Twice Told Tales

by Nathaniel Hawthorne

  THE VISION OF THE FOUNTAIN.

  At fifteen I became a resident in a country village more than ahundred miles from home. The morning after my arrival--a Septembermorning, but warm and bright as any in July--I rambled into a wood ofoaks with a few walnut trees intermixed, forming the closest shadeabove my head. The ground was rocky, uneven, overgrown with bushes andclumps of young saplings and traversed only by cattle-paths. The trackwhich I chanced to follow led me to a crystal spring with a border ofgrass as freshly green as on May morning, and overshadowed by the limbof a great oak. One solitary sunbeam found its way down and playedlike a goldfish in the water.

  From my childhood I have loved to gaze into a spring. The water filleda circular basin, small but deep and set round with stones, some ofwhich were covered with slimy moss, the others naked and of variegatedhue--reddish, white and brown. The bottom was covered with coarsesand, which sparkled in the lonely sunbeam and seemed to illuminatethe spring with an unborrowed light. In one spot the gush of the waterviolently agitated the sand, but without obscuring the fountain orbreaking the glassiness of its surface. It appeared as if some livingcreature were about to emerge--the naiad of the spring, perhaps, inthe shape of a beautiful young woman with a gown of filmy water-moss,a belt of rainbow-drops and a cold, pure, passionless countenance. Howwould the beholder shiver, pleasantly yet fearfully, to see hersitting on one of the stones, paddling her white feet in the ripplesand throwing up water to sparkle in the sun! Wherever she laid herhands on grass and flowers, they would immediately be moist, as withmorning dew. Then would she set about her labors, like a carefulhousewife, to clear the fountain of withered leaves, and bits of slimywood, and old acorns from the oaks above, and grains of corn left bycattle in drinking, till the bright sand in the bright water were likea treasury of diamonds. But, should the intruder approach too near, hewould find only the drops of a summer shower glistening about the spotwhere he had seen her.

  Reclining on the border of grass where the dewy goddess should havebeen, I bent forward, and a pair of eyes met mine within the waterymirror. They were the reflection of my own. I looked again, and, lo!another face, deeper in the fountain than my own image, more distinctin all the features, yet faint as thought. The vision had the aspectof a fair young girl with locks of paly gold. A mirthful expressionlaughed in the eyes and dimpled over the whole shadowy countenance,till it seemed just what a fountain would be if, while dancing merrilyinto the sunshine, it should assume the shape of woman. Through thedim rosiness of the cheeks I could see the brown leaves, the slimytwigs, the acorns and the sparkling sand. The solitary sunbeam wasdiffused among the golden hair, which melted into its faint brightnessand became a glory round that head so beautiful.

  My description can give no idea how suddenly the fountain was thustenanted and how soon it was left desolate. I breathed, and there wasthe face; I held my breath, and it was gone. Had it passed away orfaded into nothing? I doubted whether it had ever been.

  My sweet readers, what a dreamy and delicious hour did I spend wherethat vision found and left me! For a long time I sat perfectly still,waiting till it should reappear, and fearful that the slightestmotion, or even the flutter of my breath, might frighten it away. Thushave I often started from a pleasant dream, and then kept quiet inhopes to wile it back. Deep were my musings as to the race andattributes of that ethereal being. Had I created her? Was she thedaughter of my fancy, akin to those strange shapes which peep underthe lids of children's eyes? And did her beauty gladden me for thatone moment and then die? Or was she a water-nymph within the fountain,or fairy or woodland goddess peeping over my shoulder, or the ghost ofsome forsaken maid who had drowned herself for love? Or, in goodtruth, had a lovely girl with a warm heart and lips that would bearpressure stolen softly behind me and thrown her image into the spring?

  I watched and waited, but no vision came again. I departed, but with aspell upon me which drew me back that same afternoon to the hauntedspring. There was the water gushing, the sand sparkling and thesunbeam glimmering. There the vision was not, but only a great frog,the hermit of that solitude, who immediately withdrew his speckledsnout and made himself invisible--all except a pair of longlegs--beneath a stone. Methought he had a devilish look. I could haveslain him as an enchanter who kept the mysterious beauty imprisoned inthe fountain.

  Sad and heavy, I was returning to the village. Between me and thechurch-spire rose a little hill, and on its summit a group of treesinsulated from all the rest of the wood, with their own share ofradiance hovering on them from the west and their own solitary shadowfalling to the east. The afternoon being far declined, the sunshinewas almost pensive and the shade almost cheerful; glory and gloom weremingled in the placid light, as if the spirits of the Day and Eveninghad met in friendship under those trees and found themselves akin. Iwas admiring the picture when the shape of a young girl emerged frombehind the clump of oaks. My heart knew her: it was the vision, but sodistant and ethereal did she seem, so unmixed with earth, so imbuedwith the pensive glory of the spot where she was standing, that myspirit sunk within me, sadder than before. How could I ever reach her?

  While I gazed a sudden shower came pattering down upon the leaves. Ina moment the air was full of brightness, each raindrop catching aportion of sunlight as it fell, and the whole gentle shower appearinglike a mist, just substantial enough to bear the burden of radiance. Arainbow vivid as Niagara's was painted in the air. Its southern limbcame down before the group of trees and enveloped the fair vision asif the hues of heaven were the only garment for her beauty. When therainbow vanished, she who had seemed a part of it was no longer there.Was her existence absorbed in nature's loveliest phenomenon, and didher pure frame dissolve away in the varied light? Yet I would notdespair of her return, for, robed in the rainbow, she was the emblemof Hope.

  Thus did the vision leave me, and many a doleful day succeeded to theparting moment. By the spring and in the wood and on the hill andthrough the village, at dewy sunrise, burning noon, and at that magichour of sunset, when she had vanished from my sight, I sought her, butin vain. Weeks came and went, months rolled away, and she appeared notin them. I imparted my mystery to none, but wandered to and fro or satin solitude like one that had caught a glimpse of heaven and couldtake no more joy on earth. I withdrew into an inner world where mythoughts lived and breathed, and the vision in the midst of them.Without intending it, I became at once the author and hero of aromance, conjuring up rivals, imagining events, the actions of othersand my own, and experiencing every change of passion, till jealousyand despair had their end in bliss. Oh, had I the burning fancy of myearly youth with manhood's colder gift, the power of expression, yourhearts, sweet ladies, should flutter at my tale.

  In the middle of January I was summoned home. The day before mydeparture, visiting the spots which had been hallowed by the vision, Ifound that the spring had a frozen bosom, and nothing but the snow anda glare of winter sunshine on the hill of the rainbow. "Let me hope,"thought I, "or my heart will be as icy as the fountain and the wholeworld as desolate as this snowy hill." Most of the day was spent inpreparing for the journey, which was to commence at four o'clock thenext morning. About an hour after supper, when all was in readiness, Idescended from my chamber to the sitting-room to take leave of the oldclergyman and his family with whom I had been an inmate. A gust ofwind blew out my lamp as I passed through the entry.

  According to their invariable custom--so pleasant a one when the fireblazes cheerfully--the family were sitting in the parlor with no otherlight than what came from the hearth. As the good clergyman's scantystipend compelled him to use all sorts of economy, the foundation ofhis fires was always a large heap of tan, or ground bark, which wouldsmoulder away from morning till night with a dull warmth and no flame.This evening the heap of tan was newly put on and surmounted withthree sticks of red oak full of moisture, and a few pieces of dry pinethat had not yet kindled. There was no light except the little thatcame sullenly from two half-burnt brands, without even glimmering o
nthe andirons. But I knew the position of the old minister's arm-chair,and also where his wife sat with her knitting-work, and how to avoidhis two daughters--one a stout country lass, and the other aconsumptive girl. Groping through the gloom, I found my own place nextto that of the son, a learned collegian who had come home to keepschool in the village during the winter vacation. I noticed that therewas less room than usual to-night between the collegian's chair andmine.

  As people are always taciturn in the dark, not a word was said forsome time after my entrance. Nothing broke the stillness but theregular click of the matron's knitting-needles. At times the firethrew out a brief and dusky gleam which twinkled on the old man'sglasses and hovered doubtfully round our circle, but was far too faintto portray the individuals who composed it. Were we not like ghosts?Dreamy as the scene was, might it not be a type of the mode in whichdeparted people who had known and loved each other here would holdcommunion in eternity? We were aware of each other's presence, not bysight nor sound nor touch, but by an inward consciousness. Would itnot be so among the dead?

  The silence was interrupted by the consumptive daughter addressing aremark to some one in the circle whom she called Rachel. Her tremulousand decayed accents were answered by a single word, but in a voicethat made me start and bend toward the spot whence it had proceeded.Had I ever heard that sweet, low tone? If not, why did it rouse up somany old recollections, or mockeries of such, the shadows of thingsfamiliar yet unknown, and fill my mind with confused images of herfeatures who had spoken, though buried in the gloom of the parlor?Whom had my heart recognized, that it throbbed so? I listened to catchher gentle breathing, and strove by the intensity of my gaze topicture forth a shape where none was visible.

  Suddenly the dry pine caught; the fire blazed up with a ruddy glow,and where the darkness had been, there was she--the vision of thefountain. A spirit of radiance only, she had vanished with the rainbowand appeared again in the firelight, perhaps to flicker with the blazeand be gone. Vet her cheek was rosy and lifelike, and her features, inthe bright warmth of the room, were even sweeter and tenderer than myrecollection of them. She knew me. The mirthful expression that hadlaughed in her eyes and dimpled over her countenance when I beheld herfaint beauty in the fountain was laughing and dimpling there now. Onemoment our glance mingled; the next, down rolled the heap of tan uponthe kindled wood, and darkness snatched away that daughter of thelight, and gave her back to me no more!

  Fair ladies, there is nothing more to tell. Must the simple mystery berevealed, then, that Rachel was the daughter of the village squire andhad left home for a boarding-school the morning after I arrived andreturned the day before my departure? If I transformed her to anangel, it is what every youthful lover does for his mistress. Thereinconsists the essence of my story. But slight the change, sweet maids,to make angels of yourselves.