I
I have had occasion to remark how suddenly alcohol may affect the brain if taken on an empty stomach; I shall now illustrate the impression of one stupor after a heavy meal. Last night I drank freely during a long dinner, and when I arrived at my lodging-house, I felt completely overcome with fatigue. After climbing the five flights of stairs to my room, I sank into my arm-chair with the sensations of vast bewilderment and drowsiness. The small squares in the window frame before me merged into the darkness, and I looked out into the crisp moonlight night as if nothing were before my vision. I thought that it was the last Sunday morning in August, as yet in its freshness, long before the steady glare of the noonday sun. I was sitting, as it seemed to me, on the porch of my old plantation home; and my negro servant had just told me of his readiness to dress me for breakfast. Right before me lay the long, rectangular lawn bordered by the grove of chestnut trees. There was the same spreading poplar with the sheep nibbling its fallen leaves; and the same zig-zag fence against which some of them were rubbing themselves; I could even see little strands of grey wool on the splints in the fence, and over the top rails I caught the same glimpse of a curve in the James River, which can really be seen from this point; but the river seemed muddy, as if from recent rains; I saw a hawk rise and grow dim into a speck against the sky as he disappeared down stream.
Looking in this direction led my eyes to rest upon the old clay road which was then a highway crossing our plantation, and down which I saw my father ride off once, never to return. Along this same road now came a young horsewoman with an escort of two negro out-riders. The trio came nearer and nearer until they reached the long driveway bordered by boxwood hedges that led up to our house from the clay road. I recognized her—Susanne, Susanne, wearing a sun-bonnet with ribbons streaming out to the wind, her bosom rising and falling in the excitement of the ride as she urged her bay mare along between the rows of boxwood, the out-riders keeping in her dust. Her lips are red with life and laughter. I remembered the last time but one when I saw her, she kissed me again and again in the bloom of first love, of only love. “Ah, we are together once more, dear, in the happy long ago!” I was different then. I seem to feel the pressure of those lips; methinks I even hear her now, her voice ringing with the love of love and of life. “For life is love;” she used to say. But come I must go into the house and dress to meet her.
For a moment longer I gazed upon this well-known scene, and (as I thought) I heard myself say, “Take me back, oh, take me back again, to the time of youth, and when all nature seemed a friend.” ... At that moment my arm slipped, I grasped hold of the side of my arm-chair, but not without coming forward with a start.... Susanne! A name forgotten on my lips, yet always speaking and calling to me with the tongues of memory. How strange are remembered kisses upon lips that are dead.