UNCLE HARTLEBURY'S ROMANCE. little sarcastically, and looked incredulously at me; but mademoiselle stamped her foot angrily at Mein Herr Diable, and he condescended to look civilly upon me. "We must part here," she said hurriedly to me. "What is your hotel?" "The Imperial," I said. "Place Vendome." "You must not call on me. I will call upon you to-night. For Heaven's sake be satisfied with this." I got to my hotel in a dreamy sort of fashion, ordered private rooms, and said I expected a lady to call in the evening; I should not go out until she came, and they must show her up. It seemed ages that I waited for her; I waited until they relieved guard at the Napoleon Column and marched by the Rue St. Honoré with their drums and trumpets. I waited until my heart was sick with fears and doubts; and at last I received a short note, in which the writer said I might see her on the next night at the Arc de l'Etoile, at ten o'clock; but if I really loved her, and wished to cherish the memory of her as something sweet and dear, I ought to see her no more. She offered no apology for keeping me waiting. I kissed her note, and yet smote the table with passion, and stamped about the room with rage. That silent, disgusting German was the cause of all this! Who was he? What was he? I asked myself, but I was never enabled to answer the question. He was a strange unfathomable mystery. On the following night I was at the Arch of Triumph an hour before the trysting-time, with a longing heart and a brain half-dazed with the glare and glitter of the long rows of gas-lamps and the wandering carriage-lights. The scene was to me then one of such unaccustomed splendour, that it seemed as if I had been dropped here by Fate to play a part in some Arabian Night's story. She came at last, my charmer, muffled up half in disguise, running, I thought, from one who claims her love to one who prays for it as the greatest blessing Heaven or earth can give. We walked to the shadow of an adjacent tree, and sat down; she suffered me to clasp her in my arms. Again I offered her my hand; talked to her of arrangements for the future; indicated the sort of letter I would write to my father by the very next post. A mad thing to do? I must have been off my head? Ah, so would you have been in presence of that matchless beauty. I never saw so much loveliness in mortal being; and even after all these years have elapsed, I cannot condemn my judgment in that respect. We wandered about those walks in the Bois de Boulogne, and sat beneath the trees, and talked 137 of a hundred happy things that only lovers' lips can say. At last she confessed that she loved me with all her heart. "I have never known what love is until now," she said, "my dear, dear friend; and I understand its sweetness, its purity, when it is too late, too late, my dear monsieur." "Why too late, Louise?" I asked; and then, prepared to learn the worst, I said, "You are not married already?" "Oh, no," she said. "Nor betrothed?" I asked, hurrying question upon question. "Cease, cease, I pray you," she exclaimed, in a passion of despair. "Seek to know no more: I can never be yours: I love you too much." "You are mine, Louise; I snatched you from the grave. It was Fate that brought me to your side: Death came between us, and I struck him down. You are mine by all laws human and divine." She sobbed at this, laid her head on my shoulder, and in a wail of despair said, "Oh, would I were! Would it might be possible! Oh, sir, do not tempt me: do not; pray, do not. Your love would end in hate." 'My dear Louise, I am prepared to brave all things." "I am not prepared to brave your scorn," she said. "Death were bliss to that. Let me go, sir. Farewell!" "No, no," I said, detaining her. "I will raise an alarm," she cried. Cruel, cruel," I replied. "O, mon Dieu, monsieur!" she exclaimed, and then kissing me on the forehead she said, "You see yon distant lights on the right, and that great cluster in the Champs Elysée?" "Yes." "It is Monsieur Victor's Café Chantant. I will see you once again. Let it be there, to-morrow night, at ten." "You will not deceive me?" I said, letting her hand go very reluctantly. "That is what I will not do for all the world," she replied solemnly, and raising her eyes to heaven. "I will not deceive you." "My dear Louise!" I said. She looked so beautiful in the starlight. "Better say adieu, now and for ever!" was her response. "But if it must be, au revoir! Be it so!" "Au revoir !" broke from my lips. She slipped away from me, and disappeared. The long rows of lights, the distant sounds of music, mocked my despair. I look back now, and know what a mad fellow I was; but I do not blame myself, and I learned how heroic woman can be, the most abandoned, when the divine chord of love is really touched by the master hand. Poor lost Louise, she was a martyr for my sake! I can see now, out yonder where the sun is making a long track over the waters, I can see a half-clad figure drifting, drifting, floating away into the darker shade, -drifting out into the mist where sea and sky unite and are lost in each other. What creatures of circumstances we are! Ah, there's my wife yonder beckoning to Frank and Harry. | The girls are nearly dressed by this time, and yonder are the boys plunging about as if they had only just gone in. There they are, sir, within fifty yards of the spot where I rescued Louise from drowning twenty years ago! All right, my friend; don't be unhappy. My romance will soon be at an end. You think I tell the story well? I am quite eloquent, you say? Ah, it is the eloquence that earnestness gives, I suppose. It does me good to tell you this romance of mine: it has been in my mind at odd times, as if it demanded utterance, for years. You may be sure I went to that café the next night. There was a clear sky and a full moon. The effect of the contending lights of the café and the moon among the foliage of the Champs Elysée was weird and magical. It seemed to carry my mind back to a wonderful representation I had seen at a London theatre of Faust and Marguerite. Then the woodland scene of A Midsummer Night's Dream broke into that memory. I was not myself, I often think, all through this piece. I know that it shocked me a little when I found myself among a crowd of men and women who were drinking and smoking in this beautiful spot, and applauding an indecent dance; and it shocked me all the more to think that it was here that Louise had selected to meet me, her lover. Then I thought what a prude I was, and remembered how different were French ideas of these things to ours in England. I would soon coax Louise out of all this semi-barbarous indifference to the proprieties when I had her in England and made her my wife. While I was thinking in this wise, a terrific burst of applause brought my wandering eyes back to the stage. A lady was smil ing and bowing her acknowledgments. My heart beat wildly at sight of her. The applause rose again higher and higher. "Who is this?" I said excitedly to a gentleman who was crowded close up against me. "Do you not know?" he said in French. "Mademoiselle Victor, it is her first appearance this season; she has just returned from England." Oh, my friend, I thought I should have lost my breath altogether. There was nothing improper in her bathing dress: she might have walked down Bond Street in it; but the costume in which she now appeared was the wildest kind of ballet dress I had ever seen. She sung with intense vigour in a rich ringing voice, and to the chorus she danced in a voluptuous siren-like fashion that seemed to belong rather to a figure out of one of Etty's pictures than to anything earthly. From this movement she changed her gambols into a mad sort of Mabille dance, in the midst of which she uttered a piercing scream and threw herself upon the floor in the glare and glitter of the footlights. I thought I should go mad. I pushed my way with desperation to the stage to assure myself that I was not the victim of some horrible delusion. They had lifted her up and carried her into the retiring-room. I forced my way in; but I should have been violently ejected, had not that old German caught sight of me and snatched me out of the grasp of several yelling rascals who had nearly overpowered me. This mysterious person was evidently in great authority there. Louise opened her eyes, and seeing me said, "Oh my God," and covered her face with her hands. That sneaking German frowned at me, but happily allowed me to remain. In a few minutes mademoiselle had recovered sufficiently for the manager to go out and tell the audience she would reappear shortly. In the midst of the shout of applause which greeted this declaration Louise rose to her feet and called for champagne. She drank the wine greedily, and then turning to me said, "There, monsieur, I told you it could not be: I said I would not deceive you. Adieu! God guard you!" She took the manager's arm, and he led her once more upon the stage. The old German stood there looking at me like Mephistopheles in the play. I staggered to the door, slipped like a drunkard out into the night, threw myself upon the grass just beyond the inclosure of that painted hell, and wept like a child. Bravo Frank! That was a splendid dive; but I'm glad it is the last; you have certainly had enough of the water for this morning. That's right, my dear boy. Better finish my story before they all come and interrupt us? Is that what you said? Très bien, but one requires a little interval now and then to keep down the full rush of the old feeling; mind you, I am enacting all this story over again while I am narrating it to you. And storytelling is warm work in the hottest days of August. You mean to tell it when the weather is cold? Eh? in a Christmas annual? Well, I have no objection, only keep my name out of the story, and don't let me be pointed at as the hero. You believe Mrs. Hartlebury is coming? Well, light another cigar, and we will come to the "Finis." I passed a miserable night. I lay there on UNCLE HARTLEBURY'S ROMANCE. 189 the grass I know not how long, and then I the house, who entered with a candle, and in wandered home. I drank a pint of brandy some little excitement asked me if there was and threw myself upon the bed undressed. I not something wrong. I was out of bed in an don't think I slept a wink. Early in the instant. "What is wrong, sir?" I asked. morning that pale, pig's-eyed looking German "I think your bedroom has been robbed, if I called upon me, and in a few authoritative have not disturbed the thief," he replied. words in broken English bade me accompany "I saw a fellow prowling about before I went him on a little visit. He led the way across to bed, and as soon as I was awakened by the the Pont St. Michel to the centre of the grating of a lock I got up and rang my bell. Marché Neuf, where we entered a small square This was silly; I ought to have gone out and building. It was the Morgue! The old Mor- caught the thief. In another minute I heard gue, a much more wretched place than the a door shut; a stealthy step passed my room, present edifice. On our left hand there were and before I could follow my light was out, his large windows guarded by a rail, and beyond cloak over my head, and Jacques here has was the chamber of death. It nearly made come to say that they are after a fellow who me sick to see several dead bodies lying there. leaped from a second-floor window, and made I shuddered and clung to my companion. He off along the Rue St. Honoré." This was the looked coldly on and pointed to a pink dress host's story so far as I could make out. We and some lace that was hanging in the furthest examined the room. My valise had been cut corner; and then, oh mercy! I saw her body, open, sure enough, and there lay beside it a cold and white and still. There it lay in great clasp-knife which had done the business. awful companionship! I think I must have Louise's little note was gone, her locket had fainted at sight of the poor lost woman, with been torn away from the ribbon, and a packet her brown hair all damp and clinging to her of letters from England had been carried off. white round shoulders. I remembered nothing I shall always believe that German was the until I found myself on a sofa in a well-furnished thief. And it seemed to me at the time that My senses were no sooner restored to if he had not been disturbed he would have me than that horrible German with the light murdered me. He had evidently some mystemoustache and the cold greenish eye came in rious power, or wished to have, over Louise. I and deliberately seizing me by the throat, stood in his way; how, I cannot understand; began to shake and curse me. I felt like a but it was so. Her liking for me was to him child in his hands, I was so weak and faint, a terrible grievance: he had searched for letters and all the sensations of approaching death and other tokens of our acquaintanceship. I came over me. I must have cried out and told the hotel-keeper I had had a narrow struggled, I suppose, for a woman rushed into escape: that knife was intended for something the room and dragged my assailant from me; more desperate than cutting open a valise. he left me with an oath; and the woman, a Fancy, if he had murdered me, you would strong, wilful-looking creature led me into an have seen no fat, sentimental recorder on the adjoining room. I could hardly stand, but I beach at Boulogne; and that happy-looking was nevertheless strong enough and sensible regiment of children coming from the machines enough to take the woman's advice and get yonder would not have been in existence. out of that house. I stumbled down two pairs You are very much obliged to that German of stairs and found my way into the street, devil for not cutting my throat? And I thank where I obtained a cab and went to my hotel. my host of the Imperial for disturbing him I found a letter, which had been delivered by before he had time to carry out his fell the post: it was written in French. The scheme. words were, "I loved you truly. I was unworthy of you: that is why you will never see your poor Louise again; here is a souvenir of her who blesses you with her last breath.' room. That souvenir was a small locket fastened to a piece of blue ribbon. I need not tell you how deeply it affected me. During the night which followed these hours of mystery and terror and grief I slept the sleep of one who is at last exhausted in mind and body. I was awakened after midnight by the proprietor of Well, sir, to conclude, as the parson says, I put that bit of ribbon, which the thief had left behind him, into my pocket, took the next train to Calais, the next to Dover, returned to my father's house, and married Miss Longford. We are a thoroughly happy pair, as you have already had judgment enough to note. My children are good, contented, and numerous, as you see; and if that will make a story for Christmas, my friend, you are quite welcome to it, and you can call it Uncle Hartlebury's Romance. AULD ROBIN GRAY. [Lady Anne Barnard, daughter of James Lindsay, | ship, are referred to in Lady Anne Barnard's letter to fifth Earl of Balcarras, born at Balcarras, Fife, 27th November, 1750; died in Berkeley Square, London, 6th May, 1825. She married Sir Andrew Barnard, a son of the Bishop of Limerick, and colonial secretary at the Cape of Good Hope. She accompanied her husband to the Cape, and wrote an interesting description of an expedition across the country, in letters, part of which have been published in the Songstresses of Scotland, by Sarah Tytler and J. L. Watson. The popularity of Auld Robin Gray, and the well-kept mystery regarding its author Sir Walter Scott, dated July, 1823.1 In the year of her death, Scott edited for the Bannatyne Club a tract containing a corrected version of the ballad, and a continuation by the authoress. The second part was written to gratify her ladyship's mother; but it never became popular; and the poetess was quite sensible that it did not deserve to become so; for although it contains several fine lines, it destroys the nobility of the characters which gave force and grandeur to the original ballad. We quote the second part as a curiosity.] PART I When the sheep are in the fauld, and the kye come hame, The waes of my heart fa' in showers frae my e'e, Unken'd by my gudeman, wha sleeps sound by me. Young Jamie loo'd me weel, and he sought me for his bride; But saving ae crown-piece, he'd naething else beside. To make the crown a pound, my Jamie gaed to sea; And the crown and the pound, O they were baith for me! He hadna been gane a twelvemonth and a day, My father brak his arm, our cow was stown away; My father cou'dna work-my mother cou'dna spin; I toil'd day and night, but their bread I cou'dna win; "Robin Gray, so called from its being the name of the old herd at Balcarras, was born soon after the close of the year 1771. My sister Margaret had married, and accompanied her husband to London; I was melancholy, and endeavoured to amuse myself by attempting a few poetical trifles. There was an ancient Scotch melody, of which I was passionately fond; who lived before your day, used to sing it to us at Balcarras. She did not object to its having improper words, though I did. I longed to sing old Sophy's air to different words, and give to its plaintive tones some little history of virtuous distress in humble life, such as might suit it. While attempting to effect this in my closet, I called to my little sister, now Lady Hardwicke, who was the only person near me, 'I have been writing a ballad, my dear; I am oppressing my heroine with many misfortunes. I have already sent her Jamie to sea-and broken her father's arm-and made her mother fall sick-and given her Auld Robin Gray for her lover; but I wish to load her with a fifth sorrow within the four lines, poor thing! Help me to one.' Steal the cow, sister Anne,' said the little Elizabeth. The cow was immediately lifted by me, and the song completed. At our fireside, and amongst our neighbours, Auld Robin Gray was always called for. I was pleased in secret with the approbation it met with; but such was my dread of being suspected of writing anything, perceiving the shyness it created in those who could write nothing, that I carefully kept my own secret. The novel Robin Gray, by Charles Gibbon, is founded on the ballad. He gaed to his bed, but nae physic would take, The tears trickled down upon Auld Robin Gray. "Oh, greet nae mair, Jeanie!" said he, wi' a groan; "I've wranged her," he said, "but I kent it o'er late; 141 |