 | Mosses from an old manse |  |
THE CHRISTMAS BANQUET.
FROM THE UNPUBLISHED “ALLEGORIES OF THE HEART.”
“I have here attempted,” said Roderick, unfolding a few sheets
of manuscript, as he sat with Rosina and the sculptor in the
summer-house—“I have attempted to seize hold of a personage
who glides past me, occasionally, in my walk through life. My
former sad experience, as you know, has gifted me with some
degree of insight into the gloomy mysteries of the human heart,
through which I have wandered like one astray in a dark cavern,
with his torch fast flickering to extinction. But this man—this
class of men—is a hopeless puzzle.”
“Well, but propound him,” said the sculptor. “Let us have
an idea of him, to begin with.”
“Why, indeed,” replied Roderick, “he is such a being as I
could conceive you to carve out of marble, and some yet unrealized
perfection of human science to endow with an exquisite
mockery of intellect; but still there lacks the last inestimable
touch of a divine Creator. He looks like a man, and, perchance,
like a better specimen of man than you ordinarily meet. You might
esteem him wise—he is capable of cultivation and refinement,
and has at least an external conscience—but the demands that
spirit makes upon spirit, are precisely those to which he cannot
respond. When, at last, you come close to him, you find him
chill and unsubstantial—a mere vapor.”
“I believe,” said Rosina, “I have a glimmering idea of what
you mean.”
“Then be thankful,” answered her husband, smiling; “but
do not anticipate any further illumination from what I am about
to read. I have here imagined such a man to be—what, probably,
he never is—conscious of the deficiency in his spiritual organization.
Methinks the result would be a sense of cold unreality,
wherewith he would go shivering through the world, longing
to exchange his load of ice for any burthen of real grief that fate
could fling upon a human being.”
Contenting himself with this preface, Roderick began to read.
In a certain old gentleman's last will and testament, there appeared
a bequest, which, as his final thought and deed, was
singularly in keeping with a long life of melancholy eccentricity.
He devised a considerable sum for establishing a fund, the interest
of which was to be expanded, annually for ever, in preparing a
Christmas Banquet for ten of the most miserable persons that
could be found. It seemed not to be the testator's purpose to
make these half-a-score of sad hearts merry, but to provide that
the stern or fierce expression of human discontent should not be
drowned, even for that one holy and joyful day, amid the acclamations
of festal gratitude which all Christendom sends up. And
he desired, likewise, to perpetuate his own remonstrance against
the earthly course of Providence, and his sad and sour dissent
from those systems of religion or philosophy which either find
sunshine in the world, or draw it down from heaven.
The task of inviting the guests, or of selecting among such as
might advance their claims to partake of this dismal hospitality,
was confided to the two trustees or stewards of the fund. These
gentlemen, like their deceased friend, were sombre humorists,
who made it their principal occupation to number the sable
threads in the web of human life, and drop all the golden ones
integrity and judgment. The aspect of the assembled company,
on the day of the first festival, might not, it is true, have satisfied
every beholder that these were especially the individuals, chosen
forth from all the world, whose griefs were worthy to stand as
indicators of the mass of human suffering. Yet, after due consideration,
it could not be disputed that here was a variety of
hopeless discomfort, which, if it sometimes arose from causes
apparently inadequate, was thereby only the shrewder imputation
against the nature and mechanism of life.
The arrangements and decorations of the banquet were probably
intended to signify that death-in-life which had been the testator's
definition of existence. The hall, illuminated by torches,
was hung round with curtains of deep and dusky purple, and
adorned with branches of cypress and wreaths of artificial flowers,
imitative of such as used to be strewn over the dead. A sprig of
parsley was laid by every plate. The main reservoir of wine
was a sepulchral urn of silver, whence the liquor was distributed
around the table in small vases, accurately copied from those that
held the tears of ancient mourners. Neither had the stewards—
if it were their taste that arranged these details—forgotten the
fantasy of the old Egyptians, who seated a skeleton at every festive
board, and mocked their own merriment with the imperturbable
grin of a death's-head. Such a fearful guest, shrouded in a
black mantle, sat now at the head of the table. It was whispered,
I know not with what truth, that the testator himself had once
walked the visible world with the machinery of that same skeleton,
and that it was one of the stipulations of his will, that he
should thus be permitted to sit, from year to year, at the banquet
which he had instituted. If so, it was perhaps covertly implied
that he had cherished no hopes of bliss beyond the grave, to compensate
for the evils which he felt or imagined here. And if, in
their bewildered conjectures as to the purpose of earthly existence,
glance at this figure of death, as seeking thence the solution
otherwise unattainable, the only reply would be a stare of the
vacant eye-caverns, and a grin of the skeleton-jaws. Such was
the response that the dead man had fancied himself to receive,
when he asked of Death to solve the riddle of his life; and it was
his desire to repeat it, when the guests of his dismal hospitality
should find themselves perplexed with the same question.
“What means that wreath?” asked several of the company,
while viewing the decorations of the table.
They alluded to a wreath of cypress, which was held on high
by a skeleton-arm, protruding from within the black mantle.
“It is a crown,” said one of the stewards, “not for the worthiest,
but for the wofullest, when he shall prove his claim to it.”
The guest earliest bidden to the festival, was a man of soft and
gentle character, who had not energy to struggle against the
heavy despondency to which his temperament rendered him liable;
and therefore with nothing outwardly to excuse him from
happiness, he had spent a life of quiet misery, that made his blood
torpid, and weighed upon his breath, and sat like a ponderous
night-fiend upon every throb of his unresisting heart. His wretchedness
seemed as deep as his original nature, if not identical with
it. It was the misfortune of a second guest to cherish within his
bosom a diseased heart, which had become so wretchedly sore,
that the continual and unavoidable rubs of the world, the blow
of an enemy, the careless jostle of a stranger, and even the faithful
and loving touch of a friend, alike made ulcers in it. As is
the habit of people thus afflicted, he found his chief employment
in exhibiting these miserable sores to any who would give themselves
the pain of viewing them. A third guest was a hypochondriac,
whose imagination wrought necromancy in his outward and
inward world, and caused him to see monstrous faces in the household
fire, and dragons in the clouds of sun-set, and fiends in the
all the pleasant surfaces of nature. His neighbor at table was
one who, in his early youth, had trusted mankind too much, and
hoped too highly in their behalf, and, meeting with many disappointments,
had become desperately soured. For several years
back, this misanthrope had employed himself in accumulating
motives for hating and despising his race—such as murder, lust,
treachery, ingratitude, faithfulness of trusted friends, instinctive
vices of children, impurity of women, hidden guilt in men of saintlike
aspect—and, in short, all manner of black realities that sought
to decorate themselves with outward grace or glory. But, at
every atrocious fact that was added to his catalogue—at every
increase of the sad knowledge which he spent his life to collect—
the native impulses of the poor man's loving and confiding heart
made him groan with anguish. Next, with his heavy brow bent
downward, there stole into the hall a man naturally earnest and
impassioned, who, from his immemorial infancy, had felt the consciousness
of a high message to the world, but, essaying to deliver
it, had found either no voice or form of speech, or else no ears to
listen. Therefore his whole life was a bitter questioning of himself—“Why
have not men acknowledged my mission? Am I
not a self-deluding fool? What business have I on earth? Where
is my grave?” Throughout the festival, he quaffed frequent
draughts from the sepulchral urn of wine, hoping thus to quench
the celestial fire that tortured his own breast, and could not benefit
his race.
Then there entered—having flung away a ticket for a ball—a
gay gallant of yesterday, who had found four or five wrinkles in
his brow, and more grey hairs than he could well number, on his
head. Endowed with sense and feeling, he had nevertheless
spent his youth in folly, but had reached at last that dreary point
in life, where Folly quits us of her own accord, leaving us to
make friends with Wisdom if we can. Thus, cold and desolate,
skeleton were she. To eke out the company, the stewards had
invited a distressed poet from his home in the alms-house, and a
melancholy idiot from the street corner. The latter had just the
glimmering of sense that was sufficient to make him conscious of
a vacancy, which the poor fellow, all his life long, had mistily
sought to fill up with intelligence, wandering up and down the
streets, and groaning miserably, because his attempts were ineffectual.
The only lady in the hall was one who had fallen short
of absolute and perfect beauty, merely by the trifling defect of a
slight cast in her left eye. But this blemish, minute as it was,
so shocked the pure ideal of her soul, rather than her vanity, that
she passed her life in solitude, and veiled her countenance even
from her own gaze. So the skeleton sat shrouded at one end of
the table, and this poor lady at the other.
One other guest remains to be described. He was a young
man of smooth brow, fair cheek, and fashionable mien. So far
as his exterior development him, he might much more suitably have
found a place at some merry Christmas table, than have been
numbered among the blighted, fate-stricken, fancy-tortured set
of ill-starred banqueters. Murmurs arose among the guests, as
they noted the glance of general scrutiny which the intruder
threw over his companions. What had he to do among them?
Why did not the skeleton of the dead founder of the feast unbend
its rattling joints, arise, and motion the unwelcome stranger from
the board?
“Shameful!” said the morbid man, while a new ulcer broke
out in his heart. “He comes to mock us!—we shall be the jest
of his tavern friends!—he will make a farce of our miseries, and
bring it out upon the stage!”
“Oh, never mind him!” said the hypochondriac, smiling
sourly. “He shall feast from yonder tureen of viper soup; and
if there is a fricassee of scorpions on the table, pray let him have
Sodom. Then, if he like our Christmas fare, let him return
again next year!”
“Trouble him not,” murmured the melancholy man, with gentleness.
“What matters it whether the consciousness of misery
come a few years sooner or later? If this youth deem himself
happy now, yet let him sit with us, for the sake of the wretchedness
to come.”
The poor idiot approached the young man, with that mournful
aspect of vacant inquiry which his face continually wore, and
which caused people to say that he was always in search of his
missing wits. After no little examination, he touched the stranger's
hand, but immediately drew back his own, shaking his head
and shivering.
“Cold, cold, cold!” muttered the idiot.
The young man shivered too—and smiled.
“Gentlemen—and you, madam,”—said one of the stewards of
the festival, “do not conceive so ill, either of our caution or judgment,
as to imagine that we have admitted this young stranger—
Gervayse Hastings by name—without a full investigation and
thoughtful balance of his claims. Trust me, not a guest at the
table is better entitled to his seat.”
The steward's guarantee was perforce satisfactory. The company,
therefore, took their places, and addressed themselves to
the serious business of the feast, but were soon disturbed by the
hypochondriac, who thrust back his chair, complaining that a dish
of stewed toads and vipers was set before him, and that there was
green ditch-water in his cup of wine. This mistake being
amended, he quietly resumed his seat. The wine, as it flowed
freely from the sepulchral urn, seemed to come imbued with all
gloomy inspirations; so that its influence was not to cheer, but
either to sink the revellers into a deeper melancholy, or elevate
their spirits to an enthusiasm of wretchedness. The conversation
been worthy guests at such a festival as the present. They
talked of grisly incidents in human history; of strange crimes,
which, if truly considered, were but convulsions of agony; of
some lives that had been altogether wretched, and of others, which,
wearing a general semblance of happiness, had yet been deformed,
sooner or later, by misfortune, as by the intrusion of a grim face
at a banquet; of death-bed scenes, and what dark intimations
might be gathered from the words of dying men; of suicide, and
whether the more eligible mode were by halter, knife, poison,
drowning, gradual starvation, or the fumes of charcoal. The
majority of the guests, as is the custom with people thoroughly
and profoundly sick at heart, were anxious to make their own
woes the theme of discussion, and prove themselves most excellent
in anguish. The misanthropist went deep into the philosophy of
evil, and wandered about in the darkness, with now and then a gleam
of discolored light hovering on ghastly shapes and horrid scenery.
Many a miserable thought, such as men have stumbled upon
from age to age, did he now rake up again, and gloat over it as
an inestimable gem, a diamond, a treasure far preferable to those
bright, spiritual revelations of a better world, which are like
precious stones from heaven's pavement. And then, amid his
lore of wretchedness, he hid his face and wept.
It was a festival at which the woful man of Uz might suitably
have been a guest, together with all, in each succeeding age, who
have tasted deepest of the bitterness of life. And be it said, too,
that every son or daughter of woman, however favored with happy
fortune, might, at one sad moment or another, have claimed
the privilege of a stricken heart, to sit down at this table. But,
throughout the feast, it was remarked that the young stranger,
Gervayse Hastings, was unsuccessful in his attempts to catch its
pervading spirit. At any deep, strong thought that found utterance,
and which was torn out, as it were, from the saddest recesses
even more than the poor idiot, who seemed to grasp at such
things with his earnest heart, and thus occasionally to comprehend
them. The young man's conversation was of a colder and
lighter kind, often brilliant, but lacking the powerful characteristics
of a nature that had been developed by suffering.
“Sir,” said the misanthropist, bluntly, in reply to some observation
by Gervayse Hastings, “pray do not address me again.
We have no right to talk together. Our minds have nothing in
common. By what claim you appear at this banquet, I cannot
guess; but methinks, to a man who could say what you have
just now said, my companions and myself must seem no more
than shadows, flickering on the wall. And precisely such a
shadow are you to us!”
The young man smiled and bowed, but drawing himself back
in his chair, he buttoned his coat over his breast, as if the banquetting-hall
were growing chill. Again the idiot fixed his
melancholy stare upon the youth, and murmured—“cold! cold!
cold!”
The banquet drew to its conclusion, and the guests departed.
Scarcely had they stepped across the threshold of the hall, when
the scene that had there passed seemed like the vision of a sick
fancy, or an exhalation from a stagnant heart. Now and then,
however, during the year that ensued, these melancholy people
caught glimpses of one another, transient, indeed, but enough to
prove that they walked the earth with the ordinary allotment of
reality. Sometimes, a pair of them came face to face, while
stealing through the evening twilight, enveloped in their sable
cloaks. Sometimes, they casually met in church-yards. Once,
also, it happened, that two of the dismal banquetters mutually
started, at recognizing each other in the noon-day sunshine of a
crowded street, stalking there like ghosts astray. Doubtless, they
wondered why the skeleton did not come abroad at noon-day, too!
But, whenever the necessity of their affairs compelled these
Christmas guests into the bustling world, they were sure to encounter
the young man, who had so unaccountably been admitted
to the festival. They saw him among the gay and fortunate;
they caught the sunny sparkle of his eye; they heard the light
and careless tones of his voice—and muttered to themselves, with
such indignation as only the aristocracy of wretchedness could
kindle:—“The traitor! The vile impostor! Providence, in its
own good time, may give him a right to feast among us!” But
the young man's unabashed eye dwelt upon their gloomy figures,
as they passed him, seeming to say, perchance with somewhat of
a sneer—“First, know my secret!—then, measure your claims
with mine!”
The step of Time stole onward, and soon brought merry Christmas
round again, with glad and solemn worship in the churches,
and sports, games, festivals, and everywhere the bright face of
Joy beside the household fire. Again, likewise, the hall, with
its curtains of dusky purple, was illuminated by the death-torches,
gleaming on the sepulchral decorations of the banquet. The
veiled skeleton sat in state, lifting the cypress-wreath above its
head, as the guerdon of some guest, illustrious in the qualifications
which there claimed precedence. As the stewards deemed
the world inexhaustible in misery, and were desirous of recognizing
it in all its forms, they had not seen fit to re-assemble the
company of the former year. New faces now threw their gloom
across the table.
There was a man of nice conscience, who bore a blood-stain
in his heart—the death of a fellow-creature—which, for his more
exquisite torture, had chanced with such a peculiarity of circumstances,
that he could not absolutely determine whether his will
had entered into the deed or not. Therefore, his whole life was
spent in the agony of an inward trial for murder, with a continual
sifting of the details of his terrible calamity, until his mind had
with it. There was a mother, too—a mother once, but a desolation
now—who, many years before, had gone out on a pleasure-party,
and, returning, found her infant smothered in its little bed.
And ever since she has been tortured with the fantasy, that her
buried baby lay smothering in its coffin. Then there was an
aged lady, who had lived from time immemorial with a constant
tremor quivering through her frame. It was terrible to discern
her dark shadow tremulous upon the wall; her lips, likewise,
were tremulous; and the expression of her eye seemed to indicate
that her soul was trembling too. Owing to the bewilderment
and confusion which made almost a chaos of her intellect,
it was impossible to discover what dire misfortune had thus shaken
her nature to its depths; so that the stewards had admitted
her to the table, not from any acquaintance with her history, but
on the safe testimony of her miserable aspect. Some surprise
was expressed at the presence of a bluff, red-faced gentleman, a
certain Mr. Smith, who had evidently the fat of many a rich
feast within him, and the habitual twinkle of whose eye betrayed
a disposition to break forth into uproarious laughter, for little
cause or none. It turned out, however, that, with the best possible
flow of spirits, our poor friend was afflicted with a physical
disease of the heart, which threatened instant death on the slightest
cachinnatory indulgence, or even that titillation of the bodily
frame, produced by merry thoughts. In this dilemma, he had
sought admittance to the banquet, on the ostensible plea of his
irksome and miserable state, but, in reality, with the hope of imbibing
a life-preserving melancholy.
A married couple had been invited, from a motive of bitter
humor; it being well understood, that they rendered each other
unutterably miserable whenever they chanced to meet, and therefore
must necessarily be fit associates at the festival. In contrast
with these, was another couple, still unmarried, who had interchanged
as impalpable as morning mist, and kept apart so long,
that their spirits now found it impossible to meet. Therefore,
yearning for communion, yet shrinking from one another, and
choosing none beside, they felt themselves companionless in life,
and looked upon eternity as a boundless desert. Next to the
skeleton sat a mere son of earth—a hunter of the Exchange—a
gatherer of shining dust—a man whose life's record was in his
ledger, and whose soul's prison-house, the vaults of the bank
where he kept his deposits. This person had been greatly perplexed
at his invitation, deeming himself one of the most fortunate men
in the city; but the stewards persisted in demanding his presence,
assuring him that he had no conception how miserable he was.
And now appeared a figure, which we must acknowledge as
our acquaintance of the former festival. It was Gervayse Hastings,
whose presence had then caused so much question and
criticism, and who now took his place with the composure of one
whose claims were satisfactory to himself, and must needs be
allowed by others. Yet his easy and unruffled face betrayed no
sorrow. The well-skilled beholders gazed a moment into his
eyes, and shook their heads, to miss the unuttered sympathy—the
countersign, never to be falsified—of those whose hearts are
cavern-mouths, through which they descend into a region of
illimitable woe, and recognize other wanderers there.
“Who is this youth?” asked the man with a blood-stain on his
conscience. “Surely he has never gone down into the depths!
I know all the aspects of those who have passed through the dark
valley. By what right is he among us?”
“Ah, it is a sinful thing to come hither without a sorrow,”
murmured the aged lady, in accents that partook of the eternal
tremor which pervaded her whole being. “Depart, young man!
Your soul has never been shaken; and therefore I tremble so
much the more to look at you.”
“His soul shaken! No; I'll answer for it,” said bluff Mr.
Smith, pressing his hand upon his heart, and making himself as
melancholy as he could, for fear of a fatal explosion of laughter.
“I know the lad well; he has as fair prospects as any young
man about town, and has no more right among us, miserable
creatures, than the child unborn. He never was miserable, and
probably never will be!”
“Our honored guests,” interposed the stewards, “pray have
patience with us, and believe, at least, that our deep veneration
for the sacredness of this solemnity would preclude any wilful
violation of it. Receive this young man to your table. It may
not be too much to say, that no guest here would exchange his
own heart for the one that beats within that youthful bosom!”
“I'd call it a bargain, and gladly too,” muttered Mr. Smith,
with a perplexing mixture of sadness and mirthful conceit. “A
plague upon their nonsense! My own heart is the only really
miserable one in the company—it will certainly be the death of
me at last!”
Nevertheless, as on the former occasion, the judgment of the
stewards being without appeal, the company sat down. The obnoxious
guest made no more attempt to obtrude his conversation
on those about him, but appeared to listen to the table-talk with
peculiar assiduity, as if some inestimable secret, otherwise beyond
his reach, might be conveyed in a casual word. And, in
truth, to those who could understand and value it, there was rich
matter in the upgushings and outpourings of these initiated souls,
to whom sorrow had been a talisman, admitting them into spiritual
depths which no other spell can open. Sometimes, out of the
midst of densest gloom, there flashed a momentary radiance, pure
as crystal, bright as the flame of stars, and shedding such a glow
upon the mysteries of life, that the guests were ready to exclaim;
“Surely the riddle is on the point of being solved!” At such
illuminated intervals, the saddest mourners felt it to be revealed,
the sable robes, voluminously shrouding a certain divine reality,
and thus indicating what might otherwise be altogether invisible
to mortal eye.
“Just now,” remarked the trembling old woman, “I seemed
to see beyond the outside. And then my everlasting tremor
passed away!”
“Would that I could dwell always in these momentary gleams
of light!” said the man of stricken conscience. “Then the
blood-stain in my heart would be washed clean away.”
This strain of conversation appeared so unintelligibly absurd
to good Mr. Smith, that he burst into precisely the fit of laughter
which his physicians had warned him against, as likely to prove
instantaneously fatal. In effect, he fell back in his chair, a corpse
with a broad grin upon his face; while his ghost, perchance, remained
beside it, bewildered at its unpremeditated exit. This
catastrophe, of course, broke up the festival.
“How is this? You do not tremble?” observed the tremulous
old woman to Gervayse Hastings, who was gazing at the dead
man with singular intentness. “Is it not awful to see him so
suddenly vanish out of the midst of life—this man of flesh and
blood, whose earthly nature was so warm and strong? There is
a never-ending tremor in my soul; but it trembles afresh at this!
And you are calm!”
“Would that he could teach me somewhat!” said Gervayse
Hastings, drawing a long breath. “Men pass before me like
shadows on the wall—their actions, passions, feelings, are flickerings
of the light—and then they vanish! Neither the corpse,
nor yonder skeleton, nor this old woman's everlasting tremor,
can give me what I seek.”
And then the company departed.
We cannot linger to narrate, in such detail, more circumstances
of these singular festivals, which, in accordance with the founder's
institution. In process of time, the stewards adopted the custom
of inviting, from far and near, those individuals whose misfortunes
were prominent above other men's, and whose mental and
moral development might, therefore, be supposed to possess a
corresponding interest. The exiled noble of the French Revolution,
and the broken soldier of the Empire, were alike represented
at the table. Fallen monarchs, wandering about the earth,
have found places at that forlorn and miserable feast. The
statesman, when his party flung him off, might, if he chose it, be
once more a great man for the space of a single banquet. Aaron
Burr's name appears on the record, at a period when his ruin—
the profoundest and most striking, with more of moral circumstance
in it than that of almost any other man—was complete, in
his lonely age. Stephen Girard, when his wealth weighed upon him
like a mountain, once sought admittance of his own accord. It
is not probable, however, that these men had any lesson to teach
in the lore of discontent and misery, which might not equally well
have been studied in the common walks of life. Illustrious unfortunates
attract a wider sympathy, not because their griefs are
more intense, but because, being set on lofty pedestals, they the
better serve mankind as instances and by-words of calamity.
It concerns our present purpose to say that, at each successive
festival, Gervayse Hastings showed his face, gradually changing
from the smooth beauty of his youth to the thoughtful comeliness
of manhood, and thence to the bald, impressive dignity of age.
He was the only individual invariably present. Yet, on every
occasion, there were murmurs, both from those who knew his
character and position, and from them whose hearts shrank back,
as denying his companionship in their mystic fraternity.
“Who is this impassive man?” had been asked a hundred
times. “Has he suffered? Has he sinned? There are no
traces of either. Then wherefore is he here?”
“You must inquire of the stewards, or of himself,” was the
constant reply. “We seem to know him well, here in our city,
and know nothing of him but what is creditable and fortunate.
Yet hither he comes, year after year, to this gloomy banquet, and
sits among the guests like a marble statue. Ask yonder skeleton
—perhaps that may solve the riddle!”
It was, in truth, a wonder. The life of Gervayse Hastings,
was not merely a prosperous, but a brilliant one. Everything
had gone well with him. He was wealthy, far beyond the expenditure
that was required by habits of magnificence, a taste
of rare purity and cultivation, a love of travel, a scholar's instinct
to collect a splendid library, and, moreover, what seemed a munificent
liberality to the distressed. He had sought domestic
happiness, and not vainly, if a lovely and tender wife, and children
of fair promise, could insure it. He had, besides, ascended
above the limit which separates the obscure from the distinguished,
and had won a stainless reputation in affairs of the widest public
importance. Not that he was a popular character, or had within
him the mysterious attributes which are essential to that species
of success. To the public, he was a cold abstraction, wholly
destitute of those rich hues of personality, that living warmth,
and the peculiar faculty of stamping his own heart's impression
on a multitude of hearts, by which the people recognize their
favorites. And it must be owned that, after his most intimate associates
had done their best to know him thoroughly, and love
him warmly, they were startled to find how little hold he had
upon their affections. They approved—they admired—but still,
in those moments when the human spirit most craves reality,
they shrank back from Gervayse hastings, as powerless to give
them what they sought. It was the feeling of distrustful regret,
with which we should draw back the hand, after extending it, in
an illusive twilight, to grasp the hand of a shadow upon the wall.
As the superficial fervency of youth decayed, this peculiar
His children, when he extended his arms, came coldly to his
knees, but never climbed them of their own accord. His wife wept
secretly, and almost adjudged herself a criminal, because she
shivered in the chill of his bosom. He, too, occasionally appeared
not unconscious of the chillness of his moral atmosphere, and
willing, if it might be so, to warm himself at a kindly fire. But
age stole onward, and benumbed him more and more. As the
hoar-frost began to gather on him, his wife went to her grave, and
was doubtless warmer there; his children either died, or were
scattered to different homes of their own; and old Gervayse
Hastings, unscathed by grief—alone, but needing no companionship—continued
his steady walk through life, and still, on every
Christmas-day, attended at the dismal banquet. His privilege as
a guest had become prescriptive now. Had he claimed the head of
the table, even the skeleton would have been ejected from its seat.
Finally, at the merry Christmas-tide, when he had numbered
four-score years complete, this pale, high-browed, marble-featured
old man once more entered the long-frequented hall, with the
same impassive aspect that had called forth so much dissatisfied
remark at his first attendance. Time, except in matters merely
external, had done nothing for him, either of good or evil. As
he took his place he threw a calm, inquiring glance around the
table, as if to ascertain whether any guest had yet appeared, after
so many unsuccessful banquets, who might impart to him the
mystery—the deep, warm secret—the life within the life—which,
whether manifested in joy or sorrow, is what gives substance to a
world of shadows.
“My friends,” said Gervayse Hastings, assuming a position
which his long conversance with the festival caused to appear
natural, “you are welcome! I drink to you all in this cup of
sepulchral wine.”
The guests replied courteously, but still in a manner that proved
It may be well to give the reader an idea of the present
company at the banquet.
One was formerly a clergyman, enthusiastic in his profession,
and apparently of the genuine dynasty of those old puritan
divines, whose faith in their calling, and stern exercise of it, had
placed them among the mighty of the earth. But yielding to the
speculative tendency of the age, he had gone astray from the firm
foundation of an ancient faith, and wandered into a cloud region,
where everything was misty and deceptive, ever mocking him
with a semblance of reality, but still dissolving when he flung
himself upon it for support and rest. His instinct and early training
demanded something steadfast; but, looking forward, he
beheld vapors piled on vapors, and behind him, an impassable
gulf between the man of yesterday and to-day; on the borders of
which he paced to and fro, sometimes wringing his hands in agony,
and often making his own woe a theme of scornful merriment.
This surely was a miserable man. Next, there was a theorist—
one of a numerous tribe, although he deemed himself unique
since the creation—a theorist, who had conceived a plan by which
all the wretchedness of earth, moral and physical, might be done
away, and the bliss of the millenium at once accomplished. But,
the incredulity of mankind debarring him from action, he was
smitten with as much grief as if the whole mass of woe which he
was denied the opportunity to remedy, were crowded into his own
bosom. A plain old man in black attracted much of the company's
notice, on the supposition that he was no other than Father
Miller, who, it seemed, had given himself up to despair at the
tedious delay of the final conflagration. Then there was a man
distinguished for native pride and obstinacy, who, a little while
before, had possessed immense wealth, and held the control of a
vast moneyed interest, which he had wielded in the same spirit as
a despotic monarch would wield the power of his empire, carrying
was felt at every fireside in the land. At length came a crushing
ruin—a total overthrow of fortune, power, and character—
the effect of which on his imperious, and, in many respects, noble
and lofty nature, might have entitled him to a place, not merely
at our festival, but among the peers of Pandemonium.
There was a modern philanthropist, who had become so deeply
sensible of the calamities of thousands and millions of his fellow
creatures, and of the impracticableness of any general measures
for their relief, that he had no heart to do what little good lay
immediately within his power, but contented himself with being
miserable for sympathy. Near him sat a gentleman in a predicament
hitherto unprecedented, but of which the present epoch,
probably, affords numerous examples. Ever since he was of capacity
to read a newspaper, this person had prided himself on his
consistent adherence to one political party, but, in the confusion
of these latter days, had got bewildered, and knew not whereabouts
his party was. This wretched condition, so morally desolate
and disheartening to a man who has long accustomed himself
to merge his individuality in the mass of a great body, can
only be conceived by such as have experienced it. His next
companion was a popular orator who had lost his voice, and—as
it was pretty much all that he had to lose—had fallen into a state
of hopeless melancholy. The table was likewise graced by two
of the gentler sex—one, a half-starved, consumptive seamstress,
the representative of thousands just as wretched; the other, a
woman of unemployed energy, who found herself in the world
with nothing to achieve, nothing to enjoy, and nothing even to
suffer. She had, therefore, driven herself to the verge of madness
by dark broodings over the wrongs of her sex, and its exclusion
from a proper field of action. The roll of guests being thus
complete, a side-table had been set for three or four disappointed
office-seekers, with hearts as sick as death, whom the stewards
to entrance here, and partly that they were in especial need of a
good dinner. There was likewise a homeless dog, with his tail
between his legs, licking up the crumbs and gnawing the fragments
of the feast—such a melancholy cur as one sometimes sees
about the streets, without a master, and willing to follow the first
that will accept his service.
In their own way, these were as wretched a set of people as
ever had assembled at the festival. There they sat, with the
veiled skeleton of the founder, holding aloft the cypress wreath,
at one end of the table; and at the other, wrapt in furs, the
withered figure of Gervayse Hastings, stately, calm and cold,
impressing the company with awe, yet so little interesting their
sympathy, that he might have vanished into thin air, without their
once exclaiming—“Whither is he gone?”
“Sir,” said the philanthropist, addressing the old man, “you
have been so long a guest at this annual festival, and have thus
been conversant with so many varieties of human affliction, that,
not improbably, you have thence derived some great and important
lessons. How blessed were your lot, could you reveal a
secret by which all this mass of woe might be removed!”
“I know of but one misfortune,” answered Gervayse Hastings,
quietly, “and that is my own.”
“Your own!” rejoined the philanthropist. “And, looking
back on your serene and prosperous life, how can you claim to be
the sole unfortunate of the human race?”
“You will not understand it,” replied Gervayse Hastings feebly,
and with a singular inefficiency of pronunciation, and sometimes
putting one word for another. “None have understood it—not
even those who experience the like. It is a chilliness—a want of
earnestness—a feeling as if what should be my heart were a
thing of vapor—a haunting perception of unreality! Thus seeming
to possess all that other men have—all that men aim at—I
—all persons—as was truly said to me at this table long and long
ago—have been like shadows flickering on the wall. It was so
with my wife and children—with those who seemed my friends:
it is so with yourselves, whom I see now before me. Neither
have I myself any real existence, but am a shadow like the rest!”
“And how is it with your views of a future life?” inquired the
speculative clergyman.
“Worse than with you,” said the old man, in a hollow and
feeble tone; “for I cannot conceive it earnestly enough to feel
either hope or fear. Mine—mine is the wretchedness! This
cold heart—this unreal life! Ah! it grows colder still.”
It so chanced, that at this juncture the decayed ligaments of
the skeleton gave way, and the dry bones fell together in a heap,
thus causing the dusty wreath of cypress to drop upon the table.
The attention of the company being thus diverted, for a single
instant, from Gervayse Hastings, they perceived, on turning again
towards him, that the old man had undergone a change. His
shadow had ceased to flicker on the wall.
“Well, Rosina, what is your criticism?” asked Roderick, as
he rolled up the manuscript.
“Frankly, your success is by no means complete,” replied she.
“It is true, I have an idea of the character you endeavor to describe;
but it is rather by dint of my own thought than your expression.”
“That is unavoidable,” observed the sculptor, “because the
characteristics are all negative. If Gervayse Hastings could
have imbibed one human grief at the gloomy banquet, the task of
describing him would have been infinitely easier. Of such persons—and
we do meet with these moral monsters now and then—
it is difficult to conceive how they came to exist here, or what
there is in them capable of existence hereafter. They seem to be
on the outside of everything; and nothing wearies the soul more
than an attempt to comprehend them within its grasp.
| Mosses from an old manse | |