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_ A traveller with a knapsack on his shoulders comes out of the duskiness
of vague, unchronicled times, throwing his shadow before him in the
morning sunshine along a well-trodden, though solitary path.
It was early summer, or perhaps latter spring, and the most genial
weather that either spring or summer ever brought, possessing a
character, indeed, as if both seasons had done their utmost to create
an atmosphere and temperature most suitable for the enjoyment and
exercise of life. To one accustomed to a climate where there is seldom
a medium between heat too fierce and cold too deadly, it was a new
development in the nature of weather. So genial it was, so full of all
comfortable influences, and yet, somehow or other, void of the torrid
characteristic that inevitably burns in our full sun-bursts. The
traveller thought, in fact, that the sun was at less than his brightest
glow; for though it was bright,--though the day seemed cloudless,--
though it appeared to be the clear, transparent morning that precedes
an unshadowed noon,--still there was a mild and softened character, not
so perceptible when he directly sought to see it, but as if some veil
were interposed between the earth and sun, absorbing all the passionate
qualities out of the latter, and leaving only the kindly ones. Warmth
was in abundance, and, yet, all through it, and strangely akin to it,
there was a half-suspected coolness that gave the atmosphere its most
thrilling and delicious charm. It was good for human life, as the
traveller, felt throughout all his being; good, likewise, for vegetable
life, as was seen in the depth and richness of verdure over the gently
undulating landscape, and the luxuriance of foliage, wherever there was
tree or shrub to put forth leaves.
The path along which the traveller was passing deserved at least a word
or two of description: it was a well-trodden footpath, running just
here along the edge of a field of grass, and bordered on one side by a
hedge which contained materials within itself for varied and minute
researches in natural history; so richly luxuriant was it with its
diverse vegetable life, such a green intricacy did it form, so
impenetrable and so beautiful, and such a Paradise it was for the birds
that built their nests there in a labyrinth of little boughs and twigs,
unseen and inaccessible, while close beside the human race to which
they attach themselves, that they must have felt themselves as safe as
when they sung to Eve. Homely flowers likewise grew in it, and many
creeping and twining plants, that were an original part of the hedge,
had come of their own accord and dwelt here, beautifying and enriching
the verdant fence by way of repayment for the shelter and support which
it afforded them. At intervals, trees of vast trunk and mighty spread
of foliage, whether elms or oaks, grew in the line of the hedge, and
the bark of those gigantic, age-long patriarchs was not gray and naked,
like the trees which the traveller had been accustomed to see, but
verdant with moss, or in many cases richly enwreathed with a network of
creeping plants, and oftenest the ivy of old growth, clambering upward,
and making its own twisted stem almost of one substance with the
supporting tree. On one venerable oak there was a plant of mystic leaf,
which the traveller knew by instinct, and plucked a bough of it with a
certain reverence for the sake of the Druids and Christmas kisses and
of the pasty in which it was rooted from of old.
The path in which he walked, rustic as it was and made merely by the
feet that pressed it down, was one of the ancientest of ways; older
than the oak that bore the mistletoe, older than the villages between
which it passed, older perhaps than the common road which the traveller
had crossed that morning; old as the times when people first debarred
themselves from wandering freely and widely wherever a vagrant impulse
led them. The footpath, therefore, still retains some of the
characteristics of a woodland walk, taken at random, by a lover of
nature not pressed for time nor restrained by artificial barriers; it
sweeps and lingers along, and finds pretty little dells and nooks of
delightful scenery, and picturesque glimpses of halls or cottages, in
the same neighborhood where a highroad would disclose only a tiresome
blank. They run into one another for miles and miles together, and
traverse rigidly guarded parks and domains, not as a matter of favor,
but as a right; so that the poorest man thus retains a kind of property
and privilege in the oldest inheritance of the richest. The highroad
sees only the outside; the footpath leads down into the heart of the
country.
A pleasant feature of the footpath was the stile, between two fields;
no frail and temporary structure, but betokening the permanence of this
rustic way; the ancient solidity of the stone steps, worn into cavities
by the hobnailed shoes that had pressed upon them: here not only the
climbing foot had passed for ages, but here had sat the maiden with her
milk-pail, the rustic on his way afield or homeward; here had been
lover meetings, cheerful chance chats, song as natural as bird note, a
thousand pretty scenes of rustic manners.
It was curious to see the traveller pause, to contemplate so simple a
thing as this old stile of a few stone steps; antique as an old castle;
simple and rustic as the gap in a rail fence; and while he sat on one
of the steps, making himself pleasantly sensible of his whereabout,
like one who should handle a dream and find it tangible and real, he
heard a sound that bewitched him with still another dreamy delight. A
bird rose out of the grassy field, and, still soaring aloft, made a
cheery melody that was like a spire of audible flame,--rapturous music,
as if the whole soul and substance of the winged creature had been
distilled into this melody, as it vanished skyward.
"The lark! the lark!" exclaimed the traveller, recognizing the note
(though never heard before) as if his childhood had known it.
A moment afterwards another bird was heard in the shadow of a
neighboring wood, or some other inscrutable hiding-place, singing
softly in a flute-like note, as if blown through an instrument of
wood,--"Cuckoo! Cuckoo!"--only twice, and then a stillness.
"How familiar these rustic sounds!" he exclaimed. "Surely I was born
here!"
The person who thus enjoyed these sounds, as if they were at once
familiar and strange, was a young man, tall and rather slenderly built,
and though we have called him young, there were the traces of thought,
struggle, and even of experience in his marked brow and somewhat pale
face; but the spirit within him was evidently still that of a youth,
lithe and active, gazing out of his dark eyes and taking note of things
about him, with an eager, centring interest, that seemed to be
unusually awake at the present moment.
It could be but a few years since he first called himself a man; but
they must have been thickly studded with events, turbulent with action,
spent amidst circumstances that called for resources of energy not
often so early developed; and thus his youth might have been kept in
abeyance until now, when in this simple rural scene he grew almost a
boy again. As for his station in life, his coarse gray suit and the
knapsack on his shoulders did not indicate a very high one; yet it was
such as a gentleman might wear of a morning, or on a pedestrian ramble,
and was worn in a way that made it seem of a better fashion than it
really was, as it enabled him to find a rare enjoyment, as we have
seen, in by-path, hedge-row, rustic stile, lark, and cuckoo, and even
the familiar grass and clover blossom. It was as if he had long been
shut in a sick-chamber or a prison; or, at least, within the iron cage
of busy life, that had given him but few glimpses of natural things
through its bars; or else this was another kind of nature than he had
heretofore known.
As he walked along (through a kind of dream, though he seemed so
sensibly observant of trifling things around him,) he failed to notice
that the path grew somewhat less distinctly marked, more infringed upon
by grass, more shut in by shrubbery; he had deviated into a side track,
and, in fact, a certain printed board nailed against a tree had escaped
his notice, warning off intruders with inhospitable threats of
prosecution. He began to suspect that he must have gone astray when the
path led over plashy ground with a still fainter trail of preceding
footsteps, and plunged into shrubbery, and seemed on the point of
deserting him altogether, after having beguiled him thus far. The spot
was an entanglement of boughs, and yet did not give one the impression
of wildness; for it was the stranger's idea that everything in this
long cultivated region had been touched and influenced by man's care,
every oak, every bush, every sod,--that man knew them all, and that
they knew him, and by that mutual knowledge had become far other than
they were in the first freedom of growth, such as may be found in an
American forest. Nay, the wildest denizens of this sylvan neighborhood
were removed in the same degree from their primeval character; for
hares sat on their hind legs to gaze at the approaching traveller, and
hardly thought it worth their while to leap away among some ferns, as
he drew near; two pheasants looked at him from a bough, a little inward
among the shrubbery; and, to complete the wonder, he became aware of
the antlers and brown muzzle of a deer protruding among the boughs, and
though immediately there ensued a great rush and rustling of the herd,
it seemed evidently to come from a certain lingering shyness, an
instinct that had lost its purpose and object, and only mimicked a
dread of man, whose neighborhood and familiarity had tamed the wild
deer almost into a domestic creature. Remembering his experience of
true woodland life, the traveller fancied that it might be possible to
want freer air, less often used for human breath, than was to be found
anywhere among these woods.
But then the sweet, calm sense of safety that was here: the certainty
that with the wild element that centuries ago had passed out of this
scene had gone all the perils of wild men and savage beasts, dwarfs,
witches, leaving nature, not effete, but only disarmed of those
rougher, deadlier characteristics, that cruel rawness, which make
primeval Nature the deadly enemy even of her own children. Here was
consolation, doubtless; so we sit down on the stone step of the last
stile that he had crossed, and listen to the footsteps of the
traveller, and the distant rustle among the shrubbery, as he goes
deeper and deeper into the seclusion, having by this time lost the
deceitful track. No matter if he go astray; even were it after
nightfall instead of noontime, a will-o'-the-wisp, or Puck himself,
would not lead him into worse harm than to delude him into some mossy
pool, the depths of which the truant schoolboys had known for ages.
Nevertheless, some little time after his disappearance, there was the
report of a shot that echoed sharp and loud, startling the pheasants
from their boughs, and sending the hares and deer a-scampering in good
earnest.
We next find our friend, from whom we parted on the footpath, in a
situation of which he then was but very imperfectly aware; for, indeed,
he had been in a state of unconsciousness, lasting until it was now
late towards the sunset of that same day. He was endeavoring to make
out where he was, and how he came thither, or what had happened; or
whether, indeed, anything had happened, unless to have fallen asleep,
and to be still enveloped in the fragments of some vivid and almost
tangible dream, the more confused because so vivid. His wits did not
come so readily about him as usual; there may have been a slight
delusion, which mingled itself with his sober perceptions, and by its
leaven of extravagance made the whole substance of the scene untrue.
Thus it happened that, as it were at the same instant, he fancied
himself years back in life, thousands of miles away, in a gloomy
cobwebbed room, looking out upon a graveyard, while yet, neither more
nor less distinctly, he was conscious of being in a small chamber,
panelled with oak, and furnished in an antique style. He was doubtful,
too, whether or no there was a grim feudal figure, in a shabby
dressing-gown and an old velvet cap, sitting in the dusk of the room,
smoking a pipe that diffused a scent of tobacco,--quaffing a deep-hued
liquor out of a tumbler,--looking upwards at a spider that hung above.
"Was there, too, a child sitting in a little chair at his footstool?" In
his earnestness to see this apparition more distinctly, he opened his
eyes wider and stirred, and ceased to see it at all.
But though that other dusty, squalid, cobwebbed scene quite vanished,
and along with it the two figures, old and young, grim and childish, of
whose portraits it had been the framework, still there were features in
the old, oaken-panelled chamber that seemed to belong rather to his
dream. The panels were ornamented, here and there, with antique
carving, representing over and over again an identical device, being a
bare arm, holding the torn-off head of some savage beast, which the
stranger could not know by species, any more than Agassiz himself could
have assigned its type or kindred; because it was that kind of natural
history of which heraldry alone keeps the menagerie. But it was just as
familiar to his recollection as that of the cat which he had fondled in
his childhood.
There was likewise a mantelpiece, heavily wrought of oak, quite black
with smoke and age, in the centre of which, more prominent than
elsewhere, was that same leopard's head that seemed to thrust itself
everywhere into sight, as if typifying some great mystery which human
nature would never be at rest till it had solved; and below, in a
cavernous hollow, there was a smouldering fire of coals; for the genial
day had suddenly grown chill, and a shower of rain spattered against
the small window-panes, almost at the same time with the struggling
sunshine. And over the mantelpiece, where the light of the declining
day came strongest from the window, there was a larger and more highly
relieved carving of this same device, and underneath it a legend, in
Old English letters, which, though his eyes could not precisely trace
it at that distance, he knew to be this:--
"Hold hard the Head."
Otherwise the aspect of the room bewildered him by not being known,
since these details were so familiar; a narrow precinct it was, with
one window full of old-fashioned, diamond-shaped panes of glass, a
small desk table, standing on clawed feet; two or three high-backed
chairs, on the top of each of which was carved that same crest of the
fabulous brute's head, which the carver's fancy seemed to have clutched
so strongly that he could not let it go; in another part of the room a
very old engraving, rude and strong, representing some ruffled
personage, which the stranger only tried to make out with a sort of
idle curiosity, because it was strange he should dream so distinctly.
Very soon it became intolerably irritating that these two dreams, both
purposeless, should have mingled and entangled themselves in his mind.
He made a nervous and petulant motion, intending to rouse himself
fully; and immediately a sharp pang of physical pain took him by
surprise, and made him groan aloud.
Immediately there was an almost noiseless step on the floor; and a
figure emerged from a deep niche, that looked as if it might once have
been an oratory, in ancient times; and the figure, too, might have been
supposed to possess the devout and sanctified character of such as
knelt in the oratories of ancient times. It was an elderly man, tall,
thin, and pale, and wearing a long, dark tunic, and in a peculiar
fashion, which--like almost everything else about him--the stranger
seemed to have a confused remembrance of; this venerable person had a
benign and pitiful aspect, and approached the bedside with such good
will and evident desire to do the sufferer good, that the latter felt
soothed, at least, by his very presence. He lay, a moment, gazing up at
the old man's face, without being able to exert himself to say a word,
but sensible, as it were, of a mild, soft influence from him, cooling
the fever which seemed to burn in his veins.
"Do you suffer much pain?" asked the old man, gently.
"None at all," said the stranger; but again a slight motion caused him
to feel a burning twinge in his shoulder. "Yes; there was a throb of
strange anguish. Why should I feel pain? Where am I?"
"In safety, and with those who desire to be your friends," said the old
man. "You have met with an accident; but do not inquire about it now.
Quiet is what you need."
Still the traveller gazed at him; and the old man's figure seemed to
enter into his dream, or delirium, whichever it might be, as if his
peaceful presence were but a shadow, so quaint was his address, so
unlike real life, in that dark robe, with a velvet skullcap on his
head, beneath which his hair made a silvery border; and looking more
closely, the stranger saw embroidered on the breast of the tunic that
same device, the arm and the leopard's head, which was visible in the
carving of the room. Yes; this must still be a dream, which, under the
unknown laws which govern such psychical states, had brought out thus
vividly figures, devices, words, forgotten since his boyish days.
Though of an imaginative tendency, the stranger was nevertheless
strongly tenacious of the actual, and had a natural horror at the idea
of being seriously at odds, in beliefs, perceptions, conclusions, with
the real world about him; so that a tremor ran through him, as if he
felt the substance of the world shimmering before his eyes like a mere
vaporous consistency.
"Are you real?" said he to the antique presence; "or a spirit? or a
fantasy?"
The old man laid his thin, cool palm on the stranger's burning
forehead, and smiled benignantly, keeping it there an instant.
"If flesh and blood are real, I am so," said he; "a spirit, too, I may
claim to be, made thin by fantasy. Again, do not perplex yourself with
such things. To-morrow you may find denser substance in me. Drink this
composing draught, and close your eyes to those things that disturb
you."
"Your features, too, and your voice," said the stranger, in a resigned
tone, as if he were giving up a riddle, the solution of which he could
not find, "have an image and echo somewhere in my memory. It is all an
entanglement. I will drink, and shut my eyes."
He drank from a little old-fashioned silver cup, which his venerable
guardian presented to his lips; but in so doing he was still perplexed
and tremulously disturbed with seeing that same weary old device, the
leopard's head, engraved on the side; and shut his eyes to escape it,
for it irritated a certain portion of his brain with vague, fanciful,
elusive ideas. So he sighed and spoke no more. The medicine, whatever
it might be, had the merit, rare in doctor's stuff, of being pleasant
to take, assuasive of thirst, and imbued with a hardly perceptible
fragrance, that was so ethereal that it also seemed to enter into his
dream and modify it. He kept his eyes closed, and fell into a misty
state, in which he wondered whether this could be the panacea or
medicament which old Doctor Grimshawe used to distil from cobwebs, and
of which the fragrance seemed to breathe through all the waste of years
since then. He wondered, too, who was this benign, saint-like old man,
and where, in what former state of being, he could have known him; to
have him thus, as no strange thing, and yet so strange, be attending at
his bedside, with all this ancient garniture. But it was best to
dismiss all things, he being so weak; to resign himself; all this had
happened before, and had passed away, prosperously or unprosperously;
it would pass away in this case, likewise; and in the morning whatever
might be delusive would have disappeared. _
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