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Title: The Christmas Banquet
Author: Nathaniel Hawthorne
Release Date: September 6, 2003 [eBook #9228]
[Most recently updated: November 9, 2022]
Language: English
Character set encoding: UTF-8
Produced by: David Widger and Al Haines
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE CHRISTMAS BANQUET ***
The Christmas Banquet
by Nathaniel Hawthorne
FROM THE UNPUBLISHED “ALLEGORIES OF THE HEART.”
“I have here attempted,” said Roderick, unfolding a few sheets of manuscript,
as he sat with Rosina and the sculptor in the summer-house,—“I have
attempted to seize hold of a personage who glides past me, occasionally, in my
walk through life. My former sad experience, as you know, has gifted me with
some degree of insight into the gloomy mysteries of the human heart, through
which I have wandered like one astray in a dark cavern, with his torch fast
flickering to extinction. But this man, this class of men, is a hopeless
puzzle.”
“Well, but propound him,” said the sculptor. “Let us have an idea of hint, to
begin with.”
“Why, indeed,” replied Roderick, “he is such a being as I could conceive you to
carve out of marble, and some yet unrealized perfection of human science to
endow with an exquisite mockery of intellect; but still there lacks the last
inestimable touch of a divine Creator. He looks like a man; and, perchance,
like a better specimen of man than you ordinarily meet. You might esteem him
wise; he is capable of cultivation and refinement, and has at least an external
conscience; but the demands that spirit makes upon spirit are precisely those
to which he cannot respond. When at last you come close to him you find him
chill and unsubstantial,—a mere vapor.”
“I believe,” said Rosina, “I have a glimmering idea of what you mean.”
“Then be thankful,” answered her husband, smiling; “but do not anticipate any
further illumination from what I am about to read. I have here imagined such a
man to be—what, probably, he never is—conscious of the deficiency
in his spiritual organization. Methinks the result would be a sense of cold
unreality wherewith he would go shivering through the world, longing to
exchange his load of ice for any burden of real grief that fate could fling
upon a human being.”
Contenting himself with this preface, Roderick began to read.
In a certain old gentleman’s last will and testament there appeared a bequest,
which, as his final thought and deed, was singularly in keeping with a long
life of melancholy eccentricity. He devised a considerable sum for establishing
a fund, the interest of which was to be expended, annually forever, in
preparing a Christmas Banquet for ten of the most miserable persons that could
be found. It seemed not to be the testator’s purpose to make these half a score
of sad hearts merry, but to provide that the stern or fierce expression of
human discontent should not be drowned, even for that one holy and joyful day,
amid the acclamations of festal gratitude which all Christendom sends up. And
he desired, likewise, to perpetuate his own remonstrance against the earthly
course of Providence, and his sad and sour dissent from those systems of
religion or philosophy which either find sunshine in the world or draw it down
from heaven.
The task of inviting the guests, or of selecting among such as might advance
their claims to partake of this dismal hospitality, was confided to the two
trustees or stewards of the fund. These gentlemen, like their deceased friend,
were sombre humorists, who made it their principal occupation to number the
sable threads in the web of human life, and drop all the golden ones out of the
reckoning. They performed their present office with integrity and judgment. The
aspect of the assembled company, on the day of the first festival, might not,
it is true, have satisfied every beholder that these were especially the
individuals, chosen forth from all the world, whose griefs were worthy to stand
as indicators of the mass of human suffering. Yet, after due consideration, it
could not be disputed that here was a variety of hopeless discomfort, which, if
it sometimes arose from causes apparently inadequate, was thereby only the
shrewder imputation against the nature and mechanism of life.
The arrangements and decorations of the banquet were probably intended to
signify that death in life which had been the testator’s definition of
existence. The hall, illuminated by torches, was hung round with curtains of
deep and dusky purple, and adorned with branches of cypress and wreaths of
artificial flowers, imitative of such as used to be strewn over the dead. A
sprig of parsley was laid by every plate. The main reservoir of wine, was a
sepulchral urn of silver, whence the liquor was distributed around the table in
small vases, accurately copied from those that held the tears of ancient
mourners. Neither had the stewards—if it were their taste that arranged
these details—forgotten the fantasy of the old Egyptians, who seated a
skeleton at every festive board, and mocked their own merriment with the
imperturbable grin of a death’s-head. Such a fearful guest, shrouded in a black
mantle, sat now at the head of the table. It was whispered, I know not with
what truth, that the testator himself had once walked the visible world with
the machinery of that sane skeleton, and that it was one of the stipulations of
his will, that he should thus be permitted to sit, from year to year, at the
banquet which he had instituted. If so, it was perhaps covertly implied that he
had cherished no hopes of bliss beyond the grave to compensate for the evils
which he felt or imagined here. And if, in their bewildered conjectures as to
the purpose of earthly existence, the banqueters should throw aside the veil,
and cast an inquiring glance at this figure of death, as seeking thence the
solution otherwise unattainable, the only reply would be a stare of the vacant
eye-caverns and a grin of the skeleton jaws. Such was the response that the
dead man had fancied himself to receive when he asked of Death to solve the
riddle of his life; and it was his desire to repeat it when the guests of his
dismal hospitality should find themselves perplexed with the same question.
“What means that wreath?” asked several of the company, while viewing the
decorations of the table.
They alluded to a wreath of cypress, which was held on high by a skeleton arm,
protruding from within the black mantle.
“It is a crown,” said one of the stewards, “not for the worthiest, but for the
wofulest, when he shall prove his claim to it.”
The guest earliest bidden to the festival was a man of soft and gentle
character, who had not energy to struggle against the heavy despondency to
which his temperament rendered him liable; and therefore with nothing outwardly
to excuse him from happiness, he had spent a life of quiet misery that made his
blood torpid, and weighed upon his breath, and sat like a ponderous night-fiend
upon every throb of his unresisting heart. His wretchedness seemed as deep as
his original nature, if not identical with it. It was the misfortune of a
second guest to cherish within his bosom a diseased heart, which had become so
wretchedly sore that the continual and unavoidable rubs of the world, the blow
of an enemy, the careless jostle of a stranger, and even the faithful and
loving touch of a friend, alike made ulcers in it. As is the habit of people
thus afflicted, he found his chief employment in exhibiting these miserable
sores to any who would give themselves the pain of viewing them. A third guest
was a hypochondriac, whose imagination wrought necromancy in his outward and
inward world, and caused him to see monstrous faces in the household fire, and
dragons in the clouds of sunset, and fiends in the guise of beautiful women,
and something ugly or wicked beneath all the pleasant surfaces of nature. His
neighbor at table was one who, in his early youth, had trusted mankind too
much, and hoped too highly in their behalf, and, in meeting with many
disappointments, had become desperately soured. For several years back this
misanthrope bad employed himself in accumulating motives for hating and
despising his race,—such as murder, lust, treachery, ingratitude,
faithlessness of trusted friends, instinctive vices of children, impurity of
women, hidden guilt in men of saint-like aspect,—and, in short, all
manner of black realities that sought to decorate themselves with outward grace
or glory. But at every atrocious fact that was added to his catalogue, at every
increase of the sad knowledge which he spent his life to collect, the native
impulses of the poor man’s loving and confiding heart made him groan with
anguish. Next, with his heavy brow bent downward, there stole into the hall a
man naturally earnest and impassioned, who, from his immemorial infancy, had
felt the consciousness of a high message to the world; but, essaying to deliver
it, had found either no voice or form of speech, or else no ears to listen.
Therefore his whole life was a bitter questioning of himself: “Why have not men
acknowledged my mission? Am I not a self-deluding fool? What business have I on
earth? Where is my grave?” Throughout the festival, he quaffed frequent
draughts from the sepulchral urn of wine, hoping thus to quench the celestial
fire that tortured his own breast and could not benefit his race.
Then there entered, having flung away a ticket for a ball, a gay gallant of
yesterday, who had found four or five wrinkles in his brow, and more gray hairs
than he could well number on his head. Endowed with sense and feeling, he had
nevertheless spent his youth in folly, but had reached at last that dreary
point in life where Folly quits us of her own accord, leaving us to make
friends with Wisdom if we can. Thus, cold and desolate, he had come to seek
Wisdom at the banquet, and wondered if the skeleton were she. To eke out the
company, the stewards had invited a distressed poet from his home in the
almshouse, and a melancholy idiot from the street-corner. The latter had just
the glimmering of sense that was sufficient to make him conscious of a vacancy,
which the poor fellow, all his life long, had mistily sought to fill up with
intelligence, wandering up and down the streets, and groaning miserably because
his attempts were ineffectual. The only lady in the hall was one who had fallen
short of absolute and perfect beauty, merely by the trifling defect of a slight
cast in her left eye. But this blemish, minute as it was, so shocked the pure
ideal of her soul, rather than her vanity, that she passed her life in
solitude, and veiled her countenance even from her own gaze. So the skeleton
sat shrouded at one end of the table, and this poor lady at the other.
One other guest remains to be described. He was a young man of smooth 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 I—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 ditchwater 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.
It was a festival at which the woful man of Uz might suitably have been a
guest, together with all, in each succeeding age, who have tasted deepest of
the bitterness of life. And be it said, too, that every son or daughter of
woman, however favored with happy fortune, might, at one sad moment or another,
have claimed the privilege of a stricken heart, to sit down at this table. But,
throughout the feast, it was remarked that the young stranger, Gervayse
Hastings, was unsuccessful in his attempts to catch its pervading spirit. At
any deep, strong thought that found utterance, and which was torn out, as it
were, from the saddest recesses of human consciousness, he looked mystified and
bewildered; even more than the poor idiot, who seemed to grasp at such things
with his earnest heart, and thus occasionally to comprehend them. The young
man’s conversation was of a colder and lighter kind, often brilliant, but
lacking the powerful characteristics of a nature that had been developed by
suffering.
“Sir,” said the misanthropist, bluntly, in reply to some observation by
Gervayse Hastings, “pray do not address me again. We have no right to talk
together. Our minds have nothing in common. By what claim you appear at this
banquet I cannot guess; but methinks, to a man who could say what you have just
now said, my companions and myself must seem no more than shadows flickering on
the wall. And precisely such a shadow are you to us.”
The young man smiled and bowed, but, drawing himself back in his chair, he
buttoned his coat over his breast, as if the banqueting-ball were growing
chill. Again the idiot fixed his melancholy stare upon the youth, and murmured,
“Cold! cold! cold!”
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 churchyards.
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,—a mother once, 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.
A married couple had been invited from a motive of bitter humor, it being well
understood that they rendered each other unutterably miserable whenever they
chanced to meet, and therefore must necessarily be fit associates at the
festival. In contrast with these was another couple still unmarried, who had
interchanged their hearts in early life, but had been divided by circumstances
as impalpable as morning mist, and kept apart so long that their spirits now
found it impossible to meet, Therefore, yearning for communion, yet shrinking
from one another and choosing none beside, they felt themselves companionless
in life, and looked upon eternity as a boundless desert. Next to the skeleton
sat a mere son of earth,—a hunter of the Exchange,—a gatherer of
shining dust,—a man whose life’s record was in his ledger, and whose
soul’s prison-house the vaults of the bank where he kept his deposits. This
person had been greatly perplexed at his invitation, deeming himself one of the
most fortunate men in the city; but the stewards persisted in demanding his
presence, assuring him that he had no conception how miserable he was.
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 bloodstain 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, and, therefore, 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 circumstance in it than that
of almost any other man—was complete in his lonely age. Stephen Guard,
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 lines 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 snore 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 one very 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, highbrowed, 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. Next, there was
a theorist,—one of a numerous tribe, although he deemed himself unique
since the creation,—a theorist, who had conceived a plan by which all the
wretchedness of earth, moral and physical, might be done away, and the bliss of
the millennium at once accomplished. But, the incredulity of mankind debarring
him from action, he was smitten with as much grief as if the whole mass of woe
which he was denied the opportunity to remedy were crowded into his own bosom.
A plain old man in black attracted much of the company’s notice, on the
supposition that he was no other than Father Miller, who, it seemed, had given
himself up to despair at the tedious delay of the final conflagration. Then
there was a man distinguished for native pride and obstinacy, who, a little
while before, had possessed immense wealth, and held the control of a vast
moneyed interest which he had wielded in the same spirit as a despotic monarch
would wield the power of his empire, carrying on a tremendous moral warfare,
the roar and tremor of which was felt at every fireside in the land. At length
came a crushing ruin,—a total overthrow of fortune, power, and
character,—the effect of which on his imperious and, in many respects,
noble and lofty nature might have entitled him to a place, not merely at our
festival, but among the peers of Pandemonium.
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. The roll of guests being thus
complete, a side-table had been set for three or four disappointed
office-seekers, with hearts as sick as death, whom the stewards had admitted
partly because their calamities really entitled them to entrance here, and
partly that they were in especial need of a good dinner. There was likewise a
homeless dog, with his tail between his legs, licking up the crumbs and gnawing
the fragments of the feast,—such a melancholy cur as one sometimes sees
about the streets without a master, and willing to follow the first that will
accept his service.
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?”
“You will not understand it,” replied Gervayse Hastings, feebly, and with a
singular inefficiency of pronunciation, and sometimes putting one word for
another. “None have understood it, not even those who experience the like. It
is a chillness, a want of earnestness, a feeling as if what should be my heart
were a thing of vapor, a haunting perception of unreality! Thus seeming to
possess all that other men have, all that men aim at, I have really possessed
nothing, neither joy nor griefs. All things, all persons,—as was truly
said to me at this table long and long ago,—have been like shadows
flickering on the wall. It was so with my wife and children, with those who
seemed my friends: it is so with yourselves, whom I see now before one. Neither
have I myself any real existence, but am a shadow like the rest.”
“And how is it with your views of a future life?” inquired the speculative
clergyman.
“Worse than with you,” said the old man, in a hollow and feeble tone; “for I
cannot conceive it earnestly enough to feel either hope or fear.
Mine,—mine is the wretchedness! This cold heart,—this unreal life!
Ah! it grows colder still.”
It so chanced that at this juncture the decayed ligaments of the skeleton gave
way, and the dry hones fell together in a heap, thus causing the dusty wreath
of cypress to drop upon the table. The attention of the company being thus
diverted for a single instant from Gervayse Hastings, they perceived, on
turning again towards him, that the old man had undergone a change. His shadow
had ceased to flicker on the wall.
“Well, Rosina, what is your criticism?” asked Roderick, as he rolled up the
manuscript.
“Frankly, your success is by no means complete,” replied she. “It is true, I
have an idea of the character you endeavor to describe; but it is rather by
dint of my own thought than your expression.”
“That is unavoidable,” observed the sculptor, “because the characteristics are
all negative. If Gervayse Hastings could have imbibed one human grief at the
gloomy banquet, the task of describing him would have been infinitely easier.
Of such persons—and we do meet with these moral monsters now and
then—it is difficult to conceive how they came to exist here, or what
there is in them capable of existence hereafter. They seem to be on the outside
of everything; and nothing wearies the soul more than an attempt to comprehend
them within its grasp.”
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