his case, and moistening it diligently between his lips before lighting it. Then he pointed to a chair beside the hearth, and presented his cigarcase to his young companion, who being well versed in his elder's ways, helped himself to a cigarette, and having, like him, foreign notions about smoking, had of course no remorse about a cigar or two in their present quarters. Up the chimney chiefly whisked the narcotic smoke. Over the ponderous features and knotted forehead of the sage flushed the uncertain light of the fire, revealing all the crows' feet --all the lines which years, thought, passion, or suffering had traced on that large, sombre, and somewhat cadaverous countenance, reversing oddly some of its shadows, and glittering with a snakelike brightness on the eyes, which now gazed grimly into the bars, but were generally overshadowed and half concealed by their heavy brows. The large and rather flat foot, shining in French leather, of the portly gentleman in the ample black velvet waistcoat, rested on the fender, and he spoke not a word until his cigar was fairly smoked out, and the stump of it in the fire. Abruptly he began, without altering his pose or the direction of his gaze. "You need not make yourself more friendly with any person here than is absolutely necessary." He was speaking in French, and in a low tone that sounded like the toll of a distant bell. Young Strangways bowed acqui escence. "Be on your guard with Sir Jekyl Marlowe. Tell him nothing. Don't let him be kind to you. He will have no kind motive in being so. Fence with his questions-don't answer them. Remember he is an artful man without any scruple. I know him and all about him.' M. Varbarriere spoke each of these little sentences in an isolated way, as a smoker might, although he was no longer smoking, between his puffs, "Therefore, not a word to him no obligations- no intimacy. If he catches you by the hand, even by your little finger, in the way of friendship, he'll cling to it, so as to impede your arm, should it become necessary to exert it." I don't understand yo the young man in a deferential tone, but looking very hard at him. "You partly don't understand me; the nature of my direction, however, is clear. Observe it strictly." There was a short silence here. "I don't understand, sir, what covert hostility can exist between us; that is, why I should, in your phrase, keep my hand free to exert it against him." No, I don't suppose you do." 66 "And I can't help regretting that, if such are our possible relations, I should find myself as a guest under his roof," said the young man with a pained and almost resentful look. "You can't help regretting, and--you can't help the circumstance," vibrated his Mentor, in a metallic murmur, his cadaverous features wearing the same odd character of deep thought and apathy. "I don't know, with respect to him-I know, however, how it has affected me that I have felt unhappy, and even guilty since this journey commenced, as if I were a traitor and an impostor," said the young man with a burst of impatience. "Don't, sir, use phrases which reflect back upon me," said the other, turning upon him with a sudden sternness. All you have done is by my direction." 66 The ample black waistcoat heaved and subsided a little faster than before, and the imposing countenance was turned with pallid fierceness upon the young man. "I am sorry, uncle." "So you should-you'll see one day how little it is to me, and how much to you." Here was a pause. The senior turned his face again toward the fire. The little flush that in wrath always touched his forehead subsided slowly. He replaced his foot on the fender, and chose another cigar. "There's a great deal you don't see now that you will presently. I did not want to see Sir Jekyl Marlowe any more than you did or do; but I did want to see this place. You'll know hereafter why. I'd rather not have met him. I'd rather not be his guest. Had he been as usual at Dartbroke, I should have seen all I wanted without that annoyance. It is an accident his being here-another, his having invited me; but no false ideas and no trifling chance 11 regulate, much less stop, the action of that piece of mechanism which I am constructing and will soon put in motion." And with these words he lighted his cigar, and after smoking for a while he lowered it, and said— "Did Sir Jekyl put any questions to you, with a view to learn particulars about you or me ?" "I don't recollect that he did. I rather think not; but Captain Drayton did." “I know, Smithers ?” "Yes, sir." "With an object " inquired the elder man. "I think not merely impertinence !" answered Guy Strangways. "You are right - it is nothing to him. I do not know that even Marlowe has a suspicion. Absolutely impertinence." And upon this M. Varbarriere began to smoke again with resolution and energy. "You understand, Guy; you may be as polite as you please-but no friendship-nowhere you must remain quite unembarrassed.” Here followed some more smoke, and after it the question "What do you think of the young lady, Mademoiselle Marlowe ?" "She sings charmingly, and for the rest, I believe she is agreeable; but my opportunities have been very little." "What do you think of our fellow Jacqne-is he trustworthy " "Perfectly, so far as I know.” "You never saw him peep into letters, or that kind of thing " "Certainty not." "There is a theory which must be investigated, and I should like to employ him. You know nothing against läm, nor do I. "Suppose we go to our beds!" resumed the old gentleman, having finished his eagar. A door at either side opened from the dressing-room, by whose fire they had been sitting. **Seo which room is ment for me Jacque wil have placed my things there." The young man did as he was bid, and made his reput. "Well, get you to bed, Guy, and remember-no intendships and no non sense." And so the old man rose, and shook companion's hand, not suning, but with a solemn and thoughtful countenance, and they separated for the night. Next morning as the Rev. Dives Marlowe stood in his natty and unexceptionable clerical costume on the hall-door steps, looking with a pompons and, perhaps, a somewhat forbidding countenance upon the morning prospect before him, his brother joined him. "Early bird, Dives, pick the worm -eh Healthy and wise already, and wealthy to be. Slept well, eh i "Always well here," answered the parson. He was less of a parson and inore like himself with Jekyl than with anyone else. His brother was so uncomfortably amused with his clerical airs, knew him so well, and so undisguisedly esteemed him of the earth earthy, that the cleric, although the abler as well as the better read man, always felt invariably a little sheepish before him, in his silk vest and single-breasted coat with the standing collar, and the demi shovel, which under ether eyes he felt to le imposing properties. You look so like that exemplary young man in Watts' hymns, in the old-fashioned toggery, Dives the fellow with the handsome round checks, you know, piously saluting the morning sun that's rising with a lot of spokes stuck cut of it, don't you remcmbert" "I look like something that's uly, I dare say,' said the parson, who had not got up in a good temper. "There never was a Mariowe yet who hadn't ugly points about him. But a young man, though never so ugly, is rather a bold comparison-eh seeing I'm but two years your junior, Jekyl” "Bitterly true--every word--my dear boy. But let us be pleasant. I've had a line to say that old Moulders is very ill, and really dying this time. Just read this melancholy little bulletin." With an air which sectaed to say, “well, to please you," he took the note and read it. It was from his steward, to mention that the Rev. Abraham Moniders was extremely ill of his old complaint, and that there was something even worse the matter, and that Doctor W said that morning he sibly get over this at "Well, Dives, fi 'sick and weak," Guy Deverell. have prayers for him at Queen's Chor- Poor old man!" said Dives, so- "Too favourably, you mean," suggested the baronet. "But you know, poor old man, it is only wonderful he has lived so long. The old people about there say he is eighty-seven. Upon my word, old Jenkins says he told him, two years ago, himself, he was eighty-five, and Doctor Winters, no chicken-just sixty-says his father was in the same college with him, at Cambridge, nearly sixty-seven years ago. You know, my dear Jekyl, when a man comes to that time of life, it's all idle-a mere pull against wind and tide, and everything. It is appointed unto all men once to die, you know, and the natural term is threescore years and ten. All idle-all in vain !" And delivering this, the Rev. Dives Marlowe shook his head with a supercilious melancholy, as if the Rev. Abraham Moulders' holding out in that way against the inevitable, was a piece of melancholy bravado against which, on the part of modest mortality, it was his sad duty to protest. Jekyl's cynicism was tickled, although there was care at his heart, and he chuckled. "And how do you know you have any interest in the old fellow's de mise ?" The rector coughed a little, and flushed, and looked as careless as he could, while he answered "I said nothing of the kind; but you have always told me you meant the living for me. I've no reason, only your goodness, Jekyl." No goodness at all," said Jekyl, kindly. "You shall have it, of course. I always meant it for you, Dives, and I wish it were better, and I'm very glad, for I'm fond of you, old fellow." Hereupon they both laughed a little, shaking hands very kindly. "Come to the stable, Dives," said the baronet, taking his arm. "You must choose a horse. You don't hunt now ?" 183 "I have not been at a cover for gentleman, speaking with a consciousten years," answered the reverend ness of the demi-shovel. baronet. "I want to ask you-let's man," answered Dives; "I dare say "The elder, I should say an able could be agreeable. It is not easy to assign his exact rank though, nor his profession or business. You remarked he seems to know something in detail and technically of nearly every business one mentions." that Mr. Guy Strangways-with "Yes; and about the young man his foreign accent and manner, did anything strike you about him?" 66 most powerful likeness, I think, I Yes, certainly, could not fail. The ever saw in my life." They both stopped, and exchanged expected the other to say more; and a steady and anxious look, as if each added, with an awful sort of nodafter a while the Rev. Dives Marlowe "Guy Deverell.” The baronet nodded in reply. something more than like-the same "Well, in fact, he appeared to me -identical." Wardlock Church, and was made "And old Lady Alice saw him in quite ill," said the baronet gloomily. But you know he's gone these mancy now-a-days; only I wish you thirty years; and there is no necrowould take any opportunity, and try what they want. and make out all about him, and here to pump them, by Jove; but I brought them and wary. that old fellow seems deuced reserved if you can find or make an opporOnly, like a good fellow, tunity, you must get the young fellow you, Dives, I have been devilish unon the subject--for I don't care to tell easy about it. There are things that make me confoundedly uncomfortable; and I have a sort of foreboding it would have been better for me to have blown up this house than to have come here; but ten to one-a hundred to one-there's nothing, and I'm only a fool." the gate of the stable-yard. As they thus talked they entered THE DEAD LANGUAGE. BY THE COUNTESS OF GIFFORD, TAKING Sweet counsel, heart from heart, Grew, like the flowers, their path beside. Full of small joys, that were great to them, Burs on youth's glittering raiment hem'; A foolish tongue that was all their own; Figures-which love and the hearer knew; Tender half-meanings; metaphor bold; Fond hyperbole-saying far less Than the heart held or the kind eyes told; For the "strong hours" came, that come to all, All the poor trea ures, great and small, Love had amassed as his precious things; All the rare joys, on the path they trid, And the cares that look so like joys, when past When one great grief like the serpent rod - All the rich harvest of mutual thought, One was taken- the other left; Bury it deep in the heart bereft, Ne'er to be uttered, nor needed more! "What doth it matter? solemn and sweet Is the communion the True Life brings; Was it not thus we had longed to be- Freed from the clog of this stifling clayKnowing the depths we had sought to sound, Sure of the love we had tried to say." So the heart reasons, and reasons well, CELTIC ROMANCE. IT being a well understood thing among story-tellers and romance writers, that a hero without obstacles to surmount and antagonists to overcome would be but a tame affair; the romance-forgers of every people provided themselves betimes with a stock of these disagreeable but necessary incidents. The Persian poets created or employed Deevs; the Arabians, their Afrites and other evil genii; the classic writers made use of the Titans; the Scalds, the dwellers in Jotunheim-land of giants, and the wolf fenris; their successors, the trolls and dwarfs; and our own old bards, the Danaan sorcerers; and the people of Lochlann. Poetry naturally preceded prose fiction, its first subjects being the eulogies of living heroes, records of battles, public calamities, victories over wild beasts, voyages, &c. It was only in the nature of things, however, that attractive circumstances should gradually gather round true romance, the more to interest and delight the audiences before whom its recitations were delivered. The farther the story went back in time, the more fanciful the illustration it received, and the filea did not venture to call on his own invention till his stock of true, or partly true, subjects were exhausted. Even then the personages introduced always belonged to history or tradition. Favourite subjects of every people VOL. LXV. NO. CCCLXXXVI. or tribe would be invasions, or pitched battles, or assaults on forts, in which warriors of their own kindred distinguished themselves. All the fictional remains of old days that we possess are the compositions of the latest Gaelic people who obtained possession of the island. So, their favourite subjects are the triumphs obtained over the Danaan enemy, who not only use weapons of bronze and steel, but resort to every resource of magic, to abate the strength of their enemy, and make him an easy prey. In a few tales, such as the "Children of Lir," and the "Children of Tuirrean," the poets dwell with a kind of pitying interest on the fate of the wise and skilful people, and in the battle of Northern May Tuir, poet and hearers equally wish them well out of the hands of the terrible African pirates, the Fomorach. More than once allusion has been made to the attachment between fairy and mortal tribes. The "Son of Evil Counsel" was not surprised at being asked by the Gruagach to join his forces the next day in the fight witn Heavy Magic Fog, the Sighe Prince of Din Aoilig. In later times mortals have been caught and used as steeds in clan-battles among the fairies; but it is only in the more ancient legends that we find sighe and mortal troops fighting side by side. These fictions may have been the dim and nearly forgotten memories of alliances be 13 |