A Love Story
"Oh that the desert were my dwelling place,
With one fair spirit for my minister;
That I might all forget the human race,
And, hating no one, love but only her."
A cheerful party were met in the drawing room of Delmé. Clarendon Gage,
a neighbouring land proprietor, to whom Emily had for a twelvemonth been
betrothed, had the night previous returned from a continental tour. In
consequence, Emily looked especially radiant, Delmé much pleased, and
Clarendon superlatively happy. Nor must we pass over Mrs. Glenallan,
Miss Delmé's worthy aunt, who had supplied the place of a mother to
Emily, and who now sat in her accustomed chair, with an almost sunny
brow, quietly pursuing her monotonous tambouring. At times she turned to
admire her niece, who occasionally walked to the glass window, to caress
and feed an impudent white peacock; which one moment strutted on the
wide terrace, and at another lustily tapped for his bread at ne of the
lower panes.
"I am glad to see you looking so well, Clarendon!"
"And I can return the compliment, Delmé! Few, looking at you now, would
take you for an old campaigner."
The style of feature in Delmé and Clarendon was very dissimilar. Sir
Henry was many years Gage's senior; but his manly bearing, and dark
decided features, would bear a contrast with even the tall and elegant,
although slight form of Clarendon. The latter was very fair, and what we
are accustomed to call English-looking. His hair almost, but not quite,
flaxen, hung in thick curls over his forehead, and would have given an
effeminate expression to the face, were it not for the peculiar flash of
the clear blue eye.
"Come! Clarendon," said Emily, "I will impose a task. You have written
twice in my album; once, years ago, and the second time on the eve of
our parting. Come! you shall read us both effusions, and then write a
sonnet to our happy meeting. Would that dear George were here now!"
Gage took up the book. It was a moderately-sized volume, bound in
crimson velvet. It was the fashion to keep albums _then_. It glittered
not in a binding of azure and gold, nor were its momentous secrets
enclosed by one of Bramah's locks. The Spanish proverb says, "Tell me
who you are with, and I will tell you what you are." Ours, in that album
age, used to be, "Show me your scrap book, I will tell you your
character." Emily's was not one commencing with--
"I never loved a dear gazelle!"
and ending with stanzas on the "Forget-me-not." It had not those
hackneyed but beautiful lines addressed by Mr. Spencer to Lady Crewe--
"I stay'd too late: forgive the crime!
Unheeded flew the hours;
For noiseless falls the foot of Time.
That only treads on flowers."
Nor contained it those sublime, but yet more common ones, on Sir John
Moore's death; which lines, by the bye, have suffered more from that
mischief-making, laughter-loving creature, Parody, than any lines we
know. It was not one of these books. Nor was it the splendid scrap book,
replete with superb engravings and proof-impression prints; nor at all
allied to the sentimental one of a garrison flirt, containing locks of
hair of at least five gentlemen, three of whom are officers in the army.
Nor, lastly, was it of that genus which has vulgarity in its very
title-page, and is here and there interspersed with devilish imps, or
caricatured likenesses of the little proprietress, all done in most
infinite humour, and marking the familiar friendship, of some half-dozen
whiskered cubs, having what is technically called the run of the house.
No! it was a repository for feeling and for memory, and, in its fair
pages, presented an image of Emily's heart. Many of these were marked,
it is true; and what human being's character is unchequered? But it was
blotless; and the virgin page looks not so white as when the contrast of
the sable ink is there.
Clarendon read aloud his first contribution--who knows it not? The very
words form a music, and that music is Metastasio's,
"Placido zeffiretto,
Se trovi il caro oggetto,
Digli che sei sospiro
Ma non gli dir di chi,
Limpido ruscelletto,
Se mai t'incontri in lei,
Digli che pianto sei,
Ma non le dir qual' eiglio
Crescer ti fe cosi."
"And now, Emily! for my parting tribute--if I remember right, it was
sorrowful enough."
Gage read, with tremulous voice, the following, which we will christen
THE FAREWELL.
I will not be the lightsome lark,
That carols to the rising morn,--
I'd rather be some plaintive bird
Lulling night's ear forlorn.
I will not be the green, green leaf,
Mingling 'midst thousand leaves and flowers
That shed their fairy charms around
To deck Spring's joyous bowers.
I'd rather be the one red leaf,
Waving 'midst Autumn's sombre groves:--
On the heart to breathe that sadness
Which contemplation loves.
I will not be the morning ray,
Dancing upon the river's crest,
All light, all motion, when the stream
Turns to the sun her breast.
I'd rather be the gentle shade,
Lengthening as eve comes stealing on,
And rest in pensive sadness there,
When those bright rays are gone.
I will not be a smile to play
Upon thy coral lip, and shed
Around it sweetness, like the sun
Risen from his crimson bed.
Oh, no! I'll be the tear that steals
In pity from that eye of blue,
Making the cheek more lovely red,
Like rose-leaf dipp'd in dew.
I will not be remember'd when
Mirth shall her pageant joys impart,--
A dream to sparkle in thine eye,
Yet vanish from thy heart.
But when pensive sadness clouds thee,
When thoughts, half pain, half pleasure, steal
Upon the heart, and memory doth
The shadowy past reveal.
When seems the bliss of former years,--
Too sweet, too pure, to feel again,--
And long lost hours, scenes, friends, return,
Remember me, love--then!
"Ah, Clarendon! how often have I read those lines, and thought--but I
will not think now! Here come the letters! Henry will soon be busy--I
shall finish my drawing--and aunt will finish--no! she never _can_
finish her tambour work. Take my portfolio and give me another
contribution!" Gage now wrote "The Return," which we insert for the
reader's approval:--
THE RETURN.
When the blue-eyed morn doth peep
Over the soft hill's verdant steep,
Lighting up its shadows deep,
I'll think of thee, love, _then!_
When the lightsome lark doth sing
Her grateful song to Nature's King,
Making all the woodlands ring,
I'll think of thee, love, _then!_
Or when plaintive Philomel
Shall mourn her mate in some lone dell,
And to the night her sorrows tell,
I'll think of thee, love, _then!_
When the first green leaf of spring
Shall promise of the summer bring,
And all around its fragrance fling,
I'll think of thee, love, _then!_
Or when the last red leaf shall fall,
And winter spread its icy pall,
To mind me of the death of all,
I'll think of thee, love, _then!_
When the lively morning ray
Is dancing on the river's spray,
And sunshine gilds the joyous day,
I'll think of thee, love, _then_!
And when the shades of eve steal on,
Lengthening as life's sun goes down,
Like sweetest constancy alone,
I'll think of thee, love, _then_!
When I see a sweet smile play
On coral lips, like Phoebus' ray,
Making all look warm and gay,
I'll think of thee, love, _then_!
When steals the tear of pity, too,
O'er a cheek, whose crimson hue
Looks like rose-leaf dipp'd in dew,
I'll think of thee, love, _then_!
When mirth's pageant joys unbind
The gloomy spells that chain my mind,
And make me dream of all that's kind,
I'll think of thee, love, _then_!
And when pensive sadness clouds me,
When the host of memory crowds me,
When the shadowy past enshrouds me,
I'll think of thee, love, _then_!
When seems the bliss of former years,--
Too sweet, too pure, to feel again,--
And long lost hours, scenes, friends, return,
I'll think of thee, love, _then_!
Chapter III.
The Dinner.
"Hues which have words, and speak to ye of heaven."
"Away! there need no words or terms precise,
The paltry jargon of the marble mart,
Where pedantry gulls folly: we have eyes."
We are told by the members of the silver-fork school, that no tale of
fiction can be complete unless it embody the description of a dinner.
Let us, therefore, shutting from our view that white-limbed gum-tree,
and dismissing from our table tea and damper, [Footnote: _Damper_.
Bushman's fare--unleavened bread] call on memory's fading powers, and
feast once more with the rich, the munificent, the intellectual
Belliston Græme.
Dinner! immortal faculty of eating! to what glorious sense or
pre-eminent passion dost thou not contribute? Is not love half fed by
thy attractions? Beams ever the eye of lover more bright than when,
after gazing with enraptured glance at the coveted haunch, whose fat--a
pure white; whose lean--a rich brown--invitingly await the assault. When
doth lover's eye sparkle more, than when, at such a moment, it lights on
the features of the loved fair one? Is not the supper quadrille the most
dangerous and the dearest of all?
Cherished venison! delicate white soup! spare young susceptible bosoms!
Again we ask, is not dinner the very aliment of friendship? the hinge on
which it turns? Does a man's heart expand to you ere you have returned
his dinner? It would be folly to assert it. Cabinet dinners--corporation
dinners--election dinners--and vestry dinners--and rail-road
dinners--we pass by these things, and triumphantly ask--does not _the_
Ship par excellence--the Ship of Greenwich--annually assemble under its
revered roof the luminaries of the nation? Oh, whitebait! called so
early to your last account! a tear is all we give, but it flows
spontaneously at the memory of your sorrows!
As Mr. Belliston Græme was much talked of in his day, it may not be
amiss to say a few words regarding him. He was an only child, and at an
early age lost his parents. The expense of his education was defrayed
by a wealthy uncle, the second partner in a celebrated banking house.
His tutor, with whom he may be said to have lived from boyhood--for his
uncle had little communication with him, except to write to him one
letter half-yearly, when he paid his school bill--was a shy retiring
clergyman--a man of very extensive acquirements, and a first rate
classical scholar. After a short time, the curate and young Græme
became attached to each other. The tutor was a bachelor, and Græme was
his only pupil. The latter was soon inoculated with the classical mania
of his preceptor; and, as he grew up, it was quite a treat to hear the
pair discourse of Greeks and Romans. A stranger who had _then_ heard
them would have imagined that Themistocles and Scipio Africanus were
stars of the present generation. When Græme was nineteen, his uncle
invited him to town for a month--a most unusual proceeding. During this
period he studied closely his nephew's character. At the end of this
term, Mr. Hargrave and his young charge were on their way to the
classical regions, where their fancy had been so long straying. They
explored France, and the northern parts of Italy--came on the shores of
the Adriatic--resided and secretly made excavations near the
amphitheatre of Polo--and finally reached the Morea. Not a crag,
valley, or brook, that they were not conversant with before they left
it. They at length tore themselves away; and found themselves at the
ancient Parthenope. It was at Pompeii Mr. Græme first saw the