 | Dream life |  |
III.
Boy Sentiment.
WEEKS, and even years of your boyhood roll on,
in the which your dreams are growing wider
and grander,—even as the Spring, which I have made
the type of the boy-age, is stretching its foliage farther
and farther, and dropping longer and heavier shadows
on the land.
Nelly, that sweet sister, has grown into your heart
strangely; and you think that all they write in their
books about love, cannot equal your fondness for little
Nelly. She is pretty, they say; but what do you care
for her prettiness? She is so good, so kind—so
watchful of all your wants, so willing to yield to your
haughty claims!
But, alas, it is only when this sisterly love is lost
family and tosses it upon the waves of fate to wide-lying
distances—perhaps to graves!—that a man feels,
what a boy can never know,—the disinterested and
abiding affection of a sister.
All this, that I have set down, comes back to you
long afterward, when you recal with tears of regret,
your reproachful words, or some swift outbreak of
passion.
Little Madge is a friend of Nelly's—a mischievous,
blue-eyed hoyden. They tease you about Madge.
You do not of course care one straw for her, but yet it
is rather pleasant to be teased thus. Nelly never does
this; oh no, not she. I do not know but in the age of
childhood, the sister is jealous of the affections of a
brother, and would keep his heart wholly at home,
until suddenly, and strangely, she finds her own—
wandering.
But after all, Madge is pretty; and there is something
taking in her name. Old people, and very
precise people, call her Margaret Boyne. But you do
not: it is only plain Madge;—it sounds like her—very
rapid and mischievous. It would be the most absurd
thing in the world for you to like her, for she teases you
in innumerable ways: she laughs at your big shoes;
(such a sweet little foot as she has!) and she pins strips
of paper on your coat collar; and time and again she
that you, such a quiet body, and so much afraid of her,
will never venture upon any liberties with her gipsy
bonnet.
You sometimes wish, in your vexation, as you see
her running, that she would fall and hurt herself badly;
but the next moment, it seems a very wicked wish, and
you renounce it. Once, she did come very near it.
You were all playing together by the big swing—(how
plainly it swings in your memory now!)—Madge had
the seat, and you were famous for running under with a
long push, which Madge liked better than anything
else: well, you have half run over the ground, when
crash comes the swing, and poor Madge with it! You
fairly scream as you catch her up. But she is not hurt
—only a cry of fright, and a little sprain of that fairy
ancle; and as she brushes away the tears, and those
flaxen curls, and breaks into a merry laugh,—half at
your woe-worn face, and half in vexation at herself;
and leans her hand (such a hand!) upon your shoulder,
to limp away into the shade, you dream—your first
dream of love.
But it is only a dream, not at all acknowledged by
you: she is three or four years your junior,—too young
altogether. It is very absurd to talk about it. There
is nothing to be said of Madge—only—Madge! The
name does it.
It is rather a pretty name to write. You are fond
of making capital M's; and sometimes you follow it
with a capital A. Then you practise a little upon a D,
and perhaps back it up with a G. Of course it is the
merest accident that these letters come together. It
seems funny to you—very. And as a proof that they
are made at random, you make a T or an R before
them, and some other quite irrelevant letters after it.
Finally, as a sort of security against all suspicion, you
cross it out—cross it a great many ways;—even holding
it up to the light, to see that there should be no air of
intention about it.
—You need have no fear, Clarence, that your
hieroglyphics will be studied so closely. Accidental as
they are, you are very much more interested in them
than any one else!
—It is a common fallacy of this dream in most
stages of life, that a vast number of persons employ
their time chiefly in spying out its operations.
Yet Madge cares nothing about you, that you know
of. Perhaps it is the very reason, though you do not
suspect it then, why you care so much for her. At any
rate, she is a friend of Nelly's; and it is your duty not
to dislike her. Nelly too, sweet Nelly, gets an inkling
of matters; for sisters are very shrewd in suspicions of
this sort—shrewder than brothers or fathers; and like
your weakness.
Madge drops in to tea quite often: Nelly has something
in particular to show her, two or three times a
week. Good Nelly,—perhaps she is making your
troubles all the greater! You gather large bunches of
grapes for Madge—because she is a friend of Nelly's—
which she doesn't want at all, and very pretty bouquets,
which she either drops, or pulls to pieces.
In the presence of your father one day, you drop
some hint about Madge, in a very careless way—a way
shrewdly calculated to lay all suspicion;—at which
your father laughs. This is odd: it makes you wonder
if your father was ever in love himself.
You rather think that he has been.
Madge's father is dead and her mother is poor; and
you sometimes dream, how—whatever your father may
think or feel—you will some day make a large fortune,
in some very easy way, and build a snug cottage, and
have one horse for your carriage, and one for your wife,
(not Madge, of course—that is absurd) and a turtle
shell cat for your wife's mother, and a pretty gate to
the front yard, and plenty of shrubbery, and how your
wife will come dancing down the path to meet you,—
as the Wife does in Mr. Irving's Sketch Book,—and
how she will have a harp inside, and will wear white
dresses, with a blue sash.
—Poor Clarence, it never once occurs to you, that
even Madge may grow fat, and wear check aprons, and
snuffy-brown dresses of woollen stuff, and twist her hair
in yellow papers! Oh no, boyhood has no such dreams
as that!
I shall leave you here in the middle of your first
foray into the world of sentiment, with those wicked
blue eyes chasing rainbows over your heart, and those
little feet walking every day into your affections.
I shall leave you before the affair has ripened into any
overtures, and while there is only a sixpence split
in halves, and tied about your neck, and Maggie's
neck, to bind your destinies together.
If I even hinted at any probability of your marrying
her, or of your not marrying her, you would be very
likely to dispute me. One knows his own feelings, or
thinks he does, so much better than any one can
tell him!
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