LITERATURE.

Globe, Volume XXIII, Issue 2405, 20 December 1881, Page 4

LITERATURE.

CAMILLA'S WEDDINGDIY. [" Tinsley's Magazine." (Continued.') 'I don't believe in much.' she answered languidly ; ' I never saw a ghost— * She broke off as if the sentence was still unfinished. ' Did you ever hear an authentic ease of second eight ?' I inquired. 'I do not think I ever heard of one,' she said, but not until after a pause ; ' really I am not particularly intereated in the subject,' she added coldly. I had never known Camilla discourteous before, and was extemely astonished and puzzled. A failure io good breeding was so unlike her. I did not know what to make of it. That night there was a tap at my door, and Camilla came Into my room, an unusual attention. ♦I answered you rudely tonight, Kate,' she satd ; I hope you will forget it.' 'Dear Camilla, it is already Jfcrgotten,' I assured her. ,Th. 9 fact is,' she said, and paused before continuing, ' the subjeot was painful to me. I feel I owe you some explanation, Kate, and so I tell you this. Perhaps some day— I might tell you more.' She said nothing further then, but from that night I felt assured that a time would come when she would ' tell me more.' And the time did come. It was the night before Bhe left Elmwood House to return to Holmehurst to her uncle, Captain Stamer's, to prepare for her wedding, which was to take place from her uncle's house. We Bat op late together talking, Camilla and I. She wsb sitting by tho window In the moonlight, and her black hair streaming in beantlful abandonment about her shoulders. A broad moonbeam shone clear on her deep mysterious eyes, and her exquisite pale mournful face. There was something almost unearthly about her besuty. We had been talking confidentially ; I had told her all my life.

«You have told me all your story, Kate,' she said, and looked at me earnestly, and seemed to hesitate.

' And you, Camilla ?' I replied softly ; • may I not know anything of yours V She leant her head on her hand, and gazed away into the distance, as if looking back into the past. ' Kate,' she said at last, 'lf I tell you, no one save you must know. Not Annie, not Ada, not Oswald !' I promised secrecy. 'Do you remember the night they were talking of second-sight?' she began; 'it was painful to me because I myself have had strange experiences. But to tell you those would be to tell the story of my life. Dsar, I will tell you now.' She paused, and continued quietly, almost indifferently, ' I was brought up at my uncle Bruce's. We were a happy family, and those were happy days. There were Bell and Janet, lan and Aleck, my cousins, and my sister Dora and I, orphans, living with them. We were all united and harmonious —all like brothers and sisters. I think in the early days we scarcely knew the difference between cousins and sisters. My cousin Aleck was the eldest of ua all; he was ten years older then I.* She paused again, and in a moment I felt what ' old, old story ' I was to hear. She continued, turning to another point, as if postponing that part of the Btory, ' I'll tell you when I first had that experience I just now alluded to. It was when my sister died. I was spending af >w weeks with f riendß in the Isle of Wight; Dora was at home —uncle Brnoo'a was " home " to us, all the home I ever remember. She was taken suddenly ill; I did not know It. I was sitting in the twilight looking at the sea; I was alone, waiting for the lamps to be lit. I was a romantic child in those days, and liked sitting alone dreaming and watching the sea. Now I hate to be alone, and I never dream. Well, I was sitting by the window quietly, when I heard a sound of moauing and painful breathing; it seemed quite close to me In the room. I turned cold with terror, but I was too frightened to scream, and sat still as if I waa frozen, listening. And then, as surely as I am speaking to you now, I recognised Dora's voice. I heard her moan, " Mamma, mamma; where is mamma ?" Then an awful sense of something worse than mere terror came over me. I felt that Dora was deid—that I never, never should see her again, and I fainted. Remember, Kate, until that moment I had no idea of Dora's illness. But she was dead ; had died at that very hour—died delirious, with that very cry, " Mamma ; where is mamma ?" on her lips.' For a little while we were both silent.

•It was strange, dear, very strange!' I said at last;' ' was that the only time you ever had such an experience ?' ' No, not the only time.'

She spoke a little coldly, and relapsed into her fiilenoe; but presently she continued, falling into the frankness of a reserved nature in its rare confidences—

' It seems strange to tell this to anyone. I have told no one but you. We were all good friends and affectionate cousins ; but Aleck and I' —she lingered and dwelt on the words ' Aleck and I'— * 1 don't know when we began to be first to each other ; it seems to me now that it was always. We were together daily, in as cl <se intimacy as brother and sister, and I grew up with Aleck in my heart ©f hearts. How good he was to me, how gentle, and how brave. He was brother, friend, and father, all in one to me as a child ; he was my girlhood's hero ; and it seemed to me that brother, father, friend, and all wore gone when he went, I was only about fifteen when he went away—to Australia. Janet and Bell and I went on board the vessel to tee him off. He kissed us all end told us not to cry. How I cried, I remember, It is so strange to think I ever did cry. I have had no tears left in mo for years and years. Nothing moves me now. Well, Aleck went, and for the five yea r s he was away it was always with me, 'When Alack comes back,' and I would wish pleasant things put off ' till Aleck is at home again.' And before we knew that he had Bailed on the homeward voyage I caiiedown to breakfast one moraiug radiant, and >-aid, ' I am sure A lick i 3 coming, I feel it! Some good news of Aleck is near us !' And that very day the letter came announcing he would be with us the next week. Well, he nme ! Kate, there are moments of pure joy in life. He stayed at home with ns one happy year. What a year! Under the same roof from morning till night, every daily pleasure not his, nor mine, but ours ! And then I did not know—how blind we women are at first! —l did not know that he was more to me than to Janet or Bell; that I waß nearer to him than his Bisters were. And yet I felt he was dear as life to me. At lost I began to realise that ours was more than brother's and sister's affeotion. There is no joalousy in mere brother's love, and Aleck hated to see me receive attention from any other man. And at last I saw that he was changing to me in all ways, a reserve was creeping ovar our old familiarity. The old frank aff ction was gone ; a gulf seemed opening be Ween us, I knew not why. * My piece of mind was gone, and the dear old time seemed so far away. Every day I sat down at the tablo with Aleck, and every day the gulf seemed wider between u». Well, to make a long story short, at last wo could bear it no longer, he and I. We dashed the barriers do*vn and had a scane of explanation. Hia secret was told in two words ; he was married, had married in Australia, married in haste and repented at leisure, and had good cause to repent my poor Aleck! She —but I will not talk of her. Enough to say she was one of the women who would be the o»use of any man's life, Aleck had disoovered early his terrible mistake in marryiog her. and was aehamed to tell his folly to us. Tet if he had enly spoken bnfore it might have saved me much paio. He thought he could come back and see me only as one of his sisters, and now it was too lste ! All that we could do we did. We said good bye, and he went abroad. He had business ii Brussels for a few months ; then he came home to us for two or three weeks on his way baok to Australia. The months he had b on away in Brussels had been a fever ; the few, few weeks he stayed with us passed like a trance. Time and the world stood still We had no future, he and I; we had no p»st. What future could we have P or what past of wbioh we might dare to think ? We lived in the narrow limits of the moment, in the mere sense of each other's presence. We spoke no. word tho world might not have heard. We wera notbiosf to eaoh other ; we were bo near and yet 83 far.

Life seemed a strange dream to us. Thenhe went t • Forget me, Camilla,' ho said. • Will you forget me, Aleck ?' I asked. His answer and his last word to me was, ' Neither in Hfo nor death.' • Well, and here is the end of the Btory, Kate. He had been gone about five weeks, when one night I woke np from my sleep with strange hounds in my ears. 1 heard the thunder of water —my ears were filled with the rushing of waves, the straining and creaking of timbers—-ill strange sea noises, with what seemed like a wail of human voices drowned in those louder sounds. I did not know where I was —I felt lost, as if I myself were sinking In great waters. I stared out into the darkness, and in a sudden blaze of livid light, like a flaßh of lightning, I saw oar Aleck's face, as pale and white as I had never seen it yet, with the dark hair dank and drenched. I saw it, Kate. I heard his voice calling my name. And I knew that neither life nor death could separate my soul and his. There was a link between us neither this world nor the next c»n break. I was ill —very ill for dayß afterwards. When there came the news of a terrible shipwrecK I was not surprised. Had not Aleck come to tell me ? No, he was not dead, Kate ; ho had been saved almost by a miracle, picked up insensible from the water. But In that supreme moment, ycu see, when the jaws of death were closing on him, he had called on me, and I knew it. I saw and heard ! Well, that is all! It is five years ago—ought I not to have forgotten it by this time ? We have never seen our Aleck since; I suppose we never shall see him again. He went back to his duty ; he is as dead to me as if he had gone down that day. He wrote to me once —only once. lam doing his will, I think, now. He wished me to marry and forget him, and be happy.' (To be continued.)