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diff --git a/30540-h/30540-h.htm b/30540-h/30540-h.htm new file mode 100644 index 0000000..e808a47 --- /dev/null +++ b/30540-h/30540-h.htm @@ -0,0 +1,6330 @@ +<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN"> +<HTML> +<HEAD> + +<META HTTP-EQUIV="Content-Type" CONTENT="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1"> + +<TITLE> +The Project Gutenberg E-text of The Gates Between, by Elizabeth Stuart Phelps +</TITLE> + +<STYLE TYPE="text/css"> +BODY { color: Black; + background: White; + margin-right: 10%; + margin-left: 10%; + font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; + text-align: justify } + +P {text-indent: 4% } + +P.noindent {text-indent: 0% } + +P.poem {text-indent: 0%; + margin-left: 10%; + font-size: small } + +P.letter {text-indent: 0%; + font-size: small ; + margin-left: 10% ; + margin-right: 10% } + +P.transnote {font-size: small ; + text-indent: 0% ; + margin-left: 0% ; + margin-right: 0% } + +P.finis { font-size: larger ; + text-align: center ; + text-indent: 0% ; + margin-left: 0% ; + margin-right: 0% } + +H3.h3left { margin-left: 0%; + margin-right: 1%; + margin-bottom: .5% ; + margin-top: 0; + float: left ; + clear: left ; + text-align: center } + +H3.h3right { margin-left: 1%; + margin-right: 0 ; + margin-bottom: .5% ; + margin-top: 0; + float: right ; + clear: right ; + text-align: center } + +H3.h3center { margin-left: 0; + margin-right: 0 ; + margin-bottom: .5% ; + margin-top: 0; + float: none ; + clear: both ; + text-align: center } + +H4.h4left { margin-left: 0%; + margin-right: 1%; + margin-bottom: .5% ; + margin-top: 0; + float: left ; + clear: left ; + text-align: center } + +H4.h4right { margin-left: 1%; + margin-right: 0 ; + margin-bottom: .5% ; + margin-top: 0; + float: right ; + clear: right ; + text-align: center } + +H4.h4center { margin-left: 0; + margin-right: 0 ; + margin-bottom: .5% ; + margin-top: 0; + float: none ; + clear: both ; + text-align: center } + +H5.h5left { margin-left: 0%; + margin-right: 1%; + margin-bottom: .5% ; + margin-top: 0; + float: left ; + clear: left ; + text-align: center } + +H5.h5right { margin-left: 1%; + margin-right: 0 ; + margin-bottom: .5% ; + margin-top: 0; + float: right ; + clear: right ; + text-align: center } + +H5.h5center { margin-left: 0; + margin-right: 0 ; + margin-bottom: .5% ; + margin-top: 0; + float: none ; + clear: both ; + text-align: center } + +IMG.imgleft { float: left; + clear: left; + margin-left: 0; + margin-bottom: 0; + margin-top: 1%; + margin-right: 1%; + padding: 0; + text-align: center } + +IMG.imgright {float: right; + clear: right; + margin-left: 1%; + margin-bottom: 0; + margin-top: 1%; + margin-right: 0; + padding: 0; + text-align: center } + +IMG.imgcenter { margin-left: auto; + margin-bottom: 0; + margin-top: 1%; + margin-right: auto; } + +</STYLE> + +</HEAD> + +<BODY> + + +<pre> + +The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Gates Between, by Elizabeth Stuart Phelps + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: The Gates Between + +Author: Elizabeth Stuart Phelps + +Release Date: November 24, 2009 [EBook #30540] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE GATES BETWEEN *** + + + + +Produced by Al Haines + + + + + +</pre> + + +<BR><BR> + +<CENTER> +<IMG SRC="images/img-cover.jpg" ALT="Cover art" BORDER="" WIDTH="410" HEIGHT="638"> +</CENTER> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<H1 ALIGN="center"> +THE GATES BETWEEN. +</H1> + +<BR> + +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +BY +</H3> + +<H2 ALIGN="center"> +ELIZABETH STUART PHELPS, +</H2> + +<BR> + +<H4 ALIGN="center"> +<I>AUTHOR OF</I> +<BR> +"THE GATES AJAR," "GYPSY BREYNTON," Etc +</H4> + +<BR><BR> + +<P CLASS="poem" STYLE="margin-left: 20%"> +Write the things which thou hast seen,<BR> +and the things which are,<BR> +and the things which shall be hereafter.<BR> +<SPAN STYLE="margin-left: 2.5em">REVELATION.</SPAN><BR> +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<H4 ALIGN="center"> +WARD, LOCK AND Co., +<BR> +LONDON, NEW YORK, AND MELBOURNE. +</H4> + +<H5 ALIGN="center"> +[<I>All rights reserved</I>]. +</H5> + +<H4 ALIGN="center"> +1887 +</H4> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="chap01"></A> + +<H2 ALIGN="center"> +THE GATES BETWEEN. +</H2> + +<BR> + +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +CHAPTER I. +</H3> + +<P> +If the narrative which I am about to recount perplex the reader, it can +hardly do so more than it has perplexed the narrator. Explanations, +let me say at the start, I have none to offer. That which took place I +relate. I have had no special education or experience as a writer; +both my nature and my avocation have led me in other directions. I can +claim nothing more in the construction of these pages than the +qualities of a faithful reporter. Such, I have tried to be. +</P> + +<P> +It was on the twenty-fifth of November of the year 187-, that I, +Esmerald Thorne, fell upon the event whose history and consequences I +am about to describe. +</P> + +<P> +Autobiographies I do not like. I should have been positive at any time +during my life of forty-nine years, that no temptation could drag me +over that precipice of presumption and illusion which awaits the man +who confides himself to the world. As it is the unexpected which +happens, so it is the unwelcome which we choose. I do not tell this +story for my own gratification. I tell it to fulfil the heaviest +responsibility of my life. However I may present myself upon these +pages is the least of my concern; whether well or ill, that is of the +smallest possible consequence. Touching the manner of my telling the +story, I have heavy thoughts; for I know that upon the manner of the +telling will depend effects too far beyond the scope of any one human +personality for me to regard them indifferently. I wish I could. I +have reason to believe myself the bearer of a message to many men. +This belief is in itself enough, one would say, to deplete a man of +paltry purpose. I wish to be considered only as the messenger, who +comes and departs, and is thought of no more. The message remains, and +should remain, the only material of interest. +</P> + +<P> +Owing to some peculiarities in the situation, I am unable to delegate, +and do not see my way to defer, a duty—for I believe it to be a +duty—which I shall therefore proceed to perform with as little apology +as possible. I must trust to the gravity of my motive to overcome +every trifling consideration in the mind of my readers; as it has +solemnly done in my own. +</P> + +<BR> + +<P> +In order to give force to my narrative, it will be necessary for me to +be more personal in some particulars than I could have chosen, and to +revert to certain details of my early history belonging to that +category which people of my profession or temperament are wont to +dismiss as "emotional." I have had strange occasion to learn that this +is a deep and delicate word, which can never be scientifically used, +which cannot be so much as elementally understood, except by delicacy +and by depth. These are precisely the qualities of which this is to be +said,—he who most lacks them will be most unaware of the lack. +</P> + +<P> +There is a further peculiarity about such unconsciousness; that it is +not material for education. You can teach a man that he is not +generous, or true, or able. You can never teach him that he is +superficial, or that he is not fine. +</P> + +<P> +I have been by profession a physician; the son of a chemist; the +grandson of a surgeon; a man fairly illustrative of the subtler +significance of these circumstances; born and bred, as the children of +science are;—a physical fact in a world of physical facts; a man who +rises, if ever, by miracle, to a higher set of facts; who thinks the +thought of his father, who does the deed of his father's father, who +contests the heredity of his mother, who shuts the pressure of his +special education like a clasp about his nature, and locks it down with +the iron experience of his calling. +</P> + +<P> +It was given to me, as it is not given to all men of my kind, to know a +woman strong enough—and sweet enough—to fit a key unto this lock. +</P> + +<P> +Strong enough <I>or</I> sweet enough, I should rather have said. The two +are truly the same. The old Hebrew riddle read well, that "out of +strength shall come forth sweetness." There is the lioness behind the +rarest honey. +</P> + +<P> +Like others of my calling, I had seen the best and the worst and the +most of women. The pathological view of that complex subject is the +most unfortunate which a man can well have. The habit of classifying a +woman as neuralgic, hysteric, dyspeptic, instead of unselfish, +intellectual, high-minded, is not a wholesome one for the classifier. +Something of the abnormal condition of the <I>clientèle</I> extends to the +adviser. A physician who has a healthy and natural view of women has +the making of a great man in him. +</P> + +<P> +I was not a great man. I was only a successful lector; more conscious +in those days of the latter fact, and less of the former, be it +admitted, than I am now. A man's avocation may be at once his ruin and +his exculpation. I do not know whether I was more self-confident or +even more wilful than other men to whom is given the autocracy of our +profession, and the dependence of women which accompanies it. I should +not wish to have the appearance of saying an unmanly thing, if I add +that this dependence had wearied me. +</P> + +<P> +It is more likely to be true that I differed from most other men in +this: that in all my life I have known but one woman whom I loved, or +wished to make my wife. I was forty-five years old before I saw her. +</P> + +<P> +Who of us has not felt at the Play, the strong allegorical power in the +coming of the first actress before the house? The hero may pose, the +clown dance, the villain plot, the warrior, the king, the merchant, the +page, fuddle the attention for the nonce: it is a dreary business; it +is like parsing poetry; it is a grammatical duty; the Play could not, +it seems, go on without these superfluities. We listen, weary, regret, +find fault, and acquire an aversion, when lo! upon the monotonous, +masculine scene, some slender creature, shining, all white gown and +yellow hair and soft arms and sweet curves comes gliding—and, hush! +with the Everwomanly, the Play begins. +</P> + +<P> +I do not think this feeling is one peculiar to our sex alone; I have +heard women express the same in the strongest terms. +</P> + +<P> +So, I have sometimes thought it is with the coming of the Woman upon +the stage of a man's life. If the scenes have shifted for a while too +long, monopolized by the old dismal male actors whose trick and pose +and accent he knows so well and understands too easily,—and if, then, +half-through the drama, late and longed-for, tardily and splendidly, +comes the Star, and if she be a fine creature, of a high fame, and +worthy of it,—ah, then look you to her spectator. Rapt and rapturous +she will hold him till the Play is done. +</P> + +<P> +So she found me—held me—holds me. The best of it, thank God, is the +last of it. So, I can say, she holds me to this hour, where and as we +are. +</P> + +<P> +It was on this wise. On my short summer vacation of that year from +which I date my happiness, and which I used to call The Year of my +Lady, as others say The Year of Our Lord, I tarried for a time in a +mountain village, unfashionable and beautiful, where my city patients +were not likely to hunt me down. Fifty-three of them had followed me +to the seashore the year before, and I went back to town a +harder-worked man than I left it. Even a doctor has a right to life, +liberty, and the pursuit of a vacation, and that time I struck out for +my rights. I cut adrift—denied my addresses even to my partner—and +set forth upon a walking tour alone, among the hills. Upon one point +my mind was made up: I would not see a sick woman for two weeks. +</P> + +<P> +I arrived at this little town of which I speak upon a Saturday evening. +I remember that it was an extraordinary evening. Thunder came up, and +clouds of colours such as I found remarkable. I am not an adept in +describing these things, but I remember that they moved me. I went out +and followed the trout-brook, which was a graceful little stream, and +watched the pageant in the skies above the tops of the forest. The +trees on either side of the tiny current had the look of souls +regarding each other across a barrier, so solemn were they. They stood +with their gaze upon the heavens and their feet rooted to the earth, +and seemed like sentient creatures who knew why this was as it was. +</P> + +<P> +I, walking with my eyes upon them, feet unguarded, and fancy following +a cloud of rose-colour that hung fashioned in the outline of a mighty +wing above me, caught my foot in a gnarled old hickory root and fell +heavily. When I tried to rise I found that I was considerably hurt. +</P> + +<P> +I was a well, vigorous man, not accustomed to pain, which took a +vigorous form with me; and I was mortified to find myself quite faint, +too much so even to disturb myself over the situation, or to wonder who +would be likely to institute a searching-party for me,—a stranger, but +an hour since, registered at the hotel. +</P> + +<P> +With that ease which I condemned so hotly in my patients I abandoned +myself to the physical pang, got back somehow against the hickory, and +closed my eyes; devoid even of curiosity as to the consequences of the +accident; only "attentive to my sensations," as a great writer of my +day put it. I had often quoted him to nervous people whom I considered +as exaggerating their sufferings; I did not recall the quotation at +that moment. +</P> + +<P> +"Oh! you are hurt!" a low voice said. +</P> + +<P> +I was a bit fastidious in voices at that time of my life. To say that +this was the sweetest I had ever heard would not express what I mean. +It was the <I>dearest</I> I had ever heard. From that first moment,—before +I saw her face,—drowned as I was in that wave of mean physical agony, +given over utterly to myself, I knew, and to myself I said: "It is the +dearest voice in all this world." +</P> + +<P> +A woman on the further side of the trout-brook stood uncertain, +pitifully regarding me. She was not a girl,—quite a woman; ripe, and +self-possessed in bearing. She had a beautiful head, and bright dark +hair; her head was bare, and her straw mountain-hat hung across one arm +by the strings. She had been bathing her face in the water, which was +of a pink tint like the wing above it. As she stood there, she seemed +to be shut in and guarded by, dripping with, that rose-colour,—to +inhale it, to exhale it, to be a part of it, to be <I>it</I>. She looked +like a blossom of the live and wonderful evening. +</P> + +<P> +"You are seriously hurt," she repeated. "I must get to you. Have +patience; I will find a way. I will help you." +</P> + +<P> +The bridge was at some distance from us, and the little stream was +brawling and strong. +</P> + +<P> +"But it is not deep," she said. "Do not feel any concern. It will do +me no harm." As she spoke, she swung herself lightly over into the +brook, stepping from stone to stone, till these came to an abrupt end +in the current. There for an instant poised, but one could not say +uncertain, she hung shining before me—for her dress was white, and it +took and took and took the rose-colour as if she were a white rose, +blushing. She then plunged directly into the water, which was +knee-deep at least, and waded straight across to me. +</P> + +<P> +As she climbed the bank, her thick wet dress clinging to her lovely +limbs, and her hands outstretched as if in hurrying pity, I closed my +eyes again before her. I thought, as I did so, how much exquisite +pleasure was like perfect pain. +</P> + +<P> +She climbed the bank and stooped from her tall height to look at me; +knelt upon the moss, and touched me impersonally, like the spirit that +she seemed. +</P> + +<P> +"You are very wet!" I cried. "The water is cold. I know these +mountain brooks. You will be chilled through. Pray get home and send +me—somebody." +</P> + +<P> +"Where are you hurt?" she answered, with a little authoritative wave of +the hand, as if she waved my words away. She had firm, fine hands. +</P> + +<P> +"I have injured the patella—I mean the knee-pan," I replied. She +smiled indulgently. She did not take the trouble to tell me that my +lesson in elementary anatomy was at all superfluous. But when I saw +her smile I said:— +</P> + +<P> +"That was unconscious cerebration." +</P> + +<P> +"Why, of course," she answered, nodding pleasantly. +</P> + +<P> +"Go home," I urged. "Go and get yourself out of these wet things. No +lady can bear it; it will injure you." She lifted her head,—I thought +she carried it like a Greek,—and regarded me with her wide, grave +eyes. I met hers firmly, and for a moment we considered each other. +</P> + +<P> +"It is plain that you are a doctor," she said lightly, with a second +smile. "I presume you never see a well woman; at least—believe you +see one now. I shall mind this wetting no more than if I were a trout +or a gray squirrel. I am perfectly able to give you whatever help you +require. And by your leave, I shall not go home and get into a dry +dress until I see you properly cared for. Now! Can you step? Or +shall I get a waggon, and a farm-hand? I think we could back a horse +down almost to this spot. But it would take time. So?—Will you try +it? Gently. Slowly. Don't <I>let</I> me hurt you, or blunder. I see that +you are in great pain. Don't be afraid to lean on me. I am quite +strong. I am able. If you can crawl a few steps"— +</P> + +<P> +<I>Steps</I>! I would have crawled a few miles. For she put her sweet arms +about me as simply and nobly as if I had been a wounded child; and with +such strength of the flesh and unconsciousness of the spirit as I had +never beheld in any woman, she did indeed support me out of the forest +in such wise that my poor pain of the body became a great and glorified +fact, for the joy of soul that I had because of her. +</P> + +<P> +It had begun to be easy, in my day, to make a mock at many dear and +delicate beliefs; not those alone which pertain to the life eternal, +but those belonging to the life below. The one followed from the +other, perhaps. That which we have been accustomed to call love was an +angel whose wings had been bruised by our unbelieving clutch. It was +not the fashion to love greatly. One of the leading scientists of my +time and of my profession had written: "There is nothing particularly +holy about love." So far as I had given thought to the subject, I had, +perhaps, agreed with him. It is easy for a physician to agree to +anything which emphasizes the visible, and erases the invisible fact. +If there were any one form of the universal delusion more than all +others "gone out" in the days of which I speak, it was the dear, +old-fashioned delirium called loving at first sight. I was never +exactly a scoffer; but I had mocked at this fable as other men of my +sort mock,—a subject for prophylactics, like measles or scarlet fever; +and when you said that, you had said the whole. Be it, then, recorded, +be it admitted, without let or hindrance, that I, Esmerald Thorne, +physician and surgeon, forty-five years old, and of sane mind, did love +that one woman, and her only, and her always, from the moment that my +unworthy eyes first looked into her own, as she knelt before me on the +moss beside the mountain brook,—from that moment to this hour. +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="chap02"></A> + +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +CHAPTER II. +</H3> + +<P> +Thus half in perfect poetry, part in simplest prose, opened the first +canto of that long song which has made music in me; which has made +music of me, since that happy night. Of the countless words which we +have exchanged together in times succeeding, these, the few of our +first meeting are carved upon my brain as salutations are carved in +stone above the doorways of mansions. He that has loved as I did, may +say why this should be so, if he can. I cannot. Time and storm beat +against these inscriptions, and give them other colouring,—the tints +of years and weather; but while the house lasts and the rock holds the +salutation lives. In most other matters, the force of recurring +experience weakens association. He who loves cherishes the first words +of the beloved as he cherishes her last. +</P> + +<P> +The situation was simple enough: an injured man and a lovely woman, +guests of the same summer hotel; a slow recovery; a leisurely sweet +acquaintance; the light that never was on hill or shore; and so the +charm was wrought. My accident held me a prisoner for six weeks. But +my love put me in chains in six minutes. +</P> + +<P> +Her name was Helen; like hers of old +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +"Who fired the topmost towers of Ilium."<BR> +</P> + +<P CLASS="noindent"> +I liked the stately name of her, for she was of full +womanhood,—thirty-three years old; the age at which the French +connoisseur said that a charming woman charmed the most. +</P> + +<P> +Upon the evening before we parted, I ventured—for we sat at the +sheltered end of the piazza, away from the patterers and chatterers, a +little by ourselves—to ask her a brave question. I had learned that +one might ask her anything; she had originality; she was not of the +feminine pattern; she had no paltriness nor pettiness in her thoughts; +she looked out, as men do, upon a subject; not <I>down</I>, as women are +wont. She was a woman with whom a man could converse. He need not +adapt himself and conceal himself, and play the part of a gallant at +real matters which were above gallantry. He could confide in her. Now +it was new to me to consider that I could confide in any person. In my +calling, one becomes such a receptacle of human confidence,—one soaks +up other people's lives till one becomes a great sponge, absorptive and +absorbing for ever, as sponges should. Who notices when the useful +thing gets too full? That is what it is there for. Pour on—scalding +hot, or freezing cold, or pure or foul—pour away. If one day it +refuses to absorb any more, and lies limp and valueless—why, the +Doctor has broken down; or the Doctor is dead. Who ever thought +anything could happen to the <I>Doctor</I>? One thing in the natural +history of the sponge is apt to be overlooked. When the process of +absorption reaches a certain point, let the true hand touch the wearied +thing, and grasp it in the right way, and lo! back rushes the instinct +of confidence, <I>out</I>, not in. +</P> + +<P> +Something of this sort had happened to me. The novelty of real +acquaintance with a woman who did not need me had an effect upon me +which perhaps few outside of my profession can understand. This woman +truly needed nothing of me. She had not so much as a toothache or a +sore throat. If she had cares or troubles they were her own. She +leaned upon me no more than the sunrise did upon the mountain. She was +as radiant, as healthful, as vivid, and as calm; she surrounded me, she +overflowed me like the colour of the air. Nay, beyond this it was I +who had need; it was she who ministered. It was I who suffered the +whims and longings of weakness,—the thousand little cravings of the +sick for the well. It was I who learned to know that I had never known +the meaning of what is called "diversion." I learned to suspect that I +had yet to learn the true place of sympathy in therapeutics. I +learned, in short, some serious professional lessons which were the +simplest human ones. +</P> + +<P> +But the question that I spoke of was on this wise. It did not indeed +wear the form, but she gave it the hospitality, of a question. +</P> + +<P> +"I wish I knew," I said, "why you have not married. I wish you thought +me worthy to know." +</P> + +<P> +"The whole world might know," she answered, with her sweet +straightforward look. +</P> + +<P> +"And I, then, as the most unworthy part of it?" For my heart sank at +the terms upon which I was admitted to the answer. +</P> + +<P> +"I have never seen any man whom I wished to marry. I have no other +reason." +</P> + +<P> +"Nor I," I said, "a woman"— And there I paused. Yes, precisely +there, where I had not meant to; for she gave me a large, grave look, +upon which I could no more have intruded than I could have touched her. +</P> + +<P> +This was in September. The year had made the longest circuit of my +life before I gathered the courage to finish that sentence, broken by +the weight of a delicate look; before I dared to say to her:— +</P> + +<P> +"Nor I a woman—until now." +</P> + +<P> +I hope I was what we call "above" the petty masculine instinct which +values a woman who is hard to win chiefly for that circumstance. +Perhaps I was not as I thought myself. But it seemed to me that the +anguish of wooing in doubt overcame all paltry sense of pleasure in +pursuit of my delight. My thoughts of her moved like slow travellers +up the sides of a mountain of snow. That other feeling would have been +a descent to me. So wholly did she rule my soul—how could I stoop to +care the more for hers, because she was beyond my reach? +</P> + +<P> +Be this as it may, beyond my reach for yet another year she did remain. +Gently as she inclined toward me, to love she made no haste. The force +of my feeling was so great at times, it seemed incredible that hers did +not rush to meet me like part of the game incoming wave broken by a +coast island and joining—seemingly two, but in reality one—upon the +shoreward side. For the first time in my life, in that rising tide of +my great love, I truly knew humility. My unworthiness of her was more +present with me even than my longing for her. If I could have scourged +my soul clear of all unfitness for her as our Saviour was said to have +scourged the tradesmen out of the Temple, I should have counted myself +blessed, even though I never won her; though I beat out my last hope of +her with the very blows which I inflicted upon myself. +</P> + +<P> +In the vibrations of my strong emotion it used to surprise me that my +will was such a cripple against the sensibilities of that delicate +creature. I was a man of as much will as was naturally good for me; +and my training had made it abnormal like a prize-fighter's bicepital +muscle. People of my profession need some counter-irritant, which they +seldom get, to the habit of command. To be the ultimate control for a +<I>clientèle</I> of a thousand people, to enforce the personal opinion in +every matter from a broken constitution to a broken heart, deprives a +man of the usual human challenges to an athletic will. In his case, if +ever, motion follows least resistance. His will-power grows by a +species of pommelling; not by the higher tactics of wrestling. +</P> + +<P> +But I, who gave the fiat on which life or death hung poised as +unhesitatingly as I controlled the fluctuations of an influenza; and I, +to whom the pliability of the feminine will had long since become an +accepted and somewhat elemental fact, like the nature of milk-toast; I, +Dr. Thorne, who had the habit of success, who expected to make his +point, who was accustomed to receive obedience, who fought death or +hysteria, an opposing school or a tricky patient, with equal fidelity, +as one who pursues the avocation of life,—I stood, conquered before +this slender woman whose eyes, like the sword of flame, turned this way +and that, guarding the barred gates of the only Eden I had ever chosen +to enter. +</P> + +<P> +In short, for the first time in my life I found myself a suppliant; and +I found myself thus and there for the sake of a feeling. +</P> + +<P> +It was not for science' sake, it was not for the sake of personal fame, +or for the glory of an idea, or for the promulgation of a discovery. I +had not been overcome upon the intellectual side of my nature. I had +been conquered by an emotion. I had been beaten by a thing for which, +all my life, I had been prescribing as confidently as I would for a +sprain. Medical men will understand me, and some others may, when I +say that I experienced surprise to come face to face at last, and in +this unanswerable personal way, with an invisible, intangible power of +the soul and of the body, which could not be treated as "a symptom." +</P> + +<P> +I loved her. That was enough, and beyond. I loved her. That was the +beginning and end. I loved her. I found nothing in the Materia Medica +that could cure the fact. I loved her. Science gave me no explanation +of the phenomenon. I did not love her scientifically. I loved her +terribly. +</P> + +<P> +I was a man of middle age, and had called myself a scientist and +philosopher. I had thought, if ever, to love soberly and +philosophically. Instead of that I loved as poets sing, as artists +paint, as the statues look, as the great romances read, as ideals +teach,—as the young love. +</P> + +<P> +As the young do? Nay. What young creature ever loved like that? +</P> + +<BR> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +They know not love who sip it at the spring.<BR> +Youth is a fragile child that plays at love,<BR> +Tosses a shell, and trims a little sail,<BR> +Mimics the passion of the gathered years,<BR> +And is a loiterer on the shallow bank<BR> +Of the great flood that we have waited for.<BR> +</P> + +<BR> + +<P> +I do not think of any other thing which a man cannot do better at +forty, than at twenty. Why, then, should he not the better love? +</P> + +<P> +My lady had a stately soul; but she gave it sweet graciousness and +little womanly appeals and curves, that were to my heart as the touch +of her hand was to my pulse. I was so happy in her presence that I +could not believe I had ever been sad; and I longed so for her in +absence that I could scarcely believe I had become happy. She was to +my thoughts as the light is to the crystal. She came into my life as +the miracles came to the unbelieving. She moved through my days and +through my dreams, as the rose-cloud moved upon the mountain sky. She +floated between me and my sick. She hovered above me and my dying. +She was a mist between me and my books. Once when I took the knife for +a dangerous operation, the steel blade caught a sunbeam and flashed; +and I looked at the flash—it seemed to contain a new world—and I +thought: "She is my own. I am a happy man!" But I was sorry for my +patient. I was not rough with him. And the operation succeeded. +</P> + +<P> +What is to be said? I loved her. Love is like faith. He who has it +understands before you speak. But to him who has it not, it cannot be +explained. +</P> + +<P> +A year from the time of my most blessed accident beside the +trout-brook,—in one year and two months from that day, upon a warm and +wonderful September afternoon, my lady and I were married, and I +brought her from her mother's house to the mountain village where first +we saw each other. There we spent the first week of our happiness. It +was as near to Eden as we could find. The village was left almost to +its own rare resources; the summer tourists were well-nigh gone; the +peaceful roads gave no stare of intrusion to our joy. The hills looked +down upon us and made us feel how high love was. The forest inclosed +us, and made us understand that love was large. The holiness of beauty +was the hostess of our delight. Oh, I had won her! She was my wife. +She was my own. She loved me. +</P> + +<P> +If I cherished her as my own soul, what could I give her back, who had +given herself to me? +</P> + +<P> +I said, "I will make you the happiest woman who was ever beloved by man +upon this earth." +</P> + +<P> +"But you <I>have</I>," she whispered, lifting her dear face. "It is worth +being alive for, if it came to an end to-morrow." +</P> + +<P> +"Love has no end," I cried. "Happiness is life. It cannot die. It +has an immortal soul. If ever I make you sad, if I am untender to +you,—may God strike me"— +</P> + +<P> +"Hush," she cried, clinging to me, and closing my lips with a kiss for +which I would have died; "Hush, love! hush!" +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="chap03"></A> + +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +CHAPTER III. +</H3> + +<P> +It ought to be said, at this point in my story, that I had never been +what would be called an even-tempered man. Truth to tell, I was a +spoiled boy. My mother was a saint, but she was a soft-hearted one. +My father was a scholar. Like many another boy of decided +individuality, I came up anyhow. Nobody managed me. At an early age +my profession made it my duty to manage everybody else. I had a +nervous temperament to start on; neither my training nor my occupation +had poised it. I do not think I was malicious nor even ill-natured. +As men go, I was perhaps a kind man. The thing which I am trying to +say is, that I was an irritable one. +</P> + +<P> +As I look back upon the whole subject I can see, from my present point +of view, that this irritability had seldom struck me as a personal +disadvantage. I do not think it usually makes that impression upon +temperaments similarly vitiated. As nearly as I can remember, I +thought of myself rather as the possessor of an eccentricity, than as +the victim of a vice. My father was an overworked college +professor,—a quick-tempered man; my mother,—so he told me with +streaming tears, upon the day that he buried her,—my mother never +spoke one irritated word to him in all her life: he had chafed and she +had soothed, he had slashed and she had healed, from the beginning to +the end of their days together. A boy imitates for so many years +before he reflects, that the liberty to say what one felt like saying +appeared to me a mere identification of sex long before it occurred to +me that mine might not be the only sex endowed by nature with this form +of expression. I regarded it as one regards a beard, or a +waistcoat,—simple signs of the variation of species. +</P> + +<P> +My mother—Heaven rest her sweet soul—did not, that I recall, +obviously oppose me in this view. After the time of the first +moustache she obeyed her son, as she had obeyed her husband. +</P> + +<P> +As has been already said, the profession to which I fell heir failed to +recommend to me a different personal attitude toward the will of +others. My sick people were my pawns upon the chess-board of life. I +played my game with humane intentions, not wholly, I believe, with +selfish ones. But I suffered the military dangers of character, +without the military apologies for them. He whose duty to God and men +requires him to command all with whom he comes in contact should pray +God, and not expect men, to have mercy on his soul. +</P> + +<P> +It is possible, I do not deny, that I put this view of the case without +what literary critics call "the light touch." It is quite possible +that I emphasize it. Circumstances have made this natural; and if I +need any excuse for it I must seek it in them. Whether literary or +not, it is not human to cherish a light view of a heavy experience. +</P> + +<P> +I loved my wife. This, I think, I have sufficiently made plain. I +loved her as I might have discovered a new world; and I tried to +express this fact, as I should have learned a new, unworldly language. +I could no more have spoken unkindly to her than I could vivisect a +humming-bird. I obeyed her lightest look as if she had given me an +anaesthetic. Her love intoxicated me. I seemed to be the first lover +who had ever used this phrase. My heart originated it, with a sense of +surprise at my own imaginative quality. I was chloroformed with joy. +Oh, I loved her! I return to that. I find I can say nothing beyond +it. I loved her as other people loved,—patients, and uninstructed +persons. I, Esmerald Thorne, President of the State Medical Society, +and Foreign Correspondent of the National Evolutionary Association, +forty-six years old, and a Darwinian,—I loved my wife like any common, +ardent, unscientific fellow. +</P> + +<P> +It is easy to toss words and a smile at it all, now. There have been +times when either would have been impossible from very heart-break. +There, again, is another of the phrases to which experience has been my +only vocabulary. My patients used to talk to me about their broken +hearts. I took the temperature and wrote a prescription. I added that +she would be better to-morrow; I would call again in a week. I assured +her that I understood the case. I was as well fitted to diagnose the +diseases of the Queen of some purple planet which the telescope has not +yet given to astronomy. +</P> + +<P> +I have said that I found it impossible to be irritable to my dear wife. +I cannot tell the precise time when it became possible. When does the +dawn become the day upon the summer sky? When does the high tide begin +to turn beneath the August moon? Rather, I might say, when does the +blue become the violet, within the prism? Did I love her the less, +because the distance of the worshipper had dwindled to the lover's +clasp? +</P> + +<P> +I could have shot the scoffer who told me so. What then? What shall I +call that difference with which the man's love differs when he has won +the woman? Had the miracle gone out of it? God forbid. +</P> + +<P> +It was no longer the marvel of the fire come down from heaven to smite +the altar. It was the comfortable miracle of the daily manna. Had my +goddess departed from her divinity, my queen from her throne, my star +from her heaven? Rather, in becoming mine she had become myself, and +if there were a loss, that loss was in my own nature. I should have +risen by reason of hers. If I descended, it was by force of my own +gravitation. Her wing was too light to carry me. +</P> + +<P> +It is easier to philosophize about these things than it is to record +them in cold fact. With shame and sorrow do I say it, but say it I +must: My love went the way of the love of other men who feel (this was +and remains the truth) far less than I. I, who had believed myself to +love like no other before me, and none to come after me, and I, who had +won the dearest woman in all the world—I stooped to suffer myself to +grow used to my blessedness, like any low man who was incapable of +winning or of wearing it. +</P> + +<P> +It cannot be said, it shall not be said, that I loved my wife less than +the day I married her. It must be written that I became accustomed to +my happiness. +</P> + +<P> +That ideal of myself, which my ideal of her created in me, and which no +emergency of fate could have shaken, slipped in the old, fatal +quicksand of use. Our ideal of ourselves is to our highest life like +the heart to the pulsation. It is the divinest art of the love of +woman for man that she clasps him to his vision of himself, as breath +and being are held together. +</P> + +<P> +Until the time mentioned at the beginning of my narrative, I had in no +sense appreciated the state of the case, as it lay between my ideal and +my fact. That I had been more or less impatient of speech in my own +home for some time past, is probably true. The ungoverned lip is a +terrible master; and I had been a slave too long. I was in the habit +of finding fault with my patients. I was accustomed to be what we call +"quick" with servants. Neither had, I thought, as a rule, seemed to +care the less for me on this account. If I lost a patient or a +coachman now and then, I could afford to. The item did not trouble me. +I was inconsiderate at times with personal friends. They said, It is +his way, and bore with me. People usually bore with me; they always +had. I looked upon this as one of the rights of temperament, so far as +I looked upon it at all. I do not think this indulgence had occurred +to me as other than a tribute. It is common enough in dealing with men +of my sort. (And alas, there are enough of my sort; I must be looked +upon rather as a type than a specimen.) Such indulgence is a movement +of self-defence, or else of philosophy, upon the part of those who come +in contact with us. To this view of the subject I had given no +attention. +</P> + +<P> +I had lived to be almost fifty years old, and no person had ever said: +"Esmerald Thorne, you trust your attractive qualities too far. Power +and charm do not give a man a permit to be disagreeable. Your +temperament does not release you from the common-place human duty of +self-restraint. A gentleman has no more right to get uncontrollably +angry than he has to get drunk. The patience with which others receive +you is not a testimony to your strength; it is a concession to your +weakness. You are living upon concessions like disease, or childhood, +or age." +</P> + +<P> +No one had said this—surely not my wife. I can recall an expression +of bewilderment at times upon her beautiful face, which for the moment +perplexed me. After I had gone out, I would remember that I had been +nervous in my manner. I do not think I had ever spoken with actual +roughness to her, until this day of which I write. That I had been +sometimes cross enough, is undoubtedly the case. +</P> + +<P> +On that November day I had been overworked. This was no novelty, and I +offer it as no excuse. I had been up for two nights with a dangerous +case. I had another in the suburbs, and a consultation out of town. +There was a quarrel at the hospital, and a panic in Stock Street. I +had seen sixty patients that day. I had been attacked in the +"Therapeutic Quarterly" upon my famous theory of Antisepsis. Perhaps I +may add the circumstance that my baby was teething. +</P> + +<P> +This was, naturally, less important to me than to his mother, who +thought the child was ill. I knew better, and it annoyed me that my +knowledge did not remove her apprehension. In point of fact, he had +cried at night for a week or two, more than he ought to have done. She +could not understand why I denied him a Dover's powder. I needed +sleep, and could not get it. We were both worn, and—I might fill my +chapter to the brim with the little reasons for my great error. Let it +suffice that they were small and that it was large. +</P> + +<P> +We had been married three years, and our boy was a year old. He was a +fine fellow. Helen lost her Greek look and took on the Madonna +expression after he was born. Any woman who is fit to be a mother +gains that expression with her first child. My wife was a very happy +mother. +</P> + +<P> +She was sitting in the library when I came in that evening. It was a +warm, red library, with heavy curtains and an open fire—a deep room +that absorbed colour. I fancied the room, and it was my wife's +pleasure to await me in it with the child each evening at the earliest +hour when I might by any chance be expected home. She possessed to the +full the terrible power of waiting which women have. She could do +nothing when she expected me. Although three years married, she could +not read, or write, or play when she was listening for my step. I do +not mean that she told me this. I found it out. She never called my +attention to such little feminine weaknesses. She was never over-fond. +My wife had a noble reserve. I had never seen the hour when I felt +that her tenderness was a treasure to be lightly had, or indifferently +treated. +</P> + +<P> +It should be said that the library opened from the parlours, and was at +that time separated from them by a heavy portière of crimson stuff, the +doors not being drawn. This drapery she was in the habit of folding +apart at the hours of my probable return, and as I came through the +long parlours my eyes had the first greeting of her, before my voice or +arms. Upon this evening, as upon others, I entered by the parlour +door, and came—more quickly than usual—toward the library. I was in +a great hurry; one of the acute attacks of the chronic condition which +besets the busy doctor. As I crossed the length of the thick carpet, +the rooms shook beneath my tread; I burst into, rather than entered, +the library,—not seeing her, I think, or not pausing to see her, in +the accustomed manner. When I had come to her I found that the child +was not with her, as usual. She was sitting alone by the library table +under the drop-light, which held a shade of red lace. She had a gown +of white wool trimmed with ermine; a costume which gave me pleasure, +and which she wore upon cool evenings, not too often for me to weary of +it. She regarded my taste in dress as delicately and as delightedly as +she did every other wish or will of mine. +</P> + +<P> +She had been trying to read; but the magazine lay closed upon her knee +below her folded hands. Her face wore an anxious look as she turned +the fine contours of her head toward me. +</P> + +<P> +"Oh," she cried, "at last!" +</P> + +<P> +She moved to reach me, swiftly, murmuring something which I did not +hear, or to which I did not attend; and under the crimson curtains met +me, warm and dear and white, putting up her sweet arms. +</P> + +<P> +I kissed her carelessly—would to God that I could forget it! I kissed +her as if it did not matter much, and said:— +</P> + +<P> +"Helen, I must have my dinner this instant!" +</P> + +<P> +"Why, surely," she said, retreating from me with a little shock of +pained surprise, "It is all ready, Esmerald. I will ring." +</P> + +<P> +She melted from my arms. Oh, if I had known, if I had known! She +stirred and slipped and was gone from me, and I stood stupidly looking +at her; her figure, against the tall, full book-cases, shone mistily, +while she touched the old-fashioned bell-rope of gold cord. +</P> + +<P> +"Really, I hadn't time to come home at all," I added testily. "I am +driven to death. I've got to go again in ten minutes. But I supposed +you would worry if I didn't show myself. It is a foolish waste of +time. I don't know how I am ever going to get through. I wish I +hadn't come." +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="chap04"></A> + +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +CHAPTER IV. +</H3> + +<P> +She changed colour—from fair to flush, from red to white again—and +her hand upon the gold cord trembled. I remembered it afterward, +though I was not conscious of noticing it at the time. +</P> + +<P> +"You need not," she replied, in her low, controlled voice, "on my +account. You need never come again." +</P> + +<P> +"It is easier to come," I answered irritably, "than to know that you +sit here making yourself miserable because I don't." +</P> + +<P> +"Have I ever fretted you about coming, Esmerald? I did not know it." +</P> + +<P> +"It would be easier if you did fret!" I cried crossly. "I'd rather +you'd say a thing than look it. Any man would." +</P> + +<P> +Indeed, it would have been a paltry satisfaction to me just then if I +could have found her to blame. Her blamelessness irritated my +self-complacence as the light irritates defective eyes. +</P> + +<P> +"I am due at the hospital in twenty-two minutes," I went on, excitedly. +"Chirugeon is behaving like Apollyon. If I'm not there to handle him, +nobody will. The whole staff are afraid of him—everybody but me. We +sha'n't get the new ward built these two years if he carries the day +to-night. I've got a consultation at Decker's—the old lady is dying. +It's no sort of use dragging a tired man out there; I can't do her any +good; but they will have it. I'm at the beck and call of every whim. +Isn't that dinner ready? I wish I had time to change my boots! They +are wet through. My head aches horribly. Brake telegraphed me to get +down to Stock Street before two o'clock to save what is left of that +Santa Ma stock. I couldn't go. I had an enormous office—forty +people. I've lost ten thousand dollars in this panic. I've got to see +Brake on my way to Decker's. I lost a patient this morning—that +little girl of the Harrowhart's. She was a poor little scrofulous +thing. But they are terribly cut up about it.... Chowder? I wish +you'd had a good clear soup. I don't feel as if I could touch chowder. +I hope you have some roast beef, better than the last. You mustn't let +Parsnip cheat you. Quail? There's no nourishment in a quail for a man +in my state. The gas leaks. Can't you have it attended to? Hurry up +the coffee. I must swallow it and go. I've got more than ten men +could do." +</P> + +<P> +"It is more than one woman can do"—she began gently, when I came to +the end of this outbreak and my breath together. +</P> + +<P> +"What did you say? Do speak louder!" +</P> + +<P> +"I said it seems to be more than one woman can do, to rest you." +</P> + +<P> +"Yes," I said carelessly, "it is. You can't do the first thing for me, +except to do me the goodness to ring for a decent cup of coffee. I +can't drink this." +</P> + +<P> +"Esmerald"— +</P> + +<P> +"Oh, what? I can't stop to talk. There, I've burned my tongue, now. +If there's anything I can't stand, it is going to a consultation with a +burned tongue." +</P> + +<P> +"How tired you are, Esmerald! I was only going to say that I am sorry. +I can't let you go without saying that." +</P> + +<P> +"I can't see that it helps it any. I am so tired I don't want to be +touched. Never mind my coat. I'll put it on myself. Tell Joe—no. I +left the horse standing. I don't want Joe. I suppose Donna is uneasy +by this time. She won't stand at night—she's got to. I'll get that +whim out of her. Now, don't look that way. The horse is safe enough. +Don't you suppose I know how to drive? You're always having opinions +of your own against mine. There. I must be off." +</P> + +<P> +"Where's the baby, Helen?" I turned, with my hand upon the latch of my +heavy oaken door, and jerked the question out, as cross men do. +</P> + +<P> +"The baby isn't just right, somehow, Esmerald. I bated to bother you, +for you never think it is anything. I dare say he will be better, but +I thought I wouldn't let him come out of the nursery. Jane is with +him. I've been a <I>little</I> troubled about him. He has cried all the +afternoon." +</P> + +<P> +"He cries because you coddle him!" I exploded. "It is all nonsense, +Helen. Nothing ails the child. I won't encourage this sort of thing. +I'll see him when I come home. I can't possibly wait—I am driven to +death—for every little whim"— +</P> + +<P> +But at the door I stopped. If the baby had been a patient he would +have seen no doctor that night. But the father in me got the better of +me, and without a word further to my wife I ran up to the nursery. +</P> + +<P> +She stayed below; she perceived (Helen was always quick), although I +had not said so, that I did not wish her to follow me. I examined the +child hastily. The little fellow stopped crying at the sight of me, +and put up both arms to be taken. I said:— +</P> + +<P> +"No, Boy. Papa can't stop now," and put him gently back into his crib. +When I had reached the nursery door I remember that I returned and +kissed him. I was very angry, but I could not be angry with my baby. +With the touch of his little lips, dewy and sweet, upon mine, I rushed +down to my wife, and tempestuously began again:— +</P> + +<P> +"Helen, I must have an end to this nonsense. Nothing ails the baby; he +is only a trifle feverish with a new tooth. It really is very +unpleasant to me that you make such a fuss over him. If you had +married a greengrocer it might have been pardonable. Pray remember +that you have married a physician who understands his business, and do +leave me to manage it. Take the child out of the nursery. Carry him +downstairs as usual for a few minutes. He will sleep better. There! +I'm eight minutes behindhand already, all for this senseless anxiety of +yours. It is a pity you can't trust me, like other men's wives! I +wish I'd married a woman with a little wifely spirit!—or else not +married at all." +</P> + +<P> +I shut the door; I am afraid I slammed it. I cleared the steps at a +bound, and ran fiercely out into the night air. The wind was rising, +and the weather was growing sharp. It was frosty and noisy. Donna, my +chestnut mare, stood pawing the pavement in high temper, and called to +me as she heard my step. She had dragged at her weight a little; she +was thoroughly displeased with the delay. It occurred to me that she +felt as I had acted. It even occurred to me to go back and tell my +wife that I was ashamed of myself. +</P> + +<P> +I turned and looked in through the parlour windows. The shades were +up, and the gas was low. Dimly beyond, the bright panel of the lighted +library arose between the crimson curtains. She stood against it, +midway between the two rooms. Her hands had dropped closed one into +the other before her. Her face was toward the street. She seemed to +be gazing at me, whom she could not see. Her white dress, which hung +in thick folds, the pallor of her face and her delicate hands, gave her +the look of a statue; its purity, and to my fancy at that moment its +permanence. She seemed to be carved there, like something that must +stay. +</P> + +<P> +I turned to go back—yes, I would have gone. It is little enough for a +man to say for himself under circumstances like these; but perhaps I +may be allowed to say it, since to exculpate myself is the last of my +motives. I had made a stop or two up the flagging between the deep +grass-plots that fronted the house, when the mare, disturbed beyond +endurance at a movement of delay which she too well understood, gave a +shrill whinny, and reared, pulling and dragging at her weight fiercely. +She was a powerful creature, and the weight yielded, hitting at her +heels. In an instant she had cramped the wheels, and I saw that the +buggy would go over. To spring back, reach the bit, snatch the reins, +leap over the wheel, and whirl away in the reeling carriage was the +work of some thing less than a thought; it was the elemental instinct +by which a man must manage his horse, come life or death. +</P> + +<P> +Like most doctors, I was something of a horseman, and the idea of being +thwarted by any of Donna's whims had never occurred to me. I knew that +the horse was pulling hard, but beyond that, I could not be said to +have knowledge, much less fear; the mad conflict between the brute and +the man possessed me to the exclusion of intelligence. +</P> + +<P> +It was some moments before it struck me that my own horse was running +away with me. +</P> + +<P> +My first, perhaps I may say my only emotion at the discovery was one of +overpowering rage. +</P> + +<P> +I did not mean to strike her. No driver, ever if an angry one, would +have done that. But I had the whip in my hand, around which the reins +were knotted for the struggle, and when the horse broke into a gallop +the jerk gave her a flick. I was not in the habit of whipping her. +She felt herself insulted. It was now her turn to be angry; and an +angry runaway means a bad business. Donna put down her head, struck +out viciously from behind, and kicked the dasher flat. From that +moment I lost all control of her. +</P> + +<P> +I thought:— +</P> + +<P> +"She is headed down town. At this rate, in five minutes she will be in +the thick of travel. I have so many minutes more." +</P> + +<P> +For how long I cannot tell, I had beyond this no other intelligent +idea. Then I thought;— +</P> + +<P> +"I should not like to be the man who has got to tell Helen." This +repeated itself dully: "I should not care to be the fellow who will be +sent to tell Helen." +</P> + +<P> +I had ceased to call to the mare; it only made matters worse; but there +was great hubbub in the streets as we leaped on. There were several +attempts to head her off, I think. One man caught at her bridle. This +frightened her; she threw him off, and threw him down. I think she +must have hurt him. We were now well down town. Window lights and +carriage lights flared by deliriously. The wind, which was high, at +speed like that seemed something demoniac. I remember how much it +added to my sense of danger. I remember that my favourite phrase +occurred to me:— +</P> + +<P> +"<I>I am driven to death.</I>" +</P> + +<P> +Suddenly I saw approaching an open landau. The street was full of +vehicles, some of which I was sure to run down; but none of them seemed +to give me concern except this one carriage. It contained a lady and a +little boy, patients of mine. I recognized them forty feet away. He +was a pretty little fellow, and she was fond of me; sent for me for +everything; trusted me beyond reason; could not live without her +doctor—that kind of patient. She had been a great sufferer. It +seemed infernal to me that it should be <I>they</I>. +</P> + +<P> +I shouted to her coachman:— +</P> + +<P> +"Henry! For God's sake—to the left! To the <I>left</I>!" +</P> + +<P> +But Henry stared at me like one struck dead. I thought I heard him +say;— +</P> + +<P> +"Marm, it's the <I>doctor</I>!" and after that I heard no more. +</P> + +<P> +As the crash came, I saw the woman's face. She had recognized me with +her look of sweet trustfulness; it froze to mortal horror. She clasped +the child. I saw his cap come off from his yellow curls, and one +little hand tossed out as the landau went over. The mare, now mad as +any maniac, ran on. +</P> + +<P> +Something had broken, but it mattered little what. I think we turned a +corner. I think she struck a lamp-post or a tree. At all events, the +buggy went over; and, scooped into the top, and dragged, and blinded, +and stunned, I came to the ground. +</P> + +<P> +As I went down, I uttered the two words of all that are human, most +solemn; perhaps, one may add, most automatic. Believer or sceptic, +saint or sinner, mortal danger hurls them from us, as it wrests the +soul from out our bodies. +</P> + +<P> +I said, "<I>My God!</I>" precisely as I threw out my arms, to catch at +whatever could hold me when I could no longer hold myself. +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="chap05"></A> + +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +CHAPTER V. +</H3> + +<P> +How long I had lain stunned upon the pavement I had no means of +knowing; I thought not long. I was surprised, on coming to myself, to +find that my injuries were not more severe. +</P> + +<P> +My head felt uncomfortable, and I had a certain numbness or stiffness, +as one does from the first trial of long-disused limbs. I had always +limped a trifle since that accident beside the trout-brook; and, as I +staggered to my feet, I thought:— +</P> + +<P> +"This will play the mischief with that old injury. I shouldn't wonder +if it came to crutches." +</P> + +<P> +On the contrary, when I had walked some dozen steps I found that an +interesting thing had happened. The shock had dispersed the limp. +</P> + +<P> +It was with a perfectly even and natural gait, although, as I say, +rather a weak one, that I trod the pavement to try what manner of man +the runaway had left me. I said:— +</P> + +<P> +"It is one of those cases of nervous rearrangement. The shock has +acted like a battery upon the nerve-centres. Instead of a broken neck, +I have a cured leg. I'm a lucky fellow." +</P> + +<P> +Having already, however, considered myself a lucky fellow for the +greater part of my life, this conclusion did not impress me with the +force which it might some other men; and, laughing lightly, as lucky +people do, at fortune, I turned to examine the condition of my horse +and carriage. +</P> + +<P> +Donna was not to be seen. She had broken the traces, the breeching, +the shafts, everything, in short, she could, and cleared herself. I +had been unconscious long enough to give her time to make herself +invisible, and she had made the most of it; in what direction she had +gone, it was impossible for me to tell. The buggy was a wreck. No one +was in sight who seemed to have interest or anxiety in the matter. I +wondered that I did not find myself the victim of a gaping crowd. But +I reflected that the mishap had taken place in a quiet dwelling street, +not travelled at that hour, and that my fate, therefore, had attracted +no attention. I remembered, too, my patient, Mrs. Faith, and her boy, +and that dolt of a Henry's helpless face—the whole thing came to mind, +vividly. It occurred to me that the crowd might be at the scene of an +accident so terrible that no loafer was left to regard my lesser +misfortune. It was they who had been sacrificed. It was I who escaped. +</P> + +<P> +My first thought was to go at once and learn the worst; but I found +myself a little out of my way. I really did not recognize the street +in which I stood. I had been for so many years accustomed to driving +everywhere that, like other doctors, I hardly knew how to walk; and by +the time I made my way back to the great thoroughfare where I had +collided with Mrs. Faith's carriage, no trace of the tragedy was to be +found; or at least I could not find any. After looking in vain, for a +while, I stopped a man, and asked him if there had not been a carriage +accident there within half an hour. He lifted his eyes to me stupidly, +and went on. I put the same question to some one else—a lazy fellow, +who was leaning against an iron railing and staring at me. But he +shook his head decidedly. +</P> + +<P> +A young priest passed by, at this moment, saying an Ave with moving +lips and unworldly eyes, and I made inquiries of him whether a lady and +a child had just been injured in that vicinity by a runaway. +</P> + +<P> +"Nay," he said, gazing at me with a luminous look. "Nay, I see +nothing." +</P> + +<P> +After an instant's hesitation the priest made the sign of the cross +both upon himself and me; and then stretched his hands in blessing over +me, and silently went his way. I thought this very kind in him; and I +bowed, as we parted, saying aloud:— +</P> + +<P> +"Thank you, Father," for my heart was touched, despite myself, at the +manner of the young devotee. +</P> + +<P> +It had surely been my intention, on failing to find any traces of the +accident in the spot where I supposed that it had taken place, to go at +once to the house of Mrs. Faith, and inquire for her welfare and the +boy's. It was the least I could do, under the circumstances. +</P> + +<P> +Apparently, however, I myself was more shaken than I had thought; for +after my brief interview with the priest I speedily lost my way, and +could not find my patient's street or number. I searched for it for +some time confusedly; but the brain was clearly still affected by the +concussion—so much so that it was not long before I forgot what I was +searching for, and went my ways with a dim and idle purpose, such as +must accompany much of the action of those in whom the relation between +mind and body has become, for any cause, disarranged. +</P> + +<P> +After an interval—how long I cannot tell—of this suspended +intelligence, my brain grew more clear and natural, and I remembered +that I was very late at the hospital, at the consultation, at Brake's, +at every appointment of the evening; so late that my accustomed sense +of haste now began to possess me to the exclusion of everything else. +I remembered my wife, indeed, and wondered if I had better go back and +tell her that I was not hurt. But it did not strike me as necessary. +Donna, if she had not broken her neck somewhere, by this time, would +run straight for the stable; she would not go home. The buggy was a +wreck, and the police might clear it away. There was no reason to +suppose that Helen would hear of the accident, that I could see, from +any source. There would be no scare. I had better go about my +business, and tell her when I got home. News like this would keep an +hour or two, and everybody the better for the keeping. +</P> + +<P> +Reasoning in this manner, if it can be said to be reasoning, I took my +way to the hospital as fast as possible. I did not happen to find a +cab; and I gave myself the unusual experience of hailing a horse-car. +The car did not stop for my signal, and I flung myself aboard as best I +might; for a man so recently shaken up, with creditable ease, I thought. +</P> + +<P> +Trusting to this circumstance, when we reached the hospital I leaped +from the car, which was going at full speed; it was not till I was well +up the avenue that I recalled having forgotten to offer my fare, which +the conductor had forgotten to demand. +</P> + +<P> +"My head is not straight yet," I said. The little incident annoyed me. +</P> + +<P> +In the hospital I found, as I expected, a professional cyclone raging. +The staff were all there except myself, and so hotly engaged in +discussion that my arrival was treated with indifference. This was +undoubtedly good for me, but it was not, therefore, agreeable to me; +and I entered at once with some emphasis upon the dispute in hand. +</P> + +<P> +"You are entirely wrong," I began, turning upon my opponents. "This +institution had seven hundred more applicants than it could accommodate +last year. We are not chartered to turn away suffering. We exist to +relieve it. It is our business to find the means to do so, as much as +it is to find the true remedy for the individual case. It is"— +</P> + +<P> +"It is an act of financial folly," interrupted my most systematic +professional enemy, a certain Dr. Gazell. He had a bland voice which +irritated me like sugar sauce put upon horse-radish. "It cannot be +done without mortgaging ourselves up to our ears—or our eaves. I +maintain that the hospital can better bear to turn off patients than to +turn on debt." +</P> + +<P> +"And I maintain," I cried, tempestuously, "that this hospital cannot +bear to do either! If the gentlemen gathered here to-night—the +members of this staff, representing, as they do, the wealthiest and +most influential <I>clientèles</I> in the city—if we cannot among us pledge +from our patients the sum needed to put this thing through, I say it is +a poor show for ourselves. I, for one, am ready to raise fifteen +thousand dollars within three months. If the rest of you will do your +share in proportion"— +</P> + +<P> +"Dr. Thorne has always been a little too personal, in this matter," +said Gazell, reddening; he did not look at me, for embarrassment, but +addressed the chairman of the meeting with a vague air of being in +earnest, if any one could be got to believe it. +</P> + +<P> +"No doubt about that," said one of the staff in an undertone. "Thorne +is"—I thought I caught the added words, "unreasonable fellow," but I +would not give myself the appearance of having done so. +</P> + +<P> +"But we can't afford to quarrel with him altogether," suggested +Chirugeon, still in a tone not meant for me to overhear. And with this +they went at it again, till the discussion reached such warmth, and the +motion to leave the subject with the trustees, such favour, that, in +disgust, I seized my hat and strode out of the room. +</P> + +<P> +Smarting, I rushed away from them, and angrily out-of-doors again. I +was exceedingly angry; but this gave me no more, perhaps (though I +thought, a little), than the usual discomfort. +</P> + +<P> +From the hospital I hurried to the consultation; where I was now well +over-due. I found the attendant physician about to leave; in fact, I +met him on the stairs, up which I had run rapidly, as soon as my ring +was answered in the familiar house. This man was followed by old Madam +Decker's daughter, who was weeping. +</P> + +<P> +"She died at six o'clock, Dr. Halt," Miss Decker sobbed, "at six +precisely, for I noticed. We didn't expect it so soon." +</P> + +<P> +"Nor I, either," said Halt, soothingly, "I did not anticipate"— +</P> + +<P> +"Dead!" I cried. "Mrs. Decker dead? I did my best—I have met with an +accident. I could not come till now. Did she ask for me?" +</P> + +<P> +"She talked of Dr. Thorne," sobbed Miss Decker, "as long as she could +talk of anything. She wondered if he knew, she said, how sick she was." +</P> + +<P> +I hastened to explain, to protest, to sympathize, to say the idle words +with which we waste ourselves and weary mourners, at such times; but +the daughter paid little attention to me. She was evidently hurt at my +delay; and, thinking it best to spare her my presence, I bowed my head +in silence, and left the house. +</P> + +<P> +Halt followed me, and we stood together for a moment outside, where his +carriage and driver awaited him. +</P> + +<P> +"Was she conscious to the end?" I asked. +</P> + +<P> +"Yes," he murmured. "Yes, yes, yes. It is a pity. I'm sorry for that +girl." +</P> + +<P> +Nodding shortly in my direction, he sprang into his coupé, and drove +away. +</P> + +<P> +I had now begun to be very restless to get home. It seemed suddenly +important to see Helen. I felt, I knew not why, uneasy and impatient, +and turned my steps toward town. +</P> + +<P> +"But I must stop at Brake's," I thought. This seemed imperative; so +much so that I went out of my course a little, to reach his house, a +pretty, suburban place. I remember passing under trees; and the depth +of their shadow; it seemed like a bay of blackness into which the night +flowed. I looked up through it at the sky; stars showed through the +massed clouds which the wind whipped along like a flock of titanic +celestial creatures. I had not looked up before, since the accident. +The act gave me strange sensations, as if the sky had lowered, or I had +risen; the sense of having lost the usual scale of measurement. This +reminded me that I was still not altogether right. +</P> + +<P> +"I have really hurt my head," I thought, "I ought to get home. I must +hurry this business with Brake. I must get to Helen." +</P> + +<P> +But Brake was not at home. As I went up the steps, his servant was +ushering out some one, to whom I heard the man say that Mr. Brake had +left word not to expect him to-night. +</P> + +<P> +"Does he ever stay late at the office?" I asked, thinking that the +panic might render this possibly. +</P> + +<P> +The man turned the expressionless countenance of a well-trained servant +upon me; and repeated:— +</P> + +<P> +"Mr. Brake is not at home. I know nothing further about Mr. Brake's +movements." +</P> + +<P> +This reply settled the matter in my own mind, and I made my way to +Stock Street as fast as I might. I could not make it seem unnecessary +to see Brake. But Helen—Helen— The sooner this wretched detention +was over, the sooner to see her. I had begun to be as nervous as a +woman; and, I might add, as unreasonable as a sick one. I had got +myself under the domination of one of those fixed ideas with which I +had so little patience in the sick. I could not see Helen till I had +seen Brake: this was the delusion. I succumbed to it, and knew that I +succumbed to it, and could not help it, and knew that I could not help +it, and did the deed it bade me. As I hurried on my way, I thought:— +</P> + +<P> +"There has been considerable concussion. But Helen will take care of +me. It's a pity I spoke so to Helen." +</P> + +<P> +Stock Street, when I reached it, had a strange look to me. I was not +used to being there at such an hour; few of us are. The relative +silence, the few passers, the long empty spaces in the great +thoroughfare, told me that the hour was later than I thought. This +added to my restlessness, and I sought to look at my watch, for the +first time since the accident; it was gone. I glanced at the high +clock at the head of the street; but the light was imperfect, and with +the vertigo which I had I did not make out the hour. It might, indeed, +be really late. This troubled me, and I hastened my steps till I broke +into a run. +</P> + +<P> +It occurred to me, indeed, that I might be arrested for the suspicions +under which such a pace, at such an hour and in such a street, would +place me. But as I knew most of the members of the force in that +region more or less well, this did not trouble me. I ran on, +undisturbed, passing a watchman or two, and came quickly to Brake's +place. It was locked. +</P> + +<P> +This distressed me. I think I had confidently expected to find him +there. It did not seem to me possible to go home without seeing my +broker. I stood, uncertain, rattling at the heavy door with imbecile +impatience. This act brought the police to the spot in three minutes. +</P> + +<P> +It was Inspector Drayton who came up, the well-known inspector, so long +on duty in Stock Street; a man famed for his professional shrewdness +and his gentlemanly manner. +</P> + +<P> +"I wish," I said, "Mr. Inspector, that you would be good enough to let +me in. I want to see Brake. I have reason to believe he is in his +office. I must get in." +</P> + +<P> +"It is very important," I added; for the inspector did not answer +immediately, but looked at me searchingly. +</P> + +<P> +"There was certainly some one meddling with this lock," he said, after +a moment's hesitation, looking stealthily up and down and around the +street. +</P> + +<P> +"It was I," I replied, eagerly. "It was only I, Dr. Thorne. Come, +Drayton, you know me. I want to see Brake. I must see Brake. It is a +matter brought up by this panic—you know—the Santa Ma. He sent for +me. I absolutely must see Brake. It is a matter of thousands to me. +Let me in, Mr. Inspector." +</P> + +<P> +"Come," for he still delayed and doubted, "let me in somehow. You +fellows have a way. Communicate with his watchman—do the proper +thing—anyhow—I don't care—only let me in." +</P> + +<P> +"I will see," murmured the inspector, with a perplexed air; he had not +his usual cordial manner with me, though he was still as polished as +possible, and wore the best of kid gloves. I think the inspector +touched one of their electric signals—I am not clear about this—but +at any rate, a sleepy watchman came from within, holding a safety +lantern before him, and gingerly opened the huge door an inch or two. +</P> + +<P> +"Let me come in," said the inspector, decidedly. "It is I—Drayton. I +have a reason. I wish to go to Mr. Brake's rooms, if you please." +</P> + +<P> +The inspector slipped in like a ghost, and I followed him. Neither of +us said anything further to the watchman; we went directly to Brake's +place. He was not there. +</P> + +<P> +"I will wait a few minutes," I said. "I think he will be here. I must +see Brake." +</P> + +<P> +The inspector glanced at me as one does at a fellow who is behaving a +little out of the common course of human conduct; but he did not enter +into conversation with me, seeing me averse to it. I sank down wearily +upon Brake's biggest brown leather office chair, and put my head down +upon his table. I was now thoroughly tired and confused. I wished +with all my heart that I had gone straight home to Helen. The +inspector and the watchman busied themselves in examining the building, +for some purpose to which I paid no attention. They conversed in low +tones, "I heard a noise at the door, sir, myself," the watchman said. +</P> + +<P> +"Why don't you tell him it was I?" I called; but I did not lift my +head. I was too tired to trouble myself. I must have fallen into a +kind of stupor. +</P> + +<P> +I do not know how long I had remained in this position and condition, +whether minutes or hours; but when at last I roused myself, and looked +about, a singular thing had happened. +</P> + +<P> +The inspector had gone. The watchman had gone. I was alone in the +broker's office. And I was locked in. +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="chap06"></A> + +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +CHAPTER VI. +</H3> + +<P> +So often and so idly it is our custom to say, I shall never forget! +that the words scarcely cause a ripple of comment in the mind; whereas, +in fact, they are among the most audacious which we ever take upon our +lips. How know we what law of selection our memories will obey in that +system of mental relations which we call "forever"? +</P> + +<P> +I, who believe myself to have obtained some especial knowledge upon +this point, not possessed by all my readers, and to be more free than +many another to use such language, still retreat before the phrase, and +content myself with saying, "I have never forgotten." Up to this time +I have never been able to forget the smallest detail of that night +whose history I am now to record. It seems to me impossible in any set +of conditions that memory could blot that experience from my being; but +of that what know I? No more than I know of the politics of a meteor. +</P> + +<P> +Upon discovering my predicament I was, of course, greatly disturbed. I +tried the door, and tried again; I urged the latch violently; I exerted +myself till the mere moral sense of my helplessness overcame my +strength. I called to the watchman, whose distant steps I heard, or +fancied that I heard, pacing the corridors. There was a Safe Deposit +in the basement, and the great building was heavily guarded. I shouted +for my liberty, I pleaded for it, I demanded it; but I did not get it. +No one answered me. I ran to the barred windows and shook the iron +casement as prisoners and madmen do. Nobody heard me. I bethought me +of the private telegraph which stood by Brake's desk, mute and +mysterious, like a thing that waited an order to speak. I could not +help wondering, with something like superstition, what would be the +next words which would pass the lips of the silent metal. It occurred +to me, of course, to telegraph for relief; but I did not know how, and +a kind of respect for the intelligence and power of the instrument +deterred me from meddling with it to no visible end. Suddenly I +remembered the electric signal which so often communicates with +watchman or police in places of this kind. This, after some search, I +found in a corner, over the desk of Brake's assistant, and this I +touched. My effort brought no reply. I pressed the button again with +more force and more desperation; I might say, with more personality. +</P> + +<P> +"Obey me!" I cried, setting my teeth, and addressing the electric +influence as a man addresses a menial. +</P> + +<P> +Instantly a thrill passed from the wire to the hand. A distant sound +jarred upon the air. Steps shuffled somewhere beyond the massive +walls. I even thought that I heard voices, as of the watchman and +others in possible consultation. No one approached the broker's door. +I urged the signal again and again. I became quite frantic, for I had +now begun to think with dismay of the effect of all this upon my wife. +I railed upon that signal like a delirious patient at the order of a +physician. A commotion seemed to follow, in some distant part of the +building. But no one came within hearing of my voice; the noise soon +ceased, and my efforts at freedom with it. +</P> + +<P> +It having now become evident that I must spend the night where I was, I +proceeded to make the best of it; and a very bad best it was. I was +exhausted, I was angry, and I was distressed. +</P> + +<P> +The full force of the situation was beginning to fall upon me. The +inspector had put a not unnatural interpretation upon my condition; he +thought so little of a gentleman who had dined too freely; it was a +perfectly normal incident in his experience. He had mistaken the +character of the stupor caused by my accident, and left me in that +office for a drunken man. The fact that he was not accustomed to view +me in such a light in itself probably explained the originality of his +method. We were on pleasant terms. Drayton was a good fellow. Who +knew better than he what would be the professional significance of the +circumstance that Dr. Thorne was seen intoxicated down town at +midnight? The city would ring with it in twelve hours, and it would +not be for me, though I had been the most popular doctor in town, to +undo the deed of that slander, if once it so much as lifted its +invisible hand against the proud and pure reputation in whose shelter I +lived and laboured, and had been suffered to become what we call +"eminent." It was possible, too, that the inspector had some human +regard for my family in this matter, and reasoned that to spare them +the knowledge of my supposed disgrace was the truest kindness wherewith +it was in his power to serve me. He meant to leave me where I was and +as I was to sleep it off till morning. He would return in good season +and release me quietly, and nobody the wiser but the watchman; who +could be feed. This was plainly the purpose and the programme. +</P> + +<P> +But Helen— +</P> + +<P> +I returned to the table near which I had been sitting, and took the +office chair again, and tried, like a reasonable creature, to calm +myself. +</P> + +<P> +What would Helen think by this time? I looked about the office +stupidly. At first the dreary scene presented few details to me; but +after a time they took on the precision and permanence which trifles +acquire in emergencies. The gas was not lighted, but I could see with +considerable ease, owing to the overwrought brain condition. It +occurred to me that I saw like a cat or a medium; I noted this, as +indicative of a certain remedy; and then it further occurred to me that +I might as well doctor myself, having nothing better to do; and plainly +there was something wrong. I therefore put my hand in my pocket for my +case. It was gone. +</P> + +<P> +Now, a physician of my sort is as ill at ease without his case as he +would be without his body; and this little circumstance added +disproportionately to my discomfort. With some irritable exclamation +on my lips I leaned back in the chair, and once more regarded my +environment. It was a rather large room, dim now, and as solitary as a +graveyard after twilight. Before me stood the table, an oblong table +covered with brown felt. A blue blotter, of huge dimensions, was +spread from end to end; it was a new blotter, not much blurred. +Inkstand, pens, paper-weight, calendar, and other trifles of a strictly +necessary nature stood upon the blotter. Letters on file, and brokers' +memoranda neatly stabbed by the iron stiletto—I forget the name of the +thing—for that purpose made and provided, attracted my sick attention. +An advertisement from a Western mortgage firm had escaped the neat hand +of the clerk who put the office in order for the night, and fell +fluttering to my feet. It would be impossible to say how important +this seemed to me. I picked it up conscientiously and filed it, to the +best of my remembrance, with an invitation to the Merchant's Banquet, +and a subscription list in behalf of the blind man who sold +tissue-paper roses at the head of the street. +</P> + +<P> +In one corner of the room, as I have said, was the clerk's desk; the +electric signal shone faintly above it; it had, to my eyes, a certain +phosphorescent appearance. Opposite, the steam radiator stood like a +skeleton. There was a grate in the room, with a Cumberland coal fire +laid. On the wall hung a map of the State, and another setting forth +the proportions of a great Western railroad. At the extreme end of the +room stood chairs and settees provided for auctions. Between myself +and these, the high, guarded public desk of the broker rose like a +rampart. +</P> + +<P> +In this sombre and severe place I now abandoned myself to my thoughts; +and these gave me no mercy. +</P> + +<P> +My wife was a reasonable woman; but she was a loving and sensitive one. +I was accustomed to spare her all unnecessary uncertainty as to my +movements—being more careful in this respect, perhaps, than most +physicians would be; our profession covers a multitude of little +domestic sins. I had not taken the ground that I was never to be +expected till I came. A system of affectionate communication as to my +whereabouts existed between us; it was one of the pleasant customs of +our honeymoon which had lasted over. The telegraph and the messenger +boy we had always with us; it was a little matter for a man to take the +trouble to tell his wife why and where he was kept away all night. I +do not remember that I had ever failed to do so. It was a bother +sometimes, I admit, but the pleasure it gave her usually repaid me; +such is the small, sweet coin of daily love. +</P> + +<P> +As I sat there at the broker's desk, like a creature in a trap, all +that long and wretched night, the image of my wife seemed to devour my +brain and my reason. +</P> + +<P> +The great clock on the neighbouring church struck one with a heavy and +a solemn intonation, of which I can only say that it was to me unlike +anything I had ever heard before. It gave me a shudder to hear it, as +if I listened to some supernatural thing. The first hour of the new +day rang like a long cry. Some freak of association brought to my mind +that angel in the Apocalypse who proclaimed with a mighty voice that +Time should be no more. I caught myself thinking this preposterous +thing: Suppose it were all over? Suppose we never saw each other +again? Suppose my wife were to die? To-night? Suppose some accident +befell her? If she tripped upstairs? If the child's crib took fire +and she put it out, and herself received one of those deadly shocks +from burns not in themselves mortal? +</P> + +<P> +Suppose—she herself opening the door to let in the messenger expected +from me—that some drunken fellow, or some tramp— +</P> + +<P> +"This," I said aloud, "is the kind of thing she does when I am delayed. +This is what it means to wait. Men don't do it often enough to know +what it is. I wonder if we have any scale of measurement for what +women suffer?" +</P> + +<P> +What she, for instance, by that time was suffering, oh, who in the wide +world else could guess or dream? There were such suffering cells in +that exquisite nature! Who but me could understand? +</P> + +<P> +I brought my clinched hand down upon the broker's blue blotting-paper, +and laid my heavy head upon it. +</P> + +<P> +Suppose somebody had got the news to her that the horse had been seen +dashing free of the buggy, or had returned alone to the stable, panting +and cut? +</P> + +<P> +Suppose Helen thought that my unaccountable absence had something to do +with that scene between us? Suppose she thought—or if she +suspected—perhaps she imagined— +</P> + +<P> +I hid my face within my shaking hands and groaned. A curse upon the +cruel words that I had spoken to the tenderest of souls, to the dearest +and the gentlest of women! A curse upon the lawless temper that had +fired them! Accursed the hot lips that had uttered them, the unmanly +heart that could have let them slip! +</P> + +<P> +I thought of her face—I really had not thought of her face before, +that wretched night. I had not strictly dared. Now I found that +daring had nothing to do with it. I thought because I had to think. I +dwelt upon her expression when I spoke to her—God forgive me!—as I +did; her attitude, the way her hands fell, her silence, the quiver in +her delicate mouth. I saw the dim parlour, the lighted room beyond +her, the scarlet shade upon the gas; she standing midway, tall and +mute, like a statue carved by one stroke of a sword. +</P> + +<P> +My own words came back to me; and I was not apt to remember things I +said to people. So many impressions passed in and out of my mind in +the course of one busy day, that I became their victim rather than +their master. But now my language to my wife that unhappy evening +returned to my consciousness with incredible vividness and minuteness. +It will be seen from the precision with which I have already recorded +it, how inexorable this minuteness was. +</P> + +<P> +It occurred to me that I might as well have struck her. +</P> + +<P> +In this kind of moral pommelling which sensitive women feel—as they +do—how could I have indulged! I, who knew what a sensitive woman is, +what fearful and wonderful nervous systems these delicate creatures +have to manage; I, with what I was pleased to term my high organization +and special training—I, like any brutal hind, had berated my wife. I, +who was punctilious to draw the silken portière for her, who could not +let her pick up so much as her own lace handkerchief, nor allow her to +fold a wrap of the weight of a curlew's feather about her own soft +throat—I had belaboured her with the bludgeons that bruise the life +out of women's souls. I wondered, indeed, if I should have been a less +amiable fellow if I had worn cow-hide boots and kicked her. +</P> + +<P> +My reproaches, my remorses, my distresses, it is now an idle tale to +tell. That night passed like none before it, and none which have come +after it. My mind moved with a piteous monotony over and over and +about the aching thought: to see Helen—to see Helen—to be patient +till morning, and tell Helen—Only to get through this horrible night, +and hurry, rushing to the morning air, to the nearest cab dashing down +the street, and making the mad haste of love and shame, to see my +wife—to tell my wife— +</P> + +<P> +As never in all our lives before, I should tell her how dear she was; +how unworthy was I to love her; how I loved her just as much as if I +were worthy, and could not help it though I tried—or (as we say) could +not help it though I died! I should run up, ringing the bell, never +waiting to find the latch-key—for I could wait for nothing. I should +spring into the house, and find her upstairs, in our own room; it would +be so early; she would be only half-dressed yet, pale and lovely, +looking like a spirit, far across the rich colours of the room, her +long hair loose about her. I should gather her to my heart before she +saw me; my arms and lips should speak before my breaking voice. I +should kiss my soul out on her lifted face. I should love her so, she +should forgive me before I could so much as say, Forgive! And when I +had her—to myself again—when these arms were sure of their own, and +these lips of hers, when her precious breath was on this cheek again, +and I could say;— +</P> + +<P> +"Helen, Helen, Helen"— +</P> + +<P> +and could say no more, for love and shame and sorrow, but only— +</P> + +<P> +"Helen, Helen"— +</P> + +<BR> + +<P> +"Yes," said the watchman's voice in the corridor. "It is all right, +sir. Me and Inspector Drayton, we thought we beard a noise, last +night, and we considered it safe to look about. We had a thorough +search. We thought we'd better. But there wasn't nothing. It's all +straight, sir." +</P> + +<P> +It was morning, and Brake's clerk was coming in. It was very early, +earlier than he usually came, perhaps; but I could not tell. He did +not notice me at first, and, remembering Drayton's hypothesis, I shrank +behind the tall desk, and instinctively kept out of sight for a few +uncertain minutes, wondering what I had better do. The clerk called +the janitor, and scolded a little about the fire, which he ordered +lighted in the grate. It was a cold morning. He said the room would +chill a corpse. He had the morning papers in his hand. He unfolded +the "Herald," and laid it down upon his own desk, as if about to read +it. +</P> + +<P> +At that instant, the telegraph clicked, and he pushed the damp, fresh +paper away from him, and went immediately to the wires. The young man +listened to the message with an expression of great intentness, and +wrote rapidly. Moved by some unaccountable impulse, I softly rose and +glanced over his shoulder. +</P> + +<P> +The dispatch was dated at midnight, and was addressed to Henry Brake. +It said: +</P> + +<P> +"<I>Have you seen my husband, to-night?</I>" and it was signed, "<I>Helen +Thorne.</I>" +</P> + +<P> +Oh, poor Helen!... +</P> + +<P> +Now, maniac with haste to get to her, it occurred to me that the moment +while the clerk was occupied in recording this message was as good a +time as I could ask for in which to escape unobserved, as I greatly +wished to do. As quietly as I could—and I succeeded in doing it very +quietly—I therefore moved to leave the broker's office. As I did so, +my eye caught the heading, in large capitals, of the morning news in +the open "Herald" which lay upon the desk behind the clerk. I stopped, +and stooped, and read. This is what I read:— +</P> + +<P CLASS="noindent" STYLE="text-align: center"> +SHOCKING ACCIDENT.<BR> +<BR> +TERRIBLE TRAGEDY.<BR> +RUNAWAY AT THE WEST END.<BR> +<BR> +<I>The eminent and popular physician.</I><BR> +<I>Dr. Esmerald Thorne,</I><BR> +<BR> +KILLED INSTANTLY.<BR> +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="chap07"></A> + +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +CHAPTER VII. +</H3> + +<P> +At this moment, the broker entered the office. +</P> + +<P> +With the "Herald" in my hand, I made haste to meet him. +</P> + +<P> +"Brake!" I cried, "Mr. Brake! Thank Heaven, you have come! I have +passed such a night—and look here! Have you seen this abominable +canard? This is what has come of my being locked into your"— +</P> + +<P> +The broker regarded me with a strange look; so strange, that for very +amazement I stood still before it. He did not advance to meet me; +neither his hand nor his eyes gave me the human sign of welcome; he +looked over me, he looked through me, as a man does at one whose +acquaintance he has no desire to recognize. +</P> + +<P> +I thought:— +</P> + +<P> +"Drayton has crammed him. He too believes that I was shut in here to +sleep it off. The story will get out in two hours. I am doomed in +this town henceforth for a drunken doctor. I'd better have been killed +instantly, as this infernal paper says." +</P> + +<P> +But I said,— +</P> + +<P> +"Mr. Brake? You don't recognize me, I think. It is I, Dr. Thorne. I +couldn't get here before two. I went to your house last evening. I +got the impression you were here, so I came after you. I was locked in +here by your confounded watchman. They have this minute let me free. +I am in a great hurry to get home. Nice job this is going to be! Have +you seen <I>that</I>?" +</P> + +<P> +I put my shaking finger upon the "Herald's" fiery capitals, and held +the column folded towards him. +</P> + +<P> +"Jason," he said, after an instant's pause, "pick up the 'Herald,' will +you? A gust of wind has blown it from the table. There must be a +draught. Please shut the door." +</P> + +<BR> + +<P> +To say that I know of no earthly language which can express the +sensation that crawled over me as the broker uttered these words is to +say little or nothing about it. I use the expression "crawled" with +some faint effort to define the slowness and the repulsiveness with +which the suspicion of that to which I dared not and did not give a +name, made itself manifest to my mind. +</P> + +<P> +"Excuse me, Brake," I said with some agitation, "you did not hear what +I said. I was locked in. I am in a hurry to get home. Ask Drayton. +Drayton let me in. I must get home at once. I shall sue the 'Herald' +for that outrageous piece of work— What do you suppose my wife— +Good God! She must have read it by this time! Let me by, Brake!" +</P> + +<P> +"Jason," said the broker, "this is a terrible thing! I feel quite +broken up about it." +</P> + +<P> +"Brake!" I cried, "Henry Brake! Let me pass you! Let me home to my +wife! You're in my way—don't you see? You're standing directly +between me and the door. Let me pass!" +</P> + +<P> +"There's a private dispatch come," said the clerk Badly. "It is for +you, sir. It is from Mrs. Thorne herself." +</P> + +<P> +"Brake!" I pleaded, "Brake, Brake!—Jason!—Mr. Brake! Don't you hear +me?" +</P> + +<P> +"Give me the message, Jason," said Brake, holding out his hand; he +seated himself, as he did so, at the office table, where I had sat the +night out; he looked troubled and pale; he handled the message +reluctantly, as people do in the certainty of bad news. +</P> + +<P> +"In the name of mercy, Henry Brake!" I cried, "what is the meaning of +this? Don't you hear a word I say? Don't you feel me?—There!" I +gripped the broker by the shoulder, and clinched both hands upon him +with all my might. "Don't you <I>feel</I> me? God Almighty! don't you +<I>see</I> me, Brake?" +</P> + +<P> +"When did this dispatch come, Jason?" said the broker. He laid Helen's +message gently down; he had tears in his eyes. +</P> + +<P> +"Henry Brake," I pleaded brokenly, for my heart failed me with a mighty +fear, "answer me, in human pity's name. Are you gone deaf and blind? +Or am I struck dumb? Or am I"— +</P> + +<P> +"It came ten minutes ago, sir," replied Jason. "It is dated, I see, at +midnight. They delivered it as soon as anybody was likely to be +stirring, here; a bit before, too; considering the nature of the +message, I suppose, sir." +</P> + +<P> +"It is a terrible affair!" repeated the broker nervously. "I have +known the doctor a good many years. He had his peculiarities; but he +was a good fellow. Say—Jason!" +</P> + +<P> +"Yes, sir?" +</P> + +<P> +"How does it happen that Mrs. Thorne— You say this message was dated +at midnight?" +</P> + +<P> +"At midnight, sir. 12.15." +</P> + +<P> +"How is it she didn't <I>know</I> by that time? I pity the fellow who had +to tell her. She's a very attractive woman.... The 'Herald' says— +Where is that paper?" +</P> + +<P> +"The 'Herald' says," answered Jason decorously, "that he was scooped +into the buggy-top, and dragged, and dashed against— Here it is." +</P> + +<P> +He handed his employer the paper, as I had done, or had thought I did, +with his finger on the folded column. The broker took the paper, and +slowly put on his glasses, and slowly read aloud:— +</P> + +<P> +"'Dr. Thorne was dragged for some little distance, it is thought, +before the horse broke free. He must have hit the lamp-post, or the +pavement. He was found in the top of the buggy, which was a wreck. +The robe was over him, and his face was hidden. His medicine case lay +beneath him; the phials were crushed to splinters. Life was extinct +when he was discovered. His watch had stopped at five minutes past +seven o'clock. It so happened that he was not immediately identified, +though our reporter could not learn the reason of this extraordinary +mischance. By some unpardonable blunder, the body of the distinguished +and favourite physician was taken to the Morgue'"— +</P> + +<P> +"That accounts for it," said Jason. +</P> + +<P> +—"'Was taken to the Morgue,'" read on Mr. Brake with agitated voice. +"'It was not until midnight that the mistake was discovered. A +messenger was dispatched at twenty minutes after twelve o'clock to the +elegant residence of the popular doctor, in Delight Street. The news +was broken to the widow as agreeably as possible. Mrs. Thorne is a +young and very beautiful woman, on whom this shocking blow falls with +uncommon cruelty. +</P> + +<P> +"'The body was carried to Dr. Thorne's house at one o'clock. The time +of the funeral is not yet appointed. The "Herald" will be informed as +soon as a decision is reached. +</P> + +<P> +"'The death of Dr. Thorne is a loss to this community which it is +impossible to,'—hm—m—'his distinguished talents'—hm—m—hm—m." +</P> + +<P> +The broker laid down the paper, and sighed. +</P> + +<P> +"I sent for him yesterday, to consult about his affairs," he observed +gently. "It is a pity for her to lose that Santa Ma. She will need it +now. I'm sorry for her. I don't know how he left her, exactly. He +did a tremendous business, but he spent as he went. He was a good +fellow—I always liked the doctor! Terrible affair! Terrible affair! +Jason! Where is that advertisement of Grope County Iowa Mortgage? You +have filed it in the wrong place! Be more careful in future." +</P> + +<P> +..."<I>Mr. Brake!</I>" I tried once more; and my voice was the voice of +mortal anguish to my own appalled and ringing ear. +</P> + +<P> +"Do you not hear? Can you not see? Is there <I>no one</I> in this place +who hears? Or sees me, <I>either</I>?" +</P> + +<P> +An early customer had strayed in; Drayton was there; and the watchman +had entered. The men (there were five in all) collected by the +broker's desk, around the morning papers, and spoke to each other with +the familiarity which bad news of any public interest creates. They +conversed in low tones. Their faces wore a shocked expression. They +spoke of me; they asked for more particulars of the tragedy reported by +the morning press; they mentioned my merits and defects, but said more +about merits than defects, in the merciful, foolish way of people who +discuss the newly dead. +</P> + +<P> +"I've known him ten years," said the broker. +</P> + +<P> +"I've had the pleasure of the doctor's acquaintance myself a good +while," said the inspector politely. +</P> + +<P> +"Wasn't he a quick-tempered man?" asked the customer. +</P> + +<P> +"He cured a baby of mine of the croup," said the watchman. "It was +given up for dead. And he only charged me a dollar and a half. He was +very kind to the little chap." +</P> + +<P> +"He set an ankle for me, once, after a football match," suggested the +clerk. "I wouldn't ask to be better treated. He wasn't a bit rough." +</P> + +<P> +..."Gentlemen," I entreated, stretching out my hands toward the group, +"there is some mistake—I must make it understood. I am here. It is +I, Dr. Thorne; Dr. Esmerald Thorne. I am in this office. Gentlemen! +Listen to me! Look at me! Look in this direction! For God's sake, +<I>try</I> to see me—some of you!"... +</P> + +<P> +"He drove too fast a horse," said the customer. "He always has." +</P> + +<P> +"I must answer Mrs. Thorne's message," said the broker sadly, rising +and pushing back the office chair. +</P> + +<P> +...I shrank, and tried no more. I bowed my head, and said no other +word. The truth, incredible and terrible though it were, the truth +which neither flesh nor spirit can escape, had now forced itself upon +my consciousness. +</P> + +<P> +I looked across the broker's office at those five warm human beings as +if I had looked across the width of the breathing world. Naught had I +now to say to them; naught could they communicate to me. Language was +not between us, nor speech, nor any sign. Need of mine could reach +them not, nor any of their kind. For I was in the dead, and they the +living men. +</P> + +<P> +..."Here is your dog, sir," said Jason. "He has followed you in. He +is trying to speak to you, in his way." +</P> + +<P> +The broker stooped and patted the dumb brute affectionately. "I +understand, Lion," he said. "Yes, I understand you." +</P> + +<P> +The dog looked lovingly up into his master's face, and whined for joy. +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="chap08"></A> + +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +CHAPTER VIII. +</H3> + +<P> +This incident, trifling as it was, I think, did more than anything +which had preceded it to make me aware of the nature of that which had +befallen me. The live brute could still communicate with the living +man. Skill of scientist and philosopher was as naught to help the +human spirit which had fled the body to make itself understood by one +which occupied it still. More blessed in that moment was Lion, the +dog, than Esmerald Thorne, the dead man. I said to myself:— +</P> + +<P> +"I am a desolate and an outcast creature. I am become a dumb thing in +a deaf world." +</P> + +<P> +I thrust my hands before me, and wrung them with a groan. It seemed +incredible to me that I could die; that was more wonderful, even, than +to know that I was already dead. +</P> + +<P> +"It is all over," I moaned. "I have died. I am dead. I am what they +call a dead man." +</P> + +<P> +Now, at this instant, the dog turned his head. No human tympanum in +the room vibrated to my cry. No human retina was recipient of my +anguish. What fine, unclassified senses had the highly-organized +animal by which he should become aware of me? The dog turned his noble +head—he was a St. Bernard, with the moral qualities of the breed well +marked upon his physiognomy; he lifted his eyes and solemnly regarded +me. +</P> + +<P> +After a moment's pause he gave vent to a long and mournful cry. +</P> + +<P> +"Don't, Lion," I said. "Keep quiet, sir. This is dreadful!" +</P> + +<P> +The dog ceased howling when I spoke to him; after a little hesitation +he came slowly to the spot where I was standing, and looked earnestly +into my face, as if he saw me. Whether he did, or how he did, or why +he did, I knew not, and I know not now. The main business of this +narrative will be the recording of facts. Explanations it is not mine +to offer; and of speculations I have but few, either to give or to +withhold. +</P> + +<P> +A great wistfulness came into my soul, as I stood shut apart there from +those living men, within reach of their hands, within range of their +eyes, within the vibration of their human breath. I looked into the +animal's eyes with the yearning of a sudden and an awful sense of +desolation. +</P> + +<P> +"Speak to me, Lion," I whispered. "Won't you speak to me?" +</P> + +<P> +"What is that dog about?" asked the customer, staring. "He is standing +in the middle of the room and wagging his tail as if he had met +somebody." +</P> + +<P> +The dog at this instant, with eager signs of pleasure or of pity—I +could not, indeed, say which—put his beautiful face against my hand, +and kissed, or seemed to kiss it, sympathetically. +</P> + +<P> +"He has queer ways," observed Jason, the clerk, carelessly; "he knows +more than most folks I know." +</P> + +<P> +"True," said his master, laughing. "I don't feel that I am Lion's +equal more than half the time, myself. He is a noble fellow. He has a +very superior nature. My wife declares he is a poet, and that when he +goes off by himself, and gazes into vacancy with that sort of look, he +is composing verses." +</P> + +<P> +Another customer had strolled in by this time; he laughed at the +broker's easy wit; the rest joined in the laugh; some one said +something which I did not understand, and Drayton threw back his head +and guffawed heartily. I think their laughter made me feel more +isolate from them than anything had yet done. +</P> + +<P> +"Why!" exclaimed the broker sharply, "what is this? Jason! What does +this mean?" +</P> + +<P> +His face, as he turned it over his shoulder to address the clerk, had +changed colour; he was indeed really pale. He held his fingers on the +great sheet of blue blotting-paper, to which he pointed, unsteadily. +</P> + +<P> +"Upon my soul, sir," said Jason, flushing and then paling in his turn. +"That is a queer thing! May I show it to Mr. Drayton?" +</P> + +<P> +The inspector stepped forward, as the broker nodded; and examined the +blotting-paper attentively. +</P> + +<P> +"It is written over," he said in a professional tone, "from end to end. +I see that. It is written with one name. It is the name of"— +</P> + +<P> +"<I>Helen!</I>" interrupted the broker. +</P> + +<P> +"Yes," replied the inspector. "Yes, it is: Helen; distinctly, Helen. +Someone must have"— +</P> + +<P> +But I stayed to hear no more. What some one must have done, I sprang +and left the live men to decide—as live men do decide such +things—among themselves. I sprang, and crying: "Helen! Helen! +Helen!" with one bound I brushed them by, and fled the room, and +reached the outer air and sought for her. +</P> + +<P> +As nearly as one can characterize the emotion of such a moment I should +say that it was one of mortal intensity; perhaps of what in living men +we should call maniac intensity. Up to this moment I could not be said +to have comprehended the effect of what had taken place upon my wife. +</P> + +<P> +The full force of her terrible position now struck me like the edge of +a weapon with whose sheath I had been idling. +</P> + +<P> +Hot in the flame of my anger I had gone from her; and cold indeed had I +returned. Her I had left dumb before my cruel tongue, but dumb was +that which had come back to her in my name. +</P> + +<P> +I was a dead man. But like any living of them all—oh, more than any +living—I loved my wife. I loved her more because I had been cruel to +her than if I had been kind. I loved her more because we had parted so +bitterly than if we had parted lovingly. I loved her more because I +had died than if I had lived. I must see my wife! I must find my +wife! I must say to her—I must tell her— Why, who in all the world +but me could do <I>anything</I> for Helen now? +</P> + +<P> +Out into the morning air I rushed, and got the breeze in my face, and +up the thronging street as spirits do, unnoted and unknown of men, I +passed; solitary in the throng, silent in the outcry, unsentient in the +press. +</P> + +<P> +The sun was strong. The day was cool. The dome of the sky hung over +me, too, as over those who raised their breathing faces to its beauty. +I, too, saw, as I fled on, that the day was fair. I heard the human +voices say: +</P> + +<P> +"What a morning!" +</P> + +<P> +"It puts the soul into you!" said a burly stock speculator to a +railroad treasurer; they stood upon the steps of the Exchange, +laughing, as I brushed by. +</P> + +<P> +"It makes life worth while," said a healthy elderly woman, merrily, +making the crossing with the light foot that a light heart gives. +</P> + +<P> +"It makes life possible," replied a pale young girl beside her, coming +slowly after. +</P> + +<P> +"Poor fellow!" sighed a stranger whom I hit in hurrying on. "It was an +ugly way to die. Nice air, this morning!" +</P> + +<P> +"He will be a loss to the community," replied this man's companion. +"There isn't a doctor in town who has his luck with fevers. You can't +convince my wife he didn't save her life last winter. Frost, last +night, wasn't there? Very invigorating morning!" +</P> + +<P> +Now, at the head of the street some ladies were standing, waiting for a +car. I was delayed in passing them, and as I stepped back to change my +course I saw that one of them was speaking earnestly, and that her eyes +showed signs of weeping. +</P> + +<P> +"He wouldn't remember me," she said; "it was eleven years ago. But +sick women don't forget their doctors. He was as <I>kind</I> to me"— +</P> + +<P> +"Oh, <I>poor</I> Mrs. Thorne!" a soft voice answered, in the accented tone +of an impulsive, tender-hearted woman. "It's bad enough to be a +patient. But, oh, his <I>wife</I>!" +</P> + +<P> +"Let me pass, ladies!" I cried, or tried to cry, forgetting, in the +anguish which their words fanned to its fiercest, that I could not be +heard and might not be seen. "There seems to be some obstruction. Let +me by, for I am in mortal haste!" +</P> + +<P> +Obstruction there was, alas! but it was not in them whom I would have +entreated. Obstruction there was, but of what nature I could not and I +cannot testify. While I had the words upon my lips, even as the group +of women broke and left a space about me while they scattered on their +ways, there on the corner of the thoroughfare, in the heart of the +town, by an invisible force, by an inexplicable barrier, I, the dead +man fleeing to my living wife, was beaten back. +</P> + +<P> +Whence came that awful order? How came it? And wherefore? I knew no +more than the November wind that passed me by, and went upon its errand +as it listed. +</P> + +<P> +I was thrust back by a blast of Power Incalculable; it was like the +current of an unknown natural force of infinite capability. Set the +will of soul and body as I would, I could not pass the head of the +street. +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="chap09"></A> + +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +CHAPTER IX. +</H3> + +<P> +Struggling to bear the fate which I had met, I turned as manfully as I +might, and retraced my steps down the thronging street, within whose +limits I now learned that my freedom was confined. It was a sickening +discovery. I had been a man of will so developed and freedom so +sufficient that helplessness came upon me like a change of temperament; +it took the form of hopelessness almost at once. +</P> + +<P> +What was death? The secret of life. What knew I of the system of +things on which a blow upon the head had ushered me all unready, +reluctant, and uninstructed as I was? No more than the ruddiest live +stockbroker in the street, whose blood went bounding, that fresh +morning, to the antics of the Santa Ma. I was not accustomed to be +uninformed; my ignorance appalled me. Even in the deeps of my misery, +I found space for a sense of humiliation; I felt profoundly mortified. +In that spot, in that way, of all others, why was I withheld? Was it +the custom of the black country called Death, which we mark +"unexplored" upon the map of life,—was it the habit to tie a man to +the place where he had died? But this was not the spot where I had +died. It was the spot where I had learned that I had died. It was the +place where the consciousness of death had wrought itself, not upon the +nerves of the body, but upon the faculties of the mind. I had been +dead twelve hours before I found it out. +</P> + +<P> +I looked up and down the street, where the living men scurried to and +fro upon their little errands. These seemed immeasurably small. I +looked upon them with disgust. Fettered to that pavement, like a +convict to his ball-and-chain, I passed and repassed in wretchedness +whose quality I cannot express, and would not if I could. +</P> + +<P> +"I am punished," I said; "I am punished for that which I have done. +This is my doom. I am imprisoned here." +</P> + +<P> +Sometimes I broke into uncontrollable misery, crying upon my wife's +dear name. Then I would hush the outbreak, lest some one overhear me; +and then I would remember that no one could overhear. I looked into +the faces of the people whom I met and passed, with such longings for +one single sign of recognition as are not to be described. It even +occurred to me that among them all one might be found of whom my love +and grief and will might make a messenger to Helen. But I found none +such, or I gained no such power; and, sick at heart, I turned away. +</P> + +<P> +Suddenly, as I threaded the thick of the press, beating to and fro, and +up and down, as dead leaves move before the wind, some one softly +touched my hand. +</P> + +<P> +It was the St. Bernard, the broker's dog. This time, as before, he +looked into my face with signs of pleasure or of pity, or of both, and +made as if he would caress me. +</P> + +<P> +"Lion!" I cried, "<I>you</I> know me, don't you? Bless you, Lion!" +</P> + +<P> +Now, at the dumb thing's recognition, I could have wept for pleasure. +The dog, when I spoke to him, followed me; and for some time walked up +and down and athwart the street, beside me. This was a comfort to me. +At last his master came out upon the sidewalk and looked for him. +Brake whistled merrily, and the dog, at the first call, went bounding +in. +</P> + +<BR> + +<P> +Ordinary writers upon usual topics, addressing readers of their own +condition, have their share of difficulties; at best one conquers the +art of expression as a General conquers an enemy. But the obstacles +which present themselves to the recorder of this narrative are such as +will be seen at once to have peculiar force. Almost at the outset they +dishearten me. How shall I tell the story unless I be understood? And +how should I be understood if I told the story? Were it for me, a man +miserable and erring, gone to his doom as untrained for its +consequences, or for the use of them, as a drayman for the use of +hypnotism in surgery,—were it for me to play the interpreter between +life and death? Were it for me to expect to be successful in that +solemn effort which is as old as time, and as hopeless as the eyes of +mourners? +</P> + +<P> +What shall I say? It is willed that I shall speak. The angel said +unto me: Write. How shall I obey, who am the most unworthy of any soul +upon whom has been laid the burden of the higher utterance? Sacred be +the task. Would that its sacredness could sanctify the unfitness of +him who here fulfils it. +</P> + +<BR> + +<P> +The experience which I have already narrated was followed by an +indefinite period of great misery. How long I remained a prisoner in +that unwelcome spot I cannot accurately tell. +</P> + +<P> +What are called by dwellers in the body days and nights, and dawns and +darks, succeeded each other, little remarked by my wretchedness, or by +the sense of remoteness from these things which now began to grow upon +me. The life of what we call a spirit had begun for me in the form of +a moral dislocation. The wrench, the agony, the process of setting the +nature under its new conditions, took place in due order, but with +bitter laggardness. The accident of death did not heal in my soul by +what surgeons call "the first intention." I retained for a long time +the consciousness of being an injured creature. +</P> + +<P> +As I paced and repaced the narrow street where the money-makers and +money-lovers of the town jostled and thronged, a great disgust +descended upon me. The place, the springs of conduct, wearied me, +something in the manner that an educated person is wearied by low +conversation. It seemed to be like this:—that the moral motives of +the living created the atmosphere of the dead therein confined. It was +as if I inhaled the coarse friction, the low aspiration, the +feverishness, the selfishness, the dishonour, that the getting of gain, +when it became the purpose of life, involved. I experienced a sense of +being stifled, and breathed with difficulty; much as those live men +would have done, if the gas-pipes had burst in the street. +</P> + +<P> +It did not detract from this feeling of asphyxia that I was aware of +having, to a certain extent, shared the set of moral compounds which I +now found resolved to their elements, by the curious chemistry of death. +</P> + +<P> +I had loved money and the getting of money, as men of the world, and of +success in it, are apt to do. I was neither better nor worse than +others of my sort. I had speculated with the profits of my profession, +idly enough, but hotly, too, at times. I had told myself that I did +this out of anxiety for the future of my family. I had viewed myself +in the light of the model domestic man, who guards his household +against an evil day. It had never occurred to me to classify myself +with the mere money-changers, into whose atmosphere I had elected to +put myself. +</P> + +<P> +Now, as I glided in and out among them, unseen, unheard, unrecognized, +a spirit among their flesh, there came upon me a humiliating sense of +my true relation to them. Was it thus, I said, or so? Did I this or +that? Was the balance of motives so disproportionate after all? Was +there so little love of wife and child? So much of self and gain? Was +the item of the true so small? The sum of the false so large? Had I +been so much less that was noble, so much more that was low? +</P> + +<P> +I mingled with the mass of haggard men at a large stock auction which +half the street attended. The panic had spread. Sleeplessness and +anxiety had carved the crowding faces with hard chisels. The shouts, +the scramble, the oaths, the clinched hands, the pitiful pushing, +affected me like a dismal spectacular play on some barbarian stage. +How shall I express the sickening aspect of the scene to a man but +newly dead? +</P> + +<P> +The excitement waxed with the morning. The old and placid Santa Ma +throbbed like any little road of yesterday. The stock had gained 32 +points in ten minutes, and down again, and up again to Heaven knows +what. Men ran from despair to elation, and behaved like maniacs in +both. Men who were gentlemen at home turned savages here. Men who +were honourable in society turned sharpers here. Madness had them, as +I watched them. A kind of pity for them seized me. I glided in among +them, and lifted my whole heart to stay them if I could. I stretched +the hands that no one saw. I raised the voice that none could hear. +</P> + +<P> +"Gentlemen!" I cried, "count me the market value of it—on the margin +of two lives! By the bonds wherewith you bind yourselves you shall be +bound!... What is the sum of wealth represented within these walls +to-day? Name it to me.... The whole of it, for the power to leave +this place! The whole of it, the whole of it, for one half-hour in a +dead man's desolated home! A hundred-fold the whole of it for"— +</P> + +<P> +But here I lost command of myself, and fleeing from the place where my +presence and my misery and my entreaty alike were lost upon the +attention of the living throng as were the elements of the air they +breathed, I rushed into the outer world again; there to wander up and +down the street, and hate the place, and hate myself for being there, +and hate the greed of gain I used to love, and hate myself for having +loved it; and yet to know that I was forced to act as if I loved it +still, and to be the ghost before the ghost of a desire. +</P> + +<P> +"It is my doom," I said. "I am punished. I am fastened to this +worldly spot, and to this awful way of being dead." +</P> + +<P> +Now, while I spoke these words, I came, in the stress of my +wretchedness, fleeing to the head of the street; and there, I cannot +tell you how, I cannot answer why, as the arrow springs from the bow, +or the conduct from the heart, or the spirit from the flesh,—in one +blessed instant I knew that I was free to leave the spot, and crying, +"Helen, Helen!" broke from it. +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="chap10"></A> + +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +CHAPTER X. +</H3> + +<P> +But no. Alas, no, no! I was and was not free. All my soul turned +toward her, but something stronger than my soul constrained me. It +seemed to me that I longed for her with such longing as might have +killed a live man, or might have made a dead one live again. This +emotion added much to my suffering, but nothing to my power to turn one +footstep toward her or to lift my helpless face in her direction. It +was not permitted to me. It was not willed. +</P> + +<P> +Now this, which might in another temperament have produced a sense of +fear or of desire to placate the unknown Force which overruled me, +created in me at first a stinging rage. This is the truth, and the +truth I tell. +</P> + +<P> +In my love and misery, and the shock of this disappointment—against +the unknown opposition to my will, I turned and raved; even as when I +was a man among men I should have raved at him who dared my purpose. +</P> + +<P> +"You are playing with me!" I wailed. "You torture a miserable man. +Who and what are you, that make of death a bitterer thing than life can +guess? Show me what I have to fight, and let me wrestle for my +liberty,—though I am a ghost, let me wrestle like a man! Let me to my +wife! Give way, and let me seek her!" +</P> + +<P> +Shocking and foreign as words like these must be to many of those who +read these pages, it must be remembered that they were uttered by one +to whom faith and the knowledge that comes by way of it were the leaves +of an abandoned text-book. For so many years had the tenets of the +Christian religion been put out of my practical life, even as I put +aside the opinions of the laity concerning the treatment of disease, +that I do not over-emphasize; I speak the simplest truth in saying that +my first experience of death had not in any sense revived the vividness +of lost belief to me. As the old life had ended had the new begun. +Where the tree had fallen it did lie. What was habit before death was +habit after. What was natural then was natural now. What I loved +living I loved dead. That which interested Esmerald Thorne the man +interested Esmerald Thorne the spirit. The incident of death had +raised the temperature of intellect; it had, perhaps, I may say, by +this time quickened the pulse of conscience; but it had in no wise +wrought any miracle upon me, nor created a religious believer out of a +worldly and indifferent man of science. Dying had not forthwith made +me a devout person. Incredible as it may seem, it is the truth that up +to this time I had not, since the moment of dissolution, put to myself +the solemn queries concerning my present state which occupy the +imaginations of the living so much, while yet death is a fact remote +from their experience. +</P> + +<P> +It was the habit of long years with me, after the manner of my kind, to +settle all hard questions by a few elastic phrases, which, once +learned, are curiously pliable to the intellectual touch. "Phenomena," +for instance,—how plastic to cover whatever one does not understand! +"Law,"—how ready to explain away the inexplicable! Up to this point +death had struck me as a most unfortunate phenomenon. Its personal +disabilities I found it easy to attribute to some natural law with +which my previous education had left me unfamiliar. Now, standing +baffled there in that incredible manner half of tragedy, half of the +absurd,—even the petty element of the undignified in the position +adding to my distress,—a houseless, homeless, outcast spirit, struck +still in the heart of that great town, where in hundreds of homes was +weeping for me, where I was beloved and honoured and bemoaned, and +where my own wife at that hour broke her heart with sorrow for me and +for the manner of my parting from her,—then and there to be beaten +back, and battered down, and tossed like an atom in some primeval +flood, whithersoever I would not,—what a situation was this! +</P> + +<P> +Now, indeed, I think for the first time, my soul lifted itself, as a +sick man lifts himself upon his elbows, in his painful bed. Now, +flashing straight back upon the outburst of my defiance and despair, +like the reflex action of a strong muscle, there came into my mind, if +not into my heart, these impulsive and entreating words:— +</P> + +<P> +"What art Thou, who dost withstand me? I am a dead and helpless man. +What wouldst Thou with me? Where gainest Thou Thy force upon me? Art +Thou verily that ancient Myth which we were wont to call Almighty God?" +</P> + +<P> +Simultaneously with the utterance of these words that blast of Will to +which I have referred fell heavily upon me. A Power not myself +overshadowed me and did environ me. Guided whithersoever I would not, +I passed forth upon errands all unknown to me, rebelling and obeying as +I went. +</P> + +<P> +"I am become what we used to call a spirit," I thought, bitterly, "and +this is what it means. Better might one become a molecule, for those, +at least, obey the laws of the universe, and do not suffer." +</P> + +<P> +Now, as I took my course, it being ordered on me, it led me past the +door of a certain open church, whence the sound of singing issued. The +finest choir in the city, famous far and near, were practising for the +Sunday service, and singing like the sons of God, indeed, as I passed +by. With the love of the scientific temperament for harmony alert in +me, I lingered to listen to the anthem which these singers were +rendering in their customary great manner. With the instinct of the +musically educated, I felt pleasure in this singing, and said:— +</P> + +<P> +"Magnificently done!" as I went on. It was some moments before the +words which the choir sang assumed any vividness in my mind. When they +did I found that they were these;— +</P> + +<P> +"<I>For God is a Spirit. God is a Spirit: and they that worship Him must +worship Him in spirit</I>"— +</P> + +<BR> + +<P> +Now it fell out that my steps were directed to the hospital; and to the +hospital I straightway went. I experienced some faint comfort at this +improvement in my lot, and hurried up the avenue and up the steps and +into the familiar wards with eagerness. All the impulses of the healer +were alive in me. I felt it a mercy for my nature to be at its own +again. I hastened in among my sick impetuously. +</P> + +<P> +The hospital had been a favourite project of mine; from its start, +unreasonably dear to me. Through the mounting difficulties which +blockade such enterprises, I had hewn and hacked, I had fathered and +doctored, I had trusteed and collected, I had subscribed and directed +and persisted and prophesied and fulfilled, as one ardent person must +in most humanitarian successes; and I had loved the success +accordingly. I do not think it had ever once occurred to me to +question myself as to the chemical proportions of my motives in this +great and popular charity. Now, as I entered the familiar place, some +query of this nature did indeed occupy my mind; it had the strangeness +of all mental experiences consequent upon my new condition, and +somewhat, if I remember, puzzled me. +</P> + +<P> +The love of healing? The relief of suffering? Sympathy with the +wretched? Chivalry for the helpless? Generosity to the poor? +Friendship to the friendless? Were these the motives, all the motives, +the <I>whole</I> motives, of him who had in my name ministered in that place +so long? Even the love of science? Devotion to a therapeutic creed? +Sacrifice for a surgical doctrine? Enthusiasm for an important +professional cause? Did these, and only these, sources of conduct +<I>explain</I> the great hospital? Or the surgeon who had created and +sustained it? +</P> + +<P> +Where did the motive deteriorate? Where did the alloy come in? How +did the sensitiveness to self, the passion for fame, the joy of power, +amalgamate with all that noble feeling? How much residuum was there in +the solution of that absorption which (outside of my own home) I had +thought the purest and highest of my interests in life? +</P> + +<P> +For the first of all the uncounted times that I had entered the +hospital for now these many years, I crossed the threshold questioning +myself in this manner, and doubting of my fitness to be there, or to be +what I had been held to be in that place. Life had carried me gaily +and swiftly, as it carries successful men. I had found no time, or +made none, to cross-question the sources of conduct. My success had +been my religion. +</P> + +<P> +I had the conviction of a prosperous person that the natural emotions +of prosperity were about right. Added to this was something of the +physician's respect for what was healthful in human life. Good luck, +good looks, good nerves, a good income, an enviable reputation for +professional skill, personal popularity, and private happiness,—these +things had struck me as so wholesome that they must be admirable. +Behind the painted screen which a useful and successful career sets +before the souls of men I had been too busy or too light of heart to +peer. Now it was as if, in the act or the fact of dying, I had moved a +step or two, and looked over the edge of the bright shield. +</P> + +<P> +Thoughts like these came to me so quietly and so naturally, now, that I +wondered why I had not been familiar with them before; it even occurred +to me that being very busy did not wholly excuse a live man for not +thinking; and it was something in the softened spirit of this strange +humility that I opened the noiseless door, and found myself among my +old patients in the large ward. +</P> + +<P> +Never before had I entered that sad place that the electric thrill of +welcome, which only a physician knows, had not pulsated through it, +preceding me, from end to end of the long room. The peculiar +<I>lighting</I> of the ward that flashes with the presence of a favourite +doctor; the sudden flexible smile on pain-pinched lips; the yearning +motion of the eyes in some helpless body where only the eyes can stir; +the swift stretching-out of wasted hands; the half-inaudible cry of +welcome: "The doctor's come!" "Oh, there's the doctor!" "Why, it's the +<I>doctor</I>!"—the loving murmur of my name; the low prayer of blessing on +it,—oh, never before had I entered my hospital, and missed the least +of these. +</P> + +<P> +I thought I was prepared for this, but it was not without a shock that +I stood among my old patients, mute and miserable, glancing piteously +at them, as they had so often done at me; seeking for their +recognition, which I might not have; longing for their welcome, which +was not any more for me. +</P> + +<P> +The moans of pain, the querulous replies to nurses, the weary cough or +plethoric breathing, the feeble convalescent laughter,—these greeted +me; and only these. Like the light that entered at the window, or the +air that circulated through the ward, I passed unnoticed and unthanked. +Some one called out petulantly that a door had got unfastened, and bade +a nurse go shut it, for it blew on her. But when I came up to the +bedside of this poor woman, I saw that she was crying. +</P> + +<P> +"She's cried herself half-dead," a nurse said, complainingly. "Nobody +can stop her. She's taking on so for Dr. Thorne." +</P> + +<P> +"I don't blame her," said a little patient from a wheeled-chair. +"Everybody knows what he did for her. She's got one of her +attacks,—and look at her! There can't anybody but him stop it. +Whatever we're going to do without the doctor"— +</P> + +<P> +Her own lip quivered, though she was getting well. +</P> + +<P> +"I don't see how the doctor <I>could</I> die!" moaned the very sick woman, +weeping afresh, "when there's those that nobody but him can keep alive. +It hadn't oughter to be let to be. How are sick folks going to get +along without their doctor? It ain't <I>right</I>!" +</P> + +<P> +"Lord have mercy on ye, poor creetur," said an old lady from the +opposite cot. "Don't take on so. It don't <I>help</I> it any. It ain't +agoing to bring the doctor back!" +</P> + +<P> +Sobs arose at this. I could hear them from more beds than I cared to +count. Sorrow sat heavily in the ward for my sake. It distressed me +to think of the effect of all this depression upon the nervous systems +of these poor people. I passed from case to case, and watched the +ill-effects of the general gloom with a sense of professional +disappointment which only physicians will understand as coming +uppermost in a man's mind under circumstances such as these. +</P> + +<P> +My discomfort was increased by the evidences of what I considered +mistakes in treatment on the part of my colleagues; some of which had +peculiarly disagreed with certain patients since my death had thrown +them into other hands. My helplessness before these facts chafed me +sorely. +</P> + +<P> +I made no futile effort to make myself known to any of the hospital +patients. I had learned too well the limitations of my new condition +now. I had in no wise learned to bear them. In truth, I think I bore +them less, for my knowledge that these poor creatures did truly love +me, and leaned on me, and mourned for me; I found it hard. I think it +even occurred to me that a dead man might not be able to bear it to see +his wife and child. +</P> + +<P> +"Doctor!" said a low, sweet voice, "Doctor?" My heart leaped within +me, as I turned. Where was the highly organized one of all my +patients, who had baffled death for love of me? Who had the +clairvoyance or clairaudience, or the wonderful tip in the scale of +health and disease, which causes such phenomena? +</P> + +<P> +With hungry eyes I gazed from cot to cot. No answering gaze returned +to me. Craving their recognition more sorely than they had ever, in +the old life, craved mine, in such need of their sympathy as never had +the weakest of the whole of them for mine, I scanned them all. No—no. +There was not a patient in the ward who knew me. No. +</P> + +<P> +Stung with the disappointment, I sank into a chair beside the weeping +woman's bed, and bowed my face upon my hands. At this instant I was +touched upon the shoulder. +</P> + +<P> +"Doctor! Why, Doctor!" said the voice again. +</P> + +<P> +I sprang and caught the speaker by the hands. It was Mrs. Faith. She +stood beside me, sweet and smiling. +</P> + +<P> +"The carriage overturned," she said in her quiet way, "I was badly +hurt. I only died an hour ago. I started out at once to find you. I +want you to see Charley. Charley's still alive. Those doctors don't +understand Charley. There's nobody I'd trust him to but you. You can +save him. Come! You can't think how he asked for you, and cried for +you.... I thought I should find you at the hospital. Come quickly, +Doctor! Come!" +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="chap11"></A> + +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +CHAPTER XI. +</H3> + +<P> +Some homesick traveller in a foreign land, where he is known of none +and can neither speak nor understand the language of the country; taken +ill, let us say, at a remote inn, his strength and credit gone, and he, +in pain and fever, hears, one blessed day, the voice of an old friend +in the court below. Such a man may think he has—but I doubt if he +have—some crude conception of the state of feeling in which I found +myself, when recognized in this touching manner by my old patient. +</P> + +<P> +My emotion was so great that I could not conceal it; and she, in her +own quick and delicate way, perceiving this almost before I did myself, +made as if she saw it not, and lightly adding: +</P> + +<P> +"Hurry, Doctor! I will go before you. Let us lose no time!" led me at +once out of the hospital and rapidly away. +</P> + +<P> +In an incredibly, almost confusingly short space of time, we reached +her house; this was done by some method of locomotion not hitherto +experienced by me, and which I should, at that time, have found it +difficult to describe, unless by saying that she thought us where we +wished to be. Perhaps it would be more exact to say, <I>She felt us</I>. +It was as if the great power of the mother's love in her had become a +new bodily faculty by which she was able, with extraordinary disregard +of the laws of distance, to move herself and to draw another to the +suffering child. I should say that I perceived at once, in the +presence of this sweet woman, that there were possibilities and +privileges in the state immediately succeeding death, which had been +utterly denied to me, and were still unknown to me. It was easy to see +that her personal experience in the new condition differed as much from +mine as our lives had differed in the time preceding death. She had +been a patient, unworldly, and devout sufferer; a chronic invalid, who +bore her lot divinely. Her soul had been as full of trust and +gentleness, of the forgetting of self and the service of others, of the +scorn of pain, and of what she called trust in Heaven, as any woman's +soul could be. +</P> + +<P> +I had never seen the moment when I could withhold my respect from the +devout nature of Mrs. Faith, any more than I could from her manner of +enduring suffering; or, I might add, if I could expect the remark to be +properly understood,—from her strong and intelligent trust in me. +Physicians know what sturdy qualities it takes to make a good patient. +Perhaps they are, to some extent, the same which go to make a good +believer; but in this direction I am less informed. +</P> + +<P> +During our passage from the hospital to the house, Mrs. Faith had not +spoken to me; her whole being seemed, as nearly as I could understand +it, to be absorbed in the process of getting there. It struck me that +she was still unpractised in the use of a new and remarkable faculty, +which required strict attention from her, like any other as yet +unlearned art. +</P> + +<P> +"<I>You</I> are not turned out of your own home it seems!" I exclaimed +impulsively, as we entered the house together. +</P> + +<P> +"Oh, no, <I>no</I>!" she cried. "Who is? Who could be? Why, Doctor, are +<I>you</I>?" +</P> + +<P> +"Death is a terrible respecter of persons," I answered drearily. I +could not further explain myself at that moment. +</P> + +<P> +"I have been away from Charley a good while," she anxiously replied; +"it is the first time I have left him since I died. But I had to find +you, Doctor. Charley should not die—I can't have Charley die—for his +poor father's sake. But I feel quite safe about him now I have got +you." +</P> + +<P> +She said these words in her old bright, trustful way. The thought of +my helplessness to justify such trust smote me sorely; but I said +nothing then to undeceive her,—how could I?—and we made haste +together to the bedside of the injured child. +</P> + +<P> +I saw at a glance that the child was in a bad case. Halt was there, +and Dr. Gazell; they were consulting gloomily. The father, haggard +with his first bereavement, seemed to have accepted the second as a +foregone conclusion; he sat with his face in his hands, beside the +little fellow's bed. The boy called for his mother at intervals. A +nurse hung about weeping. It was a dismal scene; there was not a spark +of hope, or energy, or fight in the whole room. I cried out +immoderately that it was enough to kill the well, and protested against +the management of the case with the ardent conviction to which my old +patient was so used, and in which she believed more thoroughly than I +did myself. "They are giving the wrong remedy," I hotly said. "This +surgical fever could be controlled,—the boy need not die. But he +will! You may as well make up your mind to it, Mrs. Faith. Gazell +doesn't understand the little fellow's constitution, and Halt doesn't +understand anything." +</P> + +<P> +Now it was that, as I had expected, the mother turned upon me with all +a mother's hopeless and heart-breaking want of logic. Surely, I, and +only I, could save the boy. Why, I had always taken care of Charley! +Was it possible that I could stand by and see Charley <I>die</I>? <I>She</I> +should not have died herself if I had been there. She depended upon me +to find some way—there must be a way. She never thought I was the +kind of a man to be so changed by—by what had happened. +</P> + +<P> +I used to be so full of hope and vigour, and so inventive in a +sick-room. It was not reasonable! It was not right! It was not +possible that, just because I was a spirit, I could not control the +minds or bodies of those live men who were so inferior to me. Why, she +thought I could control <I>any</I>body. She thought I could conquer +<I>any</I>thing. +</P> + +<P> +"I don't understand it, Doctor," she said, with something like +reproach. "You don't seem to be able to do as much—you don't even +know as much as <I>I</I> do, now. And you know what a sick and helpless +little woman I've always been,—how ignorant, beside you! I thought +you were so wise, so strong, so great. Where has it all gone to, +Doctor? What has become of your wisdom and your power? Can't you help +me? Can't you"— +</P> + +<P> +"I can do nothing," I interrupted her,—"nothing. I am shorn of it +all. It has all gone from me, like the strength of Samson. Spare me, +and torment me not.... I cannot heal your child. I am not like you. +I was not prepared for—this condition of things. I did not expect to +die. I never thought of becoming a spirit. I find myself +extraordinarily embarrassed by it. It is the most unnatural state I +ever was in." +</P> + +<P> +"Why, I find it as natural as life," she said, more gently. She had +now moved to the bedside, and taken the little fellow in her arms. +</P> + +<P> +"You are not as I," I replied morosely. "We differed—and we differ. +Truly, I believe that if there is anything to be done for your boy, it +rests with you, and not with me." +</P> + +<P> +Halt and Gazell were now consulting in an undertone, touching the +selection of a certain remedy; no one noticed them, and they droned on. +</P> + +<P> +The mother crooned over the child, and caressed him, and breathed upon +his sunken little face, and poured her soul out over him in precious +floods and wastes of tenderness as mothers do. +</P> + +<P> +"Live, my little son!" she whispered. "Live, live!" +</P> + +<P> +But I, meanwhile, was watching the two physicians miserably. "There!" +I said, "they have dropped the phial on the floor. See, that is the +one they ought to have. It rolled away. They don't mean to take it. +They will give him the wrong thing. Oh, how can they?" +</P> + +<P> +But now the mother, when she heard me speak, swiftly and gently removed +her arms from beneath the boy, and, advancing to the hesitating men, +stood silently between them, and laid a hand upon the arm of each. +While she stood there she had a rapt, high look of such sort that I +could in no wise have addressed her. +</P> + +<P> +"Are you <I>sure</I>, Dr. Gazell?" asked Halt. +</P> + +<P> +"I <I>think</I> so," said Gazell. +</P> + +<P> +He stooped, after a moment's hesitation, and picked up the phial from +the floor, read its label; laid it down, looked at the child, and +hesitated again. +</P> + +<P> +The mother at this juncture sunk upon her knees and bowed her shining +face. I thought she seemed to be at prayer. I too bowed my head; but +it was for reverence at the sight of her. It was long since I had +prayed. I did not find it natural to do so. A strange discontent, +something almost like an inclination to prayer, came upon me. But that +was all. I would rather have had the power to turn those two men out +of the room, and pour the saving remedy upon my little patient's +burning tongue with my own flesh-and-blood fingers, and a hearty +objurgation on the professional blunder which I had come in time to +rectify. +</P> + +<P> +"Dr. Halt," said Dr. Gazell, slowly, "with your approval I think I will +change my mind. On the whole, the indications point to—this. I trust +it is the appropriate remedy." +</P> + +<P> +He removed the cork from the phial as he spoke, and, rising, passed +quickly to the bedside of the child. +</P> + +<P> +The mother had now arisen from her knees, and followed him, and got her +arms about the boy again, and set her soul to brooding over him in the +way that loving women have. I was of no further service to her, and I +had vanished from her thought, which had no more room at that moment +for anything except the child than the arms with which she clasped him. +</P> + +<P> +It amazed me—I was going to say it appalled me—that no person in the +room should seem to have consciousness of her presence. She was like +an invisible star. How incredible that love like that, and the power +of it, could be dependent upon the paltry senses of what are called +live people for so much as the proofs of its existence. +</P> + +<P> +"It is not scientific," I caught myself saying, as I turned away, +"there is a flaw in the logic somewhere. There seems to be a snapped +link between two sets of facts. There is no deficiency of data; the +difficulty lies wholly in collating them." +</P> + +<P> +How, indeed, should I—how did I but a few days since—myself regard +such "data" as presumed to indicate the continuance of human life +beyond the point of physical decay! +</P> + +<P> +"After all," I thought, as I wandered from the house in which I felt +myself forgotten and superfluous, and pursued my lonely way, I knew not +whither and I knew not why,—"after all, there is another life. I +really did not think it." +</P> + +<P> +It seemed now to have been an extraordinary narrowness of intellect in +me that I had not at least attached more weight to the universal human +hypothesis. I did not precisely wonder from a personal point of view +that I had not definitely believed it; but I wondered that I had not +given the possibility the sort of attention which a view of so much +dignity deserved. It really annoyed me that I had made that kind of +mistake. +</P> + +<P> +We, at least, were alive,—my old patient and I. Whether others, or +how many, or of what sort, I could not tell; I had yet seen no other +spirit. What was the life-force in this new condition of things? +Where was the central cell? What <I>made</I> us go on living? Habit? Or +selection? Thought? Emotion? Vigour? If the last, what species of +vigour? What was that in the individual which gave it strength to +stay? Whence came the reproductive power which was able to carry on +the species under such terrible antagonism as the fact of death? If in +the body, where was the common element between that attenuated invalid +and my robust organization? If in the soul, between the suffering +saint and the joyous man of the world, where again was our common moral +protoplasm? +</P> + +<P> +Nothing occurred to me at the time, at least, as offering any spiritual +likeness between myself and Mrs. Faith, but the fact that we were both +people of strong affections which had been highly cultivated. Might +not a woman <I>love</I> herself into continued existence who felt for any +creature what she did for that child? +</P> + +<P> +And I—God knew, if there were a God, how it was with me. If I had +never done anything, if I had never been anything, if I had never felt +anything else in all my life, that was fit to <I>last</I>, I had loved one +woman, and her only, and had thought high thoughts for her, and felt +great emotions for her, and forgotten self for her sake, and thought it +sweet to suffer for her, and been a better man for love of her. And I +had loved her,—oh, I had so loved her, that I knew in my soul ten +thousand deaths could not murder that living love. +</P> + +<P> +And I had spoken to her—I had said to her—like any low and brutal +fellow, any common wife-tormentor—I had gone from her dear presence to +this mute life wherein there was neither speech nor language; where +neither earth, nor heaven, nor my love, nor my remorse, nor all my +anguish, nor my shame, could give my sealed lips the power to say, +Forgive. +</P> + +<P> +Now, while I was cast thus abroad upon the night,—for it was +night,—sorely shaken and groaning in spirit, taking no care where my +homeless feet should lead me, I lifted my eyes suddenly, and looked +straight on before me, and behold! shining afar, fair and sweet and +clear, I saw and recognized the lights of my own home. +</P> + +<P> +I was still at some distance from the spot, and, beside myself with +joy, I started to run unto it. With the swift motions which spirits +make, and which I was beginning now to master in a clumsy manner and +low degree, I came, compassing the space between myself and all I loved +or longed for, and so brought myself tumultuously into the street where +the house stood; there, at a stone's throw from it, I felt myself +suddenly stifled with my haste, or from some cause, and, pausing (as we +used to say) to gather breath, I found that I was stricken back, and +fettered to the ground. +</P> + +<P> +There was no wind. The night was perfectly still. Not a leaf quivered +on the topmost branch of the linden which tapped our chamber-window. +Yet a Power like a mighty rushing blast gainsaid me and smote me where +I was. +</P> + +<P> +Not a step, though I writhed for it, not a breath nearer, though my +heart should break for it, could I take or make to reach her. This was +my doom. Within clasp of her dear arms, within sight of her sweet +face,—for there! while I stood struggling, I saw a woman's shadow rise +and stir upon the dimly lighted wall,—thus to be denied and bidden +back from her seemed to me more than heart could bear. +</P> + +<P> +While I stood, quite unmanned by what had happened, incredulous of my +punishment, and yearning to her through the little distance, and +stretching out my hands toward her, and brokenly babbling her dear +name, she moved, and I saw her quite distinctly, even as I had seen her +that last time. She stood midway between the unlighted parlour and the +lighted library beyond. The drop-light with the scarlet shade blazed +behind her. +</P> + +<P> +I noticed that to-night, as on that other night, the baby was not with +her; and I wondered why. She stood alone. She moved up and down the +room; she had a weary step. Her dress, I saw, was black, dead black. +Her white hands, clasped before her, shone with startling brilliancy +upon the sombre stuff she wore. Her lovely head was bent a little, and +she seemed to be gazing at me whom she could not see. Then I cried +with such a cry, it seemed as if the very living must needs hear:— +</P> + +<P> +"Helen! Helen! <I>Helen</I>!" +</P> + +<P> +But she stood quite still; leaning her pale face toward me, like some +listening creature that was stricken deaf. +</P> + +<P> +The sight was more sorrowful than I could brave; for the first time +since I had died I succumbed into something like a swoon, and lost my +miserable consciousness in the street before her door. +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="chap12"></A> + +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +CHAPTER XII. +</H3> + +<P> +When I came again to myself I found that what I should once have called +a "phenomenon" had taken place. The city, the dim street, the familiar +architecture of my home, the streams of light from the long windows, +the leaves of the linden tapping on the glass, the woman's shadow on +the wall, and the stirring toward me of the form and face I +loved,—these had vanished. +</P> + +<P> +I was in a strange place; and I was a stranger in it. It seemed rather +a lonely place at first, though it was not unpleasing to me as I looked +abroad. The scenery was mountainous and solemn, but it was therefore +on a large scale and restful to the eye. It had more grandeur than +beauty, to my first impression; but I remembered that I was not in a +condition of mind to be receptive of the merely beautiful, which might +exist for me without my perception of it, even as the life of the dead +existed without the perception of the living. Death, if it had taught +me less up to that time than it might have done to nobler men, had at +least done so much as this: it had accustomed me to respect the unseen, +and to regard its possible action upon the seen as a matter of import. +As I looked forth upon the hills and skies, the plains and forests, and +on to the distant signs of human habitation in the scenery about me, I +thought:— +</P> + +<P> +"I am in a world where it is probable that there exist a thousand +things which I cannot understand to one which I can." +</P> + +<P> +It seemed to me a very uncomfortable state of affairs, whatever it was. +I felt estranged from this place, even before I was acquainted with it. +Nothing in my nature responded to its atmosphere; or, if so, petulantly +and with a kind of helpless antagonism, like the first cry of the +new-born infant in the old life. +</P> + +<P> +As I got myself languidly to my feet, and idly trod the path which lay +before me, for lack of knowing any better thing to do, I began to +perceive that others moved about the scene; that I was not, as I had +thought, alone, but one of a company, each going on his errand as he +would. I only seemed to have no errand; and I was at a great distance +from these people, whose presence, however, though so remote, gave me +something of the sense of companionship which one whose home is in a +lonely spot upon a harbour coast has in watching the head-lights of +anchored ships upon dark nights. Communication there is none, but +desolation is less for knowing that there could be, or for fancying +that there might. +</P> + +<P> +Across the space between us, I looked upon my fellow-citizens in this +new country, with a dull emotion not unlike gratitude for their +existence; but I felt little curiosity about them. I was too unhappy +to be so easily diverted. It seemed to me that the memory of my wife +would become a mania to me, if I could in no way make known to her how +utterly I loved her and how I scorned myself. I cannot say that I felt +much definite interest in the novel circumstances surrounding me, +except as possible resources for some escape from the situation, as it +stood between herself and me. If I could compass any means of +communicating with her, I believed that I could accept my doom, let it +take me where it might or make of me what it would. +</P> + +<P> +Walking thus drearily, alone, and not sorry to be alone in that +unfamiliar company, lost in the fixed idea of my own misery, I suddenly +heard light footsteps hurrying behind me. I thought:— +</P> + +<P> +"There is another spirit; one more of the newly dead, come to this +strange place." +</P> + +<P> +But I did not find it worth my while to turn and greet him, being so +wrapt in my own fate; and when a soft hand touched my arm, I moved from +it with something like dismay. +</P> + +<P> +"Why, Doctor!" said the gentle voice of Mrs. Faith, "did I startle you? +I have been hunting for you everywhere," she added, laughing lightly. +"I was afraid you would feel rather desolate. It is a pity. Now, I am +as <I>happy</I>!" +</P> + +<P> +"Did Charley live?" I asked immediately. +</P> + +<P> +"Oh yes, Charley lived; what we used to call living, when we were +there. Poor Charley! I keep thinking how he would enjoy everything if +he were here with me. But his father needed him. It makes me so +happy! I am very happy! Tell me, Doctor, what do you think of this +place? How does it strike you?" +</P> + +<P> +"It is a foreign country," I said sadly. +</P> + +<P> +"Is it, Doctor? Poor Doctor! Why, I feel so much at <I>home</I>!" +</P> + +<P> +She lifted a radiant face to me; it was touching to see her expression, +and marvellous to behold the idealization of health on features for so +many years adjusted to pain and patience. +</P> + +<P> +"Dear Doctor!" she cried joyously, "you never thought to see me <I>well</I>! +They call this death. Why, I never knew what it was to be <I>alive</I> +before!" +</P> + +<P> +"I must make you acquainted with some of the people who live here," she +added, quickly recalling herself from her own interests to mine, with +her natural unselfishness, "it is pitiful to come into this place—as +you have done. You always knew so many people. You had such friends +about you. I never saw you walk alone in all your life before." +</P> + +<P> +"I wish to be alone," I answered moodily. "I care nothing for this +place, or for the men who live here. It is all unfamiliar to me. I am +not happy in it. I am afraid I have not been educated for it. It is +the most unhomelike place I ever saw." +</P> + +<P> +Her eyes filled; she did not answer me at once; when she did it was to +say: +</P> + +<P> +"It will be better. It will be better by and by. Have you seen"— +</P> + +<P> +She stopped and hesitated. +</P> + +<P> +"Have you seen the Lord?" she asked, in a low voice. She was wont, I +remember, to use this word in a way peculiarly her own; as if she were +referring to some personal acquaintance, near to her heart. I shook my +head, looking drearily upon her. +</P> + +<P> +"Don't you <I>want</I> to see Him?" +</P> + +<P> +"I want to see my wife!" +</P> + +<P> +"Oh, I am sorry for you," she said, with forbearing gentleness. "It is +pretty hard. But I wish you <I>wanted</I> Him." +</P> + +<P> +"I want to see my wife! I want to see my wife!" I interrupted +bitterly. And with this I turned away from her and hid my face, for I +could speak no more. When I lifted my eyes, she had gone from me, and +I was again alone. When it was thus too late, it occurred to me that I +had lost an opportunity which might not easily return to me, and I +sought far and wide for Mrs. Faith. I did not find her, though I +aroused myself to the point of accosting some of the inhabitants of the +country, and making definite inquiries for her. I was answered with +great courtesy and uncommon warmth of manner, as if it were the custom +of this place to take a genuine interest in the affairs of strangers; +but I was not able, by any effort on my part, to bring myself in +proximity to her. This trifling disappointment added to my sense of +helplessness in the new life on which I had entered; and I was still as +incredulous of helplessness and as galled by it as I should have been +by the very world of woe which had formed so irritating a dogma to me +in the theology of my day on earth, and which I had regarded as I did +the nightmares of a dyspeptic patient. +</P> + +<P> +In this state of feeling, it was the greatest comfort to me when, at +some period of time which I have no means of defining, but which could +not have been long afterward, Mrs. Faith came suddenly again across my +path. She radiated happiness and health and beauty, and when she held +out both her hands to me in greeting they seemed to glitter, as if she +had stepped from a bath of delight. +</P> + +<P> +"Oh," she said joyously, "have you seen Him <I>yet</I>?" It embarrassed me +to be forced to answer in the negative; it gave me a strange feeling, +as if I had been a convict in the country, and denied the passport of +honourable men. I therefore waived her question as well as I might, +and proceeded to make known to her the thought which had been occupying +me. +</P> + +<P> +"<I>You</I> have the <I>entrée</I> of the dear earth," I said sadly. "They do +not treat you in the—in the very singular manner with which I am +treated. It is important beyond explanation that I get a message to my +wife. A beggar in the street may be admitted to her charity,—I saw +one at the door the night I stood there. I, only I, am forbidden to +enter. Whatever may be the natural laws which are sot in opposition to +me, they have extraordinary force; I can do nothing against them. I +suppose I do not understand them. If I had an opportunity to study +them—but I have no opportunities at anything. It is a new experience +to me to be so—so disregarded by the general scheme of things. I seem +to be of no more consequence in this place than a bootblack was in the +world, or a paralytic person. It seems useless for me to fly in the +face of fate, since this is fate. I have no hope of being able to +reach my wife. You have privileges in this condition which are +evidently far superior to mine. I have been thinking that possibly you +may be able—and willing—to approach her for me?" +</P> + +<P> +"I don't think it would succeed, Doctor," replied my old patient +quickly. "I'd <I>do</I> it! You know I would! But if I were Helen—She is +a very reserved person; she never talks about her husband, as different +women do; her feeling is of such a sort; I do not think she would +<I>understand</I>, if another woman were to speak from you to her." +</P> + +<P> +"Perhaps not," I sighed. +</P> + +<P> +"I am afraid it would be the most hopeless experiment you could make," +said Mrs. Faith. "She loves you too much for it," she added, with the +divination of her sex. Comforted a little by Mrs. Faith, I quickly +abandoned this project; indeed, I soon abandoned every other which +concerned itself with Helen, and yielded myself with a kind of +desperate lethargy, if I may be allowed the expression, to the fate +which separated me from her. Of resignation I knew nothing. Peace was +the coldest stranger in that strange land to me. I yielded because I +could not help it, not because I would have willed it; and with that +dull strength which grows into the sinews of the soul from necessity, +sought to adjust myself in such fashion as I might to my new +conditions. It occurred to me from time to time that it would have +been an advantage if I had felt more interest in the conditions +themselves; that it would even have spared me something if I had ever +cultivated any familiarity with the possibilities of such a state of +existence. I could not remember that I had in the old life +satisfactorily proved that another <I>could</I> not follow it. It seemed to +me that if I had only so much as exercised my imagination upon the +possible course of events in case another did, it would have been of +some practical service to me now. I was in the position of a man who +is become the victim of a discovery whose rationality he has +contemptuously denied. It was like being struck by a projectile while +one is engaged in disproving the existence of gunpowder. +</P> + +<P> +If a soul may properly be said to be stunned, mine at this time, was +that soul. +</P> + +<P> +In this condition solitude was still so natural to me that I made no +effort to approach the people of the place, and contented myself with +observing them and their affairs from a distance. They seemed a very +happy people. There could be no mistake about that. I did not see a +clouded countenance; nor did I hear an accent of discomfort, or of +pain. I wondered at their joyousness, which I found it as impossible +to share as the sick find it impossible to share what has been called +"the insolence of health." It did, indeed, appear to me as something +almost impertinent, as possession always appears to denial. But I had +never been denied before. I perceived, also, that the inhabitants of +this country were a busy people. They came and went, they met and +parted, with the eagerness of occupation; though there was a +conspicuous absence of the fretful haste to which I had been used in +the conduct of business. I looked upon the avocations of this strange +land, and wondered at them. I could not see with what they were +occupied, or why, or to what end. They affected me perhaps something +as the concerns of the human race may affect the higher animals. I +looked on with an unintelligent envy. +</P> + +<P> +One day, as I was strolling miserably about, a child came up and spoke +to me. He, like myself, was alone. He was a beautiful child,—a +little boy; he seemed scarcely more than an infant. He appeared to be +in search of some one or of something; his brilliant eyes roved +everywhere; he had a noble little head, and carried himself +courageously. He gave no evidence of fear or sadness at his isolated +position but ran right on,—for he was running when I saw him,—as if +he had gone forth upon some happy, childish errand. +</P> + +<P> +But at sight of me he paused; regarded me a moment with the piercing +candour of childhood, as if he took my moral measure after some +inexplicable personal scale of his own; then came directly and put his +hand into my own. +</P> + +<P> +I grasped it heartily,—who could have helped it?—and lifting the +little fellow in my arms kissed him affectionately, as one does a +pretty stranger child. This seemed to gratify him rather than to +satisfy him; he nestled in my neck, but moved restlessly, slipping to +the ground, and back again into my arms; jabbering incoherently and +pleasantly; seeming to be diverted rather than comforted; ready to +stay, but alert to go; in short, behaving like a baby on a visit. +After awhile the child adjusted himself to the situation; grew quiet, +and clung to me; and at last, putting both his arms about my neck, he +gave the long, sweet sigh of healthy infant weariness, and babbling +something to the general effect that Boy was tired, he dropped into a +sound and happy sleep. +</P> + +<P> +Here, indeed, was a situation! It drew from me the first smile which +had crossed my lips since I had died. What, pray, was I, who seemed to +be of no consequence whatever in this amazing country, and who had more +than I knew how to do in looking after myself, under its mysterious +conditions,—what was I to do with the spirit-baby gone to sleep upon +my neck? +</P> + +<P> +"I must go and find the Orphan Asylum," I 'thought; "doubtless they +have them in this extraordinary civilization. I must take the little +fellow to some women as soon as possible." At this juncture, my friend +Mrs. Faith appeared, making a mock of being out of breath, and laughing +heartily. +</P> + +<P> +"He ran away from me," she merrily explained. "I had the care of him, +and he ran on; he came straight to you. I couldn't hold him. What a +comfort he will be to you!... Why, Doctor! Do you mean to say you +don't know who the child <I>is</I>?" +</P> + +<P> +"It seems to me," she added, with a mother's sublime superiority, "<I>I</I> +should know my own baby! If I were so fortunate as to find one +here!—How much less you know," she proceeded naively, "than I used to +think you did!" +</P> + +<P> +"Did the child <I>die</I>?" I asked, trembling so that I had to put the +little fellow down lest he should fall from my startled arms. "Did +something really ail him that night when his mother—that miserable +night?" +</P> + +<P> +"The child died," she answered gravely. "Dear little Boy! Take him up +again, Doctor. Don't you see? He is uneasy unless you hold him fast." +</P> + +<P> +I took Boy up; I held him close; I kissed him, and I clung to him, and +melted into unintelligible cries above him, never minding Mrs. Faith, +for I quite forgot her. +</P> + +<P> +But what I felt was for my child's poor mother, and all my thought was +for her, and my heart broke for her, that she should be so bereft. +</P> + +<BR> + +<P> +"I should like to know if you suppose for one minute that she wouldn't +<I>rather</I> you would have the little fellow, if he is the least bit of +comfort to you in the world?" +</P> + +<P> +Mrs. Faith said this; she spoke with a kind of lofty, feminine scorn. +</P> + +<P> +"Why, Helen <I>loves</I> you!" she said, superbly. +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="chap13"></A> + +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +CHAPTER XIII +</H3> + +<P> +"I believe," said my old patient, "I believe that was the highest +moment of your life." +</P> + +<P> +A man of my sort seldom comprehends a woman of hers. I did not +understand her, and I told her so, looking at her across the clinging +child. +</P> + +<P> +"There was no self in it!" she answered eagerly. +</P> + +<P> +"Oh," I said indifferently, "is that all?" +</P> + +<P> +"It is everything," replied the wiser spirit, "in the place that we +have come to. It is like a birth. Such a moment has to go on living. +One is never the same after as one was before it. Changes follow. May +the Lord be in them!" +</P> + +<P> +"But stay!" I cried, as she made a signal of farewell, "are you not +going to help me—is nobody going to help me take care of this child?" +</P> + +<P> +She shook her head, smiling; then laughed outright at my perplexity; +and with a merry air of enjoyment in my extraordinary position, she +went her ways and left me. +</P> + +<P> +There now began for me a singular life. Changes followed, as Mrs. +Faith had said. The pains and the privileges of isolation were +possible to me no longer. Action of some sort, communion of some kind +with the world in which I lived, became one of the imperative +necessities about which men do not philosophize. For there was the +boy! Whatever my views about a spiritual state of existence, there +always was the boy. No matter how I had demonstrated the +unreasonableness of living after death, the child was alive. However I +might personally object to my own share of immortality, I was a living +father, with my motherless baby in my arms. +</P> + +<P> +Up to this time I had lived in an indifferent fashion; in the old +world, we should have called it "anyhow." Food I scarcely took, or if +at all, it was to snatch at such wild fruits as grew directly before +me, without regard to their fitness or palatableness; paying, in short, +as little attention to the subject as possible. Home I had none. I +wandered till I was weary of wandering, and rested till I could rest no +more; seeking such shelter as the country afforded me in lonely and +beautiful spots; discontented with what I had, but desiring nothing +further; with my own miserable thoughts for housemates and for +neighbours, and the absence of hope forbidding the presence of energy. +Nothing that I could see interested me. Much or most that I took the +trouble to observe, I should have been frankly obliged to admit that I +did not understand. +</P> + +<P> +The customs of the people bewildered me. Their evident happiness +irritated me. Their activity produced in me only the desire to get out +of sight of it. Their personal health and beauty—for they were a very +comely people—gave me something the kind of nervous shrinking that I +had so often witnessed in the sick, when some buoyant, inconsiderate, +bubbling young creature burst into the room of pain. I felt in the +presence of the universal blessedness about me like some hurt animal, +who cares only to crawl in somewhere and be forgotten. If I drew near, +as I had on several occasions done, to give some attention to the +occupations of the inhabitants, all these feelings were accentuated so +much that I was fain to withdraw before I had studied the subject. +</P> + +<P> +Study there was in that country, and art and industry; even traffic, if +traffic it might be called; it seemed to be an interchange of +possessions, conducted upon principles of the purest consideration for +the public, as opposed to personal welfare. +</P> + +<P> +Homes there were, and the construction of them, and the happiest +natural absorption in their arrangement and management. There were +families and household devotion; parents, children, lovers, neighbours, +friends. I saw schools and other resorts of learning, and what seemed +to be institutions of benevolence and places of worship, a series of +familiar and yet wholly unfamiliar sights. In them all existed a +spirit, even as the spirit of man exists in his earthly body, which was +and willed and acted as that does, and which, like that, defied +analysis. I could perceive at the hastiest glance that these people +conducted themselves upon a set of motives entirely strange to me. +What they were doing—what they were doing it <I>for</I>—I simply did not +know. A great central purpose controlled them, such as controls masses +of men in battle or at public prayer; a powerful and universal Law had +hold of them; they treated it as if they loved it. They seemed to feel +affectionately toward the whole system of things. They loved, and +thought, and wrought straight onward with it; no one put the impediment +of a criticism against it,—no one that I could see or suspect, in all +the place, except my isolated self. They had the air of those engaged +in some sweet and solemn object, common to them all; an object, +evidently set above rather than upon the general level. Their faces +shone with pleasure and with peace. Often they wore a high, devout +look. They never showed an irritated expression, never an anxious nor +that I could see a sad one. It was impossible to deny the marked +nobility of their appearance. +</P> + +<P> +"If this," I thought, "be what is called a spiritual life, I was not +ready to become a spirit." +</P> + +<P> +Now, when my child awaited and called me, as he had begun, in the dear +old days on earth, to learn to do, and like any live human baby +proceeded to give vent to a series of incoherent remarks bearing upon +the fact that Boy would like his supper, I was fain to perceive that +being a spirit did not materially change the relation of a man to the +plainer human duties; and that, whether personally agreeable or no, I +must needs bring myself into some sort of connection with the +civilization about me. I might be a homesick fellow, but the baby was +hungry. I might be at odds with the whole scheme of things, but the +child must have a shelter. I might be a spiritual outcast, but what +was to become of Boy? The heart of the father arose in me; and, +gathering the little fellow to my breast, I set forth quickly to the +nearest town. +</P> + +<P> +Here, after some hesitation, I accosted a stranger, whose appearance +pleased me, and besought his assistance in my perplexity. He was a man +of lofty bearing; his countenance was strong and benign as the western +wind; he had a gentle smile, but eyes which piercingly regarded me. He +was of superior beauty, and conducted himself as one having authority. +He was much occupied, and hastening upon some evidently important +errand; but he stopped at once, and gave his attention to me with the +hearty interest in others characteristic of the people. +</P> + +<P> +"Are you a stranger in the country—but newly come to us?" +</P> + +<P> +"A stranger, sir, but not newly arrived." +</P> + +<P> +"And the child?" +</P> + +<P> +"The child ran into my arms about an hour ago." +</P> + +<P> +"Is the boy yours?" +</P> + +<P> +"He is my only child." +</P> + +<P> +"What do you desire for him?" +</P> + +<P> +"I would fain provide for him those things which a father must desire. +I seek food and shelter. I wish a home, and means of subsistence, and +neighbourhood, and the matters which are necessary to the care and +comfort of an infant. Pray, counsel me. I do not understand the +conditions of life in this remarkable place." +</P> + +<P> +"I do not know that it is of consequence that I should," I added, less +courteously, "but I cannot see the boy deprived. He must be made +comfortable as speedily as possible. I shall be obliged to you for +some suggestion in the matter." +</P> + +<P> +"Come hither," replied the stranger, laconically. Forthwith, he led +me, saying nothing further, and I followed, asking nothing more. +</P> + +<P> +This embarrassed me somewhat, and it was with some discomfort that I +entered the house of entertainment to which I was directed, and asked +for those things which were needful for my child. These were at once +and lavishly provided. It soon proved that I had come to a luxurious +and hospitable place. The people were most sympathetic in their +manner. Boy especially excited the kindest of attention; some women +fondled him, and all the inmates of the house interested themselves in +the little motherless spirit. +</P> + +<P> +In spite of myself this touched me, and my heart warmed toward my +entertainers. +</P> + +<P> +"Tell me," I said, turning toward him who had brought me thither, "how +shall I make compensation for my entertainment? What is the custom of +the country? I—what we used to call property—you will understand +that I necessarily left behind me. I am accustomed to the use of it. +I hardly know what to do without it. I am accustomed to—some +abundance. I wish to remunerate the people of this house." +</P> + +<P> +"What <I>did</I> you bring with you?" asked my new acquaintance, with a +half-sorrowful look, as if he would have helped me out of an unpleasant +position if he could. +</P> + +<P> +"Nothing," I replied, after some thought, "nothing but my misery. That +does not seem to be a marketable commodity in this happy place. I +could spare some, if it were." +</P> + +<P> +"What had you?" pursued my questioner, without noticing my ill-timed +satire. "What were your possessions in the life yonder?" +</P> + +<P> +"Health. Love. Happiness. Home. Prosperity. Work. Fame. Wealth. +Ambition." I numbered these things slowly and bitterly. "None of them +did I bring with me. I have lost them all upon the way. They do not +serve me in this differing civilization." +</P> + +<P> +"Was there by chance nothing more?" +</P> + +<P> +"Nothing more. Unless you count a little incidental usefulness." +</P> + +<P> +"And that?" he queried eagerly. +</P> + +<P> +I therefore explained to him that I had been a very busy doctor; that I +used to think I took pleasure in relieving the misery of the sick, but +that it seemed a mixed matter now, as I looked back upon it,—so much +love of fame, love of power, love of love itself,—and that I did not +put forth my life's work as of importance in his scale of value. +</P> + +<P> +"That would not lessen its value," replied my friend. "I myself was a +healer of the sick. Your case appeals to me. I was known as"— +</P> + +<P> +He whispered a name which gave me a start of pleasure. It was a name +famous in its day, and that a day long before my own; a name immortal +in medical history. Few men in the world had done as much as this one +to lessen the sum of human suffering. It excited me greatly to meet +him. +</P> + +<P> +"But you," I cried, "you were not like the rest of us or the most of +us. <I>You</I> believed in these—invisible things. You were a man of what +is called faith. I have often thought of that. I never laid down a +biography of you without wondering that a man of your intelligence +should retain that superstitious element of character. I ought to beg +your pardon for the adjective. I speak as I have been in the habit of +speaking." +</P> + +<P> +"Do you wonder now?" asked the great surgeon, smiling benignly. I +shook my head. I wondered at nothing now. +</P> + +<P> +But I felt myself incapable of discussing a set of subjects upon which, +for the first time in my life, I now knew myself to be really +uninformed. +</P> + +<P> +I took the pains to explain to my new friend that in matters of what he +would call spiritual import I was, for aught I knew to the contrary, +the most ignorant person in the community. I added that I supposed he +would expect me to feel humiliated by this. +</P> + +<P> +"Do you?" he asked, abruptly. +</P> + +<P> +"It makes me uncomfortable," I replied, candidly. "I don't know that I +can say more than that. I find it embarrassing." +</P> + +<P> +"That is straightforward," said the great physician. "There is at +least no diseased casuistry about you. I do not regard the indications +as unfavourable." +</P> + +<P> +He said this with something of the professional manner; it amused me, +and I smiled. "Take the case, Doctor, if you will," I humbly said. "I +could not have happened on any person to whom I would have been so +willing to intrust it." +</P> + +<P> +"We will consider the question," he said gravely. +</P> + +<P> +In this remarkable community, and under the guidance of this remarkable +man, I now began a difficult and to me astonishing life. The first +thing which happened was not calculated to soothe my personal feeling: +this was no less than the discovery that I really had nothing wherewith +to compensate the citizens who had provided for the comfort of my child +and of myself; in short, that I was no more nor less than an object of +charity at their hands. I writhed under this, as may be well imagined; +and with more impatience than humility urged that I be permitted to +perform some service which at least would bring me into relation with +the commercial system of the country. I was silenced by being gently +asked: What could I do? +</P> + +<P> +"But have you no sick here?" I pleaded, "no hospitals or places of +need? I am not without experience, I may say that I am even not +without attainment, in my profession. Is there no use for it all, in +this state of being which I have come to?" +</P> + +<P> +"Sick we have," replied the surgeon, "and hospitals. I myself am much +occupied in one of these. But the diseases that men bring here are not +of the body. Our patients are chiefly from among the newly arrived, +like yourself; they are those who are at odds with the spirit of the +place; hence they suffer discomfort." +</P> + +<P> +"They do not harmonize with the environment, I suppose," I interrupted +eagerly. I was conscious of a wish to turn the great man's thought +from a personal to a scientific direction. It occurred to me with +dismay that I might be selected yet to become a patient under this +extraordinary system of things. That would be horrible. I could think +of nothing worse. +</P> + +<P> +I proceeded to suggest that if anything could be found for me to do, in +this superior art of healing, or if, indeed, I could study and perfect +myself in it, I was more than willing to learn, or to perform. +</P> + +<P> +"Canst thou heal a sick spirit?" inquired my friend, solemnly. "Canst +thou administer holiness to a sinful soul?" +</P> + +<P> +I bowed my head before him; for I had naught to say. Alas, what art +had I, in that high science so far above me, that my earth-bound gaze +had never reached unto it? +</P> + +<P> +I was not like my friend, who seemed to have carried on the whole range +of his great earthly attainments, by force of what I supposed would +have to be called his spiritual education. Here in this world of +spirits I was an unscientific, uninstructed fellow. +</P> + +<P> +"Give me," I said brokenly, "but the lowliest chance to make an +honourable provision for the comfort of my child in your community. I +ask no more." +</P> + +<P> +The boy ran chattering to me as I said these words, he sprang and +clasped my knees, and clasped my neck, and put his little lips to mine, +and rubbed his warm, moist curls across my cheek, and asked me where +his mother was. And then he crooned my own name over and over again, +and kissed and kissed me, and did stroke me with such pretty excesses +of his little tenderness that I took heart and held him fast, and loved +him and blessed fate for him, as much as if I had not been a spirit; +more than any but a lonely and remorseful spirit could. +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="chap14"></A> + +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +CHAPTER XIV. +</H3> + +<P> +In consequence, as I suspected, of some private influence on the part +of my famous friend, whose importance in this strange world seemed +scarcely below that which he held in the other,—a marked contrast to +my own lot, which had been thus far in utter reversal of every law and +every fact of my earthly life,—a humble position was found for me, +connected with the great institution of healing which he superintended; +and here, for an indefinite time, I worked and served. I found myself +of scarcely more social importance than, let us say, the janitor or +steward in my old hospital at home. This circumstance, however +galling, could no longer surprise me. I had become familiar enough +with the economy of my new surroundings now thoroughly to understand +that I was destitute of the attainments which gave men eminence in +them. I was conscious that I had become an obscure person; nay, more +than this, that I had barely brought with me the requisites for being +tolerated at all in the community. It had begun to be evident to me +that I was fortunate in obtaining any kind of admission to citizenship. +This alone was an experience so novel to me that it was an occupation +in itself, for a time, to adjust myself to it. +</P> + +<P> +I now established myself with my boy in such a home as could be made +for us, under the circumstances. It was far inferior to most of the +homes which I observed about me; but the child lacked no necessary +comfort, and the luxuries of a spiritual civilization I did not +personally crave; they had a foreign air to me, as the customs of the +Tuileries might have had to Pocahontas. +</P> + +<P> +With dull gratitude for such plain possessions as now were granted to +me, I set myself to my daily tasks, and to the care and rearing of my +child. +</P> + +<P> +Work I found an unqualified mercy. It even occurred to me to be +thankful for it, and to desire to express what I felt about it to the +unknown Fate or Force which was controlling my history. I had been all +my life such a busy man that the vacuity of my first experience after +dying had chafed me terribly. To be of no consequence; not to be in +demand; not to be depended upon by a thousand people, and for a +thousand things; not to dash somewhere upon important errands; not to +feel that a minute was a treasure, and that mine were valued as hid +treasures; not to know that my services were superior; to feel the +canker of idleness eat upon me like one of the diseases which I had +considered impossible to my organization; to observe the hours, which +had hitherto been invisible, like rear forces pushing me to the front; +to watch the crippled moments, which had always flown past me like +mocking-birds; to know to the full the absence of movement in life; to +feel deficiency of purpose like paralysis stiffen me; to have no hope +of anything better, and not to know what worse might be before +me,—such had been my first experience of the new life. It had done as +much as this for me: it had fitted me for the humblest form of activity +which my qualifications made possible; it had taught me the elements of +gratitude for an improved condition, as suffering, when it vibrates to +the intermission of relief, teaches cheerfulness to the sick. +</P> + +<P> +An appreciable sense of gratification, which, if it could not be called +pleasure, was at least a diminution of pain, came to me from the +society of my friend, the distinguished man and powerful spirit who had +so befriended me. I admit that I was glad to have a man to deal with; +though I did not therefore feel the less a loyalty to my dear and +faithful patient, whose services to me had been so true and tender. I +missed her. I needed her counsel about the child. I would fain have +spoken to her of many little matters. I watched for her, and wondered +that she came no more to us. Although so new a comer, Mrs. Faith +proved to be a person of position in the place; her name was well and +honourably known about the neighbourhood; and I therefore easily +learned that she was absent on a journey. It was understood that she +had been called to her old home, where for some reason her husband and +her child had need of her. It was her precious privilege to minister +to them, I knew not how; it was left to me to imagine why. Bitterly I +thought of Helen. Between herself and me the awful gates of death had +shut; to pass them, though I would have died again for it,—to pass +them, for one hour, for one moment, for love's sake, for grief's sake, +or for shame's, or for pity's own,—I was forbidden. +</P> + +<P> +I had confided the circumstances of my parting from my wife to no one +of my new acquaintances. In the high order of character pervading +these happy people, such a confession would have borne the proportions +that a crime might in the world below. Bearing my secret in my own +heart, I felt like a felon in this holier society. I cherished it +guiltily and miserably, as solitary people do such things; it seemed to +me like an ache which I should go on bearing for ever. I remembered +how men on earth used to trifle with a phrase called endless +punishment. What worse punishment were there, verily, than the +consciousness of having done the sort of deed that I had? It seemed to +me, as I brooded over it, one of the saddest in the universe. I became +what I should once have readily called "morbid" over this thought. +There seemed to me nothing in the nature of remorse itself which +should, if let alone, ever come to a visible end. My longing for the +forgiveness of my wife gnawed upon me. +</P> + +<P> +Sometimes I tried to remind myself that I was as sure of her love and +of her mercy as the sun was of rising beyond the linden that tapped the +chamber window in my dear lost home; that her unfathomable tenderness, +so far passing the tenderness of women, leaned out, as ready to take me +back to itself as her white arms used to be to take me to her heart, +when I came later than usual, after a hard day's work, tired and +weather-beaten, into the house, hurrying and calling to her. +</P> + +<P> +"Helen? Helen?" +</P> + +<P> +But the anguish of the thought blotted the comfort out of it, till, for +very longing for her, I would fain almost have forgotten her; and then +I would pray never to forget her before I had forgotten, for I loved +her so that I would rather think of her and suffer because of her than +not to think of her at all. In all this memorable and unhappy period, +my boy was the solace of my soul. I gave myself to the care of him +lovingly, and as nearly as I can recollect I did not chafe against the +narrow limits of my lot in that respect. +</P> + +<P> +It occurred to me sometimes that I should once have called this a +humble service to be the visible boundary of a man's life. To what had +all those old attainments come? Command of science? Developed skill? +Public power? Extended fame? All those forms of personality which go +with intellectual position and the use of it? Verily, I was brought to +lowly tasks; we left them to women in the world below. But really, I +think this troubled me less than it might have done; perhaps less than +it should have done. I accepted the strange reversal of my fate as one +accepts any turn of affairs which, he is convinced, is better than he +might have expected. It had begun to be evident to me that it was +better than I had deserved. If I am exceptional in being forced to +admit that this consciousness was a novelty in my experience, the +admission is none the less necessary for that. I had been in the habit +of considering myself rather a good fellow, as a man with no vices in +particular is apt to. I had possessed no standards of life below which +my own fell to an embarrassing point. The situation to which I was now +brought, was not unlike that of one who finds himself in a land where +there are new and delicate instruments for indicating the state of the +weather. I was aware, and knew that my neighbours were, of +fluctuations in the moral atmosphere which had never before come under +my attention. The whole subtle and tremendous force of public +sentiment now bore upon me to make me uneasy before achievements with +which I had hitherto been complacent. It had inconceivable effects to +live in a community where spiritual character formed the sole scale of +social position. +</P> + +<P> +I, who had been always socially distinguished, found myself now exposed +to incessant mortifications, such as spring from the fact that one is +of no consequence. +</P> + +<P> +I should say, however, that I felt this much less for myself than for +my child; indeed, that it was because of Boy that I first felt the fact +at all, or brooded over it after I had begun to feel it. +</P> + +<P> +The little fellow developed rapidly, much faster than children of his +age do in the human life; he ceased to be a baby, and was a little boy +while I was yet wondering what I should do with him when he had +outgrown his infancy. His intellect, his character, his physique, +lifted themselves with a kind of luxuriance of growth, such as plants +show in tropical countries; he blossomed as a thing does which has +every advantage and no hindrance; nature moved magnificently to her +ends in him; it was a delight to watch such vigorous processes; he was +a rich, unthwarted little creature. With all a father's heart and a +physician's sensibility, I was proud of him. +</P> + +<P> +I was proud of him, alas! until I began to perceive that, as matters +were working, the boy was morally certain to be ashamed of me. This +was a hard discovery; and it went hard with me after I had made it. +But nothing could reduce the poignancy of the inquiry with which I had +first gathered him to my heart, in the solitudes where he had found me +lurking: If I were a spiritual outcast, what would become of Boy? +</P> + +<P> +As the child waxed in knowledge and in strength questions like these +dropped from his lips so frequently that they distressed me:— +</P> + +<P> +"Papa, what is God?" +</P> + +<P> +"Papa, who is worship?" +</P> + +<P> +"Tell me how boys pray." +</P> + +<P> +"Is it a kind of game?" +</P> + +<P> +"What is Christ, papa? Is it people's Mother? What is it for?" +</P> + +<BR> + +<P> +My friend, the eminent surgeon, left me much to myself in these +perplexities; regarding my natural reserve, and trusting, I thought, to +nature, or to some Power beyond nature, to assist me. But on one +occasion, happening to be present when the child interrogated me in +this manner, he bent a piercing gaze upon me. +</P> + +<P> +"Why do you not answer the child, Esmerald Thorne?" he asked me in a +voice of authority. +</P> + +<P> +"Alas," I said, "I have no answer. I know nothing of these matters. +They have been so foreign to my temperament, that—I"— +</P> + +<P> +But here I faltered. I felt ashamed of my excuse, and of myself for +offering it. +</P> + +<P> +"It is a trying position for a man to be put in," I ventured to add, +putting an arm about my boy; "naturally, I wish my child to develop in +accordance with the social and educational system of the place." +</P> + +<P> +"Naturally, I should suppose," replied he, dryly. He offered me no +further suggestion on the subject and with some severity of manner +moved to leave me. Now it happened to be the vesper hour in the +hospital, and my visitor was going to his patients, the "sick of soul," +with whom he was wont to join in the evening chant which, at a certain +hour, daily arose from every roof in the wide city, and waxed mightily +to the sides. It was music of a high order, and I always enjoyed it; +no person of any musical taste could have done otherwise. +</P> + +<P> +"Listen!" said my friend, as he turned to depart from me. I had only +to glance at his rapt and noble countenance to perceive the high +acoustic laws which separated his sensibility to the vesper from my +own. To him it was religious expression. To me it was classical music. +</P> + +<P> +While I was thus thinking, from the great wards of the Home of Healing +the prayer went up. The sinful, the sorely stricken, the ungodly, the +ignorant of heavenly mercy, all the diseased of spirit who were +gathered there in search of the soul's health, sang together: not as +the morning-stars which shouted for joy, but like living hearts that +cried for purity; yea, like hearts that so desired it, they would have +broken for it, and blessed God. +</P> + +<P> +"<I>God is a Spirit. God is a Spirit. We would worship Him. We would +worship Him in spirit. Yea, in spirit. And in truth.</I>" +</P> + +<BR> + +<P> +My little boy was playing in the garden, decking himself with the +strange and beautiful flowers which luxuriated in the spot. I remember +that he had tall white lilies and scarlet passion flowers, or something +like them, held above one shoulder, and floating like a banner in the +bright, white air. He was absorbed in his sport, and had the sweet +intentness of expression between the eyes that his mother used to wear. +When the vesper anthems sounded out, the child stopped, and turned his +nobly moulded head toward the unseen singers. A puzzled and afterward +a saddened look clouded his countenance; he listened for a moment, and +then walked slowly to me, trailing the white and scarlet flowers in the +grass behind him as he came. +</P> + +<P> +"Father, teach me how to sing! The other children do. I'm the only +little boy I know that can't sing that nice song. Teach me it!" he +demanded. +</P> + +<P> +"Alas, my son!" I answered, "how can I teach you that which I myself +know not?" +</P> + +<P> +"I thought boys' fathers knew everything," objected the child, bending +his brows severely on me. +</P> + +<P> +A certain constraint, a something not unlike distrust, a subtle barrier +which one could not define, but which one felt the more uncomfortably +for this very reason, after this incident, seemed to arise in the +child's consciousness between himself and me. As docile, as dutiful, +as beautiful as ever, as loving and as lovable, yet the little fellow +would at times withdraw from me and stand off; as if he looked on at +me, and criticised me, and kept his criticism to himself. Verily the +child was growing. He had become a separate soul. In a world of +souls, what was mine—miserable, ignorant, half-developed, wholly +unfit—what was mine to do with his? How was I to foster him? +</P> + +<P> +When I came face to face with the problem of Boy's general education, +this question pressed upon me bitterly. Looking abroad upon the people +and their principles of life, the more I studied them, the more did I +stand perplexed before them. I was in the centre of a vast Theocracy. +Plainly, our community was but one of who knew how many?—governed by +an unseen Being, upon laws of which I knew nothing. The service of +this invisible Monarch vied only with the universal affection for Him. +So far as I could understand the spiritual life at all, it seemed to be +the highest possible development and expression of love. What these +people did that was noble, pure, and fine, they did, not because they +must, but because they would. They believed because they chose. They +were devout because they wished to be. They were unselfish and true, +and what below we should have called "unworldly," because it was the +most natural thing in the world. They seemed so happy, they had such +content in life, that I could have envied them from my soul. +</P> + +<P> +How, now, was I to compass this national kind of happiness for my son? +Misery I could bear; I was sick and sore with it, but I was used to it. +My child must never suffer. Passed beyond the old system of suffering, +why should he? Joy was his birthright in this blessed place. +</P> + +<P> +How was I, being at discord from it, to bring my child into harmony +with it? I was at odds, to start on, with the whole system of +education. The letters, art, science, industry, of the country were of +a sort that I knew not. They were consecrated to ends with which I was +unfamiliar. They were pursued in a spirit incomprehensible to me. +They were dedicated to the interests of a Being, Himself a stranger to +me. Proficiency, superiority, were rated on a scale quite out of my +experience. To be distinguished was to possess high spiritual traits. +Deep at the root of every public custom, of every private deed, there +hid the seed of one universal emotion,—the love of a living soul for +the Being who had created it. +</P> + +<P> +I, who knew not of this feeling, I, who was as a savage among this +intelligence, who was no more than an object of charity at the hands of +this community,—what had I to offer to my son? +</P> + +<P> +A father's personal position? Loving influence? Power to push the +little fellow to the front? A chance to endow him with every social +opportunity, every educational privilege, such as it is a father's +pride to enrich his child wherewith? +</P> + +<P> +Nay, verily. An obscure man ignorant of the learning of the land, +destitute of its wealth, unacquainted among its magnates, and without a +share in its public interests—nothing was I; nothing had I; nothing +could I hope to do, or be, for which my motherless boy should live to +bless his father's name. Stung by such thoughts as these, which +rankled the more in me the longer I cherished them, I betook myself to +brooding and to solitary strolling in quiet places, where I could +ponder on my situation undisturbed. +</P> + +<P> +I was in great intellectual and spiritual stress, less for myself than +for the child; not more for him, than because of his mother. What +would Helen say? +</P> + +<P> +How would she hold me to account for him? How should I meet her—if I +ever saw her face again—to own myself scarcely other than a pauper in +this spiritual kingdom; our child an untaught, unimportant little +fellow, of no more consequence in this place than the <I>gamins</I> of the +street before her door? +</P> + +<BR> + +<P> +In these cold and solitary experiences which many a man has known +before me, and many more will follow after me, the soul is like a +skater, separated from his fellows upon a field of ice. Every movement +that he makes seems to be bearing him farther from the society and the +sympathy of his kind. Too benumbed, perhaps, to turn, he glides on, +helpless as an ice-boat before the wind. Conscious of his mistake, of +his danger, and knowing not how to retract the one or avoid the other, +his helpless motions, seemingly guided by idleness, by madness, or by +folly, lead him to the last place whither he would have led +himself,—the weak spot in the ice. +</P> + +<P> +Suddenly, he falls crashing, and sinks. Then lo! as he goes under, +crying out that he is lost because no man is with him, hands are +down-stretched, swimmers plunge, the crowd gathers, and it seems the +whole world stoops to save him. The sympathy of his kind wanted +nothing but a chance to reach him. +</P> + +<P> +I cannot tell; no man can tell such things; I cannot explain how I came +to do it, or even why I came to do it. But it was on this wise with +me. Being alone one evening in a forest, at twilight, taking counsel +with myself and pondering upon the mystery from which I could not +gather light, these words came into my heart; and when I had cherished +them in my heart for a certain time, I uttered them aloud: +</P> + +<P> +"Thou great God! If there be a God. Reveal Thyself unto my immortal +soul! If I have a soul immortal." +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="chap15"></A> + +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +CHAPTER XV. +</H3> + +<P> +My little boy came flying to me one fair day; he cried out that he had +news for me, that great things were going on in the town. A visitor +was expected, whose promised arrival had set the whole place astir with +joy. The child knew nothing of what or whom he spoke, but I gathered +the impression that some distinguished guest was about to reach us, to +whom the honours of the city would be extended. The matter did not +interest me; I had so little in common with the people; and I was about +to dismiss it idly, when Boy posed me by demanding that I should +personally conduct him through the events of the gala day. He was +unusually insistent about this; for he was a docile little fellow, who +seldom urged his will uncomfortably against my own. But in this case I +could not compromise with him, and half reluctantly I yielded. I had +no sooner done so than an urgent message to the same effect reached me +from my friend the surgeon. +</P> + +<P> +"Go with the current to-day," he wrote; "it sets strongly. Question it +not. Resist it not. Follow and be swept." +</P> + +<P> +Immediately upon this some neighbours came hurriedly in, and spoke with +me of the same matter eagerly. They pleaded with me on no account to +miss the event of the day, upon whose specific nature they were +somewhat reticent. They evinced the warmest possible interest in my +personal relation to it; as people do who possess a happy secret that +they wish, but may not feel at liberty, fully to share with another. +</P> + +<P> +They were excited, and overflowed with happiness. Their very presence +raised my spirits. I could not remember when I had received precisely +this sort of attention from my neighbours; and it was, somehow, a +comfort to me. I should not have supposed that I should value being +made of consequence in this trifling way; yet it warmed my heart. I +felt less desolate than usual, when I took the hand of my happy boy, +and set forth. +</P> + +<P> +The whole vicinity was aroused. Everybody moved in one direction, like +"a current," as my friend had said. Shining, solemn, and joyous faces +filled the streets and fields. The voices of the people were subdued +and sweet. There was no laughter, only smiles, and gentle expectation, +and low consulting together, and some there were who mused apart. The +"sick of soul" were present with the happier folk: these first had a +wistful look, as of those not certain of themselves or of their +welcome; but I saw that they were tenderly regarded by the more +fortunate. I myself was most gently treated; many persons spoke with +me, and I heard expressions of pleasure at my presence. In the crowd, +as we moved on, I began to recognize here and there a face; +acquaintances, whom I had known in the lower life, became visible to +me. Now and then, some one, hastening by, said:— +</P> + +<P> +"Why, Doctor!" and then I would perceive some old patients; the look +which only loving patients wear was on their faces, the old impulse of +trust and gratitude; they would grasp me heartily by the hand; this +touched me; I began to feel a stir of sympathy with the general +excitement; I was glad that I had joined the people. +</P> + +<P> +I pressed the hand of my little boy, who was running and leaping at my +side. He looked confidingly up into my face, and asked me questions +about the day's event; but these I could not answer. +</P> + +<P> +"God knows, my child," I said. "Your father is not a learned man." +</P> + +<P> +As we swept on, the crowd thickened visibly. The current from the city +met streams from the fields, the hills, the forests; all the distance +overflowed; the concourse began to become imposing. Here and there I +observed still other faces that were not strange to me; flashes of +recognition passed between us; some also of my own kin, dead years ago, +I saw, far off, and I felt drawn to them. In the distance, not near +enough to speak with her, shining and smiling, I thought that I +perceived Mrs. Faith, once more. My boy threw kisses to her and +laughed merrily; he was electric with the universal joy; he seemed to +dance upon the air like a tuft of thistledown; to be "light-hearted" +was to be light-bodied; the little fellow's frame seemed to exist only +as the expression of his soul. I thought:— +</P> + +<P> +"If he is properly educated in this place, what a spirit he will make!" +I was amazed to see his capacity for happiness. I thought of his +mother. I wished to be happy, too. +</P> + +<P> +Now, as we moved on toward the plain, the sound of low chanting began +to swell from the crowd. The strain gained in distinctness; power +gathered on it; passion grew in it; prayer ascended from it. I could +not help being moved by this billow of sweet sound. The forms and +faces of the people melted together before my eyes; their outlines +seemed to quiver in the flood of song; it was as if their manifold +personalities blurred in the unity of their feeling; they seemed to me, +as I regarded them, like the presence of one great, glad, loving human +soul. This was their supplication. Thus arose the heavenly song:— +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +"Thou that takest away<BR> +The sins of the world!<BR> +Whosoever believeth<BR> +Shall have life.<BR> +Whosoever believeth on Thee<BR> +Shall have eternal life.<BR> +Thou that takest away<BR> +The sins of the world!<BR> +And givest—and givest<BR> +Eternal life!"<BR> +</P> + +<BR> + +<P> +"I cannot sing that pretty song," said my boy sadly. "There is nobody +to teach me. Father, I wish you <I>were</I> a learned man!" +</P> + +<P> +Now, this smote me to the heart, so that I would even have lifted my +voice and sought to join the chant, for the child's sake, and to +comfort him; but when I would have done so, behold, I could not lift my +soul; it resisted me like a weight too heavy for my lips; for, in this +land, song never rises higher than the level of the soul; there are +fine laws governing this fact whose nature I may not explain, and could +not at that time even understand, but of the fact itself I testify. +</P> + +<P> +"Alas, alas, my son!" I said, "would God I were!" +</P> + +<P> +Now suddenly, while I was conversing with my child, I perceived a stir +among the people, as if they moved to greet some person who was +advancing toward them. I looked in the direction whither all eyes were +turned; but I saw nothing to account for the excitement. While I stood +gazing and wondering, at one movement, as if it were by one heart-heat, +the great throng bowed their heads. Some object, some Presence of +which I could not catch a glimpse, had entered among them. Whispers +ran from lip to lip. I heard men say that He was here, that He was +there, that He was yonder, that He had passed them, that He touched +them. +</P> + +<P> +"He blesseth me!" they murmured. +</P> + +<P> +"And me! And me!" +</P> + +<P> +"Oh, even me!" +</P> + +<P> +I heard low cries of delight and sobs of moving tenderness. I heard +strange, wistful words from the disabled of soul who were among +us,—pleadings for I knew not what, offered to I knew not whom. I +heard words of sorrow and words of utter love, and I saw signs of +shame, and looks of rapture, and attitudes of peace and eager hope. I +saw men kneeling in reverence. I saw them prostrate in petition. I +saw them as if they were clinging affectionately to hands that they +kissed and wept upon. I saw them bowed as one bows before the act of +benediction. +</P> + +<P> +These things I perceived, but alas, I could perceive no more. What +went I out, with the heavenly, happy people, for to see? +</P> + +<P> +Naught, God help me, worse than naught; for mine eyes were holden. +</P> + +<P> +Dark amid that spiritual vision, I stood stricken. Alone in all that +blessedness, was I bereft? +</P> + +<P> +Whom, for very rapture, did they melt to welcome? Whom greeted they, +with that great wave of love, so annihilating to their consciousness of +themselves that I knew when I beheld it, I had never seen the face of +Love before? +</P> + +<P> +Among them all, I stood alone—blind, blind. Them I saw, and their +blessedness, till I was filled with such a sacred envy of it that I +would have suffered some new misery to share it. But He who did move +among them thus royally and thus benignly, who passed from each man to +each man, like the highest longing and the dearest wish of his own +heart, who was to them one knew not whether the more of Master or of +chosen Friend,—Him, alas, I saw not. To me He was denied. No +spiritual optic nerve in me announced His presence. I was blind,—I +was blind. +</P> + +<P> +Overcome by this discovery, I did not notice that my boy had loosened +his hold upon my hand until his little fingers were quite disengaged +from my clasp; and then, turning to speak to him, I found that he had +slipped from me in the crowd. This was so great and the absorption so +universal that no one noticed the mishap; and grateful, indeed, at that +miserable moment, to be unobserved, I went in search of him. +</P> + +<P> +Now, I did not find the child, though I sought long and patiently; and +when I was beginning to feel perplexed, and to wonder what chance could +have befallen him, I turned, and behold, while I had been searching, +the throng had dispersed. +</P> + +<P> +Night was coming on All the citizens were strolling to their homes. +On street, and plain, and hill stirred the shadows of the departing +people. They passed quietly. Every voice was hushed. All the world +was as still as a heart is after prayer. +</P> + +<P> +In the silent purple plain, only I was left alone. Moved by solitude, +which is the soul's sincerity, I yielded myself to strange impulses, +and turning to the spot, where He who was invisible had passed or +seemed to pass, I sought to find upon the ground and in the dusk some +chance imprint of His steps. To do this it was necessary for me to +stoop; and while I was bowed, searching for some least sign of Him, in +the dew and dark, I knew not what wave of shame and sorrow came upon +me, but I fell upon my knees. There was no creature to hear me, and I +spoke aloud, and said:— +</P> + +<P> +"<I>Thou departest from me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord!</I>" ... +</P> + +<P> +"<I>Lord,</I>" I said, "<I>that I may receive my sight!</I>" +</P> + +<P> +I thought I had more to say than this, but when I had uttered these +words no more did follow them. They seemed to fill my soul and flood +it till it overflowed. +</P> + +<P> +And when I had lifted up my eyes, the first sight which did meet them +was the face of my own child. I saw at once that he was quite safe and +happy. But I saw that he was not alone. +</P> + +<P> +One towered above me, strange and dim, who held the little fellow in +His arms. When I cried out to Him, He smiled. And He did give the +child to me, and spoke with me. +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="chap16"></A> + +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +CHAPTER XVI. +</H3> + +<P> +The natural step to knowledge is through faith. Even human science +teaches as much as this. The faith of the scholar in the theoretic +value of his facts precedes his intelligent use of them. Invention +dreams before it does. Discovery believes before it finds. Creation +imagines before it achieves. +</P> + +<P> +Spiritual intelligence, when it came at last, to me, came with +something of the jar of all abnormal processes. The wholesome +movements of trust I had omitted from my soul's economy. The function +of faith was a disused thing in me. Truth had to treat me as an +undeveloped mind. +</P> + +<P> +In the depth of my consciousness, I knew that, come what might, I had +for ever lost the chance to be a symmetrical healthy human creature, +whose spiritual faculties are exercised like his brain or muscle; who +has lived upon the earth, and loved it, and gathered its wealth and +sweetness and love of living into his being, as visible food whereby to +create invisible stature; whose earthly experience has carried him on, +as Nature carries growth—unconsciously, powerfully, perfectly, into a +diviner life. For ever it must remain with me that I had missed the +natural step. +</P> + +<P> +If I say that the realization of knowledge was the first thing to teach +me the value of faith, I shall be understood by those who may have read +this narrative with any sort of sympathy to the present point; and, for +the rest, some wiser, better man than I must write. +</P> + +<P> +I do not address those who follow these pages as I myself should once +have done. I do not hope to make myself intelligible to you, as I +would to God I could! Personal misery is intelligible, and the shock +of belated discovery. But the experience of another in matters of this +kind has not a "scientific" character. +</P> + +<P> +No one can know better than I how my story will be dismissed as +something which is not "a fact." +</P> + +<P> +In the times to be, it is my belief that there shall yet arise a soul, +worthier of the sacred task than I to which shall be given the perilous +and precious commission of interpreter between the visible life and the +life invisible. On this soul high privilege will be bestowed, and +awful opportunity. Through it the deaf shall hear, the dumb shall +speak. The bereaved shall bless it, and the faint of heart shall lean +on it, and those who know not God shall listen to it, and the power of +God shall be upon it. But mine is not that soul. +</P> + +<P> +Even as One who was above man did elect to experience the earthly lot +of man to save him; so one who is a man among men may yet be permitted +to use the heavenly lot in such wise as to comfort them. The first +mission called for superhuman power. The second may need only human +purity. +</P> + +<P> +I now enter upon a turn in my narrative, where my vehicle of +communication begins to fail me. Human language, as employed upon the +earth, has served me to some extent to express those phases of +celestial fact upon which I still looked with earth-blind eyes. With +spiritual vision comes the immediate need of a spiritual vocabulary. +Like most men of my temperament and training, I have been accustomed to +some caution in the use of words. I know not any, which would be +intelligible to the readers of this record, that can serve to express +my experiences onward from this point. +</P> + +<P> +"A man becomes <I>terrestrialized</I> as he grows older," said an unbeliever +of our day, once, to me. +</P> + +<P> +It is at least true that the terrestrial intellect celestializes by the +hardest; and it remains obvious, as it was written, that the things +which are prepared may not enter into the heart of man. +</P> + +<P> +This is only another way of saying that my life from the solemn hour +which I have recorded underwent revolutions too profound for me to +desire to utter them, and that most of my experiences were of a nature +which I lack the means to report. My story draws to a stop, as a cry +of anguish comes to a hush of peace. What word is there to say? +</P> + +<P> +There is, indeed, one. With lips that tremble and praise God, I add it. +</P> + +<BR> + +<P> +At a period not immediately following the event which I have described, +yet not so far beyond it that the time, as I recall it, seemed +wearisome to me, I received a summons to go upon an errand to a distant +place. It was the first time that I had been intrusted with any +business of a wider nature than the care of my own affairs or the +immediate offices of neighbourhood, and I was gratified thereby. I +had, indeed, longed to be counted worthy to perform some special +service at the will of Him who guided all our service, and had +cherished in my secret heart some project of praying that I might be +elected to a special task which had grown, from much musing, dear to +me. I did most deeply desire to become worthy to wear the seal of a +commission to the earth; but I had ceased to urge the selfish cry of my +personal heart-break. I did not pray now for the precious right to +visit my own home, nor weary the Will in which I had learned to confide +with passionate demands for my beloved. I may rather say that I had +come almost to feel that when I was worthy to see Helen I should be +worthy of life eternal; and that I had dropped my love and my longing +and my shame into the Hands of Infinite Love, and seen them close over +these, as over a trust. +</P> + +<P> +The special matter to which I refer was this: I desired to be permitted +to visit human homes, and set myself, as well as I might, to the effort +of cultivating their kindliness. I longed to cherish the sacred graces +of human speech. I wished to emphasize the opportunity of those who +love each other. I groaned within me, till I might teach the +preciousness and the poignancy of <I>words</I>. It seemed to me that if I +might but set the whole force of a man's experience and a spirit's +power to make an irritable scene in loving homes held as degrading as a +blow, that I could say what no man ever said before, and do what no +spirit would ever do again. +</P> + +<P> +If this be called an exaggerated view of a specific case, I can only +say that every human life learns one lesson perfectly, and is qualified +to teach that, and that alone, as no other can. This was mine. +</P> + +<P> +When, therefore, I received the summons to which I have alluded, I +inferred that the wish of my heart had been heard, and I set forth +joyfully, expecting to be sent upon some service of the nature at which +I have hinted. My soul was full of it, and I made haste to depart, +putting no question in the way of my obedience. No information, +indeed, was granted to me beyond the fact that I should follow a +certain course until I came to its apparent end, and there await what +should occur, and act as my heart prompted. The vagueness of this +command stirred my curiosity a little, I confess; but that only added +to the pleasure of the undertaking. It would be difficult to say how +much relief I found in being occupied once again to some purpose, like +a man. But it would be impossible to tell the solemn happiness I had +in being counted fit humbly to fulfil the smallest trust placed in me +by Him who was revealed, at this late, last moment, after all, to me, +unworthy. +</P> + +<P> +I set forth alone. The child was left behind me with a neighbour, for +so I thought the way of wisdom in this matter. Following only the +general directions which I had received, I found myself soon within the +open country toward the region of the hills. As I advanced, the +scenery became familiar to me, and I was not slow to recognize the path +as the one which I myself had trodden on my first entrance to the city +wherein of recent days I had found my home. I stopped to consider this +fact, and to gather landmarks, gazing about me diligently and musing on +my unknown course; for the ways divided before me as foot-paths do in +fields, each looking like all and all like each. While I stood +uncertain, and sensitively anxious to make no mistake, I heard the hit! +hit! of light feet patting the grass behind me, and, turning, saw a +little fellow coming like the morning wind across the plain. His +bright hair blew straight before him, from his forehead. He ran +sturdily. How beautiful he was! +</P> + +<P> +He did not call me nor show the slightest fear lest he should fail to +overtake me. Ha had already learned that love always overtakes the +beloved in that blessed land. +</P> + +<P> +"You forgot your little boy," he said reproachfully, and put his hand +quietly within mine and walked on beside me, and forgot that he had +been forgotten immediately, and looked upward at me radiantly. +</P> + +<P> +Remembering the command to await what should occur, and do as my heart +prompted, I accepted this accident as part of a purpose wiser than my +own, and kissed the little fellow, and we travelled on together. +</P> + +<P> +As we came into the hill country, our way grow wilder and more +desolate. The last of the stray travellers whom we chanced to meet was +now well behind us. In the wide spaces we were quite alone. Behind +us, dim and distant, shimmering like an opal in a haze of fair +half-tints, the city shone. On either side of us, the forest trees +began to tread solemnly, like a vast procession which no man could +number, keeping step to some inaudible march. Before us, the great +crest of the mountains towered dark as death against the upper sky. As +we drew near, the loneliness of these hills was to me as something of +which I had never conceived before. Earth did not hold their likeness, +and my heart had never held their meaning. I could almost have dreaded +them, as we came nearer to them; but the deviation of the paths had +long since ceased. In the desolate country which we were now crossing +choice was removed from conduct. There was but one course for me to +take; I took it unhesitatingly and without fear, which belongs wholly +to the lower life. +</P> + +<P> +As we advanced, the great mountain barrier rose high and higher before +us, till it seemed to shut out the very sky from our sight, and to +crush us apart from all the world—nay, from either world or any, I +could have thought, so desolate and so awful was the spot. But when we +had entered the shadow formed by the mighty range, and had accustomed +our eyes to it for a time, I perceived, not far ahead of me, but in +fact quite near and sudden to the view, a long, dark, sharp defile cut +far into the heart of the hills. The place had an unpleasant look, and +I stopped before it to regard it. It was so grim of aspect and so +assured of outline, like a trap for travellers which had hung there +from all eternity, that I liked it not, and would not that the child +should enter till I had first inspected it. Therefore, I bade him sit +and rest upon a bed of crimson mosses which grew at the feet of a great +rock, and to remain until he saw me turn to him again; and with many +cautions and the most minute directions for his obedience and his +comfort, I left him, and advanced alone. +</P> + +<BR> + +<P> +My way had now grown quite or almost dark. The light of heaven and +earth alike seemed banished from the dreadful spot. As it narrowed, +the footing grew uncertain and slippery, and the air dense and damp. I +had to remind myself that I was now become a being for whom physical +danger had ceased for ever. +</P> + +<P> +"What a place," I thought, "for one less fortunate!" +</P> + +<P> +As these words were in my mind, I lifted my eyes and looked, and saw +that I was not alone in the dark defile. A figure was coming toward +me, slight of build and delicate; yet it had a firm tread, and moved +with well-nigh the balance of a spirit over the rough and giddy way. +As I watched it, I saw that it was a woman. Uncertain for the moment +what to do, I remembered the command. +</P> + +<P> +"Await what shall occur, and do as thy heart prompteth." And +therefore—for my heart prompted me, as a man's must, to be of service +to the woman—I hastened, and advanced, and midway of the place I met +her. +</P> + +<P> +It was now perfectly dark. I could not see her face. +</P> + +<P> +When I would have spoken with her, and given her good cheer, I could +not find my voice. If she said aught to me, I could not hear her. But +I gathered her hands, and held her, and led her on, and shielded her, +and gave her such comfort as a man by strength and silence may give a +woman when she has need of him; and as I supported her and aided her, I +thought of my dear wife, and prayed God that there might be found some +soul of fire and snow—since to me it was denied—to do as much as this +for her in some hour of her unknown need. +</P> + +<P> +But when I had led the woman out into the lighter space, and turned to +look upon her, lo, it was none other. It was she herself. It was my +wife. It was no man's beloved but my own.... +</P> + +<BR> + +<P> +So, then, crying, +</P> + +<P> +"<I>Helen!</I>" +</P> + +<P> +And "Forgive me, Helen!" till the dark place rang with her dear name, I +bowed myself and sunk before her, and could not put forth my hand to +touch her, for I thought of how we parted, and it seemed my heart would +break. +</P> + +<P> +But she said, +</P> + +<P> +"Why, my dear Love! Oh, my poor Love! Did you think I would remember +<I>that</I>?" +</P> + +<P> +And I felt her sacred tears upon my face, and she crept to me—oh, not +royally, not royally, like a wife who was wronged, but like the +sweetest woman in the world, who clung to me because she could not help +it, and would not if she could.... +</P> + +<BR> + +<P> +But when we turned our footsteps toward the light, and came out +together, hand in hand, there was our little boy, at play upon the bed +of crimson moss, and smiling like the face of joy eternal. +</P> + +<P> +So his mother held out her arms, and the child ran into them. And when +we came to ourselves, we blessed Almighty God. +</P> + +<P> +Perceiving that inquiry will be raised touching the means by which I +have been enabled to give this record to the living earth, I have this +reply to make: +</P> + +<P> +That is my secret. Let it remain such. +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<P CLASS="finis"> +THE END. +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<HR> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="chap17"></A> + +<H3 ALIGN="center"> + THE FAMILY GIFT SERIES. +</H3> + +<BR> + +<PRE> + 1 The Swiss Family Robinson. With 200 Engravings. + 2 Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress. Memoir. 100 Illusts. + 3 Robinson Crusoe. Memoir and many Engravings. + 4 Sandford and Merton. With 100 Engravings. + 5 Famous Boys, and How they became Great Men. + 6 Fifty Celebrated Women. With Portraits, &c. + 7 The Gentlemen Adventurers. W. H. G. KINGSTON. + 8 Evenings at Home. With many Illustrations. + 9 The Adventures of Captain Hatteras. + By JULES VERNE. With Coloured Plates. + 10 Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea. + By JULES VERNE. With Coloured Plates. + 11 The Wonderful Travels. By the same. Col. Plates. + 12 The Moon Voyage. JULES VERNE. Coloured Plates. + 13 Getting On in the World. By W. MATHEWS, LL.D. + 14 The Boy's Own Book of Manufactures and + Industries of the World. With 365 Engravings. + 15 Great Inventors: The Sources of their Usefulness, and + the Results of their Efforts. With 109 Engravings. + 16 The Marvels of Nature. With 400 Engravings. + 17 The Boy's Own Sea Stories. With page Engravings. + 18 Grimm's Fairy Tales. With many Illustrations. + 19 Fifty Celebrated Men. With Portraits. + 20 The Wonders of the World. With 123 Engravings. + 21 Triumphs of Perseverance and Enterprise. Illust. + 22 Keble's Christian Year. With page Engravings. + 23 A Face Illumined. By E. P. ROE. + 24 The Scottish Chiefs. By Miss JANE PORTER. + 25 What Can She Do? By E. P. ROE. + 26 Barriers Burned Away. By E. P. ROE. + 27 Opening of a Chestnut Burr. By E. P. ROE. + 28 Orange Blossoms. By T. S. ARTHUR. Illustrated. + 29 Mary Bunyan. By S. R. FORD. + 30 Margaret Catchpole. By Rev. R. COBBOLD. + 31 Julamerk; or, The Converted Jewess. By Mrs. WEBB. + 33 Amy and Hester; or, The Long Holidays. Illustrated. + 34 Edwin and Mary; or, The Mother's Cabinet. Illustrated. + 35 Wonders and Beauties of the Year. H. G. ADAMS. + 36 Modern Society. By CATHERINE SINCLAIR. + 37 Beatrice. By CATHERINE SINCLAIR. + 38 Looking Heavenward: A Series of Tales and Sketches + for the Young. With numerous Illustrations. + 39 Life's Contrasts; or, The Four Homes. Illustrated. + 40 Nature's Gifts, and How we Use Them. Illust. + 41 Pilgrims Heavenward: Counsel and Encouragement. + 42 Children's Hymns and Rhymes. Illustrated. + 43 Preachers and Preaching, in Ancient and Modern + Times. By Rev. HENRY CHRISTMAS. With Portraits. + 44 Character and Culture. By the BISHOP OF DURHAM. + 45 Popular Preachers: Their lives and their Works. + 46 Boy's Handy Book of Games and Sports, Illust. + 47 Boy's Handy Book of Natural History. Illust. + 48 A Knight of the Nineteenth Century. E. P. ROE. + 49 Near to Nature's Heart. By E. P. ROE. + 50 A Day of Fate. By E. P. ROE. + 51 Odd or Even? By Mrs. WHITNEY. + 52 Gutenburg, and the Art of Printing. Illustrated. + 53 Uncle Mark's Money; or, More Ways than One. + 54 Without a Home. By E. P. ROE. + 55 The Arabian Nights' Entertainments. Illustrated. + 56 Andersen's Popular Tales. Illustrated. + 57 Andersen's Popular Stories. Illustrated. + 58 Lion Hunting. By GERARD. Illust. by DORÉ and others. + 59 The Backwoodsman. Ed. by Sir C. F. L. WRAXALL. + 60 The Young Marooners. By F. R. GOULDING. Illust. + 61 The Crusades and Crusaders. By J. G. EDGAR. Do. + 62 Hunting Adventures in Forest and Field. Illust. + 63 The Boy's Book of Modern Travel and Adventure. + 64 Famous People and Famous Places. Illustrated. + 65 Cheerful Homes; How to Get and Keep them. Author + of "Buy your Own Cherries." &c. (Also Cheap Edition) + 66 Helen. By MARIA EDGEWORTH. + 67 Our Helen. By SOPHIE MAY. + 68 The Little Ragamuffins of Outcast London. By the + Author of "A Night in a Workhouse," &c. Illustrated. + 69 Heaven's Messengers: A Series of Stirring Addresses. + 70 From Log Cabin to White House: The Life of General + GARFIELD. Illustrated. + + + WARD, LOCK & CO., London. Melbourne, and New York. +</PRE> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<CENTER> +<IMG SRC="images/img-cat1.jpg" ALT="Catalog page 1" BORDER="" WIDTH="466" HEIGHT="732"> +</CENTER> + +<BR><BR> + +<CENTER> +<IMG SRC="images/img-cat2.jpg" ALT="Catalog page 2" BORDER="" WIDTH="463" HEIGHT="729"> +</CENTER> + +<BR><BR> + +<CENTER> +<IMG SRC="images/img-cat3.jpg" ALT="Catalog page 3" BORDER="" WIDTH="452" HEIGHT="734"> +</CENTER> + +<BR><BR> + +<CENTER> +<IMG SRC="images/img-cat4.jpg" ALT="Catalog page 4" BORDER="" WIDTH="452" HEIGHT="734"> +</CENTER> + +<BR><BR><BR><BR> + + + + + + + + +<pre> + + + + + +End of Project Gutenberg's The Gates Between, by Elizabeth Stuart Phelps + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE GATES BETWEEN *** + +***** This file should be named 30540-h.htm or 30540-h.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + https://www.gutenberg.org/3/0/5/4/30540/ + +Produced by Al Haines + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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