The Dolliver Romance
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Nathaniel Hawthorne >> The Dolliver Romance
Little Pansie's mother lived but a short time after the shock of the
terrible catastrophe; and, as we began our story with saying, she was left
with no better guardianship or support than might be found in the efforts
of a long superannuated man.
Nothing short of the simplicity, integrity, and piety of Grandsir
Dolliver's character, known and acknowledged as far back as the oldest
inhabitants remembered anything, and inevitably discoverable by the
dullest and most prejudiced observers, in all its natural manifestations,
could have protected him in still creeping about the streets. So far as he
was personally concerned, however, all bitterness and suspicion had
speedily passed away; and there remained still the careless and neglectful
good-will, and the prescriptive reverence, not altogether reverential,
which the world heedlessly awards to the unfortunate individual who
outlives his generation.
And now that we have shown the reader sufficiently, or at least to the
best of our knowledge, and perhaps at tedious length, what was the present
position of Grandsir Dolliver, we may let our story pass onward, though at
such a pace as suits the feeble gait of an old man.
The peculiarly brisk sensation of this morning, to which we have more than
once alluded, enabled the Doctor to toil pretty vigorously at his
medicinal herbs,--his catnip, his vervain, and the like; but he did not
turn his attention to the row of mystic plants, with which so much of
trouble and sorrow either was, or appeared to be, connected. In truth, his
old soul was sick of them, and their very fragrance, which the warm
sunshine made strongly perceptible, was odious to his nostrils. But the
spicy, homelike scent of his other herbs, the English simples, was
grateful to him, and so was the earth-smell, as he turned up the soil
about their roots, and eagerly snuffed it in. Little Pansie, on the other
hand, perhaps scandalized at great-grandpapa's neglect of the prettiest
plants in his garden, resolved to do her small utmost towards balancing
his injustice; so with an old shingle, fallen from the roof, which she had
appropriated as her agricultural tool, she began to dig about them,
pulling up the weeds, as she saw grandpapa doing. The kitten, too, with a
look of elfish sagacity, lent her assistance, plying her paws with vast
haste and efficiency at the roots of one of the shrubs. This particular
one was much smaller than the rest, perhaps because it was a native of the
torrid zone, and required greater care than the others to make it
flourish; so that, shrivelled, cankered, and scarcely showing a green
leaf, both Pansie and the kitten probably mistook it for a weed. After
their joint efforts had made a pretty big trench about it, the little girl
seized the shrub with both hands, bestriding it with her plump little
legs, and giving so vigorous a pull, that, long accustomed to be
transplanted annually, it came up by the roots, and little Pansie came
down in a sitting posture, making a broad impress on the soft earth. "See,
see, Doctor!" cries Pansie, comically enough giving him his title of
courtesy,--"look, grandpapa, the big, naughty weed!"
Now the Doctor had at once a peculiar dread and a peculiar value for this
identical shrub, both because his grandson's investigations had been
applied more ardently to it than to all the rest, and because it was
associated in his mind with an ancient and sad recollection. For he had
never forgotten that his wife, the early lost, had once taken a fancy to
wear its flowers, day after day, through the whole season of their bloom,
in her bosom, where they glowed like a gem, and deepened her somewhat
pallid beauty with a richness never before seen in it. At least such was
the effect which this tropical flower imparted to the beloved form in his
memory, and thus it somehow both brightened and wronged her. This had
happened not long before her death; and whenever, in the subsequent years,
this plant had brought its annual flower, it had proved a kind of talisman
to bring up the image of Bessie, radiant with this glow that did not
really belong to her naturally passive beauty, quickly interchanging with
another image of her form, with the snow of death on cheek and forehead.
This reminiscence had remained among the things of which the Doctor was
always conscious, but had never breathed a word, through the whole of his
long life,--a sprig of sensibility that perhaps helped to keep him
tenderer and purer than other men, who entertain no such follies. And the
sight of the shrub often brought back the faint, golden gleam of her hair,
as if her spirit were in the sunlights of the garden, quivering into view
and out of it. And therefore, when he saw what Pansie had done, he sent
forth a strange, inarticulate, hoarse, tremulous exclamation, a sort of
aged and decrepit cry of mingled emotion. "Naughty Pansie, to pull up
grandpapa's flower!" said he, as soon as he could speak. "Poison, Pansie,
poison! Fling it away, child!"
And dropping his spade, the old gentleman scrambled towards the little
girl as quickly as his rusty joints would let him,--while Pansie, as
apprehensive and quick of motion as a fawn, started up with a shriek of
mirth and fear to escape him. It so happened that the garden-gate was
ajar; and a puff of wind blowing it wide open, she escaped through this
fortuitous avenue, followed by great-grandpapa and the kitten.
"Stop, naughty Pansie, stop!" shouted our old friend. "You will tumble
into the grave!" The kitten, with the singular sensitiveness that seems to
affect it at every kind of excitement, was now on her back.
And, indeed, this portentous warning was better grounded and had a more
literal meaning than might be supposed; for the swinging gate communicated
with the burial-ground, and almost directly in little Pansie's track there
was a newly dug grave, ready to receive its tenant that afternoon. Pansie,
however, fled onward with outstretched arms, half in fear, half in fun,
plying her round little legs with wonderful promptitude, as if to escape
Time or Death, in the person of Grandsir Dolliver, and happily avoiding
the ominous pitfall that lies in every person's path, till, hearing a
groan from her pursuer, she looked over her shoulder, and saw that poor
grandpapa had stumbled over one of the many hillocks. She then suddenly
wrinkled up her little visage, and sent forth a full-breathed roar of
sympathy and alarm.
"Grandpapa has broken his neck now!" cried little Pansie, amid her sobs.
"Kiss grandpapa, and make it well, then," said the old gentleman,
recollecting her remedy, and scrambling up more readily than could be
expected. "Well," he murmured to himself, "a hair's-breadth more, and I
should have been tumbled into yonder grave. Poor little Pansie! what
wouldst thou have done then?"
"Make the grass grow over grandpapa," answered Pansie, laughing up in his
face.
"Poh, poh, child, that is not a pretty thing to say," said grandpapa,
pettishly and disappointed, as people are apt to be when they try to
calculate on the fitful sympathies of childhood. "Come, you must go in to
old Martha now."
The poor old gentleman was in the more haste to leave the spot because he
found himself standing right in front of his own peculiar row of
gravestones, consisting of eight or nine slabs of slate, adorned with
carved borders rather rudely cut, and the earliest one, that of his
Bessie, bending aslant, because the frost of so many winters had slowly
undermined it. Over one grave of the row, that of his gifted grandson,
there was no memorial. He felt a strange repugnance, stronger than he had
ever felt before, to linger by these graves, and had none of the tender
sorrow, mingled with high and tender hopes, that had sometimes made it
seem good to him to be there. Such moods, perhaps, often come to the aged,
when the hardened earth-crust over their souls shuts them out from
spiritual influences.
Taking the child by the hand,--her little effervescence of infantile fun
having passed into a downcast humor, though not well knowing as yet what a
dusky cloud of disheartening fancies arose from these green hillocks,--he
went heavily toward the garden-gate. Close to its threshold, so that one
who was issuing forth or entering must needs step upon it or over it, lay
a small flat stone, deeply imbedded in the ground, and partly covered with
grass, inscribed with the name of "Dr. John Swinnerton, Physician."
"Ay," said the old man, as the well-remembered figure of his ancient
instructor seemed to rise before him in his grave-apparel, with beard and
gold-headed cane, black velvet doublet and cloak, "here lies a man who, as
people have thought, had it in his power to avoid the grave! He had no
little grandchild to tease him. He had the choice to die, and chose it."
So the old gentleman led Pansie over the stone, and carefully closed the
gate; and, as it happened, he forgot the uprooted shrub, which Pansie, as
she ran, had flung away, and which had fallen into the open grave; and
when the funeral came that afternoon, the coffin was let down upon it, so
that its bright, inauspicious flower never bloomed again.
ANOTHER FRAGMENT OF THE DOLLIVER ROMANCE.
"Be secret!" and he kept his stern eye fixed upon him, as the coach began
to move.
"Be secret!" repeated the apothecary. "I know not any secret that he has
confided to me thus far, and as for his nonsense (as I will be bold to
style it now he is gone) about a medicine of long life, it is a thing I
forget in spite of myself, so very empty and trashy it is. I wonder, by
the by, that it never came into my head to give the Colonel a dose of the
cordial whereof I partook last night. I have no faith that it is a
valuable medicine--little or none--and yet there has been an unwonted
briskness in me all the morning."
Then a simple joy broke over his face--a flickering sunbeam among his
wrinkles--as he heard the laughter of the little girl, who was running
rampant with a kitten in the kitchen.
"Pansie! Pansie!" cackled he, "grandpapa has sent away the ugly man now.
Come, let us have a frolic in the garden."
And he whispered to himself again, "That is a cordial yonder, and I will
take it according to the prescription, knowing all the ingredients." Then,
after a moment's thought, he added, "All, save one."
So, as he had declared to himself his intention, that night, when little
Pansie had long been asleep, and his small household was in bed, and most
of the quiet, old-fashioned townsfolk likewise, this good apothecary went
into his laboratory, and took out of a cupboard in the wall a certain
ancient-looking bottle, which was cased over with a net-work of what
seemed to be woven silver, like the wicker-woven bottles of our days. He
had previously provided a goblet of pure water. Before opening the bottle,
however, he seemed to hesitate, and pondered and babbled to himself;
having long since come to that period of life when the bodily frame,
having lost much of its value, is more tenderly cared for than when it was
a perfect and inestimable machine.
"I triturated, I infused, I distilled it myself in these very rooms, and
know it--know it all--all the ingredients, save one. They are common
things enough--comfortable things--some of them a little queer--one or two
that folks have a prejudice against--and then there is that one thing
that I don't know. It is foolish in me to be dallying with such a mess,
which I thought was a piece of quackery, while that strange visitor bade
me do it,--and yet, what a strength has come from it! He said it was a
rare cordial, and, methinks, it has brightened up my weary life all day,
so that Pansie has found me the fitter playmate. And then the dose--it is
so absurdly small! I will try it again."
He took the silver stopple from the bottle, and with a practised hand,
tremulous as it was with age, so that one would have thought it must have
shaken the liquor into a perfect shower of misapplied drops, he dropped--I
have heard it said--only one single drop into the goblet of water. It fell
into it with a dazzling brightness, like a spark of ruby flame, and subtly
diffusing itself through the whole body of water, turned it to a rosy hue
of great brilliancy. He held it up between his eyes and the light, and
seemed to admire and wonder at it.
"It is very odd," said he, "that such a pure, bright liquor should have
come out of a parcel of weeds that mingled their juices here. The thing is
a folly,--it is one of those compositions in which the chemists--the
cabalists, perhaps--used to combine what they thought the virtues of many
plants, thinking that something would result in the whole, which was not
in either of them, and a new efficacy be created. Whereas, it has been the
teaching of my experience that one virtue counteracts another, and is the
enemy of it. I never believed the former theory, even when that strange
madman bade me do it. And what a thick, turbid matter it was, until that
last ingredient,--that powder which he put in with his own hand! Had he
let me see it, I would first have analyzed it, and discovered its
component parts. The man was mad, undoubtedly, and this may have been
poison. But its effect is good. Poh! I will taste again, because of this
weak, agued, miserable state of mine; though it is a shame in me, a man of
decent skill in my way, to believe in a quack's nostrum. But it is a
comfortable kind of thing."
Meantime, that single drop (for good Dr. Dolliver had immediately put a
stopper into the bottle) diffused a sweet odor through the chamber, so
that the ordinary fragrances and scents of apothecaries' stuff seemed to
be controlled and influenced by it, and its bright potency also dispelled
a certain dimness of the antiquated room.
The Doctor, at the pressure of a great need, had given incredible pains to
the manufacture of this medicine; so that, reckoning the pains rather than
the ingredients (all except one, of which he was not able to estimate the
cost nor value), it was really worth its weight in gold. And, as it
happened, he had bestowed upon it the hard labor of his poor life, and the
time that was necessary for the support of his family, without return; for
the customers, after playing off this cruel joke upon the old man, had
never come back; and now, for seven years, the bottle had stood in a
corner of the cupboard. To be sure, the silver-cased bottle was worth a
trifle for its silver, and still more, perhaps, as an antiquarian knick-
knack. But, all things considered, the honest and simple apothecary
thought that he might make free with the liquid to such small extent as
was necessary for himself. And there had been something in the concoction
that had struck him; and he had been fast breaking lately; and so, in the
dreary fantasy and lonely recklessness of his old age, he had suddenly
bethought himself of this medicine (cordial,--as the strange man called
it, which had come to him by long inheritance in his family) and he had
determined to try it. And again, as the night before, he took out the
receipt--a roll of antique parchment, out of which, provokingly, one fold
had been lost--and put on his spectacles to puzzle out the passage.
Guttam unicam in aquam puram, two gills. "If the Colonel should hear of
this," said Dr. Dolliver, "he might fancy it his nostrum of long life, and
insist on having the bottle for his own use. The foolish, fierce old
gentleman! He has grown very earthly, of late, else he would not desire
such a thing. And a strong desire it must be to make him feel it
desirable. For my part, I only wish for something that, for a short time,
may clear my eyes, so that I may see little Pansie's beauty, and quicken
my ears, that I may hear her sweet voice, and give me nerve, while God
keeps me here, that I may live longer to earn bread for dear Pansie. She
provided for, I would gladly lie down yonder with Bessie and our children.
Ah! the vanity of desiring lengthened days!--There!--I have drunk it,
and methinks its final, subtle flavor hath strange potency in it."
The old man shivered a little, as those shiver who have just swallowed
good liquor, while it is permeating their vitals. Yet he seemed to be in a
pleasant state of feeling, and, as was frequently the case with this
simple soul, in a devout frame of mind. He read a chapter in the Bible,
and said his prayers for Pansie and himself, before he went to bed, and
had much better sleep than usually comes to people of his advanced age;
for, at that period, sleep is diffused through their wakefulness, and a
dim and tiresome half-perception through their sleep, so that the only
result is weariness.
Nothing very extraordinary happened to Dr. Dolliver or his small household
for some time afterwards. He was favored with a comfortable winter, and
thanked Heaven for it, and put it to a good use (at least he intended it
so) by concocting drugs; which perhaps did a little towards peopling the
graveyard, into which his windows looked; but that was neither his purpose
nor his fault. None of the sleepers, at all events, interrupted their
slumbers to upbraid him. He had done according to his own artless
conscience and the recipes of licensed physicians, and he looked no
further, but pounded, triturated, infused, made electuaries, boluses,
juleps, or whatever he termed his productions, with skill and diligence,
thanking Heaven that he was spared to do so, when his contemporaries
generally were getting incapable of similar efforts. It struck him with
some surprise, but much gratitude to Providence, that his sight seemed to
be growing rather better than worse. He certainly could read the crabbed
handwriting and hieroglyphics of the physicians with more readiness than
he could a year earlier. But he had been originally near-sighted, with
large, projecting eyes; and near-sighted eyes always seem to get a new
lease of light as the years go on. One thing was perceptible about the
Doctor's eyes, not only to himself in the glass, but to everybody else;
namely, that they had an unaccustomed gleaming brightness in them; not so
very bright either, but yet so much so, that little Pansie noticed it, and
sometimes, in her playful, roguish way, climbed up into his lap, and put
both her small palms over them; telling Grandpapa that he had stolen
somebody else's eyes, and given away his own, and that she liked his old
ones better. The poor old Doctor did his best to smile through his eyes,
and so to reconcile Pansie to their brightness: but still she continually
made the same silly remonstrance, so that he was fain to put on a pair of
green spectacles when he was going to play with Pansie, or took her on his
knee. Nay, if he looked at her, as had always been his custom, after she
was asleep, in order to see that all was well with her, the little child
would put up her hands, as if he held a light that was flashing on her
eyeballs; and unless he turned away his gaze quickly, she would wake up in
a fit of crying.
On the whole, the apothecary had as comfortable a time as a man of his
years could expect. The air of the house and of the old graveyard seemed
to suit him. What so seldom happens in man's advancing age, his night's
rest did him good, whereas, generally, an old man wakes up ten times as
nervous and dispirited as he went to bed, just as if, during his sleep he
had been working harder than ever he did in the daytime. It had been so
with the Doctor himself till within a few months. To be sure, he had
latterly begun to practise various rules of diet and exercise, which
commended themselves to his approbation. He sawed some of his own fire-
wood, and fancied that, as was reasonable, it fatigued him less day by
day. He took walks with Pansie, and though, of course, her little
footsteps, treading on the elastic air of childhood, far outstripped his
own, still the old man knew that he was not beyond the recuperative period
of life, and that exercise out of doors and proper food can do somewhat
towards retarding the approach of age. He was inclined, also, to impute
much good effect to a daily dose of Santa Cruz rum (a liquor much in vogue
in that day), which he was now in the habit of quaffing at the meridian
hour. All through the Doctor's life he had eschewed strong spirits: "But
after seventy," quoth old Dr. Dolliver, "a man is all the better in head
and stomach for a little stimulus"; and it certainly seemed so in his
case. Likewise, I know not precisely how often, but complying
punctiliously with the recipe, as an apothecary naturally would, he took
his drop of the mysterious cordial.
He was inclined, however, to impute little or no efficacy to this, and to
laugh at himself for having ever thought otherwise. The dose was so very
minute! and he had never been sensible of any remarkable effect on taking
it, after all. A genial warmth, he sometimes fancied, diffused itself
throughout him, and perhaps continued during the next day. A quiet and
refreshing night's rest followed, and alacritous waking in the morning;
but all this was far more probably owing, as has been already hinted, to
excellent and well-considered habits of diet and exercise. Nevertheless he
still continued the cordial with tolerable regularity,--the more, because
on one or two occasions, happening to omit it, it so chanced that he slept
wretchedly, and awoke in strange aches and pains, torpors, nervousness,
shaking of the hands, bleared-ness of sight, lowness of spirits and other
ills, as is the misfortune of some old men,--who are often threatened by a
thousand evil symptoms that come to nothing, foreboding no particular
disorder, and passing away as unsatisfactorily as they come. At another
time, he took two or three drops at once, and was alarmingly feverish in
consequence. Yet it was very true, that the feverish symptoms were pretty
sure to disappear on his renewal of the medicine. "Still it could not be
that," thought the old man, a hater of empiricism (in which, however, is
contained all hope for man), and disinclined to believe in anything that
was not according to rule and art. And then, as aforesaid, the dose was so
ridiculously small!
Sometimes, however, he took, half laughingly, another view of it, and felt
disposed to think that chance might really have thrown in his way a very
remarkable mixture, by which, if it had happened to him earlier in life,
he might have amassed a larger fortune, and might even have raked together
such a competency as would have prevented his feeling much uneasiness
about the future of little Pansie. Feeling as strong as he did nowadays,
he might reasonably count upon ten years more of life, and in that time
the precious liquor might be exchanged for much gold. "Let us see!" quoth
he, "by what attractive name shall it be advertised? 'The old man's
cordial?' That promises too little. Poh, poh! I would stain my honesty, my
fair reputation, the accumulation of a lifetime, and befool my neighbor
and the public, by any name that would make them imagine I had found that
ridiculous talisman that the alchemists have sought. The old man's
cordial,--that is best. And five shillings sterling the bottle. That
surely were not too costly, and would give the medicine a better
reputation and higher vogue (so foolish is the world) than if I were to
put it lower. I will think further of this. But pshaw, pshaw!"
"What is the matter. Grandpapa," said little Pansie, who had stood by him,
wishing to speak to him at least a minute, but had been deterred by his
absorption; "why do you say 'Pshaw'?"
"Pshaw!" repeated Grandpapa, "there is one ingredient that I don't know."
So this very hopeful design was necessarily given up, but that it had
occurred to Dr. Dolliver was perhaps a token that his mind was in a very
vigorous state; for it had been noted of him through life, that he had
little enterprise, little activity, and that, for the want of these
things, his very considerable skill in his art had been almost thrown
away, as regarded his private affairs, when it might easily have led him
to fortune. Whereas, here in his extreme age, he had first bethought
himself of a way to grow rich. Sometimes this latter spring causes--as
blossoms come on the autumnal tree--a spurt of vigor, or untimely
greenness, when Nature laughs at her old child, half in kindness and half
in scorn. It is observable, however, I fancy, that after such a spurt, age
comes on with redoubled speed, and that the old man has only run forward
with a show of force, in order to fall into his grave the sooner.
Sometimes, as he was walking briskly along the street, with little Pansie
clasping his hand, and perhaps frisking rather more than became a person
of his venerable years, he had met the grim old wreck of Colonel Dabney,
moving goutily, and gathering wrath anew with every touch of his painful
foot to the ground; or driving by in his carriage, showing an ashen,
angry, wrinkled face at the window, and frowning at him--the apothecary
thought--with a peculiar fury, as if he took umbrage at his audacity in
being less broken by age than a gentleman like himself. The apothecary
could not help feeling as if there were some unsettled quarrel or dispute
between himself and the Colonel, he could not tell what or why. The
Colonel always gave him a haughty nod of half-recognition; and the people
in the street, to whom he was a familiar object, would say, "The
worshipful Colonel begins to find himself mortal like the rest of us. He
feels his years." "He'd be glad, I warrant," said one, "to change with
you, Doctor. It shows what difference a good life makes in men, to look at
him and you. You are half a score of years his elder, me-thinks, and yet
look what temperance can do for a man. By my credit, neighbor, seeing how
brisk you have been lately, I told my wife you seemed to be growing
younger. It does me good to see it. We are about of an age, I think, and I
like to notice how we old men keep young and keep one another in heart. I
myself--ahem--ahem--feel younger this season than for these five years
past."