p>Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 5. May 1848
CLARA HARLAND
CHAPTER I
I am no visionary – no dreamer; and yet my life has been a ceaseless struggle between the realities of everyday care, and a myriad of shadowy phantoms which ever haunt me. In the crowded and thronged city; in the green walks and sunny forests of my native hills; on the broad and boundless prairie, carpeted with velvet flowers; on the blue and dreamy sea – it is the same. I look around, and perceive men and women moving mechanically about me; I even take part in their proceedings, and seem to float along the tardy current upon which they swim, and become a part – an insignificant portion – of the dull and stagnant scene; and yet, often and often, in the busiest moment, when commonplace has its strongest hold upon me, and I feel actually interested in the ordinary pursuits of my fellow-beings, of a sudden, a great curtain seems to fall around, and enclose me on every side; and, instead of the staid and sober visages of the throng, vague and shadowy faces gleam around me, and magnificent eyes, bright and dreamy, glance and flash before me like the figures on a phantasmagoria. In such moments, there comes over me a happy consciousness that this is the reality and all else a dull and painful dream, from which I have escaped as by a great effort. The dreamy faces are familiar to me, and their large, spiritual eyes encounter mine with glances of pleasant recognition. My heart is glad within me that it has found again its friends and old companions, and the mental outline of the common world, faintly drawn by memory, becomes more and more dim and indistinct, like the surface of the earth to one who soars upward in a balloon, and is at length blended with the gray shadows of forgotten thought, which disturb me no more. But anon some rude and jarring discord, from the world below, pierces upward to my ear, and the air becomes suddenly dark and dreary, and dusty, and I fall heavily to earth again.
As years steal by, these fits of delightful abstraction become rarer and rarer. My visions seem to have lost their substantiality; and even when they do revisit me, they are thin and transparent, and no longer hide the real world from my sight – yet they hold strange power over me; and when they come upon my soul, although they do not all conceal the real, yet they concentrate upon some casual object there, and impart to it a spirituality of aspect and quality which straightway embalms it in my heart. Thus do I invest the faces of friends with a holiness and fervor of devotion which belongs not to them; and when I have wreaked the treasures of my soul upon objects thus elevated above their real quality, I find what a false vision I have been worshiping – its higher qualities mingle again with my own thoughts, whence they emanated, and the real object stands before me, low, dull, and insipid as the thousands of similar ones by which it is surrounded. Thus do I, enamored of qualities and perfections which exist only in my own thought, continually cheat and delude myself into the belief that a congenial spirit has been found, when some trivial incident breaks the spell – the charms I loved glide back to my own soul, and the charmer, unconscious of change in himself, wonders what has wrought so sudden an alteration in me. Then come heart-burnings and self-reproaches against those I have foolishly loved, of treachery, hypocrisy, and ingratitude, which they cannot understand, and over which I mourn and weep.
I had a friend once – not long ago, for the turf is still fresh over his gentle breast – whose soul was fashioned like my own, save that he was all softness, and wanted the hardness and commonplace which events and years have given to me. For a long and delightful season we held sweet converse together; and, although he was much younger than I, yet was there no restraint or concealment between us. Every throb of his heart, almost every evolution of his brain, found an echo in me. I was his mirror – a fountain in which he contemplated himself. From him I never dreamed of treachery, or selfishness, or ingratitude – and he alone did not deceive me. He never gave me pain but once – and who shall tell the agony of that hour, when his hand ceased to return the pressure of my eager fingers, and the dark curtain of death shut out the light of his dear eyes from my soul! Yet, after the anguish was over, and I had laid him in the fragrant earth, amongst the roots of happy flowers, where the limpid brook murmurs its soft and never-ending requiem, and the birds come every night to dream and sleep amid the overhanging branches, although my mortal sense was all too dull to realize his presence, yet in my soul I felt that he was still with me. No midnight breeze came sighing through the dewy moonlight, or brought the exhalations of the stars upon its wings, that did not speak to me of him; and ever when I prayed, I knew that he was near me, mingling, as of old, his soul with mine.
Poets may sing of love, and romantic youths may dream they realize the soft delusion; strong hearts may swear they break and wither away with unrequited passion, and keen brains may be turned by the maddening glances of woman's eyes; but all these to me seem weak and common emotions when compared with the intenseness of man's friendship – that pure, devoted identification with each other which two congenial souls experience when the alloy of no sexual or animal passion mingles with the devotion of the spirit. I could go through fiery ordeals, or submit with patience to the keenest tortures, both of mind or body, so that I felt the sustaining presence of one real friend; while, if alone, my heart shrinks from the contest, and retires dismayed upon itself.
But my poor friend was in love, and his love was as pervading and absorbing as the fragrance of a flower, or the light of a star. The woman he had chosen for his idol – the shrine at which his pure devotions of heart and soul were offered – was a gay and beautiful Creole from New Orleans, who, with her mother, and a young gentleman who appeared in the capacity of friend, spent the summer months in the North. They stopped at the Carlton, where my friend was boarding, and the acquaintance had been formed quite accidentally. The lady was beautiful, bewitching, and very tender; and, without stopping to inquire as to the consequences, or to assure himself that he had the least chance of success, Medwin fell desperately and hopelessly in love in a few days. I was soon made aware of the state of the case, for he had no secrets from me; and, foreseeing that he might very easily have deceived himself entirely in taking for granted that the young lady's affections were not pre-engaged, I begged him to be cautious, and not throw away his regards upon an object, perhaps, unattainable – perhaps even unworthy of them. I represented to him that ladies in the South were usually not very long in falling in love; and it was altogether probable that Clara Harland was already engaged to the gentleman who had accompanied her and her mother, and who was evidently a favored acquaintance. Charles, however, infatuated with his passion, was deaf to my remonstrances, and the very next day sought and obtained an interview, in which he declared his passion, and was made happy by the beautiful Creole. She, however, cautioned him to be on his guard, as her companion had for some time been a suitor for her hand, and was a great favorite with her mother, who had frequently and earnestly urged her to accept his attentions. The fair girl avowed, with flashing eyes, that she loved him not, and had never loved before she met with Medwin. "How," she exclaimed with unwonted energy, "can dear mamma suppose that I shall ever become enamored of that coarse, ferocious, unintellectual man? He has not a generous or delicate sympathy in his nature, and is as rude in heart and feeling as in manner. Beware, however, my dear Charles," continued she, with earnestness, "of Mr. Allington. He is a bold, bad man, whom habits and associations have made haughty, imperious, cold-blooded, and cruel; and I tremble for you when he shall learn what has this day passed between us. Beware of him, for my sake; and, oh! promise me, dearest Charles, that, whatever may be the consequence of what we now have done, you will never fight with him."
Charles smiled, and pressed her hand. "Do not alarm yourself, dearest," said he, "I love you too well to rashly expose myself to danger. I have ever entertained a just horror of the inhuman and barbarous practice at which you hint; and beside," continued he, earnestly, fixing his eyes upon her face with such tenderness that the blood rushed unconsciously to her temples beneath that dear gaze, "since your words of hope and love to me to-day, existence possesses new value in my eyes. Be assured I shall not rashly peril it."
They parted with kind looks and a timid pressure of the hands. Medwin firmly resolved, let what would happen, to keep his promise to his beautiful Creole; and Clara, convinced that, although she had been bred and educated in the midst of a community where not to fight was of itself dishonorable, she should be entirely
