CHAPTER XXXVII.THE CLOSED LIBRARY.
Whence came the young woman who made her advent in the last chapter? So fair, so gentle in her manners, and yet with an authority of character that made itself respected,—how came she to know the aged couple, whose home was hereafter to be her own?
They knew that she had been the inmate of an Insane Asylum; for there she had learned to love and protect their only child, who was all the dearer to them because of her infirmity. They knew that she had entered this institution, under the care of as good and true a woman as ever lived, from a keen desire to find some place where her daily bread could be earned in seclusion, mingled with a gentle wish to benefit humanity in some way.
The desire to do good to others usually brings its own opportunity, and Catharine had found that the wish is in itself one of the brightest and safest steps toward happiness when the soul is troubled.
It had been the destiny of this young creature to mingle with strange scenes before her character had acquired its natural strength, and through this fiery furnace her spirit came forth pure and strong as gold.
From her first entrance into the Asylum a singular fascination drew Catharine toward this woman, whose madness was full of child-like trust and poetical refinement. In moments of excitement, Elsie’s mind seemed burning with thoughts, that in a sane person, capable of conversation and contiguity, would have produced thrilling poetry.
Her grief had a depth of wild pathos in it that won conviction of its reality; her sadness was plaintive in its expression as the notes of a night-bird, when it has no listenersbut the quiet stars and motionless leaves. Her joy was that of a child, wayward and mischievous sometimes, at others full of graceful wit. But these moods seldom came to brighten her monotonous existence.
Elsie Ford’s insane life had been, of late, mournfully poetic, helpless, and gentle. She was possessed by broken fancies and yearning desires for some far-off object, which she mentioned vaguely and with a confused strain of affection, always speaking ofHIM, but without name. She would shrink back with a sort of terror when any one inquired directly who this being was, who wove his memory with her thoughts forever, and yet seemed a myth even to her.
This gentle frame of mind had come upon Elsie after Catharine had given up so much of her own life in her behalf. It is not remarkable that a young creature who had been herself friendless, came to love this woman, almost as if she had been the child in years that she had become in mind. Elsie returned this affection in her own wild way, giving through her heart the love and obedience which her brain could neither understand nor control.
This change in the condition of Elsie Ford led to a yearning desire in her aged parents to have her once more under their own roof. It was admitted by the physician that a residence at home might prove beneficial to a patient who seemed to be gradually collecting her stray thoughts into form under the loving guidance of her nurse.
This decision with regard to Elsie Ford had been made about the time of Mrs. Barr’s death, and the old people, by message and letter, made a pathetic appeal to Catharine, beseeching her to take up her abode with them, and still act as a guardian angel to their daughter.
Catharine remembered the dying counsel of her friend, and gladly accepted the position. Indeed, Elsie Ford was now the only human being who seemed to connect her withthe world. So she followed this one object of her love, not as a nurse,—that was unnecessary now,—but with the devotion of a child, or a younger sister, kindly giving up her own life to another.
Thus, from her long residence in the Insane Asylum, Catharine came with her patient to make a new home on the Island.
It was like Paradise, that serene abode, full of quietness, and surrounded with the fresh luxuriance of spring. After the hushed turmoil of an insane asylum, where the atmosphere was heavy with suppressed groans, and wild cries sometimes broke the midnight stillness, the repose of this old house was indeed Heaven.
The old people, with their refined simplicity, so still and almost caressing in every word and movement, were in gentle harmony with the place. For the first time in her life, Catharine breathed with a deep, full sense of enjoyment.
There was a library in the old house, filled with such books as lead to thought, suggesting grand ideas to the imagination, and strengthening the reason. An intellect of no ordinary cultivation must have selected these volumes, for they were in various languages, and each work was of the choice productions of its nation.
Catharine remarked that none of these volumes had been printed within the last thirty years, though up to that period the literature of many nations was gathered. This fact gave her food for thought, and with a curiosity unnatural to her, she began to conjecture for what purpose and by whom this rare collection had been made. Why had it been discontinued so suddenly, and how chanced it that a library of so much value in all respects had been left untouched, till the dust of years almost obscured the original richness of the bindings?
Another thing aroused conjecture also. The library was on the ground-floor, occupying the extreme end of one wingof the building, to which a large bay-window had been added, filling the room with pure light and enlarging it at the same time.
When Catharine first entered the room, about a week after her arrival on the Island, it was buried in darkness, for long wooden shutters were closed over the windows; and though it was early daylight, when the fresh, young morning was full of brightness, she was almost repulsed by the dusty and dim atmosphere.
But she had received permission to visit every part of the house, and use anything it contained at discretion, for the comfort of herself and her companion.
With considerable effort she forced open the sashes and flung back the shutters from the dusty panes. The morning sunshine came up through the valley in its first golden brightness, and drifting through the pendent branches of a weeping-elm that sheltered the whole wing, poured itself in a flood through the window, till dust floated like a cloud of golden motes all around.
It seemed to her almost like sacrilege, thus to have let in a broad light on the obscurity of so many years. The bookcases of dark wood, richly carved and set with plate-glass, took the sudden radiance gloomily, and glimpses of the gilded bindings came dimly through the accumulated dust. The bronze medallions that formed centre-pieces over each case were scarcely discernible, and the crimson hangings upon the wall behind, though embossed with a deep velvet pattern, seemed faded to a brown tint.
The two sides of the room were occupied by these bookcases; but on each side the door, which opened opposite the bay-window, several pictures were hung, veiled with cobwebs, and their costly frames gleaming out from wreaths of dust.
Two or three chairs of various patterns stood under these pictures, and slender bronze statues, each holding agilded branch for lights in its hand, poised themselves on either side of the window. In two of these branches, wax candles, half consumed, still remained, while others had burned low, leaving the sockets full of wax, now of a dull gray color.
As Catharine looked around, she felt the desolation of the change oppressive, and half-closed the shutters, thus preserving the partial gloom which seemed so congenial to the place.
Why was it that this scene of neglected splendor, this treasure of intellectual wealth, half buried in the past, fell so gloomily on her spirits? What was the room to her? And why was she there, except to ascertain what capacities of home comfort the place afforded for her unfortunate charge?
She could not answer these questions. Her heart beat heavily, and her eyes grew dim with a sort of foreboding terror, as she looked around. Yet a strange infatuation kept her in the room. She longed to know what the books contained, by whom they had been collected, and by whom read.
This curiosity at last overcame the pressure upon her nerves. She arose, and opening a fold of the shutters again, surveyed the room a second time. It was early sunrise, and she had a full hour before Elsie would awake, or the family be abroad.
As the light gradually flooded the room, she became self-possessed and more resolute. The superstitious sensation, that had at first swept her nerves, yielded to a feeling of imaginative curiosity. She opened one of the bookcases almost with a feeling that it had life, and could be pained with the sharp wrench which she was obliged to give the lock.
As I have said, the books were in various languages, and Catharine could read but two, her native tongue and French, which she had caught up almost without effort, by painful associations in early life with persons to whom that language was most familiar; but she took down the Italian,German, and Spanish authors, with that vague reverence which we always feel for a thing beyond our comprehension, and was seized with a quick thirst of the knowledge they contained.
Here was a new world for the young woman, a world of fresh sensations and never-ending variety. She had fallen unawares upon a mine of thought, unappropriated, beautiful thought, from which she might carry away new life, and not diminish the original stock by a single idea. Here was happiness! here was a solace for the baffled hopes and recoiling affections that had burdened her soul so long. She would no longer seek for joy among the living. The dead had left her the essence of their lives, and she would read their books, she would learn all these strange languages. She would live in the past lives of those who had become benefactors to humanity, by gathering the immortality which belongs to them from the past, for the benefit of generations yet to come.
With these aspirations, Catharine turned over the pages of an Italian poem, that she had taken from the shelves. The very strangeness of the words had its fascination. She panted to wrestle with her own ignorance, and overcome it with a single effort.
But a sound in the house awoke Catharine from this train of thought. She had duties to perform. Life was not given that it might be wasted in vague dreams and useless expectations. She closed the book, and wandered around the room, anxious to redeem it from its state of neglect, and yet reluctant to disturb the repose in which every object had rested so long.
As she stood, a light breeze swept up the valley and blew one of the shutters open, filling the room with light again. She noticed, now, a small mosaic table, half shrouded with a heap of what had been drapery cast over some object in the centre. Catharine lifted this drapery and found underneatha gilded bird-cage, which, protected as it had been from the atmosphere, looked comparatively bright. The bottom was covered with seed husks, and among them, lay a little heap of gold-tinted feathers, which seemed like a sleeping canary. But as Catharine bent over it, her breath disturbed the feathers, and they began to quiver, while one or two were dislodged and floated softly through the wires.
Again Catharine was saddened. How many years must it have been, since the poor bird, of which nothing now remained but the plumage, had starved to death in its cage? Who could have been so cruel? What evil thing had left all this gloom and desolation behind it?
She lifted the cage softly and wiped the dust from the black marble on which it stood. With the first sweep of her hand there shone out, from the glittering stone, a wreath of white jessamine and orange-blossoms, inlaid into the jetty surface with that exquisite skill known best to the Florentine artizans. Leaves of malachite, veined with many tints of green, were interspersed with the blossoms, and all looked fresh and pure as if the stone mockery had been wrought but yesterday.
Here was a new theme of interest for Catharine. Some bridal garland seemed to have left its shadow on the stone, only to mock her curiosity. Surely all these strange and beautiful objects could not have been gathered for the enjoyment of these two old people; for then they never would have been so completely left to moulder into ruin.
When conjecture reached this point, she was called from the room by the low tinkle of a breakfast-bell, which warned her of the hours she had unconsciously given to this unsatisfactory train of thought. She hurriedly shook the dust from her garments, and went out with a strange, guilty feeling, as if she had been intruding into a sacred place.
How pleasantly the old people received her, as she entered the little breakfast-room that morning; and how could shehelp the red flush that rose to her temple, when they kindly inquired what had occupied her all the morning.
Catharine was about to answer, but a glance from Elsie, who looked unusually serious and tranquil as she sat by her mother, was an unaccountable check upon her. There was no meaning in that dark, mournful look, and Catherine had encountered it a thousand times; but some unacknowledged intuition kept her silent; she could not force herself to speak of the room which she had just left.