Twice-Told Tales (24 page)

The old man and his daughters are safely housed, and now the storm
lets loose its fury. In every dwelling I perceive the faces of the
chambermaids as they shut down the windows, excluding the impetuous
shower and shrinking away from the quick fiery glare. The large drops
descend with force upon the slated roofs and rise again in smoke.
There is a rush and roar as of a river through the air, and muddy
streams bubble majestically along the pavement, whirl their dusky foam
into the kennel, and disappear beneath iron grates. Thus did Arethusa
sink. I love not my station here aloft in the midst of the tumult
which I am powerless to direct or quell, with the blue lightning
wrinkling on my brow and the thunder muttering its first awful
syllables in my ear. I will descend. Yet let me give another glance to
the sea, where the foam breaks out in long white lines upon a broad
expanse of blackness or boils up in far-distant points like snowy
mountain-tops in the eddies of a flood; and let me look once more at
the green plain and little hills of the country, over which the giant
of the storm is striding in robes of mist, and at the town whose
obscured and desolate streets might beseem a city of the dead; and,
turning a single moment to the sky, now gloomy as an author's
prospects, I prepare to resume my station on lower earth. But stay! A
little speck of azure has widened in the western heavens; the sunbeams
find a passage and go rejoicing through the tempest, and on yonder
darkest cloud, born like hallowed hopes of the glory of another world
and the trouble and tears of this, brightens forth the rainbow.

In those strange old times when fantastic dreams and madmen's reveries
were realized among the actual circumstances of life, two persons met
together at an appointed hour and place. One was a lady graceful in
form and fair of feature, though pale and troubled and smitten with an
untimely blight in what should have been the fullest bloom of her
years; the other was an ancient and meanly-dressed woman of
ill-favored aspect, and so withered, shrunken and decrepit that even
the space since she began to decay must have exceeded the ordinary
term of human existence. In the spot where they encountered no mortal
could observe them. Three little hills stood near each other, and down
in the midst of them sunk a hollow basin almost mathematically
circular, two or three hundred feet in breadth and of such depth that
a stately cedar might but just be visible above the sides. Dwarf pines
were numerous upon the hills and partly fringed the outer verge of the
intermediate hollow, within which there was nothing but the brown
grass of October and here and there a tree-trunk that had fallen long
ago and lay mouldering with no green successor from its roots. One of
these masses of decaying wood, formerly a majestic oak, rested close
beside a pool of green and sluggish water at the bottom of the basin.
Such scenes as this (so gray tradition tells) were once the resort of
a power of evil and his plighted subjects, and here at midnight or on
the dim verge of evening they were said to stand round the mantling
pool disturbing its putrid waters in the performance of an impious
baptismal rite. The chill beauty of an autumnal sunset was now gilding
the three hill-tops, whence a paler tint stole down their sides into
the hollow.

"Here is our pleasant meeting come to pass," said the aged crone,
"according as thou hast desired. Say quickly what thou wouldst have of
me, for there is but a short hour that we may tarry here."

As the old withered woman spoke a smile glimmered on her countenance
like lamplight on the wall of a sepulchre. The lady trembled and cast
her eyes upward to the verge of the basin, as if meditating to return
with her purpose unaccomplished. But it was not so ordained.

"I am stranger in this land, as you know," said she, at length.
"Whence I come it matters not, but I have left those behind me with
whom my fate was intimately bound, and from whom I am cut off for
ever. There is a weight in my bosom that I cannot away with, and I
have come hither to inquire of their welfare."

"And who is there by this green pool that can bring thee news from the
ends of the earth?" cried the old woman, peering into the lady's face.
"Not from my lips mayst thou hear these tidings; yet be thou bold, and
the daylight shall not pass away from yonder hilltop before thy wish
be granted."

"I will do your bidding though I die," replied the lady, desperately.

The old woman seated herself on the trunk of the fallen tree, threw
aside the hood that shrouded her gray locks and beckoned her companion
to draw near.

"Kneel down," she said, "and lay your forehead on my knees."

She hesitated a moment, but the anxiety that had long been kindling
burned fiercely up within her. As she knelt down the border of her
garment was dipped into the pool; she laid her forehead on the old
woman's knees, and the latter drew a cloak about the lady's face, so
that she was in darkness. Then she heard the muttered words of prayer,
in the midst of which she started and would have arisen.

"Let me flee! Let me flee and hide myself, that they may not look upon
me!" she cried. But, with returning recollection, she hushed herself
and was still as death, for it seemed as if other voices, familiar in
infancy and unforgotten through many wanderings and in all the
vicissitudes of her heart and fortune, were mingling with the accents
of the prayer. At first the words were faint and indistinct—not
rendered so by distance, but rather resembling the dim pages of a book
which we strive to read by an imperfect and gradually brightening
light. In such a manner, as the prayer proceeded, did those voices
strengthen upon the ear, till at length the petition ended, and the
conversation of an aged man and of a woman broken and decayed like
himself became distinctly audible to the lady as she knelt. But those
strangers appeared not to stand in the hollow depth between the three
hills. Their voices were encompassed and re-echoed by the walls of a
chamber the windows of which were rattling in the breeze; the regular
vibration of a clock, the crackling of a fire and the tinkling of the
embers as they fell among the ashes rendered the scene almost as vivid
as if painted to the eye. By a melancholy hearth sat these two old
people, the man calmly despondent, the woman querulous and tearful,
and their words were all of sorrow. They spoke of a daughter, a
wanderer they knew not where, bearing dishonor along with her and
leaving shame and affliction to bring their gray heads to the grave.
They alluded also to other and more recent woe, but in the midst of
their talk their voices seemed to melt into the sound of the wind
sweeping mournfully among the autumn leaves; and when the lady lifted
her eyes, there was she kneeling in the hollow between three hills.

"A weary and lonesome time yonder old couple have of it," remarked the
old woman, smiling in the lady's face.

"And did you also hear them?" exclaimed she, a sense of intolerable
humiliation triumphing over her agony and fear.

"Yea, and we have yet more to hear," replied the old woman, "wherefore
cover thy face quickly."

Again the withered hag poured forth the monotonous words of a prayer
that was not meant to be acceptable in heaven, and soon in the pauses
of her breath strange murmurings began to thicken, gradually
increasing, so as to drown and overpower the charm by which they grew.
Shrieks pierced through the obscurity of sound and were succeeded by
the singing of sweet female voices, which in their turn gave way to a
wild roar of laughter broken suddenly by groanings and sobs, forming
altogether a ghastly confusion of terror and mourning and mirth.
Chains were rattling, fierce and stern voices uttered threats and the
scourge resounded at their command. All these noises deepened and
became substantial to the listener's ear, till she could distinguish
every soft and dreamy accent of the love-songs that died causelessly
into funeral-hymns. She shuddered at the unprovoked wrath which blazed
up like the spontaneous kindling of flume, and she grew faint at the
fearful merriment raging miserably around her. In the midst of this
wild scene, where unbound passions jostled each other in a drunken
career, there was one solemn voice of a man, and a manly and melodious
voice it might once have been. He went to and fro continually, and his
feet sounded upon the floor. In each member of that frenzied company
whose own burning thoughts had become their exclusive world he sought
an auditor for the story of his individual wrong, and interpreted
their laughter and tears as his reward of scorn or pity. He spoke of
woman's perfidy, of a wife who had broken her holiest vows, of a home
and heart made desolate. Even as he went on, the shout, the laugh, the
shriek, the sob, rose up in unison, till they changed into the hollow,
fitful and uneven sound of the wind as it fought among the pine trees
on those three lonely hills.

The lady looked up, and there was the withered woman smiling in her
face.

"Couldst thou have thought there were such merry times in a
mad-house?" inquired the latter.

"True, true!" said the lady to herself; "there is mirth within its
walls, but misery, misery without."

"Wouldst thou hear more?" demanded the old woman.

"There is one other voice I would fain listen to again," replied the
lady, faintly.

"Then lay down thy head speedily upon my knees, that thou mayst get
thee hence before the hour be past."

The golden skirts of day were yet lingering upon the hills, but deep
shades obscured the hollow and the pool, as if sombre night wore
rising thence to overspread the world. Again that evil woman began to
weave her spell. Long did it proceed unanswered, till the knolling of
a bell stole in among the intervals of her words like a clang that had
travelled far over valley and rising ground and was just ready to die
in the air. The lady shook upon her companion's knees as she heard
that boding sound. Stronger it grew, and sadder, and deepened into the
tone of a death-bell, knolling dolefully from some ivy-mantled tower
and bearing tidings of mortality and woe to the cottage, to the hall
and to the solitary wayfarer, that all might weep for the doom
appointed in turn to them. Then came a measured tread, passing slowly,
slowly on, as of mourners with a coffin, their garments trailing on
the ground, so that the ear could measure the length of their
melancholy array. Before them went the priest, reading the
burial-service, while the leaves of his book were rustling in the
breeze. And though no voice but his was heard to speak aloud, still
there were revilings and anathemas, whispered but distinct, from women
and from men, breathed against the daughter who had wrung the aged
hearts of her parents, the wife who had betrayed the trusting fondness
of her husband, the mother who had sinned against natural affection
and left her child to die. The sweeping sound of the funeral train
faded away like a thin vapor, and the wind, that just before had
seemed to shake the coffin-pall, moaned sadly round the verge of the
hollow between three hills. But when the old woman stirred the
kneeling lady, she lifted not her head.

"Here has been a sweet hour's sport!" said the withered crone,
chuckling to herself.

Methinks, for a person whose instinct bids him rather to pore over the
current of life than to plunge into its tumultuous waves, no
undesirable retreat were a toll-house beside some thronged
thoroughfare of the land. In youth, perhaps, it is good for the
observer to run about the earth, to leave the track of his footsteps
far and wide, to mingle himself with the action of numberless
vicissitudes, and, finally, in some calm solitude to feed a musing
spirit on all that he has seen and felt. But there are natures too
indolent or too sensitive to endure the dust, the sunshine or the
rain, the turmoil of moral and physical elements, to which all the
wayfarers of the world expose themselves. For such a man how pleasant
a miracle could life be made to roll its variegated length by the
threshold of his own hermitage, and the great globe, as it were,
perform its revolutions and shift its thousand scenes before his eyes
without whirling him onward in its course! If any mortal be favored
with a lot analogous to this, it is the toll-gatherer. So, at least,
have I often fancied while lounging on a bench at the door of a small
square edifice which stands between shore and shore in the midst of a
long bridge. Beneath the timbers ebbs and flows an arm of the sea,
while above, like the life-blood through a great artery, the travel of
the north and east is continually throbbing. Sitting on the aforesaid
bench, I amuse myself with a conception, illustrated by numerous
pencil-sketches in the air, of the toll-gatherer's day.

In the morning—dim, gray, dewy summer's morn—the distant roll of
ponderous wheels begins to mingle with my old friend's slumbers,
creaking more and more harshly through the midst of his dream and
gradually replacing it with realities. Hardly conscious of the change
from sleep to wakefulness, he finds himself partly clad and throwing
wide the toll-gates for the passage of a fragrant load of hay. The
timbers groan beneath the slow-revolving wheels; one sturdy yeoman
stalks beside the oxen, and, peering from the summit of the hay, by
the glimmer of the half-extinguished lantern over the toll-house is
seen the drowsy visage of his comrade, who has enjoyed a nap some ten
miles long. The toll is paid; creak, creak, again go the wheels, and
the huge hay-mow vanishes into the morning mist. As yet nature is but
half awake, and familiar objects appear visionary. But yonder, dashing
from the shore with a rattling thunder of the wheels and a confused
clatter of hoofs, comes the never-tiring mail, which has hurried
onward at the same headlong, restless rate all through the quiet
night. The bridge resounds in one continued peal as the coach rolls on
without a pause, merely affording the toll-gatherer a glimpse at the
sleepy passengers, who now bestir their torpid limbs and snuff a
cordial in the briny air. The morn breathes upon them and blushes, and
they forget how wearily the darkness toiled away. And behold now the
fervid day in his bright chariot, glittering aslant over the waves,
nor scorning to throw a tribute of his golden beams on the
toll-gatherer's little hermitage. The old man looks eastward, and (for
he is a moralizer) frames a simile of the stage-coach and the sun.