CHAPTER XXXIV.
“SAD CASE OF MANIA A POTU.”
“Watchman McDonough reports that late last night, he picked up, on the sidewalk, the insensible body of Maurice Carlyle, who showed some signs of returning animation after 458 his removal to Station House No. ——. A physician was called in, and every effort made to save the unfortunate victim of intemperance; but medical skill was inadequate to arrest the work of many years of excess, and before daylight the wretched man expired in dreadful convulsions. Coroner Boutwell held an inquest on the body, and the verdict rendered was ‘Death from mania a potu.’ Mr. Carlyle was well known in this city, where for many years he was an ornament to society, and a general favorite in the fashionable and mercantile circle in which he moved. Of numbers who were once the recipients of his bounty and hospitality, none offered succor in the hour of adversity, and among all his former friends none were found to cheer or pity in the last ordeal to which flesh is subjected. The melancholy fate of Maurice Carlyle furnishes another illustration of the mournful truth that the wages of intemperance are destitution and desertion.”
Such was the startling announcement, which, under the head of “Police Report,” Dr. Grey read and re-read in a prominent New York paper that had accidentally remained for some days unopened on his desk, and was dated nearly a month previous. Locking the door of his office, he sat down to collect his bewildered thoughts, and to quiet the tumult in his throbbing heart.
During the two years that had drearily worn away since his last interview with Mrs. Carlyle, he had sternly forbidden his mind to dwell on its brief dream of happiness, and by a life of unusually active benevolence endeavored to forget the one episode which alone had power to disquiet and sadden him.
He had philosophically schooled himself to the calm, unmurmuring acceptance of his lonely destiny, and looked forward to a life solitary yet not unhappy, although uncheered by the love and companionship which every man indulges the instinctive hope will sooner or later crown his existence.
Now heart and conscience, so long at deadly feud, suddenly signalled a truce, clasped hands, embraced cordially. How radiant the world looked,—with what wondrous glory the 459 future had in the twinkling of an eye robed itself. The woman he had loved was stainless and free, and how could she long resist the pleadings of his famished heart?
He would win her from cynicism and isolation, would melt her frozen nature in the genial atmosphere of his pure and constant affection, and interweave her aimless, sombre life with the busy, silvery web of his own.
After forty years, God would grant him home, and wife, and hearthstone peace.
What a flush and sparkle stole to this grave man’s olive cheek, and calm, deep blue eyes!
Ah! how hungrily he longed for the touch of her hand, the sight of her face; and, snatching his hat, he put the paper in his pocket, and hurried towards “Solitude.”
In the holy hush of that hazy autumnal afternoon, nature—Magna Mater,—
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“The altar-curtains of whose hills Are sunset’s purple air,” “Who dips in the dim light of setting suns The spacious skirts of that vast robe of hers That widens ever in the wondrous west,” |
seemed slumbering and dreaming away the day.
The forests were gaudy in their painted shrouds of scarlet and yellow leaves, and long, feathery flakes of purple bloom nodded over crimson berries, emerald mosses, and golden-hearted asters.
Only a few weeks previous, Dr. Grey had driven along that road, and, while the echo of harvest hymns rang on the hay-scented air, had asked himself how men and women could become so completely absorbed in temporal things, ignoring the solemn and indisputable fact of the brevity of human life and the restricted dominion of man,—
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“Whose part in all the pomp that fills The circuit of the summer hills Is, that his grave is green.” |
But to-day all sober-hued reflections were exorcised by the rapturous Jubilate that hope was singing through the sunlit chambers of his happy heart; and when he entered the grounds of “Solitude” they seemed bathed in that soft glamour, that witching “light that never was on sea or land.”
As he sprang from his buggy and opened the little gate leading into the parterre, Robert came slowly forward, bearing a basket filled with a portion of the crimson apples that flushed the orchard, just beyond the low hedge.
“You could not have chosen a better time to come, Dr. Grey; and if I were allowed to have my way you would have been here last night. Were you sent for at last, or was it a lucky chance that brought you?”
“Merely an accident, as I received no summons. Robert, how is your mistress?”
“God only knows, sir; I am sure I never can tell how she really is. She has not seemed well since she took that journey to the North, and for two weeks past she appears to have been slipping down by inches into her grave. She neither eats nor sleeps, and for the last three nights has not lain down,—so old Ruth, the housekeeper, tells me. Yesterday I begged my mistress to let me go for you, but she smiled that awful freezing smile that strikes to the very marrow of my bones, worse than December sleet,—and raised her finger so: and said, ‘At your peril, Robert. Mind your orchard, man, and I will take care of myself. I want neither doctors nor nurses, and only desire that you, and Ruth, and Anna, will attend to your respective duties and let me be quiet. All will soon be well with me.’ I killed a partridge, had it nicely broiled, and carried it to her; and she thanked me, and made a pretence of eating the wing, just to please me; but when the waiter was taken away to the kitchen, I found all the bird on the plate. This morning, just before daylight, I heard her playing a wild, mournful thing on the piano, that sounded like a dirge or a wail; and Ruth says when she went into the parlor to open the blinds, she found her praying, and thinks she was on her knees for an hour. Please God! sometimes I wish she 461 was in heaven with my mother, for she will never see any peace in this life.”
“What seems to be the disease?”
“Heart-ache.”
“You should have come and told me this long ago.”
“And pray to what purpose, Dr. Grey? She vowed she would allow no human being to cross her threshold, except the servants, and I would sooner undertake to curl a steel, or make ringlets out of a pair of tongs, than bend her will when once she takes a stand. Humph! My mistress is no willow wand, and is about as easily moved as the church-steeple, or the stone-tower of the lighthouse.”
“Has she recently received letters that contained tidings which excited or distressed her?”
“A letter came last week, but I know nothing of its contents. You need not go into the house if you wish to find her, for about an hour and a half ago I saw her come out into the grounds, and she never goes in till the lamps are lighted.”
An anxious look clouded for an instant Dr. Grey’s countenance, but undaunted hope sang on of the hours of hallowed communion that the future held, while in her invalid condition he assumed the care and guardianship of his beloved; and, turning into the lawn, he eagerly searched the winding walks for some trace of her, some flutter of her garments, some faint, subtle odor of orange-flowers or tube-roses.
Here and there clusters of purple, pink, and orange crysanthemums flecked the lawn with color; and a flower-stand, covered with china jars that held geraniums, seemed almost a pyramid of flame, from the profusion of scarlet blooms.
The sun had gone down behind a waving line of low hills, where,—
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“Thinned to amber, rimmed with silver, Clouds in the distance dwell, Clouds that are cool, for all their color, Pure as a rose-lipped shell. Fleets of wool in the upper heavens Gossamer wings unfurl; Sailing so high they seem but sleeping Over yon bar of pearl.” |
Still as crystal was the sapphire sea that mirrored that quiet, sapphire sky, and not a murmur, not a ripple, stirred the evening air or the yellow sands that stretched for miles along the winding coast.
When Dr. Grey had partially crossed the lawn, he glanced towards the marble temple that gleamed against the dark background of deodars, and saw a woman sitting on the steps of the tomb. Softly he approached and entered the mausoleum by an arch on the opposite side, but, notwithstanding his cautious tread, he startled a white pigeon that had perched on the altar, where fresh violets, heliotrope, and snowy sprigs of nutmeg-geranium were leaning over the scalloped edge of the Venetian glasses, and distilling perfume in their delicate chalices.
Mrs. Carlyle had brought her floral tribute to the sepulchral urn, and, having carefully arranged her daily Arkja, had seated herself on the steps to rest.
From the two sentinel poplars that guarded the front, golden leaves were sifting down on the marble floor, and three or four had drifted upon the lap of the quiet figure, while one, bright and rich as autumn gilding could make it, rested like a crown on the silver waves that covered her head.
Down the shining steps trailed the folds of the white merino robe, and around her shoulders was wrapped the blue crape shawl, while a cluster of violets seemed to have slipped from her fingers, and strewed themselves at random on her dress.
Softly Dr. Grey drew near, and his voice was tremulously tender, as he said,—
“Mrs. Carlyle, no barrier divides us now.”
She did not speak, or turn her queenly head, and he laid his hand caressingly on the glistening gray hair.
“My darling, my first and only love—my brave, beautiful ‘Agla,’ may I not tell you, at last, what conscience once forbade my uttering?”
As motionless and silent as the sculptured poppies above her, she took no notice of his passionate pleading, and he sprang down one step directly in front of her.
The white face was turned to the sea, and the large, wide, 463 wonderfully lovely yet mournful gray eyes were gazing fixedly across the waste of water, at a filmy cloud as fine as lace, that like a silver netting caught the full October moon which was lifting itself in the pearly east.
The long black lashes did not droop, nor the steady eyes waver, and with a horrible foreboding Dr. Grey seized her hands. They were rigid and icy. He stooped, caught her to his bosom, and pressed his lips to hers, but they were colder than the marble column against which she leaned; for, one hour before, Vashti Carlyle had fronted her God.
Alone in the autumn evening, sitting there with the golden poplar leaves drifting over her, the desolate woman had held her last communion with the watching ocean that hushed its murmuring, to see her die; and, laying down the galling burden of her sunless, dreary life, she had joyfully and serenely “put on immortality” in that everlasting rest, where “there was no more sea, no more death, neither shall there be any more pain, for the former things are passed away.”
Ah! beautiful and holy was—
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“That peaceful face wherein all past distress Had melted into perfect loveliness.” |