LEVISON'S VICTIM.

Hawke's Bay Herald, Volume 14, Issue 1147, 26 April 1870, Page 3

LEVISON'S VICTIM.

„..-. ■ / ... . (Prom "Belgravia.") '"/-_ " EOave you seen Horace Wynward P" " No. You don't mean to say that he is : here?" /"-,-. \ • '" He is indeed; I saw him last night ; and I think I never saw a man so much changed in so short a time." " For the worse P" "Infinitely for the worse. I should scarcely, have recognised him but for that peculiar look in hia eyes,. which I daresay :- you remember." .'" ! " Yes ; deep-set grey eyes, with an ear- : nest penetrating look that seems to read a : : man up as h& talks to him. I'm veryi sorry to hear of this change in him. We were at Oxford together, you know ; and : his place is near my father's in Bucking-- ' hamshire. We have been fast friends for a long time ; but I lost sight of him about tw6. years, ago, before I went on my Spanish rambles, and I've heard nothing of him. since. . Do you think he has been leading a dissipated life—gping the pace a little too violently ?" " I don't know. what he has been doing; - but I faticy. he must have been travelling during the last ye'ai-' or twoi for Tvenever come aerosa him in. London!" " Did you: speak to him last night ?" : . ".?£j_|w?W very much to get hold of him for alew minutes'~cliat, But couldn't manage it. It wa&ihone of the gamblingrooms I saw him, on the. opposite, side of the table,, -^ The r ; qpm. was crowded. .He was standing looking on at the game oVer the head of the players. You know how tall he is, and what a conspicuous figure "anywhere.rrl saw/him one. minute, aad in the next he had. disappeared. I left the "rooms in search of him, Init he was not to ' ; " be seen anywhere* about." --■-•-■ ■ .. . -.' "I. shall .-try. and bunt him -•t*p- > toV.-.-, morrow. He must be stopping at one of the hotels. There can't be much difficulty in finding him." v The speakers were two young Englishmen; ; ; the scene, a little lamplit grove of . trees outside the Kursaal of a German., spa. The elder, George Theobald, was a barrister of the Inner Temple ; the younger,' Francis Lorrimore, son and heir of a Buckinghamshire squire, and gentle* . man at large. " What -was* the change that struck you so painfully, George?" Lorrimore asked ' between the puffs of his cigar; "you cduldn't have seen much of Wynwae&jn that look across the gaming-table." " I saw quite enough. His face has « worn, haggard expression — he looks like a man who never, sleeps; and there's a fierceness about the eyes—a contraction of the brows, a kind of restless, searching look— as if he were on the watch for some one or something. In short, the poor fel-low-seemed to me to be altogether queer — the sort of man one would expect to hear of in a madhouse, or committing suicide, or something bad of that kind." "I shall certainly hunt him oat, George." ... " It wouid only be a kindness to do so, old fellow, as you and he have been intitimate. Stay I" exclaimed Mr. Theobald, pointing.- suddenly to s figure in the distance. "Do you see that tall man under the trees yonder ? I've a notion it's the very man we're, talking of." . They rose from the bench on which they had been sitting smoking their cigars for the last half-hour, and walked in the direction of the tall figure pacing slowly under the pine-trees. There was no mistaking that muscular frame — 6ft. 2in. if an mch — and the peculiar carriage of the' head. Frank Lorrimore touched his friend lightly on the shoulder, and he turned round suddenly and faced the two young men, staring at them blankly without a ■ sign pf recognition. - . . * Yes, it was indeed a haggard face, with a latent fierceness in the deep-set grey eyes overshadowed by strongly-marked . black brows, but a face which, seen at its best, must needs have been very hand--' •> some. " Wynyard," said Frank, " don't you know me?"He held out both his hands. The other took one of them slowly, looking at him like a man suddenly awakened from sleep. '"Yes," he said, "I know you well enough now, Frank ; but you startled me just this moment. I was thinking. How well you're looking, old fellow ! — What, you here too, Theobald ! " " Yes ; I saw you in the rooms last night," answered George Theobald, as they shook hands ; "but you were gone before I could get a chance of speaking to you. Where are you staying ? " "At the Hotel des Estrangers. I shall be off to-morrow." # • . - " Don't run away in such a hurry, Horace," said Frank ; "it looks as if you wanted to cut us." •' I'm not very good company jast now ; you'd scarcely care to see much of me." " You are not looking very well, Horace, certajnjy. Have you been ill ? " " No,! jam never ill ; lam made of iron,. you know." : .' .. " But there's something wrong, I'm afraid." ■<■<•-••■ : • : " There is something wrong, but nothing that talk or friendship can mend." '•Don't say that, Horace. Come to breakfast with me to-morrow, and tell mo your-troubles." " It's>a common story en6ugh?l shall only- bore you." ■ " "I think you ought to know me better " " than that.", -■-•■• . - i " Well,. I'll come, if you like," Horace Wynifcar'd* answered in a softer tonej., " I'm not very much given to confide in friendship,-but you were once a kind of '' younger brother of mine, Frank. Yes, I'll come.. How long have you beea " ; here r " I only came yesterday. lam at the Coui'onne dOr,. W.here I discovered my friend Theobald, happily for me, at the table d'Jiote. I am, going back to Buckinghamshire next week. Have you been at Crofton lately ?" " No ; Crofton has been shut up for the last two years. . The old housekeeper is there, of course, and there are men to keep the gardens in order. I shouldn't like the idea of my mother's, gardens being neglected ; but I doubt if I shall ever live at Grofton." " Not when you marry, Horace P" " Marry ? ; Yes, when that event occurs, I mjiy, '-change, my mind," he answered with a scornful laugh. " Ah, Horace, I see there is a woman at the bottom of your trouble !" He did not answer this, but began to talk of indifferent subjects. The three young men walked for some time under the pines, smoking and talking in a fragmentary manner. Horace Wynward had. an absent-minded way) which : was not calculated to promote a lively state of conversation ; but the others indulged his humour, and did. not demand much. from him. It was late when they shook hands and separated. "At ten o'clock to-morrow, Horace," said Frank. "I shall be with you at ten. Goodnight." . -Mr. Lorximore ordered an excellent breakfast, and a little before ten o'clock awaited his friend in a pretty sitting-room overlooking the gardens of the hotel; He had been dreaming of : Horace .all night, 1 and was thinking r: of him" as he -walked up and dowa ; the room, waiting his arrival. As

the little clock" on the mantelpiece struck the hour, Mr. Wynward was announced. His dress was dusty; and he had a tired look even" a,tf that early hour. "Frank welcomed Jam heartily. ~.\, .-.-.■:. ." You lookas if you had been walking, Horace/'^he^said-tas; they sat down to ■ breakfd&ts/c -Ji ■ r<*. r .r< r.- ■ .■ ■ ■ ■ - ' "I have been on the: hills since five o'clock this morning," « So.early? " v ' " Yes ■; t% ' am; a bad sleeper. It is better tor^Jc.than lie tossing about hour after Hour, thinking the same thoughts with maddening Repetition. "My idear.boy, / you will make yourself ill with iJus kind of life." "Dqh't I tell you that I am never ill ? I neveV-had .aday^'s illness in my life. I suppose, rwiien.- .I, die, I shall go down at a shot— apoplexy ■ or.hearfc-disease. Men of my build generally jdo. > . „ " I hope you; may have along life. " Yes, a long iife ; of emptiness." , ""W^hy, it be a useful life, Horace?^. . - • "Because 5 it was shipwrecked two years ago. I ?et sail for a given port, Frank, with a fair jfinil in . my favour ; and ; my ship cfclifrnjin sight "of land, on a summer's fey/wMouVa" Jttoment's warning, I can't fig; another" b^ati and make for another harbour, scs sbirte' nien can. All ray world's tfealtfc arsis Mv.ehtured in this one argosy. l?hat sotanxfe tall.talk, i'doepit't it ? bat you gee tbfcf e is Sttch a' thing- as 4 pi&ssiqa in ,the mteilii!, fcsth m your sympathy, thitf. I'm? ribt, Sshamfed to tell you w|at aifoojihaye been and still am. You \vjsre/stfch, a. romantic, fellow. fifye years ; pand I used to.laugli , ; at your sentimental notions." ','■-; ! " Yes,.'J.^aa/,.obligejd fo stand. a good deal of ridveuie^from you." " Let thpse j^g] 1 who win. It was . in the last lqng jvacation before I left Oxford that I pejx£s§i[eiL<lj at a quite little village on the "Suglsej^e.Gast, with a retired tutor, an eccent|i^)|d fenow.rbufc.a miracle of learning. TW& fi|ji "^ree ■, daughters, the eldestip^p^^torpl'min^': the loveliest girl th^te^e|||h"|rjn^ .shone I'm not going to 'make"a v long, story of it. ] think itJfaßjtaj. 4 QasA oijop^at sight. I know thalJoßj^Ee T l»j|g.been a week in the humdrum,3ea-cbasi; village, I was over head and^rs. ja lp|v.f>; with Laura Daveutry; and :^atthe end.ofa month, was happy in thevbejief, that jay I love was returned. She was ttiadearest, and brightest of girls, 1 with a^ happy. disposition that won, her friends in '.evefyi direction ; and a man must have^had ;a : dull^ unimpressionable nature^ whavcpuld;- have withstood her charm.;. ilKwas/sfree, to make, my, own choice, rich, enough to marry a penniless girl ; "ajadibeforejlrwent back to Oxford I made her anoffeg. -. It was accepted ; and I retuyneji tQ'theTJniversify the happiest •dfmein"is^-, \}"l ;'.'_-;.'. . '.- .... - / He drank a cup of coffee, and rose from the t'able.toiwalk up and down the room. " yteOil Frank, you would imagine that nothing could arise to interfere with our happiness- after this; In worldly circumstance's I .was what would be considered an excellent match for Miss Daventry, and 1 had' 'every reason, to believe that she lored ine'. : She was very young, not quite 18 and I was the first man who had ever proposed to her. I left her with the most entire confidence ii'u' her good faith; and to this : hour;]: believe, in her." There, was a pause, and then he went on again..; " . ; "We corresponded, of. course. . Laura's letters, were charming; and I had no greater, delight than in receiving and replyingVto them. I had promised her to ■workihard for nay degree, and for her sake I kept.my promise and- won it. My first thought was to carry her the news of my success ;: and directly .the examinations were over, I ran ,dbwn' to Sussex. I found the cottage empty. Mr. Daventry was in London ; the two younger girls had gone to DeVdhshire, to an aunt who kept a school there. About Miss Daventry the neighbours could give me no positive information. ' She had left a few days before her father, but ,nO, one knew where she had , gone. /When I pressed them more closely, they told me that it was rumoured in t f he village that she had gone away tp^be i married; .A 'gentleman from the Spanish colonies, a Mr. Levison, had been staying at. the cottage for some weeks, and had disappeared about the . same time as, Miss Laura." " And youbelieved that she had eloped withhamrV"/ / 7..,/ i, "TQvffiis day. I am ignorant as to the manner of . her leaving. Her last letters ■were oi^rya. week old. She had told me of this Mr. Levison's residence in her household. .He ;i w,as a prosperous merchant,, t a "distant relation, of her father's, and was staying in Sussex for his health. This was all. she. had said of him. Of their apprpacMng" departure she had not givea me the -least hint.. No one in the village could tell. n»§ Mr. Daventry 's London address.,"! The 'cottage, a, furnished one, had been given up to the landlord, and every debt jpaid. I went to the postoffice; but the people there had received no directions; ,'as : to the forwarding oi let* ters, nor had any, come as yet for Mr. .. Daventry^",' • - .'. .; f "The'girls in. jDevonshire— r you applied to them, I suppose ?" "I did-; but they^ could tell me nothing. I wrote to. Emily, the eldest girl, begging her to send me her sister's address. She answered my letter immediately. Laura had left home with her father's full knowledge and. consent, she said, but had not told her sisters where she was going. She had seeme|d, very unhappy. The whole affair had been sudden, and her father had also appeared much distressed in mincj. This was all I could ascertain. I put an advertisement in The Times, addressed to Mr. Daventry, begging him to let me know his whereabouts ; but nothing came of it. I employed a man to hunt London for him, and hunted myself ; but without avail. I wasted months in this futile search, now on one false track, now on another." " Anji you haye 1 long ago given up all hope, I suppose ?" I said, as he paused, walking up; = and down . the room with a moody, face.,^. i,^ - :- "^i^en y up, all hope of seeing Laura Levison alive ? Yes ; but not of tracking her destroyer,". . , , „ " Laura , Levison ! Then you think she married the Spanish merchant ?" " I- am sure of it. I had been more than six months on the look-out for Mr. Daventry, and had /begun to despair of finding him, yfben. \ a. man I employed came to m< ■ . and told me that he had found the registry of a marriage between Michael Levison and Laura paventry, at an obscure church ir the citj^here he had occasion to makt - researcAes for another client.. The dateo; the marriaga was within a few days oi . Laura's departure from Sussex." - ; •^StrJnge^S;^^:, : ; ,"V - *' Yes, jtraggf that a woman should b« so fick|e^ |ou woul^ say >; ; Ifelt convinced _ ; t^at therdjhad; been something more thai gu?|ish inconstancy at work in this business ; power! Btrong enough tc ;;^i^|ic^thi&:, ; girl'-.tp.'Bjacrifice herself in s grlovele|s.marr^ajge.^ I^jjs confirmed in this .% v :Tbßlief,^|ien, a very . time ol Jiftip; dis^QVfcy of |hejTegistr^ ? .I came sud.^deniy^piEHn^jold ; 3Qaveniryi ; iJt the street. ;#^Hj|wo^ me ; . but I inr4#?^stfed^a; a' , with b.im, and he lodging^ 9^ fetched place in South 1 ft^p^^^^iyepy ill, with thent&S&p oi

death upon Ms face, and had a craven look that convinced me it was to Mm I was indebted for my sorrow. I told him that I Knew of Ms daughter's marriage, when and where it had taken place, and boldly accused him of having brought it about.^ " How did he take your accusation ?' , : " Like a beaten hound. He whimpered : piteously, and told me that the marriage md been no wish of his. But Levison had possession of secrets which made him the veriest slave. Little by little I wrung from him the nature of these secrets. They related to forged bills of exchange in which the old man had made free with his kinsman's name. It was a transaction of many years ago ; but Levison had used this power in order to induce Laura to marry him; and the girl, to save her father from utter ruin, as she believed, had consented to become his wife. Levison had promised to do great things for the old man, but had left England immediately after his marriage, without settling a shilling on his father-in-law. It was altogether a most wretched business : the girl had been sacrificed to her father's weakness and folly. I asked him why he had not appealed to me, who could no doubt have extricated him from his difficulty ; but he could give me no clear answer. He evidently had an overpowering dread of Michael Levison. I left him, utterly disgusted with his imbecility and selfishness ; but for Laura's sake I took care that he wanted for nothing during the remainder of his life. He did not trouble me long." " And Mrs. Levison ?" jr Tho old mars told me that the Levisons had gone to Switzerland. I followed post haste, andstraced' them from place to Elatte, closely questionihgthe peopleateaeh otel. The accounts 1 1 1 hear* were; by nomeans encouraging. Q?he' lady diet no* seem happy. The gentleman looked old; enough to be her father, and was peevishs and fretful in his manner; never letting-. his wife out of his sight,- and 1 evidently suffering torments of jealousy' on* account of the admiration which her beauty won for her from every one they met. I traced them stage by stage, through Switzerland into Italy, and then suddenly lost the track. I concluded that they had returned to England by some other route ; but all my attempts to discover traces of their return were useless. Neither by land nor by sea passage could I hear of the yellow-faced trader and his beautiful young wife. They were not a couple to be overlooked easily ; and this puzzled me. Disheartened and dispirited, I halted in Paris, where I spent a couple of months in hopeless idleness, — a state of utter stagnation, from which I was aroused abruptly by a communication from my agent, a private detective — a very clever fellow in his way, and well in with the police of civilized Europe. He sent me a cutting from a German newspaper, which described the discovery of a corpse in the Tyrol. It was supposed, from the style ofcthe dress, to be the body of an Englishwoman ; but no indication of a name or address had been found to give a clue to identity. Whether the dead woman had been the victim of foul play, or whether she had met her death from an accidental fall, no one had been able to decide. The body had been found afe the bottom of a mountain gorge, the face disfigured by the fall from the height above. Had the victim been a native of the district, it might have been easily supposed that she had lost her footing on the mountain-path ; but that a stranger should have travelled alone by so unfrequented a route seemed highly improbable. The spot at which the body was found lay within a mile of a small village ; but it was a place rarely visited by travollers of any description." (To be oonoluded in our next.)

HOW THE BtJTCHEES SEEVE THE SALESMEN. — A Melbourne contemporary says : — " The meeting of the butchers, as adver- j tised, took place at Rigby's Newmarket Hotel, at half-past 6 o'clock on Wednesday morning, when it was unanimously decided to give Messrs. Dal. Campbell and Co. their patronage, being the only firm adhering to the usual terms of credit and discount. After the commencement of the auction of cattle, which was opened by Messrs. Ryan and Hammond with a fine lot of Mr. Johnstone's cattle, from Gripps Land, 60 of the principal butchers withdrew from the sale, and seemed determined to carry out their former resolution, which had a most detrimental effect upon the prices realised. Messrs. Dal. Campbell and Co. were the next to operate, and it was: plainly to be seen by the prices obtained for cattle of inferior quality to the preceding lot, that the butchers intended to purchase freely from them. Suicide. — The Peripatetic Philosopher thus discourses on the prevailing mania in Melbourne :— Although I fully approve of suicide, I have always been of opinion that it is — like pickled salmon — a luxury to bo indulged m with moderation. But, like the stage manager who ordered the notable " three morning guns," when the public do get hold of a good thing they never can have enough of it. Everybody has taken to self-murder lately. " Demmit," as some nobleman, whose name I forget, observed of the people, " they can't leave us even our vices I" A few years ago only gentlemen presumed to go downstairs without being called for ; now, there is not a greengrocer or cornchandler in the city but must slit his weasand for the loss of a five-pound note. From crossing in love to squaring accounts, everything is made a cause for suicide. The other day I saw that some young booby shot himself because he couldn't pay his tailor's bill. Fancy a man blowing out his brains because he couldn't pay for his breeches ! Ridiculous antithesis. i Wbeck op x Steamee. — We find in the iV. Z. Herald (Auckland) a description of the total wreck of the paddle-steamer Favorite, in Ahipara Bay, on the Ist April. Captain Dyason is supposed to be a great loser, as he had almost completed the sale of one -half interest in the steamer to a Lyttelton firm. She was insured in the IS.Z. Insurance Company for £400, and the cargo for £150. The wreck was sold for £54. The crew and a small portion of the cargo were saved. Deedging the Shotovee is paying handsomely. One party on the river is making £1000 a month. The wardens' quarterly reports represent the districts as in a very satisfactory state. — Telegram in Post.