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The Project Gutenberg EBook of A Midnight Fantasy, by Thomas Bailey Aldrich

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Title: A Midnight Fantasy

Author: Thomas Bailey Aldrich

Release Date: November 6, 2007 [EBook #23363]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A MIDNIGHT FANTASY ***

Produced by David Widger

A MIDNIGHT FANTASY

By Thomas Bailey Aldrich

Boston And New York Houghton Mifflin Company

Copyright, 1873, 1885, and 1901

I.

It was close upon eleven o'clock when I stepped out of the rear
vestibule of the Boston Theatre, and, passing through the narrow court
that leads to West Street, struck across the Common diagonally. Indeed,
as I set foot on the Tremont Street mall, I heard the Old South drowsily
sounding the hour.

It was a tranquil June night, with no moon, but clusters of sensitive
stars that seemed to shiver with cold as the wind swept by them;
for perhaps there was a swift current of air up there in the zenith.
However, not a leaf stirred on the Common; the foliage hung black and
massive, as if cut in bronze; even the gaslights appeared to be infected
by the prevailing calm, burning steadily behind their glass screens
and turning the neighboring leaves into the tenderest emerald. Here and
there, in the sombre row of houses stretching along Beacon Street, an
illuminated window gilded a few square feet of darkness; and now and
then a footfall sounded on a distant pavement. The pulse of the city
throbbed languidly.

The lights far and near, the fantastic shadows of the elms and maples,
the gathering dew, the elusive odor of new grass, and that peculiar hush
which belongs only to midnight--as if Time had paused in his flight and
were holding his breath--gave to the place, so familiar to me by day, an
air of indescribable strangeness and remoteness. The vast, deserted park
had lost all its wonted outlines; I walked doubtfully on the flagstones
which I had many a time helped to wear smooth; I seemed to be wandering
in some lonely unknown garden across the seas--in that old garden in
Verona where Shakespeare's ill-starred lovers met and parted. The white
granite facade over yonder--the Somerset Club--might well have been
the house of Capulet: there was the clambering vine reaching up like a
pliant silken ladder; there, near by, was the low-hung balcony, wanting
only the slight girlish figure--immortal shape of fire and dew!--to make
the illusion perfect.

I do not know what suggested it; perhaps it was something in the play
I had just witnessed--it is not always easy to put one's finger on the
invisible electric thread that runs from thought to thought--but as
I sauntered on I fell to thinking of the ill-assorted marriages I had
known. Suddenly there hurried along the gravelled path which crossed
mine obliquely a half-indistinguishable throng of pathetic men and
women: two by two they filed before me, each becoming startlingly
distinct for an instant as they passed--some with tears, some with
hollow smiles, and some with firm-set lips, bearing their fetters with
them. There was little Alice chained to old Bowlsby; there was Lucille,
"a daughter of the gods, divinely tall," linked forever to the dwarf
Perrywinkle; there was my friend Porphyro, the poet, with his delicate
genius shrivelled in the glare of the youngest Miss Lucifer's eyes;
there they were, Beauty and the Beast, Pride and Humility, Bluebeard and
Fatima, Prose and Poetry, Riches and Poverty, Youth and Crabbed Age--
Oh, sorrowful procession! All so wretched, when perhaps all might have
been so happy if they had only paired differently! I halted a moment to
let the weird shapes drift by. As the last of the train melted into the
darkness, my vagabond fancy went wandering back to the theatre and the
play I had seen--Romeo and Juliet. Taking a lighter tint, but still of
the same sober color, my reflections continued.

What a different kind of woman Juliet would have been if she had not
fallen in love with Romeo, but had bestowed her affection on some

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