A Struggle For Life | Page 5

walk in its gay boulevards in the golden air? Oh, the delight and pain and passion of that sweet human life!"
Philip became conscious that the gloom, the silence, and the cold were gradually conquering him. The feverish activity of his brain brought on a reaction. He grew lethargic; he sunk down on the steps, and thought of nothing. His hand fell by chance on one of the pieces of candle; he grasped it and devoured it mechanically. This revived him. "How strange," he thought, "that I am not thirsty. Is it possible that the dampness of the walls, which I must inhale with every breath, has supplied the need of water? Not a drop has passed my lips for two days, and still I experience no thirst. That drowsiness, thank Heaven, has gone. I think I was never wide awake until this hour. It would be an anodyne like poison that could weigh down my eyelids. No doubt the dread of sleep has something to do with this."
The minutes were like hours. Now he walked as briskly as he dared up and down the tomb; now he rested against the door. More than once he was tempted to throw himself upon the stone coffin that held Julie, and make no further struggle for his life.
Only one piece of candle remained. He had eaten the third portion, not to satisfy hunger, but from a precautionary motive he had taken it as a man takes some disagreeable drug upon the result of which hangs safety. The time was rapidly approaching when even this poor substitute for nourishment would be exhausted. He delayed that moment. He gave himself a long fast this time. The half-inch of candle which he held in his hand was a sacred thing to him. It was his last defence against death.
Finally, with such a sinking at heart as he had not known before, he raised it to his lips. Then he paused, then he hurled the fragment across the tomb, then the oaken door was flung open, and Philip, with dazzled eyes, saw M. Dorine's form sharply defined against the blue sky.
When they led him out, half blinded, into the broad daylight, M. Dorine noticed that Philip's hair, which a short time since was as black as a crow's wing, had actually turned gray in places. The man's eyes, too, had faded; the darkness had dimmed their lustre.
"And how long was he really confined in the tomb?" I asked, as Mr. H------ concluded the story.
"Just one hour and twenty minutes!" replied Mr. H------, smiling blandly.
As he spoke, the Lilliputian sloops, with their sails all blown out like white roses, came floating bravely into port, and Philip Wentworth lounged by us, wearily, in the pleasant April sunshine.
Mr. H------'s narrative haunted me. Here was a man who had undergone a strange ordeal. Here was a man whose sufferings were unique. His was no threadbare experience. Eighty minutes had seemed like two days to him! If he had really been immured two days in the tomb, the story, from my point of view, would have lost its tragic value.
After this it was natural that I should regard Mr. Wentworth with stimulated curiosity. As I met him from day to day, passing through the Common with that same introspective air, there was something in his loneliness which touched me. I wondered that I had not read before in his pale, meditative face some such sad history as Mr. H------ had confided to me. I formed the resolution of speaking to him, though with no very lucid purpose. One morning we came face to face at the intersection of two paths. He halted courteously to allow me the precedence.
"Mr. Wentworth," I began, "I"--
He interrupted me.
"My name, sir," he said, in an off-hand manner, "is Jones."
"Jo-Jo-Jones!" I gasped.
"No, not Joseph Jones," he returned, with a glacial air--"Frederick."
A dim light, in which the perfidy of my friend H------ was becoming discernible, began to break upon my mind.
It will probably be a standing wonder to Mr. Frederick Jones why a strange man accosted him one morning on the Common as "Mr. Wentworth," and then dashed madly down the nearest foot-path and disappeared in the crowd.
The fact is, I had been duped by Mr. H------, who is a gentleman of literary proclivities, and has, it is whispered, become somewhat demented in brooding over the Great American Novel--not yet hatched, He had actually tried the effect of one of his chapters on me!
My hero, as I subsequently learned, is a commonplace young person, who had some connection, I know not what, with the building of that graceful granite bridge which spans the crooked silver lake in the Public Garden.
When I think of the readiness with which Mr. H------ built up his airy fabric on my credulity, I feel