HALF TINTS. I. COMMONPLACE. JACK, my boy, will you give me your ears awhile? I feel an impulse to talk a little. And don't take offence at my familiar way. Remember that as John and man I've never known you. Do you never rub your eyes and strain back to that long ago? Do your faculties never swim in remembrances of it? Do you never have periods of abstraction, when memories become actualities, and all sense for present things is suspended or inoperative? The To me they occur often, floating me off my feet and out of myself. No matter how busy or absorbing the situation, the exacting present is shut out, and the old time comes back, warm and radiant as our boyhood painted it. Only the other morning, hurrying through the thoroughfare of the great town, jostled by the crowd of active men with desperate purposes, I happened mechanically to glance down a side street to the tidal river, when I suddenly became as unconscious of the rush and roar as if staggering in a syncope. water seemed actually to rise and blend with the sky, and the thronging vessels to be transmuted into clouds, transfigured, but retaining the essential lines and proportions of marine architecture. And the sun was shaded to soften the vision. The celestial fleet, floating sublimely as a great soul at rest, was freighted with the hopes and loves and ambitions of my youth, and chief amongst the radiant faces on the shining decks shone the lovely lineaments of one you remember with an ardor next to my own. Mary still, but beatified, as Beatrice to Dante. And Eliza, her inseparable companion, as you were mine, stood by her side. How much, Jack, those beautiful, modest, bright girls were to us. I am sure that for years we never did a doubtful thing without a fear of their knowing it, and God knows how many ill things that guardian consciousness deterred us from. Last at night and first in the morning came thoughts of my little Mary, and pure they were as their subject. And with something of awe her presence inspired me. We never talked of the things always in our thoughts, and when happiest we talked not at all. That sweet baptism Motherwell describes as the silentness of joy, and Lowell more at large in his apostrophe: Oh, sweet Silence! They belied thee Who have called thee weak and vain; Love and longing never seek Coherency at such times was as impossible as steadiness to palsy. The happiness her presence inspired composed my soul, cushioning the faculties like a sweet sleep. The tongue forgot its cunning. Separating from her, the magic thraldom would only too sensibly be felt, as the waking senses consciously disenchant themselves of the stuff that dreams are made of. You know the sensations well enough, repeated over and over again in your relations, present and absent, with Eliza, and repeated to every man with a man's heart, human enough for its best uses. Why, Jack, it did seem that I lost my conceit sometimes, so absorbed I was with her, elbowing myself perpetually, without a thought of sacrifice, by never-ceasing, ever-varying accommodations to her wishes and whims. If you do not remember, it is nevertheless a fact, that I learned to write her name before I could write my own. I never saw a very red glistening apple, nor a perfect, blushing, delicious peach, without growing sinfully covetous of it, as a fitting little gift to her, so all-deserving. In the class I would deliberately misspell the word rather than go above her. I never saw a smooth beech-tree but I cut our initials upon it, never omitting to cut also a ring round them, that another might not get in. Never shall I forget the pretty pink bonnets she always wore on smiling Sunday mornings, and the conscious looks we gave each other across the aisle. You remember, no doubt, that pleasant time in the sugar-camp, when all four of us, with each a mug of delicious of delicious syrup, went down to the brook to cool it and drink. We were too earnest for jokes with or about the sweet lasses. And you have not forgotten how in the still summer days we sometimes wandered to that same little stream and waded in the pure water, and how the timid little things ventured out, their white toes spreading over the clean pebbles like live things. Holmes's picture reminds us : Maidens dancing on the grapes, Their milk-white ankles splashed with red. |