LITERATURE.

Globe, Volume XXII, Issue 2112, 30 November 1880, Page 3

LITERATURE.

THE MYSTERY ov LORD BRACKENBUKY: A NOVEL. BY AMELIA B. EDWABDS, Author of "Barbara's History," "'Bebenham's Vow," &c. (.Continued. Nor was the new Italian villa, even so, the only Brackenbury court on the estate. Far from the waßte of old foundations that markad the site of the former residence, farther still from the new one, in a now unfrequented and isolated spot upon the verge of a steep ridge facing southward, there still stood the ruins of old Brackenbury Court, the earliest and, once upon a time, the stateliest of all the home* which the owners of Brackenbnry had made for themselves and their descendants. It dated from the reign of Jilizibetb, was enlarged and beautified by a certain Sir Anthony Brackenbury about tho beginning of tho reign of Charles the First, and was finally besieged, sacked, and fired in 1641 by a body of Par Hamentary troop 3 under a lieutenant tf the Earl of Manchester. It mast have been a beautiful old English house of the Hatfield and tiaddon Hall type, when it was in its prime ; and it was beautiful still, as a ruin —so beautiful that seven generations of Brackenbury's had left it unmolested in the midst. of a wilderness of ancient pleasunoes where the rabbits burrowed and birds built undisturbed, and all wild growths that climb, and trail, and cling from bough to bough flourished in unchecked luxuriance. It stood in the olden time within the park boundary, but had been cut off long since by a roadway, and left to moulder in solitude. There were many who marvelled why the late lord, instead of building a new house, did not restore Old Court and carry back the park pailings to their ancient limits; but neither he nor his heir would have committed eo gross a Vandalism. Old Court, with its fourteen acres of wilderness. Stood for one of the most picturesque and precious pages in their family history. They loved every stone of it—every ivy-wreath twined about its shattered windows—every bullet scar upon its battered walls. So the first Brackenbury Court held its grounds a rain in the midst of ruin; the second had its day, was condemned, pulled down, and superseded; while the third, oommemorative of an unforeeen prosperity, rose like Aladdin's Palace in sudden and somewhat inappropriate splendour. Hither, then, Herbert Lord Brackenbury returned' a'ter twenty-one years of official bauishment; hither came Cnthbert Brackenbury to spend his first Oxford vacation ; and here the boy Lancelot received his first impressions of English home life. The Italian style of the house, with its terraced gardens and formal flower beds, its clipped junipers, Its fountains and cas<no, pleased the lads, and reminded them of the sunny land which they still Bpoke of as ' home.' The younger, perhaps because he was the younger and the more pliant, fell In readily enough with English ways, and took enthusiastically to English sports and pastimes Being sent to Eton, he went in for boating, cricketing, and athletic games: hated study, voted classics a bore; made numerous friends, and by the cloae of his first term had become as thoroughly English as any boy in the school. The elder brother was "of an altogether different type. It would perhaps be more correct to say that he partook of two very different types, the |one English, the other Italian. On the English side of him he was silent, studious, Eelf-contatned; slow to wrath; slower still to friendship; a yonng man of few affections, few words, few Btrong likings of any kind. On the Italian side, he Inherited that peculiar subtlety which rnns in Italian "blood; a subtlety that is neither insincere nor what we understand as reserve, but rather a kind of intellectual discretion, in itself the most un-English of characteri&ts. His tastes, directed and developed by a highly cultivated mother, were entirely Italian. A devoted student of the literature, poetry, and folk-lore of the land of his birth, he was almost as indifferent to classical learning as hit younger brother. But there is not much sympathy with Italian literature at either £ton or Oxford, and Cuthbert Brackenbury had to pursue his favorite studies alone; so living in an attitupe of mental isolation, which fostered the retloence of his character. For the ordinary pleasures and amusements of school and University life, he cared not at all. He kept a horse at Oxford, but he never hunted ; a boat, but he never raced. He belonged to a club, yet for" months together he never entered its door. Society, with its manifold observances, wearied and irritated him. Politics were his peculiar aversion. For music and the Fine Arts—especially the Arts of the Italian Renaissance—he had that intuitive appreciation whioh belongs by right of heritage to all who claim a strain of Italian blood; but there it stopped short. It was an appreciation; net a gift—not a passion, His one intellectual delight, in short, was Italian literature; his one physical recreation, boating. Not boating after the manner cf Eton and Oxford ; but boating as he had boated in his boyhood on the bright waters of the Bay of Naples, with a sail to set before the breeze, a book to read when drifting and dreaming with the current, and blue above and blue below, and spaoe and boundless liberty. For all this, and for the mother whom, while she lived, he loved better than all the world beside, Cuthbert Brackenbury mourned in his heart and made no sign. Coming to England before he was sixteen, he had never ceased to feel that he was an alien in a strange land. When, three years later, his mother died, and his home in Naples was broken up, he was still as far as ever from that degree of naturalisation whioh his birth and prospects demanded. Nor did this first great grief tend to loosen the old ties or knit up the new ones. It only caused him to withdraw still further into his shell. It seemed to him. indeed, that the world was emptied of beauty and grace and gentle dignity, and all the charm of womanly culture when Lady Brackenbury left. Thenceforth, for many a year, the pleasant things of life lost their sweet savour.

Thenceforth, while duly conforming to the duties and ordinances of college life, he shut himself up more than ever in his own prejudices; and Lord Brackenbury saw with dismay that, although blessed with the most sober, the most oocscientious, the most irreproachable of elder sons, yet that elder son would never be as other young men of the same age and position. That Outhbert Brackenbury should fulfil to the letter all that his pastors and ma«t?rß required of him that he should go steadily and creditably through his examination —that he should never contract a debt, never commit a folly, never even draw to the full amount of his allowance, wa3 not, after all, of half so much account in Lord Braokenbury's eyes as that he should become a man of the world, and confer distinction upon tho family name. He •would have wished his heir to take an interest in politics, to go early into Parliament, to distinguish himself in the Commons until such time as it might plaase Providence to call him to his hereditary seat among the Lords. He felt that, for his own part, he had lived too much abroad; and he was sensitively anxious that his successor should turn out a more stay-at-home politician than himself. Personally, he could do little to influence the young man's tastes. The mother's influence had been too early at work for that, and. Cuthbert Brackenbnry's tastes were long since formed and matured. Next to that mother, Mr Brackenbury loved his brother lancelot best of all the world, and Lancelot—from the time when he used to be carried up and down the orange walk on bis brother's shoulder to the day when Cuthbert kissed him good-bye and left Naples for Eton—thought bk brother the wisest, the noblest, the most god-iike of the sons of men. It was Cuthbert who helped him with his lessons ; who- interceded for him when he got into mischief ; who supplemented his pocket money with surreptitious ' bcucH,* who took Mm out boa tins when the bay was smooth and the winds were asleep. It was Cuthbert who told him wondrous tales of Orlando and his sword Duridana, and of Gan the traitor, and the dolorous rout of Konceßvalles; of Paladin Astolio and his journey to the xnuon; of tho

siege of Jerusalem and the fatal loves of Tailored and Ciorinda;. and of the weird sights seen by Dante and Virgil when thejr crossed the threshold of that dread portal where Hope was left behind. It was Cuthberth who taught him endless 'StomeHl* and ' Canti Popolari'—songs of the fisblngand the vintage ; and the ballad of ' Cicirinell',' a sort of Neapolitan Mother Hubbard, who sold hot chestnuts on the Chiaja, and had a wonderful dog who wagged his tail in . rhyme. When Cuthbert went to Eton, he still came ' home' for his vacation—to Naples at Christmas ; to Castellamaro at Midsummer j and by and by Lancelot, ss we have also feeen, outgrew home teaching, and was sent to school at Lausanne. Then, as we have also seen, Lady Brackenbnry died; and Cnthbert went to Oxford ;. and Lancelot was transferred from Lausanne to Eton; and Lord brackenbury gave up diplomacy, and divided bio life thencsforth between Lancashire and London.

What followed has baen told already. We know how, four years the great lawsuit, after dragging its slow length for more than a quarter of a century, came somewhat unexpectedly to an < nd, and how final judgment was given in the famous case of Langtrey v Brackenbnry. The victor had never doubted of hia victory ; yet it came upon fcim at the last like a surprise. It was a triumph not unmixed with bitterness. It stirred many a long forgotten memory, and raited the ghost of many a bygone hope. It reminded him that for these five or six-and-twenty years of costly strife, not one of which was of his own seeking, he rad paid not only with twenty-one of self Imposed exile, but with. the loss of the woman whom first he loved, and whom he still remembered with tenderness. That Mabel Langtrey'a only child should be involved in her uncle's ruin mixed yet another bittsr drop with the cup of hia success.-

Being a tender-hearted man he was even scrry for his ancient opponent; and though he telegraphed the good news to his sons—the one abroad, the other at college—yet, when tho ringers met to celebrate his victory, he sent down in all haste to Btop the bells, that he might not triumph .in Stephen Langtrey's ears When the unfortunate Squire sickened and died, leaving his sister and niece comparatively beggared, Lord Brackenbury became more than ever tormented by remorseful pity. Bespit e his better reason, he felt sm though he were in some sense the agent cf their ruin. And then he fell to thinking whether it might nor, for their sakes, be possible to repair the injustices of justice.

So, little by little, there grew np in hia mind a scheme by means of which the hard lines of destiny might be softened in favor of this helpless pair.