LITERATURE.

Globe, Volume XXIII, Issue 2220, 7 April 1881, Page 3

LITERATURE.

VIOLET WOOD’S HUSBAND. A STORY IN THREE CHAPTERS. £'* All the Year Round,”J Chapter I. Fornehow or other they had become great friends. Not that they were men oast in the same lines, but circumstances—that huge factor in human actions—had Induced them to be frequently together. They had been chums, in a way, as far back as their undergraduate days at Cambridge, where Andrew Gretton had first got into the way of ponring out hia really fine tenor voice to an audience of Elliot Beesly's recumbent figure and meerschaum pipe. Later on, as Beesly came up to town to eat his dinners, the two friends took a suite of 100 ms together in Gray’s Inn—chambers, Gretton remarked, which would permit them comfortably and with becomingpatienoe to await the hour when fame and clients should present themselves. It was perhaps some two or three years after the establishment in Gray’s Inn had been set up that the latter came home one night from a musical drum in an unusual state of elation.

‘Shut np your law books, have done with prose, ’ cried Gretton, flinging down his hat. 'Elliot, my boy, I’ve seen my fate.’ ‘ What’s that?' laconically asked Beesly without looking np from his arm-chair. , *My fate ! Get out you fusty lawyer. An angelic being in swansdown and — Heaven knows what, with eyes that bowl you over. None of your mincing misses, tottering and drooping their eyes—nothing of that sort—superb lines, my dear boy, and such a smile.’

‘ Admired yonr singing, eh ?’ inquired Mr Beesly slowly as, as he puffed out rings of pale bine smoke, and watch them rise and vanish into air.

‘ Well, I flatter myself that “Once Again” really went off to-night. I never felt in better voice in my life, and Miss Wood is quite a connoisseur—knows wh&t’s good, I can tell you, I saw myself how she appreciated the crescendo passage,’ cried Mr Gretton in elated tones.

* Quite affinities, eh ?’ continued Beesly. ‘ Qaick work. Bat these things are instantaneous—like photographs of dogs and babies —I suppose V * What a laconic beggar you are. I should enjoy seeing you in love with Miss Wood, bead over heels, do you hear ?’ cried Oretton, helping himself to a brandy and soda. * You wouldn't have a chance ; she’s surrounded with men, and I can tell yon it would do you a lot of (rood. I’m to lunch with the Woods on Friday. I’ll take you to call on Sunday—no refusal, look upon the thing as fixed, ’

Mrs Wood lived in a roomy house in one of the squares lying between Bayswater and Kensington Gardens. She had been a handsome, showy girl in her youth, but all traces of beauty had been washed out by the process of time. She had become hopelessly fat. She was not, indeed, more silly now than when she first gave her hand and fine person into Mr Tobias Wood’s keeping ; but the triviality that is admissible at nineteen, with fine s boulders and the right turn of throat, is not to be tolerated in the same being, grown hopelessly out of all proportions. Hers was not of the progressive order of mind ; she literally stagnated, and submitted herself passively, with plump folded hands, to whatever fata had iu store for her. The somewhat early death of her husband she accepted with Christian resignation, finding even In her deep crape loopholes of comfort in the fact that the late stockbroker was buried in the most expensive manner, and that mourning really did become darling Violet wonderfully.

Mrs Wood’s love for her only daughter was at once her greatest weakness and her redeeming point. She idolised this girl, who was a refined and more delicate version of herself in past days, and entered into her amusements and successes as if they had been her own.

The stock broker’s widow was a genial lady, who liked at all times, as she expressed it, “to see young folk about.” She kept open honse, and gave no small nnmber of dinners and dances, so that Miss Violet’s admirers found her a by no means inaccessible goddess. Accessible she was at most times, approachable at few, for Miss Wood was not entirely as other young ladies; capricious and fantastic she was at moments, melancholy and desponding at others, bat at no time to be subdued by ordinary means. Gretton and Beesley were well received from the first in this hospitable honse, so that the tenor’s ardor Increased rather than diminished, and the two men got into the habit of being there frequently.

Mr Andrew Gretton was a man on whom fortune had been pleased to bestow a handsome person, a tenor voice, and sufficient means.

But society, like the wicked fairy in the tale, had added another gift that well nigh nullified the other attractions ; she had given Mr Qretton, namely, an exaggerated perception of his own superiority to the world at large. Society had patted him on the back, he had been likened unto Mario, he had been gashed over by maiden ladies, and had been taken into mamma’s back drawingroom and confidence. In short, Mr Andrew Gretton had become a trifle spoiled. ‘ How could a nice girl—a girl like Miss Wood—come to have such a mother ? ’ said Gretton one night, as he and Beasley left the house in Bayswater, and lighted their cigars preparatory to hailing a hansom. •1 should rather put it that it was exceedingly clever on Mrs Wood’s part to have produced a daughter like Miss Violet,' answered Beosly. ‘ There is something special about that girl; there’s a fine cut, a nicety about her; she wasn’t ready made, nor, I take it, turned out of a mould. ’ ‘ Yes, yes, of course ; the girl is everything she should be, but my dear boy, the mother; what a mother-in-law! Ye heavens! no by Jove. I should have forgotten myself long ago, and gone in for the girl, but for the mother,’ exclaimed Andrew. < By the bye, old man, you heard what they were saying to-night. They want us to come over to Paris for Christmas, It’s like my luck to have booked myself for almost every week in January, and to be obliged to go and eat my plum pudding in Yorkshire. I wish you would run over and look after the Woods ; they will want some one to see them about, and take them to the theatres, and you can trot Violet round, and see those little French fellows don’t get at her. ’

• We’re not sure we want the bone ourselves, but we object to anybody else having it, eh ? Never mind, my boy ; I’ll go over and carry Miss Wood’s parcels. Am I to make meteorological reports? Weather fair daughter calm, mamma moderate, and that sort of thing ? ’ Of course you must let me know what is going on, and perhaps I shall be able to run over,’ replied Gretton, who always had a hundred plans, * Did you hear that old : ellow Cadbury to-night saying he would go ? ’ ‘ What, the silent old boy with the whiskers ? ’ asked Beosly. ' I never know what he does at the Woods ; he never speaks, but he is always there. One gets to look upon him as a part of the furniture.' 1 He’s got a lot of money,’ returned Andrew, ‘ and has proposed no end of times to Violet, Mrs Wood tells me. The old Idiot hangs round, casting les yeux deux at Mies Wood. Isn’t it a capital joke ? Ha, hn! ’ Chapteb 11. Towards the middle of December the Woods found themselves comfortably ensconced in Paris, in one of the many hotels that look on the Tuileries Gardens. Mr Cadbury had been unable to leave town; so Eliot Beesly had escorted the mother and daughter over the Channel, and had already written to his friend Andrew, telling him how things were going on. It did not occur to Beesly that any difficulty could possibly arise out of the situation. He had in his nature a tinge of oldfashioned chivalry which he often enough covered and hid away with brusque speeches, but he was at the same time the least susceptible of beings to that emotional side of man that is engendered by the proximity of pretty women. He had absolutely nothing of the flirt about him.

Without a shade of cynicism he often enough confessed he had never, with the most fascinating maiden, got beyond the desire of seeing her happily married to somebody else. Be was a bard worker and a great smoker. These habits alone, apart from the bent of his mind, might have prevented him from being anything of a lady’s man. It was therefore in perfect good faith that he

[accepted the charge half jestingly laid upon him by Grotton, and in his ignorance—one might say innocence— of such matters, found himself, in less than three weeks, in the great crisis of his life.

How much more accident, or the circumstances in which we are thrown, influence our actions and bend our purpose, is not generally admitted. If any one had told Elliot Beesly, as he lighted his cigar that foggy November night in Bayswater, that in a few weeks’ time he would be madly in love with the young lady to whom he had just so coolly bade good night, he would have smiled upon him commiseratingly and looked upon him as mad. He would have told him that it wasn’t his line of business, that the emotions were an extra to the everyday fare, the heavy price of which no man in his senses would care to pay. He would have argned that a man can help falling in love If he choose, and that in this case the young lady was given, in a way r in trust. He won'd have talked for half-an-honr in the same strain, and convinced everybody, and more than everybody himself.

Bnt our theories are, of all things, variable—we asy such and such things are not, for the simple reason that they have not happened to na.

It was, therefore, without a foreboding that Elliott Beesly took up his abode in the Hue do Rivoli, and proceeded to offer his services to Mrs Wood and her daughter. Now, the widow was extravagantly fond of French finery, and nothing would satisfy her but an outfit in Paris for the next London season. Dresses ihe must have at Worth’s, bonnets at Mme. Verot’s, while at the same time she took a childish delight in having her large, good-tempered person pushed about and carried along—as if on wheels—by the crowd in the Louvre or the Bon Marche. The worthy lady delighted in bargains, and was wont to buy cab-loads o£ goods, of which she wonld make no use, for the simple reason that they were cheap.

Miss Wood was a young lady who preferred her own taste to anybody elee’s, and perhaps she was not far wrong. She designed her own dresses, had them made np in baker street, and bad been known even to have invented a hat. She had a peculiar grace of her own that had nothing of the dressmaker's art in it ; and, moreover, there was something original in her appearance that never bordered on the ocoentrio. Shopping in Paris, then, had few charms for Violet ; so while Mrs Wood was trying on mantles and looking at the latest eccentricity in fans, the daughter was free to wander in, the Luxembourg Gallery, or spend a couple of hours with the Venus of Mii., It was thus that Beesly and Violet were thrown constantly into each other’s society. Mr Beesly could not be expected to take more than a moderate interest In bonnets, and Mrs Wood was only too delighted for Violet to have some one to * do ’ the gallerieswith.

They had been dawdling one afternoon !b the Louvre, and had come down by the girl’s special desire into the scnlptnre gallery to look at what she declared to be her favorite statne in the world—the immortal goddess of Milo.

* How is it,’ cried Violet, as she and Beesly sat looking up at the statue: ' how is it that a great work—a really great work —is always new ! I wonder,’ she went on, ‘ how many times I have seen this Venus, yet she always strikes me as much as the first time I saw her. It is of sensational pictures and catching music that one gets so tired.’

• You might as weil say why will yon ba tired of the shape of that hat the day after tomorrow?’ smiled Beesly. ‘One is a mere fashion; we continually alter the shape of our head-covering; but what we cover remains very much the same, A real work of art is, 1 suppose, the pith and essence of a struggle after what we conceive to be beautiful or true. Look at this Venus now. She affects ns perhaps as much as she affected men when she was first hewn out of the block of marble.’ ‘ And there she will stand when we little mortals are dead and buried ; just so, with that wonderful inscrutable smile. Think of the others that will come and look at her as we have done, feeling perhaps just as wo do, the same strange sad feeling,’ cried Violet, with a pretty burst of enthusiasm. The place was quite empty ; in the far distance the last visitor was clattering down the long gallery out at the other end. It was already growing dnsk. ‘ You feel that too ; the wretchedness of knowing something beautiful that Is beyond us —out of reach ? ’ asked Beesly, turning round to her quickly. How strange and dark her eyes burned In the twilight; how graceful the subtle lines of her figure ; how devoid of all coquettishncss and consciousness her pose ! The dark purple hangings swept behind her, and out through the high window the sun was all red, a dying in a pinky sky. She was actually beautiful at the moment, but she was a sweet, breathing woman, who opened out a wo dd of possibilities. •Something—beautiful—out of reach !’ repeated Violet, becoming suddenly conscious, under his direct gaze, of the meaning of his words. ‘I don’t know, I’m sure,’ she stammered.

He watched how the quick color spread over the girl’s face and throat, how her deep eyes met his with an entreating startled gaze. What a fool—ten thousand times a fool, was Gretton not to snatch at such a happiness !

Then with a sudden start he remembered his friend, and he asked himself what he was doing, looking into this young lady’s eyes. ‘Bah I I’m talking nonsense,’he said in a changed voice. ‘You must be getting cold, Mies Wood. Had we not better bo going home P’ After the above episode Mr Beesly kept wisely to strictly neutral topics with Violet, and for the next few days contrived that the mother of this dangerous syren should be constant attendance. He even evinced a hitherto concealed ardour for millinery, and insisted npon accompanying Mrs Wood several times to the jeweller’s to see about the setting of her diamonds. Of course his conduct was mystifying in the extreme to Violet, who could not help noticing his changed manner. What had she done to offend him ? bhe could no longer conceal from herself the fact that she valued what he thought of her. There was a vein of tenderness in this reserved man, with his hard month and cold grey eye, that was a surprise to her who had been In the habit of seeing him constantly for the last eight months. (To he Continued.)

In Russia all the sons and daughters of princes inherit their titles. They are consequently as plentiful as sparrows. It is said, that there is a village where every inhabitant is a Prince or Princess Q-ulitzin. The title of prince in Russia is about equivalent to that of esquire in England. Nautical—Husband (jokingly)—" Oh, I'm the mainstay of the family.” “ Wife —“Yes, and the jib-boom and the—and the—” Small boy (from experience)—“And the spanker, too, mamma.” Applause, Mother Shipton’s Prophecy - , which may be truth, but certainly isn’t poetry, says that ‘‘ In eighteen hundred and eightyone the world to an end will come.” £ fancy I can prophecy in a little better rhyme, and stand a better chance of my “tips” indulging in an imitation of my shirt buttons, and coming off. The following is “ Dagonet’s Prophecy forlSSl This year in London will be many crimes. Its politics just thrice will change tho “Times.” The Queen in Scotland half her time will spend, And Indian shawls to favored brides will send. The Prince to Paris will on pleasure hie, And Roger’s friends will make a final try. An ironclad will come to costly grief, And up once more will go the price of beef. The tear of beauty will in court bo shed, Because sho held not Hannen’s name In dread. In Russia will bo found a secret plot, The House of Lords will catch It rather hot. And one big bank at least will go to pot. John Hollingshead his sacred lamp will burn. And Crutch will still all other prophets spurn. The Tories, too, will howl and rave and curse, But Gladstone will not be one jot tna worse; Good trade, good harvest, and good sense will reign, And prove his antidote to Beaky’s bane. —“Refer eo.'*