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