Twice-Told Tales (40 page)

"Father," said the girl, "they are calling you by name."

But the good man doubted whether they had really called him, and was
unwilling to show himself too solicitous of gain by inviting people to
patronize his house. He therefore did not hurry to the door, and, the
lash being soon applied, the travellers plunged into the Notch, still
singing and laughing, though their music and mirth came back drearily
from the heart of the mountain.

"There, mother!" cried the boy, again; "they'd have given us a ride to
the Flume."

Again they laughed at the child's pertinacious fancy for a
night-ramble. But it happened that a light cloud passed over the
daughter's spirit; she looked gravely into the fire and drew a breath
that was almost a sigh. It forced its way, in spite of a little
struggle to repress it. Then, starting and blushing, she looked
quickly around the circle, as if they had caught a glimpse into her
bosom. The stranger asked what she had been thinking of.

"Nothing," answered she, with a downcast smile; "only I felt lonesome
just then."

"Oh, I have always had a gift of feeling what is in other people's
hearts," said he, half seriously. "Shall I tell the secrets of yours?
For I know what to think when a young girl shivers by a warm hearth
and complains of lonesomeness at her mother's side. Shall I put these
feelings into words?"

"They would not be a girl's feelings any longer if they could be put
into words," replied the mountain-nymph, laughing, but avoiding his
eye.

All this was said apart. Perhaps a germ of love was springing in their
hearts so pure that it might blossom in Paradise, since it could not
be matured on earth; for women worship such gentle dignity as his, and
the proud, contemplative, yet kindly, soul is oftenest captivated by
simplicity like hers. But while they spoke softly, and he was watching
the happy sadness, the lightsome shadows, the shy yearnings, of a
maiden's nature, the wind through the Notch took a deeper and drearier
sound. It seemed, as the fanciful stranger said, like the choral
strain of the spirits of the blast who in old Indian times had their
dwelling among these mountains and made their heights and recesses a
sacred region. There was a wail along the road as if a funeral were
passing. To chase away the gloom, the family threw pine-branches on
their fire till the dry leaves crackled and the flame arose,
discovering once again a scene of peace and humble happiness. The
light hovered about them fondly and caressed them all. There were the
little faces of the children peeping from their bed apart, and here
the father's frame of strength, the mother's subdued and careful mien,
the high-browed youth, the budding girl and the good old grandam,
still knitting in the warmest place.

The aged woman looked up from her task, and with fingers ever busy was
the next to speak.

"Old folks have their notions," said she, "as well as young ones.
You've been wishing and planning and letting your heads run on one
thing and another till you've set my mind a-wandering too. Now, what
should an old woman wish for, when she can go but a step or two before
she comes to her grave? Children, it will haunt me night and day till
I tell you."

"What is it, mother?" cried the husband and wife at once.

Then the old woman, with an air of mystery which drew the circle
closer round the fire, informed them that she had provided her
grave-clothes some years before—a nice linen shroud, a cap with a
muslin ruff, and everything of a finer sort than she had worn since
her wedding-day. But this evening an old superstition had strangely
recurred to her. It used to be said in her younger days that if
anything were amiss with a corpse—if only the ruff were not smooth or
the cap did not set right—the corpse, in the coffin and beneath the
clods, would strive to put up its cold hands and arrange it. The bare
thought made her nervous.

"Don't talk so, grandmother," said the girl, shuddering.

"Now," continued the old woman, with singular earnestness, yet smiling
strangely at her own folly, "I want one of you, my children, when your
mother is dressed and in the coffin,—I want one of you to hold a
looking-glass over my face. Who knows but I may take a glimpse at
myself and see whether all's right?"

"Old and young, we dream of graves and monuments," murmured the
stranger-youth. "I wonder how mariners feel when the ship is sinking
and they, unknown and undistinguished, are to be buried together in
the ocean, that wide and nameless sepulchre?"

For a moment the old woman's ghastly conception so engrossed the minds
of her hearers that a sound abroad in the night, rising like the roar
of a blast, had grown broad, deep and terrible before the fated group
were conscious of it. The house and all within it trembled; the
foundations of the earth seemed to be shaken, as if this awful sound
were the peal of the last trump. Young and old exchanged one wild
glance and remained an instant pale, affrighted, without utterance or
power to move. Then the same shriek burst simultaneously from all
their lips:

"The slide! The slide!"

The simplest words must intimate, but not portray, the unutterable
horror of the catastrophe. The victims rushed from their cottage and
sought refuge in what they deemed a safer spot, where, in
contemplation of such an emergency, a sort of barrier had been reared.
Alas! they had quitted their security and fled right into the pathway
of destruction. Down came the whole side of the mountain in a cataract
of ruin. Just before it reached the house the stream broke into two
branches, shivered not a window there, but overwhelmed the whole
vicinity, blocked up the road and annihilated everything in its
dreadful course. Long ere the thunder of that great slide had ceased
to roar among the mountains the mortal agony had been endured and the
victims were at peace. Their bodies were never found.

The next morning the light smoke was seen stealing from the cottage
chimney up the mountain-side. Within, the fire was yet smouldering on
the hearth, and the chairs in a circle round it, as if the inhabitants
had but gone forth to view the devastation of the slide and would
shortly return to thank Heaven for their miraculous escape. All had
left separate tokens by which those who had known the family were made
to shed a tear for each. Who has not heard their name? The story has
been told far and wide, and will for ever be a legend of these
mountains. Poets have sung their fate.

There were circumstances which led some to suppose that a stranger had
been received into the cottage on this awful night, and had shared the
catastrophe of all its inmates; others denied that there were
sufficient grounds for such a conjecture. Woe for the high-souled
youth with his dream of earthly immortality! His name and person
utterly unknown, his history, his way of life, his plans, a mystery
never to be solved, his death and his existence equally a
doubt,—whose was the agony of that death-moment?

Last night, between eleven and twelve o'clock, when the Old Year was
leaving her final footprints on the borders of Time's empire, she
found herself in possession of a few spare moments, and sat down—of
all places in the world—on the steps of our new city-hall. The wintry
moonlight showed that she looked weary of body and sad of heart, like
many another wayfarer of earth. Her garments, having been exposed to
much foul weather and rough usage, were in very ill condition, and, as
the hurry of her journey had never before allowed her to take an
instant's rest, her shoes were so worn as to be scarcely worth the
mending. But after trudging only a little distance farther this poor
Old Year was destined to enjoy a long, long sleep. I forgot to mention
that when she seated herself on the steps she deposited by her side a
very capacious bandbox in which, as is the custom among travellers of
her sex, she carried a great deal of valuable property. Besides this
luggage, there was a folio book under her arm very much resembling the
annual volume of a newspaper. Placing this volume across her knees and
resting her elbows upon it, with her forehead in her hands, the weary,
bedraggled, world-worn Old Year heaved a heavy sigh and appeared to be
taking no very pleasant retrospect of her past existence.

While she thus awaited the midnight knell that was to summon her to
the innumerable sisterhood of departed years, there came a young
maiden treading lightsomely on tip-toe along the street from the
direction of the railroad dépôt. She was evidently a stranger, and
perhaps had come to town by the evening train of cars. There was a
smiling cheerfulness in this fair maiden's face which bespoke her
fully confident of a kind reception from the multitude of people with
whom she was soon to form acquaintance. Her dress was rather too airy
for the season, and was bedizened with fluttering ribbons and other
vanities which were likely soon to be rent away by the fierce storms
or to fade in the hot sunshine amid which she was to pursue her
changeful course. But still she was a wonderfully pleasant-looking
figure, and had so much promise and such an indescribable hopefulness
in her aspect that hardly anybody could meet her without anticipating
some very desirable thing—the consummation of some long-sought
good—from her kind offices. A few dismal characters there may be here
and there about the world who have so often been trifled with by young
maidens as promising as she that they have now ceased to pin any faith
upon the skirts of the New Year. But, for my own part, I have great
faith in her, and, should I live to see fifty more such, still from
each of those successive sisters I shall reckon upon receiving
something that will be worth living for.

The New Year—for this young maiden was no less a personage—carried
all her goods and chattels in a basket of no great size or weight,
which hung upon her arm. She greeted the disconsolate Old Year with
great affection, and sat down beside her on the steps of the
city-hall, waiting for the signal to begin her rambles through the
world. The two were own sisters, being both granddaughters of Time,
and, though one looked so much older than the other, it was rather
owing to hardships and trouble than to age, since there was but a
twelvemonth's difference between them.

"Well, my dear sister," said the New Year, after the first
salutations, "you look almost tired to death. What have you been about
during your sojourn in this part of infinite space?"

"Oh, I have it all recorded here in my book of chronicles," answered
the Old Year, in a heavy tone. "There is nothing that would amuse you,
and you will soon get sufficient knowledge of such matters from your
own personal experience. It is but tiresome reading."

Nevertheless, she turned over the leaves of the folio and glanced at
them by the light of the moon, feeling an irresistible spell of
interest in her own biography, although its incidents were remembered
without pleasure. The volume, though she termed it her book of
chronicles, seemed to be neither more nor less than the Salem
Gazette
for 1838; in the accuracy of which journal this sagacious
Old Year had so much confidence that she deemed it needless to record
her history with her own pen.

"What have you been doing in the political way?" asked the New Year.

"Why, my course here in the United States," said the Old Year—"though
perhaps I ought to blush at the confession—my political course, I
must acknowledge, has been rather vacillatory, sometimes inclining
toward the Whigs, then causing the administration party to shout for
triumph, and now again uplifting what seemed the almost prostrate
banner of the opposition; so that historians will hardly know what to
make of me in this respect. But the Loco-Focos—"

"I do not like these party nicknames," interrupted her sister, who
seemed remarkably touchy about some points. "Perhaps we shall part in
better humor if we avoid any political discussion."

"With all my heart," replied the Old Year, who had already been
tormented half to death with squabbles of this kind. "I care not if
the name of Whig or Tory, with their interminable brawls about banks
and the sub-treasury, abolition, Texas, the Florida war, and a million
of other topics which you will learn soon enough for your own
comfort,—I care not, I say, if no whisper of these matters ever
reaches my ears again. Yet they have occupied so large a share of my
attention that I scarcely know what else to tell you. There has,
indeed been a curious sort of war on the Canada border, where blood
has streamed in the names of liberty and patriotism; but it must
remain for some future, perhaps far-distant, year to tell whether or
no those holy names have been rightfully invoked. Nothing so much
depresses me in my view of mortal affairs as to see high energies
wasted and human life and happiness thrown away for ends that appear
oftentimes unwise, and still oftener remain unaccomplished. But the
wisest people and the best keep a steadfast faith that the progress of
mankind is onward and upward, and that the toil and anguish of the
path serve to wear away the imperfections of the immortal pilgrim, and
will be felt no more when they have done their office."

"Perhaps," cried the hopeful New Year—"perhaps I shall see that happy
day."

"I doubt whether it be so close at hand," answered the Old Year,
gravely smiling. "You will soon grow weary of looking for that blessed
consummation, and will turn for amusement—as has frequently been my
own practice—to the affairs of some sober little city like this of
Salem. Here we sit on the steps of the new city-hall which has been
completed under my administration, and it would make you laugh to see
how the game of politics of which the Capitol at Washington is the
great chess-board is here played in miniature. Burning Ambition finds
its fuel here; here patriotism speaks boldly in the people's behalf
and virtuous economy demands retrenchment in the emoluments of a
lamplighter; here the aldermen range their senatorial dignity around
the mayor's chair of state and the common council feel that they have
liberty in charge. In short, human weakness and strength, passion and
policy, man's tendencies, his aims and modes of pursuing them, his
individual character and his character in the mass, may be studied
almost as well here as on the theatre of nations, and with this great
advantage—that, be the lesson ever so disastrous, its Liliputian
scope still makes the beholder smile."