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Be this as it may, it is not probable that Doctor Grimshawe would have loved a child of his own blood, with the coarse characteristics that he knew both in his race and himself, with nearly such fervor as this beautiful, slender, yet strenuous, intelligent, refined boy, with such a high-bred air, handling common things with so refined a touch, yet grasping them so firmly; throwing a natural grace on all he did.
Doctor Grimshawe, after the foregone scene, began a practice of conversing more with the children than formerly; directing his discourse chiefly to Ned, although Elsie's vivacity and more outspoken and demonstrative character made her take quite as large a share in the conversation as he.
Considering that Doctor Grimshawe, when we first look upon him, had dwelt only a few years in the house by the graveyard, it is wonderful what an appearance he, and his furniture, and his cobwebs, and their unweariable spinners, and crusty old Hannah, all had of having permanently attached themselves to the locality.
But I never, so long as I remained in America, quite lost sight of you; and Doctor Grimshawe, before his death, had knowledge of where I was, and gave me in charge a duty which I faithfully endeavored to perform. Singular man that he was! much evil, much good in him. Both, it may be, will live after him!"
The unfinished "Grimshawe" was another development of the same theme, and the "Septimius" a later sketch, with a new element introduced.
He was moving towards the door, but little Elsie sprung upon him and caught him round the neck, although he repelled her with severe dignity; and Doctor Grimshawe, after a look at the group in which a bitter sort of mirth and mischief struggled with a better and kindlier sentiment, at last flung his pipe into the chimney, hastily quaffed the remnant of a tumbler, and shuffled after Ned, kicking off his old slippers in his hurry.
While writing the Grimshawe, he was deeply perplexed by certain details of the plot; the meaning of the Pensioner, and his proper function in the story, was one of these stumbling-blocks. But the prosperity of the tale depended directly upon the solution of this problem. Constantly, therefore, in the midst of the composition, he would break off and enter upon a wrestling-match with the difficulty.
Such were the terms on which Doctor Grimshawe now stood with his adopted townspeople; and if we consider the dull little town to be full of exaggerated stories about the Doctor's oddities, many of them forged, all retailed in an unfriendly spirit; misconceptions of a character which, in its best and most candidly interpreted aspects, was sufficiently amenable to censure; surmises taken for certainties; superstitions the genuine hereditary offspring of the frame of public mind which produced the witchcraft delusion all fermenting together; and all this evil and uncharitableness taking the delusive hue of benevolent interest in two helpless children; we may partly judge what was the odium in which the grim Doctor dwelt, and amid which he walked.
But grim Doctor Grimshawe, though his aim in life might be no very exalted one, seemed singularly destitute of the impulse to better his fortunes by the exercise of his wits: it might even have been supposed, indeed, that he had a conscientious principle or religious scruple only, he was by no means a religious man against reaping profit from this particular nostrum which he was said to have invented.
"Browning's nonsense," he writes, "is of a very genuine and excellent quality, the true babble and effervescence of a bright and powerful mind; and he lets it play 'among his friends with the faith and simplicity of a child." I think I must be right in tracing one of the chief enchantments of the story of Dr. Grimshawe to these months upon the hill of Bellosguardo.
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