LITERATURE.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 5188, 19 December 1884, Page 3

LITERATURE.

» LADY MARTLNGDALE'S DEFEAT. (Literary-Gazette.) (Concluded.) The young cadet opened the room door and went in, closing it softly behind him. The earl was lying far back in the downy recesses of his easy chair with his feet on an ottoman almost on a level with tho chair. He had come to something racy and very French in M. Zola, and was wagging his old head, and winking his old eyes, as he chuckled and sniggered over the doubtful page. It was getting late in the afternoon, but a long pencil of sunlight straggled into those chambers, "and it iell full on the face of the young cadet as he stood, still and silent as a statue, some six paces within tho room. Then the earl looked off M. Zoia, aud horizontally saw an intruder. "Who the dcv " Then his mouth opened, and a death-like paleness came over his rigid features. The great Earl of Bracebridge, X.C.8., Ac, &c., at that moment looked as he might Tee supposed to look when consigned to the family vault of the Bracebridges. The young cadet made another step forward. The earl held up both hia hands, as though to ward him off. " Father ! " said the young cadet. Then the earl struggled to his feet, and'the veins on his forehead stood out sharp and blue as i his face flushed with rage.. "Go— go— . ; go !" " Father !" said the r ,/ung cadet. "Go. Not ii.ijiher word. Vu — you look too like you; aiother." The earl grappled at the air &* though it would afford him some tangil .•!••} support, and then he fell back insensible. The young cadet rushed ! forward and supported him in his vigorous ; arms. "Willis!" ."Yes, my lord. Dor/i Ibe alarmed, my lord. He has been like | this before. Thank Heaven no worse has I come of it. I know what to do if your lordship will hold him up and take off his cravat." Willis did know what to do/ and in a few minutes, with a deep sigh, the earl looked vp — looked up into the face of his bnly son, Lord Felton. " What is it ?" he said, faintly. Lord Felton, as we may now call him, motioned to Willis to leave, and then he spoke. " You have been ill, sir. And now that you are better,permitme to say why, after what has passed between us, I trouble you with this visit, which will probably be the last. Will you read this letter, sir ?" "No ; why write to me ?" "It is not I. The letter is to me. Read it, sir, and then I will say that which I came to say." The old earl took the letter; but his hands shook, and a mist was before hie eyes. He could not read Lady Martingdale's epistle. He nearly tore it in Me agitation." " Read it," he said j " read it." Then while the earl turned away his face, and tried to subdue the tremor that shock his frame, Lord Felton read Lady Marcin^dale's letter. " You hear, sir." " I hear." The old earl looked, but not into the ingenuous eyes of hia son. Anywhere be looted but there — to the ceiling, to the wall beyond, to the window whence came that scintillation of evening light, and finally to a mirror, which reflected only the profile of the young man. "Go away! " " Sir ? " "It is enough," yelled the earl ; " leave me. You sided with your mother. You took your choice, and I have never wished to look upon your face again. It was war— war — war ! " The youcg lord clasped his hands, and there whs an imploring cadence in his voico as le appealed to that rigid heart as he would not have appealed to mortal man. " Father, father ! Oh, bethink you ! Am I not yo :r son? Is it wise, is it good that wo :,-vo Bhould stand apait? Father, let the part. be but as a dreau: — ' let tho doad past Vaiy its dead.' Say but one word of tenderne-ey, o»e word of regret that the past has be?a

what it ha 3 been ! Oh, father, are you ' immortal, that you cast from you human love and the higher hopes that make that love divine — my mother ? " " No," shrieked the earl, " name her not. She — Bhe made my name a by-word and a reproach." " She did not, sir. She rescued her own namo from contagion." The earl looked about him. Wa3 it for some weapon ? He tried to speak, but in the redundant words of ■ his passion he found none that at once could satisfy the swelling rage of his heart. Then the young man bowed and said something, but in so low a tonß that it scarcely fell on the still air. It waa but a prayer, and no doubt it winged its waj where such words are garnered up for all time. Then, he turned and paced slowly to the door. Now a strange thing happened. In a slight recess of the room hung a p:rtrait. It was fair enough in a cor bain style of beauty, bold and forward — *i".o portrait of a Minnie something, or a B„'.la, or Cora — it.matters cot what fancy name the fallen angel called herself. You may see her photograph in the Regent street shop windows, and the Earl had a life-size portrait of her, and it hung in the recess — "hung there by "Willis, who had been fiercely ordered by the Earl so to hang it that he nri<*ht gaze upon the toy of the moment, that cost him three thousand a year — three thousand a year only for the privilege of being laughed at behind his back. But another and long anterior portrait had hung in that recess, and "Willis, with something of a superstitious reverence, dared not touch it, so he compromised the matter by hanging the abandoned seraph over the other. And* now when young Lord Felton reached the door of the room, Willis barred his exit. The old valet's face was flushed, and there was a loot in. his eyes such as had not been there for many a long year. " Stop," he shouted. The earl looked ,~ aghast. " Stop ! Before we go — and we are both going, my lord — you shall see her once more, and you shall see this." "Willis tore down the portrait of the lost Peri, dashed it to the floor, and trampled it under his teei. Behind it, like Bunshine through a cloud rift, appeared an indubitable " Lawrence" — one of those fair, dainty portraits with which the great master had with his own hand only adorned the canvas con amore. Young Lord Felton clasped his hands, and the tears welled from his eyes. "My mother, my mother, as she was before grief and despair had laid their icy hands upon her youthful beauty; mother! mother!" "Come," said "Willis; "the — the plate you will find all tight, my lord— all right." They both moved towards the door, almost arm in arm, for the old valet had clasped the young- lord in almost an embrace. He had known him from his infancy, you see. The trail of the serpent may be over a human heart, but its sickly influence must yet leave some untouched portion. There came now that awful feeling of abandonment over the spirit of - the earl. With a rush as of an avalanche memory flew back to the comparatively innocent pa3t. He tottered to his feet. A sob— the first that had ever welled np from that old corrupt heart — came from his lips. "My — my boy ! My own boy ;" Another moment, and he was in the arms of his son, and Willis seemed to ba "executing a kind of war-dance around the pair, then he rushed off to his pantry and set to crying as though for a wager. That evening, not above an hour later than these events, two elderly gentlemen might have been seen with their heads close together in one of the bay windows of the United Service Club. The name of one was Sir Eupert Martingdale and the other the Earl of Bracebridge ; and en that eventful evening the following letter waa sent to Lady Martingdale : — " The Albany, July 4, 1&51. "The Earl of Bracebridge presents his compliments to Lady Martingdale, and can scarcely find words in which to express his pleasure at the prospect of an alliance fcetvreen the Bracebridge peerage and the Martingdale baronetcy." Lady Martingdale was delighted. She flew with this letter in hoy hand to Sh"Rupert's room, where she was rather surprised to find Florence the picture of good spirits, and Sir Eupert himself 'actually laughing. She flung the letter almost at Sir Eupert, who read it carelessly. " Oh ! jes, my dear," he said, " I have seen' the earl, aad he is anxious that the marrikge should take place this day week — by special license, of course — at St George's." "Oh!" "And Flo is quite willing." '"'" No, I ain't," said Flo : 'Hmt if everybody says it is to be, why I suppose it must." Lady Martingdale looked suspicious. "What did this ready acquiesoence mean? "Whence came these good spirits s>i suddenly? And yet had she not the earl's letter in reply to hers ? "What, then, could be wrong ? And yet she did not feel quite happy. There was a something in this sudden conversion of everybody to her tps.j of thinking that she could not understand. She made up her mind to see the earl, and she did j the earl assured her that everything was just as it should be. "Lady Martingdale was satisfied and serene. The auspicious day duly arrived, and Hanover square was in a flutter at the marriage in high life, whic.i was, as the reporter of the Morning Pcs ' said, on the tapis. Carriages with their emblazoned panels'dashed to the church with a reckless joviality. Flo — our dear Flo — had six bridesmaids all in pearl-coloured satin, and not one of them had seen ten years of age — six cherubs all smiles and dimples. The Earl of Bracebridge wore his stars and orders, and Sir Eupert appeared in his full dreF3 as a major-general. But Lady Martingdale — oh ! she was a veritable vision of crimson satin and lace and diamonds. The beadle of St George's wm ao " taken aback" at her magnificence that he nearly fell down when he saw her get out of the carriage, and had to send a small boy for a quartern of something to recorar him. And now at the altar rails stood the illustrious party and the bishop. They had retained a bishop, and the two clergymen who were to assist him were ready. Lady Martingdale was happy. She smiled at the earl, and the earl smiled at her, and the^. she tottered slightly as the earl stepped back a pace and a young man in plain morning dress stepped forward. "Good heavens! Hubbaboo!" " Hu3h ! madame, if yon please," said one of the assisting clergymen. The ceremony proceeded, and in exactly eleven minutes and three-quarters young Lord Felton and Florence were man and wife. Sir Eupert gave away his child with tears ia his eyes, but they were happy tears. The earl stood best man, and all that could be desired for his son. Then, Lady Martingdale shrieked — * actually shrieked in the church ! She had been too utterly confounded to interrupt the ceremony during those eleven minutes and three quarters, but now, regardless of the roof that covered her, .-he shrieked. •"•' Dear me ! " said the bishop, as he went into the vestry, " this is very shocking ; who is that dreadful woman ? " " Send for the beadle," said one of the assistant clergy. " No, no ! " said Sir Eupert ; " she is Lady Martingdale." He was too just and chivalrous to desert her in such an extremity. "Leddy what?" exclaimed a voice in a most unmistakable Munster brogue, ax.d the beadle, in full costume excepting his cocked hat, pushed hi 3 bia-ly f M-ni through the throng of spectators. * '•' Leddy what, did ye say ? By the piper that played before Moses, if she isn't Biddy O'Flannagan, me lawful wife, I'm & Eoo3hian ! " " Murder and blazes ! " said Lady Martingdale, " it' 3 Teddy himself !" " An' no other, Biddy." A strange light came into the eyes of Sir Eupert, and he- drew a long breath of exquisite relief. -_ "What is the meaning of all this?" he aiked. "The maning is clear, sir," replied the beadle, " this is me own Biddy, 1 *nd I'm her Teddy." *' 7?->t you* krere killed in the Crimea:'* •_ -:3ped Lady Martingdale. "True for >. a Biddy; I v.ms kilt entirely, but come to life ugain in tho hospital at Gallipoli, and they made mt- the beetle of St George's — praise be to glory." Lady Martingdale, nee Biddy b'Flrjmigan, and by her marriage with Sergeant Teddy O'Rourie.. of the 52nd Eegimcnt, Sirs O'Eourte, fainted in the capacious arms of the beadle. * * Lord and Lady Felton, with the Conn teas c? Bracebridge, reside at Felton Court, tacir Hampshire seat. The old earl tot-t-.-red about the West End of London for ;-._..-,ther rear, °._3 t~r.es Willis found him {

dead in his chair, opposite the portrait of his wife, at the Albany, Lord Felton, of course, Hucceeding to the title. Sir Eupert made the O'Eourkes an allowance of .£l5O a year, and passes his time happily between "Felton Court and Martingdale Towers.