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Title: Reveries of a Bachelor - or, A Book of the Heart
Author: Mitchell, Donald Grant
Language: English
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REVERIES OF A BACHELOR
[Illustration]
REVERIES OF A BACHELOR
Or
A Book of the Heart
by
IK MARVEL
With Illustrations & Decorations by E. M. Ashe
Indianapolis
The Bobbs-Merrill Company
Publishers
Copyright 1906
The Bobbs-Merrill Company
—————
October
Press of
Braunworth & Co.
Bookbinders and Printers
Brooklyn. N.Y.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
To
Mrs. E. L. Dixon
of Hartford, Connecticut
This book is respectfully inscribed;
by her friend
THE AUTHOR
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[Illustration]
CONTENTS
FIRST REVERIE
PAGE
Over a Wood Fire 3
I Smoke, Signifying Doubt 9
II Blaze, Signifying Cheer 21
III Ashes, Signifying Desolation 29
SECOND REVERIE
By a City Grate 47
I Sea-Coal 57
II Anthracite 77
THIRD REVERIE
Over His Cigar 99
I Lighted With a Coal 105
II With a Wisp of Paper 121
III Lighted With a Match 137
FOURTH REVERIE
Morning, Noon and Evening 155
I Morning—Which Is the Past 165
School Days 177
The Sea 191
The Father-Lan 201
A Roman Girl 213
The Appenines 225
Enrica 235
II Noon—Which Is the Present 245
Early Friends 249
School Revisited 259
College 267
The Packet of Bella 275
III Evening—Which Is the Future 287
Carry 293
The Letter 303
New Travel 311
Home 327
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[Illustration]
PREFACE
This book is neither more nor less than it pretends to be; it is a
collection of those floating reveries which have, from time to time,
drifted across my brain. I never yet met with a bachelor who had not his
share of just such floating visions; and the only difference between us
lies in the fact that I have tossed them from me in the shape of a book.
If they had been worked over with more unity of design I dare say I
might have made a respectable novel; as it is, I have chosen the
honester way of setting them down as they came seething from my thought,
with all their crudities and contrasts, uncovered.
As for the truth that is in them, the world may believe what it likes;
for, having written to humor the world, it would be hard if I should
curtail any of its privileges of judgment. I should think there was as
much truth in them as in most Reveries.
The first story of the book has already had some publicity; and the
criticisms upon it have amused and pleased me. One honest journalist
avows that it could never have been written by a bachelor. I thank him
for thinking so well of me, and heartily wish that his thought were as
true as it is kind.
Yet I am inclined to think that bachelors are the only safe and secure
observers of all the phases of married life. The rest of the world have
their hobbies; and by law, as well as by immemorial custom, are reckoned
unfair witnesses in everything relating to their matrimonial affairs.
Perhaps I ought, however, to make an exception in favor of spinsters,
who, like us, are independent spectators, and possess just that kind of
indifference to the marital state, which makes them intrepid in their
observations, and very desirable for—authorities.
As for the style of the book I have nothing to say for it except to
refer to my title. These are not sermons, nor essays, nor criticisms;
they are only Reveries. And if the reader should stumble upon occasional
magniloquence, or be worried with a little too much of sentiment, pray
let him remember—that I am dreaming.
But while I say this, in the hope of nicking off the wiry edge of my
reader’s judgment, I shall yet stand up boldly for the general tone and
character of the book. If there is bad feeling in it, or insincerity, or
shallow sentiment, or any foolish depth of affection betrayed—I am
responsible; and the critics may expose it to their hearts’ content.
I have, moreover, a kindly feeling for these Reveries, from their very
private character; they consist mainly of just such whimseys and
reflections as a great many brother bachelors are apt to indulge in, but
which they are too cautious, or too prudent to lay before the world. As
I have in this matter shown a frankness and _naïveté_ which are unusual,
I shall ask a corresponding frankness in my reader; and I can assure him
safely that this is eminently one of those books which were “never
intended for publication.”
In the hope that this plain avowal may quicken the reader’s charity, and
screen me from cruel judgment,
I remain, with sincere good wishes,
IK MARVEL.
NEW YORK, November, 1850.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[Illustration]
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[Illustration]
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[Illustration]
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[Illustration]
OVER A WOOD FIRE
I HAVE got a quiet farmhouse in the country, a very humble place to be
sure, tenanted by a worthy enough man, of the old New England stamp,
where I sometimes go for a day or two in the winter, to look over the
farm accounts, and to see how the stock is thriving on the winter’s
keep.
One side the door, as you enter from the porch, is a little parlor,
scarce twelve feet by ten, with a cozy-looking fireplace—a heavy oak
floor—a couple of armchairs and a brown table with carved lions’ feet.
Out of this room opens a little cabinet, only big enough for a broad
bachelor bedstead, where I sleep upon feathers, and wake in the morning,
with my eye upon a saucy colored, lithographic print of some fancy
“Bessy.”
It happens to be the only house in the world, of which I am _bona fide_
owner; and I take a vast deal of comfort in treating it just as I
choose. I manage to break some article of furniture almost every time I
pay it a visit; and if I can not open the window readily of a morning,
to breathe the fresh air, I knock out a pane or two of glass with my
boot. I lean against the walls in a very old armchair there is on the
premises, and scarce ever fail to worry such a hole in the plastering as
would set me down for a round charge for damages in town, or make a prim
housewife fret herself into a raging fever. I laugh out loud with
myself, in my big armchair, when I think that I am neither afraid of one
nor the other.
As for the fire, I keep the little hearth so hot as to warm half the
cellar below, and the whole space between the jambs roars for hours
together with white flame. To be sure the windows are not very tight,
between broken panes and bad joints, so that the fire, large as it is,
is by no means an extravagant comfort.
[Illustration]
As night approaches, I have a huge pile of oak and hickory placed beside
the hearth; I put out the tallow candle on the mantel (using the family
snuffers, with one leg broken) then, drawing my chair directly in front
of the blazing wood, and setting one foot on each of the old iron
fire-dogs (until they grow too warm), I dispose myself for an evening of
such sober and thoughtful quietude, as I believe, on my soul, that very
few of my fellow men have the good fortune to enjoy.
My tenant, meantime, in the other room I can hear now and then—though
there is a thick stone chimney and broad entry between—multiplying
contrivances with his wife to put two babies to sleep. This occupies
them, I should say, usually an hour; though my only measure of time (for
I never carry a watch into the country), is the blaze of my fire. By
ten, or thereabouts, my stock of wood is nearly exhausted; I pile upon
the hot coals what remains, and sit watching how it kindles, and blazes,
and goes out—even like our joys! and then slip by the light of the
embers into my bed, where I luxuriate in such sound and healthful
slumber as only such rattling window frames and country air can supply.
But to return: the other evening—it happened to be on my last visit to
my farmhouse—when I had exhausted all the ordinary rural topics of
thought, had formed all sorts of conjectures as to the income of the
year; had planned a new wall around one lot, and the clearing up of
another, now covered with patriarchal wood, and wondered if the little
rickety house would not be, after all, a snug enough box to live and to
die in—I fell on a sudden into such an unprecedented line of thought,
which took such a deep hold of my sympathies—sometimes even starting
tears—that I determined, the next day, to set as much of it as I could
recall on paper.
Something—it may have been the home-looking blaze (I am a bachelor
of—say six and twenty), or possibly a plaintive cry of the baby in my
tenant’s room had suggested to me the thought of—Marriage.
I piled upon the heated fire-dogs, the last armful of my wood; and now,
said I, bracing myself courageously between the arms of my chair—I’ll
not flinch; I’ll pursue the thought wherever it leads, though it lead me
to the d—— (I am apt to be hasty) at least—continued I, softening—until
my fire is out.
The wood was green, and at first showed no disposition to blaze. It
smoked furiously. Smoke, thought I, always goes before blaze; and so
does doubt go before decision: and my reverie, from that very starting
point, slipped into this shape:
[Illustration]
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[Illustration]
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[Illustration]
SMOKE—SIGNIFYING DOUBT
A WIFE? thought I; yes, a wife! And why?
And pray, my dear sir, why not—why? Why not doubt; why not hesitate; why
not tremble?
Does a man buy a ticket in a lottery—a poor man, whose whole earnings go
in to secure the ticket—without trembling, hesitating, and doubting?
Can a man stake his bachelor respectability, his independence, and
comfort, upon the die of absorbing, unchanging, relentless marriage,
without trembling at the venture?
Shall a man who has been free to chase his fancies over the wide world,
without let or hindrance, shut himself up to marriageship, within four
walls called home, that are to claim him, his time, his trouble, and his
tears, thenceforward forever more, without doubts thick and thick-coming
as smoke?
Shall he who has been hitherto a mere observer of other men’s cares and
business, moving off where they made him sick of heart, approaching
whenever and wherever they made him gleeful—shall he now undertake
administration of just such cares and business without qualms? Shall he,
whose whole life has been but a nimble succession of escapes from
trifling difficulties, now broach, without doubtings, that matrimony,
where if difficulty beset him there is no escape? Shall this brain of
mine, careless-working, never tired with idleness, feeding on long
vagaries, and high, gigantic castles, dreaming out beatitudes hour by
hour—turn itself at length to such dull task-work, as thinking out a
livelihood for wife and children?
Where thenceforward will be those sunny dreams, in which I have warmed
my fancies, and my heart, and lighted my eye with crystal? This very
marriage, which a brilliant working imagination has invested time and
again with brightness and delight, can serve no longer as a mine for
teeming fancy: all, alas, will be gone—reduced to the dull standard of
the actual! No more room for intrepid forays of imagination—no more
gorgeous realm-making—all will be over!
Why not, I thought, go on dreaming?
Can any wife be prettier than an after-dinner fancy, idle and yet vivid,
can paint for you? Can any children make less noise than the little
rosy-cheeked ones, who have no existence, except in the _omnium
gatherum_ of your own brain? Can any housewife be more unexceptionable
than she who goes sweeping daintily the cobwebs that gather in your
dreams? Can any domestic larder be better stocked than the private
larder of your head dozing on a cushioned chair-back at Delmonico’s? Can
any family purse be better filled than the exceeding plump one you dream
of after reading such pleasant books as _Münchausen_ or _Typee_?
But if, after all, it must be—duty, or what-not, making provocation—what
then? And I clapped my feet hard against the fire-dogs, and leaned back,
and turned my face to the ceiling, as much as to say: And where on
earth, then, shall a poor devil look for a wife?
Somebody says, Lyttleton or Shaftesbury, I think, that, “marriages would
be happier if they were all arranged by the lord chancellor.”
Unfortunately, we have no lord chancellor to make this commutation of
our misery.
Shall a man, then, scour the country on a mule’s back, like Honest Gil
Blas, of Santillane; or shall he make application to some such
intervening providence as Madame St. Marc, who, as I see by the
_Presse_, manages these matters to one’s hand, for some five per cent.
on the fortunes of the parties?
I have trouted when the brook was so low and the sky so hot that I might
as well have thrown my fly upon the turnpike; and I have hunted hare at
noon, and woodcock in snow-time—never despairing, scarce doubting; but
for a poor hunter of his kind, without traps or snares, or any aid of
police or constabulary, to traverse the world, where are swarming, on a
moderate computation, some three hundred and odd millions of unmarried
women, for a single capture—irremediable, unchangeable—and yet a captive
which, by strange metonymy not laid down in the books, is very apt to
turn captor into captive, and make game of hunter—all this, surely,
surely may make a man shrug with doubt!
Then—again—there are the plaguy wife’s relations. Who knows how many
third, fourth, or fifth cousins will appear at careless, complimentary
intervals long after you had settled into the placid belief that all
congratulatory visits were at an end? How many twisted-headed brothers
will be putting in their advice, as a friend to Peggy?
How many maiden aunts will come to spend a month or two with their “dear
Peggy,” and want to know every tea-time “if she isn’t a dear love of a
wife?” Then dear father-in-law will beg (taking dear Peggy’s hand in
his) to give a little wholesome counsel; and will be very sure to advise
just the contrary of what you had determined to undertake. And dear
mamma-in-law must set her nose into Peggy’s cupboard, and insist upon
having the key to your own private locker in the wainscot.
Then, perhaps, there is a little bevy of dirty-nosed nephews, who come
to spend the holidays, and eat up your East India sweetmeats, and who
are forever tramping over your head or raising the old Harry below,
while you are busy with your clients. Last, and worst, is some fidgety
old uncle, forever too cold or too hot, who vexes you with his
patronizing airs, and impudently kisses his little Peggy!
—That could be borne, however, for perhaps he has promised his fortune
to Peggy. Peggy, then, will be rich (and the thought made me rub my
shins, which were now getting comfortably warm upon the fire-dogs).
Then, she will be forever talking of _her_ fortune; and pleasantly
reminding you on occasion of a favorite purchase—how lucky that _she_
had the means; and dropping hints about economy; and buying very
extravagant Paisleys.
She will annoy you by looking over the stock list at breakfast time; and
mention quite carelessly to your clients, that she is interested in
_such_, or such a speculation.
She will be provokingly silent when you hint to a tradesman that you
have not the money by you for his small bill—in short, she will tear the
life out of you, making you pay in righteous retribution of annoyance,
grief, vexation, shame and sickness of heart, for the superlative folly
of “marrying rich.”
—But if not rich, then poor. Bah! the thought made me stir the coals;
but there was still no blaze. The paltry earnings you are able to wring
out of clients by the sweat of your brow, will now be all _our_ income;
you will be pestered for pin-money, and pestered with your poor wife’s
relations. Ten to one she will stickle about taste—“Sir Visto’s”—and
want to make this so pretty, and that so charming, if she _only_ had the
means; and is sure Paul (a kiss) can’t deny his little Peggy such a
trifling sum, and all for the common benefit.
Then she, for one, means that _her_ children shan’t go a-begging for
clothes—and another pull at the purse. Trust a poor mother to dress her
children in finery!
Perhaps she is ugly—not noticeable at first, but growing on her, and
(what is worse) growing faster on you. You wonder why you didn’t see
that vulgar nose long ago: and that lip—it is very strange, you think,
that you ever thought it pretty. And then—to come to breakfast, with her
hair looking as it does, and you not so much as daring to say—“Peggy,
_do_ brush your hair!” Her foot, too—not very bad when decently
_chaussée_—but now, since she’s married, she does wear such infernal
slippers! And yet, for all this, to be prigging up for an hour, when any
of my old chums come to dine with me!
“Bless your kind hearts! my dear fellows,” said I, thrusting the tongs
into the coals, and speaking out loud, as if my voice could reach from
Virginia to Paris—“not married yet!”
Perhaps Peggy is pretty enough—only shrewish.
—No matter for cold coffee; you should have been up before.
What sad, thin, poorly-cooked chops, to eat with your rolls!
—She thinks they are very good, and wonders how you can set such an
example to your children.
The butter is nauseating.
—She has no other, and hopes you’ll not raise a storm about butter a
little turned. I think I see myself—ruminated I—sitting meekly at table,
scarce daring to lift up my eyes, utterly fagged out with some quarrel
of yesterday, choking down detestably sour muffins that my wife thinks
are “delicious”—slipping in dried mouthfuls of burned ham off the side
of my fork tines—slipping off my chair sideways at the end, and slipping
out with my hat between my knees, to business, and never feeling myself
a competent, sound-minded man till the oak door is between me and Peggy!
—“Ha, ha—not yet!” said I; and in so earnest a tone that my dog started
to his feet—cocked his eye to have a good look into my face—met my smile
of triumph with an amiable wag of the tail, and curled up again in the
corner.
Again, Peggy is rich enough, well enough, mild enough, only she doesn’t
care a fig for you. She has married you because father, or grandfather
thought the match eligible, and because she didn’t wish to disoblige
them. Besides, she didn’t positively hate you, and thought you were a
respectable enough young person; she has told you so repeatedly at
dinner. She wonders you like to read poetry; she wishes you would buy
her a good cookbook; and insists upon you making your will at the birth
of the first baby.
She thinks Captain So-and-So a splendid-looking fellow, and wishes you
would trim up a little, were it only for appearance’s sake.
You need not hurry up from the office so early at night: she, bless her
dear heart! does not feel lonely. You read to her a love tale; she
interrupts the pathetic parts with directions to her seamstress. You
read of marriages: she sighs, and asks if Captain So-and-So has left
town! She hates to be mewed up in a cottage, or between brick walls; she
does _so_ love the Springs!
But, again, Peggy loves you; at least she swears it, with her hand on
the _Sorrows of Werther_. She has pin-money which she spends for the
_Literary World_ and the _Friends in Council_. She is not bad looking,
save a bit too much of forehead; nor is she sluttish, unless a _négligé_
till three o’clock, and an ink stain on the forefinger be sluttish; but
then she is such a sad blue!
You never fancied, when you saw her buried in a three-volumed novel,
that it was anything more than a girlish vagary; and when she quoted
Latin you thought, innocently, that she had a capital memory for her
samplers.
[Illustration]
But to be bored eternally about Divine Dante and funny Goldoni, is too
bad. Your copy of Tasso, a treasure print of 1680, is all bethumbed and
dog’s-eared, and spotted with baby gruel. Even your Seneca—an Elzevir—is
all sweaty with handling. She adores La Fontaine, reads Balzac with a
kind of artist-scowl, and will not let Greek alone.
You hint at broken rest and an aching head at breakfast, and she will
fling you a scrap of anthology—in lieu of the camphor bottle—or chant
the aἰaĩ aἰaĩ, of tragic chorus.
—The nurse is getting dinner; you are holding the baby; Peggy is reading
Bruyère.
The fire smoked thick as pitch, and puffed out little clouds over the
chimney place. I gave the fore-stick a kick, at the thought of Peggy,
baby and Bruyère.
—Suddenly the flame flickered bluely athwart the smoke—caught at a twig
below—rolled round the mossy oak-stick—twined among the crackling
tree-limbs—mounted—lit up the whole body of smoke, and blazed out
cheerily and bright. Doubt vanished with Smoke, and Hope began with
Flame.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[Illustration]
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[Illustration]
II
BLAZE—SIGNIFYING CHEER
I PUSHED my chair back, drew up another, stretched out my feet cozily
upon it, rested my elbows on the chair arms, leaned my head on one hand,
and looked straight into the leaping and dancing flame.
—Love is a flame—ruminated I; and (glancing round the room) how a flame
brightens up a man’s habitation.
“Carlo,” said I, calling up my dog into the light, “good fellow, Carlo!”
and I patted him kindly, and he wagged his tail, and laid his nose
across my knee, and looked wistfully up in my face; then strode
away—turned to look again, and lay down to sleep.
“Pho, the brute!” said I, “it is not enough, after all, to like a dog.”
—If now in that chair yonder, not the one your feet lie upon, but the
other, beside you—closer yet—were seated a sweet-faced girl, with a
pretty little foot lying out upon the hearth—a bit of lace running round
the swelling throat—the hair parted to a charm over a forehead fair as
any of your dreams; and if you could reach an arm around that chair
back, without fear of giving offense, and suffer your fingers to play
idly with those curls that escape down the neck; and if you could clasp
with your other hand those little white, taper fingers of hers, which
lie so temptingly within reach—and so, talk softly and low in presence
of the blaze, while the hours slip without knowledge, and the winter
winds whistle uncared for; if, in short, you were no bachelor, but the
husband of some such sweet image (dream, call it rather), would it not
be far pleasanter than this cold single night-sitting—counting the
sticks—reckoning the length of the blaze, and the height of the falling
snow?
And if, some or all of those wild vagaries that grow on your fancy at
such an hour, you could whisper into listening, because loving ears—ears
not tired with listening, because it is you who whisper—ears ever
indulgent because eager to praise; and if your darkest fancies were lit
up, not merely with bright wood fire, but with a ringing laugh of that
sweet face turned up in fond rebuke—how far better than to be waxing
black and sour over pestilential humors—alone—your very dog asleep.
And if, when a glowing thought comes into your brain, quick and sudden,
you could tell it over as to a second self, to that sweet creature, who
is not away, because she loves to be there; and if you could watch the
thought catching that girlish mind, illuming that fair brow, sparkling
in those pleasantest of eyes—how far better than to feel it slumbering,
and going out, heavy, lifeless, and dead, in your own selfish fancy. And
if a generous emotion steals over you—coming, you know not whither,
would there not be a richer charm in lavishing it in caress, or
endearing word, upon that fondest, and most dear one, than in patting
your glossy-coated dog, or sinking lonely to smiling slumbers?
How would not benevolence ripen with such monitor to task it! How would
not selfishness grow faint and dull, leaning ever to that second self,
which is the loved one! How would not guile shiver, and grow weak,
before that girl-brow and eye of innocence! How would not all that
boyhood prized of enthusiasm, and quick blood, and life, renew itself in
such presence!
The fire was getting hotter, and I moved into the middle of the room.
The shadows the flames made were playing like fairy forms over floor,
and wall, and ceiling.
My fancy would surely quicken, thought I, if such being were in
attendance. Surely imagination would be stronger and purer if it could
have the playful fancies of dawning womanhood to delight it. All toil
would be torn from mind-labor, if but another heart grew into this
present soul, quickening it, warming it, cheering it, bidding it
ever—God speed!
_Her_ face would make a halo, rich as a rainbow, atop of all such
noisome things, as we lonely souls call trouble. Her smile would
illumine the blackest of crowding cares; and darkness that now seats you
despondent, in your solitary chair for days together, weaving bitter
fancies, dreaming bitter dreams, would grow light and thin, and spread,
and float away—chased by that beloved smile.
Your friend—poor fellow! dies: never mind, that gentle clasp of _her_
fingers, as she steals behind you, telling you not to weep—it is worth
ten friends!
Your sister, sweet one, is dead—buried. The worms are busy with all her
fairness. How it makes you think earth nothing but a spot to dig graves
upon!
—It is more: _she_, she says, will be a sister; and the waving curls as
she leans upon your shoulder, touch your cheek, and your wet eyes turn
to meet those other eyes—God has sent his angel, surely!
Your mother, alas for it, she is gone! Is there any bitterness to a
youth, alone, and homeless, like this!
But you are not homeless; you are not alone; _she_ is there—her tears
softening yours, her smile lighting yours, her grief killing yours; and
you live again, to assuage that kind sorrow of hers.
Then—those children, rosy, fair-haired; no, they do not disturb you with
their prattle now—they are yours! Toss away there on the
greensward—never mind the hyacinths, the snowdrops, the violets, if so
be any are there; the perfume of their healthful lips is worth all the
flowers of the world. No need now to gather wild bouquets to love and
cherish: flower, tree, gun, are all dead things; things livelier hold
your soul.
And she, the mother, sweetest and fairest of all, watching, tending,
caressing, loving, till your own heart grows pained with tenderest
jealousy, and cures itself with loving.
You have no need now of any cold lecture to teach thankfulness; your
heart is full of it. No need now, as once, of bursting blossoms of trees
taking leaf and greenness, to turn thought kindly and thankfully; for,
ever beside you, there is bloom, and ever beside you there is fruit—for
which eye, heart and soul are full of unknown, and unspoken, because
unspeakable thank-offering.
And if sickness catches you, binds you, lays you down—no lonely moanings
and wicked curses at careless-stepping nurses. _The_ step is noiseless,
and yet distinct beside you. The white curtains are drawn, or withdrawn
by the magic of that other presence; and the soft, cool hand is upon
your brow.
No cold comfortings of friend-watchers, merely come in to steal a word
away from that outer world, which is pulling at their skirts; but, ever
the sad, shaded brow of her, whose lightest sorrow for your sake is your
greatest grief—if it were not a greater joy.
The blaze was leaping light and high, and the wood falling under the
growing heat.
—So, continued I, this heart would be at length itself—striving with
everything gross, even now as it clings to grossness. Love would make
its strength native and progressive. Earth’s cares would fly. Joys would
double. Susceptibilities be quickened; love master self; and having made
the mastery, stretch onward, and upward toward infinitude.
And if the end came, and sickness brought that follower—Great
Follower—which sooner or later is sure to come after, then the heart,
and the hand of love, ever near, are giving to your tired soul, daily
and hourly, lessons of that love which consoles, which triumphs, which
circleth all and centereth in all—love infinite and divine!
Kind hands—none but _hers_—will smooth the hair upon your brow as the
chill grows damp and heavy on it; and her fingers—none but hers—will lie
in yours as the wasted flesh stiffens and hardens for the ground. _Her_
tears—you could feel no others, if oceans fell—will warm your drooping
features once more to life; once more your eye, lighted in joyous
triumph, kindles in her smile, and then—
The fire fell upon the hearth; the blaze gave a last leap—a flicker—then
another—caught a little remaining twig—blazed up—wavered—went out.
There was nothing but a bed of glowing embers, over which the white
ashes gathered fast. I was alone, with only my dog for company.
[Illustration]
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[Illustration]
III
ASHES—SIGNIFYING DESOLATION
AFTER all, thought I, ashes follow blaze inevitably as death follows
life. Misery treads on the heels of joy; anguish rides swift after
pleasure.
“Come to me again, Carlo,” said I to my dog; and I patted him fondly
once more, but now only by the light of the dying embers.
It is very little pleasure one takes in fondling brute favorites; but it
is a pleasure that when it passes, leaves no void. It is only a little
alleviating redundance in your solitary heart-life which, if lost,
another can be supplied.
But if your heart, not solitary—not quieting its humors with mere love
of chase, or dog—not repressing, year after year, its earnest yearnings
after something better and more spiritual—has fairly linked itself by
bonds strong as life, to another heart—is the casting off easy then?
Is it then only a little heart-redundancy cut off, which the next bright
sunset will fill up?
And my fancy, as it had painted doubt under the smoke, and cheer under
warmth of the blaze, so now it began under the faint light of the
smoldering embers, to picture heart-desolation.
What kind, congratulatory letters, hosts of them, coming from old and
half-forgotten friends, now that your happiness is a year, or two years
old!
“Beautiful.”
—Ay, to be sure, beautiful!
“Rich.”
—Pho, the dawdler! how little he knows of heart-treasure, who speaks of
wealth to a man who loves his wife as a wife only should be loved!
“Young.”
—Young indeed; guileless as infancy; charming as the morning.
Ah, these letters bear a sting: they bring to mind, with new and newer
freshness, if it be possible, the value of that which you tremble lest
you lose.
How anxiously you watch that step—if it lose not its buoyancy. How you
study the color on that cheek, if it grow not fainter. How you tremble
at the luster in those eyes, if it be not the luster of death. How you
totter under the weight of that muslin sleeve—a phantom weight! How you
fear to do it, and yet press forward, to note if that breathing be
quickened, as you ascend the home-heights, to look off on the sunset
lighting the plain.
Is your sleep, quiet sleep, after that she has whispered to you her
fears, and in the same breath—soft as a sigh, sharp as an arrow—bid you
bear it bravely?
Perhaps—the embers were now glowing fresher, a little kindling, before
the ashes—she triumphs over disease.
But Poverty, the world’s almoner, has come to you with ready, spare
hand.
Alone, with your dog living on bones, and you on hope—kindling each
morning, dying slowly each night—this could be borne. Philosophy would
bring home its stores to the lone man. Money is not in his hand, but
knowledge is in his brain! and from that brain he draws out faster, as
he draws slower from his pocket. He remembers; and on remembrance he can
live for days and weeks. The garret, if a garret covers him, is rich in
fancies. The rain, if it pelts, pelts only him used to rain-peltings.
And his dog crouches not in dread, but in companionship. His crust he
divides with him, and laughs. He crowns himself with glorious memories
of Cervantes, though he begs; if he nights it under the stars, he dreams
heaven-sent dreams of the prisoned and homeless Galileo.
He hums old sonnets, and snatches of poor Jonson’s plays. He chants
Dryden’s odes, and dwells on Otway’s rhyme. He reasons with Bolingbroke
or Diogenes as the humor takes him, and laughs at the world, for the
world, thank Heaven, has left him alone!
Keep your money, old misers, and your palaces, old princes—the world is
mine!
I care not, fortune, what you me deny.
You cannot rob me of free nature’s grace,
You cannot shut the windows of the sky;
You cannot bar my constant feet to trace
The woods and lawns, by living streams, at eve,
Let health, my nerves and finer fibers brace,
And I, their toys, to the great children, leave.
Of fancy, reason, virtue, nought can we bereave!
But—if not alone?
If _she_ is clinging to you for support, for consolation, for home, for
life—she, reared in luxury, perhaps, is faint for bread?
Then the iron enters the soul; then the nights darken under any
skylight. Then the days grow long, even in the solstice of winter.
She may not complain; what then?
Will your heart grow strong, if the strength of her love can dam up the
fountains of tears, and the tied tongue not tell of bereavement? Will it
solace you to find her parting the poor treasure of food you have stolen
for her, with begging, foodless children?
But this ill, strong hands and Heaven’s help will put down. Wealth
again; flowers again; patrimonial acres again; brightness again. But
your little Bessie, your favorite child, is pining.
Would to God! you say in agony, that wealth could bring fullness again
into that blanched cheek, or round those little thin lips once more; but
it can not. Thinner and thinner they grow; plaintive and more plaintive
her sweet voice.
“Dear Bessie”—and your tones tremble; you feel that she is on the edge
of the grave? Can you pluck her back? Can endearments stay her? Business
is heavy, away from the loved child; home, you go, to fondle while yet
time is left—but _this_ time you are too late. She is gone. She can not
hear you; she can not thank you for the violets you put within her stiff
white hand.
And then—the grassy mound—the cold shadow of head-stone!
The wind, growing with the night, is rattling at the window panes, and
whistles dismally. I wipe a tear, and in the interval of my reverie,
thank God, that I am no such mourner.
But gaiety, snail-footed, creeps back to the household. All is bright
again:
The violet bed’s not sweeter
Than the delicious breath marriage sends forth.
_Her_ lip is rich and full; her cheek delicate as a flower. Her frailty
doubles your love.
And the little one she clasps—frail too—too frail: the boy you had set
your hopes and heart on. You have watched him growing, ever prettier,
ever winning more and more upon your soul. The love you bore to him when
he first lisped names—your name and hers—has doubled in strength now
that he asks innocently to be taught of this, of that, and promises you
by that quick curiosity that flashes in his eye, a mind full of
intelligence.
And some hair-breadth escape by sea, or flood, that he perhaps may have
had—which unstrung your soul to such tears as you pray God may be spared
you again—has endeared the little fellow to your heart a thousandfold.
And, now with his pale sister in the grave, all _that_ love has come
away from the mound, where worms feast, and centers on the boy.
How you watch the storms lest they harm him! How often you steal to his
bed late at night and lay your hand lightly upon the brow, where the
curls cluster thick, rising and falling with the throbbing temples, and
watch, for minutes together, the little lips half-parted, and
listen—your ear close to them—if the breathing be regular and sweet!
But the day comes—the night rather—when you can catch no breathing.
Aye, put your hair away—compose yourself—listen again.
No, there is nothing!
Put your hand now to his brow—damp indeed—but not with healthful night
sleep: it is not your hand, no, do not deceive yourself—it is your loved
boy’s forehead that is so cold; and your loved boy will never speak to
you again—never play again—he is dead!
Oh, the tears—the tears: what blessed things are tears! Never fear now
to let them fall on his forehead, or his lip, lest you waken him! Clasp
him—clasp him harder—you can not hurt, you can not waken him! Lay him
down, gently or not, it is the same; he is stiff; he is stark and cold.
* * * * *
But courage and patience, faith and hope recovers itself easier, thought
I, than these embers will get into blaze again.
But courage, and patience, faith, and hope have their limit. Blessed be
the man who escapes such trial as will determine limit!
To a lone man it comes not near; for how can trial take hold where there
is nothing by which to try?
A funeral? You reason with philosophy. A graveyard? You read Hervey and
muse upon the wall. A friend dies? You sigh, you pat your dog—it is
over. Losses? You retrench—you light your pipe—it is forgotten. Calumny?
You laugh—you sleep.
But with that childless wife clinging to you in love and sorrow—what
then?
Can you take down Seneca now, and coolly blow the dust from the
leaf-tops? Can you crimp your lip with Voltaire? Can you smoke idly,
your feet dangling with the ivies, your thoughts all waving fancies upon
a church-yard wall—a wall that borders the grave of your boy?
Can you amuse yourself by turning stinging Martial into rhyme? Can you
pat your dog, and seeing him wakeful and kind, say, “It is enough?” Can
you sneer at calumny, and sit by your fire dozing?
Blessed, thought I again, is the man who escapes such trial as will
measure the limit of patience and the limit of courage!
But the trial comes—colder and colder were growing the embers.
That wife, over whom your love broods, is fading. Not beauty
fading—that, now that your heart is wrapped in her being, would be
nothing.
She sees with quick eye your dawning apprehension, and she tries hard to
make that step of hers elastic.
Your trials and your loves together have centered your affections. They
are not now as when you were a lone man, wide-spread and superficial.
They have caught from domestic attachments a finer tone and touch. They
cannot shoot out tendrils into barren world-soil and suck up thence
strengthening nutriment. They have grown under the forcing-glass of
home-roof, they will not now bear exposure.
You do not now look men in the face as if a heart-bond was linking
you—as if a community of feeling lay between. There is a heart-bond that
absorbs all others; there is a community that monopolizes your feeling.
When the heart lay wide open, before it had grown upon, and closed
around particular objects, it could take strength and cheer from a
hundred connections that now seem colder than ice.
And now those particular objects—alas for you!—are failing.
What anxiety pursues you! How you struggle to fancy—there is no danger;
how she struggles to persuade you—there is no danger!
How it grates now on your ear—the toil and turmoil of the city! It was
music when you were alone; it was pleasant even, when from the din you
were elaborating comforts for the cherished objects—when you had such
sweet escape as evening drew on.
Now it maddens you to see the world careless while you are steeped in
care. They hustle you in the street; they smile at you across the table;
they bow carelessly over the way; they do not know what canker is at
your heart.
The undertaker comes with his bill for the dead boy’s funeral. He knows
your grief; he is respectful. You bless him in your soul. You wish the
laughing street-goers were all undertakers.
Your eye follows the physician as he leaves your house: is he wise, you
ask yourself; is he prudent? Is he the best? Did he never fail—is he
never forgetful?
And now the hand that touches yours, is it no thinner—no whiter than
yesterday? Sunny days come when she revives; color comes back; she
breathes freer; she picks flowers; she meets you with a smile. Hope
lives again.
But the next day of storm she is fallen. She cannot talk even; she
presses your hand.
You hurry away from business before your time. What matter for
clients—who is to reap the rewards? What matter for fame—whose eye will
it brighten? What matter for riches—whose is the inheritance?
You find her propped with pillows; she is looking over a little
picture-book be-thumbed by the dear boy she has lost. She hides it in
her chair; she has pity on you.
—Another day of revival, when the spring sun shines, and flowers open
out of doors; she leans on your arm, and strolls into the garden where
the first birds are singing. Listen to them with her—what memories are
in bird-songs! You need not shudder at her tears—they are tears of
thanksgiving. Press the hand that lies light upon your arm, and you,
too, thank God, while yet you may!
* * * * *
You are early home—mid-afternoon. Your step is not light; it is heavy,
terrible.
They have sent for you.
She is lying down; her eyes half closed; her breathing long and
interrupted.
She hears you; her eye opens; you put your hand in hers; yours
trembles—hers does not. Her lips move; it is your name.
[Illustration]
“Be strong,” she says, “God will help you!”
She presses harder your hand: “Adieu!”
A long breath—another; you are alone again. No tears now; poor man! You
cannot find them!
* * * * *
—Again home early. There is a smell of varnish in your house. A coffin
is there; they have clothed the body in decent grave clothes, and the
undertaker is screwing down the lid, slipping round on tip-toe. Does he
fear to waken her?
He asks you a simple question about the inscription upon the plate,
rubbing it with his coat cuff. You look him straight in the eye; you
motion to the door; you dare not speak.
He takes up his hat and glides out stealthful as a cat.
The man has done his work well for all. It is a nice coffin—a very nice
coffin! Pass your hand over it—how smooth!
Some sprigs of mignonette are lying carelessly in a little gilt-edged
saucer. She loved mignonette.
It is a good stanch table the coffin rests on; it is your table; you are
a housekeeper—a man of family!
Ay, of family! keep down outcry, or the nurse will be in. Look over at
the pinched features; is this all that is left of her? And where is your
heart now? No, don’t thrust your nails into your hands, nor mangle your
lip, nor grate your teeth together. If you could only weep!
—Another day. The coffin is gone out. The stupid mourners have wept—what
idle tears! She with your crushed heart, has gone out!
Will you have pleasant evenings at your home now?
Go into your parlor that your prim housekeeper has made comfortable with
clean hearth and blaze of sticks.
Sit down in your chair; there is another velvet cushioned one, over
against yours—empty. You press your fingers on your eye-balls, as if you
would press out something that hurt the brain; but you cannot. Your head
leans upon your hand; your eye rests upon the flashing blaze.
Ashes always come after blaze.
Go now into the room where she was sick—softly, lest the prim
housekeeper come after.
They have put new dimity upon her chair; they have hung new curtains
over the bed. They have removed from the stand its vials, and silver
bell; they have put a little vase of flowers in their place; the perfume
will not offend the sick sense now. They have half opened the window,
that the room so long closed may have air. It will not be too cold.
She is not there.
—Oh, God! thou who dost temper the wind to the shorn lamb—be kind!
The embers were dark; I stirred them; there was no sign of life. My dog
was asleep. The clock in my tenant’s chamber had struck one.
I dashed a tear or two from my eyes; how they came there I know not. I
half ejaculated a prayer of thanks, that such desolation had not yet
come nigh me; and a prayer of hope—that it might never come.
In a half hour more, I was sleeping soundly. My reverie was ended.
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[Illustration]
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[Illustration]
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[Illustration]
BY A CITY GRATE
BLESSED be letters—they are the monitors, they are also the comforters,
and they are the only true heart-talkers! Your speech, and their
speeches, are conventional; they are molded by circumstance; they are
suggested by the observation, remark, and influence of the parties to
whom the speaking is addressed, or by whom it may be overheard.
Your truest thought is modified half through its utterance by a look, a
sign, a smile, or a sneer. It is not individual; it is not integral: it
is social and mixed—half of you, and half of others. It bends, it sways,
it multiplies, it retires, and it advances, as the talk of others
presses, relaxes, or quickens.
But it is not so of letters—there you are, with only the soulless pen,
and the snow-white, virgin paper. Your soul is measuring itself by
itself, and saying its own sayings; there are no sneers to modify its
utterance—no scowl to scare—nothing is present but you, and your
thought.
Utter it then freely—write it down—stamp it—burn it in the ink!—There it
is, a true soul-print!
Oh, the glory, the freedom, the passion of a letter! It is worth all the
lip-talk in the world. Do you say, it is studied, made up, acted,
rehearsed, contrived, artistic?
Let me see it, then; let me run it over; tell me age, sex, circumstance,
and I will tell you if it be studied or real—if it be the merest
lip-slang put into words, or heart-talk blazing on the paper.
[Illustration]
I have a little packet, not very large, tied up with narrow, crimson
ribbon, now soiled with frequent handling, which far into some winter’s
night, I take down from its nook upon my shelf, and untie, and open, and
run over, with such sorrow, and such joy—such tears and such smiles, as
I am sure make me for weeks after, a kinder and holier man.
There are in this little packet, letters in the familiar hand of a
mother—what gentle admonition—what tender affection!—God have mercy on
him who outlives the tears that such admonitions, and such affection
call up to the eye! There are others in the budget, in the delicate, and
unformed hand of a loved, and lost sister—written when she, and you were
full of glee, and the best mirth of youthfulness; does it harm you to
recall that mirthfulness? or to trace again, for the hundredth time,
that scrawling postscript at the bottom, with its _i’s_ so carefully
dotted, and its gigantic _t’s_ so carefully crossed, by the childish
hand of a little brother?
I have added latterly to that packet of letters; I almost need a new and
longer ribbon; the old one is getting too short. Not a few of these new
and cherished letters, a former reverie[1] has brought to me; not
letters of cold praise, saying it was well done, artfully executed,
prettily imagined—no such thing: but letters of sympathy—of sympathy
which means sympathy—the παθημί and the συν.
Footnote 1:
The first reverie—_Smoke, Flame and Ashes_—was published some months
previous to this, in the _Southern Literary Messenger_.
It would be cold and dastardly work to copy them; I am too selfish for
that. It is enough to say that they, the kind writers, have seen a heart
in the reverie—have felt that it was real, true. They know it; a secret
influence has told it. What matters it, pray, if, literally, there was
no wife, and no dead child, and no coffin in the house? Is not feeling,
feeling; and heart, heart? Are not these fancies thronging on my brain,
bringing tears to my eyes, bringing joy to my soul, as living, as
anything human can be living? What if they have no material type—no
objective form? All that is crude—a mere reduction of ideality to
sense—a transformation of the spiritual to the earthy—a leveling of soul
to matter.
Are we not creatures of thought and passion? Is anything about us more
earnest than that same thought and passion? Is there anything more
real—more characteristic of that great and dim destiny to which we are
born, and which may be written down in that terrible word—Forever?
Let those who will then, sneer at what in their wisdom they call
untruth—at what is false, because it has no material presence: this does
not create falsity; would to Heaven that it did!
And yet if there was actual, material truth, superadded to reverie,
would such objectors sympathize the more? No! a thousand times, no; the
heart that has no sympathy with thoughts and feelings that scorch the
soul, is dead also—whatever its mocking tears, and gestures may say—to a
coffin or a grave!
Let them pass, and we will come back to these cherished letters.
A mother, who has lost a child, has, she says, shed a tear—not one, but
many—over the dead boy’s coldness. And another, who has not lost, but
who trembles lest she lose, has found the words failing as she read, and
a dim, sorrow-borne mist spreading over the page.
Another, yet rejoicing in all those family ties, that make life a charm,
has listened nervously to careful reading, until the husband is called
home, and the coffin is in the house—“Stop!”—she says; and a gush of
tears tells the rest.
Yet the cold critic will say—“It was artfully done.” A curse on him!—it
was not art: it was nature.
Another, a young, fresh, healthful girl-mind, has seen something in the
love-picture—albeit so weak—of truth; and has kindly believed that it
must be earnest. Ay, indeed is it, fair, and generous one—earnest as
life and hope! Who, indeed, with a heart at all, that has not yet
slipped away irreparably and forever from the shores of youth—from that
fairyland which young enthusiasm creates, and over which bright dreams
hover—but knows it to be real? And so such things will be read, till
hopes are dashed, and death is come.
Another, a father, has laid down the book in tears.
—God bless them all! How far better this, than the cold praise of
newspaper paragraphs, or the critically contrived approval of colder
friends!
Let me gather up these letters, carefully—to be read when the heart is
faint, and sick of all that there is unreal, and selfish in the world.
Let me tie them together, with a new and longer bit of ribbon—not by a
love-knot, that is too hard—but by an easy-slipping knot, that so I may
get at them the better. And now, they are all together, a snug packet,
and we will label them, not sentimentally (I pity the one who thinks
it!), but earnestly, and in the best meaning of the term—SOUVENIRS DU
COEUR.
Thanks to my first reverie, which has added to such a treasure!
And now to my SECOND REVERIE.
I am no longer in the country. The fields, the trees, the brooks are far
away from me, and yet they are very present. A letter from my tenant—how
different from those other letters!—lies upon my table, telling me what
fields he has broken up for the autumn grain, and how many beeves he is
fattening, and how the potatoes are turning out.
But I am in a garret of the city. From my window I look over a mass of
crowded house-tops—moralizing often upon the scene, but in a strain too
long and somber to be set down here. In place of the wide country
chimney, with its iron fire-dogs, is a snug grate, where the maid makes
me a fire in the morning, and rekindles it in the afternoon.
I am usually fairly seated in my chair—a cozily stuffed office chair—by
five or six o’clock of the evening. The fire has been newly made,
perhaps an hour before: first, the maid drops a withe of paper in the
bottom of the grate, then a stick or two of pine-wood, and after it a
hod of Liverpool coal; so that by the time I am seated for the evening,
the sea-coal is fairly in a blaze.
When this has sunk to a level with the second bar of the grate, the maid
replenishes it with a hod of anthracite; and I sit musing and reading,
while the new coal warms and kindles—not leaving my place, until it has
sunk to the third bar of the grate, which marks my bedtime.
I love these accidental measures of the hours, which belong to you, and
your life, and not to the world. A watch is no more the measure of your
time, than of the time of your neighbors; a church clock is as public
and vulgar as a church-warden. I would as soon think of hiring the
parish sexton to make my bed, as to regulate my time by the parish
clock.
A shadow that the sun casts upon your carpet, or a streak of light on
the slated roof yonder, or the burning of your fire, are pleasant
time-keepers full of presence, full of companionship, and full of the
warning—time is passing!
In the summer season I have even measured my reading, and my
night-watch, by the burning of a taper; and I have scratched upon the
handle to the little bronze taper-holder, that meaning passage of the
New Testament—Νυξ γαρ ερχεται—the night cometh!
But I must get upon my reverie; it was a drizzly evening; I had worked
hard during the day, and had drawn my boots—thrust my feet into
slippers—thrown on a Turkish loose dress, and Greek cap—souvenirs to me
of other times, and other places, and sat watching the lively, uncertain
yellow play of the bituminous flame.
[Illustration]
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[Illustration]
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[Illustration]
I
SEA-COAL
IT is like a flirt—mused I; lively, uncertain, bright-colored, waving
here and there, melting the coal into black shapeless mass, making foul,
sooty smoke, and pasty, trashy residuum! Yet withal—pleasantly
sparkling, dancing, prettily waving, and leaping like a roebuck from
point to point.
How like a flirt! And yet is not this tossing caprice of girlhood, to
which I liken my sea-coal flame, a native play of life, and belonging by
nature to the playtime of life? Is it not a sort of essential
fire-kindling to the weightier and truer passions—even as Jenny puts the
soft coal first, the better to kindle the anthracite? Is it not a sort
of necessary consumption of young vapors, which float in the soul, and
which is left thereafter the purer? Is there not a stage somewhere in
every man’s youth, for just such waving, idle, heart-blaze, which means
nothing, yet which must be got over?
Lamartine says, somewhere, very prettily, that there is more of quick
running sap, and floating shade in a young tree; but more of fire in the
heart of a sturdy oak—_Il y a plus de sève folle et d’ombre flottante
dans les jeunes plants de la forêt; il y a plus de feu dans le vieux
cœur du chêne_.
Is Lamartine playing off his prettiness of expression, dressing up with
his poetry—making a good conscience against the ghost of some accusing
Graziella, or is there truth in the matter?
A man who has seen sixty years, whether widower or bachelor, may well
put such sentiment into words: it feeds his wasted heart with hope; it
renews the exultation of youth by the pleasantest of equivocation, and
the most charming of self-confidence. But after all, is it not true? Is
not the heart like new blossoming field-plants, whose first flowers are
half-formed, one-sided perhaps, but by and by, in maturity of season,
putting out wholesome, well-formed blossoms that will hold their leaves
long and bravely?
Bulwer in his story of _The Caxtons_, has counted first heart-flights
mere fancy-passages—a dalliance with the breezes of love, which pass,
and leave healthful heart appetite. Half the reading world has read the
story of Trevanion and Pisistratus. But Bulwer is—past; his heart-life
is used up—_épuisé_. Such a man can very safely rant about the cool
judgment of after years.
Where does Shakespeare put the unripe heart-age? All of it before the
ambition, that alone makes the hero-soul. The Shakespeare man “sighs
like a furnace,” before he stretches his arm to achieve the “bauble,
reputation.”
Yet Shakespeare has meted a soul-love, mature and ripe, without any
young furnace sighs to Desdemona and Othello. Cordelia, the sweetest of
his play creations, loves without any of the mawkish matter, which makes
the whining love of a Juliet. And Florizel in the _Winter’s Tale_, says
to Perdita in the true spirit of a most sound heart:
My desires
Run not before mine honor, nor my wishes
Burn hotter than my faith.
How is it with Hector and Andromache? no sea-coal blaze, but one that is
constant, enduring, pervading: a pair of hearts full of esteem, and best
love—good, honest, and sound.
Look now at Adam and Eve, in God’s presence, with Milton for showman.
Shall we quote by this sparkling blaze, a gem from the _Paradise Lost_?
We will hum it to ourselves—what Raphael sings to Adam—a classic song.
——Him, serve and fear!
Of other creatures, as Him pleases best
Wherever placed, let Him dispose; joy thou
In what he gives to thee, this Paradise
And thy fair Eve!
And again:
——Love refines
The thoughts, and heart enlarges; hath his seat
In reason, and is judicious: is the scale
By which to Heavenly love thou may’st ascend!
None of the playing sparkle in this love, which belongs to the flame of
my sea-coal fire that is now dancing, lively as a cricket. But on
looking about my garret chamber, I can see nothing that resembles the
archangel Raphael, or “thy fair Eve.”
There is a degree of moisture about the sea-coal flame, which with the
most earnest of my musing, I find it impossible to attach to that idea
of a waving sparkling heart which my fire suggests. A damp heart must be
a foul thing to be sure. But whoever heard of one?
Wordsworth somewhere in the _Excursion_ says:
The good die first,
And they whose hearts are _dry_ as summer dust
Burn to the socket!
What, in the name of Rydal Mount, is a dry heart? A dusty one, I can
conceive of: a bachelor’s heart must be somewhat dusty, as he nears the
sixtieth summer of his pilgrimage—and hung over with cobwebs, in which
sit such watchful gray old spiders as avarice, and selfishness, forever
on the lookout for such bottle-green flies as lust.
“I will never”—said I—gripping at the elbows of my chair—“live a
bachelor till sixty—never, so surely as there is hope in man, or charity
in woman, or faith in both!”
And with that thought my heart leaped about in playful coruscations,
even like the flame of the sea-coal—rising, and wrapping round old and
tender memories and images that were present to me—trying to cling, and
yet no sooner fastened than off—dancing again, riotous in its
exultation—a succession of heart-sparkles, blazing, and going out!
—And is there not—mused I—a portion of this world forever blazing in
just such lively sparkles, waving here and there as the air-currents fan
them?
Take, for instance, your heart of sentiment, and quick sensibility, a
weak, warm-working heart, flying off in tangents of unhappy influence,
unguided by prudence, and perhaps virtue. There is a paper by Mackenzie,
in the _Mirror_ for April, 1780, which sets this untoward sensibility in
a strong light.
And the more it is indulged, the more strong and binding such a habit of
sensibility becomes. Poor Mackenzie himself must have suffered thus; you
can not read his books without feeling it; your eye, in spite of you,
runs over with his sensitive griefs, while you are half-ashamed of his
success at picture-making. It is a terrible inheritance; and one that a
strong man or woman will study to subdue: it is a vain sea-coal
sparkling, which will count no good. The world is made of much hard,
flinty substance, against which your better and holier thoughts will be
striking fire—see to it that the sparks do not burn you!
But what a happy, careless life belongs to this bachelorhood in which
you may strike out boldly right and left! Your heart is not bound to
another which may be full of only sickly vapors of feeling; nor is it
frozen to a cold, man’s heart under a silk bodice—knowing nothing of
tenderness but the name, to prate of; and nothing of soul-confidence but
clumsy confession. And if in your careless outgoings of feeling you get
here only a little lip vapidity in return, be sure that you will find,
elsewhere, a true heart utterance. This last you will cherish in your
inner soul—a nucleus for a new group of affections; and the other will
pass with a whiff of your cigar.
Or if your feelings are touched, struck, hurt, who is the wiser, or the
worse, but you only? And have you not the whole skein of your heart-life
in your own fingers to wind, or unwind, in what shape you please? Shake
it, or twine it, or tangle it, by the light of your fire, as you fancy
best. He is a weak man who can not twist and weave the threads of his
feeling—however fine, however tangled, however strained, or however
strong—into the great cable of purpose, by which he lies moored to his
life of action.
Reading is a great and happy disentangler of all those knotted
snarls—those extravagant vagaries, which belong to a heart sparkling
with sensibility; but the reading must be cautiously directed. There is
old, placid Burton, when your soul is weak, and its digestion of life’s
humors is bad; there is Cowper, when your spirit runs into kindly,
half-sad, religious musing; there is Crabbe, when you would shake off
vagary, by a little handling of sharp actualities. There is Voltaire, a
homeopathic doctor, whom you can read when you want to make a play of
life, and crack jokes at nature, and be witty with destiny; there is
Rousseau, when you want to lose yourself in a mental dreamland, and be
beguiled by the harmony of soul-music and soul-culture.
And when you would shake off this, and be sturdiest among the battlers
for hard, world-success, and be forewarned of rocks against which you
must surely smite—read Bolingbroke—run over the letters of Lyttleton;
read, and think of what you read, in the cracking lines of
Rochefoucauld. How he sums us up in his stinging words!—how he puts the
scalpel between the nerves—yet he never hurts; for he is dissecting dead
matter.
If you are in a genial, careless mood, who is better than such
extemporizers of feeling and nature—good-hearted fellows—as Sterne and
Fielding?
And then, again, there are Milton and Isaiah, to lift up one’s soul
until it touches cloud-land, and you wander with their guidance, on
swift feet, to the very gates of heaven.
But this sparkling sensibility to one struggling under infirmity, or
with grief or poverty, is very dreadful. The soul is too nicely and
keenly hinged to be wrenched without mischief. How it shrinks, like a
hurt child, from all that is vulgar, harsh and crude! Alas, for such a
man!—he will be buffeted, from beginning to end; his life will be a sea
of troubles. The poor victim of his own quick spirit he wanders with a
great shield of doubt hung before him, so that none, not even friends,
can see the goodness of such kindly qualities as belong to him. Poverty,
if it comes upon him, he wrestles with in secret, with strong, frenzied
struggles. He wraps his scant clothes about him to keep him from the
cold; and eyes the world, as if every creature in it was breathing chill
blasts at him, from every opened mouth. He threads the crowded ways of
the city, proud in his griefs, vain in his weakness, not stopping to do
good. Bulwer, in the _New Timon_, has painted in a pair of stinging
Pope-like lines, this feeling in a woman:
Her vengeful pride, a kind of madness grown,
She hugged her wrongs, her sorrow was her throne!
Cold picture! yet the heart was sparkling under it, like my sea-coal
fire; lifting and blazing, and lighting and falling—but with no object;
and only such little heat as begins and ends within.
Those fine sensibilities, ever active, are chasing and observing all;
they catch a hue from what the dull and callous pass by
unnoticed—because unknown. They blunder at the great variety of the
world’s opinions; they see tokens of belief where others see none. That
delicate organization is a curse to a man: and yet, poor fool, he does
not see where his cure lies; he wonders at his griefs, and has never
reckoned with himself their source. He studies others, without studying
himself. He eats the leaves that sicken, and never plucks up the root
that will cure.
With a woman it is worse; with her, this delicate susceptibility is like
a frail flower, that quivers at every rough blast of heaven; her own
delicacy wounds her; her highest charm is perverted to a curse.
She listens with fear; she reads with trembling; she looks with dread.
Her sympathies give a tone, like the harp of Æolus, to the slightest
breath. Her sensibility lights up, and quivers and falls like the flame
of a sea-coal fire.
If she loves (and may not a bachelor reason on this daintiest of
topics), her love is a gushing, wavy flame, lit up with hope that has
only a little kindling matter to light it; and this soon burns out. Yet
intense sensibility will persuade her that the flame still scorches. She
will mistake the annoyance of affection unrequited for the sting of a
passion that she fancies still burns. She does not look deep enough to
see that the passion is gone, and the shocked sensitiveness emits only
faint, yellowish sparkles in its place; her high-wrought organization
makes those sparks seem a veritable flame.
With her, judgment, prudence and discretion are cold measured terms,
which have no meaning, except as they attach to the actions of others.
Of her own acts she never predicates them; feeling is much too high to
allow her to submit to any such obtrusive guides of conduct. She needs
disappointment to teach her truth; to teach that all is not gold that
glitters—to teach that all warmth does not blaze. But let her beware how
she sinks under any fancied disappointments: she who sinks under real
disappointment, lacks philosophy; but she who sinks under a fancied one,
lacks purpose. Let her flee as the plague such brooding thoughts as she
will love to cherish; let her spurn dark fancies as visitants of hell;
let the soul rise with the blaze of new-kindled, active and world-wide
emotions, and so brighten into steady and constant flame. Let her abjure
such poets as Cowper, or Byron, or even Wordsworth; and if she must
poetize, let her lay her mind to such manly verse as Pope’s, or to such
sound and ringing organry as _Comus_.
My fire was getting dull, and I thrust in the poker: it started up on
the instant into a hundred little angry tongues of flame.
[Illustration]
—Just so—thought I—the oversensitive heart once cruelly disturbed, will
fling out a score of flaming passions, darting here and darting
there—half-smoke, half-flame—love and hate—canker and joy—wild in its
madness, not knowing whither its sparks are flying. Once break roughly
upon the affections, or even the fancied affections of such a soul, and
you breed a tornado of maddened action—a whirlwind of fire that hisses
and sends out jets of wild, impulsive combustion that make the
bystanders—even those most friendly—stand aloof until the storm is past.
But this is not all the dashing flame of my sea-coal suggests.
—How like a flirt! mused I again, recurring to my first thought—so
lively, yet uncertain; so bright yet so flickering! Your true flirt
plays with sparkles; her heart, much as there is of it, spends itself in
sparkles; she measures it to sparkle, and habit grows into nature, so
that anon, it can only sparkle. How carefully she cramps it, if the
flames show too great a heat; how dexterously she flings its blaze here
and there; how coyly she subdues it; how winningly she lights it!
All this is the entire reverse of the unpremeditated dartings of the
soul at which I have been looking; sensibility scorns heart-curbings and
heart-teachings; sensibility inquires not—how much! but only—where?
Your true flirt has a coarse-grained soul; well modulated and well
tutored, but there is no fineness in it. All its native fineness is made
coarse by coarse efforts of the will. True feeling is a rustic
vulgarity, the flirt does not tolerate; she counts its healthiest and
most honest manifestation, all sentiment. Yet she will play you off a
pretty string of sentiment, which she has gathered from the poets; she
adjusts it prettily as a Gobelin weaver adjusts the colors in his
_tapis_. She shades it off delightfully; there are no bold contrasts,
but a most artistic mellowing of _nuances_.
She smiles like a wizard, and jingles it with a laugh, such as tolled
the poor home-bound Ulysses to the Circean bower. She has a cast of the
head, apt and artful as the most dexterous cast of the best
trout-killing rod. Her words sparkle and flow hurriedly, and with the
prettiest doubleness of meaning. Naturalness she copies and she scorns.
She accuses herself of a single expression or regard, which nature
prompts. She prides herself on her schooling. She measures her wit by
the triumphs of her art; she chuckles over her own falsity to herself.
And if by chance her soul—such germ as is left of it—betrays her into
untoward confidence, she condemns herself, as if she had committed
crime.
She is always gay, because she has no depth of feeling to be stirred.
The brook that runs shallow over hard pebbly bottom always rustles. She
is light-hearted, because her heart floats in sparkles—like my sea-coal
fire. She counts on marriage, not as the great absorbent of a heart’s
love and life, but as a happy, feasible, and orderly conventionality, to
be played with, and kept at distance, and finally to be accepted as a
cover for the faint and tawdry sparkles of an old and cherished
heartlessness.
She will not pine under any regrets, because she has no appreciation of
any loss: she will not chafe at indifference, because it is her art; she
will not be worried with jealousies, because she is ignorant of love.
With no conception of the soul in its strength and fullness, she sees no
lack of its demands. A thrill, she does not know; a passion, she can not
imagine; joy is a name; grief is another; and life, with its crowding
scenes of love and bitterness, is a play upon the stage.
I think it is Madame Dudevant who says, in something like the same
connection: _Les hiboux ne connaissent pas le chemin par où les aigles
vont au soleil_.
—Poor Ned! mused I, looking at the play of the fire—was a victim and a
conqueror. He was a man of a full, strong nature—not a little
impulsive—with action too full of earnestness for most of men to see its
drift. He had known little of what is called the world; he was fresh in
feeling and high of hope; he had been encircled always by friends who
loved him, and who, maybe, flattered him. Scarce had he entered upon the
tangled life of the city before he met with a sparkling face and an airy
step that stirred something in poor Ned that he had never felt before.
With him, to feel was to act. He was not one to be despised; for,
notwithstanding he wore a country air, and the awkwardness of a man who
has yet the _bienséance_ of social life before him, he had the soul, the
courage, and the talent of a strong man. Little gifted in the knowledge
of face-play, he easily mistook those coy manœuvers of a sparkling heart
for something kindred to his own true emotions.
She was proud of the attentions of a man who carried a mind in his
brain; and flattered poor Ned almost into servility. Ned had no friends
to counsel him; or, if he had them, his impulses would have blinded him.
Never was dodger more artful at the Olympic Games than the Peggy of
Ned’s heart-affection. He was charmed, beguiled, entranced.
When Ned spoke of love, she staved it off with the prettiest of sly
looks that only bewildered him the more. A charming creature to be sure;
coy as a dove!
So he went on, poor fool, until one day—he told me of it with the blood
mounting to his temples, and his eye shooting flame—he suffered his
feelings to run out in passionate avowal—entreaty—everything. She gave a
pleasant, noisy laugh, and manifested—such pretty surprise!
He was looking for the intense glow of passion; and lo, there was
nothing but the shifting sparkle of a sea-coal flame.
I wrote him a letter of condolence—for I was his senior by a year; “My
dear fellow,” said I, “diet yourself; you can find greens at the uptown
market; eat a little fish with your dinner; abstain from heating drinks;
don’t put too much butter to your cauliflower; read one of Jeremy
Taylor’s sermons, and translate all the quotations at sight; run
carefully over that exquisite picture of George Dandin in your Molière,
and my word for it, in a week you will be a sound man.”
He was too angry to reply; but eighteen months thereafter I got a thick,
three-sheeted letter, with a dove upon the seal, telling me that he was
as happy as a king: he said he had married a good-hearted, domestic,
loving wife, who was as lovely as a June day, and that their baby, not
three months old, was as bright as a spot of June day sunshine on the
grass.
—What a tender, delicate, loving wife—mused I—such flashing, flaming
flirt must in the end make; the prostitute of fashion; the bauble of
fifty hearts idle as hers; the shifting make-piece of a stage scene; the
actress, now in peasant, and now in princely petticoats! How it would
cheer an honest soul to call her—his! What a culmination of his
heart-life; what a rich dreamland to be realized!
—Bah! and I thrust the poker into the clotted mass of fading coal—just
such, and so worthless is the used heart of a city flirt; just so the
incessant sparkle of her life, and frittering passions, fuses all that
is sound and combustible into black, sooty, shapeless residuum.
When I marry a flirt, I will buy second-hand clothes of the Jews.
—Still—mused I—as the flame danced again—there is a distinction between
coquetry and flirtation.
A coquette sparkles, but it is more the sparkle of a harmless and pretty
vanity than of calculation. It is the play of humors in the blood, and
not the play of purpose at the heart. It will flicker around a true soul
like the blaze around an _omelette au rhum_, leaving the kernel sounder
and warmer.
Coquetry, with all its pranks and teasings, makes the spice to your
dinner—the mulled wine to your supper. It will drive you to desperation,
only to bring you back hotter to the fray. Who would boast a victory
that cost no strategy, and no careful disposition of the forces? Who
would bulletin such success as my Uncle Toby’s, in the back garden, with
only the Corporal Trim for assailant? But let a man be very sure that
the city is worth the siege!
Coquetry whets the appetite; flirtation depraves it. Coquetry is the
thorn that guards the rose—easily trimmed off when once plucked.
Flirtation is like the slime on water plants, making them hard to
handle, and when caught, only to be cherished in slimy waters.
And so, with my eye clinging to the flickering blaze, I see in my
reverie, a bright one dancing before me, with sparkling, coquettish
smile, teasing me with the prettiest graces in the world—and I grow
maddened between hope and fear, and still watch with my whole soul in my
eyes; and see her features by and by relax to pity, as a gleam of
sensibility comes stealing over her spirit—and then to a kindly, feeling
regard: presently she approaches—a coy and doubtful approach—and throws
back the ringlets that lie over her cheek, and lays her hand—a little
bit of white hand—timidly upon my strong fingers—and turns her head
daintily to one side—and looks up in my eyes as they rest on the playing
blaze; and my fingers close fast and passionately over that little hand
like a swift night-cloud shrouding the pale tips of Dian—and my eyes
draw nearer and nearer to those blue, laughing, pitying, teasing eyes,
and my arm clasps round that shadowy form—and my lips feel a warm
breath—growing warmer and warmer—
Just here the maid comes in, throws upon the fire a panful of
anthracite, and my sparkling sea-coal reverie is ended.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[Illustration]
II
ANTHRACITE
IT DOES not burn freely, so I put on the blower. Quaint and good-natured
Xavier de Maistre[2] would have made, I dare say, a pretty epilogue
about a sheet-iron blower; but I can not.
Footnote 2:
_Voyage autour de Ma Chambre._
I try to bring back the image that belonged to the lingering bituminous
flame, but with my eyes on that dark blower—how can I?
It is the black curtain of destiny which drops down before our brightest
dreams. How often the phantoms of joy regale us, and dance before
us—golden-winged, angel-faced, heart-warming, and make an Elysium in
which the dreaming soul bathes and feels translated to another
existence; and then—sudden as night, or a cloud—a word, a step, a
thought, a memory will chase them away like scared deer vanishing over a
gray horizon of moor-land!
I know not justly, if it be a weakness or a sin to create these phantoms
that we love, and to group them into a paradise—soul-created. But if it
is a sin, it is a sweet and enchanting sin; and if it is a weakness, it
is a strong and stirring weakness. If this heart is sick of the
falsities that meet it at every hand, and is eager to spend that power
which nature has ribbed it with, on some object worthy of its fullness
and depth—shall it not feel a rich relief—nay more, an exercise in
keeping with its end, if it flow out—strong as a tempest, wild as a
rushing river, upon those ideal creations, which imagination invents,
and which are tempered by our best sense of beauty, purity and grace?
—Useless, do you say? Ay, it is as useless as the pleasure of looking,
hour upon hour, over bright landscapes; it is as useless as the rapt
enjoyment of listening with heart full and eyes brimming, to such music
as the Miserere, at Rome; it is as useless as the ecstasy of kindling
your soul into fervor and love, and madness, over pages that reek with
genius.
There are, indeed, base-molded souls who know nothing of this; they
laugh; they sneer; they even affect to pity. Just so the Huns, under the
avenging Attila, who had been used to foul cookery and steaks stewed
under their saddles, laughed brutally at the spiced banquets of an
Apicius!
—No, this phantom-making is no sin; or if it be, it is sinning with a
soul so full, so earnest, that it can cry to Heaven cheerily, and sure
of a gracious hearing—_peccavi_—_misericorde_!
But my fire is in a glow, a pleasant glow, throwing a tranquil, steady
light to the farthest corner of my garret. How unlike it is to the
flashing play of the sea-coal!—unlike as an unsteady, uncertain-working
heart to the true and earnest constancy of one cheerful and right.
After all, thought I, give me such a heart; not bent on vanities, not
blazing too sharp with sensibilities, not throwing out coquettish jets
of flame, not wavering, and meaningless with pretended warmth, but open,
glowing and strong. Its dark shades and angles it may have; for what is
a soul worth that does not take a slaty tinge from those griefs that
chill the blood. Yet still the fire is gleaming; you see it in the
crevices; and anon it will give radiance to the whole mass.
—It hurts the eyes, this fire; and I draw up a screen painted over with
rough but graceful figures.
The true heart wears always the veil of modesty (not of prudery, which
is a dingy, iron, repulsive screen). It will not allow itself to be
looked on too near—it might scorch; but through the veil you feel the
warmth; and through the pretty figures that modesty will robe itself in,
you can see all the while the golden outlines, and by that token, you
_know_ that it is glowing and burning with a pure and steady flame.
With such a heart the mind fuses naturally—a holy and heated fusion;
they work together like twins-born. With such a heart, as Raphael says
to Adam:
Love hath his seat
In reason, and is judicious.
But let me distinguish this heart from your clay-cold, lukewarm,
half-hearted soul; considerate, because ignorant; judicious, because
possessed of no latent fires that need a curb; prudish, because with no
warm blood to tempt. This sort of soul may pass scatheless through the
fiery furnace of life; strong, only in its weakness; pure, because of
its failings; and good, only by negation. It may triumph over love, and
sin, and death; but it will be a triumph of the beast, which has neither
passions to subdue, or energy to attack, or hope to quench.
Let us come back to the steady and earnest heart, glowing like my
anthracite coal.
I fancy I see such a one now; the eye is deep and reaches back to the
spirit; it is not the trading eye, weighing your purse; it is not the
worldly eye, weighing position; it is not the beastly eye, weighing your
appearance; it is the heart’s eye weighing your soul!
It is full of deep, tender, and earnest feeling. It is an eye, which
looked on once, you long to look on again; it is an eye which will haunt
your dreams—an eye which will give a color, in spite of you, to all your
reveries. It is an eye which lies before you in your future, like a star
in the mariner’s heaven; by it, unconsciously, and from force of deep
soul habit, you take all your observations. It is meek and quiet; but it
is full as a spring that gushes in flood; an Aphrodite and a Mercury—a
Vaucluse and a Clitumnus.
The face is an angel face; no matter for curious lines of beauty; no
matter for popular talk of prettiness; no matter for its angles, or its
proportions; no matter for its color or its form—the soul is there,
illuminating every feature, burnishing every point, hallowing every
surface. It tells of honesty, sincerity and worth; it tells of truth and
virtue—and you clasp the image to your heart as the received ideal of
your fondest dreams.
The figure may be this or that, it may be tall or short, it matters
nothing—the heart is there. The talk may be soft or low, serious or
piquant—a free and honest soul is warming and softening it all. As you
speak, it speaks back again; as you think, it thinks again (not in
conjunction, but in the same sign of the Zodiac); as you love, it loves
in return.
—It is the heart for a sister, and happy is the man who can claim such!
The warmth that lies in it is not only generous, but religious, genial,
devotional, tender, self-sacrificing, and looking heavenward.
A man without some sort of religion is, at best, a poor reprobate, the
football of destiny, with no tie linking him to infinity, and the
wondrous eternity that is begun with him; but a woman without it is even
worse—a flame without heat, a rainbow without color, a flower without
perfume!
A man may, in some sort, tie his frail hopes and honors with weak,
shifting ground-tackle to business, or to the world; but a woman without
that anchor which they call faith is adrift and a-wreck! A man may
clumsily contrive a kind of moral responsibility out of his relations to
mankind, but a woman in her comparatively isolated sphere, where
affection and not purpose is the controlling motive, can find no basis
for any system of right action, but that of spiritual faith.
A man may craze his thought and his brain, to trustfulness in such poor
harborage as fame and reputation may stretch before him; but a
woman—where can she put her hope in storms, if not in Heaven?
And that sweet trustfulness—that abiding love—that enduring hope,
mellowing every page and scene of life, lighting them with pleasantest
radiance, when the world-storms break like an army with smoking
cannon—what can bestow it all, but a holy soul-tie to what is above the
storms, and to what is stronger than an army with cannon? Who that has
enjoyed the counsel and the love of a Christian mother, but will echo
the thought with energy, and hallow it with a tear?—_et moi, je pleurs!_
My fire is now a mass of red-hot coal. The whole atmosphere of my room
is warm. The heat that with its glow can light up, and warm a garret
with loose casements and shattered roof, is capable of the best
love—domestic love. I draw farther off, and the images upon the screen
change. The warmth, the hour, the quiet, create a home feeling; and that
feeling, quick as lightning, has stolen from the world of fancy (a
Promethean theft), a home object, about which my musings go on to drape
themselves in luxurious reverie.
[Illustration]
—There she sits, by the corner of the fire, in a neat home dress, of
sober, yet most adorning color. A little bit of lace ruffle is gathered
about the neck, by a blue ribbon; and the ends of the ribbon are crossed
under the dimpling chin, and are fastened neatly by a simple,
unpretending brooch—your gift. The arm, a pretty taper arm, lies over
the carved elbow of the oaken chair; the hand, white and delicate,
sustains a little home volume that hangs from her fingers. The
forefinger is between the leaves, and the others lie in relief upon the
dark embossed cover. She repeats in a silver voice a line that has
attracted her fancy; and you listen—or, at any rate, you seem to
listen—with your eyes now on the lips, now on the forehead, and now on
the finger, where glitters like a star, the marriage ring—little gold
band, at which she does not chafe, that tells you—she is yours!
—Weak testimonial, if that were all that told it! The eye, the voice,
the look, the heart, tells you stronger and better, that she is yours.
And a feeling within, where it lies you know not, and whence it comes
you know not, but sweeping over heart and brain, like a fire-flood,
tells you, too, that you are hers! Irremediably bound as Massinger’s
Hortensio:
I am subject to another’s will and can
Nor speak, nor do, without permission from her!
The fire is warm as ever; what length of heat in this hard burning
anthracite! It has scarce sunk yet to the second bar of the grate,
though the clock upon the churchtower has tolled eleven.
—Aye—mused I, gayly—such a heart does not grow faint, it does not spend
itself in idle puffs of blaze, it does not become chilly with the
passing years; but it gains and grows in strength and heat until the
fire of life is covered over with the ashes of death. Strong or hot as
it may be at the first, it loses nothing. It may not, indeed, as time
advances, throw out, like the coal fire, when new-lit, jets of blue
sparkling flame; it may not continue to bubble and gush like a fountain
at its source, but it will become a strong river of flowing charities.
Clitumnus breaks from under the Tuscan mountains, almost a flood; on a
glorious spring day I leaned down and tasted the water, as it boiled
from its sources; the little temple of white marble—the mountain sides
gray with olive orchards—the white streak of road—the tall poplars of
the river margin were glistening in the bright Italian sunlight around
me. Later, I saw it when it had become a river—still clear and strong,
flowing serenely between its prairie banks, on which the white cattle of
the valley browsed; and still farther down I welcomed it, where it joins
the Arno—flowing slowly under wooded shores, skirting the fair Florence
and the bounteous fields of the bright Cascino; gathering strength and
volume, till between Pisa and Leghorn—in sight of the wondrous Leaning
Tower and the ship-masts of the Tuscan port—it gave its waters to its
life’s grave—the sea.
The recollection blended sweetly now with my musings, over my garret
grate, and offered a flowing image to bear along upon its bosom the
affections that were grouping in my reverie.
It is a strange force of the mind and of the fancy that can set the
objects which are closest to the heart far down the lapse of time. Even
now, as the fire fades slightly, and sinks slowly toward the bar, which
is the dial of my hours, I seem to see that image of love which has
played about the fire-glow of my grate—years hence. It still covers the
same warm, trustful, religious heart. Trials have tried it; afflictions
have weighed upon it; danger has scared it; and death is coming near to
subdue it; but still it is the same.
The fingers are thinner; the face has lines of care and sorrow crossing
each other in a web-work that makes the golden tissue of humanity. But
the heart is fond and steady; it is the same dear heart, the same
self-sacrificing heart, warming, like a fire, all around it. Affliction
has tempered joy; and joy adorned affliction. Life and all its troubles
have become distilled into an holy incense, rising ever from your
fireside—an offering to your household gods.
Your dreams of reputation, your swift determination, your impulsive
pride, your deep uttered vows to win a name, have all sobered into
affection—have all blended into that glow of feeling which finds its
center, and hope, and joy in HOME. From my soul I pity him whose soul
does not leap at the mere utterance of that name.
A home!—it is the bright, blessed, adorable phantom which sits highest
on the sunny horizon that girdeth life! When shall it be reached? When
shall it cease to be a glittering day-dream, and become fully and fairly
yours?
It is not the house, though that may have its charms; nor the fields
carefully tilled, and streaked with your own footpaths—nor the trees,
though their shadow be to you like that of a great rock in a weary
land—nor yet is it the fireside, with its sweet blaze-play—nor the
pictures which tell of loved ones, nor the cherished books—but more far
than all these—it is the PRESENCE. The Lares of your worship are there;
the altar of your confidence there; the end of your worldly faith is
there; and adorning it all, and sending your blood in passionate flow,
is the ecstasy of the conviction, that _there_ at least you are beloved;
that there you are understood; that there your errors will meet ever
with gentlest forgiveness; that there your troubles will be smiled away;
that there you may unburden your soul, fearless of harsh, unsympathizing
ears; and that there you may be entirely and joyfully—yourself!
There may be those of coarse mold—and I have seen such even in the
disguise of women—who will reckon these feelings puling sentiment. God
pity them!—as they have need of pity.
—That image by the fireside, calm, loving, joyful, is there still; it
goes not, however my spirit tosses, because my wish, and every will,
keep it there, unerring.
The fire shows through the screen, yellow and warm as a harvest sun. It
is in its best age, and that age is ripeness.
A ripe heart!—now I know what Wordsworth meant when he said:
The good die first,
And they whose hearts are dry as summer dust
Burn to the socket!
The town clock is striking midnight. The cold of the night-wind is
urging its way in at the door and window-crevice; the fire has sunk
almost to the third bar of the grate. Still my dream tires not, but
wraps fondly round that image—now in the far-off, chilling mists of age,
growing sainted. Love has blended into reverence; passion has subsided
into joyous content.
—And what if age comes, said I, in a new flush of excitation—what else
proves the wine? What else gives inner strength, and knowledge, and a
steady pilot-hand, to steer your boat out boldly upon that shoreless
sea, where the river of life is running? Let the white ashes gather; let
the silver hair lie where lay the auburn; let the eye gleam farther
back, and dimmer; it is but retreating toward the pure sky-depths, an
usher to the land where you will follow after.
It is quite cold, and I take away the screen altogether; there is a
little glow yet, but presently the coal slips down below the third bar,
with a rumbling sound—like that of coarse gravel falling into a new-dug
grave.
—She is gone!
Well, the heart has burned fairly, evenly, generously, while there was
mortality to kindle it; eternity will surely kindle it better.
—Tears indeed; but they are tears of thanksgiving, of resignation, and
of hope!
And the eyes, full of those tears which ministering angels bestow, climb
with quick vision upon the angelic ladder, and open upon the futurity
where she has entered, and upon the country which she enjoys.
It is midnight, and the sounds of life are dead.
You are in the death chamber of life; but you are also in the death
chamber of care. The world seems sliding backward; and hope and you are
sliding forward. The clouds, the agonies, the vain expectancies, the
braggart noise, and fears, now vanish behind the curtain of the past,
and of the night. They roll from your soul like a load.
In the dimness of what seems the ending present, you reach out your
prayerful hands toward that boundless future, where God’s eye lifts over
the horizon, like sunrise on the ocean. Do you recognize it as an
earnest of something better? Aye, if the heart has been pure and
steady—burning like my fire—it has learned it without seeming to learn.
Faith has grown upon it, as the blossom grows upon the bud, or the
flower upon the slow-lifting stalk.
Cares can not come into the dreamland where I live. They sink with the
dying street noise, and vanish with the embers of my fire. Even
ambition, with its hot and shifting flame, is all gone out. The heart in
the dimness of the fading fire-glow is all itself. The memory of what
good things have come over it in the troubled youthlife, bear it up; and
hope and faith bear it on. There is no extravagant pulse-glow; there is
no mad fever of the brain; but only the soul, forgetting—for once—all,
save its destinies and its capacities for good. And it mounts higher and
higher on these wings of thought; and hope burns stronger and stronger
out of the ashes of decaying life, until the sharp edge of the grave
seems but a foot-scraper at the wicket of Elysium!
But what is paper; and what are words? Vain things! The soul leaves them
behind; the pen staggers like a starveling cripple; and your heart is
leaving it, a whole length of the life-course behind. The soul’s mortal
longings—its poor baffled hopes, are dim now in the light of those
infinite longings, which spread over it soft and holy as daydawn.
Eternity has stretched a corner of its mantle toward you, and the breath
of its waving fringe is like a gale of Araby.
A little rumbling, and a last plunge of the cinders within my grate,
startled me, and dragged back my fancy from my flower chase, beyond the
Phlegethon, to the white ashes that were now thick all over the darkened
coals.
—And this—mused I—is only a bachelor-dream about a pure and loving
heart! And to-morrow comes cankerous life again—is it wished for? Or if
not wished for, is the not wishing wicked?
Will dreams satisfy, reach high as they can? Are we not, after all, poor
groveling mortals, tied to earth, and to each other; are there not
sympathies, and hopes, and affections which can only find their issue
and blessing in fellow absorption? Does not the heart, steady and pure,
as it may be, and mounting on soul flights often as it dare, want a
human sympathy, perfectly indulged, to make it healthful? Is there not a
fount of love for this world as there is a fount of love for the other?
Is there not a certain store of tenderness cooped in this heart, which
must, and _will_ be lavished, before the end comes? Does it not plead
with the judgment, and make issue with prudence, year after year? Does
it not dog your steps all through your social pilgrimage, setting up its
claims in forms fresh and odorous as new-blown heath bells, saying—come
away from the heartless, the factitious, the vain, and measure your
heart not by its constraints, but by its fullness, and by its depth! Let
it run, and be joyous!
Is there no demon that comes to your harsh night-dreams, like a taunting
fiend, whispering—be satisfied; keep your heart from running over;
bridle those affections; there is nothing worth loving?
Does not some sweet being hover over your spirit of reverie like a
beckoning angel, crowned with halo, saying—hope on, hope ever; the heart
and I are kindred; our mission will be fulfilled; nature shall
accomplish its purpose; the soul shall have its paradise?
—I threw myself upon my bed: and as my thoughts ran over the definite,
sharp business of the morrow, my reverie, and its glowing images, that
made my heart bound, swept away like those fleecy rain clouds of August,
on which the sun paints rainbows-—driving southward, by the cool, rising
wind from the north.
—I wonder—thought I, as I dropped asleep—if a married man with his
sentiment made actual is, after all, as happy as we poor fellows, in our
dreams?
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OVER HIS CIGAR
I DO not believe that there was ever an Aunt Tabithy who could abide
cigars. My Aunt Tabithy hated them with a peculiar hatred. She was not
only insensible to the rich flavor of a fresh rolling volume of smoke,
but she could not so much as tolerate the sight of the rich russet color
of an Havana-labeled box. It put her out of all conceit with Guava
jelly, to find it advertised in the same tongue, and with the same Cuban
coarseness of design.
She could see no good in a cigar.
“But by your leave, my aunt,” said I to her the other morning—“there is
very much that is good in a cigar.”
My aunt, who was sweeping, tossed her head, and with it, her curls—done
up in paper.
“It is a very excellent matter,” continued I, puffing.
“It is dirty,” said my aunt.
“It is clean and sweet,” said I; “and a most pleasant soother of
disturbed feelings; and a capital companion; and a comforter—” and I
stopped to puff.
“You know it is a filthy abomination,” said my aunt—“and you ought to
be—” and she stopped to put up one of her curls, which, with the energy
of her gesticulation, had fallen out of its place.
“It suggests quiet thoughts”—continued I—“and makes a man meditative;
and gives a current to his habits of contemplation—as I can show you,”
said I, warming with the theme.
My aunt, still fingering her papers—with the pin in her mouth—gave a
most incredulous shrug.
“Aunt Tabithy”—said I, and gave two or three violent, consecutive
puffs—“Aunt Tabithy, I can make up such a series of reflections out of
my cigar as would do your heart good to listen to!”
[Illustration]
“About what, pray?” said my aunt, contemptuously.
“About love,” said I, “which is easy enough lighted, but wants constancy
to keep it in a glow—or about matrimony, which has a great deal of fire
in the beginning, but it is a fire that consumes all that feeds the
blaze—or about life,” continued I, earnestly—“which at the first is
fresh and odorous, but ends shortly in a withered cinder that is fit
only for the ground.”
My aunt, who was forty and unmarried, finished her curl with a flip of
the fingers—resumed her hold of the broom, and leaned her chin upon one
end of it with an expression of some wonder, some curiosity, and a great
deal of expectation.
I could have wished my aunt had been a little less curious, or that I
had been a little less communicative; for, though it was all honestly
said on my part, yet my contemplations bore that vague, shadowy, and
delicious sweetness that it seemed impossible to put them into
words—least of all, at the bidding of an old lady leaning on a
broomhandle.
“Give me time, Aunt Tabithy,” said I—“a good dinner, and after it a good
cigar, and I will serve you such a sunshiny sheet of reverie, all
twisted out of the smoke, as will make your kind old heart ache!”
Aunt Tabithy, in utter contempt, either of my mention of the dinner, or
of the smoke, or of the old heart, commenced sweeping furiously.
“If I do not,”—continued I, anxious to appease her—“if I do not, Aunt
Tabithy, it shall be my last cigar (Aunt Tabithy stopped sweeping); and
all my tobacco money (Aunt Tabithy drew near me), shall go to buy
ribbons for my most respectable and worthy Aunt Tabithy; and a kinder
person could not have them; or one,” continued I, with a generous puff,
“whom they would more adorn.”
My Aunt Tabithy gave me a half-playful—half-thankful nudge.
It was in this way that our bargain was struck; my part of it is already
stated. On her part, Aunt Tabithy was to allow me, in case of my
success, an evening cigar unmolested, upon the front porch, underneath
her favorite rose-tree. It was concluded, I say, as I sat; the smoke of
my cigar rising gracefully around my Aunt Tabithy’s curls; our right
hands joined; my left was holding my cigar, while in hers, was tightly
grasped—her broom-stick.
And this reverie, to make the matter short, is what came of the
contract.
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I
LIGHTED WITH A COAL
I TAKE up a coal with the tongs, and setting the end of my cigar against
it, puff—and puff again; but there is no smoke. There is very little
hope of lighting from a dead coal—no more hope, thought I, than of
kindling one’s heart into flame by contact with a dead heart.
To kindle, there must be warmth and life; and I sat for a moment,
thinking—even before I lit my cigar—on the vanity and folly of those
poor, purblind fellows, who go on puffing for half a lifetime, against
dead coals. It is to be hoped that Heaven, in its mercy, has made their
senses so obtuse that they know not when their souls are in a flame, or
when they are dead. I can imagine none but the most moderate
satisfaction, in continuing to love what has got no ember of love within
it. The Italians have a very sensible sort of proverb—_amare, e non
essere amato, é tempo perduto_—to love, and not be loved, is time lost.
I take a kind of rude pleasure in flinging down a coal that has no life
in it. And it seemed to me—and may Heaven pardon the ill-nature that
belongs to the thought—that there would be much of the same kind of
satisfaction in dashing from you a lukewarm creature covered over with
the yellow ashes of old combustion that, with ever so much attention,
and the nearest approach of the lips, never shows signs of fire. May
Heaven forgive me again, but I should long to break away, though the
marriage bonds held me, and see what liveliness was to be found
elsewhere.
I have seen before now a creeping vine try to grow up against a marble
wall; it shoots out its tendrils in all directions, seeking for some
crevice by which to fasten and to climb—looking now above and now
below—twining upon itself—reaching farther up, but, after all, finding
no good foothold, and falling away as if in despair. But nature is not
unkind; twining things were made to twine. The longing tendrils take new
strength in the sunshine, and in the showers, and shoot out toward some
hospitable trunk. They fasten easily to the kindly roughness of the
bark, and stretch up, dragging after them the vine, which, by and by,
from the topmost bough, will nod its blossoms over at the marble wall,
that refused it succor, as if it said—stand there in your pride, cold,
white wall! we, the tree and I, are kindred, it the helper, and I the
helped! and bound fast together, we riot in the sunshine and in
gladness.
The thought of this image made me search for a new coal that should have
some brightness in it. There may be a white ash over it indeed; as you
will find tender feelings covered with the mask of courtesy, or with the
veil of fear; but with a breath it all flies off, and exposes the heat
and the glow that you are seeking.
At the first touch the delicate edges of the cigar crimple, a thin line
of smoke rises—doubtfully for a while, and with a coy delay; but after a
hearty respiration or two it grows strong, and my cigar is fairly
lighted.
That first taste of the new smoke, and of the fragrant leaf is very
grateful; it has a bloom about it that you wish might last. It is like
your first love—fresh, genial and rapturous. Like that, it fills up all
the craving of your soul; and the light, blue wreaths of smoke, like the
roseate clouds that hang around the morning of your heart-life, cut you
off from the chill atmosphere of mere worldly companionship, and make a
gorgeous firmament for your fancy to riot in.
I do not speak now of those later and manlier passions, into which
judgment must be thrusting its cold tones, and when all the sweet tumult
of your heart has mellowed into the sober ripeness of affection. But I
mean that boyish burning, which belongs to every poor mortal’s lifetime,
and which bewilders him with the thought that he has reached the highest
point of human joy before he has tasted any of that bitterness from
which alone our highest human joys have sprung. I mean the time when you
cut initials with your jack-knife on the smooth bark of beech trees; and
went moping under the long shadows at sunset; and thought Louise the
prettiest name in the wide world; and picked flowers to leave at her
door; and stole out at night to watch the light in her window; and read
such novels as those about Helen Mar, or Charlotte, to give some
adequate expression to your agonized feelings.
At such a stage you are quite certain that you are deeply and madly in
love; you persist in the face of heaven and earth. You would like to
meet the individual who dared to doubt it.
You think she has got the tidiest and jauntiest little figure that ever
was seen. You think back upon some time when, in your games of forfeit,
you gained a kiss from those lips; and it seems as if the kiss was
hanging on you yet and warming you all over. And then, again, it seems
so strange that your lips did really touch hers! You half question if it
could have been actually so—and how you could have dared—and you wonder
if you would have courage to do the same thing again?—and upon second
thought are quite sure you would—and snap your fingers at the thought of
it.
What sweet little hats she does wear; and in the schoolroom, when the
hat is hung up—what curls—golden curls, worth a hundred Golcondas! How
bravely you study the top lines of the spelling-book that your eyes may
run over the edge of the cover, without the schoolmaster’s notice, and
feast upon her!
You half wish that somebody would run away with her, as they did with
Amanda, in the _Children of the Abbey_—and then you might ride up on a
splendid black horse and draw a pistol, or blunderbuss, and shoot the
villains, and carry her back, all in tears, fainting and languishing
upon your shoulder—and have her father (who is judge of the county
court) take your hand in both of his and make some eloquent remarks. A
great many such recaptures you run over in your mind and think how
delightful it would be to peril your life, either by flood, or fire—to
cut off your arm, or your head, or any such trifle—for your dear Louise.
You can hardly think of anything more joyous in life than to live with
her in some old castle, very far away from steamboats and post-offices,
and pick wild geraniums for her hair, and read poetry with her under the
shade of very dark ivy vines. And you would have such a charming boudoir
in some corner of the old ruin, with a harp in it, and books bound in
gilt, with Cupids on the cover, and such a fairy couch, with curtains
hung—as you have seen them hung in some illustrated Arabian stories—upon
a pair of carved doves.
And when they laugh at you about it, you turn it off, perhaps, with
saying—“It isn’t so;” but afterward, in your chamber, or under the tree
where you have cut her name, you take Heaven to witness that it is so;
and think—what a cold world it is, to be so careless about such holy
emotions! You perfectly hate a certain stout boy in a green jacket, who
is forever twitting you, and calling her names; but when some old maiden
aunt teases you in her kind, gentle way, you bear it very proudly; and
with a feeling as if you could bear a great deal more for _her_ sake.
And when the minister reads off marriage announcements in the church,
you think how it will sound one of these days, to have your name, and
hers, read from the pulpit—and how the people will look at you, and how
prettily she will blush; and how poor little Dick, who you know loves
her, but is afraid to say so, will squirm upon his bench.
—Heigho! mused I—as the blue smoke rolled up around my head—these first
kindlings of the love that is in one, are very pleasant! but will they
last?
You love to listen to the rustle of her dress, as she stirs about the
room. It is better music than grown-up ladies will make upon all their
harpischords in the years that are to come. But this, thank Heaven, you
do not know.
You think you can trace her foot-mark, on your way to the school; and
what a dear little foot-mark it is! And from that single point, if she
be out of your sight for days, you conjure up the whole image—the
elastic lithe little figure—the springy step—the dotted muslin so light
and flowing—the silk kerchief, with its most tempting fringe playing
upon the clear white of her throat—how you envy that fringe! And her
chin is as round as a peach—and the lips—such lips! and you sigh, and
hang your head, and wonder when you _shall_ see her again!
You would like to write her a letter; but then people would talk so
coldly about it; and besides you are not quite sure you could write such
billets as Thaddeus of Warsaw used to write; and anything less warm or
elegant would not do at all. You talk about this one, or that one, whom
they call pretty, in the coolest way in the world; you see very little
of their prettiness; they are good girls to be sure; and you hope they
will get good husbands some day or other; but it is not a matter that
concerns you very much. They do not live in your world of romance; they
are not the angels of that sky which your heart makes rosy, and to which
I have likened the blue waves of this rolling smoke.
You can even joke as you talk of others; you can smile—as you think—very
graciously; you can say laughingly that you are deeply in love with
them, and think it a most capital joke; you can touch their hands, or
steal a kiss from them in your games, most imperturbably—they are very
dead coals.
But the live one is very lively. When you take the name on your lip, it
seems somehow, to be made of different materials from the rest; you
cannot half so easily separate it into letters; write it, indeed you
can; for you have had practice—very much private practice—on odd scraps
of paper, and on the fly-leaves of geographies, and of your natural
philosophy. You know perfectly well how it looks; it seems to be
written, indeed, somewhere behind your eyes; and in such happy position
with respect to the optic nerve, that you see it all the time, though
you are looking in an opposite direction; and so distinctly, that you
have great fears lest people looking into your eyes should see it too!
For all this, it is a far more delicate name to handle than most that
you know of. Though it is very cool, and pleasant on the brain, it is
very hot, and difficult to manage on the lip. It is not, as your
schoolmaster would say—a name, so much as it is an idea—not a noun, but
a verb—an active, and transitive verb; and yet a most irregular verb,
wanting the passive voice.
It is something against your schoolmaster’s doctrine, to find warmth in
the moonlight; but with that soft hand—it is very soft—lying within your
arm, there is a great deal of warmth, whatever the philosophers may say,
even in pale moonlight. The beams, too, breed sympathies, very
close-running sympathies—not talked about in the chapters on optics, and
altogether too fine for language. And under their influence, you retain
the little hand, that you had not dared retain so long before; and her
struggle to recover it—if indeed it be a struggle—is infinitely less
than it was—nay, it is a kind of struggle, not so much against you, as
between gladness and modesty. It makes you as bold as a lion; and the
feeble hand, like a poor lamb in the lion’s clutch, is powerless, and
very meek—and failing of escape, it will sue for gentle treatment; and
will meet your warm promise, with a kind of grateful pressure, that is
but half acknowledged, by the hand that makes it.
My cigar is burning with wondrous freeness; and from the smoke flash
forth images bright and quick as lightning—with no thunder, but the
thunder of the pulse. But will it all last? Damp will deaden the fire of
a cigar; and there are hellish damps—alas, too many—that will deaden the
early blazing of the heart.
She is pretty—growing prettier to your eye, the more you look upon her,
and prettier to your ear, the more you listen to her. But you wonder who
the tall boy was, whom you saw walking with her, two days ago? He was
not a bad-looking boy; on the contrary you think (with a grit of your
teeth) that he was infernally handsome! You look at him very shyly, and
very closely, when you pass him; and turn to see how he walks, and how
to measure his shoulders, and are quite disgusted with the very modest
and gentlemanly way, with which he carries himself. You think you would
like to have a fisticuff with him, if you were only sure of having the
best of it. You sound the neighborhood coyly, to find out who the
strange boy is: and are half ashamed of yourself for doing it.
You gather a magnificent bouquet to send her and tie it with a green
ribbon, and love knot—and get a little rose-bud in acknowledgment.
_That_ day, you pass the tall boy with a very patronizing look; and
wonder if he would not like to have a sail in _your_ boat?
But by and by you find the tall boy walking with her again; and she
looks sideways at him, and with a kind of grown-up air, that makes you
feel very boylike, and humble and furious. And you look daggers at him
when you pass; and touch your cap to her, with quite uncommon dignity;
and wonder if he is not sorry, and does not feel very badly, to have got
such a look from you?
[Illustration]
On some other day, however, you meet her alone; and the sight of her
makes your face wear a genial, sunny air; and you talk a little sadly
about your fears and your jealousies; she seems a little sad, and a
little glad, together; and is sorry she has made you feel badly—and you
are sorry too. And with this pleasant twin sorrow, you are knit together
again—closer than ever. That one little tear of hers has been worth more
to you than a thousand smiles. Now you love her madly; you could swear
it—swear it to her, or swear it to the universe. You even say as much to
some kind old friend at nightfall; but your mention of her is tremulous
and joyful—with a kind of bound in your speech, as if the heart worked
too quick for the tongue; and as if the lips were ashamed to be passing
over such secrets of the soul, to the mere sense of hearing. At this
stage you can not trust yourself to speak her praises or if you venture,
the expletives fly away with your thought before you can chain it into
language; and your speech, at your best endeavor, is but a succession of
broken superlatives that you are ashamed of. You strain for language
that will scald the thought of her; but hot as you can make it, it falls
back upon your heated fancy like a cold shower.
Heat so intense as this consumes very fast; and the matter it feeds
fastest on is—judgment; and with judgment gone, there is room for
jealousy to creep in. You grow petulant at another sight of that tall
boy; and the one tear, which cured your first petulance, will not cure
it now. You let a little of your fever break out in speech—a speech
which you go home to mourn over. But she knows nothing of the mourning,
while she knows very much of the anger. Vain tears are very apt to breed
pride; and when you go again with your petulance, you will find your
rosy-lipped girl taking her first studies in dignity.
You will stay away, you say—poor fool, you are feeding on what your
disease loves best! You wonder if she is not sighing for your return—and
if your name is not running in her thought—and if tears of regret are
not moistening those sweet eyes.
—And wondering thus, you stroll moodily and hopefully toward her
father’s home; you pass the door once—twice; you loiter under the shade
of an old tree, where you have sometimes bid her adieu; your old
fondness is struggling with your pride, and has almost made the mastery;
but in the very moment of victory, you see yonder your hated rival, and
beside him, looking very gleeful and happy—your perfidious Louise.
How quickly you throw off the marks of your struggle, and put on the
boldest air of boyhood; and what a dextrous handling to your knife, and
what a wonderful keenness to the edge, as you cut away from the bark of
the beech tree all trace of her name! Still there is a little silent
relenting, and a few tears at night, and a little tremor of the hand, as
you tear out—the next day—every fly-leaf that bears her name. But at
sight of your rival—looking so jaunty, and in such capital spirits—you
put on the proud man again. You may meet her, but you say nothing of
your struggles—oh, no, not one word of that!—but you talk with amazing
rapidity about your games, or what not; and you never—never give her
another peep into your boyish heart!
For a week you do not see her—nor for a month—nor two months—nor three.
—Puff—puff once more; there is only a little nauseous smoke; and now—my
cigar is gone out altogether. I must light again.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[Illustration]
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[Illustration]
II
WITH A WISP OF PAPER
THERE are those who throw away a cigar, when once gone out; they must
needs have plenty more. But nobody that I ever heard of keeps a cedar
box of hearts, labeled at Havana. Alas, there is but one to light!
But can a heart once lit be lighted again? Authority on this point is
worth something; yet it should be impartial authority. I should be loth
to take in evidence, for the fact—however it might tally with my
hope—the affidavit of some rakish old widower, who had cast his weeds
before the grass had started on the mound of his affliction; and I
should be as slow to take, in way of rebutting testimony, the oath of
any sweet young girl, just becoming conscious of her heart’s
existence—by its loss.
Very much, it seems to me, depends upon the quality of the fire: and I
can easily conceive of one so pure, so constant, so exhausting, that if
it were once gone out, whether in the chills of death or under the
blasts of pitiless fortune, there would be no rekindling, simply because
there would be nothing left to kindle. And I can imagine, too, a fire so
earnest and so true that, whatever malice might urge, or a devilish
ingenuity devise, there could be no other found, high or low, far or
near, which should not so contrast with the first as to make it seem
cold as ice.
I remember in an old play of Davenport’s, the hero is led to doubt his
mistress; he is worked upon by slanders to quit her altogether—though he
has loved and does still love passionately. She bids him adieu, with
large tears dropping from her eyes (and I lay down my cigar to recite it
aloud, fancying all the while, with a varlet impudence, that some
Abstemia is repeating it to me):
—Farewell, Lorenzo,
Whom my soul doth love; if you ever marry
May you meet a good wife; so good, that you
May not suspect her, nor may she be worthy
Of your suspicion; and if you hear hereafter
That I am dead, inquire but my last words,
And you shall know that to the last I loved you.
And when you walk forth with your second choice,
Into the pleasant fields, and by chance talk of me
Imagine that you see me thin, and pale,
Strewing your path with flowers!
—Poor Abstemia! Lorenzo never could find such another—there never could
be such another, for such Lorenzo.
To blaze anew, it is essential that the old fire be utterly gone; and
can any truly-lighted soul ever grow cold, except the grave cover it?
The poets all say no: Othello, had he lived a thousand years, would not
have loved again—nor Desdemona—nor Andromache—nor Medea—nor Ulysses—nor
Hamlet. But in the cool wreaths of the pleasant smoke let us see what
truth is in the poets.
—What is love—mused I—at the first, but a mere fancy? There is a
prettiness that your soul cleaves to, as your eye to a pleasant flower,
or your ear to a soft melody. Presently admiration comes in, as a sort
of balance wheel for the eccentric revolutions of your fancy; and your
admiration is touched off with such neat quality as respect. Too much of
this, indeed, they say, deadens the fancy, and so retards the action of
the heart machinery. But with a proper modicum to serve as a stock,
devotion is grafted in; and then, by an agreeable and confused mingling,
all these qualities, and affections of the soul, become transfused into
that vital feeling called love.
Your heart seems to have gone over to another and better counterpart of
your humanity; what is left of you seems the mere husk of some kernel
that has been stolen. It is not an emotion of yours, which is making
very easy voyages toward another soul—that may be shortened or
lengthened at will, but it is a passion that is only yours, because it
is _there_; the more it lodges there the more keenly you feel it to be
yours.
The qualities that feed this passion may indeed belong to you; but they
never gave birth to such an one before, simply because there was no
place in which it could grow. Nature is very provident in these matters.
The chrysalis does not burst until there is a wing to help the gauze-fly
upward. The shell does not break until the bird can breathe; nor does
the swallow quit its nest until its wings are tipped with the airy oars.
This passion of love is strong just in proportion as the atmosphere it
finds is tender of its life. Let that atmosphere change into too great
coldness, and the passion becomes a wreck—not yours, because it is not
worth your having—nor vital, because it has lost the soil where it grew.
But is it not laying the reproach in a high quarter to say that those
qualities of the heart which begot this passion are exhausted and will
not thenceforth germinate through all of your lifetime?
—Take away the worm-eaten frame from your arbor plant, and the wrenched
arms of the despoiled climber will not at the first touch any new
trellis; they can not in a day change the habit of a year. But let the
new support stand firmly, and the needy tendrils will presently lay hold
upon the stranger! and your plant will regain its pride and pomp,
cherishing, perhaps, in its bent figure, a memento of the old, but in
its more earnest and abounding life mindful only of its sweet dependence
on the new.
Let the poets say what they will; these affections of ours are not
blind, stupid creatures, to starve under polar snows when the very
breezes of heaven are the appointed messengers to guide them toward
warmth and sunshine!
—And with a little suddenness of manner I tear off a wisp of paper, and,
holding it in the blaze of my lamp, relight my cigar. It does not burn
so easily, perhaps, as at first: it wants warming before it will catch;
but presently it is in a broad, full glow that throws light into the
corners of my room.
—Just so—thought I—the love of youth, which succeeds the crackling blaze
of boyhood, makes a broader flame, though it may not be so easily
kindled. A mere dainty step, or a curling lock, or a soft blue eye are
not enough; but in her, who has quickened the new blaze, there is a
blending of all these, with a certain sweetness of soul that finds
expression in whatever feature or motion you look upon. Her charms steal
over you gently and almost imperceptibly. You think that she is a
pleasant companion—nothing more: and you find the opinion strongly
confirmed, day by day; so well confirmed, indeed, that you begin to
wonder why it is that she is such a delightful companion? It can not be
her eye, for you have seen eyes almost as pretty as Nelly’s; nor can it
be her mouth, though Nelly’s mouth is certainly very sweet. And you keep
studying what on earth it can be that makes you so earnest to be near
her, or to listen to her voice. The study is pleasant. You do not know
any study that is more so, or which you accomplish with less mental
fatigue.
Upon a sudden, some fine day, when the air is balmy, and the
recollection of Nelly’s voice and manner more balmy still, you wonder—if
you are in love? When a man has such a wonder, he is either very near
love or he is very far away from it; it is a wonder that is either
suggested by his hope or by that entanglement of feeling which blunts
all his perceptions.
But if not in love, you have at least a strong fancy—so strong that you
tell your friends carelessly that she is a nice girl—nay, a beautiful
girl; and if your education has been bad, you strengthen the epithet on
your own tongue with a very wicked expletive, of which the mildest form
would be “deuced fine girl!” Presently, however, you get beyond this,
and your companionship and your wonder relapse into a constant, quiet
habit of unmistakable love—not impulsive, quick and fiery, like the
first, but mature and calm. It is as if it were born with your soul, and
the recognition of it was rather an old remembrance than a fresh
passion. It does not seek to gratify its exuberance and force with such
relief as night serenades, or any Jacques-like meditations in the
forest; but it is a quiet, still joy, that floats on your hope into the
years to come—making the prospect all sunny and joyful.
It is a kind of oil and balm for whatever was stormy or harmful: it
gives a permanence to the smile of existence. It does not make the sea
of your life turbulent with high emotions, as if a strong wind were
blowing, but it is as if an Aphrodite had broken on the surface, and the
ripples were spreading with a sweet, low sound, and widening far out to
the very shores of time.
There is no need now, as with the boy, to bolster up your feelings with
extravagant vows; even should you try this in her presence, the words
are lacking to put such vows in. So soon as you reach them they fail
you, and the oath only quivers on the lip, or tells its story by a
pressure of the fingers. You wear a brusque, pleasant air with your
acquaintances, and hint—with a sly look—at possible changes in your
circumstances. Of an evening you are kind to the most unattractive of
the wall-flowers—if only your Nelly is away; and you have a sudden
charity for street beggars with pale children. You catch yourself taking
a step in one of the new polkas upon a country walk, and wonder
immensely at the number of bright days which succeed each other, without
leaving a single stormy gap for your old melancholy moods. Even the
chambermaids at your hotel never did their duty one-half so well; and as
for your man Tom, he is become a perfect pattern of a fellow.
My cigar is in a fine glow; but it has gone out once, and it may go out
again.
—You begin to talk of marriage; but some obstinate papa or guardian
uncle thinks that it will never do—that it is quite too soon, or that
Nelly is a mere girl. Or some of your wild oats—quite forgotten by
yourself—shoot up on the vision of a staid mamma and throw a very damp
shadow on your character. Or the old lady has an ambition of another
sort, which you, a simple, earnest, plodding bachelor, can never
gratify—being of only passable appearance, and unschooled in the
fashions of the world, you will be eternally rubbing the elbows of the
old lady’s pride.
All this will be strangely afflicting to one who has been living for
quite a number of weeks, or months, in a pleasant dreamland, where there
were no five per cents. or reputations, but only a very full and
delirious flow of feeling. What care you for any position except a
position near the being that you love? What wealth do you prize, except
a wealth of heart that shall never know diminution; or for reputation,
except that of truth and of honor? How hard it would break upon these
pleasant idealities to have a weazen-faced old guardian set his arm in
yours and tell you how tenderly he has at heart the happiness of his
niece, and reason with you about your very small and sparse dividends
and your limited business, and caution you—for he has a lively regard
for your interests—about continuing your addresses?
—The kind old curmudgeon!
Your man Tom has grown suddenly a very stupid fellow, and all your
charity for withered wall-flowers is gone. Perhaps in your wrath the
suspicion comes over you that she too wishes you were something higher,
or more famous, or richer, or anything but what you are!—a very
dangerous suspicion: for no man with any true nobility of soul can ever
make his heart the slave of another’s condescension.
But no—you will not, you can not believe this of Nelly; that face of
hers is too mild and gracious; and her manner, as she takes your hand,
after your heart is made sad, and turns away those rich blue
eyes—shadowed more deeply than ever by the long and moistened fringe;
and the exquisite softness and meaning of the pressure of those little
fingers; and the low, half sob, and the heaving of that bosom in its
struggles between love and duty—all forbid. Nelly, you could swear, is
tenderly indulgent, like the fond creature that she is, toward all your
short-comings, and would not barter your strong love and your honest
heart for the greatest magnate in the land.
What a spur to effort is the confiding love of a true-hearted woman!
That last fond look of hers, hopeful and encouraging, has more power
within it to nerve your soul to high deeds than all the admonitions of
all your tutors. Your heart, beating large with hope, quickens the flow
upon the brain, and you make wild vows to win greatness. But alas, this
is a great world—very full, and very rough:
——all up-hill work when we would do;
All down-hill, when we suffer.[3]
Footnote 3:
_Festus._
Hard, withering toil only can achieve a name; and long days, and months,
and years, must be passed in the chase of that bubble—reputation, which,
when once grasped, breaks in your eager clutch into a hundred lesser
bubbles that soar above you still!
A clandestine meeting from time to time, and a note or two tenderly
written, keep up the blaze in your heart. But presently the lynx-eyed
old guardian—so tender of your interests and hers—forbids even this
irregular and unsatisfying correspondence. Now you can feed yourself
only on stray glimpses of her figure—as full of sprightliness and grace
as ever; and that beaming face, you are half sorry to see from time to
time—still beautiful. You struggle with your moods of melancholy, and
wear bright looks yourself—bright to her, and very bright to the eye of
the old curmudgeon who has snatched your heart away. It will never do to
show your weakness to a man.
At length, on some pleasant morning, you learn that she is gone—too far
away to be seen, too closely guarded to be reached. For awhile you throw
down your books and abandon your toil in despair—thinking very bitter
thoughts, and making very helpless resolves.
My cigar is still burning, but it will require constant and strong
respiration to keep it in a glow.
A letter or two dispatched at random relieve the excess of your fever,
until, with practice, these random letters have even less heat in them
than the heat of your study or of your business. Grief—thank God!—is not
so progressive or so cumulative as joy. For a time there is a pleasure
in the mood with which you recall your broken hopes, and with which you
selfishly link hers to the shattered wreck; but absence and ignorance
tame the point of your woe. You call up the image of Nelly adorning
other and distant scenes. You see the tearful smile give place to a
blithesome cheer, and the thought of you that shaded her fair face so
long fades under the sunshine of gayety, or, at best, it only seems to
cross that white forehead like a playful shadow that a fleecy
cloud-remnant will fling upon a sunny lawn.
As for you, the world, with its whirl and roar, is deafening the sweet,
distant notes that come up through old choked channels of the
affections. Life is calling for earnestness, and not for regrets. So the
months and the years slip by; your bachelor habit grows easy and light
with wearing; you have mourned enough to smile at the violent mourning
of others, and you have enjoyed enough to sigh over their little eddies
of delight. Dark shades and delicious streaks of crimson and gold color
lie upon your life. Your heart, with all its weight of ashes, can yet
sparkle at the sound of a fairy step, and your face can yet open into a
round of joyous smiles that are almost hopes—in the presence of some
bright-eyed girl.
But amid this there will float over you from time to time a midnight
trance, in which you will hear again with a thirsty ear the witching
melody of the days that are gone, and you will wake from it with a
shudder into the cold resolves of your lonely and manly life. But the
shudder passes as easy as night from morning. Tearful regrets and
memories that touch to the quick are dull weapons to break through the
panoply of your seared, eager and ambitious manhood. They only venture
out like timid, white-winged flies when night is come, and at the first
glimpse of the dawn they shrivel up and lie without a flutter in some
corner of your soul.
[Illustration]
And when, years after, you learn that she has returned—a woman—there is
a slight glow, but no tumultuous bound of the heart. Life and time have
worried you down like a spent hound. The world has given you a habit of
easy and unmeaning smiles. You half accuse yourself of ingratitude and
forgetfulness; but the accusation does not oppress you. It does not even
distract your attention from the morning journal. You can not work
yourself into a respectable degree of indignation against the old
gentleman—her guardian.
You sigh—poor thing! and in a very flashy waistcoat you venture a
morning call.
She meets you kindly—a comely, matronly dame in gingham, with her curls
all gathered under a high-topped comb; and she presents to you two
little boys in smart crimson jackets dressed up with braid. And you dine
with madam—a family party; and the weazen-faced old gentleman meets you
with a most pleasant shake of the hand—hints that you were among his
niece’s earliest friends, and hopes that you are getting on well?
—Capitally well!
And the boys toddle in at dessert—Dick to get a plum from your own dish,
Tom to be kissed by his rosy-faced papa. In short, you are made
perfectly at home; and you sit over your wine for an hour, in a cozy
smoke with the gentlemanly uncle and with the very courteous husband of
your second flame.
It is all very jovial at the table, for good wine is, I find, a great
strengthener of the bachelor heart. But afterward, when night has fairly
set in and the blaze of your fire goes flickering over your lonely
quarters, you heave a deep sigh. And as your thought runs back to the
perfidious Louise, and calls up the married and matronly Nelly, you sob
over that poor dumb heart within you, which craves so madly a free and
joyous utterance! And as you lean over with your forehead in your hands,
and your eyes fall upon the old hound slumbering on the rug—the tears
start, and you wish—that you had married years ago, and that you too had
your pair of prattling boys to drive away the loneliness of your
solitary hearthstone.
—My cigar would not go; it was fairly out. But, with true bachelor
obstinacy, I vowed that I would light again.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[Illustration]
III
LIGHTED
WITH A
MATCH
I HATE a match. I feel sure that brimstone matches were never made in
heaven; and it is sad to think that, with few exceptions, matches are
all of them tipped with brimstone.
But my taper having burned out, and the coals being all dead upon the
hearth, a match is all that is left to me.
All matches will not blaze on the first trial, and there are those that
with the most indefatigable coaxings never show a spark. They may indeed
leave in their trail phosphorescent streaks; but you can no more light
your cigar at them than you can kindle your heart at the covered
wife-trails which the infernal gossiping old match-makers will lay in
your path.
Was there ever a bachelor of seven and twenty, I wonder, who has not
been haunted by pleasant old ladies and trim, excellent, good-natured
married friends, who talk to him about nice matches—“very nice matches,”
matches which never go off? And who, pray, has not had some kind old
uncle to fill two sheets for him (perhaps in the time of heavy postages)
about some most eligible connection—“of highly respectable parentage!”
What a delightful thing, surely, for a withered bachelor to bloom forth
in the dignity of an ancestral tree! What a precious surprise for him,
who has all his life worshiped the wing-heeled Mercury, to find on a
sudden a great stock of preserved and most respectable Penates!
—In God’s name—thought I, puffing vehemently—what is a man’s heart given
him for, if not to choose, where his heart’s blood, every drop of it is
flowing? Who is going to dam these billowy tides of the soul, whose roll
is ordered by a planet greater than the moon—and that planet—Venus? Who
is going to shift this vane of my desires, when every breeze that passes
in my heaven is keeping it all the more strongly, to its fixed bearings?
Besides this, there are the money matches, urged upon you by
disinterested bachelor friends, who would be very proud to see you at
the head of an establishment. And I must confess that this kind of talk
has a pleasant jingle about it; and is one of the cleverest aids to a
bachelor’s day-dreams, that can well be imagined. And let not the
pouting lady condemn me, without a hearing.
It is certainly cheerful to think—for a contemplative bachelor—that the
pretty ermine which so sets off the transparent hue of your imaginary
wife, or the lace which lies so bewitchingly upon the superb roundness
of her form—or the graceful bodice, trimmed to a line, which is of such
exquisite adaptation to her lithe figure, will be always at her
command—nay, that these are only units among the chameleon hues, under
which you shall feed upon her beauty! I want to know if it is not a
pretty cabinet picture for fancy to luxuriate upon—that of a sweet wife,
who is cheating hosts of friends into love, sympathy and admiration, by
the modest munificence of her wealth? Is it not rather agreeable, to
feed your hopeful soul upon that abundance which, while it supplies her
need, will give a range to her loving charities—which will keep from her
brow the shadows of anxiety, and will sublime her gentle nature by
adding to it the grace of an angel of mercy?
Is it not rich, in those days when the pestilent humors of bachelorhood
hang heavy on you, to foresee in that shadowy realm, where hope is a
native, the quiet of a home, made splendid with attractions; and made
real by the presence of her who bestows them? Upon my word—thought I, as
I continued puffing—such a match must make a very grateful lighting of
one’s inner sympathies; nor am I prepared to say that such associations
would not add force to the most abstract love imaginable.
Think of it for a moment—what is it that we poor fellows love? We love,
if one may judge for himself, over his cigar—gentleness, beauty,
refinement, generosity and intelligence—and far above these, a returning
love, made up of all these qualities, and gaining upon your love, day by
day, and month by month, like a sunny morning gaining upon the frosts of
night.
But wealth is a great means of refinement; and it is a security for
gentleness, since it removes disturbing anxieties; and it is a pretty
promoter of intelligence, since it multiplies the avenues for its
reception; and it is a good basis for a generous habit of life; it even
equips beauty, neither hardening its hand with toil, nor tempting the
wrinkles to come early. But whether it provokes greatly that returning
passion—that abnegation of soul—that sweet trustfulness, and abiding
affection, which are to clothe your heart with joy, is far more
doubtful. Wealth, while it gives so much, asks much in return; and the
soul that is grateful to mammon, is not over ready to be grateful for
intensity of love. It is hard to gratify those who have nothing left to
gratify.
Heaven help the man who having wearied his soul with delays and doubts,
or exhausted the freshness and exuberance of his youth—by a hundred
little dallyings with love—consigns himself at length to the issues of
what people call a nice match—whether of money, or of a family!
Heaven help you (I brush the ashes from my cigar) when you begin to
regard marriage as only a respectable institution, and under the advices
of staid old friends, begin to look about you for some very respectable
wife. You may admire her figure, and her family; and bear pleasantly in
mind the very casual mention which has been made by some of your
penetrating friends—that she has large expectations. You think that she
would make a very capital appearance at the head of your table; nor, in
the event of your coming to any public honor, would she make you blush
for her breeding. She talks well, exceedingly well; and her face has its
charms; especially under a little excitement. Her dress is elegant, and
tasteful, and she is constantly remarked upon by all your friends, as a
“nice person.” Some good old lady, in whose pew she occasionally sits on
a Sunday, or to whom she has sometime sent a papier maché card-case, for
the show-box of some Dorcas benevolent society, thinks—with a sly
wink—that she would make a fine wife for—somebody.
She certainly _has_ an elegant figure; and the marriage of some half
dozen of your old flames warns you that time is slipping and your
chances failing. And in the pleasant warmth of some after-dinner mood,
you resolve—with her image in her prettiest pelisses drifting across
your brain—that you will marry. Now comes the pleasant excitement of the
chase; and whatever family dignity may surround her only adds to the
pleasurable glow of the pursuit. You give an hour more to your toilette,
and a hundred or two more, a year, to your tailor. All is orderly,
dignified, and gracious. Charlotte is a sensible woman, everybody says;
and you believe it yourself. You agree in your talk about books, and
churches, and flowers. Of course she has good taste—for she accepts you.
The acceptance is dignified, elegant, and even courteous.
You receive numerous congratulations; and your old friend Tom writes
you—that he hears you are going to marry a splendid woman; and all the
old ladies say—what a capital match! And your business partner, who is a
married man, and something of a wag—“sympathizes sincerely.” Upon the
whole, you feel a little proud of your arrangement. You write to an old
friend in the country, that you are to marry presently Miss Charlotte of
such a street, whose father was something very fine, in his way; and
whose father before him was very distinguished; you add, in a
postscript, that she is easily situated, and has “expectations.” Your
friend, who has a wife that he loves, and that loves him, writes back
kindly—“hoping you may be happy;” and hoping so yourself, you light your
cigar—one of your last bachelor cigars—with the margin of his letter.
The match goes off with a brilliant marriage; at which you receive a
very elegant welcome from your wife’s spinster cousins—and drink a great
deal of champagne with her bachelor uncles. And as you take the dainty
hand of your bride—very magnificent under that bridal wreath, and with
her face lit up by a brilliant glow—your eye, and your soul, for the
first time, grow full. And as your arm circles that elegant figure, and
you draw her toward you, feeling that she is yours—there is a bound at
your heart, that makes you think your soul-life is now whole, and
earnest. All your early dreams, and imaginations, come flowing on your
thought, like bewildering music; and as you gaze upon her—the admiration
of that crowd—it seems to you, that all that your heart prizes is made
good by the accident of marriage.
—Ah—thought I, brushing off the ashes again—bridal pictures are not home
pictures; and the hour at the altar is but a poor type of the waste of
years!
Your household is elegantly ordered; Charlotte has secured the best of
housekeepers, and she meets the compliments of your old friends who come
to dine with you with a suavity that is never at fault. And they tell
you—after the cloth is removed, and you sit quietly smoking in memory of
the olden times—that she is a splendid woman. Even the old ladies who
come for occasional charities, think madame a pattern of a lady; and so
think her old admirers, whom she receives still with an easy grace, that
half puzzles you. And as you stand by the ball-room door, at two of the
morning, with your Charlotte’s shawl upon your arm, some little panting
fellow will confirm the general opinion, by telling you that madame is a
magnificent dancer; and Monsieur le Comte will praise extravagantly her
French. You are grateful for all this; but you have an uncommonly
serious way of expressing your gratitude.
You think you ought to be a very happy fellow; and yet long shadows do
steal over your thought; and you wonder that the sight of your Charlotte
in the dress you used to admire so much, does not scatter them to the
winds; but it does not. You feel coy about putting your arm around that
delicately-robed figure—you might derange the plaiting of her dress. She
is civil toward you; and tender toward your bachelor friends. She talks
with dignity—adjusts her lace cap—and hopes you will make a figure in
the world, for the sake of the family. Her cheek is never soiled with a
tear; and her smiles are frequent, especially when you have some spruce
young fellows at your table.
You catch sight of occasional notes, perhaps, whose superscription you
do not know; and some of her admirers’ attentions become so pointed, and
constant, that your pride is stirred. It would be silly to show
jealousy; but you suggest to your “dear”—as you sip your tea—the slight
impropriety of her action.
Perhaps you fondly long for some little scene, as a proof of wounded
confidence; but no—nothing of that; she trusts (calling you “my dear”),
that she knows how to sustain the dignity of her position.
You are too sick at heart for comment, or for reply.
[Illustration]
—And is this the intertwining of soul of which you had dreamed in the
days that are gone? Is this the blending of sympathies that was to steal
from life its bitterness; and spread over care and suffering, the sweet,
ministering hand of kindness, and of love? Ay, you may well wander back
to your bachelor club, and make the hours long at the journals, or at
play—killing the flagging lapse of your life! Talk sprightly with your
old friends—and mimic the joy you have not; or you will wear a bad name
upon your hearth and head. Never suffer your Charlotte to catch sight of
the tears which in bitter hours may start from your eye; or to hear the
sighs which in your times of solitary musings may break forth sudden and
heavy. Go on counterfeiting your life, as you have begun. It was a nice
match; and you are a nice husband!
But you have a little boy, thank God, toward whom your heart runs out
freely; and you love to catch him in his respite from your well-ordered
nursery, and the tasks of his teachers—alone; and to spend upon him a
little of that depth of feeling, which through so many years has scarce
been stirred. You play with him at his games; you fondle him; you take
him to your bosom.
But papa—he says—see how you have tumbled my collar. What shall I tell
mamma?
—Tell her, my boy, that I love you!
Ah, thought I—my cigar was getting dull, and nauseous—is there not a
spot in your heart that the gloved hand of your elegant wife has never
reached: that you wish it might reach?
You go to see a far-away friend: his was not a “nice match;” he was
married years before you; and yet the beaming looks of his wife and his
lively smile are as fresh and honest as they were years ago; and they
make you ashamed of your disconsolate humor. Your stay is lengthened,
but the home letters are not urgent for your return; yet they are
marvelously proper letters, and rounded with a French _adieu_. You could
have wished a little scrawl from your boy at the bottom, in the place of
the postscript, which gives you the names of a new opera troupe; and you
hint as much—a very bold stroke for you.
Ben—she says—writes too shamefully.
And at your return there is no great anticipation of delight; in
contrast with the old dreams, that a pleasant summer’s journey has
called up, your parlor as you enter it—so elegant, so still—so
modish—seems the charnel-house of your heart.
By and by you fall into weary days of sickness; you have capital
nurses—nurses highly recommended—nurses who never make mistakes—nurses
who have served long in the family. But alas for that heart of sympathy,
and for that sweet face, shaded with your pain—like a soft landscape
with flying clouds—you have none of them! Your pattern wife may come in,
from time to time, to look after your nurse, or to ask after your sleep,
and glide out—her silk dress rustling upon the door—like dead leaves in
the cool night breezes of winter. Or, perhaps, after putting this chair
in its place, and adjusting to a more tasteful fold that curtain—she
will ask you, with a tone that might mean sympathy, if it were not a
stranger to you—if she can do anything more.
Thank her—as kindly as you can, and close your eyes, and dream—or rouse
up, to lay your hand upon the head of your little boy—to drink in health
and happiness from his earnest look as he gazes strangely upon your pale
and shrunken forehead. Your smile even, ghastly with long suffering,
disturbs him; there is no interpreter, save the heart, between you.
Your parched lips feel strangely to his flushed, healthful face; and he
steps about on tip-toe, at a motion from the nurse, to look at all those
rosy-colored medicines upon the table—and he takes your cane from the
corner, and passes his hand over the smooth ivory head; and he runs his
eye along the wall from picture to picture, till it rests on one he
knows—a figure in bridal dress—beautiful, almost fond—and he forgets
himself, and says aloud—“There’s mamma!”
The nurse puts her finger to her lip; you waken from your doze to see
where your eager boy is looking; and your eyes, too, take in much as
they can of that figure—now shadowy to your fainting vision—doubly
shadowy to your fainting heart!
From day to day you sink from life: the physician says the end is not
far off; why should it be? There is very little elastic force within you
to keep the end away. Madame is called, and your little boy. Your sight
is dim, but they whisper that she is beside your bed; and you reach out
your hand—both hands. You fancy you hear a sob—a strange sound! It seems
as if it came from distant years—a confused, broken, sigh, sweeping over
the long stretch of your life: and a sigh from your heart—not
audible—answers it.
Your trembling fingers clutch the hand of your little boy, and you drag
him toward you, and move your lips, as if you would speak to him; and
they place his head near you, so that you feel his fine hair brushing
your cheek—“My boy, you must love—your mother!”
Your other hand feels a quick, convulsive grasp, and something like a
tear drops upon your face. Good God! Can it be indeed a tear?
You strain your vision, and a feeble smile flits over your features as
you seem to see her figure—the figure of the painting—bending over you;
and you feel a bound at your heart—the same bound that you felt on your
bridal morning; the same bound which you used to feel in the springtime
of your life.
—Only one—rich, full bound of the heart—that is all!
—My cigar is out. I could not have lit it again if I would. It was
wholly burned.
“Aunt Tabithy”—said I, as I finished reading—“may I smoke now under your
rose tree?”
Aunt Tabithy, who had laid down her knitting to hear me—smiled—brushed a
tear from her old eyes, said—“Yes—Isaac,” and having scratched the back
of her head with the disengaged needle, resumed her knitting.
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[Illustration]
FOURTH REVERIE
MORNING, NOON AND EVENING
IT is a spring day under the oaks—the loved oaks of a once cherished
home—now, alas, mine no longer!
I had sold the old farmhouse, and the groves, and the cool springs,
where I had bathed my head in the heats of summer; and with the first
warm days of May, they were to pass from me forever. Seventy years they
had been in the possession of my mother’s family; for seventy years they
had borne the same name of proprietorship; for seventy years, the Lares
of our country home, often neglected, almost forgotten—yet brightened
from time to time by gleams of heart-worship, had held their place in
the sweet valley of Elmgrove.
And in this changeful, bustling, American life of ours seventy years is
no child’s holiday. The hurry of action, and progress may pass over it
with quick step; but the footprints are many and deep. You surely will
not wonder that it made me sad and thoughtful to break the chain of
years that bound to my heart the oaks, the hills, the springs, the
valley—and such a valley!
A wild stream runs through it—large enough to make a river for English
landscape—winding between rich banks where, in summer time, the swallows
build their nests and brood by myriads.
Tall elms rise here and there along the margin, and with their uplifted
arms and leafy spray throw great patches of shade upon the meadow. Old
lion-like oaks, too, where the meadow-soil hardens into rolling upland,
fasten to the ground with their ridgy roots; and with their gray,
scraggy limbs make delicious shelter for the panting workers, or for the
herds of August.
[Illustration]
Westward of the stream, where I am lying, the banks roll up swiftly into
sloping hills, covered with groves of oaks and green pasture lands
dotted with mossy rocks. And farther on, where some wood has been swept
down, some ten years gone, by the ax, the new growth, heavy with the
luxuriant foliage of spring, covers wide spots of the slanting land;
while some dead tree in the midst still stretches out its bare arms to
the blast—a solitary mourner over the wreck of its forest brothers.
Eastward the ridgy bank passes into wavy meadows, upon whose farther
edge you see the roofs of an old mansion, with tall chimneys and taller
elm-trees shading it. Beyond, the hills rise gently, and sweep away into
wood-crowned heights that are blue with distance. At the upper end of
the valley the stream is lost to the eye in a wide swamp-wood, which in
the autumn time is covered with a scarlet sheet, blotched here and there
by the dark crimson stains of the ash-tops. Farther on the hills crowd
close to the brook, and come down with granite boulders, and scattered
birch-trees, and beeches—under which, upon the smoky mornings of May, I
have time and again loitered, and thrown my line into the pools which
curl dark and still under their tangled roots.
Below, and looking southward, through the openings of the oaks that
shade me, I see a broad stretch of meadow, with glimpses of the silver
surface of the stream, and of the giant solitary elms, and of some old
maple that has yielded to the spring tides, and now dips its lower
boughs in the insidious current—and of clumps of alders, and willow
tufts—above which, even now, the black-and-white coated Bob-o’-Lincoln
is wheeling his musical flight, while his quieter mate sits swaying on
the topmost twigs.
A quiet road passes within a short distance of me, and crosses the brook
by a rude timber bridge; beside the bridge is a broad glassy pool,
shaded by old maples and hickories, where the cattle drink each morning
on their way to the hill pastures. A step or two beyond the stream a
lane branches across the meadows to the mansion with the tall chimneys.
I can just remember now, the stout, broad-shouldered old gentleman, with
his white hat, his long white hair, and his white-headed cane, who built
the house, and who farmed the whole valley around me. He is gone, long
since; and lies in a graveyard looking upon the sea! The elms that he
planted shake their weird arms over the mouldering roofs; and his fruit
garden shows only a battered phalanx of mossy limbs, which will scarce
tempt the July marauders.
In the other direction, upon this side the brook, the road is lost to
view among the trees; but if I were to follow the windings upon the
hillside, it would bring me shortly upon the old home of my grandfather;
there is no pleasure in wandering there now. The woods that sheltered it
from the northern winds are cut down; the tall cherries that made the
yard one leafy bower are dead. The cornice is straggling from the eaves;
the porch has fallen; the stone chimney is yawning with wide gaps.
Within, it is even worse; the floors sway upon the mouldering beams; the
doors all sag from their hinges; the rude frescos upon the parlor wall
are peeling off; all is going to decay—And my grandfather sleeps in a
little graveyard by the garden wall.
A lane branches from the country road, within a few yards of me, and
leads back, along the edge of the meadow, to the homely cottage, which
has been my special care. Its gray porch and chimney are thrown into
rich relief by a grove of oaks that skirts the hill behind it; and the
doves are flying uneasily about the open doors of the granary and barns.
The morning sun shines pleasantly on the gray group of buildings; and
the lowing of the cows, not yet driven afield, adds to the charming
homeliness of the scene. But alas for the poor azaleas, and laurels, and
vines that I had put out upon the little knoll before the cottage
door—they are all of them trodden down: only one poor creeper hangs its
loose tresses to the lattice, all disheveled and forlorn!
This by-lane which opens upon my farmhouse, leaves the road in the
middle of a grove of oaks; the brown gate swings upon an oak tree—the
brown gate closes upon an oak tree. There is a rustic seat, built
between two veteran trees that rise from a little hillock near by. Half
a century ago there was a rustic seat on the same hillock—between the
same veteran trees. I can trace marks of the old blotches upon the bark,
and the scars of the nails upon the scathed trunks. Time and time again
it has been renewed. This, the last, was built by my own hands—a
cheerful and a holy duty.
Sixty years ago, they tell me, my grandfather used to loiter here with
his gun, while his hounds lay around under the scattered oaks. Now he
sleeps, as I said, in the little graveyard yonder, where I can see one
or two white tablets glimmering through the foliage. I never knew him;
he died, as the brown stone table says, aged twenty-six. Yesterday I
climbed the wall that skirts the yard, and plucked a flower from his
tomb. I take out now from my pocket-book that flower—a frail,
first-blooming violet—and write upon the slip of paper, into which I
have thrust its delicate stem—“From my grandfather’s tomb—1850.”
But other feet have trod upon this knoll—far more dear to me. The old
neighbors have sometimes told me how they have seen, forty years ago,
two rosy-faced girls idling on this spot, under the shade, and gathering
acorns, and making oak-leaved garlands for their foreheads—Alas, alas,
the garlands they wear now are not earthly garlands!
Upon that spot, and upon that rustic seat, I am lying this May morning.
I have placed my gun against a tree; my shot-pouch I have hung upon a
broken limb. I have thrown my feet upon the bench, and lean against one
of the gnarled oaks, between which the seat is built. My hat is off; my
book and paper are beside me; and my pencil trembles in my fingers as I
catch sight of those white marble tablets gleaming through the trees,
from the height above me, like beckoning angel faces. If they were
alive! two more near and dear friends, in a world where we count friends
by units.
It is morning—a bright spring morning under the oaks—these loved oaks of
a once cherished home. Last night I slept in yonder mansion, under the
elms. The cattle going to the pasture are drinking in the pool by the
bridge; the boy who drives them is making his shrill halloo echo against
the hills. The sun has risen fairly over the eastern heights, and shines
brightly upon the meadow-land and brightly upon a bend of the brook
below me. The birds—the blue-birds sweetest and noisiest of all—are
singing over me in the branches. A woodpecker is hammering at a dry limb
aloft; and Carlo pricks up his ears, and looks at me—then stretches out
his head upon his paws in a warm bit of the sunshine—and sleeps.
Morning brings back to me the past; and the past brings up not only its
actualities, not only its events and memories, but—stranger still—what
might have been. Every little circumstance which dawns on the awakened
memory is traced not only to its actual, but to its possible issues.
What a wide world that makes of the past! a great and gorgeous—a rich
and holy world! Your fancy fills it up artist-like; the darkness is
mellowed off into soft shades; the bright spots are veiled in the sweet
atmosphere of distance; and fancy and memory together make up a rich
dreamland of the past.
And now, as I go on to trace upon paper some of the visions that float
across that dreamland of the morning—I will not—I can not say how much
comes fancywise, and how much from this vaulting memory. Of this, the
kind reader shall himself be judge.
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[Illustration]
I
THE MORNING
ISABEL AND I—she is my cousin, and is seven years old, and I am ten—are
sitting together on the bank of the stream, under an oak tree that leans
half way over to the water. I am much stronger than she, and taller by a
head. I hold in my hands a little alder rod, with which I am fishing for
the roach and minnows that play in the pool below us.
She is watching the cork tossing on the water, or playing with the
captured fish that lie upon the bank. She has auburn ringlets that fall
down upon her shoulders; and her straw hat lies back upon them, held
only by the strip of ribbon that passes under her chin. But the sun does
not shine upon her head; for the oak tree above us is full of leaves;
and only here and there a dimple of the sunlight plays upon the pool,
where I am fishing.
Her eye is hazel and bright; and now and then she turns it on me with a
look of girlish curiosity, as I lift up my rod—and again in playful
menace, as she grasps in her little fingers one of the dead fish and
threatens to throw it back upon the stream. Her little feet hang over
the edge of the bank; and from time to time she reaches down to dip her
toe in the water; and laughs a girlish laugh of defiance, as I scold her
for frightening away the fishes.
“Bella,” I say, “what if you should tumble in the river?”
“But I won’t.”
“Yes, but if you should?”
“Why then you would pull me out.”
“But if I wouldn’t pull you out?”
“But I know you would; wouldn’t you, Paul?”
“What makes you think so, Bella?”
“Because you love Bella.”
“How do you know I love Bella?”
“Because once you told me so; and because you pick flowers for me that I
can not reach; and because you let me take your rod, when you have a
fish upon it.”
“But that’s no reason, Bella.”
“Then what is, Paul?”
“I’m sure I don’t know, Bella.”
A little fish has been nibbling for a long time at the bait; the cork
has been bobbing up and down—and now he is fairly hooked, and pulls away
toward the bank, and you can not see the cork.
—“Here, Bella, quick!”—and she springs eagerly to clasp her little hands
around the rod. But the fish has dragged it away on the other side of
me; and as she reaches farther, and farther, she slips, cries—“Oh,
Paul!” and falls into the water.
The stream they told us, when we came, was over a man’s head—it is
surely over little Isabel’s. I fling down the rod, and thrusting one
hand into the roots that support the overhanging bank, I grasp at her
hat, as she comes up; but the ribbons give way, and I see the terribly
earnest look upon her face as she goes down again. Oh, my mother—thought
I—if you were only here!
But she rises again; this time I thrust my hand into her dress, and
struggling hard, keep her at the top until I can place my foot down upon
a projecting root; and, so bracing myself, I drag her to the bank, and
having climbed up, take hold of her belt firmly with both hands, and
drag her out; and poor Isabel, choked, chilled, and wet, is lying upon
the grass.
I commence crying aloud. The workmen in the fields hear me, and come
down. One takes Isabel in his arms, and I follow on foot to our uncle’s
home upon the hill.
—“Oh, my dear children!” says my mother; and she takes Isabel in her
arms; and presently, with dry clothes and blazing wood fire, little
Bella smiles again. I am at my mother’s knee.
“I told you so, Paul,” says Isabel—“aunty, doesn’t Paul love me?”
“I hope so, Bella,” said my mother.
“I know so,” said I; and kissed her cheek.
And how did I know it? The boy does not ask; the man does. Oh, the
freshness, the honesty, the vigor of a boy’s heart! how the memory of it
refreshes like the first gush of spring, or the break of an April
shower!
But boyhood has its PRIDE as well as its LOVES.
My uncle is a tall, hard-faced man; I fear him when he calls me—“child;”
I love him when he calls me—“Paul.” He is almost always busy with his
books; and when I steal into the library door, as I sometimes do, with a
string of fish, or a heaping basket of nuts to show him—he looks for a
moment curiously at them, sometimes takes them in his fingers—gives them
back to me, and turns over the leaves of his book. You are afraid to ask
him if you have not worked bravely; yet you want to do so.
You sidle out softly, and go to your mother; she scarce looks at your
little stores; but she draws you to her with her arm, and prints a kiss
upon your forehead. Now your tongue is unloosened; that kiss and that
action have done it; you will tell what capital luck you have had; and
you hold up your tempting trophies; “are they not great, mother?” But
she is looking in your face, and not at your prize.
“Take them, mother,” and you lay the basket upon her lap.
“Thank you Paul, I do not wish them: but you must give some to Bella.”
And away you go to find laughing, playful, cousin Isabel. And we sit
down together on the grass, and I pour out my stores between us. “You
shall take, Bella, what you wish in your apron, and then when study
hours are over, we will have such a time down by the big rock in the
meadow!”
“But I do not know if papa will let me,” says Isabel.
“Bella,” I say, “do you love your papa?”
“Yes,” says Bella, “why not?”
“Because he is so cold; he does not kiss you, Bella, so often as my
mother does; and, besides, when he forbids your going away, he does not
say, as mother does—my little girl will be tired, she had better not
go—but he says only—Isabel must not go. I wonder what makes him talk
so?”
“Why, Paul, he is a man, and doesn’t—at any rate, I love him, Paul.
Besides, my mother is sick, you know.”
“But Isabel, my mother will be your mother, too. Come, Bella, we will go
ask her if we may go.”
And there I am, the happiest of boys, pleading with the kindest of
mothers. And the young heart leans into that mother’s heart—none of the
void now that will overtake it like an opening Korah gulf, in the years
that are to come. It is joyous, full, and running over!
“You may go,” she says, “if your uncle is willing.”
“But mamma, I am afraid to ask him, I do not believe he loves me.”
“Don’t say so, Paul,” and she draws you to her side, as if she would
supply by her own love the lacking love of a universe.
“Go, with your cousin Isabel, and ask him kindly; and if he says no—make
no reply.”
And with courage, we go hand in hand, and steal in at the library door.
There he sits—I seem to see him now—in the old wainscoted room, covered
over with books and pictures; and he wears his heavy-rimmed spectacles,
and is poring over some big volume, full of hard words, that are not in
any spelling-book. We step up softly; and Isabel lays her little hand
upon his arm; and he turns, and says—“Well, my little daughter?”
I ask if we may go down to the big rock in the meadow?
He looks at Isabel, and says he is afraid—“we can not go.”
“But why, uncle? It is only a little way, and we will be very careful.”
“I am afraid, my children; do not say any more: you can have the pony,
and Tray, and play at home.”
“But, uncle—”
“You need say no more, my child.”
I pinch the hand of little Isabel, and look in her eye—my own
half-filling with tears. I feel that my forehead is flushed, and I hide
it behind Bella’s tresses—whispering to her at the same time—“Let us
go.”
“What, sir,” says my uncle, mistaking my meaning—“do you persuade her to
disobey?”
Now I am angry, and say blindly—“No, sir, I didn’t!” And then my rising
pride will not let me say that I wished only Isabel should go out with
me.
Bella cries; and I shrink out; and am not easy until I have run to bury
my head in my mother’s bosom. Alas! pride can not always find such
covert! There will be times when it will harass you strangely; when it
will peril friendships—will sever old, standing intimacy; and then—no
resource but to feed on its own bitterness. Hateful pride!—to be
conquered, as a man would conquer an enemy, or it will make whirlpools
in the current of your affections—nay, turn the whole tide of the heart
into rough, and unaccustomed channels.
But boyhood has its GRIEF, too, apart from PRIDE.
You love the old dog, Tray; and Bella loves him as well as you. He is a
noble old fellow, with shaggy hair, and long ears, and big paws, that he
will put up into your hand, if you ask him. And he never gets angry when
you play with him, and tumble him over in the long grass, and pull his
silken ears. Sometimes, to be sure, he will open his mouth, as if he
would bite, but when he gets your hand fairly in his jaws he will scarce
leave the print of his teeth upon it. He will swim, too, bravely, and
bring ashore all the sticks you throw upon the water; and when you fling
a stone to tease him, he swims round and round, and whines, and looks
sorry that he can not find it.
He will carry a heaping basket full of nuts, too, in his mouth, and
never spill one of them; and when you come out to your uncle’s home in
the spring, after staying a whole winter in the town, he knows you—old
Tray does! And he leaps upon you, and lays his paws on your shoulder,
and licks your face; and is almost as glad to see you as cousin Bella
herself. And when you put Bella on his back for a ride, he only pretends
to bite her little feet—but he wouldn’t do it for the world. Ay, Tray is
a noble old dog!
But one summer, the farmers say that some of their sheep are killed, and
that the dogs have worried them; and one of them comes to talk with my
uncle about it.
But Tray never worried sheep; you know he never did; and so does nurse;
and so does Bella; for in the spring, she had a pet lamb, and Tray never
worried little Fidele.
And one or two of the dogs that belong to the neighbors are shot; though
nobody knows who shot them; and you have great fears about poor Tray;
and try to keep him at home, and fondle him more than ever. But Tray
will sometimes wander off; till finally, one afternoon, he comes back
whining piteously, and with his shoulder all bloody.
Little Bella cries loud; and you almost cry, as nurse dresses the wound;
and poor old Tray whines very sadly. You pat his head, and Bella pats
him; and you sit down together by him on the floor of the porch, and
bring a rug for him to lie upon; and try and tempt him with a little
milk, and Bella brings a piece of cake for him—but he will eat nothing.
You sit up till very late, long after Bella has gone to bed, patting his
head, and wishing you could do something for poor Tray; but he only
licks your hand, and whines more piteously than ever.
In the morning you dress early and hurry downstairs; but Tray is not
lying on the rug; and you run through the house to find him, and
whistle, and call—Tray—Tray! At length you see him lying in his old
place, out by the cherry tree, and you run to him; but he does not
start; and you lean down to pat him—but he is cold, and the dew is wet
upon him—poor Tray is dead!
You take his head upon your knees, and pat again those glossy ears, and
cry; but you can not bring him to life. And Bella comes, and cries with
you. You can hardly bear to have him put in the ground; but uncle says
he must be buried. So one of the workmen digs a grave under the cherry
tree, where he died—a deep grave, and they round it over with earth, and
smooth the sods upon it—even now I can trace Tray’s grave.
You and Bella together put up a little slab for a tombstone; and she
hangs flowers upon it, and ties them there with a bit of ribbon. You can
scarce play all that day; and afterward, many weeks later, when you are
rambling over the fields, or lingering by the brook, throwing off sticks
into the eddies, you think of old Tray’s shaggy coat, and of his big
paw, and of his honest eye; and the memory of your boyish grief comes
upon you; and you say with tears, “Poor Tray!” And Bella, too, in her
sad sweet tones, says—“Poor old Tray—he is dead!”
[Illustration]
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[Illustration]
SCHOOL DAYS
THE morning was cloudy and threatened rain; besides, it was autumn
weather, and the winds were getting harsh, and rustling among the
tree-tops that shaded the house most dismally. I did not dare to listen.
If, indeed, I were to stay by the bright fires of home, and gather the
nuts as they fell, and pile up the falling leaves to make great
bonfires, with Ben and the rest of the boys, I should have liked to
listen, and would have braved the dismal morning with the cheerfullest
of them all. For it would have been a capital time to light a fire in
the little oven we had built under the wall; it would have been so
pleasant to warm our fingers at it, and to roast the great russets on
the flat stones that made the top.
But this was not in store for me. I had bid the town boys good-by the
day before; my trunk was all packed; I was to go away—to school. The
little oven would go to ruin—I knew it would. I was to leave my home. I
was to bid my mother good-by, and Lilly, and Isabel, and all the rest;
and was to go away from them so far that I should only know what they
were all doing—in letters. It _was_ sad. And then to have the clouds
come over on that morning, and the winds sigh so dismally; oh, it was
too bad, I thought!
It comes back to me as I lie here this bright spring morning as if it
were only yesterday. I remember that the pigeons skulked under the eaves
of the carriage-house, and did not sit, as they used to do in summer,
upon the ridge; and the chickens huddled together about the stable
doors, as if they were afraid of the cold autumn. And in the garden the
white hollyhocks stood shivering, and bowed to the wind, as if their
time had come. The yellow musk-melons showed plain among the
frost-bitten vines, and looked cold and uncomfortable.
—Then they were all so kind, indoors! The cook made such nice things for
my breakfast, because little master was going; Lilly _would_ give me her
seat by the fire, and would put her lump of sugar in my cup; and my
mother looked so smiling, and so tenderly, that I thought I loved her
more than I ever did before. Little Ben was so gay, too; and wanted me
to take his jackknife, if I wished it—though he knew that I had a brand
new one in my trunk. The old nurse slipped a little purse into my hand,
tied up with a green ribbon—with money in it—and told me not to show it
to Ben or Lilly.
And cousin Isabel, who was there on a visit, would come to stand by my
chair, when my mother was talking to me; and put her hand in mine, and
look up into my face; but she did not say a word. I thought it was very
odd; and yet it did not seem odd to me that I could say nothing to her.
I dare say we felt alike.
At length Ben came running in, and said the coach had come; and there,
sure enough, out of the window, we saw it—a bright yellow coach, with
four white horses, and band-boxes all over the top, with a great pile of
trunks behind. Ben said it was a grand coach, and that he should like a
ride in it; and the old nurse came to the door, and said I should have a
capital time; but, somehow, I doubted if the nurse was talking honestly.
I believe she gave me an honest kiss though—and such a hug!
But it was nothing to my mother’s. Tom told me to be a man, and study
like a Trojan; but I was not thinking about study then. There was a tall
boy in the coach, and I was ashamed to have him see me cry; so I didn’t,
at first. But I remember, as I looked back and saw little Isabel run out
into the middle of the street to see the coach go off, and the curls
floating behind her, as the wind freshened, I felt my heart leaping into
my throat, and the water coming into my eyes, and how just then I caught
sight of the tall boy glancing at me—and how I tried to turn it off by
looking to see if I could button up my greatcoat a great deal lower down
than the buttonholes went.
But it was of no use; I put my head out of the coach window, and looked
back, as the little figure of Isabel faded, and then the house, and the
trees; and the tears did come; and I smuggled my handkerchief outside
without turning; so that I could wipe my eyes before the tall boy should
see me. They say that these shadows of morning fade, as the sun
brightens into noonday; but they are very dark shadows for all that!
Let the father or the mother think long before they send away their
boy—before they break the home-ties that make a web of infinite fineness
and soft silken meshes around his heart, and toss him aloof into the
boy-world, where he must struggle up amid bickerings and quarrels, into
his age of youth! There are boys, indeed, with little fineness in the
texture of their hearts, and with little delicacy of soul; to whom the
school in a distant village is but a vacation from home; and with whom a
return revives all those grosser affections which alone existed before;
just as there are plants which will bear all exposure without the
wilting of a leaf, and will return to the hot-house life as strong and
as hopeful as ever. But there are others to whom the severance from the
prattle of sisters, the indulgent fondness of a mother, and the unseen
influences of the home altar, gives a shock that lasts forever; it is
wrenching with cruel hand what will bear but little roughness; and the
sobs with which the adieux are said are sobs that may come back in the
after years, strong, and steady, and terrible.
God have mercy on the boy who learns to sob early! Condemn it as
sentiment, if you will; talk as you will of the fearlessness, and
strength of the boy’s heart—yet there belong to many, tenderly strung
chords of affection which give forth low and gentle music that consoles
and ripens the ear for all the harmonies of life. These chords a little
rude and unnatural tension will break, and break forever. Watch your boy
then, if so be he will bear the strain; try his nature, if it be rude or
delicate; and, if delicate, in God’s name, do not, as you value your
peace and his, breed a harsh youth spirit in him that shall take pride
in subjugating and forgetting the delicacy and richness of his finer
affections!
—I see now, looking into the past, the troops of boys who were scattered
in the great play-ground, as the coach drove up at night. The school was
in a tall, stately building, with a high cupola on the top, where I
thought I would like to go up. The schoolmaster, they told me at home,
was kind; he said he hoped I would be a good boy, and patted me on the
head; but he did not pat me as my mother used to do. Then there was a
woman, whom they called the matron; who had a great many ribbons in her
cap, and who shook my hand—but so stiffly that I didn’t dare to look up
in her face.
One boy took me down to see the school-room, which was in the basement,
and the walls were all moldly, I remember; and when we passed a certain
door, he said: there was the dungeon; how I felt! I hated that boy; but
I believe he is dead now. Then the matron took me up to my room—a little
corner room, with two beds, and two windows, and a red table, and
closet; and my chum was about my size, and wore a queer roundabout
jacket with big bell buttons; and he called the schoolmaster “Old
Crikey”—and kept me awake half the night, telling me how he whipped the
scholars, and how they played tricks upon him. I thought my chum was a
very uncommon boy.
For a day or two, the lessons were easy, and it was sport to play with
so many “fellows.” But soon I began to feel lonely at night after I had
gone to bed. I used to wish I could have my mother come and kiss me;
after school, too, I wished I could step in and tell Isabel how bravely
I had got my lessons. When I told my chum this, he laughed at me, and
said that was no place for “homesick, white-livered chaps.” I wondered
if my chum had any mother.
We had spending money once a week, with which we used to go down to the
village store, and club our funds together, to make great pitchers of
lemonade. Some boys would have money besides; though it was against the
rules; and one, I recollect, showed us a five-dollar bill in his
wallet—and we all thought he must be very rich.
We marched in procession to the village church on Sundays. There were
two long benches in the galleries, reaching down the sides of the
meeting-house; and on these we sat. At the first, I was among the
smallest boys, and took a place close to the wall, against the pulpit;
but afterward, as I grew bigger, I was promoted to the lower end of the
first bench. This I never liked, because it was close by one of the
ushers, and because it brought me next to some country women, who wore
stiff bonnets, and eat fennel, and sung with the choir. But there was a
little black-eyed girl, who sat over behind the choir, that I thought
handsome; I used to look at her very often; but was careful she should
never catch my eye.
There was another down below, in a corner pew, who was pretty; and who
wore a hat in the winter trimmed with fur. Half the boys in the school
said they would marry her some day or other. One’s name was Jane, and
that of the other, Sophia; which we thought pretty names, and cut them
on the ice, in skating time. But I didn’t think either of them so pretty
as Isabel.
Once a teacher whipped me: I bore it bravely in the school: but
afterward, at night, when my chum was asleep, I sobbed bitterly as I
thought of Isabel, and Ben, and my mother, and how much they loved me:
and laying my face in my hands, I sobbed myself to sleep. In the morning
I was calm enough: it was another of the heart-ties broken, though I did
not know it then. It lessened the old attachment to home, because that
home could neither protect me nor soothe me with its sympathies. Memory,
indeed, freshened and grew strong; but strong in bitterness, and in
regrets. The boy whose love you can not feed by daily nourishment will
find pride, self-indulgence, and an iron purpose coming in to furnish
other supply for the soul that is in him. If he can not shoot his
branches into the sunshine, he will become acclimated to the shadow, and
indifferent to such stray gleams of sunshine as his fortune may
vouchsafe.
Hostilities would sometimes threaten between the school and the village
boys; but they usually passed off with such loud and harmless explosions
as belong to the wars of our small politicians. The village champions
were a hatter’s apprentice, and a thickset fellow who worked in a
tannery. We prided ourselves especially on one stout boy, who wore a
sailor’s monkey jacket. I can not but think how jaunty that stout boy
looked in that jacket; and what an Ajax cast there was to his
countenance! It certainly did occur to me to compare him with William
Wallace (Miss Porter’s William Wallace) and I thought how I would have
liked to have seen a tussle between them. Of course, we who were small
boys, limited ourselves to indignant remark, and thought “we should like
to see them do it;” and prepared clubs from the wood-shed, after a model
suggested by a New York boy, who had seen the clubs of the policemen.
There was one scholar, poor Leslie, who had friends in some foreign
country, and who occasionally received letters bearing a foreign
post-mark: what an extraordinary boy that was—what astonishing letters,
what extraordinary parents! I wondered if I should ever receive a letter
from “foreign parts?” I wondered if I should ever write one; but this
was too much—too absurd! As if I, Paul, wearing a blue jacket with gilt
buttons, and number four boots, should ever visit those countries spoken
of in the geographies, and by learned travelers! No, no; this was too
extravagant; but I knew what I would do, if I lived to come of age; and
I vowed that I would—I would go to New York!
Number seven was the hospital, and forbidden ground; we had all of us a
sort of horror of number seven. A boy died there once, and oh, how he
moaned; and what a time there was when the father came!
A scholar by the name of Tom Belton, who wore linsey gray, made a dam
across a little brook by the school, and whittled out a saw-mill that
actually sawed; he had genius. I expected to see him before now at the
head of American mechanics; but I learn with pain that he is keeping a
grocery store.
At the close of all the terms we had exhibitions, to which all the
townspeople came, and among them the black-eyed Jane, and the pretty
Sophia with fur around her hat. My great triumph was when I had the part
of one of Pizarro’s chieftains, the evening before I left the school.
How I did look!
I had a mustache put on with burned cork, and whiskers very bushy
indeed; and I had the militia coat of an ensign in the town company,
with the skirts pinned up, and a short sword very dull, and crooked,
which belonged to an old gentleman who was said to have got it from some
privateer, who was said to have taken it from some great British admiral
in the old wars; and the way I carried that sword upon the platform and
the way I jerked it out when it came to my turn to say—“Battle! battle!
then death to the armed, and chains for the defenseless!”—was
tremendous!
The morning after, in our dramatic hats—black felt, with turkey
feathers—we took our place upon the top of the coach to leave the
school. The head master, in green spectacles, came out to shake hands
with us—a very awful shaking of hands.
Poor gentleman!—he is in his grave now.
We gave three loud hurrahs “for the old school,” as the coach started;
and upon the top of the hill that overlooks the village, we gave another
round—and still another for the crabbed old fellow whose apples we had
so often stolen. I wonder if old Bulkeley is living yet?
As we got on under the pine trees, I recalled the image of the
black-eyed Jane, and of the other little girl in the corner pew—and
thought how I would come back after the college days were over—a man,
with a beaver hat, and a cane, and with a splendid barouche, and how I
would take the best chamber at the inn, and astonish the old
schoolmaster by giving him a familiar tap on the shoulder; and how I
would be the admiration, and the wonder of the pretty girl in the
fur-trimmed hat! Alas, how our thoughts outrun our deeds!
For long—long years, I saw no more of my old school; and when at length
the view came, great changes—crashing tornadoes—had swept over my path!
I thought no more of startling the villagers, or astonishing the
black-eyed girl. No, no! I was content to slip quietly through the
little town, with only a tear or two, as I recalled the dead ones, and
mused upon the emptiness of life!
[Illustration]
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[Illustration]
THE SEA
AS I look back, boyhood with its griefs and cares vanishes into the
proud stateliness of youth. The ambition and the rivalries of the
college life—its first boastful importance as knowledge begins to dawn
on the wakened mind, and the ripe, and enviable complacency of its
senior dignity—all scud over my memory like this morning breeze along
the meadows; and like that, too, bear upon their wing a chillness—as of
distant ice-banks.
Ben has grown almost to manhood; Lilly is living in a distant home; and
Isabel is just blooming into that sweet age where womanly dignity waits
her beauty; an age that sorely puzzles one who has grown up beside
her—making him slow of tongue, but very quick of heart.
As for the rest—let us pass on.
The sea is around me. The last head-lands have gone down under the
horizon, like the city steeples, as you lose yourself in the calm of the
country, or like the great thoughts of genius, as you slip from the
pages of poets into your own quiet reverie.
The waters skirt me right and left; there is nothing but water before,
and only water behind. Above me are sailing clouds, or the blue vault,
which we call, with childish license—heaven. The sails, white and full,
like helping friends are pushing me on: and night and day are distant
with the winds which come and go—none know whence, and none know
whither. A land bird flutters aloft, weary with long flying; and lost in
a world where are no forests but the careening masts, and no foliage but
the drifts of spray. It cleaves awhile to the smooth spars, till urged
by some homeward yearning, it bears off in the face of the wind, and
sinks, and rises over the angry waters, until its strength is gone, and
the blue waves gather the poor flutterer to their cold and glassy bosom.
All the morning I see nothing beyond me but the waters, or a tossing
company of dolphins; all the noon, unless some white sail—like a ghost,
stalks the horizon, there is still nothing but the rolling seas; all the
evening, after the sun has grown big and sunk under the water line, and
the moon risen, white and cold, to glimmer across the tops of the
surging ocean—there is nothing but the sea and the sky to lead off
thought, or to crush it with their greatness.
Hour after hour, as I sit in the moonlight upon the taffrail, the great
waves gather far back, and break—and gather nearer, and break louder—and
gather again, and roll down swift and terrible under the creaking ship,
and heave it up lightly upon their swelling surge, and drop it gently to
their seething and yeasty cradle—like an infant in the swaying arms of a
mother—or like a shadowy memory upon the billows of manly thought.
Conscience wakes in the silent nights of ocean; life lies open like a
book, and spreads out as level as the sea. Regrets and broken
resolutions chase over the soul like swift-winged night-birds, and all
the unsteady heights and the wastes of action lift up distinct and clear
from the uneasy but limpid depths of memory.
Yet within this floating world I am upon, sympathies are narrowed down;
they can not range, as upon the land, over a thousand objects. You are
strangely attracted toward some frail girl, whose pallor has now given
place to the rich bloom of the sea life. You listen eagerly to the
chance snatches of a song from below, in the long morning watch. You
love to see her small feet tottering on the unsteady deck; and you love
greatly to aid her steps, and feel her weight upon your arm, as the ship
lurches to a heavy sea.
Hopes and fears knit together pleasantly upon the ocean. Each day seems
to revive them; your morning salutation is like a welcome, after
absence, upon the shore; and each “good-night” has the depth and
fullness of a land “farewell.” And beauty grows upon the ocean; you can
not certainly say that the face of the fair girl-voyager is prettier
than that of Isabel; oh, no! but you are certain that you cast innocent
and honest glances upon her as you steady her walk upon the deck, far
oftener than at the first; and ocean life and sympathy makes her kind;
she does not resent your rudeness one-half so stoutly as she might upon
the shore.
She will even linger of an evening—pleading first with the mother, and
standing beside you—her white hand not very far from yours upon the
rail—look down where the black ship flings off with each plunge whole
garlands of emeralds; or she will look up (thinking perhaps you are
looking the same way) into the skies, in search of some stars—which were
her neighbors at home. And bits of old tales will come up, as if they
rode upon the ocean quietude; and fragments of half-forgotten poems,
tremulously uttered—either by reason of the rolling of the ship, or some
accidental touch of that white hand.
But ocean has its storms when fear will make strange and holy
companionship; and even here my memory shifts swiftly and suddenly.
—It is a dreadful night. The passengers are clustered, trembling, below.
Every plank shakes; and the oak ribs groan as if they suffered with
their toil. The hands are all aloft; the captain is forward shouting to
the mate in the cross-trees, and I am clinging to one of the stanchions
by the binnacle. The ship is pitching madly, and the waves are toppling
up, sometimes as high as the yard-arm, and then dipping away with a
whirl under our keel that makes every timber in the vessel quiver. The
thunder is roaring like a thousand cannons; and at the moment the sky is
cleft with a stream of fire that glares over the tops of the waves, and
glistens on the wet decks and the spars—lighting up all so plain that I
can see the men’s faces in the main-top, and catch glimpses of the
reefers on the yard-arm, clinging like death; then all is horrible
darkness.
The spray spits angrily against the canvas; the waves crash against the
weather-bow like mountains, the wind howls through the rigging; or, as a
gasket gives way, the sail bellying to leeward, splits like the crack of
a musket. I hear the captain in the lulls, screaming out orders; and the
mate in the rigging, screaming them over, until the lightning comes, and
the thunder, deadening their voices, as if they were chirping sparrows.
In one of the flashes I see a hand upon the yard-arm lose his foothold,
as the ship gives a plunge, but his arms are clinched around the spar.
Before I can see any more, the blackness comes, and the thunder, with a
crash that half-deafens me. I think I hear a low cry, as the mutterings
die away in the distance; and the next flash of lightning, which comes
in an instant, I see upon the top of one of the waves alongside, the
poor reefer who has fallen. The lightning glares upon his face.
But he has caught at a loose bit of running rigging as he fell, and I
see it slipping off the coil upon the deck. I shout madly—man
overboard!—and—catch the rope, when I can see nothing again. The sea is
too high, and the man too heavy for me. I shout, and shout, and shout,
and feel the perspiration starting in great beads from my forehead as
the line slips through my fingers.
Presently the captain feels his way aft, and takes hold with me; and the
cook comes, as the coil is nearly spent, and we pull together upon him.
It is desperate work for the sailor, for the ship is drifting at a
prodigious rate, but he clings like a dying man.
By and by at a flash, we see him on a crest, two oars’ length away from
the vessel.
“Hold on, my man!” shouts the captain.
“For God’s sake, be quick!” says the poor fellow; and he goes down in a
trough of the sea. We pull the harder, and the captain keeps calling to
him to keep up courage, and hold strong. But in the hush we hear him
say—“I can’t hold out much longer—I’m most gone!”
Presently we have brought the man where we can lay hold of him, and are
only waiting for a good lift of the sea to bring him up, when the poor
fellow groans out—“It’s of no use—I can’t—good-by!” And a wave tosses
the end of the rope, clean upon the bulwarks.
At the next flash I see him going down under the water.
I grope my way below, sick and faint at heart; and wedging myself into
my narrow berth, I try to sleep. But the thunder and the tossing of the
ship, and the face of the drowning man, as he said good-by—peering at me
from every corner will not let me sleep.
Afterward, come quiet seas, over which we boom along, leaving in our
track, at night, a broad path of phosphorescent splendor. The sailors
bustle around the decks as if they had lost no comrade; and the voyagers
losing the pallor of fear, look out earnestly for the land.
At length my eyes rest upon the coveted fields of Britain; and in a day
more, the bright face, looking out beside me, sparkles at sight of the
sweet cottages, which lie along the green Essex shores. Broad-sailed
yachts, looking strangely, yet beautifully, glide upon the waters of the
Thames, like swans; black, square-rigged colliers from the Tyne, lie
grouped in sooty cohorts; and heavy, three-decked Indiamen—of which I
had read in story books—drift slowly down with the tide. Dingy steamers,
with white pipes, and with red pipes, whiz past us to the sea, and now
my eye rests on the great palace of Greenwich; I see the wooden-legged
pensioners smoking under the palace walls; and above them upon the
hill—as Heaven is true—that old, fabulous Greenwich, the great center of
schoolboy longitude.
Presently, from under a cloud of murky smoke heaves up the vast dome of
St. Paul’s, and the tall column of the fire, and the white turrets of
London Tower. Our ship glides through the massive dock gates, and is
moored, amid the forest of masts which bears golden fruit for Britons.
That night, I sleep far away from “the old school,” and far away from
the valley of Hillfarm; long, and late, I toss upon my bed, with sweet
visions in my mind, of London Bridge, and Temple Bar, and Jane Shore,
and Falstaff, and Prince Hal, and King Jamie. And when at length I fall
asleep my dreams are very pleasant, but they carry me across the ocean,
away from the ship—away from London—away even from the fair voyager—to
the old oaks, and to the brooks, and—to thy side—sweet Isabel!
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[Illustration]
THE FATHERLAND
THERE is a great contrast between the easy deshabille of the ocean life,
and the prim attire, and conventional spirit of the land. In the first,
there are but few to please, and these few are known, and they know us;
upon the shore, there is a world to humor, and a world of strangers. In
a brilliant drawing-room looking out upon the site of old Charing-Cross,
and upon the one-armed Nelson, standing aloft at his coil of rope, I
take leave of the fair voyager of the sea. Her white negligé has given
place to silks; and the simple careless coiffe of the ocean, is replaced
by the rich dressing of a modiste. Yet her face has the same bloom upon
it; and her eye sparkles, as it seems to me, with a higher pride; and
her little hand has I think a tremulous quiver in it (I am sure my own
has)—as I bid her adieu, and take up the trail of my wanderings into the
heart of England.
Abuse her, as we will—pity her starving peasantry, as we may—smile at
her court pageantry, as much as we like—old England is dear old England
still. Her cottage homes, her green fields, her castles, her blazing
firesides, her church spires are as old as songs; and by song and story,
we inherit them in our hearts. This joyous boast, was, I remember, upon
my lip, as I first trod upon the rich meadow of Runnymede; and recalled
that GREAT CHARTER: wrested from the king, which made the first stepping
stone toward the bounties of our western freedom.
[Illustration]
It is a strange feeling that comes over the Western Saxon, as he strolls
first along the green by-lanes of England, and scents the hawthorn in
its April bloom, and lingers at some quaint stile to watch the rooks
wheeling and cawing around some lofty elm-tops, and traces the carved
gables of some old country mansion that lies in their shadow, and hums
some fragment of charming English poesy, that seems made for the scene.
This is not sight-seeing, nor travel; it is dreaming sweet dreams, that
are fed with the old life of Books.
I wander on, fearing to break the dream, by a swift step; and winding
and rising between the blooming hedgerows, I come presently to the sight
of some sweet valley below me, where a thatched hamlet lies sleeping in
the April sun, as quietly as the dead lie in history; no sound reaches
me save the occasional clink of the smith’s hammer, or the hedgeman’s
bill-hook, or the plowman’s “ho-tup,” from the hills. At evening,
listening to the nightingale, I stroll wearily into some close-nestled
village, that I had seen long ago from a rolling height. It is far away
from the great lines of travel—and the children stop their play to have
a look at me, and the rosy-faced girls peep from behind half opened
doors.
Standing apart, and with a bench on either side of the entrance, is the
inn of the Eagle and the Falcon—which guardian birds, some native Dick
Tinto has pictured upon the swinging signboard at the corner. The
hostess is half ready to embrace me, and treats me like a prince in
disguise. She shows me through the tap-room into a little parlor, with
white curtains, and with neatly framed prints of the old patriarchs.
Here, alone beside a brisk fire, kindled with furze, I watch the white
flame leaping playfully through the black lumps of coal, and enjoy the
best fare of the Eagle and the Falcon. If too late, or too early for her
garden stock, the hostess bethinks herself of some small pot of jelly in
an out-of-the-way cupboard of the house, and setting it temptingly in
her prettiest dish, she coyly slips it upon the white cloth, with a
modest regret that it is no better; and a little evident
satisfaction—that it is so good.
I muse for an hour before the glowing fire, as quiet as the cat that has
come in, to bear me company; and at bedtime, I find sheets, as fresh as
the air of the mountains.
At another time, and many months later, I am walking under a wood of
Scottish firs. It is near nightfall, and the fir tops are swaying, and
sighing hoarsely, in the cool wind of the Northern Highlands. There is
none of the smiling landscape of England about me; and the crags of
Edinburgh and Castle Stirling, and sweet Perth, in its silver valley,
are far to the southward. The larches of Athol and Bruar Water, and that
highland gem—Dunkeld, are passed. I am tired with a morning’s tramp over
Culloden Moor; and from the edge of the wood there stretches before me,
in the cool gray twilight, broad fields of heather. In the middle, there
rise against the night-sky, the turrets of a castle; it is Castle
Cawdor, where King Duncan was murdered by Macbeth.
The sight of it lends a spur to my weary step; and emerging from the
wood, I bound over the springy heather. In an hour, I clamber a broken
wall, and come under the frowning shadows of the castle. The ivy
clambers up here and there, and shakes its uncropped branches, and its
dried berries over the heavy portal. I cross the moat, and my step makes
the chains of the drawbridge rattle. All is kept in the old state; only
in lieu of the warder’s horn, I pull at the warder’s bell. The echoes
ring, and die in the stone courts; but there is no one astir, nor is
there a light at any of the castle windows. I ring again, and the echoes
come, and blend with the rising night wind that sighs around the
turrets, as they sighed that night of murder. I fancy—it must be a
fancy—that I hear an owl scream; I am sure that I hear the crickets cry.
I sit down upon the green bank of the moat; a little dark water lies in
the bottom. The walls rise from it gray and stern in the deepening
shadows. I hum chance passages of Macbeth, listening for the
echoes—echoes from the wall; and echoes from that far-away time, when I
stole the first reading of the tragic story.
“Did’st thou not hear a noise?
I heard the owl scream, and the crickets cry.
Did you not speak?
When?
Now.
As I descended?
Ay.
——Hark!”
And the sharp echo comes back—“Hark!” And at dead of night, in the
thatched cottage under the castle walls, where a dark-faced, Gaelic
woman, in plaid turban, is my hostess, I wake, startled by the wind, and
my trembling lips say involuntarily—“hark!”
Again, three months later, I am in the sweet county of Devon. Its
valleys are like emerald; its threads of waters stretched over the
fields, by their provident husbandry, glisten in the broad glow of
summer, like skeins of silk. A bland old farmer, of the true British
stamp, is my host. On market days he rides over to the old town of
Totness, in a trim, black farmer’s cart; and he wears glossy-topped
boots, and a broad-brimmed white hat. I take a vast deal of pleasure in
listening to his honest, straight-forward talk about the improvements of
the day and the state of the nation. I sometimes get upon one of his
nags, and ride off with him over his fields, or visit the homes of the
laborers, which show their gray roofs, in every charming nook of the
landscape. At the parish church I doze against the high pew backs, as I
listen to the see-saw tones of the drawling curate; and in my half
wakeful moments, the withered holly sprigs (not removed since Easter)
grow upon my vision, into Christmas boughs, and preach sermons to me—of
the days of old.
Sometimes, I wander far over the hills into a neighboring park; and
spend hours on hours under the sturdy oaks, watching the sleek fallow
deer gazing at me with their soft liquid eyes. The squirrels, too, play
above me, with their daring leaps, utterly careless of my presence, and
the pheasants whir away from my very feet.
On one of these random strolls—I remember it very well—when I was idling
along, thinking of the broad reach of water that lay between me and that
old forest home—and beating off the daisy heads with my cane—I heard the
tramp of horses coming up one of the forest avenues. The sound was
unusual, for the family, I had been told, was still in town, and no
right of way lay through the park. There they were, however: I was sure
it must be the family, from the careless way in which they came
sauntering up.
First, there was a noble hound that came bounding toward me—gazed a
moment, and turned to watch the approach of the little cavalcade. Next
was an elderly gentleman mounted upon a spirited hunter, attended by a
boy of some dozen years, who managed his pony with a grace, that is a
part of the English boy’s education. Then followed two older lads, and a
traveling phaëton in which sat a couple of elderly ladies. But what most
drew my attention was a girlish figure, that rode beyond the carriage,
upon a sleek-limbed gray. There was something in the easy grace of her
attitude, and the rich glow that lit up her face—heightened as it was,
by the little black riding cap, relieved with a single flowing
plume—that kept my eye. It was strange, but I thought that I had seen
such a figure before, and such a face, and such an eye; and as I made
the ordinary salutation of a stranger, and caught her smile, I could
have sworn that it was she—my fair companion of the ocean. The truth
flashed upon me in a moment. She was to visit, she had told me, a friend
in the south of England; and this was the friend’s home; and one of the
ladies of the carriage was her mother; and one of the lads, the
schoolboy brother, who had teased her on the sea.
I recall now perfectly her frank manner, as she ungloved her hand to bid
me welcome. I strolled beside them to the steps. Old Devon had suddenly
renewed its beauties for me. I had much to tell her, of the little
outlying nooks, which my wayward feet had led me to: and she—as much to
ask. My stay with the bland old farmer lengthened; and two days’
hospitalities at the Park ran over into three, and four. There was hard
galloping down those avenues; and new strolls, not at all lonely, under
the sturdy oaks. The long summer twilight of England used to find a very
happy fellow lingering on the garden terrace—looking, now at the
rookery, where the belated birds quarreled for a resting place, and now
down the long forest vista, gray with distance, and closed with the
white spire of Madbury church.
English country life gains fast upon one—very fast; and it is not so
easy, as in the drawing-room of Charing Cross, to say—adieu! But it is
said—very sadly said; for God only knows how long it is to last. And as
I rode slowly down toward the lodge after my leave-taking, I turned back
again, and again, and again. I thought I saw her standing still upon the
terrace, though it was almost dark; and I thought—it could hardly have
been an illusion—that I saw something white waving from her hand.
Her name—as if I could forget it—was Caroline; her mother called
her—Carry. I wondered how it would seem for me to call her—Carry! I
tried it—it sounded well. I tried it—over and over—until I came too near
the lodge. There I threw a half crown to the woman who opened the gate
for me. She courtesied low, and said—“God bless you, sir!”
I liked her for it; I would have given a guinea for it: and that
night—whether it was the old woman’s benediction, or the waving scarf
upon the terrace, I do not know—but there was a charm upon my thought,
and my hope, as if an angel had been near me.
It passed away though in my dreams; for I dreamed that I saw the sweet
face of Bella in an English park, and that she wore a black-velvet
riding cap, with a plume; and I came up to her and murmured, very
sweetly, I thought—“Carry, dear Carry!” and she started, looked sadly at
me, and turned away. I ran after her, to kiss her as I did when she sat
upon my mother’s lap, on the day when she came near drowning: I longed
to tell her, as I did then—I _do_ love you. But she turned her tearful
face upon me, I dreamed; and then—I saw no more.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[Illustration]
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[Illustration]
A
ROMAN
GIRL
—I REMEMBER the very words—“_non parlo Francese, Signore_—I do not speak
French, Signor”—said the stout lady—“but my daughter, perhaps, will
understand you.”
And she called out—“_Enrica!—Enrica! venite, subito! c’ è un
forestiere._”
And the daughter came, her light-brown hair falling carelessly over her
shoulders, her rich, hazel eye twinkling and full of life, the color
coming and going upon her transparent cheek, and her bosom heaving with
her quick step. With one hand she put back the scattered locks that had
fallen over her forehead, while she laid the other gently upon the arm
of her mother, and asked in that sweet music of the south—“_cosa volete,
mamma?_”
It was the prettiest picture I had seen in many a day; and this,
notwithstanding I was in Rome, and had come that very morning from the
Palace of Borghese.
The stout lady was my hostess, and Enrica—so fair, so young, so unlike
in her beauty, to other Italian beauties, was my landlady’s daughter.
The house was one of those tall houses—very, very old which stand along
the eastern side of the Corso, looking out upon the Piazzo di Colonna.
The staircases were very tall and dirty, and they were narrow and dark.
Four flights of stone steps led up to the corridor where they lived. A
little trap was in the door; and there was a bell-rope, at the least
touch of which, I was almost sure to hear tripping feet run along the
stone floor within, and then to see the trap thrown slyly back, and
those deep hazel eyes looking out upon me; and then the door would open,
and along the corridor, under the daughter’s guidance (until I had
learned the way), I passed to my Roman home. I was a long time learning
the way.
My chamber looked out upon the Corso, and I could catch from it a
glimpse of the top of the tall column of Antoninus, and of a fragment of
the palace of the governor. My parlor, which was separated from the
apartments of the family by a narrow corridor, looked upon a small
court, hung around with balconies. From the upper one a couple of
black-eyed girls are occasionally looking out, and they can almost read
the title of my book, when I sit by the window. Below are three or four
blooming _ragazze_, who are dark-eyed, and have Roman luxuriance of
hair. The youngest is a friend of our Enrica, and is of course
frequently looking up with all the innocence in the world, to see if
Enrica may be looking out.
Night after night a bright blaze glows upon my hearth, of the alder
faggots which they bring from the Albanian hills. Night after night,
too, the family come in to aid my blundering speech and to enjoy the
rich sparkling of my faggot fire. Little Cesare, a dark-faced Italian
boy, takes up his position with pencil and slate, and draws by the light
of the blaze genii and castles. The old one-eyed teacher of Enrica lays
his snuff box upon the table, and his handkerchief across his lap, and
with his spectacles upon his nose, and his big fingers on the lesson,
runs through the French tenses of the verb _amare_. The father, a
sallow-faced, keen-eyed man, with true Italian visage, sits with his
arms upon the elbows of his chair, and talks of the pope, or of the
weather. A spruce count from the Marches of Ancona, wears a heavy watch
seal, and reads Dante with _furore_. The mother, with arms akimbo, looks
proudly upon her daughter, and counts her, as well she may, a gem among
the Roman beauties.
The table was round, with the fire blazing on one side; there was scarce
room for but three upon the other. Signor _il maestro_ was one—then
Enrica, and next—how well I remember it—came myself. For I could
sometimes help Enrica to a word of French; and far oftener she could
help me to a word of Italian. Her face was rich, and full of feeling; I
used greatly to love to watch the puzzled expressions that passed over
her forehead, as the sense of some hard phrase escaped her; and better
still, to see the happy smile, as she caught at a glance, the thought of
some old scholastic Frenchman, and transferred it into the liquid melody
of her speech.
She had seen just sixteen summers, and only that very autumn was escaped
from the thraldom of a convent, upon the skirts of Rome. She knew
nothing of life, but the life of feeling; and all thoughts of happiness
lay as yet in her childish hopes. It was pleasant to look upon her face;
and it was still more pleasant to listen to that sweet Roman voice. What
a rich flow of superlatives, and endearing diminutives, from those
vermilion lips! Who would not have loved the study, and who would not
have loved—without meaning it—the teacher?
In those days I did not linger long at the tables of lame Pietro in the
Via Condotti: but would hurry back to my little Roman parlor—the fire
was so pleasant! And it was so pleasant to greet Enrica with her mother,
even before the one-eyed _maestro_ had come in; and it was pleasant to
unfold the book between us, and to lay my hand upon the page—a small
page—where hers lay already. And when she pointed wrong, it was pleasant
to correct her—over and over; insisting that her hand should be here,
and not there, and lifting those little fingers from one page, and
putting them down upon the other. And sometimes, half provoked with my
fault-finding she would pat my hand smartly with hers; but when I looked
in her face to know what _that_ could mean, she would meet my eye with
such a kind submission, and half earnest regret, as made me not only
pardon the offense—but tempt me to provoke it again.
Through all the days of Carnival, when I rode pelted with _confetti_,
and pelting back, my eyes used to wander up, from a long way off, to
that tall house upon the Corso, where I was sure to meet, again and
again, those forgiving eyes and that soft brown hair, all gathered under
the little brown sombrero, set off with one pure white plume. And her
hand full of bon-bons, she would shake at me threateningly; and laugh—a
musical laugh—as I bowed my head to the assault, and recovering from the
shower of missiles, would turn to throw my stoutest bouquet at her
balcony. At night I would bear home to the Roman parlor my best trophy
of the day, as a guerdon for Enrica; and Enrica would be sure to render
in acknowledgment, some carefully hidden flowers, the prettiest that her
beauty had won.
[Illustration]
Sometimes upon those Carnival nights, she arrays herself in the costume
of the Albanian water-carriers; and nothing, one would think, could be
prettier than the laced crimson jacket, and the strange headgear with
its trinkets, and the short skirts leaving to view as delicate an ankle
as could be found in Rome. Upon another night, she glides into my little
parlor, as we sit by the blaze, in a close velvet bodice, and with a
Swiss hat caught up by a looplet of silver, and adorned with a
full-blown rose—nothing you think could be prettier than this. Again, in
one of her girlish freaks, she robes herself like a nun; and with the
heavy black serge, for dress, and the funereal veil—relieved only by the
plain white ruffle of her cap—you wish she were always a nun. But the
wish vanishes, when you see her in a pure white muslin, with a wreath of
orange blossoms about her forehead, and a single white rose-bud in her
bosom.
Upon the little balcony Enrica keeps a pot or two of flowers, which
bloom all winter long; and each morning I find upon my table a fresh
rosebud; each night, I bear back for thank-offering the prettiest
bouquet that can be found in the Via Conditti. The quiet fireside
evenings come back; in which my hand seeks its wonted place upon her
book; and my other _will_ creep around upon the back of Enrica’s chair,
and Enrica _will_ look indignant—and then all forgiveness.
One day I received a large packet of letters—ah, what luxury to lie back
in my big armchair, there before the crackling faggots, with the
pleasant rustle of that silken dress beside me, and run over a second,
and a third time, those mute paper missives, which bore to me over so
many miles of water, the words of greeting, and of love. It would be
worth traveling to the shores of the Ægean, to find one’s heart
quickened into such life as the ocean letters will make. Enrica threw
down her book, and wondered what could be in them—and snatched one from
my hand, and looked with sad, but vain intensity over that strange
scrawl. What can it be? said she; and she laid her finger upon the
little half line—“Dear Paul.”
I told her it was—“_Caro mio_.”
Enrica laid it upon her lap and looked in my face; “It is from your
mother?” said she.
“No,” said I.
“From your sister?” said she.
“Alas, no!”
“_Il vostro fratello, dunque?_”
“_Nemmeno_”—said I, “not from a brother either.”
She handed me the letter, and took up her book; and presently she laid
the book down again; and looked at the letter, and then at me—and went
out.
She did not come in again that evening; in the morning, there was no
rose-bud on my table. And when I came at night, with a bouquet from
Pietro’s at the corner, she asked me—“who had written my letter?”
“A very dear friend,” said I.
“A lady?” continued she.
“A lady,” said I.
“Keep this bouquet for her,” said she, and put it in my hands.
“But, Enrica, she has plenty of flowers; she lives among them, and each
morning her children gather them by scores to make garlands of.”
Enrica put her fingers within my hand to take again the bouquet; and for
a moment I held both fingers and flowers.
The flowers slipped out first.
I had a friend at Rome in that time, who afterward died between Ancona
and Corinth; we were sitting one day upon a block of tufa in the middle
of the Coliseum, looking up at the shadows which the waving shrubs upon
the southern wall cast upon the ruined arcades within, and listening to
the chirping sparrows that lived upon the wreck—when he said to me
suddenly—“Paul, you love the Italian girl.”
“She is very beautiful,” said I.
“I think she is beginning to love you,” said he soberly.
“She has a very warm heart, I believe,” said I.
“Ay,” said he.
“But her feelings are those of a girl,” continued I.
“They are not,” said my friend; and he laid his hand upon my knee, and
left off drawing diagrams with his cane; “I have seen, Paul, more than
you of this southern nature. The Italian girl of fifteen is a woman; an
impassioned, sensitive, tender creature—yet still a woman; you are
loving—if you love—a full-grown heart; she is loving—if she loves—as a
ripe heart should.”
“But I do not think that either is wholly true,” said I.
“Try it,” said he, setting his cane down firmly, and looking in my face.
“How?” returned I.
“I have three weeks upon my hands,” continued he. “Go with me into the
Appenines; leave your home in the Corso, and see if you can forget in
the air of the mountains, your bright-eyed Roman girl.”
I was pondering for an answer, when he went on: “It is better so; love
as you might, that southern nature with all its passion, is not the
material to build domestic happiness upon; nor is your northern
habit—whatever you may think at your time of life, the one to cherish
always those passionate sympathies which are bred by this atmosphere,
and their scenes.”
One moment my thought ran to my little parlor, and to that fairy figure,
and to that sweet angel face; and then, like lightning it traversed
oceans, and fed upon the old ideal of home, and brought images to my eye
of lost—dead ones, who seemed to be stirring on heavenly wings, in that
soft Roman atmosphere, with greeting, and with beckoning.
—“I will go with you,” said I.
The father shrugged his shoulders, when I told him I was going to the
mountains, and wanted a guide. His wife said it would be cold upon the
hills, for the winter was not ended. Enrica said it would be warm in the
valleys, for the spring was coming. The old man drummed with his fingers
on the table, and shrugged his shoulders again, but said nothing.
My landlady said I could not ride. Cesare said it would be hard walking.
Enrica asked papa, if there would be any danger. And again the old man
shrugged his shoulders. Again I asked him, if he knew a man who would
serve us as a guide among the Appenines; and finding me determined, he
shrugged his shoulders, and said he would find one the next day.
As I passed out at evening, on my way to the Piazzo near the Monte
Citorio, where stand the carriages that go out to Tivoli, Enrica glided
up to me, and whispered—“_Ah, mi dispiace tanto—tanto, Signor!_”
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[Illustration]
THE APPENINES
I SHOOK her hand, and in an hour afterward was passing, with my friend,
by the Trajan forum, toward the deep shadow of San Maggiore, which lay
in our way to the mountains. At sunset we were wandering over the ruin
of Adrian’s villa, which lies upon the first step of the Appenines.
Behind us, the vesper bells of Tivoli were sounding, and their echoes
floating sweetly under the broken arches; before us, stretching all the
way to the horizon, lay the broad Campagna; while in the middle of its
great waves, turned violet-colored by the hues of twilight, rose the
grouped towers of the Eternal City; and lording it among them all, like
a giant, stood the black dome of St. Peter’s.
Day after day we stretched on over the mountains, leaving the Campagna
far behind us. Rocks and stones, huge and ragged, lie strewn over the
surface right and left; deep yawning valleys lie in the shadows of
mountains, that loom up thousands of feet, bearing, perhaps, upon their
tops old castellated towns, perched like birds’ nests. But mountain and
valley are blasted and scarred; the forests even are not continuous, but
struggle for a livelihood; as if the brimstone fire that consumed
Nineveh, had withered their energies. Sometimes our eyes rest on a great
white scar of the broken calcareous rock, on which the moss cannot grow,
and the lizards dare not creep. Then we see a cliff beetling far aloft,
with the shining walls of some monastery of holy men glistening at its
base. The wayside brooks do not seem to be the gentle offspring of
bountiful hills, but the remnants of something greater, whose greatness
has expired—they are turbid rills, rolling in the bottom of yawning
chasms. Even the shrubs have a look, as if the Volscian war-horse had
trampled them down to death; and the primroses and the violets by the
mountain path alone look modestly beautiful amid the ruin.
Sometimes we loiter in a valley, above which the goats are browsing on
the cliffs, and listen to the sweet pastoral pipes of the Appenines. We
see the shepherds in their rough skin coats, high over our heads. Their
herds are feeding, as it seems, on ledges of a hand’s breadth. The sweet
sound floats and lingers in the soft atmosphere, without a breath of
wind to bear it away, or a noise to disturb its melody. The shadows
slant more and more as we linger; and the kids begin to group together.
And as we wander on, through the stunted vineyard in the bottom of the
valley, the sweet sound flows after us, like a river of song—nor leaves
us, till the kids have vanished in the distance, and the cliffs
themselves, become one dark wall of shadow.
At night, in some little meager mountain town, we stroll about in the
narrow passways, or wander under the heavy arches of the mountain
churches. Shuffling old women grope in and out; dim lamps glimmer
faintly at the side altars, shedding horrid light upon painted images of
the dying Christ. Or, perhaps, to make the old pile more solemn, there
stands some bier in the middle, with a figure or two kneeling at the
foot, and ragged boys move stealthily under the shadows of the columns.
Presently comes a young priest, in black robes, and lights a taper at
the foot, and another at the head—for there is a dead man on the bier;
and the parched, thin features look awfully under the yellow light of
the tapers, in the gloom of the great building. It is very, very damp in
the church, and the body of the dead man seems to make the air heavy, so
we go out into the starlight again.
In the morning, the western slopes wear broad shadows, and the frosts
crumple, on the herbage, to our tread: across the valley, it is like
summer; and the birds—for there are songsters in the Appenines—make
summer music. Their notes blend softly with the faint sounds of some
far-off convent bell, tolling for morning mass, and strike the frosted
and shaded mountain side, with a sweet echo. As we toil on, and the
shaded hills begin to glow in the sunshine, we pass a train of mules,
loaded with wine. We have seen them an hour before—little black dots
twining along the white streak of footway upon the mountain above us. We
lost them as we began to ascend, until a wild snatch of an Appenine song
turned our eyes up, and there, straggling through the brush, they
appeared again; a foot slip would have brought the mules and wine casks
rolling upon us. We keep still, holding by the brushwood, to let them
pass. An hour more, and we see them toiling slowly—mule and muleteer—big
dots and little dots—far down where we have been before. The sun is hot
and smoking on them in the bare valleys; the sun is hot and smoking on
the hill side, where we are toiling over the broken stones. I thought of
little Enrica, when she said: “the spring was coming!”
Time and again we sit down together—my friend and I—upon some fragment
of rock, under the broad-armed chestnuts, that fringe the lower skirts
of the mountains, and talk through the hottest of the noon, of the
warriors of Sylla, and of the Sabine woman—but oftener—of the pretty
peasantry, and of the sweet-faced Roman girl. He, too, tells me of his
life and loves, and of the hopes that lie misty and grand before him:
little did we think that in so few years, his hopes would be gone, and
his body lying low in the Adriatic, or tossed with the drift upon the
Dalmatian shores! Little did I think that here under the ancestral
wood—still a wishful and blundering mortal, I should be gathering up the
shreds that memory can catch of our Appenine wandering, and be weaving
them into my bachelor dreams.
Away again upon the quick wing of thought, I follow our steps, as after
weeks of wandering, we gained once more a height that overlooked the
Campagna—and saw the sun setting on its edge, throwing into relief the
dome of St. Peter’s, and blazing in a red stripe upon the waters of the
Tiber.
Below us was Palestrina—the Præneste of the poets and philosophers; the
dwelling place of—I know not how many—emperors. We went straggling
through the dirty streets, searching for some tidy-looking osteria. At
length we found an old lady who could give us a bed, but no dinner. My
friend dropped in a chair disheartened. A snub-looking priest came out
to condole with us.
And could Palestrina—the _frigidum Præneste_ of Horace, which had
entertained over and over, the noblest of the Colonna, and the most
noble Adrian—could Palestrina not furnish a dinner to a tired traveler?
“_Si, Signore_,” said the snub-looking priest.
“_Si, Signorino_,” said the neat old lady; and away we went upon a new
search. And we found bright and happy faces; especially the little girl
of twelve years, who came close by me as I ate, and afterward strung a
garland of marigolds, and put it on my head. Then there was a
bright-eyed boy of fourteen, who wrote his name, and those of the whole
family, upon a fly-leaf of my book; and a pretty, saucy-looking girl of
sixteen, who peeped a long time from behind the kitchen door, but before
the evening was gone, she was in the chair beside me, and had written
her name—Carlotta—upon the first leaf of my journal.
When I woke, the sun was up. From my bed I could see over the town, the
thin, lazy mists lying on the old camp-ground of Pyrrhus; beyond it were
the mountains, which hide Frascati, and Monte-Cavi. There was old
Colonna, too, that—
Like an eagle’s nest, hangs on the crest
Of purple Appenine.
As the mist lifted, and the sun brightened the plain, I could see the
road, along which Sylla came fuming and maddened after the Mithridaten
war. I could see, as I half dreamed and half slept, the frightened
peasantry whooping to their long-horned cattle, as they drove them on
tumultuously up through the gateways of the town; and women with babies
in their arms, and children scowling with fear and hate—all trooping
fast and madly, to escape the hand of the Avenger; alas! ineffectually,
for Sylla murdered them, and pulled down the walls of their town—the
proud Palestrina.
I had a queer fancy of seeing the nobles of Rome, led on by Stefano
Colonna, grouping along the plain, their corslets flashing out of the
mists—their pennants dashing above it—coming up fast, and still as the
wind, to make the Mural Præneste, their stronghold against the Last of
the Tribunes. And strangely mingling fiction with fact, I saw the
brother of Walter de Montreal, with his noisy and bristling army, crowd
over the Campagna, and put up his white tents, and hang out his showy
banners, on the grassy knolls that lay nearest my eye.
—But the knolls were all quiet; there was not so much as a strolling
_contadino_ on them, to whistle a mimic fife-note. A little boy from the
inn went with me upon the hill, to look out upon the town and the wide
sea of land below; and whether it was the soft, warm April sun, or the
gray ruins below me, or whether the wonderful silence of the scene, or
some wild gush of memory, I do not know, but something made me sad.
“_Perché cosi penseroso!_—why so sad” said the quick-eyed boy. “The air
is beautiful, the scene is beautiful; Signore is young, why is he sad?”
“And is Giovanni never sad?” said I.
“_Quasi mai_,” said the boy, “and if I could travel as Signore, and see
other countries, I would be always gay.”
“May you be always that!” said I.
The good wish touched him; he took me by the arms, and said—“Go home
with me, Signore; you were happy at the inn last night; go back, and we
will make you gay again!”
—If we could be always boys!
I thanked him in a way that saddened him. We passed out shortly after
from the city gates, and strode on over the rolling plain. Once or twice
we turned back to look at the rocky heights beneath which lay the ruined
town of Palestrina—a city that defied Rome—that had a king before a
plowshare had touched the Capitoline, or the Janiculan hill! The ivy was
covering up richly the Etruscan foundations, and there was a quiet over
the whole place. The smoke was rising straight into the sky from the
chimney tops; a peasant or two were going along the road with donkeys;
beside this, the city was, to all appearance, a dead city. And it seemed
to me that an old monk, whom I could see with my glass, near the little
chapel above the town, might be going to say mass for the soul of the
dead city.
And afterward, when we came near to Rome, and passed under the temple
tomb of Metella—my friend said—“And will you go back now to your home?
or will you set off with me to-morrow for Ancona?”
“At least, I must say adieu,” returned I.
“God speed you!” said he, and we parted upon the Piazza di Venezia—he
for his last mass at St. Peter’s, and I for the tall house upon the
Corso.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[Illustration]
ENRICA
I HEAR her glancing feet the moment I have tinkled the bell; and there
she is, with her brown hair gathered into braids, and her eyes full of
joy and greeting. And as I walk with the mother to the window to look at
some pageant that is passing, she steals up behind and passes her arm
around me, with a quick electric motion and a gentle pressure of welcome
that tells more than a thousand words.
It is a pageant of death that is passing below. Far down the street we
see heads thrust out of the windows and standing in bold relief against
the red torchlight of the moving train. Below dim figures are gathering
on the narrow side ways to look at the solemn spectacle. A hoarse chant
rises louder and louder, and half dies in the night air, and breaks out
again with new and deep bitterness.
Now the first torchlight under us shines plainly on faces in the windows
and on the kneeling women in the street. First come old retainers of the
dead one, bearing long blazing flambeaux. Then comes a company of
priests, two by two, bareheaded, and every second one with a lighted
torch, and all are chanting.
Next is a brotherhood of friars in brown cloaks, with sandaled feet, and
the red light streams full upon their grizzled heads. They add their
heavy guttural voices to the chant and pass slowly on.
Then comes a company of priests in white muslin capes and black robes
and black caps, bearing books in their hands, wide open, and lit up
plainly by the torches of churchly servitors, who march beside them; and
from the books the priests chant loud and solemnly. Now the music is
loudest, and the friars take up the dismal notes from the white-capped
priests, and the priests before catch them from the brown-robed friars,
and mournfully the sound rises up between the tall buildings, into the
blue night sky that lies between Heaven and Rome.
—“_Vede—Vede!_” says Cesare; and in a blaze of the red torch fire comes
the bier, borne on the necks of stout friars; and on the bier is the
body of a dead man, habited like a priest. Heavy plumes of black wave at
each corner.
—“Hist,” says my landlady.
The body is just under us. Enrica crosses herself; her smile is for the
moment gone. Cesare’s boy-face is grown suddenly earnest. We could see
the pale youthful features of the dead man. The glaring flambeaux sent
their flaunting streams of unearthly light over the wan visage of the
sleeper. A thousand eyes were looking on him, but his face, careless of
them all, was turned up, straight toward the stars.
Still the chant rises, and companies of priests follow the bier, like
those who had gone before. Friars, in brown cloaks, and prelates and
Carmelites come after—all with torches. Two by two—their voices growing
hoarse—they tramp and chant.
For a while the voices cease, and you can hear the rustling of their
robes, and their footfalls, as if your ear was to the earth. Then the
chant rises again, as they glide on in a wavy shining line, and rolls
back over the death-train, like the howling of a wind in winter.
As they pass the faces vanish from the windows. The kneeling women upon
the pavement rise up, mindful of the paroxysm of Life once more. The
groups in the door-ways scatter. But their low voices do not drown the
voices of the host of mourners and their ghost-like music.
I look long upon the blazing bier, trailing under the deep shadows of
the Roman palaces, and at the stream of torches, winding like a
glittering, scaled serpent. It is a priest—say I to my landlady as she
closes the window.
“No, signor—a young man never married, and so, by virtue of his
condition, they put on him the priest-robes.”
“So I,” says the pretty Enrica—“if I should die, would be robed in
white, as you saw me on a carnival night, and be followed by nuns for
sisters.”
“A long way off may it be, Enrica.”
She took my hand in hers and pressed it. An Italian girl does not fear
to talk of death, and we were talking of it still as we walked back to
my little parlor—my hand all the time in hers—and sat down by the blaze
of my fire.
It was holy week; never had Enrica looked more sweetly than in that
black dress—under that long, dark veil of the days of Lent. Upon the
broad pavement of St. Peter’s—where the people, flocking by thousands,
made only side groups about the altars of the vast temple—I have watched
her kneeling beside her mother, her eyes bent down, her lips moving
earnestly, and her whole figure tremulous with deep emotion. Wandering
around among the halberdiers of the pope, and the court coats of
Austria, and the barefooted pilgrims with sandal, shell and staff, I
would sidle back again to look upon that kneeling figure, and, leaning
against the huge columns of the church, would dream—even as I am
dreaming now.
At nightfall I urged my way into the Sistine Chapel; Enrica is beside
me—looking with me upon the gaunt figures of the Judgment of Angelo.
They are chanting the _Miserere_. The twelve candlesticks by the altar
are put out one by one as the service continues. The sun has gone down,
and only the red glow of twilight steals through the dusky windows.
There is a pause, and a brief reading from a red-cloaked cardinal, and
all kneel down. _She_ kneels beside me, and the sweet, mournful flow of
the _Miserere_ begins again, growing in force and depth, till the whole
chapel rings and the balcony of the choir trembles; then it subsides
again into the low, soft wail of a single voice, so prolonged, so
tremulous and so real that the heart aches and the tears start—for
Christ is dead!
—Lingering yet, the wail dies not wholly, but just as it seemed expiring
it is caught up by another and stronger voice that carries it on,
plaintive as ever; nor does it stop with this, for just as you looked
for silence three voices more begin the lament—sweet, touching, mournful
voices—and bear it up to a full cry, when the whole choir catch its
burden and make the lament change into the wailing of a multitude—wild,
shrill, hoarse—with swift chants intervening, as if agony had given
force to anguish. Then, sweetly, slowly, voice by voice, note by note,
the wailings sink into the low, tender moan of a single
singer—faltering, tremulous, as if tears checked the utterance, and
swelling out, as if despair sustained it.
It was dark in the chapel when we went out; voices were low. Enrica said
nothing—I could say nothing.
I was to leave Rome after Easter; I did not love to speak of it—nor to
think of it. Rome—that old city, with all its misery, and its fallen
state, and its broken palaces of the empire—grows upon one’s heart. The
fringing shrubs of the coliseum, flaunting their blossoms at the tall
beggar-men in cloaks who grub below—the sun glimmering over the mossy
pile of the House of Nero—the sweet sunsets from the Pincian, that make
the broad pine-tops of the Janiculan stand sharp and dark against a sky
of gold, can not easily be left behind. And Enrica, with her
silver-brown hair, and the silken fillet that bound it, and her deep
hazel eyes, and her white, delicate fingers, and the blue veins chasing
over her fair temples—ah, Easter is too near!
But it comes, and passes with the glory of St. Peter’s—lighted from top
to bottom. With Enrica, I saw it from the Ripetta, as it loomed up in
the distance, like a city on fire.
The next day I bring home my last bunch of flowers, and with it a little
richly-chased Roman ring. No fire blazes on the hearth, but they are all
there. Warm days have come, and the summer air, even now, hangs heavy
with fever in the hollows of the plain.
I heard them stirring early on the morning of which I was to go away. I
do not think I slept very well myself—nor very late. Never did Enrica
look more beautiful—never. All her carnival robes and the sad drapery of
the FRIDAY OF CRUCIFIXION could not so adorn her beauty as that neat
morning dress and that simple rosebud she wore upon her bosom. She gave
it to me—the last—with a trembling hand. I did not, for I could not,
thank her. She knew it; and her eyes were full.
The old man kissed my cheek—it was the Roman custom, but the custom did
not extend to the Roman girls; at least not often. As I passed down the
Corso I looked back at the balcony, where she stood in the time of
Carnival in the brown sombrero with the white plume. I knew she would be
there now; and there she was. My eyes dwelt upon the vision, very loth
to leave it; and after my eyes had lost it, my heart clung to it—there,
where my memory clings now.
At noon the carriage stopped upon the hills, toward Soracte, that
overlooked Rome. There was a stunted pine tree grew a little way from
the road, and I sat down under it—for I wished no dinner—and I looked
back with strange tumult of feeling upon the sleeping city, with the
gray, billowy sea of the Campagna lying around it.
I seemed to see Enrica, the Roman girl, in that morning dress, with her
brown hair in its silken fillet; but the rosebud that was in her bosom
was now in mine. Her silvery voice, too, seemed to float past me,
bearing snatches of Roman songs; but the songs were sad and broken.
—After all, this is sad vanity! thought I; and yet if I had espied then
some returning carriage going down toward Rome, I will not say—but that
I should have hailed it, and taken a place, and gone back, and to this
day, perhaps, have lived at Rome.
But the vetturino called me; the coach was ready; I gave one more look
toward the dome that guarded the sleeping city, and then we galloped
down the mountain, on the road that lay toward Perugia and Lake
Thrasimene.
—Sweet Enrica! art thou living yet? Or hast thou passed away to that
Silent Land where the good sleep, and the beautiful?
The visions of the past fade. The morning breeze has died upon the
meadow; the Bob-o’-Lincoln sits swaying on the willow tufts—singing no
longer. The trees lean to the brook; but the shadows fall straight and
dense upon the silver stream.
NOON has broken into the middle sky, and MORNING is gone.
[Illustration]
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[Illustration]
II
NOON
THE noon is short; the sun never loiters on the meridian, nor does the
shadow on the old dial by the garden stay long at XII. The present, like
the noon, is only a point, and a point so fine that it is not measurable
by the grossness of action. Thought alone is delicate enough to tell the
breadth of the present.
The past belongs to God; the present only is ours. And, short as it is,
there is more in it, and of it, than we can well manage. That man who
can grapple it, and measure it, and fill it with his purpose, is doing a
man’s work; none can do more; but there are thousands who do less.
Short as it is, the present is great and strong—as much stronger than
the past as fire than ashes, or as death than the grave. The noon sun
will quicken vegetable life that in the morning was dead. It is hot and
scorching; I feel it now upon my head; but it does not scorch and heat
like the bewildering present. There are no oak leaves to interrupt the
rays of the burning now. Its shadows do not fall east or west—like the
noon, the shade it makes falls straight from sky to earth—straight from
heaven to hell!
Memory presides over the past; Action presides over the present. The
first lives in a rich temple hung with glorious trophies and lined with
tombs; the other has no shrine but Duty, and it walks the earth like a
spirit.
—I called my dog to me, and we shared together the meal that I had
brought away at sunrise from the mansion under the elms; and now Carlo
is gnawing at the bone that I have thrown to him, and I stroll dreamily
in the quiet noon atmosphere upon that grassy knoll under the oaks.
Noon in the country is very still; the birds do not sing; the workmen
are not in the field; the sheep lay their noses to the ground, and the
herds stand in pools under shady trees, lashing their sides, but
otherwise motionless. The mills upon the brook, far above, have ceased
for an hour their labor; and the stream softens its rustle and sinks
away from the sedgy banks. The heat plays upon the meadow in noiseless
waves, and the beech leaves do not stir.
Thought, I said, was the only measure of the present; and the stillness
of noon breeds thought; and my thought brings up the old companions and
stations them in the domain of now. Thought ranges over the world, and
brings up hopes, and fears, and resolves, to measure the burning now.
Joy, and grief, and purpose, blending in my thought, give breadth to the
Present.
—Where—thought I—is little Isabel now? Where is Lilly—where is Ben?
Where is Leslie—where is my old teacher? Where is my chum, who played
such rare tricks—where is the black-eyed Jane? Where is that sweet-faced
girl whom I parted with upon that terrace looking down upon the old
spire of Modbury church? Where are my hopes—where my purposes—where my
sorrows?
I care not who you are—but if you bring such thought to measure the
present, the present will seem broad; and it will be sultry at noon—and
make a fever of Now.
[Illustration]
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[Illustration]
EARLY FRIENDS
Where are they?
WHERE are they? I can not sit now, as once, upon the edge of the brook
hour after hour, flinging off my line and hook to the nibbling roach,
and reckon it great sport. There is no girl with auburn ringlets to sit
beside me and to play upon the bank. The hours are shorter than they
were then; and the little joys that furnished boyhood till the heart was
full can fill it no longer. Poor Tray is dead long ago, and he can not
swim into the pools for the floating sticks; nor can I sport with him
hour after hour and think it happiness. The mound that covers his grave
is sunken, and the trees that shaded it are broken and mossy.
Little Lilly is grown into a woman, and is married; and she has another
little Lilly, with flaxen hair, she says—looking as _she_ used to look.
I dare say the child is pretty; but it is not my Lilly. She has a little
boy, too, that she calls Paul—a chubby rogue, she writes, and as
mischievous as ever I was. God bless the boy!
Ben—who would have liked to ride in the coach that carried me away to
school—has had a great many rides since then—rough rides, and hard ones,
over the road of life. He does not rake up the falling leaves for
bonfires, as he did once; he is grown a man, and is fighting his way
somewhere in our western world, to the short-lived honors of time. He
was married not long ago; his wife I remembered as one of my playmates
at my first school; she was beautiful, but fragile as a leaf. She died
within a year of their marriage. Ben was but four years my senior; but
this grief has made him ten years older. He does not say it, but his eye
and his figure tell it.
The nurse who put the purse in my hand that dismal morning is grown a
feeble old woman. She was over fifty then; she may well be seventy now.
She did not know my voice when I went to see her the other day, nor did
she know my face at all. She repeated the name when I told it to
her—Paul, Paul—she did not remember any Paul, except a little boy, a
long while ago.
—“To whom you gave a purse when he went away, and told him to say
nothing to Lilly or to Ben?”
—“Yes, that Paul”—says the old woman exultingly—“do you know him?”
And when I told her—“She would not have believed it!” But she did, and
took hold of my hand again (for she was blind), and then smoothed down
the plaits of her apron, and jogged her cap strings, to look tidy in the
presence of “the gentleman.” And she told me long stories about the old
house and how other people came in afterward; and she called me “sir”
sometimes, and sometimes “Paul.” But I asked her to say only Paul; she
seemed glad for this, and talked easier, and went on to tell of my old
playmates, and how we used to ride the pony—poor Jacko!—and how we
gathered nuts—such heaping piles; and how we used to play at fox and
geese through the long winter evenings; and how my poor mother would
smile—but here I asked her to stop. She could not have gone on much
longer, for I believe she loved our house and people better than she
loved her own.
As for my uncle, the cold, silent man, who lived with his books in the
house upon the hill, and who used to frighten me sometimes with his
look, he grew very feeble after I had left, and almost crazed. The
country people said that he was mad; and Isabel, with her sweet heart,
clung to him, and would lead him out, when his step tottered, to the
seat in the garden, and read to him out of the books he loved to hear.
And sometimes, they told me, she would read to him some letters that I
had written to Lilly or to Ben, and ask him if he remembered Paul, who
saved her from drowning under the tree in the meadow? But he could only
shake his head and mutter something about how old and feeble he had
grown.
They wrote me afterward that he died, and was buried in a far-away
place, where his wife once lived, and where he now sleeps beside her.
Isabel was sick with grief, and came to live for a time with Lilly; but
when they wrote me last she had gone back to her old home—where Tray was
buried—where we had played together so often through the long days of
summer.
I was glad I should find her there when I came back. Lilly and Ben were
both living nearer to the city when I landed from my long journey over
the seas; but still I went to find Isabel first. Perhaps I had heard so
much oftener from the others that I felt less eager to see them; or
perhaps I wanted to save my best visits to the last; or perhaps (I did
think it), perhaps I loved Isabel better than them all.
So I went into the country, thinking all the way how she must have
changed since I left. She must be now nineteen or twenty; and then her
grief must have saddened her face somewhat; but I thought I should like
her all the better for that. Then perhaps she would not laugh and tease
me, but would be quieter, and wear a sweet smile—so calm and beautiful,
I thought. Her figure, too, must have grown more elegant, and she would
have more dignity in her air.
I shuddered a little at this, for, I thought, she will hardly think so
much of me then; perhaps she will have seen those whom she likes a great
deal better. Perhaps she will not like me at all; yet I knew very well
that I should like her.
I had gone up almost to the house; I had passed the stream where we
fished on that day, many years before; and I thought that now, since she
was grown to womanhood, I should never sit with her there again, and
surely never drag her as I did out of the water, and never chafe her
little hands, and never, perhaps, kiss her, as I did when she sat upon
my mother’s lap—oh, no—no—no!
I saw where we buried Tray, but the old slab was gone; there was no
ribbon there now. I thought that at least Isabel would have replaced the
slab, but it was a wrong thought. I trembled when I went up to the door,
for it flashed upon me that perhaps Isabel was married. I could not tell
why she should not; but I knew it would make me uncomfortable to hear
that she had.
There was a tall woman who opened the door; she did not know me, but I
recognized her as one of the old servants. I asked after the housekeeper
first, thinking I would surprise Isabel. My heart fluttered somewhat,
thinking that she might step in suddenly herself—or perhaps that she
might have seen me coming up the hill. But even then I thought she would
hardly know me.
Presently the housekeeper came in, looking very grave; she asked if the
gentleman wished to see her.
The gentleman did wish it, and she sat down on one side of the fire—for
it was autumn, and the leaves were falling, and the November winds were
very chilly.
—Shall I tell her—thought I—who I am, or ask at once for Isabel? I tried
to ask, but it was hard for me to call her name; it was very strange,
but I could not pronounce it at all.
“Who, sir?” said the housekeeper, in a tone so earnest that I rose at
once and crossed over and took her hand. “You know me,” said I—“you
surely remember Paul?”
She started with surprise, but recovered herself and resumed the same
grave manner. I thought I had committed some mistake, or been in some
way cause of offense. I called her madame, and asked for—Isabel.
She turned pale, terribly pale. “Bella?” said she.
“Yes. Bella.”
“Sir—Bella is dead!”
I dropped into my chair. I said nothing. The housekeeper—bless her kind
heart!—slipped noiselessly out. My hands were over my eyes. The winds
were sighing outside, and the clock ticking mournfully within.
I did not sob, nor weep, nor utter any cry.
The clock ticked mournfully, and the winds were sighing; but I did not
hear them any longer; there was a tempest raging within me that would
have drowned the voice of thunder.
It broke at length in a long, deep sigh—“Oh, God!”—said I. It may have
been a prayer—it was not an imprecation.
Bella—sweet Bella, was dead! It seemed as if with her half the world
were dead—every bright face darkened—every sunshine blotted out—every
flower withered—every hope extinguished!
I walked out into the air and stood under the trees where we had played
together with poor Tray—where Tray lay buried. But it was not Tray I
thought of, as I stood there, with the cold wind playing through my hair
and my eyes filling with tears. How could she die? Why _was_ she gone?
Was it really true? Was Isabel indeed dead—in her coffin—buried? Then
why should anybody live? What was there to live for, now that Bella was
gone?
Ah, what a gap in the world is made by the death of those we love! It is
no longer whole, but a poor half-world, that swings uneasy on its axis
and makes you dizzy with the clatter of its wreck!
The housekeeper told me all—little by little, as I found calmness to
listen. She had been dead a month; Lilly was with her through it all;
she died sweetly, without pain, and without fear—what can angels fear?
She had spoken often of “Cousin Paul;” she had left a little packet for
him, but it was not there; she had given it into Lilly’s keeping.
Her grave, the housekeeper told me, was only a little way off from her
home—beside the grave of a brother who died long years before. I went
there that evening. The mound was high and fresh. The sods had not
closed together, and the dry leaves caught in the crevices and gave a
ragged and a terrible look to the grave. The next day I laid them all
smooth—as we had once laid them on the grave of Tray; I clipped the long
grass, and set a tuft of blue violets at the foot, and watered it all
with—tears. The homestead, the trees, the fields, the meadows, in the
windy November, looked dismally. I could not like them again—I liked
nothing but the little mound that I had dressed over Bella’s grave.
There she sleeps now—the sleep of death!
[Illustration]
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[Illustration]
SCHOOL REVISITED
THE old school was there still—with the high cupola upon it, and the
long galleries, with the sleeping rooms opening out on either side, and
the corner one, where I slept. But the boys are not there, nor the old
teachers. They have plowed up the play-ground to plant corn, and the
apple tree with the low limb, that made our gymnasium, is cut down.
I was there only a little time ago. It was on a Sunday. One of the old
houses of the village had been fashioned into a tavern, and it was there
I stopped. But I strolled by the old one, and looked into the bar-room,
where I used to gaze with wonder upon the enormous pictures of wild
animals which heralded some coming menagerie. There was just such a
picture hanging still, and two or three advertisements of sheriffs, and
a little bill of a “horse stolen,” and—as I thought—the same brown
pitcher on the edge of the bar. I was sure it was the same great
wood-box that stood by the fireplace, and the same whip and greatcoat
hung in the corner.
I was not in so gay costume as I once thought I would be wearing when a
man; I had nothing better than a rusty shooting jacket; but even with
this I was determined to have a look about the church, and see if I
could trace any of the faces of the old times. They had sadly altered
the building; they had cut out its long galleries and its old-fashioned
square pews, and filled it with narrow boxes, as they do in the city.
The pulpit was not so high or grand, and it was covered over with the
work of the cabinet-makers.
I missed, too, the old preacher, whom we all feared so much, and in
place of him was a jaunty-looking man, whom I thought I would not be at
all afraid to speak to, or, if need be, to slap on the shoulder. And
when I did meet him after church, I looked him in the eye as boldly as a
lion—what a change was that from the school days!
Here and there I could detect about the church some old farmer by the
stoop in his shoulders, or by a particular twist in his nose, and one or
two young fellows who used to storm into the gallery in my school days
in very gay jackets, dressed off with ribbons—which we thought was
astonishing heroism, and admired accordingly—were now settled away into
fathers of families, and looked as demure and peaceable at the head of
their pews, with a white-headed boy or two between them and their wives,
as if they had been married all their days.
There was a stout man, too, with a slight limp in his gait, who used to
work on harnesses, and strap our skates, and who I always thought would
have made a capital Vulcan—he stalked up the aisle past me, as if I had
my skates strapped at his shop only yesterday.
The bald-pated shoemaker, who never kept his word, and who worked in the
brick shop, and who had a son called Theodore—which we all thought a
very pretty name for a shoemaker’s son—I could not find. I feared he
might be dead. I hoped, if he was, that his broken promises about
patching boots would not come up against him.
The old factor of tamarinds and sugar crackers who used to drive his
covered wagon every Saturday evening into the play-ground, I observed,
still holding his place in the village choir, and singing—though with a
tooth or two gone—as serenely and obstreperously as ever.
I looked around the church to find the black-eyed girl who always sat
behind the choir—the one I loved to look at so much. I knew she must be
grown up; but I could fix upon no face positively; once, as a stout
woman with a pair of boys, and who wore a big red shawl, turned half
around, I thought I recognized her nose. If it was she, it had grown red
though, and I felt cured of my old fondness. As for the other, who wore
the hat trimmed with fur—she was nowhere to be seen, among either maids
or matrons; and when I asked the tavern-keeper, and described her, and
her father, as they were in my school days, he told me that she had
married, too, and lived some five miles from the village; and, said
he—“I guess she leads her husband a devil of a life!”
I felt cured of her, too, but I pitied the husband.
One of my old teachers was in the church; I could have sworn to his
face; he was a precise man; and now I thought he looked rather roughly
at my old shooting jacket. But I let him look, and scowled at him a
little, for I remembered that he had feruled me once. I thought it was
not probable that he would ever do it again.
There was a bustling little lawyer in the village who lived in a large
house, and who was the great man of that town and country—he had scarce
changed at all; and he stepped into the church as briskly and promptly
as he did ten years ago. But what struck me most was the change in a
couple of pretty little white-haired girls that at the time I left were
of that uncertain age when the mother lifts them on a Sunday and pounces
them down one after the other upon the seat of the pew; these were now
grown into blooming young ladies. And they swept by me in the vestibule
of the church, with a flutter of robes and a grace of motion that fairly
made my heart twitter in my bosom. I know nothing that brings home upon
a man so quick the consciousness of increasing years as to find the
little prattling girls, that were almost babies in his boyhood, become
dashing ladies, and to find those whom he used to look on patronizingly
and compassionately, thinking they were little girls, grown to such
maturity that the mere rustle of their silk dresses will give him a
twinge, and their eyes, if he looks at them, make him unaccountably shy.
After service I strolled up by the school buildings; I traced the names
that we had cut upon the fence; but the fence had grown brown with age,
and was nearly rotted away. Upon the beech tree in the hollow behind the
school the carvings were all overgrown. It must have been vacation, if
indeed there was any school at all; for I could see only one old woman
about the premises, and she was hanging out a dishcloth to dry in the
sun. I passed on up the hill, beyond the buildings, where in the
boy-days we built stone forts with bastions and turrets; but the farmers
had put the bastions and turrets into their cobblestone walls. At the
orchard fence I stopped and looked—from force, I believe, of old
habit—to see if any one were watching—and then leaped over, and found my
way to the early-apple tree; but the fruit had gone by. It seemed very
daring in me, even then, to walk so boldly in the forbidden ground.
But the old head-master who forbade it was dead, and Russell and
Burgess, and I know not how many others, who in other times were
culprits with me, were dead, too. When I passed back by the school I
lingered to look up at the windows of that corner room, where I had
slept the sound, healthful sleep of boyhood—and where, too, I had passed
many, many wakeful hours, thinking of the absent Bella, and of my home.
—How small, seemed now, the great griefs of boyhood! Light floating
clouds will obscure the sun that is but half risen; but let him be
up—mid-heaven, and the cloud that then darkens the land must be thick
and heavy indeed.
—The tears started from my eyes—was not such a cloud over me now?
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[Illustration]
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[Illustration]
COLLEGE
SCHOOLMATES slip out of sight and knowledge, and are forgotten; or if
you meet them they bear another character; the boy is not there. It is a
new acquaintance that you make, with nothing of your fellow upon the
benches but the name. Though the eye and face cleave to your memory, and
you meet them afterward, and think you have met a friend—the voice or
the action will break down the charm, and you find only—another man.
But with your classmates in that later school, where form and character
were both nearer ripeness, and where knowledge, labored for together,
bred the first manly sympathies—it is different. And as you meet them,
or hear of them, the thought of their advance makes a measure of your
own—it makes a measure of the NOW.
You judge of your happiness by theirs—of your progress by theirs, and of
your prospects by theirs. If one is happy, you seek to trace out the way
by which he has wrought his happiness; you consider how it differs from
your own; and you think with sighs how you might possibly have wrought
the same; but _now_ it has escaped. If another has won some honorable
distinction, you fall to thinking how the man—your old equal, as you
thought, upon the college benches—has outrun you. It pricks to effort,
and teaches the difference between now and then. Life, with all its
duties and hopes, gathers upon your present like a great weight, or like
a storm ready to burst. It is met anew; it pleads more strongly; and
action that has been neglected rises before you—a giant of remorse.
Stop not, loiter not, look not backward, if you would be among the
foremost! The great Now, so quick, so broad, so fleeting, is yours—in an
hour it will belong to the eternity of the past. The temper of life is
to be made good by big, honest blows; stop striking, and you will do
nothing; strike feebly, and you will do almost as little. Success rides
on every hour; grapple it, and you may win; but without a grapple it
will never go with you. Work is the weapon of honor, and who lacks the
weapon will never triumph.
There were some seventy of us—all scattered now. I meet one here and
there at wide distances apart; and we talk together of old days, and of
our present work and life—and separate. Just so ships at sea, in murky
weather, will shift their course to come within hailing distance, and
compare their longitude, and—part. One I have met wandering in southern
Italy, dreaming—as I was dreaming—over the tomb of Virgil, by the dark
grotto of Pausilippo. It seemed strange to talk of our old readings in
Tacitus there upon classic ground; but we did; and ran on to talk of our
lives; and, sitting down upon the promontory of Baie, looking off upon
that blue sea, as clear as the classics, we told each other our
respective stories. And two nights after, upon the quay, in sight of
Vesuvius, which shed a lurid glow upon the sky that was reflected from
the white walls of the Hotel de Russie, and from the broad lava
pavements, we parted—he to wander among the isles of the Ægean, and I to
turn northward.
Another time, as I was wandering among those mysterious figures that
crowd the foyer of the French opera upon a night of the Masked Ball, I
saw a familiar face; I followed it with my eye until I became convinced.
He did not know me until I named his old seat upon the bench of the
division rooms, and the hard-faced Tutor G——. Then we talked of the old
rivalries, and Christmas jollities, and of this and that one, whom we
had come upon in our wayward tracks; while the black-robed grisettes
stared through their velvet masks; nor did we tire of comparing the old
memories with the unearthly gayety of the scene about us until daylight
broke.
In a quiet mountain town of New England I came not long since upon
another; he was hale and hearty, and pushing his lawyer work with just
the same nervous energy with which he used to recite a theorem of
Euclid. He was father, too, of a couple of stout, curly-pated boys; and
his good woman, as he called her, appeared a sensible, honest,
good-natured lady. I must say that I envied him his wife much more than
I had envied my companion of the opera his Domine.
I happened only a little while ago to drop into the college chapel of a
Sunday. There were the same hard oak benches below, and the lucky
fellows who enjoyed a corner seat were leaning back upon the rail, after
the old fashion. The tutors were perched up in their side boxes, looking
as prim and serious and important as ever. The same stout doctor read
the hymn in the same rhythmical way; and he prayed the same prayer for
(I thought) the same old sort of sinners. As I shut my eyes to listen,
it seemed as if the intermediate years had all gone out, and that I was
on my own pew bench, and thinking out those little schemes for excuses,
or for effort, which were to relieve me, or to advance me, in my college
world.
There was a pleasure, like the pleasure of dreaming about forgotten
joys, in listening to the doctor’s sermon; he began in the same half
embarrassed, half awkward way, and fumbled at his Bible leaves, and the
poor pinched cushion, as he did long before. But as he went on with his
rusty and polemic vigor, the poetry within him would now and then warm
his soul into a burst of fervid eloquence, and his face would glow and
his hand tremble, and the cushion and the Bible leaves be all forgot, in
the glow of his thought, until, with a half cough and a pinch at the
cushion, he fell back into his strong but tread-mill argumentation.
In the corner above was the stately, white-haired professor, wearing the
old dignity of carriage, and a smile as bland as if the years had all
been playthings; and had I seen him in his lecture-room, I daresay I
should have found the same suavity of address, the same marvelous
currency of talk, and the same infinite composure over the exploding
retorts.
Near him was the silver-haired old gentleman—with a very astute
expression—who used to have an odd habit of tightening his cloak about
his nether limbs. I could not see that his eye was any the less bright;
nor did he seem less eager to catch at the handle of some witticism or
bit of satire—to the poor student’s cost. I remembered my old awe of
him, I must say, with something of a grudge; but I had got fairly over
it now. There are sharper griefs in life than a professor’s talk.
Farther on, I saw the long-faced, dark-haired man who looked as if he
were always near some explosive, electric battery, or upon an insulated
stool. He was, I believe, a man of fine feelings; but he had a way of
reducing all action to dry, hard, mathematical system, with very little
poetry about it. I know there was not much poetry in his problems in
physics, and still less in his half-yearly examinations. But I do not
dread them now.
Over opposite, I was glad to see still the aged head of the kind and
generous old man who in my day presided over the college, and who
carried with him the affections of each succeeding class—added to their
respect for his learning. This seems a higher triumph to me now than it
seemed then. A strong mind, or a cultivated mind, may challenge respect;
but there is needed a noble one to win affection.
A new man now filled his place in the president’s seat, but he was one
whom I had known and been proud to know. His figure was bent and
thin—the very figure that an old Flemish master would have chosen for a
scholar. His eye had a kind of piercing luster, as if it had long been
fixed on books; and his expression—when unrelieved by his affable
smile—was that of hard midnight toil. With all his polish of mind, he
was a gentleman at heart, and treated us always with a manly courtesy
that is not forgotten.
But of all the faces that used to be ranged below—four hundred men and
boys—there was not one with whom to join hands and live back again.
Their griefs, joy and toil were chaining them to their labor of life.
Each one in his thought coursing over a world as wide as my own—how many
thousand worlds of thought upon this one world of ours!
I stepped dreamily through the corridors of the old Atheneum, thinking
of that first fearful step, when the faces were new and the stern tutor
was strange, and the prolix Livy _so_ hard. I went up at night, and
skulked around the buildings when the lights were blazing from all the
windows, and they were busy with their tasks—plain tasks, and easy
tasks—because they are certain tasks. Happy fellows—thought I—who have
only to do what is set before you to be done. But the time is coming,
and very fast, when you must not only do, but know what to do. The time
is coming when, in place of your one master, you will have a thousand
masters—masters of duty, of business, of pleasure, and of grief—giving
you harder lessons, each one of them, than any of your Fluxions.
MORNING will pass, and the NOON will come—hot and scorching.
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[Illustration]
THE PACKET OF BELLA
I HAVE not forgotten that packet of Bella; I did not once forget it. And
when I saw Lilly—now the grown-up Lilly, happy in her household, and
blithe as when she was a maiden—she gave it to me. She told me, too, of
Bella’s illness, and of her suffering, and of her manner when she put
the little packet in her hand “for Cousin Paul.” But this I will not
repeat—I can not.
I know not why it was, but I shuddered at the mention of her name. There
are some who will talk, at table and in their gossip, of dead friends; I
wonder how they do it? For myself, when the grave has closed its gates
on the faces of those I love—however busy my mournful thought may be—the
tongue is silent. I can not name their names; it shocks me to hear them
named. It seems like tearing open half-healed wounds, and disturbing
with harsh, worldly noise the sweet sleep of death.
I loved Bella. I know not how I loved her—whether as a lover, or as a
husband loves a wife; I only know this—I always loved her. She was so
gentle—so beautiful—so confiding, that I never once thought but that the
whole world loved her as well as I. There was only one thing I never
told to Bella; I would tell her of all my grief, and of all my joys; I
would tell her my hopes, my ambitious dreams, my disappointments, my
anger, and my dislikes; but I never told her how much I loved her.
I do not know why, unless I knew that it was needless. But I should as
soon have thought of telling Bella on some winter’s day—Bella, it is
winter—or of whispering to her on some balmy day of August—Bella, it is
summer—as of telling her, after she had grown to girlhood—Bella, I love
you!
I had received one letter from her in the old countries; it was a sweet
letter, in which she told me all that she had been doing, and how she
had thought of me, when she rambled over the woods where we had rambled
together. She had written two or three other letters, Lilly told me, but
they had never reached me. I had told her, too, of all that made my
happiness; I wrote her about the sweet girl I had seen on shipboard, and
how I met her afterward, and what a happy time we passed down in Devon.
I even told her of the strange dream I had, in which Isabel seemed to be
in England, and to turn away from me sadly because I called—Carry.
I also told her of all I saw in that great world of Paris—writing as I
would write to a sister; and I told her, too, of the sweet Roman girl,
Enrica—of her brown hair, and of her rich eyes, and of her pretty
Carnival dresses. And when I missed letter after letter I told her that
she must still write her letters, or some little journal, and read it to
me when I came back. I thought how pleasant it would be to sit under the
trees by her father’s house and listen to her tender voice going through
that record of her thoughts and fears. Alas, how our hopes betray us!
It began almost like a diary, about the time her father fell sick. “It
is”—said she to Lilly, when she gave it to her, “what I would have said
to Cousin Paul if he had been here.”
It begins:“—I have come back now to father’s house; I could not leave
him alone, for they told me he was sick. I found him not well; he was
very glad to see me, and kissed me so tenderly that I am sure, Cousin
Paul, you would not have said, as you used to say, that he was a cold
man! I sometimes read to him, sitting in the deep library window (you
remember it), where we used to nestle out of his sight at dusk. He can
not read any more.
“I would give anything to see the little Carry you speak of; but do you
know you did not describe her to me at all; will you not tell me if she
has dark hair, or light, or if her eyes are blue, or dark, like mine? Is
she good; did she not make ugly speeches, or grow peevish, in those long
days upon the ocean? How I would have liked to have been with you, on
those clear starlit nights, looking off upon the water! But then I think
that you would not have wished me there, and that you did not once think
of me even. This makes me sad; yet I know not why it should; for I
always liked you best, when you were happy; and I am sure you must have
been happy then. You say you shall never see her after you have left the
ship; you must not think so, cousin Paul; if she is so beautiful, and
fond, as you tell me, your own heart will lead you in her way some time
again; I feel almost sure of it.
* * * “Father is getting more and more feeble, and wandering in his
mind; this is very dreadful; he calls me sometimes by my mother’s name;
and when I say—it is Isabel—he says—what Isabel! and treats me as if I
was a stranger. The physician shakes his head when I ask him of father;
oh, Paul, if he should die—what could I do? I should die, too—I know I
should. Who would there be to care for me? Lilly is married, and Ben is
far off, and you, Paul, whom I love better than either, are a long way
from me. But God is good, and He will spare my father.
* * * “So you have seen again your little Carry. I told you it would be
so. You tell me how accidental it was; ah, Paul, Paul, you rogue, honest
as you are, I half doubt you there! I like your description of her,
too—dark eyes like mine, you say—’almost as pretty;’ well, Paul, I will
forgive you that; it is only a white lie. You know they must be a great
deal prettier than mine, or you would never have stayed a whole
fortnight in an old farmer’s house far down in Devon! I wish I could see
her; I wish she was here with you now; for it is midsummer, and the
trees and flowers were never prettier. But I am all alone; father is too
ill to go out at all. I fear now very much that he will never go out
again. Lilly was here yesterday, but he did not know her. She read me
your last letter; it was not so long as mine. You are very—very good to
me, Paul.
* * * “For a long time I have written nothing; my father has been very
ill, and the old housekeeper has been sick, too, and father would have
no one but me near him. He can not live long. I feel sadly—miserably;
you will not know me when you come home; your ‘pretty Bella’—as you used
to call me—will have lost all her beauty. But perhaps you will not care
for that, for you tell me you have found one prettier than ever. I do
not know, Cousin Paul, but it is because I am so sad and selfish—for
sorrow is selfish—but I do not like your raptures about the Roman girl.
Be careful, Paul; I know your heart; it is quick and sensitive; and I
dare say she is pretty and has beautiful eyes; for they tell me all the
Italian girls have soft eyes.
“But Italy is far away, Paul; I can never see Enrica; she will never
come here. No—no, remember Devon. I feel as if Carry was a sister now. I
can not feel so of the Roman girl; I do not want to feel so. You will
say this is harsh, and I am afraid you will not like me so well for it;
but I can not help saying it. I love you too well, Cousin Paul, not to
say it.
* * * “It is all over! Indeed, Paul, I am very desolate! ‘The golden
bowl is broken’—my poor father has gone to his last home. I was
expecting it; but how can we expect that fearful comer—death? He had
been for a long time so feeble that he could scarce speak at all; he sat
for hours in his chair, looking upon the fire or looking out at the
window. He would hardly notice me when I came to change his pillows or
to smooth them for his head. But before he died he knew me as well as
ever. ‘Isabel,’ he said, ‘you have been a good daughter. God will reward
you!’ and he kissed me so tenderly, and looked after me so anxiously,
with such intelligence in his look that I thought perhaps he would
revive again. In the evening he asked me for one of his books that he
loved very much. ‘Father,’ said I, ‘you can not read; it is almost
dark.’
“‘Oh, yes,’ said he, ‘Isabel, I can read now.’ And I brought it; he kept
my hand a long while; then he opened the book—it was a book about death.
“I brought a candle, for I knew he could not read without.
“‘Isabel, dear,’ said he, ‘put the candle a little nearer.’ But it was
close beside him even then.
“‘A little nearer, Isabel,’ repeated he, and his voice was very faint,
and he grasped my hand hard.
—“‘Nearer, Isabel!—nearer!’
“There was no need to do it, for my poor father was dead! Oh! Paul,
Paul!—pity me. I do not know but I am crazed. It does not seem the same
world it was. And the house, and the trees, oh, they are very dismal!
“I wish you would come home, Cousin Paul; life would not be so very,
very blank as it is now. Lilly is kind—I thank her from my heart. But it
is not _her_ father who is dead!
* * * “I am calmer now; I am staying with Lilly. The world seems smaller
than it did; but heaven seems a great deal larger; there is a place for
us all there, Paul—if we only seek it! They tell me you are coming home.
I am glad. You will not like, perhaps, to come away from that pretty
Enrica you speak of; but do so, Paul. It seems to me that I see clearer
than I did, and I talk bolder. The girlish Isabel you will not find, for
I am much older, and my air is more grave, and this suffering has made
me feeble—very feeble.
* * * “It is not easy for me to write, but I must tell you that I have
just found out who your Carry is. Years ago, when you were away from
home, I was at school with her. We were always together. I wonder I
could not have found her out from your description; but I did not even
suspect it. She is a dear girl, and is worthy of all your love. I have
seen her once since you have met her; we talked of you. She spoke
kindly—very kindly; more than this I can not tell you, for I do not know
more. Ah, Paul, may you be happy! I feel as if I had but a little while
to live.
* * * “It is even so, my dear Cousin Paul—I shall write but little more;
my hand trembles now. But I am ready. It is a glorious world beyond
this—I know it is! And there we shall meet. I did hope to see you once
again, and to hear your voice speaking to me as you used to speak. But I
shall not. Life is too frail with me. I seem to live wholly now in the
world where I am going—_there_ is my mother, and my father, and my
little brother—we shall meet—I know we shall meet!
* * * “The last—Paul. Never again in this world! I am happy—very happy.
You will come to me. I can write no more. May good angels guard you, and
bring you to Heaven!”
—Shall I go on?
But the toils of life are upon me. Private griefs do not break the force
and the weight of the great—present. A life—at best the half of it, is
before me. It is to be wrought out with nerve and work. And—blessed be
God! there are gleams of sunlight upon it. That sweet Carry, doubly dear
to me now that she is joined with my sorrow for the lost Isabel—shall be
sought for!
And with her sweet image floating before me, the NOON wanes, and the
shadows of EVENING lengthen upon the land.
[Illustration]
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[Illustration]
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[Illustration]
III
EVENING
THE future is a great land; how the lights and the shadows throng over
it—bright and dark, slow and swift! Pride and ambition build up great
castles on its plains—great monuments on the mountains, that reach
heavenward, and dip their tops in the blue of Eternity! Then comes an
earthquake—the earthquake of disappointment, of distrust, or of
inaction, and lays them low. Gaping desolation widens its breaches
everywhere; the eye is full of them, and can see nothing beside. By and
by the sun peeps forth—as now from behind yonder cloud—and reanimates
the soul.
Fame beckons, sitting high in the heavens; and joy lends a halo to the
vision. A thousand resolves stir your heart; your hand is hot and
feverish for action; your brain works madly, and you snatch here and you
snatch there, in the convulsive throes of your delirium. Perhaps you see
some earnest, careful plodder, once far behind you, now toiling slowly
but surely over the plain of life, until he seems near to grasping those
brilliant phantoms which dance along the horizon of the future; and the
sight stirs your soul to frenzy, and you bound on after him with the
madness of a fever in your veins. But it was by no such action that the
fortunate toiler has won his progress. His hand is steady, his brain is
cool; his eye is fixed and sure.
The Future is a great land; a man can not go round it in a day; he can
not measure it with a bound; he can not bind its harvests into a single
sheaf. It is wider than the vision, and has no end.
Yet always, day by day, hour by hour, second by second, the hard present
is elbowing us off into that great land of the future. Our souls,
indeed, wander to it, as to a home-land; they run beyond time and space,
beyond planets and suns, beyond far-off suns and comets, until, like
blind flies, they are lost in the blaze of immensity, and can only grope
their way back to our earth, and our time, by the cunning of instinct.
Cut out the future—even that little future which is the EVENING of our
life—and what a fall into vacuity. Forbid those earnest forays over the
borders of Now, and on what spoils would the soul live?
For myself, I delight to wander there, and to weave every day the
passing life into the coming life—so closely that I may be unconscious
of the joining. And if so be that I am able, I would make the whole
piece bear fair proportions and just figures—like those tapestries on
which nuns work by inches and finish with their lives, or like those
grand frescos which poet artists have wrought on the vaults of old
cathedrals, gaunt and colossal—appearing mere daubs of carmine and
azure, as they lay upon their backs, working out a hand’s breadth at a
time—but when complete, showing symmetrical and glorious.
But not alone does the soul wander to those glittering heights where
fame sits, with plumes waving in zephyrs of applause; there belong to it
other appetities, which range wide and constantly over the broad
future-land. We are not merely working, intellectual machines, but
social puzzles, whose solution is the work of a life. Much as hope may
mean toward the intoxicating joy of distinction, there is another
leaning in the soul, deeper and stronger, toward those pleasures which
the heart pants for, and in whose atmosphere the affections bloom and
ripen.
The first may indeed be uppermost; it may be noisiest; it may drown with
the clamor of midday the nicer sympathies. But all our day is not
midday, and all our life is not noise. Silence is as strong as the soul;
and there is no tempest so wild with blasts but has a wilder lull. There
lies in the depth of every man’s soul a mine of affection, which from
time to time will burn with the seething heat of a volcano and heave up
lava-like monuments, through all the cold strata of his commoner nature.
One may hide his warmer feelings—he may paint them dimly—he may crowd
them out of his sailing chart, where he only sets down the harbors for
traffic; yet in his secret heart he will map out upon the great country
of the Future fairy islands of love and of joy. There he will be sure to
wander when his soul is lost in those quiet and hallowed hopes which
take hold on heaven.
Love, only, unlocks the door upon that futurity where the isles of the
blessed lie like stars. Affection is the stepping-stone to God. The
heart is our only measure of infinitude. The mind tires with greatness;
the heart—never. Thought is worried and weakened in its flight through
the immensity of space; but love soars around the throne of the Highest,
with added blessing and strength.
I know not how it may be with others, but with me the heart is a readier
and quicker builder of those fabrics which strew the great country of
the Future than the mind. They may not indeed rise so high as the dizzy
pinnacles that ambition loves to rear; but they lie like fragrant
islands in a sea whose ripple is a continuous melody.
And as I muse now, looking toward the EVENING, which is already
begun—tossed as I am with the toils of the past, and bewildered with the
vexations of the present, my affections are the architect that build up
the future refuge. And, in fancy at least, I will build it
boldly—saddened, it may be, by the chance shadows of evening; but
through all I will hope for a sunset, when the day ends, glorious with
crimson and gold.
[Illustration]
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[Illustration]
CARRY
I SAID that harsh and hot as was the present, there were joyous gleams
of light playing over the future. How else could it be, when that fair
being whom I met first upon the wastes of ocean, and whose name, even,
is hallowed by the dying words of Isabel, is living in the same world
with me? Amid all the perplexities that haunt me, as I wander from the
present to the future, the thought of her image, of her smile, of her
last kind adieu, throws a dash of sunlight upon my path.
And yet why? Is it not very idle? Years have passed since I have seen
her; I do not even know where she may be. What is she to me?
My heart whispers—very much! but I do not listen to that in my prouder
moods. She is a woman, a beautiful woman indeed, whom I have known
once—pleasantly known: she is living, but she will die, or she will
marry; I shall hear of it by and by, and sigh, perhaps—nothing more.
Life is earnest around me; there is no time to delve in the past for
bright things to shed radiance on the future.
I will forget the sweet girl who was with me upon the ocean, and think
she is dead. This manly soul is strong, if we would but think so; it can
make a puppet of griefs, and take down and set up at will the symbols of
its hope.
—But no, I can not; the more I think thus, the less I really think thus.
A single smile of that frail girl, when I recall it, mocks all my proud
purposes, as if, without her, my purposes were nothing.
—Pshaw! I say—it is idle! and I bury my thought in books, and in long
hours of toil; but as the hours lengthen, and my head sinks with
fatigue, and the shadows of evening play around me, there comes again
that sweet vision, saying with tender mockery—is it idle? And I am
helpless, and am led away hopefully and joyfully toward the golden gates
which open on the Future.
But this is only in those silent hours when the man is alone and away
from his working thoughts. At midday, or in the rush of the world, he
puts hard armor on that reflects all the light of such joyous fancies.
He is cold and careless, and ready for suffering, and for fight.
One day I am traveling; I am absorbed in some present cares—thinking out
some plan which is to make easier or more successful the voyage of life.
I glance upon the passing scenery, and upon new faces, with that
careless indifference which grows upon a man with years, and, above all,
with travel. There is no wife to enlist your sympathies—no children to
sport with; my friends are few and scattered, and are working out fairly
what is before them to do. Lilly is living here, and Ben is living
there; their letters are cheerful, contented letters; and they wish me
well. Griefs even have grown light with wearing, and I am just in that
careless humor—as if I said—jog on, old world—jog on! And the end will
come along soon, and we shall get—poor devils that we are—just what we
deserve!
But on a sudden my eyes rest on a figure that I think I know. Now the
indifference flies like mist, and my heart throbs, and the old visions
come up. I watch her, as if there were nothing else to be seen. The form
is hers; the grace is hers; the simple dress—so neat, so tasteful—that
is hers, too. She half turns her head—it is the face that I saw under
the velvet cap in the park of Devon.
I do not rush forward; I sit as if I were in a trance. I watch her every
action—the kind attentions to her mother who sits beside her—her naïve
exclamations as we pass some point of surpassing beauty. It seems as if
a new world were opening to me; yet I can not tell why. I keep my place,
and think, and gaze. I tear the paper I hold in my hand into shreds. I
play with my watch chain, and twist the seal until it is near breaking.
I take out my watch, look at it, and put it back—yet I can not tell the
hour.
—It is she—I murmur—I know it is Carry!
But when they rise to leave, my lethargy is broken; yet it is with a
trembling hesitation—a faltering, as it were, between the present life
and the future—that I approach. She knows me on the instant, and greets
me kindly—as Bella wrote—very kindly, yet she shows a slight
embarrassment, a sweet embarrassment, that I treasure in my heart more
closely even than the greeting. I change my course and travel with them;
now we talk of the old scenes, and two hours seem to have made with me
the difference of half a lifetime.
It is five years since I parted with her, never hoping to meet again.
She was then a frail girl; she is now just rounding into womanhood. Her
eyes are as dark and deep as ever; the lashes that fringe them seem to
me even longer than they were. Her color is as rich, her forehead as
fair, her smile as sweet as they were before—only a little tinge of
sadness floats upon her eye, like the haze upon a summer landscape. I
grow bold to look upon her, and timid with looking. We talk of Bella;
she speaks in a soft, low voice, and the shade of sadness on her face
gathers—as when a summer mist obscures the sun. I talk in monosyllables;
I can command no other. And there is a look of sympathy in her eye when
I speak thus that binds my soul to her as no smiles could do. What can
draw the heart into the fulness of love so quick as sympathy?
But this passes; we must part, she for her home, and I for that broad
home that has been mine so long—the world. It seems broader to me than
ever, and colder than ever, and less to be wished for than ever. A new
book of hope is sprung wide open in my life: a hope of home!
We are to meet at some time not far off in the city where I am living. I
look forward to that time as at school I used to look for vacation; it
is a _point d’appui_ for hope, for thought, and for countless
journeyings into the opening future. Never did I keep the dates better,
never count the days more carefully, whether for bonds to be paid or for
dividends to fall due.
I welcome the time, and it passes like a dream. I am near her, often as
I dare; the hours are very short with her, and very long away. She
receives me kindly—always very kindly; she could not be otherwise than
kind. But is it anything more? This is a greedy nature of ours, and when
sweet kindness flows upon us we want more. I know she is kind; and yet,
in place of being grateful, I am only covetous of an excess of kindness.
She does not mistake my feelings, surely; ah, no—trust a woman for that!
But what have I or what am I to ask a return? She is pure and gentle as
an angel, and I—alas—only a poor soldier in our world-fight against the
devil! Sometimes, in moods of vanity, I call up what I fondly reckon my
excellencies or deserts—a sorry, pitiful array that makes me shame-faced
when I meet her. And in an instant I banish them all. And I think that
if I were called upon in some high court of justice to say why I should
claim her indulgence or her love, I would say nothing of my sturdy
effort to beat down the roughness of toil—nothing of such manliness as
wears a calm front amid the frowns of the world—nothing of little
triumphs in the every-day fight of life, but only I would enter the
simple plea—this heart is hers!
She leaves; and I have said nothing of what was seething within me; how
I curse my folly! She is gone, and never perhaps will return. I recall
in despair her last kind glance. The world seems blank to me. She does
not know; perhaps she does not care if I love her. Well, I will bear it.
But I can not bear it. Business is broken; books are blurred; something
remains undone that fate declares must be done. Not a place can I find
but her sweet smile gives to it either a tinge of gladness or a black
shade of desolation.
I sit down at my table with pleasant books; the fire is burning
cheerfully; my dog looks up earnestly when I speak to him; but it will
never do! Her image sweeps away all these comforts in a flood. I fling
down my book; I turn my back upon my dog; the fire hisses and sparkles
in mockery of me.
Suddenly a thought flashes on my brain—I will write to her—I say. And a
smile floats over my face—a smile of hope, ending in doubt. I catch up
my pen—my trusty pen, and the clean sheet lies before me. The paper
could not be better, nor the pen. I have written hundreds of letters; it
is easy to write letters. But now, it is not easy.
I begin, and cross it out. I begin again, and get on a little
farther—then cross it out. I try again, but can write nothing. I fling
down my pen in despair, and burn the sheet, and go to my library for
some old sour treatise of Shaftesbury or Lyttleton, and say—talking to
myself all the while—let her go! She is beautiful, but I am strong; the
world is short; we—I and my dog, and my books, and my pen, will battle
it through bravely, and leave enough for a tombstone.
But even as I say it the tears start—it is all false saying! And I throw
Shaftesbury across the room, and take up my pen again. It glides on and
on as my hope glows, and I tell her of our first meeting, and of our
hours in the ocean twilight, and of our unsteady stepping on the heaving
deck, and of that parting in the noise of London, and of my joy at
seeing her in the pleasant country, and of my grief afterward. And then
I mention Bella—her friend and mine—and the tears flow; and then I speak
of our last meeting, and of my doubts, and of this very evening—and how
I could not write, and abandoned it—and then felt something within me
that made me write and tell her—all!—“That my heart was not my own, but
was wholly hers; and that if she would be mine—I would cherish her and
love her always!”
Then I feel a kind of happiness—a strange, tumultuous happiness, into
which doubt is creeping from time to time, bringing with it a cold
shudder. I seal the letter, and carry it—a great weight—for the mail. It
seemed as if there could be no other letter that day, and as if all the
coaches and horses and cars and boats were specially detailed to bear
that single sheet. It is a great letter for me; my destiny lies in it.
I do not sleep well that night—it is a tossing sleep; one time joy—sweet
and holy joy, comes to my dreams, and an angel is by me; another time
the angel fades—the brightness fades, and I wake, struggling with fear.
For many nights it is so, until the day comes on which I am looking for
a reply.
The postman has little suspicion that the letter which he gives
me—although it contains no promissory notes, nor money, nor deeds, nor
articles of trade—is yet to have a greater influence upon my life and
upon my future, than all the letters he has ever brought to me before.
But I do not show him this; nor do I let him see the clutch with which I
grasp it. I bear it as if it were a great and fearful burden to my room.
I lock the door, and, having broken the seal with a quivering hand—read:
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[Illustration]
THE LETTER
“Paul—for I think I may call you so now—I know not how to answer
you. Your letter gave me great joy; but it gave me pain, too. I
can not—will not doubt what you say; I believe that you love me
better than I deserve to be loved, and I know that I am not
worthy of all your kind praises. But it is not this that pains
me; for I know that you have a generous heart, and would
forgive, as you always have forgiven, any weakness of mine. I am
proud, too, very proud, to have won your love; but it pains
me—more, perhaps, than you will believe—to think that I can not
write back to you as I would wish to write—alas, never.”
Here I dash the letter upon the floor, and with my hand upon my forehead
sit gazing upon the glowing coals, and breathing quick and loud. The
dream, then, is broken!
Presently I read again:
—“You know that my father died before we had ever met. He had an
old friend, who had come from England, and who in early life had
done him some great service which made him seem like a brother.
This old gentleman was my god-father, and called me daughter.
When my father died he drew me to his side and said: ‘Carry, I
shall leave you, but my old friend will be your father,’ and he
put my hand in his and said: ‘I give you my daughter.’
“This old gentleman had a son, older than myself; but we were
much together, and grew up as brother and sister. I was proud of
him, for he was tall and strong, and every one called him
handsome. He was as kind, too, as a brother could be, and his
father was like my own father. Every one said, and believed,
that we would one day be married, and my mother and my new
father spoke of it openly. So did Laurence, for that is my
friend’s name.
“I do not need to tell you any more, Paul; for when I was still
a girl we had promised that we would one day be man and wife.
Laurence has been much in England, and I believe he is there
now. The old gentleman treats me still as a daughter, and talks
of the time when I shall come and live with him. The letters of
Laurence are very kind, and though he does not talk so much of
our marriage as he did, it is only, I think, because he regards
it as so certain.
“I have wished to tell you all this before, but I have feared to
tell you; I am afraid I have been too selfish to tell you. And
now, what can I say? Laurence seems most to me like a
brother—and you, Paul—but I must not go on. For if I marry
Laurence, as fate seems to have decided, I will try and love him
better than all the world.
“But will you not be a brother, and love me, as you once loved
Bella—you say my eyes are like hers, and that my forehead is
like hers—will you not believe that my heart is like hers, too?
“Paul, if you shed tears over this letter—I have shed them as
well as you. I can write no more now.
“Adieu.”
I sit long, looking upon the blaze, and when I rouse myself it is to say
wicked things against destiny. Again all the future seems very blank. I
can not love Carry as I loved Bella; she can not be a sister to me; she
must be more or nothing! Again I seem to float singly on the tide of
life, and see all around me in cheerful groups. Everywhere the sun
shines, except upon my own cold forehead. There seems no mercy in
heaven, and no goodness for me upon earth.
I write, after some days, an answer to the letter. But it is a bitter
answer, in which I forget myself, in the whirl of my misfortunes—to the
utterance of reproaches.
Her reply, which comes speedily, is sweet and gentle. She is hurt by my
reproaches, deeply hurt. But with a touching kindness, of which I am not
worthy, she credits all my petulance to my wounded feeling; she soothes
me, but in soothing only wounds the more. I try to believe her when she
speaks of her unworthiness—but I can not.
Business, and the pursuits of ambition or of interest, pass on like
dull, grating machinery. Tasks are met, and performed with strength
indeed, but with no cheer. Courage is high, as I meet the shocks and
trials of the world; but it is a brute, careless courage, that glories
in opposition. I laugh at any dangers, or any insidious pitfalls; what
are they to me? What do I possess, which it will be hard to lose? My dog
keeps by me; my toils are present; my food is ready; my limbs are
strong; what need for more?
The months slip by; and the cloud that floated over my evening sun
passes.
Laurence wandering abroad, and writing to Caroline, as to a
sister—writes more than his father could have wished. He has met new
faces, very sweet faces; and one which shows through the ink of his
later letters, very gorgeously. The old gentleman does not like to lose
thus his little Carry! and he writes back rebuke. But Laurence, with the
letters of Caroline before him for data, throws himself upon his
sister’s kindness and charity. It astonishes not a little the old
gentleman, to find his daughter pleading in such strange way for the
son. “And what will you do then, my Carry?”—the old man says.
—“Wear weeds, if you wish, sir; and love you and Laurence more than
ever!”
And he takes her to his bosom, and says—“Carry—Carry, you are too good
for that wild fellow Laurence!”
Now, the letters are different! Now they are full of hope—dawning all
over the future sky. Business, and care, and toil glide, as if a spirit
animated them all; it is no longer cold machine work, but intelligent
and hopeful activity. The sky hangs upon you lovingly, and the birds
make music that startles you with its fineness. Men wear cheerful faces;
the storms have a kind pity, gleaming through all their wrath.
The days approach, when you can call her yours. For she has said it, and
her mother has said it; and the kind old gentleman, who says he will
still be her father, has said it, too; and they have all welcomed
you—won by her story—with a cordiality that has made your cup full to
running over. Only one thought comes up to obscure your joy—is it real?
or if real, are you worthy to enjoy? Will you cherish and love always,
as you have promised, that angel who accepts your word and rests her
happiness on your faith? Are there not harsh qualities in your nature
which you fear may sometime make her regret that she gave herself to
your love and charity? And those friends who watch over her, as the
apple of their eye, can you always meet their tenderness and approval,
for your guardianship of their treasure? Is it not a treasure that makes
you fearful, as well as joyful.
But you forget this in her smile; her kindness, her goodness, her
modesty, will not let you remember it. She _forbids_ such thoughts; and
you yield such obedience as you never yielded even to the commands of a
mother. And if your business and your labor slip by, partially
neglected—what matters it? What is interest or what is reputation
compared with that fullness of your heart, which is now ripe with joy?
The day for your marriage comes; and you live as if you were in a dream.
You think well, and hope well, for all the world. A flood of charity
seems to radiate from all around you. And as you sit beside her in the
twilight, on the evening before the day when you will call her yours,
and talk of the coming hopes, and of the soft shadows of the past, and
whisper of Bella’s love, and of that sweet sister’s death, and of
Laurence, a new brother, coming home joyful with his bride—and lay your
cheek to hers—life seems as if it were all day, and as if there could be
no night!
The marriage passes; and she is yours—yours forever.
[Illustration]
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[Illustration]
NEW TRAVEL
AGAIN I am upon the sea; but not alone. She whom I first met upon the
wastes of ocean is there beside me. Again I steady her tottering step
upon the deck; once it was a drifting, careless pleasure; now the
pleasure is holy.
Once the fear I felt, as the storms gathered, and night came, and the
ship tossed madly, and great waves gathering swift and high, came down
like slipping mountains, and spent their force upon the quivering
vessel, was a selfish fear. But it is so no longer. Indeed, I hardly
know fear; for how can the tempests harm _her_? Is she not too good to
suffer any of the wrath of heaven?
And in nights of calm—holy nights, we lean over the ship’s side, looking
down, as once before, into the dark depths, and murmur again snatches of
ocean song, and talk of those we love; and we peer among the stars,
which seem neighborly, and as if they were the homes of friends. And as
the great ocean swells come rocking under us, and carry us up and down
along the valleys and the hills of water, they seem like deep pulsations
of the great heart of nature, heaving us forward toward the goal of
life, and to the gates of heaven.
We watch the ships as they come upon the horizon, and sweep toward us,
like false friends, with the sun glittering on their sails; and then
shift their course, and bear away—with their bright sails, turned to
spots of shadow. We watch the long-winged birds skimming the waves hour
after hour—like pleasant thoughts—now dashing before our bows, and then
sweeping behind, until they are lost in the hollows of the water.
Again life lies open, as it did once before; but the regrets,
disappointments, and fruitless resolves do not come to trouble me now.
It is the future, which has become as level as the sea; and _she_ is
beside me—the sharer in that future—to look out with me upon the joyous
sparkle of water, and to count with me the dazzling ripples that lie
between us and the shore. A thousand pleasant plans come up, and are
abandoned, like the waves we leave behind us; a thousand other joyous
plans dawn upon our fancy, like the waves that glitter before us. We
talk of Laurence and his bride, whom we are to meet; we talk of her
mother, who is even now watching the winds that waft her child over the
ocean; we talk of the kindly old man, her god-father, who gave her a
father’s blessing; we talk low, and in the twilight hours, of Isabel—who
sleeps.
At length, as the sun goes down upon a fair night, over the western
waters which we have passed, we see before us the low blue line of the
shores of Cornwall and Devon. In the night shadowy ships glide past us
with gleaming lanterns; and in the morning we see the yellow cliffs of
the Isle of Wight; and standing out from the land is the dingy sail of
our pilot. London with its fog, roar, and crowds, has not the same
charms that it once had; that roar and crowd is good to make a man
forget his griefs—forget himself, and stupefy him with amazement. We are
in no need of such forgetfulness.
We roll along the banks of the sylvan river that glides by Hampton
Court; and we toil up Richmond Hill, to look together upon that scene of
water and meadow—of leafy copses and glistening villas, of brown
cottages and clustered hamlets—of solitary oaks and loitering herds—all
spread like a veil of beauty upon the bosom of the Thames. But we can
not linger here, nor even under the glorious old boles of Windsor
Forest; but we hurry on to that sweet county of Devon, made green with
its white skeins of water.
Again we loiter under the oaks, where we have loitered before; and the
sleek deer gaze on us with their liquid eyes as they gazed before. The
squirrels sport among the boughs as fearless as ever; and some wandering
puss pricks her long ears at our steps and bounds off along the
hedgerows to her burrow. Again I see Carry in her velvet riding-cap,
with the white plume; and I meet, as I met her before, under the
princely trees that skirt the northern avenue. I recall the evening when
I sauntered out at the park gates, and gained a blessing from the
porter’s wife, and dreamed that strange dream—now, the dream seems more
real than my life. “God bless you!” said the woman again.
—“Ay, old lady, God has blessed me!”—and I fling her a guinea, not as a
gift, but as a debt.
The bland farmer lives yet; he scarce knows me, until I tell him of my
bout around his oat field at the tail of his long stilted plow. I find
the old pew in the parish church. Other holly sprigs are hung now; and I
do not doze, for Carry is beside me. The curate drawls the service; but
it is pleasant to listen; and I make the responses with an emphasis that
tells more, I fear, for my joy than for my religion. The old groom at
the mansion in the park has not forgotten the hard riding of other days,
and tells long stories (to which I love to listen) of the old visit of
Mistress Carry, when she followed the hounds with the best of the
English lasses.
—“Yer honor may well be proud; for not a prettier face, or a kinder
heart, has been in Devon since Mistress Carry left us.”
But pleasant as are the old woods, full of memories, and pleasant as are
the twilight evenings upon the terrace—we must pass over to the
mountains of Switzerland. There we are to meet Laurence.
Carry has never seen the magnificence of the Juras; and as we journey
over the hills between Dole and the border line, looking upon the
rolling heights shrouded with pine trees, and down thousands of feet, at
the very roadside, upon the cottage roofs and emerald valleys, where the
dun herds are feeding quietly, she is lost in admiration. At length we
come to that point above the little town of Gex, from which you see
spread out before you the meadows that skirt Geneva, the placid surface
of Lake Leman, and the rough, shaggy mountains of Savoy—and far behind
them, breaking the horizon with snowy cap, and with dark pinnacles—Mont
Blanc, and the Needles of Chamouni.
I point out to her in the valley below the little town of Ferney, where
stands the deserted château of Voltaire; and beyond, upon the shores of
the lake, the old home of De Staël; and across, with its white walls
reflected upon the bosom of the water, the house where Byron wrote _The
Prisoner of Chillon_. Among the grouping roofs of Geneva we trace the
dark cathedral and the tall hotels shining on the edge of the lake. And
I tell of the time when I tramped down through yonder valley, with my
future all visionary and broken, and drank the splendor of the scene,
only as a quick relief to the monotony of my solitary life.
—“And now, Carry, with your hand locked in mine, and your heart
mine—yonder lake sleeping in the sun, and the snowy mountains with their
rosy hue seem like the smile of nature, bidding us be glad!”
Laurence is at Geneva; he welcomes Carry, as he would welcome a sister.
He is a noble fellow, and tells me much of his sweet Italian wife; and
presents me to the smiling, blushing—Enrica! She has learned English
now; she has found, she says, a better teacher, than ever I was. Yet she
welcomes me warmly, as a sister might; and we talk of those old evenings
by the blazing fire, and of the one-eyed _maestro_, as children long
separated might talk of their school tasks and of their teachers. She
can not tell me enough of her praises of Laurence, and of his noble
heart. “You were good,” she says, “but Laurence is better.”
Carry admires her soft brown hair, and her deep liquid eye, and wonders
how I could ever have left Rome?
—Do you indeed wonder—Carry?
And together we go down into Savoy, to that marvelous valley, which lies
under the shoulder of Mont Blanc; and we wander over the _Mer De Glace_,
and pick alpine roses from the edge of the frowning glacier. We toil at
nightfall up to the monastery of the Great St. Bernard, where the new
forming ice crackles in the narrow foot-way, and the cold moon glistens
over wastes of snow, and upon the windows of the dark Hospice. Again, we
are among the granite heights, whose ledges are filled with ice, upon
the Grimsel. The pond is dark and cold; the paths are slippery; the
great glacier of the Aar sends down icy breezes, and the echoes ring
from rock to rock, as if the ice-god answered. And yet we neither suffer
nor fear.
In the sweet valley of Meyringen, we part from Laurence: he goes
northward, by Grindenwald, and Thun—thence to journey westward, and to
make for the Roman girl a home beyond the ocean. Enrica bids me go on to
Rome: she knows that Carry will love its soft warm air, its ruins, its
pictures and temples, better than these cold valleys of Switzerland. And
she gives me kind messages for her mother, and for Cesare; and should we
be in Rome at the Easter season, she bids us remember her, when we
listen to the _Miserere_, and when we see the great _Chiesa_ on fire,
and when we saunter upon the Pincian hill—and remember, that it is her
home.
We follow them with our eyes, as they go up the steep height over which
falls the white foam of the clattering Reichenbach; and they wave their
hands toward us and disappear upon the little plateau which stretches
toward the crystal Rosenlaui and the tall, still Engel-Horner.
May the mountain angels guard them.
As we journey on toward that wonderful pass of Splugen I recall, by the
way, upon the heights and in the valleys, the spots where I lingered
years before—here, I plucked a flower; there, I drank from that cold,
yellow, glacier water; and here, upon some rock overlooking a stretch of
broken mountains, hoary with their eternal frosts, I sat musing upon
that very Future, which is with me now. But never, even when the
ice-genii were most prodigal of their fancies to the wanderer, did I
look for more joy, or a better angel.
Afterward, when all our trembling upon the Alpine paths has gone by, we
are rolling along under the chestnuts and lindens that skirt the banks
of Como. We recall that sweet story of Manzoni, and I point out, as well
as I may, the loitering place of the _bravi_, and the track of poor Don
Abbondio. We follow in the path of the discomfited Rienzi, to where the
dainty spire, and pinnacles of the Duomo of Milan, glisten against the
violet sky.
Carry longs to see Venice; its water-streets, and palaces have long
floated in her visions. In the bustling activity of our own country, and
in the quiet fields of England, that strange, half-deserted capital
lying in the Adriatic, has taken the strongest hold upon her fancy.
So we leave Padua and Verona behind us, and find ourselves, upon a soft
spring noon, upon the end of the iron road which stretches across the
lagoon toward Venice. With the hissing of steam in the ear it is hard to
think of the wonderful city we are approaching. But as we escape from
the carriage, and set our feet down into one of those strange,
hearse-like, ancient boats, with its sharp iron prow, and listen to the
melodious rolling tongue of the Venetian gondolier; as we see rising
over the watery plain before us, all glittering in the sun, tall square
towers with pyramidal tops, and clustered domes, and minarets; and
sparkling roofs lifting from marble walls—all so like the old
paintings—and as we glide nearer and nearer to the floating wonder,
under the silent working oar of our now silent gondolier—as we ride up
swiftly under the deep, broad shadows of palaces and see plainly the
play of the sea water in the crevices of the masonry—and turn into
narrow rivers shaded darkly by overhanging walls, hearing no sound, but
of voices, or the swaying of the water against the houses—we feel the
presence of the place. And the mistic fingers of the Past, grappling our
spirits, lead them away—willing and rejoicing captives, through the long
vista of the ages that are gone.
Carry is in a trance—rapt by the witchery of the scene, into dream. This
is her Venice, nor have all the visions that played upon her fancy been
equal to the enchanting presence of this hour of approach.
Afterward it becomes a living thing—stealing upon the affections, and
upon the imagination by a thousand coy advances. We wander under the
warm Italian sunlight to the steps from which rolled the white head of
poor Marino Faliero. The gentle Carry can now thrust her ungloved hand
into the terrible lion’s mouth. We enter the salon of the fearful Ten,
and peep through the half-opened door into the cabinet of the more
fearful Three. We go through the deep dungeons of Carmagnola and of
Carrara; and we instruct the willing gondolier to push his dark boat
under the Bridge of Sighs; and with Rogers’ poem in our hand, glide up
to the prison door and read of—
——that fearful closet at the foot
Lurking for prey, which, when a victim came,
Grew less and less; contracting to a span
An iron door, urged onward by a screw,
Forcing out life!
[Illustration]
I sail, listening to nothing but the dip of the gondolier’s oar, or to
_her_ gentle words, fast under the palace door, which closed that
fearful morning on the guilt and shame of Bianca Capello. Or, with souls
lit up by the scene, into a buoyancy that can scarce distinguish between
what is real and what is merely written—we chase the anxious step of the
forsaken Corinna; or seek among the veteran palaces the casement of the
old Brabantio—the chamber of Desdemona—the house of Jessica, and trace
among the strange Jew money-changers, who yet haunt the Rialto, the
likeness of the bearded Shylock. We wander into stately churches,
brushing over grass, or tell-tale flowers that grow in the court, and
find them damp and cheerless; the incense rises murkily and rests in a
thick cloud over the altars, and over the paintings; the music, if so be
that the organ notes are swelling under the roof, is mournfully
plaintive.
Of an afternoon we sail over to the Lido, to gladden our eyes with a
sight of land and green things, and we pass none upon the way, save
silent oarsmen, with barges piled high with the produce of their
gardens—pushing their way down toward the floating city. And upon the
narrow island, we find Jewish graves, half covered by drifted sand; and
from among them, watch the sunset glimmering over a desolate level of
water. As we glide back, lights lift over the lagoon, and double along
the Guideca and the Grand Canal. The little neighbor isles will have
their company of lights dancing in the water; and from among them will
rise up against the mellow evening sky of Italy gaunt, unlighted houses.
After the nightfall, which brings no harmful dew with it, I stroll, with
her hand within my arm—as once upon the sea, and in the English park,
and in the home-land—over that great square which lies before the palace
of St. Marks. The white moon is riding in the middle heaven, like a
globe of silver; the gondoliers stride over the echoing stones; and
their long black shadows, stretching over the pavement, or shaking upon
the moving water, seem like great funereal plumes, waving over the bier
of Venice.
Carrying thence whole treasures of thought and fancy, to feed upon in
the after years, we wander to Rome.
I find the old one-eyed _maestro_, and am met with cordial welcome by
the mother of the pretty Enrica. The count has gone to the marshes of
Ancona. Lame Pietro still shuffles around the boards at the Leprè, and
the flower sellers at the corner bind me a more brilliant bouquet than
ever for a new beauty at Rome. As we ramble under the broken arches of
the great aqueduct stretching toward Frascati, I tell Carry the story of
my trip in the Appenines, and we search for the pretty Carlotta. But she
is married, they tell us, to a Neapolitan guardsman. In the spring
twilight we wander upon those heights which lie between Frascati and
Albano, and looking westward, see that glorious view of the Campagna,
which can never be forgotten. But beyond the Campagna, and beyond the
huge hulk of St. Peter’s, heaving into the sky from the middle waste, we
see, or fancy we see, a glimpse of the sea, which stretches out and on
to the land we love, better than Rome. And in fancy we build up that
home, which shall belong to us on the return—a home that has slumbered
long in the future, and which, now that the future has come, lies fairly
before me.
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[Illustration]
HOME
YEARS seem to have passed. They have mellowed life into ripeness. The
start, and change, and hot ambition of youth seem to have gone by. A
calm and joyful quietude has succeeded. That future which still lies
before me seems like a roseate twilight, sinking into a peaceful and
silent night.
My home is a cottage, near that where Isabel once lived. The same valley
is around me; the same brook rustles and loiters under the gnarled roots
of the overhanging trees. The cottage is no mock cottage, but a
substantial, wide-spreading cottage, with clustering gables and ample
shade, such a cottage as they build upon the slopes of Devon. Vines
clamber over it, and the stones show mossy through the interlacing
climbers. There are low porches, with cozy armchairs, and generous
oriels, fragrant with mignonette, and the blue blossoming violets.
The chimney stacks rise high and show clear against the heavy pine
trees, that ward off the blasts of winter. The dovecote is a habited
dovecote, and the purple-necked pigeons swoop around the roofs in great
companies. The hawthorn is budding into its June fragrance along all the
lines of fence, and the paths are trim and clean. The shrubs—our
neglected azaleas and rhododendrons chiefest among them—stand in
picturesque groups upon the close-shaven lawn.
The gateway in the thicket below is between two mossy old posts of
stone; and there is a tall hemlock flanked by a sturdy pine for
sentinel. Within the cottage the library is wainscoted with native oak,
and my trusty gun hangs upon a branching pair of antlers. My rod and
nets are disposed above the generous bookshelves; and a stout eagle,
once a tenant of the native woods, sits perched over the central alcove.
An old-fashioned mantel is above the brown stone jambs of the country
fireplace, and along it are distributed records of travel, little bronze
temples from Rome, the _pietro duro_ of Florence, the porcelain busts of
Dresden, the rich iron of Berlin, and a cup fashioned from a stag’s
horn, from the Black Forest by the Rhine.
Massive chairs stand here and there, in tempting attitude; strewed over
an oaken table in the middle are the uncut papers and volumes of the
day, and upon a lion’s skin, stretched before the hearth, is lying
another Tray.
But this is not all. There are children in the cottage. There is
Jamie—we think him handsome—for he has the dark hair of his mother—and
the same black eye, with its long, heavy fringe. There is Carry—little
Carry I must call her now—with a face full of glee and rosy with health;
then there is a little rogue some two years old, whom we call Paul—a
very bad boy—as we tell him.
The mother is as beautiful as ever, and far more dear to me, for
gratitude has been adding, year by year, to love. There have been times
when a harsh word of mine, uttered in the fatigues of business, has
touched her, and I have seen that soft eye fill with tears, and I have
upbraided myself for causing her one pang. But such things she does not
remember, or remembers only to cover with her gentle forgiveness.
Laurence and Enrica are living near us. And the old gentleman, who was
Carry’s god-father, sits with me, on sunny days upon the porch, and
takes little Paul upon his knee, and wonders if two such daughters as
Enrica and Carry are to be found in the world. At twilight we ride over
to see Laurence; Jamie mounts with the coachman, little Carry puts on
her wide-rimmed Leghorn for the evening visit, and the old gentleman’s
plea for Paul can not be denied. The mother, too, is with us, and old
Tray comes whisking along, now frolicking before the horses’ heads, and
then bounding off after the flight of some belated bird.
Away from that cottage home I seem away from life. Within it, that broad
and shadowy future, which lay before me in boyhood and in youth, is
garnered—like a fine mist, gathered into drops of crystal.
And when away—those long letters, dating from the cottage home, are what
tie me to life. That cherished wife, far dearer to me now than when she
wrote that first letter, which seemed a dark veil between me and the
future—writes me now as tenderly as then. She narrates in her delicate
way all the incidents of the home life; she tells me of their rides, and
of their games, and of the new planted trees—of all their sunny days,
and of their frolics on the lawn; she tells me how Jamie is studying,
and of little Carry’s beauty growing every day, and of roguish Paul—so
like his father. And she sends such a kiss from each of them, and bids
me such adieu and such “God’s blessing” that it seems as if an angel
guarded me.
But this is not all; for Jamie has written a postscript:
——“Dear father,” he says, “mother wishes me to tell you how I am
studying. What would you think, father, to have me talk in
French to you, when you come back? I wish you would come back,
though; the hawthorns are coming out, and the apricot under my
window is all full of blossoms. If you should bring me a
present, as you almost always do, I would like a fishing rod.
Your affectionate son,
JAMIE.”
And little Carry has her fine, rambling characters running into a second
postscript:
“Why don’t you come, papa; you stay too long; I have ridden the
pony twice; once he most threw me off. This is all from
CARRY.”
And Paul has taken the pen, too, and in his extraordinary effort to make
a big P, has made a very big blot. And Jamie writes under it—“This is
Paul’s work, pa; but he says it’s a love blot, only he loves you ten
hundred times more.”
And after your return Jamie will insist that you should go with him to
the brook, and sit down with him upon a tuft of the brake, to fling off
a line into the eddies, though only the nibbling roach are sporting
below. You have instructed the workmen to spare the clumps of
bank-willows, that the wood-duck may have a covert in winter, and that
the Bob-o’-Lincolns may have a quiet nesting place in the spring.
Sometimes your wife—too kind to deny such favor—will stroll with you
along the meadow banks, and you pick meadow daisies in memory of the old
time. Little Carry weaves them into rude chaplets, to dress the forehead
of Paul, and they dance along the greensward, and switch off the
daffodils, and blow away the dandelion seeds, to see if their wishes are
to come true. Jamie holds a buttercup under Carry’s chin, to find if she
loves gold; and Paul, the rogue, teases them by sticking a thistle into
sister’s curls.
The pony has hard work to do under Carry’s swift riding—but he is fed by
her own hand, with the cold breakfast rolls. The nuts are gathered in
time, and stored for long winter evenings, when the fire is burning
bright and cheerily—a true, hickory blaze—which sends its waving gleams
over eager, smiling faces, and over well-stored book shelves, and
portraits of dear, lost ones. While from time to time, that wife, who is
the soul of the scene, will break upon the children’s prattle, with the
silver melody of her voice, running softly and sweetly through the
couplets of Crabbe’s stories, or the witchery of the Flodden tale.
Then the boys will guess conundrums, and play at fox and geese; and
Tray, cherished in his age, and old Milo petted in his dotage, lie side
by side upon the lion’s skin before the blazing hearth. Little Tomtit
the goldfinch sits sleeping on his perch, or cocks his eye at a sudden
crackling of the fire for a familiar squint upon our family group.
But there is no future without its straggling clouds. Even now a shadow
is trailing along the landscape.
It is a soft and mild day of summer. The leaves are at their fullest. A
southern breeze has been blowing up the valley all the morning, and the
light, smoky haze hangs in the distant mountain gaps, like a veil on
beauty. Jamie has been busy with his lessons, and afterward playing with
Milo upon the lawn. Little Carry has come in from a long ride—her face
blooming, and her eyes all smiles and joy. The mother has busied herself
with those flowers she loves so well. Little Paul, they say, has been
playing in the meadow, and old Tray has gone with him.
But at dinner time Paul has not come back.
“Paul ought not to ramble off so far,” I say.
The mother says nothing, but there is a look of anxiety upon her face
that disturbs me. Jamie wonders where Paul can be, and he saves for him
whatever he knows Paul will like—a heaping plateful. But the dinner hour
passes and Paul does not come. Old Tray lies in the sunshine by the
porch.
Now the mother is indeed anxious. And I, though I conceal this from her,
find my fears strangely active. Something like instinct guides me to the
meadow; I wander down the brook-side, calling—Paul—Paul! But there is no
answer.
All the afternoon we search, and the neighbors search; but it is a
fruitless toil. There is no joy that evening; the meal passes in
silence; only little Carry, with tears in her eyes, asks—if Paul will
soon come back? All the night we search and call—the mother even braving
the night air, and running here and there, until the morning finds us
sad and despairing.
That day—the next—cleared up the mystery, but cleared it up with
darkness. Poor little Paul!—he has sunk under the murderous eddies of
the brook! His boyish prattle, his rosy smiles, his artless talk, are
lost to us forever!
I will not tell how nor when we found him, nor will I tell of our
desolate home, and of _her_ grief—the first crushing grief of her life.
* * * * *
The cottage is still. The servants glide noiseless, as if they might
startle the poor little sleeper. The house seems cold—very cold. Yet it
is summer weather; and the south breeze plays softly along the meadow
and softly over the murderous eddies of the brook.
* * * * *
Then comes the hush of burial. The kind mourners are there; it is easy
for them to mourn! The good clergyman prays by the bier: “Oh, Thou, who
didst take upon Thyself human woe, and drank deep of every pang in life,
let Thy spirit come and heal this grief, and guide toward that better
Land, where justice and love shall reign, and hearts laden with anguish
shall rest for evermore!”
Weeks roll on, and a smile of resignation lights up the saddened
features of the mother. Those dark mourning robes speak to the heart
deeper and more tenderly than ever the bridal costume. She lightens the
weight of your grief by her sweet words of resignation: “Paul,” she
says, “God has taken our boy!”
Other weeks roll on. Joys are still left—great and ripe joys. The
cottage smiling in the autumn sunshine is there; the birds are in the
forest boughs; Jamie and little Carry are there; and she, who is more
than them all, is cheerful and content. Heaven has taught us that the
brightest future has its clouds—that this life is a motley of lights and
shadows. And as we look upon the world around us, and upon the thousand
forms of human misery, there is a gladness in our deep thanksgiving.
A year goes by, but it leaves no added shadow on our hearthstone. The
vines clamber and flourish; the oaks are winning age and grandeur;
little Carry is blooming into the pretty coyness of girlhood, and Jamie,
with his dark hair and flashing eyes, is the pride of his mother.
There is no alloy to pleasure, but the remembrance of poor little Paul.
And even that, chastened as it is with years, is rather a grateful
memorial that our life is not all here than a grief that weighs upon our
hearts.
Sometimes, leaving little Carrie and Jamie to their play, we wander at
twilight to the willow tree beneath which our drowned boy sleeps calmly
for the great Awaking. It is a Sunday, in the week-day of our life, to
linger by the little grave—to hang flowers upon the head-stone, and to
breathe a prayer that our little Paul may sleep well in the arms of Him
who loveth children.
And her heart, and my heart, knit together by sorrow, as they had been
knit by joy—a silver thread mingled with the gold—follow the dead one to
the land that is before us, until at last we come to reckon the boy as
living in the new home which, when this is old, shall be ours also. And
my spirit, speaking to his spirit, in the evening watches, seems to say
joyfully—so joyfully that the tears half choke the utterance—“Paul, my
boy, we will be _there_!”
And the mother, turning her face to mine, so that I see the moisture in
her eye, and catch its heavenly look, whispers softly—so softly that an
angel might have said it—“Yes, dear, we will be THERE!”
* * * * *
The night had now come, and my day under the oaks was ended. But a
crimson belt yet lingered over the horizon, though the stars were out.
A line of shaggy mist lay along the surface of the brook. I took my gun
from beside the tree, and my shot-pouch from its limb, and, whistling
for Carlo—as if it had been Tray—I strolled over the bridge, and down
the lane, to the old house under the elms.
I dreamed pleasant dreams that night—for I dreamed that my reverie was
real.
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Transcriber’s note:
○ Missing or obscured punctuation was silently corrected.
○ Typographical errors were silently corrected.
○ Inconsistent spelling and hyphenation were made consistent only
when a predominant form was found in this book.
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