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HomeMy WebLinkAboutThe Wingham Times, 1888-11-09, Page 20 FRIDAY, —NOV. p, 18e8. RHE THT& 1111, i QR SUNSHINE and: SHADE. CHAPTER XXVif1,--(OONTINUED,) `Read me Gam/Wm,' Winifred said •with quiet imperiousness. 'I'!1 see if I like that any better than all this fool- ish maundering Philosophy.' Hugh turned over his papers for the piece 'by request,' and after some searching among quires and sheets, came at last wpm a clean written copy of his immortal threnody. He began reading out the lugubrious lines in a sutfioientty grandiose and sepulchral. voice. Winifred listened with careless attention, as to a matter little worthy her sublime consideration. llugh .;cleared his throat and rang ont magito- quently 'she sits once more upon her ancient throne The fair republic of our steadfast views; A. Phrygian bonnet binds her queenly brows; Athwart her neck knotted hair is blown. A hundred cities nestle in her lap, Girt round their statelyloeks with mural crowns : ,The folds of her imperial robe enwrap A. thousand lesser towns. 'Mural crowns' is good, Winifred murmured satirically ; it reminds one so vividly of the stone statues in the Place de la Concorde.' Hugh took no notice of her inter - salary criticism. He went on with ten or twelve stt}uzas more of the same bombastic, would be sublime character, and wound up at last in thunderous tones with a prophetic out- burst as to the imagined career of some future Gambetta—himself pos- sibly : •'He still shall guide ustoward the distant goal; Cahn with unerring taut our weak alarms Train all our youth in skill of manly arms, And knit our sires in. unity of soul ; d; • Till bursting iron bars and gates of brass; Our own Republic stretch her arms again To raise the weeping daughters of Alsace, And lead thee home, Lorraine, Melt, what do. you think . of. that, Winnie?' he asked at last triumphantly, -with the. air of a man who has trotted out his best war-horse for, public in- :spection,. and has no fear of the effect he is producing. • 'Think?' Winifred answered. 'Why, •I think, Hugh, that if Swinburne had never written his Ode to Victor Hugo, you would never have written that Funeral Matchfor your precious .Gambetta.' Hugh bit his lip in bitter silence. The criticism was many times worse than harsh ; it was true ;. and he knew • it. But a truthful critic is the most galling of all things. 'Well, surely, Winifred, he cried at last after a long pause,y' ou think these other lines g,00d, don't youl— , -ud when like some tierce whirlwind through the land. The wrathful Teuton swept, he only dared °To hone and act when every heart and -hand, But his alone, despaired.' 'My dear Hugh, Winifred answered ,candidly, 'don't you see in your own way, but it isn't •original—it isn't inspiration, it isn't the true sacred fire : it's only an echo. Echoes do admirably for the youug beginner; but in a inan of your age—for yon are getting on now—we expect something native and tdosyncratie.—I think Mr. Canso. Wo must put u p conductors, Hatherley calledtt idiosyncratic. ---Yon p know Mr.Hatherley said to me once Winnie, he said hesitatingly, with a hot face, to protect those new gables at the east wing, ---It is dangerous to leave the house se exposed. .i'll order thein from Landon to -morrow. 'Conductors l Fiddlesticks 1' Wini- fred answered in a breath, with wifely promptitude. 'Lightning never hurt the house yet, and it's not going to begin hurting .it now, just beoatl; a an Immortal Poet with a fad for electricity has come to live and compose at Whitestrand. If anything it ought to go the other way. Bards, you know, aro exempt from thunder- bolte. Didn't you read the the lines yourself, 'God's lightnings spar,.d, they said, Alone the holier head, Whose laurels screened it,' or something to that effect i You're all tight, you see. Poets can never get struck, lr fancy. 'Dot 'Mr. Hotherly said to me once you would never beta poet, Hugh re- peated with a smile, exactly mimick- ing Winifred's Attentions little voice and manner. 'As my own wife doesn't consider me a poet, Winifred, I shall venture to do as I like myself about city private property. Winifred took up abedroom candle and lighted it quietly without a word. Then site wont up to muse in her own bedroom over her new made gourd and other di.illeteio>zt iwt, 'How cross. you, ;ire!; Winifred cried with a frown. ''fou lump at me as if you'd snap my head oar l And all just because h didn't like your verses,—Very well then ; I'll go and sit there atone.—x; can amuse myself, fortunately.,. without your help. .I've got Mr. Ilatherley's clever article in this month's Contemporary. That evening, as they sat together silently in. the dowing room, Winifred engaged in. the feminine amusenient of casting. admiring glances at her own walls, and Hugh poring over a serious,looking book, Winifred glanced over at him suddenly with a sigh, a'id murmured half aloud : 'After all, really I9don't think much of it.' Much of what?' Hugh asked, still bending over the book he was anxious- ly consulting. '.Why, of that gourd I brought home from town yesterday, Y"u know Mrs. Walpole's got a gourd iu her drawing- room ; and every time 1 went into the vicarage I said to myself : 'Oh, how lovely it is 1 How exquisite l How foreign looking ! If only I had a gourd like;: that, now I think life would be really endurable. It gives the last touch of art to the picture. Our new . drawing -room wound look just perfection with such a gourd as hers to finish the wall with.' Well, I saw the exact counterpart of that very gourd the day before yesterday at a shop in Bond street. 1 bought it and brought it home with exceeding 6 joy. I thought i should then be quite happy. I hung it up on the wall to try this morning. And sitting here all evening looking at it with my head first one side and then on the other I've said to myself a` thousand times over : ' It doesn't look one bit like Mrs. Walpole'a. After all, I don't know that I'm so much happier, now I've sot it, than I was before I bad a As soon as, she was gone, Hugh rose from his chair and walked slowly into hie own study, Gordon's 'Eleetric• - ity' was still in his hand, and his linger pointed to that incriminating passage, He sat clown at the sloping desk and wrote a short note to a well-known firm of scientific instrument makers whose address he had copied a week. before from the advertisement sheet. of ' Nature,' ally stead with his hands in knobs on t►u t lectrio machine, ant( his ockets, sttrveyi lis na;:.csicrnft draws down upon itself with unerring 1 .v. .l,v- Certainty cite t!estrucuiv, bolt front the+ with languid interest whenever a � .� wt t 6 , oyes'-whsi'gect elands, towing to. title cause, the thuaderrrorms .orf Last Anelia are °tl►e sliest alValling and destructive in their concrete results of any in England. Thr/ laden cloude, big with electric ouergy, hang low and dark above, one's vory head, and let loose their,accuurulated store of vivid flashes in the execs mi4l,st of tow.1is anti, villages, Ti,is peltieular thunslerstorntt as, chance woStld have it,. canna late, at,, night, after, three sultry. days of close„ weather, when big black masses veru, lust beginning to gather in vast, battalions over the Gernsen Ocean aid let loose its fierce artillery in,. terrible volleys right over the village. and grounds of Whitestrand. Hugh, Messinger was the first at the Hall to; observe 'front afar the distant nob,. before the thunder had made itself,• audible in their ears.. A pale light to wostveard, in the direction of Snade,, attracted as he read, his passing atten- tion. 'By Jove !' he cried, rising with a yawn from his chair, and laying down, the manuscript of 'A Life's, Philosophy' which, he was languidly, correcting in its later stanzas, that is something like lightning, Winifred, over Snade way, apparently. I won- der if it is going to drift towards us i —whew—what a clap 1 it is precious near. I expect we shall catch it our- . solves shortly. body from the village or elle Mali lounged up by his side to inspect or wonder at it, More curious still was. another small fact, known to nobody, but the skilled workman in. propria: Person4, that feur. small, casks, of petroleum from. a London storewere stow;.d away,. by Hugh 1Viaseinger;s, ordeae, under:the very.roots,.of- tins bi, ,poplar; and that by. their side lay, a q ,ser apparatus, c•QanecteI apparently in some remote way with electrio -light ing, The Squire himself, however, made no secret of his, own}, personal and private intentions to, the Leaden workman. He paid the Haan well, and he exacted. silence. That was. all. But he eiplained precisely in plain terms what it was that he wanted done. The tree was an eyesore to him, he said, with his usual frankness —Hugh was ,always frank when possi- ble -but his wife, for sentimental rea- sons, had a,special fancy for it. He wanted to ,get rid of it, therefore, in the least obstrusive way he could easily manage.: This. was the least obstrusive way. So this was what he required to be' done with it. . The London workman nodded, his head, pocketed his pay, looked tinnoncerned, and held his, tongue with •trained fidel- ity. It was none of his buenpess to pry into any employer's Illptives. Enough for him to take his orflers and to carry. them out faithfully, to the letter. The job •vas odd : en odd job is always interesing, He hoped the experiment 'nigh prove successful. The Whitest and laborers, who passed by the poplar,, and the London workman, time add again, with a jerky nod and theia pipes turned downward, never noticed; a certain slender unob- trusive copper wire which the strange artisan fastened 4rteiev6ntng, in the gray dusk, right up the stem and holes, of the big tree to a round knoll on the very summit. The wire, however, as its fixer knew, ran down to a large deal box well buried in the ground,, which bore a green, 'Ruhmkorff Lis Coil, Elliott's Patent. The. wire and coil terminated in a pile close to the four full Petroleum begels. When the London ,workman had se. (surely laid the entire, apparatus, undisturbed by loungers, Ice reported adversely, with great solemnity, on the tidal outfall and, electric light scheme to Hugh ltlasstsager.,; Not suf- ficient power for thio. purppae existed iu the river. This•askverse report was orally delivered in the front vestibule of Whitestrand Halll; and it was also delivered with sedn?lous care—as per orders received—in Mrs. Massinger's own •presence. When the London workn7an went out again after making his carefully worded statement, he went out clinking a coin of, the realm or twta in his trousers' pocket; and with Iris tonguo'stuck, somewhat unbe-. willingly, in his right ch,eek, as who should pride himse f on the successful outwitting of an innocent fellow. creature. He had: done, the work he was paid for, and lie hail; done it well. But he thought toihimrelf, as he went his vvay rejoicing, that the Squire. of Whitestrand must be very well held in hand indeed by that small pale lady, if he had to take so many es -inn- ing precautions in secret beforehand when he wanted to get rid of a single tree that offended his eye in his own gardens. WRITESTRAND HALL,, AI.AIUDIIAM, ,5'U1FOL14; GENTLEMEN—Please forward me to the above address, at your earliest con- venience, your most powerful form of R.uliinkorif Induction Coal, with secondary wires attached, fpr which checiue will be sent in full en receipt, of invoice or retail price. lists—Faith fully yours, HUGH, l ts. i GEC. ' As he rose from the desk, he glanced half involutarily outs of the study window. It pointed. south. The .moon waa. shin;ipg full, on the water. That hateful poplar) stared him straight in, the face, as mall and gaunt and immovable as ever. On its roots, a woman in a white dress, was standiug, looking out over the angry sea, as Elsie had stood, for the twink- ling of an eye, on that terrible eve- ning when he lost: her forever. One second the sight sent a shiver through his frame, then he imbed to himself the next, for his groundless terror. How childish ! How infantile ! It was the gardener's wife, in, her light, print frock, looking out to sea for her, boy's ernack, overdue, no doubt—for; Charlie was a fisherman.—But it was intolerable that he, the Squire of Whitestrand, should be subjected to such horirilllp turns as these.—He shook hia,fiet angrily at the offending tree. 'Xou shall pay for it, my friend,' he muttered low but hoarse between his clenched teeth. , You gourd of my own at all to look at.' shan't have. many more chances of Hugh groaned. The unconscious frightening.ma•.l allegory was far too obvious in its application not to sink into the very CHApTEPU XXIX.—ACCIDENTS WILL depths of his soul. He turned back'HAPPEN. to his book, and sighed inwardly to Duringthe whole of the next week think for what a feeble, unsatisfactory shadow of a gourd he had `'•sa+rificed the Squire and a strange artisan, his own life—not to speak of Wini• "'tom he had specially imported by Fred's and Elsie's. rail. from London, went much about By-and-by Winifred rose and crossed together by day and night through the grounds at Whitestrand. A car - the room. 'What's that you're study- ing so intently4' she ,asked, with a (tarn air of mystery hung over, their in, ma joint proeeedings.' The strange arts• suspicious glance at the book finers. • , fin was a skilled workman'uiii the Hugh hesitated, and seemed halt tis - the he told the people at clined for a moment to shut the book the If ashen^,scan s Rest, where he had taken a bed for with a bang and hide it away from her. nhis stay in the village; Then lie made up his mind with fresh and indeed sundry books in his kit 'bore out the statement—weird bo resolve to brazen it out. 'Gordon's boas Electricity and Magnetism.' he an:swereyl of a scientific and liagramic,character, quietly, as unabashed a s ppssitlia ; chokeful of forinulm in Greek'tlettering, holding the volume half closed with which seemed not unlikely to be con- nected" with l,ydrostics,,• dynamics, his forefinger at the }sane he kyad 4,ust trigonometry, any hunted up, I am —1 ani iu,terested g F, and mechanics, or in at present to some extentin t ,e subject other equally abstruco and uncanny of get- subject, not wliolly'alien to tiecromacy of electricty. I am thinking ing it up a little. and- witchcraft. It was held at White - Winifred took the book from his strand by those beit able to form an hand wondering,, with a masterful air opinion in such dark questions, that of perfect authority. He yielded like the new twportation was 'snmmat in a lamb. On immaterial questions it the electric way;' and it was certainly to all ob- mat-er of plain fact. paten was his policy not to resist her. She t, turned to the page where his finger servers equally, that he did in very had rested and ran .it down lightly truth six up an a aborate lightning- had her quick eye.; The keywords conductor of the latest pattern to the showed in some decree at,�vhat it waa newly thown-out gable -end at what driving : Franklin's T xperiment— had once been Elsie's window. It Meaus of Collection —, -Theory of ligl;tn- was Elsie's window still to ; Hugh : let ing Rods—Rulkmlroi's • Coils—Draw. himi twist it and turn it and alter it ing down Electric 'Discharges trans as he would, it would never, never the Clouds.—Why, what was ell this2 cease to be Elsie's window. She turned round inquiringly. gugh But in the domain at large, the in shuffled in an uneasy way in iiael sir. telligeut artisan with the engineering The husband who shuffles betrays his air, who was suxmtased too 'snmmat in the electric way; carefully examin- ed, Ander Hugh'd, directions, many parts of the grouid o£ Whitestrand. Squire was going tb Iay out the garden az1d terrace afresh,r the servants con- jectured in their own society : one or wo of them, exceedinglymodern in -their views, even 'opined in ren off - , hand fashion that ho must be bent on laying eleetrip lights on. Conserva- tive in most things to the backbone, the servants best(Swed the moi,, 'of their hearty approval of electric light it saves'eo in trimming and cleaning. Lamps are the bsbear of big country houses ; electricity; on the other hand needs no tending. It was hear the poplar that the Squire was going to put his installation, as they call the arrangement in ou'r latter-djargon; and he was going to drive if, rumour remarked, by a tidal outfall. What a tidal outfall miglntibe, or hoW it could work in lighting the hall, nobody knew ; but the intcilligent artisan had let the verde droi casually in the course of conversation ; and the Fisherman's Rest supped them up at once, and retailed a; then freely with profound gusto to all after•cotners. Sti11, it was a curious fact ir_ its own way that the instal don appeared to progress most cosy when nobody happened to be loo ing on, and thGth the engineering', you would never be a poet. You have too good a memory. 'Whenever Messinger sits down. at his desk to write about anything,' he said in his quiet way,' he remembers such a per feet flood of excellent things other people have written about the same subject, that lie's absolutely incapable of originality' And the more I see of -your poetry, dear, the more do I see that Air. Hatherley was right right beyond question. 5cou're clever enough, but you know you're not original: Hugh answered her never a single word. To such a knockdown blow as that, any answer at all is clearly impossible, He only muttered some thing very low to himsef about east- ing one's pearls before some creature inaudible. Presently, Winifred spoke again. 'Let's p y out,' she said rising from the sofa, 'and sit by the sea on roots of the poplar. At the word Hugh flung down the matnttseript in a heap on the ground with a stronger expression than Wini- fred had ever bete* .hearsl from his lips '1 hate the poplar!' lie said angrily i 'I detest the poplarl I won't L, ictdl ,e me ,to sit by theshirt ,here the poplar! trouts on earth Ithe skilled worktuan The plot was ,all well laid now. Hugh had nothing further left te, do but to possess hip soul in patience against the next thunderstorm. He had not very long to wait. Before the month was outa thunderstorm did indeed burst in full force over Whitestrand and' its neighborhood— one of those terrible and destructive east coast, electric displays which IN - variably leave their broad • t ,ark be; hind them. For along the low, fiat, monotonous East Anglian shore, where hills are unknown and big trees rare, the lightning inevitably singles out for its onslaught some aspiring piece of man's handiwork—some church steeple, seine castle keep, the turrets on some tall and isolated manor.house, the vane above some ancient castelated gateway. Tho reason for this is not far to seek. In hilly countries the hills and trees as natural ,lightning•conduetors, or rather as decoys to draw aside the fire from heavers from the towns or farm -houses that nestle far below among the glens and valleys. But in wide level plains, where all alike is fiat and low-lying, human archite:ature forms for the most part the one salient point int the landscape for lightning to attar:.: every chureh or tower with its battlenisnts and ian• terns etude in the placer of polished Thq clouds rolled up with extraor- dinary rapidity, and the claps came; thick and fast and, nearer. Winifred cowered down on the sofa in terror. She dreaded thunder ; but she was too proud to confess what she would nevertheless have given worlds to do —hide her frightened little head with sobs and tears in its old place upon Hugh's shoulder. : It is coming this way, site cried nervously after a while. That last flash incrust have been ,e,,vfally near us. .iven as.she spoke, a terrific volley seereed,to burst all at once right over their heads and shake the house with its, irresistible majesty, Winifred buffed her face deep in the cushions. Ohs Hugh, she cried in a terrified tone, thisieawful—awful ! N.jugh as he longed to look out of. the, w,i;idow, Hugh could not resist that, unspoken appeal. He drew up the blind hastily to its full height, so that he might see out to watch the sueeers of his deep laid stratagem then he hurried over with real tender- ness to Winifred's side. He drew his arm round her and soothed her with his hand, and laid her poor throb- bing aching head with a lover's caress upon his own broad bosom. Wini- fn;ed nestled close to him with a sigh of relief. ` The nearness of danger, real or,imagined, rouses all the most ingrained and profound of our virile feelm;s. The instinct of protection for the women and the child comes over even bad men at such moments of doubt with irresistible . might and inejesty. Small differences or tiffs are forgotten and forgiven :.the woman clings naturally in her feminine• weak- nrssrto the strong man in his primary aspect as comforter and protestor.. Between Hugh and Winifred the estrangement as yet was but vague and unacknowledged. Had it yawned far. wider, had it sunk far deeper, the awe and terror of that supreme moment. would amply have sufficed to bridge it, over, at least while the orgy of the thunderstorm lasted. For next instant a sheet of liquid: flame seemed to surround and engulf the whole house at once in its white. embrace, The world became forethe twinkling of an eye one surging flood of vivid fire, one roar and crash and sea. of deafening tumult. Winifred buried her face deeper than ever on Hugh's shoulder, and put up both her. small hands to her tingling ears, to - !keep i£ possible this hideous roar out. But the light and sound seemed to, penetrate everything : she was aware of thein keenly through her very bones - and nerves and marrow ; her entire being appeared its if prevaded and overwhelmed with the horror of the lightning. In another moment all was over, rand she was cousious only of an abiding awe, a deep seated afterglow of alarm and terror. But Ilughhad started up from the' sofa now, both' has hands clasped hard in front of his breast, and was gazing 'wildly out of, the big bay window, and lifting:up hie voice in a paroxysm of exoitemeut. Its hit the poplar 1 he cried. Its bib, the poplar 1 It must be teatibly near, Winnie 1 Its hit the poplar t (To z;tw oosernsuan,) COME morn, health and swasisSbreatb, reenred, by S3hiloh's C",`arrii BoniedY. Price lO cents. Nasal Injectorfie fie For fele by' C. ]i. Willie*.