Dreams and Dream Stories Part 22

"Adelais," pleaded the poor lover, hoa.r.s.ely, "you deceive yourself, my darling! Have you not often spoken before of dying, and yet have lived on? O why should you die now and break my heart outright?"

"I feel a mist coming over me," she answered, "even as I speak with you now. I hear a sound in my ears that is not of earth, the darkness gathers before my face, the light quivers and fades, the night is closing about me very fast. Stephen, Stephen, don't you see that I am dying?"

He bowed his head over the damp colorless brow, and whispered: "If it be so, my beloved, be as my wife yet, and die in my arms."

But while he uttered the words there came a change over her,--a shadow into the sweet eyes and a sudden spasm of pain across the white parted lips. Feebly and uncertainly she put out her hands before her face, like one groping in the darkness, her golden head drooped on his shoulder, and her breath came sharp and thick, with the sound of approaching death. Stephen folded his arms about her with a cry of agony, and pressed the poor quivering hands wildly to his bosom, as though he would fain have held them there for ever.

"O G.o.d!" he groaned in his unutterable despair; "is there no hope, no redemption, no retrieving of the past? Is this the bitter end of all, and must I lose my darling so? O Adelais, Adelais, my beloved!"

But even as he spoke, the gathering shadow broke softly over all her face, the sobbing, gasping breath ceased in the stillness of the darkened room, the golden head fell lower,--lower yet upon the desolate heart whose love had been so steadfast and so true; and Stephen covered his face with the hands of the dead, and wept such tears as men can only weep once in a lifetime,--tears that make brown hairs grey and young men old.

Philip Cameron and his aunt did not stay long at Kensington. They gave up the house to strangers, and went away to the Continent for awhile, where they traveled about together, until the old lady grew tired of wandering, and settled down with her maid in a little villa near Geneva; and after that, Stephen heard no more of her nor of Philip. But Stephen himself stayed on in the old house until he grew old too, for he loved the place where Adelais had lived, and could not bear to leave it for another. And every evening when he came home from his office, he would sit alone at the window of his study whence he could see across the garden into the little chamber next door, the little chintz-curtained old-fas.h.i.+oned chamber where she used to lie in her weakness years and years ago, where they two had so often talked and read together, and where she had died at last in his arms. But he never wept, thinking of these things now, for he had grown into a little withered dried-up old man, and his tears were dried up also, and instead of his pa.s.sionate despair and heart-breaking, had come the calm bitterness of eternal regret, and a still voiceless longing for the time that every day drew nearer and nearer, and for the coming of the messenger from the land that is very far off.

But when Maurice came home once more to settle in England with his handsome wife and his children, rich and happy and prosperous, he would fain have taken some new house in London to share with his twin brother, that they might live together; but Stephen would not.

Then when Maurice had reasoned and talked with him a long time in vain, pleading by turns the love that had been between them long ago, the loneliness of his brother's estate, and his own desire that they should not separate now, he yielded the contest, and said discontentedly,--

"Have your own way, Steenie, since you will make a solitary bachelor of yourself, but at least give up your useless toiling at the wine- office. To what end do you plod there every day,--you who are wifeless and childless, and have no need of money for yourself?

Give me up this great house in which you live all alone, like an owl in an oak-tree, and let me find you a cottage somewhere in the neighborhood, where I can often come and see you, and where you may spend your days in happiness and comfort."

And the little old man shook his head and answered, "Nay, brother Maurice, but I will go away from here to some country village where I am not known, for I have toiled long and wearily all my life, and I cannot rest in peace beside the mill where I have ground down my life so many years. Do not trouble yourself about me, Maurice, I shall find a home for myself."

Then they parted. Maurice and his family came to live in the big house at Kensington, for they liked to be near London, and Stephen sold his father's business to another merchant, and went away, Maurice knew not whither, to bury himself and his lost life in some far-off village, until by-and-by the messenger for whom he had waited and yearned so long should come also for him, and the day break and the shadows flee away."

Such, reader mine, is in substance the story that Dr. Peyton told me.

The words in which he related it I cannot of course quite remember now, so I have put it into words of my own, and here and there I have added somewhat to the dialogue. But the facts and the pathos of the romance are not mine, nor his; they are true, actual realities, such as no dressing of fiction can make more poetical or complete in their sorrowful interest.

"It was a long history," said I, "for a dying man to tell."

"Yes," answered he. "And several times it was evident enough from his quick-drawn breath and sudden pauses, that the recital wearied and pained him. But he was so set upon telling, and I, Lizzie, I confess, so much interested in hearing it, that I did not absolutely hinder his fancy, but contented myself with warning him from time to time not to overtask his strength. He always answered me that he was quite strong, and liked to go on, for that it made him happy even to talk once more about Adelais, and to tell me how beautiful and sweet and patient she had been. It was close upon sunset when he ended his story, and he begged me, that as his fas.h.i.+on was, he might be lifted out of bed and carried to his armchair by the window, to look, as he said, for the last time, at the going down of the sun.

So I called the housekeeper, and we did what he desired together, and opened the green Venetian blinds of the cas.e.m.e.nt, which had been closed all the afternoon because of the heat. You remember, Lizzie, what a wonderfully bright and beautiful sunset it was this evening?

Well, as we threw back the outer shutters, the radiant glory of the sky poured into the room like a flood of transparent gold and almost dazzled us, so that I fancied the sudden brilliancy would be too much for his feeble sight, and I leaned hastily forward with the intention of partly reclosing the blinds. But he signed to me to let them be, so I relinquished my design, and sent the housekeeper downstairs to prepare him his tea, which I thought he might like to take sitting up in his chair by the window. I had no idea--doctor though I am--that his end was so near as it proved to be; for although certainly much exhausted and agitated with the exertion of telling me his story, I did not then perceive any immediate cause for apprehension. Still less did I understand that he was then actually dying; on the contrary, I began to think that my first impressions of his danger when I entered the room that afternoon had been erroneous, and that the change I had observed in him might possibly be an indication of temporary revival. At all events, I fancied the cup of tea which was then being made ready, would be of great use in stimulating and refres.h.i.+ng him after the weariness caused by his long talk, and I promised myself that if I could only persuade him to silence for the rest of the evening, he would be none the worse for the recent gratification of his whim. We sat some time by the open window, watching the sun as it sank lower and lower into the golden-sheeted west, and some unconnected speculations were straying through my mind about 'the sea of gla.s.s mingled with fire,' when the old man's words aroused me in the midst of my dreaming, and the voice in which he spoke was so unusual and so soft that it startled me.

"'Doctor,' he said, 'I think I am dying.'

"I sprang from my seat and stood at his side in a moment, but before the utterance had well pa.s.sed from his lips, I perceived that it was no mere invalid's fancy.

"'Thirty-five years ago,' he continued, speaking still in that new unusual voice,--'thirty-five years ago this very selfsame day, my Adelais died in my arms as the sun went down. Today, as the sun goes down, I shall die also.'

"Surely," cried I, "this is a very singular incident! Does it not seem so to you! This evening, then, was actually the anniversary of poor Miss Cameron's death! How strange!"

"It certainly appeared so to me at first," he rejoined. "But when my mind reverted to it afterwards, I thought it exceedingly probable that his own knowledge of the fact had itself hastened his end, for he had no doubt been long brooding over it, and maybe desired that his death should occur that particular day and hour. In his enfeebled condition, such a desire would have great physical effect; I have known several similar cases. But however that may have been, I of course have no certain means of deciding. I have already told you, that immediately on my entering his chamber in the afternoon, he expressed to me his conviction that tonight he should go to his 'long rest,' and in the certainty of that conviction, related to me the story you have heard. But though it has been the necessary lot of my calling to be present at so many deathbeds, I never before witnessed a calmer or a more peaceful end than Stephen Gray's. In his changed face, in his watchful eyes, in every placid feature of his countenance, I beheld the quiet antic.i.p.ation of that 'long rest' about which he had spoken so contentedly an hour or two since.

"He took no further heed of me whatever,--I doubt if he was even aware of my presence. Wearily he laid his head back upon the white pillows I had placed in the armchair behind him, folded his hands together, and kept his eyes fixed steadfastly, and--I thought--even reverently, upon the setting sun that was now fast sinking like a globe of fire, towards the blue ridge of the Malvern hills, and my heart beat violently as I saw it touch the topmost peak. While I watched, there broke suddenly forth from between the low lines of sunset cloud, a long ray of golden light, that fell full on the uplifted face of the little old man. He did not turn his head, or shrink from its intense brightness, but his lips moved, though the utterance of the words he spoke was so broken and indistinct, that I stooped to hear them.

"'Adelais,--O my lost darling,--my Adelais,--let me come to thee and be beloved at last!'

" Then I looked again at the western sky, and saw that the sun had gone down."

Next morning I gathered my June roses and sweet jasmin, and took them over to the house of the little old man. I went upstairs into the darkened chamber where they had laid him, and bestowed the flowers reverently about the white-draped bed. All the wrinkles were wiped out of his pallid face now, and he looked so wondrously calm and peaceful, lying there with his closed eyelids and crossed hands, in the unbroken silence of the room, that the tears of pity I thought I should have wept at the sight never rose in my eyes; but instead, as I turned away, there came to my memory certain closing lines of a most beautiful poem, written not very long ago by a master-hand that surely held G.o.d's commission to write. It is a dead hand now, but the written words remain, and the singer herself has gone to the land of the Hereafter, where the souls of the poets float for ever in the full light of their recovered G.o.dhead, singing such songs as mortal ear hath not yet heard, nor mortal heart conceived of. And the poem of which I spoke, has this ending:--

"'Jasper first,' I said, 'And second, sapphire; third, chalcedony.

The rest in order,--last, an amethyst."'

VII. The Nightshade

"But silence is most n.o.ble till the end."--Atalanta in Calydon.

Chapter I.

Somebody, the other day, presented me with a bunch of crimson roses and purple nightshade, tied together.

Roses and nightshade!

I thought the combination worthy of a poem!

For the rose, as all the world conceives, is the emblem of love; and the nightshade typifies silence.

I put my posy in a little vase filled with water, and when night came, I lay down to rest, with my head full of vague rhymes and unfledged ideas, whose theme was still my eccentric nosegay. Sleep, however, overtook the muse, and the soft divinities of darkness, weaving their tender spells about me, dissolved my contemplated sonnet into a dream.

It seemed to my sleeping fancy that I stood in a deep, serene light of shadowy purple, grave and sombre,--a light which suggested to me the sound of low minor chords, the last notes of some organ voluntary, dying beneath a master's touch, and rolling down the hazy aisles of an empty cathedral, out into the gloomy night, and upward to the stars.

A spirit floated in the air before me,--a phantom draped in heavy sweeping robes of dense purple, but with eyes of such vivid and fiery brightness, that I could not look upon them; and my heart quailed in my bosom with a strange oppressive sense of fear and wonder. Then I felt that her awful gaze was fixed upon me, and a voice, low and sonorous as the tones of an organ, broke on my ear with an intense pathos, unutterably solemn:--

Daughter of earth, I am the spirit of the purple Nightshade, the Atropa Belladonna of the south,--the scent of whose dusky chalice is the fume of bitterness; the taste of whose dark fruit is death.

And because the children and the maidens shun my poisonous berries, when they go out into the woods to make garlands for Mary's shrine, or for wedding gala; and because the leech and herbalist find in me a marvellous balm to soothe the torments of physical anguish; because I give the sick man ease, and the sleepless man oblivion, and the miserable man eternal rest; because I am sombre of hue and unsweet of odour, able to calm, to hush, and to kill, the sons of earth have chosen me to be the emblem of silence. There is a shadow on your brow: my words sound strange and bitter to you; yet hear me: for once on earth I dwelt with one who thought and labored in silence. His name is inscribed upon no calendar of the world's heroes; it is written only in heaven!

Not far from a certain large town in Piedmont there was once a miserable little cottage. It had been let when I knew it, to a poor invalid woman and her only child, a boy about nine or ten years old. They were very poor, this mother and son; and the little living they had, came mostly by means of needlework, which the woman did for people in the town, and by the sale of dried herbs and suchlike. As for the cottage itself, it was a crazy, tumble-down tenement, half in ruins, and all the outside walls of it were covered with clinging ivies and weeds and wild climbing plants. I was one of these. I grew just underneath the solitary window of the small chamber wherein the poor woman slept,--the whole but consisted of only two rooms,--and I climbed and sprouted and twisted my head in and out of the network of shrubs about me, and clung to the crumbling stone of the wall, and stretched myself out and up continually, until I grew so tall, that I could look in at the cas.e.m.e.nt and see the inside of the room. It was in the summertime that I first managed to do this, and I remember well what a burning, sultry summer it was!

Everything seemed parched and calcined under the pitiless Italian sun, and the whole sky was like a great blazing topaz,--yellow, and hard to look at; and the water disappeared from the runlets, and there was not a breath of wind from one end of the sky to the other.

So it was no great marvel to me, when one day, not long after my first appearance at the windowsill, I saw the poor woman come into the room with a very faltering step, and a whiter, sicklier look on her wan face than was usual to it. She threw herself wearily down upon her bed in the corner, and panted for breath. She had been to the town to take thither the last piece of needlework she had done, and she laid on the wooden table by the bedside the money the people had given her for her labor. Hard-earned coins, and few of them! She put her thin, wasted hands to her head as she lay, and I heard her murmur to herself in broken words that seemed interspersed with half suppressed sobs, and I could not understand what she said. But by-and-by, when she had grown a little calmer,-- there was a sharp, swift tap at the door of the room, and the boy entered, with a small book in his hand, and a sparkle of pleasure in his eyes.

"Look, mother!" he cried, holding up the volume gleefully; "this is one of the great German Professor's 'Treatises on Chemistry!'

Herr Ritter has bought it for me! Isn't it good of him? And he is here, and wants to know if he may come and see you!"

She smiled,--such a poor ghost of a smile as it was!--and answered feebly, "Let him come; 'Tista." But I suppose the Herr had heard even that broken message, for at the words the door was pushed open a little further, and an old man appeared, bare-headed, wearing a long white beard, and carrying a staff in his hand. He was bent with age, and his forehead and cheeks were marked about with many lines and crosses,--deep furrows ploughed by the harrow of thought and sorrow. I had often seen him before, for he came frequently to the cottage, but I had never been so close to him as on this occasion, and had never before noticed how poor and worn his garments were. He came into the room with a courteous greeting on his lips, half-Italian, half-German in its phraseology, and signed with a nod of his head to the boy Battista to be gone, who immediately obeyed, hugging his prize, and closed the door softly behind him.

"Herr Ritter," said the woman, raising herself on the pillow, and putting both her hands into his; "you are too good to, my 'Tista, and too good to me. Why will you do these things?"