Part 5

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?

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!”

“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.

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?

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.