THE FEVERFEW.
THE FEVERFEW.
During my youth I suffered from a naturally delicate constitution. I was pale, feeble and sickly, but from no decided disease. A dreamy, quiet cast of temperament caused me to shrink from the rough sports of my brothers; the contact of strangers was equally disagreeable, and I seldom strayed from home. Indeed, I lived almost entirely within myself, although by no means devoid of natural affection; on the contrary, my emotions were strong, and my sympathy easily aroused.
How it happened that I acquired a love of learning I do not know, all the outward circumstances by which I was surrounded tending to foster any thing rather than intellectual habits, for our family, although each member possessed a common education, were strictly practical; but this difference in my disposition cut me offfrom their pursuits, and I found my chief enjoyment in the volumes of a library to which I obtained access.
Perhaps it was the sedentary life I led, the close confinement, and lack of exercise, that brought on a violent attack of sickness when I was in my nineteenth year, so that I lay for several weeks completely prostrated. During two or three days my life hung as in a balance, which a breath might have turned and launched me beyond the confines of time. However, the disease succumbed to the persevering attention of experienced nurses. I arose from my weary bed and found my physical health slowly improving, but from that period I was subject at irregular intervals to what the physician pronounced temporary delirium, which I knew he used as a milder term for insanity.
But it was not insanity. I never lost control of my mind, but I lost control of my body. It obeyed a will that was not my own. A mighty antagonistic power seemed to creep over my brain, which impelled my movements and held my struggling soul in subjection. I presented the singular phenomenon of one person governed by two separate and distinct wills, for my mind was not disordered, but only mastered by superior strength. In this strange condition I would see familiar objects magnified, exaggerated,and contorted, in an atmosphere varying with all colors, at the same time being perfectly conscious of their real appearance. I would hear sounds sweet and musical grow into wails of heart-rending despair. I could recognize my friends when they were present, but was forced to regard them with the cold eye of a stranger. I would commit acts that no human agency could have compelled me to do when my faculties were untrammelled. I never submitted without a struggle, and always felt conscious that, if I could but once resist this seemingly invincible power, if I could but once disregard its promptings, I should be free.
The attacks were never of long duration. They always left me utterly exhausted, and it would sometimes require a week to recruit my expended strength. I could afterward recall every incident with the most distinct minuteness, for they were branded in characters of fire on my memory. Vainly I asserted again and again that it was not delirium, that I was forced into subjection to some mysterious power I could not withstand; my statements made no impression upon the physician, who evidently considered mine but a common case of one suffering from attacks of temporary insanity, and, when I persisted in my statement, he forbade any further reference to the subject.
However, I could not prevent my mind from continually dwelling upon it in secret. What was this so foreign, so antagonistic to myself that mastered my will, that controlled my actions, that made me literally another being? Why did I not shake off this evil influence and be free? I felt perfectly conscious of possessing the power, but was not able to arouse it from a latent condition.
As I have said before, I was naturally of a studious disposition, and I now turned my attention to metaphysics. I read works, ancient and modern, on its different branches; I studied medical treatises on insanity, and, the more I learned, the more thoroughly convinced I became that I was not suffering from mental aberration. Constant brooding over my disease greatly wore upon my physical strength; traveling was recommended, in hopes that change of climate and scene might benefit my health. My old aversion to strangers clung to me, and, although possessed by a restlessness to which I was wholly unaccustomed, I persistently refused to leave home; no arguments could gain my consent, so that my friends were forced to give up the project in despair.
One morning, when more than the usual gloom oppressed my spirits, I made an effort to arouse myself and throw off the melancholythat was settling upon me, which each day I felt to be growing more confirmed. I was sitting by a window, which stood wide open, and, just outside, a caged canary was singing and fluttering its feathers in the warm spring sunshine. The little bird was my particular property, and I regarded it with an affection which is rarely bestowed upon pets. With the exception of my young sister, a child about four years of age, this was the only living thing that I had taken any interest in since my sickness. I had trained the canary from the shell, and the little creature seemed to repay all my care, for from no other member of the family would it receive caresses. I was so much afraid of its being accidentally injured that I never allowed it to be freed from the cage, except in my presence. At my call it would fly about me, resting on my head, shoulders, or hands, and chirping in a perfect ecstasy of enjoyment.
I arose and opened the door of its prison, then, reseating myself, softly whistled while it darted into the air, wheeled once or twice, and descended upon my hand. Stroking its spotless yellow plumage, I regarded the little thing with a degree of pleasure I had not experienced for several weeks. But sudden horror almost caused my heart to cease its beatings, and the perspiration started from my forehead in greatdrops, for I felt my fingers slowly closing over the delicate bird. Although I made an attempt greater than the racking effort we sometimes exert in the nightmare, I had no power to restrain them. The canary fluttered in my clasp. I would have dropped it, I would have shrieked for help, but my muscles, my voice, mybody, obeyed me not, and my fingers, like the steady working of machinery, gradually tightened their relentless grasp. In my agony the veins of my face protruded like lines of cordage. I heard the frail bones breaking beneath the crushing pressure, then my involuntary grip suddenly relaxed, and the bird fell upon my knee, dead and mangled!
At the same moment, I saw, through the open door, my little sister playing upon the grass-plat; and, almost before I was aware of moving, or of any volition, I found myself walking rapidly toward her, while my fingers twitched with a convulsive, clutching movement. Good Heavens! I already saw her face turn purple, and heard her gasping breath smothered by gurgling blood. With this terrible picture before my mental vision, my brain felt as if it would burst its bounds in the desperate, but unavailing effort I made to turn back, to fly from the spot. But I could not command myself. In that moment I endured suffering more intense than languagecan describe. Perhaps my strange and wild appearance frightened the child; for, in place of holding out her arms to me, her favorite brother, she fled crying to the nurse, who did not observe my approach, and carried her into the house. Saved! unconsciously saved—saved from a fate too terrible to contemplate.
I sank insensible upon the ground, and, when I recovered, found myself surrounded by the family, each one applying some restorative, for I had been in a long and death-like swoon. Slowly, but distinctly, the recollections of the events which had reduced me to this condition presented themselves to my memory with all their appalling horror, nearly depriving me again of consciousness.
I did not refer in any manner to the subject, which was also carefully avoided by all others in my presence, for fear that it might produce renewed excitement, and my friends had no suspicion of the circumstances which brought it about. The bird was found dead upon the floor, and the family imagined that it had met with some accident. They were evidently surprised, when the fact was communicated to me, that I made no remarks, for they had anticipated an outburst of grief.
Grief! I did not suffer from grief; grief was overpowered by the horror that racked my brain—horrorfor the act I had committed, and the more fearful one which had been so mercifully prevented. I had committed? No, it was notmymind or will which had prompted my hand to do the deed. I was innocent, even though my fingers had dripped with the blood of a sister; but the frightful thought filled me with a terror that wrung my soul. I pondered continually upon it. When might not this mysterious demon again assert its evil control over me? Strange as it may seem, I felt certain that it was some foreign agency—I knew not what—that mastered my will, and not the result of my own intellect, in a disordered condition.
This overpowering dread of the future, of what might happen, which took possession of me, drove me to the decision of leaving home, as the best way of avoiding danger to my friends. Perhaps, too, if my physical health became better, I might gain strength enough to defy this infernal power; for, as I have said before, I possessed a singular consciousness that, if I could once successfully resist its promptings, my soul would be liberated from thraldom. I announced my determination of making a journey, without any explanation of my sudden change, and it was greeted with delight by my friends and relatives, who were anxious to hasten my departure while the humor was uponme; but they need not have feared any change of purpose on my part, for I was haunted by this terrible dread of the future, and I gladly said farewell for a time to my home and birthplace.
The incidents of travel and of new scenes broke the monotony, and dispelled to some degree the gloom that had taken fast hold upon me. In a short period I found myself rapidly improving. Every week brought me an increase of strength, and I suffered less frequently from these frightful attacks. Although they occurred at longer intervals than formerly, they seemed to grow more severe in character; the conflict was fiercer, and my mind made a more desperate effort to gain the supremacy. My whole frame would be racked by the intense struggle which I constantly maintained, though I was constantly vanquished.
The increasing delight I took in the scenery, the continued exercise and excitement, almost drove despair from me, and hope once more brightened my countenance. I began to look forward to the time when my health would be entirely restored, and my body and mind be in unison. I did not hope vainly, for the final conflict came, and with it a strange termination of my long sufferings.
I stood upon the side of an Eastern mountain. Above my head vast rocks arose in solemngrandeur, their summits lost in canopied mists which, gray and clinging, wrapped them in obscurity. Below, a great chasm rent the mountain; a yawning, bottomless gulf. While I gazed, awed by the thought of its mysterious depths, where no human eye had seen, where no human foot had trod, a ray of light struggled in and rested on gaunt trees, on snake-like ferns, damp and cold, that clung to its slimy sides, and on one pale flower which nodded in the chill draught that came up, a palpable horror, from the blackness of darkness. I turned away. Near the western horizon dead clouds were piled one above another, and their heavy shadow lay brown and dark upon the sullen earth. No wind stirred the forests, or rustled their motionless leaves, and the awe of the unbroken silence fell, with a dread oppression, upon my heart.
Suddenly I was seized by an ungovernable desire to possess the flower—the colorless flower that hung far down in the death-damp of the chasm. A freezing terror crept through my blood as I recognized this decree of a will I had never been able to disobey. I felt myself crawling closer to the verge of the precipice; nearer, yet nearer, until I sat within the very jaw of the savage gulf. The dead clouds heaved their shroud-like forms and wavered overhead. Iheard the rush of subterranean waters sounding a muffled requiem. The sickly flower with its long stem writhed and twisted, as a serpent stretches his folds into the air. Slowly back and forth it swayed, glaring at me like a lustreless eye.
My brain reeled, and all the forces of my nature gathered up their increased strength for one fierce and final conflict. I felt the blood rage through my veins with the headlong fury of cataracts. The very spring of life within me was stirred and troubled, when, with one mighty strain, I drew myself up and fell backward on the grass.
The whole world went out in utter darkness. Before my eyes stretched a vast, illimitable gloom, when suddenly out of its impenetrable depths above my head there grew and glimmered faintly a thin and wavering mist. Folding upon itself, it hung down, white and luminous, a cloud of palpitating nebulæ. Pricked with a thousand points of fire it gathered slowly to a nucleus in the center—a flickering speck, a disc, it flamed, blazed into a star, and lo! poised midway in the air, an aureole of light, it rested upon the brow of a female figure.
Her scornful eyes looked down upon me with a lurid gleam that seemed to burn my soul. A smile of derision sat upon her lips that weremore vivid in hue than the vermilion dye. Her locks were yellow as the sun at noontide; her skin was white as the leper’s; her breath hot as the desert air, and the light of the star upon her forehead burned red with the frightful redness of fresh blood. Suddenly I saw that the murky clouds on either side her form swarmed with a thousand dwarfed and warted shapes. Black and hideous, they knotted, flitted to and fro, in and out, with their formless claws and tumultuous motion. She spread her wings. Immediately there gathered all the dusky shapes—the legion demons of delirium with their needle eyes—and settled down upon her sable plumes. A shrill phantom laugh rang out, mocked itself by echoes that ran up in thin shafts of sound to the skies, and theSPIRIT OF FEVERhad fled from me forever!
The rays of the sun as it sank to rest, slanting through rose-colored avenues, fell upon the gray mists, and crowned the mountain’s summit in a rainbow of glory. The rising breeze swept through the forests with a soothing sound, and, eastward, the eye was lost in mellow lines of golden haze, which to my soul freed from captivity, seemed cathedral aisles of peace.