Adyar, 17th October, 1887.
H. S. Olcott, p.t.s.
A REMARKABLE CHRISTMAS EVE.
It was a dark and solitary path, a narrow, hardly perceptible, footway in a dense forest, hemmed in by two walls of impenetrable thorns and wild creepers, covering, as with a net-work, the trunks of the tall, bare, moss-covered trees. The path led through the woods down to a deep valley in which a few country-houses were nestled. Night was fast approaching, and the hurricane, that blew across the country, boded evil to many a traveller, by land and sea. The wind, which had hitherto been only moaning through the trees, in low sad tones reminding one of a funereal dirge, was now beginning to roar with fury, filling the forest as with the howling of a hundred hungry wolves. Very soon a drizzling, ice-cold rain veiled the whole forest in a damp shroud of fog.
One solitary traveller was wearily wending his way along this deserted path. The hour was late, and the darkening shadows were creeping on steadily, making the gloom in the thicket still more depressing. The young man looked worn and tired, as he again and again brushed aside the entangled briars which impeded his progress forward. He was well-dressed, and wore a marine officer’s cap. But his coat was now in rags, torn by the hard, frozen, cruel thorns, and his hands were bleeding in the struggle he had had with the briars for a whole long night and a day since he had lost his way in the huge forest. Panting, he stopped at last; and, as he heaved a deep sigh, he fell down half-insensible at the foot of an old shaggy oak. Then, half-opening his weary eyes, he murmured in despair, as he placed his hand on his heart:—“I wonder how long this will yet beat.... I feel as if it were gradually stopping.”
He closed his eyes once more, and very soon the feeble palpitations he was watching within himself, turned his half-paralysed thought into a new groove of ideas. Now the hardly audible beatings of his heart seemed to transform themselves into the ticking of an old clock quite near to him. He imagined the old Nüremberg timepiece in his mother’s room. He was dripping wet, chilled to the marrow of his bones, and was fast losing consciousness. But, forgetting for one moment his situation, and where he was, he caught himself soliloquising as was his custom, when alone.
“This clock,” he thought, “has to be wound up ... else it will stop. So shall this heart. A man has to eat and drink to renew the fuel which feeds life, the clock too ... no; the clock is different to man. Let it rest for a week, for two, three months, even for a year.... Still, if wound up again, it will tick on as merrily as ever. But once the supply of the body is stopped—well, what then? Shall the working power cease for ever, or the ticking of the heart be resumed as that of the clock? No, no!... You may feed the dead body of man as much as you please! it shall awaken to life no more.... A queer problem to solve,—What becomes of that something which made the body move? The food is not the cause, is it?... No; the food is only the fuel.... There must be some inward fire ever burning, as long as it is supplied.... But when the supply of the fuel ceases? Ah!... that is it ... where does it go?... Does anything really die?... What form shall my inner fire take?... Shall it return to its primordial light ... and be no more?... Oh, how I suffer!... No, no; I must not allow this, my fire, to go out. No, not before I see once more my loved ones ... my mother and Alice....”
Arising with great effort he pursued his way with tottering steps, feeling his way in the darkness. But instantly a wild gust of wind, tearing along the narrow pathway, caused the great trees to sway and rock as if in very agony. Catching in its icy clasp the weakened form of the young man, the hurricane nearly upset him. Being already wet through and through with rain and cold, he shivered and groaned aloud, as he felt a sharp pain penetrating his limbs from the brain downwards. One more short struggle and he heavily fell on the cold hard ground. Clasping his hands over his brow, he could only whisper again: “Mother, I can do no more.... Farewell, mother, for ever! Alice—fare thee well!”...
His strength was gone. For over thirty hours he had tasted no food. He had travelled night and day in the hope of being with his family on Christmas Eve, that blessed day of joy and peace. Never yet had he spent a Christmas Eve away from home; but that year had been an unusually unfortunate one for him. His vessel had been wrecked and he had lost all. It was only by the greatest of chances that he had been enabled to find his way back to his country, in time to take the train that brought him from a large seaport to the small town some twenty miles’ distance from his home. Once there, he had to travel that distance by coach. But just as he was preparing to start on his last journey, he met a poor sailor, a companion of his shipwreck. With tears in his eyes the man told him that having lost all, he had no more money left to take him to his wife and children, who were yet two days’ journey by rail from where he was; and that thus, he could not be with them to make merry Christmas together. So the good-hearted young officer, thinking he could easily walk the short distance that separated him from home, had emptied his purse into the sailor’s hands and started on his way on foot, hoping to arrive on that same evening.
He set out early in the morning and bethought himself of a short cut through the vast forests of his native place. But on that afternoon he hurt his foot badly, and being able to move only at a very slow pace, the night had overtaken him in the forest in which he had finally lost his way during that terrible night. He had wandered since the morning during the whole long day, until pain, exhaustion, and the hurricane had overpowered him. And now, he was lying helpless on the bare frozen ground, and would surely die before the dawn.