What a happy place a man’s bed is — probably the best place in which he ever finds himself. Very few people will like to deny that, I think; that is to say, as a general rule. After a long day’s shooting in cold weather, for instance; or half a night on deck among the ice, when the fog has lifted, and the ghastly cold walls are safe in sight; or after a fifty mile ride in the bush, under a pouring rain; or after a pleasant ball, when you have to pull down the blind, that the impudent sun may not roast you awake in two hours; for in all these cases, and a hundred more, bed is very pleasant; but you know as well as I do, that there are times when you would sooner be on a frozen deck, or in the wildest bush in the worst weather, or waltzing in the hall of Eblis with Vathek’s mama, or almost in your very grave, than in bed, and awake.
Oh, the weary watches! when the soul, which in sleep would leave the tortured body to rest and ramble off in dreams, holds on by a mere thread, yet a thread strong enough to keep every nerve in tense agony. When one’s waking dreams of the past are as vivid as those of sleep, and there is always present, through all, the dreadful lurking thought that one is awake, and that it is all real. When, looking back, every kindly impulsive action, every heartily spoken word, makes you fancy that you have only earned contempt where you merit kindness. Where the past looks like a hell of missed opportunities, and the future like another black hopeless hell of uncertainty and imminent misfortune of all kinds! Oh, weary watches. Let us be at such times on the bleakest hill-side, in the coldest night that ever blew, rather than in the warmest bed that money will buy.
When you are going to have a night of this kind, you seldom know it beforehand, for certain. Sometimes, if you have had much experience in the sort of thing — if you have lost money, or gone in debt, or if your sweetheart has cut you very often — you may at last guess, before you get your boots off, that you are going to have a night of it; in which case, read yourself to sleep in bed. Never mind burning the house down (that would be rather desirable as a distraction from thought); but don’t read till you are sleepy with your clothes on, and then undress, because, if you do, you will find, by the time you have undressed yourself, that you are terribly wide awake, and, when the candle is blown out, you will be all ready for a regular Walpurgis night.
Charles, poor lad, had not as yet had much experience of Walpurgis nights. Before his catastrophe he had never had one. He had been used to tumble tired into his bed, and sleep a heavy dreamless sleep till an hour before aking. Then, indeed, he might begin to dream of his horses, and his dogs, and so on, and then gradually wake into a state more sweet than the sweetest dream — that state in. which sense is awake to all outward objects, but in which the soul is taking its few last airy flutters round its home, before coming to rest for the day. But, even since then, he had not had experience enough to make him dread the night. The night he came home from St. John’s Wood, he thought he would go to bed and sleep it off. Poor fellow!
A fellow-servant slept in the same room with him — the younger and better-tempered of the two (though Charles had no complaint against either of them). The lad was asleep; and, before Charles put out the light, he looked at him. His cheek was laid on his arm, and he seemed so cahn and happy that Charles knew he was not there, but far away. He was right. As he looked, the lad smiled, and babbled of something in his dream. Strange! the soul had still sufficient connexion with the body to make it smile.
“I wonder if Miss Martineau or Mr. Atkinson ever watched the face of one who slept and dreamt,” said Charles, rambling on as soon as he had got into bed. “Pish! why that fellow’s body is the mere tool of his soul. His soul is out a-walking, and his body is only a log. Hey, that won’t do; that’s as bad as Miss Martineau. I should have said that his body is only a fine piece of clockwork. That clockwork don’t smile of itself. My dear Madam, and Mr. Atkinson, I am going to leave my body hehind, and be off at Ravenshoe in five minutes. That is to say, I am going to sleep.”
He was, was he? Why no, not just at present. If he had meant to do so, he had, perhaps, better not have bothered himself about “Letters on the laws of man’s nature; ” for, when he had done his profound cogitations about them, as above, he thought that he had got a well, say a pulex, in his bed. There was no more a pulex than there was a scorpion; but he had an exciting chase after an imaginary one, like our old friend Mr. Sponge after an imaginary fox at Laverick Wells. After this, he had an irritation where he couldn’t reach, that is to say, in the middle of his back; then he had the same complaint where he could reach, and used a certain remedy (which is a pretty way of saying that he scratched himself); then he had the cramp in his right leg; then he had the cramp in his left leg; then he grew hot all over, and threw the clothes off; then he grew cold all over, and pulled them on again; then he had the cramp in his left leg again; then he had another flea hunt, cramp, irritation in back, heat, cold, and so on, all over; and then, after half an hour, finding himself in a state of feverish despondency, he fell into a cheerful train of thought, and was quite inclined to look at his already pleasant prospects from a hopeful point of view.
Poor dear fellow! You may say that it is heartless to make fun of him just now, when everything is going so terribly wrong. But really my story is so very sad, hat we must try to make a little feeble fun where we can, or it would be unreadable.
He tried to face the future, manfully. But lo, there was no future to face — it was all such a dead, hopeless blank. Ellen must come away from that house, and he must support her; but how? It would be dishonourable for him to come upon the Ravenshoes for a farthing, and it would be dishonourable for her to marry that foolish Hornby. And these two courses, being dishonourable, were impossible. And there he was brought up short.
But would either course be dishonourable? Yes, yes, was the answer each weary time he put the question to himself; and there the matter ended. Was there one soul in the wide world he could consult? Not one. All alone in the weary world, he and she. Not one friend for either of them. They had made their beds, and must lie on them. When would the end of it all come? What would the end be?
There was a noise in the street. A noise of a woman scolding, whose voice got louder and louder, till it rose into a scream. A noise of a man cursing and abusing her; then a louder scream, and a sound of blows. One, two; then a heavy fall, and silence. A drunken, homeless couple had fallen out in the street, and the man had knocked the woman down. That was all. It was very common. Probably the woman was not much hurt. That sort of woman got used to it. The police would come and take them to the station. There they were.
The man and woman were being taken off l)y two constables, scolding and swearing. Well, well!
Was it to come to that? There were bridges in London, and under them runs the river. Charles had come over one once, after midnight. He wished he had never seen the cursed place. He remembered a fluttering figure which had come and begged a halfpenny of him to pay the toll, and get home. He had given her money, and then, by a sudden impulse, followed her till she was safe off the bridge. Ugly thoughts, Charles! ugly thoughts! Will the dawn never come? Why, the night is not half over yet.
God in his mercy sets a limit to human misery in many ways. I do not believe that the condemned man, waiting through the weary night for the gallows, thinks all night through of his fate. We read generally in those accounts of the terrible last night (which are so rightly published in the newspapers — they are the most terrifying part of the punishment), that they conversed cheerfully, or slept, or did something, showing that they half forgot for a time what was coming. And so, before the little window grew to a lighter grey, poor Charles had found some relief from his misery. He was between sleep and waking, and he had fulfilled his challenge to Miss Martineau, though later than he intended. He had gone to Ravenshoe.
There it was, all before him. The dawn behind the eastern headland had flooded the amphitheatre of hills, till the crags behind the house had turned from grey to old, and the vane upon the priest’s tower shone like a star. The sea had changed from black to purple, and the fishing boats were stealing lazily homewards, over the gentle rolling groundswell. The surf was whispering to the sand of their coming. As window after window blazed out before the sun, and as woodland and hill-side, stream and park, village and lonely farm in the distant valley, waked before the coming day, Charles watched, in his mind’s eye, the dark old porch, till there came out a figure in black, and stood solitary in the terrace gazing seawards. And as he said, “Cuthbert,” he fell into a dreamless, happy sleep.
He determined that he would not go to see Ellen till the afternoon. Hornby was on duty in the morning, and never saw Charles all day; he avoided him as though on purpose. Charles, on his part, did not want to meet him till he had made some definite arrangement, and so was glad of it. But, towards two o’clock, it came across his mind that he would saunter round to St. Peter’s Church, and see the comical little imp of a boy who was generally to be found there, and beguile a quarter of an hour by listening to his prattle.
He had given up reading. He had hardly opened a book since his misfortune. This may seem an odd thing to have to record about a gentleman, and to a certain extent a scholar; but so it was. He wanted to lower himself, and he was beginning to succeed. There was an essential honesty in him, which made him hate to appear what he was not; and this feeling, carried to an absurd extent, prevented his taking refuge in the most obvious remedy for all troubles except hunger: books. He did not know, as I do, that determined reading: reading of anything, even the advertisements in a newspaper; will stop all cravings except those of the stomach, and will even soften them; but he guessed it, nevertheless. “Why should I read it?” said he. “I must learn to do as the rest of them.” And so he did as the rest of them, and “rather loafed away his time than otherwise.”
And he was more inclined to ” loaf “than usual this day, because he very much dreaded what was to come. And so he dawdled round to St. Peter’s Church, and came upon his young friend, playing ............