LITERATURE.

Globe, Volume XXI, Issue 1723, 28 August 1879, Page 3

LITERATURE.

THE FATE OF FOSBROOKE, ( Continued .) But where was the light the pair had seen ? There was only the lamp in the housekeeper’s hand! And the servants whispered among themselves.

The squire was raised, and after a time revived, but he would give no explanation as to what had caused the swoon.

From that night, however, he would have no companion when he went to fish, sending his grandson back, kindly but peremptorily. He assigned no reason; but when the child cried, his lady mother encouraged him to disobey. His grandfather drove him back, but one day, when so dismisssed, he refused to depart, and then the squire gave up his sport altogether, warning the boy not to go near the moat alone. The warning was disregarded. Before many days were gone, a slimy and dripping form was drawn from the moat, and Lady Annabel, wringing her hands, accused the old man of having murdered her boy. And the squire turned mournfully away —but answered her never a word. A month or more elapsed. Squire Fosbrooke came not to the breakfast-board. House and grounds were searched. He was found at last, lifeless, before the painting of his banished son.

Reginald, now lord of the manor, shut up the room once more, and kept the key. It was a needless precaution. From the time that Mistress Hope, the housekeeper, had confided to the steward that Rupert, the painter, had died in London the very night the old squire was found senseless before his picture—from that time superstitious awe locked the door without a key. The old squire, and he alone, would approach it night or day. His death there confirmed the evil repute of the chamber, and Dame Fosbrooke’s dying words were repeated under breath through house and village. Mistress Hope, having long rebelled against the rule of Lady Annabel, retired on the pension left by the squire. In less than a couple of years Reginald Fosbrooke was pitched clean over the neck of his hunter, and Lady Annabel was left a widow, to reign supreme at the manor during the three years of the heir’s minority. Then the steward followed Mrs Hope to London, and, though late In life, they made a match of it. They did more ; they rescued Rupert Fosbrooke’a wife and son from the poverty into which they were falling. When the picture scheme of reconciliation had failed, Rupert grew bitter and angry with himself for having made the advance. But when through Mrs Hope he heard of his mother’s death, and the haughty answer Reginald’s messenger had conveyed to the manor as from him, grief and vengeance alternated in his breast, and in the turmoil he could not paint, and diappointed his patrons. A brain fever set in, and he died execrating his brother Reginald, and threatening to haunt him until his wrong was righted, Maud, the unfortunate painter’s widow) though too proud to appeal to her haughty sister-in-law, was not too proud to accept the home made for her and her son Rupert by the faithful steward and his wife, who, in their turn, felt it only an honour to devote to the service of a Fosbrooke the money they had saved in ether Fosbrooke service. They lived to see the younger Rupert married, and impressed on him for his descendants this record of family history and estrangement, coupled with the doom hanging over the elder branch of the family, insisting that in some secret manner every fatality which befel a Fosbrooke had been mysteriously foretold or previsioned within the haunted chamber of the discarded son.

So the story was handed down to me, with an addition of casualties by flood and field which had carried off the Fosbrookes, either in infancy or age, and which were only to be averted when the elder Fosbrooke extended the right hand of fellowship to the younger, and Rupert’s heirs became masters of the manor. My grandfather believed this implicitly. As for myself, I was born in a sceptical and practical age, and have had to fight my own way so sturdily, I have had no leisure to waste on the ghostly traditions of bygone ancestors in a remote manor house. So it might have been to the end of the chapter, but for a combination of fortuitous circumstances, which, to say the least, were remarkable. n. Mr friend Stretton, the solicitor, of Clement’s Inn, to whom I owe whatever success I have made, came to my chamber in the Temple, one summer day, in unusual haste for him, and handed me a long brief and a stiff retaining fee, saying, r There, run your eyes over that! If you take the jury over to give our clients a verdict, your fortune’s made!’ and he gave me a quick tap on the shoulder. I had taken up the paper languidly. ' Meyers against Fosbrooke.’ With a quickening thrill I ran my eyes rapidly over the brief, and soon made myself master of its contents. The client I was called upon to defend was Charles Fosbrooke, of Fosbrooke Manor ; our opponent, the plaintiff, a neighbouring landowner. Tho cause simply this: Three of the Squire’s children had been drowned by tho upsetting of a small skiff on the moat. He at once vowed no more lives should be given up to it greedy waters, and set about its drainage. In so doing ho unavoidable diverted the current of a small watercourse known as the Fossebrook, to the alleged detriment and damage of the plaintiff’s property. Had the Elaintiff not been litigious, the case might avo been compromised at the outset, when the Squire offered compensation to Sir Joseph Meyers. By a strongo coincidence, a letter lay open on my table before me, containing overtures from the opposite side, wherein my supposed hereditary antagonism to the Fosbrookes of the Manor was openly relied on as a reason why they should retain mo as counsel, and I rejoice to hold their brief. It is possible to have too low an estimate of human nature. Why should I, John Fosbrooke, exercise such gifts as I possessed in order to oppose my own distant kin, who have never done me a personal wrong ? I had just declined the plaintiff’s brief when Mr Stretton put his head in at the door. I showed Mm the letter and the reply. It remained for me to prove black was white or to suffer a non-suit. There is something in tho old adage that ‘ blood is thicker than water.’ I resolved to do my best for our client, 'spite of dead-and-gone feuds, I threw myself into the case, ransacking legal records for points and precedents. A day or two elapsed. Leaving the Temple in the forenoon, I encountered Stretton in the gateway just as I was turning into Fleet street. Ho caught me by the button hole and invited me to luncheon with him. As I hesitated a light basket phaeton containing a gentleman and lady, with a small page in dark livery behind, drove under Temple Bar and stopped in front of us. ‘By Jove!' exclaimed Mr Stretton, and almost before the words left his lips tho page was at the horse’s head, and the gentleman, whose eyes and hair were dark as my own, and who struck me as a disagreeable likeness of myself—but not a bad looking fellow on the whole —had jumped out, and throwing the reins to the lady, as lovely a brunette as it had been my fate to meet, with eyes as soft and melancholy as her companion’s were eager and fiery. With barely a word of apology to me, he drew the solicitor aside and began in a hurried voice I could not but choose to hear: • What’s this your clerk tolls me, Mr Stretton ? Do you know into whose hands you have committed our case F This Mr John Fosbrooke —’ * He is a very rising young barrister —could not be in better hands,’ interrupted the lawyer imperturbably. 1 He claims kinship with the Fosbrookes of Fosbrooke, sir. There is an old feud between his branch of the family and ours. You must withdraw the brief at any cost. He will ruin our cause. In my father’s name I insist on tho withdrawal of the brief!’ TMs in answer to Mr Stretton’s visible protest. {To be continued.)