Part 30

What is the meaning of the halo with which artists have surrounded the heads of their pictured saints, of the aureoles which wraps them like a luminous cloud? Is it not a recognition of the fact that these holy personages diffuse their personality in the form of a visible emanation, which reminds us of Milton's definition of light:

“Bright effluence of bright essence increate”?

The common use of the term influence would seem to imply the existence of its correlative, effluence. There is no good reason that I can see, the doctor said to himself, why among the forces which work upon the nervous centres there should not be one which acts at various distances from its source. It may not be visible like the “glory” of the painters, it may not be appreciable by any one of the five senses, and yet it may be felt by the person reached by it as much as if it were a palpable presence,--more powerfully, perhaps, from the mystery which belongs to its mode of action.

Why should not Maurice have been rendered restless and anxious by the unseen nearness of a young woman who was in the next room to him, just as the persons who have the dread of cats are made conscious of their presence through some unknown channel? Is it anything strange that the larger and more powerful organism should diffuse a consciousness of its presence to some distance as well as the slighter and feebler one? Is it strange that this mysterious influence or effluence should belong especially or exclusively to the period of complete womanhood in distinction from that of immaturity or decadence? On the contrary, it seems to be in accordance with all the analogies of nature,--analogies too often cruel in the sentence they pass upon the human female.

Among the many curious thoughts which came up in the doctor's mind was this, which made him smile as if it were a jest, but which he felt very strongly had its serious side, and was involved with the happiness or suffering of multitudes of youthful persons who die without telling their secret:

How many young men have a mortal fear of woman, as woman, which they never overcome, and in consequence of which the attraction which draws man towards her, as strong in them as in others,--oftentimes, in virtue of their peculiarly sensitive organizations, more potent in them than in others of like age and conditions,--in consequence of which fear, this attraction is completely neutralized, and all the possibilities of doubled and indefinitely extended life depending upon it are left unrealized! Think what numbers of young men in Catholic countries devote themselves to lives of celibacy. Think how many young men lose all their confidence in the presence of the young woman to whom they are most attracted, and at last steal away from a companionship which it is rapture to dream of and torture to endure, so does the presence of the beloved object paralyze all the powers of expression. Sorcerers have in all time and countries played on the hopes and terrors of lovers. Once let loose a strong impulse on the centre of inhibition, and the warrior who had faced bayonets and batteries becomes a coward whom the well-dressed hero of the ball-room and leader of the German will put to ignominious flight in five minutes of easy, audacious familiarity with his lady-love.

Yes, the doctor went on with his reflections, I do not know that I have seen the term Gynophobia before I opened this manuscript, but I have seen the malady many times. Only one word has stood between many a pair of young people and their lifelong happiness, and that word has got as far as the lips, but the lips trembled and would not, could not, shape that little word. All young women are not like Coleridge's Genevieve, who knew how to help her lover out of his difficulty, and said yes before he had asked for an answer. So the wave which was to have wafted them on to the shore of Elysium has just failed of landing them, and back they have been drawn into the desolate ocean to meet no more on earth.

Love is the master-key, he went on thinking, love is the master-key that opens the gates of happiness, of hatred, of jealousy, and, most easily of all, the gate of fear. How terrible is the one fact of beauty!--not only the historic wonder of beauty, that “burnt the topless towers of Ilium” for the smile of Helen, and fired the palaces of Babylon by the hand of Thais, but the beauty which springs up in all times and places, and carries a torch and wears a serpent for a wreath as truly as any of the Eumenides. Paint Beauty with her foot upon a skull and a dragon coiled around her.

The doctor smiled at his own imposing classical allusions and pictorial imagery. Drifting along from thought to thought, he reflected on the probable consequences of the general knowledge of Maurice Kirkwood's story, if it came before the public.

What a piece of work it would make among the lively youths of the village, to be sure! What scoffing, what ridicule, what embellishments, what fables, would follow in the trail of the story! If the Interviewer got hold of it, how “The People's Perennial and Household Inquisitor” would blaze with capitals in its next issue! The young fellows of the place would be disposed to make fun of the whole matter. The young girls-the doctor hardly dared to think what would happen when the story got about among them. “The Sachem” of the solitary canoe, the bold horseman, the handsome hermit,--handsome so far as the glimpses they had got of him went,--must needs be an object of tender interest among them, now that he was ailing, suffering, in danger of his life, away from friends,--poor fellow! Little tokens of their regard had reached his sick-chamber; bunches of flowers with dainty little notes, some of them pinkish, some three-cornered, some of them with brief messages, others “criss-crossed,” were growing more frequent as it was understood that the patient was likely to be convalescent before many days had passed. If it should come to be understood that there was a deadly obstacle to their coming into any personal relations with him, the doctor had his doubts whether there were not those who would subject him to the risk; for there were coquettes in the village,--strangers, visitors, let us hope,--who would sacrifice anything or anybody to their vanity and love of conquest.

XXI. AN INTIMATE CONVERSATION.

The illness from which Maurice had suffered left him in a state of profound prostration. The doctor, who remembered the extreme danger of any overexertion in such cases, hardly allowed him to lift his head from the pillow. But his mind was gradually recovering its balance, and he was able to hold some conversation with those about him. His faithful Paolo had grown so thin in waiting upon him and watching with him that the village children had to take a second look at his face when they passed him to make sure that it was indeed their old friend and no other. But as his master advanced towards convalescence and the doctor assured him that he was going in all probability to get well, Paolo's face began to recover something of its old look and expression, and once more his pockets filled themselves with comfits for his little circle of worshipping three and four year old followers.

“How is Mr. Kirkwood?” was the question with which he was always greeted. In the worst periods of the fever he rarely left his master. When he did, and the question was put to him, he would shake his head sadly, sometimes without a word, sometimes with tears and sobs and faltering words,--more like a brokenhearted child than a stalwart man as he was, such a man as soldiers are made of in the great Continental armies.

“He very bad,--he no eat nothing,--he--no say nothing,--he never be no better,” and all his Southern nature betrayed itself in a passionate burst of lamentation. But now that he began to feel easy about his master, his ready optimism declared itself no less transparently.

“He better every day now. He get well in few weeks, sure. You see him on hoss in little while.” The kind-hearted creature's life was bound up in that of his “master,” as he loved to call him, in sovereign disregard of the comments of the natives, who held themselves too high for any such recognition of another as their better. They could not understand how he, so much their superior in bodily presence, in air and manner, could speak of the man who employed him in any other way than as “Kirkwood,” without even demeaning himself so far as to prefix a “Mr.” to it. But “my master” Maurice remained for Paolo in spite of the fact that all men are born free and equal. And never was a servant more devoted to a master than was Paolo to Maurice during the days of doubt and danger. Since his improvement Maurice insisted upon his leaving his chamber and getting out of the house, so as to breathe the fresh air of which he was in so much need. It worried him to see his servant returning after too short an absence. The attendant who had helped him in the care of the patient was within call, and Paolo was almost driven out of the house by the urgency of his master's command that he should take plenty of exercise in the open air.

Notwithstanding the fact of Maurice's improved condition, although the force of the disease had spent itself, the state of weakness to which he had been reduced was a cause of some anxiety, and required great precautions to be taken. He lay in bed, wasted, enfeebled to such a degree that he had to be cared for very much as a child is tended. Gradually his voice was coming back to him, so that he could hold some conversation, as was before mentioned, with those about him. The doctor waited for the right moment to make mention of the manuscript which Maurice had submitted to him. Up to this time, although it had been alluded to and the doctor had told him of the intense interest with which he had read it, he had never ventured to make it the subject of any long talk, such as would be liable to fatigue his patient. But now he thought the time had come.

“I have been thinking,” the doctor said, “of the singular seizures to which you are liable, and as it is my business not merely to think about such cases, but to do what I can to help any who may be capable of receiving aid from my art, I wish to have some additional facts about your history. And in the first place, will you allow me to ask what led you to this particular place? It is so much less known to the public at large than many other resorts that we naturally ask, What brings this or that new visitor among us? We have no ill-tasting, natural spring of bad water to be analyzed by the state chemist and proclaimed as a specific. We have no great gambling-houses, no racecourse (except that for boats on the lake); we have no coaching-club, no great balls, few lions of any kind, so we ask, What brings this or that stranger here? And I think I may venture to ask you whether any, special motive brought you among us, or whether it was accident that determined your coming to this place.”

“Certainly, doctor,” Maurice answered, “I will tell you with great pleasure. Last year I passed on the border of a great river. The year before I lived in a lonely cottage at the side of the ocean. I wanted this year to be by a lake. You heard the paper read at the meeting of your society, or at least you heard of it,--for such matters are always talked over in a village like this. You can judge by that paper, or could, if it were before you, of the frame of mind in which I came here. I was tired of the sullen indifference of the ocean and the babbling egotism of the river, always hurrying along on its own private business. I wanted the dreamy stillness of a large, tranquil sheet of water that had nothing in particular to do, and would leave me to myself and my thoughts. I had read somewhere about the place, and the old Anchor Tavern, with its paternal landlord and motherly landlady and old-fashioned household, and that, though it was no longer open as a tavern, I could find a resting-place there early in the season, at least for a few days, while I looked about me for a quiet place in which I might pass my summer. I have found this a pleasant residence. By being up early and out late I have kept myself mainly in the solitude which has become my enforced habit of life. The season has gone by too swiftly for me since my dream has become a vision.”

The doctor was sitting with his hand round Maurice's wrist, three fingers on his pulse. As he spoke these last words he noticed that the pulse fluttered a little,--beat irregularly a few times; intermitted; became feeble and thready; while his cheek grew whiter than the pallid bloodlessness of his long illness had left it.

“No more talk, now,” he said. “You are too tired to be using your voice. I will hear all the rest another time.”

The doctor had interrupted Maurice at an interesting point. What did he mean by saying that his dream had become a vision? This is what the doctor was naturally curious, and professionally anxious, to know. But his hand was still on his patient's pulse, which told him unmistakably that the heart had taken the alarm and was losing its energy under the depressing nervous influence. Presently, however, it recovered its natural force and rhythm, and a faint flush came back to the pale cheek. The doctor remembered the story of Galen, and the young maiden whose complaint had puzzled the physicians.

The next day his patient was well enough to enter once more into conversation.

“You said something about a dream of yours which had become a vision,” said the doctor, with his fingers on his patient's wrist, as before. He felt the artery leap, under his pressure, falter a little, stop, then begin again, growing fuller in its beat. The heart had felt the pull of the bridle, but the spur had roused it to swift reaction.

“You know the story of my past life, doctor,” Maurice answered; “and, I will tell you what is the vision which has taken the place of my dreams. You remember the boat-race? I watched it from a distance, but I held a powerful opera-glass in my hand, which brought the whole crew of the young ladies' boat so close to me that I could see the features, the figures, the movements, of every one of the rowers. I saw the little coxswain fling her bouquet in the track of the other boat,--you remember how the race was lost and won,--but I saw one face among those young girls which drew me away from all the rest. It was that of the young lady who pulled the bow oar, the captain of the boat's crew. I have since learned her name, you know it well,--I need not name her. Since that day I have had many distant glimpses of her; and once I met her so squarely that the deadly sensation came over me, and I felt that in another moment I should fall senseless at her feet. But she passed on her way and I on mine, and the spasm which had clutched my heart gradually left it, and I was as well as before. You know that young lady, doctor?”

“I do; and she is a very noble creature. You are not the first young man who has been fascinated, almost at a glance, by Miss Euthymia Tower. And she is well worth knowing more intimately.”

The doctor gave him a full account of the young lady, of her early days, her character, her accomplishments. To all this he listened devoutly, and when the doctor left him he said to himself, “I will see her and speak with her, if it costs me my life.”

XXII. EUTHYMIA.

“The Wonder” of the Corinna Institute had never willingly made a show of her gymnastic accomplishments. Her feats, which were so much admired, were only her natural exercise. Gradually the dumb-bells others used became too light for her, the ropes she climbed too short, the clubs she exercised with seemed as if they were made of cork instead of being heavy wood, and all the tests and meters of strength and agility had been strained beyond the standards which the records of the school had marked as their historic maxima. It was not her fault that she broke a dynamometer one day; she apologized for it, but the teacher said he wished he could have a dozen broken every year in the same way. The consciousness of her bodily strength had made her very careful in her movements. The pressure of her hand was never too hard for the tenderest little maiden whose palm was against her own. So far from priding herself on her special gifts, she was disposed to be ashamed of them. There were times and places in which she could give full play to her muscles without fear or reproach. She had her special costume for the boat and for the woods. She would climb the rugged old hemlocks now and then for the sake of a wide outlook, or to peep into the large nest where a hawk, or it may be an eagle, was raising her little brood of air-pirates.