brow, fair cheek, and fashionable mien. So far as his exterior
developed him, he might much more suitably have found a place at some
merry Christmas table, than have been numbered among the blighted,
fate-stricken, fancy-tortured set of ill-starred banqueters. Murmurs
arose among the guests as they noted the glance of general scrutiny
which the intruder threw over his companions. What had he to do among
them? Why did not the skeleton of the dead founder of the feast unbend
its rattling joints, arise, and motion the unwelcome stranger from the
board? "Shameful!" said the morbid man, while a new ulcer broke out in
his heart. "He comes to mock us!--we shall be the jest of his tavern
friends!--he will make a farce of our miseries, and bring it out upon
the stage!"
"O, never mind him!" said the hypochondriac, smiling sourly. "He shall
feast from yonder tureen of viper soup; and if there is a fricassee
of scorpions on the table, pray let him have his share of it. For the
dessert, he shall taste the apples of Sodom. Then, if he like our
Christmas fare, let him return again next year!"
"Trouble him not," murmured the melancholy man, with gentleness. "What
matters it whether the consciousness of misery come a few years sooner
or later? If this youth deem himself happy now, yet let him sit with us
for the sake of the wretchedness to come."
The poor idiot approached the young man with that mournful aspect of
vacant inquiry which his face continually wore and which caused people
to say that he was always in search of his missing wits. After no
little examination he touched the stranger's hand, but immediately drew
back his own, shaking his head and shivering.
"Cold, cold, cold!" muttered the idiot.
The young man shivered too, and smiled.
"Gentlemen--and you, madam," said one of the stewards of the festival,
"do not conceive so ill either of our caution or judgment, as to
imagine that we have admitted this young stranger--Gervayse Hastings
by name--without a full investigation and thoughtful balance of his
claims. Trust me, not a guest at the table is better entitled to his
seat."
The steward's guaranty was perforce satisfactory. The company,
therefore, took their places, and addressed themselves to the serious
business of the feast, but were soon disturbed by the hypochondriac,
who thrust back his chair, complaining that a dish of stewed toads and
vipers was set before him, and that there was green ditch water in
his cup of wine. This mistake being amended, he quietly resumed his
seat. The wine, as it flowed freely from the sepulchral urn, seemed
to come imbued with all gloomy inspirations; so that its influence
was not to cheer, but either to sink the revellers into a deeper
melancholy, or elevate their spirits to an enthusiasm of wretchedness.
The conversation was various. They told sad stories about people who
might have been worthy guests at such a festival as the present. They
talked of grisly incidents in human history; of strange crimes, which,
if truly considered, were but convulsions of agony; of some lives
that had been altogether wretched, and of others, which, wearing a
general semblance of happiness, had yet been deformed, sooner or later,
by misfortune, as by the intrusion of a grim face at a banquet; of
death-bed scenes, and what dark intimations might be gathered from the
words of dying men; of suicide, and whether the more eligible mode were
by halter, knife, poison, drowning, gradual starvation, or the fumes
of charcoal. The majority of the guests, as is the custom with people
thoroughly and profoundly sick at heart, were anxious to make their own
woes the theme of discussion, and prove themselves most excellent in
anguish. The misanthropist went deep into the philosophy of evil, and
wandered about in the darkness, with now and then a gleam of discolored
light hovering on ghastly shapes and horrid scenery. Many a miserable
thought, such as men have stumbled upon from age to age, did he now
rake up again, and gloat over it as an inestimable gem, a diamond, a
treasure far preferable to those bright, spiritual revelations of a
better world, which are like precious stones from heaven's pavement.
And then, amid his lore of wretchedness, he hid his face and wept.
* * * * *
The banquet drew to its conclusion, and the guests departed. Scarcely
had they stepped across the threshold of the hall, when the scene
that had there passed seemed like the vision of a sick fancy, or an
exhalation from a stagnant heart. Now and then, however, during the
year that ensued, these melancholy people caught glimpses of one
another, transient, indeed, but enough to prove that they walked the
earth with the ordinary allotment of reality. Sometimes a pair of
them came face to face, while stealing through the evening twilight,
enveloped in their sable cloaks. Sometimes they casually met in
church-yards. Once, also, it happened that two of the dismal banqueters
mutually started at recognizing each other in the noonday sunshine of
a crowded street, stalking there like ghosts astray. Doubtless they
wondered why the skeleton did not come abroad at noonday too.
But whenever the necessity of their affairs compelled these Christmas
guests into the bustling world, they were sure to encounter the young
man who had so unaccountably been admitted to the festival. They saw
him among the gay and fortunate; they caught the sunny sparkle of
his eye; they heard the light and careless tones of his voice, and
muttered to themselves with such indignation as only the aristocracy of
wretchedness could kindle--"The traitor! The vile impostor! Providence,
in its own good time, may give him a right to feast among us!" But
the young man's unabashed eye dwelt upon their gloomy figures as they
passed him, seeming to say, perchance with somewhat of a sneer, "First,
know my secret!--then, measure your claims with mine!"
The step of Time stole onward, and soon brought merry Christmas round
again, with glad and solemn worship in the churches, and sports, games,
festivals, and everywhere the bright face of joy beside the household
fire. Again likewise the hall, with its curtains of dusky purple,
was illuminated by the death torches gleaming on the sepulchral
decorations of the banquet. The veiled skeleton sat in state, lifting
the cypress wreath above its head, as the guerdon of some guest
illustrious in the qualifications which there claimed precedence.
As the stewards deemed the world inexhaustible in misery, and were
desirous of recognizing it in all its forms, they had not seen fit to
reassemble the company of the former year. New faces now threw their
gloom across the table.
There was a man of nice conscience, who bore a blood stain in his
heart--the death of a fellow-creature--which, for his more exquisite
torture, had chanced with such a peculiarity of circumstances, that
he could not absolutely determine whether his will had entered into
the deed or not. Therefore, his whole life was spent in the agony of
an inward trial for murder, with a continual sifting of the details
of his terrible calamity, until his mind had no longer any thought,
nor his soul any emotion, disconnected with it. There was a mother,
too--but a desolation now--who, many years before, had gone out on
a pleasure party, and, returning, found her infant smothered in its
little bed. And ever since she has been tortured with the fantasy
that her buried baby lay smothering in its coffin. Then there was an
aged lady, who had lived from time immemorial with a constant tremor
quivering through her frame. It was terrible to discern her dark shadow
tremulous upon the wall; her lips, likewise, were tremulous; and the
expression of her eye seemed to indicate that her soul was trembling
too. Owing to the bewilderment and confusion which made almost a chaos
of her intellect, it was impossible to discover what dire misfortune
had thus shaken her nature to its depths; so that the stewards had
admitted her to the table, not from any acquaintance with her history,
but on the safe testimony of her miserable aspect. Some surprise was
expressed at the presence of a bluff, red-faced gentleman, a certain
Mr. Smith, who had evidently the fat of many a rich feast within him,
and the habitual twinkle of whose eye betrayed a disposition to break
forth into uproarious laughter for little cause or none. It turned out,
however, that with the best possible flow of spirits, our poor friend
was afflicted with a physical disease of the heart, which threatened
instant death on the slightest cachinnatory indulgence, or even that
titillation of the bodily frame produced by merry thoughts. In this
dilemma he had sought admittance to the banquet, on the ostensible plea
of his irksome and miserable state, but, in reality, with the hope of
imbibing a life-preserving melancholy....
And now appeared a figure which we must acknowledge as our acquaintance
of the former festival. It was Gervayse Hastings, whose presence had
then caused so much question and criticism, and who now took his place
with the composure of one whose claims were satisfactory to himself
and must needs be allowed by others. Yet his easy and unruffled face
betrayed no sorrow. The well-skilled beholders gazed a moment into
his eyes and shook their heads, to miss the unuttered sympathy--the
countersign, never to be falsified--of those whose hearts are cavern
mouths, through which they descend into a region of illimitable woe and
recognize other wanderers there.
"Who is this youth?" asked the man with a blood stain on his
conscience. "Surely he has never gone down into the depths! I know all
the aspects of those who have passed through the dark valley. By what
right is he among us?"
"Ah, it is a sinful thing to come hither without a sorrow," murmured
the aged lady, in accents that partook of the eternal tremor which
pervaded her whole being. "Depart, young man! Your soul has never been
shaken. I tremble so much the more to look at you."
"His soul shaken! No; I'll answer for it," said bluff Mr. Smith,
pressing his hand upon his heart and making himself as melancholy as he
could, for fear of a fatal explosion of laughter. "I know the lad well;
he has as fair prospects as any young man about town, and has no more
right among us miserable creatures than the child unborn. He never was
miserable and probably never will be!"
"Our honored guests," interposed the stewards, "pray have patience with
us, and believe, at least, that our deep veneration for the sacredness
of this solemnity would preclude any wilful violation of it. Receive
this young man to your table. It may not be too much to say, that no
guest here would exchange his own heart for the one that beats within
that youthful bosom!"
"I'd call it a bargain, and gladly, too," muttered Mr. Smith, with a
perplexing mixture of sadness and mirthful conceit. "A plague upon
their nonsense! My own heart is the only really miserable one in the
company; it will certainly be the death of me at last."
Nevertheless, as on the former occasion, the judgment of the stewards
being without appeal, the company sat down. The obnoxious guest made
no more attempt to obtrude his conversation on those about him, but
appeared to listen to the table talk with peculiar assiduity, as if
some inestimable secret, otherwise beyond his reach, might be conveyed
in a casual word. And in truth, to those who could understand and
value it, there was rich matter in the upgushings and outpourings of
these initiated souls to whom sorrow had been a talisman, admitting
them into spiritual depths which no other spell can open. Sometimes out
of the midst of densest gloom there flashed a momentary radiance, pure
as crystal, bright as the flame of stars, and shedding such a glow upon
the mysteries of life that the guests were ready to exclaim, "Surely
the riddle is on the point of being solved!" At such illuminated
intervals the saddest mourners felt it to be revealed that mortal
griefs are but shadowy and external; no more than the sable robes
voluminously shrouding a certain divine reality and thus indicating
what might otherwise be altogether invisible to mortal eye.
"Just now," remarked the trembling old woman, "I seemed to see beyond
the outside. And then my everlasting tremor passed away!"
"Would that I could dwell always in these momentary gleams of light!"
said the man of stricken conscience. "Then the blood stain in my heart
would be washed clean away."
This strain of conversation appeared so unintelligibly absurd to good
Mr. Smith, that he burst into precisely the fit of laughter which his
physicians had warned him against, as likely to prove instantaneously
fatal. In effect, he fell back in his chair a corpse, with a broad
grin upon his face, while his ghost, perchance, remained beside it
bewildered at its unpremeditated exit. This catastrophe of course broke
up the festival.
"How is this? You do not tremble?" observed the tremulous old woman
to Gervayse Hastings, who was gazing at the dead man with singular
intentness. "Is it not awful to see him so suddenly vanish out of the
midst of life--this man of flesh and blood, whose earthly nature was
so warm and strong? There is a never-ending tremor in my soul, but it
trembles afresh at this! And you are calm!"
"Would that he could teach me somewhat!" said Gervayse Hastings,
drawing a long breath. "Men pass before me like shadows on the wall;
their actions, passions, feelings are flickerings of the light, and
then they vanish! Neither the corpse, nor yonder skeleton, nor this old
woman's everlasting tremor, can give me what I seek."
And then the company departed.
We cannot linger to narrate, in such detail, more circumstances of
these singular festivals, which in accordance with the founder's will,
continued to be kept with the regularity of an established institution.
In process of time the stewards adopted the custom of inviting, from
far and near, those individuals whose misfortunes were prominent above
other men's, and whose mental and moral development might, therefore,
be supposed to possess a corresponding interest. The exiled noble of
the French Revolution, and the broken soldier of the Empire, were alike
represented at the table. Fallen monarchs, wandering about the earth,
have found places at that forlorn and miserable feast. The statesman,
when his party flung him off, might, if he chose it, be once more a
great man for the space of a single banquet. Aaron Burr's name appears
on the record at a period when his ruin--the profoundest and most
striking, with more of moral circumstances in it than that of almost
any other man--was complete in his lonely age. Stephen Girard, when
his wealth weighed upon him like a mountain, once sought admittance of
his own accord. It is not probable, however, that these men had any
lesson to teach in the lore of discontent and misery which might not
equally well have been studied in the common walks of life. Illustrious
unfortunates attract a wider sympathy, not because their griefs are
more intense, but because, being set on lofty pedestals, they the
better serve mankind as instances and bywords of calamity.
It concerns our present purpose to say that, at each successive
festival, Gervayse Hastings showed his face gradually changing from the
smooth beauty of his youth to the thoughtful comeliness of manhood,
and thence to the bald, impressive dignity of age. He was the only
individual invariably present. Yet on every occasion there were
murmurs, both from those who knew his character and position, and from
them whose hearts shrank back as denying his companionship in their
mystic fraternity.
"Who is this impassive man?" had been asked a hundred times. "Has he
suffered? Has he sinned? There are no traces of either. Then wherefore
is he here?"
"You must inquire of the stewards or of himself," was the constant
reply. "We seem to know him well here in our city and know nothing of
him but what is creditable and fortunate. Yet hither he comes, year
after year, to this gloomy banquet, and sits among the guests like a
marble statue. Ask yonder skeleton; perhaps that may solve the riddle!"
It was in truth a wonder. The life of Gervayse Hastings was not merely
a prosperous, but a brilliant one. Everything had gone well with
him. He was wealthy, far beyond the expenditure that was required by
habits of magnificence, a taste of rare purity and cultivation, a love
of travel, a scholar's instinct to collect a splendid library, and,
moreover, what seemed a magnificent liberality to the distressed. He
had sought happiness, and not vainly, if a lovely and tender wife, and
children of fair promise, could insure it. He had, besides, ascended
above the limit which separates the obscure from the distinguished,
and had won a stainless reputation in affairs of the widest public
importance. Not that he was a popular character, or had within him the
mysterious attributes which are essential to that species of success.
To the public he was a cold abstraction, wholly destitute of those
rich hues of personality, that living warmth, and the peculiar faculty
of stamping his own heart's impression on a multitude of hearts by
which the people recognize their favorites. And it must be owned that,
after his most intimate associates had done their best to know him
thoroughly, and love him warmly, they were startled to find how little
hold he had upon their affections. They approved, they admired, but
still in those moments when the human spirit most craves reality, they
shrank back from Gervayse Hastings, as powerless to give them what they
sought. It was the feeling of distrustful regret with which we should
draw back the hand after extending it, in an illusive twilight, to
grasp the hand of a shadow upon the wall.
As the superficial fervency of youth decayed, this peculiar effect of
Gervayse Hastings's character grew more perceptible. His children,
when he extended his arms, came coldly to his knees, but never climbed
them of their own accord. His wife wept secretly, and almost adjudged
herself a criminal because she shivered in the chill of his bosom. He,
too, occasionally appeared not unconscious of the chillness of his
moral atmosphere, and willing, if it might be so, to warm himself at a
kindly fire. But age stole onward and benumbed him more and more. As
the hoar-frost began to gather on him his wife went to her grave, and
was doubtless warmer there; his children either died or were scattered
to different homes of their own; and old Gervayse Hastings, unscathed
by grief,--alone, but needing no companionship,--continued his steady
walk through life, and still on every Christmas day attended at the
dismal banquet. His privilege as a guest had become prescriptive now.
Had he claimed the head of the table, even the skeleton would have been
ejected from its seat.
Finally, at the merry Christmas-tide, when he had numbered fourscore
years complete, this pale, high-browed, marble-featured old man
once more entered the long-frequented hall, with the same impassive
aspect that had called forth so much dissatisfied remark at his first
attendance. Time, except in matters merely external, had done nothing
for him, either of good or evil. As he took his place he threw a calm,
inquiring glance around the table, as if to ascertain whether any
guest had yet appeared, after so many unsuccessful banquets, who might
impart to him the mystery--the deep, warm secret--the life within
the life--which, whether manifested in joy or sorrow, is what gives
substance to a world of shadows.
"My friends," said Gervayse Hastings, assuming a position which his
long conversance with the festival caused to appear natural, "you are
welcome! I drink to you all in this cup of sepulchral wine."
The guests replied courteously, but still in a manner that proved them
unable to receive the old man as a member of their sad fraternity. It
may be well to give the reader an idea of the present company at the
banquet.
One was formerly a clergyman, enthusiastic in his profession, and
apparently of the genuine dynasty of those old puritan divines whose
faith in their calling, and stern exercise of it, had placed them among
the mighty of the earth. But yielding to the speculative tendency of
the age, he had gone astray from the firm foundation of an ancient
faith, and wandered into a cloud region, where everything was misty
and deceptive, ever mocking him with a semblance of reality, but still
dissolving when he flung himself upon it for support and rest. His
instinct and early training demanded something steadfast; but, looking
forward, he beheld vapors piled on vapors, and behind him an impassable
gulf between the man of yesterday and to-day, on the borders of which
he paced to and fro, sometimes wringing his hands in agony, and often
making his own woe a theme of scornful merriment. This surely was a
miserable man....
There was a modern philanthropist, who had become so deeply sensible
of the calamities of thousands and millions of his fellow-creatures,
and of the impracticableness of any general measures for their relief,
that he had no heart to do what little good lay immediately within
his power, but contented himself with being miserable for sympathy.
Near him sat a gentleman in a predicament hitherto unprecedented, but
of which the present epoch probably affords numerous examples. Ever
since he was of capacity to read a newspaper this person had prided
himself on his consistent adherence to one political party, but, in
the confusion of these latter days, had got bewildered and knew not
whereabouts his party was. This wretched condition, so morally desolate
and disheartening to a man who has long accustomed himself to merge his
individuality in the mass of a great body, can only be conceived by
such as have experienced it. His next companion was a popular orator
who had lost his voice, and--as it was pretty much all that he had
to lose--had fallen into a state of hopeless melancholy. The table
was likewise graced by two of the gentler sex--one, a half-starved,
consumptive seamstress, the representative of thousands just as
wretched; the other, a woman of unemployed energy, who found herself in
the world with nothing to achieve, nothing to enjoy, and nothing even
to suffer. She had, therefore, driven herself to the verge of madness
by dark broodings over the wrongs of her sex, and its exclusion from a
proper field of action....
[Illustration: MADONNA DELLA SEDIA. _Raphael._]
In their own way, these were as wretched a set of people as ever had
assembled at the festival. There they sat, with the veiled skeleton of
the founder holding aloft the cypress wreath, at one end of the table,
and at the other, wrapped in furs, the withered figure of Gervayse
Hastings, stately, calm, and cold, impressing the company with awe, yet
so little interesting their sympathy that he might have vanished into
thin air without their once exclaiming, "Whither is he gone?"
"Sir," said the philanthropist, addressing the old man, "you have been
so long a guest at this annual festival, and have thus been conversant
with so many varieties of human affliction, that, not improbably, you
have thence derived some great and important lessons. How blessed were
your lot could you reveal a secret by which all this mass of woe might
be removed!"
"I know of but one misfortune," answered Gervayse Hastings, quietly,
"and that is my own."
"Your own!" rejoined the philanthropist. "And, looking back on
your serene and prosperous life, how can you claim to be the sole
unfortunate of the human race?"