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.”
CHAPTER VI.
_Note 1. Author’s note_.--“He had a sort of horror of violence, and of
the strangeness that it should be done to him; this affected him more
than the blow.”
_Note 2. Author’s note_.--“Jokes occasionally about the schoolmaster’s
thinness and lightness,--how he might suspend himself from the spider’s
web and swing, etc.”
_Note 3. Author’s note_.--“The Doctor and the Schoolmaster should have
much talk about England.”
_Note 4. Author’s note_.--“The children were at play in the churchyard.”
_Note 5. Author’s note_.--“He mentions that he was probably buried in
the churchyard there.”
CHAPTER VII.
_Note 1. Author’s note_.--“Perhaps put this narratively, not as spoken.”
_Note 2. Author’s note_.--“He was privately married to the heiress,
if she were an heiress. They meant to kill him in the wood, but, by
contrivance, he was kidnapped.”
_Note 3. Author’s note_.--“They were privately married.”
_Note 4. Author’s note_.--“Old descriptive letters, referring to
localities as they existed.”
_Note 5. Author’s note_.--“There should be symbols and tokens, hinting
at the schoolmaster’s disappearance, from the first opening of the
scene.”
CHAPTER VIII.
_Note 1. Author’s note_.--“They had got up in remarkably good case that
morning.”
_Note 2. Author’s note_.--“The stranger may be the future master of the
Hospital.--Describe the winter day.”
_Note 3. Author’s note_.--“Describe him as clerical.”
_Note 4. Author’s note_.--“Represent him as a refined, agreeable, genial
young man, of frank, kindly, gentlemanly manners.”
_Note 5._ Alternative reading: “A clergyman.”
CHAPTER IX.
_Note 1. Author’s note_.--“Make the old grave-digger a _laudator
temporis acti_,--especially as to burial customs.”
_Note 2._ Instead of “written,” as in the text, the author probably
meant to write “read.”
_Note 3._ The MS. has “delight,” but “a light” is evidently intended.
_Note 4. Author’s note_.--“He aims a blow, perhaps with his pipe, at the
boy, which Ned wards off.”
CHAPTER X.
_Note 1. Author’s note_.--“No longer could play at quarter-staff with
Ned.”
_Note 2. Author’s note_.--“Referring to places and people in England:
the Bloody Footstep sometimes.”
_Note 3._ In the original the following occurs, but marked to indicate
that it was to be omitted: “And kissed his hand to her, and laughed
feebly; and that was the last that she or anybody, the last glimpse they
had of Doctor Grimshawe alive.”
_Note 4. Author’s notes_.--“A great deal must be made out of the
spiders, and their gloomy, dusky, flaunting tapestry. A web across the
orifice of his inkstand every morning; everywhere, indeed, except
across the snout of his brandy-bottle.--Depict the Doctor in an old
dressing-gown, and a strange sort of a cap, like a wizard’s.--The two
children are witnesses of many strange experiments in the study; they
see his moods, too.--The Doctor is supposed to be writing a work on the
Natural History of Spiders. Perhaps he used them as a blind for his real
project, and used to bamboozle the learned with pretending to read them
passages in which great learning seemed to be elaborately worked up,
crabbed with Greek and Latin, as if the topic drew into itself, like a
whirlpool, all that men thought and knew; plans to cultivate cobwebs on
a large scale. Sometimes, after overwhelming them with astonishment in
this way, he would burst into one of his laughs. Schemes to make the
world a cobweb-factory, etc., etc. Cobwebs in his own brain. Crusty
Hannah such a mixture of persons and races as could be found only at a
seaport. There was a rumor that the Doctor had murdered a former maid,
for having, with housewifely instinct, swept away the cobwebs; some said
that he had her skeleton in a closet. Some said that he had strangled
a wife with web of the great spider.”--“Read the description of Bolton
Hall, the garden, lawn, etc., Aug. 8, ‘53.--Bebbington church and
churchyard, Aug. 29, ‘53.--The Doctor is able to love,--able to hate;
two great and rare abilities nowadays.--Introduce two pine trees,
ivy-grown, as at Lowwood Hotel, July 16, ‘58.--The family name might be
Redclyffe.--Thatched cottage, June 22, ‘55.--Early introduce the mention
of the cognizance of the family,--the Leopard’s Head, for instance, in
the first part of the romance; the Doctor may have possessed it engraved
as coat of arms in a book.--The Doctor shall show Ned, perhaps, a
drawing or engraving of the Hospital, with figures of the pensioners in
the quadrangle, fitly dressed; and this picture and the figures shall
impress themselves strongly on his memory.”
The above dates and places refer to passages in the published “English
Note-Books.”
CHAPTER XI.
_Note 1. Author’s note_.--“Compare it with Spenser’s Cave of Despair.
Put instruments of suicide there.”
_Note 2. Author’s note_.--“Once, in looking at the mansion, Redclyffe
is struck by the appearance of a marble inserted into the wall, and kept
clear of lichens.”
_Note 3. Author’s note_.--“Describe, in rich poetry, all shapes of
deadly things.”
CHAPTER XII.
_Note 1. Author’s note_.--“Conferred their best qualities”: an
alternative phrase for “done their utmost.”
_Note 2. Author’s note_.--“Let the old man have a beard as part of the
costume.”
CHAPTER XIII.
_Note 1. Author’s note_.--“Describe him as delirious, and the scene as
adopted into his delirium.”
_Note 2. Author’s note_.--“Make the whole scene very dreamlike and
feverish.”
_Note 3. Author’s note_.--“There should be a slight wildness in the
patient’s remark to the surgeon, which he cannot prevent, though he is
conscious of it.”
_Note 4. Author’s note_.--“Notice the peculiar depth and intelligence of
his eyes, on account of his pain and sickness.”
_Note 5. Author’s note_.--“Perhaps the recognition of the pensioner
should not be so decided. Redclyffe thinks it is he, but thinks it as
in a dream, without wonder or inquiry; and the pensioner does not quite
acknowledge it.”
_Note 6._ The following dialogue is marked to be omitted or modified in
the original MS.; but it is retained here, in order that the thread of
the narrative may not be broken.
_Note 7. Author’s note_.--“The patient, as he gets better, listens to
the feet of old people moving in corridors; to the ringing of a bell
at stated periods; to old, tremulous voices talking in the quadrangle;
etc., etc.”
_Note 8._ At this point the modification indicated in Note 5 seems to
have been made operative: and the recognition takes place in another
way.
CHAPTER XIV.
_Note 1._ This paragraph is left incomplete in the original MS.
_Note 2._ The words “Rich old bindings” are interlined here, indicating,
perhaps, a purpose to give a more detailed description of the library
and its contents.
CHAPTER XV.
_Note 1. Author’s note_.--“I think it shall be built of stone, however.”
_Note 2._ This probably refers to some incident which the author
intended to incorporate in the former portion of the romance, on a final
revision.
CHAPTER XVI.
_Note 1._ Several passages, which are essentially reproductions of what
had been previously treated, are omitted from this chapter. It belongs
to an earlier version of the romance.
CHAPTER XVII.
_Note 1. Author’s note_.--“Redclyffe shows how to find, under the
surface of the village green, an old cross.”
_Note 2. Author’s note_.--“A circular seat around the tree.”
_Note 3._ The reader now hears for the first time what Redclyffe
recollected.
CHAPTER XVIII.
_Note 1. Author’s note_.--“The dinner is given to the pensioners, as
well as to the gentry, I think.”
_Note 2. Author’s note_.--“For example, a story of three brothers, who
had a deadly quarrel among them more than two hundred years ago for the
affections of a young lady, their cousin, who gave her reciprocal love
to one of them, who immediately became the object of the deadly hatred
of the two others. There seemed to be madness in their love; perhaps
madness in the love of all three; for the result had been a plot to
kidnap this unfortunate young man and convey him to America, where he
was sold for a servant.”
CHAPTER XIX.
_Note 1._ The following passage, though it seems to fit in here
chronologically, is concerned with a side issue which was not followed
up. The author was experimenting for a character to act as the
accomplice of Lord Braithwaite at the Hall; and he makes trial of the
present personage, Mountford; of an Italian priest, Father Angelo; and
finally of the steward, Omskirk, who is adopted. It will be noticed that
Mountford is here endowed (for the moment) with the birthright of good
Doctor Hammond, the Warden. He is represented as having made the journey
to America in search of the grave. This alteration being inconsistent
with the true thread of the story, and being, moreover, not continued, I
have placed this passage in the Appendix, instead of in the text.
Redclyffe often, in the dim weather, when the prophetic intimations of
rain were too strong to allow an American to walk abroad with peace
of mind, was in the habit of pacing this noble hall, and watching the
process of renewal and adornment; or, which suited him still better, of
enjoying its great, deep solitude when the workmen were away. Parties of
visitors, curious tourists, sometimes peeped in, took a cursory
glimpse at the old hall, and went away; these were the only ordinary
disturbances. But, one day, a person entered, looked carelessly round
the hall, as if its antiquity had no great charm to him; then he seemed
to approach Redclyffe, who stood far and dim in the remote distance of
the great room. The echoing of feet on the stone pavement of the
hall had always an impressive sound, and turning his head towards the
visitant Edward stood as if there were an expectance for him in this
approach. It was a middle-aged man--rather, a man towards fifty, with
an alert, capable air; a man evidently with something to do in life, and
not in the habit of throwing away his moments in looking at old halls; a
gentlemanly man enough, too. He approached Redclyffe without hesitation,
and, lifting his hat, addressed him in a way that made Edward wonder
whether he could be an Englishman. If so, he must have known that Edward
was an American, and have been trying to adapt his manners to those of a
democratic freedom.
“Mr. Redclyffe, I believe,” said he.
Redclyffe bowed, with the stiff caution of an Englishman; for, with
American mobility, he had learned to be stiff.
“I think I have had the pleasure of knowing--at least of meeting--you
very long ago,” said the gentleman. “But I see you do not recollect me.”
Redclyffe confessed that the stranger had the advantage of him in his
recollection of a previous acquaintance.
“No wonder,” said the other, “for, as I have already hinted, it was many
years ago.”
“In my own country then, of course,” said Redclyffe.
“In your own country certainly,” said the stranger, “and when it would
have required a penetrating eye to see the distinguished Mr. Redclyffe.
the representative of American democracy abroad, in the little
pale-faced, intelligent boy, dwelling with an old humorist in the corner
of a graveyard.”
At these words Redclyffe sent back his recollections, and, though
doubtfully, began to be aware that this must needs be the young
Englishman who had come to his guardian on such a singular errand as to
search an old grave. It must be he, for it could be nobody else; and, in
truth, he had a sense of his identity,--which, however, did not express
itself by anything that he could confidently remember in his looks,
manner, or voice,--yet, if anything, it was most in the voice. But the
image which, on searching, he found in his mind of a fresh-colored young
Englishman, with light hair and a frank, pleasant face, was terribly
realized for the worse in this somewhat heavy figure, and coarser face,
and heavier eye. In fact, there is a terrible difference between the
mature Englishman and the young man who is not yet quite out of his
blossom. His hair, too, was getting streaked and sprinkled with gray;
and, in short, there were evident marks of his having worked, and
succeeded, and failed, and eaten and drunk, and being made largely of
beef, ale, port, and sherry, and all the solidities of English life.
“I remember you now,” said Redclyffe, extending his hand frankly; and
yet Mountford took it in so cold a way that he was immediately sorry
that he had done it, and called up an extra portion of reserve to freeze
the rest of the interview. He continued, coolly enough, “I remember you,
and something of your American errand,--which, indeed, has frequently
been in my mind since. I hope you found the results of your voyage,
in the way of discovery, sufficiently successful to justify so much
trouble.”
“You will remember,” said Mountford, “that the grave proved quite
unproductive. Yes, you will not have forgotten it; for I well recollect
how eagerly you listened, with that queer little girl, to my talk with
the old governor, and how disappointed you seemed when you found that
the grave was not to be opened. And yet, it is very odd. I failed in
that mission; and yet there are circumstances that have led me to think
that I ought to have succeeded better,--that some other person has
really succeeded better.”
Redclyffe was silent; but he remembered the strange old silver key, and
how he had kept it secret, and the doubts that had troubled his mind
then and long afterwards, whether he ought not to have found means to
convey it to the stranger, and ask whether that was what he sought. And
now here was that same doubt and question coming up again, and he found
himself quite as little able to solve it as he had been twenty years
ago. Indeed, with the views that had come up since, it behooved him to
be cautious, until he knew both the man and the circumstances.
“You are probably aware,” continued Mountford,--“for I understand you
have been some time in this neighborhood,--that there is a pretended
claim, a contesting claim, to the present possession of the estate
of Braithwaite, and a long dormant title. Possibly--who knows?--you
yourself might have a claim to one or the other. Would not that be a
singular coincidence? Have you ever had the curiosity to investigate
your parentage with a view to this point?”
“The title,” replied Redclyffe, “ought not to be a very strong
consideration with an American. One of us would be ashamed, I verily
believe, to assume any distinction, except such as may be supposed to
indicate personal, not hereditary merit. We have in some measure, I
think, lost the feeling of the past, and even of the future, as regards
our own lines of descent; and even as to wealth, it seems to me that the
idea of heaping up a pile of gold, or accumulating a broad estate for
our children and remoter descendants, is dying out. We wish to enjoy the
fulness of our success in life ourselves, and leave to those who descend
from us the task of providing for themselves. This tendency is seen in
our lavish expenditure, and the whole arrangement of our lives; and it
is slowly--yet not very slowly, either--effecting a change in the whole
economy of American life.”
“Still,” rejoined Mr. Mountford, with a smile that Redclyffe fancied was
dark and subtle, “still, I should imagine that even an American might
recall so much of hereditary prejudice as to be sensible of some earthly
advantages in the possession of an ancient title and hereditary
estate like this. Personal distinction may suit you better,--to be an
Ambassador by your own talent; to have a future for yourself, involving
the possibility of ranking (though it were only for four years) among
the acknowledged sovereigns of the earth;--this is very good. But if the
silver key would open the shut up secret to-day, it might be possible
that you would relinquish these advantages.”
Before Redclyffe could reply, (and, indeed, there seemed to be an
allusion at the close of Mountford’s speech which, whether intended or
not, he knew not how to reply to,) a young lady entered the hall, whom
he was at no loss, by the colored light of a painted window that fell
upon her, translating her out of the common daylight, to recognize
as the relative of the pensioner. She seemed to have come to give her
fanciful superintendence to some of the decorations of the hall; such
as required woman’s taste, rather than the sturdy English judgment and
antiquarian knowledge of the Warden. Slowly following after her came the
pensioner himself, leaning on his staff and looking up at the old roof
and around him with a benign composure, and himself a fitting figure by
his antique and venerable appearance to walk in that old hall.
“Ah!” said Mountford, to Redclyffe’s surprise, “here is an
acquaintance--two acquaintances of mine.”
He moved along the hall to accost them; and as he appeared to expect
that Redclyffe would still keep him company, and as the latter had no
reason for not doing so, they both advanced to the pensioner, who
was now leaning on the young woman’s arm. The incident, too, was not
unacceptable to the American, as promising to bring him into a more
available relation with her--whom he half fancied to be his old American
acquaintance--than he had yet succeeded in obtaining.
“Well, my old friend,” said Mountford, after bowing with a certain
measured respect to the young woman, “how wears life with you? Rather,
perhaps, it does not wear at all; you being so well suited to the life
around you, you grow by it like a lichen on a wall. I could fancy now
that you have walked here for three hundred years, and remember when
King James of blessed memory was entertained in this hall, and could
marshal out all the ceremonies just as they were then.”
“An old man,” said the pensioner, quietly, “grows dreamy as he wanes
away; and I, too, am sometimes at a loss to know whether I am living in
the past or the present, or whereabouts in time I am,--or whether there
is any time at all. But I should think it hardly worth while to call up
one of my shifting dreams more than another.”
“I confess,” said Redclyffe, “I shall find it impossible to call up this
scene--any of these scenes--hereafter, without the venerable figure of
this, whom I may truly call my benefactor, among them. I fancy him among
them from the foundation,--young then, but keeping just the equal step
with their age and decay,--and still doing good and hospitable deeds to
those who need them.”
The old man seemed not to like to hear these remarks and expressions of
gratitude from Mountford and the American; at any rate, he moved away
with his slow and light motion of infirmity, but then came uneasily
back, displaying a certain quiet restlessness, which Redclyffe was
sympathetic enough to perceive. Not so the sturdier, more heavily
moulded Englishman, who continued to direct the conversation upon the
pensioner, or at least to make him a part of it, thereby bringing out
more of his strange characteristics. In truth, it is not quite easy for
an Englishman to know how to adapt himself to the line feelings of those
below him in point of station, whatever gentlemanly deference he may
have for his equals or superiors.
“I should like now, father pensioner,” said he, “to know how many steps
you may have taken in life before your path led into this hole, and
whence your course started.”
“Do not let him speak thus to the old man,” said the young woman, in
a low, earnest tone, to Redclyffe. He was surprised and startled; it
seemed like a voice that has spoken to his boyhood.
_Note 2. Author’s note_.--“Redclyffe’s place is next to that of the
proprietor at table.”
_Note 3. Author’s note_.--“Dwell upon the antique liveried servants
somewhat.”
_Note 4. Author’s note_.--“The rose-water must precede the toasts.”
_Note 5. Author’s note_.--“The jollity of the Warden at the feast to be
noticed; and afterwards explain that he had drunk nothing.”
_Note 6. Author’s note_.--“Mention the old silver snuffbox which I saw
at the Liverpool Mayor’s dinner.”
CHAPTER XX.
_Note 1._ This is not the version of the story as indicated in the
earlier portion of the romance. It is there implied that Elsie is the
Doctor’s granddaughter, her mother having been the Doctor’s daughter,
who was ruined by the then possessor of the Braithwaite estates, and who
died in consequence. That the Doctor’s scheme of revenge was far deeper
and more terrible than simply to oust the family from its possessions,
will appear further on.
_Note 2._ The foregoing passage was evidently experimental, and
the author expresses his estimate of its value in the following
words,--“What unimaginable nonsense!” He then goes on to make the
following memoranda as to the plot. It should be remembered, however,
that all this part of the romance was written before the American part.
“Half of a secret is preserved in England; that is to say, in the
particular part of the mansion in which an old coffer is hidden; the
other part is carried to America. One key of an elaborate lock is
retained in England, among some old curiosities of forgotten purpose;
the other is the silver key that Redclyffe found beside the grave. A
treasure of gold is what they expect; they find a treasure of golden
locks. This lady, the beloved of the Bloody Footstep, had been murdered
and hidden in the coffer on account of jealousy. Elsie must know the
baselessness of Redclyffe’s claims, and be loath to tell him, because
she sees that he is so much interested in them. She has a paper of
the old Doctor’s revealing the whole plot,--a death-bed confession;
Redclyffe having been absent at the time.”
The reader will recollect that this latter suggestion was not adopted:
there was no death-bed confession. As regards the coffer full of
golden locks, it was suggested by an incident recorded in the “English
Note-Books,” 1854. “The grandmother of Mrs. O’Sullivan died fifty years
ago, at the age of twenty-eight. She had great personal charms, and
among them a head of beautiful chestnut hair. After her burial in a
family tomb, the coffin of one of her children was laid on her own, so
that the lid seems to have decayed, or been broken from this cause; at
any rate, this was the case when the tomb was opened, about a year ago.
The grandmother’s coffin was then found to be filled with beautiful,
glossy, living chestnut ringlets, into which her whole substance seems
to have been transformed, for there was nothing else but these shining
curls, the growth of half a century, in the tomb. An old man, with
a ringlet of his youthful mistress treasured in his heart, might be
supposed to witness this wonderful thing.”
CHAPTER XXIII.
_Note 1._ In a study of the plot, too long to insert here, this new
character of the steward is introduced and described. It must suffice to
say, in this place, that he was intimately connected with Dr. Grimshawe,
who had resuscitated him after he had been hanged, and had thus gained
his gratitude and secured his implicit obedience to his wishes, even
twenty years after his (Grimshawe’s) death. The use the Doctor made
of him was to establish him in Braithwaite Hall as the perpetual
confidential servant of the owners thereof. Of course, the latter
are not aware that the steward is acting in Grimshawe’s interest,
and therefore in deadly opposition to their own. Precisely what the
steward’s mission in life was, will appear here-after.
The study above alluded to, with others, amounting to about a hundred
pages, will be published as a supplement to a future edition of this
work.
CHAPTER XXIV.
_Note 1. Author’s note_.--“Redclyffe lies in a dreamy state, thinking
fantastically, as if he were one of the seven sleepers. He does not yet
open his eyes, but lies there in a maze.”
_Note 2. Author’s note_.--“Redclyffe must look at the old man quietly
and dreamily, and without surprise, for a long while.”
_Note 3._ Presumably the true name of Doctor Grimshawe.
_Note 4._ This mysterious prisoner, Sir Edward Redclyffe, is not, of
course, the Sir Edward who founded the Hospital, but a descendant of
that man, who ruined Doctor Grimshawe’s daughter, and is the father
of Elsie. He had been confined in this chamber, by the Doctor’s
contrivance, ever since, Omskirk being his jailer, as is foreshadowed in
Chapter XL He has been kept in the belief that he killed Grimshawe, in
a struggle that took place between them; and that his confinement in the
secret chamber is voluntary on his own part,--a measure of precaution to
prevent arrest and execution for murder. In this miserable delusion he
has cowered there for five and thirty years. This, and various other
dusky points, are partly elucidated in the notes hereafter to be
appended to this volume.
CHAPTER XXV.
_Note 1._ At this point, the author, for what reason I will not venture
to surmise, chooses to append this gloss: “Bubble-and-Squeak!”
_Note 2. Author’s note_.--“They found him in the hall, about to go out.”
_Note 3._ Elsie appears to have joined the party.
End of Project Gutenberg’s Doctor Grimshawe’s Secret, by Nathaniel Hawthorne