 | Dream life |  |
IV.
A Friend made and Friend Lost.
TO visit, is a great thing in the boy calendar:—
not to visit this or that neighbor,—to drink
tea, or eat strawberries, or play at draughts;—but, to
go away on a visit in a coach, with a trunk, and
a great-coat, and an umbrella:—this is large!
It makes no difference, that they wish to be rid
of your noise, now that Charlie is sick of a fever:—
the reason is not at all in the way of your pride of
visiting. You are to have a long ride in a coach,
and eat a dinner at a tavern, and to see a new town
almost as large as the one you live in, and you are to
make new acquaintances. In short, you are to see the
world:—a very proud thing it is, to see the world!
As you journey on, after bidding your friends adieu,
not been used, you think them very odd indeed: but it
occurs to you, that the geographies speak of very
various national characteristics, and you are greatly
gratified with this opportunity of verifying your study.
You see new crops too, perhaps a broad-leaved tobacco
field, which reminds you pleasantly of the luxuriant
vegetation of the tropics, spoken of by Peter Parley,
and others.
As for the houses and barns in the new town, they
quite startle you with their strangeness: you observe
that some of the latter instead of having one stable
door, have five or six, a fact which puzzles you very
much indeed. You observe farther, that the houses
many of them have balustrades upon the top, which
seems to you a very wonderful adaptation to the wants
of boys, who wish to fly kites, or to play upon
the roof. You notice with special favor, one very low
roof which you might climb upon by a mere plank, and
you think the boys, whose father lives in that house,
are very fortunate boys.
Your old aunt, whom you visit, you think wears a
very queer cap, being altogether different from that of
the old nurse, or of Mrs. Boyne,—Madge's mother.
As for the house she lives in, it is quite wonderful.
There are such an immense number of closets, and
closets within closets, reminding you of the mysteries
curious bits of old furniture—so black and
heavy, and with such curious carving!—and you think
of the old wainscot in the Children of the Abbey.
You think you will never tire of rambling about in its
odd corners, and of what glorious stories you will have
to tell of it, when you go back to Nelly, and Charlie.
As for acquaintances, you fall in the very first day
with a tall boy next door, called Nat. which seems an
extraordinary name. Besides, he has travelled; and
as he sits with you on the summer nights under the
linden trees, he tells you gorgeous stories of the things
he has seen. He has made the voyage to London;
and he talks about the ship (a real ship) and starboard
and larboard, and the spanker, in a way quite surprising;
and he takes the stern oar, in the little skiff when you
row off in the cove abreast of the town, in a most
seaman-like way.
He bewilders you too, with his talk about the great
bridges of London—London bridge specially, where
they sell kids for a penny; which story your new
acquaintance, unfortunately, does not confirm. You
have read of these bridges, and seen pictures of them
in the Wonders of the World; but then Nat. has seen
them with his own eyes: he has literally walked over
London Bridge, on his own feet! You look at his
very shoes in wonderment, and are surprised you do
and your shoes. But there is none—only yours are a
trifle stouter in the welt. You think Nat. one of the
fortunate boys of this world—born, as your old nurse
used to say—with a gold spoon in his mouth.
Beside Nat, there is a girl lives over the opposite
side of the way, named Jenny, with an eye as black as
a coal; and a half a year older than you; but about
your height;—whom you fancy amazingly.
She has any quantity of toys, that she lets you play
with, as if they were your own. And she has an odd,
old uncle, who sometimes makes you stand up together,
and then marries you after his fashion,—much to the
amusement of a grown up house-maid, whenever she
gets a peep at the performance. And it makes you
somewhat proud to hear her called your wife; and you
wonder to yourself, dreamily, if it won't be true some
day or other.
—Fie, Clarence, where is your split sixpence,
and your blue ribbon!
Jenny is romantic, and talks of Thaddeus of Warsaw
in a very touching manner, and promises to lend you
the book. She folds billets in a lover's fashion, and
practises love-knots upon her bonnet strings. She looks
out of the corners of her eyes very often, and sighs.
She is frequently by herself, and pulls flowers to pieces.
thinks them all disappointed men.
After a time she writes notes to you, begging you
would answer them at the earliest possible moment, and
signs herself—`your attached Jenny.' She takes the
marriage farce of her uncle in a cold way—as trifling
with a very serious subject, and looks tenderly at you.
She is very much shocked when her uncle offers to kiss
her; and when he proposes it to you, she is equally
indignant, but—with a great change of color.
Nat. says one day, in a confidential conversation, that
it won't do to marry a woman six months older than
yourself; and this coming from Nat. who has been to
London, rather staggers you. You sometimes think
that you would like to marry Madge and Jenny both, if
the thing were possible; for Nat. says they sometimes
do so the other side of the ocean, though he has never
seen it himself.
—Ah, Clarence, you will have no such weakness
as you grow older: you will find that Providence has
charitably, so tempered our affections, that every man
of only ordinary nerve will be amply satisfied with a
single wife!
All this time,—for you are making your visit a very
long one, so that autumn has come, and the nights are
growing cool, and Jenny and yourself are transferring
your little coquetries to the chimney corner;—poor
does not suffer severely from sympathy when the object
is remote. And those letters from the mother, telling
you that Charlie cannot play,—cannot talk even as he
used to do; and that perhaps his `Heavenly Father
will take him away, to be with him in the better
world,' disturb you for a time only. Sometimes,
however, they come back to your thought on a
wakeful night, and you dream about his suffering, and
think—why it is not you, but Charlie, who is sick?
The thought puzzles you; and well it may, for in it lies
the whole mystery of our fate.
Those letters grow more and more discouraging, and
the kind admonitions of your mother grow more
earnest, as if (though the thought does not come to
you until years afterward) she was preparing herself to
fasten upon you, that surplus of affection, which she
fears may soon be withdrawn forever from the sick
child.
It is on a frosty, bleak evening, when you are playing
with Nat. that the letter reaches you which says
Charlie is growing worse, and that you must come to
your home. It makes a dreamy night for you—
fancying how Charlie will look, and if sickness has
altered him much, and if he will not be well by
Christmas. From this, you fall away in your reverie, to
the odd old house, and its secret cupboards, and your
`your attached Jenny,' and you think it a pity that she
is six months older than you; and again—as you recal
one of her sighs—you think—that six months are not
much after all!
You bid her good-bye, with a little sentiment
swelling in your throat, and are mortally afraid Nat.
will see your lip tremble. Of course you promise to
write, and squeeze her hand with an honesty, you do
not think of doubting—for weeks.
It is a dull, cold ride, that day, for you. The
winds sweep over the withered corn-fields, with a harsh,
chilly whistle; and the surfaces of the little pools by the
road-side are tossed up into cold blue wrinkles of water.
Here and there a flock of quail, with their feathers
ruffled in the autumn gusts, tread through the hard, dry
stubble of an oat-field; or startled by the snap of the
driver's whip, they stare a moment at the coach, then
whir away down the cold current of the wind. The
blue jays scream from the road-side oaks, and the last
of the blue and purple asters shiver along the wall.
And as the sun sinks, reddening all the western clouds,
to the color of the frosted maples,—light lines of the
Aurora gush up from the northern hills, and trail their
splintered fingers far over the autumn sky.
It is quite dark when you reach home, but you see
the bright reflection of a fire within, and presently at
But there are sad faces when you enter. Your mother
folds you to her heart; but at your first noisy out-burst
of joy, puts her finger on her lip, and whispers poor
Charlie's name. The Doctor you see too, slipping
softly out of the bed-room door with glasses in his
hand; and—you hardly know how—your spirits grow
sad, and your heart gravitates to the heavy air of all
about you.
You cannot see Charlie, Nelly says;—and you cannot
in the quiet parlor, tell Nelly a single one of the many
things, which you had hoped to tell her. She says—
`Charlie has grown so thin and so pale, you would
never know him.' You listen to her, but you cannot
talk: she asks you what you have seen, and you begin,
for a moment joyously; but when they open the door
of the sick room, and you hear a faint sigh, you cannot
go on. You sit still, with your hand in Nelly's, and
look thoughtfully into the blaze.
You drop to sleep after that day's fatigue, with
singular and perplexed fancies haunting you; and when
you wake up with a shudder in the middle of the
night, you have a fancy that Charlie is really dead:
you dream of seeing him pale and thin, as Nelly
described him, and with the starched grave clothes on
him. You toss over in your bed, and grow hot and
feverish. You cannot sleep; and you get up stealthily,
the bed-room door stands half open, and you listen—
fancying you hear a whisper. You steal on through
the hall, and edge around the side of the door. A
little lamp is flickering on the hearth, and the gaunt
shadow of the bedstead lies dark upon the ceiling.
Your mother is in her chair, with her head upon her
hand—though it is long after midnight. The Doctor
is standing with his back toward you, and with Charlie's
little wrist in his fingers; and you hear hard breathing,
and now and then, a low sigh from your mother's
chair.
An occasional gleam of fire-light makes the gaunt
shadows stagger on the wall, like something spectral.
You look wildly at them, and at the bed where your
own brother—your laughing, gay-hearted brother, is
lying. You long to see him, and sidle up softly a step
or two: but your mother's ear has caught the sound,
and she beckons you to her, and folds you again in her
embrace. You whisper to her what you wish. She
rises, and takes you by the hand, to lead you to the
bedside.
The Doctor looks very solemnly, as we approach.
He takes out his watch. He is not counting Charlie's
pulse, for he has dropped his hand; and it lies carelessly,
but oh, how thin! over the edge of the bed.
He shakes his head mournfully at your mother; and
fingers upon the forehead of the boy, and passes her
hand over his mouth.
“Is he asleep, Doctor?” she says, in a tone you
do not know.
“Be calm, madam.” The Doctor is very calm.
“I am calm,” says your mother; but you do not
think it, for you see her tremble very plainly.
“Dear madam, he will never waken in this world!”
There is no cry,—only a bowing down of your
mother's head upon the body of poor, dead Charlie!—
and only when you see her form shake and quiver with
the deep, smothered sobs, your crying bursts forth loud
and strong.
The Doctor lifts you in his arms, that you may
see—that pale head,—those blue eyes all sunken,—that
flaxen hair gone,—those white lips pinched and hard!
—Never, never, will the boy forget his first terrible
sight of Death!
In your silent chamber, after the storm of sobs has
wearied you, the boy-dreams are strange and earnest.
They take hold on that awful Visitant,—that strange
slipping away from life, of which we know so little, and
yet know, alas, so much! Charlie that was your
brother, is now only a name: perhaps he is an angel:
perhaps (for the old nurse has said it, when he was
ugly—and now, you hate her for it) he is with Satan.
But you are sure this cannot be: you are sure that
God who made him suffer, would not now quicken, and
multiply his suffering. It agrees with your religion to
think so; and just now, you want your religion to help
you all it can.
You toss in your bed, thinking over and over of that
strange thing—Death:—and that perhaps it may
overtake you, before you are a man; and you sob out
those prayers (you scarce know why) which ask God to
keep life in you. You think the involuntary fear that
makes your little prayer full of sobs, is a holy feeling:—
and so it is a holy feeling—the same feeling which
makes a stricken child, yearn for the embrace, and
the protection of a Parent. But you will find there
are those canting ones, trying to persuade you at a
later day, that it is a mere animal fear, and not to be
cherished.
You feel an access of goodness growing out of your
boyish grief: you feel right-minded: it seems as if
your little brother in going to Heaven, had opened a
pathway thither, down which, goodness comes streaming
over your soul.
You think how good a life you will lead; and you
map out great purposes, spreading themselves over the
school-weeks of your remaining boyhood; and you love
your friends, or seem to, far more dearly than you ever
loved them before; and you forgive the boy who
forgive him all his wearisome teasings. But you
cannot forgive yourself for some harsh words that
you have once spoken to Charlie: still less can you
forgive yourself for having once struck him, in passion,
with your fist. You cannot forget his sobs then:—
if he were only alive one little instant, to let you say,—
“Charlie, will you forgive me?”
Yourself, you cannot forgive; and sobbing over it,
and murmuring “Dear—dear Charlie!”—you drop into
a troubled sleep.
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