the hillock of earth that was raised against the stone circumference of
the lime-kiln, he thus reached the top of the structure. It was a space
of perhaps ten feet across, from edge to edge, presenting a view of the
upper surface of the immense mass of broken marble with which the kiln
was heaped. All these innumerable blocks and fragments of marble were
red-hot and vividly on fire, sending up great spouts of blue flame,
which quivered aloft and danced madly, as within a magic circle, and
sank and rose again, with continual and multitudinous activity. As the
lonely man bent forward over this terrible body of fire, the blasting
heat smote up against his person with a breath that, it might be
supposed, would have scorched and shrivelled him up in a moment.
Ethan Brand stood erect, and raised his arms on high. The blue flames
played upon his face, and imparted the wild and ghastly light which
alone could have suited its expression; it was that of a fiend on the
verge of plunging into his gulf of intensest torment.
"O Mother Earth," cried he, "who art no more my Mother, and into whose
bosom this frame shall never be resolved! O mankind, whose brotherhood I
have cast off, and trampled thy great heart beneath my feet! O stars of
heaven, that shone on me of old, as if to light me onward and
upward!--farewell all, and forever. Come, deadly element of
Fire,--henceforth my familiar frame! Embrace me, as I do thee!"
That night the sound of a fearful peal of laughter rolled heavily
through the sleep of the lime-burner and his little son; dim shapes of
horror and anguish haunted their dreams, and seemed still present in the
rude hovel, when they opened their eyes to the daylight.
"Up, boy, up!" cried the lime-burner, staring about him. "Thank Heaven,
the night is gone, at last; and rather than pass such another, I would
watch my lime-kiln, wide awake, for a twelvemonth. This Ethan Brand,
with his humbug of an Unpardonable Sin, has done me no such mighty
favor, in taking my place!"
He issued from the hut, followed by little Joe, who kept fast hold of
his father's hand. The early sunshine was already pouring its gold upon
the mountain-tops; and though the valleys were still in shadow, they
smiled cheerfully in the promise of the bright day that was hastening
onward. The village, completely shut in by hills, which swelled away
gently about it, looked as if it had rested peacefully in the hollow of
the great hand of Providence. Every dwelling was distinctly visible; the
little spires of the two churches pointed upwards, and caught a
fore-glimmering of brightness from the sun-gilt skies upon their gilded
weathercocks. The tavern was astir, and the figure of the old,
smoke-dried stage-agent, cigar in mouth, was seen beneath the stoop.
Old Graylock was glorified with a golden cloud upon his head. Scattered
likewise over the breasts of the surrounding mountains, there were heaps
of hoary mist, in fantastic shapes, some of them far down into the
valley, others high up towards the summits, and still others, of the
same family of mist or cloud, hovering in the gold radiance of the upper
atmosphere. Stepping from one to another of the clouds that rested on
the hills, and thence to the loftier brotherhood that sailed in air, it
seemed almost as if a mortal man might thus ascend into the heavenly
regions. Earth was so mingled with sky that it was a day-dream to look
at it.
To supply that charm of the familiar and homely, which Nature so readily
adopts into a scene like this, the stage-coach was rattling down the
mountain-road, and the driver sounded his horn, while echo caught up the
notes, and intertwined them into a rich and varied and elaborate
harmony, of which the original performer could lay claim to little
share. The great hills played a concert among themselves, each
contributing a strain of airy sweetness.
Little Joe's face brightened at once.
"Dear father," cried he, skipping cheerily to and fro, "that strange man
is gone, and the sky and the mountains all seem glad of it!"
"Yes," growled the lime-burner, with an oath, "but he has let the fire
go down, and no thanks to him if five hundred bushels of lime are not
spoiled. If I catch the fellow hereabouts again, I shall feel like
tossing him into the furnace!"
With his long pole in his hand, he ascended to the top of the kiln.
After a moment's pause, he called to his son.
"Come up here, Joe!" said he.
So little Joe ran up the hillock, and stood by his father's side. The
marble was all burnt into perfect, snow-white lime. But on its surface,
in the midst of the circle,--snow-white too, and thoroughly converted
into lime,--lay a human skeleton, in the attitude of a person who, after
long toil, lies down to long repose. Within the ribs--strange to
say--was the shape of a human heart.
"Was the fellow's heart made of marble?" cried Bartram, in some
perplexity at this phenomenon. "At any rate, it is burnt into what looks
like special good lime; and, taking all the bones together, my kiln is
half a bushel the richer for him."
So saying, the rude lime-burner lifted his pole, and, letting it fall
upon the skeleton, the relics of Ethan Brand were crumbled into
fragments.
Wakefield
In some old magazine or newspaper, I recollect a story, told as truth,
of a man--let us call him Wakefield--who absented himself for a long
time from his wife. The fact thus abstractedly stated is not very
uncommon, nor--without a proper distinction of circumstances--to be
condemned either as naughty or nonsensical. Howbeit, this, though far
from the most aggravated, is perhaps the strangest instance on record of
marital delinquency; and, moreover, as remarkable a freak as may be
found in the whole list of human oddities. The wedded couple lived in
London. The man, under pretence of going a journey, took lodgings in the
next street to his own house, and there, unheard of by his wife or
friends, and without the shadow of a reason for such self-banishment,
dwelt upwards of twenty years. During that period, he beheld his home
every day, and frequently the forlorn Mrs. Wakefield. And after so great
a gap in his matrimonial felicity--when his death was reckoned certain,
his estate settled, his name dismissed from memory, and his wife, long,
long ago resigned to her autumnal widowhood--he entered the door one
evening, quietly, as from a day's absence, and became a loving spouse
till death.
This outline is all that I remember. But the incident, though of the
purest originality, unexampled, and probably never to be repeated, is
one, I think, which appeals to the generous sympathies of mankind. We
know, each for himself, that none of us would perpetrate such a folly,
yet feel as if some other might. To my own contemplations, at least, it
has often recurred, always exciting wonder, but with a sense that the
story must be true, and a conception of its hero's character. Whenever
any subject so forcibly affects the mind, time is well spent in thinking
of it. If the reader choose, let him do his own meditation; or if he
prefer to ramble with me through the twenty years of Wakefield's vagary,
I bid him welcome; trusting that there will be a pervading spirit and a
moral, even should we fail to find them, done up neatly, and condensed
into the final sentence. Thought has always its efficacy, and every
striking incident its moral.
What sort of a man was Wakefield? We are free to shape out our own idea,
and call it by his name. He was now in the meridian of life; his
matrimonial affections, never violent, were sobered into a calm,
habitual sentiment; of all husbands, he was likely to be the most
constant, because a certain sluggishness would keep his heart at rest,
wherever it might be placed. He was intellectual, but not actively so;
his mind occupied itself in long and lazy musings, that tended to no
purpose, or had not vigor to attain it; his thoughts were seldom so
energetic as to seize hold of words. Imagination, in the proper meaning
of the term, made no part of Wakefield's gifts. With a cold but not
depraved nor wandering heart, and a mind never feverish with riotous
thoughts, nor perplexed with originality, who could have anticipated
that our friend would entitle himself to a foremost place among the
doers of eccentric deeds? Had his acquaintances been asked, who was the
man in London, the surest to perform nothing to-day which should be
remembered on the morrow, they would have thought of Wakefield. Only the
wife of his bosom might have hesitated. She, without having analyzed his
character, was partly aware of a quiet selfishness, that had rusted into
his inactive mind,--of a peculiar sort of vanity, the most uneasy
attribute about him,--of a disposition to craft, which had seldom
produced more positive effects than the keeping of petty secrets, hardly
worth revealing,--and, lastly, of what she called a little strangeness,
sometimes, in the good man. This latter quality is indefinable, and
perhaps non-existent.
Let us now imagine Wakefield bidding adieu to his wife. It is the dusk
of an October evening. His equipment is a drab great-coat, a hat covered
with an oil-cloth, top-boots, an umbrella in one hand and a small
portmanteau in the other. He has informed Mrs. Wakefield that he is to
take the night coach into the country. She would fain inquire the length
of his journey, its object, and the probable time of his return; but,
indulgent to his harmless love of mystery, interrogates him only by a
look. He tells her not to expect him positively by the return coach, nor
to be alarmed should he tarry three or four days; but, at all events, to
look for him at supper on Friday evening. Wakefield himself, be it
considered, has no suspicion of what is before him. He holds out his
hand; she gives her own, and meets his parting kiss, in the
matter-of-course way of a ten years' matrimony; and forth goes the
middle-aged Mr. Wakefield, almost resolved to perplex his good lady by a
whole week's absence. After the door has closed behind him, she
perceives it thrust partly open, and a vision of her husband's face,
through the aperture, smiling on her, and gone in a moment. For the
time, this little incident is dismissed without a thought. But, long
afterwards, when she has been more years a widow than a wife, that smile
recurs, and flickers across all her reminiscences of Wakefield's
visage. In her many musings, she surrounds the original smile with a
multitude of fantasies, which make it strange and awful; as, for
instance, if she imagines him in a coffin, that parting look is frozen
on his pale features; or, if she dreams of him in heaven, still his
blessed spirit wears a quiet and crafty smile. Yet, for its sake, when
all others have given him up for dead, she sometimes doubts whether she
is a widow.
But our business is with the husband. We must hurry after him, along the
street, ere he lose his individuality, and melt into the great mass of
London life. It would be vain searching for him there. Let us follow
close at his heels, therefore, until, after several superfluous turns
and doublings, we find him comfortably established by the fireside of a
small apartment, previously bespoken. He is in the next street to his
own, and at his journey's end. He can scarcely trust his good fortune in
having got thither unperceived,--recollecting that, at one time, he was
delayed by the throng, in the very focus of a lighted lantern; and,
again, there were footsteps, that seemed to tread behind his own,
distinct from the multitudinous tramp around him; and, anon, he heard a
voice shouting afar, and fancied that it called his name. Doubtless, a
dozen busybodies had been watching him, and told his wife the whole
affair. Poor Wakefield! Little knowest thou thine own insignificance in
this great world! No mortal eye but mine has traced thee. Go quietly to
thy bed, foolish man; and, on the morrow, if thou wilt be wise, get thee
home to good Mrs. Wakefield, and tell her the truth. Remove not thyself,
even for a little week, from thy place in her chaste bosom. Were she,
for a single moment to deem thee dead, or lost, or lastingly divided
from her, thou wouldst be wofully conscious of a change in thy true
wife, forever after. It is perilous to make a chasm in human affections;
not that they gape so long and wide, but so quickly close again!
Almost repenting of his frolic, or whatever it may be termed, Wakefield
lies down betimes, and starting from his first nap, spreads forth his
arms into the wide and solitary waste of the unaccustomed bed.
"No,"--thinks he, gathering the bedclothes about him,--"I will not sleep
alone another night."
In the morning, he rises earlier than usual, and sets himself to
consider what he really means to do. Such are his loose and rambling
modes of thought, that he has taken this very singular step, with the
consciousness of a purpose, indeed, but without being able to define it
sufficiently for his own contemplation. The vagueness of the project,
and the convulsive effort with which he plunges into the execution of
it, are equally characteristic of a feeble-minded man. Wakefield sifts
his ideas, however, as minutely as he may, and finds himself curious to
know the progress of matters at home,--how his exemplary wife will
endure her widowhood of a week; and, briefly, how the little sphere of
creatures and circumstances, in which he was a central object, will be
affected by his removal. A morbid vanity, therefore, lies nearest the
bottom of the affair. But, how is he to attain his ends? Not, certainly,
by keeping close in this comfortable lodging, where, though he slept and
awoke in the next street to his home, he is as effectually abroad, as if
the stage-coach had been whirling him away all night. Yet, should he
reappear, the whole project is knocked in the head. His poor brains
being hopelessly puzzled with this dilemma, he at length ventures out,
partly resolving to cross the head of the street, and send one hasty
glance towards his forsaken domicile. Habit--for he is a man of
habits--takes him by the hand, and guides him, wholly unaware, to his
own door, where, just at the critical moment, he is aroused by the
scraping of his foot upon the step. Wakefield! whither are you going?
At that instant, his fate was turning on the pivot. Little dreaming of
the doom to which his first backward step devotes him, he hurries away,
breathless with agitation hitherto unfelt, and hardly dares turn his
head, at the distant corner. Can it be that nobody caught sight of him?
Will not the whole household--the decent Mrs. Wakefield, the smart
maid-servant, and the dirty little footboy--raise a hue and cry, through
London streets, in pursuit of their fugitive lord and master? Wonderful
escape! He gathers courage to pause and look homeward, but is perplexed
with a sense of change about the familiar edifice, such as affects us
all, when after a separation of months or years, we again see some hill
or lake, or work of art, with which we were friends of old. In ordinary
cases, this indescribable impression is caused by the comparison and
contrast between our imperfect reminiscences and the reality. In
Wakefield, the magic of a single night has wrought a similar
transformation, because, in that brief period, a great moral change has
been effected. But this is a secret from himself. Before leaving the
spot, he catches a far and momentary glimpse of his wife, passing
athwart the front window, with her face turned towards the head of the
street. The crafty nincompoop takes to his heels, scared with the idea,
that, among a thousand such atoms of mortality, her eye must have
detected him. Right glad is his heart, though his brain be somewhat
dizzy, when he finds himself by the coal-fire of his lodgings.
So much for the commencement of this long whim-wham. After the initial
conception, and the stirring up of the man's sluggish temperament to
put it in practice, the whole matter evolves itself in a natural train.
We may suppose him, as the result of deep deliberation, buying a new
wig, of reddish hair, and selecting sundry garments, in a fashion unlike
his customary suit of brown, from a Jew's old-clothes bag. It is
accomplished. Wakefield is another man. The new system being now
established, a retrograde movement to the old would be almost as
difficult as the step that placed him in his unparalleled position.
Furthermore, he is rendered obstinate by a sulkiness, occasionally
incident to his temper, and brought on, at present, by the inadequate
sensation which he conceives to have been produced in the bosom of Mrs.
Wakefield. He will not go back until she be frightened half to death.
Well; twice or thrice has she passed before his sight, each time with a
heavier step, a paler cheek, and more anxious brow; and in the third
week of his non-appearance, he detects a portent of evil entering the
house, in the guise of an apothecary. Next day, the knocker is muffled.
Towards nightfall comes the chariot of a physician, and deposits its
big-wigged and solemn burden at Wakefield's door, whence, after a
quarter of an hour's visit, he emerges, perchance the herald of a
funeral. Dear woman! Will she die? By this time, Wakefield is excited to
something like energy of feeling, but still lingers away from his
wife's bedside, pleading with his conscience, that she must not be
disturbed at such a juncture. If aught else restrains him, he does not
know it. In the course of a few weeks, she gradually recovers; the
crisis is over; her heart is sad, perhaps, but quiet; and, let him
return soon or late, it will never be feverish for him again. Such ideas
glimmer through the mist of Wakefield's mind, and render him
indistinctly conscious that an almost impassable gulf divides his hired
apartment from his former home. "It is but in the next street!" he
sometimes says. Fool! it is in another world. Hitherto, he has put off
his return from one particular day to another; henceforward, he leaves
the precise time undetermined. Not to-morrow,--probably next
week,--pretty soon. Poor man! The dead have nearly as much chance of
revisiting their earthly homes, as the self-banished Wakefield.
Would that I had a folio to write, instead of an article of a dozen
pages! Then might I exemplify how an influence, beyond our control, lays
its strong hand on every deed which we do, and weaves its consequences
into an iron tissue of necessity. Wakefield is spellbound. We must leave
him, for ten years or so, to haunt around his house, without once
crossing the threshold, and to be faithful to his wife, with all the
affection of which his heart is capable, while he is slowly fading out
of hers. Long since, it must be remarked, he has lost the perception of
singularity in his conduct.
Now for a scene! Amid the throng of a London street, we distinguish a
man, now waxing elderly, with few characteristics to attract careless
observers, yet bearing, in his whole aspect, the handwriting of no
common fate, for such as have the skill to read it. He is meagre; his
low and narrow forehead is deeply wrinkled; his eyes, small and
lustreless, sometimes wander apprehensively about him, but oftener seem
to look inward. He bends his head, and moves with an indescribable
obliquity of gait, as if unwilling to display his full front to the
world. Watch him, long enough to see what we have described, and you
will allow, that circumstances--which often produce remarkable men from
nature's ordinary handiwork--have produced one such here. Next, leaving
him to sidle along the footwalk, cast your eyes in the opposite
direction, where a portly female, considerably in the wane of life, with
a prayer-book in her hand, is proceeding to yonder church. She has the
placid mien of settled widowhood. Her regrets have either died away, or
have become so essential to her heart, that they would be poorly
exchanged for joy. Just as the lean man and well-conditioned woman are
passing, a slight obstruction occurs, and brings these two figures
directly in contact. Their hands touch; the pressure of the crowd forces
her bosom against his shoulder; they stand, face to face, staring into
each other's eyes. After a ten years' separation, thus Wakefield meets
his wife!
The throng eddies away, and carries them asunder. The sober widow,
resuming her former pace, proceeds to church, but pauses in the portal,
and throws a perplexed glance along the street. She passes in, however,
opening her prayer-book as she goes. And the man! with so wild a face,
that busy and selfish London stands to gaze after him, he hurries to his
lodgings, bolts the door, and throws himself upon the bed. The latent
feelings of years break out; his feeble mind acquires a brief energy
from their strength; all the miserable strangeness of his life is
revealed to him at a glance: and he cries out, passionately, "Wakefield!
Wakefield! you are mad!"
Perhaps he was so. The singularity of his situation must have so moulded
him to himself, that, considered in regard to his fellow-creatures and
the business of life, he could not be said to possess his right mind. He
had contrived, or rather he had happened, to dissever himself from the
world,--to vanish,--to give up his place and privileges with living men,
without being admitted among the dead. The life of a hermit is nowise
parallel to his. He was in the bustle of the city, as of old; but the
crowd swept by, and saw him not; he was, we may figuratively say, always
beside his wife, and at his hearth, yet must never feel the warmth of
the one, nor the affection of the other. It was Wakefield's
unprecedented fate, to retain his original share of human sympathies,
and to be still involved in human interests, while he had lost his
reciprocal influence on them. It would be a most curious speculation, to
trace out the effect of such circumstances on his heart and intellect,
separately, and in unison. Yet, changed as he was, he would seldom be
conscious of it, but deem himself the same man as ever; glimpses of the
truth, indeed, would come, but only for the moment; and still he would
keep saying, "I shall soon go back!" nor reflect that he had been saying
so for twenty years.
I conceive, also, that these twenty years would appear, in the
retrospect, scarcely longer than the week to which Wakefield had at
first limited his absence. He would look on the affair as no more than
an interlude in the main business of his life. When, after a little
while more, he should deem it time to re-enter his parlor, his wife
would clap her hands for joy, on beholding the middle-aged Mr.
Wakefield. Alas, what a mistake! Would Time but await the close of our
favorite follies, we should be young men, all of us, and till Doomsday.
One evening, in the twentieth year since he vanished, Wakefield is
taking his customary walk towards the dwelling which he still calls his
own. It is a gusty night of autumn, with frequent showers, that patter
down upon the pavement, and are gone, before a man can put up his
umbrella. Pausing near the house, Wakefield discerns, through the parlor
windows of the second floor, the red glow, and the glimmer and fitful
flash of a comfortable fire. On the ceiling appears a grotesque shadow
of good Mrs. Wakefield. The cap, the nose and chin, and the broad waist
form an admirable caricature, which dances, moreover, with the
up-flickering and down-sinking blaze, almost too merrily for the shade
of an elderly widow. At this instant, a shower chances to fall, and is
driven, by the unmannerly gust, full into Wakefield's face and bosom. He
is quite penetrated with its autumnal chill. Shall he stand, wet and
shivering here, when his own hearth has a good fire to warm him, and his
own wife will run to fetch the gray coat and small-clothes, which
doubtless she has kept carefully in the closet of their bedchamber? No!
Wakefield is no such fool. He ascends the steps,--heavily!--for twenty
years have stiffened his legs, since he came down,--but he knows it not.
Stay, Wakefield! Would you go to the sole home that is left you? Then
step into your grave! The door opens. As he passes in, we have a
parting glimpse of his visage, and recognize the crafty smile, which was
the precursor of the little joke that he has ever since been playing off
at his wife's expense. How unmercifully has he quizzed the poor woman!
Well, a good night's rest to Wakefield!