_DEALS WITH DEATH AND THE DREAD OF IT._
If the thoughts which are coursing through my brain at this moment be
not less gruesome to read than they are to write, this chapter will, I
fear, be but sorry reading; for I feel strangely depressed and nervous,
as I settle down to the opening pages of my diary.
The wind is raging and roaring outside until the stout walls of the
house seem to rock and sway like tree-tops, and the sudden gusts and
squalls make my startled heart bound and beat faster in my bosom, and
turn me sick with a sense of loneliness and of loss.
Even when I lie warm in my bed the sound of the wind at midnight
strikes a chill through me, so that I shiver in spite of the blankets.
As it comes shrieking and sobbing through key-hole and lattice, the
very doors and windows seem to partake of my superstition, and to be
touched with some uncanny dread; for long after it has died away I
hear them creaking complainingly among themselves, as if they too were
nervous and in fear. In the wind's shriek at such times there is always
to me some suggestion of the sights it has seen, and of the ruin it has
wrought. I seem to see, as I listen to its wailing, a weary moon that
looks out white and wan upon a bleak heath, where a dead woman lies
straining a living babe to her milkless breast; or upon a waste of
hurrying waters that heave and roar and hurl themselves in huge billows
upon one desolate figure, clinging despairingly to a broken mast. And
then there is a sudden lull in the storm; the moon is hidden by clouds
once more, and the infant's wail, the strong man's cry, and the shriek
of the wind, gloating in savage exultation over its ghastly secrets,
die away into a distant rumble, and all is still save the beating of my
heart, and the stealthy creaking of door and casement.
Even as I write I can hear its wailing so die away in the distance, and
I seem to see it crouching, still and quiet and panther-like, yet ever
gathering itself together, and creeping nearer and nearer, so that it
may take me unaware, and in one sudden bound sweep down upon me, as an
eagle swoops upon his prey, and bear me away to destruction.
Listen to it now!--whistling, wailing, shrieking, like a live thing! Is
it any wonder, on such a night, and with a sound in the air like that
of innumerable lamentations, that I feel strangely conscious of the
near approach of death, and cannot dissociate my thoughts from
"The knell, the shroud, the mattock, and the grave,
The deep damp vault, the darkness, and the worm?"
For I _do_ fear death, as I believe we all do in some moods.
Notwithstanding our reiterated beliefs in Christ and in Immortality;
notwithstanding our prayers, hymn-singing, and heartfelt declarations
of our trust in God, and in His care for us, are there not moments
in the life of each of us when the human nature within recoils in
dumb and desolate protest from the thought of an existence in which
the body will be left to decay? We think at such times of our own
death and burial. We picture the mourning coaches setting out, with
solemn pomp and pageantry of woe, to bear us away to our last earthly
resting-place. We see them drive back--briskly now, and as though the
grief were left behind with the coffin--to the darkened house, and
we see the mourners alight and re-enter to draw up the blinds with a
sigh of thinly-disguised satisfaction, and to turn with a natural if
humiliating relief to life and the things of life again. And as we
think of the darkness coming on, and of that deserted body of ours,
which had once so craved for light and warmth and human companionship,
lying, in the first awful night of desolation, away out under the sods
in that dreary cemetery, we can almost fancy that we see the uneasy
soul, restless even in heaven, stealing sadly to earth again, and
hovering, for very companionship, over the forsaken mound that covers
its ancient comrade.
So, too, there are moments of midnight waking, when we lie on our bed
as in a grave, and feel the awful thought of death borne in upon us
with unutterable, intolerable horror. Then the darkness which shuts
out those objects that in the day-time distract the attention of our
outward eye, and of our mind, serves only to make our mental vision
doubly keen, and to concentrate all our faculties, as to one inward
focal point of light, on that hateful thought. Then do we seem to
feel the earth rushing swiftly on its way, as if eager to hurry us
to our own dissolution; and then do we stretch forth impotent hands
and vain, striving hopelessly to stay it on its course. Yet ever is
our striving of none avail: Death, hideous and inexorable, stares us
in the face--a wall of vast and impenetrable night, which closes
in upon us on every side. We gasp and choke as though some bony and
cruel fingers lay clutching at our throat. "Is there no way," we cry,
with heart strained unto bursting, "is there no way by which we may
escape the Inescapable?--no loop-hole through which we may creep, and
elude this black and grisly thing?" But from the hollow womb of night
comes back the sullen answer, "Escape there is none," and then, like
doomed criminals who snatch greedily at a day's reprieve, we thrust
the ghastly thing away from us, and strive to distract our thoughts in
folly.
[Illustration]
[Illustration]