LITERATURE.

Globe, Volume XXIII, Issue 2314, 3 September 1881, Page 4

LITERATURE.

THIS STRANGEST JOURNEY OF MY LIFE. [From “ London Society. ’J ( Continued.) There could be no mistake at all about the portrait It was that of the young lady of whom I had obtained a passing glimpse on tihe downs. It was an excellent portrait—a real triumph of the photographer’s art. _ But its fidelity to that passing glimpse which I had obtained wss the wonderful charm of the po-trsit to myself. How commonplace and uninteresting eeemed all the other photographs compared to this. I did not stop to consider that there might bo other persons in the world to wfi r m some other photograph migat have a special attraction, and, compared with this, even this adored photograph of mine might seem common place and uninteresting. And yet, on second thoughts, .1 cannot conceive that there can he any people <■o thoroughly dense and una -reciaHve that they oonld not see the surpassing absolute loveliness of this pee - - It»j face.

! took Lord George’s arm and strolled into the shop. ‘You have some capital portraits in your window.'

• Yes, air. We have a specialty for veiy correct portraits, air. We have all the elite of the place, both residents and visitors. Wo have got the bishop of the diocese, sir. Uncommon well ho takes, to be snre._ When Midhat Pasha was hero wo took him, and uncommonly pleased he was ; had never seen anything like it before.’ ‘ Would you kindly bring out those in ihat pane of glass !’ A shopman handed down the photographs, and I had the delight of leisurely examining the photograph ‘ And who is this ?’ I inquired ; and I am afraid that I betrayed eagerness and anxiety In my voice and manner. ‘lain fcuro I don’t know,’ answered the insensate and insensible shopman. ‘Jim, do you know ?’ addressing a clerk or another of the assistants who wps at the desk. 1 We may not have the name,’ said the photographer. ‘ They came in and were very pleased with the one that was taken, and ordered a dozen negatives. The young lady took uncommon well; and I thought it so good a photograph that I kept one back to pat it in the window. It is just possible that we might have the name in the lodger where the dozen were to be sent.’

‘ You would greatly oblige me if you would refer to your books. I have a particular reason for wanting to know.’ The good-natured clerk referred to the lodger. ‘ I can’t make quite sure, we have had so many people taken of late. I rather think that this is the one—“ General Bulstrode, Olifton Down Hotel.” ’ There was an obvious absurdity la connecting this fair young face with a weatherbeaten old general. • Perhaps it was Mrs Bulstrode,’ said the unfeeling Erskine. * Such things happen, we know. December and May, and that style of thing.’ I repudiated the unworthy suggestion. My moral instinct told me that I could never have perpetrated an attachment to another mac’s wife.

‘ I suppose yon could let me have this photograph,’ I said, ‘ on my paying you your nasal price ?’ * O dear me, no, air. That would be quite irregular. We jnst keep one. sir. supposing that our parties don’t object, to put in the shop-window. Sometimes they come and ask us to take it out again. A good many people like to have their photographs Bold, but others do not care for it a bit; and a respectable photographer would hardly sell it without permission.’ ‘ I would willingly give you a couple of sovereigns for this one. ’ * That is a very handsome price, sir, and I should not mind selling. At the same time the photograph is such an extremely good one, that it is really worth that, or more than that, as an advertisement to our busi»esa. But I don’t mind asking the General, or asking the General to ask the lady if she will permit.’ I did not think that there was much chance of an uncompromising General’s assent. And I waa anxious to secure my prize at once. ‘ It was hardly worth while troubling the General,’ I slid. ‘Just once in a way you might not miud .departing from your rule. It is a very proper rule, no doubt; bat the Beauty of a rule is that it always has its exception.’ The shopman laughed and let me have the made my joyous exit. That photograph was a treasure trove to me. I really became very fond of this photograph, talked to it a great deal, and made myself generally ridiculous over it. 1" knew a fellow who always travailed with his fiancee’s photograph. ‘Good morning, my dear Ellen,’ he used to say to it the first thing in the morning, and ‘ Gond-night, aweet Ellen,’ the last thing at night. He talked to the photograph so much, that he really came to believe that the only reason why the photograph did not speak to him again was because, like the celebrated parrot, it was too much occupied with thinking. I have also heard tbs story of a man who was ordered abroad with his regiment, and who took his wife’s photograph with him. Ha declared on hla return that he had never failed to salute the photograph ; but his wife rather confounded him by exhibiting the article, which she had steilthily withdrawn from the case before his departure. Now, this photograph, I may truly aver, became my inseparable companion, and, as will be seen, accompanied me through a great variety of scenery and incident in search of its divine original. I had a horrible dread, in spite of my inner conaciomnesa, that the original might prove— Mrs General Bnlstrode ! in which case all my summer day-dreams would pass away. My aohle friend charged himself with the duty of investigating the matter. He investigated it with, all the zeal of an amateur •Elective, and in a day or two ha waa able to report substantial results. 1 need not be under any apprehension respecting the Mrs General Bulstrode theory. There was snoh a lady, oldish and vary yellow, who moved afccut with the General on his travels from place to place; bat when actually resident at any particular place, partook of as little locomotion as possible. The young lady was named Cecelia Manning, the daughter of Mrs Gaceral Bnlstrode by a former marriage. The General and his wife had lately returned from India, and met the young lady, who had been at school, and afterwards lived with an aunt. They had resolved to travel about for some time, and were going to travel in the west of England, and afterwards go abroad. I really gave Erskino a great deal of credit for all the pslt-s he had taken, and to hit upon come plan of utilising them. He had managed to find out that they were going to Torquay, and on to the Land’s End, So the time comes that we start for Torquay—a memorable journey. We are at Exeter, We enter the vast station of Bt. David’s. There is all the confusion of a great junction, Thors is the rush, and hurry, and tramp of many passengers. Past the broad, pleasant Exe ; past the pleasant prospect overlooked by the cathedral towers; a glance seaward across the water to Exmouth; a glance landwards towards the towers of Powderbam Castle, in the embossing woods. Then we come to what is surely the prettiest bit of railway travelling in the whole country, where the line runs directly opposite the English Channel, and the wind drives the sea-spray Into our faces, and the sea birds are about the carriage windows, and we drive through tunnel after tunnel of the red sandstone. We change carriages at Newton Junction, and then, through a country of streams and gardens, and rich fields and magnificent timber, we come to Torre and to Torquay.

Torquay was a very sweat region. The bine of the sea, the red of the sandstone, the groan of the foliage commingled very nobly, and made up a perfect picture, I bad never been there before, and I had hardly any idea that England owned anything so beautiful. It was more like one of the Italian lakes, as beautiful in its way as Como or Lugano. I wont to one of the big hotels ; but then the glace was full of big hotels. I thought I had ettar go to the very biggest of them, on the chance of finding the names I wanted on the visitors’ list, or perhaps meeting those visitors themselves at the table d'hote, However, I was altogether disappointed, quay Is all up-hill or down-hill. It boast«

a vehicle peculiar to itself, called a midge. A bath-chair was out of the question In this kind of country, I had a relay of midges, and sooured all the country. _ The time of the year was rather unpropitiouo to my design. In the winter people settle down in domiciles and stay a long time. But in the summer the tourists come on flying visits. They only come for short periods, and get over a great extent of country. I b a “ study the county maps as carefully as if I had been a Prussian Uh : an, and as if the Prussians were meditating a descent on Torbay after the old fashion of William of Orange. There was so much that a tourist could do if he made his headquarters at Torbay and investigated the country. He might go backwards along the lovely combes, by which lay the road to the estuary waters of the Teign ; or he might take a railway that led on to the wild region of Dartmoor and the girdle of lovely counties that surround it. Or ho might take the Torbay railway to the old-fashioned town of Dartmouth, and either go up the river Dart with its Ehinelike scenery, or go through the most sequestered part of England, the Southern Hams. It will be seen that I took in the whole character of the ground, and was carefully looking up the strategic places. Bnt then the great point was to ascertain where the rampageous old General and his party might be located. It would be easy enough for Lord George to investigate the hotels. It was only consuming an indefinite number of brandies-and-sodas, a task to which my noble friend felt himself perfectly equal, especially when it was not done at his own expense. But all around Torquay there were innumerable villas nestled in groves and gardens, each house islanded, so to speak, in its separate domain, where Cecilia might be embowered like the Sleeping Princess in the woods, very Hesperian fruit I

I lingered a good bit of time at Torquay. Erskino and I made some charming excursions in company, and then to economise time wo took separate routes. My health was progressing famously, but I was still obliged to elect the easier places. There was no difllonlty in the Dart. Wo had a spell cf lovely weather, and the little steamer was so popular and so crowded, that I thought it quite worth my while to spend two or three days going from Dartmouth to Totnes, and from Totues to Dartmouth. 1 did not see the BuTstrode party, and even if I had It would have been of little use. I felt that I shou’d not he of much use to myself without the friendly aid of 'my noble or ignoble friend. In the first place, I had an incurable shyness. And I was still eo infirm, that even if I met thorn I should, by myself, be quite helpless in finding out anything about their movements. Now Erskine, if necessary, would rush among the horses' hoofs at any time. He realised the Horatian line : ‘‘Gncoulus eanrions, si in coelnm jnsscris, ibit.” Actually on the Newton platform, one day, we had a great opportunity and lost it. We had been running up to Dartmoor, seen the great prison where the ‘unfortunate nobleman was languishing,’ and had gladdened our eyes with the sight of some of the seventy dark streams that rise on the moor. We had determined to go on to the southwest, even to the seas above the lost kingdom of Lyonease. The Flying Dutchman came rushing up. ‘ Take your seats, gentlemen I’ cried the station-master, as we were delaying in looking up onr traps. At this moment a lovely face—the face of the lady of the photograph—was shown at the window of a first class carriage. Erskine, with the acumen of a generalissimo, observed that them were several vacant places in the broad-gauge carriage ‘ What class, gentlemen ?’ said the guard. Alas, we had only second-class tickets I * This way, gentlemen, this way and we were hurried onwards to another part of the train, I suggested, even in the hurry of the moment, that we would go first-class. *No time to change your tickets now, gentlemen. You must get in; we are twenty m'nutes behind time already.’ And we were literally thrust into the carriage, and in another minute the train was madly rnahing forward in a frantic attempt to recover that lost twenty minutes. I looked around me and took stock of the other occupants of the carriage. _ There was a nice-mannered pleasant girl in one corner of the carriage, who might have been a lady’s-maid or nursery governess, and one or two people who evidently belonged to the grade of domestic servants. This is trnly said to be one of the drawbacks of second-class travelling, that you so often meet with the domestics of the first-class travellers. Yon have frequently much pleasanter and more refined company in the third class than, you have in the second. There was a young footman, I rsmember, who made himself obnoxious by singing ‘Champagne Charley is my name ’ in a lidionlous and self-asserting manner. He endeavored, after his musical effort?, to make himself conversational to the young lady in the corner, who evidently did not belong to his party, and by no means encouraged his advances. I observed that she was occupied with reading the ‘ Guardian,’ and was much amused by observing the evident interest with which she entered into the clerical correspondence. As for myself, I was sitting in one of my dreamy ‘mooning fits, wondering how I might be able to make use of this golden opportunity, resolving to watch carefully each station where we might stop, and to stop, go on, and stop again, as the Bnlstrode party might stop, go on, or atop again, T was much amused, however, by observing how Erskine, who had secured the opposite corner, was entering into conversation with his vis a-vis. It was the ‘Guardian ’ that invited on his part some decorous eoclesistical remarks. This led to an expression from the young lady of a disapprobation of some extreme proceedings of ‘ them Ritualists.’

‘Onr General,’ aho said, ‘doesn’t hold with them ; nor more do I.’ Here Erskino gave me a severe nudge with his elbow, by way of drawing my attention to tho fact that ho was about to develop the various tactics of social crossexamination.

And ho did it very cleverly. Ho delicately elicited from her that the General to whom she alluded was no other than Genera! Bulstrode ; but she exhibited some little indignation when Erskine bluntly put the question whether she waa in the General’s service.

‘ No, indeed !’ she answered. She was in the service of no gentleman, except that he paid her her wages—at least, he paid it to her out of the money of her young mistress, .‘■be was own lady’s tnaid to Miss Manning, the General’s step-daughter. And having exhibited a considerable amount of volubility, Erskine gave her line enough, and hia tackle and her tattle kept on harmoniously together. She was a very nioe sort of girl, ■with few faults, except those on the surface, beyond a little amiable Indiscretion as regarded her gifts of speech, ‘And I suppose your General is a very great man ?’ ‘ I should think eo!’ said the girl. ‘You should only hoar of the tigers he has killed, and you should only see the beautiful shawls and tho gold filigree he has brought; and his black man tells me that he has often ordered out a score of black soldiers and given them three dozen apiece before breakfast ’

‘And how did yocr young lady like these goings on ? I suppose she liked the shawls and the gold better than the sight of the triangles for flogging V • bless her heart, the darling ! she never clapped eyes on the old General till this day six weeks ago. She was sent home from India when her father was alive ; and when her father died the missis, who had stopped in India, got married again pretty soon to the General. The young missis was at school, and as soon as she left school a twelvemonth ago I was engaged as her maid by the aunt. No. thank yon. The General is very good in his way. bat I do not call him my master, ‘ And I suppose yon have got a very nice young mistress ?’ I said ; and as 1 said It the words of an old song came into my head—

* The fairest garden in her looks, And in her mind the sweetest books.’ The girl almost gave me back my thought in literal prose. 4 0, she is so nice! Give her a book or a piooare, or a flower, or a bit of music, and she is quite satisfied,’ * And where are you going to now ?’ asked the irrepressible Ersklne. (To be continued )