Ethel Churchill/Chapter 111
CHAPTER XXXV.
THE USUAL DESTINY OF THE IMAGINATION.
Remembrance makes the poet: 'tis the past
Lingering within him, with a keener sense
Than is upon the thoughts of common men,
Of what has been, that fills the actual world
With unreal likenesses of lovely shapes
That were, and are not; and the fairer they,
The more their contrast with existing things;
The more his power, the greater is his grief.
Are we then fallen from some noble star,
Whose consciousness is an unknown curse;
And we feel capable of happiness
Only to know it is not of our sphere?
The first sickly gleam of daylight came in through the uncurtained window, deadening the dull yellow glare of the candle that, having burned through the night, was fast sinking in the socket. The chill and uncomfortable light showed the full wretchedness of the scene over which it fell; the walls were only whitewashed, the whiteness long since obscured by dust and smoke, and broken away in many places. The bare boards looked as if they had not been scoured for months; and a deal table, and two rickety chairs, were all the furniture, except the miserable pallet on which Walter Maynard lay dying; and this was the end of his impassioned hopes, and of his early and glorious dreams!
The change that a few weeks had wrought in him was awful: the features were almost transparent, and with a strange beauty, like a spirit's; and yet with that look which belongs to death, and death only. He was awake, feverish, and restless; and the clear, shining eyes had that sort of fixed brilliancy, which life, even in its brightest moments, never gave. The door opened so softly, that even he did not hear it. Lavinia looked in; and, seeing that he was already roused, entered with his coffee; it was the only thing for which he retained the slightest liking: perhaps there was some lingering association with the pursuits once so precious; the haunted midnights, when he had been accustomed to drink it.
"How have you slept?" said she.
Walter smiled faintly, but his reply was interrupted by coughing; he signed to the window, which she opened, and then turned hastily away, for she could not bear the sight of the churchyard below. Maynard was now in the same house where he had come by chance on his first arrival in London; he was now occupying the room above the very one where he then slept. Remembering it as a cheap, out-of-the-way place, he had come thither the day after the duel to die, uncared for and unknown. But Lavinia had found him out; and, for weeks, had been his devoted nurse, though even she was startled at the extreme destitution of their situation; but, for his sake only, not for her own.
"Oh, Walter!" exclaimed she, after a long silence, during which she had either watched his difficult breathing, or turned aside to dash away the tears that, in spite of herself, would fill her eyes. There is an awe about death, even in the face the most familiar to us; it has already taken its likeness from the hereafter, so dreadful and so dark. "I cannot bear to see you perishing thus; you have many friends, do let me apply to them?"
"Friends!" answered Walter, bitterly, "I have no friends. While I could work for them, or amuse them, they were glad enough to flatter and caress me; now that I am broken in health and spirits, that my soul has worn itself out in their service, who of all that have owed pleasant hours to my pages will care that the hand which wrote now lies languid, scarcely able to trace its own name!"
"Do not talk thus," said she.
"Why not?" interrupted Walter, "it is the truth. I loathe, I despise my kind; I grieve over the labour that I have wasted on them. I should regret every generous hope, every lofty emotion, did I not think they must rise up in bitter mockery against them."
Lavinia looked bewildered; she could as little understand this outburst of impassioned anger, as she understood his former bursts of hopeful enthusiasm. She knew nothing of the irritability inseparable from an imaginative temperament; feeling every thing with the keenest susceptibility, and exaggerating every thing. The excitement of even those few words was too much, he sank back, fainting, on his pillow. It soon, however, passed away, and he roused again.
"Lavinia!" exclaimed he, hastily, "there are some people sent into the world to be miserable; and miserably do they fulfil their fate. If you see one eager, hopeful, and believing, who holds the suffering of his kind his noblest reward—over whom even the words of those whom he despises have influence—be assured that you see one predestined to the most utter wretchedness."
"I am sure," returned Lavinia, not knowing very well what to say, "it is never worth while caring much about other people."
"How wretched," continued Walter, "has my whole life been! I look back upon my sad and unloved childhood, when I felt the unkind and cold word with a sorrow beyond my years. Then came a youth of incessant labour—labour whose exhaustion none can tell but those engaged in it. How often has the pen dropped from my hand for very weariness, and the characters swam before my aching sight! How often have I written when heartsick, forcing my imagination, till the re-action was terrible!"
"Dearest Walter, do not talk, you are not equal to it," interrupted his companion.
"Oh, no; it does me good. I cannot bear," returned he, "to be here thinking over thoughts that fret my very life away. Alas! how I grieve over all that was yet stored in my mind! Do you know, Lavinia" continued he, with all the eagerness of a slight delirium, "I am far cleverer than I was; I have felt, have thought so much! Talk of the mind exhausting itself!—never! Think of the mass of material which every day accumulates! Then experience, with its calm, clear light, corrects so many youthful fallacies; every day we feel our higher moral responsibility, and our greater power. What beautiful creations even now rush over me!—but, no, no!—I am dying!—I shall write no more!" and his voice sunk, as he gasped for breath: "and she," murmured he, after a long pause, "whom I have so idolised—a thousand hearts beat at the tender sorrow of which she was the inspiration! yet she will never know how utterly she has been beloved. Even now her sweet face swims before me; methinks that I would give worlds to gaze upon it once again; to carry the image into eternity with me!"
A peculiar expression crossed Lavinia's face, and she rose from her seat; her movement recalled Walter from his temporary abstraction.
"You are not going yet?" asked he; for now he clung, like a sick child, to the presence of his kind attendant.
"I am going," replied she, "earlier to-day, that I may come back the sooner; the rehearsal will be very short; and now, dear Walter, try and compose yourself."
"You are very, very kind," said he, in broken accents; and after placing water and a restorative medicine near him, the actress left the room. She left the chamber of death and of desolation, to rehearse the jests of a comedy.