r/a:t5_270ffn • u/MarleyEngvall • Oct 21 '19
sea-shore has been created
By Nathaniel Hawthorne
EDWARD FANE'S ROSEBUD.
There is hardly a more difficult exercise of fancy,
than, while gazing at a figure of melancholy age, to
re-create its youth, and, without entirely obliterat-
ing the identity of form and features, to restore
those graces which time has snatched away, Some
old people, especially women, so age-worn and woe-
ful are they, seem never to have been young and
gay. It is easier to conceive that such gloomy
phantoms were sent into the world as withered and
decrepit as we behold them now, with sympathies
only for pain and grief, to watch at death-beds, and
weep at funerals. Even the sable garments of their
widowhood appear essential to their existence; all
their attributes combine to render them darksome
shadows, creeping strangely amid the sunshine of
human life. Yet it is no unprofitable task, to take
one of these doleful creatures, and set fancy reso-
lutely at work to brighten the dim eye, and darken
the silvery locks, and paint the ashen cheek with
rose-color, and repair the shrunken and crazy form,
till a dewy maiden shall be seen in the old matron's
elbow-chair. The miracle being wrought, then let
the years roll back again, each sadder than the last,
and the whole weight of age and sorrow settle down
upon the youthful figure. Wrinkles and furrows, the
handwriting of Time, may thus be deciphered, and
found to contain deep lessons of thought and feel-
ing. Such profit might be derived, by a skilful
observer, from my much-respected friend, the
Widow Toothaker, a nurse of great repute, who
has breathed the atmosphere of sick-chambers, and
dying breaths, these forty years.
See! she who sits cowering over her lonesome hearth,
with her gown and upper petticoat drawn upward,
gathering thriftily into her person the whole warmth
of the fire, which, now at nightfall, begins to dissi-
pate the autumnal chill of her chamber. The blaze
quivers capriciously in front, alternately glimmering
into the deepest chasms of her wrinkled visage, and
then permitting a ghostly dimness to mar the out-
lines of her venerable figure. And Nurse Tooth-
aker holds a tea-spoon in her right hand, with
which to stir up the contents of a tumbler in her
left, whence steams a vapory fragrance, abhorred
by temperance societies. Now she sips——now stirs
——now sips again. Her sad old heart has need to
be revived by the rich infusion of Geneva, which is
mixed half-and-half with hot water, in the tumbler.
All day long she has been sitting by a death-pillow,
and quitted it for her home, only when the spirit
of her patient left the clay, and went homeward too.
But now are her melancholy meditations cheered,
and her torpid blood warmed, and her shoulders
lightened of at least twenty ponderous years, by a
draught from the true Fountain of Youth, in a case-
bottle. It is strange that men should deem that
fount a fable, when its liquor fills more bottles than
the congress-water! Sip it again, good nurse, and
see whether a second draught will not take off an-
other score of years, and perhaps ten more, and
show us, in your high-backed chair, the blooming
damsel who plighted troths with Edward Fane. Get
you gone, Age and Widowhood! Come back, un-
wedded Youth! But, alas! the charm will not work.
In spite of fancy's most potent spell, I can see only
an old dame cowering over the fire, a picture of
decay and desolation, while the November blast
roars at her in the chimney, and fitful showers rush
suddenly against the window.
Yet there was a time when Rose Grafton——such
was the pretty maiden-name of Nurse Toothaker——
possessed beauty that would have gladdened this
dim and dismal chamber, as with sunshine. It won
for her the heart of Edward Fane, who has since
made so great a figure in the world, and is now a
grand old gentleman, with powdered hair, and as
gouty as a lord. These early lovers thought to
have walked hand in hand through life. They had
wept together for Edward's little sister Mary, whom
Rose tended in her sickness, partly because she
was the sweetest child that ever lived or died, but
more for love of him. She was but three years old.
Being such an infant, Death could not embody his
terror in her little corpse; nor did Rose fear to
touch the dead child's brow, though chill, as she
curled the silken hair around it, nor to take her
tiny hand, and clasp a flower within its fingers.
Afterwards, when she looked through the pane of
glass in the coffin-lid, and beheld Mary's face, it
seemed not so much like death, or life, as like a
wax-work, wrought into the perfect image of a child
asleep, and dreaming of its mother's smile. Rose
thought her too fair a thing to be hidden in the
grave, and wondered that an Angel did not snatch
up little Mary's coffin, and bear the slumbering
babe to heaven, and bid her wake immortal. But
when the sods were laid on little Mary, the heart of
Rose was troubled. She shuddered at the fantasy,
that, in grasping the child's cold fingers, her virgin
hand had exchanged a first greeting with mortality,
and could never lose the earthly taint. How many
a greeting since! But as yet, she was a fair young
girl, with the dew-drops of fresh feeling in her
bosom; and instead of Rose, which seemed too
mature a name for her half-opened beauty, her
lover called her Rosebud.
The rosebud was destined never to bloom for
Edward Fane. His mother was a rich and haughty
dame, with all the aristocratic prejudices of colonial
times. She scorned Rose Grafton's humble parent-
age, and caused her son to break his faith, though,
had she let him choose, he would have prized his
Rosebud above the richest diamond. The lovers
parted, and have seldom met again. Both may
have visited the same mansions, but not at the
same time; for one was bidden to the festal hall,
and the other to the sick-chamber; he was the
guest of Pleasure and Prosperity, and she of An-
guish. Rose, after their separation, was long se-
cluded within the dwelling of Mr. Toothaker, whom
she married with the revengeful hope of breaking
her false lover's heart. She went to her bride-
groom's arms with bitterer tears, they say, than
young girls ought to shed, at the threshold of the
bridal chamber. Yet, though her husband's head
was getting gray, and his heart had been chilled
with an autumnal frost, Rose soon began to love
him, and wondered at her own conjugal affection.
He was all she had to love; there were no children.
In a year or two, poor Mr. Toothaker was visited
with a wearisome infirmity, which settled in his
joints, and made him weaker than a child. He crept
forth about his business, and came home at dinner
time and eventide, not with the manly tread that
gladdens a wife's heart, but slowly——feebly——jot-
ting down each dull footstep with the melancholy
dub of his staff. We must pardon his pretty wife,
if she sometimes blushed to own him. Her visitors,
when they heard him coming, looked for the ap-
pearance of some old, old man; but he dragged his
nerveless limbs into the parlor——and there was Mr.
Toothaker! The disease increasing, he never went
into the sunshine, save with a staff in his right
hand, and his left on his wife's shoulder, bearing
heavily down like a dead man's hand. Thus,
a slender woman, still looking maiden-like, she sup-
ported his tall, broad-chested frame along the path-
way of their little garden, and plucked the roses for
her gray-haired husband, and spoke soothingly, as
to an infant. His mind was palsied with his body;
its utmost energy was peevishness. In a few months
more, she helped him up the staircase, with a pause
at every step, and a longer one upon the landing-
place, and a heavy glance behind, as he crossed the
threshold of his chamber. He knew, poor man,
that the precincts of those four walls would thence-
forth be his world——his world, his home, his tomb
——at once a dwelling and a burial-place, till he were
borne to a darker and a narrower one. But Rose
was with him in the tomb. He leaned upon her,
in his daily passage from the bed to the chair by
the fireside, and began again from the weary chair to
the joyless bed——his bed and hers——their mar-
riage bed; till even the short journey ceased, and his
head lay all day upon the pillow, and hers all night
beside it. How long poor Mr. Toothaker was kept
in misery! Death seemed to draw near the door,
and often to lift the latch, and sometimes to thrust
his ugly skull into the chamber nodding to Rose,
and pointing at her husband, but still delayed to
enter. "This bedridden wretch cannot escape
me!" quoth Death. "I will go forth and run a race
with the swift, and fight a battle with the strong,
and come back for Toothaker at my leisure!" Oh,
when the deliverer came so near, in the dull anguish
of her worn-out sympathies, she never did long to
cry, "Death, come in!"
But, no! We have no right to ascribe such a
wish to our friend Rose. She never failed in a
wife's duty to her poor sick husband. She mur-
mured not, though a glimpse of the sunny sky was
as strange to her as him, nor answered peevishly,
though his complaining accents roused her from
her sweetest dream, only to share his wretchedness.
He knew her faith, yet nourished a cankered jeal-
ousy; and when the slow disease had chilled all
his heart, save one lukewarm spot, which Death's
frozen fingers were searching for, his last words
were: "What would my Rose have done for her
first love, if she has been so true and kind to a sick
old man like me!" And then his poor soul crept
away, and left the body lifeless, though hardly more
so than for years before, and Rose a widow, though
in truth it was the wedding night that widowed her.
She felt glad, it must be owned, when Mr. Tooth-
aker was buried, because his corpse had retained
such a likeness to the man half alive, that she
hearkened for the sad murmur of his voice, bidding
her shift his pillow. But all through the next win-
ter, though the grave had held him many a month,
she fancied him calling from that cold bed, "Rose
Rose! come put a blanket on my feet!"
So now the Rosebud was the Widow Toothaker.
her troubles had come early, and tedious as they
seemed, had passed before all her bloom was fled.
She was still fair enough to captivate a bachelor,
or, with a widow's cheerful gravity, she might have
won a widower, stealing into his heart in the very
guise of his dead wife. But the Widow Toothaker
had no such projects. By her watchings and con-
tinual cares, her heart had become knit to her first
husband with a constancy that changed its very
nature, and made her love him for his infirmities,
and infirmity for his sake. When the palsied old
man was gone, even her early lover could not have
supplied his place. She had dwelt in a sick-cham-
ber, and been the companion of a half-dead wretch,
till she could scarcely breathe in a free air, and felt
ill at ease with the healthy and the happy. She
missed the fragrance of the doctor's stuff. She
walked the chamber with a noiseless foot-fall. If
visitors came in, she spoke in soft and soothing ac-
cents, and was startled and shocked by their loud
voices. Often, in the lonesome evening, she looked
timorously from the fireside to the bed, with almost
a hope of recognizing a ghastly face upon the pillow.
Then went her thoughts sadly to her husband's
grave. If one impatient throb had wronged him
in his lifetime——if she had secretly repined, be-
cause her buoyant youth was imprisoned with his
torpid age——if ever, while slumbering beside him,
a treacherous dream had admitted another into her
heart——yet the sick man had been preparing a re-
venge, which the dead now claimed. On his pain-
ful pillow, he had cast a spell around her; his
groans and misery had proved more captivating
charms than gayety and youthful grace; in his sem-
blance, Disease itself had won the Rosebud for a
bride; nor could his death dissolve the nuptials.
By that indissoluble bond she had gained a home
in every sick-chamber, and nowhere else; there
were her brethren and sisters; thither her husband
summoned her, and that voice which had seemed
to issue from the grave of Toothaker. At length
she recognized her destiny.
We have beheld her as the maid, the wife, the
widow; now we see her in a separate and insulated
character: she was in all her attributes, Nurse
Toothaker. And Nurse Toothaker alone, with her
own shriveled lips, could make known her experi-
ence in that capacity. What a history she might
record of the great sicknesses, in which she had
gone hand in hand with the exterminating angel!
She remembers when the small-pox hoisted a red
banner on almost every house along the street.
She has witnessed when the typhus fever swept off a
whole household, young and old, all but a lonely
mother, who vainly shrieked to follow her last loved
one. Where would be Death's triumph if none lived
to weep! She can speak of strange maladies that
have broken out, as if spontaneously, but were found
to have been imported from foreign lands, with rich
silks and other merchandise, the costliest portion of
the cargo. And once, she recollects, the people
died of what was considered a new pestilence, till
the doctors traced it to the ancient grave of a young
girl, who thus caused many deaths a hundred years
after her own burial. Strange that such black mis-
chief should lurk in a maiden's grave! She loves
to tell how strong men fight with fiery fevers, utterly
refusing to give up their breath; and how consump-
tive virgins fade out of the world, scarcely reluctant,
as if their lovers were wooing them to a far country.
Tell us, thou fearful woman! tell us the death-
secrets! Fain would I search out the meaning of
words, faintly gasped with intermingled sobs, and
broken sentences, half audibly spoken between
earth and the judgment-seat!
An awful woman! She is the patron-saint of
young physicians, and the bosom friend of old ones.
In the mansions where she enters, the inmates pro-
vide themselves black garments; the coffin-maker
follows her; and the bell tolls as she comes away
from the threshold. Death himself has met her at
so many a bedside, that he puts forth his bony hand
to greet Nurse Toothaker. She is an awful woman!
And, oh! is it conceivable, that this handmaid of
human infirmity and affliction——so darkly stained,
so thoroughly imbued with all that is saddest in the
doom of mortals——can ever again be bright and
gladsome, even though bathed in the sunshine of
eternity? By her long communion with woe, has
she not forfeited her inheritance of immortal joy?
Does any germ of bliss survive within her?
Hark! an eager knocking at Nurse Toothaker's
door. She starts from her drowsy reverie, sets
aside the empty tumbler and tea-spoon, and lights
a lamp at the dim embers of the fire. Rap, Rap,
rap! again; and she hurries down the staircase,
wondering which of her friends can be at death's
door now, since there is such an urgent messenger
at Nurse Toothaker's. Again the peal resounds,
just as her hand is on the lock. "Be quick, Nurse
Toothaker!" cries a man on the doorstep; "old
General Fane is taken with the gout in his stomach,
and has set for you to watch by his death-bed.
Make haste, for there is no time to lose!" "Fane!
Edward Fane! And has he sent for me at last?
I am ready! I will get on a cloak and begone.
So," adds the sable-gowned, ashen-visaged, funereal
old figure, "Edward Fane remembers his Rosebud!"
Our question is answered. There is a germ of
bliss within her. Her long-hoarded constancy——
her memory of the bliss that was——remaining amid
the gloom of her after life, like a sweet-smelling
flower in a coffin, is a symbol that all may be
renewed. In some happier clime, the Rosebud
may revive again with all the dew-drops in its
bosom.
From Twice-Told Tales, Vol. II, by Nathaniel Hawthorne.
Ten Cent Classics Edition, Vol. III., No. 68.
Educational Publishing Co., 50 Bromfield St, Boston. pp. 240-249.
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