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Septimius Felton;
Or,
The Elixir Of Life.
By Nathanial Hawthorne
1883
INTRODUCTORY NOTE.
SEPTIMIUS FELTON.
The existence of this story, posthumously published, was not known to any
one but Hawthorne himself, until some time after his death, when the
manuscript was found among his papers. The preparation and copying of his
Note-Books for the press occupied the most of Mrs. Hawthorne's available
time during the interval from 1864 to 1870; but in the latter year, having
decided to publish the unfinished romance, she began the task of putting
together its loose sheets and deciphering the handwriting, which, towards
the close of Hawthorne's life, had grown somewhat obscure and uncertain.
Her death occurred while she was thus engaged, and the transcription was
completed by her daughters. The book was then issued simultaneously in
America and England, in 1871.
Although "Septimius Felton" appeared so much later than "The Marble Faun,"
it was conceived and, in another form, begun before the Italian romance
had presented itself to the author's mind. The legend of a bloody foot
leaving its imprint where it passed, which figures so prominently in the
following fiction, was brought to Hawthorne's notice on a visit to
Smithell's Hall, Lancashire, England. [Footnote: See _English
Note-Books,_ April 7, and August 25, 1855.] Only five days after
hearing of it, he made a note in his journal, referring to "my Romance,"
which had to do with a plot involving the affairs of a family established
both in England and New England; and it seems likely that he had already
begun to associate the bloody footstep with this project. What is
extraordinary, and must be regarded as an unaccountable coincidence--one
of the strange premonitions of genius--is that in 1850, before he had ever
been to England and before he knew of the existence of Smithell's Hall, he
had jotted down in his Note-Book, written in America, this suggestion:
"The print in blood of a naked foot to be traced through the street of a
town." The idea of treating in fiction the attempt to renew youth or to
attain an earthly immortality had engaged his fancy quite early in his
career, as we discover from "Doctor Heidegger's Experiment," in the
"Twice-Told Tales." In 1840, also, we find in the journal: "If a man were
sure of living forever, he would not care about his offspring." The
"Mosses from an Old Manse" supply another link in this train of
reflection; for "The Virtuoso's Collection" includes some of the elixir
vitae "in an antique sepulchral urn." The narrator there represents
himself as refusing to quaff it. "'No; I desire not an earthly
immortality,' said I. 'Were man to live longer on earth, the spiritual
would die out of him.... There is a celestial something within us that
requires, after a certain time, the atmosphere of heaven to preserve it
from ruin.'" On the other hand, just before hearing, for the first time,
the legend of Smithell's Hall, he wrote in his English journal:--
"God himself cannot compensate us for being born for any period short of
eternity. All the misery endured here constitutes a claim for another
life, and still more _all the happiness;_ because all true happiness
involves something more than the earth owns, and needs something more than
a mortal capacity for the enjoyment of it." It is sufficiently clear that
he had meditated on the main theme of "Septimius Felton," at intervals,
for many years.
When, in August, 1855, Hawthorne went by invitation to Smithell's Hall, the
lady of the manor, on his taking leave, asked him "to write a ghost-story
for her house;" and he observes in his notes, "the legend is a good one."
Three years afterwards, in 1858, on the eve of departure for France and
Italy, he began to sketch the outline of a romance laid in England, and
having for its hero an American who goes thither to assert his inherited
rights in an old manor-house possessing the peculiarity of a supposed
bloody foot-print on the threshold-stone. This sketch, which appears in
the present edition as "The Ancestral Footstep," was in journal form, the
story continuing from day to day, with the dates attached. There remains
also the manuscript without elate, recently edited under the title "Dr.
Grimshawe's Secret," which bears a resemblance to some particulars in
"Septimius Felton."
Nothing further seems to have been done in this direction by the author
until he had been to Italy, had written "The Marble Faun," and again
returned to The Wayside, his home at Concord. It was then, in 1861, that
he took up once more the "Romance of Immortality," as the sub-title of the
English edition calls it. "I have not found it possible," he wrote to Mr.
Bridge, who remained his confidant, "to occupy my mind with its usual
trash and nonsense during these anxious times; but as the autumn advances,
I myself sitting down at my desk and blotting successive sheets of paper
as of yore." Concerning this place, The Wayside, he had said in a letter
to George William Curtis, in 1852: "I know nothing of the history of the
house, except Thoreau's telling me that it was inhabited a generation or
two ago by a man who believed he should never die." It was this legendary
personage whom he now proceeded to revive and embody as Septimius; and the
scene of the story was placed at The Wayside itself and the neighboring
house, belonging to Mr. Bronson Alcott, both of which stand at the base of
a low ridge running beside the Lexington road, in the village of Concord.
Rose Garfield is mentioned as living "in a small house, the site of which
is still indicated by the cavity of a cellar, in which I this very summer
planted some sunflowers." The cellar-site remains at this day distinctly
visible near the boundary of the land formerly owned by Hawthorne.
Attention may here perhaps appropriately be called to the fact that some of
the ancestors of President Garfield settled at Weston, not many miles from
Concord, and that the name is still borne by dwellers in the vicinity. One
of the last letters written by the President was an acceptance of an
invitation to visit Concord; and it was his intention to journey thither
by carriage, incognito, from Boston, passing through the scenes where
those ancestors had lived, and entering the village by the old Lexington
road, on which The Wayside faces. It is an interesting coincidence that
Hawthorne should have chosen for his first heroine's name, either
intentionally or through unconscious association, this one which belonged
to the region.
The house upon which the story was thus centred, and where it was written,
had been a farm-house, bought and for a time occupied by Hawthorne
previous to his departure for Europe. On coming back to it, he made some
additions to the old wooden structure, and caused to be built a low tower,
which rose above the irregular roofs of the older and newer portions, thus
supplying him with a study lifted out of reach of noise or interruption,
and in a slight degree recalling the tower in which he had taken so much
pleasure at the Villa Montauto. The study was extremely simple in its
appointments, being finished chiefly in stained wood, with a vaulted
plaster ceiling, and containing, besides a few pictures and some plain
furniture, a writing-table, and a shelf at which Hawthorne sometimes wrote
standing. A story has gone abroad and is widely believed, that, on
mounting the steep stairs leading to this study, he passed through a
trap-door and afterwards placed upon it the chair in which he sat, so that
intrusion or interruption became physically impossible. It is wholly
unfounded. There never was any trap-door, and no precaution of the kind
described was ever taken. Immediately behind the house the hill rises in
artificial terraces, which, during the romancer's residence, were grassy
and planted with fruit-trees. He afterwards had evergreens set out there,
and directed the planting of other trees, which still attest his
preference for thick verdure. The twelve acres running back over the hill
were closely covered with light woods, and across the road lay a level
tract of eight acres more, which included a garden and orchard. From his
study Hawthorne could overlook a good part of his modest domain; the view
embraced a stretch of road lined with trees, wide meadows, and the hills
across the shallow valley. The branches of trees rose on all sides as if
to embower the house, and birds and bees flew about his casement, through
which came the fresh perfumes of the woods, in summer.
In this spot "Septimius Felton" was written; but the manuscript, thrown
aside, was mentioned in the Dedicatory Preface to "Our Old Home" as an
"abortive project." As will be found explained in the Introductory Notes
to "The Dolliver Romance" and "The Ancestral Footstep," that phase of the
same general design which was developed in the "Dolliver" was intended to
take the place of this unfinished sketch, since resuscitated.
G.P.L.
PREFACE.
The following story is the last written by my father. It is printed as it
was found among his manuscripts. I believe it is a striking specimen of
the peculiarities and charm of his style, and that it will have an added
interest for brother artists, and for those who care to study the method
of his composition, from the mere fact of its not having received his
final revision. In any case, I feel sure that the retention of the
passages within brackets (_e. g._ p. 253), which show how my father
intended to amplify some of the descriptions and develop more fully one or
two of the character studies, will not be regretted by appreciative
readers. My earnest thanks are due to Mr. Robert Browning for his kind
assistance and advice in interpreting the manuscript, otherwise so
difficult to me.
UNA HAWTHORNE.
SEPTIMIUS FELTON;
OR, THE ELIXIR OF LIFE.
It was a day in early spring; and as that sweet, genial time of year and
atmosphere calls out tender greenness from the ground,--beautiful flowers,
or leaves that look beautiful because so long unseen under the snow and
decay,--so the pleasant air and warmth had called out three young people,
who sat on a sunny hill-side enjoying the warm day and one another. For
they were all friends: two of them young men, and playmates from boyhood;
the third, a girl, who, two or three years younger than themselves, had
been the object of their boy-love, their little rustic, childish
gallantries, their budding affections; until, growing all towards manhood
and womanhood, they had ceased to talk about such matters, perhaps
thinking about them the more.
These three young people were neighbors' children, dwelling in houses that
stood by the side of the great Lexington road, along a ridgy hill that
rose abruptly behind them, its brow covered with a wood, and which
stretched, with one or two breaks and interruptions, into the heart of the
village of Concord, the county town. It was in the side of this hill that,
according to tradition, the first settlers of the village had burrowed in
caverns which they had dug out for their shelter, like swallows and
woodchucks. As its slope was towards the south, and its ridge and crowning
woods defended them from the northern blasts and snow-drifts, it was an
admirable situation for the fierce New England winter; and the temperature
was milder, by several degrees, along this hill-side than on the
unprotected plains, or by the river, or in any other part of Concord. So
that here, during the hundred years that had elapsed since the first
settlement of the place, dwellings had successively risen close to the
hill's foot, and the meadow that lay on the other side of the road--a
fertile tract--had been cultivated; and these three young people were the
children's children's children of persons of respectability who had dwelt
there,--Rose Garfield, in a small house, the site of which is still
indicated by the cavity of a cellar, in which I this very past summer
planted some sunflowers to thrust their great disks out from the hollow
and allure the bee and the humming-bird; Robert Hagburn, in a house of
somewhat more pretension, a hundred yards or so nearer to the village,
standing back from the road in the broader space which the retreating
hill, cloven by a gap in that place, afforded; where some elms intervened
between it and the road, offering a site which some person of a natural
taste for the gently picturesque had seized upon. Those same elms, or
their successors, still flung a noble shade over the same old house, which
the magic hand of Alcott has improved by the touch that throws grace,
amiableness, and natural beauty over scenes that have little pretension in
themselves.
Now, the other young man, Septimius Felton, dwelt in a small wooden house,
then, I suppose, of some score of years' standing,--a two-story house,
gabled before, but with only two rooms on a floor, crowded upon by the
hill behind,--a house of thick walls, as if the projector had that sturdy
feeling of permanence in life which incites people to make strong their
earthly habitations, as if deluding themselves with the idea that they
could still inhabit them; in short, an ordinary dwelling of a well-to-do
New England farmer, such as his race had been for two or three generations
past, although there were traditions of ancestors who had led lives of
thought and study, and possessed all the erudition that the universities
of England could bestow. Whether any natural turn for study had descended
to Septimius from these worthies, or how his tendencies came to be
different from those of his family,--who, within the memory of the
neighborhood, had been content to sow and reap the rich field in front of
their homestead,--so it was, that Septimius had early manifested a taste
for study. By the kind aid of the good minister of the town he had been
fitted for college; had passed through Cambridge by means of what little
money his father had left him and by his own exertions in school-keeping;
and was now a recently decorated baccalaureate, with, as was understood, a
purpose to devote himself to the ministry, under the auspices of that
reverend and good friend whose support and instruction had already stood
him in such stead.
Now here were these young people, on that beautiful spring morning, sitting
on the hill-side, a pleasant spectacle of fresh life,--pleasant, as if
they had sprouted like green things under the influence of the warm sun.
The girl was very pretty, a little freckled, a little tanned, but with a
face that glimmered and gleamed with quick and cheerful expressions; a
slender form, not very large, with a quick grace in its movements; sunny
hair that had a tendency to curl, which she probably favored at such
moments as her household occupation left her; a sociable and pleasant
child, as both of the young men evidently thought. Robert Hagburn, one
might suppose, would have been the most to her taste; a ruddy, burly young
fellow, handsome, and free of manner, six feet high, famous through the
neighborhood for strength and athletic skill, the early promise of what
was to be a man fit for all offices of active rural life, and to be, in
mature age, the selectman, the deacon, the representative, the colonel. As
for Septimius, let him alone a moment or two, and then they would see him,
with his head bent down, brooding, brooding, his eyes fixed on some chip,
some stone, some common plant, any commonest thing, as if it were the clew
and index to some mystery; and when, by chance startled out of these
meditations, he lifted his eyes, there would be a kind of perplexity, a
dissatisfied, foiled look in them, as if of his speculations he found no
end. Such was now the case, while Robert and the girl were running on with
a gay talk about a serious subject, so that, gay as it was, it was
interspersed with little thrills of fear on the girl's part, of excitement
on Robert's. Their talk was of public trouble.
"My grandfather says," said Rose Garfield, "that we shall never be able to
stand against old England, because the men are a weaker race than he
remembers in his day,--weaker than his father, who came from England,--and
the women slighter still; so that we are dwindling away, grandfather
thinks; only a little sprightlier, he says sometimes, looking at me."
"Lighter, to be sure," said Robert Hagburn; "there is the lightness of the
Englishwomen compressed into little space. I have seen them and know. And
as to the men, Rose, if they have lost one spark of courage and strength
that their English forefathers brought from the old land,--lost any one
good quality without having made it up by as good or better,--then, for my
part, I don't want the breed to exist any longer. And this war, that they
say is coming on, will be a good opportunity to test the matter.
Septimius! Don't you think so?"
"Think what?" asked Septimius, gravely, lifting up his head.
"Think! why, that your countrymen are worthy to live," said Robert Hagburn,
impatiently. "For there is a question on that point."
"It is hardly worth answering or considering," said Septimius, looking at
him thoughtfully. "We live so little while, that (always setting aside the
effect on a future existence) it is little matter whether we live or no."
"Little matter!" said Rose, at first bewildered, then laughing,--"little
matter! when it is such a comfort to live, so pleasant, so sweet!"
"Yes, and so many things to do," said Robert; "to make fields yield
produce; to be busy among men, and happy among the women-folk; to play,
work, fight, and be active in many ways."
"Yes; but so soon stilled, before your activity has come to any definite
end," responded Septimius, gloomily. "I doubt, if it had been left to my
choice, whether I should have taken existence on such terms; so much
trouble of preparation to live, and then no life at all; a ponderous
beginning, and nothing more."
"Do you find fault with Providence, Septimius?" asked Rose, a feeling of
solemnity coming over her cheerful and buoyant nature. Then she burst out
a-laughing. "How grave he looks, Robert; as if he had lived two or three
lives already, and knew all about the value of it. But I think it was
worth while to be born, if only for the sake of one such pleasant spring
morning as this; and God gives us many and better things when these are
past."
"We hope so," said Septimius, who was again looking on the ground. "But who
knows?"
"I thought you knew," said Robert Hagburn. "You have been to college, and
have learned, no doubt, a great many things. You are a student of
theology, too, and have looked into these matters. Who should know, if not
you?"
"Rose and you have just as good means of ascertaining these points as I,"
said Septimius; "all the certainty that can be had lies on the surface, as
it should, and equally accessible to every man or woman. If we try to
grope deeper, we labor for naught, and get less wise while we try to be
more so. If life were long enough to enable us thoroughly to sift these
matters, then, indeed!--but it is so short!"
"Always this same complaint," said Robert. "Septimius, how long do you wish
to live?"
"Forever!" said Septimius. "It is none too long for all I wish to know."
"Forever?" exclaimed Rose, shivering doubtfully. "Ah, there would come
many, many thoughts, and after a while we should want a little rest."
"Forever?" said Robert Hagburn. "And what would the people do who wish to
fill our places? You are unfair, Septimius. Live and let live! Turn about!
Give me my seventy years, and let me go,--my seventy years of what this
life has,--toil, enjoyment, suffering, struggle, fight, rest,--only let me
have my share of what's going, and I shall be content."
"Content with leaving everything at odd ends; content with being nothing,
as you were before!"
"No, Septimius, content with heaven at last," said Rose, who had come out
of her laughing mood into a sweet seriousness. "Oh dear! think what a worn
and ugly thing one of these fresh little blades of grass would seem if it
were not to fade and wither in its time, after being green in its time."
"Well, well, my pretty Rose," said Septimius apart, "an immortal weed is
not very lovely to think of, that is true; but I should be content with
one thing, and that is yourself, if you were immortal, just as you are at
seventeen, so fresh, so dewy, so red-lipped, so golden-haired, so gay, so
frolicsome, so gentle."
"But I am to grow old, and to be brown and wrinkled, gray-haired and ugly,"
said Rose, rather sadly, as she thus enumerated the items of her decay,
"and then you would think me all lost and gone. But still there might be
youth underneath, for one that really loved me to see. Ah, Septimius
Felton! such love as would see with ever-new eyes is the true love." And
she ran away and left him suddenly, and Robert Hagburn departing at the
same time, this little knot of three was dissolved, and Septimius went
along the wayside wall, thoughtfully, as was his wont, to his own
dwelling. He had stopped for some moments on the threshold, vaguely
enjoying, it is probable, the light and warmth of the new spring day and
the sweet air, which was somewhat unwonted to the young man, because he
was accustomed to spend much of his day in thought and study within doors,
and, indeed, like most studious young men, was overfond of the fireside,
and of making life as artificial as he could, by fireside heat and
lamplight, in order to suit it to the artificial, intellectual, and moral
atmosphere which he derived from books, instead of living healthfully in
the open air, and among his fellow-beings. Still he felt the pleasure of
being warmed through by this natural heat, and, though blinking a little
from its superfluity, could not but confess an enjoyment and cheerfulness
in this flood of morning light that came aslant the hill-side. While he
thus stood, he felt a friendly hand laid upon his shoulder, and, looking
up, there was the minister of the village, the old friend of Septimius, to
whose advice and aid it was owing that Septimius had followed his
instincts by going to college, instead of spending a thwarted and
dissatisfied life in the field that fronted the house. He was a man of
middle age, or little beyond, of a sagacious, kindly aspect; the
experience, the lifelong, intimate acquaintance with many concerns of his
people being more apparent in him than the scholarship for which he had
been early distinguished. A tanned man, like one who labored in his own
grounds occasionally; a man of homely, plain address, which, when occasion
called for it, he could readily exchange for the polished manner of one
who had seen a more refined world than this about him.
"Well, Septimius," said the minister, kindly, "have you yet come to any
conclusion about the subject of which we have been talking?"
"Only so far, sir," replied Septimius, "that I find myself every day less
inclined to take up the profession which I have had in view so many years.
I do not think myself fit for the sacred desk."
"Surely not; no one is," replied the clergyman; "but if I may trust my own
judgment, you have at least many of the intellectual qualifications that
should adapt you to it. There is something of the Puritan character in
you, Septimius, derived from holy men among your ancestors; as, for
instance, a deep, brooding turn, such as befits that heavy brow; a
disposition to meditate on things hidden; a turn for meditative
inquiry,--all these things, with grace to boot, mark you as the germ of a
man who might do God service. Your reputation as a scholar stands high at
college. You have not a turn for worldly business."
"Ah, but, sir," said Septimius, casting down his heavy brows, "I lack
something within."
"Faith, perhaps," replied the minister; "at least, you think so."
"Cannot I know it?" asked Septimius.
"Scarcely, just now," said his friend. "Study for the ministry; bind your
thoughts to it; pray; ask a belief, and you will soon find you have it.
Doubts may occasionally press in; and it is so with every clergyman. But
your prevailing mood will be faith."
"It has seemed to me," observed Septimius, "that it is not the prevailing
mood, the most common one, that is to be trusted. This is habit,
formality, the shallow covering which we close over what is real, and
seldom suffer to be blown aside. But it is the snake-like doubt that
thrusts out its head, which gives us a glimpse of reality. Surely such
moments are a hundred times as real as the dull, quiet moments of faith or
what you call such."
"I am sorry for you," said the minister; "yet to a youth of your frame of
character, of your ability I will say, and your requisition for something
profound in the grounds of your belief, it is not unusual to meet this
trouble. Men like you have to fight for their faith. They fight in the
first place to win it, and ever afterwards to hold it. The Devil tilts
with them daily and often seems to win."
"Yes; but," replied Septimius, "he takes deadly weapons now. If he meet me
with the cold pure steel of a spiritual argument, I might win or lose, and
still not feel that all was lost; but he takes, as it were, a great clod
of earth, massive rocks and mud, soil and dirt, and flings it at me
overwhelmingly; so that I am buried under it."
"How is that?" said the minister. "Tell me more plainly."
"May it not be possible," asked Septimius, "to have too profound a sense of
the marvellous contrivance and adaptation of this material world to
require or believe in anything spiritual? How wonderful it is to see it
all alive on this spring day, all growing, budding! Do we exhaust it in
our little life? Not so; not in a hundred or a thousand lives. The whole
race of man, living from the beginning of time, have not, in all their
number and multiplicity and in all their duration, come in the least to
know the world they live in! And how is this rich world thrown away upon
us, because we live in it such a moment! What mortal work has ever been
done since the world began! Because we have no time. No lesson is taught.
We are snatched away from our study before we have learned the alphabet.
As the world now exists, I confess it to you frankly, my dear pastor and
instructor, it seems to me all a failure, because we do not live long
enough."
"But the lesson is carried on in another state of being!"
"Not the lesson that we begin here," said Septimius. "We might as well
train a child in a primeval forest, to teach him how to live in a European
court. No, the fall of man, which Scripture tells us of, seems to me to
have its operation in this grievous shortening of earthly existence, so
that our life here at all is grown ridiculous."
"Well, Septimius," replied the minister, sadly, yet not as one shocked by
what he had never heard before, "I must leave you to struggle through this
form of unbelief as best you may, knowing that it is by your own efforts
that you must come to the other side of this slough. We will talk further
another time. You are getting worn out, my young friend, with much study
and anxiety. It were well for you to live more, for the present, in this
earthly life that you prize so highly. Cannot you interest yourself in the
state of this country, in this coming strife, the voice of which now
sounds so hoarsely and so near us? Come out of your thoughts and breathe
another air."
"I will try," said Septimius.
"Do," said the minister, extending his hand to him, "and in a little time
you will find the change."
He shook the young man's hand kindly, and took his leave, while Septimius
entered his house, and turning to the right sat down in his study, where,
before the fireplace, stood the table with books and papers. On the
shelves around the low-studded walls were more books, few in number but of
an erudite appearance, many of them having descended to him from learned
ancestors, and having been brought to light by himself after long lying in
dusty closets; works of good and learned divines, whose wisdom he had
happened, by help of the Devil, to turn to mischief, reading them by the
light of hell-fire. For, indeed, Septimius had but given the clergyman the
merest partial glimpse of his state of mind. He was not a new beginner in
doubt; but, on the contrary, it seemed to him as if he had never been
other than a doubter and questioner, even in his boyhood; believing
nothing, although a thin veil of reverence had kept him from questioning
some things. And now the new, strange thought of the sufficiency of the
world for man, if man were only sufficient for that, kept recurring to
him; and with it came a certain sense, which he had been conscious of
before, that he, at least, might never die. The feeling was not peculiar
to Septimius. It is an instinct, the meaning of which is mistaken. We have
strongly within us the sense of an undying principle, and we transfer that
true sense to this life and to the body, instead of interpreting it justly
as the promise of spiritual immortality.
So Septimius looked up out of his thoughts, and said proudly: "Why should I
die? I cannot die, if worthy to live. What if I should say this moment
that I will not die, not till ages hence, not till the world is exhausted?
Let other men die, if they choose, or yield; let him that is strong enough
live!"
After this flush of heroic mood, however, the glow subsided, and poor
Septimius spent the rest of the day, as was his wont, poring over his
books, in which all the meanings seemed dead and mouldy, and like pressed
leaves (some of which dropped out of the books as he opened them), brown,
brittle, sapless; so even the thoughts, which when the writers had
gathered them seemed to them so brightly colored and full of life. Then he
began to see that there must have been some principle of life left out of
the book, so that these gathered thoughts lacked something that had given
them their only value. Then he suspected that the way truly to live and
answer the purposes of life was not to gather up thoughts into books,
where they grew so dry, but to live and still be going about, full of
green wisdom, ripening ever, not in maxims cut and dry, but a wisdom ready
for daily occasions, like a living fountain; and that to be this, it was
necessary to exist long on earth, drink in all its lessons, and not to die
on the attainment of some smattering of truth; but to live all the more
for that; and apply it to mankind and increase it thereby.
Everything drifted towards the strong, strange eddy into which his mind had
been drawn: all his thoughts set hitherward.
So he sat brooding in his study until the shrill-voiced old woman--an aunt,
who was his housekeeper and domestic ruler--called him to dinner,--a
frugal dinner,--and chided him for seeming inattentive to a dish of early
dandelions which she had gathered for him; but yet tempered her severity
with respect for the future clerical rank of her nephew, and for his
already being a bachelor of arts. The old woman's voice spoke outside of
Septimius, rambling away, and he paying little heed, till at last dinner
was over, and Septimius drew back his chair, about to leave the table.
"Nephew Septimius," said the old woman, "you began this meal to-day without
asking a blessing, you get up from it without giving thanks, and you soon
to be a minister of the Word."
"God bless the meat," replied Septimius (by way of blessing), "and make it
strengthen us for the life he means us to bear. Thank God for our food,"
he added (by way of grace), "and may it become a portion in us of an
immortal body."
"That sounds good, Septimius," said the old lady. "Ah! you'll be a mighty
man in the pulpit, and worthy to keep up the name of your
great-grandfather, who, they say, made the leaves wither on a tree with
the fierceness of his blast against a sin. Some say, to be sure, it was an
early frost that helped him."
"I never heard that before, Aunt Keziah," said Septimius.
"I warrant you no," replied his aunt. "A man dies, and his greatness
perishes as if it had never been, and people remember nothing of him only
when they see his gravestone over his old dry bones, and say he was a good
man in his day."
"What truth there is in Aunt Keziah's words!" exclaimed Septimius. "And how
I hate the thought and anticipation of that contemptuous appreciation of a
man after his death! Every living man triumphs over every dead one, as he
lies, poor and helpless, under the mould, a pinch of dust, a heap of
bones, an evil odor! I hate the thought! It shall not be so!"
It was strange how every little incident thus brought him back to that one
subject which was taking so strong hold of his mind; every avenue led
thitherward; and he took it for an indication that nature had intended, by
innumerable ways, to point out to us the great truth that death was an
alien misfortune, a prodigy, a monstrosity, into which man had only fallen
by defect; and that even now, if a man had a reasonable portion of his
original strength in him, he might live forever and spurn death.
Our story is an internal one, dealing as little as possible with outward
events, and taking hold of these only where it cannot be helped, in order
by means of them to delineate the history of a mind bewildered in certain
errors. We would not willingly, if we could, give a lively and picturesque
surrounding to this delineation, but it is necessary that we should advert
to the circumstances of the time in which this inward history was passing.
We will say, therefore, that that night there was a cry of alarm passing
all through the succession of country towns and rural communities that lay
around Boston, and dying away towards the coast and the wilder forest
borders. Horsemen galloped past the line of farm-houses shouting alarm!
alarm! There were stories of marching troops coming like dreams through
the midnight. Around the little rude meeting-houses there was here and
there the beat of a drum, and the assemblage of farmers with their
weapons. So all that night there was marching, there was mustering, there
was trouble; and, on the road from Boston, a steady march of soldiers'
feet onward, onward into the land whose last warlike disturbance had been
when the red Indians trod it.
Septimius heard it, and knew, like the rest, that it was the sound of
coming war. "Fools that men are!" said he, as he rose from bed and looked
out at the misty stars; "they do not live long enough to know the value
and purport of life, else they would combine together to live long,
instead of throwing away the lives of thousands as they do. And what
matters a little tyranny in so short a life? What matters a form of
government for such ephemeral creatures?"
As morning brightened, these sounds, this clamor,--or something that was in
the air and caused the clamor,--grew so loud that Septimius seemed to feel
it even in his solitude. It was in the atmosphere,--storm, wild
excitement, a coming deed. Men hurried along the usually lonely road in
groups, with weapons in their hands,--the old fowling-piece of seven-foot
barrel, with which the Puritans had shot ducks on the river and Walden
Pond; the heavy harquebus, which perhaps had levelled one of King Philip's
Indians; the old King gun, that blazed away at the French of Louisburg or
Quebec,--hunter, husbandman, all were hurrying each other. It was a good
time, everybody felt, to be alive, a nearer kindred, a closer sympathy
between man and man; a sense of the goodness of the world, of the
sacredness of country, of the excellence of life; and yet its slight
account compared with any truth, any principle; the weighing of the
material and ethereal, and the finding the former not worth considering,
when, nevertheless, it had so much to do with the settlement of the
crisis. The ennobling of brute force; the feeling that it had its godlike
side; the drawing of heroic breath amid the scenes of ordinary life, so
that it seemed as if they had all been transfigured since yesterday. Oh,
high, heroic, tremulous juncture, when man felt himself almost an angel;
on the verge of doing deeds that outwardly look so fiendish! Oh, strange
rapture of the coming battle! We know something of that time now; we that
have seen the muster of the village soldiery on the meeting-house green,
and at railway stations; and heard the drum and fife, and seen the
farewells; seen the familiar faces that we hardly knew, now that we felt
them to be heroes; breathed higher breath for their sakes; felt our eyes
moistened; thanked them in our souls for teaching us that nature is yet
capable of heroic moments; felt how a great impulse lifts up a people, and
every cold, passionless, indifferent spectator,--lifts him up into
religion, and makes him join in what becomes an act of devotion, a prayer,
when perhaps he but half approves.
Septimius could not study on a morning like this. He tried to say to
himself that he had nothing to do with this excitement; that his studious
life kept him away from it; that his intended profession was that of
peace; but say what he might to himself, there was a tremor, a bubbling
impulse, a tingling in his ears,--the page that he opened glimmered and
dazzled before him.
"Septimius! Septimius!" cried Aunt Keziah, looking into the room, "in
Heaven's name, are you going to sit here to-day, and the redcoats coming
to burn the house over our heads? Must I sweep you out with the
broomstick? For shame, boy! for shame!"
"Are they coming, then, Aunt Keziah?" asked her nephew. "Well, I am not a
fighting-man."
"Certain they are. They have sacked Lexington, and slain the people, and
burnt the meeting-house. That concerns even the parsons; and you reckon
yourself among them. Go out, go out, I say, and learn the news!"
Whether moved by these exhortations, or by his own stifled curiosity,
Septimius did at length issue from his door, though with that reluctance
which hampers and impedes men whose current of thought and interest runs
apart from that of the world in general; but forth he came, feeling
strangely, and yet with a strong impulse to fling himself headlong into
the emotion of the moment. It was a beautiful morning, spring-like and
summer-like at once. If there had been nothing else to do or think of,
such a morning was enough for life only to breathe its air and be
conscious of its inspiring influence.
Septimius turned along the road towards the village, meaning to mingle with
the crowd on the green, and there learn all he could of the rumors that
vaguely filled the air, and doubtless were shaping themselves into various
forms of fiction.
As he passed the small dwelling of Rose Garfield, she stood on the
doorstep, and bounded forth a little way to meet him, looking frightened,
excited, and yet half pleased, but strangely pretty; prettier than ever
before, owing to some hasty adornment or other, that she would never have
succeeded so well in giving to herself if she had had more time to do it
in.
"Septimius--Mr. Felton," cried she, asking information of him who, of all
men in the neighborhood, knew nothing of the intelligence afloat; but it
showed a certain importance that Septimius had with her. "Do you really
think the redcoats are coming? Ah, what shall we do? What shall we do? But
you are not going to the village, too, and leave us all alone?"
"I know not whether they are coming or no, Rose," said Septimius, stopping
to admire the young girl's fresh beauty, which made a double stroke upon
him by her excitement, and, moreover, made her twice as free with him as
ever she had been before; for there is nothing truer than that any
breaking up of the ordinary state of things is apt to shake women out of
their proprieties, break down barriers, and bring them into perilous
proximity with the world. "Are you alone here? Had you not better take
shelter in the village?"
"And leave my poor, bedridden grandmother!" cried Rose, angrily. "You know
I can't, Septimius. But I suppose I am in no danger. Go to the village, if
you like."
"Where is Robert Hagburn?" asked Septimius.
"Gone to the village this hour past, with his grandfather's old firelock on
his shoulder," said Rose; "he was running bullets before daylight."
"Rose, I will stay with you," said Septimius.
"Oh gracious, here they come, I'm sure!" cried Rose. "Look yonder at the
dust. Mercy! a man at a gallop!"
In fact, along the road, a considerable stretch of which was visible, they
heard the clatter of hoofs and saw a little cloud of dust approaching at
the rate of a gallop, and disclosing, as it drew near, a hatless
countryman in his shirt-sleeves, who, bending over his horse's neck,
applied a cart-whip lustily to the animal's flanks, so as to incite him to
most unwonted speed. At the same time, glaring upon Rose and Septimius, he
lifted up his voice and shouted in a strange, high tone, that communicated
the tremor and excitement of the shouter to each auditor: "Alarum! alarum!
alarum! The redcoats! The redcoats! To arms! alarum!"
And trailing this sound far wavering behind him like a pennon, the eager
horseman dashed onward to the village.
"Oh dear, what shall we do?" cried Rose, her eyes full of tears, yet
dancing with excitement. "They are coming! they are coming! I hear the
drum and fife."
"I really believe they are," said Septimius, his cheek flushing and growing
pale, not with fear, but the inevitable tremor, half painful, half
pleasurable, of the moment. "Hark! there was the shrill note of a fife.
Yes, they are coming!"
He tried to persuade Rose to hide herself in the house; but that young
person would not be persuaded to do so, clinging to Septimius in a way
that flattered while it perplexed him. Besides, with all the girl's
fright, she had still a good deal of courage, and much curiosity too, to
see what these redcoats were of whom she heard such terrible stories.
"Well, well, Rose," said Septimius; "I doubt not we may stay here without
danger,--you, a woman, and I, whose profession is to be that of peace and
good-will to all men. They cannot, whatever is said of them, be on an
errand of massacre. We will stand here quietly; and, seeing that we do not
fear them, they will understand that we mean them no harm."
They stood, accordingly, a little in front of the door by the well-curb,
and soon they saw a heavy cloud of dust, from amidst which shone bayonets;
and anon, a military band, which had hitherto been silent, struck up, with
drum and fife, to which the tramp of a thousand feet fell in regular
order; then came the column, moving massively, and the redcoats who seemed
somewhat wearied by a long night-march, dusty, with bedraggled gaiters,
covered with sweat which had rundown from their powdered locks.
Nevertheless, these ruddy, lusty Englishmen marched stoutly, as men that
needed only a half-hour's rest, a good breakfast, and a pot of beer
apiece, to make them ready to face the world. Nor did their faces look
anywise rancorous; but at most, only heavy, cloddish, good-natured, and
humane.
"O heavens, Mr. Felton!" whispered Rose, "why should we shoot these men, or
they us? they look kind, if homely. Each of them has a mother and sisters,
I suppose, just like our men."
"It is the strangest thing in the world that we can think of killing them,"
said Septimius. "Human life is so precious."
Just as they were passing the cottage, a halt was called by the commanding
officer, in order that some little rest might get the troops into a better
condition and give them breath before entering the village, where it was
important to make as imposing a show as possible. During this brief stop,
some of the soldiers approached the well-curb, near which Rose and
Septimius were standing, and let down the bucket to satisfy their thirst.
A young officer, a petulant boy, extremely handsome, and of gay and
buoyant deportment, also came up.
"Get me a cup, pretty one," said he, patting Rose's cheek with great
freedom, though it was somewhat and indefinitely short of rudeness; "a
mug, or something to drink out of, and you shall have a kiss for your
pains."
"Stand off, sir!" said Septimius, fiercely; "it is a coward's part to
insult a woman."
"I intend no insult in this," replied the handsome young officer, suddenly
snatching a kiss from Rose, before she could draw back. "And if you think
it so, my good friend, you had better take your weapon and get as much
satisfaction as you can, shooting at me from behind a hedge."
Before Septimius could reply or act,--and, in truth, the easy presumption
of the young Englishman made it difficult for him, an inexperienced
recluse as he was, to know what to do or say,--the drum beat a little tap,
recalling the soldiers to their rank and to order. The young officer
hastened back, with a laughing glance at Rose, and a light, contemptuous
look of defiance at Septimius, the drums rattling out in full beat, and
the troops marched on.
"What impertinence!" said Rose, whose indignant color made her look pretty
enough almost to excuse the offence.
It is not easy to see how Septimius could have shielded her from the
insult; and yet he felt inconceivably outraged and humiliated at the
thought that this offence had occurred while Rose was under his
protection, and he responsible for her. Besides, somehow or other, he was
angry with her for having undergone the wrong, though certainly most
unreasonably; for the whole thing was quicker done than said.
"You had better go into the house now, Rose," said he, "and see to your
bedridden grandmother."
"And what will you do, Septimius?" asked she.
"Perhaps I will house myself, also," he replied. "Perhaps take yonder proud
redcoat's counsel, and shoot him behind a hedge."
"But not kill him outright; I suppose he has a mother and a sweetheart, the
handsome young officer," murmured Rose pityingly to herself.
Septimius went into his house, and sat in his study for some hours, in that
unpleasant state of feeling which a man of brooding thought is apt to
experience when the world around him is in a state of intense action,
which he finds it impossible to sympathize with. There seemed to be a
stream rushing past him, by which, even if he plunged into the midst of
it, he could not be wet. He felt himself strangely ajar with the human
race, and would have given much either to be in full accord with it, or to
be separated from it forever.
"I am dissevered from it. It is my doom to be only a spectator of life; to
look on as one apart from it. Is it not well, therefore, that, sharing
none of its pleasures and happiness, I should be free of its fatalities
its brevity? How cold I am now, while this whirlpool of public feeling is
eddying around me! It is as if I had not been born of woman!"