The Toledo chronicle. [volume] (Toledo, Tama County, Iowa) 1873-1924, 1875-08-12
A MOONLIGHT WRECK,
BY HARRIET PRESCOTT sPOFFORD

BY HARRIET PRESCOTT sPOFFORD.
BRIGHTLY the hillside gardens bloomet
about the old house in brilliant slopes o.
verbena, great myrtle plats and geranium
beds, and the running fire of the scarlet
beam while the breath of heliotrope and
honeysuckle and passionate red roses hung
like an atmosphere above them and drew
the birds and bees down to revei in theil
richness. N.a@
But Of all the bright, gay things that
grew in the gardens there nothing was
rarer than Pauline. Not so much because
of any special beauty as of the sweetness
and freshness and innocence of her youth
1t would have charmed and revived a
weary heart to see how life and the great
world stretched out before this happy girls
imagination like a pageant; how there was
no trouble but looked to her eyes small
enough for her hand to grasp and set
aside, so full she was of daring and en-.
deavor and sparkling strength. Yet she
had hardly any experience beyond the
quiet one of the town, the fishing people,
and her gardens-her gardens in which
she fairly lived, borrowing certain staid
sobriety of the stock gillytiowers and holly
hooks there, that, If they did not preside
over these paths since her earliest days,
yet looked ancient enough to have done
so. And, if she were not precisely beauti-
full, yet the damask roses that she tended
were no more perfumed velvet than that
of her cheek, where two dimples nestled :;
and the violets, whose parental blossoms
had given her goodmorrow on the first
day she had drawn breath, were no bluer
than her eyes.
Yet experience was coming to Pauline,
and it began on the day when she found
she had lover-the day when Dunstan's
| great dark eyes bent and looked into her
own with new meaning-and, in answer
to that daring, sudden kiss of his, a
strange, wild thrill leaped to her lips and
taught her, through her quick, glad tears,
that she loved as she was loved.
What year of bliss it was! 1t seemed
| to Pauline as though she had not been
alive before, or else had been mere chrys.
aid, asleep and waiting for the change.
Now that change had come and it was on
wings that she fioated with Dunstan from
season to season of that perfect year. And
then the trouble that sooner or later de
scends upon our lot decreed that Pauline
should no longer be exempt. -Er
A dark day it was for the girl, bright,
though the sun shone, when Dunstan
started in the Sea Eagle on his Chilian
voyage. The firm, long engaged in South
American trade, needed him there. But,
to tell the truth, he had been 10th, until
forced, to go and leave Pauline with her
Cousin Gilbert lowering round her, as he
phrased it; though it required a powerful
Imagination to picture great fellow, six
feet high, just graduated specifically from
college, intrinsically from boat-racing, in
the act of lowering. Dunstan, however,
had some reason on his side. For Gilbert,
her mothers ward, coming home on his
long vacation, had surrendered, without
discretion, to the charm of Pauline, and,
noble soul though he was, forgot for time
that Dunstan, her plighted lover, lived.
The day he was to sail, having wrought
himself into frenzy of foreboding in the
wakeful night, Dunstan demanded that
Pauline should not speak with her Cousin
Gilbert in his absence. OF course she re-
piled that it was impossible, dwelling to
gether, to maintain such course. Then
he demanded that she should not speak
alone with him And, indignant, with the
swift anger of youth, at the suspicion OF
her faith and truth that the demand i'm
piled, Pauline resisted it again. He waited
moment and then impetuously insisted
that she should marry him before he sailed,
though he had to leave her behind; and,
shocked with the sudden idea, and with
her indignation still uppermost, she as
sharply refused that claim also He gazed
at her for long moment, then stepped
toward her and took her in his arms.
"Farewellm he said eff 1 never return,
do not remember that you are breaking
my heart And with long, long kiss he
was gone The Sea Eagle had spread
sail for Southern waters, and Pauline was
lcll ueSOldtc,
Love Gilbert? she said to herself some
hours after, when the whirl of her mind
and her senses began to subside. Love
Gilbert, her prosaic cousin? She was very
fond of him. he was sort of brother;
they had grown up side by side. But if
she never saw him again what would it
seriously matter to her? But Dunstan
was her life, her heaven, her horizon. For
DAYS and weeks the melancholy gaze OF
those great Spanish eyes of his haunted
her, the beauty of his dark, passionate
face hung before her like vision; every
night as she looked out on the infinite gray
waves she adjured them to be propltlous
and bear him swiftly and safely on.
But the waves did not heed the prayer.
The Sea Eagle never came to haroor
Pieces of wreck drifted ashore sufficiently
to tell the story, months afterward' that
she had been burned, perhaps in mid
ocean; and of the fate Of the souls on
board whether perishing or taken OIL by
some passing whaler, there was no record
to tell. Day by day Pauline grew still
and stiller. Pale, thin, but becoming ra-
diantly and, as it were, ethereally beautl-