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Doctor Grimshawe\'s Secret

N >> Nathaniel Hawthorne >> Doctor Grimshawe\'s Secret







CHAPTER XIII.


The patient [Endnote: 1] had a favorable night, and awoke with a much
clearer head, though still considerably feverish and in a state of
great exhaustion from loss of blood, which kept down the fever. The
events of the preceding day shimmered as it were and shifted illusively
in his recollection; nor could he yet account for the situation in
which he found himself, the antique chamber, the old man of mediæval
garb, nor even for the wound which seemed to have been the occasion of
bringing him thither. One moment, so far as he remembered, he had been
straying along a solitary footpath, through rich shrubbery, with the
antlered deer peeping at him, listening to the lark and the cuckoo; the
next, he lay helpless in this oak-panelled chamber, surrounded with
objects that appealed to some fantastic shadow of recollection, which
could have had no reality. [Endnote: 2.]

To say the truth, the traveller perhaps wilfully kept hold of this
strange illusiveness, and kept his thoughts from too harshly analyzing
his situation, and solving the riddle in which he found himself
involved. In his present weakness, his mind sympathizing with the
sinking down of his physical powers, it was delightful to let all go;
to relinquish all control, and let himself drift vaguely into whatever
region of improbabilities there exists apart from the dull, common
plane of life. Weak, stricken down, given over to influences which had
taken possession of him during an interval of insensibility, he was no
longer responsible; let these delusions, if they were such, linger as
long as they would, and depart of their own accord at last. He,
meanwhile, would willingly accept the idea that some spell had
transported him out of an epoch in which he had led a brief, troubled
existence of battle, mental strife, success, failure, all equally
feverish and unsatisfactory, into some past century, where the business
was to rest,--to drag on dreamy days, looking at things through half-
shut eyes; into a limbo where things were put away, shows of what had
once been, now somehow fainted, and still maintaining a sort of half-
existence, a serious mockery; a state likely enough to exist just a
little apart from the actual world, if we only know how to find our way
into it. Scenes and events that had once stained themselves, in deep
colors, on the curtain that Time hangs around us, to shut us in from
eternity, cannot be quite effaced by the succeeding phantasmagoria, and
sometimes, by a palimpsest, show more strongly than they. [Endnote: 3.]

In the course of the morning, however, he was a little too feelingly
made sensible of realities by the visit of a surgeon, who proceeded to
examine the wound in his shoulder, removing the bandages which he
himself seemed to have put upon this mysterious hurt. The traveller
closed his eyes, and submitted to the manipulations of the professional
person, painful as they were, assisted by the gentle touch of the old
palmer; and there was something in the way in which he resigned himself
that met the approbation of the surgeon, in spite of a little fever,
and slight delirium too, to judge by his eye.

"A very quiet and well-behaved patient," said he to the palmer. "Unless
I greatly mistake, he has been under the surgeon's hand for a similar
hurt ere now. He has learned under good discipline how to take such a
thing easily. Yes, yes; just here is a mark where a bullet went in some
time ago,--three or four years since, when he could have been little
more than a boy. A wild fellow this, I doubt."

"It was an Indian bullet," said the patient, still fancying himself
gone astray into the past, "shot at me in battle; 'twas three hundred
years hereafter."

"Ah! he has served in the East Indies," said the surgeon. "I thought
this sun-burned cheek had taken its hue elsewhere than in England."

The patient did not care to take the trouble which would have been
involved in correcting the surgeon's surmise; so he let it pass, and
patiently awaited the end of the examination, with only a moan or two,
which seemed rather pleasing and desirable than otherwise to the
surgeon's ear.

"He has vitality enough for his needs," said he, nodding to the palmer.
"These groans betoken a good degree of pain; though the young fellow is
evidently a self-contained sort of nature, and does not let us know all
he feels. It promises well, however; keep him in bed and quiet, and
within a day or two we shall see."

He wrote a recipe, or two or three, perhaps, (for in those days the
medical fraternity had faith in their own art,) and took his leave.

The white-bearded palmer withdrew into the half concealment of the
oratory which we have already mentioned, and then, putting on a pair of
spectacles, betook himself to the perusal of an old folio volume, the
leaves of which he turned over so gently that not the slightest sound
could possibly disturb the patient. All his manifestations were gentle
and soft, but of a simplicity most unlike the feline softness which we
are apt to associate with a noiseless tread and movement in the male
sex. The sunshine came through the ivy and glimmered upon his great
book, however, with an effect which a little disturbed the patient's
nerves; besides, he desired to have a fuller view of his benign
guardian.

"Will you sit nearer the bedside?" said he. "I wish to look at you."

Weakness, the relaxation of nerves, and the state of dependence on
another's care--very long unfelt--had made him betray what we must call
childishness; and it was perceptible in the low half-complaining tone
in which he spoke, indicating a consciousness of kindness in the other,
a little plaintiveness in himself; of which, the next instant, weak and
wandering as he was, he was ashamed, and essayed to express
it. [Endnote: 4.]

"You must deem me very poor-spirited," said he, "not to bear this
trifling hurt with a firmer mind. But perhaps it is not entirely that I
am so weak, but I feel you to be so benign."

"Be weak, and be the stronger for it," said the old man, with a grave
smile. "It is not in the pride of our strength that we are best or
wisest. To be made anew, we even must be again a little child, and
consent to be enwrapt quietly in the arms of Providence, as a child in
its mother's arms."

"I never knew a mother's care," replied the traveller, in a low,
regretful tone, being weak to the incoming of all soft feelings, in his
present state. "Since my boyhood, I have lived among men,--a life of
struggle and hard rivalry. It is good to find myself here in the long
past, and in a sheltered harbor."

And here he smiled, by way of showing to this old palmer that he saw
through the slight infirmity of mind that impelled him to say such
things as the above; that he was not its dupe, though he had not
strength, just now, to resist its impulse. After this he dozed off
softly, and felt through all his sleep some twinges of his wound,
bringing him back, as it were, to the conscious surface of the great
deep of slumber, into which he might otherwise have sunk. At all such
brief intervals, half unclosing his eyes, (like a child, when the
mother sits by its bed and he fears that she will steal away if he
falls quite asleep, and leave him in the dark solitude,) he still
beheld the white-bearded, kindly old man, of saintly aspect, sitting
near him, and turning over the pages of his folio volume so softly that
not the faintest rustle did it make; the picture at length got so fully
into his idea, that he seemed to see it even through his closed
eyelids. After a while, however, the slumberous tendency left him more
entirely, and, without having been consciously awake, he found himself
contemplating the old man, with wide-open eyes. The venerable personage
seemed soon to feel his gaze, and, ceasing to look at the folio, he
turned his eyes with quiet inquiry to meet those of the
stranger. [Endnote: 5.]

"What great volume is that?" asked the latter. [Endnote: 6.]

"It is a book of English chronicles," said the old man, "mostly
relating to the part of the island where you now are, and to times
previous to the Stuarts."

"Ah! it is to you, a contemporary, what reading the newspaper is to
other men," said the stranger; then, with a smile of self-reproach, "I
shall conquer this idle mood. I'm not so imbecile as you must think me.
But there is something that strangely haunts me,--where, in what state
of being, can I have seen your face before. There is nothing in it I
distinctly remember; but some impression, some characteristic, some
look, with which I have been long ago familiar haunts me and brings
back all old scenes. Do you know me?"

The old man smiled. "I knew, long ago, a bright and impressible boy,"
said he.

"And his name?" said the stranger.

"It was Edward Redclyffe," said the old man.

"Ah, I see who you are," said the traveller, not too earnestly, but
with a soft, gratified feeling, as the riddle thus far solved itself.
"You are my old kindly instructor. You are Colcord! That is it. I
remember you disappeared. You shall tell me, when I am quite myself,
what was that mystery,--and whether it is your real self, or only a
part of my dream, and going to vanish when I quite awake. Now I shall
sleep and dream more of it."

One more waking interval he had that day, and again essayed to enter
into conversation with the old man, who had thus strangely again become
connected with his life, after having so long vanished from his path.

"Where am I?" asked Edward Redclyffe.

"In the home of misfortune," said Colcord.

"Ah! then I have a right to be here!" said he. "I was born in such a
home. Do you remember it?"

"I know your story," said Colcord.

"Yes; from Doctor Grim," said Edward. "People whispered he had made
away with you. I never believed it; but finding you here in this
strange way, and myself having been shot, perhaps to death, it seems
not so strange. Pooh! I wander again, and ought to sleep a little more.
And this is the home of misfortune, but not like the squalid place of
rage, idiocy, imbecility, drunkenness, where I was born. How many times
I have blushed to remember that native home! But not of late! I have
struggled; I have fought; I have triumphed. The unknown boy has come to
be no undistinguished man! His ancestry, should he ever reveal himself
to them, need not blush for the poor foundling."

"Hush!" said the quiet watcher. "Your fever burns you. Take this
draught, and sleep a little longer." [Endnote: 7.]

Another day or two found Edward Redclyffe almost a convalescent. The
singular lack of impatience that characterized his present mood--the
repose of spirit into which he had lapsed--had much to do with the
favorable progress of his cure. After strife, anxiety, great mental
exertion, and excitement of various kinds, which had harassed him ever
since he grew to be a man, had come this opportunity of perfect rest;--
this dream in the midst of which he lay, while its magic boundaries
involved him, and kept far off the contact of actual life, so that its
sounds and tumults seemed remote; its cares could not fret him; its
ambitions, objects good or evil, were shut out from him; the electric
wires that had connected him with the battery of life were broken for
the time, and he did not feel the unquiet influence that kept everybody
else in galvanic motion. So, under the benign influence of the old
palmer, he lay in slumberous luxury, undisturbed save by some twinges
of no intolerable pain; which, however, he almost was glad of, because
it made him sensible that this deep luxury of quiet was essential to
his cure, however idle it might seem. For the first time since he was a
child, he resigned himself not to put a finger to the evolution of his
fortune; he determined to accept all things that might happen, good or
evil; he would not imagine an event beyond to-day, but would let one
spontaneous and half-defined thought loiter after another, through his
mind; listen to the spattering shower,--the puffs of shut-out wind; and
look with half-shut eyes at the sunshine glimmering through the ivy-
twigs, and illuminating those old devices on the wall; at the gathering
twilight; at the dim lamp; at the creeping upward of another day, and
with it the lark singing so far away that the thrill of its delicious
song could not disturb him with an impulse to awake. Sweet as its carol
was, he could almost have been content to miss the lark; sweet and
clear, it was too like a fairy trumpet-call, summoning him to awake and
struggle again with eager combatants for new victories, the best of
which were not worth this deep repose.

The old palmer did his best to prolong a mood so beneficial to the
wounded young man. The surgeon also nodded approval, and attributed
this happy state of the patient's mind, and all the physical advantages
growing out of it, to his own consummate skill; nor, indeed, was he
undeserving of credit, not often to be awarded to medical men, for
having done nothing to impede the good which kind Nature was willing to
bring about. She was doing the patient more good, indeed, than either
the surgeon or the palmer could fully estimate, in taking this
opportunity to recreate a mind that had too early known stirring
impulse, and that had been worked to a degree beyond what its
organization (in some respects singularly delicate) ought to have
borne. Once in a long while the weary actors in the headlong drama of
life must have such repose or else go mad or die. When the machinery of
human life has once been stopped by sickness or other impediment, it
often needs an impulse to set it going again, even after it is nearly
wound up.

But it could not last forever. The influx of new life into his being
began to have a poignancy that would not let him lie so quietly, lapped
in the past, in gone by centuries, and waited on by quiet Age, in the
person of the old palmer; he began to feel again that he was young, and
must live in the time when his lot was cast. He began to say to
himself, that it was not well to be any longer passive, but that he
must again take the troublesome burden of his own life on his own
shoulders. He thought of this necessity, this duty, throughout one
whole day, and determined that on the morrow he would make the first
step towards terminating his inaction, which he now began to be half
impatient of, at the same time that he clutched it still, for the sake
of the deliciousness that it had had.

"To-morrow, I hope to be clothed and in my right mind," said he to the
old palmer, "and very soon I must thank you, with my whole heart, for
your kind care, and go. It is a shame that I burden the hospitality of
this house so long."

"No shame whatever," replied the old man, "but, on the contrary, the
fittest thing that could have chanced. You are dependent on no private
benevolence, nor on the good offices of any man now living, or who has
lived these last three hundred years. This ancient establishment is for
the support of poverty, misfortune, and age, and, according to the word
of the founder, it serves him:--he was indebted to the beneficiaries,
not they to him, for, in return for his temporal bequests, he asked
their prayers for his soul's welfare. He needed them, could they avail
him; for this ponderous structure was built upon the founder's mortal
transgressions, and even, I may say, out of the actual substance of
them. Sir Edward Redclyffe was a fierce fighter in the Wars of the
Roses, and amassed much wealth by spoil, rapine, confiscation, and all
violent and evil ways that those disturbed times opened to him; and on
his death-bed he founded this Hospital for twelve men, who should be
able to prove kindred with his race, to dwell here with a stipend, and
pray for him; and likewise provision for a sick stranger, until he
should be able to go on his way again."

"I shall pray for him willingly," said Edward, moved by the pity which
awaits any softened state of our natures to steal into our hearts.
"Though no Catholic, I will pray for his soul. And that is his crest
which you wear embroidered on his garment?"

"It is," said the old man. "You will see it carved, painted,
embroidered, everywhere about the establishment; but let us give it the
better and more reasonable interpretation;--not that he sought to
proclaim his own pride of ancestry and race, but to acknowledge his
sins the more manifestly, by stamping the emblem of his race on this
structure of his penitence."

"And are you," said Redclyffe, impressed anew by the quiet dignity of
the venerable speaker, "in authority in the establishment?"

"A simple beneficiary of the charity," said the palmer; "one of the
twelve poor brethren and kinsmen of the founder. Slighter proofs of
kindred are now of necessity received, since, in the natural course of
things, the race has long been growing scarce. But I had it in my power
to make out a sufficient claim."

"Singular," exclaimed Redclyffe, "you being an American!" [Endnote: 8.]

"You remember me, then," said the old man, quietly.

"From the first," said Edward, "although your image took the fantastic
aspect of the bewilderment in which I then was; and now that I am in
clearer state of mind, it seems yet stranger that you should be here.
We two children thought you translated, and people, I remember,
whispered dark hints about your fate."

"There was nothing wonderful in my disappearance," said the old man.
"There were causes, an impulse, an intuition, that made me feel, one
particular night, that I might meet harm, whether from myself or
others, by remaining in a place with which I had the most casual
connection. But I never, so long as I remained in America, quite lost
sight of you; and Doctor Grimshawe, before his death, had knowledge of
where I was, and gave me in charge a duty which I faithfully endeavored
to perform. Singular man that he was! much evil, much good in him.
Both, it may be, will live after him!"

Redclyffe, when the conversation had reached this point, felt a vast
desire to reveal to the old man all that the grim Doctor had instilled
into his childish mind, all that he himself, in subsequent years, had
wrought more definitely out of it, all his accompanying doubts
respecting the secret of his birth and some supposed claims which he
might assert, and which, only half acknowledging the purpose, had
availed to bring him, a republican, hither as to an ancestral centre.
He even fancied that the benign old man seemed to expect and await such
a confidence; but that very idea contributed to make it impossible for
him to speak.

"Another time," he said to himself. "Perhaps never. It is a fantastic
folly; and with what the workhouse foundling has since achieved, he
would give up too many hopes to take the representation of a mouldy old
English family."

"I find my head still very weak," said he, by way of cutting short the
conversation. "I must try to sleep again."




CHAPTER XIV.


The next day he called for his clothes, and, with the assistance of the
pensioner, managed to be dressed, and awaited the arrival of the
surgeon, sitting in a great easy-chair, with not much except his pale,
thin cheeks, dark, thoughtful eyes, and his arm in a sling, to show the
pain and danger through which he had passed. Soon after the departure
of the professional gentleman, a step somewhat louder than ordinary was
heard on the staircase, and in the corridor leading to the sick-
chamber; the step (as Redclyffe's perceptions, nicely attempered by his
weakness, assured him) of a man in perfect and robust health, and of
station and authority. A moment afterwards, a gentleman of middle age,
or a little beyond, appeared in the doorway, in a dress that seemed
clerical, yet not very decidedly so; he had a frank, kindly, yet
authoritative bearing, and a face that might almost be said to beam
with geniality, when, as now, the benevolence of his nature was aroused
and ready to express itself.

"My friend," said he, "Doctor Portingale tells me you are much better;
and I am most happy to hear it."

There was something brusque and unceremonious in his manner, that a
little jarred against Redclyffe's sensitiveness, which had become
morbid in sympathy with his weakness. He felt that the new-comer had
not probably the right idea as to his own position in life; he was
addressing him most kindly, indeed, but as an inferior.

"I am much better, sir," he replied, gravely, and with reserve; "so
nearly well, that I shall very soon be able to bid farewell to my kind
nurse here, and to this ancient establishment, to which I owe so much."

The visitor seemed struck by Mr. Redclyffe's tone, and finely modulated
voice, and glanced at his face, and then over his dress and figure, as
if to gather from them some reliable data as to his station.

"I am the Warden of this Hospital," said he, with not less benignity
than heretofore, and greater courtesy; "and, in that capacity, must
consider you under my care,--as my guest, in fact,--although, owing to
my casual absence, one of the brethren of the house has been the active
instrument in attending you. I am most happy to find you so far
recovered. Do you feel yourself in a condition to give any account of
the accident which has befallen you?"

"It will be a very unsatisfactory one, at best," said Redclyffe, trying
to discover some definite point in his misty reminiscences. "I am a
stranger to this country, and was on a pedestrian tour with the purpose
of making myself acquainted with the aspects of English scenery and
life. I had turned into a footpath, being told that it would lead me
within view of an old Hall, which, from certain early associations, I
was very desirous of seeing. I think I went astray; at all events, the
path became indistinct; and, so far as I can recollect, I had just
turned to retrace my steps,--in fact, that is the last thing in my
memory."

"You had almost fallen a sacrifice," said the Warden, "to the old
preference which our English gentry have inherited from their Norman
ancestry, of game to man. You had come unintentionally as an intruder
into a rich preserve much haunted by poachers, and exposed yourself to
the deadly mark of a spring-gun, which had not the wit to distinguish
between a harmless traveller and a poacher. At least, such is our
conclusion; for our old friend here, (who luckily for you is a great
rambler in the woods,) when the report drew him to the spot, found you
insensible, and the gun discharged."

"A gun has so little discretion," said Redclyffe, smiling, "that it
seems a pity to trust entirely to its judgment, in a matter of life and
death. But, to confess the truth, I had come this morning to the
suspicion that there was a direct human agency in the matter; for I
find missing a little pocket-book which I carried."

"Then," said the Warden, "that certainly gives a new aspect to the
affair. Was it of value?"

"Of none whatever," said Redclyffe, "merely containing pencil
memoranda, and notes of a traveller's little expenses. I had papers
about me of far more value, and a moderate sum of money, a letter of
credit, which have escaped. I do not, however, feel inclined, on such
grounds, to transfer the guilt decidedly from the spring-gun to any
more responsible criminal; for it is very possible that the pocket-
book, being carelessly carried, might have been lost on the way. I had
not used it since the preceding day."

"Much more probable, indeed," said the Warden. "The discharged gun is
strong evidence against itself. Mr. Colcord," continued he, raising his
voice, "how long was the interval between the discharge of the gun and
your arrival on the spot."

"Five minutes, or less," said the old man, "for I was not far off, and
made what haste I could, it being borne in on my spirit that mischief
was abroad."

"Did you hear two reports?" asked the Warden.

"Only one," replied Colcord.

"It is a plain case against the spring-gun," said the Warden; "and, as
you tell me you are a stranger, I trust you will not suppose that our
peaceful English woods and parks are the haunt of banditti. We must try
to give you a better idea of us. May I ask, are you an American, and
recently come among us?"

"I believe a letter of credit is considered as decisive as most modes
of introduction," said Redclyffe, feeling that the good Warden was
desirous of knowing with some precision who and what he was, and that,
in the circumstances, he had a right to such knowledge. "Here is mine,
on a respectable house in London."

The Warden took it, and glanced it over with a slight apologetic bow;
it was a credit for a handsome amount in favor of the Honorable Edward
Redclyffe, a title that did not fail to impress the Englishman rather
favorably towards his new acquaintance, although he happened to know
something of their abundance, even so early in the republic, among the
men branded sons of equality. But, at all events, it showed no ordinary
ability and energy for so young a man to have held such position as
this title denoted in the fiercely contested political struggles of the
new democracy.

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