Novelist.

Waikato Times, Volume XXXIII, Issue 2668, 17 August 1889, Page 5 (Supplement)

Novelist.

[ALL KIGIIT3 KEStfKVED.] Love's Labour AVon: ax i:vkxti'i;l story. BY JAMES GRANT.

Author of "The R/miance of War," "The Black Watch," " i'airer than a l''aiiy," &c., fte.

CHAPTER XXlX.—Doubt and FEAR. In a proceeding chapter, we left Dr. Brendon, the vicar of Stokencross, using somewhat sharp lnnguage with reference to Horace Musgrave, and threatening to proceed to the Emerald Isle, to see that recreant young ofiicer personally.

But he did nob find it necessary, as the sequel proved, either to travel thither or put his threats in force.

With impetuous Amy, surprise at the mysterious silence of her lover had soon given place in succession to mortifieation, indignation, and latterly dire alarm. The former eniOtiou led her think of dismissing him, if possible, from her thoughts ; but her engagement was too much a settled fact for that yet; and alarm sorrow, and disappointment grew and ranked side by side. She had loved suddenly, too suddenly, perhaps, as mother suggested, and found she was deceived ; and that her idol, as her father, the vicar, said, " was but one of clay, merest clay, after all." When they first countenanced the engagement, pending the dictum of Musgrave's " dear old governor," as he called his father, it came upon the white-haired vicar and his wife —but the former more especially— as something of a shock, a novelty, that this little Amy was no longer a mere girl, but a woman, who would have to face and take her share in all the troubles of life ; but this her sudden and cruel one, was alike unforeseen and unanticipated.

As for Mrs, Brendon, forgetting her small kindly interests in her neighbours and the poor, her motherly heart, in her day-dreams of the future, had been apt to fly off with visions of matrimony for Amy on trifling occasions ; and with much of the simplicity of those who lead calm, uneventful, and secluded lives she was not surprised that Musgrave, one of the eligible young men who has seen her daughter—who she thought closely resemblgd herself—should have beeu led captive by her attractions at once. All this sorrow, excitement, and speculation in this circle, with the now probable loss of a son-in-law having £5,000 per annum, proved somewhat oppressive to poor -Dr. Brendon. who, previous to getting the comfortable old-fashioned living

of Stokencross, had dwelt contentedly in a remote village of the Fen country, as a curate-in-charge on less than £300 yearly, and whose mind had always been occupied with thoughts of things human and divine—the ailments of the soul rather than those of the body ; and thus the naturally gentle old vicar felt alike crushed, enraged and humiliated, with an exceeding grief for his only child Amy. He strove then, as ever, to console himself with the words of Sir Henry Moncrieff, who tells us that " It is humbling to think that the strongest affections which have perplexed or agitated, or delighted us from our

birth will, in a few years, cease to have any existence on the earth j and that all the ardour which they have kindled will be as completely extinguished and forgotten as if they had never been,"

The vicar was one of these sim-ple-minded men who deem all they meet as unsophisticated as themselves ; but for such as this Hussar he had no words.

" Musgrave may have changed," said he, with a bitter sigh. " The fancy of a man so yonng, amid the temptations of garrison life, is apt to be soon ensnared and misdirected."

" A fancy, but not love," said Mrs. Brendon, who was true to her early romantic instincts, and like the doctor, knew as much about garrison life as of the unknown tongues. " Perhaps he lias been unable to face the opposition of his father."

" But ' a man shall leave his father and mother and cleave unto his wife,' " said the vicar, sententiously. " The man has been amusing himself, that is all." "If so, it was cruelty " double distilled for with all her innate merriment and brightness, little Amy Brendon was a girl who would not comprehend even the mere rudiments of flirtation, and Horace Musgrave had carried her far beyond them, At last there came a day which Amy never forgot. No letters had come from Horace in answer to the many she wrote ; and to one almost upraiding letter she had posted with a prayer and a sigh, she now, with some new confidence, awaited a reply. It seemed impossible for any man to omit doing so, if a grain of humanity rein lined in his heart.

The clock in the old church tower near the vicarage tolled the hour of four—four a.m. It was an autumnal morning, and she could hear the sighing of the wind as it swept through the thinned foliage of the ancient trees that grew thereby ; and the very sound made the girl sad and thoughtful, recalling scriptural passages of her father's sermons, telling that the time will come when we too " shall fade as a leaf the wind has taken away. All that thou hast shall fall down as the leaf falleth froui the vine,' and that we shall soon be

" .is the oaks when they cast their leaves."

Most of the night she had been tossing restlesly on her pillow, and her thick dark hair, rough and unruly, rather than smooth or silky, was all dishevelled and tumbled about her shoulders.

She must have dropped asleep after a time, for the church clock awoke her from a feverish dream to the knowledge that her brief term of half-consciousness had not been much more than half-an-hour.

How weary in heart and worn in spirit she felt. How sad, and dark, and long the time seemed. Four hours must yet elapse ere the post arrived in that rather sequestered nook of Oxfordshire. Horace must reply to that last appeal, and let her know the worst — the very worst, whatever it was ! Four hoiks — would they ever pass i

What could his inattention mean? Did it arise from sickness, an accident, jealousy of some imaginary person, of faithlessness on his own part—oh not that—death itself were better.

Yes, pain, illness—even the lastmentioned catastrophe—were better to contemplate, she thought, the terrible doubt, the intangible dread of—she knew not what—but a dread that seemed to dry up the spring of her existence. Day was stealing in at last, greyly, with all its shadows reversed ; and half-dressed, she peeped out into the morning mist. An answer must come to-day. She had calculated the time to a moment.

Six, seven, eight o'clock struck. Another hour and the postman would certainly come, slowly, deliberately, gossiping with each friend he met, as all rural postmen do— perhaps conning the contents of the post-cards, if any there were any. At last he came in sight, and actually a little before his usual time too. Then the whole vicarage seemed to resound to the wild peal of the door bell; certainly Amy's overcharged htart reverbated thereto.

She had felt too ill, too weary, to dress completely and face the day ; but now she sprang from her bed, pushed back the thick rippling hair from her throbbing temples and listened with strained attention to the slow, prokingly slow steps of the approaching housemaid, with her letters upon a salver. There were four, Amy darted at them, glanced at them, and saw in a moment that there was not one of the four from Horace. Not one yet!

" Oh, merciful heaven, what can have happened she wailed out the instant she was alone and her knees bent under her.

In her brief but hitherto happy life some fearful crisis seemed close at hand now.

Was it some unaccountable jealousy, some slander concerning poor Reginald Talbot—oh no, that was too absurd, too impossible now. Anyway, her father must go to Dublin and umavel this horrible mystery, or she would die. Was it indeed falsehood, after all?

Amy looked into her glass, and thought, " Can it be that the poor little face which he so often vowed was without peer—for him, at least —has no charm for him now 1 That all my little ways and wild speeches which he was wont to doat on as the joy of his life—an idylic life—are deemed vapid and are forgotten now 1"

CHAPTER XXX.—LIGHT ! Her father, the vicar, had heard but recently of the dreadtul catastrophe that had happened to his old friend and Oxford chum, the Rector of Chillington, through the marriage of his only daughter Claire to Digby Montressor ; how the broken-hearted old man had been found dead in his bed, and Claire had disappeared, none knew how or where ; and heuce the anticipation of some dire calamity grew strong in the vicar's mind just then.

Descending to the breakfast-room, where, as if in mockery of her past night's misery, the autumnal morning sun shone brightly, and where, round the windows, the dewy monthly roses and ivy mingled Amy found her father and mother sitting with pale and disturbed faces before an ull tasted meal.

The latter was in tears, the former grave, stern and pre-occupied in visage, with a newspaper in his hand, which trembled nervously. " Compose yourself, Amy, my child," said he ; " but the strange silence of your ios'er is fully and fearfully accounted for now." " He is dead!" gasped Amy, pressing her hands upon her breast. " I knew it T

" No ; would to heaven he were ! We might have mourned him in that instance."

" What then, papa

" He is—married !"

" Married ? Her voice became a whisper as she repeated the word. With wrinkled and still tremulous hands, the vicar laid the paper before her ; and she read, as if in letters of fire, the brief announcement: —

" At Christ Church, Dublin, by the Rev , H.L. Lincoln Musgrave, Esq., to Hilda, only daughter of Lieut-General Tremayne, Bengal Staff Corps." His name, truly enough ; and hers, the notorious coquette whom she remembered ; and she remembered it puzzled her when his card came with her bouquet to Rose Cottage— it seemed so long, long ago. They had an awful significance now.

She slowly, yet deliberately, as one in a dream, drew the rose-dia-mond ring from her engaged finger and laid it on the table.

For a moment she struggled against the benumbed sensation that crept over her faculties, then the darkness of night seemed to descend with oblivion upon her, and sinking on the floor in a heap, she fainted. When she recovered it was only for a time—to fall from one wild paroxysm of grief into another, for Amy was a nervous creature, and one all impulse, who could take neither joy nor sorrow in quietude, or with reason—

"Oh mamma, this is dreadful 1" she moaned, as she nestled childlike in her mother's breast, while a shiver shook her from head to foot. "Dearest, I cannot bear it. I never wish to hear of him again, of course," she continued, in a low and despairing voice. " I fear Melanie already suspects Lonsdale. All men are alike. Would that women were as false as they, and had as little memory, too. And yet mamma, I love him still," she added wildly. "I cannot help it—yet it is with a different love—still, oh, my God, when he is the husband of another one I should hate him. I know, papa, how sad, how wicked, how vile this confusion of thought is—of right and wrong; but I cannot yet conquer myself." Her once happy faco looked strangely grave, even to her mother's eyes ; her tender lips were quivering like those of a child when chided; and the hearts of her parents were torn with anguish and indignation as they heard her. "Oh, Horace, Horace," she ■whispered to herself, " why did you teach me to love you —why ?

And hard indeed she found it to uproot that love from her heart now. Where were now the tenderness and devotion that had filled his eyes and thrilled in his voice when he bade her farewell—'the farewell that was only to be for a little time ?

She wept, and interlaced her slender fingers in mortification and agony. At last her grief, her excitement at least, wore itself out, and she became quieter. Thus, without warning, though after long dread and suspicion, all her happiness in her first and innocent girlish love was dashed to pieces, like the crystal in the basket of Alnaschar; the brightness of joy was goue, and a cloud had

fallen on her young life, a cloud that might never pass away. Mentally, she was rocalling over and over again the words and looks of Horace Musgrave when she saw him last; with the ever useless and aching question—why had he deceived her, so wantonly, so cruolly, when she believed him to be so loving, so honourable and true ?

Now, not until he was for ever out of her reach, the husband of another—that odious, too odious, Hilda Tremayne—did she know how much she had loved, and how deeply she now despised him.

The latter emotion was good; the vicar knew it would certainly kill or cure the first.

So a little time passed inexorably on. One day, with dim and heavy eyes she was illuminating some pious scrolls for the decoration of the village schoolroom and seeking by this manual occupation to keep her thoughts from this ever-aohing subject, when the post brought to her father a letter, which he read and re-read with blank amazement pourtraycd in every feature of his face.

" From whom is your letter, papa?" she asked, just with the faintest interest.

" From that—that —from Captain Musgrave 1" he snapped out in a broken voicc ' Horace ?"

" Don't call him so, Amy. Yes ; he is mad." " Papa ?"

" Yes, must be; else, how dare he write this to me? After little preamble, he says, 'wo are on our marriage visit to Oxford, and I shall do myself the pleasure, of calling on you, and explaining without delay much that must seem a mystery to Miss Brendon. Tomorrow, at noon, I trust will suit you.'"

The vicar tore the letter into minute shreds and cast them in the lire.

" To-morrow —at noon !" he muttered. " I shall see him—face to face—certainly."

And as he muttered this he thought of how he would crush the recreant under a torrent of bitter reproaches, and felt, like the vicar of Wakefield—when his interview with Mr Burchell was at hand— that "it is easier to conceive than describe the complicated sensations which are felt from the pain of a recent injury and the pleasure of approaching vengeance." " Horace Musgrave coming here —to Stokencross again ?" said Mrs Brendon, in utter bewilderment at such consummate effrontery. " How dare he—how dare he V'

Well, if he has befooled our child once, he cannot do so again," said the vicar, and he took a huge pinch of snuff to soothe his nerves, but did so without avail.

" But he is coming here—here, he wrote, to explain all—all what—the heartless wretch; or is it to mock the ruin he has made ?

" To-morrow you should visit Melanie Talbot, Amy, and be be out of the way," said Dr Brendon. "Most cruelly have you suffered, my poor child, and as for this man Musgrave, I cannot permit you to look upon his face again." " I roust, papa. I shall be brave, You will see how brave I can be," said Amy.

" You will only subject yourself to some unexampled torture and useless mortification. It must not be."

The anxiouslywaited-for noon of the morrow duly came, and Amy felt herself as if turned to stone when an open carriage deposited a lady and gentleman at the porch of the vicarage, and she clutched the arm of her mother nervously and averted her face, while her father started from his armchair as the visitors wero ushered in. Then Amy, who felt as if the supreme moment of her life had come, heard the laughing voice of Hilda, who was the first to speak—uttering some well-bred common-place—she knew not what it was.

" Mr Musgrave said a voice, as if introducing someone.

Amy looked up. A gentleman stood before her, hat in hand, fairhaired, blue-eyed, with a tawny moustache, and all unlike the Horace of her terrible romance, who was dark in complexion and eyes, and taller in statue.

Then who was this ?

"My husband, Miss Brendon," said Hilda, with a burst of purest laughter. "You thought that your Horace had married me? Not at all; this is his cousin, Harry Eyle Lincoln Musgrave. You have been under some dreadful mistake, my dear girl." " A mistake, I hope," said Dr. Brendon, motioning his visitors to be seated. " What have you to tell rue, sir 1" he added, sternly. " How explain the unaccountable silence of Captain Musgrave to my daughter's many letters 1" " That is easily done," said Mr Harry Musgrave, gravely. 1' My cousin, a few months ago rejoining his regiment at Dublin, met with a terrible aecident when riding in a garrison hurdle race." A little gasping cry escaped Amy. "We never heard of it," said her father coldly.

" Strange. It was reported in all the morning papers we thought."

" And this accident?"

" I shall never forget the stir and excitement of the race as poor Horace, in yellow and black colours, came powdering along,

and, ahead of tho field, went clearing hurdle after hurdle. 'He is the finest fellow in all England!' the Hussars were shouting as they tossed their caps in the air ; and a magnificent horseman he was, riding in a thoroughly artistic manner. At the close there came an ugly water jump, justbeyondthelast hurdle, nine yards from hindfoot to liindfoot. 'It is madness —rank madness. Ho'll never clear both!' was the cry on all sides. Ilis horse rose liko a bird; he clcared hurdle and brook; but just as he landed ou the other side his horse pitched forward, and he fell; tho horse fell tco, and rolled over him, giving him a crush that ended in concussion of the brain and a double fracture of tho right arm. Thus he has been for fully three months in the hands of the doctors, helpless as a baby." " But he is recovering now ?" exclaimed Dr. Brendon, his sympathy rising fast. "Yes, thank God. We knew nothing of his engagement to Miss

Brendon, as since that clay he has been nearer death than he will ever be, but once again. All unknown to him, a pile of letters lay in his room, unopened and unanswered, because, of course, while life lasted, no one in the barracks felc at liberty to meddle his private corresspondencc. It was thought that everyone must know of the accident that had befallen him, and so the weeks ran on. Horace will be able to write you—may perhaps visit you—in about ten days. Meantime, he urged Hilda and me, in passing, to call and explain all to you and Miss Brendon, to whom, certainly much explanation is due." Amy was weeping heavily now, but her tears were those of joy and hope, for a great load of grief, disappointment and humiliation had been suddenly lifted from her soul, like a dark curtain.

Amy, in her joy, now told all she had endured to Melani'v

" 80, too, will Montague's silence be explained in time,"said the latter, confidently,

Hilda's marriage cards had already come to Melanie, and great was her surprise at the reception thereof, though Lonsdale had certainly told her of that young lady's alleged engagement to a Mr Musgave.

" What mystery is this, Uncle Grirnshaw ?" she asked. " You told me that Miss Tremayne had gone out in the P. and 0. Liner with Montague Lonsdale, and here we find that she is married in Dublin. Yet, you said all that you could think of to torture me."

" Did I r said he, with a grimace, " Well, I saw her name in the passenger-list. Perhaps there are two " " Two General Tremaynes, each with an only 'daughter named Hilda?"

" Yes j why not ?" asked Unclc Grimshaw, sulkily. " Two General Tremaynes only. How many General Campbells are there always in the Army List V

Glad now that she had not known when or how to return her diamond ring, Amy replaced it on her tiny finger, which, to her eyes, had seemed so strange without it.

(To be continued.)