Reveries of a Bachelor; or, A Book of the Heart

by Donald Grant Mitchell

Again I am upon the sea; but not alone. She whom I first met upon the wastes of ocean is there beside me. Again I steady her tottering step upon the deck; once it was a drifting, careless pleasure; now the pleasure is holy.

Once the fear I felt, as the storms gathered, and night came, and the ship tossed madly, and great waves gathering swift and high, came down like slipping mountains, and spent their force upon the quivering vessel, was a selfish fear. But it is so no longer. Indeed, I hardly know fear; for how can the tempests harm her? Is she not too good to suffer any of the wrath of heaven?

And in nights of calm—holy nights, we lean over the ship’s side, looking down, as once before, into the dark depths, and murmur again snatches of ocean song, and talk of those we love; and we peer among the stars, which seem neighborly, and as if they were the homes of friends. And as the great ocean swells come rocking under us, and carry us up and down along the valleys and the hills of water, they seem like deep pulsations of the great heart of nature, heaving us forward toward the goal of life, and to the gates of heaven.

We watch the ships as they come upon the horizon, and sweep toward us, like false friends, with the sun glittering on their sails; and then shift their course, and bear away—with their bright sails, turned to spots of shadow. We watch the long-winged birds skimming the waves hour after hour—like pleasant thoughts—now dashing before our bows, and then sweeping behind, until they are lost in the hollows of the water.

Again life lies open, as it did once before; but the regrets, disappointments, and fruitless resolves do not come to trouble me now. It is the future, which has become as level as the sea; and she is beside me—the sharer in that future—to look out with me upon the joyous sparkle of water, and to count with me the dazzling ripples that lie between us and the shore. A thousand pleasant plans come up, and are abandoned, like the waves we leave behind us; a thousand other joyous plans dawn upon our fancy, like the waves that glitter before us. We talk of Laurence and his bride, whom we are to meet; we talk of her mother, who is even now watching the winds that waft her child over the ocean; we talk of the kindly old man, her god-father, who gave her a father’s blessing; we talk low, and in the twilight hours, of Isabel—who sleeps.

At length, as the sun goes down upon a fair night, over the western waters which we have passed, we see before us the low blue line of the shores of Cornwall and Devon. In the night shadowy ships glide past us with gleaming lanterns; and in the morning we see the yellow cliffs of the Isle of Wight; and standing out from the land is the dingy sail of our pilot. London with its fog, roar, and crowds, has not the same charms that it once had; that roar and crowd is good to make a man forget his griefs—forget himself, and stupefy him with amazement. We are in no need of such forgetfulness.

We roll along the banks of the sylvan river that glides by Hampton Court; and we toil up Richmond Hill, to look together upon that scene of water and meadow—of leafy copses and glistening villas, of brown cottages and clustered hamlets—of solitary oaks and loitering herds—all spread like a veil of beauty upon the bosom of the Thames. But we can not linger here, nor even under the glorious old boles of Windsor Forest; but we hurry on to that sweet county of Devon, made green with its white skeins of water.

Again we loiter under the oaks, where we have loitered before; and the sleek deer gaze on us with their liquid eyes as they gazed before. The squirrels sport among the boughs as fearless as ever; and some wandering puss pricks her long ears at our steps and bounds off along the hedgerows to her burrow. Again I see Carry in her velvet riding-cap, with the white plume; and I meet, as I met her before, under the princely trees that skirt the northern avenue. I recall the evening when I sauntered out at the park gates, and gained a blessing from the porter’s wife, and dreamed that strange dream—now, the dream seems more real than my life. “God bless you!” said the woman again.

—“Ay, old lady, God has blessed me!”—and I fling her a guinea, not as a gift, but as a debt.

The bland farmer lives yet; he scarce knows me, until I tell him of my bout around his oat field at the tail of his long stilted plow. I find the old pew in the parish church. Other holly sprigs are hung now; and I do not doze, for Carry is beside me. The curate drawls the service; but it is pleasant to listen; and I make the responses with an emphasis that tells more, I fear, for my joy than for my religion. The old groom at the mansion in the park has not forgotten the hard riding of other days, and tells long stories (to which I love to listen) of the old visit of Mistress Carry, when she followed the hounds with the best of the English lasses.