Stories and Sketches by our best authors. Various

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ cry of a panther, wrenched himself quickly from the grasp upon his arm, and, in an instant, his teeth were buried in the white shoulder of his sister. But only for an instant, for almost as quickly as the madman's movement had been the doctor's. One terrible blow of his fist sent the maniac to the floor like a clod.

      "O doctor! why did you do it?"

      "To save your life, Miss Marchand."

      "Poor St. Victor! His fate is on him at last."

      Her voice was calm in its very despair. She sank down beside the senseless man, lifting the worn, white face to her lap and covering it with kisses. "I saw it,—yet I did not think it would come so soon. O God! be pitiful! Have I not prayed enough?"

      The lips of the injured man began to quiver. "We must bind him and get him to bed before he fully recovers," said the doctor, lifting Edith to her feet. "Here, Thompson, help me to carry him to his bed."

      When the maniac recovered consciousness fully, his ravings were fearful. It was the malady of frenzy in its most appalling condition. The extent of the mental wreck Dr. Graham had, for the last half hour of the feast, been trying to fathom. When he dealt that dreadful blow he knew the wreck was complete: reason had gone out forever with that panther-like shriek. All that could be done was to secure the maniac against injury to himself or others, and to administer such anti-spasmodics or anæsthetics as, in some degree, would control the paroxysms.

      Poor St. Victor! So young, so gifted, so blest with worldly goods; his fate was upon him, as Edith had said.

      From that hour he had but brief respite from torment. Not a gleam of sanity came from those fiery eyes; all was fierce, untamable, inhuman, as if the life had been one of storm and crime, instead of peace and purity. Did there lay upon that racking bed a proof of the natural depravity of the creature man, when the creature was uncontrolled by a reasoning, responsible will? Or, was it not rather a proof that the mental machine was in disorder, by a distention of the blood-vessels and their engorgement in the brain,—that cerebral excitement was a purely physical phenomenon, dependent upon simple, physical causes, which science some day shall define and skill shall counteract?

      Happily, the fire in the sufferer's brain scorched and consumed the sources of his life, as flames drink up the water that is powerless to quench them. Day by day he wasted; and, in less than a month from that night,—Christmas evening,—St. Victor Marchand's form was at peace in death.

      During all that time Dr. Graham never left the sufferer's bedside. Day and night he was there at his post, doing all that was possible to alleviate the pain. The skill of a physician and the love of a brother were exhausted in that battle with death in its most dreaded form.

      His care was, too, required for Miss Edith. Her life was so interwoven with that of her brother, that the doctor doubted if she could survive the shock to her sympathies and affection. When the surprise of the tragedy was over, on the day following the first outburst of the malady, she told him that for months she had feared the worst. She had remarked symptoms so like her father's as to excite her fears; yet, with the happiness of youth, the sister persuaded herself that her apprehensions were groundless. His sunny nature seemed proof against the approach of an evil so blasting; and her momentary fears were banished by the very mood of heightened vivacity and excitement which had awakened them. Having no intimate friend in whom to confide, none to counsel, she had borne the weight of her inward sorrow and dread alone.

      At intervals, during Christmas day, she had observed an incoherency in her brother's speech, and an unwonted nervousness of manner, which had inspired her with serious alarm. When he proposed to drive out, she encouraged the suggestion, hoping that the cold air might restore him to his usual state. Upon his return with Dr. Graham, he had seemed so entirely like himself, so happy, so disposed to enjoyment, that she once more dismissed every thought of danger, until she overheard the sharp whispers in which he addressed his guest.

      "And oh, to think," she cried, while the tears rained down her cheeks, "that in his love for me, his madness should take the shape of beholding the conditions of his own brain reflected in mine! He was so afraid harm would come to me,—thoughtful of me so long as even the shadow of sanity remained. Dear, dear St. Victor,—so good, so pure, so wise! Why was not I the victim, if it was fated that there must be one?" Then lifting her tearful eyes,—"Doctor, perhaps the poison lurks in my veins, too! Tell me, do you think there is danger that I, too, shall one day go mad?"

      "No, poor child, most emphatically, I do not. You must not permit such a fancy to enter your mind. As St. Victor said, you are your mother's image and counterpart, in temperament and mental quality, while he, doubtless, in all active or positive elements of constitution and temperament, was his father's reflex. Is it not true?"

      "I believe so. My dear father used, I know, to think St. Victor nearer to him than I could be. When together, they looked and acted very much alike. Poor, dear brother!" and again the tears coursed down her cheeks.

      The doctor was deeply moved; this grief was so inexpressibly deep as to stir in his heart every emotion of tenderness and sympathy it was possible for a gentle-souled man to feel.

      "I loved him," he said, gently, "before I had known him an hour. His nature was like a magnet, to draw love. Alas! it is sad, when the promise of such a life is blighted. I would have given my life for his, could it have averted this terrible blow from this house."

      A radiant, soul-full look dwelt in her tear-dimmed eyes. That this man—a comparative stranger—should manifest this interest in her brother aroused all the gratitude and affection of her warm nature.

      "And I love you, Dr. Graham, for loving him," she said, in the pathos of the language that never speaks untruthfully,—the pathos of irrepressible feeling. Then she added: "Do not leave us, doctor. You are all the friend we have here in this great city. If you leave us I shall, indeed, be alone."

      "I will remain, my dear child, so long as there is need of my services."

      He did not tell her, in so many words, that the case was hopeless; but her eye was quick to see the wasting form and the growing prostration which followed each paroxysm. How those two faithful attendants watched and waited for the end! And in the grief for the sister, the physician's gentleness found that road to a mutual devotion, which is sure to open before those who love and wait upon a common object of affection. The doctor and sister became, without a consciousness of their real feeling, mutually dependent and trusting.

      In less than a month, as we have written, the skeleton which came to the feast on Christmas night departed from the house to abide on St. Victor Marchand's grave.

      At the next meeting of the Institute, Doctor Graham gave a full account of the case, remarking upon the singular feature in it of the madness assuming an embodiment in the sanity of another. From much that Edith told him, as well as from his own observation and knowledge, he was convinced that, for months, the young man had detected every minute symptom and development of his disease in his sister; and had a physician been at hand, he could have traced the insidious progress of the malady in the strength of the brother's suspicions regarding his sister. The facts cited to the Institute touched the compassion of the most practice-hardened physician when Dr. Graham related the strange and pitying tenderness with which young Marchand had watched his sister, and strove to divert from her mind the madness which tainted his blood alone.

      "Alone in this great city. If you leave me, I shall be alone indeed." The words were like an angel's rap upon the heart's door. In his own great trouble,—the loss of his wife,—the physician deemed himself afflicted beyond his deserts; but what was his condition compared with that of this youthful, tender, dependent woman, whose loss isolated her from all others?

      No, СКАЧАТЬ