SPLENDID MISERY.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XVI, Issue 5634, 6 December 1879, Page 3

SPLENDID MISERY.

A NOVEL. Uy til.. Author of I> \t:dley's eoret," &c:. 0 i \I'TE:t XVII. BUIII EO 1.l TrF.ltS, IiUP.IED HOPES. Flossie was < 1 ited exceedingly when she was told of her sister's engagement ; even the little serving-maid Amelia sang louder than ever for joy ; the sick mother mended slowly but surely from that hour. Barbara alone was sad. She moved about slowly, as if leaden weights were tried to her feet; her heavy eyes looked straight before her, gazing with infinite horror into a hateful futurity. In her mother's presence she contrived to smile, and even to talk gaily. Love gave her courage, love gave her strength. She was the old happy Barbara in the sick-room. Pride forbade that she should hare her wounds beforo the volatile Flossie. To her lover she was uniformly courteous, with a grave politness which would have disheartened an ordinary lover, but which Vyvyan Penruth accepted placidly, as if he expected nothing more. There was 110 need to pay any further visits to the dusky ortice round the corner by the silversmith's shop. The insolent clerk who had fqueczed Barbara's hand saw her no more. Her lover gave her a hundred pounds for immediate necessities, aud she took the money without compunction. She had sold herself for a price, and she felt 110 shame in accepting any part of that price. The shame was in the bargin itself—a deeper shame for her plighted husband than for herself, she thought. One of the first uses she made of Mr. Penruth's money, was to send Amelia to redeem her first lover's ring. But tho golden circle was never to be worn by her again. The bond of which it was the sign had been doubly broken. She picked the in a little box, and in- > closed it with a letter addressed to Captain Leland's mother, begging her to restore it to her son at a convenient opportunity. "No doubt you know that Captain Leland 1 cancelled our engagement some uionthß ago," < she wrote. "Perhaps I ought to have returned the ring then ; but I was so foolish ] as to think that he might change his mind, ! and that our engagement might some day be renewed, and I could not bear to part with the souvenir of his love. But now I am 1 going to be married, I have no right to keep 1 the ring any longer, and I shall esteem it a favour if you will take au early opportunity of < sending it to him with my sincere wishes for ' his happiness." ]

There was no more than this. It was the most commonplase of letters, and seemed heartless iu its poverty of phrase. Yet tho girl wrote with a hi caking heart and eyes drowned with tears.

Hot-house grapes, good old wiuo, all luxuries that money can buy, were delivered in abundance at No. 20, South-lane ; but it was not the wine or tlie invalid turtle, the spring chickens or asparagus, that brought [ back the colour to Mrs. Trevornock's check or the strength to her limbs. It was the knowledge that her children's future was provided for, it was the delightful idea that her favourite daughter waß g"ing to be a great lady, that restored her. She had sunk under the weight of petty cares and harassing tivialities, and now the burden was lifted oif her shoulders altogether. She bad no longer to calculate and provide for the necessities of the morrow. For the first time since her luckless marriage she could fold her hands and take her re3t, and say, with a contented spirit, "Sufficient for the day is the evil thereof." She could see no evil in the day or the morrow ; she had no misgivings .13 to her child's happiness. To the matter-of-fact temperof middleage the passions and sorrows of youth seem of small account. No doubt poor Barbara had been very deeply in love with Captain Lcland ; but she must have almost fjrgotten him by this time, and would, as in duty bound, become attached to Mr. Penruth, whose generous devotion was calculated to inspire grateful affection on the pait of its object.

"If I had m"t with such a man in my youth, instead of Mr. T., wlia". a happy woman I should have been !" mused Mrs. Trevornoek, forgetting that at ninteen years of age sbe had not been so well acquainted with the value of worldly wealth as she was now.

A week went by without bringing any response to Barbara's letter, and then came an answer, in a strange baud, on deeply bordered mourning paper :

"Dear Miss Trf.vornock, —l am sure you will be grieved to hear that my dear mother died last November after a short illness. It has been a terrible blow for as all. I will aend the ring to George by the next mail. 1 am sorry yonr engagement should have been broken off, but it is perhaps better so for both. My brother has not been fortunate in India, and he is in no position to marry. I think he will be surprised to hear tbat you are engaged to some one else. ' Yours very trnly, "Marian Leland." " He has not been fortunate," sighed Barbara. " Was it his bad fortune that made him give me up ? That can hardly be ; for I told him I had no fear of poverty, nor even of disgrace—that I would be true to him iu the darkest days of l>is life. If he had cared for me, he never could have flung me off. Well, it is all over and done with, and it is my duty to forget him." ■She did try honestly to put her lover's image away from her during these early spring days, which seemed to hurry by her, drifting her toward her doom. They were days evermore to be remembered ; days now historic. Such great anil terrible scenes were being played out yonder in the Crimea that Barbara's petty griefs should have seemed as nothing to the heroic mind. Yet they were brge enough to fill her little world. Never had she been so miserable, yet never had the days been so short. She clung to her mother with ever-increasing fondness. The idea of going away to her husband's distant home was intolerable to her. " How shall I ever bear my life so far away from you ?" she said, sitting on a low stool beside her mother's arm-chair in the sunny -southward-fronting window. South-lane was putting forth buds and blossoms under the April sunlight. The almond-tress were in flower ; the lilac bushes were covered with green buds; the garden was yellow with daffodils. Mrs. Trevornock was well enough to nit up for an hour or two in her own room when the day was at its warmest. " My sweetest, yon or.ee thought of putting a much wider distancb between us," she said, smiling down at the sad face nestling against her pillows. " You did not shrink from the idea of going to India." " That was to be three years hence, and I hardly realized tbo idea. When the time come, it would have 1 been dreadful to go so far away—even with him." " Cornwall is really no distance in these railway days. A day's journey at most. And we shall come and stay with you sometimes, I dare say. Mr. I'enruth is so kind that I am sure he will wish us to visit you." "Of coursc, of course, mother. My life will be bearable only when you are with me." "Barbara, don't talk like that!" cried the mother, looking at her anxiously. "My love, if you have such a feeling as that—a conviction that you are going to be unhappy in your married life —the marriago must be broken off, late as it is, and though it is such a grand n,atch for you, and has made us all so happy." " No, mother, I am not going to break my engagement to Mr. Penruth. One brokea engagement in a lifetime is enoni.li, is it not ? Hut you don't suppose I am desperately in love with him, do you ?" "No, dear; but I look forward to your being a good and dutiful wife, and a very happy woman." " Yes, mother, I shall be happy ; 1 am happy, for you are spared to mc. Oh, lam an ungrateful wretch ! When you were ill, I wearied Heaven with my prayers ; and now lam not half grateful enough. I fancy my fate a hard one." "My dearest, it is a fato that ninety-nine women out of a hundred would envy," interrupted Mrs. Trevornock. " Do you meau that ninety.niue out of a hundred would marry for money?" "Yes, dear, if they bad learned tho value of money, as we have, by bitter experience." " -Biiterexperifciice i" echoedliab. " Whatever my future tnay be, I shall look back at my days in South-lane as the happiest part of my life." Everything was settled. The wedding day was fixed for the2oth of May. Mr. Penruth was unaffected by Flossie's protest against a wedding in May as proverbially unlucky. He was not given to such small superstitions, though not entirely free from that leaven of belief in the uncanny which lies deep in the Cornish nature, not to be eradicated by time ior civilization. There was every reason to suppose that by the 20th of May Mrs. Tre- ~ Tho riyht of publishing '"Splendid Misery" in the worth Island of New Zealand has hcen purchased by the proprietors of the Nkw Zkalahd Hebald.

_. v | vornock would be well enough to assist at he •' I (laughter's marriage, and, except her illncse I there was no reason for delay. It was al ! decided with very slight reference to Bar !«ara; she gave h«r cot sent to the arrange merit* with a uieeknet-s which was rathe J submission thai cont nt. The when and th h »u* mastered little t» a» r. since this thin, vva-» :o lie. Aunt Sophia wrote warmly in approval a tue uew engagement, aud sent her niece fift; pounds to buy wedding gowns. She ha! Ie considered Barbara's previous engagemen mi the height of imprudence. She had disap proved of Captain Leland as a partial boarder id ehe had disapproved of him as a lover. Th< ra whole business had, in her estimation \a been one of poor Flora's mistakes. But now ?r she was enthusiastic in her congratulations, r, "I know all about Mr. Penruth, but bj il repute only," she wrote to her sister-in-law >e " for his estate is so very far west, and th< r. Penruths have been always rather au cccen ir trie family, living very much to themselves, n They are amuDg the best people in Cornwall, d as no doubt you know. One of the Penruths r. married a Miss Mohuo, an heiress. Thej i, have intermarried with the Carcws. Bari- bara ought to feel very proud of making h such a marriage. Mr. Penruth's age ma) e perhaps appear a drawback in her mind ; but as he has never been married before, and r i* so devoted in his attachment to her, that r ought to make very little difference. 1 cont sider her a most fortunate girl; and 1 think 7 that even you, Flora, will allow that in this 1 instance my brother Thomas has done very 5 well for one of his daughters, and has Borne 3 claim to your gratitude." j Slowly aud reluctautly Barbara set about , the purchase of her wedding clothes. .She r shrauk with secret horror from any act or r part in the preparations for her marriage, i Yet she tried heroically to hide hor misery, > lest her mother's love should prevent the sacrifice. " What a strange girl yon are !" exclaimcd Flossie. " I'm sure, if I had my purse stuffed full of bank-notes, T should be rushing off to the Koad to spend them." The lvoad —otherwise the Walworth Koad i —or, at furthest, Newington Causeway, bounded Flossie's horizou in the way of shops. But here Mrs. Trevoruock, with her experieuce of a previous existence in more fashionable localities, suggested a cab and a pilgrimage to and Oxfordstreet. " That will be delightful !" cried Flossie. " A cab ! To think that wo can afford to hire a cab whenever we waut one ! It is like entering upon a new stage of existence/ 1 "You really had better make your purchases this afternoon, Bab," urged Mrs. Trevoruock, who had now descended to the parlour. "We are half way thiougli April already, and dress-makers are so slow." Barbara had no objection to offer; so she aud Flossie went to Oxford-street, and selected such raiment as might be suitable to a Cornish gentleman's wife living in a lonely old house far off the beaten tracks. Mr. Penruth had counselled her to buy no finery. He kept no company at Penruth Place. His nearest neighbour lived savm miles off. This might have seemed a drexry look-out, eveu for a woman who loved him. But it made no difference to Barbara. " You will 1.1 my mother and eister come and see me sometimes, won't you ?" she asked one day. " Yes, of course. They cau come when they like, but I'm afraid they'll fiud it dull. Y our sister won't like Penruth Place. She's fond of gaiety, theatres, concerts, and so on." " Yes, but she is fond of the country too," urged Barbara. "I hope you will let me have my mother and Flossie to stay with me —often." She would have liked to have said " always," for she felt thai only under such conditions could her Cornish life be tolerable. " Oh yea, they can come," responded Penruth, not too graciously, 41 provided they and my sister can hit it pretty weU together." Barbara shivered. That sister, of whom ahe had heard so little, but who was always spoken off as a fixture at Pcuruth Place, a feminine edition of Mr. Penruth ! J 41 Does your brother live with you V she ; asked once, wondering whether she was to ; support existeuce with three of the Penruth 1 race. " Yes ; Mark has free quarters at Penruth Place. He is fond of horses and dogs, and makes better use of iny stables than I do. But he is not always with us. He has a couple of rooms at the Quarries, aud we sometimes see nothing of htm for a week on end." 44 Is he like you " No," auswered Yyvyan, with a griin smile. He was the buck of the family. He favours his mother, who was a Carew. He was a handsome fellow once, but he has contrived to get rid of his good looks somehow, though he is my junior by five years." i Flossie enjoyed herself vastly that April afternoon at the West-end draper' 3. It was ehe who chose everything, she who decided what the future Mrs. Penruth ought or ought not to have. Barbara sat by aud looked on, the picture of indifference. Flossie thought this arose from au innate want of taste in her elder sister. * "Some people have no taste in dress, no ideas," she said to herself; "that kiud of thing is born with one." J*lie rattled a>\ay mercilessly to Barbara in those blank intervals when the shopman had gone to ft tub fresh goods. "You must have one or two dinner dresses." she said; "however far off your neighbours may live, they must give dinner parties, and with plenty of horses in your stables you won't consider distance. You ought to have a velvet gown. Shall it bo ruby or black " By ail means black." "But you have choßen two black gowns already; surely you are not going to wear perpetual mourning." " I like black." " Well, if your dinner parties are to be few and far between, perhaps black velvet would be best. It would take you ages to wear out a ruby velvet, but you can wear out black velvet by your own fireside." " How far-eecing you are, Flossie I" " In choosing a trousseau ouehas to study contingencies," answered Flossie, sagely. It was Mr. Penruth's particular desire there should be no fuss about the weddiug. " We can't be married too quietly/' said. "I know nobody in London, and I —l suppose you haven't many friends in the neighborhood." " Very few," auswered Mrs. Trevoruock. And then she rati over the names of about ten people—tho people with whom she had been want to exchauge small hospitalties in the way of tea and muffins—whom she would like to invite to the breakfast. " Oblige me by not inviting any of them," said Mr. Penruth. " When amau of my age marries a pretty girl, he dues not care to make a spectacle of himself. Let us be mar - ried an quietly as possible, I suppose Mr. Trevoruock wi.l give away his daughter." " I suppose so," faltered Mrs. Trevoruock, thiuking that there might be some awkwardness in the sudden appearance of her husband in a neighborhood where she was popularly supposed to he a widow ; not that the had ever so declared herself; ahe had only been silent as to the existence of Mr. T., save to those more intimate friends who knew the troublous history of her married life. If the wedding were strictly private, no one need know ofc Mr. Trevornock's brief appearance on 'he domestic stage. So the good lady resigned heiself to forego those and pairs of snow-whito horses, artfully touched up with whitening for the occasion, and that elegant confectioner's breakfast which she had planned in honour of her daughter.

There was to be no breakfast at all, in the festive sense of the word. Uarbara was to be married iu her travelling dress of dark silk, and she and her husband were to drive from the church to the railway station, on their way to Paris, where they were to speud their honeymoon. Mr. Trevornoek had informed Flossie of his intention of not setting his foot inside No. 20, South-iane. He had no ohjectiou to perform a father's part in giving Barbara away, as she was making a marriage he highly approved. But beyond that he would not go. He had not forgotten how badly je had been treated—the bad treatment consisting of his having been relieved of the burden of a wifeanddaughters whom ho had never been able or willing to support.

" It isn't a very lively notion of a wedding," said Flossie to tho bride eltGt; " but as you are going to be enormously rich, it doesn't much matter. When I marry, I shall insist upon making a feature of my wedding-day ; but I dare say I shall espouse some wretched pauper, and that we shall have to pinch afterward,"

The 20;h of May arrived, so soon, so terribly soon. Barbara had watched tlio swift days hurry by with a dim idea that sometbmg would happen, cometbing wild and strange, to prevent that hateful marriage. She had steeled herself to tlio issue. She was resolutely bent upon the sacrifice which waß to make lier mother's life secure from adversity. Yet she had a vague fancy that

the sacrifice would be prevented somehow. The stroke of doom would not dscend, George Leland would come hack from India, faithful cod fond as in the first days of theii love, powerful to save her. Wealth would drop down from the ski.-s. Some relative 01 friend unknown would leave her mother a for tuue. She dreamed nightly of soma strange ami ' sudden release. She felt the delicious sense of recovered freedom, and awoke to the grim , reality. The days were slipping by, the days had gone ; this pale grey dawn, Hushed with rose on its eastward edge, was her wedding day. She awoke as early as she had done on that other fatal morning when George Leland sailed from Southampton. Sleep was impossible. There are doomed wretches who can sleep on the eve of their execution, can lie down and take their rest with that hideous end staring them in the face. Barbara was not made of sach stern stuff. She started from her pillow at the first glimmer of dawn, got up and put on her dreßsing-gown, and went over to her little table by the window, to make an end of her past. Her desk, a roomy old mahogany desk, was tilled with George Leland's letters. She had kept them till this final day. Something might happen. So long as that hope remained, were it ever so faint, she had kept those dear evidences of a dead and gone love. To destroy them even now seemed a kind of sacrilege, almost a murder. She handled the letters gently, as if they had been living creatures. She sat waiting for clearer li»ht, that she might read them for the last time. Dear letters, full of tenderness. Lighthearted, happy letters, breathing hope. "Oh my love ! my love .' why did you grow weary of me ?" she cried, in her despair ; " 1 know you loved me once." The sun was high before she had read the last of those fond protestations, which the writer's after-conduct had so strangely belied. Bnt at last there was no exsuse for lingering over those lines any loDger. She lit her taper, and held one of those doomed letters over the flame. Only for a momenK A curious fancy came into her head. She smiled at her own foolishness. The churc'u clock chimed the half hour after six. " There will be time for me to do it," the said to herself. "No one will be g> tting up till after seven. I won't burn his letters. I'll bury them." She wrapped the packet of flimsy letters in a sheet of foolscap, sen'u ! ic in three or four places, and wrote upon it, "G. L.'s letters—May 20, '55 then she put the sealed packet into a sum 1 liu box, and with this box in her hand she ran down to the garden, bare head, d, in her dressing-gown aud slippers. She went t > the end of the garden, to a spot where lilies-of-the-valley grew abundantly in the angle of the crumbling okl ivall, un ler the shadow of a barren Ijg-tree. Here seven years ago she had dug a grave for a beloved canary that had perished untimely, a victim to the treachery of a favourite cat. She remembered the childish tears that had rained upon that innocent grave. And now in the pride of her womanhood she came to'he same spot to bury the memorials of a disappointed love. She fetched a spade from the little summerhouse whero the garden tools were stored in a dark corner, and dug a deep hole between the lilies aud the rugged eld roots of the vine. It was all she could do to find space enough for the grave of her hopes amidst the bulbs that had spread aud multiplied all over the ground. Wheu she had dug deep enough to please her fancy, she knelt down aud dropped the little tin box into its grave, and then tilled in the earth again, and trod it down with her feet. " The lilies will be all growing over the place next year," she said to herself; " but I shall never forget the spot; aud perhaps some day wheu I am an old woman I shall come here and dig up those dear letters aud read them again, wondering at their foolishness. For it sesms to mo that elderly pe iple have a curious knack of forgetting their youth." It was a chilly morning, one of those days of delusive sunshine and east wind common to the treacherous mouth of May. Barbara was chilled to the bone by the time her task was finished. She hurried back to the house, shivering violently, as the clocks were striking seven.

" 1 am glad I did not burn them," she said to herself. "It would have been as bad as cutting off one of my own limbs." " For goodness gracious' sake, where haw you been ?" cried Flossie, sitting up in bed, her twisted locks bristling with hair-pins, like a new Medusa. "I have been gathering the first thcvalley for my wedding bouqucor a answered Barbara, with a hysterical laugh.' " I shall always remember those lilies on my wedding day." She dressed herself a 9 quietly as if being married were the commonest event in life, while Flossie fussed and bustled and protested tearfully that her hair never had been so difficult to do since she was born. " It serves me right for putting it in hairpains, when it has a natural wave," she said. "It was all that stupid Amelia's advice. ' Twist it in and out of an 'air-pin, miss,' she said, 'like I do.' As if she were a model." There was a hurried, breakfast in the garden parlour—scene of all those cozy tea-drinkings of days gone by, which never, never, never could be again. No one ate anything, but cups of tea were drunk feverishly. Mrs. Trevornock was painfully agitated, and looked pale and wan, in her new grey silk gown. She wondered how Mr. T. would behave to her. It was twelve years siuce she had seen him. " We have always written to each other in a friendly tone," she said ; " but it will be awkward meeting him." ISarbara was the quietest of the tlir<.c. Her cheeks were faintly Hushed, her eyes were brighter than they had been for some time. "You never looked lovelier, darling," said her mother, fondly. " That dark purple suits your complexion admirably." The wedding gown was as sombre of hue as it could be without being black. The weddiug bonnet was in no way distinguished from the bonnets of every-day life. "Not a scrap of orango blossom," protested Flossie. "It looks unlucky." Pinned against the bosom of the bride's dresi there was a single lily-of-the-valley. Her own tremulous hands had fastened it there, a token of the spot beneath which htr lover's letters lay buried. The sunny morning had clouded over a little as they drove in a hired carriage to the church by the canal. It was as if May had retrograded to March. Mr. Penruth was waiting for them at the door of the church, in company with Mr. Trevornock and Mr. Maulford, at sight of whom Barbara drew back with a shudder of absolute antipathy. "What business has he here?" she thought. ' 1 Has he come on purpose to remiud mo of that day at Southampton ?" She bad an unreasonable dislike to her father's articled clerk, an unreasonable idea that he was her enemy. Flossie turned up her pert little nose at sight of the clerk, but wai rather glad there was an extra man to admire the waviness of her hair and the perfect lit of her new gown, to say nothing of her bonnet, which had been the study of the last ten days. Mr. T. greeted his wife with a careless "How d'ye do, Flora?" and gave her the tips of his Augers to shake. The settlements had been duly executed. He felt himself a pattern father. What more could the most careful parent do for his child than to get her such a husband as Vyvyan Penruth, or rather such a settlement as Vyvyan Penruth had made ? TUe man himself was a secondary consideration. It was a humdrum wedding. The service was hurried over by a grey-haired curatf, who had grown elderly while he waited for a living that had been promised him when he was a lad at school. He had no idea that he was marrying "this woman" to so much money in the person of "this man." The bond was sealed in the shortest possible time, and Barbara was Mrs. Penruth. "If ho were to rush into the chtirch this instant, rich, triumphant, eager to marry me, it would be no use," she thought, remembering her wild dreams last night. "All is over." ITo lie continued. J