XI

You will know, perhaps, in the course of half an hour's reading, what

has been haunting my hours of sleep and waking for months. I cannot

tell, of course, whether you are a nervous person or not. If, however,

you are such a person,--if it is late at night,--if all the rest of the

household have gone off to bed,--if the wind is shaking your windows as

if a human hand were rattling the sashes,--if your candle or lamp is low

and will soon burn out,--let me advise you to take up some good quiet

sleepy volume, or attack the “Critical Notices” of the last Quarterly

and leave this to be read by daylight, with cheerful voices round, and

people near by who would hear you, if you slid from your chair and came

down in a lump on the floor.

I do not say that your heart will beat as mine did, I am willing to

confess, when I entered the dim chamber. Did I not tell you that I was

sensitive and imaginative, and that I had lain awake with thinking what

were the strange movements and sounds which I heard late at night in my

little neighbor's apartment? It had come to that pass that I was truly

unable to separate what I had really heard from what I had dreamed in

those nightmares to which I have been subject, as before mentioned. So,

when I walked into the room, and Bridget, turning back, closed the door

and left me alone with its tenant, I do believe you could have grated a

nutmeg on my skin, such a “goose-flesh” shiver ran over it. It was not

fear, but what I call nervousness,--unreasoning, but irresistible; as

when, for instance, one looking at the sun going down says, “I will

count fifty before it disappears”; and as he goes on and it becomes

doubtful whether he will reach the number, he gets strangely flurried,

and his imagination pictures life and death and heaven and hell as the

issues depending on the completion or non-completion of the fifty he is

counting. Extreme curiosity will excite some people as much as fear, or

what resembles fear, acts on some other less impressible natures.

I may find myself in the midst of strange facts in this little

conjurer's room. Or, again, there may be nothing in this poor invalid's

chamber but some old furniture, such as they say came over in the

Mayflower. All this is just what I mean to, find out while I am looking

at the Little Gentleman, who has suddenly become my patient. The

simplest things turn out to be unfathomable mysteries; the most

mysterious appearances prove to be the most commonplace objects in

disguise.

I wonder whether the boys who live in Roxbury and Dorchester are ever

moved to tears or filled with silent awe as they look upon the rocks

and fragments of “puddingstone” abounding in those localities. I have

my suspicions that those boys “heave a stone” or “fire a brickbat,”

composed of the conglomerate just mentioned, without any more tearful or

philosophical contemplations than boys of less favored regions expend on

the same performance. Yet a lump of puddingstone is a thing to look at,

to think about, to study over, to dream upon, to go crazy with, to beat

one's brains out against. Look at that pebble in it. From what cliff was

it broken? On what beach rolled by the waves of what ocean? How and

when imbedded in soft ooze, which itself became stone, and by-and-by

was lifted into bald summits and steep cliffs, such as you may see on

Meetinghouse-Hill any day--yes, and mark the scratches on their faces

left when the boulder-carrying glaciers planed the surface of the

continent with such rough tools that the storms have not worn the marks

out of it with all the polishing of ever so many thousand years?

Or as you pass a roadside ditch or pool in springtime, take from it any

bit of stick or straw which has lain undisturbed for a time. Some little

worm-shaped masses of clear jelly containing specks are fastened to

the stick: eggs of a small snail-like shell-fish. One of these specks

magnified proves to be a crystalline sphere with an opaque mass in its

centre. And while you are looking, the opaque mass begins to stir, and

by-and-by slowly to turn upon its axis like a forming planet,--life

beginning in the microcosm, as in the great worlds of the firmament,

with the revolution that turns the surface in ceaseless round to the

source of life and light.

A pebble and the spawn of a mollusk! Before you have solved their

mysteries, this earth where you first saw them may be a vitrified slag,

or a vapor diffused through the planetary spaces. Mysteries are common

enough, at any rate, whatever the boys in Roxbury and Dorchester think

of “brickbats” and the spawn of creatures that live in roadside puddles.

But then a great many seeming mysteries are relatively perfectly plain,

when we can get at them so as to turn them over. How many ghosts that

“thick men's blood with cold” prove to be shirts hung out to dry!

How many mermaids have been made out of seals! How many times have

horse-mackerels been taken for the sea-serpent!

--Let me take the whole matter coolly, while I see what is the matter

with the patient. That is what I say to myself, as I draw a chair to the

bedside. The bed is an old-fashioned, dark mahogany four-poster. It was

never that which made the noise of something moving. It is too heavy to

be pushed about the room.--The Little Gentleman was sitting, bolstered

up by pillows, with his hands clasped and their united palms resting

on the back of the head, one of the three or four positions specially

affected by persons whose breathing is difficult from disease of the

heart or other causes.

Sit down, Sir,--he said,--sit down! I have come to the hill Difficulty,

Sir, and am fighting my way up.--His speech was laborious and

interrupted.

Don't talk,--I said,--except to answer my questions.--And I proceeded

to “prospect” for the marks of some local mischief, which you know is

at the bottom of all these attacks, though we do not always find it.

I suppose I go to work pretty much like other professional folks of my

temperament. Thus:

Wrist, if you please.--I was on his right side, but he presented his

left wrist, crossing it over the other.--I begin to count, holding watch

in left hand. One, two, three, four,--What a handsome hand! wonder if

that splendid stone is a carbuncle.--One, two, three, four, five, six,

seven,--Can't see much, it is so dark, except one white object.--One,

two, three, four,--Hang it! eighty or ninety in the minute, I

guess.--Tongue, if you please.--Tongue is put out. Forget to look at it,

or, rather, to take any particular notice of it;--but what is that white

object, with the long arm stretching up as if pointing to the sky,

just as Vesalius and Spigelius and those old fellows used to put their

skeletons? I don't think anything of such objects, you know; but what

should he have it in his chamber for? As I had found his pulse irregular

and intermittent, I took out a stethoscope, which is a pocket-spyglass

for looking into people's chests with your ears, and laid it over the

place where the heart beats. I missed the usual beat of the organ.--How

is this?--I said,--where is your heart gone to?--He took the stethoscope

and shifted it across to the right side; there was a displacement of the

organ.--I am ill-packed,--he said;--there was no room for my heart in

its place as it is with other men.--God help him!

It is hard to draw the line between scientific curiosity and the desire

for the patient's sake to learn all the details of his condition. I must

look at this patient's chest, and thump it and listen to it. For this is

a case of ectopia cordis, my boy,--displacement of the heart; and it

is n't every day you get a chance to overhaul such an interesting

malformation. And so I managed to do my duty and satisfy my curiosity

at the same time. The torso was slight and deformed; the right arm

attenuated,--the left full, round, and of perfect symmetry. It had

run away with the life of the other limbs,--a common trick enough of

Nature's, as I told you before. If you see a man with legs withered from

childhood, keep out of the way of his arms, if you have a quarrel with

him. He has the strength of four limbs in two; and if he strikes you, it

is an arm-blow plus a kick administered from the shoulder instead of the

haunch, where it should have started from.

Still examining him as a patient, I kept my eyes about me to search

all parts of the chamber and went on with the double process, as

before.--Heart hits as hard as a fist,--bellows-sound over mitral valves

(professional terms you need not attend to).--What the deuse is that

long case for? Got his witch grandmother mummied in it? And three big

mahogany presses,--hey?--A diabolical suspicion came over me which I had

had once before,--that he might be one of our modern alchemists,--you

understand, make gold, you know, or what looks like it, sometimes with

the head of a king or queen or of Liberty to embellish one side of the

piece.--Don't I remember hearing him shut a door and lock it once? What

do you think was kept under that lock? Let's have another look at his

hand, to see if there are any calluses.

One can tell a man's business, if it is a handicraft, very often by

just taking a look at his open hand. Ah! Four calluses at the end of the

fingers of the right hand. None on those of the left. Ah, ha! What do

those mean?

All this seems longer in the telling, of course, than it was in fact.

While I was making these observations of the objects around me, I was

also forming my opinion as to the kind of case with which I had to deal.

There are three wicks, you know, to the lamp of a man's life: brain,

blood, and breath. Press the brain a little, its light goes out,

followed by both the others. Stop the heart a minute and out go all

three of the wicks. Choke the air out of the lungs, and presently the

fluid ceases to supply the other centres of flame, and all is

soon stagnation, cold, and darkness. The “tripod of life” a French

physiologist called these three organs. It is all clear enough which leg

of the tripod is going to break down here. I could tell you exactly

what the difficulty is;--which would be as intelligible and amusing as a

watchmaker's description of a diseased timekeeper to a ploughman. It is

enough to say, that I found just what I expected to, and that I think

this attack is only the prelude of more serious consequences,--which

expression means you very well know what.

And now the secrets of this life hanging on a thread must surely come

out. If I have made a mystery where there was none, my suspicions will

be shamed, as they have often been before. If there is anything strange,

my visits will clear it up.

I sat an hour or two by the side of the Little Gentleman's bed, after

giving him some henbane to quiet his brain, and some foxglove, which an

imaginative French professor has called the “Opium of the Heart.” Under

their influence he gradually fell into an uneasy, half-waking slumber,

the body fighting hard for every breath, and the mind wandering off in

strange fancies and old recollections, which escaped from his lips in

broken sentences.

--The last of 'em,--he said,--the last of 'em all,--thank God! And the

grave he lies in will look just as well as if he had been straight. Dig

it deep, old Martin, dig it deep,--and let it be as long as other

folks' graves. And mind you get the sods flat, old man,--flat as ever a

straight-backed young fellow was laid under. And then, with a good tall

slab at the head, and a foot-stone six foot away from it, it'll look

just as if there was a man underneath.

A man! Who said he was a man? No more men of that pattern to bear his

name!--Used to be a good-looking set enough.--Where 's all the manhood

and womanhood gone to since his great-grandfather was the strongest

man that sailed out of the town of Boston, and poor Leah there the

handsomest woman in Essex, if she was a witch?

--Give me some light,--he said,--more light. I want to see the picture.

He had started either from a dream or a wandering reverie. I was not

unwilling to have more light in the apartment, and presently had lighted

an astral lamp that stood on a table.--He pointed to a portrait hanging

against the wall.--Look at her,--he said,--look at her! Wasn't that a

pretty neck to slip a hangman's noose over?

The portrait was of a young woman, something more than twenty years old,

perhaps. There were few pictures of any merit painted in New England

before the time of Smibert, and I am at a loss to know what artist

could have taken this half-length, which was evidently from life. It was

somewhat stiff and flat, but the grace of the figure and the sweetness

of the expression reminded me of the angels of the early Florentine

painters. She must have been of some consideration, for she was dressed

in paduasoy and lace with hanging sleeves, and the old carved frame

showed how the picture had been prized by its former owners. A proud eye

she had, with all her sweetness.--I think it was that which hanged her,

as his strong arm hanged Minister George Burroughs;--but it may have

been a little mole on one cheek, which the artist had just hinted as a

beauty rather than a deformity. You know, I suppose, that nursling imps

addict themselves, after the fashion of young opossums, to these little

excrescences. “Witch-marks” were good evidence that a young woman was

one of the Devil's wet-nurses;--I should like to have seen you make fun

of them in those days!--Then she had a brooch in her bodice, that might

have been taken for some devilish amulet or other; and she wore a ring

upon one of her fingers, with a red stone in it, that flamed as if the

painter had dipped his pencil in fire;--who knows but that it was given

her by a midnight suitor fresh from that fierce element, and licensed

for a season to leave his couch of flame to tempt the unsanctified

hearts of earthly maidens and brand their cheeks with the print of his

scorching kisses?

She and I,--he said, as he looked steadfastly at the canvas,--she and I

are the last of 'em.--She will stay, and I shall go. They never painted

me,--except when the boys used to make pictures of me with chalk on the

board-fences. They said the doctors would want my skeleton when I was

dead.--You are my friend, if you are a doctor,--a'n't you?