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THE COTTAGE.
Mrs. Puckridge was anxiously awaiting the doctor's arrival. She stood by
the bedside of her lodger, miserable in her ignorance and consequent
helplessness. The lady tossed and moaned, but for very pain could
neither toss nor moan much, and breathed--panted, rather--very quick.
Her color was white more than pale, and now and then she shivered from
head to foot, but her eyes burned. Mrs. Puckridge kept bringing her hot
flannels, and stood talking between the changes.
"I wish the doctor would come!--Them doctors!--I hope to goodness Dr.
Faber wasn't out when the boy got to Glaston. Every body in this mortal
universe always is out when he's wanted: that's my experience. You
ain't so old as me, miss. And Dr. Faber, you see, miss, he be such a
favorite as have to go out to his dinner not unfrequent. They may have
to send miles to fetch him."
She talked in the vain hope of distracting the poor lady's attention
from her suffering.
It was a little up stairs cottage-room, the corners betwixt the ceiling
and the walls cut off by the slope of the roof. So dark was the night,
that, when Mrs. Puckridge carried the candle out of the room, the
unshaded dormer window did not show itself even by a bluish glimmer. But
light and dark were alike to her who lay in the little tent-bed, in the
midst of whose white curtains, white coverlid, and white pillows, her
large eyes, black as human eyes could ever be, were like wells of
darkness throwing out flashes of strange light. Her hair too was dark,
brown-black, of great plenty, and so fine that it seemed to go off in a
mist on the whiteness. It had been her custom to throw it over the back
of her bed, but in this old-fashioned one that was impossible, and it
lay, in loveliest confusion, scattered here and there over pillow and
coverlid, as if the wind had been tossing it all a long night at his
will. Some of it had strayed more than half way to the foot of the bed.
Her face, distorted almost though it was with distress, showed yet a
regularity of feature rarely to be seen in combination with such evident
power of expression. Suffering had not yet flattened the delicate
roundness of her cheek, or sharpened the angles of her chin. In her
whiteness, and her constrained, pang-thwarted motions from side to side,
she looked like a form of marble in the agonies of coming to life at the
prayer of some Pygmalion. In throwing out her arms, she had flung back
the bedclothes, and her daintily embroidered night-gown revealed a
rather large, grand throat, of the same rare whiteness. Her hands were
perfect--every finger and every nail--
Those fine[1] nimble brethren small,
Armed with pearl-shell helmets all.
[Footnote 1: Joshua Sylvester. I suspect the word ought to be five,
not fine, as my copy (1613) has it.]
When Mrs. Puckridge came into the room, she always set her candle on
the sill of the storm-window: it was there, happily, when the doctor
drew near the village, and it guided him to the cottage-gate. He
fastened Niger to the gate, crossed the little garden, gently lifted the
door-latch, and ascended the stair. He found the door of the chamber
open, signed to Mrs. Puckridge to be still, softly approached the bed,
and stood gazing in silence on the sufferer, who lay at the moment
apparently unconscious. But suddenly, as if she had become aware of a
presence, she flashed wide her great eyes, and the pitiful entreaty that
came into them when she saw him, went straight to his heart. Faber felt
more for the sufferings of some of the lower animals than for certain of
his patients; but children and women he would serve like a slave. The
dumb appeal of her eyes almost unmanned him.
"I am sorry to see you so ill," he said, as he took her wrist. "You are
in pain: where?"
Her other hand moved toward her side in reply. Every thing indicated
pleurisy--such that there was no longer room for gentle measures. She
must be relieved at once: he must open a vein. In the changed practice
of later days, it had seldom fallen to the lot of Faber to perform the
very simple operation of venesection, but that had little to do with the
trembling of the hands which annoyed him with himself, when he proceeded
to undo a sleeve of his patient's nightdress. Finding no button, he took
a pair of scissors from his pocket, cut ruthlessly through linen and
lace, and rolled back the sleeve. It disclosed an arm the sight of which
would have made a sculptor rejoice as over some marbles of old Greece. I
can not describe it, and if I could, for very love and reverence I would
rather let it alone. Faber felt his heart rise in his throat at the
necessity of breaking that exquisite surface with even such an
insignificant breach and blemish as the shining steel betwixt his
forefinger and thumb must occasion. But a slight tremble of the hand he
held acknowledged the intruding sharpness, and then the red parabola
rose from the golden bowl. He stroked the lovely arm to help its flow,
and soon the girl once more opened her eyes and looked at him. Already
her breathing was easier. But presently her eyes began to glaze with
approaching faintness, and he put his thumb on the wound. She smiled and
closed them. He bound up her arm, laid it gently by her side, gave her
something to drink, and sat down. He sat until he saw her sunk in a
quiet, gentle sleep: ease had dethroned pain, and order had begun to
dawn out of threatened chaos.
"Thank God!" he said, involuntarily, and stood up: what all that meant,
God only knows.
After various directions to Mrs. Puckridge, to which she seemed to
attend, but which, being as simple as necessary, I fear she forgot the
moment they were uttered, the doctor mounted, and rode away. The
darkness was gone, for the moon was rising, but when the road compelled
him to face her, she blinded him nearly as much. Slowly she rose through
a sky freckled with wavelets of cloud, and as she crept up amongst them
she brought them all out, in bluish, pearly, and opaline gray. Then,
suddenly almost, as it seemed, she left them, and walked up aloft,
drawing a thin veil around her as she ascended. All was so soft, so
sleepy, so vague, it seemed to Paul as he rode slowly along, himself
almost asleep, as if the Night had lost the blood he had caused to flow,
and the sweet exhaustion that followed had from the lady's brain
wandered out over Nature herself, as she sank, a lovelier Katadyomene,
into the hushed sea of pain-won repose.
Was he in love with her? I do not know. I could tell, if I knew what
being in love is. I think no two loves were ever the same since the
creation of the world. I know that something had passed from her eyes to
his--but what? He may have been in love with her already; but ere long
my reader may be more sure than I that he was not. The Maker of men
alone understands His awful mystery between the man and the woman. But
without it, frightful indeed as are some of its results, assuredly the
world He has made would burst its binding rings and fly asunder in
shards, leaving His spirit nothing to enter, no time to work His lovely
will.
It must be to any man a terrible thing to find himself in wild pain,
with no God of whom to entreat that his soul may not faint within him;
but to a man who can think as well as feel, it were a more terrible
thing still, to find himself afloat on the tide of a lovely passion,
with no God to whom to cry, accountable to Himself for that which He has
made. Will any man who has ever cast more than a glance into the
mysteries of his being, dare think himself sufficient to the ruling of
his nature? And if he rule it not, what shall he be but the sport of the
demons that will ride its tempests, that will rouse and torment its
ocean? What help then is there? What high-hearted man would consent to
be possessed and sweetly ruled by the loveliest of angels? Truly it were
but a daintier madness. Come thou, holy Love, father of my spirit,
nearer to the unknown deeper me than my consciousness is to its known
self, possess me utterly, for thou art more me than I am myself. Rule
thou. Then first I rule. Shadow me from the too radiant splendors of thy
own creative thought. Folded in thy calm, I shall love, and not die. And
ye, women, be the daughters of Him from whose heart came your mothers;
be the saviours of men, and neither their torment nor their prey!
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