"Bring the light nearer," said John Burley,--"nearer still."
Leonard obeyed, and placed the candle on a little table by the sick man's
bedside.
Burley's mind was partially wandering; but there was method in his
madness. Horace Walpole said that "his stomach would survive all the
rest of him." That which in Burley survived the last was his quaint,
wild genius. He looked wistfully at the still flame of the candle: "It
lives ever in the air!" said he.
"What lives ever?"
Burley's voice swelled, "Light!" He turned from Leonard, and again
contemplated the little flame. "In the fixed star, in the Will-o'-the-
wisp, in the great sun that illumines half a world, or the farthing
rushlight by which the ragged student strains his eyes,--still the same
flower of the elements! Light in the universe, thought in the soul--Ay,
ay, go on with the simile. My head swims. Extinguish the light! You
cannot; fool, it vanishes from your eye, but it is still in the space.
Worlds must perish, suns shrivel up, matter and spirit both fall into
nothingness, before the combinations whose union makes that little flame
which the breath of a babe can restore to darkness, shall lose the power
to form themselves into light once more. Lose the power!---no, the
necessity: it is the one Must in creation. Ay, ay, very dark riddles
grow clear now,--now when I could not cast up an addition sum in the
baker's bill! What wise man denied that two and two made four? Do they
not make four? I can't answer him. But I could answer a question that
some wise men have contrived to make much knottier." He smiled softly,
and turned his face for some minutes to the wall.
This was the second night on which Leonard had watched by his bedside,
and Burley's state had grown rapidly worse. He could not last many days,
perhaps many hours. But he had evinced an emotion beyond mere delight at
seeing Leonard again. He had since then been calmer, more himself. "I
feared I might have ruined you by my bad example," he said, with a touch
of humour that became pathos as he added, "That idea preyed on me."
"No, no; you did me great good."
"Say that,--say it often," said Burley, earnestly; "it makes my heart
feel so light."
He had listened to Leonard's story with deep interest, and was fond of
talking to him of little Helen. He detected the secret at the young
man's heart, and cheered the hopes that lay there, amidst fears and
sorrows. Burley never talked seriously of his repentance; it was not in
his nature to talk seriously of the things which he felt solemnly. But
his high animal spirits were quenched with the animal power that fed
them. Now, we go out of our sensual existence only when we are no longer
enthralled by the Present, in which the senses have their realm. The
sensual being vanishes when Ave are in the Past or the Future. The
Present was gone from Burley; he could no more be its slave and its king.
It was most touching to see how the inner character of this man unfolded
itself, as the leaves of the outer character fell off and withered,--a
character no one would have guessed in him, an inherent refinement that
was almost womanly; and he had all a woman's abnegation of self. He took
the cares lavished on him so meekly. As the features of the old man
return in the stillness of death to the aspect of youth,--the lines
effaced, the wrinkles gone,--so, in seeing Burley now, you saw what he
had been in his spring of promise. But he himself saw only what he had
failed to be,--powers squandered, life wasted. "I once beheld," he said,
"a ship in a storm. It was a cloudy, fitful day, and I could see the
ship with all its masts fighting bard for life and for death. Then came
night, dark as pitch, and I could only guess that the ship fought on.
Towards the dawn the stars grew visible, and once more I saw the ship: it
was a wreck,--it went down just as the stars shone forth."
When he had made that allusion to himself, he sat very still for some
time, then he spread out his wasted hands, and gazed on them, and on his
shrunken limbs. "Good," said he, laughing low; "these hands were too
large and rude for handling the delicate webs of my own mechanism, and
these strong limbs ran away with me. If I had been a sickly, puny
fellow, perhaps my mind would have had fair play. There was too much of
brute body here! Look at this hand now! You can see the light through
it! Good, good!"
Now, that evening, until he had retired to bed, Burley had been unusually
cheerful, and had talked with much of his old eloquence, if with little
of his old humour. Amongst other matters, he had spoken with
considerable interest of some poems and other papers in manuscript which
had been left in the house by a former lodger, and which, the reader may
remember, Mrs. Goodyer had urged him in vain to read, in his last visit
to her cottage. But then he had her husband Jacob to chat with, and the
spirit bottle to finish, and the wild craving for excitement plucked his
thoughts back to his London revels. Now poor Jacob was dead, and it was
not brandy that the sick man drank from the widow's cruse; and London lay
afar amidst its fogs, like a world resolved back into nebula. So, to
please his hostess and distract his own solitary thoughts, he had
condescended (just before Leonard found him out) to peruse the memorials
of a life obscure to the world, and new to his own experience of coarse
joys and woes. "I have been making a romance, to amuse myself, from
their contents," said he. "They maybe of use to you, brother author.
I have told Mrs. Goodyer to place them in your room. Amongst those
papers is a sort of journal,--a woman's journal; it moved me greatly. A
man gets into another world, strange to him as the orb of Sirius, if he
can transport himself into the centre of a woman's heart, and see the
life there, so wholly unlike our own. Things of moment to us, to it so
trivial; things trifling to us, to it so vast. There was this journal,
in its dates reminding me of stormy events in my own existence, and grand
doings in the world's. And those dates there, chronicling but the
mysterious, unrevealed record of some obscure, loving heart! And in that
chronicle, O Sir Poet, there was as much genius, vigour of thought,
vitality of being, poured and wasted, as ever kind friend will say was
lavished on the rude outer world by big John Burley! Genius, genius!
are we all alike, then, save when we leash ourselves to some matter-of-
fact material, and float over the roaring seas on a wooden plank or a
herring tub?" And after he had uttered that cry of a secret anguish,
John Burley had begun to show symptoms of growing fever and disturbed
brain; and when they had got him into bed, he lay there muttering to
himself, until, towards midnight, he had asked Leonard to bring the light
nearer to him.
So now he again was quiet, with his face turned towards the wall; and
Leonard stood by the bedside sorrowfully, and Mrs. Goodyer, who did not
heed Burley's talk, and thought only of his physical state, was dipping
cloths into iced water to apply to his forehead. But as she approached
with these, and addressed him soothingly, Burley raised himself on his
arm, and waved aside the bandages. "I do not need them," said he, in a
collected voice. "I am better now. I and that pleasant light understand
one another, and I believe all it tells me. Pooh, pooh, I do not rave."
He looked so smilingly and so kindly into her face, that the poor woman,
who loved him as her own son, fairly burst into tears. He drew her
towards him, and kissed her forehead.
"Peace, old fool," said he, fondly. "You shall tell anglers hereafter
how John Burley came to fish for the one-eyed perch which he never
caught; and how, when he gave it up at the last, his baits all gone, and
the line broken amongst the weeds, you comforted the baffled man. There
are many good fellows yet in the world who will like to know that poor
Burley did not die on a dunghill. Kiss me. Come, boy, you too. Now,
God bless you, I should like to sleep." His cheeks were wet with the
tears of both his listeners, and there was a moisture in his own eyes,
which, nevertheless, beamed bright through the moisture.
He laid himself down again, and the old woman would have withdrawn the
light. He moved uneasily. "Not that," he murmured,--"light to the
last!" and putting forth his wan hand, he drew aside the curtain so that
the light might fall full on his face.
[Every one remembers that Goethe's last words are said to have been,
"More Light;" and perhaps what has occurred in the text may be
supposed a plagiarism from those words. But, in fact, nothing is
more common than the craving and demand for light a little before
death. Let any consult his own sad experience in the last moments
of those whose gradual close he has watchaed and tended. What more
frequent than a prayer to open the shutters and let in the sun?
What complaint more repeated and more touching than "that it is
growing dark"? I once knew a sufferer, who did not then seem in
immediate danger, suddenly order the sick room to be lit up as if
for a gala. When this was told to the physician, he said gravely,
"No worse sign."]
In a few minutes he was asleep, breathing calmly and regularly as an
infant.
The old woman wiped her eyes, and drew Leonard softly into the adjoining
room, in which a bed had been made up for him. He had not left the house
since he had entered it with Dr. Morgan. "You are young, sir," said she,
with kindness, "and the young want sleep. Lie down a bit: I will call
you when he wakes."
"No, I could not sleep," said Leonard. "I will watch for you."
The old woman shook her head. "I must see the last of him, sir; but I
know he will be angry when his eyes open on me, for he has grown very
thoughtful of others."
"Ah, if he had but been, as thoughtful of himself!" murmured Leonard; and
he seated himself by the table, on which, as he leaned his elbow, he
dislodged some papers placed there. They fell to the ground with a dumb,
moaning, sighing sound.--
"What is that?" said he, starting.
The old woman picked up the manuscripts and smoothed them carefully.
"Ah, sir, he bade me place these papers here. He thought they might keep
you from fretting about him, in case you would sit up and wake. And he
had a thought of me, too; for I have so pined to find out the poor young
lady, who left them years ago. She was almost as dear to me as he is;
dearer perhaps until now--when--when I am about to lose him!"
Leonard turned from the papers, without a glance at their contents: they
had no interest for him at such a moment. The hostess went on,
"Perhaps she is gone to heaven before him; she did not look like one long
for this world. She left us so suddenly. Many things of hers besides
these papers are still, here; but I keep them aired and dusted, and strew
lavender over them, in case she ever come for them again. You never
heard tell of her, did you, sir?" she added, with great simplicity, and
dropping a half courtesy.
"Of her--of whom?"
"Did not Mr. John tell you her name--dear, dear; Mrs. Bertram."
Leonard started; the very name so impressed upon his memory by Harley
L'Estrange!
"Bertram!" he repeated. "Are you sure?"
"Oh, yes, sir! And many years after she had left us, and we had heard no
more of her, there came a packet addressed to her here, from over sea,
sir. We took it in, and kept it, and John would break the seal, to know
if it would tell us anything about her; but it was all in a foreign
language like,--we could not read a word."
"Have you the packet? Pray show it to me. It may be of the greatest
value. To-morrow will do--I cannot think of that just now. Poor
Burley!"
Leonard's manner indicated that he wished to talk no more, and to be
alone. So Mrs. Goodyer left him, and stole back to Burley's room on
tiptoe:
The young man remained in deep revery for some moments. "Light," he
murmured. "How often 'Light' is the last word of those round whom the
shades are gathering!" He moved, and straight on his view through the
cottage lattice there streamed light indeed,--not the miserable ray lit
by a human hand, but the still and holy effulgence of a moonlit heaven.
It lay broad upon the humble floors, pierced across the threshold of the
death chamber, and halted clear amidst its shadows.
Leonard stood motionless, his eye following the silvery silent splendour.
"And," he said inly--"and does this large erring nature, marred by its
genial faults, this soul which should have filled a land, as yon orb the
room, with a light that linked earth to heaven--does it pass away into
the dark, and leave not a ray behind? Nay, if the elements of light are
ever in the space, and when the flame goes out, return to the vital air,
so thought once kindled lives forever around and about us, a part of our
breathing atmosphere. Many a thinker, many a poet, may yet illumine the
world, from the thoughts which yon genius, that will have no name, gave
forth to wander through air, and recombine again in some new form of
light."
Thus he went on in vague speculations, seeking, as youth enamoured of
fame seeks too fondly, to prove that mind never works, however
erratically, in vain, and to retain yet, as an influence upon earth, the
soul about to soar far beyond the atmosphere where the elements that make
fame abide. Not thus had the dying man interpreted the endurance of
light and thought.
Suddenly, in the midst of his revery, a loud cry broke on his ear. He
shuddered as he heard, and hastened forebodingly into the adjoining room.
The old woman was kneeling by the bedside, and chafing Burley's hand,
eagerly looking into his face. A glance sufficed to Leonard. All was
over. Burley had died in sleep,--calmly, and without a groan.
The eyes were half open, with that look of inexpressible softness which
death sometimes leaves; and still they were turned towards the light; and
the light burned clear.
Leonard closed tenderly the heavy lids; and as he covered the face, the
lips smiled a serene farewell.