Novelist.

Waikato Times, Volume XXXIII, Issue 2662, 3 August 1889, Page 5 (Supplement)

Novelist.

[-•I 1.1- IiIUJIT.S UKKtfKVKJJ.] Love's Labour Won: AN EVENTFUL STORY. .1) Y JAM E S G 11 A NT. Author nf •'The Romance of War," "This Jjliick Watch," " Fairer than u Fairy," &c, &c. CHAPTER. XXV.—Sir Buisco Lletuuns to TiiK Charge. Books for Reginald, fruit and flowei'3 for Meliinie—-the latter forced roses, the result of a iirstclass Scottish gardener's skill, with tremulous ferus, gardenias, sprays of crimson blossoms and camelias— game for Uncle Grimshaw (now that cub-hunting was over) weie .sent to I'ose Cottage with persistent frequency, accompanied by Sir Brisco's cards. Invitations, too, came for Oxford fetes, local balls, and ho forth, which Meliinie resolutely • declined, saying that sin; " would not go into society while Lonsdalu was away," thus adding to what Mr Grimshaw deemed indications of insanity : and he never spoke to her without a covert sneer.

" iS r o gaiety or dissipation arc powerful *" enough to deaden the anxiety I endure at the absence of all letters, uncle," she would urge. " And you will lead this life of seclusion and eccentricity till you hear from Lonsdale 1" asked her uncle, with a vicious glance.

"Yes; or he return." " Then you are likely to lead it long enough ," said he, as he thought of his despatch-box ; and as he never omitted to make mischief out of the presence of Hilda Tremayne on board the Pagoda he added ; "You had no letter from the Point de Galle. But I should think he has most likely married that girl ere now, on board ship, to push his way on her father's staff. Think of the daily and hourly opportunities, of the 'close attentions, real and inferred, by being together, the propinquity, and the great attractions of the girl herself. Faugh, you are a fool! Still, you will not give him up?"

" No, uncle, we must wait," " i (, or what T " Unless it is hotter times, I do not know," said the girl, huskily, as a kind of despair crept into her heart. And Uncle Grimshaw viciously rasped up his side tufts, as he thought of all that Mulanie deprived him of by her continued obstinacy, even to such petty details as the dinners ho would enjoy at Ravensbourne Hall, the rare entrees or the pate des Join gras, the sweetbreads

and truffles, with the Foinery greno and '47 port —of which he would " have the run"—were his dear niece installed there, instead of her economical rechauffes or cheap tinned viands from the " stores," washed down by the mildest of Medoc. Her selfish folly was, he thought, truly infernal. Reginald, her brother, had written to his Soudan comrade, Horace Musgrave, of the Hussars, at Dublin inquiring about their mutual friend Lonsdale ; but, though he had taken the preceution to have his letter, posted by Dick at Stokencross, to the growing perplexity of Melanie and himself no reply ever came thereto. " What could it all mean 1" thought brother and sister, as they eyed each other blankly. But time would surely unravel all. When informed by Mrs. Chillington that Captain Lonsdale had ceased to write to Rose Cottage—so she vaguely phrased it—Sir Brisco felt greatly elated and encouraged to proeecute his suit, while, in his own mind, he was just and generous enough to revile bitterly the lover who could act in a manner so cruel and unmanly.

Yet, when he looked into Melanie's dark blue eyes, he felt an envy of Montague Lonsdale, who had seen all the love-light that could ever illumine them ; and he knew that when she loved it would be with all hor heart and soul —with the passion that he could never hope to kindle there.

" How fond she must be of him," said he to Mr. Grimshaw. " And what a dreadful blow it would be to her if anything happened to him in Burmah." Uncle Grimshaw made a grimace. He cared little if the famous white elephant gobbled up the captain at a mouthful. With doubtful kindness, Sir Urisco could not help saying, but uselessly : "Has your uncle heard from Captain Lonsdale since he left us, Miss Talbot T " Not since he entered the Suez Canal," replied Melanie, evasively, and with dilliculty repressing a choking sob ; " neither has Reggie, which is strange ; they were such friends." And to hide her growing emotion she seated herself at the piano in nervous haste, and proceeded, uninvited, to play—-she knew not what— while Reggie listened with a heart that ached for her.

But Mehuiic felt, at times, pure exasperation. Sirßrisco presumed, she thought, upon lie-r hclplessnes, the favour his admiration found with her uncle and aunt, the only relations alie had to guide her, the absence of Lonsdale and the hopeless position of her brother, the young sailor. Her innate spirit and pride buoyed her up, and would have done so still more but for the mysterious and apparently unexpiainable .silence of the absent one—-the dreadful fact that no replies came from him in reply to her most urgent and piteous letters. And when inspired by this emotion of exasperation, Melanie's manner became nervous, and she was inclined to resent tauntingly, but quietly, the attentions of her elderly admirer, till even he lost patience, and once or twice ventured to retort. Then said Melanie : "I am getting a little tired of inuendoes, Sir Brisco ; what do they mean 1" " That I am disappointed in you." "Iu what way ?" she asked, sharply, yet feared his answer, remembering the supposed eaves-dropping at the trysting place, and the cigar seen by Lonsdale. " I thought you different from other girls ; but I fear that you are somewhat of a coquette." " I do not know by what right you call me so, Sir Brisco."

He made no response, deeming, silence safest; while JVlelain'e thought whatever he had seen, or been told it was no business of his to take her to task or interfere in her affairs ; and he was thinking, old as he was, how soft was her lovlincss, as she leant back in an old and faded chintz-covered chair, her plain dark dress setting off the dazzling whiteness of her slender throat and dimpled arms, bare for some inches above the wrist, while the red lingering light of the setting sun seemed to concentrate itself upon her gleaming brown hair and to touch her rounded cheeks with a delicate rose tint. " Oh, I wish he would turn his attention to Aunt Chillington, if he is so anxious to win a Talbot," was the girl's next thought. Suddenly changing his tone and his tactics, as they were alone, he stooped his old grizzled head close to hers, and said softly : " I will not—l cannot take your refusal, Melanie. You know how I worship you, and hope to make you happy—so independent of all the world." Melanio did not answer Sir Brisco who always pained her when he adopted this softened tone and manner ; neither did shn resent, considering his years, lii.s use of her Christian name, as she should have done in the case of a younger man. " You will never regret my offer, dear Melanie," lie added, talcing her right hand caressingly between his two. Her form trembled ; she shivered as if with cold, yet her head and

hands were burning hot, and she was almost faint and giddy as shethought of the whole cruel situation —Lonsdale's strange conduct, the helplessness of Reggie, her uncle's threats towards him, and the hourly sneers and domestic tyranny to herself and little Dick.

Hopeless and helpless she felt herself, and here was a refuge and a luxurious home offered by one she knew well, and who told her daily of his love, though she had none to offer in return.

The thought flashed through her mind for a second, but a second only to be thrust aside with intense dismay that it should have occurred to her at all, and the next words of Sir Brisco roused her energies—even her ire.

" Upon my soul, Melanie," said he, regarding her earnestly and commiseratingly, " I pity you." " But I won't be pitied, or married out of pity, by you, Sir Brisco, or anyone,!" she exclaimed, with a flash in her dark eyes. "In short," she added, bringing all her courage to the sticking point, knowing that she had no one to defend her or advise her kindly—save poor Reggie—" do not talk to me of marriage again ; because, if you do, I shall have to ask you plainly to cease visiting my uncle or me." Sir Brisco took up his hat, but laid it down again, and still lingered irresolutely.

" You cannot even like me !" he said, reproachfully.

" As a friend, oh yes." " But—as a husband, Melanie V " Never. You are a thousand times too good for me." " Never?"

"You force me to speak plainly ; rudely, perhaps," she added in a broken voice, while colouring painfully.

Timidly, as a young lover might have clone, the old man stood now drawing his riding-gloves on and off, while Melanie bowed her cheek— wet with tears of sheer vexation now—upon her white palm, and bent her eyes upon the sorely faded carpet. How sweetly soft he thought she looked. " And you can like me as a friend Melanie V lie asked.

" I have said so !" and she gave him her left hand in token thereof. Ho clasped it firmly, and his grasp seemed so honest that she gathered a little courage and comfort therefrom. And then he bowed over it with old-fashioned courtesy, inherited perhaps from his rather, who had been at Court when George 111. was King, and Elliot was defending the Rock of Gibraltar, and when powdered wigs and small swords were worn. " I shall ever esteem you as the best of friends— to be more would but work misery for all."

" I thank you, Melanie ; but find it difficult now, after all I have said and all I have hoped, to slide back into mere friendship; but when you have had time to reflect, perhaps you will not be so cruel to me, and forgive the pain I may have caused you." " I have nothing to forgive, Sir Brisco."

" And I--I have to bo happy in the more fact of knowing you, Melanie; and let tho worst come to the worst, I hope you will never deprive me of your friendship, and permit me to prove mine by making you happy if at any time I can do so." And thinking that to urge more then would be unwise, he kissed the hand he had retained and bowed himself out, leaving Melanie sunk in thought.

His reiterated offers thrust an idea upon her. If she married him —suppose that idea—she could not help speculating on the future, that future in which Montague Lonsdale could have no part; and she shuddered.

She was barely twenty. Sir Brisco was over sixty. When she was forty he would be an old man, within five years of ninety, if spared —wheeled about in an armchair like Reggie, in second childhood, fed on spoon diet, helpless, toothless, to old even to be peevish; and for years before that she must have led the life of a nurse. It was a dreadful forecast—a terrible picture.

On the other hand, Sir Brisco viewed the case less severely, and after a time ceased to feol how acutely the youth and bloom of the two girls, Melanie and Amy, had made him feel, at first, the weight of his own grey hairs and more than sixty years.

Rubicund and white nioustached, with thick stubbly locks, his rather rotund outline contrasted curiously, in the eyes of the former, with the tall, military figure of him who was so far away, the bronzed face, the clearly-cut profile and fine young face, clean shaven all save the smart moustache, the tender hazel eyes, and closely-cropped dark brown

The privileged way in which Sir Brisco sometimes dropped in at Rose Cottage, even after this important interview, proved a genuine source of worry to Melanie, and she found the necessity of avoiding him whenever she could do so, without being too marked in manner. She

marvelled that a well-bred man should continue his visits thus ; but she forgot her own power o£ subtle fascination.

Amy Brendon, who we have said, came much seldomer now, and whose lively little speeches, quick, bright glances, and espegliere had proved a new experience to Sir Brisco, a correctly-trained man of the world, and had fascinated him

greatly, saw how changed Melanie had become, with an almost entire avoidance of all confidence in her as a friend, so far as Lonsdale was concerned; and how each day seemed to be passed in alternate forced excitement or hopeless apathy with a restless uneasiness of eye and veice. Of Lonsdale, Melanie scarcely spoke, even if he was casually alluded to. Thus, to Amy it seemed as if Sir Brisco was sliding by adoption into his place. The neighbourhood soon became full of rumours, though Melanie never hoaad thorn; but of her new engagement, if such existed, she never spoke, and Amy, with all her love for her, felt a strange difficulty in approaching the subject, " Forgive my question, dear," said Amy one day, wreathing her arms round her and looking into her sweet pale face, that expressed so much suffering about the eyes and corners of the lips, " but, Melanie, why arc you so changed 1" " Am I V " Yes, my darling." " In face 1" " Yes; in voice even ; every way." "I don't wonder at that. So you, too, see it, Amy ?" " See it—am I blind 1"

" Why speak of sorrows, dearest Amy, which you can neither share, bear, nor relieve t " said Melanie, whose keenly-wounded pride or selfesteem made her conceal the matter of her correspondence.

" Sorrows—God knows I have my own," said Amy, with a quivering face ; " but can't I help you 1 " " No—no one can here. But you, Amy—you talk of sorrows," said Melanie, regarding her little face, once so sunny, with deep concern.

Then Amy laid her cheek on Molanie's breast, locked her arms round her waist, and clinging to her, wept bitterly ; for she, too, had a grief somewhat similar, which she thought peculiarly all her own ; and to which we must devote the next chapter.

CHAPTER XXVI. — AT the Vicarage. We have said, a little way back, that some time had then passed since Amy Brendon had heard any tidings of Musgrave, then with his regiment in Dublin. That, like his friend Lonsdale, Amy's intended should have ceased to write, was a strange coincidence, which would sorely have perplexed and pained Melanio and roused the jealous indignation of lleggie ; but wounded

solf-esteem led to reticence on these matters between even these two fast friends ; so each girl had concealed from the other the fact that they were in precisely the same predicament —they received no letters from their lovers-—though one was only at Dublin while the other was in Bengal.

Melanie's came, certainly, up to a certain time, as we have shown the reader ; but the cause of Amy's sorrow was yet to be discovered.

Like Melanie, a gloom that was quite perceptible bad fallen upon the once bright Amy Brendon. " How Amy is changing. What can be the matter with her V asked the keenly-observant Reggie one day as she left the cottage. " She is certainly not the happy girl she was once."

"Before that Hussar fellow came, no!"

"Do not play such sad airs, Amy," her mother would sometimes say. " What is that—it is sorely depressing on a wet autumn day." " A Scottish dead march, mamma —' The Flowers of the Forest.' I really did not know what I was playing." "Why?" " I was thinking." " You are always thinking ; too much, indeed, child," her mother replied, sadly and a little reproachfully. The day was wet and stormy, and poor Amy, to conceal the misery that preyed upon her heart, and to avoid being talked to, was affecting to play a melody; but as her small hands wandered over the keys of the piano, the sounds they produced seemed like an accompaniment to the wind sobbing through the rain, that drenched the vicarage garden and tossed the branches of the sodden trees to and fro above the buried dead of yesterday, and of ages, that lay in Stokeneross graveyard, close by. The adjacent church was a grey old edifice, with a squat Norman tower added, a Saxon aisle and arcaded apse of the days, perhaps, of St. Grimhald, in the 9fch century; and around it Dr. Brendon's sheep cropped the grass, while before its lych-gate were the ancient parish stocks, long unused, mouldy, and half sunk in the earth. " How often did he call me ' darling !'" thought Amy, as day followed day and no letter came. " But that word ' darling' conies so easily to some men's lips," says the author of " A Grass Country." " I don't see what he can have to wait for," said her mother, gravely; " Horace has five thousand pounds a year of maternal property, and may be a baronet some day. He comes of the Musgraves, of Scaleby Castle, in Cumberland."

Before his advent, Amy had been, with all her girlish beauty and brightness of spirit, something like the flowers of which Gray sung, that are " born to blush unseen ; " yet how happj r she had been but a few short weeks ago. Now, it seemed as if ages had passed since she had parted from Horace and heard from

him, and when she could little foresee the dark cloud that was to overshadow her loving heart and her young life. What a difference between then and now ?

" Oh Horace, why did you come here to make me so miserable ? Before I knew you I was happy," Amy would think. " My child ?" moaned Mrs. Brondon, caressing her, but with an angry and indignant heart. " I'erhaps his father has been unable to settle with him ; or I am not, after all, a girl after tho old gontleman's heart. "Do not humiliate yourself and us by such speculations, Amy." So far as postal and telegraphic arrangements served, Dublin was "at the doo," as tho saying-is, compared with the land whither Montaguo Lonsdale had gono ; and so, why was not this cruel mystery unravelled to her ?

But her father the vicar, with all his amiability, M r as a proud man, and now took rather hard views of mankind in general, and of soldiers in particular, and was disposed to blame himself bitterly for his own facility of disposition and for the whole unhappy situation. He had been somewhat too easy —too quiescent in the matter; but his girl was sensible and would got ovorifcin time. The.matter had better be committed to oblivion ; it was a dispensation—a lesson to her and them in the future, though, a bitter one, doubtless, and so forth. But, he would add through his set teeth, Captain Horace L. L. Musgrave, who seemed to havebeen simply amusing himself, was a finished rascal.

•' My poor little girl," he said some days after, stroking Amy's thick dark hair ; " and you actually care for that fellow still?" " Oh yes, papa." " But why—now ?" " I cannot help it. One cannot change—get over a love liko mine, as we do a bodily ailment.

" I am afraid lie is one of those rnon of whom wo so often read and hear, who cannot be faithful to any girl long." " Then how I wish. I wero such a girl as Hilda Tremayne." " Why !" " One who can fall in and out of love as often as she chooses ; and may be, as I have heard, engaged to two men at once, o?ae at Canterbury and the other at Oandahar." "No my dear. Thank heaven that you are what you are—a true. a good, and a pure-hearted little pet," said the old vicar, caressing her fondly. Would Horace ever fade out of her life ? It seemed now better that it should be so—better for her own

peace. It was early in August when Amy and Musgrave had parted, and he left her to return to his regiment and coramuuicato with his family tho arrangements about their marriage. Two or three lettors had certainly reached her. but to her two last there were no replies. It was now October, and no sign came of his promises, or that he oven remembered her existence. What meant his passionate words, his tender love-making, if this were the result!

For all that time she had borne up against the keen, the bitter, the growing conviction that she had been cruelly befooled, deluded after imagining all sorts of reasons and excuses for his silence, till her heart sickened and hope died in her tender breast.

She was ever on the watch for letters — the letters that never came.

One morning she saw from her window that the postman had an unusual number for the vicarage— torturo anew to her. How slow he was in opening the gate and giving them to the vicar, who was idling in tho garden before breakfast. " Amy,h ow white you look," said he, as she joined him in haste. " Have you been ill ?" " No, papa ? only sleepless, as usual." '' My poor chiid." " The letters — the letters, papa ?" " There are none for you." " None still !" " Still, my darling—my poor Amy. I must go personally and see into this—see that scoundrel after all."

Some peculiar emotion of pride prevented the vicar from naturally making any inquiry of Sir Brisco Braybrooke about the character or movements of his nephew_ the recreant Hussar; and being full, perhaps, of his own affairs, engagements and amusements, the vicar never spoke on the subject of Amy's engagement if, indeed, he knew much about it; and though not extraordinarily meek, Dr. Brendon shrank from the taunt of having perhaps attempted to entrap his patron's nephew. (To be continued.)

Foutv-SIX soldiers have been drowned through the overcrowding of a military boat on the Vistula. Tun Berlin carpenters are joining the masons on strike for increased wagon and shorter hours. Osk of the judicial celebrieties of the Old Bailey was Sergeant Arabin, whose bulls have a Hibernian richness of flavour. In sentencing a prisoner he said, " It is in my power to subject you to a transportation for a period very considerably beyond the term of your natural life, but the Court in its mercy will not go as far as it lawfully might (,">." In another instance lie became involved very badly:—" Prisoner sit the bar, if over there was a cloarer case than this of a man robbing his master, this case is that case." He also told a prisoner that he should have "a chance of redeeming a character that he had irretrievably lost.