A Love Story, by a Bushman by - (classic literature books TXT) 📖

inner one, would fain propagate on all sides their

rigid creed, forbidding the more favoured commoners of nature even to

sip joy’s chalice. If not a saint, however, but a fair, confiding, and

romantic girl, she was good without misanthropy, pure without

pretension, and joyous, as youth and hopes not crushed might make her.

She was one of those of whom society might justly be proud. She obeyed

its dictates without question, but her feelings underwent no debasement

from the contact. If not a child of nature, she was by no means the

slave of art.

 

Emily Delmé was more beautiful than striking. She impressed more than

she exacted. Her violet eye gleamed with feeling; her smile few could

gaze on without sympathy—happy he who might revel in its brightness!

If aught gave a peculiar tinge to her character, it was the pride she

felt in the name she bore,—this she might have caught from Sir

Henry,—the interest she took in the legends connected with that name,

and the gratification which the thought gave her, that by her ancestors,

its character had been but rarely sullied, and never disgraced.

 

These things, it may be, she had accustomed herself to look on in a

light too glowing: for these things and all mundane ones are vain; but

her character did not consequently suffer. Her lip curled not with

hauteur, nor was her brow raised one shadow the more. The remembrance of

the old Baronetcy were on the ensanguined plain,—of the matchless

loyalty of a father and five valiant sons in the cause of the Royal

Charles,—the pondering over tomes, which in language obsolete, but

true, spoke of the grandeur—the deserved grandeur of her house; these

might be recollections and pursuits, followed with an ardour too

enthusiastic, but they stayed not the hand of charity, nor could they

check pity’s tear. If her eye flashed as she gazed on the ancient

device of her family, reposing on its time worn pedestal, it could melt

to the tale of the houseless wanderer, and sympathise with the sorrows

of the fatherless.

 

Chapter II.

 

The Album.

 

“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