Stories of Mystery | Page 7

his head, and its
countenance had undergone a change. The form was still undefined; but
the features had become distinct. They were those of a young man,
beautiful and wan, and marked with great suffering.
A pause had fallen on the conversation, in which the father and
daughter heard the solemn sighing of the wintry wind around the
dwelling. The silence seemed scarcely broken by the voice of the
young girl.
"Dear father, this was very sad. Did you say he died of want?"
"Of want, my child, of hunger and cold. I don't doubt it. He had
wandered about, as I gather, houseless for a couple of days and nights.
It was in December, too. Some one found him, on a rainy night, lying
in the street, drenched and burning with fever, and had him taken to the
hospital. It appears that he had always cherished a strange affection for
me, though I had grown away from him; and in his wild ravings he
constantly mentioned my name, and they sent for me. That was our first
meeting after two years. I found him in the hospital--dying. Heaven can
witness that I felt all my old love for him return then, but he was
delirious, and never recognized me. And, Nathalie, his hair,--it had
been coal-black, and he wore it very long,--he wouldn't let them cut it
either; and as they knew no skill could save him, they let him have his
way,--his hair was then as white as snow! God alone knows what that
brain must have suffered to blanch hair which had been as black as the
wing of a raven!"
He covered his eyes with his hand, and sat silently. The fingers of the
phantom still shone dimly on his head, and its white locks drooped
above him, like a weft of light.

"What was his name, father?" asked the pitying girl.
"George Feval. The very name sounds like fever. He died on Christmas
eve, fifteen years ago this night. It was on his death-bed, while his mind
was tossing on a sea of delirious fancies, that he wrote me this long
letter,--for to the last, I was uppermost in his thoughts. It is a wild,
incoherent thing, of course,--a strange mixture of sense and madness.
But I have kept it as a memorial of him. I have not looked at it for years;
but this morning I found it among my papers, and somehow it has been
in my mind all day."
He slowly unfolded the faded sheets, and sadly gazed at the writing.
His daughter had risen from her half-recumbent posture, and now bent
her graceful head over the leaves. The phantom covered its face with its
hands.
"What a beautiful manuscript it is, father!" she exclaimed. "The writing
is faultless."
"It is, indeed," he replied. "Would he had written his life as fairly!"
"Read it, father," said Nathalie.
"No, but I'll read you a detached passage here and there," he answered,
after a pause. "The rest you may read yourself some time, if you wish.
It is painful to me. Here's the beginning:--
"'_My Dear Charles Renton:--Adieu, and adieu. It is Christmas eve, and
I am going home. I am soon to exhale from my flesh, like the spirit of a
broken flower. Exultemus forever!_'
* * * * *
"It is very wild. His mind was in a fever-craze. Here is a passage that
seems to refer to his own experience of life:--
"'_Your friendship was dear to me. I give you true love. Stocks and
returns. You are rich, but I did not wish to be your bounty's pauper.

Could I beg? I had my work to do for the world, but oh! the world has
no place for souls that can only love and suffer. How many miles to
Babylon? Threescore and ten. Not so far--not near so far! Ask
starvelings--they know.
* * * * *
"'I wanted to do the world good, and the world has killed me,
Charles._'"
"It frightens me," said Nathalie, as he paused.
"We will read no more," he replied sombrely. "It belongs to the
psychology of madness. To me, who knew him, there, are gleams of
sense in it, and passages where the delirium of the language is only a
transparent veil on the meaning. All the remainder is devoted to what
he thought important advice to me. But it's all wild and vague. Poor--
poor George!"
The phantom still hid its face in its hands, as the doctor slowly turned
over the pages of the letter. Nathalie, bending over the leaves, laid her
finger on the last, and asked, "What are those closing sentences, father?
Read them."
"Oh! that is what he called his 'last counsel' to me. It's as wild as the
rest,--tinctured