"Before you drink, my respectable old friends," said he, "itwould 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 asecond time through the perils of youth. Think what a sin and shame itwould be, if, with your peculiar advantages, you should not becomepatterns of virtue and wisdom to all the young people of the age!"The doctor's four venerable friends made him no answer, except by afeeble 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 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. Heidegger imputedto it, could not have been bestowed on four human beings who needed itmore wofully. They looked as if they had never known what youth orpleasure was, but had been the offspring of Nature's dotage, andalways the gray, decrepit, sapless, miserable creatures, who now satstooping round the doctor's table, without life enough in theirsouls or bodies to be animated even by the prospect of growing youngagain. They drank off the water, and replaced their glasses on thetable.
Assuredly there was an almost immediate improvement in the aspectof the party, not unlike what might have been produced by a glass ofgenerous wine, together with a sudden glow of cheerful sunshinebrightening over all their visages at once. There was a healthfulsuffusion on their cheeks, instead of the ashen hue that had made themlook so corpse-like. They gazed at one another, and fancied thatsome magic power had really begun to smooth away the deep and sadinscriptions which Father Time had been so long engraving on theirbrows. The Widow Wycherly adjusted her cap, for she felt almost like awoman again.
"Give us more of this wondrous water!" cried they, eagerly. "We areyounger- 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 half anhour! 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 in thecity to the age of their own grandchildren. While the bubbles were yetsparkling on the brim, the doctor's four guests snatched their glassesfrom the table, and swallowed the contents at a single gulp. Was itdelusion? even while the draught was passing down their throats, itseemed to have wrought a change on their whole systems. Their eyesgrew clear and bright; a dark shade deepened among their silverylocks, they sat around the table, three gentlemen of middle age, and awoman, hardly beyond her buxom 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 and ranto the mirror, still dreading that the ugly visage of an old womanwould meet her gaze. Meanwhile, the three gentlemen behaved in sucha manner as proved that the water of the Fountain of Youth possessedsome intoxicating qualities; unless, indeed, their exhilaration ofspirits were merely a lightsome dizziness caused by the sudden removalof the weight of years. Mr. Gascoigne's mind seemed to run onpolitical topics, but whether relating to the past, present, or futurecould not easily be determined, since the same ideas and phraseshave been in vogue these fifty years. Now he rattled forthfull-throated sentences about patriotism, national glory, and thepeople's right; now he muttered some perilous stuff or other, in a slyand doubtful whisper, 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 well-turned 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 for supplyingthe East Indies with ice, by harnessing a team of whales to thepolar icebergs.
As for the Widow Wycherly, she stood before the mirrorcourtesying and simpering to her own image, and greeting it as thefriend whom she loved better than all the world beside. She thrust herface close to the glass, to see whether some long-remembered wrinkleor crow's foot had indeed vanished. She examined whether the snowhad so entirely melted from her hair that the venerable cap could besafely thrown aside. At last, turning briskly away, she came with asort of dancing step to the table.
"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 now sonearly sunset that the chamber had grown duskier than ever; but a mildand moonlike splendor gleamed from within the vase, and rested alikeon the four guests and on the doctor's venerable figure. He sat in ahigh-backed, elaborately-carved, oaken arm-chair, with a graydignity of aspect that might have well befitted that very Father Time,whose power had never been disputed, save by this fortunate company.
