better recognize the fact that it has nothing to do with England, and
look upon itself as other nations and people do, as existing on its own
hook. I never heard of any people looking back to the country of their
remote origin in the way the Anglo-Americans do. For instance, England
is made up of many alien races, German, Danish, Norman, and what not: it
has received large, accessions of population at a later date than the
settlement of the United States. Yet these families melt into the great
homogeneous mass of Englishmen, and look back no more to any other
country. There are in this vicinity many descendants of the French
Huguenots; but they care no more for France than for Timbuctoo, reckoning
themselves only Englishmen, as if they were descendants of the aboriginal
Britons. Let it be so with you.”
“So it might be,” replied Middleton, “only that our relations with
England remain far more numerous than our disconnections, through the
bonds of history, of literature, of all that makes up the memories, and
much that makes up the present interests of a people. And therefore I
must still continue to pore over these old folios, and hunt around these
precincts, spending thus the little idle time I am likely to have in a
busy life. Possibly finding little to my purpose; but that is quite a
secondary consideration.”
“If you choose to tell me precisely what your aims are,” said Hammond,
“it is possible I might give you some little assistance.”
May 7th, Friday.--Middleton was in fact more than half ashamed of the
dreams which he had cherished before coming to England, and which since,
at times, had been very potent with him, assuming as strong a tinge of
reality as those [scenes?] into which he had strayed. He could not
prevail with himself to disclose fully to this severe, and, as he
thought, cynical old man how strong within him was the sentiment that
impelled him to connect himself with the old life of England, to join on
the broken thread of ancestry and descent, and feel every link well
established. But it seemed to him that he ought not to lose this fair
opportunity of gaining some light on the abstruse field of his
researches; and he therefore explained to Hammond that he had reason,
from old family traditions, to believe that he brought with him a
fragment of a history that, if followed out, might lead to curious
results. He told him, in a tone half serious, what he had heard
respecting the quarrel of the two brothers, and the Bloody Footstep, the
impress of which was said to remain, as a lasting memorial of the tragic
termination of that enmity. At this point, Hammond interrupted him. He
had indeed, at various points of the narrative, nodded and smiled
mysteriously, as if looking into his mind and seeing something there
analogous to what he was listening to. He now spoke.
“This is curious,” said he. “Did you know that there is a manor-house in
this neighborhood, the family of which prides itself on having such a
blood-stained threshold as you have now described?”
“No, indeed!” exclaimed Middleton, greatly interested. “Where?”
“It is the old manor-house of Smithell’s,” replied Hammond, “one of those
old wood and timber [plaster?] mansions, which are among the most ancient
specimens of domestic architecture in England. The house has now passed
into the female line, and by marriage has been for two or three
generations in possession of another family. But the blood of the old
inheritors is still in the family. The house itself, or portions of it,
are thought to date back quite as far as the Conquest.”
“Smithell’s?” said Middleton. “Why, I have seen that old house from a
distance, and have felt no little interest in its antique aspect. And it
has a Bloody Footstep! Would it be possible for a stranger to get an
opportunity to inspect it?”
“Unquestionably,” said Hammond; “nothing easier. It is but a moderate
distance from here, and if you can moderate your young footsteps, and
your American quick walk, to an old man’s pace, I would go there with you
some day. In this languor and ennui of my life, I spend some time in
local antiquarianism, and perhaps I might assist you in tracing out how
far these traditions of yours may have any connection with reality. It
would be curious, would it not, if you had come, after two hundred years,
to piece out a story which may have been as much a mystery in England as
there in America?”
An engagement was made for a walk to Smithell’s the ensuing day; and
meanwhile Middleton entered more fully into what he had received from
family traditions and what he had thought out for himself on the matter
in question.
“Are you aware,” asked Hammond, “that there was formerly a title in this
family, now in abeyance, and which the heirs have at various times
claimed, and are at this moment claiming? Do you know, too,--but you can
scarcely know it,--that it has been surmised by some that there is an
insecurity in the title to the estate, and has always been; so that the
possessors have lived in some apprehension, from time immemorial, that
another heir would appear and take from them the fair inheritance? It is
a singular coincidence.”
“Very strange,” exclaimed Middleton. “No; I was not aware of it; and, to
say the truth, I should not altogether like to come forward in the light
of a claimant. But this is a dream, surely!”
“I assure you, sir,” continued the old man, “that you come here in a very
critical moment; and singularly enough there is a perplexity, a
difficulty, that has endured for as long a time as when your ancestors
emigrated, that is still rampant within the bowels, as I may say, of the
family. Of course, it is too like a romance that you should be able to
establish any such claim as would have a valid influence on this matter;
but still, being here on the spot, it may be worth while, if merely as a
matter of amusement, to make some researches into this matter.”
“Surely I will,” said Middleton, with a smile, which concealed more
earnestness than he liked to show; “as to the title, a Republican cannot
be supposed to think twice about such a bagatelle. The estate!--that
might be a more serious consideration.”
They continued to talk on the subject; and Middleton learned that the
present possessor of the estates was a gentleman nowise distinguished
from hundreds of other English gentlemen; a country squire modified in
accordance with the type of to-day, a frank, free, friendly sort of a
person enough, who had travelled on the Continent, who employed himself
much in field-sports, who was unmarried, and had a sister who was
reckoned among the beauties of the county.
While the conversation was thus going on, to Middleton’s astonishment
there came a knock at the door of the room, and, without waiting for a
response, it was opened, and there appeared at it the same young woman
whom he had already met. She came in with perfect freedom and
familiarity, and was received quietly by the old gentleman; who, however,
by his manner towards Middleton, indicated that he was now to take his
leave. He did so, after settling the hour at which the excursion of the
next day was to take place. This arranged, he departed, with much to
think of, and a light glimmering through the confused labyrinth of
thoughts which had been unilluminated hitherto.
To say the truth, he questioned within himself whether it were not better
to get as quickly as he could out of the vicinity; and, at any rate, not
to put anything of earnest in what had hitherto been nothing more than a
romance to him. There was something very dark and sinister in the events
of family history, which now assumed a reality that they had never before
worn; so much tragedy, so much hatred, had been thrown into that deep
pit, and buried under the accumulated debris, the fallen leaves, the rust
and dust of more than two centuries, that it seemed not worth while to
dig it up; for perhaps the deadly influences, which it had taken so much
time to hide, might still be lurking there, and become potent if he now
uncovered them. There was something that startled him, in the strange,
wild light, which gleamed from the old man’s eyes, as he threw out the
suggestions which had opened this prospect to him. What right had he--an
American, Republican, disconnected with this country so long, alien from
its habits of thought and life, reverencing none of the things which
Englishmen reverenced--what right had he to come with these musty claims
from the dim past, to disturb them in the life that belonged to them?
There was a higher and a deeper law than any connected with ancestral
claims which he could assert; and he had an idea that the law bade him
keep to the country which his ancestor had chosen and to its
institutions, and not meddle nor make with England. The roots of his
family tree could not reach under the ocean; he was at most but a
seedling from the parent tree. While thus meditating he found that his
footsteps had brought him unawares within sight of the old manor-house of
Smithell’s; and that he was wandering in a path which, if he followed it
further, would bring him to an entrance in one of the wings of the
mansion. With a sort of shame upon him, he went forward, and, leaning
against a tree, looked at what he considered the home of his ancestors.
May 9th, Sunday.--At the time appointed, the two companions set out on
their little expedition, the old man in his Hospital uniform, the long
black mantle, with the bear and ragged staff engraved in silver on the
breast, and Middleton in the plain costume which he had adopted in these
wanderings about the country. On their way, Hammond was not very
communicative, occasionally dropping some shrewd remark with a good deal
of acidity in it; now and then, too, favoring his companion with some
reminiscence of local antiquity; but oftenest silent. Thus they went on,
and entered the park of Pemberton Manor by a by-path, over a stile and
one of those footways, which are always so well worth threading out in
England, leading the pedestrian into picturesque and characteristic
scenes, when the high-road would show him nothing except what was
commonplace and uninteresting. Now the gables of the old manor-house
appeared before them, rising amidst the hereditary woods, which doubtless
dated from a time beyond the days which Middleton fondly recalled, when
his ancestors had walked beneath their shade. On each side of them were
thickets and copses of fern, amidst which they saw the hares peeping out
to gaze upon them, occasionally running across the path, and comporting
themselves like creatures that felt themselves under some sort of
protection from the outrages of man, though they knew too much of his
destructive character to trust him too far. Pheasants, too, rose close
beside them, and winged but a little way before they alighted; they
likewise knew, or seemed to know, that their hour was not yet come. On
all sides in these woods, these wastes, these beasts and birds, there was
a character that was neither wild nor tame. Man had laid his grasp on
them all, and done enough to redeem them from barbarism, but had stopped
short of domesticating them; although Nature, in the wildest thing there,
acknowledged the powerful and pervading influence of cultivation.
Arriving at a side door of the mansion, Hammond rang the bell, and a
servant soon appeared. He seemed to know the old man, and immediately
acceded to his request to be permitted to show his companion the house;
although it was not precisely a show-house, nor was this the hour when
strangers were usually admitted. They entered; and the servant did not
give himself the trouble to act as a cicerone to the two visitants, but
carelessly said to the old gentleman that he knew the rooms, and that he
would leave him to discourse to his friend about them. Accordingly, they
went into the old hall, a dark oaken-panelled room, of no great height,
with many doors opening into it. There was a fire burning on the hearth;
indeed, it was the custom of the house to keep it up from morning to
night; and in the damp, chill climate of England, there is seldom a day
in some part of which a fire is not pleasant to feel. Hammond here
pointed out a stuffed fox, to which some story of a famous chase was
attached; a pair of antlers of enormous size; and some old family
pictures, so blackened with time and neglect that Middleton could not
well distinguish their features, though curious to do so, as hoping to
see there the lineaments of some with whom he might claim kindred. It
was a venerable apartment, and gave a good foretaste of what they might
hope to find in the rest of the mansion.
But when they had inspected it pretty thoroughly, and were ready to
proceed, an elderly gentleman entered the hall, and, seeing Hammond,
addressed him in a kindly, familiar way; not indeed as an equal friend,
but with a pleasant and not irksome conversation. “I am glad to see you
here again,” said he. “What? I have an hour of leisure; for, to say the
truth, the day hangs rather heavy till the shooting season begins. Come;
as you have a friend with you, I will be your cicerone myself about the
house, and show you whatever mouldy objects of interest it contains.”
He then graciously noticed the old man’s companion, but without asking or
seeming to expect an introduction; for, after a careless glance at him,
he had evidently set him down as a person without social claims, a young
man in the rank of life fitted to associate with an inmate of Pemberton’s
Hospital. And it must be noticed that his treatment of Middleton was not
on that account the less kind, though far from being so elaborately
courteous as if he had met him as an equal. “You have had something of a
walk,” said he, “and it is a rather hot day. The beer of Pemberton Manor
has been reckoned good these hundred years; will you taste it?”
Hammond accepted the offer, and the beer was brought in a foaming
tankard; but Middleton declined it, for in truth there was a singular
emotion in his breast, as if the old enmity, the ancient injuries, were
not yet atoned for, and as if he must not accept the hospitality of one
who represented his hereditary foe. He felt, too, as if there were
something unworthy, a certain want of fairness, in entering clandestinely
the house, and talking with its occupant under a veil, as it were; and
had he seen clearly how to do it, he would perhaps at that moment have
fairly told Mr. Eldredge that he brought with him the character of
kinsman, and must be received in that grade or none. But it was not easy
to do this; and after all, there was no clear reason why he should do it;
so he let the matter pass, merely declining to take the refreshment, and
keeping himself quiet and retired.
Squire Eldredge seemed to be a good, ordinary sort of gentleman,
reasonably well educated, and with few ideas beyond his estate and
neighborhood, though he had once held a seat in Parliament for part of a
term. Middleton could not but contrast him, with an inward smile, with
the shrewd, alert politicians, their faculties all sharpened to the
utmost, whom he had known and consorted with in the American Congress.
Hammond had slightly informed him that his companion was an American; and
Mr. Eldredge immediately gave proof of the extent of his knowledge of
that country, by inquiring whether he came from the State of New England,
and whether Mr. Webster was still President of the United States;
questions to which Middleton returned answers that led to no further
conversation.
These little preliminaries over, they continued their ramble through the
house, going through tortuous passages, up and down little flights of
steps, and entering chambers that had all the charm of discoveries of
hidden regions; loitering about, in short, in a labyrinth calculated to
put the head into a delightful confusion. Some of these rooms contained
their time-honored furniture, all in the best possible repair, heavy,
dark, polished; beds that had been marriage beds and dying beds over and
over again; chairs with carved backs; and all manner of old world
curiosities; family pictures, and samplers, and embroidery; fragments of
tapestry; an inlaid floor; everything having a story to it, though, to
say the truth, the possessor of these curiosities made but a bungling
piece of work in telling the legends connected with them. In one or two
instances Hammond corrected him.
By and by they came to what had once been the principal bed-room of the
house; though its gloom, and some circumstances of family misfortune that
had happened long ago, had caused it to fall into disrepute, in latter
times; and it was now called the Haunted Chamber, or the Ghost’s Chamber.
The furniture of this room, however, was particularly rich in its antique
magnificence; and one of the principal objects was a great black cabinet
of ebony and ivory, such as may often be seen in old English houses, and
perhaps often in the palaces of Italy, in which country they perhaps
originated. This present cabinet was known to have been in the house as
long ago as the reign of Queen Elizabeth, and how much longer neither
tradition nor record told. Hammond particularly directed Middleton’s
attention to it.
“There is nothing in this house,” said he, “better worth your attention
than that cabinet. Consider its plan; it represents a stately mansion,
with pillars, an entrance, with a lofty flight of steps, windows, and
everything perfect. Examine it well.”
There was such an emphasis in the old man’s way of speaking that
Middleton turned suddenly round from all that he had been looking at, and
fixed his whole attention on the cabinet; and strangely enough, it seemed
to be the representative, in small, of something that he had seen in a
dream. To say the truth, if some cunning workman had been employed to
copy his idea of the old family mansion, on a scale of half an inch to a
yard, and in ebony and ivory instead of stone, he could not have produced
a closer imitation. Everything was there.
“This is miraculous!” exclaimed he. “I do not understand it.”
“Your friend seems to be curious in these matters,” said Mr. Eldredge
graciously. “Perhaps he is of some trade that makes this sort of
manufacture particularly interesting to him. You are quite at liberty,
my friend, to open the cabinet and inspect it as minutely as you wish.
It is an article that has a good deal to do with an obscure portion of
our family history. Look, here is the key, and the mode of opening the
outer door of the palace, as we may well call it.” So saying, he threw
open the outer door, and disclosed within the mimic likeness of a stately
entrance hall, with a floor chequered of ebony and ivory. There were
other doors that seemed to open into apartments in the interior of the
palace; but when Mr. Eldredge threw them likewise wide, they proved to be
drawers and secret receptacles, where papers, jewels, money, anything
that it was desirable to store away secretly, might be kept.
“You said, sir,” said Middleton, thoughtfully, “that your family history
contained matter of interest in reference to this cabinet. Might I
inquire what those legends are?”
“Why, yes,” said Mr. Eldredge, musing a little. “I see no reason why I
should have any idle concealment about the matter, especially to a
foreigner and a man whom I am never likely to see again. You must know,
then, my friend, that there was once a time when this cabinet was known
to contain the fate of the estate and its possessors; and if it had held
all that it was supposed to hold, I should not now be the lord of
Pemberton Manor, nor the claimant of an ancient title. But my father,
and his father before him, and his father besides, have held the estate
and prospered on it; and I think we may fairly conclude now that the
cabinet contains nothing except what we see.”
And he rapidly again threw open one after another all the numerous
drawers and receptacles of the cabinet.
“It is an interesting object,” said Middleton, after looking very closely
and with great attention at it, being pressed thereto, indeed, by the
owner’s good-natured satisfaction in possessing this rare article of
vertu. “It is admirable work,” repeated he, drawing back. “That mosaic
floor, especially, is done with an art and skill that I never saw
equalled.”
There was something strange and altered in Middleton’s tones, that
attracted the notice of Mr. Eldredge. Looking at him, he saw that he had
grown pale, and had a rather bewildered air.
“Is your friend ill?” said he. “He has not our English ruggedness of
look. He would have done better to take a sip of the cool tankard, and a
slice of the cold beef. He finds no such food and drink as that in his
own country, I warrant.”
“His color has come back,” responded Hammond, briefly. “He does not need
any refreshment, I think, except, perhaps, the open air.”
In fact, Middleton, recovering himself, apologized to Mr. Hammond.
[Eldredge?]; and as they had now seen nearly the whole of the house, the
two visitants took their leave, with many kindly offers on Mr. Eldredge’s
part to permit the young man to view the cabinet whenever he wished. As
they went out of the house (it was by another door than that which gave
them entrance), Hammond laid his hand on Middleton’s shoulder and pointed
to a stone on the threshold, on which he was about to set his foot.
“Take care!” said he. “It is the Bloody Footstep.”
Middleton looked down and saw something, indeed, very like the shape of a
footprint, with a hue very like that of blood. It was a twilight sort of
a place, beneath a porch, which was much overshadowed by trees and
shrubbery. It might have been blood; but he rather thought, in his
wicked skepticism, that it was a natural, reddish stain in the stone. He
measured his own foot, however, in the Bloody Footstep.
May 10th, Monday.--This is the present aspect of the story: Middleton is
the descendant of a family long settled in the United States; his
ancestor having emigrated to New England with the Pilgrims; or, perhaps,
at a still earlier date, to Virginia with Raleigh’s colonists. There had
been a family dissension,--a bitter hostility between two brothers in
England; on account, probably, of a love affair, the two both being
attached to the same lady. By the influence of the family on both sides,
the young lady had formed an engagement with the elder brother, although
her affections had settled on the younger. The marriage was about to
take place when the younger brother and the bride both disappeared, and
were never heard of with any certainty afterwards; but it was believed at
the time that he had been killed, and in proof of it a bloody footstep
remained on the threshold of the ancestral mansion. There were rumors,
afterwards, traditionally continued to the present day, that the younger
brother and the bride were seen, and together, in England; and that some
voyager across the sea had found them living together, husband and wife,
on the other side of the Atlantic. But the elder brother became a moody
and reserved man, never married, and left the inheritance to the children
of a third brother, who then became the representative of the family in
England; and the better authenticated story was that the second brother
had really been slain, and that the young lady (for all the parties may
have been Catholic) had gone to the Continent and taken the veil there.
Such was the family history as known or surmised in England, and in the
neighborhood of the manor-house, where the Bloody Footstep still remained
on the threshold; and the posterity of the third brother still held the
estate, and perhaps were claimants of an ancient baronage, long in
abeyance.
Now, on the other side of the Atlantic, the second brother and the young
lady had really been married, and became the parents of a posterity,
still extant, of which the Middleton of the romance is the surviving
male. Perhaps he had changed his name, being so much tortured with the
evil and wrong that had sprung up in his family, so remorseful, so
outraged, that he wished to disconnect himself with all the past, and
begin life quite anew in a new world. But both he and his wife, though
happy in one another, had been remorsefully and sadly so; and, with such
feelings, they had never again communicated with their respective
families, nor had given their children the means of doing so. There
must, I think, have been something nearly approaching to guilt on the
second brother’s part, and the bride should have broken a solemnly
plighted troth to the elder brother, breaking away from him when almost
his wife. The elder brother had been known to have been wounded at the
time of the second brother’s disappearance; and it had been the surmise
that he had received this hurt in the personal conflict in which the
latter was slain. But in truth the second brother had stabbed him in the
emergency of being discovered in the act of escaping with the bride; and
this was what weighed upon his conscience throughout life in America.
The American family had prolonged itself through various fortunes, and
all the ups and downs incident to our institutions, until the present
day. They had some old family documents, which had been rather
carelessly kept; but the present representative, being an educated man,
had looked over them, and found one which interested him strongly. It
was--what was it?--perhaps a copy of a letter written by his ancestor on
his deathbed, telling his real name, and relating the above incidents.
These incidents had come down in a vague wild way, traditionally, in the
American family, forming a wondrous and incredible legend, which
Middleton had often laughed at, yet been greatly interested in; and the
discovery of this document seemed to give a certain aspect of veracity
and reality to the tradition. Perhaps, however, the document only
related to the change of name, and made reference to certain evidences by
which, if any descendant of the family should deem it expedient, he might
prove his hereditary identity. The legend must be accounted for by
having been gathered from the talk of the first ancestor and his wife.
There must be in existence, in the early records of the colony, an
authenticated statement of this change of name, and satisfactory proofs
that the American family, long known as Middleton, were really a branch
of the English family of Eldredge, or whatever. And in the legend,
though not in the written document, there must be an account of a certain
magnificent, almost palatial residence, which Middleton shall presume to
be the ancestral house; and in this palace there shall be said to be a
certain secret chamber, or receptacle, where is reposited a document that
shall complete the evidence of the genealogical descent.
Middleton is still a young man, but already a distinguished one in his
own country; he has entered early into politics, been sent to Congress,
but having met with some disappointments in his ambitious hopes, and
being disgusted with the fierceness of political contests in our country,
he has come abroad for recreation and rest. His imagination has dwelt
much, in his boyhood, on the legendary story of his family; and the
discovery of the document has revived these dreams. He determines to
search out the family mansion; and thus he arrives, bringing half of a
story, being the only part known in America, to join it on to the other
half, which is the only part known in England. In an introduction I must
do the best I can to state his side of the matter to the reader, he
having communicated it to me in a friendly way, at the Consulate; as many
people have communicated quite as wild pretensions to English
genealogies.
He comes to the midland counties of England, where he conceives his
claims to lie, and seeks for his ancestral home; but there are
difficulties in the way of finding it, the estates having passed into the
female line, though still remaining in the blood. By and by, however, he
comes to an old town where there is one of the charitable institutions
bearing the name of his family, by whose beneficence it had indeed been
founded, in Queen Elizabeth’s time. He of course becomes interested in
this Hospital; he finds it still going on, precisely as it did in the old
days; and all the character and life of the establishment must be
picturesquely described. Here he gets acquainted with an old man, an
inmate of the Hospital, who (if the uncontrollable fatality of the story
will permit) must have an active influence on the ensuing events. I
suppose him to have been an American, but to have fled his country and
taken refuge in England; he shall have been a man of the Nicholas Biddle
stamp, a mighty speculator, the ruin of whose schemes had crushed
hundreds of people, and Middleton’s father among the rest. Here he had
quitted the activity of his mind, as well as he could, becoming a local
antiquary, etc., and he has made himself acquainted with the family
history of the Eldredges, knowing more about it than the members of the
family themselves do. He had known in America (from Middleton’s father,
who was his friend) the legends preserved in this branch of the family,
and perhaps had been struck by the way in which they fit into the English
legends; at any rate, this strikes him when Middleton tells him his story
and shows him the document respecting the change of name. After various
conversations together (in which, however, the old man keeps the secret
of his own identity, and indeed acts as mysteriously as possible) they go
together to visit the ancestral mansion. Perhaps it should not be in
their first visit that the cabinet, representing the stately mansion,
shall be seen. But the Bloody Footstep may; which shall interest
Middleton much, both because Hammond has told him the English tradition
respecting it, and because too the legends of the American family made
some obscure allusions to his ancestor having left blood--a bloody
footstep--on the ancestral threshold. This is the point to which the
story has now been sketched out. Middleton finds a commonplace old
English country gentleman in possession of the estate, where his
forefathers had lived in peace for many generations; but there must be
circumstances contrived which shall cause Middleton’s conduct to be
attended by no end of turmoil and trouble. The old Hospitaller, I
suppose, must be the malicious agent in this; and his malice must be
motived in some satisfactory way. The more serious question, what shall
be the nature of this tragic trouble, and how can it be brought about?
May 11th, Tuesday.--How much better would it have been if this secret,
which seemed so golden, had remained in the obscurity in which two
hundred years had buried it! That deep, old, grass-grown grave being
opened, out from it streamed into the sunshine the old fatalities, the
old crimes, the old misfortunes, the sorrows, that seemed to have
departed from the family forever. But it was too late now to close it
up; he must follow out the thread that led him on,--the thread of fate,
if you choose to call it so; but rather the impulse of an evil will, a
stubborn self-interest, a desire for certain objects of ambition which
were preferred to what yet were recognized as real goods. Thus reasoned,
thus raved, Eldredge, as he considered the things that he had done, and
still intended to do; nor did these perceptions make the slightest
difference in his plans, nor in the activity with which he set about
their performance. For this purpose he sent for his lawyer, and
consulted him on the feasibility of the design which he had already
communicated to him respecting Middleton. But the man of law shook his
head, and, though deferentially, declined to have any active concern with
the matter that threatened to lead him beyond the bounds which he allowed
himself, into a seductive but perilous region.
“My dear sir,” said he, with some earnestness, “you had much better
content yourself with such assistance as I can professionally and
consistently give you. Believe [me], I am willing to do a lawyer’s
utmost, and to do more would be as unsafe for the client as for the legal
adviser.”
Thus left without an agent and an instrument, this unfortunate man had to
meditate on what means he would use to gain his ends through his own
unassisted efforts. In the struggle with himself through which he had
passed, he had exhausted pretty much all the feelings that he had to
bestow on this matter; and now he was ready to take hold of almost any
temptation that might present itself, so long as it showed a good
prospect of success and a plausible chance of impunity. While he was
thus musing, he heard a female voice chanting some song, like a bird’s
among the pleasant foliage of the trees, and soon he saw at the end of a
wood-walk Alice, with her basket on her arm, passing on toward the
village. She looked towards him as she passed, but made no pause nor yet
hastened her steps; not seeming to think it worth her while to be
influenced by him. He hurried forward and overtook her.
So there was this poor old gentleman, his comfort utterly overthrown,
decking his white hair and wrinkled brow with the semblance of a coronet,
and only hoping that the reality might crown and bless him before he was
laid in the ancestral tomb. It was a real calamity; though by no means
the greatest that had been fished up out of the pit of domestic discord
that had been opened anew by the advent of the American; and by the use
which had been made of it by the cantankerous old man of the Hospital.
Middleton, as he looked at these evil consequences, sometimes regretted
that he had not listened to those forebodings which had warned him back
on the eve of his enterprise; yet such was the strange entanglement and
interest which had wound about him, that often he rejoiced that for once
he was engaged in something that absorbed him fully, and the zeal for the
development of which made him careless for the result in respect to its
good or evil, but only desirous that it show itself. As for Alice, she
seemed to skim lightly through all these matters, whether as a spirit of
good or ill he could not satisfactorily judge. He could not think her
wicked; yet her actions seemed unaccountable on the plea that she was
otherwise. It was another characteristic thread in the wild web of
madness that had spun itself about all the prominent characters of our
story. And when Middleton thought of these things, he felt as if it
might be his duty (supposing he had the power) to shovel the earth again
into the pit that he had been the means of opening; but also felt that,
whether duty or not, he would never perform it.
For, you see, on the American’s arrival he had found the estate in the
hands of one of the descendants; but some disclosures consequent on his
arrival had thrown it into the hands of another; or, at all events, had
seemed to make it apparent that justice required that it should be so
disposed of. No sooner was the discovery made than the possessor put on
a coronet; the new heir had commenced legal proceedings; the sons of the
respective branches had come to blows and blood; and the devil knows what
other devilish consequences had ensued. Besides this, there was much
falling in love at cross-purposes, and a general animosity of every body
against everybody else, in proportion to the closeness of the natural
ties and their obligation to love one another.
The moral, if any moral were to be gathered from these petty and wretched
circumstances, was, “Let the past alone: do not seek to renew it; press
on to higher and better things,--at all events, to other things; and be
assured that the right way can never be that which leads you back to the
identical shapes that you long ago left behind. Onward, onward, onward!”
“What have you to do here?” said Alice. “Your lot is in another land.
You have seen the birthplace of your forefathers, and have gratified your
natural yearning for it; now return, and cast in your lot with your own
people, let it be what it will. I fully believe that it is such a lot as
the world has never yet seen, and that the faults, the weaknesses, the
errors, of your countrymen will vanish away like morning mists before the
rising sun. You can do nothing better than to go back.”
“This is strange advice, Alice,” said Middleton, gazing at her and
smiling. “Go back, with such a fair prospect before me; that were
strange indeed! It is enough to keep me here, that here only I shall see
you,--enough to make me rejoice to have come, that I have found you
here.”
“Do not speak in this foolish way,” cried Alice, panting. “I am giving
you the best advice, and speaking in the wisest way I am capable of,--
speaking on good grounds too,--and you turn me aside with a silly
compliment. I tell you that this is no comedy in which we are
performers, but a deep, sad tragedy; and that it depends most upon you
whether or no it shall be pressed to a catastrophe. Think well of it.”
“I have thought, Alice,” responded the young man, “and I must let things
take their course; if, indeed, it depends at all upon me, which I see no
present reason to suppose. Yet I wish you would explain to me what you
mean.”
To take up the story from the point where we left it: by the aid of the
American’s revelations, some light is thrown upon points of family
history, which induce the English possessor of the estate to suppose that
the time has come for asserting his claim to a title which has long been
in abeyance. He therefore sets about it, and engages in great expenses,
besides contracting the enmity of many persons, with whose interests he
interferes. A further complication is brought about by the secret
interference of the old Hospitaller, and Alice goes singing and dancing
through the whole, in a way that makes her seem like a beautiful devil,
though finally it will be recognized that she is an angel of light.
Middleton, half bewildered, can scarcely tell how much of this is due to
his own agency; how much is independent of him and would have happened
had he stayed on his own side of the water. By and by a further and
unexpected development presents the singular fact that he himself is the
heir to whatever claims there are, whether of property or rank,--all
centring in him as the representative of the eldest brother. On this
discovery there ensues a tragedy in the death of the present possessor of
the estate, who has staked everything upon the issue; and Middleton,
standing amid the ruin and desolation of which he has been the innocent
cause, resigns all the claims which he might now assert, and retires, arm
in arm with Alice, who has encouraged him to take this course, and to act
up to his character. The estate takes a passage into the female line,
and the old name becomes extinct, nor does Middleton seek to continue it
by resuming it in place of the one long ago assumed by his ancestor.
Thus he and his wife become the Adam and Eve of a new epoch, and the
fitting missionaries of a new social faith, of which there must be
continual hints through the book.
A knot of characters may be introduced as gathering around Middleton,
comprising expatriated Americans of all sorts: the wandering printer who
came to me so often at the Consulate, who said he was a native of
Philadelphia, and could not go home in the thirty years that he had been
trying to do so, for lack of the money to pay his passage; the large
banker; the consul of Leeds; the woman asserting her claims to half
Liverpool; the gifted literary lady, maddened by Shakespeare, etc., etc.
The Yankee who had been driven insane by the Queen’s notice, slight as it
was, of the photographs of his two children which he had sent her. I
have not yet struck the true key-note of this Romance, and until I do,
and unless I do, I shall write nothing but tediousness and nonsense. I
do not wish it to be a picture of life, but a Romance, grim, grotesque,
quaint, of which the Hospital might be the fitting scene. It might have
so much of the hues of life that the reader should sometimes think it was
intended for a picture, yet the atmosphere should be such as to excuse
all wildness. In the Introduction, I might disclaim all intention to
draw a real picture, but say that the continual meetings I had with
Americans bent on such errands had suggested this wild story. The
descriptions of scenery, etc., and of the Hospital, might be correct, but
there should be a tinge of the grotesque given to all the characters and
events. The tragic and the gentler pathetic need not be excluded by the
tone and treatment. If I could but write one central scene in this vein,
all the rest of the Romance would readily arrange itself around that
nucleus. The begging-girl would be another American character; the
actress too; the caravan people. It must be humorous work, or nothing.
III.
May 12th, Wednesday.--Middleton found his abode here becoming daily more
interesting; and he sometimes thought that it was the sympathies with the
place and people, buried under the supergrowth of so many ages, but now
coming forth with the life and vigor of a fountain, that, long hidden
beneath earth and ruins, gushes out singing into the sunshine, as soon as
these are removed. He wandered about the neighborhood with insatiable
interest; sometimes, and often, lying on a hill-side and gazing at the
gray tower of the church; sometimes coming into the village clustered
round that same church, and looking at the old timber and plaster houses,
the same, except that the thatch had probably been often renewed, that
they used to be in his ancestor’s days. In those old cottages still
dwelt the families, the ------s, the Prices, the Hopnorts, the Copleys,
that had dwelt there when America was a scattered progeny of infant
colonies; and in the churchyard were the graves of all the generations
since--including the dust of those who had seen his ancestor’s face
before his departure.
The graves, outside the church walls indeed, bore no marks of this
antiquity; for it seems not to have been an early practice in England to
put stones over such graves; and where it has been done, the climate
causes the inscriptions soon to become obliterated and unintelligible.
But, within the church, there were rich words of the personages and times
with whom Middleton’s musings held so much converse.
But one of his greatest employments and pastimes was to ramble through
the grounds of Smithell’s, making himself as well acquainted with its
wood paths, its glens, its woods, its venerable trees, as if he had been
bred up there from infancy. Some of those old oaks his ancestor might
have been acquainted with, while they were already sturdy and well-grown
trees; might have climbed them in boyhood; might have mused beneath them
as a lover; might have flung himself at full length on the turf beneath
them, in the bitter anguish that must have preceded his departure forever
from the home of his forefathers. In order to secure an uninterrupted
enjoyment of his rambles here, Middleton had secured the good-will of the
game-keepers and other underlings whom he was likely to meet about the
grounds, by giving them a shilling or a half-crown; and he was now free
to wander where he would, with only the advice rather than the caution,
to keep out of the way of their old master,--for there might be trouble,
if he should meet a stranger on the grounds, in any of his tantrums.
But, in fact, Mr. Eldredge was not much in the habit of walking about the
grounds; and there were hours of every day, during which it was
altogether improbable that he would have emerged from his own apartments
in the manor-house. These were the hours, therefore, when Middleton most
frequented the estate; although, to say the truth, he would gladly have
so timed his visits as to meet and form an acquaintance with the lonely
lord of this beautiful property, his own kinsman, though with so many
ages of dark oblivion between. For Middleton had not that feeling of
infinite distance in the relationship, which he would have had if his
branch of the family had continued in England, and had not intermarried
with the other branch, through such a long waste of years; he rather felt
as if he were the original emigrant who, long resident on a foreign
shore, had now returned, with a heart brimful of tenderness, to revisit
the scenes of his youth, and renew his tender relations with those who
shared his own blood.
There was not, however, much in what he heard of the character of the
present possessor of the estate--or indeed in the strong family
characteristic that had become hereditary--to encourage him to attempt
any advances. It is very probable that the religion of Mr. Eldredge, as
a Catholic, may have excited a prejudice against him, as it certainly had
insulated the family, in a great degree, from the sympathies of the
neighborhood. Mr. Eldredge, moreover, had resided long on the Continent;
long in Italy; and had come back with habits that little accorded with
those of the gentry of the neighborhood; so that, in fact, he was almost
as much of a stranger, and perhaps quite as little of a real Englishman,
as Middleton himself. Be that as it might, Middleton, when he sought to
learn something about him, heard the strangest stories of his habits of
life, of his temper, and of his employments, from the people with whom he
conversed. The old legend, turning upon the monomania of the family, was
revived in full force in reference to this poor gentleman; and many a
time Middleton’s interlocutors shook their wise heads, saying with a
knowing look and under their breath that the old gentleman was looking
for the track of the Bloody Footstep. They fabled--or said, for it might
not have been a false story--that every descendant of this house had a
certain portion of his life, during which he sought the track of that
footstep which was left on the threshold of the mansion; that he sought
it far and wide, over every foot of the estate; not only on the estate,
but throughout the neighborhood; not only in the neighborhood but all
over England; not only throughout England but all about the world. It
was the belief of the neighborhood--at least of some old men and women in
it--that the long period of Mr. Eldredge’s absence from England had been
spent in the search for some trace of those departing footsteps that had
never returned. It is very possible--probable, indeed--that there may
have been some ground for this remarkable legend; not that it is to be
credited that the family of Eldredge, being reckoned among sane men,
would seriously have sought, years and generations after the fact, for
the first track of those bloody footsteps which the first rain of drippy
England must have washed away; to say nothing of the leaves that had
fallen and the growth and decay of so many seasons, that covered all
traces of them since. But nothing is more probable than that the
continual recurrence to the family genealogy, which had been necessitated
by the matter of the dormant peerage, had caused the Eldredges, from
father to son, to keep alive an interest in that ancestor who had
disappeared, and who had been supposed to carry some of the most
important family papers with him. But yet it gave Middleton a strange
thrill of pleasure, that had something fearful in it, to think that all
through these ages he had been waited for, sought for, anxiously
expected, as it were; it seemed as if the very ghosts of his kindred, a
long shadowy line, held forth their dim arms to welcome him; a line
stretching back to the ghosts of those who had flourished in the old, old
times; the doubletted and beruffled knightly shades of Queen Elizabeth’s
time; a long line, stretching from the mediaeval ages, and their
duskiness, downward, downward, with only one vacant space, that of him
who had left the Bloody Footstep. There was an inexpressible pleasure
(airy and evanescent, gone in a moment if he dwelt upon it too
thoughtfully, but very sweet) to Middleton’s imagination, in this idea.
When he reflected, however, that his revelations, if they had any effect
at all, might serve only to quench the hopes of these long expectants, it
of course made him hesitate to declare himself.
One afternoon, when he was in the midst of musings such as this, he saw
at a distance through the park, in the direction of the manor-house, a
person who seemed to be walking slowly and seeking for something upon the
ground. He was a long way off when Middleton first perceived him; and
there were two clumps of trees and underbrush, with interspersed tracts
of sunny lawn, between them. The person, whoever he was, kept on, and
plunged into the first clump of shrubbery, still keeping his eyes on the
ground, as if intensely searching for something. When he emerged from
the concealment of the first clump of shrubbery, Middleton saw that he
was a tall, thin person, in a dark dress; and this was the chief
observation that the distance enabled him to make, as the figure kept
slowly onward, in a somewhat wavering line, and plunged into the second
clump of shrubbery. From that, too, he emerged; and soon appeared to be
a thin elderly figure, of a dark man with gray hair, bent, as it seemed
to Middleton, with infirmity, for his figure still stooped even in the
intervals when he did not appear to be tracking the ground. But
Middleton could not but be surprised at the singular appearance the
figure had of setting its foot, at every step, just where a previous
footstep had been made, as if he wanted to measure his whole pathway in
the track of somebody who had recently gone over the ground in advance of
him. Middleton was sitting at the foot of an oak; and he began to feel
some awkwardness in the consideration of what he would do if Mr.
Eldredge--for he could not doubt that it was he--were to be led just to
this spot, in pursuit of his singular occupation. And even so it proved.
Middleton could not feel it manly to fly and hide himself, like a guilty
thing; and indeed the hospitality of the English country gentleman in
many cases gives the neighborhood and the stranger a certain degree of
freedom in the use of the broad expanse of ground in which they and their
forefathers have loved to sequester their residences. The figure kept
on, showing more and more distinctly the tall, meagre, not unvenerable
features of a gentleman in the decline of life, apparently in ill-health;
with a dark face, that might once have been full of energy, but now
seemed enfeebled by time, passion, and perhaps sorrow. But it was
strange to see the earnestness with which he looked on the ground, and
the accuracy with which he at last set his foot, apparently adjusting it
exactly to some footprint before him; and Middleton doubted not that,
having studied and restudied the family records and the judicial
examinations which described exactly the track that was seen the day
after the memorable disappearance of his ancestor, Mr. Eldredge was now,
in some freak, or for some purpose best known to himself, practically
following it out. And follow it out he did, until at last he lifted up
his eyes, muttering to himself: “At this point the footsteps wholly
disappear.”
Lifting his eyes, as we have said, while thus regretfully and
despairingly muttering these words, he saw Middleton against the oak,
within three paces of him.
May 13th, Thursday.--Mr. Eldredge (for it was he) first kept his eyes
fixed full on Middleton’s face, with an expression as if he saw him not;
but gradually--slowly, at first--he seemed to become aware of his
presence; then, with a sudden flush, he took in the idea that he was
encountered by a stranger in his secret mood. A flush of anger or shame,
perhaps both, reddened over his face; his eyes gleamed; and he spoke
hastily and roughly.
“Who are you?” he said. “How come you here? I allow no intruders in my
park. Begone, fellow!”
“Really, sir, I did not mean to intrude upon you,” said Middleton
blandly. “I am aware that I owe you an apology; but the beauties of your
park must plead my excuse; and the constant kindness of [the] English
gentleman, which admits a stranger to the privilege of enjoying so much
of the beauty in which he himself dwells as the stranger’s taste permits
him to enjoy.”
“An artist, perhaps,” said Mr. Eldredge, somewhat less uncourteously. “I
am told that they love to come here and sketch those old oaks and their
vistas, and the old mansion yonder. But you are an obtrusive set, you
artists, and think that a pencil and a sheet of paper may be your
passport anywhere. You are mistaken, sir. My park is not open to
strangers.”
“I am sorry, then, to have intruded upon you,” said Middleton, still in
good humor; for in truth he felt a sort of kindness, a sentiment,
ridiculous as it may appear, of kindred towards the old gentleman, and
besides was not unwilling in any way to prolong a conversation in which
he found a singular interest. “I am sorry, especially as I have not even
the excuse you kindly suggest for me. I am not an artist, only an
American, who have strayed hither to enjoy this gentle, cultivated, tamed
nature which I find in English parks, so contrasting with the wild,
rugged nature of my native land. I beg your pardon, and will retire.”
“An American,” repeated Mr. Eldredge, looking curiously at him. “Ah, you
are wild men in that country, I suppose, and cannot conceive that an
English gentleman encloses his grounds--or that his ancestors have done
so before him--for his own pleasure and convenience, and does not
calculate on having it infringed upon by everybody, like your own
forests, as you say. It is a curious country, that of yours: and in
Italy I have seen curious people from it.”
“True, sir,” said Middleton, smiling. “We send queer specimens abroad;
but Englishmen should consider that we spring from them, and that we
present after all only a picture of their own characteristics, a little
varied by climate and in situation.”
Mr. Eldredge looked at him with a certain kind of interest, and it seemed
to Middleton that he was not unwilling to continue the conversation, if a
fair way to do so could only be afforded to him. A secluded man often
grasps at any opportunity of communicating with his kind, when it is
casually offered to him, and for the nonce is surprisingly familiar,
running out towards his chance-companion with the gush of a dammed-up
torrent, suddenly unlocked. As Middleton made a motion to retire, he put
out his hand with an air of authority to restrain him.
“Stay,” said he. “Now that you are here, the mischief is done, and you
cannot repair it by hastening away. You have interrupted me in my mood
of thought, and must pay the penalty by suggesting other thoughts. I am
a lonely man here, having spent most of my life abroad, and am separated
from my neighbors by various circumstances. You seem to be an
intelligent man. I should like to ask you a few questions about your
country.”
He looked at Middleton as he spoke, and seemed to be considering in what
rank of life he should place him; his dress being such as suited a humble
rank. He seemed not to have come to any very certain decision on this
point.
“I remember,” said he, “you have no distinctions of rank in your country;
a convenient thing enough, in some respects. When there are no
gentlemen, all are gentlemen. So let it be. You speak of being
Englishmen; and it has often occurred to me that Englishmen have left
this country and been much missed and sought after, who might perhaps be
sought there successfully.”
“It is certainly so, Mr. Eldredge,” said Middleton, lifting his eyes to
his face as he spoke, and then turning them aside. “Many footsteps, the
track of which is lost in England, might be found reappearing on the
other side of the Atlantic; ay, though it be hundreds of years since the
track was lost here.”
Middleton, though he had refrained from looking full at Mr. Eldredge as
he spoke, was conscious that he gave a great start; and he remained
silent for a moment or two, and when he spoke there was the tremor in his
voice of a nerve that had been struck and still vibrated.
“That is a singular idea of yours,” he at length said; “not singular in
itself, but strangely coincident with something that happened to be
occupying my mind. Have you ever heard any such instances as you speak
of?”
“Yes,” replied Middleton, “I have had pointed out to me the rightful heir
to a Scottish earldom, in the person of an American farmer, in his
shirt-sleeves. There are many Americans who believe themselves to hold
similar claims. And I have known one family, at least, who had in their
possession, and had had for two centuries, a secret that might have been
worth wealth and honors if known in England. Indeed, being kindred as we
are, it cannot but be the case.”
Mr. Eldredge appeared to be much struck by these last words, and gazed
wistfully, almost wildly, at Middleton, as if debating with himself
whether to say more. He made a step or two aside; then returned
abruptly, and spoke.
“Can you tell me the name of the family in which this secret was kept?”
said he; “and the nature of the secret?”
“The nature of the secret,” said Middleton, smiling, “was not likely to
be extended to any one out of the family. The name borne by the family
was Middleton. There is no member of it, so far as I am aware, at this
moment remaining in America.”
“And has the secret died with them?” asked Mr. Eldredge.
“They communicated it to none,” said Middleton.
“It is a pity! It was a villainous wrong,” said Mr. Eldredge. “And so,
it may be, some ancient line, in the old country, is defrauded of its
rights for want of what might have been obtained from this Yankee, whose
democracy has demoralized them to the perception of what is due to the
antiquity of descent, and of the bounden duty that there is, in all
ranks, to keep up the honor of a family that has had potence enough to
preserve itself in distinction for a thousand years.”
“Yes,” said Middleton, quietly, “we have sympathy with what is strong and
vivacious to-day; none with what was so yesterday.”
The remark seemed not to please Mr. Eldredge; he frowned, and muttered
something to himself; but recovering himself, addressed Middleton with
more courtesy than at the commencement of their interview; and, with this
graciousness, his face and manner grew very agreeable, almost
fascinating: he [was] still haughty, however.
“Well, sir,” said he, “I am not sorry to have met you. I am a solitary
man, as I have said, and a little communication with a stranger is a
refreshment, which I enjoy seldom enough to be sensible of it. Pray, are
you staying hereabouts?”
Middleton signified to him that he might probably spend some little time
in the village.
“Then, during your stay,” maid Mr. Eldredge, “make free use of the walks
in these grounds; and though it is not probable that you will meet me in
them again, you need apprehend no second questioning of your right to be
here. My house has many points of curiosity that may be of interest to a
stranger from a new country. Perhaps you have heard of some of them.”
“I have heard some wild legend about a Bloody Footstep,” answered
Middleton; “indeed, I think I remember hearing something about it in my
own country; and having a fanciful sort of interest in such things, I
took advantage of the hospitable custom which opens the doors of curious
old houses to strangers, to go to see it. It seemed to me, I confess,
only a natural stain in the old stone that forms the doorstep.”
“There, sir,” said Mr. Eldredge, “let me say that you came to a very
foolish conclusion; and so, good-by, sir.”
And without further ceremony, he cast an angry glance at Middleton, who
perceived that the old gentleman reckoned the Bloody Footstep among his
ancestral honors, and would probably have parted with his claim to the
peerage almost as soon as have given up the legend.
Present aspect of the story: Middleton on his arrival becomes acquainted
with the old Hospitaller, and is familiarized at the Hospital. He pays a
visit in his company to the manor-house, but merely glimpses at its
remarkable things, at this visit, among others at the old cabinet, which
does not, at first view, strike him very strongly. But, on musing about
his visit afterwards, he finds the recollection of the cabinet strangely
identifying itself with his previous imaginary picture of the palatial
mansion; so that at last he begins to conceive the mistake he has made.
At this first [visit], he does not have a personal interview with the
possessor of the estate; but, as the Hospitaller and himself go from room
to room, he finds that the owner is preceding them, shyly flitting like a
ghost, so as to avoid them. Then there is a chapter about the character
of the Eldredge of the day, a Catholic, a morbid, shy man, representing
all the peculiarities of an old family, and generally thought to be
insane. And then comes the interview between him and Middleton, where
the latter excites such an interest that he dwells upon the old man’s
mind, and the latter probably takes pains to obtain further intercourse
with him, and perhaps invites him to dinner, and [to] spend a night in
his house. If so, this second meeting must lead to the examination of
the cabinet, and the discovery of some family documents in it. Perhaps
the cabinet may be in Middleton’s sleeping-chamber, and he examines it by
himself, before going to bed; and finds out a secret which will perplex
him how to deal with it.
May 14th, Friday.--We have spoken several times already of a young girl,
who was seen at this period about the little antiquated village of
Smithells; a girl in manners and in aspect unlike those of the cottages
amid which she dwelt. Middleton had now so often met her, and in
solitary places, that an acquaintance had inevitably established itself
between them. He had ascertained that she had lodgings at a farm-house
near by, and that she was connected in some way with the old Hospitaller,
whose acquaintance had proved of such interest to him; but more than this
he could not learn either from her or others. But he was greatly
attracted and interested by the free spirit and fearlessness of this
young woman; nor could he conceive where, in staid and formal England,
she had grown up to be such as she was, so without manner, so without
art, yet so capable of doing and thinking for herself. She had no
reserve, apparently, yet never seemed to sin against decorum; it never
appeared to restrain her that anything she might wish to do was contrary
to custom; she had nothing of what could be called shyness in her
intercourse with him; and yet he was conscious of an unapproachableness
in Alice. Often, in the old man’s presence, she mingled in the
conversation that went on between him and Middleton, and with an
acuteness that betokened a sphere of thought much beyond what could be
customary with young English maidens; and Middleton was often reminded of
the theories of those in our own country, who believe that the
amelioration of society depends greatly on the part that women shall
hereafter take, according to their individual capacity, in all the
various pursuits of life. These deeper thoughts, these higher qualities,
surprised him as they showed themselves, whenever occasion called them
forth, under the light, gay, and frivolous exterior which she had at
first seemed to present. Middleton often amused himself with surmises in
what rank of life Alice could have been bred, being so free of all
conventional rule, yet so nice and delicate in her perception of the true
proprieties that she never shocked him.
One morning, when they had met in one of Middleton’s rambles about the
neighborhood, they began to talk of America; and Middleton described to
Alice the stir that was being made in behalf of women’s rights; and he
said that whatever cause was generous and disinterested always, in that
country, derived much of its power from the sympathy of women, and that
the advocates of every such cause were in favor of yielding the whole
field of human effort to be shared with women.
“I have been surprised,” said he, “in the little I have seen and heard of
Englishwomen, to discover what a difference there is between them and my
own countrywomen.”
“I have heard,” said Alice, with a smile, “that your countrywomen are a
far more delicate and fragile race than Englishwomen; pale, feeble
hot-house plants, unfit for the wear and tear of life, without energy of
character, or any slightest degree of physical strength to base it upon.
If, now, you had these large-framed Englishwomen, you might, I should
imagine, with better hopes, set about changing the system of society, so
as to allow them to struggle in the strife of politics, or any other
strife, hand to hand, or side by side, with men.”
“If any countryman of mine has said this of our women,” exclaimed
Middleton, indignantly, “he is a slanderous villain, unworthy to have
been borne by an American mother; if an Englishman has said it--as I know
many of them have and do--let it pass as one of the many prejudices only
half believed, with which they strive to console themselves for the
inevitable sense that the American race is destined to higher purposes
than their own. But pardon me; I forgot that I was speaking to an
Englishwoman, for indeed you do not remind me of them. But, I assure
you, the world has not seen such women as make up, I had almost said the
mass of womanhood in my own country; slight in aspect, slender in frame,
as you suggest, but yet capable of bringing forth stalwart men; they
themselves being of inexhaustible courage, patience, energy; soft and
tender, deep of heart, but high of purpose. Gentle, refined, but bold in
every good cause.”
“Oh, you have said quite enough,” replied Alice, who had seemed ready to
laugh outright, during this encomium. “I think I see one of those
paragons now, in a Bloomer, I think you call it, swaggering along with a
Bowie knife at her girdle, smoking a cigar, no doubt, and tippling
sherry-cobblers and mint-juleps. It must be a pleasant life.”
“I should think you, at least, might form a more just idea of what women
become,” said Middleton, considerably piqued, “in a country where the
roles of conventionalism are somewhat relaxed; where woman, whatever you
may think, is far more profoundly educated than in England, where a few
ill-taught accomplishments, a little geography, a catechism of science,
make up the sum, under the superintendence of a governess; the mind being
kept entirely inert as to any capacity for thought. They are cowards,
except within certain rules and forms; they spend a life of old
proprieties, and die, and if their souls do not die with them, it is
Heaven’s mercy.”
Alice did not appear in the least moved to anger, though considerably to
mirth, by this description of the character of English females. She
laughed as she replied, “I see there is little danger of your leaving
your heart in England.” She added more seriously, “And permit me to say,
I trust, Mr. Middleton, that you remain as much American in other
respects as in your preference of your own race of women. The American
who comes hither and persuades himself that he is one with Englishmen, it
seems to me, makes a great mistake; at least, if he is correct in such an
idea he is not worthy of his own country, and the high development that
awaits it. There is much that is seductive in our life, but I think it
is not upon the higher impulses of our nature that such seductions act.
I should think ill of the American who, for any causes of ambition,--any
hope of wealth or rank,--or even for the sake of any of those old,
delightful ideas of the past, the associations of ancestry, the
loveliness of an age-long home,--the old poetry and romance that haunt
these ancient villages and estates of England,--would give up the chance
of acting upon the unmoulded future of America.”
“And you, an Englishwoman, speak thus!” exclaimed Middleton. “You
perhaps speak truly; and it may be that your words go to a point where
they are especially applicable at this moment. But where have you
learned these ideas? And how is it that you know how to awake these
sympathies, that have slept perhaps too long?”
“Think only if what I have said be the truth,” replied Alice. “It is no
matter who or what I am that speak it.”
“Do you speak,” asked Middleton, from a sudden impulse, “with any secret
knowledge affecting a matter now in my mind?”
Alice shook her head, as she turned away; but Middleton could not
determine whether the gesture was meant as a negative to his question, or
merely as declining to answer it. She left him; and he found himself
strangely disturbed with thoughts of his own country, of the life that he
ought to be leading there, the struggles in which he ought to be taking
part; and, with these motives in his impressible mind, the motives that
had hitherto kept him in England seemed unworthy to influence him.
May 15th, Saturday.--It was not long after Middleton’s meeting with Mr.
Eldredge in the park of Smithell’s, that he received--what it is
precisely the most common thing to receive--an invitation to dine at the
manor-house and spend the night. The note was written with much
appearance of cordiality, as well as in a respectful style; and Middleton
could not but perceive that Mr. Eldredge must have been making some
inquiries as to his social status, in order to feel him justified in
putting him on this footing of equality. He had no hesitation in
accepting the invitation, and on the appointed day was received in the
old house of his forefathers as a guest. The owner met him, not quite on
the frank and friendly footing expressed in his note, but still with a
perfect and polished courtesy, which however could not hide from the
sensitive Middleton a certain coldness, a something that seemed to him
Italian rather than English; a symbol of a condition of things between
them, undecided, suspicious, doubtful very likely. Middleton’s own
manner corresponded to that of his host, and they made few advances
towards more intimate acquaintance. Middleton was however recompensed
for his host’s unapproachableness by the society of his daughter, a young
lady born indeed in Italy, but who had been educated in a Catholic family
in England; so that here was another relation--the first female one--to
whoa he had been introduced. She was a quiet, shy, undemonstrative young
woman, with a fine bloom and other charms which she kept as much in the
background as possible, with maiden reserve. (There is a Catholic priest
at table.)
Mr. Eldredge talked chiefly, during dinner, of art, with which his long
residence in Italy had made him thoroughly acquainted, and for which he
seemed to have a genuine taste and enjoyment. It was a subject on which
Middleton knew little; but he felt the interest in it which appears to be
not uncharacteristic of Americans, among the earliest of their
developments of cultivation; nor had he failed to use such few
opportunities as the English public or private galleries offered him to
acquire the rudiments of a taste. He was surprised at the depth of some
of Mr. Eldredge’s remarks on the topics thus brought up, and at the
sensibility which appeared to be disclosed by his delicate appreciation
of some of the excellencies of those great masters who wrote their epics,
their tender sonnets, or their simple ballads, upon canvas; and Middleton
conceived a respect for him which he had not hitherto felt, and which
possibly Mr. Eldredge did not quite deserve. Taste seems to be a
department of moral sense; and yet it is so little identical with it, and
so little implies conscience, that some of the worst men in the world
have been the most refined.
After Miss Eldredge had retired, the host appeared to desire to make the
dinner a little more social than it had hitherto been; he called for a
peculiar species of wine from Southern Italy, which he said was the most
delicious production of the grape, and had very seldom, if ever before,
been imported pure into England. A delicious perfume came from the
cradled bottle, and bore an ethereal, evanescent testimony to the truth
of what he said: and the taste, though too delicate for wine quaffed in
England, was nevertheless delicious, when minutely dwelt upon.
“It gives me pleasure to drink your health, Mr. Middleton,” said the
host. “We might well meet as friends in England, for I am hardly more an
Englishman than yourself; bred up, as I have been, in Italy, and coming
back hither at my age, unaccustomed to the manners of the country, with
few friends, and insulated from society by a faith which makes most
people regard me as an enemy. I seldom welcome people here, Mr.
Middleton; but you are welcome.”
“I thank you, Mr. Eldredge, and may fairly say that the circumstances to
which you allude make me accept your hospitality with a warmer feeling
than I otherwise might. Strangers, meeting in a strange land, have a
sort of tie in their foreignness to those around them, though there be no
positive relation between themselves.”
“We are friends, then?” said Mr. Eldredge, looking keenly at Middleton,
as if to discover exactly how much was meant by the compact. He
continued, “You know, I suppose, Mr. Middleton, the situation in which I
find myself on returning to my hereditary estate; which has devolved to
me somewhat unexpectedly by the death of a younger man than myself.
There is an old flaw here, as perhaps you have been told, which keeps me
out of a property long kept in the guardianship of the crown, and of a
barony, one of the oldest in England. There is an idea--a tradition--a
legend, founded, however, on evidence of some weight, that there is still
in existence the possibility of finding the proof which we need, to
confirm our cause.”
“I am most happy to hear it, Mr. Eldredge,” said Middleton.
“But,” continued his host, “I am bound to remember and to consider that
for several generations there seems to have been the same idea, and the
same expectation; whereas nothing has ever come of it. Now, among other
suppositions--perhaps wild ones--it has occurred to me that this
testimony, the desirable proof, may exist on your side of the Atlantic;
for it has long enough been sought here in vain.”
“As I said in our meeting in your park, Mr. Eldredge,” replied Middleton,
“such a suggestion may very possibly be true; yet let me point out that
the long lapse of years, and the continual melting and dissolving of
family institutions--the consequent scattering of family documents, and
the annihilation of traditions from memory, all conspire against its
probability.”
“And yet, Mr. Middleton,” said his host, “when we talked together at our
first singular interview, you made use of an expression--of one
remarkable phrase--which dwelt upon my memory and now recurs to it.”
“And what was that, Mr. Eldredge?” asked Middleton.
“You spoke,” replied his host, “of the Bloody Footstep reappearing on the
threshold of the old palace of S------. Now where, let me ask you, did
you ever hear this strange name, which you then spoke, and which I have
since spoken?”
“From my father’s lips, when a child, in America,” responded Middleton.
“It is very strange,” said Mr. Eldredge, in a hasty, dissatisfied tone.
“I do not see my way through this.”
May 16th, Sunday.--Middleton had been put into a chamber in the oldest
part of the house, the furniture of which was of antique splendor, well
befitting to have come down for ages, well befitting the hospitality
shown to noble and even royal guests. It was the same room in which, at
his first visit to the house, Middleton’s attention had been drawn to the
cabinet, which he had subsequently remembered as the palatial residence
in which he had harbored so many dreams. It still stood in the chamber,
making the principal object in it, indeed; and when Middleton was left
alone, he contemplated it not without a certain awe, which at the same
time he felt to be ridiculous. He advanced towards it, and stood
contemplating the mimic facade, wondering at the singular fact of this
piece of furniture having been preserved in traditionary history, when so
much had been forgotten,--when even the features and architectural
characteristics of the mansion in which it was merely a piece of
furniture had been forgotten. And, as he gazed at it, he half thought
himself an actor in a fairy portal [tale?]; and would not have been
surprised--at least, he would have taken it with the composure of a
dream--if the mimic portal had unclosed, and a form of pigmy majesty had
appeared within, beckoning him to enter and find the revelation of what
had so long perplexed him. The key of the cabinet was in the lock, and
knowing that it was not now the receptacle of anything in the shape of
family papers, he threw it open; and there appeared the mosaic floor, the
representation of a stately, pillared hall, with the doors on either side
opening, as would seem, into various apartments. And here should have
stood the visionary figures of his ancestry, waiting to welcome the
descendant of their race, who had so long delayed his coming. After
looking and musing a considerable time,--even till the old clock from the
turret of the house told twelve, he turned away with a sigh, and went to
bed. The wind moaned through the ancestral trees; the old house creaked
as with ghostly footsteps; the curtains of his bed seemed to waver. He
was now at home; yes, he had found his home, and was sheltered at last
under the ancestral roof after all those long, long wanderings,--after
the little log-built hut of the early settlement, after the straight roof
of the American house, after all the many roofs of two hundred years,
here he was at last under the one which he had left, on that fatal night,
when the Bloody Footstep was so mysteriously impressed on the threshold.
As he drew nearer and nearer towards sleep, it seemed more and more to
him as if he were the very individual--the self-same one throughout the
whole--who had done, seen, suffered, all these long toils and
vicissitudes, and were now come back to rest, and found his weariness so
great that there could be no rest.
Nevertheless, he did sleep; and it may be that his dreams went on, and
grew vivid, and perhaps became truer in proportion to their vividness.
When he awoke he had a perception, an intuition, that he had been
dreaming about the cabinet, which, in his sleeping imagination, had again
assumed the magnitude and proportions of a stately mansion, even as he
had seen it afar from the other side of the Atlantic. Some dim
associations remained lingering behind, the dying shadows of very vivid
ones which had just filled his mind; but as he looked at the cabinet,
there was some idea that still seemed to come so near his consciousness
that, every moment, he felt on the point of grasping it. During the
process of dressing, he still kept his eyes turned involuntarily towards
the cabinet, and at last he approached it, and looked within the mimic
portal, still endeavoring to recollect what it was that he had heard or
dreamed about it,--what half obliterated remembrance from childhood, what
fragmentary last night’s dream it was, that thus haunted him. It must
have been some association of one or the other nature that led him to
press his finger on one particular square of the mosaic pavement; and as
he did so, the thin plate of polished marble slipt aside. It disclosed,
indeed, no hollow receptacle, but only another leaf of marble, in the
midst of which appeared to be a key-hole: to this Middleton applied the
little antique key to which we have several times alluded, and found it
fit precisely. The instant it was turned, the whole mimic floor of the
hall rose, by the action of a secret spring, and discovered a shallow
recess beneath. Middleton looked eagerly in, and saw that it contained
documents, with antique seals of wax appended; he took but one glance at
them, and closed the receptacle as it was before.
Why did he do so? He felt that there would be a meanness and wrong in
inspecting these family papers, coming to the knowledge of them, as he
had, through the opportunities offered by the hospitality of the owner of
the estate; nor, on the other hand, did he feel such confidence in his
host, as to make him willing to trust these papers in his hands, with any
certainty that they would be put to an honorable use. The case was one
demanding consideration, and he put a strong curb upon his impatient
curiosity, conscious that, at all events, his first impulsive feeling was
that he ought not to examine these papers without the presence of his
host or some other authorized witness. Had he exercised any casuistry
about the point, however, he might have argued that these papers,
according to all appearance, dated from a period to which his own
hereditary claims ascended, and to circumstances in which his own
rightful interest was as strong as that of Mr. Eldredge. But he had
acted on his first impulse, closed the secret receptacle, and hastening
his toilet descended from his room; and, it being still too early for
breakfast, resolved to ramble about the immediate vicinity of the house.
As he passed the little chapel, he heard within the voice of the priest
performing mass, and felt how strange was this sign of mediaeval religion
and foreign manners in homely England.
As the story looks now: Eldredge, bred, and perhaps born, in Italy, and a
Catholic, with views to the church before he inherited the estate, has
not the English moral sense and simple honor; can scarcely be called an
Englishman at all. Dark suspicions of past crime, and of the possibility
of future crime, may be thrown around him; an atmosphere of doubt shall
envelop him, though, as regards manners, he may be highly refined.
Middleton shall find in the house a priest; and at his first visit he
shall have seen a small chapel, adorned with the richness, as to marbles,
pictures, and frescoes, of those that we see in the churches at Rome; and
here the Catholic forms of worship shall be kept up. Eldredge shall have
had an Italian mother, and shall have the personal characteristics of an
Italian. There shall be something sinister about him, the more apparent
when Middleton’s visit draws to a conclusion; and the latter shall feel
convinced that they part in enmity, so far as Eldredge is concerned. He
shall not speak of his discovery in the cabinet.
May 17th, Monday.--Unquestionably, the appointment of Middleton as
minister to one of the minor Continental courts must take place in the
interval between Eldredge’s meeting him in the park, and his inviting him
to his house. After Middleton’s appointment, the two encounter each
other at the Mayor’s dinner in St. Mary’s Hall, and Eldredge, startled at
meeting the vagrant, as he deemed him, under such a character, remembers
the hints of some secret knowledge of the family history, which Middleton
had thrown out. He endeavors, both in person and by the priest, to make
out what Middleton really is, and what he knows, and what he intends; but
Middleton is on his guard, yet cannot help arousing Eldredge’s suspicions
that he has views upon the estate and title. It is possible, too, that
Middleton may have come to the knowledge--may have had some knowledge--of
some shameful or criminal fact connected with Mr. Eldredge’s life on the
Continent; the old Hospitaller, possibly, may have told him this, from
some secret malignity hereafter to be accounted for. Supposing Eldredge
to attempt his murder, by poison for instance, bringing back into modern
life his old hereditary Italian plots; and into English life a sort of
crime which does not belong to it,--which did not, at least, although at
this very period there have been fresh and numerous instances of it.
There might be a scene in which Middleton and Eldredge come to a fierce
and bitter explanation; for in Eldredge’s character there must be the
English surly boldness as well as the Italian subtlety; and here,
Middleton shall tell him what he knows of his past character and life,
and also what he knows of his own hereditary claims. Eldredge might have
committed a murder in Italy; might have been a patriot and betrayed his
friends to death for a bribe, bearing another name than his own in Italy;
indeed, he might have joined them only as an informer. All this he had
tried to sink, when he came to England in the character of a gentleman of
ancient name and large estate. But this infamy of his previous character
must be foreboded from the first by the manner in which Eldredge is
introduced; and it must make his evil designs on Middleton appear natural
and probable. It may be, that Middleton has learned Eldredge’s previous
character through some Italian patriot who had taken refuge in America,
and there become intimate with him; and it should be a piece of secret
history, not known to the world in general, so that Middleton might seem
to Eldredge the sole depositary of the secret then in England. He feels
a necessity of getting rid of him; and thenceforth Middleton’s path lies
always among pitfalls; indeed, the first attempt should follow promptly
and immediately on his rupture with Eldredge. The utmost pains must be
taken with this incident to give it an air of reality; or else it must be
quite removed out of the sphere of reality by an intensified atmosphere
of romance. I think the old Hospitaller must interfere to prevent the
success of this attempt, perhaps through the means of Alice.
The result of Eldredge’s criminal and treacherous designs is, somehow or
other, that he comes to his death; and Middleton and Alice are left to
administer on the remains of the story; perhaps, the Mayor being his
friend, he may be brought into play here. The foreign ecclesiastic shall
likewise come forward, and he shall prove to be a man of subtile policy
perhaps, yet a man of religion and honor; with a Jesuit’s principles, but
a Jesuit’s devotion and self-sacrifice. The old Hospitaller must die in
his bed, or some other how; or perhaps not--we shall see. He may just as
well be left in the Hospital. Eldredge’s attempt on Middleton must be in
some way peculiar to Italy, and which he shall have learned there; and,
by the way, at his dinner-table there shall be a Venice glass, one of the
kind that were supposed to be shattered when poison was put into them.
When Eldredge produces his rare wine, he shall pour it into this, with a
jesting allusion to the legend. Perhaps the mode of Eldredge’s attempt
on Middleton’s life shall be a reproduction of the attempt made two
hundred years before; and Middleton’s knowledge of that incident shall be
the means of his salvation. That would be a good idea; in fact, I think
it must be done so and no otherwise. It is not to be forgotten that
there is a taint of insanity in Eldredge’s blood, accounting for much
that is wild and absurd, at the same time that it must be subtile, in his
conduct; one of those perplexing mad people, whose lunacy you are
continually mistaking for wickedness or vice versa. This shall be the
priest’s explanation and apology for him, after his death. I wish I
could get hold of the Newgate Calendar, the older volumes, or any other
book of murders--the Causes Celebres, for instance. The legendary
murder, or attempt at it, will bring its own imaginative probability with
it, when repeated by Eldredge; and at the same time it will have a
dreamlike effect; so that Middleton shall hardly know whether he is awake
or not. This incident is very essential towards bringing together the
past time and the present, and the two ends of the story.
May 18th, Tuesday.--All down through the ages since Edward had
disappeared from home, leaving that bloody footstep on the threshold,
there had been legends and strange stories of the murder and the manner
of it. These legends differed very much among themselves. According to
some, his brother had awaited him there, and stabbed him on the
threshold. According to others, he had been murdered in his chamber, and
dragged out. A third story told, that he was escaping with his lady
love, when they were overtaken on the threshold, and the young man slain.
It was impossible at this distance of time to ascertain which of these
legends was the true one, or whether either of them had any portion of
truth, further than that the young man had actually disappeared from that
night, and that it never was certainly known to the public that any
intelligence had ever afterwards been received from him. Now, Middleton
may have communicated to Eldredge the truth in regard to the matter; as,
for instance, that he had stabbed him with a certain dagger that was
still kept among the curiosities of the manor-house. Of course, that
will not do. It must be some very ingenious and artificially natural
thing, an artistic affair in its way, that should strike the fancy of
such a man as Eldredge, and appear to him altogether fit, mutatis
mutandis, to be applied to his own requirements and purposes. I do not
at present see in the least how this is to be wrought out. There shall
be everything to make Eldredge look with the utmost horror and alarm at
any chance that he may be superseded and ousted from his possession of
the estate; for he shall only recently have established his claim to it,
tracing out his pedigree, when the family was supposed to be extinct.
And he is come to these comfortable quarters after a life of poverty,
uncertainty, difficulty, hanging loose on society; and therefore he shall
be willing to risk soul and body both, rather than return to his former
state. Perhaps his daughter shall be introduced as a young Italian girl,
to whom Middleton shall decide to leave the estate.
On the failure of his design, Eldredge may commit suicide, and be found
dead in the wood; at any rate, some suitable end shall be contrived,
adapted to his wants. This character must not be so represented as to
shut him out completely from the reader’s sympathies; he shall have
taste, sentiment, even a capacity for affection, nor, I think, ought he
to have any hatred or bitter feeling against the man whom he resolves to
murder. In the closing scenes, when he thinks the fate of Middleton
approaching, there might even be a certain tenderness towards him, a
desire to make the last drops of life delightful; if well done, this
would produce a certain sort of horror, that I do not remember to have
seen effected in literature. Possibly the ancient emigrant might be
supposed to have fallen into an ancient mine, down a precipice, into some
pitfall; no, not so. Into a river; into a moat. As Middleton’s
pretensions to birth are not publicly known, there will be no reason why,
at his sudden death, suspicion should fix on Eldredge as the murderer;
and it shall be his object so to contrive his death as that it shall
appear the result of accident. Having failed in effecting Middleton’s
death by this excellent way, he shall perhaps think that he cannot do
better them to make his own exit in precisely the same manner. It might
be easy, and as delightful as any death could be; no ugliness in it, no
blood; for the Bloody Footstep of old times might be the result of the
failure of the old plot, not of its success. Poison seems to be the only
elegant method; but poison is vulgar, and in many respects unfit for my
purpose. It won’t do. Whatever it may be, it must not come upon the
reader as a sudden and new thing, but as one that might have been
foreseen from afar, though he shall not actually have foreseen it until
it is about to happen. It must be prevented through the agency of Alice.
Alice may have been an artist in Rome, and there have known Eldredge and
his daughter, and thus she may have become their guest in England; or he
may be patronizing her now--at all events she shall be the friend of the
daughter, and shall have a just appreciation of the father’s character.
It shall be partly due to her high counsel that Middleton foregoes his
claim to the estate, and prefers the life of an American, with its lofty
possibilities for himself and his race, to the position of an Englishman
of property and title; and she, for her part, shall choose the condition
and prospects of woman in America, to the emptiness of the life of a
woman of rank in England. So they shall depart, lofty and poor, out of
the home which might be their own, if they would stoop to make it so.
Possibly the daughter of Eldredge may be a girl not yet in her teens, for
whom Alice has the affection of an elder sister.
It should be a very carefully and highly wrought scene, occurring just
before Eldredge’s actual attempt on Middleton’s life, in which all the
brilliancy of his character--which shall before have gleamed upon the
reader--shall come out, with pathos, with wit, with insight, with
knowledge of life. Middleton shall be inspired by this, and shall vie
with him in exhilaration of spirits; but the ecclesiastic shall look on
with singular attention, and some appearance of alarm; and the suspicion
of Alice shall likewise be aroused. The old Hospitaller may have gained
his situation partly by proving himself a man of the neighborhood, by
right of descent; so that he, too, shall have a hereditary claim to be in
the Romance.
Eldredge’s own position as a foreigner in the midst of English home life,
insulated and dreary, shall represent to Middleton, in some degree, what
his own would be, were he to accept the estate. But Middleton shall not
come to the decision to resign it, without having to repress a deep
yearning for that sense of long, long rest in an age-consecrated home,
which he had felt so deeply to be the happy lot of Englishmen. But this
ought to be rejected, as not belonging to his country, nor to the age,
nor any longer possible.
May 19th, Wednesday.--The connection of the old Hospitaller with the
story is not at all clear. He is an American by birth, but deriving his
English origin from the neighborhood of the Hospital, where he has
finally established himself. Some one of his ancestors may have been
somehow connected with the ancient portion of the story. He has been a
friend of Middleton’s father, who reposed entire confidence in him,
trusting him with all his fortune, which the Hospitaller risked in his
enormous speculations, and lost it all. His fame had been great in the
financial world. There were circumstances that made it dangerous for his
whereabouts to be known, and so he had come hither and found refuge in
this institution, where Middleton finds him, but does not know who he is.
In the vacancy of a mind formerly so active, he has taken to the study of
local antiquities; and from his former intimacy with Middleton’s father,
he has a knowledge of the American part of the story, which he connects
with the English portion, disclosed by his researches here; so that he is
quite aware that Middleton has claims to the estate, which might be urged
successfully against the present possessor. He is kindly disposed
towards the son of his friend, whom he had so greatly injured; but he is
now very old, and ------. Middleton has been directed to this old man,
by a friend in America, as one likely to afford him all possible
assistance in his researches; and so he seeks him out and forms an
acquaintance with him, which the old man encourages to a certain extent,
taking an evident interest in him, but does not disclose himself; nor
does Middleton suspect him to be an American. The characteristic life of
the Hospital is brought out, and the individual character of this old
man, vegetating here after an active career, melancholy and miserable;
sometimes torpid with the slow approach of utmost age; sometimes feeble,
peevish, wavering; sometimes shining out with a wisdom resulting from
originally bright faculties, ripened by experience. The character must
not be allowed to get vague, but, with gleams of romance, must yet be
kept homely and natural by little touches of his daily life.
As for Alice, I see no necessity for her being anywise related to or
connected with the old Hospitaller. As originally conceived, I think she
may be an artist--a sculptress--whom Eldredge had known in Rome. No; she
might be a granddaughter of the old Hospitaller, born and bred in
America, but who had resided two or three years in Rome in the study of
her art, and have there acquired a knowledge of the Eldredges and have
become fond of the little Italian girl his daughter. She has lodgings in
the village, and of course is often at the Hospital, and often at the
Hall; she makes busts and little statues, and is free, wild, tender,
proud, domestic, strange, natural, artistic; and has at bottom the
characteristics of the American woman, with the principles of the
strong-minded sect; and Middleton shall be continually puzzled at meeting
such a phenomenon in England. By and by, the internal influence
[evidence?] of her sentiments (though there shall be nothing to confirm
it in her manner) shall lead him to charge her with being an American.
Now, as to the arrangement of the Romance;--it begins as an integral and
essential part, with my introduction, giving a pleasant and familiar
summary of my life in the Consulate at Liverpool; the strange species of
Americans, with strange purposes, in England, whom I used to meet there;
and, especially, how my countrymen used to be put out of their senses by
the idea of inheritances of English property. Then I shall particularly
instance one gentleman who called on me on first coming over; a
description of him must be given, with touches that shall puzzle the
reader to decide whether it is not an actual portrait. And then this
Romance shall be offered, half seriously, as the account of the fortunes
that he met with in his search for his hereditary home. Enough of his
ancestral story may be given to explain what is to follow in the Romance;
or perhaps this may be left to the scenes of his intercourse with the old
Hospitaller.
The Romance proper opens with Middleton’s arrival at what he has reason
to think is the neighborhood of his ancestral home, and here he makes
application to the old Hospitaller. Middleton shall be described as
approaching the Hospital, which shall be pretty literally copied after
Leicester’s, although the surrounding village must be on a much smaller
scale of course. Much elaborateness may be given to this portion of the
book. Middleton shall have assumed a plain dress, and shall seek to make
no acquaintances except that of the old Hospitaller; the acquaintance of
Alice naturally following. The old Hospitaller and he go together to the
old Hall, where, as they pass through the rooms, they find that the
proprietor is flitting like a ghost before them from chamber to chamber;
they catch his reflection in a glass, etc., etc. When these have been
wrought up sufficiently, shall come the scene in the wood, where Eldredge
is seen yielding to the superstition that he has inherited, respecting
the old secret of the family, on the discovery of which depends the
enforcement of his claim to a title. All this while, Middleton has
appeared in the character of a man of no note; and now, through some
political change, not necessarily told, he receives a packet addressed to
him as an ambassador, and containing a notice of his appointment to that
dignity. A paragraph in the “Times” confirms the fact, and makes it
known in the neighborhood. Middleton immediately becomes an object of
attention; the gentry call upon him; the Mayor of the neighboring
county-town invites him to dinner, which shall be described with all its
antique formalities. Here he meets Eldredge, who is surprised,
remembering the encounter in the wood; but passes it all off, like a man
of the world, makes his acquaintance, and invites him to the Hall.
Perhaps he may make a visit of some time here, and become intimate, to a
certain degree, with all parties; and here things shall ripen themselves
for Eldredge’s attempt upon his life.
THE END
End of Project Gutenberg’s Sketches and Studies, by Nathaniel Hawthorne