第81章

He seemed to have got his wits together by this time, and to have a vague consciousness that he might have been saying more than he meant for anybody's ears.--I have been talking a little wild, Sir, eh? he said.--There is a great buzzing in my head with those drops of yours, and I doubt if my tongue has not been a little looser than I would have it, Sir.But I don't much want to live, Sir; that's the truth of the matter, and it does rather please me to think that fifty years from now nobody will know that the place where I lie does n't hold as stout and straight a man as the best of 'em that stretch out as if they were proud of the room they take.You may get me well, if you can, Sir, if you think it worth while to try;but I tell you there has been no time for this many a year when the smell of fresh earth was not sweeter to me than all the flowers that grow out of it.There's no anodyne like your good clean gravel, Sir.But if you can keep me about awhile, and it amuses you to try, you may show your skill upon me, if you like.There is a pleasure or two that I love the daylight for, and I think the night is not far off, at best.--I believe I shall sleep now; you may leave me, and come, if you like, in the morning.

Before I passed out, I took one more glance round the apartment.

The beautiful face of the portrait looked at me, as portraits often do, with a frightful kind of intelligence in its eyes.The drapery fluttered on the still outstretched arm of the tall object near the window;--a crack of this was open, no doubt, and some breath of wind stirred the hanging folds.In my excited state, I seemed to see something ominous in that arm pointing to the heavens.I thought of the figures in the Dance of Death at Basle, and that other on the panels of the covered Bridge at Lucerne, and it seemed to me that the grim mask who mingles with every crowd and glides over every threshold was pointing the sick man to his far home, and would soon stretch out his bony hand and lead him or drag him on the unmeasured journey towards it.

The fancy had possession of me, and I shivered again as when I first entered the chamber.The picture and the shrouded shape; I saw only these two objects.They were enough.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 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, Iknew 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, clad 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 waxtaper, 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 Lovers, 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.