Rensselaer Union, Volume 7, Number 34, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 13 May 1875 — MY LILY-OF-THE-VALLEY. [ARTICLE]

MY LILY-OF-THE-VALLEY.

BY EARL MARBLE.

“Peep!” It was a cheery, almost childish, voice, well known and loved by me; and yet I started in half affright, so deep was my reverie. Reveries, in the majority of cases, probably, have Love for their inspiring god; but this was an exceptional ope, else I had surely been prepared for any such surprise as this, from the very priestess herself of love. Not that she acknowledged it, or I either, for that matter. But we are both finite, and love is infinite. “You little puss!” I exclaimed, “how you frightened me!” “Doi look so like a fright, then, in my masquerading?” “Of course not. You arealways charming. But your voice ” “Was harsh and ” “ How dexterously you do fish for compliments this afternoon! You know your voice is soft and musical, for I have told you so several times; and ” “Ila.ha. ha! Goon.” “ Ivwas'tiiat very sweetness and softness that startled me, being so antipodal to mv thoughts just then.” “There!” a sudden seriousness settling over her manner. “ That convinces me that you are not obeying your doctor. You must have been thinking of those dreadful columns of figures and of ‘puts’ and ‘calls’ and ‘shorts,’ and such ridiculous nonsense. Don’t you remember you told me you shouldn’t think of any 1 calls’ but calling the cows, nor any ‘ shorts’ but those they have for their

Slipper, to make them give you an extra - quality of milk for your breakfast so you can go back to the city in the fall vigorous for business and fresh for the smiles of your sweetheart.” “ Quite a long speech, upon my word! And it is not a month yet since I supposed you never indulged in anything beyond monosyllables, and scattered ones at that.” “Thank you for nothing. But how do you like my costume?” “ Charming. Who assisted you?” “ I made the things. Cousin Maggie helped arrange them, and Mr. Fred Marston acted as critic, to see whether I was presentable.” “ And pronounced you au fait?" “Yes, if looks would do so. But he was so busy sketching that he would hardly say a word.” “ Fuss,” I said, after a moment’s deliberation, and wondering whether I really had the courage, “ do you really remember all I told you, in my gossiping way, the day after Fred and' I arrived, about the doctor’s instructions —how I was never to think of business or cares of any kind, but only amusement, and any nonsense that came uppermost?” “ Yes —perfectly.” “ Who’d have thought I would go so contrary thereto ? —first, to come up to this quiet place, where both amusement and nonsense would seem to be sacrilegious; and ——” “ Secondly,” looking as prim and dignified as so slight and sweet a body could. “ Yes, secondly, by falling in love with you.” I spoke deliberately, and with an effort; and the last word had not died from my lips before I knew that my premonitions of dangerous ground were not uninspired. A pink glow suffused her face for an instant, and then faded into a whiteness that was not so deathly as it was transparent. . » - It added to my pain as well as to a vague delight I felt in the picture she made in her masquerading dress. To speak of this mimic masquerade, and the picture it formed, it will be necessary to go back a few days, on whjch occasion Isatin the little,«pinched-up parlor of the old-fashioned farm-house that Jornied my retreat from the city’s hum and business for a few weeks in the summer. On the wall opposite where I sat hung an olds« family portrait, so old,indeed, that the daughter of my T hostess was not exactly certain as to who she was, or of what generation*she had formed a part of the life. Tile student of fashion’s caprices could probably have ascertained by research; but it really made no great difference. The salient point of the portrait was a large Elizabethan ruff, not so stiff and ungainly as are generally represented in portraits, but seeming quite graceful and pretty, and, indeed, as thoifgh forming part of the personality of the personage, who was young, less than twenty, apparently, skin white and delicate, almost entirely devoid of color, eyes of a dolce far niente feeling, and lips whose just perceptible pout was in fine keeping with the round, cheery face. , “Miss Perry,” 1 said, “the portrait yonder is enough like you to pass for your own if you should only tell.people you were masquerading. How like a lily-of-the-valley it looks, with the round, delicate face and the delicately-penciled ruff!” “What an idea!” said Miss Perry, the daughter of my hostess. “And yet, since you suggest it, I can trace quite a , resemblance. I remember hearing papa say once that she was quite a belle in her day, and there was something of a romance connected with her.” It was in a dress precisely like this in all its details in which Miss Perry was arrayed when she peered over the rosebush on the afternoon in which my story opens, and greeted me with her innocent “Peep!”

“So,” she faintly articulated, “ your ‘ amusement’ and ‘ nonsense’ for this summer are facing, in love with an unsophisticated country girl! Quite delightful!” “ Miss Perry!” I exclaimed, in blank amazement, “ you wrong me by your riiisapplied irony. My words were "not trifling ones, as you seem to think. I was too abrupt and precipitate. lam but a tyro in wooing.” “v I put my arm around her slender waist as I spoke the last words, and she suffered it to remain there an instant, and then withdrew shrinkingly, giving me a half-startled, half-shy look as she glided out of the room—a look that haunted me for months afterward. I saw her no more that afternoon and the next morning Fred and I were off on a trouting expedition before -she was astir. At supper she was absent and her mother volunteered the information that she had gone to visit her cousins over the mountains. “ It’s in the ’j’iningcounty, some twenty miles off,” she said. “ One of the boys was over this way on some business or other, and she appeared kind’ o’ moping, and when he spoke on’t I jest bundled her off quicker. It’ll do her good. She’s a gal like all others.” “Twenty miles!” I repeated. “She’ll probably, then, be gone some five or six days.” “ Five or six weeks, more like,” was the reply. “ 1 told her she’d have to stay, most likely, till we sent for her, and that wouldn’t be till after harvesting was well over. The men and horses is mighty busy during hot weather.” “ I say, Fred,” I said that evening, as we sat on the piazza smoking our cigars, “ I’ve been thinking that I’ll go back to the city to-morrow or next day. To tell the truth, it’s getting a little dull and monotonous, and ” “Dull and monotonous! What has got into you? Why, it’s only a day or two since you were going to stay a month yet. You’re just the queerest chap——” “ I’ve been told that often enough to know it by heart, Fred. I think I shall go up by to-morrow night’s train, unless you shall go too if I wait over a few davs.”-

“ Not I. I shall stay another fortnight, at any rate.” “All right. It is settled then. Walk up to the station with me, and you can send my trunk along some day when the wagon is going up.” The next evening we arrived at the little rise in sight of the station some time before the train was due, and we sat down on a rude stone-wall overlooking the valley. “By the way,” said Fred, suddenly, “I didn’t show you I believe. She looked so charming I couldn’t help it.” And he opened his portfolio, which he invariably had with him, and showed me a sketch he had made of Miss Perry the day she was masquerading,, which had thus far proved so disastrous to me. It was a personified lily-of-the-valley with the delicate features of her whose name of Margaret somehow grated on my ear, and, as “ Miss Perry” was too formal, I had taken to calling her “ Puss.” “ I say, Fred, I want this,” I saidN “ Nonsense! You’d better let me keep this and you take the original.” “ A wise man is content “with what he can yet,” I responded, briefly, as I put it in my sachel.” Fred gave me a curious look, which I did not interpret till later in the season, and made no objection to my appropriating his sketch. The sun was sinkingjbehind the mountain, the valley we had just left having been for some time in deep shadow. “ Where are your canvas and colors?” I presently asked. “There’s an effect of chiaro-oscuro that would draw praise from the most conservative critic.”

Fred needed no second hint; and, as he painted away; I observed the beautiful effect, and made occasional jerky remarks on ii variety of subjects, presently saying: “ How apropos that masquerading wig was! She is, indeed, a lily-of-the-valley, both lily and valley being in their respective ways charming in a superlative sense.” The whistle sounded just then; and I started in haste for the train, leaving Fred busy on his picture, hardly looking up when he said good-by and prophesied my return in a few days. Several times, after my return to the city, I came near doing so, wondering if it were not cowardly in me to strike my colors at such a moment, and if “Puss” did not expect me to come over the mountain to see her. Nearly two months had elapsed, and I had heard no word from Fred. I was on the point of putting a change of linen in a sachet, and taking a two-days’ run in search of him, and to see if Miss Perry had returned, when I received a letter, which, to say the least, indefinitely postponed the matter. . I give only those parts my readers will be interested in: My Dear Boy—Congratulate me —that is, with an if. She won’t name the day, nor positively promise that she ever will; but it is so well settled in my own mind thatl shall order the suit as soon as I arrive in town, which will be some day next week if I can tear myself away so soon. How did Ido it? Blestif I know! I never dreamed of such a thing till you dropped that remark you did when I gave you the sketch of the lady in her masquerade dress, tiiat “ a wise man is content with what he can get,”’ which flashed through my brain the intelligence that you had been rejected, or were satisfied you would be. Why I never could conceive, for I always supposed you to be the favored one, but I didn’t puzzle over that conundrum very long. From that moment I gave myself up to the task of winning her and went at it sough-and-tumble. I never went into anything before so recklessly, because never before had I been so seriously in earnest. But you don’t care for details. If “none but the brave deserve the fair,” I have at least earned the trophy I shall henceforth wear so proudly on my breast. Before Fred returned from the country I was upon the Atlantic. I had again behaved in a cowardly manner and deserted my colors when a vigorous movement on my own part instead of resulting so would have had a decidedly contrary result But I was both blind and stupid. I could neither see nor understand what had taken place nor how it all tended to my advantage did I but follow it up. That knowledge did not come tq me till many months afterward. On the water and pressed to the brim with work I had supposed I forget the little country girl and return heart-whole from , the European trip I had been commissioned to take by the house in which I was engaged; but every day only added to the intensity of my suffering, and finally the longings I felt must be forever unrealized, because so much a part of my existence that even sunlight began to take its hues from the half-ripened orange. But the exigencies of the busines I was

transacting demanded my continued stay and levied such a tax on my,mental capacities that I soon began to look on my trouble as, annoying, but not serious, and aS though a callus had grown over it and no pain would result from it unless a violent strain were brought to bear upon it. Then disaster came and the house suddenly Tailed, leaving me adrift; and I was preparing to return home when I was offered an advantageous position in a foreign house, a member of which, I was courteously informed, had “observed the masterly manner in which I had managed the affairs of the branch which had been intrusted to me.” So of course it transpired that I did not return to my native land that autumn nor the next, nor —in fact, it was three years from the time I left for Europe before I returned. I landed in the mid die of August, last summer, and at once began to hunt up old cronies, by aid of memory and directories. But I had no luck. Fred I could get no track of, only that he had just returned from a European trip;but where he might be at that particular time was uncertain. All for whom I cared in the city were out of town for the warm weather, or else where I could not readily find them; and I began to think I had been a fool to come across the water at so unpropitious a time. My own immediate family I found, on inquiry, were stopping for a few weeks at a remote place twenty miles or more beyond the little valley where Fred and I had summered three years before, and toward that point I turned my face. Just before sunset the train made a halt at the little village overlooking the valley where I had met my fate, and where the last time I had seen Fred he was engaged in making a sketch of the valley, hardly taking his eye from the canvas to bid me his cheery good-by. For some reason the train was delayed a few moments, and, as I gazed over the valley, the old feeling of three years before was instantly surging and swaying in my breast ; and before the train was again in motion I stood upon the rude country-station platform, unable to resist the force impelling me there, thinking I could pursue my journey the next day as well as this. After the train had departed, and I observed the curious country eyes scanning my singular movements, I suddenly realized my awkward position, and wondered what to do. Mechanically I strolled toward the spot Fred had chosen for his vantage-ground to view the valley. Little change was visible. The sunset colors Were less vivid, and consequently the shadow over the valley was less somber—a much'more pleasing picture; and yet Icould not help feeling that the somber shadow was over my heart instead. ‘ I aimlessly followed the winding road into the valley, descending at every step farther and farther into the shadow; yet my soul into’ its own shadow plunged more recklessly still, the gloom surrounding it seeming almost sullen in its intensity. Suddenly it grew lighter. What did it presage? A large cumulus of cloud had drifted into the range of the sun’s rays, and caught the splendor, sending them down to the earth in a glow of reflection. “If my own soul could drift into such a volume of light!” I (bought, bitterly, and walked slowly onward. What marvelous shapes the clouds take at times! This one and smaller ones, drifting with and counter to it, suddenly took the shape of a huge anchor, seeming to me, in my shortened vision, a gleam of mighty irony glowing with a false glimmer. So intent was my gaze bent heavenward that I did not observe a figure immediately in front of me, emerging from the valley. It was a female figure and 1 hastily stepped on one side to allow her to pass, hardly withdrawing my gaze from the heavens. The moment she had passed, in obedience to a sudden impulse I turned my head to see hers also turned to observe me. The light from the cloud of hope shone full in her face, and I started at the recognition.. Was my soul, then, drifting as yonder cloud had done? Was this thrill that bathed it in pathos the light, indeed, that warms and glorifies all it shines on—or was it but mocking irony? “ Miss Perry!” I exclaimed, “ this is a rare pleasure.” She advanced in the same shy manner as of old, and held out her hand in the old coy style. . >, “Was it you, then, I was to meet at the station?” she asked. “ Were you expecting some one?” I asked, a little bewildered.

“No—yes,” was the hesitating reply. “ I suppose if I tell you you will laugh at me. I was sitting in the parlor a short time ago, looking now and then at the old picture you were pleased to take so much notice of in those other years —the picture has been very dear to me latterly,” she parenthetically added, with a just perceptible tremor in her voice—“when suddenly I was impressed with the idea that I was to meet some one at the station. The notion occurred to me at once as so ridiculous that I laughed outright. But it wouldn’t be laughed down, and finally I started, and —here I am.” I then told her how I had just returned from Europe, and was on my way to find my mother and sister, when I was almost impelled from the cars. “ And you were going right by without stopping to see us?” I hesitated, not knowing the nature of the ground I was treading on, and not caring to make a misstep. “ Fred and I would both have been so disappointed if you had.” “Ah! is Fred here?” I asked, making an effort to appear at 'ease, though succeeding badly, I am afraid. “ Why, of course. He is here ell the time, now, except for a few months in the winter.” My heart leaped into my throat in very agony, and for a moment I dared not trust myself to speak, r-Wp had in the meantime been walking slowly down into the valley, and suddenly a door of" a house close by the wayside swung open, and a flood of light rested upon my companion. Ah, the caprices of fashion! How its edicts drift around in circles and turn up unexpectedly? Of course the fuff was not so prononce, nor the roiling folds to the dress, gathering in a mass back of the neck, so angular and so stiff as represented in the Elizabethan portrait; but there she was in the dress, with modifications, in which she had made the final assault upon my heart and won it—“ unknowingly, heedlessly,” I said to-myself. i “ Didn’t you know of Fred’s marriage ?” she asked, after the awkward pause in which my mind had been so busy. “ Not to a certainty. I conjectured as much. You are very happy, I suppose——” “ Yes, as the world goes, Fred is the

dearest and best fellow in the world. How long since you have seen him? It is a long time, isn’t it?” -• “ Three years. He was seated where I met you just now the night of my return home, and after you went over the mountains so much after the Frenchleave manner.” “ Oh, I was such y. silly chit then.” “ And think you have grown wiser now?” “ Maybe not. Nor happier; this world is for growth, not happiness, after all. Growth is the object, happiness the result; not the reverse, as people generally suppose.” “ And Fred has grown in art as well as in a domestic way?” “ Oh, yes. He is quite the rage in certain circles. But you know all about that, probably.” “No. I have been so immersed in business in Europe that I have absolutely not heard of or from him since—let me see: no, not since he wrote, just after my return from here, to'tell me of his engagement with you.” “His—engagement—with—me!” drawing a sharp breath at the enunciation of each word. “He was never engaged to me! Did he write so to you?" “He implied as much. If I remember rightly, however, there was a chance for a contrary result.” “ He fancied at one time he was in love with me, and I don’t know but considered himself engaged, but it only lasted a few weeks. He went to Europe, he said, to die of a broken heart; but came back last fall and married my cousin, and ” “ And—you—are—not—married ?” I did not hear her reply, only saw her shake her head in the rapidly-gathering dusk, and alasped my arm around her as 1 had done three summers before. But she did not Withdraw from my embrace this time, in ever so gentle a manner; and when I asked her if she would be my lily-of-the-valley the answer she gave shone over my soul as the departing sunlight had over the anchor-shaped cloud, and the reflected radiance illuminated my whole being.— Appleton's Journal.