CHAPTER IV.
The sensations of Morley Ernstein, when he returned to consciousness, were all of the most unpleasant kind. There was a numbness over his whole body, and a feeling of tingling from head to foot, which, to those who have not felt it, may be difficult, if not impossible to describe. A violent weighty pain in the head too, a sluggish oppression at the heart, and a great difficulty in drawing the breath, all made the consciousness of life so burdensome, that, when he saw a number of people standing round the bed in which he had been placed, and employing every means that art could devise and skill execute, to restore him entirely to life, he could not but feel a desire that they would let him alone, and leave him to that quiet insensibility from which they were taking such pains to rouse him. For the moment it seemed to him that death was a very pleasant thing; and he who, full of health, life, and buoyant youth, had thought half an hour before that there would be nothing more awful than to lie "in cold obstruction and to rot," now that he had become more familiar with "the lean, abhorred monster," felt not the same repugnance, and almost longed for the still quiet of the grave. Life and death are the two grand adversaries; fighting incessantly for the kingdom of man's body, and in proportion as the dominion of Life in us is powerful, so is our reluctance to yield ourselves to her enemy.
Such as I have mentioned were the first feelings of Morley Ernstein; but, as life came back more fully--as he felt his heart beat more freely, his benumbed frame regain its true sensations, his bosom heave with the unrestrained breath--his love for the bright angel, and his abhorrence for her dark opponent, returned in full force; and he could feel grateful to those who were giving him back to all the warm associations of earthly being. His eyes wandered round the little circle that encompassed his bed; but all the faces were strange, except one--that of his travelling companion in the stage-coach; who, amongst the most eager, and the most busy, was superintending with active skill the execution of every mandate pronounced by the lips of a tall, thin, yellow-faced man in black, that sat by the side of the bed near the head. All eyes were fixed upon the patient, with a look of interest in his fate and satisfaction at the change that was coming over him; but the moment he attempted to speak, every one raised a finger to the lip, in order to impose silence upon him.
"You may take away the salt from under the shoulders," said the thin yellow man; "circulation is coming back rapidly. Keep the hot water to the feet, however, and bring me a little Madeira, Mr. Jones. We must give it him by teaspoonfuls. Your friend, sir, will do," he continued, speaking to Morley's travelling companion; "but we must be very careful!--very careful, indeed! I knew a poor fellow once, who died, when every one thought him quite recovered, merely from the people imprudently raising him up in bed.--Pray do not move a muscle, sir!" he added, seeing that the young gentleman himself was evidently listening to all he said.
"You have had a very narrow escape, sir--a very narrow escape, indeed; and the least thing may undo all we have done. I never knew, in my life, a case of suspended animation, where a relapse did not prove fatal.--Oh, the Madeira!--now, sir--a teaspoonful every five minutes!"
From all that Morley Ernstein saw and heard, he judged rightly that he had undergone, and perhaps required, the treatment applied to persons who are apparently drowned. He learned, moreover, in the course of the evening, that, at the moment that he had received the severe blow on the head, which had deprived him of sensation, the carriage had sunk deep in the water, and that he would have infallibly perished had it not been for the exertions of his fellow-traveller, who, not being stunned as he was, had soon perceived that he remained under the water, and had dragged him out, through the door of the broken vehicle. He was quite insensible, however, when brought to land, and remained so for nearly an hour, although every means of resuscitation were skilfully employed.
The dangers of our poor friend were not by any means over when life once more bounded freely in his bosom. The headache which he had felt, on first recovering his senses, increased every minute; and ere the next morning, violent fever and delirium had succeeded. For ten days he hung between life and death; but the thin yellow man, whom he had seen sitting by his bedside, was, in truth, a surgeon of great skill; and the unwearied care and attention of his fellow-traveller, whose whole interest in him was only that which could be excited by the companionship of a few short hours, did as much as art to withdraw him from this new danger.
When the young gentleman recovered sufficiently to comprehend what was passing around him, he found another face by his bedside, better known than that of any one near. His old servant, Adam Gray, had been brought, it seemed, from the mansion to attend upon his young master, at a period when very little hope was entertained of his recovery, and for the four last days he had been employed in aiding the stranger in his care of the patient.
Every writer who has ever taken a pen in hand has written, and every heart, even the most selfish, has felt, how sweet is the sight of a familiar face in times of sorrow, sickness, or difficulty; so that the observation is trite enough, and yet few have analyzed the sensations which that familiar face produces, or told us why we love to see it better than fairer countenances, or even those that express as great an interest in us. It is that a familiar face comes loaded with those sweet associations of other times, which are no mean medicaments to the body or the mind. There is a light of hope upon it, reflected from those past days, which seems to brighten all the dark spots in the present; and such was the sight of that old man's countenance to Morley Ernstein. It brought to him the recollections of his early years, a feeling of balmy spring, the thoughts of health and rural sports, and many bright hours long gone; and from the moment that he saw him hovering round his sick bed, the sensation of convalescence came upon him, and he could say to himself, "I am getting well."
Ere long, conversation was allowed him, and he soon found the opportunity of doing that which he had more than once wished to do, while the grave doctor and the officious nurse had continued to impose silence upon him--namely, to thank the man, who, on so slight an acquaintance, had tended him with the care and kindness of a brother. His travelling companion, who had been absent for about an hour, entered the room, shortly after the permission to speak was granted him, and took his seat by the bedside in which he now sat up, while the balmy air of the first days of June found their way in through the open window of the little inn. Morley lost not the occasion, and expressed, as he well could do, in the fine eloquent language of the heart, the feelings of gratitude, which he experienced for all the generous kindness that had been shown him.
"Mention it not!--mention it not!" replied the stranger; "I have no title to thanks whatsoever; I did it for my own gratification, solely and simply, and consequently have no right to claim or to receive gratitude."
"Nay, nay," said Morley, "I have heard of such disclaimers before, my good friend, and know that some men always put good actions upon selfish motives, when they perform them themselves. But the way I distinguish is, to ask whether, abstracted from the pleasure of doing good, this man or that, who denies the merit of all he has done, would have so acted. This man jumps into a river, to save a child from drowning; that visits a prison, to give comfort to a sick man--would the one have plunged into the water with his clothes on merely for amusement, or the other have spent an hour in the prison if no sick man had been there? If the pleasure felt be derived solely from the goodness of the action, the man who experiences it is a good man, and well deserving the gratitude and admiration of his fellows. You saved my life, the landlord informs me, by dragging we out of the carriage while it was under water, and--"
"Yes, that is true," replied his companion, half laughing; "I did. indeed, as Sheridan called it, play the Newfoundland dog, when I found you were likely to be drowned unless assisted; but that is all, and surely that is little enough. I have done the same for a fly in a cream jug."
"But you have never stayed three weeks in a country inn," answered Morley, smiling, "to nurse a fly in a fever; and for that, at least, you deserve my deepest gratitude."
"Not at all!" answered his friend--"not at all! Even on your own principles, you owe me no thanks. I never thought whether I was doing a good action or not. In regard to the first of your mighty obligations, that of staying three weeks in a country inn, it might truly have been a great tax upon me under some circumstances; but just at that time, I had nothing on earth to do. I was going back to London out of pure weariness of the place I was in; for in general, I never am in town before the first or second of June. Here I have had fine air, fine scenery, and a fine trout-stream. What would you have more? Then as to watching and taking care of you in your delirium, I have no merit there: the truth is, I am fond of all strong emotions, and the watching you, the wondering whether you would live or die, the changes of your countenance, the gray shade that would sometimes come over your face, the flush of fever, the restless tossing to and fro--and then, again, the gambling, as it were, each moment in my own mind for your life?-all this was surely excitement enough. Besides your delirium was worth any money. There is something so strange and fantastic in the ravings of a man in fever--very much more curious and metaphysical than mere madness. In madness, one always finds one strong predominant idea; but in delirium it is as if all the ideas of a lifetime were mixed in one wild chaos. Nor Talma, nor Schroeder, nor Malibran, could have afforded me so much interest as you in your delirium."
"You have a strange taste," replied Ernstein, not altogether well pleased, in the first instance, at the explanation of his companion's feelings. A moment's reflection, however, convinced him that there was some affectation in the account, but that the affectation was of that generous kind which seeks to diminish the value of an obligation conferred upon another, even at the risk of appearing hard or selfish. "Well," he continued, "your motives are your own affairs; but the kindness you have shown me is mine, and I must feel gratitude accordingly."
While they were still speaking, the surgeon again entered, and his appearance put a stop to the conversation for the night. On the following morning, however, the patient was so far better as to be permitted to rise for a short time, and his fellow-traveller visited him towards the middle of the day, announcing that he came to bid him farewell, as he had just received letters which summoned him to London. "I do not go unwillingly," he continued, "for my plan of life is ever to hasten forward. Existence is so short that we have no time for long pauses anywhere; each joy of each period--each thought, each feeling of each period of animal being should be tasted, or they will be lost, for we must never forget the great axiom, that every minute we are a minute older."
"But do you not think," said Morley, "that we may sometimes, in our haste, taste a bitter instead of a sweet?"
"So much the better--so much the better," replied his friend, laughing; "it is by such things that we become wise. I am quite of the opinion of your great poet, Coleridge, that--
'The strongest plume in Wisdom's wing
Is memory of past folly;'
and depend upon it every man will find in life, that to be very wise, he must be a little foolish. The child that does not cut its finger before it is eight years old, will cut its hand by the time it is twelve, and perhaps its throat by the time it is twenty. What I mean is--for I see you are surprised--that we must learn what is evil or dangerous, by that acquaintance with evil and danger which is fitted for our time of life, otherwise we are sure to get our portion all at once, at some after period. It is like one of those medicines which doctors tell us accumulate in the system, and kill us suddenly when we least expect it; or rather, like one of those Eastern drugs, which are very salutary when we take a little of them every day, but utterly poisonous if we take a large dose at once."
"Might it not be better for a healthy person to take none at all?" demanded Morley; and added, the moment after, seeing his companion about to reply, "but I am not fit to argue to-day, though I think that your system has some flaws in it."
"Doubtless--doubtless," replied the other. "It would not be a human system if it had not. Heaven forbid that I should originate a perfect system of any kind! I would not commit such a crime for the world. I will only answer your question, therefore, by saying, that if we were on this earth in a healthy state, as your words suppose, it would certainly be very foolish to take drugs of any kind; but depend upon it, a portion of physic, and a portion of evil, are reserved for every man to take, to suffer, to commit, and he had better spread them over as wide a space as possible, that they may not be too thick anywhere. And now I must leave you, for the coach will soon pass."
"But," said Morley, eagerly, "I must ask you first, to tell me where I can find you in London, for you will let me hope that an acquaintance begun under such unusual circumstances is not to end here, and as yet I do not even know your name."
"It is not Mephistophiles!" replied the other, who had marked with a keen eye the expression of his young companion's countenance, at every doctrine which might be considered as doubtful in tendency, and had smiled, moreover, at what he considered the boyish innocence of Morley Ernstein--"it is not Mephistophiles! I am a very inferior devil, I assure you. My name is Everard Lieberg. In England, which is as much my home as Germany, people put Esquire at the end of it. On the other side of the channel, I put Graff before it, and the one title signifies about as little as the other."
"But tell me, Count, where I am to find you?" demanded Morley, the other having risen to depart.
"Nay, do not call me Count!" exclaimed Lieberg, laughing; "if you do, I shall fancy myself walking about London, with mustachios and a queer-looking coat, and lodging somewhere near Leicester Square. No, no, I put off the Count here, and I have a bachelor's lodging in Sackville Street, where I shall be very happy to see you--so farewell."
Morley Ernstein was left alone, and, as usual with the young, his first thoughts were of the character of his late companion. Before we grow old, we learn that the character of nineteen men out of twenty is not worth a thought. There was something in Lieberg that did not altogether please him--not alone displayed in his opinions, but also in his manner, a lightness which was superficial--not affected, but habitual--and which covered the depths of his character with an impenetrable disguise. It was like a domino, which, though nothing but thin, fluttering silk, hides form and feature, so that the real person beneath cannot be recognised, even by a near friend.
"Has he any heart, I wonder?" thought the young gentleman. "If so, he takes pains to hide it. All things seem to pass him by, affecting him but as breath upon a looking-glass, leaving no trace the moment after, upon the cold, hard surface beneath. Here he has nursed me like a brother for the last fortnight, and now he leaves me with the same air of indifference as if we had just got out of a stagecoach in which our acquaintance had commenced two hours before."
Morley felt as if he were somewhat ungrateful for scanning so closely the character of one who had treated him with much kindness, and, soon quitting such thoughts, he rang for his good old servant, Adam Gray, and enquired into all that had passed at Morley Court since he had left it--the situation of the poor cottagers, whose fate he had endeavoured to soften; the health of his horses and his dogs; the promises of the game season; and all those things that the most interest a very young Englishman, in his hours of health. The horses were all well; the dogs were in as good a state as could be wished; the game bade fair to be abundant.
"But as to Johnes, and Dickenson, and poor Widow Harvey," the old man said, "I can tell you very little, sir. They have had the money, and the bread and soup; and Johnes had work at the Lee farm. Widow Harvey got wool given her to spin, and I sent the apothecary to Dickenson, but did not hear how he was; for you see, sir, I was just going down to look in at the poor fellow's cottage, when Miss Carr came to tell me of the accident, and--"
"Miss who?" demanded Morley Ernstein, in some surprise.
"Oh, Miss Carr, sir, you know!" replied Adam Gray. "She was in a great flurry, poor young lady, and did seem to be very sorry about you--indeed every one knows she has a good heart, and does as much for the poor as she can, though that's less than she likes, poor young lady!"
"And, pray, who is Miss Carr?" demanded Ernstein; "and why does your compassion run over on her account, my good Adam? Why do you call her 'poor young lady' so often?"
"Oh, because she has such a father, to be sure, sir!" replied the servant. "Surely you recollect Old Carr, the miser, and his daughter, Miss Juliet--a beautiful girl she was--and is, too, for that matter, poor thing!"
"I do not recollect anything about them," answered Morley; "and yet I remember everything for many years before my poor mother died. But no such name as Carr ever comes back to my memory. Who is this Mr. Carr?"
"Ay, ay, I recollect," answered the old man, "it was long ago--before your time. But as to this Mr. Carr--he's a miser, and was a lawyer--ay, and cheat into the bargain, if all tales be true. However, sir, he's got money enough, they say, to buy out half the county; and there he lives, in that old tumble-down house, at the back of Yelverly, and not a shilling will he spend to repair it. He has two maids now, but till Miss Juliet was grown up, there was but one; and then the man that does the garden and looks after the farm, takes care of the two horses. Miss Juliet, they say, has some money of her own, but she spends all that upon the poor people about Yelverly, and upon books."
Morley mused; there was a feeling in his bosom--not an operation of the mind, but one of the revelations of the heart--which instantly convinced him that the lady, whose horse he had contrived to frighten, was no other than Juliet Carr. How she had discovered his situation, so as to give notice to his servants, and send one of them to him, was his first thought; but, before he gratified his curiosity on that subject, by asking any questions, he returned to something which had attracted his attention a few minutes before, demanding--
"What was it you meant just now, Adam, when you said, 'It was long ago, before my time?'"
"Oh, the quarrel, sir," replied the old man--"the quarrel between your father and Lawyer Carr; when he came about something, and vowed he would prosecute Sir Henry for defamation, as they called it, which means scandal, I take it; and your father struck him, and turned him out of the house, and he has never been near the place since."
"Did you hear how Miss Carr knew that I was ill?" demanded Morley, now fully convinced that his supposition was right.
"She told me they had been passing by this place, sir," answered Adam Gray, "and they heard the whole story from the ostlers; so she walked over, that very night, to tell us, poor young lady! It's a long walk, too, from Yelverly; so she was tired, and sat down for a minute or two in the library, and took up the book that was open upon the table--it was called 'Herrick's Poems,' I think--and asked if you had been reading it; and said, she hoped that you would soon be able to read it again, with such a sweet voice, she made us all love her. I do wonder how that man happened to have such a daughter as that--her mother was a good lady, too."
"Well, that will do, Adam!" said his master; "now bring me some soup."