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Doctor Grimshawe\'s Secret

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




Redclyffe spent the time between lunch and dinner in wandering about
the grounds, from which he had hitherto felt himself debarred by
motives of delicacy. It was a most interesting ramble to him, coming to
trees which his ancestor, who went to America, might have climbed in
his boyhood, might have sat beneath, with his lady-love, in his youth;
deer there were, the descendants of those which he had seen; old stone
stiles, which his foot had trodden. The sombre, clouded light of the
day fell down upon this scene, which in its verdure, its luxuriance of
vegetable life, was purely English, cultivated to the last extent
without losing the nature out of a single thing. In the course of his
walk he came to the spot where he had been so mysteriously wounded on
his first arrival in this region; and, examining the spot, he was
startled to see that there was a path leading to the other side of a
hedge, and this path, which led to the house, had brought him here.

Musing upon this mysterious circumstance, and how it should have
happened in so orderly a country as England, so tamed and subjected to
civilization,--an incident to happen in an English park which seemed
better suited to the Indian-haunted forests of the wilder parts of his
own land,--and how no researches which the Warden had instituted had
served in the smallest degree to develop the mystery,--he clambered
over the hedge, and followed the footpath. It plunged into dells, and
emerged from them, led through scenes which seemed those of old
romances, and at last, by these devious ways, began to approach the old
house, which, with its many gray gables, put on a new aspect from this
point of view. Redclyffe admired its venerableness anew; the ivy that
overran parts of it; the marks of age; and wondered at the firmness of
the institutions which, through all the changes that come to man, could
have kept this house the home of one lineal race for so many centuries;
so many, that the absence of his own branch from it seemed but a
temporary visit to foreign parts, from which he was now returned, to be
again at home, by the old hearthstone.

"But what do I mean to do?" said he to himself, stopping short, and
still looking at the old house. "Am I ready to give up all the actual
life before me for the sake of taking up with what I feel to be a less
developed state of human life? Would it not be better for me to depart
now, to turn my back on this flattering prospect? I am not fit to be
here,--I, so strongly susceptible of a newer, more stirring life than
these men lead; I, who feel that, whatever the thought and cultivation
of England may be, my own countrymen have gone forward a long, long
march beyond them, not intellectually, but in a way that gives them a
further start. If I come back hither, with the purpose to make myself
an Englishman, especially an Englishman of rank and hereditary estate,
--then for me America has been discovered in vain, and the great spirit
that has been breathed into us is in vain; and I am false to it all!"

But again came silently swelling over him like a flood all that ancient
peace, and quietude, and dignity, which looked so stately and beautiful
as brooding round the old house; all that blessed order of ranks, that
sweet superiority, and yet with no disclaimer of common brotherhood,
that existed between the English gentleman and his inferiors; all that
delightful intercourse, so sure of pleasure, so safe from rudeness,
lowness, unpleasant rubs, that exists between gentleman and gentleman,
where, in public affairs, all are essentially of one mind, or seem so
to an American politician, accustomed to the fierce conflicts of our
embittered parties; where life was made so enticing, so refined, and
yet with a sort of homeliness that seemed to show that all its strength
was left behind; that seeming taking in of all that was desirable in
life, and all its grace and beauty, yet never giving life a hard enamel
of over-refinement. What could there be in the wild, harsh, ill-
conducted American approach to civilization, which could compare with
this? What to compare with this juiciness and richness? What other men
had ever got so much out of life as the polished and wealthy Englishmen
of to-day? What higher part was to be acted, than seemed to lie before
him, if he willed to accept it?

He resumed his walk, and, drawing near the manor-house, found that he
was approaching another entrance than that which had at first admitted
him; a very pleasant entrance it was, beneath a porch, of antique form,
and ivy-clad, hospitable and inviting; and it being the approach from
the grounds, it seemed to be more appropriate to the residents of the
house than the other one. Drawing near, Redclyffe saw that a flight of
steps ascended within the porch, old-looking, much worn; and nothing is
more suggestive of long time than a flight of worn steps; it must have
taken so many soles, through so many years, to make an impression.
Judging from the make of the outside of the edifice, Redclyffe thought
that he could make out the way from the porch to the hall and library;
so he determined to enter this way.

There had been, as was not unusual, a little shower of rain during the
afternoon; and as Redclyffe came close to the steps, they were
glistening with the wet. The stones were whitish, like marble, and one
of them bore on it a token that made him pause, while a thrill like
terror ran through his system. For it was the mark of a footstep, very
decidedly made out, and red, like blood,--the Bloody Footstep,--the
mark of a foot, which seemed to have been slightly impressed into the
rock, as if it had been a soft substance, at the same time sliding a
little, and gushing with blood. The glistening moisture of which we
have spoken made it appear as if it were just freshly stamped there;
and it suggested to Redclyffe's fancy the idea, that, impressed more
than two centuries ago, there was some charm connected with the mark
which kept it still fresh, and would continue to do so to the end of
time. It was well that there was no spectator there,--for the American
would have blushed to have it known how much this old traditionary
wonder had affected his imagination. But, indeed, it was as old as any
bugbear of his mind--as any of those bugbears and private terrors which
grow up with people, and make the dreams and nightmares of childhood,
and the fever-images of mature years, till they haunt the deliriums of
the dying bed, and after that possibly, are either realized or known no
more. The Doctor's strange story vividly recurred to him, and all the
horrors which he had since associated with this trace; and it seemed to
him as if he had now struck upon a bloody track, and as if there were
other tracks of this supernatural foot which he was bound to search
out; removing the dust of ages that had settled on them, the moss and
deep grass that had grown over them, the forest leaves that might have
fallen on them in America--marking out the pathway, till the pedestrian
lay down in his grave.

The foot was issuing from, not entering into, the house. Whoever had
impressed it, or on whatever occasion, he had gone forth, and doubtless
to return no more. Redclyffe was impelled to place his own foot on the
track; and the action, as it were, suggested in itself strange ideas of
what had been the state of mind of the man who planted it there; and he
felt a strange, vague, yet strong surmise of some agony, some terror
and horror, that had passed here, and would not fade out of the spot.
While he was in these musings, he saw Lord Braithwaite looking at him
through the glass of the porch, with fixed, curious eyes, and a smile
on his face. On perceiving that Redclyffe was aware of his presence, he
came forth without appearing in the least disturbed.

"What think you of the Bloody Footstep?" asked he.

"It seems to me, undoubtedly," said Redclyffe, stooping to examine it
more closely, "a good thing to make a legend out of; and, like most
legendary lore, not capable of bearing close examination. I should
decidedly say that the Bloody Footstep is a natural reddish stain in
the stone."

"Do you think so, indeed?" rejoined his Lordship. "It may be; but in
that case, if not the record of an actual deed,--of a foot stamped down
there in guilt and agony, and oozing out with unwipeupable blood,--we
may consider it as prophetic;--as foreboding, from the time when the
stone was squared and smoothed, and laid at this threshold, that a
fatal footstep was really to be impressed here."

"It is an ingenious supposition," said Redclyffe. "But is there any
sure knowledge that the prophecy you suppose has yet been fulfilled?"

"If not, it might yet be in the future," said Lord Braithwaite. "But I
think there are enough in the records of this family to prove that
there did one cross this threshold in a bloody agony, who has since
returned no more. Great seekings, I have understood, have been had
throughout the world for him, or for any sign of him, but nothing
satisfactory has been heard."

"And it is now too late to expect it," observed the American.

"Perhaps not," replied the nobleman, with a glance that Redclyffe
thought had peculiar meaning in it. "Ah! it is very curious to see what
turnings up there are in this world of old circumstances that seem
buried forever; how things come back, like echoes that have rolled away
among the hills and been seemingly hushed forever. We cannot tell when
a thing is really dead; it comes to life, perhaps in its old shape,
perhaps in a new and unexpected one; so that nothing really vanishes
out of the world. I wish it did."

The conversation now ceased, and Redclyffe entered the house, where he
amused himself for some time in looking at the ancient hall, with its
gallery, its armor, and its antique fireplace, on the hearth of which
burned a genial fire. He wondered whether in that fire was the
continuance of that custom which the Doctor's legend spoke of, and that
the flame had been kept up there two hundred years, in expectation of
the wanderer's return. It might be so, although the climate of England
made it a natural custom enough, in a large and damp old room, into
which many doors opened, both from the exterior and interior of the
mansion; but it was pleasant to think the custom a traditionary one,
and to fancy that a booted figure, enveloped in a cloak, might still
arrive, and fling open the veiling cloak, throw off the sombre and
drooping-brimmed hat, and show features that were similar to those seen
in pictured faces on the walls. Was he himself--in another guise, as
Lord Braithwaite had been saying--that long-expected one? Was his the
echoing tread that had been heard so long through the ages--so far
through the wide world--approaching the blood-stained threshold?

With such thoughts, or dreams (for they were hardly sincerely enough
entertained to be called thoughts), Redclyffe spent the day; a strange,
delicious day, in spite of the sombre shadows that enveloped it. He
fancied himself strangely wonted, already, to the house; as if his
every part and peculiarity had at once fitted into its nooks, and
corners, and crannies; but, indeed, his mobile nature and active fancy
were not entirely to be trusted in this matter; it was, perhaps, his
American faculty of making himself at home anywhere, that he mistook
for the feeling of being peculiarly at home here.




CHAPTER XXIII.


Redclyffe was now established in the great house which had been so long
and so singularly an object of interest with him. With his customary
impressibility by the influences around him, he begun to take in the
circumstances, and to understand them by more subtile tokens than he
could well explain to himself. There was the steward, [Endnote: 1] or
whatever was his precise office; so quiet, so subdued, so nervous, so
strange! What had been this man's history? What was now the secret of
his daily life? There he was, creeping stealthily up and down the
staircases, and about the passages of the house; always as if he were
afraid of meeting somebody. On seeing Redclyffe in the house, the
latter fancied that the man expressed a kind of interest in his face;
but whether pleasure or pain he could not well tell; only he sometimes
found that he was contemplating him from a distance, or from the
obscurity of the room in which he sat,--or from a corridor, while he
smoked his cigar on the lawn. A great part, if not the whole of this,
he imputed to his knowledge of Redclyffe's connections with the Doctor;
but yet this hardly seemed sufficient to account for the pertinacity
with which the old man haunted his footsteps,--the poor, nervous old
thing,--always near him, or often unexpectedly so; and yet apparently
not very willing to hold conversation with him, having nothing of
importance to say.

"Mr. Omskirk," said Redclyffe to him, a day or two after the
commencement of his visit, "how many years have you now been in this
situation?"

"0, sir, ever since the Doctor's departure for America," said Omskirk,
"now thirty and five years, five months, and three days."

"A long time," said Redclyffe, smiling, "and you seem to keep the
account of it very accurately."

"A very long time, your honor," said Omskirk; "so long, that I seem to
have lived one life before it began, and I cannot think of any life
than just what I had. My life was broken off short in the midst; and
what belonged to the earlier part of it was another man's life; this is
mine."

"It might be a pleasant life enough, I should think, in this fine old
Hall," said Redclyffe; "rather monotonous, however. Would you not like
a relaxation of a few days, a pleasure trip, in all these thirty-five
years? You old Englishmen are so sturdily faithful to one thing. You do
not resemble my countrymen in that."

"0, none of them ever lived in an old mansion-house like this," replied
Omskirk, "they do not know the sort of habits that a man gets here.
They do not know my business either, nor any man's here."

"Is your master then, so difficult?" said Redclyffe.

"My master! Who was speaking of him?" said the old man, as if
surprised. "Ah, I was thinking of Dr. Grimshawe. He was my master, you
know."

And Redclyffe was again inconceivably struck with the strength of the
impression that was made on the poor old man's mind by the character of
the old Doctor; so that, after thirty years of other service, he still
felt him to be the master, and could not in the least release himself
from those earlier bonds. He remembered a story that the Doctor used to
tell of his once recovering a hanged person, and more and more came to
the conclusion that this was the man, and that, as the Doctor had said,
this hold of a strong mind over a weak one, strengthened by the idea
that he had made him, had subjected the man to him in a kind of slavery
that embraced the soul.

And then, again, the lord of the estate interested him greatly, and not
unpleasantly. He compared what he seemed to be now with what, according
to all reports, he had been in the past, and could make nothing of it,
nor reconcile the two characters in the least. It seemed as if the
estate were possessed by a devil,--a foul and melancholy fiend,--who
resented the attempted possession of others by subjecting them to
himself. One had turned from quiet and sober habits to reckless
dissipation; another had turned from the usual gayety of life to
recluse habits, and both, apparently, by the same influence; at least,
so it appeared to Redclyffe, as he insulated their story from all other
circumstances, and looked at them by one light. He even thought that he
felt a similar influence coming over himself, even in this little time
that he had spent here; gradually, should this be his permanent
residence,--and not so very gradually either,--there would come its own
individual mode of change over him. That quick suggestive mind would
gather the moss and lichens of decay. Palsy of its powers would
probably be the form it would assume. He looked back through the
vanished years to the time which he had spent with the old Doctor, and
he felt unaccountably as if the mysterious old man were yet ruling him,
as he did in his boyhood; as if his inscrutable, inevitable eye were
upon him in all his movements; nay, as if he had guided every step that
he took in coming hither, and were stalking mistily before him, leading
him about. He sometimes would gladly have given up all these wild and
enticing prospects, these dreams that had occupied him so long, if he
could only have gone away and looked back upon the house, its inmates,
and his own recollections no more; but there came a fate, and took the
shape of the old Doctor's apparition, holding him back.

And then, too, the thought of Elsie had much influence in keeping him
quietly here; her natural sunshine was the one thing that, just now,
seemed to have a good influence upon the world. She, too, was evidently
connected with this place, and with the fate, whatever it might be,
that awaited him here. The Doctor, the ruler of his destiny, had
provided her as well as all the rest; and from his grave, or wherever
he was, he still seemed to bring them together.

So here, in this darkened dream, he waited for what should come to
pass; and daily, when he sat down in the dark old library, it was with
the thought that this day might bring to a close the doubt amid which
he lived,--might give him the impetus to go forward. In such a state,
no doubt, the witchcraft of the place was really to be recognized, the
old witchcraft, too, of the Doctor, which he had escaped by the quick
ebullition of youthful spirit, long ago, while the Doctor lived; but
which had been stored up till now, till an influence that remained
latent for years had worked out in active disease. He held himself open
for intercourse with the lord of the mansion; and intercourse of a
certain nature they certainly had, but not of the kind which Redclyffe
desired. They talked together of politics, of the state of the
relations between England and America, of the court to which Redclyffe
was accredited; sometimes Redclyffe tried to lead the conversation to
the family topics, nor, in truth, did Lord Braithwaite seem to decline
his lead; although it was observable that very speedily the
conversation would be found turned upon some other subject, to which it
had swerved aside by subtle underhand movements. Yet Redclyffe was not
the less determined, and at no distant period, to bring up the subject
on which his mind dwelt so much, and have it fairly discussed between
them.

He was sometimes a little frightened at the position and circumstances
in which he found himself; a great disturbance there was in his being,
the causes of which he could not trace. It had an influence on his
dreams, through which the Doctor seemed to pass continually, and when
he awoke it was often with the sensation that he had just the moment
before been holding conversation with the old man, and that the latter
--with that gesture of power that he remembered so well--had been
impressing some command upon him; but what that command was, he could
not possibly call to mind. He wandered among the dark passages of the
house, and up its antique staircases, as if expecting at every turn to
meet some one who would have the word of destiny to say to him. When he
went forth into the park, it was as if to hold an appointment with one
who had promised to meet him there; and he came slowly back, lingering
and loitering, because this expected one had not yet made himself
visible, yet plucked up a little alacrity as he drew near the house,
because the communicant might have arrived in his absence, and be
waiting for him in the dim library. It seemed as if he was under a
spell; he could neither go away nor rest,--nothing but dreams, troubled
dreams. He had ghostly fears, as if some one were near him whom he
could not make out; stealing behind him, and starting away when he was
impelled to turn round. A nervousness that his healthy temperament had
never before permitted him to be the victim of, assailed him now. He
could not help imputing it partly to the influence of the generations
who had left a portion of their individual human nature in the house,
which had become magnetic by them and could not rid itself of their
presence in one sense, though, in another, they had borne it as far off
as to where the gray tower of the village church rose above their
remains.

Again, he was frightened to perceive what a hold the place was getting
upon him; how the tendrils of the ivy seemed to hold him and would not
let him go; how natural and homelike (grim and sombre as they were) the
old doorways and apartments were becoming; how in no place that he had
ever known had he had such a home-like feeling. To be sure, poor
fellow, he had no earlier home except the almshouse, where his
recollection of a fireside crowded by grim old women and pale, sickly
children, of course never allowed him to have the reminiscences of a
private, domestic home. But then there was the Doctor's home by the
graveyard, and little Elsie, his constant playmate? No, even those
recollections did not hold him like this heavy present circumstance.
How should he ever draw himself away? No; the proud and vivid and
active prospects that had heretofore spread themselves before him,--the
striving to conquer, the struggle, the victory, the defeat, if such it
was to be,--the experiences for good or ill,--the life, life, life,--
all possibility of these was passing from him; all that hearty earnest
contest or communion of man with man; and leaving him nothing but this
great sombre shade, this brooding of the old family mansion, with its
dreary ancestral hall, its mouldy dignity, its life of the past, its
fettering honor, which to accept must bind him hand and foot, as
respects all effort, such as he had trained himself for,--such as his
own country offered. It was not any value for these,--as it seemed to
Redclyffe,--but a witchcraft, an indefinable spell, a something that he
could not define, that enthralled him, and was now doing a work on him
analogous to, though different from, that which was wrought on Omskirk
and all the other inhabitants, high and low, of this old mansion.

He felt greatly interested in the master of the mansion; although
perhaps it was not from anything in his nature; but partly because he
conceived that he himself had a controlling power over his fortunes,
and likewise from the vague perception of this before-mentioned trouble
in him. It seemed, whatever it might be, to have converted an ordinary
superficial man of the world into a being that felt and suffered
inwardly, had pangs, fears, a conscience, a sense of unseen things. It
seemed as if underneath this manor-house were the entrance to the cave
of Trophonius, one visit to which made a man sad forever after; and
that Lord Braithwaite had been there once, or perhaps went nightly, or
at any hour. Or the mansion itself was like dark-colored experience,
the reality; the point of view where things were seen in their true
lights; the true world, all outside of which was delusion, and here--
dreamlike as its structures seemed--the absolute truth. All those that
lived in it were getting to be a brotherhood; and he among them; and
perhaps before the blood-stained threshold would grow up an impassable
barrier, which would cause himself to sit down in dreary quiet, like
the rest of them.

Redclyffe, as has been intimated, had an unavowed--unavowed to himself
--suspicion that the master of the house cherished no kindly purpose
towards him; he had an indistinct feeling of danger from him; he would
not have been surprised to know that he was concocting a plot against
his life; and yet he did not think that Lord Braithwaite had the
slightest hostility towards him. It might make the thing more horrible,
perhaps; but it has been often seen in those who poison for the sake of
interest, without feelings of personal malevolence, that they do it as
kindly as the nature of the thing will permit; they, possibly, may even
have a certain degree of affection for their victims, enough to induce
them to make the last hours of life sweet and pleasant; to wind up the
fever of life with a double supply of enjoyable throbs; to sweeten and
delicately flavor the cup of death that they offer to the lips of him
whose life is inconsistent with some stated necessity of their own.
"Dear friend," such a one might say to the friend whom he reluctantly
condemned to death, "think not that there is any base malice, any
desire of pain to thee, that actuates me in this thing. Heaven knows, I
earnestly wish thy good. But I have well considered the matter,--more
deeply than thou hast,--and have found that it is essential that one
thing should be, and essential to that thing that thou, my friend,
shouldst die. Is that a doom which even thou wouldst object to with
such an end to be answered? Thou art innocent; thou art not a man of
evil life; the worst thing that can come of it, so far as thou art
concerned, would be a quiet, endless repose in yonder churchyard, among
dust of thy ancestry, with the English violets growing over thee there,
and the green, sweet grass, which thou wilt not scorn to associate with
thy dissolving elements, remembering that thy forefather owed a debt,
for his own birth and growth, to this English soil, and paid it not,--
consigned himself to that rough soil of another clime, under the forest
leaves. Pay it, dear friend, without repining, and leave me to battle a
little longer with this troublesome world, and in a few years to rejoin
thee, and talk quietly over this matter which we are now arranging. How
slight a favor, then, for one friend to do another, will seem this that
I seek of thee."

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