LITERATURE.

Globe, Volume IV, Issue 431, 30 October 1875, Page 3

LITERATURE.

LOVE FINDS THE WAY. ( Concluded.) ‘We have waited a precious long time, darling, as it is.’ * And I’ll take all the blame. It was my idea, was it not, Harry ? ’ ‘All yours, my own; and a very clever idea too, and worthy of my Georgy’s bright wits. ’ ‘I love anything romantic,’cried the beautiful girl. ‘ Except a hero of romance, Georgy. You can’t make that out of me.’ ‘ I love you—with —all—my—heart.’ If they had been walking, her lover would have kissed her lips ; as it was, he kissed the gold knob of her riding-whip. ‘{l wonder if my father|has missed me yet ’ Then she wondered if they had found a fox—wondered what her father would say when he knew the truth —wondered if young Elliot would hint at her escape ; and her lover did his best to reassure her, for even the boldest young ladies reqnire the support of the most comforting assurances under such trying circumstances. ‘ Oh, Harry dear ! let us ride faster. I feel that unless I gallop like mad I shall never keep up my courage to do it.’ ‘ Come, then. But never say that. It is not like my brave Georgy. Hark ! I thought I heard a cry,’ exclaimed Wilton, looking round. ‘Oh ! where ?’ cried Georgiana, turning pale as paper. * Do you see that fellow there, through the gap? Dash the Dutch, they’re not hunting. ‘ They’re hunting us,’ replied the girl. ‘ Come on. Now for it.’ ‘ Straight across country, Harry.’ ‘ As the ci’ow flies.’ ‘ Here they come down the hill. There’s only one way out of it; we must pound them. ’ * Who are they ?’ ‘ Parson Downes and Mr Elliott, and my father is not far behind.’ A cry followed them ; but they rode like the wind. A double post and rails was the first obstacle to their runaway progres. Georgiana cleared it at once; Harry made two jumps of it. On they raced, neck and neck, over a broad meadow. Th£ fence was what has since been called a bulfinch. They cleared it together, and ventured to look back. Their pursuers had not gained on them a a yard. A gallop of three hundred yards over ridge and furrow brought them face to face with a stiff fence, hedge, bank, and post and rail. Georgiana’s splendid animal took it in its stride ; but Harry Wilton made a mess of it, and tasted dirt. ‘ Oh, Harry ! ’ sobbed the breathless girl. ‘ All right; no harm done.’ He squeezed himself through first and his horse after him. ‘Oh ! if you had been hurt! ’ Georgiana had got a cold fit. Her courage was going again. ‘ We’ve lost ground now. Never mind ; we must make it up.’ He leaped into his saddle, and on they went. The wind bore the halloos of their pursuers after them; but the church was in sight now, four miles off. They were in the valley ; the church was on a hill. There was that bright beacon of hope to steer to. So they went on at a racing pace, now gaining a little on their pursuers, now losing ground. Luckily the fences were not so still in this lower pasture land. Here they got along splendidly, and there pursuers were now out of sight, hidden by intervening hedgerows. This revived the lady’s courage. They galloped over a forty-acre meadow in high spirits. ‘We are beating them,’ said the gentleman. ‘ We have beaten them,’ said the lady. They sailed over a fence ’together ; a few yards oft' was a brook. They came to it. Georgiana’s mare took it like a swallow.

Harry was left on the other side. His horse would not look at water. ‘ Now I’m settled,’ he said. * Oh, Harry ! rush him over it.’ But he would not be rushed. iSlie cleared it back again, and gave him a lead ; but be would not be led. Wilton thrashed his horse, spurred him, coaxed him, and swore at him; but on the bank he set his forelegs out like two pokers, and broke away bits of the turf, but nothing more. ‘ Oh, Harry ! what shall we do ? They will catch us. They must be in the next field by this time. ’ ‘ Come and try to whip him over it;' and she did whip the horse’s quarters with a will, but to no good purpose. ‘ Let us go some other way ; we might come to a bridge. My father—my father’s with them now, perhaps. That horse’ll never jump it, Harry.’ ‘ No, but I will ;’ and throwing himself out of the saddle, he gave his horse a couple of stinging cuts on the shoulder and turned him loose. Then taking a run, Harry Wilton cleared the brook easily enough, and ran by Georgiana’s side the rest of the way to the church. ‘ They’ve given u up,’ he said as the pair mounted the hill, ‘ Thank Heaven for that.’ In the churchyard was a little old stable, built for the parson to put his horse in. Here Georgiana’s mare was tied to the rack. On the bridegroom’s arm, panting, she entered the church ; but there was nobody there to receive her but the clerk. ‘ Mr Downes bas not come yet.’ After a terrible ten minutes, hot and out of breadth, he arrived. ‘ Why did you not stop ? ’ he asked. ‘ Oh—h— h, we took you for your brother, my father’s Mr Downes. Was not Mr Elliot with you ? ’ 1 I was,’ said Elliot, who, at this juncture, entered the vestry. ‘ To what may we owe the honour of this visit ? ’ asked Georgiana icily. Now, young Elliot had come to do a very handsome thing. ‘ I’ve come to give you away, instead of leaving it to the clerk to do—if you’ll let me. ’ And when the parson, wearing- a surplice over his boots and spurs, came to that part of the service which is thus set down : ‘ If Then shall the Minister say, ‘ Who giveth this Woman to be married to this Man ?’ Edward Elliot bravely answered ‘ 1 do.’ * * * * * So the elopement had proved a success. The rival suitors were sworn friends. Georgiana was supremely happy, and Harry was as proud as a peacock of his handsome bride. But as they walked down the aisle, they heard the ‘ dead hallo ’ almost in the church. The fox, after a brilliant run, had been killed in some straw in the stable in which Georgiaua’s horse stood, and now the Squire held her mare and his own horse at the gate of the Churchyard. The state of affairs needed no explanation. He took it in at one glance. His daughter trembled. She had never seen such a look on his face before. She advanced a step towards him. ‘ Never come near me again,’ was all he said, as he threw the reins of Georgiana’s mare to his Whip, and called his hounds away to find another fox. But the field lingered to see the ‘ happy pair ’ —the bride in tears—depart ingloriously in a farmer’s chaise. * * * * Eighteen months passed. Mr Haughmond was, in his opinion, the laughing stock, of the county. Women were vermin. He had publicly horsewhipped the reverend ‘ skunk of a brother ’ who had presumed to marry his daughter in a church he had given him, horsewhipping a clergyman being not altogether a unique feat at the end of the eighteenth century. But Parson Downes and young Elliot let Georgiana knew how things were going at Haughmond Hall. What they told her was this. First, the Squire left off cards ; then he talked of giving the hounds to a younger man ; then his appetite began to fail him ; but last, and worst of all, he never got beyond his first bottle of port after dinner. These were good signs, Georgiana knew. But her father resolutely refused to see her, open her letters, or recognise her existence. She was dead to him, he said, and he moped with his dogs all alone. Mrs Wilton was a young lady of resource. She had devised the romantic elopement : now she hit upon another scheme. She drove in a chaise thirteen miles on a hot July afternoon with her old nurse and Master Gilbert Wilton behind her. In the shrubbery the young gentleman, just six mouths old, was popped into a great wicker basket built on purpose. Nurse carried the basket to the butler. The butler carried it to the master of Haughmond Hall. Both were in the plot. * Heaven help the man if he can find it in bis heart to say owt but yea to such a beauty,’ said the old woman who had nursed Georgiana, as she handed her treasure to her old fellow servant. Squire Haughmond woke from his nap. A little cry made him aware of the visitor’s presence. He opened the hamper. There, on a great pillow, lay a lovely boy. On his little white frock was pinned a card with this upon it: — ‘ Grandfather, if you please, I’m come to see you.’ For the nurse and the mother there was an awful three minutes suspense. Then the Squire’s bell rang. ‘ Bring my daughter here. ’ Then to himself. ‘ The bitch ’ll not be far from the puppy.’ Inelegant, but not unkind. The Squire was a foxhunter and knew the habits of dogs and women. * God bless your dear heart, mistress,’ cried the old nurse, breathless among the laurels where her mistress was in hiding, ‘he’s got him on his knee. ’ That afternoon Georgiana rode her own mare back to fetch her husband. They never left Haughmond Hall again, and a Wilton holds it now, as a good foxhunter as his great grandfather was langsyne.