LITERATURE.

Globe, Volume I, Issue 41, 17 July 1874, Page 3

LITERATURE.

IN THE DARK. In Two Chapters.—l. [From “ Once a Week.”] Continued. Ah, well, one is only young once. ‘ Men find women fools, and leave them cynics, saith one who, feeing a man, ought to know. At nineteen, folly is natural and delightful. It is perhaps also natural that in the happy agitation of my own mind I pay small attention to a certain embarrassment and abstraction in Dallas’s manner. . We sit down to talk, and ho explains how he has been staying with a friend at Wargrave, and so did not come by tram at all, hut rode over, thus relieving John’s palpable conscience pricks on the score of inhospitality. To my cousin lie expresses a polite, it listless, hope that his arriving an hour earlier pot inconveniencing any one, To me he

expresses a listless, if polite, satisfaction in seeing me so perfectly recovered. Once I catch a critical flash from the keen, semiveiled depths of his blue eyes over my round and not unfrecklcd face, over my limp, crumpled frock, and fat, pink hands ; but otherwise his manner is preoccupied, and his glance wanders to the door through which Laura vanished into the library. Afterwards I remember it all. Now, I am quite glad when he goes to bis room, that I may rush to Jane’s,and interrupt the spoonful of castor oil she is trying to force between Tommy’s tight-locked teeth by the eager announcement ~ 1 Oh, Jenny, be is the handsomest man you ever saw in your whole life—the most angelic nose, and eyes ’ I have not seen Miss Tremaine till then, though she is busy holding down Tommy’s legs from vigorous efforts at kicking his mother’s face. Now I stop short: yet surely there is no occasion for that look of cold, contemptuous surprise in her face. Is not Dallas mine, to praise or not, as I like ? Perhaps Mias Tremaine would sneer a second lime if she could see the trouble I am taking to dress for dinner to-day—l, who never care how I look in general ; but I do take trouble. I want to please ray future lord. I turn over all ray dresses, and select a silk—soft and thick, of shimmery, silvery green—not perhaps the dress best suited to nineteen ; but exquisite in itself, and exquisitely made. I make Thomson strain up my hair till the back of my neck nearly cracks in two, and plait it in close yellow coils on the top of my head ; and then I go downstairs, and am taken in to dinner by Dallas. Laura sits opposite to us. In the simplest of white muslins, with one halfblown Gloirc de Dijon rose nestling in the wavy masses of her gold-brown air, with the low, red sunset behind making warm reflections over clond-white robe and cream-white flesh, she looks more than lovely—almost divine. Dallas takes his eyes off her twice—once to ask me if I won’t have some oranges la ncige, once to answer some question from Jane. For the first time in my life, I begin to believe myself capable of disliking some one almost as much as Miss Tremaine dislikes me. Chapter 11. Dallas has been Imre a week. It is eight days and eight nights this morning since I first saw him—since the day wo sat side by side at dinner, and he stared persistently at Laura. He does not stare at her now. He seldom looks at, hardly ever speaks to her ; and she avoids him with almost marked decision. I need not have been sulky that first evening ; for ever since then he has devoted himself to me, not obtrusively, but with a sort of lazy, bien entendu attention—a half languid, half good-tempered readiness to gratify my little whims and pleasures, which is, I suppose, all that a muscular man is capable of in the way of courtship in these used-up days. He has rowed me—all of ns —on the river several times. He has ridden with me, and played croquet with me. He has even read aloud little, and submitted to be read to—closing his eyes, however, and sleeping very sweetly and soundly during the latter enjoyment. John and Jane treat us exactly like engaged people. I suppose we are engaged ; but somehow I thought he would have said something first. Perhaps he will ; perhaps he is only waiting to know me a little better. He can’t guess that 1 like him- -that I haven’t already fallen in love, with some one else. He can’t mean to let it be all “ taken for granted.” I have begun to puzzle a good bit over this : and to be—oh! so grateful for those three prompt rejections. Could I have ever worshipped any one as I do Dallas ? It is afternoon. A golden haze hangs over the farther bank of the river._ Great blots of pink and scarlet petals relieve the flat, hot greenness of the close-shaven lawn. Clumps of overblown roses, masses of scorching scarlet geraniums, shake down fresh contribution? of colour at every passing step or gentle breeze. Above, the sky is one vault of pure, dazzling blue. Below, the river is one sheet of dimpling, dancing silver flame. Only under one bank, where the trees hang out their broad, thick-leaved boughs, there is a band of shadow, dark, cool, and sharply defined against the blaze beyond. There our boat is lying, a heap of shawls and parasols in the stern, all ready for an outing. Dallas, looking more gloriously handsome than any old world Hyperion, in his boating flannels, is splicing one of the tiller ropes. Laura and I, in huge shady hats and cool grass-cloth costumes, are standing on the bank, discussing which shall take a first turn at the assistant oar. Jane, a little higher up the lawn, is trying to bribe Tommy to let go of her dress, and cease his ear-piercing howls to be allowed to accompany us. Wo are going to show Dallas the catacombs at Pork-place. Do you know what these catacombs are 7 If you have ever been at or in the vicinity of Henley-on-Tharacs you do, for they are one of the show places in the neighborhood—if not, it is ten to one you have never heard of them; so I may as well mention that they are supposed to have been excavated by the Romans ; that they are now the property of a gentleman residing in a pretty country house on the banks of the river ; and that they tunnel, with as many multifarious windings as an ant’s nest, one side of a hill in his domains. All visitors to Henley and Wargrave go to see them ; and a gardener takes you in at one entranae and out at another, and receives unrcmonstratingly any donations you may choose to proffer to his acceptance. This individual is beside us now, for we are all grouped round a rough doorway, encumbered with brambles, and cut in the side of the hill. As he unlocks it, a faint fresh smell of apples issues from the darkness; specimens of that fruit being placed on jutting ledges of the rock, in order to enable one to"” follow one’s nose”—sight being out of the question. Jane and I are behind the guide. She is lamenting that she has got on a dark dress—it will be irretrieveably ruined in those dark, dusty passages. Dallas and Laura have dropped a little behind. He seems to be speaking earnestly, and she is white, wofnlly pale. As I glance back at them, she comes hurriedly forward, and suggests that she should stay outside. She is tired ; she has been there before, and — and— It 'is the first time I have ever seen Laura Tremaine agitated. Jane will not hear of leaving her. She will be nervous herself without Laura. There may be strange tourists about the grounds, and Laura would have to find her way alone down the hill. Dallas turns round. “You most come,” he says, in deep, authoritative undertone. And Laura yields, I glide on quickly after the guide. Huffed? Yes, decidedly

huffed. Why should Laura obey my master ? Wo are all in thick darkness now. Our footsteps make no sound in the light, pulverous soil. I seem some way in advance, for Jane’s voice, cheering on her eldest hope, comes to me dimly from the background. No one else speaks. There might be no one else in the catacombs; and the apples smell stronger than ever in the close, damp air. I can never bear the scent, of nn apple now. It makes me sick aud shuddering in a moment. Presently, quite close behind, there is a low, eager whisper, then a quick rustic, and some one—someone in grass-cloth like me—glides rapidly pass mo without a sound. Ihc next moment there is a hand, a strong, stern hand, on my shoulder, and I hear the whisper again, in my car this time. ‘ Why did you do that?’ it says as angrily as is consistent with perfect lowness. 1 Will it hurt you for mo to speak to you this once?’ By ‘ that, ’ I suppose he means the involuntary start I give as his hand tightens on me. Instead of answering, I begin to tremble like a child. Has the moment for mutual avowals come at last ? ‘ I must speak,’ Dallas snys, in the same intensely earnest whisper, ‘and you must listen. Oh, my darling, forgive me. I cannot bear it any longer. I tried—God knows I tried, not to love you ; to keep out of your way. It was you who came here voluntarily. Why did you ? In Heaven’s name, why did yon. unless —’ He breaks off, and I can make no answer. I came—of course you know that from the first—that he might iiave an opportunity of settling that old arrangement ; but I can hardly say as much. His hand glides from my shoulder to my waist. His voice goes on, persuasive now, with a perfect tenderness i?i it which I have never heard before —shall never, never near again in this world or the next. ‘My darling, my queen lily, I love yon. You know I love yon. I have nothing whatever but love to offer you while my father lives. It is the blindest, crudest selfishness to try and lead you, who could marry a duke if you would, into utter poverty.’ (Poverty 1 and what of my hundred thousand pounds, and his good old place ? His next words answer the last query.) ‘ Hay]ands is fearfully. heavily mortgaged. My father had hard ado to keep it from old Jerningham, and I’ve helped to cucumber it with my extravagance. He can’t cut me out of the entail ; but if I refuse to marry as I am ordered, he can and will stop?my present income, and turn me out of the house during his life. Laura, can you forgive me for first trying to win your love, when I knew it would be ruin for you ; and then, too late, tearing myself away, and trying—trying with all my might—to sell myself to that little foolish thing and her money. Laura, I can*’ not. Worthless, mean, and extravagant as I am, I can’t do that while there is even one chance that you would love me well enough to brave poverty at my side. Oh ! my darling, tell me if it is so—tell me honestly ; and I will leave here to-morrow, sell out, and slave day and night till I’vc earned some sort of a home for you. It may be long waiting, but if yon love me. my beautiful sweet, if you only love me—’ For one moment he pauses, with something like a gasp ; then, with a sort of fierce desperation —‘ If not, I may as well go to the dogs, or marry that red-checked child, with all her chatter and gush. It would be much the same, as far as my happiness goes, once you were lost to me.’ He has hurried out these words, one after another, with only that one pause, and then he finds no interruption. From the moment that he utters her name—the moment that it flashes on me that he is speaking to her, not me—all power of answer, or speech of any sort, has ebbed from me ; and yet, ob, Dallas, Dallas ! that I could ever have been so blindly, madly conceited as to dream of your caring for me when she was by ! that the shattering of my dream should have driven every drop of warm life-blood in my body back to my heart, aiid made me reel and stagger so that, but for that supporting arm, I should have fallen down there at his feet, and betrayed the story of my own utter folly and weakness. To he continued.