ads:
David Swan
Nathaniel Hawthorne
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-
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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
ads:
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?
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