Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland Volume V Part 4

THE CONSCIENCE-STRICKEN.

At a dark period of the world, not yet so far back, in point of time, as modern conceit would place it, many facts in philosophy const.i.tuted a mere page of fable in the estimation of those whose belief in witchcraft and other fanciful agencies was unbounded; but, in our enlightened times, things are so curiously reversed, that some of the real events of human life--the every-day workings of that wonderful organ, the human heart--are viewed sceptically, as delusion, deception, or invention, by those whose faith is pinned to the floating mantle of philosophy, though it cover the wildest theory that ever set fire to enthusiasm. The facts I have to relate in this chapter, though true, may, from their extraordinary nature, be apt to be cla.s.sed among creations of the fancy; yet I would rather that their credibility were tested by the mind of the plain and argute man of the world, than by that of the philosopher, who with his head down in the well, kicks at inexplicable mysteries growing on its brink.

It is not my object to treat metaphysically any of those powers of the mind which, either in health or disease, exhibit, in certain states, many extraordinary phases. The struggling energies of conscience loaded with crime, have been witnessed by philosophers who have denied the existence of the moral sense as an original power; but of what avail is their scepticism, when they are bound to admit that this great sanction of G.o.d's law is incident to all mankind--having been found as vivid and strong in the new-found islands of Polynesia, as it ever was in the Old World? It would be for the interest of mankind if those who call themselves its teachers, and dignify themselves with the name of investigators of truth, had looked more often at the workings of this extraordinary power--witnessed and described the agonies of the heart convulsed by its throes, heard and narrated the piercing cries and the flaming words that are wrung from the throat of him who is under its scorpion lash, felt and told the horrors of those sights and sounds--instead of inquiring whether it is connate or constructed by social and political inst.i.tutions. Yet this, too, has been done, and well done; and it is not because the effects are unknown, or have been inadequately described, that I contribute the results of my experience on this interesting subject, but simply because I conceive they cannot be too well known, or too forcibly delineated, in a country where a struggling compet.i.tion of interests and a fierce ambition are exerted hourly in attempting to still the voice of the monitor that so indefatigably and thanklessly whispers a better life.

About twelve o'clock on the night of the 15th of December, 18--, I was aroused by a loud knocking at my bedroom door--a mode of calling me to my patients different from that generally followed by my domestics; and, upon my requesting the servant to come in, he entered hurriedly, with some one behind him, who called out, in the dark, that Mr. T----, a retired undertaker, whom I had been in the habit of attending, had been shot by an a.s.sa.s.sin, but that life remained, and might eventually be preserved, by my speedy attendance. I dressed instantly, and accompanied the messenger--a nephew of the wounded man, called William B----, whom I recollected to have seen in his house, and in whom he had much confidence--to where my services were thus so urgently required. We had about a mile to walk--the residence being beyond the town, in the midst of a small plantation of fir trees, and too well situated for the accomplishment of any felonious or murderous intention which the reputed riches of the proprietor might generate in the minds of ruffians. The night was pitch dark; our path was rendered more doubtful by a heavy fall of snow, which, having continued all day, had ceased about two hours before; and I was obliged to trust almost implicitly to my guide, whose familiarity with the road rendered it an easy task for him to get forward. As we hurried on in the darkness and silence which everywhere reigned, my companion informed me that the shot was directed against the victim through the window of his bedroom, while he was sitting warming his feet at the fire, previous to retiring to rest; and that, the individuals in the house having been roused, one had taken charge of the wounded man, others had gone in search of the perpetrator, and he, the narrator, had flown for me, in the hopes of yet saving the life of his guardian and benefactor.

On arriving at the skirts of the planting, we met some domestics with lights, and perceived that they were busy endeavouring to trace some well-marked footsteps impressed on the snow, and which, they said, they had been able to follow from the window where the shot was fired. I requested them to desist for a short time, as they seemed to be incurring the danger of defacing or so confusing the foot-prints, by the irregular and excited manner in which they wore performing this important duty, that they could not be identified. They agreed to remain with the lights until I came to them, or sent some one more capable of conducting the investigation, and, in the meantime, I hurried on to the house, where a most appalling scene presented itself to my eyes. On the floor, which was literally swimming in blood, lay the body of Mr. T----, with two people--an old woman, the housekeeper, and a middle aged person, whom I understood afterwards to be another nephew of the wounded man, of the name of Walter T---- (the son of a brother, while my companion, the messenger, was the son of a sister)--bending over him, and endeavouring to stop a wound, made by a pistol bullet, near the region of the heart. The work of the a.s.sa.s.sin was not entirely finished: there was still a fluttering uncertain life in the body, which shewed itself rather by its struggles against the overpowering energies of death, than by any proper living action; a hemorrhage in the lungs, paralysing their vitality, and filling up the air cells, fought, inch by inch, the province of the breath, which forced, at intervals, its way, by a horrid crepitation, through the aperture in the side, while, as the wound was producing fresh supplies, it was not difficult to see how the contest would terminate. In the pangs of choking, the wretched man heaved himself about, and lifted his hands to his mouth in the vain effort to force an entry to that element so signally the food of life.

The peculiar, and to us doctors, well-known barking noise of the _cynanche trachialis_, (or as the name implies, the strangling of a dog,) a few torsels of the body, and s.h.i.+vers extending from head to foot, preceded a sigh as deep as the relentless following blood in the lungs would permit; and, in a few moments, he expired.

Leaving the body to the charge of the housekeeper, I called Walter T---- to accompany me to where the individuals stood with the lights, with the view of tracing the foot-prints in the snow to the hiding place of the cool-murderer, who had committed apparently so gratuitous a crime. When we arrived at the spot, several other people had collected, among whom were some sheriff officers on their way to the scene of the murder, but who stopped to join in, or rather superintend this investigation. The foot-prints around the spot where the people had collected were too much mixed and confused to be capable of being traced for some distance; but, further on, they were again discernible and traceable, and, at one place, the extraordinary appearance presented itself to one of the officers, of a well defined figure of a pistol imprinted on the snow, with the finger points of a hand applied to lifting it from the ground--suggesting to the mind of every one present the unavoidable conclusion that the murderer had dropped the instrument of his crime in the hurry of his retreat, and had s.n.a.t.c.hed it up again as he continued his flight.

We proceeded onwards slowly, aided by several lights brought from the house; and, though the darkness of the night presented many difficulties to a successful search, we were still able to progress with certainty to the termination of the murderer's route. Whenever two distinct marks were traced, we felt no difficulty in identifying them, from the unusual circ.u.mstance of one of them bearing the impress of nail heads, and the other not, as if only one of the shoes worn by the culprit had undergone the coa.r.s.e process of repair, in which, in Scotland, short nails with broad heads are often used. As we proceeded onwards, some one cried out that the prints led to the dwelling of Walter T----; a remark which seemed to be about being verified by that individual's house now reflecting from its dark walls the glare of the lights, while the footsteps were clearly verging towards the door. I looked round and stared full in the face of the man, as it was darkly revealed to me by the flickering tapers; and, though I could perceive no indications of terror, there were clearly discernible signs of confusion, which, however, might have been the consequence of innocence as well as of guilt.

In a few minutes, we traced the foot-prints to the very threshold of the door of Walter T----'s house; and, upon the instant, one of the sheriff officers laid hold of the suspected man, who looked wildly around him, as if he wished to escape from the grasp of justice, and at last appealed to me if it was fair to blast the character of an individual by an apprehension on such slender evidence as the tracing of a foot-print among the snow from one house to another. I replied, that I thought the evidence very inadequate to authorize a confinement, and that, as to the mere detention, he could, by taking off his shoes, and allowing them to be compared with the foot-print, remove the suspicion, and be set at liberty. The man pointed significantly and triumphantly to the foot-prints he had that instant made, and had been making during the whole course of the investigation, and we saw at once that, although the size of the impression was nearly the same in both, there was no indication of nails in the prints of the shoes he wore; a fact he verified by instantly taking off and exhibiting them to the officers; who, after a minute inspection, admitted that the impressions we had been tracing could not have been formed by the shoes exhibited. This clearance was deemed sufficient by those present; but one of the officers suggested a search of the house, in which he remarked, very properly, the person might be secreted whose foot-prints we had been tracing; and the party immediately entered. There was no person within, nor could anything be seen to justify those suspicions that had been roused by the evidence afforded by the foot-prints in the snow; and the officers and party were about to retire, when some one pointed to a kind of garret, formed by planks or boards laid on some cross beams that extended between the two walls of the cottage, and quite sufficient to have contained a man. The officer accordingly mounted by means of a ladder; and he had scarcely got up, when he cried out, in a voice that made us all start, that he had succeeded in his search. I had no doubt that he had found there the concealed murderer; and the silence that ensued for a few minutes, as the officer rendered his discovery, whatever it was, available--coming in place, as it did, of an expected uproar, struggle, or fight--imparted to the scene, at this moment, great mystery, which was, however, partly removed by the descent of the officer, holding in his hands a pistol and a pair of shoes.

The appearance of these articles, so strangely and providentially traced by their images in the snow, produced a great sensation, for no one doubted but that they were the very evidences we were in search of; and so indeed they turned out to be, for the foot-prints and the shoes completely agreed, and the impression of the pistol on the snow was upon examination, found to be clearly that of the one discovered. It was again referred to me whether sufficient evidence had not now been procured to authorize the apprehension of the suspected man, who still remained in the grasp of the officer; and I felt myself, for the first time of my life, dragged, by the force of circ.u.mstances, into an investigation neither suited to my feelings and habits, nor connected with my profession, for the discharge of one of the duties of which I had been called out of bed at that late hour of the night. Unwilling even with the evidence before me, to pa.s.s sentence against the man, I inquired of William B----, his cousin, who stood by me, what kind of character he bore; and ascertained from him that he was a person of idle habits, and had been in the practice, for many years, of living upon what money he could extort, by threats or entreaties, from the deceased, who had done much for him, and had never received even thanks for what he had done; that he had known them have many quarrels, and one in particular a short time before that night; and that the deceased had threatened, by making a will, to deprive the ungrateful nephew (his heir) of any part of his effects--a step now prevented by his violent death, which would put the latter, if not guilty of this great crime, in possession of his property, which was very considerable. These corroborating circ.u.mstances bore heavy upon me; yet, such is force of habit, I would have felt less pain in amputating one of the suspected man's limbs, than I experienced (and, though it is twenty years since that night, I have the recollection of the painful feeling still) in giving my required sanction to a commitment that might be the first step in a progress to the scaffold. During the few moments of deliberation that pa.s.sed, before I could bring my mind to p.r.o.nounce my verdict, the unfortunate man sought, with a fearful eye, my countenance. A shaking terror, that chased every drop of blood from his face, and struck his limbs with the feebleness of a child, was exposed by the lights that flared at intervals on his person; and every one read in these indications of fear, the evidences of his guilt. My opinion was delivered in accordance with that of the other persons a.s.sembled. The agitation of the culprit rose to such a degree, that he fell upon the ground, and, grasping my limbs with the convulsive clutch of despair, screamed for mercy, till the echoes rung through the planting, and came back upon the ears of the relentless abettors of justice. The more eager were his energetic appeals to feelings that were steeled against the cries and sobs of a murderer, the more determined were the people to do their duty to the injured laws of their country; and as he, on relinquis.h.i.+ng the grasp of my knees, was extended on the ground, laying about him, and casting up the snow, which he clutched with his hands, and even bit in his agony, he was again laid hold of by the officers, a.s.sisted by the people, and carried struggling to the nearest place where a cart could be procured to drive him to jail.

Next day I was examined by the law officers, and stated the facts I had witnessed, as I have now related them from my notes. Many others were examined, and, among the rest, William B----, and the housekeeper I had seen hanging over the body of Mr. T----; the latter of whom, I understood, gave testimony to the effect that she had, some days before the murder, heard her master accuse the pannel of having stolen from him his watch; and an officer who had searched the house, and found the watch in a place not far from that where the shoes and pistol had been found, produced it to the men of the law, while the housekeeper and William B---- identified it as the deceased's property. Some days afterwards, a great advance was made in the evidence by another discovery, to the effect that the pannel had been in the practice of stating, to various people to whom he owed money, that he would pay them, with compound interest, when his old uncle (the deceased) was dead, as he, in the character of heir-at-law, would succeed to all his property; and, on one occasion, he had, in some drunken orgies, proceeded so far as to propose as a toast, in presence of his cousin, William B----, who spoke to the fact, a quick and safe pa.s.sage to the soul of his uncle over the Stygean stream, which, to him, the heir, would become as rich in gold as Pactolus. A great number of other corroborative facts and circ.u.mstances were spoken to by many witnesses, which, at this distance of time, I cannot recollect: the evidence was, on the whole, deemed by the men of the law sufficient to justify a trial, which accordingly took place some time afterwards, and at which I was examined as a princ.i.p.al witness.

The scene of that day was, in an eminent degree, heart-rending; the facts proved seemed to strike the unfortunate man like thunderbolts, driving him into a state of stupor from which he was no sooner roused than he was again stricken with the same paralysing proof of his crime.

The hand of the Almighty appeared to be occupied in tracing, before the averted eyes of the murderer, the secret purpose he had devised in the recesses of his heart, far removed, as he thought, from mortal eye, yet now revealed as evidence to consign him to the death he was unprepared to meet; and, as he prayed, e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed, wept, and swooned by turns, the people a.s.sembled in court, while they could not doubt his crime, or conceal from themselves its enormity, pitied the victim of such agony of torture as he was apparently suffering, only, too, on the very threshold of his misery.

Having remained in court after my examination, I was called upon by the judge, on more occasions than one, to administer what relief was in my power to the unhappy being, as he lay apparently senseless under the bolt of some truth that came on him from the witness-box, as if to seal his doom in this world. I could do little for him, when he was struck by these moral impulses, except by administering stimulants; but, on one occasion, he lay so long under an attack of syncope, that I felt myself called upon to have him removed, for a short time, to an ante-room, where I took from him some ounces of blood. I have watched the eyes of patients brought back to sensibility, life, and hope, and seen the ray of the brightening prospect of health, success, and happiness, dawn on the drowsy orb; but I had not before witnessed the return of sense and intelligence to be directed, at the first glance, on a gallows, and I shuddered as I perceived the breaking in on his clouded mind of the consciousness of the situation in which he was placed--the terror of again facing that court, and that d.a.m.ning evidence, and the recoiling effort he made to escape--alas, how vain!--from the grasp of the officers, as they again proceeded to carry him to the court-room. When placed again at the bar, upheld by the officers, pale and trembling, the relentless forms of justice proceeded; the witnesses resumed the chain of evidence, and the unfortunate man was again subjected to the rack, under the torture of which his weakened body recoiled with feebler efforts, as exhausted nature denied the supply of the sensibility of pain. But the charge of the judge, which was hollow against the prisoner, ingenious in its reasonings and stern in its conclusions, again revived the slumbering agonies, and the return of the verdict "Guilty" by the jury, was the signal for the commencement of a scene which the hardest hearted person in the court could not witness without horror. A shrill scream ran through the court-room, and was followed by the extraordinary sight of the prisoner clambering over the bar, clutching the clerks' seat, and struggling, against the grasp of the officers, to get forward to the bench, on which the judge sat adjusting the black cap with a view to p.r.o.nounce the sentence of death. The roused judge vociferated to the officers, blaming them for their remissness; but his voice was overcome by the e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.ns of the prisoner, who cried for mercy, till, vanquished by the men, who held him firmly down, and even stopped his mouth, he fell senseless within the bar, deaf to the words of the fatal sentence, which now, in the midst of death-like silence, rolled over the court with a solemnity never perhaps witnessed in any place of justice before or since.

On being carried to the jail, whither I accompanied him at the request of the judge, he was with difficulty brought back to a state of consciousness; but it was only to be able to fill the prison with his unavailing cries. I could do him no good; and, though used to exhibitions of pain and misery, I was unable to witness longer this most intensive picture of the most agonized condition of unhappy man. I left him, but I was repeatedly called to him again, in the interval which elapsed between this period and the day of his execution, to bring the strength of our art to bear against the effects of a determination to refuse all sustenance, and to resist all the confirmatory aids of necessity, resignation, and religion. All the efforts of the jailor were not able to get him to take food; the unabated strength of his despair occupied every nerve, and chased from his mind all lesser pains of hunger or bodily privations and wants; his moral apoplexy had extended its deadening effects to his physical system; and, as he lay chained by the leg to his stone couch, it could have been detected only from low murmuring groans, alternated, at long intervals, with sudden yells, that there was any real living action in his mind or body.

The ministrations of the clergymen who attended him were likely to be of greater service to him than anything within the power of our professional art; yet they informed me that such was the force of the agony under which he laboured, that all their efforts had been unavailing to introduce into his mind any one sustaining or comforting principle or sentiment. For many days, his determination to take no food continued as strong as at the beginning, whereby his whole system became emaciated and deranged; and, even when the burning pangs of hunger and thirst, the most acute of all bodily pains, rose upon him to such a height that his moral anguish was forced, for a moment, to cede some portion of the territory of feeling to their irresistible impulse, he gave way to the imperative necessity like a maniac, starting up and seizing the can of water that stood by his couch, and, after draining it to the bottom, das.h.i.+ng it from him, and falling back again into the depth of his misery.

The period of his execution was approaching; but he had become so weak that I gave it as my opinion that he would not be able to walk to the gallows. A fever had been induced by the inflammation which generally results from hunger, acting on what we call the _primae viae_; and now, when the moral pyrexia had so far weakened his brain, that the material of suffering seemed almost to be exhausted, he was attacked on the side of the flesh with pains and paroxysms of agony, not much less acute than those he had suffered, and was still, to a great extent, undergoing, from his mental and incurable causes of misery. I had a duty to perform, and I did perform it, by applying to this man, who was already "betrothed to death," those remedies that might enable him to walk into the arms of his grim bridegroom; yet, I do not blush to own and acknowledge, that I secretly sighed that G.o.d would overcome my efforts, and, by taking the poor victim to himself, save him from the death which awaited him at the gallows foot. Yet, how vain are the aspirations of mortals, in those emergencies claimed by Heaven as its own vindicated periods and purposes of divine wrath! The food he rejected, when he was _able_ to reject it, was supplied in the form of broths, when he was no longer sensible of the reception of that which was to sustain him for the bearing of the agony he dreaded, of all others--a violent death before an a.s.sembled mult.i.tude. He was saved from one death for the purpose of suffering another, and that in very spite of himself, through the instrumentality of the most pitiable state of man, the want of consciousness. When he came to be informed of the manner in which his life had been protracted and saved, for the purpose of being forcibly dragged from him by the relentless arm of public justice, he raved like a madman, expending the remnant of strength that had been saved to him in imprecations against me, in unavailing screams and clanking of the chain that still clung to his emaciated limbs.

On the day of his execution he was as feeble as a child; but the gallows does not admit the plea of illness as an excuse for non-attendance.

Emaciated and exhausted, he swooned in the hands of the officers, as they knocked from his limbs the chains that might as well have been applied to the infant that has not yet essayed its first attempt to walk; and, if the necessary time had been allowed for recovering him entirely from these repeated fits, the period comprehended in his sentence might have expired, and he would have been beyond the reach of the law. The executors of justice, themselves the very slaves of form, repudiated all ceremony, and the unfortunate being was carried to the cart, to be roused, by its horrid wheels, from a swoon to the awful consciousness of being in the act of being hurried to the scaffold, which he had not strength to mount, and yet could not escape. The scene that now presented itself was such that many individuals, whose morbid appet.i.te for horror was insatiable, flew from the place of execution, unable to stand and witness the spectacle of a human being falling from one swoon into another, incapable of keeping his feet, and lifted _softly_, as by the hands of nurses, to receive around his neck the cord that was to strangle him by his own weight. Yet I was forced to witness this sight; for, by a strange contradiction of duties, I was called upon to attend the _patient_, and, by the use of stimulants, to render him susceptible of the pangs of death. Yet what was my art, my medicaments, to those of the executioner of the last act of the law, whose quick and sudden jerk ended in a moment life, disease, terror, and all the ills coiled up in the mortal frame of miserable man!

The circ.u.mstances attending the execution of Walter T---- (though not the condemnation, which was reckoned just), were such as to rouse considerably the public attention, and the prints of that day were filled with disquisitions as to the expediency of wounding the feelings of a nation, by executing a man in a situation of mind and body calculated to excite pity and commiseration, and to exclude the feeling of satisfaction which ought to follow the punishment of the most heinous of all crimes. Yet all this was plainly absurd; for, if punishments were to wait the bodily condition of malefactors, the art of man would soon cheat the gallows of its dues, and retribution would be the stalking-horse of deceit. The unusual sufferings of this individual were commemorated in a manner very different from the ephemeral columns of daily prints; for Dr. ----, to whom his body, conform to the sentence, was delivered for dissection, anatomized it; and two years after, I purchased from him, for the price of fifteen guineas, the entire skeleton, to supply a want in my museum, and facilitate the osteological studies of my apprentices.

During the twenty years that pa.s.sed after the period of his execution, I seldom cast my eyes upon that dry crackling memorial of the unhappy man, as it hung in grim majesty and stoical defiance of the changes of time, and of those exacerbations of pa.s.sion which, in its animated condition, penetrated its very marrow, without a cold s.h.i.+vering remembrance of his sufferings. On the patella or knee-pan of the left limb there was written, by Dr. ----, who constructed the skeleton, the words "Walter T----, a murderer, executed at ----, the -- day of ----." I wrote, on the patella of the other limb--"For the extraordinary circ.u.mstances attending his execution, see the ---- newspaper, published on the same day;" and I retained a copy of the print in my museum, to gratify the curiosity of those who might be interested in the fate of the being whose bones, as they crackled to the touch, sung that peculiar and heart-striking _memento mori_, which few people, not professionally interested in the sight, can hear and forget. The indescribable interest produced by a skeleton is well known, among anatomists, to produce in young students a peculiar facility in acquiring a knowledge of the immense number of bones, many of them bearing long Greek names, which go to make up the aggregate of the human system; but the fate of Walter T----, which I always communicated to my apprentices, adding the part I myself acted in the dark drama, imparted a peculiar interest to the grim spectacle, which no memory, however treacherous, could, even with the a.s.sistance of years, disregard or renounce.

For a period of fifteen years after the execution of that unfortunate man, my avocations did not lead me into any correspondence of a professional character with the individuals who resided at the house of Mr. T----, the murdered man; but I understood generally, though I could not now tell how I got the intelligence, that William B----, his nephew, having succeeded to the deceased's effects, occupied his house, had got married, and had a large family of children. About the month of December, in the year ----, I was, however, called again to the same house in the fir planting, into which I had not been since that night on which I witnessed the death-struggles of its former proprietor. The emergency which now took me there, was the illness of William B----, who had been seized with that disease called _tic doloureux_, perhaps the most excruciating of all the ailments incident to the human frame. We are entirely ignorant of its causes, whether procatartic or proximate--all we can say of it being, that it is an affection of the nerves of the face, and particularly of that branch of the fifth pair which comes out at an aperture below the orbit; and that it is attended with such pain--coming on in an instant, generally without premonitory warning--that the devoted victim of its cruelty is often thrown on his back on the floor, where he lies, during the existence of the attack, in a state even beyond what can be figured of the wildest exacerbation of fevered frenzy. I have seen a strong man, who could have stood unappalled before a cannon mouth in the field of battle, running about like a madman, as he felt some internal monitor (a peculiarity in his case) telling him that an attack was coming on--holding out his hands, crying wildly for help, or as if he had been flying from the clutches of a hundred demons, and, in a moment after, laid on his back, in the full grasp of the relentless tormentor, uttering the most heart-rending screams, and requiring the power of several people to hold him down.

Under an attack of this frightful complaint, I found William B----, who, being in the clutch of a paroxysm, was scarcely conscious of my presence. He was extended on his back on a sofa; his fingers were (according to the practice of these victims) pressed on that part of the face where the pain shoots from; sharp cries, keeping pace with the intermitting pangs, were wrung reluctantly from him, filled the house, and might have been heard beyond it; his limbs were restless, striking the foot and sides of the couch, and sometimes das.h.i.+ng them as if he would have broken and destroyed all resisting objects; his eye glanced fiercely around, as if he disdained the supplication of mortal aid in so hopeless a cause. I knew the nature of the disease too well to hope to be able to do him, at that time, any service; the patient himself, by the pressure he was applying to the seat of the pain, was doing all that could be done to ameliorate his sufferings; and, having told his wife that I could be of greater use to him at a time when the pain was off him, I left him, with the intention of calling again, to suggest the application of the only remedy yet known for this complaint.

In a few days, accordingly, I called again, and found the patient recovered from a new attack which had come on during the previous night.

He was greatly exhausted, looked pale and anxious, and dreaded intensely another paroxysm, which he said he could not be able to bear. He endeavoured to describe to me his feelings, when the disease arrived at its greatest height, and correctly distinguished between those neuralgic pains, and the fiercest of those that attack the viscera and muscles; bringing out, in his unprofessional language, what I have witnessed, that there is often a power felt by the sufferer of resisting, by some indescribable internal process, the latter kind of pain, while, in the former (and the _tic doloureux_ is the worst species), the victim is conscious of no power within himself of even _bearing_--all his energies, thoughts, and stoical resolutions being put to flight and routed by the fierce, lancinating, burning pangs; and even despair, the ordinary refuge of the miserable, seems to deny the tortured spirit the grim relief of its dark haven.

As the patient proceeded in his description, he occasionally drew deep sighs, looked despairingly, and shuddered--all symptoms of the complaint from which he had suffered so much, and might still suffer; and, after a pause, he asked me, with a timid look, if the disease was known to medical men, or if I thought it _peculiar to him_. I replied that the complaint was well known, and very far from being uncommon; but that, unfortunately, we had not very many remedies to which we could resort or trust for a cure. He looked as if he did not believe me, or doubted my statement, and then asked what the best remedy was. I answered that it was an operation, whereby we divided a part of the facial nerve; and recommended to him the trial of that experiment, for as yet we could not p.r.o.nounce certainly of its efficacy. He did not seem to be inclined to go into my views; and I asked him if he feared the pain of the operation, and yet dared to face that of his disease, which was a thousand times greater. He replied that he cared nothing for the pain of the operation; but yet he felt that he _could not_ undergo it. I looked at him with surprise, and requested an explanation; but he answered me by the question--"Are we not sometimes bound to bear pain?" And, as he uttered these words, he seemed to feel great distress. I replied that I thought we were bound rather to get quit of pain by every means in our power, and that all mankind acted on that principle--a circ.u.mstance to which my profession owed its existence and success.

"But if this extraordinary, this _miraculous_ pain is not sent for some purpose," he said, "why is it that, the moment I think of removing it, an attack comes upon me?" I cannot explain that, I replied; and he then went on. "The last time you were sent for, I was seized, after my wife despatched you the message; and now," holding up his hand, "behold it comes again, the very instant I begin to talk of a remedy! Yet I must suffer--it is ordained that I must suffer--it is right and just that I should suffer. Welcome, ye dreadful messenger whom I fear and tremble at, yet love! You see, sir, he comes!"

The unhappy man spoke truth: an attack of his disease came on him at that moment, and he fell back on the couch, screaming, and pressing, with all his force, his hand against the seat from which the pains lancinated through the bones and muscles of his face. His cries brought his wife to his a.s.sistance; but it is one of the characteristics of this disease, that a.s.sistants and comforters can only look on and weep, so utterly does it defy and mock all human efforts. I left him in the charge of his wife, to whom I gave some directions, rather to revive her hope and remove from her countenance a painful anxiety that clouded it, than with any hope of affording relief. As I proceeded through the planting in which the house was situated, I heard his cries for some distance; and, while I pitied the victim, called up into my mind his sentiments, which struck me as being peculiar and mysterious. His conviction of some connection between an attack of his complaint and his attempt to get it removed, was clearly a fancy; yet the existence of such an idea indicated something wrong either in his mind or conscience--even with the admission that a pain so extraordinary might itself suggest, to a sober-minded man, some thoughts of Divine retribution, where there was no crime to be expiated of a deeper die than the most of mankind are in the habit of committing.

Whatever might be the ground of the delusion under which the patient laboured, it was necessary, at all events, to remove the notion that an effort to cure the disease had any supposed mysterious connection with an attack; the best way of accomplis.h.i.+ng which was to hold forth, by calling and applying remedial processes, the handle of an occasion to the unseen power to make the attack, which, if not taken advantage of (and who could suppose it would?) might expose the absurdity of his suspicion or conviction. I accordingly called again next day, and observed, as I entered, that the patient's eye scanned me with a look as eloquent as words, that I had brought with me another attack of his complaint. I ascertained that he had not had an attack since the one I witnessed, and then told him, that, as he would not consent to allow the nerve to be severed, I had brought a lotion which might prove efficacious, if applied to the diseased parts in the manner I explained to him. I held out to him the bottle, but he looked at it with fear, and said, he _could not_, he _dared not_ take it.

"Doctor," said he, "this disease must take its course. It never was designed for ordinary mortals, and I cannot believe that you or any medical man ever witnessed in another these excruciating tortures. There is nothing human about this visitation." "Nonsense," said I, "I know nothing of miraculous diseases." "Like the forked lightning," he proceeded, "it leaves no trace of its progress. There is no wound, no inflammation, no fever, not a spot in the skin, to tell that, under it, and, as it were, touching it, there exists agonies, in comparison of which the pain of red-hot irons applied to the skinless flesh (under which nature would claim the relief of sinking) is as nothing; for I cannot faint--I cannot get refuge in insensibility--I cannot die."

"Still, all natural," said I. "No," he went on, "speak no more of remedies against Heaven's visitations; but let me suffer, that, by suffering, I may expiate. I shall immediately have another visit from my messenger. Oh, sir, who shall help him that is accursed of Heaven."

He turned his body from me, to hide his face, and I could perceive that he shook as if from a spasm of the heart. I told him that he talked like one under the dark veil of religious melancholy, or rather like one who had something on his conscience different from the ordinary burden of human frailty, making him attribute to retribution what was only a disease incident to mankind; that Heaven was not against the cure of any mortal; and that he would, for certainty, have no attack that day, nor, perhaps, for several days, especially if he used the lotion I recommended to him. He heard me in silence, shaking, at intervals, his head, solemnly and incredulously, turning his eyes to heaven, and clasping his hands as if in mental adjuration. "It will not do," he cried. "I have more faith in the language of this monitor than in that of frail man. I will have another attack instantly. Leave me! Why will you force me thus to brave heaven, between, whose dread powers and me there is a secret compact recorded here--here?"--striking his chest.

"This disease I fear and tremble at; but it is _not_ h.e.l.l, and, by bearing the one, I may avoid the other. So do I claim these pangs, sharper than scorpions' tongues, as my right, my due, my redemption. Oh G.o.d! what a price do I pay for relief from eternal fire!"

He sat down as he concluded these mysterious words, in an att.i.tude of expectation of the coming paroxysm, and I conceived that my best reply to his wild and incoherent ideas would be, the refuting fact of the absence of any attack at that time. I, therefore, left him; and, as I pa.s.sed along the pa.s.sage to the door, was met by his anxious wife, who inquired of me, with tears in her eyes, if I knew what this malady was, which, leaving no trace of its presence, yet produced such a pain as she never thought mortal was doomed to suffer; and, above all, she was solicitous to know if I had got any insight into her husband's mind, which was loaded with some awful burden in some degree connected with this calamity; for, since ever the first attack, she had got no rest at night, and no peace during day--his haunted vigils, his sleep-walking, his dreaming, his agonies, and prayers, being unremitting and heart-rending, as well to him as to her. She wept bitterly as she concluded this account of her sufferings.

I could give her little satisfaction beyond a.s.suring her that the disease had nothing supernatural about it, as her husband thought, and giving it as my opinion that the unusual character of the complaint might, in a serious, contemplative-minded man, have given rise to the delusion that it came direct from heaven as a punishment of errors incident to fallen humanity. I informed her, also, of my expectation of removing this delusion, partly by impressing him with the disappointment he would likely feel that day in experiencing no attack consequent upon my remedial endeavours; and, in a short time, I might prevail upon him to allow me to perform the operation I had recommended.

I left the poor woman praying fervently that I might succeed; for, until some change was effected on her husband's mind, she could expect little peace, far less happiness, on earth. As I proceeded homewards, I had great misgivings as to my having exhausted the secret of this man's misery; yet my efforts at fathoming the true mystery of this unusual imputation of a disease to the avenging retribution of an offended G.o.d were unavailing, and I left to time to discover what was beyond my power.

As I expected, I found, on my next call, that no attack had followed my last visit. The patient was somewhat easier; yet his mind was apparently still greatly troubled. I impressed him with the vanity of the delusion under which he laboured, and prevailed upon him to consent to the application of the stimulating lotion to the scat of the disease. In yielding this consent, he underwent a great struggle; I noticed him several times in the att.i.tude of silent prayer, and, as I was about to begin the application of the medicine, he recoiled from my grasp, turning up his eyes, muttering indistinct words, and trembling like one about to undergo a severe punishment. All this had nothing to do with the character of the simple stimulant I was about to apply, but was clearly the working of his terror at the application of a remedial process of any kind to a heaven-sent disease; and I was latterly obliged to use a degree of force, a.s.sisted by the energies of his wife, before I succeeded in my endeavours to get the medicine applied. His fears and tremors, silent prayers and murmurings, continued during the whole time I was occupied in rubbing in the liniment; and, when I had finished, he fell on his knees and prayed silently for several minutes, and then threw himself down exhausted on the couch.

Two days afterwards, I called again, and found that there had still been no new attack of the disease--a fact communicated to me, on my entrance, by Mrs. B----, who was auguring from it the happiest results. On the day following, however, he had a most violent onset immediately before I called; and I ascertained that, for two days previous, the liniment had been discontinued, in consequence of a return of the patient's conscientious scruples; so that I could now reverse upon him his own argument, which I did not fail to do, pointing out to him and impressing upon him that, in place of Heaven being offended at his using remedial measures, he had now experienced its displeasure at not adopting those means which Providence points out to man for arresting the progress of disease. I therefore urged him, with all the force of my reasoning and power of persuasion, to consent to undergoing the operation I had proposed, the dividing of the nerve--backing my arguments with the stated conviction that, if he did not consent, he might be a martyr for many years to the most painful of diseases, and be deprived of all comfort in this world. He heard me in vain; for his conscientious scruples had leagued with his former terror, and he rejected my advice; but he did it as one compelled by a secret power, which overawed him by its stern decrees, and scattered his opposing resolutions with the breath of its whisper.

Justice to myself and my profession required that I should not visit again a man who rejected my advice, and whose case seemed fitted rather for the ministrations of a servant of Christ than a disciple of aesculapius. Several days pa.s.sed without my hearing anything of the condition of the unhappy patient; but I had no hopes of his having got quit of his neuralgia, which too often adheres to its victim like a double-tongued adder.

One evening I was in my study, reading an old copy of Celsus, over a fire nearly exhausted, and by the light of a candle, whose long black wick indicated the attention I was devoting to the old physician. The night was dark and windy, and I was a.s.sured that, if no emergency demanded my presence out of doors (which I fervently wished), I stood little risk of being disturbed by any _walking_ patients, generally deemed by us the most troublesome of all our employers. At my side hung my skeletons; and, among the rest, that of Walter T----; around were other monuments of the frailty and the agonies of human life, all too familiar to me to take off my attention from the old chronicler of diseases, their causes, symptoms, and cures.

While thus occupied, my bell rang with great violence and I started up from the study into which I had fallen. In an instant, my door was flung open. William B---- stood before me, the picture of a man who had broken out of bedlam: his eyes flashed the fire of an excruciating agony; his right hand was pressed convulsively on his cheek; his left made wild signs, intended to supply the want of words which his tongue could not utter; every symptom indicated that he was under the full grasp of his implacable enemy. Recovering his breath, he cried out, "I cannot bear this any longer." "Patience," said I. "No!" he proceeded, "the extent of human powers of suffering may be overrated by superior avengers. I must brave Heaven, or die under its exaction of the last pang of an overstrained retribution; death will not come to my prayer, and I am stung to rebellion. Will you, sir, use your operating knife against the wrath of Heaven? I am resolved. Though conscience cannot be amputated, this h.e.l.l-scorched nerve may be severed. Come next what will, this must be ended. I am at last prepared."

This frenzied burst, wrung from a mind labouring under some terrible burden, startled and alarmed me; and it was some moments before I could perceive the meaning which was veiled under his strange words and manner. He had been seized with an attack of his complaint, and, unable to bear it, had run out of the house to seek some relief at my hands. I requested him to be seated; and, though I had to struggle with the disadvantage of candle light, and the want of one of my a.s.sistants, I resolved upon performing the operation before the agony had abated.

I accordingly rung for my oldest apprentice, and made preparations for the work, which, though simple, requires skill and care. The patient was seated on a chair, formed for receiving the back of the head on a soft cus.h.i.+on, and used by me for operations on the upper extremities.

Everything was ready; my apprentice came in, and, as he pa.s.sed quickly forward, struck his head against the skeleton of Walter T----, that hung at the side, and a little to the back of the operating chair on which the patient was seated. That _perterricrepus_ of dry bones crackled as the body swung from side to side, and attracted the attention of the man, whose eye, tortured as he was, sought fearfully the cause of the strange noise.

I saw that his attention was in an instant rivetted on the figure, and perceived that his look was directed to the words (written in large letters) on the knee pan. The knife was in my hand, and my apprentice was about to lay hold of his head. The att.i.tude of the man arrested my eye, and I witnessed, what I have often heard of, but never saw before, that extraordinary erection of the hair of the head, produced by extreme fear, and known by the name of horripilation.

I now thought he was afraid of the knife--but I was soon undeceived.

With a loud yell he started up suddenly and violently--his hair seemed to move with horror--his body was in the att.i.tude of flying from the figure, yet his limbs obeyed not his fear; he stood rivetted to the spot, with his eyes chained on the skeleton, his lips wide open, and his hands extended. In this position he remained for several seconds, while my apprentice and I gazed on in wonder on the horror-stricken victim.

"I said I would brave Heaven," he exclaimed in wild accents, "by curing a heaven-sent disease; but is Heaven to be braved by man? How came that figure there?"

"That is easily explained," said I.

"It is"--he continued--"my cousin, Walter T----, who died for me? Is he not heaven-sent also? See, he moves and nods his grim head at me, and says, 'You shall not escape the vengeance of the Almighty. The nerve shall _not_ be cut, and your agonies must continue to the last moment of your existence.' And who has a better right to speak these flaming words, than he whose cause is vindicated by the powers above--he whose agonies, produced by me--me, wretched, miserable man!--were ended by an unjust death on the scaffold, where I should have expiated the crime for which he suffered. Guard me from that grim spectre! I cannot stand that sight!" And, with a loud crash, he fell on the floor.

In the midst of the confusion produced in my mind by what I had seen and heard, the glare of a revealed mystery flashed upon me; and I shuddered even to think of what might turn out to be true. Could it it be possible that that wretched man whose bones hung before me--whose sufferings at his trial, in the jail, on the scaffold, were unprecedented, and such as no man ever endured--was innocent of the crime for which he was hanged?

Even the suspicion was too painful to me; and I recoiled from the skeleton, as my eye, led by my thoughts, rested on the grim memorial.

The agitation into which I was thrown rendered me incapable of thought.

"Get him home! get him home!" I cried to my apprentice, and sought, in the retirement of another room, some refuge from these sights, and an opportunity of calmly contemplating all the bearings of this apparently dreadful discovery.