LITERATURE.

Globe, Volume XXIII, Issue 2186, 26 February 1881, Page 3

LITERATURE.

THE MYSTERY OF LORD BRACKENBTJRY: A NOVEL. BY AMELIA B, EDWABDS, Author of "Barbara's History," ''Debenbarn's Vow," &c. Continued.) And this man alleged that he, Stefano Beni, was not ' justified' in his refusal. 'Justified,' indeed! A fellow like this to talk of justice ! Should he rear a delicate and precious flower, shelter it, water it, train it with infinite pains and care, and when it came at last to perfection, should it be rudely plucked by the rough hands of a passing stranger P Would that _bo justice 1 *An honest man,' forsooth ! As if there were not scores of honest men in Verona as good as he. Let him take his honesty and his money to another market, and the devil go with him!

Such was the indignant tenor of Stefano Beni's meditations. Like most taciturn men, he could be sufficiently angry when rouHed ; and on the present occasion, he was exceedingly. So he chiselled and hammered, and muttered and fumed, till he had worked off a little of his superfluous heat ; then wiped the perspiration from his brow ; drank a long draught of cold water from the old green pitcher that always stood on the corner shelf : and went In next door to s?e how his neighbour the blacksmith was getting on. Here he found his own apprentice, Matteo, assisting to hold the wheel while Luigi hammered on the tire. The job, in fact, was nearly done. ' Look here, neighbour,' he said, presently ; ' you have more book-learning than I, and know more about places. Oan you tell me anything about Bari ?' ' About Bari ?' the blacksmith repeated. • Well, not much. It's a good long way off, down in the south country.' •But It is In Italy?' ' Oh, yes—it is in Italy.' • And a seaport V

' Surely—a seaport on the Adriatic coist. Yon may see plenty of Bari trading vessels at Anoona and Venice. Our neighbour Saccri, who understands the wholesale businets as well as any man in the town, gets all his oil from Bari. Being brought by sea to Venice, it comes cheaper than the oils of Florence and Lucca, which have to be brought across the Appeninea.' ' Then it U a place doing a brisk trade ?'

' None more bo. Don't you know the proverb—" Bari for oil; Tranl for figs ; Otranto for pretty women V But why do you ask ?'

To this question the wheelwright made no reply ; but stood looking silently on, while the Jaat nails were driven.

' I will settle with you for this job, Luigi,' he said ; ' and Padre Anselmo can settle with me.' He did not choose the blacksmith to know that the cost of the tire was to come out of his own pooket. That was a secret between his little Giulietta and himself; and perhaps he was also a little ashamed of his weakness in the matter. Then—having to send the wheel back again to the Golden Sun—he bade Marteo call round by way of the Osterla del Cappello, and tell his niece that he wsb too busy to come home at midday to dinner.

' Got a pressing job on hand, neighbor V asked the blacksmith' who had his share of curiosity. Stefano Benl looked glum, and shrugged his shoulders.

'No,' he said; 'but I'm out of sorts to-day, and have no stomach for my food. That's all.'

And so with a nod, he walked off to the cook's shop at the corner of the Vicolo San Nicola, and bought him half a loaf of black bread and a plate of beans and oil, upon which frugal fare, washed down with another draught from the green pitcher, he presently made his solitary meal. His rage was over now; but his thought were gloomy, and his heart was full of bittsrness. He wondered as he lit his pipe and sat brooding in the inner gloom of his den if there was in all Verona a man more ill-used than himself.

All at once, breaking upon the mid-day stillness of the almost empty piazza, there came a sound as of some vehicle furiously driven ; and the next moment—almost before he had raised his head to look—a hack vettara dashed up to his door. The vettura was empty; the horse was reeking; the driver jumped down, whip in hand, and walked in without .ceremony. It was 'Tonio Moretti, looking pale and excited,

' Good morning, neighbour Beni,' he said, ' I feared you were gone home to dinner.' • You feared wrongly, then,' growled the wheelwright, without taking his pipe from his lips, ' Anything the matter ?' 'Yes—l have something very important to say to yon.' ' It must needs be very important to make you drive like that.' "The matter Is this,' said the young vetturino, boldly. ' I love your neice Ginlientta. Yon know me. You know that my father left me five thousand lire ; and that my vettura and my two horses are my own. I can keep a wife in comfort. Will von give me La Giulietta'a hand in marriage ?' For a moment, Sttfano Beni stared st him in angry stupefaction; then jumped to his feet, and shivered his pipe into a dozen pieces. * What! another of you ?' he exclaimed, * Dlavolo ! it is too much.' Chapter XLII. love's young bream. ' Then it is addio—but not for long.' Those were his words. How well Bhe remembered them 1 How well she remembered the way in which they were said—the tone, so resolute and so tender ! Sure Borneo himself never looked and spoke more like a princely lover. A.nd now the morrow was come—the morrow on which he had urged her to meet him, at the Arena, at San Zenone, at matins, at vespers; and she had refused all Mb entreaties.

Except on market days, La Giulietta rarely ptSßed the boundary which divided the little inner world of the Osteria del Capello from the outer world of streets beyond the gate ; and on this particular morning, even if she had needed to go into the town, Bhe told herself she would have to pat up with any inconvenience rather than seem to seek a meeting. But it so happened that she needed nothing out of doors, fr'ho had sont her embroidery home last evening, and begun another piece for the same employer. So it was a day to sit at work while daylight lasted. In the meanwhile Bhe would not even go down to the well, for there the goesips were congregated as usual, and there Tonio Moretti was loitering, also as usual, casting impatient glances towards her balcony, and wondering why she was so late. But he might wait, and he might wonder, and when he was tired of waiting and wondering ho might go. What right had he to waylay and annoy her every morning with his* unwelcome courtship ? How dared he call her ' Cara Giulietta ?'

' Good Brlgita,' she said, interrupting ono of the neighbours on her way downstairs. ' Will you fill my can for me ? I am bo busy this morning!—and I will do as much for you another day.' And Brlgita, who was a good-natured soul, and wife to the lame clog-maker on the fourth floor, smiled knowingly as she took the big brass can from the girl's hand, and said—- * With pleasure, Giulietta mia; but there is ono below who has been looking for you this last half hour. Ah! ah 1 1 used to pretend to be hard-hearted myßelf sometimes, when I was of your age, and Carlo was courting me!' Bo 'Tonio Morettl, having lingered till half-past seven, went his way, whereby he again missed the early arrival from Milan, and missed it for nothing. La Giulietta, menwhile, made haste with her household work; dusting and washing up ; polishing her uncle's carved oak chair, and rubbing the old brass dishes and the tall classically shaped lucerne, till they shone like burnished gold. Then, having prepared her vegetables for the soup, watered the flowers in her balcony, fe 1 her linnet, and done all that perfect cleanliness and order

could do to make the place pretty and homelike she brought out her work-basket, and her bag of colored silks, and her reels of gold and silver thread, and settled down to the day's embroidery. Such was the routine of her daily life; and she was wont to pursue it as contentedly as if there wore no gay shops in the Via del Oorso, and no sweet country walks beyond the wall*. When it was neither too hot in summer nor too cold in winter, she would carry her chair [out npon the balcony ; and there with bent head and basy fingers, singing softly to herself, she plied her needle in the sunshine. But to-day she stayed within ; sitting a little way back from the open window, and screened by a climbing bower of nasturtiums and convolvul', which all the summer it had been her delight to train. From here she 1 commanded a peep over one side of the courtyard, and could see, not only the archway surmounted by the ancient cognisance of the Capnlets, but also the customers going in and out of the trattcria; the serving maid carrying tho dishes acro?s from the kitohen ; the cobbler in his stall in the corner; and old Anita roasting her chestnuts under the gateway. ' Then it is Addio; bat not for long !' The words ran in her head like a tune.

' Not for long'—but for how long ? Would he try to see her again to-day ? What if he were even now in tho street outside, seeking for the honse ? What if he were just comiDg into the courtyard ? If she saw him standing there in the shade, what would she do ? She hardly dared to peep down through the nasturtiums, lest she should meet his eyes looking up. Was his name really Romeo ? Or did he say it was Borneo merely by way of telling her that he loved her? This was a knotty point, and it gave her much to think about. If he were indeed Romeo . . . ah ! if he were 1 Now in the Gallery of the Palazzo del Consiglio there was a picture which she used to go and look at on festa days, when the rooms were open to the public— an indif. ferent piece of art, brown with age, and not entered in the catalogue. It was a portrait of some unknown personage by some unknown artist, apparently a follower of Giorgione J and it represented a dark-eyed melancholy man with black hair, and a forked beard, and a gold chain about his neok, and his right hand resting on the hilt of a jewelled dagger. A mere child of the people, inheriting the people's instinctive love for art, but utterly ignorant of styles, periods, schools, and the data of the oostumes, the girl had long since made up her mind that tnis sixteenth-century personage was the heir of the ancient love-story. She had interrogated the old canvas, and she fancied that it had told her its story. But alaa ! her Romeo of yesterday was not in the least like her Romeo of the Palazzo del Consiglio. Hla hair and beard of a reddish brown; his eyes were hazel; he had nothing of the fatal look of the man in the old picture.

Then she brought out her ballad (it was in twenty-four verses!) and set herself to learn it by heart. And as she matched her silks and planted her stitches, she sang over and over again the refrain with which each stanza ended.

Last evening she sent home a slip of bordering for an altar-cloth. This morning she was beginning on a white satin stole, to_ be, by-and-by, covered by her basy fingers with a mediaeval pattern of crimson roses alternately with golden oak leaves and silver acorns. The design, drawn upon vellum and richly coloured, lay beside her on the table. A dainty handicraft. It was no wonder that her little hands were soft and delicate. ' Io t'amo ora e sempre Romeo '1 mio. . . .' Was that a tap at the door ? The needle from her fingers. She held her breath, listening—not daring to move. The tap was repeated. That he should actually come to the house —that he should venture to mount the stairs—that he should dare to knook at the door . . . this was what she had not foreseen I What must she do ? To admit him was out of the question. Did he suppose that any modest maiden would do that ? Surely he was too bold. She had but one courre open to her. She must keep silent, and not open the door. Then there came a third tap j and a boyish voice (not his voice) cried impatiently— • Ho, there! is no one within ?' She ran to the door and opened it at once ; and there stood a lad with a basket. 'The Pignorina Ginlietta Beni?' ' I am Giulietta Beni i' He handed her the basket, and with a quick 'Good day!' touched his cap and was gone. ' Flowers 1 A simple wicker basket lined with moss and full of flowers—such flowers as she had never seen before I Some looked as if made of white velvet; some were like wax, semi-transparent, pink and creamy white; some sparkled all over, as if iced or crystalised j and Eome more like butterflies and blossoms. Most wonderful of all was a star-shaped crimson flower with a ewelled heart, like a cluster ef rubies in a golden setting. The girl hung over them, breathless, bewildered, dazzled. Such flowers, surely, could only grown In Paradise ! Then, one by one, being almost afraid to touch them, she took them out; and there at the bottom lay a single white rose-bud with a slip of paper twisted about its stem ; and on this paper was written in pencil—- * Borneo to Giulietta.'

(To be continued on Tuesday.)