I. THE OLD PYNCHEON FAMILY.
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Half-way down a by-street of one of our New England
towns, stands a rusty wooden house, with seven acutely-peaked
gables, facing towards various points of the compass,
and a huge, clustered chimney in the midst. The
street is Pyncheon-street; the house is the old Pyncheon-house;
and an elm-tree, of wide circumference, rooted
before the door, is familiar to every town-born child by the
title of the Pyncheon-elm. On my occasional visits to the
town aforesaid, I seldom fail to turn down Pyncheon-street,
for the sake of passing through the shadow of these two
antiquities, — the great elm-tree, and the weather-beaten
edifice.
The aspect of the venerable mansion has always affected
me like a human countenance, bearing the traces not
merely of outward storm and sunshine, but expressive, also,
of the long lapse of mortal life, and accompanying vicissitudes
that have passed within. Were these to be worthily
recounted, they would form a narrative of no small interest
and instruction, and possessing, moreover, a certain remarkable
unity, which might almost seem the result of artistic
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arrangement. But the story would include a chain of
events extending over the better part of two centuries, and,
written out with reasonable amplitude, would fill a bigger
folio volume, or a longer series of duodecimos, than could
prudently be appropriated to the annals of all New England
during a similar period. It consequently becomes
imperative to make short work with most of the traditionary
lore of which the old Pyncheon-house, otherwise known as
the House of the Seven Gables, has been the theme. With
a brief sketch, therefore, of the circumstances amid which
the foundation of the house was laid, and a rapid glimpse
at its quaint exterior, as it grew black in the prevalent
east wind, — pointing, too, here and there, at some spot of
more verdant mossiness on its roof and walls, — we shall
commence the real action of our tale at an epoch not very
remote from the present day. Still, there will be a connection
with the long past — a reference to forgotten events and personages, and to manners, feelings, and opinions, almost
or wholly obsolete — which, if adequately translated to the
reader, would serve to illustrate how much of old material
goes to make up the freshest novelty of human life. Hence,
too, might be drawn a weighty lesson from the little-regarded
truth, that the act of the passing generation is the germ
which may and must produce good or evil fruit, in a far distant
time; that, together with the seed of the merely temporary
crop, which mortals term expediency, they inevitably
sow the acorns of a more enduring growth, which may
darkly overshadow their posterity.
The House of the Seven Gables, antique as it now looks,
was not the first habitation erected by civilized man on precisely
the same spot of ground. Pyncheon-street formerly
bore the humbler appellation of Maule's-lane, from the
name of the original occupant of the soil, before whose cottage-door
it was a cow-path. A natural spring of soft and
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pleasant water — a rare treasure on the sea-girt peninsula,
where the Puritan settlement was made — had early induced
Matthew Maule to build a hut, shaggy with thatch, at this
point, although somewhat too remote from what was then
the centre of the village. In the growth of the town, however,
after some thirty or forty years, the site covered by
this rude hovel had become exceedingly desirable in the eyes
of a prominent and powerful personage, who asserted plausible
claims to the proprietorship of this, and a large adjacent
tract of land, on the strength of a grant from the legislature.
Colonel Pyncheon, the claimant, as we gather from whatever
traits of him are preserved, was characterized by an iron
energy of purpose. Matthew Maule, on the other hand,
though an obscure man, was stubborn in the defence of what
he considered his right; and, for several years, he succeeded
in protecting the acre or two of earth, which, with his own
toil, he had hewn out of the primeval forest, to be his
garden-ground and homestead. No written record of this
dispute is known to be in existence. Our acquaintance with
the whole subject is derived chiefly from tradition. It would
be bold, therefore, and possibly unjust, to venture a decisive
opinion as to its merits; although it appears to have been at
least a matter of doubt, whether Colonel Pyncheon's claim
were not unduly stretched, in order to make it cover the
small metes and bounds of Matthew Maule. What greatly
strengthens such a suspicion is the fact that this controversy
between two ill-matched antagonists — at a period, moreover,
laud it as we may, when personal influence had far more
weight than now — remained for years undecided, and
came to a close only with the death of the party occupying
the disputed soil. The mode of his death, too, affects the
mind differently, in our day, from what it did a century and
a half ago. It was a death that blasted with strange horror
the humble name of the dweller in the cottage, and made it
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seem almost a religious act to drive the plough over the
little area of his habitation, and obliterate his place and
memory from among men.
Old Matthew Maule, in a word, was executed for the crime
of witchcraft. He was one of the martyrs to that terrible
delusion, which should teach us, among its other morals, that
the influential classes, and those who take upon themselves
to be leaders of the people, are fully liable to all the passionate
error that has ever characterized the maddest mob.
Clergymen, judges, statesmen, — the wisest, calmest, holiest
persons of their day, — stood in the inner circle round about
the gallows, loudest to applaud the work of blood, latest
to confess themselves miserably deceived. If any one part
of their proceedings can be said to deserve less blame than
another, it was the singular indiscrimination with which
they persecuted, not merely the poor and aged, as in former
judicial massacres, but people of all ranks; their own equals,
brethren, and wives. Amid the disorder of such various
ruin, it is not strange that a man of inconsiderable note, like
Maule, should have trodden the martyr's path to the hill of
execution almost unremarked in the throng of his fellowsufferers.
But, in after days, when the frenzy of that hideous
epoch had subsided, it was remembered how loudly
Colonel Pyncheon had joined in the general cry, to purge
the land from witchcraft; nor did it fail to be whispered,
that there was an invidious acrimony in the zeal with which
he had sought the condemnation of Matthew Maule. It
was well known that the victim had recognized the bitterness
of personal enmity in his persecutor's conduct towards
him, and that he declared himself hunted to death for his
spoil. At the moment of execution — with the halter about
his neck, and while Colonel Pyncheon sat on horseback,
grimly gazing at the scene — Maule had addressed him from
the scaffold, and uttered a prophecy, of which history, as well
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as fireside tradition, has preserved the very words. “God,”
said the dying man, pointing his finger, with a ghastly look,
at the undismayed countenance of his enemy, “God will
give him blood to drink!”
After the reputed wizard's death, his humble homestead
had fallen an easy spoil into Colonel Pyncheon's grasp.
When it was understood, however, that the colonel intended
to erect a family mansion — spacious, ponderously framed
of oaken timber, and calculated to endure for many generations
of his posterity — over the spot first covered by the logbuilt
hut of Matthew Maule, there was much shaking of the
head among the village gossips. Without absolutely expressing
a doubt whether the stalwart Puritan had acted as
a man of conscience and integrity, throughout the proceedings
which have been sketched, they, nevertheless, hinted
that he was about to build his house over an unquiet grave.
His home would include the home of the dead and buried
wizard, and would thus afford the ghost of the latter a kind
of privilege to haunt its new apartments, and the chambers
into which future bridegrooms were to lead their brides, and
where children of the Pyncheon blood were to be born.
The terror and ugliness of Maule's crime, and the wretchedness
of his punishment, would darken the freshly-plastered
walls, and infect them early with the scent of an old and
melancholy house. Why, then, — while so much of the
soil around him was bestrewn with the virgin forest-leaves,—
why should Colonel Pyncheon prefer a site that had
already been accurst?
But the Puritan soldier and magistrate was not a man to
be turned aside from his well-considered scheme, either by
dread of the wizard's ghost, or by flimsy sentimentalities
of any kind, however specious. Had he been told of a bad
air, it might have moved him somewhat; but he was ready
to encounter an evil spirit on his own ground. Endowed
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with common sense, as massive and hard as blocks of granite,
fastened together by stern rigidity of purpose, as with
iron clamps, he followed out his original design, probably
without so much as imagining an objection to it. On the
score of delicacy, or any scrupulousness which a finer sensibility
might have taught him, the colonel, like most of his
breed and generation, was impenetrable. He, therefore, dug
his cellar, and laid the deep foundations of his mansion, on
the square of earth whence Matthew Maule, forty years
before, had first swept away the fallen leaves. It was a
curious, and, as some people thought, an ominous fact, that,
very soon after the workmen began their operations, the
spring of water, above mentioned, entirely lost the deliciousness
of its pristine quality. Whether its sources were disturbed
by the depth of the new cellar, or whatever subtler
cause might lurk at the bottom, it is certain that the water
of Maules Well, as it continued to be called, grew hard and
brackish. Even such we find it now; and any old woman
of the neighborhood will certify that it is productive of
intestinal mischief to those who quench their thirst there.
The reader may deem it singular that the head carpenter
of the new edifice was no other than the son of the very
man from whose dead gripe the property of the soil had
been wrested. Not improbably he was the best workman
of his time; or, perhaps, the colonel thought it expedient, or
was impelled by some better feeling, thus openly to cast
aside all animosity against the race of his fallen antagonist.
Nor was it out of keeping with the general coarseness and
matter-of-fact character of the age, that the son should be
willing to earn an honest penny, or, rather, a weighty
amount of sterling pounds, from the purse of his father's
deadly enemy. At all events, Thomas Maule became the
architect of the House of the Seven Gables, and performed
his duty so faithfully that the timber frame-work, fastened
by his hands, still holds together.
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Thus the great house was built. Familiar as it stands
in the writer's recollection, — for it has been an object of
curiosity with him from boyhood, both as a specimen of the
best and stateliest architecture of a long-past epoch, and as
the scene of events more full of human interest, perhaps,
than those of a gray feudal castle, — familiar as it stands,
in its rusty old age, it is therefore only the more difficult
to imagine the bright novelty with which it first caught the
sunshine. The impression of its actual state, at this distance
of a hundred and sixty years, darkens, inevitably,
through the picture which we would fain give of its appearance
on the morning when the Puritan magnate bade all
the town to be his guests. A ceremony of consecration,
festive as well as religious, was now to be performed. A
prayer and discourse from the Rev. Mr. Higginson, and
the outpouring of a psalm from the general throat of the
community, was to be made acceptable to the grosser sense
by ale, cider, wine, and brandy, in copious effusion, and, as
some authorities aver, by an ox, roasted whole, or, at least,
by the weight and substance of an ox, in more manageable
joints and sirloins. The carcass of a deer, shot within
twenty miles, had supplied material for the vast circumference
of a pasty. A cod-fish, of sixty pounds, caught in the
bay, had been dissolved into the rich liquid of a chowder.
The chimney of the new house, in short, belching forth its
kitchen-smoke, impregnated the whole air with the scent of
meats, fowls, and fishes, spicily concocted with odoriferous
herbs, and onions in abundance. The mere smell of such
festivity, making its way to everybody's nostrils, was at
once an invitation and an appetite.
Maule's-lane, or Pyncheon-street, as it were now more
decorous to call it, was thronged, at the appointed hour, as
with a congregation on its way to church. All, as they
approached, looked upward at the imposing edifice, which
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was henceforth to assume its rank among the habitations
of mankind. There it rose, a little withdrawn from the
line of the street, but in pride, not modesty. Its whole
visible exterior was ornamented with quaint figures, conceived
in the grotesqueness of a gothic fancy, and drawn
or stamped in the glittering plaster, composed of lime,
pebbles, and bits of glass, with which the wood-work of the
walls was overspread. On every side, the seven gables
pointed sharply towards the sky, and presented the aspect
of a whole sisterhood of edifices, breathing through the
spiracles of one great chimney. The many lattices, with
their small, diamond-shaped panes, admitted the sunlight
into hall and chamber, while, nevertheless, the second story,
projecting far over the base, and itself retiring beneath the
third, threw a shadow and thoughtful gloom into the lower
rooms. Carved globes of wood were affixed under the
jutting stories. Little spiral rods of iron beautified each of
the seven peaks. On the triangular portion of the gable,
that fronted next the street, was a dial, put up that very
morning, and on which the sun was still marking the passage
of the first bright hour in a history that was not
destined to be all so bright. All around were scattered
shavings, chips, shingles, and broken halves of bricks;
these, together with the lately-turned earth, on which the
grass had not begun to grow, contributed to the impression
of strangeness and novelty proper to a house that had yet
its place to make among men's daily interests.
The principal entrance, which had almost the breadth of
a church-door, was in the angle between the two front
gables, and was covered by an open porch, with benches
beneath its shelter. Under this arched door-way, scraping
their feet on the unworn threshold, now trod the clergymen,
the elders, the magistrates, the deacons, and whatever of
aristocracy there was in town or county. Thither, too,
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thronged the plebeian classes, as freely as their betters, and
in larger number. Just within the entrance, however,
stood two serving-men, pointing some of the guests to the
neighborhood of the kitchen, and ushering others into the
statelier rooms, — hospitable alike to all, but still with a
scrutinizing regard to the high or low degree of each. Velvet
garments, sombre but rich, stiffly-plaited ruffs and
bands, embroidered gloves, venerable beards, the mien and
countenance of authority, made it easy to distinguish the
gentleman of worship, at that period, from the tradesman,
with his plodding air, or the laborer, in his leathern jerkin,
stealing awe-stricken into the house which he had perhaps
helped to build.
One inauspicious circumstance there was, which awakened
a hardly-concealed displeasure in the breasts of a few
of the more punctilious visiters. The founder of this stately
mansion — a gentleman noted for the square and ponderous
courtesy of his demeanor — ought surely to have stood in
his own hall, and to have offered the first welcome to so
many eminent personages as here presented themselves in
honor of his solemn festival. He was as yet invisible; the
most favored of the guests had not beheld him. This sluggishness
on Colonel Pyncheon's part became still more unaccountable,
when the second dignitary of the province made
his appearance, and found no more ceremonious a reception.
The lieutenant-governor, although his visit was one of the
anticipated glories of the day, had alighted from his horse,
and assisted his lady from her side-saddle, and crossed the
colonel's threshold, without other greeting than that of the
principal domestic.
This person — a gray-headed man, of quiet and most respectful
deportment — found it necessary to explain that his
master still remained in his study, or private apartment; on
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entering which, an hour before, he had expressed a wish on
no account to be disturbed.
“Do not you see, fellow,” said the high sheriff of the
county, taking the servant aside, “that this is no less a
man than the lieutenant-governor? Summon Colonel Pyncheon
at once! I know that he received letters from England,
this morning; and, in the perusal and consideration
of them, an hour may have passed away, without his noticing
it. But he will be ill-pleased, I judge, if you suffer him
to neglect the courtesy due to one of our chief rulers, and
who may be said to represent King William, in the absence
of the governor himself. Call your master instantly!”
“Nay, please your worship,” answered the man, in much
perplexity, but with a backwardness that strikingly indicated
the hard and severe character of Colonel Pyncheon's domestic
rule; “my master's orders were exceeding strict; and, as
your worship knows, he permits of no discretion in the obedience
of those who owe him service. Let who list open
yonder door; I dare not, though the governor's own voice
should bid me do it!”
“Pooh, pooh, master high sheriff!” cried the lieutenant-governor,
who had overheard the foregoing discussion, and
felt himself high enough in station to play a little with his
dignity. “I will take the matter into my own hands. It
is time that the good colonel came forth to greet his friends;
else we shall be apt to suspect that he has taken a sip too
much of his Canary wine, in his extreme deliberation which
cask it were best to broach, in honor of the day! But since
he is so much behindhand, I will give him a remembrancer
myself!”
Accordingly, with such a tramp of his ponderous riding-boots
as might of itself have been audible in the remotest
of the seven gables, he advanced to the door, which the
servant pointed out, and made its new panels reëcho with a
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loud, free knock. Then, looking round, with a smile, to the
spectators, he awaited a response. As none came, however,
he knocked again, but with the same unsatisfactory
result as at first. And now, being a trifle choleric in his
temperament, the lieutenant-governor uplifted the heavy
hilt of his sword, wherewith he so beat and banged upon
the door, that, as some of the bystanders whispered, the
racket might have disturbed the dead. Be that as it might,
it seemed to produce no awakening effect on Colonel Pyncheon.
When the sound subsided, the silence through the
house was deep, dreary and oppressive, notwithstanding that
the tongues of many of the guests had already been loosened
by a surreptitious cup or two of wine or spirits.
“Strange, forsooth! — very strange!” cried the lieutenant-governor,
whose smile was changed to a frown. “But
seeing that our host sets us the good example of forgetting
ceremony, I shall likewise throw it aside, and make free to
intrude on his privacy!”
He tried the door, which yielded to his hand, and was
flung wide open by a sudden gust of wind that passed, as
with a loud sigh, from the outermost portal, through all the
passages and apartments of the new house. It rustled the
silken garments of the ladies, and waved the long curls of
the gentlemen's wigs, and shook the window-hangings and
the curtains of the bed-chambers; causing everywhere a
singular stir, which yet was more like a hush. A shadow
of awe and half-fearful anticipation — nobody knew wherefore,
nor of what — had all at once fallen over the company.
They thronged, however, to the now open door, pressing
the lieutenant-governor, in the eagerness of their curiosity,
into the room in advance of them. At the first glimpse,
they beheld nothing extraordinary: a handsomely-furnished
room, of moderate size, somewhat darkened by curtains;
books arranged on shelves; a large map on the wall, and
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likewise a portrait of Colonel Pyncheon, beneath which sat
the original colonel himself, in an oaken elbow-chair, with
a pen in his hand. Letters, parchments, and blank sheets
of paper, were on the table before him. He appeared to
gaze at the curious crowd, in front of which stood the lieutenant-governor;
and there was a frown on his dark and
massive countenance, as if sternly resentful of the boldness
that had impelled them into his private retirement.
A little boy — the colonel's grandchild, and the only
human being that ever dared to be familiar with him —
now made his way among the guests, and ran towards the
seated figure; then pausing half-way, he began to shriek
with terror. The company, tremulous as the leaves of a
tree, when all are shaking together, drew nearer, and perceived
that there was an unnatural distortion in the fixedness
of Colonel Pyncheon's stare; that there was blood on
his ruff, and that his hoary beard was saturated with it. It
was too late to give assistance. The iron-hearted Puritan,
the relentless persecutor, the grasping and strong-willed
man, was dead! Dead, in his new house! There is a
tradition, only worth alluding to, as lending a tinge of superstitious
awe to a scene perhaps gloomy enough without it,
that a voice spoke loudly among the guests, the tones of
which were like those of old Matthew Maule, the executed
wizard, — “God hath given him blood to drink!”
Thus early had that one guest — the only guest who is
certain, at one time or another, to find his way into every
human dwelling — thus early had Death stepped across the
threshold of the House of the Seven Gables!
Colonel Pyncheon's sudden and mysterious end made a
vast deal of noise in its day. There were many rumors,
some of which have vaguely drifted down to the present
time, how that appearances indicated violence; that there
were the marks of fingers on his throat, and the print of a
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bloody hand on his plaited ruff; and that his peaked beard
was dishevelled, as if it had been fiercely clutched and
pulled. It was averred, likewise, that the lattice-window,
near the colonel's chair, was open; and that, only a few
minutes before the fatal occurrence, the figure of a man had
been seen clambering over the garden-fence, in the rear of
the house. But it were folly to lay any stress on stories
of this kind, which are sure to spring up around such an
event as that now related, and which, as in the present
case, sometimes prolong themselves for ages afterwards,
like the toadstools that indicate where the fallen and buried
trunk of a tree has long since mouldered into the earth.
For our own part, we allow them just as little credence as
to that other fable of the skeleton hand which the lieutenant-governor
was said to have seen at the colonel's throat,
but which vanished away, as he advanced further into the
room. Certain it is, however, that there was a great consultation
and dispute of doctors over the dead body. One—
John Swinnerton by name — who appears to have been
a man of eminence, upheld it, if we have rightly understood
his terms of art, to be a case of apoplexy. His professional
brethren, each for himself, adopted various hypotheses,
more or less plausible, but all dressed out in a perplexing
mystery of phrase, which, if it do not show a
bewilderment of mind in these erudite physicians, certainly
causes it in the unlearned peruser of their opinions. The
coroner's jury sat upon the corpse, and, like sensible men,
returned an unassailable verdict of “Sudden Death!”
It is indeed difficult to imagine that there could have
been a serious suspicion of murder, or the slightest grounds
for implicating any particular individual as the perpetrator.
The rank, wealth, and eminent character of the deceased,
must have insured the strictest scrutiny into every ambiguous
circumstance. As none such is on record, it is safe to
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assume that none existed. Tradition — which sometimes
brings down truth that history has let slip, but is oftener the
wild babble of the time, such as was formerly spoken at the
fireside, and now congeals in newspapers — tradition is
responsible for all contrary averments. In Colonel Pyncheon's
funeral sermon, which was printed, and is still
extant, the Rev. Mr. Higginson enumerates, among the
many felicities of his distinguished parishioner's earthly
career, the happy seasonableness of his death. His duties
all performed, — the highest prosperity attained, — his race
and future generations fixed on a stable basis, and with a
stately roof to shelter them, for centuries to come, — what
other upward step remained for this good man to take,
save the final step from earth to the golden gate of heaven!
The pious clergyman surely would not have uttered words
like these, had he in the least suspected that the colonel
had been thrust into the other world with the clutch of
violence upon his throat.
The family of Colonel Pyncheon, at the epoch of his
death, seemed destined to as fortunate a permanence as can
anywise consist with the inherent instability of human
affairs. It might fairly be anticipated that the progress of
time would rather increase and ripen their prosperity, than
wear away and destroy it. For, not only had his son and
heir come into immediate enjoyment of a rich estate, but
there was a claim, through an Indian deed, confirmed by a
subsequent grant of the General Court, to a vast and as
yet unexplored and unmeasured tract of eastern lands.
These possessions — for as such they might almost certainly
be reckoned — comprised the greater part of what is
now known as Waldo County, in the State of Maine, and
were more extensive than many a dukedom, or even a
reigning prince's territory, on European soil. When the
pathless forest, that still covered this wild principality,
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should give place — as it inevitably must, though perhaps
not till ages hence — to the golden fertility of human culture,
it would be the source of incalculable wealth to the
Pyncheon blood. Had the colonel survived only a few
weeks longer, it is probable that his great political influence,
and powerful connections, at home and abroad, would have
consummated all that was necessary to render the claim
available. But, in spite of good Mr. Higginson's congratulatory
eloquence, this appeared to be the one thing which
Colonel Pyncheon, provident and sagacious as he was, had
allowed to go at loose ends. So far as the prospective
territory was concerned, he unquestionably died too soon.
His son lacked not merely the father's eminent position, but
the talent and force of character to achieve it: he could,
therefore, effect nothing by dint of political interest; and
the bare justice or legality of the claim was not so apparent,
after the colonel's decease, as it had been pronounced
in his lifetime. Some connecting link had slipped out of
the evidence, and could not anywhere be found.
Efforts, it is true, were made by the Pyncheons, not only
then, but at various periods for nearly a hundred years
afterwards, to obtain what they stubbornly persisted in
deeming their right. But, in course of time, the territory
was partly re-granted to more favored individuals, and
partly cleared and occupied by actual settlers. These last,
if they ever heard of the Pyncheon title, would have
laughed at the idea of any man's asserting a right — on
the strength of mouldy parchments, signed with the faded
autographs of governors and legislators long dead and forgotten—
to the lands which they or their fathers had
wrested from the wild hand of nature, by their own sturdy
toil. This impalpable claim, therefore, resulted in nothing
more solid than to cherish, from generation to generation,
an absurd delusion of family importance, which all along
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characterized the Pyncheons. It caused the poorest member
of the race to feel as if he inherited a kind of nobility,
and might yet come into the possession of princely wealth
to support it. In the better specimens of the breed, this
peculiarity threw an ideal grace over the hard material of
human life, without stealing away any truly valuable
quality. In the baser sort, its effect was to increase the
liability to sluggishness and dependence, and induce the
victim of a shadowy hope to remit all self-effort, while
awaiting the realization of his dreams. Years and years
after their claim had passed out of the public memory, the
Pyncheons were accustomed to consult the colonel's ancient
map, which had been projected while Waldo County was
still an unbroken wilderness. Where the old land-surveyor
had put down woods, lakes, and rivers, they marked out the
cleared spaces, and dotted the villages and towns, and
calculated the progressively increasing value of the territory,
as if there were yet a prospect of its ultimately forming
a princedom for themselves.
In almost every generation, nevertheless, there happened
to be some one descendant of the family gifted with a portion
of the hard, keen sense, and practical energy, that had
so remarkably distinguished the original founder. His
character, indeed, might be traced all the way down, as distinctly
as if the colonel himself, a little diluted, had been
gifted with a sort of intermittent immortality on earth. At
two or three epochs, when the fortunes of the family were
low, this representative of hereditary qualities had made his
appearance, and caused the traditionary gossips of the town
to whisper among themselves: — “Here is the old Pyncheon
come again! Now the Seven Gables will be newshingled!”
From father to son, they clung to the ancestral
house, with singular tenacity of home attachment. For
various reasons, however, and from impressions often too
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vaguely founded to be put on paper, the writer cherishes the
belief that many, if not most, of the successive proprietors of
this estate, were troubled with doubts as to their moral right
to hold it. Of their legal tenure there could be no question;
but old Matthew Maule, it is to be feared, trode downward
from his own age to a far later one, planting a heavy foot-step,
all the way, on the conscience of a Pyncheon. If so,
we are left to dispose of the awful query, whether each
inheritor of the property — conscious of wrong, and failing
to rectify it — did not commit anew the great guilt of his
ancestor, and incur all its original responsibilities. And
supposing such to be the case, would it not be a far truer
mode of expression to say, of the Pyncheon family, that they
inherited a great misfortune, than the reverse?
We have already hinted, that it is not our purpose to
trace down the history of the Pyncheon family, in its unbroken
connection with the House of the Seven Gables;
nor to show, as in a magic picture, how the rustiness and
infirmity of age gathered over the venerable house itself.
As regards its interior life, a large, dim looking-glass used
to hang in one of the rooms, and was fabled to contain
within its depths all the shapes that had ever been reflected
there, — the old colonel himself, and his many descendants,
some in the garb of antique babyhood, and others in the
bloom of feminine beauty or manly prime, or saddened
with the wrinkles of frosty age. Had we the secret of that
mirror, we would gladly sit down before it, and transfer its
revelations to our page. But there was a story, for which
it is difficult to conceive any foundation, that the posterity
of Matthew Maule had some connection with the mystery
of the looking-glass, and that, by what appears to have
been a sort of mesmeric process, they could make its inner
region all alive with the departed Pyncheons; not as they
had shown themselves to the world, nor in their better and
-- 026 --
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happier hours, but as doing over again some deed of sin, or
in the crisis of life's bitterest sorrow. The popular imagination,
indeed, long kept itself busy with the affair of the old
Puritan Pyncheon and the wizard Maule; the curse, which
the latter flung from his scaffold, was remembered, with the
very important addition, that it had become a part of the
Pyncheon inheritance. If one of the family did but gurgle
in his throat, a bystander would be likely enough to whisper,
between jest and earnest, — “He has Maule's blood to
drink!” The sudden death of a Pyncheon, about a hundred
years ago, with circumstances very similar to what
have been related of the colonel's exit, was held as giving
additional probability to the received opinion on this topic.
It was considered, moreover, an ugly and ominous circumstance,
that Colonel Pyncheon's picture — in obedience, it
was said, to a provision of his will — remained affixed to
the wall of the room in which he died. Those stern,
immitigable features seemed to symbolize an evil influence,
and so darkly to mingle the shadow of their presence with
the sunshine of the passing hour, that no good thoughts or
purposes could ever spring up and blossom there. To the
thoughtful mind, there will be no tinge of superstition in
what we figuratively express, by affirming that the ghost
of a dead progenitor — perhaps as a portion of his own punishment—
is often doomed to become the Evil Genius of
his family.
The Pyncheons, in brief, lived along, for the better part
of two centuries, with perhaps less of outward vicissitude
than has attended most other New England families, during
the same period of time. Possessing very distinctive traits
of their own, they nevertheless took the general characteristics
of the little community in which they dwelt; a town
noted for its frugal, discreet, well-ordered, and home-loving
inhabitants, as well as for the somewhat confined scope of
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its sympathies; but in which, be it said, there are odder
individuals, and, now and then, stranger occurrences, than
one meets with almost anywhere else. During the Revolution,
the Pyncheon of that epoch, adopting the royal side,
became a refugee; but repented, and made his reäppearance,
just at the point of time to preserve the House of the Seven
Gables from confiscation. For the last seventy years, the
most noted event in the Pyncheon annals had been likewise
the heaviest calamity that ever befell the race; no less
than the violent death — for so it was adjudged — of one
member of the family, by the criminal act of another. Certain
circumstances, attending this fatal occurrence, had
brought the deed irresistibly home to a nephew of the deceased
Pyncheon. The young man was tried and convicted
of the crime; but either the circumstantial nature of the
evidence, and possibly some lurking doubt in the breast of
the executive, or, lastly, — an argument of greater weight
in a republic than it could have been under a monarchy, —
the high respectability and political influence of the criminal's
connections, had availed to mitigate his doom from
death to perpetual imprisonment. This sad affair had
chanced about thirty years before the action of our story
commences. Latterly, there were rumors (which few believed,
and only one or two felt greatly interested in) that
this long-buried man was likely, for some reason or other,
to be summoned forth from his living tomb.
It is essential to say a few words respecting the victim of
this now almost forgotten murder. He was an old bachelor,
and possessed of great wealth, in addition to the house and
real estate which constituted what remained of the ancient
Pyncheon property. Being of an eccentric and melancholy
turn of mind, and greatly given to rummaging old records
and hearkening to old traditions, he had brought himself, it
is averred, to the conclusion, that Matthew Maule, the
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wizard, had been foully wronged out of his homestead, if not
out of his life. Such being the case, and he, the old bachelor,
in possession of the ill-gotten spoil — with the black
stain of blood sunken deep into it, and still to be scented by
conscientious nostrils — the question occurred, whether it
were not imperative upon him, even at this late hour, to
make restitution to Maule's posterity. To a man living so
much in the past, and so little in the present, as the secluded
and antiquarian old bachelor, a century and a half seemed
not so vast a period as to obviate the propriety of substituting
right for wrong. It was the belief of those who knew
him best, that he would positively have taken the very singular
step of giving up the House of the Seven Gables to
the representative of Matthew Maule, but for the unspeakable
tumult which a suspicion of the old gentleman's project
awakened among his Pyncheon relatives. Their exertions
had the effect of suspending his purpose; but it was
feared that he would perform, after death, by the operation
of his last will, what he had so hardly been prevented from
doing, in his proper lifetime. But there is no one thing
which men so rarely do, whatever the provocation or inducement,
as to bequeath patrimonial property away from their
own blood. They may love other individuals far better
than their relatives, — they may even cherish dislike, or positive
hatred, to the latter; but yet, in view of death, the
strong prejudice of propinquity revives, and impels the testator
to send down his estate in the line marked out by custom
so immemorial that it looks like nature. In all the
Pyncheons, this feeling had the energy of disease. It was
too powerful for the conscientious scruples of the old bachelor;
at whose death, accordingly, the mansion-house, together
with most of his other riches, passed into the possession
of his next legal representative.
This was a nephew, the cousin of the miserable young
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man who had been convicted of the uncle's murder. The
new heir, up to the period of his accession, was reckoned
rather a dissipated youth, but had at once reformed, and
made himself an exceedingly respectable member of society.
In fact, he showed more of the Pyncheon quality, and had
won higher eminence in the world, than any of his race,
since the time of the original Puritan. Applying himself
in earlier manhood to the study of the law, and having a
natural tendency towards office, he had attained, many years
ago, to a judicial situation in some inferior court, which
gave him for life the very desirable and imposing title of
judge. Later, he had engaged in politics, and served a part
of two terms in Congress, besides making a considerable
figure in both branches of the state legislature. Judge
Pyncheon was unquestionably an honor to his race. He
had built himself a country-seat within a few miles of his
native town, and there spent such portions of his time as
could be spared from public service in the display of every
grace and virtue — as a newspaper phrased it, on the eve
of an election — befitting the Christian, the good citizen,
the horticulturalist, and the gentleman.
There were few of the Pyncheons left to sun themselves
in the glow of the judge's prosperity. In respect to natural
increase, the breed had not thriven; it appeared rather to be
dying out. The only members of the family known to be
extant were, first, the judge himself, and a single surviving
son, who was now travelling in Europe; next, the thirty
years prisoner, already alluded to, and a sister of the latter,
who occupied, in an extremely retired manner, the House
of the Seven Gables, in which she had a life-estate by the
will of the old bachelor. She was understood to be wretchedly
poor, and seemed to make it her choice to remain so;
inasmuch as her affluent cousin, the judge, had repeatedly
offered her all the comforts of life, either in the old mansion
-- 030 --
[figure description] Page 030.[end figure description]
or his own modern residence. The last and youngest
Pyncheon was a little country-girl of seventeen, the daughter
of another of the judge's cousins, who had married a young
woman of no family or property, and died early, and in poor
circumstances. His widow had recently taken another husband.
As for Matthew Maule's posterity, it was supposed now
to be extinct. For a very long period after the witchcraft
delusion, however, the Maules had continued to inhabit
the town where their progenitor had suffered so unjust
a death. To all appearance, they were a quiet, honest,
well-meaning race of people, cherishing no malice against
individuals or the public, for the wrong which had been done
them; or if, at their own fireside, they transmitted, from
father to child, any hostile recollection of the wizard's fate,
and their lost patrimony, it was never acted upon, nor openly
expressed. Nor would it have been singular had they ceased
to remember that the House of the Seven Gables was resting
its heavy frame-work on a foundation that was rightfully
their own. There is something so massive, stable, and
almost irresistibly imposing, in the exterior presentment of
established rank and great possessions, that their very existence
seems to give them a right to exist; at least, so excellent
a counterfeit of right, that few poor and humble men
have moral force enough to question it, even in their secret
minds. Such is the case now, after so many ancient prejudices
have been overthrown; and it was far more so in
ante-revolutionary days, when the aristocracy could venture
to be proud, and the low were content to be abased. Thus
the Maules, at all events, kept their resentments within their
own breasts. They were generally poverty-stricken; always
plebeian and obscure; working with unsuccessful diligence
at handicrafts; laboring on the wharves, or following the
sea, as sailors before the mast; living here and there about
-- 031 --
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the town, in hired tenements, and coming finally to the
almshouse, as the natural home of their old age. At last,
after creeping, as it were, for such a length of time, along
the utmost verge of the opaque puddle of obscurity, they
had taken that downright plunge, which, sooner or later, is
the destiny of all families, whether princely or plebeian.
For thirty years past, neither town-record, nor grave-stone,
nor the directory, nor the knowledge or memory of man,
bore any trace of Matthew Maule's descendants. His blood
might possibly exist elsewhere; here, where its lowly current
could be traced so far back, it had ceased to keep an
onward course.
So long as any of the race were to be found, they had
been marked out from other men — not strikingly, nor as
with a sharp line, but with an effect that was felt, rather
than spoken of — by an hereditary character of reserve.
Their companions, or those who endeavored to become such,
grew conscious of a circle round about the Maules, within
the sanctity or the spell of which, in spite of an exterior
of sufficient frankness and good-fellowship, it was impossible
for any man to step. It was this indefinable peculiarity,
perhaps, that, by insulating them from human aid, kept them
always so unfortunate in life. It certainly operated to prolong,
in their case, and to confirm to them, as their only
inheritance, those feelings of repugnance and superstitious
terror with which the people of the town, even after awakening
from their frenzy, continued to regard the memory of
the reputed witches. The mantle, or rather the ragged
cloak, of old Matthew Maule, had fallen upon his children.
They were half believed to inherit mysterious attributes;
the family eye was said to possess strange power. Among
other good-for-nothing properties and privileges, one was
especially assigned them: of exercising an influence over
people's dreams. The Pyncheons, if all stories were true,
-- 032 --
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haughtily as they bore themselves in the noon-day streets
of their native town, were no better than bond-servants to
these plebeian Maules, on entering the topsy-turvy common-wealth
of sleep. Modern pyschology, it may be, will endeavor
to reduce these alleged necromancies within a system,
instead of rejecting them as altogether fabulous.
A descriptive paragraph or two, treating of the seven-gabled
mansion in its more recent aspect, will bring this
preliminary chapter to a close. The street in which it
upreared its venerable peaks has long ceased to be a fashionable
quarter of the town; so that, though the old edifice
was surrounded by habitations of modern date, they were
mostly small, built entirely of wood, and typical of the
most plodding uniformity of common life. Doubtless, however,
the whole story of human existence may be latent in
each of them, but with no picturesqueness, externally, that
can attract the imagination or sympathy to seek it there.
But as for the old structure of our story, its white-oak
frame, and its boards, shingles and crumbling plaster, and
even the huge, clustered chimney in the midst, seemed to
constitute only the least and meanest part of its reality. So
much of mankind's varied experience had passed there, —
so much had been suffered, and something, too, enjoyed, —
that the very timbers were oozy, as with the moisture of a
heart. It was itself like a great human heart, with a life
of its own, and full of rich and sombre reminiscences.
The deep projection of the second story gave the house
such a meditative look, that you could not pass it without
the idea that it had secrets to keep, and an eventful history
to moralize upon. In front, just on the edge of the unpaved
sidewalk, grew the Pyncheon-elm, which, in reference to
such trees as one usually meets with, might well be termed
gigantic. It had been planted by a great-grandson of the
first Pyncheon, and, though now fourscore years of age, or
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perhaps nearer a hundred, was still in its strong and broad
maturity, throwing its shadow from side to side of the
street, overtopping the seven gables, and sweeping the
whole black roof with its pendent foliage. It gave beauty
to the old edifice, and seemed to make it a part of nature.
The street having been widened about forty years ago, the
front gable was now precisely on a line with it. On either
side extended a ruinous wooden fence, of open lattice-work,
through which could be seen a grassy yard, and, especially
in the angles of the building, an enormous fertility of burdocks,
with leaves, it is hardly an exaggeration to say, two
or three feet long. Behind the house there appeared to be
a garden, which undoubtedly had once been extensive, but
was now infringed upon by other enclosures, or shut in by
habitations and out-buildings that stood on another street.
It would be an omission, trifling, indeed, but unpardonable,
were we to forget the green moss that had long since gathered
over the projections of the windows, and on the slopes
of the roof; nor must we fail to direct the reader's eye to a
crop, not of weeds, but flower-shrubs, which were growing
aloft in the air, not a great way from the chimney, in the
nook between two of the gables. They were called Alice's
Posies. The tradition was, that a certain Alice Pyncheon
had flung up the seeds, in sport, and that the dust of the
street and the decay of the roof gradually formed a kind
of soil for them, out of which they grew, when Alice had
long been in her grave. However the flowers might have
come there, it was both sad and sweet to observe how
nature adopted to herself this desolate, decaying, gusty,
rusty old house of the Pyncheon family; and how the
ever-returning summer did her best to gladden it with tender
beauty, and grew melancholy in the effort.
There is one other feature, very essential to be noticed,
but which, we greatly fear, may damage any picturesque
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and romantic impression which we have been willing to
throw over our sketch of this respectable edifice. In the
front gable, under the impending brow of the second story,
and contiguous to the street, was a shop-door, divided horizontally
in the midst, and with a window for its upper segment,
such as is often seen in dwellings of a somewhat
ancient date. This same shop-door had been a subject of
no slight mortification to the present occupant of the august
Pyncheon-house, as well as to some of her predecessors.
The matter is disagreeably delicate to handle; but, since
the reader must needs be let into the secret, he will please
to understand, that, about a century ago, the head of the
Pyncheons found himself involved in serious financial difficulties.
The fellow (gentleman, as he styled himself)
can hardly have been other than a spurious interloper;
for, instead of seeking office from the king or the royal
governor, or urging his hereditary claim to eastern lands,
he bethought himself of no better avenue to wealth than
by cutting a shop-door through the side of his ancestral
residence. It was the custom of the time, indeed, for merchants
to store their goods and transact business in their
own dwellings. But there was something pitifully small in
this old Pyncheon's mode of setting about his commercial
operations; it was whispered, that, with his own hands, all
be-ruffled as they were, he used to give change for a shilling,
and would turn a half-penny twice over, to make sure
that it was a good one. Beyond all question, he had the
blood of a petty huckster in his veins, through whatever
channel it may have found its way there.
Immediately on his death, the shop-door had been locked,
bolted, and barred, and, down to the period of our story,
had probably never once been opened. The old counter,
shelves, and other fixtures of the little shop, remained just
as he had left them. It used to be affirmed, that the dead
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shopkeeper, in a white wig, a faded velvet coat, an apron at
his waist, and his ruffles carefully turned back from his
wrists, might be seen through the chinks of the shutters,
any night of the year, ransacking his till, or poring over
the dingy pages of his day-book. From the look of unutterable
woe upon his face, it appeared to be his doom to
spend eternity in a vain effort to make his accounts balance.
And now — in a very humble way, as will be seen — we
proceed to open our narrative.
-- -- p574-045
II. THE LITTLE SHOP-WINDOW.
[figure description] Page 036.[end figure description]
It still lacked half an hour of sunrise, when Miss Hepzibah
Pyncheon — we will not say awoke; it being doubtful
whether the poor lady had so much as closed her eyes, during
the brief night of midsummer — but, at all events, arose
from her solitary pillow, and began what it would be mockery
to term the adornment of her person. Far from us be
the indecorum of assisting, even in imagination, at a maiden
lady's toilet! Our story must therefore await Miss Hepzibah
at the threshold of her chamber; only presuming,
meanwhile, to note some of the heavy sighs that labored
from her bosom, with little restraint as to their lugubrious
depth and volume of sound, inasmuch as they could be
audible to nobody, save a disembodied listener like ourself.
The Old Maid was alone in the old house. Alone, except
for a certain respectable and orderly young man, an artist
in the daguerreotype line, who, for about three months back,
had been a lodger in a remote gable, — quite a house by
itself, indeed, — with locks, bolts, and oaken bars, on all the
intervening doors. Inaudible, consequently, were poor Miss
Hepzibah's gusty sighs. Inaudible, the creaking joints of
her stiffened knees, as she knelt down by the bedside. And
inaudible, too, by mortal ear, but heard with all-comprehending
love and pity in the furthest heaven, that almost
agony of prayer — now whispered, now a groan, now a
struggling silence — wherewith she besought the Divine
assistance through the day! Evidently, this is to be a day
of more than ordinary trial to Miss Hepzibah, who, for
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above a quarter of a century gone by, has dwelt in strict
seclusion, taking no part in the business of life, and just as
little in its intercourse and pleasures. Not with such fervor
prays the torpid recluse, looking forward to the cold, sunless,
stagnant calm of a day that is to be like innumerable
yesterdays!
The maiden lady's devotions are concluded. Will she
now issue forth over the threshold of our story? Not yet,
by many moments. First, every drawer in the tall, old-fashioned
bureau is to be opened, with difficulty, and with a
succession of spasmodic jerks; then, all must close again,
with the same fidgety reluctance. There is a rustling of
stiff silks; a tread of backward and forward footsteps, to
and fro, across the chamber. We suspect Miss Hepzibah,
moreover, of taking a step upward into a chair, in order to
give heedful regard to her appearance, on all sides, and at
full length, in the oval, dingy-framed toilet-glass, that hangs
above her table. Truly! well, indeed! who would have
thought it! Is all this precious time to be lavished on the
matutinal repair and beautifying of an elderly person, who
never goes abroad, whom nobody ever visits, and from
whom, when she shall have done her utmost, it were the
best charity to turn one's eyes another way?
Now she is almost ready. Let us pardon her one other
pause; for it is given to the sole sentiment, or, we might
better say — heightened and rendered intense, as it has
been, by sorrow and seclusion — to the strong passion, of her
life. We heard the turning of a key in a small lock; she
has opened a secret drawer of an escritoir, and is probably
looking at a certain miniature, done in Malbone's most perfect
style, and representing a face worthy of no less delicate
a pencil. It was once our good fortune to see this picture.
It is a likeness of a young man, in a silken dressing-gown
of an old fashion, the soft richness of which is well adapted
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[figure description] Page 038.[end figure description]
to the countenance of reverie, with its full, tender lips, and
beautiful eyes, that seem to indicate not so much capacity
of thought, as gentle and voluptuous emotion. Of the possessor
of such features we shall have a right to ask nothing,
except that he would take the rude world easily, and make
himself happy in it. Can it have been an early lover of
Miss Hepzibah? No; she never had a lover — poor thing,
how could she? — nor ever knew, by her own experience,
what love technically means. And yet, her undying faith
and trust, her fresh remembrance, and continual devotedness
towards the original of that miniature, have been the
only substance for her heart to feed upon.
She seems to have put aside the miniature, and is standing
again before the toilet-glass. There are tears to be
wiped off. A few more footsteps to and fro; and here, at
last — with another pitiful sigh, like a gust of chill, damp
wind out of a long-closed vault, the door of which has accidentally
been set ajar — here comes Miss Hepzibah Pyncheon!
Forth she steps into the dusky, time-darkened
passage; a tall figure, clad in black silk, with a long and
shrunken waist, feeling her way towards the stairs like a
near-sighted person, as in truth she is.
The sun, meanwhile, if not already above the horizon,
was ascending nearer and nearer to its verge. A few clouds,
floating high upward, caught some of the earliest light, and
threw down its golden gleam on the windows of all the
houses in the street, not forgetting the House of the Seven
Gables, which — many such sunrises as it had witnessed —
looked cheerfully at the present one. The reflected radiance
served to show, pretty distinctly, the aspect and arrangement
of the room which Hepzibah entered, after descending
the stairs. It was a low-studded room, with a beam
across the ceiling, panelled with dark wood, and having a
large chimney-piece, set round with pictured tiles, but now
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[figure description] Page 039.[end figure description]
closed by an iron fire-board, through which ran the funnel
of a modern stove. There was a carpet on the floor, originally
of rich texture, but so worn and faded, in these latter
years, that its once brilliant figure had quite vanished into
one indistinguishable hue. In the way of furniture, there
were two tables: one, constructed with perplexing intricacy,
and exhibiting as many feet as a centipede; the other, most
delicately wrought, with four long and slender legs, so apparently
frail that it was almost incredible what a length of
time the ancient tea-table had stood upon them. Half a
dozen chairs stood about the room, straight and stiff, and so
ingeniously contrived for the discomfort of the human person
that they were irksome even to sight, and conveyed the
ugliest possible idea of the state of society to which they
could have been adapted. One exception there was, however,
in a very antique elbow-chair, with a high back,
carved elaborately in oak, and a roomy depth within its
arms, that made up, by its spacious comprehensiveness, for
the lack of any of those artistic curves which abound in a
modern chair.
As for ornamental articles of furniture, we recollect but
two, if such they may be called. One was a map of the
Pyncheon territory at the eastward, not engraved, but the
handiwork of some skilful old draftsman, and grotesquely
illuminated with pictures of Indians and wild beasts, among
which was seen a lion; the natural history of the region
being as little known as its geography, which was put down
most fantastically awry. The other adornment was the
portrait of old Colonel Pyncheon, at two-thirds length, representing
the stern features of a puritanic-looking personage, in
a skull-cap, with a laced band and a grizzly beard; holding a
Bible with one hand, and in the other uplifting an iron
sword-hilt. The latter object, being more successfully depicted
by the artist, stood out in far greater prominence than
-- 040 --
[figure description] Page 040.[end figure description]
the sacred volume. Face to face with this picture, on entering
the apartment, Miss Hepzibah Pyncheon came to a
pause; regarding it with a singular scowl, a strange contortion
of the brow, which, by people who did not know
her, would probably have been interpreted as an expression
of bitter anger and ill-will. But it was no such thing. She,
in fact, felt a reverence for the pictured visage of which
only a far-descended and time-stricken virgin could be susceptible;
and this forbidding scowl was the innocent result
of her near-sightedness, and an effort so to concentrate her
powers of vision as to substitute a firm outline of the object
instead of a vague one.
We must linger a moment on this unfortunate expression
of poor Hepzibah's brow. Her scowl — as the world, or
such part of it as sometimes caught a transitory glimpse of
her at the window, wickedly persisted in calling it — her
scowl had done Miss Hepzibah a very ill office, in establishing
her character as an ill-tempered old maid; nor does it
appear improbable, that, by often gazing at herself in a dim
looking-glass, and perpetually encountering her own frown
within its ghostly sphere, she had been led to interpret the
expression almost as unjustly as the world did. “How miserably
cross I look!” she must often have whispered to herself; —
and ultimately have fancied herself so, by a sense
of inevitable doom. But her heart never frowned. It was
naturally tender, sensitive, and full of little tremors and
palpitations; all of which weaknesses it retained, while her
visage was growing so perversely stern, and even fierce.
Nor had Hepzibah ever any hardihood, except what came
from the very warmest nook in her affections.
All this time, however, we are loitering faint-heartedly on
the threshold of our story. In very truth, we have an invincible
reluctance to disclose what Miss Hepzibah Pyncheon
was about to do.
-- 041 --
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It has already been observed, that, in the basement story
of the gable fronting on the street, an unworthy ancestor,
nearly a century ago, had fitted up a shop. Ever since the
old gentleman retired from trade, and fell asleep under his
coffin-lid, not only the shop-door, but the inner arrangements,
had been suffered to remain unchanged; while the
dust of ages gathered inch-deep over the shelves and counter,
and partly filled an old pair of scales, as if it were of
value enough to be weighed. It treasured itself up, too, in
the half-open till, where there still lingered a base sixpence,
worth neither more nor less than the hereditary pride which
had here been put to shame. Such had been the state and
condition of the little shop in old Hepzibah's childhood,
when she and her brother used to play at hide-and-seek in
its forsaken precincts. So it had remained, until within a
few days past.
But now, though the shop-window was still closely curtained
from the public gaze, a remarkable change had taken
place in its interior. The rich and heavy festoons of cobweb,
which it had cost a long ancestral succession of spiders
their life's labor to spin and weave, had been carefully
brushed away from the ceiling. The counter, shelves, and
floor, had all been scoured, and the latter was overstrewn
with fresh blue sand. The brown scales, too, had evidently
undergone rigid discipline, in an unavailing effort to rub off
the rust, which, alas! had eaten through and through their
substance. Neither was the little old shop any longer
empty of merchantable goods. A curious eye, privileged
to take an account of stock, and investigate behind the
counter, would have discovered a barrel, — yea, two or three
barrels and half ditto, — one containing flour, another apples,
and a third, perhaps, Indian meal. There was likewise
a square box of pine-wood, full of soap in bars; also,
another of the same size, in which were tallow candles, ten
-- 042 --
[figure description] Page 042.[end figure description]
to the pound. A small stock of brown sugar, some white
beans and split peas, and a few other commodities of low
price, and such as are constantly in demand, made up the
bulkier portion of the merchandise. It might have been
taken for a ghostly or phantasmagoric reflection of the old
shop-keeper Pyncheon's shabbily-provided shelves, save
that some of the articles were of a description and outward
form which could hardly have been known in his day. For
instance, there was a glass pickle-jar, filled with fragments
of Gibraltar rock; not, indeed, splinters of the veritable
stone foundation of the famous fortress, but bits of delectable
candy, neatly done up in white paper. Jim Crow, moreover,
was seen executing his world-renowned dance, in ginger-bread.
A party of leaden dragoons were galloping along
one of the shelves, in equipments and uniform of modern
cut; and there were some sugar figures, with no strong
resemblance to the humanity of any epoch, but less unsatisfactorily
representing our own fashions than those of a hundred
years ago. Another phenomenon, still more strikingly
modern, was a package of lucifer matches, which, in old
times, would have been thought actually to borrow their
instantaneous flame from the nether fires of Tophet.
In short, to bring the matter at once to a point, it was
incontrovertibly evident that somebody had taken the shop
and fixtures of the long-retired and forgotten Mr. Pyncheon,
and was about to renew the enterprise of that departed
worthy, with a different set of customers. Who could this
bold adventurer be? And, of all places in the world, why
had he chosen the House of the Seven Gables as the scene
of his commercial speculations?
We return to the elderly maiden. She at length withdrew
her eyes from the dark countenance of the colonel's
portrait, heaved a sigh, — indeed, her breast was a very cave
of Æolus, that morning, — and stept across the room on
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[figure description] Page 043.[end figure description]
tiptoe, as is the customary gait of elderly women. Passing
through an intervening passage, she opened a door that
communicated with the shop, just now so elaborately described.
Owing to the projection of the upper story — and
still more to the thick shadow of the Pyncheon-elm, which
stood almost directly in front of the gable — the twilight,
here, was still as much akin to night as morning. Another
heavy sigh from Miss Hepzibah! After a moment's pause
on the threshold, peering towards the window with her near-sighted
scowl, as if frowning down some bitter enemy, she
suddenly projected herself into the shop. The haste, and,
as it were, the galvanic impulse of the movement, were
really quite startling.
Nervously — in a sort of frenzy, we might almost say —
she began to busy herself in arranging some children's
play-things, and other little wares, on the shelves and at
the shop-window. In the aspect of this dark-arrayed, palefaced,
lady-like old figure, there was a deeply tragic character,
that contrasted irreconcilably with the ludicrous pettiness
of her employment. It seemed a queer anomaly, that
so gaunt and dismal a personage should take a toy in hand;
a miracle, that the toy did not vanish in her grasp; a
miserably absurd idea, that she should go on perplexing her
stiff and sombre intellect with the question how to tempt
little boys into her premises! Yet such is undoubtedly her
object. Now she places a gingerbread elephant against the
window, but with so tremulous a touch that it tumbles upon
the floor, with the dismemberment of three legs and its
trunk; it has ceased to be an elephant, and has become
a few bits of musty gingerbread. There, again, she has
upset a tumbler of marbles, all of which roll different ways,
and each individual marble, devil-directed, into the most
difficult obscurity that it can find. Heaven help our poor
old Hepzibah, and forgive us for taking a ludicrous view of
-- 044 --
[figure description] Page 044.[end figure description]
her position! As her rigid and rusty frame goes down
upon its hands and knees, in quest of the absconding marbles,
we positively feel so much the more inclined to shed
tears of sympathy, from the very fact that we must needs
turn aside and laugh at her. For here — and if we fail to
impress it suitably upon the reader, it is our own fault, not
that of the theme — here is one of the truest points of
melancholy interest that occur in ordinary life. It was the
final throe of what called itself old gentility. A lady —
who had fed herself from childhood with the shadowy food
of aristocratic reminiscences, and whose religion it was that
a lady's hand soils itself irremediably by doing aught for
bread — this born lady, after sixty years of narrowing
means, is fain to step down from her pedestal of imaginary
rank. Poverty, treading closely at her heels for a lifetime,
has come up with her at last. She must earn her
own food, or starve! And we have stolen upon Miss Hepzibah
Pyncheon, too irreverently, at the instant of time
when the patrician lady is to be transformed into the plebeian woman.
In this republican country, amid the fluctuating waves of
our social life, somebody is always at the drowning-point.
The tragedy is enacted with as continual a repetition as
that of a popular drama on a holiday; and, nevertheless, is
felt as deeply, perhaps, as when an hereditary noble sinks
below his order. More deeply; since, with us, rank is the
grosser substance of wealth and a splendid establishment,
and has no spiritual existence after the death of these, but
dies hopelessly along with them. And, therefore, since we
have been unfortunate enough to introduce our heroine at
so inauspicious a juncture, we would entreat for a mood of
due solemnity in the spectators of her fate. Let us behold,
in poor Hepzibah, the immemorial lady, — two hundred
years old, on this side of the water, and thrice as many on
-- 045 --
[figure description] Page 045.[end figure description]
the other, — with her antique portraits, pedigrees, coats of
arms, records and traditions, and her claim, as joint heiress,
to that princely territory at the eastward, no longer a wilderness,
but a populous fertility, — born, too, in Pyncheon-street,
under the Pyncheon-elm, and in the Pyncheon-house,
where she has spent all her days, — reduced now, in that
very house, to be the hucksteress of a cent-shop!
This business of setting up a petty shop is almost the
only resource of women, in circumstances at all similar to
those of our unfortunate recluse. With her near-sightedness,
and those tremulous fingers of hers, at once inflexible
and delicate, she could not be a seamstress; although her
sampler, of fifty years gone-by, exhibited some of the most
recondite specimens of ornamental needle-work. A school
for little children had been often in her thoughts; and, at
one time, she had begun a review of her early studies in
the New England primer, with a view to prepare herself for
the office of instructress. But the love of children had never
been quickened in Hepzibah's heart, and was now torpid,
if not extinct; she watched the little people of the neighborhood
from her chamber-window, and doubted whether
she could tolerate a more intimate acquaintance with them.
Besides, in our day, the very A B C has become a science,
greatly too abstruse to be any longer taught by pointing a
pin from letter to letter. A modern child could teach old
Hepzibah more than old Hepzibah could teach the child.
So — with many a cold, deep heart-quake at the idea of at
last coming into sordid contact with the world, from which
she had so long kept aloof, while every added day of seclusion
had rolled another stone against the cavern-door of her
hermitage — the poor thing bethought herself of the ancient
shop-window, the rusty scales, and dusty till. She might
have held back a little longer; but another circumstance, not
yet hinted at, had somewhat hastened her decision. Her
-- 046 --
[figure description] Page 046.[end figure description]
humble preparations, therefore, were duly made, and the
enterprise was now to be commenced. Nor was she entitled
to complain of any remarkable singularity in her fate; for,
in the town of her nativity, we might point to several little
shops of a similar description; some of them in houses as
ancient as that of the seven gables; and one or two, it may
be, where a decayed gentlewoman stands behind the counter,
as grim an image of family pride as Miss Hepzibah Pyncheon
herself.
It was overpoweringly ridiculous — we must honestly confess
it — the deportment of the maiden lady while setting
her shop in order for the public eye. She stole on tiptoe to
the window, as cautiously as if she conceived some bloody-minded
villain to be watching behind the elm-tree, with
intent to take her life. Stretching out her long, lank arm,
she put a paper of pearl-buttons, a Jew's-harp, or whatever
the small article might be, in its destined place, and straightway
vanished back into the dusk, as if the world need never
hope for another glimpse of her. It might have been fancied,
indeed, that she expected to minister to the wants of the
community unseen, like a disembodied divinity, or enchantress,
holding forth her bargains to the reverential and awe-stricken
purchaser, in an invisible hand. But Hepzibah had
no such flattering dream. She was well aware that she
must ultimately come forward, and stand revealed in her
proper individuality; but, like other sensitive persons, she
could not bear to be observed in the gradual process, and
chose rather to flash forth on the world's astonished gaze at
once.
The inevitable moment was not much longer to be delayed.
The sunshine might now be seen stealing down the front of
the opposite house, from the windows of which came a reflected
gleam, struggling through the boughs of the elm-tree,
and enlightening the interior of the shop more distinctly
-- 047 --
[figure description] Page 047.[end figure description]
than heretofore. The town appeared to be waking up. A
baker's cart had already rattled through the street, chasing
away the latest vestige of night's sanctity with the jingle-jangle
of its dissonant bells. A milkman was distributing
the contents of his cans from door to door; and the harsh
peal of a fisherman's coach-shell was heard far off, around
the corner. None of these tokens escaped Hepzibah's notice.
The moment had arrived. To delay longer would
be only to lengthen out her misery. Nothing remained,
except to take down the bar from the shop-door, leaving the
entrance free — more than free — welcome, as if all were
household friends — to every passer-by, whose eyes might
be attracted by the commodities at the window. This last
act Hepzibah now performed, letting the bar fall with what
smote upon her excited nerves as a most astounding clatter.
Then — as if the only barrier betwixt herself and the world
had been thrown down, and a flood of evil consequences
would come tumbling through the gap — she fled into the
inner parlor, threw herself into the ancestral elbow-chair,
and wept.
Our miserable old Hepzibah! It is a heavy annoyance to
a writer, who endeavors to represent nature, its various
attitudes and circumstances, in a reasonably correct outline
and true coloring, that so much of the mean and ludicrous
should be hopelessly mixed up with the purest pathos which
life anywhere supplies to him. What tragic dignity, for
example, can be wrought into a scene like this! How can
we elevate our history of retribution for the sin of long ago,
when, as one of our most prominent figures, we are compelled
to introduce — not a young and lovely woman, nor even
the stately remains of beauty, storm-shattered by affliction—
but a gaunt, sallow, rusty-jointed maiden, in a long-waisted
silk gown, and with the strange horror of a turban
on her head! Her visage is not even ugly. It is redeemed
-- 048 --
[figure description] Page 048.[end figure description]
from insignificance only by the contraction of her eyebrows
into a near-sighted scowl. And, finally, her great life-trial
seems to be, that, after sixty years of idleness, she finds it
convenient to earn comfortable bread by setting up a shop
in a small way. Nevertheless, if we look through all the
heroic fortunes of mankind, we shall find this same entanglement
of something mean and trivial with whatever is noblest
in joy or sorrow. Life is made up of marble and mud.
And, without all the deeper trust in a comprehensive sympathy
above us, we might hence be led to suspect the insult
of a sneer, as well as an immitigable frown, on the iron
countenance of fate. What is called poetic insight is the
gift of discerning, in this sphere of strangely-mingled elements,
the beauty and the majesty which are compelled to
assume a garb so sordid.
-- -- p574-058
III. THE FIRST CUSTOMER.
[figure description] Page 049.[end figure description]
Miss Hepzibah Pyncheon sat in the oaken elbow-chair,
with her hands over her face, giving way to that heavy
down-sinking of the heart which most persons have experienced,
when the image of hope itself seems ponderously
moulded of lead, on the eve of an enterprise at once doubtful
and momentous. She was suddenly startled by the
tinkling alarum — high, sharp, and irregular — of a little
bell. The maiden lady arose upon her feet, as pale as a
ghost at cock-crow; for she was an enslaved spirit, and this
the talisman to which she owed obedience. This little bell—
to speak in plainer terms — being fastened over the
shop-door, was so contrived as to vibrate by means of a
steel spring, and thus convey notice to the inner regions of
the house, when any customer should cross the threshold.
Its ugly and spiteful little din (heard now for the first time,
perhaps, since Hepzibah's periwigged predecessor had retired
from trade) at once set every nerve of her body in responsive
and tumultuous vibration. The crisis was upon her!
Her first customer was at the door!
Without giving herself time for a second thought, she
rushed into the shop, pale, wild, desperate in gesture and
expression, scowling portentously, and looking far better
qualified to do fierce battle with a house-breaker than to
stand smiling behind the counter, bartering small wares for
a copper recompense. Any ordinary customer, indeed,
would have turned his back and fled. And yet there was
nothing fierce in Hepzibah's poor old heart; nor had she, at
-- 050 --
[figure description] Page 050.[end figure description]
the moment, a single bitter thought against the world at
large, or one individual man or woman. She wished them
all well, but wished, too, that she herself were done with
them, and in her quiet grave.
The applicant, by this time, stood within the door-way.
Coming freshly, as he did, out of the morning light, he
appeared to have brought some of its cheery influences into
the shop along with him. It was a slender young man,
not more than one or two and twenty years old, with rather
a grave and thoughtful expression, for his years, but likewise
a springy alacrity and vigor. These qualities were not
only perceptible, physically, in his make and motions, but
made themselves felt almost immediately in his character.
A brown beard, not too silken in its texture, fringed his
chin, but as yet without completely hiding it; he wore a
short moustache, too, and his dark, high-featured countenance
looked all the better for these natural ornaments.
As for his dress, it was of the simplest kind; a summer
sack of cheap and ordinary material, thin, checkered pantaloons,
and a straw hat, by no means of the finest braid. Oak
Hall might have supplied his entire equipment. He was
chiefly marked as a gentleman — if such, indeed, he made
any claim to be — by the rather remarkable whiteness and
nicety of his clean linen.
He met the scowl of old Hepzibah without apparen
alarm, as having heretofore encountered it, and found it
harmless.
“So, my dear Miss Pyncheon,” said the daguerreotypist,—
for it was that sole other occupant of the seven-gabled
mansion, — “I am glad to see that you have not shrunk
from your good purpose. I merely look in to offer my best
wishes, and to ask if I can assist you any further in your
preparations.”
People in difficulty and distress, or in any manner at
-- 051 --
[figure description] Page 051.[end figure description]
odds with the world, can endure a vast amount of harsh
treatment, and perhaps be only the stronger for it; whereas,
they give way at once before the simplest expression of
what they perceive to be genuine sympathy. So it proved
with poor Hepzibah; for, when she saw the young man's
smile, — looking so much the brighter on a thoughtful
face, — and heard his kindly tone, she broke first into a
hysteric giggle, and then began to sob.
“Ah, Mr. Holgrave,” cried she, as soon as she could
speak, “I never can go through with it! Never, never,
never! I wish I were dead, and in the old family-tomb,
with all my forefathers! With my father, and my mother,
and my sister! Yes, and with my brother, who had far
better find me there than here! The world is too chill and
hard, — and I am too old, and too feeble, and too hopeless!”
“O, believe me, Miss Hepzibah,” said the young man,
quietly, “these feelings will not trouble you any longer,
after you are once fairly in the midst of your enterprise.
They are unavoidable at this moment, standing, as you do,
on the outer verge of your long seclusion, and peopling the
world with ugly shapes, which you will soon find to be as
unreal as the giants and ogres of a child's story-book. I
find nothing so singular in life, as that everything appears
to lose its substance, the instant one actually grapples with
it. So it will be with what you think so terrible.”
“But I am a woman!” said Hepzibah, piteously. “I
was going to say, a lady, — but I consider that as past.”
“Well; no matter if it be past!” answered the artist, a
strange gleam of half-hidden sarcasm flashing through the
kindliness of his manner. “Let it go! You are the better
without it. I speak frankly, my dear Miss Pyncheon:
for are we not friends? I look upon this as one of the fortunate
days of your life. It ends an epoch, and begins one.
-- 052 --
[figure description] Page 052.[end figure description]
Hitherto, the life-blood has been gradually chilling in your
veins, as you sat aloof, within your circle of gentility, while
the rest of the world was fighting out its battle with one
kind of necessity or another. Henceforth, you will at least
have the sense of healthy and natural effort for a purpose,
and of lending your strength — be it great or small — to
the united struggle of mankind. This is success — all the
success that anybody meets with!”
“It is natural enough, Mr. Holgrave, that you should
have ideas like these,” rejoined Hepzibah, drawing up her
gaunt figure, with slightly offended dignity. “You are a
man, a young man, and brought up, I suppose, as almost
everybody is now-a-days, with a view to seeking your fortune.
But I was born a lady, and have always lived one;
no matter in what narrowness of means, always a lady!”
“But I was not born a gentleman; neither have I lived
like one,” said Holgrave, slightly smiling; “so, my dear
madam, you will hardly expect me to sympathize with sensibilities
of this kind; though, unless I deceive myself,
I have some imperfect comprehension of them. These
names of gentleman and lady had a meaning, in the past
history of the world, and conferred privileges, desirable or
otherwise, on those entitled to bear them. In the present—
and still more in the future condition of society — they
imply, not privilege, but restriction!”
“These are new notions,” said the old gentlewoman,
shaking her head. “I shall never understand them; neither
do I wish it.”
“We will cease to speak of them, then,” replied the artist,
with a friendlier smile than his last one, “and I will leave
you to feel whether it is not better to be a true woman than
a lady. Do you really think, Miss Hepzibah, that any lady
of your family has ever done a more heroic thing, since this
house was built, than you are performing in it to-day?
-- 053 --
[figure description] Page 053.[end figure description]
Never; and if the Pyncheons had always acted so nobly, I
doubt whether an old wizard Maule's anathema, of which
you told me once, would have had much weight with Providence
against them.”
“Ah! — no, no!” said Hepzibah, not displeased at this
allusion to the sombre dignity of an inherited curse. “If
old Maule's ghost, or a descendant of his, could see me
behind the counter to-day, he would call it the fulfilment
of his worst wishes. But I thank you for your kindness,
Mr. Holgrave, and will do my utmost to be a good shop-keeper.”
“Pray do,” said Holgrave, “and let me have the pleasure
of being your first customer. I am about taking a walk to
the sea-shore, before going to my rooms, where I misuse
Heaven's blessed sunshine, by tracing out human features,
through its agency. A few of those biscuits, dipt in seawater,
will be just what I need for breakfast. What is the
price of half a dozen?”
“Let me be a lady a moment longer,” replied Hepzibah,
with a manner of antique stateliness, to which a melancholy
smile lent a kind of grace. She put the biscuits into his
hand, but rejected the compensation. “A Pyncheon must
not, at all events, under her forefathers' roof, receive money
for a morsel of bread, from her only friend!”
Holgrave took his departure, leaving her, for the moment,
with spirits not quite so much depressed. Soon, however,
they had subsided nearly to their former dead level. With
a beating heart, she listened to the footsteps of early passengers,
which now began to be frequent along the street.
Once or twice, they seemed to linger; these strangers, or
neighbors, as the case might be, were looking at the display
of toys and petty commodities in Hepzibah's shop-window.
She was doubly tortured; in part, with a sense of overwhelming
shame, that strange and unloving eyes should
-- 054 --
[figure description] Page 054.[end figure description]
have the privilege of gazing, and partly because the idea
occurred to her, with ridiculous importunity, that the window
was not arranged so skilfully, nor nearly to so much
advantage, as it might have been. It seemed as if the whole
fortune or failure of her shop might depend on the display
of a different set of articles, or substituting a fairer apple for
one which appeared to be specked. So she made the change,
and straightway fancied that everything was spoiled by it;
not recognizing that it was the nervousness of the juncture,
and her own native squeamishness, as an old maid, that
wrought all the seeming mischief.
Anon, there was an encounter, just at the door-step, betwixt
two laboring men, as their rough voices denoted them
to be. After some slight talk about their own affairs, one
of them chanced to notice the shop-window, and directed the
other's attention to it.
“See here!” cried he; “what do you think of this?
Trade seems to be looking up, in Pyncheon-street!”
“Well, well, this is a sight, to be sure!” exclaimed the
other. “In the old Pyncheon-house, and underneath the
Pyncheon-elm! Who would have thought it? Old Maid
Pyncheon is setting up a cent-shop!”
“Will she make it go, think you, Dixey?” said his friend.
“I don't call it a very good stand. There 's another shop,
just round the corner.”
“Make it go!” cried Dixey, with a most contemptuous
expression, as if the very idea were impossible to be conceived.
“Not a bit of it! Why, her face — I 've seen it,
for I dug her garden for her, one year — her face is enough
to frighten the Old Nick himself, if he had ever so great a
mind to trade with her. People can't stand it, I tell you!
She scowls dreadfully, reason or none, out of pure ugliness
of temper!”
“Well, that 's not so much matter,” remarked the other
-- 055 --
[figure description] Page 055.[end figure description]
man. “These sour-tempered folks are mostly handy at
business, and know pretty well what they are about. But,
as you say, I don't think she 'll do much. This business
of keeping cent-shops is overdone, like all other kinds of
trade, handicraft, and bodily labor. I know it, to my cost!
My wife kept a cent-shop three months, and lost five dollars
on her outlay!”
“Poor business!” responded Dixey, in a tone as if he
were shaking his head, — “poor business!”
For some reason or other, not very easy to analyze, there
had hardly been so bitter a pang, in all her previous misery
about the matter, as what thrilled Hepzibah's heart, on over-hearing
the above conversation. The testimony in regard
to her scowl was frightfully important; it seemed to hold
up her image, wholly relieved from the false light of her
self-partialities, and so hideous that she dared not look at it.
She was absurdly hurt, moreover, by the slight and idle
effect that her setting up shop — an event of such breathless
interest to herself — appeared to have upon the public,
of which these two men were the nearest representatives.
A glance; a passing word or two; a coarse laugh; and she
was doubtless forgotten, before they turned the corner!
They cared nothing for her dignity, and just as little for
her degradation. Then, also, the augury of ill-success,
uttered from the sure wisdom of experience, fell upon her
half-dead hope like a clod into a grave. The man's wife
had already tried the same experiment, and failed! How
could the born lady — the recluse of half a lifetime, utterly
unpractised in the world, at sixty years of age — how could
she ever dream of succeeding, when the hard, vulgar, keen,
busy, hackneyed New England woman, had lost five dollars
on her little outlay! Success presented itself as an impossibility,
and the hope of it as a wild hallucination.
Some malevolent spirit, doing his utmost to drive
-- 056 --
[figure description] Page 056.[end figure description]
Hepzibah mad, unrolled before her imagination a kind of panorama,
representing the great thoroughfare of a city, all
astir with customers. So many and so magnificent shops
as there were! Groceries, toy-shops, dry-goods stores, with
their immense panes of plate-glass, their gorgeous fixtures,
their vast and complete assortments of merchandise, in
which fortunes had been invested; and those noble mirrors
at the further end of each establishment, doubling all this
wealth by a brightly-burnished vista of unrealities! On
one side of the street, this splendid bazaar, with a multitude
of perfumed and glossy salesmen, smirking, smiling, bowing,
and measuring out the goods. On the other, the
dusky old House of the Seven Gables, with the antiquated
shop-window under its projecting story, and Hepzibah herself,
in a gown of rusty black silk, behind the counter,
scowling at the world as it went by! This mighty contrast
thrust itself forward, as a fair expression of the odds
against which she was to begin her struggle for a subsistence.
Success? Preposterous! She would never think
of it again! The house might just as well be buried in an
eternal fog, while all other houses had the sunshine on
them; for not a foot would ever cross the threshold, nor a
hand so much as try the door!
But, at this instant, the shop-bell, right over her head,
tinkled as if it were bewitched. The old gentlewoman's
heart seemed to be attached to the same steel spring, for it
went through a series of sharp jerks, in unison with the
sound. The door was thrust open, although no human
form was perceptible on the other side of the half-window.
Hepzibah, nevertheless, stood at a gaze, with her hands
clasped, looking very much as if she had summoned up an
evil spirit, and were afraid, yet resolved, to hazard the
encounter.
-- 057 --
[figure description] Page 057.[end figure description]
“Heaven help me!” she groaned, mentally. “Now is
my hour of need!”
The door, which moved with difficulty on its creaking
and rusty hinges, being forced quite open, a square and
sturdy little urchin became apparent, with cheeks as red
as an apple. He was clad rather shabbily (but, as it
seemed, more owing to his mother's carelessness than his
father's poverty), in a blue apron, very wide and short
trousers, shoes somewhat out at the toes, and a chip-hat,
with the frizzles of his curly hair sticking through its crevices.
A book and a small slate, under his arm, indicated
that he was on his way to school. He stared at Hepzibah
a moment, as an elder customer than himself would have
been likely enough to do, not knowing what to make of the
tragic attitude and queer scowl wherewith she regarded
him.
“Well, child,” said she, taking heart at sight of a personage
so little formidable, — “well, my child, what did you
wish for?”
“That Jim Crow, there, in the window,” answered the
urchin, holding out a cent, and pointing to the gingerbread
figure that had attracted his notice, as he loitered along to
school; “the one that has not a broken foot.”
So Hepzibah put forth her lank arm, and taking the
effigy from the shop-window, delivered it to her first
customer.
“No matter for the money,” said she, giving him a little
push towards the door; for her old gentility was contumaciously
squeamish at sight of the copper coin, and, besides,
it seemed such pitiful meanness to take the child's pocket-money
in exchange for a bit of stale gingerbread. “No
matter for the cent. You are welcome to Jim Crow.”
The child, staring, with round eyes, at this instance of
liberality, wholly unprecedented in his large experience of
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cent-shops, took the man of gingerbread, and quitted the
premises. No sooner had he reached the sidewalk (little
cannibal that he was!) than Jim Crow's head was in his
mouth. As he had not been careful to shut the door,
Hepzibah was at the pains of closing it after him, with a
pettish ejaculation or two about the troublesomeness of
young people, and particularly of small boys. She had just
placed another representative of the renowned Jim Crow
at the window, when again the shop-bell tinkled clamorously,
and again the door being thrust open, with its characteristic
jerk and jar, disclosed the same sturdy little
urchin who, precisely two minutes ago, had made his exit.
The crumbs and discoloration of the cannibal feast, as yet
hardly consummated, were exceedingly visible about his
mouth.
“What is it now, child?” asked the maiden lady, rather
impatiently; “did you come back to shut the door?”
“No,” answered the urchin, pointing to the figure that
had just been put up; “I want that other Jim Crow.”
“Well, here it is for you,” said Hepzibah, reaching it
down; but, recognizing that this pertinacious customer
would not quit her on any other terms, so long as she had
a gingerbread figure in her shop, she partly drew back her
extended hand, — “Where is the cent?”
The little boy had the cent ready, but, like a true-born
Yankee, would have preferred the better bargain to the
worse. Looking somewhat chagrined, he put the coin into
Hepzibah's hand, and departed, sending the second Jim
Crow in quest of the former one. The new shop-keeper
dropped the first solid result of her commercial enterprise
into the till. It was done! The sordid stain of that copper
coin could never be washed away from her palm. The
little schoolboy, aided by the impish figure of the negro
dancer, had wrought an irreparable ruin. The structure of
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ancient aristocracy had been demolished by him, even as if
his childish gripe had torn down the seven-gabled mansion!
Now let Hepzibah turn the old Pyncheon portraits with
their faces to the wall, and take the map of her eastern territory
to kindle the kitchen fire, and blow up the flame with
the empty breath of her ancestral traditions! What had
she to do with ancestry? Nothing; no more than with
posterity! No lady, now, but simply Hepzibah Pyncheon,
a forlorn old maid, and keeper of a cent-shop!
Nevertheless, even while she paraded these ideas somewhat
ostentatiously through her mind, it is altogether surprising
what a calmness had come over her. The anxiety
and misgivings which had tormented her, whether asleep or
in melancholy day-dreams, ever since her project began to
take an aspect of solidity, had now vanished quite away.
She felt the novelty of her position, indeed, but no longer
with disturbance or affright. Now and then, there came a
thrill of almost youthful enjoyment. It was the invigorating
breath of a fresh outward atmosphere, after the long torpor
and monotonous seclusion of her life. So wholesome is
effort! So miraculous the strength that we do not know
of! The healthiest glow that Hepzibah had known for
years had come now, in the dreaded crisis, when, for the
first time, she had put forth her hand to help herself. The
little circlet of the schoolboy's copper coin — dim and lustreless
though it was, with the small services which it had
been doing, here and there about the world — had proved a
talisman, fragrant with good, and deserving to be set in
gold and worn next her heart. It was as potent, and perhaps
endowed with the same kind of efficacy, as a galvanic
ring! Hepzibah, at all events, was indebted to its subtile
operation, both in body and spirit; so much the more, as it
inspired her with energy to get some breakfast, at which,
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still the better to keep up her courage, she allowed herself
an extra spoonful in her infusion of black tea.
Her introductory day of shop-keeping did not run on,
however, without many and serious interruptions of this
mood of cheerful vigor. As a general rule, Providence seldom
vouchasafes to mortals any more than just that degree
of encouragement which suffices to keep them at a reasonably
full exertion of their powers. In the case of our old
gentlewoman, after the excitement of new effort had subsided,
the despondency of her whole life threatened, ever
and anon, to return. It was like the heavy mass of clouds
which we may often see obscuring the sky, and making a
gray twilight everywhere, until, towards nightfall, it yields
temporarily to a glimpse of sunshine. But, always, the envious
cloud strives to gather again across the streak of celestial
azure.
Customers came in, as the forenoon advanced, but rather
slowly; in some cases, too, it must be owned, with little
satisfaction either to themselves or Miss Hepzibah; nor, on
the whole, with an aggregate of very rich emolument to the
till. A little girl, sent by her mother to match a skein of
cotton thread, of a peculiar hue, took one that the near-sighted
old lady pronounced extremely like, but soon came
running back, with a blunt and cross message, that it would
not do, and, besides, was very rotten! Then, there was a
pale, care-wrinkled woman, not old but haggard, and already
with streaks of gray among her hair, like silver ribbons;
one of those women, naturally delicate, whom you at once
recognize as worn to death by a brute — probably a drunken
brute — of a husband, and at least nine children. She
wanted a few pounds of flour, and offered the money, which
the decayed gentlewoman silently rejected, and gave the
poor soul better measure than if she had taken it. Shortly
afterwards, a man in a blue cotton frock, much soiled, came
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in and bought a pipe, filling the whole shop, meanwhile, with
the hot odor of strong drink, not only exhaled in the torrid
atmosphere of his breath, but oozing out of his entire system,
like an inflammable gas. It was impressed on Hepzibah's
mind that this was the husband of the care-wrinkled
woman. He asked for a paper of tobacco; and as she had
neglected to provide herself with the article, her brutal customer
dashed down his newly-bought pipe, and left the
shop, muttering some unintelligible words, which had the
tone and bitterness of a curse. Hereupon, Hepzibah threw
up her eyes, unintentionally scowling in the face of Providence!
No less than five persons, during the forenoon, inquired
for ginger-beer, or root-beer, or any drink of a similar brewage,
and, obtaining nothing of the kind, went off in an
exceedingly bad humor. Three of them left the door open,
and the other two pulled it so spitefully in going out that
the little bell played the very deuce with Hepzibah's nerves.
A round, bustling, fire-ruddy housewife of the neighborhood
burst breathless into the shop, fiercely demanding yeast;
and when the poor gentlewoman, with her cold shyness of
manner, gave her hot customer to understand that she did
not keep the article, this very capable housewife took upon
herself to administer a regular rebuke.
“A cent-shop, and no yeast!” quoth she; “that will
never do! Who ever heard of such a thing? Your loaf
will never rise, no more than mine will to-day. You had
better shut up shop at once.”
“Well,” said Hepzibah, heaving a deep sigh, “perhaps I
had!”
Several times, moreover, besides the above instance, her
ladylike sensibilities were seriously infringed upon by the
familiar, if not rude tone, with which people addressed her.
They evidently considered themselves not merely her equals,
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but her patrons and superiors. Now, Hepzibah had unconsciously
flattered herself with the idea that there would be
a gleam or halo, of some kind or other, about her person,
which would insure an obeisance to her sterling gentility,
or, at least, a tacit recognition of it. On the other hand,
nothing tortured her more intolerably than when this recognition
was too prominently expressed. To one or two
rather officious offers of sympathy, her responses were little
short of acrimonious; and, we regret to say, Hepzibah was
thrown into a positively unchristian state of mind, by the
suspicion that one of her customers was drawn to the shop,
not by any real need of the article which she pretended to
seek, but by a wicked wish to stare at her. The vulgar
creature was determined to see for herself what sort of a
figure a mildewed piece of aristocracy, after wasting all the
bloom, and much of the decline of her life, apart from the
world, would cut behind a counter. In this particular case,
however mechanical and innocuous it might be at other
times, Hepzibah's contortion of brow served her in good
stead.
“I never was so frightened in my life!” said the curious
customer, in describing the incident to one of her acquaintances.
“She 's a real old vixen, take my word of it!
She says little, to be sure; but if you could only see the
mischief in her eye!”
On the whole, therefore, her new experience led our
decayed gentlewoman to very disagreeable conclusions as to
the temper and manners of what she termed the lower
classes, whom heretofore she had looked down upon with a
gentle and pitying complaisance, as herself occupying a
sphere of unquestionable superiority. But, unfortunately,
she had likewise to struggle against a bitter emotion of a
directly opposite kind: a sentiment of virulence, we mean,
towards the idle aristocracy to which it had so recently
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been her pride to belong. When a lady, in a delicate and
costly summer garb, with a floating veil and gracefully-swaying
gown, and, altogether, an ethereal lightness that made
you look at her beautifully-slippered feet, to see whether she
trod on the dust or floated in the air, — when such a vision
happened to pass through this retired street, leaving it tenderly
and delusively fragrant with her passage, as if a bouquet
of tea-roses had been borne along, — then, again, it is
to be feared, old Hepzibah's scowl could no longer vindicate
itself entirely on the plea of near-sightedness.
“For what end,” thought she, giving vent to that feeling
of hostility which is the only real abasement of the poor, in
presence of the rich, — “for what good end, in the wisdom
of Providence, does that woman live? Must the whole
world toil, that the palms of her hands may be kept white
and delicate?”
Then, ashamed and penitent, she hid her face.
“May God forgive me!” said she.
Doubtless, God did forgive her. But, taking the inward
and outward history of the first half-day into consideration,
Hepzibah began to fear that the shop would prove her ruin
in a moral and religious point of view, without contributing
very essentially towards even her temporal welfare.
-- -- p574-073
IV. A DAY BEHIND THE COUNTER.
[figure description] Page 064.[end figure description]
Towards noon, Hepzibah saw an elderly gentleman,
large and portly, and of remarkably dignified demeanor,
passing slowly along, on the opposite side of the white and
dusty street. On coming within the shadow of the Pyncheon-elm,
he stopt, and (taking off his hat, meanwhile, to
wipe the perspiration from his brow) seemed to scrutinize,
with especial interest, the dilapidated and rusty-visaged
House of the Seven Gables. He himself, in a very different
style, was as well worth looking at as the house. No
better model need be sought, nor could have been found, of
a very high order of respectability, which, by some indescribable
magic, not merely expressed itself in his looks and
gestures, but even governed the fashion of his garments,
and rendered them all proper and essential to the man.
Without appearing to differ, in any tangible way, from other
people's clothes, there was yet a wide and rich gravity
about them, that must have been a characteristic of the
wearer, since it could not be defined as pertaining either to
the cut or material. His gold-headed cane, too, — a serviceable
staff, of dark, polished wood, — had similar traits,
and had it chosen to take a walk by itself, would have been
recognized anywhere as a tolerably adequate representative
of its master. This character — which showed itself so
strikingly in everything about him, and the effect of which
we seek to convey to the reader — went no deeper than his
station, habits of life, and external circumstances. One
perceived him to be a personage of mark, influence, and
-- 065 --
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authority; and, especially, you could feel just as certain
that he was opulent as if he had exhibited his bank
account, or as if you had seen him touching the twigs of
the Pyncheon-elm, and, Midas-like, transmuting them to
gold.
In his youth, he had probably been considered a handsome
man; at his present age, his brow was too heavy, his
temples too bare, his remaining hair too gray, his eye too
cold, his lips too closely compressed, to bear any relation to
mere personal beauty. He would have made a good and
massive portrait; better now, perhaps, than at any previous
period of his life, although his look might grow positively
harsh, in the process of being fixed upon the canvas. The
artist would have found it desirable to study his face, and
prove its capacity for varied expression; to darken it with a
frown, — to kindle it up with a smile.
While the elderly gentleman stood looking at the Pyncheon-house,
both the frown and the smile passed successively
over his countenance. His eye rested on the shop-window,
and, putting up a pair of gold-bowed spectacles,
which he held in his hand, he minutely surveyed Hepzibah's
little arrangement of toys and commodities. At first it
seemed not to please him, — nay, to cause him exceeding
displeasure, — and yet, the very next moment, he smiled.
While the latter expression was yet on his lips, he caught a
glimpse of Hepzibah, who had involuntarily bent forward
to the window; and then the smile changed from acrid and
disagreeable to the sunniest complacency and benevolence.
He bowed, with a happy mixture of dignity and courteous
kindliness, and pursued his way.
“There he is!” said Hepzibah to herself, gulping down
a very bitter emotion, and, since she could not rid herself of
it, trying to drive it back into her heart. “What does he
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think of it, I wonder? Does it please him? Ah! — he is
looking back!”
The gentleman had paused in the street, and turned himself
half about, still with his eyes fixed on the shop-window.
In fact, he wheeled wholly round, and commenced a step or
two, as if designing to enter the shop; but, as it chanced,
his purpose was anticipated by Hepzibah's first customer,
the little cannibal of Jim Crow, who, staring up at the window,
was irresistibly attracted by an elephant of ginger-bread.
What a grand appetite had this small urchin! —
two Jim Crows, immediately after breakfast! — and now
an elephant, as a preliminary whet before dinner! By the
time this latter purchase was completed, the elderly gentleman
had resumed his way, and turned the street corner.
“Take it as you like, Cousin Jaffrey!” muttered the
maiden lady, as she drew back, after cautiously thrusting
out her head, and looking up and down the street. “Take
it as you like! You have seen my little shop-window!
Well! — What have you to say? — is not the Pyncheon-house
my own, while I'm alive?”
After this incident, Hepzibah retreated to the back parlor,
where she at first caught up a half-finished stocking, and
began knitting at it with nervous and irregular jerks; but
quickly finding herself at odds with the stitches, she threw
it aside, and walked hurriedly about the room. At length,
she paused before the portrait of the stern old Puritan, her
ancestor, and the founder of the house. In one sense, this
picture had almost faded into the canvas, and hidden itself
behind the duskiness of age; in another, she could not but
fancy that it had been growing more prominent, and strikingly
expressive, ever since her earliest familiarity with it, as
a child. For, while the physical outline and substance were
darkening away from the beholder's eye, the bold, hard,
and, at the same time, indirect character of the man, seemed
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to be brought out in a kind of spiritual relief. Such an
effect may occasionally be observed in pictures of antique
date. They acquire a look which an artist (if he have
anything like the complacency of artists now-a-days) would
never dream of presenting to a patron as his own characteristic
expression, but which, nevertheless, we at once recognize
as reflecting the unlovely truth of a human soul. In
such cases, the painter's deep conception of his subject's
inward traits has wrought itself into the essence of the
picture, and is seen after the superficial coloring has been
rubbed off by time.
While gazing at the portrait, Hepzibah trembled under
its eye. Her hereditary reverence made her afraid to judge
the character of the original so harshly as a perception
of the truth compelled her to do. But still she gazed, because
the face of the picture enabled her — at least, she
fancied so — to read more accurately, and to a greater depth,
the face which she had just seen in the street.
“This is the very man!” murmured she to herself.
“Let Jaffrey Pyncheon smile as he will, there is that look
beneath! Put on him a skull-cap, and a band, and a black
cloak, and a Bible in one hand and a sword in the other, —
then let Jaffrey smile as he might, — nobody would doubt
that it was the old Pyncheon come again! He has proved
himself the very man to build up a new house! Perhaps,
too, to draw down a new curse!”
Thus did Hepzibah bewilder herself with these fantasies
of the old time. She had dwelt too much alone, — too long
in the Pyncheon-house, — until her very brain was impregnated
with the dry rot of its timbers. She needed a walk
along the noon-day street, to keep her sane.
By the spell of contrast, another portrait rose up before
her, painted with more daring flattery than any artist would
have ventured upon, but yet so delicately touched that the
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likeness remained perfect. Malbone's miniature, though
from the same original, was far inferior to Hepzibah's airdrawn
picture, at which affection and sorrowful remembrance
wrought together. Soft, mildly, and cheerfully contemplative,
with full, red lips, just on the verge of a smile,
which the eyes seemed to herald by a gentle kindling-up of
their orbs! Feminine traits, moulded inseparably with those
of the other sex! The miniature, likewise, had this last
peculiarity; so that you inevitably thought of the original
as resembling his mother, and she, a lovely and lovable
woman, with perhaps some beautiful infirmity of character,
that made it all the pleasanter to know, and easier to love
her.
“Yes,” thought Hepzibah, with grief of which it was only
the more tolerable portion that welled up from her heart to
her eyelids, “they persecuted his mother in him! He never
was a Pyncheon!”
But here the shop-bell rang; it was like a sound from a
remote distance — so far had Hepzibah descended into the
sepulchral depths of her reminiscences. On entering the
shop, she found an old man there, a humble resident of
Pyncheon-street, and whom, for a great many years past,
she had suffered to be a kind of familiar of the house. He
was an immemorial personage, who seemed always to have
had a white head and wrinkles, and never to have possessed
but a single tooth, and that a half-decayed one, in the front
of the upper jaw. Well advanced as Hepzibah was, she
could not remember when Uncle Venner, as the neighborhood
called him, had not gone up and down the street,
stooping a little and drawing his feet heavily over the gravel
or pavement. But still there was something tough and
vigorous about him, that not only kept him in daily breath,
but enabled him to fill a place which would else have been
vacant in the apparently crowded world. To go of errands,
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with his slow and shuffling gait, which made you doubt how
he ever was to arrive anywhere; to saw a small household's
foot or two of fire-wood, or knock to pieces an old
barrel, or split up a pine board, for kindling-stuff; in summer,
to dig the few yards of garden ground appertaining to a
low-rented tenement, and share the produce of his labor at
the halves; in winter, to shovel away the snow from the
side-walk, or open paths to the wood-shed, or along the
clothes-line; such were some of the essential offices which
Uncle Venner performed among at least a score of families.
Within that circle, he claimed the same sort of privilege,
and probably felt as much warmth of interest, as a clergyman
does in the range of his parishioners. Not that he
laid claim to the tithe pig; but, as an analogous mode of
reverence, he went his rounds, every morning, to gather up
the crumbs of the table and overflowings of the dinner-pot,
as food for a pig of his own.
In his younger days — for, after all, there was a dim tradition
that he had been, not young, but younger — Uncle
Venner was commonly regarded as rather deficient, than
otherwise, in his wits. In truth, he had virtually pleaded
guilty to the charge, by scarcely aiming at such success as
other men seek, and by taking only that humble and modest
part, in the intercourse of life, which belongs to the alleged
deficiency. But, now, in his extreme old age, — whether
it were that his long and hard experience had actually
brightened him, or that his decaying judgment rendered
him less capable of fairly measuring himself, — the venerable
man made pretensions to no little wisdom, and really
enjoyed the credit of it. There was likewise, at times, a
vein of something like poetry in him; it was the moss or
wall-flower of his mind in its small dilapidation, and gave a
charm to what might have been vulgar and common-place
in his earlier and middle life. Hepzibah had a regard for
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him, because his name was ancient in the town, and had
formerly been respectable. It was a still better reason for
awarding him a species of familiar reverence, that Uncle
Venner was himself the most ancient existence, whether of
man or thing, in Pyncheon-street, except the House of the
Seven Gables, and perhaps the elm that overshadowed it.
This patriarch now presented himself before Hepzibah,
clad in an old blue coat, which had a fashionable air, and
must have accrued to him from the cast-off wardrobe of some
dashing clerk. As for his trousers, they were of tow-cloth,
very short in the legs, and bagging down strangely in the
rear, but yet having a suitableness to his figure which his
other garment entirely lacked. His had had relation to no
other part of his dress, and but very little to the head that
wore it. Thus Uncle Venner was a miscellaneous old
gentleman, partly himself, but, in good measure, somebody
else; patched together, too, of different epochs; an epitome
of times and fashions.
“So, you have really begun trade,” said he, — “really
begun trade! Well, I 'm glad to see it. Young people
should never live idle in the world, nor old ones neither,
unless when the rheumatize gets hold of them. It has given
me warning already; and in two or three years longer, I
shall think of putting aside business, and retiring to my
farm. That 's yonder — the great brick house, you know—
the workhouse, most folks call it; but I mean to do my
work first, and go there to be idle and enjoy myself. And
I 'm glad to see you beginning to do your work, Miss Hepzibah!”
“Thank you, Uncle Venner,” said Hepzibah, smiling; for
she always felt kindly towards the simple and talkative old
man. Had he been an old woman, she might probably have
repelled the freedom which she now took in good part. “It
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is time for me to begin work, indeed! Or, to speak the truth,
I have just begun, when I ought to be giving it up.”
“O, never say that, Miss Hepzibah,” answered the old
man. “You are a young woman yet. Why, I hardly
thought myself younger than I am now, it seems so little
while ago since I used to see you playing about the door
of the old house, quite a small child! Oftener, though, you
used to be sitting at the threshold, and looking gravely
into the street; for you had always a grave kind of way
with you, — a grown-up air, when you were only the height
of my knee. It seems as if I saw you now; and your
grandfather with his red cloak, and his white wig, and his
cocked hat, and his cane, coming out of the house, and
stepping so grandly up the street! Those old gentlemen
that grew up before the Revolution used to put on grand
airs. In my young days, the great man of the town was
commonly called King; and his wife, not Queen to be sure,
but Lady. Now-a-days, a man would not dare to be called
King; and if he feels himself a little above common folks,
he only stoops so much the lower to them. I met your
cousin, the judge, ten minutes ago; and, in my old tow-cloth
trousers, as you see, the judge raised his hat to me,
I do believe! At any rate, the judge bowed and smiled!”
“Yes,” said Hepzibah, with something bitter stealing unawares
into her tone; “my cousin Jaffrey is thought to have
a very pleasant smile!”
“And so he has!” replied Uncle Venner. “And that 's
rather remarkable in a Pyncheon; for, begging your pardon,
Miss Hepzibah, they never had the name of being an
easy and agreeable set of folks. There was no getting close
to them. But now, Miss Hepzibah, if an old man may be
bold to ask, why don't Judge Pyncheon, with his great
means, step forward, and tell his cousin to shut up her little
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shop at once? It 's for your credit to be doing something;
but it 's not for the judge's credit to let you!”
“We won't talk of this, if you please, Uncle Venner,”
said Hepzibah, coldly. “I ought to say, however, that, if I
choose to earn bread for myself, it is not Judge Pyncheon's
fault. Neither will he deserve the blame,” added she,
more kindly, remembering Uncle Venner's privileges of age
and humble familiarity, “if I should, by-and-by, find it
convenient to retire with you to your farm.”
“And it 's no bad place, neither, that farm of mine!” cried
the old man, cheerily, as if there were something positively
delightful in the prospect. “No bad place is the great
brick farm-house, especially for them that will find a good
many old cronies there, as will be my case. I quite long to
be among them, sometimes, of the winter evenings; for it
is but dull business for a lonesome elderly man, like me, to
be nodding, by the hour together, with no company but his
air-tight stove. Summer or winter, there 's a great deal to
be said in favor of my farm! And, take it in the autumn,
what can be pleasanter than to spend a whole day on the
sunny side of a barn or a wood-pile, chatting with somebody
as old as one's self; or, perhaps, idling away the time with
a natural born simpleton, who knows how to be idle, because
even our busy Yankees never have found out how to put
him to any use? Upon my word, Miss Hepzibah, I doubt
whether I 've ever been so comfortable as I mean to be at
my farm, which most folks call the workhouse. But you, —
you 're a young woman yet, — you never need go there!
Something still better will turn up for you. I 'm sure of it!”
Hepzibah fancied that there was something peculiar in her
venerable friend's look and tone; insomuch, that she gazed
into his face with considerable earnestness, endeavoring to
discover what secret meaning, if any, might be lurking there.
Individuals whose affairs have reached an utterly desperate
-- 073 --
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crisis almost invariably keep themselves alive with hopes,
so much the more airily magnificent, as they have the less
of solid matter within their grasp, whereof to mould any
judicious and moderate expectation of good. Thus, all the
while Hepzibah was perfecting the scheme of her little
shop, she had cherished an unacknowledged idea that some
harlequin trick of fortune would intervene in her favor.
For example, an uncle — who had sailed for India, fifty
years before, and never been heard of since — might yet return,
and adopt her to be the comfort of his very extreme
and decrepit age, and adorn her with pearls, diamonds, and
oriental shawls and turbans, and make her the ultimate
heiress of his unreckonable riches. Or the member of
parliament, now at the head of the English branch of the
family, — with which the elder stock, on this side of the
Atlantic, had held little or no intercourse for the last two
centuries, — this eminent gentleman might invite Hepzibah
to quit the ruinous House of the Seven Gables, and come
over to dwell with her kindred at Pyncheon Hall. But,
for reasons the most imperative, she could not yield to his
request. It was more probable, therefore, that the descendants
of a Pyncheon who had emigrated to Virginia, in
some past generation, and became a great planter there, —
hearing of Hepzibah's destitution, and impelled by the splendid
generosity of character with which their Virginian mixture
must have enriched the New England blood, — would
send her a remittance of a thousand dollars, with a hint
of repeating the favor, annually. Or — and, surely, anything
so undeniably just could not be beyond the limits
of reasonable anticipation — the great claim to the heritage
of Waldo County might finally be decided in favor of the
Pyncheons; so that, instead of keeping a cent-shop, Hepzibah
would build a palace, and look down from its highest
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tower on hill, dale, forest, field, and town, as her own share
of the ancestral territory.
These were some of the fantasies which she had long
dreamed about; and, aided by these, Uncle Venner's casual
attempt at encouragement kindled a strange festal glory in
the poor, bare, melancholy chambers of her brain, as if that
inner world were suddenly lighted up with gas. But either
he knew nothing of her castles in the air — as how should
he? — or else her earnest scowl disturbed his recollection,
as it might a more courageous man's. Instead of pursuing
any weightier topic, Uncle Venner was pleased to favor
Hepzibah with some sage counsel in her shop-keeping
capacity.
“Give no credit!” — these were some of his golden maxims, —
“Never take paper-money! Look well to your
change! Ring the silver on the four-pound weight! Shove
back all English half-pence and base copper tokens, such
as are very plenty about town! At your leisure hours,
knit children's woollen socks and mittens! Brew your own
yeast, and make your own ginger-beer!”
And while Hepzibah was doing her utmost to digest the
hard little pellets of his already uttered wisdom, he gave
vent to his final, and what he declared to be his all-important
advice, as follows: —
“Put on a bright face for your customers, and smile
pleasantly as you hand them what they ask for! A stale
article, if you dip it in a good, warm, sunny smile, will go
off better than a fresh one that you 've scowled upon.”
To this last apothegm poor Hepzibah responded with a
sigh so deep and heavy that it almost rustled Uncle Venner
quite away, like a withered leaf, — as he was, — before an
autumnal gale. Recovering himself, however, he bent forward,
and, with a good deal of feeling in his ancient visage,
beckoned her nearer to him.
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“When do you expect him home?” whispered he.
“Whom do you mean?” asked Hepzibah, turning pale.
“Ah! you don 't love to talk about it,” said Uncle Venner.
“Well, well! we 'll say no more, though there 's word
of it, all over town. I remember him, Miss Hepzibah,
before he could run alone!”
During the remainder of the day, poor Hepzibah acquitted
herself even less creditably, as a shopkeeper, than in her
earlier efforts. She appeared to be walking in a dream;
or, more truly, the vivid life and reality assumed by her
emotions made all outward occurrences unsubstantial, like
the teasing phantasms of a half-conscious slumber. She
still responded, mechanically, to the frequent summons of
the shop-bell, and, at the demand of her customers, went
prying with vague eyes about the shop, proffering them one
article after another, and, thrusting aside — perversely, as
most of them supposed — the identical thing they asked for.
There is sad confusion, indeed, when the spirit thus flits
away into the past, or into the more awful future, or, in any
manner, steps across the spaceless boundary betwixt its own
region and the actual world; where the body remains to
guide itself, as best it may, with little more than the mechanism
of animal life. It is like death, without death's quiet
privilege, — its freedom from mortal care. Worst of all,
when the actual duties are comprised in such petty details
as now vexed the brooding soul of the old gentlewoman.
As the animosity of fate would have it, there was a great
influx of custom, in the course of the afternoon. Hepzibah
blundered to and fro about her small place of business,
committing the most unheard of errors: now stringing up
twelve, and now seven tallow-candles, instead of ten to the
pound; selling ginger for Scotch snuff, pins for needles, and
needles for pins; misreckoning her change, sometimes to the
public detriment, and much oftener to her own; and thus
-- 076 --
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she went on, doing her utmost to bring chaos back again,
until, at the close of the day's labor, to her inexplicable
astonishment, she found the money-drawer almost destitute
of coin. After all her painful traffic, the whole proceeds
were perhaps half a dozen coppers, and a questionable nine-pence,
which ultimately proved to be copper likewise.
At this price, or at whatever price, she rejoiced that the
day had reached its end. Never before had she had such a
sense of the intolerable length of time that creeps between
dawn and sunset, and of the miserable irksomeness of having
aught to do, and of the better wisdom that it would be,
to lie down at once, in sullen resignation, and let life, and
its toils and vexations, trample over one's prostrate body, as
they may! Hepzibah's final operation was with the little
devourer of Jim Crow and the elephant, who now proposed
to eat a camel. In her bewilderment, she offered him first
a wooden dragoon, and next a handful of marbles; neither
of which being adapted to his else omnivorous appetite, she
hastily held out her whole remaining stock of natural history
in gingerbread, and huddled the small customer out of
the shop. She then muffled the bell in an unfinished stocking,
and put up the oaken bar across the door.
During the latter process, an omnibus came to a stand-still
under the branches of the elm-tree. Hepzibah's heart
was in her mouth. Remote and dusky, and with no sunshine
on all the intervening space, was that region of the
Past whence her only guest might be expected to arrive!
Was she to meet him now?
Somebody, at all events, was passing from the furthest
interior of the omnibus towards its entrance. A gentleman
alighted; but it was only to offer his hand to a young girl,
whose slender figure, nowise needing such assistance, now
lightly descended the steps, and made an airy little jump
from the final one to the sidewalk. She rewarded her
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cavalier with a smile, the cheery glow of which was seen reflected
on his own face, as he reëntered the vehicle. The
girl then turned towards the House of the Seven Gables;
to the door of which, meanwhile, — not the shop-door, but
the antique portal, — the omnibus-man had carried a light
trunk and a band-box. First giving a sharp rap of the old
iron knocker, he left his passenger and her luggage at the
door-step, and departed.
“Who can it be?” thought Hepzibah, who had been
screwing her visual organs into the acutest focus of which
they were capable. “The girl must have mistaken the
house!”
She stole softly into the hall, and, herself invisible, gazed
through the dusty side-lights of the portal at the young,
blooming, and very cheerful face, which presented itself for
admittance into the gloomy old mansion. It was a face to
which almost any door would have opened of its own accord.
The young girl, so fresh, so unconventional, and yet so
orderly and obedient to common rules, as you at once recognized
her to be, was widely in contrast, at that moment,
with everything about her. The sordid and ugly luxuriance
of gigantic weeds that grew in the angle of the house, and
the heavy projection that overshadowed her, and the timeworn
frame-work of the door, — none of these things belonged
to her sphere. But, even as a ray of sunshine, fall
into what dismal place it may, instantaneously creates for
itself a propriety in being there, so did it seem altogether
fit that the girl should be standing at the threshold. It
was no less evidently proper that the door should swing
open to admit her. The maiden lady, herself, sternly inhospitable
in her first purposes, soon began to feel that the
door ought to be shoved back, and the rusty key be turned
in the reluctant lock.
“Can it be Phœbe?” questioned she within herself. “It
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must be little Phœbe; for it can be nobody else, — and there
is a look of her father about her, too! But what does she
want here? And how like a country cousin, to come down
upon a poor body in this way, without so much as a day's
notice, or asking whether she would be welcome! Well;
she must have a night's lodging, I suppose; and to-morrow
the child shall go back to her mother!”
Phœbe, it must be understood, was that one little off-shoot
of the Pyncheon race to whom we have already referred, as
a native of a rural part of New England, where the old
fashions and feelings of relationship are still partially kept
up. In her own circle, it was regarded as by no means improper
for kinsfolk to visit one another, without invitation,
or preliminary and ceremonious warning. Yet, in consideration
of Miss Hepzibah's recluse way of life, a letter had
actually been written and despatched, conveying information
of Phœbe's projected visit. This epistle, for three or four
days past, had been in the pocket of the penny-postman,
who, happening to have no other business in Pyncheon-street,
had not yet made it convenient to call at the House
of the Seven Gables.
“No! — she can stay only one night,” said Hepzibah, unbolting
the door. “If Clifford were to find her here, it
might disturb him!”
-- -- p574-088
V. MAY AND NOVEMBER.
[figure description] Page 079.[end figure description]
Phœbe Pyncheon slept, on the night of her arrival, in a
chamber that looked down on the garden of the old house.
It fronted towards the east, so that at a very seasonable
hour a glow of crimson light came flooding through the
window, and bathed the dingy ceiling and paper-hangings
in its own hue. There were curtains to Phœbe's bed; a
dark, antique canopy and ponderous festoons, of a stuff
which had been rich, and even magnificent, in its time; but
which now brooded over the girl like a cloud, making a
night in that one corner, while elsewhere it was beginning
to be day. The morning light, however, soon stole into the
aperture at the foot of the bed, betwixt those faded curtains.
Finding the new guest there, — with a bloom on her cheeks
like the morning's own, and a gentle stir of departing slumber
in her limbs, as when an early breeze moves the foliage,—
the dawn kissed her brow. It was the caress which a
dewy maiden — such as the Dawn is, immortally — gives
to her sleeping sister, partly from the impulse of irresistible
fondness, and partly as a pretty hint that it is time now to
unclose her eyes.
At the touch of those lips of light, Phœbe quietly awoke,
and, for a moment, did not recognize where she was, nor
how those heavy curtains chanced to be festooned around
her. Nothing, indeed, was absolutely plain to her, except
that it was now early morning, and that, whatever might
happen next, it was proper, first of all, to get up and say her
prayers. She was the more inclined to devotion, from the
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[figure description] Page 080.[end figure description]
grim aspect of the chamber and its furniture, especially the
tall, stiff chairs; one of which stood close by her bedside,
and looked as if some old-fashioned personage had been sitting
there all night, and had vanished only just in season
to escape discovery.
When Phœbe was quite dressed, she peeped out of the
window, and saw a rose-bush in the garden. Being a very
tall one, and of luxurious growth, it had been propped up
against the side of the house, and was literally covered with
a rare and very beautiful species of white rose. A large
portion of them, as the girl afterwards discovered, had blight
or mildew at their hearts; but, viewed at a fair distance, the
whole rose-bush looked as if it had been brought from Eden
that very summer, together with the mould in which it
grew. The truth was, nevertheless, that it had been
planted by Alice Pyncheon, — she was Phœbe's great-great-grand-aunt, —
in soil which, reckoning only its cultivation
as a garden-plat, was now unctuous with nearly two hundred
years of vegetable decay. Growing as they did, however,
out of the old earth, the flowers still sent a fresh and
sweet incense up to their Creator; nor could it have been
the less pure and acceptable, because Phœbe's young breath
mingled with it, as the fragrance floated past the window.
Hastening down the creaking and carpetless staircase, she
found her way into the garden, gathered some of the most
perfect of the roses, and brought them to her chamber.
Little Phœbe was one of those persons who possess, as
their exclusive patrimony, the gift of practical arrangement.
It is a kind of natural magic that enables these favored
ones to bring out the hidden capabilities of things around
them; and particularly to give a look of comfort and habitableness
to any place which, for however brief a period, may
happen to be their home. A wild hut of underbrush, tossed
together by wayfarers through the primitive forest, would
-- 081 --
[figure description] Page 081.[end figure description]
acquire the home aspect by one night's lodging of such a
woman, and would retain it long after her quiet figure had
disappeared into the surrounding shade. No less a portion of
such homely witchcraft was requisite, to reclaim, as it were,
Phœbe's waste, cheerless, and dusky chamber, which had
been untenanted so long — except by spiders, and mice, and
rats, and ghosts — that it was all overgrown with the desolation
which watches to obliterate every trace of man's happier
hours. What was precisely Phœbe's process, we find
it impossible to say. She appeared to have no preliminary
design, but gave a touch here, and another there; brought
some articles of furniture to light, and dragged others into
the shadow; looped up or let down a window-curtain; and,
in the course of half an hour, had fully succeeded in throwing
a kindly and hospitable smile over the apartment. No
longer ago than the night before, it had resembled nothing
so much as the old maid's heart; for there was neither sunshine
nor household-fire in one nor the other, and, save for
ghosts and ghostly reminiscences, not a guest, for many
years gone-by, had entered the heart or the chamber.
There was still another peculiarity of this inscrutable
charm. The bed-chamber, no doubt, was a chamber of very
great and varied experience, as a scene of human life: the
joy of bridal nights had throbbed itself away here; new
immortals had first drawn earthly breath here; and here old
people had died. But — whether it were the white roses,
or whatever the subtile influence might be — a person of
delicate instinct would have known, at once, that it was
now a maiden's bed-chamber, and had been purified of all
former evil and sorrow by her sweet breath and happy
thoughts. Her dreams of the past night, being such cheerful
ones, had exorcised the gloom, and now haunted the
chamber in its stead.
After arranging matters to her satisfaction, Phœbe emerged
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from her chamber, with a purpose to descend again into the
garden. Besides the rose-bush, she had observed several
other species of flowers, growing there in a wilderness of
neglect, and obstructing one another's development (as is
often the parallel case in human society) by their uneducated
entanglement and confusion. At the head of the
stairs, however, she met Hepzibah, who, it being still early,
invited her into a room which she would probably have
called her boudoir, had her education embraced any such
French phrase. It was strewn about with a few old books,
and a work-basket, and a dusty writing-desk; and had, on
one side, a large, black article of furniture, of very strange
appearance, which the old gentlewoman told Phœbe was a
harpsichord. It looked more like a coffin than anything
else; and, indeed, — not having been played upon, or opened,
for years, — there must have been a vast deal of dead music
in it, stifled for want of air. Human finger was hardly
known to have touched its chords since the days of Alice
Pyncheon, who had learned the sweet accomplishment of
melody in Europe.
Hepzibah bade her young guest sit down, and, herself
taking a chair near by, looked as earnestly at Phœbe's trim
little figure as if she expected to see right into its springs
and motive secrets.
“Cousin Phœbe,” said she, at last, “I really can't see
my way clear to keep you with me.”
These words, however, had not the inhospitable bluntness
with which they may strike the reader; for the two relatives,
in a talk before bedtime, had arrived at a certain degree of
mutual understanding. Hepzibah knew enough to enable
her to appreciate the circumstances (resulting from the second
marriage of the girl's mother) which made it desirable
for Phœbe to establish herself in another home. Nor did
she misinterpret Phœbe's character, and the genial activity
-- 083 --
[figure description] Page 083.[end figure description]
pervading it, — one of the most valuable traits of the true
New England woman, — which had impelled her forth, as
might be said, to seek her fortune, but with a self-respecting
purpose to confer as much benefit as she could anywise
receive. As one of her nearest kindred, she had naturally
betaken herself to Hepzibah, with no idea of forcing herself
on her cousin's protection, but only for a visit of a week or
two, which might be indefinitely extended, should it prove
for the happiness of both.
To Hepzibah's blunt observation, therefore, Phœbe replied,
as frankly, and more cheerfully.
“Dear cousin, I cannot tell how it will be,” said she.
“But I really think we may suit one another much better
than you suppose.”
“You are a nice girl, — I see it plainly,” continued Hepzibah;
“and it is not any question as to that point which
makes me hesitate. But, Phœbe, this house of mine is but
a melancholy place for a young person to be in. It lets in
the wind and rain, and the snow, too, in the garret and
upper chambers, in winter-time; but it never lets in the
sunshine! And as for myself, you see what I am, — a dismal
and lonesome old woman (for I begin to call myself old,
Phœbe), whose temper, I am afraid, is none of the best, and
whose spirits are as bad as can be. I cannot make your
life pleasant, Cousin Phœbe, neither can I so much as give
you bread to eat.”
“You will find me a cheerful little body,” answered
Phœbe, smiling, and yet with a kind of gentle dignity;
“and I mean to earn my bread. You know I have not
been brought up a Pyncheon. A girl learns many things
in a New England village.”
“Ah! Phœbe,” said Hepzibah, sighing, “your knowledge
would do but little for you here! And then it is a wretched
thought, that you should fling away your young days in a
-- 084 --
[figure description] Page 084.[end figure description]
place like this. Those cheeks would not be so rosy, after a
month or two. Look at my face!” — and, indeed, the contrast
was very striking, — “you see how pale I am! It is
my idea that the dust and continual decay of these old
houses are unwholesome for the lungs.”
“There is the garden, — the flowers to be taken care of,”
observed Phœbe. “I should keep myself healthy with
exercise in the open air.”
“And, after all, child,” exclaimed Hepzibah, suddenly
rising, as if to dismiss the subject, “it is not for me to say
who shall be a guest or inhabitant of the old Pyncheon-house.
Its master is coming.”
“Do you mean Judge Pyncheon?” asked Phœbe, in surprise.
“Judge Pyncheon!” answered her cousin, angrily. “He
will hardly cross the threshold while I live! No, no!
But, Phœbe, you shall see the face of him I speak of.”
She went in quest of the miniature already described, and
returned with it in her hand. Giving it to Phœbe, she
watched her features narrowly, and with a certain jealousy
as to the mode in which the girl would show herself affected
by the picture.
“How do you like the face?” asked Hepzibah.
“It is handsome! — it is very beautiful!” said Phœbe,
admiringly. “It is as sweet a face as a man's can be, or
ought to be. It has something of a child's expression, —
and yet not childish, — only, one feels so very kindly
towards him! He ought never to suffer anything. One
would bear much for the sake of sparing him toil or sorrow.
Who is it, Cousin Hepzibah?”
“Did you never hear,” whispered her cousin, bending
towards her, “of Clifford Pyncheon?”
“Never! I thought there were no Pyncheons left, except
yourself and our cousin Jaffrey,” answered Phœbe. “And
-- 085 --
[figure description] Page 085.[end figure description]
yet I seem to have heard the name of Clifford Pyncheon.
Yes! — from my father, or my mother; but has he not
been a long while dead?”
“Well, well, child, perhaps he has!” said Hepzibah, with
a sad, hollow laugh; “but, in old houses like this, you
know, dead people are very apt to come back again! We
shall see. And, Cousin Phœbe, since, after all that I have
said, your courage does not fail you, we will not part so
soon. You are welcome, my child, for the present, to such
a home as your kinswoman can offer you.”
With this measured, but not exactly cold assurance of a
hospitable purpose, Hepzibah kissed her cheek.
They now went below stairs, where Phœbe — not so
much assuming the office as attracting it to herself, by the
magnetism of innate fitness — took the most active part in
preparing breakfast. The mistress of the house, meanwhile,
as is usual with persons of her stiff and unmalleable
cast, stood mostly aside; willing to lend her aid, yet conscious
that her natural inaptitude would be likely to impede
the business in hand. Phœbe, and the fire that boiled the
teakettle, were equally bright, cheerful, and efficient, in
their respective offices. Hepzibah gazed forth from her
habitual sluggishness, the necessary result of long solitude,
as from another sphere. She could not help being interested,
however, and even amused, at the readiness with
which her new inmate adapted herself to the circumstances,
and brought the house, moreover, and all its rusty old
appliances, into a suitableness for her purposes. Whatever
she did, too, was done without conscious effort, and with
frequent outbreaks of song, which were exceedingly pleasant
to the ear. This natural tunefulness made Phœbe seem
like a bird in a shadowy tree; or conveyed the idea that the
stream of life warbled through her heart as a brook sometimes
warbles through a pleasant little dell. It betokened
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[figure description] Page 086.[end figure description]
the cheeriness of an active temperament, finding joy in its
activity, and, therefore, rendering it beautiful; it was a
New England trait, — the stern old stuff of Puritanism,
with a gold thread in the web.
Hepzibah brought out some old silver spoons, with the
family crest upon them, and a China tea-set, painted over
with grotesque figures of man, bird, and beast, in as grotesque
a landscape. These pictured people were odd
humorists, in a world of their own, — a world of vivid
brilliancy, so far as color went, and still unfaded, although
the tea-pot and small cups were as ancient as the custom
itself of tea-drinking.
“Your great-great-great-great-grandmother had these
cups, when she was married,” said Hepzibah to Phœbe.
“She was a Davenport, of a good family. They were
almost the first tea-cups ever seen in the colony; and if one
of them were to be broken, my heart would break with it.
But it is nonsense to speak so about a brittle tea-cup, when
I remember what my heart has gone through, without
breaking.”
The cups — not having been used, perhaps, since Hepzibah's
youth — had contracted no small burthen of dust,
which Phœbe washed away with so much care and delicacy
as to satisfy even the proprietor of this invaluable china.
“What a nice little housewife you are!” exclaimed the
latter, smiling, and, at the same time, frowning so prodigiously
that the smile was sunshine under a thunder-cloud.
“Do you do other things as well? Are you as
good at your book as you are at washing tea-cups?”
“Not quite, I am afraid,” said Phœbe, laughing at the
form of Hepzibah's question. “But I was schoolmistress
for the little children in our district, last summer, and might
have been so still.”
“Ah! 't is all very well!” observed the maiden lady,
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[figure description] Page 087.[end figure description]
drawing herself up. — “But these things must have come
to you with your mother's blood. I never knew a Pyncheon
that had any turn for them.”
It is very queer, but not the less true, that people are
generally quite as vain, or even more so, of their deficiencies,
than of their available gifts; as was Hepzibah of this
native inapplicability, so to speak, of the Pyncheons, to any
useful purpose. She regarded it as an hereditary trait; and
so, perhaps, it was, but, unfortunately, a morbid one, such
as is often generated in families that remain long above the
surface of society.
Before they left the breakfast-table, the shop-bell rang
sharply, and Hepzibah set down the remnant of her final
cup of tea, with a look of sallow despair that was truly
piteous to behold. In cases of distasteful occupation, the
second day is generally worse than the first; we return to
the rack with all the soreness of the preceding torture in
our limbs. At all events, Hepzibah had fully satisfied herself
of the impossibility of ever becoming wonted to this
peevishly obstreperous little bell. Ring as often as it might,
the sound always smote upon her nervous system rudely
and suddenly. And especially now, while, with her crested
tea-spoons and antique china, she was flattering herself
with ideas of gentility, she felt an unspeakable disinclination
to confront a customer.
“Do not trouble yourself, dear cousin!” cried Phœbe,
starting lightly up. “I am shopkeeper to-day.”
“You, child!” exclaimed Hepzibah. “What can a little
country-girl know of such matters?”
“O, I have done all the shopping for the family, at our
village store,” said Phœbe. “And I have had a table at a
fancy fair, and made better sales than anybody. These
things are not to be learnt; they depend upon a knack, that
comes, I suppose,” added she, smiling, “with one's mother's
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[figure description] Page 088.[end figure description]
blood. You shall see that I am as nice a little saleswoman
as I am a housewife!”
The old gentlewoman stole behind Phœbe, and peeped
from the passage-way into the shop, to not how she would
manage her undertaking. It was a case of some intricacy.
A very ancient woman, in a white short gown, and a green
petticoat, with a string of gold beads about her neck, and
what looked like a night-cap on her head, had brought a
quantity of yarn to barter for the commodities of the shop.
She was probably the very last person in town who still
kept the time-honored spinning-wheel in constant revolution.
It was worth while to hear the croaking and hollow
tones of the old lady, and the pleasant voice of Phœbe,
mingling in one twisted thread of talk; and still better, to
contrast their figures, — so light and bloomy — so decrepit
and dusky, — with only the counter betwixt them, in one
sense, but more than threescore years, in another. As for
the bargain, it was wrinkled slyness and craft pitted against
native truth and sagacity.
“Was not that well done?” asked Phœbe, laughing,
when the customer was gone.
“Nicely done, indeed, child!” answered Hepzibah. “I
could not have gone through with it nearly so well. As you
say, it must be a knack that belongs to you on the mother's
side.”
It is a very genuine admiration, that with which persons
too shy or too awkward to take a due part in the bustling
world regard the real actors in life's stirring scenes; so
genuine, in fact, that the former are usually fain to make it
palatable to their self-love, by assuming that these active
and forcible qualities are incompatible with others, which
they chose to deem higher and more important. Thus,
Hepzibah was well content to acknowledge Phœbe's vastly
superior gifts as a shopkeeper; she listened, with compliant
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ear, to her suggestion of various methods whereby the influx
of trade might be increased, and rendered profitable, without
a hazardous outlay of capital. She consented that the
village maiden should manufacture yeast, both liquid and in
cakes; and should brew a certain kind of beer, nectareous
to the palate, and of rare stomachic virtues; and, moreover,
should bake and exhibit for sale some little spice-cakes,
which whosoever tasted would longingly desire to taste
again. All such proofs of a ready mind, and skilful handiwork,
were highly acceptable to the aristocratic hucksteress,
so long as she could murmur to herself, with a grim smile,
and a half-natural sigh, and a sentiment of mixed wonder,
pity, and growing affection, —
“What a nice little body she is! If she could only be a
lady, too! — but that's impossible! Phœbe is no Pyncheon.
She takes everything from her mother.”
As to Phœbe's not being a lady, or whether she were a
lady or no, it was a point, perhaps, difficult to decide, but
which could hardly have come up for judgment at all, in
any fair and healthy mind. Out of New England, it would
be impossible to meet with a person combining so many
ladylike attributes with so many others that form no necessary
(if compatible) part of the character. She shocked
no canon of taste; she was admirably in keeping with herself,
and never jarred against surrounding circumstances.
Her figure, to be sure, — so small as to be almost childlike,
and so elastic that motion seemed as easy or easier to it
than rest, — would hardly have suited one's idea of a countess.
Neither did her face — with the brown ringlets on
either side, and the slightly piquant nose, and the wholesome
bloom, and the clear shade of tan, and the half a dozen
freckles, friendly remembrancers of the April sun and breeze—
precisely give us a right to call her beautiful. But there
was both lustre and depth in her eyes. She was very
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pretty; as graceful as a bird, and graceful much in the
same way; as pleasant about the house as a gleam of sunshine,
falling on the floor through a shadow of twinkling
leaves, or as a ray of firelight that dances on the wall,
while evening is drawing nigh. Instead of discussing her
claim to rank among ladies, it would be preferable to regard
Phœbe as the example of feminine grace and availability
combined, in a state of society, if there were any such,
where ladies did not exist. There it should be woman's
office to move in the midst of practical affairs, and to gild
them all, the very homeliest, — were it even the scouring of
pots and kettles, — with an atmosphere of loveliness and
joy.
Such was the sphere of Phœbe. To find the born and
educated lady, on the other hand, we need look no further
than Hepzibah, our forlorn old maid, in her rustling and
rusty silks, with her deeply-cherished and ridiculous consciousness
of long descent, her shadowy claims to princely
territory, and, in the way of accomplishment, her recollections,
it may be, of having formerly thrummed on a harpsichord,
and walked a minuet, and worked an antique tapestry-stitch
on her sampler. It was a fair parallel between
new Plebeianism and old Gentility.
It really seemed as if the battered visage of the House
of the Seven Gables, black and heavy-browed as it still certainly
looked, must have shown a kind of cheerfulness
glimmering through its dusky windows, as Phœbe passed
to and fro in the interior. Otherwise, it is impossible to
explain how the people of the neighborhood so soon became
aware of the girl's presence. There was a great run of
custom, setting steadily in, from about ten o'clock until
towards noon, — relaxing, somewhat, at dinner-time, but
re-commencing in the afternoon, and, finally, dying away a
half an hour or so before the long day's sunset. One of the
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staunchest patrons was little Ned Wiggins, the devourer of
Jim Crow and the elephant, who to-day had signalized his
omnivorous prowess by swallowing two dromedaries and a
locomotive. Phœbe laughed, as she summed up her aggregate
of sales, upon the slate, while Hepzibah, first drawing
on a pair of silk gloves, reckoned over the sordid accumulation
of copper coin, not without silver intermixed, that had
jingled into the till.
“We must renew our stock, Cousin Hepzibah!” cried
the little saleswoman. “The gingerbread figures are all
gone, and so are those Dutch wooden milkmaids, and most
of our other playthings. There has been constant inquiry
for cheap raisins, and a great cry for whistles, and trumpets,
and Jew's-harps; and at least a dozen little boys have asked
for molasses-candy. And we must contrive to get a peck
of russet apples, late in the season as it is. But, dear
cousin, what an enormous heap of copper! Positively a
copper mountain!”
“Well done! well done! well done!” quoth Uncle
Venner, who had taken occasion to shuffle in and out of the
shop several times, in the course of the day. “Here 's a
girl that will never end her days at my farm! Bless my
eyes, what a brisk little soul!”
“Yes, Phœbe is a nice girl!” said Hepzibah, with a
scowl of austere approbation. “But, Uncle Venner, you
have known the family a great many years. Can you tell
me whether there ever was a Pyncheon whom she takes
after?”
“I don't believe there ever was,” answered the venerable
man. “At any rate, it never was my luck to see her like
among them, nor, for that matter, anywhere else. I 've
seen a great deal of the world, not only in people's kitchens
and back-yards, but at the street-corners, and on the
wharves, and in other places where my business calls me;
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and I 'm free to say, Miss Hepzibah, that I never knew a
human creature do her work so much like one of God's
angels as this child Phœbe does!”
Uncle Venner's eulogium, if it appear rather too high-strained
for the person and occasion, had, nevertheless, a
sense in which it was both subtle and true. There was a
spiritual quality in Phœbe's activity. The life of the long
and busy day — spent in occupations that might so easily
have taken a squalid and ugly aspect — had been made
pleasant, and even lovely, by the spontaneous grace with
which these homely duties seemed to bloom out of her
character; so that labor, while she dealt with it, had the
easy and flexible charm of play. Angels do not toil, but
let their good works grow out of them; and so did Phœbe.
The two relatives — the young maid and the old one —
found time, before nightfall, in the intervals of trade, to
make rapid advances towards affection and confidence. A
recluse, like Hepzibah, usually displays remarkable frankness,
and at least temporary affability, on being absolutely
cornered, and brought to the point of personal intercourse;
like the angel whom Jacob wrestled with, she is ready to
bless you, when once overcome.
The old gentlewoman took a dreary and proud satisfaction
in leading Phœbe from room to room of the house, and
recounting the traditions with which, as we may say, the
walls were lugubriously frescoed. She showed the indentations
made by the lieutenant-governor's sword-hilt in the
door-panels of the apartment where old Colonel Pyncheon,
a dead host, had received his affrighted visiters with an
awful frown. The dusky terror of that frown, Hepzibah
observed, was thought to be lingering ever since in the passage-way.
She bade Phœbe step into one of the tall chairs,
and inspect the ancient map of the Pyncheon territory at
the eastward. In a tract of land on which she laid her
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finger, there existed a silver mine, the locality of which was
precisely pointed out in some memoranda of Colonel Pyncheon
himself, but only to be made known when the family
claim should be recognized by government. Thus it was
for the interest of all New England that the Pyncheons
should have justice done them. She told, too, how that
there was undoubtedly an immense treasure of English
guineas hidden somewhere about the house, or in the cellar,
or possibly in the garden.
“If you should happen to find it, Phœbe,” said Hepzibah,
glancing aside at her, with a grim yet kindly smile, “we
will tie up the shop-bell for good and all!”
“Yes, dear cousin,” answered Phœbe; “but, in the mean
time, I hear somebody ringing it!”
When the customer was gone, Hepzibah talked rather
vaguely, and at great length, about a certain Alice Pyncheon,
who had been exceedingly beautiful and accomplished
in her lifetime, a hundred years ago. The fragrance of her
rich and delightful character still lingered about the place
where she had lived, as a dried rose-bud scents the drawer
where it has withered and perished. This lovely Alice had
met with some great and mysterious calamity, and had
grown thin and white, and gradually faded out of the world.
But, even now, she was supposed to haunt the House of the
Seven Gables, and, a great many times, — especially when
one of the Pyncheons was to die, — she had been heard playing
sadly and beautifully on the harpsichord. One of these
tunes, just as it had sounded from her spiritual touch, had
been written down by an amateur of music; it was so exquisitely
mournful that nobody, to this day, could bear to
hear it played, unless when a great sorrow had made them
know the still profounder sweetness of it.
“Was it the same harpsichord that you showed me?”
inquired Phœbe.
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“The very same,” said Hepzibah. “It was Alice Pyncheon's
harpsichord. When I was learning music, my
father would never let me open it. So, as I could only play
on my teacher's instrument, I have forgotten all my music,
long ago.”
Leaving these antique themes, the old lady began to
talk about the daguerreotypist, whom, as he seemed to
be a well-meaning and orderly young man, and in narrow
circumstances, she had permitted to take up his residence
in one of the seven gables. But, on seeing more of Mr.
Holgrave, she hardly knew what to make of him. He had
the strangest companions imaginable: men with long
beards, and dressed in linen blouses, and other such new-fangled
and ill-fitting garments; reformers, temperance lecturers,
and all manner of cross-looking philanthropists;
community-men and come-outers, as Hepzibah believed,
who acknowledged no law, and ate no solid food, but lived
on the scent of other people's cookery, and turned up their
noses at the fare. As for the daguerreotypist, she had read
a paragraph in a penny-paper, the other day, accusing him
of making a speech full of wild and disorganizing matter, at
a meeting of his banditti-like associates. For her own part,
she had reason to believe that he practised animal magnetism,
and, if such things were in fashion now-a-days, should
be apt to suspect him of studying the Black Art, up there
in his lonesome chamber.
“But, dear cousin,” said Phœbe, “if the young man is so
dangerous, why do you let him stay? If he does nothing
worse, he may set the house on fire!”
“Why, sometimes,” answered Hepzibah, “I have seriously
made it a question, whether I ought not to send him
away. But, with all his oddities, he is a quiet kind of a
person, and has such a way of taking hold of one's mind,
that, without exactly liking him (for I don't know enough
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of the young man), I should be sorry to lose sight of him
entirely. A woman clings to slight acquaintances, when
she lives so much alone as I do.”
“But if Mr. Holgrave is a lawless person!” remonstrated
Phœbe, a part of whose essence it was to keep within the
limits of law.
“O!” said Hepzibah, carelessly, — for, formal as she was,
still, in her life's experience, she had gnashed her teeth
against human law, — “I suppose he has a law of his
own!”
-- -- p574-105
VI. MAULE'S WELL.
[figure description] Page 096.[end figure description]
After an early tea, the little country-girl strayed into the
garden. The enclosure had formerly been very extensive,
but was now contracted within small compass, and hemmed
about, partly by high wooden fences, and partly by the out-buildings
of houses that stood on another street. In its
centre was a grass-plat, surrounding a ruinous little structure,
which showed just enough of its original design to
indicate that it had once been a summer-house. A hop-vine,
springing from last year's root, was beginning to clamber
over it, but would be long in covering the roof with its green
mantle. Three of the seven gables either fronted or looked
side-ways, with a dark solemnity of aspect, down into the
garden.
The black, rich soil had fed itself with the decay of a
long period of time; such as fallen leaves, the petals of
flowers, and the stalks and seed-vessels of vagrant and lawless
plants, more useful after their death than ever while
flaunting in the sun. The evil of these departed years
would naturally have sprung up again, in such rank weeds
(symbolic of the transmitted vices of society) as are always
prone to root themselves about human dwellings. Phœbe
saw, however, that their growth must have been checked by
a degree of careful labor, bestowed daily and systematically
on the garden. The white double rose-bush had evidently
been propped up anew against the house, since the commencement
of the season; and a pear-tree and three damson-trees,
which, except a row of currant-bushes, constituted the only
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varieties of fruit, bore marks of the recent amputation of
several superfluous or defective limbs. There were also a
few species of antique and hereditary flowers, in no very
flourishing condition, but scrupulously weeded; as if some
person, either out of love or curiosity, had been anxious to
bring them to such perfection as they were capable of attaining.
The remainder of the garden presented a well-selected
assortment of esculent vegetables, in a praiseworthy state of
advancement. Summer squashes, almost in their golden
blossom; cucumbers, now evincing a tendency to spread
away from the main stock, and ramble far and wide; two
or three rows of string-beans, and as many more that were
about to festoon themselves on poles; tomatoes, occupying a
site so sheltered and sunny that the plants were already
gigantic, and promised an early and abundant harvest.
Phœbe wondered whose care and toil it could have been
that had planted these vegetables, and kept the soil so clean
and orderly. Not, surely, her cousin Hepzibah's, who had
no taste nor spirits for the lady-like employment of cultivating
flowers, and — with her recluse habits, and tendency
to shelter herself within the dismal shadow of the house —
would hardly have come forth, under the speck of open
sky, to weed and hoe among the fraternity of beans and
squashes.
It being her first day of complete estrangement from rural
objects, Phœbe found an unexpected charm in this little nook
of grass, and foliage, and aristocratic flowers, and plebeian
vegetables. The eye of Heaven seemed to look down into
it pleasantly, and with a peculiar smile, as if glad to perceive
that nature, elsewhere overwhelmed, and driven out of the
dusty town, had here been able to retain a breathing-place.
The spot acquired a somewhat wilder grace, and yet a very
gentle one, from the fact that a pair of robins had built their
nest in the pear-tree, and were making themselves
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exceedingly busy and happy in the dark intricacy of its boughs.
Bees, too, — strange to say, — had thought it worth their
while to come hither, possibly from the range of hives beside
some farm-house, miles away. How many aerial voyages
might they have made, in quest of honey, or honeyladen,
betwixt dawn and sunset! Yet, late as it now was,
there still arose a pleasant hum out of one or two of the
squash-blossoms, in the depths of which these bees were
plying their golden labor. There was one other object in
the garden which nature might fairly claim as her inalienable
property, in spite of whatever man could do to render it
his own. This was a fountain, set round with a rim of old,
mossy stones, and paved, in its bed, with what appeared to
be a sort of Mosaic-work of variously colored pebbles. The
play and slight agitation of the water, in its upward gush,
wrought magically with these variegated pebbles, and made
a continually shifting apparition of quaint figures, vanishing
too suddenly to be definable. Thence, swelling over the rim
of moss-grown stones, the water stole away under the fence,
through what we regret to call a gutter, rather than a
channel.
Nor must we forget to mention a hen-coop of very reverend
antiquity that stood in the further corner of the garden,
not a great way from the fountain. It now contained only
Chanticleer, his two wives, and a solitary chicken. All of
them were pure specimens of a breed which had been transmitted
down as an heir-loom in the Pyncheon family, and
were said, while in their prime, to have attained almost the
size of turkeys, and, on the score of delicate flesh, to be fit
for a prince's table. In proof of the authenticity of this
legendary renown, Hepzibah could have exhibited the shell
of a great egg, which an ostrich need hardly have been
ashamed of. Be that as it might, the hens were now
scarcely larger than pigeons, and had a queer, rusty,
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withered aspect, and a gouty kind of movement, and a sleepy and
melancholy tone throughout all the variations of their clucking
and cackling. It was evident that the race had degenerated,
like many a noble race besides, in consequence of
too strict a watchfulness to keep it pure. These feathered
people had existed too long in their distinct variety; a fact
of which the present representatives, judging by their lugubrious
deportment, seemed to be aware. They kept themselves
alive, unquestionably, and laid now and then an egg,
and hatched a chicken; not for any pleasure of their own,
but that the world might not absolutely lose what had once
been so admirable a breed of fowls. The distinguishing
mark of the hens was a crest of lamentably scanty growth,
in these latter days, but so oddly and wickedly analogous to
Hepzibah's turban, that Phœbe — to the poignant distress
of her conscience, but inevitably — was led to fancy a general
resemblance betwixt these forlorn bipeds and her respectable
relative.
The girl ran into the house to get some crumbs of bread,
cold potatoes, and other such scraps as were suitable to the
accommodating appetite of fowls. Returning, she gave a
peculiar call, which they seemed to recognize. The chicken
crept through the pales of the coop, and ran, with some show
of liveliness to her feet; while Chanticleer and the ladies of
his household regarded her with queer, sidelong glances,
and then croaked one to another, as if communicating their
sage opinions of her character. So wise, as well as antique,
was their aspect, as to give color to the idea, not merely
that they were the descendants of a time-honored race, but
that they had existed, in their individual capacity, ever since
the House of the Seven Gables was founded, and were
somehow mixed up with its destiny. They were a species
of tutelary sprite, or Banshee; although winged and feathered
differently from most other guardian angels.
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“Here, you odd little chicken!” said Phœbe; “here are
some nice crumbs for you!”
The chicken, hereupon, though almost as venerable in
appearance as its mother, — possessing, indeed, the whole
antiquity of its progenitors, in miniature, — mustered vivacity
enough to flutter upward and alight on Phœbe's
shoulder.
“That little fowl pays you a high compliment!” said a
voice behind Phœbe.
Turning quickly, she was surprised at sight of a young
man, who had found access into the garden by a door opening
out of another gable than that whence she had emerged.
He held a hoe in his hand, and, while Phœbe was gone in
quest of the crumbs, had begun to busy himself with drawing
up fresh earth about the roots of the tomatoes.
“The chicken really treats you like an old acquaintance,”
continued he, in a quiet way, while a smile made his face
pleasanter than Phœbe at first fancied it. “Those venerable
personages in the coop, too, seem very affably disposed.
You are lucky to be in their good graces so soon! They
have known me much longer, but never honor me with any
familiarity, though hardly a day passes without my bringing
them food. Miss Hepzibah, I suppose, will interweave the
fact with her other traditions, and set it down that the fowls
know you to be a Pyncheon!”
“The secret is,” said Phœbe, smiling, “that I have
learned how to talk with hens and chickens.”
“Ah! but these hens,” answered the young man, — “these
hens of aristocratic lineage would scorn to understand the
vulgar language of a barn-yard fowl. I prefer to think, —
and so would Miss Hepzibah, — that they recognize the
family tone. For you are a Pyncheon?”
“My name is Phœbe Pyncheon,” said the girl, with a
manner of some reserve; for she was aware that her new
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acquaintance could be no other than the daguerreotypist, of
whose lawless propensities the old maid had given her a
disagreeable idea. “I did not know that my cousin Hepzibah's
garden was under another person's care.”
“Yes,” said Holgrave, “I dig, and hoe, and weed, in this
black old earth, for the sake of refreshing myself with what
little nature and simplicity may be left in it, after men have
so long sown and reaped here. I turn up the earth by way
of pastime. My sober occupation, so far as I have any, is
with a lighter material. In short, I make pictures out of
sunshine; and, not to be too much dazzled with my own
trade, I have prevailed with Miss Hepzibah to let me lodge
in one of these dusky gables. It is like a bandage over
one's eyes, to come into it. But would you like to see a
specimen of my productions?”
“A daguerreotype likeness, do you mean?” asked Phœbe,
with less reserve; for, in spite of prejudice, her own youthfulness
sprang forward to meet his. “I don't much like pictures
of that sort — they are so hard and stern; besides
dodging away from the eye, and trying to escape altogether.
They are conscious of looking very unamiable, I suppose,
and therefore hate to be seen.”
“If you would permit me,” said the artist, looking at
Phœbe, “I should like to try whether the daguerreotype can
bring out disagreeable traits on a perfectly amiable face.
But there certainly is truth in what you have said. Most
of my likenesses do look unamiable; but the very sufficient
reason, I fancy, is, because the originals are so. There is a
wonderful insight in Heaven's broad and simple sunshine.
While we give it credit only for depicting the merest surface,
it actually brings out the secret character with a truth
that no painter would ever venture upon, even could he
detect it. There is, at least, no flattery in my humble line
of art. Now, here is a likeness which I have taken over
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and over again, and still with no better result. Yet the
original wears, to common eyes, a very different expression.
It would gratify me to have your judgment on this character.”
He exhibited a daguerreotype miniature, in a morocco
case. Phœbe merely glanced at it, and gave it back.
“I know the face,” she replied; “for its stern eye has
been following me about, all day. It is my Puritan ancestor,
who hangs yonder in the parlor. To be sure, you have
found some way of copying the portrait without its black
velvet cap and gray beard, and have given him a modern
coat and satin cravat, instead of his cloak and band. I
don't think him improved by your alterations.”
“You would have seen other differences, had you looked
a little longer,” said Holgrave, laughing, yet apparently
much struck. “I can assure you that this is a modern face,
and one which you will very probably meet. Now, the remarkable
point is, that the original wears, to the world's eye,—
and, for aught I know, to his most intimate friends, — an
exceedingly pleasant countenance, indicative of benevolence,
openness of heart, sunny good-humor, and other praiseworthy
qualities of that cast. The sun, as you see, tells
quite another story, and will not be coaxed out of it, after
half a dozen patient attempts on my part. Here we have
the man, sly, subtle, hard, imperious, and, withal, cold as
ice. Look at that eye! Would you like to be at its mercy?
At that mouth! Could it ever smile? And yet, if you
could only see the benign smile of the original! It is so
much the more unfortunate, as he is a public character
of some eminence, and the likeness was intended to be
engraved.”
“Well, I don't wish to see it any more,” observed
Phœbe, turning away her eyes. “It is certainly very like
the old portrait. But my cousin Hepzibah has another
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picture, — a miniature. If the original is still in the world, I
think he might defy the sun to make him look stern and
hard.”
“You have seen that picture, then!” exclaimed the
artist, with an expression of much interest. “I never did,
but have a great curiosity to do so. And you judge favorably
of the face?”
“There never was a sweeter one,” said Phœbe. “It is
almost too soft and gentle for a man's.”
“Is there nothing wild in the eye?” continued Holgrave,
so earnestly that it embarrassed Phœbe, as did also the
quiet freedom with which he presumed on their so recent
acquaintance. “Is there nothing dark or sinister, anywhere?
Could you not conceive the original to have been
guilty of a great crime?”
“It is nonsense,” said Phœbe, a little impatiently, “for
us to talk about a picture which you have never seen.
You mistake it for some other. A crime, indeed! Since
you are a friend of my cousin Hepzibah's, you should ask
her to show you the picture.”
“It will suit my purpose still better to see the original,”
replied the daguerreotypist, coolly. “As to his character, we
need not discuss its points; they have already been settled
by a competent tribunal, or one which called itself competent.
But, stay! Do not go yet, if you please! I have a
proposition to make you.”
Phœbe was on the point of retreating, but turned back,
with some hesitation; for she did not exactly comprehend
his manner, although, on better observation, its feature seemed
rather to be lack of ceremony than any approach to offensive
rudeness. There was an odd kind of authority, too, in
what he now proceeded to say, rather as if the garden were
his own than a place to which he was admitted merely by
Hepzibah's courtesy.
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“If agreeable to you,” he observed, “it would give me
pleasure to turn over these flowers, and those ancient
and respectable fowls, to your care. Coming fresh from
country air and occupations, you will soon feel the need of
some such out-of-door employment. My own sphere does
not so much lie among flowers. You can trim and tend
them, therefore, as you please; and I will ask only the least
trifle of a blossom, now and then, in exchange for all the
good, honest kitchen-vegetables with which I propose to
enrich Miss Hepzibah's table. So we will be fellow-laborers,
somewhat on the community system.”
Silently, and rather surprised at her own compliance,
Phœbe accordingly betook herself to weeding a flower-bed,
but busied herself still more with cogitations respecting this
young man, with whom she so unexpectedly found herself
on terms approaching to familiarity. She did not altogether
like him. His character perplexed the little country-girl,
as it might a more practised observer; for, while the
tone of his conversation had generally been playful, the
impression left on her mind was that of gravity, and, except
as his youth modified it, almost sternness. She rebelled, as
it were, against a certain magnetic element in the artist's
nature, which he exercised towards her, possibly without
being conscious of it.
After a little while, the twilight, deepened by the shadows
of the fruit-trees, and the surrounding buildings, threw an
obscurity over the garden.
“There,” said Holgrave, “it is time to give over work!
That last stroke of the hoe has cut off a bean-stalk. Good-night,
Miss Phœbe Pyncheon! Any bright day, if you will
put one of those rose-buds in your hair, and come to my
rooms in Central-street, I will seize the purest ray of sunshine,
and make a picture of the flower and its wearer.”
He retired towards his own solitary gable, but turned his
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head, on reaching the door, and called to Phœbe, with a tone
which certainly had laughter in it, yet which seemed to be
more than half in earnest.
“Be careful not to drink at Maule's well!” said he.
“Neither drink nor bathe your face in it!”
“Maule's well!” answered Phœbe. “Is that it with the
rim of mossy stones? I have no thought of drinking
there — but why not?”
“O,” rejoined the daguerreotypist, “because, like an old
lady's cup of tea, it is water bewitched!”
He vanished; and Phœbe, lingering a moment, saw a
glimmering light, and then the steady beam of a lamp, in a
chamber of the gable. On returning into Hepzibah's department
of the house, she found the low-studded parlor so
dim and dusky that her eyes could not penetrate the interior.
She was indistinctly aware, however, that the gaunt
figure of the old gentlewoman was sitting in one of the
straight-backed chairs, a little withdrawn from the window,
the faint gleam of which showed the blanched paleness of
her cheek, turned sideway towards a corner.
“Shall I light a lamp, Cousin Hepzibah?” she asked.
“Do, if you please, my dear child,” answered Hepzibah.
“But put it on the table in the corner of the passage. My
eyes are weak; and I can seldom bear the lamp-light on
them.”
What an instrument is the human voice! How wonderfully
responsive to every emotion of the human soul! In
Hepzibah's tone, at that moment, there was a certain rich
depth and moisture, as if the words, common-place as they
were, had been steeped in the warmth of her heart. Again,
while lighting the lamp in the kitchen, Phœbe fancied that
her cousin spoke to her.
“In a moment, cousin!” answered the girl. “These
matches just glimmer, and go out.”
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But, instead of a response from Hepzibah, she seemed to
hear the murmur of an unknown voice. It was strangely
indistinct, however, and less like articulate words than an
unshaped sound, such as would be the utterance of feeling
and sympathy, rather than of the intellect. So vague was
it, that its impression or echo in Phœbe's mind was that of
unreality. She concluded that she must have mistaken
some other sound for that of the human voice; or else that
it was altogether in her fancy.
She set the lighted lamp in the passage, and again entered
the parlor. Hepzibah's form, though its sable outline
mingled with the dusk, was now less imperfectly visible.
In the remoter parts of the room, however, its walls being
so ill adapted to reflect light, there was nearly the same
obscurity as before.
“Cousin,” said Phœbe, “did you speak to me just
now?”
“No, child!” replied Hepzibah.
Fewer words than before, but with the same mysterious
music in them! Mellow, melancholy, yet not mournful, the
tone seemed to gush up out of the deep well of Hepzibah's
heart, all steeped in its profoundest emotion. There was
a tremor in it, too, that — as all strong feeling is electric —
partly communicated itself to Phœbe. The girl sat silently
for a moment. But soon, her senses being very acute, she
became conscious of an irregular respiration in an obscure
corner of the room. Her physical organization, moreover,
being at once delicate and healthy, gave her a perception,
operating with almost the effect of a spiritual medium, that
somebody was near at hand.
“My dear cousin,” asked she, overcoming an indefinable
reluctance, “is there not some one in the room with us?”
“Phœbe, my dear little girl,” said Hepzibah, after a moment's
pause, “you were up betimes, and have been busy
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all day. Pray go to bed; for I am sure you must need rest.
I will sit in the parlor a while, and collect my thoughts. It
has been my custom for more years, child, than you have
lived!”
While thus dismissing her, the maiden lady stept forward,
kissed Phœbe, and pressed her to her heart, which beat
against the girl's bosom with a strong, high, and tumultuous
swell. How came there to be so much love in this desolate
old heart, that it could afford to well over thus abundantly?
“Good-night, cousin,” said Phœbe, strangely affected by
Hepzibah's manner. “If you begin to love me, I am
glad!”
She retired to her chamber, but did not soon fall asleep,
nor then very profoundly. At some uncertain period in the
depths of night, and, as it were, through the thin veil of a
dream, she was conscious of a footstep mounting the stairs,
heavily, but not with force and decision. The voice of
Hepzibah, with a hush through it, was going up along with
the footsteps; and, again, responsive to her cousin's voice,
Phœbe heard that strange, vague murmur, which might be
likened to an indistinct shadow of human utterance.
-- -- p574-117
VII. THE GUEST.
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When Phœbe awoke, — which she did with the early
twittering of the conjugal couple of robins in the pear-tree,—
she heard movements below stairs, and, hastening down,
found Hepzibah already in the kitchen. She stood by a
window, holding a book in close contiguity to her nose,
as if with the hope of gaining an olfactory acquaintance
with its contents, since her imperfect vision made it not
very easy to read them. If any volume could have manifested
its essential wisdom in the mode suggested, it would
certainly have been the one now in Hepzibah's hand; and
the kitchen, in such an event, would forthwith have steamed
with the fragrance of venison, turkeys, capons, larded partridges,
puddings, cakes, and Christmas-pies, in all manner
of elaborate mixture and concoction. It was a cookery
book, full of innumerable old fashions of English dishes,
and illustrated with engravings, which represented the
arrangements of the table at such banquets as it might
have befitted a nobleman to give, in the great hall of his
castle. And, amid these rich and potent devides of the
culinary art (not one of which, probably, had been tested,
within the memory of any man's grandfather), poor Hepzibah
was seeking for some nimble little titbit, which, with
what skill she had, and such materials as were at hand, she
might toss up for breakfast.
Soon, with a deep sigh, she put aside the savory volume,
and inquired of Phœbe whether old Speckle, as she called
one of the hens, had laid an egg the preceding day. Phœbe
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ran to see, but returned without the expected treasure in
her hand. At that instant, however, the blast of a fish-dealer's
conch was heard, announcing his approach along
the street. With energetic raps at the shop-window, Hepzibah
summoned the man in, and made purchase of what
he warranted as the finest mackerel in his cart, and as fat
a one as ever he felt with his finger so early in the season.
Requesting Phœbe to roast some coffee, — which she casually
observed was the real Mocha, and so long kept that
each of the small berries ought to be worth its weight in
gold, — the maiden lady heaped fuel into the vast receptacle
of the ancient fireplace in such quantity as soon to drive
the lingering dusk out of the kitchen. The country-girl,
willing to give her utmost assistance, proposed to make an
Indian cake, after her mother's peculiar method, of easy
manufacture, and which she could vouch for as possessing
a richness, and, if rightly prepared, a delicacy, unequalled
by any other mode of breakfast-cake. Hepzibah gladly
assenting, the kitchen was soon the scene of savory preparation.
Perchance, amid their proper element of smoke,
which eddied forth from the ill-constructed chimney, the
ghosts of departed cook-maids looked wonderingly on, or
peeped down the great breadth of the flue, despising the
simplicity of the projected meal, yet ineffectually pining to
thrust their shadowy hands into each inchoate dish. The
half-starved rats, at any rate, stole visibly out of their
hiding-places, and sat on their hind-legs, snuffing the fumy
atmosphere, and wistfully awaiting an opportunity to nibble.
Hepzibah had no natural turn for cookery, and, to say the
truth, had fairly incurred her present meagreness, by often
choosing to go without her dinner, rather than be attendant
on the rotation of the spit, or ebullition of the pot. Her zeal
over the fire, therefore, was quite an heroic test of sentiment.
It was touching, and positively worthy of tears (if
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Phœbe, the only spectator, except the rats and ghosts aforesaid,
had not been better employed than in shedding them),
to see her rake out a bed of fresh and glowing coals, and
proceed to broil the mackerel. Her usually pale cheeks
were all a-blaze with heat and hurry. She watched the
fish with as much tender care and minuteness of attention
as if, — we know not how to express it otherwise, — as if
her own heart were on the gridiron, and her immortal happiness
were involved in its being done precisely to a turn!
Life, within doors, has few pleasanter prospects than a
neatly-arranged and well-provisioned breakfast-table. We
come to it freshly, in the dewy youth of the day, and when
our spiritual and sensual elements are in better accord than
at a later period; so that the material delights of the morning
meal are capable of being fully enjoyed, without any
very grievous reproaches, whether gastric or conscientious,
for yielding even a trifle overmuch to the animal department
of our nature. The thoughts, too, that run around
the ring of familiar guests, have a piquancy and mirthfulness,
and oftentimes a vivid truth, which more rarely find
their way into the elaborate intercourse of dinner. Hepzibah's
small and ancient table, supported on its slender and
graceful legs, and covered with a cloth of the richest
damask, looked worthy to be the scene and centre of one
of the cheerfullest of parties. The vapor of the broiled fish
arose like incense from the shrine of a barbarian idol,
while the fragrance of the Mocha might have gratified the
nostrils of a tutelary Lar, or whatever power has scope over
a modern breakfast-table. Phœbe's Indian cakes were the
sweetest offering of all, — in their hue befitting the rustic
altars of the innocent and golden age, — or, so brightly yellow
were they, resembling some of the bread which was
changed to glistening gold, when Midas tried to eat it.
The butter must not be forgotten, — butter which Phœbe
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herself had churned, in her own rural home, and brought it
to her cousin as a propitiatory gift, — smelling of clover-blossoms,
and diffusing the charm of pastoral scenery
through the dark-panelled parlor. All this, with the quaint
gorgeousness of the old China cups and saucers, and the
crested spoons, and a silver cream-jug (Hepzibah's only
other article of plate, and shaped like the rudest porringer),
set out a board at which the stateliest of old Colonel Pyncheon's
guests need not have scorned to take his place.
But the Puritan's face scowled down out of the picture, as
if nothing on the table pleased his appetite.
By way of contributing what grace she could, Phœbe
gathered some roses and a few other flowers, possessing
either scent or beauty, and arranged them in a glass pitcher,
which, having long ago lost its handle, was so much the
fitter for a flower-vase. The early sunshine — as fresh as
that which peeped into Eve's bower, while she and Adam
sat at breakfast there — came twinkling through the branches
of the pear-tree, and fell quite across the table. All was now
ready. There were chairs and plates for three. A chair
and plate for Hepzibah, — the same for Phœbe, — but what
other guest did her cousin look for?
Throughout this preparation, there had been a constant
tremor in Hepzibah's frame; an agitation so powerful that
Phœbe could see the quivering of her gaunt shadow, as
thrown by the fire-light on the kitchen wall, or by the sunshine
on the parlor floor. Its manifestations were so
various, and agreed so little with one another, that the girl
knew not what to make of it. Sometimes it seemed an
ecstasy of delight and happiness. At such moments, Hepzibah
would fling out her arms, and enfold Phœbe in them,
and kiss her cheek as tenderly as ever her mother had; she
appeared to do so by an inevitable impulse, and as if her bosom
were oppressed with tenderness, of which she must needs
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pour out a little, in order to gain breathing-room. The
next moment, without any visible cause for the change, her
unwonted joy shrank back, appalled as it were, and clothed
itself in mourning; or it ran and hid itself, so to speak, in
the dungeon of her heart, where it had long lain chained,
while a cold, spectral sorrow took the place of the imprisoned
joy, that was afraid to be enfranchised — a sorrow
as black as that was bright. She often broke into a little,
nervous, hysteric laugh, more touching than any tears could
be; and forthwith, as if to try which was the most touching,
a gust of tears would follow; or perhaps the laughter and
tears came both at once, and surrounded our poor Hepzibah,
in a moral sense, with a kind of pale, dim rainbow.
Towards Phœbe, as we have said, she was affectionate, —
far tenderer than ever before, in their brief acquaintance,
except for that one kiss on the preceding night, — yet with
a continually recurring pettishness and irritability. She
would speak sharply to her; then, throwing aside all the
starched reserve of her ordinary manner, ask pardon, and
the next instant renew the just-forgiven injury.
At last, when their mutual labor was all finished, she
took Phœbe's hand in her own trembling one.
“Bear with me, my dear child,” she cried; “for truly my
heart is full to the brim! Bear with me; for I love you,
Phœbe, though I speak so roughly! Think nothing of
it, dearest child! By-and-by, I shall be kind, and only
kind!”
“My dearest cousin, cannot you tell me what has happened?”
asked Phœbe, with a sunny and tearful sympathy.
“What is it that moves you so?”
“Hush! hush! He is coming!” whispered Hepzibah,
hastily wiping her eyes. “Let him see you first, Phœbe;
for you are young and rosy, and cannot help letting a smile
break out, whether or no. He always liked bright faces!
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And mine is old, now, and the tears are hardly dry on it.
He never could abide tears. There; draw the curtain a
little, so that the shadow may fall across his side of the
table! But let there be a good deal of sunshine, too; for
he never was fond of gloom, as some people are. He has
had but little sunshine in his life, — poor Clifford, — and,
oh, what a black shadow! Poor, poor Clifford!”
Thus murmuring, in an under tone, as if speaking rather
to her own heart than to Phœbe, the old gentlewoman
stepped on tiptoe about the room, making such arrangements
as suggested themselves at the crisis.
Meanwhile, there was a step in the passage-way, above
stairs. Phœbe recognized it as the same which had passed
upward, as through her dream, in the night-time. The approaching
guest, whoever it might be, appeared to pause at
the head of the staircase; he paused twice or thrice in the
descent; he paused again at the foot. Each time, the
delay seemed to be without purpose, but rather from a forgetfulness
of the purpose which had set him in motion, or
as if the person's feet came involuntarily to a stand-still,
because the motive power was too feeble to sustain his progress.
Finally, he made a long pause at the threshold of
the parlor. He took hold of the knob of the door; then
loosened his grasp, without opening it. Hepzibah, her
hands convulsively clasped, stood gazing at the entrance.
“Dear Cousin Hepzibah, pray don't look so!” said
Phœbe, trembling; for her cousin's emotion, and this mysteriously
reluctant stop, made her feel as if a ghost were
coming into the room. “You really frighten me! Is
something awful going to happen?”
“Hush!” whispered Hepzibah. “Be cheerful! whatever
may happen, be nothing but cheerful!”
The final pause at the threshold proved so long, that
Hepzibah, unable to endure the suspense, rushed forward,
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threw open the door, and led in the stranger by the hand.
At the first glance, Phœbe saw an elderly personage, in an
old-fashioned dressing-gown of faded damask, and wearing
his gray, or almost white hair, of an unusual length. It
quite overshadowed his forehead, except when he thrust it
back, and stared vaguely about the room. After a very
brief inspection of his face, it was easy to conceive that his
footstep must necessarily be such an one as that which,
slowly, and with as indefinite an aim as a child's first
journey across a floor, had just brought him hitherward.
Yet there were no tokens that his physical strength might
not have sufficed for a free and determined gait. It was
the spirit of the man that could not walk. The expression
of his countenance — while, notwithstanding, it had the
light of reason in it — seemed to waver, and glimmer, and
nearly to die away, and feebly to recover itself again. It
was like a flame which we see twinkling among half-extinguished
embers; we gaze at it more intently than if it were
a positive blaze, gushing vividly upward, — more intently,
but with a certain impatience, as if it ought either to kindle
itself into satisfactory splendor, or be at once extinguished.
For an instant after entering the room, the guest stood
still, retaining Hepzibah's hand, instinctively, as a child
does that of the grown person who guides it. He saw
Phœbe, however, and caught an illumination from her
youthful and pleasant aspect, which, indeed, threw a cheerfulness
about the parlor, like the circle of reflected brilliancy
around the glass vase of flowers that was standing in the
sunshine. He made a salutation, or, to speak nearer the
truth, an ill-defined, abortive attempt at courtesy. Imperfect
as it was, however, it conveyed an idea, or, at least, gave a
hint, of indescribable grace, such as no practised art of
external manners could have attained. It was too slight to
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seize upon, at the instant; yet, as recollected afterwards,
seemed to transfigure the whole man.
“Dear Clifford,” said Hepzibah, in the tone with which
one soothes a wayward infant, “this is our cousin Phœbe,—
little Phœbe Pyncheon, — Arthur's only child, you
know. She has come from the country to stay with us a
while; for our old house has grown to be very lonely now.”
“Phœbe? — Phœbe Pyncheon? — Phœbe?” repeated the
guest, with a strange, sluggish, ill-defined utterance. “Arthur's
child! Ah, I forget! No matter! She is very
welcome!”
“Come, dear Clifford, take this chair,” said Hepzibah,
leading him to his place. “Pray, Phœbe, lower the curtain
a very little more. Now let us begin breakfast.”
The guest seated himself in the place assigned him,
and looked strangely around. He was evidently trying to
grapple with the present scene, and bring it home to his
mind with a more satisfactory distinctness. He desired to
be certain, at least, that he was here, in the low-studded,
cross-beamed, oaken-panelled parlor, and not in some other
spot, which had stereotyped itself into his senses. But the
effort was too great to be sustained with more than a fragmentary
success. Continually, as we may express it, he
faded away out of his place; or, in other words, his mind
and consciousness took their departure, leaving his wasted,
gray, and melancholy figure, — a substantial emptiness, a
material ghost, — to occupy his seat at table. Again, after
a blank moment, there would be a flickering taper-gleam in
his eye-balls. It betokened that his spiritual part had
returned, and was doing its best to kindle the heart's household
fire, and light up intellectual lamps in the dark and
ruinous mansion, where it was doomed to be a forlorn
inhabitant.
At one of these moments, of less torpid, yet still
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imperfect animation, Phœbe became convinced of what she had at
first rejected as too extravagant and startling an idea. She
saw that the person before her must have been the original
of the beautiful miniature in her cousin Hepzibah's possession.
Indeed, with a feminine eye for costume, she had at
once identified the damask dressing-gown, which enveloped
him, as the same in figure, material, and fashion, with that
so elaborately represented in the picture. This old, faded
garment, with all its pristine brilliancy extinct, seemed, in
some indescribable way, to translate the wearer's untold
misfortune, and make it perceptible to the beholder's eye.
It was the better to be discerned, by this exterior type, how
worn and old were the soul's more immediate garments;
that form and countenance, the beauty and grace of which
had almost transcended the skill of the most exquisite of
artists. It could the more adequately be known that the
soul of the man must have suffered some miserable wrong,
from its earthly experience. There he seemed to sit, with
a dim veil of decay and ruin betwixt him and the world,
but through which, at flitting intervals, might be caught
the same expression, so refined, so softly imaginative, which
Malbone — venturing a happy touch, with suspended breath—
had imparted to the miniature! There had been something
so innately characteristic in this look, that all the
dusky years, and the burthen of unfit calamity which had
fallen upon him, did not suffice utterly to destroy it.
Hepzibah had now poured out a cup of deliciously fragrant
coffee, and presented it to her guest. As his eyes met
hers, he seemed bewildered and disquieted.
“Is this you, Hepzibah?” he murmured, sadly; then,
more apart, and perhaps unconscious that he was overheard,
“How changed! how changed! And is she angry with
me? Why does she bend her brow so?”
Poor Hepzibah! It was that wretched scowl, which time,
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and her near-sightedness, and the fret of inward discomfort,
had rendered so habitual that any vehemence of mood invariably
evoked it. But, at the indistinct manner of his
words, her whole face grew tender, and even lovely, with
sorrowful affection; — the harshness of her features disappeared,
as it were, behind the warm and misty glow.
“Angry!” she repeated; “angry with you, Clifford!”
Her tone, as she uttered the exclamation, had a plaintive
and really exquisite melody thrilling through it, yet without
subduing a certain something which an obtuse auditor
might still have mistaken for asperity. It was as if some
transcendent musician should draw a soul-thrilling sweetness
out of a cracked instrument, which makes its physical
imperfection heard in the midst of ethereal harmony, — so
deep was the sensibility that found an organ in Hepzibah's
voice!
“There is nothing but love, here, Clifford,” she added, —
“nothing but love! You are at home!”
The guest responded to her tone by a smile, which did
not half light up his face. Feeble as it was, however, and
gone in a moment, it had a charm of wonderful beauty. It
was followed by a coarser expression; or one that had the
effect of coarseness on the fine mould and outline of his
countenance, because there was nothing intellectual to temper
it. It was a look of appetite. He ate food with what
might almost be termed voracity; and seemed to forget himself,
Hepzibah, the young girl, and everything else around
him, in the sensual enjoyment which the bountifully spread
table afforded. In his natural system, though high-wrought
and delicately refined, a sensibility to the delights of the palate
was probably inherent. It would have been kept in
check, however, and even converted into an accomplishment,
and one of the thousand modes of intellectual culture, had
his more ethereal characteristics retained their vigor. But,
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as it existed now, the effect was painful, and made Phœbe
droop her eyes.
In a little while the guest became sensible of the fragrance
of the yet untasted coffee. He quaffed it eagerly.
The subtle essence acted on him like a charmed draught,
and caused the opaque substance of his animal being to
grow transparent, or, at least, translucent; so that a spiritual
gleam was transmitted through it, with a clearer lustre than
hitherto.
“More, more!” he cried, with nervous haste in his utterance,
as if anxious to retain his grasp of what sought to
escape him. “This is what I need! Give me more!”
Under this delicate and powerful influence, he sat more
erect, and looked out from his eyes with a glance that took
note of what it rested on. It was not so much that his
expression grew more intellectual; this, though it had its
share, was not the most peculiar effect. Neither was what
we call the moral nature so forcibly awakened as to present
itself in remarkable prominence. But a certain fine temper
of being was now, — not brought out in full relief, but
changeably and imperfectly betrayed, — of which it was the
function to deal with all beautiful and enjoyable things. In
a character where it should exist as the chief attribute, it
would bestow on its possessor an exquisite taste, and an
enviable susceptibility of happiness. Beauty would be his
life; his aspirations would all tend toward it; and, allowing
his frame and physical organs to be in consonance, his own
developments would likewise be beautiful. Such a man
should have nothing to do with sorrow; nothing with strife;
nothing with the martyrdom which, in an infinite variety
of shapes, awaits those who have the heart, and will, and
conscience, to fight a battle with the world. To these heroic
tempers, such martyrdom is the richest meed in the
world's gift. To the individual before us, it could only be
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a grief, intense in due proportion with the severity of the
infliction. He had no right to be a martyr; and, beholding
him so fit to be happy, and so feeble for all other purposes,
a generous, strong, and noble spirit would, methinks, have
been ready to sacrifice what little enjoyment it might have
planned for itself, — it would have flung down the hopes, so
paltry in its regard, — if thereby the wintry blasts of our
rude sphere might come tempered to such a man.
Not to speak it harshly or scornfully, it seemed Clifford's
nature to be a Sybarite. It was perceptible, even there, in
the dark old parlor, in the inevitable polarity with which his
eyes were attracted towards the quivering play of sunbeams
through the shadowy foliage. It was seen in his appreciating
notice of the vase of flowers, the scent of which he inhaled
with a zest almost peculiar to a physical organization
so refined that spiritual ingredients are moulded in with it.
It was betrayed in the unconscious smile with which he
regarded Phœbe, whose fresh and maidenly figure was both
sunshine and flowers, — their essence, in a prettier and more
agreeable mode of manifestation. Not less evident was this
love and necessity for the Beautiful, in the instinctive caution
with which, even so soon, his eyes turned away from
his hostess, and wandered to any quarter rather than come
back. It was Hepzibah's misfortune, — not Clifford's fault.
How could he, — so yellow as she was, so wrinkled, so sad
of mien, with that odd uncouthness of a turban on her head,
and that most perverse of scowls contorting her brow, —
how could he love to gaze at her? But, did he owe her no
affection for so much as she had silently given? He owed
her nothing. A nature like Clifford's can contract no debts
of that kind. It is, — we say it without censure, nor in
diminution of the claim which it indefeasibly possesses on
beings of another mould, — it is always selfish in its essence;
and we must give it leave to be so, and heap up
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our heroic and disinterested love upon it so much the more,
without a recompense. Poor Hepzibah knew this truth, or,
at least, acted on the instinct of it. So long estranged
from what was lovely, as Clifford had been, she rejoiced, —
rejoiced, though with a present sigh, and a secret purpose to
shed tears in her own chamber, — that he had brighter
objects now before his eyes than her aged and uncomely
features. They never possessed a charm; and if they had,
the canker of her grief for him would long since have
destroyed it.
The guest leaned back in his chair. Mingled in his
countenance with a dreamy delight, there was a troubled
look of effort and unrest. He was seeking to make himself
more fully sensible of the scene around him; or, perhaps,
dreading it to be a dream, or a play of imagination, was
vexing the fair moment with a struggle for some added
brilliancy and more durable illusion.
“How pleasant! — How delightful!” he murmured, but
not as if addressing any one. “Will it last? How balmy
the atmosphere, through that open window! An open
window! How beautiful that play of sunshine! Those
flowers, how very fragrant! That young girl's face, how
cheerful, how blooming! — a flower with the dew on it, and
sunbeams in the dew-drops! Ah! this must be all a
dream! A dream! A dream! But it has quite hidden
the four stone walls!”
Then his face darkened, as if the shadow of a cavern or
a dungeon had come over it; there was no more light in
its expression than might have come through the iron grates
of a prison window, — still lessening, too, as if he were
sinking further into the depths. Phœbe (being of that
quickness and activity of temperament that she seldom long
refrained from taking a part, and generally a good one, in
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what was going forward) now felt herself moved to address
the stranger.
“Here is a new kind of rose, which I found this morning,
in the garden,” said she, choosing a small crimson one from
among the flowers in the vase. “There will be but five or
six on the bush, this season. This is the most perfect of
them all; not a speck of blight or mildew in it. And
how sweet it is! — sweet like no other rose! One can
never forget that scent!”
“Ah! — let me see! — let me hold it!” cried the guest,
eagerly seizing the flower, which, by the spell peculiar to
remembered odors, brought innumerable associations along
with the fragrance that it exhaled. “Thank you! This has
done me good. I remember how I used to prize this flower—
long ago, I suppose, very long ago! — or was it only
yesterday? It makes me feel young again! Am I young?
Either this remembrance is singularly distinct, or this consciousness
strangely dim! But how kind of the fair young
girl! Thank you! Thank you!”
The favorable excitement derived from this little crimson
rose afforded Clifford the brightest moment which he enjoyed
at the breakfast-table. It might have lasted longer,
but that his eyes happened, soon afterwards, to rest on
the face of the old Puritan, who, out of his dingy frame
and lustreless canvas, was looking down on the scene like
a ghost, and a most ill-tempered and ungenial one. The
guest made an impatient gesture of the hand, and addressed
Hepzibah with what might easily be recognized as the
licensed irritability of a petted member of the family.
“Hepzibah! — Hepzibah!” cried he, with no little force
and distinctness, — “why do you keep that odious picture
on the wall? Yes, yes! — that is precisely your taste! I
have told you, a thousand times, that it was the evil genius
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of the house! — my evil genius particularly! Take it
down, at once!”
“Dear Clifford,” said Hepzibah, sadly, “you know it
cannot be!”
“Then, at all events,” continued he, still speaking with
some energy, “pray cover it with a crimson curtain, broad
enough to hang in folds, and with a golden border and tassels.
I cannot bear it! It must not stare me in the face!”
“Yes, dear Clifford, the picture shall be covered,” said
Hepzibah, soothingly. “There is a crimson curtain in a
trunk above stairs, — a little faded and moth-eaten, I 'm
afraid, — but Phœbe and I will do wonders with it.”
“This very day, remember!” said he; and then added,
in a low, self-communing voice, — “Why should we live in
this dismal house at all? Why not go to the south of
France? — to Italy? — Paris, Naples, Venice, Rome? Hepzibah
will say, we have not the means. A droll idea,
that!”
He smiled to himself, and threw a glance of fine sarcastic
meaning towards Hepzibah.
But the several moods of feeling, faintly as they were
marked, through which he had passed, occurring in so brief
an interval of time, had evidently wearied the stranger.
He was probably accustomed to a sad monotony of life,
not so much flowing in a stream, however sluggish, as stagnating
in a pool around his feet. A slumberous veil diffused
itself over his countenance, and had an effect, morally
speaking, on its naturally delicate and elegant outline, like
that which a brooding mist, with no sunshine in it, throws
over the features of a landscape. He appeared to become
grosser, — almost cloddish. If aught of interest or beauty—
even ruined beauty — had heretofore been visible in
this man, the beholder might now begin to doubt it, and to
accuse his own imagination of deluding him with
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whatever grace had flickered over that visage, and whatever
exquisite lustre had gleamed in those filmy eyes.
Before he had quite sunken away, however, the sharp
and peevish tinkle of the shop-bell made itself audible.
Striking most disagreeably on Clifford's auditory organs and
the characteristic sensibility of his nerves, it caused him to
start upright out of his chair.
“Good Heavens, Hepzibah! what horrible disturbance
have we now in the house?” cried he, wreaking his resentful
impatience — as a matter of course, and a custom of old—
on the one person in the world that loved him. “I have
never heard such a hateful clamor! Why do you permit it?
In the name of all dissonance, what can it be?”
It was very remarkable into what prominent relief — even
as if a dim picture should leap suddenly from its canvas —
Clifford's character was thrown, by this apparently trifling
annoyance. The secret was, that an individual of his
temper can always be pricked more acutely through his sense
of the beautiful and harmonious than through his heart.
It is even possible — for similar cases have often happened—
that if Clifford, in his foregoing life, had enjoyed the
means of cultivating his taste to its utmost perfectibility,
that subtle attribute might, before this period, have completely
eaten out or filed away his affections. Shall we
venture to pronounce, therefore, that his long and black
calamity may not have had a redeeming drop of mercy at
the bottom?
“Dear Clifford, I wish I could keep the sound from your
ears,” said Hepzibah, patiently, but reddening with a painful
suffusion of shame. “It is very disagreeable even to me.
But, do you know, Clifford, I have something to tell you?
This ugly noise, — pray run, Phœbe, and see who is there!—
this naughty little tinkle is nothing but our shop-bell!”
“Shop-bell!” repeated Clifford, with a bewildered stare.
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“Yes, our shop-bell,” said Hepzibah, a certain natural
dignity, mingled with deep emotion, now asserting itself in
her manner. “For you must know, dearest Clifford, that
we are very poor. And there was no other resource, but
either to accept assistance from a hand that I would push
aside (and so would you!) were it to offer bread when we
were dying for it, — no help, save from him, or else to earn
our subsistence with my own hands! Alone, I might have
been content to starve. But you were to be given back to
me! Do you think, then, dear Clifford,” added she, with a
wretched smile, “that I have brought an irretrievable disgrace
on the old house, by opening a little shop in the front
gable? Our great-great-grandfather did the same, when
there was far less need! Are you ashamed of me?”
“Shame! Disgrace! Do you speak these words to me,
Hepzibah?” said Clifford, — not angrily, however; for when
a man's spirit has been thoroughly crushed, he may be
peevish at small offences, but never resentful of great ones.
So he spoke with only a grieved emotion. “It was not
kind to say so, Hepzibah! What shame can befall me,
now?”
And then the unnerved man — he that had been born for
enjoyment, but had met a doom so very wretched — burst
into a woman's passion of tears. It was but of brief continuance,
however; soon leaving him in a quiescent, and,
to judge by his countenance, not an uncomfortable state.
From this mood, too, he partially rallied, for an instant, and
looked at Hepzibah with a smile, the keen, half-derisory
purport of which was a puzzle to her.
“Are we so very poor, Hepzibah?” said he.
Finally, his chair being deep and softly cushioned, Clifford
fell asleep. Hearing the more regular rise and fall of
his breath — (which, however, even then, instead of being
strong and full, had a feeble kind of tremor, corresponding
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with the lack of vigor in his character) — hearing these
tokens of settled slumber, Hepzibah seized the opportunity
to peruse his face more attentively than she had yet dared
to do. Her heart melted away in tears; her profoundest
spirit sent forth a moaning voice, low, gentle, but inexpressibly
sad. In this depth of grief and pity, she felt that
there was no irreverence in gazing at his altered, aged,
faded, ruined face. But no sooner was she a little relieved
than her conscience smote her for gazing curiously at him,
now that he was so changed; and, turning hastily away,
Hepzibah let down the curtain over the sunny window, and
left Clifford to slumber there.
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VIII. THE PYNCHEON OF TO-DAY.
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Phœbe, on entering the shop, beheld there the already
familiar face of the little devourer — if we can reckon his
mighty deeds aright — of Jim Crow, the elephant, the
camel, the dromedaries, and the locomotive. Having expended
his private fortune, on the two preceding days, in
the purchase of the above unheard-of luxuries, the young
gentleman's present errand was on the part of his mother,
in quest of three eggs and half a pound of raisins. These
articles Phœbe accordingly supplied, and, as a mark of
gratitude for his previous patronage, and a slight superadded
morsel after breakfast, put likewise into his hand a
whale! The great fish, reversing his experience with the
prophet of Nineveh, immediately began his progress down
the same red pathway of fate whither so varied a caravan
had preceded him. This remarkable urchin, in truth, was
the very emblem of old Father Time, both in respect of his
all-devouring appetite for men and things, and because he,
as well as Time, after engulfing thus much of creation,
looked almost as youthful as if he had been just that moment
made.
After partly closing the door, the child turned back, and
mumbled something to Phœbe, which, as the whale was but
half disposed of, she could not perfectly understand.
“What did you say, my little fellow?” asked she.
“Mother wants to know,” repeated Ned Higgins, more
distinctly, “how Old Maid Pyncheon's brother does?
Folks say he has got home.”
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“My cousin Hepzibah's brother!” exclaimed Phœbe,
surprised at this sudden explanation of the relationship
between Hepzibah and her guest. “Her brother! And
where can he have been?”
The little boy only put his thumb to his broad snub-nose,
with that look of shrewdness which a child, spending much
of his time in the street, so soon learns to throw over his
features, however unintelligent in themselves. Then, as
Phœbe continued to gaze at him, without answering his
mother's message, he took his departure.
As the child went down the steps, a gentleman ascended
them, and made his entrance into the shop. It was the
portly, and, had it possessed the advantage of a little more
height, would have been the stately figure of a man considerably
in the decline of life, dressed in a black suit of
some thin stuff, resembling broadcloth as closely as possible.
A gold-headed cane, of rare oriental wood, added materially
to the high respectability of his aspect, as did also a white
neckcloth of the utmost snowy purity, and the conscientious
polish of his boots. His dark, square countenance, with its
almost shaggy depth of eyebrows, was naturally impressive,
and would, perhaps, have been rather stern, had not
the gentleman considerately taken upon himself to mitigate
the harsh effect by a look of exceeding good-humor and
benevolence. Owing, however, to a somewhat massive
accumulation of animal substance about the lower region of
his face, the look was, perhaps, unctuous, rather than
spiritual, and had, so to speak, a kind of fleshly effulgence,
not altogether so satisfactory as he doubtless intended it to
be. A susceptible observer, at any rate, might have
regarded it as affording very little evidence of the genuine
benignity of soul whereof it purported to be the outward
reflection. And if the observer chanced to be ill-natured,
as well as acute and susceptible, he would probably suspect
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that the smile on the gentleman's face was a good deal akin
to the shine on his boots, and that each must have cost him
and his boot-black, respectively, a good deal of hard labor to
bring out and preserve them.
As the stranger entered the little shop, where the projection
of the second story and the thick foliage of the elm-tree,
as well as the commodities at the window, created a
sort of gray medium, his smile grew as intense as if he had
set his heart on counteracting the whole gloom of the atmosphere
(besides any moral gloom pertaining to Hepzibah and
her inmates) by the unassisted light of his countenance.
On perceiving a young rose-bud of a girl, instead of the
gaunt presence of the old maid, a look of surprise was
manifest. He at first knit his brows; then smiled with
more unctuous benignity than ever.
“Ah, I see how it is!” said he, in a deep voice, — a
voice which, had it come from the throat of an uncultivated
man, would have been gruff, but, by dint of careful training,
was now sufficiently agreeable, — “I was not aware
that Miss Hepzibah Pyncheon had commenced business
under such favorable auspices. You are her assistant, I
suppose?”
“I certainly am,” answered Phœbe, and added, with a
little air of ladylike assumption (for, civil as the gentleman
was, he evidently took her to be a young person serving for
wages), “I am a cousin of Miss Hepzibah, on a visit to
her.”
“Her cousin? — and from the country? Pray pardon
me, then,” said the gentleman, bowing and smiling, as
Phœbe never had been bowed to nor smiled on before; “in
that case, we must be better acquainted; for, unless I am
sadly mistaken, you are my own little kinswoman likewise!
Let me see, — Mary? — Dolly? — Phœbe? — yes, Phœbe
is the name! Is it possible that you are Phœbe Pyncheon,
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only child of my dear cousin and classmate, Arthur? Ah,
I see your father now, about your mouth! Yes, yes! we
must be better acquainted! I am your kinsman, my dear.
Surely you must have heard of Judge Pyncheon?”
As Phœbe courtesied in reply, the judge bent forward,
with the pardonable and even praiseworthy purpose — considering
the nearness of blood, and the difference of age —
of bestowing on his young relative a kiss of acknowledged
kindred and natural affection. Unfortunately (without
design, or only with such instinctive design as gives no
account of itself to the intellect), Phœbe, just at the critical
moment, drew back; so that her highly respectable kinsman,
with his body bent over the counter, and his lips protruded,
was betrayed into the rather absurd predicament of
kissing the empty air. It was a modern parallel to the case
of Ixion embracing a cloud, and was so much the more
ridiculous, as the judge prided himself on eschewing all
airy matter, and never mistaking a shadow for a substance.
The truth was, — and it is Phœbe's only excuse, — that,
although Judge Pyncheon's glowing benignity might not be
absolutely unpleasant to the feminine beholder, with the
width of a street, or even an ordinary-sized room, interposed
between, yet it became quite too intense, when this dark,
full-fed physiognomy (so roughly bearded, too, that no razor
could ever make it smooth) sought to bring itself into actual
contact with the object of its regards. The man, the sex,
somehow or other, was entirely too prominent in the judge's
demonstrations of that sort. Phœbe's eyes sank, and, without
knowing why, she felt herself blushing deeply under
his look. Yet she had been kissed before, and without any
particular squeamishness, by perhaps half a dozen different
cousins, younger, as well as older, than this dark-browed,
grisly-bearded, white-neckclothed, and unctuously-benevolent
judge! Then, why not by him?
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On raising her eyes, Phœbe was startled by the change
in Judge Pyncheon's face. It was quite as striking, allowing
for the difference of scale, as that betwixt a landscape
under a broad sunshine and just before a thunder-storm;
not that it had the passionate intensity of the latter aspect,
but was cold, hard, immitigable, like a day-long brooding
cloud.
“Dear me! what is to be done now?” thought the country-girl
to herself. “He looks as if there were nothing softer
in him than a rock, nor milder than the east wind! I
meant no harm! Since he is really my cousin, I would
have let him kiss me, if I could!”
Then, all at once, it struck Phœbe that this very Judge
Pyncheon was the original of the miniature which the
daguerreotypist had shown her in the garden, and that the
hard, stern, relentless look, now on his face, was the same
that the sun had so inflexibly persisted in bringing out.
Was it, therefore, no momentary mood, but, however skilfully
concealed, the settled temper of his life? And not
merely so, but was it hereditary in him, and transmitted
down, as a precious heirloom, from that bearded ancestor, in
whose picture both the expression, and, to a singular degree,
the features, of the modern judge were shown as by a kind
of prophecy. A deeper philosopher than Phœbe might
have found something very terrible in this idea. It implied
that the weaknesses and defects, the bad passions, the mean
tendencies, and the moral diseases, which lead to crime, are
handed down from one generation to another, by a far surer
process of transmission than human law has been able to
establish, in respect to the riches and honors which it seeks
to entail upon posterity.
But, as it happened, scarcely had Phœbe's eyes rested
again on the judge's countenance, than all its ugly sternness
vanished; and she found herself quite overpowered by
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the sultry, dog-day heat, as it were, of benevolence, which
this excellent man diffused out of his great heart into the
surrounding atmosphere; — very much like a serpent,
which, as a preliminary to fascination, is said to fill the air
with his peculiar odor.
“I like that, Cousin Phœbe!” cried he, with an emphatic
nod of approbation. “I like it much, my little cousin!
You are a good child, and know how to take care of yourself.
A young girl — especially if she be a very pretty
one — can never be too chary of her lips.”
“Indeed, sir,” said Phœbe, trying to laugh the matter off,
“I did not mean to be unkind.”
Nevertheless, whether or no it were entirely owing to the
inauspicious commencement of their acquaintance, she still
acted under a certain reserve, which was by no means customary
to her frank and genial nature. The fantasy would
not quit her, that the original Puritan, of whom she had
heard so many sombre traditions, — the progenitor of the
whole race of New England Pyncheons, the founder of the
House of the Seven Gables, and who had died so strangely
in it, — had now stept into the shop. In these days of offhand
equipment, the matter was easily enough arranged.
On his arrival from the other world, he had merely found
it necessary to spend a quarter of an hour at a barber's,
who had trimmed down the Puritan's full beard into a pair
of grizzled whiskers; then, patronizing a ready-made clothing
establishment, he had exchanged his velvet doublet and
sable cloak, with the richly-worked band under his chin, for
a white collar and cravat, coat, vest, and pantaloons; and
lastly, putting aside his steel-hilted broadsword to take up a
gold-headed cane, the Colonel Pyncheon, of two centuries
ago, steps forward as the judge, of the passing moment!
Of course, Phœbe was far too sensible a girl to entertain
this idea in any other way than as matter for a smile.
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Possibly, also, could the two personages have stood together
before her eye, many points of difference would have been
perceptible, and perhaps only a general resemblance. The
long lapse of intervening years, in a climate so unlike that
which had fostered the ancestral Englishman, must inevitably
have wrought important changes in the physical system
of his descendant. The judge's volume of muscle could
hardly be the same as the colonel's; there was undoubtedly
less beef in him. Though looked upon as a weighty
man, among his contemporaries, in respect of animal substance,
and as favored with a remarkable degree of fundamental
development, well adapting him for the judicial
bench, we conceive that the modern Judge Pyncheon, if
weighed in the same balance with his ancestor, would have
required at least an old-fashioned fifty-six to keep the scale
in equilibrio. Then the judge's face had lost the ruddy
English hue, that showed its warmth through all the duskiness
of the colonel's weather-beaten cheek, and had taken
a sallow shade, the established complexion of his country-men.
If we mistake not, moreover, a certain quality of
nervousness had become more or less manifest, even in so
solid a specimen of Puritan descent as the gentleman now
under discussion. As one of its effects, it bestowed on his
countenance a quicker mobility than the old Englishman's
had possessed, and keener vivacity, but at the expense of
a sturdier something, on which these acute endowments
seemed to act like dissolving acids. This process, for aught
we know, may belong to the great system of human progress,
which, with every ascending footstep, as it diminishes
the necessity for animal force, may be destined gradually to
spiritualize us, by refining away our grosser attributes of
body. If so, Judge Pyncheon could endure a century or two
more of such refinement, as well as most other men.
The similarity, intellectual and moral, between the judge
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and his ancestor, appears to have been at least as strong as
the resemblance of mien and feature would afford reason to
anticipate. In old Colonel Pyncheon's funeral discourse,
the clergyman absolutely canonized his deceased parishioner,
and opening, as it were, a vista through the roof of the
church, and thence through the firmament above, showed him
seated, harp in hand, among the crowned choristers of the
spiritual world. On his tombstone, too, the record is highly
eulogistic; nor does history, so far as he holds a place upon
its page, assail the consistency and uprightness of his character.
So also, as regards the Judge Pyncheon of to-day,
neither clergyman, nor legal critic, nor inscriber of tombstones,
nor historian of general or local politics, would venture
a word against this eminent person's sincerity as a
Christian, or respectability as a man, or integrity as a judge,
or courage and faithfulness as the often-tried representative
of his political party. But, besides these cold, formal, and
empty words of the chisel that inscribes, the voice that
speaks, and the pen that writes, for the public eye and for
distant time, — and which inevitably lose much of their
truth and freedom by the fatal consciousness of so doing, —
there were traditions about the ancestor, and private diurnal
gossip about the judge, remarkably accordant in their testimony.
It is often instructive to take the woman's, the private
and domestic view of a public man; nor can anything
be more curious than the vast discrepancy between portraits
intended for engraving, and the pencil-sketches that pass
from hand to hand, behind the original's back.
For example, tradition affirmed that the Puritan had been
greedy of wealth; the judge, too, with all the show of liberal
expenditure, was said to be as close-fisted as if his
gripe were of iron. The ancestor had clothed himself in a
grim assumption of kindliness, a rough heartiness of word
and manner, which most people took to be the genuine
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warmth of nature, making its way through the thick and
inflexible hide of a manly character. His descendant, in
compliance with the requirements of a nicer age, had etherealized
this rude benevolence into that broad benignity of
smile, wherewith he shone like a noon-day sun along the
streets, or glowed like a household fire in the drawing-rooms
of his private acquaintance. The Puritan — if not
belied by some singular stories, murmured, even at this day,
under the narrator's breath — had fallen into certain transgressions
to which men of his great animal development,
whatever their faith or principles, must continue liable, until
they put off impurity, along with the gross earthly substance
that involves it. We must not stain our page with any contemporary
scandal, to a similar purport, that may have been
whispered against the judge. The Puritan, again, an autocrat
in his own household, had worn out three wives, and,
merely by the remorseless weight and hardness of his
character in the conjugal relation, had sent them, one after
another, broken-hearted, to their graves. Here, the parallel,
in some sort, fails. The judge had wedded but a single
wife, and lost her in the third or fourth year of their marriage.
There was a fable, however, — for such we choose
to consider it, though, not impossibly, typical of Judge
Pyncheon's marital deportment, — that the lady got her
death-blow in the honey-moon, and never smiled again,
because her husband compelled her to serve him with coffee,
every morning, at his bedside, in token of fealty to her
liege-lord and master.
But it is too fruitful a subject, this of hereditary resemblances, —
the frequent recurrence of which, in a direct line,
is truly unaccountable, when we consider how large an
accumulation of ancestry lies behind every man, at the distance
of one or two centuries. We shall only add, therefore,
that the Puritan — so, at least, says chimney-corner
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tradition, which often preserves traits of character with marvellous
fidelity — was bold, imperious, relentless, crafty;
laying his purposes deep, and following them out with an
inveteracy of pursuit that knew neither rest nor conscience;
trampling on the weak, and, when essential to his ends, doing
his utmost to beat down the strong. Whether the judge in
any degree resembled him, the further progress of our narrative
may show.
Scarcely any of the items in the above-drawn parallel
occurred to Phœbe, whose country birth and residence, in
truth, had left her pitifully ignorant of most of the family
traditions, which lingered, like cobwebs and incrustations of
smoke, about the rooms and chimney-corners of the House
of the Seven Gables. Yet there was a circumstance, very
trifling in itself, which impressed her with an odd degree of
horror. She had heard of the anathema flung by Maule,
the executed wizard, against Colonel Pyncheon and his posterity, —
that God would give them blood to drink, — and
likewise of the popular notion, that this miraculous blood
might now and then be heard gurgling in their throats.
The latter scandal — as became a person of sense, and, more
especially, a member of the Pyncheon family — Phœbe had
set down for the absurdity which it unquestionably was.
But ancient superstitions, after being steeped in human
hearts, and embodied in human breath, and passing from lip
to ear, in manifold repetition, through a series of generations,
become imbued with an effect of homely truth. The smoke
of the domestic hearth has scented them, through and
through. By long transmission among household facts,
they grow to look like them, and have such a familiar way
of making themselves at home, that their influence is usually
greater than we suspect. Thus it happened, that when
Phœbe heard a certain noise in Judge Pyncheon's throat, —
rather habitual with him, not altogether voluntary, yet
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indicative of nothing, unless it were a slight bronchial complaint,
or, as some people hinted, an apoplectic symptom, —
when the girl heard this queer and awkward ingurgitation
(which the writer never did hear, and therefore cannot describe),
she, very foolishly, started, and clasped her hands.
Of course, it was exceedingly ridiculous in Phœbe to be
discomposed by such a trifle, and still more unpardonable
to show her discomposure to the individual most concerned
in it. But the incident chimed in so oddly with her previous
fancies about the colonel and the judge, that, for the
moment, it seemed quite to mingle their identity.
“What is the matter with you, young woman?” said
Judge Pyncheon, giving her one of his harsh looks. “Are
you afraid of anything?”
“O, nothing, sir, — nothing in the world!” answered
Phœbe, with a little laugh of vexation at herself. “But perhaps
you wish to speak with my cousin Hepzibah. Shall I
call her?”
“Stay a moment, if you please,” said the judge, again
beaming sunshine out of his face. “You seem to be a little
nervous, this morning. The town air, Cousin Phœbe, does
not agree with your good, wholesome country habits. Or,
has anything happened to disturb you? — anything remarkable
in Cousin Hepzibah's family? — An arrival, eh? I
thought so! No wonder you are out of sorts, my little
cousin. To be an inmate with such a guest may well startle
an innocent young girl!”
“You quite puzzle me, sir,” replied Phœbe, gazing inquiringly
at the judge. “There is no frightful guest in the
house, but only a poor, gentle, child-like man, whom I believe
to be Cousin Hepzibah's brother. I am afraid (but
you, sir, will know better than I) that he is not quite in his
sound senses; but so mild and quiet he seems to be, that a
mother might trust her baby with him; and I think he
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would play with the baby, as if he were only a few years
older than itself. He startle me! — O, no indeed!”
“I rejoice to hear so favorable and so ingenuous an account
of my cousin Clifford,” said the benevolent judge.
“Many years ago, when we were boys and young men together,
I had a great affection for him, and still feel a tender
interest in all his concerns. You say, Cousin Phœbe, he
appears to be weak-minded. Heaven grant him at least
enough of intellect to repent of his past sins!”
“Nobody, I fancy,” observed Phœbe, “can have fewer to
repent of.”
“And is it possible, my dear,” rejoined the judge, with a
commiserating look, “that you have never heard of Clifford
Pyncheon? — that you know nothing of his history? Well,
it is all right; and your mother has shown a very proper
regard for the good name of the family with which she connected
herself. Believe the best you can of this unfortunate
person, and hope the best! It is a rule which Christians
should always follow, in their judgments of one another;
and especially is it right and wise among near relatives,
whose characters have necessarily a degree of mutual dependence.
But is Clifford in the parlor? I will just step
in and see.”
“Perhaps, sir, I had better call my cousin Hepzibah,” said
Phœbe; hardly knowing, however, whether she ought to
obstruct the entrance of so affectionate a kinsman into the
private regions of the house. “Her brother seemed to be
just falling asleep, after breakfast; and I am sure she would
not like him to be disturbed. Pray, sir, let me give her
notice!”
But the judge showed a singular determination to enter
unannounced; and as Phœbe, with the vivacity of a person
whose movements unconsciously answer to her thoughts,
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had stepped towards the door, he used little or no ceremony
in putting her aside.
“No, no, Miss Phœbe!” said Judge Pyncheon, in a voice
as deep as a thunder-growl, and with a frown as black as
the cloud whence it issues. “Stay you here! I know the
house, and know my cousin Hepzibah, and know her brother
Clifford likewise! — nor need my little country cousin put
herself to the trouble of announcing me!” — in these latter
words, by-the-by, there were symptoms of a change from
his sudden harshness into his previous benignity of manner. —
“I am at home here, Phœbe, you must recollect, and
you are the stranger. I will just step in, therefore, and see
for myself how Clifford is, and assure him and Hepzibah of
my kindly feelings and best wishes. It is right, at this
juncture, that they should both hear from my own lips how
much I desire to serve them. Ha! here is Hepzibah herself!”
Such was the case. The vibrations of the judge's voice
had reached the old gentlewoman in the parlor, where she
sat, with face averted, waiting on her brother's slumber.
She now issued forth, as would appear, to defend the
entrance, looking, we must needs say, amazingly like the
dragon which, in fairy tales, is wont to be the guardian over
an enchanted beauty. The habitual scowl of her brow
was, undeniably, too fierce, at this moment, to pass itself
off on the innocent score of near-sightedness; and it was
bent on Judge Pyncheon in a way that seemed to confound,
if not alarm him, so inadequately had he estimated the
moral force of a deeply-grounded antipathy. She made a
repelling gesture with her hand, and stood, a perfect picture
of prohibition, at full length, in the dark frame of the door-way.
But we must betray Hepzibah's secret, and confess
that the native timorousness of her character even now
developed itself, in a quick tremor, which, to her own
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perception, set each of her joints at variance with its fellows.
Possibly, the judge was aware how little true hardihood
lay behind Hepzibah's formidable front. At any rate, being
a gentleman of steady nerves, he soon recovered himself,
and failed not to approach his cousin with outstretched
hand; adopting the sensible precaution, however, to cover
his advance with a smile, so broad and sultry, that, had it
been only half as warm as it looked, a trellis of grapes
might at once have turned purple under its summer-like
exposure. It may have been his purpose, indeed, to melt
poor Hepzibah on the spot, as if she were a figure of yellow
wax.
“Hepzibah, my beloved cousin, I am rejoiced!” exclaimed
the judge, most emphatically. “Now, at length, you have
something to live for. Yes, and all of us, let me say, your
friends and kindred, have more to live for than we had
yesterday. I have lost no time in hastening to offer any
assistance in my power towards making Clifford comfortable.
He belongs to us all. I know how much he requires, — how
much he used to require, — with his delicate taste, and his
love of the beautiful. Anything in my house, — pictures,
books, wine, luxuries of the table, — he may command them
all! It would afford me most heart-felt gratification to see
him! Shall I step in, this moment?”
“No,” replied Hepzibah, her voice quivering too painfully
to allow of many words. “He cannot see visiters!”
“A visiter, my dear cousin! — do you call me so?”
cried the judge, whose sensibility, it seems, was hurt by the
coldness of the phrase. “Nay, then, let me be Clifford's
host, and your own likewise. Come at once to my house.
The country air, and all the conveniences — I may say
luxuries — that I have gathered about me, will do wonders
for him. And you and I, dear Hepzibah, will consult
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together, and watch together, and labor together, to make
our dear Clifford happy. Come! why should we make
more words about what is both a duty and a pleasure, on
my part? Come to me at once!”
On hearing these so hospitable offers, and such generous
recognition of the claims of kindred, Phœbe felt very much
in the mood of running up to Judge Pyncheon, and giving
him, of her own accord, the kiss from which she had so
recently shrunk away. It was quite otherwise with Hepzibah;
the judge's smile seemed to operate on her acerbity
of heart like sunshine upon vinegar, making it ten times
sourer than ever.
“Clifford,” said she, — still too agitated to utter more
than an abrupt sentence, — “Clifford has a home here!”
“May Heaven forgive you, Hepzibah,” said Judge Pyncheon, —
reverently lifting his eyes towards that high court
of equity to which he appealed, — “if you suffer any
ancient prejudice or animosity to weigh with you in this
matter! I stand here, with an open heart, willing and
anxious to receive yourself and Clifford into it. Do not
refuse my good offices, — my earnest propositions for your
welfare! They are such, in all respects, as it behooves
your nearest kinsman to make. It will be a heavy responsibility,
cousin, if you confine your brother to this dismal
house and stifled air, when the delightful freedom of my
country-seat is at his command.”
“It would never suit Clifford,” said Hepzibah, as briefly
as before.
“Woman!” broke forth the judge, giving way to his
resentment, “what is the meaning of all this? Have you
other resources? Nay, I suspected as much! Take care,
Hepzibah, take care! Clifford is on the brink of as black a
ruin as ever befell him yet! But why do I talk with you,
woman as you are? Make way! — I must see Clifford!”
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Hepzibah spread out her gaunt figure across the door,
and seemed really to increase in bulk; looking the more
terrible, also, because there was so much terror and agitation
in her heart. But Judge Pyncheon's evident purpose
of forcing a passage was interrupted by a voice from the
inner room; a weak, tremulous, wailing voice, indicating
helpless alarm, with no more energy for self-defence than
belongs to a frightened infant.
“Hepzibah, Hepzibah!” cried the voice; “go down on
you knees to him! Kiss his feet! Entreat him not to
come in! O, let him have mercy on me! Mercy! —
mercy!”
For the instant, it appeared doubtful whether it were not
the judge's resolute purpose to set Hepzibah aside, and step
across the threshold into the parlor, whence issued that
broken and miserable murmur of entreaty. It was not pity
that restrained him, for, at the first sound of the enfeebled
voice, a red fire kindled in his eyes, and he made a quick
pace forward, with something inexpressibly fierce and grim
darkening forth, as it were, out of the whole man. To know
Judge Pyncheon, was to see him at that moment. After
such a revelation, let him smile with what sultriness he would,
he could much sooner turn grapes purple, or pumpkins
yellow, than melt the iron-branded impression out of the
beholder's memory. And it rendered his aspect not the less,
but more frightful, that it seemed not to express wrath or
hatred, but a certain hot fellness of purpose, which annihilated
everything but itself.
Yet, after all, are we not slandering an excellent and
amiable man? Look at the judge now! He is apparently
conscious of having erred, in too energetically pressing his
deeds of loving-kindness on persons unable to appreciate
them. He will await their better mood, and hold himself
as ready to assist them, then, as at this moment. As he
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draws back from the door, an all-comprehensive benignity
blazes from his visage, indicating that he gathers Hepzibah,
little Phœbe, and the invisible Clifford, all three, together
with the whole world besides, into his immense heart, and
gives them a warm bath in its flood of affection.
“You do me great wrong, dear Cousin Hepzibah!” said
he, first kindly offering her his hand, and then drawing on
his glove preparatory to departure. “Very great wrong!
But I forgive it, and will study to make you think better of
me. Of course, our poor Clifford being in so unhappy a
state of mind, I cannot think of urging an interview at present.
But I shall watch over his welfare, as if he were my
own beloved brother; nor do I at all despair, my dear cousin,
of constraining both him and you to acknowledge your injustice.
When that shall happen, I desire no other revenge
than your acceptance of the best offices in my power to do
you.”
With a bow to Hepzibah, and a degree of paternal benevolence
in his parting nod to Phœbe, the judge left the shop,
and went smiling along the street. As is customary with
the rich, when they aim at the honors of a republic, he
apologized, as it were, to the people, for his wealth, prosperity,
and elevated station, by a free and hearty manner
towards those who knew him; putting off the more of his
dignity, in due proportion with the humbleness of the man
whom he saluted, and thereby proving a haughty consciousness
of his advantages as irrefragably as if he had marched
forth preceded by a troop of lackeys to clear the way. On
this particular forenoon, so excessive was the warmth of
Judge Pyncheon's kindly aspect, that (such, at least, was
the rumor about town) an extra passage of the water-carts
was found essential, in order to lay the dust occasioned by
so much extra sunshine!
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No sooner had he disappeared than Hepzibah grew
deadly white, and, staggering towards Phœbe, let her head
fall on the young girl's shoulder.
“O, Phœbe!” murmured she, “that man has been the
horror of my life! Shall I never, never have the courage, —
will my voice never cease from trembling long enough to
let me tell him what he is?”
“Is he so very wicked?” asked Phœbe. “Yet his offers
were surely kind!”
“Do not speak of them, — he has a heart of iron!”
rejoined Hepzibah. “Go, now, and talk to Clifford! Amuse
and keep him quiet! It would disturb him wretchedly to
see me so agitated as I am. There, go, dear child, and I
will try to look after the shop.”
Phœbe went, accordingly, but perplexed herself, meanwhile,
with queries as to the purport of the scene which she
had just witnessed, and also, whether judges, clergymen,
and other characters of that eminent stamp and respectability,
could really, in any single instance, be otherwise than
just and upright men. A doubt of this nature has a most
disturbing influence, and, if shown to be a fact, comes with
fearful and startling effect, on minds of the trim, orderly, and
limit-loving class, in which we find our little country-girl.
Dispositions more boldly speculative may derive a stern enjoyment
from the discovery, since there must be evil in the
world, that a high man is as likely to grasp his share of it
as a low one. A wider scope of view, and a deeper insight,
may see rank, dignity, and station, all proved illusory, so far
as regards their claim to human reverence, and yet not feel
as if the universe were thereby tumbled headlong into
chaos. But Phœbe, in order to keep the universe in its old
place, was fain to smother, in some degree, her own intuitions
as to Judge Pyncheon's character. And as for her
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cousin's testimony in disparagement of it, she concluded
that Hepzibah's judgment was embittered by one of those
family feuds, which render hatred the more deadly, by the
dead and corrupted love that they intermingle with its
native poison.
-- -- p574-154
IX. CLIFFORD AND PHŒBE.
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Truly was there something high, generous, and noble, in
the native composition of our poor old Hepzibah! Or else,—
and it was quite as probably the case, — she had been
enriched by poverty, developed by sorrow, elevated by the
strong and solitary affection of her life, and thus endowed
with heroism, which never could have characterized her in
what are called happier circumstances. Through dreary
years, Hepzibah had looked forward — for the most part
despairingly, never with any confidence of hope, but always
with the feeling that it was her brightest possibility — to the
very position in which she now found herself. In her own
behalf, she had asked nothing of Providence, but the opportunity
of devoting herself to this brother, whom she had so
loved, — so admired for what he was, or might have been,—
and to whom she had kept her faith, alone of all the
world, wholly, unfalteringly, at every instant, and throughout
life. And here, in his late decline, the lost one had
come back out of his long and strange misfortune, and was
thrown on her sympathy, as it seemed, not merely for the
bread of his physical existence, but for everything that
should keep him morally alive. She had responded to the
call. She had come forward, — our poor, gaunt Hepzibah,
in her rusty silks, with her rigid joints, and the sad perversity
of her scowl, — ready to do her utmost; and with affection
enough, if that were all, to do a hundred times as
much! There could be few more tearful sights, — and
Heaven forgive us, if a smile insist on mingling with our
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conception of it! — few sights with truer pathos in them,
than Hepzibah presented, on that first afternoon.
How patiently did she endeavor to wrap Clifford up in
her great, warm love, and make it all the world to him, so
that he should retain no torturing sense of the coldness and
dreariness without! Her little efforts to amuse him! How
pitiful, yet magnanimous, they were!
Remembering his early love of poetry and fiction, she
unlocked a bookcase, and took down several books that had
been excellent reading in their day. There was a volume
of Pope, with the Rape of the Lock in it, and another of the
Tatler, and an odd one of Dryden's Miscellanies, all with
tarnished gilding on their covers, and thoughts of tarnished
brilliancy inside. They had no success with Clifford.
These, and all such writers of society, whose new works
glow like the rich texture of a just-woven carpet, must be
content to relinquish their charm, for every reader, after an
age or two, and could hardly be supposed to retain any portion
of it for a mind that had utterly lost its estimate of
modes and manners. Hepzibah then took up Rasselas, and
began to read of the Happy Valley, with a vague idea that
some secret of a contented life had there been elaborated,
which might at least serve Clifford and herself for this one
day. But the Happy Valley had a cloud over it. Hepzibah
troubled her auditor, moreover, by innumerable sins of
emphasis, which he seemed to detect, without any reference
to the meaning; nor, in fact, did he appear to take much
note of the sense of what she read, but evidently felt the
tedium of the lecture, without harvesting its profit. His sister's
voice, too, naturally harsh, had, in the course of her
sorrowful lifetime, contracted a kind of croak, which, when
it once gets into the human throat, is as ineradicable as sin.
In both sexes, occasionally, this lifelong croak, accompanying
each word of joy or sorrow, is one of the symptoms of a
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settled melancholy; and wherever it occurs, the whole history
of misfortune is conveyed in its slightest accent. The
effect is as if the voice had been dyed black; or, — if we
must use a more moderate simile, — this miserable croak,
running through all the variations of the voice, is like a
black silken thread, on which the crystal beads of speech
are strung, and whence they take their hue. Such voices
have put on mourning for dead hopes; and they ought to
die and be buried along with them!
Discerning that Clifford was not gladdened by her efforts,
Hepzibah searched about the house for the means of more
exhilarating pastime. At one time, her eyes chanced to rest
on Alice Pyncheon's harpsichord. It was a moment of
great peril; for, — despite the traditionary awe that had
gathered over this instrument of music, and the dirges which
spiritual fingers were said to play on it, — the devoted sister
had solemn thoughts of thrumming on its chords for Clifford's
benefit, and accompanying the performance with her
voice. Poor Clifford! Poor Hepzibah! Poor harpsichord!
All three would have been miserable together. By some
good agency, — possibly, by the unrecognized interposition
of the long-buried Alice herself, — the threatening calamity
was averted.
But the worst of all, — the hardest stroke of fate for Hepzibah
to endure, and perhaps for Clifford too, — was his
invincible distaste for her appearance. Her features, never
the most agreeable, and now harsh with age and grief, and
resentment against the world for his sake; her dress, and
especially her turban; the queer and quaint manners, which
had unconsciously grown upon her in solitude; — such being
the poor gentlewoman's outward characteristics, it is no
great marvel, although the mournfullest of pities, that the
instinctive lover of the Beautiful was fain to turn away his
eyes. There was no help for it. It would be the latest
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impulse to die within him. In his last extremity, the
expiring breath stealing faintly through Clifford's lips, he
would doubtless press Hepzibah's hand, in fervent recognition
of all her lavished love, and close his eyes, — but not
so much to die, as to be constrained to look no longer on
her face! Poor Hepzibah! She took counsel with herself
what might be done, and thought of putting ribbons on her
turban; but, by the instant rush of several guardian angels,
was withheld from an experiment that could hardly have
proved less than fatal to the beloved object of her anxiety.
To be brief, besides Hepzibah's disadvantages of person,
there was an uncouthness pervading all her deeds; a clumsy
something, that could but ill adapt itself for use, and not
at all for ornament. She was a grief to Clifford, and she
knew it. In this extremity, the antiquated virgin turned to
Phœbe. No grovelling jealousy was in her heart. Had
it pleased Heaven to crown the heroic fidelity of her life
by making her personally the medium of Clifford's happiness,
it would have rewarded her for all the past, by a joy
with no bright tints, indeed, but deep and true, and worth a
thousand gayer ecstasies. This could not be. She therefore
turned to Phœbe, and resigned the task into the young
girl's hands. The latter took it up, cheerfully, as she did
everything, but with no sense of a mission to perform, and
succeeding all the better for that same simplicity.
By the involuntary effect of a genial temperament, Phœbe
soon grew to be absolutely essential to the daily comfort,
if not the daily life, of her two forlorn companions. The
grime and sordidness of the House of the Seven Gables
seemed to have vanished, since her appearance there; the
gnawing tooth of the dry-rot was stayed, among the old
timbers of its skeleton frame; the dust had ceased to settle
down so densely, from the antique ceilings, upon the floors
and furniture of the rooms below; — or, at any rate, there
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was a little housewife, as light-footed as the breeze that
sweeps a garden walk, gliding hither and thither, to brush
it all away. The shadows of gloomy events, that haunted
the else lonely and desolate apartments; the heavy, breathless
scent which death had left in more than one of the
bed-chambers, ever since his visits of long ago; — these
were less powerful than the purifying influence scattered
throughout the atmosphere of the household by the presence
of one youthful, fresh, and thoroughly wholesome
heart. There was no morbidness in Phœbe; if there had
been, the old Pyncheon-house was the very locality to ripen
it into incurable disease. But now her spirit resembled, in
its potency, a minute quantity of ottar of rose in one of
Hepzibah's huge, iron-bound trunks, diffusing its fragrance
through the various articles of linen and wrought-lace,
kerchiefs, caps, stockings, folded dresses, gloves, and whatever
else was treasured there. As every article in the great
trunk was the sweeter for the rose-scent, so did all the
thoughts and emotions of Hepzibah and Clifford, sombre as
they might seem, acquire a subtle attribute of happiness
from Phœbe's intermixture with them. Her activity of
body, intellect, and heart, impelled her continually to perform
the ordinary little toils that offered themselves around
her, and to think the thought proper for the moment, and
to sympathize, — now with the twittering gayety of the
robins in the pear-tree, and now to such a depth as she
could with Hepzibah's dark anxiety, or the vague moan of
her brother. This facile adaptation was at once the symptom
of perfect health, and its best preservative.
A nature like Phœbe's has invariably its due influence,
but is seldom regarded with due honor. Its spiritual force,
however, may be partially estimated by the fact of her
having found a place for herself, amid circumstances so
stern as those which surrounded the mistress of the house;
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and also by the effect which she produced on a character of
so much more mass than her own. For the gaunt, bony
frame and limbs of Hepzibah, as compared with the tiny
lightsomeness of Phœbe's figure, were perhaps in some fit
proportion with the moral weight and substance, respectively,
of the woman and the girl.
To the guest, — to Hepzibah's brother, — or Cousin Clifford,
as Phœbe now began to call him, — she was especially
necessary. Not that he could ever be said to converse
with her, or often manifest, in any other very definite mode,
his sense of a charm in her society. But, if she were a
long while absent, he became pettish and nervously restless,
pacing the room to and fro, with the uncertainty that characterized
all his movements; or else would sit broodingly
in his great chair, resting his head on his hands, and evincing
life only by an electric sparkle of ill-humor, whenever
Hepzibah endeavored to arouse him. Phœbe's presence,
and the contiguity of her fresh life to his blighted one, was
usually all that he required. Indeed, such was the native
gush and play of her spirit, that she was seldom perfectly
quiet and undemonstrative, any more than a fountain ever
ceases to dimple and warble with its flow. She possessed
the gift of song, and that, too, so naturally, that you would
as little think of inquiring whence she had caught it, or
what master had taught her, as of asking the same questions
about a bird, in whose small strain of music we recognize
the voice of the Creator as distinctly as in the loudest
accents of his thunder. So long as Phœbe sang, she might
stray at her own will about the house. Clifford was content,
whether the sweet, airy homeliness of her tones came down
from the upper chambers, or along the passage-way from
the shop, or was sprinkled through the foliage of the pear-tree,
inward from the garden, with the twinkling sunbeams.
He would sit quietly, with a gentle pleasure gleaming over
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his face, brighter now, and now a little dimmer, as the song
happened to float near him, or was more remotely heard.
It pleased him best, however, when she sat on a low footstool
at his knee.
It is perhaps remarkable, considering her temperament,
that Phœbe oftener chose a strain of pathos than of gayety.
But the young and happy are not ill pleased to temper their
life with a transparent shadow. The deepest pathos of
Phœbe's voice and song, moreover, came sifted through the
golden texture of a cheery spirit, and was somehow so interfused
with the quality thence acquired, that one's heart felt
all the lighter for having wept at it. Broad mirth, in the sacred
presence of dark misfortune, would have jarred harshly
and irreverently with the solemn symphony that rolled its
undertone through Hepzibah's and her brother's life. Therefore,
it was well that Phœbe so often chose sad themes, and
not amiss that they ceased to be so sad while she was singing
them.
Becoming habituated to her companionship, Clifford readily
showed how capable of imbibing pleasant tints and
gleams of cheerful light from all quarters his nature must
originally have been. He grew youthful, while she sat by
him. A beauty, — not precisely real, even in its utmost
manifestation, and which a painter would have watched long
to seize and fix upon his canvas, and, after all, in vain, —
beauty, nevertheless, that was not a mere dream, would
sometimes play upon and illuminate his face. It did more
than to illuminate; it transfigured him with an expression
that could only be interpreted as the glow of an exquisite
and happy spirit. That gray hair, and those furrows, — with
their record of infinite sorrow, so deeply written across his
brow, and so compressed, as with a futile effort to crowd in
all the tale, that the whole inscription was made illegible, —
these, for the moment, vanished. An eye, at once tender
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and acute, might have beheld in the man some shadow of
what he was meant to be. Anon, as age came stealing, like
a sad twilight, back over his figure, you would have felt
tempted to hold an argument with Destiny, and affirm, that
either this being should not have been made mortal, or mortal
existence should have been tempered to his qualities. There
seemed no necessity for his having drawn breath, at all; —
the world never wanted him; — but, as he had breathed, it
ought always to have been the balmiest of summer air. The
same perplexity will invariably haunt us with regard to natures
that tend to feed exclusively upon the Beautiful, let
their earthly fate be as lenient as it may.
Phœbe, it is probable, had but a very imperfect comprehension
of the character over which she had thrown so
beneficent a spell. Nor was it necessary. The fire upon
the hearth can gladden a whole semi-circle of faces round
about it, but need not know the individuality of one among
them all. Indeed, there was something too fine and delicate
in Clifford's traits to be perfectly appreciated by one whose
sphere lay so much in the Actual as Phœbe's did. For
Clifford, however, the reality, and simplicity, and thorough
homeliness, of the girl's nature, were as powerful a charm as
any that she possessed. Beauty, it is true, and beauty
almost perfect in its own style, was indispensable. Had
Phœbe been coarse in feature, shaped clumsily, of a harsh
voice, and uncouthly mannered, she might have been rich
with all good gifts, beneath this unfortunate exterior, and
still, so long as she wore the guise of woman, she would
have shocked Clifford, and depressed him by her lack of
beauty. But nothing more beautiful — nothing prettier, at
least — was ever made than Phœbe. And, therefore, to this
man, — whose whole poor and impalpable enjoyment of existence,
heretofore, and until both his heart and fancy died
within him, had been a dream, — whose images of women
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had more and more lost their warmth and substance, and
been frozen, like the pictures of secluded artists, into the
chillest ideality, — to him, this little figure of the cheeriest
household life was just what he required to bring him back
into the breathing world. Persons who have wandered, or
been expelled, out of the common track of things, even were
it for a better system, desire nothing so much as to be led
back. They shiver in their loneliness, be it on a mountaintop
or in a dungeon. Now, Phœbe's presence made a home
about her, — that very sphere which the outcast, the prisoner,
the potentate, — the wretch beneath mankind, the
wretch aside from it, or the wretch above it, — instinctively
pines after, — a home! She was real! Holding her hand,
you felt something; a tender something; a substance, and a
warm one: and so long as you should feel its grasp, soft as
it was, you might be certain that your place was good in
the whole sympathetic chain of human nature. The world
was no longer a delusion.
By looking a little further in this direction, we might
suggest an explanation of an often-suggested mystery. Why
are poets so apt to choose their mates, not for any similarity
of poetic endowment, but for qualities which might make
the happiness of the rudest handicraftsman as well as that
of the ideal craftsman of the spirit? Because, probably, at
his highest elevation, the poet needs no human intercourse;
but he finds it dreary to descend, and be a stranger.
There was something very beautiful in the relation that
grew up between this pair, so closely and constantly linked
together, yet with such a waste of gloomy and mysterious
years from his birth-day to hers. On Clifford's part, it was
the feeling of a man naturally endowed with the liveliest
sensibility to feminine influence, but who had never quaffed
the cup of passionate love, and knew that it was now too
late. He knew it, with the instinctive delicacy that had
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survived his intellectual decay. Thus, his sentiment for
Phœbe, without being paternal, was not less chaste than if
she had been his daughter. He was a man, it is true, and
recognized her as a woman. She was his only representative
of woman kind. He took unfailing note of every charm
that appertained to her sex, and saw the ripeness of her lips,
and the virginal development of her bosom. All her little
womanly ways, budding out of her like blossoms on a young
fruit-tree, had their effect on him, and sometimes caused his
very heart to tingle with the keenest thrills of pleasure.
At such moments, — for the effect was seldom more than
momentary, — the half-torpid man would be full of harmonious
life, just as a long-silent harp is full of sound, when the
musician's fingers sweep across it. But, after all, it seemed
rather a perception, or a sympathy, than a sentiment belonging
to himself as an individual. He read Phœbe, as he
would a sweet and simple story; he listened to her, as if
she were a verse of household poetry, which God, in requital
of his bleak and dismal lot, had permitted some angel, that
most pitied him, to warble through the house. She was
not an actual fact for him, but the interpretation of all that
he had lacked on earth, brought warmly home to his conception;
so that this more symbol, or lifelike picture, had
almost the comfort of reality.
But we strive in vain to put the idea into words. No
adequate expression of the beauty and profound pathos with
which it impresses us is attainable. This being, made only
for happiness, and heretofore so miserably failing to be
happy, — his tendencies so hideously thwarted, that, some
unknown time ago, the delicate springs of his character,
never morally or intellectually strong, had given way, and
he was now imbecile, — this poor, forlorn voyager from the
Islands of the Blest, in a frail bark, on a tempestuous sea,
had been flung, by the last mountain-wave of his shipwreck,
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into a quiet harbor. There, as he lay more than half lifeless
on the strand, the fragrance of an earthly rose-bud had
come to his nostrils, and, as odors will, had summoned up
reminiscences or visions of all the living and breathing
beauty amid which he should have had his home. With
his native susceptibility of happy influences, he inhales the
slight, ethereal rapture into his soul, and expires!
And how did Phœbe regard Clifford? The girl's was not
one of those natures which are most attracted by what is
strange and exceptional in human character. The path
which would best have suited her was the well-worn track
of ordinary life; the companions in whom she would most
have delighted were such as one encounters at every turn.
The mystery which enveloped Clifford, so far as it affected
her at all, was an annoyance, rather than the piquant charm
which many women might have found in it. Still, her
native kindliness was brought strongly into play, not by
what was darkly picturesque in his situation, nor so much,
even, by the finer grace of his character, as by the simple
appeal of a heart so forlorn as his to one so full of genuine
sympathy as hers. She gave him an affectionate regard,
because he needed so much love, and seemed to have
received so little. With a ready tact, the result of everactive
and wholesome sensibility, she discerned what was
good for him, and did it. Whatever was morbid in his
mind and experience, she ignored; and thereby kept their
intercourse healthy, by the incautious, but, as it were,
heaven-directed freedom of her whole conduct. The sick
in mind, and, perhaps, in body, are rendered more darkly
and hopelessly so, by the manifold reflection of their disease,
mirrored back from all quarters, in the deportment of
those about them; they are compelled to inhale the poison
of their own breath, in infinite repetition. But Phœbe
afforded her poor patient a supply of purer air. She
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impregnated it, too, not with a wild-flower scent, — for wildness
was no trait of hers, — but with the perfume of garden-roses,
pinks, and other blossoms of much sweetness, which
nature and man have consented together in making grow,
from summer to summer, and from century to century.
Such a flower was Phœbe, in her relation with Clifford, and
such the delight that he inhaled from her.
Yet, it must be said, her petals sometimes drooped a little,
in consequence of the heavy atmosphere about her. She
grew more thoughtful than heretofore. Looking aside at
Clifford's face, and seeing the dim, unsatisfactory elegance,
and the intellect almost quenched, she would try to inquire
what had been his life. Was he always thus? Had this
veil been over him from his birth? — this veil, under which
far more of his spirit was hidden than revealed, and through
which he so imperfectly discerned the actual world, — or
was its gray texture woven of some dark calamity? Phœbe
loved no riddles, and would have been glad to escape the
perplexity of this one. Nevertheless, there was so far a
good result of her meditations on Clifford's character, that,
when her involuntary conjectures, together with the tendency
of every strange circumstance to tell its own story,
had gradually taught her the fact, it had no terrible effect
upon her. Let the world have done him what vast wrong
it might, she knew Cousin Clifford too well — or fancied so—
ever to shudder at the touch of his thin, delicate fingers.
Within a few days after the appearance of this remarkable
inmate, the routine of life had established itself with a
good deal of uniformity in the old house of our narrative.
In the morning, very shortly after breakfast, it was Clifford's
custom to fall asleep in his chair; nor, unless accidentally
disturbed, would he emerge from a dense cloud of slumber,
or the thinner mists that flitted to and fro, until well towards
noon-day. These hours of drowsy head were the season
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of the old gentlewoman's attendance on her brother, while
Phœbe took charge of the shop; an arrangement which the
public speedily understood, and evinced their decided preference
of the younger shopwoman by the multiplicity of
their calls during her administration of affairs. Dinner
over, Hepzibah took her knitting-work, — a long stocking
of gray yarn, for her brother's winter-wear, — and with a
sigh, and a scowl of affectionate farewell to Clifford, and
a gesture enjoining watchfulness on Phœbe, went to take
her seat behind the counter. It was now the young girl's
turn to be the nurse, — the guardian, the playmate, — or
whatever is the fitter phrase, — of the gray-haired man.
-- -- p574-167
X. THE PYNCHEON-GARDEN.
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Clifford, except for Phœbe's more active instigation,
would ordinarily have yielded to the torpor which had
crept through all his modes of being, and which sluggishly
counselled him to sit in his morning chair till even-tide. But
the girl seldom failed to propose a removal to the garden,
where Uncle Venner and the daguerreotypist had made
such repairs on the roof of the ruinous arbor, or summer-house,
that it was now a sufficient shelter from sunshine
and casual showers. The hop-vine, too, had begun to grow
luxuriantly over the sides of the little edifice, and made an
interior of verdant seclusion, with innumerable peeps and
glimpses into the wider solitude of the garden.
Here, sometimes, in this green play-place of flickering
light, Phœbe read to Clifford. Her acquaintance, the artist,
who appeared to have a literary turn, had supplied her with
works of fiction, in pamphlet-form, and a few volumes of
poetry, in altogether a different style and taste from those
which Hepzibah selected for his amusement. Small thanks
were due to the books, however, if the girl's readings were
in any degree more successful than her elderly cousin's.
Phœbe's voice had always a pretty music in it, and could
either enliven Clifford by its sparkle and gayety of tone, or
soothe him by a continued flow of pebbly and brook-like
cadences. But the fictions — in which the country-girl,
unused to works of that nature, often became deeply
absorbed — interested her strange auditor very little, or
not at all. Pictures of life, scenes of passion or sentiment,
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wit, humor, and pathos, were all thrown away, or worse
than thrown away, on Clifford; either because he lacked an
experience by which to test their truth, or because his own
griefs were a touch-stone of reality that few feigned emotions
could withstand. When Phœbe broke into a peal of
merry laughter at what she read, he would now and then
laugh for sympathy, but oftener respond with a troubled,
questioning look. If a tear — a maiden's sunshiny tear,
over imaginary woe — dropped upon some melancholy
page, Clifford either took it as a token of actual calamity,
or else grew peevish, and angrily motioned her to close the
volume. And wisely, too! Is not the world sad enough,
in genuine earnest, without making a pastime of mock-sorrows?
With poetry, it was rather better. He delighted in the
swell and subsidence of the rhythm, and the happily-recurring
rhyme. Nor was Clifford incapable of feeling the
sentiment of poetry, — not, perhaps, where it was highest
or deepest, but where it was most flitting and ethereal. It
was impossible to foretell in what exquisite verse the awakening
spell might lurk; but, on raising her eyes from the
page to Clifford's face, Phœbe would be made aware, by the
light breaking through it, that a more delicate intelligence
than her own had caught a lambent flame from what she
read. One glow of this kind, however, was often the precursor
of gloom for many hours afterward; because, when
the glow left him, he seemed conscious of a missing sense
and power, and groped about for them, as if a blind man
should go seeking his lost eyesight.
It pleased him more, and was better for his inward welfare,
that Phœbe should talk, and make passing occurrences
vivid to his mind by her accompanying description and
remarks. The life of the garden offered topics enough for
such discourse as suited Clifford best. He never failed to
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inquire what flowers had bloomed since yesterday. His
feeling for flowers was very exquisite, and seemed not so
much a taste as an emotion; he was fond of sitting with
one in his hand, intently observing it, and looking from its
petals into Phœbe's face, as if the garden-flower were the
sister of the household-maiden. Not merely was there a
delight in the flower's perfume, or pleasure in its beautiful
form, and the delicacy or brightness of its hue; but Clifford's
enjoyment was accompanied with a perception of life,
character, and individuality, that made him love these blossoms
of the garden, as if they were endowed with sentiment
and intelligence. This affection and sympathy for flowers
is almost exclusively a woman's trait. Men, if endowed
with it by nature, soon lose, forget, and learn to despise it,
in their contact with coarser things than flowers. Clifford,
too, had long forgotten it; but found it again, now, as he
slowly revived from the chill torpor of his life.
It is wonderful how many pleasant incidents continually
came to pass in that secluded garden-spot, when once Phœbe
had set herself to look for them. She had seen or heard
a bee there, on the first day of her acquaintance with the
place. And often, — almost continually, indeed, — since
then, the bees kept coming thither, Heaven knows why, or
by what pertinacious desire for far-fetched sweets, when, no
doubt, there were broad clover-fields, and all kinds of garden-growth,
much nearer home than this. Thither the
bees came, however, and plunged into the squash-blossoms,
as if there were no other squash-vines within a long day's
flight, or as if the soil of Hepzibah's garden gave its productions
just the very quality which these laborious little
wizards wanted, in order to impart the Hymettus odor to
their whole hive of New England honey. When Clifford
heard their sunny, buzzing murmur, in the heart of the
great yellow blossoms, he looked about him with a joyful
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sense of warmth, and blue sky, and green grass, and of
God's free air in the whole height from earth to heaven.
After all, there need be no question why the bees came to
that one green nook, in the dusty town. God sent them
thither, to gladden our poor Clifford. They brought the
rich summer with them, in requital of a little honey.
When the bean-vines began to flower on the poles, there
was one particular variety which bore a vivid scarlet blossom.
The daguerreotypist had found these beans in a
garret, over one of the seven gables, treasured up in an old
chest of drawers, by some horticultural Pyncheon of days
gone by, who, doubtless, meant to sow them the next summer,
but was himself first sown in Death's garden-ground.
By way of testing whether there was still a living germ in
such ancient seeds, Holgrave had planted some of them;
and the result of his experiment was a splendid row of beanvmes,
clambering, early, to the full height of the poles, and
arraying them, from top to bottom, in a spiral profusion of
red blossoms. And, ever since the unfolding of the first
bud, a multitude of humming-birds had been attracted
thither. At times, it seemed as if for every one of the
hundred blossoms there was one of these tiniest fowls of the
air; a thumb's bigness of burnished plumage, hovering and
vibrating about the bean-poles. It was with indescribable
interest, and even more than childish delight, that Clifford
watched the humming-birds. He used to thrust his head
softly out of the arbor, to see them the better; all the while,
too, motioning Phœbe to be quiet, and snatching glimpses
of the smile upon her face, so as to heap his enjoyment up
the higher with her sympathy. He had not merely grown
young; — he was a child again.
Hepzibah, whenever she happened to witness one of these
fits of miniature enthusiasm, would shake her head, with a
strange mingling of the mother and sister, and of pleasure
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and sadness, in her aspect. She said that it had always
been thus with Clifford, when the humming-birds came, —
always, from his babyhood, — and that his delight in them
had been one of the earliest tokens by which he showed his
love for beautiful things. And it was a wonderful coincidence,
the good lady thought, that the artist should have
planted these scarlet-flowering beans — which the humming-birds
sought far and wide, and which had not grown
in the Pyncheon-garden before for forty years — on the
very summer of Clifford's return.
Then would the tears stand in poor Hepzibah's eyes, or
overflow them with a too abundant gush, so that she was
fain to betake herself into some corner, lest Clifford should
espy her agitation. Indeed, all the enjoyments of this
period were provocative of tears. Coming so late as it
did, it was a kind of Indian summer, with a mist in its
balmiest sunshine, and decay and death in its gaudiest
delight. The more Clifford seemed to taste the happiness
of a child, the sadder was the difference to be recognized.
With a mysterious and terrible Past, which had annihilated
his memory, and a blank Future before him, he had only this
visionary and impalpable Now, which, if you once look
closely at it, is nothing. He himself, as was perceptible by
many symptoms, lay darkly behind his pleasure, and knew
it to be a baby-play, which he was to toy and trifle with,
instead of thoroughly believing. Clifford saw, it may be,
in the mirror of his deeper consciousness, that he was an
example and representative of that great class of people
whom an inexplicable Providence is continually putting at
cross-purposes with the world; breaking what seems its
own promise in their nature; withholding their proper food,
and setting poison before them for a banquet; and thus, —
when it might so easily, as one would think, have been
adjusted otherwise, — making their existence a strangeness,
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a solitude, and torment. All his life long, he had been
learning how to be wretched, as one learns a foreign tongue;
and now, with the lesson thoroughly at heart, he could with
difficulty comprehend his little airy happiness. Frequently,
there was a dim shadow of doubt in his eyes. “Take my
hand, Phœbe,” he would say, “and pinch it hard with your
little fingers! Give me a rose, that I may press its thorns,
and prove myself awake, by the sharp touch of pain!”
Evidently, he desired this prick of a trifling anguish, in
order to assure himself, by that quality which he best knew
to be real, that the garden, and the seven weather-beaten
gables, and Hepzibah's scowl and Phœbe's smile, were real,
likewise. Without this signet in his flesh, he could have
attributed no more substance to them than to the empty
confusion of imaginary scenes with which he had fed his
spirit, until even that poor sustenance was exhausted.
The author needs great faith in his reader's sympathy;
else he must hesitate to give details so minute, and incidents
apparently so trifling, as are essential to make up the idea
of this garden-life. It was the Eden of a thunder-smitten
Adam, who had fled for refuge thither out of the same
dreary and perilous wilderness into which the original
Adam was expelled.
One of the available means of amusement, of which
Phœbe made the most, in Clifford's behalf, was that feathered
society, the hens, a breed of whom, as we have already
said, was an immemorial heirloom in the Pyncheon family.
In compliance with a whim of Clifford, as it troubled him
to see them in confinement, they had been set at liberty,
and now roamed at will about the garden; doing some little
mischief, but hindered from escape by buildings, on three
sides, and the difficult peaks of a wooden fence, on the
other. They spent much of their abundant leisure on the
margin of Maule's well, which was haunted by a kind of
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snail, evidently a titbit to their palates; and the brackish
water itself, however nauseous to the rest of the world, was
so greatly esteemed by these fowls, that they might be seen
tasting, turning up their heads, and smacking their bills,
with precisely the air of wine-bibbers round a probationary
cask. Their generally quiet, yet often brisk, and constantly
diversified talk, one to another, or sometimes in soliloquy, —
as they scratched worms out of the rich, black soil, or
pecked at such plants as suited their taste, — had such a
domestic tone, that it was almost a wonder why you could
not establish a regular interchange of ideas about household
matters, human and gallinaceous. All hens are well worth
studying, for the piquancy and rich variety of their manners;
but by no possibility can there have been other fowls
of such odd appearance and deportment as these ancestral
ones. They probably embodied the traditionary peculiarities
of their whole line of progenitors, derived through an
unbroken succession of eggs; or else this individual Chanticleer
and his two wives had grown to be humorists, and a
little crack-brained withal, on account of their solitary way
of life, and out of sympathy for Hepzibah, their lady-patroness.
Queerly, indeed, they looked! Chanticleer himself,
though stalking on two stilt-like legs, with the dignity
of interminable descent in all his gestures, was hardly
bigger than an ordinary partridge; his two wives were
about the size of quails; and as for the one chicken, it
looked small enough to be still in the egg, and, at the same
time, sufficiently old, withered, wizened, and experienced,
to have been the founder of the antiquated race. Instead
of being the youngest of the family, it rather seemed to
have aggregated into itself the ages, not only of these
living specimens of the breed, but of all its forefathers and
foremothers, whose united excellences and oddities were
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squeezed into its little body. Its mother evidently regarded
it as the one chicken of the world, and as necessary, in
fact, to the world's continuance, or, at any rate, to the equilibrium
of the present system of affairs, whether in church
or state. No lesser sense of the infant fowl's importance
could have justified, even in a mother's eyes, the perseverance
with which she watched over its safety, ruffling her
small person to twice its proper size, and flying in everybody's
face that so much as looked towards her hopeful
progeny. No lower estimate could have vindicated the
indefatigable zeal with which she scratched, and her unscrupulousness
in digging up the choicest flower or vegetable,
for the sake of the fat earth-worm at its root. Her nervous
cluck, when the chicken happened to be hidden in the long
grass or under the squash-leaves; her gentle croak of satisfaction,
while sure of it beneath her wing; her note of illconcealed
fear and obstreperous defiance, when she saw her
arch-enemy, a neighbor's cat, on the top of the high fence;—
one or other of these sounds was to be heard at almost
every moment of the day. By degrees, the observer came
to feel nearly as much interest in this chicken of illustrious
race as the mother-hen did.
Phœbe, after getting well acquainted with the old hen,
was sometimes permitted to take the chicken in her hand,
which was quite capable of grasping its cubic inch or two
of body. While she curiously examined its hereditary
marks, — the peculiar speckle of its plumage, the funny
tuft on its head, and a knob on each of its legs, — the little
biped, as she insisted, kept giving her a sagacious wink.
The daguerreotypist once whispered her that these marks
betokened the oddities of the Pyncheon family, and that
the chicken itself was a symbol of the life of the old house,
embodying its interpretation, likewise, although an unintelligible
one, as such clues generally are. It was a feathered
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riddle; a mystery hatched out of an egg, and just as mysterious
as if the egg had been addle!
The second of Chanticleer's two wives, ever since Phœbe's
arrival, had been in a state of heavy despondency, caused,
as it afterwards appeared, by her inability to lay an egg.
One day, however, by her self-important gait, the side-way
turn of her head, and the cock of her eye, as she pried into
one and another nook of the garden, — croaking to herself,
all the while, with inexpressible complacency, — it was made
evident that this identical hen, much as mankind undervalued
her, carried something about her person, the worth
of which was not to be estimated either in gold or precious
stones. Shortly after, there was a prodigious cackling and
gratulation of Chanticleer and all his family, including the
wizened chicken, who appeared to understand the matter
quite as well as did his sire, his mother, or his aunt. That
afternoon Phœbe found a diminutive egg, — not in the
regular nest — it was far too precious to be trusted there, —
but cunningly hidden under the currant-bushes, on some dry
stalks of last year's grass. Hepzibah, on learning the fact,
took possession of the egg and appropriated it to Clifford's
breakfast, on account of a certain delicacy of flavor, for
which, as she affirmed, these eggs had always been famous.
Thus unscrupulously did the old gentlewoman sacrifice the
continuance, perhaps, of an ancient feathered race, with no
better end than to supply her brother with a dainty that
hardly filled the bowl of a tea-spoon! It must have been in
reference to this outrage that Chanticleer, the next day,
accompanied by the bereaved mother of the egg, took his
post in front of Phœbe and Clifford, and delivered himself
of a harangue that might have proved as long as his own
pedigree, but for a fit of merriment on Phœbe's part.
Hereupon, the offended fowl stalked away on his long
stilts, and utterly withdrew his notice from Phœbe and the
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rest of human nature, until she made her peace with an
offering of spice-cake, which, next to snails, was the delicacy
most in favor with his aristocratic taste.
We linger too long, no doubt, beside this paltry rivulet of
life that flowed through the garden of the Pyncheon-house.
But we deem it pardonable to record these mean incidents,
and poor delights, because they proved so greatly to Clifford's
benefit. They had the earth-smell in them, and contributed
to give him health and substance. Some of his
occupations wrought less desirably upon him. He had a
singular propensity, for example, to hang over Maule's well,
and look at the constantly shifting phantasmagoria of figures
produced by the agitation of the water over the mosaic-work
of colored pebbles at the bottom. He said that faces
looked upward to him there, — beautiful faces, arrayed in
bewitching smiles, — each momentary face so fair and rosy,
and every smile so sunny, that he felt wronged at its departure,
until the same flitting witchcraft made a new one.
But sometimes he would suddenly cry out, “The dark face
gazes at me!” and be miserable the whole day afterwards.
Phœbe, when she hung over the fountain by Clifford's side,
could see nothing of all this, — neither the beauty nor the
ugliness, — but only the colored pebbles, looking as if the
gush of the water shook and disarranged them. And
the dark face, that so troubled Clifford, was no more than
the shadow thrown from a branch of one of the damson-trees,
and breaking the inner light of Maule's well. The
truth was, however, that his fancy — reviving faster than
his will and judgment, and always stronger than they —
created shapes of loveliness that were symbolic of his native
character, and now and then a stern and dreadful shape,
that typified his fate.
On Sundays, after Phœbe had been at church, — for the
girl had a church-going conscience, and would hardly have
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been at ease had she missed either prayer, singing, sermon,
or benediction, — after church-time, therefore, there was, ordinarily,
a sober little festival in the garden. In addition to
Clifford, Hepzibah and Phœbe, two guests made up the
company. One was the artist, Holgrave, who, in spite of
his consociation with reformers, and his other queer and
questionable traits, continued to hold an elevated place in
Hepzibah's regard. The other, we are almost ashamed to
say, was the venerable Uncle Venner, in a clean shirt, and
a broadcloth coat, more respectable than his ordinary wear,
inasmuch as it was neatly patched on each elbow, and might
be called an entire garment, except for a slight inequality in
the length of its skirts. Clifford, on several occasions, had
seemed to enjoy the old man's intercourse, for the sake of
his mellow, cheerful vein, which was like the sweet flavor
of a frost-bitten apple, such as one picks up under the tree
in December. A man at the very lowest point of the social
scale was easier and more agreeable for the fallen
gentleman to encounter than a person at any of the intermediate
degree; and, moreover, as Clifford's young manhood
had been lost, he was fond of feeling himself comparatively
youthful, now, in apposition with the patriarchal age of
Uncle Venner. In fact, it was sometimes observable that
Clifford half wilfully hid from himself the consciousness of
being stricken in years, and cherished visions of an earthly
future still before him; visions, however, too indistinctly
drawn to be followed by disappointment — though, doubtless,
by depression — when any casual incident or recollection
made him sensible of the withered leaf.
So this oddly-composed little social party used to assemble
under the ruinous arbor. Hepzibah — stately as ever,
at heart, and yielding not an inch of her old gentility, but
resting upon it so much the more, as justifying a princess-like
condescension — exhibited a not ungraceful
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hospitality. She talked kindly to the vagrant artist, and took sage
counsel — lady as she was — with the woodsawyer, the
messenger of everybody's petty errands, the patched philosopher.
And Uncle Venner, who had studied the world at
street-corners, and at other posts equally well adapted for
just observation, was as ready to give out his wisdom as a
town-pump to give water.
“Miss Hepzibah, ma'am,” said he once, after they had
all been cheerful together, “I really enjoy these quiet little
meetings, of a Sabbath afternoon. They are very much like
what I expect to have, after I retire to my farm!”
“Uncle Venner,” observed Clifford, in a drowsy, inward
tone, “is always talking about his farm. But I have a better
scheme for him, by-and-by. We shall see!”
“Ah, Mr. Clifford Pyncheon!” said the man of patches,
“you may scheme for me as much as you please; but I 'm
not going to give up this one scheme of my own, even if I
never bring it really to pass. It does seem to me that men
make a wonderful mistake in trying to heap up property
upon property. If I had done so, I should feel as if Providence
was not bound to take care of me; and, at all events,
the city would n't be! I 'm one of those people who think
that infinity is big enough for us all, — and eternity long
enough!”
“Why, so they are, Uncle Venner,” remarked Phœbe,
after a pause; for she had been trying to fathom the profundity
and appositeness of this concluding apothegm.
“But, for this short life of ours, one would like a house and
a moderate garden-spot of one's own.”
“It appears to me,” said the daguerreotypist, smiling,
“that Uncle Venner has the principles of Fourier at the
bottom of his wisdom; only they have not quite so much
distinctness, in his mind, as in that of the systematizing
Frenchman.”
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“Come, Phœbe,” said Hepzibah, “it is time to bring the
currants.”
And then, while the yellow richness of the declining sunshine
still fell into the open space of the garden, Phœbe
brought out a loaf of bread, and a China-bowl of currants,
freshly gathered from the bushes, and crushed with sugar.
These, with water, — but not from the fountain of ill
omen, close at hand, — constituted all the entertainment.
Meanwhile, Holgrave took some pains to establish an intercourse
with Clifford, actuated, it might seem, entirely by an
impulse of kindliness, in order that the present hour might
be cheerfuller than most which the poor recluse had spent,
or was destined yet to spend. Nevertheless, in the artist's
deep, thoughtful, all-observant eyes, there was, now and
then, an expression, not sinister, but questionable; as if he
had some other interest in the scene than a stranger, a
youthful and unconnected adventurer, might be supposed to
have. With great mobility of outward mood, however, he
applied himself to the task of enlivening the party; and
with so much success, that even dark-hued Hepzibah threw
off one tint of melancholy, and made what shift she could
with the remaining portion. Phœbe said to herself, — “How
pleasant he can be!” As for Uncle Venner, as a mark
of friendship and approbation, he readily consented to afford
the young man his countenance in the way of his profession, —
not metaphorically, be it understood, but literally,
by allowing a daguerreotype of his face, so familiar to the
town, to be exhibited at the entrance of Holgrave's studio.
Clifford, as the company partook of their little banquet,
grew to be the gayest of them all. Either it was one of
those up-quivering flashes of the spirit, to which minds
in an abnormal state are liable, or else the artist had subtly
touched some chord that made musical vibration. Indeed,
what with the pleasant summer evening, and the sympathy
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of this little circle of not unkindly souls, it was perhaps
natural that a character so susceptible as Clifford's should
become animated, and show itself readily responsive to
what was said around him. But he gave out his own
thoughts, likewise, with an airy and fanciful glow; so that
they glistened, as it were, through the arbor, and made
their escape among the interstices of the foliage. He
had been as cheerful, no doubt, while alone with Phœbe,
but never with such tokens of acute, although partial
intelligence.
But, as the sunlight left the peaks of the seven gables,
so did the excitement fade out of Clifford's eyes. He gazed
vaguely and mournfully about him, as if he missed something
precious, and missed it the more drearily for not
knowing precisely what it was.
“I want my happiness!” at last he murmured, hoarsely
and indistinctly, hardly shaping out the words. “Many,
many years have I waited for it! It is late! It is late!
I want my happiness!”
Alas, poor Clifford! You are old, and worn with troubles
that ought never to have befallen you. You are partly
crazy, and partly imbecile; a ruin, a failure, as almost
everybody is, — though some in less degree, or less perceptibly,
than their fellows. Fate has no happiness in store for
you; unless your quiet home in the old family residence
with the faithful Hepzibah, and your long summer afternoons
with Phœbe, and these Sabbath festivals with Uncle
Venner and the daguerreotypist, deserve to be called happiness!
Why not? If not the thing itself, it is marvellously
like it, and the more so for that ethereal and intangible
quality which causes it all to vanish, at too close an
introspection. Take it, therefore, while you may! Murmur
not, — question not, — but make the most of it!
-- -- p574-181
XI. THE ARCHED WINDOW.
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From the inertness, or what we may term the vegetative
character, of his ordinary mood, Clifford would perhaps have
been content to spend one day after another, interminably,—
or, at least, throughout the summer-time, — in just the
kind of life described in the preceding pages. Fancying,
however, that it might be for his benefit occasionally to
diversify the scene, Phœbe sometimes suggested that he
should look out upon the life of the street. For this purpose,
they used to mount the staircase together, to the
second story of the house, where, at the termination of a
wide entry, there was an arched window of uncommonly
large dimensions, shaded by a pair of curtains. It opened
above the porch, where there had formerly been a balcony,
the balustrade of which had long since gone to decay, and
been removed. At this arched window, throwing it open,
but keeping himself in comparative obscurity by means of
the curtain, Clifford had an opportunity of witnessing such
a portion of the great world's movement as might be supposed
to roll through one of the retired streets of a not
very populous city. But he and Phœbe made a sight as
well worth seeing as any that the city could exhibit. The
pale, gray, childish, aged, melancholy, yet often simply
cheerful, and sometimes delicately intelligent aspect of
Clifford, peering from behind the faded crimson of the
curtain, — watching the monotony of every-day occurrences
with a kind of inconsequential interest and earnestness,
and, at every petty throb of his sensibility, turning for
sympathy to the eyes of the bright young girl!
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If once he were fairly seated at the window, even Pyncheon-street
would hardly be so dull and lonely but that,
somewhere or other along its extent, Clifford might discover
matter to occupy his eye, and titillate, if not engross, his
observation. Things familiar to the youngest child that
had begun its outlook at existence seemed strange to him.
A cab; an omnibus, with its populous interior, dropping here
and there a passenger, and picking up another, and thus
typifying that vast rolling vehicle, the world, the end of
whose journey is everywhere and nowhere; — these objects
he followed eagerly with his eyes, but forgot them, before
the dust raised by the horses and wheels had settled along
their track. As regarded novelties (among which cabs and
omnibuses were to be reckoned), his mind appeared to have
lost its proper gripe and retentiveness. Twice or thrice, for
example, during the sunny hours of the day, a water-cart
went along by the Pyncheon-house, leaving a broad wake of
moistened earth, instead of the white dust that had risen at a
lady's lightest footfall; it was like a summer shower, which
the city authorities had caught and tamed, and compelled it
into the commonest routine of their convenience. With the
water-cart Clifford could never grow familiar; it always
affected him with just the same surprise as at first. His
mind took an apparently sharp impression from it, but lost
the recollection of this perambulatory shower, before its next
reäppearance, as completely as did the street itself, along
which the heat so quickly strewed white dust again. It
was the same with the railroad. Clifford could hear the
obstreperous howl of the steam-devil, and, by leaning a little
way from the arched window, could catch a glimpse of the
trains of cars, flashing a brief transit across the extremity
of the street. The idea of terrible energy, thus forced upon
him, was new at every recurrence, and seemed to affect him
as disagreeably, and with almost as much surprise, the hundredth
time as the first.
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Nothing gives a sadder sense of decay than this loss or
suspension of the power to deal with unaccustomed things,
and to keep up with the swiftness of the passing moment.
It can merely be a suspended animation; for, were the
power actually to perish, there would be little use of immortality.
We are less than ghosts, for the time being, whenever
this calamity befalls us.
Clifford was indeed the most inveterate of conservatives.
All the antique fashions of the street were dear to him;
even such as were characterized by a rudeness that would
naturally have annoyed his fastidious senses. He loved the
old rumbling and jolting carts, the former track of which he
still found in his long-buried remembrance, as the observer
of to-day finds the wheel-tracks of ancient vehicles, in Herculaneum.
The butcher's cart, with its snowy canopy, was
an acceptable object; so was the fish-cart, heralded by its
horn; so, likewise, was the countryman's cart of vegetables,
plodding from door to door, with long pauses of the patient
horse, while his owner drove a trade in turnips, carrots,
summer-squashes, string-beans, green peas, and new potatoes,
with half the housewives of the neighborhood. The
baker's cart, with the harsh music of its bells, had a pleasant
effect on Clifford, because, as few things else did, it
jingled the very dissonance of yore. One afternoon, a scissor-grinder
chanced to set his wheel a-going under the
Pyncheon-elm, and just in front of the arched window.
Children came running with their mothers' scissors, or the
carving-knife, or the paternal razor, or anything else that
lacked an edge (except, indeed, poor Clifford's wits), that
the grinder might apply the article to his magic wheel, and
give it back as good as new. Round went the busily-revolving
machinery, kept in motion by the scissor-grinder's foot,
and wore away the hard steel against the hard stone,
whence issued an intense and spiteful prolongation of a hiss,
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as fierce as those emitted by Satan and his compeers in
Pandemonium, though squeezed into smaller compass. It
was an ugly, little, venomous serpent of a noise, as ever did
petty violence to human ears. But Clifford listened with
rapturous delight. The sound, however disagreeable, had
very brisk life in it, and, together with the circle of curious
children watching the revolutions of the wheel, appeared
to give him a more vivid sense of active, bustling, and sunshiny
existence, than he had attained in almost any other
way. Nevertheless, its charm lay chiefly in the past; for
the scissor-grinder's wheel had hissed in his childish ears.
He sometimes made doleful complaint that there were no
stage-coaches, now-a-days. And he asked, in an injured tone,
what had become of all those old square-top chaises, with
wings sticking out on either side, that used to be drawn by
a plough-horse, and driven by a farmer's wife and daughter,
pedling whortleberries and blackberries, about the town.
Their disappearance made him doubt, he said, whether the
berries had not left off growing in the broad pastures, and
along the shady country lanes.
But anything that appealed to the sense of beauty, in
however humble a way, did not require to be recommended
by these old associations. This was observable when one
of those Italian boys (who are rather a modern feature of
our streets) came along with his barrel-organ, and stopped
under the wide and cool shadows of the elm. With his
quick professional eye, he took note of the two faces watching
him from the arched window, and, opening his instrument,
began to scatter its melodies abroad. He had a
monkey on his shoulder, dressed in a Highland plaid; and,
to complete the sum of splendid attractions wherewith he
presented himself to the public, there was a company of
little figures, whose sphere and habitation was in the mahogany
case of his organ, and whose principle of life was the
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music, which the Italian made it his business to grind out.
In all their variety of occupation, — the cobbler, the blacksmith,
the soldier, the lady with her fan, the toper with his
bottle, the milk-maid sitting by her cow, — this fortunate
little society might truly be said to enjoy a harmonious
existence, and to make life literally a dance. The Italian
turned a crank; and, behold! every one of these small individuals
started into the most curious vivacity. The cobbler
wrought upon a shoe; the blacksmith hammered his iron;
the soldier waved his glittering blade; the lady raised a tiny
breeze with her fan; the jolly toper swigged lustily at his
bottle; a scholar opened his book, with eager thirst for
knowledge, and turned his head to and fro along the page;
the milk-maid energetically drained her cow; and a miser
counted gold into his strong box; — all at the same turning
of a crank. Yes; and, moved by the self-same impulse, a
lover saluted his mistress on her lips! Possibly, some cynic,
at once merry and bitter, had desired to signify, in this pantomimic
scene, that we mortals, whatever our business or
amusement, — however serious, however trifling, — all dance
to one identical tune, and, in spite of our ridiculous activity,
bring nothing finally to pass. For the most remarkable
aspect of the affair was, that, at the cessation of the music,
everybody was petrified, at once, from the most extravagant
life into a dead torpor. Neither was the cobbler's shoe
finished, nor the blacksmith's iron shaped out; nor was
there a drop less of brandy in the toper's bottle, nor a drop
more of milk in the milkmaid's pail, nor one additional coin
in the miser's strong-box, nor was the scholar a page deeper
in his book. All were precisely in the same condition as
before they made themselves so ridiculous by their haste to
toil, to enjoy, to accumulate gold, and to become wise.
Saddest of all, moreover, the lover was none the happier
for the maiden's granted kiss! But, rather than swallow
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this last too acrid ingredient, we reject the whole moral of
the show.
The monkey, meanwhile, with a thick tail curling out
into preposterous prolixity from beneath his tartans, took
his station at the Italian's feet. He turned a wrinkled and
abominable little visage to every passer-by, and to the circle
of children that soon gathered round, and to Hepzibah's
shop-door, and upward to the arched window, whence Phœbe
and Clifford were looking down. Every moment, also, he
took off his Highland-bonnet, and performed a bow and
scrape. Sometimes, moreover, he made personal application
to individuals, holding out his small black palm, and otherwise
plainly signifying his excessive desire for whatever
filthy lucre might happen to be in anybody's pocket. The
mean and low, yet strangely man-like expression of his
wilted countenance; the prying and crafty glance, that
showed him ready to gripe at every miserable advantage;
his enormous tail (too enormous to be decently concealed
under his gabardine), and the deviltry of nature which it
betokened; — take this monkey just as he was, in short, and
you could desire no better image of the Mammon of copper-coin,
symbolizing the grossest form of the love of money.
Neither was there any possibility of satisfying the covetous
little devil. Phœbe threw down a whole handful of cents,
which he picked up with joyless eagerness, handed them
over to the Italian for safe-keeping, and immediately recommenced
a series of pantomimic petitions for more.
Doubtless, more than one New Englander — or, let him
be of what country he might, it is as likely to be the case—
passed by, and threw a look at the monkey, and went on,
without imagining how nearly his own moral condition was
here exemplified. Clifford, however, was a being of another
order. He had taken childish delight in the music, and
smiled, too, at the figures which it set in motion. But, after
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looking a while at the long-tailed imp, he was so shocked by
his horrible ugliness, spiritual as well as physical, that he
actually began to shed tears; a weakness which men of
merely delicate endowments, and destitute of the fiercer,
deeper, and more tragic power of laughter, can hardly
avoid, when the worst and meanest aspect of life happens
to be presented to them.
Pyncheon-street was sometimes enlivened by spectacles
of more imposing pretensions than the above, and which
brought the multitude along with them. With a shivering
repugnance at the idea of personal contact with the world,
a powerful impulse still seized on Clifford, whenever the
rush and roar of the human tide grew strongly audible to
him. This was made evident, one day, when a political
procession, with hundreds of flaunting banners, and drums,
fifes, clarions, and cymbals, reverberating between the rows
of buildings, marched all through town, and trailed its
length of trampling footsteps, and most infrequent uproar,
past the ordinarily quiet House of the Seven Gables. As a
mere object of sight, nothing is more deficient in picturesque
features than a procession, seen in its passage through narrow
streets. The spectator feels it to be fool's play, when
he can distinguish the tedious common-place of each man's
visage, with the perspiration and weary self-importance on
it, and the very cut of his pantaloons, and the stiffness or
laxity of his shirt-collar, and the dust on the back of his
black coat. In order to become majestic, it should be viewed
from some vantage-point, as it rolls its slow and long array
through the centre of a wide plain, or the stateliest public
square of a city; for then, by its remoteness, it melts all
the petty personalities, of which it is made up, into one
broad mass of existence, — one great life, — one collected
body of mankind, with a vast, homogeneous spirit animating
it. But, on the other hand, if an impressible person,
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standing alone over the brink of one of these processions, should
behold it, not in its atoms, but in its aggregate, — as a
mighty river of life, massive in its tide, and black with
mystery, and, out of its depths, calling to the kindred
depth within him, — then the contiguity would add to the
effect. It might so fascinate him that he would hardly be
restrained from plunging into the surging stream of human
sympathies.
So it proved with Clifford. He shuddered; he grew
pale; he threw an appealing look at Hepzibah and Phœbe,
who were with him at the window. They comprehended
nothing of his emotions, and supposed him merely disturbed
by the unaccustomed tumult. At last, with tremulous
limbs, he started up, set his foot on the window-sill, and, in
an instant more, would have been in the unguarded balcony.
As it was, the whole procession might have seen him, a
wild, haggard figure, his gray locks floating in the wind that
waved their banners; a lonely being, estranged from his
race, but now feeling himself man again, by virtue of the
irrepressible instinct that possessed him. Had Clifford
attained the balcony, he would probably have leaped into
the street; but whether impelled by the species of terror
that sometimes urges its victim over the very precipice
which he shrinks from, or by a natural magnetism, tending
towards the great centre of humanity, it were not easy to
decide. Both impulses might have wrought on him at
once.
But his companions, affrighted by his gesture, — which
was that of a man hurried away, in spite of himself, —
seized Clifford's garment and held him back. Hepzibah
shrieked. Phœbe, to whom all extravagance was a horror,
burst into sobs and tears.
“Clifford, Clifford! are you crazy?” cried his sister.
“I hardly know, Hepzibah,” said Clifford, drawing a long
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breath. “Fear nothing, — it is over now, — but had I taken
that plunge, and survived it, methinks it would have made
me another man!”
Possibly, in some sense, Clifford may have been right.
He needed a shock; or perhaps he required to take a deep,
deep plunge into the ocean of human life, and to sink
down and be covered by its profoundness, and then to
emerge, sobered, invigorated, restored to the world and to
himself. Perhaps, again, he required nothing less than the
great final remedy — death!
A similar yearning to renew the broken links of brotherhood
with his kind sometimes showed itself in a milder form;
and once it was made beautiful by the religion that lay even
deeper than itself. In the incident now to be sketched,
there was a touching recognition, on Clifford's part, of God's
care and love towards him, — towards this poor, forsaken
man, who, if any mortal could, might have been pardoned
for regarding himself as thrown aside, forgotten, and left to
be the sport of some fiend, whose playfulness was an ecstasy
of mischief.
It was the Sabbath morning; one of those bright, calm
Sabbaths, with its own hallowed atmosphere, when Heaven
seems to diffuse itself over the earth's face in a solemn
smile, no less sweet than solemn. On such a Sabbath
morn, were we pure enough to be its medium, we should
be conscious of the earth's natural worship ascending through
our frames, on whatever spot of ground we stood. The
church-bells, with various tones, but all in harmony, were
calling out, and responding to one another — “It is the Sabbath! —
The Sabbath! — Yea; the Sabbath!” — and over
the whole city the bells scattered the blessed sounds, now
slowly, now with livelier joy, now one bell alone, now all
the bells together, crying earnestly — “It is the Sabbath!”
and flinging their accents afar off, to melt into the air, and
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pervade it with the holy word. The air, with God's sweetest
and tenderest sunshine in it, was meet for mankind to
breathe into their hearts, and send it forth again as the
utterance of prayer.
Clifford sat at the window, with Hepzibah, watching the
neighbors as they stepped into the street. All of them,
however unspiritual on other days, were transfigured by the
Sabbath influence; so that their very garments — whether
it were an old man's decent coat, well brushed for the
thousandth time, or a little boy's first sack and trousers,
finished yesterday by his mother's needle — had somewhat
of the quality of ascension-robes. Forth, likewise, from
the portal of the old house, stepped Phœbe, putting up her
small green sunshade, and throwing upward a glance and
smile of parting kindness to the faces at the arched window.
In her aspect there was a familiar gladness, and a holiness
that you could play with, and yet reverence it as much as
ever. She was like a prayer, offered up in the homeliest
beauty of one's mother-tongue. Fresh was Phœbe, moreover,
and airy and sweet in her apparel; as if nothing that
she wore — neither her gown, nor her small straw bonnet,
nor her little kerchief, any more than her snowy stockings—
had ever been put on before; or, if worn, were all the
fresher for it, and with a fragrance as if they had lain
among the rose-buds.
The girl waved her hand to Hepzibah and Clifford, and
went up the street; a religion in herself, warm, simple,
true, with a substance that could walk on earth, and a spirit
that was capable of heaven.
“Hepzibah,” asked Clifford, after watching Phœbe to the
corner, “do you never go to church?”
“No, Clifford!” she replied, — “not these many, many
years!”
“Were I to be there,” he rejoined, “it seems to me that I
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could pray once more, when so many human souls were
praying all around me!”
She looked into Clifford's face, and beheld there a soft,
natural effusion; for his heart gushed out, as it were, and
ran over at his eyes, in delightful reverence for God, and
kindly affection for his human brethren. The emotion
communicated itself to Hepzibah. She yearned to take
him by the hand, and go and kneel down, they two together,—
both so long separate from the world, and, as she now
recognized, scarcely friends with Him above, — to kneel
down among the people, and be reconciled to God and man
at once.
“Dear brother,” said she, earnestly, “let us go! We
belong nowhere. We have not a foot of space in any
church to kneel upon; but let us go to some place of worship,
even if we stand in the broad aisle. Poor and forsaken
as we are, some pew-door will be opened to us!”
So Hepzibah and her brother made themselves ready, —
as ready as they could, in the best of their old-fashioned
garments, which had hung on pegs, or been laid away in
trunks, so long that the dampness and mouldy smell of the
past was on them, — made themselves ready, in their faded
bettermost, to go to church. They descended the staircase
together, — gaunt, sallow Hepzibah, and pale, emaciated,
age-stricken Clifford! They pulled open the front door, and
stepped across the threshold, and felt, both of them, as if
they were standing in the presence of the whole world, and
with mankind's great and terrible eye on them alone. The
eye of their Father seemed to be withdrawn, and gave
them no encouragement. The warm sunny air of the
street made them shiver. Their hearts quaked within
them, at the idea of taking one step further.
“It cannot be, Hepzibah! — it is too late,” said Clifford,
with deep sadness. — “We are ghosts! We have no right
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among human beings, — no right anywhere, but in this old
house, which has a curse on it, and which therefore we are
doomed to haunt! And, besides,” he continued, with a
fastidious sensibility, inalienably characteristic of the man,
“it would not be fit nor beautiful to go! It is an ugly
thought, that I should be frightful to my fellow-beings, and
that children would cling to their mothers' gowns, at sight
of me!”
They shrank back into the dusky passage-way, and
closed the door. But, going up the staircase again, they
found the whole interior of the house ten-fold more dismal,
and the air closer and heavier, for the glimpse and breath
of freedom which they had just snatched. They could not
flee; their jailer had but left the door ajar, in mockery, and
stood behind it, to watch them stealing out. At the threshold,
they felt his pitiless gripe upon them. For, what
other dungeon is so dark as one's own heart! What jailer
so inexorable as one's self!
But it would be no fair picture of Clifford's state of mind,
were we to represent him as continually or prevailingly
wretched. On the contrary, there was no other man in the
city, we are bold to affirm, of so much as half his years,
who enjoyed so many lightsome and griefless moments as
himself. He had no burthen of care upon him; there were
none of those questions and contingencies with the future
to be settled, which wear away all other lives, and render
them not worth having by the very process of providing for
their support. In this respect, he was a child, — a child
for the whole term of his existence, be it long or short.
Indeed, his life seemed to be standing still at a period little
in advance of childhood, and to cluster all his reminiscences
about that epoch; just as, after the torpor of a heavy blow,
the sufferer's reviving consciousness goes back to a moment
considerably behind the accident that stupefied him. He
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sometimes told Phœbe and Hepzibah his dreams, in which
he invariably played the part of a child, or a very young
man. So vivid were they, in his relation of them, that he
once held a dispute with his sister as to the particular figure
or print of a chintz morning-dress, which he had seen their
mother wear, in the dream of the preceding night. Hepzibah,
piquing herself on a woman's accuracy in such matters,
held it to be slightly different from what Clifford
described; but, producing the very gown from an old trunk,
it proved to be identical with his remembrance of it. Had
Clifford, every time that he emerged out of dreams so lifelike,
undergone the torture of transformation from a boy
into an old and broken man, the daily recurrence of the
shock would have been too much to bear. It would have
caused an acute agony to thrill, from the morning twilight,
all the day through, until bedtime; and even then would
have mingled a dull, inscrutable pain, and pallid hue of
misfortune, with the visionary bloom and adolescence of his
slumber. But the nightly moonshine interwove itself with
the morning mist, and enveloped him as in a robe, which
he hugged about his person, and seldom let realities pierce
through; he was not often quite awake, but slept open-eyed,
and perhaps fancied himself most dreaming then.
Thus, lingering always so near his childhood, he had
sympathies with children, and kept his heart the fresher
thereby, like a reservoir into which rivulets were pouring,
not far from the fountain-head. Though prevented, by a
subtle sense of propriety, from desiring to associate with
them, he loved few things better than to look out of the
arched window, and see a little girl driving her hoop along
the sidewalk, or schoolboys at a game of ball. Their
voices, also, were very pleasant to him, heard at a distance,
all swarming and intermingling together, as flies do in a
sunny room.
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Clifford would, doubtless, have been glad to share their
sports. One afternoon, he was seized with an irresistible
desire to blow soap-bubbles; an amusement, as Hepzibah
told Phœbe apart, that had been a favorite one with her
brother, when they were both children. Behold him, therefore,
at the arched window, with an earthen pipe in his
mouth! Behold him, with his gray hair, and a wan, unreal
smile over his countenance, where still hovered a beautiful
grace, which his worst enemy must have acknowledged to
be spiritual and immortal, since it had survived so long!
Behold him, scattering airy spheres abroad, from the window
into the street! Little impalpable worlds were those
soap-bubbles, with the big world depicted, in hues bright as
imagination, or the nothing of their surface. It was curious
to see how the passers-by regarded these brilliant fantasies,
as they came floating down, and made the dull atmosphere
imaginative about them. Some stopped to gaze, and, perhaps,
carried a pleasant recollection of the bubbles onward as
far as the street-corner; some looked angrily upward, as if
poor Clifford wronged them, by setting an image of beauty
afloat so near their dusty pathway. A great many put out
their fingers or their walking-sticks, to touch, withal; and
were perversely gratified, no doubt, when the bubble, with
all its pictured earth and sky scene, vanished as if it had
never been.
At length, just as an elderly gentleman of very dignified
presence happened to be passing, a large bubble sailed
majestically down, and burst right against his nose! He
looked up, — at first with a stern, keen glance, which penetrated
at once into the obscurity behind the arched window,—
then with a smile, which might be conceived as diffusing
a dog-day sultriness for the space of several yards about him.
“Aha, Cousin Clifford!” cried Judge Pyncheon. “What!
still blowing soap-bubbles!”
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The tone seemed as if meant to be kind and soothing,
but yet had a bitterness of sarcasm in it. As for Clifford,
an absolute palsy of fear came over him. Apart from any
definite cause of dread which his past experience might
have given him, he felt that native and original horror of
the excellent judge which is proper to a weak, delicate and
apprehensive character, in the presence of massive strength.
Strength is incomprehensible by weakness, and, therefore,
the more terrible. There is no greater bugbear than a
strong-willed relative, in the circle of his own connections.
-- 187 -- p574-196
XII. THE DAGUERREOTYPIST.
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It must not be supposed that the life of a personage naturally
so active as Phœbe could be wholly confined within
the precincts of the old Pyncheon-house. Clifford's demands
upon her time were usually satisfied, in those long
days, considerably earlier than sunset. Quiet as his daily
existence seemed, it nevertheless drained all the resources
by which he lived. It was not physical exercise that over-wearied
him; for — except that he sometimes wrought a
little with a hoe, or paced the garden-walk, or, in rainy
weather, traversed a large, unoccupied room — it was his
tendency to remain only too quiescent, as regarded any toil
of the limbs and muscles. But, either there was a smouldering
fire within him that consumed his vital energy, or
the monotony that would have dragged itself with benumbing
effect over a mind differently situated was no monotony
to Clifford. Possibly, he was in a state of second
growth and recovery, and was constantly assimilating nutriment
for his spirit and intellect from sights, sounds, and
events, which passed as a perfect void to persons more
practised with the world. As all is activity and vicissitude
to the new mind of a child, so might it be, likewise, to a
mind that had undergone a kind of new creation, after its
long-suspended life.
Be the cause what it might, Clifford commonly retired to
rest, thoroughly exhausted, while the sunbeams were still
melting through his window-curtains, or were thrown with
late lustre on the chamber wall. And while he thus slept
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early, as other children do, and dreamed of childhood, Phœbe
was free to follow her own tastes for the remainder of the
day and evening.
This was a freedom essential to the health even of a
character so little susceptible of morbid influences as that of
Phœbe. The old house, as we have already said, had both
the dry-rot and the damp-rot in its walls; it was not good
to breathe no other atmosphere than that. Hepzibah, though
she had her valuable and redeeming traits, had grown to be
a kind of lunatic, by imprisoning herself so long in one
place, with no other company than a single series of ideas,
and but one affection, and one bitter sense of wrong. Clifford,
the reader may perhaps imagine, was too inert to
operate morally on his fellow-creatures, however intimate
and exclusive their relations with him. But the sympathy
or magnetism among human beings is more subtle and universal
than we think; it exists, indeed, among different
classes of organized life, and vibrates from one to another.
A flower, for instance, as Phœbe herself observed, always
began to droop sooner in Clifford's hand, or Hepzibah's,
than in her own; and by the same law, converting her
whole daily life into a flower-fragrance for these two sickly
spirits, the blooming girl must inevitably droop and fade
much sooner than if worn on a younger and happier breast.
Unless she had now and then indulged her brisk impulses,
and breathed rural air in a suburban walk, or ocean-breezes
along the shore, — had occasionally obeyed the impulse of
nature, in New England girls, by attending a metaphysical
or philosophical lecture, or viewing a seven-mile panorama,
or listening to a concert, — had gone shopping about the city,
ransacking entire depôts of splendid merchandise, and bringing
home a ribbon, — had employed, likewise, a little time to
read the Bible in her chamber, and had stolen a little more
to think of her mother and her native place, — unless for such
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moral medicines as the above, we should soon have beheld
our poor Phœbe grow thin, and put on a bleached, unwholesome
aspect, and assume strange, shy ways, prophetic of
old-maidenhood and a cheerless future.
Even as it was, a change grew visible; a change partly
to be regretted, although whatever charm it infringed upon
was repaired by another, perhaps more precious. She was
not so constantly gay, but had her moods of thought, which
Clifford, on the whole, liked better than her former phase
of unmingled cheerfulness; because now she understood
him better and more delicately, and sometimes even interpreted
him to himself. Her eyes looked larger, and darker,
and deeper; so deep, at some silent moments, that they
seemed like Artesian wells, down, down, into the infinite.
She was less girlish than when we first beheld her, alighting
from the omnibus; less girlish, but more a woman.
The only youthful mind with which Phœbe had an
opportunity of frequent intercourse was that of the daguerreotypist.
Inevitably, by the pressure of the seclusion about
them, they had been brought into habits of some familiarity.
Had they met under different circumstances, neither
of these young persons would have been likely to bestow
much thought upon the other; unless, indeed, their extreme
dissimilarity should have proved a principle of mutual attraction.
Both, it is true, were characters proper to New England
life, and possessing a common ground, therefore, in their
more external developments; but as unlike, in their respective
interiors, as if their native climes had been at worldwide
distance. During the early part of their acquaintance,
Phœbe had held back rather more than was customary with
her frank and simple manners from Holgrave's not very
marked advances. Nor was she yet satisfied that she knew
him well, although they almost daily met and talked
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together, in a kind, friendly, and what seemed to be a
familiar way.
The artist, in a desultory manner, had imparted to Phœbe
something of his history. Young as he was, and had his
career terminated at the point already attained, there had
been enough of incident to fill, very creditably, an autobiographic
volume. A romance on the plan of Gil Blas,
adapted to American society and manners, would cease to
be a romance. The experience of many individuals among
us, who think it hardly worth the telling, would equal the
vicissitudes of the Spaniard's earlier life; while their ultimate
success, or the point whither they tend, may be incomparably
higher than any that a novelist would imagine for
his hero. Holgrave, as he told Phœbe, somewhat proudly,
could not boast of his origin, unless as being exceedingly
humble, nor of his education, except that it had been the
scantiest possible, and obtained by a few winter-months'
attendance at a district school. Left early to his own guidance,
he had begun to be self-dependent while yet a boy;
and it was a condition aptly suited to his natural force of
will. Though now but twenty-two years old (lacking some
months, which are years in such a life), he had already
been, first, a country schoolmaster; next, a salesman in a
country store; and, either at the same time or afterwards,
the political editor of a country newspaper. He had subsequently
travelled New England and the Middle States, as a
pedler, in the employment of a Connecticut manufactory of
cologne-water and other essences. In an episodical way,
he had studied and practised dentistry, and with very flattering
success, especially in many of the factory-towns along
our inland streams. As a supernumerary official, of some
kind or other, aboard a packet-ship, he had visited Europe,
and found means, before his return, to see Italy, and part
of France and Germany. At a later period, he had spent
-- 191 --
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some months in a community of Fourierists. Still more
recently, he had been a public lecturer on Mesmerism, for
which science (as he assured Phœbe, and, indeed, satisfactorily
proved, by putting Chanticleer, who happened to
be scratching near by, to sleep) he had very remarkable
endowments.
His present phase, as a daguerreotypist, was of no more
importance in his own view, nor likely to be more permanent,
than any of the preceding ones. It had been taken up with
the careless alacrity of an adventurer, who had his bread to
earn. It would be thrown aside as carelessly, whenever he
should choose to earn his bread by some other equally
digressive means. But what was most remarkable, and,
perhaps, showed a more than common poise in the young
man, was the fact, that, amid all these personal vicissitudes,
he had never lost his identity. Homeless as he had been,—
continually changing his whereabout, and, therefore,
responsible neither to public opinion nor to individuals, —
putting off one exterior, and snatching up another, to be
soon shifted for a third, — he had never violated the innermost
man, but had carried his conscience along with him.
It was impossible to know Holgrave, without recognizing
this to be the fact. Hepzibah had seen it. Phœbe soon
saw it, likewise, and gave him the sort of confidence which
such a certainty inspires. She was startled, however, and
sometimes repelled, — not by any doubt of his integrity to
whatever law he acknowledged, — but by a sense that his
law differed from her own. He made her uneasy, and
seemed to unsettle everything around her, by his lack of
reverence for what was fixed, unless, at a moment's warning,
it could establish its right to hold its ground.
Then, moreover, she scarcely thought him affectionate in
his nature. He was too calm and cool an observer. Phœbe
felt his eye, often; his heart, seldom, or never. He took a
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certain kind of interest in Hepzibah and her brother, and
Phœbe herself. He studied them attentively, and allowed
no slightest circumstance of their individualities to escape
him. He was ready to do them whatever good he might;
but, after all, he never exactly made common cause with
them, nor gave any reliable evidence that he loved them
better, in proportion as he knew them more. In his relations
with them, he seemed to be in quest of mental food,
not heart-sustenance. Phœbe could not conceive what
interested him so much in her friends and herself, intellectually,
since he cared nothing for them, or, comparatively, so
little, as objects of human affection.
Always, in his interviews with Phœbe, the artist made
especial inquiry as to the welfare of Clifford, whom, except
at the Sunday festival, he seldom saw.
“Does he still seem happy?” he asked, one day.
“As happy as a child,” answered Phœbe; “but — like a
child, too — very easily disturbed.”
“How disturbed?” inquired Holgrave. “By things
without, or by thoughts within?”
“I cannot see his thoughts! How should I?” replied
Phœbe, with simple piquancy. “Very often, his humor
changes without any reason that can be guessed at, just as
a cloud comes over the sun. Latterly, since I have begun
to know him better, I feel it to be not quite right to look
closely into his moods. He has had such a great sorrow,
that his heart is made all solemn and sacred by it. When
he is cheerful, — when the sun shines into his mind, — then
I venture to peep in, just as far as the light reaches, but no
further. It is holy ground where the shadow falls!”
“How prettily you express this sentiment!” said the
artist. “I can understand the feeling, without possessing it.
Had I your opportunities, no scruples would prevent me
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from fathoming Clifford to the full depth of my plummetline!”
“How strange that you should wish it!” remarked
Phœbe, involuntarily. “What is Cousin Clifford to you?”
“O, nothing, — of course, nothing!” answered Holgrave,
with a smile. “Only this is such an odd and incomprehensible
world! The more I look at it, the more it puzzles me;
and I begin to suspect that a man's bewilderment is the
measure of his wisdom. Men and women, and children,
too, are such strange creatures, that one never can be certain
that he really knows them; nor ever guess what they have
been, from what he sees them to be, now. Judge Pyncheon!
Clifford! What a complex riddle — a complexity
of complexities — do they present! It requires intuitive
sympathy, like a young girl's, to solve it. A mere observer,
like myself (who never have any intuitions, and am, at
best, only subtile and acute), is pretty certain to go astray.”
The artist now turned the conversation to themes less
dark than that which they had touched upon. Phœbe and
he were young together; nor had Holgrave, in his premature
experience of life, wasted entirely that beautiful spirit
of youth, which, gushing forth from one small heart and
fancy, may diffuse itself over the universe, making it all as
bright as on the first day of creation. Man's own youth
is the world's youth; at least, he feels as if it were, and
imagines that the earth's granite substance is something not
yet hardened, and which he can mould into whatever shape
he likes. So it was with Holgrave. He could talk sagely
about the world's old age, but never actually believed what
he said; he was a young man still, and therefore looked
upon the world — that gray-bearded and wrinkled profligate,
decrepit, without being venerable — as a tender stripling,
capable of being improved into all that it ought to be, but
scarcely yet had shown the remotest promise of becoming.
-- 194 --
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He had that sense, or inward prophecy, — which a young
man had better never have been born than not to have, and
a mature man had better die at once than utterly to relinquish, —
that we are not doomed to creep on forever in the
old, bad way, but that, this very now, there are the harbingers
abroad of a golden era, to be accomplished in his
own lifetime. It seemed to Holgrave — as doubtless it has
seemed to the hopeful of every century, since the epoch of
Adam's grandchildren — that in this age, more than ever
before, the moss-grown and rotten Past is to be torn down,
and lifeless institutions to be thrust out of the way, and their
dead corpses buried, and everything to begin anew.
As to the main point, — may we never live to doubt it! —
as to the better centuries that are coming, the artist was
surely right. His error lay in supposing that this age,
more than any past or future one, is destined to see the tattered
garments of Antiquity exchanged for a new suit, instead
of gradually renewing themselves by patchwork; in
applying his own little life-span as the measure of an interminable
achievement; and, more than all, in fancying that
it mattered anything to the great end in view, whether he
himself should contend for it or against it. Yet it was well
for him to think so. This enthusiasm, infusing itself
through the calmness of his character, and thus taking an
aspect of settled thought and wisdom, would serve to keep
his youth pure, and make his aspirations high. And
when, with the years settling down more weightily upon
him, his early faith should be modified by inevitable experience,
it would be with no harsh and sudden revolution of
his sentiments. He would still have faith in man's brightening
destiny, and perhaps love him all the better, as he
should recognize his helplessness in his own behalf; and the
haughty faith, with which he began life, would be well bartered
for a far humbler one, at its close, in discerning that
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women. To this day, however, I hardly know whether
I then beheld Zenobia in her truest attitude, or whether
that were the truer one in which she had presented herself
at Blithedale. In both, there was something like
the illusion which a great actress flings around her.
“Have you given up Blithedale forever?” I inquired.
“Why should you think so?” asked she.
“I cannot tell,” answered I; “except that it appears
all like a dream that we were ever there together.”
“It is not so to me,” said Zenobia. “I should think
it a poor and meagre nature, that is capable of but one
set of forms, and must convert all the past into a dream
merely because the present happens to be unlike it.
Why should we be content with our homely life of a
few months past, to the exclusion of all other modes? It
was good; but there are other lives as good, or better.
Not, you will understand, that I condemn those who give
themselves up to it more entirely than I, for myself,
should deem it wise to do.”
It irritated me, this self-complacent, condescending,
qualified approval and criticism of a system to which
many individuals — perhaps as highly endowed as our
gorgeous Zenobia — had contributed their all of earthly
endeavor, and their loftiest aspirations. I determined to
make proof if there were any spell that would exorcise
her out of the part which she seemed to be acting. She
should be compelled to give me a glimpse of something
true; some nature, some passion, no matter whether
right or wrong, provided it were real.
“Your allusion to that class of circumscribed characters,
who can live only in one mode of life,” remarked I,
coolly, “reminds me of our poor friend Hollingsworth.
Possibly he was in your thoughts when you spoke thus.
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just about Holgrave's age, for whom we anticipate wonderful
things, but of whom, even after much and careful
inquiry, we never happen to hear another word. The
effervescence of youth and passion, and the fresh gloss of
the intellect and imagination, endow them with a false brilliancy,
which makes fools of themselves and other people.
Like certain chintzes, calicoes, and ginghams, they show
finely in their first newness, but cannot stand the sun and
rain, and assume a very sober aspect after washing-day.
But our business is with Holgrave as we find him on
this particular afternoon, and in the arbor of the Pyncheon-garden.
In that point of view, it was a pleasant sight to
behold this young man, with so much faith in himself, and
so fair an appearance of admirable powers, — so little
harmed, too, by the many tests that had tried his metal, —
it was pleasant to see him in his kindly intercourse with
Phœbe. Her thought had scarcely done him justice, when
it pronounced him cold; or, if so, he had grown warmer
now. Without such purpose on her part, and unconsciously
on his, she made the House of the Seven Gables like a home
to him, and the garden a familiar precinct. With the
insight on which he prided himself, he fancied that he
could look through Phœbe, and all around her, and could
read her off like a page of a child's story-book. But these
transparent natures are often deceptive in their depth;
those pebbles at the bottom of the fountain are further
from us than we think. Thus the artist, whatever he might
judge of Phœbe's capacity, was beguiled, by some silent
charm of hers, to talk freely of what he dreamed of doing
in the world. He poured himself out as to another self.
Very possibly, he forgot Phœbe while he talked to her, and
was moved only by the inevitable tendency of thought,
when rendered sympathetic by enthusiasm and emotion, to
flow into the first safe reservoir which it finds. But, had
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possesses the faculty of distinguishing heroism from
absurdity.”
I dared make no retort to Zenobia's concluding apothegm.
In truth, I admired her fidelity. It gave me a
new sense of Hollingsworth's native power, to discover
that his influence was no less potent with this beautiful
woman, here, in the midst of artificial life, than it had
been at the foot of the gray rock, and among the wild
birch-trees of the wood-path, when she so passionately
pressed his hand against her heart. The great, rude,
shaggy, swarthy man! And Zenobia loved him!
“Did you bring Priscilla with you?” I resumed.
“Do you know I have sometimes fancied it not quite
safe, considering the susceptibility of her temperament,
that she should be so constantly within the sphere of a
man like Hollingsworth. Such tender and delicate
natures, among your sex, have often, I believe, a very
adequate appreciation of the heroic element in men.
But then, again, I should suppose them as likely as any
other women to make a reciprocal impression. Hollingsworth
could hardly give his affections to a person capable
of taking an independent stand, but only to one whom
he might absorb into himself. He has certainly shown
great tenderness for Priscilla.”
Zenobia had turned aside. But I caught the reflection
of her face in the mirror, and saw that it was very pale,—
as pale, in her rich attire, as if a shroud were round her.
“Priscilla is here,” said she, her voice a little lower
than usual. “Have not you learnt as much from your
chamber window? Would you like to see her?”
She made a step or two into the back drawing-room,
and called,
“Priscilla! Dear Priscilla!”
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a dead man's icy hand obstructs us! Turn our eyes to
what point we may, a dead man's white, immitigable face
encounters them, and freezes our very heart! And we
must be dead ourselves, before we can begin to have our
proper influence on our own world, which will then be no
longer our world, but the world of another generation,
with which we shall have no shadow of a right to interfere.
I ought to have said, too, that we live in dead men's houses;
as, for instance, in this of the seven gables!”
“And why not,” said Phœbe, “so long as we can be
comfortable in them?”
“But we shall live to see the day, I trust,” went on the
artist, “when no man shall build his house for posterity.
Why should he? He might just as reasonably order a
durable suit of clothes, — leather, or gutta percha, or whatever
else lasts longest, — so that his great-grandchildren
should have the benefit of them, and cut precisely the same
figure in the world that he himself does. If each generation
were allowed and expected to build its own houses, that
single change, comparatively unimportant in itself, would
imply almost every reform which society is now suffering
for. I doubt whether even our public edifices — our capitols,
state-houses, court-houses, city-halls, and churches —
ought to be built of such permanent materials as stone or
brick. It were better that they should crumble to ruin, once
in twenty years, or thereabouts, as a hint to the people to
examine into and reform the institutions which they symbolize.”
“How you hate everything old!” said Phœbe, in dismay.
“It makes me dizzy to think of such a shifting world!”
“I certainly love nothing mouldy,” answered Holgrave.
“Now, this old Pyncheon-house! Is it a wholesome place
to live in, with its black shingles, and the green moss that
shows how damp they are? — its dark, low-studded rooms?
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— its grime and sordidness, which are the crystallization on
its walls of the human breath, that has been drawn and
exhaled here, in discontent and anguish? The house
ought to be purified with fire, — purified till only its ashes
remain!”
“Then why do you live in it?” asked Phœbe, a little
piqued.
“O, I am pursuing my studies here; not in books, however,”
replied Holgrave. “The house, in my view, is
expressive of that odious and abominable Past, with all its
bad influences, against which I have just been declaiming.
I dwell in it for a while, that I may know the better how to
hate it. By-the-by, did you ever hear the story of Maule,
the wizard, and what happened between him and your
immeasurably great-grandfather?”
“Yes indeed!” said Phœbe; “I heard it long ago, from
my father, and two or three times from my cousin Hepzibah,
in the month that I have been here. She seems to
think that all the calamities of the Pyncheons began from
that quarrel with the wizard, as you call him. And you,
Mr. Holgrave, look as if you thought so too! How singular,
that you should believe what is so very absurd, when
you reject many things that are a great deal worthier of
credit!”
“I do believe it,” said the artist, seriously; “not as a
superstition, however, but as proved by unquestionable facts,
and as exemplifying a theory. Now, see; — under those
seven gables, at which we now look up, — and which old
Colonel Pyncheon meant to be the house of his descendants,
in prosperity and happiness, down to an epoch far
beyond the present, — under that roof, through a portion of
three centuries, there has been perpetual remorse of conscience,
a constantly defeated hope, strife amongst kindred,
various misery, a strange form of death, dark suspicion,
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unspeakable disgrace, — all, or most of which calamity, I
have the means of tracing to the old Puritan's inordinate
desire to plant and endow a family. To plant a family!
This idea is at the bottom of most of the wrong and mischief
which men do. The truth is, that, once in every half
century, at longest, a family should be merged into the
great, obscure mass of humanity, and forget all about its
ancestors. Human blood, in order to keep its freshness,
should run in hidden streams, as the water of an aqueduct
is conveyed in subterranean pipes. In the family existence
of these Pyncheons, for instance, — forgive me, Phœbe; but
I cannot think of you as one of them, — in their brief New
England pedigree, there has been time enough to infect
them all with one kind of lunacy or another!”
“You speak very unceremoniously of my kindred,” said
Phœbe, debating with herself whether she ought to take
offence.
“I speak true thoughts to a true mind!” answered Holgrave,
with a vehemence which Phœbe had not before witnessed
in him. “The truth is as I say! Furthermore, the
original perpetrator and father of this mischief appears to
have perpetuated himself, and still walks the street, — at
least, his very image, in mind and body, — with the fairest
prospect of transmitting to posterity as rich and as wretched
an inheritance as he has received! Do you remember the
daguerreotype, and its resemblance to the old portrait?”
“How strangely in earnest you are!” exclaimed Phœbe,
looking at him with surprise and perplexity: half alarmed,
and partly inclined to laugh. “You talk of the lunacy of
the Pyncheons; — is it contagious?”
“I understand you!” said the artist, coloring and laughing.
“I believe I am a little mad. This subject has taken
hold of my mind with the strangest tenacity of clutch, since
I have lodged in yonder old gable. As one method of
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throwing it off, I have put an incident of the Pyncheon family
history, with which I happen to be acquainted, into the
form of a legend, and mean to publish it in a magazine.”
“Do you write for the magazines?” inquired Phœbe.
“Is it possible you did not know it?” cried Holgrave.—
“Well, such is literary fame! Yes, Miss Phœbe Pyncheon,
among the multitude of my marvellous gifts, I have
that of writing stories; and my name has figured, I can
assure you, on the covers of Graham and Godey, making
as respectable an appearance, for aught I could see, as any
of the canonized bead-roll with which it was associated. In
the humorous line, I am thought to have a very pretty way
with me; and as for pathos, I am as provocative of tears as
an onion. But shall I read you my story?”
“Yes, if it is not very long,” said Phœbe, — and added,
laughingly, — “nor very dull.”
As this latter point was one which the daguerreotypist
could not decide for himself, he forthwith produced his roll
of manuscript, and, while the late sunbeams gilded the
seven gables, began to read.
-- -- p574-211
XIII. ALICE PYNCHEON.
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There was a message brought, one day, from the worshipful
Gervayse Pyncheon to young Matthew Maule, the
carpenter, desiring his immediate presence at the House of
the Seven Gables.
“And what does your master want with me?” said the
carpenter to Mr. Pyncheon's black servant. “Does the house
need any repair? Well it may, by this time; and no
blame to my father who built it, neither! I was reading the
old colonel's tombstone, no longer ago than last Sabbath;
and reckoning from that date, the house has stood seven-and-thirty
years. No wonder if there should be a job to do
on the roof.”
“Don't know what massa wants,” answered Scipio.
“The house is a berry good house, and old Colonel Pyncheon
think so too, I reckon; — else why the old man haunt it
so, and frighten a poor nigga, as he does?”
“Well, well, friend Scipio; let your master know that
I'm coming,” said the carpenter, with a laugh. “For a
fair, workman-like job, he'll find me his man. And so the
house is haunted, is it? It will take a tighter workman
than I am to keep the spirits out of the seven gables.
Even if the colonel would be quit,” he added, muttering to
himself, “my old grandfather, the wizard, will be pretty sure
to stick to the Pyncheons, as long as their walls hold
together.”
“What 's that you mutter to yourself, Matthew Maule?”
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asked Scipio. “And what for do you look so black at
me?”
“No matter, darkey!” said the carpenter. “Do you
think nobody is to look black but yourself? Go tell your
master I 'm coming; and if you happen to see Mistress
Alice, his daughter, give Matthew Maule's humble respects
to her. She has brought a fair face from Italy, — fair, and
gentle, and proud, — has that same Alice Pyncheon!”
“He talk of Mistress Alice!” cried Scipio, as he
returned from his errand. “The low carpenter-man! He
no business so much as to look at her a great way off!”
This young Matthew Maule, the carpenter, it must be
observed, was a person little understood, and not very generally
liked, in the town where he resided; not that anything
could be alleged against his integrity, or his skill and
diligence in the handicraft which he exercised. The aversion
(as it might justly be called) with which many persons
regarded him, was partly the result of his own character and
deportment, and partly an inheritance.
He was the grandson of a former Matthew Maule, one of
the early settlers of the town, and who had been a famous
and terrible wizard, in his day. This old reprobate was
one of the sufferers when Cotton Mather, and his brother
ministers, and the learned judges, and other wise men, and
Sir William Phipps, the sagacious governor, made such laudable
efforts to weaken the great enemy of souls, by sending a
multitude of his adherents up the rocky pathway of Gallows
Hill. Since those days, no doubt, it had grown to be suspected,
that, in consequence of an unfortunate overdoing of
a work praiseworthy in itself, the proceedings against the
witches had proved far less acceptable to the Beneficent Father
than to that very Arch Enemy whom they were intended
to distress and utterly overwhelm. It is not the less certain,
however, that awe and terror brooded over the memories of
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those who died for this horrible crime of witchcraft. Their
graves, in the crevices of the rocks, were supposed to be
incapable of retaining the occupants who had been so hastily
thrust into them. Old Matthew Maule, especially, was
known to have as little hesitation or difficulty in rising out
of his grave as an ordinary man in getting out of bed, and
was as often seen at midnight as living people at noonday.
This pestilent wizard (in whom his just punishment seemed
to have wrought no manner of amends) had an inveterate
habit of haunting a certain mansion, styled the House of the
Seven Gables, against the owner of which he pretended to
hold an unsettled claim for ground-rent. The ghost, it appears, —
with the pertinacity which was one of his distinguishing
characteristics while alive, — insisted that he was
the rightful proprietor of the site upon which the house
stood. His terms were, that either the aforesaid ground-rent,
from the day when the cellar began to be dug, should
be paid down, or the mansion itself given up; else he, the
ghostly creditor, would have his finger in all the affairs of
the Pyncheons, and make everything go wrong with them,
though it should be a thousand years after his death. It
was a wild story, perhaps, but seemed not altogether so incredible,
to those who could remember what an inflexibly
obstinate old fellow this wizard Maule had been.
Now, the wizard's grandson, the young Matthew Maule
of our story, was popularly supposed to have inherited some
of his ancestor's questionable traits. It is wonderful how
many absurdities were promulgated in reference to the
young man. He was fabled, for example, to have a strange
power of getting into people's dreams, and regulating matters
there according to his own fancy, pretty much like the
stage-manager of a theatre. There was a great deal of
talk among the neighbors, particularly the petticoated ones,
about what they called the witchcraft of Maule's eye,
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Some said that he could look into people's minds; others,
that, by the marvellous power of this eye, he could draw
people into his own mind, or send them, if he pleased, to do
errands to his grandfather, in the spiritual world; others,
again, that it was what is termed an Evil Eye, and possessed
the valuable faculty of blighting corn, and drying
children into mummies with the heart-burn. But, after all,
what worked most to the young carpenter's disadvantage
was, first, the reserve and sternness of his natural disposition,
and next, the fact of his not being a church-communicant,
and the suspicion of his holding heretical tenets in
matters of religion and polity.
After receiving Mr. Pyncheon's message, the carpenter
merely tarried to finish a small job, which he happened to
have in hand, and then took his way towards the House of
the Seven Gables. This noted edifice, though its style might
be getting a little out of fashion, was still as respectable a
family residence as that of any gentleman in town. The
present owner, Gervayse Pyncheon, was said to have contracted
a dislike to the house, in consequence of a shock to
his sensibility, in early childhood, from the sudden death of
his grandfather. In the very act of running to climb
Colonel Pyncheon's knee, the boy had discovered the old
Puritan to be a corpse! On arriving at manhood, Mr.
Pyncheon had visited England, where he married a lady
of fortune, and had subsequently spent many years, partly
in the mother country, and partly in various cities on the
continent of Europe. During this period, the family mansion
had been consigned to the charge of a kinsman, who
was allowed to make it his home, for the time being, in consideration
of keeping the premises in thorough repair. So
faithfully had this contract been fulfilled, that now, as the
carpenter approached the house, his practised eye could
detect nothing to criticize in its condition. The peaks of
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the seven gables rose up sharply; the shingled roof looked
thoroughly water-tight; and the glittering plaster-work
entirely covered the exterior walls, and sparkled in the
October sun, as if it had been new only a week ago.
The house had that pleasant aspect of life which is like
the cheery expression of comfortable activity in the human
countenance. You could see, at once, that there was the
stir of a large family within it. A huge load of oak-wood
was passing through the gateway, towards the out-buildings
in the rear; the fat cook — or probably it might be the
housekeeper — stood at the side-door, bargaining for some
turkeys and poultry, which a countryman had brought for
sale. Now and then, a maid-servant, neatly dressed, and
now the shining sable face of a slave, might be seen
bustling across the windows, in the lower part of the house.
At an open window of a room in the second story, hanging
over some pots of beautiful and delicate flowers, — exotics,
but which had never known a more genial sunshine than
that of the New England autumn, — was the figure of a
young lady, an exotic, like the flowers, and beautiful and
delicate as they. Her presence imparted an indescribable
grace and faint witchery to the whole edifice. In other
respects, it was a substantial, jolly-looking mansion, and
seemed fit to be the residence of a patriarch, who might
establish his own head-quarters in the front gable, and
assign one of the remainder to each of his six children;
while the great chimney in the centre should symbolize the
old fellow's hospitable heart, which kept them all warm, and
made a great whole of the seven smaller ones.
There was a vertical sun-dial on the front gable; and as
the carpenter passed beneath it, he looked up and noted the
hour.
“Three o'clock!” said he to himself. “My father told
me that dial was put up only an hour before the old colonel's
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death. How truly it has kept time these seven-and-thirty
years past! The shadow creeps and creeps, and is always
looking over the shoulder of the sunshine!”
It might have befitted a craftsman, like Matthew Maule,
on being sent for to a gentleman's house, to go to the backdoor,
where servants and work-people were usually admitted;
or at least to the side-entrance, where the better class of
tradesmen made application. But the carpenter had a great
deal of pride and stiffness in his nature; and, at this
moment, moreover, his heart was bitter with the sense of
hereditary wrong, because he considered the great Pyncheon-house
to be standing on soil which should have been
his own. On this very site, beside a spring of delicious
water, his grandfather had felled the pine-trees and built a
cottage, in which children had been born to him; and it was
only from a dead man's stiffened fingers that Colonel Pyncheon
had wrested away the title-deeds. So young Maule
went straight to the principal entrance, beneath a portal of
carved oak, and gave such a peal of the iron knocker that
you would have imagined the stern old wizard himself to be
standing at the threshold.
Black Scipio answered the summons, in a prodigious
hurry; but showed the whites of his eyes, in amazement, on
beholding only the carpenter.
“Lord-a-mercy! what a great man he be, this carpenter
fellow!” mumbled Scipio, down in his throat. “Anybody
think he beat on the door with his biggest hammer!”
“Here I am!” said Maule, sternly. “Show me the way
to your master's parlor!”
As he stept into the house, a note of sweet and melancholy
music thrilled and vibrated along the passage-way,
proceeding from one of the rooms above stairs. It was the
harpsichord which Alice Pyncheon had brought with her from
beyond the sea. The fair Alice bestowed most of her maiden
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[figure description] Page 208.[end figure description]
leisure between flowers and music, although the former were
apt to droop, and the melodies were often sad. She was of
foreign education, and could not take kindly to the New
England modes of life, in which nothing beautiful had ever
been developed.
As Mr. Pyncheon had been impatiently awaiting Maule's
arrival, black Scipio, of course, lost no time in ushering
the carpenter into his master's presence. The room in
which this gentleman sat was a parlor of moderate size,
looking out upon the garden of the house, and having its
windows partly shadowed by the foliage of fruit-trees. It
was Mr. Pyncheon's peculiar apartment, and was provided
with furniture, in an elegant and costly style, principally
from Paris; the floor (which was unusual, at that day) being
covered with a carpet, so skilfully and richly wrought,
that it seemed to glow as with living flowers. In one corner
stood a marble woman, to whom her own beauty was the
sole and sufficient garment. Some pictures — that looked
old, and had a mellow tinge diffused through all their artful
splendor — hung on the walls. Near the fireplace was a
large and very beautiful cabinet of ebony, inlaid with ivory;
a piece of antique furniture, which Mr. Pyncheon had
bought in Venice, and which he used as the treasure-place
for medals, ancient coins, and whatever small and valuable
curiosities he had picked up, on his travels. Through all
this variety of decoration, however, the room showed its
original characteristics; its low stud, its cross-beam, its
chimney-piece, with the old-fashioned Dutch tiles; so that it
was the emblem of a mind industriously stored with foreign
ideas, and elaborated into artificial refinement, but neither
larger, nor, in its proper self, more elegant, than before.
There were two objects that appeared rather out of place
in this very handsomely furnished room. One was a large
map, or surveyor's plan, of a tract of land, which looked as
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[figure description] Page 209.[end figure description]
if it had been drawn a good many years ago, and was now
dingy with smoke, and soiled, here and there, with the touch
of fingers. The other was a portrait of a stern old man, in
a Puritan garb, painted roughly, but with a bold effect, and
a remarkably strong expression of character.
At a small table, before a fire of English sea-coal, sat
Mr. Pyncheon, sipping coffee, which had grown to be a very
favorite beverage with him in France. He was a middle-aged
and really handsome man, with a wig flowing down
upon his shoulders; his coat was of blue velvet, with lace
on the borders and at the button-holes; and the fire-light
glistened on the spacious breadth of his waistcoat, which
was flowered all over with gold. On the entrance of Scipio,
ushering in the carpenter, Mr. Pyncheon turned partly
round, but resumed his former position, and proceeded deliberately
to finish his cup of coffee, without immediate notice
of the guest whom he had summoned to his presence. It
was not that he intended any rudeness, or improper neglect,—
which, indeed, he would have blushed to be guilty of, —
but it never occurred to him that a person in Maule's station
had a claim on his courtesy, or would trouble himself about
it, one way or the other.
The carpenter, however, stepped at once to the hearth,
and turned himself about, so as to look Mr. Pyncheon in
the face.
“You sent for me,” said he. “Be pleased to explain
your business, that I may go back to my own affairs.”
“Ah! excuse me,” said Mr. Pyncheon, quietly. “I did
not mean to tax your time without a recompense. Your
name, I think, is Maule, — Thomas or Matthew Maule, — a
son or grandson of the builder of this house?”
“Matthew Maule,” replied the carpenter, — “son of him
who built the house, — grandson of the rightful proprietor
of the soil.”
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“I know the dispute to which you allude,” observed Mr.
Pyncheon, with undisturbed equanimity. “I am well
aware that my grandfather was compelled to resort to a
suit at law, in order to establish his claim to the foundationsite
of this edifice. We will not, if you please, renew the
discussion. The matter was settled at the time, and by
the competent authorities, — equitably, it is to be presumed,—
and, at all events, irrevocably. Yet, singularly enough,
there is an incidental reference to this very subject in what
I am now about to say to you. And this same inveterate
grudge, — excuse me, I mean no offence, — this irritability,
which you have just shown, is not entirely aside from the
matter.”
“If you can find anything for your purpose, Mr. Pyncheon,”
said the carpenter, “in a man's natural resentment
for the wrongs done to his blood, you are welcome to it!”
“I take you at your word, Goodman Maule,” said the
owner of the seven gables, with a smile, “and will proceed
to suggest a mode in which your hereditary resentments —
justifiable, or otherwise — may have had a bearing on my
affairs. You have heard, I suppose, that the Pyncheon
family, ever since my grandfather's days, have been prosecuting
a still unsettled claim to a very large extent of
territory at the eastward?”
“Often,” replied Maule, — and it is said that a smile
came over his face, — “very often, — from my father!”
“This claim,” continued Mr. Pyncheon, after pausing a
moment, as if to consider what the carpenter's smile might
mean, “appeared to be on the very verge of a settlement
and full allowance, at the period of my grandfather's decease.
It was well known, to those in his confidence, that
he anticipated neither difficulty nor delay. Now, Colonel
Pyncheon, I need hardly say, was a practical man, well acquainted
with public and private business, and not at all the
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person to cherish ill-founded hopes, or to attempt the following
out of an impracticable scheme. It is obvious to conclude,
therefore, that he had grounds, not apparent to his
heirs, for his confident anticipation of success in the matter
of this eastern claim. In a word, I believe, — and my
legal advisers coincide in the belief, which, moreover, is
authorized, to a certain extent, by the family traditions, —
that my grandfather was in possession of some deed, or
other document, essential to this claim, but which has since
disappeared.”
“Very likely,” said Matthew Maule, — and again, it is
said, there was a dark smile on his face, — “but what can
a poor carpenter have to do with the grand affairs of the
Pyncheon family?”
“Perhaps nothing,” returned Mr. Pyncheon, — “possibly,
much!”
Here ensued a great many words between Matthew Maule
and the proprietor of the seven gables, on the subject which
the latter had thus broached. It seems (although Mr. Pyncheon
had some hesitation in referring to stories so exceedingly
absurd in their aspect) that the popular belief pointed
to some mysterious connection and dependence, existing
between the family of the Maules and these vast, unrealized
possessions of the Pyncheons. It was an ordinary
saying, that the old wizard, hanged though he was, had obtained
the best end of the bargain, in his contest with Colonel
Pyncheon; inasmuch as he had got possession of the
great eastern claim, in exchange for an acre or two of garden-ground.
A very aged woman, recently dead, had often
used the metaphorical expression, in her fire-side talk, that
miles and miles of the Pyncheon lands had been shovelled
into Maule's grave; which, by-the-by, was but a very shallow
nook, between two rocks, near the summit of Gallows
Hill. Again, when the lawyers were making inquiry for
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the missing document, it was a by-word, that it would never
be found, unless in the wizard's skeleton-hand. So much
weight had the shrewd lawyers assigned to these fables, that—
(but Mr. Pyncheon did not see fit to inform the carpenter
of the fact) — they had secretly caused the wizard's grave
to be searched. Nothing was discovered, however, except
that, unaccountably, the right hand of the skeleton was gone.
Now, what was unquestionably important, a portion of
these popular rumors could be traced, though rather doubtfully
and indistinctly, to chance words and obscure hints of
the executed wizard's son, and the father of this present
Matthew Maule. And here Mr. Pyncheon could bring an
item of his own personal evidence into play. Though but
a child at the time, he either remembered or fancied that
Matthew's father had had some job to perform, on the day
before, or possibly the very morning of the colonel's decease,
in the private room where he and the carpenter were at this
moment talking. Certain papers belonging to Colonel
Pyncheon, as his grandson distinctly recollected, had been
spread out on the table.
Matthew Maule understood the insinuated suspicion.
“My father,” he said, — but still there was that dark
smile, making a riddle of his countenance, — “my father
was an honester man than the bloody old colonel! Not to
get his rights back again would he have carried off one
of those papers!”
“I shall not bandy words with you,” observed the foreignbred
Mr. Pyncheon, with haughty composure. “Nor will it
become me to resent any rudeness towards either my grandfather
or myself. A gentleman, before seeking intercourse
with a person of your station and habits, will first consider
whether the urgency of the end may compensate for the
disagreeableness of the means. It does so, in the present
instance.”
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He then renewed the conversation, and made great pecuniary
offers to the carpenter, in case the latter should give
information leading to the discovery of the lost document,
and the consequent success of the eastern claim. For a
long time Matthew Maule is said to have turned a cold ear
to these propositions. At last, however, with a strange kind
of laugh, he inquired whether Mr. Pyncheon would make
over to him the old wizard's homestead-ground, together
with the House of the Seven Gables, now standing on it, in
requital of the documentary evidence so urgently required.
The wild, chimney-corner legend (which, without copying
all its extravagances, my narrative essentially follows)
here gives an account of some very strange behavior on
the part of Colonel Pyncheon's portrait. This picture, it
must be understood, was supposed to be so intimately connected
with the fate of the house, and so magically built
into its walls, that, if once it should be removed, that very
instant the whole edifice would come thundering down
in a heap of dusty ruin. All through the foregoing conversation
between Mr. Pyncheon and the carpenter, the
portrait had been frowning, clenching its fist, and giving
many such proofs of excessive discomposure, but without
attracting the notice of either of the two colloquists. And
finally, at Matthew Maule's audacious suggestion of a transfer
of the seven-gabled structure, the ghostly portrait is
averred to have lost all patience, and to have shown itself
on the point of descending bodily from its frame. But such
incredible incidents are merely to be mentioned aside.
“Give up this house!” exclaimed Mr. Pyncheon, in
amazement at the proposal. “Were I to do so, my grandfather
would not rest quiet in his grave!”
“He never has, if all stories are true,” remarked the carpenter,
composedly. “But that matter concerns his
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grandson more than it does Matthew Maule. I have no other
terms to propose.”
Impossible as he at first thought it to comply with
Maule's conditions, still, on a second glance, Mr. Pyncheon
was of opinion that they might at least be made
matter of discussion. He himself had no personal attachment
for the house, nor any pleasant associations connected
with his childish residence in it. On the contrary,
after seven-and-thirty years, the presence of his dead grandfather
seemed still to pervade it, as on that morning when
the affrighted boy had beheld him, with so ghastly an
aspect, stiffening in his chair. His long abode in foreign
parts, moreover, and familiarity with many of the castles and
ancestral halls of England, and the marble palaces of Italy,
had caused him to look contemptuously at the House of
the Seven Gables, whether in point of splendor or convenience.
It was a mansion exceedingly inadequate to the
style of living which it would be incumbent on Mr. Pyncheon
to support, after realizing his territorial rights. His
steward might deign to occupy it, but never, certainly, the
great landed proprietor himself. In the event of success,
indeed, it was his purpose to return to England; nor, to
say the truth, would he recently have quitted that more
congenial home, had not his own fortune, as well as his
deceased wife's, begun to give symptoms of exhaustion.
The eastern claim once fairly settled, and put upon the firm
basis of actual possession, Mr. Pyncheon's property — to be
measured by miles, not acres — would be worth an earldom,
and would reasonably entitle him to solicit, or enable him
to purchase, that elevated dignity from the British monarch.
Lord Pyncheon! — or the Earl of Waldo! — how could such
a magnate be expected to contract his grandeur within the
pitiful compass of seven shingled gables?
In short, on an enlarged view of the business, the
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carpenter's terms appeared so ridiculously easy, that Mr. Pyncheon
could scarcely forbear laughing in his face. He was
quite ashamed, after the foregoing reflections, to propose any
diminution of so moderate a recompense for the immense
service to be rendered.
“I consent to your proposition, Maule,” cried he. “Put
me in possession of the document essential to establish my
rights, and the House of the Seven Gables is your own!”
According to some versions of the story, a regular contract
to the above effect was drawn up by a lawyer, and
signed and sealed in the presence of witnesses. Others say
that Matthew Maule was contented with a private written
agreement, in which Mr. Pyncheon pledged his honor and
integrity to the fulfilment of the terms concluded upon.
The gentleman then ordered wine, which he and the carpenter
drank together, in confirmation of their bargain.
During the whole preceding discussion and subsequent formalities,
the old Puritan's portrait seems to have persisted in
its shadowy gestures of disapproval; but without effect,
except that, as Mr. Pyncheon set down the emptied glass,
he thought he beheld his grandfather frown.
“This sherry is too potent a wine for me; it has affected
my brain already,” he observed, after a somewhat startled
look at the picture. “On returning to Europe, I shall confine
myself to the more delicate vintages of Italy and
France, the best of which will not bear transportation.”
“My Lord Pyncheon may drink what wine he will, and
wherever he pleases,” replied the carpenter, as if he had
been privy to Mr. Pyncheon's ambitious projects. “But
first, sir, if you desire tidings of this lost document, I must
crave the favor of a little talk with your fair daughter
Alice.”
“You are mad, Maule!” exclaimed Mr. Pyncheon,
haughtily; and now, at last, there was anger mixed up with
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his pride. “What can my daughter have to do with a
business like this?”
Indeed, at this new demand on the carpenter's part, the
proprietor of the seven gables was even more thunder-struck
than at the cool proposition to surrender his house. There
was, at least, an assignable motive for the first stipulation;
there appeared to be none whatever, for the last. Nevertheless,
Matthew Maule sturdily insisted on the young lady
being summoned, and even gave her father to understand,
in a mysterious kind of explanation, — which made the
matter considerably darker than it looked before, — that
the only chance of acquiring the requisite knowledge was
through the clear, crystal medium of a pure and virgin
intelligence, like that of the fair Alice. Not to encumber
our story with Mr. Pyncheon's scruples, whether of conscience,
pride, or fatherly affection, he at length ordered his
daughter to be called. He well knew that she was in her
chamber, and engaged in no occupation that could not
readily be laid aside; for, as it happened, ever since Alice's
name had been spoken, both her father and the carpenter
had heard the sad and sweet music of her harpsichord, and
the airier melancholy of her accompanying voice.
So Alice Pyncheon was summoned, and appeared. A
portrait of this young lady, painted by a Venetian artist, and
left by her father in England, is said to have fallen into the
hands of the present Duke of Devonshire, and to be now
preserved at Chatsworth; not on account of any associations
with the original, but for its value as a picture, and the high
character of beauty in the countenance. If ever there was
a lady born, and set apart from the world's vulgar mass by
a certain gentle and cold stateliness, it was this very Alice
Pyncheon. Yet there was the womanly mixture in her;
the tenderness, or, at least, the tender capabilities. For the
sake of that redeeming quality, a man of generous nature
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would have forgiven all her pride, and have been content,
almost, to lie down in her path, and let Alice set her slender
foot upon his heart. All that he would have required, was
simply the acknowledgment that he was indeed a man, and
a fellow-being, moulded of the same elements as she.
As Alice came into the room, her eyes fell upon the carpenter,
who was standing near its centre, clad in a green
woollen jacket, a pair of loose breeches, open at the knees,
and with a long pocket for his rule, the end of which protruded;
it was as proper a mark of the artisan's calling, as
Mr. Pyncheon's full-dress sword of that gentleman's aristocratic
pretensions. A glow of artistic approval brightened
over Alice Pyncheon's face; she was struck with admiration—
which she made no attempt to conceal — of the remarkable
comeliness, strength and energy, of Maule's figure.
But that admiring glance (which most other men, perhaps,
would have cherished as a sweet recollection, all through
life) the carpenter never forgave. It must have been the
devil himself that made Maule so subtile in his perception.
“Does the girl look at me as if I were a brute beast?”
thought he, setting his teeth. “She shall know whether I
have a human spirit; and the worse for her, if it prove
stronger than her own!”
“My father, you sent for me,” said Alice, in her sweet
and harp-like voice. “But, if you have business with this
young man, pray let me go again. You know I do not love
this room, in spite of that Claude, with which you try to
bring back sunny recollections.”
“Stay a moment, young lady, if you please!” said Matthew
Maule. “My business with your father is over. With
yourself, it is now to begin!”
Alice looked towards her father, in surprise and inquiry.
“Yes, Alice,” said Mr. Pyncheon, with some disturbance
and confusion. “This young man — his name is Matthew
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Maule — professes, so far as I can understand him, to be
able to discover, through your means, a certain paper or
parchment, which was missing long before your birth. The
importance of the document in question renders it advisable
to neglect no possible, even if improbable, method of regaining
it. You will therefore oblige me, my dear Alice, by
answering this person's inquiries, and complying with his
lawful and reasonable requests, so far as they may appear
to have the aforesaid object in view. As I shall remain in
the room, you need apprehend no rude nor unbecoming
deportment, on the young man's part; and, at your slightest
wish, of course, the investigation, or whatever we may call
it, shall immediately be broken off.”
“Mistress Alice Pyncheon,” remarked Matthew Maule,
with the utmost deference, but yet a half-hidden sarcasm in
his look and tone, “will no doubt feel herself quite safe in
her father's presence, and under his all-sufficient protection.”
“I certainly shall entertain no manner of apprehension,
with my father at hand,” said Alice, with maidenly dignity.
“Neither do I conceive that a lady, while true to herself,
can have aught to fear, from whomsoever, or in any circumstances!”
Poor Alice! By what unhappy impulse did she thus put
herself at once on terms of defiance against a strength which
she could not estimate?
“Then, Mistress Alice,” said Matthew Maule, handing
a chair, — gracefully enough, for a craftsman, — “will it
please you only to sit down, and do me the favor (though
altogether beyond a poor carpenter's deserts) to fix your
eyes on mine!”
Alice complied. She was very proud. Setting aside all
advantages of rank, this fair girl deemed herself conscious
of a power, — combined of beauty, high, unsullied purity,
and the preservative force of womanhood, — that could
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make her sphere impenetrable, unless betrayed by treachery
within. She instinctively knew, it may be, that some sinister
or evil potency was now striving to pass her barriers;
nor would she decline the contest. So Alice put woman's
might against man's might; a match not often equal, on the
part of woman.
Her father, meanwhile, had turned away, and seemed
absorbed in the contemplation of a landscape by Claude,
where a shadowy and sun-streaked vista penetrated so remotely
into an ancient wood, that it would have been no
wonder if his fancy had lost itself in the picture's bewildering
depths. But, in truth, the picture was no more to him,
at that moment, than the blank wall against which it hung.
His mind was haunted with the many and strange tales
which he had heard, attributing mysterious if not supernatural
endowments to these Maules, as well the grandson, here
present, as his two immediate ancestors. Mr. Pyncheon's
long residence abroad, and intercourse with men of wit and
fashion,—courtiers, worldlings, and free-thinkers,—had done
much towards obliterating the grim Puritan superstitions,
which no man of New England birth, at that early period,
could entirely escape. But, on the other hand, had not a
whole community believed Maule's grandfather to be a wizard?
Had not the crime been proved? Had not the wizard
died for it? Had he not bequeathed a legacy of hatred
against the Pyncheons to this only grandson, who, as it
appeared, was now about to exercise a subtle influence over
the daughter of his enemy's house? Might not this influence
be the same that was called witchcraft?
Turning half around, he caught a glimpse of Maule's figure
in the looking-glass. At some paces from Alice, with
his arms uplifted in the air, the carpenter made a gesture,
as if directing downward a slow, ponderous, and invisible
weight upon the maiden.
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“Stay, Maule!” exclaimed Mr. Pyncheon, stepping forward.
“I forbid your proceeding further!”
“Pray, my dear father, do not interrupt the young man,”
said Alice, without changing her position. “His efforts, I
assure you, will prove very harmless.”
Again Mr. Pyncheon turned his eyes towards the Claude.
It was then his daughter's will, in opposition to his own,
that the experiment should be fully tried. Henceforth,
therefore, he did but consent, not urge it. And was it not
for her sake, far more than for his own, that he desired its
success? That lost parchment once restored, the beautiful
Alice Pyncheon, with the rich dowry which he could then
bestow, might wed an English duke, or a German reigning-prince,
instead of some New England clergyman or lawyer!
At the thought, the ambitious father almost consented, in
his heart, that, if the devil's power were needed to the
accomplishment of this great object, Maule might evoke
him. Alice's own purity would be her safeguard.
With his mind full of imaginary magnificence, Mr. Pyncheon
heard a half-uttered exclamation from his daughter.
It was very faint and low; so indistinct that there seemed
but half a will to shape out the words, and too undefined a
purport to be intelligible. Yet it was a call for help! —
his conscience never doubted it; — and, little more than a
whisper to his ear, it was a dismal shriek, and long reëchoed
so, in the region round his heart! But, this time, the
father did not turn.
After a further interval, Maule spoke.
“Behold your daughter!” said he.
Mr. Pyncheon came hastily forward. The carpenter was
standing erect in front of Alice's chair, and pointing his
finger towards the maiden with an expression of triumphant
power, the limits of which could not be defined, as, indeed,
its scope stretched vaguely towards the unseen and the
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infinite. Alice sat in an attitude of profound repose, with
the long brown lashes drooping over her eyes.
“There she is!” said the carpenter. “Speak to her!”
“Alice! My daughter!” exclaimed Mr. Pyncheon.
“My own Alice!”
She did not stir.
“Louder!” said Maule, smiling.
“Alice! Awake!” cried her father. “It troubles me
to see you thus! Awake!”
He spoke loudly, with terror in his voice, and close to
that delicate ear, which had always been so sensitive to
every discord. But the sound evidently reached her not.
It is indescribable what a sense of remote, dim, unattainable
distance, betwixt himself and Alice, was impressed on the
father by this impossibility of reaching her with his voice.
“Best touch her!” said Matthew Maule. “Shake the
girl, and roughly too! My hands are hardened with too
much use of axe, saw, and plane, — else I might help you!”
Mr. Pyncheon took her hand, and pressed it with the
earnestness of startled emotion. He kissed her, with so
great a heart-throb in the kiss, that he thought she must
needs feel it. Then, in a gust of anger at her insensibility,
he shook her maiden form, with a violence which, the next
moment, it affrighted him to remember. He withdrew his
encircling arms, and Alice — whose figure, though flexible,
had been wholly impassive — relapsed into the same attitude
as before these attempts to arouse her. Maule having
shifted his position, her face was turned towards him,
slightly, but with what seemed to be a reference of her very
slumber to his guidance.
Then it was a strange sight to behold how the man of
conventionalities shook the powder out of his periwig; how
the reserved and stately gentleman forgot his dignity; how
the gold-embroidered waistcoat flickered and glistened in
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the fire-light, with the convulsion of rage, terror, and sorrow,
in the human heart that was beating under it.
“Villain!” cried Mr. Pyncheon, shaking his clenched
fist at Maule. “You and the fiend together have robbed
me of my daughter! Give her back, spawn of the old wizard,
or you shall climb Gallows Hill in your grandfather's
footsteps!”
“Softly, Mr. Pyncheon!” said the carpenter, with scornful
composure. “Softly, an' it please your worship, else you
will spoil those rich lace ruffles, at your wrists! Is it my
crime if you have sold your daughter for the mere hope
of getting a sheet of yellow parchment into your clutch?
There sits Mistress Alice, quietly asleep! Now let
Matthew Maule try whether she be as proud as the carpenter
found her a while since.”
He spoke, and Alice responded, with a soft, subdued,
inward acquiescence, and a bending of her form towards
him, like the flame of a torch when it indicates a gentle
draft of air. He beckoned with his hand, and, rising from
her chair, — blindly, but undoubtingly, as tending to her
sure and inevitable centre, — the proud Alice approached
him. He waved her back, and, retreating, Alice sank again
into her seat.
“She is mine!” said Matthew Maule. “Mine, by the
right of the strongest spirit!”
In the further progress of the legend, there is a long, grotesque,
and occasionally awe-striking account of the carpenter's
incantations (if so they are to be called), with a view
of discovering the lost document. It appears to have been
his object to convert the mind of Alice into a kind of telescopic
medium, through which Mr. Pyncheon and himself
might obtain a glimpse into the spiritual world. He succeeded,
accordingly, in holding an imperfect sort of intercourse,
at one remove, with the departed personages, in
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whose custody the so much valued secret had been carried
beyond the precincts of earth. During her trance, Alice
described three figures as being present to her spiritualized
perception. One was an aged, dignified, stern-looking
gentleman, clad, as for a solemn festival, in grave and costly
attire, but with a great blood-stain on his richly-wrought
band; the second, an aged man, meanly dressed, with a
dark and malign countenance, and a broken halter about his
neck; the third, a person not so advanced in life as the
former two, but beyond the middle age, wearing a coarse
woollen tunic and leather breeches, and with a carpenter's
rule sticking out of his side-pocket. These three visionary
characters possessed a mutual knowledge of the missing
document. One of them, in truth, — it was he with the
blood-stain on his band, — seemed, unless his gestures were
misunderstood, to hold the parchment in his immediate
keeping, but was prevented, by his two partners in the
mystery, from disburthening himself of the trust. Finally,
when he showed a purpose of shouting forth the secret,
loudly enough to be heard from his own sphere into that of
mortals, his companions struggled with him, and pressed
their hands over his mouth; and forthwith — whether that
he were choked by it, or that the secret itself was of a crimson
hue — there was a fresh flow of blood upon his band.
Upon this, the two meanly-dressed figures mocked and
jeered at the much-abashed old dignitary, and pointed their
fingers at the stain.
At this juncture, Maule turned to Mr. Pyncheon.
“It will never be allowed,” said he. “The custody of this
secret, that would so enrich his heirs, makes part of your
grandfather's retribution. He must choke with it until it is
no longer of any value. And keep you the House of the
Seven Gables! It is too dear-bought an inheritance, and
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too heavy with the curse upon it, to be shifted yet a while
from the colonel's posterity!”
Mr. Pyncheon tried to speak, but — what with fear and
passion — could make only a gurgling murmur in his throat.
The carpenter smiled.
“Aha, worshipful sir! — so, you have old Maule's blood to
drink!” said he jeeringly.
“Fiend in man's shape! why dost thou keep dominion
over my child?” cried Mr. Pyncheon, when his choked
utterance could make way. “Give me back my daughter!
Then go thy ways; and may we never meet again!”
“Your daughter!” said Matthew Maule. “Why, she is
fairly mine! Nevertheless, not to be too hard with fair
Mistress Alice, I will leave her in your keeping; but I do
not warrant you that she shall never have occasion to remember
Maule, the carpenter.”
He waved his hands with an upward motion; and, after
a few repetitions of similar gestures, the beautiful Alice
Pyncheon awoke from her strange trance. She awoke,
without the slightest recollection of her visionary experience;
but as one losing herself in a momentary reverie,
and returning to the consciousness of actual life, in almost
as brief an interval as the down-sinking flame of the hearth
should quiver again up the chimney. On recognizing Matthew
Maule, she assumed an air of somewhat cold but
gentle dignity; the rather, as there was a certain peculiar
smile on the carpenter's visage, that stirred the native
pride of the fair Alice. So ended, for that time, the quest
for the lost title-deed of the Pyncheon territory at the
eastward; nor, though often subsequently renewed, has it
ever yet befallen a Pyncheon to set his eye upon that
parchment.
But, alas for the beautiful, the gentle, yet too haughty
Alice! A power, that she little dreamed of, had laid its
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grasp upon her maiden soul. A will, most unlike her own,
constrained her to do its grotesque and fantastic bidding.
Her father, as it proved, had martyred his poor child to an
inordinate desire for measuring his land by miles, instead
of acres. And, therefore, while Alice Pyncheon lived, she
was Maule's slave, in a bondage more humiliating, a thousand
fold, than that which binds its chain around the
body. Seated by his humble fireside, Maule had but to wave
his hand; and, wherever the proud lady chanced to be, —
whether in her chamber, or entertaining her father's stately
guests, or worshipping at church, — whatever her place or
occupation, her spirit passed from beneath her own control,
and bowed itself to Maule. “Alice, laugh!” — the carpenter,
beside his hearth, would say; or perhaps intensely
will it, without a spoken word. And, even were it prayertime,
or at a funeral, Alice must break into wild laughter.
“Alice, be sad!” — and, at the instant, down would come
her tears, quenching all the mirth of those around her, like
sudden rain upon a bonfire. “Alice, dance!” — and dance
she would, not in such court-like measures as she had
learned abroad, but some high-paced jig, or hop-skip rigadoon,
befitting the brisk lasses at a rustic merry-making.
It seemed to be Maule's impulse not to ruin Alice, nor to
visit her with any black or gigantic mischief, which would
have crowned her sorrows with the grace of tragedy, but to
wreak a low, ungenerous scorn upon her. Thus all the
dignity of life was lost. She felt herself too much abased,
and longed to change natures with some worm!
One evening, at a bridal-party — (but not her own; for,
so lost from self-control, she would have deemed it sin to
marry) — poor Alice was beckoned forth by her unseen despot,
and constrained, in her gossamer white dress and satin
slippers, to hasten along the street to the mean dwelling of
a laboring-man. There was laughter and good cheer
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within; for Matthew Maule, that night, was to wed the
laborer's daughter, and had summoned proud Alice Pyncheon
to wait upon his bride. And so she did; and when
the twain were one, Alice awoke out of her enchanted
sleep. Yet, no longer proud, — humbly, and with a smile
all steeped in sadness, — she kissed Maule's wife, and went
her way. It was an inclement night; the south-east wind
drove the mingled snow and rain into her thinly-sheltered
bosom; her satin slippers were wet through and through,
as she trod the muddy sidewalks. The next day, a cold;
soon, a settled cough; anon, a hectic cheek, a wasted form,
that sat beside the harpsichord, and filled the house with
music! Music, in which a strain of the heavenly choristers
was echoed! O, joy! For Alice had borne her last humiliation!
O, greater joy! For Alice was penitent of
her one earthly sin, and proud no more!
The Pyncheons made a great funeral for Alice. The kith
and kin were there, and the whole respectability of the town
besides. But, last in the procession, came Matthew Maule,
gnashing his teeth, as if he would have bitten his own heart
in twain — the darkest and wofullest man that ever walked
behind a corpse! He meant to humble Alice — not to kill
her; — but he had taken a woman's delicate soul into his
rude gripe, to play with, — and she was dead!
-- -- p574-236
XIV. PHŒBE'S GOOD-BY.
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Holgrave, plunging into his tale with the energy and
absorption natural to a young author, had given a good
deal of action to the parts capable of being developed and
exemplified in that manner. He now observed that a certain
remarkable drowsiness (wholly unlike that with which
the reader possibly feels himself affected) had been flung over
the senses of his auditress. It was the effect, unquestionably,
of the mystic gesticulations by which he had sought
to bring bodily before Phœbe's perception the figure of the
mesmerizing carpenter. With the lids drooping over her
eyes, — now lifted, for an instant, and drawn down again, as
with leaden weights, — she leaned slightly towards him, and
seemed almost to regulate her breath by his. Holgrave
gazed at her, as he rolled up his manuscript, and recognized
an incipient stage of that curious psychological
condition, which, as he had himself told Phœbe, he possessed
more than an ordinary faculty of producing. A
veil was beginning to be muffled about her, in which she
could behold only him, and live only in his thoughts and
emotions. His glance, as he fastened it on the young
girl, grew involuntarily more concentrated; in his attitude
there was the consciousness of power, investing his hardly
mature figure with a dignity that did not belong to its physical
manifestation. It was evident, that, with but one wave
of his hand, and a corresponding effort of his will, he could
complete his mastery over Phœbe's yet free and virgin
spirit: he could establish an influence over this good, pure,
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and simple child, as dangerous, and perhaps as disastrous
as that which the carpenter of his legend had acquired and
exercised over the ill-fated Alice.
To a disposition like Holgrave's, at once speculative and
active, there is no temptation so great as the opportunity
of acquiring empire over the human spirit; nor any
idea more seductive to a young man than to become the
arbiter of a young girl's destiny. Let us, therefore, —
whatever his defects of nature and education, and in spite
of his scorn for creeds and institutions, — concede to the
daguerreotypist the rare and high quality of reverence for
another's individuality. Let us allow him integrity, also,
forever after to be confided in; since he forbade himself to
twine that one link more which might have rendered his
spell over Phœbe indissoluble.
He made a slight gesture upward with his hand.
“You really mortify me, my dear Miss Phœbe!” he exclaimed,
smiling half-sarcastically at her. “My poor story,
it is but too evident, will never do for Godey or Graham!
Only think of your falling asleep at what I hoped the
newspaper critics would pronounce a most brilliant, powerful,
imaginative, pathetic, and original winding up! Well,
the manuscript must serve to light lamps with;— if, indeed,
being so imbued with my gentle dulness, it is any longer
capable of flame!”
“Me asleep! How can you say so?” answered Phœbe,
as unconscious of the crisis through which she had passed
as an infant of the precipice to the verge of which it has
rolled. “No, no! I consider myself as having been very
attentive; and, though I don't remember the incidents
quite distinctly, yet I have an impression of a vast deal of
trouble and calamity, — so, no doubt, the story will prove
exceedingly attractive.”
By this time, the sun had gone down, and was tinting
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the clouds towards the zenith with those bright hues which
are not seen there until some time after sunset, and when
the horizon has quite lost its richer brilliancy. The moon,
too, which had long been climbing overhead, and unobtrusively
melting its disk into the azure, — like an ambitious
demagogue, who hides his aspiring purpose by assuming the
prevalent hue of popular sentiment, — now began to shine
out, broad and oval, in its middle pathway. These silvery
beams were already powerful enough to change the character
of the lingering daylight. They softened and embellished
the aspect of the old house; although the shadows
fell deeper into the angles of its many gables, and lay brooding
under the projecting story, and within the half-open
door. With the lapse of every moment, the garden grew
more picturesque; the fruit-trees, shrubbery and flowerbushes,
had a dark obscurity among them. The common-place
characteristics, — which, at noontide, it seemed to
have taken a century of sordid life to accumulate, — were
now transfigured by a charm of romance. A hundred mysterious
years were whispering among the leaves, whenever
the slight sea-breeze found its way thither and stirred them.
Through the foliage that roofed the little summer-house
the moonlight flickered to and fro, and fell silvery white on
the dark floor, the table and the circular bench, with a continual
shift and play, according as the chinks and wayward
crevices among the twigs admitted or shut out the glimmer.
So sweetly cool was the atmosphere, after all the feverish
day, that the summer eve might be fancied as sprinkling
dews and liquid moonlight, with a dash of icy temper in
them, out of a silver vase. Here and there, a few drops of
this freshness were scattered on a human heart, and gave it
youth again, and sympathy with the eternal youth of
nature. The artist chanced to be one on whom the reviving
influence fell. It made him feel — what he sometimes
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almost forgot, thrust so early as he had been into the rude
struggle of man with man — how youthful he still was.
“It seems to me,” he observed, “that I never watched
the coming of so beautiful an eve, and never felt anything
so very much like happiness as at this moment. After all,
what a good world we live in! How good, and beautiful!
How young it is, too, with nothing really rotten or ageworn
in it! This old house, for example, which sometimes
has positively oppressed my breath with its smell of decaying
timber! And this garden, where the black mould
always clings to my spade, as if I were a sexton, delving in
a grave-yard! Could I keep the feeling that now possesses
me, the garden would every day be virgin soil, with the
earth's first freshness in the flavor of its beans and squashes;
and the house! — it would be like a bower in Eden, blossoming
with the earliest roses that God ever made. Moonlight,
and the sentiment in man's heart responsive to it,
are the greatest of renovators and reformers. And all other
reform and renovation, I suppose, will prove to be no better
than moonshine!”
“I have been happier than I am now; at least, much
gayer,” said Phœbe, thoughtfully. “Yet I am sensible of
a great charm in this brightening moonlight; and I love to
watch how the day, tired as it is, lags away reluctantly, and
hates to be called yesterday so soon. I never cared much
about moonlight before. What is there, I wonder, so beautiful
in it, to-night?”
“And you have never felt it before?” inquired the artist,
looking earnestly at the girl, through the twilight.
“Never,” answered Phœbe; “and life does not look the
same, now that I have felt it so. It seems as if I had looked
at everything, hitherto, in broad daylight, or else in the ruddy
light of a cheerful fire, glimmering and dancing through a
room. Ah, poor me!” she added, with a half-melancholy
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laugh. “I shall never be so merry as before I knew Cousin
Hepzibah and poor Cousin Clifford. I have grown a great
deal older, in this little time. Older, and, I hope, wiser, and,—
not exactly sadder, — but, certainly, with not half so
much lightness in my spirits! I have given them my sunshine,
and have been glad to give it; but, of course, I cannot
both give and keep it. They are welcome, notwithstanding!”
“You have lost nothing, Phœbe, worth keeping, nor
which it was possible to keep,” said Holgrave, after a pause.
“Our first youth is of no value; for we are never conscious
of it, until after it is gone. But sometimes — always, I suspect,
unless one is exceedingly unfortunate — there comes a
sense of second youth, gushing out of the heart's joy at
being in love; or, possibly, it may come to crown some other
grand festival in life, if any other such there be. This
bemoaning of one's self (as you do now) over the first, careless,
shallow gayety of youth departed, and this profound
happiness at youth regained, — so much deeper and richer
than that we lost, — are essential to the soul's development.
In some cases, the two states come almost simultaneously,
and mingle the sadness and the rapture in one mysterious
emotion.”
“I hardly think I understand you,” said Phœbe.
“No wonder,” replied Holgrave, smiling; “for I have
told you a secret which I hardly began to know, before I
found myself giving it utterance. Remember it, however;
and when the truth becomes clear to you, then think of this
moonlight scene!”
“It is entirely moonlight now, except only a little flush
of faint crimson, upward from the west, between those buildings,”
remarked Phœbe. “I must go in. Cousin Hepzibah
is not quick at figures, and will give herself a headache
over the day's accounts, unless I help her.”
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But Holgrave detained her a little longer.
“Miss Hepzibah tells me,” observed he, “that you return
to the country, in a few days.”
“Yes, but only for a little while,” answered Phœbe;
“for I look upon this as my present home. I go to make a
few arrangements, and to take a more deliberate leave of
my mother and friends. It is pleasant to live where one is
much desired, and very useful; and I think I may have the
satisfaction of feeling myself so, here.”
“You surely may, and more than you imagine,” said the
artist. “Whatever health, comfort and natural life, exists
in the house, is embodied in your person. These blessings
came along with you, and will vanish when you leave the
threshold. Miss Hepzibah, by secluding herself from
society, has lost all true relation with it, and is, in fact,
dead; although she galvanizes herself into a semblance of
life, and stands behind her counter, afflicting the world with
a greatly-to-be-deprecated scowl. Your poor cousin Clifford
is another dead and long-buried person, on whom the governor
and council have wrought a necromantic miracle. I
should not wonder if he were to crumble away, some morning,
after you are gone, and nothing be seen of him more,
except a heap of dust. Miss Hepzibah, at any rate, will
lose what little flexibility she has. They both exist by
you.”
“I should be very sorry to think so,” answered Phœbe,
gravely. “But it is true that my small abilities were precisely
what they needed; and I have a real interest in their
welfare, — an odd kind of motherly sentiment, — which I
wish you would not laugh at! And let me tell you
frankly, Mr. Holgrave, I am sometimes puzzled to know
whether you wish them well or ill.”
“Undoubtedly,” said the daguerreotypist, “I do feel an
interest in this antiquated, poverty-stricken old
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maidenlady, and this degraded and shattered gentleman, — this
abortive lover of the beautiful. A kindly interest, too,
helpless old children that they are! But you have no conception
what a different kind of heart mine is from your
own. It is not my impulse, as regards these two individuals,
either to help or hinder; but to look on, to analyze, to
explain matters to myself, and to comprehend the drama
which, for almost two hundred years, has been dragging its
slow length over the ground where you and I now tread.
If permitted to witness the close, I doubt not to derive a
moral satisfaction from it, go matters how they may. There
is a conviction within me that the end draws nigh. But,
though Providence sent you hither to help, and sends me
only as a privileged and meet spectator, I pledge myself to
lend these unfortunate beings whatever aid I can!”
“I wish you would speak more plainly,” cried Phœbe,
perplexed and displeased; “and, above all, that you would
feel more like a Christian and a human being! How is it
possible to see people in distress, without desiring, more
than anything else, to help and comfort them? You talk
as if this old house were a theatre; and you seem to look at
Hepzibah's and Clifford's misfortunes, and those of generations
before them, as a tragedy, such as I have seen acted
in the hall of a country hotel, only the present one appears
to be played exclusively for your amusement. I do not
like this. The play costs the performers too much, and the
audience is too cold-hearted.”
“You are severe,” said Holgrave, compelled to recognize
a degree of truth in this piquant sketch of his own mood.
“And then,” continued Phœbe, “what can you mean by
your conviction, which you tell me of, that the end is drawing
near? Do you know of any new trouble hanging over
my poor relatives? If so, tell me at once, and I will not
leave them!”
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“Forgive me, Phœbe!” said the daguerreotypist, holding
out his hand, to which the girl was constrained to yield her
own. “I am somewhat of a mystic, it must be confessed.
The tendency is in my blood, together with the faculty of
mesmerism, which might have brought me to Gallows Hill,
in the good old times of witchcraft. Believe me, if I were
really aware of any secret, the disclosure of which would
benefit your friends, — who are my own friends, likewise,—
you should learn it before we part. But I have no such
knowledge.”
“You hold something back!” said Phœbe.
“Nothing, — no secrets but my own,” answered Holgrave.
“I can perceive, indeed, that Judge Pyncheon still
keeps his eye on Clifford, in whose ruin he had so large a
share. His motives and intentions, however, are a mystery
to me. He is a determined and relentless man, with the
genuine character of an inquisitor; and had he any object
to gain by putting Clifford to the rack, I verily believe that
he would wrench his joints from their sockets, in order to
accomplish it. But, so wealthy and eminent as he is, — so
powerful in his own strength, and in the support of society
on all sides, — what can Judge Pyncheon have to hope or
fear from the imbecile, branded, half-torpid Clifford?”
“Yet,” urged Phœbe, “you did speak as if misfortune
were impending!”
“O, that was because I am morbid!” replied the artist.
“My mind has a twist aside, like almost everybody's mind,
except your own. Moreover, it is so strange to find myself
an inmate of this old Pyncheon-house, and sitting in this
old garden — (hark, how Maule's well is murmuring!) —
that, were it only for this one circumstance, I cannot help
fancying that Destiny is arranging its fifth act for a catastrophe.”
“There!” cried Phœbe, with renewed vexation; for she
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was by nature as hostile to mystery as the sunshine to a
dark corner. “You puzzle me more than ever!”
“Then let us part friends!” said Holgrave, pressing her
hand. “Or, if not friends, let us part before you entirely
hate me. You, who love everybody else in the world!”
“Good-by, then,” said Phœbe, frankly. “I do not mean
to be angry a great while, and should be sorry to have you
think so. There has Cousin Hepzibah been standing in the
shadow of the door-way, this quarter of an hour past! She
thinks I stay too long in the damp garden. So, good-night,
and good-by!”
On the second morning thereafter, Phœbe might have
been seen, in her straw bonnet, with a shawl on one arm
and a little carpet-bag on the other, bidding adieu to Hepzibah
and Cousin Clifford. She was to take a seat in the
next train of cars, which would transport her to within half
a dozen miles of her country village.
The tears were in Phœbe's eyes; a smile, dewy with
affectionate regret, was glimmering around her pleasant
mouth. She wondered how it came to pass, that her life
of a few weeks, here in this heavy-hearted old mansion, had
taken such hold of her, and so melted into her associations,
as now to seem a more important centre-point of remembrance
than all which had gone before. How had Hepzibah—
grim, silent, and irresponsive to her overflow of cordial
sentiment — contrived to win so much love? And Clifford, —
in his abortive decay, with the mystery of fearful crime upon
him, and the close prison-atmosphere yet lurking in his
breath, — how had he transformed himself into the simplest
child, whom Phœbe felt bound to watch over, and be, as it
were, the providence of his unconsidered hours! Everything,
at that instant of farewell, stood out prominently to
her view. Look where she would, lay her hand on what
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she might, the object responded to her consciousness, as if a
moist human heart were in it.
She peeped from the window into the garden, and felt
herself more regretful at leaving this spot of black earth,
vitiated with such an age-long growth of weeds, than joyful
at the idea of again scenting her pine-forests and fresh
clover-fields. She called Chanticleer, his two wives, and
the venerable chicken, and threw them some crumbs of
bread from the breakfast-table. These being hastily gobbled
up, the chicken spread its wings, and alighted close by
Phœbe on the window-sill, where it looked gravely into her
face and vented its emotions in a croak. Phœbe bade it be
a good old chicken during her absence, and promised to
bring it a little bag of buckwheat.
“Ah, Phœbe!” remarked Hepzibah, “you do not smile
so naturally as when you came to us! Then the smile
chose to shine out; now, you choose it should. It is well
that you are going back, for a little while, into your native
air. There has been too much weight on your spirits
The house is too gloomy and lonesome; the shop is full of
vexations; and as for me, I have no faculty of making things
look brighter than they are. Dear Clifford has been your
only comfort!”
“Come hither, Phœbe,” suddenly cried her cousin Clifford,
who had said very little, all the morning. “Close! —
closer! — and look me in the face!”
Phœbe put one of her small hands on each elbow of his
chair, and leaned her face towards him, so that he might
persue it as carefully as he would. It is probable that the
latent emotions of this parting hour had revived, in some
degree, his bedimmed and enfeebled faculties. At any rate,
Phœbe soon felt that, if not the profound insight of a seer,
yet a more than feminine delicacy of appreciation, was
making her heart the subject of its regard. A moment
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before, she had known nothing which she would have
sought to hide. Now, as if some secret were hinted to her
own consciousness through the medium of another's perception,
she was fain to let her eyelids droop beneath Clifford's
gaze. A blush, too, — the redder, because she strove
hard to keep it down, — ascended higher and higher, in a
tide of fitful progress, until even her brow was all suffused
with it.
“It is enough, Phœbe,” said Clifford, with a melancholy
smile. “When I first saw you, you were the prettiest little
maiden in the world; and now you have deepened into
beauty! Girlhood has passed into womanhood; the bud is
a bloom! Go, now! — I feel lonelier than I did.”
Phœbe took leave of the desolate couple, and passed
through the shop, twinkling her eyelids to shake off a dew-drop;
for — considering how brief her absence was to be,
and therefore the folly of being cast down about it — she
would not so far acknowledge her tears as to dry them with
her handkerchief. On the door-step, she met the little
urchin whose marvellous feats of gastronomy have been
recorded in the earlier pages of our narrative. She took
from the window some specimen or other of natural history, —
her eyes being too dim with moisture to inform her
accurately whether it was a rabbit or a hippopotamus, —
put it into the child's hand, as a parting gift, and went her
way. Old Uncle Venner was just coming out of his door,
with a wood-horse and saw on his shoulder; and, trudging
along the street, he scrupled not to keep company with
Phœbe, so far as their paths lay together; nor, in spite of
his patched coat and rusty beaver, and the curious fashion
of his tow-cloth trousers, could she find it in her heart to
outwalk him.
“We shall miss you, next Sabbath afternoon,” observed
the street philosopher. “It is unaccountable how little
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while it takes some folks to grow just as natural to a man
as his own breath; and, begging your pardon, Miss Phœbe
(though there can be no offence in an old man's saying it),
that's just what you 've grown to me! My years have been
a great many, and your life is but just beginning; and yet,
you are somehow as familiar to me as if I had found you at
my mother's door, and you had blossomed, like a running
vine, all along my pathway since. Come back soon, or I
shall be gone to my farm; for I begin to find these woodsawing
jobs a little too tough for my back-ache.”
“Very soon, Uncle Venner,” replied Phœbe.
“And let it be all the sooner, Phœbe, for the sake of
those poor souls yonder,” continued her companion. “They
can never do without you, now, — never, Phœbe, never! —
no more than if one of God's angels had been living with
them, and making their dismal house pleasant and comfortable!
Don't it seem to you they'd be in a sad case, if,
some pleasant summer morning like this, the angel should
spread his wings, and fly to the place he came from?
Well, just so they feel, now that you 're going home by
the railroad! They can't bear it, Miss Phœbe; so be sure
to come back!”
“I am no angel, Uncle Venner,” said Phœbe, smiling, as
she offered him her hand at the street-corner. “But, I
suppose, people never feel so much like angels as when they
are doing what little good they may. So I shall certainly
come back!”
Thus parted the old man and the rosy girl; and Phœbe
took the wings of the morning, and was soon flitting almost
as rapidly away as if endowed with the aerial locomotion
of the angels to whom Uncle Venner had so graciously
compared her.
-- -- p574-248
XV. THE SCOWL AND SMILE.
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Several days passed over the seven gables, heavily and
drearily enough. In fact (not to attribute the whole gloom
of sky and earth to the one inauspicious circumstance of
Phœbe's departure), an easterly storm had set in, and indefatigably
applied itself to the task of making the black roof
and walls of the old house look more cheerless than ever
before. Yet was the outside not half so cheerless as the
interior. Poor Clifford was cut off, at once, from all his
scanty resources of enjoyment. Phœbe was not there; nor
did the sunshine fall upon the floor. The garden, with its
muddy walks, and the chill, dripping foliage of its summer-house,
was an image to be shuddered at. Nothing flourished
in the cold, moist, pitiless atmosphere, drifting with
the brackish scud of sea-breezes, except the moss along the
joints of the shingle-roof, and the great bunch of weeds, that
had lately been suffering from drought, in the angle between
the two front gables.
As for Hepzibah, she seemed not merely possessed with
the east wind, but to be, in her very person, only another
phase of this gray and sullen spell of weather; the east
wind itself, grim and disconsolate, in a rusty black silk
gown, and with a turban of cloud-wreaths on its head.
The custom of the shop fell off because a story got abroad
that she soured her small beer and other damageable commodities,
by scowling on them. It is, perhaps, true that the
public had something reasonably to complain of in her
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deportment; but towards Clifford she was neither ill-tempered
nor unkind, nor felt less warmth of heart than always, had
it been possible to make it reach him. The inutility of her
best efforts, however, palsied the poor old gentlewoman. She
could do little else than sit silently in a corner of the room,
when the wet pear-tree branches, sweeping across the small
windows, created a noon-day dusk, which Hepzibah unconsciously
darkened with her woe-begone aspect. It was no
fault of Hepzibah's. Everything — even the old chairs and
tables, that had known what weather was for three or four
such lifetimes as her own — looked as damp and chill as if
the present were their worst experience. The picture of the
Puritan colonel shivered on the wall. The house itself
shivered, from every attic of its seven gables, down to the
great kitchen fireplace, which served all the better as an
emblem of the mansion's heart, because, though built for
warmth, it was now so comfortless and empty.
Hepzibah attempted to enliven matters by a fire in the
parlor. But the storm-demon kept watch above, and, whenever
a flame was kindled, drove the smoke back again,
choking the chimney's sooty throat with its own breath.
Nevertheless, during four days of this miserable storm,
Clifford wrapt himself in an old cloak, and occupied his customary
chair. On the morning of the fifth, when summoned
to breakfast, he responded only by a broken-hearted
murmur, expressive of a determination not to leave his bed.
His sister made no attempt to change his purpose. In fact,
entirely as she loved him, Hepzibah could hardly have
borne any longer the wretched duty — so impracticable by
her few and rigid faculties — of seeking pastime for a still
sensitive, but ruined mind, critical and fastidious, without
force or volition. It was, at least, something short of positive
despair, that, to-day, she might sit shivering alone, and
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not suffer continually a new grief, and unreasonable pang of
remorse, at every fitful sigh of her fellow-sufferer.
But Clifford, it seemed, though he did not make his
appearance below stairs, had, after all, bestirred himself in
quest of amusement. In the course of the forenoon, Hepzibah
heard a note of music, which (there being no other tuneful
contrivance in the House of the Seven Gables) she knew
must proceed from Alice Pyncheon's harpsichord. She was
aware that Clifford, in his youth, had possessed a cultivated
taste for music, and a considerable degree of skill in its practice.
It was difficult, however, to conceive of his retaining
an accomplishment to which daily exercise is so essential, in
the measure indicated by the sweet, airy, and delicate,
though most melancholy strain, that now stole upon her
ear. Nor was it less marvellous that the long-silent instrument
should be capable of so much melody. Hepzibah
involuntarily thought of the ghostly harmonies, prelusive of
death in the family, which were attributed to the legendary
Alice. But it was, perhaps, proof of the agency of other
than spiritual fingers, that, after a few touches, the chords
seemed to snap asunder with their own vibrations, and the
music ceased.
But a harsher sound succeeded to the mysterious notes;
nor was the easterly day fated to pass without an event
sufficient in itself to poison, for Hepzibah and Clifford, the
balmiest air that ever brought the humming-birds along with
it. The final echoes of Alice Pyncheon's performance (or
Clifford's, if his we must consider it) were driven away by
no less vulgar a dissonance than the ringing of the shop-bell.
A foot was heard scraping itself on the threshold, and
thence somewhat ponderously stepping on the floor. Hepzibah
delayed a moment, while muffling herself in a faded
shawl, which had been her defensive armor in a forty years'
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warfare against the east wind. A characteristic sound,
however, — neither a cough nor a hem, but a kind of rumbling
and reverberating spasm in somebody's capacious
depth of chest, — impelled her to hurry forward, with that
aspect of fierce faint-heartedness so common to women in
cases of perilous emergency. Few of her sex, on such occasions,
have ever looked so terrible as our poor scowling
Hepzibah. But the visiter quietly closed the shop-door behind
him, stood up his umbrella against the counter, and
turned a visage of composed benignity, to meet the alarm
and anger which his appearance had excited.
Hepzibah's presentiment had not deceived her. It was
no other than Judge Pyncheon, who, after in vain trying the
front door, had now effected his entrance into the shop.
“How do you do, Cousin Hepzibah? — and how does
this most inclement weather affect our poor Clifford?”
began the judge; and wonderful it seemed, indeed, that the
easterly storm was not put to shame, or, at any rate, a little
mollified, by the genial benevolence of his smile. “I could
not rest without calling to ask, once more, whether I can in
any manner promote his comfort, or your own.”
“You can do nothing,” said Hepzibah, controlling her
agitation as well as she could. “I devote myself to Clifford.
He has every comfort which his situation admits of.”
“But, allow me to suggest, dear cousin,” rejoined the
judge, “you err, — in all affection and kindness, no doubt,
and with the very best intentions, — but you do err, nevertheless,
in keeping your brother so secluded. Why insulate
him thus from all sympathy and kindness? Clifford,
alas! has had too much of solitude. Now let him try
society, — the society, that is to say, of kindred and old
friends. Let me, for instance, but see Clifford; and I will
answer for the good effect of the interview.”
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“You cannot see him,” answered Hepzibah. “Clifford
has kept his bed since yesterday.”
“What! How! Is he ill?” exclaimed Judge Pyncheon,
starting with what seemed to be angry alarm; for the very
frown of the old Puritan darkened through the room as he
spoke. “Nay, then, I must and will see him! What if he
should die?”
“He is in no danger of death,” said Hepzibah, — and
added, with bitterness that she could repress no longer,
“none; — unless he shall be persecuted to death, now, by
the same man who long ago attempted it!”
“Cousin Hepzibah,” said the judge, with an impressive
earnestness of manner, which grew even to tearful pathos,
as he proceeded, “is it possible that you do not perceive
how unjust, how unkind, how unchristian, is this constant,
this long-continued bitterness against me, for a part which I
was constrained by duty and conscience, by the force of law,
and at my own peril, to act? What did I do, in detriment
to Clifford, which it was possible to leave undone? How
could you, his sister, — if, for your never-ending sorrow, as
it has been for mine, you had known what I did, — have
shown greater tenderness? And do you think, cousin, that
it has cost me no pang? — that it has left no anguish in my
bosom, from that day to this, amidst all the prosperity with
which Heaven has blessed me? — or that I do not now
rejoice, when it is deemed consistent with the dues of public
justice and the welfare of society that this dear kinsman,
this early friend, this nature so delicately and beautifully
constituted, — so unfortunate, let us pronounce him, and
forbear to say, so guilty, — that our own Clifford, in fine,
should be given back to life, and its possibilities of enjoyment?
Ah, you little know me, Cousin Hepzibah! You
little know this heart! It now throbs at the thought of
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meeting him! There lives not the human being (except
yourself, — and you not more than I) who has shed so many
tears for Clifford's calamity! You behold some of them
now. There is none who would so delight to promote his
happiness! Try me, Hepzibah! — try me, cousin! — try
the man whom you have treated as your enemy and Clifford's! —
try Jaffrey Pyncheon, and you shall find him
true, to the heart's core!”
“In the name of Heaven,” cried Hepzibah, provoked only
to intenser indignation by this out-gush of the inestimable
tenderness of a stern nature, — “in God's name, whom you
insult, and whose power I could almost question, since he
hears you utter so many false words, without palsying your
tongue, — give over, I beseech you, this loathsome pretence
of affection for your victim! You hate him! Say so, like
a man! You cherish, at this moment, some black purpose
against him, in your heart! Speak it out, at once! — or,
if you hope so to promote it better, hide it till you can triumph
in its success! But never speak again of your love
for my poor brother! I cannot bear it! It will drive me
beyond a woman's decency! It will drive me mad! Forbear!
Not another word! It will make me spurn you!”
For once, Hepzibah's wrath had given her courage. She
had spoken. But, after all, was this unconquerable distrust
of Judge Pyncheon's integrity, and this utter denial, apparently,
of his claim to stand in the ring of human sympathies, —
were they founded in any just perception of his
character, or merely the offspring of a woman's unreasonable
prejudice, deduced from nothing?
The judge, beyond all question, was a man of eminent
respectability. The church acknowledged it; the state
acknowledged it. It was denied by nobody. In all the
very extensive sphere of those who knew him, whether
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in his public or private capacities, there was not an individual—
except Hepzibah, and some lawless mystic, like
the daguerreotypist, and, possibly, a few political opponents—
who would have dreamed of seriously disputing
his claim to a high and honorable place in the world's
regard. Nor (we must do him the further justice to say)
did Judge Pyncheon himself, probably, entertain many or
very frequent doubts, that his enviable reputation accorded
with his deserts. His conscience, therefore, usually considered
the surest witness to a man's integrity, — his conscience,
unless it might be for the little space of five minutes
in the twenty-four hours, or, now and then, some black day
in the whole year's circle, — his conscience bore an accordant
testimony with the world's laudatory voice. And yet,
strong as this evidence may seem to be, we should hesitate
to peril our own conscience on the assertion, that the judge
and the consenting world were right, and that poor Hepzibah,
with her solitary prejudice, was wrong. Hidden from
mankind, — forgotten by himself, or buried so deeply under
a sculptured and ornamented pile of ostentatious deeds that
his daily life could take no note of it, — there may have
lurked some evil and unsightly thing. Nay, we could
almost venture to say, further, that a daily guilt might have
been acted by him, continually renewed, and reddening forth
afresh, like the miraculous blood-stain of a murder, without
his necessarily and at every moment being aware of it.
Men of strong minds, great force of character, and a hard
texture of the sensibilities, are very capable of falling into
mistakes of this kind. They are ordinarily men to whom
forms are of paramount importance. Their field of action lies
among the external phenomena of life. They possess vast
ability in grasping, and arranging, and appropriating to themselves,
the big, heavy, solid unrealities, such as gold, landed
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estate, offices of trust and emolument, and public honors.
With these materials, and with deeds of goodly aspect, done
in the public eye, an individual of this class builds up, as it
were, a tall and stately edifice, which, in the view of other
people, and ultimately in his own view, is no other than the
man's character, or the man himself. Behold, therefore, a
palace! Its splendid halls, and suites of spacious apartments,
are floored with a mosaic-work of costly marbles; its
windows, the whole height of each room, admit the sunshine
through the most transparent of plate-glass; its high
cornices are gilded, and its ceilings gorgeously painted; and
a lofty dome — through which, from the central pavement,
you may gaze up to the sky, as with no obstructing medium
between — surmounts the whole. With what fairer and
nobler emblem could any man desire to shadow forth his
character? Ah! but in some low and obscure nook, — some
narrow closet on the ground-floor, shut, locked, and bolted,
and the key flung away, — or beneath the marble pavement,
in a stagnant water-puddle, with the richest pattern
of mosaic-work above, — may lie a corpse, half decayed, and
still decaying, and diffusing its death-scent all through the
palace! The inhabitant will not be conscious of it, for it
has long been his daily breath! Neither will the visiters,
for they smell only the rich odors which the master sedulously
scatters through the palace, and the incense which
they bring, and delight to burn before him! Now and
then, perchance, comes in a seer, before whose sadly-gifted
eye the whole structure melts into thin air, leaving only the
hidden nook, the bolted closet, with the cobwebs festooned
over its forgotten door, or the deadly hole under the pavement,
and the decaying corpse within. Here, then, we are
to seek the true emblem of the man's character, and of the
deed that gives whatever reality it possesses to his life.
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And, beneath the show of a marble palace, that pool of stagnant
water, foul with many impurities, and, perhaps, tinged
with blood, — that secret abomination, above which, possibly,
he may say his prayers, without remembering it, — is this
man's miserable soul!
To apply this train of remark somewhat more closely to
Judge Pyncheon. — We might say (without in the least
imputing crime to a personage of his eminent respectability)
that there was enough of splendid rubbish in his life to
cover up and paralyze a more active and subtile conscience
than the judge was ever troubled with. The purity of his
judicial character, while on the bench; the faithfulness of
his public service in subsequent capacities; his devotedness
to his party, and the rigid consistency with which he had
adhered to its principles, or, at all events, kept pace with its
organized movements; his remarkable zeal as president of a
Bible society; his unimpeachable integrity as treasurer of a
widow's and orphan's fund; his benefits to horticulture, by
producing two much-esteemed varieties of the pear, and to
agriculture, through the agency of the famous Pyncheonbull;
the cleanliness of his moral deportment, for a great
many years past; the severity with which he had frowned
upon, and finally cast off, an expensive and dissipated son,
delaying forgiveness until within the final quarter of an
hour of the young man's life; his prayers at morning and
eventide, and graces at meal-time; his efforts in furtherance
of the temperance cause; his confining himself, since the
last attack of the gout, to five diurnal glasses of old sherry
wine; the snowy whiteness of his linen, the polish of his
boots, the handsomeness of his gold-headed cane, the square
and roomy fashion of his coat, and the fineness of its material,
and, in general, the studied propriety of his dress and
equipment; the scrupulousness with which he paid public
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notice, in the street, by a bow, a lifting of the hat, a nod, or
a motion of the hand, to all and sundry his acquaintances,
rich or poor; the smile of broad benevolence wherewith he
made it a point to gladden the whole world; — what room
could possibly be found for darker traits, in a portrait made
up of lineaments like these? This proper face was what he
beheld in the looking-glass. This admirably arranged life
was what he was conscious of, in the progress of every day.
Then, might not he claim to be its result and sum, and say
to himself and the community, — “Behold Judge Pyncheon
there”?
And, allowing that, many, many years ago, in his early
and reckless youth, he had committed some one wrong
act, — or that, even now, the inevitable force of circumstances
should occasionally make him do one questionable
deed, among a thousand praiseworthy, or, at least, blameless
ones, — would you characterize the judge by that one
necessary deed, and that half-forgotten act, and let it overshadow
the fair aspect of a lifetime? What is there so
ponderous in evil, that a thumb's bigness of it should outweigh
the mass of things not evil which were heaped into
the other scale! This scale and balance system is a favorite
one with people of Judge Pyncheon's brotherhood. A hard,
cold man, thus unfortunately situated, seldom or never
looking inward, and resolutely taking his idea of himself
from what purports to be his image as reflected in the
mirror of public opinion, can scarcely arrive at true self-knowledge,
except through loss of property and reputation.
Sickness will not always help him to it; not always the
death-hour!
But our affair now is with Judge Pyncheon as he stood
confronting the fierce outbreak of Hepzibah's wrath. Without
premeditation, to her own surprise, and indeed terror,
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she had given vent, for once, to the inveteracy of her
resentment, cherished against this kinsman for thirty years.
Thus far, the judge's countenance had expressed mild
forbearance, — grave and almost gentle deprecation of his
cousin's unbecoming violence, — free and Christian-like
forgiveness of the wrong inflicted by her words. But,
when those words were irrevocably spoken, his look assumed
sternness, the sense of power, and immitigable resolve; and
this with so natural and imperceptible a change, that it
seemed as if the iron man had stood there from the first,
and the meek man not at all. The effect was as when the
light vapory clouds, with their soft coloring, suddenly vanish
from the stony brow of a precipitous mountain, and leave
there the frown which you at once feel to be eternal. Hepzibah
almost adopted the insane belief that it was her old
Puritan ancestor, and not the modern judge, on whom she
had just been wreaking the bitterness of her heart. Never
did a man show stronger proof of the lineage attributed to
him than Judge Pyncheon, at this crisis, by his unmistakable
resemblance to the picture in the inner room.
“Cousin Hepzibah,” said he, very calmly, “it is time to
have done with this.”
“With all my heart!” answered she. “Then, why do
you persecute us any longer? Leave poor Clifford and me
in peace. Neither of us desires anything better!”
“It is my purpose to see Clifford before I leave this
house,” continued the judge. “Do not act like a madwoman,
Hepzibah! I am his only friend, and an all-powerful
one. Has it never occurred to you, — are you so blind as
not to have seen, — that, without not merely my consent,
but my efforts, my representations, the exertion of my whole
influence, political, official, personal, Clifford would never
have been what you call free? Did you think his release a
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triumph over me? Not so, my good cousin; not so, by
any means! The furthest possible from that! No; but it
was the accomplishment of a purpose long entertained on
my part. I set him free!”
“You!” answered Hepzibah. “I never will believe
it! He owed his dungeon to you; — his freedom to God's
providence!”
“I set him free!” reäffirmed Judge Pyncheon, with the
calmest composure. “And I come hither now to decide
whether he shall retain his freedom. It will depend upon
himself. For this purpose, I must see him.”
“Never! — it would drive him mad!” exclaimed Hepzibah,
but with an irresoluteness sufficiently perceptible to
the keen eye of the judge; for, without the slightest faith
in his good intentions, she knew not whether there was most
to dread in yielding or resistance. “And why should you
wish to see this wretched, broken man, who retains hardly
a fraction of his intellect, and will hide even that from an
eye which has no love in it?”
“He shall see love enough in mine, if that be all!” said
the judge, with well-grounded confidence in the benignity
of his aspect. “But, Cousin Hepzibah, you confess a great
deal, and very much to the purpose. Now, listen, and I
will frankly explain my reasons for insisting on this interview.
At the death, thirty years since, of our uncle Jaffrey,
it was found, — I know not whether the circumstance ever
attracted much of your attention, among the sadder interests
that clustered round that event, — but it was found that his
visible estate, of every kind, fell far short of any estimate
ever made of it. He was supposed to be immensely rich.
Nobody doubted that he stood among the weightiest men of
his day. It was one of his eccentricities, however, — and
not altogether a folly, neither, — to conceal the amount of
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his property by making distant and foreign investments,
perhaps under other names than his own, and by various
means, familiar enough to capitalists, but unnecessary here
to be specified. By Uncle Jaffrey's last will and testament,
as you are aware, his entire property was bequeathed to
me, with the single exception of a life interest to yourself
in this old family mansion, and the strip of patrimonial
estate remaining attached to it.”
“And do you seek to deprive us of that?” asked Hepzibah,
unable to restrain her bitter contempt. “Is this your
price for ceasing to persecute poor Clifford?”
“Certainly not, my dear cousin!” answered the judge,
smiling benevolently. “On the contrary, as you must do
me the justice to own, I have constantly expressed my readiness
to double or treble your resources, whenever you should
make up your mind to accept any kindness of that nature
at the hands of your kinsman. No, no! But here lies the
gist of the matter. Of my uncle's unquestionably great
estate, as I have said, not the half — no, not one third, as I
am fully convinced — was apparent after his death. Now,
I have the best possible reasons for believing that your
brother Clifford can give me a clue to the recovery of the
remainder.”
“Clifford! — Clifford know of any hidden wealth? —
Clifford have it in his power to make you rich?” cried the
old gentlewoman, affected with a sense of something like
ridicule, at the idea. “Impossible! You deceive yourself!
It is really a thing to laugh at!”
“It is as certain as that I stand here!” said Judge Pyncheon,
striking his gold-headed cane on the floor, and at the
same time stamping his foot, as if to express his conviction
the more forcibly by the whole emphasis of his substantial
person. “Clifford told me so himself!”
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“No, no!” exclaimed Hepzibah, incredulously. “You
are dreaming, Cousin Jaffrey!”
“I do not belong to the dreaming class of men,” said the
judge, quietly. “Some months before my uncle's death,
Clifford boasted to me of the possession of the secret of
incalculable wealth. His purpose was to taunt me, and
excite my curiosity. I know it well. But, from a pretty
distinct recollection of the particulars of our conversation, I
am thoroughly convinced that there was truth in what he
said. Clifford, at this moment, if he chooses, — and choose
he must! — can inform me where to find the schedule, the
documents, the evidences, in whatever shape they exist, of
the vast amount of Uncle Jaffrey's missing property. He
has the secret. His boast was no idle word. It had a directness,
an emphasis, a particularity, that showed a back-bone
of solid meaning within the mystery of his expression.”
“But what could have been Clifford's object,” asked Hepzibah,
“in concealing it so long?”
“It was one of the bad impulses of our fallen nature,”
replied the judge, turning up his eyes. “He looked upon
me as his enemy. He considered me as the cause of his
overwhelming disgrace, his imminent peril of death, his
irretrievable ruin. There was no great probability, therefore,
of his volunteering information, out of his dungeon,
that should elevate me still higher on the ladder of prosperity.
But the moment has now come when he must give up
his secret.”
“And what if he should refuse?” inquired Hepzibah.
“Or, — as I steadfastly believe, — what if he has no knowledge
of this wealth?”
“My dear cousin,” said Judge Pyncheon, with a quietude
which he had the power of making more formidable than
any violence, “since your brother's return, I have taken the
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precaution (a highly proper one in the near kinsman and
natural guardian of an individual so situated) to have his
deportment and habits constantly and carefully overlooked.
Your neighbors have been eye-witnesses to whatever has
passed in the garden. The butcher, the baker, the fishmonger,
some of the customers of your shop, and many a
prying old woman, have told me several of the secrets of
your interior. A still larger circle — I myself, among the
rest — can testify to his extravagances at the arched window.
Thousands beheld him, a week or two ago, on the
point of flinging himself thence into the street. From all
this testimony, I am led to apprehend — reluctantly, and
with deep grief — that Clifford's misfortunes have so affected
his intellect, never very strong, that he cannot safely remain
at large. The alternative, you must be aware, — and its
adoption will depend entirely on the decision which I am
now about to make, — the alternative is his confinement,
probably for the remainder of his life, in a public asylum,
for persons in his unfortunate state of mind.”
“You cannot mean it!” shrieked Hepzibah.
“Should my cousin Clifford,” continued Judge Pyncheon,
wholly undisturbed, “from mere malice, and hatred of one
whose interests ought naturally to be dear to him, — a mode
of passion that, as often as any other, indicates mental disease, —
should he refuse me the information so important
to myself, and which he assuredly possesses, I shall consider
it the one needed jot of evidence to satisfy my mind
of his insanity. And, once sure of the course pointed out
by conscience, you know me too well, Cousin Hepzibah, to
entertain a doubt that I shall pursue it.”
“O, Jaffrey — Cousin Jaffrey!” cried Hepzibah, mournfully,
not passionately, “it is you that are diseased in mind,
not Clifford! You have forgotten that a woman was your
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mother! — that you have had sisters, brothers, children of
your own! — or that there ever was affection between man
and man, or pity from one man to another, in this miserable
world! Else, how could you have dreamed of this? You
are not young, Cousin Jaffrey! — no, nor middle-aged, —
but already an old man! The hair is white upon your head!
How many years have you to live? Are you not rich enough
for that little time? Shall you be hungry, — shall you lack
clothes, or a roof to shelter you, — between this point and the
grave? No! but, with the half of what you now possess,
you could revel in costly food and wines, and build a house
twice as splendid as you now inhabit, and make a far greater
show to the world, — and yet leave riches to your only son, to
make him bless the hour of your death! Then, why should
you do this cruel, cruel thing? — so mad a thing, that I
know not whether to call it wicked! Alas, Cousin Jaffrey,
this hard and grasping spirit has run in our blood these two
hundred years! You are but doing over again, in another
shape, what your ancestor before you did, and sending down
to your posterity the curse inherited from him!”
“Talk sense, Hepzibah, for Heaven's sake!” exclaimed
the judge, with the impatience natural to a reasonable man,
on hearing anything so utterly absurd as the above, in a
discussion about matters of business. “I have told you my
determination. I am not apt to change. Clifford must give
up his secret, or take the consequences. And let him decide
quickly; for I have several affairs to attend to, this morning,
and an important dinner engagement with some political
friends.”
“Clifford has no secret!” answered Hepzibah. “And
God will not let you do the thing you meditate!”
“We shall see,” said the unmoved judge. “Meanwhile,
choose whether you will summon Clifford, and allow
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this business to be amicably settled by an interview between
two kinsmen, or drive me to harsher measures, which I
should be most happy to feel myself justified in avoiding.
The responsibility is altogether on your part.”
“You are stronger than I,” said Hepzibah, after a brief
consideration; “and you have no pity in your strength!
Clifford is not now insane; but the interview which you
insist upon may go far to make him so. Nevertheless,
knowing you as I do, I believe it to be my best course to
allow you to judge for yourself as to the improbability of
his possessing any valuable secret. I will call Clifford. Be
merciful in your dealings with him! — be far more merciful
than your heart bids you be! — for God is looking at you,
Jaffrey Pyncheon!”
The judge followed his cousin from the shop, where the
foregoing conversation had passed, into the parlor, and
flung himself heavily into the great ancestral chair. Many
a former Pyncheon had found repose in its capacious arms:—
rosy children, after their sports; young men, dreamy
with love; grown men, weary with cares; old men, burthened
with winters; — they had mused, and slumbered,
and departed to a yet profounder sleep. It had been a long
tradition, though a doubtful one, that this was the very
chair, seated in which, the earliest of the judge's New England
forefathers — he whose picture still hung upon the wall—
had given a dead man's silent and stern reception to the
throng of distinguished guests. From that hour of evil
omen, until the present, it may be, — though we know not
the secret of his heart, — but it may be that no wearier and
sadder man had ever sunk into the chair than this same Judge
Pyncheon, whom we have just beheld so immitigably hard
and resolute. Surely, it must have been at no slight cost
that he had thus fortified his soul with iron. Such
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calmness is a mightier effort than the violence of weaker men.
And there was yet a heavy task for him to do. Was it a
little matter, — a trifle to be prepared for in a single moment,
and to be rested from in another moment, — that he
must now, after thirty years, encounter a kinsman risen
from a living tomb, and wrench a secret from him, or else
consign him to a living tomb again?
“Did you speak?” asked Hepzibah, looking in from the
threshold of the parlor; for she imagined that the judge
had uttered some sound which she was anxious to interpret
as a relenting impulse. “I thought you called me back.”
“No, no!” gruffly answered Judge Pyncheon, with a
harsh frown, while his brow grew almost a black purple, in
the shadow of the room. “Why should I call you back?
Time flies! Bid Clifford come to me!”
The judge had taken his watch from his vest-pocket, and
now held it in his hand, measuring the interval which was
to ensue before the appearance of Clifford.
-- -- p574-266
XVI. CLIFFORD'S CHAMBER.
[figure description] Page 257.[end figure description]
Never had the old house appeared so dismal to poor
Hepzibah as when she departed on that wretched errand.
There was a strange aspect in it. As she trode along the
foot-worn passages, and opened one crazy door after another,
and ascended the creaking stair-case, she gazed wistfully
and fearfully around. It would have been no marvel, to her
excited mind, if, behind or beside her, there had been the
rustle of dead people's garments, or pale visages awaiting
her on the landing-place above. Her nerves were set all
ajar by the scene of passion and terror through which she
had just struggled. Her colloquy with Judge Pyncheon,
who so perfectly represented the person and attributes of
the founder of the family, had called back the dreary past.
It weighed upon her heart. Whatever she had heard, from
legendary aunts and grandmothers, concerning the good or
evil fortunes of the Pyncheons, — stories which had heretofore
been kept warm in her remembrance by the chimney-corner
glow that was associated with them, — now recurred
to her, sombre, ghastly, cold, like most passages of family
history, when brooded over in melancholy mood. The
whole seemed little else but a series of calamity, reproducing
itself in successive generations, with one general hue, and
varying in little, save the outline. But Hepzibah now felt as
if the judge, and Clifford, and herself, — they three together,—
were on the point of adding another incident to the
annals of the house, with a bolder relief of wrong and
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sorrow, which would cause it to stand out from all the rest.
Thus it is that the grief of the passing moment takes upon
itself an individuality, and a character of climax, which it
is destined to lose, after a while, and to fade into the dark
gray tissue common to the grave or glad events of many
years ago. It is but for a moment, comparatively, that anything
looks strange or startling; — a truth that has the
bitter and the sweet in it.
But Hepzibah could not rid herself of the sense of
something unprecedented at that instant passing, and soon
to be accomplished. Her nerves were in a shake. Instinctively
she paused before the arched window, and looked out
upon the street, in order to seize its permanent objects with
her mental grasp, and thus to steady herself from the reel
and vibration which affected her more immediate sphere.
It brought her up, as we may say, with a kind of shock,
when she beheld everything under the same appearance as
the day before, and numberless preceding days, except for
the difference between sunshine and sullen storm. Her eyes
travelled along the street, from door-step to door-step, noting
the wet sidewalks, with here and there a puddle in hollows
that had been imperceptible until filled with water.
She screwed her dim optics to their acutest point, in the hope
of making out, with greater distinctness, a certain window,
where she half saw, half guessed, that a tailor's seamstress
was sitting at her work. Hepzibah flung herself upon that
unknown woman's companionship, even thus far off. Then
she was attracted by a chaise rapidly passing, and watched
its moist and glistening top, and its splashing wheels, until
it had turned the corner, and refused to carry any further
her idly trifling, because appalled and overburthened, mind.
When the vehicle had disappeared, she allowed herself still
another loitering moment; for the patched figure of good
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Uncle Venner was now visible, coming slowly from the head
of the street downward, with a rheumatic limp, because the
east wind had got into his joints. Hepzibah wished that he
would pass yet more slowly, and befriend her shivering solitude
a little longer. Anything that would take her out of
the grievous present, and interpose human beings betwixt
herself and what was nearest to her, — whatever would
defer, for an instant, the inevitable errand on which she was
bound, — all such impediments were welcome. Next to the
lightest heart, the heaviest is apt to be most playful.
Hepzibah had little hardihood for her own proper pain,
and far less for what she must inflict on Clifford. Of so
slight a nature, and so shattered by his previous calamities,
it could not well be short of utter ruin to bring him face to
face with the hard, relentless man, who had been his evil
destiny through life. Even had there been no bitter recollections,
nor any hostile interest now at stake between
them, the mere natural repugnance of the more sensitive
system to the massive, weighty, and unimpressible one,
must, in itself, have been disastrous to the former. It would
be like flinging a porcelain vase, with already a crack in it,
against a granite column. Never before had Hepzibah so
adequately estimated the powerful character of her cousin
Jaffrey, — powerful by intellect, energy of will, the long
habit of acting among men, and, as she believed, by his
unscrupulous pursuit of selfish ends through evil means.
It did but increase the difficulty, that Judge Pyncheon was
under a delusion as to the secret which he supposed Clifford
to possess. Men of his strength of purpose, and customary
sagacity, if they chance to adopt a mistaken opinion in practical
matters, so wedge it and fasten it among things known
to be true, that to wrench it out of their minds is hardly less
difficult than pulling up an oak. Thus, as the judge
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required an impossibility of Clifford, the latter, as he could
not perform it, must needs perish. For what, in the grasp
of a man like this, was to become of Clifford's soft, poetic
nature, that never should have had a task more stubborn
than to set a life of beautiful enjoyment to the flow and
rhythm of musical cadences! Indeed, what had become of
it already? Broken! Blighted! All but annihilated!
Soon to be wholly so!
For a moment, the thought crossed Hepzibah's mind,
whether Clifford might not really have such knowledge of
their deceased uncle's vanished estate as the judge imputed
to him. She remembered some vague intimations, on her
brother's part, which — if the supposition were not essentially
preposterous — might have been so interpreted. There
had been schemes of travel and residence abroad, day-dreams
of brilliant life at home, and splendid castles in the
air, which it would have required boundless wealth to build
and realize. Had this wealth been in her power, how
gladly would Hepzibah have bestowed it all upon her iron-hearted
kinsman, to buy for Clifford the freedom and seclusion
of the desolate old house! But she believed that her
brother's schemes were as destitute of actual substance and
purpose as a child's pictures of its future life, while sitting
in a little chair by its mother's knee. Clifford had none
but shadowy gold at his command; and it was not the stuff
to satisfy Judge Pyncheon!
Was there no help, in their extremity? It seemed strange
that there should be none, with a city round about her. It
would be so easy to throw up the window, and send forth a
shriek, at the strange agony of which everybody would
come hastening to the rescue, well understanding it to be
the cry of a human soul, at some dreadful crisis! But how
wild, how almost laughable, the fatality, — and yet how
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continually it comes to pass, thought Hepzibah, in this dull
delirium of a world, — that whosoever, and with however
kindly a purpose, should come to help, they would be sure
to help the strongest side! Might and wrong combined,
like iron magnetized, are endowed with irresistible attraction.
There would be Judge Pyncheon, — a person eminent
in the public view, of high station and great wealth, a
philanthropist, a member of congress and of the church,
and intimately associated with whatever else bestows good
name, — so imposing, in these advantageous lights, that
Hepzibah herself could hardly help shrinking from her own
conclusions as to his hollow integrity. The judge, on one
side! And who, on the other? The guilty Clifford! Once
a by-word! Now, an indistinctly-remembered ignominy!
Nevertheless, in spite of this perception that the judge
would draw all human aid to his own behalf, Hepzibah was
so unaccustomed to act for herself, that the least word of
counsel would have swayed her to any mode of action.
Little Phœbe Pyncheon would at once have lighted up the
whole scene, if not by any available suggestion, yet simply
by the warm vivacity of her character. The idea of the
artist occurred to Hepzibah. Young and unknown, mere
vagrant adventurer as he was, she had been conscious of a
force in Holgrave which might well adapt him to be the
champion of a crisis. With this thought in her mind, she
unbolted a door, cobwebbed and long disused, but which
had served as a former medium of communication between
her own part of the house and the gable where the wandering
daguerreotypist had now established his temporary
home. He was not there. A book, face downward, on
the table, a roll of manuscript, a half-written sheet, a newspaper,
some tools of his present occupation, and several
rejected daguerreotypes, conveyed an impression as if he
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[figure description] Page 262.[end figure description]
were close at hand. But, at this period of the day, as
Hepzibah might have anticipated, the artist was at his public
rooms. With an impulse of idle curiosity, that flickered
among her heavy thoughts, she looked at one of the daguerreotypes,
and beheld Judge Pyncheon frowning at her!
Fate stared her in the face. She turned back from her
fruitless quest, with a heart-sinking sense of disappointment.
In all her years of seclusion, she had never felt, as
now, what it was to be alone. It seemed as if the house
stood in a desert, or, by some spell, was made invisible to
those who dwelt around, or passed beside it; so that any
mode of misfortune, miserable accident, or crime, might
happen in it, without the possibility of aid. In her grief
and wounded pride, Hepzibah had spent her life in divesting
herself of friends; — she had wilfully cast off the support
which God has ordained his creatures to need from one
another; — and it was now her punishment, that Clifford
and herself would fall the easier victims to their kindred
enemy.
Returning to the arched window, she lifted her eyes, —
scowling, poor, dim-sighted Hepzibah, in the face of Heaven!—
and strove hard to send up a prayer through the dense
gray pavement of clouds. Those mists had gathered, as if
to symbolize a great, brooding mass of human trouble, doubt,
confusion, and chill indifference, between earth and the better
regions. Her faith was too weak; the prayer too heavy
to be thus uplifted. It fell back, a lump of lead, upon her
heart. It smote her with the wretched conviction that
Providence intermeddled not in these petty wrongs of one
individual to his fellow, nor had any balm for these little
agonies of a solitary soul; but shed its justice, and its mercy,
in a broad, sunlike sweep, over half the universe at once.
Its vastness made it nothing. But Hepzibah did not see
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that, just as there comes a warm sunbeam into every cottage
window, so comes a love-beam of God's care and pity,
for every separate need.
At last, finding no other pretext for deferring the torture
that she was to inflict on Clifford, — her reluctance to which
was the true cause of her loitering at the window, her
search for the artist, and even her abortive prayer, — dreading,
also, to hear the stern voice of Judge Pyncheon from
below stairs, chiding her delay, — she crept slowly, a pale,
grief-stricken figure, a dismal shape of woman, with almost
torpid limbs, slowly to her brother's door, and knocked!
There was no reply!
And how should there have been? Her hand, tremulous
with the shrinking purpose which directed it, had smitten
so feebly against the door that the sound could hardly have
gone inward. She knocked again. Still, no response!
Nor was it to be wondered at. She had struck with the
entire force of her heart's vibration, communicating, by some
subtle magnetism, her own terror to the summons. Clifford
would turn his face to the pillow, and cover his head
beneath the bed-clothes, like a startled child at midnight.
She knocked a third time, three regular strokes, gentle, but
perfectly distinct, and with meaning in them; for, modulate
it with what cautious art we will, the hand cannot help
playing some tune of what we feel, upon the senseless
wood.
Clifford returned no answer.
“Clifford! dear brother!” said Hepzibah. “Shall I come
in?”
A silence.
Two or three times, and more, Hepzibah repeated his
name, without result; till, thinking her brother's sleep
unwontedly profound, she undid the door, and entering,
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found the chamber vacant. How could he have come forth,
and when, without her knowledge? Was it possible that,
in spite of the stormy day, and worn out with the irksomeness
within doors, he had betaken himself to his customary
haunt in the garden, and was now shivering under the
cheerless shelter of the summer-house? She hastily threw
up a window, thrust forth her turbaned head and the half
of her gaunt figure, and searched the whole garden through,
as completely as her dim vision would allow. She could
see the interior of the summer-house, and its circular seat,
kept moist by the droppings of the roof. It had no occupant.
Clifford was not thereabouts; unless, indeed, he had
crept for concealment — (as, for a moment, Hepzibah fancied
might be the case) — into a great wet mass of tangled and
broad-leaved shadow, where the squash-vines were clambering
tumultuously upon an old wooden frame-work, set casually
aslant against the fence. This could not be, however;
he was not there; for, while Hepzibah was looking, a
strange grimalkin stole forth from the very spot, and picked
his way across the garden. Twice he paused to snuff the
air, and then anew directed his course towards the parlor-window.
Whether it was only on account of the stealthy,
prying manner common to the race, or that this cat seemed
to have more than ordinary mischief in his thoughts, the
old gentlewoman, in spite of her much perplexity, felt an
impulse to drive the animal away, and accordingly flung
down a window-stick. The cat stared up at her, like a
detected thief or murderer, and, the next instant, took to
flight. No other living creature was visible in the garden.
Chanticleer and his family had either not left their roost,
disheartened by the interminable rain, or had done the
next wisest thing, by seasonably returning to it. Hepzibah
closed the window.
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But where was Clifford? Could it be, that, aware of the
presence of his Evil Destiny, he had crept silently down the
staircase, while the judge and Hepzibah stood talking in the
shop, and had softly undone the fastenings of the outer door,
and made his escape into the street? With that thought,
she seemed to behold his gray, wrinkled, yet childlike aspect,
in the old-fashioned garments which he wore about the
house; a figure such as one sometimes imagines himself to
be, with the world's eye upon him, in a troubled dream.
This figure of her wretched brother would go wandering
through the city, attracting all eyes, and everybody's wonder
and repugnance, like a ghost, the more to be shuddered
at because visible at noontide. To incur the ridicule of the
younger crowd, that knew him not, — the harsher scorn and
indignation of a few old men, who might recall his once
familiar features! To be the sport of boys, who, when old
enough to run about the streets, have no more reverence for
what is beautiful and holy, nor pity for what is sad, — no
more sense of sacred misery, sanctifying the human shape
in which it embodies itself, — than if Satan were the father
of them all! Goaded by their taunts, their loud, shrill
cries, and cruel laughter, — insulted by the filth of the public
ways, which they would fling upon him, — or, as it
might well be, distracted by the mere strangeness of his
situation, though nobody should afflict him with so much as
a thoughtless word, — what wonder if Clifford were to
break into some wild extravagance, which was certain to be
interpreted as lunacy? Thus Judge Pyncheon's fiendish
scheme would be ready accomplished to his hands!
Then Hepzibah reflected that the town was almost completely
water-girdled. The wharves stretched out towards
the centre of the harbor, and, in this inclement weather,
were deserted by the ordinary throng of merchants, laborers,
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and sea-faring men; each wharf a solitude, with the vessels
moored stem and stern, along its misty length. Should her
brother's aimless footsteps stray thitherward, and he but
bend, one moment, over the deep, black tide, would he not
bethink himself that here was the sure refuge within his
reach, and that, with a single step, or the slightest overbalance
of his body, he might be forever beyond his kinsman's
gripe? O, the temptation! To make of his ponderous
sorrow a security! To sink, with its leaden weight upon
him, and never rise again!
The horror of this last conception was too much for Hepzibah.
Even Jaffrey Pyncheon must help her now! She
hastened down the staircase, shrieking as she went.
“Clifford is gone!” she cried. “I cannot find my
brother! Help, Jaffrey Pyncheon! Some harm will happen
to him!”
She threw open the parlor-door. But, what with the
shade of branches across the windows, and the smokeblackened
ceiling, and the dark oak-panelling of the walls,
there was hardly so much daylight in the room that Hepzibah's
imperfect sight could accurately distinguish the
judge's figure. She was certain, however, that she saw
him sitting in the ancestral arm-chair, near the centre of
the floor, with his face somewhat averted, and looking towards
a window. So firm and quiet is the nervous system
of such men as Judge Pyncheon, that he had perhaps
stirred not more than once since her departure, but, in the
hard composure of his temperament, retained the position
into which accident had thrown him.
“I tell you, Jaffrey,” cried Hepzibah, impatiently, as she
turned from the parlor-door to search other rooms, “my
brother is not in his chamber! You must help me seek
him!”
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But Judge Pyncheon was not the man to let himself be
startled from an easy-chair with haste ill-befitting either
the dignity of his character or his broad personal basis, by
the alarm of an hysteric woman. Yet, considering his own
interest in the matter, he might have bestirred himself with
a little more alacrity.
“Do you hear me, Jaffrey Pyncheon?” screamed Hepzibah,
as she again approached the parlor-door, after an ineffectual
search elsewhere. “Clifford is gone!”
At this instant, on the threshold of the parlor, emerging
from within, appeared Clifford himself! His face was preternaturally
pale; so deadly white, indeed, that, through all
the glimmering indistinctness of the passage-way, Hepzibah
could discern his features, as if a light fell on them alone.
Their vivid and wild expression seemed likewise sufficient
to illuminate them; it was an expression of scorn and mockery,
coinciding with the emotions indicated by his gesture.
As Clifford stood on the threshold, partly turning back, he
pointed his finger within the parlor, and shook it slowly,
as though he would have summoned, not Hepzibah alone,
but the whole world, to gaze at some object inconceivably
ridiculous. This action, so ill-timed and extravagant, —
accompanied, too, with a look that showed more like joy
than any other kind of excitement, — compelled Hepzibah
to dread that her stern kinsman's ominous visit had driven
her poor brother to absolute insanity. Nor could she otherwise
account for the judge's quiescent mood than by supposing
him craftily on the watch, while Clifford developed
these symptoms of a distracted mind.
“Be quiet, Clifford!” whispered his sister, raising her
hand, to impress caution. “O, for Heaven's sake, be
quiet!”
“Let him be quiet! What can he do better?” answered
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Clifford, with a still wilder gesture, pointing into the room
which he had just quitted. “As for us, Hepzibah, we can
dance now! — we can sing, laugh, play, do what we will!
The weight is gone, Hepzibah! it is gone off this weary old
world; and we may be as light-hearted as little Phœbe herself!”
And, in accordance with his words, he began to laugh,
still pointing his finger at the object, invisible to Hepzibah,
within the parlor. She was seized with a sudden intuition
of some horrible thing. She thrust herself past Clifford,
and disappeared into the room; but almost immediately
returned, with a cry choking in her throat. Gazing at her
brother, with an affrighted glance of inquiry, she beheld
him all in a tremor and a quake, from head to foot, while,
amid these commoted elements of passion or alarm, still
flickered his gusty mirth.
“My God! what is to become of us?” gasped Hepzibah.
“Come!” said Clifford, in a tone of brief decision, most
unlike what was usual with him. “We stay here too
long! Let us leave the old house to our cousin Jaffrey!
He will take good care of it!”
Hepzibah now noticed that Clifford had on a cloak, — a
garment of long ago, — in which he had constantly muffled
himself during these days of easterly storm. He beckoned
with his hand, and intimated, so far as she could comprehend
him, his purpose that they should go together from
the house. There are chaotic, blind, or drunken moments,
in the lives of persons who lack real force of character, —
moments of test, in which courage would most assert itself,—
but where these individuals, if left to themselves, stagger
aimlessly along, or follow implicitly whatever guidance may
befall them, even if it be a child's. No matter how preposterous
or insane, a purpose is a God-send to them.
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Hepzibah had reached this point. Unaccustomed to action or
responsibility, — full of horror at what she had seen, and
afraid to inquire, or almost to imagine, how it had come to
pass, — affirghted at the fatality which seemed to pursue
her brother, — stupefied by the dim, thick, stifling atmosphere
of dread, which filled the house as with a death-smell,
and obliterated all definiteness of thought, — she yielded
without a question, and on the instant, to the will which
Clifford expressed. For herself, she was like a person in a
dream, when the will always sleeps. Clifford, ordinarily so
destitute of this faculty, had found it in the tension of the
crisis.
“Why do you delay so?” cried he, sharply. “Put on
your cloak and hood, or whatever it pleases you to wear!
No matter what; — you cannot look beautiful nor brilliant,
my poor Hepzibah! Take your purse, with money in it,
and come along!”
Hepzibah obeyed these instructions, as if nothing else
were to be done or thought of. She began to wonder, it is
true, why she did not wake up, and at what still more
intolerable pitch of dizzy trouble her spirit would struggle
out of the maze, and make her conscious that nothing of all
this had actually happened. Of course, it was not real; no
such black, easterly day as this had yet begun to be; Judge
Pyncheon had not talked with her; Clifford had not laughed,
pointed, beckoned her away with him; but she had merely
been afflicted — as lonely sleepers often are — with a great
deal of unreasonable misery, in a morning dream!
“Now — now — I shall certainly awake!” thought Hepzibah,
as she went to and fro, making her little preparations.
“I can bear it no longer! I must wake up now!”
But it came not, that awakening moment! It came not,
even when, just before they left the house, Clifford stole to
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the parlor-door, and made a parting obeisance to the sole
occupant of the room.
“What an absurd figure the old fellow cuts now!” whispered
he to Hepzibah. “Just when he fancied he had me
completely under his thumb! Come, come; make haste!
or he will start up, like Giant Despair in pursuit of Christian
and Hopeful, and catch us yet!”
As they passed into the street, Clifford directed Hepzibah's
attention to something on one of the posts of the front
door. It was merely the initials of his own name, which,
with somewhat of his characteristic grace about the forms
of the letters, he had cut there, when a boy. The brother
and sister departed, and left Judge Pyncheon sitting in the
old home of his forefathers, all by himself; so heavy and
lumpish that we can liken him to nothing better than a
defunct nightmare, which had perished in the midst of its
wickedness, and left its flabby corpse on the breast of the
tormented one, to be gotten rid of as it might!
-- -- p574-280
XVII. THE FLIGHT OF TWO OWLS.
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Summer as it was, the east wind set poor Hepzibah's few
remaining teeth chattering in her head, as she and Clifford
faced it, on their way up Pyncheon-street, and towards the
centre of the town. Not merely was it the shiver which
this pitiless blast brought to her frame (although her feet
and hands, especially, had never seemed so death-a-cold as
now), but there was a moral sensation, mingling itself with
the physical chill, and causing her to shake more in spirit
than in body. The world's broad, bleak atmosphere was all
so comfortless! Such, indeed, is the impression which it
makes on every new adventurer, even if he plunge into it
while the warmest tide of life is bubbling through his veins.
What, then, must it have been to Hepzibah and Clifford, —
so time-stricken as they were, yet so like children in their
inexperience, — as they left the door-step, and passed from
beneath the wide shelter of the Pyncheon-elm! They were
wandering all abroad, on precisely such a pilgrimage as a
child often meditates, to the world's end, with perhaps a
sixpence and a biscuit in his pocket. In Hepzibah's mind,
there was the wretched consciousness of being adrift. She
had lost the faculty of self-guidance; but, in view of the
difficulties around her, felt it hardly worth an effort to
regain it, and was, moreover, incapable of making one.
As they proceeded on their strange expedition, she now
and then cast a look sidelong at Clifford, and could not but
observe that he was possessed and swayed by a powerful
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excitement. It was this, indeed, that gave him the control which
he had at once, and so irresistibly, established over his
movements. It not a little resembled the exhilaration of
wine. Or, it might more fancifully be compared to a joyous
piece of music, played with wild vivacity, but upon a
disordered instrument. As the cracked jarring note might
always be heard, and as it jarred loudest amid the loftiest
exultation of the melody, so was there a continual quake
through Clifford, causing him most to quiver while he wore
a triumphant smile, and seemed almost under a necessity to
skip in his gait.
They met few people abroad, even on passing from the
retired neighborhood of the House of the Seven Gables into
what was ordinarily the more thronged and busier portion
of the town. Glistening sidewalks, with little pools of rain,
here and there, along their unequal surface; umbrellas displayed
ostentatiously in the shop-windows, as if the life of
trade had concentred itself in that one article; wet leaves
of the horse-chestnut or elm trees, torn off untimely by the
blast, and scattered along the public way; an unsightly
accumulation of mud in the middle of the street, which perversely
grew the more unclean for its long and laborious
washing; — these were the more definable points of a very
sombre picture. In the way of movement, and human life,
there was the hasty rattle of a cab or coach, its driver protected
by a water-proof cap over his head and shoulders;
the forlorn figure of an old man, who seemed to have crept
out of some subterranean sewer, and was stooping along the
kennel, and poking the wet rubbish with a stick, in quest of
rusty nails; a merchant or two, at the door of the postoffice,
together with an editor, and a miscellaneous politician,
awaiting a dilatory mail; a few visages of retired seacaptains
at the window of an insurance office, looking out
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vacantly at the vacant street, blaspheming at the weather,
and fretting at the dearth as well of public news as local
gossip. What a treasure-trove to these venerable quidnuncs,
could they have guessed the secret which Hepzibah
and Clifford were carrying along with them! But their
two figures attracted hardly so much notice as that of a
young girl, who passed at the same instant, and happened
to raise her skirt a trifle too high above her ankles. Had it
been a sunny and cheerful day, they could hardly have gone
through the streets without making themselves obnoxious to
remark. Now, probably, they were felt to be in keeping
with the dismal and bitter weather, and therefore did not
stand out in strong relief, as if the sun were shining on
them, but melted into the gray gloom, and were forgotten
as soon as gone.
Poor Hepzibah! Could she have understood this fact, it
would have brought her some little comfort; for, to all her
other troubles — strange to say!— there was added the womanish
and old-maiden-like misery arising from a sense of
unseemliness in her attire. Thus, she was fain to shrink
deeper into herself, as it were, as if in the hope of making
people suppose that here was only a cloak and hood, threadbare
and wofully faded, taking an airing in the midst of the
storm, without any wearer!
As they went on, the feeling of indistinctness and unreality
kept dimly hovering round about her, and so diffusing
itself into her system that one of her hands was hardly
palpable to the touch of the other. Any certainty would
have been preferable to this. She whispered to herself,
again and again, — “Am I awake? — Am I awake?” —
and sometimes exposed her face to the chill spatter of the
wind, for the sake of its rude assurance that she was.
Whether it was Clifford's purpose, or only chance, had led
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them thither, they now found themselves passing beneath
the arched entrance of a large structure of gray stone.
Within, there was a spacious breadth, and an airy height
from floor to roof; now partially filled with smoke and steam,
which eddied voluminously upward, and formed a mimic
cloud-region over their heads. A train of cars was just
ready for a start; the locomotive was fretting and fuming,
like a steed impatient for a headlong rush; and the bell
rang out its hasty peal, so well expressing the brief summons
which life vouchsafes to us, in its hurried career.
Without question or delay, — with the irresistible decision,
if not rather to be called recklessness, which had so strangely
taken possession of him, and through him of Hepzibah, —
Clifford impelled her towards the cars, and assisted her to
enter. The signal was given; the engine puffed forth its
short, quick breaths; the train began its movement; and,
along with a hundred other passengers, these two unwonted
travellers sped onward like the wind.
At last, therefore, and after so long estrangement from
everything that the world acted or enjoyed, they had been
drawn into the great current of human life, and were swept
away with it, as by the suction of fate itself.
Still haunted with the idea that not one of the past incidents,
inclusive of Judge Pyncheon's visit, could be real, the
recluse of the seven gables murmured in her brother's ear, —
“Clifford! Clifford! Is not this a dream?”
“A dream, Hepzibah!” repeated he, almost laughing in
her face. “On the contrary, I have never been awake
before!”
Meanwhile, looking from the window, they could see the
world racing past them. At one moment, they were rattling
through a solitude; the next, a village had grown up
around them; a few breaths more, and it had vanished,
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as if swallowed by an earthquake. The spires of meeting-houses
seemed set adrift from their foundations; the
broad-based hills glided away. Everything was unfixed
from its age-long rest, and moving at whirlwind speed in a
direction opposite to their own.
Within the car, there was the usual interior life of the
railroad, offering little to the observation of other passengers,
but full of novelty for this pair of strangely enfranchised
prisoners. It was novelty enough, indeed, that there were
fifty human beings in close relation with them, under one
long and narrow roof, and drawn onward by the same
mighty influence that had taken their two selves into its
grasp. It seemed marvellous how all these people could
remain so quietly in their seats, while so much noisy
strength was at work in their behalf. Some, with tickets
in their hats (long travellers these, before whom lay a hundred
miles of railroad), had plunged into the English scenery
and adventures of pamphlet novels, and were keeping
company with dukes and earls. Others, whose briefer span
forbade their devoting themselves to studies so abstruse,
beguiled the little tedium of the way with penny-papers. A
party of girls, and one young man, on opposite sides of the
car, found huge amusement in a game of ball. They tossed
it to and fro, with peals of laughter that might be measured
by mile-lengths; for, faster than the nimble ball could fly, the
merry players fled unconsciously along, leaving the trail of
their mirth afar behind, and ending their game under
another sky than had witnessed its commencement. Boys,
with apples, cakes, candy, and rolls of variously tinctured
lozenges, — merchandise that reminded Hepzibah of her
deserted shop, — appeared at each momentary stopping-place,
doing up their business in a hurry, or breaking it
short off, lest the market should ravish them away with it.
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New people continually entered. Old acquaintances — for
such they soon grew to be, in this rapid current of affairs —
continually departed. Here and there, amid the rumble and
the tumult, sat one asleep. Sleep; sport; business; graver
or lighter study; and the common and inevitable movement
onward! It was life itself!
Clifford's naturally poignant sympathies were all aroused.
He caught the color of what was passing about him, and
threw it back more vividly than he received it, but mixed,
nevertheless, with a lurid and portentous hue. Hepzibah,
on the other hand, felt herself more apart from human kind
than even in the seclusion which she had just quitted.
“You are not happy, Hepzibah!” said Clifford, apart, in
a tone of reproach. “You are thinking of that dismal old
house, and of Cousin Jaffrey,” — here came the quake
through him, — “and of Cousin Jaffrey sitting there, all by
himself! Take my advice, — follow my example, — and let
such things slip aside. Here we are, in the world, Hepzibah! —
in the midst of life! — in the throng of our fellowbeings!
Let you and I be happy! As happy as that
youth, and those pretty girls, at their game of ball!”
“Happy!” thought Hepzibah, bitterly conscious, at the
word, of her dull and heavy heart, with the frozen pain in
it. “Happy! He is mad already; and, if I could once
feel myself broad awake, I should go mad too!”
If a fixed idea be madness, she was perhaps not remote
from it. Fast and far as they had rattled and clattered
along the iron track, they might just as well, as regarded
Hepzibah's mental images, have been passing up and down
Pyncheon-street. With miles and miles of varied scenery
between, there was no scene for her, save the seven old
gable-peaks, with their moss, and the tuft of weeds in one
of the angles, and the shop-window, and a customer
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shaking the door, and compelling the little bell to jingle fiercely,
but without disturbing Judge Pyncheon! This one old
house was everywhere! It transported its great, lumbering
bulk, with more than railroad speed, and set itself phlegmatically
down on whatever spot she glanced at. The quality
of Hepzibah's mind was too unmalleable to take new impressions
so readily as Clifford's. He had a winged nature;
she was rather of the vegetable kind, and could hardly be
kept long alive, if drawn up by the roots. Thus it happened
that the relation heretofore existing between her
brother and herself was changed. At home, she was his
guardian; here, Clifford had become hers, and seemed to
comprehend whatever belonged to their new position with
a singular rapidity of intelligence. He had been startled
into manhood and intellectual vigor; or, at least, into a condition
that resembled them, though it might be both diseased
and transitory.
The conductor now applied for their tickets; and Clifford,
who had made himself the purse-bearer, put a bank-note
into his hand, as he had observed others do.
“For the lady and yourself?” asked the conductor. “And
how far?”
“As far as that will carry us,” said Clifford. “It is no
great matter. We are riding for pleasure, merely!”
“You choose a strange day for it, sir!” remarked a gimlet-eyed
old gentleman, on the other side of the car, looking
at Clifford and his companion, as if curious to make them
out. “The best chance of pleasure, in an easterly rain, I
take it, is in a man's own house, with a nice little fire in the
chimney.”
“I cannot precisely agree with you,” said Clifford, courteously
bowing to the old gentleman, and at once taking up
the clue of conversation which the latter had proffered. “It
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had just occurred to me, on the contrary, that this admirable
invention of the railroad — with the vast and inevitable
improvements to be looked for, both as to speed and convenience—
is destined to do away with those stale ideas of
home and fireside, and substitute something better.”
“In the name of common sense,” asked the old gentleman,
rather testily, “what can be better for a man than his
own parlor and chimney-corner?”
“These things have not the merit which many good
people attribute to them,” replied Clifford. “They may be
said, in few and pithy words, to have ill-served a poor purpose.
My impression is, that our wonderfully increased
and still increasing facilities of locomotion are destined to
bring us round again to the nomadic state. You are aware,
my dear sir, — you must have observed it, in your own
experience, — that all human progress is in a circle; or, to
use a more accurate and beautiful figure, in an ascending
spiral curve. While we fancy ourselves going straight forward,
and attaining, at every step, an entirely new position
of affairs, we do actually return to something long ago
tried and abandoned, but which we now find etherealized,
refined, and perfected to its ideal. The past is but a coarse
and sensual prophecy of the present and the future. To
apply this truth to the topic now under discussion. — In the
early epochs of our race, men dwelt in temporary huts, or
bowers of branches, as easily constructed as a bird's nest,
and which they built, — if it should be called building,
when such sweet homes of a summer solstice rather grew
than were made with hands, — which Nature, we will say,
assisted them to rear, where fruit abounded, where fish and
game were plentiful, or, most especially, where the sense of
beauty was to be gratified by a lovelier shade than elsewhere,
and a more exquisite arrangement of lake, wood,
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and hill. This life possessed a charm, which, ever since
man quitted it, has vanished from existence. And it
typified something better than itself. It had its drawbacks;
such as hunger and thirst, inclement weather, hot sunshine,
and weary and foot-blistering marches over barren and ugly
tracts, that lay between the sites desirable for their fertility
and beauty. But, in our ascending spiral, we escape all
this. These railroads — could but the whistle be made
musical, and the rumble and the jar got rid of — are positively
the greatest blessing that the ages have wrought out
for us. They give us wings; they annihilate the toil and
dust of pilgrimage; they spiritualize travel! Transition
being so facile, what can be any man's inducement to tarry
in one spot? Why, therefore, should he build a more cumbrous
habitation than can readily be carried off with him?
Why should he make himself a prisoner for life in brick,
and stone, and old worm-eaten timber, when he may just as
easily dwell, in one sense, nowhere, — in a better sense,
wherever the fit and beautiful shall offer him a home?”
Clifford's countenance glowed, as he divulged this theory;
a youthful character shone out from within, converting the
wrinkles and pallid duskiness of age into an almost transparent
mask. The merry girls let their ball drop upon the
floor, and gazed at him. They said to themselves, perhaps,
that, before his hair was gray and the crow's feet tracked
his temples, this now decaying man must have stamped the
impress of his features on many a woman's heart. But,
alas! no woman's eye had seen his face while it was
beautiful!
“I should scarcely call it an improved state of things,”
observed Clifford's new acquaintance, “to live everywhere
and nowhere!”
“Would you not?” exclaimed Clifford, with singular
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energy. “It is as clear to me as sunshine, — were there
any in the sky, — that the greatest possible stumbling-blocks
in the path of human happiness and improvement are these
heaps of bricks and stones, consolidated with mortar, or hewn
timber, fastened together with spike-nails, which men painfully
contrive for their own torment, and call them house
and home! The soul needs air; a wide sweep and
frequent change of it. Morbid influences, in a thousandfold
variety, gather about hearths, and pollute the life of
households. There is no such unwholesome atmosphere
as that of an old home, rendered poisonous by one's defunct
forefathers and relatives. I speak of what I know. There
is a certain house within my familiar recollection, — one
of those peaked-gable (there are seven of them) projectingstoried
edifices, such as you occasionally see, in our elder
towns, — a rusty, crazy, creaky, dry-rotted, damp-rotted,
dingy, dark, and miserable old dungeon, with an arched
window over the porch, and a little shop-door on one side,
and a great, melancholy elm before it! Now, sir, whenever
my thoughts recur to this seven-gabled mansion — (the
fact is so very curious that I must needs mention it) — immediately
I have a vision or image of an elderly man, of
remarkably stern countenance, sitting in an oaken elbow-chair,
dead, stone-dead, with an ugly flow of blood upon
his shirt-bosom! Dead, but with open eyes! He taints the
whole house, as I remember it. I could never flourish
there, nor be happy, nor do nor enjoy what God meant me
to do and enjoy!”
His face darkened, and seemed to contract, and shrivel
itself up, and wither into age.
“Never, sir!” he repeated. “I could never draw cheerful
breath there!”
“I should think not,” said the old gentleman, eying
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Clifford earnestly, and rather apprehensively. “I should
conceive not, sir, with that notion in your head!”
“Surely not,” continued Clifford; “and it were a relief
to me if that house could be torn down, or burnt up, and
so the earth be rid of it, and grass be sown abundantly over
its foundation. Not that I should ever visit its site again!
for, sir, the further I get away from it, the more does the
joy, the lightsome freshness, the heart-leap, the intellectual
dance, the youth, in short, — yes, my youth, my youth! —
the more does it come back to me. No longer ago than
this morning, I was old. I remember looking in the glass,
and wondering at my own gray hair, and the wrinkles,
many and deep, right across my brow, and the furrows
down my cheeks, and the prodigious trampling of crow's
feet about my temples! It was too soon! I could not bear
it! Age had no right to come! I had not lived! But
now do I look old? If so, my aspect belies me strangely;
for — a great weight being off my mind — I feel in the
very hey-day of my youth, with the world and my best days
before me!”
“I trust you may find it so,” said the old gentleman, who
seemed rather embarrassed, and desirous of avoiding the
observation which Clifford's wild talk drew on them both.
“You have my best wishes for it.”
“For Heaven's sake, dear Clifford, be quiet!” whispered
his sister. “They think you mad.”
“Be quiet yourself, Hepzibah!” returned her brother.
“No matter what they think! I am not mad. For the
first time in thirty years, my thoughts gush up and find
words ready for them. I must talk, and I will!”
He turned again towards the old gentleman, and renewed
the conversation.
“Yes, my dear sir,” said he, “it is my firm belief and
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hope, that these terms of roof and hearth-stone, which have
so long been held to embody something sacred, are soon to
pass out of men's daily use, and be forgotten. Just imagine,
for a moment, how much of human evil will crumble away,
with this one change! What we call real estate — the
solid ground to build a house on — is the braod foundation
on which nearly all the guilt of this world rests. A man
will commit almost any wrong, — he will heap up an
immense pile of wickedness, as hard as granite, and which
will weigh as heavily upon his soul, to eternal ages, — only
to build a great, gloomy, dark-chambered mansion, for himself
to die in, and for his posterity to be miserable in. He
lays his own dead corpse beneath the underpinning, as one
may say, and hangs his frowning picture on the wall, and,
after thus converting himself into an evil destiny, expects
his remotest great-grandchildren to be happy there! I do
not speak wildly. I have just such a house in my mind's
eye!”
“Then, sir,” said the old gentleman, getting anxious to
drop the subject, “you are not to blame for leaving it.”
“Within the lifetime of the child already born,” Clifford
went on, “all this will be done away. The world is growing
too ethereal and spiritual to bear these enormities a
great while longer. To me, — though, for a considerable
period of time, I have lived chiefly in retirement, and know
less of such things than most men, — even to me, the harbingers
of a better era are unmistakable. Mesmerism, now!
Will that effect nothing, think you, towards purging away
the grossness out of human life?”
“All a humbug!” growled the old gentleman.
“These rapping spirits, that little Phœbe told us of, the
other day,” said Clifford, — “what are these but the
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messengers of the spiritual world, knocking at the door of substance?
And it shall be flung wide open!”
“A humbug, again!” cried the old gentleman, growing
more and more testy, at these glimpses of Clifford's metaphysics.
“I should like to rap with a good stick on the
empty pates of the dolts who circulate such nonsense!”
“Then there is electricity; — the demon, the angel, the
mighty physical power, the all-pervading intelligence!”
exclaimed Clifford. “Is that a humbug, too? Is it a fact—
or have I dreamt it — that, by means of electricity, the
world of matter has become a great nerve, vibrating thousands
of miles in a breathless point of time? Rather, the
round globe is a vast head, a brain, instinct with intelligence!
Or, shall we say, it is itself a thought, nothing but
thought, and no longer the substance which we deemed it!”
“If you mean the telegraph,” said the old gentleman,
glancing his eye toward its wire, alongside the rail-track,
“it is an excellent thing; — that is, of course, if the speculators
in cotton and politics don't get possession of it. A
great thing, indeed, sir; particularly as regards the detection
of bank-robbers and murderers.”
“I don't quite like it, in that point of view,” replied Clifford.
“A bank-robber, and what you call a murderer, likewise,
has his rights, which men of enlightened humanity
and conscience should regard in so much the more liberal
spirit, because the bulk of society is prone to controvert
their existence. An almost spiritual medium, like the
electric telegraph, should be consecrated to high, deep,
joyful, and holy missions. Lovers, day by day, — hour by
hour, if so often moved to do it, — might send their heartthrobs
from Maine to Florida, with some such words as
these, — `I love you forever!' — `My heart runs over
with love!' — `I love you more than I can!' — and,
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again, at the next message, — `I have lived an hour longer,
and love you twice as much!' Or, when a good man has
departed, his distant friend should be conscious of an
electric thrill, as from the world of happy spirits, telling
him, — `Your dear friend is in bliss!' Or, to an absent
husband, should come tidings thus, — `An immortal being,
of whom you are the father, has this moment come from
God!' — and immediately its little voice would seem to
have reached so far, and to be echoing in his heart. But
for these poor rogues, the bank-robbers, — who, after all,
are about as honest as nine people in ten, except that they
disregard certain formalities, and prefer to transact business
at midnight, rather than 'Change-hours, — and for these
murderers, as you phrase it, who are often excusable in the
motives of their deed, and deserve to be ranked among public
benefactors, if we consider only its result, — for unfortunate
individuals like these, I really cannot applaud the
enlistment of an immaterial and miraculous power in the
universal world-hunt at their heels!”
“You can't, hey?” cried the old gentleman, with a hard
look.
“Positively, no!” answered Clifford. “It puts them too
miserably at disadvantage. For example, sir, in a dark,
low, cross-beamed, panelled room of an old house, let us
suppose a dead man, sitting in an arm-chair, with a blood-stain
on his shirt-bosom, — and let us add to our hypothesis
another man, issuing from the house, which he feels to be
over-filled with the dead man's presence, — and let us lastly
imagine him fleeing, Heaven knows whither, at the speed
of a hurricane, by railroad! Now, sir, if the fugitive
alight in some distant town, and find all the people babbling
about that self-same dead man, whom he has fled so far to
avoid the sight and thought of, will you not allow that
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his natural rights have been infringed? He has been
deprived of his city of refuge, and, in my humble opinion,
has suffered infinite wrong!”
“You are a strange man, sir!” said the old gentleman,
bringing his gimlet-eye to a point on Clifford, as if determined
to bore right into him. “I can't see through you!”
“No, I 'll be bound you can't!” cried Clifford, laughing.
“And yet, my dear sir, I am as transparent as the water of
Maule's well! But come, Hepzibah! We have flown far
enough for once. Let us alight, as the birds do, and perch
ourselves on the nearest twig, and consult whither we shall
fly next!”
Just then, as it happened, the train reached a solitary
way-station. Taking advantage of the brief pause, Clifford
left the car, and drew Hepzibah along with him. A
moment afterwards, the train — with all the life of its
interior, amid which Clifford had made himself so conspicuous
an object — was gliding away in the distance, and
rapidly lessening to a point, which, in another moment,
vanished. The world had fled away from these two wanderers.
They gazed drearily about them. At a little distance
stood a wooden church, black with age, and in a
dismal state of ruin and decay, with broken windows, a
great rift through the main body of the edifice, and a rafter
dangling from the top of the square tower. Further off
was a farm-house, in the old style, as venerably black as
the church, with a roof sloping downward from the threestory
peak, to within a man's height of the ground. It
seemed uninhabited. There were the relics of a wood-pile,
indeed, near the door, but with grass sprouting up among
the chips and scattered logs. The small rain-drops came
down aslant; the wind was not turbulent, but sullen, and
full of chilly moisture.
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Clifford shivered from head to foot. The wild effervescence
of his mood — which had so readily supplied thoughts,
fantasies, and a strange aptitude of words, and impelled him
to talk from the mere necessity of giving vent to this bubbling-up
gush of ideas — had entirely subsided. A powerful
excitement had given him energy and vivacity. Its
operation over, he forthwith began to sink.
“You must take the lead now, Hepzibah!” murmured he,
with a torpid and reluctant utterance. “Do with me as
you will!”
She knelt down upon the platform where they were
standing, and lifted her clasped hands to the sky. The
dull, gray weight of clouds made it invisible; but it was no
hour for disbelief; — no juncture this, to question that there
was a sky above, and an Almighty Father looking down
from it!
“O, God!” — ejaculated poor, gaunt Hepzibah, — then
paused a moment, to consider what her prayer should be, —
“O, God, — our Father, — are we not thy children? Have
mercy on us!”
-- -- p574-296
XVIII. GOVERNOR PYNCHEON.
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Judge Pyncheon, while his two relatives have fled away
with such ill-considered haste, still sits in the old parlor,
keeping house, as the familiar phrase is, in the absence of
its ordinary occupants. To him, and to the venerable
House of the Seven Gables, does our story now betake
itself, like an owl, bewildered in the daylight, and hastening
back to his hollow tree.
The judge has not shifted his position for a long while
now. He has not stirred hand or foot, nor withdrawn his
eyes so much as a hair's breadth from their fixed gaze
towards the corner of the room, since the footsteps of
Hepzibah and Clifford creaked along the passage, and the
outer door was closed cautiously behind their exit. He
holds his watch in his left hand, but clutched in such a
manner that you cannot see the dial-plate. How profound
a fit of meditation! Or, supposing him asleep, how infantile
a quietude of conscience, and what wholesome order in
the gastric region, are betokened by slumber so entirely
undisturbed with starts, cramp, twitches, muttered dreamtalk,
trumpet-blasts through the nasal organ, or any the
slightest irregularity of breath! You must hold your own
breath, to satisfy yourself whether he breathes at all. It is
quite inaudible. You hear the ticking of his watch; his
breath you do not hear. A most refreshing slumber, doubtless!
And yet, the judge cannot be asleep. His eyes are
open! A veteran politician, such as he, would never fall
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asleep with wide-open eyes, lest some enemy or mischiefmaker,
taking him thus at unawares, should peep through
these windows into his consciousness, and make strange
discoveries among the reminiscences, projects, hopes, apprehensions,
weaknesses, and strong points, which he has
heretofore shared with nobody. A cautious man is proverbially
said to sleep with one eye open. That may be
wisdom. But not with both; for this were heedlessness!
No, no! Judge Pyncheon cannot be asleep.
It is odd, however, that a gentleman so burthened with
engagements — and noted, too, for punctuality — should
linger thus in an old lonely mansion, which he has never
seemed very fond of visiting. The oaken chair, to be sure,
may tempt him with its roominess. It is, indeed, a spacious,
and, allowing for the rude age that fashioned it, a moderately
easy seat, with capacity enough, at all events, and
offering no restraint to the judge's breadth of beam. A
bigger man might find ample accommodation in it. His
ancestor, now pictured upon the wall, with all his English
beef about him, used hardly to present a front extending
from elbow to elbow of this chair, or a base that would
cover its whole cushion. But there are better chairs than
this — mahogany, black-walnut, rosewood, spring-seated and
damask-cushioned, with varied slopes, and innumerable artifices
to make them easy, and obviate the irksomeness of too
tame an ease; — a score of such might be at Judge Pyncheon's
service. Yes! in a score of drawing-rooms he
would be more than welcome. Mamma would advance to
meet him, with outstretched hand; the virgin daughter,
elderly as he has now got to be, — an old widower, as he smilingly
describes himself, — would shake up the cushion for
the judge, and do her pretty little utmost to make him comfortable.
For the judge is a prosperous man. He cherishes
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his schemes, moreover, like other people, and reasonably
brighter than most others; or did so, at least, as he lay
abed, this morning, in an agreeable half-drowse, planning
the business of the day, and speculating on the probabilities
of the next fifteen years. With his firm health, and the
little inroad that age has made upon him, fifteen years or
twenty — yes, or perhaps five-and-twenty! — are no more
than he may fairly call his own. Five-and-twenty years for
the enjoyment of his real estate in town and country, his
railroad, bank, and insurance shares, his United States stock,—
his wealth, in short, however invested, now in possession,
or soon to be acquired; together with the public honors that
have fallen upon him, and the weightier ones that are yet
to fall! It is good! It is excellent! It is enough!
Still lingering in the old chair! If the judge has a little
time to throw away, why does not he visit the insurance
office, as is his frequent custom, and sit a while in one of
their leathern-cushioned arm-chairs, listening to the gossip
of the day, and dropping some deeply-designed chance-word,
which will be certain to become the gossip of to-morrow!
And have not the bank directors a meeting, at which it was
the judge's purpose to be present, and his office to preside?
Indeed they have; and the hour is noted on a card, which
is, or ought to be, in Judge Pyncheon's right vest-pocket.
Let him go thither, and loll at ease upon his money-bags!
He has lounged long enough in the old chair!
This was to have been such a busy day! In the first
place, the interview with Clifford. Half an hour, by the
judge's reckoning, was to suffice for that; it would probably
be less, but — taking into consideration that Hepzibah was
first to be dealt with, and that these women are apt to make
many words where a few would do much better — it might
be safest to allow half an hour. Half an hour? Why,
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judge, it is already two hours, by your own undeviatingly
accurate chronometer! Glance your eye down at it, and
see! Ah! he will not give himself the trouble either to bend
his head, or elevate his hand, so as to bring the faithful
time-keeper within his range of vision! Time, all at once,
appears to have become a matter of no moment with the
judge!
And has he forgotten all the other items of his memoranda?
Clifford's affair arranged, he was to meet a Statestreet
broker, who has undertaken to procure a heavy percentage,
and the best of paper, for a few loose thousands
which the judge happens to have by him, uninvested. The
wrinkled note-shaver will have taken his railroad trip in
vain. Half an hour later, in the street next to this, there
was to be an auction of real estate, including a portion of
the old Pyncheon property, originally belonging to Maule's
garden-ground. It has been alienated from the Pyncheons
these fourscore years; but the judge had kept it in his eye,
and had set his heart on reännexing it to the small demesne
still left around the seven gables; — and now, during this
odd fit of oblivion, the fatal hammer must have fallen, and
transferred our ancient patrimony to some alien possessor!
Possibly, indeed, the sale may have been postponed till
fairer weather. If so, will the judge make it convenient to
be present, and favor the auctioneer with his bid, on the
proximate occasion?
The next affair was to buy a horse for his own driving.
The one heretofore his favorite stumbled, this very morning,
on the road to town, and must be at once discarded.
Judge Pyncheon's neck is too precious to be risked on such
a contingency as a stumbling steed. Should all the above
business be seasonably got through with, he might attend
the meeting of a charitable society; the very name of which,
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however, in the multiplicity of his benevolence, is quite forgotten;
so that this engagement may pass unfulfilled, and
no great harm done. And if he have time, amid the press
of more urgent matters, he must take measures for the
renewal of Mrs. Pyncheon's tombstone, which, the sexton
tells him, has fallen on its marble face, and is cracked quite
in twain. She was a praiseworthy woman enough, thinks
the judge, in spite of her nervousness, and the tears that she
was so oozy with, and her foolish behavior about the coffee;
and as she took her departure so seasonably, he will not
grudge the second tombstone. It is better, at least, than if
she had never needed any! The next item on his list was
to give orders for some fruit-trees, of a rare variety, to be
deliverable at his country-seat, in the ensuing autumn.
Yes, buy them, by all means; and may the peaches be
luscious in your mouth, Judge Pyncheon! After this comes
something more important. A committee of his political
party has besought him for a hundred or two of dollars, in
addition to his previous disbursements, towards carrying on
the fall campaign. The judge is a patriot; the fate of the
country is staked on the November election; and besides, as
will be shadowed forth in another paragraph, he has no
trifling stake of his own, in the same great game. He will
do what the committee asks; nay, he will be liberal beyond
their expectations; they shall have a check for five hundred
dollars, and more anon, if it be needed. What next? A
decayed widow, whose husband was Judge Pyncheon's early
friend, has laid her case of destitution before him, in a very
moving letter. She and her fair daughter have scarcely
bread to eat. He partly intends to call on her, to-day, —
perhaps so — perhaps not, — accordingly as he may happen
to have leisure, and a small bank-note.
Another business, which, however, he puts no great weight
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on — (it is well, you know, to be heedful, but not over
anxious, as respects one's personal health) — another business,
then, was to consult his family physician. About
what, for Heaven's sake? Why, it is rather difficult to
describe the symptoms. A mere dimness of sight and dizziness
of brain, was it? — or a disagreeable choking, or stifling,
or gurgling, or bubbling, in the region of the thorax, as the
anatomists say? — or was it a pretty severe throbbing and
kicking of the heart, rather creditable to him than otherwise,
as showing that the organ had not been left out of the
judge's physical contrivance? No matter what it was.
The doctor, probably, would smile at the statement of such
trifles to his professional ear; the judge would smile, in his
turn; and meeting one another's eyes, they would enjoy a
hearty laugh together! But a fig for medical advice! The
judge will never need it.
Pray, pray, Judge Pyncheon, look at your watch, now!
What — not a glance! It is within ten minutes of the dinner-hour!
It surely cannot have slipped your memory that the
dinner of to-day is to be the most important, in its consequences,
of all the dinners you ever ate. Yes, precisely the
most important; although, in the course of your somewhat
eminent career, you have been placed high towards the head
of the table, at splendid banquets, and have poured out your
festive eloquence to ears yet echoing with Webster's mighty
organ-tones. No public dinner this, however. It is merely
a gathering of some dozen or so of friends from several districts
of the state; men of distinguished character and
influence, assembling, almost casually, at the house of a
common friend, likewise distinguished, who will make them
welcome to a little better than his ordinary fare. Nothing
in the way of French cookery, but an excellent dinner,
nevertheless! Real turtle, we understand, and salmon,
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tautog, canvas-backs, pig, English mutton, good roast-beef or
dainties of that serious kind, fit for substantial country
gentlemen, as these honorable persons mostly are. The
delicacies of the season, in short, and flavored by a brand
of old Madeira which has been the pride of many seasons.
It is the Juno brand; a glorious wine, fragrant, and full of
gentle might; a bottled-up happiness, put by for use; a
golden liquid, worth more than liquid gold; so rare and
admirable, that veteran wine-bibbers count it among their
epochs to have tasted it! It drives away the heart-ache,
and substitutes no head-ache! Could the judge but quaff
a glass, it might enable him to shake off the unaccountable
lethargy which — (for the ten intervening minutes, and five
to boot, are already past) — has made him such a laggard
at this momentous dinner. It would all but revive a dead
man! Would you like to sip it now, Judge Pyncheon?
Alas, this dinner! Have you really forgotten its true
object? Then let us whisper it, that you may start at once
out of the oaken chair, which really seems to be enchanted,
like the one in Comus, or that in which Moll Pitcher imprisoned
your own grandfather. But ambition is a talisman
more powerful than witchcraft. Start up, then, and, hurrying
through the streets, burst in upon the company, that
they may begin before the fish is spoiled! They wait for
you; and it is little for your interest that they should wait.
These gentlemen — need you be told it? — have assembled,
not without purpose, from every quarter of the state. They
are practised politicians, every man of them, and skilled to
adjust those preliminary measures which steal from the
people, without its knowledge, the power of choosing its
own rulers. The popular voice, at the next gubernatorial
election, though loud as thunder, will be really but an echo
of what these gentlemen shall speak, under their breath, at
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your friend's festive board. They meet to decide upon
their candidate. This little knot of subtle schemers will
control the convention, and, through it, dictate to the party.
And what worthier candidate, — more wise and learned,
more noted for philanthropic liberality, truer to safe principles,
tried oftener by public trusts, more spotless in private
character, with a larger stake in the common welfare, and
deeper grounded, by hereditary descent, in the faith and
practice of the Puritans, — what man can be presented for
the suffrage of the people, so eminently combining all these
claims to the chief-rulership as Judge Pyncheon here before
us?
Make haste, then! Do your part! The meed for which
you have toiled, and fought, and climbed, and crept, is
ready for your grasp! Be present at this dinner! — drink
a glass or two of that noble wine! — make your pledges in
as low a whisper as you will! — and you rise up from
table virtually governor of the glorious old state! Governor
Pyncheon, of Massachusetts!
And is there no potent and exhilarating cordial in a certainty
like this? It has been the grand purpose of half
your lifetime to obtain it. Now, when there needs little
more than to signify your acceptance, why do you sit so
lumpishly in your great-great-grandfather's oaken chair, as
if preferring it to the gubernatorial one? We have all
heard of King Log; but, in these jostling times, one of that
royal kindred will hardly win the race for an elective chiefmagistracy.
Well! it is absolutely too late for dinner! Turtle, salmon,
tautog, woodcock, boiled turkey, South-Down mutton, pig,
roast beef, have vanished, or exist only in fragments, with
lukewarm potatoes, and gravies crusted over with cold fat.
The judge, had he done nothing else, would have achieved
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wonders with his knife and fork. It was he, you know, of
whom it used to be said, in reference to his ogre-like appetite,
that his Creator made him a great animal, but that the
dinner-hour made him a great beast. Persons of his large
sensual endowments must claim indulgence, at their feedingtime.
But, for once, the judge is entirely too late for dinner!
Too late, we fear, even to join the party at their
wine! The guests are warm and merry; they have given
up the judge; and, concluding that the free-soilers have
him, they will fix upon another candidate. Were our
friend now to stalk in among them, with that wide-open
stare, at once wild and stolid, his ungenial presence would
be apt to change their cheer. Neither would it be seemly
in Judge Pyncheon, generally so scrupulous in his attire, to
show himself at a dinner-table with that crimson stain upon
his shirt-bosom. By-the-by, how came it there? It is an
ugly sight, at any rate; and the wisest way for the judge is
to button his coat closely over his breast, and, taking his
horse and chaise from the livery-stable, to make all speed
to his own house. There, after a glass of brandy and water,
and a mutton-chop, a beef-steak, a broiled fowl, or some
such hasty little dinner and supper all in one, he had better
spend the evening by the fire-side. He must toast his
slippers a long while, in order to get rid of the chilliness
which the air of this vile old house has sent curdling
through his veins.
Up, therefore, Judge Pyncheon, up! You have lost a
day. But to-morrow will be here anon. Will you rise,
betimes, and make the most of it? To-morrow! To-morrow!
To-morrow! We, that are alive, may rise betimes
to-morrow. As for him that has died to-day, his
morrow will be the resurrection morn.
Meanwhile the twilight is glooming upward out of the
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corners of the room. The shadows of the tall furniture
grow deeper, and at first become more definite; then,
spreading wider, they lose their distinctness of outline in the
dark gray tide of oblivion, as it were, that creeps slowly over
the various objects, and the one human figure sitting in the
midst of them. The gloom has not entered from without;
it has brooded here all day, and now, taking its own inevitable
time, will possess itself of everything. The judge's
face, indeed, rigid, and singularly white, refuses to melt
into this universal solvent. Fainter and fainter grows the
light. It is as if another double-handful of darkness had
been scattered through the air. Now it is no longer gray,
but sable. There is still a faint appearance at the window;
neither a glow, nor a gleam, nor a glimmer, — any phrase of
light would express something far brighter than this doubtful
perception, or sense, rather, that there is a window there.
Has it yet vanished? No! — yes! — not quite! And
there is still the swarthy whiteness, — we shall venture to
marry these ill-agreeing words, — the swarthy whiteness
of Judge Pyncheon's face. The features are all gone; there
is only the paleness of them left. And how looks it now?
There is no window! There is no face! An infinite,
inscrutable blackness has annihilated sight! Where is our
universe? All crumbled away from us; and we, adrift in
chaos, may hearken to the gusts of homeless wind, that go
sighing and murmuring about, in quest of what was once a
world!
Is there no other sound? One other, and a fearful one.
It is the ticking of the judge's watch, which, ever since
Hepzibah left the room in search of Clifford, he has been
holding in his hand. Be the cause what it may, this little,
quiet, never-ceasing throb of Time's pulse, repeating its
small strokes with such busy regularity, in Judge Pyncheon's
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motionless hand, has an effect of terror, which we do not
find in any other accompaniment of the scene.
But, listen! That puff of the breeze was louder; it had
a tone unlike the dreary and sullen one which has bemoaned
itself, and afflicted all mankind with miserable sympathy,
for five days past. The wind has veered about! It
now comes boisterously from the north-west, and, taking hold
of the aged frame-work of the seven gables, gives it a shake,
like a wrestler that would try strength with his antagonist.
Another and another sturdy tussle with the blast! The
old house creaks again, and makes a vociferous but somewhat
unintelligible bellowing in its sooty throat — (the big
flue, we mean, of its wide chimney) — partly in complaint
at the rude wind, but rather, as befits their century and a
half of hostile intimacy, in tough defiance. A rumbling
kind of a bluster roars behind the fire-board. A door has
slammed above-stairs. A window, perhaps, has been left
open, or else is driven in by an unruly gust. It is not to
be conceived, beforehand, what wonderful wind-instruments
are these old timber mansions, and how haunted with the
strangest noises, which immediately begin to sing, and sigh,
and sob, and shriek, — and to smite with sledge-hammers,
airy, but ponderous, in some distant chamber, — and to tread
along the entries as with stately foot-steps, and rustle up
and down the stair-case, as with silks miraculously stiff, —
whenever the gale catches the house with a window open,
and gets fairly into it. Would that we were not an attendant
spirit here! It is too awful! This clamor of the wind
through the lonely house; the judge's quietude, as he sits
invisible; and that pertinacious ticking of his watch!
As regards Judge Pyncheon's invisibility, however, that
matter will soon be remedied. The north-west wind has
swept the sky clear. The window is distinctly seen.
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Through its panes, moreover, we dimly catch the sweep of
the dark, clustering foliage, outside, fluttering with a constant
irregularity of movement, and letting in a peep of starlight,
now here, now there. Oftener than any other object,
these glimpses illuminate the judge's face. But here
comes more effectual light. Observe that silvery dance
upon the upper branches of the pear-tree, and now a little
lower, and now on the whole mass of boughs, while,
through their shifting intricacies, the moonbeams fall aslant
into the room. They play over the judge's figure, and show
that he has not stirred throughout the hours of darkness.
They follow the shadows, in changeful sport, across his
unchanging features. They gleam upon his watch. His
grasp conceals the dial-plate; but we know that the faithful
hands have met; for one of the city-clocks tells midnight.
A man of sturdy understanding, like Judge Pyncheon,
cares no more for twelve o'clock at night than for the corresponding
hour of noon. However just the parallel drawn,
in some of the preceding pages, between his Puritan ancestor
and himself, it fails in this point. The Pyncheon of
two centuries ago, in common with most of his contemporaries,
professed his full belief in spiritual ministrations,
although reckoning them chiefly of a malignant character.
The Pyncheon of to-night, who sits in yonder arm-chair,
believes in no such nonsense. Such, at least, was his
creed, some few hours since. His hair will not bristle,
therefore, at the stories which — in times when chimney-corners
had benches in them, where old people sat poking
into the ashes of the past, and raking out traditions like
live coals — used to be told about this very room of his
ancestral house. In fact, these tales are too absurd to bristle
even childhood's hair. What sense, meaning, or moral, for
example, such as even ghost-stories should be susceptible
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of, can be traced in the ridiculous legend, that, at midnight,
all the dead Pyncheons are bound to assemble in this
parlor? And, pray, for what? Why, to see whether the
portrait of their ancestor still keeps its place upon the wall,
in compliance with his testamentary directions! Is it worth
while to come out of their graves for that?
We are tempted to make a little sport with the idea.
Ghost-stories are hardly to be treated seriously, any longer.
The family-party of the defunct Pyncheons, we presume,
goes off in this wise.
First comes the ancestor himself, in his black cloak,
steeple-hat, and trunk-breeches, girt about the waist with a
leathern belt, in which hangs his steel-hilted sword; he has
a long staff in his hand, such as gentlemen in advanced
life used to carry, as much for the dignity of the thing as
for the support to be derived from it. He looks up at the
portrait; — a thing of no substance, gazing at its own painted
image! All is safe. The picture is still there. The purpose
of his brain has been kept sacred thus long after the
man himself has sprouted up in grave-yard grass. See! he
lifts his ineffectual hand, and tries the frame. All safe!
But is that a smile? — is it not, rather, a frown of deadly
import, that darkens over the shadow of his features? The
stout colonel is dissatisfied! So decided is his look of discontent
as to impart additional distinctness to his features;
through which, nevertheless, the moonlight passes, and
flickers on the wall beyond. Something has strangely
vexed the ancestor! With a grim shake of the head, he
turns away. Here come other Pyncheons, the whole tribe,
in their half a dozen generations, jostling and elbowing one
another, to reach the picture. We behold aged men and
grandames, a clergyman with the Puritanic stiffness still in
his garb and mien, and a red-coated officer of the old French
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war; and there comes the shop-keeping Pyncheon of a century
ago, with the ruffles turned back from his wrists; and
there the periwigged and brocaded gentleman of the artist's
legend, with the beautiful and pensive Alice, who brings no
pride out of her virgin grave. All try the picture-frame.
What do these ghostly people seek? A mother lifts her
child, that his little hands may touch it! There is evidently
a mystery about the picture, that perplexes these
poor Pyncheons, when they ought to be at rest. In a corner,
meanwhile, stands the figure of an elderly man, in a leather
jerkin and breeches, with a carpenter's rule sticking out of
his side-pocket; he points his finger at the bearded colonel
and his descendants, nodding, jeering, mocking, and finally
bursting into obstreperous, though inaudible laughter.
Indulging our fancy in this freak, we have partly lost the
power of restraint and guidance. We distinguish an
unlooked-for figure in our visionary scene. Among those
ancestral people there is a young man, dressed in the very
fashion of to-day; he wears a dark frock-coat, almost destitute
of skirts, gray pantaloons, gaiter boots of patent
leather, and has a finely-wrought gold chain across his
breast, and a little silver-headed whalebone stick in his
hand. Were we to meet this figure at noon-day, we should
greet him as young Jaffrey Pyncheon, the judge's only
surviving child, who has been spending the last two years
in foreign travel. If still in life, how comes his shadow
hither? If dead, what a misfortune! The old Pyncheon
property, together with the great estate acquired by the
young man's father, would devolve on whom? On poor,
foolish Clifford, gaunt Hepzibah, and rustic little Phœbe!
But another and a greater marvel greets us! Can we
believe our eyes? A stout, elderly gentleman has made
his appearance; he has an aspect of eminent respectability,
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wears a black coat and pantaloons, of roomy width, and
might be pronounced scrupulously neat in his attire, but for
a broad crimson stain across his snowy neckcloth and down
his shirt-bosom. Is it the judge, or no? How can it be
Judge Pyncheon? We discern his figure, as plainly as the
flickering moonbeams can show us anything, still seated in
the oaken chair! Be the apparition whose it may, it
advances to the picture, seems to seize the frame, tries to
peep behind it, and turns away, with a frown as black as
the ancestral one.
The fantastic scene just hinted at must by no means be
considered as forming an actual portion of our story. We
were betrayed into this brief extravagance by the quiver of
the moonbeams; they dance hand-in-hand with shadows,
and are reflected in the looking-glass, which, you are
aware, is always a kind of window or door-way into the
spiritual world. We needed relief, moreover, from our too
long and exclusive contemplation of that figure in the
chair. This wild wind, too, has tossed our thoughts into
strange confusion, but without tearing them away from
their one determined centre. Yonder leaden judge sits
immovably upon our soul. Will he never stir again?
We shall go mad, unless he stirs! You may the better
estimate his quietude by the fearlessness of a little mouse,
which sits on its hind legs, in a streak of moonlight, close
by Judge Pyncheon's foot, and seems to meditate a journey
of exploration over this great black bulk. Ha! what has
startled the nimble little mouse? It is the visage of Grimalkin,
outside of the window, where he appears to have
posted himself for a deliberate watch. This Grimalkin has
a very ugly look. Is it a cat watching for a mouse, or the
devil for a human soul? Would we could scare him from
the window!
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Thank Heaven, the night is well-nigh past! The moonbeams
have no longer so silvery a gleam, nor contrast so
strongly with the blackness of the shadows among which
they fall. They are paler, now; the shadows look gray,
not black. The boisterous wind is hushed. What is the
hour? Ah! the watch has at last ceased to tick; for the
judge's forgetful fingers neglected to wind it up, as usual,
at ten o'clock, being half an hour, or so, before his ordinary
bed-time; — and it has run down, for the first time in five
years. But the great world-clock of Time still keeps its
beat. The dreary night, — for, oh, how dreary seems its
haunted waste, behind us! — gives place to a fresh, transparent,
cloudless morn. Blessed, blessed radiance! The
day-beam, — even what little of it finds its way into this
always dusky parlor — seems part of the universal benediction,
annulling evil, and rendering all goodness possible, and
happiness attainable. Will Judge Pyncheon now rise up
from his chair? Will he go forth, and receive the early
sunbeams on his brow? Will he begin this new day, —
which God has smiled upon, and blessed, and given to mankind, —
will he begin it with better purposes than the
many that have been spent amiss? Or are all the deeplaid
schemes of yesterday as stubborn in his heart, and as
busy in his brain, as ever?
In this latter case, there is much to do. Will the judge
still insist with Hepzibah on the interview with Clifford?
Will he buy a safe, elderly gentleman's horse? Will he
persuade the purchaser of the old Pyncheon property to
relinquish the bargain, in his favor? Will he see his
family physician, and obtain a medicine that shall preserve
him, to be an honor and blessing to his race, until the
utmost term of patriarchal longevity? Will Judge Pyncheon,
above all, make due apologies to that company of
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honorable friends, and satisfy them that his absence from
the festive board was unavoidable, and so fully retrieve himself
in their good opinion that he shall yet be Governor of
Massachusetts? And, all these great purposes accomplished,
will he walk the streets again, with that dog-day smile of
elaborate benevolence, sultry enough to tempt flies to come
and buzz in it? Or will he, after the tomb-like seclusion
of the past day and night, go forth a humbled and repentant
man, sorrowful, gentle, seeking no profit, shrinking from
worldly honor, hardly daring to love God, but bold to love
his fellow-man, and to do him what good he may? Will
he bear about with him, — no odious grin of feigned benignity,
insolent in its pretence, and loathsome in its falsehood, —
but the tender sadness of a contrite heart, broken,
at last, beneath its own weight of sin? For it is our belief,
whatever show of honor he may have piled upon it, that
there was heavy sin at the base of this man's being.
Rise up, Judge Pyncheon! The morning sunshine glimmers
through the foliage, and, beautiful and holy as it is,
shuns not to kindle up your face. Rise up, thou subtile,
worldly, selfish, iron-hearted hypocrite, and make thy choice
whether still to be subtile, worldly, selfish, iron-hearted, and
hypocritical, or to tear these sins out of thy nature, though
they bring the life-blood with them! The Avenger is upon
thee! Rise up, before it be too late!
What! Thou art not stirred by this last appeal? No,
not a jot! And there we see a fly, — one of your common
house-flies, such as are always buzzing on the window-pane,—
which has smelt out Governor Pyncheon, and alights,
now on his forehead, now on his chin, and now, Heaven
help us! is creeping over the bridge of his nose, towards
the would-be chief-magistrate's wide-open eyes! Canst thou
not brush the fly away? Art thou too sluggish? Thou
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man, that hadst so many busy projects, yesterday! Art
thou too weak, that wast so powerful? Not brush away a
fly! Nay, then, we give thee up!
And, hark! the shop-bell rings. After hours like these
latter ones, through which we have borne our heavy tale, it
is good to be made sensible that there is a living world, and
that even this old, lonely mansion retains some manner of
connection with it. We breathe more freely, emerging
from Judge Pyncheon's presence into the street before the
seven gables.
-- -- p574-314
XIX. ALICE'S POSIES.
[figure description] Page 305.[end figure description]
Uncle Venner, trundling a wheelbarrow, was the earliest
person stirring in the neighborhood, the day after the
storm.
Pyncheon-street, in front of the House of the Seven
Gables, was a far pleasanter scene than a by-lane, confined
by shabby fences, and bordered with wooden dwellings of
the meaner class, could reasonably be expected to present.
Nature made sweet amends, that morning, for the five
unkindly days which had preceded it. It would have been
enough to live for, merely to look up at the wide benediction
of the sky, or as much of it as was visible between the
houses, genial once more with sunshine. Every object was
agreeable, whether to be gazed at in the breadth, or examined
more minutely. Such, for example, were the wellwashed
pebbles and gravel of the sidewalk; even the skyreflecting
pools in the centre of the street; and the grass,
now freshly verdant, that crept along the base of the fences,
on the other side of which, if one peeped over, was seen the
multifarious growth of gardens. Vegetable productions, of
whatever kind, seemed more than negatively happy, in the
juicy warmth and abundance of their life. The Pyncheon-elm,
throughout its great circumference, was all alive, and
full of the morning sun and a sweetly-tempered little breeze,
which lingered within this verdant sphere, and set a thousand
leafy tongues a-whispering all at once. This aged
tree appeared to have suffered nothing from the gale. It
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had kept its boughs unshattered, and its full complement of
leaves; and the whole in perfect verdure, except a single
branch, that, by the earlier change with which the elm-tree
sometimes prophesies the autumn, had been transmuted to
bright gold. It was like the golden branch, that gained
Æneas and the Sybil admittance into Hades.
This one mystic branch hung down before the main entrance
of the seven gables, so nigh the ground that any
passer-by might have stood on tiptoe and plucked it off.
Presented at the door, it would have been a symbol of his
right to enter, and be made acquainted with all the secrets
of the house. So little faith is due to external appearance,
that there was really an inviting aspect over the venerable
edifice, conveying an idea that its history must be a decorous
and happy one, and such as would be delightful for a
fire-side tale. Its windows gleamed cheerfully in the slanting
sunlight. The lines and tufts of green moss, here and
there, seemed pledges of familiarity and sisterhood with
Nature; as if this human dwelling-place, being of such old
date, had established its prescriptive title among primeval
oaks, and whatever other objects, by virtue of their long
continuance, have acquired a gracious right to be. A person
of imaginative temperament, while passing by the house,
would turn, once and again, and peruse it well: — its many
peaks, consenting together in the clustered chimney; the
deep projection over its basement-story; the arched window,
imparting a look, if not of grandeur, yet of antique gentility,
to the broken portal over which it opened; the luxuriance
of gigantic burdocks, near the threshold: — he would note
all these characteristics, and be conscious of something
deeper than he saw. He would conceive the mansion to
have been the residence of the stubborn old Puritan, Integrity,
who, dying in some forgotten generation, had left a
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blessing in all its rooms and chambers, the efficacy of which
was to be seen in the religion, honesty, moderate competence,
or upright poverty and solid happiness, of his descendants,
to this day.
One object, above all others, would take root in the imaginative
observer's memory. It was the great tuft of flowers,—
weeds, you would have called them, only a week ago, —
the tuft of crimson-spotted flowers, in the angle between the
two front gables. The old people used to give them the
name of Alice's Posies, in remembrance of fair Alice Pyncheon,
who was believed to have brought their seeds from
Italy. They were flaunting in rich beauty and full bloom,
to-day, and seemed, as it were, a mystic expression that
something within the house was consummated.
It was but little after sunrise, when Uncle Venner made
his appearance, as aforesaid, impelling a wheelbarrow along
the street. He was going his matutinal rounds to collect
cabbage-leaves, turnip-tops, potato-skins, and the miscellaneous
refuse of the dinner-pot, which the thrifty housewives
of the neighborhood were accustomed to put aside, as
fit only to feed a pig. Uncle Venner's pig was fed entirely,
and kept in prime order, on these eleemosynary contributions;
insomuch that the patched philosopher used to
promise that, before retiring to his farm, he would make a
feast of the portly grunter, and invite all his neighbors to
partake of the joints and spare-ribs which they had helped to
fatten. Miss Hepzibah Pyncheon's house-keeping had so
greatly improved, since Clifford became a member of the
family, that her share of the banquet would have been no
lean one; and Uncle Venner, accordingly, was a good deal
disappointed not to find the large earthen-pan, full of fragmentary
eatables, that ordinarily awaited his coming, at the
back door-step of the seven gables.
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“I never knew Miss Hepzibah so forgetful before,” said the
patriarch to himself. “She must have had a dinner yesterday, —
no question of that! She always has one, now-a-days.
So where 's the pot-liquor and potato-skins, I ask?
Shall I knock, and see if she 's stirring yet? No, no, —
't won't do! If little Phœbe was about the house, I should
not mind knocking; but Miss Hepzibah, likely as not,
would scowl down at me, out of the window, and look
cross, even if she felt pleasantly. So I 'll come back at
noon.”
With these reflections, the old man was shutting the gate
of the little back-yard. Creaking on its hinges, however,
like every other gate and door about the premises, the sound
reached the ears of the occupant of the northern gable,
one of the windows of which had a side-view towards the
gate.
“Good-morning, Uncle Venner!” said the daguerreotypist,
leaning out of the window. “Do you hear nobody
stirring?”
“Not a soul,” said the man of patches. “But that 's no
wonder. 'T is barely half an hour past sunrise, yet. But
I 'm really glad to see you, Mr. Holgrave! There 's a
strange, lonesome look about this side of the house; so that
my heart misgave me, somehow or other, and I felt as if
there was nobody alive in it. The front of the house looks
a good deal cheerier; and Alice's Posies are blooming there
beautifully; and if I were a young man, Mr. Holgrave,
my sweetheart should have one of those flowers in her
bosom, though I risked my neck climbing for it! — Well!
and did the wind keep you awake last night?”
“It did, indeed!” answered the artist, smiling. “If I
were a believer in ghosts, — and I don't quite know whether
I am or not, — I should have concluded that all the old
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Pyncheons were running riot in the lower rooms, especially
in Miss Hepzibah's part of the house. But it is very
quiet now.”
“Yes, Miss Hepzibah will be apt to over-sleep herself,
after being disturbed, all night, with the racket,” said Uncle
Venner. “But it would be odd, now, would n't it, if the
judge had taken both his cousins into the country along
with him? I saw him go into the shop yesterday.”
“At what hour?” inquired Holgrave.
“O, along in the forenoon,” said the old man. “Well,
well! I must go my rounds, and so must my wheelbarrow.
But I 'll be back here at dinner-time; for my pig likes a
dinner as well as a breakfast. No meal-time, and no sort
of victuals, ever seems to come amiss to my pig. Good-morning
to you! And, Mr. Holgrave, if I were a young
man, like you, I 'd get one of Alice's Posies, and keep it in
water till Phœbe comes back.”
“I have heard,” said the daguerreotypist, as he drew in
his head, “that the water of Maule's well suits those flowers
best.”
Here the conversation ceased, and Uncle Venner went on
his way. For half an hour longer, nothing disturbed the
repose of the seven gables; nor was there any visiter, except
a carrier-boy, who, as he passed the front door-step, threw
down one of his newspapers; for Hepzibah, of late, had
regularly taken it in. After a while, there came a fat
woman, making prodigious speed, and stumbling as she ran
up the steps of the shop-door. Her face glowed with fireheat,
and, it being a pretty warm morning, she bubbled and
hissed, as it were, as if all a-fry with chimney-warmth, and
summer-warmth, and the warmth of her own corpulent
velocity. She tried the shop-door; — it was fast. She tried
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it again, with so angry a jar that the bell tinkled angrily
back at her.
“The deuce take Old Maid Pyncheon!” muttered the
irascible housewife. “Think of her pretending to set up a
cent-shop, and then lying abed till noon! These are what
she calls gentlefolk's airs, I suppose! But I 'll either start
her ladyship, or break the door down!”
She shook it accordingly, and the bell, having a spiteful
little temper of its own, rang obstreperously, making its
remonstrances heard, — not, indeed, by the ears for which
they were intended, — but by a good lady on the opposite
side of the street. She opened her window, and addressed
the impatient applicant.
“You 'll find nobody there, Mrs. Gubbins.”
“But I must and will find somebody here!” cried Mrs.
Gubbins, inflicting another outrage on the bell. “I want a
half-pound of pork, to fry some first-rate flounders, for Mr.
Gubbins's breakfast; and, lady or not, Old Maid Pyncheon
shall get up and serve me with it!”
“But do hear reason, Mrs. Gubbins!” responded the lady
opposite. “She, and her brother, too, have both gone to
their cousin, Judge Pyncheon's, at his country-seat. There's
not a soul in the house, but that young daguerreotype-man,
that sleeps in the north gable. I saw old Hepzibah and
Clifford go away yesterday; and a queer couple of ducks
they were, paddling through the mud-puddles! They 're
gone, I 'll assure you.”
“And how do you know they 're gone to the judge's?”
asked Mrs. Gubbins. “He 's a rich man; and there 's been
a quarrel between him and Hepzibah, this many a day,
because he won't give her a living. That 's the main reason
of her setting up a cent-shop.”
“I know that well enough,” said the neighbor. “But
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they 're gone, — that's one thing certain. And who but a
blood-relation, that could n't help himself, I ask you, would
take in that awful-tempered old maid, and that dreadful
Clifford? That 's it, you may be sure.”
Mrs. Gubbins took her departure, still brimming over
with hot wrath against the absent Hepzibah. For another
half hour, or, perhaps, considerably more, there was almost
as much quiet on the outside of the house as within. The
elm, however, made a pleasant, cheerful, sunny sigh, responsive
to the breeze that was elsewhere imperceptible; a
swarm of insects buzzed merrily under its drooping shadow,
and became specks of light, whenever they darted into the
sunshine; a locust sang, once or twice, in some inscrutable
seclusion of the tree; and a solitary little bird, with plumage
of pale gold, came and hovered about Alice's Posies.
At last, our small acquaintance, Ned Higgins, trudged up
the street, on his way to school; and happening, for the
first time in a fortnight, to be the possessor of a cent, he
could by no means get past the shop-door of the seven
gables. But it would not open. Again and again, however,
and half a dozen other agains, with the inexorable
pertinacity of a child intent upon some object important to
itself, did he renew his efforts for admittance. He had,
doubtless, set his heart upon an elephant; or, possibly, with
Hamlet, he meant to eat a crocodile. In response to his
more violent attacks, the bell gave, now and then, a moderate
tinkle, but could not be stirred into clamor by any
exertion of the little fellow's childish and tiptoe strength.
Holding by the door-handle, he peeped through a crevice
of the curtain, and saw that the inner door, communicating
with the passage towards the parlor, was closed.
“Miss Pyncheon!” screamed the child, rapping on the
window-pane, “I want an elephant!”
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There being no answer to several repetitions of the summons,
Ned began to grow impatient; and his little pot of
passion quickly boiling over, he picked up a stone, with a
naughty purpose to fling it through the window; at the
same time blubbering and sputtering with wrath. A man—
one of two who happened to be passing by — caught the
urchin's arm.
“What's the trouble, old gentleman?” he asked.
“I want old Hepzibah, or Phœbe, or any of them!” answered
Ned, sobbing. “They won't open the door; and I
can't get my elephant!”
“Go to school, you little scamp!” said the man. “There's
another cent-shop round the corner. 'T is very strange,
Dixey,” added he to his companion, “what 's become of all
these Pyncheons! Smith, the livery-stable keeper, tells me
Judge Pyncheon put his horse up yesterday, to stand till
after dinner, and has not taken him away yet. And one
of the judge's hired men has been in, this morning, to make
inquiry about him. He 's a kind of person, they say, that
seldom breaks his habits, or stays out o' nights.”
“O, he 'll turn up safe enough!” said Dixey. “And as
for Old Maid Pyncheon, take my word for it, she has run in
debt, and gone off from her creditors. I foretold, you remember,
the first morning she set up shop, that her devilish
scowl would frighten away customers. They could n't
stand it!”
“I never thought she 'd make it go,” remarked his friend.
“This business of cent-shops is overdone among the womenfolks.
My wife tried it, and lost five dollars on her outlay!”
“Poor business!” said Dixey, shaking his head. “Poor
business!”
In the course of the morning, there were various other
attempts to open a communication with the supposed
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inhabitants of this silent and impenetrable mansion. The man
of root-beer came, in his neatly-painted wagon, with a
couple of dozen full bottles, to be exchanged for empty ones;
the baker, with a lot of crackers which Hepzibah had ordered
for her retail custom; the butcher, with a nice titbit which
he fancied she would be eager to secure for Clifford. Had
any observer of these proceedings been aware of the fearful
secret hidden within the house, it would have affected him
with a singular shape and modification of horror, to see the
current of human life making this small eddy hereabouts;—
whirling sticks, straws, and all such trifles, round and
round, right over the black depth where a dead corpse lay
unseen!
The butcher was so much in earnest with his sweetbread
of lamb, or whatever the dainty might be, that he tried
every accessible door of the seven gables, and at length
came round again to the shop, where he ordinarily found
admittance.
“It 's a nice article, and I know the old lady would jump
at it,” said he to himself. “She can't be gone away! In
fifteen years that I have driven my cart through Pyncheon-street,
I 've never known her to be away from home; though
often enough, to be sure, a man might knock all day without
bringing her to the door. But that was when she 'd
only herself to provide for.”
Peeping through the same crevice of the curtain where,
only a little while before, the urchin of elephantine appetite
had peeped, the butcher beheld the inner door, not closed,
as the child had seen it, but ajar, and almost wide open.
However it might have happened, it was the fact. Through
the passage-way there was a dark vista into the lighter but
still obscure interior of the parlor. It appeared to the
butcher that he could pretty clearly discern what seemed
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to be the stalwart legs, clad in black pantaloons, of a man
sitting in a large oaken chair, the back of which concealed
all the remainder of his figure. This contemptuous tranquillity
on the part of an occupant of the house, in response
to the butcher's indefatigable efforts to attract notice, so
piqued the man of flesh that he determined to withdraw.
“So,” thought he, “there sits Old Maid Pyncheon's bloody
brother, while I 've been giving myself all this trouble!
Why, if a hog had n't more manners, I 'd stick him! I call
it demeaning a man's business to trade with such people;
and from this time forth, if they want a sausage or an ounce
of liver, they shall run after the cart for it!”
He tossed the titbit angrily into his cart, and drove off in
a pet.
Not a great while afterwards, there was a sound of music
turning the corner, and approaching down the street, with
several intervals of silence, and then a renewed and nearer
outbreak of brisk melody. A mob of children was seen
moving onward, or stopping, in unison with the sound, which
appeared to proceed from the centre of the throng; so that
they were loosely bound together by slender strains of harmony,
and drawn along captive; with ever and anon an
accession of some little fellow in an apron and straw-hat,
capering forth from door or gateway. Arriving under the
shadow of the Pyncheon-elm, it proved to be the Italian boy,
who, with his monkey and show of puppets, had once
before played his hurdy-gurdy beneath the arched window.
The pleasant face of Phœbe — and doubtless, too, the liberal
recompense which she had flung him — still dwelt in his
remembrance. His expressive features kindled up, as he
recognized the spot where this trifling incident of his erratic
life had chanced. He entered the neglected yard (now
wilder than ever, with its growth of hog-weed and burdock),
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stationed himself on the door-step of the main entrance, and
opening his show-box, began to play. Each individual of
the automatic community forthwith set to work, according
to his or her proper vocation: the monkey, taking off his
Highland bonnet, bowed and scraped to the bystanders most
obsequiously, with ever an observant eye to pick up a stray
cent; and the young foreigner himself, as he turned the
crank of his machine, glanced upward to the arched window,
expectant of a presence that would make his music
the livelier and sweeter. The throng of children stood near;
some on the sidewalk; some within the yard; two or three
establishing themselves on the very door-step; and one
squatting on the threshold. Meanwhile, the locust kept
singing in the great old Pyncheon-elm.
“I don't hear anybody in the house,” said one of the
children to another. “The monkey won't pick up anything
here.”
“There is somebody at home,” affirmed the urchin on the
threshold. “I heard a step!”
Still the young Italian's eye turned sidelong upward; and
it really seemed as if the touch of genuine, though slight
and almost playful emotion, communicated a juicier sweetness
to the dry, mechanical process of his minstrelsy. These
wanderers are readily responsive to any natural kindness —
be it no more than a smile, or a word, itself not understood,
but only a warmth in it — which befalls them on the roadside
of life. They remember these things, because they are
the little enchantments which, for the instant, — for the space
that reflects a landscape in a soap-bubble, — build up a home
about them. Therefore, the Italian boy would not be discouraged
by the heavy silence with which the old house
seemed resolute to clog the vivacity of his instrument. He
persisted in his melodious appeals; he still looked upward,
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trusting that his dark, alien countenance would soon be
brightened by Phœbe's sunny aspect. Neither could he be
willing to depart without again beholding Clifford, whose
sensibility, like Phœbe's smile, had talked a kind of heart's
language to the foreigner. He repeated all his music, over
and over again, until his auditors were getting weary. So
were the little wooden people in his show-box, and the monkey
most of all. There was no response, save the singing
of the locust.
“No children live in this house,” said a schoolboy, at
last. “Nobody lives here but an old maid and an old man.
You 'll get nothing here! Why don't you go along?”
“You fool, you, why do you tell him?” whispered a
shrewd little Yankee, caring nothing for the music, but
a good deal for the cheap rate at which it was had. “Let
him play as long as he likes! If there 's nobody to pay him,
that 's his own look-out!”
Once more, however, the Italian ran over his round of
melodies. To the common observer — who could understand
nothing of the case, except the music and the sunshine
on the hither side of the door — it might have been amusing
to watch the pertinacity of the street-performer. Will
he succeed at last? Will that stubborn door be suddenly
flung open? Will a group of joyous children, the young
ones of the house, come dancing, shouting, laughing, into
the open air, and cluster round the show-box, looking with
eager merriment at the puppets, and tossing each a copper
for long-tailed Mammon, the monkey, to pick up?
But, to us, who know the inner heart of the seven gables,
as well as its exterior face, there is a ghastly effect in this
repetition of light popular tunes at its door-step. It would be
an ugly business, indeed, if Judge Pyncheon (who would not
have cared a fig for Paganini's fiddle, in his most
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harmonious mood) should make his appearance at the door, with a
bloody shirt-bosom, and a grim frown on his swarthily-white
visage, and motion the foreign vagabond away! Was ever
before such a grinding out of jigs and waltzes, where nobody
was in the cue to dance? Yes, very often. This contrast, or
intermingling of tragedy with mirth, happens daily, hourly,
momently. The gloomy and desolate old house, deserted
of life, and with awful Death sitting sternly in its solitude,
was the emblem of many a human heart, which, nevertheless,
is compelled to hear the trill and echo of the world's
gayety around it.
Before the conclusion of the Italian's performance, a
couple of men happened to be passing, on their way to
dinner.
“I say, you young French fellow!” called out one of
them, — “come away from that door-step, and go somewhere
else with your nonsense! The Pyncheon family live
there; and they are in great trouble, just about this time.
They don't feel musical to-day. It is reported, all over
town, that Judge Pyncheon, who owns the house, has been
murdered; and the city marshal is going to look into the
matter. So be off with you, at once!”
As the Italian shouldered his hurdy-gurdy, he saw on the
door-step a card, which had been covered, all the morning,
by the newspaper that the carrier had flung upon it, but
was now shuffled into sight. He picked it up, and perceiving
something written in pencil, gave it to the man to read.
In fact, it was an engraved card of Judge Pyncheon's, with
certain pencilled memoranda on the back, referring to various
businesses, which it had been his purpose to transact during
the preceding day. It formed a prospective epitome of the
day's history; only that affairs had not turned out altogether
in accordance with the programme. The card must
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have been lost from the judge's vest-pocket, in his preliminary
attempt to gain access by the main entrance of the
house. Though well-soaked with rain, it was still partially
legible.
“Look here, Dixey!” cried the man. “This has something
to do with Judge Pyncheon. See! — here 's his
name printed on it; and here, I suppose, is some of his
hand-writing.”
“Let 's go to the city marshal with it!” said Dixey. “It
may give him just the clue he wants. After all,” whispered
he in his companion's ear, “it would be no wonder if
the judge has gone into that door, and never come out again!
A certain cousin of his may have been at his old tricks.
And Old Maid Pyncheon having got herself in debt by the
cent-shop, — and the judge's pocket-book being well filled,—
and bad blood amongst them already! Put all these
things together, and see what they make!”
“Hush, hush!” whispered the other. “It seems like a
sin to be the first to speak of such a thing. But I think,
with you, that we had better go to the city marshal.”
“Yes, yes!” said Dixey. “Well! — I always said there
was something devilish in that woman's scowl!”
The men wheeled about, accordingly, and retraced their
steps up the street. The Italian, also, made the best of
his way off, with a parting glance up at the arched window.
As for the children, they took to their heels, with one
accord, and scampered as if some giant or ogre were in
pursuit, until, at a good distance from the house, they
stopped as suddenly and simultaneously as they had set out.
Their susceptible nerves took an indefinite alarm from what
they had overheard. Looking back at the grotesque peaks
and shadowy angles of the old mansion, they fancied a
gloom diffused about it, which no brightness of the sunshine
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could dispel. An imaginary Hepzibah scowled and shook
her finger at them, from several windows at the same moment.
An imaginary Clifford — for (and it would have
deeply wounded him to know it) he had always been a
horror to these small people — stood behind the unreal Hepzibah,
making awful gestures, in a faded dressing-gown.
Children are even more apt, if possible, than grown people,
to catch the contagion of a panic terror. For the rest of the
day, the more timid went whole streets about, for the sake
of avoiding the seven gables; while the bolder signalized
their hardihood by challenging their comrades to race past
the mansion at full speed.
It could not have been more than half an hour after the
disappearance of the Italian boy, with his unseasonable melodies,
when a cab drove down the street. It stopped beneath
the Pyncheon-elm; the cabman took a trunk, a canvas-bag,
and a band-box, from the top of his vehicle, and deposited them
on the door-step of the old house; a straw bonnet, and then
the pretty figure of a young girl, came into view from the
interior of the cab. It was Phœbe! Though not altogether
so blooming as when she first tripped into our story, — for,
in the few intervening weeks, her experiences had made her
graver, more womanly, and deeper-eyed, in token of a heart
that had begun to suspect its depths, — still there was the
quiet glow of natural sunshine over her. Neither had she
forfeited her proper gift of making things look real, rather
than fantastic, within her sphere. Yet we feel it to be a
questionable venture, even for Phœbe, at this juncture, to
cross the threshold of the seven gables. Is her healthful
presence potent enough to chase away the crowd of pale,
hideous, and sinful phantoms, that have gained admittance
there since her departure? Or will she, likewise, fade,
sicken, sadden, and grow into deformity, and be only another
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pallid phantom, to glide noiselessly up and down the stairs,
and affright children, as she pauses at the window?
At least, we would gladly forewarn the unsuspecting girl
that there is nothing in human shape or substance to receive
her, unless it be the figure of Judge Pyncheon, who —
wretched spectacle that he is, and frightful in our remembrance,
since our night-long vigil with him! — still keeps
his place in the oaken chair.
Phœbe first tried the shop-door. It did not yield to her
hand; and the white curtain, drawn across the window
which formed the upper section of the door, struck her quick
perceptive faculty as something unusual. Without making
another effort to enter here, she betook herself to the
great portal, under the arched window. Finding it fastened,
she knocked. A reverberation came from the emptiness
within. She knocked again, and a third time; and,
listening intently, fancied that the floor creaked, as if Hepzibah
were coming, with her ordinary tiptoe movement, to
admit her. But so dead a silence ensued upon this imaginary
sound, that she began to question whether she might
not have mistaken the house, familiar as she thought herself
with its exterior.
Her notice was now attracted by a child's voice, at some
distance. It appeared to call her name. Looking in the
direction whence it proceeded, Phœbe saw little Ned Higgins,
a good way down the street, stamping, shaking his head
violently, making deprecatory gestures with both hands, and
shouting to her at mouth-wide screech.
“No, no, Phœbe!” he screamed. “Don't you go in!
There 's something wicked there! Don't — don't — don't
go in!”
But, as the little personage could not be induced to approach
near enough to explain himself, Phœbe concluded
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that he had been frightened, on some of his visits to the
shop, by her cousin Hepzibah; for the good lady's manifestations,
in truth, ran about an equal chance of scaring children
out of their wits, or compelling them to unseemly
laughter. Still, she felt the more, for this incident, how
unaccountably silent and impenetrable the house had become.
As her next resort, Phœbe made her way into the garden,
where, on so warm and bright a day as the present, she had
little doubt of finding Clifford, and perhaps Hepzibah also,
idling away the noontide in the shadow of the arbor. Immediately
on her entering the garden-gate, the family of
hens half ran, half flew, to meet her; while a strange Grimalkin,
which was prowling under the parlor-window, took
to his heels, clambered hastily over the fence, and vanished.
The arbor was vacant, and its floor, table, and circular
bench, were still damp, and bestrewn with twigs, and the
disarray of the past storm. The growth of the garden
seemed to have got quite out of bounds; the weeds
had taken advantage of Phœbe's absence, and the long-continued
rain, to run rampant over the flowers and kitchen-vegetables.
Maule's well had overflowed its stone border,
and made a pool of formidable breadth, in that corner of
the garden.
The impression of the whole scene was that of a spot
where no human foot had left its print for many preceding
days, — probably not since Phœbe's departure, — for she
saw a side-comb of her own under the table of the arbor,
where it must have fallen on the last afternoon when she
and Clifford sat there.
The girl knew that her two relatives were capable of far
greater oddities than that of shutting themselves up in their
old house, as they appeared now to have done. Nevertheless,
with indistinct misgivings of something amiss, and
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apprehensions to which she could not give shape, she approached
the door that formed the customary communication
between the house and garden. It was secured within,
like the two which she had already tried. She knocked,
however; and immediately, as if the application had been
expected, the door was drawn open, by a considerable
exertion of some unseen person's strength, not widely, but
far enough to afford her a side-long entrance. As Hepzibah,
in order not to expose herself to inspection from without,
invariably opened a door in this manner, Phœbe necessarily
concluded that it was her cousin who now admitted her.
Without hesitation, therefore, she stepped across the
threshold, and had no sooner entered than the door closed
behind her.
-- -- p574-332
XX. THE FLOWER OF EDEN.
[figure description] Page 323.[end figure description]
Phœbe, coming so suddenly from the sunny daylight,
was altogether bedimmed in such density of shadow as
lurked in most of the passages of the old house. She was
not at first aware by whom she had been admitted. Before
her eyes had adapted themselves to the obscurity, a hand
grasped her own, with a firm but gentle and warm pressure,
thus imparting a welcome which caused her heart to
leap and thrill with an indefinable shiver of enjoyment.
She felt herself drawn along, not towards the parlor, but
into a large and unoccupied apartment, which had formerly
been the grand reception-room of the seven gables. The
sunshine came freely into all the uncurtained windows of
this room, and fell upon the dusty floor; so that Phœbe
now clearly saw — what, indeed, had been no secret, after
the encounter of a warm hand with hers — that it was not
Hepzibah nor Clifford, but Holgrave, to whom she owed
her reception. The subtle, intuitive communication, or,
rather, the vague and formless impression of something to
be told, had made her yield unresistingly to his impulse.
Without taking away her hand, she looked eagerly in his
face, not quick to forebode evil, but unavoidably conscious
that the state of the family had changed since her departure,
and therefore anxious for an explanation.
The artist looked paler than ordinary; there was a
thoughtful and severe contraction of his forehead, tracing
a deep vertical line between the eyebrows. His smile,
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[figure description] Page 324.[end figure description]
however, was full of genuine warmth, and had in it a joy,
by far the most vivid expression that Phœbe had ever witnessed,
shining out of the New England reserve with
which Holgrave habitually masked whatever lay near his
heart. It was the look wherewith a man, brooding alone
over some fearful object, in a dreary forest or illimitable
desert, would recognize the familiar aspect of his dearest
friend, bringing up all the peaceful ideas that belong to
home, and the gentle current of every-day affairs. And
yet, as he felt the necessity of responding to her look of
inquiry, the smile disappeared.
“I ought not to rejoice that you have come, Phœbe,” said
he. “We meet at a strange moment!”
“What has happened?” she exclaimed. “Why is the
house so deserted? Where are Hepzibah and Clifford?”
“Gone! I cannot imagine where they are!” answered
Holgrave. “We are alone in the house!”
“Hepzibah and Clifford gone?” cried Phœbe. “It is
not possible! And why have you brought me into this
room, instead of the parlor? Ah, something terrible has
happened! I must run and see!”
“No, no, Phœbe!” said Holgrave, holding her back.
“It is as I have told you. They are gone, and I know not
whither. A terrible event has, indeed, happened, but not to
them, nor, as I undoubtingly believe, through any agency
of theirs. If I read your character rightly, Phœbe,” he
continued, fixing his eyes on hers, with stern anxiety, intermixed
with tenderness, “gentle as you are, and seeming to
have your sphere among common things, you yet possess
remarkable strength. You have wonderful poise, and a
faculty which, when tested, will prove itself capable of
dealing with matters that fall far out of the ordinary
rule.”
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“O, no, I am very weak!” replied Phœbe, trembling.
“But tell me what has happened!”
“You are strong!” persisted Holgrave. “You must be
both strong and wise; for I am all astray, and need your
counsel. It may be you can suggest the one right thing to
do!”
“Tell me! — tell me!” said Phœbe, all in a tremble.
“It oppresses, — it terrifies me, — this mystery! Anything
else I can bear!”
The artist hesitated. Notwithstanding what he had
just said, and most sincerely, in regard to the self-balancing
power with which Phœbe impressed him, it still seemed
almost wicked to bring the awful secret of yesterday to her
knowledge. It was like dragging a hideous shape of death
into the cleanly and cheerful space before a household fire,
where it would present all the uglier aspect, amid the decorousness
of everything about it. Yet it could not be concealed
from her; she must needs know it.
“Phœbe,” said he, “do you remember this?”
He put into her hand a daguerreotype; the same that he
had shown her at their first interview, in the garden, and
which so strikingly brought out the hard and relentless
traits of the original.
“What has this to do with Hepzibah and Clifford?”
asked Phœbe, with impatient surprise that Holgrave should
so trifle with her, at such a moment. “It is Judge Pyncheon!
You have shown it to me before!”
“But here is the same face, taken within this half-hour,”
said the artist, presenting her with another miniature. “I
had just finished it, when I heard you at the door.”
“This is death!” shuddered Phœbe, turning very pale.
“Judge Pyncheon dead!”
“Such as there represented,” said Holgrave, “he sits in
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the next room. The judge is dead, and Clifford and Hepzibah
have vanished! I know no more. All beyond is conjecture.
On returning to my solitary chamber, last evening,
I noticed no light, either in the parlor, or Hepzibah's
room, or Clifford's; no stir nor footstep about the house.
This morning there was the same death-like quiet. From
my window, I overheard the testimony of a neighbor, that
your relatives were seen leaving the house, in the midst of
yesterday's storm. A rumor reached me, too, of Judge Pyncheon
being missed. A feeling which I cannot describe —
an indefinite sense of some catastrophe, or consummation—
impelled me to make my way into this part of the
house, where I discovered what you see. As a point of
evidence that may be useful to Clifford, and also as a memorial
valuable to myself, — for, Phœbe, there are hereditary
reasons that connect me strangely with that man's fate, — I
used the means at my disposal to preserve this pictorial
record of Judge Pyncheon's death.”
Even in her agitation, Phœbe could not help remarking
the calmness of Holgrave's demeanor. He appeared, it is
true, to feel the whole awfulness of the judge's death, yet
had received the fact into his mind without any mixture of
surprise, but as an event pre-ordained, happening inevitably,
and so fitting itself into past occurrences that it could
almost have been prophesied.
“Why have you not thrown open the doors, and called
in witnesses?” inquired she, with a painful shudder. “It
is terrible to be here alone!”
“But Clifford!” suggested the artist. “Clifford and
Hepzibah! We must consider what is best to be done in
their behalf. It is a wretched fatality, that they should
have disappeared! Their flight will throw the worst coloring
over this event of which it is susceptible. Yet how
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easy is the explanation, to those who know them! Bewildered
and terror-stricken by the similarity of this death to a
former one, which was attended with such disastrous consequences
to Clifford, they have had no idea but of removing
themselves from the scene. How miserably unfortunate!
Had Hepzibah but shrieked aloud, — had Clifford
flung wide the door, and proclaimed Judge Pyncheon's
death, — it would have been, however awful in itself, an
event fruitful of good consequences to them. As I view it,
it would have gone far towards obliterating the black stain
on Clifford's character.”
“And how,” asked Phœbe, “could any good come from
what is so very dreadful?”
“Because,” said the artist, “if the matter can be fairly
considered, and candidly interpreted, it must be evident that
Judge Pyncheon could not have come unfairly to his end.
This mode of death has been an idiosyncrasy with his
family, for generations past; not often occurring, indeed,
but, when it does occur, usually attacking individuals about
the judge's time of life, and generally in the tension of
some mental crisis, or, perhaps, in an access of wrath. Old
Maule's prophecy was probably founded on a knowledge of
this physical predisposition in the Pyncheon race. Now,
there is a minute and almost exact similarity in the appearances
connected with the death that occurred yesterday
and those recorded of the death of Clifford's uncle, thirty
years ago. It is true, there was a certain arrangement of
circumstances, unnecessary to be recounted, which made it
possible, — nay, as men look at these things, probable, or
even certain, — that old Jaffrey Pyncheon came to a violent
death, and by Clifford's hands.”
“Whence came those circumstances?” exclaimed Phœbe;
“he being innocent, as we know him to be!”
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“They were arranged,” said Holgrave, — “at least,
such has long been my conviction, — they were arranged,
after the uncle's death, and before it was made public, by
the man who sits in yonder parlor. His own death, so like
that former one, yet attended with none of those suspicious
circumstances, seems the stroke of God upon him, at once a
punishment for his wickedness, and making plain the innocence
of Clifford. But this flight, — it distorts everything!
He may be in concealment, near at hand. Could we but
bring him back before the discovery of the judge's death,
the evil might be rectified.”
“We must not hide this thing a moment longer!” said
Phœbe. “It is dreadful to keep it so closely in our hearts.
Clifford is innocent. God will make it manifest! Let us
throw open the doors, and call all the neighborhood to see
the truth!”
“You are right, Phœbe,” rejoined Holgrave. “Doubtless
you are right.”
Yet the artist did not feel the horror, which was proper
to Phœbe's sweet and order-loving character, at thus finding
herself at issue with society, and brought in contact with an
event that transcended ordinary rules. Neither was he in
haste, like her, to betake himself within the precincts of
common life. On the contrary, he gathered a wild enjoyment, —
as it were, a flower of strange beauty, growing in
a desolate spot, and blossoming in the wind, — such a
flower of momentary happiness he gathered from his present
position. It separated Phœbe and himself from the world,
and bound them to each other, by their exclusive knowledge
of Judge Pyncheon's mysterious death, and the counsel
which they were forced to hold respecting it. The secret,
so long as it should continue such, kept them within the
circle of a spell, a solitude in the midst of men, a
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[figure description] Page 329.[end figure description]
remoteness as entire as that of an island in mid-ocean; — once
divulged, the ocean would flow betwixt them, standing on
its widely-sundered shores. Meanwhile, all the circumstances
of their situation seemed to draw them together;
they were like two children who go hand in hand, pressing
closely to one another's side, through a shadow-haunted
passage. The image of awful Death, which filled the
house, held them united by his stiffened grasp.
These influences hastened the development of emotions
that might not otherwise have flowered so soon. Possibly,
indeed, it had been Holgrave's purpose to let them die in
their undeveloped germs.
“Why do we delay so?” asked Phœbe. “This secret
takes away my breath! Let us throw open the doors!”
“In all our lives, there can never come another moment
like this!” said Holgrave. “Phœbe, is it all terror? —
nothing but terror? Are you conscious of no joy, as I am,
that has made this the only point of life worth living for?”
“It seems a sin,” replied Phœbe, trembling, “to think of
joy at such a time!”
“Could you but know, Phœbe, how it was with me, the
hour before you came!” exclaimed the artist. “A dark,
cold, miserable hour! The presence of yonder dead man
threw a great black shadow over everything; he made the
universe, so far as my perception could reach, a scene of
guilt, and of retribution more dreadful than the guilt. The
sense of it took away my youth. I never hoped to feel
young again! The world looked strange, wild, evil, hostile; —
my past life, so lonesome and dreary; my future, a
shapeless gloom, which I must mould into gloomy shapes!
But, Phœbe, you crossed the threshold; and hope, warmth
and joy, came in with you! The black moment became at
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[figure description] Page 330.[end figure description]
once a blissful one. It must not pass without the spoken
word. I love you!”
“How can you love a simple girl like me?” asked Phœbe,
compelled by his earnestness to speak. “You have many
many thoughts, with which I should try in vain to sympathize.
And I, — I, too, — I have tendencies with which
you would sympathize as little. That is less matter. But
I have not scope enough to make you happy.”
“You are my only possibility of happiness!” answered
Holgrave. “I have no faith in it, except as you bestow it
on me!”
“And then — I am afraid!” continued Phœbe, shrinking
towards Holgrave, even while she told him so frankly the
doubts with which he affected her. “You will lead me
out of my own quiet path. You will make me strive to
follow you, where it is pathless. I cannot do so. It is not
my nature. I shall sink down and perish!”
“Ah, Phœbe!” exclaimed Holgrave, with almost a sigh,
and a smile that was burthened with thought. “It will be far
otherwise than as you forebode. The world owes all its onward
impulses to men ill at ease. The happy man inevitably
confines himself within ancient limits. I have a presentiment
that, hereafter, it will be my lot to set out trees, to
make fences, — perhaps, even, in due time, to build a house
for another generation, — in a word, to conform myself to
laws, and the peaceful practice of society. Your poise will
be more powerful than any oscillating tendency of mine.”
“I would not have it so!” said Phœbe, earnestly.
“Do you love me?” asked Holgrave. “If we love one
another, the moment has room for nothing more. Let us
pause upon it, and be satisfied. Do you love me, Phœbe?”
“You look into my heart,” said she, letting her eyes
drop. “You know I love you!”
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And it was in this hour, so full of doubt and awe, that
the one miracle was wrought, without which every human
existence is a blank. The bliss, which makes all things
true, beautiful, and holy, shone around this youth and
maiden. They were conscious of nothing sad nor old.
They transfigured the earth, and made it Eden again, and
themselves the two first dwellers in it. The dead man, so
close beside them, was forgotten. At such a crisis, there is
no death; for immortality is revealed anew, and embraces
everything in its hallowed atmosphere.
But how soon the heavy earth-dream settled down again!
“Hark!” whispered Phœbe. “Somebody is at the
street door!”
“Now let us meet the world!” said Holgrave. “No
doubt, the rumor of Judge Pyncheon's visit to this house,
and the flight of Hepzibah and Clifford, is about to lead to
the investigation of the premises. We have no way but to
meet it. Let us open the door at once.”
But, to their surprise, before they could reach the street
door, — even before they quitted the room in which the foregoing
interview had passed, — they heard footsteps in the
further passage. The door, therefore, which they supposed
to be securely locked, — which Holgrave, indeed, had seen
to be so, and at which Phœbe had vainly tried to enter, —
must have been opened from without. The sound of foot-steps
was not harsh, bold, decided, and intrusive, as the gait
of strangers would naturally be, making authoritative
entrance into a dwelling where they knew themselves unwelcome.
It was feeble, as of persons either weak or weary;
there was the mingled murmur of two voices, familiar to
both the listeners.
“Can it be?” whispered Holgrave.
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“It is they!” answered Phœbe. “Thank God! — thank
God!”
And then, as if in sympathy with Phœbe's whispered
ejaculation, they heard Hepzibah's voice, more distinctly.
“Thank God, my brother, we are at home!”
“Well! — Yes! — thank God!” responded Clifford.
“A dreary home, Hepzibah! But you have done well to
bring me hither! Stay! That parlor-door is open. I cannot
pass by it! Let me go and rest me in the arbor, where
I used, — oh, very long ago, it seems to me, after what has
befallen us, — where I used to be so happy with little
Phœbe!”
But the house was not altogether so dreary as Clifford
imagined it. They had not made many steps, — in truth,
they were lingering in the entry, with the listlessness of an
accomplished purpose, uncertain what to do next, — when
Phœbe ran to meet them. On beholding her, Hepzibah burst
into tears. With all her might, she had staggered onward
beneath the burden of grief and responsibility, until now that
it was safe to fling it down. Indeed, she had not energy
to fling it down, but had ceased to uphold it, and suffered it
to press her to the earth. Clifford appeared the stronger of
the two.
“It is our own little Phœbe! — Ah! and Holgrave with
her,” exclaimed he, with a glance of keen and delicate
insight, and a smile, beautiful, kind, but melancholy. “I
thought of you both, as we came down the street, and
beheld Alice's Posies in full bloom. And so the flower of
Eden has bloomed, likewise, in this old, darksome house,
to-day!”
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XXI. THE DEPARTURE.
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The sudden death of so prominent a member of the social
world as the Honorable Judge Jaffrey Pyncheon created a
sensation (at least, in the circles more immediately connected
with the deceased) which had hardly quite subsided
in a fortnight.
It may be remarked, however, that, of all the events which
constitute a person's biography, there is scarcely one —
none, certainly, of anything like a similar importance — to
which the world so easily reconciles itself as to his death.
In most other cases and contingencies, the individual is present
among us, mixed up with the daily revolution of affairs,
and affording a definite point for observation. At his decease,
there is only a vacancy, and a momentary eddy, —
very small, as compared with the apparent magnitude of the
ingurgitated object, — and a bubble or two, ascending out
of the black depth, and bursting at the surface. As regarded
Judge Pyncheon, it seemed probable, at first blush, that the
mode of his final departure might give him a larger and
longer posthumous vogue than ordinarily attends the memory
of a distinguished man. But when it came to be
understood, on the highest professional authority, that the
event was a natural, and — except for some unimportant
particulars, denoting a slight idiosyncrasy — by no means
an unusual form of death, the public, with its customary
alacrity, proceeded to forget that he had ever lived. In
short, the honorable judge was beginning to be a stale
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subject, before half the county newspapers had found time to
put their columns in mourning, and publish his exceedingly
eulogistic obituary.
Nevertheless, creeping darkly through the places which
this excellent person had haunted in his lifetime, there was
a hidden stream of private talk, such as it would have
shocked all decency to speak loudly at the street-corners. It
is very singular, how the fact of a man's death often seems
to give people a truer idea of his character, whether for good
or evil, than they have ever possessed while he was living
and acting among them. Death is so genuine a fact that it
excludes falsehood, or betrays its emptiness; it is a touch-stone
that proves the gold, and dishonors the baser metal.
Could the departed, whoever he may be, return in a week
after his decease, he would almost invariably find himself at
a higher or lower point han he had formerly occupied, on
the scale of public appreciation. But the talk, or scandal,
to which we now allude, had reference to matters of no less
old a date than the supposed murder, thirty or forty years
ago, of the late Judge Pyncheon's uncle. The medical
opinion, with regard to his own recent and regretted decease,
had almost entirely obviated the idea that a murder was
committed, in the former case. Yet, as the record showed,
there were circumstances irrefragably indicating that some
person had gained access to old Jaffrey Pyncheon's private
apartments, at or near the moment of his death. His desk
and private drawers, in a room contiguous to his bedchamber,
had been ransacked; money and valuable articles were
missing; there was a bloody hand-print on the old man's
linen; and, by a powerfully welded chain of deductive evidence,
the guilt of the robbery and apparent murder had
been fixed on Clifford, then residing with his uncle in the
House of the Seven Gables.
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Whencesoever originating, there now arose a theory that
undertook so to account for these circumstances as to exclude
the idea of Clifford's agency. Many persons affirmed that
the history and elucidation of the facts, long so mysterious,
had been obtained by the daguerreotypist from one of those
mesmerical seers, who, now-a-days, so strangely perplex the
aspect of human affairs, and put everybody's natural vision
to the blush, by the marvels which they see with their eyes
shut.
According to this version of the story, Judge Pyncheon,
exemplary as we have portrayed him in our narrative, was,
in his youth, an apparently irreclaimable scapegrace. The
brutish, the animal instincts, as is often the case, had been
developed earlier than the intellectual qualities, and the
force of character, for which he was afterwards remarkable.
He had shown himself wild, dissipated, addicted to low
pleasures, little short of ruffianly in his propensities, and
recklessly expensive, with no other resources than the
bounty of his uncle. This course of conduct had alienated
the old bachelor's affection, once strongly fixed upon him.
Now, it is averred, — but whether on authority available in
a court of justice, we do not pretend to have investigated,—
that the young man was tempted by the devil, one night,
to search his uncle's private drawers, to which he had
unsuspected means of access. While thus criminally occupied,
he was startled by the opening of the chamber-door.
There stood old Jaffrey Pyncheon, in his night-clothes!
The surprise of such a discovery, his agitation, alarm, and
horror, brought on the crisis of a disorder to which the old
bachelor had an hereditary liability; — he seemed to choke
with blood, and fell upon the floor, striking his temple a
heavy blow against the corner of a table. What was to be
done? The old man was surely dead! Assistance would
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come too late! What a misfortune, indeed, should it come
too soon, since his reviving consciousness would bring the
recollection of the ignominious offence which he had beheld
his nephew in the very act of committing!
But he never did revive. With the cool hardihood that
always pertained to him, the young man continued his
search of the drawers, and found a will, of recent date, in
favor of Clifford, — which he destroyed, — and an older one,
in his own favor, which he suffered to remain. But, before
retiring, Jaffrey bethought himself of the evidence, in these
ransacked drawers, that some one had visited the chamber
with sinister purposes. Suspicion, unless averted, might fix
upon the real offender. In the very presence of the dead
man, therefore, he laid a scheme that should free himself at
the expense of Clifford, his rival, for whose character he had
at once a contempt and a repugnance. It is not probable, be
it said, that he acted with any set purpose of involving Clifford
in a charge of murder. Knowing that his uncle did
not die by violence, it may not have occurred to him, in the
hurry of the crisis, that such an inference might be drawn.
But, when the affair took this darker aspect, Jaffrey's
previous steps had already pledged him to those which
remained. So craftily had he arranged the circumstances,
that, at Clifford's trial, his cousin hardly found it necessary
to swear to anything false, but only to withhold the one
decisive explanation, by refraining to state what he had
himself done and witnessed.
Thus Jaffrey Pyncheon's inward criminality, as regarded
Clifford, was, indeed, black and damnable; while its mere
outward show and positive commission was the smallest
that could possibly consist with so great a sin. This is just
the sort of guilt that a man of eminent respectability finds
it easiest to dispose of. It was suffered to fade out of sight,
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or be reckoned a venial matter, in the Honorable Judge
Pyncheon's long subsequent survey of his own life. He
shuffled it aside, among the forgotten and forgiven frailties
of his youth, and seldom thought of it again.
We leave the judge to his repose. He could not be
styled fortunate, at the hour of death. Unknowingly,
he was a childless man, while striving to add more wealth
to his only child's inheritance. Hardly a week after his
decease, one of the Cunard steamers brought intelligence of
the death, by cholera, of Judge Pyncheon's son, just at the
point of embarkation for his native land. By this misfortune,
Clifford became rich; so did Hepzibah; so did our little village-maiden,
and, through her, that sworn foe of wealth and
all manner of conservatism, — the wild reformer, — Holgrave!
It was now far too late in Clifford's life for the good opinion
of society to be worth the trouble and anguish of a formal
vindication. What he needed was the love of a very few;
not the admiration, or even the respect, of the unknown
many. The latter might probably have been won for him,
had those on whom the guardianship of his welfare had
fallen deemed it advisable to expose Clifford to a miserable
resuscitation of past ideas, when the condition of whatever
comfort he might expect lay in the calm of forgetfulness.
After such wrong as he had suffered, there is no reparation.
The pitiable mockery of it, which the world might have
been ready enough to offer, coming so long after the agony
had done its utmost work, would have been fit only to provoke
bitterer laughter than poor Clifford was ever capable of.
It is a truth (and it would be a very sad one, but for the
higher hopes which it suggests) that no great mistake,
whether acted or endured, in our mortal sphere, is ever
really set right. Time, the continual vicissitude of
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circumstances, and the invariable inopportunity of death, render it
impossible. If, after long lapse of years, the right seems
to be in our power, we find no niche to set it in. The better
remedy is for the sufferer to pass on, and leave what he
once thought his irreparable ruin far behind him.
The shock of Judge Pyncheon's death had a permanently
invigorating and ultimately beneficial effect on Clifford.
That strong and ponderous man had been Clifford's nightmare.
There was no free breath to be drawn, within the
sphere of so malevolent an influence. The first effect of
freedom, as we have witnessed in Clifford's aimless flight,
was a tremulous exhilaration. Subsiding from it, he did
not sink into his former intellectual apathy. He never, it
is true, attained to nearly the full measure of what might
have been his faculties. But he recovered enough of them
partially to light up his character, to display some outline
of the marvellous grace that was abortive in it, and to make
him the object of no less deep, although less melancholy
interest than heretofore. He was evidently happy. Could
we pause to give another picture of his daily life, with all
the appliances now at command to gratify his instinct for
the Beautiful, the garden scenes, that seemed so sweet to
him, would look mean and trivial in comparison.
Very soon after their change of fortune, Clifford, Hepzibah,
and little Phœbe, with the approval of the artist,
concluded to remove from the dismal old House of the
Seven Gables, and take up their abode, for the present,
at the elegant country-seat of the late Judge Pyncheon.
Chanticleer and his family had already been transported
thither, where the two hens had forthwith begun an indefatigable
process of egg-laying, with an evident design, as a
matter of duty and conscience, to continue their illustrious
breed under better auspices than for a century past. On
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the day set for their departure, the principal personages
of our story, including good Uncle Venner, were assembled
in the parlor.
“The country-house is certainly a very fine one, so far
as the plan goes,” observed Holgrave, as the party were discussing
their future arrangements. “But I wonder that
the late judge — being so opulent, and with a reasonable
prospect of transmitting his wealth to descendants of his
own — should not have felt the propriety of embodying so
excellent a piece of domestic architecture in stone, rather
than in wood. Then, every generation of the family might
have altered the interior, to suit its own taste and convenience;
while the exterior, through the lapse of years,
might have been adding venerableness to its original beauty,
and thus giving that impression of permanence which I
consider essential to the happiness of any one moment.”
“Why,” cried Phœbe, gazing into the artist's face with
infinite amazement, “how wonderfully your ideas are
changed! A house of stone, indeed! It is but two or
three weeks ago, that you seemed to wish people to live in
something as fragile and temporary as a bird's nest!”
“Ah, Phœbe, I told you how it would be!” said the
artist, with a half-melancholy laugh. “You find me a
conservative already! Little did I think ever to become
one. It is especially unpardonable in this dwelling of so
much hereditary misfortune, and under the eye of yonder
portrait of a model conservative, who, in that very character,
rendered himself so long the evil destiny of his race.”
“That picture!” said Clifford, seeming to shrink from its
stern glance. “Whenever I look at it, there is an old, dreamy
recollection haunting me, but keeping just beyond the grasp
of my mind. Wealth, it seems to say! — boundless wealth!—
unimaginable wealth! I could fancy that, when I was a
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child, or a youth, that portrait had spoken, and told me
a rich secret, or had held forth its hand, with the written
record of hidden opulence. But those old matters are so
dim with me, now-a-days! What could this dream have
been?”
“Perhaps I can recall it,” answered Holgrave. “See!
There are a hundred chances to one, that no person, unacquainted
with the secret, would ever touch this spring.”
“A secret spring!” cried Clifford. “Ah, I remember
now! I did discover it, one summer afternoon, when I was
idling and dreaming about the house, long, long ago. But
the mystery escapes me.”
The artist put his finger on the contrivance to which he
had referred. In former days, the effect would probably
have been to cause the picture to start forward. But, in so
long a period of concealment, the machinery had been eaten
through with rust; so that, at Holgrave's pressure, the portrait,
frame and all, tumbled suddenly from its position, and
lay face downward on the floor. A recess in the wall was
thus brought to light, in which lay an object so covered with
a century's dust that it could not immediately be recognized
as a folded sheet of parchment. Holgrave opened it, and
displayed an ancient deed, signed with the hieroglyphics of
several Indian sagamores, and conveying to Colonel Pyncheon
and his heirs, forever, a vast extent of territory at
the eastward.
“This is the very parchment the attempt to recover
which cost the beautiful Alice Pyncheon her happiness and
life,” said the artist, alluding to his legend. “It is what
the Pyncheons sought in vain, while it was valuable; and
now that they find the treasure, it has long been worthless.”
“Poor Cousin Jaffrey! This is what deceived him,”
exclaimed Hepzibah. “When they were young together,
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Clifford probably made a kind of fairy-tale of this discovery.
He was always dreaming hither and thither about the house,
and lighting up its dark corners with beautiful stories. And
poor Jaffrey, who took hold of everything as if it were real,
thought my brother had found out his uncle's wealth. He
died with this delusion in his mind!”
“But,” said Phœbe, apart to Holgrave, “how came you
to know the secret?”
“My dearest Phœbe,” said Holgrave, “how will it please
you to assume the name of Maule? As for the secret, it is
the only inheritance that has come down to me from my
ancestors. You should have known sooner (only that I was
afraid of frightening you away) that, in this long drama of
wrong and retribution, I represent the old wizard, and am
probably as much of a wizard as ever he was. The son of
the executed Matthew Maule, while building this house,
took the opportunity to construct that recess, and hide away
the Indian deed, on which depended the immense land-claim
of the Pyncheons. Thus they bartered their eastern territory
for Maule's garden-ground.”
“And now,” said Uncle Venner, “I suppose their whole
claim is not worth one man's share in my farm yonder!”
“Uncle Venner,” cried Phœbe, taking the patched philosopher's
hand, “you must never talk any more about your
farm! You shall never go there, as long as you live! There
is a cottage in our new garden, — the prettiest little yellowish-brown
cottage you ever saw; and the sweetest-looking place,
for it looks just as if it were made of gingerbread, — and
we are going to fit it up and furnish it, on purpose for you.
And you shall do nothing but what you choose, and shall
be as happy as the day is long, and shall keep Cousin Clifford
in spirits with the wisdom and pleasantness which is
always dropping from your lips!”
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“Ah! my dear child,” quoth good Uncle Venner, quite
overcome, “if you were to speak to a young man as you do
to an old one, his chance of keeping his heart another
minute would not be worth one of the buttons on my waistcoat!
And — soul alive! — that great sigh, which you
made me heave, has burst off the very last of them! But
never mind! It was the happiest sigh I ever did heave;
and it seems as if I must have drawn in a gulp of heavenly
breath, to make it with. Well, well, Miss Phœbe! They 'll
miss me in the gardens, hereabouts, and round by the backdoors;
and Pyncheon-street, I 'm afraid, will hardly look the
same without old Uncle Venner, who remembers it with a
mowing field on one side, and the garden of the seven
gables on the other. But either I must go to your country-seat,
or you must come to my farm — that 's one of two
things certain; and I leave you to choose which!”
“O, come with us, by all means, Uncle Venner!”
said Clifford, who had a remarkable enjoyment of the old
man's mellow, quiet, and simple spirit. “I want you
always to be within five minutes' saunter of my chair.
You are the only philosopher I ever knew of, whose wisdom
has not a drop of bitter essence at the bottom!”
“Dear me!” cried Uncle Venner, beginning partly to
realize what manner of man he was. “And yet folks used
to set me down among the simple ones, in my younger
days! But I suppose I am like a Roxbury russet, — a great
deal the better, the longer I can be kept. Yes; and my
words of wisdom, that you and Phœbe tell me of, are like
the golden dandelions, which never grow in the hot months,
but may be seen glistening among the withered grass, and
under the dry leaves, sometimes as late as December. And
you are welcome, friends, to my mess of dandelions, if there
were twice as many!”
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A plain, but handsome, dark-green barouche had now
drawn up in front of the ruinous portal of the old mansion-house.
The party came forth, and (with the exception of
good Uncle Venner, who was to follow in a few days) proceeded
to take their places. They were chatting and laughing
very pleasantly together; and — as proves to be often
the case, at moments when we ought to palpitate with sensibility—
Clifford and Hepzibah bade a final farewell to
the abode of their forefathers, with hardly more emotion
than if they had made it their arrangement to return thither
at tea-time. Several children were drawn to the spot by
so unusual a spectacle as the barouche and pair of gray
horses. Recognizing little Ned Higgins among them, Hepzibah
put her hand into her pocket, and presented the
urchin, her earliest and staunchest customer, with silver
enough to people the Domdaniel cavern of his interior with
as various a procession of quadrupeds as passed into the
ark.
Two men were passing, just as the barouche drove off.
“Well, Dixey,” said one of them, “what do you think of
this? My wife kept a cent-shop three months, and lost five
dollars on her outlay. Old Maid Pyncheon has been in
trade just about as long, and rides off in her carriage with
a couple of hundred thousand, — reckoning her share, and
Clifford's, and Phœbe's, — and some say twice as much!
If you choose to call it luck, it is all very well; but if we
are to take it as the will of Providence, why, I can't exactly
fathom it!”
“Pretty good business!” quoth the sagacious Dixey.
“Pretty good business!”
Maule's well, all this time, though left in solitude, was
throwing up a succession of kaleidoscopic pictures, in which
a gifted eye might have seen fore-shadowed the coming
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fortunes of Hepzibah and Clifford, and the descendant of the
legendary wizard, and the village-maiden, over whom he
had thrown Love's web of sorcery. The Pyncheon-elm,
moreover, with what foliage the September gale had spared
to it, whispered unintelligible prophecies. And wise Uncle
Venner, passing slowly from the ruinous porch, seemed to
hear a strain of music, and fancied that sweet Alice Pyncheon—
after witnessing these deeds, this by-gone woe,
and this present happiness, of her kindred mortals — had
given one farewell touch of a spirit's joy upon her harpsichord,
as she floated heavenward from the House of the
Seven Gables!
THE END.
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Hawthorne, Nathaniel, 1804-1864 [1851], The house of seven gables: a romance. (Ticknor, Reed, and Fields, Boston) [word count] [eaf574T].
