LITERATURE.

Globe, Volume XXI, Issue 1730, 5 September 1879, Page 3

LITERATURE.

MRS BENNION’S DISAPPEARANCE. I. ‘ Did yonr mistress leave no word as to when she would be in ?’ asked Mr Bennion, comparing his watch with the drawing room clock and addressing his butler. Both master and man looked very uneasy. * No, sir. Missis went out after luncheon. She ordered dinner for seven as usual, bo we supposed she would be in.’ ‘lt is 8.30 now,’ said Mr Bennion, endeavoring to look composed. ‘ You are sure no card or note was left for me ?’ ‘Quite sure, sir,’ replied the butler, who had been summoned np four or five times witbiu the last hour and a half to answer similar interrogatories. ‘ Shall I serve up the dinner, sir V ‘Yes, yon had better. Probably your mistress has gone to dine with her parents. I daresay she sent me a note to my chambers, and it must have miscarried. ’

Mr Bennion sought to quiet himself by saying this, but he was ill at esse. He was a barrister in large practice who had been married about a year, and this was the first time that there had been the slightest hitch in the clock-work regularity of his homo life. Except on Sundays, during vacation and when he was absent on circuit, he was accustomed to leave his home at 9.30 every morning and to return at 6.45, when he would find his wife dressed to receive him and the dinner ready to be served. He was a methodical man and she a social little woman, who know her husband’s liking for punctuality, and took care that he should never bo disturbed by anything amiss in her domestic arrangements. He sat down to his solitary dinner In the large hadsome dining room. He lived in Eussell square, where all apartments are spacious ; and being a prosperous man, his surroundings were luxurious. The table, spread with taste, was decked with flowers and silver, and the soft light shining through globes of white glass shed on it an air of festivity. But the chair of the young mistress of the house remained empty, and gazing on that vacant seat, Henry Bennion could neither eat nor drink. He had never re alised till that moment how very dear his wife was to him. She had graced his home and made him happy. From the first day when she had sat in that place of honor at the head of his board—a still blushing bride after their return from the honeymoon tour —from that time until that very morning of this day, when she had presided as usual over his breakfast, Henry Bennion bad been accustomed to find in her the most tender and cheerful companionship. He called to mind how often he had glanced across the table and met the beams of her smiling eyes, how often he had been enlivened by her merry prattle and touched by the interest which she expressed in his work, his pleading and his growing fame, of which she appeared so proud. No cross word had ever passed between them ; no coldness or sulks had ever marred their intercourse for an hour; on the contrary, in the smallest matters as well as in great ones, dear Mabel Bennion had made her husband constantly feel that she was a helpmate on whose loving devotion and entire frankness ho could rely wholly. Abruptly a presentiment fell upon him that all this was past and gone, and that his wife would never more sit in her place at that table—never! He pushed away his plate and stared at the empty chair with a haggard glance, A creeping of the flesh came upon him as if misfortune had entered his home and were standing near him with her chill shadow. He had started several times at the sonnd of cab wheels and even bells, and now a loud knock at a neighbouring door made him jump with the reflection that it was past nine, and that every moment added to his just cause for alarm. He walked into the hall, put on his hat, and left the house without speaking to any of the servants. At the fir-.t cab stand he hailed a hansom, and told the driver to take him to Eaton Place, where Mr Kurthew, Mabel’s father, lived. Mr Kurthew was a wealthy solicitor, having a large family of sons and daughters whom he had all settled comfortably in life with the exception of one daughter, an invalid, who resided with him. Julia Kurthew, with her father and mother, were all three in the drawing room when Henry Bennion arrived, and to the anxious question which |he stammered out * Have you seen Mabel ?’ they answered In the negative. Julia at once saw that there was something wrong, but she was not the person to offer any comfort. Her general occupation was to lie on the sofa and say snappish things “ Has Mabel left you ?’ she said, arching her eyebrows. ‘ She has disappeared,’ answered Bennion, addressing Mr and Mrs Kurthew rather than Julia, whose tone shocked him. ‘ I hoped she might have come here.’ Mr and Mrs Kurthew both grew much alarmed. They were too proud to attribute their daughter’s disappearance to any scandalous reason, and concluded that she must have met with some terrible accident. Perhaps she had been run over in tha streets, or been injured while riding in a cab. Mr Kurthew said he would accompany Bennion to Bussell square to see if any news of Mabel had yet arrived ; and if not. they must go to Scotland Yard. They left the house accordingly, but at Bennion’s residence they learned nothing new. So in silent consternation they drove to the police office and saw one of the heads of the department, who took down a description of Mabel and obligingly promised that inquiries should be insti'nted that night in all the hospitals and police stations, so that the afflicted husband might at least have tidings of some sort on the morrow.

But neither on the morrow nor on the days following that, could any intelligence be obtained of Mabel Bennion. His servants were greatly agitated, but in answering the cross-questions of their master and of detectives they were all agreed that nothing unusual waa uoticeable in their mistress’s appearance the last time they saw her. Henry Bennion had now put aside all professional work and spent his time in driving about to polios stations and hospitals. When at home he employed himself in examining all Mabel’s drawers, her dresses, desks and papers to see if haply seme clue to the woful mystery might be discovered. But he found i othing at all —not a single line of a compromising character—nothing to shake the melancholy belief at which he had arrived that his wife’s disappearance could only he accounted for by her death. As a last resource, just a week after his loss, Henry Bennion caused this advertisement to be inserted in the papers : Mysteriously Disappealed—From her house, in Russell square, on the sth inst., a married lady, aged twenty-one. Slight in figure, wavy chesnut hair, blue eyes, small mouth, with very pretty teeth. Was dressed when last seen in a dark blue serge wa’king dress, a seaLkin jacket and a hat with a red feather. Linen marked M. B. A reward of One Hundred Pounds will be paid for information which shall disclose this lady’s whereabouts, if living, or lead to the recovery of her remains if she be dead, Apply to Sc Aland Yard.

By this time Mra Eennion’e disappearance had been reported editorially in all the papers, and was become the talk of the kingdom. It bad been converted into a sensation affair, insomuch that some of tho daily journals printed two or three columns full of letters every morning from corrca-

pendents who had explanations to augment—most of them opining that the missing lady must havo been decoyed Into some thieves’ den and there murdered. Henry Bennion himself received heaps ef communications from persons who had seen ladies answering to the description of his wife, and he was summoned a dozen times to identify dead odies that had been found in the river. At the end of a month he put on mourning, feeling convinced that he was a widower. Among all his acquaintances there was but one person who did not believe Mabel to bo dead, and that was her sister, Julia Knrthew.

Lying on the sofa in her languid way, with novels in her lap, this girl, who would have been pretty but for her hard look and trick of sneering, took no part in the discussions that were held in her xrresencc as to Mabel’s probable fate, but she occasionally shook her head and smiled as if incredulously. When Henry Bennion had seen her do this several times, he one day lost patience and turned on her abruptly:—‘Julia, you don’t seem to agree with us about your sister’s death,’ he said, looking hard at her. * Can you say anything to enlighten us !’ ‘ No, I don’t believe she is dead,’ auawered Julia, coirring. ‘Then do yon imagine she has left me purposely ? What could make her wish to hiring this sorrow on us ?’

‘ I don’t believe Mabel was happy with you I’ replied Julia, coldly. it. Time assuages grief, for men must work, and no tribulation falling upon a man who is not of weak nature will prostrate him for long. Henry Bennion left his home in Enssell square because its memories were too bitter; but ho went to live in his chambers and rallied to his work at the bar. His practice lay in the Criminal Courts, and the habit he acquired of working very hard to drive forrow away began to earn him exceptional renown in bis profession. He had always been a successful pleader; but his trouble seemed to have a refining effect upon him, so that instead of being a jocular, often blustering advocate, who had made no scruple to rant or bully witnessess, he became remarkable for bis gravity and quiet persuasiveness. He was one of those lawyers who are said ta “have the ear'/ of juries and judges, and it was predicted that he would himself in due time be elevated to the bench.

So it came to pass about four years after his bereavement Henry Bennion, going on the Home Circuit, was retained to defend a man accused of accidental manslaughter. There was nothing peculiar in the case at its outset, but in the course of the trial the prosecution procured information tending to show that the prisoner was a desperate criminal who had been convicted of uttering forged notes two years previously, but had escaped from prison, and these facts had a direct bearing on the charge of manslaugter, for if proved they would demonstrate that the prisoner had long known the man whom he had killed, and that, far from slaying him by accident, he had executed a deeplyplanned murder. Henry Bennion, whose client had been out on bail before the trial, had reckoned on an easy acquittal, and, of course, he did his utmost to rebut the theory which the prosecution had suddenly started; but after the trial had been dragginc on for several hours, the counsel for the Crown—a young barrister of no high status —rose and said—‘My lord, we contend that the prisoner wilfully disfigured himself by scarring bis features with vitrol. I will now call two witnesses as to his identity—the landlady of the lodging-house where he was arrested four years ago when charged with forgery and the woman who was sentenced as his accomplice and who is still undergoing a sentence of five years’ penal servitude at Woking.’ (To be continued ')