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

by Donald Grant Mitchell

The qualities that feed this passion may indeed belong to you; but they never gave birth to such an one before, simply because there was no place in which it could grow. Nature is very provident in these matters. The chrysalis does not burst until there is a wing to help the gauze-fly upward. The shell does not break until the bird can breathe; nor does the swallow quit its nest until its wings are tipped with the airy oars.

This passion of love is strong just in proportion as the atmosphere it finds is tender of its life. Let that atmosphere change into too great coldness, and the passion becomes a wreck—not yours, because it is not worth your having—nor vital, because it has lost the soil where it grew. But is it not laying the reproach in a high quarter to say that those qualities of the heart which begot this passion are exhausted and will not thenceforth germinate through all of your lifetime?

—Take away the worm-eaten frame from your arbor plant, and the wrenched arms of the despoiled climber will not at the first touch any new trellis; they can not in a day change the habit of a year. But let the new support stand firmly, and the needy tendrils will presently lay hold upon the stranger! and your plant will regain its pride and pomp, cherishing, perhaps, in its bent figure, a memento of the old, but in its more earnest and abounding life mindful only of its sweet dependence on the new.

Let the poets say what they will; these affections of ours are not blind, stupid creatures, to starve under polar snows when the very breezes of heaven are the appointed messengers to guide them toward warmth and sunshine!

—And with a little suddenness of manner I tear off a wisp of paper, and, holding it in the blaze of my lamp, relight my cigar. It does not burn so easily, perhaps, as at first: it wants warming before it will catch; but presently it is in a broad, full glow that throws light into the corners of my room.

—Just so—thought I—the love of youth, which succeeds the crackling blaze of boyhood, makes a broader flame, though it may not be so easily kindled. A mere dainty step, or a curling lock, or a soft blue eye are not enough; but in her, who has quickened the new blaze, there is a blending of all these, with a certain sweetness of soul that finds expression in whatever feature or motion you look upon. Her charms steal over you gently and almost imperceptibly. You think that she is a pleasant companion—nothing more: and you find the opinion strongly confirmed, day by day; so well confirmed, indeed, that you begin to wonder why it is that she is such a delightful companion? It can not be her eye, for you have seen eyes almost as pretty as Nelly’s; nor can it be her mouth, though Nelly’s mouth is certainly very sweet. And you keep studying what on earth it can be that makes you so earnest to be near her, or to listen to her voice. The study is pleasant. You do not know any study that is more so, or which you accomplish with less mental fatigue.

Upon a sudden, some fine day, when the air is balmy, and the recollection of Nelly’s voice and manner more balmy still, you wonder—if you are in love? When a man has such a wonder, he is either very near love or he is very far away from it; it is a wonder that is either suggested by his hope or by that entanglement of feeling which blunts all his perceptions.

But if not in love, you have at least a strong fancy—so strong that you tell your friends carelessly that she is a nice girl—nay, a beautiful girl; and if your education has been bad, you strengthen the epithet on your own tongue with a very wicked expletive, of which the mildest form would be “deuced fine girl!” Presently, however, you get beyond this, and your companionship and your wonder relapse into a constant, quiet habit of unmistakable love—not impulsive, quick and fiery, like the first, but mature and calm. It is as if it were born with your soul, and the recognition of it was rather an old remembrance than a fresh passion. It does not seek to gratify its exuberance and force with such relief as night serenades, or any Jacques-like meditations in the forest; but it is a quiet, still joy, that floats on your hope into the years to come—making the prospect all sunny and joyful.

It is a kind of oil and balm for whatever was stormy or harmful: it gives a permanence to the smile of existence. It does not make the sea of your life turbulent with high emotions, as if a strong wind were blowing, but it is as if an Aphrodite had broken on the surface, and the ripples were spreading with a sweet, low sound, and widening far out to the very shores of time.

There is no need now, as with the boy, to bolster up your feelings with extravagant vows; even should you try this in her presence, the words are lacking to put such vows in. So soon as you reach them they fail you, and the oath only quivers on the lip, or tells its story by a pressure of the fingers. You wear a brusque, pleasant air with your acquaintances, and hint—with a sly look—at possible changes in your circumstances. Of an evening you are kind to the most unattractive of the wall-flowers—if only your Nelly is away; and you have a sudden charity for street beggars with pale children. You catch yourself taking a step in one of the new polkas upon a country walk, and wonder immensely at the number of bright days which succeed each other, without leaving a single stormy gap for your old melancholy moods. Even the chambermaids at your hotel never did their duty one-half so well; and as for your man Tom, he is become a perfect pattern of a fellow.