LITERATURE.

Globe, Volume XXII, Issue 1841, 16 January 1880, Page 3

LITERATURE.

A QUEEN OF TRUMPS.

{ Concluded.)

‘ Yes,’ said she. ‘ I could take from Mr Raymond all ho has, if I have those lines.’ ‘ Well, women aren’t fools —at least, not always. There’s the whole story in one word again. And now you see why I wanted you to got hold of those lines ; and now, Miss Mary Raymond, you see why it’s worth your while to buy ’em of me for £20,000, and they’re cheap at the money.’ ‘ And suppose I were such a fool as not to use them ? ’

‘ Then I should ; or else I could sell them back to old Raymond for pretty near as much as I should get from you.’ ‘ And suppose I were to die ? ’ ‘ My dear Polly, don’t waste time talking nonsense. If you died, do you suppose 1 couldn’t lay hands on yonr sister ? ’

* Had I a sister ? ’ * All women are sisters they’re ail daughters of Eve. I mean I could lay my hand on twenty nieces of old Raymond for a five-pound note apiece—and prove it, too—till I’d sold the old fellow back his lines.’

‘ And if the lines were lost, then— V ‘ Why then, of course, we should be done. But that’s the only chance that isn't in the game.’ * May I look at them ?’

* There they are.’ ‘Thank you, Mr Seymour. Then, now we are done; and servo us right, too. Bo yon think I’ll rob the only people who have ever been kind to me of a farthing ? Not I. If you want you’r money yon’ll have]to look for it in the fire.’

She thrust the paper between her tnnio and her breast, folded her arms over it in her moat theatrical way, and looked at him defiantly. He smiled, though a little nervously. ‘Come,’ he said, ‘a joke's a joke. Miss Polly. Qive me back that thing. It’ll be time for you to bo on.’ ‘ I mean to destroy the lines before I sleep—and it’s no joke at all. Thank you for your story, sir,’ she said, with a courtesy, * 1 learned a great deal at Lanceham, and now I have learned a great deal more.’_ * I suppose you think you can nfie_ it yourself, and get Lanceham without paying me far my trouble —is that what you mean, eh?’ ‘ I mean what I have said, Mr Seymour. Of course, I don’t expect you to understand.’

‘By the Lord Harry ’ —l stereotype my rendering of his oaths —‘I understand that you’re a fool. Give me back that paper or it’ll be the worse for you,’ ‘ I won’t.’

‘ Then you shall. Now, Miss Polly, we’ll see which is the strongest, if you please.’ Before she could reach it he ran to the door and locked it, placing himself between it and her.

She turned pale ; hut her fear was less for herself than for her paper. How could she make away with it in this fireless room with a man driven on by gold-hunger ready to tear it from her ? And yet she would rather he would kill her than yield. She looked wildly at the window, but it was too narrow even for her to leap through. He came nearer, his rage was no child’s play, and yet she was as thoroughly in earnest as he. And he was frightfully in earnest, for she did not know how every sort of evil course had made riches of less need to him than sifety from worse than ruin His hand was upon her, when a boy knocked at the door and called ; * Mies Polly’s wanted in the ring.’ He swore under his breath—there was nothing for it now but to open the door and let her go, or she would, in the next minute, have been searched for, high and low. For the moment, at least, she was safe, and she darted out with her hand covering her treasure. And, surely, things would go strangely, indeed, if she did not contrive to make away with the paper before she saw Mr Seymour again; and then he might punish her as he pleased. She would have done something to deserve Frank Raymond’s love after all.

No agitation, however, affected hands and eyes that were more at home in mid air than most people are on firm ground. Seymour watched her balance herself on the wire, and cursed, at last, hia own folly in expecting common sense from a woman. What was he to do ? He had been preparing this coup ever since the girl was two years old. He had trained her for it both physically and morally, and now, for a woman's capricious obstinacy, it was, in the very moment of triumph, to fail. That, at least, must not be ; and yet, in her present mood, she was obviously ready to make away with the document somehow, even before she left the ring. What was ho to do ? for he felt desperate unless something conld be done. Meanwhile the performance grew more and more exciting, for every minute the danger of the performer was increasing. There were no nets in the country shows in those days, and every spectator might enjoy the hope of seeing somebody killed. Presently the Queen of Trapezia began to exercise upon the national machine of her native land. Slowly and thoughtfully Seymour climbed a ladder used by the carpenters for various purposes, letting down and arranging the ropes she used. These were suspended from a false roof, which left a space of a few yards between it and the canvas on which two or three men might stand, and where one of them might look down into the ring through a central passage for ropes and pulleys. It was rather a nervous perch for most people, for the edges of the platform were nnrailed, and it shook and swung every now and then with the movements of the performers below. Seymour, though unused to clambering, was just now, however, too absorbed in his mental perils to think of bodily ones. He lay down on the platform with his face over the hole, steadying himself by grasping the edge in front with the fingers of one hand. He flattered himself with having hit on a grand idea He had seen how pale the girl turned when he threatened herafew minutes ago, and therein he read that he had at any rate one strong influence left over her. When, in the course of her flight, she reached the trapeze immediately below the hole, he pulled the rope hard upward, so as suddenly to arrest its swing, and, as she turned up her face to find the reason of such an accident, whispered down to her : ‘ Hold on by one hand, take out that paper, and let it fall.’ She raised herse’f up quietly, and stood with her feet in the trapeze, holding the rope with both hands—that is to say, in as much safety as one can be in mid-air, with a clear fall below. The audience naturally thought she was resting before beginning some new and more wonderful flight; those in the ring thouvht much the same. ‘No,’ taid she. * Listen hard, Polly,’ he whispered again, ■there’s no time to lose. I mean to have that paper Down with it,’ he b eathed rather than whispered, ‘or down you go!’ ‘No.’

‘ Do you want to go head first down into the ring ? Think how it will feel. I can send yon down in one moment, and not a soul will be the wiser, and I mean it. Now, do you want to go ?’ ‘No.’

‘ Then save yourself.’ His face, though she could not see it, was so close that she felt his breath in her ear ; and she had come to scorn the man so utterly as to believe him capable of even this last desperate deed. It was no idle threat to her mind. Her heart beat fast, and, for the first time in her life, her eyes began to glaze and her brain to reel. But still she said — ‘No.’ ‘ Then—once—twice— ’

‘She drew the paper from her bosom, holding the rope with one hand only, and began to tear off pieces with her teeth, and swallow them hastily. It was too much for a man enraged with disappointment and desperation to bear. Ungovernable impulse made him open his knife. ‘Thrice I* said he, with the voice of the fiend that was in him. ‘ No!’ she cried, knowing with all her life what her death was going to be. Down she went, rope and all. Chapter IV. The Princess Helena had walked fast to Durnford, but not faster than the footsteps that followed her. Is a man in love necessarily the fool that Mr Seymour would have called him, for liking to watch the windows of somebody else’s bedroom instead of going to sleep in his own? If so, who has always been wise ? Frank Raymond, therefore, saw what sleep hid from the eyes of wisdom. But, afraid of he knew not what terrible trouble to the strange creature whom he was nnhsppy enough to love, he dared not interfere with her escape from the wall she kissed until, unseen himself, he could unravel the meaning and the end of It all —wrong of Helena even now he could not, or rather would not, believe. He traced her to the circus tent, and lost her; but the next day, letting any confusion that might ensue at home take its chance for a few hours, he contented himself with sending a message to Lanceham, bidding them wait patiently till evening for news of himself and the Princess, and went back to the field. There he had but little trouble in identifying the advertised Queen from Samarcand with her whom he was seeking. It was surely enough to madden a man, or to cure a man of madness, once for all. But even so, when he thought of her words to him, he could not bring himself to believe, in spite of reason, that any commonplace

fnud had been committed, though . the Princess had turned out to be a she acrobat, and that flue-mannered Prince, her uncle, a travelling circus master. And even were it a fraud, he must see her once more alone, if only to prevent exposure and public scan Jal. He sat back among the spectators till the end of her performance gave him the chance of speaking to her. I have never tried it myself, and yet, when I shut my eyes, and try to put myself in the place of a man who sees a woman whom he loves or has loved flying in midair, and with the abomination of such scenes about her—the drees she wears, the wretched jests beneath, the vulgar Inst for bo lily emotion letting itself out in hungry applause around—l so sicken at my own fancy that I open my eyes again, Frank Raymond still lives, and is sane, though he saw all this with open eyes—even now I do not envy him all his dreams. And then the ill-omened pause in her flight —the fall—

_His quiet country life must have given him stronger and health'er nerves than most of us can boast of owning. After all, sudden shocks that call for instant help are not bad things for nerves that have anything in them at all. Almost before her body touched the earth Frank was by her in the ring, raising her on one side—Danvers on the other. I am hardly sure but that, swift as was her flight, bis arm was half under her before she fell. There she lay, stiff and shattered, held up by the only arm that needed her in life, with that crumpled, ha’f-torn scrap of paper tightly clutched in her hand—even in her fall her fingers had been true.

‘And that,’ said Danvers, ‘is why we call Mrs Raymond, of Lanceham, the Queen of Trumps. And that is why she is lame. ’ ‘ She wasn’t killed, then ? ’

‘ No ; unless it was her ghost yon saw today. No, sir ; she wasn’t quite killed ; and a miss is as good as a mile. I’d remembered her coming to Seymour’s grand circus when she was a baby—a regular juvenile phenomenon ; and I once wanted her to be kHs Danver; and if she had been I should be Joseph Danvers, Esquire, of Lanceham, instead of grinning through horse collars. For’ sir, though I mayn’t look it, I can grin. However, I married somebody else, and I don’t complain. But, as I was saying, I remembered her first coming, and knew her mother called herself Mrs Raymond; though neither I, nor anybody else, believed in the name. So, what with what I could remember. and with the paper found in her hand, and the knife-mark in the rope, they made out her story pretty v«'l without much guessing ; they had the best surgeons in London down to Durnford, and they managed to mend her—all but her left leg, with which she’ll have to limp to her grave. AH the better, sir; she’ll be the longer getting there.’ * So she married Frank Raymond ?’ * Who else—when the young fellow loved her, and the father was only too glad of a match that married right and possession ? And she’s a good woman, as well as a brave and happy one. Sir, there’s never a circus comes to Durnford but what she makes it pay. And she’s not my lady with me; I don’t call her Polly, but if I did she wouldn’t be angry, and she keeps all my boys at school. As to the country people—after all, she’s a real Raymond, so they’re free to like her as much as they like foe her own sake; and they do, I believe. And she’s taught herself everything—her leg gives her lots of time. In short, sir, she’s the very Queen of Trumps, and here’s her health, air ! When I think of little Polly letting herself be murdered rather than gain ten thousand a year by getting her rights from people of whom she knew nothing bat that they’d been a little bit kind to her, I just feel almost ready, sir, to—grin.’