Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland Volume XII Part 19

She was hurriedly occupied in drying up her tears, and removing the signs of grief.

"You have been weeping, Miss Milford," I said; "is it for your aunt?"

"Forbid that I should require to weep for her!" she cried, starting, as if stung with pain. "I cannot bear the idea of that woman being in danger. I have watched your eye daily, and have read in it fearful things; but I will comfort her; she shall never know that there is danger near. I will ward off the sad thought; and oh! sir, for mercy's sake, co-operate with me in my love, while you try to save her from the danger, the thought of which she shall never know!"

The remembrance of what had pa.s.sed a few minutes before between her and her lover, brought out the full effect of the purity of thought that dictated her impa.s.sioned words. I surveyed her for a moment with admiration.

"I did not think my _professional_ eye was so easily read, Miss Milford," I replied. "You have read it correctly. Your aunt cannot live.

I have thought it my duty to inform you of this. Her complaint is in the region of the heart, and she will likely die in an instant."

She stood for a moment pale and motionless, as if her heart had suddenly ceased its functions. A slow heaving of the bosom showed the approach of a paroxysm of grief; and I trembled lest the sounds should reach the patient's room. I pointed in the direction silently. She understood me; and the strongest workings of nature were overcome by the strength of her fear to cause pain to her she loved. She struggled against the rising pa.s.sion, and, turning to me, fell suddenly at my feet, and held up her clasped hands in the direction of my countenance.

"And you will not tell her?" she cried, while struggling sobs impeded her speech; "no, no, pity demands it, and I pray for it--let her live in the hope of life! Say, good sir, for Heaven's sake, that you will conceal it from her, and from all others. None shall know it from me--I will die rather than divulge it. She will thus be happy to the end. She requires no preparation--she is spotless--pure as the child unborn; and as she has lived, so shall she die!"

"It is not my intention to communicate it to her," replied I.

"Ah! thanks, thanks, good sir," she replied, in the same impa.s.sioned voice. "Bless you--bless you!"

"But this ignorance, Miss Milford," said I, "prevents a settlement of a patient's worldly affairs."

"If that settlement, in the case of my aunt," replied she, fervently, and turning up her eyes to heaven, "is to be purchased by one moment of pain to her, let Augustus Germain take all."

"Extraordinary sentiment!" muttered I--"extraordinary being!" I left her to her grief, and proceeded to the attorney's house. He was at home, and promised to wait on Mrs Germain that day. He called afterwards, and told me that the will would be ready next evening at seven, when I was requested to attend to witness it, along with him. I attended accordingly. The lady was in her usual state of spirits. She sat up on the couch, arrayed in a superb undress. Miss Milford was not present. I observed her in her own room, as I pa.s.sed, with Stanford sitting by her, holding one of her hands. The attorney, and one of his clerks, and myself, were the only persons present besides the invalid.

"I am dying to hear a will, Mr Jenkins," said the patient, laughing. "I don't think I ever heard one in my life; for my husband's settlement was a contract of marriage, and I fear there is _some_ difference between the two papers."

Mr Jenkins read the settlement.

"Will you not allow me a gla.s.s of wine, doctor?" resumed the invalid, in the same strain. "It may steady my hand. I declare I am as nervous as a young bride."

I poured out a gla.s.s of her old burgundy, and gave it to her.

"Here is to my own health first!" said she--"for, you know, I'm an invalid; and, secondly, here is to you all, and may you never be worse than I am until you come to die!"

She took up the pen and began to write her name. I looked over her shoulder. She had written Margaret Germ--and the pen was quivering in her hand. She uttered a scream, and fell back--a corpse. In an instant, Louisa and Stanford rushed into the room.

"Is she dead?" cried the attorney. "The will is not signed. It wants three letters. It is useless."

"She is gone," replied I, "for ever."

Louisa threw herself upon the body of her aunt. Stanford looked on like a statue of marble. The scene was heartrending; for the devoted girl clung with such force to the dead body, that it was with difficulty I could get her detached. The loss of the 20,000 was to her nothing. She did not even hear--at least she understood not the writer, when he cried out that the will wanted three letters, and was void. Her whole soul was occupied with the engrossing idea that her aunt was dead; yet so painful was the thought, that she could not bear to hear the truth, and cried with a loud voice on the dead body to answer her with one word of consolation. All this time, Stanford fixed his eye on the fragment of the name to the will. The three letters were worth a fortune.

"Heavens!" I heard him mutter, "is it so? Are my fears realised, and in this dreadful form? Hope on the very brink of being realised, swallowed by the fell demon of despair!"

Louisa was carried out senseless, and Stanford rushed out of the room like a maniac. The dead body was spread out; the will was rolled up in a scroll; the writer went away; and I sought home with eyes filled with tears.

I afterwards learned that the brother came in as heir. Louisa was, indeed, a beggar; but Stanford married her. They are yet poor, and may remain so for life.

THE GLa.s.s BACK.

I have already laid before the public one well-authenticated case of a false conception of ident.i.ty, arising from the disease called hypochondria. In that case, as well as in most of the others generally met with, the supposed change of ident.i.ty that takes place is complete, extending to the whole body, which is imagined to pa.s.s into a new form of being, different from man, and often into a piece of matter not imbued with life or motion at all. Of this latter case, by far the best known trans.m.u.tation is that into some very brittle commodity, such as gla.s.s; and this is not to be wondered at, even amidst the darkness of our ignorance of the secret workings of those extraordinary changes which seem to shame even the invention of Ovid; for the idea or fantasy, in that case, is only a peculiar type of the feeling of the nervous apprehension or terror, which is the peculiar pathognomonic symptom of the disease itself. It is not difficult to suppose that, when the heart is filled with fear of personal injury, and yet the eye surveys no cause of danger, the mind itself will supply imaginary causes--and this accordingly we find to be the case; neither does it seem to defy our _a priori_ conceptions, that while imaginary objects of detrimental efficacy shall be conjured up from the depths of a dark fancy, a corresponding notion of peculiar brittleness in the body itself shall be generated, to give plausibility to the pre-existing apprehension of serious evil. Indeed, the two seem to be counterparts of each other; and we have only to proceed a step further, to the species of brittleness or liability to detriment, to come to that extraordinary conception, which almost every doctor of extensive practice has witnessed once or twice in his life--that the body is composed of gla.s.s, and therefore in continual danger of being cracked or broken to pieces, from the appulse of objects that are every day impinging upon us without doing us any harm. The frequency of the "gla.s.s man" is therefore not a matter of very great wonder to a philosophical mind, after the casual condition of the change is admitted. The case has so often occurred, that it now excites little curiosity; but I question much, if the case of a fancied _partial_ trans.m.u.tation of the flesh into gla.s.s may not, as well from its rarity as its grotesqueness, claim a greater share of interest from the faculty, and from the general reader; and when I state that the instance I have to record was witnessed and studied by myself, with a view to the interests of science--a fact of much importance in all reports of extraordinary conditions of human nature--I need say no more in recommendation of it to the attention of the public.

The unhappy subject of the case was a poor man, called Patrick G----, by trade a tailor--a profession, by the way, which is more productive of hypochondria than any other with which I am acquainted, arising, doubtless, from the sedentary habits of the individuals, combined with their irregular modes of living. I have always noticed a peculiar _outre_ character in the ideas and feelings of people inclined to hypochondria; and those who have been permitted to enter the _penetralia_ of the workshop where the _board_ is covered with these unfortunate beings, will justify the remark, by their experience of the strange sayings, grotesque art, and recondite humour, to be found in the peculiar atmosphere of that temple of taste. I make this allusion, of course, with a scientific view, as elucidating a fine point in psychology, and not in the slightest degree influenced by a love of the mere garbage of the food of an ill-timed curiosity. The peculiarity of thought and feeling, incidental to this cla.s.s, might easily have been discovered in the individual who was so unfortunate as to require my aid; and all his physical appearances would have justified the antic.i.p.ation of the peculiarity, before he opened his mouth. His complexion was so decidedly what we call saturnine, that it approached to the colour of green. He was at all times excessively irritable, so much so that he was often attacked with spasmodic affections; and at these times he was so easily acted upon by slight and trifling external causes, that his wife, a very sober and decent woman, required to observe the greatest caution in conducting those affairs of her domestic establishment which interfered with either his mind or body. If he was not in this state of irritability, he was sure to be under the power of an extreme rigidity of solids, and torpor of the nervous system, accompanied by their usual concomitant of melancholy, which suggested even a _bizarrerie_ of thought quite different from that of ordinary men. I thought the seat of his disease was the spleen, in consequence of finding an enlargement of that organ; but I afterwards came to be satisfied that his liver, too, was deranged--an opinion very well justified by what afterwards befel him.

The symptoms I have mentioned continued in the man for a period of a year and a-half; but an aggravation of them became soon thereafter apparent, in a very marked increase of his melancholy, accompanied by a shaking nervousness on being approached by any heavy article, subject to movement. When forced out by his wife for the benefit of his health, he kept the side of the wall, shook at the risk of a jostle, as if a push or drive would have killed him, and ran into closes and avenues, to be out of the reach of carriages that were steadily keeping the middle of the high-road. I have observed these symptoms (to us well known) in very aggravated diseases of the stomach, without very marked derangement of the neighbouring organs; and calmed the fears of his wife, by stating that they would probably abate, as the medicines I gave him (chiefly tonics) began to operate upon his system. I had, notwithstanding, my fears that a deeper type of hypochondria was on the eve of exhibiting itself--an opinion formed chiefly from the study of his eye, which was getting daily heavier and gloomier, more turned to the angle of the orbit, and filled with morbid terror, on the approach of any moving thing, however innocuous. To test further the truth of my deduction, I gave him a gentle push aside, and observed that he shrank as if he had been stung by an adder, retreating back from me, and eyeing me with suspicion and dread, as if I had been about to kill him. He was now, I suspected, on the eve of falling into one of two positions, depending upon the temperament of his mind. He would either (as happens with people of an imaginative turn) create fanciful objects of fear that might do him bodily injury, retaining his conception of personal ident.i.ty unimpaired, or he would pa.s.s into the false conviction of being made of some tender substance, capable of being injured by the approach of external objects, but retaining otherwise his conceptions of external things entire--a result more common to minds of a sedate, phlegmatic kind.

My fears turned out too true. The next time I visited him, I was met by his wife in the pa.s.sage, who said she wished to speak a few words to me before I entered. She whispered that she feared her husband had entirely lost his senses--for that, on the day previous, he had gone to bed, where he had lain ever since in the same position--_on his face_; and yet, so far as she could ascertain, there was nothing the matter with his back. When she asked him why he lay in that extraordinary position, he turned up a piteous eye in her face, and replied, with a sigh that came from the deepest part of his chest, that she would know that soon enough, requesting her, for the sake of Heaven's mercy and a wife's love, not to touch him, and to keep the bedclothes as light upon him as it was ever, ever in her power to do. I could not, even by the power of antic.i.p.ation, derived from an ample experience of diseases of this sort, divine the peculiarity of this patient's complaint; but I was soon to have sufficient evidence to unravel the mystery.

On going forward to him, I observed that he was carefully laid on his face, with just so much of his left eye exposed as to serve for a watch over his body, and exhibit the apprehension which filled his soul, and engrossed every other feeling.

"Why in this position?" said I. "The back is the resting-place of patients. Turn, and you will experience the truth of what I say."

"Turn!--oh, that I could!" said he; "but, alas, alas! I dare not; I dare not." And he accompanied his words with a peculiar nervous glance, indicating great uneasiness and fear.

"Why?" rejoined I.

"Ah, sir," he cried, in a choking voice, "I must keep this side uppermost. Gla.s.s is brittle, very brittle. I dare not turn; the crash--ay, sir, the crash--would be tremendous. I would be in a hundred pieces in a moment. Dreadful thought!--Do not touch me, for Heaven's sake! approach me not. It is brittle, brittle--ah, very, very brittle!"

These words he accompanied with the same glance of intense fear. I saw at once where the secret lay; but the poor wife stared with glaring eyes, as if she had seen a spectre. She understood nothing; but she watched her husband's eye, and she had never seen there such a wild light before. Argument in such cases is altogether _hors d'oeuvre_, or rather it does much injury, and my course lay in a direction entirely opposite. I had first the precise vitreous locality to discover, which could be done only by an expression of belief of his extraordinary condition.

"Calm yourself," said I; "we will deal with you quietly. Which is the dangerous part?"

I laid my hand between his shoulders, and the bedclothes shook with the tremor of his limbs.

"I never can _sit_ more upon this earth,"[1] he cried, and then paused and sighed. "My occupation's gone," he continued, in the same trembling, choking voice. "Merciful powers, what is to become of one of my profession, if he cannot sit without a crash? Do I not make my bread sitting? and yet, sir, I put it to you--I put it to you who know the strength of a window pane--how can I sit? how can I ever earn a livelihood for that weeping wife? Terrible! terrible!"

[Footnote 1: A case of this kind occurred also in or near the town of Dundee in Scotland, where the gla.s.s was limited to the same regions--below the lumbars.]

His wife, still at a loss for an explanation, looked into my face, where she saw the gravity of a philosophic doctor contemplating one of the miseries of his fellow-creatures, and, besides, interested scientifically in the case before me--one of partial vitrification, where the seat of the fancied trans.m.u.tation was curiously connected with the prior habits of the individual. The case was serious; and, though I did not wish, by an expression of my real apprehensions, to frighten the poor woman, I could not belie my feelings, by a.s.suming any appearance of carelessness, far less of levity, which I did not in sincerity feel. I could do nothing for the invalid in the position in which he now was, and left him, to consider what plan I should fall upon to dispossess him of this false belief, which, with all the determination and perversity of his complaint, had taken a firm hold of his mind.

Next morning, the patient's wife called upon me, and stated that she had got alarmed at the state of her husband, in consequence of his extraordinary conduct when she endeavoured to get his couch spread up for their night's repose. On taking hold of him, though she did it in the gentlest manner possible, with a view to a.s.sist him out of the bed, he screamed out that she was breaking him to fragments, with such vociferation that the neighbours flocked in, to ascertain what was the cause. She could give no proper explanation; for, although she had already got some insight into the nature of the disease, she felt ashamed to exhibit the weakness of her husband; but he, who felt no delicacy on the subject, accused her, with tears in his eyes, of an intention to break him into pieces; called her a cruel woman, and appealed to several of those present whether it was reasonable to suppose that a person who had a part of his body made of gla.s.s could be safely handled in the rough manner in which the careless and temerarious woman had begun to touch and move him from the only safe position he could ever enjoy on earth. The poor woman wept as she told me that his speech was received by the neighbours with a loud laugh. I sympathised with her, and told her, with much grave and real sincerity, that I would do everything I could for her husband; and in the meantime recommended her again to try to get him out of bed by the hour of twelve, when I would call and see him, and try some remedy for him.

I called accordingly, but found that the wife's efforts had proved unavailing; he was still in bed on his face, and murmuring strong and bitter reproaches against his helpmate, whom he eyed with an expression of mixed anger and terror.

"Is it not horrible, sir," he vociferated, "that a woman should attempt to take the life of her husband? Say, as a Christian and a man, if I ought not to be handled in a manner suitable to the nature of the substance of which a part of my body is composed? Heavens! 'tis dreadful to be damaged irretrievably by the hands of one who should treat me more softly than others. Ha! my queen, you wish to get quit of me!--but I shall guard the vital and brittle parts from your evil intention. My hands and arms are still of flesh and blood."

I tried to convince him that his wife had no evil intention towards him; but he continued to throw at her wild glances, in which there was apparent, however, much more terror than anger. I tried him on the question of rising; but he fixed his eye upon my face with a piteous expression, and said, in a calm, serious tone--

"Would you, sir, rise if you were in my position, with the danger staring you in the face of being crushed or broken by the first hard substance you came against. What would be my consolation in having the most important part of the body--at least to men of my profession--picked up in fragments, and laid in my coffin?"

"Better run the risk of being damaged," said I, seriously, "than starve in your bed. Your wife says you have work lying to do, and that there is no money in the house."

This statement produced a strong effect upon him. He shook between the horns of the dilemma in which he was placed, and threw a look at me, which said plainly, "Is not my situation horrible and heartrending?" But I retained the sternness of my expression, and yielded him no sympathy where I felt it to be my duty to use severity. I thought it better to leave him in this mood, and took my leave. I had made the statement regarding the necessity of working, at random, and was very well pleased to have it confirmed by Mrs G----, who followed me to the door, and told me that she was, indeed, in great perplexity, in consequence of a large order for mournings having come in that morning, and the two apprentices could do absolutely nothing to it. The case was one of domestic calamity, which I could do little to ameliorate, beyond giving another recommendation to her to strain every effort to get him up.

Something occurred to prevent me calling next day; but on the next day after I waited upon my unhappy patient. The bed was empty. I looked round, and saw no one in the apartment. I was surprised, and dreaded some additional misfortune; but Mrs G----, who came out of the small room in which her husband wrought, stepped cautiously up to me, and whispered in my ear, that he had that morning got up, with the determination to commence work; but that he was still under the same delusion. "Come here," she added, retreating softly to the workshop. I followed her; and, at her desire, directed my eye through a small opening by the side of the door, which was partially open. A most extraordinary sight was exhibited to me. Two apprentices were sitting on a board, working fiercely at the mournings, and holding their heads down, as I thought, to prevent their cruel laughter from being seen by their unfortunate master, who was clearly the cause of their ill-timed and mischievous merriment. At a little distance from them, with his back turned to the wall, was my pale and emaciated patient, busy sewing--_on his feet_!