Harper's New Monthly Magazine, No. XXVII, August 1852, Vol. V

Toward the end of my first Saratoga week, I met an old college friend. It was my old chum, Herbert, from the South. Herbert, who, over many a midnight glass and wasting weed, had leaned out of my window in the moonlight, and recited those burning lines of Byron which all students do recite to that degree, that I have often wondered what students did, in romantic moonlights, before Byron was born. In those midnight recitals Herbert used often to stop, and say to me:

"I wonder if you would like my sister?"

Her name was not mentioned, but Herbert was so handsome in the southern style; he was so picturesque, and manly, and graceful – a kind of Sidney and Bayard – that I was sure his sister was not less than Amy Robsart, or Lucy of Lammermoor, or perhaps Zuleika.

Toward the close of our course, we were one day sauntering beyond the little college-town, and dreaming dreams of that Future which, to every ambitious young man, seems a stately palace waiting to be royally possessed by him, when Herbert, who really loved me, said:

"I wish you knew Lulu."

"I wish I did know Lulu."

And that was all we ever said about it.

When we met at Saratoga it was a pleasant surprise to both, and doubly so to me, for I was sadly bored by my want of acquaintances. We fell into an earnest conversation, in the midst of which Herbert suddenly said:

"Ah! there, I must run and join Lulu!" and left me.

Who has not had just this experience, or a similar one, at any Watering-Place? One day you suddenly discover that some certain person has arrived; and when you go to your room to dress for dinner, your boots look splayed – your waistcoats are not the thing – your coat isn't half as handsome as other coats – and you spoil all your cravats in your nervous efforts to tie them exquisitely. You get dressed, however, and descend to dinner, giving yourself a Vivian Grey-ish air – a combination of the coxcomb, the poet, and the politician – and yet wonder why your hands seem so large, and why you do not feel at your ease, although every thing is the same as yesterday, except that Lulu has arrived.

And there she sits!

So sat Lulu, Herbert's sister, cool in light muslin, as if that sultry summer day she were Undine draped in mist. She had the self-possession, which many children have, and which greatly differs from the elaborate sang froid of elegant manners. There was no haughty reserve, no cold unconsciousness, as if the world were not worth her treading. But when Herbert nodded to me – and I, knowing that she was about to look at me, involuntarily put forward the poet-aspect of Vivian – she turned and looked toward me earnestly and unaffectedly for a few moments, while I played with a sweet-bread, and looked abstracted. It is a pity that we men make such fools of ourselves when we are in the callow state! Lulu turned back and said something to Herbert; of course, it was telling him her first impression of me! Do you think I wished to hear it?

She was not tall nor superb: her face was very changeful and singularly interesting. I watched her during dinner, and such were my impressions. If they were wrong, it was the fault of my perceptions.

We met upon the piazza after dinner while the beautifully-dressed throng was promenading, and the band was playing. It was an Arcadian moment and scene.

"Lulu, this is my friend, Mr. – , of whom I have spoken to you so often."

Herbert remained but a moment. I offered my arm to his sister, and we moved with the throng. The whole world seemed a festival. The day was golden – the music swelled in those long, delicious chords, which imparadise the moment, and make life poetry. In that strain, and with that feeling, our acquaintance commenced. It was Lulu's first summer at a Watering-Place (at least she said so); it was my first, too, at a Watering-Place – but not my first at a flirtation, thought I, loftily. She had all the cordial freshness of a Southern girl, with that geniality of manner which, without being in the least degree familiar, is confiding and friendly, and which to us, reserved and suspicious Northerners, appears the evidence of the complete triumph we have achieved, until we see that it is a general and not a particular manner.

The band played on: the music seemed only to make more melodious and expressive all that we said. At intervals, we stopped and leaned upon the railing by a column wreathed with a flowering vine, and Lulu's eye seeking the fairest blossom, found it, and her hand placed it in mine. I forgot commencement-day, and the glory of the valedictory. Lulu's eyes were more inspiring than the enthusiastic thousand in the church; and the remembered bursts of the band that day were lost in the low whispers of the girl upon my arm. I do not remember what we said. I did not mean to flirt, in the usual sense of that word (men at a Watering-Place never do). It was an intoxication most fatal of all, and which no Maine law can avert.

Herbert joined us later in the afternoon, and proposed a drive; he was anxious to show me his horses. We parted to meet at the door. Lulu gently detached her arm from mine; said gayly, "Au revoir, bientôt!" as she turned away; and I bounded into the hall, sprang up-stairs into my room, and sat down, stone-still, upon a chair.

I looked fixedly upon the floor, and remained perfectly motionless for five minutes. I was lost in a luxury of happiness! Without a profession, without a fortune, I felt myself irresistibly drawn toward this girl; – and the very fascination lay here, that I knew, however wild and wonderful a feeling I might indulge, it was all hopeless. We should enjoy a week of supreme happiness – suffer in parting – and presently be solaced, and enjoy other weeks of supreme felicity with other Lulus!

My young friends of the Watering-Places, deny having had just such an emotion and "course of thought," if you dare!

We drove to the lake, and the whole world of Saratoga with us. Herbert's new bays sped neatly along – he driving in front, Lulu and I chatting behind. Arrived at the lake, we sauntered down the steep slope to the beach. We stepped into a boat and drifted out upon the water. It was still and gleaming in the late afternoon; and the pensive tranquillity of evening was gathering before we returned. We sang those passionate, desperate love-songs which young people always sing when they are happiest and most sentimental. So rapidly had we advanced – for a Watering-Place is the very hot-bed of romance – that I dropped my hand idly upon Lulu's; and finding that hers was not withdrawn, gradually and gently clasped it in mine. So, hand-in-hand, we sang, floating homeward in the golden twilight.

There was a dance in the evening at the hotel. Lulu was to dance with me, of course, the first set, and as many waltzes as I chose. She was so sparkling, so evidently happy, that I observed the New York belles, to whom happiness is an inexplicable word, scanned her with an air of lofty wonder and elegant disdain. But Lulu was so genuinely graceful and charming; she remained so quietly superior in her simplicity to the assuming hauteur of the metropolitan misses, that I kept myself in perfect good-humor, and did not feel myself at all humbled in the eyes of the Young America of that city, because I was the cavalier of the unique Southerner. So far did this go, that in my desire to revenge myself upon the New Yorkers, I resolved to increase their chagrin by praising Lulu to the chief belle of the set.

To her I was introduced. A New York belle at a Watering-Place! "There's a divinity doth hedge her," and a mystery too. She looked at me with supreme indifference as I advanced to the ordeal of presentation, evidently measuring my claims upon her consideration by the general aspect of my outer man. I moved with a certain pride, because although I felt awkward before the glance of Lulu, I was entirely self-possessed in the consciousness of unexceptionable attire before the unmeaning stare of the fashionable parvenue. You see I do get a little warm in speaking of her, and yet I was as cool as an autumn morning, when I made my bow, and requested her hand for the next set.

We danced vis-a-vis to Lulu. My partner swung her head around upon her neck, as none but Juno or Minerva should venture to do, and looked at the other personal of the quadrille, to see if she were in a perfectly safe set. I ventured a brief remark upon nothing – the weather, probably. The Queen of the Cannibal Islands bent majestically in a monosyllabic response.

"It is very warm to-night," continued I.

"Yes, very warm," she responded.

"You have been long here?"

"Two weeks."

"Probably you came from Niagara?"

"No, from Sharon."

"Shall you go to Lake George?"

"No, we go to Newport."

There I paused, and fondled my handkerchief, while the impassible lady relapsed into her magnificent silence, and offered no hope of any conversation in any direction. But I would not be balked of my object, and determined that if the living stream did run "quick below," the glaring polish of ice which these "fine manners" presented, my remark should be an Artesian bore to it.

"How handsome our vis-a-vis is?" said I.

My stately lady said nothing, but tossed her head slightly, without changing her expression, except to make it more pointedly frigid, in a reply which was a most vociferous negative, petrified by politeness into ungracious assent.

"She is what Lucia of Lammermoor might have been before she was unhappy," continued I, plunging directly off into the sea of trouble.

"Ah! I don't know Miss Lammermoor," responded my partner, with sang-froid.

I am conscious that I winced at this. A New York belle, hedged with divinity and awfulness, &c., not know Miss Lammermoor. Such stately naïveté of ignorance drew a smile into my eyes, and I concluded to follow the scent.

"You misunderstand me," said I. "I was speaking of Scott's Lucia – the Waverley novel, you know."

"Waverley, Waverley," replied my Cannibal Queen, who moved her head like Juno, but this time lisping and somewhat confused, as if she knew that, by the mention of books, we were possibly nearing the verge of sentiment. "Waverley – I don't know what you mean: you're too deep for me."

I was silent for that moment, and sat a mirthful Marius, among the ruins of my proud idea of a metropolitan belle. Had she not exquisitely perfected my revenge? Could the contrast of my next dance with Lulu have been pointed with more diamond distinctness than by the unweeting lady, whom I watched afterward, with my eyes swimming in laughter, as she glided, passionlessly, without smiling, without grace, without life – like a statue clad in muslin, over grass-cloth, around the hall. Once again, during the evening, I went to her and said:

"How graceful that Baltimore lady is."

"The Baltimore ladies may have what you call grace and ease," said she, with the same delicious hauteur, "and the Boston ladies are very 'strong-minded,'" she continued, in a tone intended for consuming satire, the more unhappy that it was clear she could make no claim to either of the qualities – "but the New York women have air," she concluded, and sailed away with what "might be air," said Herbert, who heard her remark, "but certainly very bad air."

Learn from this passage of my experience, beloved reader, you who are for the first time encountering that Sphinx, a New York belle, that she is not terrible. You shall find her irreproachable in tournure, but it is no more exclusively beautiful or admirable, than New York is exclusively the fine city of the country. I am a young man, of course, and inexperienced; but I prefer that lovely languor of the Southern manners, which is expressed in the negligence, and sometimes even grotesqueness of dress, to the vapid superciliousness, which is equally expressed in the coarse grass cloth that imparts the adorable Je ne sais quoi of style. "It is truly amusing," Herbert says, who has been a far traveler, "to see these nice New Yorkers assuming that the whole country outside their city is provincial." A Parisian lady who should affect to treat a Florentine as a provincial, would be exiled by derision from social consideration. Fair dames of New York, I am but an anonymous valedictorian; yet why not make your beauty more beautiful, by that courtesy which is loftier than disdain, and superior to superciliousness?

Ah, well! it was an aromatic evening. Disraeli says that Ferdinand Armine had a Sicilian conversation with Henrietta Temple, in the conservatory. You know how it ended, and they knew how it would end, – they were married. But if Ferdinand had plunged into that abyss of excitement, knowing that however Sicilian his conversation might be, it would all end in a bachelor's quarters, with Henrietta as a lay figure of memory, which he might amuse himself in draping with a myriad rainbow fancies – if he had known this, ought he to have advanced farther in the divine darkness of that prospect? Ought he not to have said, "Dear Miss Temple, my emotions are waxing serious, and I am afraid of them, and will retire."

You will say, "certainly," of course. We all say, "certainly," when we read or talk about it quietly. Young men at Saratoga and Newport say, "certainly," over their cigars. But when the weed is whiffed away, they dress for conquest, and draw upon the Future for the consequences. Unhappily, the Future is perfectly "good," and always settles to the utmost copper.

At least, so Herbert says, and he is older than I am. I only know – in fact, I only cared, that the evening fled away like a sky-lark singing up to the sun at daybreak – (that was a much applauded sentence in my valedictory). I deliberately cut every cable of remorse that might have held me to the "ingenuous course," as it is called, and drove out into the shoreless sea of enjoyment. I revelled in Lulu's beauty, in her grace, in her thousand nameless charms. I was naturally sorry for her. I knew her young affections would "run to waste, and water but the desert." But if a girl will do so! Summer and the midsummer sun shone in a cloudless sky. There was nothing to do but live and love, and Lulu and I did nothing else. Through the motley aspects of Watering-Place existence, our life shot like a golden thread, embroidering it with beauty. We strolled on the piazza at morning and evening. During the forenoon we sat in the parlor, and Lulu worked a bag or a purse, and I sat by her, gossiping that gossip which is evanescent as foam upon champagne – yes, and as odorous and piercing, for the moment it lasts. We only parted to dress for dinner. I relinquished the Vivian Grey style, and returned to my own. Every day Lulu was more exquisitely dressed, and when the band played, after dinner, and the sunlight lay, golden-green, upon the smooth, thick turf, our conversation was inspired by the music, as on the first day, which seemed to me centuries ago, so natural and essential to my life had Lulu become. Toward sunset we drove to the lake. Sometimes in a narrow little wagon, not quite wide enough for two, and in which I sat overdrifted by the azure mist of the dress she wore – nor ever dreaming of the Autumn or the morrow; and sometimes with Herbert and his new horses.

Young America sipping cobblers, and roving about in very loose and immoral coats, voted it "a case." The elderly ladies thought it a "shocking flirtation." The old gentlemen who smoke cigars in the easy chairs under the cool colonnade, watched the course of events through the slow curling clouds of tobacco, and looked at me, when I passed them, as if I were juvenile for a Lothario; while the great dancing, bowling, driving, flirting, and fooling mass of the Saratoga population thought it all natural and highly improper.

It is astonishing to recur to an acquaintance which has become a large and luminous part of your life, and discover that it lasted a week. It is saddening to sit among the withered rose-leaves of a summer, and remember that each rose in its prime seemed the sweetest of roses. The old ladies called it "shocking," and the young ladies sigh that it is "heartless," and the many condemn, while the few wrap themselves in scornful pride at the criminal fickleness of men.

One such I met on a quiet Sunday morning when Lulu had just left me to go and read to her mother.

"You are a vain coxcomb," was the promising prelude of my friend's conversation. But she was a friend, so I did not frown nor play that I was offended.

"Why a coxcomb?"

"Because you are flirting with that girl merely for your own amusement. You know perfectly well that she loves you, and you know equally well that you mean nothing. You are a flippant, shallow Arthur Pendennis – "

"Pas trop vite. If I meet a pleasant person in a pleasant place, and we like each other, I, for my part, will follow the whim of the hour. I will live while I live – provided, always, that I injure no other person in following that plan – and in every fairly supposable case of this kind the game is equal. Good morning."

Now you will say that I was afraid to continue the argument, and that I felt self-convicted of folly. Not at all; but I chanced to see Lulu returning, and I strolled down the piazza to meet her.

She was flushed, and tears were ill-concealed in her eyes. Her mother had apprised her that she was to leave in the morning. It was all over.

I did not dare to trust my tongue, but seized her hand a moment, and then ran for my life – literally for my life. Reaching my room I sat down in my chair again, and stared upon the floor. I loved Lulu more than any woman in the world. Yet I remembered precisely similar occasions before, when I felt as if the sun and life were departing when certain persons left my side, and I therefore could not trust my emotion, and run back again and swear absolute and eternal fidelity. You think I was a great fool, and destitute of feeling, and better not venture any more into general female society. Perhaps so. But it was written upon my consciousness suddenly and dazzlingly, as the mystic words upon Nebuchadnezzar's hall, that this, though sweet and absorbing, was but a summer fancy – offspring of sunshine, flowers, and music – not the permanent reality which all men seek in love. It was one of the characteristic charms of the summer life. It made the weeks a pleasant Masque of Truth – a paraphrase of the poetry of Love. I would not avoid it. I would not fail to sail among the isles of Greece, though but for a summer day – though Memory might forever yearningly revert to that delight – conscious of no dishonor, of no more selfishness than in enjoying a day or a flower – exposed to all the risks to which my partner in the delirious and delicious game was exposed.

We met at dinner. We strolled after dinner, and I felt the trembling of the arm within mine, as we spoke of travel, of Niagara, of Newport, and of parting. "Lulu," said I, "the pleasure of a Watering-Place is the meeting with a thousand friends whom we never saw before, and shall never see again."

That was the way I began.

"We meet here, Lulu, like travelers upon a mountain-top, one coming from the clear, green north, another from the sun-loved south; and we sit together for an hour talking, each of his own, and each story by its strangeness fascinating the other hearer. Then we rise, say farewell, and each pursues his journey alone, yet never forgetting that meeting on the mountain, and the sweet discourse that charmed the hours."

I found myself again delivering valedictory addresses, and to an audience more moved than the first.

Yet who would not have had the day upon the mountain! Who would not once have seen Helen, though he might never see her more? Who would not wish to prove by a thousand-fold experience Shelley's lines —

"True love in this differs from gold to clay,That to divide is not to take away."

Lulu said nothing, and we walked silently on.

"I hate the very name Watering-Place," said she, at length.

I did not ask her why.

When the full moonlight came, we went to the ball-room. It is the way they treat moonlights at a Watering-Place.

"Yes," said Lulu, "let us die royally, wreathed with flowers."

And she smiled as she said it. Why did she smile? It was just as we parted, and mark the result. The moment I suspected that the flirtation was not all on one side, I discovered – beloved budding Flirt, male or female, of this summer, you will also discover the same thing in similar cases – that I was seriously in love. Now that I fancied there was no reason to blind my eyes to the fact, I stared directly upon it.

We went into the hall. It was a wild and melancholy dance that we danced. There was a frenzy in my movements, for I knew that I was clasping for the last time the woman for whom my admiring and tender compassion was by her revelation of superiority to loving me, suddenly kindled into devotion! She was very beautiful – at least, she was so to me, and I could not but mark a kind of triumph in her air, which did not much perplex, but overwhelmed me. At length she proposed stepping out upon the piazza, and then we walked in the cool moonlight while I poured out to her the overflowing enthusiasm of my passion. Lulu listened patiently, and then she said:

"My good friend (fancy such a beginning in answer to a declaration), you have much to learn. I thought from what you said this afternoon that you were profoundly acquainted with the mystery of Watering-Place life. You remember you delivered a very polished disquisition on the subject to me – to a woman who, you had every reason to suppose, was deeply in love with you. My good sir, a Watering-Place passion, you ought to know, is an affair of sunshine, music, and flowers. We meet upon a mountain-top, and enjoy ourselves, then part with longing and regret."

Here she paused a moment, and my knees smote together.

"You are a very young man, with very much to learn, and if you mean to make the tour of the Watering-Places during this or any summer, you must understand this; and, as Herbert tells me you were a very moving valedictorian this year, this shall be my moving valedictory to you, for I leave to-morrow – in all summer encounters of the heart or head, at any of the leisure resorts where there is nothing to do but to do nothing, never forget that all baggage is at the risk of the owner."

And so saying, Lulu slipped her arm from mine, glided up the stairs into the hall, and the next moment was floating down the room to a fragrant strain of Strauss.

I, young reader, remained a few moments bewildered in the moonlight, and the next morning naturally left Saratoga. I am meditating whether to go to Newport; but I am sure Lulu is there. Let me advise you, meanwhile, to beware, let me urge you to adapt the old proverb to the meridian of a Watering-Place by reversing it – that "whoever goes out to find a kingdom may return an ass."

THE MIDNIGHT MASS.

AN EPISODE IN THE HISTORY OF THE REIGN OF TERROR

About eight o'clock on the night of the 22d of January, 1793, while the Reign of Terror was still at its height in Paris, an old woman descended the rapid eminence in that city, which terminates before the Church of St. Laurent. The snow had fallen so heavily during the whole day, that the sound of footsteps was scarcely audible. The streets were deserted; and the fear that silence naturally inspires, was increased by the general terror which then assailed France. The old woman passed on her way, without perceiving a living soul in the streets; her feeble sight preventing her from observing in the distance, by the lamp-light, several foot passengers, who flitted like shadows over the vast space of the Faubourg, through which she was proceeding. She walked on courageously through the solitude, as if her age were a talisman which could shield her from every calamity. No sooner, however, had she passed the Rue des Morts, than she thought she heard the firm and heavy footsteps of a man walking behind her. It struck her that she had not heard this sound for the first time. Trembling at the idea of being followed, she quickened her pace, in order to confirm her suspicions by the rays of light which proceeded from an adjacent shop. As soon as she had reached it, she abruptly turned her head, and perceived, through the fog, the outline of a human form. This indistinct vision was enough: she shuddered violently the moment she saw it – doubting not that the stranger had followed her from the moment she had quitted home. But the desire to escape from a spy soon renewed her courage, and she quickened her pace, vainly thinking that, by such means, she could escape from a man necessarily much more active than herself.