It did not fill the opening whence it rushed,and I crept through into a little cave,where I learned that,instead of hurrying tumultuously down a stair,it rose quietly from the ground at the back like the base of a large column,and ran along one side,nearly filling a deep,rather narrow channel.I considered the place,and saw that,if I could find a few fallen boughs long enough to lie across the channel,and large enough to bear a little weight without bending much,I might,with smaller branches and plenty of leaves,make upon them a comfortable couch,which the stream under would keep constantly warm.Then I ran back to see how my charge fared.
She was lying as I had left her.The heat had not brought her to life,but neither had it developed anything to check farther hope.
I got a few boulders out of the channel,and arranged them at her feet and on both sides of her.
Running again to the wood,I had not to search long ere I found some small boughs fit for my purpose--mostly of beech,their dry yellow leaves yet clinging to them.With these I had soon laid the floor of a bridge-bed over the torrent.I crossed the boughs with smaller branches,interlaced these with twigs,and buried all deep in leaves and dry moss.
When thus at length,after not a few journeys to the forest,I had completed a warm,dry,soft couch,I took the body once more,and set out with it for the cave.It was so light that now and then as I went I almost feared lest,when I laid it down,I should find it a skeleton after all;and when at last I did lay it gently on the pathless bridge,it was a greater relief to part with that fancy than with the weight.Once more I covered the body with a thick layer of leaves;and trying again to feed her with a grape,found to my joy that I could open the mouth a little farther.The grape,indeed,lay in it unheeded,but I hoped some of the juice might find its way down.
After an hour or two on the couch,she was no longer cold.The warmth of the brook had interpenetrated her frame--truly it was but a frame!--and she was warm to the touch;--not,probably,with the warmth of life,but with a warmth which rendered it more possible,if she were alive,that she might live.I had read of one in a trance lying motionless for weeks!
In that cave,day after day,night after night,seven long days and nights,I sat or lay,now waking now sleeping,but always watching.
Every morning I went out and bathed in the hot stream,and every morning felt thereupon as if I had eaten and drunk--which experience gave me courage to lay her in it also every day.Once as I did so,a shadow of discoloration on her left side gave me a terrible shock,but the next morning it had vanished,and I continued the treatment--every morning,after her bath,putting a fresh grape in her mouth.
I too ate of the grapes and other berries I found in the forest;but I believed that,with my daily bath in that river,I could have done very well without eating at all.
Every time I slept,I dreamed of finding a wounded angel,who,unable to fly,remained with me until at last she loved me and would not leave me;and every time I woke,it was to see,instead of an angel-visage with lustrous eyes,the white,motionless,wasted face upon the couch.But Adam himself,when first he saw her asleep,could not have looked more anxiously for Eve's awaking than Iwatched for this woman's.Adam knew nothing of himself,perhaps nothing of his need of another self;I,an alien from my fellows,had learned to love what I had lost!Were this one wasted shred of womanhood to disappear,I should have nothing in me but a consuming hunger after life!I forgot even the Little Ones:things were not amiss with them!here lay what might wake and be a woman!might actually open eyes,and look out of them upon me!
Now first I knew what solitude meant--now that I gazed on one who neither saw nor heard,neither moved nor spoke.I saw now that a man alone is but a being that may become a man--that he is but a need,and therefore a possibility.To be enough for himself,a being must be an eternal,self-existent worm!So superbly constituted,so simply complicate is man;he rises from and stands upon such a pedestal of lower physical organisms and spiritual structures,that no atmosphere will comfort or nourish his life,less divine than that offered by other souls;nowhere but in other lives can he breathe.Only by the reflex of other lives can he ripen his specialty,develop the idea of himself,the individuality that distinguishes him from every other.Were all men alike,each would still have an individuality,secured by his personal consciousness,but there would be small reason why there should be more than two or three such;while,for the development of the differences which make a large and lofty unity possible,and which alone can make millions into a church,an endless and measureless influence and reaction are indispensable.A man to be perfect--complete,that is,in having reached the spiritual condition of persistent and universal growth,which is the mode wherein he inherits the infinitude of his Father--must have the education of a world of fellow-men.Save for the hope of the dawn of life in the form beside me,I should have fled for fellowship to the beasts that grazed and did not speak.Better to go about with them--infinitely better--than to live alone!But with the faintest prospect of a woman to my friend,I,poorest of creatures,was yet a possible man!
