Kitabı oku: «Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 11, No. 23, February, 1873», sayfa 11
Why not? The fear of man is no instinctive feeling in the invertebrate creation. The pioneer who penetrates into the uninhabited wilds of our Western frontier finds bird and beast fearless and familiar. Man's cruelty is a lesson of experience. The timid and fearful of the lower creation belong to creatures of prey. The shark, for example, is as cowardly as the wolf.
I thought to speak of other marine creations with which the diver grows acquainted, finding in them only a repetition of the same degree of life he has seen in the upper world. But let it be enough to state the conclusion—as yet only an impression, and perhaps never to be more—that in marine existence there is to be found the counterpart always of some animate existence on earth, invertebrate or radiate, in corresponding animals or insects, between whose habits and modes of existence strong analogies are found. The shrimps that hang in clusters on your hand under the water are but winged insects of the air in another frame that have annoyed you on the land.
Let me dismiss the subject with the brief account of a diver caught in a trap.
In the passion of blind destruction that followed and attended the breaking out of hostilities between the North and the South, as a child breaks his rival's playthings, the barbarism of war destroyed the useful improvements of civilization. Among the things destroyed by this iconoclastic fury was the valuable dry-dock in Pensacola Bay. It was burned to the water's edge, and sunk. A company was subsequently organized to rescue the wreck, and in the course of the submarine labor occurred the incident to which I refer.
The dry-dock was built in compartments, to ensure it against sinking, but the ingenuity which was to keep it above water now served effectually to keep it down. Each one of these small water-tight compartments held the vessel fast to the bottom, as Gulliver was bound by innumerable threads to the ground of Lilliput. It was necessary to break severally into the lower side of each of these chambers, and allow the water to flow evenly in all. The interior of the hull was checkered by these boxes. Huge beams and cross-ties intersected each other at right angles, forming the frame for this honeycombed interior, pigeon-holed like a merchant's desk. It was necessary to tear off the skin and penetrate from one to the other in order to effect this.
It was a difficult and tedious job under water. The net of intersecting beams lay so close together that the passage between was exceedingly narrow and compressed, barely admitting the diver's body. The pens, so framed by intersecting beams, were narrowed and straitened, embarrassing attempts at labor in them, which the cold, slippery, serpent-like touch of the sea-water was not likely to make pleasanter. It folded the shuddering body in its coils, and a most ancient and fish-like smell did not improve the situation. The toil was multiplied by the innumerable pigeon-holes, as if they fitted into one another like a Chinese puzzle, with the unlucky diver in the middle box. It was a nightmare of the sea, the furniture of a dream solidified in woody fibre.
Into one of these crowding holes the diver crawled. There was the tedious work of tearing off the casing to occupy an hour or more, and when it was accomplished he endeavored to back out of his situation. He was stopped fast and tight in his regression. The arrangement of the armor about the head and shoulders, making a cone whose apex was the helmet, prevented his exit. It was like the barb of a harpoon, and caught him fast in the wood. Such a danger is not sudden in its revelation. There is at first only a feeling of impatience at the embarrassment, a disposition to "tear things." In vain attempts at doubling and other gymnastic feats the diver wasted several hours, until his companions above became alarmed at the delay. They renewed and increased their labors at the force-pump, and the impetuous torrent came surging about the diver's ears. It served to complete his danger. It sprung the trap in which he lay enclosed. The inflated armor swelled and filled up the crowded spaces. It stiffened out the casing of the helmet to equal the burden of fifty pounds to the square inch, and made it as hard as iron. He was caught like the gluttonous fox. The bulky volume of included air made exit impossible. It was no longer a labyrinth as before, where freedom of motion incited courage: he was in the fetters of wind and water, bound fast to the floor of his dungeon den. He signaled for the pump to stop. It was the only alternative. He might die without that life-giving air, but he would certainly die if its volume was not reduced. The cock at the back of the helmet for discharging the vessel was out of his reach. The invention never contemplated a case in which the diver would perish from the presence of air.
As the armor worn was made tight at the sleeves with elastic wristbands, his remedy was to insert his fingers under it, and slowly and tediously allow the bubbling air to escape. In this he persevered steadily, encouraged by the prospect of escape. The way was long and difficult, but release certain with the reduction of that huge bulk.
But a new and subtler danger attacked him—the very wit of Nature brought to bear upon his force and ingenuity. It was as if the mysterious sirens of the sea saw in that intellectual force the real strength of their prisoner, and sought to steal it from him while they lulled him to indifference. Inhaling and reinhaling the reduced volume of air, it became carbonized and foul, not with the warning of sudden oppression, but
Sly as April melts to May,
And May slips into June.
The senses, intoxicated by the new companion sent them by the lungs, began to sport with it, as ignorant children with a loaded shell, forgetful of duty and the critical condition of the man. They began to wander in vagaries and delusions. A soft chime of distant bells rang in his ears with the sweet sleepy service of a Sabbath afternoon; the sound of hymns and the organ mingled with the melody and the chant of the sirens of the sea.
There is sweet music here that softer falls
Than petals from blown roses on the grass,
Or night-dew on still waters, between walls
Of shadowy granite in a gleaming pass—
Music that gentler on the spirit lies
Than tired eyelids upon tired eyes.
Here are cool mosses deep,
And through the moss the ivies creep,
And in the stream the long-leaved flowers weep,
And from the craggy ledge the poppy hangs in sleep.
The sensuous beauty, the infinite luxury of repose sung by the poet, filled and steeped his senses. The desire to sleep was intoxicating, delicious, irresistible; and with it ran delicious, restful thrills through all his limbs, the narcotism of the blood. It was partly, no doubt, the effect of inhaling that pernicious air; partly that hibernation of the bear which in the freezing man precedes dissolution; and possibly more than that, something more than any mere physical cause—life perhaps preparing to lay this tired body down, its future usefulness destroyed.
This delicious enervation had to be constantly resisted and dominated by a superior will. One more strenuous effort to relieve that straitened garrison, to release that imprisoned and fettered body, and then, if that failed, an unconditional surrender to the armies of eternal steep. But it did not fail. That constant, persevering tugging of the fingers at the wristbands, pursued mechanically in that strange condition of pleasing stupor, had reduced the exaggerated distensions of the bulbous head-gear. A stout, energetic push set the diver free, and he was drawn to the surface dazed, drowsy, and only half conscious of the peril undergone. But with the rush of fresh, untainted air to the lungs came an emotion of gratitude to the Giver of life and the full consciousness of escape.
And this sums up my sketch illustrative of the peculiar character of marine life, and the hazards of submarine adventure, hitherto known to few, for—well, for divers reasons.
WILL WALLACE HARNEY.
CONFIDENTIAL
My ear has ever been considered public property for private usage. I cannot call to mind the time when I was not somebody's confidante, the business beginning as far back as the winter I ran down to Aunt Rally's to receive my birthday-party of sweet or bitter sixteen, as will appear.
Ralph Romer was the first to spread the news of my arrival in the village among the girls of my own age. Ralph Romer it was who had braved the dangers of "brier and brake" to find the bright holly berries with which Aunt Hally had decorated the cheery little parlor for the occasion; and it was with Ralph Romer I danced the oftenest on that famous night.
"Wouldn't I just step out on the porch a short little minute," he whispered as he came around in the rear of Aunt Hally to bid me good-night, ending the whisper, according to the style of all boy-lovers, "I've got something to tell you."
The door stood open and conveniently near, and I suppose I wanted to see how high the snow had drifted since dark; and, a better reason still, I couldn't afford to let Ralph take my hand off with him; and so I had to go out on the porch just long enough to get it back, while he said: "Ettie Moore says she loves me, and we are going to correspond when I go back to college; and as you know all lovers and their sweethearts must have a confidante to smuggle letters and valentines across the lines, we have both chosen you for ours. Oh, I was so afraid you wouldn't come!"
I found the snow had drifted–well, I don't believe I knew how many inches.
I have not promised a recital of all my auricular experiences. Enough to say, that in time I settled down into the conviction that it was my special mission to be the receptacle of other people's secrets; and they seemed determined to convince me that they thought so too.
So, when Mr. Tennent Tremont happened along and became a candidate for auricular favors, like a tradesman who has gained the self-sustaining ground which has made him indifferent as to custom-seeking, I could afford to be entirely independent about giving a previous promise to keep his secrets for him; and so, dear reader, they are as much yours as mine.
When my brother introduced him into our family circle we took him to be a Northern college-chum, met with during his just-returned-from-trip to Washington; for it was in those days when Southern hospitality was as much appreciated as it was liberally bestowed. It was a good time for a modest stranger to come among new faces. We were in the flutter and bustle which a wedding in the family makes, and it gave him an opportunity to get used to us, and left us none to observe him unpleasantly much.
But when the wedding was over, and I had made up my week of lost sleep, and he and my brother had kept themselves out of the way on a camp-hunt, for my mother to do up her week of house-cleaning,—it is here that our story proper begins.
As we were leaving the breakfast-table one morning my brother caught my dress-sleeve, and, dropping in the rear of Mr. Tennent Tremont, allowed him to find the verandah: "Really, sis, I don't think you are doing the clever thing, quite."
"How?"
"Why, in not helping me to entertain my friend."
"Getting tired of him?"
"No, he isn't one of that kind; but, to tell the truth, I am too busy just now to give him the whole of my time."
"Too busy turning your own cakes. Yes, I see."
"Which is no more than my sister is doing; which reminds me to say that J.B. will call this morning, he desired me to inform you. But, dear sis, we must not be so absorbed in our own love-matters as to give my friend only a moiety of our attention, for, poor fellow! he has one of his own."
"So I am to bore him for the sake of relieving you? Is that my role?"
"Now stop! He simply wants a lady confidante."
I broke away from my brother's hold, and ran up to my room to see if all was right for my expected caller, giving my right ear a pull, by way of saying to that victimized organ, "You are needed."
And what think you I did next? Got out my embroidery-material bag, and put it in order for action at a moment's warning. I was prepared for a reasonable amount of martyrdom pertaining to my profession, but I was always an economist of time, and not another unemployed hour would I yield to the selfish demands of my forthcoming job.
The next day was one of November drizzle, the house confinement of which, my adroit brother declared, could only be mitigated by my presence in the sitting-room until the improved state of the weather allowed their escape from it.
I was in the habit of appropriating such weather to my piano, and I had not touched it for a month. Whether Mr. Tennent Tremont's nerves were in a sound state or not, I was determined to practice until twelve. But when he came in from the library and assisted me in opening the instrument, I was obliged to ask him what he would have. They were my first direct words to him, our three weeks' guest.
"Oh, 'Summer Night' is a favorite," he said.
I gave him the song, and then executed the long variations; then, dropping my tired hands in my lap, inquired whether he liked vocal or instrumental best.
"Not any more of either, just now, thanking you kindly for what you have given me," he said. "Have you ever been a confidante, Miss –?"
"That is my vocation, Mr. Tremont," I replied, grasping my bag.
"Which? your embroidery or—"
"Both combined," I tried to say pleasantly, "as on this occasion. I am at Mr. Tremont's service;" and I threaded my tapestry-needle.
Without a prefatory word he began: "Years before your young heart was awakened to 'the sweetest joy, the wildest woe,' I loved."
"And single yet!" I exclaimed as I let my hands drop and glanced up at his brown hair, to see if all those years had left their silver footprints there.
"And single yet," he repeated slowly, "and still worshiping at the same shrine; and to no other will I ever bow until this head is silvered o'er, and this strong arm palsied with the infirmities of age—if a long life is indeed to be mine."
His ardor startled me, but I managed to stitch away composedly, and he went on:
"I know it is in the highest degree selfish to inflict on you a recital of what may not interest you; but I have tried to keep my secret buried from human eyes, from all but hers, and you are now the only being on earth to whom I have ever said, 'I love.' As intimate as I have been with your brother, if he knows it, it is by his penetration, for no word of acknowledgment has ever passed my lips before. May I go on?" he asked.
"Oh yes," I answered, taken by surprise. "I suppose so. It is a relief to talk, and to listen, I have told you, is my vocation."
"How long can you listen?" he questioned in delighted eagerness.
I fancied he would have to be allowanced, and I held up my paper pattern before me: "This bouquet of flowers is to be transferred. I will give you all the time it will take to do it. Remember, the catastrophe must be reached by that time. Some one else will probably want my ear."
"But," said he, "listening is not the only duty of a confidante: you must aid me by your counsel. Only a woman may say how a woman may be won."
"You have my sympathies, Mr. Tremont, on the score of your being a very dear brother's friend. I know nothing of her—next to nothing of you. I can neither counsel nor aid you."
"That brother is familiar with every page of my outward life-history. It was in our family he spent his vacation, while you and your father were traveling in Europe."
"Well, then, that will do about yourself. Now about her?"
The door-bell was rung: the waiter announced—well, my obliging brother has already given enough of his name—"Mr. J.B." My confessor withdrew.
The next morning, as I was bringing the freshened flower-vases into the sitting-room, he brought me my bag, saying, "Now about her."
I opened the piano, repeated his favorite, kept my seat and cultivated my roses vigorously.
"Miss – ," he began, "I would not knowingly give pain to a human creature. Yesterday, when your visitor found me by your side, I observed a frown on his face. I detest obtrusiveness, but if there is anything in the relation in which you stand to each other which will make my attentions objectionable to either of you, they shall cease this moment. You are at perfect liberty to repeat to him every word I have said to you."
"I thank you sincerely for your considerateness," I said. "I am under no obligations of the kind to him or any other gentleman."
He introduced his topic by saying: "I am glad that I shall have to say little more of myself. Oh, what a strange joy it is to be able to speak unreservedly of her, and of the long pent-up hopes and fears of the past years! And now, if you will assist me in interpreting her conduct toward me—if you will inspire me with even faint hope of success—if you will advise me as you would a brother how to proceed,—gratitude will be too weak a word for my feeling toward you for the remainder of my life."
"I have not yet sufficient light on her part of the affair to aid you by advice," I answered. "In these slowly-developing love-affairs there is usually but one great hindering cause. Do you know," I said, laughing as much as I dared, looking into his woebegone face, "that you have not told me what has passed between you?"
His moment or two of death silence made me almost regret my last words.
"In the first of our acquaintance I was ever tortured by her indifference. My first attentions were quietly received, never encouraged. Then came the still more torturing fear—agony let me call it—lest she was pre-engaged. Thank God! that burden was lifted from my poor heart, but only, it seemed, to make room for the very one of all in the catalogue of causes by which a lover's hope dies beyond the possibility of a resurrection. It is the rock—no, I fear the placid waters of friendship into which my freighted bark is now drifting—which may lie between it and the bright isle of love, the safe harbor" (he shuddered), "not the blissful possession."
Reader, the roses were not growing under my needle: my sympathies were at last fully enlisted.
"You have well said," I answered. "Friendship is the 'nine notch' in which a lover makes 'no count' in the game of hearts. But steer bravely past these dark gulfs of despair. Have you ever had recourse to jealousy in your desperation?" I queried.
"I scorn such a base ally. Your brother can tell you I am here partly because I would avoid increasing an affection in another which I cannot return."
"Does she know of that?" I asked, not at all prepared in my own mind to yield the potency of the ally in my sincere desire to aid him by this test of a woman's affection.
"Yes: I have no reason, however, for thinking that the fact has raised her estimate of the article," he said, making a poor attempt to smile.
I felt ashamed of my suggestion, and said quickly, "You correspond, of course: how are her letters?" Now I was sure of my safest clue in finding her out.
"It was through the medium of her letters that I first obtained my knowledge of her mind, her temperament, her disposition, her admirable domestic virtues; for they were written without reserve. They excited my highest admiration; they stimulated my desire to know more of her; but they contain no word of love for me."
His want of boldness almost excited my contempt. My skill was baffled on every side, and, not caring much to conceal my impatience, I said, "You have asked me to advise you as I would my brother. She is cold and selfish: give her up."
"Give her up!" he said with measured and emphatic slowness—"give her up, when I have sought her beneath every clime on which the sun shines—not for months, but for years? Give her up, when her presence gives me all I have ever known of happiness? Give her up!" and he leaned his head on the back of his chair and closed his eyes.
I had imagined him gifted with wonderful self-control, but when I looked up from my work all color had faded from his cheeks, the lips seemed ready to yield the little blood left there by the clinch of the white-teeth upon them, while every muscle of the face quivered with spasmodic effort to control emotion. When the eyes were opened and fixed on the ceiling, I saw no trace in them of anger, revenge, or even of wounded pride. They were full of tears, ready to gush in one last flood-tide of feeling over a subdued, chastened, but breaking heart.
It was very evident that my treatment was not adding much comfort to my patient, however salutary it might prove in the end. I knew of his intention to leave the next day: there was little time left me to aid him, and I had come to regard the unknown woman's mysterious nature or strategic warfare as pitted against my superior penetration. That he might be victorious she must be vanquished. She was, then, my antagonist.
The deepening twilight was producing chilliness. I flooded the room with brilliant light, stirred the grate into glowing warmth, and invited him to a seat near the fire.
"You will not leave me, will you? This may be—it will be—my last demand on you as a confidante. How is the bouquet progressing?" he asked.
"See," I said, holding my embroidery up before me: "we must hurry. I have but one more tendril to add."
"Tendrils are clinging things, like hope, are they not?" he said pensively.
But sentimentalizing was not the business of the hour, and I intimated as much to him. "Yes," I replied, "but hope must now give place to effort. I see you are not going to take my 'give-her-up' advice."
"No—only from her who has the right to give it."
I now considered my patient out of danger.
"Then why do you torture yourself longer with doubts? Perhaps your irresolution has caused a want of confidence in the strength of your affection. At least give her an opportunity to define her true position toward you. Beard the lions of indifference and friendship in their dens, and do not yield to unmanly cowardice. Strange that I have given you the counsel last which should have been given first! But do not, I beseech you, lose any time in seeking her. Assure her of your long and unwavering devotion. Constancy is the most valued word in a true woman's vocabulary. You have staked too much happiness to lose: you must win."
"And if I lose," he said—holding up something before him which I took to be a picture, though it was in the shape of a heart—"and if I lose, then perish all of earth to me. But leave me only this, and should I hold you thus, and gaze on what I have first and last and only loved until this perishable material on which I have placed you turn to dust, still will you be graven on a heart whose deathless love can know no death; for a thing so holy as the love I bear you was not made to die."
My work—now my completed work—dropped beneath my fingers, for the last stitch was taken.
If I could not prevent his self-torture, he should not, at least, torture me longer; and snatching the thing from his grasp, I exclaimed as I closed my hands over it, "Now, before I return it, you must, you shall, promise me that you will take the last advice I gave you; or will you allow me to look at it, and then unseal the silent lips and give you the prophetic little 'yes' or 'no' which a professed physiognomist like your confidante can always read in the eye?"
"I would rather you did the last," he said; and I rose, leaned my elbow on the corner of the mantel nearest the gaslight, rested my head on my empty hand, so as to shade my eyes from the intensity of the brilliant burner near me, and with the awe creeping over me with which the old astrologers read the horoscope of the midnight stars, I looked, and saw—only a wonderfully faithful copy of the portrait hanging just over me, of which Mr. Tennent Tremont's confidante was the original. I threw it from me, and burst into tears. He stood quite near me. I thought I hated him, but my obtuse, blundering, idiotic self more than him. I waved my hand in token either of his silence or withdrawal, for in all my life long I, with a whole dictionary in my mind of abusive epithets, was never more at a loss for a word. My token was unheeded.
He only murmured softly,
"I had never seen thee weeping:
I cannot leave thee now.
When you snatched my picture from me a moment ago I saw a glistening tear of sympathy in your eye; but what are these?"
"So cruel! so ungenerous! so unfair!" I said, still pressing my hands tightly over my eyes. "How can I ever forgive you?"
With softer murmur than the last he repeated the words,
"'Tis sweet to let the pardoned in."
"Astounding presumption that!" I said, now giving him the benefit of my full gaze—"to speak of pardon before making a confession of your guilt! But before I give you time even for that, the remaining mysteries which still hang around your tale of woe shall be cleared up. Please to inform the court how the original of your purloined sketch could have been the object of years of devotion, when it has been only four weeks to-day since you laid your mortal eyes on her?"
"Ah! you may well say mortal; but you know the soul too has its visual organs. I saw and loved and worshiped my ideal in those years, and sought her too—how unceasingly!—and I said,
Only for the real will I with the ideal part:
Another shall not even tempt my heart.
When I saw her just four weeks since, I knew her,
And my heart responded as, with unseen wings,
An angel touched its unswept strings,
And whispers in its song,
Where hast thou strayed so long?"
But the avenging demon of curiosity was not to be exorcised by sentimental evasion: "Those letters, sir, of which you spoke, they must have been of a real, tangible form—not a part of the mythical phantasmagoria of your idealistic vision."
He laughed as a light-hearted child would, but knitted his brow with a perplexed air as he said, "Why don't the British government send a woman to find the source of the Nile? I must thank your unsophisticated brother's pride in his sister's epistolary accomplishments for my privilege of perusal. What next?"
I thought a moment. Before, I had fifty other queries to propound, but now as I looked into the glowing anthracite before me which gave us those pleasant Reveries, they very naturally all resolved themselves into explained mysteries without his aid.
He insists that the "prophetic little yes or no" never came.
Upon my honor, dear reader, as a confidante, I still think it the most unfair procedure which ever "disgraced the annals of civilized warfare;" but I shall have abundant opportunity for revenge, for we are to make the journey of life together.
