Part 2 (2/2)
So saying, he walked out of the chamber, followed by the Recluse
”Tell me first,” said Holden, as they stood in the open air, ”what thou thinkest of the wound”
”Ha!” cried the doctor, ”'tis not so deep as a well nor so wide as a church door; but 'tis enough--'twill serve”
”What!” exclai the boy! But no, thou art incapable of that; and, besides, I have seen too er from this”
”I see, friend, you have read Shakspeare to some purpose,” cried the doctor; ”but know that I spoke not in the sense in which Mercutio speaks of the wound that Tybalt gave hirave as poor Mercutio's Look you, now, I told you but the simple truth, and what your own eyes have seen The wound _is not_ so deep as a well, nor so wide as a church door If it were--ad the physical possibility--Poould be a s of h, too You would not have it more Besides, 'twill serve; that is, to keep him a day or two in your cabin And herein consists one of the innumerable excellences of Shakspeare Every sentence is as full of e to pick out asBut, friend, I am sure you must have a copy Let me see it”
”I know little of these vanities,” replied Holden ”In iddy youth, I drank such follies, even as the ass sucketh up the east wind But it pleased the Lord to open ht,” he continued--and his eyes shone brighter, and his stature seemed to increase--”when deep sleep falleth on , which made all my bones to shake Then a vision passed before me, and the hair of my flesh stood up It stood still, but I could not discern the fore was before , 'Behold, I come quickly; watch and pray, for thou knowest not the day nor the hour!' I was not disobedient to the heavenly warning, and thenceforth the pomps and vanities of the world have been as the dust beneath my feet”
This was not the first time that the doctor heard the Recluse speak of his peculiar opinions; but, although always ready to avow and dilate upon the to listen, he had uniforness to allude to himself or the incidents of his life Whenever, heretofore, as sometimes happened, the curiosity of his auditors led the conversation in that direction, he had invariably evaded all hints and repulsed every inquiry But his mood seehly prized, and he could therefore speak the more freely in his presence; but this is not sufficient to account for the dropping of his reserve We know no other explanation than that there are tis to unburden itself, and this was one of the since the revelation?” inquired the doctor
”Too long,” said Holden, ”did I wander in the paths of sin, and in forgetfulness of my God, and my youth asted in that which satisfieth not, neither doth it profit My heart was very hard, and it rose up in rebellion against the Lord Then it pleased Him (blessed be His holy name) to bray me in the mortar of affliction, and to crush me between the upper and the nether millstone Yet I heeded not; and, like Nebuchadnezzar,of Babylon was driven forth from the sons ofith the wild asses, and they fed hirass, like oxen, and his body ith the dew of heaven, even so did the Spirit drive me forth into the tabernacles of the wild men of the forest and the prairie, and I sojourned with them many days But He doth not always chide, neither keepeth He His anger for ever In His own good time, He snatched me from the fiery furnace, and badeyears, have I looked for His pro!”
The doctor's question was unanswered, either because Holden forgot it, in his excite any accurate account of the passage of tiather from his incoherent account, that, at soreat calamity, which had affected his reason In this condition, he had probably joined the Indians, and passed several years a them, and afterwards, upon a partial restoration of intellect, adopted the wild notions he professed What had passed during those years, was a secret known only to himself, if, indeed, the events had not disappeared from his memory
”You have suffered bitterly,” said the doctor
”Talk not of suffering,” exclaimed Holden ”I reckon all that lory that awaits hidom What is this speck we call life? Mark,” he continued, taking up a pebble and dropping it into the water, ”it is like the bubble that rises to burst, or the sound of ht, except to prepareof my Lord”
”You think, then, this solitary life the best preparation you can make for the next?”
”Yes,” said Holden; ”I work not my oill Can the clay say to the potter, what doest thou? Behold, I ahtier than I Nor hath he leftin the wilderness, and though the people heed not, yet must the faithful witness cry I have a work to perform, and how is my soul straitened until it be done? Canst thou not thyself see, by what hath happened to-day, some reason why the solitary is upon his lonely island? Had he loved the crowded haunts ofhad, perhaps, perished”
The allusion to the occurrence of therecalled the doctor's attention to the purpose for which he had left the cha to the talk of the enthusiast He now directed the conversation to the subject of the wound, and heard Holden's account He became convinced, both from his statement, and from a feords Pownal hiun which Holden had picked up, and found just discharged, that the wounding was accidental, and occasioned by the youngsatisfied himself on this point, the doctor, with his co directions to Bernard, to enjoin quiet upon his patient, and to take leave of him, which he did, in the words of his favorite--
”Fare thee well!
The elements be kind to thee, and make Thy spirits all of comfort”
CHAPTER III
Ici il fallut que j'en divinasse plus qu'on ne m'en disoit
MEMOIRES DE SULLY
A week after the events narrated in the preceding chapters, a small company was collected in a parlor of one of the houses of Hillsdale
It consisted of a gentle ht blue-eyed flaxen-haired girl, rounding into thethe wound of Pownal--for it is he--had proved to be correct, and, on the second day after the hurt, he had returned to the village, with his friend William Bernard, in the house of whose father he was, for the present, do men had been acquainted before, and the accident seemed to have established a sort of inti of reluctance, that Pownal accepted an invitation to desert his boarding-house for a while, for the hospitality of his friend
Perhaps, his decision was a little influenced by the remembrance of the blue eyes of Miss Bernard, and of the pleasant effect which, from their first acquaintance, they had exerted upon hih somewhat paler than usual, he appeared to be quite contented with his condition
It was evening, and candles were lighted, and Mr Bernard, or as he was e Bernard, froes of the Superior Court, was sitting in an ar a newspaper; Mrs Bernard was busy with her knitting; the young lady employed upon one of those pieces of needle-work, which, in those days, were seldo at her all he dared, and listening to an occasional paragraph read by the Judge from his newspaper
”You are the cause of quite a sensation in our little co down his spectacles and newspaper at the saht to be infinitely obliged to you for wounding yourself, and affording hienius and the brilliancy of his i to talk about Here, Anne, read the article aloud for our edification”