She was not tall nor superb: her face was very changeful and singularly interesting. I watched her during dinner, and such were my impressions. If they were wrong, it was the fault of my perceptions.
We met upon the piazza after dinner while the beautifully-dressed throng was promenading, and the band was playing. It was an Arcadian moment and scene.
"Lulu, this is my friend, Mr. ——, of whom I have spoken to you so often."
Herbert remained but a moment. I offered my arm to his sister, and we moved with the throng. The whole world seemed a festival. The day was golden—the music swelled in those long, delicious chords, which imparadise the moment, and make life poetry. In that strain, and with that feeling, our acquaintance commenced. It was Lulu's first summer at a Watering-Place (at least she said so); it was my first, too, at a Watering-Place—but not my first at a flirtation, thought I, loftily. She had all the cordial freshness of a Southern girl, with that geniality of manner which, without being in the least degree familiar, is confiding and friendly, and which to us, reserved and suspicious Northerners, appears the evidence of the complete triumph we have achieved, until we see that it is a general and not a particular manner.
The band played on: the music seemed only to make more melodious and expressive all that we said. At intervals, we stopped and leaned upon the railing by a column wreathed with a flowering vine, and Lulu's eye seeking the fairest blossom, found it, and her hand placed it in mine. I forgot commencement-day, and the glory of the valedictory. Lulu's eyes were more inspiring than the enthusiastic thousand in the church; and the remembered bursts of the band that day were lost in the low whispers of the girl upon my arm. I do not remember what we said. I did not mean to flirt, in the usual sense of that word (men at a Watering-Place never do). It was an intoxication most fatal of all, and which no Maine law can avert.
Herbert joined us later in the afternoon, and proposed a drive; he was anxious to show me his horses. We parted to meet at the door. Lulu gently detached her arm from mine; said gayly, "Au revoir, bientôt!" as she turned away; and I bounded into the hall, sprang up-stairs into my room, and sat down, stone-still, upon a chair.
I looked fixedly upon the floor, and remained perfectly motionless for five minutes. I was lost in a luxury of happiness! Without a profession, without a fortune, I felt myself irresistibly drawn toward this girl;—and the very fascination lay here, that I knew, however wild and wonderful a feeling I might indulge, it was all hopeless. We should enjoy a week of supreme happiness—suffer in parting—and presently be solaced, and enjoy other weeks of supreme felicity with other Lulus!
My young friends of the Watering-Places, deny having had just such an emotion and "course of thought," if you dare!
We drove to the lake, and the whole world of Saratoga with us. Herbert's new bays sped neatly along—he driving in front, Lulu and I chatting behind. Arrived at the lake, we sauntered down the steep slope to the beach. We stepped into a boat and drifted out upon the water. It was still and gleaming in the late afternoon; and the pensive tranquillity of evening was gathering before we returned. We sang those passionate, desperate love-songs which young people always sing when they are happiest and most sentimental. So rapidly had we advanced—for a Watering-Place is the very hot-bed of romance—that I dropped my hand idly upon Lulu's; and finding that hers was not withdrawn, gradually and gently clasped it in mine. So, hand-in-hand, we sang, floating homeward in the golden twilight.
There was a dance in the evening at the hotel. Lulu was to dance with me, of course, the first set, and as many waltzes as I chose. She was so sparkling, so evidently happy, that I observed the New York belles, to whom happiness is an inexplicable word, scanned her with an air of lofty wonder and elegant disdain. But Lulu was so genuinely graceful and charming; she remained so quietly superior in her simplicity to the assuming hauteur of the metropolitan misses, that I kept myself in perfect good-humor, and did not feel myself at all humbled in the eyes of the Young America of that city, because I was the cavalier of the unique Southerner. So far did this go, that in my desire to revenge myself upon the New Yorkers, I resolved to increase their chagrin by praising Lulu to the chief belle of the set.