Twice-told tales
puncheons ascend to upper air. At a little distance a group of
gentlemen are assembled round the door of a warehouse. Grave seniors be
they, and I would wager—if it were safe, in these times, to be
responsible for any one—that the least eminent among them might vie
with old Vincentio, that incomparable trafficker of Pisa. I can even
select the wealthiest of the company. It is the elderly personage in
somewhat rusty black, with powdered hair the superfluous whiteness of
which is visible upon the cape of his coat. His twenty ships are wafted
on some of their many courses by every breeze that blows, and his name,
I will venture to say, though I know it not, is a familiar sound among
the far-separated merchants of Europe and the Indies.
But I bestow too much of my attention in this quarter. On looking again
to the long and shady walk I perceive that the two fair girls have
encountered the young man. After a sort of shyness in the recognition,
he turns back with them. Moreover, he has sanctioned my taste in regard
to his companions by placing himself on the inner side of the pavement,
nearest the Venus to whom I, enacting on a steeple-top the part of
Paris on the top of Ida, adjudged the golden apple.
In two streets converging at right angles toward my watch-tower I
distinguish three different processions. One is a proud array of
voluntary soldiers in bright uniform, resembling, from the height
whence I look down, the painted veterans that garrison the windows of a
toy-shop. And yet it stirs my heart. Their regular advance, their
nodding plumes, the sun-flash on their bayonets and musket-barrels, the
roll of their drums ascending past me, and the fife ever and anon
piercing through,—these things have wakened a warlike fire, peaceful
though I be. Close to their rear marches a battalion of schoolboys
ranged in crooked and irregular platoons, shouldering sticks, thumping
a harsh and unripe clatter from an instrument of tin and ridiculously
aping the intricate manoeuvres of the foremost band. Nevertheless, as
slight differences are scarcely perceptible from a church-spire, one
might be tempted to ask, “Which are the boys?” or, rather, “Which the
men?” But, leaving these, let us turn to the third procession, which,
though sadder in outward show, may excite identical reflections in the
thoughtful mind. It is a funeral—a hearse drawn by a black and bony
steed and covered by a dusty pall, two or three coaches rumbling over
the stones, their drivers half asleep, a dozen couple of careless
mourners in their every-day attire. Such was not the fashion of our
fathers when they carried a friend to his grave. There is now no
doleful clang of the bell to proclaim sorrow to the town. Was the King
of Terrors more awful in those days than in our own, that wisdom and
philosophy have been able to produce this change? Not so. Here is a
proof that he retains his proper majesty. The military men and the
military boys are wheeling round the corner, and meet the funeral full
in the face. Immediately the drum is silent, all but the tap that
regulates each simultaneous footfall. The soldiers yield the path to
the dusty hearse and unpretending train, and the children quit their
ranks and cluster on the sidewalks with timorous and instinctive
curiosity. The mourners enter the churchyard at the base of the steeple
and pause by an open grave among the burial-stones; the lightning
glimmers on them as they lower down the coffin, and the thunder rattles
heavily while they throw the earth upon its lid. Verily, the shower is
near, and I tremble for the young man and the girls, who have now
disappeared from the long and shady street.
How various are the situations of the people covered by the roofs
beneath me, and how diversified are the events at this moment befalling
them! The new-born, the aged, the dying, the strong in life and the
recent dead are in the chambers of these many mansions. The full of
hope, the happy, the miserable and the desperate dwell together within
the circle of my glance. In some of the houses over which my eyes roam
so coldly guilt is entering into hearts that are still tenanted by a
debased and trodden virtue; guilt is on the very edge of commission,
and the impending deed might be averted; guilt is done, and the
criminal wonders if it be irrevocable. There are broad thoughts
struggling in my mind, and, were I able to give them distinctness, they
would make their way in eloquence. Lo! the raindrops are descending.
The clouds within a little time have gathered over all the sky, hanging
heavily, as if about to drop in one unbroken mass upon the earth. At
intervals the lightning flashes from their brooding hearts, quivers,
disappears, and then comes the thunder, travelling slowly after its
twin-born flame. A strong wind has sprung up, howls through the
darkened streets, and raises the dust in dense bodies to rebel against
the approaching storm. The disbanded soldiers fly, the funeral has
already vanished like its dead, and all people hurry homeward—all that
have a home—while a few lounge by the corners or trudge on desperately
at their leisure. In a narrow lane which communicates with the shady
street I discern the rich old merchant putting himself to the top of
his speed lest the rain should convert his hair-powder to a paste.
Unhappy gentleman! By the slow vehemence and painful moderation
wherewith he journeys, it is but too evident that Podagra has left its
thrilling tenderness in his great toe. But yonder, at a far more rapid
pace, come three other of my acquaintance, the two pretty girls and the
young man unseasonably interrupted in their walk. Their footsteps are
supported by the risen dust, the wind lends them its velocity, they fly
like three sea-birds driven landward by the tempestuous breeze. The
ladies would not thus rival Atalanta if they but knew that any one were
at leisure to observe them. Ah! as they hasten onward, laughing in the
angry face of nature, a sudden catastrophe has chanced. At the corner
where the narrow lane enters into the street they come plump against
the old merchant, whose tortoise-motion has just brought him to that
point. He likes not the sweet encounter; the darkness of the whole air
gathers speedily upon his visage, and there is a pause on both sides.
Finally he thrusts aside the youth with little courtesy, seizes an arm
of each of the two girls, and plods onward like a magician with a prize
of captive fairies. All this is easy to be understood. How disconsolate
the poor lover stands, regardless of the rain that threatens an
exceeding damage to his well-fashioned habiliments, till he catches a
backward glance of mirth from a bright eye, and turns away with
whatever comfort it conveys!
The old man and his daughters are safely housed, and now the storm lets
loose its fury. In every dwelling I perceive the faces of the
chambermaids as they shut down the windows, excluding the impetuous
shower and shrinking away from the quick fiery glare. The large drops
descend with force upon the slated roofs and rise again in smoke. There
is a rush and roar as of a river through the air, and muddy streams
bubble majestically along the pavement, whirl their dusky foam into the
kennel, and disappear beneath iron grates. Thus did Arethusa sink. I
love not my station here aloft in the midst of the tumult which I am
powerless to direct or quell, with the blue lightning wrinkling on my
brow and the thunder muttering its first awful syllables in my ear. I
will descend. Yet let me give another glance to the sea, where the foam
breaks out in long white lines upon a broad expanse of blackness or
boils up in far-distant points like snowy mountain-tops in the eddies
of a flood; and let me look once more at the green plain and little
hills of the country, over which the giant of the storm is striding in
robes of mist, and at the town whose obscured and desolate streets
might beseem a city of the dead; and, turning a single moment to the
sky, now gloomy as an author’s prospects, I prepare to resume my
station on lower earth. But stay! A little speck of azure has widened
in the western heavens; the sunbeams find a passage and go rejoicing
through the tempest, and on yonder darkest cloud, born like hallowed
hopes of the glory of another world and the trouble and tears of this,
brightens forth the rainbow.
THE HOLLOW OF THE THREE HILLS
In those strange old times when fantastic dreams and madmen’s reveries
were realized among the actual circumstances of life, two persons met
together at an appointed hour and place. One was a lady graceful in
form and fair of feature, though pale and troubled and smitten with an
untimely blight in what should have been the fullest bloom of her
years; the other was an ancient and meanly-dressed woman of ill-favored
aspect, and so withered, shrunken and decrepit that even the space
since she began to decay must have exceeded the ordinary term of human
existence. In the spot where they encountered no mortal could observe
them. Three little hills stood near each other, and down in the midst
of them sunk a hollow basin almost mathematically circular, two or
three hundred feet in breadth and of such depth that a stately cedar
might but just be visible above the sides. Dwarf pines were numerous
upon the hills and partly fringed the outer verge of the intermediate
hollow, within which there was nothing but the brown grass of October
and here and there a tree-trunk that had fallen long ago and lay
mouldering with no green successor from its roots. One of these masses
of decaying wood, formerly a majestic oak, rested close beside a pool
of green and sluggish water at the bottom of the basin. Such scenes as
this (so gray tradition tells) were once the resort of a power of evil
and his plighted subjects, and here at midnight or on the dim verge of
evening they were said to stand round the mantling pool disturbing its
putrid waters in the performance of an impious baptismal rite. The
chill beauty of an autumnal sunset was now gilding the three hill-tops,
whence a paler tint stole down their sides into the hollow.
“Here is our pleasant meeting come to pass,” said the aged crone,
“according as thou hast desired. Say quickly what thou wouldst have of
me, for there is but a short hour that we may tarry here.”
As the old withered woman spoke a smile glimmered on her countenance
like lamplight on the wall of a sepulchre. The lady trembled and cast
her eyes upward to the verge of the basin, as if meditating to return
with her purpose unaccomplished. But it was not so ordained.
“I am stranger in this land, as you know,” said she, at length. “Whence
I come it matters not, but I have left those behind me with whom my
fate was intimately bound, and from whom I am cut off for ever. There
is a weight in my bosom that I cannot away with, and I have come hither
to inquire of their welfare.”
“And who is there by this green pool that can bring thee news from the
ends of the earth?” cried the old woman, peering into the lady’s face.
“Not from my lips mayst thou hear these tidings; yet be thou bold, and
the daylight shall not pass away from yonder hilltop before thy wish be
granted.”
“I will do your bidding though I die,” replied the lady, desperately.
The old woman seated herself on the trunk of the fallen tree, threw
aside the hood that shrouded her gray locks and beckoned her companion
to draw near.
“Kneel down,” she said, “and lay your forehead on my knees.”
She hesitated a moment, but the anxiety that had long been kindling
burned fiercely up within her. As she knelt down the border of her
garment was dipped into the pool; she laid her forehead on the old
woman’s knees, and the latter drew a cloak about the lady’s face, so