Life — May 16, 1895 — page 13: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

327 “Call me Eliza.” -LIFE- ** Don't call me * Miss Linger,’ I exclaimed impetuously. ** You won't be angry with me if [ do?” he blushed. “* Angry with you, Herbert ?” I said.‘ How could I be angry with you? You who were created for the birds to sing to; the fowersto blossom for; the sunshine to be envious of; the stars to pale their ineffectual fires before? Angry with you, darling? How could I be 2” “Oh, Eliza,” he said, “you mustn't say those things to me, I am too young to listen to such words from you or from any woman. Papa has always told me that women were ever waiting and willing to flatter me, and that I must not listen.” “But do you not love to hear such things ?" I answered him, taking his hand in mine. “They are the sweetest I ever heard,” he sighed softly. “And if I told you that I loved you, Herbert ; that on. your love my whole life depended ; that without it the world would be a desert to me ; that if your dear hand were not in mine to be my gentle stay and guide, I would wander away and be lost to the earcer which is so grandly opening before me—if I should say that to you, Herbert, what would you think ?” I waited anxiously for his answer because on that depended so much. “Why do you say ‘if," Eliza." he asked with a coy little smile. ** Why don’t you say it direct to me ?” Just to think of Herbert saying that! My Herbert, whom I had clothed in the full garniture of guilelessness, and had worshipped as the one altogether artless. ‘You enchanter,” I exclaimed, catching both his hands in mine, and kissing him on one blazing cheek in spite of his struggles. ‘Oh, you more than wise charmer of womankind. Do you thus doubt me ?”" He laughed with a cute chirp, as of a bird, and smoothed out his rumpled necktie. “And why shouldn't I, when you preface a declaration with that hateful *if* ?” he asked as he moved over to the farther end of the rustic seat. “But you know that I love you, Herbert,” Linsisted. ‘How could 1 help loving you?” “It is easy to love when one is in the moonlight of a night in June,” he said tenderly as he gazed upward at the stars. “It is easy to love you, Herbert, under any circumstances, To love is nothing ; not to love you is the task.” ** How nicely you talk. Papa was right when he told me how the women could flatter when they tried.” “Don't speak so, dear one," I urged, drawing him to me once more. “Women are deceivers ever,” he laughed, quoting the revised version of the old poet, and he looked up into my eyes with that look in his, which I knew could come only from a heart that beat true to mine, whatever he might say to put me off. “Now look me square in the face you dear, bewitching little wizard,” I said, taking his face in my two hands and holding him there, “and listen to what I tell you: I love you; I love you; I love you.” “And 2” he added with a great overgrown interrogation point after it. “And I shall love you forever.” “And 2” he questioned again. “And I want you to love me the same.” “And ?” again the interrogation, no less smaller grown by so much use, “And I love you more every minute I look at you." “And 2” ever the *and," with that questioning inflection which coaxes an answer. ‘And I want you to be my own dear little husband, forever and ever, Herbert.”” “* Dear Eliza,” he said in a tone of relief so sweetly, I thought it was the stars singing together as in the old time, and he laid his head upon my shoulder and 1 felt the clinging grasp of a hand that would be in my hand until death should come and take it away. “* Darling,” I murmured and our lips met. Even so, and as the nights of later Junes come to us again, and the moon lets down its silver chords to bind us together to that one night in June when first we started upon the path our feet have trod so happily since, I can only be thankful that I have won Herbert's love, and that as he clung to me then, he clings to mestill, and my loving care and protection have been to him all that his dear heart could have wished. As for myself, there are no heights to which I may attain that with me Herbert shall not go as a husband whose great love makes him the equal of his wife in all the honors the world may confer upon her. A perfect husband, nobly planned, To love, to comfort and command. W. J. Lampton.