Chapter 11

On the following day, I happened to be in that quarter of the country, and called at the house to which I had been directed. The day was cloudy, raw, and cold, and a stern north wind whistled among the brackens of the hills. I was struck with the situation and appearance of the house. It had formerly been a mansion-house, and was much larger than the ordinary residences of small sheep-farmers among the hills. The situation was peculiarly bleak, sequestered, and even dismal: no trees could be discovered in any direction; there was no outhouses attached to the dwelling; and no neighbouring residence was to be seen. The house stood alone, big, gaunt, cold, and comfortless, in the midst of bare hills, exposed to the bitter wind that careered through the valleys and ravines. Nor, as I approached, did I discover any signs of domestic stir or comfort. Several of the windows were closed up--the under part of the house apparently being only inhabited by the inmates, who showed no anxiety to ascertain by looking out who it was that had accomplished the task of getting to this barren and sequestered place.

On knocking at the door, it was opened by a young woman about eighteen years of age. She appeared to be delicate--being thin in her person, pale in her complexion, and of an irritable temperament, for she started when she saw me. An expression of melancholy pervaded features not unhandsome, and attracted particularly my attention, by almost instantly exciting my sympathy. I asked her if George B---- was in the house. She answered that her father, for such he was, had just gone to bed, having been for some time ailing. I told her that it was upon that account I had come to see him. She seemed then to know who I was, and thanked me for my attention. I stepped in; and, as I followed the young woman through a long passage to the room occupied by her father, she told me that her mother had died about a year before, and that there was no other individual living in the house but her and her remaining parent. A gloomy, unhappy pair! thought I, as I looked on her sombre face, and heard the wind moaning through the big, open house.

On entering the room, which was cold and poorly furnished, I observed George B---- sitting up in his bed reading a book, which I discovered to be a large Bible. He had a napkin bound round his temples. His face exhibited the true melancholic hue, being of a swarthy yellow; his eyes wore the heaviness generally found in people of that temperament; the muscles were firmly bound down by the rigid, severe, and desponding expression of dejection, generally found associated with these other characteristics; and throughout his face and manner there was exhibited an indifference to surrounding objects, which was only very partially relaxed by his recognition of me as I entered. There was, however, nothing of the look of a diseased man about him; for his face was full and fleshy, his nerves firm and well strung, his eye steady and unclouded, and his voice, as he welcomed me in, strong, and even rough and burly. His face resembled very much the _ideal_ of that of the old Covenanters; and the large Bible he held in his hands aided the conception, and increased the picturesque effect of the whole aspect of the man.

He knew, or took it for granted, that I was the surgeon he had sent for, pointed to a chair, that I might sit down, and beckoned to his daughter Margaret, as he called her, to leave the room. The young woman retired slowly, and I observed, as she proceeded towards the door, she threw back two or three nervous looks, which I thought indicated a strong feeling of apprehension, mixed with her filial sympathy. As the door shut, it sounded as if it had lost the catch; the father caught the sound, appeared angry, and requested me to rise and shut it effectually, and, as he added, carefully. I complied, and he seemed to listen for some time, as if to try to ascertain whether his daughter had proceeded along the passage to the kitchen. He was uncertain, and listened again, but was still unresolved; at last, he said he was sorry to give me so much trouble, but he felt he could not enter upon the subject about which he wished to consult me until he was satisfied, beyond the possibility of doubt, that Margaret was not listening. I rose and went to the door. On opening it, I saw the young woman standing behind it. On perceiving me, she retreated precipitately and fearfully along the dark passage. I shut the door; and, being unwilling, in my ignorance of the cause of all this mysterious secrecy and suspicion, to betray the poor girl, who had perhaps some good legitimate object in solicitude, I said simply that there was now nobody there. He was satisfied; and I again sat down.

I then asked him what was the particular complaint about which he wished to consult me.

"That is precisely what I wish to know," he replied. "I hae nae complaint aboot _my body_, which, God be thanked! is just as strong as it used to be. But there is a change in my mind, different frae the healthy griefs, and sorrows, and pains o' mortals. My wife, the best o' women, died a year ago. In a short time after, I lost the greater number o' my sheep in a storm, which prevented me frae payin my Candlemas rent. But mony a man loses his wife, and mony a shepherd his sheep, without tellin a doctor o' their loss. I laid my account wi' sufferin grief as heavy as mortal ever suffered; and in this house, in this bed, on these hills, in the kirk, and at our cattle trysts, I hae struggled wi' my sorrow. But, sir," leaning his head towards me, and speaking low, "_it winna a' do_."

He paused, and, as he fixed his eye upon me, drew a deep sigh, as if he had already, as it were, broached a subject that was fearful to himself.

"What mean you?" said I.

"I mean, that _I canna live_!" he replied, energetically, seizing the Bible with a spasmodic grasp--closing it--throwing it to the back of the bed--then falling in an instant into a state of real dejection, with his arms folded over his breast, and his eyes cast down.

"Grief often produces these gloomy thoughts," said I; "but they are the mere fancies of a sick mind--generated in sorrow, and dying with the time-subdued cause that produces them. There is not a bereaved husband, wife, parent, or child in the land, that does not, in the first struggle with a new grief, entertain and cherish, for passing moments of agony, such sick fancies of rebelling nature. You have not yet given time and your energies a fair trial. You must have patience."

"There is some consolation in that," he replied. "I am glad when I think that the thought that haunts and alarms me is no sae dangerous as it sometimes appears to me. This book (sweet comforter!) tells me that Tobit prayed to be dissolved, and become earth, because o' his sorrow. It tells me, also, that Job, in his agonies, cried, 'My soul chooseth strangling and death rather than life.' My experience o' the ills o' life (and a man o' sixty-five must have some portion o' that) informs me o' the truth o' what you have told me, that an extraordinary burden o' grief often wrings frae the sick soul a wish to dee and be at rest. But oh! I fear my situation is different. I hae _mair_ than a wish to be dissolved; for sure none o' my brethren in sorrow"--here his voice fell almost to a whisper, and tears rolled down his cheek--"ever lay wi' the like o' that"--holding up a razor--"under his sick pillow."

I was alarmed, being utterly unprepared for this exhibition.

"You need be under nae alarm," he continued, wiping the tears from his eyes. "My courage is not yet strong enough. God be praised for it! Moments o' fearfu fortitude sometimes come owre me, and I have held that instrument in my clenched hand--ay, within an inch o' my bared throat; but the resolution passes as quickly as it comes, and terror, cowardice, and a shiverin cauld--dreadfu to suffer--come in their place. Lay it past, sir--lay it past."

I obeyed; and, as I proceeded to place the instrument on the top of a chest of drawers, I heard the noise of some one in the passage, with suppressed ejaculations of--"O God! O God!"

"I wadna hae shown you that," he continued, as I sat down, "but that it is my wish to tell you the warst; for nae man can expect assistance, if he is ashamed or afraid to show his necessities and his danger. I didna send for you to cure my body, but to examine my mind, and tell me if it is sound and healthy, or weak and diseased, and therefore I will conceal naething frae ye that may show you its state and condition."

I was pleased to find I had so tractable a patient. I paused for a moment, to consider in what way I should draw him out, and on what side I should attack him--whether I should argue calmly with him, and endeavour to stimulate his feelings of duty to his Maker, to himself and his poor daughter; or shake him roughly as a vain and sinful dreamer who had voluntarily swallowed a pernicious soporific, and try to awaken him, and keep him awake, after the manner of our remedial endeavours to save those who have attempted to poison themselves by laudanum. I saw, in an instant, that he was by far too strong-minded a man to be operated upon effectually by the mere charm of the imputed reach and strength of our cabalistic lore--an agent, if well employed, of great good in our profession--and too determined (for such resolutions are always, in some degree, a false result of reasoning powers) to be put from his purpose either by a firm pressure of logical authority, or the subtle and more dangerous means of good-humoured or severe satire. My course was clearly to endeavour to affect the form of his own reasoning, and, if possible, to invest it with a character which might be recognised as true by the peculiar, and, no doubt, morbid perceptions he possessed of moral truth. I began by securing his eye, which I saw was, at times, inclined to wander, or take on that unmeaning, dull, glazed aspect which people in the act of brooding over intense sorrows--as if the optic nerves were thereby paralysed--so often exhibit.

"What train of mind are you in generally," said I, "when the wish to die, accompanied with the fortitude you have mentioned, comes upon you in its strongest form?"

"I first fall into a state of low spirits," said he, "and then nae effort I can use will tak my mind aff my dead wife. I think for whole hours--sometimes on the hills, sometimes in the house, and sometimes in my bed--of our courtship, our marriage, our happy life, and her miserable, painful, untimely death. This feeds my sorrow, which grows stronger, and descends deeper and deeper, till it reaches my brain, and I am sunk in the darkness o' despair. To escape frae thoughts o' past sorrows that are owre strong to be borne, I try to look forward to the future; but, alas! I see naething there but the pain o' livin for a number o' comfortless years o' auld age, draggin after me, a memory clogged wi' past ills, and naething afore me but a jail, and want, and lingerin death."

"These are false views of life," said I--"overstrained and morbid. I must teach you to think better. You have a daughter who will comfort you, and whom you are bound to support and protect."

"True, true," he cried; "I hae a dochter, and a better never sacrificed her ain thochts and feelins to the comforts o' a faither. The idea o' leavin her, young, faitherless, poor, and full o' sorrow, in the midst o' a bad world, has before this" (lowering his voice) "brought down that rebellious hand from this throat. But, alas for the inconsistency and mutability o' man's fancies!--dearly as I love that creature, and she is now my only comfort, my very affection for her sometimes sinks me deeper into that sorrow which produces the dreadfu purpose o' takin awa my ain life; for I think--oh! how weak is man's proud reason, when the heart is broken wi' grief!--that an auld parent under the ban o' poverty is a burden to a child. His death (so in these unhappy moments do I think) relieves the unhappy bairn o' twa evils--that o' toilin maybe in vain to support him, and that o' witnessin age, decrepitude, pain, misery, and want, wringin frae his shrivelled and diseased body groans o' agony, strikin the heart o' his child wi' mair pain than would be caused by the knell o' his death."

He now sank his face in the bedclothes, which he grasped with a spasmodic hand, and groaned so deep and loud that the sounds might have reached the passage. I again heard a noise from that quarter, as if of stifled sighs and hysterical sobs. I was placed between the groans of a father bent against his own judgment on self-destruction, and the terrors and griefs of a daughter listening to the horrible recital of her parent's designs against his life. The loneliness of the house, and the solitude of the unhappy pair--with no one to aid the young woman, in the event of any appalling extremity to which the unnatural purpose of her father might drive him--struck me forcibly. I had no recollection of ever experiencing a scene of grief so peculiar, with such fearful and uncertain issues, so irremediable and heart-stirring. The groans of the one and the sobs of the other seemed to vie with each other in the effect they produced upon me; but, great as the pain of the father was, the sufferings of the daughter, perhaps as peculiar and touching as any that could be conceived, engaged to the greatest extent my sympathy. It was my duty and wish to try to remove the fundamental cause of all this suffering; and I waited the end of the paroxysm of the father's sorrow in order to resume the conversation.

"These views," said I, as he calmed, "which you take of life, and its duties and affections, are all false and distorted. It is our duty to try to regulate our thoughts as well as our actions by some steady supporting principle, which mankind have agreed in considering as true, whether it be derived from the direct Word of God or from the written tablets of the heart. The taking away of our life--originally given to us as a trust, or imposed on us by the Author of all good, for certain ends and purposes which are veiled from our view--is undoubtedly in many respects, as regards God himself, ourselves, our children, and our neighbours, a great, flagrant, horrible crime. It is against the law of God, the law of our country, the organic law of our physical constitution, and the moral law of our minds. It is indeed the only act that can be mentioned that is against _all_ these. It does not require me to tell you that suicide, with other murders, was denounced by God himself, speaking in words that all mankind have heard, from the 'thick cloud' that hung over Mount Sinai. You are, I presume, a Christian, and the Sacred Book containing that denunciation lies at your side; and yet you have made the dreadful confession to me, that you have dared to meditate on the breaking, the despising, the contemning of the command of Him who by less than a command--ay, than even a word, by the lifting up of his finger--may consign you to an eternity of agony, in comparison of which all the sorrow you now suffer is less than a grain of sand to the sandbanks of the sea."

"It is true, it is true!" replied the unhappy man. "I know, I _feel_ that every word you have uttered is true, maist true and undeniable as are the sentiments o' this holy book," grasping again the Bible; "but can ye--wha, by the command o' books and education, can dive farther into the nature o' the mind than ane like me--explain this mystery, that, when my soul is filled wi' the darkness o' sorrow, and my rebellious purpose o' self-murder whispers in my mind treachery and war against God, thae truths ye hae uttered, for they hae occurred to me before, tak flight like guid angels, and leave me to warsle wi' a power that subdues me? It is then that I am in danger, and the hand that has held up to my throat that fatal instrument I had under my pillow, has the moment before been lifted up vainly in prayer to God, to throw owre my mind the light o' thae grand truths. What avails it, then, that there are times when I love them, and am guided by them, and thank Heaven for the precious gift o' knowin, feelin, and appreciatin them, if there are other moments when they flee frae me, and I am left powerless in the grasp o' my enemy?" Pausing, and falling again into a fit of dejection. "I fear, I fear the best o' us are only the slaves o' some mysterious power. But"--starting up, as if recollecting himself--"I put a question to you--answer me in the name o' Heaven; for if I gie mysel up to the belief o' an all-powerful necessity, I am a lost man and a self-murderer."

He was now clearly approaching a rock whereon many a gallant bark has been shivered to atoms. Even healthy-minded men cannot look at the question of the necessity of the will without staggering and reeling; and hypochondriacs love to get drunk by inhaling the vapours of mysticism that rise from it, destroying as they do all moral responsibility, and concealing the vengeance of heaven and the terrors of hell. It was necessary to lead him from this dangerous subject, which it was clear he had been studying and dreaming about, with all that love of subtlety and mysticism which melancholy generates.

"No sensible man," said I, "believes in the absolute necessity of the will. After the will is fixed, the liberty is already exercised, and there is indeed _no will_ in the mind at all, until it takes the form of an active, moving, propelling principle. But these are abstruse fancies, which you must fly, if you wish to possess a healthy mind. Sorrow, or any other feeling of pain, will extinguish while it lasts the burning lights of principle or sentiment. The pain of the amputation of a limb prevents, while it lasts, the natural working of the mind; but _grief may be averted_, and the great healing secret of that is, that the mind _must_ be occupied. Renounce all abstruse thinking, all day-dreaming, all sorrowful remembering, all sentimental musing--look upon application, exercise, work, as a duty and a medicine, and I will answer for your expelling from your mind that dreadful purpose that entails upon you misery, and disgraces the nature of man."

"Your advice is excellent," replied he, somewhat roused; "but, unfortunately, I hae got the same frae my ain mind; and, what is mair, I hae tried it--I hae tried it again and again;--the medicine is worth nae mair to me than a bread pill. My efforts to exercise my mind, when a fit o' sorrow presses upon it, only mak the sorrow the heavier, by makin the mind less able to bear it. My soul is for ever bent on that question o' the necessity o' the will which you despise and avoid. I will, God is my witness, argue it with you, calmly and reasonably."

"Unless you agree to renounce that question," said I, "I can do you no good."

"Then," replied he, with a groan, "I am left to Heaven and my unavoidable fate. May God have mercy on my soul!"

And he again relapsed into a fit of dejection, his head leaning on his breast, and his eyes fixed on the bed.

I could, I found, make no more of him that day, and my other avocations required my departure. I told him I would call again, and bring or send him some medicine.

"It is an unnecessary waste o' your valuable time," he said, lifting up his head, "to call again upon a wretch like me. I am much obliged to you for advice; but the only medicine for me is--_death_."

He pronounced the fearful word with an emphatic guttural tone, which gave it a terrific effect. I opened the door to depart, and was surprised to find that it would not go back sufficiently to allow me to pass freely. The probable cause of the interruption flashed upon my mind in an instant. Without speaking a word, I edged myself through, and saw, lying at the back of the door, the body of the unfortunate young woman, in a state of insensibility. I had presence of mind enough not to carry her into the room where her father lay; but, seeing the light of the kitchen at the further end of the long gloomy passage, I snatched her up in my arms, and hastened with her thither. Having laid her on a small truckle bed, whereon, I presume, she usually slept, I found she was in a deep swoon; and, notwithstanding that it was getting dark, and my time was expired, I waited her recovery. As she lay before me, pale as a corpse, and as I thought of the cause of her illness, and looked round in vain for any one to give her assistance or consolation (the groans of her father, which I indistinctly heard, being the only answer that would have been given to a call for aid in a house more like a haunt for ghosts and spectres than a residence for human beings), I felt the impression of her peculiar misery pass over me, making me shudder as if I had been seized with a fit of the ague. The frail, brittle creature lying there, a victim of hysterics, fit only to be cherished and guarded by a doting mother--placed in a large, empty, gousty mansion--doomed to guard alone a suicide and a father, and, perhaps, to wrestle with him through blood--her parent's blood!--for the preservation of a remaining spark of a self-taken life! She at length recovered, exhibiting the ordinary precursors of returning consciousness--convulsive shiverings, rolling of the eyes, and beating about with the hands. On perceiving me indistinctly, she articulated--

"Death! death!--that was the word he spoke sae wildly.--Ah! I know it now!--James H---- has lang tried to conceal it frae me; but I hae discovered it at last. Can you save him, sir?--can you save the faither o' her wha has scarcely anither freend on earth?"

A flood of tears followed this ejaculation. She tore her hair like a maniac. I tried everything in my power to pacify her; but terror had completely mastered her weak nerves, and she shook as the successive frightful images suggested by her situation passed through her excited and still confused mind.

"Is there no one in those parts," said I, "that can attend your father, and assist you? Who is the James H---- you just now mentioned?"

"He is my cousin," replied she. "He lived with us for some time; but my father and he quarrelled about a _razor_, which he said James wanted to steal from him. But I see it now. There was nae theft. James, poor James, was innocent, and wanted to save him; but they concealed it frae me, and my cousin was turned away."

The mention of the word razor made me start. I had left the instrument on the head of the drawers, and I had even now heard the wretched man's groans. I hurried to the room, and entered softly. He was in a fit of dejection, groaning, at intervals, deeply, like a man in bodily pain. I took up the instrument without being noticed, and returned to the kitchen. It was now almost dark. I had three miles to ride through wild hill paths, and I heard some threatening indications of a night-storm. The young woman was still lying on the couch, with her terrors undiminished; but I could do nothing more for her, and to have impressed her with the necessity of watching her parent would have created additional alarm, without increasing her zeal in a cause that concerned too nearly her own heart. I told her, therefore, that I required to depart, and was in the act of leaving to go to the door, when, in a paroxysm of terror, she started up, and seized me, clutching me firmly, and crying loudly--

"Will you leave me alone wi' him in this house, and throughout the dark night! He will do it when you are gone. Heaven preserve me frae the sight o' a father's blood!"