If Master Bernard felt a natural gratitude to his young pupil for saving
him from an imminent peril, he was in a state of infinite perplexity
to know why he should have needed such aid. He, an active, muscular,
courageous, adventurous young fellow, with--a stick in his hand, ready
to hold down the Old Serpent himself, if he had come in his way, to
stand still, staring into those two eyes, until they came up close to
him, and the strange, terrible sound seemed to freeze him stiff where he
stood,--what was the meaning of it? Again, what was the influence
this girl had seemingly exerted, under which the venomous creature had
collapsed in such a sudden way? Whether he had been awake or dreaming
he did not feel quite sure. He knew he had gone up The Mountain, at any
rate; he knew he had come down The Mountain with the girl walking just
before him;--there was no forgetting her figure, as she walked on
in silence, her braided locks falling a little, for want of the lost
hairpin, perhaps, and looking like a wreathing coil of--Shame on such
fancies!--to wrong that supreme crowning gift of abounding Nature, a
rush of shining black hair, which, shaken loose, would cloud her all
round, like Godiva, from brow to instep! He was sure he had sat down
before the fissure or cave. He was sure that he was led softly away from
the place, and that it was Elsie who had led him. There was the hair-pin
to show that so far it was not a dream. But between these recollections
came a strange confusion; and the more the master thought, the more he
was perplexed to know whether she had waked him, sleeping, as he sat on
the stone, from some frightful dream, such as may come in a very brief
slumber, or whether she had bewitched him into a trance with those
strange eyes of hers, or whether it was all true, and he must solve its
problem as he best might.
There was another recollection connected with this mountain adventure.
As they approached the mansion-house, they met a young man, whom Mr.
Bernard remembered having seen once at least before, and whom he had
heard of as a cousin of the young girl. As Cousin Richard Venner, the
person in question, passed them, he took the measure, so to speak, of
Mr. Bernard, with a look so piercing, so exhausting, so practised, so
profoundly suspicious, that the young master felt in an instant that he
had an enemy in this handsome youth,--an enemy, too, who was like to be
subtle and dangerous.
Mr. Bernard had made up his mind, that, come what might, enemy or no
enemy, live or die, he would solve the mystery of Elsie Venner, sooner
or later. He was not a man to be frightened out of his resolution by a
scowl, or a stiletto, or any unknown means of mischief, of which a whole
armory was hinted at in that passing look Dick Venner had given him.
Indeed, like most adventurous young persons, he found a kind of charm
in feeling that there might be some dangers in the way of his
investigations. Some rumors which had reached him about the supposed
suitor of Elsie Venner, who was thought to be a desperate kind of
fellow, and whom some believed to be an unscrupulous adventurer, added
a curious, romantic kind of interest to the course of physiological and
psychological inquiries he was about instituting.
The afternoon on The Mountain was still upper-most in his mind. Of
course he knew the common stories--about fascination. He had once been
himself an eyewitness of the charming of a small bird by one of our
common harmless serpents. Whether a human being could be reached by this
subtile agency, he had been skeptical, notwithstanding the mysterious
relation generally felt to exist between man and this creature, “cursed
above all cattle and above every beast of the field,”--a relation which
some interpret as the fruit of the curse, and others hold to be so
instinctive that this animal has been for that reason adopted as the
natural symbol of evil. There was another solution, however, supplied
him by his professional reading. The curious work of Mr. Braid of
Manchester had made him familiar with the phenomena of a state allied to
that produced by animal magnetism, and called by that writer by the name
of hypnotism. He found, by referring to his note-book, the statement
was, that, by fixing the eyes on a bright object so placed as to produce
a strain upon the eyes and eyelids, and to maintain a steady fixed
stare, there comes on in a few seconds a very singular condition,
characterized by muscular rigidity and inability to move, with a
strange exaltation of most of the senses, and generally a closure of the
eyelids,--this condition being followed by torpor.
Now this statement of Mr. Braid's, well known to the scientific world,
and the truth of which had been confirmed by Mr. Bernard in
certain experiments he had instituted, as it has been by many other
experimenters, went far to explain the strange impressions, of which,
waking or dreaming, he had certainly been the subject. His nervous
system had been in a high state of exaltation at the time. He remembered
how the little noises that made rings of sound in the silence of the
woods, like pebbles dropped in still waters, had reached his inner
consciousness. He remembered that singular sensation in the roots of the
hair, when he came on the traces of the girl's presence, reminding him
of a line in a certain poem which he had read lately with a new and
peculiar interest. He even recalled a curious evidence of exalted
sensibility and irritability, in the twitching of the minute muscles of
the internal ear at every unexpected sound, producing an odd little snap
in the middle of the head, which proved to him that he was getting very
nervous.
The next thing was to find out whether it were possible that the
venomous creature's eyes should have served the purpose of Mr. Braid's
“bright object” held very close to the person experimented on, or
whether they had any special power which could be made the subject of
exact observation.
For this purpose Mr. Bernard considered it necessary to get a live
crotalus or two into his possession, if this were possible. On inquiry,
he found that there was a certain family living far up the mountainside,
not a mile from the ledge, the members of which were said to have taken
these creatures occasionally, and not to be in any danger, or at least
in any fear, of being injured by them. He applied to these people, and
offered a reward sufficient to set them at work to capture some of these
animals, if such a thing were possible.
A few days after this, a dark, gypsy-looking woman presented herself at
his door. She held up her apron as if it contained something precious in
the bag she made with it.
“Y' wanted some rattlers,” said the woman. “Here they be.”
She opened her apron and showed a coil of rattlesnakes lying very
peaceably in its fold. They lifted their heads up, as if they wanted to
see what was going on, but showed no sign of anger.
“Are you crazy?” said Mr. Bernard. “You're dead in an hour, if one of
those creatures strikes you!”
He drew back a little, as he spoke; it might be simple disgust; it might
be fear; it might be what we call antipathy, which is different from
either, and which will sometimes show itself in paleness, and even
faintness, produced by objects perfectly harmless and not in themselves
offensive to any sense.
“Lord bless you,” said the woman, “rattlers never touches our folks. I'd
jest 'z lieves handle them creaturs as so many striped snakes.”
So saying, she put their heads down with her hand, and packed them
together in her apron as if they had been bits of cart-rope.
Mr. Bernard had never heard of the power, or, at least, the belief in
the possession of a power by certain persons, which enables them
to handle these frightful reptiles with perfect impunity. The fact,
however, is well known to others, and more especially to a very
distinguished Professor in one of the leading institutions of the great
city of the land, whose experiences in the neighborhood of Graylock, as
he will doubtless inform the curious, were very much like those of the
young master.
Mr. Bernard had a wired cage ready for his formidable captives, and
studied their habits and expression with a strange sort of interest.
What did the Creator mean to signify, when he made such shapes of
horror, and, as if he had doubly cursed this envenomed wretch, had set
a mark upon him and sent him forth the Cain of the brotherhood of
serpents? It was a very curious fact that the first train of thoughts
Mr. Bernard's small menagerie suggested to him was the grave, though
somewhat worn, subject of the origin of evil. There is now to be seen in
a tall glass jar, in the Museum of Comparative Anatomy at Cantabridge in
the territory of the Massachusetts, a huge crotalus, of a species which
grows to more frightful dimensions than our own, under the hotter skies
of South America. Look at it, ye who would know what is the tolerance,
the freedom from prejudice, which can suffer such an incarnation of all
that is devilish to lie unharmed in the cradle of Nature! Learn, too,
that there are many things in this world which we are warned to shun,
and are even suffered to slay, if need be, but which we must not hate,
unless we would hate what God loves and cares for.
Whatever fascination the creature might exercise in his native haunts,
Mr. Bernard found himself not in the least nervous or affected in any
way while looking at his caged reptiles. When their cage was shaken,
they would lift their heads and spring their rattles; but the sound was
by no means so formidable to listen to as when it reverberated among
the chasms of the echoing rocks. The expression of the creatures was
watchful, still, grave, passionless, fate-like, suggesting a cold
malignity which seemed to be waiting for its opportunity. Their awful,
deep-cut mouths were sternly closed over the long hollow fangs which
rested their roots against the swollen poison-gland, where the venom had
been hoarding up ever since the last stroke had emptied it. They never
winked, for ophidians have no movable eyelids, but kept up that awful
fixed stare which made the two unwinking gladiators the survivors of
twenty pairs matched by one of the Roman Emperors, as Pliny tells us, in
his “Natural History.” Their eyes did not flash, but shone with a cold
still light. They were of a pale-golden or straw color, horrible to look
into, with their stony calmness, their pitiless indifference, hardly
enlivened by the almost imperceptible vertical slit of the pupil,
through which Death seemed to be looking out like the archer behind the
long narrow loop-hole in a blank turret-wall. On the whole, the caged
reptiles, horrid as they were, hardly matched his recollections of what
he had seen or dreamed he save at the cavern. These looked dangerous
enough, but yet quiet. A treacherous stillness, however,--as the
unfortunate New York physician found, when he put his foot out to wake
up the torpid creature, and instantly the fang flashed through his boot,
carrying the poison into his blood, and death with it.
Mr. Bernard kept these strange creatures, and watched all their habits
with a natural curiosity. In any collection of animals the venomous
beasts are looked at with the greatest interest, just as the greatest
villains are most run after by the unknown public. Nobody troubles
himself for a common striped snake or a petty thief, but a cobra or a
wife-killer is a centre of attraction to all eyes. These captives did
very little to earn their living, but, on the other hand, their living
was not expensive, their diet being nothing but air, au naturel. Months
and months these creatures will live and seem to thrive well enough,
as any showman who has then in his menagerie will testify, though they
never touch anything to eat or drink.
In the mean time Mr. Bernard had become very curious about a class of
subjects not treated of in any detail in those text-books accessible in
most country-towns, to the exclusion of the more special treatises, and
especially of the rare and ancient works found on the shelves of the
larger city-libraries. He was on a visit to old Dr. Kittredge one
day, having been asked by him to call in for a few moments as soon as
convenient. The Doctor smiled good-humoredly when he asked him if he had
an extensive collection of medical works.
“Why, no,” said the old Doctor, “I haven't got a great many printed
books; and what I have I don't read quite as often as I might, I'm
afraid. I read and studied in the time of it, when I was in the midst of
the young men who were all at work with their books; but it's a mighty
hard matter, when you go off alone into the country, to keep up with
all that's going on in the Societies and the Colleges. I'll tell you,
though, Mr. Langdon, when a man that's once started right lives among
sick folks for five-and-thirty years, as I've done, if he has n't got
a library of five-and-thirty volumes bound up in his head at the end of
that time, he'd better stop driving round and sell his horse and sulky.
I know the bigger part of the families within a dozen miles' ride. I
know the families that have a way of living through everything, and
I know the other set that have the trick of dying without any kind of
reason for it. I know the years when the fevers and dysenteries are in
earnest, and when they're only making believe. I know the folks that
think they're dying as soon as they're sick, and the folks that never
find out they 're sick till they're dead. I don't want to undervalue
your science, Mr. Langdon. There are things I never learned, because
they came in after my day, and I am very glad to send my patients to
those that do know them, when I am at fault; but I know these people
about here, fathers and mothers, and children and grandchildren, so
as all the science in the world can't know them, without it takes time
about it, and sees them grow up and grow old, and how the wear and tear
of life comes to them. You can't tell a horse by driving him once, Mr.
Langdon, nor a patient by talking half an hour with him.”
“Do you know much about the Veneer family?” said Mr. Bernard, in a
natural way enough, the Doctor's talk having suggested the question.
The Doctor lifted his head with his accustomed movement, so as to
command the young man through his spectacles.
“I know all the families of this place and its neighborhood,” he
answered.
“We have the young lady studying with us at the Institute,” said Mr.
Bernard.
“I know it,” the Doctor answered. “Is she a good scholar?”
All this time the Doctor's eyes were fixed steadily on Mr. Bernard,
looking through the glasses.
“She is a good scholar enough, but I don't know what to make of her.
Sometimes I think she is a little out of her head. Her father, I
believe, is sensible enough;--what sort of a woman was her mother,
Doctor?--I suppose, of course, you remember all about her?”
“Yes, I knew her mother. She was a very lovely young woman.”--The Doctor
put his hand to his forehead and drew a long breath.--“What is there you
notice out of the way about Elsie Venner?”
“A good many things,” the master answered. “She shuns all the other
girls. She is getting a strange influence over my fellow-teacher, a
young lady,--you know Miss Helen Darley, perhaps? I am afraid this girl
will kill her. I never saw or heard of anything like it, in prose at
least;--do you remember much of Coleridge's Poems, Doctor?”
The good old Doctor had to plead a negative.
“Well, no matter. Elsie would have been burned for a witch in old times.
I have seen the girl look at Miss Darley when she had not the least idea
of it, and all at once I would see her grow pale and moist, and sigh,
and move round uneasily, and turn towards Elsie, and perhaps get up
and go to her, or else have slight spasmodic movements that looked like
hysterics;--do you believe in the evil eye, Doctor?”
“Mr. Langdon,” the Doctor said, solemnly, “there are strange things
about Elsie Veneer,--very strange things. This was what I wanted to
speak to you about. Let me advise you all to be very patient with the
girl, but also very careful. Her love is not to be desired, and “--he
spoke in a lower tone--“her hate is to be dreaded. Do you think she has
any special fancy for anybody else in the school besides Miss Darley?”
Mr. Bernard could not stand the old Doctor's spectacled eyes without
betraying a little of the feeling natural to a young man to whom a home
question involving a possible sentiment is put suddenly.
“I have suspected,” he said,--“I have had a kind of feeling--that
she--Well, come, Doctor,--I don't know that there 's any use in
disguising the matter,--I have thought Elsie Veneer had rather a fancy
for somebody else,--I mean myself.”
There was something so becoming in the blush with which the young man
made this confession, and so manly, too, in the tone with which he
spoke, so remote from any shallow vanity, such as young men who are
incapable of love are apt to feel, when some loose tendril of a woman's
fancy which a chance wind has blown against them twines about them
for the want of anything better, that the old Doctor looked at him
admiringly, and could not help thinking that it was no wonder any young
girl should be pleased with him.
“You are a man of nerve, Mr. Langdon?” said the Doctor.
“I thought so till very lately,” he replied. “I am not easily
frightened, but I don't know but I might be bewitched or magnetized, or
whatever it is when one is tied up and cannot move. I think I can find
nerve enough, however, if there is any special use you want to put it
to.”
“Let me ask you one more question, Mr. Langdon. Do you find yourself
disposed to take a special interest in Elsie,--to fall in love with her,
in a word? Pardon me, for I do not ask from curiosity, but a much more
serious motive.”
“Elsie interests me,” said the young man, “interests me strangely. She
has a wild flavor in her character which is wholly different from that
of any human creature I ever saw. She has marks of genius, poetic or
dramatic,--I hardly know which. She read a passage from Keats's 'Lamia'
the other day, in the schoolroom, in such a way that I declare to you I
thought some of the girls would faint or go into fits. Miss Darley got
up and left the room, trembling all over. Then, I pity her, she is so
lonely. The girls are afraid of her, and she seems to have either a
dislike or a fear of them. They have all sorts of painful stories about
her. They give her a name which no human creature ought to bear. They
say she hides a mark on her neck by always wearing a necklace. She
is very graceful, you know, and they will have it that she can twist
herself into all sorts of shapes, or tie herself in a knot, if she wants
to. There is not one of them that will look her in the eyes. I pity the
poor girl; but, Doctor, I do not love her. I would risk my life for her,
if it would do her any good, but it would be in cold blood. If her hand
touches mine, it is not a thrill of passion I feel running through me,
but a very different emotion. Oh, Doctor! there must be something in
that creature's blood which has killed the humanity in her. God only
knows the cause that has blighted such a soul in so beautiful a body!
No, Doctor, I do not love the girl.”
“Mr. Langdon,” said the Doctor, “you are young, and I am old. Let me
talk to you with an old man's privilege, as an adviser. You have come to
this country-town without suspicion, and you are moving in the midst of
perils. There are things which I must not tell you now; but I may warn
you. Keep your eyes open and your heart shut. If, through pitying that
girl, you ever come to love her, you are lost. If you deal carelessly
with her, beware! This is not all. There are other eyes on you beside
Elsie Venner's. Do you go armed?”
“I do!” said Mr. Bernard,--and he “put his hands up” in the shape
of fists, in such a way as to show that he was master of the natural
weapons at any rate.
The Doctor could not help smiling. But his face fell in an instant.
“You may want something more than those tools to work with. Come with me
into my sanctum.”
The Doctor led Mr. Bernard into a small room opening out of the study.
It was a place such as anybody but a medical man would shiver to enter.
There was the usual tall box with its bleached, rattling tenant; there
were jars in rows where “interesting cases” outlived the grief of widows
and heirs in alcoholic immortality,--for your “preparation-jar” is the
true “monumentum aere perennius;” there were various semi-possibilities
of minute dimensions and unpromising developments; there were shining
instruments of evil aspect, and grim plates on the walls, and on one
shelf by itself, accursed and apart, coiled in a long cylinder of
spirit, a huge crotalus, rough-scaled, flatheaded, variegated with dull
bands, one of which partially encircled the neck like a collar,--an
awful wretch to look upon, with murder written all over him in horrid
hieroglyphics. Mr. Bernard's look was riveted on this creature,--not
fascinated certainly, for its eyes looked like white beads, being
clouded by the action of the spirits in which it had been long
kept,--but fixed by some indefinite sense of the renewal of a previous
impression;--everybody knows the feeling, with its suggestion of some
past state of existence. There was a scrap of paper on the jar, with
something written on it. He was reaching up to read it when the Doctor
touched him lightly.
“Look here, Mr. Langdon!” he said, with a certain vivacity of manner, as
if wishing to call away his attention,--“this is my armory.”
The Doctor threw open the door of a small cabinet, where were disposed
in artistic patterns various weapons of offence and defence,--for he was
a virtuoso in his way, and by the side of the implements of the art of
healing had pleased himself with displaying a collection of those other
instruments, the use of which renders the first necessary.
“See which of these weapons you would like best to carry about you,”
said the Doctor.
Mr. Bernard laughed, and looked at the Doctor as if he half doubted
whether he was in earnest.
“This looks dangerous enough,” he said,--“for the man who carries it, at
least.”
He took down one of the prohibited Spanish daggers or knives which a
traveller may, occasionally get hold of and smuggle out of the country.
The blade was broad, trowel-like, but the point drawn out several
inches, so as to look like a skewer.
“This must be a jealous bull-fighter's weapon,” he said, and put it back
in its place.
Then he took down an ancient-looking broad-bladed dagger, with a complex
aspect about it, as if it had some kind of mechanism connected with it.
“Take care!” said the Doctor; “there is a trick to that dagger.”
He took it and touched a spring. The dagger split suddenly into three
blades, as when one separates the forefinger and the ring-finger from
the middle one. The outside blades were sharp on their outer edge. The
stab was to be made with the dagger shut, then the spring touched and
the split blades withdrawn.
Mr. Bernard replaced it, saying, that it would have served for sidearm
to old Suwarrow, who told his men to work their bayonets back and
forward when they pinned a Turk, but to wriggle them about in the wound
when they stabbed a Frenchman.
“Here,” said the Doctor, “this is the thing you want.”
He took down a much more modern and familiar implement,--a small,
beautifully finished revolver.
“I want you to carry this,” he said; “and more than that, I want you to
practise with it often, as for amusement, but so that it maybe seen and
understood that you are apt to have a pistol about you. Pistol-shooting
is pleasant sport enough, and there is no reason why you should not
practise it like other young fellows. And now,” the Doctor said, “I have
one other, weapon to give you.”
He took a small piece of parchment and shook a white powder into it from
one of his medicine-jars. The jar was marked with the name of a mineral
salt, of a nature to have been serviceable in case of sudden illness in
the time of the Borgias. The Doctor folded the parchment carefully, and
marked the Latin name of the powder upon it.
“Here,” he said, handing it to Mr. Bernard, “you see what it is, and you
know what service it can render. Keep these two protectors about your
person day and night; they will not harm you, and you may want one or
the other or both before you think of it.”
Mr. Bernard thought it was very odd, and not very old-gentlemanlike,
to be fitting him out for treason, stratagem, and spoils, in this way.
There was no harm, however, in carrying a doctor's powder in his pocket,
or in amusing himself with shooting at a mark, as he had often done
before. If the old gentleman had these fancies, it was as well to humor
him.
So he thanked old Doctor Kittredge, and shook his hand warmly as he left
him.
“The fellow's hand did not tremble, nor his color change,” the Doctor
said, as he watched him walking away. “He is one of the right sort.”