# Francesca Carrara/Chapter 54

CHAPTER XXVII.
"Farewell! but not for long."
Summer had come—bright and beautiful as her prophecy, spring, had foretold, in the sweet oracles of opening buds and expanding leaves; but Francesca wandered no more through the shadowy depths of the forest, nor loitered amid the pleasant paths of the garden. The green grass and the wild flowers of the meadow were being mown; but she only thought of the cheerful season when the air came laden with the scent of the fragrant hay, and Guido would ask what new and delicious odour came upon the morning air. Francesca's sole haunt was now the darkened chamber of the dying. There her light step suited its silent fall to the feint throbbing of the sick man's pulse; there her eye wore the tender guile of unshed tears, suppressed even when the sufferer slept, lest he should mark their traces when he ​awoke, and he pained by grief, which he vainly deemed was turned into hope.
Day and night she hung over Guido's pillow—her sweet face, like a mirror, reflecting every change of his—pale as he beside whom she was watching. Only for the briefest period would she allow Lucy to take her place; and when, worn out, she slumbered, it was to dream she was still at his side. Ah! human nature is beautiful at such a time—beautiful amid its agony. There was something so touching in the patience with which Guido endured many a pang that tortured every nerve, lest an expression of pain should wring his sister's heart, who, alas! knew too well the kindly deceit, and almost wished him to complain, as she wiped away the dew upon his forehead.
Guido suffered much,—weakness made every movement pain; and yet he was haunted by that feverish restlessness, which is one of the worst features of the disease. The food he longed for one moment, he loathed when he came to taste it. The struggle between body and soul which takes place in this lingering illness is terrible to witness—it is as if two mysterious powers contended together. The soul, calm, prepared, or rather pining for its departure,—the body, still bound to earth, resists the coming sleep to the last; and these two ​opposites, never congenial, show how little they have in common—the stronger as their final separation approaches.
"I can feel even here," said Guido, raising himself with some difficulty on his weary pillow, "How lovely the day is;" and he gazed on the lattices thrown open to the utmost, and only curtained by the honeysuckle. The casements were in shade themselves, and a cool breeze just waved the ruby tendrils and their veined clusters; but beyond, you could see that sunshine rested on the trees, and that the deep blue sky was without a cloud.
"You are very pale, my own dearest," he continued; "I wish you would go forth, and return with tidings of some of our old haunts. A little colour on those wan cheeks would do me a world of good."
Francesca looked towards the window, and turned sickening from its glad and golden light; while her eyes fixed more fondly upon Guido's face, as if every moment were now precious. Affection has its own true sympathy, and he never again asked her to leave him. He felt that the tender watch which she now kept was her only consolation.
Alas! in this our valley of the shadow of death, ​how many such vigils have been kept, and are keeping!—it is a common scene:—the still and darkened room—darkened, for the eyes are too weak to bear that light which is departing from them for ever; where, if a sunbeam enters, it is like an unwelcome visitor; where one sweet and watchful nurse glides like a shadow;—so subdued is every movement, the loudest noise in that still chamber is the beating of the sufferer's heart, or the low music of a whispered question, fainter than even the failing voice which answers.
How many dreary nights are passed in feverish wakefulness on one side, and dreadful solicitude on the other! It seems worst to die at night; the blackness throws its own gloom, and the damp on the ever cold midnight hour is as if disembodied spirits brought with them the chill of the grave, which only then they are permitted to quit. How long the minutes seem when sleep is banished by pain and anxiety! The single pale and shaded light, flinging round its fantastic shapes—that "visible darkness," enough to try the strongest nerves; and how much more so, when the bodily strength is worn down, and the imagination, excited by one ever-present dread, is wound up to admit all forms of fearful fantasy!
Francesca would start from a moment's ​drowsiness, during which the delusive power had transported her to scenes afar off—for sleep reverses all other rules, and its dominion is greatest where its influence is least. It is the lightest slumber that is most haunted with visionary creations. She awakened with sudden consciousness—the myrtle groves of her childhood yet around her, and the voices of her young companions still glad in her ear. Then came the wonder and confusion attendant on fancies disappearing before realities;—"Where am I?" is the first idea of the roused sleeper. Gradually the darkened room seems to emerge from its shadows; familiar objects strike upon the senses—and memory is never so terribly distinct as on its first reviving from such momentary lethargy.
In an instant Francesca would become perfectly collected—every past event would stand out singularly clear, and she would turn, take one look at Guido, and then breathe again. One idea was ever uppermost; she might gaze upon his face, and find that life had departed even during that short lull of forgetfulness! Alas! the weakness of the body is triumphant in a long struggle over both strong love and will; and yet, during the months that Francesca watched beside that bed of death, never, for five minutes together, ​were those affectionate eyes closed in even that passing oblivion. When forced to leave him, which she could never be prevailed upon to do till utterly exhausted, she would sleep heavily for some hours; but the first moment of waking was fearful. She would start from her pillow and rush to his room, and, when Lucy's gentle smile reassured her, lean, faint and breathless, against the wall, till relieved by tears; while the meeting between her and Guido was like the tender welcome given after a long absence.
"You are very weak to-day, dearest," exclaimed Francesca, as her arm supported Guido's head.
"And yet I feel all my faculties so strong within me—my memory so clear, my imagination so powerful—that I cannot think that I shall die so soon as I had hoped."
"Hoped?" whispered his sister.
"Alas!" replied he, "we are selfish even on our death-bed: and I have desired relief even at the cost at rending asunder life's last and fondest link."
"It is I that am selfish," murmured she. "God knows, we ought to be thankful when those we love stand on the verge of another existence. It may be better, it cannot be worse, than our present ​life. Weary, disappointed, and desolate as it is, why should I wish such a pilgrimage to he prolonged? Were we wise, we should weep when life begins, and only rejoice at the close."
Francesca spoke in the bitterness of a wounded spirit, whose burden is too heavy to bear. All patient hope, all cheerful submission, had for the time passed away; but oh! the victory of the grave is terrible.
"We shall not separate for long," continued Guido. "The heart has its own revelations; and the aspect of the invisible, so soon to be known, casts its shadows, which are omens, as we draw unto its presence. I feel the love which binds me to you stronger every hour;—would it not weaken with all my other hopes and earthly thoughts, were I about to part from you, as I have done with them, for ever? Francesca, beloved, we are alike; and neither are made of materials that ever yet lasted. Think of those who have gone down to an early grave—are they not the good, the beautiful, those of the passionate feeling and the dreaming hope? They have but a brief time in this world, for their nature belongs to another. Victims of an inexorable destiny, they suffer, they struggle, till at last the trial is ended, and the tomb is the dark and awful gate through which they pass into ​another sphere; and that higher, purer, and better lot is our own."
The crimson burnt upon his cheek, and his eyes kindled with light—all that was beautiful and spiritual in his nature speaking in his face.
"You must not talk," said his sister; "it makes you feverish."
"It matters little," replied he, with a faint smile; but, nevertheless, resting his head on her shoulder to recover himself. "It is strange," he continued, "How vividly, now that I have no future on this earth, its past rises before me. I often lie for hours with the scenes of my earlier youth so present, that they seem actual. Francesca; I have been unhappy, very unhappy; and scarcely may I say that it is past even now. Perhaps, at our birth, we have a certain portion of enjoyment allotted to us, and this is to last us through our life; hence that fear which so often comes upon us, even in our most delighted moment—a dread of we know not what. It is a warning from within, that we are rashly revelling in that heart-wealth of which so small a pittance is ours. I was a very spendthrift with mine. I believe every one can look back to some particular period, and say, 'Dear and blessed time, how precious is your memory!' And yet we should ​have trembled in the presence of our happiness—we were then draining the sweet waters of a fountain, whose silver cord is soon loosened, and whose golden bowl is soon broken. Ah, dearest! do you remember the summer—'tis nearly four years since—when the acacia blossomed twice? Methinks it was typical, for the tree exhausted itself and perished, even of its own too great luxuriance. But do you not look back to that summer?"
For a moment the colour came into Francesca's pale countenance, for that was the summer when she first knew Evelyn; but it faded, and left her paler than before.
"We have paid dearly for that happiness since. Guido, dearest Guido, what can we have done to be so deceived, so wretched? Think but for a moment how precious, how great a gift, is the deep, strong, and trusting affection of the young heart; and how cruel is the fate which decrees it should be given, and in vain!"
"I have not courage, even now, to think of that," interrupted Guido, the damps rising heavily upon his forehead. Tenderly Francesca bent over him; she parted the thick moist clusters of his rich curls, and, bathing his temples with an aromatic essence, kissed him, and bade him sleep. But he was too much excited for rest. "Marie!" ​whispered he:—"It is months since I have breathed that name, but deem you that her image has not been present with me?—ay, present as when we wandered through the pine forest, her frank, sweet smile encouraging those dreams of the future at which she affected to laugh. But both then believed that the future was at their will. Ah, Francesca! who could have thought that the world would spoil a nature so kindly and yet so glad!"
Francesca repressed the answer which rose to her lips. She could have said that the Marie of Guido's love was indeed the creature of his fantasy. But when an allusion thus lingers to the last, it is worse than useless—it is cruel, cruel, to attempt its destruction.
"And yet," continued he, "How evil has her influence been over me! The imagination, which wasted itself in bringing her ever before me, inventing our discourse, combining every possible and impossible event, so that they did but bring us together—of what efforts was not this faculty capable, had it been more worthily exercised! It matters little, though—mine was destined to be an unfinished existence. I firmly believe that my mind has here been trained and tried by suffering, and that the development of its powers is reserved for another sphere."
​ To many, the visionary hope which is born of the imagination may seem the very mockery of nothing. We cannot imagine what we have never experienced. The imagination, the highest, the noblest, the most ethereal portion of our nature, lies in some almost dormant; and to such, how strange must the influence which it exercises appear! On one of the ideal temperament of Guido its power is despotic—it had coloured his life, and it threw its soft, sweet shadow over the bed of death.
"Oh! how passionately," added he, after a brief pause, "I desire to see her again, for the last time, to let her know the deep truth of a heart which has never worn image save her own—to gaze upon her with one long, last look of love, and leave with her an impression no crowd, no gaiety, might ever efface. We shall meet again, Francesca—not so Marie and I. Our natures are far apart—she has no share in my futurity. Our earthly is an eternal farewell."
He sank back, quite exhausted, on his pillow; and at last he slept, but his sleep was feverish and broken, and his waking was unrefreshed.