 | The snow-image |  |
ETHAN BRAND:
A CHAPTER FROM AN ABORTIVE ROMANCE.
Bartram the lime-burner, a rough, heavy-looking
man, begrimed with charcoal, sat watching his kiln, at
nightfall, while his little son played at building houses
with the scattered fragments of marble, when, on the
hill-side below them, they heard a roar of laughter, not
mirthful, but slow, and even solemn, like a wind shaking
the boughs of the forest.
“Father, what is that?” asked the little boy, leaving
his play, and pressing betwixt his father's knees.
“O, some drunken man, I suppose,” answered the
lime-burner; “some merry fellow from the bar-room in
the village, who dared not laugh loud enough within
doors, lest he should blow the roof of the house off.
So here he is, shaking his jolly sides at the foot of Graylock.”
“But, father,” said the child, more sensitive than the
obtuse, middle-aged clown, “he does not laugh like a
man that is glad. So the noise frightens me!”
“Don't be a fool, child!” cried his father, gruffly.
“You will never make a man, I do believe; there is too
much of your mother in you. I have known the rustling
of a leaf startle you. Hark! Here comes the
in him.”
Bartram and his little son, while they were talking
thus, sat watching the same lime-kiln that had been the
scene of Ethan Brand's solitary and meditative life,
before he began his search for the Unpardonable Sin.
Many years, as we have seen, had now elapsed, since
that portentous night when the Idea was first developed.
The kiln, however, on the mountain-side, stood unimpaired,
and was in nothing changed since he had thrown
his dark thoughts into the intense glow of its furnace,
and melted them, as it were, into the one thought that
took possession of his life. It was a rude, round, tower-like
structure, about twenty feet high, heavily built of
rough stones, and with a hillock of earth heaped about
the larger part of its circumference; so that the blocks
and fragments of marble might be drawn by cart-loads,
and thrown in at the top. There was an opening at the
bottom of the tower, like an oven-mouth, but large
enough to admit a man in a stooping posture, and provided
with a massive iron door. With the smoke and
jets of flame issuing from the chinks and crevices of this
door, which seemed to give admittance into the hill-side,
it resembled nothing so much as the private entrance to
the infernal regions, which the shepherds of the Delectable
Mountains were accustomed to show to pilgrims.
There are many such lime-kilns in that tract of country,
for the purpose of burning the white marble which
composes a large part of the substance of the hills.
Some of them, built years ago, and long deserted, with
weeds growing in the vacant round of the interior, which
is open to the sky, and grass and wild-flowers rooting
like relics of antiquity, and may yet be overspread with
the lichens of centuries to come. Others, where the
lime-burner still feeds his daily and night-long fire,
afford points of interest to the wanderer among the hills,
who seats himself on a log of wood or a fragment of
marble, to hold a chat with the solitary man. It is a
lonesome, and, when the character is inclined to thought,
may be an intensely thoughtful occupation; as it proved
in the case of Ethan Brand, who had mused to such
strange purpose, in days gone by, while the fire in this
very kiln was burning.
The man who now watched the fire was of a different
order, and troubled himself with no thoughts save the
very few that were requisite to his business. At frequent
intervals, he flung back the clashing weight of the iron
door, and, turning his face from the insufferable glare,
thrust in huge logs of oak, or stirred the immense brands
with a long pole. Within the furnace were seen the
curling and riotous flames, and the burning marble,
almost molten with the intensity of heat; while without,
the reflection of the fire quivered on the dark intricacy
of the surrounding forest, and showed in the foreground
a bright and ruddy little picture of the hut, the spring
beside its door, the athletic and coal-begrimed figure of
the lime-burner, and the half-frightened child, shrinking
into the protection of his father's shadow. And when
again the iron door was closed, then reäppeared the tender
light of the half-full moon, which vainly strove to
trace out the indistinct shapes of the neighboring mountains;
and, in the upper sky, there was a flitting congregation
of clouds, still faintly tinged with the rosy
had vanished long and long ago.
The little boy now crept still closer to his father, as
footsteps were heard ascending the hill-side, and a human
form thrust aside the bushes that clustered beneath the
trees.
“Halloo! who is it?” cried the lime-burner, vexed at
his son's timidity, yet half infected by it. “Come forward,
and show yourself, like a man, or I 'll fling this
chunk of marble at your head!”
“You offer me a rough welcome,” said a gloomy
voice, as the unknown man drew nigh. “Yet I neither
claim nor desire a kinder one, even at my own fireside.”
To obtain a distincter view, Bartram threw open the
iron door of the kiln, whence immediately issued a gush
of fierce light, that smote full upon the stranger's face
and figure. To a careless eye there appeared nothing
very remarkable in his aspect, which was that of a man
in a coarse, brown, country-made suit of clothes, tall and
thin, with the staff and heavy shoes of a wayfarer. As
he advanced, he fixed his eyes — which were very bright
— intently upon the brightness of the furnace, as if he
beheld, or expected to behold, some object worthy of
note within it.
“Good-evening, stranger,” said the lime-burner;
“whence come you, so late in the day?”
“I come from my search,” answered the wayfarer;
“for, at last, it is finished.”
“Drunk! — or crazy!” muttered Bartram to himself.
“I shall have trouble with the fellow. The sooner I
drive him away, the better.”
The little boy, all in a tremble, whispered to his father,
there might not be so much light; for that there was
something in the man's face which he was afraid to look
at, yet could not look away from. And, indeed, even
the lime-burner's dull and torpid sense began to be
impressed by an indescribable something in that thin,
rugged, thoughtful visage, with the grizzled hair hanging
wildly about it, and those deeply-sunken eyes, which
gleamed like fires within the entrance of a mysterious
cavern. But, as he closed the door, the stranger turned
towards him, and spoke in a quiet, familiar way, that
made Bartram feel as if he were a sane and sensible
man, after all.
“Your task draws to an end, I see,” said he. “This
marble has already been burning three days. A few
hours more will convert the stone to lime.”
“Why, who are you?” exclaimed the lime-burner.
“You seem as well acquainted with my business as I
am myself.”
“And well I may be,” said the stranger; “for I followed
the same craft many a long year, and here, too,
on this very spot. But you are a new comer in these
parts. Did you never hear of Ethan Brand?”
“The man that went in search of the Unpardonable
Sin?” asked Bartram, with a laugh.
“The same,” answered the stranger. “He has
found what he sought, and therefore he comes back
again.”
“What! then you are Ethan Brand himself?” cried
the lime-burner, in amazement. “I am a new comer
here, as you say, and they call it eighteen years since
you left the foot of Graylock. But, I can tell you, the
yonder, and what a strange errand took him away from
his lime-kiln. Well, and so you have found the Unpardonable
Sin?”
“Even so!” said the stranger, calmly.
“If the question is a fair one,” proceeded Bartram,
“where might it be?”
Ethan Brand laid his finger on his own heart.
“Here!” replied he.
And then, without mirth in his countenance, but as if
moved by an involuntary recognition of the infinite
absurdity of seeking throughout the world for what was
the closest of all things to himself, and looking into
every heart, save his own, for what was hidden in no
other breast, he broke into a laugh of scorn. It was the
same slow, heavy laugh, that had almost appalled the
lime-burner when it heralded the wayfarer's approach.
The solitary mountain-side was made dismal by it.
Laughter, when out of place, mistimed, or bursting
forth from a disordered state of feeling, may be the most
terrible modulation of the human voice. The laughter
of one asleep, even if it be a little child, — the madman's
laugh, — the wild, screaming laugh of a born idiot, — are
sounds that we sometimes tremble to hear, and would
always willingly forget. Poets have imagined no utterance
of fiends or hobgoblins so fearfully appropriate as a
laugh. And even the obtuse lime-burner felt his nerves
shaken, as this strange man looked inward at his own
heart, and burst into laughter that rolled away into the
night, and was indistinctly reverberated among the hills.
“Joe,” said he to his little son, “scamper down to the
tavern in the village, and tell the jolly fellows there that
Unpardonable Sin!”
The boy darted away on his errand, to which Ethan
Brand made no objection, nor seemed hardly to notice it.
He sat on a log of wood, looking steadfastly at the iron
door of the kiln. When the child was out of sight, and
his swift and light footsteps ceased to be heard treading
first on the fallen leaves and then on the rocky mountain-path,
the lime-burner began to regret his departure. He
felt that the little fellow's presence had been a barrier
between his guest and himself, and that he must now
deal, heart to heart, with a man who, on his own confession,
had committed the one only crime for which
Heaven could afford no mercy. That crime, in its indistinct
blackness, seemed to overshadow him. The lime-burner's
own sins rose up within him, and made his
memory riotous with a throng of evil shapes that asserted
their kindred with the Master Sin, whatever it might be,
which it was within the scope of man's corrupted nature
to conceive and cherish. They were all of one family;
they went to and fro between his breast and Ethan
Brand's, and carried dark greetings from one to the
other.
Then Bartram remembered the stories which had
grown traditionary in reference to this strange man, who
had come upon him like a shadow of the night, and was
making himself at home in his old place, after so long
absence that the dead people, dead and buried for years,
would have had more right to be at home, in any familiar
spot, than he. Ethan Brand, it was said, had conversed
with Satan himself in the lurid blaze of this very kiln.
The legend had been matter of mirth heretofore, but
Brand departed on his search, he had been accustomed
to evoke a fiend from the hot furnace of the lime-kiln,
night after night, in order to confer with him about the
Unpardonable Sin; the man and the fiend each laboring
to frame the image of some mode of guilt which could
neither be atoned for nor forgiven. And, with the first
gleam of light upon the mountain-top, the fiend crept in
at the iron door, there to abide the intensest element of
fire, until again summoned forth to share in the dreadful
task of extending man's possible guilt beyond the
scope of Heaven's else infinite mercy.
While the lime-burner was struggling with the horror
of these thoughts, Ethan Brand rose from the log, and
flung open the door of the kiln. The action was in such
accordance with the idea in Bartram's mind, that he
almost expected to see the Evil One issue forth, red-hot
from the raging furnace.
“Hold! hold!” cried he, with a tremulous attempt to
laugh; for he was ashamed of his fears, although they
overmastered him. “Don't, for mercy's sake, bring out
your devil now!”
“Man!” sternly replied Ethan Brand, “what need
have I of the devil? I have left him behind me, on my
track. It is with such half-way sinners as you that he
busies himself. Fear not, because I open the door. I
do but act by old custom, and am going to trim your
fire, like a lime-burner, as I was once.”
He stirred the vast coals, thrust in more wood, and
bent forward to gaze into the hollow prison-house of the
fire, regardless of the fierce glow that reddened upon his
face. The lime-burner sat watching him, and half
a fiend, at least to plunge bodily into the flames, and
thus vanish from the sight of man. Ethan Brand,
however, drew quietly back, and closed the door of the
kiln.
“I have looked,” said he, “into many a human heart
that was seven times hotter with sinful passions than
yonder furnace is with fire. But I found not there what
I sought. No, not the Unpardonable Sin!”
“What is the Unpardonable Sin?” asked the lime-burner;
and then he shrank further from his companion,
trembling lest his question should be answered.
“It is a sin that grew within my own breast,”
replied Ethan Brand, standing erect, with a pride that
distinguishes all enthusiasts of his stamp. “A sin that
grew nowhere else! The sin of an intellect that triumphed
over the sense of brotherhood with man and
reverence for God, and sacrificed everything to its own
mighty claims! The only sin that deserves a recompense
of immortal agony! Freely, were it to do again,
would I incur the guilt. Unshrinkingly I accept the
retribution!”
“The man's head is turned,” muttered the lime-burner
to himself. “He may be a sinner, like the rest of us, —
nothing more likely, — but, I 'll be sworn, he is a madman
too.”
Nevertheless he felt uncomfortable at his situation,
alone with Ethan Brand on the wild mountain-side,
and was right glad to hear the rough murmur of
tongues, and the footsteps of what seemed a pretty
numerous party, stumbling over the stones and rustling
through the underbrush. Soon appeared the whole lazy
three or four individuals who had drunk flip
beside the bar-room fire through all the winters, and
smoked their pipes beneath the stoop through all the
summers, since Ethan Brand's departure. Laughing
boisterously, and mingling all their voices together in
unceremonious talk, they now burst into the moonshine
and narrow streaks of fire-light that illuminated the open
space before the lime-kiln. Bartram set the door ajar
again, flooding the spot with light, that the whole company
might get a fair view of Ethan Brand, and he of
them.
There, among other old acquaintances, was a once
ubiquitous man, now almost extinct, but whom we were
formerly sure to encounter at the hotel of every thriving
village throughout the country. It was the stage-agent.
The present specimen of the genus was a wilted
and smoke-dried man, wrinkled and red-nosed, in a
smartly-cut, brown, bob-tailed coat, with brass buttons,
who, for a length of time unknown, had kept his desk
and corner in the bar-room, and was still puffing what
seemed to be the same cigar that he had lighted twenty
years before. He had great fame as a dry joker, though,
perhaps, less on account of any intrinsic humor than from
a certain flavor of brandy-toddy and tobacco-smoke,
which impregnated all his ideas and expressions, as
well as his person. Another well-remembered though
strangely-altered face was that of Lawyer Giles, as
people still called him in courtesy; an elderly ragamuffin,
in his soiled shirt-sleeves and tow-cloth trousers.
This poor fellow had been an attorney, in what he
called his better days, a sharp practitioner, and in great
and toddy, and cocktails, imbibed at all hours, morning,
noon and night, had caused him to slide from intellectual
to various kinds and degrees of bodily labor, till, at
last, to adopt his own phrase, he slid into a soap-vat.
In other words, Giles was now a soap-boiler, in a small
way. He had come to be but the fragment of a human
being, a part of one foot having been chopped off by an
axe, and an entire hand torn away by the devilish grip
of a steam-engine. Yet, though the corporeal hand was
gone, a spiritual member remained; for, stretching forth
the stump, Giles steadfastly averred that he felt an
invisible thumb and fingers with as vivid a sensation as
before the real ones were amputated. A maimed and
miserable wretch he was; but one, nevertheless, whom
the world could not trample on, and had no right to
scorn, either in this or any previous stage of his misfortunes,
since he had still kept up the courage and spirit
of a man, asked nothing in charity, and with his one
hand — and that the left one — fought a stern battle
against want and hostile circumstances.
Among the throng, too, came another personage, who,
with certain points of similarity to Lawyer Giles, had
many more of difference. It was the village doctor; a
man of some fifty years, whom, at an earlier period of
his life, we introduced as paying a professional visit to
Ethan Brand during the latter's supposed insanity. He
was now a purple-visaged, rude, and brutal, yet half-gentlemanly
figure, with something wild, ruined, and
desperate in his talk, and in all the details of his gesture
and manners. Brandy possessed this man like an evil
spirit, and made him as surly and savage as a wild
supposed to be in him such wonderful skill, such native
gifts of healing, beyond any which medical science could
impart, that society caught hold of him, and would not
let him sink out of its reach. So, swaying to and fro
upon his horse, and grumbling thick accents at the bedside,
he visited all the sick chambers for miles about
among the mountain towns, and sometimes raised a
dying man, as it were, by miracle, or quite as often, no
doubt, sent his patient to a grave that was dug many a
year too soon. The doctor had an everlasting pipe in
his mouth, and, as somebody said, in allusion to his
habit of swearing, it was always alight with hell-fire.
These three worthies pressed forward, and greeted
Ethan Brand each after his own fashion, earnestly
inviting him to partake of the contents of a certain black
bottle, in which, as they averred, he would find something
far better worth seeking for than the Unpardonable
Sin. No mind, which has wrought itself by
intense and solitary meditation into a high state of
enthusiasm, can endure the kind of contact with low
and vulgar modes of thought and feeling to which
Ethan Brand was now subjected. It made him doubt
— and, strange to say, it was a painful doubt — whether
he had indeed found the Unpardonable Sin, and found
it within himself. The whole question on which he
had exhausted life, and more than life, looked like a
delusion.
“Leave me,” he said, bitterly, “ye brute beasts, that
have made yourselves so, shrivelling up your souls with
fiery liquors! I have done with you. Years and years
for my purpose. Get ye gone!”
“Why, you uncivil scoundrel,” cried the fierce doctor,
“is that the way you respond to the kindness of your
best friends? Then let me tell you the truth. You
have no more found the Unpardonable Sin than yonder
boy Joe has. You are but a crazy fellow, — I told you
so twenty years ago, — neither better nor worse than a
crazy fellow, and the fit companion of old Humphrey,
here!”
He pointed to an old man, shabbily dressed, with long
white hair, thin visage, and unsteady eyes. For some
years past this aged person had been wandering about
among the hills, inquiring of all travellers whom he met
for his daughter. The girl, it seemed, had gone off
with a company of circus-performers; and occasionally
tidings of her came to the village, and fine stories were
told of her glittering appearance as she rode on horse-back
in the ring, or performed marvellous feats on the
tight-rope.
The white-haired father now approached Ethan
Brand, and gazed unsteadily into his face.
“They tell me you have been all over the earth,”
said he, wringing his hands with earnestness. “You
must have seen my daughter, for she makes a grand
figure in the world, and everybody goes to see her.
Did she send any word to her old father, or say when
she was coming back?”
Ethan Brand's eye quailed beneath the old man's.
That daughter, from whom he so earnestly desired a
word of greeting, was the Esther of our tale, the very
girl whom, with such cold and remorseless purpose,
experiment, and wasted, absorbed, and perhaps annihilated
her soul, in the process.
“Yes,” murmured he, turning away from the hoary
wanderer; “it is no delusion. There is an Unpardonable
Sin!”
While these things were passing, a merry scene was
going forward in the area of cheerful light, beside the
spring and before the door of the hut. A number of the
youth of the village, young men and girls, had hurried
up the hill-side, impelled by curiosity to see Ethan
Brand, the hero of so many a legend familiar to their
childhood. Finding nothing, however, very remarkable
in his aspect, — nothing but a sun-burnt wayfarer, in
plain garb and dusty shoes, who sat looking into the
fire, as if he fancied pictures among the coals, — these
young people speedily grew tired of observing him. As
it happened, there was other amusement at hand. An
old German Jew, travelling with a diorama on his back,
was passing down the mountain-road towards the village
just as the party turned aside from it, and, in hopes of
eking out the profits of the day, the showman had kept
them company to the lime-kiln.
“Come, old Dutchman,” cried one of the young men,
“let us see your pictures, if you can swear they are
worth looking at!”
“O, yes, Captain,” answered the Jew, — whether as
a matter of courtesy or craft, he styled everybody
Captain, — “I shall show you, indeed, some very superb
pictures!”
So, placing his box in a proper position, he invited the
young men and girls to look through the glass orifices
most outrageous scratchings and daubings, as specimens
of the fine arts, that ever an itinerant showman had the
face to impose upon his circle of spectators. The pictures
were worn out, moreover, tattered, full of cracks and
wrinkles, dingy with tobacco-smoke, and otherwise in a
most pitiable condition. Some purported to be cities,
public edifices, and ruined castles in Europe; others
represented Napoleon's battles and Nelson's sea-fights;
and in the midst of these would be seen a gigantic,
brown, hairy hand, — which might have been mistaken
for the Hand of Destiny, though, in truth, it was only
the showman's, — pointing its forefinger to various scenes
of the conflict, while its owner gave historical illustrations.
When, with much merriment at its abominable
deficiency of merit, the exhibition was concluded, the
German bade little Joe put his head into the box.
Viewed through the magnifying glasses, the boy's round,
rosy visage assumed the strangest imaginable aspect of
an immense Titanic child, the mouth grinning broadly,
and the eyes and every other feature overflowing with fun
at the joke. Suddenly, however, that merry face turned
pale, and its expression changed to horror, for this easily
impressed and excitable child had become sensible that
the eye of Ethan Brand was fixed upon him through the
glass.
“You make the little man to be afraid, Captain,” said
the German Jew, turning up the dark and strong outline
of his visage, from his stooping posture. “But look
again, and, by chance, I shall cause you to see somewhat
that is very fine, upon my word!”
Ethan Brand gazed into the box for an instant, and
had he seen? Nothing, apparently; for a curious youth,
who had peeped in almost at the same moment, beheld
only a vacant space of canvas.
“I remember you now,” muttered Ethan Brand to the
showman.
“Ah, Captain,” whispered the Jew of Nuremburg,
with a dark smile, “I find it to be a heavy matter in my
show-box, — this Unpardonable Sin! By my faith,
Captain, it has wearied my shoulders, this long day, to
carry it over the mountain.”
“Peace,” answered Ethan Brand, sternly, “or get
thee into the furnace yonder!”
The Jew's exhibition had scarcely concluded, when a
great, elderly dog, — who seemed to be his own master,
as no person in the company laid claim to him, — saw
fit to render himself the object of public notice. Hitherto,
he had shown himself a very quiet, well-disposed
old dog, going round from one to another, and, by way
of being sociable, offering his rough head to be patted by
any kindly hand that would take so much trouble. But
now, all of a sudden, this grave and venerable quadruped,
of his own mere motion, and without the slightest
suggestion from anybody else, began to run round after
his tail, which, to heighten the absurdity of the proceeding,
was a great deal shorter than it should have been.
Never was seen such headlong eagerness in pursuit of
an object that could not possibly be attained; never was
heard such a tremendous outbreak of growling, snarling,
barking, and snapping, — as if one end of the ridiculous
brute's body were at deadly and most unforgivable
enmity with the other. Faster and faster, round about
brevity of his tail; and louder and fiercer
grew his yells of rage and animosity; until, utterly
exhausted, and as far from the goal as ever, the foolish
old dog ceased his performance as suddenly as he had
begun it. The next moment he was as mild, quiet, sensible,
and respectable in his deportment, as when he first
scraped acquaintance with the company.
As may be supposed, the exhibition was greeted with
universal laughter, clapping of hands, and shouts of
encore, to which the canine performer responded by
wagging all that there was to wag of his tail, but
appeared totally unable to repeat his very successful
effort to amuse the spectators.
Meanwhile, Ethan Brand had resumed his seat upon
the log, and moved, it might be, by a perception of some
remote analogy between his own case and that of this
self-pursuing cur, he broke into the awful laugh, which,
more than any other token, expressed the condition of
his inward being. From that moment, the merriment
of the party was at an end; they stood aghast, dreading
lest the inauspicious sound should be reverberated around
the horizon, and that mountain would thunder it to
mountain, and so the horror be prolonged upon their
ears. Then, whispering one to another that it was late,
— that the moon was almost down, — that the August
night was growing chill, — they hurried homewards,
leaving the lime-burner and little Joe to deal as they
might with their unwelcome guest. Save for these three
human beings, the open space on the hill-side was a solitude,
set in a vast gloom of forest. Beyond that darksome
verge, the fire-light glimmered on the stately
the lighter verdure of sapling oaks, maples, and poplars,
while here and there lay the gigantic corpses of dead
trees, decaying on the leaf-strewn soil. And it seemed
to little Joe — a timorous and imaginative child — that
the silent forest was holding its breath, until some fearful
thing should happen.
Ethan Brand thrust more wood into the fire, and
closed the door of the kiln; then looking over his
shoulder at the lime-burner and his son, he bade, rather
than advised, them to retire to rest.
“For myself, I cannot sleep,” said he. “I have matters
that it concerns me to meditate upon. I will watch
the fire, as I used to do in the old time.”
“And call the devil out of the furnace to keep you
company, I suppose,” muttered Bartram, who had been
making intimate acquaintance with the black bottle
above-mentioned. “But watch, if you like, and call as
many devils as you like! For my part, I shall be all
the better for a snooze. Come, Joe!”
As the boy followed his father into the hut, he looked
back at the wayfarer, and the tears came into his eyes,
for his tender spirit had an intuition of the bleak and
terrible loneliness in which this man had enveloped
himself.
When they had gone, Ethan Brand sat listening to
the crackling of the kindled wood, and looking at the
little spirits of fire that issued through the chinks of the
door. These trifles, however, once so familiar, had but
the slightest hold of his attention, while deep within his
mind he was reviewing the gradual but marvellous change
that had been wrought upon him by the search to which
dew had fallen upon him, — how the dark forest had
whispered to him, — how the stars had gleamed upon
him, — a simple and loving man, watching his fire in the
years gone by, and ever musing as it burned. He
remembered with what tenderness, with what love and
sympathy for mankind, and what pity for human guilt
and woe, he had first begun to contemplate those ideas
which afterwards became the inspiration of his life; with
what reverence he had then looked into the heart of
man, viewing it as a temple originally divine, and, however
desecrated, still to be held sacred by a brother;
with what awful fear he had deprecated the success of
his pursuit, and prayed that the Unpardonable Sin might
never be revealed to him. Then ensued that vast intellectual
development, which, in its progress, disturbed the
counterpoise between his mind and heart. The Idea
that possessed his life had operated as a means of education;
it had gone on cultivating his powers to the
highest point of which they were susceptible; it had
raised him from the level of an unlettered laborer to
stand on a star-lit eminence, whither the philosophers
of the earth, laden with the lore of universities, might
vainly strive to clamber after him. So much for the
intellect! But where was the heart? That, indeed,
had withered — had contracted — had hardened — had
perished! It had ceased to partake of the universal throb.
He had lost his hold of the magnetic chain of humanity.
He was no longer a brother-man, opening the chambers
or the dungeons of our common nature by the key of
holy sympathy, which gave him a right to share in all
its secrets; he was now a cold observer, looking on mankind
converting man and woman to be his puppets, and pulling
the wires that moved them to such degrees of crime
as were demanded for his study.
Thus Ethan Brand became a fiend. He began to be
so from the moment that his moral nature had ceased to
keep the pace of improvement with his intellect. And
now, as his highest effort and inevitable development, —
as the bright and gorgeous flower, and rich, delicious
fruit of his life's labor, — he had produced the Unpardonable
Sin!
“What more have I to seek? What more to achieve?”
said Ethan Brand to himself. “My task is done, and
well done!”
Starting from the log with a certain alacrity in his
gait, and ascending the hillock of earth that was raised
against the stone circumference of the lime-kiln, he thus
reached the top of the structure. It was a space of perhaps
ten feet across, from edge to edge, presenting a
view of the upper surface of the immense mass of broken
marble with which the kiln was heaped. All these innumerable
blocks and fragments of marble were red-hot
and vividly on fire, sending up great spouts of blue
flame, which quivered aloft and danced madly, as within
a magic circle, and sank and rose again, with continual
and multitudinous activity. As the lonely man bont
forward over this terrible body of fire, the blasting heat
smote up against his person with a breath that, it might
be supposed, would have scorched and shrivelled him up
in a moment.
Ethan Brand stood erect, and raised his arms on high.
The blue flames played upon his face, and imparted the
expression; it was that of a fiend on the verge of plunging
into his gulf of intensest torment.
“O Mother Earth,” cried he, “who art no more my
Mother, and into whose bosom this frame shall never be
resolved! O mankind, whose brotherhood I have cast
off, and trampled thy great heart beneath my feet! O
stars of heaven, that shone on me of old, as if to light
me onward and upward! — farewell all, and forever.
Come, deadly element of Fire, — henceforth my familiar
friend! Embrace me, as I do thee!”
That night the sound of a fearful peal of laughter
rolled heavily through the sleep of the lime-burner and
his little son; dim shapes of horror and anguish haunted
their dreams, and seemed still present in the rude hovel,
when they opened their eyes to the daylight.
“Up, boy, up!” cried the lime-burner, staring about
him. “Thank Heaven, the night is gone, at last; and
rather than pass such another, I would watch my lime-kiln,
wide awake, for a twelvemonth. This Ethan
Brand, with his humbug of an Unpardonable Sin, has
done me no such mighty favor, in taking my place!”
He issued from the hut, followed by little Joe, who
kept fast hold of his father's hand. The early sunshine
was already pouring its gold upon the mountain-tops;
and though the valleys were still in shadow, they smiled
cheerfully in the promise of the bright day that was
hastening onward. The village, completely shut in by
hills, which swelled away gently about it, looked as if
it had rested peacefully in the hollow of the great hand
of Providence. Every dwelling was distinctly visible;
the little spires of the two churches pointed upwards, and
skies upon their gilded weather-cocks. The tavern was
astir, and the figure of the old, smoke-dried stage-agent,
cigar in mouth, was seen beneath the stoop. Old Graylock
was glorified with a golden cloud upon his head.
Scattered likewise over the breasts of the surrounding
mountains, there were heaps of hoary mist, in fantastic
shapes, some of them far down into the valley, others
high up towards the summits, and still others, of the
same family of mist or cloud, hovering in the gold radiance
of the upper atmosphere. Stepping from one to
another of the clouds that rested on the hills, and thence
to the loftier brotherhood that sailed in air, it seemed
almost as if a mortal man might thus ascend into the
heavenly regions. Earth was so mingled with sky that
it was a day-dream to look at it.
To supply that charm of the familiar and homely,
which Nature so readily adopts into a scene like this,
the stage-coach was rattling down the mountain-road,
and the driver sounded his horn, while echo caught up
the notes, and intertwined them into a rich and varied
and elaborate harmony, of which the original performer
could lay claim to little share. The great hills played a
concert among themselves, each contributing a strain of
airy sweetness.
Little Joe's face brightened at once.
“Dear father,” cried he, skipping cheerily to and fro,
“that strange man is gone, and the sky and the mountains
all seem glad of it!”
“Yes,” growled the lime-burner, with an oath, “but
he has let the fire go down, and no thanks to him if five
hundred bushels of lime are not spoiled. If I catch the
the furnace!”
With his long pole in his hand, he ascended to the top
of the kiln. After a moment's pause, he called to his
son.
“Come up here, Joe!” said he.
So little Joe ran up the hillock, and stood by his
father's side. The marble was all burnt into perfect,
snow-white lime. But on its surface, in the midst of the
circle,—snow-white too, and thoroughly converted into
lime,—lay a human skeleton, in the attitude of a person
who, after long toil, lies down to long repose. Within
the ribs — strange to say — was the shape of a human
heart.
“Was the fellow's heart made of marble?” cried
Bartram, in some perplexity at this phenomenon. “At
any rate, it is burnt into what looks like special good
lime; and, taking all the bones together, my kiln is half
a bushel the richer for him.”
So saying, the rude lime-burner lifted his pole, and,
letting it fall upon the skeleton, the relics of Ethan
Brand were crumbled into fragments.
| The snow-image | |