CLARA FLETCHER.

OR, FIRST AND LAST LOVE.

“What a beautiful creature Clara Fletcher is!” exclaimed Mr. Tressayle.

“Beautiful!” replied the lady by whom he stood, tossing her head disdainfully, “why la!” and she raised her glass to her eye, “I think she’s positively plain looking.”

“Beautiful indeed!” echoed her mamma, a fat, vulgar looking woman, the flaunting colors of whose dress, betrayed her character at once, “why now, I do say, Mr. Tressayle, it’s astonishing—it is—how a gentleman of such tone as you, should think that pert Miss Fletcher any thing but common-like. Why do look at her hair now, I’d be bound she done it up herself—and then her dress, why that stuff,” said she, with a contemptuous curl of her lip, “couldn’t have cost a dollar a yard. Do you think it could, Araminta, my dear?”

Mr. Tressayle was decidedly the most fashionable man at Saratoga. With a fine person, a handsome countenance, the most courtly manners, and more than all supposed to be possessed of a fortune as extensive as his establishment was fashionable, he was looked up to by all as the match of the season. The Belvilles, therefore, with whom he was now conversing, were not a little flattered by the attentions which he paid them. True they were the wealthiest family at the Springs; but then Mr. Belville had made his princely fortune as a distiller. Originally the keeper of a green-grocer’s shop, he had risen afterward into an obscure tavern-keeper, and from thence by slow gradations, he had become a wine-merchant, a distiller, a usurer, and a millionaire. Latterly, his lady, discarding the shop, and affecting to despise tradesmen’s wives, had set up for a woman of fashion, and nothing gave her, in her eyes, more importance than the attentions obviously paid by Mr. Tressayle to her only child, Araminta Melvina Belville, a long, scraggy young lady of about two-and-twenty, but who affected the manners of “sweet sixteen.” The devotion of Tressayle to such a being was indeed surprising to all who did not know how involved was his fortune.

What reply might have been made by Tressayle to this remark we know not, for his answer was cut short by the appearance of no less a personage than Mr. Belville.

“How are you, Tressayle, fine girls here, eh!” said this gentleman, slapping the young man somewhat familiarly on the shoulder, “deuced handsome gal that, just come in, and has fell heiress to a cool three hundred thousand. By Jove she’s a lucky thing to get the hunk of money old Snarler made in the East India trade.”

“Clara Fletcher heiress to Mr. Snarler!—you surprise me,” said Tressayle, “I thought he had sworn to cut off her mother, who was his sister, you know, and all her family with a shilling, merely for marrying Mr. Fletcher, who, though poor, was in every respect a gentleman.”

“Ay, so he did—so he did, but he died at last—d’ye see?—without a will,—and so Clara Fletcher, the only daughter of his only sister, cuts into his fortune fat.”

“It’s singular I never heard of this before,” said Tressayle, half musingly.

“Mamma, la! if I don’t think Mr. Tressayle has seen Miss Fletcher before,” whispered the daughter behind her fan; and then raising her voice and simpering and blushing as Tressayle looked down on overhearing her, she continued, “dear me, you haven’t been listening all the while, have you? But do tell, Mr. Tressayle, who is that young man talking with her?”

“I believe it is Mr. Rowley.”

“Gad is he the feller,” broke in Mr. Belville, “that published the poems so many people are cracking up? Why he isn’t much after all I guess. For my part I don’t see why some people get praised for writing poetry—it’s nothing—I could do it myself if I’d try,” said he, with a sneer. “I don’t think this Mr. Rowley a man of talent; no poet is.” And finishing his sentence with a supercilious look at the subject of his remarks, the ci-devant green-grocer, inflated with the consciousness of his wealth, thrust his fingers into his waistcoat pockets, and marched off to join another group.

“Why, my dear Miss Fletcher, how d’ye do?” said the shrill voice of Mrs. Belville, at this moment, as Mr. Rowley led his beautiful partner to a seat near the pretender to ton, “how have you been this age? Why how well you are looking. Laws me, and so you know Mr. Tressayle. Well now I do say how quiet you’ve all kept it.”

It was as Mrs. Belville said. Clara Fletcher had scarcely replied to the vulgar address of her neighbor by a distant though polite inclination of her head, before she caught the eyes of Tressayle fixed upon her with a look of mingled inquiry and delight, and as he bowed and stepped forward a slight blush passed over her beautiful cheek, and a scarcely perceptible tremor of the voice might have been detected in replying to his salutation.

That night mother and daughter held a long consultation, the result of which was, that Miss Fletcher might prove a formidable rival, and that therefore no arts were to be omitted to detach the fashionable and wealthy Mr. Tressayle from her suite.

Meanwhile, Tressayle reached his room, and throwing himself abstractedly into a large fautieul, sat for nearly an hour, with his face leaning on his hand. At length he started up, and pacing the room rapidly, exclaimed, as if continuing a train of thought,

“It is no use denying it, Clara Fletcher is far more beautiful than I ever dreamed she could be. Yes! and I once loved her,—at least I told her so. I wonder if she would refuse me now,” and he paused before the glass. “Pshaw! it is idle to think so. True, she is not more than half as wealthy as this inanimate little fool, Miss Belville; but, then, there is the vulgar mother, and coarse father of the latter. Clara has none of these. I never saw their vulgarity so plainly as I did to-night. Ah! I forgot, there is that coldness I showed to Clara when her other uncle disappointed every one’s expectations in omitting her in his will. I’m cursedly afraid she’s not forgotten it. But, then, how could one know she would ever become an heiress? It’s deucedly unlucky, now I think of it, that I never called on her in New York, after my return from Europe. But ‘faint heart never won fair lady;’ and, besides, if Clara ever loved me, as I really think she once did, it’s not so difficult a matter for Henry Tressayle to re-kindle that affection in her bosom. Besides, I’m really making a heroic sacrifice in giving up a fortune twice as large for my old flame.”

From that time Tressayle was almost ever at the side of the beautiful Clara Fletcher. He rode with her, sang with her, danced with her, promenaded with her, and did this too, without a rival, for her former suitor, Mr. Rowley had been compelled to return to New York by business, and few cared to enter the lists against so resistless a beau as Tressayle. Every body declared that they were already affianced lovers, or they soon would be so, except the Belvilles, whose chagrin could not be concealed, and who sneered even at the probability of such a thing.

Tressayle, however, was not so well satisfied with his progress as was the world at large. His knowledge of the sex told him that the conduct of Clara toward him, was not exactly that of one whose affections he had anew engaged. She was too easy, too composed, possessed of too much quiet calmness at all times, not to awaken uneasy suspicions, lest her love was not yet gained. Still, however, she did nothing to shew any distaste for Tressayle’s society, and his own vanity led him on in the pursuit.

Nor was his love any longer a mere matter of calculation to Tressayle. It had become a necessity—it had grown into a passion. If ever he loved a woman, that woman had been Clara Fletcher, and when it had become known that she was not her uncle’s heiress, it was not without a struggle that Tressayle left her. But supremely selfish, and with a fortune impaired by extravagance, he looked at it as an impossibility that he should marry except to an heiress. Now, however, all his old feelings toward Clara were revived, and revived too in ten-fold force. Her fortune was no longer an obstacle. Yes, Tressayle loved; loved for the first time; loved with more than the fervor of which such a man might be thought capable. He could endure his suspense no longer, and determining to propose at once for Clara, he chose for his purpose, an afternoon when they rode out unaccompanied together.

Words cannot describe the eloquence with which the lover—for Tressayle’s talented, though selfish mind, was capable of the highest eloquence—poured forth his passion in the ear of his mistress. But it drew no answering emotion from Clara. A slight blush perhaps tinged her cheek a moment, but her eye calmly looked into his own, and her voice was firm and clear, as she replied,

“Listen to me, Tressayle,” she said. “I am young still, but I was once younger. You remember it well. Then I met you, and—need I disguise it?—you spake to me of love. I know it was but once you said so, but it was after you had paid attention to me which you knew, as well as I, was more eloquent than words. I had never seen one whom I thought your equal, and I loved you. Stay—hear me out. I loved you with all the ardor of a girl’s first love. But how was it returned? While I thought only of you,—while a word from you was my law—while the day seemed gloomy without your presence—while, in short, I gave to you freely every emotion of my heart, you were coolly calculating how much my fortune would be, and preparing, as you subsequently did, to discard me altogether in case I was not my uncle’s heiress—”

“Oh, Clara, Clara, hear me.”

“Yes, Tressayle, but listen first, and then I will hear you. You left me without cause when my uncle’s will was opened and I was found to have been overlooked. I need not tell you the agony of my heart on discovering your character. Let that pass. Reason conquered at last. They say a first love,” continued the beautiful girl, looking at her companion until his eye quailed before the calm dignity of her own, “can never be conquered; but believe me it is a mistake. When the object of that love is unworthy, it is not impossible. And now, Tressayle, you understand me. You are to me as a stranger. Never can I love you again. I am, moreover, the affianced bride of Mr. Rowley.”

Tressayle could not answer a word. Mortification and shame overpowered him, and he was glad when he saw that they were near the termination of their ride.

The first person they met on alighting was Mr. Belville. Ashamed of himself and stung to the very quick, Tressayle took advantage to propose to the millionaire for his daughter.

“Gad, and are you the only ignorant man here of your loss of fortune?” said Mr. Belville, superciliously. “But I forgot the mail came in while you were riding with Miss Fletcher. Good morning, sir.”

Tressayle hurried to his room, opened his letters, and found that the Bank in which he was a large stockholder was broken. In two hours he had left Saratoga.

H. J. V.