 | Dream life |  |
III.
College Romance.
IN following the mental vagaries of youth, I must
not forget the curvetings and wiltings of the heart.
The black-eyed Jenny, with whom a correspondence
at red heat, was kept up for several weeks, is long
before this, entirely out of your regard;—not so much
by reason of the six months disparity of age, as from
the fact, communicated quite confidentially by the
travelled Nat, that she has had a desperate flirtation
with a handsome midshipman. The conclusion is
natural, that she is an inconstant, cruel-hearted creature,
with little appreciation of real worth; and furthermore,
that all midshipmen are a very contemptible, not
to say,—dangerous set of men. She is consigned to
forgetfulness and neglect; and the late lover has long
passage of Childe Harold, commencing,—
I have not loved the world, nor the world me.
As for Madge, the memory of her has been more
wakeful, but less violent. To say nothing of occasional
returns to the old homestead when you have met her,
Nelly's letters not unfrequently drop a careless half-sentence,
that keeps her strangely in mind.
`Madge,' she says, `is sitting by me with her work;'
or, `you ought to see the little, silk purse that Madge
is knitting;' or, speaking of some country rout—
`Madge was there in the sweetest dress you can
imagine.' All this will keep Madge in mind; not it is
true in the ambitious moods, or in the frolics with
Dalton; but in those odd half hours that come stealing
over one at twilight, laden with sweet memories of the
days of old.
A new Romantic admiration is started by those pale
lady-faces which light up, on a Sunday, the gallery of
the college chapel. An amiable and modest fancy,
gives to them all a sweet classic grace. The very
atmosphere of those courts, wakened with high metaphysic
discourse, seems to lend them a Greek beauty,
and finesse; and you attach to the prettiest that your
eye can reach, all the charms of some Sciote maiden,
And as you lie half-wakeful, and half-dreaming, through
the long Divisions of the Doctor's morning discourse,
the twinkling eyes in some corner of the gallery, bear
you pleasant company, as you float down those
streaming visions, which radiate from you, far over the
track of the coming life.
But following very closely upon this, comes a whole
volume of street romance. There are prettily shaped
figures that go floating, at convenient hours for college
observation, along the thoroughfares of the town. And
these figures come to be known, and the dresses, and
the streets; and even the door-plate is studied. The
hours are ascertained, by careful observation, and
induction, at which some particular figure is to be met;
or is to be seen at some low parlor window, in white
summer dress, with head leaning on the hand,—very
melancholy, and very dangerous. Perhaps her very
card is stuck proudly into a corner of the mirror, in the
college chamber. After this may come moonlight
meetings at the gate, or long listenings to the plaintive
lyrics that steal out of the parlor windows, and that
blur wofully the text of the Conic Sections.
Or, perhaps she is under the fierce eye of some
Cerberus of a school mistress, about whose grounds
you prowl piteously, searching for small knot holes
in the surrounding board-fence, through which little
Sonnets are written for the town papers, full of telling
phrases, and with classic allusions, and foot notes, which
draw attention to some similar felicity of expression in
Horace, or Ovid. Correspondence may even be ventured
on, enclosing locks of hair, and interchanging
rings, and paper oaths of eternal fidelity.
But the old Cerberus is very wakeful: the letters
fail: the lamp that used to glimmer for a sign among
the sycamores, is gone out: a stolen wave of a
handkerchief,—a despairing look,—and tears, which
you fancy, but do not see,—make you miserable for
long days.
The tyrant teacher, with no trace of compassion in
her withered heart, reports you to the college authorities.
There is a long lecture of admonition upon the folly of
such dangerous practices; and if the offence be aggravated
by some recent joviality with Dalton and the
Senior, you are condemned to a month of exile with a
country clergyman. There are a few tearful regrets
over the painful tone of the home letters; but the
bracing country air, and the pretty faces of the village
girls heal your heart,—with fresh wounds.
The old Doctor sees dimly through his spectacles;
and his pew gives a good look out upon the smiling
choir of singers. A collegian wears the honors of a
stranger; and the country bucks stand but poor chance
and verses. But this fresh dream, odorous with its
memories of sleigh-rides, or lilac blossoms, slips by, and
yields again to the more ambitious dreams of the
cloister.
In the prouder moments that come, when you are
more a man, and less a boy—with more of strategy
and less of faith—your thought of woman runs loftily:
not loftily in the realm of virtue or goodness, but loftily
on your new world-scale. The pride of intellect that is
thirsting in you, fashions ideal graces after a classic
model. The heroines of fable are admired; and the
soul is tortured with that intensity of passion, which
gleams through the broken utterances of Grecian
tragedy.
In the vanity of self-consciousness, one feels at a long
remove above the ordinary love and trustfulness of a
simple and pure heart. You turn away from all such
with a sigh of conceit, to graze on that lofty, but bitter
pasturage, where no daisies grow. Admiration may be
called up by some graceful figure that you see moving
under those sweeping elms; and you follow it with an
intensity of look that makes you blush; and straightway,
hide the memory of the blush, by summing up
some artful sophistry, that resolves your delighted
gaze into a weakness, and your contempt into a virtue.
But this cannot last. As the years drop off, a
to have been cut out of a page of Greek poetry. They
have all its sentiment, its fire, its intellectual reaches: it
would be hard to say what they have not. The profile,
is a Greek profile; and the heavy chestnut hair is
plaited in Greek bands. The figure too, might easily
be that of Helen, or of Andromache.
You gaze—ashamed to gaze; and your heart yearns
—ashamed of its yearning. It is no young girl, who is
thus testing you: there is too much pride for that.
A ripeness, and maturity rest upon her look, and
figure, that completely fill up that ideal, which
exaggerated fancies have wrought out of the Grecian
heaven. The vision steals upon you at all hours,—
now rounding its flowing outline to the mellifluous
metre of Epic Hexameter, and again, with its bounding
life, pulsating with the glorious dashes of tragic verse.
Yet, with the exception of stolen glances, and secret
admiration, you keep aloof. There is no wish to
fathom what seems a happy mystery. There lies a
content in secret obeisance. Sometimes it shames you,
as your mind glows with its fancied dignity; but the
heart thrusts in its voice; and yielding to it, you dream
dreams, like fond, old Boccacio's, upon the olive-shaded
slopes of Italy. The tongue even, is not trusted with
the thoughts that are seething within: they begin and
end in the voiceless pulsations of your nature.
After a time,—it seems a long time, but it is in
truth, a very short time,—you find who she is, who is
thus entrancing you. It is done most carelessly. No
creature could imagine that you felt any interest in the
accomplished sister—of your friend Dalton. Yet it is
even she, who has thus beguiled you; and she is at
least some ten years Dalton's senior; and by even more
years,—your own!
It is singular enough, but it is true,—that the affections
of that transition state from youth to manliness,
run toward the types of maturity. The mind in its
reaches toward strength, and completeness, creates a
heart-sympathy—which, in its turn, craves fullness.
There is a vanity too about the first steps of manly
education, which is disposed to under-rate the innocence,
and unripened judgment of the other sex. Men see
the mistake, as they grow older;—for the judgment
of a woman, in all matters of the affections, ripens by
ten years, faster than a man's.
In place of any relentings on such score, you are
set on fire anew. The stories of her accomplishments,
and of her grace of conversation, absolutely drive you
mad. You watch your occasion for meeting her upon
the street. You wonder if she has any conception
of your capacity for mental labor; and if she has any
adequate idea of your admiration for Greek poetry,
and for herself?
You tie your cravat poet-wise, and wear broad
collars, turned down, wondering how such disposition
may affect her. Her figure and step become a kind
of moving romance to you, drifting forward, and
outward into that great land of dreams, which you
call the world. When you see her walking with
others, you pity her; and feel perfectly sure that if
she had only a hint of that intellectual fervor which
in your own mind, blazes up at the very thought
of her, she would perfectly scorn the stout gentleman
who spends his force in tawdry compliments.
A visit to your home wakens ardor, by contrast,
as much as by absence. Madge, so gentle, and now
stealing sly looks at you, in a way so different from
her hoydenish manner of school-days, you regard
complacently, as a most lovable, fond girl—the very
one for some fond and amiable young man, whose soul
is not filled—as yours is—with higher things! To
Nelly, earnestly listening, you drop only exaggerated
hints of the wonderful beauty, and dignity of this new
being of your fancy. Of her age, you scrupulously say
nothing.
The trivialities of Dalton amaze you; it is hard to
understand how a man within the limit of such
influences, as Miss Dalton must inevitably exert, can
tamely sit down to a rubber of whist, and cigars!
certainly be a proud thing to supply that lack!
The new feeling, wild and vague as it is,—for as yet,
you have only most casual acquaintance with Laura
Dalton,—invests the whole habit of your study; not
quickening overmuch the relish for Dugald Stewart, or
the miserable skeleton of college Logic; but spending
a sweet charm upon the graces of Rhetoric, and the
music of Classic Verse. It blends harmoniously with
your quickened ambition. There is some last appearance
that you have to make upon the College stage,
in the presence of the great worthies of the state, and
of all the beauties of the town,—Laura chiefest among
them. In view of it, you feel dismally intellectual.
Prodigious faculties are to be brought to the task.
You think of throwing out ideas that will quite
startle His Excellency the Governor, and those very
distinguished public characters, whom the College
purveyors vote into their periodic public sittings. You
are quite sure of surprising them, and of deeply provoking
such scheming, shallow politicians, as have never
read `Wayland's Treatise;' and who venture incautiously,
within hearing of your remarks. You fancy yourself in
advance, the victim of a long leader in the next day's
paper; and the thoughtful, but quiet cause of a great
change in the political programme of the State. But
crowning and eclipsing all the triumph, are those dark
their floods of unconscious praise and tenderness.
Your father and Nelly are there to greet you. He
has spoken a few calm, quiet words of encouragement,
that make you feel—very wrongfully—that he is a
cold man, with no earnestness of feeling. As for Nelly,
she clasps your arm with a fondness, and with a pride,
that tell at every step, her praises and her love.
But even this, true and healthful as it is, fades
before a single word of commendation from the new
arbitress of your feeling. You have seen Miss Dalton!
You have met her on that last evening of your cloistered
life, in all the elegance of ball costume; your eye has
feasted on her elegant figure, and upon her eye
sparkling with the consciousness of beauty. You have
talked with Miss Dalton about Byron,—about Wordsworth,—about
Homer. You have quoted poetry to
Miss Dalton; you have clasped Miss Dalton's hand!
Her conversation delights you by its piquancy and
grace; she is quite ready to meet you (a grave matter
of surprise!) upon whatever subject you may suggest.
You lapse easily and lovingly into the current of her
thought, and blush to find yourself vacantly admiring,
when she is looking for reply. The regard you feel for
her, resolves itself into an exquisite mental love, vastly
superior as you think, to any other kind of love.
There is no dream of marriage as yet, but only of
succession of hours, and talking of poetry and nature,—
of destiny, and love.
Magnificent Miss Dalton!
—And all the while, vaunting youth is almost
mindless of the presence of that fond Nelly, whose
warm sisterly affection measures itself hopefully against
the proud associations of your growing years; and
whose deep, loving eye half suffused with its native
tenderness, seems longing to win you back to the old
joys of that Home-love, which linger on the distant
horizon of your boy-hood, like the golden glories of a
sinking day.
As the night wanes, you wander, for a last look,
toward the dingy walls, that have made for you so long
a home. The old broken expectancies, the days of
glee, the triumphs, the rivalries, the defeats, the friendships,
are recalled with a fluttering of the heart, that
pride cannot wholly subdue. You step upon the
Chapel-porch, in the quiet of the night, as you would
step on the graves of friends. You pace back and
forth in the wan moonlight, dreaming of that dim life
which opens wide and long, from the morrow. The
width and length oppress you: they crush down your
struggling self-consciousness, like Titans dealing with
Pigmies. A single piercing thought of the vast and
shadowy future which is so near, tears off on the
vanity that doubles your bigness, and forces you down
to the bare nakedness of what you truly are!
With one more yearning look at the gray hulks of
building, you loiter away under the trees. The
monster elms which have bowered your proud steps
through four years of proudest life, lift up to the night
their rounded canopy of leaves, with a quiet majesty
that mocks you. They kiss the same calm sky, which
they wooed four years ago; and they droop their
trailing limbs lovingly to the same earth, which
has steadily, and quietly, wrought in them their stature,
and their strength. Only here and there, you catch
the loitering foot-fall of some other benighted dreamer,
strolling around the vast quadrangle of level green,
which lies like a prairie-child, under the edging shadows
of the town. The lights glimmer one by one; and
one by one—like breaking hopes—they fade away
from the houses. The full risen moon that dapples the
ground beneath the trees, touches the tall church
spires with silver; and slants their loftiness—as
memory slants grief—in long, dark, tapering lines, upon
the silvered Green.
| Dream life | |