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 | The complete works of N.P. Willis |  |
3. No. III.
THE LUNATIC'S SKATE.
I have only, in my life, known one lunatic — properly
so called. In the days when I carried a satchel
on the banks of the Shawsheen (a river whose half-lovely,
half-wild scenery is tied like a silver thread
about my heart), Larry Wynn and myself were the
farthest boarders from school, in a solitary farm-house
on the edge of a lake of some miles square, called by
the undignified title of Pomp's pond. An old negro,
who was believed by the boys to have come over with
Christopher Columbus, was the only other human
being within anything like a neighborhood of the
lake (it took its name from him), and the only approaches
to its waters, girded in as it was by an almost
impenetrable forest, were the path through old Pomp's
clearing, and that by our own door. Out of school,
Larry and I were inseparable. He was a pale, sad-faced
had confided a secret to me which, from its uncommon
nature, and the excessive caution with which he
kept it from every one else, bound me to him with
more than the common ties of schoolfellow attachment.
We built wigwams together in the woods, had
our tomahawks made of the same fashion, united our
property in fox-traps, and played Indians with perfect
contentment in each other's approbation.
I had found out, soon after my arrival at school,
that Larry never slept on a moonlight night. With
the first slender horn that dropped its silver and graceful
shape behind the hills, his uneasiness commenced,
and by the time its full and perfect orb poured a flood
of radiance over vale and mountain, he was like one
haunted by a pursuing demon. At early twilight he
closed the shutters, stuffing every crevice that could
admit a ray; and then, lighting as many candles as
he could beg or steal from our thrifty landlord, he sat
down with his book in moody silence, or paced the
room with an uneven step, and a solemn melancholy
in his fine countenance, of which, with all my familiarity
with him, I was almost afraid. Violent exercise
seemed the only relief, and when the candles
burnt low after midnight, and the stillness around the
lone farm-house became too absolute to endure, he
would throw up the window, and, leaping desperately
out into the moonlight, rush up the hill into the
depths of the wild forest, and walk on with supernatural
excitement till the day dawned. Faint and pale he
would then creep into his bed, and, begging me to
make his very common and always credited excuse of
illness, sleep soundly till I returned from school. I
soon became used to his way, ceased to follow him,
as I had once or twice endeavored to do, into the
forest, and never attempted to break in on the fixed
and wrapt silence which seemed to transform his lips
to marble. And for all this Larry loved me.
Our preparatory studies were completed, and, to
our mutual despair, we were destined to different
universities. Larry's father was a disciple of the great
Channing, and mine a Trinitarian of uncommon zeal;
and the two institutions of Yale and Harvard were in
the hands of most eminent men of either persuasion,
and few are the minds that could resist a four years'
ordeal in either. A student was as certain to come
forth a Unitarian from one as a Calvinist from the
other; and in the New England states these two sects
are bitterly hostile. So, to the glittering atmosphere
of Channing and Everett went poor Larry, lonely
and dispirited; and I was committed to the sincere
zealots of Connecticut, some two hundred miles off,
to learn Latin and Greek, if it pleased Heaven, but
the mysteries of “election and free grace,” whether
or no.
Time crept, ambled, and galloped, by turns, as we
were in love or out, moping in term-time, or revelling
in vacation, and gradually, I know not why, our correspondence
had dropped, and the four years had
come to their successive deaths, and we had never
met. I grieved over it; for in those days I believed
with a school-boy's fatuity,
“That two, or one, are almost what they seem;”
man or woman again — with a pain at my heart. I
wrote one or two reproachful letters in my senior
years, but his answers were overstrained, and too full
of protestations by half; and seeing that absence had
done its usual work on him, I gave it up, and wrote
an epitaph on a departed friendship. I do not know,
by the way, why I am detaining you with all this, for
it has nothing to do with my story; but let it pass as
an evidence that it is a true one. The climax of things
in real life has not the regular procession of incidents
in a tragedy.
Some two or three years after we had taken “the
irrevocable yoke” of life upon us (not matrimony,
but money-making), a winter occurred of uncommonly
fine sleighing — sledging, you call it in England.
At such times the American world is all
abroad, either for business or pleasure. The roads
are passable at any rate of velocity of which a horse
is capable; smooth as montagnes Russes, and hard
as is good for hoofs; and a hundred miles is diminished
to ten in facility of locomotion. The hunter
brings down his venison to the cities, the western
trader takes his family a hundred leagues to buy
calicoes and tracts, and parties of all kinds scour the
country, drinking mulled wine and “flip,” and shaking
the very nests out of the fir-trees with the ringing of
their horses' bells. You would think death and sorrow
were buried in the snow with the leaves of the
last autumn.
I do not know why I undertook, at this time, a
journey to the west; certainly not for scenery, for it
was a world of waste, desolate, and dazzling whiteness,
for a thousand unbroken miles. The trees were
weighed down with snow, and the houses were
thatched and half-buried in it, and the mountains and
valleys were like the vast waves of an illimitable sea,
congealed with its yesty foam in the wildest hour of a
tempest. The eye lost its powers in gazing on it.
The “spirit-bird” that spread his refreshing green
wings before the pained eyes of Thalaba would have
been an inestimable fellow-traveller. The worth of
the eyesight lay in the purchase of a pair of green
goggles.
In the course of a week or two, after skimming over
the buried scenery of half a dozen states, each as
large as Great Britain (more or less), I found myself
in a small town on the border of one of our western
lakes. It was some twenty years since the bears had
found it thinly settled enough for their purposes, and
now it contained perhaps twenty thousand souls.
The oldest inhabitant, born in the town, was a youth
in his minority. With the usual precocity of new
settlements, it had already most of the peculiarities of
an old metropolis. The burnt stumps still stood about
among the houses, but there was a fashionable circle,
at the head of which were the lawyer's wife and the
member of Congress's daughter; and people ate their
peas with silver forks, and drank their tea with scandal,
and forgave men's many sins and refused to forgive
woman's one, very much as in towns whose history
is written in black letter. I dare say there were
not more than one or two offences against the moral
and Levitical law, fashionable on this side the water,
which had not been committed, with the authentic
aggravations, in the town of — ; I would mention
the name if this were not a true story.
Larry Wynn (now Lawrence Wynn, Esq.) lived
here. He had, as they say in the United States, “hung
out a shingle” (Londonicé, put up a sign) as attorney-at-law,
and to all the twenty thousand innocent inhabitants
of the place, he was the oracle and the squire.
He was besides colonel of militia, churchwarden,
and canal commissioner; appointments which speak
volumes for the prospects of “rising young men” in
our flourishing republic.
Larry was glad to see me — very. I was more glad
to see him. I have a soft heart, and forgive a wrong
generally, if it touches neither my vanity nor my
purse. I forgot his neglect, and called him “Larry.”
By the same token he did not call me “Phil.” (There
are very few that love me, patient reader; but those
who do, thus abbreviate my pleasant name of Philip.
I was called after the Indian sachem of that name,
whose blood runs in this tawny hand.) Larry looked
upon me as a man. I looked on him, with all his
dignities and changes, through the sweet vista of
memory — as a boy. His mouth had acquired the
those who know their fellow-men; but I never saw it
unless when speculating as I am now. He was to me
the pale-faced and melancholy friend of my boyhood;
and I could have slept, as I used to do, with my arm
around his neck, and feared to stir lest I should wake
him. Had my last earthy hope lain in the palm of
my hand, I could have given it to him, had he needed
it, but to make him sleep; and yet he thought of me
but as a stranger under his roof, and added, in his
warmest moments, a “Mr.” to my name! There is
but one circumstance in my life that has wounded me
more. Memory avaunt!
Why should there be no unchangeableness in the
world? why no friendship? or why am I, and you,
gentle reader (for by your continuing to pore over
these idle musings, you have a heart too), gifted with
this useless and restless organ beating in our bosoms,
if its thirst for love is never to be slaked, and its aching
self-fulness never to find flow or utterance? I
would positively sell my whole stock of affections for
three farthings. Will you say “two?”
“You are come in good time,” said Larry one morning,
with a half-smile, “and shall be groomsman to
me. I am going to be married.”
“Married?”
“Married.”
I repeated the word after him, for I was surprised.
He had never opened his lips about his unhappy lunacy
since my arrival, and I had felt hurt at this apparent
unwillingness to renew our ancient confidence,
but had felt a repugnance to any forcing of the topic
upon him, and could only hope that he had outgrown
or overcome it. I argued, immediately on this information
of his intended marriage, that it must be so.
No man in his senses, I thought, would link an impending
madness to the fate of a confiding and lovely
woman.
He took me into his sleigh, and we drove to her
father's house. She was a flower in the wilderness.
Of a delicate form, as all my countrywomen are, and
lovely, as quite all certainly are not, large-eyed, soft
in her manners, and yet less timid than confiding and
sister-like, with a shade of melancholy in her smile,
caught, perhaps, with the “trick of sadness” from himself,
and a patrician slightness of reserve, or pride,
which Nature sometimes, in very mockery of high
birth, teaches her most secluded child — the bride elect
was, as I said before, a flower in the wilderness. She
was one of those women we sigh to look upon as they
pass by, as if there went a fragment of the wreck of
some blessed dream.
The day arrived for the wedding, and the sleigh-bells
jingled merrily into the village. The morning
was as soft and genial as June, and the light snow on
the surface of the lake melted, and lay on the breast
of the solid ice beneath, giving it the effect of one white
silver mirror, stretching to the edge of the horizon.
It was exquisitely beautiful, and I was standing at the
window in the afternoon, looking off upon the shining
expanse, when Larry approached, and laid his hand
familiarly on my shoulder.
“What glorious skating we shall have,” said I, “if
this smooth water freezes to-night!”
I turned the next moment to look at him; for we
had not skated together since I went out, at his earnest
entreaty, at midnight, to skim the little lake where we
had passed our boyhood, and drive away the fever from
his brain, under the light of a full moon.
He remembered it, and so did I; and I put my arm
behind him, for the color fled from his face, and I
thought he would have sunk to the floor.
“The moon is full to-night,” said he, recovering instantly
to a cold self-possession.
I took hold of his hand firmly, and, in as kind a
tone as I could summon, spoke of our early friend
ship, and apologizing thus for the freedom, asked if he
had quite overcome his melancholy disease. His face
worked with emotion, and he tried to withdraw his
hand from my clasp, and evidently wished to avoid an
answer.
“Tell me, dear Larry,” said I.
“Oh God! No!” said he, breaking violently from
me, and throwing himself with his face downward upon
the sofa. The tears streamed through his fingers upon
the silken cushion.
“Not cured? And does she know it?”
“No! no! thank God! not yet!”
I remained silent a few minutes, listening to his
suppressed moans (for he seemed heart-broken with
the confession), and pitying while I inwardly condemned
him. And then the picture of that lovely and
fond woman rose up before me, and the impossibility
of concealing his fearful malady from his wife, and
the fixed insanity in which it must end, and the whole
wreck of her hopes and his own prospects and happiness
— and my heart grew sick.
I sat down by him, and, as it was too late to remonstrate
on the injustice he was committing toward her,
I asked how he came to appoint the night of a full
moon for his wedding. He gave up his reserve, calmed
himself, and talked of it at last as if he were relieved
by the communication. Never shall I forget the
doomed pallor, the straining eye, and feverish hand,
of my poor friend during that half hour.
Since he had left college he had striven with the
whole energy of his soul against it. He had plunged
into business — he had kept his bed resolutely night
after night, till his brain seemed on the verge of phrensy
with the effort — he had taken opium to secure to himself
an artificial sleep; but he had never dared to confide
it to any one, and he had no friend to sustain him
in his fearful and lonely hours; and it grew upon him
rather than diminished. He described to me with the
most touching pathos how he had concealed it for
years — how he had stolen out like a thief to give vent
to his insane restlessness in the silent streets of the city
at midnight, and in the more silent solitudes of the
forest — how he had prayed, and wrestled, and wept
over it — and finally, how he had come to believe that
there was no hope for him except in the assistance and
constant presence of some one who would devote life
to him in love and pity. Poor Larry! I put up a silent
prayer in my heart that the desperate experiment might
not end in agony and death.
The sun set, and, according to my prediction, the
wind changed suddenly to the north, and the whole
surface of the lake in a couple of hours became of the
lustre of polished steel. It was intensely cold.
The fires blazed in every room of the bride's paternal
mansion, and I was there early to fulfil my office
of master of ceremonies at the bridal. My heart was
weighed down with a sad boding, but I shook off at
least the appearance of it, and superintended the concoction
of a huge bowl of punch with a merriment
which communicated itself in the shape of most joyous
hilarity to a troop of juvenile relations. The house
resounded with their shouts of laughter.
In the midst of our noise in the small inner room
entered Larry. I started back, for he looked more like
a demon possessed than a Christian man. He had walked
to the house alone in the moonlight, not daring to
trust himself in company. I turned out the turbulent
troop about me, and tried to dispel his gloom, for a face
like his at that moment would have put to flight the
rudest bridal party ever assembled on holy ground.
He seized on the bowl of strong spirits which I had
mixed for a set of hardy farmers, and before I could
tear it from his lips had drank a quantity which, in an
ordinary mood, would have intoxicated him helplessly
in an hour. He then sat down with his face buried in
his hands, and in a few minutes rose, his eyes sparkling
face utterly changed. I thought he had gone wild.
“Now, Phil,” said he; “now for my bride!” And
with an unbecoming levity he threw open the door,
and went half dancing into the room where the friends
were already assembled to witness the ceremony.
I followed with fear and anxiety. He took his place
by the side of the fair creature on whom he had placed
his hopes of life, and, though sobered somewhat by
the impressiveness of the scene, the wild sparkle still
danced in his eyes, and I could see that every nerve
in his frame was excited to the last pitch of tension.
If he had fallen a gibbering maniac on the floor, I
should not have been astonished.
The ceremony proceeded, and the first tone of his
voice in the response startled even the bride. If it had
rung from the depths of a cavern, it could not have
been more sepulchral. I looked at him with a shudder.
His lips were curled with an exulting expression,
mixed with an indefinable fear; and all the blood
in his face seemed settled about his eyes, which were
so bloodshot and fiery, that I have ever since wondered
he was not, at the first glance, suspected of insanity.
But oh! the heavenly sweetness with which that loveliest
of creatures promised to love and cherish him, in
sickness and in health! I never go to a bridal but it
half breaks my heart; and as the soft voice of that
beautiful girl fell with its eloquent meaning on my
ear, and I looked at her, with lips calm and eyes moistened,
vowing a love which I knew to be stronger than
death, to one who, I feared, was to bring only pain and
sorrow into her bosom, my eyes warmed with irrepressible
tears, and I wept.
The stir in the room as the clergyman closed his
prayer, seemed to awake him from a trance. He
looked around with a troubled face for a moment; and
then, fixing his eyes on his bride, he suddenly clasped
his arms about her, and straining her violently to his
bosom, broke into an hysterical passion of tears and
laughter. Then suddenly resuming his self-command,
he apologized for the over-excitement of his feelings,
and behaved with forced and gentle propriety till the
guests departed.
There was an apprehensive gloom over the spirits
of the small bridal party left in the lighted rooms; and
as they gathered round the fire, I approached, and endeavored
to take a gay farewell. Larry was sitting
with his arm about his wife, and he wrung my hand in
silence as I said, “Good-night,” and dropped his head
upon her shoulder. I made some futile attempt to
rally him, but it jarred on the general feeling, and I
lef the house.
It was a glorious night. The clear piercing air had
a vitreous brilliancy, which I have never seen in any
other climate, the rays of the moonlight almost visibly
splintering with the keenness of the frost. The
moon herself was in the zenith, and there seemed
nothing between her and the earth but palpable and
glittering cold.
I hurried home: it was but eleven o'clock; and,
heaping up the wood in the large fireplace, I took a
volume of “Ivanhoe,” which had just then appeared,
and endeavored to rid myself of my unpleasant
thoughts. I read on till midnight; and then, in a
pause of the story, I rose to look out upon the night,
hoping, for poor Larry's sake, that the moon was
buried in clouds. The house was near the edge of
the lake; and as I looked down upon the glassy waste,
spreading away from the land, I saw the dark figure
of a man kneeling directly in the path of the moon's
rays. In another moment he rose to his feet, and
the tall, slight form of my poor friend was distinctly
visible, as, with long and powerful strokes, he sped
away upon his skates along the shore.
To take my own Hollanders, put a collar of fur
around my mouth, and hurry after him, was the work
of but a minute. My straps were soon fastened; and,
following in the marks of the sharp irons at the top of
my speed, I gained sight of him in about half an hour,
and with great effort neared him sufficiently to shout
his name with a hope of being heard.
“Larry! Larry!”
The lofty mountain-shore gave back the cry in repeated
echoes — but he redoubled his strokes, and
sped on faster than before. At my utmost speed I
followed on; and when, at last, I could almost lay
my hand on his shoulder, I summoned my strength
to my breathless lungs, and shouted again — “Larry!
Larry!”
He half looked back, and the full moon at that instant
streamed full into his eyes. I have thought
since that he could not have seen me for its dazzling
brightness; but I saw every line of his features with
the distinctness of daylight, and I shall never forget
them. A line of white foam ran through his half-parted
lips; his hair streamed wildly over his forehead,
on which the perspiration glittered in large drops; and
every lineament of his expressive face was stamped with
unutterable and awful horror. He looked back no
more; but, increasing his speed with an energy of
which I did not think his slender frame capable, he
began gradually to outstrip me. Trees, rocks, and
hills, fled back like magic. My limbs began to grow
numb; my fingers had lost all feeling, but a strong
northeast wind was behind us, and the ice smoother
than a mirror: and I struck out my feet mechanically,
and still sped on.
For two hours we had kept along the shore. The
branches of the trees were reflected in the polished
ice, and the hills seemed hanging in the air, and floating
past us with the velocity of storm-clouds. Far
down the lake, however, there glimmered the just
visible light of a fire, and I was thanking God that
we were probably approaching some human succor,
when, to my horror, the retreating figure before me
suddenly darted off to the left, and made swifter than
before toward the centre of the icy waste. Oh, God!
what feelings were mine at that moment! Follow him
far I dared not; for, the sight of land once lost, as it
would be almost instantly with our tremendous speed,
we perished, without a possibility of relief.
He was far beyond my voice, and to overtake him
was the only hope. I summoned my last nerve for
the effort, and keeping him in my eye, struck across
at a sharper angle, with the advantage of the wind full
in my back. I had taken note of the mountains, and
knew that we were already forty miles from home, a
distance it would be impossible to retrace against the
wind; and the thought of freezing to death, even if
I could overtake him, forced itself appallingly upon
me.
Away I flew, despair giving new force to my limbs,
and soon gained on the poor lunatic, whose efforts
seemed flagging and faint. I neared him. Another
struggle! I could have dropped down where I was,
and slept, if there were death in the first minute, so
stiff and drowsy was every muscle in my frame.
“Larry!” I shouted. “Larry!”
He started at the sound, and I could hear a smothered
and breathless shriek, as, with supernatural
strength, he straightened up his bending figure, and,
leaning forward again, sped away from me like a
phantom on the blast.
I could follow no longer. I stood stiff on my skates,
still going on rapidly before the wind, and tried to
look after him, but the frost had stiffened my eyes,
and there was a mist before them, and they felt like
glass. Nothing was visible around me but moonlight
and ice, and dimly and slowly I began to retrace the
slight path of semicircles toward the shore. It was
painful work. The wind seemed to divide the very
fibres of the skin upon my face. Violent exercise no
sharply into my loins, and bind across my breast like
a chain of ice; and, with the utmost strength of mind
at my command, I could just resist the terrible inclination
to lie down and sleep. I forgot poor Larry.
Life — dear life! — was now my only thought! So selfish
are we in our extremity!
With difficulty I at last reached the shore, and then,
unbuttoning my coat, and spreading it wide for a sail,
I set my feet together, and went slowly down before
the wind, till the fire which I had before noticed began
to blaze cheerily in the distance. It seemed an
eternity in my slow progress. Tree after tree threw
the shadow of its naked branches across the way; hill
after hill glided slowly backward; but my knees
seemed frozen together, and my joints fixed in ice;
and if my life had depended on striking out my feet,
I should have died powerless. My jaws were locked,
my shoulders drawn half down to my knees, and in a
few minutes more, I am well convinced, the blood
would have thickened in my veins, and stood still, for
ever.
I could see the tongues of the flames — I counted
the burning fagots — a form passed between me and
the fire — I struck, and fell prostrate on the snow; and
I remember no more.
The sun was darting a slant beam through the trees
when I awoke. The genial warmth of a large bed of
embers played on my cheek, a thick blanket enveloped
me, and beneath my head was a soft cushion of withered
leaves. On the opposite side of the fire lay four
Indians wrapped in their blankets, and, with her head
on her knees, and her hands clasped over her ankles,
sat an Indian woman, who had apparently fallen asleep
upon her watch. The stir I made aroused her, and,
as she piled on fresh fagots, and kindled them to a
bright blaze with a handful of leaves, drowsiness came
over me again, and I wrapped the blanket about me
more closely, and shut my eyes to sleep.
I awoke refreshed. It must have been ten o'clock
by the sun. The Indians were about, occupied in various
avocations, and the woman was broiling a slice
of deer's flesh on the coals. She offered it to me as I
rose; and having eaten part of it with a piece of a cake
made of meal, I requested her to call in the men, and,
with offers of reward, easily induced them to go with
me in search of my lost friend.
We found him, as I had anticipated, frozen to death,
far out on the lake. The Indians tracked him by the
marks of his skate-irons, and from their appearance
he had sunk quietly down, probably drowsy and exhausted,
and had died of course without pain. His
last act seemed to have been under the influence of
his strange madness, for he lay on his face, turned
from the quarter of the setting moon.
We carried him home to his bride. Even the Indians
were affected by her uncontrollable agony. I
can not describe that scene, familiar as I am with pictures
of horror.
I made inquiries with respect to the position of his
bridal chamber. There were no shutters, and the
moon streamed broadly into it: and after kissing his
shrinking bride with the violence of a madman, he
sprang out of the room with a terrific scream, and she
saw him no more till he lay dead on his bridal bed.
| The complete works of N.P. Willis | |