Twice-Told Tales (23 page)

"I must take away the bundle," whispered one.

"If he stirs, I'll strike," muttered the other.

But at this moment a dog scenting along the ground came in beneath the
maple trees and gazed alternately at each of these wicked men and then
at the quiet sleeper. He then lapped out of the fountain.

"Pshaw!" said one villain. "We can do nothing now. The dog's master
must be close behind."

"Let's take a drink and be off," said the other.

The man with the dagger thrust back the weapon into his bosom and drew
forth a pocket-pistol, but not of that kind which kills by a single
discharge. It was a flask of liquor with a block-tin tumbler screwed
upon the mouth. Each drank a comfortable dram, and left the spot with
so many jests and such laughter at their unaccomplished wickedness
that they might be said to have gone on their way rejoicing. In a few
hours they had forgotten the whole affair, nor once imagined that the
recording angel had written down the crime of murder against their
souls in letters as durable as eternity. As for David Swan, he still
slept quietly, neither conscious of the shadow of death when it hung
over him nor of the glow of renewed life when that shadow was
withdrawn. He slept, but no longer so quietly as at first. An hour's
repose had snatched from his elastic frame the weariness with which
many hours of toil had burdened it. Now he stirred, now moved his lips
without a sound, now talked in an inward tone to the noonday spectres
of his dream. But a noise of wheels came rattling louder and louder
along the road, until it dashed through the dispersing mist of David's
slumber; and there was the stagecoach. He started up with all his
ideas about him.

"Halloo, driver! Take a passenger?" shouted he.

"Room on top!" answered the driver.

Up mounted David, and bowled away merrily toward Boston without so
much as a parting glance at that fountain of dreamlike vicissitude. He
knew not that a phantom of Wealth had thrown a golden hue upon its
waters, nor that one of Love had sighed softly to their murmur, nor
that one of Death had threatened to crimson them with his blood, all
in the brief hour since he lay down to sleep. Sleeping or waking, we
hear not the airy footsteps of the strange things that almost happen.
Does it not argue a superintending Providence that, while viewless and
unexpected events thrust themselves continually athwart our path,
there should still be regularity enough in mortal life to render
foresight even partially available?

So! I have climbed high, and my reward is small. Here I stand with
wearied knees—earth, indeed, at a dizzy depth below, but heaven far,
far beyond me still. Oh that I could soar up into the very zenith,
where man never breathed nor eagle ever flew, and where the ethereal
azure melts away from the eye and appears only a deepened shade of
nothingness! And yet I shiver at that cold and solitary thought. What
clouds are gathering in the golden west with direful intent against
the brightness and the warmth of this summer afternoon? They are
ponderous air-ships, black as death and freighted with the tempest,
and at intervals their thunder—the signal-guns of that unearthly
squadron—rolls distant along the deep of heaven. These nearer heaps
of fleecy vapor—methinks I could roll and toss upon them the whole
day long—seem scattered here and there for the repose of tired
pilgrims through the sky. Perhaps—for who can tell?—beautiful
spirits are disporting themselves there, and will bless my mortal eye
with the brief appearance of their curly locks of golden light and
laughing faces fair and faint as the people of a rosy dream. Or where
the floating mass so imperfectly obstructs the color of the firmament
a slender foot and fairy limb resting too heavily upon the frail
support may be thrust through and suddenly withdrawn, while longing
fancy follows them in vain. Yonder, again, is an airy archipelago
where the sunbeams love to linger in their journeyings through space.
Every one of those little clouds has been dipped and steeped in
radiance which the slightest pressure might disengage in silvery
profusion like water wrung from a sea-maid's hair. Bright they are as
a young man's visions, and, like them, would be realized in dullness,
obscurity and tears. I will look on them no more.

In three parts of the visible circle whose centre is this spire I
discern cultivated fields, villages, white country-seats, the waving
lines of rivulets, little placid lakes, and here and there a rising
ground that would fain be termed a hill. On the fourth side is the
sea, stretching away toward a viewless boundary, blue and calm except
where the passing anger of a shadow flits across its surface and is
gone. Hitherward a broad inlet penetrates far into the land; on the
verge of the harbor formed by its extremity is a town, and over it am
I, a watchman, all-heeding and unheeded. Oh that the multitude of
chimneys could speak, like those of Madrid, and betray in smoky
whispers the secrets of all who since their first foundation have
assembled at the hearths within! Oh that the Limping Devil of Le Sage
would perch beside me here, extend his wand over this contiguity of
roofs, uncover every chamber and make me familiar with their
inhabitants! The most desirable mode of existence might be that of a
spiritualized Paul Pry hovering invisible round man and woman,
witnessing their deeds, searching into their hearts, borrowing
brightness from their felicity and shade from their sorrow, and
retaining no emotion peculiar to himself. But none of these things are
possible; and if I would know the interior of brick walls or the
mystery of human bosoms, I can but guess.

Yonder is a fair street extending north and south. The stately
mansions are placed each on its carpet of verdant grass, and a long
flight of steps descends from every door to the pavement. Ornamental
trees—the broadleafed horse-chestnut, the elm so lofty and bending,
the graceful but infrequent willow, and others whereof I know not the
names—grow thrivingly among brick and stone. The oblique rays of the
sun are intercepted by these green citizens and by the houses, so that
one side of the street is a shaded and pleasant walk. On its whole
extent there is now but a single passenger, advancing from the upper
end, and he, unless distance and the medium of a pocket spyglass do
him more than justice, is a fine young man of twenty. He saunters
slowly forward, slapping his left hand with his folded gloves, bending
his eyes upon the pavement, and sometimes raising them to throw a
glance before him. Certainly he has a pensive air. Is he in doubt or
in debt? Is he—if the question be allowable—in love? Does he strive
to be melancholy and gentlemanlike, or is he merely overcome by the
heat? But I bid him farewell for the present. The door of one of the
houses—an aristocratic edifice with curtains of purple and gold
waving from the windows—is now opened, and down the steps come two
ladies swinging their parasols and lightly arrayed for a summer
ramble. Both are young, both are pretty; but methinks the left-hand
lass is the fairer of the twain, and, though she be so serious at this
moment, I could swear that there is a treasure of gentle fun within
her. They stand talking a little while upon the steps, and finally
proceed up the street. Meantime, as their faces are now turned from
me, I may look elsewhere.

Upon that wharf and down the corresponding street is a busy contrast
to the quiet scene which I have just noticed. Business evidently has
its centre there, and many a man is wasting the summer afternoon in
labor and anxiety, in losing riches or in gaining them, when he would
be wiser to flee away to some pleasant country village or shaded lake
in the forest or wild and cool sea-beach. I see vessels unlading at
the wharf and precious merchandise strown upon the ground abundantly
as at the bottom of the sea—that market whence no goods return, and
where there is no captain nor supercargo to render an account of
sales. Here the clerks are diligent with their paper and pencils and
sailors ply the block and tackle that hang over the hold, accompanying
their toil with cries long-drawn and roughly melodious till the bales
and puncheons ascend to upper air. At a little distance a group of
gentlemen are assembled round the door of a warehouse. Grave seniors
be they, and I would wager—if it were safe, in these times, to be
responsible for any one—that the least eminent among them might vie
with old Vincentio, that incomparable trafficker of Pisa. I can even
select the wealthiest of the company. It is the elderly personage in
somewhat rusty black, with powdered hair the superfluous whiteness of
which is visible upon the cape of his coat. His twenty ships are
wafted on some of their many courses by every breeze that blows, and
his name, I will venture to say, though I know it not, is a familiar
sound among the far-separated merchants of Europe and the Indies.

But I bestow too much of my attention in this quarter. On looking
again to the long and shady walk I perceive that the two fair girls
have encountered the young man. After a sort of shyness in the
recognition, he turns back with them. Moreover, he has sanctioned my
taste in regard to his companions by placing himself on the inner side
of the pavement, nearest the Venus to whom I, enacting on a
steeple-top the part of Paris on the top of Ida, adjudged the golden
apple.

In two streets converging at right angles toward my watch-tower I
distinguish three different processions. One is a proud array of
voluntary soldiers in bright uniform, resembling, from the height
whence I look down, the painted veterans that garrison the windows of
a toy-shop. And yet it stirs my heart. Their regular advance, their
nodding plumes, the sun-flash on their bayonets and musket-barrels,
the roll of their drums ascending past me, and the fife ever and anon
piercing through,—these things have wakened a warlike fire, peaceful
though I be. Close to their rear marches a battalion of schoolboys
ranged in crooked and irregular platoons, shouldering sticks, thumping
a harsh and unripe clatter from an instrument of tin and ridiculously
aping the intricate manoeuvres of the foremost band. Nevertheless, as
slight differences are scarcely perceptible from a church-spire, one
might be tempted to ask, "Which are the boys?" or, rather, "Which the
men?" But, leaving these, let us turn to the third procession, which,
though sadder in outward show, may excite identical reflections in the
thoughtful mind. It is a funeral—a hearse drawn by a black and bony
steed and covered by a dusty pall, two or three coaches rumbling over
the stones, their drivers half asleep, a dozen couple of careless
mourners in their every-day attire. Such was not the fashion of our
fathers when they carried a friend to his grave. There is now no
doleful clang of the bell to proclaim sorrow to the town. Was the King
of Terrors more awful in those days than in our own, that wisdom and
philosophy have been able to produce this change? Not so. Here is a
proof that he retains his proper majesty. The military men and the
military boys are wheeling round the corner, and meet the funeral full
in the face. Immediately the drum is silent, all but the tap that
regulates each simultaneous footfall. The soldiers yield the path to
the dusty hearse and unpretending train, and the children quit their
ranks and cluster on the sidewalks with timorous and instinctive
curiosity. The mourners enter the churchyard at the base of the
steeple and pause by an open grave among the burial-stones; the
lightning glimmers on them as they lower down the coffin, and the
thunder rattles heavily while they throw the earth upon its lid.
Verily, the shower is near, and I tremble for the young man and the
girls, who have now disappeared from the long and shady street.

How various are the situations of the people covered by the roofs
beneath me, and how diversified are the events at this moment
befalling them! The new-born, the aged, the dying, the strong in life
and the recent dead are in the chambers of these many mansions. The
full of hope, the happy, the miserable and the desperate dwell
together within the circle of my glance. In some of the houses over
which my eyes roam so coldly guilt is entering into hearts that are
still tenanted by a debased and trodden virtue; guilt is on the very
edge of commission, and the impending deed might be averted; guilt is
done, and the criminal wonders if it be irrevocable. There are broad
thoughts struggling in my mind, and, were I able to give them
distinctness, they would make their way in eloquence. Lo! the
raindrops are descending.

The clouds within a little time have gathered over all the sky,
hanging heavily, as if about to drop in one unbroken mass upon the
earth. At intervals the lightning flashes from their brooding hearts,
quivers, disappears, and then comes the thunder, travelling slowly
after its twin-born flame. A strong wind has sprung up, howls through
the darkened streets, and raises the dust in dense bodies to rebel
against the approaching storm. The disbanded soldiers fly, the funeral
has already vanished like its dead, and all people hurry homeward—all
that have a home—while a few lounge by the corners or trudge on
desperately at their leisure. In a narrow lane which communicates with
the shady street I discern the rich old merchant putting himself to
the top of his speed lest the rain should convert his hair-powder to a
paste. Unhappy gentleman! By the slow vehemence and painful moderation
wherewith he journeys, it is but too evident that Podagra has left its
thrilling tenderness in his great toe. But yonder, at a far more rapid
pace, come three other of my acquaintance, the two pretty girls and
the young man unseasonably interrupted in their walk. Their footsteps
are supported by the risen dust, the wind lends them its velocity,
they fly like three sea-birds driven landward by the tempestuous
breeze. The ladies would not thus rival Atalanta if they but knew that
any one were at leisure to observe them. Ah! as they hasten onward,
laughing in the angry face of nature, a sudden catastrophe has
chanced. At the corner where the narrow lane enters into the street
they come plump against the old merchant, whose tortoise-motion has
just brought him to that point. He likes not the sweet encounter; the
darkness of the whole air gathers speedily upon his visage, and there
is a pause on both sides. Finally he thrusts aside the youth with
little courtesy, seizes an arm of each of the two girls, and plods
onward like a magician with a prize of captive fairies. All this is
easy to be understood. How disconsolate the poor lover stands,
regardless of the rain that threatens an exceeding damage to his
well-fashioned habiliments, till he catches a backward glance of mirth
from a bright eye, and turns away with whatever comfort it conveys!