CHOWRINGHEE;

OR

THE RAYMOND FAMILY.

A TALE OF CALCUTTA LIFE.

By HARTLEY HALL.

CHAPTER VIII.

A Mountain out of a Mole-hill.-Per fas et nefas.—The Interior of a Lawyer's Office. MR. ST. ALBANS allowed two days to elapse without paying a visit to Ella after the night he had left her and DeSilva together. The actual reason was, that his deeply laid schemes in another direction were so quickly ripening, that all his thoughts and attention were engrossed in them; and it answered his purpose to let Ella dread that he felt wronged and indignant with her, by his protracted absence. But when he went into the bungalow upon the third night, holding his arms outstretched as old grandfathers do for their sons' children when they walk first, and enticed Ella into them as a fawn might rush into a tiger's lair, then folded her to his heart, put his lips on her brow, and called her "darling," she thought that he had not only forgiven but forgotten DeSilva's intrusion. The delusive thought emboldened her, and she asked

"Why have you stayed away from me, Herman?"

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Herman, do not, I pray of you, do not." "He is here at the present moment; I mean in the compound, skulking like a common house-breaker, and would think it no crime to obtain you feloniously. I will tell what DeSilva is. He is an enyou thusiast in love; his passion is fanaticism. He dreams of you day and night, and I have no doubt his appetite is wofully small. Had he brains, he would deaden them with drink; had he wits, he would gamble; but, having neither, he pursues the career of a

sentimental burglar, 'who entereth not by the door.'

"He has sufficient of that profitless courage-so abundant in the grandmothers' stores of martyrology—to die for you. True courage and he are not acquainted, and he seems at home in the lanes. To him, the sole possession of you in this bungalow would be Elysium, and in his rapture he might have it whitewashed. He would read to you from the Bengal Obituary, and I fancy he has a gift for remembering epitaphs. If metempsychosis is a fact, the animal will not suffer much from its accession to Henry DeSilva's soul. It may never know of its inheritance. A young wren would hold a dozen such. I have no doubt his mother and sisters, if he has any, are enchanted with him; but, mark my words, Ella, they would not let him marry you. Now, when I was at Oxford, I fell in love with a girl, and I have every reason to believe that by continued acts of kindness I taught her to have a sort of smattering regard for me. She professed unbounded love, but it was optional whether I believed her or not. We became engaged. We were almost perfectly happy for many months, until another, a sort of intellectual DeSilva, stept in to turn our milk of human kindness sour. He one day openly avowed to her his intention to be a rival of mine. Do you know what Became of that being ?"

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My love, you never mentioned him before."

"No, I think I have not. Well, where the waters of the Isis mix with those of the Cherwell, they are deep, and no one knows that better than my rival for the Oxford girl!"

Ella looked steadfastly at the speaker, and shuddered.

"So you see that I have exhibited meritorious forbearance in this later case, I suppose because I love you more than I loved that girl at home, and knowing, as I do, that you have so much of what the world calls deep personal regard for this-ghost! Yes; look, Ella, there he goes, amongst the trees; see, he grows quite bold in his eaves-dropping. Oh, paragon of mercy that I am!"

"I do not think that is Henry," said Ella, mildly.

"Do you expect it to be some one else?" She drooped her head, and cried.

"We will soon see who it is, my Ella," remarked St. Albans, gently raising her up. Come into the garden, Maud, and protect me from any violence he may be induced to punish me with." Then, ceasing his bitter irony, he said, lifting her hand up, to look at it closely, "I shall spoil this pretty finger with the symbol of eternity before very long!"

She heard his words with a short, low sigh. They stood together on the top of the small flight of steps which led into the bungalow from the gravel walk, he with his arm round her. The intersected shadows fell across the garden, and flickered over the flowers, making any form which might be moving about almost imperceptible.

But St. Albans had not lost sight of the object which annoyed him. There it stood, by that tall gnarled trunk of the cocoanut tree, the thick clumpy summit of which leaned full against the cloudless sky.

St. Albans stooped and kissed her. He did it for a purpose.

Then he said, feigning to be sentimental, —a mood unknown to him,

"The moon shines bright, in such a night as this,

When the sweet wind did gently kiss the trees, And they did make no noise. In such a night, Troilus methinks mounted the Trojan's wall, And sighed his soul toward the Grecian tents, Where Cressid lay that night.

Did Ella steal from the jealous Herman,
And with an unthrift love did run from him
As far as-

"He would let her," interposed Ella.

"And no further," like Canute's waves. "Suppose you did take it into your head to emulate the romantic behaviour of Jessica?" asked St. Albans.

“And leave you."

"Yes, to the gnawing of remorse."
Ella could not answer him.

"Oh! you patient spectacle," said St. Albans, with withering bitterness, looking towards the figure in the trees. "What

would you not do or give to call this little girl your own? Give me another kiss, Ella; let the audience have a visual banquet."

Ella's heart was beating loud with pity, but she could not refuse her lover what she gave him voluntarily by thousands every day.

St. Albans, though seemingly in a light mood, or at the worst in a satirical and uncharitable vein, was in reality surging with passion, and only just had power enough to keep his feelings within bounds. But he stood there toying with Ella, proud at the thought that he was plunging DeSilva into despair.

I have heard of men's hearts bursting," said St. Albans, "and it is a strange death. There is no outward sign of life having flown. The victim may possibly be standing before you, half mad, perhaps, with

the agony he is called upon to bear. Another moment, and the torrent has reached that height which passes human endurance, and the heart bursts-literally bursts, and lets free that sublime mystery which men call life. Now, had DeSilva been created with a heart capable of such a noble, exquisitely noble death, I should have said the sudden stroke had come, for he stands there as mute and motionless as the Colossus at Rhodes, though not quite such a well-made man. But if the enemy is weak, let us hold out a flag of truce. Come Ella, take a stroll, though to stand still appears the fashion in this compound. We will be out of the fashion."

"I wish we were alone," Ella said. "We cannot have our own way always," St. Albans replied, satirically.

was

"I am more annoyed at his presence here than you are, Herman," continued she, in an under tone. Then there a silence, during which St. Albans led her straight to the solemn figure there had been so much talk about. She went unwillingly, and half pressed back against her lover, but he took no notice of her reluctance; he continued to converse in a light, buoyant manner.

Ella stopped suddenly. Before them stood, not DeSilva, but a complete stranger, and the same individual who had been there all the time.

It was possible that he had not heard a tenth part of what St. Albans had said to Ella, but nevertheless her lover was exceedingly indignant.

"Come back into the house, Ella. I must settle the question with this fresh intruder alone," said St. Albans, "One spy in the camp is surely a fair allowanceone spy over two individuals." "I would not speak passionately to him, Herman!"

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Oh, no! I shall ask his pardon for addressing him, and shall merely tell him that this once unmolested house and garden have been thrown open to the public; are, in fact, on view, without tickets or cards of any kind. This new visitor appears to be unaware of the dainty cold collation spread within,—a most unpardonable state of ignorance."

By the time he had finished his invective, he had reached the house, and sending Ella into the room, he turned back to have one of the greatest outpourings of his passion. He reached the spot, but the figure had gone! St. Albans rushed to the gate, and looked up and down the lane, but no trace of the mysterious visitor could be found.

St. Albans stood still for a little while in deep thought. He recalled in his mind the face and figure as it had stood before him,

and a tremor passed over his frame. A dark scene in his Oxford life stole through his mind, and a handful of bank-notes!it was mere fancy-seemed to sweep past him like so many fallen leaves. A frog in the road startled him. He turned suddenly when he heard a bird rustle in the thicket.

But the tremor passed over him and away, and he rejoined Ella.

"The fellow has disappeared," he said, laughingly. "Did you notice his features particularly ?"

"He had a very white thin face,” Ella replied.

"But dark hair and eyes?" "I cannot say, love; I merely saw that it was not Henry DeSilva."

"Ah! well, never mind, my Ella; we will change the subject," and he carried his precept out for an hour, talking to her of old reminiscences-a theme very present with him. He was so unusually gentle to her, that Ella spoke to him more freely than she generally did. She alluded to the girl at Oxford, for whom he confessed to have had an attachment; but he rebuked her somewhat agitatedly, rose up, and went and looked into the garden again. He had banished the thought of the strange visitor from Ella's breast, and felt he could leave her in safety. Whether he loved Ella or not, he took the jealousest interest in her physical safety as long as he was with her himself, and in his absence he laid the best plans he could.

But that night, an unaccountable feeling took possession of him, and, as he drove home, his thoughts must have been fixed on some subject with indescribable intensity, for his horse went down the narrow sinuous lanes, and round the sudden corners, at such a neck-break speed, that the syce, in his inelegant attitude behind the buggy, held fast to his seat in the momentary expectation of violent grief. The loneliness in which Ella found herself when she closed the gate after her lover had departed, sufficed to remind her of the strange incident of the evening, and as she ran back to her comfortable little house, she started once or twice at the shadows of trees on the gravel pathway. But no one rose up to molest her, and she reached her bed-chamber in peace. To take up an exquisite portrait of St. Albans, which always lay upon her toilet-table in the day-time, and by her side at night, that it might be the first object upon which her eyes would fall in the morning, was the customary act of her heart's devotion. It was then she looked most charming, as she stood with her garments unconfined, and her long silken hair, raven black, covering her soft full neck, which was budding delicately into the ripeness of womanhood. One long, steadfast, lingering gaze at that portrait in her hand, one kiss, a

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long and lingering one too, oftentimes a tear, and her day's devotion to St. Albans had ceased, unless he was with her in her dreams. And in those dreams alone were her lover's countless vows and promises fulfilled. The ignis fatuus of marriage, which by his subtle scheming was floating, flickering before her, became real and tangible, and she would awake in the ecstacy of the moment when, as he said, he was spoiling her marriage finger with the symbol of eternity!

ever

But he had been so kind and gentle to her that night, that she could not put his portrait away, and might have stood gazing at it the whole night through; but it was destined to be otherwise. She had just kissed the bauble passionately for the hundredth time as she stood there, when her attention was attracted to a movement in the jhilmils close behind her mirror. A sudden terror took possession of her, a film came over her eyes, and the picture fell from her hand. There, within a few feet of her, in the garden, stood the human form she had seen an hour before. The pale thin face, the head uncovered, and the wind playing with his hair. Another second, and he had gone! It was all over in one brief moment, and Ella lay insensible upon the floor.

*

*

*

*

The investigation into the robbery of the notes was a long and tedious one, and it is worthy of mention that Colonel Raymond was the most unwilling to abandon it. It surely could not be that he really suspected Captain Parkes guilty of a petty felony, or did he want to cast an odium on his character to prevent his union with Emily? I believe that men will do anything. Our own acts always shine in a brighter light before ourselves, and many a man has slain another without calling it murder, until that word was put into his mouth by justice.

For a time, suspicion fell on the Captain's bearer, who arrived from Dum-Dum the day after the accident, and who remained with him throughout his illness. St. Albans, during the proceedings, asked several questions, some of them so clever and sharp, that the bearer became confused and agitated.

The atmosphere of Coke and Lyttleton, true to its old established character, had most successfully complexed and mystified the case; and it was not the first time that

a meeting of two hours' duration in a lawyer's office-like a ship in a resistless headwind-found its motion had been retrograde. It merely remained for the investigators to confess their inability to discover the thief. Colonel Glossery offered to share the loss with Parkes, a proposition the Captain indignantly repudiated.

Parkes throughout the proceedings took no very active part: he asked few questions, and did not answer all that were put to him; and, to be ungenerous, his whole demeanour was that of a guilty man. He was sullen and morose; he was generally lively and vivacious. He halted and stammered; he was generally open and fluent. His natural pride, of the proper sort, was struggling for dominion with his commonsense. It said to him, " These men, though they do not say so, are in reality trying you, an officer in one of Her Majesty's regiments, for felony. The inquiries are levelled at you as much as your servants. When the investigation is over, you may possibly be under arrest!"

But his common-sense said, "Do not evince the slightest evidence that you are aware of their suspicions. Such a conviction should never enter the breast of an honorable man, however sensitive, or however glaring the facts may be. You can remove any impression by taking this course, and repel all obloquy."

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The face of Emily Raymond shone in that musty old office, smiled out of the worm-eaten crime catechisms on the walls, and even looked cheerfully through the marble eyes of a dusty Lord Eldon over the door; and the visionary fancy fortified her lover. For her sake alone he stood passive amidst his peculiar cast of friends, and strange insinuations. But it was a Herculean task. He knew the hand was in the room, and whose hand, which had opened that pocket-book and abstracted the notes; but not being able to prove it in point of law, he remained mute.

The investigation ended, and instead of Captain Parkes finding himself a prisoner under arrest, he found he must act the part of prosecutor should any future evidence be forthcoming.

Colonel Raymond went home, weak enough in his high ambition for Emily's future, to set about undoing the union he had already sanctioned.

He thought once or twice of St. Albans that night, and spoke well of him to his daughter.

CHAPTER IX.

Captain Parkes moralises upon Friendship. -Storm-clouds in the Moral Sky.-St. An drew's Library: a Rencontre ; the Lovers meet again; the trial of Mrs. Gervase; a faint gleam of sunshine after all. CAPTAIN PARKES sat in his verandah

on the night of the "investigation day." He was thoroughly alone, and he gave himself up to reveries. Everything so still and quiet, and' the cool air, conjoined to carry his fancies into England, and to the pleasant home of his father, the Admiral. Up to the time when he joined his regiment, he had never had a trial of any kind, and he had formed two friendships which had never proved insincere or unreal. Thus he was blessed above the generality of his fellows; but everything in youth-time shines fairer through the eyes of inexperience. And Parkes felt himself alone in wide India, so far as friends went.

What would arise from his love of Emily Raymond it was impossible to say, but he felt disgusted with the Colonel. He had read him distinctly, without a doubt, and he knew that the events of that day would be used against him, and to the termination of his hopes. How hollow is what the world calls friendship! thought he; and groups of men and women passed before him-women he knew in India, who were daily deluding themselves with the notion that their acquaintances were friends! There was so and so for instance, a man of glaring plebeianism; pigheaded, and not sapient; a man notable only for his inherent meannesses and backbiting

who would, to have enriched himself a pice, have sold the nails out of his parent's coffin; a man spoken of contemptuously by every human being who had the misfortune to sully his hand in his; conceited and vain, not proud; stubborn, not from incredulity, but from his monstrously swinish nature. A Hydra with a hundred heads, and faces and tongues; a two-visaged Janus, not as his Thessalian antitype, for the present and the past, but for slander and lies; dead to all that delicate machinery of the human heart which attunes itself and others to the symphony of fellowkindness; dead to the feelings which, in middle-class society, alone distinguish the true-born gentleman from the snob, and dead, like silly old Silenus, to the simplest order of modesty.

And yet, thought Parkes, that creature, or thing, imagines the group of men who gather around him are attracted and actuatted by that divinest of sentiments-true and cordial friendship. Poor fool! Do they not know that he would grudge the midnight oil for a sick child's room? Do they not know, and do they not tell it, (behind his back,) that he is the corrupt essence of all that is vile and repulsive ?-a man whom to horsewhip would be a pleasure, but whose company and assinine peculiarities are alone borne with because the refining and elevating influence of womankind is rare in this unpalatable country, and the creature is married?