The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 01, No. 07, May, 1858. VariousЧитать онлайн книгу.

      The Man With Two Shadows.

      The sky is gray with unfallen sleet; the wind howls bitterly about the house; relentless in its desperate speed, it whirls by green crosses from the fir-boughs in the wood,—dry russet oak-leaves,—tiny cones from the larch, that were once rose-red with the blood of Spring, but now rattle on the leafless branches, black and bare as they. No leaf remains on any bough of the forest, no scarlet streamer of brier flaunts from the steadfast rocks that underlie all verdure, and now stand out, bleak and barren, the truths and foundations of life, when its ornate glories are fled away. The river flows past, a languid stream of lead; a single crow, screaming for its mate, flaps heavily against the north-east gale, that enters here also and lifts the carpet in long waves across the floor, whiffles light eddies of ashes in the chimney-corner, and vainly presses on door and window, like a houseless spirit shrieking and pining for a shelter from its bodiless and helpless unrest in the elements.

      The whole air,—although, within, my fire crackles and leaps with steady cheer, and the red rose on my window is warm and sanguine with bloom,—yet this whole air is full of tiny sparks of chill to my sensitive and morbid nature; it is at once electric and cold, the very atmosphere of spirits.—What a shadow passed that pane! Roger, was it you?—The storm bursts, in one fierce rush of sleet and roaring wind; the little spaniel crouched at my feet whimpers and nestles closer; the house is silent,—silent as my thoughts,—silent as he is who walked these rooms once, with a face likest to the sky that darkens them now, and lonelier, lonelier than I, though at his side forever trod a companion.

      This valley of the Moosic is narrow and thinly settled. Here and there the mad river, leaping from some wooded gorge to rest among the hemlock-covered islands that break its smoother path between the soft meadows, is crossed by a strong dam; and a white village, with its church and graveyard, clusters against the hill-side, sweeping upward from the huge mills that stand along the shore just below the bridge. Here and there, too, out of sight of mill or village, a quiet farmer's house, trimly painted, with barns and hay-stacks and wood-piles drawn up in goodly array, stands in its old orchard, and offers the front of a fortress against want and misery. Idle aspect! fortress of vain front! there are intangible foes that no man may conquer! In such a stronghold was born Roger Pierce, the Man with two Shadows.

      He was the son of good and upright parents. Before he came into their arms, three tiny shapes had lain there, one after another, for a few brief weeks, smiled, moaned, and fallen asleep,—to sleep, forever children, under the daisies and golden-rods. For this reason they cling to little Roger with passionate apprehension; they fought with the Angel of Death, and overcame; and, as it ever is to the blind nature of man, the conquest was greater to them than any gift.

      The boy grew up into childhood as other children grow, a daily miracle to see. Only for him incessant care watched and waited; unwearied as the angel that looked from him to the face of God, so to gather ever fresh strength and guidance for the wayward child, his mother's tender eyes overlooked him all day, followed his tottering steps from room to room, kept far away from him all fear and pain, shone upon him in the depths of night, woke and wept for him always. Never could he know the hardy self-reliance of those whom life casts upon their own strength and care; the wisdom and the love that lived for him lived in him, and he grew to be a boy as the tropic blossom of a hot-house grows, without thought or toil.

      It was not until his age brought him in contact with others, that there seemed to be any difference between his nature and the common race of children. Always, however, some touch of sullenness lurked in his temperament; and whatever thwarted his will or fancy darkened the light of his clear eyes, and drew a dull pallor over his blooming cheek, till his mother used to tell him at such times that he stood between her and the sunshine.

      But as he grew older, and shared in the sports of his companions, a strange thing came to pass. Beside the shadow that follows us all in the light, another, like that, but something deeper, began to go with Roger Pierce,—not falling with the other, a dial-mark to show the light that cast it, but capriciously to right or left; on whomever or whatever was nearest him at the moment, there that Shadow lay; and as time crept on, the Shadow pertinaciously crept with it, till it was forever hanging about him, ready to chill with vague terror, or harden as with a frost, either his fellows or himself.

      One peculiar trait this Shadow had: the more the restless child thought of his visitant, the deeper it grew,—shrinking in size, but becoming more intensely dark, till it seemed like part of a heavy thunder-cloud, only that no lightning ever played across its blank gloom.

      The first time that the Shadow ever stood before him as an actual presence was when, a mere child, he was busied one day in the warm May sunshine making a garden by the school-house, in a line with other little squares, tracked and moulded by childish fingers, and set with branches of sallow silvered with downy catkins, half-opened dandelions, twigs of red-flowered maple, mighty reservoirs of water in sunken clam-shells, and paths adorned with borders of broken china and glittering bits of glass. Next to Roger's garden-bed was one that belonged to two little boys who were sworn friends, and one of these was busy weaving a fence for his garden, of yellow willow-twigs, which the other cut and sharpened.

      Roger looked on with longing eyes.

      "Will you help me, Jimmy?" said he.

      "I can't," answered the quiet, timid child.

      "No!" shouted Jacob,—the frank, fearless voice bringing a tint of color into his comrade's cheek. "Jim shan't help you, Roger Pierce! Do you ever help anybody?"

      Then the Shadow fell beside Roger, as he stood with anger and shame swelling in his throat; it fell across the blue violets he had taken from Jacob to dress his own garden, and they drooped and withered; it crossed the path of shining pebbles that he had forced the younger children to gather for him, and they grew dull as common stones; it reached over into Jacob's positive, honest face, and darkened it, and Jimmy, looking up, with fear in his mild eyes, whispered, softly,—"Come away! it's going to rain;—don't you see that dark cloud?"

      Roger started, for the Shadow was darkening about himself; and as he moodily returned home, it seemed to grow deeper and deeper, till his mother drew his head upon her knee, and by the singing fire told him tales of her own childhood, and from the loving brightness of her tender eyes the Shadow slunk away and left the boy to sleep, unhaunted.

      As day by day went by, in patient monotony, Roger became daily more aware of this ghostly attendant. He was not always alone, for he had friends who loved him in spite of the Shadow, and grew used to its appearing;—but he liked to be by himself; for, out of constant companionship and daily use, this Shadow made for itself a strange affinity with him, and following his daily rambles over the sharp hills, tracing to their source the noisy brooks, or setting snares for the wild creatures whose innocent timid eyes peered at their little enemy curiously from nook and crevice, he grew to have a moody pleasure in the knowledge that nothing else disturbed his path or shared his amusements.

      But a time came when he must mix more with the outer world; for he was sent away from home to school, and there, amid a host of strange faces, he singled out the only one that had a thought of his past life and home in it, as his special companion,—the same quiet boy who had unconsciously feared the Shadow in their earlier school-days.

      So good and gentle was he, that he did not feel the cloud of Roger's hateful Double as every one else did; and he even won the boy himself to except him only from a certain suspicion that had lately sprung from, his own consciousness of his burden,—a suspicion gradually growing into a belief that all the world had such a Shadow as his own.

      Now this was not a strange result of so painful a reality. Seeing, as Roger Pierce did, in every action of others toward himself the dark atmosphere of the Shadow that was peculiarly his own, he watched also their mutual actions, and, throwing from his own obscurity a shade over all human deeds, he became possessed of the monomania, a practical belief that every mortal man, except it might be Jimmy Doane, was followed and overlooked by this terrible Second Shadow.

      In proportion as the gloom of this black Presence seemed to be lightened over any one was his esteem for