The Haunted Mind (From Twice Told Tales) Read online

  Produced by David Widger

  TWICE TOLD TALES

  THE HAUNTED MIND

  By Nathaniel Hawthorne

  What a singular moment is the first one, when you have hardly begun torecollect yourself after starting from midnight slumber! By unclosingyour eyes so suddenly, you seem to have surprised the personages ofyour dream in full convocation round your bed, and catch one broadglance at them before they can flit into obscurity. Or, to vary themetaphor, you find yourself, for a single instant, wide awake in thatrealm of illusions, whither sleep has been the passport, and beholdits ghostly inhabitants and wondrous scenery, with a perception oftheir strangeness, such as you never attain while the dream isundisturbed. The distant sound of a church-clock is borne faintly onthe wind. You question with yourself, half seriously, whether it hasstolen to your waking ear from some gray tower, that stood within theprecincts of your dream. While yet in suspense, another clock flingsits heavy clang over the slumbering town, with so full and distinct asound, and such a long murmur in the neighboring air, that you arecertain it must proceed from the steeple at the nearest corner. Youcount the strokes--one--two, and there they cease, with a boomingsound, like the gathering of a third stroke within the bell.

  If you could choose an hour of wakefulness out of the whole night, itwould be this. Since your sober bedtime, at eleven, you have had restenough to take off the pressure of yesterday's fatigue; while beforeyou, till the sun comes from "far Cathay" to brighten your window,there is almost the space of a summer night; one hour to be spent inthought, with the mind's eye half shut, and two in pleasant dreams,and two in that strangest of enjoyments, the forgetfulness alike ofjoy and woe. The moment of rising belongs to another period of time,and appears so distant, that the plunge out of a warm bed into thefrosty air cannot yet be anticipated with dismay. Yesterday hasalready vanished among the shadows of the past; to-morrow has not yetemerged from the future. You have found an intermediate space, wherethe business of life does not intrude; where the passing momentlingers, and becomes truly the present; a spot where Father Time, whenhe thinks nobody is watching him, sits down by the wayside to takebreath. O that he would fall asleep, and let mortals live on withoutgrowing older!

  Hitherto you have lain perfectly still, because the slightest motionwould dissipate the fragments of your slumber. Now, being irrevocablyawake, you peep through the half-drawn window-curtain, and observethat the glass is ornamented with fanciful devices in frostwork, andthat each pane presents something like a frozen dream. There will betime enough to trace out the analogy, while waiting the summons tobreakfast. Seen through the clear portion of the glass, where thesilvery mountain-peaks of the frost scenery do not ascend, the mostconspicuous object is the steeple, the white spire of which directsyou to the wintry lustre of the firmament. You may almost distinguishthe figures on the clock that has just told the hour. Such a frostysky, and the snow-covered roofs, and the long vista of the frozenstreet, all white, and the distant water hardened into rock, mightmake you shiver, even under four blankets and a woollen comforter.Yet look at that one glorious star! Its beams are distinguishablefrom all the rest, and actually cast the shadow of the casement on thebed, with a radiance of deeper hue than moonlight, though not soaccurate an outline.

  You sink down and muffle your head in the clothes, shivering all thewhile, but less from bodily chill than the bare idea of a polaratmosphere. It is too cold even for the thoughts to venture abroad.You speculate on the luxury of wearing out a whole existence in bed,like an oyster in its shell, content with the sluggish ecstasy ofinaction, and drowsily conscious of nothing but delicious warmth, suchas you now feel again. Ah! that idea has brought a hideous one in itstrain. You think how the dead are lying in their cold shrouds andnarrow coffins, through the drear winter of the grave, and cannotpersuade your fancy that they neither shrink nor shiver, when the snowis drifting over their little hillocks, and the bitter blast howlsagainst the door of the tomb. That gloomy thought will collect agloomy multitude, and throw its complexion over your wakeful hour.

  In the depths of every heart there is a tomb and a dungeon, though thelights, the music, and revelry above may cause us to forget theirexistence, and the buried ones, or prisoners whom they hide. Butsometimes, and oftenest at midnight, these dark receptacles are flungwide open. In an hour like this, when the mind has a passivesensibility, but no active strength; when the imagination is a mirror,imparting vividness to all ideas, without the power of selecting orcontrolling them; then pray that your griefs may slumber, and thebrotherhood of remorse not break their chain. It is too late! Afuneral train comes gliding by your bed, in which Passion and Feelingassume bodily shape, and things of the mind become dire spectres tothe eye. There is your earliest Sorrow, a pale young mourner, wearinga sister's likeness to first love, sadly beautiful, with a hallowedsweetness in her melancholy features, and grace in the flow of hersable robe. Next appears a shade of ruined loveliness, with dustamong her golden hair, and her bright garments all faded and defaced,stealing from your glance with drooping head, as fearful of reproach;she was your fondest Hope, but a delusive one; so call herDisappointment now. A sterner form succeeds, with a brow of wrinkles,a look and gesture of iron authority; there is no name for him unlessit be Fatality, an emblem of the evil influence that rules yourfortunes; a demon to whom you subjected yourself by some error at theoutset of life, and were bound his slave forever, by once obeying him.See! those fiendish lineaments graven on the darkness, the writhed lipof scorn, the mockery of that living eye, the pointed finger, touchingthe sore place in your heart! Do you remember any act of enormousfolly, at which you would blush, even in the remotest cavern of theearth? Then recognize your Shame.

  Pass, wretched band! Well for the wakeful one, if, riotouslymiserable, a fiercer tribe do not surround him, the devils of a guiltyheart, that holds its hell within itself. What if Remorse shouldassume the features of an injured friend? What if the fiend shouldcome in woman's garments, with a pale beauty amid sin and desolation,and lie down by your side? What if he should stand at your bed'sfoot, in the likeness of a corpse, with a bloody stain upon theshroud? Sufficient without such guilt is this nightmare of the soul;this heavy, heavy sinking of the spirits; this wintry gloom about theheart; this indistinct horror of the mind, blending itself with thedarkness of the chamber.

  By a desperate effort, you start upright, breaking from a sort ofconscious sleep, and gazing wildly round the bed, as if the fiendswere anywhere but in your haunted mind. At the same moment, theslumbering embers on the hearth send forth a gleam which palelyilluminates the whole outer room, and flickers through the door of thebedchamber, but cannot quite dispel its obscurity. Your eye searchesfor whatever may remind you of the living world. With eagerminuteness, you take note of the table near the fireplace, the bookwith an ivory knife between its leaves, the unfolded letter, the hat,and the fallen glove. Soon the flame vanishes, and with it the wholescene is gone, though its image remains an instant in your mind's eye,when darkness has swallowed the reality. Throughout the chamber,there is the same obscurity as before, but not the same gloom withinyour breast. As your head falls back upon the pillow, you think--in awhisper be it spoken--how pleasant in these night solitudes would bethe rise and fall of a softer breathing than your own, the slightpressure of a tenderer bosom, the quiet throb of a purer heart,imparting its peacefulness to your troubled one, as if the fondsleeper were involving you in her dream.

  Her influence is over you, though she have no existence but in thatmomentary image. You sink down in a flowery spot, on the borders ofsleep and wakef
ulness, while your thoughts rise before you inpictures, all disconnected, yet all assimilated by a pervadinggladsomeness and beauty. The wheeling of gorgeous squadrons, thatglitter in the sun, is succeeded by the merriment of children roundthe door of a school-house, beneath the glimmering shadow of oldtrees, at the corner of a rustic lane. You stand in the sunny rain ofa summer shower, and wander among the sunny trees of an autumnal wood,and look upward at the brightest of all rainbows, overarching theunbroken sheet of snow, on the American side of Niagara. Your mindstruggles pleasantly between the dancing radiance round the hearth ofa young man and his recent bride, and the twittering flight of birdsin spring, about their new-made nest. You feel the merry bounding ofa ship before the breeze; and watch the tuneful feet of rosy girls, asthey twine their last and merriest dance in a splendid ballroom; andfind yourself in the brilliant circle of a crowded theatre, as thecurtain falls over a light and airy scene.

  With an involuntary start, you seize hold on consciousness, and proveyourself but half awake, by running a doubtful parallel between humanlife and the hour which has now elapsed. In both you emerge frommystery, pass through a vicissitude that you can but imperfectlycontrol, and are borne onward to another mystery. Now comes the pealof the distant clock, with fainter and fainter strokes as you plungefurther into the wilderness of sleep. It is the knell of a temporarydeath. Your spirit has departed, and strays like a free citizen,among the people of a shadowy world, beholding strange sights, yetwithout wonder or dismay. So calm, perhaps, will be the final change;so undisturbed, as if among familiar things, the entrance of the soulto its Eternal home!