 | Twice-told tales |  |
DAVID SWAN.
DAVID SWAN.
A FANTASY.
We can be but partially acquainted even with the
events which actually influence our course through
life, and our final destiny. There are innumerable
other events, if such they may be called, which come
close upon us, yet pass away without actual results, or
even betraying their near approach, by the reflection
of any light or shadow across our minds. Could we
know all the vicissitudes of our fortunes, life would be
too full of hope and fear, exultation or disappointment,
to afford us a single hour of true serenity. This idea
may be illustrated by a page from the secret history of
David Swan.
We have nothing to do with David, until we find
him, at the age of twenty, on the high road from his
native place to the city of Boston, where his uncle, a
small dealer in the grocery line, was to take him behind
the counter. Be it enough to say, that he was a
and had received an ordinary school education, with a
classic finish by a year at Gilmanton academy. After
journeying on foot, from sunrise till nearly noon of a
summer's day, his weariness and the increasing heat
determined him to sit down in the first convenient
shade, and await the coming up of the stage coach.
As if planted on purpose for him, there soon appeared
a little tuft of maples, with a delightful recess in the
midst, and such a fresh bubbling spring, that it seemed
never to have sparkled for any wayfarer but David
Swan. Virgin or not, he kissed it with his thirsty
lips, and then flung himself along the brink, pillowing
his head upon some shirts and a pair of pantaloons,
tied up in a striped cotton handkerchief. The sun-beams
could not reach him; the dust did not yet rise
from the road, after the heavy rain of yesterday; and
his grassy lair suited the young man better than a bed
of down. The spring murmured drowsily beside him;
the branches waved dreamily across the blue sky, overhead;
and a deep sleep, perchance hiding dreams
within its depths, fell upon David Swan. But we are
to relate events which he did not dream of.
While he lay sound asleep in the shade, other people
were wide awake, and passed to and fro, a-foot, on
horseback, and in all sorts of vehicles, along the sunny
road by his bedchamber. Some looked neither to the
right hand nor the left, and knew not that he was
there; some merely glanced that way, without admitting
laughed to see how soundly he slept; and several,
whose hearts were brimming full of scorn, ejected their
venomous superfluity on David Swan. A middle-aged
widow, when nobody else was near, thrust her head a
little way into the recess, and vowed that the young
fellow looked charming in his sleep. A temperance
lecturer saw him, and wrought poor David into the
texture of his evening's discourse, as an awful instance
of dead drunkenness by the road-side. But, censure,
praise, merriment, scorn, and indifference, were all
one, or rather all nothing, to David Swan.
He had slept only a few moments, when a brown
carriage, drawn by a handsome pair of horses, bowled
easily along, and was brought to a stand-still, nearly in
front of David's resting place. A linch-pin had fallen
out, and permitted one of the wheels to slide off. The
damage was slight, and occasioned merely a momentary
alarm to an elderly merchant and his wife, who were
returning to Boston in the carriage. While the coachman
and a servant were replacing the wheel, the lady
and gentleman sheltered themselves beneath the maple
trees, and there espied the bubbling fountain, and
David Swan asleep beside it. Impressed with the awe
which the humblest sleeper usually sheds around him,
the merchant trod as lightly as the gout would allow;
and his spouse took good heed not to rustle her silk
gown, lest David should start up, all of a sudden.
`How soundly he sleeps!' whispered the old gentleman.
Such sleep as that, brought on without an opiate,
would be worth more to me than half my income; for
it would suppose health, and an untroubled mind.'
`And youth, besides,' said the lady. `Healthy and
quiet age does not sleep thus. Our slumber is no
more like his, than our wakefulness.'
The longer they looked, the more did this elderly
couple feel interested in the unknown youth, to whom
the way-side and the maple shade were as a secret
chamber, with the rich gloom of damask curtains
brooding over him. Perceiving that a stray sunbeam
glimmered down upon his face, the lady contrived to
twist a branch aside, so as to intercept it. And having
done this little act of kindness, she began to feel like a
mother to him.
`Providence seems to have laid him here,' whispered
she to her husband, `and to have brought us hither
to find him, after our disappointment in our cousin's
son. Methinks I can see a likeness to our departed
Henry. Shall we waken him?'
`To what purpose?' said the merchant, hesitating.
`We know nothing of the youth's character.'
`That open countenance!' replied his wife, in the
same hushed voice, yet earnestly. `This innocent
sleep!'
While these whispers were passing, the sleeper's
heart did not throb, nor his breath become agitated,
nor his features betray the least token of interest.
fall a burthen of gold. The old merchant had lost his
only son, and had no heir to his wealth, except a distant
relative, with whose conduct he was dissatisfied.
In such cases, people sometimes do stranger things
than to act the magician, and awaken a young man to
splendor, who fell asleep in poverty.
`Shall we not waken him?' repeated the lady, persuasively.
`The coach is ready, sir,' said the servant, behind.
The old couple started, reddened, and hurried
away, mutually wondering, that they should ever have
dreamed of doing any thing so very ridiculous. The
merchant threw himself back in the carriage, and
occupied his mind with the plan of a magnificent
asylum for unfortunate men of business. Meanwhile,
David Swan enjoyed his nap.
The carriage could not have gone above a mile or
two, when a pretty young girl came along, with a
tripping pace, which shewed precisely how her little
heart was dancing in her bosom. Perhaps it was this
merry kind of motion that caused—is there any harm
in saying it?—her garter to slip its knot. Conscious
that the silken girth, if silk it were, was relaxing its
hold, she turned aside into the shelter of the maple
trees, and there found a young man asleep by the
spring! Blushing, as red as any rose, that she should
have intruded into a gentleman's bedchamber, and for
such a purpose too, she was about to make her escape
monster of a bee had been wandering overhead—buzz,
buzz, buzz—now among the leaves, now flashing
through the strips of sunshine, and now lost in the
dark shade, till finally he appeared to be settling on the
eyelid of David Swan. The sting of a bee is sometimes
deadly. As free-hearted as she was innocent,
the girl attacked the intruder with her handkerchief,
brushed him soundly, and drove him from beneath the
maple shade. How sweet a picture! This good deed
accomplished, with quickened breath, and a deeper
blush, she stole a glance at the youthful stranger, for
whom she had been battling with a dragon in the air.
`He is handsome!' thought she, and blushed redder
yet.
How could it be that no dream of bliss grew so
strong within him, that, shattered by its very strength,
it should part asunder, and allow him to perceive the
girl among its phantoms? Why, at least, did no smile
of welcome brighten upon his face? She was come,
the maid whose soul, according to the old and beautiful
idea, had been severed from his own, and whom,
in all his vague but passionate desires, he yearned to
meet. Her, only, could he love with a perfect love—
him, only, could she receive into the depths of her
heart—and now her image was faintly blushing in the
fountain, by his side; should it pass away, its happy
lustre would never gleam upon his life again.
`How sound he sleeps!' murmured the girl.
She departed, but did not trip along the road so
lightly as when she came.
Now, this girl's father was a thriving country merchant
in the neighborhood, and happened, at that
identical time, to be looking out for just such a young
man as David Swan. Had David formed a way-side
acquaintance with the daughter, he would have become
the father's clerk, and all else in natural succession.
So here, again, had good fortune—the best of
fortunes—stolen so near, that her garments brushed
against him; and he knew nothing of the matter.
The girl was hardly out of sight, when two men
turned aside beneath the maple shade. Both had dark
faces, set off by cloth caps, which were drawn down
aslant over their brows. Their dresses were shabby,
yet had a certain smartness. These were a couple of
rascals, who got their living by whatever the devil sent
them, and now, in the interim of other business, had
staked the joint profits of their next piece of villany
on a game of cards, which was to have been decided
here under the trees. But, finding David asleep by
the spring, one of the rogues whispered to his fellow,
`Hist!—Do you see that bundle under his head?'
The other villain nodded, winked, and leered.
`I'll bet you a horn of brandy,' said the first, `that
the chap has either a pocketbook, or a snug little
hoard of small change, stowed away amongst his shirts.
And if not there, we shall find it in his pantaloons'
pocket.'
`But how if he wakes?' said the other.
His companion thrust aside his waistcoat, pointed
to the handle of a dirk, and nodded.
`So be it!' muttered the second villain.
They approached the unconscious David, and, while
one pointed the dagger towards his heart, the other
began to search the bundle beneath his head. Their
two faces, grim, wrinkled, and ghastly with guilt and
fear, bent over their victim, looking horrible enough
to be mistaken for fiends, should he suddenly awake.
Nay, had the villains glanced aside into the spring,
even they would hardly have known themselves, as
reflected there. But David Swan had never worn a
more tranquil aspect, even when asleep on his mother's
breast.
`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,
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 burthened
it. Now, he stirred—now, moved his lips, without
a sound—now, talked, in an inward tone, to the noon-day
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 stage coach. 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 towards
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
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?
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