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Doctor Grimshawe\'s Secret

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




"I question," said Redclyffe, smiling, "whether their pleasurable or
painful experiences can be so keen, that we need trouble our
consciences much with regard to what we do, merely as it affects them.
So highly cultivated a conscience as that would be a nuisance to one's
self and one's fellows."

"You say a terrible thing," rejoined the old man. "Can conscience be
too much alive in us? is not everything however trifling it seems, an
item in the great account, which it is of infinite importance therefore
to have right? A terrible thing is that you have said."

"That may be," said Redclyffe; "but it is none the less certain to me,
that the efficient actors--those who mould the world--are the persons
in whom something else is developed more strongly than conscience.
There must be an invincible determination to effect something; it may
be set to work in the right direction, but after that it must go
onward, trampling down small obstacles--small considerations of right
and wrong--as a great rock, thundering down a hillside, crushes a
thousand sweet flowers, and ploughs deep furrows in the innocent
hillside."

As Redclyffe gave vent to this doctrine, which was not naturally his,
but which had been the inculcation of a life, hitherto devoted to
politics, he was surprised to find how strongly sensible he became of
the ugliness and indefensibleness of what he said. He felt as if he
were speaking under the eye of Omniscience, and as if every word he
said were weighed, and its emptiness detected, by an unfailing
intelligence. He had thought that he had volumes to say about the
necessity of consenting not to do right in all matters minutely, for
the sake of getting out an available and valuable right as the whole;
but there was something that seemed to tie his tongue. Could it be the
quiet gaze of this old man, so unpretending, so humble, so simple in
aspect? He could not tell, only that he faltered, and finally left his
speech in the midst.

But he was surprised to find how he had to struggle against a certain
repulsion within himself to the old man. He seemed so nonsensical,
interfering with everybody's right in the world; so mischievous,
standing there and shutting out the possibility of action. It seemed
well to trample him down; to put him out of the way--no matter how--
somehow. It gave him, he thought, an inkling of the way in which this
poor old man had made himself odious to his kind, by opposing himself,
inevitably, to what was bad in man, chiding it by his very presence,
accepting nothing false. You must either love him utterly, or hate him
utterly; for he could not let you alone. Redclyffe, being a susceptible
man, felt this influence in the strongest way; for it was as if there
was a battle within him, one party pulling, wrenching him towards the
old man, another wrenching him away, so that, by the agony of the
contest, he felt disposed to end it by taking flight, and never seeing
the strange individual again. He could well enough conceive how a
brutal nature, if capable of receiving his influence at all, might find
it so intolerable that it must needs get rid of him by violence,--by
taking his blood if necessary.

All these feelings were but transitory, however; they swept across him
like a wind, and then he looked again at the old man and saw only his
simplicity, his unworldliness,--saw little more than the worn and
feeble individual in the Hospital garb, leaning on his staff; and then
turning again with a gentle sigh to weed in the garden. And then
Redclyffe went away, in a state of disturbance for which he could not
account to himself.




CHAPTER XIX.


High up in the old carved roof, meanwhile, the spiders of centuries
still hung their flaunting webs with a profusion that old Doctor
Grimshawe would have been ravished to see; but even this was to be
remedied, for one day, on looking in, Redclyffe found the great hall
dim with floating dust, and down through it came great floating masses
of cobweb, out of which the old Doctor would have undertaken to
regenerate the world; and he saw, dimly aloft, men on ladders sweeping
away these accumulations of years, and breaking up the haunts and
residences of hereditary spiders.

The stately old hall had been in process of cleaning and adapting to
the banquet purposes of the nineteenth century, which it was accustomed
to subserve, in so proud a way, in the sixteenth. It was, in the first
place, well swept and cleansed; the painted glass windows were cleansed
from dust, and several panes, which had been unfortunately broken and
filled with common glass, were filled in with colored panes, which the
Warden had picked up somewhere in his antiquarian researches. They were
not, to be sure, just what was wanted; a piece of a saint, from some
cathedral window, supplying what was lacking of the gorgeous purple of
a mediæval king; but the general effect was rich and good, whenever the
misty English atmosphere supplied sunshine bright enough to pervade it.
Tapestry, too, from antique looms, faded, but still gorgeous, was hung
upon the walls. Some suits of armor, that hung beneath the festal
gallery, were polished till the old battered helmets and pierced
breastplates sent a gleam like that with which they had flashed across
the battle-fields of old. [Endnote: 1.]

So now the great day of the Warden's dinner had arrived; and, as may be
supposed, there were fiery times in the venerable old kitchen. The
cook, according to ancient custom, concocted many antique dishes, such
as used to be set before kings and nobles; dainties that might have
called the dead out of their graves; combinations of ingredients that
had ceased to be put together for centuries; historic dishes, which had
long, long ceased to be in the list of revels. Then there was the
stalwart English cheer of the sirloin, and the round; there were the
vast plum-puddings, the juicy mutton, the venison; there was the game,
now just in season,--the half-tame wild fowl of English covers, the
half-domesticated wild deer of English parks, the heathcock from the
far-off hills of Scotland, and one little prairie hen, and some canvas-
back ducks--obtained, Heaven knows how, in compliment to Redclyffe--
from his native shores. O, the old jolly kitchen! how rich the flavored
smoke that went up its vast chimney! how inestimable the atmosphere of
steam that was diffused through it! How did the old men peep into it,
even venture across the threshold, braving the hot wrath of the cook
and his assistants, for the sake of imbuing themselves with these rich
and delicate flavors, receiving them in as it were spiritually; for,
received through the breath and in the atmosphere, it was really a
spiritual enjoyment. The ghosts of ancient epicures seemed, on that day
and the few preceding ones, to haunt the dim passages, snuffing in with
shadowy nostrils the rich vapors, assuming visibility in the congenial
medium, almost becoming earthly again in the strength of their earthly
longings for one other feast such as they used to enjoy.

Nor is it to be supposed that it was only these antique dainties that
the Warden provided for his feast. No; if the cook, the cultured and
recondite old cook, who had accumulated within himself all that his
predecessors knew for centuries,--if he lacked anything of modern
fashion and improvement, he had supplied his defect by temporary
assistance from a London club; and the bill of fare was provided with
dishes that Soyer would not have harshly criticised. The ethereal
delicacy of modern taste, the nice adjustment of flowers, the French
style of cookery, was richly attended to; and the list was long of
dishes with fantastic names, fish, fowl, and flesh; and
_entremets_, and "sweets," as the English call them, and sugared
cates, too numerous to think of.

The wines we will not take upon ourselves to enumerate; but the juice,
then destined to be quaffed, was in part the precious vintages that had
been broached half a century ago, and had been ripening ever since; the
rich and dry old port, so unlovely to the natural palate that it
requires long English seasoning to get it down; the sherry, imported
before these modern days of adulteration; some claret, the Warden said
of rarest vintage; some Burgundy, of which it was the quality to warm
the blood and genialize existence for three days after it was drunk.
Then there was a rich liquid contributed to this department by
Redclyffe himself; for, some weeks since, when the banquet first loomed
in the distance, he had (anxious to evince his sense of the Warden's
kindness) sent across the ocean for some famous Madeira which he had
inherited from the Doctor, and never tasted yet. This, together with
some of the Western wines of America, had arrived, and was ready to be
broached.

The Warden tested these modern wines, and recognized a new flavor, but
gave it only a moderate approbation; for, in truth, an elderly
Englishman has not a wide appreciation of wines, nor loves new things
in this kind more than in literature or life. But he tasted the
Madeira, too, and underwent an ecstasy, which was only alleviated by
the dread of gout, which he had an idea that this wine must bring on,--
and truly, if it were so splendid a wine as he pronounced it, some pain
ought to follow as the shadow of such a pleasure.

As it was a festival of antique date, the dinner hour had been fixed
earlier than is usual at such stately banquets; namely, at six o'clock,
which was long before the dusky hour at which Englishmen love best to
dine. About that period, the carriages drove into the old courtyard of
the Hospital in great abundance; blocking up, too, the ancient portal,
and remaining in a line outside. Carriages they were with armorial
bearings, family coaches in which came Englishmen in their black coats
and white neckcloths, elderly, white-headed, fresh-colored, squat; not
beautiful, certainly, nor particularly dignified, nor very well
dressed, nor with much of an imposing air, but yet, somehow or other,
producing an effect of force, respectability, reliableness, trust,
which is probably deserved, since it is invariably experienced. Cold
they were in deportment, and looked coldly on the stranger, who, on his
part, drew himself up with an extra haughtiness and reserve, and felt
himself in the midst of his enemies, and more as if he were going to do
battle than to sit down to a friendly banquet. The Warden introduced
him, as an American diplomatist, to one or two of the gentlemen, who
regarded him forbiddingly, as Englishmen do before dinner.

Not long after Redclyffe had entered the reception-room, which was but
shortly before the hour appointed for the dinner, there was another
arrival betokened by the clatter of hoofs and grinding wheels in the
courtyard; and then entered a gentleman of different mien from the
bluff, ruddy, simple-minded, yet worldly Englishmen around him. He was
a tall, dark man, with a black moustache and almost olive skin, a
slender, lithe figure, a flexible face, quick, flashing, mobile. His
deportment was graceful; his dress, though it seemed to differ in
little or nothing from that of the gentlemen in the room, had yet a
grace and picturesqueness in his mode of wearing it. He advanced to the
Warden, who received him with distinction, and yet, Redclyffe fancied,
not exactly with cordiality. It seemed to Redclyffe that the Warden
looked round, as if with the purpose of presenting Redclyffe to this
gentleman, but he himself, from some latent reluctance, had turned away
and entered, into conversation with one of the other gentlemen, who
said now, looking at the new-comer, "Are you acquainted with this last
arrival?"

"Not at all," said Redclyffe. "I know Lord Braithwaite by sight,
indeed, but have had no introduction. He is a man, certainly, of
distinguished appearance."

"Why, pretty well," said the gentleman, "but un-English, as also are
his manners. It is a pity to see an old English family represented by
such a person. Neither he, his father, nor grandfather was born among
us; he has far more Italian blood than enough to drown the slender
stream of Anglo-Saxon and Norman. His modes of life, his prejudices,
his estates, his religion, are unlike our own; and yet here he is in
the position of an old English gentleman, possibly to be a peer. You,
whose nationality embraces that of all the world, cannot, I suppose,
understand this English feeling." [Endnote: 2.]

"Pardon me," said Redclyffe, "I can perfectly understand it. An
American, in his feelings towards England, has all the jealousy and
exclusiveness of Englishmen themselves,--perhaps, indeed, a little
exaggerated."

"I beg your pardon," said the Englishman, incredulously, "I think you
cannot possibly understand it!" [Endnote: 3.]

The guests were by this time all assembled, and at the Warden's bidding
they moved from the reception-room to the dining-hall, in some order
and precedence, of which Redclyffe could not exactly discover the
principle, though he found that to himself--in his quality, doubtless,
of Ambassador--there was assigned a pretty high place. A venerable
dignitary of the Church--a dean, he seemed to be--having asked a
blessing, the fair scene of the banquet now lay before the guests,
presenting a splendid spectacle, in the high-walled, antique,
tapestried hall, overhung with the dark, intricate oaken beams, with
the high Gothic windows, through one of which the setting sunbeams
streamed, and showed the figures of kings and warriors, and the old
Braithwaites among them. Beneath and adown the hall extended the long
line of the tables, covered with the snow of the damask tablecloth, on
which glittered, gleamed, and shone a good quality of ancient ancestral
plate, and an _épergne_ of silver, extending down the middle; also
the gleam of golden wine in the decanters; and truly Redclyffe thought
that it was a noble spectacle, made so by old and stately associations,
which made a noble banquet of what otherwise would be only a vulgar
dinner. The English have this advantage and know how to make use of it.
They bring--in these old, time-honored feasts--all the past to sit down
and take the stately refreshment along with them, and they pledge the
historic characters in their wine.

A printed bill of fare, in gold letters, lay by each plate, on which
Redclyffe saw the company glancing with great interest. The first dish,
of course, was turtle soup, of which--as the gentleman next him, the
Mayor of a neighboring town, told Redclyffe--it was allowable to take
twice. This was accompanied, according to one of those rules which one
knows not whether they are arbitrary or founded on some deep reason, by
a glass of punch. Then came the noble turbot, the salmon, the sole, and
divers of fishes, and the dinner fairly set in. The genial Warden
seemed to have given liberal orders to the attendants, for they spared
not to offer hock, champagne, sherry, to the guests, and good bitter
ale, foaming in the goblet; and so the stately banquet went on, with
somewhat tedious magnificence; and yet with a fulness of effect and
thoroughness of sombre life that made Redclyffe feel that, so much
importance being assigned to it,--it being so much believed in,--it was
indeed a feast. The cumbrous courses swept by, one after another; and
Redclyffe, finding it heavy work, sat idle most of the time, regarding
the hall, the old decaying beams, the armor hanging beneath the
galleries, and these Englishmen feasting where their fathers had
feasted for so many ages, the same occasion, the same men, probably, in
appearance, though the black coat and the white neckcloth had taken the
place of ruff, embroidered doublet, and the magnificence of other ages.
After all, the English have not such good things to eat as we in
America, and certainly do not know better how to make them palatable.
[Endnote: 4.]

Well; but by and by the dinner came to a conclusion, as regarded the
eating part; the cloth was withdrawn; a dessert of fruits, fresh and
dried, pines, hothouse grapes, and all candied conserves of the Indies,
was put on the long extent of polished mahogany. There was a tuning up
of musicians, an interrogative drawing of fiddle-bows, and other
musical twangs and puffs; the decanters opposite the Warden and his
vice-president,--sherry, port, Redclyffe's Madeira, and claret, were
put in motion along the table, and the guests filled their glasses for
the toast which, at English dinner-tables, is of course the first to be
honored,--the Queen. Then the band struck up the good old anthem, "God
save the Queen," which the whole company rose to their feet to sing. It
was a spectacle both interesting and a little ludicrous to Redclyffe,--
being so apart from an American's sympathies, so unlike anything that
he has in his life or possibilities,--this active and warm sentiment of
loyalty, in which love of country centres, and assimilates, and
transforms itself into a passionate affection for a person, in whom
they love all their institutions. To say the truth, it seemed a happy
notion; nor could the American--while he comforted himself in the pride
of his democracy, and that he himself was a sovereign--could he help
envying it a little, this childlike love and reverence for a person
embodying all their country, their past, their earthly future. He felt
that it might be delightful to have a sovereign, provided that
sovereign were always a woman,--and perhaps a young and fine one. But,
indeed, this is not the difficulty, methinks, in English institutions
which the American finds it hardest to deal with. We could endure a
born sovereign, especially if made such a mere pageant as the English
make of theirs. What we find it hardest to conceive of is, the
satisfaction with which Englishmen think of a race above them, with
privileges that they cannot share, entitled to condescend to them, and
to have gracious and beautiful manners at their expense; to be kind,
simple, unpretending, because these qualities are more available than
haughtiness; to be specimens of perfect manhood;--all these advantages
in consequence of their position. If the peerage were a mere name, it
would be nothing to envy; but it is so much more than a name; it
enables men to be really so superior. The poor, the lower classes,
might bear this well enough; but the classes that come next to the
nobility,--the upper middle classes,--how they bear it so lovingly is
what must puzzle the American. But probably the advantage of the
peerage is the less perceptible the nearer it is looked at.

It must be confessed that Redclyffe, as he looked at this assembly of
peers and gentlemen, thought with some self-gratulation of the
probability that he had within his power as old a rank, as desirable a
station, as the best of them; and that if he were restrained from
taking it, it would probably only be by the democratic pride that made
him feel that he could not, retaining all his manly sensibility, accept
this gewgaw on which the ages--his own country especially--had passed
judgment, while it had been suspended over his head. He felt himself,
at any rate, in a higher position, having the option of taking this
rank, and forbearing to do so, than if he took it. [Endnote: 5.]

After this ensued a ceremony which is of antique date in old English
corporations and institutions, at their high festivals. It is called
the Loving Cup. A sort of herald or toast-master behind the Warden's
chair made proclamation, reciting the names of the principal guests,
and announcing to them, "The Warden of the Braithwaite Hospital drinks
to you in a Loving Cup"; of which cup, having sipped, or seemed to sip
(for Redclyffe observed that the old drinkers were rather shy of it) a
small quantity, he sent it down the table. Its progress was accompanied
with a peculiar entanglement of ceremony, one guest standing up while
another drinks, being pretty much as follows. First, each guest
receiving it covered from the next above him, the same took from the
silver cup its silver cover; the guest drank with a bow to the Warden
and company, took the cover from the preceding guest, covered the cup,
handed it to the next below him, then again removed the cover, replaced
it after the guest had drunk, who, on his part, went through the same
ceremony. And thus the cup went slowly on its way down the stately
hall; these ceremonies being, it is said, originally precautions
against the risk, in wild times, of being stabbed by the man who was
drinking with you, or poisoned by one who should fail to be your
taster. The cup was a fine, ancient piece of plate, massive, heavy,
curiously wrought with armorial bearings, in which the leopard's head
appeared. Its contents, so far as Redclyffe could analyze them by a
moderate sip, appeared to be claret, sweetened, with spices, and,
however suited to the peculiarity of antique palates, was not greatly
to Redclyffe's taste. [Endnote: 6.]

Redclyffe's companion just below him, while the Loving Cup was
beginning its march, had been explaining the origin of the custom as a
defence of the drinker in times of deadly feud; when it had reached
Lord Braithwaite, who drank and passed it to Redclyffe covered, and
with the usual bow, Redclyffe looked into his Lordship's Italian eyes
and dark face as he did so, and the thought struck him, that, if there
could possibly be any use in keeping up this old custom, it might be so
now; for, how intimated he could hardly tell, he was sensible in his
deepest self of a deadly hostility in this dark, courteous, handsome
face. He kept his eyes fixed on his Lordship as he received the cup,
and felt that in his own glance there was an acknowledgment of the
enmity that he perceived, and a defiance, expressed without visible
sign, and felt in the bow with which they greeted one another. When
they had both resumed their seats, Redclyffe chose to make this
ceremonial intercourse the occasion of again addressing him.

"I know not whether your Lordship is more accustomed than myself to
these stately ceremonials," said he.

"No," said Lord Braithwaite, whose English was very good. "But this is
a good old ceremony, and an ingenious one; for does it not twine us
into knotted links of love--this Loving Cup--like a wreath of
Bacchanals whom I have seen surrounding an antique vase. Doubtless it
has great efficacy in entwining a company of friendly guests into one
affectionate society."

"Yes; it should seem so," replied Redclyffe, with a smile, and again
meeting those black eyes, which smiled back on him. "It should seem so,
but it appears that the origin of the custom was quite different, and
that it was as a safeguard to a man when he drank with his enemy. What
a peculiar flavor it must have given to the liquor, when the eyes of
two deadly foes met over the brim of the Loving Cup, and the drinker
knew that, if he withdrew it, a dagger would be in his heart, and the
other watched him drink, to see if it was poison!"

"Ah!" responded his Lordship, "they had strange fashions in those rough
old times. Nowadays, we neither stab, shoot, nor poison. I scarcely
think we hate except as interest guides us, without malevolence."

This singular conversation was interrupted by a toast, and the rising
of one of the guests to answer it. Several other toasts of routine
succeeded; one of which, being to the honor of the old founder of the
Hospital, Lord Braithwaite, as his representative, rose to reply,--
which he did in good phrases, in a sort of eloquence unlike that of the
Englishmen around him, and, sooth to say, comparatively unaccustomed as
he must have been to the use of the language, much more handsomely than
they. In truth, Redclyffe was struck and amused with the rudeness, the
slovenliness, the inartistic quality of the English speakers, who
rather seemed to avoid grace and neatness of set purpose, as if they
would be ashamed of it. Nothing could be more ragged than these
utterances which they called speeches; so patched, and darned; and yet,
somehow or other--though dull and heavy as all which seemed to inspire
them--they had a kind of force. Each man seemed to have the faculty of
getting, after some rude fashion, at the sense and feeling that was in
him; and without glibness, without smoothness, without form or
comeliness, still the object with which each one rose to speak was
accomplished,--and what was more remarkable, it seemed to be
accomplished without the speaker's having any particular plan for doing
it. He was surprised, too, to observe how loyally every man seemed to
think himself bound to speak, and rose to do his best, however unfit
his usual habits made him for the task. Observing this, and thinking
how many an American would be taken aback and dumbfounded by being
called on for a dinner speech, he could not but doubt the correctness
of the general opinion, that Englishmen are naturally less facile of
public speech than our countrymen.

"You surpass your countrymen," said Redclyffe, when his Lordship
resumed his seat, amid rapping and loud applause.

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