LITERATURE.

Globe, Volume XXIII, Issue 2401, 15 December 1881, Page 4

LITERATU RE.

WHAT IT MEANT. I had the last look. I shall always maintain that. Alice thought s:e had got the better of me by going round to the othor side of the cab and teasing him to kiss her through the window, though she was all amouchod with tears—a thing he neverliked, a:d ho was hunting for his flask whioh ho hid mislaid ; but I was even with her. I jumped iu at the last moment and drove down with him to the gate. We did not say anything at all, but he let me hold his hind all the way, and at the very last, when I was nctually on the stop getting out, he said—'God bless yon !" Alice will not beliova it, but ho did. _ He, so undemonstrative, who never in his life or bedardlitiged us, he said—' God bless you.' I am so glad that I did not annoy him with tears. 1 think that that was his way of paying me. I told Alice so, which made her very angry, as sho cried like a pump ; but after all, perhaps it dis traoted us a little to brawl over it, as we did intermittingly for the rest of the day. Ever since he came home on sick leave, five months earlier, our life had been so built uoon him and his convenience, that now that the keystone was withdrawn our bridge seemed to collapse. For five months our every action had had some reference to him. Now that he was gone all aotion Beemed useless. This parting was, as we both agreed, worse, far worse than any former one. They had all been bad enough, but whon he was at school there were at least the long midsummer and foe short Christmas to look to ; there was jam to simd him, and the penny post to bring letters only twelve hours old. Even when ho first went out to join his regiment in India, bis own buoyant gladness in the prospect, his confidence that tho climate would suit him—(Hd not hot woather hero alway suit him ?—the hotter the better) —had imparted to us, too, some faint ray cf courage. But now that wo knew certainly that that young confidence had been misplaced, now that there was burnt in upon our memories tho look of him sent back to us as he had bom last autumn—faint, deathly, bleachad and emaciated almost pa3t recognition—i 3it any wonder that our pulses beat low as we gave him back trembling to that ftveriah soil that Is over being now paved with British graves?' And though he would not for a moment have suffered na to iudulge, nor indeed would we have plagued him with, any morbid forebodings, yet we agreed, Alice and I, that his own dear heart seemed to grow heavy as the time for parting drew nigh. ' Only sons' sisters should be sent on foreign service with them !' said Alice, ' oh, if' (with a profound sigh) *wo were all three steaming down to Folkestone together !' ' How pleased the regiment would be to see us!' rejoined I drily, and we both laughed. We were sui prised and shocked the moment that we had done It, but we did laugh. Yes, he had not been gono three hours when we laughed. At lunoheon we were quite upset again by Figaro, the black poodle, going unasked through all the tricks that Dick had taught him. Usually it required entreaties, threats, and unlimited Albeit biscuits to Induce him to execute one; but to-day, just when he knew they would be too much for us, he volunteered them all. In the evening we all lay strewn about, limp and teßrful in our armchairs, leaving sacredly empty his, and gazing at it wistfully till the clock struck ten, and the day was mercifully at an end. The next day was a shade better; we cried less and ate more; the next a shade better again ; and the next a shade better again than that. In fine, by the end of the week we had plucked up our spirits so far as to teach Figaro half a new triok, and cur armohairs being limited—and our dear boy's empty one pitently far the most comfortable one—we had, reluctantly at lirat, but with ever growing callousness, abandoned the Idea of its conseoration to emptiness and memory. Indeed Alice and I had wrangled a good deal over our respective claims to its possession. By-and by came bis letters, the first from Paris to ssy that he had had a rough passage, and that everybody on board, exoept himself, had been sick, and that he had walked about and enjoyed it; that he was going to the play at the varieties; and that he hoped we would not forget to send him the spotting papers. The next letter was from Brlndhi; the third from Aden, and so on. Very soon father and mother began to drop into their old way of showing his letters about; taking them with them to exhibit when they paid visits, and bring them forth to read, in whole or In part, when anyone called. It was a plan that Alice and I had always deprecated, and that no one wonld have disliked more than Dick himself, could he have known it. Alice and I had often noticed the atlfitd yawns of indifferent guests during those readings, and had still of toner observed the hurried excuses and regrets for being unable to stay longer as soon as there was any talk of the Indian letters being produced. And so, in time, he reached India, and was welcomed back as one from the dead by his fellow soldiers, who hardly knew him again, so hale, and brown, and strong on his legs. And as to us, wo fell into our old tame and tranquil ways—our main events, the Indian mail days; our twin bugbears, cholera and war. We had returned to our evening rubber ; mother, who could never tell one card from another, and hated them all, being mercilessly compelled by us to take a hand. As the season advanced, and the air warmed, and the buds swelled, we spent more and more of oar time in the garden, where the cedar let fall its uncaprioious dark shade on us, and even the shrivelled ilex put out some new leaves. May had now just gene, and Jane's first splendid days were holding high holiday in eatth and sky. The lilacs were over; they had been exceptionally profuse this year ; even the thorns were on the wane, and the lv.t sun gave them the coup de grace; and though the pink horse chesnut still held up its stiff and stately spikes, yet a little tell-tale flushed carpet as its foot betrayed that it too was departing. But to make up to us for what we lost, the white pinks spread their spicy mats everywhere about the borders ; the roses were only waiting for one lightest shower to rush forth, one and all, and the cloying syringa made the air languid. It was not only the syringa, however. The day had been weighted with excews of wonted heat, and even oncoming night had brought but little freshness. We had stayed on the parched lawn and under the unstirred trees in the vaiu search f.f a reviving breath, listening to the owl and the harah but summer voioed corncrake. We strayed till bedtime had come and passed—since our dear lad wont, the day had seemed long enough, yes over loDg by ten —and the docks were with one consent were telling the hour of eleven. So we turned homewards, and limply climbed the stairs to bed. My room was in the roof, and on that roof, all through the immense June day, the sun had been mightily striking, ao that, though all my three windows were set open to their fullest extent, the atmosphere was as of an engine room.

I undressed dejectedly and lay down beneath | the one sheet, which on that night seemed to hive the weight and consistency of Ave good blankets. With small hope of sleep I lay down ; my eyes, widely open, staring out at the tennis-ground and the hammock, and the pink-borse chestnut tree, not pink any longer now, but (all distinctions of color lost in one grave gloom) of the same hue as the cedar, the ilex and the elm. I had small hope of sleep; and yet, by-and-by sleep CHtne. It mnet have come rather soon too, as I have no recollection of hsvlng heard the clocks strike ag*in. I was awaked or, at leased I seemed to be awaked, not with a stirt, but gradually by a voico. I found myself sittkg up in bed and listening. I have no recollection of any panic fear, of any lond heart beating, or paralysing of tongue cr limb, of any cold sweat of terror at this unexplained sound that was breaking the intense stillness of the night. I was only sitting up and listening. I could not tell whence the voice came, not even from wbat direction it seems to issue. I had no slightest cue as to whom or what it could belong to. It was accompanied by no rustling of any earthly garment, by no most cautious stirring of any human foot. It was only • voice. I caught myself pondering as to whose voice it could be. To what voice that I knew had it any likeness P ' I could And none. Yet there was nothing dreadful, nothing threatening or fear-inspiring in its qua ifcy. 1% w# simp'y a voic?, and it was saying most slowly, raoit solemnly and most sedly, with a light pause between each

two words. Your brother ! —your brother I your brother I' Then there was silence again. I listened intensely, poignantly, still unaccountably without fear ; but there was nothing more. There was no sound of any one breathing near me, and no form intervened between mo and the casement square. I do not kmw for how long I listened ; it might have been minutoa, or only half a minute. The' I spoke. I can hardly believe now thai I dared to do it; wore such a voice to come to me again—which God avert !—I am v»ry sure that I should have no power to uuolose my lips or ntter intelligible speech. Jut then I did. I said, still sitting up in bed, and staring strainingly out into the cim but not dark room, and I can still recall ;he odd sound of my own voice as it broko ujon the dumbness round me :

' My brother 1 what about my brother?' There was another paUße, during wheh you might, perhaps, have counted ton rat'ier slowly ; and then the voice came again, exactly the same as before ; as slow, as solemn, as profoundly cad, and as impotable to trace whence it came

' Go into the garden and you will find a yellow lily striped with brown, and then jou will know !'

That was all. I listened, listened, is" tened, but there was nothing more. The words that I had heard kept ringing end echoing in my head, without my attaching any meaning to then at first; but then all at ones they grew olear. 'Go into the garden and you will find a lily striped with brown, and then you vill know 1'

How oould I go into the garden now—the olocks were just striking one—alone—|for the Idea of waking anybody never ocooired to me) ? The doors would be locked and bolted. I doubted if I should be ab'e to draw the heavy bolts. Go into the ga'den in dressing-gown and bare feet at one o'clock in the morning! I had never done such a thing in my life I And a yellow lily striped with brown ? —there was no suoh lily in the garden I was sure. It was not so large in extent that I could not have an intimate acquaintance with each blossom; aid I recollected no such flower. In what border could it be ?

Se'zod by a hot and biting curiosity, I slipped out of bed and—still inexplicably free from fear—walked barefoot to tho vin dow. There lay the garden—not precisely dark, for I could see the tennis nets, but overspread with so dusky a veil, that a lundred strange lilies might be hiding is its beds without my being able to distinguish or detect them. There was nothing fir it but to go down and search. I could not resist the apparently senseless impulse, Go I must. I put on dressing gown and slippers, and not lighting any candle, trusting tc the lenity of the summer night and the bright planets, I opened my door and ran along the passages and down the stairs, whose every step I knew so well as to be abb to race blindfold down th«m. I had recollected that the garden door locked less stiffly '-han the others, and had no bolts. In effect, 1 opened it without more noise than the slight unavoidable click that any key makes in turning, and stood on the sward outside. How strangely strange the familiar garden looked! Could this really be the tennis ground, worn bare by our feet—this solemn silent space ? Could this be the pink horse chesnnt at whose rosy fcot I had left my book lying last evening—this towering mass of darhnesß ? Bow in this universal gloom that spread one colorless shade over all could I distinguish one tint from another? I walked alongside the borders, stooping as I went to peer at the faces of the blossoms, bath those that thriftily close at advancing night, nor waste their beauty on the unperceiving darkness, and those that still hold up their chalices to the stars. It was perfectly useless. (To he continued.')