A Struggle For Life | Page 5

him, but the keen hunger came again.
"It must be near morning now," he mused; "perhaps the sun is just
gilding the towers of Notre Dame; or, may be, a dull, drizzling rain is
beating on Paris, sobbing on these mounds above me. Paris! it seems
like a dream. Did I ever 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,