DESPAIR.
“The white feet of angels yet upon the hills.”
Months and months had passed, and yet this wretched man was staggering
on, not this time drunk, literally, but, as though blinded by red
blood oozing from his brain, which had been crushed by the weight
of this blow. He was wandering vaguely hither and yon, distracting
his brain in ineffectual chimeras, the very impossibilities of their
success affording to him their greatest attraction. But gradually
all this maddened struggle had been settling down into one sultry,
close, inevitable conclusion of sullen self-destruction, which must
result from the continued precipitation, upon conditions that promised
death in one form or other. He went to Boston while the cholera was
raging there at its worst. The pretence of the visit was some wild,
distracting scheme that he had seized upon, and in which he was
endeavoring to secure co-operation there.
But unfortunately for his mad purpose, since that very separation
from daily contact with the girl Elna, which was working so sadly
upon his imagination now, his attenuated and exhausted physique had
rapidly recovered all its inherent vigor, and in animal health and
strength he had suddenly become, by an inexplicable reaction, more
prodigally abounding than ever for many years. So that fate seemed to
have closed up to him any ordinary means of getting rid of himself,
except the pistol and the dagger, from the use of which his manliness
unconquerably revolted.
But by a strange process of self-delusion, he had managed to confound
himself into the idea that the abject cowardice of the act of suicide
might be avoided by a species of half unconscious indirection. For
instance, cholera was rife in the city, and he well knew that long
warm baths, by relaxing the system, would lay it more open to the
attacks of any epidemical tendencies that might be prevalent; and
accordingly, without ever venturing to explain to himself why, he
continued, day after day, to take these long hot baths, and then to eat
and drink, in the quietest possible way, everything that was specially
to be avoided at such a time.
While this novel process was thus coolly progressing, he one morning
met, by the merest accident, on State Street, a person whom he knew to
have been long and intimately the friend of the lost Moione and her
family. Manton eagerly asked him if he knew where she could now be
found; for, strange enough, her calm image had lately intruded often
into the darkened vistas of his thought, from whence he had supposed
her banished long ago.
Her address was promptly given: it was in a remote and humble district
of the city; and, although Manton already felt the seeds of the
disease, which he had thus pertinaciously invited, rioting within him,
yet he vowed to himself that he would at once seek her. His first visit
failed; but the second found her, thin and wan, stretched on a lounge,
awaiting she knew not whom.
With a short cry of sudden joy, as she recognised his features, she
sprang to meet him, as of old, with a childish caress. Ah, why was
it that he felt such sullen cold, and yet saw light, falling like
star-beams upon the midnight of his soul, as his arms met this fond and
childish clasp? He did not understand it—but we shall see!
The physical results, which he had so assiduously courted, could not
be avoided. As he had walked about among his friends already for
several days, with the premonitory symptoms of the fatal epidemic
fully developed in his system, and as fully understood by himself, yet
without the adoption, on his own part, of one single precautionary
step, it was now sure to wreak its worst. Some, who could not help
observing his ghastly appearance, thought him monstrously reckless,
and others, hopelessly insane.
Regardless of every remonstrance, he still kept his feet, until, at
length, the third evening found him leaving his hotel, in a hack, which
he ordered to be driven to the home of Moione; and from which he had to
be carried, by the driver, into the parlor, where he sank upon what he
supposed to be the last couch upon which he should recline in life. A
strange, indestructible feeling, that he must die beneath her eye, had
urged him to this last and desperate exertion of the feeble vitality
remaining in him. He had lain himself there to die; but why the strange
purpose that she should minister to his passing breath? Was it only
here that peace could be found for him?
Moione was alone, with a timid, young, and undeveloped sister. Their
mother was accidentally away that night; having been detained by the
illness of a friend, joined with the inclemency of the night, which
set in in darkness and storm, in terror, in thunder, and in blaze.
In the meantime, the paroxysms of cholera had commenced upon the
enfeebled frame of Manton; and the black fear of the night outside only
corresponded to the convulsed and writhing agonies which now tossed
him to and fro, in helpless, but most mortal agonies. The thunder
crashed, and the frail house shook, and the fierce pangs shot along
his quivering nerves, as vividly as any blinding burst of lightning
from without. The darkness which surrounded him had been penetrated by
a calm, pure light, that dimmed not nor trembled before the blinding
blast. A voice, the soft, clear, cheerful tones of which vibrated not
to the quick rattling of thunder-crashes from without, told him of
strength and hope, of peace and a calm future, in the life yet beyond
him on the earth—that he could not die now, and should not!—until his
will became electrified with a new impulsion, and was roused to cope
with the fell demon that had thus, of his own invitation, possessed
him; and, illuminated with a sudden and rapid intellection, he
directed her how to baffle every paroxysm of cramp as it rose.
It is sufficient, he was thus sustained by light applications of
cold-water, until the passing of the storm enabled her to summon to his
aid a physician, whose skilful application of the same powerful remedy,
even in the “blue-stage” of collapse into which Manton had now fallen,
sufficed to relieve him from the disease, with the vital principle yet
striving in his frame; though many days must elapse before those starry
eyes, that held sleepless watch above him, could impart to his dimmed
and incredulous consciousness sufficient strength to enable him to lift
his hand, in vague and mournful wonder that he still possessed a being.
Ah, what an awakening was this! Deep, deep, beneath the realms
of shadow—dark and deep—he had lain in long and dumb oblivion of
consciousness. He knew not that he lived; it was a blank of rayless
rest—a peace without sunshine. How profound! how unutterably still!
What a contrast with the ceaseless, dreadful tension of the moiling
chaos of past years, during which the passions had never slept, but,
through his very dreams, had moaned in the weariness of strife. Alas!
the rebellious heart, which struggleth in unyielding pride with life,
refusing to concede to its conditions, how it must suffer? The world
know little of the life-long horrors of that fight—the unidealizing
world, the conservative, the compromising world. It little dreams what
this self-immolating madman must endure—to what nights of sleepless
thought, to what days of bleak and sullen isolation—walking apart from
sympathies that are distrusted and scorned, yet yearned for—hating
nothing, yet loving nothing which is warmed in the embrace of earth,
because that earth may be accursed in his sight: its barren bosom has
not yielded to his exacting soul the flowers and streams and echoing
groves of the Utopia it has framed within him.
This is the unpardonable sin of pride! He dares to treat with contempt
a world that will not turn to his inspired voice, and live as he has
dreamed it might live. It is not to be wondered at, that the bolts fall
thick and fast about him; but when we see his pale brow scathed and
seamed with many a stunning stroke, while his hollow eyes yet glitter
with a deathless and defiant fire—when we think of the mortal tension
of his unsympathised life—oh, should we not remember, that this painful
warrior has been battling, not for base lucre, not for selfish ends,
but for the beautiful, as it has been revealed to him—the true, as
he has felt it—for the ideal in him; and that, though wretched and
suffering and wan, it is, after all,
“Of such stuff as he,
The gods are made.”
It is of his suffering that his prowess comes—of his experiences, his
themes—of his solitude, his reach and radiance of thought—of his strong
will, his conquering flight at last. Do not think to pity him; may-be
he is pitying you. Do not attempt to “save” him; it may be, it is you
who will be damned in the effort. Only let him alone—do not persecute
him. Let his pride pass—that is what sustains him; but for that, he
would be like you, a mere “compromise.” Give him the same chance that
you give to others around you, and, although you may not understand him
now, only give him time, he will make you understand him; it may be, in
wonder and in joy.
But this waking—but this waking of the weary man! Was it a new birth—a
new resurrection—or, a mere waking from a light sleep, without a dream?
The world upon which his shrinking vision now opened was filled with
sunshine—he was blinded with the glory thereof. He closed his thin
eyelids, and the splendor came through them, all rosy-hued and dimmed,
that he could bear it; but there was a starlight for him too, and he
could bear its calm effulgence better.
Yes, there were two stars, and they were tempered, that they might
neither freeze nor slay his feeble life. When they came over him, as
he lay in a half-trance of weakness, he could feel them through his
eyelids and upon his heart; and they were warm, and he felt his heart
warm, as buds to the unfolding spring. A dim-remembered music flowed
into his soul, faint and dim, but oh, sweetly mellowed, that he might
not die!
There was a rustling, too,—it was as of a tempered wind,—and a soft
touch; it sent no thrill, but it was of healing—it sunk into his life
in strength. A strange, balsamic tenderness, like a new sense of peace
and joy, pervaded all his being—and a new growth set in apace, and a
dim remembrance of ancient strength flitted into his thought.
Ah, ha! this wondrous presence, what was it? Moione, the ministering
Moione! It was she! Ever there, sleeping and awake, she leaned over
him. When he dreamed, he dreamed of a fair spirit, that hung upon the
air above him, on viewless wings, and ever, with still eyes looking
upon his, shedding their soft radiance deep into his soul. No wonder
that life, in swift, light waves, came flooding in again; no wonder
that the crushed and much-enduring man became as a child once more,
and laughed out in the sunshine with a simple joy. The Present was
sufficient unto him; he remembered not the Past now—the hideous, the
spectre-haunted Past. What was it to him, when serene hope thus smiled?
Ah, it was a happy time, that period of rapid convalescence. Yes,
rapid, for his heart beat freely again. The natural sun could reach
him; no lurid delusion, like miasmatic fog, hung over to intercept the
rays.
They talked of the future, and peopled it with wild dreams, like
children, until it all became as real to them as their own being.
There was a strange and mournful romance, connected with the origin
of Moione’s family, that pointed at possible realizations in another
country, through inheritance, that would be as gorgeous as the
creations of Aladdin’s lamp. They talked of these prospects as of facts
assumed, and of all the high-thoughted enterprises of the day which
promised to be of true benefit to mankind, as already achieved, through
their aid; and, with magnanimous simplicity, were already distributing
hoarded and rusting millions to bless the world withal. These were
gay day-dreams; but they were innocent, and, although they may never
be realized, they gave them joy—inspired the yet feeble Manton with a
future.
There could be but one result to all this. His health was rapidly
restored; and when Manton married Moione, which he soon did, his soul
now first found rest. The last that was spoken between them concerning
Elna was in a conversation soon after, when she casually asked him—
“Did Elna show you my drawings, when you came back from the North?”
“Your drawings? your drawings? She showed me some, the delicacy and
calm precision of which, I remember, vainly intoxicated me with
delight. But why do you ask, dear?”
“Why, she carried off from me, about that time, certain studies of
human anatomy, which I had elaborated much, and which I valued. As I
have never been able to recover them, after repeatedly requesting their
return, I thought, perhaps, she might have shown them to you, and then
thrown them aside, through forgetfulness.”
“Ah! ha!” said Manton, “I remember now. They were assiduously paraded
before me by her as her own. In spite of my recognition of the fact,
that she did not possess originally, and must have very suddenly
acquired, the constitutional steadiness and delicacy of touch necessary
to accomplish drawings so fine and exquisitely accurate, I never
dreamed of imposition, of course; and thus, with fatal credulity,
set down to her credit, from what she had stolen of you, a new and
infinitely significant attribute, which I had heretofore, specially and
hopelessly, in spite of my passion, denied to her.”
“Let us forget it now,” was the quiet response. “She is only harmful
to either of us, as you may remember morbidly the relations which have
existed between you; the delusion is over.”
Such was the fact, indeed. Manton had at last found his artist-wife,
and a true and wondrous artist did she prove indeed, realising his
fond, high dream. Under this blessed and holy guardianship, he had
returned fully to the realities of a true existence. He now saw, felt,
and understood all that had occurred in that long shuddering dream; and
this reality he had attained seemed only the more unutterably precious.
When the calm Moione revealed to him all the secret of the bleak and
poverty-stricken desolation, in which he found her living, he was
not at all astonished to find that her mother, who was a generous,
trusting, noble-hearted zealot of Water-cure, had been another of the
many victims of Boanerges Phospher, the “Spiritual Professor.” He
had not only stripped her widowed isolation of all the appliances of
household comfort, which years of devoted and self-sacrificing labor
had enabled her to collect and throw together, in respectable defence
between her helpless children and common want, but had absolutely
turned her out of doors, without even spoon, or knife, or fork left
her, of all this little property which she had thrown in rashly,
perhaps, but earnestly, and with a noble dedication of her widow’s
mite, towards furnishing a Water-cure establishment.
The cause was one that she revered for the good that she knew,
practically, it might accomplish; and Boanerges, who was in this
case, as usual, profoundly ignorant of what he had undertaken to do,
had availed himself of her well-known experience and knowledge of
Water-cure, just so long as sufficed to collect around him again a
hirsute confederacy of faithful Amazons; the strength of which he
thought would be sufficient to over-ride all opposition, and sustain
him in the valorous assault upon helpless widowhood intended. He then
openly claimed her property as his own, and the proud, uncomplaining
mother of Moione was, of course, plundered of her all—victimised!
The sainted Boanerges soon met with a just retribution. The partner,
to whom he had assigned, in trust, to stave off his creditors, all
his claims upon this illustrious institution, and who, from the late
chrysalis of a vulgar tailor, had suddenly been emancipated into an M.
D. of Water-cure, at once sprung upon him his legal rights, under the
transfer, and he was reduced again to beggary.
Some method wrested from his puerile studies of Swedenborg, has no
doubt, by this time, and upon some other tack, suggested to the
“Spiritual Professor” just enough of wisdom to enable him to persevere
in “saving” the elderly New-Lights of the land.
We wish Boanerges happiness in his new enterprises; for, certainly, his
versatility at least commands respect.