Twice-told tales
that she was in darkness. Then she heard the muttered words of prayer,
in the midst of which she started and would have arisen.
“Let me flee! Let me flee and hide myself, that they may not look upon
me!” she cried. But, with returning recollection, she hushed herself
and was still as death, for it seemed as if other voices, familiar in
infancy and unforgotten through many wanderings and in all the
vicissitudes of her heart and fortune, were mingling with the accents
of the prayer. At first the words were faint and indistinct—not
rendered so by distance, but rather resembling the dim pages of a book
which we strive to read by an imperfect and gradually brightening
light. In such a manner, as the prayer proceeded, did those voices
strengthen upon the ear, till at length the petition ended, and the
conversation of an aged man and of a woman broken and decayed like
himself became distinctly audible to the lady as she knelt. But those
strangers appeared not to stand in the hollow depth between the three
hills. Their voices were encompassed and re-echoed by the walls of a
chamber the windows of which were rattling in the breeze; the regular
vibration of a clock, the crackling of a fire and the tinkling of the
embers as they fell among the ashes rendered the scene almost as vivid
as if painted to the eye. By a melancholy hearth sat these two old
people, the man calmly despondent, the woman querulous and tearful, and
their words were all of sorrow. They spoke of a daughter, a wanderer
they knew not where, bearing dishonor along with her and leaving shame
and affliction to bring their gray heads to the grave. They alluded
also to other and more recent woe, but in the midst of their talk their
voices seemed to melt into the sound of the wind sweeping mournfully
among the autumn leaves; and when the lady lifted her eyes, there was
she kneeling in the hollow between three hills.
“A weary and lonesome time yonder old couple have of it,” remarked the
old woman, smiling in the lady’s face.
“And did you also hear them?” exclaimed she, a sense of intolerable
humiliation triumphing over her agony and fear.
“Yea, and we have yet more to hear,” replied the old woman, “wherefore
cover thy face quickly.”
Again the withered hag poured forth the monotonous words of a prayer
that was not meant to be acceptable in heaven, and soon in the pauses
of her breath strange murmurings began to thicken, gradually
increasing, so as to drown and overpower the charm by which they grew.
Shrieks pierced through the obscurity of sound and were succeeded by
the singing of sweet female voices, which in their turn gave way to a
wild roar of laughter broken suddenly by groanings and sobs, forming
altogether a ghastly confusion of terror and mourning and mirth. Chains
were rattling, fierce and stern voices uttered threats and the scourge
resounded at their command. All these noises deepened and became
substantial to the listener’s ear, till she could distinguish every
soft and dreamy accent of the love-songs that died causelessly into
funeral-hymns. She shuddered at the unprovoked wrath which blazed up
like the spontaneous kindling of flume, and she grew faint at the
fearful merriment raging miserably around her. In the midst of this
wild scene, where unbound passions jostled each other in a drunken
career, there was one solemn voice of a man, and a manly and melodious
voice it might once have been. He went to and fro continually, and his
feet sounded upon the floor. In each member of that frenzied company
whose own burning thoughts had become their exclusive world he sought
an auditor for the story of his individual wrong, and interpreted their
laughter and tears as his reward of scorn or pity. He spoke of woman’s
perfidy, of a wife who had broken her holiest vows, of a home and heart
made desolate. Even as he went on, the shout, the laugh, the shriek,
the sob, rose up in unison, till they changed into the hollow, fitful
and uneven sound of the wind as it fought among the pine trees on those
three lonely hills.
The lady looked up, and there was the withered woman smiling in her
face.
“Couldst thou have thought there were such merry times in a mad-house?”
inquired the latter.
“True, true!” said the lady to herself; “there is mirth within its
walls, but misery, misery without.”
“Wouldst thou hear more?” demanded the old woman.
“There is one other voice I would fain listen to again,” replied the
lady, faintly.
“Then lay down thy head speedily upon my knees, that thou mayst get
thee hence before the hour be past.”
The golden skirts of day were yet lingering upon the hills, but deep
shades obscured the hollow and the pool, as if sombre night were rising
thence to overspread the world. Again that evil woman began to weave
her spell. Long did it proceed unanswered, till the knolling of a bell
stole in among the intervals of her words like a clang that had
travelled far over valley and rising ground and was just ready to die
in the air. The lady shook upon her companion’s knees as she heard that
boding sound. Stronger it grew, and sadder, and deepened into the tone
of a death-bell, knolling dolefully from some ivy-mantled tower and
bearing tidings of mortality and woe to the cottage, to the hall and to
the solitary wayfarer, that all might weep for the doom appointed in
turn to them. Then came a measured tread, passing slowly, slowly on, as
of mourners with a coffin, their garments trailing on the ground, so
that the ear could measure the length of their melancholy array. Before
them went the priest, reading the burial-service, while the leaves of
his book were rustling in the breeze. And though no voice but his was
heard to speak aloud, still there were revilings and anathemas,
whispered but distinct, from women and from men, breathed against the
daughter who had wrung the aged hearts of her parents, the wife who had
betrayed the trusting fondness of her husband, the mother who had
sinned against natural affection and left her child to die. The
sweeping sound of the funeral train faded away like a thin vapor, and
the wind, that just before had seemed to shake the coffin-pall, moaned
sadly round the verge of the hollow between three hills. But when the
old woman stirred the kneeling lady, she lifted not her head.
“Here has been a sweet hour’s sport!” said the withered crone,
chuckling to herself.
THE TOLL-GATHERER’S DAY
A SKETCH OF TRANSITORY LIFE
Methinks, for a person whose instinct bids him rather to pore over the
current of life than to plunge into its tumultuous waves, no
undesirable retreat were a toll-house beside some thronged thoroughfare
of the land. In youth, perhaps, it is good for the observer to run
about the earth, to leave the track of his footsteps far and wide, to
mingle himself with the action of numberless vicissitudes, and,
finally, in some calm solitude to feed a musing spirit on all that he
has seen and felt. But there are natures too indolent or too sensitive
to endure the dust, the sunshine or the rain, the turmoil of moral and
physical elements, to which all the wayfarers of the world expose
themselves. For such a man how pleasant a miracle could life be made to
roll its variegated length by the threshold of his own hermitage, and
the great globe, as it were, perform its revolutions and shift its
thousand scenes before his eyes without whirling him onward in its
course! If any mortal be favored with a lot analogous to this, it is
the toll-gatherer. So, at least, have I often fancied while lounging on
a bench at the door of a small square edifice which stands between
shore and shore in the midst of a long bridge. Beneath the timbers ebbs
and flows an arm of the sea, while above, like the life-blood through a
great artery, the travel of the north and east is continually
throbbing. Sitting on the aforesaid bench, I amuse myself with a
conception, illustrated by numerous pencil-sketches in the air, of the
toll-gatherer’s day.
In the morning—dim, gray, dewy summer’s morn—the distant roll of
ponderous wheels begins to mingle with my old friend’s slumbers,
creaking more and more harshly through the midst of his dream and
gradually replacing it with realities. Hardly conscious of the change
from sleep to wakefulness, he finds himself partly clad and throwing
wide the toll-gates for the passage of a fragrant load of hay. The
timbers groan beneath the slow-revolving wheels; one sturdy yeoman
stalks beside the oxen, and, peering from the summit of the hay, by the
glimmer of the half-extinguished lantern over the toll-house is seen
the drowsy visage of his comrade, who has enjoyed a nap some ten miles
long. The toll is paid; creak, creak, again go the wheels, and the huge
hay-mow vanishes into the morning mist. As yet nature is but half
awake, and familiar objects appear visionary. But yonder, dashing from
the shore with a rattling thunder of the wheels and a confused clatter
of hoofs, comes the never-tiring mail, which has hurried onward at the
same headlong, restless rate all through the quiet night. The bridge
resounds in one continued peal as the coach rolls on without a pause,
merely affording the toll-gatherer a glimpse at the sleepy passengers,
who now bestir their torpid limbs and snuff a cordial in the briny air.
The morn breathes upon them and blushes, and they forget how wearily
the darkness toiled away. And behold now the fervid day in his bright
chariot, glittering aslant over the waves, nor scorning to throw a
tribute of his golden beams on the toll-gatherer’s little hermitage.
The old man looks eastward, and (for he is a moralizer) frames a simile
of the stage-coach and the sun.
While the world is rousing itself we may glance slightly at the scene
of our sketch. It sits above the bosom of the broad flood—a spot not of
earth, but in the midst of waters which rush with a murmuring sound
among the massive beams beneath. Over the door is a weatherbeaten board
inscribed with the rates of toll in letters so nearly effaced that the
gilding of the sunshine can hardly make them legible. Beneath the
window is a wooden bench on which a long succession of weary wayfarers
have reposed themselves. Peeping within-doors, we perceive the
whitewashed walls bedecked with sundry lithographic prints and
advertisements of various import and the immense show-bill of a
wandering caravan. And there sits our good old toll-gatherer, glorified
by the early sunbeams. He is a man, as his aspect may announce, of
quiet soul and thoughtful, shrewd, yet simple mind, who of the wisdom
which the passing world scatters along the wayside has gathered a
reasonable store.
Now the sun smiles upon the landscape and earth smiles back again upon
the sky. Frequent now are the travellers. The toll-gatherer’s practised
ear can distinguish the weight of every vehicle, the number of its
wheels and how many horses beat the resounding timbers with their iron
tramp. Here, in a substantial family chaise, setting forth betimes to
take advantage of the dewy road, come a gentleman and his wife with
their rosy-cheeked little girl sitting gladsomely between them. The
bottom of the chaise is heaped with multifarious bandboxes and
carpet-bags, and beneath the axle swings a leathern trunk dusty with
yesterday’s journey. Next appears a four-wheeled carryall peopled with
a round half dozen of pretty girls, all drawn by a single horse and
driven by a single gentleman. Luckless wight doomed through a whole
summer day to be the butt of mirth and mischief among the frolicsome
maidens! Bolt upright in a sulky rides a thin, sour-visaged man who as
he pays his toll hands the toll-gatherer a printed card to stick upon
the wall. The vinegar-faced traveller proves to be a manufacturer of