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Doctor Grimshawe\'s Secret

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




"My countrymen? I scarcely know whether yon mean the English or
Italians," said Lord Braithwaite. "Like yourself, I am a hybrid, with
really no country, and ready to take up with any."

"I have a country,--one which I am little inclined to deny," replied
Redclyffe, gravely, while a flush (perhaps of conscientious shame) rose
to his brow.

His Lordship bowed, with a dark Italian smile, but Redclyffe's
attention was drawn away from the conversation by a toast which the
Warden now rose to give, and in which he found himself mainly
concerned. With a little preface of kind words (not particularly aptly
applied) to the great and kindred country beyond the Atlantic, the
worthy Warden proceeded to remark that his board was honored, on this
high festival, with a guest from that new world; a gentleman yet young,
but already distinguished in the councils of his country; the bearer,
he remarked, of an honored English name, which might well claim to be
remembered here, and on this occasion, although he had understood from
his friend that the American bearers of this name did not count kindred
with the English ones. This gentleman, he further observed, with
considerable flourish and emphasis, had recently been called from his
retirement and wanderings into the diplomatic service of his country,
which he would say, from his knowledge, the gentleman was well
calculated to honor. He drank the health of the Honorable Edward
Redclyffe, Ambassador of the United States to the Court of Hohen-
Linden.

Our English cousins received this toast with the kindest enthusiasm, as
they always do any such allusion to our country; it being a festal
feeling, not to be used except on holidays. They rose, with glass in
hand, in honor of the Ambassador; the band struck up "Hail, Columbia";
and our hero marshalled his thoughts as well as he might for the
necessary response; and when the tumult subsided he arose.

His quick apprehending had taught him something of the difference of
taste between an English and an American audience at a dinner-table; he
felt that there must be a certain looseness, and carelessness, and
roughness, and yet a certain restraint; that he must not seem to aim at
speaking well, although, for his own ambition, he was not content to
speak ill; that, somehow or other, he must get a heartiness into his
speech; that he must not polish, nor be too neat, and must come with a
certain rudeness to his good points, as if he blundered on them, and
were surprised into them. Above all, he must let the good wine and
cheer, and all that he knew and really felt of English hospitality, as
represented by the kind Warden, do its work upon his heart, and speak
up to the extent of what he felt--and if a little more, then no great
harm--about his own love for the father-land, and the broader grounds
of the relations between the two countries. On this system, Redclyffe
began to speak; and being naturally and habitually eloquent, and of
mobile and ready sensibilities, he succeeded, between art and nature,
in making a speech that absolutely delighted the company, who made the
old hall echo, and the banners wave and tremble, and the board shake,
and the glasses jingle, with their rapturous applause. What he said--or
some shadow of it, and more than he quite liked to own--was reported in
the county paper that gave a report of the dinner; but on glancing over
it, it seems not worth while to produce this eloquent effort in our
pages, the occasion and topics being of merely temporary interest.

Redclyffe sat down, and sipped his claret, feeling a little ashamed of
himself, as people are apt to do after a display of this kind.

"You know the way to the English heart better than I do," remarked his
Lordship, after a polite compliment to the speech. "Methinks these dull
English are being improved in your atmosphere. The English need a
change every few centuries,--either by immigration of new stock, or
transportation of the old,--or else they grow too gross and earthly,
with their beef, mutton, and ale. I think, now, it might benefit both
countries, if your New England population were to be reciprocally
exchanged with an equal number of Englishmen. Indeed, Italians might do
as well."

"I should regret," said Redclyffe, "to change the English, heavy as
they are."

"You are an admirable Englishman," said his Lordship. "For my part, I
cannot say that the people are very much to my taste, any more than
their skies and climate, in which I have shivered during the two years
that I have spent here."

Here their conversation ceased; and Redclyffe listened to a long train
of speechifying, in the course of which everybody, almost, was toasted;
everybody present, at all events, and many absent. The Warden's old
wine was not spared; the music rang and resounded from the gallery; and
everybody seemed to consider it a model feast, although there were no
very vivid signs of satisfaction, but a decorous, heavy enjoyment, a
dull red heat of pleasure, without flame. Soda and seltzer-water, and
coffee, by and by were circulated; and at a late hour the company began
to retire.

Before taking his departure, Lord Braithwaite resumed his conversation
with Redclyffe, and, as it appeared, with the purpose of making a
hospitable proposition.

"I live very much alone," said he, "being insulated from my neighbors
by many circumstances,--habits, religion, and everything else
peculiarly English. If you are curious about old English modes of life,
I can show you, at least, an English residence, little altered within a
century past. Pray come and spend a week with me before you leave this
part of the country. Besides, I know the court to which you are
accredited, and can give you, perhaps, useful information about it."

Redclyffe looked at him in some surprise, and with a nameless
hesitation; for he did not like his Lordship, and had fancied, in
truth, that there was a reciprocal antipathy. Nor did he yet feel that
he was mistaken in this respect; although his Lordship's invitation was
given in a tone of frankness, and seemed to have no reserve, except
that his eyes did not meet his like Anglo-Saxon eyes, and there seemed
an Italian looking out from within the man. But Redclyffe had a sort of
repulsion within himself; and he questioned whether it would be fair to
his proposed host to accept his hospitality, while he had this secret
feeling of hostility and repugnance,--which might be well enough
accounted for by the knowledge that he secretly entertained hostile
interests to their race, and half a purpose of putting them in force.
And, besides this,--although Redclyffe was ashamed of the feeling,--he
had a secret dread, a feeling that it was not just a safe thing to
trust himself in this man's power; for he had a sense, sure as death,
that he did not wish him well, and had a secret dread of the American.
But he laughed within himself at this feeling, and drove it down. Yet
it made him feel that there could be no disloyalty in accepting his
Lordship's invitation, because it was given in as little friendship as
it would be accepted.

"I had almost made my arrangements for quitting the neighborhood," said
he, after a pause; "nor can I shorten the week longer which I had
promised to spend with my very kind friend, the Warden. Yet your
Lordship's kindness offers we a great temptation, and I would gladly
spend the next ensuing week at Braithwaite Hall."

"I shall expect you, then," said Lord Braithwaite. "You will find me
quite alone, except my chaplain,--a scholar, and a man of the world,
whom you will not be sorry to know."

He bowed and took his leave, without shaking hands, as an American
would have thought it natural to do, after such a hospitable agreement;
nor did Redclyffe make any motion towards it, and was glad that his
Lordship had omitted it. On the whole, there was a secret
dissatisfaction with himself; a sense that he was not doing quite a
frank and true thing in accepting this invitation, and he only made
peace with himself on the consideration that Lord Braithwaite was as
little cordial in asking the visit as he in acceding to it.




CHAPTER XX.


The guests were now rapidly taking their departure, and the Warden and
Redclyffe were soon left alone in the antique hall, which now, in its
solitude, presented an aspect far different from the gay festivity of
an hour before; the duskiness up in the carved oaken beams seemed to
descend and fill the hall; and the remembrance of the feast was like
one of those that had taken place centuries ago, with which this was
now numbered, and growing ghostly, and faded, and sad, even as they had
long been.

"Well, my dear friend," said the Warden, stretching himself and
yawning, "it is over. Come into my study with me, and we will have a
devilled turkey-bone and a pint of sherry in peace and comfort."

"I fear I can make no figure at such a supper," said Redclyffe. "But I
admire your inexhaustibleness in being ready for midnight refreshment
after such a feast."

"Not a glass of good liquor has moistened my lips to-night," said the
Warden, "save and except such as was supplied by a decanter of water
made brown with toast; and such a sip as I took to the health of the
Queen, and another to that of the Ambassador to Hohen-Linden. It is the
only way, when a man has this vast labor of speechifying to do; and
indeed there is no possibility of keeping up a jolly countenance for
such a length of time except on toast-water."

They accordingly adjourned to the Warden's sanctum, where that worthy
dignitary seemed to enjoy himself over his sherry and cracked bones, in
a degree that he probably had not heretofore; while Redclyffe, whose
potations had been more liberal, and who was feverish and disturbed,
tried the effect of a little brandy and soda-water. As often happens at
such midnight symposiums, the two friends found themselves in a more
kindly and confidential vein than had happened before, great as had
been the kindness and confidence already grown up between them.
Redclyffe told his friend of Lord Braithwaite's invitation, and of his
own resolution to accept it.

"Why not? You will do well," said the Warden; "and you will find his
Lordship an accustomed host, and the old house most interesting. If he
knows the secrets of it himself, and will show them, they will be well
worth the seeing."

"I have had a scruple in accepting this invitation," said Redclyffe.

"I cannot see why," said the Warden. "I advise it by all means, since I
shall lose nothing by it myself, as it will not lop off any part of
your visit to me."

"My dear friend," said Redclyffe, irresistibly impelled to a confidence
which he had not meditated a moment before, "there is a foolish secret
which I must tell you, if you will listen to it; and which I have only
not revealed to you because it seemed to me foolish and dream-like;
because, too, I am an American, and a democrat; because I am ashamed of
myself and laugh at myself."

"Is it a long story?" asked the Warden.

"I can make it of any length, and almost any brevity," said Redclyffe.

"I will fill my pipe then," answered the Warden, "and listen at my
ease; and if, as you intimate, there prove to be any folly in it, I
will impute it all to the kindly freedom with which you have partaken
of our English hospitality, and forget it before to-morrow morning."

He settled himself in his easy-chair, in a most luxurious posture; and
Redclyffe, who felt a strange reluctance to reveal--for the first time
in his life--the shadowy hopes, if hopes they were, and purposes, if
such they could be called, with which he had amused himself so many
years, begun the story from almost the earliest period that he could
remember. He told even of his earliest recollection, with an old woman,
in the almshouse, and how he had been found there by the Doctor, and
educated by him, with all the hints and half-revelations that had been
made to him. He described the singular character of the Doctor, his
scientific pursuits, his evident accomplishments, his great abilities,
his morbidness and melancholy, his moodiness, and finally his death,
and the singular circumstances that accompanied it. The story took a
considerable time to tell; and after its close, the Warden, who had
only interrupted it by now and then a question to make it plainer,
continued to smoke his pipe slowly and thoughtfully for a long while.

"This Doctor of yours was a singular character," said he. "Evidently,
from what you tell me as to the accuracy of his local reminiscences, he
must have been of this part of the country,--of this immediate
neighborhood,--and such a man could not have grown up here without
being known. I myself--for I am an old fellow now--might have known him
if he lived to manhood hereabouts."

"He seemed old to me when I first knew him," said Redclyffe. "But
children make no distinctions of age. He might have been forty-five
then, as well as I can judge."

"You are now twenty-seven or eight," said the Warden, "and were four
years old when you first knew him. He might now be sixty-five. Do you
know, my friend, that I have something like a certainty that I know who
your Doctor was?"

"How strange this seems!" exclaimed Redclyffe. "It has never struck me
that I should be able to identify this singular personage with any
surroundings or any friends."

The Warden, to requite his friend's story,--and without as yet saying a
word, good or bad, on his ancestral claims,--proceeded to tell him some
of the gossip of the neighborhood,--what had been gossip thirty or
forty years ago, but was now forgotten, or, at all events, seldom
spoken of, and only known to the old, at the present day. He himself
remembered it only as a boy, and imperfectly. There had been a
personage of that day, a man of poor estate, who had fallen deeply in
love and been betrothed to a young lady of family; he was a young man
of more than ordinary abilities, and of great promise, though small
fortune. It was not well known how, but the match between him and the
young lady was broken off, and his place was supplied by the then
proprietor of Braithwaite Hall; as it was supposed, by the artifices of
her mother. There had been circumstances of peculiar treachery in the
matter, and Mr. Oglethorpe had taken it severely to heart; so severely,
indeed, that he had left the country, after selling his ancestral
property, and had only been occasionally heard of again. Now, from
certain circumstances, it had struck the Warden that this might be the
mysterious Doctor of whom Redclyffe spoke. [Endnote: 1.]

"But why," suggested Redclyffe, "should a man with these wrongs to
avenge take such an interest in a descendant of his enemy's family?"

"That is a strong point in favor of my supposition," replied the
Warden. "There is certainly, and has long been, a degree of probability
that the true heir of this family exists in America. If Oglethorpe
could discover him, he ousts his enemy from the estate and honors, and
substitutes the person whom he has discovered and educated. Most
certainly there is revenge in the thing. Should it happen now, however,
the triumph would have lost its sweetness, even were Oglethorpe alive
to partake of it; for his enemy is dead, leaving no heir, and this
foreign branch has come in without Oglethorpe's aid."

The friends remained musing a considerable time, each in his own train
of thought, till the Warden suddenly spoke.

"Do you mean to prosecute this apparent claim of yours?"

"I have not intended to do so," said Redclyffe.

"Of course," said the Warden, "that should depend upon the strength of
your ground; and I understand you that there is some link wanting to
establish it. Otherwise, I see not how you can hesitate. Is it a little
thing to hold a claim to an old English estate and honors?"

"No; it is a very great thing, to an Englishman born, and who need give
up no higher birthright to avail himself of it," answered Redclyffe.
"You will laugh at me, my friend; but I cannot help feeling that I, a
simple citizen of a republic, yet with none above me except those whom
I help to place there,--and who are my servants, not my superiors,--
must stoop to take these honors. I leave a set of institutions which
are the noblest that the wit and civilization of man have yet
conceived, to enlist myself in one that is based on a far lower
conception of man, and which therefore lowers every one who shares in
it. Besides," said the young man, his eyes kindling with the ambition
which had been so active a principle in his life, "what prospects--what
rewards for spirited exertion--what a career, only open to an American,
would I give up, to become merely a rich and idle Englishman, belonging
(as I should) nowhere, without a possibility of struggle, such as a
strong man loves, with only a mockery of a title, which in these days
really means nothing,--hardly more than one of our own Honorables. What
has any success in English life to offer (even were it within my reach,
which, as a stranger, it would not be) to balance the proud career of
an American statesman?"

"True, you might be a President, I suppose," said the Warden, rather
contemptuously,--"a four years' potentate. It seems to me an office
about on a par with that of the Lord Mayor of London. For my part, I
would rather be a baron of three or four hundred years' antiquity."

"We talk in vain," said Redclyffe, laughing. "We do not approach one
another's ideas on this subject. But, waiving all speculations as to my
attempting to avail myself of this claim, do you think I can fairly
accept this invitation to visit Lord Braithwaite? There is certainly a
possibility that I may arraign myself against his dearest interests.
Conscious of this, can I accept his hospitality?"

The Warden paused. "You have not sought access to his house," he
observed. "You have no designs, it seems, no settled designs at all
events, against his Lordship,--nor is there a probability that they
would be forwarded by your accepting this invitation, even if you had
any. I do not see but you may go. The only danger is, that his
Lordship's engaging qualities may seduce you into dropping your claims
out of a chivalrous feeling, which I see is among your possibilities.
To be sure, it would be more satisfactory if he knew your actual
position, and should then renew his invitation."

"I am convinced," said Redclyffe, looking up from his musing posture,
"that he does know them. You are surprised; but in all Lord
Braithwaite's manner towards me there has been an undefinable something
that makes me aware that he knows on what terms we stand towards each
other. There is nothing inconceivable in this. The family have for
generations been suspicious of an American line, and have more than
once sent messengers to try to search out and put a stop to the
apprehension. Why should it not have come to their knowledge that there
was a person with such claims, and that he is now in England?"

"It certainly is possible," replied the Warden, "and if you are
satisfied that his Lordship knows it, or even suspects it, you meet him
on fair ground. But I fairly tell you, my good friend, that--his
Lordship being a man of unknown principles of honor, outlandish, and an
Italian in habit and moral sense--I scarcely like to trust you in his
house, he being aware that your existence may be inimical to him. My
humble board is the safer of the two."

"Pshaw!" said Redclyffe. "You Englishmen are so suspicious of anybody
not regularly belonging to yourselves. Poison and the dagger haunt your
conceptions of all others. In America you think we kill every third man
with the bowie-knife. But, supposing there were any grounds for your
suspicion, I would still encounter it. An American is no braver than an
Englishman; but still he is not quite so chary of his life as the
latter, who never risks it except on the most imminent necessity. We
take such matters easy. In regard to this invitation, I feel that I can
honorably accept it, and there are many idle and curious motives that
impel me to it. I will go."

"Be it so; but you must come back to me for another week, after
finishing your visit," said the Warden. "After all, it was an idle
fancy in me that there could be any danger. His Lordship has good
English blood in his veins, and it would take oceans and rivers of
Italian treachery to wash out the sterling quality of it. And, my good
friend, as to these claims of yours, I would not have you trust too
much to what is probably a romantic dream; yet, were the dream to come
true, I should think the British peerage honored by such an accession
to its ranks. And now to bed; for we have heard the chimes of midnight,
two hours agone."

They accordingly retired; and Redclyffe was surprised to find what a
distinctness his ideas respecting his claim to the Braithwaite honors
had assumed, now that he, after so many years, had imparted them to
another. Heretofore, though his imagination had played with them so
much, they seemed the veriest dreams; now, they had suddenly taken form
and hardened into substance; and he became aware, in spite of all the
lofty and patriotic sentiments which he had expressed to the Warden,
that these prospects had really much importance in his mind.

Redclyffe, during the few days that he was to spend at the Hospital,
previous to his visit to Braithwaite Hall, was conscious of a
restlessness such as we have all felt on the eve of some interesting
event. He wondered at himself at being so much wrought up by so simple
a thing as he was about to do; but it seemed to him like a coming home
after an absence of centuries. It was like an actual prospect of
entrance into a castle in the air,--the shadowy threshold of which
should assume substance enough to bear his foot, its thin, fantastic
walls actually protect him from sun and rain, its hall echo with his
footsteps, its hearth warm him. That delicious, thrilling uncertainty
between reality and fancy, in which he had often been enwrapt since his
arrival in this region, enveloped him more strongly than ever; and with
it, too, there came a sort of apprehension, which sometimes shuddered
through him like an icy draught, or the touch of cold steel to his
heart. He was ashamed, too, to be conscious of anything like fear; yet
he would not acknowledge it for fear; and indeed there was such an
airy, exhilarating, thrilling pleasure bound up with it, that it could
not really be so.

It was in this state of mind that, a day or two after the feast, he saw
Colcord sitting on the bench, before the portal of the Hospital, in the
sun, which--September though it was--still came warm and bright (for
English sunshine) into that sheltered spot; a spot where many
generations of old men had warmed their limbs, while they looked down
into the life, the torpid life, of the old village that trailed its
homely yet picturesque street along by the venerable buildings of the
Hospital.

"My good friend," said Redclyffe, "I am about leaving you, for a time,
--indeed, with the limited time at my disposal, it is possible that I
may not be able to come back hither, except for a brief visit. Before I
leave you, I would fain know something more about one whom I must ever
consider my benefactor."

"Yes," said the old man, with his usual benignant quiet, "I saved your
life. It is yet to be seen, perhaps, whether thereby I made myself your
benefactor. I trust so."

"I feel it so, at least," answered Redclyffe, "and I assure you life
has a new value for me since I came to this place; for I have a deeper
hold upon it, as it were,--more hope from it, more trust in something
good to come of it."

"This is a good change,--or should be so," quoth the old man.

"Do you know," continued Redclyffe, "how long you have been a figure in
my life?"

"I know it," said Colcord, "though you might well have forgotten it."

"Not so," said Redclyffe. "I remember, as if it were this morning, that
time in New England when I first saw you."

"The man with whom you then abode," said Colcord, "knew who I was."

"And he being dead, and finding you here now, by such a strange
coincidence," said Redclyffe, "and being myself a man capable of taking
your counsel, I would have you impart it to me: for I assure you that
the current of my life runs darkly on, and I would be glad of any light
on its future, or even its present phase."

"I am not one of those from whom the world waits for counsel," said the
pensioner, "and I know not that mine would be advantageous to you, in
the light which men usually prize. Yet if I were to give any, it would
be that you should be gone hence."

"Gone hence!" repeated Redclyffe, surprised. "I tell you--what I have
hardly hitherto told to myself--that all my dreams, all my wishes
hitherto, have looked forward to precisely the juncture that seems now
to be approaching. My dreaming childhood dreamt of this. If you know
anything of me, you know how I sprung out of mystery, akin to none, a
thing concocted out of the elements, without visible agency; how all
through my boyhood I was alone; how I grew up without a root, yet
continually longing for one,--longing to be connected with somebody,
and never feeling myself so. Yet there was ever a looking forward to
this time at which I now find myself. If my next step were death, yet
while the path seemed to lead toward a certainty of establishing me in
connection with my race, I would take it. I have tried to keep down
this yearning, to stifle it, annihilate it, by making a position for
myself, by being my own fact; but I cannot overcome the natural horror
of being a creature floating in the air, attached to nothing; ever this
feeling that there is no reality in the life and fortunes, good or bad,
of a being so unconnected. There is not even a grave, not a heap of dry
bones, not a pinch of dust, with which I can claim kindred, unless I
find it here!"

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