LITERATURE.

Globe, Volume II, Issue 173, 28 December 1874, Page 3

LITERATURE.

AUDREY’S CHRISTMAS MORNINC. They had been fellow-travellers for two hours in the same train and in the same carriage—two gentlemen, who were travelling together, and one lady, who was alone. She was young, but she was not a bit pretty; that word in no way conveys an' idea of the singular beauty of her face and expression. She was very self-possessed, and quite aware of her attractions. One of the men, after the first glance, never looked her way, but sat immersed in his paper, his thoughts, to judge from the half-pained expression his face wore, none of the pleasantest. He was tall, dark, and soldierly-looking, with a scar half-hidden by his long drooping moustache. A man turning the corner of his prime, a face grand and noble, the girl thought, yet wearing a somewhat scornful sneering expression round the corners of his mouth —an expression that seemed to have grown habitual to that face when in repose, as if it had been long implanted and fostered there. His companion was more like the girl herself—bright and sunny, with a bright curly head of hair, with nothing but an incipient moustache to relieve the smoothness of his face, a row of dazzlingly white teeth, and laughing blue eyes. >She never looked at him, of course ; possibly because she was aware that his eyes were fixed upon her, full of boyish admiration ; but now and then she glanced furtively at the other face, and wished he would come to an end of his stupid paper. At last he put the paper down, and glanced carelessly at her. She was sitting back in her cornel’, her gloves thrown on the seat opposite her, and her little white fingers employed in a bit of apparently useless woman’s work. She had been reading, and her book lay with her gloves, where she had thrown it when she took out her crochet. The man with the blue eyes like her own glanced once or twice at the book, and then, as if emboldened by finding a something of similarity in their tastes, leaned over, and, laying his hand on the book, said — ‘ May I look at it ? I am so fond of Tennyson. ’ ‘ Oh, certainly. Do you know how far we are from Ashton Mills?’ ‘ 1 have no idea. I have never been in this part of the country before,’ he answered, shouting it out so that she might hear. * Wrighton, you know,’ turning to his companion, ‘ or have you forgotten England completely in the last twelve years ?’ No, he had not forgotten ; he had been recalling each place they had passed while they had fancied that he was reading. He thought ten minutes more would see them there : and he was right; the train jerked its unwieldly body into the Ashton Mills station within the time he had named. Before handing back the book the name on the flyleaf caught the younger man’s eyes—- ‘ Audrey Ashton. ’ ‘ Audrey Ashton, ’ he kept repeating, as they drove along over the frozen roads ; and so intent was he on his own thoughts, that he did not perceive the start his companion gave when he first heard the name. ‘ Y on seem a good deal struck by that name, Clayton. Why are you ?’ the other asked at length. ‘ Struck ? I should think so. Why Audrey Ashton is the belle everybody has been raving about in town ; the greatest flirt, they say, in England ; the best dancer and the prettiest rider. In fact, that’s the girl, Wrighton, who has been turning all heads in town and breaking more than one heart. ’ ‘ Heads must be easily turned and hearts equally easily broken,’ the other replied sneeringly. ‘ Well, I don’t know, ’ Clayton said. ‘ She certainly is strangely beautiful. ’ ‘ Do you know anything of her family ?’ Colonel Wrighton asked. ‘Not much. Her father is Sir Charles Ashton, of Ashton Mills, and she is an only daughter. I believe there is a sister of Sir Charles, much younger than himself, who lives at Ashton Mills; but Miss Audrey Ashton has been abroad until this winter, and I dare say this is her first home-coming since she was a child. ’ After this no more was said till the reached their destination. Colonel Wrighton had just returned from a twelve years’ tour of service in India, where he had won himself a name, a Victoria Cross, and, what he prized more, the love and respect of his officers and his regiment. He had been invited down with his cousin, Edward Clayton, to spend their Christmas at a place called Lorrimer Hall, now in the possession of an old schoolfellow of the colonel’s, Jack Huntley. It was a pleasantenough house to pass a few weeks in, and Mrs Huntley was one of those sweet motherly women whose chief happiness consists in making those about them happy, and whose plans have this end as their sole purpose. With this characteristic, it is not strange that she should be something of a matchmaker—an amiable, though often a sadly dangerous weakness. She had promised that the party round their Christmas dinner should be a small one, for she knew that Colonel Wrighton had no love for society or festive gatherings ; and, indeed, it was only on this condition that he had been persuaded to come at all. Jack Huntley had known Claude Wrighton intimately in the days when they were both young men. He had known, and still well remembered, that in those days there had been a woman whom the colonel had hold very dear—so dear, that when the reaction had come, and he had thought of how she had treated him, he had almost let his lips form a curse in connection with that name which they had hitherto coupled with the dearest terms his heart could coin. So, knowing all this, he did not now wonder that his old friend Claude classed all women under one category, and, reading them by the light of his bitter experience, did not hesitate to doubt the truth of all that bore that name. In the old days Mr Huntley had been in his friend’s confidence, and he had so well kept his promise of silence on that episode, that even his wife was ignorant of the romance which had been played out in the days when they were young. A lady was seated at the drawing-room window at Ashton Mills. She had been sitting quietly for a quarter of an hour, thinking, as it was so often her habitthinking intently, with the book she had been reading lying idly on her knee. She was dressed in a stiff' silk dress of sombre gray, suited to a Avoman of fifty; and yet she young-looking face and slight pretty figure told you that she could not bo more than thirty. The face Avas a very quiet one noAV, with the loAmliest broAvn hair smoothed over her Avhite high forehead. Loving

brown eyes too she had, that smiled on you full of a great sorrow, and a mouth exquisitely tender, that had laughed and dimpled very beautifully in the old lost days of her girlhood. Yet Helen Ashton had settled herself down to be an old maid, and her friends and relations, though many of them did not know the cause of this resolution, come to accept it as a fact that she would never marry. At length she roused herself out of her reverie and rang the bell, which was answered by a pleasant middle-aged woman. ‘ Esther, I see it’s beginning to snow. Have they sent the close carriage for Miss Audrey ?’ ‘ That they have, my dear; she’ll come safe enough with Robert; trust him for looking after Miss Audrey. Robert thinks there never was any lady in the world like the young mistress. ’ ‘ Hear child, how long it seems since we saw her, Esther ! I hope they won’t have spoiled her with all the gaiety she has been having.’ ‘ Bless her ! no fear of that. It will take more than one year, Miss Helen, to spoil her.’ ‘ Ah, there is the carriage at last. Esther, go and tell them to send up some tea ; the child will want something to warm her after her cold drive. ’ Then Miss Ashton ran down stairs in time to receive Audrey in her arms as she came into the hall, a few flakes of snow lying like tufts of ermine on her black velvet mantle. ‘ My darling, welcome home at last. ’ ‘How jolly it is, and such a dear old house ! and you, aunt Nelly, not looking a day older.’ ‘ Come to the light, Audrey,’ Miss Ashton said, when they got back to the drawingroom. ‘ Let me look at you, love. ’ ‘ Oh, yes, do look at me, aunt Nell, and tell me honestly if you think me pretty. I have been told I am so often ; but one never knows whether people mean what they say. Now you—l know I can trust you to tell exactly what you think.” ‘ My darling, you are lovely,’ Miss Ashton answered, standing under a big lamp, and looking at the sweet girlish face with its rich bloom—the bloom which her own had lost long ago ; ‘ and your colqir is one of the most beautiful I have ever seen. ’ ‘ I am very glad to hear you say that. But I quite agree with papa ; I shall never be as beautiful as you, aunt Nelly ’ Aunt Nelly turned away, and busied herself with the tea-things, while Audrey sat down on the rug to warm her cold fingers at the fire. Then Esther came in, and the girl rose to kiss her Told nurse, who stroked back the tumbled hair from her face, and pronounced her as “beautiful as a flower,” at which Audrey laughed, and said that if the flower were a dandelion or a peony, it was not much of a compliment. They had not spoiled her, that was easily seen ; yet Audrey Ashton was very far from being perfect; and it was in some measure true of her that she had once or twice exerted herself to win hearts that she did not care to retain. She had never been warned against this great sin, and in the foreign school where she had finished f her education, it was an established article of belief that women were given beauty for the sole purpose of winning men’s hearts without losing their own ; and her one season in London had shown her nothing to make her think the belief a false one. Had Audrey paused to think upon the role she was playing, she would quickly have detected its untruth and worthlessness, for she had fine generous instincts, and an open truthful disposition. But she did not pause to think ; she only saw that the more heartless her conquests, the higher she seemed to rise in the opinion of the world of London society ; and she left London rather rejoicing in the consciousness that she had embittered more than one life. The next day a letter came from Mrs Huntley, inviting Miss Ashton and her niece to go to Lorrimer Hall for their Christmas. Nothing could induce Miss Ashton to accept the invitation, though Audrey tried her most persuasive powers, and Mrs Huntley herself came over, and finding Miss Ashton alone in the drawing-room, had told her who her other guests were, and what a quiet party they would be. ‘ Indeed, aunt Helen seems more determined than ever not to go since we have tried to persuade her,’ Audrey said, when Mrs Huntley was driving away after her fruitless visit. Mrs Huntley and her aunt had both insisted that Audrey must go, and after a long resistance she at last yielded to their persuasions. ‘ I shall not be at all lonely, dear ; think of the years I have been content to be alone. Some people like solitude, dear, and I am one of those.’ Yet there had been a time when Helen Ashton had been no recluse, when she had enjoyed the fellowship and pleasures of society as much as any one. The world was smiling on her then, and she had found one who was dearer to her than all the rest of the world. Yet in those days she had been vain and foolish ; she too had used her beauty as a snare; but she had forgotton the second article in the flirt’s creed, and, while winning another heart, had lost her own. Still she went on flirting, until the man whose love she had won had left her, believing her as heartless as she had tried to make herself in his eyes. Then she awoke to the consciousness of how completely and absorbingly she had loved him; that it "was for his sake that she was Helen Ashton still. During the long years that he had been away no word from him had ever reached her, though she had occasionally heard from the newspapers and from th« Huntleys what his life was. When the time came for Audrey to go to Lorrimer Hall, she went, promising to come often and see her aunt, and tell her what they were all doing at the Hall. She was really sorry to leave her, and would willingly have remained to cheer her solitude; but aunt Helen would not hear of it. So she went, and Miss Ashton was once more left to brood over her own sad thoughts. When Audrey arrived at the Hall, she found that Mrs Huntley and some of her guests had gone out driving to see an old ruined abbey that was one of the sights of the neighborhood, and she was shown into a great drawing room, where before a blazing lire a gentleman was standing, reading. She wont in very quietly, and it was not till she was quite close to him that he turned to look at her ; and Audrey, opening her blue eyes,, uttered an exclamation of surprise, and felt very foolish for the first time in her life. He bowed, and she fancied from hismanner that lie would have left her then and there, if he could have done so without appearing rude. To be continued.