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Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers

T >> Thomas De Quincey >> Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers




At this stage of her progress, and whilst the agonizing question seemed
yet as indeterminate as ever, Kate's struggle with despair, which had
been greatly soothed by the fervor of her prayer, revolved upon her in
deadlier blackness. All turned, she saw, upon a race against time, and
the arrears of the road; and she, poor thing! how little qualified
could _she_ be, in such a condition, for a race of any kind; and
against two such obstinate brutes as time and space! This hour of the
progress, this noontide of Kate's struggle, must have been the very
crisis of the whole. Despair was rapidly tending to ratify itself.
Hope, in any degree, would be a cordial for sustaining her efforts. But
to flounder along a dreadful chaos of snow-drifts, or snow-chasms,
towards a point of rock, which, being turned, should expose only
another interminable succession of the same character--might
_that_ be endured by ebbing spirits, by stiffening limbs, by the
ghastly darkness that was now beginning to gather upon the inner eye?
And, if once despair became triumphant, all the little arrear of
physical strength would collapse at once.

Oh! verdure of human fields, cottages of men and women, (that now
suddenly seemed all brothers and sisters,) cottages with children
around them at play, that are so far below--oh! summer and spring,
flowers and blossoms, to which, as to _his_ symbols, God has given
the gorgeous privilege of rehearsing for ever upon earth his most
mysterious perfection--Life, and the resurrections of Life--is it
indeed true, that poor Kate must never see you more? Mutteringly she
put that question to herself. But strange are the caprices of ebb and
flow in the deep fountains of human sensibilities. At this very moment,
when the utter incapacitation of despair was gathering fast at Kate's
heart, a sudden lightening shot far into her spirit, a reflux almost
supernatural, from the earliest effects of her prayer. A thought had
struck her all at once, and this thought prompted her immediately to
turn round. Perhaps it was in some blind yearning after the only
memorials of life in this frightful region, that she fixed her eye upon
a point of hilly ground by which she identified the spot near which the
three corpses were lying. The silence seemed deeper than ever. Neither
was there any phantom memorial of life for the eye or for the ear, nor
wing of bird, nor echo, nor green leaf, nor creeping thing, that moved
or stirred, upon the soundless waste. Oh, what a relief to this burthen
of silence would be a human groan! Here seemed a motive for still
darker despair. And yet, at that very moment, a pulse of joy began to
thaw the ice at her heart. It struck her, as she reviewed the ground,
that undoubtedly it had been for some time slowly descending. Her
senses were much dulled by suffering; but this thought it was,
suggested by a sudden apprehension of a continued descending movement,
which had caused her to turn round. Sight had confirmed the suggestion
first derived from her own steps. The distance attained was now
sufficient to establish the tendency. Oh, yes, yes, to a certainty she
had been descending for some time. Frightful was the spasm of joy which
whispered that the worst was over. It was as when the shadow of
midnight, that murderers had relied on, is passing away from your
beleagured shelter, and dawn will soon be manifest. It was as when a
flood, that all day long has raved against the walls of your house, has
ceased (you suddenly think) to rise; yes! measured by a golden plummet,
it _is_ sinking beyond a doubt, and the darlings of your household
are saved. Kate faced round in agitation to her proper direction. She
saw, what previously, in her stunning confusion, she had _not_
seen, that, hardly two stones' throw in advance, lay a mass of rock,
split as into a gateway. Through that opening it now became probable
that the road was lying. Hurrying forward, she passed within the
natural gates. Gates of paradise they were. Ah, what a vista did that
gateway expose before her dazzled eye? what a revelation of heavenly
promise? Full two miles long, stretched a long narrow glen, everywhere
descending, and in many parts rapidly. All was now placed beyond a
doubt. She _was_ descending--for hours, perhaps, _had_ been
descending insensibly, the mighty staircase. Yes, Kate is leaving
behind her the kingdom of frost and the victories of death. Two miles
farther there may be rest, if there is not shelter. And very soon, as
the crest of her new-born happiness, she distinguished at the other end
of that rocky vista, a pavilion-shaped mass of dark green foliage--a
belt of trees, such as we see in the lovely parks of England, but
islanded by a screen (though not everywhere occupied by the
usurpations) of a thick bushy undergrowth. Oh, verdure of dark olive
foliage, offered suddenly to fainting eyes, as if by some winged
patriarchal herald of wrath relenting--solitary Arab's tent, rising
with saintly signals of peace, in the dreadful desert, must Kate indeed
die even yet, whilst she sees but cannot reach you? Outpost on the
frontier of man's dominions, standing within life, but looking out upon
everlasting death, wilt thou hold up the anguish of thy mocking
invitation, only to betray? Never, perhaps, in this world was the line
so exquisitely grazed, that parts salvation and ruin. As the dove to
her dove-cot from the swooping hawk--as the Christian pinnace to
Christian batteries, from the bloody Mahometan corsair, so flew--so
tried to fly towards the anchoring thickets, that, alas! could not
weigh their anchors and make sail to meet her--the poor exhausted Kate
from the vengeance of pursuing frost.

And she reached them; staggering, fainting, reeling, she entered
beneath the canopy of umbrageous trees. But, as oftentimes, the Hebrew
fugitive to a city of refuge, flying for his life before the avenger of
blood, was pressed so hotly that, on entering the archway of what
seemed to _him_ the heavenly city-gate, as he kneeled in deep
thankfulness to kiss its holy merciful shadow, he could not rise again,
but sank instantly with infant weakness into sleep--sometimes to wake
no more; so sank, so collapsed upon the ground, without power to choose
her couch, and with little prospect of ever rising again to her feet,
the martial nun. She lay as luck had ordered it, with her head screened
by the undergrowth of bushes, from any gales that might arise; she lay
exactly as she sank, with her eyes up to heaven; and thus it was that
the nun saw, before falling asleep, the two sights that upon earth are
fittest for the closing eyes of a nun, whether destined to open again,
or to close for ever. She saw the interlacing of boughs overhead
forming a dome, that seemed like the dome of a cathedral. She saw
through the fretwork of the foliage, another dome, far beyond, the dome
of an evening sky, the dome of some heavenly cathedral, not built with
hands. She saw upon this upper dome the vesper lights, all alive with
pathetic grandeur of coloring from a sunset that had just been rolling
down like a chorus. She had not, till now, consciously observed the
time of day; whether it were morning, or whether it were afternoon, in
her confusion she had not distinctly known. But now she whispered to
herself--'_It is evening_:' and what lurked half unconsciously in
these words might be--'The sun, that rejoices, has finished his daily
toil; man, that labors, has finished _his_; I, that suffer, have
finished mine.' That might be what she thought, but what she
_said_ was--'It is evening; and the hour is come when the
_Angelus_ is sounding through St. Sebastian.' What made her think
of St. Sebastian, so far away in depths of space and time? Her brain
was wandering, now that her feet were _not_; and, because her eyes
had descended from the heavenly to the earthly dome, _that_ made
her think of earthly cathedrals, and of cathedral choirs, and of St.
Sebastian's chapel, with its silvery bells that carried the
_Angelus_ far into mountain recesses. Perhaps, as her wanderings
increased, she thought herself back in childhood; became 'pussy' once
again; fancied that all since then was a frightful dream; that she was
not upon the dreadful Andes, but still kneeling in the holy chapel at
vespers; still innocent as then; loved as then she had been loved; and
that all men were liars, who said her hand was ever stained with blood.
Little enough is mentioned of the delusions which possessed her; but
that little gives a key to the impulse which her palpitating heart
obeyed, and which her rambling brain for ever reproduced in multiplying
mirrors. Restlessness kept her in waking dreams for a brief half hour.
But then, fever and delirium would wait no longer; the killing
exhaustion would no longer be refused; the fever, the delirium, and the
exhaustion, swept in together with power like an army with banners; and
the nun ceased through the gathering twilight any more to watch the
cathedrals of earth, or the more solemn cathedrals that rose in the
heavens above.

All night long she slept in her verdurous St. Bernard's hospice without
awaking, and whether she would _ever_ awake seemed to depend upon
an accident. The slumber that towered above her brain was like that
fluctuating silvery column which stands in scientific tubes sinking,
rising, deepening, lightening, contracting, expanding; or like the mist
that sits, through sultry afternoons, upon the river of the American
St. Peter, sometimes rarefying for minutes into sunny gauze, sometimes
condensing for hours into palls of funeral darkness. You fancy that,
after twelve hours of _any_ sleep, she must have been refreshed;
better at least than she was last night. Ah! but sleep is not always
sent upon missions of refreshment. Sleep is sometimes the secret
chamber in which death arranges his machinery. Sleep is sometimes that
deep mysterious atmosphere, in which the human spirit is slowly
unsettling its wings for flight from earthly tenements. It is now eight
o'clock in the morning; and, to all appearance, if Kate should receive
no aid before noon, when next the sun is departing to his rest, Kate
will be departing to hers; when next the sun is holding out his golden
Christian signal to man, that the hour is come for letting his anger go
down, Kate will be sleeping away for ever into the arms of brotherly
forgiveness.

What is wanted just now for Kate, supposing Kate herself to be wanted
by this world, is, that this world would be kind enough to send her a
little brandy before it is too late. The simple truth was, and a truth
which I have known to take place in more ladies than Kate, who died or
did _not_ die, accordingly, as they had or had not an adviser like
myself, capable of giving so sound an opinion, that the jewelly star of
life had descended too far down the arch towards setting, for any
chance of re-ascending by _spontaneous_ effort. The fire was still
burning in secret, but needed to be rekindled by potent artificial
breath. It lingered, and _might_ linger, but would never culminate
again without some stimulus from earthly vineyards. [Footnote: Though
not exactly in the same circumstances as Kate, or sleeping, _à la
belle étoile_, on a declivity of the Andes, I have known (or heard
circumstantially reported) the cases of many ladies besides Kate, who
were in precisely the same critical danger of perishing for want of a
little brandy. A dessert spoonful or two would have saved them. Avaunt!
you wicked 'Temperance' medallist! repent as fast as ever you can, or,
perhaps the next time we hear of you, _anasarca_ and _hydro-
thorax_ will be running after you to punish your shocking excesses
in water. Seriously, the case is one of constant recurrence, and
constantly ending fatally from _unseasonable_ and pedantic rigor
of temperance. The fact is, that the medical profession composes the
most generous and liberal body of men amongst us; taken generally, by
much the most enlightened; but professionally, the most timid. Want of
boldness in the administration of opium, &c., though they can be bold
enough with mercury, is their besetting infirmity. And from this
infirmity females suffer most. One instance I need hardly mention, the
fatal case of an august lady, mourned by nations, with respect to whom
it was, and is, the belief of multitudes to this hour (well able to
judge), that she would have been saved by a glass of brandy; and her
attendant, who shot himself, came to think so too late--too late for
_her_, and too late for himself. Amongst many cases of the same
nature, which personally I have been acquainted with, twenty years ago,
a man, illustrious for his intellectual accomplishments, mentioned to
me that his own wife, during her first or second confinement, was
suddenly reported to him, by one of her female attendants, (who slipped
away unobserved by the medical people,) as undoubtedly sinking fast. He
hurried to her chamber, and _saw_ that it was so. The presiding
medical authority, however, was inexorable. 'Oh, by no means,' shaking
his ambrosial wig, 'any stimulant at this crisis would be fatal.' But
no authority could overrule the concurrent testimony of all symptoms,
and of all unprofessional opinions. By some pious falsehood my friend
smuggled the doctor out of the room, and immediately smuggled a glass
of brandy into the poor lady's lips. She recovered with magical power.
The doctor is now dead, and went to his grave under the delusive
persuasion--that not any vile glass of brandy, but the stern refusal of
all brandy, was the thing that saved his collapsing patient. The
patient herself, who might naturally know something of the matter, was
of a different opinion. She sided with the factious body around her
bed, (comprehending all beside the doctor,) who felt sure that death
was rapidly approaching, _barring_ that brandy. The same result in
the same appalling crisis, I have known repeatedly produced by twenty-
five drops of laudanum. An obstinate man will say--'Oh, never listen to
a non-medical man like this writer. Consult in such a case your medical
adviser.' You will, will you? Then let me tell you, that you are
missing the very logic of all I have been saying for the improvement of
blockheads, which is--that you should consult any man _but_ a
medical man, since no other man has any obstinate prejudice of
professional timidity. N. B.--I prescribe for Kate _gratis_,
because she, poor thing! has so little to give. But from other ladies,
who may have the happiness to benefit by my advice, I expect a fee--not
so large a one considering the service--a flowering plant, suppose the
_second_ best in their collection. I know it would be of no use to
ask for the _very_ best, (which else I could wish to do,) because
that would only be leading them into little fibs. I don't insist on a
_Yucca gloriosa_, or a _Magnolia speciosissima_, (I hope
there _is_ such a plant)--a rose or a violet will do. I am sure
there is such a plant as that. And if they settle their debts justly, I
shall very soon be master of the prettiest little conservatory in
England. For, treat it not as a jest, reader; no case of timid practice
is so fatally frequent.] Kate was ever lucky, though ever unfortunate;
and the world, being of my opinion that Kate was worth saving, made up
its mind about half-past eight o'clock in the morning to save her. Just
at that time, when the night was over, and its sufferings were hidden--
in one of those intermitting gleams that for a moment or two lightened
the clouds of her slumber, Kate's dull ear caught a sound that for
years had spoken a familiar language to _her_. What was it? It was
the sound, though muffled and deadened, like the ear that heard it, of
horsemen advancing. Interpreted by the tumultuous dreams of Kate, was
it the cavalry of Spain, at whose head so often she had charged the
bloody Indian scalpers? Was it, according to the legend of ancient
days, cavalry that had been sown by her brother's blood, cavalry that
rose from the ground on an inquest of retribution, and were racing up
the Andes to seize her? Her dreams that had opened sullenly to the
sound waited for no answer, but closed again into pompous darkness.
Happily, the horsemen had caught the glimpse of some bright ornament,
clasp, or aiguillette, on Kate's dress. They were hunters and foresters
from below; servants in the household of a beneficent lady; and in some
pursuit of flying game had wandered beyond their ordinary limits.
Struck by the sudden scintillation from Kate's dress played upon by the
morning sun, they rode up to the thicket. Great was their surprise,
great their pity, to see a young officer in uniform stretched within
the bushes upon the ground, and perhaps dying. Borderers from childhood
on this dreadful frontier, sacred to winter and death, they understood
the case at once. They dismounted: and with the tenderness of women,
raising the poor frozen cornet in their arms, washed her temples with
brandy, whilst one, at intervals, suffered a few drops to trickle
within her lips. As the restoration of a warm bed was now most likely
to be successful, they lifted the helpless stranger upon a horse,
walking on each side with supporting arms. Once again our Kate is in
the saddle; once again a Spanish Caballador. But Kate's bridle-hand is
deadly cold. And her spurs, that she had never unfastened since leaving
the monastic asylum, hung as idle as the flapping sail that fills
unsteadily with the breeze upon a stranded ship.

This procession had some miles to go, and over difficult ground; but at
length it reached the forest-like park and the chateau of the wealthy
proprietress. Kate was still half-frozen and speechless, except at
intervals. Heavens! can this corpse-like, languishing young woman, be
the Kate that once, in her radiant girlhood, rode with a handful of
comrades into a column of two thousand enemies, that saw her comrades
die, that persisted when all were dead, that tore from the heart of all
resistance the banner of her native Spain? Chance and change have
'written strange defeatures in her face.' Much is changed; but some
things are not changed: there is still kindness that overflows with
pity: there is still helplessness that asks for this pity without a
voice: she is now received by a Senora, not less kind than that
maternal aunt, who, on the night of her birth, first welcomed her to a
loving home; and she, the heroine of Spain, is herself as helpless now
as that little lady who, then at ten minutes of age, was kissed and
blessed by all the household of St. Sebastian.

Let us suppose Kate placed in a warm bed. Let us suppose her in a few
hours recovering steady consciousness; in a few days recovering some
power of self-support; in a fortnight able to seek the gay saloon,
where the Senora was sitting alone, and rendering thanks, with that
deep sincerity which ever characterized our wild-hearted Kate, for the
critical services received from that lady and her establishment.

This lady, a widow, was what the French call a _métisse_, the Spaniards
a _mestizza_; that is, the daughter of a genuine Spaniard, and an
Indian mother. I shall call her simply a _creole_, [Footnote:
'Creole.'--At that time the infusion of negro or African blood was
small. Consequently none of the negro hideousness was diffused. After
these intercomplexities had arisen between all complications of descent
from three original strands, European, American, African, the
distinctions of social consideration founded on them bred names so
many, that a court calendar was necessary to keep you from blundering.
As yet, the varieties were few. Meantime, the word _creole_ has always
been misapplied in our English colonies to a person (though of strictly
European blood,) simply because _born_ in the West Indies. In this
English use, it expresses the same difference as the Romans indicated
by _Hispanus_ and _Hispanicus_. The first meant a person of Spanish
blood, a native of Spain; the second, a Roman born in Spain. So of
_Germanus_ and _Germanicus_, _Italus_ and _Italicus_, _Anglus_ and
_Anglicus_, &c.; an important distinction, on which see Casaubon _apud
Scriptores. Hist. Augustan._] which will indicate her want of pure
Spanish blood sufficiently to explain her deference for those who had
it. She was a kind, liberal woman; rich rather more than needed where
there were no opera boxes to rent--a widow about fifty years old in the
wicked world's account, some forty-four in her own; and happy, above
all, in the possession of a most lovely daughter, whom even the wicked
world did not accuse of more than sixteen years. This daughter, Juana,
was--But stop--let her open the door of the saloon in which the Senora
and the cornet are conversing, and speak for herself. She did so, after
an hour had passed; which length of time, to _her_ that never had any
business whatever in her innocent life, seemed sufficient to settle the
business of the old world and the new. Had Pietro Diaz (as Catalina now
called herself) been really a Peter, and not a sham Peter, what a
vision of loveliness would have rushed upon his sensibilities as the
door opened! Do not expect me to describe her, for which, however,
there are materials extant, sleeping in archives, where they have slept
for two hundred and twenty years. It is enough that she is reported to
have united the stately tread of Andalusian women with the innocent
voluptuousness of Peruvian eyes. As to her complexion and figure, be it
known that Juana's father was a gentleman from Grenada, having in his
veins the grandest blood of all this earth, blood of Goths and Vandals,
tainted (for which Heaven be thanked!) twice over with blood of Arabs--
once through Moors, once through Jews; [Footnote: It is well known,
that the very reason why the Spanish of all nations became the most
gloomily jealous of a Jewish cross in the pedigree, was because, until
the vigilance of the Church rose into ferocity, in no nation was such a
cross so common. The hatred of fear is ever the deepest. And men hated
the Jewish taint, as once in Jerusalem they hated the leprosy, because
even whilst they raved against it, the secret proofs of it might be
detected amongst their own kindred, even as in the Temple, whilst once
a king rose in mutiny against the priesthood, (2 Chron. xxvi 16-20,)
suddenly the leprosy that dethroned him, blazed out upon his forehead.]
whilst from her grandmother, Juana drew the deep subtle melancholy and
the beautiful contours of limb which belong to the Indian race--a race
destined silently and slowly to fade from the earth. No awkwardness was
or could be in this antelope, when gliding with forest grace into the
room--no town-bred shame--nothing but the unaffected pleasure of one
who wishes to speak a fervent welcome, but knows not if she ought--the
astonishment of a Miranda, bred in utter solitude, when first beholding
a princely Ferdinand--and just so much reserve as to remind you, that
if Catalina thought fit to dissemble her sex, she did _not_. And
consider, reader, if you look back and are a great arithmetician, that
whilst the Senora had only fifty per cent of Spanish blood, Juana had
seventy-five; so that her Indian melancholy after all was swallowed up
for the present by her Vandal, by her Arab, by her Spanish fire.

Catalina, seared as she was by the world, has left it evident in her
memoirs that she was touched more than she wished to be by this
innocent child. Juana formed a brief lull for Catalina in her too
stormy existence. And if for _her_ in this life the sweet reality
of a sister had been possible, here was the sister she would have
chosen. On the other hand, what might Juana think of the cornet? To
have been thrown upon the kind hospitalities of her native home, to
have been rescued by her mother's servants from that fearful death
which, lying but a few miles off, had filled her nursery with
traditionary tragedies,--_that_ was sufficient to create an
interest in the stranger. But his bold martial demeanor, his yet
youthful style of beauty, his frank manners, his animated conversation
that reported a hundred contests with suffering and peril, wakened for
the first time her admiration. Men she had never seen before, except
menial servants, or a casual priest. But here was a gentleman, young
like herself, that rode in the cavalry of Spain--that carried the
banner of the only potentate whom Peruvians knew of--the King of the
Spains and the Indies--that had doubled Cape Horn, that had crossed the
Andes, that had suffered shipwreck, that had rocked upon fifty storms,
and had wrestled for life through fifty battles.

The reader knows all that followed. The sisterly love which Catalina
did really feel for this young mountaineer was inevitably misconstrued.
Embarrassed, but not able, from sincere affection, or almost in bare
propriety, to refuse such expressions of feeling as corresponded to the
artless and involuntary kindnesses of the ingenuous Juana, one day the
cornet was surprised by mamma in the act of encircling her daughter's
waist with his martial arm, although waltzing was premature by at least
two centuries in Peru. She taxed him instantly with dishonorably
abusing her confidence. The cornet made but a bad defence. He muttered
something about '_fraternal affection_,' about 'esteem,' and a
great deal of metaphysical words that are destined to remain
untranslated in their original Spanish. The good Senora, though she
could boast only of forty-four years' experience, was not altogether to
be '_had_' in that fashion--she was as learned as if she had been
fifty, and she brought matters to a speedy crisis. 'You are a
Spaniard,' she said, 'a gentleman, therefore; _remember_ that you
are a gentleman. This very night, if your intentions are not serious,
quit my house. Go to Tucuman; you shall command my horses and servants;
but stay no longer to increase the sorrow that already you will have
left behind you. My daughter loves you. That is sorrow enough, if you
are trifling with us. But, if not, and you also love _her_, and
can be happy in our solitary mode of life, stay with us--stay for ever.
Marry Juana with my free consent. I ask not for wealth. Mine is
sufficient for you both.' The cornet protested that the honor was one
never contemplated by _him_--that it was too great--that--. But,
of course, reader, you know that 'gammon' flourishes in Peru, amongst
the silver mines, as well as in some more boreal lands that produce
little better than copper and tin. 'Tin,' however, has its uses. The
delighted Senora overruled all objections, great and small; and she
confirmed Juana's notion that the business of two worlds could be
transacted in an hour, by settling her daughter's future happiness in
exactly twenty minutes. The poor, weak Catalina, not acting now in any
spirit of recklessness, grieving sincerely for the gulf that was
opening before her, and yet shrinking effeminately from the momentary
shock that would be inflicted by a firm adherence to her duty, clinging
to the anodyne of a short delay, allowed herself to be installed as the
lover of Juana. Considerations of convenience, however, postponed the
marriage. It was requisite to make various purchases; and for this, it
was requisite to visit Tucuman, where, also, the marriage ceremony
could be performed with more circumstantial splendor. To Tucuman,
therefore, after some weeks' interval, the whole party repaired. And at
Tucuman it was that the tragical events arose, which, whilst
interrupting such a mockery for ever, left the poor Juana still happily
deceived, and never believing for a moment that hers was a rejected or
a deluded heart.

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