LITERATURE.

Globe, Volume XXIII, Issue 2221, 8 April 1881, Page 3

LITERATURE.

VIOLET WOOD'S HUSBAND, A STOKY IN THREE CHAPTERS, ["All the Year Round."J (totialuded.) Bnfc in London they had beea differently placed. Ho had never culled at their house without Andrew aud had always stood aside to make room for the tenor to warble bis love song, or to drop in mosk humility at her feet.

She remembered one evening, when she fonnd herself with Beesly in the conservatory. He had jumped up on Gretton's approach, and ceded his place to his friend. Was ehe too silly, too girlish to please him she aakpd herself? For her experience of men told her that they will bo inclined to find the way and means if the object be worth their while. All this was true; but his reserve and coldness had seemed to drop for an instant in the twilight of that afternoon. It was as if she looked through a loopholo at some wide vista, of whose existence she had never dreamed; and onco having known the view beyond could never be again content with blank walls.

It was therefore in much perplexity and nightly questionings that the week went by for Violet. In the beginning of the next a hard frost set in; the air was keen and sharp, the skaters flocked to the Bois, and the sun hung like a red lamp in the sky.

' Oh, mamma, how I should like to seato!' exclaimed Violot, as she appeared for breakfast in the bright little room. * Well, my dear, I've no objection,' answered mamma ; ' only you know I can't stand about on the ice, my dear. You must get Mr Beesly to take you.' ' Oh, I wonder if he would mind going,' said Violet, who perhaps had her doubts. * Do yon think Mrs Beesly skates, mamma?' she went on ;'' we must go and get skates this morning if he does, and then we might go this afternoon.' So it happened that in spite of Mr Beesly's precautions against what he regarded as a .culpable weakness in himeolf, he started out with Miss Wood for an afternoon's skating in the Bois de Bonlogne. In the bright, cold daylight, and in the crowd on the ice, things went off entirely to Mr Beesly's satisfaction. Violet and he were on exactly the same neutral ground as they had been all the week. But as the sun sank large and crimson into the mist, and the twilight grew apa-e, Beesly could not help recalling the afternoon in the Louvre. Perhaps it was only the same effect of light. Violet could not help noticing that his hand trembled as he helped her into the little fiacre thut had been waiting for tlem. Did he not linger an imperceptible instant at he drew another wrap around her shoulders ?

Why did the long drive through the Bois and Champs Elycees seem the shortest drive they had ever taken, and why did Mr Beesly pay the coachman more ttian double his fare?

It occurred to both of them, why ? ' Do not light the candles.' said Violet, as they came into the cozy sitting room, where the fire was burning brightly; ' I like the fire light. This is the nicest hour of the day, I think,' she continued to Beesly ; and then she threw off her heavy furs and knelt down, holding her pink fingers to the blaze.

* What was the madness that kept dancing in his ?' Beesly asked himself. He felt his brain confused, as if there were no sharp line between right and wrong. He felt as if he must throw himself down beside that slim bending figure In the fire-light and tell her he could not spare her out of his life. Then he thought of Gretton, and he turned and looked into the street.

There were the dancing lights of the carriages, the blaze of the cafes, as they had seen them just before. A hurdy-gurdy was playing in the road below, and a lounger at a cafe turned at that moment to speak to a smartly dressed girl. Then something seemed to snap in hie brain. • Wnere is your motner r" aettea XJeeßly in a hard voice.

' Still shopping, I suppose,' returned Violet.

' But why do you ask like that; are you —frightened of me ?' she asked wflh a little hysterical laugh. ' If you like it, I am frightened of you,' said Beesly, sitting down ; ' perhaps I am frightened of myself.' A pause. • Have you any message for Gretton V he asked, making a sudden resolution. ' I think I shall have to go over to London tonight or to-morrow morning.' ' Something has happened ?' sho asked tremulously, turning her face to him. ' Nothing, I assure you. I've been idling so pleasantly, the time has slipped by,' he answered in the same cold tone, and avoiding her eyes. ' I must get back. Have you any message for Gretton ?' he repeated. ' Thank yon, none,' she answered haughtily, and she stood up with her back to him and leaned her arms on the chimneypiece. He wsb going, Bnd in parting had nothing to entreat but a message for Gretton. She had been living in a fool's paradise in supposing he would ever have anything else to entreat.

Another long silence. A little flame blurted out f ;om the fire, lighting the room, and throwing their gigantic shadows on the ceiling. * I am sorry mamma isn't here to bid ycu good-bye,' said the girl in a dry voice, without turning her head. ' For my part I hate leave-takings.' The flame flickered a little and then went out ; It seemed somehow to Beesly, gazing dully into the fire, as if with it his hope went too.

* You don't hate saying good-bye more than I,' he murmured, as he dashed his hand across his face. Then he got up and took possession of her hands.

' There are moments,' he said looking with a kind of fierceness into her eyes, ' when we cannot ask ourselves what we like ; we only know what with heaven's help we must try to do,' The next moment tha door wag shut, and he was gone, CHAITER 111. On Elliot Beesly's arrival in London he was greeted by a thick yellow fog. Driving to his rooms in Gray's Inn, he remembered he had had no time to send word of his coming, so that he was prepared to find Gretton out. Turning the key of his door he found the carpets up, the blinds down, and a general unaired dampness pervading their rooms. •Gretton is still away, then,' thought Beesly. ' When shall I get this intolerable business off my mind ?' •Make a fire,' he said to the servant. ' Were there any letters T 'Yes, a number on the mantfepiece for both gentlemen.' Beesly picked the bundle hurriedly up ; perhaps there would be a line from Gretton saying he was coming back. Nothing but long blue envelopes—unmistakable bills and small square epistles from Gretton's train of admirers. Ah 1 there at last was Andrew's writing. Gretton hailed from Scotland, and wrote a long letter describing hiR various visits, and the invariable success of his voice and acting connected therewith. He ended up by asking after the Woods, saying that, as he should not be in town for another fortnight, Beesly was to say all sorts of imaginable pretty things for him. 'Pretty things!' The letter made him wince mora than once. What was the fellow doing comfortably in BcotUnd when Miss Wood was coming to London ? Would he be content, Beesly asked himself, to be tuning his pipe to the Hebrides while there was a Violet Wood in the South ? He threw the letter aside, and resolved to dine at his club. The fog was thicker than ever in the street, but on arriving at his destination he was hailed by a number of his friends. ' What have you been doing old fellow, haven't seen you ? Paris, eh ? * exclaimed one of them, as the dinner went on. ' What did you do there ? ' ' Usual sort of thing, I suppose,' said Beesly, with no very great show of interest in the topic. ' Ah,' exclaimed a rubicund and beaming old gentleman, the jovial man of the club,

' you ohonld stay in London, nothing- Hko it; weather is always nice and season* able.'

' So it is,' said Beesly, gazing ont through the window into an ocean of pea-aonp. ' Yes,' exclaimed the old gentleman, casting round for some statistics which ho had nearly bnt not quite got right; ' London is the most healthy; Berlin ——' 1 So sorry I have to go to the thcatrs,' said Bsc-Bly, petting up arjd wondering why the whole thing seemed such an intolerable bore.

The frivolity Theatre however proved little more amusing than the statistics. Beesly lounged back in his stsll, and wondered what all the large audience about him found worth CDtning to sec. He turned his eyes from the stage and glanced ronnd the theatre. In the second box from sho stage there was a lady" whose turn of neck reminded him of Violet. Ete eyes kept wandering to that box, until the yonng lady turned round and revealed a f;ce of unredeemed homeliness. Beesly seized his hat and hailed the first h^csom. There whs the same, air of discomfort in the chambers when Bsesly got back. He lighted a pipe, and then, with an unaccountable feeling of restlessness wandered from roim to room. He lounged almost unconsciously into Gretton's bedroom when suddenly something on the wall attracted hifl eye.

It was the photograph of a olim young girl in a white dress. Stack into the cord that held the frame was a bunch of" faded roses. How well ho remembered the night that Andrew had begged for that nosegay. He wondered that it had seemed of so little importance then.

He nnhooked the portrait gently, and as he did so the roees fell, all dnsty and shivering, to the ground. It was a photograph of Violet Wood. How true to life it was ? There was her trick of hand-clasp ; there her frank, open brow; her clear direct gaze, in which you seemed to see her very soul. The hair was thrown a little back, and the lips jnst parted for a smile.

'My darling, this is all I may ever ho to you,' he said, and he stooped aud kissed the portrait on the lips. Then he hang it np on its hook and came out and looked the door. It was as if he had just buried the best piece of his life, The next day, in the more hopeful morning light, he resolved to give himself another chance.

Why should he not appeal to Gretton? He wrote to Andrew and told him all that had passed. He did not conceal for one moment the fact that he was in love with Miss Wood } he considered that he owed it to his friend to be perfectly open and direct.

He knew, of course, the ugly light In which his conduct might be viewed, but he assured him that he had made no sort of proposal to Violet. Beesly conjured him, finally, by all that he held most sacred, to tell him if he were serious in his attachment, so that they might come to an snderstandiug at once.

In answer to this letter came an unmitigated attaok from G rettan. He considered that he, Beesly, had bstrayed a trust ; that all intercourse from that moment had better cease between them, and further, that he should not dream of entering into the question of his attachment with a man who had proved himself to be deficient in the commoneßt sentiment of honor. In the meantime Mrs Wood had been much perplexed by Violet's behaviour in Paris. First of all, the girl evinced a strange desire to go back to London at once, and when the mother demurred on account of unfinished finery, and the thing was put off for a day or two, Violet expressed a wish to winter abroad.

This last idea gained ground as the days went by and no sort of word came from Elliott Beesly.

' What ia there in me that he should care about?' she often asked herself drearily, ' He must, I suppose, have seen that I cared about him, aed thought it best to go away. Of course he could not do anything else.' She made up her mind to carry her mother there and then off to Italy, so that Mrs Wood found herself that winter, somewhat to her surprise, in Borne. It was in Home that they first heard, through mutual friends, of Beeslv's ■'»« parture tor Australia ; and it was in Rome, later on, that Violet grew seriously ill. She was ordered change of scene and air, so that Mr Uadbury—who had joined them in Italy —managed to get them a charming villa on the heights above Florence, where they passed the spring and early summer, months. It will be wondered, in the face of Elliott Beealy's departure for Australia, why Andrew Gretton did not again come forward on the scene. But that which is without let or hindrance is, to men of Gretton's stamp, often enough devoid of charm. His grievance once removed, he slipped comfortably into his old mode of life, do had honestly felt himself an aggrieved man in reading Beealy's letter. He was as much in love with Miss Wood as it was given him to be in love with any one ; but, after all, Mr Gretton's emotions were not of the kind that out-balance prudential considerations. In Violet's absence he reflected that she was the most charming of women, to whom he should infallibly propose one day, but he could not shut out the vision of an inseparable mother-in-law, who was not immaculate in the matter of aspiration, and who was liable to wear too much jewellery. It was therefore with a feeling of hurt pride and profound astonishment that Gretton read one morning in the Times the following announcement : ' At the British Embassy, in Paris, Violet, only daughter of the late Tobiss Wood, Esq., to Richard Cadbury, of Cromwell road, S.W.'

Mr Gretton'a self-love received a severe blow; but ho was not one who sighs long after the unattaiuable.

Violet, then, had married the respectable middle-aged gentleman, and before many months had elapsed Andrew managed to shrug his shoulders over the affair. As for Beesly, who did not get the news for months afterwards, his friends say he has become a changed man. They wonder what could have happened to him on that voyage round the world, or why he suddenly gave up studying the law. His health seemed about this time to have completely broken down, and now, though nearly seven years have passed, he rarely, if ever, comes to London. He wanders about the Continent, seldom staying long in one place, telling himself that it is his business to forget one incident in his life. Perhaps the perseverance with whioh he pursued tbis end is suggestive that he is not one who easily forgets.

Some verses on "Cabin Philosophy " (bets " Bapier ") stowed away at the end of " Sc: b ■ nor'3 Magazine," are worth abundant quotation. I have not of late seen simple philosophy better put than in the following : Dar's heap o' dreadful music in de very fines' fiddle ;. A ripe an' meller apple may bo rotten in de middle ; De wises' lookin' trabelcr may be de biggea fool; Dar's a lot o' solid kickin' in de humbles' t»in* o' mule ; , De preacher aint do holies' dat w'ars de meekos look, An' does de loudee' bangin' on do kiver ob do Book! I hope this will not be thought irrevoront, for it is evidently not meant to be so. "Well, you think dat doin' nuffin' 'tall is mighty II sof ' an' nice, But it busted up de renters in de lubly Paradise ? You see, dey bofe was human bein's, jes like an* an' you, . An' dey couldn't reggerlato doireelves wid nos a thing to do ; Wid plenty wuk bofo' 'em, an' a cotton crop to make, Dey'd nebbor thought o' loafin' 'roun' an' ckattin' wid de snake ! A well-known lady artist, resident in Rome, relates that while standing one day near the statue of the Apollo Belvidore, she suddenly became aware of the presence of a country woman. The new comer, a well-to-do looking American woman, introduced herself as Mrs Baggies, Mo., and then asked, " Is this the Apollo Belvidere ?" Miss H —«- testified to the identity of the work, and the tourist then said—" Considered a great statue ? " The interrogated lady replied that it was generally thought to be one of the masterpieces of the world. " Manly beauty and all that sort of thing?" said the lady from the land of the setting sun. "Yes," responded the now amazed artist. "It is said to be one of the noblett representations of the human frame." " Well," exclaimed Mrs Baggies, closing her Baedeker, and with arms akimbo taking a last and earnest look at the marble," I'vseen the Apollo Belvidere and I've seen Baggies, and give me Baggie*."