Laura had given Sally a great many useful things for her cottage, but made no promise at parting. She said, “Be sure you write to me, Sally, from time to time, to say how you are going on, and tell me if you want help.”

When Isabel was gone, Fanny saw that she must accustom herself to her cottage as it was, and banish from her mind the idea of the long-anticipated improvements. It was, however, no easy task. The window once regarded as bare and comfortless still seemed so, in spite of Fanny’s reasoning that it was no worse than Sally’s, which always looked cheerful and pretty. To be sure, John, who did not think of getting curtains, had trained a honeysuckle over it, still that made but little show at present. The carpet, too, so long regarded as a coarse temporary thing, never regained the beauty it first had to the eye of Thomas, as he laid it down the evening before he took Fanny to the cottage; and Fanny could never forget, as she arranged her tea-things, that Miss Isabel had called them “common little things;” so of all the other pieces of furniture that the young lady had remarked upon. Sally’s house was, in reality, more homely than her cousin’s, yet as she had never entertained a wish that it should be better, and as Laura had been pleased with all its arrangements, she bustled about it with perfect satisfaction; and even to Fanny it seemed replete with the comfort her own had always wanted.

At the end of three months Isabel enclosed an order for three pounds to Fanny, desiring her to get a Brussels carpet, and if there was a sufficient remainder, to replace the tea seat.

“I would rather,” said Fanny to her cousin, “put up with the old carpet and china, and get a roll of fine flannel, some coals, an extra blanket or two, and a cradle for the little one that’s coming, for it will be cold weather when I am put to bed; but I suppose as Miss Isabel has set her mind on the carpet and china, I must get them.”

A week or two after John was invited, with his wife and mother, to drink tea from Fanny’s new china. It was very pretty, so was the carpet, and so was Fanny making tea, elated with showing her new wealth.

“Is not Miss Isabel generous?” asked she, as she held the milk-pot to be admired.

“I sometimes wish Miss Laura had as much money to spare,” replied Sally; “for she lets me lay it out as I please, and I could get a number of things for three guineas.”

“Fie, Sally,” said her husband; “are not three shillings to spend as one pleases, better than three guineas laid out to please some one else?”

“Nonsense, John,” said Fanny, pettishly; “how can a carpet for my kitchen be bought to please any one but me?”

“John isn’t far wrong either,” answered her husband; “but the carpet is very handsome, and does please you and me too, now it is here.”

Time passed on, and Fanny gave birth to a little girl. Isabel stood sponsor for her by proxy, sending her an embroidered cloak and lace cap, and desiring that she should be called by her own name. Little Bella was very sickly, and as her mother had not been able to procure her good warm clothing, or lay in a large stock of firing, she suffered greatly from cold during the severe winter that followed her birth. The spring and summer did not bring her better health; and as Fanny always attributed her delicacy to the want of proper warmth in her infancy, she took a great dislike to the Brussels carpet, which now lay in a roll behind a large chest, having been long ago taken up as a piece of inconvenient luxury in a kitchen. “I wish you could find a corner for it in your cottage, Sally,” said she, “for I never catch a sight of it without worrying myself to think how much flannels and coals I might have bought with the money it cost.”

Laura frequently sent Sally small presents of money, but Isabel, though not so regular as her sister, surprised every one by the splendor of her presents, when they did come. As Bella entered her second year she received from her godmother a beautiful little carriage, which Thomas said must have “spoilt a five-pound note.” This was Isabel’s last gift, for it was at about this time that she accepted an offer from a French count, and became so absorbed in her own affairs, that she forgot Fanny and Bella too. Poor Bella grew more and more sickly every month; the apothecary ordered her beef tea, arrowroot, and other strengthening diet, but work was slack with Thomas, and it was with difficulty that he could procure her the commonest food. “I am sure,” said Fanny to her cousin, as little Bella was whining on her knee, “that if only Miss Isabel were here, she would set us all right. She never could bear to see even a stranger in distress.”

“I wish,” said Thomas, “that great folks would think a little of what they don’t see. I’ll lay anything Miss Isabel gives away a deal of money, more than enough to save our little one, to a set of French impostors that cry after her in the street, and yet, when she knows our child is ill, she never cares, because she can’t see it grow thin, or hear it cry.”

“For shame, Thomas,” said his wife, “do not speak so rudely of the young lady. Have you forgotten the pretty carriage she sent Bella, and how pleased we were when it came?”

“I don’t mean any harm,” answered her husband; “only it strikes me that Miss was pleased to buy the carriage because it was pretty, and seemed a great thing to send us, and that she wouldn’t have cared a straw to give us a little cash, that would have served us every bit as well.”

“I never heard you so ungrateful, Thomas. Of course she wouldn’t, because she wished to please us.”

“Or herself, as John said; but maybe I am wrong; only it goes to my heart to see the child want food while there is a filagree carriage in the yard that cost more than would keep her for six months.”

“Well, cheer up,” said Sally; “Miss Laura will be coming home soon, and I’ll lay anything she won’t let Bella die of want.”

“I’m afraid she won’t think of giving to me, Sally,” said Fanny despondingly; “I was never her maid, you know.”

“You wouldn’t fear, if you knew Miss Laura as I do, Fanny; she never cares who she helps so long as the person is deserving, and in want. She has no pride of that sort.”

Isabel’s marriage was put off, and Laura’s return, consequently, postponed. As Bella grew worse every day, and yet no help came, the unselfish Sally wrote to her patroness, telling her of poor Fanny’s distress, and begging her either to send her help, or speak on her behalf to her sister.

Isabel was dressing for a party when Laura showed her Sally’s letter. “Poor Fanny,” said she, “I wish I had known it before I bought this wreath. I have, absolutely, not a half-franc in the world. Will you buy the wreath of me at half-price, it has not even been taken from its box.”

“I do not want it,” said Laura, “but I will lend you some money.”

“No, I cannot borrow more,” said her sister despondingly. “I owe you already for the flowers, the brooch, the bill you paid yesterday, and I know not what else besides; but I will tell Eugène there is a poor Englishwoman in distress, I am sure he will send her something.”

Eugène gave her a five-franc piece.

It was late one frosty evening when Sally ran across to her cousin’s cottage, delighted to be the bearer of the long hoped-for letter. Fanny was sitting on the fender before a small fire, hugging her darling to her breast, and breathing on its little face to make the air warmer. “I’m afraid,” said she, in answer to Sally’s inquiries, “that the child won’t be here long;” and she wiped away a few hot tears that had forced their way as she sat listening to the low moans of the little sufferer.

“But I have good news for you,” said her cousin, cheerfully. “Here is a letter from Miss Isabel at last. I would not tell you before, but I wrote to Miss Laura, saying how you were expecting every week to be put to bed again, and how Bella was wasting away, and see, I was right about her, she has sent you a sovereign, and her sister’s letter, no-doubt, contains a pretty sum.”

Fanny started up, and could scarcely breathe as she broke the seal. What was her disappointment on seeing an order for five shillings!

“I am very sorry, my good Fanny,” said Isabel, “that just now I have no money. A charitable gentleman sends you five shillings, and as soon as I possibly can, I will let you have a large sum. I have not yet paid for the carriage I sent you, and as the bill has been given me several times, I must discharge it before I send away more money. I hope that by this time, little Bella is better.”

Fanny laid her child upon the bed, and putting her face by its side, shed bitter tears. Sally did not speak, and so both remained till Thomas came in from his work. Fanny would have hidden the letter from him, but he saw and seized it in a moment.

“Five guineas for a carriage, and five shillings for a child’s life,” said he with a sneer, as he laid it down. “Do not look for the large sum, Fanny, you won’t get it; but I will work hard, and bury the child decently.”

Fanny felt no inclination to defend her mistress. For the first time, it occurred to her that Thomas and John might be right in their judgment of her. She raised Bella, as Thomas, who had been twisting up the money order, was about to throw it in the fire. He caught a sight of the child’s wan face, and, advancing to the bed, said, in a softened tone, “Do you know father, pretty one?” and as Bella smiled faintly, he added, “I will do anything for your sake. Here, Fanny, take the money, and get the child something nourishing.”

Bella seemed to revive from getting better food; and the apothecary held out great hope of her ultimate recovery, if the improved diet could be continued; but expenses fell heavily on Thomas, Fanny was put to bed with a fine strong little boy, and, although Sally and Mrs. Maythorn devoted themselves to her and Bella, the anxiety she suffered from being separated from her invalid child, added to her former constant uneasiness, and want of proper food, brought on a fever that threatened her life. In a few days she became quite delirious. During this time Isabel was married, and Laura returned to England.

When Fanny regained her consciousness she was in the dark, but she could see some one standing by the window. On her speaking the person advanced to her side. “Do not be startled to find me here,” said a sweet soft voice. “Sally has watched by your side for three nights, and when I came this evening she looked so ill that I insisted on her going to bed; then, as we could find no one on whose care and watchfulness we could depend, I took her place. You have been in a sound sleep. Dr. Hart said you would wake up much better. Are you better?”

“Yes, ma’am, a deal better; but where am I, and who is it with me?”

“You are in your own pretty cottage, and Miss Laura is with you. You expected me home, did you not?”

“Oh, thank God; who sent you, dear Miss Laura? How is – but may-be I had best not ask just while I am so weak. Is the dear boy well?”

“Yes, quite well; and Bella is much better. I have sent her for a few days to L – , with Mrs. Maythorn; the sea air will do her good.”

“Oh, thank you – thank you – dear young lady, for the thought. I seem so bound up in that dear child, that nothing could comfort me for her loss. How good and kind you are, Miss – you do all so well and so quietly!”

“Yes, Fanny, dear,” said Thomas, coming from behind the curtain and stooping to kiss his wife. “Miss Laura has saved you and Bella, and me, too, for I couldn’t have lived if you had died; and has found me work; and all without making one great present, or doing anything one could speak about. I’ll tell you what it is, wife, dear, Miss Isabel does all for the best, but it is just as she feels at the moment. Now Miss Laura – if I may be so bold to speak, Miss – Miss Laura does not give to please her own feelings, but to do good. I can’t say it well, but do you say it for me, Miss; I want Fanny to know the right words, to teach the little ones by-and-by. You know what I wish to say, Miss Laura.”

“Yes, Thomas,” said Laura, blushing, “but I do not say you are right. You mean, I think, that my sister acts from impulse, and I from principle. Is that it?”

“I suppose that’s it, Miss,” said Thomas, considering, and apparently not quite satisfied.

“You have no harder meaning, I am sure,” said Laura, quietly, “because I love my sister very much.”

“Certainly not, Miss,” returned Thomas. “But, myself, if I may take the liberty of gratefully saying so, I prefer to be acted to on principle, and think it a good deal better than impulse.”

V.
Bed

“Oh, Sleep! it is a gentle thing,
Beloved from pole to pole!”

Was the heart’s cry of the Ancient Mariner at the recollection of the blessed moment when the fearful curse of life in death fell off him, and the heavenly sleep first “slid into his soul.” “Blessings on sleep!” said honest Sancho Panza: “it wraps one all around like a mantle!” – a mantle for the weary human frame, lined softly, as with the down of the eider-duck, and redolent of the soothing odors of the poppy. The fabled cave of Sleep was in the land of Darkness. No ray of the sun, or moon, or stars, ever broke upon that night without a dawn. The breath of somniferous flowers floated in on the still air from the grotto’s mouth. Black curtains hung round the ever-sleeping god; the Dreams stood around his couch; Silence kept watch at the portals. Take the winged Dreams from the picture, and what is left? The sleep of matter.

The dreams that come floating through our sleep, and fill the dormitory with visions of love or terror – what are they? Random freaks of the fancy? Or is sleep but one long dream, of which we see only fragments, and remember still less? Who shall explain the mystery of that loosening of the soul and body, of which night after night whispers to us, but which day after day is unthought of? Reverie, sleep, trance – such are the stages between the world of man and the world of spirits. Dreaming but deepens as we advance. Reverie deepens into the dreams of sleep – sleep into trance – trance borders on death. As the soul retires from the outer senses, as it escapes from the trammels of the flesh, it lives with increased power within. Spirit grows more spirit-like as matter slumbers. We can follow the development up to the last stage. What is beyond?

“And in that sleep of death, what dreams may come!”

says Hamlet – pausing on the brink of eternity, and vainly striving to scan the inscrutable. Trance is an awful counterpart of sleep and death – mysterious in itself, appalling in its hazards. Day after day noise has been hushed in the dormitory – month after month it has seen a human frame grow weaker and weaker, wanner, more deathlike, till the hues of the grave colored the face of the living. And now he lies, motionless, pulseless, breathless. It is not sleep – is it death?

Leigh Hunt is said to have perpetrated a very bad pun connected with the dormitory, and which made Charles Lamb laugh immoderately. Going home together late one night, the latter repeated the well-known proverb, “A home’s a home, however homely.” “Ay,” added Hunt, “and a bed’s a bed, however bedly.” It is a strange thing, a bed. Somebody has called it a bundle of paradoxes; we go to it reluctantly, and leave it with regret. Once within the downy precincts of the four posts, how loth we are to make our exodus into the wilderness of life. We are as enamored of our curtained dwelling as if it were the land of Goshen or the cave of Circe. And how many fervent vows have those dumb posts heard broken! every fresh perjury rising to join its cloud of hovering fellows, each morning weighing heavier and heavier on our sluggard eyelids. A caustic proverb says, – we are all “good risers at night;” but woe’s me for our agility in the morning. It is a failing of our species, ever ready to break out in all of us, and in some only vanquished after a struggle painful as the sundering of bone and marrow. The Great Frederic of Prussia found it easier, in after life, to rout the French and Austrians, than in youth to resist the seductions of sleep. After many single-handed attempts at reformation, he had at last to call to his assistance an old domestic, whom he charged, on pain of dismissal, to pull him out of bed every morning at two o’clock. The plan succeeded, as it deserved to succeed. All men of action are impressed with the importance of early rising. “When you begin to turn in bed, its time to turn out,” says the old Duke; and we believe his practice has been in accordance with his precept. Literary men – among whom, as Bulwer says, a certain indolence seems almost constitutional – are not so clear upon this point: they are divided between Night and Morning, though the best authorities seem in favor of the latter. Early rising is the best elixir vitæ: it is the only lengthener of life that man has ever devised. By its aid the great Buffon was able to spend half a century – an ordinary lifetime – at his desk; and yet had time to be the most modish of all the philosophers who then graced the gay metropolis of France.

Sleep is a treasure and a pleasure; and, as you love it, guard it warily. Over-indulgence is ever suicidal, and destroys the pleasure it means to gratify. The natural times for our lying down and rising up are plain enough. Nature teaches us, and unsophisticated mankind followed her. Singing birds and opening flowers hail the sunrise, and the hush of groves and the closed eyelids of the parterre mark his setting. But “man hath sought out many inventions.” We prolong our days into the depths of night, and our nights into the splendor of day. It is a strange result of civilization! It is not merely occasioned by that thirst for varied amusement which characterizes an advanced stage of society – it is not that theatres, balls, dancing, masquerades, require an artificial light, for all these are or have been equally enjoyed elsewhere beneath the eye of day. What is the cause, we really are not philosopher enough to say; but the prevalence of the habit must have given no little pungency to honest Benjamin Franklin’s joke, when, one summer, he announced to the Parisians as a great discovery – that the sun rose each morning at four o’clock; and that, whereas, they burnt no end of candles by sitting up at night, they might rise in the morning and have light for nothing. Franklin’s “discovery,” we dare say, produced a laugh at the time, and things went on as before. Indeed, so universal is this artificial division of day and night, and so interwoven with it are the social habits, that we shudder at the very idea of returning to the natural order of things. A Robespierre could not carry through so stupendous a revolution. Nothing less than an avatar of Siva the destroyer – Siva with his hundred arms, turning off as many gas-pipes, and replenishing his necklace of human skulls by decapitating the leading conservatives – could have any chance of success; and, ten to one, with our gassy splendors, and seducing glitter, we should convert that pagan devil ere half his work was done.

But of all the inventions which perverse ingenuity has sought out, the most incongruous, the most heretical against both nature and art, is reading in bed. Turning rest into labor, learning into ridicule. A man had better be up. He is spoiling two most excellent things by attempting to join them. Study and sleep – how incongruous! It is an idle coupling of opposites, and shocks a sensible man as much as if he were to meet in the woods the apparition of a winged elephant. Only fancy an elderly or middle-aged man (for youth is generally orthodox on this point), sitting up in bed, spectacles on his nose, a Kilmarnock on his head, and his flannel jacket round his shivering shoulders, – doing what? Reading? It may be so – but he winks so often, possibly from the glare of the candle, and the glasses now and then slip so far down on his nose, and his hand now and then holds the volume so unsteadily, that if he himself didn’t assure us to the contrary, we should suppose him half asleep. We are sure it must be a great relief to him when the neglected book at last tumbles out of bed to such a distance that he cannot recover it.

Nevertheless, we have heard this extraordinary custom excused on the no less extraordinary ground of its being a soporific. For those who require such things, Marryat gives a much simpler recipe – namely, to mentally repeat any scraps of poetry you can recollect; if your own, so much the better. The monks of old, in a similar emergency, used to repeat the seven Penitential Psalms. Either of these plans, we doubt not, will be found equally efficacious, if one is able to use them – if anxiety of mind does not divert him from his task, or the lassitude of illness disable him for attempting it. Sleep, alas! is at times fickle and coy; and, like most sublunary friends, forsakes us when most wanted. Reading in that repertory of many curious things, the “Book of the Farm,” we one day met with the statement that “a pillow of hops will ensure sleep to a patient in a delirious fever when every other expedient fails.” We made a note of it. Heaven forbid that the recipe should ever be needed for us or ours! but the words struck a chord of sympathy in our heart with such poor sufferers, and we saddened with the dread of that awful visitation. The fever of delirium! when incoherent words wander on the lips of genius; when the sufferer stares strangely and vacantly on his ministering friends, or starts with freezing horror from the arms of familiar love! Ah! what a dread tenant has the dormitory then. No food taken for the body, no sleep for the brain! a human being surging with diabolic strength against his keepers – a human frame gifted with superhuman vigor only the more rapidly to destroy itself! Less fearful to the eye, but more harrowing to the soul, is the dormitory whose walls enclose the sleepless victim of Remorse. No poppies or mandragora for him! His malady ends only with the fever of life. Ends? Grief, anxiety, “the thousand several ills that flesh is heir to,” pass away before the lapse of time or the soothings of love, and sleep once more folds its dove-like wings above the couch.

“If there be a regal solitude,” says Charles Lamb, “it is a bed. How the patient lords it there; what caprices he acts without control! How king-like he sways his pillow, – tumbling and tossing, and shifting, and lowering, and thumping, and flatting, and moulding it to the ever-varying requisitions of his throbbing temples. He changes sides oftener than a politician. Now he lies full-length, then half-length, obliquely, transversely, head and feet quite across the bed; and none accuses him of tergiversation. Within the four curtains he is absolute. They are his Mare Clausum. How sickness enlarges the dimensions of a man’s self to himself! He is his own exclusive object. Supreme selfishness is inculcated on him as his only duty. ’Tis the two Tables of the Law to him. He has nothing to think of but how to get well. What passes out of doors or within them, so he hear not the jarring of them, affects him not.”

In this climate a sight of the sun is prized; but we love to see it most from bed. A dormitory fronting the east, therefore, so that the early sunbeams may rouse us to the dewy beauties of morning, we love. Let there also be festooned roses without the window, that on opening it the perfume may pervade the realms of bed. Our night-bower should be simple – neat as a fairy’s cell, and ever perfumed with the sweet air of heaven. It is not a place for showy things, or costly. As fire is the presiding genius in other rooms, so let water, symbol of purity, be in the ascendant here; water, fresh and unturbid as the thoughts that here make their home – water, to wash away the dust and sweat of a weary world. Let no fracas disturb the quiet of the dormitory. We go there for repose. Our tasks and our cares are left outside, only to be put on again with our hat and shoes in the morning. It is an asylum from the bustle of life – it is the inner shrine of our household gods – and should be respected accordingly. We never entered during the ordinary process of bed-making – pillows tossed here, blankets and sheets pitched hither and thither in wildest confusion, chairs and pitchers in the middle of the floor, feathers and dust everywhere – without a jarring sense that sacrilege was going on, and that the genius loci had departed. Rude hands were profaning the home of our slumbers!

A sense of security pervades the dormitory. A healthy man in bed is free from everything but dreams, and once in a life-time, or after adjudging the Cheese Premium at an Agricultural Show – the nightmare. We once heard a worthy gentleman, blessed with a very large family of daughters, declare he had no peace in his house except in bed. There we feel as if in a city of refuge, secure alike from the brawls of earth and the storms of heaven. Lightning, say old ladies, won’t come through, blankets. Even tigers, says Humboldt, “will not attack a man in his hammock.” Hitting a man when he’s down is stigmatized as villanous all the world over; and lions will rather sit with an empty stomach for hours than touch a man before he awakes. Tricks upon a sleeper! Oh, villanous! Every perpetrator of such unutterable treachery should be put beyond the pale of society. The First of April should have no place in the calendar of the dormitory. We would have the maxim, “Let sleeping dogs lie,” extended to the human race. And an angry dog, certainly, is a man roused needlessly from his slumbers. What an outcry we Northmen raised against the introduction of Greenwich time, which defrauded us of fifteen minutes’ sleep in the morning; and how indiscriminate the objurgations lavished upon printers’ devils! Of all sinners against the nocturnal comfort of literary men, these imps are the foremost; and possibly it was from their malpractices in such matters that they first acquired their diabolic cognomen.

The nightcap is not an elegant head-dress, but its comfort is undeniable. It is a diadem of night; and what tranquillity follows our self-coronation! It is priceless as the invisible cap of Fortunatus; and, viewless beneath its folds, our cares cannot find us out. It is graceless. Well; what then? It is not meant for the garish eye of day, nor for the quizzing glass of our fellow-men, or of the ridiculing race of women; neither does it outrage any taste for the beautiful in the happy sleeper himself. We speak as bachelors, to whom the pleasures of a manifold existence are unknown. Possibly the æsthetics of night are not uncared for when a man has another self to please, and when a pair of lovely eyes are fixed admiringly on his upper story; but such is the selfishness of human nature, that we suspect this abnegation of comfort will not long survive the honeymoon. The French, ever enamored of effect, and who, we verily believe, even sleep, “posé,” sometimes substitute the many-colored silken handkerchief for the graceless “bonnet-de-nuit.” But all such substitutes are less comfortable and more troublesome; and of all irritating things, the most irritable is a complex operation in undressing. Æsthetics at night, and for the weary! No, no. The weary man frets at every extra button or superfluous knot, he counts impatiently every second that keeps him from his couch, and flies to the arms of sleep as to those of his mistress. Nevertheless, French novelette writers make a great outcry against nightcaps. We remember an instance. A husband – rather good-looking fellow – suspects that his wife is beginning to have too tender thoughts towards a glossy-ringletted Lothario who is then staying with them. So, having accidentally discovered that Lothario slept in a huge peeked nightcowl, and knowing that ridicule would prove the most effectual disenchanter, he fastened a string to his guest’s bell, and passed it into his own room.

At the dead of night, when all were fast asleep, suddenly Lothario’s bell rang furiously. Upstarted the lady – “their guest must be ill;” – and, accompanied by her husband, elegantly coiffed in a turbaned silk handkerchief, she entered the room whence the alarum had sounded. They find Lothario sitting up in bed – his cowl rising pyramid-fashion, a fool’s cap all but the bells – bewildered and in ludicrous consternation at being surprised thus by the fair Angelica; and, unable to conceal his chagrin, he completes his discomfiture by bursting out in wrathful abuse of his laughing host for so betraying his weakness for nightcaps.

The Poetry of the Dormitory! It is an inviting but too delicate a subject for our rough hands. Do not the very words call up a vision? By the light of the stars we see a lovely head resting on a downy pillow; the bloom of the rose is on that young cheek, and the half-parted lips murmur as in a dream: “Edward!” Love is lying light at her heart, and its fairy wand is showing her visions. May her dreams be happy! “Edward!” Was it a sigh that followed that gentle invocation? What would the youth give to hear that murmur, – to gaze like yonder stars on his slumbering love. Hush! are the morning-stars singing together – a lullaby to soothe the dreamer? A low dulcet strain floats in through the window; and soon, mingling with the breathings of the lute, the voice of youth. The harmony penetrates through the slumbering senses to the dreamer’s heart; and ere the golden curls are lifted from the pillow, she is conscious of all. The serenade begins anew. What does she hear?

“Stars of the summer night!
Far in yon azure deeps,
Hide, hide your golden light!
She sleeps!
My lady sleeps!
Sleeps!

Dreams of the summer night!
Tell her her lover keeps
Watch! while in slumbers light
She sleeps
My lady sleeps!
Sleeps!”