PART II

THE PERIOD OF THE NEW FORM

NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE

1804–1864

For an estimate of Hawthorne as a writer of short stories see pages

12–15 of the Introduction.

THE WHITE OLD MAID

[_From “Twice-Told Tales.” The story was first published in “The New

England Magazine” for July, 1835_]

The moonbeams came through two deep and narrow windows, and showed

a spacious chamber richly furnished in an antique fashion. From one

lattice the shadow of the diamond panes was thrown upon the floor; the

ghostly light through the other slept upon the bed, falling between the

heavy silken curtains and illuminating the face of a young man. But

how quietly the slumberer lay! how pale his features! And how like a

shroud the sheet was wound about his frame! Yes, it was a corpse in its

burial-clothes.

Suddenly the fixed features seemed to move with dark emotion. Strange

fantasy! It was but the shadow of the fringed curtain waving betwixt

the dead face and the moonlight as the door of the chamber opened and a

girl stole softly to the bedside. Was there delusion in the moonbeams,

or did her gesture and her eye betray a gleam of triumph as she bent

over the pale corpse, pale as itself, and pressed her living lips to

the cold ones of the dead? As she drew back from that long kiss her

features writhed as if a proud heart were fighting with its anguish.

Again it seemed that the features of the corpse had moved responsive

to her own. Still an illusion. The silken curtains had waved a second

time betwixt the dead face and the moonlight as another fair young

girl unclosed the door and glided ghostlike to the bedside. There the

two maidens stood, both beautiful, with the pale beauty of the dead

between them. But she who had first entered was proud and stately, and

the other a soft and fragile thing.

“Away!” cried the lofty one. “Thou hadst him living; the dead is mine.”

“Thine!” returned the other, shuddering. “Well hast thou spoken. The

dead is thine.”

The proud girl started, and stared into her face with a ghastly look.

But a wild and mournful expression passed across the features of the

gentle one, and, weak and helpless, she sank down on the bed, her head

pillowed beside that of the corpse and her hair mingling with his dark

locks. A creature of hope and joy, the first draught of sorrow had

bewildered her.

“Edith!”[39] cried her rival.

Edith groaned as with a sudden compression of the heart; and removing

her cheek from the dead youth’s pillow, she stood upright, fearfully

encountering the eyes of the lofty girl.

“Wilt thou betray me?” said the latter, calmly.

“Till the dead bid me speak I will be silent,” answered Edith. “Leave

us alone together. Go and live many years, and then return and tell me

of thy life. He too will be here. Then, if thou tellest of sufferings

more than death, we will both forgive thee.”

“And what shall be the token?” asked the proud girl, as if her heart

acknowledged a meaning in these wild words.

“This lock of hair,” said Edith, lifting one of the dark, clustering

curls that lay heavily on the dead man’s brow.

The two maidens joined their hands over the bosom of the corpse, and

appointed a day and hour far, far in time to come for their next

meeting in that chamber. The statelier girl gave one deep look at the

motionless countenance and departed--yet turned again and trembled ere

she closed the door, almost believing that her dead lover frowned upon

her. And Edith, too! Was not her white form fading into the moonlight?

Scorning her own weakness, she went forth and perceived that a negro

slave was waiting in the passage with a wax-light, which he held

between her face and his own, and regarded her, as she thought, with

an ugly expression of merriment. Lifting his torch on high, the slave

lighted her down the staircase and undid the portal of the mansion. The

young clergyman of the town had just ascended the steps, and, bowing to

the lady, passed in without a word.

Years, many years, rolled on. The world seemed new again, so much

older was it grown since the night when those pale girls had clasped

their hands across the bosom of the corpse. In the interval a lonely

woman had passed from youth to extreme age, and was known by all the

town as the “Old Maid in the Winding-Sheet.” A taint of insanity had

affected her whole life, but so quiet, sad and gentle, so utterly free

from violence, that she was suffered to pursue her harmless fantasies

unmolested by the world, with whose business or pleasures she had

naught to do. She dwelt alone, and never came into the daylight, except

to follow funerals. Whenever a corpse was borne along the street, in

sunshine, rain or snow, whether a pompous train of the rich and proud

thronged after it or few and humble were the mourners, behind them came

the lonely woman in a long white garment which the people called her

shroud. She took no place among the kindred or the friends, but stood

at the door to hear the funeral prayer, and walked in the rear of the

procession as one whose earthly charge it was to haunt the house of

mourning, and be the shadow of affliction, and see that the dead were

duly buried. So long had this been her custom that the inhabitants of

the town deemed her a part of every funeral, as much as the coffin-pall

or the very corpse itself, and augured ill of the sinner’s destiny

unless the Old Maid in the Winding-Sheet came gliding like a ghost

behind. Once, it is said, she affrighted a bridal party with her pale

presence, appearing suddenly in the illuminated hall just as the

priest was uniting a false maid to a wealthy man before her lover had

been dead a year. Evil was the omen to that marriage! Sometimes she

stole forth by moonlight and visited the graves of venerable integrity,

and wedded love, and virgin innocence, and every spot where the ashes

of a kind and faithful heart were mouldering. Over the hillocks of

those favored dead would she stretch out her arms with a gesture as if

she were scattering seeds, and many believed that she brought them from

the garden of Paradise; for the graves which she had visited were green

beneath the snow and covered with sweet flowers from April to November.

Her blessing was better than a holy verse upon the tombstone. Thus wore

away her long, sad, peaceful and fantastic life till few were so old as

she, and the people of later generations wondered how the dead had ever

been buried, or mourners had endured their grief, without the Old Maid

in the Winding-Sheet.

Still years went on, and still she followed funerals and was not yet

summoned to her own festival of death. One afternoon the great street

of the town was all alive with business and bustle, though the sun

now gilded only the upper half of the church-spire, having left the

house-tops and loftiest trees in shadow. The scene was cheerful and

animated in spite of the somber shade between the high brick buildings.

Here were pompous merchants in white wigs and laced velvet, the bronzed

faces of sea-captains, the foreign garb and air of Spanish creoles,

and the disdainful port of natives of Old England, all contrasted

with the rough aspect of one or two back-settlers negociating sales

of timber from forests where axe had never sounded. Sometimes a lady

passed, swelling roundly forth in an embroidered petticoat, balancing

her steps in high-heeled shoes, and courtesying with lofty grace to the

punctilious obeisances of the gentlemen. The life of the town seemed to

have its very centre not far from an old mansion that stood somewhat

back from the pavement, surrounded by neglected grass, with a strange

air of loneliness, rather deepened than dispelled by the throng so

near it. Its site would have been suitably occupied by a magnificent

Exchange or a brick block lettered all over with various signs; or the

large house itself might have made a noble tavern with the “King’s

Arms” swinging before it, and guests in every chamber, instead of

the present solitude. But, owing to some dispute about the right of

inheritance, the mansion had been long without a tenant, decaying from

year to year and throwing the stately gloom of its shadow over the

busiest part of the town. Such was the scene, and such the time, when a

figure unlike any that have been described was observed at a distance

down the street.

“I espy a strange sail yonder,” remarked a Liverpool captain; “that

woman in the long white garment.”

The sailor seemed much struck by the object, as were several others who

at the same moment caught a glimpse of the figure that had attracted

his notice. Almost immediately the various topics of conversation gave

place to speculations in an undertone on this unwonted occurrence.

“Can there be a funeral so late this afternoon?” inquired some.

They looked for the signs of death at every door--the sexton, the

hearse, the assemblage of black-clad relatives--all that makes up the

woeful pomp of funerals. They raised their eyes, also, to the sun-gilt

spire of the church, and wondered that no clang proceeded from its

bell, which had always tolled till now when this figure appeared in the

light of day. But none had heard that a corpse was to be borne to its

home that afternoon, nor was there any token of a funeral except the

apparition of the Old Maid in the Winding-Sheet.

“What may this portend?” asked each man of his neighbor.

All smiled as they put the question, yet with a certain trouble in

their eyes, as if pestilence, or some other wide calamity, were

prognosticated by the untimely intrusion among the living of one whose

presence had always been associated with death and woe. What a comet

is to the earth was that sad woman to the town. Still she moved on,

while the hum of surprise was hushed at her approach, and the proud and

the humble stood aside that her white garment might not wave against

them. It was a long, loose robe of spotless purity. Its wearer appeared

very old, pale, emaciated and feeble, yet glided onward without the

unsteady pace of extreme age. At one point of her course a little rosy

boy burst forth from a door and ran with open arms towards the ghostly

woman, seeming to expect a kiss from her bloodless lips. She made a

slight pause, fixing her eye upon him with an expression of no earthly

sweetness, so that the child shivered and stood awe-struck rather than

affrighted while the Old Maid passed on. Perhaps her garment might have

been polluted even by an infant’s touch; perhaps her kiss would have

been death to the sweet boy within the year.

“She is but a shadow,” whispered the superstitious. “The child put

forth his arms and could not grasp her robe.”

The wonder was increased when the Old Maid passed beneath the porch

of the deserted mansion, ascended the moss-covered steps, lifted the

iron knocker and gave three raps. The people could only conjecture that

some old remembrance, troubling her bewildered brain, had impelled the

poor woman hither to visit the friends of her youth; all gone from

their home long since and forever, unless their ghosts still haunted

it--fit company for the Old Maid in the Winding-Sheet. An elderly man

approached the steps and, reverently uncovering his gray locks, essayed

to explain the matter.

“None, madam,” said he, “have dwelt in this house these fifteen years

agone--no, not since the death of old Colonel Fenwicke, whose funeral

you may remember to have followed. His heirs, being ill-agreed among

themselves, have let the mansion-house go to ruin.”

The Old Maid looked slowly round with a slight gesture of one hand

and a finger of the other upon her lip, appearing more shadow-like

than ever in the obscurity of the porch. But again she lifted the

hammer, and gave, this time, a single rap. Could it be that a footstep

was now heard coming down the staircase of the old mansion which all

conceived to have been so long untenanted? Slowly, feebly, yet heavily,

like the pace of an aged and infirm person, the step approached, more

distinct on every downward stair, till it reached the portal. The bar

fell on the inside; the door was opened. One upward glance toward the

church-spire, whence the sunshine had just faded, was the last that the

people saw of the “Old Maid in the Winding-Sheet.”

“Who undid the door?” asked many.

This question, owing to the depth of shadow beneath the porch, no one

could satisfactorily answer. Two or three aged men, while protesting

against an inference which might be drawn, affirmed that the person

within was a negro, and bore a singular resemblance to old Cæsar,

formerly a slave in the house, but freed by death some thirty years

before.

“Her summons has waked up a servant of the old family,” said one, half

seriously.

“Let us wait here,” replied another. “More guests will knock at the

door anon. But the gate of the grave-yard should be thrown open.”

Twilight had overspread the town before the crowd began to separate,

or the comments on this incident were exhausted. One after another was

wending his way homeward, when a coach--no common spectacle in those

days--drove slowly into the street. It was an old-fashioned equipage,

hanging close to the ground, with arms on the pannels, a footman

behind, and a grave, corpulent coachman seated high in front--the whole

giving an idea of solemn state and dignity. There was something awful

in the heavy rumbling of the wheels. The coach rolled down the street,

till, coming to the gateway of the deserted mansion, it drew up, and

the footman sprang to the ground.

“Whose grand coach is this?” asked a very inquisitive body.

The footman made no reply, but ascended the steps of the old house,

gave three taps with the iron hammer, and returned to open the coach

door. An old man possessed of the heraldic lore so common in that day

examined the shield of arms on the pannel.

“Azure, a lion’s head erased, between three flower de luces,” said he;

then whispered the name of the family to whom these bearings belonged.

The last inheritor of its honors was recently dead, after a long

residence amid the splendor of the British court, where his birth and

wealth had given him no mean station. “He left no child,” continued the

herald, “and these arms, being in a lozenge, betoken that the coach

appertains to his widow.”

Further disclosures, perhaps, might have been made, had not the speaker

been suddenly struck dumb by the stern eye of an ancient lady who

thrust forth her head from the coach, preparing to descend. As she

emerged the people saw that her dress was magnificent, and her figure

dignified in spite of age and infirmity--a stately ruin, but with a

look at once of pride and wretchedness. Her strong and rigid features

had an awe about them unlike that of the White Old Maid, but as of

something evil. She passed up the steps, leaning on a gold-headed cane.

The door swung open as she ascended--and the light of a torch glittered

on the embroidery of her dress and gleamed on the pillars of the porch.

After a momentary pause--a glance backwards--and then a desperate

effort--she went in. The decypherer of the coat of arms had ventured up

the lowest step, and, shrinking back immediately, pale and tremulous,

affirmed that the torch was held by the very image of old Cæsar.

“But such a hideous grin,” added he, “was never seen on the face of

mortal man, black or white! It will haunt me till my dying day.”

Meantime the coach had wheeled round, with a prodigious clatter on the

pavement, and rumbled up the street, disappearing in the twilight,

while the ear still tracked its course. Scarcely was it gone when

the people began to question whether the coach and attendants, the

ancient lady, the spectre of old Cæsar and the Old Maid herself, were

not all a strangely combined delusion with some dark purport in its

mystery. The whole town was astir, so that, instead of dispersing, the

crowd continually increased, and stood gazing up at the windows of

the mansion, now silvered by the brightening moon. The elders, glad

to indulge the narrative propensity of age, told of the long-faded

splendor of the family, the entertainments they had given and the

guests, the greatest of the land, and even titled and noble ones from

abroad, who had passed beneath that portal. These graphic reminiscences

seemed to call up the ghosts of those to whom they referred. So strong

was the impression on some of the more imaginative hearers that two

or three were seized with trembling fits at one and the same moment,

protesting that they had distinctly heard three other raps of the iron

knocker.

“Impossible!” exclaimed others. “See! The moon shines beneath the

porch, and shows every part of it, except in the narrow shade of that

pillar. There is no one there.”

“Did not the door open?” whispered one of these fanciful persons.

“Didst thou see it too?” said his companion, in a startled tone.

But the general sentiment was opposed to the idea that a third

visitant had made application at the door of the deserted house. A

few, however, adhered to this new marvel, and even declared that a red

gleam like that of a torch had shone through the great front window,

as if the negro were lighting a guest up the staircase. This, too, was

pronounced a mere fantasy. But at once the whole multitude started,

and each man beheld his own terror painted in the faces of all the rest.

“What an awful thing is this!” cried they.

A shriek, too fearfully distinct for doubt, had been heard within the

mansion, breaking forth suddenly and succeeded by a deep stillness,

as if a heart had burst in giving it utterance. The people knew not

whether to fly from the very sight of the house, or to rush trembling

in and search out the strange mystery. Amid their confusion and

affright, they were somewhat reassured by the appearance of their

clergyman, a venerable patriarch, and equally a saint, who had taught

them and their fathers the way to heaven for more than the space of an

ordinary life-time. He was a reverend figure with long white hair upon

his shoulders, a white beard upon his breast, and a back so bent over

his staff that he seemed to be looking downward continually, as if to

choose a proper grave for his weary frame. It was some time before the

good old man, being deaf and of impaired intellect, could be made to

comprehend such portions of the affair as were comprehensible at all.

But, when possessed of the facts, his energies assumed unexpected vigor.

“Verily,” said the old gentleman, “it will be fitting that I enter the

mansion-house of the worthy Colonel Fenwicke, lest any harm should have

befallen that true Christian woman whom ye call the ‘Old Maid in the

Winding-Sheet.’”

Behold, then, the venerable clergyman ascending the steps of the

mansion with a torch-bearer behind him. It was the elderly man who had

spoken to the Old Maid, and the same who had afterward explained the

shield of arms and recognized the features of the negro. Like their

predecessors, they gave three raps with the iron hammer.

“Old Cæsar cometh not,” observed the priest. “Well, I wot he no longer

doth service in this mansion.”

“Assuredly, then, it was something worse in old Cæsar’s likeness!” said

the other adventurer.

“Be it as God wills,” answered the clergyman. “See! my strength, though

it be much decayed, hath sufficed to open this heavy door. Let us enter

and pass up the staircase.”

Here occurred a singular exemplification of the dreamy state of a

very old man’s mind. As they ascended the wide flight of stairs, the

aged clergyman appeared to move with caution, occasionally standing

aside, and oftener bending his head, as it were in salutation, thus

practicing all the gestures of one who makes his way through a throng.

Reaching the head of the staircase, he looked around with sad and

solemn benignity, laid aside his staff, bared his hoary locks, and was

evidently on the point of commencing a prayer.

“Reverend Sir,” said his attendant, who conceived this a very suitable

prelude to their further search, “would it not be well that the people

join with us in prayer?”

“Well-a-day!” cried the old clergyman, staring strangely around him.

“Art thou here with me, and none other? Verily, past times were present

to me, and I deemed that I was to make a funeral prayer, as many a time

heretofore, from the head of this staircase. Of a truth, I saw the

shades of many that are gone. Yea, I have prayed at their burials, one

after another, and the Old Maid in the Winding-Sheet hath seen them to

their graves!”

Being now more thoroughly awake to their present purpose, he took his

staff and struck forcibly on the floor, till there came an echo from

each deserted chamber, but no menial to answer their summons. They

therefore walked along the passage, and again paused, opposite to the

great front window, through which was seen the crowd in the shadow and

partial moonlight of the street beneath. On their right hand was the

open door of a chamber, and a closed one on their left. The clergyman

pointed his cane to the carved oak pannel of the latter.

“Within that chamber,” observed he, “a whole life-time since, did I

sit by the death-bed of a goodly young man who, being now at the last

gasp----”

Apparently, there was some powerful excitement in the ideas which

had now flashed across his mind. He snatched the torch from his

companion’s hand, and threw open the door with such sudden violence

that the flame was extinguished, leaving them no other light than the

moonbeams, which fell through two windows into the spacious chamber. It

was sufficient to discover all that could be known. In a high-backed

oaken arm-chair, upright, with her hands clasped across her breast,

and her head thrown back, sat the “Old Maid in the Winding-Sheet.” The

stately dame had fallen on her knees with her forehead on the holy

knees of the Old Maid, one hand upon the floor and the other pressed

convulsively against her heart. It clutched a lock of hair, once sable,

now discolored with a greenish mould. As the priest and layman advanced

into the chamber, the Old Maid’s features assumed such a semblance

of shifting expression that they trusted to hear the whole mystery

explained by a single word. But it was only the shadow of a tattered

curtain waving betwixt the dead face and the moonlight.

“Both dead!” said the venerable man. “Then who shall divulge the

secret? Methinks it glimmers to and fro in my mind like the light and

shadow across the Old Maid’s face. And now ’tis gone!”

HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW

1807–1882

The very large proportion of narrative poetry throughout Longfellow’s

work suggests a native bent toward story. _Outre-Mer_ (begun in

parts, 1833; published entire, 1835) at once reminded his reviewers

of Irving’s _Tales of a Traveller_. The parallel is obvious; but _The

Notary of Périgueux_, slight as is its substance, is superior to

Irving’s typical form in narrative compactness.

THE NOTARY OF PÉRIGUEUX

[_From “Outre-Mer,” 1835_]

Do not trust thy body with a physician. He’ll make thy foolish

bones go without flesh in a fortnight, and thy soul walk without a

body in a se’nnight after.

SHIRLEY.

You must know, gentlemen, that there lived some years ago, in the

city of Périgueux, an honest notary public, the descendant of a very

ancient and broken-down family, and the occupant of one of those

old weather-beaten tenements which remind you of the times of your

great-grandfather. He was a man of an unoffending, quiet disposition;

the father of a family, though not the head of it--for in that family

“the hen overcrowed the cock,” and the neighbors, when they spake of

the notary, shrugged their shoulders, and exclaimed, “Poor fellow! his

spurs want sharpening.” In fine--you understand me, gentlemen--he was

henpecked.

Well, finding no peace at home, he sought it elsewhere, as was very

natural for him to do; and at length discovered a place of rest far

beyond the cares and clamors of domestic life. This was a little _café

estaminet_ a short way out of the city, whither he repaired every

evening to smoke his pipe, drink sugar-water, and play his favorite

game of domino. There he met the boon companions he most loved,

heard all the floating chitchat of the day, laughed when he was in

merry mood, found consolation when he was sad, and at all times gave

vent to his opinions without fear of being snubbed short by a flat

contradiction.

Now the notary’s bosom friend was a dealer in claret and cognac,

who lived about a league from the city, and always passed his

evenings at the _estaminet_. He was a gross, corpulent fellow, raised

from a full-blooded Gascon breed, and sired by a comic actor of

some reputation in his way. He was remarkable for nothing but his

good-humor, his love of cards, and a strong propensity to test the

quality of his own liquors by comparing them with those sold at other

places.

As evil communications corrupt good manners, the bad practices of the

wine-dealer won insensibly upon the worthy notary; and before he was

aware of it, he found himself weaned from domino and sugar-water,

and addicted to piquet and spiced wine. Indeed, it not infrequently

happened that, after a long session at the _estaminet_, the two friends

grew so urbane that they would waste a full half-hour at the door in

friendly dispute which should conduct the other home.

Though this course of life agreed well enough with the sluggish,

phlegmatic temperament of the wine-dealer, it soon began to play the

very deuce with the more sensitive organization of the notary, and

finally put his nervous system completely out of tune. He lost his

appetite, became gaunt and haggard, and could get no sleep. Legions

of blue-devils haunted him by day; and by night strange faces peeped

through his bed-curtains, and the nightmare snorted in his ear. The

worse he grew, the more he smoked and tippled; and the more he smoked

and tippled--why, as a matter of course, the worse he grew. His wife

alternately stormed, remonstrated, entreated; but all in vain. She made

the house too hot for him--he retreated to the tavern; she broke his

long-stemmed pipes upon the andirons--he substituted a short-stemmed

one, which, for safe keeping, he carried in his waistcoat-pocket.

Thus the unhappy notary ran gradually down at the heel. What with his

bad habits and his domestic grievances, he became completely hipped. He

imagined that he was going to die, and suffered in quick succession all

the diseases that ever beset mortal man. Every shooting pain was an

alarming symptom--every uneasy feeling after dinner a sure prognostic

of some mortal disease. In vain did his friends endeavor to reason, and

then to laugh him out of his strange whims; for when did ever jest or

reason cure a sick imagination? His only answer was, “Do let me alone;

I know better than you what ails me.”

Well, gentlemen, things were in this state when, one afternoon in

December, as he sat moping in his office, wrapped in an overcoat, with

a cap on his head and his feet thrust into a pair of furred slippers,

a cabriolet stopped at the door, and a loud knocking without aroused

him from his gloomy revery. It was a message from his friend the

wine-dealer, who had been suddenly attacked with a violent fever,

and, growing worse and worse, had now sent in the greatest haste

for the notary to draw up his last will and testament. The case was

urgent, and admitted neither excuse nor delay; and the notary, tying

a handkerchief round his face, and buttoning up to the chin, jumped

into the cabriolet, and suffered himself, though not without some

dismal presentiments and misgivings of heart, to be driven to the

wine-dealer’s house.

When he arrived he found everything in the greatest confusion. On

entering the house he ran against the apothecary, who was coming down

stairs, with a face as long as your arm; and a few steps farther he

met the housekeeper--for the wine-dealer was an old bachelor--running

up and down, and wringing her hands, for fear that the good man should

die without making his will. He soon reached the chamber of his sick

friend, and found him tossing about in a paroxysm of fever and calling

aloud for a draught of cold water. The notary shook his head. He

thought this a fatal symptom. For ten years back the wine-dealer had

been suffering under a species of hydrophobia, which seemed suddenly to

have left him.

When the sick man saw who stood by his bedside, he stretched out his

hand and exclaimed:

“Ah! my dear friend! have you come at last? You see it is all over with

me. You have arrived just in time to draw up that--that passport of

mine. Ah, _grand diable!_ how hot it is here! Water--water--water! Will

nobody give me a drop of cold water?”

As the case was an urgent one, the notary made no delay in getting his

papers in readiness; and in a short time the last will and testament of

the wine-dealer was drawn up in due form, the notary guiding the sick

man’s hand as he scrawled his signature at the bottom.

As the evening wore away, the wine-dealer grew worse and worse, and at

length became delirious, mingling in his incoherent ravings the phrases

of the Credo and Paternoster with the shibboleth of the dram-shop and

the card-table.

“Take care! take care! There, now--_Credo in_--pop! ting-a-ling-ling!

give me some of that. Cent-é-dize! Why, you old publican, this wine is

poisoned--I know your tricks!--_Sanctam ecclesiam Catholicam_--Well,

well, we shall see. Imbecile! to have a tierce-major and a seven

of hearts, and discard the seven! By St. Anthony, capot! You are

lurched--ha! ha! I told you so. I knew very well--there--there--don’t

interrupt me--_Carnis resurrectionem et vitam eternam!_”

With these words upon his lips the poor wine-dealer expired. Meanwhile

the notary sat cowering over the fire, aghast at the fearful scene

that was passing before him, and now and then striving to keep up his

courage by a glass of cognac. Already his fears were on the alert, and

the idea of contagion flitted to and fro through his mind. In order to

quiet these thoughts of evil import, he lighted his pipe, and began to

prepare for returning home. At that moment the apothecary turned round

to him and said:

“Dreadful sickly time, this! The disorder seems to be spreading.”

“What disorder?” exclaimed the notary, with a movement of surprise.

“Two died yesterday, and three to-day,” continued the apothecary,

without answering the question. “Very sickly time, sir--very.”

“But what disorder is it? What disease has carried off my friend here

so suddenly?”

“What disease? Why, scarlet fever, to be sure.”

“And is it contagious?”

“Certainly.”

“Then I am a dead man!” exclaimed the notary, putting his pipe into

his waistcoat-pocket, and beginning to walk up and down the room in

despair. “I am a dead man! Now don’t deceive me--don’t, will you?

What--what are the symptoms?”

“A sharp burning pain in the right side,” said the apothecary.

“Oh, what a fool I was to come here!”

In vain did the housekeeper and the apothecary strive to pacify him.

He was not a man to be reasoned with. He answered that he knew his own

constitution better than they did, and insisted upon going home without

delay. Unfortunately, the vehicle he came in had returned to the city;

and the whole neighbourhood was abed and asleep. What was to be done?

Nothing in the world but to take the apothecary’s horse, which stood

hitched at the door, patiently waiting his master’s will.

Well, gentlemen, as there was no remedy, our notary mounted this

raw-boned steed, and set forth upon his homeward journey. The night

was cold and gusty, and the wind set right in his teeth. Overhead the

leaden clouds were beating to and fro, and through them the newly-risen

moon seemed to be tossing and drifting along like a cock-boat in the

surf; now swallowed up in a huge billow of cloud, and now lifted upon

its bosom and dashed with silvery spray. The trees by the roadside

groaned with a sound of evil omen, and before him lay three mortal

miles, beset with a thousand imaginary perils. Obedient to the whip and

spur, the steed leaped forward by fits and starts, now dashing away in

a tremendous gallop, and now relaxing into a long, hard trot; while the

rider, filled with symptoms of disease and dire presentiments of death,

urged him on, as if he were fleeing before the pestilence.

In this way, by dint of whistling and shouting, and beating right and

left, one mile of the fatal three was safely passed. The apprehensions

of the notary had so far subsided that he even suffered the poor horse

to walk up-hill; but these apprehensions were suddenly revived again

with tenfold violence by a sharp pain in the right side, which seemed

to pierce him like a needle.

“It is upon me at last!” groaned the fear-stricken man. “Heaven be

merciful to me, the greatest of sinners! And must I die in a ditch,

after all? He! get up! get up!”

And away went horse and rider at full speed--hurry-scurry--up-hill

and down--panting and blowing like a whirlwind. At every leap the

pain in the rider’s side seemed to increase. At first it was a little

point like the prick of a needle--then it spread to the size of a

half-franc piece--then covered a piece as large as the palm of your

hand. It gained upon him fast. The poor man groaned aloud in agony;

faster and faster sped the horse over the frozen ground--farther and

farther spread the pain over his side. To complete the dismal picture,

the storm commenced--snow mingled with rain. But snow, and rain, and

cold were naught to him; for, though his arms and legs were frozen to

icicles, he felt it not. The fatal symptom was upon him; he was doomed

to die--not of cold, but of scarlet fever!

At length, he knew not how, more dead than alive, he reached the gate

of the city. A band of ill-bred dogs, that were serenading at a corner

of the street, seeing the notary dash by, joined in the hue and cry,

and ran barking and yelping at his heels. It was now late at night,

and only here and there a solitary lamp twinkled from an upper story.

But on went the notary, down this street and up that, till at last he

reached his own door. There was a light in his wife’s bed chamber. The

good woman came to the window, alarmed at such a knocking and howling

and clattering at her door so late at night.

“Let me in! let me in! Quick! quick!” he exclaimed, almost breathless

from terror and fatigue.

“Who are you, that come to disturb a lone woman at this hour of the

night?” cried a sharp voice from above. “Begone about your business,

and let quiet people sleep.”

“Oh, _diable, diable_! Come down and let me in! I am your husband.

Don’t you know my voice? Quick, I beseech you; for I am dying here in

the street!”

After a few moments of delay and a few more words of parley, the door

was opened, and the notary stalked into his domicil, pale and haggard

in aspect, and as stiff and straight as a ghost. Cased from head to

heel in an armor of ice, as the glare of the lamp fell upon him he

looked like a knight-errant mailed in steel. But in one place his armor

was broken. On his right side was a circular spot as large as the crown

of your hat, and about as black!

“My dear wife!” he exclaimed, with more tenderness than he had

exhibited for many years, “reach me a chair. My hours are numbered. I

am a dead man!”

Alarmed at these exclamations, his wife stripped off his overcoat.

Something fell from beneath it, and was dashed to pieces on the hearth.

It was the notary’s pipe! He placed his hand upon his side, and, lo! it

was bare to the skin! Coat, waistcoat, and linen were burnt through and

through, and there was a blister on his side as large over as your head!

The mystery was soon explained, symptom and all. The notary had put his

pipe into his pocket without knocking out the ashes! And so my story

ends.

EDGAR ALLAN POE

1809–1849

For an appreciation of Poe as a short-story writer see pages 15–23 of

the Introduction.

THE FALL OF THE HOUSE OF USHER

[_First published in Burton’s “Gentleman’s Magazine and American

Monthly Review,” September, 1839_]

Son cœur est un luth suspendu;

Sitôt qu’on le touche il rèsonne.

DE BÉRANGER.

During the whole of a dull, dark, and soundless day in the autumn

of the year, when the clouds hung oppressively low in the heavens,

I had been passing alone, on horseback, through a singularly dreary

tract of country; and at length found myself, as the shades of the

evening drew on, within view of the melancholy House of Usher. I know

not how it was; but, with the first glimpse of the building, a sense

of insufferable gloom pervaded my spirit. I say insufferable; for

the feeling was unrelieved by any of that half-pleasurable, because

poetic, sentiment, with which the mind usually receives even the

sternest natural images of the desolate or terrible. I looked upon

the scene before me--upon the mere house, and the simple landscape

features of the domain--upon the bleak walls--upon the vacant eye-like

windows--upon a few rank sedges--and upon a few white trunks of decayed

trees--with an utter depression of soul which I can compare to no

earthly sensation more properly than to the after-dream of the reveller

upon opium--the bitter lapse into every-day life--the hideous dropping

off of the veil. There was an iciness, a sinking, a sickening of the

heart--an unredeemed dreariness of thought which no goading of the

imagination could torture into aught of the sublime. What was it--I

paused to think--what was it that so unnerved me in the contemplation

of the House of Usher? It was a mystery all insoluble; nor could I

grapple with the shadowy fancies that crowded upon me as I pondered. I

was forced to fall back upon the unsatisfactory conclusion that while,

beyond doubt, there _are_ combinations of very simple natural objects

which have the power of thus affecting us, still the analysis of this

power lies among considerations beyond our depth. It was possible, I

reflected, that a mere different arrangement of the particulars of the

scene, of the details of the picture, would be sufficient to modify,

or perhaps to annihilate its capacity for sorrowful impression; and,

acting upon this idea, I reined my horse to the precipitous brink of a

black and lurid tarn that lay in unruffled lustre by the dwelling, and

gazed down--but with a shudder even more thrilling than before--upon

the remodelled and inverted images of the gray sedge, and the ghastly

tree-stems, and the vacant and eye-like windows.

Nevertheless, in this mansion of gloom I now proposed to myself a

sojourn of some weeks. Its proprietor, Roderick Usher, had been one

of my boon companions in boyhood; but many years had elapsed since

our last meeting. A letter, however, had lately reached me in a

distant part of the country--a letter from him--which, in its wildly

importunate nature, had admitted of no other than a personal reply.

The MS. gave evidence of nervous agitation. The writer spoke of acute

bodily illness, of a mental disorder which oppressed him, and of an

earnest desire to see me, as his best, and indeed his only personal

friend, with a view of attempting, by the cheerfulness of my society,

some alleviation of his malady. It was the manner in which all this,

and much more, was said--it was the apparent _heart_ that went with his

request--which allowed me no room for hesitation; and I accordingly

obeyed forthwith what I still considered a very singular summons.

Although, as boys, we had been even intimate associates, yet I really

knew little of my friend. His reserve had been always excessive and

habitual. I was aware, however, that his very ancient family had been

noted, time out of mind, for a peculiar sensibility of temperament,

displaying itself, through long ages, in many works of exalted art, and

manifested, of late, in repeated deeds of munificent, yet unobtrusive

charity, as well as in a passionate devotion to the intricacies,

perhaps even more than to the orthodox and easily recognizable

beauties, of musical science. I had learned, too, the very remarkable

fact that the stem of the Usher race, all time-honored as it was, had

put forth, at no period, any enduring branch; in other words, that

the entire family lay in the direct line of descent, and had always,

with very trifling and very temporary variation, so lain. It was this

deficiency, I considered, while running over in thought the perfect

keeping of the character of the premises with the accredited character

of the people, and while speculating upon the possible influence which

the one, in the long lapse of centuries, might have exercised upon

the other--it was this deficiency, perhaps, of collateral issue, and

the consequent undeviating transmission, from sire to son, of the

patrimony with the name, which had, at length, so identified the two as

to merge the original title of the estate in the quaint and equivocal

appellation of the “House of Usher”--an appellation which seemed to

include, in the minds of the peasantry who used it, both the family and

the family mansion.

I have said that the sole effect of my somewhat childish experiment

of looking down within the tarn had been to deepen the first singular

impression. There can be no doubt that the consciousness of the rapid

increase of my superstition--for why should I not so term it?--served

mainly to accelerate the increase itself. Such, I have long known, is

the paradoxical law of all sentiments having terror as a basis. And it

might have been for this reason only, that, when I again uplifted my

eyes to the house itself, from its image in the pool, there grew in my

mind a strange fancy--a fancy so ridiculous, indeed, that I but mention

it to show the vivid force of the sensations which oppressed me. I had

so worked upon my imagination as really to believe that about the whole

mansion and domain there hung an atmosphere peculiar to themselves and

their immediate vicinity--an atmosphere which had no affinity with the

air of heaven, but which had reeked up from the decayed trees, and the

gray wall, and the silent tarn--a pestilent and mystic vapor, dull,

sluggish, faintly discernible, and leaden-hued.

Shaking off from my spirit what _must_ have been a dream, I scanned

more narrowly the real aspect of the building. Its principal feature

seemed to be that of an excessive antiquity. The discoloration of ages

had been great. Minute fungi overspread the whole exterior, hanging in

a fine, tangled web-work from the eaves. Yet all this was apart from

any extraordinary dilapidation. No portion of the masonry had fallen;

and there appeared to be a wild inconsistency between its still perfect

adaptation of parts, and the crumbling condition of the individual

stones. In this there was much that reminded me of the specious

totality of old wood-work which has rotted for years in some neglected

vault, with no disturbance from the breath of the external air. Beyond

this indication of extensive decay, however, the fabric gave little

token of instability. Perhaps the eye of a scrutinizing observer might

have discovered a barely perceptible fissure, which, extending from the

roof of the building in front, made its way down the wall in a zigzag

direction, until it became lost in the sullen waters of the tarn.

Noticing these things, I rode over a short causeway to the house. A

servant in waiting took my horse, and I entered the Gothic archway of

the hall. A valet, of stealthy step, thence conducted me, in silence,

through many dark and intricate passages in my progress to the _studio_

of his master. Much that I encountered on the way contributed, I know

not how, to heighten the vague sentiments of which I have already

spoken. While the objects around me--while the carvings of the

ceilings, the sombre tapestries of the walls, the ebon blackness of

the floors, and the phantasmagoric armorial trophies which rattled

as I strode, were but matters to which, or to such as which, I had

been accustomed from my infancy--while I hesitated not to acknowledge

how familiar was all this--I still wondered to find how unfamiliar

were the fancies which ordinary images were stirring up. On one of

the staircases, I met the physician of the family. His countenance, I

thought, wore a mingled expression of low cunning and perplexity. He

accosted me with trepidation and passed on. The valet now threw open a

door and ushered me into the presence of his master.

The room in which I found myself was very large and lofty. The windows

were long, narrow, and pointed, and at so vast a distance from the

black oaken floor as to be altogether inaccessible from within. Feeble

gleams of encrimsoned light made their way through the trelliced panes,

and served to render sufficiently distinct the more prominent objects

around; the eye, however, struggled in vain to reach the remoter angles

of the chamber, or the recesses of the vaulted and fretted ceiling.

Dark draperies hung upon the walls. The general furniture was profuse,

comfortless, antique, and tattered. Many books and musical instruments

lay scattered about, but failed to give any vitality to the scene. I

felt that I breathed an atmosphere of sorrow. An air of stern, deep,

and irredeemable gloom hung over and pervaded all.

Upon my entrance, Usher arose from a sofa on which he had been lying at

full length, and greeted me with a vivacious warmth which had much in

it, I at first thought, of an overdone cordiality--of the constrained

effort of the _ennuyé_ man of the world. A glance, however, at his

countenance convinced me of his perfect sincerity. We sat down; and for

some moments, while he spoke not, I gazed upon him with a feeling half

of pity, half of awe. Surely, man had never before so terribly altered,

in so brief a period, as had Roderick Usher! It was with difficulty

that I could bring myself to admit the identity of the wan being before

me with the companion of my early boyhood. Yet the character of his

face had been at all times remarkable. A cadaverousness of complexion;

an eye large, liquid, and luminous beyond comparison; lips somewhat

thin and very pallid, but of a surpassingly beautiful curve; a nose

of a delicate Hebrew model, but with a breadth of nostril unusual in

similar formations; a finely moulded chin, speaking, in its want of

prominence, of a want of moral energy; hair of a more than web-like

softness and tenuity; these features, with an inordinate expansion

above the regions of the temple, made up altogether a countenance

not easily to be forgotten. And now in the mere exaggeration of the

prevailing character of these features, and of the expression they were

wont to convey, lay so much of change that I doubted to whom I spoke.

The now ghastly pallor of the skin, and the now miraculous lustre of

the eye, above all things startled and even awed me. The silken hair,

too, had been suffered to grow all unheeded, and as, in its wild

gossamer texture, it floated rather than fell about the face, I could

not, even with effort, connect its arabesque expression with any idea

of simple humanity.

In the manner of my friend I was at once struck with an incoherence--an

inconsistency; and I soon found this to arise from a series of feeble

and futile struggles to overcome an habitual trepidancy, an excessive

nervous agitation. For something of this nature I had indeed been

prepared, no less by his letter than by reminiscences of certain

boyish traits, and by conclusions deduced from his peculiar physical

conformation and temperament. His action was alternately vivacious and

sullen. His voice varied rapidly from a tremulous indecision (when the

animal spirits seemed utterly in abeyance) to that species of energetic

concision--that abrupt, weighty, unhurried, and hollow-sounding

enunciation--that leaden, self-balanced and perfectly modulated

guttural utterance, which may be observed in the lost drunkard, or the

irreclaimable eater of opium, during the periods of his most intense

excitement.

It was thus that he spoke of the object of my visit, of his earnest

desire to see me, and of the solace he expected me to afford him. He

entered, at some length, into what he conceived to be the nature of his

malady. It was, he said, a constitutional and a family evil, and one

for which he despaired to find a remedy--a mere nervous affection, he

immediately added, which would undoubtedly soon pass off. It displayed

itself in a host of unnatural sensations. Some of these, as he detailed

them, interested and bewildered me; although, perhaps, the terms and

the general manner of the narration had their weight. He suffered much

from a morbid acuteness of the senses. The most insipid food was alone

endurable; he could wear only garments of certain texture; the odors

of all flowers were oppressive; his eyes were tortured by even a faint

light; and there were but peculiar sounds, and these from stringed

instruments, which did not inspire him with horror.

To an anomalous species of terror I found him a bounden slave. “I

shall perish,” said he, “I _must_ perish in this deplorable folly.

Thus, thus, and not otherwise, shall I be lost. I dread the events of

the future, not in themselves, but in their results. I shudder at the

thought of any, even the most trivial, incident, which may operate upon

this intolerable agitation of soul. I have, indeed, no abhorrence of

danger, except in its absolute effect--in terror. In this unnerved--in

this pitiable condition--I feel that the period will sooner or later

arrive when I must abandon life and reason together, in some struggle

with the grim phantasm, FEAR.”

I learned, moreover, at intervals, and through broken and equivocal

hints, another singular feature of his mental condition. He was

enchained by certain superstitious impressions in regard to the

dwelling which he tenanted, and whence, for many years, he had never

ventured forth--in regard to an influence whose supposititious force

was conveyed in terms too shadowy here to be restated--an influence

which some peculiarities in the mere form and substance of his family

mansion, had, by dint of long sufferance, he said, obtained over his

spirit--an effect which the _physique_ of the gray walls and turrets,

and of the dim tarn into which they all looked down, had, at length,

brought about upon the _morale_ of his existence.

He admitted, however, although with hesitation, that much of the

peculiar gloom which thus afflicted him could be traced to a more

natural and far more palpable origin--to the severe and long-continued

illness--indeed to the evidently approaching dissolution--of a tenderly

beloved sister, his sole companion for long years, his last and only

relative on earth. “Her decease,” he said, with a bitterness which I

can never forget, “would leave him (him the hopeless and the frail)

the last of the ancient race of the Ushers.” While he spoke, the lady

Madeline (for so was she called) passed slowly through a remote portion

of the apartment, and, without having noticed my presence, disappeared.

I regarded her with an utter astonishment not unmingled with dread;[40]

and yet I found it impossible to account for such feelings. A sensation

of stupor oppressed me, as my eyes followed her retreating steps. When

a door, at length, closed upon her, my glance sought instinctively and

eagerly the countenance of the brother; but he had buried his face in

his hands, and I could only perceive that a far more than ordinary

wanness had overspread the emaciated fingers through which trickled

many passionate tears.

The disease of the lady Madeline had long baffled the skill of her

physicians. A settled apathy, a gradual wasting away of the person,

and frequent although transient affections of a partially cataleptical

character, were the unusual diagnosis. Hitherto she had steadily borne

up against the pressure of her malady, and had not betaken herself

finally to bed; but, on the closing in of the evening of my arrival

at the house, she succumbed (as her brother told me at night with

inexpressible agitation) to the prostrating power of the destroyer;

and I learned that the glimpse I had obtained of her person would thus

probably be the last I should obtain--that the lady, at least while

living, would be seen by me no more.

For several days ensuing her name was unmentioned by either Usher or

myself; and during this period I was busied in earnest endeavors to

alleviate the melancholy of my friend. We painted and read together;

or I listened, as if in a dream, to the wild improvisations of his

speaking guitar. And thus, as a closer and still closer intimacy

admitted me more unreservedly into the recesses of his spirit, the more

bitterly did I perceive the futility of all attempt at cheering a mind

from which darkness, as if an inherent positive quality, poured forth

upon all objects of the moral and physical universe, in one unceasing

radiation of gloom.

I shall ever bear about me a memory of the many solemn hours I thus

spent alone with the master of the House of Usher. Yet I should fail in

any attempt to convey an idea of the exact character of the studies,

or of the occupations in which he involved me, or led me the way. An

excited and highly distempered ideality threw a sulphurous lustre over

all. His long improvised dirges will ring forever in my ears. Among

other things, I hold painfully in mind a certain singular perversion

and amplification of the wild air of the last waltz of Von Weber.

From the paintings over which his elaborate fancy brooded, and which

grew, touch by touch, into vaguenesses at which I shuddered the more

thrillingly because I shuddered knowing not why;--from these paintings

(vivid as their images now are before me) I would in vain endeavor to

educe more than a small portion which should lie within the compass

of merely written words. By the utter simplicity, by the nakedness

of his designs, he arrested and overawed attention. If ever mortal

painted an idea, that mortal was Roderick Usher. For me at least, in

the circumstances then surrounding me, there arose out of the pure

abstractions which the hypochondriac contrived to throw upon his

canvas, an intensity of intolerable awe, no shadow of which felt I ever

yet in the contemplation of the certainly glowing yet too concrete

reveries of Fuseli.

One of the phantasmagoric conceptions of my friend, partaking not so

rigidly of the spirit of abstraction, may be shadowed forth, although

feebly, in words. A small picture presented the interior of an

immensely long and rectangular vault or tunnel, with low walls, smooth,

white, and without interruption or device. Certain accessory points

of the design served well to convey the idea that this excavation lay

at an exceeding depth below the surface of the earth. No outlet was

observed in any portion of its vast extent, and no torch, or other

artificial source of light was discernible; yet a flood of intense rays

rolled throughout, and bathed the whole in a ghastly and inappropriate

splendor.

I have just spoken of that morbid condition of the auditory nerve which

rendered all music intolerable to the sufferer, with the exception

of certain effects of stringed instruments. It was, perhaps, the

narrow limits to which he thus confined himself upon the guitar,

which gave birth, in great measure, to the fantastic character of his

performances. But the fervid _facility_ of his _impromptus_ could not

be so accounted for. They must have been, and were, in the notes, as

well as in the words of his wild fantasias (for he not unfrequently

accompanied himself with rhymed verbal improvisations), the result of

that intense mental collectedness and concentration to which I have

previously alluded as observable only in particular moments of the

highest artificial excitement. The words of one of these rhapsodies I

have easily remembered. I was, perhaps, the more forcibly impressed

with it, as he gave it, because, in the under or mystic current of

its meaning, I fancied that I perceived, and for the first time, a

full consciousness on the part of Usher, of the tottering of his lofty

reason upon her throne. The verses, which were entitled “The Haunted

Palace,” ran very nearly, if not accurately, thus:

I.

In the greenest of our valleys,

By good angels tenanted,

Once a fair and stately palace--

Radiant palace--reared its head.

In the monarch Thought’s dominion--

It stood there!

Never seraph spread a pinion

Over fabric half so fair.

II.

Banners yellow, glorious, golden,

On its roof did float and flow;

(This--all this--was in the olden

Time long ago)

And every gentle air that dallied,

In that sweet day,

Along the ramparts plumed and pallid,

A winged odor went away.

III.

Wanderers in that happy valley

Through two luminous windows saw

Spirits moving musically

To a lute’s well-tunèd law,

Round about a throne, where sitting

(Porphyrogene!)

In state his glory well befitting,

The ruler of the realm was seen.

IV.

And all with pearl and ruby glowing

Was the fair palace door,

Through which came flowing, flowing, flowing,

And sparkling evermore,

A troop of Echoes whose sweet duty

Was but to sing,

In voices of surpassing beauty,

The wit and wisdom of their king.

V.

But evil things, in robes of sorrow,

Assailed the monarch’s high estate

(Ah, let us mourn, for never morrow

Shall dawn upon him, desolate!);

And, round about his home, the glory

That blushed and bloomed

Is but a dim-remembered story

Of the old time entombed.

VI.

And travellers now within that valley,

Through the red-litten windows, see

Vast forms that move fantastically

To a discordant melody;

While, like a rapid ghastly river,

Through the pale door,

A hideous throng rush out forever,

And laugh--but smile no more.

I well remember that suggestions arising from this ballad led us into

a train of thought wherein there became manifest an opinion of Usher’s

which I mention not so much on account of its novelty (for other

men[41] I have thought thus) as on account of the pertinacity with

which he maintained it. This opinion, in its general form, was that of

the sentience of all vegetable things. But, in his disordered fancy,

the idea had assumed a more daring character, and trespassed, under

certain conditions, upon the kingdom of inorganization. I lack words

to express the full extent or the earnest _abandon_ of his persuasion.

The belief, however, was connected (as I have previously hinted) with

the gray stones of the home of his forefathers. The conditions of

the sentience had been here, he imagined, fulfilled in the method of

collocation of these stones--in the order of their arrangement, as

well as in that of the many _fungi_ which overspread them, and of the

decayed trees which stood around--above all, in the long undisturbed

endurance of this arrangement, and in its reduplication in the still

waters of the tarn. Its evidence--the evidence of the sentience--was to

be seen, he said, (and I here started as he spoke), in the gradual yet

certain condensation of an atmosphere of their own about the waters and

the walls. The result was discoverable, he added, in that silent, yet

importunate and terrible influence which for centuries had moulded the

destinies of his family, and which made _him_ what I now saw him--what

he was. Such opinions need no comment, and I will make none.

Our books--the books, which, for years, had formed no small portion of

the mental existence of the invalid--were, as might be supposed, in

strict keeping with this character of phantasm. We pored together over

such works as the _Ververt et Chartreuse_ of Gresset; the _Belphegor_

of Machiavelli; the _Heaven and Hell_ of Swedenborg; the _Subterranean

Voyage of Nicholas Klimm_ by Holberg; the _Chiromancy_ of Robert

Flud, of Jean D’Indaginé, and of De la Chambre; the _Journey into the

Blue Distance_ of Tieck; and the _City of the Sun_ of Campanella.

One favorite volume was a small octavo edition of the _Directorium

Inquisitorium_, by the Dominican Eymeric de Gironne; and there were

passages in Pomponius Mela, about the old African Satyrs and Œgipans,

over which Usher would sit dreaming for hours. His chief delight,

however, was found in the perusal of an exceedingly rare and curious

book in quarto Gothic--the manual of a forgotten church--the _Vigiliæ

Mortuorum secundum Chorum Ecclesiæ Maguntinæ_.

I could not help thinking of the wild ritual of this work, and of its

probable influence upon the hypochondriac, when, one evening, having

informed me abruptly that the lady Madeline was no more, he stated

his intention of preserving her corpse for a fortnight (previously to

its final interment) in one of the numerous vaults within the main

walls of the building. The worldly reason, however, assigned for

this singular proceeding was one which I did not feel at liberty to

dispute. The brother had been led to his resolution, so he told me, by

consideration of the unusual character of the malady of the deceased,

of certain obtrusive and eager inquiries on the part of her medical

men, and of the remote and exposed situation of the burial-ground of

the family. I will not deny that when I called to mind the sinister

countenance of the person whom I met upon the staircase, on the day of

my arrival at the house, I had no desire to oppose what I regarded as

at best but a harmless, and by no means an unnatural, precaution.

At the request of Usher, I personally aided him in the arrangements

for the temporary entombment. The body having been encoffined, we two

alone bore it to its rest. The vault in which we placed it (and which

had been so long unopened that our torches, half smothered in its

oppressive atmosphere, gave us little opportunity for investigation)

was small, damp, and entirely without means of admission for light;

lying, at great depth, immediately beneath that portion of the building

in which was my own sleeping apartment. It had been used, apparently,

in remote feudal times, for the worst purposes of a donjon-keep,

and, in later days, as a place of deposit for powder, or some other

highly combustible substance, as a portion of its floor, and the

whole interior of a long archway through which we reached it, were

carefully sheathed with copper. The door, of massive iron, had been,

also, similarly protected. Its immense weight caused an unusually sharp

grating sound, as it moved upon its hinges.

Having deposited our mournful burden upon tressels within this region

of horror, we partially turned aside the yet unscrewed lid of the

coffin, and looked upon the face of the tenant. A striking similitude

between the brother and sister now first arrested my attention; and

Usher, divining, perhaps, my thoughts, murmured out some few words from

which I learned that the deceased and himself had been twins, and that

sympathies of a scarcely intelligible nature had always existed between

them. Our glances, however, rested not long upon the dead--for we could

not regard her unawed. The disease which had thus entombed the lady in

the maturity of youth, had left, as usual in all maladies of a strictly

cataleptical character, the mockery of a faint blush upon the bosom and

the face, and that suspiciously lingering smile upon the lip which is

so terrible in death. We replaced and screwed down the lid, and, having

secured the door of iron, made our way, with toil, into the scarcely

less gloomy apartments of the upper portion of the house.

And now, some days of bitter grief having elapsed, an observable

change came over the features of the mental disorder of my friend. His

ordinary manner had vanished. His ordinary occupations were neglected

or forgotten. He roamed from chamber to chamber with hurried, unequal,

and objectless step. The pallor of his countenance had assumed, if

possible, a more ghastly hue--but the luminousness of his eye had

utterly gone out. The once occasional huskiness of his tone was heard

no more; and a tremulous quaver, as if of extreme terror, habitually

characterized his utterance. There were times, indeed, when I thought

his unceasingly agitated mind was laboring with some oppressive secret,

to divulge which he struggled for the necessary courage. At times,

again, I was obliged to resolve all into the mere inexplicable vagaries

of madness; for I beheld him gazing upon vacancy for long hours, in

an attitude of the profoundest attention, as if listening to some

imaginary sound. It was no wonder that his condition terrified--that it

infected me. I felt creeping upon me, by slow yet certain degrees, the

wild influence of his own fantastic yet impressive superstitions.

It was, especially, upon retiring to bed late in the night of the

seventh or eighth day after the placing of the lady Madeline within

the donjon, that I experienced the full power of such feelings. Sleep

came not near my couch, while the hours waned and waned away. I

struggled to reason off the nervousness which had dominion over me. I

endeavored to believe that much, if not all of what I felt, was due to

the bewildering influence of the gloomy furniture of the room--of the

dark and tattered draperies, which, tortured into motion by the breath

of a rising tempest, swayed fitfully to and fro upon the walls, and

rustled uneasily about the decorations of the bed. But my efforts were

fruitless. An irrepressible tremor gradually pervaded my frame; and, at

length, there sat upon my very heart an incubus of utterly causeless

alarm. Shaking this off with a gasp and a struggle, I uplifted myself

upon the pillows, and, peering earnestly within the intense darkness

of the chamber, harkened--I know not why, except that an instinctive

spirit prompted me--to certain low and indefinite sounds which came,

through the pauses of the storm, at long intervals, I knew not whence.

Overpowered by an intense sentiment of horror, unaccountable yet

unendurable, I threw on my clothes with haste (for I felt that I should

sleep no more during the night), and endeavored to arouse myself from

the pitiable condition into which I had fallen, by pacing rapidly to

and fro through the apartment.

I had taken but few turns in this manner, when a light step on an

adjoining staircase arrested my attention. I presently recognized it as

that of Usher. In an instant afterward he rapped, with a gentle touch,

at my door, and entered, bearing a lamp. His countenance was, as usual,

cadaverously wan--but, moreover, there was a species of mad hilarity in

his eyes--and evidently restrained hysteria in his whole demeanor. His

air appalled me--but anything was preferable to the solitude which I

had so long endured, and I even welcomed his presence as a relief.

“And you have not seen it?” he said abruptly, after having stared about

him for some moments in silence--“you have not then seen it?--but stay!

you shall.” Thus speaking, and having carefully shaded his lamp, he

hurried to one of the casements, and threw it freely open to the storm.

The impetuous fury of the entering gust nearly lifted us from our

feet. It was, indeed, a tempestuous yet sternly beautiful night, and

one wildly singular in its terror and its beauty. A whirlwind had

apparently collected its force in our vicinity; for there were frequent

and violent alterations in the direction of the wind; and the exceeding

density of the clouds (which hung so low as to press upon the turrets

of the house) did not prevent our perceiving the life-like velocity

with which they flew careering from all points against each other,

without passing away into the distance. I say that even their exceeding

density did not prevent our perceiving this--yet we had no glimpse of

the moon or stars--nor was there any flashing forth of the lightning.

But the under surfaces of the huge masses of agitated vapor, as well

as all terrestrial objects immediately around us, were glowing in the

unnatural light of a faintly luminous and distinctly visible gaseous

exhalation which hung about and enshrouded the mansion.

“You must not--you shall not behold this!” said I, shudderingly, to

Usher, as I led him, with a gentle violence, from the window to a seat.

“These appearances, which bewilder you, are merely electrical phenomena

not uncommon--or it may be that they have their ghastly origin in

the rank miasma of the tarn. Let us close this casement--the air is

chilling and dangerous to your frame. Here is one of your favorite

romances. I will read, and you shall listen;--and so we will pass away

this terrible night together.”

The antique volume which I had taken up was the _Mad Trist_ of Sir

Launcelot Canning; but I had called it a favorite of Usher’s more

in sad jest than in earnest; for, in truth, there is little in its

uncouth and unimaginative prolixity which could have had interest for

the lofty and spiritual ideality of my friend. It was, however, the

only book immediately at hand; and I indulged a vague hope that the

excitement which now agitated the hypochondriac, might find relief

(for the history of mental disorder is full of similar anomalies) even

in the extremeness of the folly which I should read. Could I have

judged, indeed, by the wild, overstrained air of vivacity with which he

harkened, or apparently harkened, to the words of the tale, I might

well have congratulated myself upon the success of my design.

I had arrived at that well-known portion of the story where Ethelred,

the hero of the _Trist_, having sought in vain for peaceable admission

into the dwelling of the hermit, proceeds to make good an entrance by

force. Here, it will be remembered, the words of the narrative run thus:

“And Ethelred, who was by nature of a doughty heart, and who was now

mighty withal, on account of the powerfulness of the wine which he

had drunken, waited no longer to hold parley with the hermit, who, in

sooth, was of an obstinate and maliceful turn; but, feeling the rain

upon his shoulders, and fearing the rising of the tempest, uplifted his

mace outright, and, with blows, made quickly room in the plankings of

the door for his gauntleted hand; and now pulling therewith sturdily,

he so cracked, and ripped, and tore all asunder, that the noise of the

dry and hollow-sounding wood alarummed and reverberated throughout the

forest.”

At the termination of this sentence I started, and for a moment paused;

for it appeared to me (although I at once concluded that my excited

fancy had deceived me)--it appeared to me that, from some very remote

portion of the mansion, there came, indistinctly, to my ears what

might have been, in its exact similarity of character, the echo (but

a stifled and dull one certainly) of the very cracking and ripping

sound which Sir Launcelot had so particularly described. It was, beyond

doubt, the coincidence alone which had arrested my attention; for,

amid the rattling of the sashes of the casements, and the ordinary

commingled noises of the still increasing storm, the sound, in itself,

had nothing, surely, which should have interested or disturbed me. I

continued the story:

“But the good champion Ethelred, now entering within the door, was sore

enraged and amazed to perceive no signal of the maliceful hermit; but,

in the stead thereof, a dragon of a scaly and prodigious demeanor, and

of a fiery tongue, which sate in guard before a palace of gold, with a

floor of silver; and upon the wall there hung a shield of shining brass

with this legend enwritten--

Who entereth herein, a conqueror hath bin;

Who slayeth the dragon, the shield he shall win;

And Ethelred uplifted his mace, and struck upon the head of the dragon,

which fell before him, and gave up his pesty breath, with a shriek so

horrid and harsh, and withal so piercing, that Ethelred had fain to

close his ears with his hands against the dreadful noise of it, the

like whereof was never before heard.”

Here again I paused abruptly, and now with a feeling of wild

amazement--for there could be no doubt whatever that, in this instance,

I did actually hear (although from what direction it proceeded I

found it impossible to say) a low and apparently distant, but harsh,

protracted, and most unusual screaming or grating sound--the exact

counterpart of what my fancy had already conjured up for the dragon’s

unnatural shriek as described by the romancer.

Oppressed, as I certainly was, upon the occurrence of this second and

most extraordinary coincidence, by a thousand conflicting sensations,

in which wonder and extreme terror were predominant, I still retained

sufficient presence of mind to avoid exciting, by any observation,

the sensitive nervousness of my companion. I was by no means certain

that he had noticed the sounds in question; although, assuredly, a

strange alteration had, during the last few minutes, taken place

in his demeanor. From a position fronting my own, he had gradually

brought round his chair, so as to sit with his face to the door of the

chamber; and thus I could but partially perceive his features, although

I saw that his lips trembled as if he were murmuring inaudibly. His

head had dropped upon his breast--yet I knew that he was not asleep,

from the wide and rigid opening of the eye as I caught a glance of it

in profile. The motion of his body, too, was at variance with this

idea--for he rocked from side to side with a gentle yet constant and

uniform sway. Having rapidly taken notice of all this, I resumed the

narrative of Sir Launcelot, which thus proceeded:

“And now the champion, having escaped from the terrible fury of the

dragon, bethinking himself of the brazen shield, and of the breaking up

of the enchantment which was upon it, removed the carcass from out of

the way before him, and approached valorously over the silver pavement

of the castle to where the shield was upon the wall; which in sooth

tarried not for his full coming, but fell down at his feet upon the

silver floor, with a mighty great and terrible ringing sound.”

No sooner had these syllables passed my lips, than--as if a shield

of brass had indeed, at the moment, fallen heavily upon a floor of

silver--I became aware of a distinct, hollow, metallic and clangorous,

yet apparently muffled reverberation. Completely unnerved, I leaped to

my feet; but the measured rocking movement of Usher was undisturbed.

I rushed to the chair in which he sat. His eyes were bent fixedly

before him, and throughout his whole countenance there reigned a stony

rigidity. But, as I placed my hand upon his shoulder, there came a

strong shudder over his whole person; a sickly smile quivered about his

lips; and I saw that he spoke in a low, hurried, and gibbering murmur,

as if unconscious of my presence. Bending closely over him, I at length

drank in the hideous import of his words.

“Not hear it?--yes, I hear it, and _have_ heard it.

Long--long--long--many minutes, many hours, many days, have I heard

it--yet I dared not--oh pity me, miserable wretch that I am!--I

dared not--I _dared_ not speak! _We have put her living in the

tomb!_ Said I not that my senses were acute? I _now_ tell you that

I heard her first feeble movements in the hollow coffin. I heard

them--many, many days ago--yet I dared not--_I dared not speak!_ And

now--to-night--Ethelred--ha! ha!--the breaking of the hermit’s door,

and the death-cry of the dragon, and the clangor of the shield!--say,

rather, the rending of her coffin, and the grating of the iron hinges

of her prison, and her struggles within the coppered archway of the

vault! Oh whither shall I fly? Will she not be here anon? Is she not

hurrying to upbraid me for my haste? Have I not heard her footstep

on the stair? Do I not distinguish that heavy and horrible beating

of her heart? Madman!”--here he sprang furiously to his feet, and

shrieked out his syllables, as if in the effort he were giving up his

soul--“_Madman! I tell you that she now stands without the door!_”

As if in the superhuman energy of his utterance there had been found

the potency of a spell--the huge antique pannels to which the speaker

pointed threw slowly back, upon the instant, their ponderous and ebony

jaws. It was the work of the rushing gust--but then without those doors

there _did_ stand the lofty and enshrouded figure of the lady Madeline

of Usher. There was blood upon her white robes, and the evidence

of some bitter struggle upon every portion of her emaciated frame.

For a moment she remained trembling and reeling to and fro upon the

threshold--then, with a low, moaning cry, fell heavily inward upon the

person of her brother, and in her violent and now final death-agonies,

bore him to the floor a corpse, and a victim to the terrors he had

anticipated.

From that chamber, and from that mansion, I fled aghast. The storm

was still abroad in all its wrath as I found myself crossing the old

causeway. Suddenly there shot along the path a wild light, and I turned

to see whence a gleam so unusual could have issued; for the vast house

and its shadows were alone behind me. The radiance was that of the

full, setting, and blood-red moon, which now shone vividly through

that once barely-discernible fissure, of which I have before spoken as

extending from the roof of the building, in a zigzag direction, to the

base. While I gazed, this fissure rapidly widened--there came a fierce

breath of the whirlwind--the entire orb of the satellite burst at

once upon my sight--my brain reeled as I saw the mighty walls rushing

asunder--there was a long tumultuous shouting sound like the voice of a

thousand waters--and the deep and dank tarn at my feet closed sullenly

and silently over the fragments of the “_House of Usher_.”

NATHANIEL PARKER WILLIS

1806–1867

Town talk sums up much of Willis, both what he was and what he wrote.

He lived in the public eye; he wrote of the hour, for the hour.

Naturally, therefore, his work was dying while he was yet alive. Now he

is hardly more than a name. Of Andover and Yale what little impress he

received was soon rubbed away by a life in which the daily cultivation

of eminent society was industriously made to yield the daily crop of

journalism. Indeed, a man so quick to take every new impression was

hardly the man to bear the marks of many old ones. And of course the

happy fluency that gave him even in youth a current popularity could

dispense with that other and more deliberate merit of form. Form, since

he had no native sense of it, and could get on swimmingly without it,

he never seriously pursued. Few story-writers have spoiled so many good

plots. Not only is he chatty, digressive, episodic, but he rarely has

any clear solution and he never culminates. Such merit as _The Inlet of

Peach Blossoms_ has in this aspect is quite exceptional. Piquant, even

vivid sometimes, in sketchy description, he has no composition. This,

doubtless, is why of the hundred tales that pleased his public not one

is read by ours.

_Pencillings by the Way_ were supplied from Paris and London in

the early ’30’s to the New York _Mirror_, and in collective form

entertained both Britons and Americans. The characteristic title would

serve as well for his subsequent collections. A list is appended to the

biography in the American Men of Letters series by Professor Beers,

who has also edited a volume of selections. A New York editor for many

years, Willis touched at so many points the literary life of his time

that this biography has been made admirably significant of its main

social aspects. In fact, the life of Willis has more enduring interest

than his works.

THE INLET OF PEACH BLOSSOMS

[_From “Dashes at Life with a Free Pencil,” 1845. The story was

first published between 1840 and 1845, probably in the “New Mirror”

of New York._]

The Emperor Yuentsoong, of the dynasty Chow, was the most magnificent

of the long-descended succession of Chinese sovereigns. On his first

accession to the throne, his character was so little understood, that

a conspiracy was set on foot among the yellow-caps, or eunuchs, to

put out his eyes, and place upon the throne the rebel Szema, in whose

warlike hands, they asserted, the empire would more properly maintain

its ancient glory. The gravity and reserve which these myrmidons of

the palace had construed into stupidity and fear, soon assumed another

complexion, however. The eunuchs silently disappeared; the mandarins

and princes whom they had seduced from their allegiance were made loyal

subjects by a generous pardon; and, in a few days after the period

fixed upon for the consummation of the plot, Yuentsoong set forth in

complete armor at the head of his troops to give battle to the rebel in

the mountains.

In Chinese annals this first enterprise of the youthful Yuentsoong is

recorded with great pomp and particularity. Szema was a Tartar prince

of uncommon ability, young, like the emperor, and, during the few last

imbecile years of the old sovereign, he had gathered strength in his

rebellion, till now he was at the head of ninety thousand men, all

soldiers of repute and tried valor. The historian has, unfortunately,

dimmed the emperor’s fame to European eyes by attributing his wonderful

achievements in this expedition to his superiority in arts of magic.

As this account of his exploits is only prefatory to our tale, we

will simply give the reader an idea of the style of the historian

by translating literally a passage or two of his description of the

battle:--

“Szema now took refuge within a cleft of the mountain, and Yuentsoong,

upon his swift steed, outstripping the body-guard in his ardor, dashed

amid the paralyzed troops with poised spear, his eyes fixed only on

the rebel. There was a silence of an instant, broken only by the

rattling hoofs of the intruder; and then, with dishevelled hair and

waving sword, Szema uttered a fearful imprecation. In a moment the wind

rushed, the air blackened, and, with the suddenness of a fallen rock, a

large cloud enveloped the rebel, and innumerable men and horses issued

out of it. Wings flapped against the eyes of the emperor’s horse,

hellish noises screamed in his ears, and, completely beyond control,

the animal turned and fled back through the narrow pass, bearing his

imperial master safe into the heart of his army.

“Yuentsoong, that night, commanded some of his most expert soldiers

to scale the beetling heights of the ravine, bearing upon their backs

the blood of swine, sheep, and dogs, with other impure things, and

these they were ordered to shower upon the combatants at the sound of

the imperial clarion. On the following morning, Szema came forth again

to offer battle, with flags displayed, drums beating, and shouts of

triumph and defiance. As on the day previous, the bold emperor divided,

in his impatience, rank after rank of his own soldiery, and, followed

closely by his body-guard, drove the rebel army once more into their

fastness. Szema sat upon his war-horse as before, intrenched amid

his officers and ranks of the tallest Tartar spearmen; and, as the

emperor contended hand to hand with one of the opposing rebels, the

magic imprecation was again uttered, the air again filled with cloudy

horsemen and chariots, and the mountain shaken with discordant thunder.

Backing his willing steed, the emperor blew a long sharp note upon

his silver clarion, and, in an instant, the sun broke through the

darkness, and the air seemed filled with paper men, horses of straw,

and phantoms dissolving into smoke. Yuentsoong and Szema now stood face

to face, with only mortal aid and weapons.”

The historian goes on to record that the two armies suspended

hostilities at the command of their leaders, and that, the emperor

and his rebel subject having engaged in single combat, Yuentsoong was

victorious, and returned to his capital with the formidable enemy whose

life he had spared, riding beside him like a brother. The conqueror’s

career, for several years after this, seems to have been a series of

exploits of personal valor; and the Tartar prince shared in all his

dangers and pleasures, his inseparable friend. It was during this

period of romantic friendship that the events occurred which have made

Yuentsoong one of the idols of Chinese poetry.

By the side of a lake in a distant province of the empire, stood one

of the imperial palaces of pleasure, seldom visited, and almost in

ruins. Hither, in one of his moody periods of repose from war, came

the conqueror Yuentsoong, for the first time in years separated from

his faithful Szema. In disguise, and with only one or two attendants,

he established himself in the long silent halls of his ancestor

Tsinchemong, and with his boat upon the lake, and his spear in the

forest, seemed to find all the amusement of which his melancholy

was susceptible. On a certain day in the latter part of April, the

emperor had set his sail to a fragrant south wind, and, reclining on

the cushions of his bark, watched the shore as it softly and silently

glided past, and, the lake being entirely encircled by the imperial

forest, he felt immersed in what he believed to be the solitude of a

deserted paradise. After skirting the fringed sheet of water in this

manner for several hours, he suddenly observed that he had shot through

a streak of peach-blossoms floating from the shore, and at the same

moment he became conscious that his boat was slightly headed off by a

current setting outward. Putting up his helm, he returned to the spot,

and beneath the drooping branches of some luxuriant willows, thus

early in leaf, he discovered the mouth of an inlet, which, but for the

floating blossoms it brought to the lake, would have escaped the notice

of the closest observer. The emperor now lowered his sail, unshipped

the slender mast, and betook him to the oars; and, as the current

was gentle, and the inlet wider within the mouth, he sped rapidly on

through what appeared to be but a lovely and luxuriant vale of the

forest. Still, those blushing betrayers of some flowering spot beyond

extended like a rosy clew before him; and with impulse of muscles

swelled and indurated in warlike exercise, the swift keel divided the

besprent mirror winding temptingly onward, and, for a long hour, the

royal oarsman untiringly threaded this sweet vein of the wilderness.

Resting a moment on his oars while the slender bark still kept her way,

he turned his head toward what seemed to be an opening in the forest on

the left, and in the same instant the boat ran head on, to the shore,

the inlet at this point almost doubling on its course. Beyond, by

the humming of bees and the singing of birds, there should be a spot

more open than the tangled wilderness he had passed; and, disengaging

his prow from the alders, he shoved the boat again into the stream,

and pulled round a high rock, by which the inlet seemed to have been

compelled to curve its channel. The edge of a bright green meadow now

stole into the perspective, and, still widening with his approach,

disclosed a slightly rising terrace clustered with shrubs, and studded

here and there with vases; and farther on, upon the same side of the

stream, a skirting edge of peach-trees loaded with the gay blossoms

which had guided him thither.

Astonished at these signs of habitation in what was well understood to

be a privileged wilderness, Yuentsoong kept his boat in mid-stream, and

with his eyes vigilantly on the alert, slowly made headway against the

current. A few strokes with his oars, however, traced another curve of

the inlet, and brought into view a grove of ancient trees scattered

over a gently ascending lawn, beyond which, hidden from the river

till now by the projecting shoulder of a mound, lay a small pavilion

with gilded pillars glittering like fairy work in the sun. The emperor

fastened his boat to a tree leaning over the water, and with his short

spear in his hand, bounded upon the shore, and took his way toward

the shining structure, his heart beating with a feeling of wonder and

interest altogether new. On a nearer approach, the bases of the pillars

seemed decayed by time, and the gilding weather-stained and tarnished;

but the trellised porticoes on the southern aspect were laden with

flowering shrubs in vases of porcelain, and caged birds sang between

the pointed arches, and there were manifest signs of luxurious taste,

elegance, and care.

A moment with an indefinable timidity the emperor paused before

stepping from the greensward upon the marble floor of the pavilion, and

in that moment a curtain was withdrawn from the door, and a female,

with step suddenly arrested by the sight of the stranger, stood

motionless before him. Ravished with her extraordinary beauty, and

awe-struck with the suddenness of the apparition and the novelty of the

adventure, the emperor’s tongue cleaved to his mouth, and ere he could

summon resolution, even for a gesture of courtesy, the fair creature

had fled within, and the curtain closed the entrance as before.

Wishing to recover his composure, so strangely troubled, and taking

it for granted that some other inmate of the house would soon appear,

Yuentsoong turned his steps aside to the grove; and with his head

bowed, and his spear in the hollow of his arm, tried to recall more

vividly the features of the vision he had seen. He had walked but a few

paces when there came toward him from the upper skirt of the grove, a

man of unusual stature and erectness, with white hair unbraided on his

shoulders, and every sign of age except infirmity of step and mien. The

emperor’s habitual dignity had now rallied, and on his first salutation

the countenance of the old man softened, and he quickened his pace to

meet and give him welcome.

“You are noble?” he said with confident inquiry.

Yuentsoong colored slightly.

“I am,” he replied, “Lew-melin, a prince of the empire.”

“And by what accident here?”

Yuentsoong explained the clew of the peach-blossoms, and represented

himself as exiled for a time to the deserted palace upon the lakes.

“I have a daughter,” said the old man abruptly, “who has never looked

on human face save mine.”

“Pardon me,” replied his visitor, “I have thoughtlessly intruded on her

sight, and a face more heavenly fair”--

The emperor hesitated, but the old man smiled encouragingly.

“It is time,” he said, “that I should provide a younger defender

for my bright Teh-leen, and Heaven has sent you in the season of

peach-blossoms with provident kindness.[42] You have frankly revealed

to me your name and rank. Before I offer you the hospitality of my

roof, I must tell you mine. I am Choo-tseen, the outlaw, once of your

own rank, and the general of the Celestial army.”

The emperor started, remembering that this celebrated rebel was the

terror of his father’s throne.

“You have heard my history,” the old man continued. “I had been,

before my rebellion, in charge of the imperial palace on the lake.

Anticipating an evil day, I secretly prepared this retreat for my

family; and when my soldiers deserted me at the battle of Ke-chow, and

a price was set upon my head, hither I fled with my women and children;

and the last alive is my beautiful Teh-leen. With this brief outline

of my life, you are at liberty to leave me as you came, or to enter my

house on the condition that you become the protector of my child.”

The emperor eagerly turned toward the pavilion, and, with a step as

light as his own, the erect and stately outlaw hastened to lift the

curtain before him. Leaving his guest for a moment in the outer

apartment, he entered to an inner chamber in search of his daughter,

whom he brought, panting with fear, and blushing with surprise and

delight, to her future lover and protector. A portion of an historical

tale so delicate as the description of the heroine is not work for

imitators, however, and we must copy strictly the portrait of the

matchless Teh-leen, as drawn by Le-pih, the Anacreon of Chinese poetry

and the contemporary and favorite of Yuentsoong.

“Teh-leen was born while the morning star shone upon the bosom of her

mother. Her eye was like the unblemished blue lily, and its light

like the white gem unfractured. The plum-blossom is most fragrant

when the cold has penetrated its stem, and the mother of Teh-leen had

known sorrow. The head of her child drooped in thought, like a violet

overladen with dew. Bewildering was Teh-leen. Her mouth’s corners were

dimpled, yet pensive. The arch of her brows was like the vein in the

tulip’s heart, and the lashes shaded the blushes on her cheek. With the

delicacy of a pale rose, her complexion put to shame the floating light

of day. Her waist, like a thread in fineness, seemed ready to break,

yet was it straight and erect, and feared not the fanning breeze; and

her shadowy grace was as difficult to delineate as the form of the

white bird rising from the ground by moonlight. The natural gloss of

her hair resembled the uncertain sheen of calm water, yet without the

false aid of unguents. The native intelligence of her mind seemed to

have gained strength by retirement; and he who beheld her thought not

of her as human. Of rare beauty, of rarer intellect, was Teh-leen, and

her heart responded to the poet’s lute.”

We have not space, nor could we, without copying directly from the

admired Le-pih, venture to describe the bringing of Teh-leen to court,

and her surprise at finding herself the favorite of the emperor. It

is a romantic circumstance, besides, which has had its parallels in

other countries. But the sad sequel to the loves of poor Teh-leen is

but recorded in the cold page of history; and if the poet, who wound

up the climax of her perfections with her susceptibility to his lute,

embalmed her sorrows in verse, he was probably too politic to bring it

ever to light. Pass we to these neglected and unadorned passages of her

history.

Yuentsoong’s nature was passionately devoted and confiding; and, like

two brothers with one favorite sister, lived together Teh-leen, Szema,

and the emperor. The Tartar prince, if his heart knew a mistress

before the arrival of Teh-leen at the palace, owned afterward no

other than her; and, fearless of check or suspicion from the noble

confidence and generous friendship of Yuentsoong, he seemed to live

but for her service, and to have neither energies nor ambition except

for the winning of her smiles. Szema was of great personal beauty,

frank when it did not serve him to be wily, bold in his pleasures,

and of manners almost femininely soft and voluptuous. He was renowned

as a soldier, and, for Teh-leen, he became a poet and master of the

lute; and, like all men formed for ensnaring the heart of women, he

seemed to forget himself in the absorbing devotion of his idolatry.

His friend the emperor was of another mould. Yuentsoong’s heart had

three chambers,--love, friendship, and glory. Teh-leen was but a third

in his existence, yet he loved her,--the sequel will show how well.

In person, he was less beautiful than majestic, of large stature,

and with a brow and lip naturally stern and lofty. He seldom smiled,

even upon Teh-leen, whom he would watch for hours in pensive and

absorbed delight; but his smile, when it did awake, broke over his sad

countenance like morning. All men loved and honored Yuentsoong; and all

men, except only the emperor, looked on Szema with antipathy. To such

natures as the former, women give all honor and approbation; but, for

such as the latter, they reserve their weakness!

Wrapt up in his friend and mistress, and reserved in his intercourse

with his counsellors, Yuentsoong knew not that, throughout the imperial

city, Szema was called “the _kieu_,” or robber-bird, and his fair

Teh-leen openly charged with dishonor. Going out alone to hunt, as

was his custom, and having left his signet with Szema, to pass and

repass through the private apartments at his pleasure, his horse fell

with him unaccountably in the open field. Somewhat superstitious, and

remembering that good spirits sometimes “knit the grass” when other

obstacles fail to bar our way into danger, the emperor drew rein,

and returned to his palace. It was an hour after noon, and, having

dismissed his attendants at the city gate, he entered by a postern to

the imperial garden, and bethought himself of the concealed couch in

a cool grot by a fountain (a favorite retreat, sacred to himself and

Teh-leen), where he fancied it would be refreshing to sleep away the

sultriness of the remaining hours till evening. Sitting down by the

side of the murmuring fount, he bathed his feet, and left his slippers

on the lip of the basin to be unencumbered in his repose within, and

so, with unechoing step, entered the resounding grotto. Alas! there

slumbered the faithless friend with the guilty Teh-leen upon his bosom!

Grief struck through the noble heart of the emperor like a sword in

cold blood. With a word he could consign to torture and death the

robber of his honor, but there was agony in his bosom deeper than

revenge. He turned silently away, recalling his horse and huntsmen,

and, outstripping all, plunged on through the forest till night

gathered around him.

Yuentsoong had been absent many days from his capital, and his subjects

were murmuring their fears for his safety, when a messenger arrived to

the counsellors informing them of the appointment of the captive Tartar

prince to the government of the province of Szechuen, the second honor

of the Celestial empire. A private order accompanied the announcement,

commanding the immediate departure of Szema for the scene of his new

authority. Inexplicable as was this riddle to the multitude, there were

those who read it truly by their knowledge of the magnanimous soul of

the emperor; and among these was the crafty object of his generosity.

Losing no time, he set forward with great pomp for Szechuen, and in

their joy to see him no more in the palace, the slighted princes of

the empire forgave his unmerited advancement. Yuentsoong returned to

his capital; but to the terror of his counsellors and people, his hair

was blanched white as the head of an old man! He was pale as well, but

he was cheerful and kind beyond his wont, and to Teh-leen untiring in

pensive and humble attentions. He pleaded only impaired health and

restless slumbers as an apology for nights of solitude. Once Teh-leen

penetrated to his lonely chamber, but by the dim night lamp she saw

that the scroll over the window[43] was changed, and instead of the

stimulus to glory which formerly hung in golden letters before his

eyes, there was a sentence written tremblingly in black:--

“The close wing of love covers the death-throb of honor.”

Six months from this period the capital was thrown into a tumult with

the intelligence that the province of Szechuen was in rebellion, and

Szema at the head of a numerous army on his way to seize the throne of

Yuentsoong. This last sting betrayed the serpent even to the forgiving

emperor, and tearing the reptile at last from his heart, he entered

with the spirit of other times into the warlike preparations. The

imperial army was in a few days on its march, and at Keo-yang the

opposing forces met and prepared for encounter.

With a dread of the popular feeling toward Teh-leen, Yuentsoong had

commanded for her a close litter, and she was borne after the imperial

standard in the centre of the army. On the eve before the battle, ere

the watch-fires were lit, the emperor came to her tent, set apart from

his own, and with the delicate care and kind gentleness from which

he never varied, inquired how her wants were supplied, and bade her

thus early farewell for the night; his own custom of passing among

his soldiers on the evening previous to an engagement, promising to

interfere with what was usually his last duty before retiring to his

couch. Teh-leen on this occasion seemed moved by some irrepressible

emotion, and as he rose to depart, she fell forward upon her face, and

bathed his feet with her tears. Attributing it to one of those excesses

of feeling to which all, but especially hearts ill at ease, are liable,

the noble monarch gently raised her, and with repeated efforts at

re-assurance, committed her to the hands of her women. His own heart

beat far from tranquilly, for, in the excess of his pity for her grief

he had unguardedly called her by one of the sweet names of their early

days of love,--strange word now upon his lip,--and it brought back,

spite of memory and truth, happiness that would not be forgotten!

It was past midnight, and the moon was riding high in heaven, when the

emperor, returning between the lengthening watch-fires, sought the

small lamp which, suspended like a star above his own tent, guided

him back from the irregular mazes of the camp. Paled by the intense

radiance of the moonlight, the small globe of alabaster at length

became apparent to his weary eye, and with one glance at the peaceful

beauty of the heavens, he parted the curtained door beneath it, and

stood within. The Chinese historian asserts that a bird, from whose

wing Teh-leen had once plucked an arrow, restoring it to liberty and

life, in grateful attachment to her destiny, removed the lamp from the

imperial tent, and suspended it over hers. The emperor stood beside

her couch. Startled at his inadvertent error, he turned to retire;

but the lifted curtain let in a flood of moonlight upon the sleeping

features of Teh-leen, and like dewdrops the undried tears glistened in

her silken lashes. A lamp burned faintly in the inner apartment of the

tent, and her attendants slept soundly. His soft heart gave way. Taking

up the lamp, he held it over his beautiful mistress, and once more

gazed passionately and unrestrainedly on her unparalleled beauty. The

past--the early past--was alone before him. He forgave her,--there, as

she slept, unconscious of the throbbing of his injured but noble heart

so close beside her,--he forgave her in the long silent abysses of his

soul! Unwilling to wake her from her tranquil slumber, but promising to

himself, from that hour, such sweets of confiding love as had well-nigh

been lost to him forever, he imprinted one kiss upon the parted lips of

Teh-leen, and sought his couch for slumber.

Ere daybreak the emperor was aroused by one of his attendants with news

too important for delay. Szema, the rebel, had been arrested in the

imperial camp, disguised, and on his way back to his own forces; and

like wildfire the information had spread among the soldiery, who, in

a state of mutinous excitement, were with difficulty restrained from

rushing upon the tent of Teh-leen. At the door of his tent, Yuentsoong

found messengers from the alarmed princes and officers of the different

commands, imploring immediate aid and the imperial presence to allay

the excitement; and while the emperor prepared to mount his horse, the

guard arrived with the Tartar prince, ignominiously tied, and bearing

marks of rough usage from his indignant captors.

“Loose him!” cried the emperor, in a voice of thunder.

The cords were severed, and with a glance whose ferocity expressed

no thanks, Szema reared himself up to his fullest height, and looked

scornfully around him. Daylight had now broke, and as the group stood

upon an eminence in sight of the whole army, shouts began to ascend,

and the armed multitude, breaking through all restraint, rolled in

toward the centre. Attracted by the commotion, Yuentsoong turned to

give some orders to those near him, when Szema suddenly sprang upon an

officer of the guard, wrenched his drawn sword from his grasp, and in

an instant was lost to sight in the tent of Teh-leen. A sharp scream,

a second of thought, and forth again rushed the desperate murderer,

with his sword flinging drops of blood, and ere a foot stirred in the

paralyzed group, the avenging cimeter of Yuentsoong had cleft him to

the chin.

A hush, as if the whole army was struck dumb by a bolt from heaven,

followed this rapid tragedy. Dropping the polluted sword from his hand,

the emperor, with uncertain step, and the pallor of death upon his

countenance, entered the fatal tent.

He came no more forth that day. The army was marshalled by the princes,

and the rebels were routed with great slaughter; but Yuentsoong never

more wielded sword. “He pined to death,” says the historian, “with the

wane of the same moon that shone upon the forgiveness of Teh-leen.”

CAROLINE MATILDA STANSBURY KIRKLAND

1801–1864

Mrs. Kirkland was recognised as one of the New York literary set during

the flourishing of Willis. Her marriage to Professor William Kirkland

(1827) took her to Central New York, and in 1839 to Michigan frontier.

The emigration produced immediately _A New Home--Who’ll Follow_ (New

York, 1839). “Miss Mitford’s charming sketches of village life,” she

says in her preface, “suggested the form.” It is the best of her books,

not only in its distinct historical value as a document of frontier

life, but also in its vivacity and keen intelligence of style. Of

structure there is very little, a mere series of descriptions, with

an occasional sketch in narrative. Returning to New York in 1842, she

opened a school for girls, wrote for the magazines, and published, as

a sequel to her first book, _Forest Life_ (New York and Boston, 1842).

Her tales, collected under the title _Western Clearings_ (New York,

1846), show the same qualities as her descriptions--racy dialect,

dashes of penetrative characterisation, quick suggestion of manners;

but their narrative consistency is not usually strong enough to hold

interest. She returned to her first form in _Holidays Abroad_ (1849).

After that the titles of her books suggest hack-work. Meantime Mr.

Kirkland had won his place as an editor. Poe included them both, the

husband perfunctorily, the wife cordially, among his _Literati_.

THE BEE-TREE

[_From “Western Clearings” 1846, a collection composed both of

contributions to magazines and annuals and of new matter. The

reprint below omits an explanatory introduction and an episodic

love-story which, besides being feeble, is rendered quite

superfluous by the dénouement._]

It was on one of the lovely mornings of our ever lovely autumn, so

early that the sun had scarcely touched the tops of the still verdant

forest, that Silas Ashburn and his eldest son sallied forth for a

day’s chopping on the newly-purchased land of a rich settler, who had

been but a few months among us. The tall form of the father, lean

and gaunt as the very image of Famine, derived little grace from the

rags which streamed from the elbows of his almost sleeveless coat, or

flapped round the tops of his heavy boots, as he strode across the long

causeway that formed the communication from his house to the dry land.

Poor Joe’s costume showed, if possible, a still greater need of the

aid of that useful implement, the needle. His mother is one who thinks

little of the ancient proverb that commends the stitch in time; and the

clothing under her care sometimes falls in pieces, seam by seam. For

want of this occasional aid is rendered more especially necessary by

the slightness of the original sewing; so that the brisk breeze of the

morning gave the poor boy no faint resemblance to a tall young aspen,

“With all its leaves fast fluttering, all at once.”

The little conversation which passed between the father and son was

such as necessarily makes up much of the talk of the poor.

“If we hadn’t had sich bad luck this summer,” said Mr. Ashburn, “losing

that heifer, and the pony, and them three hogs,--all in that plaguy

spring-hole, too,--I thought to have bought that timbered forty of

Dean. It would have squared out my farm jist about right.”

“The pony didn’t die in the spring-hole, father,” said Joe.

“No, he did not, but he got his death there, for all. He never stopped

shiverin’ from the time he fell in. _You_ thought he had the agur, but

I know’d well enough what ailded him; but I wasn’t agoin’ to let Dean

know, because he’d ha’ thought himself so blam’d cunning, after all

he’d said to me about that spring-hole. If the agur could kill, Joe,

we’d all ha’ been dead long ago.”

Joe sighed,--a sigh of assent. They walked on musingly.

“This is going to be a good job of Keene’s,” continued Mr. Ashburn,

turning to a brighter theme, as they crossed the road and struck into

the “timbered land,” on their way to the scene of the day’s operations.

“He has bought three eighties, all lying close together, and he’ll

want as much as one forty cleared right off; and I’ve a good notion

to take the fencin’ of it as well as the choppin’. He’s got plenty of

money, and they say he don’t shave quite so close as some. But I tell

you, Joe, if I do take the job, you must turn to like a catamount, for

I ain’t a-going to make a nigger o’ myself, and let my children do

nothing but eat.”

“Well, father,” responded Joe, whose pale face gave token of any thing

but high living, “I’ll do what I can; but you know I never work two

days at choppin’ but what I have the agur like sixty,--and a feller

can’t work when he’s got the agur.”

“Not while the fit’s on, to be sure,” said the father, “but I’ve worked

many an afternoon after my fit was over, when my head felt as big as a

half-bushel, and my hands would ha’ sizzed if I had put ’em in water.

Poor folks has got to work--but Joe! if there isn’t bees, by golley! I

wonder if anybody’s been a baitin’ for ’em? Stop! hush! watch which way

they go!”

And with breathless interest--forgetful of all troubles, past, present,

and future--they paused to observe the capricious wheelings and

flittings of the little cluster, as they tried every flower on which

the sun shone, or returned again and again to such as suited best their

discriminating taste. At length, after a weary while, one suddenly rose

into the air with a loud whizz, and after balancing a moment on a level

with the tree-tops, darted off, like a well-sent arrow, toward the

east, followed instantly by the whole busy company, till not a loiterer

remained.

“Well! if this isn’t luck!” exclaimed Ashburn, exultingly; “they make

right for Keene’s land! We’ll have ’em! go ahead, Joe, and keep your

eye on ’em!”

Joe obeyed so well in both points that he not only outran his father,

but very soon turned a summerset over a gnarled root or _grub_ which

lay in his path. This _faux pas_ nearly demolished one side of his

face, and what remained of his jacket sleeve, while his father, not

quite so heedless, escaped falling, but tore his boot almost off with

what he called “a contwisted stub of the toe.”

But these were trifling inconveniences, and only taught them to use a

little more caution in their eagerness. They followed on, unweariedly;

crossed several fences, and threaded much of Mr. Keene’s tract of

forest-land, scanning with practised eye every decayed tree, whether

standing or prostrate, until at length, in the side of a gigantic but

leafless oak, they espied, some forty feet from the ground, the “sweet

home” of the immense swarm whose scouts had betrayed their hiding-place.

“The Indians have been here;” said Ashburn; “you see they’ve felled

this saplin’ agin the bee-tree, so as they could climb up to the hole;

but the red devils have been disturbed afore they had time to dig it

out. If they’d had axes to cut down the big tree, they wouldn’t have

left a smitchin o’ honey, they’re such tarnal thieves!”

Mr. Ashburn’s ideas of morality were much shocked at the thought of the

dishonesty of the Indians, who, as is well known, have no rights of any

kind; but considering himself as first finder, the lawful proprietor

of this much-coveted treasure, gained too without the trouble of a

protracted search, or the usual amount of baiting, and burning of

honeycombs, he lost no time in taking possession after the established

mode.

To cut his initials with his axe on the trunk of the bee-tree, and

to make _blazes_ on several of the trees he had passed, detained him

but a few minutes; and with many a cautious noting of the surrounding

localities, and many a charge to Joe “not to say nothing to nobody,”

Silas turned his steps homeward, musing on the important fact that

he had had good luck for once, and planning important business quite

foreign to the day’s chopping.

Now it so happened that Mr. Keene, who is a restless old gentleman,

and, moreover, quite green in the dignity of a land-holder, thought

proper to turn his horse’s head, for this particular morning ride,

directly towards these same “three eighties,” on which he had engaged

Ashburn and his son to commence the important work of clearing. Mr.

Keene is low of stature, rather globular in contour, and exceedingly

parrot-nosed; wearing, moreover, a face red enough to lead one to

suppose he had made his money as a dealer in claret; but, in truth,

one of the kindest of men, in spite of a little quickness of temper.

He is profoundly versed in the art and mystery of store-keeping, and

as profoundly ignorant of all that must sooner or later be learned by

every resident land-owner of the western country.

Thus much being premised, we shall hardly wonder that our good old

friend felt exceedingly aggrieved at meeting Silas Ashburn and the

“lang-legged chiel” Joe, (who has grown longer with every shake of

ague,) on the way _from_ his tract, instead of _to_ it.

“What in the world’s the matter now!” began Mr. Keene, rather testily.

“Are you never going to begin that work?”

“I don’t know but I shall;” was the cool reply of Ashburn; “I can’t

begin it to-day, though.”

“And why not, pray, when I’ve been so long waiting?”

“Because, I’ve got something else that must be done first. You don’t

think your work is all the work there is in the world, do you?”

Mr. Keene was almost too angry to reply, but he made an effort to say,

“When am I to expect you, then?”

“Why, I guess we’ll come on in a day or two, and then I’ll bring both

the boys.”

So saying, and not dreaming of having been guilty of an incivility, Mr.

Ashburn passed on, intent only on his bee-tree.

Mr. Keene could not help looking after the ragged pair for a moment,

and he muttered angrily as he turned away, “Aye! pride and beggary go

together in this confounded new country! You feel very independent, no

doubt, but I’ll try if I can’t find somebody that wants money.”

And Mr. Keene’s pony, as if sympathizing with his master’s vexation,

started off at a sharp, passionate trot, which he has learned, no

doubt, under the habitual influence of the spicy temper of his rider.

To find labourers who wanted money, or who would own that they wanted

it, was at that time no easy task. Our poorer neighbours have been so

little accustomed to value household comforts, that the opportunity

to obtain them presents but feeble incitement to continuous industry.

However, it happened in this case that Mr. Keene’s star was in the

ascendant, and the woods resounded, ere long, under the sturdy strokes

of several choppers.

* * * * *

The Ashburns, in the mean time, set themselves busily at work to make

due preparations for the expedition which they had planned for the

following night. They felt, as does every one who finds a bee-tree

in this region, that the prize was their own--that nobody else had

the slightest claim to its rich stores; yet the gathering in of the

spoils was to be performed, according to the invariable custom where

the country is much settled, in the silence of night, and with every

precaution of secrecy. This seems inconsistent, yet such is the fact.

The remainder of the “lucky” day and the whole of the succeeding one

passed in scooping troughs for the reception of the honey,--tedious

work at best, but unusually so in this instance, because several of the

family were prostrate with the ague. Ashburn’s anxiety lest some of his

customary bad luck should intervene between discovery and possession,

made him more impatient and harsh than usual; and the interior of

that comfortless cabin would have presented to a chance visitor, who

knew not of the golden hopes which cheered its inmates, an aspect of

unmitigated wretchedness. Mrs. Ashburn sat almost in the fire, with a

tattered hood on her head and the relics of a bed-quilt wrapped about

her person; while the emaciated limbs of the baby on her lap,--two

years old, yet unweaned,--seemed almost to reach the floor, so

preternaturally were they lengthened by the stretches of a four months’

ague. Two of the boys lay in the trundle-bed, which was drawn as near

to the fire as possible; and every spare article of clothing that the

house afforded was thrown over them, in the vain attempt to warm their

shivering frames. “Stop your whimperin’, can’t ye!” said Ashburn, as he

hewed away with hatchet and jack-knife, “you’ll be hot enough before

long.” And when the fever came his words were more than verified.

Two nights had passed before the preparations were completed. Ashburn

and such of his boys as could work had laboured indefatigably at the

troughs; and Mrs. Ashburn had thrown away the milk, and the few other

stores which cumbered her small supply of household utensils, to free

as many as possible for the grand occasion. This third day had been

“well day” to most of the invalids, and after the moon had risen to

light them through the dense wood, the family set off, in high spirits,

on their long, dewy walk. They had passed the causeway and were turning

from the highway into the skirts of the forest, when they were accosted

by a stranger, a young man in a hunter’s dress, evidently a traveller,

and one who knew nothing of the place or its inhabitants, as Mr.

Ashburn ascertained, to his entire satisfaction, by the usual number

of queries. The stranger, a handsome youth of one or two and twenty,

had that frank, joyous air which takes so well with us Wolverines; and

after he had fully satisfied our bee-hunter’s curiosity, he seemed

disposed to ask some questions in his turn. One of the first of these

related to the moving cause of the procession and their voluminous

display of _containers_.

“Why, we’re goin’ straight to a bee-tree that I lit upon two or three

days ago, and if you’ve a mind to, you may go ’long, and welcome. It’s

a real peeler, I tell ye! There’s a hundred and fifty weight of honey

in it, if there’s a pound.”

The young traveller waited no second invitation. His light knapsack

being but small incumbrance, he took upon himself the weight of several

troughs that seemed too heavy for the weaker members of the expedition.

They walked on at a rapid and steady pace for a good half hour, over

paths that were none of the smoothest, and only here and there lighted

by the moonbeams. The mother and children were but ill fitted for the

exertion, but Aladdin, on his midnight way to the wondrous vault of

treasure, would as soon have thought of complaining of fatigue.

Who then shall describe the astonishment, the almost breathless rage

of Silas Ashburn,--the bitter disappointment of the rest,--when they

found, instead of the bee-tree, a great gap in the dense forest, and

the bright moon shining on the shattered fragments of the immense oak

that had contained their prize? The poor children, fainting with toil

now that the stimulus was gone, threw themselves on the ground; and

Mrs. Ashburn, seating her wasted form on a huge branch, burst into

tears.

“It’s all one!” exclaimed Ashburn, when at length he could find words;

“it’s all alike! this is just my luck! It ain’t none of my neighbour’s

work, though! They know better than to be so mean! It’s the rich! Them

that begrudges the poor man the breath of life!” And he cursed bitterly

and with clenched teeth, whoever had robbed him of his right.

“Don’t cry, Betsey,” he continued; “let’s go home. I’ll find out who

has done this, and I’ll let ’em know there’s law for the poor man as

well as the rich. Come along, young ’uns, and stop your blubberin’, and

let them splinters alone!” The poor little things were trying to gather

up some of the fragments to which the honey still adhered, but their

father was too angry to be kind.

“Was the tree on your own land?” now inquired the young stranger, who

had stood by in sympathizing silence during this scene.

“No! but that don’t make any difference. The man that found it first,

and marked it, had a right to it afore the President of the United

States, and that I’ll let ’em know, if it costs me my farm. It’s on

old Keene’s land, and I shouldn’t wonder if the old miser had done it

himself,--but I’ll let him know what’s the law in Michigan!”

“Mr. Keene a miser!” exclaimed the young stranger, rather hastily.

“Why, what do _you_ know about him?”

“O! nothing!--that is, nothing very particular--but I have heard him

well spoken of. What I was going to say was, that I fear you will not

find the law able to do anything for you. If the tree was on another

person’s property--”

“Property! that’s just so much as you know about it!” replied Ashburn,

angrily. “I tell ye I know the law well enough, and I know the honey

was mine--and old Keene shall know it too, if he’s the man that stole

it.”

The stranger politely forbore further reply, and the whole party walked

on in sad silence till they reached the village road, when the young

stranger left them with a kindly “good night!”

* * * * *

It was soon after an early breakfast on the morning which succeeded

poor Ashburn’s disappointment, that Mr. Keene, attended by his lovely

orphan niece, Clarissa Bensley, was engaged in his little court-yard,

tending with paternal care the brilliant array of autumnal flowers

which graced its narrow limits. Beds in size and shape nearly

resembling patty-pans, were filled to overflowing with dahlias,

china-asters and marigolds, while the walks which surrounded them,

daily “swept with a woman’s neatness,” set off to the best advantage

these resplendent children of Flora. A vine-hung porch that opened upon

the miniature Paradise was lined with bird-cages of all sizes, and on a

yard-square grass-plot stood the tin cage of a squirrel, almost too fat

to be lively.

After all was “perform’d to point,”--when no dahlia remained

unsupported,--no cluster of many-hued asters without its neat

hoop,--when no intrusive weed could be discerned, even through Mr.

Keene’s spectacles,--Clarissa took the opportunity to ask if she might

take the pony for a ride.

“To see those poor Ashburns, uncle.”

“They’re a lazy, impudent set, Clary.”

“But they are all sick, uncle; almost every one of the family down with

ague. Do let me go and carry them something. I hear they are completely

destitute of comforts.”

“And so they ought to be, my dear,” said Mr. Keene, who could not

forget what he considered Ashburn’s impertinence.

But his habitual kindness prevailed, and he concluded his remonstrance

by saddling the pony himself, arranging Clarissa’s riding-dress with

all the assiduity of a gallant cavalier, and giving into her hand,

with her neat silver-mounted whip, a little basket, well-crammed by

his wife’s kind care with delicacies for the invalids. No wonder that

he looked after her with pride as she rode off! There are few prettier

girls than the bright-eyed Clarissa.

* * * * *

“How are you this morning, Mrs. Ashburn?” asked the young visitant as

she entered the wretched den, her little basket on her arm, her sweet

face all flushed, and her eyes more than half suffused with tears.

“Law sakes alive!” was the reply. “I ain’t no how. I’m clear tuckered

out with these young ’uns. They’ve had the agur already this morning,

and they’re as cross as bear-cubs.”

“Ma!” screamed one, as if in confirmation of the maternal remark, “I

want some tea!”

“Tea! I ha’n’t got no tea, and you know that well enough!”

“Well, give me a piece o’ sweetcake then, and a pickle.”

“The sweetcake was gone long ago, and I ha’n’t nothing to make more--so

shut your head!” And as Clarissa whispered to the poor pallid child

that she would bring him some if he would be a good boy, and not tease

his mother, Mrs. Ashburn produced, from a barrel of similar delicacies,

a yellow cucumber, something less than a foot long, “pickled” in

whiskey and water--and this the child began devouring eagerly.

Miss Bensley now set out upon the table the varied contents of her

basket. “This honey,” she said, showing some as limpid as water,

“was found a day or two ago in uncle’s woods--wild honey--isn’t it

beautiful?”

Mrs. Ashburn fixed her eyes on it without speaking; but her husband,

who just then came in, did not command himself so far. “Where did you

say you got that honey?” he asked.

“In our woods,” repeated Clarissa; “I never saw such quantities; and a

good deal of it as clear and beautiful as this.”

“I thought as much!” said Ashburn angrily: “and now, Clary Bensley,”

he added, “you’ll just take that cursed honey back to your uncle, and

tell him to keep it, and eat it, and I hope it will choke him! and if I

live, I’ll make him rue the day he ever touched it.”

Miss Bensley gazed on him, lost in astonishment. She could think of

nothing but that he must have gone suddenly mad; and the idea made her

instinctively hasten her steps toward the pony.

“Well! if you won’t take it, I’ll send it after ye!” cried Ashburn,

who had lashed himself into a rage; and he hurled the little jar, with

all the force of his powerful arm, far down the path by which Clarissa

was about to depart, while his poor wife tried to restrain him with a

piteous “Oh, father! don’t! don’t!”

Then, recollecting himself a little,--for he is far from being

habitually brutal,--he made an awkward apology to the frightened girl.

“I ha’n’t nothing agin _you_, Miss Bensley; you’ve always been kind to

me and mine; but that old devil of an uncle of yours, that can’t bear

to let a poor man live,--I’ll larn him who he’s got to deal with! Tell

him to look out, for he’ll have reason!”

He held the pony while Clarissa mounted, as if to atone for his

rudeness to herself; but he ceased not to repeat his denunciations

against Mr. Keene as long as she was within hearing. As she paced over

the logs, Ashburn, his rage much cooled by this ebullition, stood

looking after her.

“I swan!” he exclaimed; “if there ain’t that very feller that went with

us to the bee-tree, leading Clary Bensley’s horse over the cross-way!”

* * * * *

Clarissa felt obliged to repeat to her uncle the rude threats which

had so much terrified her; and it needed but this to confirm Mr.

Keene’s suspicious dislike of Ashburn, whom he had already learned to

regard as one of the worst specimens of western character that had yet

crossed his path. He had often felt the vexations of his new position

to be almost intolerable, and was disposed to imagine himself the

predestined victim of all the ill-will and all the impositions of the

neighbourhood. It unfortunately happened, about this particular time,

that he had been more than usually visited with disasters which are

too common in a new country to be much regarded by those who know what

they mean. His fences had been thrown down, his corn-field robbed,

and even the lodging-place of the peacock forcibly attempted. But

from the moment he discovered that Ashburn had a grudge against him,

he thought neither of unruly oxen, mischievous boys, nor exasperated

neighbours; but concluded that the one unlucky house in the swamp was

the ever-welling foundation of all this bitterness. He had not yet been

long enough among us to discern how much our “bark is waur than our

bite.”

It was on a very raw and gusty evening, not long after, that Mr. Keene,

with his handkerchief carefully wrapped around his chin, sallied forth

after dark, on an expedition to the post-office. He was thinking how

vexatious it was--how like everything else in this disorganized, or

rather unorganized new country, that the weekly mail should not be

obliged to arrive at regular hours, and those early enough to allow

of one’s getting one’s letters before dark. As he proceeded he became

aware of the approach of two persons, and though it was too dark to

distinguish faces, he heard distinctly the dreaded tones of Silas

Ashburn.

“No! I found you were right enough there! I couldn’t get at him that

way; but I’ll pay him for it yet!”

He lost the reply of the other party in this iniquitous scheme, in the

rushing of the wild wind which hurried him on his course; but he had

heard enough! He made out to reach the office, and receiving his paper,

and hastening desperately homeward, had scarcely spirits even to read

the price-current, (though he did mechanically glance at the corner

of the “Trumpet of Commerce,”) before he retired to bed in meditative

sadness; feeling quite unable to await the striking of nine on the

kitchen clock, which, in all ordinary circumstances, “toll’d the hour

for retiring.”

Mr. Keene’s nerves had received a terrible shock on this fated

evening, and it is certain that for a man of sober imagination, his

dreams were terrific. He saw Ashburn, covered from crown to sole with

a buzzing shroud of bees, trampling on his flower-beds, tearing up

his honey-suckles root and branch, and letting his canaries and Java

sparrows out of their cages; and, as his eyes recoiled from this

horrible scene, they encountered the shambling form of Joe, who,

besides aiding and abetting in these enormities, was making awful

strides, axe in hand, toward the sanctuary of the pea-fowls.

He awoke with a cry of horror, and found his bed-room full of smoke.

Starting up in agonized alarm, he awoke Mrs. Keene, and half-dressed,

by the red light which glimmered around them, they rushed together

to Clarissa’s chamber. It was empty. To find the stairs was the next

thought; but at the very top they met the dreaded bee-finder armed with

a prodigious club!

“Oh mercy! don’t murder us!” shrieked Mrs. Keene, falling on her

knees; while her husband, whose capsicum was completely roused, began

pummelling Ashburn as high as he could reach, bestowing on him at

the same time, in no very choice terms, his candid opinion as to the

propriety of setting people’s houses on fire, by way of revenge.

“Why, you’re both as crazy as loons!” was Mr. Ashburn’s polite

exclamation, as he held off Mr. Keene at arm’s length. “I was comin’ up

o’ purpose to tell you that you needn’t be frightened. It’s only the

ruff o’ the shanty, there,--the kitchen, as you call it.”

“And what have you done with Clarissa?”--“Ay! where’s my niece?” cried

the distracted pair.

“Where is she? why, down stairs to be sure, takin’ care o’ the traps

they throw’d out o’ the shanty. I was out a ’coon-hunting, and see the

light, but I was so far off that they’d got it pretty well down before

I got here. That ’ere young spark of Clary’s worked like a beaver, I

tell ye!”

“You need not attempt,” solemnly began Mr. Keene, “you need not think

to make me believe, that you are not the man that set my house on fire.

I know your revengeful temper; I have heard of your threats, and you

shall answer for all, sir! before you’re a day older!”

Ashburn seemed struck dumb, between his involuntary respect for Mr.

Keene’s age and character, and the contemptuous anger with which his

accusations filled him. “Well! I swan!” said he after a pause; “but

here comes Clary; _she’s_ got common sense; ask her how the fire

happened.”

“It’s all over now, uncle,” she exclaimed, almost breathless, “it has

not done so _very_ much damage.”

“Damage!” said Mrs. Keene, dolefully; “we shall never get things clean

again while the world stands!”

“And where are my birds?” inquired the old gentleman.

“All safe--quite safe; we moved them into the parlour.”

“We! who, pray?”

“Oh! the neighbours came, you know, uncle; and--Mr. Ashburn--”

“Give the devil his due,” interposed Ashburn; “you know very well that

the whole concern would have gone if it hadn’t been for that young

feller.”

“What young fellow? where?”

“Why here,” said Silas, pulling forward our young stranger; “this here

chap.”

“Young man,” began Mr. Keene,--but at the moment, up came somebody with

a light, and while Clarissa retreated behind Mr. Ashburn, the stranger

was recognised by her aunt and uncle as Charles Darwin.

“Charles! what on earth brought you here?”

“Ask Clary,” said Ashburn, with grim jocoseness.

Mr. Keene turned mechanically to obey; but Clarissa had disappeared.

“Well! I guess I can tell you something about it, if nobody else

won’t,” said Ashburn; “I’m something of a Yankee, and it’s my notion

that there was some sparkin’ a goin’ on in your kitchin, and that

somehow or other the young folks managed to set it a-fire.”

The old folks looked more puzzled than ever. “_Do_ speak, Charles,”

said Mr. Keene; “what _does_ it all mean? Did you set my house on fire?”

“I’m afraid I must have had some hand in it, sir,” said Charles, whose

self-possession seemed quite to have deserted him.

“You!” exclaimed Mr. Keene; “and I’ve been laying it to this man!”

“Yes! you know’d I owed you a spite, on account o’ that plaguy

bee-tree,” said Ashburn; “a guilty conscience needs no accuser. But you

was much mistaken if you thought I was sich a bloody-minded villain as

to burn your gimcrackery for that! If I could have paid you for it,

fair and even, I’d ha’ done it with all my heart and soul. But I don’t

set men’s houses a-fire when I get mad at ’em.”

“But you threatened vengeance,” said Mr. Keene.