Page images
PDF
EPUB

of dreams. She dreamt those dreams anew; she seemed to have been very wretched, very weary, to have stood on a precipice, while Mr. Julian beckoned to her from the other side. Again she strove to gain an ascent, seeing her lover at the summit. The ledges of stone on which she trod were sharp and narrow; the coarse, prickly grass by which she endeavored to aid herself, hurt her hands; she looked dizzily down from the height she had surmounted and seemed to swoon. In her fall she caught a hand; an arm was circled around her, and she was lifted to security; a face with fond expressions bent above her; with the dimness of returning consciousness she spoke a name. The dream-effort roused her. Was it then, she thought, all true? For, sure enough, Mr. Julian was leaning over her with all the tenderness that his face wore in her dream.

'What were you dreaming, Adrienne, that you called me?' he said softly. She roused herself still further. Where am I?' she asked. 'Have I been asleep?'

Mrs. Tenour laughed when she came in, to see Miss Isham's cheek printed and stained by the pressure of the hand on which she had rested, and said she was a careless girl to tumble her dress so, and insisted on smoothing her hair. She looked uneasily at her brother. 'We will have tea now, and then start,'

she said.

"Nous verrons,' said Mr. Julian in reply to her look. ?Mrs. Tenour took Adrienne in the barouche with her, and left a vacant seat beside Miss McNeil in the box-wagon for her brother. Mr. Julian suddenly recollected a letter which it was imperative for him to write, and said he would overtake them on horseback. The harvest-moon was rising, and in the mingled light, the flush of sun-set on the amber-flooded air, the party drove briskly on, surprised to find themselves a little chilly after the exceeding heat of the day. 'It will be all the better for dancing,' said Georgie Curran.

'That's poor consolation,' shivered Mrs. Tenour, hugging her fleecy shawl about her. Adrienne was silent. A torturing expectancy settled like a weight on her spirits, and smothered the usual sparkle of her talk. She leaned back in the carriage drearily, once in a while turning and looking back. But Mr. Julian was not coming.

The dressing-room was filled when Mrs. Tenour and her party arrived at Mrs. McConnell's. Mrs. Tenour was proud of her several guests, well aware that she would introduce the belles of the evening; so she watched the group before the mirror with an appreciable satisfaction, while they fluttered and chattered in the excitement of preliminary decoration.

In the first glance which showed her Miss McNeil's black braid coronet and stately form, Miss Frost's white shoulders, and Miss Curran's curls, she did not miss Adrienne, but with the next view she looked around for her pet. Adrienne sat languidly on an ottoman, her cloak falling from her shoulders, her hands dropped listlessly in her lap.

'Ada, what ails you? Are you sick?' said Mrs. Tenour coaxingly. 'How plain you look! Why, ma belle, this will never do. I meant you for the bright particular star of the evening; get up, let me shake the wrinkles out of

your dress. And your hair in that odious net! What shall I do with you?'

Mrs. Tenour unwound from her own head a string of peculiarly fine pearls, great, gleaming, globy things, and brought them toward Adrienne.

[ocr errors]
[blocks in formation]

Nonsense. Wait. If you will not wear the pearls, I think of something.' She slipped away. The young ladies were all ready, and waiting for their chaperone, before she returned. Adrienne only sat patiently, indifferently. Mrs. Tenour had taken off her net, and her dark, draping hair fell around her silkily; her face was pale, and her eyes had the look of Murillo's Madonna. Mr. Ernst saw her partly from an opposite room. beautiful. He felt as though he could die for her. with her long, trailing, branches of ivy, which she her. She looped Adrienne's hair low in her neck, and depending numberless tendrils from her braids. The glossy leaves lengthened over her shoulders, looped her sleeves, festooned her bodice, and trained down to her feet, clustering in spaces, until she stood like a wood-nymph; some Dryad with a new-found soul.

She had never looked so Mrs. Tenour brought back got the gardener to cut for crowning her with leaves,

[ocr errors]

'Come,' said Mrs. Tenour, linking Adrienne's arm through hers, and summoning their escorts to attend her guests, 'we'll not wait for Julian.'

Mr. Ernst was watching for them at the door. The floor was already crowded with dancers, and a wild, enrapturing strain of dance-music throbbed on the warm air. He came eagerly forward. 'Miss Isham,' he said imploringly, extending his hand.

'Dance, Ada,' said Mrs. Tenour.

Adrienne shrank back.

'Miss Isham is not well,' explained her hostess.

'The heat? She must have an ice.'

Mrs. Tenour had turned aside for an instant. Adrienne felt giddy, and alone. Involuntarily she allowed Mr. Ernst to draw her arm through his ; in an instant the crowd isolated them, and she was borne unresistingly toward the door. There were a few people on the piazza; lovers evidently, who came there for quiet. She took the ice which Mr. Ernst got for her.

'Ah! Miss Adrienne, let us stay here in the cool. There is a fountain just down this gravel-walk; do n't you hear? Come, we will find it.' 'No, no; I am better; I can dance.'

Adrienne for once remembered the treachery of appearances. 'Let us go back,' she said.

'I was sure the ice would cure you; that is a glorious redowa. But let us see the fountain first. Just a minute

'No; I would rather dance.'

The cool air, the odors, the exciting music, swept a thrill of animation through Adrienne's frame. Mr. Ernst danced perfectly; the motion seemed rather the result of an inevitable influence, than an exertion of volition. She felt only the rhythmical resistance of the air, and the harmony of sound

and sway; the lapsing, swooning sway, as of an ebb-tide, that drifted her into a mental nowhither; an unbeaconed mere, whose surge-melody deafened her to the future and the past.

'You must stop, Ada,' said Mrs. Tenour hurriedly, as she swept by her. She started as she had from her dream in the afternoon, and stopped suddenly. Mr. Ernst supported her still with his arm, and whispered:

'Let us go out in the air.'

'Nous avons vue,' she heard some one say to Mrs. Tenour. She looked around, and caught Mr. Julian's eye. He bowed ceremoniously, and walked away. The hot, blinding tears would come.

'I am rested, Mr. Ernst, let us dance.'

The measure had changed, and sets were forming for quadrilles.

'Oh! not a quadrille — let us see the fountain first.'

Adrienne could not answer.

They threaded their way through the crowd,

down the piazza, and along the gravel-walk, and sat down on a rustic bench beside the fountain.

'I am cold,' shivered Adrienne.

'Let me get your shawl. Will you wait here? What shall I do?'

'I will wait.'

'I will be back in an instant.'

Adrienne waited passively, stonily. She had one thought, in which all hopes and fears were cycled. Where was Mr. Julian? What was he thinking?' She knew instinctively that it would not do to make him jealous

'Lotus or ivy, treachery or oblivion, Adrienne?'

'O Mr. Julian!' she gasped, 'why did n't you speak to me?'

'I had nothing to say.'

'Have you now?'

'Yes. What are you doing here alone?'

'Mr. Ernst went after my cloak.'

'Ah! a convenient trist.'

'Don't say that. I only came for a moment, to get cool

Certainly. I did not ask an explanation.'

She was silent. He could not leave her then, irritated, excited, sufficiently exasperated for her woman's pride, to help her conquer her passion. He bent over her.

'Adrienne, what you told me to-day was false. You do care for Ernst, you cannot deny it.'

'I told you at least one thing that is true, though you deny it, and that is, that you are wicked and cruel

'And I told you one thing that is true, though you deny it."

'What?'

"That you are Mignon. Adrienne, why will you quarrel with me, and exasperate me as you do with your levity. How can I tell if you are sincere in any thing?'

'Mr. Julian!'

'Mr. Ernst is coming. Shall I go?'

'No.'

'Come, then, with me.'

[ocr errors]

'How can I?'

'Au revoir, then.',

'Don't leave me.'

She had risen. Mr. Julian waited at the turn of the path. She followed him.

[ocr errors][merged small][merged small]

'You would rather go back and dance? I will take you.'

'No, no!'

'What an incomprehensible Mignon! Shall I ever understand her?? She looked up in his face with impetuous confidence, that set strange strings vibrating in his breast.

'Is there any thing in my whole behavior you cannot understand?' she asked in a tone of reckless appeal.

'Let us go home, or at any rate to the lake, and then send the carriage back with word to Clara. I want to talk to you, Adrienne, to-night.'

She submitted implicitly. Mr. Julian found some one's shawl, and wrapped her in it. They got in the carriage, and were driven rapidly over the smooth road.

'About here, the boat is moored. Shall we get out?'

'Yes.'

Mr. Julian gave the driver a message for Mrs. Tenour; parting the dense shrubbery that concealed the path from the road, the two walked along, side by side, in the moonlight.

'What a lovely scene,' said Adrienne, when they reached the bank.

Mr. Julian helped her in the boat, unfastened it from its moorings, and they pushed out from shore. Adrienne sank wearily on the cushions, utterly unnerved by the struggle and excitement of the day. Mr. Julian guided the boat easily with one oar, and talked on in his rapid, brilliant way. He liked a listener like Adrienne, silent, sympathizing; and with rare words he strung the fantasies of the night. By-and-by, they were silent. The waters plashed sullenly, the silver-shrillings of August night-cries pierced the ear, the light grew hazy, and the knotted stems of the water-lilies staid the progress of the boat. Over the lake, through the silence, came a distant chime.

[ocr errors]

'It is mid-night,' said Mr. Julian, with a start, the last night of the month.' 'Of August?' said Adrienne. 'Then, papa comes to-morrow. Summer's

parted, glories gone!

How strange it is to regret the past. I never used.' 'And need not now; that dirge is only for me. You have winters in prospect, glories to come.'

'Society does not dazzle me as it did a year ago.'

'Girls always talk so, in the first shock which society gives; disappointment is inevitable; when that is over, the world becomes tolerable, at least, often delightful.'

'But I have had no disappointment, no shock; only that every thing has suffered a 'sea-change.''

'You must study refraction. Learn to consider the medium through which impressions come.'

'Are impressions so varying?'

'Certainly. A summer love often makes a winter jest. In both phases we are sincere; yet we scarcely feel a pang in acknowledging our inconsistency: such is our organization.'

'But we must learn to distrust ourselves.'

'We do, Adrienne,' he paused; when we no longer believe in ourselves, we may well toll our own dirges,' he added lightly.

'I always shall,' she answered simply: 'I shall always believe in myself.' 'But if you made a great mistake; if feelings, for instance, which you believed in now should delude you into some act of acknowledgment, which you should afterward regret, could you trust yourself implicitly again?' 'I could not be deceived.'

‘Adrienne, if you thought now that you loved-me, for instance, and under such a conviction should bind yourself to me, you are very young, remember; don't you think that when you were twenty, had seen the world, and many men, you might think of your tie with loathing, might call your passion a delusion?'

He scanned her face intently; perhaps there hung more interest upon her verdict than he would have confessed. His course to-night had been so much the sport of impulse that he could not in truth trust himself. Involuntarily he had allowed himself to feel, to trust, to stake a hope on a venture, he who never braved chance. Did he love her? The moments were too fleet for analyzing; his long-established precedents too fixed to admit supposition. A dim dream - did Mr. Julian ever dream? He dropped the oar, and let the boat rock on the tide. He twisted the trailing ivy tendrils around his wrist, as though to substantiate a link between them; his arm half-glided around the recumbent form of the girl; the smothered intensity of long control fired his eye and mellowed his voice.

[ocr errors]

'Adrienne, might you not

His words flowed

He had gone too far; had implied too much skepticism. over the girl's soul, like the tide of the river, which petrifies whatever is thrown on the current; and she answered with a slow, sad emphasis, a recognition of some new-born doubt: 'I do not know, 'Mr. Julian.''

Mr. Julian took up the oar, and with a few vigorous strokes brought them to the shore they were nearing. There was a lapse of a few silent minutes, during which they trod down the dew-damp grass of the narrow path, and emerged on the lonely road. Mr. Julian untwisted the ivy from his wrist, and let the tendrils trail in the dust. They went through the paths among the shrubbery, where he had walked that afternoon, and up to the house.

'Are you cold, Miss Isham?'

'No.'

'Good-night, then; good-by, perhaps

St. Regis lakes before you are up in the morning.'

[ocr errors]

I shall be on my way to the

She did not start at all. 'Good-by, Mr. Julian.'

He held her hand. 'Summer's parted; glories gone, Adrienne.'
'Winter's in prospect; glories to come, Mr. Julian.'

(TO BE CONCLUDED.)

« PreviousContinue »