Love stories; New York (N.Y.) -- History -- 1775-1865 -- Fiction
With some hesitation, yet quite carried away by Hyde's personal longing
and impulse, Cornelia went into the garden with her lover. It was a
green, shady place, full of great maple-trees and flowering vines and
shrubs, and patches of green grass. All kinds of sweet old-fashioned
flowers grew there, mingling their scent with the strawberries' perfume
and the woody odours of the ripening cherries. They were alone in this
lovely place; the high privet hedges hid them from the outside world,
and the babble and rumble of Broadway came to them only as the murmur
of noise in a dream. Speechless with joy, Hyde clasped Cornelia's
slender fingers, and they went together down the few broad low steps
which led them into the green shadows of the trees. How soft was the
grassy turf! How exquisite the westering sunlight, sifting through the
maple leaves! They looked into each other's eyes and smiled, but were
too happy to speak. For they had suddenly come into that land, which is
east of the sun, and west of the moon; that land not laid down on any
chart, but which we feel to be our rightful heritage.
Slowly, as they stepped, they came at length to a little summerhouse.
It was covered with a thick jessamin vine; and the mysterious,
languorous perfume of its starlike flowers filled the narrow
resting-place with the very atmosphere of love. They sat down there,
and in a few moments the seal was broken and Hyde's heart found out all
the sweetest words that love could speak. Cornelia trembled; she
blushed, she smiled, she suffered herself to be drawn close to his
side; and, at last, in some sweet, untranslatable way, she gave him the
assurance of her love. Then they found in delicious silence the
eloquence that words were incompetent to translate; time was forgotten,
and on earth there was once more an interlude of heavenly harmony in
which two souls became one and Paradise was regained.
Arenta's voice, petulant and not pleasant, broke the charm. With a sigh
they rose, dropped each other's hand, and went out of their heaven on
earth to meet her.
"Tea is waiting," she said, "and Rem is waiting, and my aunt is tired,
and you two have forgotten that the clock moves." Then they laughed,
and laughter is always fatal to feeling; the magical land of love was
suddenly far away, and there was the sound of china, and the heavy
tones of Rem's voice--dissatisfied, if not angry--and Arenta's lighter
fret; and they stood once more among fetishes and forms so foreign,
fabulous and fantastical, that it was difficult to pass from the land
of love, and all its pure delights, into their atmosphere.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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