“For in that sleep of death, what dreams may come. Is this one?” was the
vague feeling, rather than thought, of which Helwyze was dimly
conscious, as he lay in what seemed a grave, so cold, so dead he felt;
so powerless and pent, in what he fancied was his coffin. He remembered
the slow rising of a tide of helplessness which chilled his blood and
benumbed his brain, till the last idea to be distinguished was, “I am
dying: shall I meet Gladys?” then came oblivion, and now, what was this?
Something was alive still—something which strove to see, move, speak,
yet could not, till the mist, which obscured every sense, should clear
away. A murmur was in the air, growing clearer every instant, as it rose
and fell, like the muffled sound of waves upon a distant shore.
Presently he recognized human voices, and the words they uttered,—words
which had no meaning, till, like an electric shock, intelligence
returned, bringing with it a great fear.
Olivia was mourning over him, and he felt her tears upon his face; but
it was not this which stung him to sudden life,—it was another voice,
saying, low, but with a terrible distinctness,—
“There is no hope. He may remain so for some years; but sooner or later
the brain will share the paralysis of the body, and leave our poor
friend in a state I grieve to think of.”
“No!” burst from Helwyze, with an effort which seemed to dispel the
trance which held his faculties. Stir he could not, but speak he did,
and opened wide the eyes which had been closed for hours. With the
unutterable relief of one roused from a nightmare he recognized his own
room, Olivia’s tender face bent over him, and his physician holding a
hand that had no feeling in it.
“Not dead yet;” he muttered, with a feeble sort of exultation, adding,
with as feeble a despair and doubt, “but _she_ is. Did I dream that?”
“Alas, no!” and Olivia wiped away her own tears from the forehead which
began to work with the rush of returning memory and thought.
“What does this numbness mean? Why are you here?” he asked, as his eye
went from one face to the other.
“Dear Jasper, it means that you are ill. Stern found you unconscious in
your chair last night. You are much better now, but it alarmed us, for
we thought you dead,” replied Olivia, knowing that he would have the
truth at any cost.
“I remember thinking it was death, and being glad of it. Why did you
bring me back? I had no wish to come.”
She forgave the ingratitude, and went on chafing the cold hand so
tenderly, that Helwyze reproached no more, but, turning to the
physician, demanded, with a trace of the old imperiousness coming back
into his feeble voice,—
“Is this to be the end of it?”
“I fear so, Mr. Helwyze. You will not suffer any more, let that comfort
you.”
“My body may not, but my mind will suffer horribly. Good heavens, man,
do you call this death in life a comfortable end? How long have I got to
lie here watching my wits go?”
“It is impossible to say.”
“But certain, sooner or later?”
“There is a chance,—your brain has been overworked: it must have rest,”
began the doctor, trying to soften the hard facts, since his patient
would have them.
“Rest! kill me at once, then; annihilation would be far better than such
rest as that. I will not lie here waiting for imbecility,—put an end to
this, or let me!” cried Helwyze, struggling to lift his powerless right
hand; and, finding it impossible, he looked about him with an impotent
desperation which wrung Olivia’s heart, and alarmed the physician,
although he had long foreseen this climax.
Both vainly tried to soothe and console; but after that one despairing
appeal Helwyze turned his face to the wall, and lay so for hours.
Asleep, they hoped, but in reality tasting the first bitterness of the
punishment sent upon him as an expiation for the sin of misusing one of
Heaven’s best gifts. No words could describe the terror such a fate had
for him, since intellect had been his god, and he already felt it
tottering to its fall. On what should he lean, if that were taken? where
see any ray of hope to make the present endurable? where find any
resignation to lighten the gloom of such a future?
Restless mind and lawless will, now imprisoned in a helpless body,
preyed on each other like wild creatures caged, finding it impossible to
escape, and as impossible to submit. Death would not have daunted him,
pain he had learned to endure; but this slow decay of his most precious
possession he could not bear, and suffered a new martyrdom infinitely
sharper than the old.
How time went he never knew; for, although merciful unconsciousness was
denied him, his thoughts, like avenging Furies, drove him from one
bitter memory to another, probing his soul as he had probed others, and
tormenting him with an almost supernatural activity of brain before its
long rest began. Ages seemed to pass, while he took no heed of what went
on about him. People came and went, faces bent over him, hands
ministered to him, and voices whispered in the room. He knew all this,
without the desire to do so, longing only to forget and be forgotten,
with an increasing irritation, which slowly brought him back from that
inner world of wordless pain to the outer one, which must be faced, and
in some fashion endured.
Olivia still sat near him, as if she had not stirred, though it was
morning when last he spoke, and now night had come. The familiar room
was dim and still, every thing already ordered for his comfort, and the
brilliant cousin had transformed herself into a quiet nurse. The
rustling silks were replaced by a soft, gray gown; the ornaments all
gone; even the fine hair was half-hidden by the little kerchief of lace
tied over it. Yet never had Olivia been more beautiful; for now the
haughty queen had changed to a sad woman, wearing for her sole ornaments
constancy and love. Worn and weary she looked, but a sort of sorrowful
content was visible, a jealous tenderness, which plainly told that for
her, at least, there was a drop of honey even in the new affliction,
since it made him more her own than ever.
“Poor soul! she promised to be faithful to the death; and she will
be,—even such a death as this.”
A sigh, that was almost a groan, broke from Helwyze as the thought came,
and Olivia was instantly at his side.
“Are you suffering, Jasper? What can I do for you?” she said, with such
a passionate desire to serve or cheer, that he could not but answer,
gently,—
“I am done with pain: teach me to be patient.”
“Oh, if I could! we must learn that together,” she said, feeling with
him how sorely both would need the meek virtue to sustain the life
before them.
“Where is Felix?” asked Helwyze, after lying for a while, with his eyes
upon the fire, as if they would absorb its light and warmth into their
melancholy depths.
“Mourning for Gladys,” replied Olivia, fearing to touch the dangerous
topic, yet anxious to know how the two men stood toward one another; for
something in the manner of the younger, when the elder was mentioned,
made her suspect some stronger, sadder tie between them than the one she
had already guessed.
“Does he know of this?” and Helwyze struck himself a feeble blow with
the one hand which he could use, now lying on his breast.
“Yes.”
“What does he say of me?”
“Nothing.”
“I must see him.”
“You shall. I asked him if he had no word for you, and he answered, with
a strange expression, ‘When I have buried my dead I will come, for the
last time.’”
“How does he look?” questioned Helwyze, curious to see, even through
another’s eyes, the effect of sorrow upon the man whom he had watched so
long and closely.
“Sadly broken; but he is young and sanguine: he will soon forget, and be
happy again; so do not let a thought of him disturb you, Jasper.”
“It does not: we made our bargain, and held each other to it, till he
chose to break it. Let him bear the consequences, as I do.”
“Alas, they fall on him far less heavily than on you! He has all the
world before him where to choose, while you have nothing left—but me.”
He did not seem to hear her, and fell into a gloomy reverie, which she
dared not break, but sat, patiently beguiling her lonely watch with sad
thoughts of the twilight future they were to share together,—a future
which might have been so beautiful and happy, had true love earlier made
them one.
Another day, another night, then there were sounds about the house which
told Helwyze what was passing, without the need of any question. He
asked none; but lay silent for the most part, as if careless or
unconscious of what went on around him. He missed Olivia for an hour,
and when she returned, traces of tears upon her cheeks told him that she
had been to say farewell to Gladys. He had not spoken that name even to
himself; for now an immeasurable space seemed to lie between him and its
gentle owner. She had gone into a world whither he could not follow her.
A veil, invisible, yet impenetrable, separated them for ever, he
believed, and nothing remained to him but a memory that would not die,—a
memory so bitter-sweet, so made up of remorse and reverence, love and
longing, that it seemed to waken his heart from its long sleep, and
kindle in it a spark of the divine fire, whose flame purified while it
consumed; for even in his darkness and desolation he was not forgotten.
Late that day Canaris came, looking like a man escaped from a great
shipwreck, with nothing left him but his life. Unannounced he entered,
and, with the brevity which in moments of strong feeling is more
expressive than eloquence, he said,—
“I am going.”
“Where?” asked Helwyze, conscious that any semblance of friendship, any
word of sympathy, was impossible between them.
“Out into the world again.”
“What will you do?”
“Any _honest_ work I can find.”
“Let me”—
“No! I will take nothing from you. Poor as I came, I will go,—except the
few relics I possess of her.”
A traitorous tremor in the voice which was stern with repressed emotion
warned Canaris to pause there, while his eye turned to Olivia, as if
reminded of some last debt to her. From his breast he drew a little
paper, unfolded it, and took out what looked like a massive ring of
gold; this he laid before her, saying, with a softened mien and accent,—
“You were very kind,—I have nothing else to offer,—let me give you this,
in memory of Gladys.”
Only a tress of sunny hair; but Olivia received the gift as if it were a
very precious one, thanking him, not only with wet eyes, but friendly
words.
“Dear Felix, for her sake let _me_ help you, if I can. Do not go away so
lonely, purposeless, and poor. The world is hard; you will be
disheartened, and turn desperate, with no one to love and hope and work
for.”
“I must help myself. I am poor; but not purposeless, nor alone.
Disheartened I may be: never desperate again; for I _have_ some one to
love and hope and work for. She is waiting for me somewhere: I must make
myself worthy to follow and find her. I have promised; and, God helping
me, I will keep that promise.”
Very humble, yet hopeful, was the voice; and full of a sad courage was
the young man’s altered face,—for out of it the gladness and the bloom
of youth had gone for ever, leaving the strength of a noble purpose to
confront a life which hereafter should be honest, if not happy.
Helwyze had not the infinite patience to work in marble; the power to
chisel even his own divided nature into harmony, like the sculptor, who,
in the likeness of a suffering saint, hewed his own features out of
granite. He could only work in clay, as caprice inspired or circumstance
suggested; forgetting that life’s stream of mixed and molten metals
would flow over his faulty models, fixing unalterably both beauty and
blemish. He had found the youth plastic as clay, had shaped him as he
would; till, tiring of the task, he had been ready to destroy his work.
But the hand of a greater Master had dropped into the furnace the gold
of an enduring love, to brighten the bronze in which suffering and time
were to cast the statue of the _man_. Helwyze saw this now, and a pang
of something sharper than remorse wrung from him the reluctant words,—
“Take, as my last gift, the fame which has cost you so much. I will
never claim it: to me it is an added affliction, to you it may be a
help. Keep it, I implore you, and give me the pardon _she_ asked of
you.”
But Canaris turned on him with the air of one who cries, “Get thee
behind me!” and answered with enough of the old vehemence to prove that
grief had not yet subdued the passionate spirit which had been his
undoing,—
“It is no longer in your power to tempt me, or in mine to be tempted, by
my bosom sin. Forsythe knows the truth, and the world already wonders. I
will earn a better fame for myself: keep this, and enjoy it, if you can.
Pardon I cannot promise yet; but I give you my pity, ‘for her sake.’”
With that—the bitterest word he could have uttered—Canaris was gone,
leaving Helwyze to writhe under the double burden imposed by one more
just than generous. Olivia durst not speak; and, in the silence, both
listened to the hasty footsteps that passed from room to room, till a
door closed loudly, and they knew that Canaris had set forth upon that
long pilgrimage which was in time to lead him up to Gladys.