Page:Littell's Living Age - Volume 128.djvu/546

536 must ever rank amongst the perennial honours of English literature; and the work before us, when completed, will, we are confident, place Swift the man — if not on so lofty a moral pedestal as seems designed for him by his biographer — at least in a position to engage a larger share of human sympathy than has hitherto been accorded him by the common run of readers a generation of whom it may be said, at the present day, that they know not Jonathan.

 

 From Temple Bar.

Hugh Galbraith turned away from the dwelling where he had known the most of pleasure that had ever brightened his somewhat sombre life, nearly five months before this stage of our story, he felt strangely sore and stunned, yet not indignant. He had always accepted the position of "a fellow women did not care about" with great philosophy, returning their indifference with full measure, yet not the least resentment. But this practical proof of his own unattractiveness struck home. Worst of all, it lent the additional charm of being out of reach to the woman who had so fascinated him. She was a lady in the fullest acceptation of the word; delicate, refined. The attendant circumstances of keeping a shop must be repulsive to her, yet she preferred battling with the difiiculties of such a life to accepting the position, the ease, the security she might enjoy as his wife. Nevertheless he loved her the more for her unwavering honesty; and, as he walked miserably to and fro, seeking to while away the weary hours till it was time to go to bed (for there were no more trains that day), he cursed his own precipitancy in having thus suddenly cut himself off from all chance of any more play in the game on which he had staked so much. He had not diverged from his original route with any intention of proposing to Mrs. Temple; he only wished to satisfy his eyes with the sight of her, and glidden his heart with the sound of her voice; and then in a moment a wave of passion carried him over the border of polite seeming into the reality of confession! Yet, after all, he did not know what was beneath the cards. He could not for a moment believe that Kate Temple's past contained any page she need desire to obliterate or conceal, but there was something there she did not choose him to know. He was too candid to attribute his rejection to this reason. He recognized her actual indifference, while he recalled with a certain degree of painful gratitude the kindly emotion in her voice as she spoke her adieux. "I suppose it will come all right," thought Galbraith, with a dreary effort at manful, reasonable resignation. "I suppose the time will come when I shall think I have had a narrow escape from a piece of folly, for it is about the last sort of marriage I ever contemplated; but it's infernally bitter to give it up at present. Still, I suppose it is better for me in the end. Might I not have repented had she said 'Yes' instead of 'No'?" But even while he strove to argue himself into composure, the recollection of Kate's great lustrous eyes, dewy with unshed tears, her expressive mouth, the rich red lips tremulous with kindly sympathy in the pain she inflicted, came back to him so vividly that he longed with a passion more ardent, more intense than he had ever felt before, to hold her in his arms and press his lips to hers.

The Grange, as it was familiarly called — or Kirby Grange, to give the full appellation — the old house of the Galbraiths, was even more desolate than Sir Hugh expected to find it. His boyish reminiscences presented him with a lonely picture enough, but not equal, to the reality.

Yet he soon grew to be at home there. Galbraith, though essentially an aristocrat, was not in the least a fine gentleman; the plainest food, the simplest accommodation sufficed for him. His soldier-servant, a man in the stables, an old woman and her daughter to keep the house, formed an ample retinue. Some modern additions to such portions of the antiquated, mouldy furniture as could still be used made a few rooms habitable, and here Hugh Galbraith spent the summer, perhaps more agreeably than he would have done elsewhere. The land he had newly purchased gave him a good deal of employment. There were fresh leases to be granted on fresh terms; but some of his new acquisition he would keep in his own hands. Farming was exactly the employment that suited him. Moreover, Galbraith had been too long a poor gentleman, striving bravely and successfully to keep out of debt, not to have acquired a liking for money. To improve his property and add to it had become his day-dream. To this end he contented himself with a small personal expenditure, although when he first felt the unwonted