The Great Stone Face, and Other Tales of the White Mountains, Page 2

Gathergold.

  Being shrewd and active, and endowed by Providence with that inscrutablefaculty which develops itself in what the world calls luck, he became anexceedingly rich merchant, and owner of a whole fleet of bulky-bottomedships. All the countries of the globe appeared to join hands for themere purpose of adding heap after heap to the mountainous accumulationof this one man's wealth. The cold regions of the north, almost withinthe gloom and shadow of the Arctic Circle, sent him their tribute in theshape of furs; hot Africa sifted for him the golden sands of her rivers,and gathered up the ivory tusks of her great elephants out of theforests; the east came bringing him the rich shawls, and spices, andteas, and the effulgence of diamonds, and the gleaming purity of largepearls. The ocean, not to be behindhand with the earth, yielded up hermighty whales, that Mr. Gathergold might sell their oil, and make aprofit on it. Be the original commodity what it might, it was goldwithin his grasp. It might be said of him, as of Midas, in the fable,that whatever he touched with his finger immediately glistened, and grewyellow, and was changed at once into sterling metal, or, which suitedhim still better, into piles of coin. And, when Mr. Gathergold hadbecome so very rich that it would have taken him a hundred years onlyto count his wealth, he bethought himself of his native valley, andresolved to go back thither, and end his days where he was born. Withthis purpose in view, he sent a skilful architect to build him such apalace as should be fit for a man of his vast wealth to live in.

  As I have said above, it had already been rumored in the valley thatMr. Gathergold had turned out to be the prophetic personage so long andvainly looked for, and that his visage was the perfect and undeniablesimilitude of the Great Stone Face. People were the more ready tobelieve that this must needs be the fact, when they beheld the splendidedifice that rose, as if by enchantment, on the site of his father'sold weather-beaten farmhouse. The exterior was of marble, so dazzlinglywhite that it seemed as though the whole structure might melt away inthe sunshine, like those humbler ones which Mr. Gathergold, in hisyoung play-days, before his fingers were gifted with the touch oftransmutation, had been accustomed to build of snow. It had a richlyornamented portico supported by tall pillars, beneath which was a loftydoor, studded with silver knobs, and made of a kind of variegated woodthat had been brought from beyond the sea. The windows, from the floorto the ceiling of each stately apartment, were composed, respectivelyof but one enormous pane of glass, so transparently pure that it wassaid to be a finer medium than even the vacant atmosphere. Hardlyanybody had been permitted to see the interior of this palace; but itwas reported, and with good semblance of truth, to be far more gorgeousthan the outside, insomuch that whatever was iron or brass in otherhouses was silver or gold in this; and Mr. Gathergold's bedchamber,especially, made such a glittering appearance that no ordinary man wouldhave been able to close his eyes there. But, on the other hand, Mr.Gathergold was now so inured to wealth, that perhaps he could not haveclosed his eyes unless where the gleam of it was certain to find its waybeneath his eyelids.

  In due time, the mansion was finished; next came the upholsterers, withmagnificent furniture; then, a whole troop of black and white servants,the haringers of Mr. Gathergold, who, in his own majestic person, wasexpected to arrive at sunset. Our friend Ernest, meanwhile, had beendeeply stirred by the idea that the great man, the noble man, the man ofprophecy, after so many ages of delay, was at length to be made manifestto his native valley. He knew, boy as he was, that there were a thousandways in which Mr. Gathergold, with his vast wealth, might transformhimself into an angel of beneficence, and assume a control over humanaffairs as wide and benignant as the smile of the Great Stone Face.Full of faith and hope, Ernest doubted not that what the people saidwas true, and that now he was to behold the living likeness of thosewondrous features on the mountainside. While the boy was still gazingup the valley, and fancying, as he always did, that the Great Stone Facereturned his gaze and looked kindly at him, the rumbling of wheels washeard, approaching swiftly along the winding road.

  'Here he comes!' cried a group of people who were assembled to witnessthe arrival. 'Here comes the great Mr. Gathergold!'

  A carriage, drawn by four horses, dashed round the turn of the road.Within it, thrust partly out of the window, appeared the physiognomyof the old man, with a skin as yellow as if his own Midas-hand hadtransmuted it. He had a low forehead, small, sharp eyes, puckered aboutwith innumerable wrinkles, and very thin lips, which he made stillthinner by pressing them forcibly together.

  'The very image or the Great Stone Face!' shouted the people. 'Sureenough, the old prophecy is true; and here we have the great man come,at last!'

  And, what greatly perplexed Ernest, they seemed actually to believe thathere was the likeness which they spoke of. By the roadside there chancedto be an old beggar woman and two little beggar-children, stragglersfrom some far-off region, who, as the carriage rolled onward, heldout their hands and lifted up their doleful voices, most piteouslybeseeching charity. A yellow claw the very same that had dawed togetherso much wealth--poked itself out of the coach-window, and dropt somecopper coins upon the ground; so that, though the great man's name seemsto have been Gathergold, he might just as suitably have been nicknamedScattercopper. Still, nevertheless, with an earnest shout, and evidentlywith as much good faith as ever, the people bellowed 'He is the veryimage of the Great Stone Face!' But Ernest turned sadly from thewrinkled shrewdness of that sordid visage, and gazed up the valley,where, amid a gathering mist, gilded by the last sunbeams, he couldstill distinguish those glorious features which had impressed themselvesinto his soul. Their aspect cheered him. What did the benign lips seemto say?

  'He will come! Fear not, Ernest; the man will come!'

  The years went on, and Ernest ceased to be a boy. He had grown to be ayoung man now. He attracted little notice from the other inhabitantsof the valley; for they saw nothing remarkable in his way of life, savethat, when the labor of the day was over, he still loved to go apart andgaze and meditate upon the Great Stone Face. According to their idea ofthe matter, it was a folly, indeed, but pardonable, inasmuch as Ernestwas industrious, kind, and neighborly, and neglected no duty for thesake of indulging this idle habit. They knew not that the Great StoneFace had become a teacher to him, and that the sentiment which wasexpressed in it would enlarge the young man's heart, and fill it withwider and deeper sympathies than other hearts. They knew not that thencewould come a better wisdom than could be learned from books, and abetter life than could be moulded on the defaced example of other humanlives. Neither did Ernest know that the thoughts and affections whichcame to him so naturally, in the fields and at the fireside, andwherever he communed with himself, were of a higher tone than thosewhich all men shared with him. A simple soul--simple as when his motherfirst taught him the old prophecy--he beheld the marvellous featuresbeaming adown the valley, and still wondered that their humancounterpart was so long in making his appearance.

  By this time poor Mr. Gathergold was dead and buried; and the oddestpart of the matter was, that his wealth, which was the body and spiritof his existence, had disappeared before his death, leaving nothing ofhim but a living skeleton, covered over with a wrinkled, yellow skin.Since the melting away of his gold, it had been very generally concededthat there was no such striking resemblance, after all, betwixt theignoble features of the ruined merchant and that majestic face upon themountainside. So the people ceased to honor him during his lifetime,and quietly consigned him to forgetfulness after his decease. Once ina while, it is true, his memory was brought up in connection with themagnificent palace which he had built, and which had long ago beenturned into a hotel for the accommodation of strangers, multitudes ofwhom came, every summer, to visit that famous natural curiosity, theGreat Stone Face. Thus, Mr. Gathergold being discredited and thrown intothe shade, the man of prophecy was yet to come.

  It so happened that a native-born son of the valley, many years before,had enlisted as a soldier, and, after a great deal of hard fighting,had now become an illustrious
commander. Whatever he may be called inhistory, he was known in camps and on the battlefield under the nicknameof Old Blood-and-Thunder. This war-worn veteran, being now infirm withage and wounds, and weary of the turmoil of a military life, and of theroll of the drum and the clangor of the trumpet, that had so long beenringing in his ears, had lately signified a purpose of returning to hisnative valley, hoping to find repose where he remembered to have leftit. The inhabitants, his old neighbors and their grown-up children, wereresolved to welcome the renowned warrior with a salute of cannon and apublic dinner; and all the more enthusiastically, it being affirmedthat now, at last, the likeness of the Great Stone Face had actuallyappeared. An aid-de-camp of Old Blood-and-Thunder, travelling throughthe valley, was said to have been struck with the resemblance. Moreoverthe schoolmates and early acquaintances of the general were ready totestify, on oath, that, to the