The Hong merchant's intelligence proved at once to Swan Day the absolute
necessity of his return to America to protect the interests of the
Company in Boston. With the promptitude which had thus far been one of
the chief elements of his success, he lost not a moment in (so to speak)
changing his skin, for the new purpose of his existence.
It seemed as if with the resumption of the dress of his native
country, (albeit of torrid texture still, since a chocolate silk coat,
embroidered waistcoat, and trousers of dark satin speak to a modern ear
of fashions as remote as China,) Swan resumed many of the habits and
feelings therewith connected. With the flowing flowered robe he cast off
forever the world to which it belonged, and his pulse beat rapidly and
joyfully as the sails filled with the breeze that bore him away. He
gazed with a disdainful pleasure at the receding shore, and closed his
eyes,--to turn his back fairly and forever on the Chew-Sins and the
Wu-Wangs,--to let the Hang dynasty go hang,--to shut out from all
but future fireside-tales the thought of varnish-trees, soap-trees,
tallow-trees, wax-trees, and litchi,--never more to look on the land of
the rhinoceros, the camel, the elephant, and the ape,--on the girls with
thick, protuberant lips, copper skins, and lanky, black hair,--on the
corpulent gentry with their long talons, and madams tottering on their
hoofs, reminding him constantly of the animal kingdom, as figured to
imagination in childhood, of the rat that wanted his long tail again, or
of the horse that will never win a race,--on the land of lanterns and
lying, of silver pheasants and--of scamps.
The faster the good ship sailed, the stronger the east-wind blew,
the swifter ran the life-current in the veins of the returning
exile,--friend, countryman, lover.
As the vessel neared the coast of Massachusetts, and the land-breeze
brought to his eager nostrils the odors of his native orchards, or the
aromatic fragrance of the pine, and the indescribable impression, on all
his senses, of home, the fresh love of country rushed purely through his
veins, bubbled warmly about the place where his heart used to beat, and
rose to his brain in soft, sweet imaginations. Vivid pictures of past
and future; identical in all their essential features, swam before his
closed eyes, languid now from excess of pleasure. Again and again he
drew in the breath of home, and felt it sweeter than the gales from the
Spice Islands or odors from Araby the Blest. Hovering before his fancy,
came sweet eyes, full of bewildering light, half-reproachful, half-sad,
and all-bewitching; a form of such exquisite grace that he wondered not
it swam and undulated before him; over all, the rose-hue of youth, and
the smooth, sweet charm of lip and hand that memory brought him, in that
last timid caress under the pear-tree after sunset.
As soon as he could possibly so arrange his affairs in Boston as to
admit of his taking a journey to Walton, Swan determined to do so. But
affairs will not always consent to an arrangement; and although he
exerted himself to gain a week's leisure, it was not till the Indian
summer was past that he took his place in the stage-coach which plied
between Boston and Walton.
How very short seemed the time since he was last on this road! Yet how
much had things changed! Fifteen years! Was it possible he had been gone
so long? How rapidly they had gone over himself! He felt scarcely a day
older. The stage-coach was aptly termed "Accommodation," and Swan had
great amusement, as he sat with the driver on the box, in noting the
differences in the aspect of houses and people, since his own last ride
over the same road. New villages had sprung up here and there, while
already more than one manufacturing establishment showed the Northern
tendencies; and the elements of progress peeped from every settlement,
in the shape of meeting- and school-houses.
When the driver whipped up his modest team to an animated trot before
the Eagle Hotel in Walton, Swan felt as if he must have been in a dream
only, and had just now awakened. Walton was one of those New-Hampshire
towns, of which there came afterwards to be many, which were said "to be
good to go _from_"; accordingly, everybody had gone everywhere, except
the old inhabitants and the children. All the youths had gone towards
"the pleasant Ohio, to settle on its banks"; and such maidens as had
courage to face a pioneer settlement followed their chosen lords,
while the less enterprising were fain to stay at home and bewail
their singlehood. All business was necessarily stagnant, and all the
improvements, architectural or otherwise, which had marked the route on
which Swan had come, now seemed suddenly to have ceased. He might have
thought Walton the Enchanted Palace, and himself the Fairy-Prince that
was to waken to life and love the Sleeping Beauty.
How unchanged was everything! The store where he used to sell crockery
and pins,--the great elm-tree in front of it,--the old red tavern on the
hill, where they had the Thanksgiving ball,--the houses, from one end of
the street to the other, all just as when he left: he might have found
his way in the dark to every one of them.
At the Eagle Tavern, the same men sat on the stoop, with chairs tilted
back, smoking. A man in the bar-room was mixing flip or gin-sling for
two others, who were playing checkers. Taft himself stood at the door,
somewhat changed indeed, though he was always fat, but with the same
ready smile as ever; and Swan could see through the windows, by
the bright candle-light, the women flitting to and fro, in brisk
preparations for supper.
Swan's first touch of surprise was that Taft did not recognize him,--him
whom he used to see every day of his life! That was strange. It looked
as if time told on Taft's faculties a little. He had himself recognized
Taft in a moment. So he had recognized everything, as they drove along,
and now how familiar everything looked in the evening light!
Wrapping his travelling-cloak about him, Swan asked to be shown directly
to his room, and, in his anxiety to avoid being recognized, ordered
a light supper to be sent up to him. First of all, he wanted to see
Dorcas, to settle affairs with Colonel Fox, and to feel established.
Until then, he cared not to see or talk with his old acquaintances. It
would be time enough afterwards to take them by the hand,--to employ
them, perhaps. And as it takes almost no time to think, before he was
half-way up the stairs, Swan Day had got as far as the erection of a
superb country-seat on the hill where the old Cobb house stood, and of
employing a dozen smart young carpenters and masons of his acquaintance
in the village. The garden should have a pagoda in it; and one room in
the house should be called the "China room," and should be furnished
exclusively with Chinese tables and chairs; and he would have a
brilliant lantern-_fête_, and----Here he reached the top-stair, and the
little maid pointed to his room, curtsied, and ran away.
Swan dropped his cloak, snuffed the candle, and, sitting down before the
pleasant wood-fire that had been hastily lighted, proceeded to make his
own tea, by a new Invention for Travellers.
As people are not changed so quickly as they expect and intend to be
by circumstances, it came to pass that Swan Day's plans for elegant
expenditure in his native town soon relapsed, perhaps under the
influence of the Chinese herb, into old channels and plans for
acquisition. The habit of years was a little too strong for him to turn
short round and pour out what he had been for so many years garnering
in. Rather, perhaps, keep in the tread-mill of business awhile longer,
and then be the nabob in earnest. At present, who knew what these
mutterings in the political atmosphere portended? A war with England
seemed inevitable, and that at no distant period. It might be better
to retire on a limited certainty; but then there was also the manful
struggle for a splendid possibility.
A neat-handed maid brought in a tray, with the light Supper he had
ordered.
The sight of four kinds of pies, with cold turkey and apple-sauce,
brought the Fox farm and its inhabitants more vividly to his mind than
anything else he had seen. Pumpkin of the yellowest, custard of
the richest, apple of the spiciest, and mince that was one mass of
appetizing dainty, filled the room with the flavor of by-gone memories.
Every sense responded to them. The fifteen years that had hung like a
curtain of mist before him suddenly lifted, and he saw the view beyond,
broad, bountiful, and cheery, under the sunshine of love, hope, and
plenty. He closed his eyes, and the flavor filled his soul, as sweet
music makes the lover faint with happiness.
He took out his writing-materials, and wrote,--
"My DEAREST, SWEETEST DORCAS,--Never for one instant has the thought of
you left my heart, since"----
"That's a lie, to begin with!" said he, coolly, and throwing the paper
into the fire,--"try again!"
"DEAREST DORCAS,--I feel and I know what you may possibly think of me
by this time,--that you may possibly imagine me false to the vows which
"----
It will be perceived that Swan had improved in rhetoric, since the day
he parted from his lady-love. Still he could not satisfy himself in a
letter. In short, he felt that expression outran the reality, however
modestly and moderately chosen. Some vividness, some fervency, he must
have, of course. But how in the world to get up the requisite definition
even to the words he could conscientiously use? The second attempt
followed the first.
Swan Day is not the first man who has found himself mistaken in matters
of importance. In his return to his native country, and the scenes of
his early life, he had taken for granted the evergreen condition of his
sentiments. Like the reviving patient in epilepsy, who declares he has
never for an instant lost his consciousness, while the bystanders have
witnessed the dead fall, and taken note of the long interval,--so this
sojourner of fifteen years in strange lands felt the returning pulse of
youth, without thought of the lapsing time that bridges over all gulfs
of emotion, however deep.
In fact, that part of his nature which had been in most violent action
fifteen years before had been lying as torpid under Indian suns as if it
had been dead indeed; and his sense of returning vitality was mixed with
curious speculations about his own sensations.
He dropped the pen, and placed his feet on the top of the high stuffed
easy-chair which adorned the room. This inverted personal condition
relieved his mystification somewhat, or perhaps brought his whole nature
more into harmony.
"Dorcas!--hm! hm!--fifteen years! so it is!--ah! she must be sadly
changed indeed! At thirty, a woman is no longer a wood-nymph. Even more
than thirty she must be."
He removed his feet from their elevation, and carefully arranged a
different scaffolding out of the materials before him, by placing
a cricket on the table, and his feet on the cricket. To do this
effectually and properly required the removal of the four pies, and the
displacement of the cold turkey.
But Swan was mentally removing far greater and more serious
difficulties. By the time he had asked himself one or two questions, and
had answered them, such as, "Whether, all the conditions being changed,
I am to be held to my promise?" and the like, he had placed one foot
carefully up. Then, before conscience had time to trip him up, the other
foot followed, and he found himself firmly posted.
"I will write a note to-morrow,--put it into the post-office----No,
that won't do; in these places, nobody goes to the post-office once a
week;--I'll send a note to the house."
Here he warmed up.
"A note, asking her to meet me under the great pear-tree, as we
met----It is, by Jove! just fifteen years to-morrow night since I left
Walton! That's good! it will help on some"----
The little maid here interrupted his meditations by coming for the
relics of the supper; and Swan, weary with unwonted thought, dropped
the paper curtains, and plunged, body and soul, into fifty pounds of
live-geese feathers.