Mosses from an old manse
shrank back from Gervayse Hastings, as powerless to give them what they
sought. It was the feeling of distrustful regret with which we should
draw back the hand after extending it, in an illusive twilight, to
grasp the hand of a shadow upon the wall.
As the superficial fervency of youth decayed, this peculiar effect of
Gervayse Hastings’s character grew more perceptible. His children, when
he extended his arms, came coldly to his knees, but never climbed them
of their own accord. His wife wept secretly, and almost adjudged
herself a criminal because she shivered in the chill of his bosom. He,
too, occasionally appeared not unconscious of the chillness of his
moral atmosphere, and willing, if it might be so, to warm himself at a
kindly fire. But age stole onward and benumbed him snore and more. As
the hoar-frost began to gather on him his wife went to her grave, and
was doubtless warmer there; his children either died or were scattered
to different homes of their own; and old Gervayse Hastings, unscathed
by grief,—alone, but needing no companionship,—continued his steady
walk through life, and still one very Christmas day attended at the
dismal banquet. His privilege as a guest had become prescriptive now.
Had he claimed the head of the table, even the skeleton would have been
ejected from its seat.
Finally, at the merry Christmas-tide, when he had numbered fourscore
years complete, this pale, highbrowed, marble-featured old man once
more entered the long-frequented hall, with the same impassive aspect
that had called forth so much dissatisfied remark at his first
attendance. Time, except in matters merely external, had done nothing
for him, either of good or evil. As he took his place he threw a calm,
inquiring glance around the table, as if to ascertain whether any guest
had yet appeared, after so many unsuccessful banquets, who might impart
to him the mystery—the deep, warm secret—the life within the
life—which, whether manifested in joy or sorrow, is what gives
substance to a world of shadows.
“My friends,” said Gervayse Hastings, assuming a position which his
long conversance with the festival caused to appear natural, “you are
welcome! I drink to you all in this cup of sepulchral wine.”
The guests replied courteously, but still in a manner that proved them
unable to receive the old man as a member of their sad fraternity. It
may be well to give the reader an idea of the present company at the
banquet.
One was formerly a clergyman, enthusiastic in his profession, and
apparently of the genuine dynasty of those old Puritan divines whose
faith in their calling, and stern exercise of it, had placed them among
the mighty of the earth. But yielding to the speculative tendency of
the age, he had gone astray from the firm foundation of an ancient
faith, and wandered into a cloud-region, where everything was misty and
deceptive, ever mocking him with a semblance of reality, but still
dissolving when he flung himself upon it for support and rest. His
instinct and early training demanded something steadfast; but, looking
forward, he beheld vapors piled on vapors, and behind him an impassable
gulf between the man of yesterday and to-day, on the borders of which
he paced to and fro, sometimes wringing his hands in agony, and often
making his own woe a theme of scornful merriment. This surely was a
miserable man. Next, there was a theorist,—one of a numerous tribe,
although he deemed himself unique since the creation,—a theorist, who
had conceived a plan by which all the wretchedness of earth, moral and
physical, might be done away, and the bliss of the millennium at once
accomplished. But, the incredulity of mankind debarring him from
action, he was smitten with as much grief as if the whole mass of woe
which he was denied the opportunity to remedy were crowded into his own
bosom. A plain old man in black attracted much of the company’s notice,
on the supposition that he was no other than Father Miller, who, it
seemed, had given himself up to despair at the tedious delay of the
final conflagration. Then there was a man distinguished for native
pride and obstinacy, who, a little while before, had possessed immense
wealth, and held the control of a vast moneyed interest which he had
wielded in the same spirit as a despotic monarch would wield the power
of his empire, carrying on a tremendous moral warfare, the roar and
tremor of which was felt at every fireside in the land. At length came
a crushing ruin,—a total overthrow of fortune, power, and
character,—the effect of which on his imperious and, in many respects,
noble and lofty nature might have entitled him to a place, not merely
at our festival, but among the peers of Pandemonium.
There was a modern philanthropist, who had become so deeply sensible of
the calamities of thousands and millions of his fellow-creatures, and
of the impracticableness of any general measures for their relief, that
he had no heart to do what little good lay immediately within his
power, but contented himself with being miserable for sympathy. Near
him sat a gentleman in a predicament hitherto unprecedented, but of
which the present epoch probably affords numerous examples. Ever since
he was of capacity to read a newspaper, this person had prided himself
on his consistent adherence to one political party, but, in the
confusion of these latter days, had got bewildered and knew not
whereabouts his party was. This wretched condition, so morally desolate
and disheartening to a man who has long accustomed himself to merge his
individuality in the mass of a great body, can only be conceived by
such as have experienced it. His next companion was a popular orator
who had lost his voice, and—as it was pretty much all that he had to
lose—had fallen into a state of hopeless melancholy. The table was
likewise graced by two of the gentler sex,—one, a half-starved,
consumptive seamstress, the representative of thousands just as
wretched; the other, a woman of unemployed energy, who found herself in
the world with nothing to achieve, nothing to enjoy, and nothing even
to suffer. She had, therefore, driven herself to the verge of madness
by dark broodings over the wrongs of her sex, and its exclusion from a
proper field of action. The roll of guests being thus complete, a
side-table had been set for three or four disappointed office-seekers,
with hearts as sick as death, whom the stewards had admitted partly
because their calamities really entitled them to entrance here, and
partly that they were in especial need of a good dinner. There was
likewise a homeless dog, with his tail between his legs, licking up the
crumbs and gnawing the fragments of the feast,—such a melancholy cur as
one sometimes sees about the streets without a master, and willing to
follow the first that will accept his service.
In their own way, these were as wretched a set of people as ever had
assembled at the festival. There they sat, with the veiled skeleton of
the founder holding aloft the cypress-wreath, at one end of the table,
and at the other, wrapped in furs, the withered figure of Gervayse
Hastings, stately, calm, and cold, impressing the company with awe, yet
so little interesting their sympathy that he might have vanished into
thin air without their once exclaiming, “Whither is he gone?”
“Sir,” said the philanthropist, addressing the old man, “you have been
so long a guest at this annual festival, and have thus been conversant
with so many varieties of human affliction, that, not improbably, you
have thence derived some great and important lessons. How blessed were
your lot could you reveal a secret by which all this mass of woe might
be removed!”
“I know of but one misfortune,” answered Gervayse Hastings, quietly,
“and that is my own.”
“Your own!” rejoined the philanthropist. “And looking back on your
serene and prosperous life, how can you claim to be the sole
unfortunate of the human race?”
“You will not understand it,” replied Gervayse Hastings, feebly, and
with a singular inefficiency of pronunciation, and sometimes putting
one word for another. “None have understood it, not even those who
experience the like. It is a chillness, a want of earnestness, a
feeling as if what should be my heart were a thing of vapor, a haunting
perception of unreality! Thus seeming to possess all that other men
have, all that men aim at, I have really possessed nothing, neither joy
nor griefs. All things, all persons,—as was truly said to me at this
table long and long ago,—have been like shadows flickering on the wall.
It was so with my wife and children, with those who seemed my friends:
it is so with yourselves, whom I see now before one. Neither have I
myself any real existence, but am a shadow like the rest.”
“And how is it with your views of a future life?” inquired the
speculative clergyman.
“Worse than with you,” said the old man, in a hollow and feeble tone;
“for I cannot conceive it earnestly enough to feel either hope or fear.
Mine,—mine is the wretchedness! This cold heart,—this unreal life! Ah!
it grows colder still.”
It so chanced that at this juncture the decayed ligaments of the
skeleton gave way, and the dry hones fell together in a heap, thus
causing the dusty wreath of cypress to drop upon the table. The
attention of the company being thus diverted for a single instant from
Gervayse Hastings, they perceived, on turning again towards him, that
the old man had undergone a change. His shadow had ceased to flicker on
the wall.
“Well, Rosina, what is your criticism?” asked Roderick, as he rolled up
the manuscript.
“Frankly, your success is by no means complete,” replied she. “It is
true, I have an idea of the character you endeavor to describe; but it
is rather by dint of my own thought than your expression.”
“That is unavoidable,” observed the sculptor, “because the
characteristics are all negative. If Gervayse Hastings could have
imbibed one human grief at the gloomy banquet, the task of describing
him would have been infinitely easier. Of such persons—and we do meet
with these moral monsters now and then—it is difficult to conceive how
they came to exist here, or what there is in them capable of existence
hereafter. They seem to be on the outside of everything; and nothing
wearies the soul more than an attempt to comprehend them within its
grasp.”
DROWNE’S WOODEN IMAGE
One sunshiny morning, in the good old times of the town of Boston, a
young carver in wood, well known by the name of Drowne, stood
contemplating a large oaken log, which it was his purpose to convert
into the figure-head of a vessel. And while he discussed within his own
mind what sort of shape or similitude it were well to bestow upon this
excellent piece of timber, there came into Drowne’s workshop a certain
Captain Hunnewell, owner and commander of the good brig called the
Cynosure, which had just returned from her first voyage to Fayal.
“Ah! that will do, Drowne, that will do!” cried the jolly captain,
tapping the log with his rattan. “I bespeak this very piece of oak for
the figure-head of the Cynosure. She has shown herself the sweetest
craft that ever floated, and I mean to decorate her prow with the
handsomest image that the skill of man can cut out of timber. And,
Drowne, you are the fellow to execute it.”
“You give me more credit than I deserve, Captain Hunnewell,” said the
carver, modestly, yet as one conscious of eminence in his art. “But,
for the sake of the good brig, I stand ready to do my best. And which
of these designs do you prefer? Here,”—pointing to a staring,
half-length figure, in a white wig and scarlet coat,—“here is an
excellent model, the likeness of our gracious king. Here is the valiant
Admiral Vernon. Or, if you prefer a female figure, what say you to