University of Virginia Library

16. CHAPTER XVI.

The gray light of dawn stole into the chamber.
Norman lay stretched upon his back on the couch,
his features settled into a livid and ghastly hue, as
if death had already struck him: cold—passionless
—senseless—rigid; the eyes closed, the cheeks,
forehead, and mouth sharpened. Recall him as he
moved a few hours before in the flush of strength
and health, or wandered in blissful reveries beneath
the stars, weaving visions of future joy. How
strange that all, even when they least dream of it,
may have run to the edge of the abyss. What a
happy constitution of our nature which can ever
forget this frightful truth—which can lose itself in
the dance and the song; which can watch the
melting cloud, the fading rainbow, the withering
flower, and never tremble—never remember that
we ourselves are as fleeting.

Over the prostrate and almost unbreathing form
of the youth bent four figures. The first was a
surgeon, eminent both in Europe and America for
his extraordinary skill, and the success with which
he had for many years performed most difficult and

daring operations. Long habit had rendered him
callous to every sign of distress, either in the
patient or the bleeding hearts of the circle around.
He could take you off a limb with a quiet smile,
and draw the glittering and fearful instrument
through the flesh of the living, with the same accustomed
composure with which he laid open the
mysteries of God's mightiest machine in death.
He stood over Norman calmly, and with that slight
air of professional importance which few, if any,
can separate from their exertions of skill. The
patient breathed with a momentarily lengthened
respiration, and a low faint moan broke from his
pallid lips. The half-smiling practitioner had just
dressed the wounds, with as much apparent solicitude
to preserve his own wristbands unstained, as
to secure the life which ebbed so low in the youth's
veins. You would have imagined Dr. Wetmore,
from his bland and pleasant air, superintending
some pretty chymical operation, rather than striving
to reunite those half-severed ties which held a human
soul from its flight into eternity.

By his side Dr. Melbourne, the first physician of
the city, watched the face, and ever and anon felt
the pulse, of the object of their solicitude. His
prepossessing features were, although in but a
slight degree, more touched with solemnity; and,
if calm and deliberate in every motion, still he did
not smile. He exhibited undivided attention in the
suffering of the patient. Perhaps, being more
familiar with pain in a less bloody form, and in a
sphere immediately comprehended within his own
circle of skill, the sight now before him struck
upon those sympathies undulled by use. On the
other side—kneeling, her hair dishevelled, her dress
thrown hastily on, pale, agitated with suspense, anguish,
and horror—the light shone faintly on the

features of Miss Leslie. Lastly, the noble form
of the father—in that majestic and almost proud
attitude unconsciously assumed by those exercising
a strong power over passion or feeling. His face
was pale indeed; his lips compressed; but the
muscles of his features moved not—there was not
a start, a stir, a tear—when the two learned gentlemen
raised themselves as the task was finished.
Norman still lay insensible, and the picture of
death. Indeed, for a moment both father and
sister thought the spirit fled.

“Is he gone? is it over?” asked Mr. Leslie, his
paleness increasing as his medical advisers slowly
withdrew from the bed. He followed them; Miss
Leslie did so likewise, with a faint and choked
sob, her hands clasped, and her eyes streaming with
tears.

One or two significant looks passed between the
doctors, and then the surgeon replied in a low
whisper,—

“Why, Mr. Leslie, as yet—”

A scarcely perceptible convulsion flitted across
the face of the father.

“As yet he lives, but—”

Miss Leslie sank back in a chair in agony, bent
down her head, and covered her face with her
hands—

“My brother—my brother—oh, my brother!”

Mr. Leslie drew his companion yet farther away,
where their voices might not disturb the invalid.
Melbourne returned to the bedside.

“Dr. Wetmore,” said the father, “speak the
worst. Must he die?”

“Impossible to say, my good sir. The scales
hang even. A moment—a breath—a hair may decide;
but the danger is certainly not immediate.”

“He may then recover?”

“Possibly,” replied the surgeon, passing his fingers
over the sleeve of his coat to brush away a
thread.

Night again arrived. The most gloomy forebodings
were entertained of the patient. Norman remained
weak and in great pain. All conversation
was forbidden him. It was the day of their intended
visit to Washington; Julia had forgotten it.
The gayeties of fashionable life had occupied but
little of her thoughts; she enjoyed, but never abandoned
herself to them. Her anticipations of the
seat of government were largely made up of the
expected triumph of her father in the long looked
for debate. Never beat a more tender and affectionate
heart than hers. Whatever she loved, she
loved enthusiastically, romantically. Although her
young soul had learned to yield itself to the solicitations
of Howard, she found no diminution of her
affection for her brother and father. The attachment
was not like other attachments. There were in
its progress no doubts, no dislikes, no heart-burnings,
no oppositions. It was the growth of a kind
and gentle climate, shooting up and blossoming
richly in perpetual sunshine. Her nature was all
love. Terrible were the thoughts which broke
upon her young dreams while watching Norman's
pillow. She had never before suffered a misfortune;
had never even seen sickness; and death—
it seemed to her the calamity of some lower world.
The ghastly and frightful spectre had scarcely ever
entered the sunny circle of her thoughts. She
had never lost a friend. Her mother had passed
away long before her memory; and she pictured
her, not in the startling and awful vestments of the
grave, but as an angel in heaven. Happy girl!
happy girl! she had never seen her heart's dearest
adored struck by the sudden shaft from smiling

health to the dark and hushed bed of agony. She
had never seen the form the most doted on, wasted,
palsied, and strengthless; the voice, interwoven
with years of love, changed, till it met her with a
strange and unnatural tone; the lips shrunken to an
expression never seen before; the eyes gleaming
with a solemnity new and appalling, as if some demon
had entered the body; the form so hallowed,
so tenderly dear, racked with all the tremendous
engines of disease and death.

Mr. Leslie's emotions were for a time equally
undivided. He forgot his lofty schemes; his
haughty ambition—all the statesman passed from
his bosom, and left him exposed to the agony of a
father's solicitude. But as the second night wore
away, other thoughts began to mingle with those
to which he had at first been a prey. The habits
of thirty years are deep and obstinate. This
dreadful calamity had occurred at a moment when
his presence at Washington was pledged, not only
to his own hopes, but to the hopes of a mighty portion
of his country. Not only would he by his absence
suffer a blow from which, probably, he would
never be able to recover, but his constituents would
never retrieve the loss. Perhaps these thoughts
would have had less influence over his mind, perhaps
they would not even have gained entrance
there at all, but for an occurrence which, although
he might have done so, he had not in the least foreseen.
Party spirit in the United States sometimes
rages with unlimited fury; sometimes (shame to
those among my countrymen who countenance
such violations of decency!) descends to the most
unjustifiable means to put up or put down a powerful
politician. The misfortunes or accidents of private
life are by a certain class seized upon with indiscriminating
avidity. Personal feelings, even domestic

casualties of the most sacred nature, are not
unfrequently dragged forth to feed the thirst for
ridicule and slander which these thoughtless agents,
tools of political leaders, think it not beneath them
to resort to. I am not here speaking of my country;
I allude but to those (and they are very often
foreigners) who by this licentiousness disgrace and
insult it. On the present occasion, the fond father,
while overwhelmed in unutterable anxiety and anguish,
found a certain set of daily journals ridiculing
his distress, and endeavouring to link it with
fabrications dishonourable to him. One organ of
the opposite party observed—“The report, so currently
circulated to-day, of the robbery and assassination
of Mr. Norman Leslie, son of the celebrated
Mr. Mordaunt Leslie, proves to be but a trick.
Mr. Norman Leslie was hurt, as our respectable
contemporary the `Democratic Journal' has it, in a
fray. If young gentlemen will sow, they must expect
to reap. The wounds, however, we are credibly
informed, are altogether unimportant; but the
eloquent statesman is happy to avail himself of any
excuse for not meeting the thunders of Mr. B—,
which he well knows would burst upon him were
he to show himself at this period in the Senate of
the United States.”

These and other paragraphs forced the subject
of his political affairs upon his attention in a new
light; and as he hung over the pillow of his son,
his mind was torn with contending emotions.