The Ancestral Footstep (fragment)
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Nathaniel Hawthorne >> The Ancestral Footstep (fragment)
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Alice shook her head. "You have no claim to know what I know, even if it
would be any addition to your own knowledge. I shall not, and must not
enlighten you. You must burrow for the secret with your own tools, in
your own manner, and in a place of your own choosing. I am bound not to
assist you."
"Alice, this is wilful, wayward, unjust," cried Middleton, with a flushed
cheek. "I have not told you--yet you know well--the deep and real
importance which this subject has for me. We have been together as
friends, yet, the instant when there comes up an occasion when the
slightest friendly feeling would induce you to do me a good office, you
assume this altered tone."
"My tone is not in the least altered in respect to you," said Alice. "All
along, as you know, I have reserved myself on this very point; it being,
I candidly tell you, impossible for me to act in your interest in the
matter alluded to. If you choose to consider this unfriendly, as being
less than the terms on which you conceive us to have stood give you a
right to demand of me--you must resent it as you please. I shall not the
less retain for you the regard due to one who has certainly befriended me
in very untoward circumstances."
This conversation confirmed the previous idea of Middleton, that some
mystery of a peculiarly dark and evil character was connected with the
family secret with which he was himself entangled; but it perplexed him
to imagine in what way this, after the lapse of so many years, should
continue to be a matter of real importance at the present day. All the
actors in the original guilt--if guilt it were--must have been long ago
in their graves; some in the churchyard of the village, with those
moss-grown letters embossing their names; some in the church itself, with
mural tablets recording their names over the family-pew, and one, it
might be, far over the sea, where his grave was first made under the
forest leaves, though now a city had grown up around it. Yet here was he,
the remote descendant of that family, setting his foot at last in the
country, and as secretly as might be; and all at once his mere presence
seemed to revive the buried secret, almost to awake the dead who partook
of that secret and had acted it. There was a vibration from the other
world, continued and prolonged into this, the instant that he stepped
upon the mysterious and haunted ground.
He knew not in what way to proceed. He could not but feel that there was
something not exactly within the limits of propriety in being here,
disguised--at least, not known in his true character--prying into the
secrets of a proud and secluded Englishman. But then, as he said to
himself on his own side of the question, the secret belonged to himself
by exactly as ancient a tenure and by precisely as strong a claim, as to
the Englishman. His rights here were just as powerful and well-founded as
those of his ancestor had been, nearly three centuries ago; and here the
same feeling came over him that he was that very personage, returned
after all these ages, to see if his foot would fit this bloody footstep
left of old upon the threshold. The result of all his cogitation was, as
the reader will have foreseen, that he decided to continue his
researches, and, his proceedings being pretty defensible, let the result
take care of itself.
For this purpose he went next day to the hospital, and ringing at the
Master's door, was ushered into the old-fashioned, comfortable library,
where he had spent that well-remembered evening which threw the first ray
of light on the pursuit that now seemed developing into such strange and
unexpected consequences. Being admitted, he was desired by the domestic
to wait, as his Reverence was at that moment engaged with a gentleman on
business. Glancing through the ivy that mantled over the window,
Middleton saw that this interview was taking place in the garden, where
the Master and his visitor were walking to and fro in the avenue of box,
discussing some matter, as it seemed to him, with considerable
earnestness on both sides. He observed, too, that there was warmth,
passion, a disturbed feeling on the stranger's part; while, on that of
the Master, it was a calm, serious, earnest representation of whatever
view he was endeavoring to impress on the other. At last, the interview
appeared to come toward a climax, the Master addressing some words to his
guest, still with undisturbed calmness, to which the latter replied by a
violent and even fierce gesture, as it should seem of menace, not towards
the Master, but some unknown party; and then hastily turning, he left the
garden and was soon heard riding away. The Master looked after him
awhile, and then, shaking his white head, returned into the house and
soon entered the parlor.
He looked somewhat surprised, and, as it struck Middleton, a little
startled, at finding him there; yet he welcomed him with all his former
cordiality--indeed, with a friendship that thoroughly warmed Middleton's
heart even to its coldest corner.
"This is strange!" said the old gentleman. "Do you remember our
conversation on that evening when I first had the unlooked-for pleasure
of receiving you as a guest into my house? At that time I spoke to you of
a strange family story, of which there was no denouement, such as a
novel-writer would desire, and which had remained in that unfinished
posture for more than two hundred years! Well; perhaps it will gratify
you to know that there seems a prospect of that wanting termination being
supplied!"
"Indeed!" said Middleton.
"Yes," replied the Master. "A gentleman has just parted with me who was
indeed the representative of the family concerned in the story. He is the
descendant of a younger son of that family, to whom the estate devolved
about a century ago, although at that time there was search for the heirs
of the elder son, who had disappeared after the bloody incident which I
related to you. Now, singular as it may appear, at this late day, a
person claiming to be the descendant and heir of that eldest son has
appeared, and if I may credit my friend's account, is disposed not only
to claim the estate, but the dormant title which Eldredge himself has
been so long preparing to claim for himself. Singularly enough, too, the
heir is an American."
_May 2d, Sunday._--"I believe," said Middleton, "that many English
secrets might find their solution in America, if the two threads of a
story could be brought together, disjoined as they have been by time and
the ocean. But are you at liberty to tell me the nature of the incidents
to which you allude?"
"I do not see any reason to the contrary," answered the Master; "for the
story has already come in an imperfect way before the public, and the
full and authentic particulars are likely soon to follow. It seems that
the younger brother was ejected from the house on account of a love
affair; the elder having married a young woman with whom the younger was
in love, and, it is said, the wife disappeared on the bridal night, and
was never heard of more. The elder brother remained single during the
rest of his life; and dying childless, and there being still no news of
the second brother, the inheritance and representation of the family
devolved upon the third brother and his posterity. This branch of the
family has ever since remained in possession; and latterly the
representation has become of more importance, on account of a claim to an
old title, which, by the failure of another branch of this ancient
family, has devolved upon the branch here settled. Now, just at this
juncture, comes another heir from America, pretending that he is the
descendant of a marriage between the second son, supposed to have been
murdered on the threshold of the manor-house, and the missing bride! Is
it not a singular story?"
"It would seem to require very strong evidence to prove it," said
Middleton. "And methinks a Republican should care little for the title,
however he might value the estate."
"Both--both," said the Master, smiling, "would be equally attractive to
your countryman. But there are further curious particulars in connection
with this claim. You must know, they are a family of singular
characteristics, humorists, sometimes developing their queer traits into
something like insanity; though oftener, I must say, spending stupid
hereditary lives here on their estates, rusting out and dying without
leaving any biography whatever about them. And yet there has always been
one very queer thing about this generally very commonplace family. It is
that each father, on his death-bed, has had an interview with his son, at
which he has imparted some secret that has evidently had an influence on
the character and after life of the son, making him ever after a
discontented man, aspiring for something he has never been able to find.
Now the American, I am told, pretends that he has the clue which has
always been needed to make the secret available; the key whereby the lock
may be opened; the something that the lost son of the family carried away
with him, and by which through these centuries he has impeded the
progress of the race. And, wild as the story seems, he does certainly
seem to bring something that looks very like the proof of what he says."
"And what are those proofs?" inquired Middleton, wonder-stricken at the
strange reduplication of his own position and pursuits.
"In the first place," said the Master, "the English marriage-certificate
by a clergyman of that day in London, after publication of the banns,
with a reference to the register of the parish church where the marriage
is recorded. Then, a certified genealogy of the family in New England,
where such matters can be ascertained from town and church records, with
at least as much certainty, it would appear, as in this country. He has
likewise a manuscript in his ancestor's autograph, containing a brief
account of the events which banished him from his own country; the
circumstances which favored the idea that he had been slain, and which he
himself was willing should be received as a belief; the fortune that led
him to America, where he wished to found a new race wholly disconnected
with the past; and this manuscript he sealed up, with directions that it
should not be opened till two hundred years after his death, by which
time, as it was probable to conjecture, it would matter little to any
mortal whether the story was told or not. A whole generation has passed
since the time when the paper was at last unsealed and read, so long it
had no operation; yet now, at last, here comes the American, to disturb
the succession of an ancient family!"
"There is something very strange in all this," said Middleton.
And indeed there was something stranger in his view of the matter than he
had yet communicated to the Master. For, taking into consideration the
relation in which he found himself with the present recognized
representative of the family, the thought struck him that his coming
hither had dug up, as it were, a buried secret that immediately assumed
life and activity the moment that it was above ground again. For seven
generations the family had vegetated in the quietude of English country
gentility, doing nothing to make itself known, passing from the cradle to
the tomb amid the same old woods that had waved over it before his
ancestor had impressed the bloody footstep; and yet the instant that he
came back, an influence seemed to be at work that was likely to renew the
old history of the family. He questioned with himself whether it were not
better to leave all as it was; to withdraw himself into the secrecy from
which he had but half emerged, and leave the family to keep on, to the
end of time perhaps, in its rusty innocence, rather than to interfere
with his wild American character to disturb it. The smell of that dark
crime--that brotherly hatred and attempted murder--seemed to breathe out
of the ground as he dug it up. Was it not better that it should remain
forever buried, for what to him was this old English title--what this
estate, so far from his own native land, located amidst feelings and
manners which would never be his own? It was late, to be sure--yet not
too late for him to turn back: the vibration, the fear, which his
footsteps had caused, would subside into peace! Meditating in this way,
he took a hasty leave of the kind old Master, promising to see him again
at an early opportunity. By chance, or however it was, his footsteps
turned to the woods of ---- Chace, and there he wandered through its
glades, deep in thought, yet always with a strange sense that he was
treading on the soil where his ancestors had trodden, and where he
himself had best right of all men to be. It was just in this state of
feeling that he found his course arrested by a hand upon his shoulder.
"What business have you here?" was the question sounded in his ear; and,
starting, he found himself in the grasp, as his blood tingled to know, of
a gentleman in a shooting-dress, who looked at him with a wrathful brow.
"Are you a poacher, or what?"
Be the case what it might, Middleton's blood boiled at the grasp of that
hand, as it never before had done in the course of his impulsive life. He
shook himself free, and stood fiercely before his antagonist, confronting
him with his uplifted stick, while the other, likewise, appeared to be
shaken by a strange wrath.
"Fellow," muttered he--"Yankee blackguard!--impostor--take yourself oil
these grounds. Quick, or it will be the worse for you!"
Middleton restrained himself. "Mr. Eldredge," said he, "for I believe I
speak to the man who calls himself owner of this land on which we
stand,--Mr. Eldredge, you are acting under a strange misapprehension of
my character. I have come hither with no sinister purpose, and am
entitled, at the hands of a gentleman, to the consideration of an
honorable antagonist, even if you deem me one at all. And perhaps, if you
think upon the blue chamber and the ebony cabinet, and the secret
connected with it,"--
"Villain, no more!" said Eldredge; and utterly mad with rage, he
presented his gun at Middleton; but even at the moment of doing so, he
partly restrained himself, so far as, instead of shooting him, to raise
the butt of his gun, and strike a blow at him. It came down heavily on
Middleton's shoulder, though aimed at his head; and the blow was terribly
avenged, even by itself, for the jar caused the hammer to come down; the
gun went off, sending the bullet downwards through the heart of the
unfortunate man, who fell dead upon the ground. Eldredge[1] stood
stupefied, looking at the catastrophe which had so suddenly occurred.
[1] Evidently a slip of the pen; Middleton being intended.
_May 3d, Monday._--So here was the secret suddenly made safe in this so
terrible way; its keepers reduced from two parties to one interest; the
other who alone knew of this age-long mystery and trouble now carrying it
into eternity, where a long line of those who partook of the knowledge,
in each successive generation, might now be waiting to inquire of him how
he had held his trust. He had kept it well, there was no doubt of it; for
there he lay dead upon the ground, having betrayed it to no one, though
by a method which none could have foreseen, the whole had come into the
possession of him who had brought hither but half of it. Middleton looked
down in horror upon the form that had just been so full of life and
wrathful vigor--and now lay so quietly. Being wholly unconscious of any
purpose to bring about the catastrophe, it had not at first struck him
that his own position was in any manner affected by the violent death,
under such circumstances, of the unfortunate man. But now it suddenly
occurred to him, that there had been a train of incidents all calculated
to make him the object of suspicion; and he felt that he could not, under
the English administration of law, be suffered to go at large without
rendering a strict account of himself and his relations with the
deceased. He might, indeed, fly; he might still remain in the vicinity,
and possibly escape notice. But was not the risk too great? Was it just
even to be aware of this event, and not relate fully the manner of it,
lest a suspicion of blood-guiltiness should rest upon some innocent head?
But while he was thus cogitating, he heard footsteps approaching along
the wood-path; and half-impulsively, half on purpose, he stept aside into
the shrubbery, but still where he could see the dead body, and what
passed near it.
The footsteps came on, and at the turning of the path, just where
Middleton had met Eldredge, the new-comer appeared in sight. It was
Hoper, in his usual dress of velveteen, looking now seedy,
poverty-stricken, and altogether in ill-case, trudging moodily along,
with his hat pulled over his brows, so that he did not see the ghastly
object before him till his foot absolutely trod upon the dead man's hand.
Being thus made aware of the proximity of the corpse, he started back a
little, yet evincing such small emotion as did credit to his English
reserve; then uttering a low exclamation,--cautiously low, indeed,--he
stood looking at the corpse a moment or two, apparently in deep
meditation. He then drew near, bent down, and without evincing any horror
at the touch of death in this horrid shape, he opened the dead man's
vest, inspected the wound, satisfied himself that life was extinct, and
then nodded his head and smiled gravely. He next proceeded to examine
seriatim the dead man's pockets, turning each of them inside out and
taking the contents, where they appeared adapted to his needs: for
instance, a silken purse, through the interstices of which some gold was
visible; a watch, which however had been injured by the explosion, and
had stopt just at the moment--twenty-one minutes past five--when the
catastrophe took place. Hoper ascertained, by putting the watch to his
ear, that this was the case; then pocketing it, he continued his
researches. He likewise secured a note-book, on examining which he found
several bank-notes, and some other papers. And having done this, the
thief stood considering what to do next; nothing better occurring to him,
he thrust the pockets back, gave the corpse as nearly as he could the
same appearance that it had worn before he found it, and hastened away,
leaving the horror there on the wood-path.
He had been gone only a few minutes when another step, a light woman's
step, [was heard] coming along the pathway, and Alice appeared, having on
her usual white mantle, straying along with that fearlessness which
characterized her so strangely, and made her seem like one of the
denizens of nature. She was singing in a low tone some one of those airs
which have become so popular in England, as negro melodies; when
suddenly, looking before her, she saw the blood-stained body on the
grass, the face looking ghastly upward. Alice pressed her hand upon her
heart; it was not her habit to scream, not the habit of that strong,
wild, self-dependent nature; and the exclamation which broke from her was
not for help, but the voice of her heart crying out to herself. For an
instant she hesitated, as [if] not knowing what to do; then approached,
and with her white, maiden hand felt the brow of the dead man,
tremblingly, but yet firm, and satisfied herself that life had wholly
departed. She pressed her hand, that had just touched the dead man's, on
her forehead, and gave a moment to thought.
What her decision might have been, we cannot say, for while she stood in
this attitude, Middleton stept from his seclusion, and at the noise of
his approach she turned suddenly round, looking more frightened and
agitated than at the moment when she had first seen the dead body. She
faced Middleton, however, and looked him quietly in the eye. "You see
this!" said she, gazing fixedly at him. "It is not at this moment that
you first discover it."
"No," said Middleton, frankly. "It is not. I was present at the
catastrophe. In one sense, indeed, I was the cause of it; but, Alice, I
need not tell you that I am no murderer."
"A murderer?--no," said Alice, still looking at him with the same fixed
gaze. "But you and this man were at deadly variance. He would have
rejoiced at any chance that would have laid you cold and bloody on the
earth, as he is now; nay, he would most eagerly have seized on any
fair-looking pretext that would have given him a chance to stretch you
there. The world will scarcely believe, when it knows all about your
relations with him, that his blood is not on your hand. Indeed," said
she, with a strange smile, "I see some of it there now!"
And, in very truth, so there was; a broad blood-stain that had dried on
Middleton's hand. He shuddered at it, but essayed vainly to rub it off.
"You see," said she. "It was foreordained that you should shed this man's
blood; foreordained that, by digging into that old pit of pestilence, you
should set the contagion loose again. You should have left it buried
forever. But now what do you mean to do?"
"To proclaim this catastrophe," replied Middleton. "It is the only honest
and manly way. What else can I do?"
"You can and ought to leave him on the wood-path, where he has fallen,"
said Alice, "and go yourself to take advantage of the state of things
which Providence has brought about. Enter the old house, the hereditary
house, where--now, at least--you alone have a right to tread. Now is the
hour. All is within your grasp. Let the wrong of three hundred years be
righted, and come back thus to your own, to these hereditary fields, this
quiet, long-descended home; to title, to honor."
Yet as the wild maiden spoke thus, there was a sort of mockery in her
eyes; on her brow; gleaming through all her face, as if she scorned what
she thus pressed upon him, the spoils of the dead man who lay at their
feet. Middleton, with his susceptibility, could not [but] be sensible of
a wild and strange charm, as well as horror, in the situation; it seemed
such a wonder that here, in formal, orderly, well-governed England, so
wild a scene as this should have occurred; that they too [two?] should
stand here, deciding on the descent of an estate, and the inheritance of
a title, holding a court of their own.
"Come, then," said he, at length. "Let us leave this poor fallen
antagonist in his blood, and go whither you will lead me. I will judge
for myself. At all events, I will not leave my hereditary home without
knowing what my power is."
"Come," responded Alice; and she turned back; but then returned and threw
a handkerchief over the dead man's face, which while they spoke had
assumed that quiet, ecstatic expression of joy which often is observed to
overspread the faces of those who die of gunshot wounds, however fierce
the passion in which the spirits took their flight. With this strange,
grand, awful joy did the dead man gaze upward into the very eyes and
hearts, as it were, of the two that now bent over him. They looked at one
another.
"Whence comes this expression?" said Middleton, thoughtfully. "Alice,
methinks he is reconciled to us now; and that we are members of one
reconciled family, all of whom are in heaven but me."
_Tuesday, May 4th._--"How strange is this whole situation between you and
me," said Middleton, as they went up the winding pathway that led towards
the house. "Shall I ever understand it? Do you mean ever to explain it to
me? That I should find you here with that old man,[2] so mysterious,
apparently so poor, yet so powerful! What [is] his relation to you?"
[2] The allusion here is apparently to the old man who proclaims
himself Alice's father, in the portion dated April 14th. He figures
hereafter as the old Hospitaller, Hammond. The reader must not take
this present passage as referring to the death of Eldredge, which has
just taken place in the preceding section. The author is now
beginning to elaborate the relation of Middleton and Alice. As will
be seen, farther on, the death of Eldredge is ignored and abandoned;
Eldredge is revived, and the story proceeds in another way.--G. P. L.
"A close one," replied Alice sadly. "He was my father!"
"Your father!" repeated Middleton, starting back. "It does but heighten
the wonder! Your father! And yet, by all the tokens that birth and
breeding, and habits of thought and native character can show, you are my
countrywoman. That wild, free spirit was never born in the breast of an
Englishwoman; that slight frame, that slender beauty, that frail
envelopment of a quick, piercing, yet stubborn and patient spirit,--are
those the properties of an English maiden?"
"Perhaps not," replied Alice quietly. "I am your countrywoman. My father
was an American, and one of whom you have heard--and no good, alas!--for
many a year."
"And who then was he?" asked Middleton.
"I know not whether you will hate me for telling you," replied Alice,
looking him sadly though firmly in the face. "There was a man--long years
since, in your childhood--whose plotting brain proved the ruin of himself
and many another; a man whose great designs made him a sort of potentate,
whose schemes became of national importance, and produced results even
upon the history of the country in which he acted. That man was my
father; a man who sought to do great things, and, like many who have had
similar aims, disregarded many small rights, strode over them, on his way
to effect a gigantic purpose. Among other men, your father was trampled
under foot, ruined, done to death, even, by the effects of his ambition."
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