The Young Duke

  CHAPTER XI.

  _'Perfection in a Petticoat.'_

  THEY come not: it is late. He is already telling all! She relapses intoher sweet reverie. Her thought fixes on no subject; her mind isintent on no idea; her soul is melted into dreamy delight; her onlyconsciousness is perfect bliss! Sweet sounds still echo in her ear, andstill her pure pulse beats, from the first embrace of passion.

  The door opens, and her father enters, leaning upon the arm of herbeloved. Yes, he has told all! Mr. Dacre approached, and, bending down,pressed the lips of his child. It was the seal to their plighted faith,and told, without speech, that the blessing of a parent mingled with thevows of a lover! No other intimation was at present necessary;' but she,the daughter, thought now only of her father, that friend of her longlife, whose love had ne'er been wanting: was she about to leave him? Shearose, she threw her arms around his neck and wept.

  The young Duke walked away, that his presence might not control the fullexpression of her hallowed soul. 'This jewel is mine,' was his thought;'what, what have I done to be so blessed?'

  In a few minutes he again joined them, and was seated by her side; andMr. Dacre considerately remembered that he wished to see his steward,and they were left alone. Their eyes meet, and their soft looks tellthat they were thinking of each other. His arm steals round the back ofher chair, and with his other hand he gently captures hers.

  First love, first love! how many a glowing bard has sung thy beauties!How many a poor devil of a prosing novelist, like myself, has echoedall our superiors, the poets, teach us! No doubt, thou rosy god of youngDesire, thou art a most bewitching little demon; and yet, for my part,give me last love.

  Ask a man which turned out best, the first horse he bought, or the onehe now canters on? Ask--but in short there is nothing in which knowledgeis more important and experience more valuable than in love. When wefirst love, we are enamoured of our own imaginations. Our thoughts arehigh, our feelings rise from out the deepest caves of the tumultuoustide of our full life. We look around for one to share our exquisiteexistence, and sanctify the beauties of our being.

  But those beauties are only in our thoughts. We feel like heroes,when we are but boys. Yet our mistress must bear a relation, not toourselves, but to our imagination. She must be a real heroine, while ourperfection is but ideal. And the quick and dangerous fancy of our racewill, at first, rise to the pitch. She is all we can conceive. Mild andpure as youthful priests, we bow down before our altar. But the idol towhich we breathe our warm and gushing vows, and bend our eager knees,all its power, does it not exist only in our idea; all its beauty, isit not the creation of our excited fancy? And then the sweetest ofsuperstitions ends. The long delusion bursts, and we are left likemen upon a heath when fairies vanish; cold and dreary, gloomy, bitter,harsh, existence seems a blunder.

  But just when we are most miserable, and curse the poet's cunning andour own conceits, there lights upon our path, just like a ray freshfrom the sun, some sparkling child of light, that makes us think we arepremature, at least, in our resolves. Yet we are determined not to betaken in, and try her well in all the points in which the others failed.One by one, her charms steal on our warming soul, as, one by one, thoseof the other beauty sadly stole away, and then we bless our stars, andfeel quite sure that we have found perfection in a petticoat.

  But our Duke--where are we? He had read woman thoroughly, andconsequently knew how to value the virgin pages on which his thoughtsnow fixed. He and May Dacre wandered in the woods, and nature seemed tothem more beautiful from their beautiful loves. They gazed upon thesky; a brighter light fell o'er the luminous earth. Sweeter to them thefragrance of the sweetest flowers, and a more balmy breath brought onthe universal promise of the opening year.

  They wandered in the woods, and there they breathed their mutualadoration. She to him was all in all, and he to her was like a newdivinity. She poured forth all that she long had felt, and scarcelycould suppress. From the moment he tore her from the insulter's arms,his image fixed in her heart, and the struggle which she experiencedto repel his renewed vows was great indeed. When she heard ofhis misfortunes, she had wept; but it was the strange delight sheexperienced when his letter arrived to her father that first convincedher how irrevocably her mind was his.

  And now she does not cease to blame herself for all her past obduracy;now she will not for a moment yield that he could have been everanything but all that was pure, and beautiful, and good.