Twice-told tales
bee had been wandering overhead—buzz, buzz, buzz—now among the leaves,
now flashing through the strips of sunshine, and now lost in the dark
shade, till finally he appeared to be settling on the eyelid of David
Swan. The sting of a bee is sometimes deadly. As free-hearted as she
was innocent, the girl attacked the intruder with her handkerchief,
brushed him soundly and drove him from beneath the maple shade. How
sweet a picture! This good deed accomplished, with quickened breath and
a deeper blush she stole a glance at the youthful stranger for whom she
had been battling with a dragon in the air.
“He is handsome!” thought she, and blushed redder yet.
How could it be that no dream of bliss grew so strong within him that,
shattered by its very strength, it should part asunder and allow him to
perceive the girl among its phantoms? Why, at least, did no smile of
welcome brighten upon his face? She was come, the maid whose soul,
according to the old and beautiful idea, had been severed from his own,
and whom in all his vague but passionate desires he yearned to meet.
Her only could he love with a perfect love, him only could she receive
into the depths of her heart, and now her image was faintly blushing in
the fountain by his side; should it pass away, its happy lustre would
never gleam upon his life again.
“How sound he sleeps!” murmured the girl. She departed, but did not
trip along the road so lightly as when she came.
Now, this girl’s father was a thriving country merchant in the
neighborhood, and happened at that identical time to be looking out for
just such a young man as David Swan. Had David formed a wayside
acquaintance with the daughter, he would have become the father’s
clerk, and all else in natural succession. So here, again, had good
fortune—the best of fortunes—stolen so near that her garments brushed
against him, and he knew nothing of the matter.
The girl was hardly out of sight when two men turned aside beneath the
maple shade. Both had dark faces set off by cloth caps, which were
drawn down aslant over their brows. Their dresses were shabby, yet had
a certain smartness. These were a couple of rascals who got their
living by whatever the devil sent them, and now, in the interim of
other business, had staked the joint profits of their next piece of
villainy on a game of cards which was to have been decided here under
the trees. But, finding David asleep by the spring, one of the rogues
whispered to his fellow:
“Hist! Do you see that bundle under his head?”
The other villain nodded, winked and leered.
“I’ll bet you a horn of brandy,” said the first, “that the chap has
either a pocketbook or a snug little hoard of small change stowed away
amongst his shirts. And if not there, we will find it in his pantaloons
pocket.”
“But how if he wakes?” said the other.
His companion thrust aside his waistcoat, pointed to the handle of a
dirk and nodded.
“So be it!” muttered the second villain.
They approached the unconscious David, and, while one pointed the
dagger toward his heart, the other began to search the bundle beneath
his head. Their two faces, grim, wrinkled and ghastly with guilt and
fear, bent over their victim, looking horrible enough to be mistaken
for fiends should he suddenly awake. Nay, had the villains glanced
aside into the spring, even they would hardly have known themselves as
reflected there. But David Swan had never worn a more tranquil aspect,
even when asleep on his mother’s breast.
“I must take away the bundle,” whispered one.
“If he stirs, I’ll strike,” muttered the other.
But at this moment a dog scenting along the ground came in beneath the
maple trees and gazed alternately at each of these wicked men and then
at the quiet sleeper. He then lapped out of the fountain.
“Pshaw!” said one villain. “We can do nothing now. The dog’s master
must be close behind.”
“Let’s take a drink and be off,” said the other.
The man with the dagger thrust back the weapon into his bosom and drew
forth a pocket-pistol, but not of that kind which kills by a single
discharge. It was a flask of liquor with a block-tin tumbler screwed
upon the mouth. Each drank a comfortable dram, and left the spot with
so many jests and such laughter at their unaccomplished wickedness that
they might be said to have gone on their way rejoicing. In a few hours
they had forgotten the whole affair, nor once imagined that the
recording angel had written down the crime of murder against their
souls in letters as durable as eternity. As for David Swan, he still
slept quietly, neither conscious of the shadow of death when it hung
over him nor of the glow of renewed life when that shadow was
withdrawn. He slept, but no longer so quietly as at first. An hour’s
repose had snatched from his elastic frame the weariness with which
many hours of toil had burdened it. Now he stirred, now moved his lips
without a sound, now talked in an inward tone to the noonday spectres
of his dream. But a noise of wheels came rattling louder and louder
along the road, until it dashed through the dispersing mist of David’s
slumber; and there was the stagecoach. He started up with all his ideas
about him.
“Halloo, driver! Take a passenger?” shouted he.
“Room on top!” answered the driver.
Up mounted David, and bowled away merrily toward Boston without so much
as a parting glance at that fountain of dreamlike vicissitude. He knew
not that a phantom of Wealth had thrown a golden hue upon its waters,
nor that one of Love had sighed softly to their murmur, nor that one of
Death had threatened to crimson them with his blood, all in the brief
hour since he lay down to sleep. Sleeping or waking, we hear not the
airy footsteps of the strange things that almost happen. Does it not
argue a superintending Providence that, while viewless and unexpected
events thrust themselves continually athwart our path, there should
still be regularity enough in mortal life to render foresight even
partially available?
SIGHTS FROM A STEEPLE
So! I have climbed high, and my reward is small. Here I stand with
wearied knees—earth, indeed, at a dizzy depth below, but heaven far,
far beyond me still. Oh that I could soar up into the very zenith,
where man never breathed nor eagle ever flew, and where the ethereal
azure melts away from the eye and appears only a deepened shade of
nothingness! And yet I shiver at that cold and solitary thought. What
clouds are gathering in the golden west with direful intent against the
brightness and the warmth of this summer afternoon? They are ponderous
air-ships, black as death and freighted with the tempest, and at
intervals their thunder—the signal-guns of that unearthly
squadron—rolls distant along the deep of heaven. These nearer heaps of
fleecy vapor—methinks I could roll and toss upon them the whole day
long—seem scattered here and there for the repose of tired pilgrims
through the sky. Perhaps—for who can tell?—beautiful spirits are
disporting themselves there, and will bless my mortal eye with the
brief appearance of their curly locks of golden light and laughing
faces fair and faint as the people of a rosy dream. Or where the
floating mass so imperfectly obstructs the color of the firmament a
slender foot and fairy limb resting too heavily upon the frail support
may be thrust through and suddenly withdrawn, while longing fancy
follows them in vain. Yonder, again, is an airy archipelago where the
sunbeams love to linger in their journeyings through space. Every one
of those little clouds has been dipped and steeped in radiance which
the slightest pressure might disengage in silvery profusion like water
wrung from a sea-maid’s hair. Bright they are as a young man’s visions,
and, like them, would be realized in dullness, obscurity and tears. I
will look on them no more.
In three parts of the visible circle whose centre is this spire I
discern cultivated fields, villages, white country-seats, the waving
lines of rivulets, little placid lakes, and here and there a rising
ground that would fain be termed a hill. On the fourth side is the sea,
stretching away toward a viewless boundary, blue and calm except where
the passing anger of a shadow flits across its surface and is gone.
Hitherward a broad inlet penetrates far into the land; on the verge of
the harbor formed by its extremity is a town, and over it am I, a
watchman, all-heeding and unheeded. Oh that the multitude of chimneys
could speak, like those of Madrid, and betray in smoky whispers the
secrets of all who since their first foundation have assembled at the
hearths within! Oh that the Limping Devil of Le Sage would perch beside
me here, extend his wand over this contiguity of roofs, uncover every
chamber and make me familiar with their inhabitants! The most desirable
mode of existence might be that of a spiritualized Paul Pry hovering
invisible round man and woman, witnessing their deeds, searching into
their hearts, borrowing brightness from their felicity and shade from
their sorrow, and retaining no emotion peculiar to himself. But none of
these things are possible; and if I would know the interior of brick
walls or the mystery of human bosoms, I can but guess.
Yonder is a fair street extending north and south. The stately mansions
are placed each on its carpet of verdant grass, and a long flight of
steps descends from every door to the pavement. Ornamental trees—the
broadleafed horse-chestnut, the elm so lofty and bending, the graceful
but infrequent willow, and others whereof I know not the names—grow
thrivingly among brick and stone. The oblique rays of the sun are
intercepted by these green citizens and by the houses, so that one side
of the street is a shaded and pleasant walk. On its whole extent there
is now but a single passenger, advancing from the upper end, and he,
unless distance and the medium of a pocket spyglass do him more than
justice, is a fine young man of twenty. He saunters slowly forward,
slapping his left hand with his folded gloves, bending his eyes upon
the pavement, and sometimes raising them to throw a glance before him.
Certainly he has a pensive air. Is he in doubt or in debt? Is he—if the
question be allowable—in love? Does he strive to be melancholy and
gentlemanlike, or is he merely overcome by the heat? But I bid him
farewell for the present. The door of one of the houses—an aristocratic
edifice with curtains of purple and gold waving from the windows—is now
opened, and down the steps come two ladies swinging their parasols and
lightly arrayed for a summer ramble. Both are young, both are pretty;
but methinks the left-hand lass is the fairer of the twain, and, though
she be so serious at this moment, I could swear that there is a
treasure of gentle fun within her. They stand talking a little while
upon the steps, and finally proceed up the street. Meantime, as their
faces are now turned from me, I may look elsewhere.
Upon that wharf and down the corresponding street is a busy contrast to
the quiet scene which I have just noticed. Business evidently has its
centre there, and many a man is wasting the summer afternoon in labor
and anxiety, in losing riches or in gaining them, when he would be
wiser to flee away to some pleasant country village or shaded lake in
the forest or wild and cool sea-beach. I see vessels unlading at the
wharf and precious merchandise strown upon the ground abundantly as at
the bottom of the sea—that market whence no goods return, and where
there is no captain nor supercargo to render an account of sales. Here
the clerks are diligent with their paper and pencils and sailors ply
the block and tackle that hang over the hold, accompanying their toil
with cries long-drawn and roughly melodious till the bales and