Twice-Told Tales (28 page)

"Ahem!" said Colonel Killigrew, who believed not a word of the
doctor's story; "and what may be the effect of this fluid on the human
frame?"

"You shall judge for yourself, my dear colonel," replied Dr.
Heidegger.—"And all of you, my respected friends, are welcome to so
much of this admirable fluid as may restore to you the bloom of youth.
For my own part, having had much trouble in growing old, I am in no
hurry to grow young again. With your permission, therefore, I will
merely watch the progress of the experiment."

While he spoke Dr. Heidegger had been filling the four
champagne-glasses with the water of the Fountain of Youth. It was
apparently impregnated with an effervescent gas, for little bubbles
were continually ascending from the depths of the glasses and bursting
in silvery spray at the surface. As the liquor diffused a pleasant
perfume, the old people doubted not that it possessed cordial and
comfortable properties, and, though utter sceptics as to its
rejuvenescent power, they were inclined to swallow it at once. But Dr.
Heidegger besought them to stay a moment.

"Before you drink, my respectable old friends," said he, "it would be
well that, with the experience of a lifetime to direct you, you should
draw up a few general rules for your guidance in passing a second time
through the perils of youth. Think what a sin and shame it would be
if, with your peculiar advantages, you should not become patterns of
virtue and wisdom to all the young people of the age!"

The doctor's four venerable friends made him no answer except by a
feeble and tremulous laugh, so very ridiculous was the idea that,
knowing how closely Repentance treads behind the steps of Error, they
should ever go astray again.

"Drink, then," said the doctor, bowing; "I rejoice that I have so well
selected the subjects of my experiment."

With palsied hands they raised the glasses to their lips. The liquor,
if it really possessed such virtues as Dr. Heidegger imputed to it,
could not have been bestowed on four human beings who needed it more
woefully. They looked as if they had never known what youth or
pleasure was, but had been the offspring of Nature's dotage, and
always the gray, decrepit, sapless, miserable creatures who now sat
stooping round the doctor's table without life enough in their souls
or bodies to be animated even by the prospect of growing young again.
They drank off the water and replaced their glasses on the table.

Assuredly, there was an almost immediate improvement in the aspect of
the party—not unlike what might have been produced by a glass of
generous wine—together with a sudden glow of cheerful sunshine,
brightening over all their visages at once. There was a healthful
suffusion on their cheeks instead of the ashen hue that had made them
look so corpse-like. They gazed at one another, and fancied that some
magic power had really begun to smooth away the deep and sad
inscriptions which Father Time had been so long engraving on their
brows. The widow Wycherly adjusted her cap, for she felt almost like a
woman again.

"Give us more of this wondrous water," cried they, eagerly. "We are
younger, but we are still too old. Quick! give us more!"

"Patience, patience!" quoth Dr. Heidegger, who sat, watching the
experiment with philosophic coolness. "You have been a long time
growing old; surely you might be content to grow young in half an
hour. But the water is at your service." Again he filled their glasses
with the liquor of youth, enough of which still remained in the vase
to turn half the old people in the city to the age of their own
grandchildren.

While the bubbles were yet sparkling on the brim the doctor's four
guests snatched their glasses from the table and swallowed the
contents at a single gulp. Was it delusion? Even while the draught was
passing down their throats it seemed to have wrought a change on their
whole systems. Their eyes grew clear and bright; a dark shade deepened
among their silvery locks: they sat around the table three gentlemen
of middle age and a woman hardly beyond her buxom prime.

"My dear widow, you are charming!" cried Colonel Killigrew, whose eyes
had been fixed upon her face while the shadows of age were flitting
from it like darkness from the crimson daybreak.

The fair widow knew of old that Colonel Killigrew's compliments were
not always measured by sober truth; so she started up and ran to the
mirror, still dreading that the ugly visage of an old woman would meet
her gaze.

Meanwhile, the three gentlemen behaved in such a manner as proved that
the water of the Fountain of Youth possessed some intoxicating
qualities—unless, indeed, their exhilaration of spirits were merely a
lightsome dizziness caused by the sudden removal of the weight of
years. Mr. Gascoigne's mind seemed to run on political topics, but
whether relating to the past, present or future could not easily be
determined, since the same ideas and phrases have been in vogue these
fifty years. Now he rattled forth full-throated sentences about
patriotism, national glory and the people's right; now he muttered
some perilous stuff or other in a sly and doubtful whisper, so
cautiously that even his own conscience could scarcely catch the
secret; and now, again, he spoke in measured accents and a
deeply-deferential tone, as if a royal ear were listening to his
well-turned periods. Colonel Killigrew all this time had been trolling
forth a jolly bottle-song and ringing his glass in symphony with the
chorus, while his eyes wandered toward the buxom figure of the widow
Wycherly. On the other side of the table, Mr. Medbourne was involved
in a calculation of dollars and cents with which was strangely
intermingled a project for supplying the East Indies with ice by
harnessing a team of whales to the polar icebergs. As for the widow
Wycherly, she stood before the mirror courtesying and simpering to her
own image and greeting it as the friend whom she loved better than all
the world besides. She thrust her face close to the glass to see
whether some long-remembered wrinkle or crow's-foot had indeed
vanished; she examined whether the snow had so entirely melted from
her hair that the venerable cap could be safely thrown aside. At last,
turning briskly away, she came with a sort of dancing step to the
table.

"My dear old doctor," cried she, "pray favor me with another glass."

"Certainly, my dear madam—certainly," replied the complaisant doctor.
"See! I have already filled the glasses."

There, in fact, stood the four glasses brimful of this wonderful
water, the delicate spray of which, as it effervesced from the
surface, resembled the tremulous glitter of diamonds.

It was now so nearly sunset that the chamber had grown duskier than
ever, but a mild and moonlike splendor gleamed from within the vase
and rested alike on the four guests and on the doctor's venerable
figure. He sat in a high-backed, elaborately-carved oaken arm-chair
with a gray dignity of aspect that might have well befitted that very
Father Time whose power had never been disputed save by this fortunate
company. Even while quaffing the third draught of the Fountain of
Youth, they were almost awed by the expression of his mysterious
visage. But the next moment the exhilarating gush of young life shot
through their veins. They were now in the happy prime of youth. Age,
with its miserable train of cares and sorrows and diseases, was
remembered only as the trouble of a dream from which they had joyously
awoke. The fresh gloss of the soul, so early lost and without which
the world's successive scenes had been but a gallery of faded
pictures, again threw its enchantment over all their prospects. They
felt like new-created beings in a new-created universe.

"We are young! We are young!" they cried, exultingly.

Youth, like the extremity of age, had effaced the strongly-marked
characteristics of middle life and mutually assimilated them all. They
were a group of merry youngsters almost maddened with the exuberant
frolicsomeness of their years. The most singular effect of their
gayety was an impulse to mock the infirmity and decrepitude of which
they had so lately been the victims. They laughed loudly at their
old-fashioned attire—the wide-skirted coats and flapped waistcoats of
the young men and the ancient cap and gown of the blooming girl. One
limped across the floor like a gouty grandfather; one set a pair of
spectacles astride of his nose and pretended to pore over the
black-letter pages of the book of magic; a third seated himself in an
arm-chair and strove to imitate the venerable dignity of Dr.
Heidegger. Then all shouted mirthfully and leaped about the room.

The widow Wycherly—if so fresh a damsel could be called a
widow—tripped up to the doctor's chair with a mischievous merriment
in her rosy face.

"Doctor, you dear old soul," cried she, "get up and dance with me;"
and then the four young people laughed louder than ever to think what
a queer figure the poor old doctor would cut.

"Pray excuse me," answered the doctor, quietly. "I am old and
rheumatic, and my dancing-days were over long ago. But either of these
gay young gentlemen will be glad of so pretty a partner."

"Dance with me, Clara," cried Colonel Killigrew.

"No, no! I will be her partner," shouted Mr. Gascoigne.

"She promised me her hand fifty years ago," exclaimed Mr. Medbourne.

They all gathered round her. One caught both her hands in his
passionate grasp, another threw his arm about her waist, the third
buried his hand among the glossy curls that clustered beneath the
widow's cap. Blushing, panting, struggling, chiding, laughing, her
warm breath fanning each of their faces by turns, she strove to
disengage herself, yet still remained in their triple embrace. Never
was there a livelier picture of youthful rivalship, with bewitching
beauty for the prize. Yet, by a strange deception, owing to the
duskiness of the chamber and the antique dresses which they still
wore, the tall mirror is said to have reflected the figures of the
three old, gray, withered grand-sires ridiculously contending for the
skinny ugliness of a shrivelled grandam. But they were young: their
burning passions proved them so.

Inflamed to madness by the coquetry of the girl-widow, who neither
granted nor quite withheld her favors, the three rivals began to
interchange threatening glances. Still keeping hold of the fair prize,
they grappled fiercely at one another's throats. As they struggled to
and fro the table was overturned and the vase dashed into a thousand
fragments. The precious Water of Youth flowed in a bright stream
across the floor, moistening the wings of a butterfly which, grown old
in the decline of summer, had alighted there to die. The insect
fluttered lightly through the chamber and settled on the snowy head of
Dr. Heidegger.

"Come, come, gentlemen! Come, Madam Wycherly!" exclaimed the doctor.
"I really must protest against this riot."

They stood still and shivered, for it seemed as if gray Time were
calling them back from their sunny youth far down into the chill and
darksome vale of years. They looked at old Dr. Heidegger, who sat in
his carved armchair holding the rose of half a century, which he had
rescued from among the fragments of the shattered vase. At the motion
of his hand the four rioters resumed their seats—the more readily
because their violent exertions had wearied them, youthful though they
were.

"My poor Sylvia's rose!" ejaculated Dr. Heidegger, holding it in the
light of the sunset clouds. "It appears to be fading again."

And so it was. Even while the party were looking at it the flower
continued to shrivel up, till it became as dry and fragile as when the
doctor had first thrown it into the vase. He shook off the few drops
of moisture which clung to its petals.

"I love it as well thus as in its dewy freshness," observed he,
pressing the withered rose to his withered lips.

While he spoke the butterfly fluttered down from the doctor's snowy
head and fell upon the floor. His guests shivered again. A strange
dullness—whether of the body or spirit they could not tell—was
creeping gradually over them all. They gazed at one another, and
fancied that each fleeting moment snatched away a charm and left a
deepening furrow where none had been before. Was it an illusion? Had
the changes of a lifetime been crowded into so brief a space, and were
they now four aged people sitting with their old friend Dr. Heidegger?

"Are we grown old again so soon?" cried they, dolefully.

In truth, they had. The Water of Youth possessed merely a virtue more
transient than that of wine; the delirium which it created had
effervesced away. Yes, they were old again. With a shuddering impulse
that showed her a woman still, the widow clasped her skinny hands
before her face and wished that the coffin-lid were over it, since it
could be no longer beautiful.

"Yes, friends, ye are old again," said Dr. Heidegger, "and, lo! the
Water of Youth is all lavished on the ground. Well, I bemoan it not;
for if the fountain gushed at my very doorstep, I would not stoop to
bathe my lips in it—no, though its delirium were for years instead of
moments. Such is the lesson ye have taught me."

But the doctor's four friends had taught no such lesson to themselves.
They resolved forthwith to make a pilgrimage to Florida and quaff at
morning, noon and night from the Fountain of Youth.

One afternoon last summer, while walking along Washington street, my
eye was attracted by a sign-board protruding over a narrow archway
nearly opposite the Old South Church. The sign represented the front
of a stately edifice which was designated as the "OLD PROVINCE HOUSE,
kept by Thomas Waite." I was glad to be thus reminded of a purpose,
long entertained, of visiting and rambling over the mansion of the old
royal governors of Massachusetts, and, entering the arched passage
which penetrated through the middle of a brick row of shops, a few
steps transported me from the busy heart of modern Boston into a small
and secluded court-yard. One side of this space was occupied by the
square front of the Province House, three stories high and surmounted
by a cupola, on the top of which a gilded Indian was discernible, with
his bow bent and his arrow on the string, as if aiming at the
weathercock on the spire of the Old South. The figure has kept this
attitude for seventy years or more, ever since good Deacon Drowne, a
cunning carver of wood, first stationed him on his long sentinel's
watch over the city.