University of Virginia Library

15. CHAPTER XV.
PHYSIOLOGICAL.

If Master Bernard felt a natural gratitude to
his young pupil for saving him from an imminent
peril, he was in a state of infinite perplexity to
know why he should have needed such aid. He,
an active, muscular, courageous, adventurous
young fellow, with a stick in his hand, ready to
hold down the Old Serpent himself, if he had
come in his way, to stand still, staring into those
two eyes, until they came up close to him, and
the strange, terrible sound seemed to freeze him
stiff where he stood, — what was the meaning of
it? Again, what was the influence this girl had
seemingly exerted, under which the venomous
creature had collapsed in such a sudden way?
Whether he had been awake or dreaming he did
not feel quite sure. He knew he had gone up
The Mountain, at any rate; he knew he had
come down The Mountain with the girl walking
just before him; — there was no forgetting her
figure, as she walked on in silence, her braided
locks falling a little, for want of the lost hair-pin,
perhaps, and looking like a wreathing coil of —

Shame on such fancies! — to wrong that supreme
crowning gift of abounding Nature, a rush
of shining black hair, which, shaken loose, would
cloud her all round, like Godiva, from brow to
instep! He was sure he had sat down before the
fissure or cave. He was sure that he was led
softly away from the place, and that it was Elsie
who had led him. There was the hair-pin to show
that so far it was not a dream. But between
these recollections came a strange confusion; and
the more the master thought, the more he was
perplexed to know whether she had waked him,
sleeping, as he sat on the stone, from some frightful
dream, such as may come in a very brief slumber,
or whether she had bewitched him into a
trance with those strange eyes of hers, or whether
it was all true, and he must solve its problem as
he best might.

There was another recollection connected with
this mountain adventure. As they approached
the mansion-house, they met a young man, whom
Mr. Bernard remembered having seen once at
least before, and whom he had heard of as a
cousin of the young girl. As Cousin Richard
Venner, the person in question, passed them, he
took the measure, so to speak, of Mr. Bernard,
with a look so piercing, so exhausting, so practised,
so profoundly suspicious, that the young
master felt in an instant that he had an enemy in
this handsome youth, — an enemy, too, who was
like to be subtle and dangerous.

Mr. Bernard had made up his mind, that, come
what might, enemy or no enemy, live or die, he
would solve the mystery of Elsie Venner, sooner
or later. He was not a man to be frightened out
of his resolution by a scowl, or a stiletto, or any
unknown means of mischief, of which a whole
armory was hinted at in that passing look Dick
Venner had given him. Indeed, like most adventurous
young persons, he found a kind of charm
in feeling that there might be some dangers in the
way of his investigations. Some rumors which
had reached him about the supposed suitor of
Elsie Venner, who was thought to be a desperate
kind of fellow, and whom some believed to be an
unscrupulous adventurer, added a curious, romantic
kind of interest to the course of physiological
and psychological inquiries he was about instituting.

The afternoon on The Mountain was still uppermost
in his mind. Of course he knew the
common stories about fascination. He had once
been himself an eye-witness of the charming of a
small bird by one of our common harmless serpents.
Whether a human being could be reached
by this subtile agency, he had been skeptical, notwithstanding
the mysterious relation generally felt
to exist between man and this creature, “cursed
above all cattle and above every beast of the
field,” — a relation which some interpret as the
fruit of the curse, and others hold to be so instinctive
that this animal has been for that reason

adopted as the natural symbol of evil. There was
another solution, however, supplied him by his
professional reading. The curious work of Mr.
Braid of Manchester had made him familiar with
the phenomena of a state allied to that produced
by animal magnetism, and called by that writer
by the name of hypnotism. He found, by referring
to his note-book, the statement was, that, by
fixing the eyes on a bright object so placed as to
produce a strain upon the eyes and eyelids, and to
maintain a steady fixed stare, there comes on in a
few seconds a very singular condition, characterized
by muscular rigidity and inability to move,
with a strange exaltation of most of the senses, and
generally a closure of the eyelids, — this condition
being followed by torpor.

Now this statement of Mr. Braid's, well known
to the scientific world, and the truth of which had
been confirmed by Mr. Bernard in certain experiments
he had instituted, as it has been by many
other experimenters, went far to explain the
strange impressions, of which, waking or dreaming,
he had certainly been the subject. His nervous
system had been in a high state of exaltation
at the time. He remembered how the little
noises that made rings of sound in the silence of
the woods, like pebbles dropped in still waters,
had reached his inner consciousness. He remembered
that singular sensation in the roots of the
hair, when he came on the traces of the girl's
presence, reminding him of a line in a certain

poem which he had read lately with a new and
peculiar interest. He even recalled a curious evidence
of exalted sensibility and irritability, in the
twitching of the minute muscles of the internal
ear at every unexpected sound, producing an odd
little snap in the middle of the head, which proved
to him that he was getting very nervous.

The next thing was to find out whether it were
possible that the venomous creature's eyes should
have served the purpose of Mr. Braid's “bright
object” held very close to the person experimented
on, or whether they had any special
power which could be made the subject of exact
observation.

For this purpose Mr. Bernard considered it necessary
to get a live crotalus or two into his possession,
if this were possible. On inquiry, he
found that there was a certain family living far
up the mountain-side, not a mile from the ledge,
the members of which were said to have taken
these creatures occasionally, and not to be in any
danger, or at least in any fear, of being injured
by them. He applied to these people, and offered
a reward sufficient to set them at work to capture
some of these animals, if such a thing were
possible.

A few days after this, a dark, gypsy-looking
woman presented herself at his door. She held
up her apron as if it contained something precious
in the bag she made with it.

“Y'wanted some rattlers,” said the woman.
“Here they be.”

She opened her apron and showed a coil of
rattlesnakes lying very peaceably in its fold.
They lifted their heads up, as if they wanted to
see what was going on, but showed no sign of
anger.

“Are you crazy?” said Mr. Bernard. “You're
dead in an hour, if one of those creatures strikes
you!”

He drew back a little, as he spoke; it might be
simple disgust; it might be fear; it might be
what we call antipathy, which is different from
either, and which will sometimes show itself in
paleness, and even faintness, produced by objects
perfectly harmless and not in themselves offensive
to any sense.

“Lord bless you,” said the woman, “rattlers
never touches our folks. I'd jest 'z lieves handle
them creaturs as so many stripéd snakes.”

So saying, she put their heads down with her
hand, and packed them together in her apron as
if they had been bits of cart-rope.

Mr. Bernard had never heard of the power, or,
at least, the belief in the possession of a power
by certain persons, which enables them to handle
these frightful reptiles with perfect impunity.
The fact, however, is well known to others, and
more especially to a very distinguished Professor
in one of the leading institutions of the great
city of the land, whose experiences in the neighborhood

of Graylock, as he will doubtless inform
the curious, were very much like those of the
young master.

Mr. Bernard had a wired cage ready for his
formidable captives, and studied their habits and
expression with a strange sort of interest. What
did the Creator mean to signify, when he made
such shapes of horror, and, as if he had doubly
cursed this envenomed wretch, had set a mark
upon him and sent him forth, the Cain of the
brotherhood of serpents? It was a very curious
fact that the first train of thoughts Mr. Bernard's
small menagerie suggested to him was the grave,
though somewhat worn, subject of the origin of
evil. There is now to be seen in a tall glass jar,
in the Museum of Comparative Anatomy at
Cantabridge in the territory of the Massachusetts,
a huge crotalus, of a species which grows to more
frightful dimensions than our own, under the hotter
skies of South America. Look at it, ye who
would know what is the tolerance, the freedom
from prejudice, which can suffer such an incarnation
of all that is devilish to lie unharmed in the
cradle of Nature! Learn, too, that there are
many things in this world which we are warned
to shun, and are even suffered to slay, if need be,
but which we must not hate, unless we would
hate what God loves and cares for.

Whatever fascination the creature might exercise
in his native haunts, Mr. Bernard found himself
not in the least nervous or affected in any way

while looking at his caged reptiles. When their
cage was shaken, they would lift their heads and
spring their rattles; but the sound was by no
means so formidable to listen to as when it reverberated
among the chasms of the echoing
rocks. The expression of the creatures was
watchful, still, grave, passionless, fate-like, suggesting
a cold malignity which seemed to be waiting
for its opportunity. Their awful, deep-cut
mouths were sternly closed over the long hollow
fangs which rested their roots against the swollen
poison-gland, where the venom had been hoarding
up ever since the last stroke had emptied it.
They never winked, for ophidians have no movable
eyelids, but kept up that awful fixed stare
which made the two unwinking gladiators the
survivors of twenty pairs matched by one of the
Roman Emperors, as Pliny tells us, in his “Natural
History.” Their eyes did not flash, but shone
with a cold still light. They were of a pale-golden
or straw color, horrible to look into, with
their stony calmness, their pitiless indifference,
hardly enlivened by the almost imperceptible
vertical slit of the pupil, through which Death
seemed to be looking out like the archer behind
the long narrow loop-hole in a blank turret-wall.
On the whole, the caged reptiles, horrid as they
were, hardly matched his recollections of what
he had seen or dreamed he saw at the cavern.
These looked dangerous enough, but yet quiet.
A treacherous stillness, however, — as the unfortunate
New York physician found, when he put
his foot out to wake up the torpid creature,
and instantly the fang flashed through his boot,
carrying the poison into his blood, and death
with it.

Mr. Bernard kept these strange creatures, and
watched all their habits with a natural curiosity.
In any collection of animals the venomous beasts
are looked at with the greatest interest, just as
the greatest villains are most run after by the unknown
public. Nobody troubles himself for a
common striped snake or a petty thief, but a cobra
or a wife-killer is a centre of attraction to all eyes.
These captives did very little to earn their living,
but, on the other hand, their living was not expensive,
their diet being nothing but air, au naturel.
Months and months these creatures will live and
seem to thrive well enough, as any showman who
has them in his menagerie will testify, though
they never touch anything to eat or drink.

In the mean time Mr. Bernard had become very
curious about a class of subjects not treated of
in any detail in those text-books accessible in
most country-towns, to the exclusion of the more
special treatises, and especially of the rare and
ancient works found on the shelves of the larger
city-libraries. He was on a visit to old Dr. Kittredge
one day, having been asked by him to call
in for a few moments as soon as convenient.
The Doctor smiled good-humoredly when he asked
him if he had an extensive collection of medical
works.

“Why, no,” said the old Doctor, “I haven't
got a great many printed books; and what I
have I don't read quite as often as I might, I'm
afraid. I read and studied in the time of it,
when I was in the midst of the young men who
were all at work with their books; but it's a
mighty hard matter, when you go off alone into
the country, to keep up with all that's going on
in the Societies and the Colleges. I'll tell you,
though, Mr. Langdon, when a man that's once
started right lives among sick folks for five-and-thirty
years, as I've done, if he hasn't got a library
of five-and-thirty volumes bound up in his head
at the end of that time, he'd better stop driving
round and sell his horse and sulky. I know the
bigger part of the families within a dozen miles'
ride. I know the families that have a way of
living through everything, and I know the other
set that have the trick of dying without any kind
of reason for it. I know the years when the
fevers and dysenteries are in earnest, and when
they're only making believe. I know the folks
that think they're dying as soon as they're sick,
and the folks that never find out they're sick till
they're dead. I don't want to undervalue your
science, Mr. Langdon. There are things I never
learned, because they came in after my day, and
I am very glad to send my patients to those that
do know them, when I am at fault; but I know
these people about here, fathers and mothers, and
children and grandchildren, so as all the science

in the world can't know them, without it takes
time about it, and sees them grow up and grow
old, and how the wear and tear of life comes to
them. You can't tell a horse by driving him
once, Mr. Langdon, nor a patient by talking half
an hour with him.”

“Do you know much about the Venner family?”
said Mr. Bernard, in a natural way enough,
the Doctor's talk having suggested the question.

The Doctor lifted his head with his accustomed
movement, so as to command the young man
through his spectacles.

“I know all the families of this place and its
neighborhood,” he answered.

“We have the young lady studying with us at
the Institute,” said Mr. Bernard.

“I know it,” the Doctor answered. “Is she a
good scholar?”

All this time the Doctor's eyes were fixed steadily
on Mr. Bernard, looking through the glasses.

“She is a good scholar enough, but I don't
know what to make of her. Sometimes I think
she is a little out of her head. Her father, I believe,
is sensible enough; — what sort of a woman
was her mother, Doctor? — I suppose of course,
you remember all about her?”

“Yes, I knew her mother. She was a very
lovely young woman.” — The Doctor put his
hand to his forehead and drew a long breath. —
“What is there you notice out of the way about
Elsie Venner?”

“A good many things,” the master answered.
“She shuns all the other girls. She is getting a
strange influence over my fellow-teacher, a young
lady, — you know Miss Helen Darley, perhaps?
I am afraid this girl will kill her. I never saw or
heard of anything like it, in prose at least; — do you
remember much of Coleridge's Poems, Doctor?”

The good old Doctor had to plead a negative.

“Well, no matter. Elsie would have been
burned for a witch in old times. I have seen
the girl look at Miss Darley when she had not
the least idea of it, and all at once I would see
her grow pale and moist, and sigh, and move
round uneasily, and turn towards Elsie, and perhaps
get up and go to her, or else have slight
spasmodic movements that looked like hysterics;
— do you believe in the evil eye, Doctor?”

“Mr. Langdon,” the Doctor said, solemnly,
“there are strange things about Elsie Venner, —
very strange things. This was what I wanted to
speak to you about. Let me advise you all to be
very patient with the girl, but also very careful.
Her love is not to be desired, and” — he spoke
in a lower tone — “her hate is to be dreaded.
Do you think she has any special fancy for anybody
else in the school besides Miss Darley?”

Mr. Bernard could not stand the old Doctor's
spectacled eyes without betraying a little of the
feeling natural to a young man to whom a home
question involving a possible sentiment is put
suddenly.

“I have suspected,” he said, — “I have had a
kind of feeling — that she — Well, come,
Doctor, — I don't know that there's any use in
disguising the matter, — I have thought Elsie
Venner had rather a fancy for somebody else, —
I mean myself.”

There was something so becoming in the blush
with which the young man made this confession,
and so manly, too, in the tone with which he
spoke, so remote from any shallow vanity, such
as young men who are incapable of love are apt
to feel, when some loose tendril of a woman's
fancy which a chance wind has blown against
them twines about them for the want of anything
better, that the old Doctor looked at him admiringly,
and could not help thinking that it was no
wonder any young girl should be pleased with him.

“You are a man of nerve, Mr. Langdon?” said
the Doctor.

“I thought so till very lately,” he replied. “I
am not easily frightened, but I don't know but
I might be bewitched or magnetized, or whatever
it is when one is tied up and cannot move. I
think I can find nerve enough, however, if there
is any special use you want to put it to.”

“Let me ask you one more question, Mr.
Langdon. Do you find yourself disposed to take
a special interest in Elsie, — to fall in love with
her, in a word? Pardon me, for I do not ask
from curiosity, but a much more serious motive.”

“Elsie interests me,” said the young man, “interests

me strangely. She has a wild flavor in
her character which is wholly different from that
of any human creature I ever saw. She has
marks of genius, — poetic or dramatic, — I hardly
know which. She read a passage from Keats's
`Lamia' the other day, in the school-room, in
such a way that I declare to you I thought some
of the girls would faint or go into fits. Miss Darley
got up and left the room, trembling all over.
Then I pity her, she is so lonely. The girls are
afraid of her, and she seems to have either a dislike
or a fear of them. They have all sorts of
painful stories about her. They give her a name
which no human creature ought to bear. They
say she hides a mark on her neck by always
wearing a necklace. She is very graceful, you
know, and they will have it that she can twist
herself into all sorts of shapes, or tie herself in a
knot, if she wants to. There is not one of them
that will look her in the eyes. I pity the poor
girl; but, Doctor, I do not love her. I would risk
my life for her, if it would do her any good, but
it would be in cold blood. If her hand touches
mine, it is not a thrill of passion I feel running
through me, but a very different emotion. Oh,
Doctor! there must be something in that creature's
blood which has killed the humanity in her.
God only knows the cause that has blighted such
a soul in so beautiful a body! No, Doctor, I do
not love the girl.”

“Mr. Langdon,” said the Doctor, “you are

young, and I am old. Let me talk to you with
an old man's privilege, as an adviser. You have
come to this country-town without suspicion, and
you are moving in the midst of perils. There
are things which I must not tell you now; but I
may warn you. Keep your eyes open and your
heart shut. If, through pitying that girl, you
ever come to love her, you are lost. If you deal
carelessly with her, beware! This is not all.
There are other eyes on you beside Elsie Venner's.
— Do you go armed?”

“I do!” said Mr. Bernard, — and he “put his
hands up” in the shape of fists, in such a way as
to show that he was master of the natural weapons
at any rate.

The Doctor could not help smiling. But his
face fell in an instant.

“You may want something more than those
tools to work with. Come with me into my
sanctum.”

The Doctor led Mr. Bernard into a small room
opening out of the study. It was a place such
as anybody but a medical man would shiver to
enter. There was the usual tall box with its
bleached, rattling tenant; there were jars in rows
where “interesting cases” outlived the grief of
widows and heirs in alcoholic immortality, — for
your “preparation-jar” is the true “monumentum
ære perennius”; there were various semipossibilities
of minute dimensions and unpromising developments;
there were shining instruments of

evil aspect, and grim plates on the walls, and on
one shelf by itself, accursed and apart, coiled in
a long cylinder of spirit, a huge crotalus, rough-scaled,
flat-headed, variegated with dull bands,
one of which partially encircled the neck like a
collar, — an awful wretch to look upon, with
murder written all over him in horrid hieroglyphics.
Mr. Bernard's look was riveted on this creature,
— not fascinated certainly, for its eyes looked
like white beads, being clouded by the action of
the spirits in which it had been long kept, — but
fixed by some indefinite sense of the renewal of
a previous impression; — everybody knows the
feeling, with its suggestion of some past state of
existence. There was a scrap of paper on the
jar, with something written on it. He was reaching
up to read it when the Doctor touched him
lightly.

“Look here, Mr Langdon!” he said, with a
certain vivacity of manner, as if wishing to call
away his attention, — “this is my armory.”

The Doctor threw open the door of a small
cabinet, where were disposed in artistic patterns
various weapons of offence and defence, — for he
was a virtuoso in his way, and by the side of the
implements of the art of healing had pleased himself
with displaying a collection of those other
instruments, the use of which renders the first
necessary.

“See which of these weapons you would like
best to carry about you,” said the Doctor.

Mr. Bernard laughed, and looked at the Doctor
as if he half doubted whether he was in
earnest.

“This looks dangerous enough,” he said, —
“for the man who carries it, at least.”

He took down one of the prohibited Spanish
daggers or knives which a traveller may occasionally
get hold of and smuggle out of the
country. The blade was broad, trowel-like, but
the point drawn out several inches, so as to look
like a skewer.

“This must be a jealous bull-fighter's weapon,”
he said, and put it back in its place.

Then he took down an ancient-looking broad-bladed
dagger, with a complex aspect about it,
as if it had some kind of mechanism connected
with it.

“Take care!” said the Doctor; “there is a
trick to that dagger.”

He took it and touched a spring. The dagger
split suddenly into three blades, as when one
separates the forefinger and the ring-finger from
the middle one. The outside blades were sharp
on their outer edge. The stab was to be made
with the dagger shut, then the spring touched
and the split blades withdrawn.

Mr. Bernard replaced it, saying, that it would
have served for side-arm to old Suwarrow, who
told his men to work their bayonets back and
forward when they pinned a Turk, but to
wriggle them about in the wound when they
stabbed a Frenchman.

“Here,” said the Doctor, “this is the thing
you want.”

He took down a much more modern and familiar
implement, — a small, beautifully finished
revolver.

“I want you to carry this,” he said; “and
more than that, I want you to practise with it
often, as for amusement, but so that it may be
seen and understood that you are apt to have a
pistol about you. Pistol-shooting is pleasant
sport enough, and there is no reason why you
should not practise it like other young fellows.
And now,” the Doctor said, “I have one other
weapon to give you.”

He took a small piece of parchment and shook
a white powder into it from one of his medicine-jars.
The jar was marked with the name of a
mineral salt, of a nature to have been serviceable
in case of sudden illness in the time of the Borgias.
The Doctor folded the parchment carefully
and marked the Latin name of the powder upon
it.

“Here,” he said, handing it to Mr. Bernard, —
“you see what it is, and you know what service
it can render. Keep these two protectors about
your person day and night; they will not harm
you, and you may want one or the other or both
before you think of it.”

Mr. Bernard thought it was very odd, and not
very old-gentlemanlike, to be fitting him out for
treason, stratagem, and spoils, in this way.

There was no harm, however, in carrying a
doctor's powder in his pocket, or in amusing
himself with shooting at a mark, as he had often
done before. If the old gentleman had these fancies,
it was as well to humor him. So he thanked
old Doctor Kittredge, and shook his hand warmly
as he left him.

“The fellow's hand did not tremble, nor his
color change,” the Doctor said, as he watched
him walking away. “He is one of the right
sort.”