SPLENDID MISERY.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XVII, Issue 5758, 1 May 1880, Page 7

SPLENDID MISERY.

A NOVEL. By the Author o{ " "Lady Audley'a Secret," &c. • CHAPTER XLVII. — {Continued.J RED CLOTH AXD OLIVE LEAVES. There were the two basket-chairs in which she and Flossie had spent so many summer afternoons, reading or working, before Geore Leland's coming, and where, afterward, he and Barbara had sat side by side readitic Byron, or talking of the future that was to"be theirs far »way in the shadow of the Himalayas, building castles and planning a life of impossible happiness. She sank into oai of the chairs, weary with the weight of sadness. He was dying. Flossie had told her what the doctor had said yesterday. His life was now only a question of days and hour.!. He might linger for a week, he might ciie before the night. Nothing more couW. be done to prolong the struggle. The end was inevitable. " So good, so brave, so true !" she thought; "and to-inorrow theve may be no such man as George Leland upen this earth —a memory only, a dear and cheiished name." At thi3 thought the tears came. She gave herself up to a passionate buret of £rief; she fell on her knees upon the grass, and bid her face upon her folded arms in an attitude that looked like prayer. She knew not hew long she had be?n kneeling thus, when a hand lightly touched her shoulder, and looking up, she saw George Leland standing by her side, leaning on his stick.

" Barbara, my love, you must not regret nie," he said, gently. "You do not know •how happy I am ; yes completely happy. To have you here at the last, to know that your husband is staunch and good, and loves you with a worthy love—is not all this enough to make death easy ? Do you think I am 3orry because I have not been allowed to go on living to feebleness and grey hairs, to be lifted on my horse by a couple of troopers, or to have to ask an aide-de-camp which way.my men are facing, because my own old eyes are too blind to see? I have seen veterans commanding armies when it would have been better for themselves and their country they were under the sod. I shall not live to the useless age, Barbara." His eye brightened and his hollow cheek flashed as he talked. Looking at him, she began to wonder if the doctors could be right —if there were not too much life and energy here to be the prey of death. "I am so glad you are well enough to walk in the garden," she said. . '■ I struggle for that every day ; the air and sunlight and flowers do me more good than doctors' stuff. Dear old garden ! Do you remember our moonlight waltzes 1" " I shall never forget them." " And the mawkish ' Prima Donna' ? One of the regimental, bands played that unforgotten waltz one day at a review, and at the first bar I felt as if somebody had stabbed me. The melody brought back the old tune, and you were resting lightly on my arm as we went slowly round upon the grass. . Well, I suppese it is something for a man to be able to say that for two mouths of his life he was utterly happy. Will you come for a atroll round the garden ? May I lean upon your shoulder as I do on Flossie's?" "Pray do."

They walked slowly along the narrow path by the hazels. This part of the garden was white and rosy with apple blossoms, and perfumed with wall-flowers. The bright glad sunshine, the happy look of the flowers, tortured Barbara's heart. It waa if there was gladness everywhere, although he was so soon to die. They came to the corner where the lilies-of-the-valley grew under the fig-tree, whose crinkled leaves were just enfolding. " How well J remember this spot," he said, stopping to take breath, " and your telling me how you buried your canary here under the lilies ! Rave you forgotten ?" "No," she said. "I buried something here afterward, something dearer than my canary, though I was foolish enough to be almost heart-broken when he died." '' A nother favourite bird ?" " Your letters. X kept them till my wedding morning, and then I made np my mind to burn them. But I had not the heart to do it. So I came here at daybreak and dug a grave —dug the grave of my first love. The lilie3 are growing over your letters, George; the letters that once made me so happy, and the last cruel letter that broke my heart." " That cruelty was meant for kindness, Barbara. Yoacan never know the struggle it cost me to writs that letter."

" Well, it changed our fate, that was all. Suppose, instead of doing what you thought your duty, and writing as you did, you had said, 'I am in great trouble. Come and be my wife !' I should have gone out to you by the next steamer, just as I went.to Southampton." "And you would have found me a disgraced man, without a hope of promotion ; a pauper, without a chance of fortune, and you would have had good cause to think me the meanest hound in India." " I would have trusted you against all the world." "Dear love, I was not base enough to profit by such trustfulness ; that was why I wrote as I did, vaguely, so that my letter should not be an appeal to your generosity." They went slowly along by the wall, and the southern border which pretended to grow strawberries, and succeeded admirably in producing grounsel—grounsel with which Flossie waged an intermittent warfare, and which always got the'better of her, for it grew while she was sleeping, and waxed 3trong in every interval of idleness. One circuit of the half-acre garden was now a3 much as George Leland could manage. He was glad to go in and lie down presently, and. then Barbara left him to her sister's care. It was a day full of sadness. Even Mrs. Trevornock's delight in her grandson was damped by her sorrow for that brave spirit passing away. She and Flossie took it in turns to sit with the invalid, while Barbara sat alone in her mother's bedroom with her baby on her lap. She had made her journey from the far western point of England to see I George Leland once more; but she submitted quietly to remain away from him in tiese last sad hours, while others tended aim ana kept him company. She could not t0 watch b y him as Flossie watchea; she could not have so schooled her countenance, ao governed her voice. Her sorrow must hav? burst from her in some Budden passion,- which would have given a new agony to iho dying man. She sat by the open window while the aun went down behind distant spires and chimneys, and the evening shadows crept into the room; eat there thinking of the past and the happy girlish days when she had stood before yonder looking-gla9s decking herself for an evening's pleasure, with her . betrothed —opera, or- play, or concert a alender figure, robed in white, with flowers lather hair, the fond mother waiting upon r "about her, and admiring her all the time; and impatient Flossie standing _ ( ,by imploring to be" hooked or pinzied, and protesting she, would nevjer be * The right of publishing" Splendid Misery" in tbe XorOi island of New Zealand has been purchased by (be proprietors of the New ZealasdJUbram.

ready " when the cab came to fo.fcch them ; and then the lover's resonant voice calling at tin foot of the little staircase. • And he lay dying in the room where tbey two had been so happy together, and she was another man's wife ! - .There was an awful stillness intho house. No one came near her, except Gilmore, wbo brought her a cup of tea, and made the baby a cozy nest on Mrs. Trevornock's bed. " Shall I bring candles, ma'am ?" asked Gilmore, when her little charge bad been hushed and patted and wheedled to sleep. " It's so dismal for you sitting up here alone in the dark." "No, thank you, Gilmore. I'd rather be 1 as I am." So Gilmore courtesied and retired, and Barbara was alone once more. 1 She had her mother's Testament open before her, the large print clearly visible in the gloaming to eyes familiar with the text: "I am the resurrection and the life; he that believeth in Me, though he were dead, yet shall be live." The moon had risen—a pale young moon— above opening bloom and folded leaf; the evening was wearing on toward night, when Flosßie opened the door, and came creeping up to Barbara, her face blotted with tears. " Come," she sobbed ; " mother says he is siuktDg fast. And he .would like to see you once more." Barbara rose and went without a word. The garden window was open wide to the soft moon-lit sky. There was a shaded lamp near the bed on which George Leland lay, and by the dim light Barbara saw the awful change ia his face, the glazing eye, the cold grey hue of the cheek, t'he knelt by the bed, and he stretched out his hands to her feebly, as'if be were groping for something beyond his reach, till one hand rested on her forehead. "Is this Barbara ?" "Yes." " Thank Go ! ! Barbara and England ! I thought I was in the hospital at Lucknow, and that there were black faces round ray bed. To die at home ; to hear your voice at last. That is happiness." I Later, awaking from a brief sleep, he murmured, " Lycurgus. decreed that only the Spartans who had fought for their country were to be buried in red cloth and olive leaver and to have their names inscribed upon their tombs. In that ruHc age valour was virtue." Then, after an interval, in which he lay with half closed-eyes, murmuring strange snatches of speech, sometimes the name of a brother officer—Chamberlain, Seaton, Light—sometimes the word of command to his own men, he lifted himself suddenly from his pillow, opened his eye?, looked at her long and earnestly, and then, extending his wasted arm, drew her to his breast, and kissed her pale lips, murmuring, "This once, love, and for the last time. Dearest, if we see and know those whom we have loved in heaven this is not parting." Shß knelt for a long time by his bed, he lying sometimes in silence, sometimes with intervals of wandering speech, sometimes with gleams of consciousness ; but through all the feeble hand held hers, as if there were comfort in her touch. • And thus, at the stroke of midnight, he passed from a brief interval of troubled sleep to the placid slumber which knows no earthly waking.

EPILOGUE. Ten years have come and gone since George Leland was laid in his last rest in the Somersetshire church-yard, where ht3 mother and father had been buried before him. The Indian Mutiny has become hißtory ; Outram, the Bayard of India, is lying in Westminster Abbey; Clyde, too, is gone, full of years and of honours; Napier is winning new laurels on a strange soil. The world is altered and aged by a decade. Society has grown more artistic, and more artificial- To the oldfashioned port-and-sherry period has succeeded a milder age of hock and claret. Men drink less, women more. The value of a sovereign has diminished by thirty per cent. Everybody worth speaking of is rich. Everybody worth mention has newly furnished his house, and taken to collecting old china. But as in the days of the Commonwealth architecture in Cornwall remained still pretty much what it had been in the reign of Elizabeth, so no w the old house on the moor is slow to follow the caprices of London fashion. Everything at Penruth Place has the same grave and sober air as of old; the same neutral tints, dull greys and faded greens, predominate in the furniture, making an admirable background for the wealth of exquisite flowers with which Barbara Penruth loves to decorate her rooms.

Yet, though the house is grave and grey as of old, there is now within its walls all the life and gladness of a large household and a happy band of light-hearted children. The ten-year-old hsir is not alone in his nursery ; there are two slender blue-eyed girls, with long fair hair, either of whom might have sat for Millais's picture of " My First Sermon." There is a toddling boy baby, unanimously pronounced the very finest thing in babies, an entirely new development of infantine life, and immeasurably superior to' the infant heir about whom so much fuss was made ten years ago. Then there are Mark's two tall lads from Helstone Grammar School, and the eldest son, Jack, home from Oxford for a seemingly interminable vacation which he calls "the Long," a period ostensibly employed in coaching with a tutor,, but the greater part of which is devoted to dogs, horses, and guns. And lastly, there are two fairy-like girls of seven and five years, and one ridiculously chubby boy aged two, who also claim Mark for father. . Who is Mark's second wife and the mother of these new and tender sprouts upon tbe family tree of Penruth ? Who but this neat little matron, who rides to hounds in a short olive-green habit and a tall chimney-pot hat, who is always firdt in the scurry, and who needs no guide to show her the shortest way across country. This fearless rider, this happy little matron, is Flossie, who, after Mark had patiently courted her for a period of between three and four years, during which he bore more snubbing and ridicule than ever a man endured from a sharptongued mistress, finally relented one day; a3 she and Mark were waiting for the hounds in a sheltered corner beside a copse, and promised to make him unutterably happy for the rest of his life.

She has kept her promise nobly : Mark is as happy and as true-hearted as he was once false and miserable. The quarries have prospered with the growing prosperity of the building trade ; and Mark, who is now a partner in the business, has become a richman. He lias built himself a house witli a windy bell-tower on the hill outside Launceatoa, and looks down upon a lower world from brand-newplate-glass windows. Everything in Flossie's house contrasts curiously with the surroundings of her sister. Furniture and ornaments are the essence of newness, and are faintly suggestive of the fancy repository in the Walworth Road. The prismatic hues of much Bohemian glass glorify the drawing-room, where proofs after Landseer stand darkly out against a wbite-and-gold paper, and upon whose carpet all Flora's gems are represented in their gayest coloura. Launceatonmatrons whohavenever envied Barbara her grand old 'iudor house feel the pangs of the covetous when they behold Mrs. Mark Penruth's plate-glass windows aad French china shepherdesses.

And Barbera is happy. Her cup is filled to the brim with domestic joys : the love of little children, who grow dearer to her and fill her life more completely day by day ; the love of her proud and happy mothei, on whose gentle face the shadows o£ time fall so lightly that she is prettier with grey hair than she was when her dark brown tresses showed no streak of silver ; the deep affection of a husband who has won her heart by long years of unchanging fidelity, unselfish devotion. She has these blessings, and knows their worth, and is grateful to the God who. in witholding something, has yet given so mnub- And when memory, awakened by a sound, an-image, a vagrant thought wanders back to the passionate hopes and dreams of her girlhood, she sees the picture of the past in a tender light which is not all sorrow and bitterness. " My hero !" she says to herself sometimes, "I am proud to have loved him, and to have been beloved by him ; proud to remember how he lived and how he died." .He is something in her life still, an everabiding influence; for the dead we have truly loved have their part in our lives to the end. The memory of him is interwoven with the very fabric of her mind. And thus, in tho calm afternoon of a simple domestic life, loving and beloved, Barbara's story closes. Thomas Trevornoek, still familiarly described by Flossie as Mr. T., has gone to his last earthly rest. He died not exactly in the odour of sanctity, bnt at a most convenient time to escape possible involvement in a criminal prosecution, on account of certain artful and. deeply laid schemes in the silvermining line, which same prooess brought] Mr, Maulford's ruddy locks under the shears of the prison barber,- and rcoßfc_ abruptly, pat a full stop or at least a colon, in the shape of seven, years' penal servitude, to that clever gentleman's promising career. In vain did Lewis Maulford's oounsel enlarge upon the

youthful innocence of his client, in vain pourtray with pathetic eloquence the affliction pf a widowed mother, harshly deprived of'the most devoted and dutiful of song. A heartless jury found the prisoner gnilty, and an equally heartless judge pronounced the, sternest sentence which the law allowed!* • Happily for the honour of the Penruths, the junior partner had been the active agent in these fraudulent endeavours to achieve fortune, and Mr. Trevornock's name was not blazoned forth in the public prints, or bandied on the lips of counsel. He may have been innocent of any knowledge of, or participation in, Lewis Maulford's schemes, although- his office had been used by that gentleman as a base of operations. Miss Penruth has taken up her permanent abode in one of the most commanding terraces that overlook Plymouth Hoe. From that altitude, as from a citadel, she surveys a world which is not worthy of her, and provides tea, toast, and other light refreshments, for a select and evangelical few every Tuesday evening at eight. Mrs. Trevornock still retains the cottage at Camberwell, though the greater part of her life is spent at Place. where her grandchildren adore her, and where she is as dear to her daughter's husband and as popular with the entire household as if the name of mother-in-law had never been made a word of fear.

The Camberwell home is a pleasant shelter for Mark and Flossie when they give themselves a fortnight's holiday in Loudon, and go the round of the West End theatres. Barbara and her children sometimes visit there, and sit in the old wicker chairs on the lawn, which seems so small to eyes accustomed to the wide lawns and winding shrubbery walks at Place. But it ia grandmamma's garden, and as such has a certain dignity and distinction in the children's eyes, to say nothing of the greater liberty for mischief which they enjoy here, where there is no stern Scotch gardener to complain of their depredations, or to bewail the bavoc they make. The lilies-of-the-valley bloom and multiply above the spot where Barbara buried • her love-letters, and no "one knows of the broken Btory they cover. In every life, even in that which seems brightest and fairest, there is some such grave where dead hopes and unfulfilled dreams lie buried. THE END.