LITERATURE.

Globe, Volume XXIV, Issue 2709, 13 December 1882, Page 4

LITERATURE.

A NIGHT OP DISASTER,

[Concluded.)

The rain was coming down now and obscured all objects. Never mind, he knew the direction pretty well. * How surprised they will he to see me so soon ; and in such a state ? ’ he thought. Just then ho plunged into a narrow ditch separating two fields, and went up to his knees in water. It was not deep, and he soon waded across, and began striking over some stony soil, gradually rising. When he got to the top ho looked about for a few moments. Yes, ho was going right, he thought. Was the sky getting brighter? Perhaps it was clearing up. No, the rain still beat down persistently. ‘ I shan’t mind a wotting after such an accident as that,’ said Bertram to himself ; and now he passed under some trees, and came to a wall, leapt it, and found himself in a road. It led in the right direction, and thanking his stars, he began to move forward. But the sky was getting brighter. He could see it through the heavy bows overhanging the path, and there was certainly a glow which he had not seen before. He walked a little now, and the light got brighter. Then it became more radiant, and he could see distinct pulsations of red blaze rising and falling on the midnight curtain of clouds. What did it mean ? An Aurora ? Not in these latitudes, on such a night. What was it ? With quickly-beating heart he hastened on. Another moment, and he was in view of, and close to the house that hold what was dearest to him on earth. What a sight! Was he dreaming? Was this the effect of the accident upon his too high-strained nerves ?' No, The villa was on fire, from basement to roof one flaming framework ; windows, floors, and walls sending columns of nearly smokeless fire up to the sky, as only houses can do that have quantities of well-scasoued wood about them. There was a beautiful creeper, a clematis, that used to hang in festoons over the porch, and there ifc was hanging still, charred and shrivelling in the fierce heart. That creeper had been watered every day by Helen’s own hand. Where was she now ? Pray Heaven, not within ! He set off, with his heart throbbing against his ribs, at racehorse speed for the house. Somebody was standing on the lawn in front of it. Bertie rushed across the soppy, fire-illuminated turf towards him. It was old Mr Graham, Helen’s father. I call him old, though in reality he was not more than sixty years ; but he was prematurely aged, being a complete invalid, and had come abroad to the southern coast for the sake of his health. .He was stooping down, trying with frantic impatience to raise a heavy ladder that lay along the ground ; but evidently the task was too much for his feeble strength. I Mr Graham !’ shouted Bertram, as ho dashed up to him. ‘ Wilde ?’ and Mr Graham clasped his hands, and ejaculated, ‘thank Heaven ! you are come. Helen !’

That name was enough for Bertie. He guessed all. Quick as lightning he had raised the ponderous ladder into the air, carried it across the gravel and reared it against the house, spite of columns of smoke pouring from the lower windows. Another moment, and he had sprung up the rounds, and was battling with the mingled flames and vapors that were pouring out of an upstairs room —Helen’s room ; He sprang inside, although he knew from the amount of smoke and heat that he had only a few brief momenta in which to do his work. Half suffocated, ho tried to look round, and his eyelight failing him, he walked forward, feeling his way, when he stumbled against something lying on the floor. Another second, and ho had lifted Helen’s inanimate form in his arms, dashed to the window in a state of semi-madness from the effects of the heat and smoke, and put his foot on the top round of the ladder. It was difficult work descending, weakened, scorched, and blind as he was ; and as he got within a foot of the ground he was seen to drop his precious burden—luckily in Mr Graham’s arms—while he himself sank hack heavily on the turf. The accumulated horrors of that eventful night bad been too much even for his young and active frame. He had swooned away. And Helen, was she still alive ? Her father bore her tenderly to the lodge, helped by some among the country people who were now hurrying to the scene of the conflagration. There her mother was waiting, and that mother expended all her care and affection in tending the beautiful girl who had almost fallen a victim to the dreadful fate of death by fire ; while Mr Graham went back to look after Bertram Wilde.

Bertie was safe enough. It was not fated that he should perish either from railway accident, or the flames, or the fall from the ladder. His ailment chiefly consisted of burns and bruises, and was trifling compared with Helen’s, who did not really recover from the shock and suffocation for some months after the terrible events of that night. How the conflagration originate! rema'ns a mystery, though it was certain that it had begun in an upstairs room. In the old timberbuilt chateau the flames had spread with marvellous rapidity. Helen had been in her room, trying to catch a sight of Bertie’s train through the window, and could not have been upstairs more than half an hour when she hoard her father shouting, f Helen ! Helen ! come down for heaven’s sake ! ’ She rushed to the door—that is what

Bertie learnt from her afterwards—and on tho landing ; but tho flames already had hold of the staircase, and she was driven back into her room. There she made an effort to leap from the window, but tho height was too great, and she was afraid, and tho gathering resinous smoke soon paralysed her; she stood at tho open window calling to her father to fetch a ladder, and it was in this position that she remained to be overpowered by the deadening torpor of suffocation. The reader knows the rest.

Bertie says that railway accident was the luckiest event that ever happened to him. Had he gone on safely to Antibes, he could not have been at the Chateau Y for full an hour more. In that time, what would or might have happened to Helen ? Of course inquiries were made as to the cause of tho accident on the line. Nobody had been killed, but several persons badly injured. Eminent French engineers were of opinion that it arose from a defect in the rails just at that point. There, was a grand gathering up of the scattered lugga re, and Bertie was obliged to go into Antibes and claim his personal belongings. In the commissary’s room of the gendarmerie offices, articles picked up from the wreck were spread out on a long table, to bo claimed by their owners. Bertie was carelessly looking over this collection of treasure trove, when his eye lighted on a piece of jewellery. * That ring, ’ he said, and stretched out his hand to grasp it. It was gold, set with alternate diamonds and rubies.

‘ Does it belong to monsieur ?’ asked the polite functionary guarding the treasures. ‘ No; but I think—in fact, I know the real owner.’

‘ln that case,’replied the official, ‘monsieur must communicate with his friend; it must only be given up to the veritable owner. *

*Do you know whereabouts it was found ?' asked Bertie.

•It was found upon the rails, between two sleepers, just eight and a half metres from Antibes, where the lamentable accident occurred,’ answered the exact and logical-minded Frenchman. ‘Ah ! and has it been claimed yet ?’ asked Wilde.

• No, the ring has not been claimed,’ was tho reply. ‘ I thought as much,’ remarked Bertie, as he turned away.

And the ring has never yet been claimed; nor could Bertie ever succeed in tracing its putative and presumptive owner, though he set the French police on his track. If Senor Basil Garcia reads this narrative, and wishes to claim his property, he has only to apply to the Chief Commissary of Police at Antibes, where he may perhaps hear of ‘ something to his advantage,’ perhaps not.

A friend from Eomo informed Mrs Kamsbotham that among other things he had recently seen Cardinal Lavigerie take possession of his titular church of St. Agnes-without-the-Walls. “ St. Agnes without the walls ! ’ exclaimed Mrs Ram. ‘ How on earth is the roof kept up ’ — “ Punch.”

In his recent memoir of Henry Erskine Colonel Fergusson has recorded several of ‘ Mr Erskine’s good things/ such as his explanation why an unsuccessful advocate died very poor— ‘ As he had no causes ho could have no effects.’ On another occasion, when the parsimonious habits of old Lord James led him to attempt small economies in the wine at the bar dinners, although provided at the public expense, sundry hints, increasing in breadth as the evening wore on, had been given that claret would be acceptable, and Lord Karnes, at a loss how to give one more turn to the conversation, addressed Mr Erskine, expecting to get some support from the pleasant-spoken young man. ‘ What/ said his lordship, ‘can have become of the Dutch, who only the other day were drubbed off the Doggerbank by Admiral Porter ? ’ The young advocate, with the sweetest smile, replied, ‘ I suppose, my lord, they are, like ourselves, confined to port.'