On Being the Last to Bed

BED is a kind of solecism after all: one can’t quite imagine the angels tucking their heads under their wings or having any ado with blankets. Even the ‘young-eyed cherubim,’ one is sure, need no slumber to preserve that immortal youthfulness of gaze; and if man is a little lower than the angels, it may be because, however great and good he may become, he still must sleep.

Yet one aspires! There are nights when the ebullient soul refuses to simmer and sink to flat tepidity, when one can look the clock squarely in the face with ignoring insolence, when not even the thought of the inevitable drowsy morrow can send one packing to his pillow. Let the raveled sleave of care for once go unmended, and the white night have its way.

They’re all upstairs and asleep. Bless their dear hearts! we love them all; but one can’t play Robinson Crusoe with a family about — even he was at his best before that ill-omened day when Man Friday appeared. Herein lies the essential prosiness of the Swiss Family Robinson, that with all the turtles and other pleasing fauna of their marvelous isle, and despite the equally amazing flora, — distinctly I remember cloves, and there must have been yams, inevitable product of desert islands, combining the security of the potato with a name suggesting the lip-smackings of the more refined negroid types, — in spite of all these things, I say, good Robinson with all his interesting brood, crowned and completed by his admirable wife, was in no case to know the things which solitude, divinest mystagogue, reveals to her initiates.

That strained interval once tided over in which it is still possible that the voice of wifely counsel may recall the admitted difficulty of rising betimes, with Health and Wealth to greet one, the room becomes a microcosm. Need it be said that only one light is burning? There must be shadows, wherein Wonder may play at hide-and-seek, like Horace’s maidens among the ineffectual willows — and there is, too, the light bill. I repeat, the room is now a microcosm, complete, enclosed. Out-of-doors is a mere matter of conjecture, like the nature of the atom. The mind may posit various things. Perhaps the shrubbery has stolen down the hillside, lured by the unheard melodies of some unseen Amphion. Or perhaps — to dismiss the thought of such vegetable vagaries — it may be silently raining, and every leaf be lifting up her face in speechless rejoicing. The imagination even slips back to the habit of twoscore years ago, and considers the fairies. But more immediate things have also changed. The chairs have a settled look, as if resting. The armchair stretches out its arms, in solid, middle-aged fashion, like a stoutish person of some consequence, plump hands on fatter knees. The tables literally stand. It is the Hour of all the furniture — or would be, were the furniture granted its just privacy. The flowers in the vases look bored: they have been fresh all day, and counted upon this time to wilt in decent retirement. No self-respecting herb of the field likes to wither publicly. I cannot garden, but this much I know.

Now, in the midst of all this change, I too am changed. Proportion and perspective, shy in the stress of living, come back and arrange experience. All day long my mind has had to work; now — there is no other word for it — it fairly cavorts! So a tired horse astonishes us by his outrageous gallopading, when once the green grasses and the pleasant waters acquaint him that he is his own horse again.

Only the cat sleeps on, with a tentative ear hung out for signals from potential mice. A remarkable cat this, fully convinced, not that we keep a cat, but that he cherishes a few humans as pets. Between the intervals of letting him out and in, all day long, I manage to do a little work — and I am sure he thinks that I fall short of the standard of strict honor in so doing. The cat rises and the mood, birdlike, flies away. Arched back, extended paw, and the miaou of tolerant contempt apprise me that it is again his will and pleasure to walk abroad. This time, though, the man triumphs. Cat under my left arm, candle in my right hand, I reach the cellar stairs and put him down. He runs to the bottom with ridiculous, unfeline strides, and the air of having said ‘cellar’ when he spoke. I dispose of a portion of my income for the benefit of the furnace, and crawl yawning up the stairs. Bed has its merits after all. The last object I see is the cat, sitting upright in his box, his back pointedly turned, with the attitude of one who will presently remove his shoes, if only I will have the decency to withdraw. Good-night, then — ‘and so, to bed.’