Doctor Grimshawe's Secret — a RomanceHawthorne, Nathaniel
Science
Doctor Grimshawe's Secret — a Romance
Hawthorne, Nathaniel
Fiction
He was sometimes a little frightened at the position and circumstances
in which he found himself; a great disturbance there was in his being,
the causes of which he could not trace. It had an influence on his
dreams, through which the Doctor seemed to pass continually, and when he
awoke it was often with the sensation that he had just the moment before
been holding conversation with the old man, and that the latter--with
that gesture of power that he remembered so well--had been impressing
some command upon him; but what that command was, he could not possibly
call to mind. He wandered among the dark passages of the house, and up
its antique staircases, as if expecting at every turn to meet some one
who would have the word of destiny to say to him. When he went forth
into the park, it was as if to hold an appointment with one who had
promised to meet him there; and he came slowly back, lingering and
loitering, because this expected one had not yet made himself visible,
yet plucked up a little alacrity as he drew near the house, because the
communicant might have arrived in his absence, and be waiting for him in
the dim library. It seemed as if he was under a spell; he could neither
go away nor rest,--nothing but dreams, troubled dreams. He had ghostly
fears, as if some one were near him whom he could not make out; stealing
behind him, and starting away when he was impelled to turn round. A
nervousness that his healthy temperament had never before permitted him
to be the victim of, assailed him now. He could not help imputing it
partly to the influence of the generations who had left a portion of
their individual human nature in the house, which had become magnetic by
them and could not rid itself of their presence in one sense, though, in
another, they had borne it as far off as to where the gray tower of the
village church rose above their remains.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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