LITERATURE.

Globe, Volume XXIII, Issue 2234, 26 April 1881, Page 3

LITERATURE.

THE MYSTERY OF LORD BRACKENBTJRY: A NOVEL. BY AMELIA B. EDWABD9, Author of "Barbara's History," "Debenbam's Vow," &c. ( Continued.) Chapter LIX. AT Til It OLD VILLA.

'lt is useless. The place is gone to ruin, and deserted.'

' King once more, at all e. vents !' said the lady in the carriage to the gentleman at the gate !' ' I have done nothing but ring once more for the last quarter of an hour. However, to oblige you, I will begin again.' And ag'in he pulled fmionEly at the iron ohain; and again they heard the prolonged pealing of a distant bell. It was a narrow road, clcsed in by high white walls and over shadowed by the meeting boughs of acacias, laburnums, and mulberry trees growing in private grounds on either side. The carriage—a hired one, drawn by _ a pair of active little Neapolitan hacks—waited at the entrance to what looked like a large villa standing in a considerable space of neglected shrubbery. The_ rusty gates showed traces of faded gliding. The semi-circular aria in front of theße gates, and the carriage drive within, were grass-grown and weedy. The house or as much of it as was visible between the trees, looked rambling, dingy, and dilapidated.

• One might ring till Doomrday!' said tho gentleman, after another impatient attack upon the bell. ' But if there is really a custode '. * If there is really a custode, that custode must bo out, asleep, or dead ; and in either case, I submit that it is sheer waste of time to wait for him longer. We must drive over another day, and hope for better fortune.'

Then, turning to the driver, he said, with his hand on the carriage door—'Back to Sorrento. *

But as he put his foot on the step, a little bare-footed, brown-skinned girl with bla:-k locks flying, came racing to the gate. She carried a big key which she was only just tall enough to put into the lock, and which, with both little hands, she had scarcely strength to tnrn. ' Are you the custode V asked the Englishman smiling. Showing a double row of glittering teeth, the small girl shook her head and explained how her father kept the keys, and how, after running all over the house to look for him, she had at last found him in the grounds, attending upon another party of visitors.

' Nobody has been to look over the villa for more than a year,' she said, chattering away with the easy volubility of a woman of forty. 'But Ecco!—it is always like that you know—" the net come* in empty, or it breaks through with the fish." The villa is to be let famished or unfurnished. It contains twenty-six rooms, besides kitchens, offices, and stables ; and the situation is the best in Castellamare. " Vossig noire " will be pleased to come round to the kitchen entrance; the big doors are locked.'

They followed her down a path leading to the back of the house, and across a pavtd yard, in the middle of which there was a draw-well surmounted by a picturesque wrought-iron canopy. It was a neglected, forlorn-looking place ; grass growing between the stones underfoot; window panes cracked; shutters hanging from broken hinges, paint blistered ; cocks and hens soratchitig about on heaps of vegetable refuse which looked as if they might have been accumulating for years. Entering the house by a tide-door and leaving to the left a room whence issued a confused steam of washing, cooking, and garlic; the strangers followed their guide along a stone passage, through a vaulted corridor, and into a spacious hall paved with black and white marble. Here a fine donble staircase supported on massive scagliola columns led to a gallery from which the upper rooms opened; while, through a central skylight, a flood of sunshine streamed down upon the pavement. ' This is the hall you told me about, Lancelot —the hall in which your people used to dance the Saltarella by torchligh',' whispered the lady, clinging more closely to her husband's arm. ' You described it to me on Christmas Eve—do you remember?'

Silently, sadly he looks round. His thoughts have gone baok to the far past, and he is 'low to answer, ' Yes ; I remember,' The stairs, the balustrades, the walls, are coated with dust. The marble floor is grimed like a street pavement; and in every corner and nook, and behind every pillar, lie drifted heaps cf dead leaveß, straws, scraps of torn paper, and the like.

• " Vossignorie " will be pleased to take the trouble to follow me,' said the Email girl, darting forward to fling open a lofty door, and rattling off her lesson with eager self-importance. ' The reception-rooms are all on the ground-floor, Tho ceilings ara from mythological designs by I'ietro di Cortonn ; the rooms are named after the subjects of the frescoes. We are now in the Saloon of Diant. Here one sees the goddess attired by her nymphs—yonder uhe pursues the wild boar; in the third compartment, she returns with the trophies of the chase. The dogs are painted by a German artist, and they are considered very fine. The next room is the Saloon of Mars ' . . • But this was too much for Lancelot Brackenbury's patience. ' Enough, my little maiden,' he said, abruptly. ' I know it all, I havd been here before.'

The small guide was silenced, but incredulous, She was eight years old, and had lived in the empty villa as long as she could remember. All who came to view the place she bad seen; but these two she had never seen. Sho fell back, however, and followed instead of leading. They went on from room to room ; from the Saloon of Diana to the Saloon of Venus, from the Paloon of VeDus to the Saloon of Apollo—huge, echoing, melancholy apartments, big enough for concert rooms, with floors of mixed tessera: in colored marbles, like petrified ' pate de foie gras.' Here mirrors black with dust alternated upon the walls with panels of faded arabesques, while all the gods of Olympus sprawled overhead on dingy clouds, or disported themselves in landscapes of blue and green, Most of these rooms were quite bare ; but in one or two there were pyramidal heaps of furniture draped with dosty sheets which took fantastic forms, and looked as if they might cover funeral pyres and heaps of slain.

' Did you ever see anything so mournful?' said Lancelot. 'lt id like a house desolated by plague ! And yet, somehow. I would rather soe it like this—empty and dilapidated—than modernised out of recognition, and fu'l of alien faces. I cou.'d almost fancy now that no one hfcs lived here since we left the place sixteen years ago.' Then, turning to the child, who wa3 following close at their heels, he askod how long the houßo had been uuten anted.

This, however, she did not. or would not know. It had been empty for some time two years, perhap3 ; pnsEibly three. Her father would bo here presently, and could answer the Signore's questions Would the Signore meanwhile be pleased to take the trouble to visit the rooms upstairs ? He shook his head.

• 3 hero is nothing to sen overhead but auite after suite of bedrooms,' he said, addressing himself to Winifred. ' But if yon don't mind climbing a good many stairr, I should like to show yon the view from the loggia in the tower. No —this way. It is nearer to cross the terrace than to go back through the hall.' So saying, he led the way to a Bidc-room opening from tho Saloon of Ap.dlo, and decorated with panels of ' fetes champetres ' in the Watteau style. « This,' he said, undoing the fastenings of a window that opened on a paved turrucc

beyond, ' was my mother's boudoir. It facer, you see, to the sooth. She lived upon sunshine. Sometimes, when she was well enough, poor darling, her couch was carried outside, and placed under the orange trees there used to be a row of them, in tubs, all along the terrace. Sixteen years ago! . . . It seems like yeiterday.' The terrace—decorated at intervals with sculptured vases full of training ivy overlooked a desolate garden laid out in formal beds, where flowers and weeds ran wild. Beyond the garden, all was lawn and shrubbery, with distant glimpses of the harbor of Castellamare.

Still going first, Lancelot went on to a door at the further end of the terrace. It stood ajar, and admitted them on to a basement thambcr, used apparently as a storehouse for garden lumber. Hence, by & staircase with many landings, they made their way to a loggia under the roof, This loggia, open on all sides and surrounded by a parapet, commanded a view which is certainly one of the most beautiful, and is perhaps the most famous, in the world. The crescent bay, purple and emerald under ths rocky headlands, bluer than the bluest summer sky out in the open, lay outstretched before them, from Miseno to Soriento. Ischia and Procida bathed in sunmist, slept like cloud island on the Western hf rizon. Naples, and the scattered villages between Portico and Torre dell Anuunziata, gleamed like a string of scattered pearls along 'the beached margont of the sea;" while Vesuvius, rising out of verdure into barrenness, gathering villages, vineyards, and corn slopes in the folds of her mighty mantle, lifted her fire smitten cone and plume of faint brown smoke against the stainless sky. So still, so distant was the s eno, that not even the tiny steamer crossing from Naples to Sorrento seemed in motion. The fishing barks with transverse sai.'a geaming hora and there against the b'ue, looked like sea-birds t sleep on the waters. Not even the floating island of tunny-nets guarded, nearer shore, by a flotilla of flat-bottomed boats, betrayed the faintest sign or grounds well from beneath. All was aB fixed, as placid, as nnreal, as a pointed panorama.

Lancelot and "Winifred leaned, side by side, upoa the parapet. Long and silently they gazed on sea and shore, island and mountain and sky. For weeks they had been wandering together, wedded lovers, happy with the first happiness of perfect union. Together they had picked the mvrtlo blooms in the pillared shade of ing of the bees on the thyme-tufted slopes of Rymettns, and to the nightingale singing at midday in the pomegranate thickets on the banks of Iliaaus. By moonlight they had trodden the drifted petals of the frail dog-rose in the marble porticoes of the Acropolis at Athens, lingered at sunset la the t mple solitudes of and gathered purple asphodel in the plains of Piestnm. Colour, and form and light, splendour of morn and even, pathos of ruin, and the tender grace of a vanished past, had been with them at every stage in their pilgrimage ; but neither in Greece, nor in Sicily, nor on the lone shores of Poßidonia, had they strayed to look upon a scene more fair than this. It was no new scene, either, for they were stajing now at Sorrento, and saw it from their windows every day. 'ls it ever arjything but summer here ?' asked Winifred, dreamily. ' I am sorry to say, it is occasionally winter. 1 have seen leaden skies, and persietent rains, ond even fogs and frosts, in this fairyland of roses and sunshine. I have seen Vesuvius white with show, like a smoky bride cake.'

* And you have seen Vesuvius in eruption, too !' she Baid, quickly. ' Well, that is a forcible way of expressing it,' he answered, smiling. 'I have seen i bowers of red hot stones and cinders, followed now and then by a fiery streak of lava ; but that is only what every Neapolitan sees twice or thrice a year. We don't call tr.oso little freaks and spurts by so fine a name as eruptions.' ' I wish the mountain would bo pleased to indulge in a freak before we go away,' said Winifred.

Lancelot pulled out his Hold-glass and scanned the summit long and critically. ' i think it not impossible that your wish may be gratified,' he said, handing her the glass. 'Do you see those patches of pale yellow about the mouth of the crater ? That is fresh sulphur; and we used to observe a deposit of fresh sulphur pretty surely indicated a coming display of fireworks, In the meanwhile, however, if we are to make the ascent of the mountain, we had better do it within the next day or two.' ' Oh, but I should like best to go when there is something to be seen,' she said eagerly. 'You wcnld not like to be stifled by sulphur- fumes and peppered with red-hot stones ?' said Lancelot. 'At all events, I should not like it for you. Besides, you have no idea—'

He broke off abruptly. * Look there!' he said, in an altered vo'ce.

Following the direction of his eyes, Wlni» fred saw three persons—a ledy and gentle* man, accompanied by a gardener In * blonse—crossing a space of open lawn between the trees, about a quarter of a mile away.

CICAPTEB LX. THE OTHER PARTS'.

Lancelot stood looking fixedly at the three figures in the garden below. ' It is theenstode, showing the other party over the grounds,' said Winifred. ' Give me the glass.' He put out his hand for it without turning his head, adjusted, and turned it upon ' the other party.' 1 They came down tho orange walk,' he said, more to himself, as it seemed, than to his wife. ' They are going up to the knoll—for the view.'

' It cannot be so fine as from here,' said Winifred,

Then, observing the inteneeness with which he continued to watch these strangers, she looked at them again, 'J here was nothing remarkable in their appearance. The gentleman wore a dark blue fiuh and a navy cap with a gold band. The lady looked slight and girlish. They were more than a quarter of a mile away, as the crow flies ; and their faces we; e turned towards the sea. Slowly they crossed the open; slowly they climbed the little knoll, and there stood, looking over the bay. Winifred saw the man take a small telescope from his pocket, carefully regulate it, and hand it to his companion. He seemed to be directing her attention towards Vesuvius.

' I wonder if they are looking at those sulphur patches,' she said Lancelot shut the glass up with a click, and thrust it into the sling case at his side. * Let us go down,' he said, quickly, ' We have been here long enough ; and —and I want to show you the grounds. Do yon. mind V

Winifred did not mind. She would fain have lingered awhile longer; but, seeing that he was impatient to be gone, she said nothing. So they went down the stairs, and along the terrace, and instead of retracing their steps through the house, made straight for the neglected flower-garden below.

' There is nothing to see here,' said Lancelot. 'That "cippus ?"*— a poor thing ! we can look at it as we return. lam taking you to the orange-walk, dearest one—this way!' He had often spoken to her of tho orangewalk ; and she knew tba'i it was the scone of some of Lia earliest and dearest memories. And now a cloeo " bereau" of fragrant uhade studded with clusters of green 3nd golden oranges—it opened before her eyos. • Oh, this is beautiful !' she said. 'lt is like the garden of Aladdin. Lot ns go slowly, fctay! there is a seat yonder. Shall we not rest a while in this enchanted place 2' But still he hastened. 'As wo return, dt areet,' he said again ; ' as we return !'

They emerged from the green tunnel into the blue day. They crossed the open sward, and turned in the direction of the little knoll; now open and solitary in the sun.

Almost running, Lancelot made for the slope, and there soood, looking round. Presently, the man in the blouse emerged from a laurel-thicket some few hundred yards away. Hobbling towards them, he apologised, cap in hand, for not waiting upon them sooner. He had been attending, ho said, upon another party. (To be continued on Saturday,')