LITERATURE.

Globe, Volume XXIII, Issue 2274, 16 July 1881, Page 4

LITERATURE.

OLD AND YOUNG BY TURKS. The Lady Annabel sat in a small room in her father’s castle, looking out of a window which overlooked a wide landscape. Her maidens were in a little group at the other end of the apartment, busily engaged at th'.ir embroidery, laughing r.nd chatt'ng, and whispering, just as they might wore they alive now—tor this was many years ago, and they are ail dead and buried. The Lady Annabel took no notice of them — she was thinking . At last she looked up, and yawned—- ■ Oh. I am sleepy aud thirsty. Mabel, bring mo some water.’ Mabel obeyed ; and as she received the cup again, she said ‘ Your ladyship will net bo sleepy tomorrow !’ * To-morrow ? What is to-morrow V ‘ Boss not your lad’, shi;> recollect that to morrow is your ladyship's birthday ? ani ’ ‘My birthday P Oh, yea, so it is. I had fcrgo'.ton aU arout it. Wo are to have a merry time of it, I believe ; but I am sure I feel in no humor for merriment now. Indeed, I should like to be alone. Lay down your work for a while and take a stroll in the courtyard.’ When she found herself alone, the Lady Anuarell walked up and down the small apartment, then stopping before the lookinggloss raid—‘My birthday ! Am I indeed twentynine to-morrow ! Twenty-nine! thataounds very old. It is fen years since my father came into the possession of this estate, and every one of those years has passed one just like another. I feel no older than I was then. I look no older,’ and sho looked long into the mirror then. ‘lam no older in any one respect. How I wish they would let my birthday pass by in silence, and not distress me by publishing it to all the assembling crowd that the Lady Annabel is now twenty-nine.’ Her reverie was here disturbed by the hasty entrance of her father. • Why what makes you look so downcast, daughter ? For shame I —go down and assbt in ths preparations for to-morrow’s feast, instead of moping here. Bnt I must not forget to tell you I saw my neighbor L this morning. We passed through hia grounds, and ho joined our hunting party.’ gAt this the Lady Annabel’s color heightened visibly, 1 He expects his son beck in a few months; and he and I were settling, that, as our estates touch, and as he has but one son, and I have but one daughter —but I hear my men ; they have brought home the stags—one of them has such horns I You must come down after awhile and see them.’

_ So saying her left her. .‘Jasper ii coming home,’ continued the Lady Annabel to herself. ‘ How wall do I remember the first time I saw him it was on my birthday. I was a tall girl and he a little boy, and I refused to dance with him because he was a whole head shorter than I us —”

At this moment her companions returned, and quieting their laughing countenances, oat down again to their embroidery. The next day was one of unusual festivity. By mid-day the hall was crowded with ladles and gentlemen of high degree from far and near. The music was loud, and dancing and feasting we:e the order of the day. The Lady Annabel, contrary to her expectations, was beguiled by the joy she saw on every face around her, and entered with great vivacity into every sport that was proposed. No laugh so loud as hors—no movements so full of glee. Late at night, when the guests had departed, aha threw herself, flushed and excited, Into a large chair in her own room, and began to unfasten the roses from her hair.

* So it is all over, and 1 have been happy, very happy, indeed I have only the recollection that it was my birthday would intrude itself upon me to damp my enjoyment every now and then. I heard several people ask if it were true that it was my twenty eighth birthday!—they did not know it was the twenty-ninth. And that oiioua Miss What’s-her-name actually said I looked very well for that, very wall indeed. I should be glad, I, know, to see her look half as' well, though she was, as she says, a baby when I was almost crown np. Twenty-nine, twentynine ! Oh! I wish 1 were not so old !' and, covering her face with her hands, she burst into tears.

Let us pass over a few months. The neighbor’s long expected son has come home, and Lady Annabel is in a state of anxiety, for her heart is true to her first love, despite her twenty-nine years. Her lather and his neighbor are a great deal together, looking over paper and inspecting boundary lines ; but, contrary to all expectation, the neighbor’s son turns out perverse, as neighbors’ sons are apt to do, and begins a flirtation with a little girl of sixteen, as poor as a rat. His father frowned—Annabel’s father frowned, and Annabel—she remembered her twenty-nine years. This unhappy state of things continued for some months, in spite of various remonstrances on the part cf one father and polite speeches on the part of the other. In vain title deeds were shown him—in vain the contiguous estates were talked over and walked over. Jasper remained immovable. At last upon being formally and rigorously appealed to by his father as to his intentions concerning Lady Annabel, he obstinately refused to enter into any engagement with her whatever, alleging as a reason that she was too old to bo his wife, and adding she might be informed of his having said so for aught he oared.

T'to days after he pot the finishing strafeo to his disobedience by eloping with the above-mentioned little girl of sixteen. All this was conveyed to the Lady Annabel by her offended and indignant father. And now, indeed, was she unhappy—for she really loved this man, and knew herself to havo been really loved by him some years before.

*'l oo old for him, indeed—too old for him ! God known my love for him may bo older lhan it was, but It is only the stronger, the more enduring. Cruel, cruel Jasper, to cist me off thus ; and for what—because I am twenty-nine, Purely I am the same that I have always been, and ho reproaches me with the years that have taken away none of my beauty He might as well lay to my charge the ages that have passed before I was born.’

But go it was, in spite of all her grief It wa? then as it is now, as it always has been and always ohail be, man speaks and woman abides by it. The Lady Annabel pined and grieved, and wept in secret; and talked and laughed end jested about the elopement in public, and for a while no one know that hers was a heavily-laden heart. “ Tears do a greet deal of mischief in the world. In the Lady Annabel’s case they did a great deal. They took all the lustre from her bright eyes ; they washed away the color from her cheeks, and rolling down they wore for themselves channels in her smooth skin, so that by her thirtieth birthday people began to say : 11 The Lady Annabel is very much faded,’ and ‘The Lady Annabel is not quite so young as she was and one little lady, tho odious little lady, as Lady Annabel had called her a year ago, was heard to say—- • I did think she wore very well, but I don’t think eo now. To be sure, poor thing, she is getting on pretty well.’ This time the Lady Annabel entreated her father to omit the usual merry-making. She spent the day alone in her room. ‘ Thirty years old ! How it distressed me a year ago to think I was twenty-nine. I have no such feelings now. Jasper was right when he said I was too old for him. How would my careworn, sorrowful face look in company with his blooming appearance ? They talked of a ball to-night—how my heart shrunk from such a thing ! I at a bail 1 No—this dimly-lighted room suits mo better. Jasper was right; but then, if he had still loved me, would my youth and beauty havo gone so soon 7 Perhaps not, but they are now gone. And what is loft for me ? a dull, joyless life of regret.’ But she was wrong—she was not quite as old as she thought. A few years passed away. Her violent sorrow became changed by degrees into a melancholy, and then into a gravity. They rarely saw her laugh, but abe was often cheerful. She had put away her ornaments—her jewels—it is true, but her attire was always becoming and elegant. Her father’s dwelling continued to be the wort of bis numerous friends. She mingled with them but seldom, and smiled when the odious little lady, now Mrs Somebody, talked about old maids. Meanwhile Jasper was

never board of ; hia angry father refused to correspond with him. EC© seemed to be forgotten, and ha was everywhere —bnt in one place. Bat grief will wear itself out. After a while Annabel at first listened, and then joined in the conversation of her father s guests, and found herself by degrees returning the interest evinced for her by a country gentleman of some property in the neighborhood, about ten years older than herself, bhe was now thirty-five. The next thing was a wedding at the hall, and no one seemed in higher spirits than the bride herself, decked in the ornaments which had lain in their cases for five years. Annabsl was young again. , Let ua pass over five years of quie. domestic happiness—for although her feelings toward her husband wore very different from those called forth by her first love, still she was attached to the worthy man. * ■» * *

Her black dress and ugly cap, _no less than her slow galte and saddened air, show her to be a widow. Lonely and desolate since her bereavement, she has again taken up her residence with her father, and inhabits the same little room she formerly did. A few months more and her father’s death increased her seclusion. She has no relation left upon earth, and earnestly and bitterly does she pray that she may die and leave this world of sorrows. She receives no visitors, and never appears abroad—only now and then, late In the afternoon, when the weather is tine, her tall, closely veiled figure may be seen walking slowly round about the castle, and the village children, coming home from school, peep at her through the hedge, and whisper: ‘ It is the old lady talking her walk. We said visitors were never admitted there, and they were [not. So much the greater then was the surprise of all the servants when one day, a fine looking, middle aged man was seen in the largest parlor in close converse with their mistress, but this was repeated so often that at last it came to be a customary thing. She took no more solitary walks ; her black veil was laid aside; her close cap again gave way to her glossy hair—glossy still, though streaked with grey, Her youth was coming baok —far was not this Jasper—the Jasper of old—her first love ? .... Poor Jasper, he had been unhappy in ms marriage, and upon his wife’s death had come home with his son after long years spent in poverty abroad. He did not think the Lady Annabel too old for him now, so that the caatla was a second time illuminated for a marriage, and a second time were the jewels taken from their cases. ‘Jasper,’ said Annabel, 'the world will call ns an eld couple. It is true, years have passed over us. VVe have been old, both of ns, but it was sorrow that made us so, not time. Sorrow has left ns now, and time has brought us to this, our second youth. Is it not so ? For although they speak the truth when they say we have both of us gray hairs, yet if they did but see our hearts they would say there is youth yet In them—as in the day when I would not dance with yon because you were a head shorter than I, or the day when you deserted me because I was too old for you.’