Holden with the Cords

by W. M. L. Jay

It soon appeared that—thanks to her father's promptness—Carice had sustained little injury from her immersion in the water; but, though heart and lungs were quickly brought to resume their functions, her senses remained fast locked in stupor. Knitting his brows, for a brief space, over this unexpected complication, Doctor Remy betook himself to a careful examination of the patient's head; and shortly announced that he had discovered a severe contusion of the skull, implying more or less serious injury to the brain.

The stupor would last hours—possibly days. Meanwhile, many appliances and comforts which the cabin could not afford, would be demanded; he therefore advised her immediate removal to the cottage. Mr. Bergan hastened to break the distressing news to her mother, and to make sure that the house and grounds were clear; then Carice was carefully placed on a litter, and borne to her own room.

It was long before she showed any sign of consciousness, longer still before she was free from the supervening fever and delirium, and capable of coherent thought and expression. When that time came, it was found that her memory of the past five months was a blank. Bergan's unaccountable silence, her father's trying illness, Doctor Remy's unacceptable suit, and the ill-starred marriage ceremony—everything which had distressed her mind or wounded her heart, had been completely wiped out of her recollection as by some friendly, pitying hand; and she was carried back, all unconscious of the transit, to the tender joy and blissful content with which she had parted from Bergan. To her thought it was only a few days since he went; yet, with a pleasant inconsequence, she was already beginning to watch for his return. At first, she had seemed a little bewildered by the change of season; it was amidst the flower and foliage of early summer that Bergan had said good-bye; now, the deciduous trees stood bare against the sky, and the flower-beds were shorn of their glory. But her mind was too feeble to reason, and she soon accepted the fact, as she did many another, without trying to account for it. Enough to know that, winter being near, Bergan must be near also.

It may be noted as a curiously ironical turn of that blind Chance, or Fate, in which Doctor Remy believed, that he was compelled, in his professional capacity, to give orders that Carice should be carefully humored, for the present, in this or any other delusion. There was something at stake of far more importance, to him, than his personal feelings as a man or a bridegroom—namely, the ownership of Bergan Hall. In consideration of that, Carice must be spared everything tending to excite or distress her, and indulged in whatever was soothing to her mind, or pleasing to her fancy.

Meanwhile, he addressed himself, with renewed ardor and determination, to the study of brain diseases. His attention had already been engaged by the recently promulged theory of Gall, that each faculty of the mind had its distinct location in the brain; and he was quick to see the fine field thereby opened to pathological investigation. It was in this direction that he hoped, some day, to make his name famous; and it was chiefly as a means to this end that Bergan Hall was valuable in his eyes. He wanted wealth in order to be able to devote himself exclusively to the study of this branch of medical science, and to pursue it, unhampered by considerations of expense, throughout the books and manuscripts, the practitioners and patients, the hospitals and asylums, the morgues and the dissecting-rooms, of the whole world. Till he could do that, he must content himself with the one patient whom circumstance had thrown into his hands.

But here, he was unexpectedly disappointed, in a measure. Whether it were that enough of her recollection revived to associate him dimly with anxiety and distress; or whether, her reason being in abeyance, she was more controlled by her pure and delicate instincts; certain it is, that Carice's fever no sooner left her, than she developed the most unconquerable aversion to him, amounting in time to a degree of terror. At his approach, she either hid her face, and trembled like an aspen leaf, or she fled with cries of fright. And these moments of excitement were followed by such alarming prostration, that Doctor Remy was reluctantly compelled to admit the necessity of keeping out of her sight. His investigations had thenceforth to be conducted through the agency of her parents or of Rosa. Now and then, when she slept,—and her sleep was always singularly profound, the very twin brother of death,—he stole into her room, to acquaint himself with some particular of the location, depth, or progress in healing, of the injury to her head, and to satisfy himself of the state of her general health.

To every one but Doctor Remy, Carice was gentleness itself. She was happiness, too, in a touchingly quiet, dreamy, illogical form. She was content to spend hours at the window, watching for the first glimpse of Bergan, with a smile on her lips, and her eyes bright with eager expectation; and though she sometimes sighed, when the day ended, and he did not come, she was ready to begin the same hopeful watch on the morrow, and never seemed to know how long it had lasted. As she grew stronger, she resumed, in some measure, her old pursuits;—she busied herself with light household tasks; she wrought dainty embroidery with silks and worsteds; she read, chiefly poetry, the music of which seemed to please her ear, without fatiguing her mind; she even noticed the cloud on her father's brow, and made gentle war upon it,—conquering, of course, as long as he was in her sight, and never suspecting how heavily it settled back afterward. But all this time, the veil over the past never lifted, nor was the eager watch for Bergan ever abandoned.

The few intimate friends, or the servants not of the household, who saw her occasionally, noticed nothing unusual about her, except the delicacy and languor consequent upon a severe illness; Mrs. Bergan being always present to turn the conversation away from every dangerous point, and guide it through safe channels. To the rest of the world, it was simply known that Carice had suddenly been stricken down, on her wedding night, by a fever, supposed to be of the same nature as the one which had lately prostrated her father; and that she was not yet sufficiently strong to show herself abroad, or see much company at home. Doctor Remy, meanwhile, came and went, and spent as much time at the cottage as could reasonably be expected of a physician with a large area of practice, and an office three miles away from his nominal home. Not a person, outside of the limited household, supposed that he never saw Carice, except when she was fast asleep, and totally unconscious of his presence.

So the months rolled away, and the year drew near to its close. Doctor Remy had prosecuted his abstruse study, by the dim light of the science of that day, with characteristic energy and acuteness. He had slowly felt his way, from the premise that each faculty of the mind had its appropriate seat in the brain, to the conclusion that every local injury or disease would affect mainly the faculty corresponding to the injured or diseased portion, thereby not only indicating the seat of the impaired faculty, but suggesting the possibility of a local remedy for the local disturbance,—probably a delicate and difficult surgical operation, to remove pus, slivers of bone, or other foreign matter pressing upon, piercing, or otherwise irritating the sensitive cellular tissue of the brain. Now, he only longed for an opportunity to test his conclusions by experiment, and would certainly have attempted to use Carice for this purpose, except that on her slender thread of life hung his only chance of Bergan Hall. It would not do to sacrifice the immense future advantage to the small immediate gain.

Nature, meanwhile, was laboring in her slow, gentle way, to effect the same end contemplated by the doctor's science. With the beginning of November, a change was observable in Carice. Her sweet face lost its look of happy anticipation, and grew weary and anxious. There were tokens that she was beginning to reason again, in a fitful, fragmentary way, and to notice some of the many discrepancies between the facts and the theories of her life; sometimes she put her hand to her head with a piteous expression of doubt and bewilderment. By and by, she became possessed of a spirit of restlessness by day, and of sleeplessness by night; making the care of her—hitherto an easy and a pleasant task—a sufficiently onerous charge. Thus it happened that she had made her escape to the Hall, as heretofore narrated. Her night had been restless, beyond all previous precedent, keeping Rosa constantly on the watch. Toward dawn, she had fallen into a light slumber, during which the weary attendant, sitting quietly by the bedside, had suddenly been overcome by a profound sleep. Waking ere long, and not wishing to disturb her tired maid, Carice stole softly to the window, to look out, as usual, for Bergan's coming, and saw the light shining again from the window of his room in the old Hall. The broken links in the chain of association were stirred, if not reunited,—perhaps a dim reminiscence of her former attempt to reach him woke within her,—she wrapped herself in the first shawl that came to hand, thrust her feet into a pair of slippers, and noiselessly made her way out of the house and down to the river, exactly as she had done a year before. At the gap in the foot-bridge, through which she had fallen, she stopped and put her hand to her brow, in a momentary perplexity. Here, her memory of the former expedition, which had led her thus far on her way, failed her;—what was she to do next?