Splendid Mistery.

Otago Witness, Issue 1461, 15 November 1879, Page 21

Splendid Mistery.

A NOVEL.

BY THE AUTHOR OF "LADY AUDLEVS

drooped, like a flower that has been plucked ruthlessly from its stem. She could neither eat nor sleep, and refused to be comforted. For a little while she tried to keep her sorrowful secret. To all Flossie's speculations and interrogatories she was dumb ; but on the third day, when Mrs Trevornock was sitting by the bed, and the broken-hearted girl lay in those loving arms, her head resting on the maternal breast, the ice broke all at once, and with tears streaming down her pale cheeks, she told her mother about George Leland's letter. "My dearest child," cried her mother, melting into tears, " how could he have been so cruel ? Show me his letter, darling. I can't understand — " " No, mother, the letter is too sacred. I would Bhow you any other letter from him, but not this one." And then Bhe explained falteringly rher lover's dark hints of dishonour and disgrace. " I have written to tell him that no evil judgment of other men could alter my trust in him," she said. " I have told him that nothing but a change in his own feelings could make any difference to me.' Mrs Trevornock looked alarmed. She was so easily impressed, poor soul, so much a creature of the present moment ; and latterly the idea that Barbara's engagement was in some wise a mistake had been gaining strength in her mind. " But, my love," you must not send such a letter as that," she exclaimed. "Youmuatnot marry a disgraced man. What would your Aunt Sophia say ? He must have been doing something dreadful, Some gambling transaction, perhaps — young men in India gamble frightfully —or Borne horrid entanglement with his colonel's wife — young men in India often entangle themselves with their colonels' wives. I have read of such things in novels. Let me write to him, darling. It is a mother's duty to write and ask for an explanation. It is not your place to reply to such a letter. Marry a disgraced man ! No, love, you would • break my heart if you did that — you who were born to occupy a distinguished position. It would be bad enough for you to marry a poor man ; and you know I never quite approved of your engagement."

SECRET," &c.

Chapter XII. Flossie Goes to the Post. FTER the receipt of that letter Barbara fell ill. It was no desperate case of brain fever. She did not become delirious and rave about her cruel lover. But she was sick and sorry. She lay on her bed, in the sunny little bedroom, and

" 0, mother, when you were so fond of George !" " I liked him, darling ; but I never liked the engagement. He would have made a very good husband for Flossie. Let me write to him, dear. Pray don't send that foolish letter."

" I must, dear mother. This is a matter in which I must act for myself. It is life or death with me."

The resolute young face, the thoughtful eyes, beautiful in their intense sadness, gave emphasis to her words. This was no fickle soul, blown whithersoever the weather-cock of fancy pointed, but a nature in which all the seeds of life took deep root.

Here Flossie, who exercised no authority over her legs when she was excited, came tumbling into the room. In one hand she held a big bunch of the loveliest yellow roses and maidenhair fern — both rarer in those days than they are now — in the other a basket of purple grapes, such as one sees in a picture by Lance, or in the shop of the haughty Solomons. " Look at these, Bab," gasped Flossie, throwing the roses on the bed, " and say if pa's client does not improve on acquaintance. And he wants to know if you will be well enough for the last night of the Italian Opera — the Huguenots, at Covent Garden — next Tuesday; and it will be your only chance this year, and I do hope you'll not be such an idiot as to refuse ; and he says he's intensely sorry you are ill ; and he has got on a black frock-coat and grey trousers, and looks quite civilised ; and there's a hansom waiting while he cools his heels in our front parlour ; and will you go down and see him ma ?"

" I must change my gown first," said Mrs Trevornock, looking down at the well-worn garments in which she had been assisting the maid in her morning's housework ; for that little house in South lane was only kept the pink of perfection by means of much labour from mistress as well as maid. ' ' What shall I say to him, Barbara dear ?"

"Anything you like, mother, as long as you don't accept his Opera-tickets for me."

"What?" cried Flossie, lifting up her eyebrows till they almost touched the roots of her hair, "do you mean to say you don't want to hear the Huguenots, with the new soprano as Valentina ?" " I should dearly love to hear her if I could go to the Opera with people I like — you and mother alone, for instance. But I am not going to the Opera with Mr Penruth."

"Hedosen't ask you to do anything of the kind. He will only drop into your box."

" And stay there all the evening, as he did at the Haymarket. It is too dear a price to pay for the enjoyment of a play. Please tell him that I am not well enough to go to theatres, and that if I were I shouldn't care about them."

".But,/ my pet," pleaded her mother, "you really ought not to distract your mind. If you give yourself up to grief in this way you will get seriously ill."

The girl's unexpressed thought was, " That would not hurt me. I wish I could die.

. " I call it absolute folly," cried Flossie with an aggrieved air, when her mother had gone to change her gown. " Here is a gentleman rolling in money, the dearest wish of whose life is to provide us with amusement ; and he is kept waiting; in our front parlour in a most inhuman manner — with a cab at ever so much a minute standing at the gate — while a disagreeable young woman turns up her nose at his polite attentious and blights all our chances of enjoyment. I call it disgusting selfishness."

" I don't want to prevent mama and you accepting his Opera-tickets, Flossie. You can go to the Opera without me."

"Of course we can. But when Mr Penruth finds one member of a small family persistently disagreeable, he will naturally leave off showing kindness to the other members. How am Ito thank him for those divine roses, and those delicious grapes? They were brought specially for you. " " Say anything you think proper."

" Then I shall tell him that you were longing for purple grapes and yellow roses, add that his kindness has anticipated the desire of your soul," cried Flossie, dancing out of the room almost as wildly as she had tumbled into it.

The next day was the day for the Indian post, and Barbara was still far too ill to go out and post her letter with her own hands, as she would fain have done. She got up, and experimentalised with herself by a walk across the room, and found herself bo weak and tremulous that to dream of an excursion to the post-office would have been sheer foolishness. She must employ Flossie in this all-important mission — a frail skiff in which to trust her fortune ; but there was no other. It was Saturday, and for Mrs Trevornock to leave her house on the last day of the week was a thing unknown. That excellent housekeeper, indeed, was at all times, more or less, a slave to domesticity, and was loth to entrust her ten- roomed dwelling to the doubtful custody of a servant.

" You'll take the greatest care of my letter, won't you, darling ? " asked Barbara, when she had put the sacred charge into Flossie's hands.

" Goodness gracious, child ! Yes, of course. You know lam the very essence of carefulness, and the only woman of business in this house," cried Flossie, admiring her fresh young face as she tied her bonnet-strings before the lookingglass,

Then Flossie danced down stairs to the kitchen to get her mother's commissions to the Walworth road, which the day being Saturday, were more numerous than usual.

Moßsie was to look in at the butcher's, and make a special request that the Sunday joint should not be too fat, or weigh more than seven pounds at the uttermost. She was to call at the butterman's, and order half a pound of best fresh, and sixpennyworth of breakfast eggs. She was to ask the baker to send a particular kind of fancy loaf for Sunday's consumption. She was to buy so many small articles at the grocer's, and bring them home in her reticule, as that grocer's errand-boy was a creature as tricky and uncertain as Robin Goodfellow. She was to order a pound of composites at the oil-and-colour shop, and she was to call at the circulating library for the first volume of Bulwer's last novel, to comfort Barbara in her sickness.

"Hadn't you better write the things down? suggested Mrs Trevornock, who was making pastry at the little table by the vine- wreathed window. " Its a good deal for you to remember." " Providence has blessed me with a tolerable memory," said Flossie. " Now, ma, the sinews of war, please. Look sharp ! I've a letter to post for Bab, and it must be in by four o'clock." "0," Baid Mrs Trevornock, looking grave, aa she fumbled with a floury hand in hor pocket for the money, " her Indian letter ?" "Yes, her Indian letter." Mrs Trevornock Bighed as she counted her little stock of silver.

"I hope Barbara is not going to be poor all her days, like me," she said. "One's life seems such a long journey when one has to calculate the cost of every step. I should like my darling to marry a rich man." "So should I," said Flossie; "if it were only for the sake of poor me." Flossie on her perambulations on a fine summer afternoon was a creature to observe and study, a being of the butterfly species altogether, yet with a certain Btratum of Bound sense under her butterfly frivolity. The fact that she had business on hand was never absent from her mind ; yet she tried to get as much amusement as she could on her way. She looked her prettiest on these occasions — her bonnet neatly put on, her bonnetstrings a picture ; her gloves, in their small way, perfection ; her muslin gown brightened by a ribbon just where a dash of colour was needed. People looked at her and admired her as she went by ; but no one ever doubted that she was a young lady. The days of that half-world which lies between respectability and the disreputable had not yet come. Powder and paint and darkened eyebrows were the livery of a race outside the pale. There was no compromise between virtue and vice in that simpler epoch.

It was astonishing what a large amount of amusement Flossie, was able to derive from the contemplation of shop-windows which she saw almost every day. Looking at shops with Flossie was almost a passion. She stopped to gaze into the most insignificant window. The scentbottleß and the pomatum-pots and packets of courtplaster at the chemist's ; the Berlin wool patterns at the fancy shop ; the toys, the trumpery, the sham jewellery, Brummagem brooches, tinsel bracelets, all interested her. But these were as nothing compared with a display of bonnets, gloves, ribbons, parasols, and French flowers at elevenpence threefarthings the spray. Over these she gloated for ten minutes at a stretch, trying to make up her mind what she would buy when she had half a sovereign to spend for herself. To-day she wa3 in a particular volatile humor. Mr Penruth's theatre tickets had demoralised her. She was thinking of Robson ; she was forecasting the bliss of an Italian opera. She found it harder than usual to fix her mind on butchers-meat and grocery. She fluttered past the butcher's shop, on the wings of her muslin frock, forgetting that she had a message to deliver there, and fluttered back again conscious-striken from the other side of Addington square. She had not her usual grasp of the situation at the grocer's, and blundered about the quarter of a pound of orange pekoe which was to perfume the family teapot. Her ideas were disarranged. Slate- quarries and old Cornish mansions a thousand feet above the sea-level mixed themselves with the daily humdrum of of fancy bread and lump-sugar. She found herself speculating upon what might have been her fate had Mr Penruth been attracted by her charms instead of Barbara's ; whether she could ever have brought herself to look over his awkwardness of gait and figure, and to accept the mansion and the quarries.

She had decided that these drawbacks were not unconquerable, as she was already in imagination reigning over the Cornish mansion and riding thoroughbred horses over the Cornish moors, when she pulled herself up suddenly at the postoffice, and came dowa with a tremendous drop from the airy realms of fancy to the solid world of fact.

" Gracious ! " she exclaimed inwardly, " Barbara's letter ! "

Barbara's letter ! Where was Barbara's letter 1 The joy or woe of two lives hangs upon that sheet of flimsy paper. The fate of two strong and steadfast souls has beeen trusted to this butterfly creature, and the result is ruin.

Flossie searched her reticule and turned her pocket inside out in vain. The letter was gone. She turned hastily and hurried back ever so far, perusing the pavement with eyes. In vain. She

asked the most unlikely people if they had picked up a letter. She looked down the gratings before her favourite shopwindows ; Bhe weDt back to the baker's, the butcher's, the grocer's, and fluttered those respectable tradespeople by her inquiries ; but there was no trace of Barbara's letter. That message of faithful love, that fond despairing appeal to a lover's heart, had disappeared as completely from Camberwell as if the winds of heaven had taken pity upon the writer and wafted it away to the Indian seas. "What shall I do?" thought Flossie, standing on the pavement, staring wildly round in an agony of remorse. " Barbara would never forgive me, if she knew how careless I have been."

But Barbara ought to know, and Barbara could easily write another letter, argued reason ; and Flossie went slowly homeward, framing the apologetic speech in which she should confess her sin.

She felt deeply humiliated. She, who had been wont to assert herself as the one businesslike individual in the family, to be thus convicted of dire carelessness ! Where henceforward would be her pretentions 1 She had yielded the palm to Barbara in beauty and intellectual, acquirement, but she had asserted herself always as the sole proprietor of practical wisdom. She walked slowly into the sunshiny kitchen where Mrs Trevornock was setting the teatray, while Amelia hearthstoned the back premises with a view to all-pervading spotlessness on the coming Sabbath — and sank exhausted into a chair by the open window, where the vine, which never in its life had grown an eatable grape, pushed in its leaves and tendrils so prettily. She had a guilty look, which struck her mother at once.

"I hope you haven't forgotten anything," cried Mrs Trevornock, as she warmed the teapot. "No, ma dear." " You called at the butcher's V "Yes.", " And you have brought the pekoe and a teacake for Barbara's tea V

" Yes ; here's the teaoake. I'll toaat it if you like." "No; you look tired, and you're as pale as a ghost. Was it very warm out of doors?"

"It was — for me. It's no use trying to hide it, mother," cried Flossie, in a gush of candour ; " I've done something dreadful."

"You've lost my change !" exclaimed, Mrs Trevornock, horror-stricken. " Change, indeed !" cried Flossie ; "why there was only sevenpence halfpenny left after I had paid for everything. 1 It's much worse than that."

" You horrid girl, how you are torturing me !" said the aggrieved mother, letting the kettle boil over unheeded, to the detriment of a newly whitened hearth. " For mercy's sake speak out, and have done with it !"

" I've lost Barbara's Indian letter."

"Lost it T "Yes, I must have dropped it into an area, or let it fly away into the clouds. It's gone."

Mrs Trevornock looked fully alive to the enormity of the offence, but she answered not a word. Profound thoughtfulness took possession of her. She had just enough consciousness of common things to snatch up the kettle, which was now making a Great Geyser of itself, and to fill the teapob ; but, for the rest, her thoughts were far away. "You might say something sympathetic, ma," observed Flossie, aggrieved by this silence ; "I shall have a nica scolding from Bab. Her inmost thoughts bandied up and down the Walworth road and circulated all over Oamberwell. I'm sure I don't know however I shall bring myself to tell her."

Mrs Trevornock sat down, and looked at her daughter doubtfully.

" Suppose you were not to say anything about it, Flora V she said.

" Why, then poor George Leland would be languishing for a letter — "

"Flossie," interrupted Mrs Trevornock solemnly, " there are reasons why it would be much better for Barbara that Oaptain Leland never got that letter. I don't mind trusting you, for you have plenty of common sense, and. know how to look at things in a practical way."

"Well, ma, I am not ridiculously romantic, like Bab ; and though I am only eighteen, I have some knowledge of the world."

" An enormous amount for so young a girl," said Mrs Trevornock approvingly. " Well, dear, I am sorry to say poor Captain Leland, who was always so gen-tleman-like and so kind, and whom I really loved, has got into some dreadful trouble — whether it is gambling or something worse, I don't know, and Heaven only knows how it may end — and he has had the proper feeling to write to Barbara, releasing her from her engagement — "

"Very nice in him," said Flossie. "And this is why Barbara has been breaking her heart V

" Yes, poor darling child ! And in spite of all I could say, she has been foolish enough to write and tell him that nothing can change her love for him, and that she will be true to him through evil report and good report — "

" And that is the letter I have managed to lose !" cried Flossie, jumping up, and executing her favourite pas seul round the kitchen. " Why, what a clever girl lam ! I really thought I had been stupid for once in my life, and behold, my stupidity was a stroke of genius ! Give me your benediction, mother. Bab Bhall marry the slate-quarries, and you and J

will walk in silk attire all the rest of on t lives."

"Flora, Flora, how wild you are I" ' " I am only pleased with my unconscious ingenuity. To think that I, who never lost a letter before in my life; Bhould lose just that one ! I shan't say one word to Bab. The captain will think she accepts his release, and he will consider the engagement at an end. And Barbara will be Mrs Penruth, and one of the richest women in Cornwall; and, all my doing ! And now let me toast me teacake, and get her tray ready., Poojr dear pet, she shall have a nice tea !*' ;) - And the mother and sister, who were dealing with Barbara's fate as if they were wiser than Providence, and knew better how to regulate life trad its chances, thought they were making aonfe amends for their duplicity by small attentions and trivial tendernesses, such as are given to a sick child as atone.ment for weary hours and nauaeoujs medicines. ■',-

Chapter XIV.

Silence. ' ' Her letter on its way to India, as stfe supposed, Barbara began to, count the days which must pass before she could receive her lover's reply ; and the fond expectation of this answer, which would doubtless reward her faith by the assurance of George Leland's unchanged and unchangeable love, cheered and comforted her. She revived and bloomed again, like a flower which has bent to the storm, and seemed almost the old, bright, happy Barbara in the small family circle' j whereat her mother and Flossie concluded that the barb had never gone deep into her heart, that she had liked Captain Leland only because he was at hand to be liked, and that she had a stock of affection ready to be transferred to a more worthy object. . . „' ' A blank and monotonous tranquility characterised the period of falling, leaves and fading flowers in South , lane. i'THa angular Cornishman had gone b»ck r to his moor and his slate-quarries, disgusted' By Barbara's incivility, no doubt, as Flossie remarked complainingly on several occasions. '",*■ ' ' "The very first influential friend* we ever had," grumbled the damsel, "and Bab must needs make herself disagreeable to him. A man who could get endless orders for the theatres." '"','' '\J- Ifi- " I feel convinced that he has no. more influence at the theatres than you have, Flossie," protested Barbara.-, " He bought all those tickets." " ' ' ' ' , '•'"*■ " All the more to his credit jl lie' did. It proves that he has a generous disposition, and that he ought to be cultivated. Yet you must needs snub him shamefully. And now he has gone back to Cornwall, and we shall never see him again." ',L, L

"I devoutly hope we sha'n't," said Bab. _ But in this hope Barbara was disappointed, as in that fonder, dearer hope of a speedy reply from her lover. ' ' '

The year waned ; the leafy groves of Camberwe.Ur.grew .bleak and bare ; the friendly muflm-man> loomed through the mists of afternoon; the yellow gaßlight flared against a background of brown fog, and Mrs Trevornock's parlours put on their cosy winter aspect. The' sofa was wheeled to the fireside ; the round table drawn nearer the hearth ; the wide French window shrouded with warm ciirtains; and a sense of homeliness and comfort and love and union grew stronger with the lengthening of the winter nights, since darkness and the shutting out of the external world seemed to draw mother and daughters, and even the faithful and melodious serving-maid, nearer together. Yet there "was a discordant note 'in their music. Barbara was not herself ; Barbara, bravely though she bore her trouble, was evidently unhappy. No answer had come to her letter — that frank and generous letter, in which she had/ as it were, flung herself into her lover's arms, thrown herself almost at his feet, setting at naught the world and t!he world's good word for his Bake. Thiere had been plenty of time for his reply, but he had not answered her. Barbara accepted his silence as the admission' of his inconstancy. His heart had gone from her. It ' would have been useless, painful perhaps, for him to reply to her letter. What could he say ? "My dear, you are very generous, and I thank you for the assurance of your love. Unhappily I have fallen in love with some cine else, and am only embarrassed by your amiable constancy." .No, it was better for him to leave her foolish letter unanswered, Bince he could say nothing which would not be more or less discreditable.

So while he was the real offender, her shame and remorse were as profound as if the sin had been hers. She despised herself for having written that letter. She ought to have accepted the annulment of her engagement without a word. He had wished to be free, and he had told her so. Her place was to hive bowed to his decision. All those fine 1 phrases in which he had enveloped the one plain fact of his inconstancy meant nothing, and Bhe ought to have so understood them.

" I was very foolish ; I knew so little of the world," she told herself, in -deep abasement. " And he seemed so fond of me ; we were so happy. I thought he loved me as intensely as I loved him. How could I tell that his love would last such a short time 1 How pale he was that day on the ship, when he held m 3 to his heart as if he could not part with me ! His eyes had a despairing look. If that was not love, true faithful love— o God, was it only seeming 1 Can he hold an,

Other woman to his heart, look into other eyes, and in one short year — " These were Barbara's thoughts in many a solitary walk up and down the narrow gravel path in ' the bare wintry garden. She liked tote alone with her trouble, and had taken to avoiding Flossie's society. , She had to fight with her grief, and .conquer it/ if she' could/ She had abandoned'all hope of a reply to her letter. .There could be no' delay in such a matter. A "letter of that' kind must be anBwered at once, or not at all. She made up her' mind that all was ended between her and George L'eland. If they were eyer to meet again, it would be as strangers. They would pass each other in the . street, perhaps, ' without a word, "with only one swift glance of horrified recognition, and then carefully averted eyes. "O, my love, I have loved you so ! I thought you so entirely my own !" she said to herself. "I thought we were to live and die together, and lie side by side in the grave. - „And how it is all over and ended, and you look back,' perhaps, and , wonder how you could ever have liked

we. , , Mrs Trevdrnock and Flossie were more than usually affectionate and considerate 'in their treatment of Barbara, but neither dared .to intrude upon her grief. Flossie affected, an abnormal gaiety, and made occasional sprightly allusions to the man <iji Cornwall, his estates; and his opera 'tickets, and his evident .admiration of Barbara,; b'ufy these, being received by her, Sister w/ith an icy coldness, she. was not encouraged to enlarge upon the theme. ,' mother nor daughter breathed Captain, Leland's name. They knew they , had done, wrong, yet they hugged themselves , in- the belief ' that they had t been guilty of a yery small evil in order to bring 'about averylarge'good. ' Barbara's ,pajl|d ( cjiee^s ; and heavy eyes were an ever-: 'pres^nii. Reproach, but her' cheek might ; fyave be,en as.pale r anci hjer eye as dull if Jhjߣ leitter had been 1 duly posted : for who trouble the captain's reply nave brpugnt her ? ' And to sanction her' marriage with a, disgraced man' 'would Have been to doom her to pale and careworn looks .for the rest of r'Eer.'life^ 'Desperate ills niiist have des-; felt ]|ffi^jStie ( done, ; h'er duty as a mother "in "concealing' the loap, of theletterl j _^^Touth,,and^healtli'are possessions not & eaouy r squandered. Before . the winter^ J^^^ajfiOyer began 'to recover,? p'tiysicaily, froiri 'the bid w^ that had fallen' fHO, heavily, on. heart and mind. She had * n^t. '.ijeaße'd . io grieve in,silence ; she was "jnot leßVunJiappy ; but, the bloom came .b^olc'to ne'r.cneek and the lustre to her /eye.' She .was more like the old Barbara ( in'that pre-'Adamite period of life before .- the idea of a partial boarder entered Mrs "^Trevorrio'ck's mind. She wa3 able td tFlosßie'st FlosBie's r pertness ; she was lov"'ing 'and companionable as" of old with "mother and Bister. ', i (| Peace was restored to the family circle. 1 ' , .•, {To le continued. — Commenced in No. 1452.)