Imagens da página
PDF
ePub

STORY-TELLER;

ов, .

MINOR LIBRARY OF FICTION.

A COLLECTION OF THE CHOICEST TALES, LEGENDS, AND

TRADITIONS OF ALL NATIONS.

EMBRACING

SPECIMENS OF THE MOST CELEBRATED ANCIENT AND MODERN AUTHORS;

TOGETHER WITII

Original Stories and foreign Tales,

WRITTEN EXPRESSLY FOR THIS WORK, AND TRANSLATED FOR ITS PAGES IMMEDIATELY AFTER

[blocks in formation]

SOLD BY THE PRINCIPAL BOOKSELLERS IN TOWN AND COUNTRY.

1833.

PUBLISHED IN
WEEKLY PARTS,

AT 10,
BEAUFORT BUILDINOS,

[Entered at Stationers' Hall.]

St76%

2.2

[ocr errors][subsumed]

THE STORY-HAUNTED.

Second Confession.

(BY THE STORY-TELLE R.)

HAVING fulfilled my solemn pledge, and made a existence into an hour. One day of my life would revelation of those strange events that buried my make the complete revolution of another man's youth in darkness, and having faithfully narrated fortunes. But in what terms could I describe this

|| the mysterious interpositions that placed before me mysterious operation of thought to the end that it the omens of the future, prefiguring, in awful ap- should be justified to the understandings of my pearances, the destiny of bitterness and pain for fellow beings, who walk abroad to receive tangible which I was ordained, I am impelled to continue impressions of the mere outward nature, unsusthe history of my life into the cycle of years interceptible, happily for themselves, of those inward vening between the date of my voluntary confession and unexplained workings of the spirit that, like and the present time. Mine is not a life crowded the invisible genius confined in the crystal spring with incidents, and replete with dramatic variety. of Alcaderos, can make the waters of existence run I have dwelt in many places--I have witnessed | sweet or bitter, while the sorcery that effects the

I much of the machinery of society in full operation, || change remains a marvel to the sufferer. I cannot and I have been thrown, as a spectator, into many hope-I do not expect—that all I state shall be positions in which curiosity might be converted into clearly understood. I am not responsible for the spleen, and the tamest heart be awakened into the fidelity of an attempt to paint an agony of which I development of all its latent passions. But these not the hidden sources. If I am, indeed, things have only schooled me into stoicism. They the only one in whom the physical being has been have not tempted me to become an actor on the to the spiritual as the breath of the low wind in frivolous scene. I could not bustle in the world, if hidden places to the voice of the storm on the I would; and I would not, if I could. The tree heights of desolate mountains, then my confeswas blighted at its root, and if the trunk extended sion will fail to be instructive, since it can point its naked arms to the air, it received no invigora- no practical moral to others; but it will not be the tion, and profited nothing from the showers and the less a testimony of those unaccountable agencies sunshine. I have often felt--I always feel that in the creation, to which the wisdom of the earth is I am like a solitary pine in the forest, which the ignorance and vanity. lightning had singled out from the rest, and blasted Many years have passed away since my former through every part of its articulation. There is no narrative was shaped into that form in which it has verdure in my soul! Nothing remains but the since been made known. I then believed that the acute sense of by-gone pain. I live in the Past! | fatal spell had accomplished its catastrophe. I did The Future is to me a vast, blind void. I yearn not not think, nor was there a single ground for thinktowards it. I have no longings after what is to ing, that there remained any thing further for me

But out of the solitary world of my own to fulfil but death. My Idol had perished in her Thoughts, Remembrances, and Emotions, arises a beauty and her love. She withered before my eyes, train of mental actions that, like the bodiless vi- destroyed by the supernatural passion that bound sions of the dreamer, have all the immediate force us to each other. In life, the bare earth, unteof palpable life. The phantasma is a magic tablet nanted by Hope or Pleasure, alone remained. The of the mind : it has its forms of vivid colours, of prisoner cannot subsist without food, or air, or light, lively motion, of incessant interchange, and sin- or warmth. How could I then live, when that gular influence. It traverses whole regions of which was my life had vanished like a pageant in feeling with the rapidity of light. It snatches the sky? But it was written that I should live, in

|| from time the grace of delay, and comprises a whole | very spite of the doom that destroyed all desire of VOL. II,

B

come.

a

a

[ocr errors]

life. And I did live. With what thoughts I de- every figure before me would look like Ellen's, as if parted from the charnel-house, I must not say. I she had infused her glorious loveliness into each was swayed by some potent charm, that inspired and all of them, and as if it were multiplied and reme with a fearful power of endurance. I went flected in a thousand mirrors moving in the air. again into the world—that is, into the world of Yet Ellen still was there—she was ever the priestess faces, of voices, of echoes, and of motions. I was of the solemn rite. And my mother, too,-I saw not of it, but I was with it; my plank was on the her as she sat in the old library, when death was ruffled stream, and wherever the current floated upon her face, in her ancient chair, with her livid me I went passively, but not unconsciously. checks clammy and cold, and her withered fingers

Oh! with what sublime pity I regarded mankind || stark and stiff, hanging down by her sides, and her in the brief season of self-absorption that succeeded eyes distended with intent eagerness, and her limbs my bereavement. I felt—not as a creature of this rigid as they were taken and killed in the height of globe, in whom passion, and prejudice, and sorrow, the spasm-but there was a horrid smile on her lips, and remorse, and expectation made a constant and that sat there like a fiend. unavailing warfare—but rather as one who had acquired an imperfect knowledge of the immortal I lived entirely in London. I dared not have nature, and who, without the power to release him- || trusted myself in the country. The solitudes and self from the fretful obligations of humanity, looked noiseless calm of the fields and waters would have ever upwards to some dark and mysterious com- filled me with despair. I could not have endured munion beyond its reach.

the peace of nature, for within me all was unsettled In the depths of the midnight, I was not like and in storm. The busy scene carried me in a deother men, reposing from toil, or struggling with gree away from my secret ruminations, and snatched bodily pain, or watchfully calculating upon the at least some hours of self-oblivion out of the round miserable chances of the time to come. My mid- | of pain. I visited and received visits. My mantelnight was a revel of illusions. My chamber was piece was covered with cards, for people thought peopled to the roof with spectral images; and there was something singular about me, and as things were done, and voices were heard in the every thing ihat iş singular is sure to make a sensolitude of that hour, at the recital of which, bold sation, I became an object of curiosity, if not of inhearts would quail. All was action about me—not | terest. But I lent myself to this system of living the diseased action of the superstitious imagination ; || abroad, and for the enjoyment of others, only as but action, high and potent, in which no living || caprice moved me; and having nothing definitive form was moved from its distant habitation to ad- to live for, I thought I could not devise any more minister a mental deceit, and which set forth no engrossing object than the gratification of caprice, living impossibility in plausible seeming, as dreams | So I grew capricious for the sake of making an are said to do: but the action of the dead revived, || employment, and of getting a means upon which of the mighty who dwell in other essences, and my faculties might be occupied without an aim. come at the bidding of the inspired spirit. The Thus I knew not one hour how I should d. dicate grave restored their tenants in all the fresh bloom | the next, and, having resolved, I threw myself into and sweet confidence of life, and these, renewed in the opposite extreme with a wilful resolution to dethe boay, were mine again—not in sleep, for I slept | feat my own resolves. But this fed the hours, and not-but in wakefulness and truth. How they gave a sort of stimulus to my mind that just lasted came, I know not. But they came often, and in out its own purpose, and left me free to new freaks gladness. Ellen was chief and starlike in that of invention. I had neither perseverance nor deħappy throng, shedding a light about her that im- sire for any lengthened plans of life, and these parted something of her own beauty to the rest, || abrupt and sudden bursts of immediate will, suited without eclipsing their individual distinctness. At my condition and flattered me into a sort of broken times she came alone, and was wont to smile sadly, || communion with society. and look pale, as if she had a thought of something One family I visited with more constancy than wanted in that upper region to which death had || the rest. I can hardly explain why it was so, for translated her; and she would look tearfully upon there was not much that was loveable in their cirme on those occasions, as if she would reproach me cle. But they were all odd persons, and confor lingering so very long behind her in the dross of tinually appeared to take new forms of the grotesque earth. This used to make me feel the utter humili- || and the uncommon. They never seemed to be the ation of the lot that is cast in clay, and my emotion same, except in being generally unlike themselves, was to spring upwards, and soar into the clouds, || for two evenings in succession. They always had where the material being should dissolve, and the some unexpected whim on hand-some strange spirit alone survive. But I was withheld by a joke, some very absurd peculiarity to take to pieces, strength greater even than my aspirations. Again, or some satirical pleasure to imbody, that gave them Ellen would appear to me in th midst the and all enough to do until bedtime. Their raillery and of reimbodied souls, and her form, floating like rays mirth, and even their sympathies were on the side of light, would niix and blend with the others con- of ridicule. They took' delight in distorting every fusedly, and I would, for a time as long as the eye thing; and never distorted any thing twice in the closes to reassure itself, lose her identity; and then same way. It seemed as if they had no cares af

a

a

[ocr errors]

their own, but that they took the cares of their || dates, a lady from a distant part of the town, whom neighbours into keeping, and tortured them so I had never seen nor heard of before, came upon a adroitly that one could not help laughing at their visit to them. She was a woman of about twentyuncouth but felicitous ribaldry.

five years of age, with a commanding presence, One member of this family excited my especial uncommon powers of conversation, and a wit not attention. He was quite a dwarf in stature, and brilliant, but deep and searching. She had never had a large head, with a projecting forehead, start- been married, and being in all respects a superior ing eyes, bushy hair, and an angular chin. He | person, it was a subject of much entertainment to her was old enough to be considered as approaching to friends how she could have so long preserved her manhood, but his size, and the singularity of his state of singleness. One said that no man was manners still held him in the grade of youth. | worthy of her; another, that she must have made Without either memory, wit, or sense, he possessed | up her mind never to marry, owing, probably, to such a talent for translating and caricaturing the some early blight, which she had too much pride human feelings into dumb show, that he was looked to acknowledge; a third thought she was very hard upon as a domestic mime of the most extraordinary to please, that her mind was too masculine, and aptitude. He could run the circle of all the pas- spoiled her beauty, and that she would be disapsions with surprising facility, and such was the pointed to the end of her life in her estimate of the volubility of his transitions that he went from the ideal character of our sex; a fourth remarked that gravest to the merriest. touching every shade of she did not relish female society, while she was, in emotion, and each separate link of feeling, so truth, always out of her element amongst men, and quickly, and yet so truly, that you could distin- that she could not find sympathy in either; a fifth guish the one from the other at once, although he was convinced that books had turned her head, and scarcely gave you time for the recognition. During | led her into refined hopes which, in this world of these feais he never spoke. He wanted not a coarse realities, could never be fulfilled ; a sixth voice to make his meaning perfect. All was rapid, saw nothing in her but a mass of affectation, a deintelligible, and graphic, and dashed with such a sire to be thought something out of the way, and marvellous air of humour, that the most tragic pan- | the constant effort of an irregularly cultivated inteltomime, without losing the force of truth, was en- | lect to acquire a reputation for knowledge, discerntirely divested of its painful features. Indeed, they ment, and a ridiculous power of self-control; every all delighted in shutting out sadness even in remote thing she did was attributed, by the inferior minds illusions, and this dwarf mime was the most faith- that surrounded her, to some ridiculous motive; she ful subscriber to the family principles.

was accused of poetical abstractions, another

way For a long time I enjoyed this congenial extrava- of making her look absurd, of never taking things gance. It was in keeping with the eccentric current as they were, but of melting the most ordinary of my own thoughts, that never flowed in obedience | things in the alembic of her imagination, when they to the impulse from the source, but by the way. || assumed new forms, as unlike themselves as one ward bidding of the changing winds. The dwarf element is unlike another; every body agreed that was a fellow to my own fancy. He never disturbed she was not fit for the general purposes of life, and my ruminations by an attempt to show things as that it was out of all reason to suppose that such a they were, or to reason from fact to possibility, and woman should succeed in getting married, for a so on, as people are in the habit of doing, until man must be very stupid who could not discover wisdom itself becomes no better than dull common- the unfeminine points of her character; but, if such place. He never offended my singularities, for he || an unexpected event should ever take place, they

, was, if possible, more singular himself: except that all united in the significant ejaculation of “God he invariably turned the whole arcana of life to the help her husband !” account of the absurd, and made men, not the vic- Perhaps these discussions about the lady protims of distate as I did, but the shallow puppets of voked my curiosity. She was evidently not undera farce. But we came to the same conclusion by stood by her critics, and it was possible that in the a different ratiocination of ideas, and the dwarf and smartness of their delineations they might have I agreed well together, although we did not ex- wholly lost sight of her true tastes and disposition. change the vulgar courtesies that telegraph the It was always one of my weaknesses to set myself vulgar sympathies of the crowd.

against the crowd in matters of this sort, and to It was strange, and I never could account for it, suspect, by way of a “ foregone conclusion,” that but from the first I felt that the dwarf exercised a the common verdict was founded upon imperfect mysterious influence over my fate. I knew not evidence, or a mistaken theory of nature. I then how this could be ; but, although perfect strangers, believed, and do still in a great measure believe, neither of us seemed to require time to resolve our that

of acquaintance into intimacy. We relaxed formali- | prehended by the multitude; but I occasionally ties in each other's company at once.

We were

committed the egregious mistake of taking it for friends, or associates in our slippers, while his granted that all persons who were depreciated by family yet stood on full-dress ceremony with me. the multitude on account of their intellectual claims

When I had been sufficiently inducted into the must have been, of necessity, persons of genius. babite of the family to make my visits at irregular | But the multitude are sometimes right by accident.

« AnteriorContinuar »