 | Septimius Felton, or, The elixir of life |  |
SEPTIMIUS FELTON;
OR,
THE ELIXIR OF LIFE.
It was a day in early spring; and as that sweet,
genial time of year and atmosphere calls out tender
greenness from the ground, — beautiful flowers, or
leaves that look beautiful because so long unseen
under the snow and decay, — so the pleasant air and
warmth had called out three young people, who sat
on a sunny hillside enjoying the warm day and one
another. For they were all friends: two of them
young men, and playmates from boyhood; the third,
a girl who, two or three years younger than themselves,
had been the object of their boy-love, their
little rustic, childish gallantries, their budding affections;
until, growing all towards manhood and womanhood,
they had ceased to talk about such matters,
perhaps thinking about them the more.
These three young people were neighbors' children,
dwelling in houses that stood by the side of the great
Lexington road, along a ridgy hill that rose abruptly
behind them, its brow covered with a wood, and
which stretched, with one or two breaks and interruptions,
county town. It was in the side of this hill that,
according to tradition, the first settlers of the village
had burrowed in caverns which they had dug out for
their shelter, like swallows and woodchucks. As its
slope was towards the south, and its ridge and crowning
woods defended them from the northern blasts
and snow-drifts, it was an admirable situation for the
fierce New England winter; and the temperature
was milder, by several degrees, along this hillside than
on the unprotected plains, or by the river, or in any
other part of Concord. So that here, during the hundred
years that had elapsed since the first settlement
of the place, dwellings had successively risen close to
the hill's foot, and the meadow that lay on the other
side of the road — a fertile tract — had been cultivated;
and these three young people were the children's
children's children of persons of respectability
who had dwelt there, — Rose Garfield, in a small
house, the site of which is still indicated by the
cavity of a cellar, in which I this very past summer
planted some sunflowers to thrust their great disks
out from the hollow and allure the bee and the
humming-bird; Robert Hagburn, in a house of somewhat
more pretension, a hundred yards or so nearer
to the village, standing back from the road in the
broader space which the retreating hill, cloven by a gap
in that place, afforded; where some elms intervened
between it and the road, offering a site which some
person of a natural taste for the gently picturesque
had seized upon. Those same elms, or their successors,
the magic hand of Alcott has improved by the touch
that throws grace, amiableness, and natural beauty over
scenes that have little pretension in themselves.
Now, the other young man, Septimius Felton, dwelt
in a small wooden house, then, I suppose, of some
score of years' standing, — a two-story house, gabled
before, but with only two rooms on a floor, crowded
upon by the hill behind, — a house of thick walls, as
if the projector had that sturdy feeling of permanence
in life which incites people to make strong their
earthly habitations, as if deluding themselves with
the idea that they could still inhabit them; in short,
an ordinary dwelling of a well-to-do New England
farmer, such as his race had been for two or three
generations past, although there were traditions of
ancestors who had led lives of thought and study,
and possessed all the erudition that the universities
of England could bestow. Whether any natural turn
for study had descended to Septimius from these
worthies, or how his tendencies came to be different
from those of his family, — who, within the memory
of the neighborhood, had been content to sow and
reap the rich field in front of their homestead, — so
it was, that Septimius had early manifested a taste
for study. By the kind aid of the good minister of
the town he had been fitted for college; had passed
through Cambridge by means of what little money
his father had left him and by his own exertions in
school-keeping; and was now a recently decorated
baccalaureate, with, as was understood, a purpose to
that reverend and good friend whose support and
instruction had already stood him in such stead.
Now here were these young people, on that beautiful
spring morning, sitting on the hillside, a pleasant
spectacle of fresh life, — pleasant, as if they had
sprouted like green things under the influence of the
warm sun. The girl was very pretty, a little freckled,
a little tanned, but with a face that glimmered and
gleamed with quick and cheerful expressions; a
slender form, not very large, with a quick grace in its
movements; sunny hair that had a tendency to curl,
which she probably favored at such moments as her
household occupation left her; a sociable and pleasant
child, as both of the young men evidently thought.
Robert Hagburn, one might suppose, would have been
the most to her taste; a ruddy, burly young fellow,
handsome, and free of manner, six feet high, famous
through the neighborhood for strength and athletic
skill, the early promise of what was to be a man fit
for all offices of active rural life, and to be, in mature
age, the selectman, the deacon, the representative,
the colonel. As for Septimius, let him alone a moment
or two, and then they would see him, with his
head bent down, brooding, brooding, his eyes fixed on
some chip, some stone, some common plant, any commonest
thing, as if it were the clew and index to
some mystery; and when, by chance startled out
of these meditations, he lifted his eyes, there would
be a kind of perplexity, a dissatisfied, foiled look in
them, as if of his speculations he found no end.
were running on with a gay talk about a serious subject,
so that, gay as it was, it was interspersed with
little thrills of fear on the girl's part, of excitement
on Robert's. Their talk was of public trouble.
“My grandfather says,” said Rose Garfield, “that
we shall never be able to stand against old England,
because the men are a weaker race than he remembers
in his day, — weaker than his father, who came from
England, — and the women slighter still; so that we
are dwindling away, grandfather thinks; only a little
sprightlier, he says sometimes, looking at me.”
“Lighter, to be sure,” said Robert Hagburn; “there
is the lightness of the Englishwomen compressed into
little space. I have seen them and know. And as
to the men, Rose, if they have lost one spark of
courage and strength that their English forefathers
brought from the old land, — lost any one good
quality without having made it up by as good or
better, — then, for my part, I don't want the breed
to exist any longer. And this war, that they say is
coming on, will be a good opportunity to test the
matter. Septimius! don't you think so?”
“Think what?” asked Septimius, gravely, lifting
up his head.
“Think! why, that your countrymen are worthy
to live,” said Robert Hagburn, impatiently. “For
there is a question on that point.”
“It is hardly worth answering or considering,” said
Septimius, looking at him thoughtfully. “We live so
little while, that (always setting aside the effect on a
or no.”
“Little matter!” said Rose, at first bewildered,
then laughing, — “little matter! when it is such a
comfort to live, so pleasant, so sweet!”
“Yes, and so many things to do,” said Robert;
“to make fields yield produce; to be busy among
men, and happy among the women-folk; to play,
work, fight, and be active in many ways.”
“Yes; but so soon stilled, before your activity
has come to any definite end,” responded Septimius,
gloomily. “I doubt, if it had been left to my choice,
whether I should have taken existence on such terms;
so much trouble of preparation to live, and then no
life at all; a ponderous beginning, and nothing more.”
“Do you find fault with Providence, Septimius?”
asked Rose, a feeling of solemnity coming over her
cheerful and buoyant nature. Then she burst out
a-laughing. “How grave he looks, Robert; as if he
had lived two or three lives already, and knew all
about the value of it. But I think it was worth while
to be born, if only for the sake of one such pleasant
spring morning as this; and God gives us many and
better things when these are past.”
“We hope so,” said Septimius, who was again looking
on the ground. “But who knows?”
“I thought you knew,” said Robert Hagburn.
“You have been to college, and have learned, no
doubt, a great many things. You are a student of
theology, too, and have looked into these matters.
Who should know, if not you?”
“Rose and you have just as good means of ascertaining
these points as I,” said Septimius; “all the
certainty that can be had lies on the surface, as it
should, and equally accessible to every man or woman.
If we try to grope deeper, we labor for naught, and
get less wise while we try to be more so. If life were
long enough to enable us thoroughly to sift these
matters, then, indeed! — but it is so short!”
“Always this same complaint,” said Robert. “Septimius,
how long do you wish to live?”
“Forever!” said Septimius. “It is none too long
for all I wish to know.”
“Forever?” exclaimed Rose, shivering doubtfully.
“Ah, there would come many, many thoughts, and
after a while we should want a little rest.”
“Forever?” said Robert Hagburn. “And what
would the people do who wish to fill our places?
You are unfair, Septimius. Live and let live! Turn
about! Give me my seventy years, and let me go, —
my seventy years of what this life has, — toil, enjoyment,
suffering, struggle, fight, rest, — only let me
have my share of what 's going, and I shall be content.”
“Content with leaving everything at odd ends;
content with being nothing, as you were before!”
“No, Septimius, content with heaven at last,” said
Rose, who had come out of her laughing mood into a
sweet seriousness. “O dear! think what a worn and
ugly thing one of these fresh little blades of grass
would seem if it were not to fade and wither in its
time, after being green in its time.”
“Well, well, my pretty Rose,” said Septimius apart,
is true; but I should be content with one thing, and
that is yourself, if you were immortal, just as you
are at seventeen, so fresh, so dewy, so red-lipped, so
golden-haired, so gay, so frolicsome, so gentle.”
“But I am to grow old, and to be brown and
wrinkled, gray-haired and ugly,” said Rose, rather
sadly, as she thus enumerated the items of her decay,
“and then you would think me all lost and gone.
But still there might be youth underneath, for one
that really loved me to see. Ah, Septimius Felton!
such love as would see with ever-new eyes is the true
love.” And she ran away and left him suddenly, and
Robert Hagburn departing at the same time, this little
knot of three was dissolved, and Septimius went along
the wayside wall, thoughtfully, as was his wont, to
his own dwelling. He had stopped for some moments
on the threshold, vaguely enjoying, it is probable, the
light and warmth of the new spring day and the sweet
air, which was somewhat unwonted to the young man,
because he was accustomed to spend much of his day
in thought and study within doors, and, indeed, like
most studious young men, was overfond of the fireside,
and of making life as artificial as he could, by fireside
heat and lamplight, in order to suit it to the artificial,
intellectual, and moral atmosphere which he derived
from books, instead of living healthfully in the open
air, and among his fellow-beings. Still he felt the
pleasure of being warmed through by this natural
heat, and though blinking a little from its superfluity,
could not but confess an enjoyment and cheerfulness
hillside. While he thus stood, he felt a friendly hand
laid upon his shoulder, and looking up, there was the
minister of the village, the old friend of Septimius, to
whose advice and aid it was owing that Septimius had
followed his instincts by going to college, instead of
spending a thwarted and dissatisfied life in the field
that fronted the house. He was a man of middle age,
or little beyond, of a sagacious, kindly aspect; the
experience, the lifelong, intimate acquaintance with
many concerns of his people being more apparent in
him than the scholarship for which he had been early
distinguished. A tanned man, like one who labored
in his own grounds occasionally; a man of homely,
plain address, which, when occasion called for it, he
could readily exchange for the polished manner of
one who had seen a more refined world than this
about him.
“Well, Septimius,” said the minister, kindly, “have
you yet come to any conclusion about the subject of
which we have been talking?”
“Only so far, sir,” replied Septimius, “that I find
myself every day less inclined to take up the profession
which I have had in view so many years. I do
not think myself fit for the sacred desk.”
“Surely not; no one is,” replied the clergyman;
“but if I may trust my own judgment, you have at
least many of the intellectual qualifications that should
adapt you to it. There is something of the Puritan
character in you, Septimius, derived from holy men
among your ancestors; as, for instance, a deep, brooding
to meditate on things hidden; a turn for
meditative inquiry; — all these things, with grace to
boot, mark you as the germ of a man who might do
God service. Your reputation as a scholar stands
high at college. You have not a turn for worldly
business.”
“Ah, but, sir,” said Septimius, casting down his
heavy brows, “I lack something within.”
“Faith, perhaps,” replied the minister; “at least,
you think so.”
“Cannot I know it?” asked Septimius.
“Scarcely, just now,” said his friend. “Study for
the ministry; bind your thoughts to it; pray; ask a
belief, and you will soon find you have it. Doubts
may occasionally press in; and it is so with every
clergyman. But your prevailing mood will be faith.”
“It has seemed to me,” observed Septimius, “that
it is not the prevailing mood, the most common one,
that is to be trusted. This is habit, formality, the
shallow covering which we close over what is real, and
seldom suffer to be blown aside. But it is the snakelike
doubt that thrusts out its head, which gives us a
glimpse of reality. Surely such moments are a hundred
times as real as the dull, quiet moments of faith,
or what you call such.”
“I am sorry for you,” said the minister; “yet to a
youth of your frame of character, of your ability I will
say, and your requisition for something profound in
the grounds of your belief, it is not unusual to meet
this trouble. Men like you have to fight for their
ever afterwards to hold it. The Devil tilts with them
daily, and often seems to win.”
“Yes; but,” replied Septimius, “he takes deadly
weapons now. If he meet me with the cold pure steel
of a spiritual argument, I might win or lose, and still
not feel that all was lost; but he takes, as it were, a
great clod of earth, massive rocks and mud, soil and
dirt, and flings it at me overwhelmingly; so that I
am buried under it.”
“How is that?” said the minister. “Tell me more
plainly.”
“May it not be posssible,” asked Septimius, “to
have too profound a sense of the marvellous contrivance
and adaptation of this material world to
require or believe in anything spiritual? How wonderful
it is to see it all alive on this spring day, all
growing, budding! Do we exhaust it in our little
life? Not so; not in a hundred or a thousand lives.
The whole race of man, living from the beginning of
time, have not, in all their number and multiplicity
and in all their duration, come in the least to know
the world they live in! And how is this rich world
thrown away upon us, because we live in it such a
moment! What mortal work has ever been done
since the world began! Because we have no time.
No lesson is taught. We are snatched away from
our study before we have learned the alphabet. As
the world now exists, I confess it to you frankly, my
dear pastor and instructor, it seems to me all a
failure, because we do not live long enough.”
“But the lesson is carried on in another state of
being!”
“Not the lesson that we begin here,” said Septimius.
“We might as well train a child in a primeval
forest, to teach him how to live in a European court.
No, the fall of man, which Scripture tells us of, seems
to me to have its operation in this grievous shortening
of earthly existence, so that our life here at
all is grown ridiculous.”
“Well, Septimius,” replied the minister, sadly, yet
not as one shocked by what he had never heard
before, “I must leave you to struggle through this
form of unbelief as best you may, knowing that
it is by your own efforts that you must come
to the other side of this slough. We will talk further
another time. You are getting worn out, my
young friend, with much study and anxiety. It were
well for you to live more, for the present, in this
earthly life that you prize so highly. Cannot you
interest yourself in the state of this country, in this
coming strife, the voice of which now sounds so
hoarsely and so near us? Come out of your thoughts
and breathe another air.”
“I will try,” said Septimius.
“Do,” said the minister, extending his hand to
him, “and in a little time you will find the change.”
He shook the young man's hand kindly, and took
his leave, while Septimius entered his house, and
turning to the right sat down in his study, where,
before the fireplace, stood the table with books and
papers. On the shelves around the low-studded walls
appearance, many of them having descended to him
from learned ancestors, and having been brought to
light by himself after long lying in dusty closets;
works of good and learned divines, whose wisdom he
had happened, by help of the Devil, to turn to mischief,
reading them by the light of hell-fire. For,
indeed, Septimius had but given the clergyman the
merest partial glimpse of his state of mind. He
was not a new beginner in doubt; but, on the contrary,
it seemed to him as if he had never been other
than a doubter and questioner, even in his boyhood;
believing nothing, although a thin veil of reverence
had kept him from questioning some things. And
now the new, strange thought of the sufficiency of
the world for man, if man were only sufficient for
that, kept recurring to him; and with it came a certain
sense, which he had been conscious of before,
that he, at least, might never die. The feeling was
not peculiar to Septimius. It is an instinct, the
meaning of which is mistaken. We have strongly
within us the sense of an undying principle, and we
transfer that true sense to this life and to the body,
instead of interpreting it justly as the promise of
spiritual immortality.
So Septimius looked up out of his thoughts, and
said proudly: “Why should I die? I cannot die,
if worthy to live. What if I should say this moment
that I will not die, not till ages hence, not till the
world is exhausted? Let other men die, if they
choose or yield; let him that is strong enough live!”
After this flush of heroic mood, however, the glow
subsided, and poor Septimius spent the rest of the
day, as was his wont, poring over his books, in which
all the meanings seemed dead and mouldy, and like
pressed leaves (some of which dropped out of the
books as he opened them), brown, brittle, sapless;
so even the thoughts, which when the writers had
gathered them seemed to them so brightly colored
and full of life. Then he began to see that there
must have been some principle of life left out of
the book, so that these gathered thoughts lacked
something that had given them their only value.
Then he suspected that the way truly to live and
answer the purposes of life was not to gather up
thoughts into books, where they grew so dry, but
to live and still be going about, full of green wisdom,
ripening ever, not in maxims cut and dry, but a
wisdom ready for daily occasions, like a living fountain;
and that to be this, it was necessary to exist
long on earth, drink in all its lessons, and not to
die on the attainment of some smattering of truth;
but to live all the more for that; and apply it to
mankind, and increase it thereby.
Everything drifted towards the strong, strange
eddy into which his mind had been drawn: all his
thoughts set hitherward.
So he sat brooding in his study until the shrill-voiced
old woman — an aunt, who was his housekeeper
and domestic ruler — called him to dinner, —
a frugal dinner, — and chided him for seeming inattentive
to a dish of early dandelions which she had
respect for the future clerical rank of her nephew,
and for his already being a bachelor of arts. The
old woman's voice spoke outside of Septimius, rambling
away, and he paying little heed, till at last
dinner was over, and Septimius drew back his chair,
about to leave the table.
“Nephew Septimius,” said the old woman, “you
began this meal to-day without asking a blessing, you
get up from it without giving thanks, and you soon
to be a minister of the Word.”
“God bless the meat,” replied Septimius (by way
of blessing), “and make it strengthen us for the life
he means us to bear. Thank God for our food,”
he added (by way of grace), “and may it become
a portion in us of an immortal body.”
“That sounds good, Septimius,” said the old lady.
“Ah! you 'll be a mighty man in the pulpit, and
worthy to keep up the name of your great-grandfather,
who, they say, made the leaves wither on
a tree with the fierceness of his blast against a
sin. Some say, to be sure, it was an early frost that
helped him.”
“I never heard that before, Aunt Keziah,” said
Septimius.
“I warrant you no,” replied his aunt. “A man
dies, and his greatness perishes as if it had never
been, and people remember nothing of him only
when they see his gravestone over his old dry bones,
and say he was a good man in his day.”
“What truth there is in Aunt Keziah's words!”
and anticipation of that contemptuous appreciation
of a man after his death! Every living man triumphs
over every dead one, as he lies, poor and
helpless, under the mould, a pinch of dust, a heap
of bones, an evil odor! I hate the thought! It
shall not be so!”
It was strange how every little incident thus
brought him back to that one subject which was
taking so strong hold of his mind; every avenue led
thitherward; and he took it for an indication that
nature had intended, by innumerable ways, to point
out to us the great truth that death was an alien
misfortune, a prodigy, a monstrosity, into which man
had only fallen by defect; and that even now, if a
man had a reasonable portion of his original strength
in him, he might live forever and spurn death.
Our story is an internal one, dealing as little as
possible with outward events, and taking hold of these
only where it cannot be helped, in order by means of
them to delineate the history of a mind bewildered in
certain errors. We would not willingly, if we could,
give a lively and picturesque surrounding to this
delineation, but it is necessary that we should advert
to the circumstances of the time in which this inward
history was passing. We will say, therefore, that that
night there was a cry of alarm passing all through the
succession of country towns and rural communities
that lay around Boston, and dying away towards the
coast and the wilder forest borders. Horsemen galloped
past the line of farm-houses shouting alarm!
like dreams through the midnight. Around the
little rude meeting-houses there was here and there
the beat of a drum, and the assemblage of farmers
with their weapons. So all that night there was
marching, there was mustering, there was trouble;
and, on the road from Boston, a steady march of
soldiers' feet onward, onward into the land whose last
warlike disturbance had been when the red Indians
trod it.
Septimius heard it, and knew, like the rest, that it
was the sound of coming war. “Fools that men
are!” said he, as he rose from bed and looked out at
the misty stars; “they do not live long enough to
know the value and purport of life, else they would
combine together to live long, instead of throwing
away the lives of thousands as they do. And what
matters a little tyranny in so short a life? What
matters a form of government for such ephemeral
creatures?”
As morning brightened, these sounds, this clamor,
— or something that was in the air and caused the
clamor, — grew so loud that Septimius seemed to feel
it even in his solitude. It was in the atmosphere, —
storm, wild excitement, a coming deed. Men hurried
along the usually lonely road in groups, with
weapons in their hands, — the old fowling-piece of
seven-foot barrel, with which the Puritans had shot
ducks on the river and Walden Pond; the heavy
harquebus, which perhaps had levelled one of King
Philip's Indians; the old King gun, that blazed away
all were hurrying each other. It was a
good time, everybody felt, to be alive, a nearer kindred,
a closer sympathy between man and man; a
sense of the goodness of the world, of the sacredness
of country, of the excellence of life; and yet its slight
account compared with any truth, any principle; the
weighing of the material and ethereal, and the finding
the former not worth considering, when, nevertheless,
it had so much to do with the settlement of the crisis.
The ennobling of brute force; the feeling that it had
its godlike side; the drawing of heroic breath amid
the scenes of ordinary life, so that it seemed as if they
had all been transfigured since yesterday. O, high,
heroic, tremulous juncture, when man felt himself
almost an angel; on the verge of doing deeds that
outwardly look so fiendish! O, strange rapture of the
coming battle! We know something of that time
now; we that have seen the muster of the village
soldiery on the meeting-house green, and at railway
stations; and heard the drum and fife, and seen the
farewells; seen the familiar faces that we hardly
knew, now that we felt them to be heroes; breathed
higher breath for their sakes; felt our eyes moistened;
thanked them in our souls for teaching us that
nature is yet capable of heroic moments; felt how a
great impulse lifts up a people, and every cold, passionless,
indifferent spectator, — lifts him up into religion,
and makes him join in what becomes an act of
devotion, a prayer, when perhaps he but half approves.
Septimius could not study on a morning like this.
do with this excitement; that his studious life kept
him away from it; that his intended profession was
that of peace; but say what he might to himself,
there was a tremor, a bubbling impulse, a tingling in
his ears, — the page that he opened glimmered and
dazzled before him.
“Septimius! Septimius!” cried Aunt Keziah, looking
into the room, “in Heaven's name, are you going
to sit here to-day, and the redcoats coming to burn
the house over our heads? Must I sweep you out
with the broomstick? For shame, boy! for shame!”
“Are they coming, then, Aunt Keziah?” asked her
nephew. “Well, I am not a fighting-man.”
“Certain they are. They have sacked Lexington,
and slain the people, and burnt the meeting-house.
That concerns even the parsons; and you reckon
yourself among them. Go out, go out, I say, and
learn the news!”
Whether moved by these exhortations, or by his
own stifled curiosity, Septimius did at length issue
from his door, though with that reluctance which
hampers and impedes men whose current of thought
and interest runs apart from that of the world in
general; but forth he came, feeling strangely, and
yet with a strong impulse to fling himself headlong
into the emotion of the moment. It was a beautiful
morning, spring-like and summer-like at once. If
there had been nothing else to do or think of, such a
morning was enough for life only to breathe its air
and be conscious of its inspiring influence.
Septimius turned along the road towards the village,
meaning to mingle with the crowd on the green,
and there learn all he could of the rumors that
vaguely filled the air, and doubtless were shaping
themselves into various forms of fiction.
As he passed the small dwelling of Rose Garfield,
she stood on the doorstep, and bounded forth a little
way to meet him, looking frightened, excited, and yet
half pleased, but strangely pretty; prettier than ever
before, owing to some hasty adornment or other, that
she would never have succeeded so well in giving to
herself if she had had more time to do it in.
“Septimius — Mr. Felton,” cried she, asking information
of him who, of all men in the neighborhood,
knew nothing of the intelligence afloat; but it showed
a certain importance that Septimius had with her.
“Do you really think the redcoats are coming? Ah,
what shall we do? What shall we do? But you are
not going to the village, too, and leave us all alone?”
“I know not whether they are coming or no, Rose,”
said Septimius, stopping to admire the young girl's
fresh beauty, which made a double stroke upon him
by her excitement, and, moreover, made her twice as
free with him as ever she had been before; for there
is nothing truer than that any breaking up of the
ordinary state of things is apt to shake women out of
their proprieties, break down barriers, and bring them
into perilous proximity with the world. “Are you
alone here? Had you not better take shelter in the
village?”
“And leave my poor, bedridden grandmother!”
But I suppose I am in no danger. Go to the village,
if you like.”
“Where is Robert Hagburn?” asked Septimius.
“Gone to the village this hour past, with his grandfather's
old firelock on his shoulder,” said Rose; “he
was running bullets before daylight.”
“Rose, I will stay with you,” said Septimius.
“O gracious, here they come, I 'm sure!” cried
Rose. “Look yonder at the dust. Mercy! a man
at a gallop!”
In fact, along the road, a considerable stretch of
which was visible, they heard the clatter of hoofs and
saw a little cloud of dust approaching at the rate of
a gallop, and disclosing, as it drew near, a hatless
countryman in his shirt-sleeves, who, bending over his
horse's neck, applied a cart-whip lustily to the animal's
flanks, so as to incite him to most unwonted speed.
At the same time, glaring upon Rose and Septimius,
he lifted up his voice and shouted in a strange, high
tone, that communicated the tremor and excitement
of the shouter to each auditor: “Alarum! alarum!
alarum! The redcoats! The redcoats! To arms!
alarum!”
And trailing this sound far wavering behind him
like a pennon, the eager horseman dashed onward to
the village.
“O dear, what shall we do?” cried Rose, her eyes
full of tears, yet dancing with excitement. “They
are coming! they are coming! I hear the drum and
fife.”
“I really believe they are,” said Septimius, his
cheek flushing and growing pale, not with fear, but
the inevitable tremor, half painful, half pleasurable,
of the moment. “Hark! there was the shrill note
of a fife. Yes, they are coming!”
He tried to persuade Rose to hide herself in the
house; but that young person would not be persuaded
to do so, clinging to Septimius in a way
that flattered while it perplexed him. Besides, with
all the girl's fright, she had still a good deal of
courage, and much curiosity too, to see what these
redcoats were of whom she heard such terrible
stories.
“Well, well, Rose,” said Septimius; “I doubt
not we may stay here without danger, — you, a
woman, and I, whose profession is to be that of
peace and good-will to all men. They cannot, whatever
is said of them, be on an errand of massacre.
We will stand here quietly; and, seeing that we
do not fear them, they will understand that we
mean them no harm.”
They stood, accordingly, a little in front of the
door by the well-curb, and soon they saw a heavy
cloud of dust, from amidst which shone bayonets;
and anon, a military band, which had hitherto been
silent, struck up, with drum and fife, to which the
tramp of a thousand feet fell in regular order; then
came the column, moving massively, and the redcoats
who seemed somewhat wearied by a long night-march,
dusty, with bedraggled gaiters, covered with
sweat which had run down from their powdered locks.
stoutly, as men that needed only a half-hour's rest,
a good breakfast, and a pot of beer apiece, to make
them ready to face the world. Nor did their faces
look anywise rancorous; but at most, only heavy,
cloddish, good-natured, and humane.
“O heavens, Mr. Felton!” whispered Rose, “why
should we shoot these men, or they us? they look
kind, if homely. Each of them has a mother and
sisters, I suppose, just like our men.”
“It is the strangest thing in the world that we
can think of killing them,” said Septimius. “Human
life is so precious.”
Just as they were passing the cottage, a halt was
called by the commanding officer, in order that some
little rest might get the troops into a better condition
and give them breath before entering the village,
where it was important to make as imposing a show
as possible. During this brief stop, some of the soldiers
approached the well-curb, near which Rose and
Septimius were standing, and let down the bucket
to satisfy their thirst. A young officer, a petulant
boy, extremely handsome, and of gay and buoyant
deportment, also came up.
“Get me a cup, pretty one,” said he, patting Rose's
cheek with great freedom, though it was somewhat
and indefinitely short of rudeness; “a mug, or something
to drink out of, and you shall have a kiss for
your pains.”
“Stand off, sir!” said Septimius, fiercely; “it is
a coward's part to insult a woman.”
“I intend no insult in this,” replied the handsome
young officer, suddenly snatching a kiss from Rose,
before she could draw back. “And if you think it
so, my good friend, you had better take your weapon
and get as much satisfaction as you can, shooting at
me from behind a hedge.”
Before Septimius could reply or act, — and, in
truth, the easy presumption of the young Englishman
made it difficult for him, an inexperienced recluse as
he was, to know what to do or say, — the drum beat
a little tap, recalling the soldiers to their rank and
to order. The young officer hastened back, with a
laughing glance at Rose and a light, contemptuous
look of defiance at Septimius, the drums rattling out
in full beat, and the troops marched on.
“What impertinence!” said Rose, whose indignant
color made her look pretty enough almost to excuse
the offence.
It is not easy to see how Septimius could have
shielded her from the insult; and yet he felt inconceivably
outraged and humiliated at the thought
that this offence had occurred while Rose was under
his protection, and he responsible for her. Besides,
somehow or other, he was angry with her for having
undergone the wrong, though certainly most unreasonably;
for the whole thing was quicker done than
said.
“You had better go into the house now, Rose,”
said he, “and see to your bedridden grandmother.”
“And what will you do, Septimius?” asked she.
“Perhaps I will house myself, also,” he replied.
shoot him behind a hedge.”
“But not kill him outright; I suppose he has a
mother and a sweetheart, the handsome young officer,”
murmured Rose pityingly to herself.
Septimius went into his house, and sat in his study
for some hours, in that unpleasant state of feeling
which a man of brooding thought is apt to experience
when the world around him is in a state of intense
action, which he finds it impossible to sympathize
with. There seemed to be a stream rushing past him,
by which, even if he plunged into the midst of it, he
could not be wet. He felt himself strangely ajar
with the human race, and would have given much
either to be in full accord with it, or to be separated
from it forever.
“I am dissevered from it. It is my doom to be
only a spectator of life; to look on as one apart from
it. Is it not well, therefore, that, sharing none of its
pleasures and happiness, I should be free of its fatalities,
its brevity? How cold I am now, while this
whirlpool of public feeling is eddying around me. It
is as if I had not been born of woman!”
Thus it was, that, drawing wild inferences from
phenomena of the mind and heart common to people
who, by some morbid action within themselves, are
set ajar with the world, Septimius continued still to
come round to that strange idea of undyingness which
had recently taken possession of him. And yet he
was wrong in thinking himself cold, and that he felt
no sympathy in the fever of patriotism that was
as a flame; he could not fix his thoughts upon his
book; he could not sit in his chair, but kept pacing
to and fro, while through the open window came
noises to which his imagination gave diverse interpretation.
Now it was a distant drum; now shouts;
by and by there came the rattle of musketry, that
seemed to proceed from some point more distant
than the village; a regular roll, then a ragged volley,
then scattering shots. Unable any longer to preserve
this unnatural indifference, Septimius snatched his
gun, and, rushing out of the house, climbed the abrupt
hillside behind, whence he could see a long way
towards the village, till a slight bend hid the uneven
road. It was quite vacant, not a passenger upon it.
But there seemed to be confusion in that direction;
an unseen and inscrutable trouble, blowing thence
towards him, intimated by vague sounds, — by no
sounds. Listening eagerly, however, he at last fancied
a mustering sound of the drum; then it seemed as if
it were coming towards him; while in advance rode
another horseman, the same kind of headlong messenger,
in appearance, who had passed the house with
his ghastly cry of alarum; then appeared scattered
countrymen, with guns in their hands, straggling
across fields. Then he caught sight of the regular
array of British soldiers, filling the road with their
front, and marching along as firmly as ever, though at
a quick pace, while he fancied that the officers looked
watchfully around. As he looked, a shot rang sharp
from the hillside towards the village; the smoke
in the midst of the troops. Septimius shuddered; it
was so like murder that he really could not tell
the difference; his knees trembled beneath him; his
breath grew short, not with terror, but with some
new sensation of awe.
Another shot or two came almost simultaneously
from the wooded height, but without any effect that
Septimius could perceive. Almost at the same moment
a company of the British soldiers wheeled from
the main body, and, dashing out of the road, climbed
the hill, and disappeared into the wood and shrubbery
that veiled it. There were a few straggling shots, by
whom fired, or with what effect, was invisible, and
meanwhile the main body of the enemy proceeded
along the road. They had now advanced so nigh that
Septimius was strangely assailed by the idea that he
might, with the gun in his hand, fire right into the
midst of them, and select any man of that now hostile
band to be a victim. How strange, how strange it is,
this deep, wild passion that nature has implanted in
us to be the death of our fellow-creatures, and which
coexists at the same time with horror! Septimius
levelled his weapon, and drew it up again; he marked
a mounted officer, who seemed to be in chief command,
whom he knew that he could kill. But no!
he had really no such purpose. Only it was such a
temptation. And in a moment the horse would leap,
the officer would fall and lie there in the dust of the
road, bleeding, gasping, breathing in spasms, breathing
no more.
While the young man, in these unusual circumstances,
stood watching the marching of the troops,
he heard the noise of rustling boughs, and the voices
of men, and soon understood that the party, which he
had seen separate itself from the main body and
ascend the hill, was now marching along on the
hill-top, the long ridge which, with a gap or two,
extended as much as a mile from the village. One
of these gaps occurred a little way from where Septimius
stood. They were acting as flank guard, to
prevent the uproused people from coming so close to
the main body as to fire upon it. He looked and saw
that the detachment of British was plunging down one
side of this gap, with intent to ascend the other, so
that they would pass directly over the spot where he
stood; a slight removal to one side, among the small
bushes, would conceal him. He stepped aside accordingly,
and from his concealment, not without drawing
quicker breaths, beheld the party draw near. They
were more intent upon the space between them and
the main body than upon the dense thicket of birchtrees,
pitch-pines, sumach, and dwarf oaks, which,
scarcely yet beginning to bud into leaf, lay on the
other side, and in which Septimius lurked.
[Describe how their faces affected him, passing so
near; how strange they seemed.]
They had all passed, except an officer who brought
up the rear, and who had perhaps been attracted by
some slight motion that Septimius made, — some
rustle in the thicket; for he stopped, fixed his eyes
piercingly towards the spot where he stood, and
or I shoot,” said he.
Not to avoid the shot, but because his manhood
felt a call upon it not to skulk in obscurity from an
open enemy, Septimius at once stood forth, and confronted
the same handsome young officer with whom
those fierce words had passed on account of his
rudeness to Rose Garfield. Septimius's fierce Indian
blood stirred in him, and gave a murderous excitement.
“Ah, it is you!” said the young officer, with a
haughty smile. “You meant, then, to take up with
my hint of shooting at me from behind a hedge?
This is better. Come, we have in the first place the
great quarrel between me a king's soldier, and you a
rebel; next our private affair, on account of yonder
pretty girl. Come, let us take a shot on either
score!”
The young officer was so handsome, so beautiful, in
budding youth; there was such a free, gay petulance
in his manner; there seemed so little of real evil
in him; he put himself on equal ground with the
rustic Septimius so generously, that the latter, often
so morbid and sullen, never felt a greater kindness
for fellow-man than at this moment for this
youth.
“I have no enmity towards you,” said he; “go in
peace.”
“No enmity!” replied the officer. “Then why
were you here with your gun amongst the shrubbery?
But I have a mind to do my first deed of arms on
as prisoner.”
“A prisoner!” cried Septimius, that Indian fierceness
that was in him arousing itself, and thrusting
up its malign head like a snake. “Never! If you
would have me, you must take my dead body.”
“Ah, well, you have pluck in you, I see, only it
needs a considerable stirring. Come, this is a good
quarrel of ours. Let us fight it out. Stand where
you are, and I will give the word of command. Now;
ready, aim, fire!”
As the young officer spoke the three last words,
in rapid succession, he and his antagonist brought
their firelocks to the shoulder, aimed and fired. Septimius
felt, as it were, the sting of a gadfly passing
across his temple, as the Englishman's bullet grazed
it; but, to his surprise and horror (for the whole
thing scarcely seemed real to him), he saw the officer
give a great start, drop his fusil, and stagger against
a tree, with his hand to his breast. He endeavored
to support himself erect, but, failing in the effort,
beckoned to Septimius.
“Come, my good friend,” said he, with that playful,
petulant smile flitting over his face again. “It
is my first and last fight. Let me down as softly as
you can on mother earth, the mother of both you
and me; so we are brothers; and this may be a
brotherly act, though it does not look so, nor feel so.
Ah! that was a twinge indeed!”
“Good God!” exclaimed Septimius. “I had no thought
of this, no malice towards you in the least!”
“Nor I towards you,” said the young man. “It
was boy's play, and the end of it is that I die a
boy, instead of living forever, as perhaps I otherwise
might.”
“Living forever!” repeated Septimius, his attention
arrested, even at that breathless moment, by
words that rang so strangely on what had been his
brooding thought.
“Yes; but I have lost my chance,” said the young
officer. Then, as Septimius helped him to lie against
the little hillock of a decayed and buried stump,
“Thank you; thank you. If you could only call
back one of my comrades to hear my dying words.
But I forgot. You have killed me, and they would
take your life.”
In truth, Septimius was so moved and so astonished,
that he probably would have called back the young
man's comrades, had it been possible; but, marching
at the swift rate of men in peril, they had already
gone far onward, in their passage through the shrubbery
that had ceased to rustle behind them.
“Yes; I must die here!” said the young man,
with a forlorn expression, as of a school-boy far away
from home, “and nobody to see me now but you,
who have killed me. Could you fetch me a drop of
water? I have a great thirst.”
Septimius, in a dream of horror and pity, rushed
down the hillside; the house was empty, for Aunt
Keziah had gone for shelter and sympathy to some
of the neighbors. He filled a jug with cold water,
and hurried back to the hill-top, finding the young
few moments.
“I thank you, my enemy that was, my friend that
is,” murmured he, faintly smiling. “Methinks, next
to the father and mother that gave us birth, the
next most intimate relation must be with the man
that slays us, who introduces us to the mysterious
world to which this is but the portal. You and I
are singularly connected, doubt it not, in the scenes
of the unknown world.”
“O, believe me,” cried Septimius, “I grieve for you
like a brother!”
“I see it, my dear friend,” said the young officer;
“and though my blood is on your hands, I forgive
you freely, if there is anything to forgive. But I am
dying, and have a few words to say, which you must
hear. You have slain me in fair fight, and my spoils,
according to the rules and customs of warfare, belong
to the victor. Hang up my sword and fusil over
your chimney-place, and tell your children, twenty
years hence, how they were won. My purse, keep it
or give it to the poor. There is something here, next
my heart, which I would fain have sent to the address
which I will give you.”
Septimius, obeying his directions, took from his
breast a miniature that hung round it; but, on
examination, it proved that the bullet had passed
directly through it, shattering the ivory, so that the
woman's face it represented was quite destroyed.
“Ah! that is a pity,” said the young man; and yet
Septimius thought that there was something light and
“Well, but send it; cause it to be transmitted,
according to the address.”
He gave Septimius, and made him take down on a
tablet which he had about him, the name of a hall
in one of the midland counties of England.
“Ah, that old place,” said he, “with its oaks, and
its lawn, and its park, and its Elizabethan gables!
I little thought I should die here, so far away, in this
barren Yankee land. Where will you bury me?”
As Septimius hesitated to answer, the young man
continued: “I would like to have lain in the little
old church at Whitnash, which comes up before me
now, with its low, gray tower, and the old yew-tree
in front, hollow with age, and the village clustering
about it, with its thatched houses. I would be loath
to lie in one of your Yankee graveyards, for I have a
distaste for them, — though I love you, my slayer.
Bury me here, on this very spot. A soldier lies best
where he falls.”
“Here, in secret?” exclaimed Septimius.
“Yes; there is no consecration in your Puritan
burial-grounds,” said the dying youth, some of that
queer narrowness of English Churchism coming into
his mind. “So bury me here, in my soldier's dress.
Ah! and my watch! I have done with time, and
you, perhaps, have a long lease of it; so take it, not
as spoil, but as my parting gift. And that reminds
me of one other thing. Open that pocket-book which
you have in your hand.”
Septimius did so, and by the officer's direction took
written in a crabbed hand; it was considerably worn
in the outer folds, but not within. There was also a
small silver key in the pocket-book.
“I leave it with you,” said the officer; “it was
given me by an uncle, a learned man of science, who
intended me great good by what he there wrote.
Reap the profit, if you can. Sooth to say, I never
read beyond the first lines of the paper.”
Septimius was surprised, or deeply impressed, to see
that through this paper, as well as through the miniature,
had gone his fatal bullet, — straight through
the midst; and some of the young man's blood,
saturating his dress, had wet the paper all over. He
hardly thought himself likely to derive any good from
what it had cost a human life, taken (however uncriminally)
by his own hands, to obtain.
“Is there anything more that I can do for you?”
asked he, with genuine sympathy and sorrow, as he
knelt by his fallen foe's side.
“Nothing, nothing, I believe,” said he. “There
was one thing I might have confessed; if there were a
holy man here, I might have confessed, and asked his
prayers; for though I have lived few years, it has
been long enough to do a great wrong. But I will
try to pray in my secret soul. Turn my face towards
the trunk of the tree, for I have taken my last look at
the world. There, let me be now.”
Septimius did as the young man requested, and
then stood leaning against one of the neighboring
pines, watching his victim with a tender concern that
through his frame were felt equally in his own. There
was a murmuring from the youth's lips which seemed
to Septimius swift, soft, and melancholy, like the
voice of a child when it has some naughtiness to
confess to its mother at bedtime; contrite, pleading,
yet trusting. So it continued for a few minutes;
then there was a sudden start and struggle, as if he
were striving to rise; his eyes met those of Septimius
with a wild, troubled gaze, but as the latter caught
him in his arms, he was dead. Septimius laid the
body softly down on the leaf-strewn earth, and tried,
as he had heard was the custom with the dead, to
compose the features distorted by the dying agony.
He then flung himself on the ground at a little distance,
and gave himself up to the reflections suggested
by the strange occurrences of the last hour.
He had taken a human life; and, however the
circumstances might excuse him, — might make the
thing even something praiseworthy, and that would
be called patriotic, — still, it was not at once that a
fresh country youth could see anything but horror in
the blood with which his hand was stained. It seemed
so dreadful to have reduced this gay, animated, beautiful
being to a lump of dead flesh for the flies to
settle upon, and which in a few hours would begin to
decay; which must be put forthwith into the earth,
lest it should be a horror to men's eyes; that delicious
beauty for women to love; that strength and
courage to make him famous among men, — all come
to nothing; all probabilities of life in one so gifted;
the keen ecstatic joy, — this never could be made up,
— all ended quite; for the dark doubt descended
upon Septimius, that, because of the very fitness that
was in this youth to enjoy this world, so much the
less chance was there of his being fit for any other
world. What could it do for him there, — this beautiful
grace and elegance of feature, — where there was
no form, nothing tangible nor visible? what good that
readiness and aptness for associating with all created
things, doing his part, acting, enjoying, when, under
the changed conditions of another state of being, all
this adaptedness would fail? Had he been gifted
with permanence on earth, there could not have been
a more admirable creature than this young man; but
as his fate had turned out, he was a mere grub, an
illusion, something that nature had held out in mockery,
and then withdrawn. A weed might grow from
his dust now; that little spot on the barren hill-top,
where he had desired to be buried, would be greener
for some years to come, and that was all the difference.
Septimius could not get beyond the earthiness;
his feeling was as if, by an act of violence, he had forever
cut off a happy human existence. And such was
his own love of life and clinging to it, peculiar to
dark, sombre natures, and which lighter and gayer
ones can never know, that he shuddered at his deed,
and at himself, and could with difficulty bear to be
alone with the corpse of his victim, — trembled at the
thought of turning his face towards him.
Yet he did so, because he could not endure the
towards him as he lay; so he came and stood beside
him, looking down into his white, upturned face.
But it was wonderful! What a change had come over
it since, only a few moments ago, he looked at that
death-contorted countenance! Now there was a high
and sweet expression upon it, of great joy and surprise,
and yet a quietude diffused throughout, as if
the peace being so very great was what had surprised
him. The expression was like a light gleaming and
glowing within him. Septimius had often, at a certain
space of time after sunset, looking westward, seen
a living radiance in the sky, — the last light of the
dead day, that seemed just the counterpart of this
death-light in the young man's face. It was as if the
youth were just at the gate of heaven, which, swinging
softly open, let the inconceivable glory of the blessed
city shine upon his face, and kindle it up with gentle,
undisturbing astonishment and purest joy. It was an
expression contrived by God's providence to comfort; to
overcome all the dark auguries that the physical ugliness
of death inevitably creates, and to prove, by the
divine glory on the face, that the ugliness is a delusion.
It was as if the dead man himself showed his face out
of the sky, with heaven's blessing on it, and bade the
afflicted be of good cheer, and believe in immortality.
Septimius remembered the young man's injunctions
to bury him there, on the hill, without uncovering the
body; and though it seemed a sin and shame to cover
up that beautiful body with earth of the grave, and
give it to the worm, yet he resolved to obey.
Be it confessed that, beautiful as the dead form
looked, and guiltless as Septimius must be held in
causing his death, still he felt as if he should be eased
when it was under the ground. He hastened down to
the house, and brought up a shovel and a pickaxe, and
began his unwonted task of grave-digging, delving
earnestly a deep pit, sometimes pausing in his toil,
while the sweat-drops poured from him, to look at the
beautiful clay that was to occupy it. Sometimes he
paused, too, to listen to the shots that pealed in the
far distance, towards the east, whither the battle had
long since rolled out of reach and almost out of hearing.
It seemed to have gathered about itself the
whole life of the land, attending it along its bloody
course in a struggling throng of shouting, shooting
men, so still and solitary was everything left behind
it. It seemed the very midland solitude of the world
where Septimius was delving at the grave. He and
his dead were alone together, and he was going to put
the body under the sod, and be quite alone.
The grave was now deep, and Septimius was stooping
down into its depths among dirt and pebbles,
levelling off the bottom, which he considered to be
profound enough to hide the young man's mystery
forever, when a voice spoke above him; a solemn,
quiet voice, which he knew well.
“Septimius! what are you doing here?”
He looked up and saw the minister.
“I have slain a man in fair fight,” answered he,
“and am about to bury him as he requested. I am
glad you are come. You, reverend sir, can fitly say a
for it is very lonely and terrible to be here.”
He climbed out of the grave, and, in reply to the
minister's inquiries, communicated to him the events
of the morning, and the youth's strange wish to be
buried here, without having his remains subjected to
the hands of those who would prepare it for the grave.
The minister hesitated.
“At an ordinary time,” said he, “such a singular
request would of course have to be refused. Your
own safety, the good and wise rules that make it
necessary that all things relating to death and burial
should be done publicly and in order, would forbid it.”
“Yes,” replied Septimius; “but, it may be, scores
of men will fall to-day, and be flung into hasty graves
without funeral rites; without its ever being known,
perhaps, what mother has lost her son. I cannot but
think that I ought to perform the dying request of
the youth whom I have slain. He trusted in me
not to uncover his body myself, nor to betray it to
the hands of others.”
“A singular request,” said the good minister, gazing
with deep interest at the beautiful dead face, and
graceful, slender, manly figure. “What could have
been its motive? But no matter. I think, Septimius,
that you are bound to obey his request; indeed,
having promised him, nothing short of an impossibility
should prevent your keeping your faith. Let
us lose no time, then.”
With few but deeply solemn rites the young stranger
was laid by the minister and the youth who slew
Septimius, gathering some branches and twigs, spread
them over the face that was turned upward from the
bottom of the pit, into which the sun gleamed downward,
throwing its rays so as almost to touch it. The
twigs partially hid it, but still its white shone
through. Then the minister threw a handful of
earth upon it, and, accustomed as he was to burials,
tears fell from his eyes along with the mould.
“It is sad,” said he, “this poor young man, coming
from opulence, no doubt, a dear English home,
to die here for no end, one of the first-fruits of a
bloody war, — so much privately sacrificed. But let
him rest, Septimius. I am sorry that he fell by your
hand, though it involves no shadow of a crime. But
death is a thing too serious not to melt into the
nature of a man like you.”
“It does not weigh upon my conscience, I think,”
said Septimius; “though I cannot but feel sorrow,
and wish my hand were as clean as yesterday. It
is, indeed, a dreadful thing to take human life.”
“It is a most serious thing,” replied the minister;
“but perhaps we are apt to over-estimate the importance
of death at any particular moment. If the
question were whether to die or to live forever, then,
indeed, scarcely anything should justify the putting
a fellow-creature to death. But since it only shortens
his earthly life, and brings a little forward a change
which, since God permits it, is, we may conclude, as
fit to take place then as at any other time, it alters
the case. I often think that there are many things
crises, that are more important to us than this mysterious
circumstance of death, which we deem the
most important of all. All we understand of it is,
that it takes the dead person away from our knowledge
of him, which, while we live with him, is so
very scanty.”
“You estimate at nothing, it seems, his earthly
life, which might have been so happy.”
“At next to nothing,” said the minister; “since, as
I have observed, it must, at any rate, have closed so
soon.”
Septimius thought of what the young man, in his
last moments, had said of his prospect or opportunity
of living a life of interminable length, and which prospect
he had bequeathed to himself. But of this he
did not speak to the minister, being, indeed, ashamed
to have it supposed that he would put any serious
weight on such a bequest, although it might be that
the dark enterprise of his nature had secretly seized
upon this idea, and, though yet sane enough to be
influenced by a fear of ridicule, was busy incorporating
it with his thoughts.
So Septimius smoothed down the young stranger's
earthy bed, and returned to his home, where he hung
up the sword over the mantel-piece in his study, and
hung the gold watch, too, on a nail, — the first time
he had ever had possession of such a thing. Nor did
he now feel altogether at ease in his mind about keeping
it, — the time-measurer of one whose mortal life
he had cut off. A splendid watch it was, round as a
who has slain a man to step into his vacant place in
all respects; and from the beginning of man's dealings
with man this right has been practically recognized,
whether among warriors or robbers, as paramount to
every other. Yet Septimius could not feel easy in
availing himself of this right. He therefore resolved
to keep the watch, and even the sword and fusil, —
which were less questionable spoils of war, — only
till he should be able to restore them to some representative
of the young officer. The contents of the
purse, in accordance with the request of the dying
youth, he would expend in relieving the necessities of
those whom the war (now broken out, and of which
no one could see the limit) might put in need of it.
The miniature, with its broken and shattered face,
that had so vainly interposed itself between its wearer
and death, had been sent to its address.
But as to the mysterious document, the written
paper, that he had laid aside without unfolding it,
but with a care that betokened more interest in it
than in either gold or weapon, or even in the golden
representative of that earthly time on which he set
so high a value. There was something tremulous in
his touch of it; it seemed as if he were afraid of it
by the mode in which he hid it away, and secured
himself from it, as it were.
This done, the air of the room, the low-ceilinged
eastern room where he studied and thought, became
too close for him, and he hastened out; for he was
full of the unshaped sense of all that had befallen,
broken-out war was intermixed with that of what he
had done personally in the great struggle that was
beginning. He longed, too, to know what was the
news of the battle that had gone rolling onward along
the hitherto peaceful country road, converting everywhere
(this demon of war, we mean), with one blast
of its red sulphurous breath, the peaceful husbandman
to a soldier thirsting for blood. He turned his
steps, therefore, towards the village, thinking it probable
that news must have arrived either of defeat or
victory, from messengers or fliers, to cheer or sadden
the old men, the women, and the children, who alone
perhaps remained there.
But Septimius did not get to the village. As he
passed along by the cottage that has been already
described, Rose Garfield was standing at the door,
peering anxiously forth to know what was the issue
of the conflict, — as it has been woman's fate to do
from the beginning of the world, and is so still.
Seeing Septimius, she forgot the restraint that she
had hitherto kept herself under, and, flying at him
like a bird, she cried out, “Septimius, dear Septimius,
where have you been? What news do you bring?
You look as if you had seen some strange and dreadful
thing.”
“Ah, is it so? Does my face tell such stories?”
exclaimed the young man. “I did not mean it
should. Yes, Rose, I have seen and done such things
as change a man in a moment.”
“Then you have been in this terrible fight,” said Rose.
“Yes, Rose, I have had my part in it,” answered
Septimius.
He was on the point of relieving his overburdened
mind by telling her what had happened no farther
off than on the hill above them; but, seeing her
excitement, and recollecting her own momentary interview
with the young officer, and the forced intimacy
and link that had been established between them by
the kiss, he feared to agitate her further by telling
her that that gay and beautiful young man had since
been slain, and deposited in a bloody grave by his
hands. And yet the recollection of that kiss caused
a thrill of vengeful joy at the thought that the perpetrator
had since expiated his offence with his life, and
that it was himself that did it, so deeply was Septimius's
Indian nature of revenge and blood incorporated
with that of more peaceful forefathers, although
Septimius had grace enough to chide down that
bloody spirit, feeling that it made him, not a patriot,
but a murderer.
“Ah,” said Rose, shuddering, “it is awful when we
must kill one another! And who knows where it
will end?”
“With me it will end here, Rose,” said Septimius.
“It may be lawful for any man, even if he have
devoted himself to God, or however peaceful his pursuits,
to fight to the death when the enemy's step is
on the soil of his home; but only for that perilous
juncture, which passed, he should return to his own
way of peace. I have done a terrible thing for once,
dear Rose, one that might well trace a dark line
think it my duty to pursue any further a work for
which my studies and my nature unfit me.”
“O no! O no!” said Rose; “never! and you a
minister, or soon to be one. There must be some
peacemakers left in the world, or everything will turn
to blood and confusion; for even women grow dreadfully
fierce in these times. My old grandmother
laments her bedriddenness, because, she says, she
cannot go to cheer on the people against the enemy.
But she remembers the old times of the Indian wars,
when the women were as much in danger of death as
the men, and so were almost as fierce as they, and
killed men sometimes with their own hands. But
women, nowadays, ought to be gentler; let the men
be fierce, if they must, except you, and such as you,
Septimius.”
“Ah, dear Rose,” said Septimius, “I have not the
kind and sweet impulses that you speak of. I need
something to soften and warm my cold, hard life;
something to make me feel how dreadful this time of
warfare is. I need you, dear Rose, who are all kindness
of heart and mercy.”
And here Septimius, hurried away by I know not
what excitement of the time, — the disturbed state of
the country, his own ebullition of passion, the deed he
had done, the desire to press one human being close
to his life, because he had shed the blood of another,
his half-formed purposes, his shapeless impulses; in
short, being affected by the whole stir of his nature,
— spoke to Rose of love, and with an energy that,
bounds. And Rose, whose maiden thoughts, to say
the truth, had long dwelt upon this young man, —
admiring him for a certain dark beauty, knowing him
familiarly from childhood, and yet having the sense,
that is so bewitching, of remoteness, intermixed with
intimacy, because he was so unlike herself; having a
woman's respect for scholarship, her imagination the
more impressed by all in him that she could not comprehend,
— Rose yielded to his impetuous suit, and
gave him the troth that he requested. And yet it
was with a sort of reluctance and drawing back; her
whole nature, her secretest heart, her deepest womanhood,
perhaps, did not consent. There was something
in Septimius, in his wild, mixed nature, the monstrousness
that had grown out of his hybried race, the
black infusions, too, which melancholic men had left
there, the devilishness that had been symbolized in
the popular regard about his family, that made her
shiver, even while she came the closer to him for that
very dread. And when he gave her the kiss of
betrothment her lips grew white. If it had not been
in the day of turmoil, if he had asked her in any
quiet time, when Rose's heart was in its natural mood,
it may well be that, with tears and pity for him, and
half-pity for herself, Rose would have told Septimius
that she did not think she could love him well enough
to be his wife.
And how was it with Septimius? Well; there was
a singular correspondence in his feelings to those of
Rose Garfield. At first, carried away by a passion
itself all in a moment, he felt, and so spoke to Rose,
so pleaded his suit, as if his whole earthly happiness
depended on her consent to be his bride. It seemed
to him that her love would be the sunshine in the
gloomy dungeon of his life. But when her bashful,
downcast, tremulous consent was given, then immediately
came a strange misgiving into his mind. He
felt as if he had taken to himself something good and
beautiful doubtless in itself, but which might be the
exchange for one more suited to him, that he must
now give up. The intellect, which was the prominent
point in Septimius, stirred and heaved, crying out
vaguely that its own claims, perhaps, were ignored in
this contract. Septimius had perhaps no right to love
at all; if he did, it should have been a woman of
another make, who could be his intellectual companion
and helper. And then, perchance, — perchance,
— there was destined for him some high, lonely path,
in which, to make any progress, to come to any end,
he must walk unburdened by the affections. Such
thoughts as these depressed and chilled (as many men
have found them, or similar ones, to do) the moment
of success that should have been the most exulting
in the world. And so, in the kiss which these two
lovers had exchanged there was, after all, something
that repelled; and when they parted they wondered
at their strange states of mind, but would not acknowledge
that they had done a thing that ought not
to have been done. Nothing is surer, however, than
that, if we suffer ourselves to be drawn into too close
of our proper tendency towards them, or theirs towards
us, a reaction is sure to follow.
Septimius quitted Rose, and resumed his walk
towards the village. But now it was near sunset, and
there began to be straggling passengers along the
road, some of whom came slowly, as if they had
received hurts; all seemed wearied. Among them
one form appeared which Rose soon found that she
recognized. It was Robert Hagburn, with a shattered
firelock in his hand, broken at the but, and his left
arm bound with a fragment of his shirt, and suspended
in a handkerchief; and he walked weariedly,
but brightened up at sight of Rose, as if ashamed to
let her see how exhausted and dispirited he was.
Perhaps he expected a smile, at least a more earnest
reception than he met; for Rose, with the restraint
of what had recently passed drawing her back, merely
went gravely a few steps to meet him, and said, “Robert,
how tired and pale you look! Are you hurt?”
“It is of no consequence,” replied Robert Hagburn;
“a scratch on my left arm from an officer's sword,
with whose head my gunstock made instant acquaintance.
It is no matter, Rose; you do not care for it,
nor do I either.”
“How can you say so, Robert?” she replied. But
without more greeting he passed her, and went into
his own house, where, flinging himself into a chair, he
remained in that despondency that men generally feel
after a fight, even if a successful one.
Septimius, the next day, lost no time in writing a
letter to the direction given him by the young officer,
conveying a brief account of the latter's death and
burial, and a signification that he held in readiness to
give up certain articles of property, at any future
time, to his representatives, mentioning also the
amount of money contained in the purse, and his
intention, in compliance with the verbal will of the
deceased, to expend it in alleviating the wants of
prisoners. Having so done, he went up on the hill
to look at the grave, and satisfy himself that the
scene there had not been a dream; a point which he
was inclined to question, in spite of the tangible evidence
of the sword and watch, which still hung over
the mantel-piece. There was the little mound, however,
looking so incontrovertibly a grave, that it
seemed to him as if all the world must see it, and
wonder at the fact of its being there, and spend their
wits in conjecturing who slept within; and, indeed, it
seemed to give the affair a questionable character,
this secret burial, and he wondered and wondered why
the young man had been so earnest about it. Well;
there was the grave; and, moreover, on the leafy
earth, where the dying youth had lain, there were
traces of blood, which no rain had yet washed away.
Septimius wondered at the easiness with which the
acquiesced in this deed; in fact, he felt in a slight
degree the effects of that taste of blood, which makes
the slaying of men, like any other abuse, sometimes
become a passion. Perhaps it was his Indian trait
stirring in him again; at any rate, it is not delightful
animal.
Looking down from the hill-top, he saw the little
dwelling of Rose Garfield, and caught a glimpse of the
girl herself, passing the windows or the door, about
her household duties, and listened to hear the singing
which usually broke out of her. But Rose, for some
reason or other, did not warble as usual this morning.
She trod about silently, and somehow or other
she was translated out of the ideality in which Septimius
usually enveloped her, and looked little more
than a New England girl, very pretty indeed, but not
enough so perhaps to engross a man's life and higher
purposes into her own narrow circle; so, at least,
Septimius thought. Looking a little farther, — down
into the green recess where stood Robert Hagburn's
house, — he saw that young man, looking very pale,
with his arm in a sling, sitting listlessly on a half-chopped
log of wood, which was not likely soon to be
severed by Robert's axe. Like other lovers, Septimius
had not failed to be aware that Robert Hagburn was
sensible to Rose Garfield's attractions; and now, as he
looked down on them both from his elevated position,
he wondered if it would not have been better for
Rose's happiness if her thoughts and virgin fancies had
settled on that frank, cheerful, able, wholesome young
man, instead of on himself, who met her on so few
points; and, in relation to whom, there was perhaps a
plant that had its root in the grave, that would entwine
itself around his whole life, overshadowing it with dark,
rich foliage and fruit that he alone could feast upon.
For the sombre imagination of Septimius, though
he kept it as much as possible away from the subject,
still kept hinting and whispering, still coming back to
the point, still secretly suggesting that the event of
yesterday was to have momentous consequences upon
his fate.
He had not yet looked at the paper which the
young man bequeathed to him; he had laid it away
unopened; not that he felt little interest in it, but,
on the contrary, because he looked for some blaze of
light which had been reserved for him alone. The
young officer had been only the bearer of it to him,
and he had come hither to die by his hand, because
that was the readiest way by which he could deliver
his message. How else, in the infinite chances of
human affairs, could the document have found its way
to its destined possessor? Thus mused Septimius,
pacing to and fro on the level edge of his hill-top,
apart from the world, looking down occasionally into
it, and seeing its love and interest away from him;
while Rose, it might be looking upward, saw occasionally
his passing figure, and trembled at the nearness
and remoteness that existed between them; and Robert
Hagburn looked too, and wondered what manner
of man it was who, having won Rose Garfield (for his
instinct told him this was so), could keep that distance
between her and him, thinking remote thoughts.
Yes; there was Septimius, treading a path of his
own on the hill-top; his feet began only that morning
to wear it in his walking to and fro, sheltered from
the lower world, except in occasional glimpses, by the
the hillside. But many a year thereafter he continued
to tread that path, till it was worn deep with his footsteps
and trodden down hard; and it was believed by
some of his superstitious neighbors that the grass and
little shrubs shrank away from his path, and made it
wider on that account; because there was something
in the broodings that urged him to and fro along the
path alien to nature and its productions. There was
another opinion, too, that an invisible fiend, one of his
relatives by blood, walked side by side with him, and
so made the pathway wider than his single footsteps
could have made it. But all this was idle, and was,
indeed, only the foolish babble that hovers like a mist
about men who withdraw themselves from the throng,
and involve themselves in unintelligible pursuits and
interests of their own. For the present, the small
world, which alone knew of him, considered Septimius
as a studious young man, who was fitting for the
ministry, and was likely enough to do credit to the
ministerial blood that he drew from his ancestors, in
spite of the wild stream that the Indian priest had
contributed; and perhaps none the worse, as a clergyman,
for having an instinctive sense of the nature of
the Devil from his traditionary claims to partake of
his blood. But what strange interest there is in
tracing out the first steps by which we enter on a
career that influences our life; and this deep-worn
pathway on the hill-top, passing and repassing by a
grave, seemed to symbolize it in Septimius's case.
I suppose the morbidness of Septimius's disposition
paper into his possession. Had he received it by
post, it might not have impressed him; he might
possibly have looked over it with ridicule, and tossed
it aside. But he had taken it from a dying man, and
he felt that his fate was in it; and truly it turned
out to be so. He waited for a fit opportunity to
open it and read it; he put it off as if he cared nothing
about it; but perhaps it was because he cared
so much. Whenever he had a happy time with Rose
(and, moody as Septimius was, such happy moments
came), he felt that then was not the time to look into
the paper, — it was not to be read in a happy mood.
Once he asked Rose to walk with him on the hill-top.
“Why, what a path you have worn here, Septimius!”
said the girl. “You walk miles and miles
on this one spot, and get no farther on than when
you started. That is strange walking!”
“I don't know, Rose; I sometimes think I get a
little onward. But it is sweeter — yes, much sweeter,
I find — to have you walking on this path here than
to be treading it alone.”
“I am glad of that,” said Rose; “for sometimes,
when I look up here, and see you through the
branches, with your head bent down and your hands
clasped behind you, treading, treading, treading, always
in one way, I wonder whether I am at all in
your mind. I don't think, Septimius,” added she,
looking up in his face and smiling, “that ever a girl
had just such a young man for a lover.”
“No young man ever had such a girl, I am sure,”
said Septimius; “so sweet, so good for him, so prolific
of good influences!”
“Ah, it makes me think well of myself to bring
such a smile into your face! But, Septimius, what
is this little hillock here so close to our path? Have
you heaped it up here for a seat? Shall we sit down
upon it for an instant? — for it makes me more tired
to walk backward and forward on one path than to
go straight forward a much longer distance.”
“Well; but we will not sit down on this hillock,”
said Septimius, drawing her away from it. “Farther
out this way, if you please, Rose, where we shall have
a better view over the wide plain, the valley, and the
long, tame ridge of hills on the other side, shutting
it in like human life. It is a landscape that never
tires, though it has nothing striking about it; and I
am glad that there are no great hills to be thrusting
themselves into my thoughts, and crowding out better
things. It might be desirable, in some states of
mind, to have a glimpse of water, — to have the lake
that once must have covered this green valley, —
because water reflects the sky, and so is like religion
in life, the spiritual element.”
“There is the brook running through it, though we
do not see it,” replied Rose; “a torpid little brook,
to be sure; but, as you say, it has heaven in its
bosom, like Walden Pond, or any wider one.”
As they sat together on the hill-top, they could
look down into Robert Hagburn's enclosure, and they
saw him, with his arm now relieved from the sling,
man by his side, to whom he seemed to be
talking and explaining some matter. Even at that
distance Septimius could see that the rustic stoop and
uncouthness had somehow fallen away from Robert,
and that he seemed developed.
“What has come to Robert Hagburn?” said he.
“He looks like another man than the lout I knew a
few weeks ago.”
“Nothing,” said Rose Garfield, “except what comes
to a good many young men nowadays. He has enlisted,
and is going to the war. It is a pity for his
mother.”
“A great pity,” said Septimius. “Mothers are
greatly to be pitied all over the country just now,
and there are some even more to be pitied than
the mothers, though many of them do not know or
suspect anything about their cause of grief at present.”
“Of whom do you speak?” asked Rose.
“I mean those many good and sweet young girls,”
said Septimius, “who would have been happy wives
to the thousands of young men who now, like Robert
Hagburn, are going to the war. Those young men —
many of them, at least — will sicken and die in camp,
or be shot down, or struck through with bayonets on
battle-fields, and turn to dust and bones; while the
girls that would have loved them, and made happy
firesides for them, will pine and wither, and tread along
many sour and discontented years, and at last go out
of life without knowing what life is. So you see,
or kills one and worse than kills the other.”
“No woman will live single on account of poor
Robert Hagburn being shot,” said Rose, with a change
of tone; “for he would never be married were he to
stay at home and plough the field.”
“How can you tell that, Rose?” asked Septimius.
Rose did not tell how she came to know so much
about Robert Hagburn's matrimonial purposes; but
after this little talk it appeared as if something had
risen up between them, — a sort of mist, a medium,
in which their intimacy was not increased; for the
flow and interchange of sentiment was balked, and
they took only one or two turns in silence along
Septimius's trodden path. I don't know exactly what
it was; but there are cases in which it is inscrutably
revealed to persons that they have made a mistake in
what is of the highest concern to them; and this
truth often comes in the shape of a vague depression
of the spirit, like a vapor settling down on a landscape;
a misgiving, coming and going perhaps, a lack
of perfect certainty. Whatever it was, Rose and
Septimius had no more tender and playful words
that day; and Rose soon went to look after her
grandmother, and Septimius went and shut himself
up in his study, after making an arrangement to meet
Rose the next day.
Septimius shut himself up, and drew forth the
document which the young officer, with that singular
smile on his dying face, had bequeathed to him as
folded parchment, right through which, as aforesaid,
was a bullet-hole and some stains of blood. Septimius
unrolled the parchment cover, and found inside
a manuscript, closely written in a crabbed hand;
so crabbed, indeed, that Septimius could not at first
read a word of it, nor even satisfy himself in what
language it was written. There seemed to be Latin
words, and some interspersed ones in Greek characters,
and here and there he could doubtfully read
an English sentence; but, on the whole, it was an
unintelligible mass, conveying somehow an idea that
it was the fruit of vast labor and erudition, emanating
from a mind very full of books, and grinding and
pressing down the great accumulation of grapes that
it had gathered from so many vineyards, and squeezing
out rich viscid juices, — potent wine, — with
which the reader might get drunk. Some of it,
moreover, seemed, for the further mystification of
the officer, to be written in cipher; a needless precaution,
it might seem, when the writer's natural
chirography was so full of puzzle and bewilderment.
Septimius looked at this strange manuscript, and
it shook in his hands as he held it before his eyes,
so great was his excitement. Probably, doubtless,
it was in a great measure owing to the way in which
it came to him, with such circumstances of tragedy
and mystery; as if — so secret and so important was it
— it could not be within the knowledge of two persons
at once, and therefore it was necessary that one
should die in the act of transmitting it to the hand of
it. By the bloody hand, as all the great possessions
in this world have been gained and inherited, he had
succeeded to the legacy, the richest that mortal man
ever could receive. He pored over the inscrutable
sentences, and wondered, when he should succeed in
reading one, if it might summon up a subject-fiend,
appearing with thunder and devilish demonstrations.
And by what other strange chance had the document
come into the hand of him who alone was fit to
receive it? It seemed to Septimius, in his enthusiastic
egotism, as if the whole chain of events had been
arranged purposely for this end; a difference had
come between two kindred peoples; a war had broken
out; a young officer, with the traditions of an old
family represented in his line, had marched, and had
met with a peaceful student, who had been incited
from high and noble motives to take his life; then
came a strange, brief intimacy, in which his victim
made the slayer his heir. All these chances, as they
seemed, all these interferences of Providence, as they
doubtless were, had been necessary in order to put
this manuscript into the hands of Septimius, who now
pored over it, and could not with certainty read one
word!
But this did not trouble him, except for the momentary
delay. Because he felt well assured that the
strong, concentrated study that he would bring to it
would remove all difficulties, as the rays of a lens
melt stones; as the telescope pierces through densest
light of stars, and resolves them into their individual
if it were necessary; but earnestness and application
should do quickly the work of years.
Amid these musings he was interrupted by his
Aunt Keziah; though generally observant enough of
her nephew's studies, and feeling a sanctity in them,
both because of his intending to be a minister and
because she had a great reverence for learning, even
if heathenish, this good old lady summoned Septimius
somewhat peremptorily to chop wood for her domestic
purposes. How strange it is, — the way in which we
are summoned from all high purposes by these little
homely necessities; all symbolizing the great fact
that the earthly part of us, with its demands, takes
up the greater portion of all our available force. So
Septimius, grumbling and groaning, went to the woodshed
and exercised himself for an hour as the old lady
requested; and it was only by instinct that he worked,
hardly conscious what he was doing. The whole of
passing life seemed impertinent; or if, for an instant,
it seemed otherwise, then his lonely speculations and
plans seemed to become impalpable, and to have only
the consistency of vapor, which his utmost concentration
succeeded no further than to make into the likeness
of absurd faces, mopping, mowing, and laughing
at him.
But that sentence of mystic meaning shone out
before him like a transparency, illuminated in the
darkness of his mind; he determined to take it for his
motto until he should be victorious in his quest.
When he took his candle, to retire apparently to bed,
by the dim light, tried vainly to read it; but he could
not as yet settle himself to concentrated and regular
effort; he kept turning the leaves of the manuscript,
in the hope that some other illuminated sentence
might gleam out upon him, as the first had done, and
shed a light on the context around it; and that then
another would be discovered, with similar effect, until
the whole document would thus be illuminated with
separate stars of light, converging and concentring
in one radiance that should make the whole visible.
But such was his bad fortune, not another word of the
manuscript was he able to read that whole evening;
and, moreover, while he had still an inch of candle
left, Aunt Keziah, in her nightcap, — as witch-like a
figure as ever went to a wizard meeting in the forest
with Septimius's ancestor, — appeared at the door of
the room, aroused from her bed, and shaking her
finger at him.
“Septimius,” said she, “you keep me awake, and
you will ruin your eyes, and turn your head, if you
study till midnight in this manner. You 'll never live
to be a minister, if this is the way you go on.”
“Well, well, Aunt Keziah,” said Septimius, covering
his manuscript with a book, “I am just going to
bed now.”
“Good night, then,” said the old woman; “and
God bless your labors.”
Strangely enough, a glance at the manuscript, as he
hid it from the old woman, had seemed to Septimius
to reveal another sentence, of which he had imperfectly
vain sought the place, and vainly, too, endeavored to
recall the meaning of what he had read. Doubtless
his fancy exaggerated the importance of the sentence,
and he felt as if it might have vanished from the book
forever. In fact, the unfortunate young man, excited
and tossed to and fro by a variety of unusual impulses,
was got into a bad way, and was likely enough to go
mad, unless the balancing portion of his mind proved
to be of greater volume and effect than as yet appeared
to be the case.
The next morning he was up, bright and early,
poring over the manuscript with the sharpened wits
of the new day, peering into its night, into its old,
blurred, forgotten dream; and, indeed, he had been
dreaming about it, and was fully possessed with the
idea that, in his dream, he had taken up the inscrutable
document, and read it off as glibly as he would
the page of a modern drama, in a continual rapture
with the deep truth that it made clear to his comprehension,
and the lucid way in which it evolved the
mode in which man might be restored to his originally
undying state. So strong was the impression, that
when he unfolded the manuscript, it was with almost
the belief that the crabbed old handwriting would be
plain to him. Such did not prove to be the case,
however; so far from it, that poor Septimius in vain
turned over the yellow pages in quest of the one sentence
which he had been able, or fancied he had been
able, to read yesterday. The illumination that had
inscrutableness, a scrawl of unintelligible characters
alike. So much did this affect him, that he had
almost a mind to tear it into a thousand fragments,
and scatter it out of the window to the west-wind,
that was then blowing past the house; and if, in that
summer season, there had been a fire on the hearth, it
is possible that easy realization of a destructive impulse
might have incited him to fling the accursed
scrawl into the hottest of the flames, and thus returned
it to the Devil, who, he suspected, was the
original author of it. Had he done so, what strange
and gloomy passages would I have been spared the
pain of relating! How different would have been the
life of Septimius, — a thoughtful preacher of God's
word, taking severe but conscientious views of man's
state and relations, a heavy-browed walker and worker
on earth, and, finally, a slumberer in an honored
grave, with an epitaph bearing testimony to his great
usefulness in his generation.
But, in the mean time, here was the troublesome
day passing over him, and pestering, bewildering, and
tripping him up with its mere sublunary troubles, as
the days will all of us the moment we try to do anything
that we flatter ourselves is of a little more
importance than others are doing. Aunt Keziah tormented
him a great while about the rich field, just
across the road, in front of the house, which Septimius
had neglected the cultivation of, unwilling to
spare the time to plough, to plant, to hoe it himself,
but hired a lazy lout of the village, when he might just
which Aunt Keziah dressed out in ancient habiliments,
and set up in the midst of the corn. Then came
an old codger from the village, talking to Septimius
about the war, — a theme of which he was weary:
telling the rumor of skirmishes that the next day
would prove to be false, of battles that were immediately
to take place, of encounters with the enemy in
which our side showed the valor of twenty-fold heroes,
but had to retreat; babbling about shells and mortars,
battalions, manœuvres, angles, fascines, and other
items of military art; for war had filled the whole
brain of the people, and enveloped the whole thought
of man in a mist of gunpowder.
In this way, sitting on his doorstep, or in the very
study, haunted by such speculations, this wretched
old man would waste the better part of a summer
afternoon, while Septimius listened, returning abstracted
monosyllables, answering amiss, and wishing
his persecutor jammed into one of the cannons he
talked about, and fired off, to end his interminable
babble in one roar; [talking] of great officers coming
from France and other countries; of overwhelming
forces from England, to put an end to the war at
once; of the unlikelihood that it ever should be
ended; of its hopelessness; of its certainty of a good
and speedy end.
Then came limping along the lane a disabled soldier,
begging his way home from the field, which, a
little while ago, he had sought in the full vigor of
rustic health he was never to know again; with whom
he could (though not from the poor young officer's
deposit of English gold), and send him on his way.
Then came the minister, to talk with his former
pupil, about whom he had latterly had much meditation,
not understanding what mood had taken possession
of him; for the minister was a man of insight,
and from conversations with Septimius, as searching
as he knew how to make them, he had begun to
doubt whether he were sufficiently sound in faith to
adopt the clerical persuasion. Not that he supposed
him to be anything like a confirmed unbeliever;
but he thought it probable that these doubts, these
strange, dark, disheartening suggestions of the Devil,
that so surely infect certain temperaments and measures
of intellect, were tormenting poor Septimius, and
pulling him back from the path in which he was
capable of doing so much good. So he came this
afternoon to talk seriously with him, and to advise
him, if the case were as he supposed, to get for a
time out of the track of the thought in which he had
so long been engaged; to enter into active life; and
by and by, when the morbid influences should have
been overcome by a change of mental and moral
religion, he might return, fresh and healthy, to his
original design.
“What can I do,” asked Septimius, gloomily,
“what business take up, when the whole land lies
waste and idle, except for this war?”
“There is the very business, then,” said the minister.
“Do you think God's work is not to be done in
Septimius, of a bold character, and have a mien and
bearing that gives you a natural command among
men. Go to the wars, and do a valiant part for your
country, and come back to your peaceful mission
when the enemy has vanished. Or you might go as
chaplain to a regiment, and use either hand in battle,
— pray for success before a battle, help win it with
sword or gun, and give thanks to God, kneeling on
the bloody field, at its close. You have already
stretched one foe on your native soil.”
Septimius could not but smile within himself at
this warlike and bloody counsel; and, joining it with
some similar exhortations from Aunt Keziah, he was
inclined to think that women and clergymen are, in
matters of war, the most uncompromising and blood-thirsty
of the community. However, he replied,
coolly, that his moral impulses and his feelings of duty
did not exactly impel him in this direction, and that
he was of opinion that war was a business in which a
man could not engage with safety to his conscience,
unless his conscience actually drove him into it; and
that this made all the difference between heroic battle
and murderous strife. The good minister had nothing
very effectual to answer to this, and took his leave,
with a still stronger opinion than before that there
was something amiss in his pupil's mind.
By this time, this thwarting day had gone on
through its course of little and great impediments to
his pursuit, — the discouragements of trifling and
earthly business, of purely impertinent interruption,
counteraction of different kinds of mind, — until
the hour had come at which he had arranged to meet
Rose Garfield. I am afraid the poor thwarted youth
did not go to his love-tryst in any very amiable mood;
but rather, perhaps, reflecting how all things earthly
and immortal, and love among the rest, whichever
category, of earth or heaven, it may belong to, set
themselves against man's progress in any pursuit that
he seeks to devote himself to. It is one struggle, the
moment he undertakes such a thing, of everything
else in the world to impede him.
However, as it turned out, it was a pleasant and
happy interview that he had with Rose that afternoon.
The girl herself was in a happy, tuneful mood,
and met him with such simplicity, threw such a light
of sweetness over his soul, that Septimius almost
forgot all the wild cares of the day, and walked by her
side with a quiet fulness of pleasure that was new to
him. She reconciled him, in some secret way, to life
as it was, to imperfection, to decay; without any
help from her intellect, but through the influence of
her character, she seemed, not to solve, but to smooth
away, problems that troubled him; merely by being,
by womanhood, by simplicity, she interpreted God's
ways to him; she softened the stoniness that was
gathering about his heart. And so they had a delightful
time of talking, and laughing, and smelling to
flowers; and when they were parting, Septimius said
to her, —
“Rose, you have convinced me that this is a most
and Death, and is bound to prize them equally; and
that God is very kind to his earthly children; and
that all will go well.”
“And have I convinced you of all this?” replied
Rose, with a pretty laughter. “It is all true, no
doubt, but I should not have known how to argue for
it. But you are very sweet, and have not frightened
me to-day.”
“Do I ever frighten you then, Rose?” asked Septimius,
bending his black brow upon her with a look
of surprise and displeasure.
“Yes, sometimes,” said Rose, facing him with courage,
and smiling upon the cloud so as to drive it
away; “when you frown upon me like that, I am a
little afraid you will beat me, all in good time.”
“Now,” said Septimius, laughing again, “you shall
have your choice, to be beaten on the spot, or suffer
another kind of punishment, — which?”
So saying, he snatched her to him, and strove to
kiss her, while Rose, laughing and struggling, cried
out, “The beating! the beating!” But Septimius
relented not, though it was only Rose's cheek that he
succeeded in touching. In truth, except for that first
one, at the moment of their plighted troths, I doubt
whether Septimius ever touched those soft, sweet lips,
where the smiles dwelt and the little pouts. He now
returned to his study, and questioned with himself
whether he should touch that weary, ugly, yellow,
blurred, unintelligible, bewitched, mysterious, bullet-penetrated,
blood-stained manuscript again. There
same time an enticement (irresistible, as it proved)
drawing him towards it. He yielded, and taking it
from his desk, in which the precious, fatal treasure
was locked up, he plunged into it again, and
this time with a certain degree of success. He
found the line which had before gleamed out, and
vanished again, and which now started out in strong
relief; even as when sometimes we see a certain
arrangement of stars in the heavens, and again lose it,
by not seeing its individual stars in the same relation
as before; even so, looking at the manuscript in a
different way, Septimius saw this fragment of a sentence,
and saw, moreover, what was necessary to give
it a certain meaning. “Set the root in a grave, and
wait for what shall blossom. It will be very rich, and
full of juice.” This was the purport, he now felt sure,
of the sentence he had lighted upon; and he took it
to refer to the mode of producing something that was
essential to the thing to be concocted. It might
have only a moral being; or, as is generally the case,
the moral and physical truth went hand in hand.
While Septimius was busying himself in this way,
the summer advanced, and with it there appeared a
new character, making her way into our pages. This
was a slender and pale girl, whom Septimius was
once startled to find, when he ascended his hill-top,
to take his walk to and fro upon the accustomed path,
which he had now worn deep.
What was stranger, she sat down close beside the
grave, which none but he and the minister knew to be
a little, and had planted with various flowers and
shrubs; which the summer had fostered into richness,
the poor young man below having contributed what
he could, and tried to render them as beautiful as he
might, in remembrance of his own beauty. Septimius
wished to conceal the fact of its being a grave: not
that he was tormented with any sense that he had
done wrong in shooting the young man, which had
been done in fair battle; but still it was not the
pleasantest of thoughts, that he had laid a beautiful
human creature, so fit for the enjoyment of life, there,
when his own dark brow, his own troubled breast,
might better, he could not but acknowledge, have
been covered up there. [Perhaps there might sometimes
be something fantastically gay in the language and
behavior of the girl.]
Well; but then, on this flower and shrub disguised
grave, sat this unknown form of a girl, with a slender,
pallid, melancholy grace about her, simply dressed in
a dark attire, which she drew loosely about her. At
first glimpse, Septimius fancied that it might be Rose;
but it needed only a glance to undeceive him; her
figure was of another character from the vigorous,
though slight and elastic beauty of Rose; this was a
drooping grace, and when he came near enough to
see her face, he saw that those large, dark, melancholy
eyes, with which she had looked at him, had never
met his gaze before.
“Good morrow, fair maiden,” said Septimius, with
such courtesy as he knew how to use (which, to say
brought him little into female society). “There is a
nice air here on the hill-top, this sultry morning
below the hill!”
As he spoke, he continued to look wonderingly at the
strange maiden, half fancying that she might be something
that had grown up out of the grave; so unexpected
she was, so simply unlike anything that had
before come there.
The girl did not speak to him, but as she sat by the
grave she kept weeding out the little white blades of
faded autumn grass and yellow pine-spikes, peering
into the soil as if to see what it was all made of, and
everything that was growing there; and in truth,
whether by Septimius's care or no, there seemed to be
several kinds of flowers, — those little asters that
abound everywhere, and golden flowers, such as autumn
supplies with abundance. She seemed to be in
quest of something, and several times plucked a leaf
and examined it carefully; then threw it down again,
and shook her head. At last she lifted up her pale
face, and, fixing her eyes quietly on Septimius, spoke:
“It is not here!”
A very sweet voice it was, — plaintive, low, — and
she spoke to Septimius as if she were familiar with
him, and had something to do with him. He was
greatly interested, not being able to imagine who the
strange girl was, or whence she came, or what, of all
things, could be her reason for coming and sitting
down by this grave, and apparently botanizing upon
it, in quest of some particular plant.
“Are you in search of flowers?” asked Septimius.
“This is but a barren spot for them, and this is not a
good season. In the meadows, and along the margin
of the watercourses, you might find the fringed gentian
at this time. In the woods there are several
pretty flowers, — the side-saddle flower, the anemone;
violets are plentiful in spring, and make the whole
hillside blue. But this hill-top, with its soil strewn
over a heap of pebble-stones, is no place for flowers.”
“The soil is fit,” said the maiden, “but the flower
has not sprung up.”
“What flower do you speak of?” asked Septimius.
“One that is not here,” said the pale girl. “No
matter. I will look for it again next spring.”
“Do you, then, dwell hereabout?” inquired Septimius.
“Surely,” said the maiden, with a look of surprise;
“where else should I dwell? My home is on this
hill-top.”
It not a little startled Septimius, as may be supposed,
to find his paternal inheritance, of which he
and his forefathers had been the only owners since
the world began (for they held it by an Indian deed),
claimed as a home and abiding-place by this fair, pale,
strange-acting maiden, who spoke as if she had as
much right there as if she had grown up out of the soil
like one of the wild, indigenous flowers which she had
been gazing at and handling. However that might be,
the maiden seemed now about to depart, rising, giving
a farewell touch or two to the little verdant hillock,
which looked much the neater for her ministrations.
“Are you going?” said Septimius, looking at her
in wonder.
“For a time,” said she.
“And shall I see you again?” asked he.
“Surely,” said the maiden, “this is my walk, along
the brow of the hill.”
It again smote Septimius with a strange thrill of
surprise to find the walk which he himself had made,
treading it, and smoothing it, and beating it down
with the pressure of his continual feet, from the time
when the tufted grass made the sides all uneven, until
now, when it was such a pathway as you may see
through a wood, or over a field, where many feet pass
every day, — to find this track and exemplification of
his own secret thoughts and plans and emotions, this
writing of his body, impelled by the struggle and
movement of his soul, claimed as her own by a strange
girl with melancholy eyes and voice, who seemed to
have such a sad familiarity with him.
“You are welcome to come here,” said he, endeavoring
at least to keep such hold on his own property as
was implied in making a hospitable surrender of it to
another.
“Yes,” said the girl, “a person should always be
welcome to his own.”
A faint smile seemed to pass over her face as she
said this, vanishing, however, immediately into the
melancholy of her usual expression. She went along
Septimius's path, while he stood gazing at her till she
reached the brow where it sloped towards Robert Hagburn's
house; then she turned, and seemed to wave a
descend. When her figure had entirely sunk behind
the brow of the hill, Septimius slowly followed along
the ridge, meaning to watch from that elevated station
the course she would take; although, indeed, he would
not have been surprised if he had seen nothing, no
trace of her in the whole nearness or distance; in
short, if she had been a freak, an illusion, of a hardworking
mind that had put itself ajar by deeply
brooding on abstruse matters, an illusion of eyes that
he had tried too much by poring over the inscrutable
manuscript, and of intellect that was mystified and
bewildered by trying to grasp things that could not be
grasped. A thing of witchcraft, a sort of fungus-growth
out of the grave, an unsubstantiality altogether;
although, certainly, she had weeded the grave
with bodily fingers, at all events. Still he had so
much of the hereditary mysticism of his race in him,
that he might have held her supernatural, only that
on reaching the brow of the hill he saw her feet
approach the dwelling of Robert Hagburn's mother,
who, moreover, appeared at the threshold beckoning
her to come, with a motherly, hospitable air, that
denoted she knew the strange girl, and recognized her
as human.
It did not lessen Septimius's surprise, however, to
think that such a singular being was established in
the neighborhood without his knowledge; considered
as a real occurrence of this world, it seemed even
more unaccountable than if it had been a thing of
ghostology and witchcraft. Continually through the
among his thoughts and studies; continually, as he
paced along his path, this form seemed to hurry along
by his side on the track that she had claimed for her
own, and he thought of her singular threat or promise,
whichever it were to be held, that he should have a
companion there in future. In the decline of the day,
when he met the schoolmistress coming home from
her little seminary, he snatched the first opportunity
to mention the apparition of the morning, and ask
Rose if she knew anything of her.
“Very little,” said Rose, “but she is flesh and
blood, of that you may be quite sure. She is a girl
who has been shut up in Boston by the siege; perhaps
a daughter of one of the British officers, and her
health being frail, she requires better air than they
have there, and so permission was got for her, from
General Washington, to come and live in the country;
as any one may see, our liberties have nothing to fear
from this poor brain-stricken girl. And Robert Hagburn,
having to bring a message from camp to the
selectmen here, had it in charge to bring the girl,
whom his mother has taken to board.”
“Then the poor thing is crazy?” asked Septimius.
“A little brain-touched, that is all,” replied Rose,
“owing to some grief that she has had; but she is
quite harmless, Robert was told to say, and needs
little or no watching, and will get a kind of fantastic
happiness for herself, if only she is allowed to ramble
about at her pleasure. If thwarted, she might be
very wild and miserable.”
“Have you spoken with her?” asked Spetimius.
“A word or two this morning, as I was going to my
school,” said Rose. “She took me by the hand, and
smiled, and said we would be friends, and that I
should show her where the flowers grew; for that she
had a little spot of her own that she wanted to plant
with them. And she asked me if the Sanguinea sanguinissima
grew hereabout. I should not have taken
her to be ailing in her wits, only for a kind of freespokenness
and familiarity, as if we had been acquainted
a long while; or as if she had lived in some
country where there are no forms and impediments in
people's getting acquainted.”
“Did you like her?” inquired Septimius.
“Yes; almost loved her at first sight,” answered
Rose, “and I hope may do her some little good, poor
thing, being of her own age, and the only companion,
hereabouts, whom she is likely to find. But she has
been well educated, and is a lady, that is easy to see.”
“It is very strange,” said Septimius, “but I fear I
shall be a good deal interrupted in my thoughts and
studies, if she insists on haunting my hill-top as much
as she tells me. My meditations are perhaps of a
little too much importance to be shoved aside for the
sake of gratifying a crazy girl's fantasies.”
“Ah, that is a hard thing to say!” exclaimed Rose,
shocked at her lover's cold egotism, though not giving
it that title. “Let the poor thing glide quietly along
in the path, though it be yours. Perhaps, after a
while, she will help your thoughts.”
“My thoughts,” said Septimius, “are of a kind
would only be from some wise, long-studied, and
experienced scientific man, who could enlighten me as
to the bases and foundation of things, as to mystic
writings, as to chemical elements, as to the mysteries
of language, as to the principles and system on which
we were created. Methinks these are not to be taught
me by a girl touched in the wits.”
“I fear,” replied Rose Garfield with gravity, and
drawing imperceptibly apart from him, “that no
woman can help you much. You despise woman's
thought, and have no need of her affection.”
Septimius said something soft and sweet, and in a
measure true, in regard to the necessity he felt for the
affection and sympathy of one woman at least — the
one now by his side — to keep his life warm and to
make the empty chambers of his heart comfortable.
But even while he spoke, there was something that
dragged upon his tongue; for he felt that the solitary
pursuit in which he was engaged carried him apart
from the sympathy of which he spoke, and that he
was concentrating his efforts and interest entirely
upon himself, and that the more he succeeded the
more remotely he should be carried away, and that his
final triumph would be the complete seclusion of
himself from all that breathed, — the converting him,
from an interested actor, into a cold and disconnected
spectator of all mankind's warm and sympathetic
life. So, as it turned out, this interview with Rose
was one of those in which, coming no one knows
from whence, a nameless cloud springs up between
a cold, sullen spell. Usually, however, it requires
only one word, spoken out of the heart, to break that
spell, and compel the invisible, unsympathetic medium
which the enemy of love has stretched cunningly
between them, to vanish, and let them come closer
together than ever; but, in this case, it might be that
the love was the illusive state, and the estrangement
the real truth, the disenchanted verity. At all events,
when the feeling passed away, in Rose's heart there
was no reaction, no warmer love, as is generally the
case. As for Septimius, he had other things to think
about, and when he next met Rose Garfield, had forgotten
that he had been sensible of a little wounded
feeling, on her part, at parting.
By dint of continued poring over the manuscript,
Septimius now began to comprehend that it was
written in a singular mixture of Latin and ancient
English, with constantly recurring paragraphs of what
he was convinced was a mystic writing; and these
recurring passages of complete unintelligibility seemed
to be necessary to the proper understanding of any
part of the document. What was discoverable was
quaint, curious, but thwarting and perplexing, because
it seemed to imply some very great purpose, only to
be brought out by what was hidden.
Septimius had read, in the old college library during
his pupilage, a work on ciphers and cryptic writing,
but being drawn to it only by his curiosity respecting
whatever was hidden, and not expecting ever to use
his knowledge, he had obtained only the barest idea
passage. Judging by what he could pick out, he
would have thought the whole essay was upon the
moral conduct; all parts of that he could make out
seeming to refer to a certain ascetic rule of life; to
denial of pleasures; these topics being repeated and
insisted on everywhere, although without any discoverable
reference to religious or moral motives;
and always when the author seemed verging towards
a definite purpose, he took refuge in his cipher. Yet
withal, imperfectly (or not at all, rather) as Septimius
could comprehend its purport, this strange
writing had a mystic influence, that wrought upon
his imagination, and with the late singular incidents
of his life, his continual thought on this one subject,
his walk on the hill-top, lonely, or only interrupted
by the pale shadow of a girl, combined to set him
outside of the living world. Rose Garfield perceived
it, knew and felt that he was gliding away from her,
and met him with a reserve which she could not
overcome.
It was a pity that his early friend, Robert Hagburn,
could not at present have any influence over
him, having now regularly joined the Continental
Army, and being engaged in the expedition of Arnold
against Quebec. Indeed, this war, in which the country
was so earnestly and enthusiastically engaged, had
perhaps an influence on Septimius's state of mind,
for it put everybody into an exaggerated and unnatural
state, united enthusiasms of all sorts, heightened
everybody either into its own heroism or into
and Septimius walked so much the more
wildly on his lonely course, because the people were
going enthusiastically on another. In times of revolution
and public disturbance all absurdities are more
unrestrained; the measure of calm sense, the habits,
the orderly decency, are partially lost. More people
become insane, I should suppose; offences against
public morality, female license, are more numerous;
suicides, murders, all ungovernable outbreaks of men's
thoughts, embodying themselves in wild acts, take
place more frequently, and with less horror to the
lookers-on. So [with] Septimius; there was not, as
there would have been at an ordinary time, the same
calmness and truth in the public observation, scrutinizing
everything with its keen criticism, in that
time of seething opinions and overturned principles;
a new time was coming, and Septimius's phase of
novelty attracted less attention so far as it was
known.
So he continued to brood over the manuscript in
his study, and to hide it under lock and key in a
recess of the wall, as if it were a secret of murder;
to walk, too, on his hill-top, where at sunset always
came the pale, crazy maiden, who still seemed to
watch the little hillock with a pertinacious care that
was strange to Septimius. By and by came the
winter and the deep snows; and even then, unwilling
to give up his habitual place of exercise, the monotonousness
of which promoted his wish to keep
before his mind one subject of thought, Septimius
Here, however, he lost for a time the companionship
of the girl; for when the first snow came, she shivered,
and looked at its white heap over the hillock,
and said to Septimius, “I will look for it again in
spring.”
[Septimius is at the point of despair for want of a
guide in his studies.]
The winter swept over, and spring was just beginning
to spread its green flush over the more favored
exposures of the landscape, although on the north
side of stone walls, and the northern nooks of hills,
there were still the remnants of snow-drifts. Septimius's
hill-top, which was of a soil which quickly rid
itself of moisture, now began to be a genial place of
resort to him, and he was one morning taking his
walk there, meditating upon the still insurmountable
difficulties which interposed themselves against the
interpretation of the manuscript, yet feeling the new
gush of spring bring hope to him, and the energy and
elasticity for new effort. Thus pacing to and fro, he
was surprised, as he turned at the extremity of his
walk, to see a figure advancing towards him; not
that of the pale maiden whom he was accustomed to
see there, but a figure as widely different as possible.
[He sees a spider dangling from his web, and examines
him minutely.] It was that of a short, broad, somewhat
elderly man, dressed in a surtout that had a
half-military air, the cocked hat of the period, well
worn, and having a fresher spot in it, whence, perhaps,
a cockade had been recently taken off;
in his hand, which, as he walked, he applied to his
lips, and puffed out volumes of smoke, filling the
pleasant western breeze with the fragrance of some
excellent Virginia. He came slowly along, and Septimius,
slackenening his pace a little, came as slowly to
meet him, feeling somewhat indignant, to be sure,
that anybody should intrude on his sacred hill; until
at last they met, as it happened, close by the memorable
little hillock, on which the grass and flower-leaves
also had begun to sprout. The stranger
looked keenly at Septimius, made a careless salute
by putting his hand up, and took the pipe from his
mouth.
“Mr. Septimius Felton, I suppose?” said he.
“That is my name,” replied Septimius.
“I am Doctor Jabez Portsoaken,” said the stranger,
“late surgeon of his Majesty's sixteenth regiment,
which I quitted when his Majesty's army quitted
Boston, being desirous of trying my fortunes in your
country, and giving the people the benefit of my
scientific knowledge; also to practise some new modes
of medical science, which I could not so well do in
the army.”
“I think you are quite right, Doctor Jabez Portsoaken,”
said Septimius, a little confused and bewildered,
so unused had he become to the society of
strangers.
“And as to you, sir,” said the doctor, who had a
very rough, abrupt way of speaking, “I have to thank
you for a favor done me.”
“Have you, sir?” said Septimius, who was quite
sure that he had never seen the doctor's uncouth figure
before.
“O, ay, me,” said the doctor, puffing coolly, —
“me, in the person of my niece, a sickly, poor,
nervous little thing, who is very fond of walking on
your hill-top, and whom you do not send away.”
“You are the uncle of Sybil Dacy?” said Septimius.
“Even so, her mother's brother,” said the doctor,
with a grotesque bow. “So, being on a visit; the
first that the siege allowed me to pay, to see how
the girl was getting on, I take the opportunity to pay
my respects to you; the more that I understand you
to be a young man of some learning, and it is not
often that one meets with such in this country.”
“No,” said Septimius, abruptly, for indeed he had
half a suspicion that this queer Doctor Portsoaken
was not altogether sincere, — that, in short, he was
making game of him. “You have been misinformed.
I know nothing whatever that is worth knowing.”
“Oho!” said the doctor, with a long puff of smoke
out of his pipe. “If you are convinced of that, you
are one of the wisest men I have met with, young as
you are. I must have been twice your age before I
got so far; and even now, I am sometimes fool
enough to doubt the only thing I was ever sure of
knowing. But come, you make me only the more
earnest to collogue with you. If we put both our
shortcomings together, they may make up an item of
positive knowledge.”
“What use can one make of abortive thoughts?”
said Septimius.
“Do your speculations take a scientific turn?” said
Doctor Portsoaken. “There I can meet you with as
much false knowledge and empiricism as you can bring
for the life of you. Have you ever tried to study
spiders? — there is my strong point now! I have
hung my whole interest in life on a spider's web.”
“I know nothing of them, sir,” said Septimius,
“except to crush them when I see them running
across the floor, or to brush away the festoons of their
webs when they have chanced to escape my Aunt
Keziah's broom.”
“Crush them! Brush away their webs!” cried
the doctor, apparently in a rage, and shaking his pipe
at Septimius. “Sir, it is sacrilege! Yes, it is worse
than murder. Every thread of a spider's web is worth
more than a thread of gold; and before twenty years
are passed, a housemaid will be beaten to death with
her own broomstick if she disturbs one of these sacred
animals. But, come again. Shall we talk of botany,
the virtues of herbs?”
“My Aunt Keziah should meet you there, doctor,”
said Septimius. “She has a native and original acquaintance
with their virtues, and can save and kill
with any of the faculty. As for myself, my studies
have not turned that way.”
“They ought! they ought!” said the doctor, looking
meaningly at him. “The whole thing lies in the
blossom of an herb. Now, you ought to begin with
what lies about you; on this little hillock, for instance”;
were standing, he gave it a kick which went to Septimius's
heart, there seemed to be such a spite and
scorn in it. “On this hillock I see some specimens of
plants which would be worth your looking at.”
Bending down towards the grave as he spoke, he
seemed to give closer attention to what he saw there;
keeping in his stooping position till his face began to
get a purple aspect, for the erudite doctor was of that
make of man who has to be kept right side uppermost
with care. At length he raised himself, muttering,
“Very curious! very curious!”
“Do you see anything remarkable there?” asked
Septimius, with some interest.
“Yes,” said the doctor, bluntly. “No matter
what! The time will come when you may like to
know it.”
“Will you come with me to my residence at the
foot of the hill, Doctor Portsoaken?” asked Septimius.
“I am not a learned man, and have little or no title
to converse with one, except a sincere desire to be
wiser than I am. If you can be moved on such terms
to give me your companionship, I shall be thankful.”
“Sir, I am with you,” said Doctor Portsoaken. “I
will tell you what I know, in the sure belief (for I will
be frank with you) that it will add to the amount of
dangerous folly now in your mind, and help you on
the way to ruin. Take your choice, therefore, whether
to know me further or not.”
“I neither shrink nor fear, — neither hope much,”
said Septimius, quietly. “Anything that you can
receive, and return you such thanks as it may be found
to deserve.”
So saying, he led the way down the hill, by the
steep path that descended abruptly upon the rear of
his bare and unadorned little dwelling; the doctor
following with much foul language (for he had a terrible
habit of swearing) at the difficulties of the way, to
which his short legs were ill adapted. Aunt Keziah
met them at the door, and looked sharply at the doctor,
who returned the gaze with at least as much
keenness, muttering between his teeth, as he did so;
and to say the truth, Aunt Keziah was as worthy of
being sworn at as any woman could well be, for whatever
she might have been in her younger days, she was
at this time as strange a mixture of an Indian squaw and
herb doctress, with the crabbed old maid, and a mingling
of the witch-aspect running through all, as could
well be imagined; and she had a handkerchief over
her head, and she was of hue a dusky yellow, and she
looked very cross. As Septimius ushered the doctor
into his study, and was about to follow him, Aunt
Keziah drew him back.
“Septimius, who is this you have brought here?”
asked she.
“A man I have met on the hill,” answered her
nephew; “a Doctor Portsoaken he calls himself, from
the old country. He says he has knowledge of herbs
and other mysteries; in your own line, it may be. If
you want to talk with him, give the man his dinner,
and find out what there is in him.”
“And what do you want of him yourself, Septimius?”
asked she.
“I? Nothing! — that is to say, I expect nothing,”
said Septimius. “But I am astray, seeking everywhere,
and so I reject no hint, no promise, no faintest
possibility of aid that I may find anywhere. I judge
this man to be a quack, but I judge the same of the
most learned man of his profession, or any other; and
there is a roughness about this man, that may indicate
a little more knowledge than if he were smoother. So,
as he threw himself in my way, I take him in.”
“A grim, ugly-looking old wretch, as ever I saw,”
muttered Aunt Keziah. “Well, he shall have his
dinner; and if he likes to talk about yarb-dishes, I 'm
with him.”
So Septimius followed the doctor into his study,
where he found him with the sword in his hand, which
he had taken from over the mantel-piece, and was
holding it drawn, examining the hilt and blade with
great minuteness; the hilt being wrought in openwork,
with certain heraldic devices, doubtless belonging
to the family of its former wearer.
“I have seen this weapon before,” said the doctor.
“It may well be,” said Septimius. “It was once
worn by a person who served in the army of your
king.”
“And you took it from him?” said the doctor.
“If I did, it was in no way that I need be ashamed
of, or afraid to tell, though I choose rather not to
speak of it,” answered Septimius.
“Have you, then, no desire nor interest to know
who once wore this sword, and who will never draw
sword again?” inquired Doctor Portsoaken. “Poor
Cyril Norton! There was a singular story attached
to that young man, sir, and a singular mystery he
carried about with him, the end of which, perhaps, is
not yet.”
Septimius would have been, indeed, well enough
pleased to learn the mystery which he himself had
seen that there was about the man whom he slew;
but he was afraid that some question might be thereby
started about the secret document that he had kept
possession of; and he therefore would have wished to
avoid the whole subject.
“I cannot be supposed to take much interest in
English family history. It is a hundred and fifty
years, at least, since my own family ceased to be
English,” he answered. “I care more for the present
and future than for the past.”
“It is all one,” said the doctor, sitting down, taking
out a pinch of tobacco, and refilling his pipe.
It is unnecessary to follow up the description of
the visit of the eccentric doctor through the day. Suffice
it to say that there was a sort of charm, or rather
fascination, about the uncouth old fellow, in spite of
his strange ways; in spite of his constant puffing of
tobacco; and in spite, too, of a constant imbibing
of strong liquor, which he made inquiries for, and of
which the best that could be produced was a certain
decoction, infusion, or distillation, pertaining to Aunt
Keziah, and of which the basis was rum, be it said,
gathering, at proper times of the moon, and which
was a well-known drink to all who were favored with
Aunt Keziah's friendship; though there was a story
that it was the very drink which used to be passed
round at witch-meetings, being brewed from the Devil's
own recipe. And, in truth, judging from the taste
(for I once took a sip of a draught prepared from the
same ingredients, and in the same way), I should
think this hellish origin might be the veritable one.
[“I thought,” quoth the doctor, “I could drink anything,
but —”]
But the valiant doctor sipped, and sipped again,
and said with great blasphemy that it was the real
stuff, and only needed henbane to make it perfect.
Then, taking from his pocket a good-sized leathern-covered
flask, with a silver lip fastened on the muzzle,
he offered it to Septimius, who declined, and to Aunt
Keziah, who preferred her own decoction, and then
drank it off himself, with a loud smack of satisfaction,
declaring it to be infernally good brandy.
Well, after this Septimius and he talked; and I
know not how it was, but there was a great deal of
imagination in this queer man, whether a bodily or
spiritual influence it might be hard to say. On the
other hand, Septimius had for a long while held little
intercourse with men; none whatever with men who
could comprehend him; the doctor, too, seemed to
bring the discourse singularly in apposition with what
his host was continually thinking about, for he conversed
on occult matters, on people who had had the
on the powers and qualities of common herbs,
which he believed to be so great, that all around our
feet—growing in the wild forest, afar from man, or
following the footsteps of man wherever he fixes his
residence, across seas, from the old homesteads whence
he migrated, following him everywhere, and offering
themselves sedulously and continually to his notice,
while he only plucks them away from the comparatively
worthless things which he cultivates, and flings
them aside, blaspheming at them because Providence
has sown them so thickly — grow what we call weeds,
only because all the generations, from the beginning
of time till now, have failed to discover their wondrous
virtues, potent for the curing of all diseases, potent for
procuring length of days.
“Everything good,” said the doctor, drinking another
dram of brandy, “lies right at our feet, and all
we need is to gather it up.”
“That 's true,” quoth Keziah, taking just a little
sup of her hellish preparation; “these herbs were all
gathered within a hundred yards of this very spot,
though it took a wise woman to find out their virtues.”
The old woman went off about her household duties,
and then it was that Septimius submitted to the doctor
the list of herbs which he had picked out of the
old document, asking him, as something apposite to
the subject of their discourse, whether he was acquainted
with them, for most of them had very queer
names, some in Latin, some in English.
The bluff doctor put on his spectacles, and looked
over the slip of yellow and worn paper scrutinizingly,
puffing tobacco-smoke upon it in great volumes, as if
thereby to make its hidden purport come out; he
mumbled to himself, he took another sip from his
flask; and then, putting it down on the table, appeared
to meditate.
“This infernal old document,” said he, at length,
“is one that I have never seen before, yet heard of,
nevertheless; for it was my folly in youth (and whether
I am any wiser now is more than I take upon me
to say, but it was my folly then) to be in quest of
certain kinds of secret knowledge, which the fathers
of science thought attainable. Now, in several quarters,
amongst people with whom my pursuits brought
me in contact, I heard of a certain recipe which had
been lost for a generation or two, but which, if it could
be recovered, would prove to have the true life-giving
potency in it. It is said that the ancestor of a great
old family in England was in possession of this secret,
being a man of science, and the friend of Friar Bacon,
who was said to have concocted it himself, partly from
the precepts of his master, partly from his own experiments,
and it is thought he might have been living to
this day, if he had not unluckily been killed in the
wars of the Roses; for you know no recipe for long
life would be proof against an old English arrow, or a
leaden bullet from one of our own firelocks.”
“And what has been the history of the thing after
his death?” asked Septimius.
“It was supposed to be preserved in the family,”
head and eldest son of that family had it at his option
to live forever, if he could only make up his mind to
it. But seemingly there were difficulties in the way.
There was probably a certain diet and regimen to be
observed, certain strict rules of life to be kept, a certain
asceticism to be imposed on the person, which was
not quite agreeable to young men; and after the
period of youth was passed, the human frame became
incapable of being regenerated from the seeds of decay
and death, which, by that time, had become strongly
developed in it. In short, while young, the possessor
of the secret found the terms of immortal life too
hard to be accepted, since it implied the giving up of
most of the things that made life desirable in his view;
and when he came to a more reasonable mind, it was
too late. And so, in all the generations since Friar
Bacon's time, the Nortons have been born, and enjoyed
their young days and worried through their
manhood, and tottered through their old age (unless
taken off sooner by sword, arrow, ball, fever, or what
not), and died in their beds, like men that had no
such option; and so this old yellow paper has done
not the least good to any mortal. Neither do I see
how it can do any good to you, since you know not
the rules, moral or dietetic, that are essential to its
effect. But how did you come by it?”
“It matters not how,” said Septimius, gloomily.
“Enough that I am its rightful possessor and inheritor.
Can you read these old characters?”
“Most of them,” said the doctor; “but let me tell
secret; and, having meddled with such things myself,
I ought to know. The old physicians and chemists
had strange ideas of the virtues of plants, drugs, and
minerals, and equally strange fancies as to the way of
getting those virtues into action. They would throw
a hundred different potencies into a caldron together,
and put them on the fire, and expect to brew a potency
containing all their potencies, and having a different
virtue of its own. Whereas, the most likely result
would be that they would counteract one another, and
the concoction be of no virtue at all; or else some
more powerful ingredient would tincture the whole.”
He read the paper again, and continued: —
“I see nothing else so remarkable in this recipe, as
that it is chiefly made up of some of the commonest
things that grow; plants that you set your foot upon
at your very threshold, in your garden, in your woodwalks,
wherever you go. I doubt not old Aunt
Keziah knows them, and very likely she has brewed
them up in that hell-drink, the remembrance of which
is still rankling in my stomach. I thought I had
swallowed the Devil himself, whom the old woman
had been boiling down. It would be curious enough
if the hideous decoction was the same as old Friar
Bacon and his acolyte discovered by their science!
One ingredient, however, one of those plants, I scarcely
think the old lady can have put into her pot of
Devil's elixir; for it is a rare plant, that does not
grow in these parts.”
“And what is that?” asked Septimius.
“Sanguinea sanguinissima,” said the doctor; “it
has no vulgar name; but it produces a very beautiful
flower, which I have never seen, though some seeds
of it were sent me by a learned friend in Siberia.
The others, divested of their Latin names, are as
common as plantain, pig-weed, and burdock; and it
stands to reason that, if vegetable Nature has any
such wonderfully efficacious medicine in store for
men, and means them to use it, she would have
strewn it everywhere plentifully within their reach.”
“But, after all, it would be a mockery on the old
dame's part,” said the young man, somewhat bitterly,
“since she would thus hold the desired thing seemingly
within our reach; but because she never tells
us how to prepare and obtain its efficacy, we miss
it just as much as if all the ingredients were hidden
from sight and knowledge in the centre of the earth.
We are the playthings and fools of Nature, which she
amuses herself with during our little lifetime, and
then breaks for mere sport, and laughs in our faces as
she does so.”
“Take care, my good fellow,” said the doctor, with
his great coarse laugh. “I rather suspect that you
have already got beyond the age when the great
medicine could do you good; that speech indicates a
great toughness and hardness and bitterness about the
heart that does not accumulate in our tender years.”
Septimius took little or no notice of the raillery of
the grim old doctor but employed the rest of the
time in getting as much information as he could out
of his guest; and though he could not bring himself
he questioned him as closely as possible without betraying
his secret, as to the modes of finding out
cryptic writings. The doctor was not without the
perception that his dark-browed, keen-eyed acquaintance
had some purpose not openly avowed in all
these pertinacious, distinct questions; he discovered a
central reference in them all, and perhaps knew that
Septimius must have in his possession some writing in
hieroglyphics, cipher, or other secret mode, that conveyed
instructions how to operate with the strange
recipe that he had shown him.
“You had better trust me fully, my good sir,” said
he. “Not but what I will give you all the aid I can
without it; for you have done me a greater benefit
than you are aware of, beforehand. No — you will
not? Well, if you can change your mind, seek me
out in Boston, where I have seen fit to settle in the
practice of my profession, and I will serve you according
to your folly; for folly it is, I warn you.”
Nothing else worthy of record is known to have
passed during the doctor's visit; and in due time he
disappeared, as it were, in a whiff of tobacco-smoke,
leaving an odor of brandy and tobacco behind him,
and a traditionary memory of a wizard that had been
there. Septimius went to work with what items of
knowledge he had gathered from him; but the interview
had at least made him aware of one thing, which
was, that he must provide himself with all possible
quantity of scientific knowledge of botany, and perhaps
more extensive knowledge, in order to be able
scientific attainment of the age that produced it (so
said the legend, which seemed reasonable enough), a
great philosopher had wrought his learning into it;
and this had been attempered, regulated, improved,
by the quick, bright intellect of his scholar. Perhaps,
thought Septimius, another deep and earnest intelligence
added to these two may bring the precious
recipe to still greater perfection. At least it shall be
tried. So thinking, he gathered together all the
books that he could find relating to such studies;
he spent one day, moreover, in a walk to Cambridge,
where he searched the alcoves of the college library
for such works as it contained; and borrowing them
from the war-disturbed institution of learning, he
betook himself homewards, and applied himself to the
study with an earnestness of zealous application that
perhaps has been seldom equalled in a study of so
quiet a character. A month or two of study, with
practice upon such plants as he found upon his hill-top,
and along the brook and in other neighboring
localities, sufficed to do a great deal for him. In
this pursuit he was assisted by Sybil, who proved to
have great knowledge in some botanical departments,
especially among flowers; and in her cold and quiet
way, she met him on this subject and glided by his side,
as she had done so long, a companion, a daily observer
and observed of him, mixing herself up with his pursuits,
as if she were an attendant sprite upon him.
But this pale girl was not the only associate of his
studies, the only instructress, whom Septimius found.
the fantastic possibility that Aunt Keziah might have
inherited the same receipt from her Indian ancestry
which had been struck out by the science of Friar
Bacon and his pupil had not failed to impress Septimius,
and to remain on his memory. So, not long
after the doctor's departure, the young man took
occasion one evening to say to his aunt that he
thought his stomach was a little out of order with too
much application, and that perhaps she could give him
some herb-drink or other that would be good for him.
“That I can, Seppy, my darling,” said the old
woman, “and I 'm glad you have the sense to ask
for it at last. Here it is in this bottle; and though
that foolish, blaspheming doctor turned up his old
brandy nose at it, I 'll drink with him any day and
come off better than he.”
So saying, she took out of the closet her brown jug,
stopped with a cork that had a rag twisted round it
to make it tighter, filled a mug half full of the concoction,
and set it on the table before Septimius.
“There, child, smell of that; the smell merely will
do you good; but drink it down, and you 'll live the
longer for it.”
“Indeed, Aunt Keziah, is that so?” asked Septimius,
a little startled by a recommendation which
in some measure tallied with what he wanted in a
medicine. “That 's a good quality.”
He looked into the mug, and saw a turbid, yellow
concoction, not at all attractive to the eye; he smelt
of it, and was partly of opinion that Aunt Keziah had
with the other ingredients of her witch-drink.
He tasted it; not a mere sip, but a good,
genuine gulp, being determined to have real proof
of what the stuff was in all respects. The draught
seemed at first to burn in his mouth, unaccustomed
to any drink but water, and to go scorching all the
way down into his stomach, making him sensible of
the depth of his inwards by a track of fire, far, far
down; and then, worse than the fire, came a taste of
hideous bitterness and nauseousness, which he had
not previously conceived to exist, and which threatened
to stir up his bowels into utter revolt; but
knowing Aunt Keziah's touchiness with regard to this
concoction, and how sacred she held it, he made an
effort of real heroism, squelched down his agony, and
kept his face quiet, with the exception of one strong
convulsion, which he allowed to twist across it for the
sake of saving his life.
“It tastes as if it might have great potency in it,
Aunt Keziah,” said this unfortunate young man;
“I wish you would tell me what it is made of, and
how you brew it; for I have observed you are very
strict and secret about it.”
“Aha! you have seen that, have you?” said Aunt
Keziah, taking a sip of her beloved liquid, and grinning
at him with a face and eyes as yellow as that she
was drinking. In fact, the idea struck him, that in
temper, and all appreciable qualities, Aunt Keziah
was a good deal like this drink of hers, having probably
become saturated by them while she drank of it.
tasted, and smelt of the cup of this hellish wine, as a
wine-bibber does of that which is most fragrant and
delicate. “And you want to know how I make it?
But first, child, tell me honestly, do you love this
drink of mine? Otherwise, here, and at once, we stop
talking about it.”
“I love it for its virtues,” said Septimius, temporizing
with his conscience, “and would prefer it on
that account to the rarest wines.”
“So far good,” said Aunt Keziah, who could not
well conceive that her liquor should be otherwise
than delicious to the palate. “It is the most virtuous
liquor that ever was; and therefore one need
not fear drinking too much of it. And you want to
know what it is made of? Well; I have often
thought of telling you, Seppy, my boy, when you
should come to be old enough; for I have no other
inheritance to leave you, and you are all of my blood,
unless I should happen to have some far-off uncle
among the Cape Indians. But first, you must know
how this good drink, and the faculty of making it,
came down to me from the chiefs, and sachems, and
Peow-wows, that were your ancestors and mine, Septimius,
and from the old wizard who was my great-grandfather
and yours, and who, they say, added the
fire-water to the other ingredients, and so gave it the
only one thing that it wanted to make it perfect.”
And so Aunt Keziah, who had now put herself
into a most comfortable and jolly state by sipping
again, and after pressing Septimius to mind his
a time was enough for a new beginner, its virtues
being so strong, as well as admirable), the old woman
told him a legend strangely wild and uncouth, and
mixed up of savage and civilized life, and of the superstitions
of both, but which yet had a certain analogy,
that impressed Septimius much, to the story that the
doctor had told him.
She said that, many ages ago, there had been a
wild sachem in the forest, a king among the Indians,
and from whom, the old lady said, with a look of
pride, she and Septimius were lineally descended,
and were probably the very last who inherited one
drop of that royal, wise, and warlike blood. The
sachem had lived very long, longer than anybody
knew, for the Indians kept no record, and could only
talk of a great number of moons; and they said he
was as old, or older, than the oldest trees; as old as
the hills almost, and could remember back to the
days of godlike men, who had arts then forgotten.
He was a wise and good man, and could foretell as
far into the future as he could remember into the
past; and he continued to live on, till his people
were afraid that he would live forever, and so disturb
the whole order of nature; and they thought it time
that so good a man, and so great a warrior and
wizard, should be gone to the happy hunting-grounds,
and that so wise a counsellor should go and tell his
experience of life to the Great Father, and give him
an account of matters here, and perhaps lead him to
make some changes in the conduct of the lower
they very reverently assassinated the great never-dying
sachem; for though safe against disease, and
undecayable by age, he was capable of being killed
by violence, though the hardness of his skull broke to
fragments the stone tomahawk with which they at
first tried to kill him.
So a deputation of the best and bravest of the
tribe went to the great sachem, and told him their
thought, and reverently desire his consent to be
put out of the world; and the undying one agreed
with them that it was better for his own comfort
that he should die, and that he had long been weary
of the world, having learned all that it could teach
him, and having, chiefly, learned to despair of ever
making the red race much better than they now
were. So he cheerfully consented, and told them to
kill him if they could; and first they tried the stone
hatchet, which was broken against his skull; and
then they shot arrows at him, which could not pierce
the toughness of his skin; and finally they plastered
up his nose and mouth (which kept uttering wisdom
to the last) with clay and set him to bake in the sun;
so at last his life burnt out of his breast, tearing his
body to pieces, and he died.
[Make this legend grotesque, and express the weariness
of the tribe at the intolerable control the undying one had
of them; his always bringing up precepts from his own
experience, never consenting to anything new, and so impeding
progress; his habits hardening into him, his ascribing
to himself all wisdom, and depriving everybody of
dwelling on the past, so that the world could not bear
him. Describe his ascetic and severe habits, his rigid
calmness, &c.]
But before the great sagamore died he imparted
to a chosen one of his tribe, the next wisest to himself,
the secret of a potent and delicious drink, the
constant imbibing of which, together with his abstinence
from luxury and passion, had kept him alive
so long, and would doubtless have compelled him to
live forever. This drink was compounded of many
ingredients, all of which were remembered and handed
down in tradition, save one, which, either because it
was nowhere to be found, or for some other reason, was
forgotten; so that the drink ceased to give immortal
life as before. They say it was a beautiful purple
flower. [Perhaps the Devil taught him the drink, or else
the Great Spirit, — doubtful which.] But it still was a
most excellent drink, and conducive to health, and
the cure of all diseases; and the Indians had it at the
time of the settlement by the English; and at one of
those wizard meetings in the forest, where the Black
Man used to meet his red children and his white ones,
and be jolly with them, a great Indian wizard taught
the secret to Septimius's great-grandfather, who was
a wizard, and died for it; and he, in return, taught
the Indians to mix it with rum, thinking that this
might be the very ingredient that was missing, and
that by adding it he might give endless life to himself
and all his Indian friends, among whom he had taken
a wife.
“But your great-grandfather, you know, had not
a fair chance to test its virtues, having been hanged
for a wizard; and as for the Indians, they probably
mixed too much fire-water with their liquid, so that
it burnt them up, and they all died; and my mother,
and her mother, — who taught the drink to me, — and
her mother afore her, thought it a sin to try to live
longer than the Lord pleased, so they let themselves
die. And though the drink is good, Septimius, and
toothsome, as you see, yet I sometimes feel as if I
were getting old, like other people, and may die in
the course of the next half-century; so perhaps the
rum was not just the thing that was wanting to make
up the recipe. But it is very good! Take a drop
more of it, dear.”
“Not at present, I thank you, Aunt Keziah,” said
Septimius, gravely; “but will you tell me what the
ingredients are, and how you make it?”
“Yes, I will, my boy, and you shall write them
down,” said the old woman; “for it 's a good drink,
and none the worse, it may be, for not making you
live forever. I sometimes think I had as lief go to
heaven as keep on living here.”
Accordingly, making Septimius take pen and ink,
she proceeded to tell him a list of plants and herbs,
and forest productions, and he was surprised to find
that it agreed most wonderfully with the recipe contained
in the old manuscript, as he had puzzled it
out, and as it had been explained by the doctor.
There were a few variations, it is true; but even here
there was a close analogy, plants indigenous to America
growth of Europe. Then there was another difference
in the mode of preparation, Aunt Keziah's nostrum
being a concoction, whereas the old manuscript gave a
process of distillation. This similarity had a strong
effect on Septimius's imagination. Here was, in one
case, a drink suggested, as might be supposed, to a
primitive people by something similar to that instinct
by which the brute creation recognizes the medicaments
suited to its needs, so that they mixed up fragrant
herbs for reasons wiser than they knew, and
made them into a salutary potion; and here, again,
was a drink contrived by the utmost skill of a great
civilized philosopher, searching the whole field of
science for his purpose; and these two drinks proved,
in all essential particulars, to be identically the
same.
“O, Aunt Keziah,” said he, with a longing earnestness,
“are you sure that you cannot remember that
one ingredient?”
“No, Septimius, I cannot possibly do it,” said she.
“I have tried many things, skunk-cabbage, wormwood,
and a thousand things; for it is truly a pity that the
chief benefit of the thing should be lost for so little.
But the only effect was, to spoil the good taste of the
stuff, and, two or three times, to poison myself, so
that I broke out all over blotches, and once lost the
use of my left arm, and got a dizziness in the head,
and a rheumatic twist in my knee, a hardness of hearing,
and a dimness of sight, and the trembles; all of
which I certainly believe to have been caused by my
the good New England rum. Stick to that, Seppy,
my dear.”
So saying, Aunt Keziah took yet another sip of the
beloved liquid, after vainly pressing Septimius to do
the like; and then lighting her old clay pipe, she sat
down in the chimney-corner, meditating, dreaming,
muttering pious prayers and ejaculations, and sometimes
looking up the wide flue of the chimney, with
thoughts, perhaps, how delightful it must have been
to fly up there, in old times, on excursions by midnight
into the forest, where was the Black Man, and the
Puritan deacons and ladies, and those wild Indian ancestors
of hers; and where the wildness of the forest
was so grim and delightful, and so unlike the commonplaceness
in which she spent her life. For thus
did the savage strain of the woman, mixed up as
it was with the other weird and religious parts of
her composition, sometimes snatch her back into barbarian
life and its instincts; and in Septimius, though
further diluted, and modified likewise by higher cultivation,
there was the same tendency.
Septimius escaped from the old woman, and was
glad to breathe the free air again; so much had he
been wrought upon by her wild legends and wild
character, the more powerful by its analogy with his
own; and perhaps, too, his brain had been a little
bewildered by the draught of her diabolical concoction
which she had compelled him to take. At any
rate, he was glad to escape to his hill-top, the free
air of which had doubtless contributed to keep him
and estranged study as he had addicted himself to.
Here, as it happened, he found both Rose Garfield
and Sybil Dacy, whom the pleasant summer evening
had brought out. They had formed a friendship, or
at least society; and there could not well be a pair
more unlike, — the one so natural, so healthy, so fit to
live in the world; the other such a morbid, pale thing.
So there they were, walking arm in arm, with one arm
round each other's waist, as girls love to do. They
greeted the young man in their several ways, and began
to walk to and fro together, looking at the sunset
as it came on, and talking of things on earth and in
the clouds.
“When has Robert Hagburn been heard from?”
asked Septimius, who, involved in his own pursuits,
was altogether behindhand in the matters of the war,
— shame to him for it!
“There came news, two days past,” said Rose,
blushing. “He is on his way home with the remnant
of General Arnold's command, and will be here soon.”
“He is a brave fellow, Robert,” said Septimius,
carelessly, “and I know not, since life is so short,
that anything better can be done with it than to risk
it as he does.”
“I truly think not,” said Rose Garfield, composedly.
“What a blessing it is to mortals,” said Sybil
Dacy, “what a kindness of Providence, that life is
made so uncertain; that death is thrown in among
the possibilities of our being; that these awful mysteries
are thrown around us, into which we may
to be heroic, how should we plod along in commonplaces
forever, never dreaming high things, never
risking anything? For my part, I think man is more
favored than the angels, and made capable of higher
heroism, greater virtue, and of a more excellent spirit
than they, because we have such a mystery of grief
and terror around us; whereas they, being in a certainty
of God's light, seeing his goodness and his purposes
more perfectly than we, cannot be so brave as
often poor weak man, and weaker woman, has the
opportunity to be, and sometimes makes use of it.
God gave the whole world to man, and if he is left
alone with it, it will make a clod of him at last; but,
to remedy that, God gave man a grave, and it redeems
all, while it seems to destroy all, and makes an immortal
spirit of him in the end.”
“Dear Sybil, you are inspired,” said Rose, gazing in
her face.
“I think you ascribe a great deal too much potency
to the grave,” said Septimius, pausing involuntarily
alone by the little hillock, whose contents he knew so
well. “The grave seems to me a vile pitfall, put right
in our pathway, and catching most of us, — all of us, —
causing us to tumble in at the most inconvenient opportunities,
so that all human life is a jest and a farce,
just for the sake of this inopportune death; for I observe
it never waits for us to accomplish anything:
we may have the salvation of a country in hand, but
we are none the less likely to die for that. So that,
being a believer, on the whole, in the wisdom and
is a mistake, and that by and by we shall overcome it.
I say there is no use in the grave.”
“I still adhere to what I said,” answered Sybil
Dacy; “and besides, there is another use of a grave
which I have often observed in old English graveyards,
where the moss grows green, and embosses
the letters of the gravestones; and also graves are
very good for flower-beds.”
Nobody ever could tell when the strange girl was
going to say what was laughable,—when what was
melancholy; and neither of Sybil's auditors knew
quite what to make of this speech. Neither could
Septimius fail to be a little startled by seeing her,
as she spoke of the grave as a flower-bed, stoop down
to the little hillock to examine the flowers, which,
indeed, seemed to prover her words by growing there
in strange abundance, and of many sorts; so that,
if they could all have bloomed at once, the spot
would have looked like a bouquet by itself, or as if
the earth were richest in beauty there, or as if seeds
had been lavished by some florist. Septimius could
not account for it, for though the hillside did produce
certain flowers,—the aster, the golden-rod, the
violet, and other such simple and common things,—
yet this seemed as if a carpet of bright colors had
been thrown down there, and covered the spot.
“This is very strange,” said he.
“Yes,” said Sybil Dacy, “there is some strange
richness in this little spot of soil.”
“Where could the seeds have come from?—that
teach me botany, methinks, on this one spot.”
“Do you know this plant?” asked Sybil of Septimius,
pointing to one not yet in flower, but of
singular leaf, that was thrusting itself up out of the
ground, on the very centre of the grave, over where
the breast of the sleeper below might seem to be.
“I think there is no other here like it.”
Septimius stooped down to examine it, and was
convinced that it was unlike anything he had seen
of the flower kind; a leaf of a dark green, with
purple veins traversing it, it had a sort of questionable
aspect, as some plants have, so that you would
think it very likely to be poison, and would not like
to touch or smell very intimately, without first inquiring
who would be its guarantee that it should
do no mischief. That it had some richness or other,
either baneful or beneficial, you could not doubt.
“I think it poisonous,” said Rose Garfield, shuddering,
for she was a person so natural she hated
poisonous things, or anything speckled especially, and
did not, indeed, love strangeness. “Yet I should
not wonder if it bore a beautiful flower by and by.
Nevertheless, if I were to do just as I feel inclined,
I should root it up and fling it away.”
“Shall she do so?” said Sybil to Septimius.
“Not for the world,” said he, hastily. “Above all
things, I desire to see what will come of this plant.”
“Be it as you please,” said Sybil. “Meanwhile,
if you like to sit down here and listen to me, I will
tell you a story that happens to come into my mind
old hall that I know well, and have known from my
childhood, in one of the northern counties of England,
where I was born. Would you like to hear it,
Rose?”
“Yes, of all things,” said she. “I like all stories
of hall and cottage in the old country, though now
we must not call it our country any more.”
Sybil looked at Septimius, as if to inquire whether
he, too, chose to listen to her story, and he made
answer: —
“Yes, I shall like to hear the legend, if it is a
genuine one that has been adopted into the popular
belief, and came down in chimney-corners with the
smoke and soot that gathers there; and incrusted
over with humanity, by passing from one homely
mind to another. Then, such stories get to be true,
in a certain sense, and indeed in that sense may be
called true throughout, for the very nucleus, the fiction
in them, seems to have come out of the heart
of man in a way that cannot be imitated of malice
aforethought. Nobody can make a tradition; it takes
a century to make it.”
“I know not whether this legend has the character
you mean,” said Sybil, “but it has lived much more
than a century; and here it is.
“On the threshold of one of the doors of —
Hall there is a bloody footstep impressed into the
doorstep, and ruddy as if the bloody foot had just
trodden there; and it is averred that, on a certain
if you go and look at that doorstep you will see the
mark wet with fresh blood. Some have pretended
to say that this appearance of blood was but dew;
but can dew redden a cambric handkerchief? Will
it crimson the finger-tips when you touch it? And
that is what the bloody footstep will surely do when
the appointed night and hour come round, this very
year, just as it would three hundred years ago.
“Well; but how did it come there? I know not
precisely in what age it was, but long ago, when
light was beginning to shine into what was called the
dark ages, there was a lord of — Hall who applied
himself deeply to knowledge and science, under the
guidance of the wisest man of that age, — a man
so wise that he was thought to be a wizard; and,
indeed, he may have been one, if to be a wizard
consists in having command over secret powers of
nature, that other men do not even suspect the
existence of, and the control of which enables one to
do feats that seem as wonderful as raising the dead.
It is needless to tell you all the strange stories that
have survived to this day about the old Hall; and
how it is believed that the master of it, owing to
his ancient science, has still a sort of residence there,
and control of the place; and how, in one of the
chambers, there is still his antique table, and his
chair, and some rude old instruments and machinery,
and a book, and everything in readiness, just as if
he might still come back to finish some experiment.
What it is important to say is, that one of the chief
discover the means of prolonging his own life, so
that its duration should be indefinite, if not infinite;
and such was his science, that he was believed to
have attained this magnificent and awful purpose.
“So, as you may suppose, the man of science had
great joy in having done this thing, both for the
pride of it, and because it was so delightful a thing
to have before him the prospect of endless time,
which he might spend in adding more and more to
his science, and so doing good to the world; for the
chief obstruction to the improvement of the world
and the growth of knowledge is, that mankind cannot
go straightforward in it, but continually there
have to be new beginnings, and it takes every new
man half his life, if not the whole of it, to come
up to the point where his predecessor left off. And
so this noble man — this man of a noble purpose —
spent many years in finding out this mighty secret;
and at last, it is said, he succeeded. But on what
terms?
“Well, it is said that the terms were dreadful
and horrible; insomuch that the wise man hesitated
whether it were lawful and desirable to take advantage
of them, great as was the object in view.
“You see, the object of the lord of — Hall was
to take a life from the course of Nature, and Nature
did not choose to be defrauded; so that, great as was
the power of this scientific man over her, she would
not consent that he should escape the necessity of
dying at his proper time, except upon condition of
be done once for every thirty years that he chose to
live, thirty years being the account of a generation
of man; and if in any way, in that time, this lord
could be the death of a human being, that satisfied
the requisition, and he might live on. There is a
form of the legend which says, that one of the ingredients
of the drink which the nobleman brewed
by his science was the heart's blood of a pure young
boy or girl. But this I reject, as too coarse an idea;
and, indeed, I think it may be taken to mean symbolically,
that the person who desires to engross to
himself more than his share of human life must do
it by sacrificing to his selfishness some dearest interest
of another person, who has a good right to life, and
may be as useful in it as he.
“Now, this lord was a just man by nature, and if
he had gone astray, it was greatly by reason of his
earnest wish to do something for the poor, wicked,
struggling, bloody, uncomfortable race of man, to
which he belonged. He bethought himself whether
he would have a right to take the life of one of those
creatures, without their own consent, in order to
prolong his own; and after much arguing to and
fro, he came to the conclusion that he should not
have the right, unless it were a life over which he
had control, and which was the next to his own.
He looked round him; he was a lonely and abstracted
man, secluded by his studies from human
affections, and there was but one human being whom
he cared for; — that was a beautiful kinswoman, an
left her to his care. There was great kindness and
affection — as great as the abstracted nature of his
pursuits would allow — on the part of this lord
towards the beautiful young girl; but not what is
called love, — at least, he never acknowledged it to
himself. But, looking into his heart, he saw that
she, if any one, was to be the person whom the
sacrifice demanded, and that he might kill twenty
others without effect, but if he took the life of this
one, it would make the charm strong and good.
“My friends, I have meditated many a time on
this ugly feature of my legend, and am unwilling to
take it in the literal sense; so I conceive its spiritual
meaning (for everything, you know, has its
spiritual meaning, which to the literal meaning is
what the soul is to the body), — its spiritual meaning
was, that to the deep pursuit of science we must
sacrifice great part of the joy of life; that nobody
can be great, and do great things, without giving
up to death, so far as he regards his enjoyment of it,
much that he would gladly enjoy; and in that sense
I choose to take it. But the earthly old legend will
have it, that this mad, high-minded, heroic, murderous
lord did insist upon it with himself that he must
murder this poor, loving, and beloved child.
“I do not wish to delay upon this horrible matter,
and to tell you how he argued it with himself; and
how, the more and more he argued it, the more
reasonable it seemed, the more absolutely necessary,
the more a duty that the terrible sacrifice should be
mankind, and all that stood in the way of it was
one little delicate life, so frail that it was likely
enough to be blown out, any day, by the mere rude
blast that the rush of life creates, as it streams
along, or by any slightest accident; so good and
pure, too, that she was quite unfit for this world,
and not capable of any happiness in it; and all that
was asked of her was to allow herself to be transported
to a place where she would be happy, and
would find companions fit for her, — which he, her
only present companion, certainly was not. In fine,
he resolved to shed the sweet, fragrant blood of this
little violet that loved him so.
“Well; let us hurry over this part of the story as
fast as we can. He did slay this pure young girl;
he took her into the wood near the house, an old
wood that is standing yet, with some of its magnificent
oaks; and then he plunged a dagger into her
heart, after they had had a very tender and loving
talk together, in which he had tried to open the
matter tenderly to her, and make her understand,
that though he was to slay her, it was really for
the very reason that he loved her better than anything
else in the world, and that he would far rather
die himself, if that would answer the purpose at all.
Indeed, he is said to have offered her the alternative
of slaying him, and taking upon herself the burthen
of indefinite life, and the studies and pursuits by
which he meant to benefit mankind. But she, it is
said, — this noble, pure, loving child, — she looked up
the dagger from him, she plunged it into her own
heart. I cannot tell whether this be true or whether
she waited to be killed by him; but this I know,
that in the same circumstances I think I should have
saved my lover or my friend the pain of killing me.
There she lay dead, at any rate, and he buried her
in the wood, and returned to the house; and, as it
happened, he had set his right foot in her blood, and
his shoe was wet in it, and by some miraculous fate,
it left a track all along the wood-path, and into the
house, and on the stone steps of the threshold, and
up into his chamber, all along; and the servants saw
it the next day, and wondered, and whispered, and
missed the fair young girl, and looked askance at
their lord's right foot, and turned pale, all of them,
as death.
“And next, the legend says, that Sir Forrester was
struck with horror at what he had done, and could
not bear the laboratory where he had toiled so long,
and was sick to death of the object that he had
pursued, and was most miserable, and fled from his
old Hall, and was gone full many a day. But all the
while he was gone there was the mark of a bloody
footstep impressed upon the stone doorstep of the
Hall. The track had lain all along through the
wood-path, and across the lawn, to the old Gothic
door of the Hall; but the rain, the English rain that
is always falling, had come the next day, and washed
it all away. The track had lain, too, across the
broad hall, and up the stairs, and into the lord's
strewn there, and these the servants had gathered
carefully up, and thrown them away, and spread
fresh ones. So that it was only on the threshold
that the mark remained.
“But the legend says, that wherever Sir Forrester
went, in his wanderings about the world, he left a
bloody track behind him. It was wonderful, and
very inconvenient, this phenomenon. When he went
into a church, you would see the track up the broad
aisle, and a little red puddle in the place where he
sat or knelt. Once he went to the king's court, and
there being a track up to the very throne, the king
frowned upon him, so that he never came there any
more. Nobody could tell how it happened; his foot
was not seen to bleed, only there was the bloody
track behind him, wherever he went; and he was
a horror-stricken man, always looking behind him to
see the track, and then hurrying onward, as if
to escape his own tracks; but always they followed
him as fast.
“In the hall of feasting, there was the bloody
track to his chair. The learned men whom he consulted
about this strange difficulty conferred with
one another, and with him, who was equal to any
of them, and pished and pshawed, and said, `O,
there is nothing miraculous in this; it is only
a natural infirmity, which can easily be put an
end to, though, perhaps, the stoppage of such an
evacuation will cause damage to other parts of the
frame.' Sir Forrester always said, `Stop it, my
consequences.' And they did their best, but without
result; so that he was still compelled to leave his
bloody track on their college-rooms and combination-rooms,
the same as elsewhere; and in street and in
wilderness; yes, and in the battle-field, they say, his
track looked freshest and reddest of all. So, at last,
finding the notice he attracted inconvenient, this
unfortunate lord deemed it best to go back to his
own Hall, where, living among faithful old servants
born in the family, he could hush the matter up
better than elsewhere, and not be stared at continually,
or, glancing round, see people holding up their
hands in terror at seeing a bloody track behind him.
And so home he came, and there he saw the bloody
track on the doorstep, and dolefully went into the
hall, and up the stairs, an old servant ushering him
into his chamber, and half a dozen others following
behind, gazing, shuddering, pointing with quivering
fingers, looking horror-stricken in one another's pale
faces, and the moment he had passed, running to get
fresh rushes, and to scour the stairs. The next day,
Sir Forrester went into the wood, and by the aged
oak he found a grave, and on the grave he beheld a
beautiful crimson flower; the most gorgeous and
beautiful, surely, that ever grew; so rich it looked,
so full of potent juice. That flower he gathered; and
the spirit of his scientific pursuits coming upon him,
he knew that this was the flower, produced out of a
human life, that was essential to the perfection of
his recipe for immortality; and he made the drink,
still studying, still growing wiser and more wretched
in every age. By and by he vanished from the old
Hall, but not by death; for from generation to generation,
they say that a bloody track is seen around
that house, and sometimes it is tracked up into the
chambers, so freshly that you see he must have
passed a short time before; and he grows wiser and
wiser, and lonelier and lonelier, from age to age.
And this is the legend of the bloody footstep, which
I myself have seen at the Hall door. As to the
flower, the plant of it continued for several years
to grow out of the grave; and after a while, perhaps
a century ago, it was transplanted into the garden of
— Hall, and preserved with great care, and is so
still. And as the family attribute a kind of sacredness,
or cursedness, to the flower, they can hardly
be prevailed upon to give any of the seeds, or allow
it to be propagated elsewhere, though the king should
send to ask it. It is said, too, that there is still in
the family the old lord's recipe for immortality, and
that several of his collateral descendants have tried
to concoct it, and instil the flower into it, and so
give indefinite life; but unsuccessfully, because the
seeds of the flower must be planted in a fresh
grave of bloody death, in order to make it effectual.”
So ended Sybil's legend; in which Septimius was
struck by a certain analogy to Aunt Keziah's Indian
legend, — both referring to a flower growing out of
with the wild coincidence of this disappearance of
an ancestor of the family long ago, and the appearance,
at about the same epoch, of the first known
ancestor of his own family, the man with wizard's
attributes, with the bloody footstep, and whose sudden
disappearance became a myth, under the idea
that the Devil carried him away. Yet, on the whole,
this wild tradition, doubtless becoming wilder in
Sybil's wayward and morbid fancy, had the effect to
give him a sense of the fantasticalness of his present
pursuit, and that in adopting it, he had strayed into
a region long abandoned to superstition, and where
the shadows of forgotten dreams go when men are
done with them; where past worships are; where
great Pan went when he died to the outer world;
a limbo into which living men sometimes stray when
they think themselves sensiblest and wisest, and
whence they do not often find their way back into
the real world. Visions of wealth, visions of fame,
visions of philanthropy, — all visions find room here,
and glide about without jostling. When Septimius
came to look at the matter in his present mood, the
thought occurred to him that he had perhaps got
into such a limbo, and that Sybil's legend, which
looked so wild, might be all of a piece with his own
present life; for Sybil herself seemed an illusion, and
so, most strangely, did Aunt Keziah, whom he had
known all his life, with her homely and quaint characteristics;
the grim doctor, with his brandy and his
German pipe, impressed him in the same way; and
wayside seem an unsubstantial edifice, such as castles
in the air are built of, and the ground he trod on
unreal; and that grave, which he knew to contain the
decay of a beautiful young man, but a fictitious swell
formed by the fantasy of his eyes. All unreal;
all illusion! Was Rose Garfield a deception too,
with her daily beauty, and daily cheerfulness, and
daily worth? In short, it was such a moment as I
suppose all men feel (at least, I can answer for one),
when the real scene and picture of life swims, jars,
shakes, seems about to be broken up and dispersed,
like the picture in a smooth pond, when we disturb
its tranquil mirror by throwing in a stone; and
though the scene soon settles itself, and looks as real
as before, a haunting doubt keeps close at hand, as
long as we live, asking, “Is it stable? Am I sure
of it? Am I certainly not dreaming? See; it
trembles again, ready to dissolve.”
Applying himself with earnest diligence to his attempt
to decipher and interpret the mysterious manuscript,
working with his whole mind and strength,
Septimius did not fail of some flattering degree of
success.
A good deal of the manuscript, as has been said, was
in an ancient English script, although so uncouth and
shapeless were the characters, that it was not easy to
resolve them into letters, or to believe that they were
anything but arbitrary and dismal blots and scrawls
upon the yellow paper; without meaning, vague, like
in our minds before clothing themselves in words.
These, however, as he concentrated his mind upon
them, took distincter shape, like cloudy stars at the
power of the telescope, and became sometimes English,
sometimes Latin, strangely patched together, as if, so
accustomed was the writer to use that language in
which all the science of that age was usually embodied,
that he really mixed it unconsciously with the vernacular,
or used both indiscriminately. There was
some Greek, too, but not much. Then frequently
came in the cipher, to the study of which Septimius
had applied himself for some time back, with the aid
of the books borrowed from the college library, and
not without success. Indeed, it appeared to him, on
close observation, that it had not been the intention
of the writer really to conceal what he had written
from any earnest student, but rather to lock it up for
safety in a sort of coffer, of which diligence and insight
should be the key, and the keen intelligence with
which the meaning was sought should be the test
of the seeker's being entitled to possess the secret
treasure.
Amid a great deal of misty stuff, he found the
document to consist chiefly, contrary to his supposition
beforehand, of certain rules of life; he would
have taken it, on a casual inspection, for an essay of
counsel, addressed by some great and sagacious man
to a youth in whom he felt an interest, — so secure
and good a doctrine of life was propounded, such
excellent maxims there were, such wisdom in all
was as much like a digested synopsis of some old
philosopher's wise rules of conduct, as anything else.
But on closer inspection, Septimius, in his unsophisticated
consideration of this matter, was not so well
satisfied. True, everything that was said seemed
not discordant with the rules of social morality;
not unwise: it was shrewd, sagacious; it did not
appear to infringe upon the rights of mankind; but
there was something left out, something unsatisfactory,
— what was it? There was certainly a cold
spell in the document; a magic, not of fire, but of
ice; and Septimius the more exemplified its power,
in that he soon began to be insensible of it. It
affected him as if it had been written by some
greatly wise and worldly-experienced man, like the
writer of Ecclesiastes; for it was full of truth. It
was a truth that does not make men better, though
perhaps calmer; and beneath which the buds of
happiness curl up like tender leaves in a frost.
What was the matter with this document, that the
young man's youth perished out of him as he read?
What icy hand had written it, so that the heart
was chilled out of the reader? Not that Septimius
was sensible of this character; at least, not long, —
for as he read, there grew upon him a mood of calm
satisfaction, such as he had never felt before. His
mind seemed to grow clearer; his perceptions most
acute; his sense of the reality of things grew to be
such, that he felt as if he could touch and handle
all his thoughts, feel round about all their outline
as if they were material things. Not that all this
was in the document itself; but by studying it so
earnestly, and, as it were, creating its meaning anew
for himself, out of such illegible materials, he caught
the temper of the old writer's mind, after so many
ages as that tract had lain in the mouldy and musty
manuscript. He was magnetized with him; a powerful
intellect acted powerfully upon him; perhaps,
even, there was a sort of spell and mystic influence
imbued into the paper, and mingled with the yellow
ink, that steamed forth by the effort of this young
man's earnest rubbing, as it were, and by the action
of his mind, applied to it as intently as he possibly
could; and even his handling the paper, his
bending over it, and breathing upon it, had its
effect.
It is not in our power, nor in our wish, to produce
the original form, nor yet the spirit, of a production
which is better lost to the world: because it was the
expression of a human intellect originally greatly
gifted, and capable of high things, but gone utterly
astray, partly by its own subtlety, partly by yielding
to the temptations of the lower part of its nature, by
yielding the spiritual to a keen sagacity of lower
things, until it was quite fallen; and yet fallen in
such a way, that it seemed not only to itself, but to
mankind, not fallen at all, but wise and good, and
fulfilling all the ends of intellect in such a life as
ours, and proving, moreover, that earthly life was
good, and all that the development of our nature
burnt; better never thought over again; and all
the more, because its aspect was so wise, and even
praiseworthy. But what we must preserve of it
were certain rules of life and moral diet, not exactly
expressed in the document, but which, as it were,
on its being duly received into Septimius's mind,
were precipitated from the rich solution, and crystallized
into diamonds, and which he found to be
the moral dietetics, so to speak, by observing which
he was to achieve the end of earthly immortality,
whose physical nostrum was given in the recipe
which, with the help of Doctor Portsoaken and his
Aunt Keziah, he had already pretty satisfactorily
made out.
“Keep thy heart at seventy throbs in a minute;
all more than that wears away life too quickly.
If thy respiration be too quick, think with thyself
that thou hast sinned against natural order and
moderation.
“Drink not wine nor strong drink; and observe
that this rule is worthiest in its symbolic meaning.
“Bask daily in the sunshine, and let it rest on thy
heart.
“Run not; leap not; walk at a steady pace, and
count thy paces per day.
“If thou feelest, at any time, a throb of the heart,
pause on the instant, and analyze it; fix thy mental
eye steadfastly upon it, and inquire why such commotion
is.
“Hate not any man nor woman; be not angry, unless
at any time thy blood seem a little cold and torpid;
cut out all rankling feelings, they are poisonous
to thee. If, in thy waking moments, or in thy
dreams, thou hast thoughts of strife or unpleasantness
with any man, strive quietly with thyself to forget
him.
“Have no friendships with an imperfect man, with
a man in bad health, of violent passions, of any
characteristic that evidently disturbs his own life,
and so may have disturbing influence on thine.
Shake not any man by the hand, because thereby, if
there be any evil in the man, it is likely to be communicated
to thee.
“Kiss no woman if her lips be red; look not upon
her if she be very fair. Touch not her hand if thy
finger-tips be found to thrill with hers ever so little.
On the whole, shun woman, for she is apt to be a
disturbing influence. If thou love her, all is over,
and thy whole past and remaining labor and pains
will be in vain.
“Do some decent degree of good and kindness in
thy daily life, for the result is a slight pleasurable
sense that will seem to warm and delectate thee with
felicitous self-laudings; and all that brings thy thoughts
to thyself tends to invigorate that central principle by
the growth of which thou art to give thyself indefinite
life.
“Do not any act manifestly evil; it may grow upon
thee, and corrode thee in after-years. Do not any
foolish good act; it may change thy wise habits.
“Eat no spiced meats. Young chickens, new-fallen
lambs, fruits, bread four days old, milk, freshest
butter, will make thy fleshy tabernacle youthful.
“From sick people, maimed wretches, afflicted
people, — all of whom show themselves at variance
with things as they should be, — from people beyond
their wits, from people in a melancholic mood, from
people in extravagant joy, from teething children,
from dead corpses, turn away thine eyes and depart
elsewhere.
“If beggars haunt thee, let thy servants drive them
away, thou withdrawing out of ear-shot.
“Crying and sickly children, and teething children,
as aforesaid, carefully avoid. Drink the breath of
wholesome infants as often as thou conveniently
canst, — it is good for thy purpose; also the breath
of buxom maids, if thou mayest without undue disturbance
of the flesh, drink it as a morning-draught,
as medicine; also the breath of cows as they return
from rich pasture at eventide.
“If thou seest human poverty, or suffering, and it
trouble thee, strive moderately to relieve it, seeing
that thus thy mood will be changed to a pleasant self-laudation.
“Practise thyself in a certain continual smile, for
its tendency will be to compose thy frame of being,
and keep thee from too much wear.
“Search not to see if thou hast a gray hair; scrutinize
not thy forehead to find a wrinkle; nor the corners
of thy eyes to discover if they be corrugated. Such
things, being gazed at, daily take heart and grow.
“Desire nothing too fervently, not even life; yet
keep thy hold upon it mightily, quietly, unshakably,
for as long as thou really art resolved to live, Death,
with all his force, shall have no power against thee.
“Walk not beneath tottering ruins, nor houses
being put up, nor climb to the top of a mast, nor
approach the edge of a precipice, nor stand in the
way of the lightning, nor cross a swollen river, nor
voyage at sea, nor ride a skittish horse, nor be shot
at by an arrow, nor confront a sword, nor put thyself
in the way of violent death; for this is hateful,
and breaketh through all wise rules.
“Say thy prayers at bedtime, if thou deemest it
will give thee quieter sleep; yet let it not trouble
thee if thou forgettest them.
“Change thy shirt daily; thereby thou castest off
yesterday's decay, and imbibest the freshness of the
morning's life, which enjoy with smelling to roses, and
other healthy and fragrant flowers, and live the longer
for it. Roses are made to that end.
“Read not great poets; they stir up thy heart; and
the human heart is a soil which, if deeply stirred, is
apt to give out noxious vapors.”
Such were some of the precepts which Septimius
gathered and reduced to definite form out of this
wonderful document; and he appreciated their wisdom,
and saw clearly that they must be absolutely
essential to the success of the medicine with which
they were connected. In themselves, almost, they
seemed capable of prolonging life to an indefinite
they apply to the causes which almost invariably
wear away this poor, short life of men, years and
years before even the shattered constitutions that
they received from their forefathers need compel
them to die. He deemed himself well rewarded for
all his labor and pains, should nothing else follow
but his reception and proper appreciation of these
wise rules; but continually, as he read the manuscript,
more truths, and, for aught I know, profounder
and more practical ones, developed themselves;
and, indeed, small as the manuscript looked,
Septimius thought that he should find a volume as
big as the most ponderous folio in the college library
too small to contain its wisdom. It seemed to drip
and distil with precious fragrant drops, whenever
he took it out of his desk; it diffused wisdom like
those vials of perfume which, small as they look,
keep diffusing an airy wealth of fragrance for years
and years together, scattering their virtue in incalculable
volumes of invisible vapor, and yet are none
the less in bulk for all they give; whenever he
turned over the yellow leaves, bits of gold, diamonds
of good size, precious pearls, seemed to drop out
from between them.
And now ensued a surprise which, though of a
happy kind, was almost too much for him to bear;
for it made his heart beat considerably faster than
the wise rules of his manuscript prescribed. Going
up on his hill-top, as summer wore away (he had not
been there for some time), and walking by the little
what should he see there but a new flower, that
during the time he had been poring over the manuscript
so sedulously had developed itself, blossomed,
put forth its petals, bloomed into full perfection, and
now, with the dew of the morning upon it, was
waiting to offer itself to Septimius? He trembled as
he looked at it, it was too much almost to bear; — it
was so very beautiful, so very stately, so very rich,
so very mysterious and wonderful. It was like a
person, like a life! Whence did it come? He stood
apart from it, gazing in wonder; tremulously taking
in its aspect, and thinking of the legends he had
heard from Aunt Keziah and from Sybil Dacy; and
how that this flower, like the one that their wild
traditions told of, had grown out of a grave, — out
of a grave in which he had lain one slain by himself.
The flower was of the richest crimson, illuminated
with a golden centre of a perfect and stately beauty.
From the best descriptions that I have been able to
gain of it, it was more like a dahlia than any other
flower with which I have acquaintance; yet it does
not satisfy me to believe it really of that species, for
the dahlia is not a flower of any deep characteristics,
either lively or malignant, and this flower, which
Septimius found so strangely, seems to have had one
or the other. If I have rightly understood, it had
a fragrance which the dahlia lacks; and there was
something hidden in its centre, a mystery, even in
its fullest bloom, not developing itself so openly as
the heartless, yet not dishonest, dahlia. I remember
Cheshire, in those magnificent gardens, which may
have been like this, but my remembrance of it is
not sufficiently distinct to enable me to describe it
better than by saying that it was crimson, with a
gleam of gold in its centre, which yet was partly
hidden. It had many petals of great richness.
Septimius, bending eagerly over the plant, saw
that this was not to be the only flower that it would
produce that season; on the contrary, there was to
be a great abundance of them, a luxuriant harvest;
as if the crimson offspring of this one plant would
cover the whole hillock, — as if the dead youth beneath
had burst into a resurrection of many crimson
flowers! And in its veiled heart, moreover, there
was a mystery like death, although it seemed to
cover something bright and golden.
Day after day the strange crimson flower bloomed
more and more abundantly, until it seemed almost
to cover the little hillock, which became a mere bed
of it, apparently turning all its capacity of production
to this flower; for the other plants, Septimius
thought, seemed to shrink away, and give place to
it, as if they were unworthy to compare with the
richness, glory, and worth of this their queen. The
fervent summer burned into it, the dew and the rain
ministered to it; the soil was rich, for it was a
human heart contributing its juices, — a heart in its
fiery youth sodden in its own blood, so that passion,
unsatisfied loves and longings, ambition that never
won its object, tender dreams and throbs, angers,
in it, and its mysterious being, and streaks and
shadows had some meaning in each of them.
The two girls, when they next ascended the hill,
saw the strange flower, and Rose admired it, and
wondered at it, but stood at a distance, without
showing an attraction towards it, rather an undefined
aversion, as if she thought it might be a poison
flower; at any rate she would not be inclined to
wear it in her bosom. Sybil Dacy examined it
closely, touched its leaves, smelt it, looked at it with
a botanist's eye, and at last remarked to Rose,
“Yes, it grows well in this new soil; methinks it
looks like a new human life.”
“What is the strange flower?” asked Rose.
“The Sanguinea sanguinissima,” said Sybil.
It so happened about this time that poor Aunt
Keziah, in spite of her constant use of that bitter
mixture of hers, was in a very bad state of health.
She looked all of an unpleasant yellow, with bloodshot
eyes; she complained terribly of her inwards.
She had an ugly rheumatic hitch in her motion
from place to place, and was heard to mutter many
wishes that she had a broomstick to fly about upon,
and she used to bind up her head with a dishclout,
or what looked to be such, and would sit by the
kitchen fire even in the warm days, bent over it,
crouching as if she wanted to take the whole fire
into her poor cold heart or gizzard, — groaning regularly
with each breath a spiteful and resentful groan,
and she continually smoked her pipe, and sent out
the breath of her complaint visibly in that evil
odor; and sometimes she murmured a little prayer,
but somehow or other the evil and bitterness, acridity,
pepperiness, of her natural disposition overcame the
acquired grace which compelled her to pray, insomuch
that, after all, you would have thought the
poor old woman was cursing with all her rheumatic
might. All the time an old, broken-nosed, brown
earthen jug, covered with the lid of a black teapot,
stood on the edge of the embers, steaming forever,
and sometimes bubbling a little, and giving a great
puff, as if it were sighing and groaning in sympathy
with poor Aunt Keziah, and when it sighed there
came a great steam of herby fragrance, not particularly
pleasant, into the kitchen. And ever and anon,
— half a dozen times it might be, — of an afternoon,
Aunt Keziah took a certain bottle from a private
receptacle of hers, and also a teacup, and likewise a
little, old-fashioned silver teaspoon, with which she
measured three teaspoonfuls of some spirituous liquor
into the teacup, half filled the cup with the hot
decoction, drank it off, gave a grunt of content, and
for the space of half an hour appeared to find life
tolerable.
But one day poor Aunt Keziah found herself
unable, partly from rheumatism, partly from other
sickness or weakness, and partly from dolorous ill-spirits,
to keep about any longer, so she betook herself
to her bed; and betimes in the forenoon Septimius
her bedchamber, which happened to be the room
above his own. He was the only person in or about
the house; so, with great reluctance, he left his
studies, which were upon the recipe, in respect to
which he was trying to make out the mode of concoction,
which was told in such a mysterious way
that he could not well tell either the quantity of
the ingredients, the mode of trituration, nor in
what way their virtue was to be extracted and combined.
Running hastily up stairs, he found Aunt Keziah
lying in bed, and groaning with great spite and
bitterness; so that, indeed, it seemed not improvidential
that such an inimical state of mind towards
the human race was accompanied with an almost
inability of motion, else it would not be safe to be
within a considerable distance of her.
“Seppy, you good-for-nothing, are you going to
see me lying here, dying, without trying to do anything
for me?”
“Dying, Aunt Keziah?” repeated the young man.
“I hope not! What can I do for you? Shall I go
for Rose? or call a neighbor in? or the doctor?”
“No, no, you fool!” said the afflicted person.
“You can do all that anybody can for me; and that
is to put my mixture on the kitchen fire till it
steams, and is just ready to bubble; then measure
three teaspoonfuls — or it may be four, as I am very
bad — of spirit into a teacup, fill it half full, — or
it may be quite full, for I am very bad, as I said
and let me have it as soon as may be; and
don't break the cup, nor spill the precious mixture,
for goodness knows when I can go into the woods
to gather any more. Ah me! ah me! it 's a wicked,
miserable world, and I am the most miserable creature
in it. Be quick, you good-for-nothing, and do
as I say!”
Septimius hastened down; but as he went, a
thought came into his head, which it occurred to
him might result in great benefit to Aunt Keziah,
as well as to the great cause of science and human
good, and to the promotion of his own purpose, in
the first place. A day or two ago, he had gathered
several of the beautiful flowers, and laid them in the
fervid sun to dry; and they now seemed to be in
about the state in which the old woman was accustomed
to use her herbs, so far as Septimius had
observed. Now, if these flowers were really, as there
was so much reason for supposing, the one ingredient
that had for hundreds of years been missing out of
Aunt Keziah's nostrum, — if it was this which that
strange Indian sagamore had mingled with his drink
with such beneficial effect, — why should not Septimius
now restore it, and if it would not make his
beloved aunt young again, at least assuage the violent
symptoms, and perhaps prolong her valuable life
some years, for the solace and delight of her numerous
friends? Septimius, like other people of
investigating and active minds, had a great tendency
to experiment, and so good an opportunity as the
little to be risked at worst, and so much to be gained,
was not to be neglected; so, without more ado, he
stirred three of the crimson flowers into the earthen
jug, set it on the edge of the fire, stirred it well, and
when it steamed, threw up little scarlet bubbles, and
was about to boil, he measured out the spirits, as
Aunt Keziah had bidden him, and then filled the
teacup.
“Ah, this will do her good; little does she think,
poor old thing, what a rare and costly medicine is
about to be given her. This will set her on her
feet again.”
The hue was somewhat changed, he thought, from
what he had observed of Aunt Keziah's customary
decoction; instead of a turbid yellow, the crimson
petals of the flower had tinged it, and made it
almost red; not a brilliant red, however, nor the
least inviting in appearance. Septimius smelt it,
and thought he could distinguish a little of the rich
odor of the flower, but was not sure. He considered
whether to taste it; but the horrible flavor of
Aunt Keziah's decoction recurred strongly to his
remembrance, and he concluded, that were he evidently
at the point of death, he might possibly be
bold enough to taste it again; but that nothing
short of the hope of a century's existence, at least,
would repay another taste of that fierce and nauseous
bitterness. Aunt Keziah loved it; and as she brewed,
so let her drink.
He went up stairs, careful not to spill a drop of
bedside, where she lay, groaning as before, and
breaking out into a spiteful croak the moment he
was within ear-shot.
“You don't care whether I live or die,” said she.
“You 've been waiting in hopes I shall die, and so
save yourself further trouble.”
“By no means, Aunt Keziah,” said Septimius.
“Here is the medicine, which I have warmed, and
measured out, and mingled, as well as I knew how;
and I think it will do you a great deal of good.”
“Won't you taste it, Seppy, my dear?” said
Aunt Keziah, mollified by the praise of her beloved
mixture. “Drink first, dear, so that my sick old
lips need not taint it. You look pale, Septimius; it
will do you good.”
“No, Aunt Keziah, I do not need it; and it were a
pity to waste your precious drink,” said he.
“It does not look quite the right color,” said Aunt
Keziah, as she took the cup in her hand. “You must
have dropped some soot into it.” Then as she raised
it to her lips, “It does not smell quite right. But,
woe 's me! how can I expect anybody but myself to
make this precious drink as it should be?”
She drank it off at two gulps; for she appeared
to hurry it off faster than usual, as if not tempted
by the exquisiteness of its flavor to dwell upon it
so long.
“You have not made it just right, Seppy,” said
she in a milder tone than before, for she seemed to
feel the customary soothing influence of the draught,
taste, methought; or is it that my mouth is getting
out of taste? Hard times it will be for poor Aunt
Kezzy, if she 's to lose her taste for the medicine
that, under Providence, has saved her life for so
many years.”
She gave back the cup to Septimius, after looking a
little curiously at the dregs.
“It looks like bloodroot, don't it?” said she.
“Perhaps it 's my own fault after all. I gathered a
fresh bunch of the yarbs yesterday afternoon, and
put them to steep, and it may be I was a little blind,
for it was between daylight and dark, and the moon
shone on me before I had finished. I thought how
the witches used to gather their poisonous stuff at
such times, and what pleasant uses they made of
it, — but those are sinful thoughts, Seppy, sinful
thoughts! so I 'll say a prayer and try to go to sleep.
I feel very noddy all at once.”
Septimius drew the bedclothes up about her
shoulders, for she complained of being very chilly,
and, carefully putting her stick within reach, went
down to his own room, and resumed his studies,
trying to make out from those aged hieroglyphics,
to which he was now so well accustomed, what was
the precise method of making the elixir of immortality.
Sometimes, as men in deep thought do, he
rose from his chair, and walked to and fro, the four
or five steps or so, that conveyed him from end to
end of his little room. At one of these times he
chanced to look in the little looking-glass that hung
of his face. It was quite white, indeed. Septimius
was not in the least a foppish young man;
careless he was in dress, though often his apparel
took an unsought picturesqueness that set off his
slender, agile figure, perhaps from some quality of
spontaneous arrangement that he had inherited from
his Indian ancestry. Yet many women might have
found a charm in that dark, thoughtful face, with
its hidden fire and energy, although Septimius never
thought of its being handsome, and seldom looked at
it. Yet now he was drawn to it by seeing how
strangely white it was, and, gazing at it, he observed
that since he considered it last, a very deep furrow, or
corrugation, or fissure, it might almost be called, had
indented his brow, rising from the commencement of
his nose towards the centre of the forehead. And he
knew it was his brooding thought, his fierce, hard
determination, his intense concentrativeness for so
many months, that had been digging that furrow;
and it must prove indeed a potent specific of the life-water
that would smooth that away, and restore him
all the youth and elasticity that he had buried in that
profound grave.
But why was he so pale? He could have supposed
himself startled by some ghastly thing that he had
just seen; by a corpse in the next room, for instance;
or else by the foreboding that one would
soon be there; but yet he was conscious of no
tremor in his frame, no terror in his heart; as why
should there be any? Feeling his own pulse, he
He was not ill, nor affrighted; not expectant of any
pain. Then why so ghastly pale? And why, moreover,
Septimius, did you listen so earnestly for any
sound in Aunt Keziah's chamber? Why did you
creep on tiptoe, once, twice, three times, up to the
old woman's chamber, and put your ear to the keyhole,
and listen breathlessly? Well; it must have
been that he was sub-conscious that he was trying a
bold experiment, and that he had taken this poor
old woman to be the medium of it, in the hope, of
course, that it would turn out well; yet with other
views than her interest in the matter. What was
the harm of that? Medical men, no doubt, are
always doing so, and he was a medical man for the
time. Then why was he so pale?
He sat down and fell into a revery, which perhaps
was partly suggested by that chief furrow which he
had seen, and which we have spoken of, in his brow.
He considered whether there was anything in this
pursuit of his that used up life particularly fast; so
that perhaps, unless he were successful soon, he
should be incapable of renewal; for, looking within
himself, and considering his mode of being, he had
a singular fancy that his heart was gradually drying
up, and that he must continue to get some moisture
for it, or else it would soon be like a withered leaf.
Supposing his pursuit were vain, what a waste he was
making of that little treasure of golden days, which
was his all! Could this be called life, which he was
leading now? How unlike that of other young men!
There had come news yesterday of his having performed
a gallant part in the battle of Monmouth, and
being promoted to be a captain for his brave conduct.
Without thinking of long life, he really lived in heroic
actions and emotions; he got much life in a little, and
did not fear to sacrifice a lifetime of torpid breaths, if
necessary, to the ecstasy of a glorious death!
[It appears from a written sketch by the author of this
story, that he changed his first plan of making Septimius
and Rose lovers, and she was to be represented as his
half-sister, and in the copy for publication this alteration
would have been made. — Ed.]
And then Robert loved, too, loved his sister Rose,
and felt, doubtless, an immortality in that passion.
Why could not Septimius love too? It was forbidden!
Well, no matter; whom could he have
loved? Who, in all this world, would have been
suited to his secret, brooding heart, that he could
have let her into its mysterious chambers, and walked
with her from one cavernous gloom to another, and
said, “Here are my treasures. I make thee mistress
of all these; with all these goods I thee endow.”
And then, revealing to her his great secret and
purpose of gaining immortal life, have said: “This
shall be thine, too. Thou shalt share with me.
We will walk along the endless path together, and
keep one another's hearts warm, and so be content to
live.”
Ah, Septimius! but now you are getting beyond
those rules of yours, which, cold as they are, have
were it possible to follow them out, suffice to do all
that you ask of them; but if you break them, you
do it at the peril of your earthly immortality. Each
warmer and quicker throb of the heart wears away
so much of life. The passions, the affections, are a
wine not to be indulged in. Love, above all, being
in its essence an immortal thing, cannot be long
contained in an earthly body, but would wear it
out with its own secret power, softly invigorating
as it seems. You must be cold, therefore, Septimius;
you must not even earnestly and passionately desire
this immortality that seems so necessary to you.
Else the very wish will prevent the possibility of its
fulfilment.
By and by, to call him out of these rhapsodies,
came Rose home; and finding the kitchen hearth
cold, and Aunt Keziah missing, and no dinner by
the fire, which was smouldering, — nothing but the
portentous earthen jug, which fumed, and sent out
long, ill-flavored sighs, she tapped at Septimius's door,
and asked him what was the matter.
“Aunt Keziah has had an ill turn,” said Septimius,
“and has gone to bed.”
“Poor auntie!” said Rose, with her quick sympathy.
“I will this moment run up and see if she
needs anything.”
“No, Rose,” said Septimius, “she has doubtless
gone to sleep, and will awake as well as usual. It
would displease her much were you to miss your
afternoon school; so you had better set the table
leave me to take care of auntie.”
“Well,” said Rose, “she loves you best; but if
she be really ill, I shall give up my school and nurse
her.”
“No doubt,” said Septimius, “she will be about
the house again to-morrow.”
So Rose ate her frugal dinner (consisting chiefly
of purslain, and some other garden herbs, which her
thrifty aunt had prepared for boiling), and went
away as usual to her school; for Aunt Keziah, as
aforesaid, had never encouraged the tender ministrations
of Rose, whose orderly, womanly character, with
its well-defined orb of daily and civilized duties, had
always appeared to strike her as tame; and she
once said to her, “You are no squaw, child, and
you 'll never make a witch.” Nor would she even
so much as let Rose put her tea to steep, or do anything
whatever for herself personally; though, certainly,
she was not backward in requiring of her a
due share of labor for the general housekeeping.
Septimius was sitting in his room, as the afternoon
wore away; because, for some reason or other, or
quite as likely, for no reason at all, he did not air
himself and his thoughts, as usual, on the hill; so
he was sitting musing, thinking, looking into his
mysterious manuscript, when he heard Aunt Keziah
moving in the chamber above. First she seemed to
rattle a chair; then she began a slow, regular beat
with the stick which Septimius had left by her bedside,
and which startled him strangely, — so that,
throbs to which he was restricted by the wise rules
that he had digested. So he ran hastily up stairs,
and behold, Aunt Keziah was sitting up in bed,
looking very wild, — so wild, that you would have
thought she was going to fly up chimney the next
minute; her gray hair all dishevelled, her eyes staring,
her hands clutching forward, while she gave a sort
of howl, what with pain and agitation.
“Seppy! Seppy!” said she, “Seppy, my darling!
are you quite sure you remember how to make that
precious drink?”
“Quite well, Aunt Keziah,” said Septimius, inwardly
much alarmed by her aspect, but preserving
a true Indian composure of outward mien. “I wrote
it down, and could say it by heart besides. Shall I
make you a fresh pot of it? for I have thrown away
the other.”
“That was well, Seppy,” said the poor old woman,
“for there is something wrong about it; but I want
no more, for, Seppy dear, I am going fast out of
this world, where you and that precious drink were
my only treasures and comforts. I wanted to know
if you remembered the recipe; it is all I have to
leave you, and the more you drink of it, Seppy, the
better. Only see to make it right!”
“Dear auntie, what can I do for you?” said Septimius,
in much consternation, but still calm. “Let
me run for the doctor, — for the neighbors? something
must be done!”
The old woman contorted herself as if there were
twisted the yellow ugliness of her face, and groaned,
and howled; and yet there was a tough and fierce
kind of endurance with which she fought with her
anguish, and would not yield to it a jot, though she
allowed herself the relief of shrieking savagely at
it, — much more like a defiance than a cry for mercy.
“No doctor! no woman!” said she; “if my drink
could not save me, what would a doctor's foolish
pills and powders do? And a woman! If old
Martha Denton, the witch, were alive, I would be
glad to see her. But other women! Pah! Ah!
Ai! Oh! Phew! Ah, Seppy, what a mercy it would
be now if I could set to and blaspheme a bit, and
shake my fist at the sky! But I 'm a Christian
woman, Seppy, — a Christian woman!”
“Shall I send for the minister, Aunt Keziah?”
asked Septimius. “He is a good man, and a wise one.”
“No minister for me, Seppy,” said Aunt Keziah,
howling as if somebody were choking her. “He
may be a good man and a wise one, but he 's not
wise enough to know the way to my heart, and
never a man as was! Eh, Seppy, I 'm a Christian
woman, but I 'm not like other Christian women;
and I 'm glad I 'm going away from this stupid
world. I 've not been a bad woman, and I deserve
credit for it, for it would have suited me a great
deal better to be bad. O, what a delightful time a
witch must have had, starting off up chimney on her
broomstick at midnight, and looking down from
aloft in the sky on the sleeping village far below,
touch the golden weathercock! You, meanwhile, in
such an ecstasy, and all below you the dull, innocent,
sober humankind; the wife sleeping by her
husband, or mother by her child, squalling with
wind in its stomach; the goodman driving up his
cattle and his plough, — all so innocent, all so stupid,
with their dull days just alike, one after another.
And you up in the air, sweeping away to some nook
in the forest! Ha! What 's that? A wizard! Ha!
ha! Known below as a deacon! There is Goody
Chickering! How quietly she sent the young people
to bed after prayers! There is an Indian; there a
nigger; they all have equal rights and privileges at a
witch-meeting. Phew! the wind blows cold up here!
Why does not the Black Man have the meeting at
his own kitchen hearth? Ho! ho! O dear me!
But I 'm a Christian woman and no witch; but those
must have been gallant times!”
Doubtless it was a partial wandering of the mind
that took the poor old woman away on this old-witch
flight; and it was very curious and pitiful to witness
the compunction with which she returned to herself
and took herself to task for the preference which, in
her wild nature, she could not help giving to harumscarum
wickedness over tame goodness. Now she
tried to compose herself, and talk reasonably and
godly.
“Ah, Septimius, my dear child, never give way to
temptation, nor consent to be a wizard, though the
Black Man persuade you ever so hard. I know he will
gave him his will; and never do you, my boy, though
you, with your dark complexion, and your brooding
brow, and your eye veiled, only when it suddenly looks
out with a flash of fire in it, are the sort of man he
seeks most, and that afterward serves him. But don't
do it, Septimius. But if you could be an Indian, methinks
it would be better than this tame life we lead.
'T would have been better for me, at all events. O,
how pleasant 't would have been to spend my life wandering
in the woods, smelling the pines and the hemlock
all day, and fresh things of all kinds, and no kitchen
work to do, — not to rake up the fire, nor sweep the
room, nor make the beds, — but to sleep on fresh
boughs in a wigwam, with the leaves still on the
branches that made the roof! And then to see the
deer brought in by the red hunter, and the blood
streaming from the arrow-dart! Ah! and the fight
too! and the scalping! and, perhaps, a woman might
creep into the battle, and steal the wounded enemy
away of her tribe and scalp him, and be praised for it!
O Seppy, how I hate the thought of the dull life
women lead! A white woman's life is so dull!
Thank Heaven, I 'm done with it! If I 'm ever
to live again, may I be whole Indian, please my
Maker!”
After this goodly outburst, Aunt Keziah lay quietly
for a few moments, and her skinny claws being clasped
together, and her yellow visage grinning, as pious
an aspect as was attainable by her harsh and pain-distorted
features, Septimius perceived that she was
the old woman turned to him with a grim tenderness
on her face, and stretched out her hand to be taken
in his own. He clasped the bony talon in both his
hands.
“Seppy, my dear, I feel a great peace, and I don't
think there is so very much to trouble me in the
other world. It won't be all house-work, and keeping
decent, and doing like other people there. I suppose I
need n't expect to ride on a broomstick, — that would
be wrong in any kind of a world, — but there may be
woods to wander in, and a pipe to smoke in the air of
heaven; trees to hear the wind in, and to smell of,
and all such natural, happy things; and by and by I
shall hope to see you there, Seppy, my darling boy!
Come by and by; 't is n't worth your while to live
forever, even if you should find out what's wanting
in the drink I 've taught you. I can see a little
way into the next world now, and I see it to be far
better than this heavy and wretched old place.
You 'll die when your time comes; won't you, Seppy,
my darling?”
“Yes, dear auntie, when my time comes,” said
Septimius. “Very likely I shall want to live no
longer by that time.”
“Likely not,” said the old woman. “I 'm sure I
don't. It is like going to sleep on my mother's breast
to die. So good night, dear Seppy!”
“Good night, and God bless you, aunty!” said
Septimius, with a gush of tears blinding him, spite of
his Indian nature.
The old woman composed herself, and lay quite still
and decorous for a short time; then, rousing herself a
little, “Septimius,” said she, “is there just a little
drop of my drink left? Not that I want to live any
longer, but if I could sip ever so little, I feel as if I
should step into the other world quite cheery, with it
warm in my heart, and not feel shy and bashful at
going among strangers.”
“Not one drop, auntie.”
“Ah, well, no matter! It was not quite right, that
last cup. It had a queer taste. What could you
have put into it, Seppy, darling? But no matter, no
matter! It 's a precious stuff, if you make it right.
Don't forget the herbs, Septimius. Something wrong
had certainly got into it.”
These, except for some murmurings, some groanings
and unintelligible whisperings, were the last utterances
of poor Aunt Keziah, who did not live a great
while longer, and at last passed away in a great sigh,
like a gust of wind among the trees, she having just
before stretched out her hand again and grasped that
of Septimius; and he sat watching her and gazing
at her, wondering, and horrified, touched, shocked by
death, of which he had so unusual a terror, — and by
the death of this creature especially, with whom he
felt a sympathy that did not exist with any other person
now living. So long did he sit, holding her hand,
that at last he was conscious that it was growing cold
within his own, and that the stiffening fingers clutched
him, as if they were disposed to keep their hold, and
not forego the tie that had been so peculiar.
Then rushing hastily forth, he told the nearest
available neighbor, who was Robert Hagburn's mother;
and she summoned some of her gossips, and came
to the house, and took poor Aunt Keziah in charge.
They talked of her with no great respect, I fear, nor
much sorrow, nor sense that the community would
suffer any great deprivation in her loss; for, in their
view, she was a dram-drinking, pipe-smoking, cross-grained
old maid, and, as some thought, a witch;
and, at any rate, with too much of the Indian blood in
her to be of much use; and they hoped that now Rose
Garfield would have a pleasanter life, and Septimius
study to be a minister, and all things go well, and the
place be cheerfuller. They found Aunt Keziah's bottle
in the cupboard, and tasted and smelt of it.
“Good West Indjy as ever I tasted,” said Mrs.
Hagburn; “and there stands her broken pitcher, on
the hearth. Ah, empty! I never could bring my
mind to taste it; but now I 'm sorry I never did, for
I suppose nobody in the world can make any more
of it.”
Septimius, meanwhile, had betaken himself to the
hill-top, which was his place of refuge on all occasions
when the house seemed too stifled to contain
him; and there he walked to and fro, with a certain
kind of calmness and indifference that he wondered
at; for there is hardly anything in this world so
strange as the quiet surface that spreads over a
man's mind in his greatest emergencies; so that he
deems himself perfectly quiet, and upbraids himself
with not feeling anything, when indeed he is passion-stirred.
at the rich crimson flowers, which seemed to be
blooming in greater profusion and luxuriance than
ever before. He had made an experiment with these
flowers, and he was curious to know whether that
experiment had been the cause of Aunt Keziah's
death. Not that he felt any remorse therefor, in
any case, or believed himself to have committed a
crime, having really intended and desired nothing
but good. I suppose such things (and he must be
a lucky physician, methinks, who has no such mischief
within his own experience) never weigh with
deadly weight on any man's conscience. Something
must be risked in the cause of science, and in desperate
cases something must be risked for the patient's
self. Septimius, much as he loved life, would not
have hesitated to put his own life to the same risk
that he had imposed on Aunt Keziah; or if he did
hesitate, it would have been only because, if the
experiment turned out disastrously in his own person,
he would not be in a position to make another and
more successful trial; whereas, by trying it on others,
the man of science still reserves himself for new
efforts, and does not put all the hopes of the world,
so far as involved in his success, on one cast of
the die.
By and by he met Sybil Dacy, who had ascended
the hill, as was usual with her, at sunset, and came
towards him, gazing earnestly in his face.
“They tell me poor Aunt Keziah is no more,” said
she.
“She is dead,” said Septimius.
“The flower is a very famous medicine,” said the
girl, “but everything depends on its being applied in
the proper way.”
“Do you know the way, then?” asked Septimius.
“No; you should ask Doctor Portsoaken about
that,” said Sybil.
Doctor Portsoaken! And so he should consult
him. That eminent chymist and scientific man had
evidently heard of the recipe, and at all events would
be acquainted with the best methods of getting the
virtues out of flowers and herbs, some of which,
Septimius had read enough to know, were poison in
one phase and shape of preparation, and possessed of
richest virtues in others; their poison, as one may
say, serving as a dark and terrible safeguard, which
Providence has set to watch over their preciousness;
even as a dragon, or some wild and fiendish spectre,
is set to watch and keep hidden gold and heaped-up
diamonds. A dragon always waits on everything that
is very good. And what would deserve the watch
and ward of danger of a dragon, or something more
fatal than a dragon, if not this treasure of which
Septimius was in quest, and the discovery and possession
of which would enable him to break down one
of the strongest barriers of nature? It ought to be
death, he acknowledged it, to attempt such a thing;
for how changed would be life if he should succeed;
how necessary it was that mankind should be defended
from such attempts on the general rule on
spared? — then the sire would live forever, and the
heir never come to his inheritance, and so he would
at once hate his own father, from the perception
that he would never be out of his way. Then the
same class of powerful minds would always rule the
state, and there would never be a change of policy.
[Here several pages are missing. — Ed.]
Through such scenes Septimius sought out the
direction that Doctor Portsoaken had given him, and
came to the door of a house in the olden part of
the town. The Boston of those days had very much
the aspect of provincial towns in England, such as
may still be seen there, while our own city has undergone
such wonderful changes that little likeness to
what our ancestors made it can now be found. The
streets, crooked and narrow; the houses, many-gabled,
projecting, with latticed windows and diamond
panes; without sidewalks; with rough pavements.
Septimius knocked loudly at the door, nor had
long to wait before a serving-maid appeared, who
seemed to be of English nativity; and in reply to
his request for Doctor Portsoaken bade him come in,
and led him up a staircase with broad landing-places;
then tapped at the door of a room, and was
responded to by a gruff voice saying, “Come in!”
The woman held the door open, and Septimius saw
the veritable Doctor Portsoaken in an old, faded
morning-gown, and with a nightcap on his head, his
the best of our belief, on the table by his side.
“Come in, come in,” said the gruff doctor, nodding
to Septimius. “I remember you. Come in, man,
and tell me your business.”
Septimius did come in, but was so struck by the
aspect of Doctor Portsoaken's apartment, and his
gown, that he did not immediately tell his business.
In the first place, everything looked very dusty and
dirty, so that evidently no woman had ever been
admitted into this sanctity of a place; a fact made
all the more evident by the abundance of spiders,
who had spun their webs about the walls and ceiling
in the wildest apparent confusion, though doubtless
each individual spider knew the cordage which he
had lengthened out of his own miraculous bowels.
But it was really strange. They had festooned their
cordage on whatever was stationary in the room,
making a sort of gray, dusky tapestry, that waved
portentously in the breeze, and flapped, heavy and
dismal, each with its spider in the centre of his
own system. And what was most marvellous was
a spider over the doctor's head; a spider, I think
of some South American breed, with a circumference
of its many legs as big, unless I am misinformed,
as a teacup, and with a body in the midst as large
as a dollar; giving the spectator horrible qualms as
to what would be the consequence if this spider
should be crushed, and, at the same time, suggesting
the poisonous danger of suffering such a monster to
live. The monster, however, sat in the midst of
head; and he looked, with all those complicated
lines, like the symbol of a conjurer or crafty
politician in the midst of the complexity of his
scheme; and Septimius wondered if he were not
the type of Doctor Portsoaken himself, who, fat and
bloated as the spider, seemed to be the centre of
some dark contrivance. And could it be that poor
Septimius was typified by the fascinated fly, doomed
to be entangled by the web?
“Good day to you,” said the gruff doctor, taking
his pipe from his mouth. “Here I am, with my
brother spiders, in the midst of my web. I told
you, you remember, the wonderful efficacy which I
had discovered in spiders' webs; and this is my
laboratory, where I have hundreds of workmen concocting
my panacea for me. Is it not a lovely
sight?”
“A wonderful one, at least,” said Septimius.
“That one above your head, the monster, is calculated
to give a very favorable idea of your theory.
What a quantity of poison there must be in him!”
“Poison, do you call it?” quoth the grim doctor.
“That 's entirely as it may be used. Doubtless his
bite would send a man to kingdom come; but, on
the other hand, no one need want a better life-line
than that fellow's web. He and I are firm friends,
and I believe he would know my enemies by instinct.
But come, sit down, and take a glass of brandy.
No? Well, I 'll drink it for you. And how is the
old aunt yonder, with her infernal nostrum, the bitterness
not yet forgotten?”
“My Aunt Keziah is no more,” said Septimius.
“No more! Well, I trust in heaven she has carried
her secret with her,” said the doctor. “If anything
could comfort you for her loss, it would be that. But
what brings you to Boston?”
“Only a dried flower or two,” said Septimius, producing
some specimens of the strange growth of the
grave. “I want you to tell me about them.”
The naturalist took the flowers in his hand, one of
which had the root appended, and examined them
with great minuteness and some surprise; two or
three times looking in Septimius's face with a puzzled
and inquiring air; then examined them again.
“Do you tell me,” said he, “that the plant has
been found indigenous in this country, and in your
part of it? And in what locality?”
“Indigenous, so far as I know,” answered Septimius.
“As to the locality,” — he hesitated a little, — “it is
on a small hillock, scarcely bigger than a molehill, on
the hill-top behind my house.”
The naturalist looked steadfastly at him with red,
burning eyes, under his deep, impending, shaggy
brows; then again at the flower.
“Flower, do you call it?” said he, after a re-examination.
“This is no flower, though it so closely resembles
one, and a beautiful one, — yes, most beautiful.
But it is no flower. It is a certain very rare fungus,
— so rare as almost to be thought fabulous; and
there are the strangest superstitions, coming down
What sort of manure had been put into that hillock?
Was it merely dried leaves, the refuse of the forest, or
something else?”
Septimius hesitated a little; but there was no reason
why he should not disclose the truth, — as much of it
as Doctor Portsoaken cared to know.
“The hillock where it grew,” answered he, “was a
grave.”
“A grave! Strange! strange!” quoth Doctor
Portsoaken. “Now these old superstitions sometimes
prove to have a germ of truth in them, which some
philosopher has doubtless long ago, in forgotten
ages, discovered and made known; but in process
of time his learned memory passes away, but the
truth, undiscovered, survives him, and the people
get hold of it, and make it the nucleus of all sorts of
folly. So it grew out of a grave! Yes, yes; and
probably it would have grown out of any other dead
flesh, as well as that of a human being; a dog would
have answered the purpose as well as a man. You
must know that the seeds of fungi are scattered so
universally over the world that, only comply with the
conditions, and you will produce them everywhere.
Prepare the bed it loves, and a mushroom will spring
up spontaneously, an excellent food, like manna from
heaven. So superstition says, kill your deadliest enemy,
and plant him, and he will come up in a delicious
fungus, which I presume to be this; steep him, or
distil him, and he will make an elixir of life for you. I
suppose there is some foolish symbolism or other about
Dead flesh under some certain conditions of rain and
sunshine, not at present ascertained by science, will
produce the fungus, whether the manure be friend, or
foe, or cattle.”
“And as to its medical efficacy?” asked Septimius.
“That may be great for aught I know,” said Portsoaken;
“but I am content with my cobwebs. You
may seek it out for yourself. But if the poor fellow
lost his life in the supposition that he might be a useful
ingredient in a recipe, you are rather an unscrupulous
practitioner.”
“The person whose mortal relics fill that grave,”
said Septimius, “was no enemy of mine (no private
enemy, I mean, though he stood among the enemies
of my country), nor had I anything to gain by his
death. I strove to avoid aiming at his life, but he
compelled me.”
“Many a chance shot brings down the bird,” said
Doctor Portsoaken. “You say you had no interest in
his death. We shall see that in the end.”
Septimius did not try to follow the conversation
among the mysterious hints with which the doctor
chose to involve it; but he now sought to gain some
information from him as to the mode of preparing
the recipe, and whether he thought it would be most
efficacious as a decoction, or as a distillation. The
learned chemist supported most decidedly the latter
opinion, and showed Septimius how he might make for
himself a simpler apparatus, with no better aids than
Aunt Keziah's teakettle, and one or two trifling things,
be done with every necessary scrupulousness.
“Let me look again at the formula,” said he.
“There are a good many minute directions that
appear trifling, but it is not safe to neglect any
minutiæ in the preparation of an affair like this;
because, as it is all mysterious and unknown ground
together, we cannot tell which may be the important
and efficacious part. For instance, when all else is
done, the recipe is to be exposed seven days to the
sun at noon. That does not look very important, but
it may be. Then again, `Steep it in moonlight during
the second quarter.' That 's all moonshine, one
would think; but there 's no saying. It is singular,
with such preciseness, that no distinct directions are
given whether to infuse, decoct, distil, or what other
way; but my advice is to distil.”
“I will do it,” said Septimius, “and not a direction
shall be neglected.”
“I shall be curious to know the result,” said
Doctor Portsoaken, “and am glad to see the zeal
with which you enter into the matter. A very
valuable medicine may be recovered to science
through your agency, and you may make your fortune
by it; though, for my part, I prefer to trust to
my cobwebs. This spider, now, is not he a lovely
object? See, he is quite capable of knowledge and
affection.”
There seemed, in fact, to be some mode of communication
between the doctor and his spider, for on
some sign given by the former, imperceptible to
by a cord, which he extemporized out of his own
bowels, and came dangling his huge bulk down before
his master's face, while the latter lavished many
epithets of endearment upon him, ludicrous, and not
without horror, as applied to such a hideous production
of nature.
“I assure you,” said Doctor Portsoaken, “I run
some risk from my intimacy with this lovely jewel,
and if I behave not all the more prudently, your
countrymen will hang me for a wizard, and annihilate
this precious spider as my familiar. There
would be a loss to the world; not small in my own
case, but enormous in the case of the spider. Look
at him now, and see if the mere uninstructed observation
does not discover a wonderful value in him.”
In truth, when looked at closely, the spider really
showed that a care and art had been bestowed upon
his make, not merely as regards curiosity, but absolute
beauty, that seemed to indicate that he must be
a rather distinguished creature in the view of Providence;
so variegated was he with a thousand minute
spots, spots of color, glorious radiance, and such a
brilliance was attained by many conglomerated brilliancies;
and it was very strange that all this care
was bestowed on a creature that, probably, had never
been carefully considered except by the two pair of
eyes that were now upon it; and that, in spite of its
beauty and magnificence, could only be looked at
with an effort to overcome the mysterious repulsiveness
of its presence; for all the time that Septimius
thought it wrong that it was ever born, and wished
that it could be annihilated. Whether the spider was
conscious of the wish, we are unable to say; but certainly
Septimius felt as if he were hostile to him,
and had a mind to sting him; and, in fact, Doctor
Portsoaken seemed of the same opinion.
“Aha, my friend,” said he, “I would advise you
not to come too near Orontes! He is a lovely beast,
it is true; but in a certain recess of this splendid
form of his he keeps a modest supply of a certain
potent and piercing poison, which would produce a
wonderful effect on any flesh to which he chose to
apply it. A powerful fellow is Orontes; and he has
a great sense of his own dignity and importance, and
will not allow it to be imposed on.”
Septimius moved from the vicinity of the spider,
who, in fact, retreated, by climbing up his cord, and
ensconced himself in the middle of his web, where
he remained waiting for his prey. Septimius wondered
whether the doctor were symbolized by the
spider, and was likewise waiting in the middle of his
web for his prey. As he saw no way, however, in
which the doctor could make a profit out of himself,
or how he could be victimized, the thought did not
much disturb his equanimity. He was about to take
his leave, but the doctor, in a derisive kind of way,
bade him sit still, for he purposed keeping him as
a guest, that night, at least.
“I owe you a dinner,” said he, “and will pay it
with a supper and knowledge; and before we part
not at first see the object, but yet are not quite purposeless.
My familiar, up aloft there, has whispered
me something about you, and I rely greatly on his
intimations.”
Septimius, who was sufficiently common-sensible,
and invulnerable to superstitious influences on every
point except that to which he had surrendered himself,
was easily prevailed upon to stay; for he found the singular,
charlatanic, mysterious lore of the man curious,
and he had enough of real science to at least make
him an object of interest to one who knew nothing
of the matter; and Septimius's acuteness, too, was
piqued in trying to make out what manner of man he
really was, and how much in him was genuine science
and self-belief, and how much quackery and pretension
and conscious empiricism. So he stayed, and
supped with the doctor at a table heaped more bountifully,
and with rarer dainties, than Septimius had
ever before conceived of; and in his simpler cognizance,
heretofore, of eating merely to live, he could not
but wonder to see a man of thought caring to eat of
more than one dish, so that most of the meal, on his
part, was spent in seeing the doctor feed and hearing
him discourse upon his food.
“If man lived only to eat,” quoth the doctor,
“one life would not suffice, not merely to exhaust the
pleasure of it, but even to get the rudiments of it.”
When this important business was over, the doctor
and his guest sat down again in his laboratory, where
the former took care to have his usual companion, the
seemed to feel a certain sullen, genial, fierce, brutal,
kindly mood enough, and looked at Septimius with a
sort of friendship, as if he had as lief shake hands with
him as knock him down.
“Now for a talk about business,” said he.
Septimius thought, however, that the doctor's talk
began, at least, at a sufficient remoteness from any
practical business; for he began to question about his
remote ancestry, what he knew, or what record had
been preserved, of the first emigrant from England;
whence, from what shire or part of England, that
ancestor had come; whether there were any memorial
of any kind remaining of him, any letters, or written
documents, wills, deeds, or other legal papers; in
short, all about him.
Septimius could not satisfactorily see whether these
inquiries were made with any definite purpose, or
from a mere general curiosity to discover how a
family of early settlement in America might still be
linked with the old country; whether there were
any tendrils stretching across the gulf of a hundred
and fifty years, by which the American branch of
the family was separated from the trunk of the family
tree in England. The doctor partly explained this.
“You must know,” said he, “that the name you
bear, Felton, is one formerly of much eminence and
repute in my part of England, and, indeed, very
recently possessed of wealth and station. I should
like to know if you are of that race.”
Septimius answered with such facts and traditions
history; a sort of history that is quite as liable to
be mythical, in its early and distant stages, as that
of Rome, and, indeed, seldom goes three or four
generations back without getting into a mist really
impenetrable, though great, gloomy, and magnificent
shapes of men often seem to loom in it, who, if they
could be brought close to the naked eye, would turn
out as commonplace as the descendants who wonder
at and admire them. He remembered Aunt Keziah's
legend, and said he had reason to believe that
his first ancestor came over at a somewhat earlier
date than the first Puritan settlers, and dwelt among
the Indians, where (and here the young man cast
down his eyes, having the customary American abhorrence
for any mixture of blood) he had intermarried
with the daughter of a sagamore, and succeeded
to his rule. This might have happened as
early as the end of Elizabeth's reign, perhaps later.
It was impossible to decide dates on such a matter.
There had been a son of this connection, perhaps
more than one, but certainly one son, who, on the
arrival of the Puritans, was a youth, his father appearing
to have been slain in some outbreak of the tribe,
perhaps owing to the jealousy of prominent chiefs, at
seeing their natural authority abrogated or absorbed
by a man of different race. He slightly alluded to
the supernatural attributes that gathered round this
predecessor, but in a way to imply that he put no
faith in them; for Septimius's natural keen sense and
perception kept him from betraying his weaknesses to
with which a madman can so well conceal his infirmity.
On the arrival of the Puritans, they had found
among the Indians a youth partly of their own blood,
able, though imperfectly, to speak their language, —
having, at least, some early recollections of it, —
inheriting, also, a share of influence over the tribe
on which his father had grafted him. It was natural
that they should pay especial attention to this youth,
consider it their duty to give him religious instruction
in the faith of his fathers, and try to use him
as a means of influencing his tribe. They did so,
but did not succeed in swaying the tribe by his
means, their success having been limited to winning
the half-Indian from the wild ways of his mother's
people, into a certain partial, but decent accommodation
to those of the English. A tendency to
civilization was brought out in his character by their
rigid training; at least, his savage wildness was
broken. He built a house among them, with a good
deal of the wigwam, no doubt, in its style of architecture,
but still a permanent house, near which he
established a corn-field, a pumpkin-garden, a melon-patch,
and became farmer enough to be entitled
to ask the hand of a Puritan maiden. He spent
his life, with some few instances of temporary relapse
into savage wildness, when he fished in the river
Musquehannah, or in Walden, or strayed in the
woods, when he should have been planting or hoeing;
but, on the whole, the race had been redeemed from
barbarism in his person, and in the succeeding generations
second generation had been distinguished in the
Indian wars of the provinces, and then intermarried
with the stock of a distinguished Puritan divine,
by which means Septimius could reckon great and
learned men, scholars of old Cambridge, among his
ancestry on one side, while on the other it ran
up to the early emigrants, who seemed to have been
remarkable men, and to that strange wild lineage
of Indian chiefs, whose blood was like that of persons
not quite human, intermixed with civilized blood.
“I wonder,” said the doctor, musingly, “whether
there are really no documents to ascertain the epoch
at which that old first emigrant came over, and
whence he came, and precisely from what English
family. Often the last heir of some respectable
name dies in England, and we say that the family
is extinct; whereas, very possibly, it may be abundantly
flourishing in the New World, revived by the
rich infusion of new blood in a new soil, instead of
growing feebler, heavier, stupider, each year by
sticking to an old soil, intermarrying over and over
again with the same respectable families, till it has
made common stock of all their vices, weaknesses,
madnesses. Have you no documents, I say, no muniment
deed?”
“None,” said Septimius.
“No old furniture, desks, trunks, chests, cabinets?”
“You must remember,” said Septimius, “that my
Indian ancestor was not very likely to have brought
Indian does not carry a chest of papers with
him. I do remember, in my childhood, a little old
iron-bound chest, or coffer, of which the key was
lost, and which my Aunt Keziah used to say came
down from her great-great-grandfather. I don't know
what has become of it, and my poor old aunt kept
it among her own treasures.”
“Well, my friend, do you hunt up that old coffer,
and, just as a matter of curiosity, let me see the
contents.”
“I have other things to do,” said Septimius.
“Perhaps so,” quoth the doctor, “but no other,
as it may turn out, of quite so much importance as
this. I 'll tell you fairly; the heir of a great English
house is lately dead, and the estate lies open to
any well-sustained, perhaps to any plausible claimant.
If it should appear from the records of that family,
as I have some reason to suppose, that a member of
it, who would now represent the older branch, disappeared
mysteriously and unaccountably, at a date
corresponding with what might be ascertained as
that of your ancestor's first appearance in this country;
if any reasonable proof can be brought forward,
on the part of the representatives of that
white sagamore, that wizard pow-wow, or however
you call him, that he was the disappearing Englishman,
why, a good case is made out. Do you feel
no interest in such a prospect?”
“Very little, I confess,” said Septimius.
“Very little!” said the grim doctor, impatiently.
you establish for yourself a position among the English
aristocracy, and succeed to a noble English
estate, an ancient hall, where your forefathers have
dwelt since the Conqueror; splendid gardens, hereditary
woods and parks, to which anything America
can show is despicable, — all thoroughly cultivated
and adorned, with the care and ingenuity of centuries;
and an income, a month of which would be
greater wealth than any of your American ancestors,
raking and scraping for his lifetime, has ever got
together, as the accumulated result of the toil and
penury by which he has sacrificed body and soul?”
“That strain of Indian blood is in me yet,” said
Septimius, “and it makes me despise, — no, not despise;
for I can see their desirableness for other people,
— but it makes me reject for myself what you
think so valuable. I do not care for these common
aims. I have ambition, but it is for prizes such as
other men cannot gain, and do not think of aspiring
after. I could not live in the habits of English life,
as I conceive it to be, and would not, for my part,
be burthened with the great estate you speak of. It
might answer my purpose for a time. It would suit
me well enough to try that mode of life, as well as
a hundred others, but only for a time. It is of no
permanent importance.”
“I 'll tell you what it is, young man,” said the
doctor, testily, “you have something in your brain
that makes you talk very foolishly; and I have
partly a suspicion what it is, — only I can't think
sense, in other directions, should be such a confounded
idiot in this.”
Septimius blushed, but held his peace, and the
conversation languished after this; the doctor grimly
smoking his pipe, and by no means increasing the
milkiness of his mood by frequent applications to
the black bottle, until Septimius intimated that he
would like to go to bed. The old woman was summoned,
and ushered him to his chamber.
At breakfast, the doctor partially renewed the subject
which he seemed to consider most important in
yesterday's conversation.
“My young friend,” said he, “I advise you to look
in cellar and garret, or wherever you consider the
most likely place, for that iron-bound coffer. There
may be nothing in it; it may be full of musty love-letters,
or old sermons, or receipted bills of a hundred
years ago; but it may contain what will be worth to
you an estate of five thousand pounds a year. It is a
pity the old woman with the damnable decoction is
gone off. Look it up, I say.”
“Well, well,” said Septimius, abstractedly, “when
I can find time.”
So saying, he took his leave, and retraced his way
back to his home. He had not seemed like himself
during the time that elapsed since he left it, and it
appeared an infinite space that he had lived through
and travelled over, and he fancied it hardly possible
that he could ever get back again. But now, with
every step that he took, he found himself getting miserably
rose up about him, the pale mist-bow of ghostly promise
curved before him; and he trod back again, poor
boy, out of the clime of real effort, into the land of his
dreams and shadowy enterprise.
“How was it,” said he, “that I can have been so
untrue to my convictions? Whence came that dark
and dull despair that weighed upon me? Why did I
let the mocking mood which I was conscious of in that
brutal, brandy-burnt sceptic have such an influence
on me? Let him guzzle! He shall not tempt me
from my pursuit, with his lure of an estate and name
among those heavy English beef-eaters of whom he
is a brother. My destiny is one which kings might
envy, and strive in vain to buy with principalities and
kingdoms.”
So he trod on air almost, in the latter parts of his
journey, and instead of being wearied, grew more airy
with the latter miles that brought him to his wayside
home.
So now Septimius sat down, and began in earnest
his endeavors and experiments to prepare the medicine,
according to the mysterious terms of the recipe.
It seemed not possible to do it, so many rebuffs and
disappointments did he meet with. No effort would
produce a combination answering to the description of
the recipe, which propounded a brilliant, gold-colored
liquid, clear as the air itself, with a certain fragrance
which was peculiar to it, and also, what was the more
individual test of the correctness of the mixture, a certain
coldness of the feeling, a chillness which was described
all his trials, he produced nothing but turbid results,
clouded generally, or lacking something in color, and
never that fragrance, and never that coldness which
was to be the test of truth. He studied all the books
of chemistry which at that period were attainable, — a
period when, in the world, it was a science far unlike
what it has since become; and when Septimius had
no instruction in this country, nor could obtain any
beyond the dark, mysterious, charlatanic communications
of Doctor Portsoaken. So that, in fact, he seemed
to be discovering for himself the science through which
he was to work. He seemed to do everything that
was stated in the recipe, and yet no results came from
it; the liquid that he produced was nauseous to the
smell, — to taste it he had a horrible repugnance, —
turbid, nasty, reminding him in most respects of poor
Aunt Keziah's elixir; and it was a body without a
soul, and that body dead. And so it went on; and
the poor, half-maddened Septimius began to think that
his immortal life was preserved by the mere effort of
seeking for it, but was to be spent in the quest, and
was therefore to be made an eternity of abortive misery.
He pored over the document that had so possessed
him, turning its crabbed meanings every way,
trying to get out of it some new light, often tempted
to fling it into the fire which he kept under his retort,
and let the whole thing go; but then again, soon rising
out of that black depth of despair, into a determination
to do what he had so long striven for. With
such intense action of mind as he brought to bear on
distilled; that its essence did not arise, purified from
all alloy of falsehood, from all turbidness of obscurity
and ambiguity, and from a pure essence of truth and
invigorating motive, if of any it were capable. In
this interval, Septimius is said by tradition to have
found out many wonderful secrets that were almost
beyond the scope of science. It was said that old
Aunt Keziah used to come with a coal of fire from unknown
furnaces, to light his distilling apparatus; it
was said, too, that the ghost of the old lord, whose ingenuity
had propounded this puzzle for his descendants,
used to come at midnight and strive to explain
to him this manuscript; that the Black Man, too, met
him on the hill-top, and promised him an immediate
release from his difficulties, provided he would kneel
down and worship him, and sign his name in his book,
an old, iron-clasped, much-worn volume, which he produced
from his ample pockets, and showed him in it
the names of many a man whose name has become
historic, and above whose ashes kept watch an inscription
testifying to his virtues and devotion, — old
autographs, — for the Black Man was the original
autograph collector.
But these, no doubt, were foolish stories, conceived
and propagated in chimney-corners, while yet there
were chimney-corners and firesides, and smoky flues.
There was no truth in such things, I am sure; the
Black Man had changed his tactics, and knew better
than to lure the human soul thus to come to him with
his musty autograph-book. So Septimius fought with
has done before him; and to his efforts in this way
are popularly attributed many herb-drinks, and some
kinds of spruce-beer, and nostrums used for rheumatism,
sore throat, and typhus fever; but I rather think
they all came from Aunt Keziah; or perhaps, like
jokes to Joe Miller, all sorts of quack medicines,
flocking at large through the community, are assigned
to him or her. The people have a little mistaken the
character and purpose of poor Septimius, and remember
him as a quack doctor, instead of a seeker for a
secret, not the less sublime and elevating because it
happened to be unattainable.
I know not through what medium, or by what
means, but it got noised abroad that Septimius was
engaged in some mysterious work; and, indeed, his
seclusion, his absorption, his indifference to all that
was going on in that weary time of war, looked strange
enough to indicate that it must be some most important
business that engrossed him. On the few occasions
when he came out from his immediate haunts
into the village, he had a strange, owl-like appearance,
uncombed, unbrushed, his hair long and tangled; his
face, they said, darkened with smoke; his cheeks pale;
the indentation of his brow deeper than ever before;
an earnest, haggard, sulking look; and so he went
hastily along the village street, feeling as if all eyes
might find out what he had in his mind from his
appearance; taking by-ways where they were to be
found, going long distances through woods and fields,
rather than short ones where the way lay through the
glances of his fellow-men, probably because he had
learnt to consider them not as fellows, because he was
seeking to withdraw himself from the common bond
and destiny, — because he felt, too, that on that account
his fellow-men would consider him as a traitor,
an enemy, one who deserted their cause, and tried
to withdraw his feeble shoulder from under that great
burthen of death which is imposed on all men to bear,
and which, if one could escape, each other would feel
his load proportionably heavier. With these beings of
a moment he had no longer any common cause; they
must go their separate ways, yet apparently the same,
— they on the broad, dusty, beaten path, that seemed
always full, but from which continually they so strangely
vanished into invisibility, no one knowing, nor long
inquiring, what had become of them; he on his lonely
path, where he should tread secure, with no trouble
but the loneliness which would be none to him. For
a little while he would seem to keep them company,
but soon they would all drop away, the minister, his
accustomed townspeople, Robert Hagburn, Rose, Sybil
Dacy, — all leaving him in blessed unknownness to
adopt new temporary relations, and take a new course.
Sometimes, however, the prospect a little chilled
him. Could he give them all up, — the sweet sister;
the friend of his childhood; the grave instructor
of his youth; the homely, life-known faces? Yes;
there were such rich possibilities in the future:
for he would seek out the noblest minds, the deepest
hearts in every age, and be the friend of human
companion; for, unless he strung the pearls and
diamonds of life upon one unbroken affection, he
sometimes thought that his life would have nothing
to give it unity and identity; and so the longest
life would be but an aggregate of insulated fragments,
which would have no relation to one another.
And so it would not be one life, but many unconnected
ones. Unless he could look into the same
eyes, through the mornings of future time, opening
and blessing him with the fresh gleam of love and
joy; unless the same sweet voice could melt his
thoughts together; unless some sympathy of a life
side by side with his could knit them into one;
looking back upon the same things, looking forward
to the same; the long, thin thread of an individual
life, stretching onward and onward, would cease to
be visible, cease to be felt, cease, by and by, to have
any real bigness in proportion to its length, and so
be virtually non-existent, except in the mere inconsiderable
Now. If a group of chosen friends, chosen
out of all the world for their adaptedness, could go
on in endless life together, keeping themselves mutually
warm on the high, desolate way, then none of
them need ever sigh to be comforted in the pitiable
snugness of the grave. If one especial soul might be
his companion, then how complete the fence of mutual
arms, the warmth of close-pressing breast to
breast! Might there be one! O, Sybil Dacy!
Perhaps it could not be. Who but himself could
undergo that great trial, and hardship, and self-denial,
for a moment, keeping his grasp on life like one
who holds up by main force a sinking and drowning
friend? — how could a woman do it! He must
then give up the thought. There was a choice, —
friendship, and the love of woman, — the long life
of immortality. There was something heroic and
ennobling in choosing the latter. And so he walked
with the mysterious girl on the hill-top, and sat
down beside her on the grave, which still ceased not
to redden, portentously beautiful, with that unnatural
flower, — and they talked together; and Septimius
looked on her weird beauty, and often said
to himself, “This, too, will pass away; she is not
capable of what I am, she is a woman. It must be
a manly and courageous and forcible spirit, vastly
rich in all three particulars, that has strength enough
to live! Ah, is it surely so? There is such a dark
sympathy between us, she knows me so well, she
touches my inmost so at unawares, that I could almost
think I had a companion here. Perhaps not so
soon. At the end of centuries I might wed one;
not now.”
But once he said to Sybil Dacy, “Ah, how sweet
it would be — sweet for me, at least — if this intercourse
might last forever!”
“That is an awful idea that you present,” said
Sybil, with a hardly perceptible, involuntary shudder;
“always on this hill-top, always passing and repassing
this little hillock; always smelling these flowers! I
always looking at this deep chasm in your brow; you
these trees crumble away, till perhaps a new forest
grew up wherever this white race had planted, and a
race of savages again possess the soil. I should not
like it. My mission here is but for a short time, and
will soon be accomplished, and then I go.”
“You do not rightly estimate the way in which
the long time might be spent,” said Septimius. “We
would find out a thousand uses of this world, uses
and enjoyments which now men never dream of,
because the world is just held to their mouths, and
then snatched away again, before they have time
hardly to taste it, instead of becoming acquainted
with the deliciousness of this great world-fruit. But
you speak of a mission, and as if you were now in
performance of it. Will you not tell me what it
is?”
“No,” said Sybil Dacy, smiling on him. “But
one day you shall know what it is, — none sooner
nor better than you, — so much I promise you.”
“Are we friends?” asked Septimius, somewhat puzzled
by her look.
“We have an intimate relation to one another,”
replied Sybil.
“And what is it?” demanded Septimius.
“That will appear hereafter,” answered Sybil, again
smiling on him.
He knew not what to make of this, nor whether to
be exalted or depressed; but, at all events, there
seemed to be an accordance, a striking together, a
mutual touch of their two natures, as if, somehow or
music; so that he felt his soul thrill, and at the
same time shudder. Some sort of sympathy there
surely was, but of what nature he could not tell;
though often he was impelled to ask himself the
same question he asked Sybil, “Are we friends?”
because of a sudden shock and repulsion that came
between them, and passed away in a moment; and
there would be Sybil, smiling askance on him.
And then he toiled away again at his chemical
pursuits; tried to mingle things harmoniously that
apparently were not born to be mingled; discovering
a science for himself, and mixing it up with absurdities
that other chemists had long ago flung
aside; but still there would be that turbid aspect,
still that lack of fragrance, still that want of the
peculiar temperature, that was announced as the test
of the matter. Over and over again, he set the crystal
vase in the sun, and let it stay there the appointed
time, hoping that it would digest in such a manner
as to bring about the desired result.
One day, as it happened, his eyes fell upon the
silver key which he had taken from the breast of the
dead young man, and he thought within himself that
this might have something to do with the seemingly
unattainable success of his pursuit. He remembered,
for the first time, the grim doctor's emphatic injunction
to search for the little iron-bound box of which
he had spoken, and which had come down with such
legends attached to it; as, for instance, that it held
the Devil's bond with his great-great-grandfather, now
it held the golden key of Paradise; that it was full
of old gold, or of the dry leaves of a hundred years
ago; that it had a familiar friend in it, who would
be exorcised by the turning of the lock, but would
otherwise remain a prisoner till the solid oak of the
box mouldered, or the iron rusted away; so that
between fear and the loss of the key, this curious old
box had remained unopened, till itself was lost.
But now Septimius, putting together what Aunt
Keziah had said in her dying moments, and what Doctor
Portsoaken had insisted upon, suddenly came to
the conclusion that the possession of the old iron box
might be of the greatest importance to him. So he
set himself at once to think where he had last seen
it. Aunt Keziah, of course, had put it away in some
safe place or other, either in cellar or garret, no
doubt; so Septimius, in the intervals of his other
occupations, devoted several days to the search; and
not to weary the reader with the particulars of the
quest for an old box, suffice it to say that he at last
found it, amongst various other antique rubbish, in a
corner of the garret.
It was a very rusty old thing, not more than a
foot in length, and half as much in height and
breadth; but most ponderously iron-bound, with bars,
and corners, and all sorts of fortification; looking
very much like an ancient alms-box, such as are to be
seen in the older rural churches of England, and
which seem to intimate great distrust of those to
whom the funds are committed. Indeed, there might
among Septimius's forefathers, when emigrating
from England, had taken the opportunity of bringing
the poor-box along with him. On looking close, too,
there were rude embellishments on the lid and sides
of the box in long-rusted steel, designs such as the
Middle Ages were rich in; a representation of Adam
and Eve, or of Satan and a soul, nobody could tell
which; but, at any rate, an illustration of great value
and interest. Septimius looked at this ugly, rusty,
ponderous old box, so worn and battered with time,
and recollected with a scornful smile the legends of
which it was the object; all of which he despised and
discredited, just as much as he did that story in the
“Arabian Nights,” where a demon comes out of a copper
vase, in a cloud of smoke that covers the seashore;
for he was singularly invulnerable to all modes
of superstition, all nonsense, except his own. But
that one mode was ever in full force and operation
with him. He felt strongly convinced that inside
the old box was something that appertained to his
destiny; the key that he had taken from the dead
man's breast, had that come down through time, and
across the sea, and had a man died to bring and
deliver it to him, merely for nothing? It could
not be.
He looked at the old, rusty, elaborated lock of
the little receptacle. It was much flourished about
with what was once polished steel; and certainly,
when thus polished, and the steel bright with which
it was hooped, defended, and inlaid, it must have
now the oak was worm-eaten as an old coffin, and
the rust of the iron came off red on Septimius's
fingers, after he had been fumbling at it. He looked
at the curious old silver key too, and fancied that
he discovered in its elaborate handle some likeness
to the ornaments about the box; at any rate, this he
determined was the key of fate, and he was just
applying it to the lock, when somebody tapped familiarly
at the door, having opened the outer one, and
stepped in with a manly stride. Septimius, inwardly
blaspheming, as secluded men are apt to do when any
interruption comes, and especially when it comes at
some critical moment of projection, left the box as yet
unbroached, and said, “Come in.”
The door opened, and Robert Hagburn entered;
looking so tall and stately, that Septimius hardly
knew him for the youth with whom he had grown
up familiarly. He had on the Revolutionary dress
of buff and blue, with decorations that to the initiated
eye denoted him an officer, and certainly there was a
kind of authority in his look and manner, indicating
that heavy responsibilities, critical moments, had educated
him, and turned the ploughboy into a man.
“Is it you?” exclaimed Septimius. “I scarcely
knew you. How war has altered you!”
“And I may say, Is it you? for you are much
altered likewise, my old friend. Study wears upon
you terribly. You will be an old man, at this rate,
before you know you are a young one. You will kill
yourself, as sure as a gun!”
“Do you think so?” said Septimius, rather startled,
for the queer absurdity of the position struck him, if
he should so exhaust and wear himself as to die, just
at the moment when he should have found out the
secret of everlasting life. “But though I look pale, I
am very vigorous. Judging from that scar, slanting
down from your temple, you have been nearer death
than you now think me, though in another way.”
“Yes,” said Robert Hagburn; “but in hot blood,
and for a good cause, who cares for death? And
yet I love life; none better, while it lasts, and I
love it in all its looks and turns and surprises; —
there is so much to be got out of it, in spite of all
that people say. Youth is sweet, with its fiery enterprise,
and I suppose mature manhood will be just as
much so, though in a calmer way, and age, quieter
still, will have its own merits; — the thing is only
to do with life what we ought, and what is suited
to each of its stages; do all, enjoy all, — and I
suppose these two rules amount to the same thing.
Only catch real earnest hold of life, not play with
it, and not defer one part of it for the sake of
another, then each part of life will do for us what
was intended. People talk of the hardships of
military service, of the miseries that we undergo
fighting for our country. I have undergone my share,
I believe, — hard toil in the wilderness, hunger, extreme
weariness, pinching cold, the torture of a
wound, peril of death; and really I have been as
happy through it as ever I was at my mother's
cosey fireside of a winter's evening. If I had died,
happy. There is no use of life, but just to find out
what is fit for us to do; and, doing it, it seems to
be little matter whether we live or die in it. God
does not want our work, but only our willingness
to work; at least, the last seems to answer all his
purposes.”
“This is a comfortable philosophy of yours,” said
Septimius, rather contemptuously, and yet enviously.
“Where did you get it, Robert?”
“Where? Nowhere; it came to me on the march;
and though I can't say that I thought it when the
bullets pattered into the snow about me, in those narrow
streets of Quebec, yet, I suppose, it was in my
mind then; for, as I tell you, I was very cheerful and
contented. And you, Septimius? I never saw such
a discontented, unhappy-looking fellow as you are.
You have had a harder time in peace than I in war.
You have not found what you seek, whatever that
may be. Take my advice. Give yourself to the next
work that comes to hand. The war offers place to all
of us; we ought to be thankful, — the most joyous of
all the generations before or after us, — since Providence
gives us such good work to live for, or such a
good opportunity to die. It is worth living for, just
to have the chance to die so well as a man may in
these days. Come, be a soldier. Be a chaplain,
since your education lies that way; and you will find
that nobody in peace prays so well as we do, we
soldiers; and you shall not be debarred from fighting,
too; if war is holy work, a priest may lawfully do it,
Septimius, be my comrade, and, whether you live or
die, you will thank me for getting you out of the
yellow forlornness in which you go on, neither living
nor dying.”
Septimius looked at Robert Hagburn in surprise;
so much was he altered and improved by this brief
experience of war, adventure, responsibility, which he
had passed through. Not less than the effect produced
on his loutish, rustic air and deportment,
developing his figure, seeming to make him taller,
setting free the manly graces that lurked within his
awkward frame, — not less was the effect on his mind
and moral nature, giving freedom of ideas, simple
perception of great thoughts, a free natural chivalry;
so that the knight, the Homeric warrior, the hero,
seemed to be here, or possible to be here, in the young
New England rustic; and all that history has given,
and hearts throbbed and sighed and gloried over, of
patriotism and heroic feeling and action, might be
repeated, perhaps, in the life and death of this familiar
friend and playmate of his, whom he had valued
not over highly, — Robert Hagburn. He had merely
followed out his natural heart, boldly and singly, —
doing the first good thing that came to hand, — and
here was a hero.
“You almost make me envy you, Robert,” said he,
sighing.
“Then why not come with me?” asked Robert.
“Because I have another destiny,” said Septimius.
“Well, you are mistaken; be sure of that,” said
Robert. “This is not a generation for study, and the
making of books; that may come by and by. This
great fight has need of all men to carry it on, in one
way or another; and no man will do well, even for
himself, who tries to avoid his share in it. But I have
said my say. And now, Septimius, the war takes
much of a man, but it does not take him all, and what
it leaves is all the more full of life and health thereby.
I have something to say to you about this.”
“Say it then, Robert,” said Septimius, who, having
got over the first excitement of the interview, and the
sort of exhilaration produced by the healthful glow of
Robert's spirit, began secretly to wish that it might
close, and to be permitted to return to his solitary
thoughts again. “What can I do for you?”
“Why, nothing,” said Robert, looking rather confused,
“since all is settled. The fact is, my old friend,
as perhaps you have seen, I have very long had an
eye upon your sister Rose; yes, from the time we went
together to the old school-house, where she now teaches
children like what we were then. The war took me
away, and in good time, for I doubt if Rose would ever
have cared enough for me to be my wife, if I had
stayed at home, a country lout, as I was getting to be,
in shirt-sleeves and bare feet. But now, you see, I
have come back, and this whole great war, to her woman's
heart, is represented in me, and makes me heroic,
so to speak, and strange, and yet her old familiar lover.
So I found her heart tenderer for me than it was; and,
in short, Rose has consented to be my wife, and we
little delay.”
“You surprise me,” said Septimius, who, immersed
in his own pursuits, had taken no notice of the growing
affection between Robert and his sister. “Do you
think it well to snatch this little lull that is allowed
you in the wild striving of war to try to make a peaceful
home? Shall you like to be summoned from it
soon? Shall you be as cheerful among dangers afterwards,
when one sword may cut down two happinesses?”
“There is something in what you say, and I have
thought of it,” said Robert, sighing. “But I can't
tell how it is; but there is something in this uncertainty,
this peril, this cloud before us, that makes it
sweeter to love and to be loved than amid all seeming
quiet and serenity. Really, I think, if there were to
be no death, the beauty of life would be all tame. So
we take our chance, or our dispensation of Providence,
and are going to love, and to be married, just as confidently
as if we were sure of living forever.”
“Well, old fellow,” said Septimius, with more cordiality
and outgush of heart than he had felt for a long
while, “there is no man whom I should be happier to
call brother. Take Rose, and all happiness along with
her. She is a good girl, and not in the least like me.
May you live out your threescore years and ten, and
every one of them be happy.”
Little more passed, and Robert Hagburn took his
leave with a hearty shake of Septimius's hand, too
conscious of his own happiness to be quite sensible how
separated from healthy life and interests; and Septimius,
as soon as Robert had disappeared, locked the
door behind him, and proceeded at once to apply the
silver key to the lock of the old strong box.
The lock resisted somewhat, being rusty, as might
well be supposed after so many years since it was
opened; but it finally allowed the key to turn, and
Septimius, with a good deal of flutter at his heart,
opened the lid. The interior had a very different aspect
from that of the exterior; for, whereas the latter
looked so old, this, having been kept from the air,
looked about as new as when shut up from light and
air two centuries ago, less or more. It was lined with
ivory, beautifully carved in figures, according to the
art which the mediæval people possessed in great perfection;
and probably the box had been a lady's jewel-casket
formerly, and had glowed with rich lustre and
bright colors at former openings. But now there was
nothing in it of that kind, — nothing in keeping with
those figures carved in the ivory representing some
mythical subjects, — nothing but some papers in the
bottom of the box written over in an ancient hand,
which Septimius at once fancied that he recognized as
that of the manuscript and recipe which he had found
on the breast of the young soldier. He eagerly seized
them, but was infinitely disappointed to find that they
did not seem to refer at all to the subjects treated by
the former, but related to pedigrees and genealogies,
and were in reference to an English family and some
member of it who, two centuries before, had crossed
to preserve his connection with his native stock, so as
to be able, perhaps, to prove it for himself or his descendants;
and there was reference to documents and
records in England in confirmation of the genealogy.
Septimius saw that this paper had been drawn up by
an ancestor of his own, the unfortunate man who had
been hanged for witchcraft; but so earnest had been
his expectation of something different, that he flung
the old papers down with bitter indifference.
Then again he snatched them up, and contemptuously
read them, — those proofs of descent through
generations of esquires and knights, who had been renowned
in war; and there seemed, too, to be running
through the family a certain tendency to letters, for
three were designated as of the colleges of Oxford or
Cambridge; and against one there was the note, “he
that sold himself to Sathan”; and another seemed to
have been a follower of Wickliffe; and they had murdered
kings, and been beheaded, and banished, and
what not; so that the age-long life of this ancient
family had not been after all a happy or very prosperous
one, though they had kept their estate, in one or
another descendant, since the Conquest. It was not
wholly without interest that Septimius saw that this
ancient descent, this connection with noble families,
and intermarriages with names, some of which he recognized
as known in English history, all referred to his
own family, and seemed to centre in himself, the last
of a poverty-stricken line, which had dwindled down
into obscurity, and into rustic labor and humble toil,
his strange purpose. Was it not better worth
his while to take this English position here so strangely
offered him? He had apparently slain unwittingly
the only person who could have contested his rights, —
the young man who had so strangely brought him the
hope of unlimited life at the same time that he was
making room for him among his forefathers. What a
change in his lot would have been here, for there
seemed to be some pretensions to a title, too, from a
barony which was floating about and occasionally moving
out of abeyancy!
“Perhaps,” said Septimius to himself, “I may hereafter
think it worth while to assert my claim to these
possessions, to this position amid an ancient aristocracy,
and try that mode of life for one generation. Yet
there is something in my destiny incompatible, of
course, with the continued possession of an estate. I
must be, of necessity, a wanderer on the face of the
earth, changing place at short intervals, disappearing
suddenly and entirely; else the foolish, short-lived
multitude and mob of mortals will be enraged with
one who seems their brother, yet whose countenance
will never be furrowed with his age, nor his knees
totter, nor his force be abated; their little brevity will
be rebuked by his age-long endurance, above whom
the oaken roof-tree of a thousand years would crumble,
while still he would be hale and strong. So that
this house, or any other, would be but a resting-place
of a day, and then I must away into another
obscurity.”
With almost a regret, he continued to look over the
documents until he reached one of the persons recorded
in the line of pedigree, — a worthy, apparently, of
the reign of Elizabeth, to whom was attributed a title
of Doctor in Utriusque Juris; and against his name
was a verse of Latin written, for what purpose Septimius
knew not, for on reading it, it appeared to have
no discoverable appropriateness; but suddenly he remembered
the blotted and imperfect hieroglyphical
passage in the recipe. He thought an instant, and
was convinced this was the full expression and out-writing
of that crabbed little mystery; and that here
was part of that secret writing for which the Age of
Elizabeth was so famous and so dexterous. His mind
had a flash of light upon it, and from that moment he
was enabled to read not only the recipe but the rules,
and all the rest of that mysterious document, in a
way which he had never thought of before; to discern
that it was not to be taken literally and simply, but
had a hidden process involved in it that made the
whole thing infinitely deeper than he had hitherto
deemed it to be. His brain reeled, he seemed to have
taken a draught of some liquor that opened infinite
depths before him, he could scarcely refrain from
giving a shout of triumphant exultation, the house
could not contain him, he rushed up to his hill-top, and
there, after walking swiftly to and fro, at length flung
himself on the little hillock, and burst forth, as if addressing
him who slept beneath.
“O brother, O friend!” said he, “I thank thee
for thy matchless beneficence to me; for all which I
Thou wast very good, very kind. It would not have
been well for thee, a youth of fiery joys and passions,
loving to laugh, loving the lightness and sparkling
brilliancy of life, to take this boon to thyself; for,
O brother! I see, I see, it requires a strong spirit,
capable of much lonely endurance, able to be sufficient
to itself, loving not too much, dependent on no sweet
ties of affection, to be capable of the mighty trial
which now devolves on me. I thank thee, O kinsman!
Yet thou, I feel, hast the better part, who
didst so soon lie down to rest, who hast done forever
with this troublesome world, which it is mine to contemplate
from age to age, and to sum up the meaning
of it. Thou art disporting thyself in other spheres.
I enjoy the high, severe, fearful office of living here,
and of being the minister of Providence from one age
to many successive ones.”
In this manner he raved, as never before, in a
strain of exalted enthusiasm, securely treading on
air, and sometimes stopping to shout aloud, and
feeling as if he should burst if he did not do so;
and his voice came back to him again from the low
hills on the other side of the broad, level valley, and
out of the woods afar, mocking him; or as if it were
airy spirits, that knew how it was all to be, confirming
his cry, saying, “It shall be so,” “Thou hast
found it at last,” “Thou art immortal.” And it
seemed as if Nature were inclined to celebrate his
triumph over herself; for above the woods that
crowned the hill to the northward, there were shoots
lustre, blazing up high towards the zenith,
dancing up, flitting down, dancing up again; so
that it seemed as if spirits were keeping a revel
there. The leaves of the trees on the hillside, all
except the evergreens, had now mostly fallen with
the autumn; so that Septimius was seen by the few
passers-by, in the decline of the afternoon, passing
to and fro along his path, wildly gesticulating; and
heard to shout so that the echoes came from all
directions to answer him. After nightfall, too, in
the harvest moonlight, a shadow was still seen passing
there, waving its arms in shadowy triumph; so, the
next day, there were various goodly stories afloat
and astir, coming out of successive mouths, more
wondrous at each birth; the simplest form of the
story being, that Septimius Felton had at last gone
raving mad on the hill-top that he was so fond of
haunting; and those who listened to his shrieks
said that he was calling to the Devil; and some said
that by certain exorcisms he had caused the appearance
of a battle in the air, charging squadrons,
cannon-flashes, champions encountering; all of which
foreboded some real battle to be fought with the
enemies of the country; and as the battle of Monmouth
chanced to occur, either the very next day, or
about that time, this was supposed to be either caused
or foretold by Septimius's eccentricities; and as the
battle was not very favorable to our arms, the patriotism
of Septimius suffered much in popular estimation.
But he knew nothing, thought nothing, cared
he was as sane as he had been for a year past, and
was wise enough, though merely by instinct, to
throw off some of his superfluous excitement by
these wild gestures, with wild shouts, and restless
activity; and when he had partly accomplished this
he returned to the house, and, late as it was, kindled
his fire, and began anew the processes of chemistry,
now enlightened by the late teachings. A new agent
seemed to him to mix itself up with his toil and to
forward his purpose; something helped him along;
everything became facile to his manipulation, clear to
his thought. In this way he spent the night, and
when at sunrise he let in the eastern light upon his
study, the thing was done.
Septimius had achieved it. That is to say, he had
succeeded in amalgamating his materials so that they
acted upon one another, and in accordance; and had
produced a result that had a subsistence in itself, and
a right to be; a something potent and substantial;
each ingredient contributing its part to form a new
essence, which was as real and individual as anything
it was formed from. But in order to perfect
it, there was necessity that the powers of nature
should act quietly upon it through a month of sunshine;
that the moon, too, should have its part in
the production; and so he must wait patiently for
this. Wait! surely he would! Had he not time
for waiting? Were he to wait till old age, it would
not be too much; for all future time would have it in
charge to repay him.
So he poured the inestimable liquor into a glass
vase, well secured from the air, and placed it in the
sunshine, shifting it from one sunny window to
another, in order that it might ripen; moving it
gently lest he should disturb the living spirit that
he knew to be in it. And he watched it from day
to day, watched the reflections in it, watched its
lustre, which seemed to him to grow greater day by
day, as if it imbibed the sunlight into it. Never
was there anything so bright as this. It changed
its hue, too, gradually, being now a rich purple, now
a crimson, now a violet, now a blue; going through
all these prismatic colors without losing any of its
brilliance, and never was there such a hue as the
sunlight took in falling through it and resting on
his floor. And strange and beautiful it was, too, to
look through this medium at the outer world, and
see how it was glorified and made anew, and did not
look like the same world, although there were all
its familiar marks. And then, past his window, seen
through this, went the farmer and his wife, on saddle
and pillion, jogging to meeting-house or market;
and the very dog, the cow coming home from pasture,
the old familiar faces of his childhood, looked differently.
And so at last, at the end of the month, it
settled into a most deep and brilliant crimson, as if it
were the essence of the blood of the young man whom
he had slain; the flower being now triumphant, it had
given its own hue to the whole mass, and had grown
brighter every day; so that it seemed to have inherent
light, as if it were a planet by itself, a heart of
crimson fire burning within it.
And when this had been done, and there was no
more change, showing that the digestion was perfect,
then he took it and placed it where the changing
moon would fall upon it; and then again he watched
it, covering it in darkness by day, revealing it to the
moon by night; and watching it here, too, through
more changes. And by and by he perceived that
the deep crimson hue was departing, — not fading;
we cannot say that, because of the prodigious lustre
which still pervaded it, and was not less strong than
ever; but certainly the hue became fainter, now a
rose-color, now fainter, fainter still, till there was
only left the purest whiteness of the moon itself; a
change that somewhat disappointed and grieved Septimius,
though still it seemed fit that the water
of life should be of no one richness, because it must
combine all. As the absorbed young man gazed
through the lonely nights at his beloved liquor, he
fancied sometimes that he could see wonderful things
in the crystal sphere of the vase; as in Doctor Dee's
magic crystal used to be seen, which now lies in the
British Museum; representations, it might be, of
things in the far past, or in the further future,
scenes in which he himself was to act, persons yet
unborn, the beautiful and the wise, with whom he
was to be associated, palaces and towers, modes of
hitherto unseen architecture, that old hall in England
to which he had a hereditary right, with its gables,
and its smooth lawn; the witch-meetings in which
his ancestor used to take part; Aunt Keziah on her
death-bed; and, flitting through all, the shade of
remoteness, with her peculiar mischievous smile,
beckoning him into the sphere. All such visions
would he see, and then become aware that he had
been in a dream, superinduced by too much watching,
too intent thought; so that living among so
many dreams, he was almost afraid that he should
find himself waking out of yet another, and find that
the vase itself and the liquid it contained were also
dream-stuff. But no; these were real.
There was one change that surprised him, although
he accepted it without doubt, and, indeed, it did imply
a wonderful efficacy, at least singularity, in the
newly converted liquid. It grew strangely cool in
temperature in the latter part of his watching it.
It appeared to imbibe its coldness from the cold,
chaste moon, until it seemed to Septimius that it was
colder than ice itself; the mist gathered upon the
crystal vase as upon a tumbler of iced water in a
warm room. Some say it actually gathered thick
with frost, crystallized into a thousand fantastic and
beautiful shapes, but this I do not know so well.
Only it was very cold. Septimius pondered upon it,
and thought he saw that life itself was cold, individual
in its being, a high, pure essence, chastened
from all heats; cold, therefore, and therefore invigorating.
Thus much, inquiring deeply, and with painful research
into the liquid which Septimius concocted,
have I been able to learn about it, — its aspect, its
properties; and now I suppose it to be quite perfect,
as he had so long been laboring for. But this, somehow
or other, he found in himself a strong reluctance
to do; he paused, as it were, at the point where his
pathway separated itself from that of other men, and
meditated whether it were worth while to give up
everything that Providence had provided, and take
instead only this lonely gift of immortal life. Not
that he ever really had any doubt about it; no, indeed;
but it was his security, his consciousness that
he held the bright sphere of all futurity in his hand,
that made him dally a little, now that he could quaff
immortality as soon as he liked.
Besides, now that he looked forward from the
verge of mortal destiny, the path before him seemed
so very lonely. Might he not seek some one own
friend — one single heart — before he took the final
step? There was Sybil Dacy! O, what bliss, if
that pale girl might set out with him on his journey!
how sweet, how sweet, to wander with her through
the places else so desolate! for he could but half
see, half know things, without her to help him. And
perhaps it might be so. She must already know, or
strongly suspect, that he was engaged in some deep,
mysterious research; it might be that, with her
sources of mysterious knowledge among her legendary
lore, she knew of this. Then, O, to think of
those dreams which lovers have always had, when
their new love makes the old earth seem so happy
and glorious a place, that not a thousand nor an
endless succession of years can exhaust it, — all those
should he do? Would he venture onward into such
a wintry futurity, symbolized, perhaps, by the coldness
of the crystal goblet? He shivered at the
thought.
Now, what had passed between Septimius and
Sybil Dacy is not upon record, only that one day they
were walking together on the hill-top, or sitting by
the little hillock, and talking earnestly together.
Sybil's face was a little flushed with some excitement,
and really she looked very beautiful; and Septimius's
dark face, too, had a solemn triumph in it
that made him also beautiful; so rapt he was after
all those watchings, and emaciations, and the pure,
unworldly, self-denying life that he had spent. They
talked as if there were some foregone conclusion on
which they based what they said.
“Will you not be weary in the time that we shall
spend together?” asked he.
“O no,” said Sybil, smiling, “I am sure that it will
be very full of enjoyment.”
“Yes,” said Septimius, “though now I must remould
my anticipations; for I have only dared, hitherto,
to map out a solitary existence.”
“And how did you do that?” asked Sybil.
“O, there is nothing that would come amiss,”
answered Septimius; “for, truly, as I have lived
apart from men, yet it is really not because I have
no taste for whatever humanity includes; but I would
fain, if I might, live everybody's life at once, or, since
that may not be, each in succession. I would try
later, after I had had long experience of men, and
had lived through much history, and had seen, as
a disinterested observer, how men might best be influenced
for their own good. I would be a great
traveller at first; and as a man newly coming into
possession of an estate, goes over it, and views each
separate field and wood-lot, and whatever features it
contains, so will I, whose the world is, because I
possess it forever; whereas all others are but transitory
guests. So will I wander over this world of
mine, and be acquainted with all its shores, seas,
rivers, mountains, fields, and the various peoples who
inhabit them, and to whom it is my purpose to be
a benefactor; for think not, dear Sybil, that I suppose
this great lot of mine to have devolved upon
me without great duties, — heavy and difficult to
fulfil, though glorious in their adequate fulfilment.
But for all this there will be time. In a century I
shall partially have seen this earth, and known at
least its boundaries, — have gotten for myself the outline,
to be filled up hereafter.”
“And I, too,” said Sybil, “will have my duties
and labors; for while you are wandering about among
men, I will go among women, and observe and converse
with them, from the princess to the peasant
girl; and will find out what is the matter, that
woman gets so large a share of human misery laid
on her weak shoulders. I will see why it is that,
whether she be a royal princess, she has to be sacrificed
to matters of state, or a cottage girl, still somehow
there is or no some deadly curse on woman, so that
she has nothing to do, and nothing to enjoy, but
only to be wronged by man, and still to love him,
and despise herself for it, — to be shaky in her
revenges. And then if, after all this investigation,
it turns out — as I suspect — that woman is not
capable of being helped, that there is something inherent
in herself that makes it hopeless to struggle
for her redemption, then what shall I do? Nay, I
know not, unless to preach to the sisterhood that they
all kill their female children as fast as they are born,
and then let the generations of men manage as they
can! Woman, so feeble and crazy in body, fair
enough sometimes, but full of infirmities; not strong,
with nerves prone to every pain; ailing, full of little
weaknesses, more contemptible than great ones!”
“That would be a dreary end, Sybil,” said Septimius.
“But I trust that we shall be able to hush
up this weary and perpetual wail of womankind on
easier terms than that. Well, dearest Sybil, after
we have spent a hundred years in examining into the
real state of mankind, and another century in devising
and putting in execution remedies for his
ills, until our maturer thought has time to perfect
his cure, we shall then have earned a little playtime,
— a century of pastime, in which we will search
out whatever joy can be had by thoughtful people,
and that childlike sportiveness which comes out of
growing wisdom, and enjoyment of every kind. We
will gather about us everything beautiful and stately,
that all riches will be easy for us to get; with rich
furniture, pictures, statues, and all royal ornaments;
and side by side with this life we will have a little
cottage, and see which is the happiest, for this has
always been a dispute. For this century we will
neither toil nor spin, nor think of anything beyond
the day that is passing over us. There is time
enough to do all that we have to do.”
“A hundred years of play! Will not that be tiresome?”
said Sybil.
“If it is,” said Septimius, “the next century
shall make up for it; for then we will contrive
deep philosophies, take up one theory after another,
and find out its hollowness and inadequacy, and
fling it aside, the rotten rubbish that they all are,
until we have strewn the whole realm of human
thought with the broken fragments, all smashed up.
And then, on this great mound of broken potsherds
(like that great Monte Testaccio, which we will go
to Rome to see), we will build a system that shall
stand, and by which mankind shall look far into the
ways of Providence, and find practical uses of the
deepest kind in what it has thought merely speculation.
And then, when the hundred years are over,
and this great work done, we will still be so free in
mind, that we shall see the emptiness of our own
theory, though men see only its truth. And so, if
we like more of this pastime, then shall another and
another century, and as many more as we like, be
spent in the same way.”
“And after that another play-day?” asked Sybil
Dacy.
“Yes,” said Septimius, “only it shall not be
called so; for the next century we will get ourselves
made rulers of the earth; and knowing men so well,
and having so wrought our theories of government
and what not, we will proceed to execute them, —
which will be as easy to us as a child's arrangement
of its dolls. We will smile superior, to see what a
facile thing it is to make a people happy. In our
reign of a hundred years, we shall have time to
extinguish errors, and make the world see the absurdity
of them; to substitute other methods of
government for the old, bad ones; to fit the people
to govern itself, to do with little government, to do
with none; and when this is effected, we will vanish
from our loving people, and be seen no more, but be
reverenced as gods, — we, meanwhile, being overlooked,
and smiling to ourselves, amid the very crowd that is
looking for us.”
“I intend,” said Sybil, making this wild talk
wilder by that petulance which she so often showed,
— “I intend to introduce a new fashion of dress when
I am queen, and that shall be my part of the great
reform which you are going to make. And for my
crown, I intend to have it of flowers, in which that
strange crimson one shall be the chief; and when I
vanish, this flower shall remain behind, and perhaps
they shall have a glimpse of me wearing it in the
crowd. Well, what next?”
“After this,” said Septimius, “having seen so
years, I will sit down and write a history, such as
histories ought to be, and never have been. And it
shall be so wise, and so vivid, and so self-evidently
true, that people shall be convinced from it that
there is some undying one among them, because only
an eye-witness could have written it, or could have
gained so much wisdom as was needful for it.”
“And for my part in the history,” said Sybil, “I
will record the various lengths of women's waists, and
the fashion of their sleeves. What next?”
“By this time,” said Septimius, — “how many
hundred years have we now lived? — by this time, I
shall have pretty well prepared myself for what I
have been contemplating from the first. I will become
a religious teacher, and promulgate a faith,
and prove it by prophecies and miracles; for my
long experience will enable me to do the first, and
the acquaintance which I shall have formed with the
mysteries of science will put the latter at my fingers'
ends. So I will be a prophet, a greater than Mahomet,
and will put all man's hopes into my doctrine,
and make him good, holy, happy; and he shall put
up his prayers to his Creator, and find them answered,
because they shall be wise, and accompanied with effort.
This will be a great work, and may earn me
another rest and pastime.”
[He would see, in one age, the column raised in memory
of some great deed of his in a former one.]
“And what shall that be?” asked Sybil Dacy.
“Why,” said Septimius, looking askance at her,
learned, Sybil, that it is a weary toil for a man
to be always good, holy, and upright. In my life
as a sainted prophet, I shall have somewhat too
much of this; it will be enervating and sickening,
and I shall need another kind of diet. So, in
the next hundred years, Sybil, — in that one little
century, — methinks I would fain be what men call
wicked. How can I know my brethren, unless I do
that once? I would experience all. Imagination is
only a dream. I can imagine myself a murderer, and
all other modes of crime; but it leaves no real impression
on the heart. I must live these things.”
[The rampant unrestraint, which is the characteristic
of wickedness.]
“Good,” said Sybil, quietly; “and I too.”
“And thou too!” exclaimed Septimius. “Not
so, Sybil. I would reserve thee, good and pure, so
that there may be to me the means of redemption, —
some stable hold in the moral confusion that I will
create around myself, whereby I shall by and by
get back into order, virtue, and religion. Else all
is lost, and I may become a devil, and make my
own hell around me; so, Sybil, do thou be good
forever, and not fall nor slip a moment. Promise
me!”
“We will consider about that in some other century,”
replied Sybil, composedly. “There is time
enough yet. What next?”
“Nay, this is enough for the present,” said Septimius.
“New vistas will open themselves before us
that one little lifetime would exhaust the world!
After hundreds of centuries, I feel as if we might
still be on the threshold. There is the material
world, for instance, to perfect; to draw out the
powers of nature, so that man shall, as it were, give
life to all modes of matter, and make them his ministering
servants. Swift ways of travel, by earth,
sea, and air; machines for doing whatever the
hand of man now does, so that we shall do all but
put souls into our wheel-work and watch-work; the
modes of making night into day; of getting control
over the weather and the seasons; the virtues of
plants; — these are some of the easier things thou
shalt help me do.”
“I have no taste for that,” said Sybil, “unless I
could make an embroidery worked of steel.”
“And so, Sybil,” continued Septimius, pursuing
his strain of solemn enthusiasm, intermingled as it
was with wild, excursive vagaries, “we will go on
as many centuries as we choose. Perhaps — yet I
think not so — perhaps, however, in the course of
lengthened time, we may find that the world is the
same always, and mankind the same, and all possibilities
of human fortune the same; so that by
and by we shall discover that the same old scenery
serves the world's stage in all ages, and that the
story is always the same; yes, and the actors always
the same, though none but we can be aware of
it; and that the actors and spectators would grow
weary of it, were they not bathed in forgetful sleep,
lifetime. We may find that the stuff of the world's
drama, and the passions which seem to play in it,
have a monotony, when once we have tried them;
that in only once trying them, and viewing them,
we find out their secret, and that afterwards the
show is too superficial to arrest our attention. As
dramatists and novelists repeat their plots, so does
man's life repeat itself, and at length grows stale.
This is what, in my desponding moments, I have
sometimes suspected. What to do, if this be so?”
“Nay, that is a serious consideration,” replied
Sybil, assuming an air of mock alarm, “if you really
think we shall be tired of life, whether or no.”
“I do not think it, Sybil,” replied Septimius.
“By much musing on this matter, I have convinced
myself that man is not capable of debarring himself
utterly from death, since it is evidently a remedy
for many evils that nothing else would cure. This
means that we have discovered of removing death to
an indefinite distance is not supernatural; on the
contrary, it is the most natural thing in the world, —
the very perfection of the natural, since it consists
in applying the powers and processes of Nature to the
prolongation of the existence of man, her most perfect
handiwork; and this could only be done by
entire accordance and co-effort with nature. Therefore
Nature is not changed, and death remains as one
of her steps, just as heretofore. Therefore, when
we have exhausted the world, whether by going
through its apparently vast variety, or by satisfying
we will call death as the friend to introduce us to
something new.”
[He would write a poem, or other great work, inappreciable
at first, and live to see it famous, — himself
among his own posterity.]
“O, insatiable love of life!” exclaimed Sybil, looking
at him with strange pity. “Canst thou not conceive
that mortal brain and heart might at length be
content to sleep?”
“Never, Sybil!” replied Septimius, with horror.
“My spirit delights in the thought of an infinite
eternity. Does not thine?”
“One little interval — a few centuries only — of
dreamless sleep,” said Sybil, pleadingly. “Cannot
you allow me that?”
“I fear,” said Septimius, “our identity would
change in that repose; it would be a Lethe between
the two parts of our being, and with such disconnection
a continued life would be equivalent to a new
one, and therefore valueless.”
In such talk, snatching in the fog at the fragments
of philosophy, they continued fitfully; Septimius
calming down his enthusiasm thus, which
otherwise might have burst forth in madness, affrighting
the quiet little village with the marvellous things
about which they mused. Septimius could not quite
satisfy himself whether Sybil Dacy shared in his
belief of the success of his experiment, and was confident,
as he was, that he held in his control the means
of unlimited life; neither was he sure that she loved
the long march that he propounded to her, making a
union an affair of so vastly more importance than it is
in the brief lifetime of other mortals. But he determined
to let her drink the invaluable draught along
with him, and to trust to the long future, and the
better opportunities that time would give him, and
his outliving all rivals, and the loneliness which an
undying life would throw around her, without him, as
the pledges of his success.
And now the happy day had come for the celebration
of Robert Hagburn's marriage with pretty
Rose Garfield, the brave with the fair; and, as
usual, the ceremony was to take place in the evening,
and at the house of the bride: and preparations were
made accordingly; the wedding-cake, which the bride's
own fair hands had mingled with her tender hopes,
and seasoned it with maiden fears, so that its composition
was as much ethereal as sensual; and the
neighbors and friends were invited, and came with
their best wishes and good-will. For Rose shared not
at all the distrust, the suspicion, or whatever it was,
that had waited on the true branch of Septimius's
family, in one shape or another, ever since the memory
of man; and all — except, it might be, some disappointed
damsels who had hoped to win Robert
Hagburn for themselves — rejoiced at the approaching
union of this fit couple, and wished them happiness.
Septimius, too, accorded his gracious consent to
the union, and while he thought within himself that
which his sister and her lover wasted on it, still
he wished them happiness. As he compared their
brevity with his long duration, he smiled at their
little fancies of loves, of which he seemed to see the
end; the flower of a brief summer, blooming beautifully
enough, and shedding its leaves, the fragrance
of which would linger a little while in his memory,
and then be gone. He wondered how far in the
coming centuries he should remember this wedding
of his sister Rose; perhaps he would meet, five
hundred years hence, some descendant of the marriage,
— a fair girl, bearing the traits of his sister's
fresh beauty; a young man, recalling the strength and
manly comeliness of Robert Hagburn, — and could
claim acquaintance and kindred. He would be the
guardian, from generation to generation, of this race;
their ever-reappearing friend at times of need; and
meeting them from age to age, would find traditions
of himself growing poetical in the lapse of time; so
that he would smile at seeing his features look so
much more majestic in their fancies than in reality.
So all along their course, in the history of the family,
he would trace himself, and by his traditions he would
make them acquainted with all their ancestors, and so
still be warmed by kindred blood.
And Robert Hagburn, full of the life of the moment,
warm with generous blood, came in a new uniform,
looking fit to be the founder of a race who should look
back to a hero sire. He greeted Septimius as a
brother. The minister, too, came, of course, and
greeted Septimius with more formality than he had
been wont; for Septimius had insensibly withdrawn
himself from the minister's intimacy, as he got deeper
and deeper into the enthusiasm of his own cause.
Besides, the minister did not fail to see that his once
devoted scholar had contracted habits of study into
the secrets of which he himself was not admitted, and
that he no longer alluded to studies for the ministry;
and he was inclined to suspect that Septimius had
unfortunately allowed infidel ideas to assail, at least,
if not to overcome, that fortress of firm faith which he
had striven to found and strengthen in his mind, — a
misfortune frequently befalling speculative and imaginative
and melancholic persons, like Septimius, whom
the Devil is all the time planning to assault, because
he feels confident of having a traitor in the garrison.
The minister had heard that this was the fashion of
Septimius's family, and that even the famous divine,
who, in his eyes, was the glory of it, had had his season
of wild infidelity in his youth, before grace touched
him; and had always thereafter, throughout his long
and pious life, been subject to seasons of black and
sulphurous despondency, during which he disbelieved
the faith which, at other times, he preached so
powerfully.
“Septimius, my young friend,” said he, “are you
yet ready to be a preacher of the truth?”
“Not yet, reverend pastor,” said Septimius, smiling
at the thought of the day before, that the career
of a prophet would be one that he should some time
truth when I better know it.”
“You do not look as if you knew it so well as
formerly, instead of better,” said his reverend friend,
looking into the deep furrows of his brow, and into
his wild and troubled eyes.
“Perhaps not,” said Septimius. “There is time
yet.”
These few words passed amid the bustle and murmur
of the evening, while the guests were assembling,
and all were awaiting the marriage with that interest
which the event continually brings with it, common as
it is, so that nothing but death is commoner. Everybody
congratulated the modest Rose, who looked
quiet and happy; and so she stood up at the proper
time, and the minister married them with a certain
fervor and individual application, that made them feel
they were married indeed. Then there ensued a salutation
of the bride, the first to kiss her being the
minister, and then some respectable old justices and
farmers, each with his friendly smile and joke. Then
went round the cake and wine, and other good cheer,
and the hereditary jokes with which brides used to be
assailed in those days. I think, too, there was a
dance, though how the couples in the reel found
space to foot it in the little room, I cannot imagine;
at any rate, there was a bright light out of the
windows, gleaming across the road, and such a sound
of the babble of numerous voices and merriment, that
travellers passing by, on the lonely Lexington road,
wished they were of the party; and one or two of
bride, drank to her health, and took a piece of the
wedding-cake home to dream upon.
[It is to be observed that Rose had requested of her
friend, Sybil Dacy, to act as one of her bridesmaids, of
whom she had only the modest number of two; and the
strange girl declined, saying that her intermeddling would
bring ill-fortune to the marriage.]
“Why do you talk such nonsense, Sybil?” asked
Rose. “You love me, I am sure, and wish me well;
and your smile, such as it is, will be the promise of
prosperity, and I wish for it on my wedding-day.”
“I am an ill-fate, a sinister demon, Rose; a thing
that has sprung out of a grave; and you had better
not entreat me to twine my poison tendrils round
your destinies. You would repent it.”
“O, hush, hush!” said Rose, putting her hand
over her friend's mouth. “Naughty one! you can
bless me, if you will, only you are wayward.”
“Bless you, then, dearest Rose, and all happiness
on your marriage!”
Septimius had been duly present at the marriage,
and kissed his sister with moist eyes, it is said, and
a solemn smile, as he gave her into the keeping of
Robert Hagburn; and there was something in the
words he then used that afterwards dwelt on her
mind, as if they had a meaning in them that asked
to be sought into, and needed reply.
“There, Rose,” he had said, “I have made myself
ready for my destiny. I have no ties any more,
and may set forth on my path without scruple.”
“Am I not your sister still, Septimius?” said she,
shedding a tear or two.
“A married woman is no sister.; nothing but a
married woman till she becomes a mother; and then
what shall I have to do with you?”
He spoke with a certain eagerness to prove his
case, which Rose could not understand, but which
was probably to justify himself in severing, as he
was about to do, the link that connected him with
his race, and making for himself an exceptional destiny,
which, if it did not entirely insulate him, would
at least create new relations with all. There he stood,
poor fellow, looking on the mirthful throng, not in
exultation, as might have been supposed, but with a
strange sadness upon him. It seemed to him, at that
final moment, as if it were Death that linked together
all; yes, and so gave the warmth to all. Wedlock
itself seemed a brother of Death; wedlock, and
its sweetest hopes, its holy companionship, its mysteries,
and all that warm mysterious brotherhood that
is between men; passing as they do from mystery to
mystery in a little gleam of light; that wild, sweet
charm of uncertainty and temporariness, — how lovely
it made them all, how innocent, even the worst of
them; how hard and prosaic was his own situation in
comparison to theirs. He felt a gushing tenderness
for them, as if he would have flung aside his endless
life, and rushed among them, saying, —
“Embrace me! I am still one of you, and will
not leave you! Hold me fast!”
After this it was not particularly observed that
the party, which, however, went on no less merrily
without them. In truth, the habits of Sybil Dacy
were so wayward, and little squared by general rules,
that nobody wondered or tried to account for them;
and as for Septimius, he was such a studious man,
so little accustomed to mingle with his fellow-citizens
on any occasion, that it was rather wondered at that
he should have spent so large a part of a sociable
evening with them, than that he should now retire.
After they were gone the party received an unexpected
addition, being no other than the excellent
Doctor Portsoaken, who came to the door, announcing
that he had just arrived on horseback from Boston,
and that, his object being to have an interview with
Sybil Dacy, he had been to Robert Hagburn's house
in quest of her; but, learning from the old grandmother
that she was here, he had followed.
Not finding her, he evinced no alarm, but was
easily induced to sit down among the merry company,
and partake of some brandy, which, with other
liquors, Robert had provided in sufficient abundance;
and that being a day when man had not learned to
fear the glass, the doctor found them all in a state
of hilarious chat. Taking out his German pipe, he
joined the group of smokers in the great chimney-corner,
and entered into conversation with them,
laughing and joking, and mixing up his jests with
that mysterious suspicion which gave so strange a
character to his intercourse.
“It is good fortune, Mr. Hagburn,” quoth he,
how has been my learned young friend Doctor Septimius,
— for so he should be called, — and how have
flourished his studies of late? The scientific world
may look for great fruits from that decoction of
his.”
“He 'll never equal Aunt Keziah for herb-drinks,”
said an old woman, smoking her pipe in the corner,
“though I think likely he 'll make a good doctor
enough by and by. Poor Kezzy, she took a drop
too much of her mixture, after all. I used to tell
her how it would be; for Kezzy and I ever were
pretty good friends once, before the Indian in her
came out so strongly, — the squaw and the witch,
for she had them both in her blood, poor yellow
Kezzy!”
“Yes! had she indeed?” quoth the doctor; “and
I have heard an odd story, that if the Feltons chose
to go back to the old country, they 'd find a home
and an estate there ready for them.”
The old woman mused, and puffed at her pipe.
“Ah, yes,” muttered she, at length, “I remember to
have heard something about that; and how, if Felton
chose to strike into the woods, he 'd find a tribe of
wild Indians there, ready to take him for their sagamore,
and conquer the whites; and how, if he chose
to go to England, there was a great old house all
ready for him, and a fire burning in the hall, and a
dinner-table spread, and the tall-posted bed ready,
with clean sheets, in the best chamber, and a man
waiting at the gate to show him in. Only there was
the last that came out, so that none of his posterity
could ever cross it again. But that was all nonsense.”
“Strange old things one dreams in a chimney-corner,”
quoth the doctor. “Do you remember any
more of this?”
“No, no; I 'm so forgetful nowadays,” said old Mrs.
Hagburn; “only it seems as if I had my memories
in my pipe, and they curl up in smoke. I 've known
these Feltons all along, or it seems as if I had; for
I 'm nigh ninety years old now, and I was two year
old in the witch's time, and I have seen a piece of
the halter that old Felton was hung with.”
Some of the company laughed.
“That must have been a curious sight,” quoth the
doctor.
“It is not well,” said the minister seriously to the
doctor, “to stir up these old remembrances, making
the poor old lady appear absurd. I know not that
she need to be ashamed of showing the weaknesses
of the generation to which she belonged; but I do
not like to see old age put at this disadvantage among
the young.”
“Nay, my good and reverend sir,” returned the
doctor, “I mean no such disrespect as you seem to
think. Forbid it, ye upper powers, that I should cast
any ridicule on beliefs — superstitions, do you call
them? — that are as worthy of faith, for aught I
know, as any that are preached in the pulpit. If
the old lady would tell me any secret of the old
interpret these stories about his miraculous gifts as
meaning that he had a great command over natural
science, the virtues of plants, the capacities of the
human body.”
While these things were passing, or before they
passed, or some time in that eventful night, Septimius
had withdrawn to his study, when there was a
low tap heard at the door, and, opening it, Sybil
Dacy stood before him. It seemed as if there had
been a previous arrangement between them; for Septimius
evinced no surprise, only took her hand, and
drew her in.
“How cold your hand is!” he exclaimed. “Nothing
is so cold, except it be the potent medicine. It
makes me shiver.”
“Never mind that,” said Sybil. “You look frightened
at me.”
“Do I?” said Septimius. “No, not that; but
this is such a crisis; and methinks it is not yourself.
Your eyes glare on me strangely.”
“Ah, yes; and you are not frightened at me?
Well, I will try not to be frightened at myself. Time
was, however, when I should have been.”
She looked round at Septimius's study, with its
few old books, its implements of science, crucibles,
retorts, and electrical machines; all these she noticed
little; but on the table drawn before the fire,
there was something that attracted her attention;
it was a vase that seemed of crystal, made in that
old fashion in which the Venetians made their glasses,
which was a curved elaboration of fancy-work, wreathed
and twisted. This old glass was an heirloom of the
Feltons, a relic that had come down with many traditions,
bringing its frail fabric safely through all the
perils of time, that had shattered empires; and, if
space sufficed, I could tell many stories of this curious
vase, which was said, in its time, to have been the instrument
both of the Devil's sacrament in the forest,
and of the Christian in the village meeting-house.
But, at any rate, it had been a part of the choice
household gear of one of Septimius's ancestors, and
was engraved with his arms, artistically done.
“Is that the drink of immortality?” said Sybil.
“Yes, Sybil,” said Septimius. “Do but touch the
goblet; see how cold it is.”
She put her slender, pallid fingers on the side of the
goblet, and shuddered, just as Septimius did when he
touched her hand.
“Why should it be so cold?” said she, looking at
Septimius.
“Nay, I know not, unless because endless life goes
round the circle and meets death, and is just the
same with it. O Sybil, it is a fearful thing that I
have accomplished. Do you not feel it so? What
if this shiver should last us through eternity?”
“Have you pursued this object so long,” said Sybil,
“to have these fears respecting it now? In that case,
methinks I could be bold enough to drink it alone,
and look down upon you, as I did so, smiling at your
fear to take the life offered you.”
“I do not fear,” said Septimius; “but yet I acknowledge
there is a strange, powerful abhorrence
in me towards this draught, which I know not how to
account for, except as the reaction, the revulsion of
feeling consequent upon its being too long over-strained
in one direction. I cannot help it. The
meannesses, the littlenesses, the perplexities, the
general irksomeness of life, weigh upon me strangely.
Thou didst refuse to drink with me. That being
the case, methinks I could break the jewelled goblet
now, untasted, and choose the grave as the wiser
part.”
“The beautiful goblet! What a pity to break it!”
said Sybil, with her characteristic malign and mysterious
smile. “You cannot find it in your heart to
do it.”
“I could, — I can. So thou wilt not drink with
me?”
“Do you know what you ask?” said Sybil. “I
am a being that sprung up, like this flower, out of
a grave; or, at least, I took root in a grave, and,
growing there, have twined about your life, until
you cannot possibly escape from me. Ah, Septimius!
you know me not. You know not what is in my
heart towards you. Do you remember this broken
miniature? would you wish to see the features that
were destroyed when that bullet passed? Then look
at mine!”
“Sybil! what do you tell me? Was it you —
were they your features — which that young soldier
kissed as he lay dying?”
“They were,” said Sybil. “I loved him, and gave
him that miniature, and the face they represented. I
had given him all, and you slew him.”
“Then you hate me,” whispered Septimius.
“Do you call it hatred?” asked Sybil, smiling.
“Have I not aided you, thought with you, encouraged
you, heard all your wild ravings when you dared
to tell no one else? kept up your hopes; suggested;
helped you with my legendary lore to useful hints;
helped you, also, in other ways, which you do not
suspect? And now you ask me if I hate you. Does
this look like it?”
“No,” said Septimius. “And yet, since first I
knew you, there has been something whispering me
of harm, as if I sat near some mischief. There is
in me the wild, natural blood of the Indian, the
instinctive, the animal nature, which has ways of
warning that civilized life polishes away and cuts out;
and so, Sybil, never did I approach you, but there
were reluctances, drawings back, and, at the same
time, a strong impulse to come closest to you;
and to that I yielded. But why, then, knowing
that in this grave lay the man you loved, laid there
by my hand, — why did you aid me in an object
which you must have seen was the breath of my
life?”
“Ah, my friend, — my enemy, if you will have it
so, — are you yet to learn that the wish of a man's
inmost heart is oftenest that by which he is ruined
and made miserable? But listen to me, Septimius.
No matter for my earlier life; there is no reason
its weakness, its shame. It may be, I had more
cause to hate the tenant of that grave, than to hate
you who unconsciously avenged my cause; nevertheless,
I came here in hatred, and desire of revenge,
meaning to lie in wait, and turn your dearest
desire against you, to eat into your life, and
distil poison into it, I sitting on this grave, and
drawing fresh hatred from it; and at last, in the
hour of your triumph, I meant to make the triumph
mine.”
“Is this still so?” asked Septimius, with pale lips;
“or did your fell purpose change?”
“Septimius, I am weak, — a weak, weak girl, —
only a girl, Septimius; only eighteen yet,” exclaimed
Sybil. “It is young, is it not? I might be forgiven
much. You know not how bitter my purpose was to
you. But look, Septimius, — could it be worse than
this? Hush, be still! Do not stir!”
She lifted the beautiful goblet from the table,
put it to her lips, and drank a deep draught from
it; then, smiling mockingly, she held it towards
him.
“See; I have made myself immortal before you.
Will you drink?”
He eagerly held out his hand to receive the goblet,
but Sybil, holding it beyond his reach a moment, deliberately
let it fall upon the hearth, where it shivered
into fragments, and the bright, cold water of immortality
was all spilt, shedding its strange fragrance
around.
“Sybil, what have you done?” cried Septimius in
rage and horror.
“Be quiet! See what sort of immortality I win by
it, — then, if you like, distil your drink of eternity
again, and quaff it.”
“It is too late, Sybil; it was a happiness that may
never come again in a lifetime. I shall perish as a
dog does. It is too late!”
“Septimius,” said Sybil, who looked strangely beautiful,
as if the drink, giving her immortal life, had
likewise the potency to give immortal beauty answering
to it. “Listen to me. You have not learned
all the secrets that lay in those old legends, about
which we have talked so much. There were two
recipes, discovered or learned by the art of the studious
old Gaspar Felton. One was said to be that
secret of immortal life which so many old sages sought
for, and which some were said to have found; though,
if that were the case, it is strange some of them
have not lived till our day. Its essence lay in a
certain rare flower, which, mingled properly with
other ingredients of great potency in themselves,
though still lacking the crowning virtue till the
flower was supplied, produced the drink of immortality.”
“Yes, and I had the flower, which I found in a
grave,” said Septimius, “and distilled the drink, which
you have spilt.”
“You had a flower, or what you called a flower,”
said the girl. “But, Septimius, there was yet another
drink, in which the same potent ingredients were
flower, was mingled the semblance of a flower,
but really a baneful growth out of a grave. This I
sowed there, and it converted the drink into a poison,
famous in old science, — a poison which the Borgias
used, and Mary de Medicis, — and which has brought
to death many a famous person, when it was desirable
to his enemies. This is the drink I helped you to
distil. It brings on death with pleasant and delightful
thrills of the nerves. O Septimius, Septimius, it
is worth while to die, to be so blest, so exhilarated
as I am now.”
“Good God, Sybil, is this possible?”
“Even so, Septimius. I was helped by that old
physician, Doctor Portsoaken, who, with some private
purpose of his own, taught me what to do; for he
was skilled in all the mysteries of those old physicians,
and knew that their poisons at least were
efficacious, whatever their drinks of immortality
might be. But the end has not turned out as I
meant. A girl's fancy is so shifting, Septimius. I
thought I loved that youth in the grave yonder;
but it was you I loved, — and I am dying. Forgive
me for my evil purposes, for I am dying.”
“Why hast thou spilt the drink?” said Septimius,
bending his dark brows upon her, and frowning over
her. “We might have died together.”
“No, live, Septimius,” said the girl, whose face
appeared to grow bright and joyous, as if the drink
of death exhilarated her like an intoxicating fluid.
“I would not let you have it, not one drop. But to
what months of wearisome labor thou hast had, —
and what thoughts, what dreams, and how I laughed
in my sleeve at them all the time! Ha, ha, ha!
Then thou didst plan out future ages, and talked
poetry and prose to me. Did I not take it very
demurely, and answer thee in the same style? and
so thou didst love me, and kindly didst wish to take
me with thee in thy immortality. O Septimius, I
should have liked it well! Yes, latterly, only, I
knew how the case stood. O, how I surrounded thee
with dreams, and instead of giving thee immortal
life, so kneaded up the little life allotted thee with
dreams and vaporing stuff, that thou didst not really
live even that. Ah, it was a pleasant pastime, and
pleasant is now the end of it. Kiss me, thou poor
Septimius, one kiss!”
[She gives the ridiculous aspect to his scheme, in an
airy way.]
But as Septimius, who seemed stunned, instinctively
bent forward to obey her, she drew back.
“No, there shall be no kiss! There may a little
poison linger on my lips. Farewell! Dost thou
mean still to seek for thy liquor of immortality? —
ah, ah! It was a good jest. We will laugh at it
when we meet in the other world.”
And here poor Sybil Dacy's laugh grew fainter,
and dying away, she seemed to die with it; for
there she was, with that mirthful, half-malign expression
still on her face, but motionless; so that
however long Septimius's life was likely to be, whether
her image in his memory so. And here she lay
among his broken hopes, now shattered as completely
as the goblet which held his draught, and as incapable
of being formed again.
The next day, as Septimius did not appear, there
was research for him on the part of Doctor Portsoaken.
His room was found empty, the bed untouched.
Then they sought him on his favorite
hill-top; but neither was he found there, although
something was found that added to the wonder and
alarm of his disappearance. It was the cold form
of Sybil Dacy, which was extended on the hillock so
often mentioned, with her arms thrown over it; but,
looking in the dead face, the beholders were astonished
to see a certain malign and mirthful expression,
as if some airy part had been played out, — some
surprise, some practical joke of a peculiarly airy
kind had burst with fairy shoots of fire among the
company.
“Ah, she is dead! Poor Sybil Dacy,” exclaimed
Doctor Portsoaken. “Her scheme, then, has turned
out amiss.”
This exclamation seemed to imply some knowledge
of the mystery; and it so impressed the auditors,
among whom was Robert Hagburn, that they thought
it not inexpedient to have an investigation; so the
learned doctor was not uncivilly taken into custody
and examined. Several interesting particulars, some
of which throw a certain degree of light on our narrative,
Dacy, who was a niece of the doctor, had been beguiled
from her home and led over the sea by Cyril
Norton, and that the doctor, arriving in Boston with
another regiment, had found her there, after her
lover's death. Here there was some discrepancy or
darkness in the doctor's narrative. He appeared to
have consented to, or instigated (for it was not quite
evident how far his concurrence had gone) this poor
girl's scheme of going and brooding over her lover's
grave, and living in close contiguity with the man who
had slain him. The doctor had not much to say for
himself on this point; but there was found reason to
believe that he was acting in the interest of some
English claimant of a great estate that was left without
an apparent heir by the death of Cyril Norton;
and there was even a suspicion that he, with his fantastic
science and antiquated empiricism, had been at
the bottom of the scheme of poisoning, which was so
strangely intertwined with Septimius's notion, in which
he went so nearly crazed, of a drink of immortality.
It was observable, however, that the doctor — such a
humbug in scientific matters, that he had perhaps
bewildered himself — seemed to have a sort of faith
in the efficacy of the recipe which had so strangely
come to light, provided the true flower could be
discovered; but that flower, according to Doctor Portsoaken,
had not been seen on earth for many centuries,
and was banished probably forever. The flower, or
fungus, which Septimius had mistaken for it, was a sort
of earthly or devilish counterpart of it, and was greatly
uses in their art. In fine, no tangible evidence being
found against the worthy doctor, he was permitted to
depart, and disappeared from the neighborhood, to
the scandal of many people, unhanged; leaving behind
him few available effects beyond the web and
empty skin of an enormous spider.
As to Septimius, he returned no more to his cottage
by the wayside, and none undertook to tell what had
become of him; crushed and annihilated, as it were,
by the failure of his magnificent and most absurd
dreams. Rumors there have been, however, at various
times, that there had appeared an American
claimant, who had made out his right to the great
estate of Smithell's Hall, and had dwelt there, and
left posterity, and that in the subsequent generation
an ancient baronial title had been revived in favor of
the son and heir of the American. Whether this was
our Septimius, I cannot tell; but I should be rather
sorry to believe that after such splendid schemes as
he had entertained, he should have been content to
settle down into the fat substance and reality of English
life, and die in his due time, and be buried like
any other man.
A few years ago, while in England, I visited
Smithell's Hall, and was entertained there, not knowing
at the time that I could claim its owner as
my countryman by descent; though, as I now remember,
I was struck by the thin, sallow, American
cast of his face, and the lithe slenderness of his
figure, and seem now (but this may be my fancy) to
of feature.
As for the Bloody Footstep, I saw it with my own
eyes, and will venture to suggest that it was a mere
natural reddish stain in the stone, converted by superstition
into a Bloody Footstep.
| Septimius Felton, or, The elixir of life | |