First Love: A Novel. Vol. 2 of 3Loudon, Mrs. (Margracia)
General
First Love: A Novel. Vol. 2 of 3
Loudon, Mrs. (Margracia)
Fiction
into a footpath among the trees, which promised to lead in the direction
of the said solitary tower.
He soon found himself in a maze of gravel walks and abrupt turnings,
the ascent so steep as to be often indispensably assisted by flights
of irregular stone steps. On each shelf of the rock, lately so much
above his head, his feet now found a path; though one secured from the
precipice only by a superabundant growth of shrubs. On the side of the
cliff immediately over the sea it was sometimes quite terrific to peep
through the slender defences of a honeysuckle or jessamine at the foaming
billows dashing in far below on a wild and rocky beach. At length
arrived at the goal of all his labours, he entered the long seen, and,
at a distance, formidable-looking tower, and found it fitted up within
as a conservatory and well supplied with exotics in full bloom. Of these
he plucked, mechanically, a few of the finest blossoms, then sighed and
desisted, as the remembrance smote on his heart that he could not now, as
he had been wont, present them to Julia. He thrust, however, those he had
collected into his own bosom; he could not throw away what had once been,
even in thought, associated with her. Near this building the last of the
shelving paths tapered off gradually, till there was no longer footing.
The rock rose behind it more than perpendicularly—it overhung; while, in
front, there was now no defence whatever, not a shrub, not so much as
a tuft of grass, or even moss, to break the treacherous surface of the
polished flint.
On the furthest portion which it was possible to occupy of this perilous
spot, was placed a rustic seat; on this Edmund flung himself, and rested
his eyes with a peculiarly desolate feeling on his old friends and
companions, the waves of the sea. They seemed pressing after each other,
and all, as it were, crowding towards the foot of the steep cliff from
the summit of which he thus viewed them. He smiled bitterly: to his
distempered fancy they appeared hastening forward to welcome his return
amongst them, with a fierce and boisterous species of delight, very
uncongenial to the softer emotions in which he had of late so much too
frequently indulged.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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