"O glorious Art!" thus mused the enthusiastic painter as he trodthe street, thou art the image of the Creator's own. The innumerableforms, that wander in nothingness, start into being at thy beck. Thedead live again. Thou recallest them to their old scenes, and givesttheir gray shadows the lustre of a better life, at once earthly andimmortal. Thou snatchest back the fleeting moments of History. Withthee there is no Past, for, at thy touch, all that is great becomesforever present; and illustrious men live through long ages, in thevisible performance of the very deeds which made them what they are. Opotent Art! as thou bringest the faintly revealed Past to stand inthat narrow strip of sunlight, which we call Now, canst thou summonthe shrouded Future to meet her there? Have I not achieved it? Am Inot thy Prophet?"Thus, with a proud, yet melancholy fervor, did he almost cry aloud,as he passed through the toilsome street, among people that knew notof his reveries, nor could understand nor care for them. It is notgood for man to cherish a solitary ambition. Unless there be thosearound him by whose example he may regulate himself, his thoughts,desires, and hopes will become extravagant, and he the semblance,perhaps the reality, of a madman. Reading other bosoms with anacuteness almost preternatural, the painter failed to see the disorderof his own.
"And this should be the house," said he, looking up and down thefront, before he knocked. "Heaven help my brains! That picture!
Methinks it will never vanish. Whether I look at the windows or thedoor, there it is framed within them, painted strongly, and glowing inthe richest tints- the faces of the portraits- the figures andaction of the sketch!"He knocked.
"The Portraits! Are they within?" inquired he of the domestic; thenrecollecting himself- "your master and mistress! Are they at home?""They are, sir," said the servant, adding, as he noticed thatpicturesque aspect of which the painter could never divest himself,"and the Portraits too!"The guest was admitted into a parlor, communicating by a centraldoor with an interior room of the same size. As the first apartmentwas empty, he passed to the entrance of the second, within which hiseyes were greeted by those living personages, as well as theirpictured representatives, who had long been the objects of so singularan interest. He involuntarily paused on the threshold.
They had not perceived his approach. Walter and Elinor werestanding before the portraits, whence the former had just flung backthe rich and voluminous folds of the silken curtain, holding itsgolden tassel with one hand, while the other grasped that of hisbride. The pictures, concealed for months, gleamed forth again inundiminished splendor, appearing to throw a sombre light across theroom, rather than to be disclosed by a borrowed radiance. That ofElinor had been almost prophetic. A pensiveness, and next a gentlesorrow, had successively dwelt upon her countenance, deepening, withthe lapse of time, into a quiet anguish. A mixture of affright wouldnow have made it the very expression of the portrait. Walter's facewas moody and dull, or animated only by fitful flashes, which left aheavier darkness for their momentary illumination. He looked fromElinor to her portrait, and thence to his own, in the contemplation ofwhich he finally stood absorbed.
The painter seemed to hear the step of Destiny approaching behindhim, on its progress towards its victims. A strange thought dartedinto his mind. Was not his own the form in which that destiny hadembodied itself, and he a chief agent of the coming evil which hehad foreshadowed?
Still, Walter remained silent before the picture, communing with itas with his own heart, and abandoning himself to the spell of evilinfluence that the painter had cast upon the features. Gradually hiseyes kindled; while as Elinor watched the increasing wildness of hisface, her own assumed a look of terror; and when at last he turnedupon her, the resemblance of both to their portraits was complete.
"Our fate is upon us!" howled Walter. "Die!"Drawing a knife, he sustained her, as she was sinking to theground, and aimed it at her bosom. In the action, and in the lookand attitude of each, the painter beheld the figures of his sketch.
The picture, with all its tremendous coloring, was finished.
"Hold, madman!" cried he, sternly.
He had advanced from the door, and interposed himself between thewretched beings, with the same sense of power to regulate theirdestiny as to alter a scene upon the canvas. He stood like a magician,controlling the phantoms which he had evoked.
"What!" muttered Walter Ludlow, as he relapsed from fierceexcitement into silent gloom. "Does Fate impede its own decree?""Wretched lady!" said the painter, "did I not warn you?""You did," replied Elinor, calmly, as her terror gave place tothe quiet grief which it had disturbed. "But- I loved him!"Is there not a deep moral in the tale? Could the result of one,or all our deeds, be shadowed forth and set before us, some would callit Fate, and hurry onward, others be swept along by their passionatedesires, and none be turned aside by the PROPHETIC PICTURES.
THE END
.
1850
TWICE-TOLD TALES
THE SNOW-IMAGE: A CHILDISH MIRACLE
by Nathaniel Hawthorne
ONE AFTERNOON of a cold winter's day, when the sun shone forth withchilly brightness, after a long storm, two children asked leave oftheir mother to run out and play in the new-fallen snow. The elderchild was a little girl, whom, because she was of a tender andmodest disposition, and was thought to be very beautiful, her parents,and other people who were familiar with her, used to call Violet.
