The Dolliver Romance / Nathaniel Hawthorne

A SCENE FROM THE DOLLIVER ROMANCE.

Dr. Dolliver, a worthy personage of extreme antiquity, was aroused rather

prematurely, one summer morning, by the shouts of the child Pansie, in an

adjoining chamber, summoning old Martha (who performed the duties of

nurse, housekeeper, and kitchen-maid, in the Doctor's establishment) to

take up her little ladyship and dress her. The old gentleman woke with

more than his customary alacrity, and, after taking a moment to gather his

wits about him, pulled aside the faded moreen curtains of his ancient bed,

and thrust his head into a beam of sunshine that caused him to wink and

withdraw it again. This transitory glimpse of good Dr. Dolliver showed a

flannel night-cap, fringed round with stray locks of silvery white hair,

and surmounting a meagre and duskily yellow visage, which was crossed and

criss-crossed with a record of his long life in wrinkles, faithfully

written, no doubt, but with such cramped chirography of Father Time that

the purport was illegible. It seemed hardly worth while for the patriarch

to get out of bed any more, and bring his forlorn shadow into the summer

day that was made for younger folks. The Doctor, however, was by no means

of that opinion, being considerably encouraged towards the toil of living

twenty-four hours longer by the comparative ease with which he found

himself going through the usually painful process of bestirring his rusty

joints (stiffened by the very rest and sleep that should have made them

pliable) and putting them in a condition to bear his weight upon the

floor. Nor was he absolutely disheartened by the idea of those tonsorial,

ablutionary, and personally decorative labors which are apt to become so

intolerably irksome to an old gentleman, after performing them daily and

daily for fifty, sixty, or seventy years, and finding them still as

immitigably recurrent as at first. Dr. Dolliver could nowise account for

this happy condition of his spirits and physical energies, until he

remembered taking an experimental sip of a certain cordial which was long

ago prepared by his grandson, and carefully sealed up in a bottle, and had

been reposited in a dark closet, among a parcel of effete medicines, ever

since that gifted young man's death.

"It may have wrought effect upon me," thought the doctor, shaking his head

as he lifted it again from the pillow. "It may be so; for poor Edward

oftentimes instilled a strange efficacy into his perilous drugs. But I

will rather believe it to be the operation of God's mercy, which may have

temporarily invigorated my feeble age for little Pansie's sake."

A twinge of his familiar rheumatism, as he put his foot out of bed, taught

him that he must not reckon too confidently upon even a day's respite from

the intrusive family of aches and infirmities, which, with their

proverbial fidelity to attachments once formed, had long been the closest

acquaintances that the poor old gentleman had in the world. Nevertheless,

he fancied the twinge a little less poignant than those of yesterday; and,

moreover, after stinging him pretty smartly, it passed gradually off with

a thrill, which, in its latter stages, grew to be almost agreeable. Pain

is but pleasure too strongly emphasized. With cautious movements, and only

a groan or two, the good Doctor transferred himself from the bed to the

floor, where he stood awhile, gazing from one piece of quaint furniture to

another (such as stiff-backed Mayflower chairs, an oaken chest-of-drawers

carved cunningly with shapes of animals and wreaths of foliage, a table

with multitudinous legs, a family record in faded embroidery, a shelf of

black-bound books, a dirty heap of gallipots and phials in a dim

corner),--gazing at these things, and steadying himself by the bedpost,

while his inert brain, still partially benumbed with sleep, came slowly

into accordance with the realities about him. The object which most helped

to bring Dr. Dolliver completely to his waking perceptions was one that

common observers might suppose to have been snatched bodily out of his

dreams. The same sunbeam that had dazzled the doctor between the bed-

curtains gleamed on the weather-beaten gilding which had once adorned this

mysterious symbol, and showed it to be an enormous serpent, twining round

a wooden post, and reaching quite from the floor of the chamber to its

ceiling.

It was evidently a thing that could boast of considerable antiquity, the

dry-rot having eaten out its eyes and gnawed away the tip of its tail; and

it must have stood long exposed to the atmosphere, for a kind of gray moss

had partially overspread its tarnished gilt surface, and a swallow, or

other familiar little bird in some by-gone summer, seemed to have built

its nest in the yawning and exaggerated mouth. It looked like a kind of

Manichean idol, which might have been elevated on a pedestal for a century

or so, enjoying the worship of its votaries in the open air, until the

impious sect perished from among men,--all save old Dr. Dolliver, who had

set up the monster in his bedchamber for the convenience of private

devotion. But we are unpardonable in suggesting such a fantasy to the

prejudice of our venerable friend, knowing him to have been as pious and

upright a Christian, and with as little of the serpent in his character,

as ever came of Puritan lineage. Not to make a further mystery about a

very simple matter, this bedimmed and rotten reptile was once the medical

emblem or apothecary's sign of the famous Dr. Swinnerton, who practised

physic in the earlier days of New England, when a head of Aesculapius or

Hippocrates would have vexed the souls of the righteous as savoring of

heathendom. The ancient dispenser of drugs had therefore set up an image

of the Brazen Serpent, and followed his business for many years with great

credit, under this Scriptural device; and Dr. Dolliver, being the

apprentice, pupil, and humble friend of the learned Swinnerton's old age,

had inherited the symbolic snake, and much other valuable property by his

bequest.

While the patriarch was putting on his small-clothes, he took care to

stand in the parallelogram of bright sunshine that fell upon the

uncarpeted floor. The summer warmth was very genial to his system, and yet

made him shiver; his wintry veins rejoiced at it, though the reviving

blood tingled through them with a half-painful and only half-pleasurable

titillation. For the first few moments after creeping out of bed, he kept

his back to the sunny window, and seemed mysteriously shy of glancing

thitherward; but, as the June fervor pervaded him more and more

thoroughly, he turned bravely about, and looked forth at a burial-ground

on the corner of which he dwelt. There lay many an old acquaintance, who

had gone to sleep with the flavor of Dr. Dolliver's tinctures and powders

upon his tongue; it was the patient's final bitter taste of this world,

and perhaps doomed to be a recollected nauseousness in the next.

Yesterday, in the chill of his forlorn old age, the Doctor expected soon

to stretch out his weary bones among that quiet community, and might

scarcely have shrunk from the prospect on his own account, except, indeed,

that he dreamily mixed up the infirmities of his present condition with

the repose of the approaching one, being haunted by a notion that the damp

earth, under the grass and dandelions, must needs be pernicious for his

cough and his rheumatism. But, this morning, the cheerful sunbeams, or the

mere taste of his grandson's cordial that he had taken at bedtime, or the

fitful vigor that often sports irreverently with aged people, had caused

an unfrozen drop of youthfulness, somewhere within him, to expand.

"Hem! ahem!" quoth the Doctor, hoping with one effort to clear his throat

of the dregs of a ten-years' cough. "Matters are not so far gone with me

as I thought. I have known mighty sensible men, when only a little age-

stricken or otherwise out of sorts, to die of mere faint-heartedness, a

great deal sooner than they need."

He shook his silvery head at his own image in the looking-glass, as if to

impress the apothegm on that shadowy representative of himself; and, for

his part, he determined to pluck up a spirit and live as long as he

possibly could, if it were only for the sake of little Pansie, who stood

as close to one extremity of human life as her great-grandfather to the

other. This child of three years old occupied all the unfossilized portion

of Dr. Dolliver's heart. Every other interest that he formerly had, and

the entire confraternity of persons whom he once loved, had long ago

departed; and the poor Doctor could not follow them, because the grasp of

Pansie's baby-fingers held him back.

So he crammed a great silver watch into his fob, and drew on a patchwork

morning-gown of an ancient fashion. Its original material was said to have

been the embroidered front of his own wedding-waistcoat and the silken

skirt of his wife's bridal attire, which his eldest granddaughter had

taken from the carved chest-of-drawers, after poor Bessie, the beloved of

his youth, had been half a century in the grave. Throughout many of the

intervening years, as the garment got ragged, the spinsters of the old

man's family had quilted their duty and affection into it in the shape of

patches upon patches, rose-color, crimson, blue, violet, and green, and

then (as their hopes faded, and their life kept growing shadier, and their

attire took a sombre hue) sober gray and great fragments of funereal

black, until the Doctor could revive the memory of most things that had

befallen him by looking at his patchwork-gown, as it hung upon a chair.

And now it was ragged again, and all the fingers that should have mended

it were cold. It had an Eastern fragrance, too, a smell of drugs, strong-

scented herbs, and spicy gums, gathered from the many potent infusions

that had from time to time been spilt over it; so that, snuffing him afar

off, you might have taken Dr. Dolliver for a mummy, and could hardly have

been undeceived by his shrunken and torpid aspect, as he crept nearer.

Wrapt in his odorous and many-colored robe, he took staff in hand, and

moved pretty vigorously to the head of the staircase. As it was somewhat

steep, and but dimly lighted, he began cautiously to descend, putting his

left hand on the banister, and poking down his long stick to assist him in

making sure of the successive steps; and thus he became a living

illustration of the accuracy of Scripture, where it describes the aged as

being "afraid of that which is high,"--a truth that is often found to have

a sadder purport than its external one. Half-way to the bottom, however,

the Doctor heard the impatient and authoritative tones of little Pansie,--

Queen Pansie, as she might fairly have been styled, in reference to her

position in the household,--calling amain for grandpapa and breakfast. He

was startled into such perilous activity by the summons, that his heels

slid on the stairs, the slippers were shuffled off his feet, and he saved

himself from a tumble only by quickening his pace, and coming down at

almost a run.

"Mercy on my poor old bones!" mentally exclaimed the Doctor, fancying

himself fractured in fifty places. "Some of them are broken, surely, and,

methinks, my heart has leaped out of my mouth! What! all right? Well,

well! but Providence is kinder to me than I deserve, prancing down this

steep staircase like a kid of three months old!"

He bent stiffly to gather up his slippers and fallen staff; and meanwhile

Pansie had heard the tumult of her great-grandfather's descent, and was

pounding against the door of the breakfast-room in her haste to come at

him. The Doctor opened it, and there she stood, a rather pale and large-

eyed little thing, quaint in her aspect, as might well be the case with a

motherless child, dwelling in an uncheerful house, with no other playmates

than a decrepit old man and a kitten, and no better atmosphere within-

doors than the odor of decayed apothecary's stuff, nor gayer neighborhood

than that of the adjacent burial-ground, where all her relatives, from her

great-grandmother downward, lay calling to her, "Pansie, Pansie, it is

bedtime!" even in the prime of the summer morning. For those dead women-

folk, especially her mother and the whole row of maiden aunts and grand-

aunts, could not but be anxious about the child, knowing that little

Pansie would be far safer under a tuft of dandelions than if left alone,

as she soon must be, in this difficult and deceitful world.

Yet, in spite of the lack of damask roses in her cheeks, she seemed a

healthy child, and certainly showed great capacity of energetic movement

in the impulsive capers with which she welcomed her venerable progenitor.

She shouted out her satisfaction, moreover (as her custom was, having

never had any oversensitive auditors about her to tame down her voice),

till even the Doctor's dull ears were full of the clamor.

"Pansie, darling," said Dr. Dolliver, cheerily, patting her brown hair

with his tremulous fingers, "thou hast put some of thine own friskiness

into poor old grandfather, this fine morning! Dost know, child, that he

came near breaking his neck down-stairs at the sound of thy voice? What

wouldst thou have done then, little Pansie?"

"Kiss poor grandpapa and make him well!" answered the child, remembering

the Doctor's own mode of cure in similar mishaps to herself. "It shall do

poor grandpapa good!" she added, putting up her mouth to apply the remedy.

"Ah, little one, thou hast greater faith in thy medicines than ever I had

in my drugs," replied the patriarch, with a giggle, surprised and

delighted at his own readiness of response. "But the kiss is good for my

feeble old heart, Pansie, though it might do little to mend a broken neck;

so give grandpapa another dose, and let us to breakfast."

In this merry humor they sat down to the table, great-grandpapa and Pansie

side by side, and the kitten, as soon appeared, making a third in the

party. First, she showed her mottled head out of Pansie's lap, delicately

sipping milk from the child's basin without rebuke: then she took post on

the old gentleman's shoulder, purring like a spinning-wheel, trying her

claws in the wadding of his dressing-gown, and still more impressively

reminding him of her presence by putting out a paw to intercept a warmed-

over morsel of yesterday's chicken on its way to the Doctor's mouth. After

skilfully achieving this feat, she scrambled down upon the breakfast-table

and began to wash her face and hands. Evidently, these companions were all

three on intimate terms, as was natural enough, since a great many

childish impulses were softly creeping back on the simple-minded old man;

insomuch that, if no worldly necessities nor painful infirmity had

disturbed him, his remnant of life might have been as cheaply and cheerily

enjoyed as the early playtime of the kitten and the child. Old Dr.

Dolliver and his great-granddaughter (a ponderous title, which seemed

quite to overwhelm the tiny figure of Pansie) had met one another at the

two extremities of the life-circle: her sunrise served him for a sunset,

illuminating his locks of silver and hers of golden brown with a

homogeneous shimmer of twinkling light.

Little Pansie was the one earthly creature that inherited a drop of the

Dolliver blood. The Doctor's only child, poor Bessie's offspring, had died

the better part of a hundred years before, and his grandchildren, a

numerous and dimly remembered brood, had vanished along his weary track in

their youth, maturity, or incipient age, till, hardly knowing, how it had

all happened, he found himself tottering onward with an infant's small

fingers in his nerveless grasp. So mistily did his dead progeny come and

go in the patriarch's decayed recollection, that this solitary child

represented for him the successive babyhoods of the many that had gone

before. The emotions of his early paternity came back to him. She seemed

the baby of a past age oftener than she seemed Pansie. A whole family of

grand-aunts (one of whom had perished in her cradle, never so mature as

Pansie now, another in her virgin bloom, another in autumnal maidenhood,

yellow and shrivelled, with vinegar in her blood, and still another, a

forlorn widow, whose grief outlasted even its vitality, and grew to be

merely a torpid habit, and was saddest then),--all their hitherto

forgotten features peeped through the face of the great-grandchild, and

their long-inaudible voices sobbed, shouted, or laughed, in her familiar

tones. But it often happened to Dr. Dolliver, while frolicking amid this

throng of ghosts, where the one reality looked no more vivid than its

shadowy sisters,--it often happened that his eyes filled with tears at a

sudden perception of what a sad and poverty-stricken old man he was,

already remote from his own generation, and bound to stray further onward

as the sole playmate and protector of a child!

As Dr. Dolliver, in spite of his advanced epoch of life, is likely to

remain a considerable time longer upon our hands, we deem it expedient to

give a brief sketch of his position, in order that the story may get

onward with the greater freedom when he rises from the breakfast-table.

Deeming it a matter of courtesy, we have allowed him the honorary title of

Doctor, as did all his towns-people and contemporaries, except, perhaps,

one or two formal old physicians, stingy of civil phrases and over-jealous

of their own professional dignity. Nevertheless, these crusty graduates

were technically right in excluding Dr. Dolliver from their fraternity. He

had never received the degree of any medical school, nor (save it might be

for the cure of a toothache, or a child's rash, or a whitlow on a

seamstress's finger, or some such trifling malady) had he ever been even a

practitioner of the awful science with which his popular designation

connected him. Our old friend, in short, even at his highest social

elevation, claimed to be nothing more than an apothecary, and, in these

later and far less prosperous days, scarcely so much. Since the death of

his last surviving grandson (Pansie's father, whom he had instructed in

all the mysteries of his science, and who, being distinguished by an

experimental and inventive tendency, was generally believed to have

poisoned himself with an infallible panacea of his own distillation),--

since that final bereavement, Dr. Dolliver's once pretty flourishing

business had lamentably declined. After a few months of unavailing

struggle, he found it expedient to take down the Brazen Serpent from the

position to which Dr. Swinnerton had originally elevated it, in front of

his shop in the main street, and to retire to his private dwelling,

situated in a by-lane and on the edge of a burial-ground.

This house, as well as the Brazen Serpent, some old medical books, and a

drawer full of manuscripts, had come to him by the legacy of Dr.

Swinnerton. The dreariness of the locality had been of small importance to

our friend in his young manhood, when he first led his fair wife over the

threshold, and so long as neither of them had any kinship with the human

dust that rose into little hillocks, and still kept accumulating beneath

their window. But, too soon afterwards, when poor Bessie herself had gone

early to rest there, it is probable that an influence from her grave may

have prematurely calmed and depressed her widowed husband, taking away

much of the energy from what should have been the most active portion of

his life. Thus he never grew rich. His thrifty townsmen used to tell him,

that, in any other man's hands, Dr. Swinnerton's Brazen Serpent (meaning,

I presume, the inherited credit and good-will of that old worthy's trade)

would need but ten years' time to transmute its brass into gold. In Dr.

Dolliver's keeping, as we have seen, the inauspicious symbol lost the

greater part of what superficial gilding it originally had. Matters had

not mended with him in more advanced life, after he had deposited a

further and further portion of his heart and its affections in each

successive one of a long row of kindred graves; and as he stood over the

last of them, holding Pansie by the hand and looking down upon the coffin

of his grandson, it is no wonder that the old man wept, partly for those

gone before, but not so bitterly as for the little one that stayed behind.

Why had not God taken her with the rest? And then, so hopeless as he was,

so destitute of possibilities of good, his weary frame, his decrepit

bones, his dried-up heart, might have crumbled into dust at once, and have

been scattered by the next wind over all the heaps of earth that were akin

to him.

This intensity of desolation, however, was of too positive a character to

be long sustained by a person of Dr. Dolliver's original gentleness and

simplicity, and now so completely tamed by age and misfortune. Even before

he turned away from the grave, he grew conscious of a slightly cheering

and invigorating effect from the tight grasp of the child's warm little

hand. Feeble as he was, she seemed to adopt him willingly for her

protector. And the Doctor never afterwards shrank from his duty nor

quailed beneath it, but bore himself like a man, striving, amid the sloth

of age and the breaking-up of intellect, to earn the competency which he

had failed to accumulate even in his most vigorous days.

To the extent of securing a present subsistence for Pansie and himself, he

was successful. After his son's death, when the Brazen Serpent fell into

popular disrepute, a small share of tenacious patronage followed the old

man into his retirement. In his prime, he had been allowed to possess more

skill than usually fell to the share of a Colonial apothecary, having been

regularly apprenticed to Dr. Swinnerton, who, throughout his long

practice, was accustomed personally to concoct the medicines which he

prescribed and dispensed. It was believed, indeed, that the ancient

physician had learned the art at the world-famous drug-manufactory of

Apothecary's Hall, in London, and, as some people half-malignly whispered,

had perfected himself under masters more subtle than were to be found even

there. Unquestionably, in many critical cases he was known to have

employed remedies of mysterious composition and dangerous potency, which,

in less skilful hands, would have been more likely to kill than cure. He

would willingly, it is said, have taught his apprentice the secrets of

these prescriptions, but the latter, being of a timid character and

delicate conscience, had shrunk from acquaintance with them. It was

probably as the result of the same scrupulosity that Dr. Dolliver had

always declined to enter the medical profession, in which his old

instructor had set him such heroic examples of adventurous dealing with

matters of life and death. Nevertheless, the aromatic fragrance, so to

speak, of the learned Swinnerton's reputation, had clung to our friend

through life; and there were elaborate preparations in the pharmacopœia of

that day, requiring such minute skill and conscientious fidelity in the

concocter that the physicians were still glad to confide them to one in

whom these qualities were so evident.

Moreover, the grandmothers of the community were kind to him, and mindful

of his perfumes, his rose-water, his cosmetics, tooth-powders, pomanders,

and pomades, the scented memory of which lingered about their toilet-

tables, or came faintly back from the days when they were beautiful. Among

this class of customers there was still a demand for certain comfortable

little nostrums (delicately sweet and pungent to the taste, cheering to

the spirits, and fragrant in the breath), the proper distillation of which

was the airiest secret that the mystic Swinnerton had left behind him.

And, besides, these old ladies had always liked the manners of Dr.

Dolliver, and used to speak of his gentle courtesy behind the counter as

having positively been something to admire; though of later years, an

unrefined, and almost rustic simplicity, such as belonged to his humble

ancestors, appeared to have taken possession of him, as it often does of

prettily mannered men in their late decay.

But it resulted from all these favorable circumstances that the Doctor's

marble mortar, though worn with long service and considerably damaged by a

crack that pervaded it, continued to keep up an occasional intimacy with

the pestle; and he still weighed drachms and scruples in his delicate

scales, though it seemed impossible, dealing with such minute quantities,

that his tremulous fingers should not put in too little or too much,

leaving out life with the deficiency, or spilling in death with the

surplus. To say the truth, his stanchest friends were beginning to think

that Dr. Dolliver's fits of absence (when his mind appeared absolutely to

depart from him, while his frail old body worked on mechanically) rendered

him not quite trustworthy without a close supervision of his proceedings.

It was impossible, however, to convince the aged apothecary of the

necessity for such vigilance; and if anything could stir up his gentle

temper to wrath, or, as oftener happened, to tears, it was the attempt

(which he was marvellously quick to detect) thus to interfere with his

long-familiar business.

The public, meanwhile, ceasing to regard Dr. Dolliver in his professional

aspect, had begun to take an interest in him as perhaps their oldest

fellow-citizen. It was he that remembered the Great Fire and the Great

Snow, and that had been a grown-up stripling at the terrible epoch of

Witch-Times, and a child just breeched at the breaking out of King

Philip's Indian War. He, too, in his school-boy days, had received a

benediction from the patriarchal Governor Bradstreet, and thus could boast

(somewhat as Bishops do of their unbroken succession from the Apostles) of

a transmitted blessing from the whole company of sainted Pilgrims, among

whom the venerable magistrate had been an honored companion. Viewing their

townsman in this aspect, the people revoked the courteous Doctorate with

which they had heretofore decorated him, and now knew him most familiarly

as Grandsir Dolliver. His white head, his Puritan band, his threadbare

garb (the fashion of which he had ceased to change, half a century ago),

his gold-headed staff, that had been Dr. Swinnerton's, his shrunken,

frosty figure, and its feeble movement,--all these characteristics had a

wholeness and permanence in the public recognition, like the meeting-house

steeple or the town-pump. All the younger portion of the inhabitants

unconsciously ascribed a sort of aged immortality to Grandsir Dolliver's

infirm and reverend presence. They fancied that he had been born old (at

least, I remember entertaining some such notions about age-stricken

people, when I myself was young), and that he could the better tolerate

his aches and incommodities, his dull ears and dim eyes, his remoteness

from human intercourse within the crust of indurated years, the cold

temperature that kept him always shivering and sad, the heavy burden that

invisibly bent down his shoulders,--that all these intolerable things

might bring a kind of enjoyment to Grandsir Dolliver, as the lifelong

conditions of his peculiar existence.

But, alas! it was a terrible mistake. This weight of years had a perennial

novelty for the poor sufferer. He never grew accustomed to it, but, long

as he had now borne the fretful torpor of his waning life, and patient as

he seemed, he still retained an inward consciousness that these stiffened

shoulders, these quailing knees, this cloudiness of sight and brain, this

confused forgetfulness of men and affairs, were troublesome accidents that

did not really belong to him. He possibly cherished a half-recognized idea

that they might pass away. Youth, however eclipsed for a season, is

undoubtedly the proper, permanent, and genuine condition of man; and if we

look closely into this dreary delusion of growing old, we shall find that

it never absolutely succeeds in laying hold of our innermost convictions.

A sombre garment, woven of life's unrealities, has muffled us from our

true self, but within it smiles the young man whom we knew; the ashes of

many perishable things have fallen upon our youthful fire, but beneath

them lurk the seeds of inextinguishable flame. So powerful is this

instinctive faith, that men of simple modes of character are prone to

antedate its consummation. And thus it happened with poor Grandsir

Dolliver, who often awoke from an old man's fitful sleep with a sense that

his senile predicament was but a dream of the past night; and hobbling

hastily across the cold floor to the looking-glass, he would be grievously

disappointed at beholding the white hair, the wrinkles and furrows, the

ashen visage and bent form, the melancholy mask of Age, in which, as he

now remembered, some strange and sad enchantment had involved him for

years gone by!

To other eyes than his own, however, the shrivelled old gentleman looked

as if there were little hope of his throwing off this too artfully wrought

disguise, until, at no distant day, his stooping figure should be

straightened out, his hoary locks be smoothed over his brows, and his

much-enduring bones be laid safely away, with a green coverlet spread over

them, beside his Bessie, who doubtless would recognize her youthful

companion in spite of his ugly garniture of decay. He longed to be gazed

at by the loving eyes now closed; he shrank from the hard stare of them

that loved him not. Walking the streets seldom and reluctantly, he felt a

dreary impulse to elude the people's observation, as if with a sense that

he had gone irrevocably out of fashion, and broken his connecting links

with the net-work of human life; or else it was that nightmare-feeling

which we sometimes have in dreams, when we seem to find ourselves

wandering through a crowded avenue, with the noonday sun upon us, in some

wild extravagance of dress or nudity. He was conscious of estrangement

from his towns-people, but did not always know how nor wherefore, nor why

he should be thus groping through the twilight mist in solitude. If they

spoke loudly to him, with cheery voices, the greeting translated itself

faintly and mournfully to his ears; if they shook him by the hand, it was

as if a thick, insensible glove absorbed the kindly pressure and the

warmth. When little Pansie was the companion of his walk, her childish

gayety and freedom did not avail to bring him into closer relationship

with men, but seemed to follow him into that region of indefinable

remoteness, that dismal Fairy-Land of aged fancy, into which old Grandsir

Dolliver had so strangely crept away.

Yet there were moments, as many persons had noticed, when the great-

grandpapa would suddenly take stronger hues of life. It was as if his

faded figure had been colored over anew, or at least, as he and Pansie

moved along the street, as if a sunbeam had fallen across him, instead of

the gray gloom of an instant before. His chilled sensibilities had

probably been touched and quickened by the warm contiguity of his little

companion through the medium of her hand, as it stirred within his own, or

some inflection of her voice that set his memory ringing and chiming with

forgotten sounds. While that music lasted, the old man was alive and

happy. And there were seasons, it might be, happier than even these, when

Pansie had been kissed and put to bed, and Grandsir Dolliver sat by his

fireside gazing in among the massive coals, and absorbing their glow into

those cavernous abysses with which all men communicate. Hence come angels

or fiends into our twilight musings, according as we may have peopled them

in by-gone years. Over our friend's face, in the rosy flicker of the fire-

gleam, stole an expression of repose and perfect trust that made him as

beautiful to look at, in his high-backed chair, as the child Pansie on her

pillow; and sometimes the spirits that were watching him beheld a calm

surprise draw slowly over his features and brighten into joy, yet not so

vividly as to break his evening quietude. The gate of heaven had been

kindly left ajar, that this forlorn old creature might catch a glimpse

within. All the night afterwards, he would be semi-conscious of an

intangible bliss diffused through the fitful lapses of an old man's

slumber, and would awake, at early dawn, with a faint thrilling of the

heart-strings, as if there had been music just now wandering over them.

--

ANOTHER SCENE FROM THE DOLLIVER ROMANCE

[Footnote: This scene was not revised by the author, but is printed from

his first draught.]

We may now suppose Grandsir Dolliver to have finished his breakfast, with

a better appetite and sharper perception of the qualities of his food than

he has generally felt of late years, whether it were due to old Martha's

cookery or to the cordial of the night before. Little Pansie had also made

an end of her bread and milk with entire satisfaction, and afterwards

nibbled a crust, greatly enjoying its resistance to her little white

teeth.

How this child came by the odd name of Pansie, and whether it was really

her baptismal name, I have not ascertained. More probably it was one of

those pet appellations that grow out of a child's character, or out of

some keen thrill of affection in the parents, an unsought-for and

unconscious felicity, a kind of revelation, teaching them the true name by

which the child's guardian angel would know it,--a name with playfulness

and love in it, that we often observe to supersede, in the practice of

those who love the child best, the name that they carefully selected, and

caused the clergyman to plaster indelibly on the poor little forehead at

the font,--the love-name, whereby, if the child lives, the parents know

it in their hearts, or by which, if it dies, God seems to have called it

away, leaving the sound lingering faintly and sweetly through the house.

In Pansie's case, it may have been a certain pensiveness which was

sometimes seen under her childish frolic, and so translated itself into

French (_pensée_), her mother having been of Acadian kin; or, quite

as probably, it alluded merely to the color of her eyes, which, in some

lights, were very like the dark petals of a tuft of pansies in the

Doctor's garden. It might well be, indeed, on account of the suggested

pensiveness; for the child's gayety had no example to sustain it, no

sympathy of other children or grown people,--and her melancholy, had it

been so dark a feeling, was but the shadow of the house, and of the old

man. If brighter sunshine came, she would brighten with it. This morning,

surely, as the three companions, Pansie, puss, and Grandsir Dolliver,

emerged from the shadow of the house into the small adjoining enclosure,

they seemed all frolicsome alike.

The Doctor, however, was intent over something that had reference to his

lifelong business of drugs. This little spot was the place where he was

wont to cultivate a variety of herbs supposed to be endowed with medicinal

virtue. Some of them had been long known in the pharmacopœia of the Old

World; and others, in the early days of the country, had been adopted by

the first settlers from the Indian medicine-men, though with fear and even

contrition, because these wild doctors were supposed to draw their

pharmaceutic knowledge from no gracious source, the Black Man himself

being the principal professor in their medical school. From his own

experience, however, Dr. Dolliver had long since doubted, though he was

not bold enough quite to come to the conclusion, that Indian shrubs, and

the remedies prepared from them, were much less perilous than those so

freely used in European practice, and singularly apt to be followed by

results quite as propitious. Into such heterodoxy our friend was the more

liable to fall, because it had been taught him early in life by his old

master, Dr. Swinnerton, who, at those not infrequent times when he

indulged a certain unhappy predilection for strong waters, had been

accustomed to inveigh in terms of the most cynical contempt and coarsest

ridicule against the practice by which he lived, and, as he affirmed,

inflicted death on his fellow-men. Our old apothecary, though too loyal to

the learned profession with which he was connected fully to believe this

bitter judgment, even when pronounced by his revered master, was still so

far influenced that his conscience was possibly a little easier when

making a preparation from forest herbs and roots than in the concoction of

half a score of nauseous poisons into a single elaborate drug, as the

fashion of that day was.

But there were shrubs in the garden of which he had never ventured to make

a medical use, nor, indeed, did he know their virtue, although from year

to year he had tended and fertilized, weeded and pruned them, with

something like religious care. They were of the rarest character, and had

been planted by the learned and famous Dr. Swinnerton, who, on his death-

bed, when he left his dwelling and all his abstruse manuscripts to his

favorite pupil, had particularly directed his attention to this row of

shrubs. They had been collected by himself from remote countries, and had

the poignancy of torrid climes in them; and he told him, that, properly

used, they would be worth all the rest of the legacy a hundred-fold. As

the apothecary, however, found the manuscripts, in which he conjectured

there was a treatise on the subject of these shrubs, mostly illegible, and

quite beyond his comprehension in such passages as he succeeded in

puzzling out (partly, perhaps, owing to his very imperfect knowledge of

Latin, in which language they were written), he had never derived from

them any of the promised benefit. And, to say the truth, remembering that

Dr. Swinnerton himself never appeared to triturate or decoct or do

anything else with the mysterious herbs, our old friend was inclined to

imagine the weighty commendation of their virtues to have been the idly

solemn utterance of mental aberration at the hour of death. So, with the

integrity that belonged to his character, he had nurtured them as tenderly

as was possible in the ungenial climate and soil of New England, putting

some of them into pots for the winter; but they had rather dwindled than

flourished, and he had reaped no harvests from them, nor observed them

with any degree of scientific interest.

His grandson, however, while yet a school-boy, had listened to the old

man's legend of the miraculous virtues of these plants; and it took so

firm a hold of his mind, that the row of outlandish vegetables seemed

rooted in it, and certainly flourished there with richer luxuriance than

in the soil where they actually grew. The story, acting thus early upon

his imagination, may be said to have influenced his brief career in life,

and, perchance, brought about its early close. The young man, in the

opinion of competent judges, was endowed with remarkable abilities, and

according to the rumor of the people had wonderful gifts, which were

proved by the cures he had wrought with remedies of his own invention. His

talents lay in the direction of scientific analysis and inventive

combination of chemical powers. While under the pupilage of his

grandfather, his progress had rapidly gone quite beyond his instructor's

hope,--leaving him even to tremble at the audacity with which he

overturned and invented theories, and to wonder at the depth at which he

wrought beneath the superficialness and mock-mystery of the medical

science of those days, like a miner sinking his shaft and running a

hideous peril of the earth caving in above him. Especially did he devote

himself to these plants; and under his care they had thriven beyond all

former precedent, bursting into luxuriance of bloom, and most of them

bearing beautiful flowers, which, however, in two or three instances, had

the sort of natural repulsiveness that the serpent has in its beauty,

compelled against its will, as it were, to warn the beholder of an

unrevealed danger. The young man had long ago, it must be added, demanded

of his grandfather the documents included in the legacy of Professor

Swinnerton, and had spent days and nights upon them, growing pale over

their mystic lore, which seemed the fruit not merely of the Professor's

own labors, but of those of more ancient sages than he; and often a whole

volume seemed to be compressed within the limits of a few lines of crabbed

manuscript, judging from the time which it cost even the quick-minded

student to decipher them.

Meantime these abstruse investigations had not wrought such disastrous

effects as might have been feared, in causing Edward Dolliver to neglect

the humble trade, the conduct of which his grandfather had now

relinquished almost entirely into his hands. On the contrary, with the

mere side results of his study, or what may be called the chips and

shavings of his real work, he created a prosperity quite beyond anything

that his simple-minded predecessor had ever hoped for, even at the most

sanguine epoch of his life. The young man's adventurous endowments were

miraculously alive, and connecting themselves with his remarkable ability

for solid research, and perhaps his conscience being as yet imperfectly

developed (as it sometimes lies dormant in the young), he spared not to

produce compounds which, if the names were anywise to be trusted, would

supersede all other remedies, and speedily render any medicine a needless

thing, making the trade of apothecary an untenable one, and the title of

Doctor obsolete. Whether there was real efficacy in these nostrums, and

whether their author himself had faith in them, is more than can safely be

said; but, at all events, the public believed in them, and thronged to the

old and dim sign of the Brazen Serpent, which, though hitherto familiar to

them and their forefathers, now seemed to shine with auspicious lustre, as

if its old Scriptural virtues were renewed. If any faith was to be put in

human testimony, many marvellous cures were really performed, the fame of

which spread far and wide, and caused demands for these medicines to come

in from places far beyond the precincts of the little town. Our old

apothecary, now degraded by the overshadowing influence of his grandson's

character to a position not much above that of a shop-boy, stood behind

the counter with a face sad and distrustful, and yet with an odd kind of

fitful excitement in it, as if he would have liked to enjoy this new

prosperity, had he dared. Then his venerable figure was to be seen

dispensing these questionable compounds by the single bottle and by the

dozen, wronging his simple conscience as he dealt out what he feared was

trash or worse, shrinking from the reproachful eyes of every ancient

physician who might chance to be passing by, but withal examining closely

the silver, or the New England coarsely printed bills, which he took in

payment, as if apprehensive that the delusive character of the commodity

which he sold might be balanced by equal counterfeiting in the money

received, or as if his faith in all things were shaken.

Is it not possible that this gifted young man had indeed found out those

remedies which Nature has provided and laid away for the cure of every

ill?

The disastrous termination of the most brilliant epoch that ever came to

the Brazen Serpent must be told in a few words. One night, Edward

Dolliver's young wife awoke, and, seeing the gray dawn creeping into the

chamber, while her husband, it should seem, was still engaged in his

laboratory, arose in her nightdress, and went to the door of the room to

put in her gentle remonstrance against such labor. There she found him

dead,--sunk down out of his chair upon the hearth, where were some ashes,

apparently of burnt manuscripts, which appeared to comprise most of those

included in Dr. Swinnerton's legacy, though one or two had fallen near the

heap, and lay merely scorched beside it. It seemed as if he had thrown

them into the fire, under a sudden impulse, in a great hurry and passion.

It may be that he had come to the perception of something fatally false

and deceptive in the successes which he had appeared to win, and was too

proud and too conscientious to survive it. Doctors were called in, but had

no power to revive him. An inquest was held, at which the jury, under the

instruction, perhaps, of those same revengeful doctors, expressed the

opinion that the poor young man, being given to strange contrivances with

poisonous drugs, had died by incautiously tasting them himself. This

verdict, and the terrible event itself, at once deprived the medicines of

all their popularity; and the poor old apothecary was no longer under any

necessity of disturbing his conscience by selling them. They at once lost

their repute, and ceased to be in any demand. In the few instances in

which they were tried the experiment was followed by no good results; and

even those individuals who had fancied themselves cured, and had been

loudest in spreading the praises of these beneficent compounds, now, as if

for the utter demolition of the poor youth's credit, suffered under a

recurrence of the worst symptoms, and, in more than one case, perished

miserably: insomuch (for the days of witchcraft were still within the

memory of living men and women) it was the general opinion that Satan had

been personally concerned in this affliction, and that the Brazen Serpent,

so long honored among them, was really the type of his subtle malevolence

and perfect iniquity. It was rumored even that all preparations that came

from the shop were harmful: that teeth decayed that had been made pearly

white by the use of the young chemist's dentifrice; that cheeks were

freckled that had been changed to damask roses by his cosmetics; that hair

turned gray or fell off that had become black, glossy, and luxuriant from

the application of his mixtures; that breath which his drugs had sweetened

had now a sulphurous smell. Moreover, all the money heretofore amassed by

the sale of them had been exhausted by Edward Dolliver in his lavish

expenditure for the processes of his study; and nothing was left for

Pansie, except a few valueless and unsalable bottles of medicine, and one

or two others, perhaps more recondite than their inventor had seen fit to

offer to the public.

Little Pansie's mother lived but a short time after the shock of the

terrible catastrophe; and, as we began our story with saying, she was left

with no better guardianship or support than might be found in the efforts

of a long superannuated man.

Nothing short of the simplicity, integrity, and piety of Grandsir

Dolliver's character, known and acknowledged as far back as the oldest

inhabitants remembered anything, and inevitably discoverable by the

dullest and most prejudiced observers, in all its natural manifestations,

could have protected him in still creeping about the streets. So far as he

was personally concerned, however, all bitterness and suspicion had

speedily passed away; and there remained still the careless and neglectful

good-will, and the prescriptive reverence, not altogether reverential,

which the world heedlessly awards to the unfortunate individual who

outlives his generation.

And now that we have shown the reader sufficiently, or at least to the

best of our knowledge, and perhaps at tedious length, what was the present

position of Grandsir Dolliver, we may let our story pass onward, though at

such a pace as suits the feeble gait of an old man.

The peculiarly brisk sensation of this morning, to which we have more than

once alluded, enabled the Doctor to toil pretty vigorously at his

medicinal herbs,--his catnip, his vervain, and the like; but he did not

turn his attention to the row of mystic plants, with which so much of

trouble and sorrow either was, or appeared to be, connected. In truth, his

old soul was sick of them, and their very fragrance, which the warm

sunshine made strongly perceptible, was odious to his nostrils. But the

spicy, homelike scent of his other herbs, the English simples, was

grateful to him, and so was the earth-smell, as he turned up the soil

about their roots, and eagerly snuffed it in. Little Pansie, on the other

hand, perhaps scandalized at great-grandpapa's neglect of the prettiest

plants in his garden, resolved to do her small utmost towards balancing

his injustice; so with an old shingle, fallen from the roof, which she had

appropriated as her agricultural tool, she began to dig about them,

pulling up the weeds, as she saw grandpapa doing. The kitten, too, with a

look of elfish sagacity, lent her assistance, plying her paws with vast

haste and efficiency at the roots of one of the shrubs. This particular

one was much smaller than the rest, perhaps because it was a native of the

torrid zone, and required greater care than the others to make it

flourish; so that, shrivelled, cankered, and scarcely showing a green

leaf, both Pansie and the kitten probably mistook it for a weed. After

their joint efforts had made a pretty big trench about it, the little girl

seized the shrub with both hands, bestriding it with her plump little

legs, and giving so vigorous a pull, that, long accustomed to be

transplanted annually, it came up by the roots, and little Pansie came

down in a sitting posture, making a broad impress on the soft earth. "See,

see, Doctor!" cries Pansie, comically enough giving him his title of

courtesy,--"look, grandpapa, the big, naughty weed!"

Now the Doctor had at once a peculiar dread and a peculiar value for this

identical shrub, both because his grandson's investigations had been

applied more ardently to it than to all the rest, and because it was

associated in his mind with an ancient and sad recollection. For he had

never forgotten that his wife, the early lost, had once taken a fancy to

wear its flowers, day after day, through the whole season of their bloom,

in her bosom, where they glowed like a gem, and deepened her somewhat

pallid beauty with a richness never before seen in it. At least such was

the effect which this tropical flower imparted to the beloved form in his

memory, and thus it somehow both brightened and wronged her. This had

happened not long before her death; and whenever, in the subsequent years,

this plant had brought its annual flower, it had proved a kind of talisman

to bring up the image of Bessie, radiant with this glow that did not

really belong to her naturally passive beauty, quickly interchanging with

another image of her form, with the snow of death on cheek and forehead.

This reminiscence had remained among the things of which the Doctor was

always conscious, but had never breathed a word, through the whole of his

long life,--a sprig of sensibility that perhaps helped to keep him

tenderer and purer than other men, who entertain no such follies. And the

sight of the shrub often brought back the faint, golden gleam of her hair,

as if her spirit were in the sunlights of the garden, quivering into view

and out of it. And therefore, when he saw what Pansie had done, he sent

forth a strange, inarticulate, hoarse, tremulous exclamation, a sort of

aged and decrepit cry of mingled emotion. "Naughty Pansie, to pull up

grandpapa's flower!" said he, as soon as he could speak. "Poison, Pansie,

poison! Fling it away, child!"

And dropping his spade, the old gentleman scrambled towards the little

girl as quickly as his rusty joints would let him,--while Pansie, as

apprehensive and quick of motion as a fawn, started up with a shriek of

mirth and fear to escape him. It so happened that the garden-gate was

ajar; and a puff of wind blowing it wide open, she escaped through this

fortuitous avenue, followed by great-grandpapa and the kitten.

"Stop, naughty Pansie, stop!" shouted our old friend. "You will tumble

into the grave!" The kitten, with the singular sensitiveness that seems to

affect it at every kind of excitement, was now on her back.

And, indeed, this portentous warning was better grounded and had a more

literal meaning than might be supposed; for the swinging gate communicated

with the burial-ground, and almost directly in little Pansie's track there

was a newly dug grave, ready to receive its tenant that afternoon. Pansie,

however, fled onward with outstretched arms, half in fear, half in fun,

plying her round little legs with wonderful promptitude, as if to escape

Time or Death, in the person of Grandsir Dolliver, and happily avoiding

the ominous pitfall that lies in every person's path, till, hearing a

groan from her pursuer, she looked over her shoulder, and saw that poor

grandpapa had stumbled over one of the many hillocks. She then suddenly

wrinkled up her little visage, and sent forth a full-breathed roar of

sympathy and alarm.

"Grandpapa has broken his neck now!" cried little Pansie, amid her sobs.

"Kiss grandpapa, and make it well, then," said the old gentleman,

recollecting her remedy, and scrambling up more readily than could be

expected. "Well," he murmured to himself, "a hair's-breadth more, and I

should have been tumbled into yonder grave. Poor little Pansie! what

wouldst thou have done then?"

"Make the grass grow over grandpapa," answered Pansie, laughing up in his

face.

"Poh, poh, child, that is not a pretty thing to say," said grandpapa,

pettishly and disappointed, as people are apt to be when they try to

calculate on the fitful sympathies of childhood. "Come, you must go in to

old Martha now."

The poor old gentleman was in the more haste to leave the spot because he

found himself standing right in front of his own peculiar row of

gravestones, consisting of eight or nine slabs of slate, adorned with

carved borders rather rudely cut, and the earliest one, that of his

Bessie, bending aslant, because the frost of so many winters had slowly

undermined it. Over one grave of the row, that of his gifted grandson,

there was no memorial. He felt a strange repugnance, stronger than he had

ever felt before, to linger by these graves, and had none of the tender

sorrow, mingled with high and tender hopes, that had sometimes made it

seem good to him to be there. Such moods, perhaps, often come to the aged,

when the hardened earth-crust over their souls shuts them out from

spiritual influences.

Taking the child by the hand,--her little effervescence of infantile fun

having passed into a downcast humor, though not well knowing as yet what a

dusky cloud of disheartening fancies arose from these green hillocks,--he

went heavily toward the garden-gate. Close to its threshold, so that one

who was issuing forth or entering must needs step upon it or over it, lay

a small flat stone, deeply imbedded in the ground, and partly covered with

grass, inscribed with the name of "Dr. John Swinnerton, Physician."

"Ay," said the old man, as the well-remembered figure of his ancient

instructor seemed to rise before him in his grave-apparel, with beard and

gold-headed cane, black velvet doublet and cloak, "here lies a man who, as

people have thought, had it in his power to avoid the grave! He had no

little grandchild to tease him. He had the choice to die, and chose it."

So the old gentleman led Pansie over the stone, and carefully closed the

gate; and, as it happened, he forgot the uprooted shrub, which Pansie, as

she ran, had flung away, and which had fallen into the open grave; and

when the funeral came that afternoon, the coffin was let down upon it, so

that its bright, inauspicious flower never bloomed again.

--

ANOTHER FRAGMENT OF THE DOLLIVER ROMANCE.

"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?