About this time, there went a rumor throughout the valley that the great
man, foretold from ages long ago, who was to bear a resemblance to the
Great Stone Face, had appeared at last. It seems that, many years
before, a young man had left the valley and settled at a distant
seaport, where, after getting together a little money, he had set up as
a shopkeeper. His name--but I could never learn whether it was his real
one, or a nickname that had grown out of his habits and success in
life--was Gathergold.
It might be said of him, as of [v]Midas in the fable, that whatever he
touched with his finger immediately glistened, and grew yellow, and was
changed at once into coin. And when Mr. Gathergold had become so rich
that it would have taken him a hundred years only to count his wealth,
he bethought himself of his native valley, and resolved to go back
thither, and end his days where he was born. With this purpose in view,
he sent a skillful architect to build him such a palace as should be fit
for a man of his vast wealth to live in.
As I have said above, it had already been rumored in the valley that Mr.
Gathergold had turned out to be the person so long and vainly looked
for, and that his visage was the perfect and undeniable likeness of the
Great Stone Face. People were the more ready to believe that this must
needs be the fact when they beheld the splendid edifice that rose, as if
by enchantment, on the site of his father's old weather-beaten
farmhouse. The exterior was of marble, so dazzling white that it seemed
as though the whole structure might melt away in the sunshine, like
those humbler ones which Mr. Gathergold, in his young playdays, had been
accustomed to build of snow. It had a richly ornamented portico,
supported by tall pillars, beneath which was a lofty door, studded with
silver knobs, and made of a kind of variegated wood that had been
brought from beyond the sea. The windows, from the floor to the ceiling
of each stately apartment, were each composed of but one enormous pane
of glass. Hardly anybody had been permitted to see the interior of this
palace; but it was reported to be far more gorgeous than the outside,
insomuch that whatever was iron or brass in other houses was silver or
gold in this; and Mr. Gathergold's bedchamber, especially, made such a
glittering appearance that no ordinary man would have been able to close
his eyes there. But, on the other hand, Mr. Gathergold was now so
accustomed to wealth that perhaps he could not have closed his eyes
unless where the gleam of it was certain to find its way beneath his
eyelids.
In due time, the mansion was finished; next came the upholsterers, with
magnificent furniture; then a whole troop of black and white servants,
the harbingers of Mr. Gathergold, who, in his own majestic person, was
expected to arrive at sunset. Our friend Ernest, meanwhile, had been
deeply stirred by the idea that the great man, the noble man, the man of
prophecy, after so many ages of delay, was at length to appear in his
native valley. He knew, boy as he was, that there were a thousand ways
in which Mr. Gathergold, with his vast wealth, might transform himself
into an angel of beneficence, and assume a control over human affairs as
wide and [v]benignant as the smile of the Great Stone Face. Full of
faith and hope, Ernest doubted not that what the people said was true,
and that now he was to behold the living likeness of those wondrous
features on the mountain side. While the boy was still gazing up the
valley, and fancying, as he always did, that the Great Stone Face
returned his gaze and looked kindly at him, the rumbling of wheels was
heard, approaching swiftly along the winding road.
"Here he comes!" cried a group of people who were assembled to witness
the arrival. "Here comes the great Mr. Gathergold!"
A carriage, drawn by four horses, dashed round the turn of the road.
Within it, thrust partly out of the window, appeared the face of a
little old man, with a skin as yellow as gold. He had a low forehead,
small, sharp eyes, puckered about with innumerable wrinkles, and very
thin lips, which he made still thinner by pressing them forcibly
together.
"The very image of the Great Stone Face!" shouted the people. "Sure
enough, the old prophecy is true."
And, what greatly perplexed Ernest, they seemed actually to believe that
here was the likeness which they spoke of. By the roadside there chanced
to be an old beggar woman and two little beggar children, stragglers
from some far-off region, who, as the carriage rolled onward, held out
their hands and lifted up their doleful voices, most piteously
beseeching charity. A yellow claw--the very same that had clawed
together so much wealth--poked itself out of the coach window, and
dropped some copper coins upon the ground; so that, though the great
man's name seems to have been Gathergold, he might just as suitably have
been nicknamed Scattercopper. Still, nevertheless, with an earnest
shout, and evidently with as much good faith as ever, the people
bellowed:
"He is the very image of the Great Stone Face!"
But Ernest turned sadly from the wrinkled shrewdness of that visage and
gazed up the valley, where, amid a gathering mist, gilded by the last
sunbeams, he could still distinguish those glorious features which had
impressed themselves into his soul. Their aspect cheered him. What did
the benign lips seem to say?
"He will come! Fear not, Ernest; the man will come!"
The years went on, and Ernest ceased to be a boy. He had grown to be a
young man now. He attracted little notice from the other inhabitants of
the valley, for they saw nothing remarkable in his way of life, save
that, when the labor of the day was over, he still loved to go apart and
gaze and meditate upon the Great Stone Face. According to their idea of
the matter, however, it was a pardonable folly, for Ernest was
industrious, kind, and neighborly, and neglected no duty for the sake of
this idle habit. They knew not that the Great Stone Face had become a
teacher to him, and that the sentiment which was expressed in it would
enlarge the young man's heart, and fill it with wider and deeper
sympathies than other hearts. They knew not that thence would come a
better wisdom than could be learned from books, and a better life than
could be molded on the example of other human lives. Neither did Ernest
know that the thoughts and affections which came to him so naturally, in
the fields and at the fireside, were of a higher tone than those which
all men shared with him. A simple soul,--simple as when his mother first
taught him the old prophecy,--he beheld the marvelous features beaming
down the valley, and still wondered that their human counterpart was so
long in making his appearance.
By this time poor Mr. Gathergold was dead and buried; and the oddest
part of the matter was that his wealth, which was the body and spirit of
his existence, had disappeared before his death, leaving nothing of him
but a living skeleton, covered over with a wrinkled, yellow skin. Since
the melting away of his gold, it had been very generally allowed that
there was no such striking resemblance, after all, betwixt the ignoble
features of the ruined merchant and that majestic face upon the mountain
side. So the people ceased to honor him during his lifetime, and quietly
forgot him after his decease. Once in a while, it is true, his memory
was brought up in connection with the magnificent palace which he had
built, and which had long ago been turned into a hotel for the
accommodation of strangers, multitudes of whom came, every summer, to
visit that famous natural curiosity, the Great Stone Face. The man of
prophecy was yet to come.