hospitable meal had been provided for all the villagers of good
character who chose to partake of it. It was a merry party, for even
Fanny, when every one had seen her finery long enough to forget it,
forgot it herself. Thomas was very good-natured about the shawl, and
delighted at the prospect of spending a few days at L----. He and Fanny
talked of the boat-excursions they would have, the shells they would
gather for a grotto in their garden, and the long rambles they would
take by the sea-side, till they wondered how ever they could have been
contented with the prospect of going to their cottage at once.
As the pony-chaise which the good baronet had lent for the day, drove up
to take the bridal party to L----, for John and Sally were also to spend
one day there, the two young ladies came to take leave of their
_protégées_. Laura said, “Good-bye, Sally, I have consulted papa, and
will undertake to allow you four shillings a week as long as Mrs.
Maythorn lives. Here is a sovereign towards expenses; you will not, I am
sure, mind changing your five pound note for the rest.”
Isabel said, “Good-bye, Fanny. I am very, very sorry to disappoint you
of your treat at L----, but I intended to have borrowed the two pounds
of Miss Laura, and I find she cannot lend them to me. Never mind, I am
sure you will be happy enough in your little cottage. I never saw such a
sweet little place as it is.” So the bridal party drove away.
In less than a week the cousins were established in their new abode.
Sally settled and happy; but Fanny, unsettled, always expected the new
carpet, the china tea-set, and the various other alterations that Isabel
had suggested and promised to make. The young lady, however, was
unfortunate with her money. At one time she lost a bank-note; at
another, just as she was counting out money for the Brussels carpet, the
new maid entered to tell her that sundry articles of dress were “past
mending,” and must be immediately replaced. One thing after another
nipped her generous intentions in the bud, and at last she was obliged
to set out for her long-expected journey to France without having done
more towards the fulfilment of her promises than call frequently on
Fanny, to remind her that all her present arrangements were temporary,
and that she should shortly have almost everything new.
“Good-bye, Fanny,” said she at parting; “I shall often write to you,
and send you money. I will not make any distinct promise, for I dare say
I shall be able to do more than I should like to say now.”
Laura had given Sally a great many useful things for her cottage, but
made no promise at parting. She said, “Be sure you write to me, Sally,
from time to time, to say how you are going on, and tell me if you want
help.”
When Isabel was gone, Fanny saw that she must accustom herself to her
cottage as it was, and banish from her mind the idea of the
long-anticipated improvements. It was, however, no easy task. The window
once regarded as bare and comfortless still seemed so, in spite of
Fanny’s reasoning that it was no worse than Sally’s, which always looked
cheerful and pretty. To be sure, John, who did not think of getting
curtains, had trained a honeysuckle over it, still that made but little
show at present. The carpet, too, so long regarded as a coarse temporary
thing, never regained the beauty it first had to the eye of Thomas, as
he laid it down the evening before he took Fanny to the cottage; and
Fanny could never forget, as she arranged her tea-things, that Miss
Isabel had called them “common little things;” so of all the other
pieces of furniture that the young lady had remarked upon. Sally’s house
was, in reality, more homely than her cousin’s, yet as she had never
entertained a wish that it should be better, and as Laura had been
pleased with all its arrangements, she bustled about it with perfect
satisfaction; and even to Fanny it seemed replete with the comfort her
own had always wanted.
At the end of three months Isabel enclosed an order for three pounds to
Fanny, desiring her to get a Brussels carpet, and if there was a
sufficient remainder, to replace the tea seat.
“I would rather,” said Fanny to her cousin, “put up with the old carpet
and china, and get a roll of fine flannel, some coals, an extra blanket
or two, and a cradle for the little one that’s coming, for it will be
cold weather when I am put to bed; but I suppose as Miss Isabel has set
her mind on the carpet and china, I must get them.”
A week or two after John was invited, with his wife and mother, to drink
tea from Fanny’s new china. It was very pretty, so was the carpet, and
so was Fanny making tea, elated with showing her new wealth.
“Is not Miss Isabel generous?” asked she, as she held the milk-pot to be
admired.
“I sometimes wish Miss Laura had as much money to spare,” replied Sally;
“for she lets me lay it out as I please, and I could get a number of
things for three guineas.”
“Fie, Sally,” said her husband; “are not three shillings to spend as one
pleases, better than three guineas laid out to please some one else?”
“Nonsense, John,” said Fanny, pettishly; “how can a carpet for my
kitchen be bought to please any one but me?”
“John isn’t far wrong either,” answered her husband; “but the carpet is
very handsome, and does please you and me too, now it is here.”
Time passed on, and Fanny gave birth to a little girl. Isabel stood
sponsor for her by proxy, sending her an embroidered cloak and lace cap,
and desiring that she should be called by her own name. Little Bella was
very sickly, and as her mother had not been able to procure her good
warm clothing, or lay in a large stock of firing, she suffered greatly
from cold during the severe winter that followed her birth. The spring
and summer did not bring her better health; and as Fanny always
attributed her delicacy to the want of proper warmth in her infancy, she
took a great dislike to the Brussels carpet, which now lay in a roll
behind a large chest, having been long ago taken up as a piece of
inconvenient luxury in a kitchen. “I wish you could find a corner for it
in your cottage, Sally,” said she, “for I never catch a sight of it
without worrying myself to think how much flannels and coals I might
have bought with the money it cost.”
Laura frequently sent Sally small presents of money, but Isabel, though
not so regular as her sister, surprised every one by the splendor of
her presents, when they did come. As Bella entered her second year she
received from her godmother a beautiful little carriage, which Thomas
said must have “spoilt a five-pound note.” This was Isabel’s last gift,
for it was at about this time that she accepted an offer from a French
count, and became so absorbed in her own affairs, that she forgot Fanny
and Bella too. Poor Bella grew more and more sickly every month; the
apothecary ordered her beef tea, arrowroot, and other strengthening
diet, but work was slack with Thomas, and it was with difficulty that he
could procure her the commonest food. “I am sure,” said Fanny to her
cousin, as little Bella was whining on her knee, “that if only Miss
Isabel were here, she would set us all right. She never could bear to
see even a stranger in distress.”
“I wish,” said Thomas, “that great folks would think a little of what
they don’t see. I’ll lay anything Miss Isabel gives away a deal of
money, more than enough to save our little one, to a set of French
impostors that cry after her in the street, and yet, when she knows our
child is ill, she never cares, because she can’t see it grow thin, or
hear it cry.”
“For shame, Thomas,” said his wife, “do not speak so rudely of the young
lady. Have you forgotten the pretty carriage she sent Bella, and how
pleased we were when it came?”
“I don’t mean any harm,” answered her husband; “only it strikes me that
Miss was pleased to buy the carriage because it was pretty, and seemed a
great thing to send us, and that she wouldn’t have cared a straw to give
us a little cash, that would have served us every bit as well.”
“I never heard you so ungrateful, Thomas. Of course she wouldn’t,
because she wished to please us.”
“Or herself, as John said; but maybe I am wrong; only it goes to my
heart to see the child want food while there is a filagree carriage in
the yard that cost more than would keep her for six months.”
“Well, cheer up,” said Sally; “Miss Laura will be coming home soon, and
I’ll lay anything she won’t let Bella die of want.”
“I’m afraid she won’t think of giving to me, Sally,” said Fanny
despondingly; “I was never her maid, you know.”
“You wouldn’t fear, if you knew Miss Laura as I do, Fanny; she never
cares who she helps so long as the person is deserving, and in want. She
has no pride of that sort.”
Isabel’s marriage was put off, and Laura’s return, consequently,
postponed. As Bella grew worse every day, and yet no help came, the
unselfish Sally wrote to her patroness, telling her of poor Fanny’s
distress, and begging her either to send her help, or speak on her
behalf to her sister.
Isabel was dressing for a party when Laura showed her Sally’s letter.
“Poor Fanny,” said she, “I wish I had known it before I bought this
wreath. I have, absolutely, not a half-franc in the world. Will you buy
the wreath of me at half-price, it has not even been taken from its
box.”
“I do not want it,” said Laura, “but I will lend you some money.”
“No, I cannot borrow more,” said her sister despondingly. “I owe you
already for the flowers, the brooch, the bill you paid yesterday, and I
know not what else besides; but I will tell Eugène there is a poor
Englishwoman in distress, I am sure he will send her something.”
Eugène gave her a five-franc piece.
It was late one frosty evening when Sally ran across to her cousin’s
cottage, delighted to be the bearer of the long hoped-for letter. Fanny
was sitting on the fender before a small fire, hugging her darling to
her breast, and breathing on its little face to make the air warmer.
“I’m afraid,” said she, in answer to Sally’s inquiries, “that the child
won’t be here long;” and she wiped away a few hot tears that had forced
their way as she sat listening to the low moans of the little sufferer.
“But I have good news for you,” said her cousin, cheerfully. “Here is a
letter from Miss Isabel at last. I would not tell you before, but I
wrote to Miss Laura, saying how you were expecting every week to be put
to bed again, and how Bella was wasting away, and see, I was right about
her, she has sent you a sovereign, and her sister’s letter, no-doubt,
contains a pretty sum.”
Fanny started up, and could scarcely breathe as she broke the seal. What
was her disappointment on seeing an order for five shillings!
“I am very sorry, my good Fanny,” said Isabel, “that just now I have no
money. A charitable gentleman sends you five shillings, and as soon as I
possibly can, I will let you have a large sum. I have not yet paid for
the carriage I sent you, and as the bill has been given me several
times, I must discharge it before I send away more money. I hope that by
this time, little Bella is better.”
Fanny laid her child upon the bed, and putting her face by its side,
shed bitter tears. Sally did not speak, and so both remained till Thomas
came in from his work. Fanny would have hidden the letter from him, but
he saw and seized it in a moment.
“Five guineas for a carriage, and five shillings for a child’s life,”
said he with a sneer, as he laid it down. “Do not look for the large
sum, Fanny, you won’t get it; but I will work hard, and bury the child
decently.”
Fanny felt no inclination to defend her mistress. For the first time, it
occurred to her that Thomas and John might be right in their judgment of
her. She raised Bella, as Thomas, who had been twisting up the money
order, was about to throw it in the fire. He caught a sight of the
child’s wan face, and, advancing to the bed, said, in a softened tone,
“Do you know father, pretty one?” and as Bella smiled faintly, he added,
“I will do anything for your sake. Here, Fanny, take the money, and get
the child something nourishing.”
Bella seemed to revive from getting better food; and the apothecary held
out great hope of her ultimate recovery, if the improved diet could be
continued; but expenses fell heavily on Thomas, Fanny was put to bed
with a fine strong little boy, and, although Sally and Mrs. Maythorn
devoted themselves to her and Bella, the anxiety she suffered from
being separated from her invalid child, added to her former constant
uneasiness, and want of proper food, brought on a fever that threatened
her life. In a few days she became quite delirious. During this time
Isabel was married, and Laura returned to England.
When Fanny regained her consciousness she was in the dark, but she could
see some one standing by the window. On her speaking the person advanced
to her side. “Do not be startled to find me here,” said a sweet soft
voice. “Sally has watched by your side for three nights, and when I came
this evening she looked so ill that I insisted on her going to bed;
then, as we could find no one on whose care and watchfulness we could
depend, I took her place. You have been in a sound sleep. Dr. Hart said
you would wake up much better. Are you better?”
“Yes, ma’am, a deal better; but where am I, and who is it with me?”
“You are in your own pretty cottage, and Miss Laura is with you. You
expected me home, did you not?”
“Oh, thank God; who sent you, dear Miss Laura? How is--but may-be I had
best not ask just while I am so weak. Is the dear boy well?”
“Yes, quite well; and Bella is much better. I have sent her for a few
days to L----, with Mrs. Maythorn; the sea air will do her good.”
“Oh, thank you--thank you--dear young lady, for the thought. I seem so
bound up in that dear child, that nothing could comfort me for her loss.
How good and kind you are, Miss--you do all so well and so quietly!”
“Yes, Fanny, dear,” said Thomas, coming from behind the curtain and
stooping to kiss his wife. “Miss Laura has saved you and Bella, and me,
too, for I couldn’t have lived if you had died; and has found me work;
and all without making one great present, or doing anything one could
speak about. I’ll tell you what it is, wife, dear, Miss Isabel does all
for the best, but it is just as she feels at the moment. Now Miss
Laura--if I may be so bold to speak, Miss--Miss Laura does not give to
please her own feelings, but to do good. I can’t say it well, but do you
say it for me, Miss; I want Fanny to know the right words, to teach the
little ones by-and-by. You know what I wish to say, Miss Laura.”
“Yes, Thomas,” said Laura, blushing, “but I do not say you are right.
You mean, I think, that my sister acts from impulse, and I from
principle. Is that it?”
“I suppose that’s it, Miss,” said Thomas, considering, and apparently
not quite satisfied.
“You have no harder meaning, I am sure,” said Laura, quietly, “because I
love my sister very much.”
“Certainly not, Miss,” returned Thomas. “But, myself, if I may take the
liberty of gratefully saying so, I prefer to be acted to on principle,
and think it a good deal better than impulse.”
V.
Bed.
“Oh, Sleep! it is a gentle thing,
Beloved from pole to pole!”
Was the heart’s cry of the Ancient Mariner at the recollection of the
blessed moment when the fearful curse of life in death fell off him, and
the heavenly sleep first “slid into his soul.” “Blessings on sleep!”
said honest Sancho Panza: “it wraps one all around like a mantle!”--a
mantle for the weary human frame, lined softly, as with the down of the
eider-duck, and redolent of the soothing odors of the poppy. The fabled
cave of Sleep was in the land of Darkness. No ray of the sun, or moon,
or stars, ever broke upon that night without a dawn. The breath of
somniferous flowers floated in on the still air from the grotto’s
mouth. Black curtains hung round the ever-sleeping god; the Dreams stood
around his couch; Silence kept watch at the portals. Take the winged
Dreams from the picture, and what is left? The sleep of matter.
The dreams that come floating through our sleep, and fill the dormitory
with visions of love or terror--what are they? Random freaks of the
fancy? Or is sleep but one long dream, of which we see only fragments,
and remember still less? Who shall explain the mystery of that loosening
of the soul and body, of which night after night whispers to us, but
which day after day is unthought of? Reverie, sleep, trance--such are
the stages between the world of man and the world of spirits. Dreaming
but deepens as we advance. Reverie deepens into the dreams of
sleep--sleep into trance--trance borders on death. As the soul retires
from the outer senses, as it escapes from the trammels of the flesh, it
lives with increased power within. Spirit grows more spirit-like as
matter slumbers. We can follow the development up to the last stage.
What is beyond?
“And in that _sleep of death_, what dreams may come!”
says Hamlet--pausing on the brink of eternity, and vainly striving to
scan the inscrutable. Trance is an awful counterpart of sleep and
death--mysterious in itself, appalling in its hazards. Day after day
noise has been hushed in the dormitory--month after month it has seen a
human frame grow weaker and weaker, wanner, more deathlike, till the
hues of the grave colored the face of the living. And now he lies,
motionless, pulseless, breathless. It is not sleep--is it death?
Leigh Hunt is said to have perpetrated a very bad pun connected with the
dormitory, and which made Charles Lamb laugh immoderately. Going home
together late one night, the latter repeated the well-known proverb, “A
home’s a home, however homely.” “Ay,” added Hunt, “and a bed’s a bed,
however _bedly_.” It is a strange thing, a bed. Somebody has called it a
bundle of paradoxes; we go to it reluctantly, and leave it with regret.
Once within the downy precincts of the four posts, how loth we are to
make our exodus into the wilderness of life. We are as enamored of our
curtained dwelling as if it were the land of Goshen or the cave of
Circe. And how many fervent vows have those dumb posts heard broken!
every fresh perjury rising to join its cloud of hovering fellows, each
morning weighing heavier and heavier on our sluggard eyelids. A caustic
proverb says,--we are all “good risers at night;” but woe’s me for our
agility in the morning. It is a failing of our species, ever ready to
break out in all of us, and in some only vanquished after a struggle
painful as the sundering of bone and marrow. The Great Frederic of
Prussia found it easier, in after life, to rout the French and
Austrians, than in youth to resist the seductions of sleep. After many
single-handed attempts at reformation, he had at last to call to his
assistance an old domestic, whom he charged, on pain of dismissal, to
pull him out of bed every morning at two o’clock. The plan succeeded,
as it deserved to succeed. All men of action are impressed with the
importance of early rising. “When you begin to turn in bed, its time to
turn out,” says the old Duke; and we believe his practice has been in
accordance with his precept. Literary men--among whom, as Bulwer says, a
certain indolence seems almost constitutional--are not so clear upon
this point: they are divided between Night and Morning, though the best
authorities seem in favor of the latter. Early rising is the best
_elixir vitæ_: it is the only lengthener of life that man has ever
devised. By its aid the great Buffon was able to spend half a
century--an ordinary lifetime--at his desk; and yet had time to be the
most modish of all the philosophers who then graced the gay metropolis
of France.
Sleep is a treasure and a pleasure; and, as you love it, guard it
warily. Over-indulgence is ever suicidal, and destroys the pleasure it
means to gratify. The natural times for our lying down and rising up are
plain enough. Nature teaches us, and unsophisticated mankind followed
her. Singing birds and opening flowers hail the sunrise, and the hush of
groves and the closed eyelids of the parterre mark his setting. But “man
hath sought out many inventions.” We prolong our days into the depths of
night, and our nights into the splendor of day. It is a strange result
of civilization! It is not merely occasioned by that thirst for varied
amusement which characterizes an advanced stage of society--it is not
that theatres, balls, dancing, masquerades, require an artificial light,
for all these are or have been equally enjoyed elsewhere beneath the eye
of day. What is the cause, we really are not philosopher enough to say;
but the prevalence of the habit must have given no little pungency to
honest Benjamin Franklin’s joke, when, one summer, he announced to the
Parisians as a great discovery--that the sun rose each morning at four
o’clock; and that, whereas, they burnt no end of candles by sitting up
at night, they might rise in the morning and have light for nothing.
Franklin’s “discovery,” we dare say, produced a laugh at the time, and
things went on as before. Indeed, so universal is this artificial
division of day and night, and so interwoven with it are the social
habits, that we shudder at the very idea of returning to the natural
order of things. A Robespierre could not carry through so stupendous a
revolution. Nothing less than an avatar of Siva the destroyer--Siva
with his hundred arms, turning off as many gas-pipes, and replenishing
his necklace of human skulls by decapitating the leading
conservatives--could have any chance of success; and, ten to one, with
our gassy splendors, and seducing glitter, we should convert that pagan
devil ere half his work was done.
But of all the inventions which perverse ingenuity has sought out, the
most incongruous, the most heretical against both nature and art, is
reading in bed. Turning rest into labor, learning into ridicule. A man
had better be up. He is spoiling two most excellent things by attempting
to join them. Study and sleep--how incongruous! It is an idle coupling
of opposites, and shocks a sensible man as much as if he were to meet
in the woods the apparition of a winged elephant. Only fancy an elderly
or middle-aged man (for youth is generally orthodox on this point),
sitting up in bed, spectacles on his nose, a Kilmarnock on his head, and
his flannel jacket round his shivering shoulders,--doing what? Reading?
It may be so--but he winks so often, possibly from the glare of the
candle, and the glasses now and then slip so far down on his nose, and
his hand now and then holds the volume so unsteadily, that if he himself
didn’t assure us to the contrary, we should suppose him half asleep. We
are sure it must be a great relief to him when the neglected book at
last tumbles out of bed to such a distance that he cannot recover it.
Nevertheless, we have heard this extraordinary custom excused on the no
less extraordinary ground of its being a soporific. For those who
require such things, Marryat gives a much simpler recipe--namely, to
mentally repeat any scraps of poetry you can recollect; if your own, so
much the better. The monks of old, in a similar emergency, used to
repeat the seven Penitential Psalms. Either of these plans, we doubt
not, will be found equally efficacious, if one is able to use them--if
anxiety of mind does not divert him from his task, or the lassitude of
illness disable him for attempting it. Sleep, alas! is at times fickle
and coy; and, like most sublunary friends, forsakes us when most wanted.
Reading in that repertory of many curious things, the “Book of the
Farm,” we one day met with the statement that “a pillow of hops will
ensure sleep to a patient in a delirious fever when every other
expedient fails.” We made a note of it. Heaven forbid that the recipe
should ever be needed for us or ours! but the words struck a chord of
sympathy in our heart with such poor sufferers, and we saddened with the
dread of that awful visitation. The fever of delirium! when incoherent
words wander on the lips of genius; when the sufferer stares strangely
and vacantly on his ministering friends, or starts with freezing horror
from the arms of familiar love! Ah! what a dread tenant has the
dormitory then. No food taken for the body, no sleep for the brain! a
human being surging with diabolic strength against his keepers--a human
frame gifted with superhuman vigor only the more rapidly to destroy
itself! Less fearful to the eye, but more harrowing to the soul, is the
dormitory whose walls enclose the sleepless victim of Remorse. No
poppies or mandragora for him! His malady ends only with the fever of
life. _Ends?_ Grief, anxiety, “the thousand several ills that flesh is
heir to,” pass away before the lapse of time or the soothings of love,
and sleep once more folds its dove-like wings above the couch.