“I have here attempted,” said Roderick, unfolding a few sheets of
manuscript, as he sat with Rosina and the sculptor in the
summer-house,—“I have attempted to seize hold of a personage who glides
past me, occasionally, in my walk through life. My former sad
experience, as you know, has gifted me with some degree of insight into
the gloomy mysteries of the human heart, through which I have wandered
like one astray in a dark cavern, with his torch fast flickering to
extinction. But this man, this class of men, is a hopeless puzzle.”
“Well, but propound him,” said the sculptor. “Let us have an idea of
hint, to begin with.”
“Why, indeed,” replied Roderick, “he is such a being as I could
conceive you to carve out of marble, and some yet unrealized perfection
of human science to endow with an exquisite mockery of intellect; but
still there lacks the last inestimable touch of a divine Creator. He
looks like a man; and, perchance, like a better specimen of man than
you ordinarily meet. You might esteem him wise; he is capable of
cultivation and refinement, and has at least an external conscience;
but the demands that spirit makes upon spirit are precisely those to
which he cannot respond. When at last you come close to him you find
him chill and unsubstantial,—a mere vapor.”
“I believe,” said Rosina, “I have a glimmering idea of what you mean.”
“Then be thankful,” answered her husband, smiling; “but do not
anticipate any further illumination from what I am about to read. I
have here imagined such a man to be—what, probably, he never
is—conscious of the deficiency in his spiritual organization. Methinks
the result would be a sense of cold unreality wherewith he would go
shivering through the world, longing to exchange his load of ice for
any burden of real grief that fate could fling upon a human being.”
Contenting himself with this preface, Roderick began to read.
In a certain old gentleman’s last will and testament there appeared a
bequest, which, as his final thought and deed, was singularly in
keeping with a long life of melancholy eccentricity. He devised a
considerable sum for establishing a fund, the interest of which was to
be expended, annually forever, in preparing a Christmas Banquet for ten
of the most miserable persons that could be found. It seemed not to be
the testator’s purpose to make these half a score of sad hearts merry,
but to provide that the stern or fierce expression of human discontent
should not be drowned, even for that one holy and joyful day, amid the
acclamations of festal gratitude which all Christendom sends up. And he
desired, likewise, to perpetuate his own remonstrance against the
earthly course of Providence, and his sad and sour dissent from those
systems of religion or philosophy which either find sunshine in the
world or draw it down from heaven.
The task of inviting the guests, or of selecting among such as might
advance their claims to partake of this dismal hospitality, was
confided to the two trustees or stewards of the fund. These gentlemen,
like their deceased friend, were sombre humorists, who made it their
principal occupation to number the sable threads in the web of human
life, and drop all the golden ones out of the reckoning. They performed
their present office with integrity and judgment. The aspect of the
assembled company, on the day of the first festival, might not, it is
true, have satisfied every beholder that these were especially the
individuals, chosen forth from all the world, whose griefs were worthy
to stand as indicators of the mass of human suffering. Yet, after due
consideration, it could not be disputed that here was a variety of
hopeless discomfort, which, if it sometimes arose from causes
apparently inadequate, was thereby only the shrewder imputation against
the nature and mechanism of life.
The arrangements and decorations of the banquet were probably intended
to signify that death in life which had been the testator’s definition
of existence. The hall, illuminated by torches, was hung round with
curtains of deep and dusky purple, and adorned with branches of cypress
and wreaths of artificial flowers, imitative of such as used to be
strewn over the dead. A sprig of parsley was laid by every plate. The
main reservoir of wine, was a sepulchral urn of silver, whence the
liquor was distributed around the table in small vases, accurately
copied from those that held the tears of ancient mourners. Neither had
the stewards—if it were their taste that arranged these
details—forgotten the fantasy of the old Egyptians, who seated a
skeleton at every festive board, and mocked their own merriment with
the imperturbable grin of a death’s-head. Such a fearful guest,
shrouded in a black mantle, sat now at the head of the table. It was
whispered, I know not with what truth, that the testator himself had
once walked the visible world with the machinery of that sane skeleton,
and that it was one of the stipulations of his will, that he should
thus be permitted to sit, from year to year, at the banquet which he
had instituted. If so, it was perhaps covertly implied that he had
cherished no hopes of bliss beyond the grave to compensate for the
evils which he felt or imagined here. And if, in their bewildered
conjectures as to the purpose of earthly existence, the banqueters
should throw aside the veil, and cast an inquiring glance at this
figure of death, as seeking thence the solution otherwise unattainable,
the only reply would be a stare of the vacant eye-caverns and a grin of
the skeleton jaws. Such was the response that the dead man had fancied
himself to receive when he asked of Death to solve the riddle of his
life; and it was his desire to repeat it when the guests of his dismal
hospitality should find themselves perplexed with the same question.
“What means that wreath?” asked several of the company, while viewing
the decorations of the table.
They alluded to a wreath of cypress, which was held on high by a
skeleton arm, protruding from within the black mantle.
“It is a crown,” said one of the stewards, “not for the worthiest, but
for the wofulest, when he shall prove his claim to it.”
The guest earliest bidden to the festival was a man of soft and gentle
character, who had not energy to struggle against the heavy despondency
to which his temperament rendered him liable; and therefore with
nothing outwardly to excuse him from happiness, he had spent a life of
quiet misery that made his blood torpid, and weighed upon his breath,
and sat like a ponderous night-fiend upon every throb of his
unresisting heart. His wretchedness seemed as deep as his original
nature, if not identical with it. It was the misfortune of a second
guest to cherish within his bosom a diseased heart, which had become so
wretchedly sore that the continual and unavoidable rubs of the world,
the blow of an enemy, the careless jostle of a stranger, and even the
faithful and loving touch of a friend, alike made ulcers in it. As is
the habit of people thus afflicted, he found his chief employment in
exhibiting these miserable sores to any who would give themselves the
pain of viewing them. A third guest was a hypochondriac, whose
imagination wrought necromancy in his outward and inward world, and
caused him to see monstrous faces in the household fire, and dragons in
the clouds of sunset, and fiends in the guise of beautiful women, and
something ugly or wicked beneath all the pleasant surfaces of nature.
His neighbor at table was one who, in his early youth, had trusted
mankind too much, and hoped too highly in their behalf, and, in meeting
with many disappointments, had become desperately soured. For several
years back this misanthrope bad employed himself in accumulating
motives for hating and despising his race,—such as murder, lust,
treachery, ingratitude, faithlessness of trusted friends, instinctive
vices of children, impurity of women, hidden guilt in men of saint-like
aspect,—and, in short, all manner of black realities that sought to
decorate themselves with outward grace or glory. But at every atrocious
fact that was added to his catalogue, at every increase of the sad
knowledge which he spent his life to collect, the native impulses of
the poor man’s loving and confiding heart made him groan with anguish.
Next, with his heavy brow bent downward, there stole into the hall a
man naturally earnest and impassioned, who, from his immemorial
infancy, had felt the consciousness of a high message to the world;
but, essaying to deliver it, had found either no voice or form of
speech, or else no ears to listen. Therefore his whole life was a
bitter questioning of himself: “Why have not men acknowledged my
mission? Am I not a self-deluding fool? What business have I on earth?
Where is my grave?” Throughout the festival, he quaffed frequent
draughts from the sepulchral urn of wine, hoping thus to quench the
celestial fire that tortured his own breast and could not benefit his
race.
Then there entered, having flung away a ticket for a ball, a gay
gallant of yesterday, who had found four or five wrinkles in his brow,
and more gray hairs than he could well number on his head. Endowed with
sense and feeling, he had nevertheless spent his youth in folly, but
had reached at last that dreary point in life where Folly quits us of
her own accord, leaving us to make friends with Wisdom if we can. Thus,
cold and desolate, he had come to seek Wisdom at the banquet, and
wondered if the skeleton were she. To eke out the company, the stewards
had invited a distressed poet from his home in the almshouse, and a
melancholy idiot from the street-corner. The latter had just the
glimmering of sense that was sufficient to make him conscious of a
vacancy, which the poor fellow, all his life long, had mistily sought
to fill up with intelligence, wandering up and down the streets, and
groaning miserably because his attempts were ineffectual. The only lady
in the hall was one who had fallen short of absolute and perfect
beauty, merely by the trifling defect of a slight cast in her left eye.
But this blemish, minute as it was, so shocked the pure ideal of her
soul, rather than her vanity, that she passed her life in solitude, and
veiled her countenance even from her own gaze. So the skeleton sat
shrouded at one end of the table, and this poor lady at the other.
One other guest remains to be described. He was a young man of smooth
brow, fair cheek, and fashionable mien. So far as his exterior
developed him, he might much more suitably have found a place at some
merry Christmas table, than have been numbered among the blighted,
fate-stricken, fancy-tortured set of ill-starred banqueters. Murmurs
arose among the guests as they noted, the glance of general scrutiny
which the intruder threw over his companions. What had he to do among
them? Why did not the skeleton of the dead founder of the feast unbend
its rattling joints, arise, and motion the unwelcome stranger from the
board?
“Shameful!” said the morbid man, while a new ulcer broke out in his
heart. “He comes to mock us! we shall be the jest of his tavern friends
I—he will make a farce of our miseries, and bring it out upon the
stage!”
“O, never mind him!” said the hypochondriac, smiling sourly. “He shall
feast from yonder tureen of viper-soup; and if there is a fricassee of
scorpions on the table, pray let him have his share of it. For the
dessert, he shall taste the apples of Sodom, then, if he like our
Christmas fare, let him return again next year!”
“Trouble him not,” murmured the melancholy man, with gentleness. “What
matters it whether the consciousness of misery come a few years sooner
or later? If this youth deem himself happy now, yet let him sit with us
for the sake of the wretchedness to come.”
The poor idiot approached the young man with that mournful aspect of
vacant inquiry which his face continually wore, and which caused people
to say that he was always in search of his missing wits. After no
little examination he touched the stranger’s hand, but immediately drew
back his own, shaking his head and shivering.
“Cold, cold, cold!” muttered the idiot.
The young man shivered too, and smiled.
“Gentlemen, and you, madam,” said one of the stewards of the festival,
“do not conceive so ill either of our caution or judgment, as to
imagine that we have admitted this young stranger—Gervayse Hastings by
name—without a full investigation and thoughtful balance of his claims.
Trust me, not a guest at the table is better entitled to his seat.”
The steward’s guaranty was perforce satisfactory. The company,
therefore, took their places, and addressed themselves to the serious
business of the feast, but were soon disturbed by the hypochondriac,
who thrust back his chair, complaining that a dish of stewed toads and
vipers was set before him, and that there was green ditchwater in his
cup of wine. This mistake being amended, he quietly resumed his seat.
The wine, as it flowed freely from the sepulchral urn, seemed to come
imbued with all gloomy inspirations; so that its influence was not to
cheer, but either to sink the revellers into a deeper melancholy, or
elevate their spirits to an enthusiasm of wretchedness. The
conversation was various. They told sad stories about people who might
have been Worthy guests at such a festival as the present. They talked
of grisly incidents in human history; of strange crimes, which, if
truly considered, were but convulsions of agony; of some lives that had
been altogether wretched, and of others, which, wearing a general
semblance of happiness, had yet been deformed, sooner or later, by
misfortune, as by the intrusion of a grim face at a banquet; of
death-bed scenes, and what dark intimations might be gathered from the
words of dying men; of suicide, and whether the more eligible mode were
by halter, knife, poison, drowning, gradual starvation, or the fumes of
charcoal. The majority of the guests, as is the custom with people
thoroughly and profoundly sick at heart, were anxious to make their own
woes the theme of discussion, and prove themselves most excellent in
anguish. The misanthropist went deep into the philosophy of evil, and
wandered about in the darkness, with now and then a gleam of discolored
light hovering on ghastly shapes and horrid scenery. Many a miserable
thought, such as men have stumbled upon from age to age, did he now
rake up again, and gloat over it as an inestimable gem, a diamond, a
treasure far preferable to those bright, spiritual revelations of a
better world, which are like precious stones from heaven’s pavement.
And then, amid his lore of wretchedness he hid his face and wept.
It was a festival at which the woful man of Uz might suitably have been
a guest, together with all, in each succeeding age, who have tasted
deepest of the bitterness of life. And be it said, too, that every son
or daughter of woman, however favored with happy fortune, might, at one
sad moment or another, have claimed the privilege of a stricken heart,
to sit down at this table. But, throughout the feast, it was remarked
that the young stranger, Gervayse Hastings, was unsuccessful in his
attempts to catch its pervading spirit. At any deep, strong thought
that found utterance, and which was torn out, as it were, from the
saddest recesses of human consciousness, he looked mystified and
bewildered; even more than the poor idiot, who seemed to grasp at such
things with his earnest heart, and thus occasionally to comprehend
them. The young man’s conversation was of a colder and lighter kind,
often brilliant, but lacking the powerful characteristics of a nature
that had been developed by suffering.
“Sir,” said the misanthropist, bluntly, in reply to some observation by
Gervayse Hastings, “pray do not address me again. We have no right to
talk together. Our minds have nothing in common. By what claim you
appear at this banquet I cannot guess; but methinks, to a man who could
say what you have just now said, my companions and myself must seem no
more than shadows flickering on the wall. And precisely such a shadow
are you to us.”
The young man smiled and bowed, but, drawing himself back in his chair,
he buttoned his coat over his breast, as if the banqueting-ball were
growing chill. Again the idiot fixed his melancholy stare upon the
youth, and murmured, “Cold! cold! cold!”
The banquet drew to its conclusion, and the guests departed. Scarcely
had they stepped across the threshold of the hall, when the scene that
had there passed seemed like the vision of a sick fancy, or an
exhalation from a stagnant heart. Now and then, however, during the
year that ensued, these melancholy people caught glimpses of one
another, transient, indeed, but enough to prove that they walked the
earth with the ordinary allotment of reality. Sometimes a pair of them
came face to face, while stealing through the evening twilight,
enveloped in their sable cloaks. Sometimes they casually met in
churchyards. Once, also, it happened that two of the dismal banqueters
mutually started at recognizing each other in the noonday sunshine of a
crowded street, stalking there like ghosts astray. Doubtless they
wondered why the skeleton did not come abroad at noonday too.
But whenever the necessity of their affairs compelled these Christmas
guests into the bustling world, they were sure to encounter the young
man who had so unaccountably been admitted to the festival. They saw
him among the gay and fortunate; they caught the sunny sparkle of his
eye; they heard the light and careless tones of his voice, and muttered
to themselves with such indignation as only the aristocracy of
wretchedness could kindle, “The traitor! The vile impostor! Providence,
in its own good time, may give him a right to feast among us!” But the
young man’s unabashed eye dwelt upon their gloomy figures as they
passed him, seeming to say, perchance with somewhat of a sneer, “First,
know my secret then, measure your claims with mine!”
The step of Time stole onward, and soon brought merry Christmas round
again, with glad and solemn worship in the churches, and sports, games,
festivals, and everywhere the bright face of Joy beside the household
fire. Again likewise the hall, with its curtains of dusky purple, was
illuminated by the death-torches gleaming on the sepulchral decorations
of the banquet. The veiled, skeleton sat in state, lifting the
cypress-wreath above its head, as the guerdon of some guest illustrious
in the qualifications which there claimed precedence. As the stewards
deemed the world inexhaustible in misery, and were desirous of
recognizing it in all its forms, they had not seen fit to reassemble
the company of the former year. New faces now threw their gloom across
the table.
There was a man of nice conscience, who bore a blood-stain in his
heart—the death of a fellow-creature—which, for his more exquisite
torture, had chanced with such a peculiarity of circumstances, that he
could not absolutely determine whether his will had entered into the
deed or not. Therefore, his whole life was spent in the agony of an
inward trial for murder, with a continual sifting of the details of his
terrible calamity, until his mind had no longer any thought, nor his
soul any emotion, disconnected with it, There was a mother, too,—a
mother once, but a desolation now,—who, many years before, had gone out
on a pleasure-party, and, returning, found her infant smothered in its
little bed. And ever since she has been tortured with the fantasy that
her buried baby lay smothering in its coffin. Then there was an aged
lady, who had lived from time immemorial with a constant tremor
quivering through her-frame. It was terrible to discern her dark shadow
tremulous upon the wall; her lips, likewise, were tremulous; and the
expression of her eye seemed to indicate that her soul was trembling
too. Owing to the bewilderment and confusion which made almost a chaos
of her intellect, it was impossible to discover what dire misfortune
had thus shaken her nature to its depths; so that the stewards had
admitted her to the table, not from any acquaintance with her history,
but on the safe testimony of her miserable aspect. Some surprise was
expressed at the presence of a bluff, red-faced gentleman, a certain
Mr. Smith, who had evidently the fat of many a rich feast within him,
and the habitual twinkle of whose eye betrayed a disposition to break
forth into uproarious laughter for little cause or none. It turned out,
however, that, with the best possible flow of spirits, our poor friend
was afflicted with a physical disease of the heart, which threatened
instant death on the slightest cachinnatory indulgence, or even that
titillation of the bodily frame produced by merry thoughts. In this
dilemma he had sought admittance to the banquet, on the ostensible plea
of his irksome and miserable state, but, in reality, with the hope of
imbibing a life-preserving melancholy.
A married couple had been invited from a motive of bitter humor, it
being well understood that they rendered each other unutterably
miserable whenever they chanced to meet, and therefore must necessarily
be fit associates at the festival. In contrast with these was another
couple still unmarried, who had interchanged their hearts in early
life, but had been divided by circumstances as impalpable as morning
mist, and kept apart so long that their spirits now found it impossible
to meet, Therefore, yearning for communion, yet shrinking from one
another and choosing none beside, they felt themselves companionless in
life, and looked upon eternity as a boundless desert. Next to the
skeleton sat a mere son of earth,—a hunter of the Exchange,—a gatherer
of shining dust,—a man whose life’s record was in his ledger, and whose
soul’s prison-house the vaults of the bank where he kept his deposits.
This person had been greatly perplexed at his invitation, deeming
himself one of the most fortunate men in the city; but the stewards
persisted in demanding his presence, assuring him that he had no
conception how miserable he was.
And now appeared a figure which we must acknowledge as our acquaintance
of the former festival. It was Gervayse Hastings, whose presence had
then caused so much question and criticism, and who now took his place
with the composure of one whose claims were satisfactory to himself and
must needs be allowed by others. Yet his easy and unruffled face
betrayed no sorrow.
The well-skilled beholders gazed a moment into his eyes and shook their
heads, to miss the unuttered sympathy—the countersign never to be
falsified—of those whose hearts are cavern-mouths through which they
descend into a region of illimitable woe and recognize other wanderers
there.
“Who is this youth?” asked the man with a bloodstain on his conscience.
“Surely he has never gone down into the depths! I know all the aspects
of those who have passed through the dark valley. By what right is he
among us?”
“Ah, it is a sinful thing to come hither without a sorrow,” murmured
the aged lady, in accents that partook of the eternal tremor which
pervaded her whole being “Depart, young man! Your soul has never been
shaken, and, therefore, I tremble so much the more to look at you.”
“His soul shaken! No; I’ll answer for it,” said bluff Mr. Smith,
pressing his hand upon his heart and making himself as melancholy as he
could, for fear of a fatal explosion of laughter. “I know the lad well;
he has as fair prospects as any young man about town, and has no more
right among us miserable creatures than the child unborn. He never was
miserable and probably never will be!”
“Our honored guests,” interposed the stewards, “pray have patience with
us, and believe, at least, that our deep veneration for the sacredness
of this solemnity would preclude any wilful violation of it. Receive
this young man to your table. It may not be too much to say, that no
guest here would exchange his own heart for the one that beats within
that youthful bosom!”
“I’d call it a bargain, and gladly, too,” muttered Mr. Smith, with a
perplexing mixture of sadness and mirthful conceit. “A plague upon
their nonsense! My own heart is the only really miserable one in the
company; it will certainly be the death of me at last!”
Nevertheless, as on the former occasion, the judgment of the stewards
being without appeal, the company sat down. The obnoxious guest made no
more attempt to obtrude his conversation on those about him, but
appeared to listen to the table-talk with peculiar assiduity, as if
some inestimable secret, otherwise beyond his reach, might be conveyed
in a casual word. And in truth, to those who could understand and value
it, there was rich matter in the upgushings and outpourings of these
initiated souls to whom sorrow had been a talisman, admitting them into
spiritual depths which no other spell can open. Sometimes out of the
midst of densest gloom there flashed a momentary radiance, pure as
crystal, bright as the flame of stars, and shedding such a glow upon
the mysteries of life, that the guests were ready to exclaim, “Surely
the riddle is on the point of being solved!” At such illuminated
intervals the saddest mourners felt it to be revealed that mortal
griefs are but shadowy and external; no more than the sable robes
voluminously shrouding a certain divine reality, and thus indicating
what might otherwise be altogether invisible to mortal eye.
“Just now,” remarked the trembling old woman, “I seemed to see beyond
the outside. And then my everlasting tremor passed away!”
“Would that I could dwell always in these momentary gleams of light!”
said the man of stricken conscience. “Then the blood-stain in my heart
would be washed clean away.”
This strain of conversation appeared so unintelligibly absurd to good
Mr. Smith, that he burst into precisely the fit of laughter which his
physicians had warned him against, as likely to prove instantaneously
fatal. In effect, he fell back in his chair a corpse, with a broad grin
upon his face, while his ghost, perchance, remained beside it
bewildered at its unpremeditated exit. This catastrophe of course broke
up the festival.
“How is this? You do not tremble!” observed the tremulous old woman to
Gervayse Hastings, who was gazing at the dead man with singular
intentness. “Is it not awful to see him so suddenly vanish out of the
midst of life,—this man of flesh and blood, whose earthly nature was so
warm and strong? There is a never-ending tremor in my soul, but it
trembles afresh at, this! And you are calm!”
“Would that he could teach me somewhat!” said Gervayse Hastings,
drawing a long breath. “Men pass before me like shadows on the wall;
their actions, passions, feelings, are flickerings of the light, and
then they vanish! Neither the corpse, nor yonder skeleton, nor this old
woman’s everlasting tremor, can give me what I seek.”
And then the company departed.
We cannot linger to narrate, in such detail, more circumstances of
these singular festivals, which, in accordance with the founder’s will,
continued to be kept with the regularity of an established institution.
In process of time the stewards adopted the custom of inviting, from
far and near, those individuals whose misfortunes were prominent above
other men’s, and whose mental and moral development might, therefore,
be supposed to possess a corresponding interest. The exiled noble of
the French Revolution, and the broken soldier of the Empire, were alike
represented at the table. Fallen monarchs, wandering about the earth,
have found places at that forlorn and miserable feast. The statesman,
when his party flung him off, might, if he chose it, be once more a
great man for the space of a single banquet. Aaron Burr’s name appears
on the record at a period when his ruin—the profoundest and most
striking, with more of moral circumstance in it than that of almost any
other man—was complete in his lonely age. Stephen Guard, when his
wealth weighed upon him like a mountain, once sought admittance of his
own accord. It is not probable, however, that these men had any lesson
to teach in the lore of discontent and misery which might not equally
well have been studied in the common walks of life. Illustrious
unfortunates attract a wider sympathy, not because their griefs are
more intense, but because, being set on lofty pedestals, they the
better serve mankind as instances and bywords of calamity.
It concerns our present purpose to say that, at each successive
festival, Gervayse Hastings showed his face, gradually changing from
the smooth beauty of his youth to the thoughtful comeliness of manhood,
and thence to the bald, impressive dignity of age. He was the only
individual invariably present. Yet on every occasion there were
murmurs, both from those who knew his character and position, and from
them whose hearts shrank back as denying his companionship in their
mystic fraternity.
“Who is this impassive man?” had been asked a hundred times. “Has he
suffered? Has he sinned? There are no traces of either. Then wherefore
is he here?”
“You must inquire of the stewards or of himself,” was the constant
reply. “We seem to know him well here in our city, and know nothing of
him but what is creditable and fortunate. Yet hither he comes, year
after year, to this gloomy banquet, and sits among the guests like a
marble statue. Ask yonder skeleton, perhaps that may solve the riddle!”
It was in truth a wonder. The life of Gervayse Hastings was not merely
a prosperous, but a brilliant one. Everything had gone well with him.
He was wealthy, far beyond the expenditure that was required by habits
of magnificence, a taste of rare purity and cultivation, a love of
travel, a scholar’s instinct to collect a splendid library, and,
moreover, what seemed a magnificent liberality to the distressed. He
had sought happiness, and not vainly, if a lovely and tender wife, and
children of fair promise, could insure it. He had, besides, ascended
above the limit which separates the obscure from the distinguished, and
had won a stainless reputation in affairs of the widest public
importance. Not that he was a popular character, or had within him the
mysterious attributes which are essential to that species of success.
To the public he was a cold abstraction, wholly destitute of those rich
lines of personality, that living warmth, and the peculiar faculty of
stamping his own heart’s impression on a multitude of hearts, by which
the people recognize their favorites. And it must be owned that, after
his most intimate associates had done their best to know him
thoroughly, and love him warmly, they were startled to find how little
hold he had upon their affections. They approved, they admired, but
still in those moments when the human spirit most craves reality, they
shrank back from Gervayse Hastings, as powerless to give them what they
sought. It was the feeling of distrustful regret with which we should
draw back the hand after extending it, in an illusive twilight, to
grasp the hand of a shadow upon the wall.
As the superficial fervency of youth decayed, this peculiar effect of
Gervayse Hastings’s character grew more perceptible. His children, when
he extended his arms, came coldly to his knees, but never climbed them
of their own accord. His wife wept secretly, and almost adjudged
herself a criminal because she shivered in the chill of his bosom. He,
too, occasionally appeared not unconscious of the chillness of his
moral atmosphere, and willing, if it might be so, to warm himself at a
kindly fire. But age stole onward and benumbed him snore and more. As
the hoar-frost began to gather on him his wife went to her grave, and
was doubtless warmer there; his children either died or were scattered
to different homes of their own; and old Gervayse Hastings, unscathed
by grief,—alone, but needing no companionship,—continued his steady
walk through life, and still one very Christmas day attended at the
dismal banquet. His privilege as a guest had become prescriptive now.
Had he claimed the head of the table, even the skeleton would have been
ejected from its seat.
Finally, at the merry Christmas-tide, when he had numbered fourscore
years complete, this pale, highbrowed, marble-featured old man once
more entered the long-frequented hall, with the same impassive aspect
that had called forth so much dissatisfied remark at his first
attendance. Time, except in matters merely external, had done nothing
for him, either of good or evil. As he took his place he threw a calm,
inquiring glance around the table, as if to ascertain whether any guest
had yet appeared, after so many unsuccessful banquets, who might impart
to him the mystery—the deep, warm secret—the life within the
life—which, whether manifested in joy or sorrow, is what gives
substance to a world of shadows.
“My friends,” said Gervayse Hastings, assuming a position which his
long conversance with the festival caused to appear natural, “you are
welcome! I drink to you all in this cup of sepulchral wine.”
The guests replied courteously, but still in a manner that proved them
unable to receive the old man as a member of their sad fraternity. It
may be well to give the reader an idea of the present company at the
banquet.
One was formerly a clergyman, enthusiastic in his profession, and
apparently of the genuine dynasty of those old Puritan divines whose
faith in their calling, and stern exercise of it, had placed them among
the mighty of the earth. But yielding to the speculative tendency of
the age, he had gone astray from the firm foundation of an ancient
faith, and wandered into a cloud-region, where everything was misty and
deceptive, ever mocking him with a semblance of reality, but still
dissolving when he flung himself upon it for support and rest. His
instinct and early training demanded something steadfast; but, looking
forward, he beheld vapors piled on vapors, and behind him an impassable
gulf between the man of yesterday and to-day, on the borders of which
he paced to and fro, sometimes wringing his hands in agony, and often
making his own woe a theme of scornful merriment. This surely was a
miserable man. Next, there was a theorist,—one of a numerous tribe,
although he deemed himself unique since the creation,—a theorist, who
had conceived a plan by which all the wretchedness of earth, moral and
physical, might be done away, and the bliss of the millennium at once
accomplished. But, the incredulity of mankind debarring him from
action, he was smitten with as much grief as if the whole mass of woe
which he was denied the opportunity to remedy were crowded into his own
bosom. A plain old man in black attracted much of the company’s notice,
on the supposition that he was no other than Father Miller, who, it
seemed, had given himself up to despair at the tedious delay of the
final conflagration. Then there was a man distinguished for native
pride and obstinacy, who, a little while before, had possessed immense
wealth, and held the control of a vast moneyed interest which he had
wielded in the same spirit as a despotic monarch would wield the power
of his empire, carrying on a tremendous moral warfare, the roar and
tremor of which was felt at every fireside in the land. At length came
a crushing ruin,—a total overthrow of fortune, power, and
character,—the effect of which on his imperious and, in many respects,
noble and lofty nature might have entitled him to a place, not merely
at our festival, but among the peers of Pandemonium.
There was a modern philanthropist, who had become so deeply sensible of
the calamities of thousands and millions of his fellow-creatures, and
of the impracticableness of any general measures for their relief, that
he had no heart to do what little good lay immediately within his
power, but contented himself with being miserable for sympathy. Near
him sat a gentleman in a predicament hitherto unprecedented, but of
which the present epoch probably affords numerous examples. Ever since
he was of capacity to read a newspaper, this person had prided himself
on his consistent adherence to one political party, but, in the
confusion of these latter days, had got bewildered and knew not
whereabouts his party was. This wretched condition, so morally desolate
and disheartening to a man who has long accustomed himself to merge his
individuality in the mass of a great body, can only be conceived by
such as have experienced it. His next companion was a popular orator
who had lost his voice, and—as it was pretty much all that he had to
lose—had fallen into a state of hopeless melancholy. The table was
likewise graced by two of the gentler sex,—one, a half-starved,
consumptive seamstress, the representative of thousands just as
wretched; the other, a woman of unemployed energy, who found herself in
the world with nothing to achieve, nothing to enjoy, and nothing even
to suffer. She had, therefore, driven herself to the verge of madness
by dark broodings over the wrongs of her sex, and its exclusion from a
proper field of action. The roll of guests being thus complete, a
side-table had been set for three or four disappointed office-seekers,
with hearts as sick as death, whom the stewards had admitted partly
because their calamities really entitled them to entrance here, and
partly that they were in especial need of a good dinner. There was
likewise a homeless dog, with his tail between his legs, licking up the
crumbs and gnawing the fragments of the feast,—such a melancholy cur as
one sometimes sees about the streets without a master, and willing to
follow the first that will accept his service.
In their own way, these were as wretched a set of people as ever had
assembled at the festival. There they sat, with the veiled skeleton of
the founder holding aloft the cypress-wreath, at one end of the table,
and at the other, wrapped in furs, the withered figure of Gervayse
Hastings, stately, calm, and cold, impressing the company with awe, yet
so little interesting their sympathy that he might have vanished into
thin air without their once exclaiming, “Whither is he gone?”
“Sir,” said the philanthropist, addressing the old man, “you have been
so long a guest at this annual festival, and have thus been conversant
with so many varieties of human affliction, that, not improbably, you
have thence derived some great and important lessons. How blessed were
your lot could you reveal a secret by which all this mass of woe might
be removed!”
“I know of but one misfortune,” answered Gervayse Hastings, quietly,
“and that is my own.”
“Your own!” rejoined the philanthropist. “And looking back on your
serene and prosperous life, how can you claim to be the sole
unfortunate of the human race?”
“You will not understand it,” replied Gervayse Hastings, feebly, and
with a singular inefficiency of pronunciation, and sometimes putting
one word for another. “None have understood it, not even those who
experience the like. It is a chillness, a want of earnestness, a
feeling as if what should be my heart were a thing of vapor, a haunting
perception of unreality! Thus seeming to possess all that other men
have, all that men aim at, I have really possessed nothing, neither joy
nor griefs. All things, all persons,—as was truly said to me at this
table long and long ago,—have been like shadows flickering on the wall.
It was so with my wife and children, with those who seemed my friends:
it is so with yourselves, whom I see now before one. Neither have I
myself any real existence, but am a shadow like the rest.”
“And how is it with your views of a future life?” inquired the
speculative clergyman.
“Worse than with you,” said the old man, in a hollow and feeble tone;
“for I cannot conceive it earnestly enough to feel either hope or fear.
Mine,—mine is the wretchedness! This cold heart,—this unreal life! Ah!
it grows colder still.”
It so chanced that at this juncture the decayed ligaments of the
skeleton gave way, and the dry hones fell together in a heap, thus
causing the dusty wreath of cypress to drop upon the table. The
attention of the company being thus diverted for a single instant from
Gervayse Hastings, they perceived, on turning again towards him, that
the old man had undergone a change. His shadow had ceased to flicker on
the wall.
“Well, Rosina, what is your criticism?” asked Roderick, as he rolled up
the manuscript.
“Frankly, your success is by no means complete,” replied she. “It is
true, I have an idea of the character you endeavor to describe; but it
is rather by dint of my own thought than your expression.”
“That is unavoidable,” observed the sculptor, “because the
characteristics are all negative. If Gervayse Hastings could have
imbibed one human grief at the gloomy banquet, the task of describing
him would have been infinitely easier. Of such persons—and we do meet
with these moral monsters now and then—it is difficult to conceive how
they came to exist here, or what there is in them capable of existence
hereafter. They seem to be on the outside of everything; and nothing
wearies the soul more than an attempt to comprehend them within its
grasp.”