Part 6

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.

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.

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.

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.