he look back, but without seeing any cause for increased alarm. As yet,
however, the road had been level and winding, and therefore could not
allow him to span much of it at a glance. After noon it ascended a high
and lengthened hill, surrounded by wastes of bog. As he gained the
summit of this hill, and again looked back, a horseman appeared,
sweeping to its foot. Shamus galloped at full speed down the now
quickly falling road; then along its level continuation for about a
mile; and then up another eminence, more lengthened, though not so
steep as the former; and from it still he looked back, and caught the
figure of the horseman breaking over the line of the hill he had
passed. For hours such was the character of the chase; until the road
narrowed and began to wind amid an uncultivated and uninhabited
mountain wilderness. Here Shamus's horse tripped and fell; the rider,
little injured, assisted him to his legs, and, with lash and spur,
re-urged him to pursue his course. The animal went forward in a last
effort, and, for still another span of time, well befriended his rider.
A rocky valley, through which both had been galloping, now opened at
its farther end, presenting to Shamus's eye, in the distance, the
sloping ground, and the ruin which, with its mouldering walls,
encircled his poor home; and the setting sun streamed golden rays
through the windows and rents of the old abbey.
The fugitive gave a weak cry of joy, and lashed his beast again. The
cry seemed to be answered by a shout; and a second time, after a wild
plunge, the horse fell, now throwing Shamus off with a force that left
him stunned. And yet he heard the hoofs of another horse come
thundering down the rocky way; and, while he made a faint effort to
rise on his hands and look at his pursuer, the horse and horseman were
very near, and the voice of his uncle cried, "Stand!" at the same time
that the speaker fired a pistol, of which the ball struck a stone at
Shamus's foot. The next moment his uncle, having left his saddle, stood
over him, presenting a second pistol, and he spoke in a low but
distinct voice.
"Spawn of a beggar! This is not merely for the chance of riches given
by our dreams, though it seems, in the teeth of all I ever thought,
that the devil tells truth at last. No, nor it is not quite for the
blow; but it _is_ to close the lips that, with a single word, can kill
me. You die, to let me live!"
"Help!" aspirated Shamus's heart, turning itself to Heaven; "help me
but now, not for the sake of the goold either, but for the sake of them
that will be left on the wild world without me; for them help me, great
God!"
Hitherto his weakness and confusion had left him passive. Before his
uncle spoke the last words, his silent prayer was offered, and Shamus
had jumped upon his assailant. They struggled, and dragged each other
down. Shamus felt the muzzle of the pistol at his breast; heard it
snap,--but only snap; he seized and mastered it, and once more the
uncle was at the mercy of his nephew. Shamus's hand was raised to deal
a good blow; but he checked himself, and addressed the almost senseless
ears of his captive.
"No; you're my mother's blood, and a son of hers will never draw it
from your heart; but I can make sure of you again,--stop a bit."
He ran to his own prostrate horse, took off its bridle and its
saddle-girth, and with both secured his uncle's limbs, beyond all
possibility of the struggler being able to escape from their control.
"There," resumed Shamus, "lie there till we have time to send an ould
friend to see you, that, I'll go bail, will take good care of your four
bones. And do you know where I'm going now? You tould me, on Lunnon
Bridge, that you knew _that_, at least,"--pointing to the abbey,--"ay,
and the quare ould hearthstone that's to be found in it. And so, look
at this, uncle, honey,"--he vaulted upon his relative's horse,--"I'm
just goin' to lift it off o' the barrel-pot full of good ould goold,
and you have only to cry halves, and you'll get it, as sure as that the
big divvle is in the town you came from."
Nance Dempsey was nursing her new-born babe, sitting up in her straw,
and doing very well after her late illness, when old Noreen tottered in
from the front of the ruin, to tell her that "the body they were just
speaking about was driving up the hill mad, like as if 'twas his own
sperit in great throuble." And the listener had not recovered from her
surprise, when Shamus ran into the shed, flung himself kneeling by her
side, caught her in his arms, then seized her infant, covered it with
kisses, and then, roughly throwing it in her lap, turned to the
fireplace, raised one of the rocky seats lying near it, poised the
ponderous mass over the hearthstone, and shivered into pieces, with one
crash, that solid barrier between him and his visionary world of
wealth.
"It's cracked he is, out an' out, of a certainty," said Nance, looking
terrified at her husband.
"Nothing else am I," shouted Shamus, after groping under the broken
slab; "an', for a token, get along with yourself out of this, owld
gran!"
He started up and seized her by the shoulder. Noreen remonstrated. He
stooped for a stone; she ran; he pursued her to the arches of the ruin.
She stopped halfway down the descent. He pelted her with clods to the
bottom, and along a good piece of her road homewards; and then danced
back into his wife's presence.
"Now, Nance," he cried, "now that we're by ourselves, what noise is
this like!"
"And he took out han'fuls after han'fuls of the ould goold, afore her
face, my dear," added the original narrator of this story.
"An' after the gaugers and their crony, Ould Nick, ran off wid the
uncle of him, Nance and he, and the childer, lived together in their
father's and mother's house; and if they didn't live and die happy, I
wish that you and I may."
THE THREEFOLD DESTINY.
BY NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE.
In the twilight of a summer eve, a tall, dark figure, over which long
and remote travel had thrown an outlandish aspect, was entering a
village, not in "Fairy Londe," but within our own familiar boundaries.
The staff on which this traveller leaned had been his companion from
the spot where it grew, in the jungles of Hindostan; the hat, that
overshadowed his sombre brow, had shielded him from the suns of Spain,
but his cheek had been blackened by the red-hot wind of an Arabian
desert, and had felt the frozen breath of an Arctic region. Long
sojourning amid wild and dangerous men, he still wore beneath his vest
the ataghan which he had once struck into the throat of a Turkish
robber. In every foreign clime he had lost something of his New England
characteristics; and, perhaps, from every people he had unconsciously
borrowed a new peculiarity; so that when the world-wanderer again trod
the street of his native village, it is no wonder that he passed
unrecognized, though exciting the gaze and curiosity of all. Yet, as
his arm casually touched that of a young woman, who was wending her way
to an evening lecture, she started, and almost uttered a cry.
"Ralph Cranfield!" was the name that she half articulated.
"Can that be my old playmate, Faith Egerton?" thought the traveller,
looking round at her figure, but without pausing.
Ralph Cranfield, from his youth upward, had felt himself marked out for
a high destiny. He had imbibed the idea,--we say not whether it were
revealed to him by witchcraft, or in a dream of prophecy, or that his
brooding fancy had palmed its own dictates upon him as the oracles of a
Sibyl,--but he had imbibed the idea, and held it firmest among his
articles of faith, that three marvellous events of his life were to be
confirmed to him by three signs.
The first of these three fatalities, and perhaps the one on which his
youthful imagination had dwelt most fondly, was the discovery of the
maid, who alone, of all the maids on earth, could make him happy by her
love. He was to roam around the world till he should meet a beautiful
woman, wearing on her bosom a jewel in the shape of a heart; whether of
pearl, or ruby, or emerald, or carbuncle, or a changeful opal, or
perhaps a priceless diamond, Ralph Cranfield little cared, so long as
it were a heart of one peculiar shape. On encountering this lovely
stranger, he was bound to address her thus:--"Maiden, I have brought
you a heavy heart. May I rest its weight on you?" And if she were his
fated bride,--if their kindred souls were destined to form a union here
below, which all eternity should only bind more closely,--she would
reply, with her finger on the heart-shaped jewel, "This token, which I
have worn so long, is the assurance that you may!"
And, secondly, Ralph Cranfield had a firm belief that there was a
mighty treasure hidden somewhere in the earth, of which the
burial-place would be revealed to none but him. When his feet should
press upon the mysterious spot, there would be a hand before him,
pointing downward,--whether carved of marble, or hewn in gigantic
dimensions on the side of a rocky precipice, or perchance a hand of
flame in empty air, he could not tell; but, at least, he would discern
a hand, the forefinger pointing downward, and beneath it the Latin word
EFFODE,--Dig! And digging thereabouts, the gold in coin or ingots, the
precious stones, or of whatever else the treasure might consist, would
be certain to reward his toil.
The third and last of the miraculous events in the life of this
high-destined man was to be the attainment of extensive influence and
sway over his fellow-creatures. Whether he were to be a king, and
founder of an hereditary throne, or the victorious leader of a people
contending for their freedom, or the apostle of a purified and
regenerated faith, was left for futurity to show. As messengers of the
sign, by which Ralph Cranfield might recognize the summons, three
venerable men were to claim audience of him. The chief among them, a
dignified and majestic person, arrayed, it may be supposed, in the
flowing garments of an ancient sage, would be the bearer of a wand, or
prophet's rod. With this wand, or rod, or staff, the venerable sage
would trace a certain figure in the air, and then proceed to make known
his heaven-instructed message; which, if obeyed, must lead to glorious
results.
With this proud fate before him, in the flush of his imaginative youth,
Ralph Cranfield had set forth to seek the maid, the treasure, and the
venerable sage with his gift of extended empire. And had he found them?
Alas! it was not with the aspect of a triumphant man, who had achieved
a nobler destiny than all his fellows, but rather with the gloom of one
struggling against peculiar and continual adversity, that he now passed
homeward to his mother's cottage. He had come back, but only for a
time, to lay aside the pilgrim's staff, trusting that his weary manhood
would regain somewhat of the elasticity of youth, in the spot where his
threefold fate had been foreshown him. There had been few changes in
the village; for it was not one of those thriving places where a year's
prosperity makes more than the havoc of a century's decay; but like a
gray hair in a young man's head, an antiquated little town, full of old
maids, and aged elms, and moss-grown dwellings. Few seemed to be the
changes here. The drooping elms, indeed, had a more majestic spread;
the weather-blackened houses were adorned with a denser thatch of
verdant moss; and doubtless there were a few more gravestones in the
burial-ground, inscribed with names that had once been familiar in the
village street. Yet, summing up all the mischief that ten years had
wrought, it seemed scarcely more than if Ralph Cranfield had gone forth
that very morning, and dreamed a daydream till the twilight, and then
turned back again. But his heart grew cold, because the village did not
remember him as he remembered the village.
"Here is the change!" sighed he, striking his hand upon his breast.
"Who is this man of thought and care, weary with world wandering, and
heavy with disappointed hopes? The youth returns not, who went forth so
joyously!"
And now Ralph Cranfield was at his mother's gate, in front of the small
house where the old lady, with slender but sufficient means, had kept
herself comfortable during her son's long absence. Admitting himself
within the enclosure, he leaned against a great old tree, trifling with
his own impatience, as people often do in those intervals when years
are summed into a moment. He took a minute survey of the dwelling,--its
windows, brightened with the sky gleam, its doorway, with the half of a
millstone for a step, and the faintly traced path waving thence to the
gate. He made friends again with his childhood's friend, the old tree
against which he leaned; and glancing his eye adown its trunk, beheld
something that excited a melancholy smile. It was a half-obliterated
inscription,--the Latin word EFFODE,--which he remembered to have
carved in the bark of the tree, with a whole day's toil, when he had
first begun to muse about his exalted destiny. It might be accounted a
rather singular coincidence, that the bark, just above the inscription,
had put forth an excrescence, shaped not unlike a hand, with the
forefinger pointing obliquely at the word of fate. Such, at least, was
its appearance in the dusky light.
"Now a credulous man," said Ralph Cranfield carelessly to himself,
"might suppose that the treasure which I have sought round the world
lies buried, after all, at the very door of my mother's dwelling. That
would be a jest indeed!"
More he thought not about the matter; for now the door was opened, and
an elderly woman appeared on the threshold, peering into the dusk to
discover who it might be that had intruded on her premises, and was
standing in the shadow of her tree. It was Ralph Cranfield's mother.
Pass we over their greeting, and leave the one to her joy and the other
to his rest,--if quiet rest he found.
But when morning broke, he arose with a troubled brow; for his sleep
and his wakefulness had alike been full of dreams. All the fervor was
rekindled with which he had burned of yore to unravel the threefold
mystery of his fate. The crowd of his early visions seemed to have
awaited him beneath his mother's roof, and thronged riotously around to
welcome his return. In the well-remembered chamber--on the pillow where
his infancy had slumbered--he had passed a wilder night than ever in an
Arab tent, or when he had reposed his head in the ghastly shades of a
haunted forest. A shadowy maid had stolen to his bedside, and laid her
finger on the scintillating heart; a hand of flame had glowed amid the
darkness, pointing downward to a mystery within the earth; a hoary sage
had waved his prophetic wand, and beckoned the dreamer onward to a
chair of state. The same phantoms, though fainter in the daylight,
still flitted about the cottage, and mingled among the crowd of
familiar faces that were drawn thither by the news of Ralph Cranfield's
return, to bid him welcome for his mother's sake. There they found him,
a tall, dark, stately man, of foreign aspect, courteous in demeanor and
mild of speech, yet with an abstracted eye, which seemed often to
snatch a glance at the invisible.
Meantime the widow Cranfield went bustling about the house, full of joy
that she again had somebody to love, and be careful of, and for whom
she might vex and tease herself with the petty troubles of daily life.
It was nearly noon, when she looked forth from the door, and descried
three personages of note coming along the street, through the hot
sunshine and the masses of elm-tree shade. At length they reached her
gate, and undid the latch.
"See, Ralph!" exclaimed she, with maternal pride, "here is Squire
Hawkwood and the two other selectmen, coming on purpose to see you! Now
do tell them a good long story about what you have seen in foreign
parts."
The foremost of the three visitors, Squire Hawkwood, was a very
pompous, but excellent old gentleman, the head and prime mover in all
the affairs of the village, and universally acknowledged to be one of
the sagest men on earth. He wore, according to a fashion even then
becoming antiquated, a three-cornered hat, and carried a silver-headed
cane, the use of which seemed to be rather for flourishing in the air
than for assisting the progress of his legs. His two companions were
elderly and respectable yeomen, who, retaining an ante-revolutionary
reverence for rank and hereditary wealth, kept a little in the Squire's
rear. As they approached along the pathway, Ralph Cranfield sat in an
oaken elbow-chair, half unconsciously gazing at the three visitors, and
enveloping their homely figures in the misty romance that pervaded his
mental world.
"Here," thought he, smiling at the conceit,--"here come three elderly
personages, and the first of the three is a venerable sage with a
staff. What if this embassy should bring me the message of my fate!"
While Squire Hawkwood and his colleagues entered, Ralph rose from his
seat, and advanced a few steps to receive them; and his stately figure
and dark countenance, as he bent courteously towards his guests, had a
natural dignity; contrasting well with the bustling importance of the
Squire. The old gentleman, according to invariable custom, gave an
elaborate preliminary flourish with his cane in the air, then removed
his three-cornered hat in order to wipe his brow, and finally proceeded
to make known his errand.
"My colleagues and myself," began the Squire, "are burdened with
momentous duties, being jointly selectmen of this village. Our minds,
for the space of three days past, have been laboriously bent on the
selection of a suitable person to fill a most important office, and
take upon himself a charge and rule, which, wisely considered, may be
ranked no lower than those of kings and potentates. And whereas you,
our native townsman, are of good natural intellect, and well cultivated
by foreign travel, and that certain vagaries and fantasies of your
youth are doubtless long ago corrected,--taking all these matters, I
say, into due consideration, we are of opinion that Providence hath
sent you hither, at this juncture, for our very purpose."
During this harangue, Cranfield gazed fixedly at the speaker, as if he
beheld something mysterious and unearthly in his pompous little figure,
and as if the Squire had worn the flowing robes of an ancient sage,
instead of a square-skirted coat, flapped waistcoat, velvet breeches,
and silk stockings. Nor was his wonder without sufficient cause; for
the flourish of the Squire's staff, marvellous to relate, had described
precisely the signal in the air which was to ratify the message of the
prophetic Sage, whom Cranfield had sought around the world.
"And what," inquired Ralph Cranfield, with a tremor in his
voice,--"what may this office be, which is to equal me with kings and
potentates?"
"No less than instructor of our village school," answered Squire
Hawkwood; "the office being now vacant by the death of the venerable
Master Whitaker, after a fifty years' incumbency."
"I will consider of your proposal," replied Ralph Cranfield, hurriedly,
"and will make known my decision within three days."
After a few more words, the village dignitary and his companions took
their leave. But to Cranfield's fancy their images were still present,
and became more and more invested with the dim awfulness of figures
which had first appeared to him in a dream, and afterwards had shown
themselves in his waking moments, assuming homely aspects among
familiar things. His mind dwelt upon the features of the Squire, till
they grew confused with those of the visionary Sage, and one appeared
but the shadow of the other. The same visage, he now thought, had
looked forth upon him from the Pyramid of Cheops; the same form had
beckoned to him among the colonnades of the Alhambra; the same figure
had mistily revealed itself through the ascending steam of the Great
Geyser. At every effort of his memory he recognized some trait of the
dreamy Messenger of Destiny, in this pompous, bustling, self-important,
little great man of the village. Amid such musings, Ralph Cranfield sat
all day in the cottage, scarcely hearing and vaguely answering his
mother's thousand questions about his travels and adventures. At sunset
he roused himself to take a stroll, and, passing the aged elm-tree, his
eye was again caught by the semblance of a hand, pointing downward at
the half-obliterated inscription.
As Cranfield walked down the street of the village, the level sunbeams
threw his shadow far before him; and he fancied that, as his shadow
walked among distant objects, so had there been a presentiment stalking
in advance of him throughout his life. And when he drew near each
object, over which his tall shadow had preceded him, still it proved to
be one of the familiar recollections of his infancy and youth. Every
crook in the pathway was remembered. Even the more transitory
characteristics of the scene were the same as in bygone days. A company
of cows were grazing on the grassy roadside, and refreshed him with
their fragrant breath. "It is sweeter," thought he, "than the perfume
which was wafted to our ship from the Spice Islands." The round little
figure of a child rolled from a doorway, and lay laughing almost
beneath Cranfield's feet. The dark and stately man stooped down, and,
lifting the infant, restored him to his mother's arms. "The children,"
said he to himself,--and sighed, and smiled,--"the children are to be
my charge!" And while a flow of natural feeling gushed like a
wellspring in his heart, he came to a dwelling which he could nowise
forbear to enter. A sweet voice, which seemed to come from a deep and
tender soul, was warbling a plaintive little air, within.
He bent his head, and passed through the lowly door. As his foot
sounded upon the threshold, a young woman advanced from the dusky
interior of the house, at first hastily, and then with a more uncertain
step, till they met face to face. There was a singular contrast in
their two figures; he dark and picturesque,--one who had battled with
the world,--whom all suns had shone upon, and whom all winds had blown
on a varied course; she neat, comely, and quiet,--quiet even in her
agitation,--as if all her emotions had been subdued to the peaceful
tenor of her life. Yet their faces, all unlike as they were, had an
expression that seemed not so alien,--a glow of kindred feeling,
flashing upward anew from half-extinguished embers.
"You are welcome home!" said Faith Egerton.
But Cranfield did not immediately answer; for his eye had been caught
by an ornament in the shape of a Heart, which Faith wore as a brooch
upon her bosom. The material was the ordinary white quartz; and he
recollected having himself shaped it out of one of those Indian
arrowheads, which are so often found in the ancient haunts of the red
men. It was precisely on the pattern of that worn by the visionary
Maid. When Cranfield departed on his shadowy search he had bestowed
this brooch, in a gold setting, as a parting gift to Faith Egerton.
"So, Faith, you have kept the Heart!" said he, at length.
"Yes," said she, blushing deeply; then, more gayly, "and what else have
you brought me from beyond the sea?"
"Faith!" replied Ralph Cranfield, uttering the fated words by an
uncontrollable impulse, "I have brought you nothing but a heavy heart!
May I rest its weight on you?"
"This token, which I have worn so long," said Faith, laying her
tremulous finger on the Heart, "is the assurance that you may!"
"Faith! Faith!" cried Cranfield, clasping her in his arms, "you have
interpreted my wild and weary dream!"
Yes, the wild dreamer was awake at last. To find the mysterious
treasure, he was to till the earth around his mother's dwelling, and
reap its products! Instead of warlike command, or regal or religious
sway, he was to rule over the village children! And now the visionary
Maid had faded from his fancy, and in her place he saw the playmate of
his childhood! Would all, who cherish such wild wishes, but look around
them, they would oftenest find their sphere of duty, of prosperity, and
happiness, within those precincts, and in that station, where
Providence itself has cast their lot. Happy they who read the riddle,
without a weary world-search, or a lifetime spent in vain!