I felt keenly the reproach, for it was just. I might have taken credit for a good intention; but my sympathy for the wretched being restrained any wish I had to defend myself I endeavoured to change the subject of our conversation, and turn his mind to a subject which I knew engaged his interests and feelings more than anything else on earth.
"Your daughter," said I, "is unwell. She seems to be miserable. I know a change upon her both in mind and body, since I called here only a few days ago. Her body is thin and emaciated, her cheek is blanched, and her eye dimmed. These signs do not visit the young frame for nothing. I fear she has heard of the deadly intention you still persist in entertaining—to take away your own life. It is clear to me that her sickly constitution cannot long stand against a terror and an apprehension which even the aged and the strong cannot endure without grievous injury to all the faculties of the body and mind. Sir, take heed"—pausing and looking at him seriously and impressively—"you may become a daughter's murderer before your cowardly courage enables you to become your own!"
"Hold, sir!—hold!" cried the roused man. "You now speak daggers to me! I could hae borne this when you were here last; but ye hae unmanned me—ye hae made me familiar wi' him, the king o' terrors, wha waits for me. I know him in his worst shapes. He is nae langer hideous to me; and, being his friend, I canna be my dochter's faither and guardian! Why cam you here to revive a struggle that was past? My mind was made up. Owre the pages o' that book, my resolution was fixed; now you wad re-resolve me back to my doubt, my pain, my insufferable agony, by bringin up into my mind the tender image o' a sufferin, sorrowin, starvin dochter. My Margaret—my Margaret!—her mother's image—the pledge o' a love dearer than life——"
The door opened, and the young woman, who had been listening at the back of it, rushed in and flung herself on the bosom of the agonised man.
"O father!" she cried, "I ken everything. Yer dreadfu purpose has been revealed to me. Ye intend to tak awa yer ain life, which my mother, yer beloved Agnes, on her death-bed, bade ye preserve for my sake. But ye canna do that without takin also mine. Yer death will be my death. I hae already seen yer bleedin body in my dreams—the image haunts me like a spirit, and leaves me nae rest. The doctor says true—ye will kill me before yer dreadfu purpose is fulfilled; but if, in God's will, I should be left when ye are awa, wha is to guard me, wha is to comfort me—without freends, without means, and without health?"
The scene now presented to me transcended anything I had ever seen during my long intercourse with suffering humanity. The excited girl clung with a firm grasp to the neck of her parent, and sobbed intensely; while he, struggling to be liberated, and holding away his face to the back of the bed, groaned and appealed for relief in broken, guttural, half-choked aspirations to Heaven. I saw his eyes turned to the throne of mercy, and big tears rolled down his rugged cheeks. In my anxiety to aid this struggle, and assist him to the return to his natural love of life and duty to his God, I was afraid to interfere with the sacred service of a bursting heart, turned in its agony to the only source of consolation and healing virtue; while, if I allowed this opportunity to escape, I might not have another for adding a mortal's means and energies (sometimes God's instruments) to the workings of nature, and the silent but powerful voice of religion speaking from the innermost recesses of his moral constitution.
"This is nature and truth," said I, after a pause—"powers a thousand times stronger than the brain-sick fancies of a diseased mind. It is the voice of God himself, sounding through the heart, and, like the electric energy, heaving it with convulsive throes, as if to cast forth from it the impious daring and unnatural purpose you have cherished in it so long that no lesser power will expel it. I rejoice in these throes; cherish them and aid them, for they are the expulsers of poison that, having got into your blood, and reached the heart, the seat of life, madly stimulates it to self-destruction. This is the time—here is the vantage-ground of a return to all that is right, true, and good, from cowardice, cruelty, irreligion, and even rebellion against God!"
"Listen to him—listen to him!" cried the young woman, still sobbing. "Hear thae words o' truth, for they are sent from Heaven. Receive them into your heart, and it will be changed, and I will live to see my father enjoy life and be happy."
"When?" groaned the miserable man, satirically, as if roused by the sound of the distasteful word "happy." "When I am sittin at the window o' a prison, thinkin o' my dead Agnes, and lookin at the red settin o' my sixty-fifth sun?"
These words showed that the struggle had been ineffectual. Released from the grasp of his daughter, who sat at the side of the bed, he doggedly and sternly folded his arms, and relapsed into a silent fit of dejection. No effort would make him open his lips. There seemed to be no principle of reaction in his moral economy; all was penetrated by a fatal lethargy, which closed up every issue, broke every spring of living thought, feeling, or motion. My professional knowledge was entirely useless, my personal services unavailing. I called to him loudly to answer me, and got no reply but deep groans. I even shook him roughly, and tried to bend his head to his weeping daughter. My efforts were quickened by a sense that bore in upon me with fearful strength and importunity, that I had, by experimenting on his mind, and filling it with images of horror, increased the disease I intended to cure. Pained beyond measure, I was anxious to redeem my fault and correct my error by getting him again engaged in conversation, whereby I might have a last opportunity of drawing him into a train of thought which might lead to a sense of his awful condition, and a prospect of escaping from its present misery, and its horrible consequences. But my medicine had operated too powerfully. There he sat, unmoved, immoveable—a sad and melancholy victim of the worst species of hypochondria—that which exhibits as one of its pathognomonic symptoms, the desire, the determination, persevered in through all difficulties, all oppositions, all wiles and schemes, to commit self-murder.