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, and went on.
_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 death-bed, 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 home; 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 have 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 everybody
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, &c., &c.
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, &c., 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.