The First Love

( Originally Published 1922 )

In dreams she grows not older
The lands of dream among,
Though all the world wax colder,
Though all the songs be sung;
In dreams doth he behold her
Still fair and kind and young.

ANDREW LANG

A MAN never forgets his first love, however early in life it may have come to him; through all the ensuing years he bears this precious blue flower of the heart. Even amid the storms of later passion, or the tranquil joys of an assured love, it keeps its unseen, mysterious, marvellous life. However the heart may burn, it still has dew enough for this unfading blossom; however happy and content it may be in another love, yet has it a secret longing which only this can appease. Aye, though the heart itself be as a temple consecrated to another woman, where Love as a priest offers perpetual sacrifice, yet shall you find, deep hidden within its shrine of shrines, a tiny white pyx holding the sacred Host, the imperishable dream of the first passion.

Is it not astonishing how early we begin to love,—as if Nature had no other use for us? I can scarcely remember a time, however distant in my childhood, when I was not in love with somebody. Ah, do not think those earliest troubles of the heart are to be smiled at as children's play. Innocent though they were, what exquisite sweet pain they caused us! What cruel unhappiness, since to be young and unhappy seems a special malignancy of fate! What ineffable longings, that our childish minds vainly sought to understand! What torments of jealousy, which the storms of mature passion have been impotent to efface !

Mamie! The name will never lose its magic for me, and to the end it will continue to be whispered from my dreams. And to think I have now a daughter older than she was when I first saw and loved her. O time the inexorable!

She was twelve and I was sixteen when we tasted together the poignant sweets of young passion, the delicious fruit of that one forbid-den tree in the earthly Eden which to eat and enjoy, humanity will ever gladly face exile and death.

Yet Mamie was only a little girl just entering her teens, though developed like a child ma-donna, and, as I was to know, with feelings beyond her years. I have never seen anything like the proud beauty of her face with its glorious hazel eyes, rich brown and red cheek like a ripe fruit, and scarlet sensitive mouth, all framed in a setting of dark auburn hair.

I pause to smile a little at this fervid description, but you will understand that I am trying to look into the Boy's heart and to write what I find there. That this Fairy Princess of love was only a little household drudge, kept from school and slaving all day for her large German mother married the second time to a small German tailor, who had by this said mother a younger daughter of his own, for whom he evinced an unpleasing preference,—these things may hold well enough together in a world of hard facts, but the Boy saw them through the lens of his romantic imagination. And so complete was the illusion that after more than twenty-five years the Man cannot easily shake it off.

The very beginning of it I can't remember—perhaps we never do recall those first obscure intimations of a passion. I have a delicious but confused memory of long evening walks with her and the little sister—she, as I recollect with an old pang, was nearly always with us. It was summer and the place was an old New England town with a narrow river spanned by quaint bridges flowing through the midst of it. I have known love since,—ah me ! —and real passion, the kind that consumes a man's life as flame licks up oil; but never again have I known anything to compare with that young dream.

Crossing one of these bridges on a certain evening sacred to the angels of Memory and Joy, the little sister stopped behind not more than a minute to tie her shoe; and we had our first kiss! (The Man trembles at the remembrance.) I did not ask for it—I feared her, that is, loved her too much; and she knew no more of coquetry than a babe. So far as I can be sure, the impulse was at once mutual, natural and irresistible. O clinging dewy mouth ! 0 young heart fluttering wildly against mine !—when have I ever drunk at so pure a fount of joy! . . .

After that our evening walks were mostly made up of kisses, for the little sister (she was nine) had to be let into the secret, and as I recall with some surprise, she never betrayed us. This was the more to her credit, seeing that she was only a half-sister and the favorite child. But not even a little girl of nine can bear to see another getting all the kisses, and so she would be vexed sometimes and cry pettishly, "Oh kiss, kiss !—why don't you get married?" Then I would appease her with candy or a promise of something nice,—and we would enjoy our subsequent kisses all the more for the little interruption. O far years, wafting to me a faint scent of lilac! O youth that is no more ! . . .

This lasted a whole summer,—the only en-tire season, the Man freely admits, that he ever passed in Paradise. Could he now go back through the crowding years, I am very sure that he would make a bee-line for that old New England town, and with a heart thumping in his throat, look for a beloved little figure on one of the quaint bridges in the summer gloaming.

Here the Boy tugs at my sleeve and asks me not to tell the prosaic occasion of those twilight walks with Mamie and little sister; the same being that the little tailor sent them every night but Sunday (ah, those heart-hungry Sun-day nights!) for a pint of beer, and often chided them for bringing it home flat. He, the Boy, is quite sullen when I try to make him understand that this homely detail but adds to the pathos of his romance. Stubborn Boy in-deed . . . and the Man not so much better!

I had to leave the little town at the end of that summer of love, and so suddenly that there was no chance to bid her good-bye. Once again, and only once, I saw her afterward, when about two years later I visited the place. On our dear bridge, too, and with little sister grown formidably larger and more knowing. She came defiantly between us at once, and I saw with a sinking heart that we dared not re-new the old love-making. Mamie was taller, paler and, as I thought,—I mean the Boy,—lovely as an angel. I scarcely remember a word that she said to me—the constraint of the sister's presence checked us both. I think she was chilled too by the fact that my visit was to be only for a few days; and she doubtless realized the truth, that I was passing out of her life. Never have I been more wretched than during that last walk with Mamie.

On leaving her I mustered up my courage and ignoring little sister, whose eyes were bright with malice, offered to kiss her. She turned her cheek toward me, saying calmly : "I am going to be confirmed on Sunday".

That cold kiss is my last memory of Mamie, of the warm loving child-woman whose mere name, seen or heard, causes my heart to thrill as when a boy. I never saw her again. . . .