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Doctor Grimshawe\'s Secret

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




"This is sad," said the old man,--"this strong yearning, and nothing to
gratify it. Yet, I warn you, do not seek its gratification here. There
are delusions, snares, pitfalls, in this life. I warn you, quit the
search."

"No," said Redclyffe, "I will follow the mysterious clue that seems to
lead me on; and, even now, it pulls me one step further."

"How is that?" asked the old man.

"It leads me onward even as far as the threshold--across the threshold
--of yonder mansion," said Redclyffe.

"Step not across it; there is blood on that threshold!" exclaimed the
pensioner. "A bloody footstep emerging. Take heed that there be not as
bloody a one entering in!"

"Pshaw!" said Redclyffe, feeling the ridicule of the emotion into which
he had been betrayed, as the old man's wildness of demeanor made him
feel that he was talking with a monomaniac. "We are talking idly. I do
but go, in the common intercourse of society, to see the old English
residence which (such is the unhappy obscurity of my position) I fancy,
among a thousand others, may have been that of my ancestors. Nothing is
likely to come of it. My foot is not bloody, nor polluted with anything
except the mud of the damp English soil."

"Yet go not in!" persisted the old man.

"Yes, I must go," said Redclyffe, determinedly, "and I will."

Ashamed to have been moved to such idle utterances by anything that the
old man could say Redclyffe turned away, though he still heard the sad,
half-uttered remonstrance of the old man, like a moan behind him, and
wondered what strange fancy had taken possession of him.

The effect which this opposition had upon him made him the more aware
how much his heart was set upon this visit to the Hall; how much he had
counted upon being domiciliated there; what a wrench it would be to him
to tear himself away without going into that mansion, and penetrating
all the mysteries wherewith his imagination, exercising itself upon the
theme since the days of the old Doctor's fireside talk, had invested
it. In his agitation he wandered forth from the Hospital, and, passing
through the village street, found himself in the park of Braithwaite
Hall, where he wandered for a space, until his steps led him to a point
whence the venerable Hall appeared, with its limes and its oaks around
it; its look of peace, and aged repose, and loveliness; its stately
domesticity, so ancient, so beautiful; its mild, sweet simplicity; it
seemed the ideal of home. The thought thrilled his bosom, that this was
his home,--the home of the wild Western wanderer, who had gone away
centuries ago, and encountered strange chances, and almost forgotten
his origin, but still kept a clue to bring him back; and had now come
back, and found all the original emotions safe within him. It even
seemed to him, that, by his kindred with those who had gone before,--by
the line of sensitive blood linking him with that final emigrant,--he
could remember all these objects;--that tree, hardly more venerable now
than then; that clock-tower, still marking the elapsing time; that
spire of the old church, raising itself beyond. He spread out his arms
in a kind of rapture, and exclaimed:--

"O home, my home, my forefathers' home! I have come back to thee! The
wanderer has come back!"

There was a slight stir near him; and on a mossy seat, that was
arranged to take advantage of a remarkably good point of view of the
old Hall, he saw Elsie sitting. She had her drawing-materials with her,
and had probably been taking a sketch. Redclyffe was ashamed of having
been overheard by any one giving way to such idle passion as he had
been betrayed into; and yet, in another sense, he was glad,--glad, at
least, that something of his feeling, as yet unspoken to human being,
was shared, and shared by her with whom, alone of living beings, he had
any sympathies of old date, and whom he often thought of with feelings
that drew him irresistibly towards her.

"Elsie," said he, uttering for the first time the old name, "Providence
makes you my confidant. We have recognized each other, though no word
has passed between us. Let us speak now again with one another. How
came you hither? What has brought us together again?--Away with this
strangeness that lurks between us! Let us meet as those who began life
together, and whose life-strings, being so early twisted in unison,
cannot now be torn apart."

"You are not wise," said Elsie, in a faltering voice, "to break the
restraint we have tacitly imposed upon ourselves. Do not let us speak
further on this subject."

"How strangely everything evades me!" exclaimed Redclyffe. "I seem to
be in a land of enchantment, where I can get hold of nothing that lends
me a firm support. There is no medium in my life between the most
vulgar realities and the most vaporous fiction, too thin to breathe.
Tell me, Elsie, how came you here? Why do you not meet me frankly? What
is there to keep you apart from the oldest friend, I am bold to say,
you have on earth? Are you an English girl? Are you one of our own New
England maidens, with her freedom, and her know-how, and her force,
beyond anything that these demure and decorous damsels can know?"

"This is wild," said Elsie, straggling for composure, yet strongly
moved by the recollections that he brought up. "It is best that we
should meet as strangers, and so part."

"No," said Redclyffe; "the long past comes up, with its memories, and
yet it is not so powerful as the powerful present. We have met again;
our adventures have shown that Providence has designed a relation in my
fate to yours. Elsie, are you lonely as I am?"

"No," she replied, "I have bonds, ties, a life, a duty. I must live
that life and do that duty. You have, likewise, both. Do yours, lead
your own life, like me."

"Do you know, Elsie," he said, "whither that life is now tending?"

"Whither?" said she, turning towards him.

"To yonder Hall," said he.

She started up, and clasped her hands about his arm.

"No, no!" she exclaimed, "go not thither! There is blood upon the
threshold! Return: a dreadful fatality awaits you here."

"Come with me, then," said he, "and I yield my purpose."

"It cannot be," said Elsie.

"Then I, too, tell you it cannot be," returned Redclyffe. [Endnote: 2.]

The dialogue had reached this point, when there came a step along the
wood-path; the branches rustled, and there was Lord Braithwaite,
looking upon the pair with the ordinary slightly sarcastic glance with
which he gazed upon the world.

"A fine morning, fair lady and fair sir," said he. "We have few such,
except in Italy."




CHAPTER XXI.


So Redclyffe left the Hospital, where he had spent many weeks of
strange and not unhappy life, and went to accept the invitation of the
lord of Braithwaite Hall. It was with a thrill of strange delight,
poignant almost to pain, that he found himself driving up to the door
of the Hall, and actually passing the threshold of the house. He
looked, as he stept over it, for the Bloody Footstep, with which the
house had so long been associated in his imagination; but could nowhere
see it. The footman ushered him into a hall, which seemed to be in the
centre of the building, and where, little as the autumn was advanced, a
fire was nevertheless burning and glowing on the hearth; nor was its
effect undesirable in the somewhat gloomy room. The servants had
evidently received orders respecting the guest; for they ushered him at
once to his chamber, which seemed not to be one of those bachelor's
rooms, where, in an English mansion, young and single men are forced to
be entertained with very bare and straitened accommodations; but a
large, well, though antiquely and solemnly furnished room, with a
curtained bed, and all manner of elaborate contrivances for repose; but
the deep embrasures of the windows made it gloomy, with the little
light that they admitted through their small panes. There must have
been English attendance in this department of the household
arrangements, at least; for nothing could exceed the exquisite nicety
and finish of everything in the room, the cleanliness, the attention to
comfort, amid antique aspects of furniture; the rich, deep preparations
for repose.

The servant told Redclyffe that his master had ridden out, and, adding
that luncheon would be on the table at two o'clock, left him; and
Redclyffe sat some time trying to make out and distinguish the feelings
with which he found himself here, and realizing a lifelong dream. He
ran back over all the legends which the Doctor used to tell about this
mansion, and wondered whether this old, rich chamber were the one where
any of them had taken place; whether the shadows of the dead haunted
here. But, indeed, if this were the case, the apartment must have been
very much changed, antique though it looked, with the second, or third,
or whatever other numbered arrangement, since those old days of
tapestry hangings and rush-strewed floor. Otherwise this stately and
gloomy chamber was as likely as any other to have been the one where
his ancestor appeared for the last time in the paternal mansion; here
he might have been the night before that mysterious Bloody Footstep was
left on the threshold, whence had arisen so many wild legends, and
since the impression of which nothing certain had ever been known
respecting that ill-fated man,--nothing certain in England at least,--
and whose story was left so ragged and questionable even by all that he
could add.

Do what he could, Redclyffe still was not conscious of that deep home-
feeling which he had imagined he should experience when, if ever, he
should come back to the old ancestral place; there was strangeness, a
struggle within himself to get hold of something that escaped him, an
effort to impress on his mind the fact that he was, at last,
established at his temporary home in the place that he had so long
looked forward to, and that this was the moment which he would have
thought more interesting than any other in his life. He was strangely
cold and indifferent, frozen up as it were, and fancied that he would
have cared little had he been to leave the mansion without so much as
looking over the remaining part of it.

At last, he became weary of sitting and indulging this fantastic humor
of indifference, and emerged from his chamber with the design of
finding his way about the lower part of the house. The mansion had that
delightful intricacy which can never be contrived; never be attained by
design; but is the happy result of where many builders, many designs,--
many ages, perhaps,--have concurred in a structure, each pursuing his
own design. Thus it was a house that you could go astray in, as in a
city, and come to unexpected places, but never, until after much
accustomance, go where you wished; so Redclyffe, although the great
staircase and wide corridor by which he had been led to his room seemed
easy to find, yet soon discovered that he was involved in an unknown
labyrinth, where strange little bits of staircases led up and down, and
where passages promised much in letting him out, but performed nothing.
To be sure, the old English mansion had not much of the stateliness of
one of Mrs. Radcliffe's castles, with their suites of rooms opening one
into another; but yet its very domesticity--its look as if long ago it
had been lived in--made it only the more ghostly; and so Redclyffe felt
the more as if he were wandering through a homely dream; sensible of
the ludicrousness of his position, he once called aloud; but his voice
echoed along the passages, sounding unwontedly to his ears, but
arousing nobody. It did not seem to him as if he were going afar, but
were bewildered round and round, within a very small compass; a
predicament in which a man feels very foolish usually.

As he stood at an old window, stone-mullioned, at the end of a passage
into which he had come twice over, a door near him opened, and a
personage looked out whom he had not before seen. It was a face of
great keenness and intelligence, and not unpleasant to look at, though
dark and sallow. The dress had something which Redclyffe recognized as
clerical, though not exactly pertaining to the Church of England,--a
sort of arrangement of the vest and shirt-collar; and he had knee
breeches of black. He did not seem like an English clerical personage,
however; for even in this little glimpse of him Redclyffe saw a
mildness, gentleness, softness, and asking-of-leave, in his manner,
which he had not observed in persons so well assured of their position
as the Church of England clergy.

He seemed at once to detect Redclyffe's predicament, and came forward
with a pleasant smile, speaking in good English, though with a somewhat
foreign accent.

"Ah, sir, you have lost your way. It is a labyrinthian house for its
size, this old English Hall,--full of perplexity. Shall I show you to
any point?"

"Indeed, sir," said Redclyffe, laughing, "I hardly know whither I want
to go; being a stranger, and yet knowing nothing of the public places
of the house. To the library, perhaps, if you will be good enough to
direct me thither."

"Willingly, my dear sir," said the clerical personage; "the more easily
too, as my own quarters are close adjacent; the library being my
province. Do me the favor to enter here."

So saying, the priest ushered Redclyffe into an austere-looking yet
exceedingly neat study, as it seemed, on one side of which was an
oratory, with a crucifix and other accommodations for Catholic
devotion. Behind a white curtain there were glimpses of a bed, which
seemed arranged on a principle of conventual austerity in respect to
limits and lack of softness; but still there was in the whole austerity
of the premises a certain character of restraint, poise, principle,
which Redclyffe liked. A table was covered with books, many of them
folios in an antique binding of parchment, and others were small,
thick-set volumes, into which antique lore was rammed and compressed.
Through an open door, opposite to the one by which he had entered,
there was a vista of a larger apartment, with alcoves, a rather dreary-
looking room, though a little sunshine came through a window at the
further end, distained with colored glass.

"Will you sit down in my little home?" said the courteous priest. "I
hope we may be better acquainted; so allow me to introduce myself. I am
Father Angelo, domestic chaplain to his Lordship. You, I know, are the
American diplomatic gentleman, from whom his Lordship has been
expecting a visit."

Redclyffe bowed.

"I am most happy to know you," continued the priest. "Ah; you have a
happy country, most catholic, most recipient of all that is outcast on
earth. Men of my religion must ever bless it."

"It certainly ought to be remembered to our credit," replied Redclyffe,
"that we have shown no narrow spirit in this matter, and have not, like
other Protestant countries, rejected the good that is found in any man
on account of his religious faith. American statesmanship comprises
Jew, Catholic, all."

After this pleasant little acknowledgment, there ensued a conversation
having some reference to books; for though Redclyffe, of late years,
had known little of what deserves to be called literature,--having
found political life as much estranged from it as it is apt to be with
politicians,--yet he had early snuffed the musty fragrance of the
Doctor's books, and had learned to love its atmosphere. At the time he
left college, he was just at the point where he might have been a
scholar; but the active tendencies of American life had interfered with
him, as with thousands of others, and drawn him away from pursuits
which might have been better adapted to some of his characteristics
than the one he had adopted. The priest gently felt and touched around
his pursuits, and finding some remains of classic culture, he kept up a
conversation on these points; showing him the possessions of the
library in that department, where, indeed, were some treasures that he
had discovered, and which seemed to have been collected at least a
century ago.

"Generally, however," observed he, as they passed from one dark alcove
to another, "the library is of little worth, except to show how much of
living truth each generation contributes to the botheration of life,
and what a public benefactor a bookworm is, after all. There, now! did
you ever happen to see one? Here is one that I have watched at work,
some time past, and have not thought it worth while to stop him."

Redclyffe looked at the learned little insect, who was eating a strange
sort of circular trench into an old book of scholastic Latin, which
probably only he had ever devoured,--at least ever found to his taste.
The insect seemed in excellent condition, fat with learning, having
doubtless got the essence of the book into himself. But Redclyffe was
still more interested in observing in the corner a great spider, which
really startled him,--not so much for its own terrible aspect, though
that was monstrous, as because he seemed to see in it the very great
spider which he had known in his boyhood; that same monster that had
been the Doctor's familiar, and had been said to have had an influence
in his death. He looked so startled that Father Angelo observed it.

"Do not be frightened," said he; "though I allow that a brave man may
well be afraid of a spider, and that the bravest of the brave need not
blush to shudder at this one. There is a great mystery about this
spider. No one knows whence he came; nor how long he has been here. The
library was very much shut up during the time of the last inheritor of
the estate, and had not been thoroughly examined for some years when I
opened it, and swept some of the dust away from its old alcoves. I
myself was not aware of this monster until the lapse of some weeks,
when I was startled at seeing him, one day, as I was reading an old
book here. He dangled down from the ceiling, by the cordage of his web,
and positively seemed to look into my face."

"He is of the species Condetas," said Redclyffe,--"a rare spider seldom
seen out of the tropic regions."

"You are learned, then, in spiders," observed the priest, surprised.

"I could almost make oath, at least, that I have known this ugly
specimen of his race," observed Redclyffe. "A very dear friend, now
deceased, to whom I owed the highest obligations, was studious of
spiders, and his chief treasure was one the very image of this."

"How strange!" said the priest. "There has always appeared to me to be
something uncanny in spiders. I should be glad to talk further with you
on this subject. Several times I have fancied a strange intelligence in
this monster; but I have natural horror of him, and therefore refrain
from interviews."

"You do wisely, sir," said Redclyffe. "His powers and purposes are
questionably beneficent, at best."

In truth, the many-legged monster made the old library ghostly to him
by the associations which it summoned up, and by the idea that it was
really the identical one that had seemed so stuffed with poison, in the
lifetime of the Doctor, and at that so distant spot. Yet, on
reflection, it appeared not so strange; for the old Doctor's spider, as
he had heard him say, was one of an ancestral race that he had brought
from beyond the sea. They might have been preserved, for ages possibly,
in this old library, whence the Doctor had perhaps taken his specimen,
and possibly the one now before him was the sole survivor. It hardly,
however, made the monster any the less hideous to suppose that this
might be the case; and to fancy the poison of old times condensed into
this animal, who might have sucked the diseases, moral and physical, of
all this family into him, and to have made himself their demon. He
questioned with himself whether it might not be well to crush him at
once, and so perhaps do away with the evil of which he was the emblem.

"I felt a strange disposition to crush this monster at first," remarked
the priest, as if he knew what Redclyffe was thinking of,--"a feeling
that in so doing I should get rid of a mischief; but then he is such a
curious monster. You cannot long look at him without coming to the
conclusion that he is indestructible."

"Yes; and to think of crushing such a deep-bowelled monster!" said
Redclyffe, shuddering. "It is too great a catastrophe."

During this conversation in which he was so deeply concerned, the
spider withdrew himself, and hand over hand ascended to a remote and
dusky corner, where was his hereditary abode.

"Shall I be likely to meet Lord Braithwaite here in the library?" asked
Redclyffe, when the fiend had withdrawn himself. "I have not yet seen
him since my arrival."

"I trust," said the priest, with great courtesy, "that you are aware of
some peculiarities in his Lordship's habits, which imply nothing in
detriment to the great respect which he pays all his few guests, and
which, I know, he is especially desirous to pay to you. I think that we
shall meet him at lunch, which, though an English institution, his
Lordship has adopted very readily."

"I should hope," said Redclyffe, willing to know how far he might be
expected to comply with the peculiarities--which might prove to be
eccentricities--of his host, "that my presence here will not be too
greatly at variance with his Lordship's habits, whatever they may be. I
came hither, indeed, on the pledge that, as my host would not stand in
my way, so neither would I in his."

"That is the true principle," said the priest, "and here comes his
Lordship in person to begin the practice of it."




CHAPTER XXII.


Lord Braithwaite came into the principal door of the library as the
priest was speaking, and stood a moment just upon the threshold,
looking keenly out of the stronger light into this dull and darksome
apartment, as if unable to see perfectly what was within; or rather, as
Redclyffe fancied, trying to discover what was passing between those
two. And, indeed, as when a third person comes suddenly upon two who
are talking of him, the two generally evince in their manner some
consciousness of the fact; so it was in this case, with Redclyffe at
least, although the priest seemed perfectly undisturbed, either through
practice of concealment, or because he had nothing to conceal.

His Lordship, after a moment's pause, came forward, presenting his hand
to Redclyffe, who shook it, and not without a certain cordiality; till
he perceived that it was the left hand, when he probably intimated some
surprise by a change of manner.

"I am an awkward person," said his Lordship. "The left hand, however,
is nearest the heart; so be assured I mean no discourtesy."

"The Signor Ambassador and myself," observed the priest, "have had a
most interesting conversation (to me at least) about books and
bookworms, spiders, and other congruous matters; and I find his
Excellency has heretofore made acquaintance with a great spider bearing
strong resemblance to the hermit of our library."

"Indeed," said his Lordship. "I was not aware that America had yet
enough of age and old misfortune, crime, sordidness, that accumulate
with it, to have produced spiders like this. Had he sucked into himself
all the noisomeness of your heat?"

Redclyffe made some slight answer, that the spider was a sort of pet of
an old virtuoso to whom he owed many obligations in his boyhood; and
the conversation turned from this subject to others suggested by topics
of the day and place. His Lordship was affable, and Redclyffe could
not, it must be confessed, see anything to justify the prejudices of
the neighbors against him. Indeed, he was inclined to attribute them,
in great measure, to the narrowness of the English view,--to those
insular prejudices which have always prevented them from fully
appreciating what differs from their own habits. At lunch, which was
soon announced, the party of three became very pleasant and sociable,
his Lordship drinking a light Italian red wine, and recommending it to
Redclyffe; who, however, was English enough to prefer some bitter ale,
while the priest contented himself with pure water,--which is, in
truth, a less agreeable drink in chill, moist England than in any
country we are acquainted with.

"You must make yourself quite at home here," said his Lordship, as they
rose from table. "I am not a good host, nor a very genial man, I
believe. I can do little to entertain you; but here is the house and
the grounds at your disposal,--horses in the stable,--guns in the
hall,--here is Father Angelo, good at chess. There is the library. Pray
make the most of them all; and if I can contribute in any way to your
pleasure, let me know."

All this certainly seemed cordial, and the manner in which it was said
seemed in accordance with the spirit of the words; and yet, whether the
fault was in anything of morbid suspicion in Redclyffe's nature, or
whatever it was, it did not have the effect of making him feel welcome,
which almost every Englishman has the natural faculty of producing on a
guest, when once he has admitted him beneath his roof. It might be in
great measure his face, so thin and refined, and intellectual without
feeling; his voice which had melody, but not heartiness; his manners,
which were not simple by nature, but by art;--whatever it was,
Redclyffe found that Lord Braithwaite did not call for his own
naturalness and simplicity, but his art, and felt that he was
inevitably acting a part in his intercourse with him, that he was on
his guard, playing a game; and yet he did not wish to do this. But
there was a mobility, a subtleness in his nature, an unconscious tact,
--which the mode of life and of mixing with men in America fosters and
perfects,--that made this sort of finesse inevitable to him, with any
but a natural character; with whom, on the other hand, Redclyffe could
be as fresh and natural as any Englishman of them all.

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