LITERATURE.

Globe, Volume XX, Issue 1471, 2 November 1878, Page 3

LITERATURE.

ruocToirs case. Bv Mrs. Cashel Hoey. ( Continued.) By degrees the Hartletop and the Nimruo business came to be regarded as peculiarly my affair —I had always known mre about them than Mr Charles —and, in particular, 1 always called on Lady Hartletop to take her any papers which she had to see, and occasionally to make to her certain communications which Sir Frederick sent through our office. I have reason to believe that no direct correspondence ever took place between them from the date of Lady Hartletop's arrival at the Hall. I felt a great interest in Lady Hartletop, and was sorry that she persevered in the extreme seclusion which she from the first adopted. Her manner to me was always gracious, ladylike, and reserved ; she would hardly over make a comment upon any communication which it was my duty to make to her, but, when she had received it, would put the matter aside, and converse with me for awhile in her pretty foreign English. Miss Sybilla was generally present, and she would talk to me too, and sometimes question me about the little world outside the parkgates, of which she knew so little. I suppose Lady Hartletop’s rigid avoidance of her neighbours of every degree came from her being too poor to associate with her equals ou equal terms, and too proud to associate with her inferiors on any terms. She never omitted to inquire for my wife, hut she had never seen her ; and I do not know whether she knew even the names of the families who resided close to the parkgate,s. Miss Sybilla was educated entirely by her mother, and, as I afterwards came to know, very well educated. She was a cheerful, bright, pretty creature, and her young glad-heartedness seemed to be proof against the influences of solitude, and that very trying form of poverty, which combines external grandeur with the lack of all that makes life beautiful or pleasant. Miss Sybilla and her foreign attendant were frequently seen in the suburbs, and even in Ipswich itself, though Lady Hartletop never passed the park-gates. * And a sweet pretty creature she is, Mr Forrest,’ said Mrs Proctor to me one day, when Sybilla Hartletop was, as near as I could judge, “ sweet seventeen,” and the very picture of health and sprightly English loveliness ; ‘ for all she never has a silk frock, and scarcely a new bonnet to speak of, and cooped up with a foreigner, too.’ ‘ The foreigner is her mother,’ I objected; * and Alias Hartletop has never had any other companions, so I suppose she does not miss them.’ * Ah, yes, that’s all very well; but it won’t last. Take my word for it, Mr Forrest, though I have no daughters myself, it won’t last,; Mrs Proctor was right. It did not last, and it came to an end very shortly after Mrs Proctor had thus given her opinion, . , , . , A little before this time we had received at our office a communication from Sir Frederick Hartletop of an unusual character. This time ha instructed us that, owing to the death of a relative, Lady Hartletop had become possessed of a legacy of one thousand pounds, and the papers concerning the bequest were forwarded to us. When I wailed on her to convey this good news, she displayed, for the first time in my presence, signs of emotion, but she speedily put them down, and proceeded to ask me anxiously whether Sir Frederick had said anything about reducing her income in consequence of this bequest, or had dictated any special form of investment for it. I answered both quest!ons in the negative, and she seemed much relieved. At the moment Sybilla came into the room, and her mother, with an unreserve quite new to me, told her what had happened, * ()h, mamma mia t’ she exclaimed, with the eagerness of a child, * may I not have a pony now, a litt ■ e cheap pony ? You know you said I could, if only we had the least little money over and above. ’ The mother looked at the girl with the fondest smile, and said to mo—- ‘ I think, Mv Forrest, wo may risk the pony. 1 Alias Sybilla had her pony, and she used to ride sedately about the park and along the quietest of the roads close by. 1 remember her well, with her long skirt and her broad-leaved hat and feather ; aud I chanced to meet her one day when I was going to the Hall, looking so bright and pretty that I had not the heart to tell her what my errand was, but let her go her pleasant way with only a word or two about the pony. ‘ You manage him nicely, Aliss Sybilla. He is very quiet.’ 1 Very; only when there’s a sudden noise. He hates that.’ I went on, thinking that Lady Hartletop would be sure to prefer being alone whoa she must hear my tidings. If they were not grievous to her, Sybilla had better not sec that it was so; if they were grievous nobody could help her, I had come to tell her that Sir Frederick Hartletop had died suddenly, aud that, when the new baronet should have possession of the Hall, as wo presumed ho , would immediately; 04* must provide herndf with -mother dwelling, without any increase ox her means. Beyond the capital of the small income which was secured to her, Sir Frederick Hartletop left nothing. A line estate, an honourable name, the of many lives, the traditions ox a long line of worthies, had all been qa-rdiced to his selfish vices-

I told Lady Hartletop the truth as gently and considerately as I could; and I know that, notwithstanding the strong restraint she put upon herself, it was grievous to her, and she would be better alone for awhile. So I merely urged upon her that she must come to a speedy decision as to what she would do, rather as a means of occupying her, than because there was any real reason to fear her being incommoded, and was about to leave her when she arid, ‘ Are you to continue to manage the business of the Hall ?' ‘ We have no instructions as yet from Sir William Hartletop. He is, we understand, an elderly unmarried man; and the entails stops with him,’ ‘ Yes, I believe that is so. He could, therefore, sell the Hall, which Sir Frederick would gladly have done if he could.’ ‘ 1 should think he would do ; he has never seen the place ; the but what is this ?’ I rose and hurried to the window, with her back to which Lady Hartletop w r as sitting; I had caught sight of a man leading Miss Sybifia’s pony, followed by another man carrying something in his arms. Lady Hartletop started up ; I in vain tried to restrain her; she rushed towards the great empty echoing hall, the wide doors lay open, and in the act of carrying his burden no the steps was Richard Proctor. In bis arms lay Sybilla, insensible and with a broken arm. ‘Don’t be alarmed, madam,’ said Richard, ‘she has only fainted within the last minute or two, because it was impossible to carry her without hurting her arm. Let me lay her down, and then I will fetch a doctor at once.’ When Sybilla had been laid down on a sofa, and her horrified mother was loosening her dress, I looked out for the other man, whom I had not recognised, and saw him walking off with his hands in his pockets, having tied the guilty pony to one of the pillars of the porch. The man was Bernard Proctor’s eldest son. Chapter 11. Miss .Sybilla Hart etop was not long laid up with her broken arm, but the accident was, nevertheless, productive of certain consequences, among which was the relaxation of Lady Hartletop’s rigid rule of seclusion, in favor first of Richard Proctor and afterwards of his mother. Events followed each other at the Hall just then with rapidity, in proportion to the long stagnation that had existed there. Instructions were received at our office from Sir William Hartletop, to the effect that he wished the business of the estate to be conducted by Mr Nimmo until such time as he could advantageously effect a sde of it, as be had no intention of residing upon it. But he made no allusion to the widow and daughter of his predecessor, and when 1 proposed to Lady Hartletop that wo should apply to Sir Wi-liana for permission for them to continue to reside at the Hall, as the place was not to be let, she refused to allow me to do so. A small house in the vicinity was taken for her, and on Miss Sybilla’s recovery the fitting took place. Tne house belonged to Bernard Proctor, and was, indeed, the very one of which there had been a question so many years previously, on the first occasion of my seeing Mr and Mrs Proctor. It would not have required the penetra tion of a sage, or the prophetic power of a magician, to foresee and foretell the effect, upon the persons chiefly concerned, of the occurrence that had introduced Richard Proctor and Sybilla Hartletop to each other. The terror of Lady Hartletop, and her helplessness in the presence of her child’s injury aud suffering, contrasted strangely with the stoical reserve of her usual demeanour so far as I was acquainted with it. The readiness, the genuine kindness, the courteous helpfulness of the handsome young man who had, as she persisted in believing, saved Miss Sybilla’s life—though the pony’s misdemeanors had hardly involved so serious an issue as that —seemed to constitute a new relation to the woman who had just received two such shocks as had come to Lady Hartletop within the same hour. Richard Proctor had always been a favorite of mine, and if I thought Lady Hartletop made a little too much of what he had done, I was careful to keep that opinion strictly to myself. It was two or three days after the accident that, on going to inquire for Miss Sybilla, I found Mrs Proctor at the Hall, and heard that Richard had proposed to bring his mother thore, on finding that nobody in the house knew anything about broken bones, and that Lady Hartletop’s nerves were entirely unequal to the occasion. Mrs Proctor was the motherliest of women, and the curiosity she had long felt about the recluse lady and her daughter gave way to genuine interest —not a little assisted by the fact, that she and her son formed the only exception to the rule which excluded visitors from the Hall Wh .n the now arrangements had been made, I felt almost as if I had got the mother and daughter off my mind ; and shortly afterwards my wife and I went away for a month, on one of the holiday trips which were of rare occurrence in our lives. The first piece of local intelligence I heard on my return was, that Mr Proctor had had a severe illness, and was recovering from it but slowly. The second was that it was said that he intended to purchase Hartletop Hall. The latter item of news was not generally well received. There was a rather extensively-spread feeling that selfmade men were all very well in their way, and of course it w r as very commendable to raise oue’a-self in the world, aud to make as large a fortune as possible ; but that sort of thing ought to stop short of buying up old places with which none but aristocratic traditions wmre associated—transactions of the kind savoring of bumptiousness and bad taste. As no intimation of any suck intention on his part had reached our office, I did not pay much heed to the rumour. {To he continued.)