University of Virginia Library

2. II.

Vacation was over, but Fred and myself were still
lingering at Fleming Farm. The roads were impassable
with a premature THAW. Perhaps there is nothing
so peculiar in American meteorology as the phenomenon
which I alone probably, of all the imprisoned
inhabitants of Skaneateles, attributed to a kind and
“special Providence.” Summer had come back, like
Napoleon from Elba, and astonished usurping winter
in the plenitude of apparent possession and security.
No cloud foreboded the change, as no alarm preceded
the apparition of “the child of destiny.” We awoke
on a February morning, with the snow lying chin-deep
on the earth, and it was June! The air was soft
and warm—the sky was clear, and of the milky cerulean
of chrysoprase—the south wind (the same, save
his unperfumed wings, who had crept off like a satiated
lover in October) stole back suddenly from the
tropics, and found his flowery mistress asleep and insensible
to his kisses beneath her snowy mantle. The
sunset warmed back from its wintry purple to the
golden teints of heat, the stars burned with a less
vitreous sparkle, the meteors slid once more lambently
down the sky, and the house-dove sat on the eaves,
washing her breast in the snow-water, and thinking
(like a neglected wife at a capricious return of her
truant's tenderness) that the sunshine would last for
ever!

The air was now full of music. The water trickled
away under the snow, and, as you looked around and
saw no change or motion in the white carpet of the
earth, it seemed as if a myriad of small bells were ringing
under ground—fairies, perhaps, startled in mid-revel
with the false alarm of summer, and hurrying
about with their silver anklets, to wake up the slumbering
flowers. The mountain-torrents were loosed,
and rushed down upon the valleys like the Children
of the Mist; and the hoarse war-cry, swelling and falling
upon the wind, maintained its perpetual undertone
like an accompaniment of bassoons; and occasionally,
in a sudden lull of the breeze, you would hear the
click of the undermined snow-drifts dropping upon the
earth, as if the chorister of spring were beating time
to the reviving anthem of nature.

The snow sunk perhaps a foot in a day, but it was
only perceptible to the eye where you could measure
its wet mark against a tree from which it had fallen
away, or by the rock, from which the dissolving bank
shrunk and separated, as if rocks and snow were as
heartless as overselves and threw off their friends, too,
in their extremity! The low-lying lake, meantime,
surrounded by melting mountains, received the abandoned
waters upon its frozen bosom, and, spreading
them into a placid and shallow lagoon, separate by a
crystal plane from its own lower depths, gave them the
repose denied in the more elevated sphere in which
lay their birthright. And thus—(oh, how full is nature
of these gentle moralities!)—and thus sometimes
do the lowly, whose bosom, like the frozen lake, is at
first cold and unsympathetic to the rich and noble,
still receive them in adversity, and, when neighborhood
and dependence have convinced them that they
are made of the same common element, as the lake
melts its dividing and icy plane, and mingles the strange
waters with its own, do they dissolve the unnatural barrier
of prejudice, and take the humbled wanderer to
their bosom!

The face of the snow lost its dazzling whiteness as
the thaw went on—as disease steals away the beauty
of those we love—but it was only in the distance,
where the sun threw a shadow into the irregular pits
of the dissolving surface. Near to the eye (as the
dying one pressed to the bosom), it was still of its
original beauty, unchanged and spotless. And now
you are tired of my loitering speculations, gentle reader,
and we will return (please Heaven, only on paper!)
to Edith Linsey.

The roads were at last reduced to what is expressively
called, in New England, slosh (in New York,
posh, but equally descriptive), and Fred received a
hint from the judge that the mail had arrived in the
usual time, and his bcaux jours were at an end.

A slighter thing than my departure would have been
sufficient to stagger the tottering spirits of Edith. We
were sitting at table when the letters came in, and the
dates were announced that proved the opening of the
roads; and I scarce dared to turn my eyes upon the
pale face that I could just see had dropped upon her
bosom. The next instant there was a general confusion,
and she was carried lifeless to her chamber.

A note, scarce legible, was put into my hand in the
course of the evening, requesting me to sit up for her
in the library. She would come to me, she said, if
she had strength.

It was a night of extraordinary beauty. The full
moon was high in the heavens at midnight, and there
had been a slight shower soon after sunset, which,
with the clearing-up wind, had frozen thinly into a
most fragile rime, and glazed everything open to the
sky with transparent crystal. The distant forest looked
serried with metallic trees, dazzlingly and unspeakably
gorgeous; and, as the night-wind stirred through them
and shook their crystal points in the moonlight—the
aggregated stars of heaven springing from their Maker's
hand to the spheres of their destiny, or the
march of the host of the archangel Michael with their
irradiate spear-points glittering in the air, or the diamond
beds of central earth thrust up to the sun in
some throe of the universe—would, each or all, have
been well bodied forth by such similitude.

It was an hour after midnight when Edith was supported
in by her maid, and, choosing her own position,
sunk into the broad window-seat, and lay with her head
on my bosom, and her face turned outward to the glittering
night. Her eyes had become, I thought, unnaturally
bright, and she spoke with an exhausted
faintness that gradually strengthened to a tone of the
most thrilling and melodious sweetness. I shall never
get that music out of my brain!

“Philip!” she said.

“I listen, dear Edith!”

“I am dying.”

And she looked it, and I believed her; and my heart
sunk to its deepest abyss of wretchedness with the
conviction.

She went on to talk of death. It was the subject

that pressed most upon her mind, and she could
scarce fail to be eloquent on any subject. She was
very eloquent on this. I was so impressed with the
manner in which she seemed almost to rhapsodize
between the periods of her faintness, as she lay in
my arms that night, that every word she uttered is
still fresh in my memory. She seemed to forget my
presence, and to commune with her own thoughts
aloud.

“I recollect,” she said, “when I was strong and
well (years ago, dear Philip!), I left my books on a
morning in May, and looking up to find the course of
the wind, started off alone for a walk into its very eye.
A moist steady breeze came from the southwest, driving
before it fragments of the dispersed clouds. The
air was elastic and clear—a freshness that entered freely
at every pore was coming up, mingled with the profuse
perfume of grass and flowers—the colors of the
new, tender foliage were particularly soothing to an
eye pained with close attention—and the just perceptible
murmur of the drops shaken from the trees, and
the peculiarly soft rustle of the wet leaves, made as
much music as an ear accustomed to the silence of
solitude could well relish. Altogether, it was one of
those rarely-tempered days when every sense is satisfied,
and the mind is content to lie still with its common
thoughts, and simply enjoy.

“I had proceeded perhaps a mile—my forehead
held up to the wind, my hair blowing back, and the
blood glowing in my cheeks with the most vivid flush
of exercise and health—when I saw coming toward
me a man apparently in middle life, but wasted by illness
to the extremest emaciation. His lip was colorless,
his skin dry and white, and his sunken eyes had
that expression of inquiring earnestness which comes
always with impatient sickness. He raised his head,
and looked steadily at me as I came on. My lips were
open, and my whole air must have been that of a person
in the most exulting enjoyment of health. I was
just against him, gliding past with an elastic step,
when, with his eye still fixed on me, he half turned,
and in a voice of inexpressible meaning, exclaimed,
`Merciful Heaven! how well she is!' I passed on,
with his voice still ringing in my ear. It haunted me
like a tone in the air. It was repeated in the echo of
my tread—in the panting of my heart. I felt it in the
neating of the strong pulse in my temples. As if it
was strange that I should be so well! I had never
before realized that it could be otherwise. It seemed
impossible to me that my strong limbs should fail me,
or the pure blood I felt bounding so bravely through
my veins could be reached and tainted by disease.
How should it come? If I ate, would it not nourish
me? If I slept, would it not refresh me? If I came
out in the cool, free air, would not my lungs heave,
and my muscles spring, and my face feel its grateful
freshness? I held out my arm, for the first time in my
life, with a doubt of its strength. I closed my hand
life, with a fear it would not obey. I drew
a deep breath, to feel if it was difficult to breathe; and
even my bounding step, that was as elastic then as a
fawn's, seemed to my excited imagination already to
have become decrepit and feeble.

“I walked on, and thought of death. I had never
before done so definitely; it was like a terrible shape
that had always pursued me dimly, but which I had
never before turned and looked steadily on. Strange!
that we can live so constantly with that threatening
hand hung over us, and not think of it always! Strange!
that we can use a limb, or enter with interest into any
pursuit of time, when we know that our continued
life is almost a daily miracle!

“How difficult it is to realize death! How difficult
it is to believe that the hand with whose every vein
you are familiar, will ever lose its motion and its
warmth? That the quick eye, which is so restless
now, will settle and grow dull? That the refined lip,
which now shrinks so sensitively from defilement, will
not feel the earth lying upon it, and the tooth of the
feeding worm? That the free breath will be choked,
and the forehead be pressed heavily on by the decaying
coffin, and the light and air of heaven be shut quite
out; and this very body, warm, and breathing, and
active as it is now, will not feel uneasiness or pain?
I could not help looking at my frame as these thoughts
crowded on me; and I confess I almost doubted my
own convictions—there was so much strength and
quickness in it—my hand opened so freely, and my
nostrils expanded with such a satisfied thirst to the
moist air. Ah! it is hard to believe at first that we
must die! harder still to believe and realize the repulsive
circumstances that follow that terrible change!
It is a bitter thought at the lightest. There is little
comfort in knowing that the soul will not be there—
that the sense and the mind that feel and measure suffering,
will be gone. The separation is too great a
mystery to satisfy fear. It is the body that we know.
It is this material frame in which the affections have
grown up. The spirit is a mere thought—a presence
that we are told of, but do not see. Philosophize as
we will, the idea of existence is connected indissolubly
with the visible body, and its pleasant and familiar
senses. We talk of, and believe, the soul's ascent to
its Maker; but it is not ourselves—it is not our own
conscious breathing identity that we send up in imagination
through the invisible air. It is some phantom
that is to issue forth mysteriously, and leave us gazing
on it in wonder. We do not understand, we can not
realize it.

“At the time I speak of, my health had been always
unbroken. Since then, I have known disease in many
forms, and have had, of course, more time and occasion
for the contemplation of death. I have never,
till late, known resignation. With my utmost energy
I was merely able, in other days, to look upon it with
quiet despair; as a terrible, unavoidable evil. I remember
once, after severe suffering for weeks, I overheard
the physician telling my mother that I must
die, and from that moment the thought never left me.
A thin line of light came in between the shutters of
the south window; and, with this one thought fastened
on my mind, like the vulture of Prometheus, I lay
and watched it, day after day, as it passed with its
imperceptible progress over the folds of my curtains.
The last faint gleam of sunset never faded from its
damask edge, without an inexpressible sinking of my
heart, and a belief that I should see its pleasant light
no more. I turned from the window when even imagination
could find the daylight no longer there, and
felt my pulse and lifted my head to try my remaining
strength. And then every object, yes, even the meanest,
grew unutterably dear to me; my pillow, and the
cup with which my lips were moistened, and the cooling
amber which I had held in my hand, and pressed
to my burning lips when the fever was on me—everything
that was connected with life, and that would remain
among the living when I was gone.

“It is strange, but with all this clinging to the world
my affection for the living decreased sensibly. I grew
selfish in my weakness. I could not bear that they
should go from my chamber into the fresh air, and
have no fear of sickness and no pain. It seemed unfeeling
that they did not stay and breathe the close
atmosphere of my room—at least till I was dead.—
How could they walk round so carelessly, and look
on a fellow-creature dying helplessly and unwillingly,
and never shed a tear! And then the passing courtesies
exchanged with the family at the door, and the
quickened step on the sidewalk, and the wandering looks
about my room, even while I was answering with my
difficult breath their cold inquiries! There was an inhuman
caerlessness in all this that stung me to the soul.

“I craved sympathy as I did life; and yet I doubted
it all. There was not a word spoken by the friends
who were admitted to see me, that I did not ponder
over when they were gone, and always with an impatient
dissatisfaction. The tone, and the manner,
and the expression of face, all seemed forced; and
often, in my earlier sickness, when I had pondered for
hours on the expressed sympathy of some one I had
loved, the sense of utter helplessness which crowded
on me with my conviction of their insincerity, quite
overcame me. I have lain night after night, and
looked at my indifferent watchers: and oh how I
hated them for their-careless ease, and their snatched
moments of repose! I could scarce keep from dashing
aside the cup they came to give me so sluggishly.

“It is singular that, with all our experience of sickness,
we do not attend more to these slight circumstances.
It can scarce be conceived how an ill-managed
light, or a suppressed whispering, or a careless
change of attitude, in the presence of one whose senses
are so sharpened, and whose mind is so sensitive as a
sick person's, irritate and annoy. And, perhaps, more
than these to bear, is the affectedly subdued tone of
condolence. I remember nothing which I endured so
impatiently.

“Annoyances like these, however, scarcely diverted
for a moment the one great thought of death. It became
at last familiar, but, if possible, more dreadfully
horrible from that very fact. It was giving it a new
character. I realized it more, The minute circumstances
became nearer and more real—I tried the position
in which I should lie in my coffin—I lay with
my arms to my side, and my feet together, and with
the cold sweat standing in large drops on my lip, composed
my features into a forced expression of tranquillity.

“I awoke on the second morning after the hope of
my recovery had been abandoned. There was a narrow
sunbeam lying in a clear crimson line across the
curtain, and I lay and watched the specks of lint sailing
through it, like silver-winged insects, and the thin
dust, quivering and disappearing on its definite limit,
in a dream of wonder. I had thought not to see
another sun, and my mind was still fresh with the expectation
of an immediate change; I could not believe
that I was alive. The dizzy throb in my temples was
done; my limbs felt cool and refreshed; my mind had
that feeling of transparency which is common after
healthful and sweet sleep; and an indefinite sensation
of pleasure trembled in every nerve. I thought that
this might be death, and that, with this exquisite feeling
of repose, I was to linger thus consciously with
the body till the last day; and I dwelt on it pleasantly
with my delicious freedom from pain. I felt no regret
for life—none for a friend even: I was willing—quite
willing—to lie thus for ages. Presently the physician
entered; he came and laid his fingers on my pulse,
and his face brightened. `You will get well,' he said,
and I heard it almost without emotion. Gradually,
however, the love of life returned; and as I realized it
fully, and all the thousand chords which bound me to
it vibrated once more, the tears came thickly to my eyes,
and a crowd of delightful thoughts pressed cheerfully
and glowingly on me. No language can do justice
to the pleasure of convalescence from extreme sickness.
The first step upon the living grass—the first
breath of free air—the first unsuppressed salutation of
a friend—my fainting heart, dear Philip, rallies and
quickens even now with the recollection.”

I have thrown into a continuous strain what was
murmured to me between pauses of faintness, and with
difficulty of breath that seemed overpowered only by
the mastery of the eloquent spirit apparently trembling
on its departure. I believed Edith Linsey would die
that night; I believed myself listening to words spoken
almost from heaven; and if I have wearied you, dear
reader, with what must be more interesting to me than
to you, it is because every syllable was burnt like
enamel into my soul, in my boundless reverence and
love.

It was two o'clock, and she still lay breathing painfully
in my arms. I had thrown up the window, and
the soft south wind, stirring gently among the tinkling
icicles of the trees, came in, warm and genial, and she
leaned over to inhale it, as if it came from the source
of life. The stars burned gloriously in the heavens;
and, in a respite of her pain, she lay back her head,
and gazed up at them with an inarticulate motion of
her lips, and eyes so unnaturally kindled, that I thought
reason had abandoned her.

“How beautiful are the stars to night, Edith!” I
said, with half a fear that she would answer me in
madness.

“Yes,” she said, putting my hand (that pressed her
closer, involuntary, to my bosom) first to her lips—
“Yes; and, beautiful as they are, they are all accurately
numbered and governed, and just as they burn
now have they burned since the creation, never `faint
in their watches,' and never absent from their place.
How glorious they are! How thrilling it is to see them
stand with such a constant silence in the sky, unsteadied
and unsupported, obeying the great law of
their Maker! What pure and silvery light it is! How
steadily it pours from those small fountains, giving
every spot of earth its due portion! The hovel and
the palace are shone upon equally, and the shepherd
gets as broad a beam as the king, and these few rays
that are now streaming into my feverish eyes were
meant and lavished only for me! I have often
thought—has it never occurred to you, dear Philip?—
how ungrateful we are to call ourselves poor, when
there is so much that no poverty can take away!
Clusters of silver rays from every star in these heavens
are mine. Every breeze that breaks on my forehead
was sent for my refreshment. Every tinkle and ray
from those stirring and glistening icicles, and the invigorating
freshness of this unseasonable and delicious
wind, and moonlight, and sunshine, and the glory of
the planets, are all gifts that poverty could not take
away! It is not often that I forget these treasures; for
I have loved nature, and the skies of night and day, in
all their changes, from my childhood, and they have
been unspeakably dear to me; for in them I see the
evidence of an Almighty Maker, and in the excessive
beauty of the stars and the unfading and equal splendor
of their steadfast fires, I see glimpses of an immortal
life, and find an answer to the eternal questioning
within me!

“Three! The village clock reaches us to night.
Nay, the wind can not harm me now. Turn me more
to the window, for I would look nearer upon the stars:
it is the last time—I am sure of it—the very last! Yet
to-morrow night those stars will all be there—not one
missing from the sky, nor shining one ray the less because
I am dead! It is strange that this thought
should be so bitter—strange that the companionship
should be so close between our earthly affections and
those spititual worlds—and stranger yet, that, satisfied
as we must be that we shall know them nearer
and better when released from our flesh, we still cling
so fondly to our earthly and imperfect vision. I feel,
Philip, that I shall traverse hereafter every star in those
bright heavens. If the course of that career of knowledge,
which I believe in my soul it will be the reward
of the blessed to run, be determined in any degree by
the strong desires that yearn so sickeningly within us,
I see the thousand gates of my future heaven shining
at this instant above me. There they are! the clustering
Pleiades, with `their sweet influences;' and
the morning star, melting into the east with its transcendent
lambency and whiteness; and the broad galaxy,
with its myriads of bright spheres, dissolving into

each other's light, and belting the heavens like a girdle.
I shall see them all! I shall know them and
their inhabitants as the angels of God know them;
the mystery of their order, and the secret of their
wonderful harmony, and the duration of their appointed
courses—all will be made clear!”

I have trespassed again, most indulgent reader, on
the limits of these Procrustean papers. I must defer
the “change” that “came o'er the spirit of my dream”
till another mood and time. Meanwhile, you may
consider Edith, if you like, the true heart she thought
herself (and I thought her) during her nine deaths in
the library; and you will have leisure to imagine the
three years over which we shall skip with this finale,
during which I made a journey to the north, and danced
out a winter in your own territories at Quebec—a circumstance
I allude to, no less to record the hospitalities
of the garrison of that time (this was in 27—were
you there?) than to pluck forth from Time's hindermost
wallet a modest copy of verses I addressed thence
to Edith. She sent them back to me considerably
mended; but I give you the original draught, scorning
her finger in my poesies.