LITERATURE.

Globe, Volume XXI, Issue 1794, 20 November 1879, Page 3

LITERATURE.

MEG. Margaret Nealo. a girl of twenty or thereabouts, Bat on a low, broad stone at the edge of the cliff that overhung the sea. Her features wore irregular, but she had a certain dark, gipsy-like beauty of her owr. Her brown stuff gown clung closely about her ; her hat had fallen bsck, and hung carelessly by the strings ; a red woollen Bhawl was wrapped around her shoulders, one end trailing over tho scant gray herbage. Her hands were clasped about her knees ; there was a hard, set look about the unsmiling mouth ; and the eyes, that were sometimes most tender, had a dangerous light in them as they gazed steadfastly off over the darkening sea to a distant horizon, still red with the reflected glow of the sunset. At a little distance, but with his back toward her, and his steel-blue eyes just as steadfastly bent in the opposite direction, stood Matthew Erickson, a handsome young fellow enough, in the rough dress of a miner, tall, strong and rudy, with a full, curling chesnut beard and hair of the same rich color. A bluo libbon dang Ted from his left hand. There had evidently been a quarrel, and a love quarrel in a straggling mining hamlet on the north-west coast of England does not differ greatly from one in a scattered fishing hamlet on the eastern coast of Maine Forms of speech may differ, but love and anger are much the same the wide world over. As for the queer, quaint dialect in which this especial pair of lovers poured forth their mutual grievances, no attempt will be made to reproduce it here |You may be sure they said 'yo' for 'y n, 'and ' towd'for 'told,' and ' ta' for ' thou,' and ' canna ' for • cannot.' But all that sha be taken for granted, if not for your ease and comfort, at least for mine. Tired of the silence at length, the young miner sauntered away with an air of assumed indifference, and picking np a handful of pebbles, slowly tossed them, one by one, into the waves below. Margaret's eyes did not waver, hut none the lees did she follow every motion of his hand. Having watched the fall of the last pebble, he came back and stood behind her, winding the ribbon around his finger to its evident detriment. ' So yon will not wear it, Meg ?' he said at last. 'No, I will not,'she answered, without turning her head 'Why do you vex me? There's no more to be said about it.' 'But why, Meg?' and he laid his hand on her shoulder as with an attempt at reconciliation. * Tell me why T Surely you can do no less.'

' Because—because I can't abide blue, Matt Eriekson. It's hateful to mo. 'But I like it, Meg ! and if you cared for me you would be glad to wear a blue ribbon to the fair when I ask it.' ' Why did you buy it ?' she asked shortly, turning toward him by a hair's breadth. * Not to please me, that's sure ?' • Yes ; to please you and to please myself. Jenny wears ribbons as blue as her own eyes, and I am sure you cannot say they are not pretty. You are jußt stubborn, Meg.' Foor Matt! In his uneducated, masculine blindness he could not see that the delicate color that harmonised so well with his pretty cousin's pink and white cheeks and sunny curls, was utterly unsuited to his brown Meg, who needed rich dark hues and warm reds to brighten her somewhat swarthy complexion. And poor Meg ! She had an instinctive sense of fitness that taught her this, but she was not wise enough to know how to explain it to her somewhat imperious lover. She could not say she ' hated blue V Besides, Meg had carried a sore spot in her heart for two months ; ever since this same cousin Jenny of Matt's came on a visit to Rysdky. She was a dimpled, delicate little creature from the south—from near London, in fact where Meg was very certain, every thing was nicor and finer than in Lanceshire Jenny's hands were soft and white, and she had pretty gowns, as befitted the daughterof a well-to-do farmer who kept men-servants and maid-servants. And she had a pair of real gold ear-rings and a lace scatf 1 Old Mother Mar ley said it was real lace, but of that Meg was not quite sure. That was a height of magnificence to which she was not certain that even Jenny could attain. And Jenny had swest little coaxing ways with her ; and she was always purring around her cousin Matt like a kitten ; and—and—she wore blue ribbons 1 Meg would none of them. She sat for a moment as if turned to stone. Then she blazed out : •Jenny! Jenny!' lam tired of 'Jenny!' She has turned your head with her flirting ways like a butterfly, and her yellow hair and her finery. Give your blue ribbon to her and take her to the fair—for I'll not wear it!' 'And you'll not go to the fair either?' said Matt, in tones of suppressed passion. ' Is that what you mean ?' ' I'll not go with you,' she answered, growing cool herself as she grew angry. ' 'Xet it's likely enough that I may go. There are plenty of lads who would be glad to take me with no ribbons at all.' With a strong effort the young man put the curb npon his tongue, but his face darkened. * You will go with me or no one, Meg,' he said. ' This is all nonsense—and iwo to be married next Michaelmas. But come,' and he put out his hand to raise her from the stone; 'it grows dark.' Meg still anp;ry, but willing to bo pacified if she must, allowed him to assist her, and stood beside her stalwart lover with burning cheeks and downcast eyes. She rather liked, on the whole, his tacit refusal to defend himself and his masterful way of telling her it was 'all nonsense.' But just at this moment, as ill luck would have it, a small brown paper parcel dropped from the folds of her shawl. Matt stopped to pick it up. It burst open and a yard or two of scarlet ribbon rippled over his fingers. Now our poor Meg, not to be outdone by the fair Jenny, had brought this ribbon herself that very evening, meaning to wear It to the fair next week. But it so happened that when Matt went to Mother Marley's shop to buy his own blue love token he had found Daa Willis there—the only man in Rysdyk whose rivalship he had feared. And Dan was buying a ribbon precisely like this. Mother Marley had wrapped it in this very piece of paper, Matt was sure, and he had seen Dan put it in his pocket and walk o2 with it. And now here it was. His gift was spurned then, and his rival's accepted ; and all Meg's talk about Jenny was a more subterfuge—an excuse for a quarrel. It was easy to see now why she had been so Irritable of late, and so prone to take offence. But a man conld not stand everything, and if Meg preferred Dan Willis to him, why so be it. Yet if she would not wear his love token she certainly should wear Dan's. He hardly meant to do it. He was sorry the next minute. But what he did, as the tide of passion Bwept him off his feet for an instant, was to wind the two ribbons into a knot, 9-nd. throw them vehemently into the sea.

'There !' lie cried: 'that's settled, once for all.' 'And something else is settled, too, Matt Erickson,' retorted Meg, in a white heat. 'There'll ba no marriage for us next Michaelmas. No marriage then or ever. You would strike ma some day for aught I know, if I should choose to wear a red knot rather than a blur. I'll not run the risk. i'il have nothing more to say to you while the stars shine,' and darting round the cliff she was half way down the beach before he ever thought of stopping her. The next day E-ickson, magnanimous, great hearted fellow that he was after all, having gotten over his quarrel with Meg's standpoint, it occurred to him that he might have drawn uncalled-for inferences. Dan Willis might have a dczen sweethearts who all liked red ribbons for aught he knew. And how like a fool he had behaved, losing his temper like a hot-headed boy and throwing M?g's poor little trinkets over the cliff. No wonder the was afraid to trust him. More than one husband in Byadyk was in the habit of beating his wife on as slight provocation that a high spirited girl like Meg Bhould decline to run the risk after she had once seen him in a fury. And ss for Jenny—she had come in between him and Meg. He could see it now. But she was going home the day after the fair, and he would see Meg that very night and ttll her so. For he did not dream that all was over between them. He could hardly wait for the hour to leave the mine. He changed his soiled clothes, ate his supper hurridly. and was soon on his way to see Meg, stopping as lie went to buy another ribbon—red this tima, and broader and richer and handsomer than the one he had robbed her of.

Then he wtnt on through the crooked rcattered little village till he reached the widow Neale's cottage just on the outskirts. To his surpriee he found the door locked and the shutters closed. As he stood in his perplexity, a white haired urchin who was turning somersaults near by shouted—- ' Ho, you, Matt Erickson ! It's no good to wait there. The widow and Meg have gone away.' 'Gone? Where?' * Don't know. To France, like enough—or to Ameriky—or to London—or somewheres. They took a big box and a bundle, and they don't know but they'll stay forever'n ever. Meg said so,' and making a rotation wheel of himself, the lad vanished round the corner. Just then the door of the nearest cottage opened and a woman's face looked out. It was growing dark. 'ls it you, Erickson ? There's no one at home in the house there. But I have something here I was to give you when you came this way.' His face was stern and set and white in the fadiog light, as he took the little packet from the woman's hand. ' Where have they gone ?' was all he said. ' I don't just know. To visit some of their kinfolk a great way off,' the widow said. 'Oh ! but she's close-mouthed rne, she is—and Meg's a bit like her. They're not gossipy folk. You never get much out of them,' she added with an injured air. 'Not but I've found them good neighbors enough, but they're rather high and mighty for commoners.'

As soon as he was out of sight Matthew Erickson opened the packet. He knew what was in it before he untied the knot, a string of curiously-carved beads, with a strange, foreign, *picy odor, that he had bought of a wandering sailor and fastened round Meg's neck one happy night, and two or three other trifles he had given her. And he found this note slowly and painfully writfcan, badly spelled perhaps, and not punctuated at all. But what of that ? The meaning wasj'plain enough ; all too" plaiD, Matt thought, as he drew his hand across his eyes as if to clear his vision. ' I gave you back your troth last night. Here are the beads, and the silver piece, an the heron feathers. Now all ia over betwee us.'

Here she had evidently hesitated a mo merit, wondering if her words wore strong enough, for on the line below she had written, as with an echo from the Prayer-book reverberating in her ears : ' Forever and forever, amen, Margaret Neale.' Not Meg, his Meg, his proud, high spirited sweetheart —but Margaret Neale! It set her at such an immeasurable distance from him. 'All over between ns.' As if she were dead and buried out of his sight. And he had spoken to James Ray about the snug cottage beyond the bay. And they were to have been married at Michaelmas. He knew enongh of the widow Neale's habits to ask no more questions of the neighbors. As one of them had said, she was closo-mouthed. He knew she had a sister living in Scotlond, for whom Meg was named; but where even he did not know. Scotland was like a distant, foreign land to the people in Bysdyk. But the widow bad money enough to go to Scotland or farther if she wished, even on such short notice. She had never woiked in the mine, neither had Meg. She had a comfortable annuity leH her by her old mistress j for she had served in a great family before she had married John Neale. Month after month passed. Michaelmas was over, the winter came and went, and Rysdyk knew no more of her or of Meg than when they left. The silence, the void, grew unendurable to Matt, With the early tpnng he carried into effect what had been the one dream of hiß life before he learned to love Meg. America was the land of promise for miners as well as others; and had he not a friend who worked in the great iron mines at Ishpeming on the shores of the wonderful Northern lake that was itself almost as large as all England ? He had no father or mother, only a half uncle whose houre had been the only home he had ever known. What better could he do than to seek work and forgetfnlness together, where there would be nothing to remind him of the past ? So, when one fine morning nearly a year after her sudden flitting, the neighbors awoke to find the door of Widow Neale's cottage ajar and the shutters open Tho first bit of news Meg heard was that Matt Erickson had gone to America. It struck her like a blow. Now, indeed, he had dropped out of her life as utterly as, months since, she had dropped out of his. For she, too, had had time to repent. Almost before the blue hills of Scotland had dawned npon her sight she had repented in dust and ashes. How foolish she had been, like a child who throws away its bread in a pet and goes to bed hungry. Why had Bhe not worn the blue ribbon to please her lover, even if she did not like it ? As for Jenny—but what nonsense was that! She would have been ashamed of Matt if he bad not been kind to her. To be sure, he had been cross and had thrown away her ribbon. But then he was a man and men are strong and masterful and could not bear contradiction, and she had angered him by her foolish perfistence. Ah ? If Bhe could but undo it all and have her tall, brave, handsome lover back again I (To be continued.)