第77章

Day by day, as the Little Gentleman comes to the table, it seems to me that the shadow of some approaching change falls darker and darker over his countenance.Nature is struggling with something, and I am afraid she is under in the wrestling-match.You do not care much, perhaps, for my particular conjectures as to the nature of his difficulty.I should say, however, from the sudden flushes to which he is subject, and certain other marks which, as an expert, I know how to interpret, that his heart was in trouble; but then he presses his hand to the right side, as if there were the centre of his uneasiness.

When I say difficulty about the heart, I do not mean any of those sentimental maladies of that organ which figure more largely in romances than on the returns which furnish our Bills of Mortality.

I mean some actual change in the organ itself, which may carry him off by slow and painful degrees, or strike him down with one huge pang and only time for a single shriek,--as when the shot broke through the brave Captain Nolan's breast, at the head of the Light Brigade at Balaklava, and with a loud cry he dropped dead from his saddle.

I thought it only fair to say something of what I apprehended to some who were entitled to be warned.The landlady's face fell when I mentioned my fears.

Poor man! --she said.--And will leave the best room empty! Has n't he got any sisters or nieces or anybody to see to his things, if he should be took away? Such a sight of cases, full of everything!

Never thought of his failin' so suddin.A complication of diseases, she expected.Liver-complaint one of 'em?

After this first involuntary expression of the too natural selfish feelings, (which we must not judge very harshly, unless we happen to be poor widows ourselves, with children to keep filled, covered, and taught,--rents high,--beef eighteen to twenty cents per pound,)--after this first squeak of selfishness, followed by a brief movement of curiosity, so invariable in mature females, as to the nature of the complaint which threatens the life of a friend or any person who may happen to be mentioned as ill,--the worthy soul's better feelings struggled up to the surface, and she grieved for the doomed invalid, until a tear or two came forth and found their way down a channel worn for them since the early days of her widowhood.

Oh, this dreadful, dreadful business of being the prophet of evil!

Of all the trials which those who take charge of others' health and lives have to undergo, this is the most painful.It is all so plain to the practised eye!--and there is the poor wife, the doting mother, who has never suspected anything, or at least has clung always to the hope which you are just going to wrench away from her!

--I must tell Iris that I think her poor friend is in a precarious state.She seems nearer to him than anybody.

I did tell her.Whatever emotion it produced, she kept a still face, except, perhaps, a little trembling of the lip.--Could I be certain that there was any mortal complaint?--Why, no, I could not be certain; but it looked alarming to me.--He shall have some of my life,--she said.

I suppose this to have been a fancy of hers, or a kind of magnetic power she could give out;--at any rate, I cannot help thinking she wills her strength away from herself, for she has lost vigor and color from that day.I have sometimes thought he gained the force she lost; but this may have been a whim, very probably.

One day she came suddenly to me, looking deadly pale.Her lips moved, as if she were speaking; but I could not at first hear a word.Her hair looked strangely, as if lifting itself, and her eyes were full of wild light.She sunk upon a chair, and I thought was falling into one of her trances.Something had frozen her blood with fear; I thought, from what she said, half audibly, that she believed she had seen a shrouded figure.

That night, at about eleven o'clock, I was sent for to see the Little Gentleman, who was taken suddenly ill.Bridget, the servant, went before me with a light.The doors were both unfastened, and Ifound myself ushered, without hindrance, into the dim light of the mysterious apartment I had so longed to enter.

I found these stanzas in the young girl's book among many others.Igive them as characterizing the tone of her sadder moments.

UNDER THE VIOLETS.

Her hands are cold; her face is white;

No more her pulses come and go;

Her eyes are shut to life and light;

Fold the white vesture, snow on snow, And lay her where the violets blow.

But not beneath a graven stone, To plead for tears with alien eyes;A slender cross of wood alone Shall say, that here a maiden lies In peace beneath the peaceful skies.

And gray old trees of hugest limb Shall wheel their circling shadows round To make the scorching sunlight dim That drinks the greenness from the ground, And drop their dead leaves on her mound.

When o'er their boughs the squirrels run, And through their leaves the robins call, And, ripening in the autumn sun, The acorns and the chestnuts fall, Doubt not that she will heed them all.

For her the morning choir shall sing Its matins from the branches high, And every minstrel voice of spring, That trills beneath the April sky, Shall greet her with its earliest cry.

When, turning round their dial-track, Eastward the lengthening shadows pass, Her little mourners, clad in black, The crickets, sliding through the grass, Shall pipe for her an evening mass.

At last the rootlets of the trees Shall find the prison where she lies, And bear the buried dust they seize In leaves and blossoms to the skies.

So may the soul that warmed it rise!

If any, born of kindlier blood, Should ask, What maiden lies below?

Say only this: A tender bud, That tried to blossom in the snow, Lies withered where the violets blow.