Mrs Falchion | Page 6

my heart," she said; "I
cannot go into the world so."
"It is too late; the measures are empty," he replied.
"I love you to-day, I will loathe you to-morrow," was the answer.
But he turned and left her, and she blindly stretched out her hands and
followed him into the darkness, weeping.
Was it the scent of the chemicals in my cabin, coupled with some
subterranean association of things, which brought these scenes vividly
before me at this moment? What had they to do with Mrs. Falchion?
A time came when the occurrence appeared to me in the light of
prescience, but that was when I began to understand that all ideas, all
reason and philosophy, are the result of outer impression. The primal
language of our minds is in the concrete. Afterwards it becomes the
cypher, and even at its highest it is expressed by angles, lines, and
geometrical forms--substances and allusive shapes. But now, as the
scene shifted by, I had involuntarily thrust forward my hands as did the
girl when she passed out into the night, and, in doing so, touched the
curtain of my cabin door swinging in towards me. I recovered myself,
and a man timidly stepped inside, knocking as he did so. It was the
Intermediate Passenger. His face was pale; he looked ill.
Poor as his dress was, I saw that he had known the influences and
practised the graces of good society, though his manner was hesitating

and anxious now. I knew at a glance that he was suffering from both
physical pain and mental worry. Without a word, I took his wrist and
felt his pulse, and he said: "I thought I might venture to come--"
I motioned him not to speak. I counted the irregular pulse-beats, then
listened to the action of his heart, with my ear to his breast. There lay
his physical trouble. I poured out a dose of digitalis, and, handing it to
him, asked him to sit down. As he sat and drank the medicine, I rapidly
studied him. The chin was firm, and the eyes had a dogged, persistent
look that, when turned on you, saw not you, but something beyond you.
The head was thrown slightly forward, the eyes looking up at an angle.
This last action was habitual with him. It gave him a peculiar
earnestness. As I noted these peculiarities, my mind was also with his
case; I saw that his life was threatened. Perhaps he guessed what was
going on in me, for he said in a low, cultured voice: "The wheels will
stop too long some time, and there will be no rebound;" --referring to
the irregular action of his heart.
"Perhaps that is true," I said; "yet it depends a good deal upon yourself
when it will be. Men can die if they wish without committing suicide.
Look at the Maori, the Tongan, the Malay. They can also prolong life
(not indefinitely, but in a case like yours considerably), if they choose.
You can lengthen your days if you do not brood on fatal things --fatal
to you; if you do not worry yourself into the grave."
I knew that something of this was platitude, and that counsel to such a
man must be of a more possible cast, if it is to be followed. I was aware
also that, in nine cases out of ten, worry is not a voluntary or
constitutional thing, but springs from some extraneous cause.
He smiled faintly, raised his head a little higher, and said: "Yes, that's
just it, I suppose; but then we do not order our own constitutions; and I
believe, Doctor, that you must kill a nerve before it ceases to hurt. One
doesn't choose to worry, I think, any more than one chooses to lay bare
a nerve." And then his eyes dropped, as if he thought he had already
said too much.
Again I studied him, repeating my definitions in my mind. He was not

a drunkard; he might have had no vice, so free was his face from any
sign of dissipation or indulgence; but there was suffering, possibly the
marks of some endured shame. The suffering and shadows showed the
more because his features were refined enough for a woman. And
altogether it struck me that he was possessed by some one idea, which
gave his looks a kind of sorrowful eloquence, such as one sees on
occasion in the face of a great actor like Salvini, on the forehead of a
devout Buddhist, or in the eyes of a Jesuit missionary who martyrs
himself in the wilds.
I felt at once for the man a sympathy, a brotherliness, the causes of
which I should be at a loss to trace. Most people have this experience at