LITERATURE.

Globe, Volume XXIII, Issue 2164, 1 February 1881, Page 3

LITERATURE.

THE MYSTERY OF LORD BRACKENBURY: A NOVEL. BY AMELIA B. EDWABDB. Author of “Barbara’s History,” •* Debenham's Vow,” &o. ( Continued. ‘Ah, that Is jaatitl’ replied the connoisseur eagerly. ‘ hey are, in a sense, masks. That is to say, they are the faces of heroes and deml-gods—creatures of Ideal valor and serenity, who smile when they slay, and when they are slain.’ The lady looked as if she thought her hnsband infallible. Bat his interlocutor stared incredulously. * You think the woodenness of these faces is Intentional ?’

‘ I mean to say that the men who modelled these figures had passed beyond that point of archaism when “ woodenness,” *s you oall it, is unconscious. They had mastered truth of form and freedom of aclion, and I think they simply perpetuated the archaic type of face, because that type was sacred and traditional.’ The younger man stroked his moustache contemplatively. * Well, you know about these things, and I suppose you are right,’ he said; * but it bothers |me to understand why they shouldn’t have done better. If they knew how.’

Lancelot smiled, and was moving to the other side of the ball; bat Winifred hung back. She wanted to hear the connoisseur's reply. ‘ Bat he is % stupid prig,’ said Lancelot ’ Be is only talking for effect.’ However, she lingered, and the eloquent man, seeing that he had an audience, became more eloquent, ‘ Look at that Minerva,’ he said. ‘ Because she is a goddess, she is purposely made to look less human than the warriors. That precisely bears out my theory. And if yon bad a purely human warrior in the gronp, you may depend he would have a purely human face. What you take for ‘ woodenness’ is calculated effect—the outcome of the highest artistic subtlety.

This was more than Lancelot conld bear.

* Do come away,’ he whispered. ’ But he talks so beautifully! ’ said Winifred. ‘ He talks the sublimest rubbish.’

Lancelot hated tall talk ; especially tall talk of the aesthetic sort. Above all, it irritated him that Winifred should listen to this sort of thing with admiration, ‘ The fellow is a prig—and a pretentions prig,’ he said, as he drew her away to look at the model of the Temple at the other side of the hall.

That man’s pretentiousness would have amused him at any time ; but that Winifred should listen to him in that way was unendurable.

Presently this gentleman with his wife and friend passed out into another room. ‘ I wonder now why yon are so hard upon that poor man 7 ' said Winifred, looking after them. *He talks well.’

* If yon call that talking well ! ‘ And what he said was interesting—especially abont that figure of the goddess.’ *lt is a puzzling statue, and it has exercised the wits of wiser critics than our declamatory friend,’ said Lancelot. And then he went on to explain how, notwithstanding that the whole group was undoubtedly executed at one time, the modelling of that figure was more archaic by half a century than the modelling of its fellows. The feet, for instance, are turned sideways ; and In order to raise the goddess above the combatants, she is mounted on a little pedestal. ‘Some regard that as naive device of early art,’ said Lancelot. ‘Others contend that the figure Is meant to represent, not the goddeis In person, but a statue of the goddess.' * And which are right ?’ ‘ Who shall say ? I have my own notion about it, as our declamatory friend has his notion. And of course I fancy my own notion Is the right one. * What is your notion ?' ‘ Well, I have been to JE gina ; I have examined that temple; and I believe that, ancient as it is, it occupies the site of one still more ancient. It was once surrounded by a walled terrace, and the foundations of that wall are of prehistoric masonry. So, in my opinions, are the foundations of the platform on which the temple stands. .Now my notion is that this statue is probably a copy of one much older, which may have stood In the “ oella” (that is, the Holy of Holies) of the first temple. Hence Its archaic Jtype. I cannot, of course, vouch for that first temple. It may never have existed, save In my imagination. But such is my idea ’ Then he told her how, the island being volcanio, these groups wore probably flung from their places by a shook of earthquake ; and how they were fonnd, broken and buried and overgrown by bushes, just where they had fallen, at each end of the building. And then he described the position of JEgina—how it lies facing the Attic aoast, fair and solitary, in view of Athens and the Parthenon ; mountain looking to mountain, temple to temple, with tho blue sea between and the clear Greek sky above. ‘ It is forty years since the soil was distnrbed and these figures were unearthed,’ be said. ‘And now the tamarisks and myrtles have grown again ; and storks make their nests in the angles of the cornice, and goats browse in the sanctuary of the goddess,’ It must be a beantifnl place,’ said the girl wistfully. ‘There is not a more beautiful spot in Greeos—or in the world,’ he said, looking at her earnestly. ‘Would you like it ? I will take you there—some day.' She heard the words, but without heeding all that they implied. She was picturing to herself tho scene as ha described it—the solitary ruin ; the placid sea ; the flowering myrtles. ‘ Some day,’ she repeated dreamily. He bent nearer. His breath came warm upon her cheek. ‘ When, dearest ? he said passionately. ‘ When ?’ *****

It was all over now —the suspense, the uncertainty, the silence. Me loved her. He had loved her slways—always—from the time when, a lad at college, he came home for his first long vacation, and was taken to call upon the ladies at the Grange. He loved her then with a boy’s cnthusiam ; he loved her now with a man’s steadfastness. It had been his first wild dream ; his one romance ; the poem, the passion of his life. He never dreamed when he first saw her—nor, indeed, till long after —that she was intended for his brother. Cuthbert was of all men the moat reticent; and he, Lancelot, was so many years younger than Cuthbert, that it was scarcely to be supposed the elder brother would at that time have taken the boy into bis confidence. Then, when at last the knowledge came to him, it was too late. He loved her; and his love had gone too deep for cure. Yet he did what he could. He straggled with his passion as with a terrible temptation. He fled from it, as from a scathing fire. But he straggled, and strove, and fled in vain. It possessed him; it pursued him ; it mastered him. Go where he would, ho could not get away from it. It. had become a part of himself. Not to think of her —not to dream of her —not to long for the sound of her voice, was as impossible es to live without breathing. All he could do was to avoid lur. To that sacrifice, at least, ha was equal. This is why ho lived his years of art sfcu dentship in Paris. This was why ho so rarely came home. This was why ha isolated himself at CTd Court. Used ihe to wonder why he lived so much away from father, and brother, and home? Lid she lay it to his devotion to his art ? Ah, she never guessed that it was because he loved her. Ho kept his secret well in those days ! That ho kept it so well—that he could look his brother in the face, and hear him talk of the future, and never betray himself by look or word that was his one great contentment. He would have shot himself rather than betray that secret Better all the anguish of alienee, better all the bitterness of absence. And then when Outhbort was lost to them —when that great aud tarriblo forrow befel —still, aud more than over, he buried his secret in the. deaths cf his heart. Por bo

would cot, he could not, believe that hie brother might never come back. And wer» not Cuthbert’s rights, and Cuthbort'a happiness, and Outhbert’a honour, dearer to him than even his own T

Then, as the years went by and brought no tidings—then there dawned upon him, little by little, the prospect of a possible future. As hope faded on the one hornon, it rose upon the other. Still he waited f still he doubted; still he held his peace. At last . . , Well, she knew the rest She knew how reluctantly ho had taken hla brother’s name and plane Bat, having taken them, he seemed by that one stop to have overleaped the barrier that separated their lives From that moment, all was changed. From that moment, he put away the renunciation of years, making np his mind to remain silent only until be should 'have taken the oaths and succeeded to his inheritance. Bat to this last resolve he had not acted up. His love had been stronger than In's will

All this, hurriedly, eager y, with vehemence of lo:ig suppressed passion, Lancelot Briokeobury poured out ; not so muck pleading bis cause, as accounting for thetime that was past.

‘And I never betrayed myself!’ be said, holding her hands fust in bo*h his own. ‘My love! my darling!—in all those many years, I never betrayed myself—yon never knew it 1*

She was looking down; listening and trembling a little, and very pale. *Nc,’ she said, softly. ‘Ton never betrayed yourself, but—but I think I- always knew it. ’

‘And you always loved me? Ah, my sweet,, say that you always loved me !’ A faint flush crossed the pallor of her cheek. She looked up. Her eyes met his as innocently as the eyes of a questioned child.

‘ Ven,’ she answered gravely and simply, ‘ I always loved you.’ He stooped and kissed her on the Ups that no man—not even his brother—had kissed before.

Then they talked, as lovers are wont to talk ’in the first harried moments of their joy ; and time passed ; and the honr of closing came. The eloquent Englishman, and his party having worked round from hall to hall, emerged by way of the modern sculptures, and went ont talking of Thorwaldsen’s Adrnis and Spalla’a bust of Napoleon the First. The Art students, who were drawing in the Hall of Apollo, pnt away their crayons and packed np their boards and easels. The giant connted his groschen, looked at the clock, and wondered what had become of the lady in black, and the gentleman who always gave him a florin. At last, when the minute and hour hands stood within a hair’s-breadth of meeting, ho took up bis wand, and before barring the doors, went round to clear the rooms. And there he fonnd Lancelot and Winifred still, as he in his simplicity believed, absorbed is contemplation of the ASgina marbles. They had forgotten all afaont closing time. They had forgotten the meek giant, and the fighting warriors with their vacant faces, and the archaic Pallas on her pedestal. What cared they now for Greek or Trojan? What to them was the slaying of Fatroctns ? They thought of nothing, remembered nothing, bat the present rapture. The Jpast, with its glory, its poetry, its art, was for the moment as though it had never been. They went out, like children, band in hand ; and the goddess seemed to look after them with her stony smile—that self-sam* smile with which, in the foregone time, she bad so often looked down upon lovers lingering within the precincts of her temple. How many a furtive meeting had she not witnessed when the doors of the sanctuary were closed, and the priests were gone, and the evening star had risen! What vows of constancy had she not overheard—what prayers—what promises! And whore are they now, those yonths that wooed, those maidens that listened ?

They lived, they loved, they died, they are forgotten : —that was what her cola smile seemed to say. Life is a flower that withers. Love is a breath that fails. Bnt the sculptured stone, the chanted ode, the deathless deed, live on, and are immortal. (To he continued on Saturday .)