Mosses from an old manse
deed or not. Therefore, his whole life was spent in the agony of an
inward trial for murder, with a continual sifting of the details of his
terrible calamity, until his mind had no longer any thought, nor his
soul any emotion, disconnected with it, There was a mother, too,—a
mother once, but a desolation now,—who, many years before, had gone out
on a pleasure-party, and, returning, found her infant smothered in its
little bed. And ever since she has been tortured with the fantasy that
her buried baby lay smothering in its coffin. Then there was an aged
lady, who had lived from time immemorial with a constant tremor
quivering through her-frame. It was terrible to discern her dark shadow
tremulous upon the wall; her lips, likewise, were tremulous; and the
expression of her eye seemed to indicate that her soul was trembling
too. Owing to the bewilderment and confusion which made almost a chaos
of her intellect, it was impossible to discover what dire misfortune
had thus shaken her nature to its depths; so that the stewards had
admitted her to the table, not from any acquaintance with her history,
but on the safe testimony of her miserable aspect. Some surprise was
expressed at the presence of a bluff, red-faced gentleman, a certain
Mr. Smith, who had evidently the fat of many a rich feast within him,
and the habitual twinkle of whose eye betrayed a disposition to break
forth into uproarious laughter for little cause or none. It turned out,
however, that, with the best possible flow of spirits, our poor friend
was afflicted with a physical disease of the heart, which threatened
instant death on the slightest cachinnatory indulgence, or even that
titillation of the bodily frame produced by merry thoughts. In this
dilemma he had sought admittance to the banquet, on the ostensible plea
of his irksome and miserable state, but, in reality, with the hope of
imbibing a life-preserving melancholy.
A married couple had been invited from a motive of bitter humor, it
being well understood that they rendered each other unutterably
miserable whenever they chanced to meet, and therefore must necessarily
be fit associates at the festival. In contrast with these was another
couple still unmarried, who had interchanged their hearts in early
life, but had been divided by circumstances as impalpable as morning
mist, and kept apart so long that their spirits now found it impossible
to meet, Therefore, yearning for communion, yet shrinking from one
another and choosing none beside, they felt themselves companionless in
life, and looked upon eternity as a boundless desert. Next to the
skeleton sat a mere son of earth,—a hunter of the Exchange,—a gatherer
of shining dust,—a man whose life’s record was in his ledger, and whose
soul’s prison-house the vaults of the bank where he kept his deposits.
This person had been greatly perplexed at his invitation, deeming
himself one of the most fortunate men in the city; but the stewards
persisted in demanding his presence, assuring him that he had no
conception how miserable he was.
And now appeared a figure which we must acknowledge as our acquaintance
of the former festival. It was Gervayse Hastings, whose presence had
then caused so much question and criticism, and who now took his place
with the composure of one whose claims were satisfactory to himself and
must needs be allowed by others. Yet his easy and unruffled face
betrayed no sorrow.
The well-skilled beholders gazed a moment into his eyes and shook their
heads, to miss the unuttered sympathy—the countersign never to be
falsified—of those whose hearts are cavern-mouths through which they
descend into a region of illimitable woe and recognize other wanderers
there.
“Who is this youth?” asked the man with a bloodstain on his conscience.
“Surely he has never gone down into the depths! I know all the aspects
of those who have passed through the dark valley. By what right is he
among us?”
“Ah, it is a sinful thing to come hither without a sorrow,” murmured
the aged lady, in accents that partook of the eternal tremor which
pervaded her whole being “Depart, young man! Your soul has never been
shaken, and, therefore, I tremble so much the more to look at you.”
“His soul shaken! No; I’ll answer for it,” said bluff Mr. Smith,
pressing his hand upon his heart and making himself as melancholy as he
could, for fear of a fatal explosion of laughter. “I know the lad well;
he has as fair prospects as any young man about town, and has no more
right among us miserable creatures than the child unborn. He never was
miserable and probably never will be!”
“Our honored guests,” interposed the stewards, “pray have patience with
us, and believe, at least, that our deep veneration for the sacredness
of this solemnity would preclude any wilful violation of it. Receive
this young man to your table. It may not be too much to say, that no
guest here would exchange his own heart for the one that beats within
that youthful bosom!”
“I’d call it a bargain, and gladly, too,” muttered Mr. Smith, with a
perplexing mixture of sadness and mirthful conceit. “A plague upon
their nonsense! My own heart is the only really miserable one in the
company; it will certainly be the death of me at last!”
Nevertheless, as on the former occasion, the judgment of the stewards
being without appeal, the company sat down. The obnoxious guest made no
more attempt to obtrude his conversation on those about him, but
appeared to listen to the table-talk with peculiar assiduity, as if
some inestimable secret, otherwise beyond his reach, might be conveyed
in a casual word. And in truth, to those who could understand and value
it, there was rich matter in the upgushings and outpourings of these
initiated souls to whom sorrow had been a talisman, admitting them into
spiritual depths which no other spell can open. Sometimes out of the
midst of densest gloom there flashed a momentary radiance, pure as
crystal, bright as the flame of stars, and shedding such a glow upon
the mysteries of life, that the guests were ready to exclaim, “Surely
the riddle is on the point of being solved!” At such illuminated
intervals the saddest mourners felt it to be revealed that mortal
griefs are but shadowy and external; no more than the sable robes
voluminously shrouding a certain divine reality, and thus indicating
what might otherwise be altogether invisible to mortal eye.
“Just now,” remarked the trembling old woman, “I seemed to see beyond
the outside. And then my everlasting tremor passed away!”
“Would that I could dwell always in these momentary gleams of light!”
said the man of stricken conscience. “Then the blood-stain in my heart
would be washed clean away.”
This strain of conversation appeared so unintelligibly absurd to good
Mr. Smith, that he burst into precisely the fit of laughter which his
physicians had warned him against, as likely to prove instantaneously
fatal. In effect, he fell back in his chair a corpse, with a broad grin
upon his face, while his ghost, perchance, remained beside it
bewildered at its unpremeditated exit. This catastrophe of course broke
up the festival.
“How is this? You do not tremble!” observed the tremulous old woman to
Gervayse Hastings, who was gazing at the dead man with singular
intentness. “Is it not awful to see him so suddenly vanish out of the
midst of life,—this man of flesh and blood, whose earthly nature was so
warm and strong? There is a never-ending tremor in my soul, but it
trembles afresh at, this! And you are calm!”
“Would that he could teach me somewhat!” said Gervayse Hastings,
drawing a long breath. “Men pass before me like shadows on the wall;
their actions, passions, feelings, are flickerings of the light, and
then they vanish! Neither the corpse, nor yonder skeleton, nor this old
woman’s everlasting tremor, can give me what I seek.”
And then the company departed.
We cannot linger to narrate, in such detail, more circumstances of
these singular festivals, which, in accordance with the founder’s will,
continued to be kept with the regularity of an established institution.
In process of time the stewards adopted the custom of inviting, from
far and near, those individuals whose misfortunes were prominent above
other men’s, and whose mental and moral development might, therefore,
be supposed to possess a corresponding interest. The exiled noble of
the French Revolution, and the broken soldier of the Empire, were alike
represented at the table. Fallen monarchs, wandering about the earth,
have found places at that forlorn and miserable feast. The statesman,
when his party flung him off, might, if he chose it, be once more a
great man for the space of a single banquet. Aaron Burr’s name appears
on the record at a period when his ruin—the profoundest and most
striking, with more of moral circumstance in it than that of almost any
other man—was complete in his lonely age. Stephen Guard, when his
wealth weighed upon him like a mountain, once sought admittance of his
own accord. It is not probable, however, that these men had any lesson
to teach in the lore of discontent and misery which might not equally
well have been studied in the common walks of life. Illustrious
unfortunates attract a wider sympathy, not because their griefs are
more intense, but because, being set on lofty pedestals, they the
better serve mankind as instances and bywords of calamity.
It concerns our present purpose to say that, at each successive
festival, Gervayse Hastings showed his face, gradually changing from
the smooth beauty of his youth to the thoughtful comeliness of manhood,
and thence to the bald, impressive dignity of age. He was the only
individual invariably present. Yet on every occasion there were
murmurs, both from those who knew his character and position, and from
them whose hearts shrank back as denying his companionship in their
mystic fraternity.
“Who is this impassive man?” had been asked a hundred times. “Has he
suffered? Has he sinned? There are no traces of either. Then wherefore
is he here?”
“You must inquire of the stewards or of himself,” was the constant
reply. “We seem to know him well here in our city, and know nothing of
him but what is creditable and fortunate. Yet hither he comes, year
after year, to this gloomy banquet, and sits among the guests like a
marble statue. Ask yonder skeleton, perhaps that may solve the riddle!”
It was in truth a wonder. The life of Gervayse Hastings was not merely
a prosperous, but a brilliant one. Everything had gone well with him.
He was wealthy, far beyond the expenditure that was required by habits
of magnificence, a taste of rare purity and cultivation, a love of
travel, a scholar’s instinct to collect a splendid library, and,
moreover, what seemed a magnificent liberality to the distressed. He
had sought happiness, and not vainly, if a lovely and tender wife, and
children of fair promise, could insure it. He had, besides, ascended
above the limit which separates the obscure from the distinguished, and
had won a stainless reputation in affairs of the widest public
importance. Not that he was a popular character, or had within him the
mysterious attributes which are essential to that species of success.
To the public he was a cold abstraction, wholly destitute of those rich
lines of personality, that living warmth, and the peculiar faculty of
stamping his own heart’s impression on a multitude of hearts, by which
the people recognize their favorites. And it must be owned that, after
his most intimate associates had done their best to know him
thoroughly, and love him warmly, they were startled to find how little
hold he had upon their affections. They approved, they admired, but
still in those moments when the human spirit most craves reality, they