LITERATURE.

Globe, Volume XXII, Issue 1909, 7 April 1880, Page 3

LITERATURE.

A CHRISTMAS PARTY ONE HUNDRED YEARS AGO, AND WHAT CAME OF IT. [Abridged from the Argosy. ] THB CHRISTMAS PARTY. I live in an old dilapidated house, and I am alone. Alone—yes ! for all my relations are dead. Distant connections there are who will take this place after me; about them I have little concern. People say, " Having small means why not move into a smaller house 5' I answer, 'Ntver 1' There will be but one remove for me; for in this year of grace 1860, I am old and alor«. Shall I describe the house mora particularly. An old, forgotten house, built in part of materials of a much older house, once standing a quarter of a mile to the south. It has been altered repeatedly. The long roof pierced by gables, fresh windows inserted ; and th« twisted chimneys are gone ; but the rooms, the dear old rooms, remain where all around has changed. You can see it as you pass along the South-Eastern Railway, below Ashford, just as the line takes a dip as it skirts the garden wall; and the old house buries its face as if it scorns to look upon such a modern enormity as a railroad. Not, indeed, on the iron horse came the guesti of that Christmas party. Squire Darrel, from Chart, rode with his cousiD, on a pillion behind. Mr Finch, Mr Radcliffe, Mr Toke, and Edward Dering were accompanied by ladies similarly mounted; Edward Knatchbnll brought Matthew Breton and Thomas Knight in a great yellow chariot; whilst Mr and Mrs Norwood, Dr Whitfield, and young Elwick, walked from the neighboring town. In the house, in addition to my mother, there were staying two middleaged ladies, the Misses Tapanden ; Ellen ——, Lieutenant B , and a youth named Tracy, supposed to be a cadet of a noble family of Irish extraction. Yet little was known about him. The master of the house, who sometimes went to survey some property (as he said) on the coast, had recently returned with him. Yes; with Tracy, whose presence had such, baneful influence over one young life, and whose mysterious death has been rehearsed by wakeful winds about thiß lonely honee for many years. " Murder! " they still hoartely shout overhead amid tie-beam, and rafter; "Mystery!" they softly whisper in this dark room where I am sitting. It is an idle fancy ; but, guided by my mother's description so often repeated, I can place chairs where each person sat round the flaming hearth. To me their shadows still come and go in the twilight, and the boards creak land start as if the feet which have long walked into family vaults were yet careering round the spacious room. Warm wad the welcome which all received on that eventual day. Since the cruel winter four yoars before, when Hogben the borsholder was found frozen stark and stiff in the adj lining '■ eighteen acres," the owner of thia house hrf.d taken every precaution to keep out the bitter cold. Strips of carpet, sancibag3, and list concealed every crevice ; great l.igs from Eoekhanger burned in the hall, day and night ; and yet the house even then was cold. To me it ssems colder every year. I need hardly pay that the ladies were " drest all in best ;" one or two in saeques, and others in the large bell hoops just coming into fashion, with head-dresses of s correupondlng size. Indeed, so ample are the dimensions of the lidies compared with the tight-kiting clothes of the gentlemen, that old John Shorter, of Bybrook. declared when ha joined the circle that they aU looked liko turnips and carrots. Dinner was served at four o'clock. Heavy and substantial as tho host himself, tha only rariety being the red lefged partridgg; ether game, with the meat and poultry, came from the estate ; and the ponderous plum pudding, girt about with quivering sprays, formed of split quills and pendeat almonds, had been boiling all tho previous night. My mother, who was then seventeen, had only recently left school, and the feeling of liberty, and some deeper feeling besides, caused her to look back upon thia as. the

dinner par excellence, altogether delightful. Ic was no secret. She was already engaged to the eldest son of her host, then, I am told, a youth whose genial gocd-nature and comeliness fairly atoned for lack of brightness of parts ; in fact, my fathe? was somewßat of a dunce. There was another engaged couple—pale Ellen S , with the violet eyes, my mother's young cousin, fragile as a flower, a mere child in appearance, but even then impulsive and determined to a degree which showed where the shadow might fall. Poor Ellen ! she was the last of a family all grandly interred in their chantry at Brabourne ; but the land, like the line, has dwindled to six feet of earth. Her lover, Lieutenant B wag a tall, stalwart fellow ; had already seen active service, and was in a fair way to promotion. As a man of the world, he was more than a match lor the apparently guile'ess girl, playing upon her credulity, probing her intellect, and half amused with her sallies. But he little knew her ; and perhaps she dared not ask hsr heart if she really cared for the man who had £a,ttered her by an assurance of his untiring love. Many were the jokes which circulated, with the wine, abcut the young people. They were toasted and pledged in all kinds of ways ; and although soil* of the remarks would rather shock the present Mrs Grundy, they were thsn received with hilirity by all ; for people were easily amused, and broad humour prevailed some eighty years ago. And then the dancing in the withdrawing-rocm overhead ! Even now the tiny hooks remain which upheld the crreen garlands and festoons of bright ribands Vane, the violinist from Anhford, could play only accompaniments suited to such anti quated dances as ' Cuckolds all Awry.' ' Money Musk,' ' Mother Casey,' ' Off she goes,' and * Drops of Brandy ;' and a straage mischance, causing much laughter, befeil stout Mrs Badcliffe, whose heated solts stuck to the waxed floor so pertinaciously that she was obliged to leave them behind for the remainder of the dance.

For those who did not dance, card-tibles were placed in the business-room down stair?, for wist, and so on; but the marter of the house properly insisted that everybody, including the servants, should stand up in tho large hall for " Sir iloger de Coverley," It was then when jSllen S and Tracey were partneri, that my mother observed the shadow which soon fell so darkly on her yonng life. . . . She described Tracy afterwards often and minutely. His presence was deeply impressed on her memory. The strange reticence about his birth and connections excited her curiosity, whilst the startling manner of his subsequent disappearance haunted her. He was, and is, one of the phantoms peopling this deserted house. How well she noted his appearance that evening. He was indeed fair to look upon ; a youth of slight build, and under the middle height; but somehow one forgot his small stature in gazing upon a smooth face fit for the canvas of a Le'y. The well curved mouth, the nose slightly aquiline, the eyebrows boldly arched and meeting, and the eyes, those " windows of the soul," set like the star in heaven's own azure ; that wavy hair, drawn stiffly back from the forehead, in the ungainly fashion of the time, and formed into a knotted club behind, but which my mother declared had once been seen for a moment falling in massive folds over his shoulders. Ah, me ! that such more than earthly beauty should have visited this now lone and deserted house ! I said that Ellen 8 and Tracy were partners, and right merrily went the dance; and as " Sir Koger " demands, constant activity and attention, no one but my mother observed the very close intimacy which was suddenly developed between these two. Elderly people soon tired, and others fell out of the ranks; yet Tracy clung to his vis-a-vis ; and she, perhaps, from a spirit of bravado, swept up and down the long hall, until the head refused to govern the feet, and Tracy bore her fainting to a bench. Dr Whitfield was in the card-room—a mild-mannered gentleman of portly presence, with a voice like the rustle of a curtain. ' Merely what we call hysteria,' whispered he. * Humbug,' reioined the host, who did not understand the term, and who was really concerned. ' John Toke, crack her knuckles, and pass a spill before her nose; now the brandy. There, I never knew that fail with the ladies,' as the patient sighed and shivered. As my mother bent down with a scent bottle, Ellen elapsed her convulsively and murmured, ' Oh, Tracy—Traoy!' " Hueh,' interposed my mother, looking up, devoutly hoping that no one else heard the exclamation.

Alas! the person least to be desired, Lieutenant B—, was peering over her shoulder, with an anxious, troubled look. In a moment his brow furrowed, the thin lips were compressed, and his voice broke from him like the flash of a thunder-cloud—- " She is coming to herself," and he turned coldly away. The general company knew nothing of this. They bkw only a giddy girl overcome with exertion:: afterwards laughing and talking, and blaming her own folly ; and ail were shortly interested in observing a custom which had never been omitted since the huge timbers of the house had been welded together. The curiously carved clock, on the first landing of the stairs, had given in halting undertone the hour of eleven, when the guests ranged themselves in the hall in a semi-circle, some on settleß, some in fiddlebaoked chairs, round the blazing fire. Mulled wine was Berved freely and conversation became animated. It was then that Betsy Tappenden, who had_ been peering outside at some Kingsnorth singers, came in with a face as white as her kerchief, vowing that she had seen a ghost. There was a rush to the back door; but nothing was to be seen in the glimmering moonlight. Returning to their warm places, the conversation turned naturally upon ghosts. Mr Elw'.ck had just heard in Bath, where it was the talk of the town, of a well-known nobleman who had died suddenly, and whose ghost had appeared to a banker at the exact moment of his lordship's decease. The banker had taken a Bible oath of its truth. Mr Whitfield remembered being called to staunch the wounds of a footpad, who declared before death that he had helped to waylay and murder " as fine a feller a== ever carried flint," at the entrance to Ashford. " And, what is curious," added the doctor, " though no body has been found, the occupants of a solitary farmhouse called Barrowhill, at the weat end, have frequently s-:en, as they Bay, a fine military man standing in the high road, who alwajs disappears as they near him." Lieutenant B—, stationed in London the previous Msy, also astonished his hearers by a thrilling account of how he had seen thirteen convicts executed together at Tyburn, the eldest of whom, scarcely of age, had threatened to haunt the hangman during his mortal life and after. At this point the host started up, and reminding the company that it was close upon twelve, all arose, and, joining hands, formed a circle in the centre of the hall. Motionless they stood, and silent, like the shadows they shortly became, as old Father Time gave an awful bound over the threshold. The firelight faltered and fell, the lamps seemed to grow dim, their faceß whitened as spectreß; yet so still were they that the measured beat of the,near hand pendulum seemed as the muffled knock of the new year waiting at the door; and it was a relief when the clock began grudgingly to gasp out the remaining moments, and the old year was dead. Then everybody's tongue was loosed like their hands ; cheers, congratulations, and good wishes prevailed. One more custom followed. Who should let the old year out and the new year in. But beware : ''For he who opens the first door To let the new year tread the ioor, Shall see misfortune at the fore. While he who bids the old year pack From open casement at the back, Of future years shall have no lack." * It was all nonsense, merely a fond dame's rhyme,' cried stout Mrs Toke, turning the we'l-worn key, as the company pressed round the door. Tracy was about to pull it onen. Miss S— stepped forward to her hand noon his shoulder. It was to> late. ' Who cares,' shouted Tracy swinging back the sturdy oak panels. Ellen, shivered ; it may have been from the east wind which came fiercely in ; but her Jaco was white, and my mother fancied some secret fear possessed her. Was she right? Out in the open air for a moment, with the young firs waving like plumes on either side, and the keen stars piercing their flakes of cloud, the Urge paity Btood listening. The bells ot Aldington, Mersham, Stvington, and Willen- : boronch were ringing joyously on the^last night of December eighty years ago. , be continued.)