LITERATURE.

Globe, Volume XXII, Issue 2111, 29 November 1880, Page 3

LITERATURE.

tb;e mysteet OF LOUD BBACKENBURY: A NOVEL. BY AMELIA B. EDWABDB, Author of 11 Barbara’s History,” ’‘Debenham’s Vow.” &c. ( Continued . Time, meanwhile, trudged on, and the sand in the glass kept running. The great lawsuit completed his first decade. Herbert Braokenbury, eight years married, was father of two sons, to tho elder of whom, now seven years of age, the Grand Duke of Tuscany had stood sponsor ; the younger being an infant of some two or three months old.

Mabel Langtrey, still fair but somewhat faded, accepted, at twenty-eight tho hand of a certain middle-aged well-connected, aud very worthy gentleman named Philip Savage, who, though possessed of no private fortune, held a lucrative Government appointment in Barbados?. So Mabel Langtrey became Mrs Philip Savage, and went with her husband to the West Indies, where after some years of wedded life, she died, leaving an infant daughter named Winifred. Little dreaming that he should never see his little girl’s faoa again, Mr Savage sent this poor baby home to England to be reared and educated. Transferred not long after, at an increased salary, from Barbadoea to Jamaica, he was swept off with hundreds of other Europeans by an epidemic fever, and Winifred was adopted for good and all by her relations at the Grange. Still time trudged on; and when Mr Savage had been dead about twelve months, and the lawsuit had been dragging its slow length along for between fourteen and fifteen years, Lord Brnekenbury also “went over to the majority,” and was succeeded by his son Herbert, third Baron Braokenbury of Braokenbury, at this time British Ambasdor at the Court of the Two Sicilies, and resident of Naples. Now, the new Lord, heartily hating the lawsuit, and willing, if possible, to be freed from the cares of a business for which he had neither time nor Inclination, resolved to make an effort towards reconciliation with Stephen Langtrey. Sorting aside, therefore, the formalities customary between defendant and plaintiff, he wrote to the Squire with hia own hand; male friendly reference to the old time when as boys they had been playfellows i and as young men friends ; and offered to compromise this unprofitable grievance by a payment of £20,000. Even Mr Langtrey’s solicitors, who desired nothing leas than to see the case at an end, were fain to admit that it was a liberal offer. They went so far as to make a show of advising their client to accept it. Herein, however, they played a perfectly safe game. Long waiting and long persistence had made Stephen Langtrey only more dogged. * For sixteen years,’ he said with a big oath, ‘my motto has been ‘‘Allornone’— and “ all ” I mean to have, though I fight for sixteen years longer,’ He did not even answer Lord Brackenbnry’s letter j but turned it over to Messrs Fawcett and Clark, to be dealt with in whatsoever fashion might seem beat to them.

After this rebuff, Lord Brackenbury left matters to take their own course. A rich man himself, living abroad, and spending little more than his official income, he could afford the costly duel which Improvished his adversary more and more as each year of litigation went by. The coal had, in truth proved a splendid fortune to the Brackenbury family. The late Lord, after an unsuooesfful attempt at working it himself, had let hia mine to an Iron Company at a royalty which soon produced him an income of £12,000 per annum; and the Iron Company had not only built hnge premises upon the spot, but had constructed a tram way in connection with the great mainline of the neighboring manufacturing districts ; thereby bringing the ore to the coal to bo smelted, and conveying it away again in the form of bars and sheet iron for sale, Nothing galled Stephen Langtrey like the glare of the Braokenbury furnaces reddening half the sky by night, and darkening it under a canopy of smoko by day. It was as a sign hnng in tbe heavens to remind him perpetually of his loss. In the twenty-second year of the lawsuit, the beautiful Lady Brackenbury died of long disease at Sorrento, to which place the family was wont to retire for ‘ villegiaturs ’ every summer. The eldest son, Cuthbert, then nineteen years of age, was at Oxford, the younger, Lancelot, was at a public school in Lansanne.

Lord Brackenbury had now been more than twenty-one years in the diplomatic service; and, partly because he had married an Italian lady, partly because he was peculiarly well fitted for the work, had continued all this time to hold an Italian appointment. He was, in fact, so accomplished an Italian scholar, so conversant with the ton© of Italian Society, so intimately acquainted with every “nuance” of Italian politics, that he became identified with English diplomacy in Italy just as Lord Stratford de Bedcliffe became identified with English diplomacy in Turkey. The death of his wife, however, brought all this to an end. It had been a long exile, and cf late years he had oftentimes felt how good and pleasant it would be to live once again in his own home and among his own people. Also, it was his duty to give his boys English tastes and English habits. Cuthbert, already a young man, had now been nearly four years pursuing his education in England ; but Lancelot had never set foot in his native country. While his wife lived—and she was always delicate—Lord Brackenbury put these considerations on one side. Left a widower, however ; separated from his children ; and alone with his sorrow in a strange land, Italy became intolerable to him. So he made np his mind to retire from the diplomatic service ; to reside on his property; to take his seat in the Upper House ; to interest himself in homo politics ; and to live the quiet, useful, every-day life of an English country gentleman. Such was the end of lord Brackenbury’s diplomatic career. Ho solicited and obtained permission to resign ; and within a few months after his great loss, came home for good and all, bringing with him his younger boy from Lausanne.

Chapter X. RATHER AND SONS. It has been said that Lord Brackenbury “ came home,,” that is to say, ho came home to England—to Brackenbury court—but not to the home of his birth; not to the oldfashioned mansion designed by Sir Christopher Wren, with its double flight of stops, its pilastered and pedimented “fagado” its balustraded balconies, its stone urns and sculptured wreath and formal surroundings. That house used to stand at the easternmost extremity of Brackenbury Park, within a quarter of a mile of the memorable piece of waste laud, tho wealth of which had but lately been discovered when, as the Honorable Herbert Brackenbury, he had accepted his first diplomatic appointment. It occupied a commanding position, looking towards the distant woods of Langtrey Manor. But when the Iron Company came to take possession in such close neighborhood, bringing with them fire and smoke, and the clang of never-ceasing hammers, the fortunate landlord decided to build a new house, and to give hia valuable tenants as wide a berth as possible. So he fixed upon a site at the north-western boundary of his park, and there erected what is called l an elegant modern mansion,’ in the Italian style, with a loggia, a campanile tower, a projecting cornice, and every architectural adornment best befitting a warm climate, and least appropriate to a bleak north country side some ICGOft above the level of the sea. When this new house was completed, the old place near tho colliery was pulled down; and thus it happened that the third lord came home to a home that was not tho home of his boyhood. (To le continued.}