The Snow Image Page 4

  THE CANTERBURY PILGRIMS

  The summer moon, which shines in so many a tale, was beaming over abroad extent of uneven country. Some of its brightest rays were flunginto a spring of water, where no traveller, toiling, as the writer has,up the hilly road beside which it gushes, ever failed to quench histhirst. The work of neat hands and considerate art was visible aboutthis blessed fountain. An open cistern, hewn and hollowed out of solidstone, was placed above the waters, which filled it to the brim, but bysome invisible outlet were conveyed away without dripping down itssides. Though the basin had not room for another drop, and thecontinual gush of water made a tremor on the surface, there was asecret charm that forbade it to overflow. I remember, that when I hadslaked my summer thirst, and sat panting by the cistern, it was myfanciful theory that Nature could not afford to lavish so pure aliquid, as she does the waters of all meaner fountains.

  While the moon was hanging almost perpendicularly over this spot, twofigures appeared on the summit of the hill, and came with noiselessfootsteps down towards the spring. They were then in the firstfreshness of youth; nor is there a wrinkle now on either of theirbrows, and yet they wore a strange, old-fashioned garb. One, a youngman with ruddy cheeks, walked beneath the canopy of a broad-brimmedgray hat; he seemed to have inherited his great-grandsire'ssquare-skirted coat, and a waistcoat that extended its immense flaps tohis knees; his brown locks, also, hung down behind, in a mode unknownto our times. By his side was a sweet young damsel, her fair featuressheltered by a prim little bonnet, within which appeared the vestalmuslin of a cap; her close, long-waisted gown, and indeed her wholeattire, might have been worn by some rustic beauty who had faded half acentury before. But that there was something too warm and life-like inthem, I would here have compared this couple to the ghosts of two younglovers who had died long since in the glow of passion, and now werestraying out of their graves, to renew the old vows, and shadow forththe unforgotten kiss of their earthly lips, beside the moonlit spring.

  "Thee and I will rest here a moment, Miriam," said the young man, asthey drew near the stone cistern, "for there is no fear that the eldersknow what we have done; and this may be the last time we shall evertaste this water."

  Thus speaking, with a little sadness in his face, which was alsovisible in that of his companion, he made her sit down on a stone, andwas about to place himself very close to her side; she, however,repelled him, though not unkindly.

  "Nay, Josiah," said she, giving him a timid push with her maiden hand,"thee must sit farther off, on that other stone, with the springbetween us. What would the sisters say, if thee were to sit so close tome?"

  "But we are of the world's people now, Miriam," answered Josiah.

  The girl persisted in her prudery, nor did the youth, in fact, seemaltogether free from a similar sort of shyness; so they sat apart fromeach other, gazing up the hill, where the moonlight discovered the topsof a group of buildings. While their attention was thus occupied, aparty of travellers, who had come wearily up the long ascent, made ahalt to refresh themselves at the spring. There were three men, awoman, and a little girl and boy. Their attire was mean, covered withthe dust of the summer's day, and damp with the night-dew; they alllooked woebegone, as if the cares and sorrows of the world had madetheir steps heavier as they climbed the hill; even the two littlechildren appeared older in evil days than the young man and maiden whohad first approached the spring.

  "Good evening to you, young folks," was the salutation of thetravellers; and "Good evening, friends," replied the youth and damsel.

  "Is that white building the Shaker meeting-house?" asked one of thestrangers. "And are those the red roofs of the Shaker village?"

  "Friend, it is the Shaker village," answered Josiah, after somehesitation.

  The travellers, who, from the first, had looked suspiciously at thegarb of these young people, now taxed them with an intention which allthe circumstances, indeed, rendered too obvious to be mistaken.

  "It is true, friends," replied the young man, summoning up his courage."Miriam and I have a gift to love each other, and we are going amongthe world's people, to live after their fashion. And ye know that we donot transgress the law of the land; and neither ye, nor the eldersthemselves, have a right to hinder us."

  "Yet you think it expedient to depart without leave-taking," remarkedone of the travellers.

  "Yea, ye-a," said Josiah, reluctantly, "because father Job is a veryawful man to speak with; and being aged himself, he has but littlecharity for what he calls the iniquities of the flesh."

  "Well," said the stranger, "we will neither use force to bring you backto the village, nor will we betray you to the elders. But sit you hereawhile, and when you have heard what we shall tell you of the worldwhich we have left, and into which you are going, perhaps you will turnback with us of your own accord. What say you?" added he, turning tohis companions. "We have travelled thus far without becoming known toeach other. Shall we tell our stories, here by this pleasant spring,for our own pastime, and the benefit of these misguided young lovers?"

  In accordance with this proposal, the whole party stationed themselvesround the stone cistern; the two children, being very weary, fellasleep upon the damp earth, and the pretty Shaker girl, whose feelingswere those of a nun or a Turkish lady, crept as close as possible tothe female traveller, and as far as she well could from the unknownmen. The same person who had hitherto been the chief spokesman nowstood up, waving his hat in his hand, and suffered the moonlight tofall full upon his front.

  "In me," said he, with a certain majesty of utterance,--"in me, youbehold a poet."

  Though a lithographic print of this gentleman is extant, it may be wellto notice that he was now nearly forty, a thin and stooping figure, ina black coat, out at elbows; notwithstanding the ill condition of hisattire, there were about him several tokens of a peculiar sort offoppery, unworthy of a mature man, particularly in the arrangement ofhis hair which was so disposed as to give all possible loftiness andbreadth to his forehead. However, he had an intelligent eye, and, onthe whole, a marked countenance.

  "A poet!" repeated the young Shaker, a little puzzled how to understandsuch a designation, seldom heard in the utilitarian community where hehad spent his life. "Oh, ay, Miriam, he means a varse-maker, thee mustknow."

  This remark jarred upon the susceptible nerves of the poet; nor couldhe help wondering what strange fatality had put into this young man'smouth an epithet, which ill-natured people had affirmed to be moreproper to his merit than the one assumed by himself.

  "True, I am a verse-maker," he resumed, "but my verse is no more thanthe material body into which I breathe the celestial soul of thought.Alas! how many a pang has it cost me, this same insensibility to theethereal essence of poetry, with which you have here tortured me again,at the moment when I am to relinquish my profession forever! O Fate!why hast thou warred with Nature, turning all her higher and moreperfect gifts to the ruin of me, their possessor? What is the voice ofsong, when the world lacks the ear of taste? How can I rejoice in mystrength and delicacy of feeling, when they have but made great sorrowsout of little ones? Have I dreaded scorn like death, and yearned forfame as others pant for vital air, only to find myself in a middlestate between obscurity and infamy? But I have my revenge! I could havegiven existence to a thousand bright creations. I crush them into myheart, and there let them putrefy! I shake off the dust of my feetagainst my countrymen! But posterity, tracing my footsteps up thisweary hill, will cry shame upon the unworthy age that drove one of thefathers of American song to end his days in a Shaker village!"

  During this harangue, the speaker gesticulated with great energy, and,as poetry is the natural language of passion, there appeared reason toapprehend his final explosion into an ode extempore. The reader mustunderstand that, for all these bitter words, he was a kind, gentle,harmless, poor fellow enough, whom Nature, tossing her ingredientstogether without looking at her recipe, had sent into the world withtoo much of one sort of brain, and hardly any of
another.

  "Friend," said the young Shaker, in some perplexity, "thee seemest tohave met with great troubles; and, doubtless, I should pity them,if--if I could but understand what they were."

  "Happy in your ignorance!" replied the poet, with an air of sublimesuperiority. "To your coarser mind, perhaps, I may seem to speak ofmore important griefs when I add, what I had well-nigh forgotten, thatI am out at elbows, and almost starved to death. At any rate, you havethe advice and example of one individual to warn you back; for I amcome hither, a disappointed man, flinging aside the fragments of myhopes, and seeking shelter in the calm retreat which you are so anxiousto leave."

  "I thank thee, friend," rejoined the youth, "but I do not mean to be apoet, nor, Heaven be praised! do I think Miriam ever made a varse inher life. So we need not fear thy disappointments. But, Miriam," headded, with real concern, "thee knowest that the elders admit nobodythat has not a gift to be useful. Now, what under the sun can they dowith this poor varse-maker?"

  "Nay, Josiah, do not thee discourage the poor man," said the girl, inall simplicity and kindness. "Our hymns are very rough, and perhapsthey may trust him to smooth them."

  Without noticing this hint of professional employment, the poet turnedaway, and gave himself up to a sort of vague reverie, which he calledthought. Sometimes he watched the moon, pouring a silvery liquid on theclouds, through which it slowly melted till they became all bright;then he saw the same sweet radiance dancing on the leafy trees whichrustled as if to shake it off, or sleeping on the high tops of hills,or hovering down in distant valleys, like the material of unshapeddreams; lastly, he looked into the spring, and there the light wasmingling with the water. In its crystal bosom, too, beholding allheaven reflected there, he found an emblem of a pure and tranquilbreast. He listened to that most ethereal of all sounds, the song ofcrickets, coming in full choir upon the wind, and fancied that, ifmoonlight could be heard, it would sound just like that. Finally, hetook a draught at the Shaker spring, and, as if it were the trueCastalia, was forthwith moved to compose a lyric, a Farewell to hisHarp, which he swore should be its closing strain, the last verse thatan ungrateful world should have from him. This effusion, with two orthree other little pieces, subsequently written, he took the firstopportunity to send, by one of the Shaker brethren, to Concord, wherethey were published in the New Hampshire Patriot.

  Meantime, another of the Canterbury pilgrims, one so different from thepoet that the delicate fancy of the latter could hardly have conceivedof him, began to relate his sad experience. He was a small man, ofquick and unquiet gestures, about fifty years old, with a narrowforehead, all wrinkled and drawn together. He held in his hand apencil, and a card of some commission-merchant in foreign parts, on theback of which, for there was light enough to read or write by, heseemed ready to figure out a calculation.

  "Young man," said he, abruptly, "what quantity of land do the Shakersown here, in Canterbury?"

  "That is more than I can tell thee, friend," answered Josiah, "but itis a very rich establishment, and for a long way by the roadside theemay guess the land to be ours, by the neatness of the fences."

  "And what may be the value of the whole," continued the stranger, "withall the buildings and improvements, pretty nearly, in round numbers?"

  "Oh, a monstrous sum,--more than I can reckon," replied the youngShaker.

  "Well, sir," said the pilgrim, "there was a day, and not very long ago,neither, when I stood at my counting-room window, and watched thesignal flags of three of my own ships entering the harbor, from theEast Indies, from Liverpool, and from up the Straits, and I would nothave given the invoice of the least of them for the title-deeds of thiswhole Shaker settlement. You stare. Perhaps, now, you won't believethat I could have put more value on a little piece of paper, no biggerthan the palm of your hand, than all these solid acres of grain, grass,and pasture-land would sell for?"

  "I won't dispute it, friend," answered Josiah, "but I know I had ratherhave fifty acres of this good land than a whole sheet of thy paper."

  "You may say so now," said the ruined merchant, bitterly, "for my namewould not be worth the paper I should write it on. Of course, you musthave heard of my failure?"

  And the stranger mentioned his name, which, however mighty it mighthave been in the commercial world, the young Shaker had never heard ofamong the Canterbury hills.

  "Not heard of my failure!" exclaimed the merchant, considerably piqued."Why, it was spoken of on 'Change in London, and from Boston to NewOrleans men trembled in their shoes. At all events, I did fail, and yousee me here on my road to the Shaker village, where, doubtless (for theShakers are a shrewd sect), they will have a due respect for myexperience, and give me the management of the trading part of theconcern, in which case I think I can pledge myself to double theircapital in four or five years. Turn back with me, young man; for thoughyou will never meet with my good luck, you can hardly escape my bad."

  "I will not turn back for this," replied Josiah, calmly, "any more thanfor the advice of the varse-maker, between whom and thee, friend, I seea sort of likeness, though I can't justly say where it lies. But Miriamand I can earn our daily bread among the world's people as well as inthe Shaker village. And do we want anything more, Miriam?"

  "Nothing more, Josiah," said the girl, quietly.

  "Yea, Miriam, and daily bread for some other little mouths, if God sendthem," observed the simple Shaker lad.

  Miriam did not reply, but looked down into the spring, where sheencountered the image of her own pretty face, blushing within the primlittle bonnet. The third pilgrim now took up the conversation. He was asunburnt countryman, of tall frame and bony strength, on whose rude andmanly face there appeared a darker, more sullen and obstinatedespondency, than on those of either the poet or the merchant.

  "Well, now, youngster," he began, "these folks have had their say, soI'll take my turn. My story will cut but a poor figure by the side oftheirs; for I never supposed that I could have a right to meat anddrink, and great praise besides, only for tagging rhymes together, asit seems this man does; nor ever tried to get the substance of hundredsinto my own hands, like the trader there. When I was about of youryears, I married me a wife,--just such a neat and pretty young woman asMiriam, if that's her name,--and all I asked of Providence was anordinary blessing on the sweat of my brow, so that we might be decentand comfortable, and have daily bread for ourselves, and for some otherlittle mouths that we soon had to feed. We had no very great prospectsbefore us; but I never wanted to be idle; and I thought it a matter ofcourse that the Lord would help me, because I was willing to helpmyself."

  "And didn't He help thee, friend?" demanded Josiah, with some eagerness.

  "No," said the yeoman, sullenly; "for then you would not have seen mehere. I have labored hard for years; and my means have been growingnarrower, and my living poorer, and my heart colder and heavier, allthe time; till at last I could bear it no longer. I set myself down tocalculate whether I had best go on the Oregon expedition, or come hereto the Shaker village; but I had not hope enough left in me to beginthe world over again; and, to make my story short, here I am. And now,youngster, take my advice, and turn back; or else, some few yearshence, you'll have to climb this hill, with as heavy a heart as mine."

  This simple story had a strong effect on the young fugitives. Themisfortunes of the poet and merchant had won little sympathy from theirplain good sense and unworldly feelings, qualities which made them suchunprejudiced and inflexible judges, that few men would have chosen totake the opinion of this youth and maiden as to the wisdom or folly oftheir pursuits. But here was one whose simple wishes had resembledtheir own, and who, after efforts which almost gave him a right toclaim success from fate, had failed in accomplishing them.

  "But thy wife, friend?" exclaimed the younger man. "What became of thepretty girl, like Miriam? Oh, I am afraid she is dead!"

  "Yea, poor man, she must be dead,--she and the children, too," sobbedMiriam.

  The female pilgrim had be
en leaning over the spring, wherein latterly atear or two might have been seen to fall, and form its little circle onthe surface of the water. She now looked up, disclosing features stillcomely, but which had acquired an expression of fretfulness, in thesame long course of evil fortune that had thrown a sullen gloom overthe temper of the unprosperous yeoman.

  "I am his wife," said she, a shade of irritability just perceptible inthe sadness of her tone. "These poor little things, asleep on theground, are two of our children. We had two more, but God has providedbetter for them than we could, by taking them to Himself."

  "And what would thee advise Josiah and me to do?" asked Miriam, thisbeing the first question which she had put to either of the strangers.

  "'Tis a thing almost against nature for a woman to try to part truelovers," answered the yeoman's wife, after a pause; "but I'll speak astruly to you as if these were my dying words. Though my husband toldyou some of our troubles, he didn't mention the greatest, and thatwhich makes all the rest so hard to bear. If you and your sweetheartmarry, you'll be kind and pleasant to each other for a year or two, andwhile that's the case, you never will repent; but, by and by, he'llgrow gloomy, rough, and hard to please, and you'll be peevish, and fullof little angry fits, and apt to be complaining by the fireside, whenhe comes to rest himself from his troubles out of doors; so your lovewill wear away by little and little, and leave you miserable at last.It has been so with us; and yet my husband and I were true lovers once,if ever two young folks were ."

  As she ceased, the yeoman and his wife exchanged a glance, in whichthere was more and warmer affection than they had supposed to haveescaped the frost of a wintry fate, in either of their breasts. At thatmoment, when they stood on the utmost verge of married life, one wordfitly spoken, or perhaps one peculiar look, had they had mutualconfidence enough to reciprocate it, might have renewed all their oldfeelings, and sent them back, resolved to sustain each other amid thestruggles of the world. But the crisis passed and never came again.Just then, also, the children, roused by their mother's voice, lookedup, and added their wailing accents to the testimony borne by all theCanterbury pilgrims against the world from which they fled.

  "We are tired and hungry!" cried they. "Is it far to the Shakervillage?"

  The Shaker youth and maiden looked mournfully into each other's eyes.They had but stepped across the threshold of their homes, when lo! thedark array of cares and sorrows that rose up to warn them back. Thevaried narratives of the strangers had arranged themselves into aparable; they seemed not merely instances of woful fate that hadbefallen others, but shadowy omens of disappointed hope and unavailingtoil, domestic grief and estranged affection, that would cloud theonward path of these poor fugitives. But after one instant'shesitation, they opened their arms, and sealed their resolve with aspure and fond an embrace as ever youthful love had hallowed.

  "We will not go back," said they. "The world never can be dark to us,for we will always love one another."

  Then the Canterbury pilgrims went up the hill, while the poet chanted adrear and desperate stanza of the Farewell to his Harp, fitting musicfor that melancholy band. They sought a home where all former ties ofnature or society would be sundered, and all old distinctions levelled,and a cold and passionless security be substituted for mortal hope andfear, as in that other refuge of the world's weary outcasts, the grave.The lovers drank at the Shaker spring, and then, with chastened hopes,but more confiding affections, went on to mingle in an untried life.