“Yes, Agatha, this memorial of our love shall rest beside that heart which is all thine own. But softly, Mr. Fitzmaurice! Is there not already a tenant in possession? Pshaw! Poor Clara! What fools boys are! Ha, ha, ha! and I really did fancy I was in love? One cannot help laughing at the recollection. Let me see—light brown—Well, the hair is pretty hair enough—but, shafts of Cupid! to compare brown with black!—the very thought is high treason in love’s calendar. Still will I preserve a memorial of thee, my sweet blonde—and therefore, sunny ringlet, I’ll commit thee to—my wilting desk!” The transfer was effected, and the tress of glossy black promoted to the secret pocket of the jacket, in front of fourth rib—left side—vice light brown, “placed on the retired list.”
A year rolled over—the anniversary of my birth came round. It was a sweet October evening, and I stole out from the crowded hall of my father’s mansion to meet my gentle Lucy. All around was so calm, so quiet, and so lovely, that the coldest heart would own its influence, and even a professed woman-hater, for once renounce his heresy, and “plead for pardon.” And who was Lucy? The sweetest girl in Roscommon! Her father was the village curate, not passing rich on forty pounds a year but half starved with a wife and six children upon a hundred. Lucy was the eldest child, and when I left England three years before, she had promised to grow up particularly handsome. I returned—we met by accident—for her father’s circumstances were too humble, and his spirit too high, to allow him to maintain terms of intimacy with my family. It was in one of those sweet green hint’s, bounded by hawthorn hedges and overspread with apple trees, whose boughs bent under the load they bore, that I saw her for the first time after my return. If ever rustic-beauty was calculated to ruin a man’s peace, it was such as Lucy Delmer’s. A lovelier dice I never looked at—but it was its expression that did the mischief. The deep blue eye, that turned on the ground from man’s approval the cheek, which one whispered word reddened to the very brow; those lips, which Suckling poetized and Cupid might have sworn by—but why dwell on the loveliness of Lucy Delmer? I came, I saw—reversed the proverb—and was conquered.
The locality of my father’s house was exceedingly remote, and so was the parsonage—and hence, though Lucy had numbered seventeen summers, the tale of love had never yet been heard. No wonder, then, that to my ardent suit her young heart was not indifferent. She did not tell me so—but, without much difficulty, I guessed the secret.
She was punctual to the hour.—The lane was made for lovers—so sweet—so unfrequented.
“Ten thousand thanks, my sweetest Lucy, I feared this lonely spot might have alarmed you, and made you change your resolutions.”
“Oh no; with your protection, what had I to fear? But why were you so desirous to see me? I know there is a dinner party at the hall!”
“It is my birth-day, Lucy—and before my last one, we carried Badajoz, by assault. From a soldier I purchased this chain, and have kept it as a memorial of that eventful passage in my nameless history.” I threw it round her neck: “And now, my sweet Lucy, the spoil of war becomes the bond of love.”
“Dear Pat,” said the blushing girl, in reply; “would that I had some token to offer in return;—I am poor—————”
“Rich, beyond Potosi,” I exclaimed; “ay, and throw El Dorado into the bargain. These nut-brown tresses would manacle Dan Cupid if he came on earth, and replace Berenice’s in hewen afterwards. Give me one lock!
“Hush—I hear footsteps.—Farewell, dear—dear Pat.”