LITERATURE.

Globe, Volume XXIV, Issue 2470, 7 March 1882, Page 4

LITERATURE.

ONLY TEN MINCTEB; OR, WHAT MY DREAM TOLD MB. ( Continued .) ‘ Dear Sir, —I regret to have to infoim you that I am by this post advised of tho death, at Shanghai, of Mr George Kenrick, your uncle, on the 21st ultimo. An epldemio of cholera Is raging there, to which he fell one of the first victims. You will be exceedingly surpiised to learn that he was married last May to a lady at thanghal. Mrs K>nrick was also taken with cholera, and died by a remarkable coincidence on the very same day. I can only suppose that his wellknown views and principles concerning matrimony made him unwilling to inform either his family or his solicitors of bis marriage at tbe time, and have also been the cause of his otherwise unaccountable delay in making it known. As the marriage wss 80 recent I need hardly say that he has left no children. Most unfortunately, however. It appears that ho died intestate. The last will be made is in our hands, under which the whole of bis estate (wholly consisting of personalty) la bequeathed to yourself as sole legatee But as yon are doubtless aware every will Is revoked by tho marriage of the testatorj and we are advised that he was about to make a new will almost as largely in your favour when he died. In effVct therefore he died intestate; and the practical result is that (Mrs Kenrick baing dead) you will be entitled to no more than your share of the estate after distribution. E'er year guidance, and pending proceedings, I may tell you that I expect the estate to realise about £90,000. This will give about £9003 for each of Mr George Kenrlok’s ten brothers and slaters who either survive him or have loft surviving issue. The £9OOO which would have come to your father will be divided among his nine children, giving to yourself the share of about £IOOOO which, deducting succession duty, will give you in the result not more than a clear balance of £970. ‘ I estimate that the amount coming to you may prove less, but oanuot well amount to more. * I shall be happy to see you and give farther particulars any time you can give me a call.’ I handed the letter to Mildred without a word. Why had I not put off telling her I was rich for one single half hour more ? Nine hundred and seventy pounds—not fifty pounds a year—for a man who bad been carefully taught how not to earn his living, who at thirty years old had not even made a beginning, whose so-called profession had been but pastime, who had nothing else to turn to, who had been deliberately trained to exaggerated ignorance of business, and who had just married awife whosemeans amounted to nothing 1 Who could quite have forgotten himself, and one far dearer than himse'f, in grief for the best uncle who ever lived in the world ? I could see it all—how George Eenriok’s dread and shyness of women had been only the Instinctive self-defence of an exceptionally tender-hearted man ; how one woman at last had, as a matter of course, caught his heart, and had proved too much even for the elaborate outworks with which he had guarded it round ; how, after all his open and notorious boasts and scorns, he had felt the shame of a man who had proved himself a rank Impostor, and bad kept putting off the evil day of having to tell • how—always an easy-going procrastinating man—he had in like manner put off making a naw will, which would record his Inconsistency in black and white, and would, Indeed, be very difficult to settle in such a way as to do justice both to his wife and her possible children, and to me. . . * You have married a poor devil of a painter after all,’ said I, as Mildred laid the letter down; ‘ and yon might have ‘Hush!’ said Mildred. ‘I might have been wioked and miserable and rich. I am just as happy now as I was when I only believed that we wore poor; and that la, the happiest girl in the world! Surely you don’t want money so muoh as to make you forget that he la dtai who meant to be so good to you ?’ And then I knew that, though I had married in haste, I should never have to repeat at leisure, I think that la that moment I first became a man. Ch AX’FEB 111. But It was a terribly uphill road that lay before me now. Even when that nine hundred and seventy pounds should oome into my hands, it wonld not mean fifty pounds a year, for I owed at least -five hundred. If I could pet In the end so much as four hundred pounds out of tbe ninety thousand 1 should be fortuu&ate ; and even that I must still farther diminish by anticipation, In order to live for to-day. It is not good to belong to a very large family when personalty has to be divided. It was wonderful how uncles, aunts and causing turned ap their noses at my calling now that I had to earn my daily bread with it instead of carrying it on as uncle George’s whim. Even my brothers had to admit that there was bo room in their offices for an amateur artist who had been foolish enough to saddle

bimaelf with a penniless wife, and to whom accounts were Hebrew and Chaldee. They were right—except in calling Milered’s husband a fool. I could not bo of anv use to them for veirs to come, and then I should be too old for a junior clerk or office boy. I must paint—paint—paint, since that was all I could do, and become an artist, if 1 could, In fact as well as In name.

I ahoild very likely have thrown away my brush if Mildred had not been beside me. But she believed In me, and found heart and courage for two till abe mode mo share them.

Nor was she idle. While I wont at my work with patient effort sho threw herself into hers with joy. I verily believe she was glad to find that poverty and labor had not turned out to be dreams after all. We lived In three rooms—and lived like hermits, except when we went oat together on impromptu holidays to enjoy ourselves nearly ns much as we did at home. In time, what with lessons and with occasional a ilea in very bad markets, wo earned something, and made believe that we were beginning to make our own fortunes with our own hands. She was always so bright and gay that I forgot to be as careful over her as I ought to have been, and had not the heart to measure the work for her, over which she found her life so well filled. Mine, 1 felt, was hard work ; hers looked like play, though it took up nearly as many honrs as it did of mine.

Bnt I must add that, at accounts and economies, she was nearly as bad a hand as I. There were times when we lived neither she nor I knew how But at last there came a time when we found ourselves consciously face to faoo with the wolf at the door; and Love, though ho did not even dream of so much as the shadow of a glsnce towards the bolt of the window, did not reconcile us to the growl Unwillingly enough, I had to laydown my brush for a while, and to look about for work out of doors, since none seemed coming to me. Meanwhile, Mildred set to work on a real picture in the spirit of a real artist who can never be divorced from hope, do what he will. Away from her easel she was the moot modest-minded of women; but, when she worked, she seemed to be fired with some spirit that was strangely like ambition, though I am sure it was really nothing of the kind. It was a fine subject that she bad thought over till it had become a part of herself ; and, though her technical skill was still very imperfect, it already showed qualities that are beyond the roach of scores of far better painters. I knew she was working at it hard, but how hard I never knew—till one afternoon I came back from giving some lessons at a school, and found her in a dead faint upon the floor. And then, and not till then, I learned how, as soon as my back was turned early in the morning, she had been toiling, hungry and alone, every minuta of the day until I returned ; how energy had burned Into fever; how genius, without corresponding vital strength, is nothing better than a disease.

And I had thought that mine alone had been work and that hers had been pleasure and play; and how coaid I, while away from her, have guessed how a delicate girl would have spent all her hours ? I had not learned to know Mildred, even then—and was the knowledge only to come when it was too late, when— I could not finish the thought. I got her to bed, and then went for the nearest doctor as fast as I could go. At three houses, with red lamps and brass plates, I knocked and rang before I found surgeon or physician at home at an hoar when most were going their rounds. At last, by good fortune I found one at home where the plate bore the name of ‘ Mr E. Segrave, Surgeon and Accoucheur.' 1 waited for what seemed an age, though I doubt whether two minutes had passed on the clock dial. At last the door opened.

‘ Dr, Seg'ave ?’ I began eagerly. ‘Not Dr. Segrave,’ Said a tall, cool, ahrewd-looking Scotchman who entered j ‘l'm Dr. Menzies, and I am attending to my friend’s patients while he'gots a little holiday.’ ‘Never mind,’ I said, more hurriedly than politely, ‘ it’s all the same.’

In five minutes more—for he seenr-d to have the art cf doing things slowly faster than other people do them quickly—he was by Mildred’s bedside, I waiting for him in terrible anxiety by the half finished picture into which she had been putting her actual life day by day. At last he came back. ‘ Well V

‘ From what you tell me, and from what I can see, she's prostrate from hard work and want of air and exorcise, and star —well, from not taking time enough to her meals. She wants rest, and plenty of meat and change of air; and let me tell yon that yon mnst look after her well, for I think she is one of those women that look after everybody but themselves.’ ‘There’s no danger, then ?’ ‘ There’s no worse danger on earth than working too much and eating too little. But if yon mean is there anything wrong with her that cannot bo mended—not at all. Eating’s the easiest thing in the world, and doing nothing’s easier still. And that’s all she’s got to do if you can manage It.’ A weight was lifted off my heart, but I guessed what he meant—and that his prescription might prove harder to carry out than he knew.

‘ You will call again ?' * I’ll see how yonr wife is getting on before I go, bnt I am going abroad In a week. I shall tell Mr Segrave of the case if yon give me yonr name.’ ‘ Kenrick. And thank you for— ’ ‘Eenrick! Indeed, I once had a patient of that name out in Shanghai. I’ll write a prescription—' * What! you knew my ancle, Mr Kenriok, of Shanghai?' ‘ Yea; I was called in to attend him when he died in the cholera outbreak. Hnsband and wife both in one day. It was an awful lime with us » people dying around in whole households; it was like a nightmare —’ 1 And strangely enough I had a nightmare on the very eve of my uncle’s death, in which I seemed to feel it all, just as if I was there, ites; on the very night before he died. (To le continued)