I saw him first after the funeral of his wife, the symptom--present in all
cases of an utterly crushed spirit--of a wish to die. I was the first to
whom he had uttered a syllable since the day on which she had been carried
out of the house which she had so long filled with the spirit of
cheerfulness and comfort. His only daughter, Martha, a fine young woman,
had contributed but little to his relief--if she had not, indeed, increased
his depression by her own emotions, which she had no power to conceal; and
his only son had gone off to Edinburgh, to attend his classes in the
college, where he intended to graduate as a physician. He was thus, in a
manner, left in a great degree alone; for his daughter sought her apartment
at every opportunity, to weep over her sorrows unobserved; and she had
naturally thought that her father's grief, attended by no exacerbations of
groaning or weeping like her own, presented less appearance of intensity
than that which convulsed her own heart, and got relief by nature's
appointed modes of alleviation. When the heart is stricken with a certain
force, all forms of presenting less gloomy views of the condition of the
individual, will generally be found to be totally unavailing in affording
relief. Nay, I am satisfied that there was genuine philosophy in the custom
of the Greeks and the ancient Germans, in _forcing_ victims of great
sorrows to _weep_ out the rankling barbed shaft. These had a species of
licensed mourners, whose duty it was to soften the heart by melting strains
of mournful melody, whereby, as by the application of a bland liniment, the
rigid issues of the feelings were softened and opened, and the oppressed
organ, the heart, was relieved of the load which defies the force of
argument, and even the condolence of friendship. The curing of cold-nips by
the appliance of snow, and of burns by the application of heat, could not
have appeared more fraught with ridicule to the old women of former days,
than would the custom I have here cited to the comforters of modern times.
If I cannot say that, amongst some bold remedies, I have recommended it, I
have, at least, avoided, on all occasions, officious endeavours to
counteract the oppressing burden, by wrenching the mind from the engrossing
thought--a process generally attended with no other result than making it
adhere with increased force.
The greatest triumph that can be effected with the truly heart-stricken
victim, to whom is denied the usual bursts that indicate a bearable
misfortune, or, at least, one whose intensity is partly abated, is the
bringing about of that more natural condition of the heart, which, indeed,
is generally most feared by the ordinary paraclete. In the case of the
bereaved husband, there is no charm so powerful in its effects as the vivid
portrayment of the virtues of her who has gone down to the grave; and it
may well be said, that the heart that will not give out its feelings to the
impassioned description of the amiable properties of the departed helpmate,
is all but incurable. The sister of Mr B----, who saw the necessity of
administering relief, tried to awaken him to a sense of religious
consolation; but he was as yet unfit even for that sacred ministration; and
all her efforts having failed to rouse him, even from the deathlike stupor
in which he lay, she had recourse, by my advice, to probing the wound, to
take off the stricture by which the natural humours were pent up. She
discoursed pathetically on the qualities of the departed, which, she said,
would be the passport of her spirit to a sphere where he would again
contemplate them unclouded by the dingy vapours of earthly feelings. She
kept in the same strain for a lengthened period; but declared to me, when I
visited him again, that he exhibited no signs of being moved by her
discourse. He, once or twice, turned his eyes on her for a moment, drew
occasionally a heavy sigh, that told, by the difficulty of the operation,
the load with which he was oppressed; but his eyes were dry, no groan
escaped from him, or any other sign of the heart being aided in an effort
to restore the current of natural feeling. The _coup de peine_ had too
clearly taken the very core of the heart; the lamp of hope had been dashed
out violently, and, under the cloud of his great evil, all things that
remained to him upon earth were tinged with its dark hues. He presented all
the appearances--except the dilation of the pupil of the eye--of one whose
brain had been concussed by a deep fall, or laboured under a fracture of
the bones of the _cranium_. The few words he spoke to me came slowly, with
a heavy oppressive sound, as if spoken through a hollow tube; and what may,
to some, be remarkable, though certainly not to me, they embraced not the
slightest allusion to his bereavement--a symptom almost invariably
attendant upon those deeper strokes of grief, which, being but seldom
witnessed, are much less understood in their effects than the more ordinary
oppressions, whose intense demonstrations and allusions to the cause of the
evil, mark the victims as objects for the portrayments of poets.
Two or three days passed off in this way, without the slightest
amelioration of his condition. The efforts of Miss B---- had been repeated
often without effect. As she expressed herself to me, he would neither eat
nor speak, sleep nor weep. "He has not," she added, "even muttered her
name. His heart seems utterly broken; and time and the power of Heaven
alone will effect a change." Such is the common philosophy of sorrow: time
is held forth as all-powerful, all-saving; and while I admit its force, I
only insist for the certainty of the existence of exceptions. The eighth
day had passed without any support having been taken to sustain the system.
A course of maceration, that had been going on during his wife's illness,
was thus continued; yet, in the few words I occasionally drew from him,
there was no indication of anything like the sullen determination of the
suicide; the cause lay in the total cessation of the powers of the
stomach--a consequence of the cerebral pressure, whose action is felt not
where it operates primarily, but in the heart and other organs, where it
works merely by sympathy.
It was on the evening of the eighth day after the funeral, as I have it
noted, that I called to see if any change for the better had been effected
by the ministrations of his sister. She sat by his bedside, with the Bible
placed before her, from which she had been reading passages to him. His
face was turned to the front of the bed, but he did not seem to be in any
way moved by my entrance. All the efforts his sister had made to get him to
enter into the spirit of the passages she had been reading had been
fruitless; nor had he as yet made the slightest allusion to the cause of
his illness, or mentioned the name of his deceased partner. A few words of
no importance, and not related to the circumstances of his grief, were
wrung from him painfully by my questions; but it seemed as if the language
that represents the things of the world had lost all power of charming the
ear; the deadness that had overtaken the heart like a palsy, was felt from
the fountain of feelings, to the minute endings of the nerves; and the
external senses, which are the ministers of the soul, had renounced their
ordinary ministrations to the spirit that heeded them not. Only once his
sister had observed a slight moisture rise for a moment in his eye, as she
touched some tender traits of the character of the departed; but it passed
away rather as an evidence of the utter powerlessness of nature, in a faint
heave of the reactive energy, telling at once how little she could perform,
yet how much was necessary to overcome the weight by which she was
oppressed. I sat for some moments silent by the side of the bed, and
meditated a recourse to some more strenuous effort directed to his sense of
duty as a parent; though I was aware, that until the heart is in some
degree relieved, all such appeals are too often vain, if not rather
attended with unfavourable effects, but, in extreme cases, we are not
entitled to rest upon the generality of theories where so various and
mutable an essence as the human mind is the object to which they are to be
applied. I was on the point of making a trial, by recurring to the position
of his son and daughter, when I heard the sound of a horse's feet
approaching, with great rapidity, the door. The sister started; and I could
hear Martha open the window above, to ascertain who might be the visiter.
In another moment the outer door opened with a loud clang. Some one
approached along the passage, in breathless haste. He entered. It was
George B----, under the excitement of some strong internal emotion; his
eyes gleaming with a fearful light, and his limbs shaking violently. He
stood for a moment as if he were gathering his energies to speak; but the
words stuck in his throat, the sounds died away amidst the noise of an
indistinct jabbering. I noticed the eye of his father fixed upon him,
betraying only a very slight increase of animation; but even this
extraordinary demeanour of his son did not draw from him a question; so
utterly dead to all external impulses had his grief made him, that the
harrowing cause of so much excitement in his son, remained unquestioned by
the feelings of the parent. In another moment the youth was stretched
across the bed, locking the father in his embrace, and sobbing out
inarticulate words, none of which I could understand. The aunt was as much
at a loss to solve the mystery of the violent paroxysm as myself; for some
time neither of us could put a question; the sobbings of the youth seemed
to chain up our tongues by the charm of the eloquence of nature's
impassioned language. Meanwhile, Martha entered, ran forward to the
bedside, lifted her brother from the position which he occupied, and seated
him, by the application of some force, on the empty chair that stood by the
side of the bed.
"What is the matter, George?" she cried; the question was repeated by the
aunt, and the eyes of the parent sought languidly the face of the youth,
which was, however, now covered by his hands. The question was more than
once repeated by both the aunt and myself; the father never spoke, nor
could I perceive a single ray of curiosity in his eye. He seemed to await
the issue of the son's explanation, heedless what it might be--whether the
announcement of a great or a lesser evil--its magnitude, though
transcending the bounds of ordinary bearing, comprehending every other
misfortune that fate could have in store for him, being, whatever its
proportions, as nothing to the death-stricken heart of one whose hope was
buried.
"This is scarcely a time or an occasion, George," said I, "for the
manifestation of these emotions. If the cause lies in the grief, come back
with increased force, for the death of your mother, you should have known
that there is one lying there whose load is still greater, and who is,
unfortunately, as yet, beyond the relief which, as your agitation
indicates, nature in the young heart is working for you."
"The death!--the death!" he muttered in a choking voice; "but there is
something after the death that is worse than the death itself."
"Are you distracted, George?" said the aunt. "This Bible was the hand-book
and the rule of your mother's conduct in this world. A better woman never
offered up her prayers at the fountain of the waters of immortal life; no
one that ever lived had a better right to draw from the blessing, or better
qualified for enjoying it as she now enjoys it. She is in heaven; and will
you say that that is worse than death?"
"You speak of her spirit, aunt," replied he, as he still covered his face
with his hands. "Her spirit is there!"--and he took away one of his hands
from his face and pointed to heaven--"There, where the saints rest, does my
mother's soul rest; but, O God, where--where is the body?"
A thought struck me on the instant. I was afraid to utter it. I looked at
the father, and suspected, from the sudden light of animation that started
to his eye, that the gloom of his mind had at last been penetrated by the
thought which had suggested itself to me.
"Where is the body!" responded the aunt. "Why, George, where should it be
but in C---- churchyard, beneath the stone that has told the virtues of her
ancestors, and will, in a short time, declare her own, greater than those
of her kindred that have gone before?"
"It is on Dr M----'s table!" cried the youth, starting to his feet, and
again throwing himself violently on the chair. "I purchased it; paid the
price for it; and recognised it only when the dissecting-knife was in my
hand!" Every one started aghast; terror froze up the issues of speech; a
deep groan issued from the bed-ridden patient; he beckoned me to his ear.
"Tell the women to go out," he whispered, as he twisted his body
convulsively among the bedclothes.
I complied with his request; and the aunt, seizing Martha, who stood as if
she had been transfixed to the floor, dragged her out of the room. In the
passage, I heard a loud scream; and, in a moment, all was again silence. Mr
B----, without uttering a word, raised his feeble body from the bed, and
came forth, the spectre of what he was only a few weeks before. His limbs,
which were reduced to bony shanks, covered with shrivelled skin, seemed
totally unable to support even the decayed, emaciated frame. He staggered
as he reached the floor; but, recovering himself, stood firm, and then
proceeded to his wardrobe, from which he drew his vestments, and proceeded
to attire himself.
"An hour since," he said, in a slow, solemn voice, "I thought these clothes
would never again be on my body. My only hope was the winding-sheet, and
that grave which has been robbed."
"George may have been deceived," said I, as he was proceeding to dress
himself. "I have often thought that I saw resemblances to deceased friends
in the features of subjects in the dissecting-room."
"The grave will test it," answered he, with a deep groan, as he proceeded
slowly, but resolutely, to put one garment after another on his skeleton
body.
He was at length dressed; and, proceeding to the kitchen, he appeared
again, in a short time, with a lighted lantern in his hand, the light of
which, as it threw its beam on his sallow face--for the candle had,
meanwhile, burned down into the socket--exhibited, in its lurid glare, the
deep-sunken eyes and protruding bones of his emaciated countenance.
"Come, we shall proceed to the grave of my Isabella," said he.
"You are unable," said I. "Your limbs will not carry you that length; and
you are, besides, unfitted by the state of your mind and feelings, for an
investigation of this kind. Stay here with your son, and I will go to the
churchyard and satisfy myself of the deception under which George,
doubtless, labours."
"I feel now more than my former strength," he replied. "I am awakened from
a death-stupor of the soul; and I feel that within me which will enable me
to go through this trial. I will look into my Isabella's grave; will meet
with those eyes again--that countenance through which I have read the
workings of love in a spirit that is now far from the precincts of the
clay. Deny me not; I will be satisfied of this, if I should come back from
her grave to complete that which is begun, and is already visible in these
shrunken members, that now obey a supernatural power."
There seemed to be no gainsaying him; his manner was inspired and resolute;
and I proceeded to accompany him to C---- churchyard. George, who, in the
meantime, had been tossing himself in the chair, rose to make one of the
party. The agitation under which he still laboured was in direct contrast
to the cold stillness of his father; yet the one was a more living
expression than the other; and, while my eye shrunk not from the ordinary
indications of suffering, I--maugre all the experience of misery I had
had--could scarcely look on the animated corpse thus preparing to visit the
grave where the object of all his hopes and affections in this world had
been buried, and might now be found to have been desecrated by the knife of
the anatomist. We went forth together. George's horse still stood at the
door, reeking and bloody. I requested Mr B---- to mount, as we had a full
mile to go to the burying-ground, and I deemed it utterly impossible that
he could accomplish the distance. He did not answer me, but proceeded
onwards with a firm step, in the face of a cold, bleak, east wind, that
moaned mournfully among a clump of trees that skirted the road. Some flakes
of snow were winging through the air--driven now by the breeze, or
lingering over our heads as if afraid to be soiled by the earth, which we
were bent to open where the dead then lay--or some time before lay--a mass
of putrefaction; yet dear to the feelings of the bereaved, and sought now
with greater avidity than when the body was arrayed in the smiles of
beauty, and filled with living, breathing love. The husband spoke nothing;
and George was silent, save for the deep sobs that burst from him as he
looked upon the woe-worn form of his father, who stalked away before us
like a creature hurrying to the grave to seek the home there from which a
troubled spirit had removed him in the dark hour of night. In this way we
wandered on. I was not in a mood to speak. The occasion and the scene
depressed me more than ever did the prospect of a deathbed, or the sight of
a patient about to submit to a painful and dangerous operation. My habits
of thought are little conversant with the poetry of nature, or of man's
condition in this stage of suffering--the duties of an arduous profession
are exclusive of those dreamy moods of the mind, which have little in
common with the doings of every-day life; yet, on this occasion, I felt all
the inspiration of the sad muse; and, were I to endeavour to account for
it, I could only seek for the cause in the aspect of the night, and the
unusual nature of the vocation, operating, at the moment, on a mind
loosened from the cares of my profession.
In a much less time than I could have anticipated, from the weak condition
of Mr B----, we arrived at the churchyard--a solitary spot, surrounded with
an old grey dyke, at the back of which rose in deep shade a wood of firs.
The snow lay on the top of the walls, and on the higher branches of the
firs, reminding one of streaks of white clouds in the sky, as the darkness
of the night, enveloping the lower portions, kept them almost from our
view. From a small house at the ridge of the fir-belt, a slight ray of
light beamed forth, and, striking upon the top of a monument placed against
the wall, exhibited the left all around in deeper gloom. Without uttering a
word, Mr B---- made up to the house, and, knocking at the door, a young
female appeared. She uttered a scream, and ran back, doubtless from the
pale and death-like appearance presented by the face of the visiter. Her
place was momentarily supplied by the sexton, who, the moment he saw Mr
B----, shrunk back in what I conceived to be conscious fear. I was standing
behind, and noticing, what I thought, the guilty expression of the man's
face, concluded unfavourably for the sad hope of my friend.
"I have reason to believe that there have been resurrectionists in your
churchyard, James," said Mr B---- mournfully.
"Impossible!" replied the sexton; "we have been guarding the ground for
some time past. It is a dream, Mr B----; many relations are troubled by the
same fears. It was only yesterday that I opened a grave to satisfy the
wishes of Mrs G----, whose husband was buried a week ago. The body was as
safe as if it had been in her own keeping. Take my advice; be satisfied
there is no cause of apprehension; you forget the sacred nature of my
trust."
"I can only be satisfied by an examination of the grave," replied Mr B----.
"I insist upon having this satisfaction. The cemetery is my property, and I
have a right to examine it."
The man hesitated, and said that his assistant was from home. But the
bereaved husband was not to be thus diverted from his purpose. He stood
resolutely with the lantern in his hand, and demanded admittance into the
churchyard. The man at length reluctantly took down the key from a nail in
the passage, and bringing another lantern with him, led us to the door,
which, in the midst of many grumblings, he opened. He then led the way over
the snowy hillocks to nearly the middle of the burying-ground, where the
grave of Mrs B----, headed by an ornamented stone, was exhibited to us. Mr
B---- bent down, and, moving the lantern backwards and forwards, examined
it slowly and carefully, casting his eye over the snow, which presented an
unbroken appearance, and examining every chink, as if he there found an
evidence of the truth of George's statement.
"That grave has not been touched," said the man. "The head of it is the
part to judge by. You will find the turf lies whole and unbroken under the
wreath."
"It may be as you say," replied Mr B----, as he bent down in his
examination; "but the late snow may have removed the traces of the opening.
I cannot return home till I am satisfied. My own bones must mix with those
of my Isabella. Proceed to open the grave; I myself will assist you."
At that moment a figure was seen gliding alone amidst the tombstones. It
had all the legitimate whiteness like the ideal spirit. I stood and gazed
at it, and George's eyes were also fixed upon it; Mr B---- paid no
attention; he was too intent upon the investigation he was engaged in; and
the grave-digger, whose head was down, did not notice it. I said nothing;
but George, pointing to it as it approached, cried--
"See, see! what is that?"
The sexton looked up, and cried--"It is David. He has been out, and is
covered with snow. He comes in good time."
It was even so. The man approached, and the implements having been
procured, they set about opening the grave. Mr. B---- stood motionless, his
head hanging down, and deep sighs occasionally coming from his breast,
mixed with the quick breathing of the men, as they plied their shovels. He
still held the lantern in his hand, by the light of which the group before
me is brought out in faint relief. The silence around was signally that of
a churchyard; for the fir belt shrouded the scene from the night breeze,
and there was only occasionally heard a low, mournful gust, as it died
among the branches of the trees. On that spot only there was quick
breathing action. The men had got down pretty far into the grave; and, as
they brought their heads within the ray of the lantern, in their acts of
throwing up the earth, their flushed faces contrasted strongly with the
cadaverous countenance of the husband, who leant over them, watching every
motion, and intent upon the expected stroke of the shovel upon the coffin
lid. The recollection of the attributes of the German ghoul came over me;
nor did the difference between the beings, the motives, and the actions,
prevent me from conjuring up the similitude, so unlike a human being did he
appear in his complexion, his fixed, dead-like stare into the grave, and
the perfect stillness of his body, as he crouched down to be nearer to the
object of his search. At length, the sound was heard, the rattle on the
coffin lid. The victim's ear seemed chained to the sound, as if he could
have augured from it whether or not the chest was empty. In a short time,
"The heavy moil that shrouds the dead"
was entirely removed. The sexton now took his own lamp down into the grave.
The screw-nails were undone, the lid was raised, and the body of Mrs B----,
arrayed in her winding-sheet and scalloped sere-clothes, was seen, by the
sickly, yellow gleam of the lantern, lying in the stillness and placidity
of death--
"For still, still she lay,
With a wreath on her bosom."
One of the men now came out, and Mr B---- descended into the grave. He
lifted off the face-cloth, gazed on the clay-cold face, touched it, and now
was opened the
"Sacred source of sympathetic tears."
He burst into a loud paroxysm; and, as if nature had been to take her
revenge for her sufferings, under the freezing influence of his sorrow, he
wept as if there had been to be no end of his weeping. It was latterly
found necessary to force him out of the grave; though, as I was informed by
George, he had shrunk from the view of the dead body of his wife, while it
lay in the house, and before it was interred. The lid was again placed on
the coffin, the screws fixed, and the grave filled up. Mr B---- slipped a
guinea into the hand of the sexton, and we took our way back to the town.
George informed us, as we went, that he had been for several nights haunted
by the image of his mother; and could only thus account for the conviction
that had seized him, that the body of the female he had seen in the
dissecting-room was that of his parent. It is a remarkable fact, and the
one which chiefly induced me to give this narrative, that the scene I have
now described wrought so powerfully on the feelings of Mr B----, that the
form of his grief was entirely changed. During the whole of the subsequent
night, he wept intensely--nature was relieved--his sorrow was mollified
into one of those