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The opening · free to read
A solitary room at midnight: a single wax candle lighted on the table: the stiff dull crimson silken curtains of the bed close drawn: half a dozen phials and two or three glasses. Is it the chamber of a sick man? He must sleep sound if it be, for there is no noise--not even a breath; and all without is as still as death. There is awe in the silence; the candle sheds gloom, not light, the damask hanging sucks up the rays, and gives nothing back: they sink into the dark wood furniture: one could hear a mouse creep over the thick carpet; but there is no sound! Is it the chamber of the dead? But where is the watcher?--Away! and what matters it here? No one will come to disturb the rest of that couch: no brawling voices, no creaking doors will make vibrate the dull cold ear of death. Watch ye the living! The dead need no watching: the sealed eyes and the clayed ears have sleep that cannot be broken.
But is it the watcher who comes back again through that slowly opening door? No, that is a man; and we give all the more sad and solemn tasks of life to women. A young man, too, with the broad, free brow gathered into a sad, stern frown. He comes near the bed; he draws slowly back the curtain, and, with the faint ray of the single candle streaming in, gazes down upon the sight beneath. There it lies, the clay--animate, breathing, thoughtful, full of feelings, considerations, passions, pangs, not six-and-thirty hours before. But now so silent, so calm, so powerfully grave: it seems to seize in its very inertness upon the busy thoughts of others, and chain them down to its own deadly tranquillity.
It is the corpse of a man passed the prime, not yet in the decline, of life. The hair is gray, not white; the skin somewhat wrinkled, but not shrivelled. The features are fine, but stern; and there is a deep furrow of a frown between the eyebrows, which even the pacifying hand of death has not been able to obliterate. He must have been a hard man, methinks. Yet how the living gazes on the dead! How earnestly--how tenderly! His eyes, too, fill with tears. There must have been some kindly act done, some tie of gratitude or affection between those two. It is very often that those who are stern, but just, win regard more long-enduring, deeper-seated, more intense, than the blandishing, light-minded man of sweet and hollow courtesies.
The tear overtops the eyelid, and falls upon the dark shooting-jacket; and then, bending down his head, he presses his lips upon the marble brow. A drop (of the heart's dew) will be found there in the morning; for there is no warmth in that cold forehead to dry it up.
The curtains are closed again; the room is once more vacant of breath. The image of human life upon the table, that decreasing taper, gutters down with droppings like those of a petrifying spring. A spark of fire, like some angry passion of the heart, floats in the melted wax above, nourishing its flaming self by wasting that it dwells in. Then comes back the watcher, with bleared and vacant eyes, and lips that smell of brandy. She has sense enough yet to stop the prodigal consumer of her only companion of the night; and sitting down, she falls asleep in the presence of death, as if she were quite familiar with the grave, and had wandered amongst the multitudes that lie beneath.
It was the autumn of the year, when men who do such things, shoot pheasants, and go hunting. The leaves had fallen from the trees, and were blown about in heaps by the chill wind; or if any hung upon the sapless branches, it was but as the tatters of a shroud on the dry bones of some violated tomb; the grass in the fields was brown, and beaten down by wind and storm; the streams were flooded with yellow torrents from the hills, and waved about in wild confusion the thick, fleshy stems of the water weeds; and the face of earth, cold and spiritless like that of a corpse, glared up to the sunless sky, without one promise of the glorious resurrection of the spring. It was night, too, dull, gray night. The raven's wing brooded over the whole world; clouds were upon the firmament; no moonbeam warmed with sweet prophecy the edge of the vapour; but, dim and monotonous, the black veil quenched the starry eyes of heaven, and the shrill wind that whistled through the creaking tree-tops, stirred not even the edges of that dun pall so as to afford one glimpse of things beneath.
There was a dark clay-like smell in the air, too, a smell of decay; for the vegetable world was rotting down into the earth, and the death of the year's life made itself felt to every sense. All was dark, and foul, and chilly as a tomb.
With a quick, strong step, firm, well-planted, unwavering, a man walked along with a stick over his shoulder, and a bundle on the hook of the stick. There was nothing gay or lightsome in his gait. It betokened strength, resolution, self-dependence, but not cheerfulness. He whistled not as he went: the wind whistled enough for the whole world. He neither looked up nor down, but straight forward on his way; and though the blast beat upon his breast and over his cheek, though the thin, sleety rain dashed in his face, and poked its icy fingers in his eyes, on he went sturdily. He never seemed to feel it. He was either young and hardy, or had bitter things in his heart which armoured him against the sharp tooth of the weather--perhaps both. He seemed to know his way well too, for he paused not to consider or look round; but on--on, for many an hour he walked, till at length a stream stopped him, hissing along under its sedgy banks, and in some places overtopping them with the swollen waters.
There he halted for an instant, but not longer; and then with a laugh, short and not gay, he walked straight on, following the path. The turbid torrent came to his knee, rose to the hip, reached his elbows. "Deep enough!" said the night wanderer, but on he went. The stream wrestled with, and shook him, tugged at his feet, strove to whirl him round in its eddies, splashed up against his chest, and, like a hungry serpent, seemed to lick the prey it was fierce to swallow up. He let go the stick and the bundle, and swam. It was his only chance to reach the other bank alive; but he uttered no cry, he called for no help: perhaps he knew that it would be in vain. He could not conquer without loss, though he gave the torrent buffet for buffet, but, like a determined band fighting against a superior force, he smote still, though turned from his direct course, and still made progress onward, till catching the root of an old tree, he held firm, regained his breath and his footing, and leaped upon the bank.
"Who are you? and what do you want here?" asked a voice the moment after, as he paused by the tree, and drew a deep breath.
The wayfarer looked round, and saw, by what light there was a man of apparently his own height and strength, standing by an alder near. "I must first know where I am," he said in return, "before I can tell you what I want."
"Come, come, that will not do," replied the other; "you must have some sharp object, to swim across such a night as this, and must know well enough where you were coming, and what you were coming for. Who are you? I say--and if you do no tell, I will make you."
"That were difficult," answered the other; "but I will tell you what I am, and why I swam the stream, if that will do. I am a man not of a nature nor in a mood to be turned back. The river lay in my way, and therefore I came over it; but I have lost my bundle, which is a pity; and I am wetter than is pleasant."
"As for your bundle," said the other, "that will stick upon Winslow wear; and as for your being wet, I could help you to dry clothes if I knew who you were."
"Not knowing will not prevent you," rejoined the other. "Winslow wear!--Now I know where I am. I was not aware I had walked so far by seven good miles. Then I must be in Winslow park."
"Not far wrong," said the other man; "but you seem to be a somewhat strange lad, and wilful withal. As you have lost your bundle, however, and got your clothes wet, you had better come with me; for after all, I dare say you mean no harm, and I may as well help you to a dry jacket."
"I mean no harm to any one," was the reply; "and I think I must stop somewhere near, for my clothes will not dry so soon to-night as they would in the summer sunshine."
"Certainly not," answered the other, "there is more chance of saturation than evaporation."
The swimmer of the stream turned suddenly and looked at him, in some surprise: then fell into a fit of thought: and in the end, without noticing his companion's fine words observed, "I am not getting any dryer by standing here: and you are getting wetter; for the rain is coming on more fiercely. If you have any will to give me shelter and dry clothes, now is the time. If not, I must go and seek them elsewhere."
"Suppose I say you shan't," inquired the other, "what would you do then?"
"Walk away," was the answer.
"And if I stopped you?" said the other.
"Pitch you into the river, and see if you can swim it as well as I did," rejoined the wayfarer.
"The chances would be against you, my friend," rejoined his new companion: "we are about the same height and size, I think; and not very different in make. Suppose us equal then in strength. You have, however, taken a walk to-night long enough to make you lose seven miles of your count; you have swam that river in flood, and have lost somewhat of your strength at every mile of the way, and every yard of the water. Your strength and mine then, being at first equal quantities, you must inquire, whether a can be equal to b, minus c the walk, and d the stream?"
"Yes," answered the other, "for there is one thing you do not take into account."
"What is that?" asked the arithmetician.
"Despair!" said his new-found friend; "for I tell you fairly, that if you make me try to pitch you into the river, I do not care a straw whether I go in with you or not."
"That is a different affair," replied his companion drily; "despair is an unknown quantity, and I have not time to arrive at it; so come along."
The other did not make any answer, but walked on with him, following a path which in ordinary times communicated with that which he had pursued on the other side of the stream, by a little wooden bridge, which had been apparently washed away in the flood. Both the men mused; and probably there was a good deal of similarity in the questions which they were separately trying in their own minds. When man first meets man, to each is presented a problem which he is bound to solve as speedily as possible. Every man is a sphinx to his neighbour, and propounds an enigma, which the other must answer, or woe be to him. The riddle is, "What is within this casket of flesh before my eyes?" and none can tell how important may be the solution. We may be parted soon, whether the impression made by the one upon the other be like the ripple of the wind upon the sea, or profound as the channel which the torrent has worn in the rock; for--
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