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 time.
Only it might be sweet to have one unchangeable 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 Sibyl
Dacy!
Perhaps it could not be. Who but himself could undergo that great trial,
and hardship, and self-denial, and firm purpose, never wavering, never
sinking 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 Sibyl 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 Sibyl, 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 always seeing my bloodless
cheek!--doing this till 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 Sibyl 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 Sibyl.
"And what is it?" demanded Septimius.
"That will appear hereafter," answered Sibyl, 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 other, they were
performing the same part of solemn 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 Sibyl, "Are we friends?" because of a
sudden shock and repulsion that came between them, and passed away in a
moment; and there would be Sibyl, 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 cancelled by the surrender of the latter's
soul; that 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
fiend 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 be a shrewd suspicion that some
ancient church beadle 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 sea-shore; 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 been a thing fit to appear in
any cabinet; though 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,
I doubt not my last moments would have been 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, as well
as pray for it. Come with us, my old friend 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."
