Read Ebook: Reveries of a Bachelor; or A Book of the Heart by Mitchell Donald Grant Ashe E M Illustrator

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Ebook has 891 lines and 66996 words, and 18 pages

--"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 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.

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 a?a? a?a?, of tragic chorus.

--The nurse is getting dinner; you are holding the baby; Peggy is reading Bruy?re.

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 Bruy?re.

--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.

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 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 , 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!

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!

Your mother, alas for it, she is gone! Is there any bitterness to a youth, alone, and homeless, like this!

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.

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!

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.

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!

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