Certainly during this one season of my life I did full justice to the beauties of Central Park. There was not a nook or corner where wild flowers unfolded, where white-stemmed birches leaned over still waters, or ivies clambered over grottoed rocks, which I did not explore; and when in the winding walks of "the Ramble" I caught distant sight of a white drapery, or heard through budding thickets the silvery sounds of laughing and talking, I knew I was coming on one of those pleasant surprises for which the Park grounds are so nicely arranged.
Sometimes Eva would come with a carriage full of children, and with the gay little fairies would pass a sunny afternoon, swinging them, watching them riding in the little goat-carriages, or otherwise presiding over their gaieties. We had, under these circumstances, all the advantage of a tête-à-tête without any of the responsibility of seeking or prolonging it. In fact, the presence of others was a salvo to my conscience, and to public appearance, for, looking on Eva as engaged to another, I was very careful not to go over a certain line of appearances in my relations to her. My reason told me that I was upon dangerous ground for my own peace, but I quieted reason as young men in my circumstances generally do, by the best of arguments.
I said to myself that, "No matter if she were engaged, why shouldn't I worship at her shrine, and cherish her unage as Dante did that of Beatrice, and Tasso that of Eleanora d'Este?" and so on.
"To be sure," I reflected, "this thing can never come to anything; of course she never can be anything to you more than a star in the heavens. But," I said in reply, "she is mine to worship and adore with the worship that we give to all beautiful things. She is mine as are fair flowers, and the blue skies, and the bright sunshine, which cheer and inspire."
I was conscious that I had in my own most sacred receptacle at home, a little fairy glove that she had dropped, to which I had no claim; but I said to myself, "When a leaf falls from the rose, who shall say that I shall not gather it up?" So, too, I had one of those wonderful, useless little bits of fairy gossamer, which Eve's daughters call a pocket-handkerchief. I had yet so little sense of sin that I stole that too, kept the precious theft folded in my prayer-book, and thought she would never know it. I began to understand the efficacy that is ascribed to holy relics, for it seemed to me that if ever any deadly trouble or trial should come upon me, I would lay these little things upon my heart, and they would comfort me.
And yet, all this while, I solemnly told myself I was not in love,—oh, no, not in the least. This was friendship—the very condensed, distilled essence of friendship, that and nothing more. To be sure it was friendship set to a heroic key—friendship of a rare quality. I longed to do something for her, and often thought how glad I would be to give my life for her. Having a very active imagination, sometimes as I lay awake at night I perpetrated all sorts of confusions in the city of New York, for the sole purpose of giving myself an opportunity to do something for her. I set fire to the Van Arsdel mansion several times, in different ways, and, rushing in, bore her through the flames. I inaugurated a horrible plot against the life of her father, and rushing in at the critical moment, delivered the old gentleman that I might revel in her delight. I became suddenly a millionaire by the death of a supposititious uncle in the East Indies, and immediately proceeded to lay all my treasures at her feet.
As for Mr. Wat Sydney, it is incredible the resignation with which I saw him ship-wrecked, upset in stages, crushed in railroad accidents, while I appeared on the scene as the consoling friend; not that I had, of course, any purpose of causing such catastrophes, but there was a degree of resignation attending the view of them that was soothing.
I had in my heart a perfect certainty that Sydney was unworthy of her, but of course racks and thumbscrews should not draw from me the slightest intimation of the kind, in her presence.
So matters went on for some weeks. But sometimes it happens when a young fellow has long wandered in a beautiful dream of this kind, a sudden and harsh light of reality and of common-sense, every-day life, is thrown upon him in an unforeseen moment; and this moment at last arrived for me.
One evening, when I dropped in for a call at the Van Arsdel mansion, the young ladies were all out at a concert, but Mrs. Van Arsdel was at home, and for some reason, unusually bland and motherly.