Iris has told me that the Scottish gift of second-sight runs in her
family, and that she is afraid she has it. Those who are so endowed look
upon a well man and see a shroud wrapt about him. According to the degree
to which it covers him, his death will be near or more remote. It is an
awful faculty; but science gives one too much like it. Luckily for our
friends, most of us who have the scientific second-sight school ourselves
not to betray our knowledge by word or look.
Day by day, as the Little Gentleman comes to the table, it seems to me
that the shadow of some approaching change falls darker and darker over
his countenance. Nature is struggling with something, and I am afraid
she is under in the wrestling-match. You do not care much, perhaps, for
my particular conjectures as to the nature of his difficulty. I should
say, however, from the sudden flushes to which he is subject, and certain
other marks which, as an expert, I know how to interpret, that his heart
was in trouble; but then he presses his hand to the _right_ side, as if
there were the centre of his uneasiness.
When I say difficulty about the heart, I do not mean any of those
sentimental maladies of that organ which figure more largely in romances
than on the returns which furnish our Bills of Mortality. I mean some
actual change in the organ itself, which may carry him off by slow and
painful degrees, or strike him down with one huge pang and only time
for a single shriek,——as when the shot broke through the brave Captain
Nolan’s breast, at the head of the Light Brigade at Balaklava, and with a
loud cry he dropped dead from his saddle.
I thought it only fair to say something of what I apprehended to some who
were entitled to be warned. The landlady’s face fell when I mentioned my
fears.
Poor man!——she said.——And will leave the best room empty! Hasn’t he got
any sisters or nieces or anybody to see to his things, if he should be
took away? Such a sight of cases, full of everything! Never thought
of his failin’ so suddin. A complication of diseases, she expected.
Liver-complaint one of ’em?
I must tell Iris that I think her poor friend is in a precarious state.
She seems nearer to him than anybody.
I did tell her. Whatever emotion it produced, she kept a still face,
except, perhaps, a little trembling of the lip.——Could I be certain that
there was any mortal complaint?——Why, no, I could not be certain; but it
looked alarming to me.——He shall have some of my life,——she said.
I suppose this to have been a fancy of hers, of a kind of magnetic power
she could give out;——at any rate, I cannot help thinking she _wills_ her
strength away from herself, for she has lost vigor and color from that
day. I have sometimes thought he gained the force she lost; but this may
have been a whim, very probably.
One day she came suddenly to me, looking deadly pale. Her lips moved, as
if she were speaking; but I could not at first hear a word. Her hair
looked strangely, as if lifting itself, and her eyes were full of wild
light. She sunk upon a chair, and I thought was falling into one of her
trances. Something had frozen her blood with fear; I thought, from what
she said, half audibly, that she believed she had seen a shrouded figure.
That night, at about eleven o’clock, I was sent for to see the Little
Gentleman, who was taken suddenly ill. Bridget, the servant, went
before me with a light. The doors were both unfastened, and I found
myself ushered, without hindrance, into the dim light of the mysterious
apartment I had so longed to enter....
The house was deadly still, and the night-wind, blowing through an open
window, struck me as from a field of ice, at the moment I passed back
again into the creaking corridor. As I turned into the common passage, a
white figure, holding a lamp, stood full before me. I thought at first it
was one of those images made to stand in niches and hold a light in their
hands. But the illusion was momentary, and my eyes speedily recovered
from the shock of the bright flame and snowy drapery to see that the
figure was a breathing one. It was Iris, in one of her statue-trances.
She had come down, whether sleeping or waking, I knew not at first,
led by an instinct that told her she was wanted,——or, possibly, having
overheard and interpreted the sound of our movements,——or, it may be,
having learned from the servant that there was trouble which might ask
for a woman’s hand. I sometimes think women have a sixth sense, which
tells them that others, whom they cannot see or hear, are in suffering.
How surely we find them at the bedside of the dying! How strongly does
Nature plead for them, that we should draw our first breath in their
arms, as we sigh away our last upon their faithful breasts!
With white, bare feet, her hair loosely knotted, dressed as the starlight
knew her, and the morning when she rose from slumber, save that she
had twisted a scarf round her long dress, she stood still as a stone
before me, holding in one hand a lighted coil of wax-taper, and in the
other a silver goblet. I held my own lamp close to her, as if she had
been a figure of marble, and she did not stir. There was no breach of
propriety then, to scare the Poor Relation with and breed scandal out
of. She had been “warned in a dream,” doubtless suggested by her waking
knowledge and the sounds which had reached her exalted sense. There was
nothing more natural than that she should have risen and girdled her
waist, and lighted her taper, and found the silver goblet with “_Ex dono
pupillorum_” on it, from which she had taken her milk and possets through
all her childish years, and so gone blindly out to find her place at the
bedside,——a Sister of Charity without the cap and rosary; nay, unknowing
whither her feet were leading her, and with wide, blank eyes seeing
nothing but the vision that beckoned her along.——Well, I must wake her
from her slumber or trance.——I called her name, but she did not heed my
voice.
The Devil put it into my head that I would kiss one handsome young girl
before I died, and now was my chance. She never would know it, and I
should carry the remembrance of it with me into the grave, and a rose
perhaps grow out of my dust, as a brier did out of Lord Lovel’s, in
memory of that immortal moment! Would it wake her from her trance?
and would she see me in the flush of my stolen triumph, and hate and
despise me ever after? Or should I carry off my trophy undetected,
and always from that time say to myself, when I looked upon her in
the glory of youth and the splendor of beauty, “My lips have touched
those roses and made their sweetness mine forever”? You think my cheek
was flushed, perhaps, and my eyes were glittering with this midnight
flash of opportunity. On the contrary, I believe I was pale, very pale,
and I know that I trembled. Ah, it is the pale passions that are the
fiercest,——it is the violence of the chill that gives the measure of the
fever! The fighting-boy of our school always turned white when he went
out to a pitched battle with the bully of some neighboring village; but
we knew what his bloodless cheeks meant,——the blood was all in his stout
heart,——he was a slight boy, and there was not enough to redden his face
and fill his heart both at once.
Perhaps it is making a good deal of a slight matter, to tell the internal
conflicts in the heart of a quiet person something more than juvenile
and something less than senile, as to whether he should be guilty of
an impropriety, and if he were, whether he would get caught in his
indiscretion. And yet the memory of the kiss that Margaret of Scotland
gave to Alain Chartier has lasted four hundred years, and put it into the
head of many an ill-favored poet, whether Victoria or Eugénie would do
as much by him, if she happened to pass him when he was asleep. And have
we ever forgotten that the fresh cheek of the young John Milton tingled
under the lips of some high-born Italian beauty, who, I believe, did
not think to leave her card by the side of the slumbering youth, but has
bequeathed the memory of her pretty deed to all coming time? The sound
of a kiss is not so loud as that of a cannon, but its echo lasts a deal
longer.
There is one disadvantage which the man of philosophical habits of mind
suffers, as compared with the man of action. While he is taking an
enlarged and rational view of the matter before him, he lets his chance
slip through his fingers. Iris woke up, of her own accord, before I had
made up my mind what I was going to do about it.
When I remember how charmingly she looked, I don’t blame myself at all
for being tempted; but if I had been fool enough to yield to the impulse,
I should certainly have been ashamed to tell of it. She did not know
what to make of it, finding herself there alone, in such guise, and me
staring at her. She looked down at her white robe and bare feet, and
colored,——then at the goblet she held in her hand,——then at the taper;
and at last her thoughts seemed to clear up.
I know it all,——she said.——He is going to die, and I must go and sit by
him. Nobody will care for him as I shall, and I have nobody else to care
for.
I assured her that nothing was needed for him that night but rest, and
persuaded her that the excitement of her presence could only do harm. Let
him sleep, and he would very probably awake better in the morning. There
was nothing to be said, for I spoke with authority; and the young girl
glided away with noiseless step and sought her own chamber.