LITERATURE.

Patea Mail, Volume IX, Issue 1085, 12 September 1883, Page 4

LITERATURE.

A DBAWING-ROOM COMEDY, i

Mr Thomas Bilbury is the junior

partner ..of the great firm of Bilbury!, Blackthome and Co, ter merchants, of Calcutta • and : .Londop. ,_■> The .senior partner is Mr Joseph Bilbury, his father, who has a very nice hotiso at Kew ; and

until a year or two ago there was a third Drifemb'er. of the firm, in , the person of Thomas’, uncle, Mr' 'Babbington Black* ! thoyne, the Calcutta representative of the establishment. , But, unfortunately, Mr Blackthome,. like many Englishmen

who live in India, drank too much Scotch whisky ami Bass’ ale, and ate

too much curry and too many “ Bomba}: •‘.ducks*” the result being that at the age - of fifty-five his liver declined to bear the put upon it and collapsed, leaving "its owher so weak iaii.d ill that he had time ere he died ,to telegraph to .iris partners in England a brief notice of his impending fate. This alarming dispatch arrived at■■ a' particularly in'o'ppbrtune moment. ! Mr Thomas Bil-

bury had on.the day previous married a, very 'charming young lady, Lydia •Lapples by name ; and the intelligence of his uncle.’s sad condition necessitated; that the newly-made husband —who, by the way, had only become acquainted with his bride about six weeks before marriage—should, without a moment’s

delay, take the train fur Dover, cross to Calais, and thence go by the quickest route" to Calcutta. The affair was

■pressing. Mr Blackthorne’s death would

certainly throw the business into confusion, a-ml-any hesitation on the part: of./ the 'English partners might imperil the future of the firm. “Go at once, my dear boy,” wrote Joseph Bilbury to his son, who was in the Isfgof Wight, “and send your wife to me. I will take care of her.and see lier-'settled in, your new home at Richmond. 1 would go myself, but my gont won’t allow me. And above all things, .take carp of your liver.” There was uo help for it. Mr Bilhnry junior fell that he must go ; ; so go he did, putting the best face on the matter, and. bidding a very long and tender gbod-hye to his poor little wife. Ha escorted her across to Portsmouth, put her into a London train, kissed her, saw her off, and then took the next train for Dover.

. She settled down in her new home on Richmond Hill, find he for many months afterwards worked hard at his desk in Calcutta, arranging the worldly affairs of his dead uncle, and from time to time sending honie reports of his progress and love letters to Lydia. Two years, in fact, elapsed ere he was able to return to England; and then he returned, as he had gone out, at a moment’s notice. Unforeseen circumstances suddenly left him free; ami, unwilling to lose a day, he look the first homeward-bound steamer, which, so it happened, was also taking to Richmond a letter, written a few days earlier, in which Mr Bilbury,'among other matters, regretted to his wife that the pressure of business would not leave him at liberty for at least a month. He travelled home without adventure, landed in due course at Dover, arrived in London late at night, and, without having, written a word of warning to Lydia, hurried on next morning to Richmond Hill. Why he did not write of telegraph, we cannot say; perhaps he thought his sudden appearance would agreeably surprise his wife ; or perhaps he was too excited to be able to think at all. But in any case, he neither wrotie nor telegraphed a single word of preparation. , . It was a fine sunny morning in summer; Mr Thomas Bilbnry had scarcely seen his new home, which he had taken in a hurry immediately before his wedding; and he was walking eagerly up the short carriage drive leading to the house, when, happening to cast his gaze: toward the upper windows he canght sight of a lair, white-draped figure, which was watering some flowering plants that stood in a row on the sill. He at once recognised the figure as that of his wife, and was about to utter a cry of salutation when he suddenly became concious that she did not recognise him, for with graceful modesty she withdrew from the window and disappeared as soon as she became conscions that he was watching her. An idea struck him. It was a foolish but: not wholly unnatural one. He would pretend to be some one else—a friend, say, of her husband’s, and would ask to see her as such. - Of course she would at once recognise his voice; but then the surprise and the consequent pleasure would be the more complete if he thus; deferred them. He knocked, therefore, at the door, and to the servant who appeared announced that he had just returned from India and desired to see Mrs Bilbnry. He gave no name, but' he was admitted and shown into the drawing room, where, in some perturbation of mind, he awaited the advent of the wife from whom be had been so long and cruelly separated, “ I suppose that she will know me,” hie reflected, as he stood with his back to the window ; “ hut it is true that I have grown a tolerably big beard since I went away, and that I have become considerably tanned. However, the beard ought to make.no great difference. I suppose that she would know me if she saw me in my shirt sleews, or with both .legs cut off at the knees. On the other hand, she thinks that I am still at Calcutta, for she must have had my last letter this morning. I hope my sudden appearance .here won’t upset her. I must be careful.” Here his thoughts were switched aside by the unmistakcable sound of rustling skirts in the passage without; and as the door opened he involuntarily turned and gazed into the garden, at the same time coughing nervously. ( To he continued.)