LITERATURE.

Globe, Volume XXI, Issue 1785, 10 November 1879, Page 3

LITERATURE.

A SHADOW IN THE CORNER. [From “All the Year Round.” Wildheath Grange stood a little way back from the road, with a barren stretch of hea 1 h behind it, and a few tall fir trees, with straggling wind-tossed heads, for its only shelter. It was a lonely house on a lonely road, little better than a lane, leading across a desolate waste of sandy fields to the seashore, and it was a house that bore a bad name among the natives of the village of Holcroft, which was the nearest place where humanity might be found. It was a good old house, nevertheless, substantially built in the days when there was no stint of stone and timber—a good old gray stone house, with many gables, deep window seats, and a wide staircase, long dark passages, hidden doors in queer earners, closets as large as some modern rooms, and cellars in which a company of soldiers might have lain perdu. This spacious old mansion was given over to rats and mice, loneliness echoes, and the occupation of three elderly people ; Michael Bascom, whose forefathers had been landowners of importance in the neighborhood, and his two servants, Daniel Skegg and his wife, who had served the owner of that grim old house ever since he left the university, where he had lived fifteen years of his life—five as student, and ten as Professor of Natural Science. At three and-thirty Michael Bascom had seemed a middle-aged man, at fifty-six he looked and moved and spoke like an old man. During that interval of twenty three years ho had lived alone in Wildheath Grange, and the country people told each other that the house had made him what he was. That was a fanciful and superstitious notion on their pa-t, doubtless, yet it would not have been difficult to have traced affinity between the dull gray building and the man who lived in it. Both seemed alike remote from the common cares and Interests of humanity; both had an air of settled melan holy, engendered by perpetual solitude ; both had the same faded complexion, had the same look of slow decay. Yet lonely as Michael Basoom’s life was at Wildheath Grange, be would not on any account have altered its tenor. He had been glad to exchange the comparative seclusion of college rooms for the unbroken solitude of Wildheath. He was a fanatic in his love of scientific research, and his quiet days were filled to the brim with labors that seldom failed to interest and satisfy him. There were periods of depression, occasional momenta of doubt, when the goal toward which he strove seemed nnattainable, and his spirit fainted within him. He had a dogged power of continuity which ought to have carried him to the highest pinnacle of achievement, and which, perhaps might ultimately have won for him a grand name and a world-wide renown, but for a catastrophe which burdened the declining years of his harmless life with an unconquerable remoise. - . _ One autum morning—when ho had lived just three-and twenty years at Wildheath, and had only lately begun to Jperceieve that his faithful .butler and body servant, who was middle aged when he first employed him, was actually getting old —Mr Bascom’s breakfast meditations over the latest treatise on the atomic theory were interrupted by an abrupt demand from that very Daniel Skegg. The man was accustomed to wait upon his master in the most absolute silence, and his sadden breaking out into speech was almost as startling as if the bust of Socrates above the book case had burst into human language. • It’s no use,’ said Daniel; *my missns must have a girl!’ ... , ‘ A what!’ demanded Mr Bascom, without taking his eyes from the line he had been reading. « A girl—girl to trot about and wash up, and help the old lady. She’s getting weak on her legs, poor soul. We’ve none of us grown younger in the last twenty years.’ ‘ Twenty years!’ echoed Michael Base 3in scornfully. ‘Whatis twenty years in the formation of a strata—what even in the growth of an oak —the cooling of a volcano?’ 1 Not much, perhaps, but it s apt to tell upon the bones of a human being.’ ‘ The manganese staining to be seen upon ’ some skulls would certainly indicate —’ begar the scientist, dreamily. ; • I wish my bones were only as free froir • rheumatics as they were twenty years ago, pursued Daniel testily: * and then, per- ■ haps, I should make light of twenty years l Howsoever, the long and the short of it is ° my missus must have a girl. She can’t gi » trotting np and down these everlasting - passages, and standing in that stony scullery J year after year, just as if she was a young c woman. She must have a giri to help.’ 0 ‘Let her have twenty girls,’ said M r Bosoom, going back to his book. 0 ‘ What’s the use of talking like that, sir '* Twenty girls, indeed! We shall have ran '• work to get one.’ f ‘ Because the neighborhood is sparcel; 6 populated?’ interrogated Mr Bascom, stil 6 reading. ■' «No, sir. Because this house is known t be haunted-’ ~. , ~ , . I (Michael Bascom laid down his boos and turned a look of grave reproach npo his servant. • Skegg,’ he said, in [a ’severe voice, 5 thought yon had ived long enough wit me to be superior to any folly of that kind.'

‘ I don’t say that I believe in ghost answered Daniel, with a semi apologetic ai ‘ but the country people do. There’s no mortal among ’em that will venture aor< our threshold after nightfall.’ * Merely because Anthony Basoom, w led a wild life in London, and lost his mon and land, came home here broken hcarte and is supposed to have destroyed hims in this house—the only remnant of proper that was left him of a fine estate.’ ‘ Supposed to have destroyed himself cried Skrgg, ‘ why, the fact is a well knov as the death of Queen Elizabeth or tl Great Eire of London, Why, wasn’t 1 buried at the cross roads between here ai Ifolcroft ?’ ‘An idle tradition, for which y< could produce no substantial proof,’ r torted Mr Baecom. ‘ I don't know about proof, but the peop believe it as firmly as they be’ieve the Gospel.’ ‘lf .their f«ith in the Gospel was a litt! stronger, they need not trouble themselvi about Anthony Rascom. ’ ‘ Well,’ grumbled Daniel, as he began f clear the table, * a girl of some kind w must get, but she’ll have to be a foreiguej or a girl that’s driven hard for a place.’ When Daniel Skegg said a foreigner, h did the native of some distant climi but a girl who had not been born and bred a Holcroft. Daniel had been raised and rearei i'i that insignificant hamlet, and, small am dull as it was, he considered the world beyom it only a margin. Michael Bascom was too deep in the atomi theory to give a second thought to the neccs si ies of an old servant. Mrs Skegg was n individual with whom he rarely came in con tact. She lived, for the most part, in i gloomy region at the north end of the house where she ruled over the solitude of a kitchei that looked like a cathedral, and numerou offices of the scullery, larder, and pantr :lass, where she carried on a perpetual war ’are with spiders and beetles, and wore he: ife out in the labour of sweeping and scrub ring. She was a woman of severe aspect iogmatio piety, and a bitter tongue. She vas a good plain cook, and ministered dili;entiy to her master’s wants. He was not an picure, but liked his life to be smooth and asy, and the equilibrium of his mental lower would have been disturbed by a bad Inner. He heard no more about the proposed ddition to his household for a space of ten ays, when Daniel Skegg again startled him mid his stupendous repose by the abrupt anounoement: ‘ I’ve got a girl! ’ ‘ Ob,’ said Michael Bascom, * have you ? ’ ad he went on with his book. This time he was reading an essay on phoshorus and its functions in relation to the uman brain. ‘ Yes,’ pursued Daniel, in his usual rumbling tone ; ‘ she was a waif and stray, f I shouldn’t have got her. If she’d been a stive she’d never have come to us.’ * I hope she’s respectable,’ said Michael. ‘Respectable ! That’s the only fault she as, poor thing. She’s too good for the [ace. She’s never been in service before, at she says she’s willing to work, and I are soy my old woman will be able to peak her In, Her father was a small „.adesman at Yarmouth. He died a month ago, and left this poor thing homeless. Mrs Midge, at Holcroft, is her aunt, and she said to the girl, • Come and stay with me till you get a place,” and the girl has been staying with Mrs Midge for the last three weeks, trying to hear of a place. When Mrs Midge heard that my missus wanted a girl to help, she thought it would be the very thing for her niece Mario. Luckily Maria had heard nothing about this bouse, so the poor innocent dropped me a conrtsy, and said she’s be thankful to come, and would do her best to learn her duty. She’d had an easy time of it with her father, who bad educated her above her station, like a fool as he was,’ growled Daniel. ‘By your own account I’m afraid you’ve made a bad bargain,’ said Michael. ‘ You don’t want a young lady to clean kettles and pans,’ * If she was a young Duchess my old woman would make her work,’ retorted Skegg, decisively. ‘ And pray, where are you going to put this girl r asked Mr Bascom, rather irritably ; ‘ I can’t have a strange young woman tramping up and down the passage ontside my room, You know what a wretched sleeper I am, Skegg. A mouse behind the wainsoote is enough to wake me.’ ‘X’vo thought of that,’ answered the bntler, with his look of ineffable wisdom. * I’m not'goinglto put her on your floor. She’s to sleep in the attic.’ ‘ Which room ?’ ‘ The hie one at the north end of the honse. That’s the only ceiling that doesn’t let water. She might as well sleep in a shower bath as in any of the other attics.’ ‘ The room at the north end,’ repeated Mr Bascom thoughtfully ; * Isn’ that—? ‘Of course, it is ’ snapped Skegg; bat she doesn’t known anything about it.’ Mr Bascom went back to his books, and forgot all about the orphan from Yarmouth, nntil one morning, on entering his study, he was startled by the appearance of a strange girl, in a neat black and while cotton gown, busy dusting the volumes which were stacked in blocks npon hla spacious writing table and doing it with such deft and careful hands that he bad no inclination to he angry at this unwonted liberty. Old Mrs Skegg had religiously refrained from all such dusting, on the plea that she did not wish to interfere with her master’s ways. One of the master’s ways, therefore, had been to inhale a good deal of dust in the course of his studies. The girl was a slim little thing, with a pale and somewhat old-fashioned face, flaxen hair braided under a neat muslin cap, a very fair complexion, and light blue eyes. They were the lightest blue eyes Michael Bascom had ever seen, but there was a sweetness and gentleness in their expression which atoned 1 for their insipid color. I ‘ I hope you do not object to my dnsting your books, sir.’ she said, dropping a courtesy. ‘ She spoke with a quaint precision which struck Michael Bascom as a pretty thing in its way. ‘ No ; I don’t object to cleanliness, so long as my hooks and papers are not disturbed. If yon take a volume of my desk, replace it on the spot you took it from. ‘ That’s all I ask. {To be continued')