 | THE LITTLE MAN IN BLACK. The beauties of Washington Irving, author of "The sketch-book," "Knickerbocker," "Crayon miscellany," &c. |  |
THE LITTLE MAN IN BLACK.
The following story has been handed down by a family
tradition for more than a century. It is one on which
my cousin Christopher dwells with more than usual prolixity;
and, being in some measure connected with a personage
often quoted in our work, I have thought it worthy
of being laid before my readers.
Soon after my grandfather, Mr. Lemuel Cockloft, had
quietly seated himself at the Hall, and just about the
time that the gossips of the neighbourhood, tired of prying
into his affairs, were anxious for some new tea-table
topic, the busy community of our little village was thrown
into a grand turmoil of curiosity and conjecture—a situation
very common to little gossiping villages—by the
sudden and unaccountable appearance of a mysterious
individual.
The object of this solicitude was a little black-looking
man, of a foreign aspect, who took possession of an old
building, which having long had the reputation of being
haunted, was in a state of ruinous desolation, and an object
of fear to all true believers in Ghosts. He usually
wore a high sugar-loaf hat with a narrow brim, and a
little black cloak, which, short as he was, scarcely reached
below his knees. He sought no intimacy or acquaintance
with any one—appeared to take no interest in the pleasures
or the little broils of the village—nor ever talked, except
sometimes to himself in an outlandish tongue. He commonly
carried a large book, covered with sheepskin, under
his arm, appeared always to be lost in meditation—and was
often met by the peasantry, sometimes watching the dawning
of the day, sometimes at noon seated under a tree
poring over his volume, and sometimes at evening gazing,
with a look of sober tranquillity, at the sun as it gradually
sunk below the horizon.
The good people of the vicinity beheld something prodigiously
singular in all this: a profound mystery seemed
they could not penetrate; and in the excess of worldly
charity they pronounced it a sure sign “that he was
no better than he should be;” a phrase innocent enough
in itself; but which, as applied in common, signifies nearly
every thing that is bad. The young people thought
him a gloomy misanthrope, because he never joined in
their sports; the old men thought still more hardly of
him, because he followed no trade, nor ever seemed ambitious
of earning a farthing; and as to the old gossips,
baffled by the inflexible taciturnity of the stranger, they
unanimously declared that a man who could not or would
not talk was no better than a dumb beast. The little
man in black, careless of their opinions, seemed resolved
to maintain the liberty of keeping his own secret; and the
consequence was, that, in a little while, the whole village
was in an uproar; for in little communities of this description,
the members have always the privilege of being thoroughly
versed, and even of meddling in all the affairs of
each other.
A confidential conference was held one Sunday morning
after sermon, at the door of the village church, and
the character of the unknown fully investigated. The
schoolmaster gave as his opinion that he was the wandering
Jew; the sexton was certain that he must be a free-mason
from his silence; a third maintained, with great
obstinacy, that he was a High German Doctor, and that
the book which he carried about with him contained the
secrets of the black art; but the most prevailing opinion
seemed to be that he was a witch—a race of beings at that
time abounding in those parts: and a sagacious old matron,
from Connecticut, proposed to ascertain the fact by sousing
him into a kettle of hot water.
Suspicion, when once afloat, goes with wind and tide,
and soon becomes certainty. Many a stormy night was
the little man in black seen by the flashes of lightning,
frisking and curvetting in the air upon a broomstick; and
it was always observed, that at those times the storm did
more mischief than at any other. The old lady in particular,
who suggested the humane ordeal of the boiling
kettle, lost, on one of these occasions, a fine brindle cow;
which accident was entirely ascribed to the vengeance of
the little man in black. If ever a mischievous hireling
rode his master's favourite horse to a distant frolic, and
the animal was observed to be lame and jaded in the
bottom of the affair; nor could a high wind howl through
the village at night, but the old women shrugged up their
shoulders, and observed, “the little man in black was in
his tantrums.” In short, he became the bugbear of every
house; and was as effectual in frightening little children
into obedience and hysterics, as the redoubtable Raw-head-and-bloody-bones
himself; nor could a housewife of
the village sleep in peace, except under the guardianship
of a horse-shoe nailed to the door.
The object of these direful suspicions remained for
some time totally ignorant of the wonderful quandary he
had occasioned; but he was soon doomed to feel its effects.
An individual who is once so unfortunate as to
incur the odium of a village, is in a great measure out-lawed
and proscribed, and becomes a mark for injury and
insult; particularly if he has not the power or the disposition
to recriminate.—The little venomous passions,
which in the great world are dissipated and weakened by
being widely diffused, act in the narrow limits of a country
town with collected vigour, and become rancorous in
proportion as they are confined in their sphere of action.
The little man in black experienced the truth of this;
every mischievous urchin returning from school had full
liberty to break his windows; and this was considered as
a most daring exploit; for in such awe did they stand of
him, that the most adventurous schoolboy was never seen
to approach his threshold, and at night would prefer going
round by the cross-roads, where a traveller had been murdered
by the Indians, rather than pass by the door of his
forlorn habitation.
The only living creature that seemed to have any care
or affection for this deserted being was an old turnspit,—
the companion of this lonely mansion and his solitary
wanderings;—the sharer of his scanty meals, and, sorry
am I to say it,—the sharer of his persecutions. The
turnspit, like his master, was peaceable and inoffensive;
never known to bark at a horse, to growl at a traveller,
or to quarrel with the dogs of the neighbourhood. He
followed close by his master's heels when he went out,
and when he returned stretched himself in the sunbeams
at the door; demeaning himself in all things like a civil
and well disposed turnspit. But notwithstanding his
exemplary deportment, he fell likewise under the ill report
of the village; as being the familiar of the little man
The old hovel was considered as the scene of their
unhallowed rites, and its harmless tenants regarded with
a detestation which their inoffensive conduct never merited.
Though pelted and jeered at by the brats of the village,
and frequently abused by their parents, the little
man in black never turned to rebuke them; and his faithful
dog, when wantonly assaulted, looked up wistfully in
his master's face, and there learned a lesson of patience
and forbearance.
The movements of this inscrutable being had long been
the subject of speculation at Cockloft-hall, for its inmates
were full as much given to wondering as their descendants.
The patience with which he bore his persecutions
particularly surprised them—for patience is a virtue but
little known in the Cockloft family. My grandmother,
who, it appears, was rather superstitious, saw, in this
humility, nothing but the gloomy sullenness of a wizard,
who restrained himself for the present, in hopes of midnight
vengeance—the parson of the village, who was a
man of some reading, pronounced it the stubborn insensibility
of a stoic philosopher—my grandfather, who,
worthy soul, seldom wandered abroad in search of conclusions,
took datum from his own excellent heart, and
regarded it as the humble forgiveness of a Christian. But
however different were their opinions as to the character
of the stranger, they agreed in one particular, namely, in
never intruding upon his solitude; and my grandmother,
who was at that time nursing my mother, never left the
room without wisely putting the large family bible in the
cradle—a sure talisman, in her opinion, against witchcraft
and necromancy.
One stormy windy night, when a bleak north-east
wind moaned about the cottages, and howled around the
village steeple, my grandfather was returning from club
preceded by a servant with a lantern. Just as he arrived
opposite the desolate abode of the little man in black, he
was arrested by the piteous howling of a dog, which,
heard in the pauses of a storm, was exquisitely mournful;
and he fancied now and then that he caught the low
and broken groans of some one in distress. He stopped for
some minutes, hesitating between the benevolence of his
heart and a sensation of genuine delicacy, which, in spite
of his eccentricity, he fully possessed,—and which forbade
too, this hesitation might have been strengthened
by a little taint of superstition; or surely, if the unknown
had been addicted to witchcraft, this was a most propitious
night for his vagaries. At length the old gentleman's
philanthropy predominated; he approached the
hovel, and pushing open the door,—for poverty has no
occasion for locks and keys,—beheld, by the light of the
lantern, a scene that smote his generous heart to the core.
On a miserable bed, with pallid and emaciated visage
and hollow eyes; in a room destitute of every convenience;
without fire to warm or friend to console him, lay
this helpless mortal, who had been so long the terror and
wonder of the village. His dog was crouching on the
scanty coverlet, and shivering with cold. My grandfather
stepped softly and hesitatingly to the bedside, and accosted
the forlorn sufferer in his usual accents of kindness.
The little man in black, seemed recalled by the tones of
compassion from the lethargy into which he had fallen;
for, though his heart was almost frozen, there was yet
one chord that answered to the call of the good old man
who bent over him;—the tones of sympathy, so novel to
his ear, called back his wandering senses, and acted like a
restorative to his solitary feelings.
He raised his eyes, but they were vacant and haggard;
—he put forth his hand, but it was cold; he essayed to
speak, but the sound died away in his throat;—he pointed
to his mouth with an expression of dreadful meaning,
and, sad to relate! my grandfather understood that the
harmless stranger, deserted by society, was perishing with
hunger!—With the quick impulse of humanity he despatched
the servant to the hall for refreshment. A little
warm nourishment renovated him for a short time, but not
long: it was evident his pilgrimage was drawing to a close,
and he was about entering that peaceful asylum where
“the wicked cease from troubling.”
His tale of misery was short, and quickly told;—infirmities
had stolen upon him, heightened by the rigours
of the season; he had taken to his bed without strength to
rise and ask for assistance; “and if I had,” said he, in a
tone of bitter despondency, “to whom should I have applied?
I have no friend that I know of in the world!—
the villagers avoid me as something loathsome and dangerous;
and here, in the midst of Christians, should I have
of existence, and close my dying eyes, had not the howlings
of my faithful dog excited your attention.”
He seemed deeply sensible of the kindness of my grandfather;
and at one time as he looked up into his old benefactor's
face, a solitary tear was observed to steal
adown the parched furrows of his cheek.—Poor outcast!
—it was the last tear he shed; but I warrant it was not
the first by millions! My grandfather watched by him
all night. Towards morning he gradually declined; and
as the rising sun gleamed through the windows, he begged
to be raised in his bed, that he might look at it for the
last time. He contemplated it for a moment with a kind
of religious enthusiasm, and his lips moved as if engaged
in prayer. The strange conjecture concerning him rushed
on my grandfather's mind. “He is an idolater!”
thought he, “and is worshipping the sun!” He listened
a moment, and blushed at his own uncharitable suspicion;
he was only engaged in the pious devotions of a Christian.
His simple orison being finished, the little man in black
withdrew his eyes from the east, and taking my grandfather's
hand in one of his, and making a motion with the
other towards the sun—“I love to contemplate it,” said
he; “'tis an emblem of the universal benevolence of a
true Christian;—and it is the most glorious work of him
who is philanthropy itself!” My grandfather blushed
still deeper at his ungenerous surmises; he had pitied the
stranger at first, but now he revered him:—he turned
once more to regard him, but his countenance had undergone
a change; the holy enthusiasm that had lighted up
each feature had given place to an expression of mysterious
import:—a gleam of grandeur seemed to steal across
his gothic visage, and he appeared full of some mighty
secret which he hesitated to impart. He raised the tattered
nightcap that had sunk almost over his eyes, and
waving his withered hand with a slow and feeble expression
of dignity—“In me,” said he, with a laconic solemnity,—“In
me you behold the last descendant of the renowned
Linkum Fidelius!” My grandfather gazed at
him with reverence; for though he had never heard of
the illustrious personage thus pompously announced, yet
there was a certain black-letter dignity in the name that
peculiarly struck his fancy and commanded his respect.
“You have been kind to me,” continued the little man
in black, after a momentary pause, “and richly will I
In yonder large deal box are the volumes of my
illustrious ancestor, of which I alone am the fortunate
possessor. Inherit them—ponder over them, and be
wise!” He grew faint with the exertion he had made,
and sunk back almost breathless on his pillow. His hand,
which, inspired with the importance of his subject, he had
raised to my grandfather's arm, slipped from its hold and
fell over the side of the bed, and his faithful dog licked
it; as if anxious to sooth the last moments of his master,
and testify his gratitude to the hand that had so often cherished
him. The untaught caresses of the faithful animal
were not lost upon his dying master; he raised his languid
eyes,—turned them on the dog, then on my grandfather;
and having given this silent recommendation—
closed them for ever.
The remains of the little man in black, notwithstanding
the objections of many pious people, were decently interred
in the church-yard of the village; and his spirit,
harmless as the body it once animated, has never been
known to molest a living being. My grandfather complied
as far as possible with his last request; he conveyed
the volumes of Linkum Fidelius to his library;—he pondered
over them frequently; but whether he grew wiser,
the family tradition doth not mention. This much is
certain, that his kindness to the poor descendant of Fidelius
was amply rewarded by the approbation of his own
heart, and the devoted attachment of the old turnspit;
who, transferring his affection from his deceased master
to his benefactor, became his constant attendant, and was
father to a long tribe of runty curs that still flourish in the
family. And thus was the Cockloft library enriched by
the invaluable folios of the sage Linkum Fidelius.
| THE LITTLE MAN IN BLACK. The beauties of Washington Irving, author of "The sketch-book," "Knickerbocker," "Crayon miscellany," &c. | |