THE CLOSED LIBRARY.
Whence came the young woman who made her advent in the last chapter? So
fair, so gentle in her manners, and yet with an authority of character
that made itself respected,—how came she to know the aged couple, whose
home was hereafter to be her own?
They knew that she had been the inmate of an Insane Asylum; for there
she had learned to love and protect their only child, who was all the
dearer to them because of her infirmity. They knew that she had entered
this institution, under the care of as good and true a woman as ever
lived, from a keen desire to find some place where her daily bread could
be earned in seclusion, mingled with a gentle wish to benefit humanity
in some way.
The desire to do good to others usually brings its own opportunity, and
Catharine had found that the wish is in itself one of the brightest and
safest steps toward happiness when the soul is troubled.
It had been the destiny of this young creature to mingle with strange
scenes before her character had acquired its natural strength, and
through this fiery furnace her spirit came forth pure and strong as
gold.
From her first entrance into the Asylum a singular fascination drew
Catharine toward this woman, whose madness was full of child-like trust
and poetical refinement. In moments of excitement, Elsie’s mind seemed
burning with thoughts, that in a sane person, capable of conversation
and contiguity, would have produced thrilling poetry.
Her grief had a depth of wild pathos in it that won conviction of its
reality; her sadness was plaintive in its expression as the notes of a
night-bird, when it has no listeners but the quiet stars and motionless
leaves. Her joy was that of a child, wayward and mischievous sometimes,
at others full of graceful wit. But these moods seldom came to brighten
her monotonous existence.
Elsie Ford’s insane life had been, of late, mournfully poetic, helpless,
and gentle. She was possessed by broken fancies and yearning desires for
some far-off object, which she mentioned vaguely and with a confused
strain of affection, always speaking of HIM, but without name. She would
shrink back with a sort of terror when any one inquired directly who
this being was, who wove his memory with her thoughts forever, and yet
seemed a myth even to her.
This gentle frame of mind had come upon Elsie after Catharine had given
up so much of her own life in her behalf. It is not remarkable that a
young creature who had been herself friendless, came to love this woman,
almost as if she had been the child in years that she had become in
mind. Elsie returned this affection in her own wild way, giving through
her heart the love and obedience which her brain could neither
understand nor control.
This change in the condition of Elsie Ford led to a yearning desire in
her aged parents to have her once more under their own roof. It was
admitted by the physician that a residence at home might prove
beneficial to a patient who seemed to be gradually collecting her stray
thoughts into form under the loving guidance of her nurse.
This decision with regard to Elsie Ford had been made about the time of
Mrs. Barr’s death, and the old people, by message and letter, made a
pathetic appeal to Catharine, beseeching her to take up her abode with
them, and still act as a guardian angel to their daughter.
Catharine remembered the dying counsel of her friend, and gladly
accepted the position. Indeed, Elsie Ford was now the only human being
who seemed to connect her with the world. So she followed this one
object of her love, not as a nurse,—that was unnecessary now,—but with
the devotion of a child, or a younger sister, kindly giving up her own
life to another.
Thus, from her long residence in the Insane Asylum, Catharine came with
her patient to make a new home on the Island.
It was like Paradise, that serene abode, full of quietness, and
surrounded with the fresh luxuriance of spring. After the hushed turmoil
of an insane asylum, where the atmosphere was heavy with suppressed
groans, and wild cries sometimes broke the midnight stillness, the
repose of this old house was indeed Heaven.
The old people, with their refined simplicity, so still and almost
caressing in every word and movement, were in gentle harmony with the
place. For the first time in her life, Catharine breathed with a deep,
full sense of enjoyment.
There was a library in the old house, filled with such books as lead to
thought, suggesting grand ideas to the imagination, and strengthening
the reason. An intellect of no ordinary cultivation must have selected
these volumes, for they were in various languages, and each work was of
the choice productions of its nation.
Catharine remarked that none of these volumes had been printed within
the last thirty years, though up to that period the literature of many
nations was gathered. This fact gave her food for thought, and with a
curiosity unnatural to her, she began to conjecture for what purpose and
by whom this rare collection had been made. Why had it been discontinued
so suddenly, and how chanced it that a library of so much value in all
respects had been left untouched, till the dust of years almost obscured
the original richness of the bindings?
Another thing aroused conjecture also. The library was on the
ground-floor, occupying the extreme end of one wing of the building, to
which a large bay-window had been added, filling the room with pure
light and enlarging it at the same time.
When Catharine first entered the room, about a week after her arrival on
the Island, it was buried in darkness, for long wooden shutters were
closed over the windows; and though it was early daylight, when the
fresh, young morning was full of brightness, she was almost repulsed by
the dusty and dim atmosphere.
But she had received permission to visit every part of the house, and
use anything it contained at discretion, for the comfort of herself and
her companion.
With considerable effort she forced open the sashes and flung back the
shutters from the dusty panes. The morning sunshine came up through the
valley in its first golden brightness, and drifting through the pendent
branches of a weeping-elm that sheltered the whole wing, poured itself
in a flood through the window, till dust floated like a cloud of golden
motes all around.
It seemed to her almost like sacrilege, thus to have let in a broad
light on the obscurity of so many years. The bookcases of dark wood,
richly carved and set with plate-glass, took the sudden radiance
gloomily, and glimpses of the gilded bindings came dimly through the
accumulated dust. The bronze medallions that formed centre-pieces over
each case were scarcely discernible, and the crimson hangings upon the
wall behind, though embossed with a deep velvet pattern, seemed faded to
a brown tint.
The two sides of the room were occupied by these bookcases; but on each
side the door, which opened opposite the bay-window, several pictures
were hung, veiled with cobwebs, and their costly frames gleaming out
from wreaths of dust.
Two or three chairs of various patterns stood under these pictures, and
slender bronze statues, each holding a gilded branch for lights in its
hand, poised themselves on either side of the window. In two of these
branches, wax candles, half consumed, still remained, while others had
burned low, leaving the sockets full of wax, now of a dull gray color.
As Catharine looked around, she felt the desolation of the change
oppressive, and half-closed the shutters, thus preserving the partial
gloom which seemed so congenial to the place.
Why was it that this scene of neglected splendor, this treasure of
intellectual wealth, half buried in the past, fell so gloomily on her
spirits? What was the room to her? And why was she there, except to
ascertain what capacities of home comfort the place afforded for her
unfortunate charge?
She could not answer these questions. Her heart beat heavily, and her
eyes grew dim with a sort of foreboding terror, as she looked around.
Yet a strange infatuation kept her in the room. She longed to know what
the books contained, by whom they had been collected, and by whom read.
This curiosity at last overcame the pressure upon her nerves. She arose,
and opening a fold of the shutters again, surveyed the room a second
time. It was early sunrise, and she had a full hour before Elsie would
awake, or the family be abroad.
As the light gradually flooded the room, she became self-possessed and
more resolute. The superstitious sensation, that had at first swept her
nerves, yielded to a feeling of imaginative curiosity. She opened one of
the bookcases almost with a feeling that it had life, and could be
pained with the sharp wrench which she was obliged to give the lock.
As I have said, the books were in various languages, and Catharine could
read but two, her native tongue and French, which she had caught up
almost without effort, by painful associations in early life with
persons to whom that language was most familiar; but she took down the
Italian, German, and Spanish authors, with that vague reverence which we
always feel for a thing beyond our comprehension, and was seized with a
quick thirst of the knowledge they contained.
Here was a new world for the young woman, a world of fresh sensations
and never-ending variety. She had fallen unawares upon a mine of
thought, unappropriated, beautiful thought, from which she might carry
away new life, and not diminish the original stock by a single idea.
Here was happiness! here was a solace for the baffled hopes and
recoiling affections that had burdened her soul so long. She would no
longer seek for joy among the living. The dead had left her the essence
of their lives, and she would read their books, she would learn all
these strange languages. She would live in the past lives of those who
had become benefactors to humanity, by gathering the immortality which
belongs to them from the past, for the benefit of generations yet to
come.
With these aspirations, Catharine turned over the pages of an Italian
poem, that she had taken from the shelves. The very strangeness of the
words had its fascination. She panted to wrestle with her own ignorance,
and overcome it with a single effort.
But a sound in the house awoke Catharine from this train of thought. She
had duties to perform. Life was not given that it might be wasted in
vague dreams and useless expectations. She closed the book, and wandered
around the room, anxious to redeem it from its state of neglect, and yet
reluctant to disturb the repose in which every object had rested so
long.
As she stood, a light breeze swept up the valley and blew one of the
shutters open, filling the room with light again. She noticed, now, a
small mosaic table, half shrouded with a heap of what had been drapery
cast over some object in the centre. Catharine lifted this drapery and
found underneath a gilded bird-cage, which, protected as it had been
from the atmosphere, looked comparatively bright. The bottom was covered
with seed husks, and among them, lay a little heap of gold-tinted
feathers, which seemed like a sleeping canary. But as Catharine bent
over it, her breath disturbed the feathers, and they began to quiver,
while one or two were dislodged and floated softly through the wires.
Again Catharine was saddened. How many years must it have been, since
the poor bird, of which nothing now remained but the plumage, had
starved to death in its cage? Who could have been so cruel? What evil
thing had left all this gloom and desolation behind it?
She lifted the cage softly and wiped the dust from the black marble on
which it stood. With the first sweep of her hand there shone out, from
the glittering stone, a wreath of white jessamine and orange-blossoms,
inlaid into the jetty surface with that exquisite skill known best to
the Florentine artizans. Leaves of malachite, veined with many tints of
green, were interspersed with the blossoms, and all looked fresh and
pure as if the stone mockery had been wrought but yesterday.
Here was a new theme of interest for Catharine. Some bridal garland
seemed to have left its shadow on the stone, only to mock her curiosity.
Surely all these strange and beautiful objects could not have been
gathered for the enjoyment of these two old people; for then they never
would have been so completely left to moulder into ruin.
When conjecture reached this point, she was called from the room by the
low tinkle of a breakfast-bell, which warned her of the hours she had
unconsciously given to this unsatisfactory train of thought. She
hurriedly shook the dust from her garments, and went out with a strange,
guilty feeling, as if she had been intruding into a sacred place.
How pleasantly the old people received her, as she entered the little
breakfast-room that morning; and how could she help the red flush that
rose to her temple, when they kindly inquired what had occupied her all
the morning.
Catharine was about to answer, but a glance from Elsie, who looked
unusually serious and tranquil as she sat by her mother, was an
unaccountable check upon her. There was no meaning in that dark,
mournful look, and Catherine had encountered it a thousand times; but
some unacknowledged intuition kept her silent; she could not force
herself to speak of the room which she had just left.