The summer moon, which shines in so many a tale, was beaming over
a broad extent of uneven country. Some of its brightest rays were
flung into a spring of water, where no traveller, toiling, as the
writer has, up the hilly road beside which it gushes, ever failed
to quench his thirst. The work of neat hands and considerate art
was visible about this blessed fountain. An open cistern, hewn
and hollowed out of solid stone, was placed above the waters,
which filled it to the brim, but by some invisible outlet were
conveyed away without dripping down its sides. Though the basin
had not room for another drop, and the continual gush of water
made a tremor on the surface, there was a secret charm that
forbade it to overflow. I remember, that when I had slaked my
summer thirst, and sat panting by the cistern, it was my fanciful
theory that Nature could not afford to lavish so pure a liquid,
as she does the waters of all meaner fountains.
While the moon was hanging almost perpendicularly over this spot,
two figures appeared on the summit of the hill, and came with
noiseless footsteps down towards the spring. They were then in
the first freshness of youth; nor is there a wrinkle now on
either of their brows, and yet they wore a strange, old-fashioned
garb. One, a young man with ruddy cheeks, walked beneath the
canopy of a broad-brimmed gray hat; he seemed to have inherited
his great-grandsire's square-skirted coat, and a waistcoat that
extended its immense flaps to his knees; his brown locks, also,
hung down behind, in a mode unknown to our times. By his side was
a sweet young damsel, her fair features sheltered by a prim
little bonnet, within which appeared the vestal muslin of a cap;
her close, long-waisted gown, and indeed her whole attire, might
have been worn by some rustic beauty who had faded half a century
before. But that there was something too warm and life-like in
them, I would here have compared this couple to the ghosts of two
young lovers who had died long since in the glow of passion, and
now were straying out of their graves, to renew the old vows, and
shadow forth the unforgotten kiss of their earthly lips, beside
the moonlit spring.
"Thee and I will rest here a moment, Miriam," said the young man,
as they drew near the stone cistern, "for there is no fear that
the elders know what we have done; and this may be the last time
we shall ever taste this water."
Thus speaking, with a little sadness in his face, which was also
visible in that of his companion, he made her sit down on a
stone, and was about to place himself very close to her side;
she, however, repelled him, though not unkindly.
"Nay, Josiah," said she, giving him a timid push with her maiden
hand, "thee must sit farther off, on that other stone, with the
spring between us. What would the sisters say, if thee were to
sit so close to me?"
"But we are of the world's people now, Miriam," answered Josiah.
The girl persisted in her prudery, nor did the youth, in fact,
seem altogether free from a similar sort of shyness; so they sat
apart from each other, gazing up the hill, where the moonlight
discovered the tops of a group of buildings. While their
attention was thus occupied, a party of travellers, who had come
wearily up the long ascent, made a halt to refresh themselves at
the spring. There were three men, a woman, and a little girl and
boy. Their attire was mean, covered with the dust of the summer's
day, and damp with the night-dew; they all looked woebegone, as
if the cares and sorrows of the world had made their steps
heavier as they climbed the hill; even the two little children
appeared older in evil days than the young man and maiden who had
first approached the spring.
"Good evening to you, young folks," was the salutation of the
travellers; and "Good evening, friends," replied the youth and
damsel.
"Is that white building the Shaker meeting-house?" asked one of
the strangers. "And are those the red roofs of the Shaker
village?"
"Friend, it is the Shaker village," answered Josiah, after some
hesitation.
The travellers, who, from the first, had looked suspiciously at
the garb of these young people, now taxed them with an intention
which all the circumstances, indeed, rendered too obvious to be
mistaken.
"It is true, friends," replied the young man, summoning up his
courage. "Miriam and I have a gift to love each other, and we are
going among the world's people, to live after their fashion. And
ye know that we do not transgress the law of the land; and
neither ye, nor the elders themselves, have a right to hinder
us."
"Yet you think it expedient to depart without leave-taking,"
remarked one of the travellers.
"Yea, ye-a," said Josiah, reluctantly, "because father Job is a
very awful man to speak with; and being aged himself, he has but
little charity for what he calls the iniquities of the flesh."
"Well," said the stranger, "we will neither use force to bring
you back to the village, nor will we betray you to the elders.
But sit you here awhile, and when you have heard what we shall
tell you of the world which we have left, and into which you are
going, perhaps you will turn back with us of your own accord.
What say you?" added he, turning to his companions. "We have
travelled thus far without becoming known to each other. Shall we
tell our stories, here by this pleasant spring, for our own
pastime, and the benefit of these misguided young lovers?"
In accordance with this proposal, the whole party stationed
themselves round the stone cistern; the two children, being very
weary, fell asleep upon the damp earth, and the pretty Shaker
girl, whose feelings were those of a nun or a Turkish lady, crept
as close as possible to the female traveller, and as far as she
well could from the unknown men. The same person who had hitherto
been the chief spokesman now stood up, waving his hat in his
hand, and suffered the moonlight to fall full upon his front.
"In me," said he, with a certain majesty of utterance,--"in me,
you behold a poet."
Though a lithographic print of this gentleman is extant, it may
be well to notice that he was now nearly forty, a thin and
stooping figure, in a black coat, out at elbows; notwithstanding
the ill condition of his attire, there were about him several
tokens of a peculiar sort of foppery, unworthy of a mature man,
particularly in the arrangement of his hair which was so disposed
as to give all possible loftiness and breadth to his forehead.
However, he had an intelligent eye, and, on the whole, a marked
countenance.
"A poet!" repeated the young Shaker, a little puzzled how to
understand such a designation, seldom heard in the utilitarian
community where he had spent his life. "Oh, ay, Miriam, he means
a varse-maker, thee must know."
This remark jarred upon the susceptible nerves of the poet; nor
could he help wondering what strange fatality had put into this
young man's mouth an epithet, which ill-natured people had
affirmed to be more proper to his merit than the one assumed by
himself.
"True, I am a verse-maker," he resumed, "but my verse is no more
than the material body into which I breathe the celestial soul of
thought. Alas! how many a pang has it cost me, this same
insensibility to the ethereal essence of poetry, with which you
have here tortured me again, at the moment when I am to
relinquish my profession forever! O Fate! why hast thou warred
with Nature, turning all her higher and more perfect gifts to the
ruin of me, their possessor? What is the voice of song, when the
world lacks the ear of taste? How can I rejoice in my strength
and delicacy of feeling, when they have but made great sorrows
out of little ones? Have I dreaded scorn like death, and yearned
for fame as others pant for vital air, only to find myself in a
middle state between obscurity and infamy? But I have my revenge!
I could have given existence to a thousand bright creations. I
crush them into my heart, and there let them putrefy! I shake off
the dust of my feet against my countrymen! But posterity, tracing
my footsteps up this weary hill, will cry shame upon the unworthy
age that drove one of the fathers of American song to end his
days in a Shaker village! "
During this harangue, the speaker gesticulated with great energy,
and, as poetry is the natural language of passion, there appeared
reason to apprehend his final explosion into an ode extempore.
The reader must understand that, for all these bitter words, he
was a kind, gentle, harmless, poor fellow enough, whom Nature,
tossing her ingredients together without looking at her recipe,
had sent into the world with too much of one sort of brain, and
hardly any of another.
"Friend," said the young Shaker, in some perplexity, "thee
seemest to have met with great troubles; and, doubtless, I should
pity them, if--if I could but understand what they were."
"Happy in your ignorance!" replied the poet, with an air of
sublime superiority. "To your coarser mind, perhaps, I may seem
to speak of more important griefs when I add, what I had well-
nigh forgotten, that I am out at elbows, and almost starved to
death. At any rate, you have the advice and example of one
individual to warn you back; for I am come hither, a disappointed
man, flinging aside the fragments of my hopes, and seeking
shelter in the calm retreat which you are so anxious to leave."
"I thank thee, friend," rejoined the youth, "but I do not mean to
be a poet, nor, Heaven be praised! do I think Miriam ever made a
varse in her life. So we need not fear thy disappointments. But,
Miriam," he added, with real concern, "thee knowest that the
elders admit nobody that has not a gift to be useful. Now, what
under the sun can they do with this poor varse-maker?"
"Nay, Josiah, do not thee discourage the poor man," said the
girl, in all simplicity and kindness. "Our hymns are very rough,
and perhaps they may trust him to smooth them."
Without noticing this hint of professional employment, the poet
turned away, and gave himself up to a sort of vague reverie,
which he called thought. Sometimes he watched the moon, pouring a
silvery liquid on the clouds, through which it slowly melted till
they became all bright; then he saw the same sweet radiance
dancing on the leafy trees which rustled as if to shake it off,
or sleeping on the high tops of hills, or hovering down in
distant valleys, like the material of unshaped dreams; lastly, he
looked into the spring, and there the light was mingling with the
water. In its crystal bosom, too, beholding all heaven reflected
there, he found an emblem of a pure and tranquil breast. He
listened to that most ethereal of all sounds, the song of
crickets, coming in full choir upon the wind, and fancied that,
if moonlight could be heard, it would sound just like that.
Finally, he took a draught at the Shaker spring, and, as if it
were the true Castalia, was forthwith moved to compose a lyric, a
Farewell to his Harp, which he swore should be its closing
strain, the last verse that an ungrateful world should have from
him. This effusion, with two or three other little pieces,
subsequently written, he took the first opportunity to send, by
one of the Shaker brethren, to Concord, where they were published
in the New Hampshire Patriot.
Meantime, another of the Canterbury pilgrims, one so different
from the poet that the delicate fancy of the latter could hardly
have conceived of him, began to relate his sad experience. He was
a small man, of quick and unquiet gestures, about fifty years
old, with a narrow forehead, all wrinkled and drawn together. He
held in his hand a pencil, and a card of some commission-merchant
in foreign parts, on the back of which, for there was light
enough to read or write by, he seemed ready to figure out a
calculation.
"Young man," said he, abruptly, "what quantity of land do the
Shakers own here, in Canterbury?"
"That is more than I can tell thee, friend," answered Josiah,
"but it is a very rich establishment, and for a long way by the
roadside thee may guess the land to be ours, by the neatness of
the fences."
"And what may be the value of the whole," continued the stranger,
"with all the buildings and improvements, pretty nearly, in round
numbers?"
"Oh, a monstrous sum,--more than I can reckon," replied the young
Shaker.
"Well, sir," said the pilgrim, "there was a day, and not very
long ago, neither, when I stood at my counting-room window, and
watched the signal flags of three of my own ships entering the
harbor, from the East Indies, from Liverpool, and from up the
Straits, and I would not have given the invoice of the least of
them for the title-deeds of this whole Shaker settlement. You
stare. Perhaps, now, you won't believe that I could have put more
value on a little piece of paper, no bigger than the palm of your
hand, than all these solid acres of grain, grass, and
pasture-land would sell for?"
"I won't dispute it, friend," answered Josiah, "but I know I had
rather have fifty acres of this good land than a whole sheet of
thy paper."
"You may say so now," said the ruined merchant, bitterly, "for my
name would not be worth the paper I should write it on. Of
course, you must have heard of my failure?"
And the stranger mentioned his name, which, however mighty it
might have been in the commercial world, the young Shaker had
never heard of among the Canterbury hills.
"Not heard of my failure!" exclaimed the merchant, considerably
piqued. "Why, it was spoken of on 'Change in London, and from
Boston to New Orleans men trembled in their shoes. At all events,
I did fail, and you see me here on my road to the Shaker village,
where, doubtless (for the Shakers are a shrewd sect), they will
have a due respect for my experience, and give me the management
of the trading part of the concern, in which case I think I can
pledge myself to double their capital in four or five years. Turn
back with me, young man; for though you will never meet with my
good luck, you can hardly escape my bad."
"I will not turn back for this," replied Josiah. calmly, "any
more than for the advice of the varse-maker, between whom and
thee, friend, I see a sort of likeness, though I can't justly say
where it lies. But Miriam and I can earn our daily bread among
the world's people as well as in the Shaker village. And do we
want anything more, Miriam?"
"Nothing more, Josiah," said the girl, quietly.
"Yea, Miriam, and daily bread for some other little mouths, if
God send them," observed the simple Shaker lad.
Miriam did not reply, but looked down into the spring, where she
encountered the image of her own pretty face, blushing within the
prim little bonnet. The third pilgrim now took up the
conversation. He was a sunburnt countryman, of tall frame and
bony strength, on whose rude and manly face there appeared a
darker, more sullen and obstinate despondency, than on those of
either the poet or the merchant.
"Well, now, youngster," he began, "these folks have had their
say, so I'll take my turn. My story will cut but a poor figure by
the side of theirs; for I never supposed that I could have a
right to meat and drink, and great praise besides, only for
tagging rhymes together, as it seems this man does; nor ever
tried to get the substance of hundreds into my own hands, like
the trader there. When I was about of your years, I married me a
wife,--just such a neat and pretty young woman as Miriam, if
that's her name,--and all I asked of Providence was an ordinary
blessing on the sweat of my brow, so that we might be decent and
comfortable, and have daily bread for ourselves, and for some
other little mouths that we soon had to feed. We had no very
great prospects before us; but I never wanted to be idle; and I
thought it a matter of course that the Lord would help me,
because I was willing to help myself."
"And didn't He help thee, friend?" demanded Josiah, with some
eagerness.
"No," said the yeoman, sullenly; "for then you would not have
seen me here. I have labored hard for years; and my means have
been growing narrower, and my living poorer, and my heart colder
and heavier, all the time; till at last I could bear it no
longer. I set myself down to calculate whether I had best go on
the Oregon expedition, or come here to the Shaker village; but I
had not hope enough left in me to begin the world over again;
and, to make my story short, here I am. And now, youngster, take
my advice, and turn back; or else, some few years hence, you'll
have to climb this hill, with as heavy a heart as mine."
This simple story had a strong effect on the young fugitives. The
misfortunes of the poet and merchant had won little sympathy from
their plain good sense and unworldly feelings, qualities which
made them such unprejudiced and inflexible judges, that few men
would have chosen to take the opinion of this youth and maiden as
to the wisdom or folly of their pursuits. But here was one whose
simple wishes had resembled their own, and who, after efforts
which almost gave him a right to claim success from fate, had
failed in accomplishing them.
"But thy wife, friend?" exclaimed the younger man. "What became
of the pretty girl, like Miriam? Oh, I am afraid she is dead!"
"Yea, poor man, she must be dead,--she and the children, too,"
sobbed Miriam.
The female pilgrim had been leaning over the spring, wherein
latterly a tear or two might have been seen to fall, and form its
little circle on the surface of the water. She now looked up,
disclosing features still comely, but which had acquired an
expression of fretfulness, in the same long course of evil
fortune that had thrown a sullen gloom over the temper of the
unprosperous yeoman.
"I am his wife," said she, a shade of irritability just
perceptible in the sadness of her tone. "These poor little
things, asleep on the ground, are two of our children. We had two
more, but God has provided better for them than we could, by
taking them to Himself."
"And what would thee advise Josiah and me to do?" asked Miriam,
this being the first question which she had put to either of the
strangers.
" 'Tis a thing almost against nature for a woman to try to part
true lovers," answered the yeoman's wife, after a pause; "but
I'll speak as truly to you as if these were my dying words.
Though my husband told you some of our troubles, he didn't
mention the greatest, and that which makes all the rest so hard
to bear. If you and your sweetheart marry, you'll be kind and
pleasant to each other for a year or two, and while that's the
case, you never will repent; but, by and by, he'll grow gloomy,
rough, and hard to please, and you'll be peevish, and full of
little angry fits, and apt to be complaining by the fireside,
when he comes to rest himself from his troubles out of doors; so
your love will wear away by little and little, and leave you
miserable at last. It has been so with us; and yet my husband and
I were true lovers once, if ever two young folks were ."
As she ceased, the yeoman and his wife exchanged a glance, in
which there was more and warmer affection than they had supposed
to have escaped the frost of a wintry fate, in either of their
breasts. At that moment, when they stood on the utmost verge of
married life, one word fitly spoken, or perhaps one peculiar
look, had they had mutual confidence enough to reciprocate it,
might have renewed all their old feelings, and sent them back,
resolved to sustain each other amid the struggles of the world.
But the crisis passed and never came again. Just then, also, the
children, roused by their mother's voice, looked up, and added
their wailing accents to the testimony borne by all the
Canterbury pilgrims against the world from which they fled.
"We are tired and hungry!" cried they. "Is it far to the Shaker
village?"
The Shaker youth and maiden looked mournfully into each other's
eyes. They had but stepped across the threshold of their homes,
when lo! the dark array of cares and sorrows that rose up to warn
them back. The varied narratives of the strangers had arranged
themselves into a parable; they seemed not merely instances of
woful fate that had befallen others, but shadowy omens of
disappointed hope and unavailing toil, domestic grief and
estranged affection, that would cloud the onward path of these
poor fugitives. But after one instant's hesitation, they opened
their arms, and sealed their resolve with as pure and fond an
embrace as ever youthful love had hallowed.
"We will not go back," said they. "The world never can be dark to
us, for we will always love one another."
Then the Canterbury pilgrims went up the hill, while the poet
chanted a drear and desperate stanza of the Farewell to his Harp,
fitting music for that melancholy band. They sought a home where
all former ties of nature or society would be sundered, and all
old distinctions levelled, and a cold and passionless security be
substituted for mortal hope and fear, as in that other refuge of
the world's weary outcasts, the grave. The lovers drank at the
Shaker spring, and then, with chastened hopes, but more confiding
affections, went on to mingle in an untried life.
_________
-THE END-
Nathaniel Hawthorne's short story: The Canterbury Pilgrims
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