Sea-gift. Fuller Edwin Wiley

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СКАЧАТЬ style="font-size:15px;">      “I am sorry I broke you up,” he said, kindly, “but it is very late, and much for the best that you should be at home. Good night; run up to bed.”

      I went up to my room, and tumbled on the bed with my clothes on. My mind was full of bitter, burning thoughts. I fancied I could still hear the band, and whenever I closed my eyes Lulie’s form, with Frank hovering near, rose to my vision.

      Next morning I rose with a headache, and for relief walked out. My steps involuntarily led me to the scene of my chagrin, and in a sad kind of reverie I wandered through the rooms.

      ‘Tis sad food for reflection to visit a ball room the morning after the ball. Dreary silence has taken the place of noisy mirth and revelry, and the walls and floor look wan in the yellow sunlight, as if suffering from their night’s dissipation. The chandeliers quiver their pendent prisms at your approach, and tinkle a drowsy salutation. Around the music stand are scattered a leaf or two of music, fragments of rosin, and half sucked lemons; along the floor we pick up a fallen wreath, a slipper’s rosette, or a torn fragment of tarlatan. These are all that remind us of the whirling throng that mingled here.

      ‘Tis very much like life! We thoughtlessly dance upon its arena, and departing leave behind us, some at least, the evergreen wreath, some the tarnished rosette of pleasures tried and found empty, and some the poor torn shred of fruitless ambition.

      CHAPTER VIII

      One would hardly recognize in the tall youth the little boy that cried so when called away from the party, but times and persons change a great deal in seven years. Ned Cheyleigh is still my bosom friend, nobler, truer and more manly, if a soul such as his can know any degree of improvement. Frank Paning and myself, after innumerable quarrels and make-ups, have grown somewhat intimate, partly from the fact that our families are near neighbors, and partly because we are thrown together so constantly at school, being the only two members of a Latin class. He has lost much of his boyish rudeness, and when it is politic is kind, obliging and pleasant, but I still often feel in his presence the old sensation of repulsion. Lulie is still the bone between us, though with infinite tact she contrives to preserve the balance of feeling. Frank thinks he has the best of the contest, and I often am obliged to think so too, though generally my conceit and vanity keep my spirits up. Thus much for relative position as regards each other. And if, reader, you have become interested in us sufficiently to desire to see us personally, I will endeavor to give you our pictures. First, then, is Ned, a rather stout, thick-set figure; round open face, with large very blue eyes, firm mouth – not expressed so much in the lips as in the set of the teeth beneath them; brownish dark hair, which, though always kept short, always looks dishevelled; nose the least prominent feature in his face, though straight and well formed; his whole face expressing so much integrity of conduct and candor of meaning, that Campanella would have sworn by him without ever hearing him utter a word, though there was not as much depth in it as a man of the world could have wished for. Frank was almost his exact opposite, and much the handsomer of the two. His form was very tall for his age, and graceful; his hair jet black, and curling crisply over a well shaped head; his nose slightly aquiline and long; his mouth, with very white teeth, was always a little curled, either with a smile or a sneer; and, whatever his state of feelings, it ever wore one of these expressions, their only variation being an increased intensity. His eyes were rather small, very black, yet showing a great deal of white in their oblique glances. He always looked straight at you in ordinary pleasant converse, or when he thought he had you at a disadvantage; but when himself in the inferiority, his glance was down and aside, in fact every way but into your eyes. For instance, he could never look his teacher in the face when arraigned for a misdemeanor, yet he would gaze steadily at a comrade while accusing him of wrong. And it was a frequent jest in school that when Frank Paning’s eyes fell he was under “hack.”

      But to give you an exact idea of Lulie Mayland is beyond my power. I can describe well enough her bright sunny face, with its clear hazel eyes, its dimpled chin and pouting lips, and her cheeks with the roses coming and going with almost every word; but I cannot describe the effect of the thoughts that seemed to be ever coming up from her soul to her face, yet never uttered. There was always something more beneath those eyes you longed to know. If she looked and expressed sorrow for a misfortune, you knew, as you gazed into her face, there was a vast well of sympathy untold. If she laughed, and laughing was her life’s most constant phase, you felt that it was only the bubbles of mirth, that its springs were yet to be sounded. And in my intercourse with her I always felt there were two Lulies – one on the surface, a bright laughing girl, with a warm sunny heart, whom I loved dearly, and who I sometimes thought loved me; the other was a far more radiant being, whose face was beneath the first Lulie’s, and whose shadow or likeness she constantly wore, though never distinctly enough to be perfectly recognized. And this last Lulie was the idol of my heart – she whom I adored so unceasingly, and yet who I knew deep in my heart never loved me.

      I would not affect mystery with this duality; I simply wish to present an idea of one of those faces we sometimes see – faces that, strive how they will, by word and look, can never express all their meaning; faces that, from their very secrecy, so to speak, possess a power we either dread or love. Lulie’s power over me I loved; and loving, hoped one day to attain to the love of her inner soul.

      Mr. Cheyleigh possessed a beautiful residence on the Sound, about eight miles from Wilmington, and Ned invited Frank and myself to spend the vacation with him. What an Elysium it was for us! Horses, dogs and boats at our command! Every nook of the Sound was explored in our fishing, crabbing and shrimping excursions; every swamp and lake invaded in our search for summer game. But of all our pleasures the greatest was to go over to the beach and take the surf. The delicate votaries of fashion at the watering places know nothing of its real luxury. Swathed in flannel and buoyed by ropes they strangle through the tortures of a dip, and declare it charming. But to go beyond the reach of lorgnettes, to disrobe entirely without fear of the sun’s tanning, to trip lightly over the cool moist sand, and plunge into the great tossing ocean, is to really enjoy the thing.

      But now we are in; we find our depth, and wait for the wave. Ah, here it comes! A great green fellow, crumbling towards the shore; a smooth, glassy valley before it, and its white crest curling proudly in its power. “Here it is! how it rustles! turn your backs! now spring!” and the next instant, swept from our feet, we ride the great monster to land, where he throws us high upon the sand, and sinks back to his watery domain, with a growl for our intrusion.

      With our numerous sports time passed all the more rapidly, and we were preparing to return home. The evening previous to the day appointed was a dark and threatening one. A heavy blue bank lay in the west, and though the sun, as he passed beyond it, had thrown across it a bright golden fringe, it refused to be propitiated, and sullenly waited till he had disappeared, when it loomed blackly up, while the constant quivering of the lightning, and the distant, heavy jarring of the thunder told that a storm of no ordinary magnitude was brewing. After tea Mr. Cheyleigh went out on the back piazza to smoke, while we boys took our seats on the steps, and in subdued tones told tales of the awful effects of lightning, and its affinity for isolated houses like Mr. Cheyleigh’s. The cloud had now reached half way up the heavens, and its dark line was distinctly marked on the blue of the sky. A few brave little stars were twinkling defiantly in front of it, though the bright evening star had long since sunk behind its folds. It grew very dark, so that all objects in the yard were invisible, save when for an instant illuminated by the greenish flickering glare of the lightning. We at length caught the dull roar of the distant wind, while the leaves gave their premonitory rustle, as a poor frightened little zephyr fled to them for refuge. We heard the tap of Mr. Cheyleigh’s pipe, and saw the fiery sparks fall from the railing and glow a moment or two amidst the grass, then a few great drops of rain pattered down on the steps, and we rose and entered the house. Windows were pulled down, shutters were fastened, and doors were closed. Another shake among the trees, and then came the shedding, gushing sound of the rain as it fell in torrents, while the wind in all its fury burst upon us. The house cracked, the windows shook, and the corners СКАЧАТЬ