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<div style='text-align:center'>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 77 ***</div>

<h1>The House of the Seven Gables</h1>

<h2>by Nathaniel Hawthorne</h2>

<h3>With an introduction by George Parsons Lathrop</h3>

<hr >

<h2>Contents</h2>

<table style=";">

<tr>
<td> <a href="#pref01">INTRODUCTORY NOTE</a></td>
</tr>

<tr>
<td> <a href="#pref02">AUTHOR&rsquo;S PREFACE</a><br ><br ></td>
</tr>

<tr>
<td> <a href="#chap01">I. THE OLD PYNCHEON FAMILY</a></td>
</tr>

<tr>
<td> <a href="#chap02">II. THE LITTLE SHOP-WINDOW</a></td>
</tr>

<tr>
<td> <a href="#chap03">III. THE FIRST CUSTOMER</a></td>
</tr>

<tr>
<td> <a href="#chap04">IV. A DAY BEHIND THE COUNTER</a></td>
</tr>

<tr>
<td> <a href="#chap05">V. MAY AND NOVEMBER</a></td>
</tr>

<tr>
<td> <a href="#chap06">VI. MAULE&rsquo;S WELL</a></td>
</tr>

<tr>
<td> <a href="#chap07">VII. THE GUEST</a></td>
</tr>

<tr>
<td> <a href="#chap08">VIII. THE PYNCHEON OF TO-DAY</a></td>
</tr>

<tr>
<td> <a href="#chap09">IX. CLIFFORD AND PHŒBE</a></td>
</tr>

<tr>
<td> <a href="#chap10">X. THE PYNCHEON GARDEN</a></td>
</tr>

<tr>
<td> <a href="#chap11">XI. THE ARCHED WINDOW</a></td>
</tr>

<tr>
<td> <a href="#chap12">XII. THE DAGUERREOTYPIST</a></td>
</tr>

<tr>
<td> <a href="#chap13">XIII. ALICE PYNCHEON</a></td>
</tr>

<tr>
<td> <a href="#chap14">XIV. PHŒBE&rsquo;S GOOD-BYE</a></td>
</tr>

<tr>
<td> <a href="#chap15">XV. THE SCOWL AND SMILE</a></td>
</tr>

<tr>
<td> <a href="#chap16">XVI. CLIFFORD&rsquo;S CHAMBER</a></td>
</tr>

<tr>
<td> <a href="#chap17">XVII. THE FLIGHT OF TWO OWLS</a></td>
</tr>

<tr>
<td> <a href="#chap18">XVIII. GOVERNOR PYNCHEON</a></td>
</tr>

<tr>
<td> <a href="#chap19">XIX. ALICE&rsquo;S POSIES</a></td>
</tr>

<tr>
<td> <a href="#chap20">XX. THE FLOWER OF EDEN</a></td>
</tr>

<tr>
<td> <a href="#chap21">XXI. THE DEPARTURE</a></td>
</tr>

</table>

<div class="chapter">

<h2><a id="pref01"></a>INTRODUCTORY NOTE<br >
THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES.</h2>

<p>
In September of the year during the February of which Hawthorne had completed
&ldquo;The Scarlet Letter,&rdquo; he began &ldquo;The House of the Seven
Gables.&rdquo; 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.
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;I sha&rsquo;n&rsquo;t have the new story ready by November,&rdquo; he
explained to his publisher, on the 1st of October, &ldquo;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&mdash;multiplying and brightening its hues.&rdquo; But by vigorous
application he was able to complete the new work about the middle of the
January following.
</p>

<p>
Since research has disclosed the manner in which the romance is interwoven with
incidents from the history of the Hawthorne family, &ldquo;The House of the
Seven Gables&rdquo; 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&rsquo;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 &ldquo;blood to drink.&rdquo;
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&rsquo;s husband, just mentioned; and, here again, we have a
correspondence with Maule&rsquo;s malediction in the story. Furthermore, there
occurs in the &ldquo;American Note-Books&rdquo; (August 27, 1837), a
reminiscence of the author&rsquo;s family, to the following effect. Philip
English, a character well-known in early Salem annals, was among those who
suffered from John Hathorne&rsquo;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 Phœbe and
Holgrave. The romance, however, describes the Maules as possessing some of the
traits known to have been characteristic of the Hawthornes: for example,
&ldquo;so long as any of the race were to be found, they had been marked out
from other men&mdash;not strikingly, nor as with a sharp line, but with an
effect that was felt rather than spoken of&mdash;by an hereditary
characteristic of reserve.&rdquo; 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&rsquo;s family, certain distinguishing marks of
the Hawthornes were assigned to the imaginary Maule posterity.
</p>

<p>
There are one or two other points which indicate Hawthorne&rsquo;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
&ldquo;Seven Gables,&rdquo; to a grant of lands in Waldo County, Maine, owned
by the Pyncheon family. In the &ldquo;American Note-Books&rdquo; 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&rsquo;s
graduation 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&rsquo;s fancy and details of reality are only fragmentary, and are
rearranged to suit the author&rsquo;s purposes.
</p>

<p>
In the same way he has made his description of Hepzibah Pyncheon&rsquo;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:&mdash;
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;Familiar as it stands in the writer&rsquo;s recollection&mdash;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&mdash;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.&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
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&rsquo;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 &ldquo;laying out a street that infringes upon nobody&rsquo;s
private rights... and building a house of materials long in use for
constructing castles in the air.&rdquo; 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.
</p>

<p>
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. &ldquo;In the afternoons, nowadays,&rdquo; he records,
shortly before beginning the work, &ldquo;this valley in which I dwell seems
like a vast basin filled with golden Sunshine as with wine;&rdquo; 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: &ldquo;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.&rdquo; 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:&mdash;
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;&lsquo;The House of the Seven Gables&rsquo; in my opinion, is better
than &lsquo;The Scarlet Letter:&rsquo; 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.&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
From England, especially, came many warm expressions of praise,&mdash;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.
</p>

<p class="right">
G. P. L.
</p>

</div><!--end chapter-->

<div class="chapter">

<h2><a id="pref02"></a>PREFACE.</h2>

<p>
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&rsquo;s experience. The former&mdash;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&mdash;has fairly a right
to present that truth under circumstances, to a great extent, of the
writer&rsquo;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.
</p>

<p>
In the present work, the author has proposed to himself&mdash;but with what
success, fortunately, it is not for him to judge&mdash;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.
</p>

<p>
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,&mdash;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&mdash;or, indeed, any one man&mdash;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,&mdash;or, rather, as by sticking a pin through a butterfly,&mdash;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 skilfully 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.
</p>

<p>
The reader may perhaps choose to assign an actual locality to the imaginary
events of this narrative. If permitted by the historical
connection,&mdash;which, though slight, was essential to his plan,&mdash;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&rsquo;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&mdash;though they give themselves out to be of ancient stability and
considerable prominence&mdash;are really of the author&rsquo;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&mdash;especially in the quarter to which he alludes&mdash;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.
</p>

<p class="letter">
L<small>ENOX</small>, January 27, 1851.
</p>

</div><!--end chapter-->

<div class="chapter">

<h2>THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES</h2>

</div><!--end chapter-->

<div class="chapter">

<h2><a id="chap01"></a>I.<br >
The Old Pyncheon Family</h2>

<p>
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,&mdash;the great elm-tree and the
weather-beaten edifice.
</p>

<p>
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,&mdash;pointing, too, here and there, at some spot of more
verdant mossiness on its roof and walls,&mdash;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&mdash;a reference to forgotten
events and personages, and to manners, feelings, and opinions, almost or wholly
obsolete&mdash;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.
</p>

<p>
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&rsquo;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&mdash;a rare
treasure on the sea-girt peninsula where the Puritan settlement was
made&mdash;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&rsquo;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&mdash;at a period, moreover, laud it as we may, when
personal influence had far more weight than now&mdash;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.
</p>

<p>
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,&mdash;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&rsquo;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&rsquo;s conduct towards him, and that he
declared himself hunted to death for his spoil. At the moment of
execution&mdash;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. &ldquo;God,&rdquo; said the dying man,
pointing his finger, with a ghastly look, at the undismayed countenance of his
enemy,&mdash;&ldquo;God will give him blood to drink!&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
After the reputed wizard&rsquo;s death, his humble homestead had fallen an easy
spoil into Colonel Pyncheon&rsquo;s grasp. When it was understood, however,
that the Colonel intended to erect a family mansion&mdash;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&rsquo;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,&mdash;while so much
of the soil around him was bestrewn with the virgin forest leaves,&mdash;why
should Colonel Pyncheon prefer a site that had already been accurst?
</p>

<p>
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&rsquo;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&rsquo;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.
</p>

<p>
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&rsquo;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.
</p>

<p>
Thus the great house was built. Familiar as it stands in the writer&rsquo;s
recollection,&mdash;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,&mdash;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&rsquo;s nostrils, was at once an invitation and an appetite.
</p>

<p>
Maule&rsquo;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&rsquo;s
daily interests.
</p>

<p>
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,&mdash;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.
</p>

<p>
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&mdash;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&rsquo;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&rsquo;s threshold, without
other greeting than that of the principal domestic.
</p>

<p>
This person&mdash;a gray-headed man, of quiet and most respectful
deportment&mdash;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.
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;Do not you see, fellow,&rdquo; said the high-sheriff of the county,
taking the servant aside, &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;Nay, please your worship,&rdquo; answered the man, in much perplexity,
but with a backwardness that strikingly indicated the hard and severe character
of Colonel Pyncheon&rsquo;s domestic rule; &ldquo;my master&rsquo;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&rsquo;s own voice should bid me do it!&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;Pooh, pooh, master high sheriff!&rdquo; cried the lieutenant-governor,
who had overheard the foregoing discussion, and felt himself high enough in
station to play a little with his dignity. &ldquo;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!&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
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.
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;Strange, forsooth!&mdash;very strange!&rdquo; cried the
lieutenant-governor, whose smile was changed to a frown. &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
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&rsquo;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&mdash;nobody knew wherefore, nor of what&mdash;had
all at once fallen over the company.
</p>

<p>
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.
</p>

<p>
A little boy&mdash;the Colonel&rsquo;s grandchild, and the only human being
that ever dared to be familiar with him&mdash;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&rsquo;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,&mdash;&ldquo;God hath given him blood to drink!&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
Thus early had that one guest,&mdash;the only guest who is certain, at one time
or another, to find his way into every human dwelling,&mdash;thus early had
Death stepped across the threshold of the House of the Seven Gables!
</p>

<p>
Colonel Pyncheon&rsquo;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&rsquo;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&rsquo;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,&mdash;John Swinnerton by name,&mdash;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&rsquo;s jury sat upon the corpse, and, like
sensible men, returned an unassailable verdict of &ldquo;Sudden Death!&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
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,&mdash;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,&mdash;tradition is
responsible for all contrary averments. In Colonel Pyncheon&rsquo;s funeral
sermon, which was printed, and is still extant, the Rev. Mr. Higginson
enumerates, among the many felicities of his distinguished parishioner&rsquo;s
earthly career, the happy seasonableness of his death. His duties all
performed,&mdash;the highest prosperity attained,&mdash;his race and future
generations fixed on a stable basis, and with a stately roof to shelter them
for centuries to come,&mdash;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.
</p>

<p>
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&mdash;for as such they might almost
certainly be reckoned&mdash;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&rsquo;s territory, on European soil. When
the pathless forest that still covered this wild principality should give
place&mdash;as it inevitably must, though perhaps not till ages hence&mdash;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&rsquo;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&rsquo;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&rsquo;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.
</p>

<p>
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&rsquo;s asserting a right&mdash;on the
strength of mouldy parchments, signed with the faded autographs of governors
and legislators long dead and forgotten&mdash;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&rsquo;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.
</p>

<p>
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, &ldquo;Here is the old Pyncheon come again! Now the Seven Gables
will be new-shingled!&rdquo; 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&mdash;conscious of wrong, and failing to rectify it&mdash;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?
</p>

<p>
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,&mdash;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&rsquo;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, &ldquo;He has Maule&rsquo;s blood
to drink!&rdquo; The sudden death of a Pyncheon, about a hundred years ago,
with circumstances very similar to what have been related of the
Colonel&rsquo;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&rsquo;s picture&mdash;in obedience, it was
said, to a provision of his will&mdash;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&mdash;perhaps as a portion of his own punishment&mdash;is often
doomed to become the Evil Genius of his family.
</p>

<p>
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&mdash;for so it was adjudged&mdash;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&mdash;an argument of greater weight in a
republic than it could have been under a monarchy,&mdash;the high
respectability and political influence of the criminal&rsquo;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.
</p>

<p>
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,&mdash;with the black stain of blood sunken deep into it, and still to be
scented by conscientious nostrils,&mdash;the question occurred, whether it were
not imperative upon him, even at this late hour, to make restitution to
Maule&rsquo;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&rsquo;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,&mdash;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.
</p>

<p>
This was a nephew, the cousin of the miserable young man who had been convicted
of the uncle&rsquo;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&mdash;as a newspaper phrased it, on the eve of an
election&mdash;befitting the Christian, the good citizen, the horticulturist,
and the gentleman.
</p>

<p>
There were few of the Pyncheons left to sun themselves in the glow of the
Judge&rsquo;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&rsquo; 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&rsquo;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.
</p>

<p>
As for Matthew Maule&rsquo;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&rsquo;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&rsquo;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.
</p>

<p>
So long as any of the race were to be found, they had been marked out from
other men&mdash;not strikingly, nor as with a sharp line, but with an effect
that was felt rather than spoken of&mdash;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,&mdash;that of exercising an
influence over people&rsquo;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.
</p>

<p>
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&rsquo;s varied experience had passed
there,&mdash;so much had been suffered, and something, too, enjoyed,&mdash;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.
</p>

<p>
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 four-score 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 pendant 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 an omission, trifling, indeed, but
unpardonable, were we to forget the green moss that had long since gathered
over the projections of the windows, and on the slopes of the roof nor must we
fail to direct the reader&rsquo;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&rsquo;s
Posies. The tradition was, that a certain Alice Pyncheon had flung up the
seeds, in sport, and that the dust of the street and the decay of the roof
gradually formed a kind of soil for them, out of which they grew, when Alice
had long been in her grave. However the flowers might have come there, it was
both sad and sweet to observe how Nature adopted to herself this desolate,
decaying, gusty, rusty old house of the Pyncheon family; and how the
ever-returning Summer did her best to gladden it with tender beauty, and grew
melancholy in the effort.
</p>

<p>
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&rsquo;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.
</p>

<p>
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.
</p>

<p>
And now&mdash;in a very humble way, as will be seen&mdash;we proceed to open
our narrative.
</p>

</div><!--end chapter-->

<div class="chapter">

<h2><a id="chap02"></a>II.<br >
The Little Shop-Window</h2>

<p>
It still lacked half an hour of sunrise, when Miss Hepzibah Pyncheon&mdash;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&mdash;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&rsquo;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,&mdash;quite a house by itself,
indeed,&mdash;with locks, bolts, and oaken bars on all the intervening doors.
Inaudible, consequently, were poor Miss Hepzibah&rsquo;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&mdash;now whispered,
now a groan, now a struggling silence&mdash;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.
</p>

<p>
The maiden lady&rsquo;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&rsquo;s eyes another way?
</p>

<p>
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,&mdash;heightened and rendered
intense, as it has been, by sorrow and seclusion,&mdash;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&rsquo;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&mdash;poor thing, how could
she?&mdash;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.
</p>

<p>
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,&mdash;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&mdash;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.
</p>

<p>
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&mdash;many such sunrises as it had witnessed&mdash;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.
</p>

<p>
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.
</p>

<p>
We must linger a moment on this unfortunate expression of poor Hepzibah&rsquo;s
brow. Her scowl,&mdash;as the world, or such part of it as sometimes caught a
transitory glimpse of her at the window, wickedly persisted in calling
it,&mdash;her scowl had done Miss Hepzibah a very ill office, in establishing
her character as an ill-tempered old maid; nor does it appear improbable that,
by often gazing at herself in a dim looking-glass, and perpetually encountering
her own frown with its ghostly sphere, she had been led to interpret the
expression almost as unjustly as the world did. &ldquo;How miserably cross I
look!&rdquo; 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.
</p>

<p>
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.
</p>

<p>
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&rsquo;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.
</p>

<p>
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&rsquo;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,&mdash;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 shop-keeper Pyncheon&rsquo;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.
</p>

<p>
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?
</p>

<p>
We return to the elderly maiden. She at length withdrew her eyes from the dark
countenance of the Colonel&rsquo;s portrait, heaved a sigh,&mdash;indeed, her
breast was a very cave of Aolus that morning,&mdash;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&mdash;and still more to the thick shadow of the Pyncheon Elm, which stood
almost directly in front of the gable&mdash;the twilight, here, was still as
much akin to night as morning. Another heavy sigh from Miss Hepzibah! After a
moment&rsquo;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.
</p>

<p>
Nervously&mdash;in a sort of frenzy, we might almost say&mdash;she began to
busy herself in arranging some children&rsquo;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,&mdash;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&mdash;who had fed
herself from childhood with the shadowy food of aristocratic reminiscences, and
whose religion it was that a lady&rsquo;s hand soils itself irremediably by
doing aught for bread,&mdash;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.
</p>

<p>
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&mdash;two hundred
years old, on this side of the water, and thrice as many on the
other,&mdash;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,&mdash;born, too, in
Pyncheon Street, under the Pyncheon Elm, and in the Pyncheon House, where she
has spent all her days,&mdash;reduced. Now, in that very house, to be the
hucksteress of a cent-shop.
</p>

<p>
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&rsquo;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 ABC 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&mdash;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&mdash;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.
</p>

<p>
It was overpoweringly ridiculous,&mdash;we must honestly confess it,&mdash;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&rsquo;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&rsquo;s astonished gaze at once.
</p>

<p>
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&rsquo;s cart had already rattled through
the street, chasing away the latest vestige of night&rsquo;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&rsquo;s conch
shell was heard far off, around the corner. None of these tokens escaped
Hepzibah&rsquo;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&mdash;more than free&mdash;welcome, as
if all were household friends&mdash;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&mdash;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&mdash;she fled into the inner parlor, threw herself
into the ancestral elbow-chair, and wept.
</p>

<p>
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&mdash;not a young and lovely woman, nor even the stately remains of
beauty, storm-shattered by affliction&mdash;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.
</p>

</div><!--end chapter-->

<div class="chapter">

<h2><a id="chap03"></a>III.<br >
The First Customer</h2>

<p>
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&mdash;high, sharp, and
irregular&mdash;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,&mdash;to speak in plainer
terms,&mdash;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&rsquo;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!
</p>

<p>
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&rsquo;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.
</p>

<p>
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&mdash;if such, indeed, he made any claim to be&mdash;by the
rather remarkable whiteness and nicety of his clean linen.
</p>

<p>
He met the scowl of old Hepzibah without apparent alarm, as having heretofore
encountered it and found it harmless.
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;So, my dear Miss Pyncheon,&rdquo; said the daguerreotypist,&mdash;for it
was that sole other occupant of the seven-gabled mansion,&mdash;&ldquo;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.&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
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&rsquo;s smile,&mdash;looking so much the brighter on a
thoughtful face,&mdash;and heard his kindly tone, she broke first into a
hysteric giggle and then began to sob.
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;Ah, Mr. Holgrave,&rdquo; cried she, as soon as she could speak, &ldquo;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,&mdash;and I am too old, and too feeble,
and too hopeless!&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;Oh, believe me, Miss Hepzibah,&rdquo; said the young man quietly,
&ldquo;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&rsquo;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.&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;But I am a woman!&rdquo; said Hepzibah piteously. &ldquo;I was going to
say, a lady,&mdash;but I consider that as past.&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;Well; no matter if it be past!&rdquo; answered the artist, a strange
gleam of half-hidden sarcasm flashing through the kindliness of his manner.
&ldquo;Let it go! You are the better without it. I speak frankly, my dear Miss
Pyncheon!&mdash;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&mdash;to the united struggle of mankind. This is
success,&mdash;all the success that anybody meets with!&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;It is natural enough, Mr. Holgrave, that you should have ideas like
these,&rdquo; rejoined Hepzibah, drawing up her gaunt figure with slightly
offended dignity. &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;But I was not born a gentleman; neither have I lived like one,&rdquo;
said Holgrave, slightly smiling; &ldquo;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&mdash;and still more in the future condition of society&mdash;they
imply, not privilege, but restriction!&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;These are new notions,&rdquo; said the old gentlewoman, shaking her
head. &ldquo;I shall never understand them; neither do I wish it.&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;We will cease to speak of them, then,&rdquo; replied the artist, with a
friendlier smile than his last one, &ldquo;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&rsquo;s anathema, of which you told me once, would have had much weight
with Providence against them.&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;Ah!&mdash;no, no!&rdquo; said Hepzibah, not displeased at this allusion
to the sombre dignity of an inherited curse. &ldquo;If old Maule&rsquo;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.&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;Pray do&rdquo; said Holgrave, &ldquo;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&rsquo;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?&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;Let me be a lady a moment longer,&rdquo; 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. &ldquo;A
Pyncheon must not, at all events under her forefathers&rsquo; roof, receive
money for a morsel of bread from her only friend!&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
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&rsquo;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 skilfully, nor nearly to so much advantage, as it
might have been. It seemed as if the whole fortune or failure of her shop might
depend on the display of a different set of articles, or substituting a fairer
apple for one which appeared to be specked. So she made the change, and
straightway fancied that everything was spoiled by it; not recognizing that it
was the nervousness of the juncture, and her own native squeamishness as an old
maid, that wrought all the seeming mischief.
</p>

<p>
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&rsquo;s attention to it.
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;See here!&rdquo; cried he; &ldquo;what do you think of this? Trade seems
to be looking up in Pyncheon Street!&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;Well, well, this is a sight, to be sure!&rdquo; exclaimed the other.
&ldquo;In the old Pyncheon House, and underneath the Pyncheon Elm! Who would
have thought it? Old Maid Pyncheon is setting up a cent-shop!&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;Will she make it go, think you, Dixey?&rdquo; said his friend. &ldquo;I
don&rsquo;t call it a very good stand. There&rsquo;s another shop just round
the corner.&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;Make it go!&rdquo; cried Dixey, with a most contemptuous expression, as
if the very idea were impossible to be conceived. &ldquo;Not a bit of it! Why,
her face&mdash;I&rsquo;ve seen it, for I dug her garden for her one
year&mdash;her face is enough to frighten the Old Nick himself, if he had ever
so great a mind to trade with her. People can&rsquo;t stand it, I tell you! She
scowls dreadfully, reason or none, out of pure ugliness of temper.&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;Well, that&rsquo;s not so much matter,&rdquo; remarked the other man.
&ldquo;These sour-tempered folks are mostly handy at business, and know pretty
well what they are about. But, as you say, I don&rsquo;t think she&rsquo;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.&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;Poor business!&rdquo; responded Dixey, in a tone as if he were shaking
his head,&mdash;&ldquo;poor business.&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
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&rsquo;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&mdash;an event of such breathless
interest to herself&mdash;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&rsquo;s wife had
already tried the same experiment, and failed! How could the born
lady&mdash;the recluse of half a lifetime, utterly unpractised in the world, at
sixty years of age,&mdash;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.
</p>

<p>
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!
</p>

<p>
But, at this instant, the shop-bell, right over her head, tinkled as if it were
bewitched. The old gentlewoman&rsquo;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.
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;Heaven help me!&rdquo; she groaned mentally. &ldquo;Now is my hour of
need!&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
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&rsquo;s carelessness than his father&rsquo;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.
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;Well, child,&rdquo; said she, taking heart at sight of a personage so
little formidable,&mdash;&ldquo;well, my child, what did you wish for?&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;That Jim Crow there in the window,&rdquo; answered the urchin, holding
out a cent, and pointing to the gingerbread figure that had attracted his
notice, as he loitered along to school; &ldquo;the one that has not a broken
foot.&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
So Hepzibah put forth her lank arm, and, taking the effigy from the
shop-window, delivered it to her first customer.
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;No matter for the money,&rdquo; 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&rsquo;s pocket-money in exchange for a bit of stale gingerbread.
&ldquo;No matter for the cent. You are welcome to Jim Crow.&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
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&rsquo;s head was in his mouth. As
he had not been careful to shut the door, Hepzibah was at the pains of closing
it after him, with a pettish ejaculation or two about the troublesomeness of
young people, and particularly of small boys. She had just placed another
representative of the renowned Jim Crow at the window, when again the shop-bell
tinkled clamorously, and again the door being thrust open, with its
characteristic jerk and jar, disclosed the same sturdy little urchin who,
precisely two minutes ago, had made his exit. The crumbs and discoloration of
the cannibal feast, as yet hardly consummated, were exceedingly visible about
his mouth.
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;What is it now, child?&rdquo; asked the maiden lady rather impatiently;
&ldquo;did you come back to shut the door?&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;No,&rdquo; answered the urchin, pointing to the figure that had just
been put up; &ldquo;I want that other Jim Crow.&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;Well, here it is for you,&rdquo; 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, &ldquo;Where is the cent?&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
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&rsquo;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!
</p>

<p>
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&rsquo;s copper coin&mdash;dim and
lustreless though it was, with the small services which it had been doing here
and there about the world&mdash;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.
</p>

<p>
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.
</p>

<p>
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&mdash;probably a drunken brute&mdash;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&rsquo;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!
</p>

<p>
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&rsquo;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.
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;A cent-shop, and no yeast!&rdquo; quoth she; &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;Well,&rdquo; said Hepzibah, heaving a deep sigh, &ldquo;perhaps I
had!&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
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&rsquo;s contortion of brow served her in good stead.
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;I never was so frightened in my life!&rdquo; said the curious customer,
in describing the incident to one of her acquaintances. &ldquo;She&rsquo;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!&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
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,&mdash;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,&mdash;then again, it is to
be feared, old Hepzibah&rsquo;s scowl could no longer vindicate itself entirely
on the plea of near-sightedness.
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;For what end,&rdquo; thought she, giving vent to that feeling of
hostility which is the only real abasement of the poor in presence of the
rich,&mdash;&ldquo;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?&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
Then, ashamed and penitent, she hid her face.
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;May God forgive me!&rdquo; said she.
</p>

<p>
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.
</p>

</div><!--end chapter-->

<div class="chapter">

<h2><a id="chap04"></a>IV.<br >
A Day Behind the Counter</h2>

<p>
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&rsquo;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,&mdash;a serviceable staff, of dark polished wood,&mdash;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&mdash;which showed itself so strikingly in everything about him, and
the effect of which we seek to convey to the reader&mdash;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.
</p>

<p>
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,&mdash;to kindle it up with a
smile.
</p>

<p>
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&rsquo;s little arrangement of toys and
commodities. At first it seemed not to please him,&mdash;nay, to cause him
exceeding displeasure,&mdash;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.
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;There he is!&rdquo; 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. &ldquo;What does he think of it, I wonder? Does it please him?
Ah! he is looking back!&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
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&rsquo;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!&mdash;Two Jim Crows immediately after breakfast!&mdash;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.
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;Take it as you like, Cousin Jaffrey,&rdquo; muttered the maiden lady, as
she drew back, after cautiously thrusting out her head, and looking up and down
the street,&mdash;&ldquo;Take it as you like! You have seen my little
shop-window. Well!&mdash;what have you to say?&mdash;is not the Pyncheon House
my own, while I&rsquo;m alive?&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
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&rsquo;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&rsquo;s deep conception of his subject&rsquo;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.
</p>

<p>
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&mdash;at least, she fancied so&mdash;to read
more accurately, and to a greater depth, the face which she had just seen in
the street.
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;This is the very man!&rdquo; murmured she to herself. &ldquo;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,&mdash;then let Jaffrey smile as he might,&mdash;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!&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
Thus did Hepzibah bewilder herself with these fantasies of the old time. She
had dwelt too much alone,&mdash;too long in the Pyncheon House,&mdash;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.
</p>

<p>
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&rsquo;s
miniature, though from the same original, was far inferior to Hepzibah&rsquo;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.
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; thought Hepzibah, with grief of which it was only the more
tolerable portion that welled up from her heart to her eyelids, &ldquo;they
persecuted his mother in him! He never was a Pyncheon!&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
But here the shop-bell rang; it was like a sound from a remote
distance,&mdash;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&rsquo;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.
</p>

<p>
In his younger days&mdash;for, after all, there was a dim tradition that he had
been, not young, but younger&mdash;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,&mdash;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,&mdash;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.
</p>

<p>
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.
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;So, you have really begun trade,&rdquo; said he,&mdash;&ldquo;really
begun trade! Well, I&rsquo;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&rsquo;s
yonder,&mdash;the great brick house, you know,&mdash;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&rsquo;m glad to see you beginning to do your work, Miss
Hepzibah!&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;Thank you, Uncle Venner,&rdquo; 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.
&ldquo;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.&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;Oh, never say that, Miss Hepzibah!&rdquo; answered the old man.
&ldquo;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,&mdash;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!&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; said Hepzibah, with something bitter stealing unawares into
her tone; &ldquo;my cousin Jaffrey is thought to have a very pleasant
smile!&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;And so he has&rdquo; replied Uncle Venner. &ldquo;And that&rsquo;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&rsquo;t Judge Pyncheon, with his great means, step forward, and
tell his cousin to shut up her little shop at once? It&rsquo;s for your credit
to be doing something, but it&rsquo;s not for the Judge&rsquo;s credit to let
you!&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;We won&rsquo;t talk of this, if you please, Uncle Venner,&rdquo; said
Hepzibah coldly. &ldquo;I ought to say, however, that, if I choose to earn
bread for myself, it is not Judge Pyncheon&rsquo;s fault. Neither will he
deserve the blame,&rdquo; added she more kindly, remembering Uncle
Venner&rsquo;s privileges of age and humble familiarity, &ldquo;if I should, by
and by, find it convenient to retire with you to your farm.&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;And it&rsquo;s no bad place, either, that farm of mine!&rdquo; cried the
old man cheerily, as if there were something positively delightful in the
prospect. &ldquo;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&rsquo;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&rsquo;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&rsquo;ve ever been so
comfortable as I mean to be at my farm, which most folks call the workhouse.
But you,&mdash;you&rsquo;re a young woman yet,&mdash;you never need go there!
Something still better will turn up for you. I&rsquo;m sure of it!&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
Hepzibah fancied that there was something peculiar in her venerable
friend&rsquo;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&mdash;who had sailed for India
fifty years before, and never been heard of since&mdash;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,&mdash;with which the elder
stock, on this side of the Atlantic, had held little or no intercourse for the
last two centuries,&mdash;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,&mdash;hearing of Hepzibah&rsquo;s destitution, and
impelled by the splendid generosity of character with which their Virginian
mixture must have enriched the New England blood,&mdash;would send her a
remittance of a thousand dollars, with a hint of repeating the favor annually.
Or,&mdash;and, surely, anything so undeniably just could not be beyond the
limits of reasonable anticipation,&mdash;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.
</p>

<p>
These were some of the fantasies which she had long dreamed about; and, aided
by these, Uncle Venner&rsquo;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,&mdash;as how should he?&mdash;or else her earnest
scowl disturbed his recollection, as it might a more courageous man&rsquo;s.
Instead of pursuing any weightier topic, Uncle Venner was pleased to favor
Hepzibah with some sage counsel in her shop-keeping capacity.
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;Give no credit!&rdquo;&mdash;these were some of his golden
maxims,&mdash;&ldquo;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&rsquo;s woollen socks and mittens! Brew your own yeast, and make your
own ginger-beer!&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
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:&mdash;
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;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&rsquo;ve scowled
upon.&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
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,&mdash;as
he was,&mdash;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.
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;When do you expect him home?&rdquo; whispered he.
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;Whom do you mean?&rdquo; asked Hepzibah, turning pale.
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;Ah!&mdash;You don&rsquo;t love to talk about it,&rdquo; said Uncle
Venner. &ldquo;Well, well! we&rsquo;ll say no more, though there&rsquo;s word
of it all over town. I remember him, Miss Hepzibah, before he could run
alone!&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
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&mdash;perversely, as most of them supposed&mdash;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&rsquo;s
quiet privilege,&mdash;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&rsquo;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.
</p>

<p>
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&rsquo;s prostrate body as they may! Hepzibah&rsquo;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.
</p>

<p>
During the latter process, an omnibus came to a stand-still under the branches
of the elm-tree. Hepzibah&rsquo;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?
</p>

<p>
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,&mdash;not the shop-door, but the antique portal,&mdash;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.
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;Who can it be?&rdquo; thought Hepzibah, who had been screwing her visual
organs into the acutest focus of which they were capable. &ldquo;The girl must
have mistaken the house.&rdquo; 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.
</p>

<p>
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,&mdash;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.
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;Can it be Phœbe?&rdquo; questioned she within herself. &ldquo;It must
be little Phœbe; for it can be nobody else,&mdash;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&rsquo;s notice, or asking whether she would be welcome! Well; she must have
a night&rsquo;s lodging, I suppose; and to-morrow the child shall go back to
her mother.&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
Phœbe, 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&rsquo;s recluse way
of life, a letter had actually been written and despatched, conveying
information of Phœbe&rsquo;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.
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;No&mdash;she can stay only one night,&rdquo; said Hepzibah, unbolting
the door. &ldquo;If Clifford were to find her here, it might disturb
him!&rdquo;
</p>

</div><!--end chapter-->

<div class="chapter">

<h2><a id="chap05"></a>V.<br >
May and November</h2>

<p>
Phœbe Pyncheon slept, on the night of her arrival, in a chamber that looked
down on the garden of the old house. It fronted towards the east, so that at a
very seasonable hour a glow of crimson light came flooding through the window,
and bathed the dingy ceiling and paper-hangings in its own hue. There were
curtains to Phœbe&rsquo;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,&mdash;with a bloom on her cheeks like the
morning&rsquo;s own, and a gentle stir of departing slumber in her limbs, as
when an early breeze moves the foliage,&mdash;the dawn kissed her brow. It was
the caress which a dewy maiden&mdash;such as the Dawn is,
immortally&mdash;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.
</p>

<p>
At the touch of those lips of light, Phœbe quietly awoke, and, for a moment,
did not recognize where she was, nor how those heavy curtains chanced to be
festooned around her. Nothing, indeed, was absolutely plain to her, except that
it was now early morning, and that, whatever might happen next, it was proper,
first of all, to get up and say her prayers. She was the more inclined to
devotion from the 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.
</p>

<p>
When Phœbe 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,&mdash;she was
Phœbe&rsquo;s great-great-grand-aunt,&mdash;in soil which, reckoning only its
cultivation as a garden-plat, was now unctuous with nearly two hundred years of
vegetable decay. Growing as they did, however, out of the old earth, the
flowers still sent a fresh and sweet incense up to their Creator; nor could it
have been the less pure and acceptable because Phœbe&rsquo;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.
</p>

<p>
Little Phœbe was one of those persons who possess, as their exclusive
patrimony, the gift of practical arrangement. It is a kind of natural magic
that enables these favored ones to bring out the hidden capabilities of things
around them; and particularly to give a look of comfort and habitableness to
any place which, for however brief a period, may happen to be their home. A
wild hut of underbrush, tossed together by wayfarers through the primitive
forest, would acquire the home aspect by one night&rsquo;s lodging of such a
woman, and would retain it long after her quiet figure had disappeared into the
surrounding shade. No less a portion of such homely witchcraft was requisite to
reclaim, as it were, Phœbe&rsquo;s waste, cheerless, and dusky chamber, which
had been untenanted so long&mdash;except by spiders, and mice, and rats, and
ghosts&mdash;that it was all overgrown with the desolation which watches to
obliterate every trace of man&rsquo;s happier hours. What was precisely
Phœbe&rsquo;s process we find it impossible to say. She appeared to have no
preliminary design, but gave a touch here and another there; brought some
articles of furniture to light and dragged others into the shadow; looped up or
let down a window-curtain; and, in the course of half an hour, had fully
succeeded in throwing a kindly and hospitable smile over the apartment. No
longer ago than the night before, it had resembled nothing so much as the old
maid&rsquo;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.
</p>

<p>
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&mdash;whether it were the white roses, or whatever the subtile influence
might be&mdash;a person of delicate instinct would have known at once that it
was now a maiden&rsquo;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.
</p>

<p>
After arranging matters to her satisfaction, Phœbe 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&rsquo;s development (as is often the
parallel case in human society) by their uneducated entanglement and confusion.
At the head of the stairs, however, she met Hepzibah, who, it being still
early, invited her into a room which she would probably have called her
boudoir, had her education embraced any such French phrase. It was strewn about
with a few old books, and a work-basket, and a dusty writing-desk; and had, on
one side, a large black article of furniture, of very strange appearance, which
the old gentlewoman told Phœbe was a harpsichord. It looked more like a coffin
than anything else; and, indeed,&mdash;not having been played upon, or opened,
for years,&mdash;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.
</p>

<p>
Hepzibah bade her young guest sit down, and, herself taking a chair near by,
looked as earnestly at Phœbe&rsquo;s trim little figure as if she expected to
see right into its springs and motive secrets.
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;Cousin Phœbe,&rdquo; said she, at last, &ldquo;I really can&rsquo;t see
my way clear to keep you with me.&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
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&rsquo;s mother) which made it desirable for Phœbe to establish herself in
another home. Nor did she misinterpret Phœbe&rsquo;s character, and the genial
activity pervading it,&mdash;one of the most valuable traits of the true New
England woman,&mdash;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&rsquo;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.
</p>

<p>
To Hepzibah&rsquo;s blunt observation, therefore, Phœbe replied as frankly,
and more cheerfully.
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;Dear cousin, I cannot tell how it will be,&rdquo; said she. &ldquo;But I
really think we may suit one another much better than you suppose.&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;You are a nice girl,&mdash;I see it plainly,&rdquo; continued Hepzibah;
&ldquo;and it is not any question as to that point which makes me hesitate.
But, Phœbe, this house of mine is but a melancholy place for a young person to
be in. It lets in the wind and rain, and the snow, too, in the garret and upper
chambers, in winter-time, but it never lets in the sunshine. And as for myself,
you see what I am,&mdash;a dismal and lonesome old woman (for I begin to call
myself old, Phœbe), whose temper, I am afraid, is none of the best, and whose
spirits are as bad as can be! I cannot make your life pleasant, Cousin Phœbe,
neither can I so much as give you bread to eat.&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;You will find me a cheerful little body&rdquo; answered Phœbe, smiling,
and yet with a kind of gentle dignity, &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;Ah! Phœbe,&rdquo; said Hepzibah, sighing, &ldquo;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!&rdquo; and, indeed, the contrast
was very striking,&mdash;&ldquo;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.&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;There is the garden,&mdash;the flowers to be taken care of,&rdquo;
observed Phœbe. &ldquo;I should keep myself healthy with exercise in the open
air.&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;And, after all, child,&rdquo; exclaimed Hepzibah, suddenly rising, as if
to dismiss the subject, &ldquo;it is not for me to say who shall be a guest or
inhabitant of the old Pyncheon House. Its master is coming.&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;Do you mean Judge Pyncheon?&rdquo; asked Phœbe in surprise.
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;Judge Pyncheon!&rdquo; answered her cousin angrily. &ldquo;He will
hardly cross the threshold while I live! No, no! But, Phœbe, you shall see the
face of him I speak of.&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
She went in quest of the miniature already described, and returned with it in
her hand. Giving it to Phœbe, she watched her features narrowly, and with a
certain jealousy as to the mode in which the girl would show herself affected
by the picture.
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;How do you like the face?&rdquo; asked Hepzibah.
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;It is handsome!&mdash;it is very beautiful!&rdquo; said Phœbe
admiringly. &ldquo;It is as sweet a face as a man&rsquo;s can be, or ought to
be. It has something of a child&rsquo;s expression,&mdash;and yet not
childish,&mdash;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?&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;Did you never hear,&rdquo; whispered her cousin, bending towards her,
&ldquo;of Clifford Pyncheon?&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;Never. I thought there were no Pyncheons left, except yourself and our
cousin Jaffrey,&rdquo; answered Phœbe. &ldquo;And yet I seem to have heard the
name of Clifford Pyncheon. Yes!&mdash;from my father or my mother; but has he
not been a long while dead?&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;Well, well, child, perhaps he has!&rdquo; said Hepzibah with a sad,
hollow laugh; &ldquo;but, in old houses like this, you know, dead people are
very apt to come back again! We shall see. And, Cousin Phœbe, since, after all
that I have said, your courage does not fail you, we will not part so soon. You
are welcome, my child, for the present, to such a home as your kinswoman can
offer you.&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
With this measured, but not exactly cold assurance of a hospitable purpose,
Hepzibah kissed her cheek.
</p>

<p>
They now went below stairs, where Phœbe&mdash;not so much assuming the office
as attracting it to herself, by the magnetism of innate fitness&mdash;took the
most active part in preparing breakfast. The mistress of the house, meanwhile,
as is usual with persons of her stiff and unmalleable cast, stood mostly aside;
willing to lend her aid, yet conscious that her natural inaptitude would be
likely to impede the business in hand. Phœbe and the fire that boiled the
teakettle were equally bright, cheerful, and efficient, in their respective
offices. Hepzibah gazed forth from her habitual sluggishness, the necessary
result of long solitude, as from another sphere. She could not help being
interested, however, and even amused, at the readiness with which her new
inmate adapted herself to the circumstances, and brought the house, moreover,
and all its rusty old appliances, into a suitableness for her purposes.
Whatever she did, too, was done without conscious effort, and with frequent
outbreaks of song, which were exceedingly pleasant to the ear. This natural
tunefulness made Phœbe seem like a bird in a shadowy tree; or conveyed the
idea that the stream of life warbled through her heart as a brook sometimes
warbles through a pleasant little dell. It betokened the cheeriness of an
active temperament, finding joy in its activity, and, therefore, rendering it
beautiful; it was a New England trait,&mdash;the stern old stuff of Puritanism
with a gold thread in the web.
</p>

<p>
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,&mdash;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.
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;Your great-great-great-great-grandmother had these cups, when she was
married,&rdquo; said Hepzibah to Phœbe. &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
The cups&mdash;not having been used, perhaps, since Hepzibah&rsquo;s
youth&mdash;had contracted no small burden of dust, which Phœbe washed away
with so much care and delicacy as to satisfy even the proprietor of this
invaluable china.
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;What a nice little housewife you are!&rdquo; exclaimed the latter,
smiling, and at the same time frowning so prodigiously that the smile was
sunshine under a thunder-cloud. &ldquo;Do you do other things as well? Are you
as good at your book as you are at washing teacups?&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;Not quite, I am afraid,&rdquo; said Phœbe, laughing at the form of
Hepzibah&rsquo;s question. &ldquo;But I was schoolmistress for the little
children in our district last summer, and might have been so still.&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;Ah! &rsquo;tis all very well!&rdquo; observed the maiden lady, drawing
herself up. &ldquo;But these things must have come to you with your
mother&rsquo;s blood. I never knew a Pyncheon that had any turn for
them.&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
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.
</p>

<p>
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.
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;Do not trouble yourself, dear cousin!&rdquo; cried Phœbe, starting
lightly up. &ldquo;I am shop-keeper to-day.&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;You, child!&rdquo; exclaimed Hepzibah. &ldquo;What can a little country
girl know of such matters?&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;Oh, I have done all the shopping for the family at our village
store,&rdquo; said Phœbe. &ldquo;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,&rdquo; added she, smiling, &ldquo;with
one&rsquo;s mother&rsquo;s blood. You shall see that I am as nice a little
saleswoman as I am a housewife!&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
The old gentlewoman stole behind Phœbe, 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
Phœbe, mingling in one twisted thread of talk; and still better to contrast
their figures,&mdash;so light and bloomy,&mdash;so decrepit and
dusky,&mdash;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.
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;Was not that well done?&rdquo; asked Phœbe, laughing, when the customer
was gone.
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;Nicely done, indeed, child!&rdquo; answered Hepzibah. &ldquo;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&rsquo;s side.&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
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&rsquo;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 Phœbe&rsquo;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:&mdash;
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;What a nice little body she is! If she only could be a lady;
too&mdash;but that&rsquo;s impossible! Phœbe is no Pyncheon. She takes
everything from her mother!&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
As to Phœbe&rsquo;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,&mdash;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&rsquo;s idea of a
countess. Neither did her face&mdash;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&mdash;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
Phœbe as the example of feminine grace and availability combined, in a state
of society, if there were any such, where ladies did not exist. There it should
be woman&rsquo;s office to move in the midst of practical affairs, and to gild
them all, the very homeliest,&mdash;were it even the scouring of pots and
kettles,&mdash;with an atmosphere of loveliness and joy.
</p>

<p>
Such was the sphere of Phœbe. 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.
</p>

<p>
It really seemed as if the battered visage of the House of the Seven Gables,
black and heavy-browed as it still certainly looked, must have shown a kind of
cheerfulness glimmering through its dusky windows as Phœbe passed to and fro
in the interior. Otherwise, it is impossible to explain how the people of the
neighborhood so soon became aware of the girl&rsquo;s presence. There was a
great run of custom, setting steadily in, from about ten o&rsquo;clock until
towards noon,&mdash;relaxing, somewhat, at dinner-time, but recommencing in the
afternoon, and, finally, dying away a half an hour or so before the long
day&rsquo;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. Phœbe laughed, as she
summed up her aggregate of sales upon the slate; while Hepzibah, first drawing
on a pair of silk gloves, reckoned over the sordid accumulation of copper coin,
not without silver intermixed, that had jingled into the till.
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;We must renew our stock, Cousin Hepzibah!&rdquo; cried the little
saleswoman. &ldquo;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&rsquo;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!&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;Well done! well done! well done!&rdquo; quoth Uncle Venner, who had
taken occasion to shuffle in and out of the shop several times in the course of
the day. &ldquo;Here&rsquo;s a girl that will never end her days at my farm!
Bless my eyes, what a brisk little soul!&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;Yes, Phœbe is a nice girl!&rdquo; said Hepzibah, with a scowl of
austere approbation. &ldquo;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?&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t believe there ever was,&rdquo; answered the venerable man.
&ldquo;At any rate, it never was my luck to see her like among them, nor, for
that matter, anywhere else. I&rsquo;ve seen a great deal of the world, not only
in people&rsquo;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&rsquo;m free to
say, Miss Hepzibah, that I never knew a human creature do her work so much like
one of God&rsquo;s angels as this child Phœbe does!&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
Uncle Venner&rsquo;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 Phœbe&rsquo;s activity. The life of
the long and busy day&mdash;spent in occupations that might so easily have
taken a squalid and ugly aspect&mdash;had been made pleasant, and even lovely,
by the spontaneous grace with which these homely duties seemed to bloom out of
her character; so that labor, while she dealt with it, had the easy and
flexible charm of play. Angels do not toil, but let their good works grow out
of them; and so did Phœbe.
</p>

<p>
The two relatives&mdash;the young maid and the old one&mdash;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.
</p>

<p>
The old gentlewoman took a dreary and proud satisfaction in leading Phœbe from
room to room of the house, and recounting the traditions with which, as we may
say, the walls were lugubriously frescoed. She showed the indentations made by
the lieutenant-governor&rsquo;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 Phœbe step into
one of the tall chairs, and inspect the ancient map of the Pyncheon territory
at the eastward. In a tract of land on which she laid her 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.
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;If you should happen to find it, Phœbe,&rdquo; said Hepzibah, glancing
aside at her with a grim yet kindly smile, &ldquo;we will tie up the shop-bell
for good and all!&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;Yes, dear cousin,&rdquo; answered Phœbe; &ldquo;but, in the mean time,
I hear somebody ringing it!&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
When the customer was gone, Hepzibah talked rather vaguely, and at great
length, about a certain Alice Pyncheon, who had been exceedingly beautiful and
accomplished in her lifetime, a hundred years ago. The fragrance of her rich
and delightful character still lingered about the place where she had lived, as
a dried rose-bud scents the drawer where it has withered and perished. This
lovely Alice had met with some great and mysterious calamity, and had grown
thin and white, and gradually faded out of the world. But, even now, she was
supposed to haunt the House of the Seven Gables, and, a great many
times,&mdash;especially when one of the Pyncheons was to die,&mdash;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.
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;Was it the same harpsichord that you showed me?&rdquo; inquired Phœbe.
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;The very same,&rdquo; said Hepzibah. &ldquo;It was Alice
Pyncheon&rsquo;s harpsichord. When I was learning music, my father would never
let me open it. So, as I could only play on my teacher&rsquo;s instrument, I
have forgotten all my music long ago.&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
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&rsquo;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.
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;But, dear cousin,&rdquo; said Phœbe, &ldquo;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!&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;Why, sometimes,&rdquo; answered Hepzibah, &ldquo;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&rsquo;s mind, that, without exactly liking him (for I don&rsquo;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.&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;But if Mr. Holgrave is a lawless person!&rdquo; remonstrated Phœbe, a
part of whose essence it was to keep within the limits of law.
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;Oh!&rdquo; said Hepzibah carelessly,&mdash;for, formal as she was,
still, in her life&rsquo;s experience, she had gnashed her teeth against human
law,&mdash;&ldquo;I suppose he has a law of his own!&rdquo;
</p>

</div><!--end chapter-->

<div class="chapter">

<h2><a id="chap06"></a>VI.<br >
Maule&rsquo;s Well</h2>

<p>
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&rsquo;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.
</p>

<p>
The black, rich soil had fed itself with the decay of a long period of time;
such as fallen leaves, the petals of flowers, and the stalks and seed-vessels
of vagrant and lawless plants, more useful after their death than ever while
flaunting in the sun. The evil of these departed years would naturally have
sprung up again, in such rank weeds (symbolic of the transmitted vices of
society) as are always prone to root themselves about human dwellings. Phœbe
saw, however, that their growth must have been checked by a degree of careful
labor, bestowed daily and systematically on the garden. The white double
rosebush 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.
</p>

<p>
Phœbe wondered whose care and toil it could have been that had planted these
vegetables, and kept the soil so clean and orderly. Not surely her cousin
Hepzibah&rsquo;s, who had no taste nor spirits for the lady-like employment of
cultivating flowers, and&mdash;with her recluse habits, and tendency to shelter
herself within the dismal shadow of the house&mdash;would hardly have come
forth under the speck of open sky to weed and hoe among the fraternity of beans
and squashes.
</p>

<p>
It being her first day of complete estrangement from rural objects, Phœbe
found an unexpected charm in this little nook of grass, and foliage, and
aristocratic flowers, and plebeian vegetables. The eye of Heaven seemed to look
down into it pleasantly, and with a peculiar smile, as if glad to perceive that
nature, elsewhere overwhelmed, and driven out of the dusty town, had here been
able to retain a breathing-place. The spot acquired a somewhat wilder grace,
and yet a very gentle one, from the fact that a pair of robins had built their
nest in the pear-tree, and were making themselves exceedingly busy and happy in
the dark intricacy of its boughs. Bees, too,&mdash;strange to say,&mdash;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&rsquo;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&rsquo;s turban, that Phœbe&mdash;to the poignant
distress of her conscience, but inevitably&mdash;was led to fancy a general
resemblance betwixt these forlorn bipeds and her respectable relative.
</p>

<p>
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.
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;Here, you odd little chicken!&rdquo; said Phœbe; &ldquo;here are some
nice crumbs for you!&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
The chicken, hereupon, though almost as venerable in appearance as its
mother&mdash;possessing, indeed, the whole antiquity of its progenitors in
miniature,&mdash;mustered vivacity enough to flutter upward and alight on
Phœbe&rsquo;s shoulder.
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;That little fowl pays you a high compliment!&rdquo; said a voice behind
Phœbe.
</p>

<p>
Turning quickly, she was surprised at sight of a young man, who had found
access into the garden by a door opening out of another gable than that whence
she had emerged. He held a hoe in his hand, and, while Phœbe was gone in quest
of the crumbs, had begun to busy himself with drawing up fresh earth about the
roots of the tomatoes.
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;The chicken really treats you like an old acquaintance,&rdquo; continued
he in a quiet way, while a smile made his face pleasanter than Phœbe at first
fancied it. &ldquo;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!&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;The secret is,&rdquo; said Phœbe, smiling, &ldquo;that I have learned
how to talk with hens and chickens.&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;Ah, but these hens,&rdquo; answered the young man,&mdash;&ldquo;these
hens of aristocratic lineage would scorn to understand the vulgar language of a
barn-yard fowl. I prefer to think&mdash;and so would Miss Hepzibah&mdash;that
they recognize the family tone. For you are a Pyncheon?&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;My name is Phœbe Pyncheon,&rdquo; 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. &ldquo;I did not know that my cousin Hepzibah&rsquo;s garden
was under another person&rsquo;s care.&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; said Holgrave, &ldquo;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&rsquo;s eyes, to come into it. But would you like to see a specimen of my
productions?&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;A daguerreotype likeness, do you mean?&rdquo; asked Phœbe with less
reserve; for, in spite of prejudice, her own youthfulness sprang forward to
meet his. &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t much like pictures of that sort,&mdash;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.&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;If you would permit me,&rdquo; said the artist, looking at Phœbe,
&ldquo;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&rsquo;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.&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
He exhibited a daguerreotype miniature in a morocco case. Phœbe merely glanced
at it, and gave it back.
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;I know the face,&rdquo; she replied; &ldquo;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&rsquo;t think him improved by your
alterations.&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;You would have seen other differences had you looked a little
longer,&rdquo; said Holgrave, laughing, yet apparently much struck. &ldquo;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&rsquo;s eye,&mdash;and, for aught I know, to his most intimate
friends,&mdash;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.&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;Well, I don&rsquo;t wish to see it any more,&rdquo; observed Phœbe,
turning away her eyes. &ldquo;It is certainly very like the old portrait. But
my cousin Hepzibah has another picture,&mdash;a miniature. If the original is
still in the world, I think he might defy the sun to make him look stern and
hard.&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;You have seen that picture, then!&rdquo; exclaimed the artist, with an
expression of much interest. &ldquo;I never did, but have a great curiosity to
do so. And you judge favorably of the face?&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;There never was a sweeter one,&rdquo; said Phœbe. &ldquo;It is almost
too soft and gentle for a man&rsquo;s.&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;Is there nothing wild in the eye?&rdquo; continued Holgrave, so
earnestly that it embarrassed Phœbe, as did also the quiet freedom with which
he presumed on their so recent acquaintance. &ldquo;Is there nothing dark or
sinister anywhere? Could you not conceive the original to have been guilty of a
great crime?&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;It is nonsense,&rdquo; said Phœbe a little impatiently, &ldquo;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&rsquo;s,
you should ask her to show you the picture.&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;It will suit my purpose still better to see the original,&rdquo; replied
the daguerreotypist coolly. &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
Phœbe was on the point of retreating, but turned back, with some hesitation;
for she did not exactly comprehend his manner, although, on better observation,
its feature seemed rather to be lack of ceremony than any approach to offensive
rudeness. There was an odd kind of authority, too, in what he now proceeded to
say, rather as if the garden were his own than a place to which he was admitted
merely by Hepzibah&rsquo;s courtesy.
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;If agreeable to you,&rdquo; he observed, &ldquo;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&rsquo;s table. So we will be fellow-laborers, somewhat on the
community system.&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
Silently, and rather surprised at her own compliance, Phœbe accordingly betook
herself to weeding a flower-bed, but busied herself still more with cogitations
respecting this young man, with whom she so unexpectedly found herself on terms
approaching to familiarity. She did not altogether like him. His character
perplexed the little country-girl, as it might a more practised observer; for,
while the tone of his conversation had generally been playful, the impression
left on her mind was that of gravity, and, except as his youth modified it,
almost sternness. She rebelled, as it were, against a certain magnetic element
in the artist&rsquo;s nature, which he exercised towards her, possibly without
being conscious of it.
</p>

<p>
After a little while, the twilight, deepened by the shadows of the fruit-trees
and the surrounding buildings, threw an obscurity over the garden.
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;There,&rdquo; said Holgrave, &ldquo;it is time to give over work! That
last stroke of the hoe has cut off a beanstalk. Good-night, Miss Phœbe
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.&rdquo; He retired
towards his own solitary gable, but turned his head, on reaching the door, and
called to Phœbe, with a tone which certainly had laughter in it, yet which
seemed to be more than half in earnest.
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;Be careful not to drink at Maule&rsquo;s well!&rdquo; said he.
&ldquo;Neither drink nor bathe your face in it!&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;Maule&rsquo;s well!&rdquo; answered Phœbe. &ldquo;Is that it with the
rim of mossy stones? I have no thought of drinking there,&mdash;but why
not?&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;Oh,&rdquo; rejoined the daguerreotypist, &ldquo;because, like an old
lady&rsquo;s cup of tea, it is water bewitched!&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
He vanished; and Phœbe, lingering a moment, saw a glimmering light, and then
the steady beam of a lamp, in a chamber of the gable. On returning into
Hepzibah&rsquo;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.
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;Shall I light a lamp, Cousin Hepzibah?&rdquo; she asked.
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;Do, if you please, my dear child,&rdquo; answered Hepzibah. &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
What an instrument is the human voice! How wonderfully responsive to every
emotion of the human soul! In Hepzibah&rsquo;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, Phœbe fancied that her cousin spoke to her.
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;In a moment, cousin!&rdquo; answered the girl. &ldquo;These matches just
glimmer, and go out.&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
But, instead of a response from Hepzibah, she seemed to hear the murmur of an
unknown voice. It was strangely indistinct, however, and less like articulate
words than an unshaped sound, such as would be the utterance of feeling and
sympathy, rather than of the intellect. So vague was it, that its impression or
echo in Phœbe&rsquo;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.
</p>

<p>
She set the lighted lamp in the passage, and again entered the parlor.
Hepzibah&rsquo;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.
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;Cousin,&rdquo; said Phœbe, &ldquo;did you speak to me just now?&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;No, child!&rdquo; replied Hepzibah.
</p>

<p>
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&rsquo;s heart, all steeped in its profoundest emotion. There was a
tremor in it, too, that&mdash;as all strong feeling is electric&mdash;partly
communicated itself to Phœbe. The girl sat silently for a moment. But soon,
her senses being very acute, she became conscious of an irregular respiration
in an obscure corner of the room. Her physical organization, moreover, being at
once delicate and healthy, gave her a perception, operating with almost the
effect of a spiritual medium, that somebody was near at hand.
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;My dear cousin,&rdquo; asked she, overcoming an indefinable reluctance,
&ldquo;is there not some one in the room with us?&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;Phœbe, my dear little girl,&rdquo; said Hepzibah, after a
moment&rsquo;s pause, &ldquo;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!&rdquo; While thus dismissing her, the maiden lady stept
forward, kissed Phœbe, and pressed her to her heart, which beat against the
girl&rsquo;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?
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;Goodnight, cousin,&rdquo; said Phœbe, strangely affected by
Hepzibah&rsquo;s manner. &ldquo;If you begin to love me, I am glad!&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
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&rsquo;s voice, Phœbe heard that strange, vague murmur, which
might be likened to an indistinct shadow of human utterance.
</p>

</div><!--end chapter-->

<div class="chapter">

<h2><a id="chap07"></a>VII.<br >
The Guest</h2>

<p>
When Phœbe awoke,&mdash;which she did with the early twittering of the
conjugal couple of robins in the pear-tree,&mdash;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&rsquo;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&rsquo;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.
</p>

<p>
Soon, with a deep sigh, she put aside the savory volume, and inquired of Phœbe
whether old Speckle, as she called one of the hens, had laid an egg the
preceding day. Phœbe ran to see, but returned without the expected treasure in
her hand. At that instant, however, the blast of a fish-dealer&rsquo;s conch
was heard, announcing his approach along the street. With energetic raps at the
shop-window, Hepzibah summoned the man in, and made purchase of what he
warranted as the finest mackerel in his cart, and as fat a one as ever he felt
with his finger so early in the season. Requesting Phœbe to roast some
coffee,&mdash;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,&mdash;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&rsquo;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.
</p>

<p>
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 Phœbe, the only spectator,
except the rats and ghosts aforesaid, had not been better employed than in
shedding them), to see her rake out a bed of fresh and glowing coals, and
proceed to broil the mackerel. Her usually pale cheeks were all ablaze with
heat and hurry. She watched the fish with as much tender care and minuteness of
attention as if,&mdash;we know not how to express it otherwise,&mdash;as if her
own heart were on the gridiron, and her immortal happiness were involved in its
being done precisely to a turn!
</p>

<p>
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&rsquo;s small and ancient table, supported on its slender and graceful
legs, and covered with a cloth of the richest damask, looked worthy to be the
scene and centre of one of the cheerfullest of parties. The vapor of the
broiled fish arose like incense from the shrine of a barbarian idol, while the
fragrance of the Mocha might have gratified the nostrils of a tutelary Lar, or
whatever power has scope over a modern breakfast-table. Phœbe&rsquo;s Indian
cakes were the sweetest offering of all,&mdash;in their hue befitting the
rustic altars of the innocent and golden age,&mdash;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,&mdash;butter which
Phœbe herself had churned, in her own rural home, and brought it to her cousin
as a propitiatory gift,&mdash;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&rsquo;s only other article of plate, and
shaped like the rudest porringer), set out a board at which the stateliest of
old Colonel Pyncheon&rsquo;s guests need not have scorned to take his place.
But the Puritan&rsquo;s face scowled down out of the picture, as if nothing on
the table pleased his appetite.
</p>

<p>
By way of contributing what grace she could, Phœbe gathered some roses and a
few other flowers, possessing either scent or beauty, and arranged them in a
glass pitcher, which, having long ago lost its handle, was so much the fitter
for a flower-vase. The early sunshine&mdash;as fresh as that which peeped into
Eve&rsquo;s bower while she and Adam sat at breakfast there&mdash;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,&mdash;the same for Phœbe,&mdash;but what other guest did
her cousin look for?
</p>

<p>
Throughout this preparation there had been a constant tremor in
Hepzibah&rsquo;s frame; an agitation so powerful that Phœbe 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 Phœbe in them, and kiss her
cheek as tenderly as ever her mother had; she appeared to do so by an
inevitable impulse, and as if her bosom were oppressed with tenderness, of
which she must needs 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,&mdash;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 Phœbe, as we have said, she was affectionate,&mdash;far
tenderer than ever before, in their brief acquaintance, except for that one
kiss on the preceding night,&mdash;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.
</p>

<p>
At last, when their mutual labor was all finished, she took Phœbe&rsquo;s hand
in her own trembling one.
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;Bear with me, my dear child,&rdquo; she cried; &ldquo;for truly my heart
is full to the brim! Bear with me; for I love you, Phœbe, though I speak so
roughly. Think nothing of it, dearest child! By and by, I shall be kind, and
only kind!&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;My dearest cousin, cannot you tell me what has happened?&rdquo; asked
Phœbe, with a sunny and tearful sympathy. &ldquo;What is it that moves you
so?&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;Hush! hush! He is coming!&rdquo; whispered Hepzibah, hastily wiping her
eyes. &ldquo;Let him see you first, Phœbe; for you are young and rosy, and
cannot help letting a smile break out whether or no. He always liked bright
faces! 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,&mdash;poor Clifford,&mdash;and, oh, what a black shadow.
Poor, poor Clifford!&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
Thus murmuring in an undertone, as if speaking rather to her own heart than to
Phœbe, the old gentlewoman stepped on tiptoe about the room, making such
arrangements as suggested themselves at the crisis.
</p>

<p>
Meanwhile there was a step in the passage-way, above stairs. Phœbe recognized
it as the same which had passed upward, as through her dream, in the
night-time. The approaching guest, whoever it might be, appeared to pause at
the head of the staircase; he paused twice or thrice in the descent; he paused
again at the foot. Each time, the delay seemed to be without purpose, but
rather from a forgetfulness of the purpose which had set him in motion, or as
if the person&rsquo;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.
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;Dear Cousin Hepzibah, pray don&rsquo;t look so!&rdquo; said Phœbe,
trembling; for her cousin&rsquo;s emotion, and this mysteriously reluctant
step, made her feel as if a ghost were coming into the room. &ldquo;You really
frighten me! Is something awful going to happen?&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;Hush!&rdquo; whispered Hepzibah. &ldquo;Be cheerful! whatever may
happen, be nothing but cheerful!&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
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, Phœbe saw an elderly personage, in
an old-fashioned dressing-gown of faded damask, and wearing his gray or almost
white hair of an unusual length. It quite overshadowed his forehead, except
when he thrust it back, and stared vaguely about the room. After a very brief
inspection of his face, it was easy to conceive that his footstep must
necessarily be such an one as that which, slowly and with as indefinite an aim
as a child&rsquo;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&mdash;while, notwithstanding
it had the light of reason in it&mdash;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,&mdash;more intently, but
with a certain impatience, as if it ought either to kindle itself into
satisfactory splendor, or be at once extinguished.
</p>

<p>
For an instant after entering the room, the guest stood still, retaining
Hepzibah&rsquo;s hand instinctively, as a child does that of the grown person
who guides it. He saw Phœbe, however, and caught an illumination from her
youthful and pleasant aspect, which, indeed, threw a cheerfulness about the
parlor, like the circle of reflected brilliancy around the glass vase of
flowers that was standing in the sunshine. He made a salutation, or, to speak
nearer the truth, an ill-defined, abortive attempt at 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.
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;Dear Clifford,&rdquo; said Hepzibah, in the tone with which one soothes
a wayward infant, &ldquo;this is our cousin Phœbe,&mdash;little Phœbe
Pyncheon,&mdash;Arthur&rsquo;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.&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;Phœbe&mdash;Phœbe Pyncheon?&mdash;Phœbe?&rdquo; repeated the guest,
with a strange, sluggish, ill-defined utterance. &ldquo;Arthur&rsquo;s child!
Ah, I forget! No matter. She is very welcome!&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;Come, dear Clifford, take this chair,&rdquo; said Hepzibah, leading him
to his place. &ldquo;Pray, Phœbe, lower the curtain a very little more. Now
let us begin breakfast.&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
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&mdash;a substantial emptiness,
a material ghost&mdash;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&rsquo;s household fire, and light up intellectual lamps in the dark and
ruinous mansion, where it was doomed to be a forlorn inhabitant.
</p>

<p>
At one of these moments of less torpid, yet still imperfect animation, Phœbe
became convinced of what she had at first rejected as too extravagant and
startling an idea. She saw that the person before her must have been the
original of the beautiful miniature in her cousin Hepzibah&rsquo;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&rsquo;s untold misfortune, and make
it perceptible to the beholder&rsquo;s eye. It was the better to be discerned,
by this exterior type, how worn and old were the soul&rsquo;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&mdash;venturing a happy touch, with suspended
breath&mdash;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.
</p>

<p>
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.
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;Is this you, Hepzibah?&rdquo; he murmured sadly; then, more apart, and
perhaps unconscious that he was overheard, &ldquo;How changed! how changed! And
is she angry with me? Why does she bend her brow so?&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
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.
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;Angry!&rdquo; she repeated; &ldquo;angry with you, Clifford!&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
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,&mdash;so deep was the sensibility that found an organ in
Hepzibah&rsquo;s voice!
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;There is nothing but love here, Clifford,&rdquo; she
added,&mdash;&ldquo;nothing but love! You are at home!&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
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 Phœbe droop her
eyes.
</p>

<p>
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.
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;More, more!&rdquo; he cried, with nervous haste in his utterance, as if
anxious to retain his grasp of what sought to escape him. &ldquo;This is what I
need! Give me more!&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
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&rsquo;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,&mdash;it would have flung
down the hopes, so paltry in its regard,&mdash;if thereby the wintry blasts of
our rude sphere might come tempered to such a man.
</p>

<p>
Not to speak it harshly or scornfully, it seemed Clifford&rsquo;s nature to be
a Sybarite. It was perceptible, even there, in the dark old parlor, in the
inevitable polarity with which his eyes were attracted towards the quivering
play of sunbeams through the shadowy foliage. It was seen in his appreciating
notice of the vase of flowers, the scent of which he inhaled with a zest almost
peculiar to a physical organization so refined that spiritual ingredients are
moulded in with it. It was betrayed in the unconscious smile with which he
regarded Phœbe, whose fresh and maidenly figure was both sunshine and
flowers,&mdash;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&rsquo;s misfortune,&mdash;not Clifford&rsquo;s fault. How could
he,&mdash;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,&mdash;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&rsquo;s can contract no debts of that kind. It is&mdash;we
say it without censure, nor in diminution of the claim which it indefeasibly
possesses on beings of another mould&mdash;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&mdash;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.
</p>

<p>
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.
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;How pleasant!&mdash;How delightful!&rdquo; he murmured, but not as if
addressing any one. &ldquo;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&rsquo;s face, how cheerful, how
blooming!&mdash;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!&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
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&mdash;still lessening, too, as if he were
sinking farther into the depths. Phœbe (being of that quickness and activity
of temperament that she seldom long refrained from taking a part, and generally
a good one, in what was going forward) now felt herself moved to address the
stranger.
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;Here is a new kind of rose, which I found this morning in the
garden,&rdquo; said she, choosing a small crimson one from among the flowers in
the vase. &ldquo;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!&mdash;sweet like no other rose! One can never forget that
scent!&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;Ah!&mdash;let me see!&mdash;let me hold it!&rdquo; 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.
&ldquo;Thank you! This has done me good. I remember how I used to prize this
flower,&mdash;long ago, I suppose, very long ago!&mdash;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!&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
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.
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;Hepzibah!&mdash;Hepzibah!&rdquo; cried he with no little force and
distinctness, &ldquo;why do you keep that odious picture on the wall? Yes,
yes!&mdash;that is precisely your taste! I have told you, a thousand times,
that it was the evil genius of the house!&mdash;my evil genius particularly!
Take it down, at once!&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;Dear Clifford,&rdquo; said Hepzibah sadly, &ldquo;you know it cannot
be!&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;Then, at all events,&rdquo; continued he, still speaking with some
energy, &ldquo;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!&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;Yes, dear Clifford, the picture shall be covered,&rdquo; said Hepzibah
soothingly. &ldquo;There is a crimson curtain in a trunk above stairs,&mdash;a
little faded and moth-eaten, I&rsquo;m afraid,&mdash;but Phœbe and I will do
wonders with it.&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;This very day, remember&rdquo; said he; and then added, in a low,
self-communing voice, &ldquo;Why should we live in this dismal house at all?
Why not go to the South of France?&mdash;to Italy?&mdash;Paris, Naples, Venice,
Rome? Hepzibah will say we have not the means. A droll idea that!&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
He smiled to himself, and threw a glance of fine sarcastic meaning towards
Hepzibah.
</p>

<p>
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,&mdash;almost cloddish. If aught of
interest or beauty&mdash;even ruined beauty&mdash;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.
</p>

<p>
Before he had quite sunken away, however, the sharp and peevish tinkle of the
shop-bell made itself audible. Striking most disagreeably on Clifford&rsquo;s
auditory organs and the characteristic sensibility of his nerves, it caused him
to start upright out of his chair.
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;Good heavens, Hepzibah! what horrible disturbance have we now in the
house?&rdquo; cried he, wreaking his resentful impatience&mdash;as a matter of
course, and a custom of old&mdash;on the one person in the world that loved
him. &ldquo;I have never heard such a hateful clamor! Why do you permit it? In
the name of all dissonance, what can it be?&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
It was very remarkable into what prominent relief&mdash;even as if a dim
picture should leap suddenly from its canvas&mdash;Clifford&rsquo;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&mdash;for similar cases have often happened&mdash;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?
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;Dear Clifford, I wish I could keep the sound from your ears,&rdquo; said
Hepzibah, patiently, but reddening with a painful suffusion of shame. &ldquo;It
is very disagreeable even to me. But, do you know, Clifford, I have something
to tell you? This ugly noise,&mdash;pray run, Phœbe, and see who is
there!&mdash;this naughty little tinkle is nothing but our shop-bell!&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;Shop-bell!&rdquo; repeated Clifford, with a bewildered stare.
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;Yes, our shop-bell,&rdquo; said Hepzibah, a certain natural dignity,
mingled with deep emotion, now asserting itself in her manner. &ldquo;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,&mdash;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,&rdquo; added she, with a wretched smile,
&ldquo;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?&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;Shame! Disgrace! Do you speak these words to me, Hepzibah?&rdquo; said
Clifford,&mdash;not angrily, however; for when a man&rsquo;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. &ldquo;It was not kind to
say so, Hepzibah! What shame can befall me now?&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
And then the unnerved man&mdash;he that had been born for enjoyment, but had
met a doom so very wretched&mdash;burst into a woman&rsquo;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.
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;Are we so very poor, Hepzibah?&rdquo; said he.
</p>

<p>
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),&mdash;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.
</p>

</div><!--end chapter-->

<div class="chapter">

<h2><a id="chap08"></a>VIII.<br >
The Pyncheon of To-day</h2>

<p>
Phœbe, on entering the shop, beheld there the already familiar face of the
little devourer&mdash;if we can reckon his mighty deeds aright&mdash;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&rsquo;s present errand was on
the part of his mother, in quest of three eggs and half a pound of raisins.
These articles Phœbe accordingly supplied, and, as a mark of gratitude for his
previous patronage, and a slight 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.
</p>

<p>
After partly closing the door, the child turned back, and mumbled something to
Phœbe, which, as the whale was but half disposed of, she could not perfectly
understand.
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;What did you say, my little fellow?&rdquo; asked she.
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;Mother wants to know&rdquo; repeated Ned Higgins more distinctly,
&ldquo;how Old Maid Pyncheon&rsquo;s brother does? Folks say he has got
home.&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;My cousin Hepzibah&rsquo;s brother?&rdquo; exclaimed Phœbe, surprised
at this sudden explanation of the relationship between Hepzibah and her guest.
&ldquo;Her brother! And where can he have been?&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
The little boy only put his thumb to his broad snub-nose, with that look of
shrewdness which a child, spending much of his time in the street, so soon
learns to throw over his features, however unintelligent in themselves. Then as
Phœbe continued to gaze at him, without answering his mother&rsquo;s message,
he took his departure.
</p>

<p>
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&rsquo;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.
</p>

<p>
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.
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;Ah, I see how it is!&rdquo; said he in a deep voice,&mdash;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,&mdash;&ldquo;I was not aware that Miss Hepzibah Pyncheon had
commenced business under such favorable auspices. You are her assistant, I
suppose?&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;I certainly am,&rdquo; answered Phœbe, 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), &ldquo;I am a cousin of Miss Hepzibah, on
a visit to her.&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;Her cousin?&mdash;and from the country? Pray pardon me, then,&rdquo;
said the gentleman, bowing and smiling, as Phœbe never had been bowed to nor
smiled on before; &ldquo;in that case, we must be better acquainted; for,
unless I am sadly mistaken, you are my own little kinswoman likewise! Let me
see,&mdash;Mary?&mdash;Dolly?&mdash;Phœbe?&mdash;yes, Phœbe is the name! Is
it possible that you are Phœbe 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?&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
As Phœbe curtsied in reply, the Judge bent forward, with the pardonable and
even praiseworthy purpose&mdash;considering the nearness of blood and the
difference of age&mdash;of bestowing on his young relative a kiss of
acknowledged kindred and natural affection. Unfortunately (without design, or
only with such instinctive design as gives no account of itself to the
intellect) Phœbe, just at the critical moment, drew back; so that her highly
respectable kinsman, with his body bent over the counter and his lips
protruded, was betrayed into the rather absurd predicament of kissing the empty
air. It was a modern parallel to the case of Ixion embracing a cloud, and was
so much the more ridiculous as the Judge prided himself on eschewing all airy
matter, and never mistaking a shadow for a substance. The truth was,&mdash;and
it is Phœbe&rsquo;s only excuse,&mdash;that, although Judge Pyncheon&rsquo;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&rsquo;s
demonstrations of that sort. Phœbe&rsquo;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?
</p>

<p>
On raising her eyes, Phœbe was startled by the change in Judge
Pyncheon&rsquo;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.
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;Dear me! what is to be done now?&rdquo; thought the country-girl to
herself. &ldquo;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!&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
Then, all at once, it struck Phœbe that this very Judge Pyncheon was the
original of the miniature which the daguerreotypist had shown her in the
garden, and that the hard, stern, relentless look, now on his face, was the
same that the sun had so inflexibly persisted in bringing out. Was it,
therefore, no momentary mood, but, however skilfully concealed, the settled
temper of his life? And not merely so, but was it hereditary in him, and
transmitted down, as a precious heirloom, from that bearded ancestor, in whose
picture both the expression and, to a singular degree, the features of the
modern Judge were shown as by a kind of prophecy? A deeper philosopher than
Phœbe might have found something very terrible in this idea. It implied that
the weaknesses and defects, the bad passions, the mean tendencies, and the
moral diseases which lead to crime are handed down from one generation to
another, by a far surer process of transmission than human law has been able to
establish in respect to the riches and honors which it seeks to entail upon
posterity.
</p>

<p>
But, as it happened, scarcely had Phœbe&rsquo;s eyes rested again on the
Judge&rsquo;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,&mdash;very much like a serpent, which, as a preliminary
to fascination, is said to fill the air with his peculiar odor.
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;I like that, Cousin Phœbe!&rdquo; cried he, with an emphatic nod of
approbation. &ldquo;I like it much, my little cousin! You are a good child, and
know how to take care of yourself. A young girl&mdash;especially if she be a
very pretty one&mdash;can never be too chary of her lips.&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;Indeed, sir,&rdquo; said Phœbe, trying to laugh the matter off,
&ldquo;I did not mean to be unkind.&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
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,&mdash;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,&mdash;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&rsquo;s, who had trimmed down the Puritan&rsquo;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!
</p>

<p>
Of course, Phœbe 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&rsquo;s volume of muscle could hardly be
the same as the Colonel&rsquo;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&rsquo;s face had lost the ruddy English hue that showed its warmth
through all the duskiness of the Colonel&rsquo;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&rsquo;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.
</p>

<p>
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&rsquo;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&rsquo;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,&mdash;and
which inevitably lose much of their truth and freedom by the fatal
consciousness of so doing,&mdash;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&rsquo;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&rsquo;s back.
</p>

<p>
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&mdash;if not belied by some singular stories,
murmured, even at this day, under the narrator&rsquo;s breath&mdash;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,&mdash;for such we
choose to consider it, though, not impossibly, typical of Judge
Pyncheon&rsquo;s marital deportment,&mdash;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.
</p>

<p>
But it is too fruitful a subject, this of hereditary resemblances,&mdash;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&mdash;so, at least, says chimney-corner tradition, which often
preserves traits of character with marvellous fidelity&mdash;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.
</p>

<p>
Scarcely any of the items in the above-drawn parallel occurred to Phœbe, whose
country birth and residence, in truth, had left her pitifully ignorant of most
of the family traditions, which lingered, like cobwebs and incrustations of
smoke, about the rooms and chimney-corners of the House of the Seven Gables.
Yet there was a circumstance, very trifling in itself, which impressed her with
an odd degree of horror. She had heard of the anathema flung by Maule, the
executed wizard, against Colonel Pyncheon and his posterity,&mdash;that God
would give them blood to drink,&mdash;and likewise of the popular notion, that
this miraculous blood might now and then be heard gurgling in their throats.
The latter scandal&mdash;as became a person of sense, and, more especially, a
member of the Pyncheon family&mdash;Phœbe had set down for the absurdity which
it unquestionably was. But ancient superstitions, after being steeped in human
hearts and embodied in human breath, and passing from lip to ear in manifold
repetition, through a series of generations, become imbued with an effect of
homely truth. The smoke of the domestic hearth has scented them through and
through. By long transmission among household facts, they grow to look like
them, and have such a familiar way of making themselves at home that their
influence is usually greater than we suspect. Thus it happened, that when
Phœbe heard a certain noise in Judge Pyncheon&rsquo;s throat,&mdash;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,&mdash;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.
</p>

<p>
Of course, it was exceedingly ridiculous in Phœbe to be discomposed by such a
trifle, and still more unpardonable to show her discomposure to the individual
most concerned in it. But the incident chimed in so oddly with her previous
fancies about the Colonel and the Judge, that, for the moment, it seemed quite
to mingle their identity.
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;What is the matter with you, young woman?&rdquo; said Judge Pyncheon,
giving her one of his harsh looks. &ldquo;Are you afraid of anything?&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;Oh, nothing, sir&mdash;nothing in the world!&rdquo; answered Phœbe,
with a little laugh of vexation at herself. &ldquo;But perhaps you wish to
speak with my cousin Hepzibah. Shall I call her?&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;Stay a moment, if you please,&rdquo; said the Judge, again beaming
sunshine out of his face. &ldquo;You seem to be a little nervous this morning.
The town air, Cousin Phœbe, does not agree with your good, wholesome country
habits. Or has anything happened to disturb you?&mdash;anything remarkable in
Cousin Hepzibah&rsquo;s family?&mdash; 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!&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;You quite puzzle me, sir,&rdquo; replied Phœbe, gazing inquiringly at
the Judge. &ldquo;There is no frightful guest in the house, but only a poor,
gentle, childlike man, whom I believe to be Cousin Hepzibah&rsquo;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!&mdash;Oh, no indeed!&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;I rejoice to hear so favorable and so ingenuous an account of my cousin
Clifford,&rdquo; said the benevolent Judge. &ldquo;Many years ago, when we were
boys and young men together, I had a great affection for him, and still feel a
tender interest in all his concerns. You say, Cousin Phœbe, he appears to be
weak minded. Heaven grant him at least enough of intellect to repent of his
past sins!&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;Nobody, I fancy,&rdquo; observed Phœbe, &ldquo;can have fewer to repent
of.&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;And is it possible, my dear,&rdquo; rejoined the Judge, with a
commiserating look, &ldquo;that you have never heard of Clifford
Pyncheon?&mdash;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.&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;Perhaps, sir, I had better call my cousin Hepzibah,&rdquo; said Phœbe;
hardly knowing, however, whether she ought to obstruct the entrance of so
affectionate a kinsman into the private regions of the house. &ldquo;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!&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
But the Judge showed a singular determination to enter unannounced; and as
Phœbe, with the vivacity of a person whose movements unconsciously answer to
her thoughts, had stepped towards the door, he used little or no ceremony in
putting her aside.
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;No, no, Miss Phœbe!&rdquo; said Judge Pyncheon in a voice as deep as a
thunder-growl, and with a frown as black as the cloud whence it issues.
&ldquo;Stay you here! I know the house, and know my cousin Hepzibah, and know
her brother Clifford likewise.&mdash;nor need my little country cousin put
herself to the trouble of announcing me!&rdquo;&mdash;in these latter words, by
the bye, there were symptoms of a change from his sudden harshness into his
previous benignity of manner. &ldquo;I am at home here, Phœbe, you must
recollect, and you are the stranger. I will just step in, therefore, and see
for myself how Clifford is, and assure him and Hepzibah of my kindly feelings
and best wishes. It is right, at this juncture, that they should both hear from
my own lips how much I desire to serve them. Ha! here is Hepzibah
herself!&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
Such was the case. The vibrations of the Judge&rsquo;s voice had reached the
old gentlewoman in the parlor, where she sat, with face averted, waiting on her
brother&rsquo;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&rsquo;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.
</p>

<p>
Possibly, the Judge was aware how little true hardihood lay behind
Hepzibah&rsquo;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.
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;Hepzibah, my beloved cousin, I am rejoiced!&rdquo; exclaimed the Judge
most emphatically. &ldquo;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,&mdash;how much he used to require,&mdash;with his delicate
taste, and his love of the beautiful. Anything in my house,&mdash;pictures,
books, wine, luxuries of the table,&mdash;he may command them all! It would
afford me most heartfelt gratification to see him! Shall I step in, this
moment?&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;No,&rdquo; replied Hepzibah, her voice quivering too painfully to allow
of many words. &ldquo;He cannot see visitors!&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;A visitor, my dear cousin!&mdash;do you call me so?&rdquo; cried the
Judge, whose sensibility, it seems, was hurt by the coldness of the phrase.
&ldquo;Nay, then, let me be Clifford&rsquo;s host, and your own likewise. Come
at once to my house. The country air, and all the conveniences,&mdash;I may say
luxuries,&mdash;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!&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
On hearing these so hospitable offers, and such generous recognition of the
claims of kindred, Phœbe felt very much in the mood of running up to Judge
Pyncheon, and giving him, of her own accord, the kiss from which she had so
recently shrunk away. It was quite otherwise with Hepzibah; the Judge&rsquo;s
smile seemed to operate on her acerbity of heart like sunshine upon vinegar,
making it ten times sourer than ever.
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;Clifford,&rdquo; said she,&mdash;still too agitated to utter more than
an abrupt sentence,&mdash;&ldquo;Clifford has a home here!&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;May Heaven forgive you, Hepzibah,&rdquo; said Judge
Pyncheon,&mdash;reverently lifting his eyes towards that high court of equity
to which he appealed,&mdash;&ldquo;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,&mdash;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.&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;It would never suit Clifford,&rdquo; said Hepzibah, as briefly as
before.
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;Woman!&rdquo; broke forth the Judge, giving way to his resentment,
&ldquo;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!&mdash;I must see Clifford!&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
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&rsquo;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.
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;Hepzibah, Hepzibah!&rdquo; cried the voice; &ldquo;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!&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
For the instant, it appeared doubtful whether it were not the Judge&rsquo;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&rsquo;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.
</p>

<p>
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 Phœbe, and
the invisible Clifford, all three, together with the whole world besides, into
his immense heart, and gives them a warm bath in its flood of affection.
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;You do me great wrong, dear Cousin Hepzibah!&rdquo; said he, first
kindly offering her his hand, and then drawing on his glove preparatory to
departure. &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
With a bow to Hepzibah, and a degree of paternal benevolence in his parting nod
to Phœbe, the Judge left the shop, and went smiling along the street. As is
customary with the rich, when they aim at the honors of a republic, he
apologized, as it were, to the people, for his wealth, prosperity, and elevated
station, by a free and hearty manner towards those who knew him; putting off
the more of his dignity in due proportion with the humbleness of the man whom
he saluted, and thereby proving a haughty consciousness of his advantages as
irrefragably as if he had marched forth preceded by a troop of lackeys to clear
the way. On this particular forenoon, so excessive was the warmth of Judge
Pyncheon&rsquo;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!
</p>

<p>
No sooner had he disappeared than Hepzibah grew deadly white, and, staggering
towards Phœbe, let her head fall on the young girl&rsquo;s shoulder.
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;O Phœbe!&rdquo; murmured she, &ldquo;that man has been the horror of my
life! Shall I never, never have the courage,&mdash;will my voice never cease
from trembling long enough to let me tell him what he is?&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;Is he so very wicked?&rdquo; asked Phœbe. &ldquo;Yet his offers were
surely kind!&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;Do not speak of them,&mdash;he has a heart of iron!&rdquo; rejoined
Hepzibah. &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
Phœbe went accordingly, but perplexed herself, meanwhile, with queries as to
the purport of the scene which she had just witnessed, and also whether judges,
clergymen, and other characters of that eminent stamp and respectability, could
really, in any single instance, be otherwise than just and upright men. A doubt
of this nature has a most disturbing influence, and, if shown to be a fact,
comes with fearful and startling effect on minds of the trim, orderly, and
limit-loving class, in which we find our little country-girl. Dispositions more
boldly speculative may derive a stern enjoyment from the discovery, since there
must be evil in the world, that a high man is as likely to grasp his share of
it as a low one. A wider scope of view, and a deeper insight, may see rank,
dignity, and station, all proved illusory, so far as regards their claim to
human reverence, and yet not feel as if the universe were thereby tumbled
headlong into chaos. But Phœbe, in order to keep the universe in its old
place, was fain to smother, in some degree, her own intuitions as to Judge
Pyncheon&rsquo;s character. And as for her cousin&rsquo;s testimony in
disparagement of it, she concluded that Hepzibah&rsquo;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.
</p>

</div><!--end chapter-->

<div class="chapter">

<h2><a id="chap09"></a>IX.<br >
Clifford and Phœbe</h2>

<p>
Truly was there something high, generous, and noble in the native composition
of our poor old Hepzibah! Or else,&mdash;and it was quite as probably the
case,&mdash;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&mdash;for the
most part despairingly, never with any confidence of hope, but always with the
feeling that it was her brightest possibility&mdash;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,&mdash;so admired for what he was, or might have been,&mdash;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,&mdash;our poor, gaunt Hepzibah, in her rusty silks,
with her rigid joints, and the sad perversity of her scowl,&mdash;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,&mdash;and Heaven forgive us if
a smile insist on mingling with our conception of it!&mdash;few sights with
truer pathos in them, than Hepzibah presented on that first afternoon.
</p>

<p>
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!
</p>

<p>
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&rsquo;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&rsquo;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,&mdash;if we must use a more moderate simile,&mdash;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!
</p>

<p>
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&rsquo;s harpsichord. It was a moment of
great peril; for,&mdash;despite the traditionary awe that had gathered over
this instrument of music, and the dirges which spiritual fingers were said to
play on it,&mdash;the devoted sister had solemn thoughts of thrumming on its
chords for Clifford&rsquo;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,&mdash;possibly, by the
unrecognized interposition of the long-buried Alice herself,&mdash;the
threatening calamity was averted.
</p>

<p>
But the worst of all&mdash;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,&mdash;such being the poor gentlewoman&rsquo;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&rsquo;s lips, he would doubtless press Hepzibah&rsquo;s hand, in
fervent recognition of all her lavished love, and close his eyes,&mdash;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.
</p>

<p>
To be brief, besides Hepzibah&rsquo;s disadvantages of person, there was an
uncouthness pervading all her deeds; a clumsy something, that could but ill
adapt itself for use, and not at all for ornament. She was a grief to Clifford,
and she knew it. In this extremity, the antiquated virgin turned to Phœbe. No
grovelling jealousy was in her heart. Had it pleased Heaven to crown the heroic
fidelity of her life by making her personally the medium of Clifford&rsquo;s
happiness, it would have rewarded her for all the past, by a joy with no bright
tints, indeed, but deep and true, and worth a thousand gayer ecstasies. This
could not be. She therefore turned to Phœbe, and resigned the task into the
young girl&rsquo;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.
</p>

<p>
By the involuntary effect of a genial temperament, Phœbe soon grew to be
absolutely essential to the daily comfort, if not the daily life, of her two
forlorn companions. The grime and sordidness of the House of the Seven Gables
seemed to have vanished since her appearance there; the gnawing tooth of the
dry-rot was stayed among the old timbers of its skeleton frame; the dust had
ceased to settle down so densely, from the antique ceilings, upon the floors
and furniture of the rooms below,&mdash;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,&mdash;these were less powerful than the purifying influence
scattered throughout the atmosphere of the household by the presence of one
youthful, fresh, and thoroughly wholesome heart. There was no morbidness in
Phœbe; if there had been, the old Pyncheon House was the very locality to
ripen it into incurable disease. But now her spirit resembled, in its potency,
a minute quantity of ottar of rose in one of Hepzibah&rsquo;s huge, iron-bound
trunks, diffusing its fragrance through the various articles of linen and
wrought-lace, kerchiefs, caps, stockings, folded dresses, gloves, and whatever
else was treasured there. As every article in the great trunk was the sweeter
for the rose-scent, so did all the thoughts and emotions of Hepzibah and
Clifford, sombre as they might seem, acquire a subtle attribute of happiness
from Phœbe&rsquo;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,&mdash;now with the twittering gayety of the robins in the
pear-tree, and now to such a depth as she could with Hepzibah&rsquo;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.
</p>

<p>
A nature like Phœbe&rsquo;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 Phœbe&rsquo;s figure, were perhaps in some fit
proportion with the moral weight and substance, respectively, of the woman and
the girl.
</p>

<p>
To the guest,&mdash;to Hepzibah&rsquo;s brother,&mdash;or Cousin Clifford, as
Phœbe now began to call him,&mdash;she was especially necessary. Not that he
could ever be said to converse with her, or often manifest, in any other very
definite mode, his sense of a charm in her society. But if she were a long
while absent he became pettish and nervously restless, pacing the room to and
fro with the uncertainty that characterized all his movements; or else would
sit broodingly in his great chair, resting his head on his hands, and evincing
life only by an electric sparkle of ill-humor, whenever Hepzibah endeavored to
arouse him. Phœbe&rsquo;s presence, and the contiguity of her fresh life to
his blighted one, was usually all that he required. Indeed, such was the native
gush and play of her spirit, that she was seldom perfectly quiet and
undemonstrative, any more than a fountain ever ceases to dimple and warble with
its flow. She possessed the gift of song, and that, too, so naturally, that you
would as little think of inquiring whence she had caught it, or what master had
taught her, as of asking the same questions about a bird, in whose small strain
of music we recognize the voice of the Creator as distinctly as in the loudest
accents of his thunder. So long as Phœbe sang, she might stray at her own will
about the house. Clifford was content, whether the sweet, airy homeliness of
her tones came down from the upper chambers, or along the 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.
</p>

<p>
It is perhaps remarkable, considering her temperament, that Phœbe oftener
chose a strain of pathos than of gayety. But the young and happy are not ill
pleased to temper their life with a transparent shadow. The deepest pathos of
Phœbe&rsquo;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&rsquo;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&rsquo;s and her brother&rsquo;s life. Therefore, it was well
that Phœbe so often chose sad themes, and not amiss that they ceased to be so
sad while she was singing them.
</p>

<p>
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,&mdash;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,&mdash;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,&mdash;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,&mdash;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.
</p>

<p>
Phœbe, it is probable, had but a very imperfect comprehension of the character
over which she had thrown so beneficent a spell. Nor was it necessary. The fire
upon the hearth can gladden a whole 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&rsquo;s traits to be perfectly
appreciated by one whose sphere lay so much in the Actual as Phœbe&rsquo;s
did. For Clifford, however, the reality, and simplicity, and thorough
homeliness of the girl&rsquo;s nature were as powerful a charm as any that she
possessed. Beauty, it is true, and beauty almost perfect in its own style, was
indispensable. Had Phœbe been coarse in feature, shaped clumsily, of a harsh
voice, and uncouthly mannered, she might have been rich with all good gifts,
beneath this unfortunate exterior, and still, so long as she wore the guise of
woman, she would have shocked Clifford, and depressed him by her lack of
beauty. But nothing more beautiful&mdash;nothing prettier, at least&mdash;was
ever made than Phœbe. And, therefore, to this man,&mdash;whose whole poor and
impalpable enjoyment of existence heretofore, and until both his heart and
fancy died within him, had been a dream,&mdash;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,&mdash;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, Phœbe&rsquo;s presence made a home about
her,&mdash;that very sphere which the outcast, the prisoner, the
potentate,&mdash;the wretch beneath mankind, the wretch aside from it, or the
wretch above it,&mdash;instinctively pines after,&mdash;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.
</p>

<p>
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.
</p>

<p>
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&rsquo;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 Phœbe, without
being paternal, was not less chaste than if she had been his daughter. He was a
man, it is true, and recognized her as a woman. She was his only representative
of 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,&mdash;for the
effect was seldom more than momentary,&mdash;the half-torpid man would be full
of harmonious life, just as a long-silent harp is full of sound, when the
musician&rsquo;s fingers sweep across it. But, after all, it seemed rather a
perception, or a sympathy, than a sentiment belonging to himself as an
individual. He read Phœbe as he would a sweet and simple story; he listened to
her as if she were a verse of household poetry, which God, in requital of his
bleak and dismal lot, had permitted some angel, that most pitied him, to warble
through the house. She was not an actual fact for him, but the interpretation
of all that he lacked on earth brought warmly home to his conception; so that
this mere symbol, or life-like picture, had almost the comfort of reality.
</p>

<p>
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,&mdash;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,&mdash;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!
</p>

<p>
And how did Phœbe regard Clifford? The girl&rsquo;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 Phœbe afforded her poor patient a supply of purer
air. She impregnated it, too, not with a wild-flower scent,&mdash;for wildness
was no trait of hers,&mdash;but with the perfume of garden-roses, pinks, and
other blossoms of much sweetness, which nature and man have consented together
in making grow from summer to summer, and from century to century. Such a
flower was Phœbe in her relation with Clifford, and such the delight that he
inhaled from her.
</p>

<p>
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&rsquo;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?&mdash;this veil, under which far more of his spirit was hidden than
revealed, and through which he so imperfectly discerned the actual
world,&mdash;or was its gray texture woven of some dark calamity? Phœbe loved
no riddles, and would have been glad to escape the perplexity of this one.
Nevertheless, there was so far a good result of her meditations on
Clifford&rsquo;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&mdash;or fancied so&mdash;ever to shudder at the touch of his thin,
delicate fingers.
</p>

<p>
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&rsquo;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&rsquo;s attendance on her brother, while
Phœbe took charge of the shop; an arrangement which the public speedily
understood, and evinced their decided preference of the younger shopwoman by
the multiplicity of their calls during her administration of affairs. Dinner
over, Hepzibah took her knitting-work,&mdash;a long stocking of gray yarn, for
her brother&rsquo;s winter wear,&mdash;and with a sigh, and a scowl of
affectionate farewell to Clifford, and a gesture enjoining watchfulness on
Phœbe, went to take her seat behind the counter. It was now the young
girl&rsquo;s turn to be the nurse,&mdash;the guardian, the playmate,&mdash;or
whatever is the fitter phrase,&mdash;of the gray-haired man.
</p>

</div><!--end chapter-->

<div class="chapter">

<h2><a id="chap10"></a>X.<br >
The Pyncheon Garden</h2>

<p>
Clifford, except for Phœbe&rsquo;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.
</p>

<p>
Here, sometimes, in this green play-place of flickering light, Phœbe read to
Clifford. Her acquaintance, the artist, who appeared to have a literary turn,
had supplied her with works of fiction, in pamphlet form,&mdash;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&rsquo;s readings were in any degree more successful than
her elderly cousin&rsquo;s. Phœbe&rsquo;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&mdash;in which the country-girl, unused to works of that nature, often
became deeply absorbed&mdash;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 Phœbe broke into a peal of merry laughter at what she read, he
would now and then laugh for sympathy, but oftener respond with a troubled,
questioning look. If a tear&mdash;a maiden&rsquo;s sunshiny tear over imaginary
woe&mdash;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?
</p>

<p>
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,&mdash;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&rsquo;s face, Phœbe would be made
aware, by the light breaking through it, that a more delicate intelligence than
her own had caught a lambent flame from what she read. One glow of this kind,
however, was often the precursor of gloom for many hours afterward; because,
when the glow left him, he seemed conscious of a missing sense and power, and
groped about for them, as if a blind man should go seeking his lost eyesight.
</p>

<p>
It pleased him more, and was better for his inward welfare, that Phœbe should
talk, and make passing occurrences vivid to his mind by her accompanying
description and remarks. The life of the garden offered topics enough for such
discourse as suited Clifford best. He never failed to inquire what flowers had
bloomed since yesterday. His feeling for flowers was very exquisite, and seemed
not so much a taste as an emotion; he was fond of sitting with one in his hand,
intently observing it, and looking from its petals into Phœbe&rsquo;s face, as
if the garden flower were the sister of the household maiden. Not merely was
there a delight in the flower&rsquo;s perfume, or pleasure in its beautiful
form, and the delicacy or brightness of its hue; but Clifford&rsquo;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&rsquo;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.
</p>

<p>
It is wonderful how many pleasant incidents continually came to pass in that
secluded garden-spot when once Phœbe had set herself to look for them. She had
seen or heard a bee there, on the first day of her acquaintance with the place.
And often,&mdash;almost continually, indeed,&mdash;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&rsquo;s flight, or as if the soil of
Hepzibah&rsquo;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&rsquo;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.
</p>

<p>
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&rsquo;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,&mdash;a thumb&rsquo;s bigness of burnished plumage, hovering and
vibrating about the bean-poles. It was with indescribable interest, and even
more than childish delight, that Clifford watched the humming-birds. He used to
thrust his head softly out of the arbor to see them the better; all the while,
too, motioning Phœbe to be quiet, and snatching glimpses of the smile upon her
face, so as to heap his enjoyment up the higher with her sympathy. He had not
merely grown young;&mdash;he was a child again.
</p>

<p>
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,&mdash;always, from his
babyhood,&mdash;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&mdash;which the humming-birds sought far and wide, and
which had not grown in the Pyncheon garden before for forty years&mdash;on the
very summer of Clifford&rsquo;s return.
</p>

<p>
Then would the tears stand in poor Hepzibah&rsquo;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&mdash;when it might so easily, as one would think, have been
adjusted otherwise&mdash;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. &ldquo;Take my hand, Phœbe,&rdquo; he would
say, &ldquo;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!&rdquo;
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&rsquo;s scowl, and Phœbe&rsquo;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.
</p>

<p>
The author needs great faith in his reader&rsquo;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.
</p>

<p>
One of the available means of amusement, of which Phœbe made the most in
Clifford&rsquo;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&rsquo;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,&mdash;as they scratched worms out of the rich, black soil, or pecked
at such plants as suited their taste,&mdash;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.
</p>

<p>
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&rsquo;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&rsquo;s
importance could have justified, even in a mother&rsquo;s eyes, the
perseverance with which she watched over its safety, ruffling her small person
to twice its proper size, and flying in everybody&rsquo;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&rsquo;s cat, on the top of
the high fence,&mdash;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.
</p>

<p>
Phœbe, after getting well acquainted with the old hen, was sometimes permitted
to take the chicken in her hand, which was quite capable of grasping its cubic
inch or two of body. While she curiously examined its hereditary
marks,&mdash;the peculiar speckle of its plumage, the funny tuft on its head,
and a knob on each of its legs,&mdash;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!
</p>

<p>
The second of Chanticleer&rsquo;s two wives, ever since Phœbe&rsquo;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,&mdash;croaking to herself, all the while, with
inexpressible complacency,&mdash;it was made evident that this identical hen,
much as mankind undervalued her, carried something about her person the worth
of which was not to be estimated either in gold or precious stones. Shortly
after, there was a prodigious cackling and gratulation of Chanticleer and all
his family, including the wizened chicken, who appeared to understand the
matter quite as well as did his sire, his mother, or his aunt. That afternoon
Phœbe found a diminutive egg,&mdash;not in the regular nest, it was far too
precious to be trusted there,&mdash;but cunningly hidden under the
currant-bushes, on some dry stalks of last year&rsquo;s grass. Hepzibah, on
learning the fact, took possession of the egg and appropriated it to
Clifford&rsquo;s breakfast, on account of a certain delicacy of flavor, for
which, as she affirmed, these eggs had always been famous. Thus unscrupulously
did the old gentlewoman sacrifice the continuance, perhaps, of an ancient
feathered race, with no better end than to supply her brother with a dainty
that hardly filled the bowl of a tea-spoon! It must have been in reference to
this outrage that Chanticleer, the next day, accompanied by the bereaved mother
of the egg, took his post in front of Phœbe and Clifford, and delivered
himself of a harangue that might have proved as long as his own pedigree, but
for a fit of merriment on Phœbe&rsquo;s part. Hereupon, the offended fowl
stalked away on his long stilts, and utterly withdrew his notice from Phœbe
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.
</p>

<p>
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&rsquo;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&rsquo;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,&mdash;beautiful faces,
arrayed in bewitching smiles,&mdash;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,
&ldquo;The dark face gazes at me!&rdquo; and be miserable the whole day
afterwards. Phœbe, when she hung over the fountain by Clifford&rsquo;s side,
could see nothing of all this,&mdash;neither the beauty nor the
ugliness,&mdash;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&rsquo;s well. The truth
was, however, that his fancy&mdash;reviving faster than his will and judgment,
and always stronger than they&mdash;created shapes of loveliness that were
symbolic of his native character, and now and then a stern and dreadful shape
that typified his fate.
</p>

<p>
On Sundays, after Phœbe had been at church,&mdash;for the girl had a
church-going conscience, and would hardly have been at ease had she missed
either prayer, singing, sermon, or benediction,&mdash;after church-time,
therefore, there was, ordinarily, a sober little festival in the garden. In
addition to Clifford, Hepzibah, and Phœbe, two guests made up the company. One
was the artist Holgrave, who, in spite of his consociation with reformers, and
his other queer and questionable traits, continued to hold an elevated place in
Hepzibah&rsquo;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&rsquo;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&rsquo;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&mdash;though, doubtless, by depression&mdash;when
any casual incident or recollection made him sensible of the withered leaf.
</p>

<p>
So this oddly composed little social party used to assemble under the ruinous
arbor. Hepzibah&mdash;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&mdash;exhibited a not ungraceful hospitality. She
talked kindly to the vagrant artist, and took sage counsel&mdash;lady as she
was&mdash;with the wood-sawyer, the messenger of everybody&rsquo;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.
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;Miss Hepzibah, ma&rsquo;am,&rdquo; said he once, after they had all been
cheerful together, &ldquo;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!&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;Uncle Venner&rdquo; observed Clifford in a drowsy, inward tone,
&ldquo;is always talking about his farm. But I have a better scheme for him, by
and by. We shall see!&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;Ah, Mr. Clifford Pyncheon!&rdquo; said the man of patches, &ldquo;you
may scheme for me as much as you please; but I&rsquo;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&rsquo;t be! I&rsquo;m one
of those people who think that infinity is big enough for us all&mdash;and
eternity long enough.&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;Why, so they are, Uncle Venner,&rdquo; remarked Phœbe after a pause;
for she had been trying to fathom the profundity and appositeness of this
concluding apothegm. &ldquo;But for this short life of ours, one would like a
house and a moderate garden-spot of one&rsquo;s own.&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;It appears to me,&rdquo; said the daguerreotypist, smiling, &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;Come, Phœbe,&rdquo; said Hepzibah, &ldquo;it is time to bring the
currants.&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
And then, while the yellow richness of the declining sunshine still fell into
the open space of the garden, Phœbe brought out a loaf of bread and a china
bowl of currants, freshly gathered from the bushes, and crushed with sugar.
These, with water,&mdash;but not from the fountain of ill omen, close at
hand,&mdash;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&rsquo;s deep, thoughtful, all-observant
eyes, there was, now and then, an expression, not sinister, but questionable;
as if he had some other interest in the scene than a stranger, a youthful and
unconnected adventurer, might be supposed to have. With great mobility of
outward mood, however, he applied himself to the task of enlivening the party;
and with so much success, that even dark-hued Hepzibah threw off one tint of
melancholy, and made what shift she could with the remaining portion. Phœbe
said to herself,&mdash;&ldquo;How pleasant he can be!&rdquo; 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,&mdash;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&rsquo;s studio.
</p>

<p>
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&rsquo;s
should become animated, and show itself readily responsive to what was said
around him. But he gave out his own thoughts, likewise, with an airy and
fanciful glow; so that they glistened, as it were, through the arbor, and made
their escape among the interstices of the foliage. He had been as cheerful, no
doubt, while alone with Phœbe, but never with such tokens of acute, although
partial intelligence.
</p>

<p>
But, as the sunlight left the peaks of the Seven Gables, so did the excitement
fade out of Clifford&rsquo;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.
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;I want my happiness!&rdquo; at last he murmured hoarsely and
indistinctly, hardly shaping out the words. &ldquo;Many, many years have I
waited for it! It is late! It is late! I want my happiness!&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
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,&mdash;though some in less degree, or less perceptibly,
than their fellows. Fate has no happiness in store for you; unless your quiet
home in the old family residence with the faithful Hepzibah, and your long
summer afternoons with Phœbe, and these Sabbath festivals with Uncle Venner
and the daguerreotypist, deserve to be called happiness! Why not? If not the
thing itself, it is marvellously like it, and the more so for that ethereal and
intangible quality which causes it all to vanish at too close an introspection.
Take it, therefore, while you may. Murmur not,&mdash;question not,&mdash;but
make the most of it!
</p>

</div><!--end chapter-->

<div class="chapter">

<h2><a id="chap11"></a>XI.<br >
The Arched Window</h2>

<p>
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,&mdash;or, at least, throughout the summer-time,&mdash;in
just the kind of life described in the preceding pages. Fancying, however, that
it might be for his benefit occasionally to diversify the scene, Phœbe
sometimes suggested that he should look out upon the life of the street. For
this purpose, they used to mount the staircase together, to the second story of
the house, where, at the termination of a wide entry, there was an arched
window, of uncommonly large dimensions, shaded by a pair of curtains. It opened
above the porch, where there had formerly been a balcony, the balustrade of
which had long since gone to decay, and been removed. At this arched window,
throwing it open, but keeping himself in comparative obscurity by means of the
curtain, Clifford had an opportunity of witnessing such a portion of the great
world&rsquo;s movement as might be supposed to roll through one of the retired
streets of a not very populous city. But he and Phœbe made a sight as well
worth seeing as any that the city could exhibit. The pale, gray, childish,
aged, melancholy, yet often simply cheerful, and sometimes delicately
intelligent aspect of Clifford, peering from behind the faded crimson of the
curtain,&mdash;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!
</p>

<p>
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&rsquo;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.
</p>

<p>
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.
</p>

<p>
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&rsquo;s cart, with its snowy
canopy, was an acceptable object; so was the fish-cart, heralded by its horn;
so, likewise, was the countryman&rsquo;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&rsquo;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&rsquo; scissors, or the carving-knife, or the paternal razor, or
anything else that lacked an edge (except, indeed, poor Clifford&rsquo;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&rsquo;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&rsquo;s wheel had hissed in his childish
ears.
</p>

<p>
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&rsquo;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.
</p>

<p>
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,&mdash;the cobbler, the blacksmith, the
soldier, the lady with her fan, the toper with his bottle, the milk-maid
sitting by her cow&mdash;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,&mdash;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,&mdash;however serious, however trifling,&mdash;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&rsquo;s shoe
finished, nor the blacksmith&rsquo;s iron shaped out; nor was there a drop less
of brandy in the toper&rsquo;s bottle, nor a drop more of milk in the
milkmaid&rsquo;s pail, nor one additional coin in the miser&rsquo;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&rsquo;s granted kiss! But, rather
than swallow this last too acrid ingredient, we reject the whole moral of the
show.
</p>

<p>
The monkey, meanwhile, with a thick tail curling out into preposterous
prolixity from beneath his tartans, took his station at the Italian&rsquo;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&rsquo;s
shop-door, and upward to the arched window, whence Phœbe and Clifford were
looking down. Every moment, also, he took off his Highland bonnet, and
performed a bow and scrape. Sometimes, moreover, he made personal application
to individuals, holding out his small black palm, and otherwise plainly
signifying his excessive desire for whatever filthy lucre might happen to be in
anybody&rsquo;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,&mdash;take this monkey just as he was, in short, and you could
desire no better image of the Mammon of copper coin, symbolizing the grossest
form of the love of money. Neither was there any possibility of satisfying the
covetous little devil. Phœbe threw down a whole handful of cents, which he
picked up with joyless eagerness, handed them over to the Italian for
safekeeping, and immediately recommenced a series of pantomimic petitions for
more.
</p>

<p>
Doubtless, more than one New-Englander&mdash;or, let him be of what country he
might, it is as likely to be the case&mdash;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.
</p>

<p>
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&rsquo;s play, when he can distinguish the tedious commonplace of
each man&rsquo;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,&mdash;one great
life,&mdash;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,&mdash;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,&mdash;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.
</p>

<p>
So it proved with Clifford. He shuddered; he grew pale; he threw an appealing
look at Hepzibah and Phœbe, who were with him at the window. They comprehended
nothing of his emotions, and supposed him merely disturbed by the unaccustomed
tumult. At last, with tremulous limbs, he started up, set his foot on the
window-sill, and in an instant more would have been in the unguarded balcony.
As it was, the whole procession might have seen him, a wild, haggard figure,
his gray locks floating in the wind that waved their banners; a lonely being,
estranged from his race, but now feeling himself man again, by virtue of the
irrepressible instinct that possessed him. Had Clifford attained the balcony,
he would probably have leaped into the street; but whether impelled by the
species of terror that sometimes urges its victim over the very precipice which
he shrinks from, or by a natural magnetism, tending towards the great centre of
humanity, it were not easy to decide. Both impulses might have wrought on him
at once.
</p>

<p>
But his companions, affrighted by his gesture,&mdash;which was that of a man
hurried away in spite of himself,&mdash;seized Clifford&rsquo;s garment and
held him back. Hepzibah shrieked. Phœbe, to whom all extravagance was a
horror, burst into sobs and tears.
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;Clifford, Clifford! are you crazy?&rdquo; cried his sister.
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;I hardly know, Hepzibah,&rdquo; said Clifford, drawing a long breath.
&ldquo;Fear nothing,&mdash;it is over now,&mdash;but had I taken that plunge,
and survived it, methinks it would have made me another man!&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
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&mdash;death!
</p>

<p>
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&rsquo;s part, of God&rsquo;s care
and love towards him,&mdash;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.
</p>

<p>
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&rsquo;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&rsquo;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,&mdash;&ldquo;It is the Sabbath!&mdash;The
Sabbath!&mdash;Yea; the Sabbath!&rdquo;&mdash;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,&mdash;&ldquo;It is the
Sabbath!&rdquo;&mdash;and flinging their accents afar off, to melt into the air
and pervade it with the holy word. The air with God&rsquo;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.
</p>

<p>
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&mdash;whether it were an old man&rsquo;s decent coat well brushed for
the thousandth time, or a little boy&rsquo;s first sack and trousers finished
yesterday by his mother&rsquo;s needle&mdash;had somewhat of the quality of
ascension-robes. Forth, likewise, from the portal of the old house stepped
Phœbe, putting up her small green sunshade, and throwing upward a glance and
smile of parting kindness to the faces at the arched window. In her aspect
there was a familiar gladness, and a holiness that you could play with, and yet
reverence it as much as ever. She was like a prayer, offered up in the
homeliest beauty of one&rsquo;s mother-tongue. Fresh was Phœbe, moreover, and
airy and sweet in her apparel; as if nothing that she wore&mdash;neither her
gown, nor her small straw bonnet, nor her little kerchief, any more than her
snowy stockings&mdash;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 rosebuds.
</p>

<p>
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.
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;Hepzibah,&rdquo; asked Clifford, after watching Phœbe to the corner,
&ldquo;do you never go to church?&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;No, Clifford!&rdquo; she replied,&mdash;&ldquo;not these many, many
years!&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;Were I to be there,&rdquo; he rejoined, &ldquo;it seems to me that I
could pray once more, when so many human souls were praying all around
me!&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
She looked into Clifford&rsquo;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,&mdash;both so long separate from the
world, and, as she now recognized, scarcely friends with Him above,&mdash;to
kneel down among the people, and be reconciled to God and man at once.
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;Dear brother,&rdquo; said she earnestly, &ldquo;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!&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
So Hepzibah and her brother made themselves, ready&mdash;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,&mdash;made themselves ready, in their faded bettermost, to go to
church. They descended the staircase together,&mdash;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&rsquo;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.
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;It cannot be, Hepzibah!&mdash;it is too late,&rdquo; said Clifford with
deep sadness. &ldquo;We are ghosts! We have no right among human
beings,&mdash;no right anywhere but in this old house, which has a curse on it,
and which, therefore, we are doomed to haunt! And, besides,&rdquo; he
continued, with a fastidious sensibility, inalienably characteristic of the
man, &ldquo;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&rsquo; gowns at sight of me!&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
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&rsquo;s own heart! What jailer so inexorable as one&rsquo;s
self!
</p>

<p>
But it would be no fair picture of Clifford&rsquo;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,&mdash;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&rsquo;s reviving consciousness goes back to a moment considerably
behind the accident that stupefied him. He sometimes told Phœbe and Hepzibah
his dreams, in which he invariably played the part of a child, or a very young
man. So vivid were they, in his relation of them, that he once held a dispute
with his sister as to the particular figure or print of a chintz morning-dress
which he had seen their mother wear, in the dream of the preceding night.
Hepzibah, piquing herself on a woman&rsquo;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.
</p>

<p>
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.
</p>

<p>
Clifford would, doubtless, have been glad to share their sports. One afternoon
he was seized with an irresistible desire to blow soap-bubbles; an amusement,
as Hepzibah told Phœbe apart, that had been a favorite one with her brother
when they were both children. Behold him, therefore, at the arched window, with
an earthen pipe in his mouth! Behold him, with his gray hair, and a wan, unreal
smile over his countenance, where still hovered a beautiful grace, which his
worst enemy must have acknowledged to be spiritual and immortal, since it had
survived so long! Behold him, scattering airy spheres abroad from the window
into the street! Little impalpable worlds were those soap-bubbles, with the big
world depicted, in hues bright as imagination, 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.
</p>

<p>
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,&mdash;at first with a stern, keen glance, which
penetrated at once into the obscurity behind the arched window,&mdash;then with
a smile which might be conceived as diffusing a dog-day sultriness for the
space of several yards about him.
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;Aha, Cousin Clifford!&rdquo; cried Judge Pyncheon. &ldquo;What! Still
blowing soap-bubbles!&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
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.
</p>

</div><!--end chapter-->

<div class="chapter">

<h2><a id="chap12"></a>XII.<br >
The Daguerreotypist</h2>

<p>
It must not be supposed that the life of a personage naturally so active as
Phœbe could be wholly confined within the precincts of the old Pyncheon House.
Clifford&rsquo;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,&mdash;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,&mdash;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.
</p>

<p>
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, Phœbe was free to
follow her own tastes for the remainder of the day and evening.
</p>

<p>
This was a freedom essential to the health even of a character so little
susceptible of morbid influences as that of Phœbe. The old house, as we have
already said, had both the dry-rot and the damp-rot in its walls; it was not
good to breathe no other atmosphere than that. Hepzibah, though she had her
valuable and redeeming traits, had grown to be a kind of lunatic by imprisoning
herself so long in one place, with no other company than a single series of
ideas, and but one affection, and one bitter sense of wrong. Clifford, the
reader may perhaps imagine, was too inert to operate morally on his
fellow-creatures, however intimate and exclusive their relations with him. But
the sympathy or magnetism among human beings is more 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 Phœbe herself
observed, always began to droop sooner in Clifford&rsquo;s hand, or
Hepzibah&rsquo;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,&mdash;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,&mdash;had gone shopping about
the city, ransacking entire depots of splendid merchandise, and bringing home a
ribbon,&mdash;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&mdash;unless for such moral medicines as the above, we should soon have
beheld our poor Phœbe grow thin and put on a bleached, unwholesome aspect, and
assume strange, shy ways, prophetic of old-maidenhood and a cheerless future.
</p>

<p>
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.
</p>

<p>
The only youthful mind with which Phœbe had an opportunity of frequent
intercourse was that of the daguerreotypist. Inevitably, by the pressure of the
seclusion about them, they had been brought into habits of some familiarity.
Had they met under different circumstances, neither of these young persons
would have been likely to bestow much thought upon the other, unless, indeed,
their extreme dissimilarity should have proved a principle of mutual
attraction. Both, it is true, were characters proper to New England life, and
possessing a common ground, therefore, in their more external developments; but
as unlike, in their respective interiors, as if their native climes had been at
world-wide distance. During the early part of their acquaintance, Phœbe had
held back rather more than was customary with her frank and simple manners from
Holgrave&rsquo;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.
</p>

<p>
The artist, in a desultory manner, had imparted to Phœbe something of his
history. Young as he was, and had his career terminated at the point already
attained, there had been enough of incident to fill, very creditably, an
autobiographic volume. A romance on the plan of Gil Blas, adapted to American
society and manners, would cease to be a romance. The experience of many
individuals among us, who think it hardly worth the telling, would equal the
vicissitudes of the Spaniard&rsquo;s earlier life; while their ultimate
success, or the point whither they tend, may be incomparably higher than any
that a novelist would imagine for his hero. Holgrave, as he told Phœbe
somewhat proudly, could not boast of his origin, unless as being exceedingly
humble, nor of his education, except that it had been the scantiest possible,
and obtained by a few winter-months&rsquo; 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 Phœbe, and, indeed, satisfactorily proved, by putting Chanticleer, who
happened to be scratching near by, to sleep) he had very remarkable endowments.
</p>

<p>
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,&mdash;continually changing his whereabout, and,
therefore, responsible neither to public opinion nor to
individuals,&mdash;putting off one exterior, and snatching up another, to be
soon shifted for a third,&mdash;he had never violated the innermost man, but
had carried his conscience along with him. It was impossible to know Holgrave
without recognizing this to be the fact. Hepzibah had seen it. Phœbe soon saw
it likewise, and gave him the sort of confidence which such a certainty
inspires. She was startled, however, and sometimes repelled,&mdash;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&rsquo;s warning, it could establish its right to hold its ground.
</p>

<p>
Then, moreover, she scarcely thought him affectionate in his nature. He was too
calm and cool an observer. Phœbe felt his eye, often; his heart, seldom or
never. He took a certain kind of interest in Hepzibah and her brother, and
Phœbe herself. He studied them attentively, and allowed no slightest
circumstance of their individualities to escape him. He was ready to do them
whatever good he might; but, after all, he never exactly made common cause with
them, nor gave any reliable evidence that he loved them better in proportion as
he knew them more. In his relations with them, he seemed to be in quest of
mental food, not heart-sustenance. Phœbe could not conceive what interested
him so much in her friends and herself, intellectually, since he cared nothing
for them, or, comparatively, so little, as objects of human affection.
</p>

<p>
Always, in his interviews with Phœbe, the artist made especial inquiry as to
the welfare of Clifford, whom, except at the Sunday festival, he seldom saw.
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;Does he still seem happy?&rdquo; he asked one day.
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;As happy as a child,&rdquo; answered Phœbe; &ldquo;but&mdash;like a
child, too&mdash;very easily disturbed.&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;How disturbed?&rdquo; inquired Holgrave. &ldquo;By things without, or by
thoughts within?&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;I cannot see his thoughts! How should I?&rdquo; replied Phœbe with
simple piquancy. &ldquo;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,&mdash;when the sun shines into his
mind,&mdash;then I venture to peep in, just as far as the light reaches, but no
further. It is holy ground where the shadow falls!&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;How prettily you express this sentiment!&rdquo; said the artist.
&ldquo;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!&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;How strange that you should wish it!&rdquo; remarked Phœbe
involuntarily. &ldquo;What is Cousin Clifford to you?&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;Oh, nothing,&mdash;of course, nothing!&rdquo; answered Holgrave with a
smile. &ldquo;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&rsquo;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&mdash;a complexity of
complexities&mdash;do they present! It requires intuitive sympathy, like a
young girl&rsquo;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.&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
The artist now turned the conversation to themes less dark than that which they
had touched upon. Phœbe and he were young together; nor had Holgrave, in his
premature experience of life, wasted entirely that beautiful spirit of youth,
which, gushing forth from one small heart and fancy, may diffuse itself over
the universe, making it all as bright as on the first day of creation.
Man&rsquo;s own youth is the world&rsquo;s youth; at least, he feels as if it
were, and imagines that the earth&rsquo;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&rsquo;s old age, but never
actually believed what he said; he was a young man still, and therefore looked
upon the world&mdash;that gray-bearded and wrinkled profligate, decrepit,
without being venerable&mdash;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,&mdash;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,&mdash;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,&mdash;as doubtless it has seemed to the hopeful of every century
since the epoch of Adam&rsquo;s grandchildren,&mdash;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.
</p>

<p>
As to the main point,&mdash;may we never live to doubt it!&mdash;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&rsquo;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&rsquo;s best directed
effort accomplishes a kind of dream, while God is the sole worker of realities.
</p>

<p>
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&mdash;from his own as well as other
eyes&mdash;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,&mdash;in his
crude, wild, and misty philosophy, and the practical experience that
counteracted some of its tendencies; in his magnanimous zeal for man&rsquo;s
welfare, and his recklessness of whatever the ages had established in
man&rsquo;s behalf; in his faith, and in his infidelity; in what he had, and in
what he lacked,&mdash;the artist might fitly enough stand forth as the
representative of many compeers in his native land.
</p>

<p>
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&rsquo;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&rsquo;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.
</p>

<p>
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,&mdash;so little harmed, too, by the
many tests that had tried his metal,&mdash;it was pleasant to see him in his
kindly intercourse with Phœbe. Her thought had scarcely done him justice when
it pronounced him cold; or, if so, he had grown warmer now. Without such
purpose on her part, and unconsciously on his, she made the House of the Seven
Gables like a home to him, and the garden a familiar precinct. With the insight
on which he prided himself, he fancied that he could look through Phœbe, and
all around her, and could read her off like a page of a child&rsquo;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 Phœbe&rsquo;s capacity, was
beguiled, by some silent charm of hers, to talk freely of what he dreamed of
doing in the world. He poured himself out as to another self. Very possibly, he
forgot Phœbe while he talked to her, and was moved only by the inevitable
tendency of thought, when rendered sympathetic by enthusiasm and emotion, to
flow into the first safe reservoir which it finds. But, had you peeped at them
through the chinks of the garden-fence, the young man&rsquo;s earnestness and
heightened color might have led you to suppose that he was making love to the
young girl!
</p>

<p>
At length, something was said by Holgrave that made it apposite for Phœbe 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.
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;Shall we never, never get rid of this Past?&rdquo; cried he, keeping up
the earnest tone of his preceding conversation. &ldquo;It lies upon the Present
like a giant&rsquo;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,&mdash;to Death, if we give the matter the right
word!&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;But I do not see it,&rdquo; observed Phœbe.
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;For example, then,&rdquo; continued Holgrave: &ldquo;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&rsquo;s
books! We laugh at dead men&rsquo;s jokes, and cry at dead men&rsquo;s pathos!
We are sick of dead men&rsquo;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&rsquo;s forms and creeds. Whatever we seek
to do, of our own free motion, a dead man&rsquo;s icy hand obstructs us! Turn
our eyes to what point we may, a dead man&rsquo;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&rsquo;s houses; as, for instance, in this of the Seven
Gables!&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;And why not,&rdquo; said Phœbe, &ldquo;so long as we can be comfortable
in them?&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;But we shall live to see the day, I trust,&rdquo; went on the artist,
&ldquo;when no man shall build his house for posterity. Why should he? He might
just as reasonably order a durable suit of clothes,&mdash;leather, or
guttapercha, or whatever else lasts longest,&mdash;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&mdash;our capitols, state-houses,
court-houses, city-hall, and churches,&mdash;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.&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;How you hate everything old!&rdquo; said Phœbe in dismay. &ldquo;It
makes me dizzy to think of such a shifting world!&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;I certainly love nothing mouldy,&rdquo; answered Holgrave. &ldquo;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?&mdash;its dark,
low-studded rooms&mdash;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,&mdash;purified till only its ashes remain!&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;Then why do you live in it?&rdquo; asked Phœbe, a little piqued.
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;Oh, I am pursuing my studies here; not in books, however,&rdquo; replied
Holgrave. &ldquo;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?&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;Yes, indeed!&rdquo; said Phœbe; &ldquo;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!&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;I do believe it,&rdquo; said the artist seriously; &ldquo;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,&mdash;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,&mdash;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,&mdash;all, or most of which calamity I have the means of
tracing to the old Puritan&rsquo;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,&mdash;forgive me, Phœbe, but I cannot think of you as one of
them,&mdash;in their brief New England pedigree, there has been time enough to
infect them all with one kind of lunacy or another.&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;You speak very unceremoniously of my kindred,&rdquo; said Phœbe,
debating with herself whether she ought to take offence.
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;I speak true thoughts to a true mind!&rdquo; answered Holgrave, with a
vehemence which Phœbe had not before witnessed in him. &ldquo;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,&mdash;at
least, his very image, in mind and body,&mdash;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?&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;How strangely in earnest you are!&rdquo; exclaimed Phœbe, looking at
him with surprise and perplexity; half alarmed and partly inclined to laugh.
&ldquo;You talk of the lunacy of the Pyncheons; is it contagious?&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;I understand you!&rdquo; said the artist, coloring and laughing.
&ldquo;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.&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;Do you write for the magazines?&rdquo; inquired Phœbe.
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;Is it possible you did not know it?&rdquo; cried Holgrave. &ldquo;Well,
such is literary fame! Yes. Miss Phœbe Pyncheon, among the multitude of my
marvellous gifts I have that of writing stories; and my name has figured, I can
assure you, on the covers of Graham and Godey, making as respectable an
appearance, for aught I could see, as any of the canonized bead-roll with which
it was associated. In the humorous line, I am thought to have a very pretty way
with me; and as for pathos, I am as provocative of tears as an onion. But shall
I read you my story?&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;Yes, if it is not very long,&rdquo; said Phœbe,&mdash;and added
laughingly,&mdash;&ldquo;nor very dull.&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
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.
</p>

</div><!--end chapter-->

<div class="chapter">

<h2><a id="chap13"></a>XIII.<br >
Alice Pyncheon</h2>

<p>
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.
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;And what does your master want with me?&rdquo; said the carpenter to Mr.
Pyncheon&rsquo;s black servant. &ldquo;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&rsquo;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.&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;Don&rsquo;t know what massa wants,&rdquo; answered Scipio. &ldquo;The
house is a berry good house, and old Colonel Pyncheon think so too, I
reckon;&mdash;else why the old man haunt it so, and frighten a poor nigga, as
he does?&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;Well, well, friend Scipio; let your master know that I&rsquo;m
coming,&rdquo; said the carpenter with a laugh. &ldquo;For a fair, workmanlike
job, he&rsquo;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,&rdquo; he added, muttering to himself,
&ldquo;my old grandfather, the wizard, will be pretty sure to stick to the
Pyncheons as long as their walls hold together.&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;What&rsquo;s that you mutter to yourself, Matthew Maule?&rdquo; asked
Scipio. &ldquo;And what for do you look so black at me?&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;No matter, darky,&rdquo; said the carpenter. &ldquo;Do you think nobody
is to look black but yourself? Go tell your master I&rsquo;m coming; and if you
happen to see Mistress Alice, his daughter, give Matthew Maule&rsquo;s humble
respects to her. She has brought a fair face from Italy,&mdash;fair, and
gentle, and proud,&mdash;has that same Alice Pyncheon!&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;He talk of Mistress Alice!&rdquo; cried Scipio, as he returned from his
errand. &ldquo;The low carpenter-man! He no business so much as to look at her
a great way off!&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
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.
</p>

<p>
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,&mdash;with the
pertinacity which was one of his distinguishing characteristics while
alive,&mdash;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.
</p>

<p>
Now, the wizard&rsquo;s grandson, the young Matthew Maule of our story, was
popularly supposed to have inherited some of his ancestor&rsquo;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&rsquo;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&rsquo;s eye. Some said that he could look into
people&rsquo;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&rsquo;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.
</p>

<p>
After receiving Mr. Pyncheon&rsquo;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&rsquo;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.
</p>

<p>
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&mdash;or probably it might be the housekeeper&mdash;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,&mdash;exotics, but which had
never known a more genial sunshine than that of the New England
autumn,&mdash;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&rsquo;s hospitable heart,
which kept them all warm, and made a great whole of the seven smaller ones.
</p>

<p>
There was a vertical sundial on the front gable; and as the carpenter passed
beneath it, he looked up and noted the hour.
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;Three o&rsquo;clock!&rdquo; said he to himself. &ldquo;My father told me
that dial was put up only an hour before the old Colonel&rsquo;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!&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
It might have befitted a craftsman, like Matthew Maule, on being sent for to a
gentleman&rsquo;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&rsquo;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.
</p>

<p>
Black Scipio answered the summons in a prodigious hurry; but showed the whites
of his eyes, in amazement on beholding only the carpenter.
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;Lord-a-mercy, what a great man he be, this carpenter fellow!&rdquo;
mumbled Scipio, down in his throat. &ldquo;Anybody think he beat on the door
with his biggest hammer!&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;Here I am!&rdquo; said Maule sternly. &ldquo;Show me the way to your
master&rsquo;s parlor.&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
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.
</p>

<p>
As Mr. Pyncheon had been impatiently awaiting Maule&rsquo;s arrival, black
Scipio, of course, lost no time in ushering the carpenter into his
master&rsquo;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&rsquo;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&mdash;that looked
old, and had a mellow tinge diffused through all their artful
splendor&mdash;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.
</p>

<p>
There were two objects that appeared rather out of place in this very
handsomely furnished room. One was a large map, or surveyor&rsquo;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.
</p>

<p>
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,&mdash;which, indeed,
he would have blushed to be guilty of,&mdash;but it never occurred to him that
a person in Maule&rsquo;s station had a claim on his courtesy, or would trouble
himself about it one way or the other.
</p>

<p>
The carpenter, however, stepped at once to the hearth, and turned himself
about, so as to look Mr. Pyncheon in the face.
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;You sent for me,&rdquo; said he. &ldquo;Be pleased to explain your
business, that I may go back to my own affairs.&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;Ah! excuse me,&rdquo; said Mr. Pyncheon quietly. &ldquo;I did not mean
to tax your time without a recompense. Your name, I think, is
Maule,&mdash;Thomas or Matthew Maule,&mdash;a son or grandson of the builder of
this house?&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;Matthew Maule,&rdquo; replied the carpenter,&mdash;&ldquo;son of him who
built the house,&mdash;grandson of the rightful proprietor of the soil.&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;I know the dispute to which you allude,&rdquo; observed Mr. Pyncheon
with undisturbed equanimity. &ldquo;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,&mdash;equitably, it is to be presumed,&mdash;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,&mdash;excuse me, I mean no offence,&mdash;this irritability, which you
have just shown, is not entirely aside from the matter.&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;If you can find anything for your purpose, Mr. Pyncheon,&rdquo; said the
carpenter, &ldquo;in a man&rsquo;s natural resentment for the wrongs done to
his blood, you are welcome to it.&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;I take you at your word, Goodman Maule,&rdquo; said the owner of the
Seven Gables, with a smile, &ldquo;and will proceed to suggest a mode in which
your hereditary resentments&mdash;justifiable or otherwise&mdash;may have had a
bearing on my affairs. You have heard, I suppose, that the Pyncheon family,
ever since my grandfather&rsquo;s days, have been prosecuting a still unsettled
claim to a very large extent of territory at the Eastward?&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;Often,&rdquo; replied Maule,&mdash;and it is said that a smile came over
his face,&mdash;&ldquo;very often,&mdash;from my father!&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;This claim,&rdquo; continued Mr. Pyncheon, after pausing a moment, as if
to consider what the carpenter&rsquo;s smile might mean, &ldquo;appeared to be
on the very verge of a settlement and full allowance, at the period of my
grandfather&rsquo;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,&mdash;and my legal advisers coincide in the belief, which, moreover,
is authorized, to a certain extent, by the family traditions,&mdash;that my
grandfather was in possession of some deed, or other document, essential to
this claim, but which has since disappeared.&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;Very likely,&rdquo; said Matthew Maule,&mdash;and again, it is said,
there was a dark smile on his face,&mdash;&ldquo;but what can a poor carpenter
have to do with the grand affairs of the Pyncheon family?&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;Perhaps nothing,&rdquo; returned Mr. Pyncheon, &ldquo;possibly
much!&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
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&rsquo;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&rsquo;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&rsquo;s grave to be searched. Nothing was
discovered, however, except that, unaccountably, the right hand of the skeleton
was gone.
</p>

<p>
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&rsquo;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&rsquo;s father had had some job to perform
on the day before, or possibly the very morning of the Colonel&rsquo;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.
</p>

<p>
Matthew Maule understood the insinuated suspicion.
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;My father,&rdquo; he said,&mdash;but still there was that dark smile,
making a riddle of his countenance,&mdash;&ldquo;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!&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;I shall not bandy words with you,&rdquo; observed the foreign-bred Mr.
Pyncheon, with haughty composure. &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
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&rsquo;s
homestead-ground, together with the House of the Seven Gables, now standing on
it, in requital of the documentary evidence so urgently required.
</p>

<p>
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&rsquo;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&rsquo;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.
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;Give up this house!&rdquo; exclaimed Mr. Pyncheon, in amazement at the
proposal. &ldquo;Were I to do so, my grandfather would not rest quiet in his
grave!&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;He never has, if all stories are true,&rdquo; remarked the carpenter
composedly. &ldquo;But that matter concerns his grandson more than it does
Matthew Maule. I have no other terms to propose.&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
Impossible as he at first thought it to comply with Maule&rsquo;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&rsquo;s, begun to give symptoms of exhaustion. The
Eastern claim once fairly settled, and put upon the firm basis of actual
possession, Mr. Pyncheon&rsquo;s property&mdash;to be measured by miles, not
acres&mdash;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!&mdash;or the Earl of Waldo!&mdash;how could such a
magnate be expected to contract his grandeur within the pitiful compass of
seven shingled gables?
</p>

<p>
In short, on an enlarged view of the business, the carpenter&rsquo;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.
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;I consent to your proposition, Maule!&rdquo; cried he. &ldquo;Put me in
possession of the document essential to establish my rights, and the House of
the Seven Gables is your own!&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
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&rsquo;s
portrait seems to have persisted in its shadowy gestures of disapproval; but
without effect, except that, as Mr. Pyncheon set down the emptied glass, he
thought he beheld his grandfather frown.
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;This sherry is too potent a wine for me; it has affected my brain
already,&rdquo; he observed, after a somewhat startled look at the picture.
&ldquo;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.&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;My Lord Pyncheon may drink what wine he will, and wherever he
pleases,&rdquo; replied the carpenter, as if he had been privy to Mr.
Pyncheon&rsquo;s ambitious projects. &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;You are mad, Maule!&rdquo; exclaimed Mr. Pyncheon haughtily; and now, at
last, there was anger mixed up with his pride. &ldquo;What can my daughter have
to do with a business like this?&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
Indeed, at this new demand on the carpenter&rsquo;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,&mdash;which made
the matter considerably darker than it looked before,&mdash;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&rsquo;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&rsquo;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.
</p>

<p>
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&rsquo;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.
</p>

<p>
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&rsquo;s calling as Mr. Pyncheon&rsquo;s
full-dress sword of that gentleman&rsquo;s aristocratic pretensions. A glow of
artistic approval brightened over Alice Pyncheon&rsquo;s face; she was struck
with admiration&mdash;which she made no attempt to conceal&mdash;of the
remarkable comeliness, strength, and energy of Maule&rsquo;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.
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;Does the girl look at me as if I were a brute beast?&rdquo; thought he,
setting his teeth. &ldquo;She shall know whether I have a human spirit; and the
worse for her, if it prove stronger than her own!&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;My father, you sent for me,&rdquo; said Alice, in her sweet and
harp-like voice. &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;Stay a moment, young lady, if you please!&rdquo; said Matthew Maule.
&ldquo;My business with your father is over. With yourself, it is now to
begin!&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
Alice looked towards her father, in surprise and inquiry.
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;Yes, Alice,&rdquo; said Mr. Pyncheon, with some disturbance and
confusion. &ldquo;This young man&mdash;his name is Matthew
Maule&mdash;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&rsquo;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&rsquo;s
part; and, at your slightest wish, of course, the investigation, or whatever we
may call it, shall immediately be broken off.&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;Mistress Alice Pyncheon,&rdquo; remarked Matthew Maule, with the utmost
deference, but yet a half-hidden sarcasm in his look and tone, &ldquo;will no
doubt feel herself quite safe in her father&rsquo;s presence, and under his
all-sufficient protection.&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;I certainly shall entertain no manner of apprehension, with my father at
hand,&rdquo; said Alice with maidenly dignity. &ldquo;Neither do I conceive
that a lady, while true to herself, can have aught to fear from whomsoever, or
in any circumstances!&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
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?
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;Then, Mistress Alice,&rdquo; said Matthew Maule, handing a
chair,&mdash;gracefully enough, for a craftsman, &ldquo;will it please you only
to sit down, and do me the favor (though altogether beyond a poor
carpenter&rsquo;s deserts) to fix your eyes on mine!&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
Alice complied. She was very proud. Setting aside all advantages of rank, this
fair girl deemed herself conscious of a power&mdash;combined of beauty, high,
unsullied purity, and the preservative force of womanhood&mdash;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&rsquo;s
might against man&rsquo;s might; a match not often equal on the part of woman.
</p>

<p>
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&rsquo;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&rsquo;s
long residence abroad, and intercourse with men of wit and
fashion,&mdash;courtiers, worldlings, and free-thinkers,&mdash;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&rsquo;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&rsquo;s house? Might not this influence be the same that
was called witchcraft?
</p>

<p>
Turning half around, he caught a glimpse of Maule&rsquo;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.
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;Stay, Maule!&rdquo; exclaimed Mr. Pyncheon, stepping forward. &ldquo;I
forbid your proceeding further!&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;Pray, my dear father, do not interrupt the young man,&rdquo; said Alice,
without changing her position. &ldquo;His efforts, I assure you, will prove
very harmless.&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
Again Mr. Pyncheon turned his eyes towards the Claude. It was then his
daughter&rsquo;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&rsquo;s power were needed to the accomplishment of this great object,
Maule might evoke him. Alice&rsquo;s own purity would be her safeguard.
</p>

<p>
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!&mdash;his conscience
never doubted it;&mdash;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.
</p>

<p>
After a further interval, Maule spoke.
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;Behold your daughter,&rdquo; said he.
</p>

<p>
Mr. Pyncheon came hastily forward. The carpenter was standing erect in front of
Alice&rsquo;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.
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;There she is!&rdquo; said the carpenter. &ldquo;Speak to her!&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;Alice! My daughter!&rdquo; exclaimed Mr. Pyncheon. &ldquo;My own
Alice!&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
She did not stir.
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;Louder!&rdquo; said Maule, smiling.
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;Alice! Awake!&rdquo; cried her father. &ldquo;It troubles me to see you
thus! Awake!&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
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.
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;Best touch her!&rdquo; said Matthew Maule &ldquo;Shake the girl, and
roughly, too! My hands are hardened with too much use of axe, saw, and
plane,&mdash;else I might help you!&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
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&mdash;whose figure,
though flexible, had been wholly impassive&mdash;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.
</p>

<p>
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.
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;Villain!&rdquo; cried Mr. Pyncheon, shaking his clenched fist at Maule.
&ldquo;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&rsquo;s footsteps!&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;Softly, Mr. Pyncheon!&rdquo; said the carpenter with scornful composure.
&ldquo;Softly, an&rsquo; 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.&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
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,&mdash;blindly, but undoubtingly, as tending to her sure and inevitable
centre,&mdash;the proud Alice approached him. He waved her back, and,
retreating, Alice sank again into her seat.
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;She is mine!&rdquo; said Matthew Maule. &ldquo;Mine, by the right of the
strongest spirit!&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
In the further progress of the legend, there is a long, grotesque, and
occasionally awe-striking account of the carpenter&rsquo;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 blood-stain on his richly wrought band; the second, an aged man, meanly
dressed, with a dark and malign countenance, and a broken halter about his
neck; the third, a person not so advanced in life as the former two, but beyond
the middle age, wearing a coarse woollen tunic and leather breeches, and with a
carpenter&rsquo;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,&mdash;it was he with the blood-stain on his band,&mdash;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&mdash;whether that he were choked by it, or that the secret itself
was of a crimson hue&mdash;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.
</p>

<p>
At this juncture, Maule turned to Mr. Pyncheon.
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;It will never be allowed,&rdquo; said he. &ldquo;The custody of this
secret, that would so enrich his heirs, makes part of your grandfather&rsquo;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&rsquo;s posterity.&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
Mr. Pyncheon tried to speak, but&mdash;what with fear and passion&mdash;could
make only a gurgling murmur in his throat. The carpenter smiled.
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;Aha, worshipful sir!&mdash;so you have old Maule&rsquo;s blood to
drink!&rdquo; said he jeeringly.
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;Fiend in man&rsquo;s shape! why dost thou keep dominion over my
child?&rdquo; cried Mr. Pyncheon, when his choked utterance could make way.
&ldquo;Give me back my daughter. Then go thy ways; and may we never meet
again!&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;Your daughter!&rdquo; said Matthew Maule. &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
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&rsquo;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.
</p>

<p>
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&rsquo;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,&mdash;whether in her chamber, or entertaining her father&rsquo;s
stately guests, or worshipping at church,&mdash;whatever her place or
occupation, her spirit passed from beneath her own control, and bowed itself to
Maule. &ldquo;Alice, laugh!&rdquo;&mdash;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.
&ldquo;Alice, be sad!&rdquo;&mdash;and, at the instant, down would come her
tears, quenching all the mirth of those around her like sudden rain upon a
bonfire. &ldquo;Alice, dance.&rdquo;&mdash;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&rsquo;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!
</p>

<p>
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&rsquo;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,&mdash;humbly, and
with a smile all steeped in sadness,&mdash;she kissed Maule&rsquo;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!
</p>

<p>
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,&mdash;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&rsquo;s
delicate soul into his rude gripe, to play with&mdash;and she was dead!
</p>

</div><!--end chapter-->

<div class="chapter">

<h2><a id="chap14"></a>XIV.<br >
Phœbe&rsquo;s Good-Bye</h2>

<p>
Holgrave, plunging into his tale with the energy and absorption natural to a
young author, had given a good deal of action to the parts capable of being
developed and exemplified in that manner. He now observed that a certain
remarkable drowsiness (wholly unlike that with which the reader possibly feels
himself affected) had been flung over the senses of his auditress. It was the
effect, unquestionably, of the mystic gesticulations by which he had sought to
bring bodily before Phœbe&rsquo;s perception the figure of the mesmerizing
carpenter. With the lids drooping over her eyes,&mdash;now lifted for an
instant, and drawn down again as with leaden weights,&mdash;she leaned slightly
towards him, and seemed almost to regulate her breath by his. Holgrave gazed at
her, as he rolled up his manuscript, and recognized an incipient stage of that
curious psychological condition which, as he had himself told Phœbe, he
possessed more than an ordinary faculty of producing. A veil was beginning to
be muffled about her, in which she could behold only him, and live only in his
thoughts and emotions. His glance, as he fastened it on the young girl, grew
involuntarily more concentrated; in his attitude there was the consciousness of
power, investing his hardly mature figure with a dignity that did not belong to
its physical manifestation. It was evident, that, with but one wave of his hand
and a corresponding effort of his will, he could complete his mastery over
Phœbe&rsquo;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.
</p>

<p>
To a disposition like Holgrave&rsquo;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&rsquo;s destiny. Let us, therefore,&mdash;whatever his defects
of nature and education, and in spite of his scorn for creeds and
institutions,&mdash;concede to the daguerreotypist the rare and high quality of
reverence for another&rsquo;s individuality. Let us allow him integrity, also,
forever after to be confided in; since he forbade himself to twine that one
link more which might have rendered his spell over Phœbe indissoluble.
</p>

<p>
He made a slight gesture upward with his hand.
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;You really mortify me, my dear Miss Phœbe!&rdquo; he exclaimed, smiling
half-sarcastically at her. &ldquo;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;&mdash;if, indeed, being so imbued with my gentle dulness, it is any
longer capable of flame!&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;Me asleep! How can you say so?&rdquo; answered Phœbe, as unconscious of
the crisis through which she had passed as an infant of the precipice to the
verge of which it has rolled. &ldquo;No, no! I consider myself as having been
very attentive; and, though I don&rsquo;t remember the incidents quite
distinctly, yet I have an impression of a vast deal of trouble and
calamity,&mdash;so, no doubt, the story will prove exceedingly
attractive.&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
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,&mdash;like an ambitious demagogue, who hides his aspiring
purpose by assuming the prevalent hue of popular sentiment,&mdash;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&mdash;which, at noontide, it seemed to have taken a century of
sordid life to accumulate&mdash;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.
</p>

<p>
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&mdash;what he sometimes almost
forgot, thrust so early as he had been into the rude struggle of man with
man&mdash;how youthful he still was.
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;It seems to me,&rdquo; he observed, &ldquo;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&rsquo;s first freshness in the flavor of its beans
and squashes; and the house!&mdash;it would be like a bower in Eden, blossoming
with the earliest roses that God ever made. Moonlight, and the sentiment in
man&rsquo;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!&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;I have been happier than I am now; at least, much gayer,&rdquo; said
Phœbe thoughtfully. &ldquo;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?&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;And you have never felt it before?&rdquo; inquired the artist, looking
earnestly at the girl through the twilight.
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;Never,&rdquo; answered Phœbe; &ldquo;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!&rdquo; she added, with a
half-melancholy laugh. &ldquo;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,&mdash;not exactly
sadder,&mdash;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!&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;You have lost nothing, Phœbe, worth keeping, nor which it was possible
to keep,&rdquo; said Holgrave after a pause. &ldquo;Our first youth is of no
value; for we are never conscious of it until after it is gone. But
sometimes&mdash;always, I suspect, unless one is exceedingly
unfortunate&mdash;there comes a sense of second youth, gushing out of the
heart&rsquo;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&rsquo;s self (as you do now) over the first, careless, shallow gayety of
youth departed, and this profound happiness at youth regained,&mdash;so much
deeper and richer than that we lost,&mdash;are essential to the soul&rsquo;s
development. In some cases, the two states come almost simultaneously, and
mingle the sadness and the rapture in one mysterious emotion.&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;I hardly think I understand you,&rdquo; said Phœbe.
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;No wonder,&rdquo; replied Holgrave, smiling; &ldquo;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!&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;It is entirely moonlight now, except only a little flush of faint
crimson, upward from the west, between those buildings,&rdquo; remarked Phœbe.
&ldquo;I must go in. Cousin Hepzibah is not quick at figures, and will give
herself a headache over the day&rsquo;s accounts, unless I help her.&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
But Holgrave detained her a little longer.
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;Miss Hepzibah tells me,&rdquo; observed he, &ldquo;that you return to
the country in a few days.&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;Yes, but only for a little while,&rdquo; answered Phœbe; &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;You surely may, and more than you imagine,&rdquo; said the artist.
&ldquo;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.&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;I should be very sorry to think so,&rdquo; answered Phœbe gravely.
&ldquo;But it is true that my small abilities were precisely what they needed;
and I have a real interest in their welfare,&mdash;an odd kind of motherly
sentiment,&mdash;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.&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;Undoubtedly,&rdquo; said the daguerreotypist, &ldquo;I do feel an
interest in this antiquated, poverty-stricken old maiden lady, and this
degraded and shattered gentleman,&mdash;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!&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;I wish you would speak more plainly,&rdquo; cried Phœbe, perplexed and
displeased; &ldquo;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&rsquo;s and
Clifford&rsquo;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.&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;You are severe,&rdquo; said Holgrave, compelled to recognize a degree of
truth in the piquant sketch of his own mood.
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;And then,&rdquo; continued Phœbe, &ldquo;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!&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;Forgive me, Phœbe!&rdquo; said the daguerreotypist, holding out his
hand, to which the girl was constrained to yield her own. &ldquo;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,&mdash;who are my own
friends, likewise,&mdash;you should learn it before we part. But I have no such
knowledge.&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;You hold something back!&rdquo; said Phœbe.
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;Nothing,&mdash;no secrets but my own,&rdquo; answered Holgrave. &ldquo;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,&mdash;so powerful in his own strength, and in the support of society on all
sides,&mdash;what can Judge Pyncheon have to hope or fear from the imbecile,
branded, half-torpid Clifford?&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;Yet,&rdquo; urged Phœbe, &ldquo;you did speak as if misfortune were
impending!&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;Oh, that was because I am morbid!&rdquo; replied the artist. &ldquo;My
mind has a twist aside, like almost everybody&rsquo;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&mdash;(hark, how Maule&rsquo;s well is
murmuring!)&mdash;that, were it only for this one circumstance, I cannot help
fancying that Destiny is arranging its fifth act for a catastrophe.&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;There!&rdquo; cried Phœbe with renewed vexation; for she was by nature
as hostile to mystery as the sunshine to a dark corner. &ldquo;You puzzle me
more than ever!&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;Then let us part friends!&rdquo; said Holgrave, pressing her hand.
&ldquo;Or, if not friends, let us part before you entirely hate me. You, who
love everybody else in the world!&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;Good-by, then,&rdquo; said Phœbe frankly. &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
On the second morning thereafter, Phœbe might have been seen, in her straw
bonnet, with a shawl on one arm and a little carpet-bag on the other, bidding
adieu to Hepzibah and Cousin Clifford. She was to take a seat in the next train
of cars, which would transport her to within half a dozen miles of her country
village.
</p>

<p>
The tears were in Phœbe&rsquo;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&mdash;grim, silent, and irresponsive to her overflow of cordial
sentiment&mdash;contrived to win so much love? And Clifford,&mdash;in his
abortive decay, with the mystery of fearful crime upon him, and the close
prison-atmosphere yet lurking in his breath,&mdash;how had he transformed
himself into the simplest child, whom Phœbe felt bound to watch over, and be,
as it were, the providence of his unconsidered hours! Everything, at that
instant of farewell, stood out prominently to her view. Look where she would,
lay her hand on what she might, the object responded to her consciousness, as
if a moist human heart were in it.
</p>

<p>
She peeped from the window into the garden, and felt herself more regretful at
leaving this spot of black earth, vitiated with such an age-long growth of
weeds, than joyful at the idea of again scenting her pine forests and fresh
clover-fields. She called Chanticleer, his two wives, and the venerable
chicken, and threw them some crumbs of bread from the breakfast-table. These
being hastily gobbled up, the chicken spread its wings, and alighted close by
Phœbe on the window-sill, where it looked gravely into her face and vented its
emotions in a croak. Phœbe bade it be a good old chicken during her absence,
and promised to bring it a little bag of buckwheat.
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;Ah, Phœbe!&rdquo; remarked Hepzibah, &ldquo;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!&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;Come hither, Phœbe,&rdquo; suddenly cried her cousin Clifford, who had
said very little all the morning. &ldquo;Close!&mdash;closer!&mdash;and look me
in the face!&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
Phœbe 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, Phœbe soon felt
that, if not the profound insight of a seer, yet a more than feminine delicacy
of appreciation, was making her heart the subject of its regard. A moment
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&rsquo;s perception, she was fain to let her eyelids droop beneath
Clifford&rsquo;s gaze. A blush, too,&mdash;the redder, because she strove hard
to keep it down,&mdash;ascended bigger and higher, in a tide of fitful
progress, until even her brow was all suffused with it.
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;It is enough, Phœbe,&rdquo; said Clifford, with a melancholy smile.
&ldquo;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&mdash;I feel lonelier than I did.&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
Phœbe took leave of the desolate couple, and passed through the shop,
twinkling her eyelids to shake off a dew-drop; for&mdash;considering how brief
her absence was to be, and therefore the folly of being cast down about
it&mdash;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,&mdash;her eyes
being too dim with moisture to inform her accurately whether it was a rabbit or
a hippopotamus,&mdash;put it into the child&rsquo;s hand as a parting gift, and
went her way. Old Uncle Venner was just coming out of his door, with a
wood-horse and saw on his shoulder; and, trudging along the street, he scrupled
not to keep company with Phœbe, so far as their paths lay together; nor, in
spite of his patched coat and rusty beaver, and the curious fashion of his
tow-cloth trousers, could she find it in her heart to outwalk him.
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;We shall miss you, next Sabbath afternoon,&rdquo; observed the street
philosopher. &ldquo;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
Phœbe (though there can be no offence in an old man&rsquo;s saying it),
that&rsquo;s just what you&rsquo;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&rsquo;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.&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;Very soon, Uncle Venner,&rdquo; replied Phœbe.
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;And let it be all the sooner, Phœbe, for the sake of those poor souls
yonder,&rdquo; continued her companion. &ldquo;They can never do without you,
now,&mdash;never, Phœbe; never&mdash;no more than if one of God&rsquo;s angels
had been living with them, and making their dismal house pleasant and
comfortable! Don&rsquo;t it seem to you they&rsquo;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&rsquo;re going
home by the railroad! They can&rsquo;t bear it, Miss Phœbe; so be sure to come
back!&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;I am no angel, Uncle Venner,&rdquo; said Phœbe, smiling, as she offered
him her hand at the street-corner. &ldquo;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!&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
Thus parted the old man and the rosy girl; and Phœbe took the wings of the
morning, and was soon flitting almost as rapidly away as if endowed with the
aerial locomotion of the angels to whom Uncle Venner had so graciously compared
her.
</p>

</div><!--end chapter-->

<div class="chapter">

<h2><a id="chap15"></a>XV.<br >
The Scowl and Smile</h2>

<p>
Several days passed over the Seven Gables, heavily and drearily enough. In fact
(not to attribute the whole gloom of sky and earth to the one inauspicious
circumstance of Phœbe&rsquo;s departure), an easterly storm had set in, and
indefatigably applied itself to the task of making the black roof and walls of
the old house look more cheerless than ever before. Yet was the outside not
half so cheerless as the interior. Poor Clifford was cut off, at once, from all
his scanty resources of enjoyment. Phœbe was not there; nor did the sunshine
fall upon the floor. The garden, with its muddy walks, and the chill, dripping
foliage of its summer-house, was an image to be shuddered at. Nothing
flourished in the cold, moist, pitiless atmosphere, drifting with the brackish
scud of sea-breezes, except the moss along the joints of the shingle-roof, and
the great bunch of weeds, that had lately been suffering from drought, in the
angle between the two front gables.
</p>

<p>
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 noonday dusk, which
Hepzibah unconsciously darkened with her woe-begone aspect. It was no fault of
Hepzibah&rsquo;s. Everything&mdash;even the old chairs and tables, that had
known what weather was for three or four such lifetimes as her own&mdash;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&rsquo;s heart, because, though built for
warmth, it was now so comfortless and empty.
</p>

<p>
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&rsquo;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&mdash;so impracticable by her
few and rigid faculties&mdash;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.
</p>

<p>
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&rsquo;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.
</p>

<p>
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&rsquo;s performance (or Clifford&rsquo;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&rsquo; warfare against the east wind. A
characteristic sound, however,&mdash;neither a cough nor a hem, but a kind of
rumbling and reverberating spasm in somebody&rsquo;s capacious depth of
chest;&mdash;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.
</p>

<p>
Hepzibah&rsquo;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.
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;How do you do, Cousin Hepzibah?&mdash;and how does this most inclement
weather affect our poor Clifford?&rdquo; 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. &ldquo;I could not
rest without calling to ask, once more, whether I can in any manner promote his
comfort, or your own.&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;You can do nothing,&rdquo; said Hepzibah, controlling her agitation as
well as she could. &ldquo;I devote myself to Clifford. He has every comfort
which his situation admits of.&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;But allow me to suggest, dear cousin,&rdquo; rejoined the Judge,
&ldquo;you err,&mdash;in all affection and kindness, no doubt, and with the
very best intentions,&mdash;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,&mdash;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.&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;You cannot see him,&rdquo; answered Hepzibah. &ldquo;Clifford has kept
his bed since yesterday.&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;What! How! Is he ill?&rdquo; 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. &ldquo;Nay, then, I must and will see him! What
if he should die?&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;He is in no danger of death,&rdquo; said Hepzibah,&mdash;and added, with
bitterness that she could repress no longer, &ldquo;none; unless he shall be
persecuted to death, now, by the same man who long ago attempted it!&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;Cousin Hepzibah,&rdquo; said the Judge, with an impressive earnestness
of manner, which grew even to tearful pathos as he proceeded, &ldquo;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,&mdash;if, for your never-ending
sorrow, as it has been for mine, you had known what I did,&mdash;have shown
greater tenderness? And do you think, cousin, that it has cost me no
pang?&mdash;that it has left no anguish in my bosom, from that day to this,
amidst all the prosperity with which Heaven has blessed me?&mdash;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,&mdash;so unfortunate, let us
pronounce him, and forbear to say, so guilty,&mdash;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,&mdash;and you not more than I) who has shed so many tears for
Clifford&rsquo;s calamity. You behold some of them now. There is none who would
so delight to promote his happiness! Try me, Hepzibah!&mdash;try me,
Cousin!&mdash;try the man whom you have treated as your enemy and
Clifford&rsquo;s!&mdash;try Jaffrey Pyncheon, and you shall find him true, to
the heart&rsquo;s core!&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;In the name of Heaven,&rdquo; cried Hepzibah, provoked only to intenser
indignation by this outgush of the inestimable tenderness of a stern
nature,&mdash;&ldquo;in God&rsquo;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,&mdash;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!&mdash;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&rsquo;s decency! It will
drive me mad! Forbear! Not another word! It will make me spurn you!&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
For once, Hepzibah&rsquo;s wrath had given her courage. She had spoken. But,
after all, was this unconquerable distrust of Judge Pyncheon&rsquo;s integrity,
and this utter denial, apparently, of his claim to stand in the ring of human
sympathies,&mdash;were they founded in any just perception of his character, or
merely the offspring of a woman&rsquo;s unreasonable prejudice, deduced from
nothing?
</p>

<p>
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&mdash;except Hepzibah, and some lawless
mystic, like the daguerreotypist, and, possibly, a few political
opponents&mdash;who would have dreamed of seriously disputing his claim to a
high and honorable place in the world&rsquo;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&rsquo;s integrity,&mdash;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&rsquo;s circle,&mdash;his conscience bore an accordant
testimony with the world&rsquo;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,&mdash;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,&mdash;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.
</p>

<p>
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&rsquo;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&mdash;through which, from the central pavement, you may gaze up to the
sky, as with no obstructing medium between&mdash;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,&mdash;some narrow closet on the
ground-floor, shut, locked and bolted, and the key flung away,&mdash;or beneath
the marble pavement, in a stagnant water-puddle, with the richest pattern of
mosaic-work above,&mdash;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&rsquo;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,&mdash;that secret abomination, above which,
possibly, he may say his prayers, without remembering it,&mdash;is this
man&rsquo;s miserable soul!
</p>

<p>
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&rsquo;s and orphan&rsquo;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&rsquo;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,&mdash;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, &ldquo;Behold Judge Pyncheon there&rdquo;?
</p>

<p>
And allowing that, many, many years ago, in his early and reckless youth, he
had committed some one wrong act,&mdash;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,&mdash;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&rsquo;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&rsquo;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!
</p>

<p>
But our affair now is with Judge Pyncheon as he stood confronting the fierce
outbreak of Hepzibah&rsquo;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.
</p>

<p>
Thus far the Judge&rsquo;s countenance had expressed mild
forbearance,&mdash;grave and almost gentle deprecation of his cousin&rsquo;s
unbecoming violence,&mdash;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.
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;Cousin Hepzibah,&rdquo; said he very calmly, &ldquo;it is time to have
done with this.&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;With all my heart!&rdquo; answered she. &ldquo;Then, why do you
persecute us any longer? Leave poor Clifford and me in peace. Neither of us
desires anything better!&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;It is my purpose to see Clifford before I leave this house,&rdquo;
continued the Judge. &ldquo;Do not act like a madwoman, Hepzibah! I am his only
friend, and an all-powerful one. Has it never occurred to you,&mdash;are you so
blind as not to have seen,&mdash;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!&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;You!&rdquo; answered Hepzibah. &ldquo;I never will believe it! He owed
his dungeon to you; his freedom to God&rsquo;s providence!&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;I set him free!&rdquo; reaffirmed Judge Pyncheon, with the calmest
composure. &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;Never!&mdash;it would drive him mad!&rdquo; 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. &ldquo;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?&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;He shall see love enough in mine, if that be all!&rdquo; said the Judge,
with well-grounded confidence in the benignity of his aspect. &ldquo;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,&mdash;I
know not whether the circumstance ever attracted much of your attention, among
the sadder interests that clustered round that event,&mdash;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,&mdash;and not altogether a folly, neither,&mdash;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&rsquo;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.&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;And do you seek to deprive us of that?&rdquo; asked Hepzibah, unable to
restrain her bitter contempt. &ldquo;Is this your price for ceasing to
persecute poor Clifford?&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;Certainly not, my dear cousin!&rdquo; answered the Judge, smiling
benevolently. &ldquo;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&rsquo;s unquestionably great estate, as I have said, not the
half&mdash;no, not one third, as I am fully convinced&mdash;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.&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;Clifford!&mdash;Clifford know of any hidden wealth? Clifford have it in
his power to make you rich?&rdquo; cried the old gentlewoman, affected with a
sense of something like ridicule at the idea. &ldquo;Impossible! You deceive
yourself! It is really a thing to laugh at!&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;It is as certain as that I stand here!&rdquo; 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. &ldquo;Clifford told me so himself!&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;No, no!&rdquo; exclaimed Hepzibah incredulously. &ldquo;You are
dreaming, Cousin Jaffrey.&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;I do not belong to the dreaming class of men,&rdquo; said the Judge
quietly. &ldquo;Some months before my uncle&rsquo;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,&mdash;and choose he must!&mdash;can inform me where to find the
schedule, the documents, the evidences, in whatever shape they exist, of the
vast amount of Uncle Jaffrey&rsquo;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.&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;But what could have been Clifford&rsquo;s object,&rdquo; asked Hepzibah,
&ldquo;in concealing it so long?&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;It was one of the bad impulses of our fallen nature,&rdquo; replied the
Judge, turning up his eyes. &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;And what if he should refuse?&rdquo; inquired Hepzibah.
&ldquo;Or,&mdash;as I steadfastly believe,&mdash;what if he has no knowledge of
this wealth?&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;My dear cousin,&rdquo; said Judge Pyncheon, with a quietude which he had
the power of making more formidable than any violence, &ldquo;since your
brother&rsquo;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&mdash;I myself, among the rest&mdash;can testify to his extravagances at
the arched window. Thousands beheld him, a week or two ago, on the point of
flinging himself thence into the street. From all this testimony, I am led to
apprehend&mdash;reluctantly, and with deep grief&mdash;that Clifford&rsquo;s
misfortunes have so affected his intellect, never very strong, that he cannot
safely remain at large. The alternative, you must be aware,&mdash;and its
adoption will depend entirely on the decision which I am now about to
make,&mdash;the alternative is his confinement, probably for the remainder of
his life, in a public asylum for persons in his unfortunate state of
mind.&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;You cannot mean it!&rdquo; shrieked Hepzibah.
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;Should my cousin Clifford,&rdquo; continued Judge Pyncheon, wholly
undisturbed, &ldquo;from mere malice, and hatred of one whose interests ought
naturally to be dear to him,&mdash;a mode of passion that, as often as any
other, indicates mental disease,&mdash;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.&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;O Jaffrey,&mdash;Cousin Jaffrey,&rdquo; cried Hepzibah mournfully, not
passionately, &ldquo;it is you that are diseased in mind, not Clifford! You
have forgotten that a woman was your mother!&mdash;that you have had sisters,
brothers, children of your own!&mdash;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!&mdash;no, nor middle-aged,&mdash;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,&mdash;shall you lack clothes, or a
roof to shelter you,&mdash;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,&mdash;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?&mdash;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!&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;Talk sense, Hepzibah, for Heaven&rsquo;s sake!&rdquo; 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.
&ldquo;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.&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;Clifford has no secret!&rdquo; answered Hepzibah. &ldquo;And God will
not let you do the thing you meditate!&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;We shall see,&rdquo; said the unmoved Judge. &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;You are stronger than I,&rdquo; said Hepzibah, after a brief
consideration; &ldquo;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!&mdash;be far more merciful than your heart bids you be!&mdash;for God is
looking at you, Jaffrey Pyncheon!&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
The Judge followed his cousin from the shop, where the foregoing conversation
had passed, into the parlor, and flung himself heavily into the great ancestral
chair. Many a former Pyncheon had found repose in its capacious arms: rosy
children, after their sports; young men, dreamy with love; grown men, weary
with cares; old men, burdened with winters,&mdash;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&rsquo;s New England forefathers&mdash;he whose
picture still hung upon the wall&mdash;had given a dead man&rsquo;s silent and
stern reception to the throng of distinguished guests. From that hour of evil
omen until the present, it may be,&mdash;though we know not the secret of his
heart,&mdash;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&mdash;a trifle to be prepared for in a single moment,
and to be rested from in another moment,&mdash;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?
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;Did you speak?&rdquo; 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. &ldquo;I thought you called me
back.&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;No, no&rdquo; gruffly answered Judge Pyncheon with a harsh frown, while
his brow grew almost a black purple, in the shadow of the room. &ldquo;Why
should I call you back? Time flies! Bid Clifford come to me!&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
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.
</p>

</div><!--end chapter-->

<div class="chapter">

<h2><a id="chap16"></a>XVI.<br >
Clifford&rsquo;s Chamber</h2>

<p>
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&rsquo;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,&mdash;stories which had
heretofore been kept warm in her remembrance by the chimney-corner glow that
was associated with them,&mdash;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,&mdash;they three together,&mdash;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,&mdash;a
truth that has the bitter and the sweet in it.
</p>

<p>
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&rsquo;s seamstress was sitting at her
work. Hepzibah flung herself upon that unknown woman&rsquo;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,&mdash;whatever would defer for an instant the inevitable errand on which
she was bound,&mdash;all such impediments were welcome. Next to the lightest
heart, the heaviest is apt to be most playful.
</p>

<p>
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,&mdash;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&rsquo;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!
</p>

<p>
For a moment, the thought crossed Hepzibah&rsquo;s mind, whether Clifford might
not really have such knowledge of their deceased uncle&rsquo;s vanished estate
as the Judge imputed to him. She remembered some vague intimations, on her
brother&rsquo;s part, which&mdash;if the supposition were not essentially
preposterous&mdash;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&rsquo;s schemes were as destitute of actual substance and purpose as a
child&rsquo;s pictures of its future life, while sitting in a little chair by
its mother&rsquo;s knee. Clifford had none but shadowy gold at his command; and
it was not the stuff to satisfy Judge Pyncheon!
</p>

<p>
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,&mdash;and yet how continually it comes to pass, thought Hepzibah, in
this dull delirium of a world,&mdash;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,&mdash;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,&mdash;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!
</p>

<p>
Nevertheless, in spite of this perception that the Judge would draw all human
aid to his own behalf, Hepzibah was so unaccustomed to act for herself, that
the least word of counsel would have swayed her to any mode of action. Little
Phœbe Pyncheon would at once have lighted up the whole scene, if not by any
available suggestion, yet simply by the warm vivacity of her character. The
idea of the artist occurred to Hepzibah. Young and unknown, mere vagrant
adventurer as he was, she had been conscious of a force in Holgrave which might
well adapt him to be the champion of a crisis. With this thought in her mind,
she unbolted a door, cobwebbed and long disused, but which had served as a
former medium of communication between her own part of the house and the gable
where the wandering daguerreotypist had now established his temporary home. He
was not there. A book, face downward, on the table, a roll of manuscript, a
half-written sheet, a newspaper, some tools of his present occupation, and
several rejected daguerreotypes, conveyed an impression as if he 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.
</p>

<p>
Returning to the arched window, she lifted her eyes,&mdash;scowling, poor,
dim-sighted Hepzibah, in the face of Heaven!&mdash;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&rsquo;s care
and pity for every separate need.
</p>

<p>
At last, finding no other pretext for deferring the torture that she was to
inflict on Clifford,&mdash;her reluctance to which was the true cause of her
loitering at the window, her search for the artist, and even her abortive
prayer,&mdash;dreading, also, to hear the stern voice of Judge Pyncheon from
below stairs, chiding her delay,&mdash;she crept slowly, a pale, grief-stricken
figure, a dismal shape of woman, with almost torpid limbs, slowly to her
brother&rsquo;s door, and knocked!
</p>

<p>
There was no reply.
</p>

<p>
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&rsquo;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.
</p>

<p>
Clifford returned no answer.
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;Clifford! Dear brother!&rdquo; said Hepzibah. &ldquo;Shall I come
in?&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
A silence.
</p>

<p>
Two or three times, and more, Hepzibah repeated his name, without result; till,
thinking her brother&rsquo;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.
</p>

<p>
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&rsquo;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&rsquo;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,&mdash;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,&mdash;no more sense of sacred
misery, sanctifying the human shape in which it embodies itself,&mdash;than if
Satan were the father of them all! Goaded by their taunts, their loud, shrill
cries, and cruel laughter,&mdash;insulted by the filth of the public ways,
which they would fling upon him,&mdash;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,&mdash;what wonder if Clifford were to break into
some wild extravagance which was certain to be interpreted as lunacy? Thus
Judge Pyncheon&rsquo;s fiendish scheme would be ready accomplished to his
hands!
</p>

<p>
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&rsquo;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&rsquo;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!
</p>

<p>
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.
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;Clifford is gone!&rdquo; she cried. &ldquo;I cannot find my brother.
Help, Jaffrey Pyncheon! Some harm will happen to him!&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
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&rsquo;s
imperfect sight could accurately distinguish the Judge&rsquo;s figure. She was
certain, however, that she saw him sitting in the ancestral arm-chair, near the
centre of the floor, with his face somewhat averted, and looking towards a
window. So firm and quiet is the nervous system of such men as Judge Pyncheon,
that he had perhaps stirred not more than once since her departure, but, in the
hard composure of his temperament, retained the position into which accident
had thrown him.
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;I tell you, Jaffrey,&rdquo; cried Hepzibah impatiently, as she turned
from the parlor-door to search other rooms, &ldquo;my brother is not in his
chamber! You must help me seek him!&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
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.
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;Do you hear me, Jaffrey Pyncheon?&rdquo; screamed Hepzibah, as she again
approached the parlor-door, after an ineffectual search elsewhere.
&ldquo;Clifford is gone.&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
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,&mdash;accompanied, too, with a look that showed more like joy than
any other kind of excitement,&mdash;compelled Hepzibah to dread that her stern
kinsman&rsquo;s ominous visit had driven her poor brother to absolute insanity.
Nor could she otherwise account for the Judge&rsquo;s quiescent mood than by
supposing him craftily on the watch, while Clifford developed these symptoms of
a distracted mind.
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;Be quiet, Clifford!&rdquo; whispered his sister, raising her hand to
impress caution. &ldquo;Oh, for Heaven&rsquo;s sake, be quiet!&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;Let him be quiet! What can he do better?&rdquo; answered Clifford, with
a still wilder gesture, pointing into the room which he had just quitted.
&ldquo;As for us, Hepzibah, we can dance now!&mdash;we can sing, laugh, play,
do what we will! The weight is gone, Hepzibah! It is gone off this weary old
world, and we may be as light-hearted as little Phœbe herself.&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
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.
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;My God! what is to become of us?&rdquo; gasped Hepzibah.
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;Come!&rdquo; said Clifford in a tone of brief decision, most unlike what
was usual with him. &ldquo;We stay here too long! Let us leave the old house to
our cousin Jaffrey! He will take good care of it!&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
Hepzibah now noticed that Clifford had on a cloak,&mdash;a garment of long
ago,&mdash;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,&mdash;moments of test, in which courage would most assert
itself,&mdash;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&rsquo;s. No matter how preposterous or insane, a purpose is a
Godsend to them. Hepzibah had reached this point. Unaccustomed to action or
responsibility,&mdash;full of horror at what she had seen, and afraid to
inquire, or almost to imagine, how it had come to pass,&mdash;affrighted at the
fatality which seemed to pursue her brother,&mdash;stupefied by the dim, thick,
stifling atmosphere of dread which filled the house as with a death-smell, and
obliterated all definiteness of thought,&mdash;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.
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;Why do you delay so?&rdquo; cried he sharply. &ldquo;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!&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
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&mdash;as lonely sleepers often are&mdash;with a great deal of
unreasonable misery, in a morning dream!
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;Now&mdash;now&mdash;I shall certainly awake!&rdquo; thought Hepzibah, as
she went to and fro, making her little preparations. &ldquo;I can bear it no
longer! I must wake up now!&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
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.
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;What an absurd figure the old fellow cuts now!&rdquo; whispered he to
Hepzibah. &ldquo;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!&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
As they passed into the street, Clifford directed Hepzibah&rsquo;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!
</p>

</div><!--end chapter-->

<div class="chapter">

<h2><a id="chap17"></a>XVII.<br >
The Flight of Two Owls</h2>

<p>
Summer as it was, the east wind set poor Hepzibah&rsquo;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&rsquo;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,&mdash;so time-stricken as they were, yet so like children in their
inexperience,&mdash;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&rsquo;s end, with perhaps
a sixpence and a biscuit in his pocket. In Hepzibah&rsquo;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.
</p>

<p>
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.
</p>

<p>
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,&mdash;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.
</p>

<p>
Poor Hepzibah! Could she have understood this fact, it would have brought her
some little comfort; for, to all her other troubles,&mdash;strange to
say!&mdash;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!
</p>

<p>
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,
&ldquo;Am I awake?&mdash;Am I awake?&rdquo; 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&rsquo;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,&mdash;with the irresistible
decision, if not rather to be called recklessness, which had so strangely taken
possession of him, and through him of Hepzibah,&mdash;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.
</p>

<p>
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.
</p>

<p>
Still haunted with the idea that not one of the past incidents, inclusive of
Judge Pyncheon&rsquo;s visit, could be real, the recluse of the Seven Gables
murmured in her brother&rsquo;s ear,&mdash;
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;Clifford! Clifford! Is not this a dream?&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;A dream, Hepzibah!&rdquo; repeated he, almost laughing in her face.
&ldquo;On the contrary, I have never been awake before!&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
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.
</p>

<p>
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,&mdash;merchandise that reminded Hepzibah of her deserted
shop,&mdash;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&mdash;for such they
soon grew to be, in this rapid current of affairs&mdash;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!
</p>

<p>
Clifford&rsquo;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.
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;You are not happy, Hepzibah!&rdquo; said Clifford, apart, in a tone of
reproach. &ldquo;You are thinking of that dismal old house, and of Cousin
Jaffrey&rdquo;&mdash;here came the quake through him,&mdash;&ldquo;and of
Cousin Jaffrey sitting there, all by himself! Take my advice,&mdash;follow my
example,&mdash;and let such things slip aside. Here we are, in the world,
Hepzibah!&mdash;in the midst of life!&mdash;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!&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;Happy&mdash;&rdquo; thought Hepzibah, bitterly conscious, at the word,
of her dull and heavy heart, with the frozen pain in it,&mdash;&ldquo;happy. He
is mad already; and, if I could once feel myself broad awake, I should go mad
too!&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
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&rsquo;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&rsquo;s mind was
too unmalleable to take new impressions so readily as Clifford&rsquo;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.
</p>

<p>
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.
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;For the lady and yourself?&rdquo; asked the conductor. &ldquo;And how
far?&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;As far as that will carry us,&rdquo; said Clifford. &ldquo;It is no
great matter. We are riding for pleasure merely.&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;You choose a strange day for it, sir!&rdquo; 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. &ldquo;The best chance of pleasure, in an
easterly rain, I take it, is in a man&rsquo;s own house, with a nice little
fire in the chimney.&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;I cannot precisely agree with you,&rdquo; said Clifford, courteously
bowing to the old gentleman, and at once taking up the clew of conversation
which the latter had proffered. &ldquo;It had just occurred to me, on the
contrary, that this admirable invention of the railroad&mdash;with the vast and
inevitable improvements to be looked for, both as to speed and
convenience&mdash;is destined to do away with those stale ideas of home and
fireside, and substitute something better.&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;In the name of common-sense,&rdquo; asked the old gentleman rather
testily, &ldquo;what can be better for a man than his own parlor and
chimney-corner?&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;These things have not the merit which many good people attribute to
them,&rdquo; replied Clifford. &ldquo;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,&mdash;you
must have observed it in your own experience,&mdash;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&rsquo;s-nest, and which
they built,&mdash;if it should be called building, when such sweet homes of a
summer solstice rather grew than were made with hands,&mdash;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&mdash;could but the
whistle be made musical, and the rumble and the jar got rid of&mdash;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&rsquo;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,&mdash;in a
better sense, wherever the fit and beautiful shall offer him a home?&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
Clifford&rsquo;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&rsquo;s-feet tracked his temples, this
now decaying man must have stamped the impress of his features on many a
woman&rsquo;s heart. But, alas! no woman&rsquo;s eye had seen his face while it
was beautiful.
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;I should scarcely call it an improved state of things,&rdquo; observed
Clifford&rsquo;s new acquaintance, &ldquo;to live everywhere and
nowhere!&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;Would you not?&rdquo; exclaimed Clifford, with singular energy.
&ldquo;It is as clear to me as sunshine,&mdash;were there any in the
sky,&mdash;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&rsquo;s defunct forefathers and relatives. I speak of
what I know. There is a certain house within my familiar
recollection,&mdash;one of those peaked-gable (there are seven of them),
projecting-storied edifices, such as you occasionally see in our older
towns,&mdash;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.&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
His face darkened, and seemed to contract, and shrivel itself up, and wither
into age.
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;Never, sir!&rdquo; he repeated. &ldquo;I could never draw cheerful
breath there!&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;I should think not,&rdquo; said the old gentleman, eyeing Clifford
earnestly, and rather apprehensively. &ldquo;I should conceive not, sir, with
that notion in your head!&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;Surely not,&rdquo; continued Clifford; &ldquo;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,&mdash;yes, my youth, my youth!&mdash;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&rsquo;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&mdash;a great weight being off my
mind&mdash;I feel in the very heyday of my youth, with the world and my best
days before me!&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;I trust you may find it so,&rdquo; said the old gentleman, who seemed
rather embarrassed, and desirous of avoiding the observation which
Clifford&rsquo;s wild talk drew on them both. &ldquo;You have my best wishes
for it.&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;For Heaven&rsquo;s sake, dear Clifford, be quiet!&rdquo; whispered his
sister. &ldquo;They think you mad.&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;Be quiet yourself, Hepzibah!&rdquo; returned her brother. &ldquo;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!&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
He turned again towards the old gentleman, and renewed the conversation.
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;Yes, my dear sir,&rdquo; said he, &ldquo;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&rsquo;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&mdash;the solid ground to
build a house on&mdash;is the broad foundation on which nearly all the guilt of
this world rests. A man will commit almost any wrong,&mdash;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,&mdash;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&rsquo;s
eye!&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;Then, sir,&rdquo; said the old gentleman, getting anxious to drop the
subject, &ldquo;you are not to blame for leaving it.&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;Within the lifetime of the child already born,&rdquo; Clifford went on,
&ldquo;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,&mdash;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?&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;All a humbug!&rdquo; growled the old gentleman.
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;These rapping spirits, that little Phœbe told us of, the other
day,&rdquo; said Clifford,&mdash;&ldquo;what are these but the messengers of
the spiritual world, knocking at the door of substance? And it shall be flung
wide open!&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;A humbug, again!&rdquo; cried the old gentleman, growing more and more
testy at these glimpses of Clifford&rsquo;s metaphysics. &ldquo;I should like
to rap with a good stick on the empty pates of the dolts who circulate such
nonsense!&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;Then there is electricity,&mdash;the demon, the angel, the mighty
physical power, the all-pervading intelligence!&rdquo; exclaimed Clifford.
&ldquo;Is that a humbug, too? Is it a fact&mdash;or have I dreamt
it&mdash;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!&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;If you mean the telegraph,&rdquo; said the old gentleman, glancing his
eye toward its wire, alongside the rail-track, &ldquo;it is an excellent
thing,&mdash;that is, of course, if the speculators in cotton and politics
don&rsquo;t get possession of it. A great thing, indeed, sir, particularly as
regards the detection of bank-robbers and murderers.&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t quite like it, in that point of view,&rdquo; replied
Clifford. &ldquo;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&mdash;hour by hour, if so often moved to do it,&mdash;might
send their heart-throbs from Maine to Florida, with some such words as these
&lsquo;I love you forever!&rsquo;&mdash;&lsquo;My heart runs over with
love!&rsquo;&mdash;&lsquo;I love you more than I can!&rsquo; and, again, at the
next message &lsquo;I have lived an hour longer, and love you twice as
much!&rsquo; 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 &lsquo;Your dear friend is in bliss!&rsquo; Or, to an absent husband,
should come tidings thus &lsquo;An immortal being, of whom you are the father,
has this moment come from God!&rsquo; 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,&mdash;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 &rsquo;Change-hours,&mdash;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,&mdash;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!&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;You can&rsquo;t, hey?&rdquo; cried the old gentleman, with a hard look.
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;Positively, no!&rdquo; answered Clifford. &ldquo;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,&mdash;and let us add to our
hypothesis another man, issuing from the house, which he feels to be
over-filled with the dead man&rsquo;s presence,&mdash;and let us lastly imagine
him fleeing, Heaven knows whither, at the speed of a hurricane, by railroad!
Now, sir, if the fugitive alight in some distant town, and find all the people
babbling about that self-same dead man, whom he has fled so far to avoid the
sight and thought of, will you not allow that his natural rights have been
infringed? He has been deprived of his city of refuge, and, in my humble
opinion, has suffered infinite wrong!&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;You are a strange man; Sir!&rdquo; said the old gentleman, bringing his
gimlet-eye to a point on Clifford, as if determined to bore right into him.
&ldquo;I can&rsquo;t see through you!&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;No, I&rsquo;ll be bound you can&rsquo;t!&rdquo; cried Clifford,
laughing. &ldquo;And yet, my dear sir, I am as transparent as the water of
Maule&rsquo;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!&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
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&mdash;with all the life of its
interior, amid which Clifford had made himself so conspicuous an
object&mdash;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&rsquo;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.
</p>

<p>
Clifford shivered from head to foot. The wild effervescence of his
mood&mdash;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.
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;You must take the lead now, Hepzibah!&rdquo; murmured he, with a torpid
and reluctant utterance. &ldquo;Do with me as you will!&rdquo; 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,&mdash;no juncture this to question that there was a sky above, and
an Almighty Father looking from it!
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;O God!&rdquo;&mdash;ejaculated poor, gaunt Hepzibah,&mdash;then paused a
moment, to consider what her prayer should be,&mdash;&ldquo;O God,&mdash;our
Father,&mdash;are we not thy children? Have mercy on us!&rdquo;
</p>

</div><!--end chapter-->

<div class="chapter">

<h2><a id="chap18"></a>XVIII.<br >
Governor Pyncheon</h2>

<p>
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.
</p>

<p>
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&rsquo;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 reminiscences, projects,
hopes, apprehensions, weaknesses, and strong points, which he has heretofore
shared with nobody. A cautious man is proverbially said to sleep with one eye
open. That may be wisdom. But not with both; for this were heedlessness! No,
no! Judge Pyncheon cannot be asleep.
</p>

<p>
It is odd, however, that a gentleman so burdened with engagements,&mdash;and
noted, too, for punctuality,&mdash;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&rsquo;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,&mdash;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,&mdash;a score of such might be at Judge Pyncheon&rsquo;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,&mdash;an old widower, as he smilingly describes
himself,&mdash;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&mdash;yes, or
perhaps five-and-twenty!&mdash;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,&mdash;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!
</p>

<p>
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&rsquo;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&rsquo;s right vest-pocket. Let him go thither,
and loll at ease upon his moneybags! He has lounged long enough in the old
chair!
</p>

<p>
This was to have been such a busy day. In the first place, the interview with
Clifford. Half an hour, by the Judge&rsquo;s reckoning, was to suffice for
that; it would probably be less, but&mdash;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&mdash;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!
</p>

<p>
And has he forgotten all the other items of his memoranda? Clifford&rsquo;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&rsquo;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?
</p>

<p>
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&rsquo;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&rsquo;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&rsquo;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,&mdash;perhaps so&mdash;perhaps not,&mdash;accordingly as he may happen
to have leisure, and a small bank-note.
</p>

<p>
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&rsquo;s personal
health),&mdash;another business, then, was to consult his family physician.
About what, for Heaven&rsquo;s sake? Why, it is rather difficult to describe
the symptoms. A mere dimness of sight and dizziness of brain, was it?&mdash;or
disagreeable choking, or stifling, or gurgling, or bubbling, in the region of
the thorax, as the anatomists say?&mdash;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&rsquo;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&rsquo;s eyes, they would enjoy a hearty laugh together! But a fig
for medical advice. The Judge will never need it.
</p>

<p>
Pray, pray, Judge Pyncheon, look at your watch, Now! What&mdash;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&rsquo;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?
</p>

<p>
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&mdash;need you be told it?&mdash;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&rsquo;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,&mdash;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,&mdash;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?
</p>

<p>
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!&mdash;drink a glass or two of that noble wine!&mdash;make your pledges
in as low a whisper as you will!&mdash;and you rise up from table virtually
governor of the glorious old State! Governor Pyncheon of Massachusetts!
</p>

<p>
And is there no potent and exhilarating cordial in a certainty like this? It
has been the grand purpose of half your lifetime to obtain it. Now, when there
needs little more than to signify your acceptance, why do you sit so lumpishly
in your great-great-grandfather&rsquo;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.
</p>

<p>
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 animal, 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.
</p>

<p>
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.
</p>

<p>
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&rsquo;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,&mdash;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!&mdash;yes!&mdash;not quite! And there is still the swarthy
whiteness,&mdash;we shall venture to marry these ill-agreeing words,&mdash;the
swarthy whiteness of Judge Pyncheon&rsquo;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!
</p>

<p>
Is there no other sound? One other, and a fearful one. It is the ticking of the
Judge&rsquo;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&rsquo;s pulse, repeating its small
strokes with such busy regularity, in Judge Pyncheon&rsquo;s motionless hand,
has an effect of terror, which we do not find in any other accompaniment of the
scene.
</p>

<p>
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,&mdash;and to smite with sledge-hammers, airy but
ponderous, in some distant chamber,&mdash;and to tread along the entries as
with stately footsteps, and rustle up and down the staircase, as with silks
miraculously stiff,&mdash;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&rsquo;s quietude, as he sits invisible; and that pertinacious ticking of
his watch!
</p>

<p>
As regards Judge Pyncheon&rsquo;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&rsquo;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&rsquo;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,&mdash;but we know that the faithful hands have met; for one of
the city clocks tells midnight.
</p>

<p>
A man of sturdy understanding, like Judge Pyncheon, cares no more for twelve
o&rsquo;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&mdash;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&mdash;used to be told
about this very room of his ancestral house. In fact, these tales are too
absurd to bristle even childhood&rsquo;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?
</p>

<p>
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.
</p>

<p>
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?&mdash;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&rsquo;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&rsquo;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.
</p>

<p>
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&rsquo;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&rsquo;s father, would devolve on
whom? On poor, foolish Clifford, gaunt Hepzibah, and rustic little Phœbe! But
another and a greater marvel greets us! Can we believe our eyes? A stout,
elderly gentleman has made his appearance; he has an aspect of eminent
respectability, 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.
</p>

<p>
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&rsquo;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!
</p>

<p>
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&rsquo;s forgetful fingers neglected to wind it
up, as usual, at ten o&rsquo;clock, being half an hour or so before his
ordinary bedtime,&mdash;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&mdash;for, oh, how dreary seems its haunted waste, behind us!&mdash;gives
place to a fresh, transparent, cloudless morn. Blessed, blessed radiance! The
daybeam&mdash;even what little of it finds its way into this always dusky
parlor&mdash;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,&mdash;which God has smiled upon, and
blessed, and given to mankind,&mdash;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?
</p>

<p>
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&rsquo;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,&mdash;no odious grin of
feigned benignity, insolent in its pretence, and loathsome in its
falsehood,&mdash;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&rsquo;s being.
</p>

<p>
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!
</p>

<p>
What! Thou art not stirred by this last appeal? No, not a jot! And there we see
a fly,&mdash;one of your common house-flies, such as are always buzzing on the
window-pane,&mdash;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&rsquo;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!
</p>

<p>
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&rsquo;s presence into the street before the Seven Gables.
</p>

</div><!--end chapter-->

<div class="chapter">

<h2><a id="chap19"></a>XIX.<br >
Alice&rsquo;s Posies</h2>

<p>
Uncle Venner, trundling a wheelbarrow, was the earliest person stirring in the
neighborhood the day after the storm.
</p>

<p>
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.
</p>

<p>
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.
</p>

<p>
One object, above all others, would take root in the imaginative
observer&rsquo;s memory. It was the great tuft of flowers,&mdash;weeds, you
would have called them, only a week ago,&mdash;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&rsquo;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.
</p>

<p>
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&rsquo;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&rsquo;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.
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;I never knew Miss Hepzibah so forgetful before,&rdquo; said the
patriarch to himself. &ldquo;She must have had a dinner yesterday,&mdash;no
question of that! She always has one, nowadays. So where&rsquo;s the pot-liquor
and potato-skins, I ask? Shall I knock, and see if she&rsquo;s stirring yet?
No, no,&mdash;&rsquo;twon&rsquo;t do! If little Phœbe was about the house, I
should not mind knocking; but Miss Hepzibah, likely as not, would scowl down at
me out of the window, and look cross, even if she felt pleasantly. So,
I&rsquo;ll come back at noon.&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
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.
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;Good-morning, Uncle Venner!&rdquo; said the daguerreotypist, leaning out
of the window. &ldquo;Do you hear nobody stirring?&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;Not a soul,&rdquo; said the man of patches. &ldquo;But that&rsquo;s no
wonder. &rsquo;Tis barely half an hour past sunrise, yet. But I&rsquo;m really
glad to see you, Mr. Holgrave! There&rsquo;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&rsquo;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?&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;It did, indeed!&rdquo; answered the artist, smiling. &ldquo;If I were a
believer in ghosts,&mdash;and I don&rsquo;t quite know whether I am or
not,&mdash;I should have concluded that all the old Pyncheons were running riot
in the lower rooms, especially in Miss Hepzibah&rsquo;s part of the house. But
it is very quiet now.&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;Yes, Miss Hepzibah will be apt to over-sleep herself, after being
disturbed, all night, with the racket,&rdquo; said Uncle Venner. &ldquo;But it
would be odd, now, wouldn&rsquo;t it, if the Judge had taken both his cousins
into the country along with him? I saw him go into the shop yesterday.&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;At what hour?&rdquo; inquired Holgrave.
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;Oh, along in the forenoon,&rdquo; said the old man. &ldquo;Well, well! I
must go my rounds, and so must my wheelbarrow. But I&rsquo;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&rsquo;d get one of
Alice&rsquo;s Posies, and keep it in water till Phœbe comes back.&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;I have heard,&rdquo; said the daguerreotypist, as he drew in his head,
&ldquo;that the water of Maule&rsquo;s well suits those flowers best.&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
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 newspapers; for Hepzibah, of late, had regularly taken it in.
After a while, there came a fat woman, making prodigious speed, and stumbling
as she ran up the steps of the shop-door. Her face glowed with 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.
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;The deuce take Old Maid Pyncheon!&rdquo; muttered the irascible
housewife. &ldquo;Think of her pretending to set up a cent-shop, and then lying
abed till noon! These are what she calls gentlefolk&rsquo;s airs, I suppose!
But I&rsquo;ll either start her ladyship, or break the door down!&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
She shook it accordingly, and the bell, having a spiteful little temper of its
own, rang obstreperously, making its remonstrances heard,&mdash;not, indeed, by
the ears for which they were intended,&mdash;but by a good lady on the opposite
side of the street. She opened the window, and addressed the impatient
applicant.
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;You&rsquo;ll find nobody there, Mrs. Gubbins.&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;But I must and will find somebody here!&rdquo; cried Mrs. Gubbins,
inflicting another outrage on the bell. &ldquo;I want a half-pound of pork, to
fry some first-rate flounders for Mr. Gubbins&rsquo;s breakfast; and, lady or
not, Old Maid Pyncheon shall get up and serve me with it!&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;But do hear reason, Mrs. Gubbins!&rdquo; responded the lady opposite.
&ldquo;She, and her brother too, have both gone to their cousin&rsquo;s, Judge
Pyncheon&rsquo;s at his country-seat. There&rsquo;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&rsquo;re gone, I&rsquo;ll assure
you.&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;And how do you know they&rsquo;re gone to the Judge&rsquo;s?&rdquo;
asked Mrs. Gubbins. &ldquo;He&rsquo;s a rich man; and there&rsquo;s been a
quarrel between him and Hepzibah this many a day, because he won&rsquo;t give
her a living. That&rsquo;s the main reason of her setting up a
cent-shop.&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;I know that well enough,&rdquo; said the neighbor. &ldquo;But
they&rsquo;re gone,&mdash;that&rsquo;s one thing certain. And who but a blood
relation, that couldn&rsquo;t help himself, I ask you, would take in that
awful-tempered old maid, and that dreadful Clifford? That&rsquo;s it, you may
be sure.&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
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&rsquo;s Posies.
</p>

<p>
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&rsquo;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.
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;Miss Pyncheon!&rdquo; screamed the child, rapping on the window-pane,
&ldquo;I want an elephant!&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
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&mdash;one of two who happened to be
passing by&mdash;caught the urchin&rsquo;s arm.
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;What&rsquo;s the trouble, old gentleman?&rdquo; he asked.
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;I want old Hepzibah, or Phœbe, or any of them!&rdquo; answered Ned,
sobbing. &ldquo;They won&rsquo;t open the door; and I can&rsquo;t get my
elephant!&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;Go to school, you little scamp!&rdquo; said the man.
&ldquo;There&rsquo;s another cent-shop round the corner. &rsquo;Tis very
strange, Dixey,&rdquo; added he to his companion, &ldquo;what&rsquo;s become of
all these Pyncheon&rsquo;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&rsquo;s hired men has been in, this
morning, to make inquiry about him. He&rsquo;s a kind of person, they say, that
seldom breaks his habits, or stays out o&rsquo; nights.&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;Oh, he&rsquo;ll turn up safe enough!&rdquo; said Dixey. &ldquo;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&rsquo;t stand it!&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;I never thought she&rsquo;d make it go,&rdquo; remarked his friend.
&ldquo;This business of cent-shops is overdone among the women-folks. My wife
tried it, and lost five dollars on her outlay!&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;Poor business!&rdquo; said Dixey, shaking his head. &ldquo;Poor
business!&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
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,&mdash;whirling sticks, straws and all such trifles, round and
round, right over the black depth where a dead corpse lay unseen!
</p>

<p>
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.
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;It&rsquo;s a nice article, and I know the old lady would jump at
it,&rdquo; said he to himself. &ldquo;She can&rsquo;t be gone away! In fifteen
years that I have driven my cart through Pyncheon Street, I&rsquo;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&rsquo;d
only herself to provide for.&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
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&rsquo;s indefatigable efforts to attract notice, so
piqued the man of flesh that he determined to withdraw.
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;So,&rdquo; thought he, &ldquo;there sits Old Maid Pyncheon&rsquo;s
bloody brother, while I&rsquo;ve been giving myself all this trouble! Why, if a
hog hadn&rsquo;t more manners, I&rsquo;d stick him! I call it demeaning a
man&rsquo;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!&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
He tossed the titbit angrily into his cart, and drove off in a pet.
</p>

<p>
Not a great while afterwards there was a sound of music turning the corner and
approaching down the street, with several intervals of silence, and then a
renewed and nearer outbreak of brisk melody. A mob of children was seen moving
onward, or stopping, in unison with the sound, which appeared to proceed from
the centre of the throng; so that they were loosely bound together by slender
strains of harmony, and drawn along captive; with ever and anon an accession of
some little fellow in an apron and straw-hat, capering forth from door or
gateway. Arriving under the shadow of the Pyncheon Elm, it proved to be the
Italian boy, who, with his monkey and show of puppets, had once before played
his hurdy-gurdy beneath the arched window. The pleasant face of
Phœbe&mdash;and doubtless, too, the liberal recompense which she had flung
him&mdash;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.
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t hear anybody in the house,&rdquo; said one of the children
to another. &ldquo;The monkey won&rsquo;t pick up anything here.&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;There is somebody at home,&rdquo; affirmed the urchin on the threshold.
&ldquo;I heard a step!&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
Still the young Italian&rsquo;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&mdash;be it no more than a smile, or a word itself not understood, but
only a warmth in it&mdash;which befalls them on the roadside of life. They
remember these things, because they are the little enchantments which, for the
instant,&mdash;for the space that reflects a landscape in a
soap-bubble,&mdash;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 Phœbe&rsquo;s sunny aspect. Neither could he be
willing to depart without again beholding Clifford, whose sensibility, like
Phœbe&rsquo;s smile, had talked a kind of heart&rsquo;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.
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;No children live in this house,&rdquo; said a schoolboy, at last.
&ldquo;Nobody lives here but an old maid and an old man. You&rsquo;ll get
nothing here! Why don&rsquo;t you go along?&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;You fool, you, why do you tell him?&rdquo; whispered a shrewd little
Yankee, caring nothing for the music, but a good deal for the cheap rate at
which it was had. &ldquo;Let him play as he likes! If there&rsquo;s nobody to
pay him, that&rsquo;s his own lookout!&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
Once more, however, the Italian ran over his round of melodies. To the common
observer&mdash;who could understand nothing of the case, except the music and
the sunshine on the hither side of the door&mdash;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?
</p>

<p>
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&rsquo;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&rsquo;s gayety around it.
</p>

<p>
Before the conclusion of the Italian&rsquo;s performance, a couple of men
happened to be passing, On their way to dinner. &ldquo;I say, you young French
fellow!&rdquo; called out one of them,&mdash;&ldquo;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&rsquo;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!&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
As the Italian shouldered his hurdy-gurdy, he saw on the doorstep a card, which
had been covered, all the morning, by the newspaper that the carrier had flung
upon it, but was now shuffled into sight. He picked it up, and perceiving
something written in pencil, gave it to the man to read. In fact, it was an
engraved card of Judge Pyncheon&rsquo;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&rsquo;s
history; only that affairs had not turned out altogether in accordance with the
programme. The card must have been lost from the Judge&rsquo;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.
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;Look here; Dixey!&rdquo; cried the man. &ldquo;This has something to do
with Judge Pyncheon. See!&mdash;here&rsquo;s his name printed on it; and here,
I suppose, is some of his handwriting.&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;Let&rsquo;s go to the city marshal with it!&rdquo; said Dixey. &ldquo;It
may give him just the clew he wants. After all,&rdquo; whispered he in his
companion&rsquo;s ear, &ldquo;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,&mdash;and the Judge&rsquo;s pocket-book being well filled,&mdash;and
bad blood amongst them already! Put all these things together and see what they
make!&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;Hush, hush!&rdquo; whispered the other. &ldquo;It seems like a sin to be
the first to speak of such a thing. But I think, with you, that we had better
go to the city marshal.&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;Yes, yes!&rdquo; said Dixey. &ldquo;Well!&mdash;I always said there was
something devilish in that woman&rsquo;s scowl!&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
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&mdash;for
(and it would have deeply wounded him to know it) he had always been a horror
to these small people&mdash;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.
</p>

<p>
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 Phœbe! Though not altogether so
blooming as when she first tripped into our story,&mdash;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,&mdash;still there was the quiet glow of natural sunshine over her.
Neither had she forfeited her proper gift of making things look real, rather
than fantastic, within her sphere. Yet we feel it to be a questionable venture,
even for Phœbe, at this juncture, to cross the threshold of the Seven Gables.
Is her healthful presence potent enough to chase away the crowd of pale,
hideous, and sinful phantoms, that have gained admittance there since her
departure? Or will she, likewise, fade, sicken, sadden, and grow into
deformity, and be only another pallid phantom, to glide noiselessly up and down
the stairs, and affright children as she pauses at the window?
</p>

<p>
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&mdash;wretched spectacle that he is, and frightful in our
remembrance, since our night-long vigil with him!&mdash;still keeps his place
in the oaken chair.
</p>

<p>
Phœbe first tried the shop-door. It did not yield to her hand; and the white
curtain, drawn across the window which formed the upper section of the door,
struck her quick perceptive faculty as something unusual. Without making
another effort to enter here, she betook herself to the great portal, under the
arched window. Finding it fastened, she knocked. A reverberation came from the
emptiness within. She knocked again, and a third time; and, listening intently,
fancied that the floor creaked, as if Hepzibah were coming, with her ordinary
tiptoe movement, to admit her. But so dead a silence ensued upon this imaginary
sound, that she began to question whether she might not have mistaken the
house, familiar as she thought herself with its exterior.
</p>

<p>
Her notice was now attracted by a child&rsquo;s voice, at some distance. It
appeared to call her name. Looking in the direction whence it proceeded, Phœbe
saw little Ned Higgins, a good way down the street, stamping, shaking his head
violently, making deprecatory gestures with both hands, and shouting to her at
mouth-wide screech.
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;No, no, Phœbe!&rdquo; he screamed. &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t you go in!
There&rsquo;s something wicked there!
Don&rsquo;t&mdash;don&rsquo;t&mdash;don&rsquo;t go in!&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
But, as the little personage could not be induced to approach near enough to
explain himself, Phœbe concluded that he had been frightened, on some of his
visits to the shop, by her cousin Hepzibah; for the good lady&rsquo;s
manifestations, in truth, ran about an equal chance of scaring children out of
their wits, or compelling them to unseemly laughter. Still, she felt the more,
for this incident, how unaccountably silent and impenetrable the house had
become. As her next resort, Phœbe made her way into the garden, where on so
warm and bright a day as the present, she had little doubt of finding Clifford,
and perhaps Hepzibah also, idling away the noontide in the shadow of the arbor.
Immediately on her entering the garden gate, the family of hens half ran, half
flew to meet her; while a strange grimalkin, which was prowling under the
parlor window, took to his heels, clambered hastily over the fence, and
vanished. The arbor was vacant, and its floor, table, and circular bench were
still damp, and bestrewn with twigs and the disarray of the past storm. The
growth of the garden seemed to have got quite out of bounds; the weeds had
taken advantage of Phœbe&rsquo;s absence, and the long-continued rain, to run
rampant over the flowers and kitchen-vegetables. Maule&rsquo;s well had
overflowed its stone border, and made a pool of formidable breadth in that
corner of the garden.
</p>

<p>
The impression of the whole scene was that of a spot where no human foot had
left its print for many preceding days,&mdash;probably not since Phœbe&rsquo;s
departure,&mdash;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.
</p>

<p>
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&rsquo;s strength, not wide,
but far enough to afford her a sidelong entrance. As Hepzibah, in order not to
expose herself to inspection from without, invariably opened a door in this
manner, Phœbe necessarily concluded that it was her cousin who now admitted
her.
</p>

<p>
Without hesitation, therefore, she stepped across the threshold, and had no
sooner entered than the door closed behind her.
</p>

</div><!--end chapter-->

<div class="chapter">

<h2><a id="chap20"></a>XX.<br >
The Flower of Eden</h2>

<p>
Phœbe, coming so suddenly from the sunny daylight, was altogether bedimmed in
such density of shadow as lurked in most of the passages of the old house. She
was not at first aware by whom she had been admitted. Before her eyes had
adapted themselves to the obscurity, a hand grasped her own with a firm but
gentle and warm pressure, thus imparting a welcome which caused her heart to
leap and thrill with an indefinable shiver of enjoyment. She felt herself drawn
along, not towards the parlor, but into a large and unoccupied apartment, which
had formerly been the grand reception-room of the Seven Gables. The sunshine
came freely into all the uncurtained windows of this room, and fell upon the
dusty floor; so that Phœbe now clearly saw&mdash;what, indeed, had been no
secret, after the encounter of a warm hand with hers&mdash;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.
</p>

<p>
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 Phœbe had ever witnessed, shining out of
the New England reserve with which Holgrave habitually masked whatever lay near
his heart. It was the look wherewith a man, brooding alone over some fearful
object, in a dreary forest or illimitable desert, would recognize the familiar
aspect of his dearest friend, bringing up all the peaceful ideas that belong to
home, and the gentle current of every-day affairs. And yet, as he felt the
necessity of responding to her look of inquiry, the smile disappeared.
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;I ought not to rejoice that you have come, Phœbe,&rdquo; said he.
&ldquo;We meet at a strange moment!&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;What has happened!&rdquo; she exclaimed. &ldquo;Why is the house so
deserted? Where are Hepzibah and Clifford?&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;Gone! I cannot imagine where they are!&rdquo; answered Holgrave.
&ldquo;We are alone in the house!&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;Hepzibah and Clifford gone?&rdquo; cried Phœbe. &ldquo;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!&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;No, no, Phœbe!&rdquo; said Holgrave holding her back. &ldquo;It is as I
have told you. They are gone, and I know not whither. A terrible event has,
indeed happened, but not to them, nor, as I undoubtingly believe, through any
agency of theirs. If I read your character rightly, Phœbe,&rdquo; he
continued, fixing his eyes on hers with stern anxiety, intermixed with
tenderness, &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;Oh, no, I am very weak!&rdquo; replied Phœbe, trembling. &ldquo;But
tell me what has happened!&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;You are strong!&rdquo; persisted Holgrave. &ldquo;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!&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;Tell me!&mdash;tell me!&rdquo; said Phœbe, all in a tremble. &ldquo;It
oppresses,&mdash;it terrifies me,&mdash;this mystery! Anything else I can
bear!&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
The artist hesitated. Notwithstanding what he had just said, and most
sincerely, in regard to the self-balancing power with which Phœbe impressed
him, it still seemed almost wicked to bring the awful secret of yesterday to
her knowledge. It was like dragging a hideous shape of death into the cleanly
and cheerful space before a household fire, where it would present all the
uglier aspect, amid the decorousness of everything about it. Yet it could not
be concealed from her; she must needs know it.
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;Phœbe,&rdquo; said he, &ldquo;do you remember this?&rdquo; 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.
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;What has this to do with Hepzibah and Clifford?&rdquo; asked Phœbe,
with impatient surprise that Holgrave should so trifle with her at such a
moment. &ldquo;It is Judge Pyncheon! You have shown it to me before!&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;But here is the same face, taken within this half-hour&rdquo; said the
artist, presenting her with another miniature. &ldquo;I had just finished it
when I heard you at the door.&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;This is death!&rdquo; shuddered Phœbe, turning very pale. &ldquo;Judge
Pyncheon dead!&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;Such as there represented,&rdquo; said Holgrave, &ldquo;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&rsquo;s room, or
Clifford&rsquo;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&rsquo;s storm. A rumor reached me, too, of Judge Pyncheon being
missed. A feeling which I cannot describe&mdash;an indefinite sense of some
catastrophe, or consummation&mdash;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,&mdash;for,
Phœbe, there are hereditary reasons that connect me strangely with that
man&rsquo;s fate,&mdash;I used the means at my disposal to preserve this
pictorial record of Judge Pyncheon&rsquo;s death.&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
Even in her agitation, Phœbe could not help remarking the calmness of
Holgrave&rsquo;s demeanor. He appeared, it is true, to feel the whole awfulness
of the Judge&rsquo;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.
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;Why have you not thrown open the doors, and called in witnesses?&rdquo;
inquired she with a painful shudder. &ldquo;It is terrible to be here
alone!&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;But Clifford!&rdquo; suggested the artist. &ldquo;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,&mdash;had Clifford flung wide the door, and proclaimed Judge
Pyncheon&rsquo;s death,&mdash;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&rsquo;s character.&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;And how,&rdquo; asked Phœbe, &ldquo;could any good come from what is so
very dreadful?&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;Because,&rdquo; said the artist, &ldquo;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&rsquo;s time of life, and generally in the tension of some mental crisis,
or, perhaps, in an access of wrath. Old Maule&rsquo;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&rsquo;s uncle thirty years ago. It is true, there was a certain
arrangement of circumstances, unnecessary to be recounted, which made it
possible&mdash;nay, as men look at these things, probable, or even certain&mdash;that
old Jaffrey Pyncheon came to a violent death, and by Clifford&rsquo;s
hands.&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;Whence came those circumstances?&rdquo; exclaimed Phœbe. &ldquo;He
being innocent, as we know him to be!&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;They were arranged,&rdquo; said Holgrave,&mdash;&ldquo;at least such has
long been my conviction,&mdash;they were arranged after the uncle&rsquo;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,&mdash;it distorts everything! He may be in concealment, near at hand.
Could we but bring him back before the discovery of the Judge&rsquo;s death,
the evil might be rectified.&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;We must not hide this thing a moment longer!&rdquo; said Phœbe.
&ldquo;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!&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;You are right, Phœbe,&rdquo; rejoined Holgrave. &ldquo;Doubtless you
are right.&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
Yet the artist did not feel the horror, which was proper to Phœbe&rsquo;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,&mdash;as it were, a
flower of strange beauty, growing in a desolate spot, and blossoming in the
wind,&mdash;such a flower of momentary happiness he gathered from his present
position. It separated Phœbe and himself from the world, and bound them to
each other, by their exclusive knowledge of Judge Pyncheon&rsquo;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&rsquo;s side, through a shadow-haunted
passage. The image of awful Death, which filled the house, held them united by
his stiffened grasp.
</p>

<p>
These influences hastened the development of emotions that might not otherwise
have flowered so. Possibly, indeed, it had been Holgrave&rsquo;s purpose to let
them die in their undeveloped germs. &ldquo;Why do we delay so?&rdquo; asked
Phœbe. &ldquo;This secret takes away my breath! Let us throw open the
doors!&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;In all our lives there can never come another moment like this!&rdquo;
said Holgrave. &ldquo;Phœbe, is it all terror?&mdash;nothing but terror? Are
you conscious of no joy, as I am, that has made this the only point of life
worth living for?&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;It seems a sin,&rdquo; replied Phœbe, trembling, &ldquo;to think of joy
at such a time!&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;Could you but know, Phœbe, how it was with me the hour before you
came!&rdquo; exclaimed the artist. &ldquo;A dark, cold, miserable hour! The
presence of yonder dead man threw a great black shadow over everything; he made
the universe, so far as my perception could reach, a scene of guilt and of
retribution more dreadful than the guilt. The sense of it took away my youth. I
never hoped to feel young again! The world looked strange, wild, evil, hostile;
my past life, so lonesome and dreary; my future, a shapeless gloom, which I
must mould into gloomy shapes! But, Phœbe, you crossed the threshold; and
hope, warmth, and joy came in with you! The black moment became at once a
blissful one. It must not pass without the spoken word. I love you!&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;How can you love a simple girl like me?&rdquo; asked Phœbe, compelled
by his earnestness to speak. &ldquo;You have many, many thoughts, with which I
should try in vain to sympathize. And I,&mdash;I, too,&mdash;I have tendencies
with which you would sympathize as little. That is less matter. But I have not
scope enough to make you happy.&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;You are my only possibility of happiness!&rdquo; answered Holgrave.
&ldquo;I have no faith in it, except as you bestow it on me!&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;And then&mdash;I am afraid!&rdquo; continued Phœbe, shrinking towards
Holgrave, even while she told him so frankly the doubts with which he affected
her. &ldquo;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!&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;Ah, Phœbe!&rdquo; exclaimed Holgrave, with almost a sigh, and a smile
that was burdened with thought.
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;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,&mdash;perhaps, even, in due time, to build a
house for another generation,&mdash;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.&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;I would not have it so!&rdquo; said Phœbe earnestly.
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;Do you love me?&rdquo; asked Holgrave. &ldquo;If we love one another,
the moment has room for nothing more. Let us pause upon it, and be satisfied.
Do you love me, Phœbe?&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;You look into my heart,&rdquo; said she, letting her eyes drop.
&ldquo;You know I love you!&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
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.
</p>

<p>
But how soon the heavy earth-dream settled down again!
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;Hark!&rdquo; whispered Phœbe. &ldquo;Somebody is at the street
door!&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;Now let us meet the world!&rdquo; said Holgrave. &ldquo;No doubt, the
rumor of Judge Pyncheon&rsquo;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.&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
But, to their surprise, before they could reach the street door,&mdash;even
before they quitted the room in which the foregoing interview had
passed,&mdash;they heard footsteps in the farther passage. The door, therefore,
which they supposed to be securely locked,&mdash;which Holgrave, indeed, had
seen to be so, and at which Phœbe had vainly tried to enter,&mdash;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.
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;Can it be?&rdquo; whispered Holgrave.
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;It is they!&rdquo; answered Phœbe. &ldquo;Thank God!&mdash;thank
God!&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
And then, as if in sympathy with Phœbe&rsquo;s whispered ejaculation, they
heard Hepzibah&rsquo;s voice more distinctly.
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;Thank God, my brother, we are at home!&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;Well!&mdash;Yes!&mdash;thank God!&rdquo; responded Clifford. &ldquo;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,&mdash;oh, very long ago, it seems to me, after what has befallen
us,&mdash;where I used to be so happy with little Phœbe!&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
But the house was not altogether so dreary as Clifford imagined it. They had
not made many steps,&mdash;in truth, they were lingering in the entry, with the
listlessness of an accomplished purpose, uncertain what to do next,&mdash;when
Phœbe ran to meet them. On beholding her, Hepzibah burst into tears. With all
her might, she had staggered onward beneath the burden of grief and
responsibility, until now that it was safe to fling it down. Indeed, she had
not energy to fling it down, but had ceased to uphold it, and suffered it to
press her to the earth. Clifford appeared the stronger of the two.
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;It is our own little Phœbe!&mdash;Ah! and Holgrave with, her&rdquo;
exclaimed he, with a glance of keen and delicate insight, and a smile,
beautiful, kind, but melancholy. &ldquo;I thought of you both, as we came down
the street, and beheld Alice&rsquo;s Posies in full bloom. And so the flower of
Eden has bloomed, likewise, in this old, darksome house to-day.&rdquo;
</p>

</div><!--end chapter-->

<div class="chapter">

<h2><a id="chap21"></a>XXI.<br >
The Departure</h2>

<p>
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.
</p>

<p>
It may be remarked, however, that, of all the events which constitute a
person&rsquo;s biography, there is scarcely one&mdash;none, certainly, of
anything like a similar importance&mdash;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,&mdash;very small, as compared with the apparent
magnitude of the ingurgitated object,&mdash;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&mdash;except
for some unimportant particulars, denoting a slight idiosyncrasy&mdash;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.
</p>

<p>
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&rsquo;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&rsquo;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&rsquo;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&rsquo;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.
</p>

<p>
Whencesoever originating, there now arose a theory that undertook so to account
for these circumstances as to exclude the idea of Clifford&rsquo;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&rsquo;s natural vision to the blush, by the marvels
which they see with their eyes shut.
</p>

<p>
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&rsquo;s affection, once
strongly fixed upon him. Now it is averred,&mdash;but whether on authority
available in a court of justice, we do not pretend to have
investigated,&mdash;that the young man was tempted by the devil, one night, to
search his uncle&rsquo;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!
</p>

<p>
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,&mdash;which he destroyed,&mdash;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&rsquo;s previous steps had already pledged him to those which remained.
So craftily had he arranged the circumstances, that, at Clifford&rsquo;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.
</p>

<p>
Thus Jaffrey Pyncheon&rsquo;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&rsquo;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.
</p>

<p>
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&rsquo;s inheritance. Hardly a week after his decease,
one of the Cunard steamers brought intelligence of the death, by cholera, of
Judge Pyncheon&rsquo;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,&mdash;the wild reformer,&mdash;Holgrave!
</p>

<p>
It was now far too late in Clifford&rsquo;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.
</p>

<p>
The shock of Judge Pyncheon&rsquo;s death had a permanently invigorating and
ultimately beneficial effect on Clifford. That strong and ponderous man had
been Clifford&rsquo;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&rsquo;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.
</p>

<p>
Very soon after their change of fortune, Clifford, Hepzibah, and little Phœbe,
with the approval of the artist, concluded to remove from the dismal old House
of the Seven Gables, and take up their abode, for the present, at the elegant
country-seat of the late Judge Pyncheon. Chanticleer and his family had already
been transported thither, where the two hens had forthwith begun an
indefatigable process of egg-laying, with an evident design, as a matter of
duty and conscience, to continue their illustrious breed under better auspices
than for a century past. On the day set for their departure, the principal
personages of our story, including good Uncle Venner, were assembled in the
parlor.
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;The country-house is certainly a very fine one, so far as the plan
goes,&rdquo; observed Holgrave, as the party were discussing their future
arrangements. &ldquo;But I wonder that the late Judge&mdash;being so opulent,
and with a reasonable prospect of transmitting his wealth to descendants of his
own&mdash;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.&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;Why,&rdquo; cried Phœbe, gazing into the artist&rsquo;s face with
infinite amazement, &ldquo;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&rsquo;s-nest!&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;Ah, Phœbe, I told you how it would be!&rdquo; said the artist, with a
half-melancholy laugh. &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;That picture!&rdquo; said Clifford, seeming to shrink from its stern
glance. &ldquo;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!&mdash;boundless wealth!&mdash;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?&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;Perhaps I can recall it,&rdquo; answered Holgrave. &ldquo;See! There are
a hundred chances to one that no person, unacquainted with the secret, would
ever touch this spring.&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;A secret spring!&rdquo; cried Clifford. &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
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&rsquo;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&rsquo;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.
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;This is the very parchment, the attempt to recover which cost the
beautiful Alice Pyncheon her happiness and life,&rdquo; said the artist,
alluding to his legend. &ldquo;It is what the Pyncheons sought in vain, while
it was valuable; and now that they find the treasure, it has long been
worthless.&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;Poor Cousin Jaffrey! This is what deceived him,&rdquo; exclaimed
Hepzibah. &ldquo;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&rsquo;s wealth. He died with this delusion in
his mind!&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;But,&rdquo; said Phœbe, apart to Holgrave, &ldquo;how came you to know
the secret?&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;My dearest Phœbe,&rdquo; said Holgrave, &ldquo;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&rsquo;s garden-ground.&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;And now&rdquo; said Uncle Venner &ldquo;I suppose their whole claim is
not worth one man&rsquo;s share in my farm yonder!&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;Uncle Venner,&rdquo; cried Phœbe, taking the patched
philosopher&rsquo;s hand, &ldquo;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,&mdash;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,&mdash;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!&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;Ah! my dear child,&rdquo; quoth good Uncle Venner, quite overcome,
&ldquo;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&mdash;soul alive!&mdash;that great sigh, which you made me
heave, has burst off the very last of them! But, never mind! It was the
happiest sigh I ever did heave; and it seems as if I must have drawn in a gulp
of heavenly breath, to make it with. Well, well, Miss Phœbe! They&rsquo;ll
miss me in the gardens hereabouts, and round by the back doors; and Pyncheon
Street, I&rsquo;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,&mdash;that&rsquo;s one of two things certain; and I leave you
to choose which!&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;Oh, come with us, by all means, Uncle Venner!&rdquo; said Clifford, who
had a remarkable enjoyment of the old man&rsquo;s mellow, quiet, and simple
spirit. &ldquo;I want you always to be within five minutes&rsquo; 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!&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;Dear me!&rdquo; cried Uncle Venner, beginning partly to realize what
manner of man he was. &ldquo;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,&mdash;a
great deal the better, the longer I can be kept. Yes; and my words of wisdom,
that you and Phœbe tell me of, are like the golden dandelions, which never
grow in the hot months, but may be seen glistening among the withered grass,
and under the dry leaves, sometimes as late as December. And you are welcome,
friends, to my mess of dandelions, if there were twice as many!&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
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&mdash;as proves to be often the case, at moments when we ought to palpitate
with sensibility&mdash;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.
</p>

<p>
Two men were passing, just as the barouche drove off.
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;Well, Dixey,&rdquo; said one of them, &ldquo;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,&mdash;reckoning her share, and
Clifford&rsquo;s, and Phœbe&rsquo;s,&mdash;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&rsquo;t exactly fathom it!&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
&ldquo;Pretty good business!&rdquo; quoth the sagacious
Dixey,&mdash;&ldquo;pretty good business!&rdquo;
</p>

<p>
Maule&rsquo;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&rsquo;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&mdash;after witnessing these
deeds, this bygone woe and this present happiness, of her kindred
mortals&mdash;had given one farewell touch of a spirit&rsquo;s joy upon her
harpsichord, as she floated heavenward from the H<small>OUSE OF THE</small>
S<small>EVEN</small> G<small>ABLES</small>!
</p>

</div><!--end chapter-->

<div style='text-align:center'>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 77 ***</div>
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