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

by Donald Grant Mitchell

You can even joke as you talk of others; you can smile—as you think—very graciously; you can say laughingly that you are deeply in love with them, and think it a most capital joke; you can touch their hands, or steal a kiss from them in your games, most imperturbably—they are very dead coals.

But the live one is very lively. When you take the name on your lip, it seems somehow, to be made of different materials from the rest; you cannot half so easily separate it into letters; write it, indeed you can; for you have had practice—very much private practice—on odd scraps of paper, and on the fly-leaves of geographies, and of your natural philosophy. You know perfectly well how it looks; it seems to be written, indeed, somewhere behind your eyes; and in such happy position with respect to the optic nerve, that you see it all the time, though you are looking in an opposite direction; and so distinctly, that you have great fears lest people looking into your eyes should see it too!

For all this, it is a far more delicate name to handle than most that you know of. Though it is very cool, and pleasant on the brain, it is very hot, and difficult to manage on the lip. It is not, as your schoolmaster would say—a name, so much as it is an idea—not a noun, but a verb—an active, and transitive verb; and yet a most irregular verb, wanting the passive voice.

It is something against your schoolmaster’s doctrine, to find warmth in the moonlight; but with that soft hand—it is very soft—lying within your arm, there is a great deal of warmth, whatever the philosophers may say, even in pale moonlight. The beams, too, breed sympathies, very close-running sympathies—not talked about in the chapters on optics, and altogether too fine for language. And under their influence, you retain the little hand, that you had not dared retain so long before; and her struggle to recover it—if indeed it be a struggle—is infinitely less than it was—nay, it is a kind of struggle, not so much against you, as between gladness and modesty. It makes you as bold as a lion; and the feeble hand, like a poor lamb in the lion’s clutch, is powerless, and very meek—and failing of escape, it will sue for gentle treatment; and will meet your warm promise, with a kind of grateful pressure, that is but half acknowledged, by the hand that makes it.

My cigar is burning with wondrous freeness; and from the smoke flash forth images bright and quick as lightning—with no thunder, but the thunder of the pulse. But will it all last? Damp will deaden the fire of a cigar; and there are hellish damps—alas, too many—that will deaden the early blazing of the heart.

She is pretty—growing prettier to your eye, the more you look upon her, and prettier to your ear, the more you listen to her. But you wonder who the tall boy was, whom you saw walking with her, two days ago? He was not a bad-looking boy; on the contrary you think (with a grit of your teeth) that he was infernally handsome! You look at him very shyly, and very closely, when you pass him; and turn to see how he walks, and how to measure his shoulders, and are quite disgusted with the very modest and gentlemanly way, with which he carries himself. You think you would like to have a fisticuff with him, if you were only sure of having the best of it. You sound the neighborhood coyly, to find out who the strange boy is: and are half ashamed of yourself for doing it.

You gather a magnificent bouquet to send her and tie it with a green ribbon, and love knot—and get a little rose-bud in acknowledgment. That day, you pass the tall boy with a very patronizing look; and wonder if he would not like to have a sail in your boat?

But by and by you find the tall boy walking with her again; and she looks sideways at him, and with a kind of grown-up air, that makes you feel very boylike, and humble and furious. And you look daggers at him when you pass; and touch your cap to her, with quite uncommon dignity; and wonder if he is not sorry, and does not feel very badly, to have got such a look from you?

On some other day, however, you meet her alone; and the sight of her makes your face wear a genial, sunny air; and you talk a little sadly about your fears and your jealousies; she seems a little sad, and a little glad, together; and is sorry she has made you feel badly—and you are sorry too. And with this pleasant twin sorrow, you are knit together again—closer than ever. That one little tear of hers has been worth more to you than a thousand smiles. Now you love her madly; you could swear it—swear it to her, or swear it to the universe. You even say as much to some kind old friend at nightfall; but your mention of her is tremulous and joyful—with a kind of bound in your speech, as if the heart worked too quick for the tongue; and as if the lips were ashamed to be passing over such secrets of the soul, to the mere sense of hearing. At this stage you can not trust yourself to speak her praises or if you venture, the expletives fly away with your thought before you can chain it into language; and your speech, at your best endeavor, is but a succession of broken superlatives that you are ashamed of. You strain for language that will scald the thought of her; but hot as you can make it, it falls back upon your heated fancy like a cold shower.