 | CHAPTER XXXVII.
DOCTOR FOSSYL AND HIS PATIENT. Ellie, or, The human comedy |  |
37. CHAPTER XXXVII.
DOCTOR FOSSYL AND HIS PATIENT.
Since the scene related in the last chapter, more than
two weeks had passed—weeks in which dreary winds have
beaten against window-panes, snow-storms fallen silently,
and the hard, frozen earth grown colder; and the human
passions, whose disastrous consequences we have traced,
grown colder too, and died away, and left the brains
heated by them, cool once more, and sensitive to all of
good in human hearts.
Stretched on his bed, with a countenance so thin and
pale, that it scarcely resembles anything earthly, Mr. Fantish
lies, breathing faintly, and with the measured movement
of the invalid who barely possesses strength enough
to expand his lungs, and draw in the element which
ministers to life.
On the table a host of medicine-bottles show that the
utmost art of the physician has been exerted to retain in
the feeble frame the fainting spirit of life, balanced upon
its pinions, and ready at any moment to take its flight.
But it has slowly returned to its prison-house of clay—
the trance of pain and anguish has passed away—the
blood once more begins to move and flow regularly through
the nearly stiff channels of the weary frame: and life has
come back slowly, and is triumphant over its enemy,
death.
In those long hours of agony—agony not only of the
frame, but of the mind—the sick man has reflected long,
and painfully.
The shadow of death has made him regard in their
true light the passions to which he has yielded himself
for years:—all that is good in his nature has come back
to him, concealed, not choked out, by the poisonous overgrowth
of later years.
The curtain is not before the picture now; and from
the canvass a face full of love looks down upon him, pities
him, and seems to reach towards him hands which rain
down tenderness and blessings. Infinite mother's love!
which gilds the weary world, and holds the hard man
with silken cords more strong than chains of steel, and
breaks his heart with memories of the old, old days, and
changes, purifies and saves him!
What once he was afraid to look upon, and covered
with a curtain, shutting out from that pure presence the
associates whose looks and words were sacrilegious
almost, in their contrast with the portrait,—fills him now
him with a thousand blessings on her dying lips long
years ago, she lives again for him in the world of memory;
and going out of the faulty and repulsive present, he takes
refuge in the past, and feels the dear mother's lips upon
his brow, and moans to think of what he was and is, and
cries like a child, thinking of all her goodness to him
when he was indeed a little child, and knelt at her knee,
and clasped his hands in prayer.
Thank heaven, that if human souls are bad and foul,
and desperately bent on following the paths of evil, none
are wholly so. The man has never lived who has not at
some moment felt his heart sink within him, and his eyes
moisten, thinking of his childhood and that love which is
nearer the love of heaven, than anything else upon the
poor corrupt earth.
So he lies for a long time almost dreaming: thinking
of his childhood. Then his faint eyes rise to the picture;
and the lids moisten, and the man, murmurs, “mother!”
As he speaks the door opens, and his physician enters.
It is Doctor Fossyl, who, in passing on the day of his
accident, had supported him until he reached the house,
and since, attended to him.
“Doctor, he murmurs, “do you think I am out of
danger yet?”
“No,” growls the Doctor, but with less harshness than
usual.
“How long shall I live then?”
“I didn't say you were going to die!—remarkable,”
becomes by a little suffering!”
The invalid remains silent for a moment, and then says
faintly:
“So I will live and recover?”
“Yes—that is, it is probable, though you had a fall
hard enough to crack the scull of an ox.”
“It was terrible!” the sick man murmurs, closing his
eyes.
“Don't think about it,” Doctor Fossyl says, “and tell
me how you feel this morning.”
“Faint and weak, but with less pain—I think the bone
is uniting.”
“Certainly, it is.”
“I shall live.”
“Of course.”
“Do you know, Doctor,” murmurs the sick man, “that
I wish to live? I did not think I should have such a
desire for life. I never cared for my life, but I do now”
“Hum, sir! a very natural circumstance. That is the
way with most men: they don't care for their lives—
they'll run into a thousand perils—risk their necks in a
chase, or any other desperate amusement: they don't care
for life—not they! Well, that's all very fine. Only wait
until death reaches out his hand to clutch them, and they
find that their life hangs on a thread—presto! they are
anxious, terribly anxious for a little more life—a little
more time. They wish to renew the note—pay a small
discount of suffering and physic—and put miser Death off
sir, and you don't surprise me.”
The sick man makes a faint movement with his head,
as though these words do not describe his feeling.
“That is not what I mean, Doctor,” he says, lowly.
“What do you mean, then?”
“I mean that I have lived a miserable life heretofore—
and that I wish to break off from it, and go away, and
live better.”
The Doctor looked at the patient, and muttered, “the
old tale!” Then he says, aloud:
“So you are going to reform?”
“I am going to change my habits and associates!” is
the faint reply: “Do you know what that man, Tarnish,
did, Doctor?”
“Tarnish? Oh! that blackleg! No I do not.”
“I will tell you. He came here one morning, just
after you had left me, when I was too weak to move or
call; and said that my `cursed folly' had put him in
danger of a prosecution; and he was warned by a friend
of the intention of the officers of the law to arrest him on
suspicion of having been engaged in some crime—an abduction,
or something—do not ask me what.”
And the invalid pauses, with a faint color in his cheeks.
“Well, growls the Doctor, “what followed this interesting
communication of Captain Tarnish's.”
“Insult and robbery,” replied the sick man, “he loaded
me with abuse, until the bandage on my wound dripped
with blood—for the excitement caused my blood to flow—
and then having relieved himself of all the hatred which
my secretary there—opened it with the key from my
waistcoat pocket—and carried away with him two hundred
dollars, in gold, I had procured one day from bank,
and placed there in his presence.”
“Robbery!”
“Yes, Doctor—simple felony. I could not even raise
my voice, and with a last insult, he informed me that it
would be useless to inform against him: he would be out
of the way, before I could do anything. But I did not
wish to—I was willing to let this man depart; too well
satisfied to be rid of him.”
“What a scoundrel!”
“He was thrown with bad associates, and became depraved
by them, and by vice, I suppose, Doctor. Alas!
I have no right to judge hastily of him.”
And having, by these words, shown how total a change
in his character had taken place, the sick man adds, “now
you know, Doctor, what I mean, when I say that I am
resolved to change my habits, and my associates.”
The Doctor looked at the invalid with a dubious expression,
and it is plain that the meaning of this look is
understood.
“You mean that I am like sick men generally—that I
make a number of good resolutions during my weakness
and pain, which I will straightway forget, when I recover
my health and strength. But I think you are mistaken,
Doctor. I have been very ill two or three times, but never
formed any such resolutions. I attribute my present determination
to the fact that I have reached that point in
and dies speedily of drunkenness, or breaks away from his
bad life and changes. I wish to live and do this, Doctor;
shall I live?”
“Yes,” the Doctor says, looking vacantly at the patient,
“yes, it is true.”
“True, Doctor—what is?”
“I have seen it.”
“What, Doctor?—you seem to be thinking of something
else.
“Ah? What?” says the Doctor, waking up, as it
were, with a troubled brow.
“I asked if I would live, and if so, recover soon!”
“I do not know when you will recover—in two months,
may-be.”
“So long!”
“Perhaps longer.”
“What a time I shall have here, through the long,
weary days;—I have no books, or none that I care to
read: do you know, Doctor, I have not even a Bible!”
“A Bible!
“Not even a Bible. You think it strange I should
want a Bible—but my mother taught me to read in it,
Doctor—that is her portrait.”
And the invalid gazes with great softness on the picture.
“Hum,” growls the Doctor, “there 's a child down in
the passage who, as I am told, always carries a Bible.
Her uncle 's sick, and she 's come with me to get his medicine
from my office.”
“A child, Doctor?”
“Yes.”
“In my passage?”
“I suppose she is—I ordered her to get out of the
carriage, which is a perfect ice-house, and come in while I
saw you.”
“I wish you would ask her to come and lend me her
Bible until she returns—or rather to read me some, as
I 'm so weak.”
The doctor looks doubtfully at the sick man, and
growls:
“Do you know who this child is?”
“No, Doctor.”
“Her name 's Ellen Lacklitter, and I heard your
father—”
“Oh, Doctor! I remember without another word!
My father forced him from one of his houses, when he was
ill! Oh, doctor, don't speak of my father!”
And a frown contracts the sick man's brow.
“Do you want to see the child?” growls the physician.
“Yes, ask her to come up. I do not think she will feel
any enmity toward me, because I have the misfortune to
be afflicted with a cruel father. You smile in triumph,
Doctor, and would taunt me with the bad feeling that
remains in me. Well, sir, I do not deny that I retain a
sentiment toward the man who is my father, wholly improper—but
I cannot prevent it. You ought to tell the
child who I am, and then let her come if she will—if she
will not, I have no complaint to make.”
And the sick man sinks back.
Doctor Fossyl gazes at him for a moment, smiles sardonically,
where Ellie is sitting.
| CHAPTER XXXVII.
DOCTOR FOSSYL AND HIS PATIENT. Ellie, or, The human comedy | |