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Edgar Allan Poe_Eleonora
Edgar Allan Poe (1809–1849).
Eleonora, The Fall of the House of Usher & The Purloined Letter.
The Harvard Classics Shelf of Fiction. 1917.
Eleonora
Sub conservatione formæ specificæ salva
anima.
—Raymond Lully
I AM come of a race noted for vigour of fancy and ardour of
passion. Men have called me mad, but the question is not yet settled whether
madness is or is not the loftiest intelligence, whether much that is glorious,
whether all that is profound, does not spring from disease of thought, from
moods of mind exalted at the expense of the general intellect. They who dream
by day are cognisant of many things which escape those who dream only by night.
In their grey visions they obtain glimpses of eternity, and thrill, in waking,
to find that they have been upon the verge of the great secret. In snatches
they learn something of the wisdom which is of good, and more of the mere
knowledge which is of evil. They penetrate, however rudderless or compassless,
into the vast ocean of the “night ineffable,” and again, like the adventures of
the Nubian geographer, “agressi sunt mare tenebrarum, quid in eo esset
exploraturi.”
We will say, then,
that I am mad. I grant, at least, that there are two distinct conditions of my
mental existence, the condition of a lucid reason not to be disputed, and
belonging to the memory of events forming the first epoch of my life, and a
condition of shadow and doubt, appertaining to the present, and to the
recollection of what constitutes the second great era of my being. Therefore,
what I shall tell of the earlier period, believe; and to what I may relate of
the later time, give only such credit as may seem due; or doubt it altogether;
or, if doubt it ye cannot, then play unto its riddle the dipus.
She whom I loved in
youth, and of whom I now pen calmly and distinctly these remembrances, was the
sole daughter of the only sister of my mother long departed. Eleonora was the
name of my cousin. We had always dwelt together, beneath a tropical sun, in the
Valley of the Many-Coloured Grass. No unguided footstep ever came upon that
vale, for it lay far away up among a range of giant hills that hung beetling
around about it, shutting out the sunlight from its sweetest recesses. No path
was trodden in its vicinity; and to reach our happy home there was need of
putting back with force the foliage of many thousands of forest trees, and of
crushing to death the glories of many millions of fragrant flowers. Thus it was
that we lived all alone, knowing nothing of the world without the valley—I, and
my cousin, and her mother.
From the dim regions
beyond the mountains at the upper end of our encircled domain, there crept out
a narrow and deep river, brighter than all save the eyes of Eleonora; and
winding stealthily about in mazy courses, it passed away at length through a
shadowy gorge, among hills still dimmer than those whence it had issued. We
called it the “River of Silence,” for there seemed to be a hushing influence in
its flow. No murmur arose from its bed, and so gently it wandered along that
the pearly pebbles upon which we loved to gaze, far down within its bosom,
stirred not at all, but lay in a motionless content, each in its own old
station, shining on gloriously for ever.
The margin of the
river, and of the many dazzling rivulets that glided through devious ways into
its channel, as well as the spaces that extended from the margins away down
into the depths of the streams until they reached the bed of pebbles at the
bottom, these spots, not less than the whole surface of the valley, from the
river to the mountains that girdled it in, were carpeted all by a soft green
grass, thick, short, perfectly even, and vanilla-perfumed, but so besprinkled
throughout with the yellow buttercup, the white daisy, the purple violet, and
the ruby-red asphodel, that its exceeding beauty spoke to our hearts in loud
tones of the love and of the glory of God.
And here and there,
in groves about this grass, like wildernesses of dreams, sprang up fantastic
trees, whose tall slender stems stood not upright, but slanted gracefully
towards the light that peered at noon-day into the centre of the valley. Their
bark was speckled with the vivid alternate splendour of ebony and silver, and
was smoother than all save the cheeks of Eleonora; so that but for the
brilliant green of the huge leaves that spread from their summits in long
tremulous lines, dallying with the zephyrs, one might have fancied them giant
serpents of Syria doing homage to their sovereign the sun.
Hand in hand about
this valley, for fifteen years, roamed I with Eleonora before love entered
within our hearts. It was one evening at the close of the third lustrum of her
life, and of the fourth of my own, that we sat locked in each other’s embrace,
beneath the serpent-like trees, and looked down within the waters of the River
of Silence at our images therein. We spoke no words during the rest of that
sweet day, and our words even upon the morrow were tremulous and few. We had
drawn the god Eros from that wave, and now we felt that he had enkindled within
us the fiery souls of our forefathers. The passions which had for centuries
distinguished our race came thronging with the fancies for which they had been
equally noted, and together breathed a delirious bliss over the Valley of the
Many-Coloured Grass. A change fell upon all things. Strange, brilliant flowers,
star-shaped, burst out upon the trees where no flowers had been known before.
The tints of the green carpet deepened, and when, one by one, the white daisies
shrank away, there sprang up in place of them, ten by ten of the ruby-red
asphodel. And life arose in our paths, for the tall flamingo, hitherto unseen,
with all gay glowing birds, flaunted his scarlet plumage before us. The golden
and silver fish haunted the river, out of the bosom of which issued, little by
little, a murmur that swelled at length into a lulling melody more divine than
that of the harp of Æolus, sweeter than all save the voice of Eleonora. And
now, too, a voluminous cloud, which we had long watched in the regions of
Hesper, floated out thence, all gorgeous in crimson and gold, and settling in
peace above us, sank day by day lower and lower until its edges rested upon the
tops of the mountains, turning all their dimness into magnificence, and
shutting us up as if for ever within a magic prison-house of grandeur and of
glory.
The loveliness of
Eleonora was that of the Seraphim; but she was a maiden artless and innocent as
the brief life she had led among the flowers. No guile disguised the fervour of
love which animated her heart, and she examined with me its inmost recesses as
we walked together in the Valley of the Many-Coloured Grass, and discoursed of
the mighty changes which had lately taken place therein.
At length, having
spoken one day, in tears, of the last sad change which must befall humanity,
she thenceforward dwelt only upon this one sorrowful theme, interweaving it
into all our converse, as, in the songs of the bard of Schiraz, the same images
are found occurring again and again in every impressive variation of phrase.
She had seen that
the finger of Death was upon her bosom—that, like the ephemeron, she had been
made perfect in loveliness only to die; but the terrors of the grave to her lay
solely in a consideration which she revealed to me one evening at twilight by
the banks of the River of Silence. She grieved to think that, having entombed
her in the Valley of the Many-Coloured Grass, I would quit for ever its happy
recesses, transferring the love which now was so passionately her own to some
maiden of the outer and every-day world.
And then and there I
threw myself hurriedly at the feet of Eleonora, and offered up a vow to herself
and to Heaven, that I would never bind myself in marriage to any daughter of
Earth—that I would in no manner prove recreant to her dear memory, or to the
memory of the devout affection with which she had blessed me. And I called the
Mighty Ruler of the Universe to witness the pious solemnity of my vow. And the
curse which I invoked of Him and of her, a saint in Elusion, should I prove
traitorous to that promise, involved a penalty the exceeding great horror of
which will not permit me to make record of it here. And the bright eyes of
Eleonora grew brighter at my words; and she sighed as if a deadly burthen had
been taken from her breast; and she trembled and very bitterly wept; but she
made acceptance of the vow (for what was she but a child?), and it made easy to
her the bed of her death. And she said to me, not many days afterwards,
tranquilly dying, that, because of what I had done for the comfort of her
spirit, she would watch over me in that spirit when departed, and, if so it
were permitted her, return to me visibly in the watches of the night; but, if
this thing were indeed beyond the power of the souls in Paradise, that she
would at least give me frequent indications of her presence; sighing upon me in
the evening winds, or filling the air which I breathed with perfume from the
censers of the angels. And, with these words upon her lips, she yielded up her
innocent life, putting an end to the first epoch of my own.
Thus far I have
faithfully said. But as I pass the barrier in Time’s path, formed by the death
of my beloved, and proceed with the second era of my existence, I feel that a
shadow gathers over my brain, and I mistrust the perfect sanity of the record.
But let me on.—Years dragged themselves along heavily, and still I dwelled
within the Valley of the Many-Coloured Grass; but a second change had come upon
all things. The star-shaped flowers shrank into the stems of the trees, and
appeared no more. The tints of the green carpet faded; and, one by one, the
ruby-red asphodels withered away; and there sprang up, in place of them, ten by
ten, dark, eye-like violets, that writhed uneasily and were ever encumbered
with dew. And Life departed from our paths; for the tall flamingo flaunted no
longer his scarlet plumage before us, but flew sadly from the vale into the
hills, with all the gay growing birds that had arrived in his company. And the
golden and silver fish swam down through the gorge at the lower end of our
domain, and bedecked the sweet river never again. And the lulling melody that
had been softer than the wind-harp of Æolus, and more divine than all save the
voice of Eleonora, it died little by little away, in murmurs growing lower and
lower, until the stream returned, at length, utterly into the solemnity of its
original silence; and then, lastly, the voluminous cloud uprose, and,
abandoning the tops of the mountains to the dimness of old, fell back into the
regions of Hesper, and took away all its manifold golden and gorgeous glories
from the Valley of the Many-Coloured Grass.
Yet the promises of
Eleonora were not forgotten; for I heard the sounds of the swinging of the
censers of the angels; and streams of a holy perfume floated ever and ever
about the valley; and at lone hours, when my heart beat heavily, the winds that
bathed my brow came unto me laden with soft sighs; and indistinct murmurs
filled often the night air; and once—oh, but once only! I was awakened from a
slumber, like the slumber of death, by the pressing of spiritual lips upon my
own. 13
But the void within
my heart refused, even thus, to be filled. I longed for the love which had
before filled it to overflowing. At length the valley pained me through its
memories of Eleonora, and I left it for ever for the vanities and the turbulent
triumphs of the world.
I found myself
within a strange city, where all things might have served to blot from
recollection the sweet dreams I had dreamed so long in the Valley of the
Many-Coloured Grass. The pomps and pageantries of a stately court, and the mad
clangour of arms, and the radiant loveliness of woman, bewildered and
intoxicated my brain. But as yet my soul had proved true to its vows, and the
indications of the presence of Eleonora were still given me in the silent hours
of the night. Suddenly, these manifestations ceased; and the world grew dark before
mine eyes; and I stood aghast at the burning thoughts which possessed—at the
terrible temptations which beset me; for there came from some far, far distant
and unknown land, into the gay court of the king I served, a maiden to whose
footstool I bowed down without a struggle in the most ardent, in the most
abject worship of love. What indeed was my passion for the young girl of the
valley in comparison with the fervour and the delirium, and the spirit-lifting
ecstasy of adoration with which I poured out my whole soul in tears at the feet
of the ethereal Ermengarde?—Oh, bright was the seraph Ermengarde! and in that
knowledge I had room for none other.—Oh, divine was the angel Ermengarde! and
as I looked down into the depths of her memorial eyes, I thought only of
them—and of her.
I wedded;—nor
dreaded the curse I had invoked; and its bitterness was not visited upon me.
And once—but once again in the silence of the night, there came through my
lattice the soft sighs which had forsaken me; and they modelled themselves into
familiar and sweet voice, saying—
“Sleep in peace!—for
the Spirit of Love reigneth and ruleth, and, in taking to thy passionate heart
her who is Ermengarde, thou art absolved, for reason which shall be made known
to thee in Heaven, of thy vows unto Eleonora.”
вторник, 5 декември 2017 г.
The Devil and Tom Walker by Washington Irving
The Devil and Tom Walker
By Washington Irving
A few miles from Boston, in Massachusetts, there is a deep inlet winding several miles into the interior of the country from Charles Bay, and terminating in a thickly wooded swamp, or morass. On one side of this inlet is a beautiful dark grove; on the opposite side the land rises abruptly from the water's edge, into a high ridge on which grow a few scattered oaks of great age and immense size. Under one of these gigantic trees, according to old stories, there was a great amount of treasure buried by Kidd the pirate. The inlet allowed a facility to bring the money in a boat secretly and at night to the very foot of the hill. The elevation of the place permitted a good look out to be kept that no one was at hand, while the remarkable trees formed good landmarks by which the place might easily be found again. The old stories add, moreover, that the devil presided at the hiding of the money, and took it under his guardianship; but this, it is well known, he always does with buried treasure, particularly when it has been ill gotten. Be that as it may, Kidd never returned to recover his wealth; being shortly after seized at Boston, sent out to England, and there hanged for a pirate.
About the year 1727, just at the time when earthquakes were prevalent in New England, and shook many tall sinners down upon their knees, there lived near this place a meagre miserly fellow of the name of Tom Walker. He had a wife as miserly as himself; they were so miserly that they even conspired to cheat each other. Whatever the woman could lay hands on she hid away: a hen could not cackle but she was on the alert to secure the new-laid egg. Her husband was continually prying about to detect her secret hoards, and many and fierce were the conflicts that took place about what ought to have been common property. They lived in a forlorn looking house, that stood alone and had an air of starvation. A few straggling savin trees, emblems of sterility, grew near it; no smoke ever curled from its chimney; no traveller stopped at its door. A miserable horse, whose ribs were as articulate as the bars of a gridiron, stalked about a field where a thin carpet of moss, scarcely covering the ragged beds of pudding stone, tantalized and balked his hunger; and sometimes he would lean his head over the fence, look piteously at the passer by, and seem to petition deliverance from this land of famine. The house and its inmates had altogether a bad name. Tom's wife was a tall termagant, fierce of temper, loud of tongue, and strong of arm. Her voice was often heard in wordy warfare with her husband; and his face sometimes showed signs that their conflicts were not confined to words. No one ventured, however, to interfere between them; the lonely wayfarer shrunk within himself at the horrid clamour and clapper clawing; eyed the den of discord askance, and hurried on his way, rejoicing, if a bachelor, in his celibacy.
One day that Tom Walker had been to a distant part of the neighbourhood, he took what he considered a short cut homewards through the swamp. Like most short cuts, it was an ill chosen route. The swamp was thickly grown with great gloomy pines and hemlocks, some of them ninety feet high; which made it dark at noonday, and a retreat for all the owls of the neighbourhood. It was full of pits and quagmires, partly covered with weeds and mosses; where the green surface often betrayed the traveller into a gulf of black smothering mud; there were also dark and stagnant pools, the abodes of the tadpole, the bull-frog, and the water snake, and where trunks of pines and hemlocks lay half drowned, half rotting, looking like alligators, sleeping in the mire.
Tom had long been picking his way cautiously through this treacherous forest; stepping from tuft to tuft of rushes and roots which afforded precarious footholds among deep sloughs; or pacing carefully, like a cat, along the prostrate trunks of trees; startled now and then by the sudden screaming of the bittern, or the quacking of a wild duck, rising on the wing from some solitary pool. At length he arrived at a piece of firm ground, which ran out like a peninsula into the deep bosom of the swamp. It had been one of the strong holds of the Indians during their wars with the first colonists. Here they had thrown up a kind of fort which they had looked upon as almost impregnable, and had used as a place of refuge for their squaws and children. Nothing remained of the Indian fort but a few embankments gradually sinking to the level of the surrounding earth, and already overgrown in part by oaks and other forest trees, the foliage of which formed a contrast to the dark pines and hemlocks of the swamp.
It was late in the dusk of evening that Tom Walker reached the old fort, and he paused there for a while to rest himself. Any one but he would have felt unwilling to linger in this lonely melancholy place, for the common people had a bad opinion of it from the stories handed down from the time of the Indian wars; when it was asserted that the savages held incantations here and made sacrifices to the evil spirit. Tom Walker, however, was not a man to be troubled with any fears of the kind.
He reposed himself for some time on the trunk of a fallen hemlock, listening to the boding cry of the tree toad, and delving with his walking staff into a mound of black mould at his feet. As he turned up the soil unconsciously, his staff struck against something hard. He raked it out of the vegetable mould, and lo! a cloven skull with an Indian tomahawk buried deep in it, lay before him. The rust on the weapon showed the time that had elapsed since this death blow had been given. It was a dreary memento of the fierce struggle that had taken place in this last foothold of the Indian warriors.
"Humph!" said Tom Walker, as he gave the skull a kick to shake the dirt from it.
"Let that skull alone!" said a gruff voice.
Tom lifted up his eyes and beheld a great black man, seated directly opposite him on the stump of a tree. He was exceedingly surprised, having neither seen nor heard any one approach, and he was still more perplexed on observing, as well as the gathering gloom would permit, that the stranger was neither negro nor Indian. It is true, he was dressed in a rude, half Indian garb, and had a red belt or sash swathed round his body, but his face was neither black nor copper colour, but swarthy and dingy and begrimed with soot, as if he had been accustomed to toil among fires and forges. He had a shock of coarse black hair, that stood out from his head in all directions; and bore an axe on his shoulder.
He scowled for a moment at Tom with a pair of great red eyes.
"What are you doing in my grounds?" said the black man, with a hoarse growling voice.
"Your grounds?" said Tom, with a sneer; "no more your grounds than mine: they belong to Deacon Peabody."
"Deacon Peabody be d--d," said the stranger, "as I flatter myself he will be, if he does not look more to his own sins and less to his neighbour's. Look yonder, and see how Deacon Peabody is faring."
Tom looked in the direction that the stranger pointed, and beheld one of the great trees, fair and flourishing without, but rotten at the core, and saw that it had been nearly hewn through, so that the first high wind was likely to below it down. On the bark of the tree was scored the name of Deacon Peabody. He now looked round and found most of the tall trees marked with the name of some great men of the colony, and all more or less scored by the axe. The one on which he had been seated, and which had evidently just been hewn down, bore the name of Crowninshield; and he recollected a mighty rich man of that name, who made a vulgar display of wealth, which it was whispered he had acquired by buccaneering.
"He's just ready for burning!" said the black man, with a growl of triumph. "You see I am likely to have a good stock of firewood for winter."
"But what right have you," said Tom, "to cut down Deacon Peabody's timber?"
"The right of prior claim," said the other. "This woodland belonged to me long before one of your white faced race put foot upon the soil."
"And pray, who are you, if I may be so bold?" said Tom. "Oh, I go by various names. I am the Wild Huntsman in some countries; the Black Miner in others. In this neighbourhood I am known by the name of the Black Woodsman. I am he to whom the red men devoted this spot, and now and then roasted a white man by way of sweet smelling sacrifice. Since the red men have been exterminated by you white savages, I amuse myself by presiding at the persecutions of quakers and anabaptists; I am the great patron and prompter of slave dealers, and the grand master of the Salem witches."
"The upshot of all which is, that, if I mistake not," said Tom, sturdily, "you are he commonly called Old Scratch."
"The same at your service!" replied the black man, with a half civil nod.
Such was the opening of this interview, according to the old story, though it has almost too familiar an air to be credited. One would think that to meet with such a singular personage in this wild lonely place, would have shaken any man's nerves: but Tom was a hard-minded fellow, not easily daunted, and he had lived so long with a termagant wife, that he did not even fear the devil.
It is said that after this commencement, they had a long and earnest conversation together, as Tom returned homewards. The black man told him of great sums of money which had been buried by Kidd the pirate, under the oak trees on the high ridge not far from the morass. All these were under his command and protected by his power, so that none could find them but such as propitiated his favour. These he offered to place within Tom Walker's reach, having conceived an especial kindness for him: but they were to be had only on certain conditions. What these conditions were, may easily be surmised, though Tom never disclosed them publicly. They must have been very hard, for he required time to think of them, and he was not a man to stick at trifles where money was in view. When they had reached the edge of the swamp the stranger paused.
"What proof have I that all you have been telling me is true?" said Tom.
"There is my signature," said the black man, pressing his finger on Tom's forehead. So saying, he turned off among the thickets of the swamp, and seemed, as Tom said, to go down, down, down, into the earth, until nothing but his head and shoulders could be seen, and so on until he totally disappeared.
When Tom reached home he found the black print of a finger burnt, as it were, into his forehead, which nothing could obliterate.
The first news his wife had to tell him was the sudden death of Absalom Crowninshield the rich buccaneer. It was announced in the papers with the usual flourish, that "a great man had fallen in Israel."
Tom recollected the tree which his black friend had just hewn down, and which was ready for burning. "Let the freebooter roast," said Tom, "who cares!" He now felt convinced that all he had heard and seen was no illusion.
He was not prone to let his wife into his confidence; but as this was an uneasy secret, he willingly shared it with her. All her avarice was awakened at the mention of hidden gold, and she urged her husband to comply with the black man's terms and secure what would make them wealthy for life. However Tom might have felt disposed to sell himself to the devil, he was determined not to do so to oblige his wife; so he flatly refused out of the mere spirit of contradiction. Many and bitter were the quarrels they had on the subject, but the more she talked the more resolute was Tom not to be damned to please her. At length she determined to drive the bargain on her own account, and if she succeeded, to keep all the gain to herself.
Being of the same fearless temper as her husband, she set off for the old Indian fort towards the close of a summer's day. She was many hours absent. When she came back she was reserved and sullen in her replies. She spoke something of a black man whom she had met about twilight, hewing at the root of a tall tree. He was sulky, however, and would not come to terms; she was to go again with a propitiatory offering, but what it was she forebore to say.
The next evening she set off again for the swamp, with her apron heavily laden. Tom waited and waited for her, but in vain: midnight came, but she did not make her appearance; morning, noon, night returned, but still she did not come. Tom now grew uneasy for her safety; especially as he found she had carried off in her apron the silver teapot and spoons and every portable article of value. Another night elapsed, another morning came; but no wife. In a word, she was never heard of more.
What was her real fate nobody knows, in consequence of so many pretending to know. It is one of those facts that have become confounded by a variety of historians. Some asserted that she lost her way among the tangled mazes of the swamp and sunk into some pit or slough; others, more uncharitable, hinted that she had eloped with the household booty, and made off to some other province; while others assert that the tempter had decoyed her into a dismal quagmire on top of which her hat was found lying. In confirmation of this, it was said a great black man with an axe on his shoulder was seen late that very evening coming out of the swamp, carrying a bundle tied in a check apron, with an air of surly triumph.
The most current and probable story, however, observes that Tom Walker grew so anxious about the fate of his wife and his property that he sat out at length to seek them both at the Indian fort. During a long summer's afternoon he searched about the gloomy place, but no wife was to be seen. He called her name repeatedly, but she was no where to be heard. The bittern alone responded to his voice, as he flew screaming by; or the bull frog croaked dolefully from a neighbouring pool. At length, it is said, just in the brown hour of twilight, when the owls began to hoot and the bats to flit about, his attention was attracted by the clamour of carrion crows that were hovering about a cypress tree. He looked and beheld a bundle tied in a check apron and hanging in the branches of the tree; with a great vulture perched hard by, as if keeping watch upon it. He leaped with joy, for he recognized his wife's apron, and supposed it to contain the household valuables.
"Let us get hold of the property," said he, consolingly to himself, "and we will endeavour to do without the woman."
As he scrambled up the tree the vulture spread its wide wings, and sailed off screaming into the deep shadows of the forest. Tom seized the check apron, but, woful sight! found nothing but a heart and liver tied up in it.
Such, according to the most authentic old story, was all that was to be found of Tom's wife. She had probably attempted to deal with the black man as she had been accustomed to deal with her husband; but though a female scold is generally considered a match for the devil, yet in this instance she appears to have had the worst of it. She must have died game however; for it is said Tom noticed many prints of cloven feet deeply stamped about the tree, and several handsful of hair, that looked as if they had been plucked from the coarse black shock of the woodsman. Tom knew his wife's prowess by experience. He shrugged his shoulders as he looked at the signs of a fierce clapper clawing. "Egad," said he to himself, "Old Scratch must have had a tough time of it!"
Tom consoled himself for the loss of his property with the loss of his wife; for he was a man of fortitude. He even felt something like gratitude towards the black woodsman, who he considered had done him a kindness. He sought, therefore, to cultivate a farther acquaintance with him, but for some time without success; the old black legs played shy, for whatever people may think, he is not always to be had for calling for; he knows how to play his cards when pretty sure of his game.
At length, it is said, when delay had whetted Tom's eagerness to the quick, and prepared him to agree to any thing rather than not gain the promised treasure, he met the black man one evening in his usual woodman dress, with his axe on his shoulder, sauntering along the edge of the swamp, and humming a tune. He affected to receive Tom's advance with great indifference, made brief replies, and went on humming his tune.
By degrees, however, Tom brought him to business, and they began to haggle about the terms on which the former was to have the pirate's treasure. There was one condition which need not be mentioned, being generally understood in all cases where the devil grants favours; but there were others about which, though of less importance, he was inflexibly obstinate. He insisted that the money found through his means should be employed in his service. He proposed, therefore, that Tom should employ it in the black traffick; that is to say, that he should fit out a slave ship. This, however, Tom resolutely refused; he was bad enough in all conscience; but the devil himself could not tempt him to turn slave dealer.
Finding Tom so squeamish on this point, he did not insist upon it, but proposed instead that he should turn usurer; the devil being extremely anxious for the increase of usurers, looking upon them as his peculiar people.
To this no objections were made, for it was just to Tom's taste.
"You shall open a broker's shop in Boston next month," said the black man.
"I'll do it to-morrow, if you wish," said Tom Walker.
"You shall lend money at two per cent. a month."
"Egad, I'll charge four!" replied Tom Walker.
"You shall extort bonds, foreclose mortgages, drive the merchant to bankruptcy-"
"I'll drive him to the d--l," cried Tom Walker, eagerly.
"You are the usurer for my money!" said the black legs, with delight. "When will you want the rhino?"
"This very night."
"Done!" said the devil.
"Done!" said Tom Walker. -So they shook hands, and struck a bargain.
A few days' time saw Tom Walker seated behind his desk in a counting house in Boston. His reputation for a ready moneyed man, who would lend money out for a good consideration, soon spread abroad. Every body remembers the days of Governor Belcher, when money was particularly scarce. It was a time of paper credit. The country had been deluged with government bills; the famous Land Bank had been established; there had been a rage for speculating; the people had run mad with schemes for new settlements; for building cities in the wilderness; land jobbers went about with maps of grants, and townships, and Eldorados, lying nobody knew where, but which every body was ready to purchase. In a word, the great speculating fever which breaks out every now and then in the country, had raged to an alarming degree, and every body was dreaming of making sudden fortunes from nothing. As usual the fever had subsided; the dream had gone off, and the imaginary fortunes with it; the patients were left in doleful plight, and the whole country resounded with the consequent cry of "hard times."
At this propitious time of public distress did Tom Walker set up as a usurer in Boston. His door was soon thronged by customers. The needy and the adventurous; the gambling speculator; the dreaming land jobber; the thriftless tradesman; the merchant with cracked credit; in short, every one driven to raise money by desperate means and desperate sacrifices, hurried to Tom Walker.
Thus Tom was the universal friend of the needy, and he acted like a "friend in need;" that is to say, he always exacted good pay and good security. In proportion to the distress of the applicant was the hardness of his terms. He accumulated bonds and mortgages; gradually squeezed his customers closer and closer; and sent them at length, dry as a sponge from his door.
In this way he made money hand over hand; became a rich and mighty man, and exalted his cocked hat upon change. He built himself, as usual, a vast house, out of ostentation; but left the greater part of it unfinished and unfurnished out of parsimony. He even set up a carriage in the fullness of his vain glory, though he nearly starved the horses which drew it; and as the ungreased wheels groaned and screeched on the axle trees, you would have thought you heard the souls of the poor debtors he was squeezing.
As Tom waxed old, however, he grew thoughtful. Having secured the good things of this world, he began to feel anxious about those of the next. He thought with regret on the bargain he had made with his black friend, and set his wits to work to cheat him out of the conditions. He became, therefore, all of a sudden, a violent church goer. He prayed loudly and strenuously as if heaven were to be taken by force of lungs. Indeed, one might always tell when he had sinned most during the week, by the clamour of his Sunday devotion. The quiet christians who had been modestly and steadfastly travelling Zionward, were struck with self reproach at seeing themselves so suddenly outstripped in their career by this new-made convert. Tom was as rigid in religious, as in money matters; he was a stern supervisor and censurer of his neighbours, and seemed to think every sin entered up to their account became a credit on his own side of the page. He even talked of the expediency of reviving the persecution of quakers and anabaptists. In a word, Tom's zeal became as notorious as his riches.
Still, in spite of all this strenuous attention to forms, Tom had a lurking dread that the devil, after all, would have his due. That he might not be taken unawares, therefore, it is said he always carried a small bible in his coat pocket. He had also a great folio bible on his counting house desk, and would frequently be found reading it when people called on business; on such occasions he would lay his green spectacles on the book, to mark the place, while he turned round to drive some usurious bargain.
Some say that Tom grew a little crack brained in his old days, and that fancying his end approaching, he had his horse new shod, saddled and bridled, and buried with his feet uppermost; because he supposed that at the last day the world would be turned upside down; in which case he should find his horse standing ready for mounting, and he was determined at the worst to give his old friend a run for it. This, however, is probably a mere old wives fable. If he really did take such a precaution it was totally superfluous; at least so says the authentic old legend which closes his story in the following manner.
On one hot afternoon in the dog days, just as a terrible black thundergust was coming up, Tom sat in his counting house in his white linen cap and India silk morning gown. He was on the point of foreclosing a mortgage, by which he would complete the ruin of an unlucky land speculator for whom he had professed the greatest friendship. The poor land jobber begged him to grant a few months indulgence. Tom had grown testy and irritated and refused another day.
"My family will be ruined and brought upon the parish," said the land jobber. "Charity begins at home," replied Tom, "I must take care of myself in these hard times."
"You have made so much money out of me," said the speculator.
Tom lost his patience and his piety-"The devil take me," said he, "if I have made a farthing!"
Just then there were three loud knocks at the street door. He stepped out to see who was there. A black man was holding a black horse which neighed and stamped with impatience.
"Tom, you're come for!" said the black fellow, gruffly. Tom shrunk back, but too late. He had left his little bible at the bottom of his coat pocket, and his big bible on the desk buried under the mortgage he was about to forclose: never was sinner taken more unawares. The black man whisked him like a child astride the horse and away he galloped in the midst of a thunder storm. The clerks stuck their pens behind their ears and stared after him from the windows. Away went Tom Walker, dashing down the streets; his white cap bobbing up and down; his morning gown fluttering in the wind, and his steed striking fire out of the pavement at every bound. When the clerks turned to look for the black man he had disappeared.
Tom Walker never returned to foreclose the mortgage. A countryman who lived on the borders of the swamp, reported that in the height of the thunder gust he had heard a great clattering of hoofs and a howling along the road, and that when he ran to the window he just caught sight of a figure, such as I have described, on a horse that galloped like mad across the fields, over the hills and down into the black hemlock swamp towards the old Indian fort; and that shortly after a thunderbolt fell in that direction which seemed to set the whole forest in a blaze.
The good people of Boston shook their heads and shrugged their shoulders, but had been so much accustomed to witches and goblins and tricks of the devil in all kinds of shapes from the first settlement of the colony, that they were not so much horror struck as might have been expected. Trustees were appointed to take charge of Tom's effects. There was nothing, however, to administer upon. On searching his coffers all his bonds and mortgages were found reduced to cinders. In place of gold and silver his iron chest was filled with chips and shavings; two skeletons lay in his stable instead of his half starved horses, and the very next day his great house took fire and was burnt to the ground.
Such was the end of Tom Walker and his ill gotten wealth. Let all griping money brokers lay this story to heart. The truth of it is not to be doubted. The very hole under the oak trees, from whence he dug Kidd's money is to be seen to this day; and the neighbouring swamp and old Indian fort is often haunted in stormy nights by a figure on horseback, in a morning gown and white cap, which is doubtless the troubled spirit of the usurer. In fact, the story has resolved itself into a proverb, and is the origin of that popular saying, prevalent throughout New-England, of "The Devil and Tom Walker."
THE END
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