Transcriber's Notes:
1. Page scan source: Google Books
https://books.google.com/books?id=u6olAAAAMAAJ
(the New York Public Library)
2. The diphthong oe is represented by [oe].
COLLECTION
OF
BRITISH AUTHORS.
VOL. CXIV.
----------
A WHIM, AND ITS CONSEQUENCES.
IN ONE VOLUME.
A WHIM,
AND
ITS CONSEQUENCES.
_COPYRIGHT EDITION_.
LEIPZIG
BERNH. TAUCHNITZ JUN.
1847
A WHIM, AND ITS CONSEQUENCES.
CHAPTER I.
A solitary room at midnight: a single wax candle lighted on the table:
the stiff dull crimson silken curtains of the bed close drawn: half a
dozen phials and two or three glasses. Is it the chamber of a sick
man? He must sleep sound if it be, for there is no noise--not even a
breath; and all without is as still as death. There is awe in the
silence; the candle sheds gloom, not light, the damask hanging sucks
up the rays, and gives nothing back: they sink into the dark wood
furniture: one could hear a mouse creep over the thick carpet; but
there is no sound! Is it the chamber of the dead? But where is the
watcher?--Away! and what matters it here? No one will come to disturb
the rest of that couch: no brawling voices, no creaking doors will
make vibrate the dull cold ear of death. Watch ye the living! The dead
need no watching: the sealed eyes and the clayed ears have sleep that
cannot be broken.
But is it the watcher who comes back again through that slowly opening
door? No, that is a man; and we give all the more sad and solemn tasks
of life to women. A young man, too, with the broad, free brow
gathered into a sad, stern frown. He comes near the bed; he draws
slowly back the curtain, and, with the faint ray of the single
candle streaming in, gazes down upon the sight beneath. There
it lies, the clay--animate, breathing, thoughtful, full of feelings,
considerations, passions, pangs, not six-and-thirty hours before. But
now so silent, so calm, so powerfully grave: it seems to seize in its
very inertness upon the busy thoughts of others, and chain them down
to its own deadly tranquillity.
It is the corpse of a man passed the prime, not yet in the decline, of
life. The hair is gray, not white; the skin somewhat wrinkled, but not
shrivelled. The features are fine, but stern; and there is a deep
furrow of a frown between the eyebrows, which even the pacifying
hand of death has not been able to obliterate. He must have been a
hard man, methinks. Yet how the living gazes on the dead! How
earnestly--how tenderly! His eyes, too, fill with tears. There must
have been some kindly act done, some tie of gratitude or affection
between those two. It is very often that those who are stern, but
just, win regard more long-enduring, deeper-seated, more intense, than
the blandishing, light-minded man of sweet and hollow courtesies.
The tear overtops the eyelid, and falls upon the dark shooting-jacket;
and then, bending down his head, he presses his lips upon the marble
brow. A drop (of the heart's dew) will be found there in the morning;
for there is no warmth in that cold forehead to dry it up.
The curtains are closed again; the room is once more vacant of breath.
The image of human life upon the table, that decreasing taper, gutters
down with droppings like those of a petrifying spring. A spark of
fire, like some angry passion of the heart, floats in the melted wax
above, nourishing its flaming self by wasting that it dwells in. Then
comes back the watcher, with bleared and vacant eyes, and lips that
smell of brandy. She has sense enough yet to stop the prodigal
consumer of her only companion of the night; and sitting down, she
falls asleep in the presence of death, as if she were quite familiar
with the grave, and had wandered amongst the multitudes that lie
beneath.