Nathaniel Hawthorne
David Swan
A Fantasy
From Twice-Told Tales
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 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 wayfarer 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 depths, 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 bedchamber. Some looked neither to the right hand nor 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 David into
the texture of his evening's discourse, as an awful instance of dead drunkenness
by the roadside. But censure, praise, merriment, scorn, and 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 standstill nearly in
front of David's resting-place. A linchpin 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 sleeped 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 wayside and the maple shade were as a secret chamber,
with the rich gloom of damask curtains 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 burden 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 anything 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.
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
bedchamber, 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 free hearted as she was innocent, the girl attacked the intruder with
her handkerchief, brushed him soundly, and drove him from beneath the mapleshade.
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 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 wayside 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
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, 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 burdened
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?
"The Token and Atlantic Souvenir", 1837
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