________________________________________________
_ "Be secret!" and he kept his stern eye fixed upon him, as the coach began
to move.
"Be secret!" repeated the apothecary. "I know not any secret that he has
confided to me thus far, and as for his nonsense (as I will be bold to
style it now he is gone) about a medicine of long life, it is a thing I
forget in spite of myself, so very empty and trashy it is. I wonder, by
the by, that it never came into my head to give the Colonel a dose of the
cordial whereof I partook last night. I have no faith that it is a
valuable medicine--little or none--and yet there has been an unwonted
briskness in me all the morning."
Then a simple joy broke over his face--a flickering sunbeam among his
wrinkles--as he heard the laughter of the little girl, who was running
rampant with a kitten in the kitchen.
"Pansie! Pansie!" cackled he, "grandpapa has sent away the ugly man now.
Come, let us have a frolic in the garden."
And he whispered to himself again, "That is a cordial yonder, and I will
take it according to the prescription, knowing all the ingredients." Then,
after a moment's thought, he added, "All, save one."
So, as he had declared to himself his intention, that night, when little
Pansie had long been asleep, and his small household was in bed, and most
of the quiet, old-fashioned townsfolk likewise, this good apothecary went
into his laboratory, and took out of a cupboard in the wall a certain
ancient-looking bottle, which was cased over with a net-work of what
seemed to be woven silver, like the wicker-woven bottles of our days. He
had previously provided a goblet of pure water. Before opening the bottle,
however, he seemed to hesitate, and pondered and babbled to himself;
having long since come to that period of life when the bodily frame,
having lost much of its value, is more tenderly cared for than when it was
a perfect and inestimable machine.
"I triturated, I infused, I distilled it myself in these very rooms, and
know it--know it all--all the ingredients, save one. They are common
things enough--comfortable things--some of them a little queer--one or two
that folks have a prejudice against--and then there is that one thing
that I don't know. It is foolish in me to be dallying with such a mess,
which I thought was a piece of quackery, while that strange visitor bade
me do it,--and yet, what a strength has come from it! He said it was a
rare cordial, and, methinks, it has brightened up my weary life all day,
so that Pansie has found me the fitter playmate. And then the dose--it is
so absurdly small! I will try it again."
He took the silver stopple from the bottle, and with a practised hand,
tremulous as it was with age, so that one would have thought it must have
shaken the liquor into a perfect shower of misapplied drops, he dropped--I
have heard it said--only one single drop into the goblet of water. It fell
into it with a dazzling brightness, like a spark of ruby flame, and subtly
diffusing itself through the whole body of water, turned it to a rosy hue
of great brilliancy. He held it up between his eyes and the light, and
seemed to admire and wonder at it.
"It is very odd," said he, "that such a pure, bright liquor should have
come out of a parcel of weeds that mingled their juices here. The thing is
a folly,--it is one of those compositions in which the chemists--the
cabalists, perhaps--used to combine what they thought the virtues of many
plants, thinking that something would result in the whole, which was not
in either of them, and a new efficacy be created. Whereas, it has been the
teaching of my experience that one virtue counteracts another, and is the
enemy of it. I never believed the former theory, even when that strange
madman bade me do it. And what a thick, turbid matter it was, until that
last ingredient,--that powder which he put in with his own hand! Had he
let me see it, I would first have analyzed it, and discovered its
component parts. The man was mad, undoubtedly, and this may have been
poison. But its effect is good. Poh! I will taste again, because of this
weak, agued, miserable state of mine; though it is a shame in me, a man of
decent skill in my way, to believe in a quack's nostrum. But it is a
comfortable kind of thing."
Meantime, that single drop (for good Dr. Dolliver had immediately put a
stopper into the bottle) diffused a sweet odor through the chamber, so
that the ordinary fragrances and scents of apothecaries' stuff seemed to
be controlled and influenced by it, and its bright potency also dispelled
a certain dimness of the antiquated room.
The Doctor, at the pressure of a great need, had given incredible pains to
the manufacture of this medicine; so that, reckoning the pains rather than
the ingredients (all except one, of which he was not able to estimate the
cost nor value), it was really worth its weight in gold. And, as it
happened, he had bestowed upon it the hard labor of his poor life, and the
time that was necessary for the support of his family, without return; for
the customers, after playing off this cruel joke upon the old man, had
never come back; and now, for seven years, the bottle had stood in a
corner of the cupboard. To be sure, the silver-cased bottle was worth a
trifle for its silver, and still more, perhaps, as an antiquarian knick-
knack. But, all things considered, the honest and simple apothecary
thought that he might make free with the liquid to such small extent as
was necessary for himself. And there had been something in the concoction
that had struck him; and he had been fast breaking lately; and so, in the
dreary fantasy and lonely recklessness of his old age, he had suddenly
bethought himself of this medicine (cordial,--as the strange man called
it, which had come to him by long inheritance in his family) and he had
determined to try it. And again, as the night before, he took out the
receipt--a roll of antique parchment, out of which, provokingly, one fold
had been lost--and put on his spectacles to puzzle out the passage.
Guttam unicam in aquam puram, two gills. "If the Colonel should hear of
this," said Dr. Dolliver, "he might fancy it his nostrum of long life, and
insist on having the bottle for his own use. The foolish, fierce old
gentleman! He has grown very earthly, of late, else he would not desire
such a thing. And a strong desire it must be to make him feel it
desirable. For my part, I only wish for something that, for a short time,
may clear my eyes, so that I may see little Pansie's beauty, and quicken
my ears, that I may hear her sweet voice, and give me nerve, while God
keeps me here, that I may live longer to earn bread for dear Pansie. She
provided for, I would gladly lie down yonder with Bessie and our children.
Ah! the vanity of desiring lengthened days!--There!--I have drunk it,
and methinks its final, subtle flavor hath strange potency in it."
The old man shivered a little, as those shiver who have just swallowed
good liquor, while it is permeating their vitals. Yet he seemed to be in a
pleasant state of feeling, and, as was frequently the case with this
simple soul, in a devout frame of mind. He read a chapter in the Bible,
and said his prayers for Pansie and himself, before he went to bed, and
had much better sleep than usually comes to people of his advanced age;
for, at that period, sleep is diffused through their wakefulness, and a
dim and tiresome half-perception through their sleep, so that the only
result is weariness.
Nothing very extraordinary happened to Dr. Dolliver or his small 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?
THE END.
The Dolliver Romance, by Nathaniel Hawthorne. _
Read previous: ANOTHER SCENE FROM THE DOLLIVER ROMANCE
Table of content of Dolliver Romance
GO TO TOP OF SCREEN
Post your review
Your review will be placed after the table of content of this book
