Among the throng, too, came another personage, who, with certain points of similarity to Lawyer Giles, had many more of difference.It was the village doctor; a man of some fifty years, whom, at an earlier period of his life, we introduced as paying a professional visit to Ethan Brand during the latter's supposed insanity.He was now a purple-visaged, rude, and brutal, yet half-gentlemanly figure, with something wild, ruined, and desperate in his talk, and in all the details of his gesture and manners.Brandy possessed this man like an evil spirit, and made him as surly and savage as a wild beast, and as miserable as a lost soul; but there was supposed to be in him such wonderful skill, such native gifts of healing, beyond any which medical science could impart, that society caught hold of him, and would not let him sink out of its reach.So, swaying to and fro upon his horse, and grumbling thick accents at the bedside, he visited all the sick-chambers for miles about among the mountain towns, and sometimes raised a dying man, as it were, by miracle, or quite as often, no doubt, sent his patient to a grave that was dug many a year too soon.The doctor had an everlasting pipe in his mouth, and, as somebody said, in allusion to his habit of swearing, it was always alight with hell-fire.
These three worthies pressed forward, and greeted Ethan Brand each after his own fashion, earnestly inviting him to partake of the contents of a certain black bottle, in which, as they averred, he would find somethingfar better worth seeking than the Unpardonable Sin.No mind, which has wrought itself by intense and solitary meditation into a high state of enthusiasm, can endure the kind of contact with low and vulgar modes of thought and feeling to which Ethan Brand was now subjected.It made him doubt--and, strange to say, it was a painful doubt--whether he had indeed found the Unpardonable Sin, and found it within himself.The whole question on which he had exhausted life, and more than life, looked like a delusion.
"Leave me," he said bitterly, "ye brute beasts, that have made yourselves so, shrivelling up your souls with fiery liquors! I have done with you.Years and years ago, I groped into your hearts and found nothing there for my purpose.Get ye gone!""Why, you uncivil scoundrel," cried the fierce doctor, "is that the way you respond to the kindness of your best friends? Then let me tell you the truth.You have no more found the Unpardonable Sin than yonder boy Joe has.You are but a crazy fellow,--I told you so twenty years ago,-neither better nor worse than a crazy fellow, and the fit companion of old Humphrey, here!"He pointed to an old man, shabbily dressed, with long white hair, thin visage, and unsteady eyes.For some years past this aged person had been wandering about among the hills, inquiring of all travellers whom he met for his daughter.The girl, it seemed, had gone off with a company of circus-performers, and occasionally tidings of her came to the village, and fine stories were told of her glittering appearance as she rode on horseback in the ring, or performed marvellous feats on the tight-rope.
The white-haired father now approached Ethan Brand, and gazed unsteadily into his face.
"They tell me you have been all over the earth," said he, wringing his hands with earnestness."You must have seen my daughter, for she makes a grand figure in the world, and everybody goes to see her.Did she send any word to her old father, or say when she was coming back?"Ethan Brand's eye quailed beneath the old man's.That daughter, from whom he so earnestly desired a word of greeting, was the Esther of our tale, the very girl whom, with such cold and remorseless purpose, EthanBrand had made the subject of a psychological experiment, and wasted, absorbed, and perhaps annihilated her soul, in the process.
"Yes," he murmured, turning away from the hoary wanderer, "it is no delusion.There is an Unpardonable Sin!"While these things were passing, a merry scene was going forward in the area of cheerful light, beside the spring and before the door of the hut.A number of the youth of the village, young men and girls, had hurried up the hill-side, impelled by curiosity to see Ethan Brand, the hero of so many a legend familiar to their childhood.Finding nothing, however, very remarkable in his aspect,--nothing but a sunburnt wayfarer, in plain garb and dusty shoes, who sat looking into the fire as if he fancied pictures among the coals,--these young people speedily grew tired of observing him.As it happened, there was other amusement at hand.An old German Jew travelling with a diorama on his back, was passing down the mountain-road towards the village just as the party turned aside from it, and, in hopes of eking out the profits of the day, the showman had kept them company to the lime-kiln.
