What is he seeking? Exercise--the exhilaration of motion--the
refreshment of change? If so, why does he look behind and before him
with an almost guilty air as he advances towards a dimly lighted house,
guarded by the dense branches of a double row of poplars? Is it here the
attraction lies which has drawn him from the hotel and the companionship
of his friend? Yes, for he stops as he reaches it and gazes first along
the dim shadowy vista made by those clustered trunks and upright boughs,
and then up the side and across the front of the silent house itself,
while an expression of strange wistfulness softens the eager brightness
of his face, and his smile becomes one of mingled pride and tenderness,
for which the peaceful scene, with all its picturesque features, can
scarcely account.
Can it be that his imagination has been roused and his affections
stirred by the instantaneous vision of an almost unknown woman? that
this swelling of the heart and this sudden turning of his whole nature
towards what is sweetest, holiest, and most endearing in life means that
his hitherto free spirit has met its mate, and that here in the lonely
darkness, before a strange portal and in the midst of new and untried
scenes, he has found the fate that comes once to every man, making him a
changed being for ever after?
The month is June and the air is full of the scent of roses. He can see
their fairy forms shining from amid the vines clambering over the walls
and porches before him. They suggest all that is richest and spiciest
and most exquisite in nature, as does her face as he remembered it. What
if a thorn has rent a petal here and there, in the luxurious flowers
before him, are they not roses still? So to him her face is all the
lovelier for the blemish which might speak to others of imperfection,
but which to him is only a call for profounder tenderness and more
ardent devotion. And if in her nature there lies a fault also, is not a
man's first love potent enough to overlook even that? He begins to think
so, and allows his glances to roam from window to window of the nearly
darkened house, as if half expecting her sweet and melancholy head to
look forth in quest of the stars--or him.
The living rooms are mainly on the side that overlooks the garden, and
scarcely understanding by what impulse he is swayed, he passes around
the wall to a second gate, which he perceives opening at right angles to
the poplar walk. Here he pauses a moment, looking up at the window which
for some reason he has determined to be hers, and while he stands there,
the moonlight shows the figure of another man coming from the highway
and making towards the self-same spot. But before this second person
reaches Frank he pauses, falters, and finally withdraws. Who is it? The
shadow is on his face and we cannot see, but one thing is apparent,
Frank Etheridge is not the only man who worships at this especial shrine
to-night.
VI.
YOUNG MEN'S FANCIES.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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