Kavanagh

by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

  On three sides, the farm was inclosed by willow and alder hedges, and the flowing wall of a river; nearer the house were groves clear of all underwood, with rocky knolls, and breezy bowers of beech; and afar off the blue hills broke the horizon, creating secret longings for what lay beyond them, and filling the mind with pleasant thoughts of Prince Rasselas and the Happy Valley.

  The house was one of the few old houses still standing in New England;—a large, square building, with a portico in front, whose door in Summer time stood open from morning until night. A pleasing stillness reigned about it; and soft gusts of pine-embalmed air, and distant cawings from the crow-haunted mountains, filled its airy and ample halls.

  In this old-fashioned house had Cecilia Vaughan grown up to maidenhood. The travelling shadows of the clouds on the hill-sides,—the sudden Summer wind, that lifted the languid leaves, and rushed from field to field, from grove to grove, the forerunner of the rain,—and, most of all, the mysterious mountain, whose coolness was a perpetual invitation to her, and whose silence a perpetual fear,—fostered her dreamy and poetic temperament. Not less so did the reading of poetry and romance in the long, silent, solitary winter evenings. Her mother had been dead for many years, and the memory of that mother had become almost a religion to her. She recalled it incessantly; and the reverential love, which it inspired, completely filled her soul with melancholy delight. Her father was a kindly old man; a judge in one of the courts; dignified, affable, somewhat bent by his legal erudition, as a shelf is by the weight of the books upon it. His papers encumbered the study table;—his law books, the study floor. They seemed to shut out from his mind the lovely daughter, who had grown up to womanhood by his side, but almost without his recognition. Always affectionate, always indulgent, he left her to walk alone, without his stronger thought and firmer purpose to lean upon; and though her education had been, on this account, somewhat desultory, and her imagination indulged in many dreams and vagaries, yet, on the whole, the result had been more favorable than in many cases where the process of instruction has been too diligently carried on, and where, as sometimes on the roofs of farm-houses and barns, the scaffolding has been left to deform the building.

  Cecilia’s bosom-friend at school was Alice Archer; and, after they left school, the love between them, and consequently the letters, rather increased than diminished. These two young hearts found not only a delight, but a necessity in pouring forth their thoughts and feelings to each other; and it was to facilitate this intercommunication, for whose exigencies the ordinary methods were now found inadequate, that the carrier-pigeon had been purchased. He was to be the flying post; their bed-rooms the dovecots, the pure and friendly columbaria.

  Endowed with youth, beauty, talent, fortune, and, moreover, with that indefinable fascination which has no name, Cecilia Vaughan was not without lovers, avowed and unavowed;—young men, who made an ostentatious display of their affection;—boys, who treasured it in their bosoms, as something indescribably sweet and precious, perfuming all the chambers of the heart with its celestial fragrance. Whenever she returned from a visit to the city, some unknown youth of elegant manners and varnished leather boots was sure to hover round the village inn for a few days,—was known to visit the Vaughans assiduously, and then silently to disappear, and be seen no more. Of course, nothing could be known of the secret history of such individuals; but shrewd surmises were formed as to their designs and their destinies; till finally, any well-dressed stranger, lingering in the village without ostensible business, was set down as “one of Miss Vaughan’s lovers.”

  In all this, what a contrast was there between the two young friends! The wealth of one and the poverty of the other were not so strikingly at variance, as this affluence and refluence of love. To the one, so much was given that she became regardless of the gift; from the other, so much withheld, that, if possible, she exaggerated its importance.

  XVII.

  In addition to these transient lovers, who were but birds of passage, winging their way, in an incredibly short space of time, from the torrid to the frigid zone, there was in the village a domestic and resident adorer, whose love for himself, for Miss Vaughan, and for the beautiful, had transformed his name from Hiram A. Hawkins to H. Adolphus Hawkins. He was a dealer in English linens and carpets;—a profession which of itself fills the mind with ideas of domestic comfort. His waistcoats were made like Lord Melbourne’s in the illustrated English papers, and his shiny hair went off to the left in a superb sweep, like the hand-rail of a bannister. He wore many rings on his fingers, and several breast-pins and gold chains disposed about his person. On all his bland physiognomy was stamped, as on some of his linens, “Soft finish for family use.” Every thing about him spoke the lady’s man. He was, in fact, a perfect ring-dove; and, like the rest of his species, always walked up to the female, and, bowing his head, swelled out his white crop, and uttered a very plaintive murmur.

  Moreover, Mr. Hiram Adolphus Hawkins was a poet,—so much a poet, that, as his sister frequently remarked, he “spoke blank verse in the bosom of his family.” The general tone of his productions was sad, desponding, perhaps slightly morbid. How could it be otherwise with the writings of one who had never been the world’s friend, nor the world his? who looked upon himself as “a pyramid of mind on the dark desert of despair”? and who, at the age of twenty-five, had drunk the bitter draught of life to the dregs, and dashed the goblet down? His productions were published in the Poet’s Corner of the Fairmeadow Advertiser; and it was a relief to know, that, in private life, as his sister remarked, he was “by no means the censorious and moody person some of his writings might imply.”

  Such was the personage who assumed to himself the perilous position of Miss Vaughan’s permanent admirer. He imagined that it was impossible for any woman to look upon him and not love him. Accordingly, he paraded himself at his shop-door as she passed; he paraded himself at the corners of the streets; he paraded himself at the church-steps on Sunday. He spied her from the window; he sallied from the door; he followed her with his eyes; he followed her with his whole august person; he passed her and repassed her, and turned back to gaze; he lay in wait with dejected countenance and desponding air; he persecuted her with his looks; he pretended that their souls could comprehend each other without words; and whenever her lovers were alluded to in his presence, he gravely declared, as one who had reason to know, that, if Miss Vaughan ever married, it would be some one of gigantic intellect!

  Of these persecutions Cecilia was for a long time the unconscious victim. She saw this individual, with rings and strange waistcoats, performing his gyrations before her, but did not suspect that she was the centre of attraction,— not imagining that any man would begin his wooing with such outrages. Gradually the truth dawned upon her, and became the source of indescribable annoyance, which was augmented by a series of anonymous letters, written in a female hand, and setting forth the excellences of a certain mysterious relative,—his modesty, his reserve, his extreme delicacy, his talent for poetry,—rendered authentic by extracts from his papers, made, of course, without the slightest knowledge or suspicion on his part. Whence came these sibylline leaves? At first Cecilia could not divine; but, ere long, her woman’s instinct traced them to the thin and nervous hand of the poet’s sister. This surmise was confirmed by her maid, who asked the boy that brought them.

  It was with one of these missives in her hand that Cecilia entered Mrs. Archer’s house, after purchasing the carrier-pigeon. Unannounced she entered, and walked up the narrow and imperfectly lighted stairs to Alice’s bed-room,—that little sanctuary draped with white,—that columbarium lined with warmth, and softness, and silence. Alice was not there; but the chair by the window, the open volume of poems on the table, the note to Cecilia by its side, and the ink not yet dry in the pen, were like the vibration of a bough, when the bird has just left it,—like the rising of the grass, when the foot has just pressed it. In a moment she returned. She had been down to her mother, who sat
talking, talking, talking, with an old friend in the parlour below, even as these young friends were talking together, in the bed-room above. Ah, how different were their themes! Death and Love,—apples of Sodom, that crumble to ashes at a touch,—golden fruits of the Hesperides,—golden fruits of Paradise, fragrant, ambrosial, perennial!

  “I have just been writing to you,” said Alice; “I wanted so much to see you this morning!”

  “Why this morning in particular? Has any thing happened?”

  “Nothing, only I had such a longing to see you!”

  And, seating herself in a low chair by Cecilia’s side, she laid her head upon the shoulder of her friend, who, taking one of her pale, thin hands in both her own, silently kissed her forehead again and again.

  Alice was not aware, that, in the words she uttered, there was the slightest shadow of untruth. And yet had nothing happened? Was it nothing, that among her thoughts a new thought had risen, like a star, whose pale effulgence, mingled with the common daylight, was not yet distinctly visible even to herself, but would grow brighter as the sun grew lower, and the rosy twilight darker? Was it nothing, that a new fountain of affection had suddenly sprung up within her, which she mistook for the freshening and overflowing of the old fountain of friendship, that hitherto had kept the lowland landscape of her life so green, but now, being flooded by more affection, was not to cease, but only to disappear in the greater tide, and flow unseen beneath it? Yet so it was; and this stronger yearning—this unappeasable desire for her friend—was only the tumultuous swelling of a heart, that as yet knows not its own secret.

  “I am so glad to see you, Cecilia!” she continued. “You are so beautiful! I love so much to sit and look at you! Ah, how I wish Heaven had made me as tall, and strong, and beautiful as you are!”

  “You little flatterer! What an affectionate, lover-like friend you are! What have you been doing all the morning?”

  “Looking out of the window, thinking of you, and writing you this letter, to beg you to come and see me.”

  “And I have been buying a carrier-pigeon, to fly between us, and carry all our letters.”

  “That will be delightful.”

  “He is to be sent home to-day; and after he gets accustomed to my room, I shall send him here, to get acquainted with yours;—a Iachimo in my Imogen’s bed-chamber, to spy out its secrets.”

  “If he sees Cleopatra in these white curtains, and silver Cupids in these andirons, he will have your imagination.”

  “He will see the book with the leaf turned down, and you asleep, and tell me all about you.”

  “A carrier-pigeon! What a charming idea! and how like you to think of it!”

  “But to-day I have been obliged to bring my own letters. I have some more sibylline leaves from my anonymous correspondent, in laud and exaltation of her modest relative, who speaks blank verse in the bosom of his family. I have brought them to read you some extracts, and to take your advice; for, really and seriously, this must be stopped. It has grown too annoying.”

  “How much love you have offered you!” said Alice, sighing.

  “Yes, quite too much of this kind. On my way here, I saw the modest relative, standing at the corner of the street, hanging his head in this way.”

  And she imitated the melancholy Hiram Adolphus, and the young friends laughed.

  “I hope you did not notice him?” resumed Alice.

  “Certainly not. But what do you suppose he did? As soon as he saw me, he began to walk backward down the street only a short distance in front of me, staring at me most impertinently. Of course, I took no notice of this strange conduct. I felt myself blushing to the eyes with indignation, and yet could hardly suppress my desire to laugh.”

  “If you had laughed, he would have taken it for an encouragement; and I have no doubt it would have brought on the catastrophe.”

  “And that would have ended the matter. I half wish I had laughed.”

  “But think of the immortal glory of marrying a poet!”

  “And of inscribing on my cards, Mrs. Hiram Adolphus Hawkins!”

  “A few days ago, I went to buy something at his shop; and, leaning over the counter, he asked me if I had seen the sun set the evening before, —adding, that it was gorgeous, and that the grass and trees were of a beautiful Paris green!”

  And again the young friends gave way to their mirth.

  “One thing, dear Alice, you must consent to do for me. You must write to Miss Martha Amelia, the author of all these epistles, and tell her very plainly how indelicate her conduct is, and how utterly useless all such proceedings will prove in effecting her purpose.”

  “I will write this very day. You shall be no longer persecuted.”

  “And now let me give you a few extracts from these wonderful epistles.”

  So saying, Cecilia drew forth a small package of three-cornered billets, tied with a bit of pink ribbon. Taking one of them at random, she was on the point of beginning, but paused, as if her attention had been attracted by something out of doors. The sound of passing footsteps was heard on the gravel walk.

  “There goes Mr. Kavanagh,” said she, in a half-whisper.

  Alice rose suddenly from her low chair at Cecilia’s side, and the young friends looked from the window to see the clergyman pass.

  “How handsome he is!” said Alice, involuntarily.

  “He is, indeed.”

  At that moment Alice started back from the window. Kavanagh had looked up in passing, as if his eye had been drawn by some secret magnetism. A bright color flushed the cheek of Alice; her eyes fell; but Cecilia continued to look steadily into the street. Kavanagh passed on, and in a few moments was out of sight.

  The two friends stood silent, side by side.

  XVIII.

  Arthur Kavanagh was descended from an ancient Catholic family. His ancestors had purchased from the Baron Victor of St. Castine a portion of his vast estates, lying upon that wild and wonderful sea-coast of Maine, which, even upon the map, attracts the eye by its singular and picturesque indentations, and fills the heart of the beholder with something of that delight which throbbed in the veins of Pierre du Gast, when, with a royal charter of the land from the Atlantic to the Pacific, he sailed down the coast in all the pride of one who is to be prince of such a vast domain. Here, in the bosom of the solemn forests, they continued the practice of that faith which had first been planted there by Rasle and St. Castine; and the little church where they worshipped is still standing, though now as closed and silent as the graves which surround it, and in which the dust of the Kavanaghs lies buried.

  In these solitudes, in this faith, was Kavanagh born, and grew to childhood, a feeble, delicate boy, watched over by a grave and taciturn father, and a mother who looked upon him with infinite tenderness, as upon a treasure she should not long retain. She walked with him by the sea-side, and spake to him of God, and the mysterious majesty of the ocean, with its tides and tempests. She sat with him on the carpet of golden threads beneath the aromatic pines, and, as the perpetual melancholy sound ran along the rattling boughs, his soul seemed to rise and fall, with a motion and a whisper like those in the branches over him. She taught him his letters from the Lives of the Saints,—a volume full of wondrous legends, and illustrated with engravings from pictures by the old masters, which opened to him at once the world of spirits and the world of art; and both were beautiful. She explained to him the pictures; she read to him the legends,—the lives of holy men and women, full of faith and good works,—things which ever afterward remained associated together in his mind. Thus holiness of life, and self-renunciation, and devotion to duty, were early impressed upon his soul. To his quick imagination, the spiritual world became real; the holy company of the saints stood round about the solitary boy; his guardian angels led him by the hand by day, and sat by his pillow at night. At times, even, he wished to die, that he might see them and talk with them, and return no more to his weak and weary body.

  Of all the legends of th
e mysterious book, that which most delighted and most deeply impressed him was the legend of St. Christopher. The picture was from a painting of Paolo Farinato, representing a figure of gigantic strength and stature, leaning upon a staff, and bearing the infant Christ on his bending shoulders across the rushing river. The legend related, that St. Christopher, being of huge proportions and immense strength, wandered long about the world before his conversion, seeking for the greatest king, and willing to obey no other. After serving various masters, whom he in turn deserted, because each recognized by some word or sign another greater than himself, he heard by chance of Christ, the king of heaven and earth, and asked of a holy hermit where he might be found, and how he might serve him. The hermit told him he must fast and pray; but the giant replied that if he fasted he should lose his strength, and that he did not know how to pray. Then the hermit told him to take up his abode on the banks of a dangerous mountain torrent, where travellers were often drowned in crossing, and to rescue any that might be in peril. The giant obeyed; and tearing up a palmtree by the roots for a staff, he took his station by the river’s side, and saved many lives. And the Lord looked down from heaven and said, “Behold this strong man, who knows not yet the way to worship, but has found the way to serve me!” And one night he heard the voice of a child, crying in the darkness and saying, “Christopher! come and bear me over the river!” And he went out, and found the child sitting alone on the margin of the stream; and taking him upon his shoulders, he waded into the water. Then the wind began to roar, and the waves to rise higher and higher about him, and his little burden, which at first had seemed so light, grew heavier and heavier as he advanced, and bent his huge shoulders down, and put his life in peril; so that, when he reached the shore, he said, “Who art thou, O child, that hast weighed upon me with a weight, as if I had borne the whole world upon my shoulders?” And the little child answered, “Thou hast borne the whole world upon thy shoulders, and Him who created it. I am Christ, whom thou by thy deeds of charity wouldst serve. Thou and thy service are accepted. Plant thy staff in the ground, and it shall blossom and bear fruit!” With these words, the child vanished away.