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Doctor Grimshawe\'s Secret

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




"Do you know, Mr. Redclyffe, that this name is familiar to us,
hereabouts?" asked he, with a kindly bow and recognition,--"that it is
in fact the principal name in this neighborhood,--that a family of your
name still possesses Braithwaite Hall, and that this very Hospital,
where you have happily found shelter, was founded by former
representatives of your name? Perhaps you count yourself among their
kindred."

"My countrymen are apt to advance claims to kinship with distinguished
English families on such slight grounds as to make it ridiculous," said
Redclyffe, coloring. "I should not choose to follow so absurd an
example."

"Well, well, perhaps not," said the Warden, laughing frankly. "I have
been amongst your republicans myself, a long while ago, and saw that
your countrymen have no adequate idea of the sacredness of pedigrees,
and heraldic distinctions, and would change their own names at
pleasure, and vaunt kindred with an English duke on the strength of the
assumed one. But I am happy to meet an American gentleman who looks
upon this matter as Englishmen necessarily must. I met with great
kindness in your country, Mr. Redclyffe, and shall be truly happy if
you will allow me an opportunity of returning some small part of the
obligation. You are now in a condition for removal to my own quarters,
across the quadrangle. I will give orders to prepare an apartment, and
you must transfer yourself there by dinner-time."

With this hospitable proposal, so decisively expressed, the Warden took
his leave; and Edward Redclyffe had hardly yet recovered sufficient
independent force to reject an invitation so put, even were he
inclined; but, in truth, the proposal suited well with his wishes, such
as they were, and was, moreover, backed, it is singular to say, by
another of those dreamlike recognitions which had so perplexed him ever
since he found himself in the Hospital. In some previous state of
being, the Warden and he had talked together before.

"What is the Warden's name?" he inquired of the old pensioner.

"Hammond," said the old man; "he is a kinsman of the Redclyffe family
himself, a man of fortune, and spends more than the income of his
wardenship in beautifying and keeping up the glory of the
establishment. He takes great pride in it."

"And he has been in America," said Redclyffe. "How strange! I knew him
there. Never was anything so singular as the discovery of old
acquaintances where I had reason to suppose myself unknowing and
unknown. Unless dear Doctor Grim, or dear little Elsie, were to start
up and greet me, I know not what may chance next."

Redclyffe took up his quarters in the Warden's house the next day, and
was installed in an apartment that made a picture, such as he had not
before seen, of English household comfort. He was thus established
under the good Warden's roof, and, being very attractive of most
people's sympathies, soon began to grow greatly in favor with that
kindly personage.

When Edward Redclyffe removed from the old pensioner's narrow quarters
to the far ampler accommodations of the Warden's house, the latter
gentleman was taking his morning exercise on horseback. A servant,
however, in a grave livery, ushered him to an apartment, where the new
guest was surprised to see some luggage which two or three days before
Edward had ordered from London, on finding that his stay in this part
of the country was likely to be much longer than he had originally
contemplated. The sight of these things--the sense which they conveyed
that he was an expected and welcome guest--tended to raise the spirits
of the solitary wanderer, and made him.... [Endnote: 1.]

The Warden's abode was an original part of the ancient establishment,
being an entire side of the quadrangle which the whole edifice
surrounded; and for the establishment of a bachelor (which was his new
friend's condition), it seemed to Edward Redclyffe abundantly spacious
and enviably comfortable. His own chamber had a grave, rich depth, as
it were, of serene and time-long garniture, for purposes of repose,
convenience, daily and nightly comfort, that it was soothing even to
look at. Long accustomed, as Redclyffe had been, to the hardy and rude
accommodations, if so they were to be called, of log huts and hasty,
mud-built houses in the Western States of America, life, its daily
habits, its passing accommodations, seemed to assume an importance,
under these aspects, which it had not worn before; those deep downy
beds, those antique chairs, the heavy carpet, the tester and curtains,
the stateliness of the old room,--they had a charm as compared with the
thin preparation of a forester's bedchamber, such as Redclyffe had
chiefly known them, in the ruder parts of the country, that really
seemed to give a more substantial value to life; so much pains had been
taken with its modes and appliances, that it looked more solid than
before. Nevertheless, there was something ghostly in that stately
curtained bed, with the deep gloom within its drapery, so ancient as it
was; and suggestive of slumberers there who had long since slumbered
elsewhere.

The old servant, whose grave, circumspect courtesy was a matter quite
beyond Redclyffe's experience, soon knocked at the chamber door, and
suggested that the guest might desire to await the Warden's arrival in
the library, which was the customary sitting-room. Redclyffe assenting,
he was ushered into a spacious apartment, lighted by various Gothic
windows, surrounded with old oaken cases, in which were ranged volumes,
most or many of which seemed to be coeval with the foundation of the
hospital; and opening one of them, Redclyffe saw for the first time in
his life [Endnote: 2] a genuine book-worm, that ancient form of
creature living upon literature; it had gnawed a circular hole,
penetrating through perhaps a score of pages of the seldom opened
volume, and was still at his musty feast. There was a fragrance of old
learning in this ancient library; a soothing influence, as the American
felt, of time-honored ideas, where the strife, novelties, uneasy
agitating conflict, attrition of unsettled theories, fresh-springing
thought, did not attain a foothold; a good place to spend a life which
should not be agitated with the disturbing element; so quiet, so
peaceful; how slowly, with how little wear, would the years pass here!
How unlike what he had hitherto known, and was destined to know,--the
quick, violent struggle of his mother country, which had traced lines
in his young brow already. How much would be saved by taking his former
existence, not as dealing with things yet malleable, but with fossils,
things that had had their life, and now were unchangeable, and revered,
here!

At one end of this large room there was a bowed window, the space near
which was curtained off from the rest of the library, and, the window
being filled with painted glass (most of which seemed old, though there
were insertions evidently of modern and much inferior handiwork), there
was a rich gloom of light, or you might call it a rich glow, according
to your mood of mind. Redclyffe soon perceived that this curtained
recess was the especial study of his friend, the Warden, and as such
was provided with all that modern times had contrived for making an
enjoyment out of the perusal of old books; a study table, with every
convenience of multifarious devices, a great inkstand, pens; a
luxurious study chair, where thought [Endnote: 3] upon. To say the
truth, there was not, in this retired and thoughtful nook, anything
that indicated to Redclyffe that the Warden had been recently engaged
in consultation of learned authorities,--or in abstract labor, whether
moral, metaphysical or historic; there was a volume of translations of
Mother Goose's Melodies into Greek and Latin, printed for private
circulation, and with the Warden's name on the title-page; a London
newspaper of the preceding day; Lillebullero, Chevy Chase, and the old
political ballads; and, what a little amused Redclyffe, the three
volumes of a novel from a circulating library; so that Redclyffe came
to the conclusion that the good Warden, like many educated men, whose
early scholastic propensities are backed up by the best of
opportunities, and all desirable facilities and surroundings, still
contented himself with gathering a flower or two, instead of attempting
the hard toil requisite to raise a crop.

It must not be omitted, that there was a fragrance in the room, which,
unlike as the scene was, brought back, through so many years, to
Redclyffe's mind a most vivid remembrance of poor old Doctor Grim's
squalid chamber, with his wild, bearded presence in the midst of it,
puffing his everlasting cloud; for here was the same smell of tobacco,
and on the mantel-piece of a chimney lay a German pipe, and an old
silver tobacco-box into which was wrought the leopard's head and the
inscription in black letter. The Warden had evidently availed himself
of one of the chief bachelor sources of comfort. Redclyffe, whose
destiny had hitherto, and up to a very recent period, been to pass a
feverishly active life, was greatly impressed by all these tokens of
learned ease,--a degree of self-indulgence combined with duties enough
to quiet an otherwise uneasy conscience,--by the consideration that
this pensioner acted a good part in a world where no one is entitled to
be an unprofitable laborer. He thought within himself, that his
prospects in his own galvanized country, that seemed to him, a few
years since, to offer such a career for an adventurous young man,
conscious of motive power, had nothing so enticing as such a nook as
this,--a quiet recess of unchangeable old time, around which the
turbulent tide now eddied and rushed, but could not disturb it. Here,
to be sure, hope, love, ambition, came not, progress came not; but here
was what, just now, the early wearied American could appreciate better
than aught else,--here was rest.

The fantasy took Edward to imitate the useful labors of the learned
Warden, and to make trial whether his own classical condition--the
results of Doctor Grim's tuition, and subsequently that of an American
College--had utterly deserted him, by attempting a translation of a few
verses of Yankee Doodle; and he was making hopeful progress when the
Warden came in fresh and rosy from a morning's ride in a keen east
wind. He shook hands heartily with his guest, and, though by no means
frigid at their former interview, seemed to have developed at once into
a kindlier man, now that he had suffered the stranger to cross his
threshold, and had thus made himself responsible for his comfort.

"I shall take it greatly amiss," said he, "if you do not pick up fast
under my roof, and gather a little English ruddiness, moreover, in the
walks and rides that I mean to take you. Your countrymen, as I saw
them, are a sallow set; but I think you must have English blood enough
in your veins to eke out a ruddy tint, with the help of good English
beef and ale, and daily draughts of wholesome light and air."

"My cheeks would not have been so very pale," said Edward, laughing,
"if an English shot had not deprived me of a good deal of my American
blood."

"Only follow my guidance," said the Warden, "and I assure you you shall
have back whatever blood we have deprived you of, together with an
addition. It is now luncheon-time, and we will begin the process of
replenishing your veins."

So they went into a refectory, where were spread upon the board what
might have seemed a goodly dinner to most Americans; though for this
Englishman it was but a by-incident, a slight refreshment, to enable
him to pass the midway stage of life. It is an excellent thing to see
the faith of a hearty Englishman in his own stomach, and how well that
kindly organ repays his trust; with what devout assimilation he takes
to himself his kindred beef, loving it, believing in it, making a good
use of it, and without any qualms of conscience or prescience as to the
result. They surely eat twice as much as we; and probably because of
their undoubted faith it never does them any harm. Dyspepsia is merely
a superstition with us. If we could cease to believe in its existence,
it would exist no more. Redclyffe, eating little himself, his wound
compelling him to be cautious as to his diet, was secretly delighted to
see what sweets the Warden found in a cold round of beef, in a pigeon
pie, and a cut or two of Yorkshire ham; not that he was ravenous, but
that his stomach was so healthy.

"You eat little, my friend," said the Warden, pouring out a glass of
sherry for Redclyffe, and another for himself. "But you are right, in
such a predicament as yours. Spare your stomach while you are weakly,
and it will help you when you are strong This, now, is the most
enjoyable meal of the day with me. You will not see me play such a
knife and fork at dinner; though there too, especially if I have ridden
out in the afternoon, I do pretty well. But, come now, if (like most of
your countrymen, as I have heard) you are a lover of the weed, I can
offer you some as delicate Latakia as you are likely to find in
England."

"I lack that claim upon your kindness, I am sorry to say," replied
Redclyffe. "I am not a good smoker, though I have occasionally taken a
cigar at need."

"Well, when you find yourself growing old, and especially if you chance
to be a bachelor, I advise you to cultivate the habit," said the
Warden. "A wife is the only real obstacle or objection to a pipe; they
can seldom be thoroughly reconciled, and therefore it is well for a man
to consider, beforehand, which of the two he can best dispense with. I
know not how it might have been once, had the conflicting claim of
these two rivals ever been fairly presented to me; but I now should be
at no loss to choose the pipe."

They returned to the study; and while the Warden took his pipe,
Redclyffe, considering that, as the guest of this hospitable
Englishman, he had no right to continue a stranger, thought it fit to
make known to him who he was, and his condition, plans, and purposes.
He represented himself as having been liberally educated, bred to the
law, but (to his misfortune) having turned aside from that profession
to engage in politics. In this pursuit, indeed, his success wore a
flattering outside; for he had become distinguished, and, though so
young, a leader, locally at least, in the party which he had adopted.
He had been, for a biennial term, a member of Congress, after winning
some distinction in the legislature of his native State; but some one
of those fitful changes to which American politics are peculiarly
liable had thrown him out, in his candidacy for his second term; and
the virulence of party animosity, the abusiveness of the press, had
acted so much upon a disposition naturally somewhat too sensitive for
the career which he had undertaken, that he had resolved, being now
freed from legislative cares, to seize the opportunity for a visit to
England, whither he was drawn by feelings which every educated and
impressible American feels, in a degree scarcely conceivable by the
English themselves. And being here (but he had already too much
experience of English self-sufficiency to confess so much) he began to
feel the deep yearning which a sensitive American--his mind full of
English thoughts, his imagination of English poetry, his heart of
English character and sentiment--cannot fail to be influenced by,--the
yearning of the blood within his veins for that from which it has been
estranged; the half-fanciful regret that he should ever have been
separated from these woods, these fields, these natural features of
scenery, to which his nature was moulded, from the men who are still so
like himself, from these habits of life and thought which (though he
may not have known them for two centuries) he still perceives to have
remained in some mysterious way latent in the depths of his character,
and soon to be reassumed, not as a foreigner would do it, but like
habits native to him, and only suspended for a season.

This had been Redclyffe's state of feeling ever since he landed in
England, and every day seemed to make him more at home; so that it
seemed as if he were gradually awakening to a former reality.




CHAPTER XV.

After lunch, the Warden showed a good degree of kind anxiety about his
guest, and ensconced him in a most comfortable chair in his study,
where he gave him his choice of books old and new, and was somewhat
surprised, as well as amused, to see that Redclyffe seemed most
attracted towards a department of the library filled with books of
English antiquities, and genealogies, and heraldry; the two latter,
indeed, having the preference over the others.

"This is very remarkable," said he, smiling. "By what right or reason,
by what logic of character, can you, a democrat, renouncing all
advantages of birth,--neither priding yourself on family, nor seeking
to found one,--how therefore can you care for genealogies, or for this
fantastic science of heraldry? Having no antiquities, being a people
just made, how can you care for them?"

"My dear sir," said Redclyffe, "I doubt whether the most devoted
antiquarian in England ever cares to search for an old thing merely
because it is old, as any American just landed on your shores would do.
Age is our novelty; therefore it attracts and absorbs us. And as for
genealogies, I know not what necessary repulsion there may be between
it and democracy. A line of respectable connections, being the harder
to preserve where there is nothing in the laws to defend it, is
therefore the more precious when we have it really to boast of."

"True," said the Warden, "when a race keeps itself distinguished among
the grimy order of your commonalty, all with equal legal rights to
place and eminence as itself, it must needs be because there is a force
and efficacy in the blood. I doubt not," he said, looking with the free
approval of an elder man at the young man's finely developed face and
graceful form,--"I doubt not that you can look back upon a line of
ancestry, always shining out from the surrounding obscurity of the
mob."

Redclyffe, though ashamed of himself, could not but feel a paltry
confusion and embarrassment, as he thought of his unknown origin, and
his advent from the almshouse; coming out of that squalid darkness as
if he were a thing that had had a spontaneous birth out of poverty,
meanness, petty crime; and here in ancestral England, he felt more
keenly than ever before what was his misfortune.

"I must not let you lie under this impression," said he manfully to the
Warden. "I have no ancestry; at the very first step my origin is lost
in impenetrable obscurity. I only know that but for the aid of a kind
friend--on whose benevolence I seem to have had no claim whatever--my
life would probably have been poor, mean, unenlightened."

"Well, well," said the kind Warden,--hardly quite feeling, however, the
noble sentiment which he expressed,--"it is better to be the first
noble illustrator of a name than even the worthy heir of a name that
has been noble and famous for a thousand years. The highest pride of
some of our peers, who have won their rank by their own force, has been
to point to the cottage whence they sprung. Your posterity, at all
events, will have the advantage of you,--they will know their
ancestor."

Redclyffe sighed, for there was truly a great deal of the foolish
yearning for a connection with the past about him; his imagination had
taken this turn, and the very circumstances of his obscure birth gave
it a field to exercise itself.

"I advise you," said the Warden, by way of changing the conversation,
"to look over the excellent history of the county which you are now in.
There is no reading better, to my mind, than these country histories;
though doubtless a stranger would hardly feel so much interest in them
as one whose progenitors, male or female, have strewn their dust over
the whole field of which the history treats. This history is a fine
specimen of the kind."

The work to which Redclyffe's attention was thus drawn was in two large
folio volumes, published about thirty years before, bound in calf by
some famous artist in that line, illustrated with portraits and views
of ruined castles, churches, cathedrals, the seats of nobility and
gentry; Roman, British, and Saxon remains, painted windows, oak
carvings, and so forth.

And as for its contents the author ascended for the history of the
county as far as into the pre-Roman ages, before Caesar had ever heard
of Britain; and brought it down, an ever swelling and increasing tale,
to his own days; inclusive of the separate histories, and pedigrees,
and hereditary legends, and incidents, of all the principal families.
In this latter branch of information, indeed, the work seemed
particularly full, and contained every incident that would have worked
well into historical romance.

"Aye, aye," said the Warden, laughing at some strange incident of this
sort which Redclyffe read out to him. "My old friend Gibber, the
learned author of this work, (he has been dead this score of years, so
he will not mind my saying it,) had a little too much the habit of
seeking his authorities in the cottage chimney-corners. I mean that an
old woman's tale was just about as acceptable to him as a recorded
fact; and to say the truth, they are really apt to have ten times the
life in them."

Redclyffe saw in the volume a full account of the founding of the
Hospital, its regulations and purposes, its edifices; all of which he
reserved for future reading, being for the present more attracted by
the mouldy gossip of family anecdotes which we have alluded to. Some of
these, and not the least singular, referred to the ancient family which
had founded the Hospital; and he was attracted by seeing a mention of a
Bloody Footstep, which reminded him of the strange old story which good
Doctor Grimshawe had related by his New England fireside, in those
childish days when Edward dwelt with him by the graveyard, On reading
it, however, he found that the English legend, if such it could be
called, was far less full and explicit than that of New England.
Indeed, it assigned various origins to the Bloody Footstep;--one being,
that it was the stamp of the foot of the Saxon thane, who fought at his
own threshold against the assault of the Norman baron, who seized his
mansion at the Conquest; another, that it was the imprint of a fugitive
who had sought shelter from the lady of the house during the Wars of
the Roses, and was dragged out by her husband, and slain on the door-
step; still another, that it was the footstep of a Protestant in Bloody
Mary's days, who, being sent to prison by the squire of that epoch, had
lifted his hands to Heaven, and stamped his foot, in appeal as against
the unjust violence with which he was treated, and stamping his foot,
it had left the bloody mark. It was hinted too, however, that another
version, which out of delicacy to the family the author was reluctant
to state, assigned the origin of the Bloody Footstep to so late a
period as the wars of the Parliament. And, finally, there was an odious
rumor that what was called the Bloody Footstep was nothing miraculous,
after all, but most probably a natural reddish stain in the stone door-
step; but against this heresy the excellent Dr. Gibber set his face
most sturdily.

The original legend had made such an impression on Redclyffe's childish
fancy, that he became strangely interested in thus discovering it, or
something remotely like it, in England, and being brought by such
unsought means to reside so near it. Curious about the family to which
it had occurred, he proceeded to examine its records, as given in the
County History. The name was Redclyffe. Like most English pedigrees,
there was an obscurity about a good many of the earlier links; but the
line was traced out with reasonable definiteness from the days of Coeur
de Lion, and there was said to be a cross-legged ancestor in the
village church, who (but the inscription was obliterated) was probably
a Redclyffe, and had fought either under the Lion Heart or in the
Crusades. It was, in subsequent ages, one of the most distinguished
families, though there had been turbulent men in all those turbulent
times, hard fighters. In one age, a barony of early creation seemed to
have come into the family, and had been, as it were, playing bo-peep
with the race for several centuries. Some of them had actually assumed
the title; others had given it up for lack of sufficient proof; but
still there was such a claim, and up to the time at which this County
History was written, it had neither been made out, nor had the hope of
doing so been relinquished.

"Have the family," asked Redclyffe of his host, "ever yet made out
their claim to this title, which has so long been playing the will-of-
the-wisp with them?"

"No, not yet," said the Warden, puffing out a volume of smoke from his
meerschaum, and making it curl up to the ceiling. "Their claim has as
little substance, in my belief, as yonder vanishing vapor from my pipe.
But they still keep up their delusion. I had supposed that the claim
would perish with the last squire, who was a childless man,--at least,
without legitimate heirs; but this estate passed to one whom we can
scarcely call an Englishman, he being a Catholic, the descendant of
forefathers who have lived in Italy since the time of George II., and
who is, moreover, a Catholic. We English would not willingly see an
ancestral honor in the possession of such a man!"

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