“For one it has been riches, perhaps, comprising luxury, position, variety—all the advantages that spring from an abundance of worldly goods. Some fine morning, Fortune, ‘ludem insolentem ludere pertinax,’ gives her wings a shake, spreads them, and flits away; leaving in her place haggard Want, gaunt Ruin, bailiffs in the drawing-room, furniture ticketed for sale up-stairs. The children’s rocking-horse, the wife’s pianoforte, all the well-known trifles of daily use and ornament, must be cast into the chasm, as the Romans threw their effects into that awkward rent in the Forum. And the master of the household is fortunate if he be not compelled, like Curtius, to leap in after his goods. His friends are astonished, and bless themselves. His relations had predicted the catastrophe long ago. These, of course, turn their backs on him, incontinently, from motives of self-respect, no doubt, but a few of the former, such as had professed to love him least, lend a helping hand. Nevertheless, the Gourd is withered, and the man, faint and sick unto death, only wishes his hour was come and he might lie down to be at rest.
“Or it has been a child—God forbid it should have been an only one! Some golden-headed darling that used to patter down-stairs with you every morning to breakfast, and stand at your elbow every night after dinner. Whose dancing eyes never met your own but with the merry, saucy, confiding glances that seldom outlast a fifth birthday, and to whom you could no more have said an unkind word than you could cut off your right hand. Yesterday it was chasing butterflies across the lawn, and you carried it yourself with laughing triumph, rosy, happy, and hungry, in to tea. But the worm had begun its work, even then. This morning you missed the glad little voice at breakfast, and, looking at the jam on the table, a sad misgiving, stifled as soon as born, shot through you like a knife. It was pitiful to watch all day, in the nursery, by the little bed,—to see the golden head lying so listless, the chubby hands so waxen and still, the heavy lids drooping so wearily over the blue eyes that yet shone with a light you never saw in them before. There rose a mist to dim your own when the patient little voice asked gently, ‘Is that papa?’—and noticing two or three neglected playthings on the counterpane, you walked to the window and wept.
“So the afternoon wore on, and the doctor came, and there was cruel hope and torturing suspense, and a wrench that so stupefied you, it is difficult to remember anything clearly afterwards, though you have a dim perception of a pair of scissors severing some golden curls, while nurse went down on her knees to pray.
“And at sundown you walk out into your garden along the very path that brought you both home yesterday, but you walk like a man in a dream, for ringing in your ears is the wail that was heard of old in Ramah, and you know your darling is with the angels, wondering feebly why that knowledge cannot console you more.
“Or perhaps your Gourd was ‘only a woman’s love!’—not a growth, certainly, however exuberant, on which a wise man should place so much dependence as on lignum vitæ, for instance, or heart-of-oak. But, so far as I can see, either wise men do not fall in love, or they allow wisdom to slip out of their grasp in the very act of making that fatal stumble. So, in defiance of all theory, warning, and practical experience, you may have congratulated yourself with insane vehemence on the upspringing of this delicate exotic, and looked forward to the passing of many happy hours under its shade. You shut your eyes wilfully, of course, to the obvious fact that you never are happy, even when in full accomplishment of your wishes you stretch your lazy length at the feet of your Gourd. There is sure to be an insect that stings, or a sunbeam that dazzles, or a cold wind in the nape of your neck. Nevertheless, the vegetable, so long as it exists, is not only the delight of your heart, but the very sustenance of your brain. That is the fatal part of the disease. Your Gourd connects itself with everything you think, or do, or say, spreading her roots, as it were, over every foot of land you possess, shutting out earth’s horizon with her slender stem, and, worse than all, poking her dainty head between you and heaven.
“Then, when she withers up—a disappointment which, to do her justice, she is capable of inflicting in the loveliest weather and at the shortest notice—you find to your dismay that, with her, all the fair side of creation has withered too. There is no more freshness in the meadows, no more promise in the smile of spring. The scent is gone from the garden-flowers, the music from the song of birds. Summer’s vivid glow has faded, and the russet of autumn is no longer edged with gold. Hope’s rosy hues have ceased to tinge the morning, and the glory has departed from noonday.
“Like Jonah, you ‘do well to be angry!’ and it is well for you if you can be very angry indeed. That stimulant will do more to heal your wound over than any other remedy I can think of, except the planting of a fresh seedling to await another failure; but God help you if yours is a nature less susceptible of wrath than of sorrow! If you are brave, generous, forgiving, confiding, ‘Je vous en fais mon compliment!’ There is no more to be said. Where your Gourd grew, nothing green will ever spring up again! What say you, Bones? I think you and I are well out of the whole thing!”
He waved his fleshless hand gently, with the gesture of one who puts from him some dim and distant recollection.
“There is a bitter flavour,” said he, “about that remark which I should hardly have expected, and which is by no means to my taste. You and I can surely afford to look at these things from a comprehensive, philosophical, and indulgent point of view. No more Gourds are likely to grow for either of us; and although your style of figure is, perhaps, less entitled to defy the worm than mine, yet I think you have but little to fear from the kind which caused such an outbreak of temper in the disgusted prophet. The whole story of the Gourd, I need not point out to you, is a lesson. It was intended as a lesson for Jonah, it is intended as a lesson for ourselves. Forgive me for observing that you seem to have entirely lost the point of it, and, as usual in our discussions, you have sacrificed argument to declamation. It is weak, of course, to be too much delighted with the Gourd, it is cowardly to be too much afraid of the worm, but——”
“There is one kind of worm I am horribly afraid of,” I interrupted, for I admit I was a little nettled and out of temper.