In this short story, a reclusive chemist is determined to find the elixir of life to help him dispel the chill and disintegration of age.
The Alchemist: ECR7
In the year 1720 there lived in a turreted house at North and Essex Streets, in Salem, a silent, dark-visaged man, reputedly a chemist. He gathered strange herbs in the fields, and queer parcels and vials came and went between him and learned doctors in Boston. But whispers around the old town said that it was not drugs alone that he worked with, nor medicines for the curing of sickness that he distilled.
The watchman, drowsily pacing the streets in the small hours, often saw his shadow move across the glare in his tower. And other shadows seemed to flit about shadows that could be thrown by no tangible form, yet had an evil and grotesque likeness to the human kind.
Sometimes a clink of hammers and a hiss of steam were heard, and his neighbors devoutly hoped that if he secured the secret of the philosopher’s stone or the universal solvent, it would be honestly come by.
But it was neither gold nor the dangerous strong water that he wanted. It was life. the elixir that would dispel the chill and disintegration of age!
But it was neither gold nor the dangerous strong water that he wanted. It was life. the elixir that would dispel the chill and disintegration of age!
Day after day he explored the surrounding wilderness. Night after night he compounded the juices of its trees and plants. And after a thousand failures, at last he found the ingredients he needed. But they were many, they were perishable, and they had to be. distilled in five days, or fermentation and decay would set in.
At last he was ready! Gathering the herbs and piling his floor with fuel, he began his strange work alone. The furnace glowed, the retorts bubbled, and through their long throats trickled drops golden, that would be ruddy drops combined into the precious draught.
He had begun none too soon, for under the strain of anxiety he seemed to be aging fast. He took no sleep, except for naps in his chair, for if the fire died, his work would be spoiled. With heavy eyes and aching head he watched his furnace and listened to the constant drip, drip of the precious liquor. On the fourth day, he knelt to stir his fire.
Its brightness made him blink, but its warmth felt so good that he lay down before it with elbow on the floor and head resting on his hand. How cheerily the logs hummed and crackled, yet how drowsily. How slow the hours were, how dull the watch. Lower and lower sank his head, and heavier grew his eyes. At last he stretched out full length on the floor, and the long sleep of exhaustion began.
He was awakened by the sound of a bell. “The church bell!” he cried, starting up. “The people are going through the streets to meeting. How is this?”
He stared about him wildly. “The sun is in the east! My God! I have been asleep!”
With fear clutching like an icicle at his heart he bounded toward the furnace with a hoarse cry, “The furnace is cold! The elixir!”
Hastily he snatched up the retorts and blended the essences he had made. Though one or two of the ingredients were lacking he gulped it down anyway. A look of disgust came over his face.
“Faugh!” he exclaimed,
“It is still unfinished. Perhaps I’ve spoiled it. I must begin again.”
Taking his hat and coat he uttered a weary sigh and was about to open the door when his cheek blanched with pain. Sight seemed to leave him. The cry for help that rose to his lips was stifled in a terrible groan of agony. A look of hellish torture distorted his features as he groped for sup port. His writhing fingers grasped a shelf, ripping it loose from the wall and spilling its contents of bottles and retorts to the floor. An instant later he fell, twisted among their fragments. The elixir of life, unfinished, was an elixir of death!
