DAVID SWAN. A FANTASY.
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We can be but partially acquainted even with the
events which actually influence our course through
life, and our final destiny. There are innumerable
other events, if such they may be called, which come
close upon us, yet pass away without actual results,
or even betraying their near approach by the reflection
of any light or shadow across our minds. Could
we know all the vicissitudes of our fortunes, life would
be too full of hope and fear, exultation or disappointment,
to afford us a single hour of true serenity.
This idea may be illustrated by a page from the secret
history of David Swan.
We have nothing to do with David, until we find
him, at the age of twenty, on the high road from his
native place to the city of Boston, where his uncle, a
small dealer in the grocery line, was to take him behind
the counter. Be it enough to say, that he was a
native of New Hampshire, born of respectable parents,
and had received an ordinary school education, with
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a classic finish by a year at Gilmanton academy.
After journeying on foot, from sunrise till nearly
noon of a summer's day, his weariness and the increasing
heat determined him to sit down in the first
convenient shade, and await the coming up of the
stage-coach. As if planted on purpose for him, there
soon appeared a little tuft of maples, with a delightful
recess in the midst, and such a fresh, bubbling spring,
that it seemed never to have sparkled for any way-farer
but David Swan. Virgin or not, he kissed it
with his thirsty lips, and then flung himself along the
brink, pillowing his head upon some shirts and a pair
of pantaloons, tied up in a striped cotton handkerchief.
The sunbeams could not reach him; the dust did not
yet rise from the road, after the heavy rain of yesterday;
and his grassy lair suited the young man better
than a bed of down. The spring murmured drowsily
beside him; the branches waved dreamily across the
blue sky, overhead; and a deep sleep, perchance
hiding dreams within its depth, fell upon David
Swan. But we are to relate events which he did
not dream of.
While he lay sound asleep in the shade, other
people were wide awake, and passed to and fro, afoot,
on horseback, and in all sorts of vehicles, along the
sunny road by his bed-chamber. Some looked neither
to the right hand nor to the left, and knew not
that he was there; some merely glanced that way,
without admitting the slumberer among their busy
thoughts; some laughed to see how soundly he slept;
and several, whose hearts were brimming full of scorn,
ejected their venomous superfluity on David Swan.
A middle-aged widow, when nobody else was near,
thrust her head a little way into the recess, and vowed
that the young fellow looked charming in his sleep.
A temperance lecturer saw him, and wrought poor
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David into the texture of his evening's discourse, as
an awful instance of dead drunkenness by the roadside.
But censure, praise, merriment, scorn, or indifference,
were all one, or rather all nothing to David
Swan.
He had slept only a few moments, when a brown
carriage, drawn by a handsome pair of horses, bowled
easily along, and was brought to a stand-still nearly
in front of David's resting-place. A linch-pin had
fallen out, and permitted one of the wheels to slide
off. The damage was slight, and occasioned merely
a momentary alarm to an elderly merchant and his
wife, who were returning to Boston in the carriage.
While the coachman and a servant were replacing
the wheel, the lady and gentleman sheltered themselves
beneath the maple trees, and there espied the
bubbling fountain, and David Swan asleep beside it.
Impressed with the awe which the humblest sleeper
usually sheds around him, the merchant trod as lightly
as the gout would allow; and his spouse took good
heed not to rustle her silk gown, lest David should
start up, all of a sudden.
“How soundly he sleeps!” whispered the old gentleman.
“From what a depth he draws that easy
breath! Such sleep as that, brought on without an
opiate, would be worth more to me than half my income;
for it would suppose health, and an untroubled
mind.”
“And youth, besides,” said the lady. “Healthy and
quiet age does not sleep thus. Our slumber is no
more like his, than our wakefulness.”
The longer they looked, the more did this elderly
couple feel interested in the unknown youth, to whom
the way-side and the maple shade were as a secret
chamber, with the rich gloom of damask curtains
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brooding over him. Perceiving that a stray sunbeam
glimmered down upon his face, the lady contrived
to twist a branch aside, so as to intercept it. And
having done this little act of kindness, she began to
feel like a mother to him.
“Providence seems to have laid him here,” whispered
she to her husband, “and to have brought us
hither to find him, after our disappointment in our
cousin's son. Methinks I can see a likeness to our
departed Henry. Shall we waken him?”
“To what purpose?” said the merchant, hesitating.
“We know nothing of the youth's character.”
“That open countenance!” replied his wife, in the
same hushed voice, yet earnestly. “This innocent
sleep!”
While these whispers were passing, the sleeper's
heart did not throb, nor his breath become agitated,
nor his features betray the least token of interest.
Yet Fortune was bending over him, just ready to let
fall a burthen of gold. The old merchant had lost
his only son, and had no heir to his wealth, except a
distant relative, with whose conduct he was dissatisfied.
In such cases, people sometimes do stranger
things than to act the magician, and awaken a young
man to splendor, who fell asleep in poverty.
“Shall we not waken him?” repeated the lady,
persuasively.
“The coach is ready, sir,” said the servant, behind.
The old couple started, reddened, and hurried
away, mutually wondering, that they should ever have
dreamed of doing any thing so very ridiculous. The
merchant threw himself back in the carriage, and occupied
his mind with the plan of a magnificent asylum
for unfortunate men of business. Meanwhile, David
Swan enjoyed his nap.
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The carriage could not have gone above a mile or
two, when a pretty young girl came along, with a
tripping pace, which showed precisely how her little
heart was dancing in her bosom. Perhaps it was this
merry kind of motion that caused—is there any harm
in saying it?—her garter to slip its knot. Conscious
that the silken girth, if silk it were, was relaxing its
hold, she turned aside into the shelter of the maple
trees, and there found a young man asleep by the
spring! Blushing, as red as any rose, that she should
have intruded into a gentleman's bed-chamber, and
for such a purpose too, she was about to make her
escape on tiptoe. But there was peril near the
sleeper. A monster of a bee had been wandering
overhead—buzz, buzz, buzz—now among the
leaves, now flashing through the strips of sunshine,
and now lost in the dark shade, till finally he appeared
to be settling on the eyelid of David Swan. The
sting of a bee is sometimes deadly. As freehearted
as she was innocent, the girl attacked the intruder
with her handkerchief, brushed him soundly, and
drove him from beneath the maple shade. How sweet
a picture! This good deed accomplished, with quickened
breath, and a deeper blush, she stole a glance
at the youthful stranger, for whom she had been
battling with a dragon in the air.
“He is handsome!” thought she, and blushed redder
yet.
How could it be that no dream of bliss grew so
strong within him, that, shattered by its very strength,
it should part asunder, and allow him to perceive the
girl among its phantoms? Why, at least, did no smile
of welcome brighten upon his face? She was come,
the maid whose soul, according to the old and beautiful
idea, had been severed from his own, and whom,
in all his vague but passionate desires, he yearned to
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meet. Her, only, could he love with a perfect love—
him, only, could she receive into the depths of her
heart—and now her image was faintly blushing in
the fountain by his side; should it pass away, its
happy lustre would never gleam upon his life again.
“How sound he sleeps!” murmured the girl.
She departed, but did not trip along the road so
lightly as when she came.
Now, this girl's father was a thriving country merchant
in the neighborhood, and happened, at that
identical time, to be looking out for just such a young
man as David Swan. Had David formed a way-side
acquaintance with the daughter, he would have become
the father's clerk, and all else in natural succession.
So here, again, had good fortune—the best
of fortunes—stolen so near, that her garments brushed
against him; and he knew nothing of the matter.
The girl was hardly out of sight, when two men
turned aside beneath the maple shade. Both had dark
faces, set off by cloth caps, which were drawn down
aslant over their brows. Their dresses were shabby,
yet had a certain smartness. These were a couple
of rascals, who got their living by whatever the devil
sent them, and now, in the interim of other business,
had staked the joint profits of their next piece of villany
on a game of cards, which was to have been
decided here under the trees. But, finding David
asleep by the spring, one of the rogues whispered to
his fellow,
“Hist!—Do you see that bundle under his
head?”
The other villain nodded, winked, and leered.
“I'll bet you a horn of brandy,” said the first, “that
the chap has either a pocket-book, or a snug little
hoard of small change, stowed away amongst his
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shirts. And if not there, we shall find it in his pantaloons'
pocket.
“But how if he wakes?” said the other.
His companion thrust aside his waistcoat, pointed
to the handle of a dirk, and nodded.
“So be it!” muttered the second villain.
They approached the unconscious David, and, while
one pointed the dagger towards his heart, the other
began to search the bundle beneath his head. Their
two faces, grim, wrinkled, and ghastly with guilt and
fear, bent over their victim, looking horrible enough
to be mistaken for fiends, should he suddenly awake.
Nay, had the villains glanced aside into the spring,
even they would hardly have known themselves, as
reflected there. But David Swan had never worn
a more tranquil aspect, even when asleep on his
mother's breast.
“I must take away the bundle,” whispered one.
“If he stirs, I'll strike,” muttered the other.
But, at this moment, a dog, scenting along the
ground, came in beneath the maple trees, and gazed
alternately at each of these wicked men, and then at
the quiet sleeper. He then lapped out of the fountain.
“Pshaw!” said one villain. “We can do nothing
now. The dog's master must be close behind.”
“Let's take a drink, and be off,” said the other.
The man with the dagger thrust back the weapon
into his bosom, and drew forth a pocket pistol, but not
of that kind which kills by a single discharge. It was
a flask of liquor, with a block tin tumbler screwed
upon the mouth. Each drank a comfortable dram,
and left the spot, with so many jests, and such laughter
at their unaccomplished wickedness, that they
might be said to have gone on their way rejoicing.
In a few hours, they had forgotten the whole affair,
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nor once imagined that the recording angel had written
down the crime of murder against their souls, in
letters as durable as eternity. As for David Swan,
he still slept quietly, neither conscious of the shadow
of death when it hung over him, nor of the glow of
renewed life, when that shadow was withdrawn.
He slept, but no longer so quietly as at first. An
hour's repose had snatched from his elastic frame
the weariness with which many hours of toil had
burthened it. Now, he stirred—now, moved his
lips, without a sound—now, talked, in an inward
tone, to the noonday spectres of his dream. But a
noise of wheels came rattling louder and louder along
the road, until it dashed through the dispersing mist
of David's slumber—and there was the stage-coach.
He started up, with all his ideas about him.
“Halloo, driver!—Take a passenger?” shouted
he.
“Room on top,” answered the driver.
Up mounted David, and bowled away merrily towards
Boston, without so much as a parting glance
at that fountain of dreamlike vicissitude. He knew
not that a phantom of wealth had thrown a golden
hue upon its waters—nor that one of love had sighed
softly to their murmur—nor that one of death had
threatened to crimson them with his blood—all in
the brief hour since he lay down to sleep. Sleeping
or waking, we hear not the airy footsteps of the strange
things that almost happen. Does it not argue a superintending
Providence, that, while viewless and
unexpected events thrust themselves continually
athwart our path, there should still be regularity
enough, in mortal life, to render foresight even partially
available?
