Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume 17

by Unknown

The individual whose case has suggested these observations, presented, when I saw him first after the funeral of his wife, the symptom—present in all cases of an utterly crushed spirit—of a wish to die. I was the first to whom he had uttered a syllable since the day on which she had been carried out of the house which she had so long filled with the spirit of cheerfulness and comfort. His only daughter, Martha, a fine young woman, had contributed but little to his relief—if she had not, indeed, increased his depression by her own emotions, which she had no power to conceal; and his only son had gone off to Edinburgh, to attend his classes in the college, where he intended to graduate as a physician. He was thus, in a manner, left in a great degree alone; for his daughter sought her apartment at every opportunity, to weep over her sorrows unobserved; and she had naturally thought that her father's grief, attended by no exacerbations of groaning or weeping like her own, presented less appearance of intensity than that which convulsed her own heart, and got relief by nature's appointed modes of alleviation. When the heart is stricken with a certain force, all forms of presenting less gloomy views of the condition of the individual, will generally be found to be totally unavailing in affording relief. Nay, I am satisfied that there was genuine philosophy in the custom of the Greeks and the ancient Germans, in forcing victims of great sorrows to weep out the rankling barbed shaft. These had a species of licensed mourners, whose duty it was to soften the heart by melting strains of mournful melody, whereby, as by the application of a bland liniment, the rigid issues of the feelings were softened and opened, and the oppressed organ, the heart, was relieved of the load which defies the force of argument, and even the condolence of friendship. The curing of cold-nips by the appliance of snow, and of burns by the application of heat, could not have appeared more fraught with ridicule to the old women of former days, than would the custom I have here cited to the comforters of modern times. If I cannot say that, amongst some bold remedies, I have recommended it, I have, at least, avoided, on all occasions, officious endeavours to counteract the oppressing burden, by wrenching the mind from the engrossing thought—a process generally attended with no other result than making it adhere with increased force.

The greatest triumph that can be effected with the truly heart-stricken victim, to whom is denied the usual bursts that indicate a bearable misfortune, or, at least, one whose intensity is partly abated, is the bringing about of that more natural condition of the heart, which, indeed, is generally most feared by the ordinary paraclete. In the case of the bereaved husband, there is no charm so powerful in its effects as the vivid portrayment of the virtues of her who has gone down to the grave; and it may well be said, that the heart that will not give out its feelings to the impassioned description of the amiable properties of the departed helpmate, is all but incurable. The sister of Mr B——, who saw the necessity of administering relief, tried to awaken him to a sense of religious consolation; but he was as yet unfit even for that sacred ministration; and all her efforts having failed to rouse him, even from the deathlike stupor in which he lay, she had recourse, by my advice, to probing the wound, to take off the stricture by which the natural humours were pent up. She discoursed pathetically on the qualities of the departed, which, she said, would be the passport of her spirit to a sphere where he would again contemplate them unclouded by the dingy vapours of earthly feelings. She kept in the same strain for a lengthened period; but declared to me, when I visited him again, that he exhibited no signs of being moved by her discourse. He, once or twice, turned his eyes on her for a moment, drew occasionally a heavy sigh, that told, by the difficulty of the operation, the load with which he was oppressed; but his eyes were dry, no groan escaped from him, or any other sign of the heart being aided in an effort to restore the current of natural feeling. The coup de peine had too clearly taken the very core of the heart; the lamp of hope had been dashed out violently, and, under the cloud of his great evil, all things that remained to him upon earth were tinged with its dark hues. He presented all the appearances—except the dilation of the pupil of the eye—of one whose brain had been concussed by a deep fall, or laboured under a fracture of the bones of the cranium. The few words he spoke to me came slowly, with a heavy oppressive sound, as if spoken through a hollow tube; and what may, to some, be remarkable, though certainly not to me, they embraced not the slightest allusion to his bereavement—a symptom almost invariably attendant upon those deeper strokes of grief, which, being but seldom witnessed, are much less understood in their effects than the more ordinary oppressions, whose intense demonstrations and allusions to the cause of the evil, mark the victims as objects for the portrayments of poets.

Two or three days passed off in this way, without the slightest amelioration of his condition. The efforts of Miss B—— had been repeated often without effect. As she expressed herself to me, he would neither eat nor speak, sleep nor weep. "He has not," she added, "even muttered her name. His heart seems utterly broken; and time and the power of Heaven alone will effect a change." Such is the common philosophy of sorrow: time is held forth as all-powerful, all-saving; and while I admit its force, I only insist for the certainty of the existence of exceptions. The eighth day had passed without any support having been taken to sustain the system. A course of maceration, that had been going on during his wife's illness, was thus continued; yet, in the few words I occasionally drew from him, there was no indication of anything like the sullen determination of the suicide; the cause lay in the total cessation of the powers of the stomach—a consequence of the cerebral pressure, whose action is felt not where it operates primarily, but in the heart and other organs, where it works merely by sympathy.

It was on the evening of the eighth day after the funeral, as I have it noted, that I called to see if any change for the better had been effected by the ministrations of his sister. She sat by his bedside, with the Bible placed before her, from which she had been reading passages to him. His face was turned to the front of the bed, but he did not seem to be in any way moved by my entrance. All the efforts his sister had made to get him to enter into the spirit of the passages she had been reading had been fruitless; nor had he as yet made the slightest allusion to the cause of his illness, or mentioned the name of his deceased partner. A few words of no importance, and not related to the circumstances of his grief, were wrung from him painfully by my questions; but it seemed as if the language that represents the things of the world had lost all power of charming the ear; the deadness that had overtaken the heart like a palsy, was felt from the fountain of feelings, to the minute endings of the nerves; and the external senses, which are the ministers of the soul, had renounced their ordinary ministrations to the spirit that heeded them not. Only once his sister had observed a slight moisture rise for a moment in his eye, as she touched some tender traits of the character of the departed; but it passed away rather as an evidence of the utter powerlessness of nature, in a faint heave of the reactive energy, telling at once how little she could perform, yet how much was necessary to overcome the weight by which she was oppressed. I sat for some moments silent by the side of the bed, and meditated a recourse to some more strenuous effort directed to his sense of duty as a parent; though I was aware, that until the heart is in some degree relieved, all such appeals are too often vain, if not rather attended with unfavourable effects, but, in extreme cases, we are not entitled to rest upon the generality of theories where so various and mutable an essence as the human mind is the object to which they are to be applied. I was on the point of making a trial, by recurring to the position of his son and daughter, when I heard the sound of a horse's feet approaching, with great rapidity, the door. The sister started; and I could hear Martha open the window above, to ascertain who might be the visiter. In another moment the outer door opened with a loud clang. Some one approached along the passage, in breathless haste. He entered. It was George B——, under the excitement of some strong internal emotion; his eyes gleaming with a fearful light, and his limbs shaking violently. He stood for a moment as if he were gathering his energies to speak; but the words stuck in his throat, the sounds died away amidst the noise of an indistinct jabbering. I noticed the eye of his father fixed upon him, betraying only a very slight increase of animation; but even this extraordinary demeanour of his son did not draw from him a question; so utterly dead to all external impulses had his grief made him, that the harrowing cause of so much excitement in his son, remained unquestioned by the feelings of the parent. In another moment the youth was stretched across the bed, locking the father in his embrace, and sobbing out inarticulate words, none of which I could understand. The aunt was as much at a loss to solve the mystery of the violent paroxysm as myself; for some time neither of us could put a question; the sobbings of the youth seemed to chain up our tongues by the charm of the eloquence of nature's impassioned language. Meanwhile, Martha entered, ran forward to the bedside, lifted her brother from the position which he occupied, and seated him, by the application of some force, on the empty chair that stood by the side of the bed.

"What is the matter, George?" she cried; the question was repeated by the aunt, and the eyes of the parent sought languidly the face of the youth, which was, however, now covered by his hands. The question was more than once repeated by both the aunt and myself; the father never spoke, nor could I perceive a single ray of curiosity in his eye. He seemed to await the issue of the son's explanation, heedless what it might be—whether the announcement of a great or a lesser evil—its magnitude, though transcending the bounds of ordinary bearing, comprehending every other misfortune that fate could have in store for him, being, whatever its proportions, as nothing to the death-stricken heart of one whose hope was buried.

"This is scarcely a time or an occasion, George," said I, "for the manifestation of these emotions. If the cause lies in the grief, come back with increased force, for the death of your mother, you should have known that there is one lying there whose load is still greater, and who is, unfortunately, as yet, beyond the relief which, as your agitation indicates, nature in the young heart is working for you."

"The death!—the death!" he muttered in a choking voice; "but there is something after the death that is worse than the death itself."

"Are you distracted, George?" said the aunt. "This Bible was the hand-book and the rule of your mother's conduct in this world. A better woman never offered up her prayers at the fountain of the waters of immortal life; no one that ever lived had a better right to draw from the blessing, or better qualified for enjoying it as she now enjoys it. She is in heaven; and will you say that that is worse than death?"

"You speak of her spirit, aunt," replied he, as he still covered his face with his hands. "Her spirit is there!"—and he took away one of his hands from his face and pointed to heaven—"There, where the saints rest, does my mother's soul rest; but, O God, where—where is the body?"

A thought struck me on the instant. I was afraid to utter it. I looked at the father, and suspected, from the sudden light of animation that started to his eye, that the gloom of his mind had at last been penetrated by the thought which had suggested itself to me.