Twice-told tales
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.
Legends of the Province-House
I.
HOWE’S MASQUERADE
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.
The Province House is constructed of brick, which seems recently to
have been overlaid with a coat of light-colored paint. A flight of red
freestone steps fenced in by a balustrade of curiously wrought iron
ascends from the court-yard to the spacious porch, over which is a
balcony with an iron balustrade of similar pattern and workmanship to
that beneath. These letters and figures—“16 P.S. 79”—are wrought into
the ironwork of the balcony, and probably express the date of the
edifice, with the initials of its founder’s name.
A wide door with double leaves admitted me into the hall or entry, on
the right of which is the entrance to the bar-room. It was in this
apartment, I presume, that the ancient governors held their levees with
vice-regal pomp, surrounded by the military men, the counsellors, the
judges, and other officers of the Crown, while all the loyalty of the
province thronged to do them honor. But the room in its present
condition cannot boast even of faded magnificence. The panelled
wainscot is covered with dingy paint and acquires a duskier hue from
the deep shadow into which the Province House is thrown by the brick
block that shuts it in from Washington street. A ray of sunshine never
visits this apartment any more than the glare of the festal torches
which have been extinguished from the era of the Revolution. The most
venerable and ornamental object is a chimney-piece set round with Dutch
tiles of blue-figured china, representing scenes from Scripture, and,
for aught I know, the lady of Pownall or Bernard may have sat beside
this fireplace and told her children the story of each blue tile. A bar
in modern style, well replenished with decanters, bottles, cigar-boxes
and network bags of lemons, and provided with a beer-pump and a
soda-fount, extends along one side of the room.
At my entrance an elderly person was smacking his lips with a zest
which satisfied me that the cellars of the Province House still hold
good liquor, though doubtless of other vintages than were quaffed by
the old governors. After sipping a glass of port-sangaree prepared by
the skilful hands of Mr. Thomas Waite, I besought that worthy successor
and representative of so many historic personages to conduct me over
their time-honored mansion. He readily complied, but, to confess the
truth, I was forced to draw strenuously upon my imagination in order to
find aught that was interesting in a house which, without its historic
associations, would have seemed merely such a tavern as is usually
favored by the custom of decent city boarders and old-fashioned country
gentlemen. The chambers, which were probably spacious in former times,
are now cut up by partitions and subdivided into little nooks, each
affording scanty room for the narrow bed and chair and dressing-table
of a single lodger: The great staircase, however, may be termed,
without much hyperbole, a feature of grandeur and magnificence. It
winds through the midst of the house by flights of broad steps, each
flight terminating in a square landing-place, whence the ascent is
continued toward the cupola. A carved balustrade, freshly painted in
the lower stories, but growing dingier as we ascend, borders the
staircase with its quaintly twisted and intertwined pillars, from top
to bottom. Up these stairs the military boots, or perchance the gouty
shoes, of many a governor have trodden as the wearers mounted to the
cupola which afforded them so wide a view over their metropolis and the
surrounding country. The cupola is an octagon with several windows, and
a door opening upon the roof. From this station, as I pleased myself