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THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES, by NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE.

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                    THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES

                                 by

                         NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE

                    HOUGHTON MIFFLIN AND COMPANY
                         BOSTON AND NEW YORK

                The Riverside Press Cambridge, Mass.

                Copyright 1815 by NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE
              Copyright 1879 by ROSE HAWTHORNE LATHROP

             Copyright 1883 By HOUGHTON AND MIFFLIN & CO.


Table of Contents

INTRODUCTORY NOTE
AUTHOR'S PREFACE
I.      THE OLD PYNCHEON FAMILY
II.     THE LITTLE SHOP-WINDOW
III.    THE FIRST CUSTOMER
IV.     A DAY BEHIND THE COUNTER
V.      MAY AND NOVEMBER
VI.     MAULE'S WELL
VII.    THE GUEST
VIII.   THE PYNCHEON OF TO-DAY
IX.     CLIFFORD AND PHOEBE
X.      THE PYNCHEON GARDEN
XI.     THE ARCHED WINDOW
XII.    THE DAGUERREOTYPIST
XIII.   ALICE PYNCHEON
XIV.    PHOEBE'S GOOD-BY
XV.     THE SCOWL AND SMILE
XVI.    CLIFFORD'S CHAMBER
XVII.   THE FLIGHT OF TWO OWLS
XVIII.  GOVERNOR PYNCHEON
XIX.    ALICE'S POSIES
XX.     THE FLOWER OF EDEN
XXI.    THE DEPARTURE


INTRODUCTORY NOTE.
THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES.

     IN September of the year during the February of which
Hawthorne had completed "The Scarlet Letter," he began "The
House of the Seven Gables." Meanwhile, he had removed from Salem
to Lenox, in Berkshire County, Massachusetts, where he occupied
with his family a small red wooden house, still standing at the
date of this edition, near the Stockbridge Bowl.
     "I sha'n't have the new story ready by November,"  he
explained to his publisher, on the 1st of October, "for I am
never good for anything in the literary way till after the first
autumnal frost, which has somewhat such an effect on my
imagination that it does on the foliage here about
me-multiplying and brightening its hues." But by vigorous
application he was able to complete the new work about the
middle of the January following.
     Since research has disclosed the manner in which the
romance is interwoven with incidents from the history of the
Hawthorne family, "The House of the Seven Gables" has acquired
an interest apart from that by which it first appealed to the
public. John Hathorne (as the name was then spelled), the
great-grandfather of Nathaniel Hawthorne, was a magistrate at
Salem in the latter part of the seventeenth century, and
officiated at the famous trials for witchcraft held there. It is
of record that he used peculiar severity towards a certain woman
who was among the accused; and the husband of this woman
prophesied that God would take revenge upon his wife's
persecutors. This circumstance doubtless furnished a hint for
that piece of tradition in the book which represents a Pyncheon
of a former generation as having persecuted one Maule, who
declared that God would give his enemy "blood to drink." It
became a conviction with The Hawthorne family That a curse had
been pronounced upon its members, which continued in force in
the time of The romancer; a conviction perhaps derived from the
recorded prophecy of The injured woman's husband, just
mentioned; and, here again, we have a correspondence with
Maule's malediction in The story. Furthermore, there occurs in
The "American Note-Books" (August 27, 1837), a reminiscence of
The author's family, to the following effect. Philip English, a
character well-known in early Salem annals, was among those who
suffered from John Hathorne's magisterial harshness, and he
maintained in consequence a lasting feud with the old Puritan
official. But at his death English left daughters, one of whom
is said to have married the son of Justice John Hathorne, whom
English had declared he would never forgive. It is scarcely
necessary to point out how clearly this foreshadows the final
union of those hereditary foes, the Pyncheons and Maules,
through the marriage of Phoebe and Holgrave. The romance,
however, describes the Maules as possessing some of the traits
known to have been characteristic of the Hawthornes: for
example, "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 characteristic of reserve." Thus, while the
general suggestion of the Hawthorne line and its fortunes was
followed in the romance, the Pyncheons taking the place of The
author's family, certain distinguishing marks of the Hawthornes
were assigned to the imaginary Maule posterity.
     There are one or two other points which indicate
Hawthorne's method of basing his compositions, the result in the
main of pure invention, on the solid ground of particular facts.
Allusion is made, in the first chapter of the "Seven Gables," to
a grant of lands in Waldo County, Maine, owned by the Pyncheon
family. In the "American Note-Books" there is an entry, dated
August 12, 1837, which speaks of the Revolutionary general,
Knox, and his land-grant in Waldo County, by virtue of which the
owner had hoped to establish an estate on the English plan, with
a tenantry to make it profitable for him. An incident of much
greater importance in the story is the supposed murder of one of
the Pyncheons by his nephew, to whom we are introduced as
Clifford Pyncheon. In all probability Hawthorne connected with
this, in his mind, the murder of Mr. White, a wealtHy gentleman
of Salem, killed by a man whom his nephew had hired. This took
place a few years after Hawthorne's gradation from college, and
was one of the celebrated cases of the day, Daniel Webster
taking part prominently in the trial. But it should be observed
here that such resemblances as these between sundry elements in
the work of Hawthorne's fancy and details of reality are only
fragmentary, and are rearranged to suit the author's purposes.
     In the same way he has made his description of Hepzibah
Pyncheon's seven-gabled mansion conform so nearly to several old
dwellings formerly or still extant in Salem, that strenuous
efforts have been made to fix upon some one of them as the
veritable edifice of the romance. A paragraph in The opening
chapter has perhaps assisted this delusion that there must have
been a single original House of the Seven Gables, framed by
flesh-and-blood carpenters; for it runs thus:-
     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
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."
     Hundreds of pilgrims annually visit a house in Salem,
belonging to one branch of the Ingersoll family of that place,
which is stoutly maintained to have been The model for
Hawthorne's visionary dwelling. Others have supposed that the
now vanished house of The identical Philip English, whose blood,
as we have already noticed, became mingled with that of the
Hawthornes, supplied the pattern; and still a third building,
known as the Curwen mansion, has been declared the only genuine
establishment. Notwithstanding persistent popular belief, The
authenticity of all these must positively be denied; although it
is possible that isolated reminiscences of all three may have
blended with the ideal image in the mind of Hawthorne. He, it
will be seen, remarks in the Preface, alluding to himself in the
third person, that he trusts not to be condemned for "laying out
a street that infringes upon nobody's private rights... and
building a house of materials long in use for constructing
castles in the air." More than this, He stated to persons still
living that the house of the romance was not copied from any
actual edifice, but was simply a general reproduction of a style
of architecture belonging to colonial days, examples of which
survived into the period of his youth, but have since been
radically modified or destroyed. Here, as elsewhere, he
exercised the liberty of a creative mind to heighten the
probability of his pictures without confining himself to a
literal description of something he had seen.
     While Hawthorne remained at Lenox, and during the
composition of this romance, various other literary personages
settled or stayed for a time in the vicinity; among them, Herman
melville, whose intercourse Hawthorne greatly enjoyed, Henry
James, Sr., Doctor Holmes, J. T. Headley, James Russell Lowell,
Edwin P. Whipple, Frederika Bremer, and J. T. Fields; so that
there was no lack of intellectual society in the midst of the
beautiful and inspiring mountain scenery of the place. "In the
afternoons, nowadays," he records, shortly before beginning the
work, "this valley in which I dwell seems like a vast basin
filled with golden Sunshine as with wine;" and, happy in the
companionship of his wife and their three children, he led a
simple, refined, idyllic life, despite the restrictions of a
scanty and uncertain income. A letter written by Mrs. Hawthorne,
at this time, to a member of her family, gives incidentally a
glimpse of the scene, which may properly find a place here. She
says: "I delight to think that you also can look forth, as I do
now, upon a broad valley and a fine amphitheater of hills, and
are about to watch the stately ceremony of the sunset from your
piazza. But you have not this lovely lake, nor, I suppose, the
delicate purple mist which folds these slumbering mountains in
airy veils. Mr. Hawthorne has been lying down in the sun shine,
slightly fleckered with The shadows of a tree, and Una and
Julian have been making him look like the mighty Pan, by
covering his chin and breast with long grass-blades, that looked
like a verdant and venerable beard." The pleasantness and peace
of his surroundings and of his modest home, in Lenox, may be
taken into account as harmonizing with the mellow serenity of
the romance then produced. Of the work, when it appeared in the
early spring of 1851, he wrote to Horatio Bridge these words,
now published for the first time:--
     "'The House of the Seven Gables' in my opinion, is better
than 'The Scarlet Letter:' but I should not wonder if I had
refined upon the principal character a little too much for
popular appreciation, nor if the romance of the book should be
somewhat at odds with the humble and familiar scenery in which
I invest it. But I feel that portions of it are as good as
anything I can hope to write, and the publisher speaks
encouragingly of its success."
     From England, especially, came many warm expressions of
praise,--a fact which Mrs. Hawthorne, in a private letter,
commented on as the fulfillment of a possibility which
Hawthorne, writing in boyhood to his mother, had looked forward
to. He had asked her if she would not like him to become an
author and have his books read in England.

G. P. L.


PREFACE.

     WHEN a writer calls his work a Romance, it need hardly be
observed that he wishes to claim a certain latitude, both as to
its fashion and material, which he would not have felt himself
entitled to assume had he professed to be writing a Novel. The
latter form of composition is presumed to aim at a very minute
fidelity, not merely to the possible, but to the probable and
ordinary course of man's experience. The former-while, as a work
of art, it must rigidly subject itself to laws, and while it
sins unpardonably so far as it may swerve aside from the truth
of the human heart-has fairly a right to present that truth
under circumstances, to a great extent, of the writer's own
choosing or creation. If he think fit, also, he may so manage
his atmospherical medium as to bring out or mellow the lights
and deepen and enrich the shadows of the picture. He will be
wise, no doubt, to make a very moderate use of the privileges
here stated, and, especially, to mingle the Marvelous rather as
a slight, delicate, and evanescent flavor, than as any portion
of the actual substance of the dish offered to the public. He
can hardly be said, however, to commit a literary crime even if
he disregard this caution.
     In the present work, the author has proposed to himself-but
with what success, fortunately, it is not for him to judge-to
keep undeviatingly within his immunities. The point of view in
which this tale comes under the Romantic definition lies in the
attempt to connect a bygone time with the very present that is
flitting away from us. It is a legend prolonging itself, from an
epoch now gray in the distance, down into our own broad
daylight, and bringing along with it some of its legendary mist,
which the reader, according to his pleasure, may either
disregard, or allow it to float almost imperceptibly about the
characters and events for the sake of a picturesque effect. The
narrative, it may be, is woven of so humble a texture as to
require this advantage, and, at the same time, to render it the
more difficult of attainment.
     Many writers lay very great stress upon some definite moral
purpose, at which they profess to aim their works. Not to be
deficient in this particular, the author has provided himself
with a moral,--the truth, namely, that the wrong-doing of one
generation lives into the successive ones, and, divesting itself
of every temporary advantage, becomes a pure and uncontrollable
mischief; and he would feel it a singular gratification if this
romance might effectually convince mankind-or, indeed, any one
man-of the folly of tumbling down an avalanche of ill-gotten
gold, or real estate, on the heads of an unfortunate posterity,
thereby to maim and crush them, until the accumulated mass shall
be scattered abroad in its original atoms. In good faith,
however, he is not sufficiently imaginative to flatter himself
with the slightest hope of this kind. When romances do really
teach anything, or produce any effective operation, it is
usually through a far more subtile process than the ostensible
one. The author has considered it hardly worth his while,
therefore, relentlessly to impale the story with its moral as
with an iron rod,--or, rather, as by sticking a pin through a
butterfly,--thus at once depriving it of life, and causing it to
stiffen in an ungainly and unnatural attitude. A high truth,
indeed, fairly, finely, and skillfully wrought out, brightening
at every step, and crowning the final development of a work of
fiction, may add an artistic glory, but is never any truer, and
seldom any more evident, at the last page than at the first.
     The reader may perhaps choose to assign an actual locality
to the imaginary events of this narrative. If permitted by the
historical connection,--which, though slight, was essential to
his plan,--the author would very willingly have avoided anything
of this nature. Not to speak of other objections, it exposes the
romance to an inflexible and exceedingly dangerous species of
criticism, by bringing his fancy-pictures almost into positive
contact with the realities of the moment. It has been no part of
his object, however, to describe local manners, nor in any way
to meddle with the characteristics of a community for whom he
cherishes a proper respect and a natural regard. He trusts not
to be considered as unpardonably offending by laying out a
street that infringes upon nobody's private rights, and
appropriating a lot of land which had no visible owner, and
building a house of materials long in use for constructing
castles in the air. The personages of the tale-though they give
themselves out to be of ancient stability and considerable
prominence-are really of the author's own making, or at all
events, of his own mixing; their virtues can shed no lustre, nor
their defects redound, in the remotest degree, to the discredit
of the venerable town of which they profess to be inhabitants.
He would be glad, therefore, if--especially in the quarter to
which he alludes-the book may be read strictly as a Romance,
having a great deal more to do with the clouds overhead than
with any portion of the actual soil of the County of Essex.
     LENOX, January 27, 1851.


CHAPTER I. The Old Pyncheon Family

HALFWAY 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 failed 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 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 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 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 fellow sufferers. 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 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 log-built 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 with commonsense, 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 Maule's 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 framework fastened by his
hands still holds together.
     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 longpast 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
codfish 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 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 woodwork 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 shadowy 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 doorway, 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, 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 visitors. 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 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 reecho with a 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
bedchambers; 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 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 halfway, 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 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 farther 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 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 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
regranted 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 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 new-shingled!" 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
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 footstep, 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 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 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
reappearance, 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
doubts 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 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 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 horticulturist, 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 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 framework 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 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 gravestone, 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,--that of exercising an influence over people's
dreams. The Pyncheons, if all stories were true, haughtily as
they bore themselves in the noonday streets of their native
town, were no better than bond-servants to these plebeian
Maules, on entering the topsy-turvy commonwealth of sleep.
Modern psychology, 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 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 outbuildings
that stood on another street. It would be au 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 even-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 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 beruffled 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 shop-keeper, 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.


CHAPTER II. The Little Shop-Window

     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 farthest 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 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 escritoire, 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 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
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 draughtsman, 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 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 illtempered old maid; nor does it appear improbable that,
by often gazing at herself in a dim looking-glass, and
perpetually encountering her own frown with 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 faintheartedly on
the threshold of our story. In very truth, we have an invincible
reluctance to disclose what Miss Hepzibah Pyncheon was about to
do.
     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 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 shopkeeper 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 gingerbread. 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 AEolus that
morning,--and stept across the room on 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 playthings,
and other little wares, on the shelves and at the shop-window.
In the aspect of this dark-arrayed, pale-faced, ladylike 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 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 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 needlework. 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 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 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
conch 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 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.


CHAPTER III. The First Customer

     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 housebreaker 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 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 doorway.
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 mustache, 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 apparent 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 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!"
     "Oh, 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. 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 nowadays,
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? 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 fulfillment 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
seashore, 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 sea-water, 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 have the privilege of gazing, and partly
because the idea occurred to her, with ridiculous importunity,
that the window was not arranged so skillfully, 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 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
overhearing 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 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, drygoods 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 farther 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.
     "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
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 j ar, 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 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, 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 vouchsafes
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 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
lady-like 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, 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 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.


CHAPTER IV. A Day Behind the Counter

     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
marked influence and 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 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 gingerbread. 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 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 nowadays) 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 noonday
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
likeness remained perfect. Malbone's miniature, though from the
same original, was far inferior to Hepzibah's air-drawn 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 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 firewood, 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 sidewalk, or open paths to the woodshed, 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 commonplace in
his earlier and middle life. Hepzibah had a regard for 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 hat 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 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."
     "Oh, 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. Nowadays, 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 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, either, 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 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 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.
     "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 shop-keeper, 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 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 ninepence 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 farthest
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 cavalier with a
smile, the cheery glow of which was seen reflected on his own
face as he reentered 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 bandbox. 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 time-worn framework 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 Phoebe?" questioned she within herself. "It must
be little Phoebe; 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."
     Phoebe, it must be understood, was that one little offshoot
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 Phoebe'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!"


CHAPTER V. May and November

     PHOEBE 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 Phoebe'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, Phoebe 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 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 Phoebe was quite dressed, she peeped out of the
window, and saw a rosebush in the garden. Being a very tall one,
and of luxuriant 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 rosebush
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 Phoebe'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 Phoebe'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 Phoebe 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 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, Phoebe'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 Phoebe'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. N o 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 bedchamber, 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 bedchamber, 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, Phoebe emerged
from her chamber, with a purpose to descend again into the
garden. Besides the rosebush, 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 Phoebe 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 Phoebe's trim little
figure as if she expected to see right into its springs and
motive secrets.
     "Cousin Phoebe," 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 Phoebe to establish
herself in another home. Nor did she misinterpret Phoebe's
character, and the genial activity 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, Phoebe 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, Phoebe, 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, Phoebe), whose temper, I
am afraid, is none of the best, and whose spirits are ss bad as
can be I cannot make your life pleasant, Cousin Phoebe, neither
can I so much as give you bread to eat."
     "You will find me a cheerful little, body" answered Phoebe,
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! Phoebe," 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 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 Phoebe. "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 Phoebe in surprise.
     "Judge Pyncheon!" answered her cousin angrily. "He will
hardly cross the threshold while I live! No, no! But, Phoebe,
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 Phoebe, 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 Phoebe
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 Phoebe. "And 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 Phoebe, 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 Phoebe--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. Phoebe 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 Phoebe 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 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 teapot 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 Phoebe."She was a
Davenport, of a good family. They were almost the first teacups
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 teacup, 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 burden of dust, which Phoebe
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 teacups?"
     "Not quite, I am afraid," said Phoebe, 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! 'tis all very well!" observed the maiden lady, 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 teaspoons 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 Phoebe,
starting lightly up. "I am shop-keeper today."
     "You, child!" exclaimed Hepzibah. "What can a little
country girl know of such matters?"
     "Oh, I have done all the shopping for the family at our
village store," said Phoebe. "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 blood. You shall see
that I am as nice a little saleswoman as I am a housewife!"
     The old gentlewoman stole behind Phoebe, and peeped from
the passageway into the shop, to note 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
nightcap 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 Phoebe,
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 Phoebe, 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 choose to
deem higher and more important. Thus, Hepzibah was well content
to acknowledge Phoebe's vastly superior gifts as a
shop-keeper'-she listened, with compliant 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 only could be a
lady; too--but that's impossible! Phoebe is no Pyncheon. She
takes everything from her mother."
     As to Phoebe'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 dozen freckles,
friendly remembrances 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 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
Phoebe 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 Phoebe. To find the born and
educated lady, on the other hand, we need look no farther 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 Phoebe 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 recommencing in the afternoon, and, finally,
dying away a half an hour or so before the long day's sunset.
One of the stanchest patrons was little Ned Higgins, the
devourer of Jim Crow and the elephant, who to-day signalized his
omnivorous prowess by swallowing two dromedaries and a
locomotive. Phoebe 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, Phoebe 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; 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 Phoebe 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 subtile and true. There was a
spiritual quality in Phoebe'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 Phoebe.
     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 Phoebe 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 visitors with an awful frown. The dusky terror of
that frown, Hepzibah observed, was thought to be lingering ever
since in the passageway. She bade Phoebe 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 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, Phoebe," 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 Phoebe; "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 rosebud 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
Phoebe.
     "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 nowadays, should be apt to suspect him of
studying the Black Art up there in his lonesome chamber.
     "But, dear cousin," said Phoebe, "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 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
Phoebe, a part of whose essence it was to keep within the limits
of law.
     "Oh!" 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!"


CHAPTER VI. MAULE'S WELL

     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 outbuildings 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 sideways, 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. Phoebe 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 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.
     Phoebe 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, Phoebe 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 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
honey-laden, 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 farther
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 heirloom 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, 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 Phoebe--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.
     "Here, you odd little chicken!" said Phoebe; "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 Phoebe's shoulder.
     "That little fowl pays you a high compliment!" said a voice
behind Phoebe.
     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 Phoebe 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 Phoebe 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 Phoebe, 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 Phoebe Pyncheon," said the girl, with  a manner
of some reserve; for she was aware that her new 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 Phoebe 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
Phoebe, "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 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.
Phoebe 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 Phoebe,
turning away her eyes. "It is certainly very like the old
portrait. But my cousin Hepzibah has another 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 Phoebe. "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 Phoebe, 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 Phoebe 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."
     Phoebe 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.
     "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,
Phoebe 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 beanstalk. Good-night, Miss
Phoebe Pyncheon! Any bright day, if you will put one of those
rosebuds 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 head, on reaching the door, and called to
Phoebe, 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 Phoebe. "Is that it with the rim
of mossy stones? I have no thought of drinking there,--but why
not?"
     "Oh," rejoined the daguerreotypist, "because, like an old
lady's cup of tea, it is water bewitched!"
     He vanished; and Phoebe, 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 apartment 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 sideways
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 lamplight 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, commonplace as they were, had been
steeped in the warmth of her heart. Again, while lighting the
lamp in the kitchen, Phoebe fancied that her cousin spoke to
her.
     "In a moment, cousin!" answered the girl. "These matches
just glimmer, and go out."
     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 Phoebe'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 Phoebe, "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 Phoebe. 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?"
     "Phoebe, my dear little girl," said Hepzibah, after a
moment's pause,"you were up betimes, and have been busy all day.
Pray go to bed; for I am sure you must need rest. I will sit in
the parlor awhile, 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 Phoebe,
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?
     "Goodnight, cousin," said Phoebe, 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, Phoebe heard that strange,
vague murmur, which might be likened to an indistinct shadow of
human utterance.


CHAPTER VII. The Guest

     WHEN Phoebe 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 streamed
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
devices 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 Phoebe whether old Speckle, as she called one of
the hens, had laid an egg the preceding day. Phoebe 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 Phoebe 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 Phoebe, 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 ablaze 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. Phoebe'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 Phoebe 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, Phoebe
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
Phoebe,--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 Phoebe
could see the quivering of her gaunt shadow, as thrown by the
firelight 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 infold Phoebe 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 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 gush 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 Phoebe, 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
Phoebe'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, Phoebe,
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 Phoebe, 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, Phoebe; for you are
young and rosy, and cannot help letting a smile break out
whether or no. He always liked bright faces! 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 undertone, as if speaking rather to
her own heart than to Phoebe, 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. Phoebe 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 Phoebe,
trembling; for her cousin's emotion, and this mysteriously
reluctant step, 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, threw
open the door, and led in the stranger by the hand. At the first
glance, Phoebe 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 Phoebe, 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 curtsy. 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 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 Phoebe,--little
Phoebe Pyncheon,--Arthur's only child, you know. She has come
from the country to stay with us awhile; for our old house has
grown to be very lonely now."
     "Phoebe--Phoebe Pyncheon?--Phoebe?" 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, Phoebe, 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 eyeballs. 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 imperfect
animation, Phoebe 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
burden 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 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 murmur 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 as it existed now, the effect was painful and made
Phoebe 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 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 Phoebe, 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 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
farther into the depths. Phoebe (being of that quickness and
activity of temperament that she seldom long refrained from
taking a part, and generally a good one, in 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 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
Phoebe 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 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 subtile
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, Phoebe, and see who is there!--this naughty
little tinkle is nothing but our shop-bell!"
     "Shop-bell!" repeated Clifford, with a bewildered stare.
     "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 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.


CHAPTER VIII. The Pyncheon of To-day

PHOEBE, 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 Phoebe accordingly supplied, and, as a
mark of gratitude for his previous patronage, and a slight
super-added 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
ingulfing 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 Phoebe, 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."
     "My cousin Hepzibah's brother?" exclaimed Phoebe, 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 Phoebe 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 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 general 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 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 Phoebe, and added, with a little
air of lady-like 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 Phoebe 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?--Phoebe?--yes, Phoebe is the name! Is it
possible that you are Phoebe Pyncheon, 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 Phoebe curtsied 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) Phoebe, 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 Phoebe'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. Phoebe'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-browned, grisly-bearded, white-neck-clothed, and
unctuously-benevolent Judge! Then, why not by him?
     On raising her eyes, Phoebe 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 Phoebe 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 Phoebe
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 Phoebe's eyes rested
again on the Judge's countenance than all its ugly sternness
vanished; and she found herself quite overpowered by 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 Phoebe!" 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 Phoebe, 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 off-hand 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, Phoebe was far too sensible a girl to entertain
this idea in any other way than as matter for a smile. 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 countrymen. 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
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 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 noonday 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
honeymoon, 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 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 Phoebe, 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--Phoebe
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 Phoebe heard a certain noise in Judge
Pyncheon's throat,--rather habitual with him, not altogether
voluntary, yet 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 Phoebe 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?"
     "Oh, nothing" sir--nothing in the world!" answered Phoebe,
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 Phoebe, 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 Phoebe, gazing
inquiringly at the Judge. "There is no frightful guest in the
house, but only a poor, gentle, childlike 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 would play with the baby as if
he were only a few years older than itself. He startle me!--Oh,
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 Phoebe, he appears to be weak minded.
Heaven grant him at least enough of intellect to repent of his
past sins!"
     "Nobody, I fancy," observed Phoebe, "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
Phoebe; 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 Phoebe, with the vivacity of a person whose
movements unconsciously answer to her thoughts, had stepped
towards the door, he used little or no ceremony in putting her
aside.
     "No, no, Miss Phoebe!" 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 bye, there were
symptoms of a change from his sudden harshness into his previous
benignity of manner. "I am at home here, Phoebe, 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 doorway.
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 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 heartfelt
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 visitors!"
     "A visitor, 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 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, Phoebe 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!"
     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 your
knees to him! Kiss his feet! Entreat him not to come in! Oh, 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 draws back from the door, an
all-comprehensive benignity blazes from his visage, indicating
that he gathers Hepzibah, little Phoebe, 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 Phoebe, 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!
     No sooner had he disappeared than Hepzibah grew deadly
white, and, staggering towards Phoebe, let her head fall on the
young girl's shoulder.
     "O Phoebe!" 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 Phoebe. "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."
     Phoebe 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 Phoebe, 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 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.


CHAPTER IX. Clifford and Phoebe

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 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 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 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 Phoebe. 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 Phoebe, 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, Phoebe
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 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 bedchambers,
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 Phoebe;
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
Phoebe'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 Phoebe'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; 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 Phoebe'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 Phoebe 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. Phoebe'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 Phoebe 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 passageway 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 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
Phoebe 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 Phoebe'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 Phoebe 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 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.
     Phoebe, 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 semicircle 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 Phoebe'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 Phoebe 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 Phoebe. 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 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
mountain-top or in a dungeon. Now, Phoebe'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 birthday 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 survived his intellectual
decay. Thus, his sentiment for Phoebe, 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 womankind. 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 Phoebe 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 lacked on earth brought warmly
home to his conception; so that this mere symbol, or life-like
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, 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 Phoebe 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 graces 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 ever-active 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
Phoebe afforded her poor patient a supply of purer air. She
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 Phoebe 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? Phoebe 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 noonday. These
hours of drowsihead were the season of the old gentlewoman's
attendance on her brother, while Phoebe 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 Phoebe, 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.


CHAPTER X. The Pyncheon Garden

     CLIFFORD, except for Phoebe'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 eventide. 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, Phoebe 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. Phoebe'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, 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 Phoebe 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,
Phoebe 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 Phoebe 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 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 Phoebe'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 Phoebe 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 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 were
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 bean-vines, 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
Phoebe 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 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, 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 by heart, he
could with difficulty comprehend his little airy happiness.
Frequently there was a dim shadow of doubt in his eyes. "Take my
hand, Phoebe," 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
Phoebe'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 Phoebe
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 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.
     Queer, 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 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 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 earthworm
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 ill-concealed 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.
     Phoebe, 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 clews generally are. It was a
feathered 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 Phoebe'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 sideways 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 Phoebe 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 Phoebe
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 Phoebe's part. Hereupon, the offended fowl stalked
away on his long stilts, and utterly withdrew his notice from
Phoebe and the 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. Phoebe, 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 waters 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 Phoebe had been at church,--for the girl
had a church-going conscience, and would hardly have 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 Phoebe, 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 degrees; 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 hospitality. She
talked kindly to the vagrant artist, and took sage counsel--lady
as she was--with the wood-sawyer, the messenger of everybody's
petty errands, the patched philosopher. And Uncle Venner, who
had studied the world at street-corners, and 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 wouldn'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 Phoebe 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."
     "Come, Phoebe," 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, Phoebe
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. Phoebe 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 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 Phoebe, 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 Phoebe, 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!


CHAPTER XI. The Arched Window

     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,
Phoebe 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
Phoebe 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!
     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 reappearance, 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.
     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 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 nowadays. And he asked in an injured tone what had
become of all those old square-topped 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,
peddling whortle-berries 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 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 milkmaid
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 milkmaid 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 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 Phoebe 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.
Phoebe threw down a whole handful of cents, which he picked up
with joyless eagerness, handed them over to the Italian for
safekeeping, 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 looking awhile 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 commonplace 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, 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 Phoebe, 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. Phoebe,
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
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 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
Phoebe, 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 Phoebe, 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 Phoebe 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
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 farther.
     "It cannot be, Hepzibah!--it is too late," said Clifford
with deep sadness. "We are ghosts! We have no right 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 tenfold, 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
burden 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
sometimes told Phoebe 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 subtile 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.
     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 Phoebe
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, on 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!"
     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.


CHAPTER XII. The Daguerreotypist

     IT must not be supposed that the life of a personage
naturally so active as Phoebe 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 overwearied 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 early, as
other children do, and dreamed of childhood, Phoebe 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
Phoebe. 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 subtile 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 Phoebe 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 depots 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 moral medicines as the above, we should
soon have beheld our poor Phoebe 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 Phoebe 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 world-wide distance. During the early part of their
acquaintance, Phoebe 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 together, in
a kind, friendly, and what seemed to be a familiar way.
     The artist, in a desultory manner, had imparted to Phoebe
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 Phoebe 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 peddler, 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 some months in a community of Fourierists. Still more
recently he had been a public lecturer on Mesmerism, for which
science (as he assured Phoebe, 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. Phoebe 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. Phoebe felt
his eye, often; his heart, seldom or never. He took a certain
kind of interest in Hepzibah and her brother, and Phoebe
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. Phoebe 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 Phoebe, 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 Phoebe; "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 Phoebe
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 from fathoming
Clifford to the full depth of my plummet-line!"
     "How strange that you should wish it!" remarked Phoebe
involuntarily. "What is Cousin Clifford to you?"
     "Oh, 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. Phoebe 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.
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 man's
best directed effort accomplishes a kind of dream, while God is
the sole worker of realities.
     Holgrave had read very little, and that little in passing
through the thoroughfare of life, where the mystic language of
his books was necessarily mixed up with the babble of the
multitude, so that both one and the other were apt to lose any
sense that might have been properly their own. He considered
himself a thinker, and was certainly of a thoughtful turn, but,
with his own path to discover, had perhaps hardly yet reached
the point where an educated man begins to think. The true value
of his character lay in that deep consciousness of inward
strength, which made all his past vicissitudes seem merely like
a change of garments; in that enthusiasm, so quiet that he
scarcely knew of its existence, but which gave a warmth to
everything that he laid his hand on; in that personal ambition,
hidden--from his own as well as other eyes--among his more
generous impulses, but in which lurked a certain efficacy, that
might solidify him from a theorist into the champion of some
practicable cause. Altogether in his culture and want of
culture,--in his crude, wild, and misty philosophy, and the
practical experience that counteracted some of its tendencies;
in his magnanimous zeal for man's welfare, and his recklessness
of whatever the ages had established in man's behalf; in his
faith, and in his infidelity. in what he had, and in what he
lacked,--the artist might fitly enough stand forth as the
representative of many compeers in his native land.
     His career it would be difficult to prefigure. There
appeared to be qualities in Holgrave, such as, in a country
where everything is free to the hand that can grasp it, could
hardly fail to put some of the world's prizes within his reach.
But these matters are delightfully uncertain. At almost every
step in life, we meet with young men of 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 Phoebe. 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 Phoebe, 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 farther from us than we think. Thus
the artist, whatever he might judge of Phoebe'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 Phoebe 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 you
peeped at them through the chinks of the garden-fence, the young
man's earnestness and heightened color might have led you to
suppose that he was making love to the young girl!
     At length, something was said by Holgrave that made it
apposite for Phoebe to inquire what had first brought him
acquainted with her cousin Hepzibah, and why he now chose to
lodge in the desolate old Pyncheon House. Without directly
answering her, he turned from the Future, which had heretofore
been the theme of his discourse, and began to speak of the
influences of the Past. One subject, indeed, is but the
reverberation of the other.
     "Shall we never, never get rid of this Past?" cried he,
keeping up the earnest tone of his preceding conversation. "It
lies upon the Present like a giant's dead body In fact, the case
is just as if a young giant were compelled to waste all his
strength in carrying about the corpse of the old giant, his
grandfather, who died a long while ago, and only needs to be
decently buried. Just think a moment, and it will startle you to
see what slaves we are to bygone times,--to Death, if we give
the matter the right word!"
     "But I do not see it," observed Phoebe.
     "For example, then," continued Holgrave: "a dead man, if he
happens to have made a will, disposes of wealth no longer his
own; or, if he die intestate, it is distributed in accordance
with the notions of men much longer dead than he. A dead man
sits on all our judgment-seats; and living judges do but search
out and repeat his decisions. We read in dead men's books! We
laugh at dead men's jokes, and cry at dead men's pathos! We are
sick of dead men's diseases, physical and moral, and die of the
same remedies with which dead doctors killed their patients! We
worship the living Deity according to dead men's forms and
creeds. Whatever we seek to do, of our own free motion, 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 Phoebe, "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 guttapercha, 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-hall, 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 Phoebe 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--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 Phoebe, a little
piqued.
     "Oh, 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 bye, did you
ever hear the story of Maule, the wizard, and what happened
between him and your immeasurably great-grandfather?"
     "Yes, indeed!" said Phoebe; "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, 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, Phoebe. 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
Phoebe, debating with herself whether she ought to take offence.
     "I speak true thoughts to a true mind!" answered Holgrave,
with a vehemence which Phoebe 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 Phoebe,
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 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 Phoebe.
     "Is it possible you did not know it?" cried Holgrave.
"Well, such is literary fame! Yes. Miss Phoebe 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 Phoebe,--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.


CHAPTER XIII. Alice Pyncheon

     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,
workmanlike 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 quiet," 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?" asked
Scipio. "And what for do you look so black at me?"
     "No matter, darky." 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 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 amendment) 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. 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 heartburn. 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 criticise in its
condition. The peaks of 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 outbuildings 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 headquarters 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 sundial 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
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 back door,
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 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 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 firelight 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."
     "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 foundation-site 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 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 fireside talk, that miles
and miles of the Pyncheon lands had been shovelled into Maule's
grave; which, by the bye, was but a very shallow nook, between
two rocks, near the summit of Gallows Hill. Again, when the
lawyers were making inquiry for 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
foreign-bred 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."
     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 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
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 fulfillment
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 be 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 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 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 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 preception.
     "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
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 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, worldings, 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.
     "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 reechoed 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 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 the
firelight 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 awhile 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 draught 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 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 bloodstain
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 disburdening 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 too heavy with the
curse upon it, to be shifted yet awhile 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 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 prayer-time, 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 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 southeast 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! Oh; joy For Alice had borne her last
humiliation! Oh, 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!


CHAPTER XIV. Phoebe's Good-By

     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
Phoebe'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 Phoebe, 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 Phoebe's yet
free and virgin spirit: he could establish an influence over
this good, pure, 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 Phoebe indissoluble.
     He made a slight gesture upward with his hand.
     "You really mortify me, my dear Miss Phoebe!" 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 Phoebe, 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 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 flower-bushes had
a dark obscurity among them. The commonplace
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 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 age-worn 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 graveyard! 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 Phoebe 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 Phoebe; "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 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, Phoebe, 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 Phoebe.
     "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 Phoebe. "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."
     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 Phoebe; "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 Phoebe
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 maiden lady,
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 Phoebe,
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 the piquant sketch of his own mood.
     "And then," continued Phoebe, "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!"
     "Forgive me, Phoebe!" 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 Phoebe.
     "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 Phoebe, "you did speak as if misfortune were
impending!"
     "Oh, 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 Phoebe with renewed vexation; for she 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 Phoebe 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
doorway, 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, Phoebe 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 Phoebe'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 Phoebe 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 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 Phoebe on the
window-sill, where it looked gravely into her face and vented
its emotions in a croak. Phoebe bade it be a good old chicken
during her absence, and promised to bring it a little bag of
buckwheat.
     "Ah, Phoebe!" 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, Phoebe," suddenly cried her cousin Clifford,
who had said very little all the morning. "Close!--closer!--and
look me in the face!"
     Phoebe put one of her small hands on each elbow of his
chair, and leaned her face towards him, so that he might peruse
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, Phoebe 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 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 bigger and higher, in a tide of
fitful progress, until even her brow was all suffused with it.
     "It is enough, Phoebe," 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."
     Phoebe 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 doorstep, 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 Phoebe, 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 while it
takes some folks to grow just as natural to a man as his own
breath; and, begging your pardon, Miss Phoebe (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 wood-sawing jobs a little too tough for my back-ache."
     "Very soon, Uncle Venner," replied Phoebe.
     "And let it be all the sooner, Phoebe, for the sake of
those poor souls yonder," continued her companion. "They can
never do without you, now,--never, Phoebe; 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 Phoebe; so
be sure to come back!"
     "I am no angel, Uncle Venner," said Phoebe, 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 Phoebe 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.


CHAPTER XV. The Scowl and Smile

     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 Phoebe's
departure), an easterly storm had set in, and indefatigably
apply 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.
Phoebe 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 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 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' 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 visitor 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."
     "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 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 outgush 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 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 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 visitors, 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.
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 Pyncheon bull; 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 notice,
in the street, by a bow, a lifting of the hat, a nod, or a
motion of the hand, to all and sundry of 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 do 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, 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 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!" reaffirmed Judge Pyncheon, with the
calmest composure. "And I came 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 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 clew 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!"
     "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 backbone
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
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 fish-monger, 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 finging 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 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 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 in to 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, burdened 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 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.


CHAPTER XVI. Clifford's Chamber

     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 staircase, 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 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 doorstep to
doorstep, 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 overburdened, mind. When the vehicle had
disappeared, she allowed herself still another loitering moment;
for the patched figure of good 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 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 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 byword! 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 Phoebe
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 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 heartsinking 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 that, just as there comes a warm sunbeam
into every cottage window, so comes a lovebeam 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 subtile magnetism, her own
terror to the summons. Clifford would turn his face to the
pillow, and cover his head beneath the bedclothes, 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, 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 framework, 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.
     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, 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? Oh, 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 smoke-blackened 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 armchair,
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!"
     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 passageway, 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. "Oh, for Heaven's sake, be quiet!"
     "Let him be quiet! What can he do better?" answered
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 Phoebe 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 Godsend to
them. 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,--affrighted 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 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!


CHAPTER XVII. The Flight of Two Owls

     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
doorstep, 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 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 amidst 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 concentrated
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 waterproof 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 post-office,
together with an editor and a miscellaneous politician, awaiting
a dilatory mail; a few visages of retired sea-captains at the
window of an insurance office, looking out 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 woefully 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 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, 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. 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 aproach. "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 fellow beings! 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 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 clew of conversation which the latter had proffered. "It 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
around 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, of 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, 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 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 thousand-fold 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), projecting-storied
edifices, such as you occasionally see in our older towns,--a
rusty, crazy, creaky, dry-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, eyeing
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 farther 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 heyday 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 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 broad 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 Phoebe told us of, the
other day," said Clifford,--"what are these but the 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 heart-throbs 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, 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 fugutive 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 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 wither 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. Farther off was a farm-house, in the old
style, as venerably black as the church, with a roof sloping
downward from the three-story 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.
     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 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!"


CHAPTER XVIII. Governor Pyncheon

     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
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 asleep with wide-open eyes, lest
some enemy or mischief-maker, taking him thus at unawares,
should peep through these windows into his consciousness, and
make strange discoveries among the remniniscences, 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 burdened 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 utmost to make him
comfortable. For the Judge is a prosperous man. He cherishes 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 awhile 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 moneybags! 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, 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 State Street
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 four-score years; but the
Judge had kept it in his eye, and had set his heart on
reannexing 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, 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
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
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, 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 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 prupose 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 chief-magistracy.
     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 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 aninmal, but that the dinner-hour made
him a great beast. Persons of his large sensual endowments must
claim indulgence, at their feeding-time. 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 bye, 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 beefsteak, a
broiled fowl, or some such hasty little dinner and supper all in
one, he had better spend the evening by the fireside. 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
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 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 northwest, and, taking hold of the aged framework 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,
before-hand, 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 footsteps, and rustle up and down the staircase, 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 northwest wind has swept the
sky clear. The window is distinctly seen. 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 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 graveyard 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 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 leathern 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
noonday, 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 Phoebe! 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, 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 doorway 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!
     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 bedtime,--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 daybeam--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 deep-laid 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
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 subtle, worldly, selfish,
iron-hearted hypocrite, and make thy choice whether still to be
subtle, worldly, selfish, iron-hearted, and hypocritical, or to
tear these sins out of thy nature, though they bring the
lifeblood 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 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.


CHAPTER XIX. Alice's Posies

     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
well-washed pebbles and gravel of the sidewalk; even the
sky-reflecting 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 sweet-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 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 AEneas and the Sibyl 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 fireside 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
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 housekeeping
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 doorstep of the
Seven Gables.
     "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, nowadays. 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 Phoebe 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 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.
     "Oh, 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 Phoebe 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 visitor, except a
carrier-boy, who, as he passed the front doorstep, threw down
one of his news-papers; 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 fire-heat, 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 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 the 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's, 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 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!"
     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 Phoebe, 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
Pyncheon's! 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."
     "Oh, 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 couldn't stand it!"
     "I never thought she'd make it go," remarked his friend.
"This business of cent-shops is overdone among the women-folks.
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 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 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 Phoebe--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), stationed
himself on the doorstep 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 by-standers 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, trusting that his dark, alien countenance would
soon be brightened by Phoebe's sunny aspect. Neither could he be
willing to depart without again beholding Clifford, whose
sensibility, like Phoebe'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 he likes!
If there's nobody to pay him, that's his own lookout!"
     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 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 thrill 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 doorstep, 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
doorstep a card, which had been covered, all the morning, by the
newpaper 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 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 handwriting."
     "Let's go to the city marshal with it!" said Dixey. "It may
give him just the clew 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
he 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 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
bandbox, from the top of his vehicle, and deposited them on the
doorstep 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 Phoebe! 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 Phoebe, 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 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.
     Phoebe 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, Phoebe 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, Phoebe!" 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, Phoebe concluded 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, Phoebe
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 Phoebe'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 Phoebe'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 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 wide, 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, Phoebe 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.


CHAPTER XX. The Flower of Eden

     PHOEBE, 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 Phoebe 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 subtile, 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, however,
was full of genuine warmth, and had in it a joy, by far the most
vivid expression that Phoebe 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, Phoebe," 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 Phoebe. "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, Phoebe!" 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, Phoebe," 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."
     "Oh, no, I am very weak!" replied Phoebe, 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 Phoebe, 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 Phoebe 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.
     "Phoebe," 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
Phoebe, 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 Phoebe, turning very pale.
"Judge Pyncheon dead!"
     "Such as there represented," said Holgrave, "he sits in 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, Phoebe, 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, Phoebe 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 preordained, 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 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 Phoebe, "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 had 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 Phoebe. "he
being innocent, as we know him to be!"
     "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 by 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 Phoebe.
"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, Phoebe," rejoined Holgrave. "Doubtless you
are right."
     Yet the artist did not feel the horror, which was proper to
Phoebe'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 Phoebe 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 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. Possibly, indeed, it had
been Holgrave's purpose to let them die in their undeveloped
germs. "Why do we delay so?" asked Phoebe. "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. "Phoebe, 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 Phoebe, trembling,"to think of
joy at such a time!"
     "Could you but know, Phoebe, 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,
Phoebe, you crossed the threshold; and hope, warmth, and joy
came in with you! The black moment became at 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 Phoebe,
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 Phoebe, 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, Phoebe!" exclaimed Holgrave, with almost a sigh, and
a smile that was burdened 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 Phoebe 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, Phoebe?"
     "You look into my heart," said she, letting her eyes drop.
"You know I love you!"
     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 Phoebe. "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 farther
passage. The door, therefore, which they supposed to be securely
locked,--which Holgrave, indeed, had seen to be so, and at which
Phoebe had vainly tried to enter,--must have been opened from
without. The sound of footsteps 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.
     "It is they!" answered Phoebe. "Thank God!--thank God!"
     And then, as if in sympathy with Phoebe'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 Phoebe!"
     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 Phoebe 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 Phoebe!--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."


CHAPTER XXI. The Departure

     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 subject before half
the country 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 touchstone 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 than 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.
     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, nowadays, 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 nightclothes! 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 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 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
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 Phoebe, 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 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 Phoebe, 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, Phoebe, 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
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,
nowadays! 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, 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 Phoebe, apart to Holgrave, "how came you to
know the secret?"
     "My dearest Phoebe," 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 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 Phoebe, 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!"
     "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 Phoebe!
They'll miss me in the gardens hereabouts, and round by the back
doors; 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!"
     "Oh, 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 Phoebe
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!"
     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
Phoebe'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 foreshadowed the coming 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
bygone 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!

[End.]