LITERATURE.

Globe, Volume XXIII, Issue 2402, 16 December 1881, Page 4

LITERATURE.

WHAT IT HEART. [“Temple Bar.”] { Continued.) I was atepping hopelessly across the grass, to a largo oval bed of mixed shrubs and herbaceous plants which occupied the space immediately iu front of the drawing-roem windows, and of which I well knew, as I thought, every inmate, and was convinced that among them grew no such flower as I sought, whoa suddenly the moon, who tonight rose late, looked over the belt of girdling forest trees that hedged us in. At once, directly bffore me, cs plainly as if it were in the very aye of noon, I saw—lean see it now—a large tall yellow lily, with lines of brown streaking its petals. That there had been no such lilly there, when last, late on tho previous evening—l bad visited tho parterre (by which old fashioned name we always called this part of tho pleasure grounds) I was thoroughly convinced. Growing there straight and stately, unlike also any of our lilies, it was absolutely impossible that it could have sprung up in its strength and beanty In the course of tho ci.'ht. Was it an optical delusion V Could I bo suffering from acme strange hallucination? I bent down low and touched it; put my fingers about its vigorous stem, and peered into tho great orange stamened vase of its expanded flower. for, like other lilies, it was as widely open as if it were tho noon of day, instea lofthit sin of night. Into their pure cups the constellations look as freely as does the sun. It was certainly real, and as I stood in complete bewilderment, the words that the voice had ottered echoed back on my mind—--4 Go into the garden and you will find a yellow lily striped with brown, and then you will know !’ But I had gone into the garden and found tho lily, and t knew no more than before. No ray of enlightenment pierced my darkness. The moon had sailed np above our elms, and was draining down her white and dreamful radiance. I gazed long and earnestly at the mystic blossom, eagerly trying to wile its secret from it, but it was in vain Tho answer to tho riddle, the key of the puzzle escaped me. After long, or what seemed long and hopeless waiting, I had to turn away baffled, and retrace my steps across tho ghostly white open spaces, and through the ghostly black shadows to the house. Up the d>rk stairs I climbed to my room. It was exaot'y as I had left it, only lighter, silent and empty. Tho shadow of the window frames lay in a cross b r pattern, black and white upon tho floor. Thera was even a patch of wan radiance upon the b-d quilt. I looked out of the window, trying if at this distance and by the aid of the now powerful mem, I conld distinguish the strange now Illy, but It was too far off. So at la it I unwillingly threw off my dressinggown and again lay down, meaning to await In bewildered wakefulness the coming of the morning, when I could correct by the help of daylight the errors and delusions of the night. But strange to say, almost before my head was laid on the pillow, I was asleep agslu. For how long, who shall say ? There is nothing more difficult to measure than the periods of sleep. I had been too preoccupied to ascertain at what hour I returned to the house, nor at my waking did it over occur to mo to think of the length of my slnmbei. For I awoke again, precisely as I had done before, without start or jump or heart throbbing ; woke to find myself sitting up in b. : d and listening, listening to the same voice, and that was now a second time addressing me in precisely the same words ‘Your brother I —your brother!—your brother!’

The room, which before bad not really been dark, was now quite light. Besides the moon, which still sailed high, the dawn waa breaking—in June there is virtually no night—and had there been any person, any form or apparition of any kind in the room, I matt have perceived It. But in this case hearing drew no aid from sight. It was quite as impossible as before for mo to decide whence tho sound came. It was neither from above nor below, nor did it seem to proceed from any one point of the compass more than another. It was a voice, that was all. It was neither load nor low, it was neither soft nor harsh. It was a voice and it was sorrowful. That was all you oould certainly say of It. It repeated the tho words as before, three times—

‘Your brother ! —year brother !—your brother 1’

And I as before, still strangely stouthearted, but in a passion of haste and eagerness, answered without any snob interval as I had let elapse on the former occasion, staring out the while vaguely, for I did not know in which direction to look into the still and vacant chamber, where the two lights—the one that must wax and the one that must wane—wore contending—- * My brother ! what about my brother ?’ Again there was a little pause, as there had been before, and then the voice sounded again, vague and sad through the room—- * Go to your wardrobe, and you will find a yellow ribbon striped with brown, and then you will know!' I am not sore that I had not expected a repetition of the former w r ords—to bo again bidden to go and seek the Illy; but at this new injunction, 1 remained for a few moments awed and still, waiting perhaps for something more to follow. But nothing came. ‘Ajellow ribbon striped with brown 1’ It flashed upon me that I had no such ribbm in my possession. I ran over in my head my simple and limited stock of personal adornments. I oould remember among them none such. I was perfectly convincad that I owned no such ribbon. Bat then, on the other hand, I had been as firmly convinced that there was no such lily in garden as the one that I had not only seen with my own eyes, but also touched and smelt there. I sprang out if my bod and ran to my wardrobe. ft was composed of a banging press for gowns on one side, and drawers on the other. With a feverish haste I pulled out every drawer, beginning at the bottom. To reach the higher ones 1 had to mount a chair. I had pulled them all ont except one, and eagerly turned over and rummaged their contents without finding anything that I did not already know to bo there. Only one more drawer remained to bo examined! The probabilities were twenty to one that it also would be found to bo empty of that £ sought, or rather of what I anxiously sought not to find. I drew a heavy breaih of relief at the thought that this lime the voice had spoken falsely, and that therefore even if I hea r d it again and yet again repeat its melancholy message, I might dismiss it from my thoughts as some curious form of aural do usion. I hurriedly drew out the top drawer, and the first thing that met my eye, lying above everything else, and unrolled so as to stretch across almost the whole width of the drawer, lay a ribbon- a yellow ribbon striped with brown, a ribbon that I had assuredly never been possessed of. or even seen before !

There could be no mistake aa to Its colors. Momentarily the morning was broadening aoroao the world, and the two tints wore so distinct, the stripes so clearly marked, that error was impossible. I took it oat and let it fall across my fingers. No! I had never seen it before. As to how it come there, or whence it came, I could hazard no conjecture. ‘ Q-o to your wardrobe, and you will find a yellow ribbon otriped with brown, and then you will know!’ But 1 hud gone to my wardrobe i I held tho ribbon in my hand, andetill I knew not. The message of tho ribbon was as dork to mo aa had been that of tha slower. As I stood in tho garden, paiofully striving to find the moral of this twice repeated enigma, a bird —some little ficch—struck uo the first few notes of his sleepy dawn song. I listened eagerly to him, thinking that perhaps he might give me the key to the riddle. But in his little song there was nothing bnt joy—joy at the coming of another day ; joy at being alive | joy at being a little garden finch. He could not help me. Meither could the widening morning red, nor the awakening flowers. None of them could help me. Byaud by I lay down the ribbon in despair, carefully replacing it exactly aa I found it. I closed the drawer, got down from the chair, shut tha wardrobe, and went back to bod. This time I resolved that sleep should not again overtake no* expose me to tha possibility of being again aroused by that tormenting riddle speaking voice. And indeed, so vividly, agitatedly wakeful was I, that It seemed most unlikely that I should again lapse Into slumber. And yet aa before, soaroe had my head touched the pillow, beforo I was sound asleep again.

Next time that I woke the June sun was blazing aloft; for the one sleepy finch, a soore of blackbirds and thrushes sod linnets wore making their heavenly din, and my

maid was offering me my morning tea. I took it drowsily, bat before 1 had tasted it —the act of Bitting np having fully aroused me —the incidents of the night rushed back on my miud. Hastily thrusting aside the tray, I jumped out of bod, and running to the wardrobe, opened it, climbed up on a chair, and puller! cut the top drawer, in which I had so plainly seen the ribbon lying; not only aeon but touched and hatdled it. i hero was no brown and yellow ribbon there. Then I pulled out hastily all the others. Neither in any of them was there such a ribbon; nor, although I clearly r collected having overturned and displaced their contents, was there any least trace of such overturning and displacing. Everything lay neat and orderly aa was its wont. I was feverishly exploring the bottom drawer, when my maid in a voice, through which hot astonishment at my unwonted procedure plainly pierced, asked me ‘ What I was looking for ?’ I answered, ‘Nothing, or at least,’ re-closing the wardrobe as I spoke, ‘nothing that I was likely to find,’ I dressed in feverish haste—usually I was of a lazy habit : lay long, and was hard to rouse—and in half an hour from tho time at which I was called, I was racing across the sward to the bed that had held the mystic flower. What a different garden it was to the midnight one! holding no secrets in its frank and sunny breast, and sung to by what sweet and practised minstrels ! I reached the bed, but I could see no lily. In tho night, os I remembered, it was the very first object that had struck my sight. It was impossible to overlook it, even in that comparatively faint light, but now, even with strong daylight helping me, I could find no trace of it. I searched through the whole large bed, pushing even between the Gueldro rose and mock-orange bushes, bat it was not there. There were peonies—huge red ones, pale pink ones—that seemed as if they were trying to be mistaken for great roses ; there was weigolia, delicate aa apple-blossom; there were irises ; there were Oanterbury-bells ; there were lupins but there was no yellow lily striped with brown.

As I still—though now convinced that it was in vain—peered and pushed aside leaves and blossoms, the voice of Alice, who had suddenly come up behind, rather startled me.

‘ What are you looking for ?’ * Nothing,’ I answered hurriedly, stepping back on the grass again. ‘Have yon lost a ring or a glove ?’ inquired she, looking at me with soma attention, for I suppose I appeared flurried and disordered.

‘ No,’ I replied, ‘ I have lost nothing ; at least ” —casting one more fruitless glance around— ‘ nothing that lam at all likely to findV Neither flower nor ribbon! Must it then have bean only a dream? At first I rejected scornfully this explanation. Had ever dream such consistency? Did ever dream move with such apparent coherence from it beginning to its close ? In it had been none of the strange starts and freaks that are always occurring in the dream world. In it there had been nothing decousn ; no leaps from the probable to the entirely impossible; no metamorphosis of myself into some one else; no unexplained transition from here to there, from now to then, such as have abounded in every dream —even the moat vivid and lifelike ones—that I have ever previously had. And yet, as the day wore on, the suspicion deepened, changed at lost into a conviction that it was a dream. I had never awakened really. I had never trodden the midnight garden, or opened my wardrobe doors. All the time that I imagined I had been so doing 1 had been in point of fact resting quistly on my bed ; possibly some awkward way of lying, some uneasiness of posture, had produced the phenomena that I have described. I spoke of my dream, if it was a dream, to no one, not even to Alice. Some strange reluctance tied my tongue, But I went heavily and ill at ease all through the day. It was htver out of my head. I puzzled over its enigma from early morning until night again fell and bedtime returned, (To be continued.)