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The Guardian Angel, a novel by Oliver Wendell Holmes |
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CHAPTER IX. MR. CLEMENT LINDSAY RECEIVES A LETTER, AND BEGINS HIS ANSWER |
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_ CHAPTER IX. MR. CLEMENT LINDSAY RECEIVES A LETTER, AND BEGINS HIS ANSWER It was already morning when a young man living in the town of Alderbank, after lying awake for an hour thinking the unutterable thoughts that nineteen years of life bring to the sleeping and waking dreams of young people, rose from his bed, and, half dressing himself, sat down at his desk, from which he took a letter, which he opened and read. It was written in a delicate, though hardly formed female hand, and crossed like a checker-board, as is usual with these redundant manuscripts. The letter was as follows: OXBOW VILLAGE, June 13, 1859. MY DEAREST CLEMENT,--You was so good to write me such a sweet little bit of a letter,--only, dear, you never seem to be in quite so good spirits as you used to be. I wish your Susie was with you to cheer you up; but no, she must be patient, and you must be patient too, for you are so ambitious! I have heard you say so many times that nobody could be a great artist without passing years and years at work, and growing pale and lean with thinking so hard. You won't grow pale and lean, I hope; for I do so love to see that pretty color in your cheeks you have always had ever since I have known you; and besides, I do not believe you will have to work so very hard to do something great,--you have so much genius, and people of genius do such beautiful things with so little trouble. You remember those beautiful lines out of our newspaper I sent you? Well, Mr. Hopkins told me he wrote those lines in one evening without stopping! I wish you could see Mr. Hopkins,--he is a very talented person. I cut out this little piece about him from the paper on purpose to show you,--for genius loves genius,--and you would like to hear him read his own poetry,--he reads it beautifully. Please send this piece from the paper back, as I want to put it in my scrapbook, under his autograph:-- "Our young townsman, Mr. Gifted Hopkins, has proved himself worthy of the name he bears. His poetical effusions are equally creditable to his head and his heart, displaying the highest order of genius and powers of imagination and fancy hardly second to any writer of the age. He is destined to make a great sensation in the world of letters." Mrs. Hopkins is the same good soul she always was. She is very proud of her son, as is natural, and keeps a copy of everything he writes. I believe she cries over them every time she reads them. You don't know how I take to little Sossy and Minthy, those two twins I have written to you about before. Poor little creatures,--what a cruel thing it was in their father and mother not to take care of them! What do you think? Old bachelor Gridley lets them come up into his room, and builds forts and castles for them with his big books! "The world's coming to an end," Mrs. Hopkins said the first time he did so. He looks so savage with that scowl of his, and talks so gruff when he is scolding at things in general, that nobody would have believed he would have let such little things come anywhere near him. But he seems to be growing kind to all of us and everybody. I saw him talking to the Fire-hang-bird the other day. You know who the Fire-hang-bird is, don't you? Myrtle Hazard her name is. I wish you could see her. I don't know as I do, though. You would want to make a statue of her, or a painting, I know. She is so handsome that all the young men stand round to see her come out of meeting. Some say that Lawyer Bradshaw is after her; but my! he is ten years older than she is. She is nothing but a girl, though she looks as if she was eighteen. She lives up at a place called The Poplars, with an old woman that is her aunt or something, and nobody seems to be much acquainted with her except Olive Eveleth, who is the minister's daughter at Saint Bartholomew's Church. She never has beauxs round her, as some young girls do--they say that she is not happy with her aunt and another woman that stays with her, and that is the reason she keeps so much to herself. The minister came to see me the other day,--Mr. Stoker his name is. I was all alone, and it frightened me, for he looks, oh, so solemn on Sundays! But he called me "My dear," and did n't say anything horrid, you know, about my being such a dreadful, dreadful sinner, as I have heard of his saying to some people,--but he looked very kindly at me, and took my hand, and laid his hand on my shoulder like a brother, and hoped I would come and see him in his study. I suppose I must go, but I don't want to. I don't seem to like him exactly. I hope you love me as well as ever you did. I can't help feeling sometimes as if you was growing away from me,--you know what I mean,--getting to be too great a person for such a small person as I am. I know I can't always understand you when you talk about art, and that you know a great deal too much for such a simple girl as I am. Oh, if I thought I could never make you happy!... There, now! I am almost ashamed to send this paper so spotted. Gifted Hopkins wrote some beautiful verses one day on "A Maiden Weeping." He compared the tears falling from her eyes to the drops of dew which one often sees upon the flowers in the morning. Is n't it a pretty thought? I wish I loved art as well as I do poetry; but I am afraid I have not so much taste as some girls have. You remember how I liked that picture in the illustrated magazine, and you said it was horrid. I have been afraid since to like almost anything, for fear you should tell me some time or other it was horrid. Don't you think I shall ever learn to know what is nice from what is n't? Oh, dear Clement, I wish you would do one thing to please me. Don't say no, for you can do everything you try to,--I am sure you can. I want you to write me some poetry,--just three or four little verses TO SUZIE. Oh, I should feel so proud to have some lines written all on purpose for me. Mr. Hopkins wrote some the other day, and printed them in the paper, "To M---e." I believe he meant them for Myrtle,--the first and last letter of her name, you see, "M" and "e." Your letter was a dear one, only so short! I wish you would tell me all about what you are doing at Alderbank. Have you made that model of Innocence that is to have my forehead, and hair parted like mine! Make it pretty, do, that is a darling. Now don't make a face at my letter. It is n't a very good one, I know; but your poor little Susie does the best she can, and she loves you so much! Now do be nice and write me one little bit of a mite of a poem,--it will make me just as happy! I am very well, and as happy as I can be when you are away. Your affectionate SUSIE. (Directed to Mr. Clement Lindsay, Alderbank.) The envelope of this letter was unbroken, as was before said, when the young man took it from his desk. He did not tear it with the hot impatience of some lovers, but cut it open neatly, slowly, one would say sadly. He read it with an air of singular effort, and yet with a certain tenderness. When he had finished it, the drops were thick on his forehead; he groaned and put his hands to his face, which was burning red. This was what the impulse of boyhood, years ago, had brought him to! He was a stately youth, of noble bearing, of high purpose, of fastidious taste; and, if his broad forehead, his clear, large blue eyes, his commanding features, his lips, firm, yet plastic to every change of thought and feeling, were not an empty mask, might not improbably claim that Promethean quality of which the girl's letter had spoken,--the strange, divine, dread gift of genius. This poor, simple, innocent, trusting creature, so utterly incapable of coming into any true relation with his aspiring mind, his large and strong emotions,--this mere child, all simplicity and goodness, but trivial and shallow as the little babbling brooklet that ran by his window to the river, to lose its insignificant being in the swift torrent he heard rushing over the rocks,--this pretty idol for a weak and kindly and easily satisfied worshipper, was to be enthroned as the queen of his affections, to be adopted as the companion of his labors! The boy, led by the commonest instinct, the mere attraction of biped to its female, which accident had favored, had thrown away the dearest possession of manhood,--liberty,--and this bauble was to be his lifelong reward! And yet not a bauble either, for a pleasing person and a gentle and sweet nature, which had once made her seem to him the very paragon of loveliness, were still hers. Alas! her simple words were true,--he had grown away from her. Her only fault was that she had not grown with him, and surely he could not reproach her with that. "No," he said to himself, "I will never leave her so long as her heart clings to me. I have been rash, but she shall not pay the forfeit. And if I may think of myself, my life need not be wretched because she cannot share all my being with me. The common human qualities are more than all exceptional gifts. She has a woman's heart; and what talent of mine is to be named by the love a true woman can offer in exchange for these divided and cold affections? If it had pleased God to mate me with one more equal in other ways, who could share my thoughts, who could kindle my inspiration, who had wings to rise into the air with me as well as feet to creep by my side upon the earth,--what cannot such a woman do for a man! "What! cast away the flower I took in the bud because it does not show as I hoped it would when it opened? I will stand by my word; I will be all as a man that I promised as a boy. Thank God, she is true and pure and sweet. My nest will be a peaceful one; but I must take wing alone,--alone." He drew one long sigh, and the cloud passed from his countenance. He must answer that letter now, at once. There were reasons, he thought, which made it important. And so, with the cheerfulness which it was kind and becoming to show, so far as possible, and yet with a little excitement on one particular point, which was the cause of his writing so promptly, he began his answer. ALDERBANK, Thursday morning, June 16, 1859. MY DEAR SUSIE,--I have just been reading your pleasant letter; and if I do not send you the poem you ask for so eloquently, I will give you a little bit of advice, which will do just as well,--won't it, my dear? I was interested in your account of various things going on at Oxbow Village. I am very glad you find young Mr. Hopkins so agreeable a friend. His poetry is better than some which I see printed in the village papers, and seems generally unexceptionable in its subjects and tone. I do not believe he is a dangerous companion, though the habit of writing verse does not always improve the character. I think I have seen it make more than one of my acquaintances idle, conceited, sentimental, and frivolous,--perhaps it found them so already. Don't make too much of his talent, and particularly don't let him think that because he can write verses he has nothing else to do in this world. That is for his benefit, dear, and you must skilfully apply it. Now about yourself. My dear Susie, there was something in your letter that did not please me. You speak of a visit from the Rev. Mr. Stoker, and of his kind, brotherly treatment, his cordiality of behavior, and his asking you to visit him in his study. I am very glad to hear you say that you "don't seem to like him." He is very familiar, it seems to me, for so new an acquaintance. What business had he to be laying his hand on your shoulder? I should like to see him try these free-and-easy ways in my presence! He would not have taken that liberty, my dear! No, he was alone with you, and thought it safe to be disrespectfully familiar. I want you to maintain your dignity always with such persons, and I beg you not to go to the study of this clergyman, unless some older friend goes with you on every occasion, and sits through the visit. I must speak plainly to you, my dear, as I have a right to. If the minister has anything of importance to say, let it come through the lips of some mature person. It may lose something of the fervor with which it would have been delivered at first hand, but the great rules of Christian life are not so dependent on the particular individual who speaks them, that you must go to this or that young man to find out what they are. If to any man, I should prefer the old gentleman whom you have mentioned in your letters, Father Pemberton. You understand me, my dear girl, and the subject is not grateful. You know how truly I am interested in all that relates to you,--that I regard you with an affection which-- HELP! HELP! HELP! A cry as of a young person's voice was heard faintly, coming from the direction of the river. Something in the tone of it struck to his heart, and he sprang as if he had been stabbed. He flung open his chamber window and leaped from it to the ground. He ran straight to the bank of the river by the side of which the village of Alderbank was built, a little farther down the stream than the house in which he was living. Everybody that travels in that region knows the beautiful falls which break the course of the river just above the village; narrow and swift, and surrounded by rocks of such picturesque forms that they are sought and admired by tourists. The stream was now swollen, and rushed in a deep and rapid current over the ledges, through the rocky straits, plunging at last in tumult and foam, with loud, continuous roar, into the depths below the cliff from which it tumbled. A short distance above the fall there projected from the water a rock which had, by parsimonious saving during a long course of years, hoarded a little soil, out of which a small tuft of bushes struggled to support a decent vegetable existence. The high waters had nearly submerged it, but a few slender twigs were seen above their surface. A skiff was lying close to this rock, between it and the brink of the fall, which was but a few rods farther down. In the skiff was a youth of fourteen or fifteen years, holding by the slender twigs, the boat dragging at them all the time, and threatening to tear them away and go over the fall. It was not likely that the boy would come to shore alive if it did. There were stories, it is true, that the Indians used to shoot the fall in their canoes with safety; but everybody knew that at least three persons had been lost by going over it since the town was settled; and more than one dead body had been found floating far down the river, with bruises and fractured bones, as if it had taken the same fatal plunge. There was no time to lose. Clement ran a little way up the river-bank, flung off his shoes, and sprang from the bank as far as he could leap into the water. The current swept him toward the fall, but he worked nearer and nearer the middle of the stream. He was making for the rock, thinking he could plant his feet upon it and at the worst hold the boat until he could summon other help by shouting. He had barely got his feet upon the rock, when the twigs by which the boy was holding gave way. He seized the boat, but it dragged him from his uncertain footing, and with a desperate effort he clambered over its side and found himself its second doomed passenger. There was but an instant for thought. "Sit still," he said, "and, just as we go over, put your arms round me under mine, and don't let go for your life!" He caught up the single oar, and with a few sharp paddle-strokes brought the skiff into the blackest centre of the current, where it was deepest, and would plunge them into the deepest pool. "Hold your breath! God save us! Now!" They rose, as if with one will, and stood for an instant, the arms of the younger closely embracing the other as he had directed. A sliding away from beneath them of the floor on which they stood, as the drop fails under the feet of a felon. A great rush of air, and a mighty, awful, stunning roar,--an involuntary gasp, a choking flood of water that came bellowing after them, and hammered them down into the black depths so far that the young man, though used to diving and swimming long distances underwater, had well-nigh yielded to the fearful need of air, and sucked in his death in so doing. The boat came up to the surface, broken in twain, splintered, a load of firewood for those who raked the river lower down. It had turned crosswise, and struck the rocks. A cap rose to the surface, such a one as boys wear,--the same that boy had on. And then--after how many seconds by the watch cannot be known, but after a time long enough, as the young man remembered it, to live his whole life over in memory--Clement Lindsay felt the blessed air against his face, and, taking a great breath, came to his full consciousness. The arms of the boy were still locked around him as in the embrace of death. A few strokes brought him to the shore, dragging his senseless burden with him. He unclasped the arms that held him so closely encircled, and laid the slender form of the youth he had almost died to save gently upon the grass. It was as if dead. He loosed the ribbon that was round the neck, he tore open the checked shirt-- The story of Myrtle Hazard's sex was told; but she was deaf to his cry of surprise, and no blush came to her cold cheek. Not too late, perhaps, to save her,--not too late to try to save her, at least! He placed his lips to hers, and filled her breast with the air from his own panting chest. Again and again he renewed these efforts, hoping, doubting, despairing,--once more hoping, and at last, when he had almost ceased to hope, she gasped, she breathed, she moaned, and rolled her eyes wildly round her, she was born again into this mortal life. He caught her up in his arms, bore her to the house, laid her on a sofa, and, having spent his strength in this last effort, reeled and fell, and lay as one over whom have just been whispered the words, "He is gone." _ |
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