Delphi Complete Works of Nathaniel Hawthorne (Illustrated) (195 page)

It must not be omitted, that there was a fragrance in the room, which, unlike as the scene was, brought back, through so many years, to Redclyffe's mind a most vivid remembrance of poor old Doctor Grim's squalid chamber, with his wild, bearded presence in the midst of it, puffing his everlasting cloud; for here was the same smell of tobacco, and on the mantel-piece of a chimney lay a German pipe, and an old silver tobacco-box into which was wrought the leopard's head and the inscription in black letter. The Warden had evidently availed himself of one of the chief bachelor sources of comfort. Redclyffe, whose destiny had hitherto, and up to a very recent period, been to pass a feverishly active life, was greatly impressed by all these tokens of learned ease, — a degree of self-indulgence combined with duties enough to quiet an otherwise uneasy conscience, — by the consideration that this pensioner acted a good part in a world where no one is entitled to be an unprofitable laborer. He thought within himself, that his prospects in his own galvanized country, that seemed to him, a few years since, to offer such a career for an adventurous young man, conscious of motive power, had nothing so enticing as such a nook as this, — a quiet recess of unchangeable old time, around which the turbulent tide now eddied and rushed, but could not disturb it. Here, to be sure, hope, love, ambition, came not, progress came not; but here was what, just now, the early wearied American could appreciate better than aught else, — here was rest.

The fantasy took Edward to imitate the useful labors of the learned Warden, and to make trial whether his own classical condition — the results of Doctor Grim's tuition, and subsequently that of an American College — had utterly deserted him, by attempting a translation of a few verses of Yankee Doodle; and he was making hopeful progress when the Warden came in fresh and rosy from a morning's ride in a keen east wind. He shook hands heartily with his guest, and, though by no means frigid at their former interview, seemed to have developed at once into a kindlier man, now that he had suffered the stranger to cross his threshold, and had thus made himself responsible for his comfort.

“I shall take it greatly amiss,” said he, “if you do not pick up fast under my roof, and gather a little English ruddiness, moreover, in the walks and rides that I mean to take you. Your countrymen, as I saw them, are a sallow set; but I think you must have English blood enough in your veins to eke out a ruddy tint, with the help of good English beef and ale, and daily draughts of wholesome light and air.”

“My cheeks would not have been so very pale,” said Edward, laughing, “if an English shot had not deprived me of a good deal of my American blood.”

“Only follow my guidance,” said the Warden, “and I assure you you shall have back whatever blood we have deprived you of, together with an addition. It is now luncheon-time, and we will begin the process of replenishing your veins.”

So they went into a refectory, where were spread upon the board what might have seemed a goodly dinner to most Americans; though for this Englishman it was but a by-incident, a slight refreshment, to enable him to pass the midway stage of life. It is an excellent thing to see the faith of a hearty Englishman in his own stomach, and how well that kindly organ repays his trust; with what devout assimilation he takes to himself his kindred beef, loving it, believing in it, making a good use of it, and without any qualms of conscience or prescience as to the result. They surely eat twice as much as we; and probably because of their undoubted faith it never does them any harm. Dyspepsia is merely a superstition with us. If we could cease to believe in its existence, it would exist no more. Redclyffe, eating little himself, his wound compelling him to be cautious as to his diet, was secretly delighted to see what sweets the Warden found in a cold round of beef, in a pigeon pie, and a cut or two of Yorkshire ham; not that he was ravenous, but that his stomach was so healthy.

“You eat little, my friend,” said the Warden, pouring out a glass of sherry for Redclyffe, and another for himself. “But you are right, in such a predicament as yours. Spare your stomach while you are weakly, and it will help you when you are strong This, now, is the most enjoyable meal of the day with me. You will not see me play such a knife and fork at dinner; though there too, especially if I have ridden out in the afternoon, I do pretty well. But, come now, if (like most of your countrymen, as I have heard) you are a lover of the weed, I can offer you some as delicate Latakia as you are likely to find in England.”

“I lack that claim upon your kindness, I am sorry to say,” replied Redclyffe. “I am not a good smoker, though I have occasionally taken a cigar at need.”

“Well, when you find yourself growing old, and especially if you chance to be a bachelor, I advise you to cultivate the habit,” said the Warden. “A wife is the only real obstacle or objection to a pipe; they can seldom be thoroughly reconciled, and therefore it is well for a man to consider, beforehand, which of the two he can best dispense with. I know not how it might have been once, had the conflicting claim of these two rivals ever been fairly presented to me; but I now should be at no loss to choose the pipe.”

They returned to the study; and while the Warden took his pipe, Redclyffe, considering that, as the guest of this hospitable Englishman, he had no right to continue a stranger, thought it fit to make known to him who he was, and his condition, plans, and purposes. He represented himself as having been liberally educated, bred to the law, but (to his misfortune) having turned aside from that profession to engage in politics. In this pursuit, indeed, his success wore a flattering outside; for he had become distinguished, and, though so young, a leader, locally at least, in the party which he had adopted. He had been, for a biennial term, a member of Congress, after winning some distinction in the legislature of his native State; but some one of those fitful changes to which American politics are peculiarly liable had thrown him out, in his candidacy for his second term; and the virulence of party animosity, the abusiveness of the press, had acted so much upon a disposition naturally somewhat too sensitive for the career which he had undertaken, that he had resolved, being now freed from legislative cares, to seize the opportunity for a visit to England, whither he was drawn by feelings which every educated and impressible American feels, in a degree scarcely conceivable by the English themselves. And being here (but he had already too much experience of English self-sufficiency to confess so much) he began to feel the deep yearning which a sensitive American — his mind full of English thoughts, his imagination of English poetry, his heart of English character and sentiment — cannot fail to be influenced by, — the yearning of the blood within his veins for that from which it has been estranged; the half-fanciful regret that he should ever have been separated from these woods, these fields, these natural features of scenery, to which his nature was moulded, from the men who are still so like himself, from these habits of life and thought which (though he may not have known them for two centuries) he still perceives to have remained in some mysterious way latent in the depths of his character, and soon to be reassumed, not as a foreigner would do it, but like habits native to him, and only suspended for a season.

This had been Redclyffe's state of feeling ever since he landed in England, and every day seemed to make him more at home; so that it seemed as if he were gradually awakening to a former reality.

CHAPTER XV.

After lunch, the Warden showed a good degree of kind anxiety about his guest, and ensconced him in a most comfortable chair in his study, where he gave him his choice of books old and new, and was somewhat surprised, as well as amused, to see that Redclyffe seemed most attracted towards a department of the library filled with books of English antiquities, and genealogies, and heraldry; the two latter, indeed, having the preference over the others.

“This is very remarkable,” said he, smiling. “By what right or reason, by what logic of character, can you, a democrat, renouncing all advantages of birth, — neither priding yourself on family, nor seeking to found one, — how therefore can you care for genealogies, or for this fantastic science of heraldry? Having no antiquities, being a people just made, how can you care for them?”

“My dear sir,” said Redclyffe, “I doubt whether the most devoted antiquarian in England ever cares to search for an old thing merely because it is old, as any American just landed on your shores would do. Age is our novelty; therefore it attracts and absorbs us. And as for genealogies, I know not what necessary repulsion there may be between it and democracy. A line of respectable connections, being the harder to preserve where there is nothing in the laws to defend it, is therefore the more precious when we have it really to boast of.”

“True,” said the Warden, “when a race keeps itself distinguished among the grimy order of your commonalty, all with equal legal rights to place and eminence as itself, it must needs be because there is a force and efficacy in the blood. I doubt not,” he said, looking with the free approval of an elder man at the young man's finely developed face and graceful form, — ”I doubt not that you can look back upon a line of ancestry, always shining out from the surrounding obscurity of the mob.”

Redclyffe, though ashamed of himself, could not but feel a paltry confusion and embarrassment, as he thought of his unknown origin, and his advent from the almshouse; coming out of that squalid darkness as if he were a thing that had had a spontaneous birth out of poverty, meanness, petty crime; and here in ancestral England, he felt more keenly than ever before what was his misfortune.

“I must not let you lie under this impression,” said he manfully to the Warden. “I have no ancestry; at the very first step my origin is lost in impenetrable obscurity. I only know that but for the aid of a kind friend — on whose benevolence I seem to have had no claim whatever — my life would probably have been poor, mean, unenlightened.”

“Well, well,” said the kind Warden, — hardly quite feeling, however, the noble sentiment which he expressed, — ”it is better to be the first noble illustrator of a name than even the worthy heir of a name that has been noble and famous for a thousand years. The highest pride of some of our peers, who have won their rank by their own force, has been to point to the cottage whence they sprung. Your posterity, at all events, will have the advantage of you, — they will know their ancestor.”

Redclyffe sighed, for there was truly a great deal of the foolish yearning for a connection with the past about him; his imagination had taken this turn, and the very circumstances of his obscure birth gave it a field to exercise itself.

“I advise you,” said the Warden, by way of changing the conversation, “to look over the excellent history of the county which you are now in. There is no reading better, to my mind, than these country histories; though doubtless a stranger would hardly feel so much interest in them as one whose progenitors, male or female, have strewn their dust over the whole field of which the history treats. This history is a fine specimen of the kind.”

The work to which Redclyffe's attention was thus drawn was in two large folio volumes, published about thirty years before, bound in calf by some famous artist in that line, illustrated with portraits and views of ruined castles, churches, cathedrals, the seats of nobility and gentry; Roman, British, and Saxon remains, painted windows, oak carvings, and so forth.

And as for its contents the author ascended for the history of the county as far as into the pre-Roman ages, before Caesar had ever heard of Britain; and brought it down, an ever swelling and increasing tale, to his own days; inclusive of the separate histories, and pedigrees, and hereditary legends, and incidents, of all the principal families. In this latter branch of information, indeed, the work seemed particularly full, and contained every incident that would have worked well into historical romance.

“Aye, aye,” said the Warden, laughing at some strange incident of this sort which Redclyffe read out to him. “My old friend Gibber, the learned author of this work, (he has been dead this score of years, so he will not mind my saying it,) had a little too much the habit of seeking his authorities in the cottage chimney-corners. I mean that an old woman's tale was just about as acceptable to him as a recorded fact; and to say the truth, they are really apt to have ten times the life in them.”

Redclyffe saw in the volume a full account of the founding of the Hospital, its regulations and purposes, its edifices; all of which he reserved for future reading, being for the present more attracted by the mouldy gossip of family anecdotes which we have alluded to. Some of these, and not the least singular, referred to the ancient family which had founded the Hospital; and he was attracted by seeing a mention of a Bloody Footstep, which reminded him of the strange old story which good Doctor Grimshawe had related by his New England fireside, in those childish days when Edward dwelt with him by the graveyard, On reading it, however, he found that the English legend, if such it could be called, was far less full and explicit than that of New England. Indeed, it assigned various origins to the Bloody Footstep; — one being, that it was the stamp of the foot of the Saxon thane, who fought at his own threshold against the assault of the Norman baron, who seized his mansion at the Conquest; another, that it was the imprint of a fugitive who had sought shelter from the lady of the house during the Wars of the Roses, and was dragged out by her husband, and slain on the door- step; still another, that it was the footstep of a Protestant in Bloody Mary's days, who, being sent to prison by the squire of that epoch, had lifted his hands to Heaven, and stamped his foot, in appeal as against the unjust violence with which he was treated, and stamping his foot, it had left the bloody mark. It was hinted too, however, that another version, which out of delicacy to the family the author was reluctant to state, assigned the origin of the Bloody Footstep to so late a period as the wars of the Parliament. And, finally, there was an odious rumor that what was called the Bloody Footstep was nothing miraculous, after all, but most probably a natural reddish stain in the stone door- step; but against this heresy the excellent Dr. Gibber set his face most sturdily.

The original legend had made such an impression on Redclyffe's childish fancy, that he became strangely interested in thus discovering it, or something remotely like it, in England, and being brought by such unsought means to reside so near it. Curious about the family to which it had occurred, he proceeded to examine its records, as given in the County History. The name was Redclyffe. Like most English pedigrees, there was an obscurity about a good many of the earlier links; but the line was traced out with reasonable definiteness from the days of Coeur de Lion, and there was said to be a cross-legged ancestor in the village church, who (but the inscription was obliterated) was probably a Redclyffe, and had fought either under the Lion Heart or in the Crusades. It was, in subsequent ages, one of the most distinguished families, though there had been turbulent men in all those turbulent times, hard fighters. In one age, a barony of early creation seemed to have come into the family, and had been, as it were, playing bo-peep with the race for several centuries. Some of them had actually assumed the title; others had given it up for lack of sufficient proof; but still there was such a claim, and up to the time at which this County History was written, it had neither been made out, nor had the hope of doing so been relinquished.

“Have the family,” asked Redclyffe of his host, “ever yet made out their claim to this title, which has so long been playing the will-of- the-wisp with them?”

“No, not yet,” said the Warden, puffing out a volume of smoke from his meerschaum, and making it curl up to the ceiling. “Their claim has as little substance, in my belief, as yonder vanishing vapor from my pipe. But they still keep up their delusion. I had supposed that the claim would perish with the last squire, who was a childless man, — at least, without legitimate heirs; but this estate passed to one whom we can scarcely call an Englishman, he being a Catholic, the descendant of forefathers who have lived in Italy since the time of George II., and who is, moreover, a Catholic. We English would not willingly see an ancestral honor in the possession of such a man!”

“Is there, do you think, a prospect of his success?”

“I have heard so, but hardly believe it,” replied the Warden. “I remember, some dozen or fifteen years ago, it was given out that some clue had been found to the only piece of evidence that was wanting. It had been said that there was an emigration to your own country, above a hundred years ago, and on account of some family feud; the true heir had gone thither and never returned. Now, the point was to prove the extinction of this branch of the family. But, excuse me, I must pay an official visit to my charge here. Will you accompany me, or continue to pore over the County History?”

Redclyffe felt enough of the elasticity of convalescence to be desirous of accompanying the Warden; and they accordingly crossed the enclosed quadrangle to the entrance of the Hospital portion of the large and intricate structure. It was a building of the early Elizabethan age, a plaster and timber structure, like many houses of that period and much earlier. [Endnote: 1] Around this court stood the building, with the date 1437 cut on the front. On each side, a row of gables looked upon the enclosed space, most venerable old gables, with heavy mullioned windows filled with little diamond panes of glass, and opening on lattices. On two sides there was a cloistered walk, under echoing arches, and in the midst a spacious lawn of the greenest and loveliest grass, such as England only can show, and which, there, is of perennial verdure and beauty. In the midst stood a stone statue of a venerable man, wrought in the best of mediæval sculpture, with robe and ruff, and tunic and venerable beard, resting on a staff, and holding what looked like a clasped book in his hand. The English atmosphere, together with the coal smoke, settling down in the space of centuries from the chimneys of the Hospital, had roughened and blackened this venerable piece of sculpture, enclosing it as it were in a superficies of decay; but still (and perhaps the more from these tokens of having stood so long among men) the statue had an aspect of venerable life, and of connection with human life, that made it strongly impressive.

“This is the effigy of Sir Edward Redclyffe, the founder of the Hospital,” said the Warden. “He is a most peaceful and venerable old gentleman in his attire and aspect, as you see; but he was a fierce old fellow in his day, and is said to have founded the Hospital as a means of appeasing Heaven for some particular deed of blood, which he had imposed upon his conscience in the War of the Roses.”

“Yes,” said Redclyffe, “I have just read in the County History that the Bloody Footstep was said to have been imprinted in his time. But what is that thing which he holds in his hand?”

“It is a famous heirloom of the Redclyffes,” said the Warden, “on the possession of which (as long as they did possess it) they prided themselves, it is said, more than on their ancient manor-house. It was a Saxon ornament, which a certain ancestor was said to have had from Harold, the old Saxon king; but if there ever was any such article, it has been missing from the family mansion for two or three hundred years. There is not known to be an antique relic of that description now in existence.”

“I remember having seen such an article, — yes, precisely of that shape,” observed Redclyffe, “in the possession of a very dear old friend of mine, when I was a boy.”

“What, in America?” exclaimed the Warden. “That is very remarkable. The time of its being missed coincides well enough with that of the early settlement of New England. Some Puritan, before his departure, may have thought himself doing God service by filching the old golden gewgaw from the Cavalier; for it was said to be fine, ductile gold.”

The circumstances struck Redclyffe with a pleasant wonder; for, indeed, the old statue held the closest possible imitation, in marble, of that strange old glitter of gold which he himself had so often played with in the Doctor's study; [Endnote: 2] so identical, that he could have fancied that he saw the very thing, changed from metal into stone, even with its bruises and other casual marks in it. As he looked at the old statue, his imagination played with it, and his naturally great impressibility half made him imagine that the old face looked at him with a keen, subtile, wary glance, as if acknowledging that it held some secret, but at the same time defying him to find it out. And then again came that visionary feeling that had so often swept over him since he had been an inmate of the Hospital.