 | Twice-told tales |  |
THE AMBITIOUS GUEST.
One September night, a family had gathered round
their hearth, and piled it high with the drift-wood of
mountain-streams, the dry cones of the pine, and the
splintered ruins of great trees, that had come crashing
down the precipice. Up the chimney roared the
fire, and brightened the room with its broad blaze.
The faces of the father and mother had a sober gladness;
the children laughed; the eldest daughter was
the image of Happiness at seventeen; and the aged
grandmother, who sat knitting in the warmest place,
was the image of Happiness grown old. They had
found the `herb, heart's ease,' in the bleakest spot of
all New England. This family were situated in the
Notch of the White Hills, where the wind was sharp
throughout the year, and pitilessly cold in the winter
— giving their cottage all its fresh inclemency,
before it descended on the valley of the Saco. They
dwelt in a cold spot and a dangerous one; for a
stones would often rumble down its sides, and startle
them at midnight.
The daughter had just uttered some simple jest,
that filled them all with mirth, when the wind came
through the Notch and seemed to pause before their
cottage — rattling the door, with a sound of wailing
and lamentation, before it passed into the valley.
For a moment, it saddened them, though there was
nothing unusual in the tones. But the family were
glad again, when they perceived that the latch was
lifted by some traveller, whose footsteps had been unheard
amid the dreary blast, which heralded his approach,
and wailed as he was entering, and went
moaning away from the door.
Though they dwelt in such a solitude, these people
held daily converse with the world. The romantic
pass of the Notch is a great artery, through which
the life-blood of internal commerce is continually
throbbing, between Maine, on one side, and the Green
Mountains and the shores of the St. Lawrence on the
other. The stage-coach always drew up before the
door of the cottage. The wayfarer, with no companion
but his staff, paused here to exchange a word,
that the sense of loneliness might not utterly overcome
him, ere he could pass through the cleft of the
mountain, or reach the first house in the valley.
And here the teamster, on his way to Portland market,
would put up for the night — and, if a bachelor,
might sit an hour beyond the usual bed-time, and
steal a kiss from the mountain maid, at parting. It
pays only for food and lodging, but meets with a
homely kindness, beyond all price. When the footsteps
were heard, therefore, between the outer door
and the inner one, the whole family rose up, grandmother,
children, and all, as if about to welcome
some one who belonged to them, and whose fate was
linked with theirs.
The door was opened by a young man. His face
at first wore the melancholy expression, almost despondency,
of one who travels a wild and bleak road,
at night-fall and alone, but soon brightened up, when
he saw the kindly warmth of his reception. He felt
his heart spring forward to meet them all, from the
old woman, who wiped a chair with her apron, to the
little child that held out its arms to him. One glance
and smile placed the stranger on a footing of innocent
familiarity with the eldest daughter.
`Ah, this fire is the right thing!' cried he; `especially
when there is such a pleasant circle round it.
I am quite benumbed; for the Notch is just like the
pipe of a great pair of bellows; it has blown a terrible
blast in my face, all the way from Bartlett.'
`Then you are going towards Vermont?' said the
master of the house, as he helped to take a light
knapsack off the young man's shoulders.
`Yes; to Burlington, and far enough beyond,' replied
he. `I meant to have been at Ethan Crawford's
to-night; but a pedestrian lingers along such
a road as this. It is no matter; for, when I saw this
good fire, and all your cheerful faces, I felt as if you
my arrival. So I shall sit down among you, and
make myself at home.'
The frank-hearted stranger had just drawn his chair
to the fire, when something like a heavy footstep was
heard without, rushing down the steep side of the
mountain, as with long and rapid strides, and taking
such a leap, in passing the cottage, as to strike the
opposite precipice. The family held their breath,
because they knew the sound, and their guest held
his, by instinct.
`The old Mountain has thrown a stone at us, for
fear we should forget him,' said the landlord, recovering
himself. `He sometimes nods his head, and
threatens to come down; but we are old neighbors,
and agree together pretty well, upon the whole. Besides,
we have a sure place of refuge, hard by, if he
should be coming in good earnest.'
Let us now suppose the stranger to have finished
his supper of bear's meat; and, by his natural felicity
of manner, to have placed himself on a footing of
kindness with the whole family — so that they talked
as freely together, as if he belonged to their mountain
brood. He was of a proud, yet gentle spirit —
haughty and reserved among the rich and great; but
ever ready to stoop his head to the lowly cottage
door, and be like a brother or a son at the poor
man's fireside. In the household of the Notch, he
found warmth and simplicity of feeling, the pervading
intelligence of New England, and a poetry of native
growth, which they had gathered, when they little
and at the very threshold of their romantic and dangerous
abode. He had travelled far and alone; his
whole life, indeed, had been a solitary path; for,
with the lofty caution of his nature, he had kept himself
apart from those who might otherwise have been
his companions. The family, too, though so kind
and hospitable, had that consciousness of unity among
themselves, and separation from the world at large,
which, in every domestic circle, should still keep a
holy place, where no stranger may intrude. But,
this evening, a prophetic sympathy impelled the refined
and educated youth to pour out his heart before
the simple mountaineers, and constrained them to
answer him with the same free confidence. And
thus it should have been. Is not the kindred of a
common fate a closer tie than that of birth?
The secret of the young man's character was, a
high and abstracted ambition. He could have borne
to live an undistinguished life, but not to be forgotten
in the grave. Yearning desire had been transformed
to hope; and hope, long cherished, had become like
certainty, that, obscurely as he journeyed now, a
glory was to beam on all his path-way — though not,
perhaps, while he was treading it. But, when posterity
should gaze back into the gloom of what was
now the present, they would trace the brightness of
his footsteps, brightening as meaner glories faded, and
confess, that a gifted one had passed from his cradle
to his tomb, with none to recognise him.
`As yet,' cried the stranger — his cheek glowing
done nothing. Were I to vanish from the earth to-morrow,
none would know so much of me as you;
that a nameless youth came up, at night-fall, from
the valley of the Saco, and opened his heart to you
in the evening, and passed through the Notch, by
sunrise, and was seen no more. Not a soul would
ask — "Who was he? — Whither did the wanderer
go?" But, I cannot die till I have achieved my destiny.
Then, let Death come! I shall have built my
monument!'
There was a continual flow of natural emotion,
gushing forth amid abstracted reverie, which enabled
the family to understand this young man's sentiments,
though so foreign from their own. With quick sensibility
of the ludicrous, he blushed at the ardor into
which he had been betrayed.
`You laugh at me,' said he, taking the eldest
daughter's hand, and laughing himself. `You think
my ambition as nonsensical as if I were to freeze
myself to death on the top of Mount Washington,
only that people might spy at me from the country
roundabout. And truly, that would be a noble pedestal
for a man's statue!'
`It is better to sit here by this fire,' answered the
girl, blushing, `and be comfortable and contented,
though nobody thinks about us.'
`I suppose,' said her father, after a fit of musing,
`there is something natural in what the young man
says; and if my mind had been turned that way, I
might have felt just the same. It is strange, wife,
are pretty certain never to come to pass.'
`Perhaps they may,' observed the wife. `Is the
man thinking what he will do when he is a widower?'
`No, no!' cried he, repelling the idea with reproachful
kindness. `When I think of your death,
Esther, I think of mine, too. But I was wishing we
had a good farm, in Bartlett, or Bethlehem, or Littleton,
or some other township round the White
Mountains; but not where they could tumble on our
heads. I should want to stand well with my neighbors,
and be called 'Squire, and sent to General
Court, for a term or two; for a plain, honest man
may do as much good there as a lawyer. And when
I should be grown quite an old man, and you an old
woman, so as not to be long apart, I might die happy
enough in my bed, and leave you all crying around
me. A slate grave-stone would suit me as well as a
marble one — with just my name and age, and a
verse of a hymn, and something to let people know,
that I lived an honest man and died a Christian.'
`There now!' exclaimed the stranger; `it is our
nature to desire a monument, be it slate, or marble,
or a pillar of granite, or a glorious memory in the
universal heart of man.'
`We're in a strange way, to-night,' said the wife,
with tears in her eyes. `They say it's a sign of
something, when folks' minds go a wandering so.
Hark to the children!'
They listened accordingly. The younger children
had been put to bed in another room, but with
talking busily among themselves. One and all seemed
to have caught the infection from the fireside
circle, and were outvying each other, in wild wishes,
and childish projects of what they would do, when
they came to be men and women. At length, a little
boy, instead of addressing his brothers and sisters,
called out to his mother.
`I'll tell you what I wish, mother,' cried he. `I
want you and father and grandma'm, and all of us,
and the stranger too, to start right away, and go and
take a drink out of the basin of the Flume!'
Nobody could help laughing at the child's notion of
leaving a warm bed, and dragging them from a
cheerful fire, to visit the basin of the Flume—a
brook, which tumbles over the precipice, deep within
the Notch. The boy had hardly spoken, when a
wagon rattled along the road, and stopped a moment
before the door. It appeared to contain two or three
men, who were cheering their hearts with the rough
chorus of a song, which resounded, in broken notes,
between the cliffs, while the singers hesitated whether
to continue their journey, or put up here for the
night.'
`Father,' said the girl, `they are calling you by
name.'
But the good man doubted whether they had really
called him, and was unwilling to show himself too
solicitous of gain, by inviting people to patronize his
house. He therefore did not hurry to the door; and
the lash being soon applied, the travellers plunged
their music and mirth came back drearily from the
heart of the mountain.
`There, mother!' cried the boy, again. `They'd
have given us a ride to the Flume.'
Again they laughed at the child's pertinacious
fancy for a night-ramble. But it happened, that a
light cloud passed over the daughter's spirit; she
looked gravely into the fire, and drew a breath that
was almost a sigh. It forced its way, in spite of a
little struggle to repress it. Then starting and blushing,
she looked quickly round the circle, as if they
had caught a glimpse into her bosom. The stranger
asked what she had been thinking of.
`Nothing,' answered she, with a downcast smile.
`Only I felt lonesome just then.'
`Oh, I have always had a gift of feeling what is
in other people's hearts,' said he, half seriously.
`Shall I tell the secrets of yours? For I know what
to think, when a young girl shivers by a warm hearth,
and complains of lonesomeness at her mother's side.
Shall I put these feelings into words?'
`They would not be a girl's feelings any longer,
if they could be put into words,' replied the mountain
nymph, laughing, but avoiding his eye.
All this was said apart. Perhaps a germ of love
was springing in their hearts, so pure that it might
blossom in Paradise, since it could not be matured on
earth; for women worship such gentle dignity as
his; and the proud, contemplative, yet kindly soul is
oftenest captivated by simplicity like hers. But,
happy sadness, the lightsome shadows, the shy yearnings
of a maiden's nature, the wind, through the
Notch, took a deeper and drearier sound. It seemed,
as the fanciful stranger said, like the choral strain of
the spirits of the blast, who, in old Indian times, had
their dwelling among these mountains, and made
their heights and recesses a sacred region. There
was a wail, along the road, as if a funeral were passing.
To chase away the gloom, the family threw pine
branches on their fire, till the dry leaves crackled
and the flame arose, discovering once again a scene
of peace and humble happiness. The light hovered
about them fondly, and caressed them all. There
were the little faces of the children, peeping from
their bed apart, and here the father's frame of
strength, the mother's subdued and careful mien, the
high-browed youth, the budding girl, and the good
old grandam, still knitting in the warmest place.
The aged woman looked up from her task, and, with
fingers ever busy, was the next to speak.
`Old folks have their notions,' said she, `as well
as young ones. You've been wishing and planning;
and letting your heads run on one thing and another,
till you've set my mind a wandering too. Now what
should an old woman wish for, when she can go but
a step or two before she comes to her grave? Children,
it will haunt me night and day, till I tell you.'
`What is it, mother?' cried the husband and wife,
at once.
Then the old woman, with an air of mystery,
them that she had provided her grave-clothes some
years before — a nice linen shroud, a cap with a
muslin ruff, and every thing of a finer sort than she
had worn since her wedding-day. But, this evening,
an old superstition had strangely recurred to her. It
used to be said, in her younger days, that, if any
thing were amiss with a corpse, if only the ruff were
not smooth, or the cap did not set right, the corpse,
in the coffin and beneath the clods, would strive to
put up its cold hands and arrange it. The bare
thought made her nervous.
`Don't talk so, grandmother!' said the girl, shuddering.
`Now,' — continued the old woman, with singular
earnestness, yet smiling strangely at her own folly, —
`I want one of you, my children — when your mother
is drest, and in the coffin — I want one of you to hold
a looking-glass over my face. Who knows but I
may take a glimpse at myself, and see whether all 's
right?'
`Old and young, we dream of graves and monuments,'
murmured the stranger youth. `I wonder
how mariners feel, when the ship is sinking, and
they, unknown and undistinguished, are to be buried
together in the ocean — that wide and nameless sepulchre!'
For a moment, the old woman's ghastly conception
so engrossed the minds of her hearers, that a
sound, abroad in the night, rising like the roar of a
blast, had grown broad, deep, and terrible, before the
all within it, trembled; the foundations of the earth
seemed to be shaken, as if this awful sound were the
peal of the last trump. Young and old exchanged
one wild glance, and remained an instant, pale,
affrighted, without utterance, or power to move.
Then the same shriek burst simultaneously from all
their lips.
`The Slide! The Slide!'
The simplest words must intimate, but not portray,
the unutterable horror of the catastrophe. The victims
rushed from their cottage, and sought refuge in
what they deemed a safer spot — where, in contemplation
of such an emergency, a sort of barrier had
been reared. Alas! they had quitted their security,
and fled right into the pathway of destruction. Down
came the whole side of the mountain, in a cataract
of ruin. Just before it reached the house, the stream
broke into two branches — shivered not a window
there, but overwhelmed the whole vicinity, blocked
up the road, and annihilated every thing in its dreadful
course. Long ere the thunder of that great Slide
had ceased to roar among the mountains, the mortal
agony had been endured, and the victims were at
peace. Their bodies were never found.
The next morning, the light smoke was seen stealing
from the cottage chimney, up the mountain-side.
Within, the fire was yet smouldering on the hearth,
and the chairs in a circle round it, as if the inhabitants
had but gone forth to view the devastation of the
Slide, and would shortly return, to thank Heaven
tokens, by which those, who had known the family,
were made to shed a tear for each. Who has not
heard their name? The story had been told far and
wide, and will for ever be a legend of these mountains.
Poets have sung their fate.
There were circumstances, which led some to suppose
that a stranger had been received into the cottage
on this awful night, and had shared the catastrophe
of all its inmates. Others denied that there
were sufficient grounds for such a conjecture. Wo,
for the high-souled youth, with his dream of Earthly
Immortality! His name and person utterly unknown;
his history, his way of life, his plans, a mystery never
to be solved; his death and his existence, equally
a doubt! Whose was the agony of that death-moment?
| Twice-told tales | |