household for some time afterwards. He was favored with a comfortable
winter, and thanked Heaven for it, and put it to a good use (at least
he intended it so) by concocting drugs; which perhaps did a little
towards peopling the graveyard, into which his windows looked; but that
was neither his purpose nor his fault. None of the sleepers, at all
events, interrupted their slumbers to upbraid him. He had done
according to his own artless conscience and the recipes of licensed
physicians, and he looked no further, but pounded, triturated, infused,
made electuaries, boluses, juleps, or whatever he termed his
productions, with skill and diligence, thanking Heaven that he was
spared to do so, when his contemporaries generally were getting
incapable of similar efforts. It struck him with some surprise, but
much gratitude to Providence, that his sight seemed to be growing
rather better than worse. He certainly could read the crabbed
handwriting and hieroglyphics of the physicians with more readiness
than he could a year earlier. But he had been originally near-sighted,
with large, projecting eyes; and near-sighted eyes always seem to get a
new lease of light as the years go on. One thing was perceptible about
the Doctor's eyes, not only to himself in the glass, but to everybody
else; namely, that they had an unaccustomed gleaming brightness in
them; not so very bright either, but yet so much so, that little Pansie
noticed it, and sometimes, in her playful, roguish way, climbed up into
his lap, and put both her small palms over them; telling Grandpapa that
he had stolen somebody else's eyes, and given away his own, and that
she liked his old ones better. The poor old Doctor did his best to
smile through his eyes, and so to reconcile Pansie to their brightness:
but still she continually made the same silly remonstrance, so that he
was fain to put on a pair of green spectacles when he was going to play
with Pansie, or took her on his knee. Nay, if he looked at her, as had
always been his custom, after she was asleep, in order to see that all
was well with her, the little child would put up her hands, as if he
held a light that was flashing on her eyeballs; and unless he turned
away his gaze quickly, she would wake up in a fit of crying.
On the whole, the apothecary had as comfortable a time as a man of his
years could expect. The air of the house and of the old graveyard
seemed to suit him. What so seldom happens in man's advancing age, his
night's rest did him good, whereas, generally, an old man wakes up ten
times as nervous and dispirited as he went to bed, just as if, during
his sleep he had been working harder than ever he did in the daytime.
It had been so with the Doctor himself till within a few months. To be
sure, he had latterly begun to practise various rules of diet and
exercise, which commended themselves to his approbation. He sawed some
of his own fire-wood, and fancied that, as was reasonable, it fatigued
him less day by day. He took walks with Pansie, and though, of course,
her little footsteps, treading on the elastic air of childhood, far
outstripped his own, still the old man knew that he was not beyond the
recuperative period of life, and that exercise out of doors and proper
food can do somewhat towards retarding the approach of age. He was
inclined, also, to impute much good effect to a daily dose of Santa
Cruz rum (a liquor much in vogue in that day), which he was now in the
habit of quaffing at the meridian hour. All through the Doctor's life
he had eschewed strong spirits: "But after seventy," quoth old Dr.
Dolliver, "a man is all the better in head and stomach for a little
stimulus"; and it certainly seemed so in his case. Likewise, I know not
precisely how often, but complying punctiliously with the recipe, as an
apothecary naturally would, he took his drop of the mysterious cordial.
He was inclined, however, to impute little or no efficacy to this, and
to laugh at himself for having ever thought otherwise. The dose was so
very minute! and he had never been sensible of any remarkable effect on
taking it, after all. A genial warmth, he sometimes fancied, diffused
itself throughout him, and perhaps continued during the next day. A
quiet and refreshing night's rest followed, and alacritous waking in
the morning; but all this was far more probably owing, as has been
already hinted, to excellent and well-considered habits of diet and
exercise. Nevertheless he still continued the cordial with tolerable
regularity,--the more, because on one or two occasions, happening to
omit it, it so chanced that he slept wretchedly, and awoke in strange
aches and pains, torpors, nervousness, shaking of the hands,
bleared-ness of sight, lowness of spirits and other ills, as is the
misfortune of some old men,--who are often threatened by a thousand
evil symptoms that come to nothing, foreboding no particular disorder,
and passing away as unsatisfactorily as they come. At another time, he
took two or three drops at once, and was alarmingly feverish in
consequence. Yet it was very true, that the feverish symptoms were
pretty sure to disappear on his renewal of the medicine. "Still it
could not be that," thought the old man, a hater of empiricism (in
which, however, is contained all hope for man), and disinclined to
believe in anything that was not according to rule and art. And then,
as aforesaid, the dose was so ridiculously small!
Sometimes, however, he took, half laughingly, another view of it, and
felt disposed to think that chance might really have thrown in his way
a very remarkable mixture, by which, if it had happened to him earlier
in life, he might have amassed a larger fortune, and might even have
raked together such a competency as would have prevented his feeling
much uneasiness about the future of little Pansie. Feeling as strong as
he did nowadays, he might reasonably count upon ten years more of life,
and in that time the precious liquor might be exchanged for much gold.
"Let us see!" quoth he, "by what attractive name shall it be
advertised? 'The old man's cordial?' That promises too little. Poh,
poh! I would stain my honesty, my fair reputation, the accumulation of
a lifetime, and befool my neighbor and the public, by any name that
would make them imagine I had found that ridiculous talisman that the
alchemists have sought. The old man's cordial,--that is best. And five
shillings sterling the bottle. That surely were not too costly, and
would give the medicine a better reputation and higher vogue (so
foolish is the world) than if I were to put it lower. I will think
further of this. But pshaw, pshaw!"
"What is the matter. Grandpapa," said little Pansie, who had stood by
him, wishing to speak to him at least a minute, but had been deterred
by his absorption; "why do you say 'Pshaw'?"
"Pshaw!" repeated Grandpapa, "there is one ingredient that I don't
know."
So this very hopeful design was necessarily given up, but that it had
occurred to Dr. Dolliver was perhaps a token that his mind was in a
very vigorous state; for it had been noted of him through life, that he
had little enterprise, little activity, and that, for the want of these
things, his very considerable skill in his art had been almost thrown
away, as regarded his private affairs, when it might easily have led
him to fortune. Whereas, here in his extreme age, he had first
bethought himself of a way to grow rich. Sometimes this latter spring
causes--as blossoms come on the autumnal tree--a spurt of vigor, or
untimely greenness, when Nature laughs at her old child, half in
kindness and half in scorn. It is observable, however, I fancy, that
after such a spurt, age comes on with redoubled speed, and that the old
man has only run forward with a show of force, in order to fall into
his grave the sooner.
Sometimes, as he was walking briskly along the street, with little
Pansie clasping his hand, and perhaps frisking rather more than became
a person of his venerable years, he had met the grim old wreck of
Colonel Dabney, moving goutily, and gathering wrath anew with every
touch of his painful foot to the ground; or driving by in his carriage,
showing an ashen, angry, wrinkled face at the window, and frowning at
him--the apothecary thought--with a peculiar fury, as if he took
umbrage at his audacity in being less broken by age than a gentleman
like himself. The apothecary could not help feeling as if there were
some unsettled quarrel or dispute between himself and the Colonel, he
could not tell what or why. The Colonel always gave him a haughty nod
of half-recognition; and the people in the street, to whom he was a
familiar object, would say, "The worshipful Colonel begins to find
himself mortal like the rest of us. He feels his years." "He'd be glad,
I warrant," said one, "to change with you, Doctor. It shows what
difference a good life makes in men, to look at him and you. You are
half a score of years his elder, me-thinks, and yet look what
temperance can do for a man. By my credit, neighbor, seeing how brisk
you have been lately, I told my wife you seemed to be growing younger.
It does me good to see it. We are about of an age, I think, and I like
to notice how we old men keep young and keep one another in heart. I
myself--ahem--ahem--feel younger this season than for these five years
past."
"It rejoices me that you feel so," quoth the apothecary, who had just
been thinking that this neighbor of his had lost a great deal, both in
mind and body, within a short period, and rather scorned him for it.
"Indeed, I find old age less uncomfortable than I supposed. Little
Pansie and I make excellent companions for one another."
And then, dragged along by Pansie's little hand, and also impelled by a
certain alacrity that rose with him in the morning, and lasted till his
healthy rest at night, he bade farewell to his contemporary, and
hastened on; while the latter, left behind, was somewhat irritated as
he looked at the vigorous movement of the apothecary's legs.
"He need not make such a show of briskness neither," muttered he to
himself. "This touch of rheumatism troubles me a bit just now, but try
it on a good day, and I'd walk with him for a shilling. Pshaw! I'll
walk to his funeral yet."
One day, while the Doctor, with the activity that bestirred itself in
him nowadays, was mixing and manufacturing certain medicaments that
came in frequent demand, a carriage stopped at his door, and he
recognized the voice of Colonel Dabney, talking in his customary stern
tone to the woman who served him. And, a moment afterwards, the coach
drove away, and he actually heard the old dignitary lumbering up
stairs, and bestowing a curse upon each particular step, as if that
were the method to make them soften and become easier when he should
come down again. "Pray, your worship," said the Doctor from above, "let
me attend you below stairs."
"No," growled the Colonel, "I'll meet you on your own ground. I can
climb a stair yet, and be hanged to you."
So saying, he painfully finished the ascent, and came into the
laboratory, where he let himself fall into the Doctor's easy-chair,
with an anathema on the chair, the Doctor, and himself; and, staring
round through the dusk, he met the wide-open, startled eyes of little
Pansie, who had been reading a gilt picture-book in the corner.
"Send away that child, Dolliver," cried the Colonel, angrily. "Confound
her, she makes my bones ache. I hate everything young."
"Lord, Colonel," the poor apothecary ventured to say, "there must be
young people in the world as well as old ones. 'T is my mind, a man's
grandchildren keep him warm round about him."
"I have none, and want none," sharply responded the Colonel; "and as
for young people, let me be one of them, and they may exist, otherwise
not. It is a cursed bad arrangement of the world, that there are young
and old here together."
When Pansie had gone away, which she did with anything but reluctance,
having a natural antipathy to this monster of a Colonel, the latter
personage tapped with his crutch-handled cane on a chair that stood
near, and nodded in an authoritative way to the apothecary to sit down
in it. Dr. Dolliver complied submissively, and the Colonel, with dull,
unkindly eyes, looked at him sternly, and with a kind of intelligence
amid the aged stolidity of his aspect, that somewhat puzzled the
Doctor. In this way he surveyed him all over, like a judge, when he
means to hang a man, and for some reason or none, the apothecary felt
his nerves shake, beneath this steadfast look.
"Aha! Doctor!" said the Colonel at last, with a doltish sneer, "you
bear your years well."
"Decently well, Colonel; I thank Providence for it," answered the meek
apothecary.
"I should say," quoth the Colonel, "you are younger at this moment than
when we spoke together two or three years ago. I noted then that your
eyebrows were a handsome snow-white, such as befits a man who has
passed beyond his threescore years and ten, and five years more. Why,
they are getting dark again, Mr. Apothecary."
"Nay, your worship must needs be mistaken there," said the Doctor, with
a timorous chuckle. "It is many a year since I have taken a deliberate
note of my wretched old visage in a glass, but I remember they were
white when I looked last."
"Come, Doctor, I know a thing or two," said the Colonel, with a bitter
scoff; "and what's this, you old rogue? Why, you've rubbed away a
wrinkle since we met. Take off those infernal spectacles, and look me
in the face. Ha! I see the devil in your eye. How dare you let it shine
upon me so?"
"On my conscience, Colonel," said the apothecary, strangely struck with
the coincidence of this accusation with little Pansie's complaint, "I
know not what you mean. My sight is pretty well for a man of my age. We
near-sighted people begin to know our best eyesight, when other people
have lost theirs."
"Ah! ah! old rogue," repeated the insufferable Colonel, gnashing his
ruined teeth at him, as if, for some incomprehensible reason, he wished
to tear him to pieces and devour him. "I know you. You are taking the
life away from me, villain! and I told you it was my inheritance. And I
told you there was a Bloody Footstep, bearing its track down through my
race.
"I remember nothing of it," said the Doctor, in a quake, sure that the
Colonel was in one of his mad fits. "And on the word of an honest man,
I never wronged you in my life, Colonel."
"We shall see," said the Colonel, whose wrinkled visage grew absolutely
terrible with its hardness; and his dull eyes, without losing their
dulness, seemed to look through him.
"Listen to me, sir. Some ten years ago, there came to you a man on a
secret business. He had an old musty bit of parchment, on which were
written some words, hardly legible, in an antique hand,--an old deed,
it might have been,--some family document, and here and there the
letters were faded away. But this man had spent his life over it, and
he had made out the meaning, and he interpreted it to you, and left it
with you, only there was one gap,--one torn or obliterated place. Well,
sir,--and he bade you, with your poor little skill at the mortar, and
for a certain sum,--ample repayment for such a service,--to manufacture
this medicine,--this cordial. It was an affair of months. And just when
you thought it finished, the man came again, and stood over your cursed
beverage, and shook a powder, or dropped a lump into it, or put in some
ingredient, in which was all the hidden virtue,--or, at least, it drew
out all the hidden virtue of the mean and common herbs, and married
them into a wondrous efficacy. This done, the man bade you do certain
other things with the potation, and went away"--the Colonel hesitated a
moment--"and never came back again."
"Surely, Colonel, you are correct," said the apothecary; much startled,
however, at the Colonel's showing himself so well acquainted with an
incident which he had supposed a secret with himself alone. Yet he had
a little reluctance in owning it, although he did not exactly
understand why, since the Colonel had, apparently, no rightful claim to
it, at all events.
"That medicine, that receipt," continued his visitor, "is my hereditary
property, and I challenge you, on your peril, to give it up."
"But what if the original owner should call upon me for it," objected
Dr. Dolliver.
"I'll warrant you against that," said the Colonel; and the apothecary
thought there was something ghastly in his look and tone. "Why, 't is
ten year, you old fool; and do you think a man with a treasure like
that in his possession would have waited so long?"
"Seven years it was ago," said the apothecary. "Septem annis passatis:
so says the Latin."
"Curse your Latin," answers the Colonel. "Produce the stuff. You have
been violating the first rule of your trade,--taking your own
drugs,--your own, in one sense; mine by the right of three hundred
years. Bring it forth, I say!"
"Pray excuse me, worthy Colonel," pleaded the apothecary; for though
convinced that the old gentleman was only in one of his insane fits,
when he talked of the value of this concoction, yet he really did not
like to give up the cordial, which perhaps had wrought him some
benefit. Besides, he had at least a claim upon it for much trouble and
skill expended in its composition. This he suggested to the Colonel,
who scornfully took out of his pocket a net-work purse, with more
golden guineas in it than the apothecary had seen in the whole seven
years, and was rude enough to fling it in his face. "Take that,"
thundered he, "and give up the thing, or I will have you in prison
before you are an hour older. Nay," he continued, growing pale, which
was his mode of showing terrible wrath; since all through life, till
extreme age quenched it, his ordinary face had been a blazing-red,
"I'll put you to death, you villain, as I've a right!" And thrusting
his hand into his waistcoat pocket, lo! the madman took a small pistol
from it, which he cocked, and presented at the poor apothecary. The old
fellow, quaked and cowered in his chair, and would indeed have given
his whole shopful of better concocted medicines than this, to be out of
this danger. Besides, there were the guineas; the Colonel had paid him
a princely sum for what was probably worth nothing.
"Hold! hold!" cried he as the Colonel, with stern eye pointed the
pistol at his head. "You shall have it."
So he rose all trembling, and crept to that secret cupboard, where the
precious bottle--since precious it seemed to be--was reposited. In all
his life, long as it had been, the apothecary had never before been
threatened by a deadly weapon; though many as deadly a thing had he
seen poured into a glass, without winking. And so it seemed to take his
heart and life away, and he brought the cordial forth feebly, and stood
tremulously before the Colonel, ashy pale, and looking ten years older
than his real age, instead of five years younger, as he had seemed just
before this disastrous interview with the Colonel.
"You look as if you needed a drop of it yourself," said Colonel Dabney,
with great scorn. "But not a drop shall you have. Already have you
stolen too much," said he, lifting up the bottle, and marking the space
to which the liquor had subsided in it in consequence of the minute
doses with which the apothecary had made free. "Fool, had you taken
your glass like a man, you might have been young again. Now, creep on,
the few months you have left, poor, torpid knave, and die! Come--a
goblet! quick!"
He clutched the bottle meanwhile voraciously, miserly, eagerly,
furiously, as if it were his life that he held in his grasp; angry,
impatient, as if something long sought were within his reach, and not
yet secure,--with longing thirst and desire; suspicious of the world
and of fate; feeling as if an iron hand were over him, and a crowd of
violent robbers round about him, struggling for it. At last, unable to
wait longer, just as the apothecary was tottering away in quest of a
drinking-glass, the Colonel took out the stopple, and lifted the flask
itself to his lips.
"For Heaven's sake, no!" cried the Doctor. "The dose is one single
drop!--one drop, Colonel, one drop!"
"Not a drop to save your wretched old soul," responded the Colonel;
probably thinking that the apothecary was pleading for a small share of
the precious liquor. He put it to his lips, and, as if quenching a
lifelong thirst, swallowed deep draughts, sucking it in with
desperation, till, void of breath, he set it down upon the table. The
rich, poignant perfume spread itself through the air.
The apothecary, with an instinctive carefulness that was rather
ludicrous under the circumstances, caught up the stopper, which the
Colonel had let fall, and forced it into the bottle to prevent any
farther escape of virtue. He then fearfully watched the result of the
madman's potation.
The Colonel sat a moment in his chair, panting for breath; then started
to his feet with a prompt vigor that contrasted widely with the infirm
and rheumatic movements that had heretofore characterized him. He
struck his forehead violently with one hand, and smote his chest with
the other: he stamped his foot thunderously on the ground; then he
leaped up to the ceiling, and came down with an elastic bound. Then he
laughed, a wild, exulting ha! ha! with a strange triumphant roar that
filled the house and reechoed through it; a sound full of fierce,
animal rapture,--enjoyment of sensual life mixed up with a sort of
horror. After all, real as it was, it was like the sounds a man makes
in a dream. And this, while the potent draught seemed still to be
making its way through his system; and the frightened apothecary
thought that he intended a revengeful onslaught upon himself. Finally,
he uttered a loud unearthly screech, in the midst of which his voice
broke, as if some unseen hand were throttling him, and, starting
forward, he fought frantically, as if he would clutch the life that was
being rent away,--and fell forward with a dead thump upon the floor.
"Colonel! Colonel!" cried the terrified Doctor.
The feeble old man, with difficulty, turned over the heavy frame, and
saw at once, with practised eye, that he was dead. He set him up, and
the corpse looked at him with angry reproach. He was so startled, that
his subsequent recollections of the moment were neither distinct nor
steadfast; but he fancied, though he told the strange impression to no
one, that on his first glimpse of the face, with a dark flush of what
looked like rage still upon it, it was a young man's face that he
saw,--a face with all the passionate energy of early manhood,--the
capacity for furious anger which the man had lost half a century ago,
crammed to the brim with vigor till it became agony. But the next
moment, if it were so (which it could not have been), the face grew
ashen, withered, shrunken, more aged than in life, though still the
murderous fierceness remained, and seemed to be petrified forever upon
it.
After a moment's bewilderment, Dolliver ran to the window looking to
the street, threw it open, and called loudly for assistance. He opened
also another window, for the air to blow through, for he was almost
stifled with the rich odor of the cordial which filled the room, and
was now exuded from the corpse.
He heard the voice of Pansie, crying at the door, which was locked,
and, turning the key, he caught her in his arms, and hastened with her
below stairs, to give her into the charge of Martha, who seemed half
stupefied with a sense of something awful that had occurred.
Meanwhile there was a rattling and a banging at the street portal, to
which several people had been attracted both by the Doctor's outcry
from the window, and by the awful screech in which the Colonel's spirit
(if, indeed, he had that divine part) had just previously taken its
flight.
He let them in, and, pale and shivering, ushered them up to the
death-chamber, where one or two, with a more delicate sense of smelling
than the rest, snuffed the atmosphere, as if sensible of an unknown
fragrance, yet appeared afraid to breathe, when they saw the terrific
countenance leaning back against the chair, and eying them so
truculently.
I would fain quit the scene and have done with the Colonel, who, I am
glad, has happened to die at so early a period of the narrative. I
therefore hasten to say that a coroner's inquest was held on the spot,
though everybody felt that it was merely ceremonial, and that the
testimony of their good and ancient townsman, Dr. Dolliver, was amply
sufficient to settle the matter. The verdict was, "Death by the
visitation of God."
The apothecary gave evidence that the Colonel, without asking leave,
and positively against his advice, had drunk a quantity of distilled
spirits; and one or two servants, or members of the Colonel's family,
testified that he had been in a very uncomfortable state of mind for
some days past, so that they fancied he was insane. Therefore nobody
thought of blaming Dr. Dolliver for what had happened; and, if the
plain truth must be told, everybody who saw the wretch was too well
content to be rid of him, to trouble themselves more than was quite
necessary about the way in which the incumbrance had been removed.
The corpse was taken to the mansion in order to receive a magnificent
funeral; and Dr. Dolliver was left outwardly in quiet, but much
disturbed, and indeed almost overwhelmed inwardly, by what had happened.
Yet it is to be observed, that he had accounted for the death with a
singular dexterity of expression, when he attributed it to a dose of
distilled spirits. What kind of distilled spirits were those, Doctor?
and will you venture to take any more of them?
End of Project Gutenberg's The Dolliver Romance, by Nathaniel Hawthorne