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Doctor Grimshawe\'s Secret

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







CHAPTER XXV.


Redclyffe, apparently, had not communicated to his agent in London his
change of address, when he left the Warden's residence to avail himself
of the hospitality of Braithwaite Hall; for letters arrived for him,
from his own country, both private and with the seal of state upon
them; one among the rest that bore on the envelope the name of the
President of the United States. The good Warden was impressed with
great respect for so distinguished a signature, and, not knowing but
that the welfare of the Republic (for which he had an Englishman's
contemptuous interest) might be involved in its early delivery at its
destination, he determined to ride over to Braithwaite Hall, call on
his friend, and deliver it with his own hand. With this purpose, he
mounted his horse, at the hour of his usual morning ride, and set
forth; and, before reaching the village, saw a figure before him which
he recognized as that of the pensioner. [Endnote: 1.]

"Soho! whither go you, old friend?" said the Warden, drawing his bridle
as he came up with the old man.

"To Braithwaite Hall, sir," said the pensioner, who continued to walk
diligently on; "and I am glad to see your honor (if it be so) on the
same errand."

"Why so?" asked the Warden. "You seem much in earnest. Why should my
visit to Braithwaite Hall be a special cause of rejoicing?"

"Nay," said the pensioner, "your honor is specially interested in this
young American, who has gone thither to abide; and when one is in a
strange country he needs some guidance. My mind is not easy about the
young man."

"Well," said the Warden, smiling to himself at the old gentleman's idle
and senile fears, "I commend your diligence on behalf of your friend."

He rode on as he spoke, and deep in one of the woodland paths he saw
the flutter of a woman's garment, and, greatly to his surprise,
overtook Elsie, who seemed to be walking along with great rapidity,
and, startled by the approach of hoofs behind her, looked up at him,
with a pale cheek.

"Good morning, Miss Elsie," said the Warden. "You are taking a long
walk this morning. I regret to see that I have frightened you."

"Pray, whither are you going?" said she.

"To the Hall," said the Warden, wondering at the abrupt question.

"Ah, sir," exclaimed Elsie, "for Heaven's sake, pray insist on seeing
Mr. Redclyffe,--take no excuse. There are reasons for it."

"Certainly, fair lady," responded the Warden, wondering more and more
at this injunction from such a source. "And when I see this fascinating
gentleman, pray what message am I to give him from Miss Elsie,--who,
moreover, seems to be on the eve of visiting him in person?"

"See him! see him! Only see him!" said Elsie, with passionate
earnestness, "and in haste! See him now!"

She waved him onward as she spoke; and the Warden, greatly commoted for
the nonce, complied with the maiden's fantasy so far as to ride on at a
quicker pace, uneasily marvelling at what could have aroused this
usually shy and reserved girl's nervousness to such a pitch. The
incident served at all events to titillate his English sluggishness; so
that he approached the avenue of the old Hall with a vague expectation
of something that had happened there, though he knew not of what nature
it could possibly be. However, he rode round to the side entrance, by
which horsemen generally entered the house, and, a groom approaching to
take his bridle, he alighted and approached the door. I know not
whether it were anything more than the glistening moisture common in an
English autumnal morning; but so it was, that the trace of the Bloody
Footstep seemed fresh, as if it had been that very night imprinted
anew, and the crime made all over again, with fresh guilt upon
somebody's soul.

When the footman came to the door, responsive to his ring, the Warden
inquired for Mr. Redclyffe, the American gentleman.

"The American gentleman left for London, early this morning," replied
the footman, in a matter-of-fact way.

"Gone!" exclaimed the Warden. "This is sudden; and strange that he
should go without saying good by. Gone," and then he remembered the old
pensioner's eagerness that the Warden should come here, and Elsie's
strange injunction that he should insist on seeing Redclyffe. "Pray, is
Lord Braithwaite at home?"

"I think, sir, he is in the library," said the servant, "but will see;
pray, sir, walk in."

He returned in a moment, and ushered the Warden through passages with
which he was familiar of old, to the library, where he found Lord
Braithwaite sitting with the London newspaper in his hand. He rose and
welcomed his guest with great equanimity.

To the Warden's inquiries after Redclyffe, Lord Braithwaite replied
that his guest had that morning left the house, being called to London
by letters from America; but of what nature Lord Braithwaite was unable
to say, except that they seemed to be of urgency and importance. The
Warden's further inquiries, which he pushed as far as was decorous,
elicited nothing more than this; and he was preparing to take his
leave,--not seeing any reason for insisting (according to Elsie's
desire) on the impossibility of seeing a man who was not there,--nor,
indeed, any reason for so doing. And yet it seemed very strange that
Redclyffe should have gone so unceremoniously; nor was he half
satisfied, though he knew not why he should be otherwise.

"Do you happen to know Mr. Redclyffe's address in London," asked the
Warden.

"Not at all," said Braithwaite. "But I presume there is courtesy enough
in the American character to impel him to write to me, or both of us,
within a day or two, telling us of his whereabouts and whatabouts.
Should you know, I beg you will let me know; for I have really been
pleased with this gentleman, and should have been glad could he have
favored me with a somewhat longer visit."

There was nothing more to be said; and the Warden took his leave, and
was about mounting his horse, when he beheld the pensioner approaching
the house, and he remained standing until he should come up.

"You are too late," said he, as the old man drew near. "Our friend has
taken French leave."

"Mr. Warden," said the old man solemnly, "let me pray you not to give
him up so easily. Come with me into the presence of Lord Braithwaite."

The Warden made some objections; but the pensioner's manner was so
earnest, that he soon consented; knowing that the strangeness of his
sudden return might well enough be put upon the eccentricities of the
pensioner, especially as he was so well known to Lord Braithwaite. He
accordingly again rang at the door, which being opened by the same
stolid footman, the Warden desired him to announce to Lord Braithwaite
that the Warden and a pensioner desired to see him. He soon returned,
with a request that they would walk in, and ushered them again to the
library, where they found the master of the house in conversation with
Omskirk at one end of the apartment,--a whispered conversation, which
detained him a moment, after their arrival. The Warden fancied that he
saw in old Omskirk's countenance a shade more of that mysterious horror
which made him such a bugbear to children; but when Braithwaite turned
from him and approached his visitor, there was no trace of any
disturbance, beyond a natural surprise to see his good friend the
Warden so soon after his taking leave. [Endnote: 2.]

"I see you are surprised," said the latter. "But you must lay the
blame, if any, on our good old friend here, who, for some reason, best
known to himself, insisted on having my company here."

Braithwaite looked to the old pensioner, with a questioning look, as if
good-humoredly (yet not as if he cared much about it) asking for an
explanation. As Omskirk was about leaving the room, having remained
till this time, with that nervous look which distinguished him gazing
towards the party, the pensioner made him a sign, which he obeyed as if
compelled to do so.

"Well, my friend," said the Warden, somewhat impatient of the aspect in
which he himself appeared, "I beg of you, explain at once to Lord
Braithwaite why you have brought me back in this strange way."

"It is," said the pensioner quietly, "that in your presence I request
him to allow me to see Mr. Redclyffe."

"Why, my friend," said Braithwaite, "how can I show you a man who has
left my house, and whom in the chances of this life, I am not very
likely to see again, though hospitably desirous of so doing?"

Here ensued a laughing sort of colloquy between the Warden and
Braithwaite, in which the former jocosely excused himself for having
yielded to the whim of the pensioner, and returned with him on an
errand which he well knew to be futile.

"I have long been aware," he said apart, in a confidential way, "of
something a little awry in our old friend's mental system. You will
excuse him, and me for humoring him."

"Of course, of course," said Braithwaite, in the same tone. "I shall
not be moved by anything the old fellow can say."

The old pensioner, meanwhile, had been as it were heating up, and
gathering himself into a mood of energy which those who saw him had
never before witnessed in his usually quiet person. He seemed somehow
to grow taller and larger, more impressive. At length, fixing his eyes
on Lord Braithwaite, he spoke again.

"Dark, murderous man," exclaimed he. "Your course has not been
unwatched; the secrets of this mansion are not unknown. For two
centuries back, they have been better known to them who dwell afar off
than to those resident within the mansion. The foot that made the
Bloody Footstep has returned from its long wanderings, and it passes
on, straight as destiny,--sure as an avenging Providence,--to the
punishment and destruction of those who incur retribution."

"Here is an odd kind of tragedy," said Lord Braithwaite, with a
scornful smile. "Come, my old friend, lay aside this vein and talk
sense."

"Not thus do you escape your penalty, hardened and crafty one!"
exclaimed the pensioner. "I demand of you, before this worthy Warden,
access to the secret ways of this mansion, of which thou dost unjustly
retain possession. I shall disclose what for centuries has remained
hidden,--the ghastly secrets that this house hides."

"Humor him," whispered the Warden, "and hereafter I will take care that
the exuberance of our old friend shall be duly restrained. He shall not
trouble you again."

Lord Braithwaite, to say the truth, appeared a little flabbergasted and
disturbed by these latter expressions of the old gentleman. He
hesitated, turned pale; but at last, recovering his momentary confusion
and irresolution, he replied, with apparent carelessness:--

"Go wherever you will, old gentleman. The house is open to you for this
time. If ever you have another opportunity to disturb it, the fault
will be mine."

"Follow, sir," said the pensioner, turning to the Warden; "follow,
maiden![Endnote: 3] Now shall a great mystery begin to be revealed."

So saying, he led the way before them, passing out of the hall, not by
the doorway, but through one of the oaken panels of the wall, which
admitted the party into a passage which seemed to pass through the
thickness of the wall, and was lighted by interstices through which
shone gleams of light. This led them into what looked like a little
vestibule, or circular room, which the Warden, though deeming himself
many years familiar with the old house, had never seen before, any more
than the passage which led to it. To his surprise, this room was not
vacant, for in it sat, in a large old chair, Omskirk, like a toad in
its hole, like some wild, fearful creature in its den, and it was now
partly understood how this man had the possibility of suddenly
disappearing, so inscrutably, and so in a moment; and, when all quest
for him was given up, of as suddenly appearing again.

"Ha!" said old Omskirk, slowly rising, as at the approach of some event
that he had long expected. "Is he coming at last?"

"Poor victim of another's iniquity," said the pensioner. "Thy release
approaches. Rejoice!"

The old man arose with a sort of trepidation and solemn joy intermixed
in his manner, and bowed reverently, as if there were in what he heard
more than other ears could understand in it.

"Yes; I have waited long," replied he. "Welcome; if my release is
come."

"Well," said Lord Braithwaite, scornfully. "This secret retreat of my
house is known to many. It was the priest's secret chamber when it was
dangerous to be of the old and true religion, here in England. There is
no longer any use in concealing this place; and the Warden, or any man,
might have seen it, or any of the curiosities of the old hereditary
house, if desirous so to do."

"Aha! son of Belial!" quoth the pensioner. "And this, too!"

He took three pieces from a certain point of the wall, which he seemed
to know, and stooped to press upon the floor. The Warden looked at Lord
Braithwaite, and saw that he had grown deadly pale. What his change of
cheer might bode, he could not guess; but, at the pressure of the old
pensioner's finger, the floor, or a segment of it, rose like the lid of
a box, and discovered a small darksome pair of stairs, within which
burned a lamp, lighting it downward, like the steps that descend into a
sepulchre.

"Follow," said he, to those who looked on, wondering.

And he began to descend. Lord Braithwaite saw him disappear, then
frantically followed, the Warden next, and old Omskirk took his place
in the rear, like a man following his inevitable destiny. At the bottom
of a winding descent, that seemed deep and remote, and far within, they
came to a door, which the pensioner pressed with a spring; and, passing
through the space that disclosed itself, the whole party followed, and
found themselves in a small, gloomy room. On one side of it was a
couch, on which sat Redclyffe; face to face with him was a white-haired
figure in a chair.

"You are come!" said Redclyffe, solemnly. "But too late!"

"And yonder is the coffer," said the pensioner. "Open but that; and our
quest is ended."

"That, if I mistake not, I can do," said Redclyffe.

He drew forth--what he had kept all this time, as something that might
yet reveal to him the mystery of his birth--the silver key that had
been found by the grave in far New England; and applying it to the
lock, he slowly turned it on the hinges, that had not been turned for
two hundred years. All--even Lord Braithwaite, guilty and shame-
stricken as he felt--pressed forward to look upon what was about to be
disclosed. What were the wondrous contents? The entire, mysterious
coffer was full of golden ringlets, abundant, clustering through the
whole coffer, and living with elasticity, so as immediately, as it
were, to flow over the sides of the coffer, and rise in large abundance
from the long compression. Into this--by a miracle of natural
production which was known likewise in other cases--into this had been
resolved the whole bodily substance of that fair and unfortunate being,
known so long in the legends of the family as the Beauty of the Golden
Locks. As the pensioner looked at this strange sight,--the lustre of
the precious and miraculous hair gleaming and glistening, and seeming
to add light to the gloomy room,--he took from his breast pocket
another lock of hair, in a locket, and compared it, before their faces,
with that which brimmed over from the coffer.

"It is the same!" said he.

"And who are you that know it?" asked Redclyffe, surprised.

"He whose ancestors taught him the secret,--who has had it handed down
to him these two centuries, and now only with regret yields to the
necessity of making it known."

"You are the heir!" said Redclyffe.

In that gloomy room, beside the dead old man, they looked at him, and
saw a dignity beaming on him, covering his whole figure, that broke out
like a lustre at the close of day.




APPENDIX


CHAPTER I.

_Note 1._ The MS. gives the following alternative openings: "Early
in the present century"; "Soon after the Revolution"; "Many years ago."

_Note 2._ Throughout the first four pages of the MS. the Doctor is
called "Ormskirk," and in an earlier draft of this portion of the
romance, "Etheredge."

_Note 3. Author's note_.--"Crusty Hannah is a mixture of Indian
and negro."

_Note 4. Author's note_.--"It is understood from the first that
the children are not brother and sister.--Describe the children with
really childish traits, quarrelling, being naughty, etc.--The Doctor
should occasionally beat Ned in course of instruction."

_Note 5._ In order to show the manner in which Hawthorne would
modify a passage, which was nevertheless to be left substantially the
same, I subjoin here a description of this graveyard as it appears in
the earlier draft: "The graveyard (we are sorry to have to treat of
such a disagreeable piece of ground, but everybody's business centres
there at one time or another) was the most ancient in the town. The
dust of the original Englishmen had become incorporated with the soil;
of those Englishmen whose immediate predecessors had been resolved into
the earth about the country churches,--the little Norman, square,
battlemented stone towers of the villages in the old land; so that in
this point of view, as holding bones and dust of the first ancestors,
this graveyard was more English than anything else in town. There had
been hidden from sight many a broad, bluff visage of husbandmen that
had ploughed the real English soil; there the faces of noted men, now
known in history; there many a personage whom tradition told about,
making wondrous qualities of strength and courage for him;--all these,
mingled with succeeding generations, turned up and battened down again
with the sexton's spade; until every blade of grass was human more than
vegetable,--for an hundred and fifty years will do this, and so much
time, at least, had elapsed since the first little mound was piled up
in the virgin soil. Old tombs there were too, with numerous sculptures
on them; and quaint, mossy gravestones; although all kinds of
monumental appendages were of a date more recent than the time of the
first settlers, who had been content with wooden memorials, if any, the
sculptor's art not having then reached New England. Thus rippled,
surged, broke almost against the house, this dreary graveyard, which
made the street gloomy, so that people did not like to pass the dark,
high wooden fence, with its closed gate, that separated it from the
street. And this old house was one that crowded upon it, and took up
the ground that would otherwise have been sown as thickly with dead as
the rest of the lot; so that it seemed hardly possible but that the
dead people should get up out of their graves, and come in there to
warm themselves. But in truth, I have never heard a whisper of its
being haunted."

_Note 6. Author's note_.--"The spiders are affected by the weather
and serve as barometers.--It shall always be a moot point whether the
Doctor really believed in cobwebs, or was laughing at the credulous."

_Note 7. Author's note_.--"The townspeople are at war with the
Doctor.--Introduce the Doctor early as a smoker, and describe.--The
result of Crusty Hannah's strangely mixed breed should be shown in some
strange way.--Give vivid pictures of the society of the day, symbolized
in the street scenes."



CHAPTER II.

_Note 1. Author's note_.--"Read the whole paragraph before copying
any of it."

_Note 2. Author's note_.--"Crusty Hannah teaches Elsie curious
needlework, etc."

_Note 3._ These two children are described as follows in an early
note of the author's: "The boy had all the qualities fitted to excite
tenderness in those who had the care of him; in the first and most
evident place, on account of his personal beauty, which was very
remarkable,--the most intelligent and expressive face that can be
conceived, changing in those early years like an April day, and
beautiful in all its changes; dark, but of a soft expression, kindling,
melting, glowing, laughing; a varied intelligence, which it was as good
as a book to read. He was quick in all modes of mental exercise; quick
and strong, too, in sensibility; proud, and gifted (probably by the
circumstances in which he was placed) with an energy which the softness
and impressibility of his nature needed.--As for the little girl, all
the squalor of the abode served but to set off her lightsomeness and
brightsomeness. She was a pale, large-eyed little thing, and it might
have been supposed that the air of the house and the contiguity of the
burial-place had a bad effect upon her health. Yet I hardly think this
could have been the case, for she was of a very airy nature, dancing
and sporting through the house as if melancholy had never been made.
She took all kinds of childish liberties with the Doctor, and with his
pipe, and with everything appertaining to him except his spiders and
his cobwebs."--All of which goes to show that Hawthorne first conceived
his characters in the mood of the "Twice-Told Tales," and then by
meditation solidified them to the inimitable flesh-and-blood of "The
House of the Seven Gables" and "The Blithedale Romance."



CHAPTER III.

_Note 1._ An English church spire, evidently the prototype of
this, and concerning which the same legend is told, is mentioned in the
author's "English Mote-Books."

_Note 2._ Leicester Hospital, in Warwick, described in "Our Old
Home," is the original of this charity.

_Note 3. Author's note_.--"The children find a gravestone with
something like a footprint on it."

_Note 4. Author's note_.--"Put into the Doctor's character a
continual enmity against somebody, breaking out in curses of which
nobody can understand the application."



CHAPTER IV.

_Note 1._ The Doctor's propensity for cobwebs is amplified in the
following note for an earlier and somewhat milder version of the
character: "According to him, all science was to be renewed and
established on a sure ground by no other means than cobwebs. The cobweb
was the magic clue by which mankind was to be rescued from all its
errors, and guided safely back to the right. And so he cherished
spiders above all things, and kept them spinning, spinning away; the
only textile factory that existed at that epoch in New England. He
distinguished the production of each of his ugly friends, and assigned
peculiar qualities to each; and he had been for years engaged in
writing a work on this new discovery, in reference to which he had
already compiled a great deal of folio manuscript, and had unguessed at
resources still to come. With this suggestive subject he interwove all
imaginable learning, collected from his own library, rich in works that
few others had read, and from that of his beloved University, crabbed
with Greek, rich with Latin, drawing into itself, like a whirlpool, all
that men had thought hitherto, and combining them anew in such a way
that it had all the charm of a racy originality. Then he had projects
for the cultivation of cobwebs, to which end, in the good Doctor's
opinion, it seemed desirable to devote a certain part of the national
income; and not content with this, all public-spirited citizens would
probably be induced to devote as much of their time and means as they
could to the same end. According to him, there was no such beautiful
festoon and drapery for the halls of princes as the spinning of this
heretofore despised and hated insect; and by due encouragement it might
be hoped that they would flourish, and hang and dangle and wave
triumphant in the breeze, to an extent as yet generally undreamed of.
And he lamented much the destruction that has heretofore been wrought
upon this precious fabric by the housemaid's broom, and insisted upon
by foolish women who claimed to be good housewives. Indeed, it was the
general opinion that the Doctor's celibacy was in great measure due to
the impossibility of finding a woman who would pledge herself to co-
operate with him in this great ambition of his life,--that of reducing
the world to a cobweb factory; or who would bind herself to let her own
drawing-room be ornamented with this kind of tapestry. But there never
was a wife precisely fitted for our friend the Doctor, unless it had
been Arachne herself, to whom, if she could again have been restored to
her female shape, he would doubtless have lost no time in paying his
addresses. It was doubtless the having dwelt too long among the musty
and dusty clutter and litter of things gone by, that made the Doctor
almost a monomaniac on this subject. There were cobwebs in his own
brain, and so he saw nothing valuable but cobwebs in the world around
him; and deemed that the march of created things, up to this time, had
been calculated by foreknowledge to produce them."

_Note 2. Author's note_.--"Ned must learn something of the
characteristics of the Catechism, and simple cottage devotion."



CHAPTER V.

_Note 1. Author's note_.--"Make the following scene emblematic of
the world's treatment of a dissenter."

_Note 2. Author's note_.--"Yankee characteristics should be shown
in the schoolmaster's manners."

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