CHAPTER XVII.
_RODERICK_.
When Mary reached home she found her brother already in bed, where helay tossing uneasily in search of the rest and slumber which he couldnot attain.
His cheeks were flushed with incipient fever, and the tangled hairhung about his face in matted locks. His eyes were closed, and hislips moved in inaudible mutterings, as he turned restlessly from oneside to the other. He complained of an acute pain in his side whichcaught his breath, and a dull aching that smouldered like fire in hisbones and joints, which he fancied he could count by their separatetwingings.
The sight of his sister seemed to do him good, and when he felt thecoolness of her hand on his brow, he closed his eyes and fell into akind of slumber; but the sleep was not of very long duration, and itwas restless and disturbed. The nightmares of the night before fell onhim again; groaning and muttering he tossed to and fro, and presentlyawoke.
The surgeon arrived in due course, and shook his head gravely, whilehe enjoined the greatest care, as pleurisy or rheumatic fever, orboth, appeared to be impending. Roderick lay and muttered, rightingwith the dismal visions that floated like mists about his brain, andstruggling to keep hold of the reality.
In that, however, he found little solace, it seemed more dismal thanaught a fevered fancy could conjure up to distress him. Visions ofCain driven forth from home and kindred, to wander over the face ofthe earth an outcast and a stranger; Abram sent forth to find him anew home in a strange and unknown country, turning his back on allthat he had ever known or loved; Job with his children all slain in asingle hour; those who had cast away a right hand or plucked out aright eye for the sake of the kingdom of righteousness; all theforlorn and desolate and bereaved he had ever heard or dreamed of,passed in melancholy procession before him, and hailed him as theirfellow. He looked upon the stricken train, and questioning each as tothe nature of his sorrow; it seemed to him that in their misery, theyall had justice or hope or consolation. But his? It stood alone amongthem all, unmerited, unreasonable, without purpose and without pity.There was nothing he had held too dear to part with, nothing he hadkept back, when he laid down all to follow his Church into thewilderness. Then why had this new grief come upon him? and what goodend was to be served by enacting anew in his case the parable of theprophet Nathan, and robbing him of the one ewe lamb he cherished inhis bosom? Since his boyhood, the whole pure love of his heart hadbeen given to Sophia. Her image had filled a shrine in his inmostthoughts, and he had clothed it in all he knew of pure and holy, andheld it for a symbol of unseen good. He had waited till in allreasonableness and truth he could win her for his wife, and she andher parents, in some unspoken measure at least, had consented to hisresolve.
Now, all of a sudden he hears from the lips of her own mother, wrungfrom them, as it were unawares, under the dread pre-occupation ofimpending danger, that another man's suit is entertained or courted,and so utterly trivial are any pretensions of his held to be, thattheir very existence is overlooked, and himself made the confidant ofthe mother's views. Oh, how can he resign himself? How pluck away theimage around which all his hopes and dreams, the very roots andtendrils of his being have entwined themselves for so many years?Pluck out an eye? It were to pluck out his very heart, and cast itfrom him--to cease to think--to cease to live. Yet if she were tobecome another man's wife he would have to do it. He groaned. Theuniverse seemed falling in on him, his head swam, and he fell into adose.
When he next awoke the emotional strain was somewhat relaxed. Histhoughts would run in no other channel, but he began now to muse, andplan, and question. Was it indeed decided? Or was it as yet but a planof the mother? Had Sophia consented? And even if she had, was it ofher own free will, and with the concurrence of her affections? Or wasit a mere compliance with the wishes of her parents, while she had nosufficient reason to admit a preference elsewhere? For theunmaidenliness, as he would have called it, of loving unsought, wasnot to be dreamed of in the case of Sophia.
'Ah!' he cried aloud, 'Who knows? I have never spoken, or----' therest would not frame itself in words, but a vision arose before hismind's eye, or rather many visions, remembrances of all the sweetestand most endearing looks, or what he regarded as such, that she hadever given him; and as he thought, his poor chilled soul grew warmerand more at ease, and the throbbing in his head grew easier.
'The venture is worth making,' he said presently. And thereupon herose from bed and sat down before his desk, which, as alreadymentioned, was in another part of the same room.
Mary was not present at the moment, so there was no one to offeropposition. He drew to him some paper and prepared to write. Hismind had been seething with emotion, but as he took the pen in hishand, the thoughts grew hazy, and refused to shape themselves inwords,---they refused to be written down. Fluttering and whirlingbefore him like the disordered gleams in a moving prism, they wouldnot be caught, and yet kept tantalizing him by settling upon his pen,till he tried to write them, when they would dissipate again in a newand perturbed whirl of tempestuous feeling. He clasped his hands uponhis aching brow, but it ached worse than ever, and he sat stupified inblank despair.
Words came after a while, and by and by he began to write, but thewriting when it was done had to be torn up, and the work begun againanew. Sheet after sheet was written and destroyed, and the scatteredflakes gathered like snowdrifts about his chair. He wearied himself inabortive efforts, but at least he deadened the acuteness of hismisery. The fantastic pains and throes of composition were an anodyneto the more real agonies of his mind. By dividing its action in theendeavour to express its workings, he reduced their intensity. As hegrew weary, therefore, he began to grow calmer, and was able with somesort of coherence to say the thing he meant. It was no greatachievement in the way of a love-letter, but under the circumstances agreat achievement was impossible. He was too much under the directinfluence of his emotion,--whatever of mental force he had wasexpended in the suffering, the jealousy, the hopelessness and thelonging, and but a fraction could be abstracted to express hismeaning.
An emotion when it can be expressed is in a manner relegated from thepresent to the past,--from experience to memory; and we may be surethat the poets were pretty well cured of their woes, before they madethe world resound with their harrowing despairs and their plaintivewailings. Goethe tells us he got quit of much perilous stuff inwriting Werther, but one can scarcely doubt that he was convalescentbefore he undertook the task. Art is always fiction, though fiction isso seldom art, and its nearest approach to actual veracity is when theartist brings forth the ashes of bygone emotion from the sepulchre ofmemory, and galvanizes them into a second life before his attentiveworld.
Such utterance as Roderick had been able to achieve had done him good.The beads of moisture stood on his brow, as he folded and addressedhis letter; he directed that it should be given into Sophia's ownhands, and then returning to his bed, he closed his eyes with a longsigh of relief, and fell into a peaceful sleep.
The letter was as follows:--
'My dear Sophia,
'For this once I must so address you, even if it be permitted me to doso never again. I am sick in bed, in consequence of yesterday'smisadventure, so unable to come to you myself and speak, and it hascome to my knowledge that an offer of marriage is already, or willshortly be made to you, therefore I write.
'I owe it to myself, that you should know before you have given ananswer, that I too desire you to look on me as your suitor.
'I had meant to wait till after my ordination, but I cannot run therisk of letting another man speak while I remain silent.
'Oh, Sophia, I seem to have loved you ever since I saw you first--asfar back as I can recollect--since we were both children; and the lovehas grown with the years till I believe I could not live if I saw youmarried to another. That other may be rich, while I am not; but think,Sophia,--he never saw you till the other day--and what can his love beto mine, that has been g
rowing and deepening through so many years?
'Think of it, dearest. Have we not played together as children? sungtogether as boy and girl? Have we not taken sweet counsel together aschristian man and woman? and shall we not walk through life as wifeand husband?
'Think of it all, Sophia, and choose with the best wisdom you cancommand.
'My life will be a lonely journey, if it is not to be shared by you,for you have been to me the symbol of all that is good and holy; butif you find it is not I who can make you happy, at least my prayershall ever be for a blessing on whatever choice you make.
'Yours utterly,'
'(Signed) RODERICK BROWN.'