LITERATURE.

Globe, Volume XX, Issue 1455, 15 October 1878, Page 3

LITERATURE.

DR. GARRICK. By M. E. Braddon. [From “All the Year Round.”] { Continued.) Chapter Vl.— Fob Love and Life. St Hildred House was said to be haunted. There was (hardly an inhabitant of the village who would not have vouched for the fact Noises had been heard i ghosts had been seen, at intervals, and by divers persons. ever since the oldest inhabitant’s childhood. The exact form of the apparition, or the precise nature of the noises, was not easy to determine, since everyone gave a different description, and almost everyone’s knowledge was derived from hearsay. Till very lately, Hester Rushton had laughed at these rumors, and had never known what it was to feel a thrill of fear in the musty old passages, or to shudder as the gathering twilight peopled the corners of the pannelled rooms with shadows. Now all was changed, she was nervous and apprehensive. She started at a shadow, and fancied she heard a human voice mixed with the night winds that sobbed in the wide old chimneys. One night she was disturbed by sounds that seemed distinctly human : heavy breathing, footsteps moving close to the head of her bed. She started up, and lighted her candle, convinced that there was someone in the room. Yet she had bolted her door before going to bed. The room was empty, but again she heard footsteps moving stealthily close at hand. ‘ The cupboard,’she thought. ‘ There is someone in that cupboard.’ It was a long narrow cupboard, a kind of enclosed passage between her room and Mr Tregonnell’s. There was a third door in this cupboard, opening on to a corkscrew staircase, that led down to the servants’ offices. But this staircase was rarely used, the door leading into Mr Tregonnell’s room was never opened,' and the cupboard was only a receptacle for disused and forgotten lumber, Hester unlocked the cupboard, and looked in. A man was in the act of escaping by the door that opened on the staircase. She pursued him, candle in hand, her heart beating violently, , Something told her that this was Dr Carrick, who had been paying a stealthy visit to his patient’s room; but, to her surprise, on the hrst step of the stairs David Skelter turned and faced her, with his finger on his lip, and a look that implored her forbearance. ‘Oh, please, miss, don’t say anything, I'm not doing any harm.’ ‘ But why aro you here—hiding in this cupboard—in the middle of the night ?’ ‘lt isn’t the middle of the night, miss. I was uneasy about master.” ‘Why?’ ‘ Well, miss, to he candid, I don’t like the doctor’s goings on. I’ve had my suspicions of him for a long time. It s too much like witchcraft, the power he’s got over my master. It isn’t natural you know, miss, and I happened to find out that he’d been putting it into people’s heads that my master wasn’t to be treated like a rational being, and that turned me against him, and made me think that there was something wrong going on.’ ‘ Bat what wrong can Dr Garrick do your master, David ?’ asked Hester, with her earnest eyes searching the young man’s face. ‘ Oh, miss, can I trust you ? Are you a friend or a foe ?’ ‘ I am a friend to Mr Tregonnell, David ; a sincere one.’

‘Yes, I believe it, miss; I’ve seen that, and I know something more. I know that he's a friend to you—more than a friend, nearer and dearer. He’s been happier and better since he’s known yon. But I can’t make the doctor out. He’s too dark for me. Do you see that cupboard-door?’ pointing to the door opening into Mr Tregonnell’s room. * The other morning, when 1 was putting away my master’s things, it struck mo that we might as well have the use of this cupboard. 1 tried the door, and found it locked inside. I could see the nozzle of the key in it. Then it struck me that this cupboard-door must communicate with some other room or passage, and then I remembered the door at the head of these stairs, which I’d never seen open. I came round by the stairs, and examined the cupboard, and I found a little shutter or flap opening in that door—it had been made for ventilation I suppose —through which I could look into my master’s room. And that very night, feeling uneasy about him in my mind, after I’d gone up to bed, I crept down again, and looked through the little shutter to see if he was all right. And therefore I saw ’ ‘ What, David ? It was very wrong to play the spy upon your master.’ * I saw the doctor conjuring him—hocus sing him, miss.’ ‘ Wnat do you mean ? ’ ‘ So, miss—like this.’ And David made solemn passes with his ; hands before Hester’s face. ‘He did that, miss, and sent master to sleep as quiet as a lamb. Now, I don’t like to think that any man should have the power of sending my master to sleep.’ Hester heard him in silence, deadly pale, breathless. Bhe had the clue to the mystery now. It was mesmeric influence that composed the patient’s restless mind to sleep ; it was under mesmeric influence that Eustace Tregonnell had written and signed the will, of which in his waking state he knew nothing. Among the books which Mr Tregonnell had brought her, and one which she had read with deepest interest, was Lord Lylton’s “Strange Story.” She had read also that thrilling story, by the same author, “ The House and the Brain,” and the doctrines of magnetic influence were not unknown to her. Dr Garrick was just the kind of man—studious, passionless, selfcontained—to exert such influence, to be familiar with that unholy art. He had used his power to get a will executed —a will which doubtless bestowed more upon him than the legacy he had spoken of to Hester, But that will would give him nothing so long as Eustace Tregonnell lived, and Eustace Tregonnell was at loast eighteen years his junior. How remote must be the benefit which Dr Garrick could hope for from that will. Again, it would he cancelled, mere waste-paper, the moment Mr Tregonnell made another will, and he talked of doing so at the end of the week. All through the night Hester lay broad awake, thinking of Dr Garrick, and trying to fathom his motive for a deed, which was, to her mind, as dark a crime as the worst forgery that had ever been perpetrated, ‘ The will is made, and he will he eager toi profit by it,’ she thought, with an icy thrill of horror creeping through her veins. •* He is no longer interested in prolonging his patient’s life. He must wish for his death, for he would not have committed this crime if ho were not greedy of money. He will want to prevent Mr Tregonnell’s making a second will, and how is ho to do that ?’ How, save by the worst and last of crimes—secret murder ? A wild terror seized upon Hester, as she saw herself face to face with this hideous thought. The idea, having once taken hold of her, was not to be thrust out of her mind. How else, hut by Eustace Tregonncll’s speedy death, could the doctor profit by his crime ? His profession gave him a fatal power. He had the keys of life and death in his hand, and Eustace trusted him with blind unquestioning faith. ‘ I will not leave him in a secret enemy’s hand,’ she thought ; ‘I will tell him everything to-morrow. I owed gratitude and affection to my cousin, while I believed him a good and honorable man, I owe nothiug to a traitor.’ She rose at her usual early with a torturing headache, and hands burning with fever the was startled when she saw her altered, in the glass. ‘ I hope I am not going to he ill,’ she said to herself, ‘just whoa I waut the utmost stfaugth and clearness of mind.’

It was an effort to dress, an effort to crawl downstairs, and take her place at the breakfast table. She was obliged to omit those small duties which had been her daily task —the finishing touches to the dusting and polishing of the furniture, the arrangement of a bouquet of freshly-cut flowers for the tableThe day was hopelessly wet, a dull gray sky, a straight downpour, that shut out everything except the sullen waste of leaden sea, crested with long lines of livid whiteness. There was no chance of Mr Tregonnell going to Plymouth on such a day as this. Dr. Garrick looked curiously at his cousin’s pale face, but said not a word. Mr Tregonnell, who rarely appeared so early, joined them before the doctor had finished his first cup of tea. Ho was not slow to perceive that something was wrong with Hester, ‘ Good heavens, Miss Rnshton, how ill you are looking !’ he exclaimed. ‘I do not feel very well. I had a wakeful night.’ ‘ Why, what should keep you awake ?’ asked Pr Garrick, looking sharply up at her, ‘ I hardly know. My mind was full of queer fancies. That awful story haunted me, the story you read to me a few days ago, Mr Tregonnell. ‘Well, it is rather uncanny,’ answered Eustace ; ‘ I am so sorry I read it to you. I ought to have considered that your nerves would be more sensitive than mine. I read it to you merely as a work of art, a masterpiece of graphic style.’ * I was very foolish to think of it as a reality,’ said Hester, Dr Garrick laid his fingers on her wrist. ji ‘ You had better go to bed, and stay there, if you don't want to bo seriously ill,’ he said ; ‘ you are in a high fever, as it is.’ ‘ Impossible,’ answered Hester, ‘ I have all sorts of things to do.’ ‘Of course. A woman always fancies the earth will stop, if she takes her hand off the machinery that make# it go round. I am sure you can have nothing to do to-day, that can’t be as well done to-morrow. If it’s a question of dinner, that clever fellow, Skelter, will cook for you If it’s any fiddle-faddle about the house, a muslin curtain to be ironed, or a chintz chair-cover to be mended let it stand over till you are well. I shall be at home all day, if I’m wanted. I’ve no urgent cases, and it would be too cruel to take a horse out of his stable unnecessarily on such a day as this.’ {To ho continued.)