Mosses from an old manse
himself. This unnatural restraint was almost the only trait that
betokened anything amiss. He had just thrown a book upon the grass,
where it lay half opened, thus disclosing itself to be a natural
history of the serpent tribe, illustrated by lifelike plates. Near it
lay that bulky volume, the Ductor Dubitantium of Jeremy Taylor, full of
cases of conscience, and in which most men, possessed of a conscience,
may find something applicable to their purpose.
“You see,” observed Elliston, pointing to the book of serpents, while a
smile gleamed upon his lips, “I am making an effort to become better
acquainted with my bosom friend; but I find nothing satisfactory in
this volume. If I mistake not, he will prove to be sui generis, and
akin to no other reptile in creation.”
“Whence came this strange calamity?” inquired the sculptor.
“My sable friend Scipio has a story,” replied Roderick, “of a snake
that had lurked in this fountain—pure and innocent as it looks—ever
since it was known to the first settlers. This insinuating personage
once crept into the vitals of my great grandfather and dwelt there many
years, tormenting the old gentleman beyond mortal endurance. In short
it is a family peculiarity. But, to tell you the truth, I have no faith
in this idea of the snake’s being an heirloom. He is my own snake, and
no man’s else.”
“But what was his origin?” demanded Herkimer.
“Oh, there is poisonous stuff in any man’s heart sufficient to generate
a brood of serpents,” said Elliston with a hollow laugh. “You should
have heard my homilies to the good town’s-people. Positively, I deem
myself fortunate in having bred but a single serpent. You, however,
have none in your bosom, and therefore cannot sympathize with the rest
of the world. It gnaws me! It gnaws me!”
With this exclamation Roderick lost his self-control and threw himself
upon the grass, testifying his agony by intricate writhings, in which
Herkimer could not but fancy a resemblance to the motions of a snake.
Then, likewise, was heard that frightful hiss, which often ran through
the sufferer’s speech, and crept between the words and syllables
without interrupting their succession.
“This is awful indeed!” exclaimed the sculptor—“an awful infliction,
whether it be actual or imaginary. Tell me, Roderick Elliston, is there
any remedy for this loathsome evil?”
“Yes, but an impossible one,” muttered Roderick, as he lay wallowing
with his face in the grass. “Could I for one moment forget myself, the
serpent might not abide within me. It is my diseased self-contemplation
that has engendered and nourished him.”
“Then forget yourself, my husband,” said a gentle voice above him;
“forget yourself in the idea of another!”
Rosina had emerged from the arbor, and was bending over him with the
shadow of his anguish reflected in her countenance, yet so mingled with
hope and unselfish love that all anguish seemed but an earthly shadow
and a dream. She touched Roderick with her hand. A tremor shivered
through his frame. At that moment, if report be trustworthy, the
sculptor beheld a waving motion through the grass, and heard a tinkling
sound, as if something had plunged into the fountain. Be the truth as
it might, it is certain that Roderick Elliston sat up like a man
renewed, restored to his right mind, and rescued from the fiend which
had so miserably overcome him in the battle-field of his own breast.
“Rosina!” cried he, in broken and passionate tones, but with nothing of
the wild wail that had haunted his voice so long, “forgive! forgive!”
Her happy tears bedewed his face.
“The punishment has been severe,” observed the sculptor. “Even Justice
might now forgive; how much more a woman’s tenderness! Roderick
Elliston, whether the serpent was a physical reptile, or whether the
morbidness of your nature suggested that symbol to your fancy, the
moral of the story is not the less true and strong. A tremendous
Egotism, manifesting itself in your case in the form of jealousy, is as
fearful a fiend as ever stole into the human heart. Can a breast, where
it has dwelt so long, be purified?”
“Oh yes,” said Rosina with a heavenly smile. “The serpent was but a
dark fantasy, and what it typified was as shadowy as itself. The past,
dismal as it seems, shall fling no gloom upon the future. To give it
its due importance we must think of it but as an anecdote in our
Eternity.”
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
hint, 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 burden 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 expended, annually forever, 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 out of the reckoning. They performed
their present office with 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 sane 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, the banqueters
should throw aside the veil, and cast an inquiring 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 wofulest, 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