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Doctor Grimshawe\'s Secret

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




"Is there, do you think, a prospect of his success?"

"I have heard so, but hardly believe it," replied the Warden. "I
remember, some dozen or fifteen years ago, it was given out that some
clue had been found to the only piece of evidence that was wanting. It
had been said that there was an emigration to your own country, above a
hundred years ago, and on account of some family feud; the true heir
had gone thither and never returned. Now, the point was to prove the
extinction of this branch of the family. But, excuse me, I must pay an
official visit to my charge here. Will you accompany me, or continue to
pore over the County History?"

Redclyffe felt enough of the elasticity of convalescence to be desirous
of accompanying the Warden; and they accordingly crossed the enclosed
quadrangle to the entrance of the Hospital portion of the large and
intricate structure. It was a building of the early Elizabethan age, a
plaster and timber structure, like many houses of that period and much
earlier. [Endnote: 1] Around this court stood the building, with the
date 1437 cut on the front. On each side, a row of gables looked upon
the enclosed space, most venerable old gables, with heavy mullioned
windows filled with little diamond panes of glass, and opening on
lattices. On two sides there was a cloistered walk, under echoing
arches, and in the midst a spacious lawn of the greenest and loveliest
grass, such as England only can show, and which, there, is of perennial
verdure and beauty. In the midst stood a stone statue of a venerable
man, wrought in the best of mediæval sculpture, with robe and ruff, and
tunic and venerable beard, resting on a staff, and holding what looked
like a clasped book in his hand. The English atmosphere, together with
the coal smoke, settling down in the space of centuries from the
chimneys of the Hospital, had roughened and blackened this venerable
piece of sculpture, enclosing it as it were in a superficies of decay;
but still (and perhaps the more from these tokens of having stood so
long among men) the statue had an aspect of venerable life, and of
connection with human life, that made it strongly impressive.

"This is the effigy of Sir Edward Redclyffe, the founder of the
Hospital," said the Warden. "He is a most peaceful and venerable old
gentleman in his attire and aspect, as you see; but he was a fierce old
fellow in his day, and is said to have founded the Hospital as a means
of appeasing Heaven for some particular deed of blood, which he had
imposed upon his conscience in the War of the Roses."

"Yes," said Redclyffe, "I have just read in the County History that the
Bloody Footstep was said to have been imprinted in his time. But what
is that thing which he holds in his hand?"

"It is a famous heirloom of the Redclyffes," said the Warden, "on the
possession of which (as long as they did possess it) they prided
themselves, it is said, more than on their ancient manor-house. It was
a Saxon ornament, which a certain ancestor was said to have had from
Harold, the old Saxon king; but if there ever was any such article, it
has been missing from the family mansion for two or three hundred
years. There is not known to be an antique relic of that description
now in existence."

"I remember having seen such an article,--yes, precisely of that
shape," observed Redclyffe, "in the possession of a very dear old
friend of mine, when I was a boy."

"What, in America?" exclaimed the Warden. "That is very remarkable. The
time of its being missed coincides well enough with that of the early
settlement of New England. Some Puritan, before his departure, may have
thought himself doing God service by filching the old golden gewgaw
from the Cavalier; for it was said to be fine, ductile gold."

The circumstances struck Redclyffe with a pleasant wonder; for, indeed,
the old statue held the closest possible imitation, in marble, of that
strange old glitter of gold which he himself had so often played with
in the Doctor's study; [Endnote: 2] so identical, that he could have
fancied that he saw the very thing, changed from metal into stone, even
with its bruises and other casual marks in it. As he looked at the old
statue, his imagination played with it, and his naturally great
impressibility half made him imagine that the old face looked at him
with a keen, subtile, wary glance, as if acknowledging that it held
some secret, but at the same time defying him to find it out. And then
again came that visionary feeling that had so often swept over him
since he had been an inmate of the Hospital.

All over the interior part of the building was carved in stone the
leopard's head, with wearisome iteration; as if the founder were
anxious to imprint his device so numerously, lest--when he produced
this edifice as his remuneration to Eternal Justice for many sins--the
Omniscient Eye should fail to be reminded that Sir Edward Redclyffe had
done it. But, at all events, it seemed to Redclyffe that the ancient
knight had purposed a good thing, and in a measurable degree had
effected it; for here stood the venerable edifice securely founded,
bearing the moss of four hundred years upon it; and though wars, and
change of dynasties, and religious change, had swept around it, with
seemingly destructive potency, yet here had the lodging, the food, the
monastic privileges of the brethren been held secure, and were
unchanged by all the altering mariners of the age. The old fellow,
somehow or other, seemed to have struck upon an everlasting rock, and
founded his pompous charity there.

They entered an arched door on the left of the quadrangle, and found
themselves hi a dark old hall with oaken beams; to say the truth, it
was a barn-like sort of enclosure, and was now used as a sort of
rubbish-place for the Hospital, where they stored away old furniture,
and where carpenter's work might be done. And yet, as the Warden
assured Redclyffe, it was once a hall of state, hung with tapestry,
carpeted, for aught he knew, with cloth of gold, and set with rich
furniture, and a groaning board in the midst. Here, the hereditary
patron of the Hospital had once entertained King James the First, who
made a Latin speech on the occasion, a copy of which was still
preserved in the archives. On the rafters of this old hall there were
cobwebs in such abundance that Redclyffe could not but reflect on the
joy which old Doctor Grimshawe would have had in seeing them, and the
health to the human race which he would have hoped to collect and
distil from them.

From this great, antique room they crossed the quadrangle and entered
the kitchen of the establishment. A hospitable fire was burning there,
and there seemed to be a great variety of messes cooking; and the
Warden explained to Redclyffe that there was no general table in the
Hospital; but the brethren, at their own will and pleasure, either
formed themselves into companies or messes, of any convenient size, or
enjoyed a solitary meal by themselves, each in their own apartments.
There was a goodly choice of simple, but good and enjoyable food, and a
sufficient supply of potent ale, brewed in the vats of the Hospital,
which, among its other praiseworthy characteristics, was famous for
this; having at some epoch presumed to vie with the famous ale of
Trinity, in Cambridge, and the Archdeacon of Oxford,--these having come
down to the hospital from a private receipt of Sir Edward's butler,
which was now lost in the Redclyffe family; nor would the ungrateful
Hospital give up its secret even out of loyalty to its founder.

"I would use my influence with the brewer," said the Warden, on
communicating this little fact to Redclyffe; "but the present man--now
owner of the estate--is not worthy to have good ale brewed in his
house; having himself no taste for anything but Italian wines, wretched
fellow that he is! He might make himself an Englishman if he would take
heartily to our ale; and with that end in view, I should be glad to
give it him."

The kitchen fire blazed warmly, as we have said, and roast and stewed
and boiled were in process of cooking, producing a pleasant fume, while
great heaps of wheaten loaves were smoking hot from the ovens, and the
master cook and his subordinates were in fume and hiss, like beings
that were of a fiery element, and, though irritable and scorching, yet
were happier here than they could have been in any other situation. The
Warden seemed to have an especial interest and delight in this
department of the Hospital, and spoke apart to the head cook on the
subject (as Redclyffe surmised from what he overheard) of some especial
delicacy for his own table that day.

"This kitchen is a genial place," said he to Redclyffe, as they
retired. "In the evening, after the cooks have done their work, the
brethren have liberty to use it as a sort of common room, and to sit
here over their ale till a reasonable bedtime. It would interest you
much to make one at such a party; for they have had a varied experience
in life, each one for himself, and it would be strange to hear the
varied roads by which they have come hither."

"Yes," replied Redclyffe, "and, I presume, not one of them ever dreamed
of coming hither when he started in life. The only one with whom I am
acquainted could hardly have expected it, at all events."

"He is a remarkable man, more so than you may have had an opportunity
of knowing," said the Warden. "I know not his history, for he is not
communicative on that subject, and it was only necessary for him to
make out his proofs of claim to the charity to the satisfaction of the
Curators. But it has often struck me that there must have been strange
and striking events in his life,--though how it could have been without
his attracting attention and being known, I cannot say. I have myself
often received good counsel from him in the conduct of the Hospital,
and the present owner of the Hall seems to have taken him for his
counsellor and confidant, being himself strange to English affairs and
life."

"I should like to call on him, as a matter of course rather than
courtesy," observed Redclyffe, "and thank him for his great kindness."

They accordingly ascended the dark oaken staircase with its black
balustrade, and approached the old man's chamber, the door of which
they found open, and in the blurred looking-glass which hung deep
within the room Redclyffe was surprised to perceive the young face of a
woman, who seemed to be arranging her head-gear, as women are always
doing. It was but a moment, and then it vanished like a vision.

"I was not aware," he said, turning to the Warden, "that there was a
feminine side to this establishment."

"Nor is there," said the old bachelor, "else it would not have held
together so many ages as it has. The establishment has its own wise,
monkish regulations; but we cannot prevent the fact, that some of the
brethren may have had foolish relations with the other sex at some
previous period of their lives. This seems to be the case with our wise
old friend of whom we have been speaking,--whereby he doubtless became
both wiser and sadder. If you have seen a female face here, it is that
of a relative who resides out of the hospital,--an excellent young
lady, I believe, who has charge of a school."

While he was speaking, the young lady in question passed out, greeting
the Warden in a cheerful, respectful way, in which deference to him was
well combined with a sense of what was due to herself.

"That," observed the Warden, who had returned her courtesy, with a
kindly air betwixt that of gentlemanly courtesy and a superior's
acknowledgment,--"that is the relative of our old friend; a young
person--a gentlewoman, I may almost call her--who teaches a little
school in the village here, and keeps her guardian's heart warm, no
doubt, with her presence. An excellent young woman, I do believe, and
very useful and faithful in her station."




CHAPTER XVI.


On entering the old palmer's apartment, they found him looking over
some ancient papers, yellow and crabbedly written, and on one of them a
large old seal, all of which he did up in a bundle and enclosed in a
parchment cover, so that, before they were well in the room, the
documents were removed from view.

"Those papers and parchments have a fine old yellow tint, Colcord,"
said the Warden, "very satisfactory to an antiquary."

"There is nothing in them," said the old man, "of general interest.
Some old papers they are, which came into my possession by inheritance,
and some of them relating to the affairs of a friend of my youth;--a
long past time, and a long past friend," added he, sighing.

"Here is a new friend, at all events," said the kindly Warden, wishing
to cheer the old man, "who feels himself greatly indebted to you for
your care." [Endnote: 1.]

There now ensued a conversation between the three, in the course of
which reference was made to America, and the Warden's visit there.

"You are so mobile," he said, "you change so speedily, that I suppose
there are few external things now that I should recognize. The face of
your country changes like one of your own sheets of water, under the
influence of sun, cloud, and wind; but I suppose there is a depth below
that is seldom effectually stirred. It is a great fault of the country
that its sons find it impossible to feel any patriotism for it."

"I do not by any means acknowledge that impossibility," responded
Redclyffe, with a smile. "I certainly feel that sentiment very strongly
in my own breast, more especially since I have left America three
thousand miles behind me."

"Yes, it is only the feeling of self-assertion that rises against the
self-complacency of the English," said the Warden. "Nothing else; for
what else have you become the subject of this noble weakness of
patriotism? You cannot love anything beyond the soil of your own
estate; or in your case, if your heart is very large, you may possibly
take in, in a quiet sort of way, the whole of New England. What more is
possible? How can you feel a heart's love for a mere political
arrangement, like your Union? How can you be loyal, where personal
attachment--the lofty and noble and unselfish attachment of a subject
to his prince--is out of the question? where your sovereign is felt to
be a mere man like yourselves, whose petty struggles, whose ambition--
mean before it grew to be audacious--you have watched, and know him to
be just the same now as yesterday, and that to-morrow he will be
walking unhonored amongst you again? Your system is too bare and meagre
for human nature to love, or to endure it long. These stately degrees
of society, that have so strong a hold upon us in England, are not to
be done away with so lightly as you think. Your experiment is not yet a
success by any means; and you will live to see it result otherwise than
you think!"

"It is natural for you Englishmen to feel thus," said Redclyffe;
"although, ever since I set my foot on your shores,--forgive me, but
you set me the example of free speech,--I have had a feeling of coming
change among all that you look upon as so permanent, so everlasting;
and though your thoughts dwell fondly on things as they are and have
been, there is a deep destruction somewhere in this country, that is
inevitably impelling it in the path of my own. But I care not for this.
I do aver that I love my country, that I am proud of its institutions,
that I have a feeling unknown, probably, to any but a republican, but
which is the proudest thing in me, that there is no man above me,--for
my ruler is only myself, in the person of another, whose office I
impose upon him,--nor any below me. If you would understand me, I would
tell you of the shame I felt when first, on setting foot in this
country, I heard a man speaking of his birth as giving him privileges;
saw him looking down on laboring men, as of an inferior race. And what
I can never understand, is the pride which you positively seem to feel
in having men and classes of men above you, born to privileges which
yon can never hope to share. It may be a thing to be endured, but
surely not one to be absolutely proud of. And yet an Englishman is so."

"Ah! I see we lack a ground to meet upon," said the Warden. "We can
never truly understand each other. What you have last mentioned is one
of our inner mysteries. It is not a thing to be reasoned about, but to
be felt,--to be born within one; and I uphold it to be a generous
sentiment, and good for the human heart."

"Forgive me, sir," said Redclyffe, "but I would rather be the poorest
and lowest man in America than have that sentiment."

"But it might change your feeling, perhaps," suggested the Warden, "if
you were one of the privileged class."

"I dare not say that it would not," said Redclyffe, "for I know I have
a thousand weaknesses, and have doubtless as many more that I never
suspected myself of. But it seems to me at this moment impossible that
I should ever have such an ambition, because I have a sense of meanness
in not starting fair, in beginning the world with advantages that my
fellows have not."

"Really this is not wise," said the Warden, bluntly, "How can the start
in life be fair for all? Providence arranges it otherwise. Did you
yourself,--a gentleman evidently by birth and education,--did you start
fair in the race of life?"

Redclyffe remembered what his birth, or rather what his first
recollected place had been, and reddened.

"In birth, certainly, I had no advantages," said he, and would have
explained further but was kept back by invincible reluctance; feeling
that the bare fact of his origin in an almshouse would be accepted,
while all the inward assurances and imaginations that had reconciled
himself to the ugly fact would go for nothing. "But there were
advantages, very early in life," added he, smiling, "which perhaps I
ought to have been ashamed to avail myself of."

"An old cobwebby library,--an old dwelling by a graveyard,--an old
Doctor, busied with his own fantasies, and entangled in his own
cobwebs,--and a little girl for a playmate: these were things that you
might lawfully avail yourself of," said Colcord, unheard by the Warden,
who, thinking the conversation had lasted long enough, had paid a
slight passing courtesy to the old man, and was now leaving the room.
"Do you remain here long?" he added.

"If the Warden's hospitality holds out," said the American, "I shall be
glad; for the place interests me greatly."

"No wonder," replied Colcord.

"And wherefore no wonder?" said Redclyffe, impressed with the idea that
there was something peculiar in the tone of the old man's remark.

"Because," returned the other quietly, "it must be to you especially
interesting to see an institution of this kind, whereby one man's
benevolence or penitence is made to take the substance and durability
of stone, and last for centuries; whereas, in America, the solemn
decrees and resolutions of millions melt away like vapor, and
everything shifts like the pomp of sunset clouds; though it may be as
pompous as they. Heaven intended the past as a foundation for the
present, to keep it from vibrating and being blown away with every
breeze."

"But," said Redclyffe, "I would not see in my country what I see
elsewhere,--the Past hanging like a mill-stone round a country's neck,
or encrusted in stony layers over the living form; so that, to all
intents and purposes, it is dead."

"Well," said Colcord, "we are only talking of the Hospital. You will
find no more interesting place anywhere. Stay amongst us; this is the
very heart of England, and if you wish to know the fatherland,--the
place whence you sprung,--this is the very spot!"

Again Redclyffe was struck with the impression that there was something
marked, something individually addressed to himself, in the old man's
words; at any rate, it appealed to that primal imaginative vein in him
which had so often, in his own country, allowed itself to dream over
the possibilities of his birth. He knew that the feeling was a vague
and idle one; but yet, just at this time, a convalescent, with a little
play moment in what had heretofore been a turbulent life, he felt an
inclination to follow out this dream, and let it sport with him, and by
and by to awake to realities, refreshed by a season of unreality. At a
firmer and stronger period of his life, though Redclyffe might have
indulged his imagination with these dreams, yet he would not have let
them interfere with his course of action; but having come hither in
utter weariness of active life, it seemed just the thing for him to
do,--just the fool's paradise for him to be in.

"Yes," repeated the old man, looking keenly in his face, "you will not
leave us yet."

Redclyffe returned through the quadrangle to the Warden's house; and
there were the brethren, sitting on benches, loitering in the sun,
which, though warm for England, seemed scarcely enough to keep these
old people warm, even with their cloth robes. They did not seem
unhappy; nor yet happy; if they were so, it must be with the mere bliss
of existence, a sleepy sense of comfort, and quiet dreaminess about
things past, leaving out the things to come,--of which there was
nothing, indeed, in their future, save one day after another, just like
this, with loaf and ale, and such substantial comforts, and prayers,
and idle days again, gathering by the great kitchen fire, and at last a
day when they should not be there, but some other old men in their
stead. And Redclyffe wondered whether, in the extremity of age, he
himself would like to be one of the brethren of the Leopard's Head. The
old men, he was sorry to see, did not seem very genial towards one
another; in fact, there appeared to be a secret enjoyment of one
another's infirmities, wherefore it was hard to tell, unless that each
individual might fancy himself to possess an advantage over his fellow,
which he mistook for a positive strength; and so there was sometimes a
sardonic smile, when, on rising from his seat, the rheumatism was a
little evident in an old fellow's joints; or when the palsy shook
another's fingers so that he could barely fill his pipe; or when a
cough, the gathered spasmodic trouble of thirty years, fairly convulsed
another. Then, any two that happened to be sitting near one another
looked into each other's cold eyes, and whispered, or suggested merely
by a look (for they were bright to such perceptions), "The old fellow
will not outlast another winter."

Methinks it is not good for old men to be much together. An old man is
a beautiful object in his own place, in the midst of a circle of young
people, going down in various gradations to infancy, and all looking up
to the patriarch with filial reverence, keeping him warm by their own
burning youth; giving him the freshness of their thought and feeling,
with such natural influx that it seems as if it grew within his heart;
while on them he reacts with an influence that sobers, tempers, keeps
them down. His wisdom, very probably, is of no great account,--he
cannot fit to any new state of things; but, nevertheless, it works its
effect. In such a situation, the old man is kind and genial, mellow,
more gentle and generous, and wider-minded than ever before. But if
left to himself, or wholly to the society of his contemporaries, the
ice gathers about his heart, his hope grows torpid, his love--having
nothing of his own blood to develop it--grows cold; he becomes selfish,
when he has nothing in the present or the future worth caring about in
himself; so that, instead of a beautiful object, he is an ugly one,
little, mean, and torpid. I suppose one chief reason to be, that unless
he has his own race about him he doubts of anybody's love, he feels
himself a stranger in the world, and so becomes unamiable.

A very few days in the Warden's hospitable mansion produced an
excellent effect on Redclyffe's frame; his constitution being naturally
excellent, and a flow of cheerful spirits contributing much to restore
him to health, especially as the abode in this old place, which would
probably have been intolerably dull to most young Englishmen, had for
this young American a charm like the freshness of Paradise. In truth it
had that charm, and besides it another intangible, evanescent,
perplexing charm, full of an airy enjoyment, as if he had been here
before. What could it be? It could be only the old, very deepest,
inherent nature, which the Englishman, his progenitor, carried over the
sea with him, nearly two hundred years before, and which had lain
buried all that time under heaps of new things, new customs, new
institutions, new snows of winter, new layers of forest leaves, until
it seemed dead, and was altogether forgotten as if it had never been;
but, now, his return had seemed to dissolve or dig away all this
incrustation, and the old English nature awoke all fresh, so that he
saw the green grass, the hedgerows, the old structures and old manners,
the old clouds, the old raindrops, with a recognition, and yet a
newness. Redclyffe had never been so quietly happy as now. He had, as
it were, the quietude of the old man about him, and the freshness of
his own still youthful years.

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