LITERATURE.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 6239, 16 May 1888, Page 1

LITERATURE.

A LUCKY EARTHQUAKE.

(The World.) For more than half a century, Georgina Countess of Gaddaway had been one of the ornaments of English sooiety. The early days ol the fourth William saw her ft bride, a reigning beauty. The Victorian Jubilee, thanks to the progress made by those artistes who study the preservation and decoration of the human form divine, beheld her apparently not the worse for wear. But then it must be recollected that the memories of those who remembered her as a bride had grown somewhat hazy. In any case, if not exactly a thing of beauty (the present Earl'e wife called her an old mummy), Lady G. was certainly a joy for ever. She was full of spirits, even to giddiness, and the presence of " Fluffy," as her friends called her, was eagerly sought for at London dinner-tables and country-house gatherings. Lady Gaddaway had survived her husband by a longer lapße of years than she cared to enumerate. She was, undoubtedly, an old lady, but wonderfully well preserved. Of all her youthful passions she retained but two : her love of society, and her hatred of some of her connections, principally the wife of the present Earl, whose baptismal name was Maria, but who. before her marriage, had been better known as Baby Briggß, of the Nudity Theatre. Thi3 latter, Georgina Lady Gaddaway hated with all the concentrated venom of a long life spent in a society not remarkable for its charity. Not that "Fluffy" was a particularly spiteful old lady, but she could not forgive the present Counteßß hex extreme youth. _ That is a fault a woman never pardons in another. Perhaps it was this one good fiery hatred combined with the one great love of her life, which kept Lady Gaddaway's blood stirring and active, and allowed her to rattle about all over Europe and the British Isles, from one social entertainment to another, always up to everything and ready for everything. Her horizons had changed. Grandchildren occupied the place of her hosts of fifty years ago , but, like the Brook or the Wandering Jbtv; Lady Gaddaway went on for ever. The Btare of preservation of Edmund About's colonel with the broken ear was nothing to hers, after an even longer period. Next— after a succession of idolised pugdogs, who died regularly of apoplexy, were wildly bemourned, and then replaced the following week— Lady Gaddaway loved her nephew, Lord Glenarragh. He was really her great-nephew, but nobody except Debrett dare call him so to Lady Gaddaway. She loved him for hia good lookß, his wildness, and hia fun ; he had boon able to wheedle money out of her ever since he was in kniokerbockers. Even in the days of the Kilkenny cats the Glenarragh barony had been a poor one. In less remote times, thanks to Mr Parnell and the Land League, its financial position had not improved. Bub for his aunt's help, Glenarragh would not have known how to get along at all. " It was an open secret that he was to be the heir of her own property, and to the savings she had made out of the handsome jointure charged on the Gaddaway estate, over which three Buccesßive Earls had grumbled in vain. Now, if there was a point on which Lady Gaddaway was a shade behind the age, it was in regard to the modern culte of plutocracy. . She liked money well enough, but she hated it new. The Baby Briggs business had given her a horror of mesalliances. There! oreallheracquaintances , at Cannes, whither she had flitted in February, like everyone else who could getaway, were amazed to find she had taken up the Fotiphar Higgs. But the astute old lady knew what she was about. She had discovered the Higgs, an unknown mine of wealth, hovering aimlessly enough along the Eiviera, fresh from their native wilds of Buffalo. Lady Gaddaway, having made surest the wealth bequeathed by the late Mr Fotiphar Hfggs to hiß only daughter, promptly proceeded to exploiter , them. "I'm very much obliged to you, my dear Duchess," said "Fluffy," shaking her fuzzy front at that lady, as Bhe bade her good-night. The Duchess' great ball at her Cannes villa would not be over for many hours to come, but Lady Gaddaway couldn't keep the houra she once did. •Tm very much obliged to you for having had them to-night. The girl's very handsome, and she'll do very nicely for Glenarragh." But Bhe wouldn't have been quite so Bure of it if she could have seen her dear nephew at that moment. It was the night of the Hunt Ball at Snaffleborongh. That great-function was the last of three dances which were wont annually to convulse Wesßex society over a period of about ten days. Lord GJenarragh had been Btaying at a houße near for all three, and had made such good use of his time that he had fallen in love with, and actually proposed to, the youngest and loveliest of the five daughters of a local squire, who was as hard hit by the agricultural depression as he (Glenarragh) was by the Land League. The lovers were sitting out in a draughty passage of the Corn Exchange, where the Hunt Ball was held, watching tho sea of pink coats and white dresses surging beyond the doorway. " And must you really go ? " Bhe was asking. " I don't see how I can get out of it. You don't know "what my aunt is. She's evidently set her heart on my coming to her for the Shrove Tuesday ball." "Will it be Buoh a good one— better thanthiaP" " I don't know anything about it, or who gives it, and I don't want to. I shall just hate it." "But perhaps you'll meet someone you 11 think nice f" (archly.) But thia latter suggestion Glenarragh promptly and satisfactorily»refuted. Three days later the* train de luxe had borne him southwards to meet Lady Gaddaway at Nice, in time for the last day of the Carnival saturnalia. " Fluffy " was in great spirits. Eoyalty, who had run down for hiß annual lark, had been most affable to her, laughing enormously a"t one or twd stories the old lady had collected for his especial benefit. Her nephew was hardly in such good form. He suffered himself to be dragged like a lamb to the slaughter to the Princess de Plafond's ball, and all unsuspiciously danced with the fair Higgs. Lady Gaddaway liked her nephew to be attentive to her, but she could have pardoned him that night if he had not shown such a desire to escort her back to her hotel, when she left immediately after supper. If he had been much struok, she argued, he wouldn't have wanted to have come away. But she determined to sound him. " Well, Glen, and what do you think of her ?" asked hi 3 aunt, when they were back in her salon. Glenarragh was pouring, out a whisky Bndeoda absently, his thoughts far away. "Think of her? Why she's charm—" Then he recollected himself. "Think of whom, aunt Georgie ?" " Why, boy, aye you blind ? The beauty, Miss Potipbar Uiggs, " What, that American girl you introduced me to ? By Jove ! she is a rum un, quite an aboriginal! Told ma she'd never lived in the country till.sh© came to Nice —cornea from a city, Buffalo , asked me if I was only a lord, and not going to grow into anything more. linfoimyd her I'd done gtoviiog some time, and ebat as for the title, we'dfound that gdo«t enough, for the last eight or niner. cenirariesv, But,.

auntie/ coming and sitting down on the sofa by Lady Gaddaway, and continuing persuasively, "let's drop that and talk seriously if we can. I've got a piece of news for you." Now, one of Lady Gaddaway's maxims in life, one of her favourite recipes for the preservation of youth and beauty, was that you Bhould never lose your temper. But on this occasion, when her nephew imparted to her the fact of his engagement, she was so incensed that she threw every consideration of her appearance to the winds, and made up for^ years of abstinence by a regular explosion of wrath. Half an hour later the two parted, Lady Gaddaway declaring that she would never set eyes on him again, and would leave every farthing she possessed to Baby Briggs' son and heir. Glenarragh went to sleep, feeling about as uncomfortable as it was possible for a young fellow of his light-hearted temperament to feel. He awoke suddenly more uncomfortable still. His bed was being rocked from side to side like a boat in a sea, and the china and the furniture were falling about the room. Though his experience in such matters was limited, it did not need a second's reflection to convince him that there was an earthquake. It did not take him many seconds more to robe himself classically with a blanket, in a manner which, though it would have become him admirably had he been sitting for his portrait as a young Roman patrician, was hardly adapted for a chilly morning on the Riviera at seven o'clock. Then he fled with the panic-striken, quaintly-garbed crowd, who surged down the hotel stairsandinto the garden. The first persons he saw there were Lady Gaddaway's English footman, looking like an acrobat, in crimson breeches and white shirt, and her French maid in curl-papers and very little else, wringing her hands. " Ah, mon Dieu ! Madam la Comtesse, est-elle ensevelie la-haut ? She come not ! She is killed ! " Then Lord Glenarragh realised that his aunt was still in the hotel. He rushed upstairs again, over masses of ddbris of ceiling and walls which encumbered the staira and passages. The door of the salon. -was jammed ; with some difficulty he forced it open, and brought an avalanche of plaster about his ears. The quarrel was all forgotten in the great and appalling emergency. He never recollected thac he was nob to speak to her again. f'Aunt Georgie! aunt Georgia! where are you ? Come out — come down — there's not a moment to be lost ! " An agonised voice from the bedroom : " I can't, I can't, Glen ! I can't find my things ! " "Confound your things, aunt! The house'll be down about your ears. Come, come ! " " I can't come like this, I'd sooner die ! I can't find my — " Lord Glenarragh waited for no more. He flung open the door and rushed in. He stopped short at a sight the like of which do man or woman (except the French maid) had ever beheld. Then he fancied he mast have come into the wrong room. This could never be his aunt. But the voice was hers. "Go away, go away, Glen there's a dear boy ; leave me to die ! I'd much raiher — " Bat Glenarragh was equal to the occasion. He seized a blanket from the bed, and enveloping Lady Gaddaway bodily, bore her triumphantly down-stairs, and deposited her, mummy-like, on a garden seat. Presently a choked voice issued from the folds of the blanket : ' " Glenarragh, bend your head down ; I want to whisper something." He did as he was bidden. "My darling boy, you may marry whom you like, and I'll give you half my income and leave you everything, if you'llV>nly go back into the hotel and fetch my — my hair and my testh." "When, five minutes latter, Glenarragh returned from an expedition of some danger bearing the articles in question, and also a large white umbrella which he opened and put over Lady Gaddaway's prostrate form, he felt that he had won his bride as chivalrously a3 any knight of old.