“hath one heel nail’d in hell,Though she stretch her fingers to touch the heavens.”
“hath one heel nail’d in hell,Though she stretch her fingers to touch the heavens.”
“hath one heel nail’d in hell,
Though she stretch her fingers to touch the heavens.”
Demoniac rage possessed my soul—I was frenzied to the verge of insanity, and as the crash of that roof-tree which had shielded the light of prophecy and covered my hopes, if but for so short a time, sent scintillations up and out, far and wide, I rushed from the excited scene, I knew not whither.
When I next recognized my surroundings, I found myself in a small, neat room, white-walled and curtained—and Estelle’s anxious face was bending over me. I had been ill a month, and my gaunt limbs and haggard features, which I insisted on seeing in a mirror,gave no reminiscence of my once plump face and rounded form. My voice, the mere ghost of a sound, was hardly the semblance of its former resonant self.
At first I was not permitted to excite myself by too eager inquiry, but as I gained strength, those about me, who of course had known nothing about my intended collaboration with Brathwaite, set to work to ascertain something concerning the events of that September night in which I had been so swiftly snatched up to the seventh heaven of expectancy, and as suddenly dropped to earth again.
There was nothing reassuring in the tidings of a month ago. The enthusiast, roused from slumber by the shrill cry of fire, sought to save his papers rather than his person; traversed passage after passage claimed by the invading flames; and bore treasure after treasure to the lower hall. But in penetrating to some distant stairway, which gave way under his daring footsteps, he inhaled flame, and although rescued by the bravery of the firemen, was borne from the seething, roaring furnace—only to die.
So, then, the manuscript which the noble soulhad entrusted to me, as an earnest of what was to come, was all that remained of a life of work, a fortune of expenditure.
“Then black despair,The shadow of a starless night was thrownOver the world in which I moved alone”—
“Then black despair,The shadow of a starless night was thrownOver the world in which I moved alone”—
“Then black despair,
The shadow of a starless night was thrown
Over the world in which I moved alone”—
I could without a sigh “let the dead past bury its dead,” but the future which promised so much for me and mine—how could I bear to give it up?
The attending physician, who gathered that I had met with some sudden business reverse, said soothingly: “Remember this line of Shakespeare:
“‘Sweet are the uses of adversity,’
and this which Beaumont and Fletcher borrowed from Seneca:
“‘Calamity is man’s true touchstone.’
This trouble, great though it be, may be like the heating in molten lead and quenching in cold brine which gives to steel its greatest hardness and most exquisite temper. Everything is for the best.”
With this I could not agree. I am not sure that I agree with it yet. I replied, peevishly: “It is very easy for you to console me; to patchgrief with proverbs. But I can quote you Shakespeare against himself:
“‘’Tis all men’s office to speak patienceTo those that wring under the load of sorrow,But no man’s virtue, nor sufficiency,To be so moral when he shall endureThe like himself.’”
“‘’Tis all men’s office to speak patienceTo those that wring under the load of sorrow,But no man’s virtue, nor sufficiency,To be so moral when he shall endureThe like himself.’”
“‘’Tis all men’s office to speak patience
To those that wring under the load of sorrow,
But no man’s virtue, nor sufficiency,
To be so moral when he shall endure
The like himself.’”
Pope says, ‘I never knew any man in my life who could not bear another’s misfortunes like a Christian.’ While I do believe that I should make the best of everything, I do not believe that everything is for the best.
“‘Yet I argue notAgainst Heaven’s hand or will, nor bate a jotOf heart or hope; but still bear up and steerRight onward.’”
“‘Yet I argue notAgainst Heaven’s hand or will, nor bate a jotOf heart or hope; but still bear up and steerRight onward.’”
“‘Yet I argue not
Against Heaven’s hand or will, nor bate a jot
Of heart or hope; but still bear up and steer
Right onward.’”
Estelle said, half-reprovingly, “‘If thou faint in the day of adversity, thy faith is small.’”
“I never pretended to have faith. I never thought that I had any, except perhaps when none was needed. Faith is like courage; it must be born in one, or be cultivated by contact with danger. When there is no danger to test one’s faith, there is no means of knowing whether or not any has been born with one. Then when faith is most needed, it may be found entirely lacking.”
With such thoughts and words our conversationcontinued until the physician, mindful of his patient’s physical welfare, signed to Estelle to leave me—which she did, pressing on my pallid forehead a soft, tender kiss that meant hope and love, confidence and reassurance.
A soothing draught composed me to dreamless sleep, and when again I woke it was to see the love-light in my dear one’s eyes, patiently watching my restful slumber and awaiting my return to consciousness.
Her gentle ministrations, as much as the doctor’s skill, restored health and strength to my enfeebled mind and body. We tacitly avoided the subject of my so-suddenly blasted ambitions, and talked of love and happy life together, in a pleasant uneventful future, such as had often engrossed our conversation before my eyes had seen from afar that promised land which I was never to enter.
With returning vigor, I renewed my former plans for my future and Estelle’s; but as my steps increased in firmness, my thoughts still reverted to Brathwaite’s wonderful prophetic manuscript, some of the details of which I set about to make realities of the present, rather than of a generation hence. The hope of realizingfor myself and Estelle an early return from my mental labors in their development and embodiment, lent new strength, suppleness and deftness to my touch, and seemed to make my insight keener, my inventive powers more fertile, more promptly responsive to the demands upon them.Festina lentebecame my motto. I doubted as I hoped; I criticised relentlessly as I solved method after method, and produced result after result. At each new step I felt the ground firmly before trusting to it; I looked at each production as though it were that of some hated rival whom I had in my power to thrust down, keep down, by savage search for faults and merciless exposure of each weakness in design, construction or operation.
The news of the dramatic death of Brathwaite and some inkling of the fact that he had for so many years been engaged in scientific research, every vestige of result from which was believed to have perished with “the old Professor”—as the journals of the day styled him—had startled the city; and gave three-column stories, spread headed, sub-headed and paddedad nauseam; no two agreeing, save that in all “the fire-fiend” was rampant; “holocaust” and “pyre,” “cremation”and “conflagration,” vied with each other in harrowing up the reader’s nerves. The suburban press took up the strain in more subdued tones and in less space, although no more grammatically—while the far-away sheets of Boom City or Dead Man’s Gulch paragraphed it as the shocking self-destruction of Robert Batterman, an eccentric metropolitan hermit who had a mania for collecting old almanacs and back numbers of periodicals. “Such is fame,” said Byron, “to have one’s name misspelled in the ‘Gazette.’”
The Masonic body of which Brathwaite had been for so many years an unobtrusive member announced a Lodge of Sorrow in memory of the deceased brother; and most imposing were the ceremonies, most impressive were the addresses upon that occasion. From the pamphlet account of this function, printed by resolution of the Lodge, I excerpt the remarks of M. W. Past Master Ashley, as showing in some degree the respect in which Brathwaite was held by those who knew him, and the veneration which his upright life, his charitable although retiring disposition, and his many and varied accomplishments, inspired.