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The Ambitious Guest
Nathaniel Hawthorne
One September night a family had gathered round their hearth, and piled it
high with the driftwood of mountain streams, the dry cones of the pine, and the
splintered ruins of great trees that had come crashing down the precipice. Up
the chimney roared the fire, and brightened the room with its broad blaze. The
faces of the father and mother had a sober gladness; the children laughed; the
eldest daughter was the image of Happiness at seventeen; and the aged
grandmother, who sat knitting in the warmest place, was the image of Happiness
grown old. They had found the "herb, heart's-ease," in the bleakest spot of all
New England. This family were situated in the Notch of the White Hills, where
the wind was sharp throughout the year, and pitilessly cold in the winter -
giving their cottage all its fresh inclemency before it descended on the valley
of the Saco. They dwelt in a cold spot and a dangerous one; for a mountain
towered above their heads, so steep, that the stones would often rumble down its
sides and startle them at midnight.
The daughter had just uttered some simple jest that filled them all with
mirth, when the wind came through the Notch and seemed to pause before their
cottage - rattling the door, with a sound of wailing and lamentation, before it
passed into the valley. For a moment it saddened them, though there was nothing
unusual in the tones. But the family were glad again when they perceived that
the latch was lifted by some traveller, whose footsteps had been unheard amid
the dreary blast which heralded his approach, and wailed as he was entering, and
went moaning away from the door.
Though they dwelt in such a solitude, these people held daily converse with
the world. The romantic pass of the Notch is a great artery, through which the
life-blood of internal commerce is continually throbbing between Maine, on one
side, and the Green Mountains and the shores of the St. Lawrence, on the other.
The stage-coach always drew up before the door of the cottage. The way-farer,
with no companion but his staff, paused here to exchange a word, that the sense
of loneliness might not utterly overcome him ere he could pass through the cleft
of the mountain, or reach the first house in the valley. And here the teamster,
on his way to Portland market, would put up for the night; and, if a bachelor,
might sit an hour beyond the usual bedtime, and steal a kiss from the mountain
maid at parting. It was one of those primitive taverns where the traveller pays
only for food and lodging, but meets with a homely kindness beyond all price.
When the footsteps were heard, therefore, between the outer door and the inner
one, the whole family rose up, grandmother, children, and all, as if about to
welcome someone who belonged to them, and whose fate was linked with theirs.
The door was opened by a young man. His face at first wore the melancholy
expression, almost despondency, of one who travels a wild and bleak road, at
nightfall and alone, but soon brightened up when he saw the kindly warmth of his
reception. He felt his heart spring forward to meet them all, from the old
woman, who wiped a chair with her apron, to the little child that held out its
arms to him. One glance and smile placed the stranger on a footing of innocent
familiarity with the eldest daughter.
"Ah, this fire is the right thing!" cried he; "especially when there is
such a pleasant circle round it. I am quite benumbed; for the Notch is just like
the pipe of a great pair of bellows; it has blown a terrible blast in my face
all the way from Bartlett."
"Then you are going towards Vermont?" said the master of the house, as he
helped to take a light knapsack off the young man's shoulders.
"Yes; to Burlington, and far enough beyond," replied he. "I meant to have
been at Ethan Crawford's tonight; but a pedestrian lingers along such a road as
this. It is no matter; for, when I saw this good fire, and all your cheerful
faces, I felt as if you had kindled it on purpose for me, and were waiting my
arrival. So I shall sit down among you, and make myself at home."
The frank-hearted stranger had just drawn his chair to the fire when
something like a heavy footstep was heard without, rushing down the steep side
of the mountain, as with long and rapid strides, and taking such a leap in
passing the cottage as to strike the opposite precipice. The family held their
breath, because they knew the sound, and their guest held his by instinct.
"The old mountain has thrown a stone at us, for fear we should forget him,"
said the landlord, recovering himself. "He sometimes nods his head and threatens
to come down; but we are old neighbours, and agree together pretty well upon the
whole. Besides we have a sure place of refuge hard by if he should be coming in
good earnest."
Let us now suppose the stranger to have finished his supper of bear's meat;
and, by his natural felicity of manner, to have placed himself on a footing of
kindness with the whole family, so that they talked as freely together as if he
belonged to their mountain brood. He was of a proud, yet gentle spirit - haughty
and reserved among the rich and great; but ever ready to stoop his head to the
lowly cottage door, and be like a brother or a son at the poor man's fireside.
In the household of the Notch he found warmth and simplicity of feeling, the
pervading intelligence of New England, and a poetry of native growth, which they
had gathered when they little thought of it from the mountain peaks and chasms,
and at the very threshold of their romantic and dangerous abode. He had
travelled far and alone; his whole life, indeed, had been a solitary path; for,
with the lofty caution of his nature, he had kept himself apart from those who
might otherwise have been his companions. The family, too, though so kind and
hospitable, had that consciousness of unity among themselves, and separation
from the world at large, which, in every domestic circle, should still keep a
holy place where no stranger may intrude. But this evening a prophetic sympathy
impelled the refined and educated youth to pour out his heart before the simple
mountaineers, and constrained them to answer him with the same free confidence.
And thus it should have been. Is not the kindred of a common fate a closer tie
than that of birth?
The secret of the young man's character was a high and abstracted ambition.
He could have borne to live an undistinguished life, but not to be forgotten in
the grave. Yearning desire had been transformed to hope; and hope, long
cherished, had become like certainty, that, obscurely as he journeyed now, a
glory was to beam on all his pathway- though not, perhaps, while he was treading
it. But when posterity should gaze back into the gloom of what was now the
present, they would trace the brightness of his footsteps, brightening as meaner
glories faded, and confess that a gifted one had passed from his cradle to his
tomb with none to recognise him.
"As yet," cried the stranger - his cheek glowing and his eye flashing with
enthusiasm - "as yet, I have done nothing. Were I to vanish from the earth
tomorrow, none would know so much of me as you: that a nameless youth came up at
nightfall from the valley of the Saco, and opened his heart to you in the
evening, and passed through the Notch by sunrise, and was seen no more. Not a
soul would ask, 'Who was he? Whither did the wanderer go?' But I cannot die till
I have achieved my destiny. Then, let Death come! I shall have built my
monument!"
There was a continual flow of natural emotion, gushing forth amid
abstracted reverie, which enabled the family to understand this young man's
sentiments, though so foreign from their own. With quick sensibility of the
ludicrous, he blushed at the ardour into which he had been betrayed.
"You laugh at me," said he, taking the eldest daughter's hand, and laughing
himself. "You think my ambition as nonsensical as if I were to freeze myself to
death on the top of Mount Washington, only that people might spy at me from the
country round about. And, truly, that would be a noble pedestal for a man's
statue!"
"It is better to sit here by this fire," answered the girl, blushing, "and
be comfortable and contented, though nobody thinks about us."
"I suppose," said her father, after a fit of musing, "there is something
natural in what the young man says; and if my mind had been turned that way, I
might have felt just the same. It is strange, wife, how his talk has set my head
running on things that are pretty certain never to come to pass."
"Perhaps they may," observed the wife. "Is the man thinking what he will do
when he is a widower?"
"No, no!" cried he, repelling the idea with reproachful kindness. "When I
think of your death, Esther, I think of mine, too. But I was wishing we had a
good farm in Bartlett, or Bethlehem, or Littleton, or some other township round
the White Mountains; but not where they could tumble on our heads. I should want
to stand well with my neighbours and be called Squire, and sent to General Court
for a term or two; for a plain, honest man may do as much good there as a
lawyer. And when I should be grown quite an old man, and you an old woman, so as
not to be long apart, I might die happy enough in my bed, and leave you all
crying around me. A slate gravestone would suit me as well as a marble one -
with just my name and age, and a verse of a hymn, and something to let people
know that I lived an honest man and died a Christian."
"There now!" exclaimed the stranger; "it is our nature to desire a
monument, be it slate or marble, or a pillar of granite, or a glorious memory in
the universal heart of man."
"We're in a strange way, tonight," said the wife, with tears in her eyes.
"They say it's a sign of something, when folks' minds go a-wandering so. Hark to
the children!"
They listened accordingly. The younger children had been put to bed in
another room, but with an open door between, so that they could be heard talking
busily among themselves. One and all seemed to have caught the infection from
the fireside circle, and were outvying each other in wild wishes, and childish
projects, of what they would do when they came to be men and women. At length a
little boy, instead of addressing his brothers and sisters, called out to his
mother.
"I'll tell you what I wish, mother," cried he. "I want you and father and
grandma'm, and all of us, and the stranger too, to start right away, and go and
take a drink out of the basin of the Flume!"
352523_103734_1_lit.jpg
Nobody could help laughing at the child's notion of leaving a warm bed, and
dragging them from a cheerful fire, to visit the basin of the Flume - a brook,
which tumbles over the precipice, deep within the Notch. The boy had hardly
spoken when a wagon rattled along the road, and stopped a moment before the
door. It appeared to contain two or three men, who were cheering their hearts
with the rough chorus of a song, which resounded, in broken notes, between the
cliffs, while the singers hesitated whether to continue their journey or put up
here for the night.
"Father," said the girl, "they are calling you by name."
But the good man doubted whether they had really called him, and was
unwilling to show himself too solicitous of gain by inviting people to patronise
his house. He therefore did not hurry to the door; and the lash being soon
applied, the travellers plunged into the Notch, still singing and laughing,
though their music and mirth came back drearily from the heart of the
mountain.
"There, mother!" cried the boy, again. "They'd have given us a ride to the
Flume."
Again they laughed at the child's pertinacious fancy for a night ramble.
But it happened that a light cloud passed over the daughter's spirit; she looked
gravely into the fire, and drew a breath that was almost a sigh. It forced its
way, in spite of a little struggle to repress it. Then starting and blushing,
she looked quickly round the circle, as if they had caught a glimpse into her
bosom. The stranger asked what she had been thinking of.
"Nothing," answered she, with a downcast smile. "Only I felt lonesome just
then."
"Oh, I have always had a gift of feeling what is in other people's hearts,"
said he, half seriously. "Shall I tell the secrets of yours? For I know what to
think when a young girl shivers by a warm hearth, and complains of lonesomeness
at her mother's side. Shall I put these feelings into words?"
"They would not be a girl's feelings any longer if they could be put into
words," replied the mountain nymph, laughing, but avoiding his eye.
All this was said apart. Perhaps a germ of love was springing in their
hearts, so pure that it might blossom in Paradise, since it could not be matured
on earth; for women worship such gentle dignity as his; and the proud,
contemplative, yet kindly soul is oftenest captivated by simplicity like hers.
But while they spoke softly, and he was watching the happy sadness, the
lightsome shadows, the shy yearnings of a maiden's nature, the wind through the
Notch took a deeper and drearier sound. It seemed, as the fanciful stranger
said, like the choral strain of the spirits of the blast, who in old Indian
times had their dwelling among these mountains, and made their heights and
recesses a sacred region. There was a wail along the road, as if a funeral were
passing. To chase away the gloom, the family threw pine branches on their fire,
till the dry leaves crackled and the flame arose, discovering once again a scene
of peace and humble happiness. The light hovered about them fondly, and caressed
them all. There were the little faces of the children, peeping from their bed
apart, and here the father's frame of strength, the mother's subdued and careful
mien, the high-browed youth, the budding girl, and the good old grandam, still
knitting in the warmest place. The aged woman looked up from her task, and, with
fingers ever busy, was the next to speak.
"Old folks have their notions," said she, "as well as young ones. You've
been wishing and planning; and letting your heads run on one thing and another,
till you've set my mind a-wandering too. Now what should an old woman wish for,
when she can go but a step or two before she comes to her grave? Children, it
will haunt me night and day till I tell you."
"What is it, mother?" cried the husband and wife at once.
Then the old woman, with an air of mystery which drew the circle closer
round the fire, informed them that she had provided her grave-clothes some years
before - a nice linen shroud, a cap with a muslin ruff, and everything of a
finer sort than she had worn since her wedding day. But this evening an old
superstition had strangely recurred to her. It used to be said, in her younger
days, that if anything were amiss with a corpse, if only the ruff were not
smooth, or the cap did not set right, the corpse in the coffin and beneath the
clods would strive to put up its cold hands and arrange it. The bare thought
made her nervous.
"Don't talk so, grandmother!" said the girl, shuddering.
"Now," continued the old woman, with singular earnestness, yet smiling
strangely at her own folly, "I want one of you, my children- when your mother is
dressed and in the coffin - I want one of you to hold a looking-glass over my
face. Who knows but I may take a glimpse at myself, and see whether all's
right?"
"Old and young, we dream of graves and monuments," murmured the stranger
youth. "I wonder how mariners feel when the ship is sinking, and they, unknown
and undistinguished, are to be buried together in the ocean - that wide and
nameless sepulchre?"
For a moment, the old woman's ghastly conception so engrossed the minds of
her hearers that a sound abroad in the night, rising like the roar of a blast,
had grown broad, deep, and terrible, before the fated group were conscious of
it. The house and all within it trembled; the foundations of the earth seemed to
be shaken, as if this awful sound were the peal of the last trump. Young and old
exchanged one wild glance, and remained an instant, pale, affrighted, without
utterance, or power to move. Then the same shriek burst simultaneously from all
their lips.
"The Slide! The Slide!"
The simplest words must intimate, but not portray, the unutterable horror
of the catastrophe. The victims rushed from their cottage, and sought refuge in
what they deemed a safer spot - where, in contemplation of such an emergency, a
sort of barrier had been reared. Alas! they had quitted their security, and fled
right into the pathway of destruction. Down came the whole side of the mountain,
in a cataract of ruin. Just before it reached the house, the stream broke into
two branches - shivered not a window there, but overwhelmed the whole vicinity,
blocked up the road, and annihilated everything in its dreadful course. Long ere
the thunder of the great Slide had ceased to roar among the mountains, the
mortal agony had been endured, and the victims were at peace. Their bodies were
never found.
The next morning, the light smoke was seen stealing from the cottage
chimney up the mountain side. Within, the fire was yet smouldering on the
hearth, and the chairs in a circle round it, as if the inhabitants had but gone
forth to view the devastation of the Slide, and would shortly return, to thank
Heaven for their miraculous escape. All had left separate tokens, by which those
who had known the family were made to shed a tear for each. Who has not heard
their name? The story has been told far and wide, and will forever be a legend
of these mountains. Poets have sung their fate.
There were circumstances which led some to suppose that a stranger had been
received into the cottage on this awful night, and had shared the catastrophe of
all its inmates. Others denied that there were sufficient grounds for such a
conjecture. Wo for the high-souled youth, with his dream of Earthly Immortality!
His name and person utterly unknown; his history, his way of life, his plans, a
mystery never to be solved, his death and his existence equally a doubt! Whose
was the agony of that death moment? |
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发表于 2016-7-10 11:23:08