A Love Story, by a Bushman | Page 4

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.