THE VISION OF
THE FOUNTAIN
At fifteen I became a resident in a country village more than a
hundred miles from home. The morning after my arrival—a September morning, but
warm and bright as any in July—I rambled into a wood of oaks with a few walnut
trees intermixed, forming the closest shade above my head. The ground was
rocky, uneven, overgrown with bushes and clumps of young saplings and traversed
only by cattle-paths. The track which I chanced to follow led me to a crystal
spring with a border of grass as freshly green as on May morning, and
overshadowed by the limb of a great oak. One solitary sunbeam found its way
down and played like a goldfish in the water.
From my childhood I have loved to gaze into a spring. The water
filled a circular basin, small but deep and set round with stones, some of
which were covered with slimy moss, the others naked and of variegated
hue—reddish, white and brown. The bottom was covered with coarse sand, which
sparkled in the lonely sunbeam and seemed to illuminate the spring with an
unborrowed light. In one spot the gush of the water violently agitated the
sand, but without obscuring the fountain or breaking the glassiness of its
surface. It appeared as if some living creature were about to emerge—the naiad
of the spring, perhaps, in the shape of a beautiful young woman with a gown of
filmy water-moss, a belt of rainbow-drops and a cold, pure, passionless
countenance. How would the beholder shiver, pleasantly yet fearfully, to see
her sitting on one of the stones, paddling her white feet in the ripples and
throwing up water to sparkle in the sun! Wherever she laid her hands on grass
and flowers, they would immediately be moist, as with morning dew. Then would
she set about her labors, like a careful housewife, to clear the fountain of
withered leaves, and bits of slimy wood, and old acorns from the oaks above,
and grains of corn left by cattle in drinking, till the bright sand in the
bright water were like a treasury of diamonds. But, should the intruder
approach too near, he would find only the drops of a summer shower glistening
about the spot where he had seen her.
Reclining on the border of grass where the dewy goddess should
have been, I bent forward, and a pair of eyes met mine within the watery
mirror. They were the reflection of my own. I looked again, and, lo! another
face, deeper in the fountain than my own image, more distinct in all the
features, yet faint as thought. The vision had the aspect of a fair young girl
with locks of paly gold. A mirthful expression laughed in the eyes and dimpled
over the whole shadowy countenance, till it seemed just what a fountain would
be if, while dancing merrily into the sunshine, it should assume the shape of
woman. Through the dim rosiness of the cheeks I could see the brown leaves, the
slimy twigs, the acorns and the sparkling sand. The solitary sunbeam was
diffused among the golden hair, which melted into its faint brightness and
became a glory round that head so beautiful.
My description can give no idea how suddenly the fountain was
thus tenanted and how soon it was left desolate. I breathed, and there was the
face; I held my breath, and it was gone. Had it passed away or faded into
nothing? I doubted whether it had ever been.
My sweet readers, what a dreamy and delicious hour did I spend
where that vision found and left me! For a long time I sat perfectly still,
waiting till it should reappear, and fearful that the slightest motion, or even
the flutter of my breath, might frighten it away. Thus have I often started
from a pleasant dream, and then kept quiet in hopes to wile it back. Deep were
my musings as to the race and attributes of that ethereal being. Had I created
her? Was she the daughter of my fancy, akin to those strange shapes which peep
under the lids of children's eyes? And did her beauty gladden me for that one
moment and then die? Or was she a water-nymph within the fountain, or fairy or
woodland goddess peeping over my shoulder, or the ghost of some forsaken maid
who had drowned herself for love? Or, in good truth, had a lovely girl with a
warm heart and lips that would bear pressure stolen softly behind me and thrown
her image into the spring?
I watched and waited, but no vision came again. I departed, but
with a spell upon me which drew me back that same afternoon to the haunted
spring. There was the water gushing, the sand sparkling and the sunbeam
glimmering. There the vision was not, but only a great frog, the hermit of that
solitude, who immediately withdrew his speckled snout and made himself
invisible—all except a pair of long legs—beneath a stone. Methought he had a
devilish look. I could have slain him as an enchanter who kept the mysterious
beauty imprisoned in the fountain.
Sad and heavy, I was returning to the village. Between me and
the church-spire rose a little hill, and on its summit a group of trees
insulated from all the rest of the wood, with their own share of radiance
hovering on them from the west and their own solitary shadow falling to the
east. The afternoon being far declined, the sunshine was almost pensive and the
shade almost cheerful; glory and gloom were mingled in the placid light, as if
the spirits of the Day and Evening had met in friendship under those trees and
found themselves akin. I was admiring the picture when the shape of a young
girl emerged from behind the clump of oaks. My heart knew her: it was the
vision, but so distant and ethereal did she seem, so unmixed with earth, so
imbued with the pensive glory of the spot where she was standing, that my
spirit sunk within me, sadder than before. How could I ever reach her?
While I gazed a sudden shower came pattering down upon the
leaves. In a moment the air was full of brightness, each raindrop catching a
portion of sunlight as it fell, and the whole gentle shower appearing like a
mist, just substantial enough to bear the burden of radiance. A rainbow vivid
as Niagara 's was painted in the air. Its southern
limb came down before the group of trees and enveloped the fair vision as if
the hues of heaven were the only garment for her beauty. When the rainbow
vanished, she who had seemed a part of it was no longer there. Was her
existence absorbed in nature's loveliest phenomenon, and did her pure frame
dissolve away in the varied light? Yet I would not despair of her return, for,
robed in the rainbow, she was the emblem of Hope.
Thus did the vision leave me, and many a doleful day succeeded
to the parting moment. By the spring and in the wood and on the hill and
through the village, at dewy sunrise, burning noon , and at that magic hour of sunset, when
she had vanished from my sight, I sought her, but in vain. Weeks came and went,
months rolled away, and she appeared not in them. I imparted my mystery to
none, but wandered to and fro or sat in solitude like one that had caught a
glimpse of heaven and could take no more joy on earth. I withdrew into an inner
world where my thoughts lived and breathed, and the vision in the midst of
them. Without intending it, I became at once the author and hero of a romance,
conjuring up rivals, imagining events, the actions of others and my own, and
experiencing every change of passion, till jealousy and despair had their end
in bliss. Oh, had I the burning fancy of my early youth with manhood's colder
gift, the power of expression, your hearts, sweet ladies, should flutter at my
tale.
In the middle of January I was summoned home. The day before my
departure, visiting the spots which had been hallowed by the vision, I found
that the spring had a frozen bosom, and nothing but the snow and a glare of
winter sunshine on the hill of the rainbow. "Let me hope," thought I,
"or my heart will be as icy as the fountain and the whole world as
desolate as this snowy hill." Most of the day was spent in preparing for
the journey, which was to commence at four o'clock the next morning. About an hour after
supper, when all was in readiness, I descended from my chamber to the
sitting-room to take leave of the old clergyman and his family with whom I had
been an inmate. A gust of wind blew out my lamp as I passed through the entry.
According to their invariable custom—so pleasant a one when the
fire blazes cheerfully—the family were sitting in the parlor with no other
light than what came from the hearth. As the good clergyman's scanty stipend
compelled him to use all sorts of economy, the foundation of his fires was
always a large heap of tan, or ground bark, which would smoulder away from
morning till night with a dull warmth and no flame. This evening the heap of
tan was newly put on and surmounted with three sticks of red oak full of
moisture, and a few pieces of dry pine that had not yet kindled. There was no
light except the little that came sullenly from two half-burnt brands, without
even glimmering on the andirons. But I knew the position of the old minister's
arm-chair, and also where his wife sat with her knitting-work, and how to avoid
his two daughters—one a stout country lass, and the other a consumptive girl.
Groping through the gloom, I found my own place next to that of the son, a
learned collegian who had come home to keep school in the village during the
winter vacation. I noticed that there was less room than usual to-night between
the collegian's chair and mine.
As people are always taciturn in the dark, not a word was said
for some time after my entrance. Nothing broke the stillness but the regular
click of the matron's knitting-needles. At times the fire threw out a brief and
dusky gleam which twinkled on the old man's glasses and hovered doubtfully
round our circle, but was far too faint to portray the individuals who composed
it. Were we not like ghosts? Dreamy as the scene was, might it not be a type of
the mode in which departed people who had known and loved each other here would
hold communion in eternity? We were aware of each other's presence, not by sight
nor sound nor touch, but by an inward consciousness. Would it not be so among
the dead?
The silence was interrupted by the consumptive daughter
addressing a remark to some one in the circle whom she called Rachel. Her
tremulous and decayed accents were answered by a single word, but in a voice
that made me start and bend toward the spot whence it had proceeded. Had I ever
heard that sweet, low tone? If not, why did it rouse up so many old
recollections, or mockeries of such, the shadows of things familiar yet
unknown, and fill my mind with confused images of her features who had spoken,
though buried in the gloom of the parlor? Whom had my heart recognized, that it
throbbed so? I listened to catch her gentle breathing, and strove by the
intensity of my gaze to picture forth a shape where none was visible.
Suddenly the dry pine caught; the fire blazed up with a ruddy
glow, and where the darkness had been, there was she—the vision of the
fountain. A spirit of radiance only, she had vanished with the rainbow and
appeared again in the firelight, perhaps to flicker with the blaze and be gone.
Vet her cheek was rosy and lifelike, and her features, in the bright warmth of
the room, were even sweeter and tenderer than my recollection of them. She knew
me. The mirthful expression that had laughed in her eyes and dimpled over her
countenance when I beheld her faint beauty in the fountain was laughing and
dimpling there now. One moment our glance mingled; the next, down rolled the
heap of tan upon the kindled wood, and darkness snatched away that daughter of
the light, and gave her back to me no more!
Fair ladies, there is nothing more to tell. Must the simple
mystery be revealed, then, that Rachel was the daughter of the village squire
and had left home for a boarding-school the morning after I arrived and
returned the day before my departure? If I transformed her to an angel, it is
what every youthful lover does for his mistress. Therein consists the essence
of my story. But slight the change, sweet maids, to make angels of yourselves.
Grateful thanks to Project Gutenberg.
