DR. HEIDEGGER'S EXPERIMENT
That very singular man, old Dr. Heidegger, once invited fourvenerable friends to meet him in his study. There were threewhite-bearded gentlemen, Mr. Medbourne, Colonel Killigrew, andMr. Gascoigne, and a withered gentlewoman, whose name was theWidow Wycherly. They were all melancholy old creatures, who hadbeen unfortunate in life, and whose greatest misfortune it wasthat they were not long ago in their graves. Mr. Medbourne, inthe vigor of his age, had been a prosperous merchant, but hadlost his all by a frantic speculation, and was now little betterthan a mendicant. Colonel Killigrew had wasted his best years,and his health and substance, in the pursuit of sinful pleasures,which had given birth to a brood of pains, such as the gout, anddivers other torments of soul and body. Mr. Gascoigne was aruined politician, a man of evil fame, or at least had been sotill time had buried him from the knowledge of the presentgeneration, and made him obscure instead of infamous. As for theWidow Wycherly, tradition tells us that she was a great beauty inher day; but, for a long while past, she had lived in deepseclusion, on account of certain scandalous stories which hadprejudiced the gentry of the town against her. It is acircumstance worth mentioning that each of these three oldgentlemen, Mr. Medbourne, Colonel Killigrew, and Mr. Gascoigne,were early lovers of the Widow Wycherly, and had once been on thepoint of cutting each other's throats for her sake. And, beforeproceeding further, I will merely hint that Dr. Heidegger and allhis foul guests were sometimes thought to be a little besidethemselves,--as is not unfrequently the case with old people,when worried either by present troubles or woful recollections.
"My dear old friends," said Dr. Heidegger, motioning them to beseated, "I am desirous of your assistance in one of those littleexperiments with which I amuse myself here in my study."
If all stories were true, Dr. Heidegger's study must have been avery curious place. It was a dim, old-fashioned chamber,festooned with cobwebs, and besprinkled with antique dust. Aroundthe walls stood several oaken bookcases, the lower shelves ofwhich were filled with rows of gigantic folios and black-letterquartos, and the upper with little parchment-covered duodecimos.Over the central bookcase was a bronze bust of Hippocrates, withwhich, according to some authorities, Dr. Heidegger wasaccustomed to hold consultations in all difficult cases of hispractice. In the obscurest corner of the room stood a tall andnarrow oaken closet, with its door ajar, within which doubtfullyappeared a skeleton. Between two of the bookcases hung alooking-glass, presenting its high and dusty plate within atarnished gilt frame. Among many wonderful stories related ofthis mirror, it was fabled that the spirits of all the doctor'sdeceased patients dwelt within its verge, and would stare him inthe face whenever he looked thitherward. The opposite side of thechamber was ornamented with the full-length portrait of a younglady, arrayed in the faded magnificence of silk, satin, andbrocade, and with a visage as faded as her dress. Above half acentury ago, Dr. Heidegger had been on the point of marriage withthis young lady; but, being affected with some slight disorder,she had swallowed one of her lover's prescriptions, and died onthe bridal evening. The greatest curiosity of the study remainsto be mentioned; it was a ponderous folio volume, bound in blackleather, with massive silver clasps. There were no letters on theback, and nobody could tell the title of the book. But it waswell known to be a book of magic; and once, when a chambermaidhad lifted it, merely to brush away the dust, the skeleton hadrattled in its closet, the picture of the young lady had steppedone foot upon the floor, and several ghastly faces had peepedforth from the mirror; while the brazen head of Hippocratesfrowned, and said,--"Forbear!"
Such was Dr. Heidegger's study. On the summer afternoon of ourtale a small round table, as black as ebony, stood in the centreof the room, sustaining a cut-glass vase of beautiful form andelaborate workmanship. The sunshine came through the window,between the heavy festoons of two faded damask curtains, and felldirectly across this vase; so that a mild splendor was reflectedfrom it on the ashen visages of the five old people who sataround. Four champagne glasses were also on the table.
"My dear old friends," repeated Dr. Heidegger, "may I reckon onyour aid in performing an exceedingly curious experiment?"
Now Dr. Heidegger was a very strange old gentleman, whoseeccentricity had become the nucleus for a thousand fantasticstories. Some of these fables, to my shame be it spoken, mightpossibly be traced back to my own veracious self; and if anypassages of the present tale should startle the reader's faith, Imust be content to bear the stigma of a fiction monger.
When the doctor's four guests heard him talk of his proposedexperiment, they anticipated nothing more wonderful than themurder of a mouse in an air pump, or the examination of a cobwebby the microscope, or some similar nonsense, with which he wasconstantly in the habit of pestering his intimates. But withoutwaiting for a reply, Dr. Heidegger hobbled across the chamber,and returned with the same ponderous folio, bound in blackleather, which common report affirmed to be a book of magic.Undoing the silver clasps, he opened the volume, and took fromamong its black-letter pages a rose, or what was once a rose,though now the green leaves and crimson petals had assumed onebrownish hue, and the ancient flower seemed ready to crumble todust in the doctor's hands.
"This rose," said Dr. Heidegger, with a sigh, "this same witheredand crumbling flower, blossomed five and fifty years ago. It wasgiven me by Sylvia Ward, whose portrait hangs yonder; and I meantto wear it in my bosom at our wedding. Five and fifty years ithas been treasured between the leaves of this old volume. Now,would you deem it possible that this rose of half a century couldever bloom again?"
"Nonsense!" said the Widow Wycherly, with a peevish toss of herhead. "You might as well ask whether an old woman's wrinkled facecould ever bloom again."
"See!" answered Dr. Heidegger.
He uncovered the vase, and threw the faded rose into the waterwhich it contained. At first, it lay lightly on the surface ofthe fluid, appearing to imbibe none of its moisture. Soon,however, a singular change began to be visible. The crushed anddried petals stirred, and assumed a deepening tinge of crimson,as if the flower were reviving from a deathlike slumber; theslender stalk and twigs of foliage became green; and there wasthe rose of half a century, looking as fresh as when Sylvia Wardhad first given it to her lover. It was scarcely full blown; forsome of its delicate red leaves curled modestly around its moistbosom, within which two or three dewdrops were sparkling.
"That is certainly a very pretty deception," said the doctor'sfriends; carelessly, however, for they had witnessed greatermiracles at a conjurer's show; "pray how was it effected?"
"Did you never hear of the 'Fountain of Youth?'" asked Dr.Heidegger, "which Ponce De Leon, the Spanish adventurer, went insearch of two or three centuries ago?"
"But did Ponce De Leon ever find it?" said the Widow Wycherly.
"No," answered Dr. Heidegger, "for he never sought it in theright place. The famous Fountain of Youth, if I am rightlyinformed, is situated in the southern part of the Floridianpeninsula, not far from Lake Macaco. Its source is overshadowedby several gigantic magnolias, which, though numberless centuriesold, have been kept as fresh as violets by the virtues of thiswonderful water. An acquaintance of mine, knowing my curiosity insuch matters, has sent me what you see in the vase."
"Ahem!" said Colonel Killigrew, who believed not a word of thedoctor's story; "and what may be the effect of this fluid on thehuman frame?"
"You shall judge for yourself, my dear colonel," replied Dr.Heidegger; "and all of you, my respected friends, are welcome toso much of this admirable fluid as may restore to you the bloomof youth. For my own part, having had much trouble in growingold, 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 champagneglasses with the water of the Fountain of Youth. It wasapparently impregnated with an effervescent gas, for littlebubbles were continually ascending from the depths of theglasses, and bursting in silvery spray a
t the surface. As theliquor diffused a pleasant perfume, the old people doubted notthat it possessed cordial and comfortable properties; and thoughutter sceptics as to its rejuvenescent power, they were inclinedto swallow it at once. But Dr. Heidegger besought them to stay amoment.
"Before you drink, my respectable old friends," said he, "itwould be well that, with the experience of a lifetime to directyou, you should draw up a few general rules for your guidance, inpassing a second time through the perils of youth. Think what asin and shame it would be, if, with your peculiar advantages, youshould not become patterns of virtue and wisdom to all the youngpeople of the age!"
The doctor's four venerable friends made him no answer, except bya feeble and tremulous laugh; so very ridiculous was the ideathat, knowing how closely repentance treads behind the steps oferror, they should ever go astray again.
"Drink, then," said the doctor, bowing: "I rejoice that I have sowell selected the subjects of my experiment."
With palsied hands, they raised the glasses to their lips. Theliquor, if it really possessed such virtues as Dr. Heideggerimputed to it, could not have been bestowed on four human beingswho needed it more wofully. They looked as if they had neverknown what youth or pleasure was, but had been the offspring ofNature's dotage, and always the gray, decrepit, sapless,miserable creatures, who now sat stooping round the doctor'stable, without life enough in their souls or bodies to beanimated even by the prospect of growing young again. They drankoff the water, and replaced their glasses on the table.
Assuredly there was an almost immediate improvement in the aspectof the party, not unlike what might have been produced by a glassof generous wine, together with a sudden glow of cheerfulsunshine brightening over all their visages at once. There was ahealthful suffusion on their cheeks, instead of the ashen huethat had made them look so corpse-like. They gazed at oneanother, and fancied that some magic power had really begun tosmooth away the deep and sad inscriptions which Father Time hadbeen so long engraving on their brows. The Widow Wycherlyadjusted her cap, for she felt almost like a woman again.
"Give us more of this wondrous water!" cried they, eagerly. "Weare younger--but we are still too old! Quick--give us more!"
"Patience, patience!" quoth Dr. Heidegger, who sat watching theexperiment with philosophic coolness. "You have been a long timegrowing old. Surely, you might be content to grow young in halfan hour! But the water is at your service."
Again he filled their glasses with the liquor of youth, enough ofwhich still remained in the vase to turn half the old people inthe city to the age of their own grandchildren. While the bubbleswere yet sparkling on the brim, the doctor's four guests snatchedtheir glasses from the table, and swallowed the contents at asingle gulp. Was it delusion? even while the draught was passingdown their throats, it seemed to have wrought a change on theirwhole systems. Their eyes grew clear and bright; a dark shadedeepened among their silvery locks, they sat around the table,three gentlemen of middle age, and a woman, hardly beyond herbuxom prime.
"My dear widow, you are charming!" cried Colonel Killigrew, whoseeyes had been fixed upon her face, while the shadows of age wereflitting from it like darkness from the crimson daybreak.
The fair widow knew, of old, that Colonel Killigrew's complimentswere not always measured by sober truth; so she started up andran to the mirror, still dreading that the ugly visage of an oldwoman would meet her gaze. Meanwhile, the three gentlemen behavedin such a manner as proved that the water of the Fountain ofYouth possessed some intoxicating qualities; unless, indeed,their exhilaration of spirits were merely a lightsome dizzinesscaused by the sudden removal of the weight of years. Mr.Gascoigne's mind seemed to run on political topics, but whetherrelating to the past, present, or future, could not easily bedetermined, since the same ideas and phrases have been in voguethese fifty years. Now he rattled forth full-throated sentencesabout patriotism, national glory, and the people's right; now hemuttered some perilous stuff or other, in a sly and doubtfulwhisper, so cautiously that even his own conscience couldscarcely catch the secret; and now, again, he spoke in measuredaccents, and a deeply deferential tone, as if a royal ear werelistening to his wellturned periods. Colonel Killigrew all thistime had been trolling forth a jolly bottle song, and ringing hisglass in symphony with the chorus, while his eyes wandered towardthe buxom figure of the Widow Wycherly. On the other side of thetable, Mr. Medbourne was involved in a calculation of dollars andcents, with which was strangely intermingled a project forsupplying the East Indies with ice, by harnessing a team ofwhales to the polar icebergs.
As for the Widow Wycherly, she stood before the mirrorcourtesying and simpering to her own image, and greeting it asthe friend whom she loved better than all the world beside. Shethrust her face close to the glass, to see whether somelong-remembered wrinkle or crow's foot had indeed vanished. Sheexamined whether the snow had so entirely melted from her hairthat the venerable cap could be safely thrown aside. At last,turning briskly away, she came with a sort of dancing step to thetable.
"My dear old doctor," cried she, "pray favor me with anotherglass!"
"Certainly, my dear madam, certainly!" replied the complaisantdoctor; "see! I have already filled the glasses."
There, in fact, stood the four glasses, brimful of this wonderfulwater, the delicate spray of which, as it effervesced from thesurface, resembled the tremulous glitter of diamonds. It was nowso 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 venerablefigure. He sat in a high-backed, elaborately-carved, oakenarm-chair, with a gray dignity of aspect that might have wellbefitted that very Father Time, whose power had never beendisputed, save by this fortunate company. Even while quaffing thethird draught of the Fountain of Youth, they were almost awed bythe expression of his mysterious visage.
But, the next moment, the exhilarating gush of young life shotthrough 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 theyhad joyously awoke. The fresh gloss of the soul, so early lost,and without which the world's successive scenes had been but agallery of faded pictures, again threw its enchantment over alltheir prospects. They felt like new-created beings in anew-created universe.
"We are young! We are young!" they cried exultingly.
Youth, like the extremity of age, had effaced the strongly-markedcharacteristics of middle life, and mutually assimilated themall. They were a group of merry youngsters, almost maddened withthe exuberant frolicsomeness of their years. The most singulareffect of their gayety was an impulse to mock the infirmity anddecrepitude of which they had so lately been the victims. Theylaughed loudly at their old-fashioned attire, the wide-skirtedcoats and flapped waistcoats of the young men, and the ancientcap and gown of the blooming girl. One limped across the floorlike a gouty grandfather; one set a pair of spectacles astride ofhis nose, and pretended to pore over the black-letter pages ofthe book of magic; a third seated himself in an arm-chair, andstrove to imitate the venerable dignity of Dr. Heidegger. Thenall shouted mirthfully, and leaped about the room. The WidowWycherly--if so fresh a damsel could be called a widow--trippedup to the doctor's chair, with a mischievous merriment in herrosy face.
"Doctor, you dear old soul," cried she, "get up and dance withme!" And then the four young people laughed louder than ever, tothink what a queer figure the poor old doctor would cut.
"Pray excuse me," answered the doctor quietly. "I am old andrheumatic, and my dancing days were over long ago. But either ofthese 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 hispassionate grasp another threw his arm
about her waist--the thirdburied his hand among the glossy curls that clustered beneath thewidow's cap. Blushing, panting, struggling, chiding, laughing,her warm breath fanning each of their faces by turns, she stroveto disengage herself, yet still remained in their triple embrace.Never was there a livelier picture of youthful rivalship, withbewitching beauty for the prize. Yet, by a strange deception,owing to the duskiness of the chamber, and the antique dresseswhich they still wore, the tall mirror is said to have reflectedthe figures of the three old, gray, withered grandsires,ridiculously contending for the skinny ugliness of a shrivelledgrandam.
But they were young: their burning passions proved them so.Inflamed to madness by the coquetry of the girl-widow, whoneither granted nor quite withheld her favors, the three rivalsbegan to interchange threatening glances. Still keeping hold ofthe fair prize, they grappled fiercely at one another's throats.As they struggled to and fro, the table was overturned, and thevase dashed into a thousand fragments. The precious Water ofYouth flowed in a bright stream across the floor, moistening thewings of a butterfly, which, grown old in the decline of summer,had alighted there to die. The insect fluttered lightly throughthe chamber, and settled on the snowy head of Dr. Heidegger.
"Come, come, gentlemen!--come, Madam Wycherly," exclaimed thedoctor, "I really must protest against this riot."
They stood still and shivered; for it seemed as if gray Time werecalling them back from their sunny youth, far down into the chilland darksome vale of years. They looked at old Dr. Heidegger, whosat in his carved arm-chair, holding the rose of half a century,which he had rescued from among the fragments of the shatteredvase. At the motion of his hand, the four rioters resumed theirseats; the more readily, because their violent exertions hadwearied them, youthful though they were.
"My poor Sylvia's rose!" ejaculated Dr. Heidegger, holding it inthe light of the sunset clouds; "it appears to be fading again."
And so it was. Even while the party were looking at it, theflower continued to shrivel up, till it became as dry and fragileas when the doctor had first thrown it into the vase. He shookoff 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, andfell upon the floor.
His guests shivered again. A strange chillness, whether of thebody or spirit they could not tell, was creeping gradually overthem all. They gazed at one another, and fancied that eachfleeting moment snatched away a charm, and left a deepeningfurrow where none had been before. Was it an illusion? Had thechanges of a lifetime been crowded into so brief a space, andwere 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 virtuemore transient than that of wine. The delirium which it createdhad effervesced away. Yes! they were old again. With a shudderingimpulse, that showed her a woman still, the widow clasped herskinny hands before her face, and wished that the coffin lid wereover 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 bemoanit not; for if the fountain gushed at my very doorstep, I wouldnot stoop to bathe my lips in it--no, though its delirium werefor years instead of moments. Such is the lesson ye have taughtme!"
But the doctor's four friends had taught no such lesson tothemselves. They resolved forthwith to make a pilgrimage toFlorida, and quaff at morning, noon, and night, from the Fountainof Youth.