Part 6 - The House of the Seven Gables Audiobook by Nathaniel Hawthorne (Chs 19-21)

CHAPTER XIX Alice's Posies
UNCLE VENNER, trundling a wheelbarrow, was the earliest person stirring in the
neighborhood the day after the storm.
Pyncheon Street, in front of the House of the Seven Gables, was a far pleasanter
scene than a by-lane, confined by shabby fences, and bordered with wooden dwellings
of the meaner class, could reasonably be expected to present.
Nature made sweet amends, that morning, for the five unkindly days which had preceded
it.
It would have been enough to live for, merely to look up at the wide benediction
of the sky, or as much of it as was visible between the houses, genial once more with
sunshine.
Every object was agreeable, whether to be gazed at in the breadth, or examined more
minutely.
Such, for example, were the well-washed pebbles and gravel of the sidewalk; even
the sky-reflecting pools in the centre of the street; and the grass, now freshly
verdant, that crept along the base of the
fences, on the other side of which, if one peeped over, was seen the multifarious
growth of gardens.
Vegetable productions, of whatever kind, seemed more than negatively happy, in the
juicy warmth and abundance of their life.
The Pyncheon Elm, throughout its great circumference, was all alive, and full of
the morning sun and a sweet-tempered little breeze, which lingered within this verdant
sphere, and set a thousand leafy tongues a- whispering all at once.
This aged tree appeared to have suffered nothing from the gale.
It had kept its boughs unshattered, and its full complement of leaves; and the whole in
perfect verdure, except a single branch, that, by the earlier change with which the
elm-tree sometimes prophesies the autumn, had been transmuted to bright gold.
It was like the golden branch that gained Aeneas and the Sibyl admittance into Hades.
This one mystic branch hung down before the main entrance of the Seven Gables, so nigh
the ground that any passer-by might have stood on tiptoe and plucked it off.
Presented at the door, it would have been a symbol of his right to enter, and be made
acquainted with all the secrets of the house.
So little faith is due to external appearance, that there was really an
inviting aspect over the venerable edifice, conveying an idea that its history must be
a decorous and happy one, and such as would be delightful for a fireside tale.
Its windows gleamed cheerfully in the slanting sunlight.
The lines and tufts of green moss, here and there, seemed pledges of familiarity and
sisterhood with Nature; as if this human dwelling-place, being of such old date, had
established its prescriptive title among
primeval oaks and whatever other objects, by virtue of their long continuance, have
acquired a gracious right to be.
A person of imaginative temperament, while passing by the house, would turn, once and
again, and peruse it well: its many peaks, consenting together in the clustered
chimney; the deep projection over its
basement-story; the arched window, imparting a look, if not of grandeur, yet
of antique gentility, to the broken portal over which it opened; the luxuriance of
gigantic burdocks, near the threshold; he
would note all these characteristics, and be conscious of something deeper than he
saw.
He would conceive the mansion to have been the residence of the stubborn old Puritan,
Integrity, who, dying in some forgotten generation, had left a blessing in all its
rooms and chambers, the efficacy of which
was to be seen in the religion, honesty, moderate competence, or upright poverty and
solid happiness, of his descendants, to this day.
One object, above all others, would take root in the imaginative observer's memory.
It was the great tuft of flowers,--weeds, you would have called them, only a week
ago,--the tuft of crimson-spotted flowers, in the angle between the two front gables.
The old people used to give them the name of Alice's Posies, in remembrance of fair
Alice Pyncheon, who was believed to have brought their seeds from Italy.
They were flaunting in rich beauty and full bloom to-day, and seemed, as it were, a
mystic expression that something within the house was consummated.
It was but little after sunrise, when Uncle Venner made his appearance, as aforesaid,
impelling a wheelbarrow along the street.
He was going his matutinal rounds to collect cabbage-leaves, turnip-tops,
potato-skins, and the miscellaneous refuse of the dinner-pot, which the thrifty
housewives of the neighborhood were
accustomed to put aside, as fit only to feed a pig.
Uncle Venner's pig was fed entirely, and kept in prime order, on these eleemosynary
contributions; insomuch that the patched philosopher used to promise that, before
retiring to his farm, he would make a feast
of the portly grunter, and invite all his neighbors to partake of the joints and
spare-ribs which they had helped to fatten.
Miss Hepzibah Pyncheon's housekeeping had so greatly improved, since Clifford became
a member of the family, that her share of the banquet would have been no lean one;
and Uncle Venner, accordingly, was a good
deal disappointed not to find the large earthen pan, full of fragmentary eatables,
that ordinarily awaited his coming at the back doorstep of the Seven Gables.
"I never knew Miss Hepzibah so forgetful before," said the patriarch to himself.
"She must have had a dinner yesterday,--no question of that!
She always has one, nowadays.
So where's the pot-liquor and potato-skins, I ask?
Shall I knock, and see if she's stirring yet?
No, no,--'t won't do!
If little Phoebe was about the house, I should not mind knocking; but Miss
Hepzibah, likely as not, would scowl down at me out of the window, and look cross,
even if she felt pleasantly.
So, I'll come back at noon." With these reflections, the old man was
shutting the gate of the little back-yard.
Creaking on its hinges, however, like every other gate and door about the premises, the
sound reached the ears of the occupant of the northern gable, one of the windows of
which had a side-view towards the gate.
"Good-morning, Uncle Venner!" said the daguerreotypist, leaning out of the window.
"Do you hear nobody stirring?" "Not a soul," said the man of patches.
"But that's no wonder.
'Tis barely half an hour past sunrise, yet. But I'm really glad to see you, Mr.
Holgrave!
There's a strange, lonesome look about this side of the house; so that my heart misgave
me, somehow or other, and I felt as if there was nobody alive in it.
The front of the house looks a good deal cheerier; and Alice's Posies are blooming
there beautifully; and if I were a young man, Mr. Holgrave, my sweetheart should
have one of those flowers in her bosom, though I risked my neck climbing for it!
Well, and did the wind keep you awake last night?"
"It did, indeed!" answered the artist, smiling.
"If I were a believer in ghosts,--and I don't quite know whether I am or not,--I
should have concluded that all the old Pyncheons were running riot in the lower
rooms, especially in Miss Hepzibah's part of the house.
But it is very quiet now."
"Yes, Miss Hepzibah will be apt to over- sleep herself, after being disturbed, all
night, with the racket," said Uncle Venner.
"But it would be odd, now, wouldn't it, if the Judge had taken both his cousins into
the country along with him? I saw him go into the shop yesterday."
"At what hour?" inquired Holgrave.
"Oh, along in the forenoon," said the old man.
"Well, well! I must go my rounds, and so must my
wheelbarrow.
But I'll be back here at dinner-time; for my pig likes a dinner as well as a
breakfast. No meal-time, and no sort of victuals, ever
seems to come amiss to my pig.
Good morning to you! And, Mr. Holgrave, if I were a young man,
like you, I'd get one of Alice's Posies, and keep it in water till Phoebe comes
back."
"I have heard," said the daguerreotypist, as he drew in his head, "that the water of
Maule's well suits those flowers best." Here the conversation ceased, and Uncle
Venner went on his way.
For half an hour longer, nothing disturbed the repose of the Seven Gables; nor was
there any visitor, except a carrier-boy, who, as he passed the front doorstep, threw
down one of his 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. "The deuce take Old Maid Pyncheon!"
muttered the irascible housewife.
"Think of her pretending to set up a cent- shop, and then lying abed till noon!
These are what she calls gentlefolk's airs, I suppose!
But I'll either start her ladyship, or break the door down!"
She shook it accordingly, and the bell, having a spiteful little temper of its own,
rang obstreperously, making its remonstrances heard,--not, indeed, by the
ears for which they were intended,--but by
a good lady on the opposite side of the street.
She opened the window, and addressed the impatient applicant.
"You'll find nobody there, Mrs. Gubbins."
"But I must and will find somebody here!" cried Mrs. Gubbins, inflicting another
outrage on the bell.
"I want a half-pound of pork, to fry some first-rate flounders for Mr. Gubbins's
breakfast; and, lady or not, Old Maid Pyncheon shall get up and serve me with
it!"
"But do hear reason, Mrs. Gubbins!" responded the lady opposite.
"She, and her brother too, have both gone to their cousin's, Judge Pyncheon's at his
country-seat.
There's not a soul in the house, but that young daguerreotype-man that sleeps in the
north gable.
I saw old Hepzibah and Clifford go away yesterday; and a queer couple of ducks they
were, paddling through the mud-puddles! They're gone, I'll assure you."
"And how do you know they're gone to the Judge's?" asked Mrs. Gubbins.
"He's a rich man; and there's been a quarrel between him and Hepzibah this many
a day, because he won't give her a living.
That's the main reason of her setting up a cent-shop."
"I know that well enough," said the neighbor.
"But they're gone,--that's one thing certain.
And who but a blood relation, that couldn't help himself, I ask you, would take in that
awful-tempered old maid, and that dreadful Clifford?
That's it, you may be sure."
Mrs. Gubbins took her departure, still brimming over with hot wrath against the
absent Hepzibah.
For another half-hour, or, perhaps, considerably more, there was almost as much
quiet on the outside of the house as within.
The elm, however, made a pleasant, cheerful, sunny sigh, responsive to the
breeze that was elsewhere imperceptible; a swarm of insects buzzed merrily under its
drooping shadow, and became specks of light
whenever they darted into the sunshine; a locust sang, once or twice, in some
inscrutable seclusion of the tree; and a solitary little bird, with plumage of pale
gold, came and hovered about Alice's Posies.
At last our small acquaintance, Ned Higgins, trudged up the street, on his way
to school; and happening, for the first time in a fortnight, to be the possessor of
a cent, he could by no means get past the shop-door of the Seven Gables.
But it would not open.
Again and again, however, and half a dozen other agains, with the inexorable
pertinacity of a child intent upon some object important to itself, did he renew
his efforts for admittance.
He had, doubtless, set his heart upon an elephant; or, possibly, with Hamlet, he
meant to eat a crocodile.
In response to his more violent attacks, the bell gave, now and then, a moderate
tinkle, but could not be stirred into clamor by any exertion of the little
fellow's childish and tiptoe strength.
Holding by the door-handle, he peeped through a crevice of the curtain, and saw
that the inner door, communicating with the passage towards the parlor, was closed.
"Miss Pyncheon!" screamed the child, rapping on the window-pane, "I want an
elephant!"
There being no answer to several repetitions of the summons, Ned began to
grow impatient; and his little pot of passion quickly boiling over, he picked up
a stone, with a naughty purpose to fling it
through the window; at the same time blubbering and sputtering with wrath.
A man--one of two who happened to be passing by--caught the urchin's arm.
"What's the trouble, old gentleman?" he asked.
"I want old Hepzibah, or Phoebe, or any of them!" answered Ned, sobbing.
"They won't open the door; and I can't get my elephant!"
"Go to school, you little scamp!" said the man.
"There's another cent-shop round the corner.
'T is very strange, Dixey," added he to his companion, "what's become of all these
Pyncheon's!
Smith, the livery-stable keeper, tells me Judge Pyncheon put his horse up yesterday,
to stand till after dinner, and has not taken him away yet.
And one of the Judge's hired men has been in, this morning, to make inquiry about
him.
He's a kind of person, they say, that seldom breaks his habits, or stays out o'
nights." "Oh, he'll turn up safe enough!" said
Dixey.
"And as for Old Maid Pyncheon, take my word for it, she has run in debt, and gone off
from her creditors.
I foretold, you remember, the first morning she set up shop, that her devilish scowl
would frighten away customers. They couldn't stand it!"
"I never thought she'd make it go," remarked his friend.
"This business of cent-shops is overdone among the women-folks.
My wife tried it, and lost five dollars on her outlay!"
"Poor business!" said Dixey, shaking his head.
"Poor business!"
In the course of the morning, there were various other attempts to open a
communication with the supposed inhabitants of this silent and impenetrable mansion.
The man of root-beer came, in his neatly painted wagon, with a couple of dozen full
bottles, to be exchanged for empty ones; the baker, with a lot of crackers which
Hepzibah had ordered for her retail custom;
the butcher, with a nice titbit which he fancied she would be eager to secure for
Clifford.
Had any observer of these proceedings been aware of the fearful secret hidden within
the house, it would have affected him with a singular shape and modification of
horror, to see the current of human life
making this small eddy hereabouts,-- whirling sticks, straws and all such
trifles, round and round, right over the black depth where a dead corpse lay unseen!
The butcher was so much in earnest with his sweetbread of lamb, or whatever the dainty
might be, that he tried every accessible door of the Seven Gables, and at length
came round again to the shop, where he ordinarily found admittance.
"It's a nice article, and I know the old lady would jump at it," said he to himself.
"She can't be gone away!
In fifteen years that I have driven my cart through Pyncheon Street, I've never known
her to be away from home; though often enough, to be sure, a man might knock all
day without bringing her to the door.
But that was when she'd only herself to provide for."
Peeping through the same crevice of the curtain where, only a little while before,
the urchin of elephantine appetite had peeped, the butcher beheld the inner door,
not closed, as the child had seen it, but ajar, and almost wide open.
However it might have happened, it was the fact.
Through the passage-way there was a dark vista into the lighter but still obscure
interior of the parlor.
It appeared to the butcher that he could pretty clearly discern what seemed to be
the stalwart legs, clad in black pantaloons, of a man sitting in a large
oaken chair, the back of which concealed all the remainder of his figure.
This contemptuous tranquillity on the part of an occupant of the house, in response to
the butcher's indefatigable efforts to attract notice, so piqued the man of flesh
that he determined to withdraw.
"So," thought he, "there sits Old Maid Pyncheon's bloody brother, while I've been
giving myself all this trouble! Why, if a hog hadn't more manners, I'd
stick him!
I call it demeaning a man's business to trade with such people; and from this time
forth, if they want a sausage or an ounce of liver, they shall run after the cart for
it!"
He tossed the titbit angrily into his cart, and drove off in a pet.
Not a great while afterwards there was a sound of music turning the corner and
approaching down the street, with several intervals of silence, and then a renewed
and nearer outbreak of brisk melody.
A mob of children was seen moving onward, or stopping, in unison with the sound,
which appeared to proceed from the centre of the throng; so that they were loosely
bound together by slender strains of
harmony, and drawn along captive; with ever and anon an accession of some little fellow
in an apron and straw-hat, capering forth from door or gateway.
Arriving under the shadow of the Pyncheon Elm, it proved to be the Italian boy, who,
with his monkey and show of puppets, had once before played his hurdy-gurdy beneath
the arched window.
The pleasant face of Phoebe--and doubtless, too, the liberal recompense which she had
flung him--still dwelt in his remembrance.
His expressive features kindled up, as he recognized the spot where this trifling
incident of his erratic life had chanced.
He entered the neglected yard (now wilder than ever, with its growth of hog-weed and
burdock), stationed himself on the doorstep of the main entrance, and, opening his
show-box, began to play.
Each individual of the automatic community forthwith set to work, according to his or
her proper vocation: the monkey, taking off his Highland bonnet, bowed and scraped
to the by-standers most obsequiously, with
ever an observant eye to pick up a stray cent; and the young foreigner himself, as
he turned the crank of his machine, glanced upward to the arched window, expectant of a
presence that would make his music the livelier and sweeter.
The throng of children stood near; some on the sidewalk; some within the yard; two or
three establishing themselves on the very door-step; and one squatting on the
threshold.
Meanwhile, the locust kept singing in the great old Pyncheon Elm.
"I don't hear anybody in the house," said one of the children to another.
"The monkey won't pick up anything here."
"There is somebody at home," affirmed the urchin on the threshold.
"I heard a step!"
Still the young Italian's eye turned sidelong upward; and it really seemed as if
the touch of genuine, though slight and almost playful, emotion communicated a
juicier sweetness to the dry, mechanical process of his minstrelsy.
These wanderers are readily responsive to any natural kindness--be it no more than a
smile, or a word itself not understood, but only a warmth in it--which befalls them on
the roadside of life.
They remember these things, because they are the little enchantments which, for the
instant,--for the space that reflects a landscape in a soap-bubble,--build up a
home about them.
Therefore, the Italian boy would not be discouraged by the heavy silence with which
the old house seemed resolute to clog the vivacity of his instrument.
He persisted in his melodious appeals; he still looked upward, trusting that his
dark, alien countenance would soon be brightened by Phoebe's sunny aspect.
Neither could he be willing to depart without again beholding Clifford, whose
sensibility, like Phoebe's smile, had talked a kind of heart's language to the
foreigner.
He repeated all his music over and over again, until his auditors were getting
weary. So were the little wooden people in his
show-box, and the monkey most of all.
There was no response, save the singing of the locust.
"No children live in this house," said a schoolboy, at last.
"Nobody lives here but an old maid and an old man.
You'll get nothing here! Why don't you go along?"
"You fool, you, why do you tell him?" whispered a shrewd little Yankee, caring
nothing for the music, but a good deal for the cheap rate at which it was had.
"Let him play as he likes!
If there's nobody to pay him, that's his own lookout!"
Once more, however, the Italian ran over his round of melodies.
To the common observer--who could understand nothing of the case, except the
music and the sunshine on the hither side of the door--it might have been amusing to
watch the pertinacity of the street- performer.
Will he succeed at last? Will that stubborn door be suddenly flung
open?
Will a group of joyous children, the young ones of the house, come dancing, shouting,
laughing, into the open air, and cluster round the show-box, looking with eager
merriment at the puppets, and tossing each
a copper for long-tailed Mammon, the monkey, to pick up?
But to us, who know the inner heart of the Seven Gables as well as its exterior face,
there is a ghastly effect in this repetition of light popular tunes at its
door-step.
It would be an ugly business, indeed, if Judge Pyncheon (who would not have cared a
fig for Paganini's fiddle in his most harmonious mood) should make his appearance
at the door, with a bloody shirt-bosom, and
a grim frown on his swarthily white visage, and motion the foreign vagabond away!
Was ever before such a grinding out of jigs and waltzes, where nobody was in the cue to
dance?
Yes, very often. This contrast, or intermingling of tragedy
with mirth, happens daily, hourly, momently.
The gloomy and desolate old house, deserted of life, and with awful Death sitting
sternly in its solitude, was the emblem of many a human heart, which, nevertheless, is
compelled to hear the thrill and echo of the world's gayety around it.
Before the conclusion of the Italian's performance, a couple of men happened to be
passing, On their way to dinner.
"I say, you young French fellow!" called out one of them,--"come away from that
doorstep, and go somewhere else with your nonsense!
The Pyncheon family live there; and they are in great trouble, just about this time.
They don't feel musical to-day.
It is reported all over town that Judge Pyncheon, who owns the house, has been
murdered; and the city marshal is going to look into the matter.
So be off with you, at once!"
As the Italian shouldered his hurdy-gurdy, he saw on the doorstep a card, which had
been covered, all the morning, by the newspaper that the carrier had flung upon
it, but was now shuffled into sight.
He picked it up, and perceiving something written in pencil, gave it to the man to
read.
In fact, it was an engraved card of Judge Pyncheon's with certain pencilled memoranda
on the back, referring to various businesses which it had been his purpose to
transact during the preceding day.
It formed a prospective epitome of the day's history; only that affairs had not
turned out altogether in accordance with the programme.
The card must have been lost from the Judge's vest-pocket in his preliminary
attempt to gain access by the main entrance of the house.
Though well soaked with rain, it was still partially legible.
"Look here; Dixey!" cried the man. "This has something to do with Judge
Pyncheon.
See!--here's his name printed on it; and here, I suppose, is some of his
handwriting." "Let's go to the city marshal with it!"
said Dixey.
"It may give him just the clew he wants. After all," whispered he in his companion's
ear, "it would be no wonder if the Judge has gone into that door and never come out
again!
A certain cousin of his may have been at his old tricks.
And Old Maid Pyncheon having got herself in debt by the cent-shop,--and the Judge's
pocket-book being well filled,--and bad blood amongst them already!
Put all these things together and see what they make!"
"Hush, hush!" whispered the other. "It seems like a sin to be the first to
speak of such a thing.
But I think, with you, that we had better go to the city marshal."
"Yes, yes!" said Dixey. "Well!--I always said there was something
devilish in that woman's scowl!"
The men wheeled about, accordingly, and retraced their steps up the street.
The Italian, also, made the best of his way off, with a parting glance up at the arched
window.
As for the children, they took to their heels, with one accord, and scampered as if
some giant or ogre were in pursuit, until, at a good distance from the house, they
stopped as suddenly and simultaneously as they had set out.
Their susceptible nerves took an indefinite alarm from what they had overheard.
Looking back at the grotesque peaks and shadowy angles of the old mansion, they
fancied a gloom diffused about it which no brightness of the sunshine could dispel.
An imaginary Hepzibah scowled and shook her finger at them, from several windows at the
same moment.
An imaginary Clifford--for (and it would have deeply wounded him to know it) he had
always been a horror to these small people- -stood behind the unreal Hepzibah, making
awful gestures, in a faded dressing-gown.
Children are even more apt, if possible, than grown people, to catch the contagion
of a panic terror.
For the rest of the day, the more timid went whole streets about, for the sake of
avoiding the Seven Gables; while the bolder signalized their hardihood by challenging
their comrades to race past the mansion at full speed.
It could not have been more than half an hour after the disappearance of the Italian
boy, with his unseasonable melodies, when a cab drove down the street.
It stopped beneath the Pyncheon Elm; the cabman took a trunk, a canvas bag, and a
bandbox, from the top of his vehicle, and deposited them on the doorstep of the old
house; a straw bonnet, and then the pretty
figure of a young girl, came into view from the interior of the cab.
It was Phoebe!
Though not altogether so blooming as when she first tripped into our story,--for, in
the few intervening weeks, her experiences had made her graver, more womanly, and
deeper-eyed, in token of a heart that had
begun to suspect its depths,--still there was the quiet glow of natural sunshine over
her.
Neither had she forfeited her proper gift of making things look real, rather than
fantastic, within her sphere.
Yet we feel it to be a questionable venture, even for Phoebe, at this juncture,
to cross the threshold of the Seven Gables.
Is her healthful presence potent enough to chase away the crowd of pale, hideous, and
sinful phantoms, that have gained admittance there since her departure?
Or will she, likewise, fade, sicken, sadden, and grow into deformity, and be
only another pallid phantom, to glide noiselessly up and down the stairs, and
affright children as she pauses at the window?
At least, we would gladly forewarn the unsuspecting girl that there is nothing in
human shape or substance to receive her, unless it be the figure of Judge Pyncheon,
who--wretched spectacle that he is, and
frightful in our remembrance, since our night-long vigil with him!--still keeps his
place in the oaken chair. Phoebe first tried the shop-door.
It did not yield to her hand; and the white curtain, drawn across the window which
formed the upper section of the door, struck her quick perceptive faculty as
something unusual.
Without making another effort to enter here, she betook herself to the great
portal, under the arched window. Finding it fastened, she knocked.
A reverberation came from the emptiness within.
She knocked again, and a third time; and, listening intently, fancied that the floor
creaked, as if Hepzibah were coming, with her ordinary tiptoe movement, to admit her.
But so dead a silence ensued upon this imaginary sound, that she began to question
whether she might not have mistaken the house, familiar as she thought herself with
its exterior.
Her notice was now attracted by a child's voice, at some distance.
It appeared to call her name.
Looking in the direction whence it proceeded, Phoebe saw little Ned Higgins, a
good way down the street, stamping, shaking his head violently, making deprecatory
gestures with both hands, and shouting to her at mouth-wide screech.
"No, no, Phoebe!" he screamed. "Don't you go in!
There's something wicked there!
Don't--don't--don't go in!"
But, as the little personage could not be induced to approach near enough to explain
himself, Phoebe concluded that he had been frightened, on some of his visits to the
shop, by her cousin Hepzibah; for the good
lady's manifestations, in truth, ran about an equal chance of scaring children out of
their wits, or compelling them to unseemly laughter.
Still, she felt the more, for this incident, how unaccountably silent and
impenetrable the house had become.
As her next resort, Phoebe made her way into the garden, where on so warm and
bright a day as the present, she had little doubt of finding Clifford, and perhaps
Hepzibah also, idling away the noontide in the shadow of the arbor.
Immediately on her entering the garden gate, the family of hens half ran, half
flew to meet her; while a strange grimalkin, which was prowling under the
parlor window, took to his heels, clambered hastily over the fence, and vanished.
The arbor was vacant, and its floor, table, and circular bench were still damp, and
bestrewn with twigs and the disarray of the past storm.
The growth of the garden seemed to have got quite out of bounds; the weeds had taken
advantage of Phoebe's absence, and the long-continued rain, to run rampant over
the flowers and kitchen-vegetables.
Maule's well had overflowed its stone border, and made a pool of formidable
breadth in that corner of the garden.
The impression of the whole scene was that of a spot where no human foot had left its
print for many preceding days,--probably not since Phoebe's departure,--for she saw
a side-comb of her own under the table of
the arbor, where it must have fallen on the last afternoon when she and Clifford sat
there.
The girl knew that her two relatives were capable of far greater oddities than that
of shutting themselves up in their old house, as they appeared now to have done.
Nevertheless, with indistinct misgivings of something amiss, and apprehensions to which
she could not give shape, she approached the door that formed the customary
communication between the house and garden.
It was secured within, like the two which she had already tried.
She knocked, however; and immediately, as if the application had been expected, the
door was drawn open, by a considerable exertion of some unseen person's strength,
not wide, but far enough to afford her a sidelong entrance.
As Hepzibah, in order not to expose herself to inspection from without, invariably
opened a door in this manner, Phoebe necessarily concluded that it was her
cousin who now admitted her.
Without hesitation, therefore, she stepped across the threshold, and had no sooner
entered than the door closed behind her.
>
CHAPTER XX The Flower of Eden
PHOEBE, coming so suddenly from the sunny daylight, was altogether bedimmed in such
density of shadow as lurked in most of the passages of the old house.
She was not at first aware by whom she had been admitted.
Before her eyes had adapted themselves to the obscurity, a hand grasped her own with
a firm but gentle and warm pressure, thus imparting a welcome which caused her heart
to leap and thrill with an indefinable shiver of enjoyment.
She felt herself drawn along, not towards the parlor, but into a large and unoccupied
apartment, which had formerly been the grand reception-room of the Seven Gables.
The sunshine came freely into all the uncurtained windows of this room, and fell
upon the dusty floor; so that Phoebe now clearly saw--what, indeed, had been no
secret, after the encounter of a warm hand
with hers--that it was not Hepzibah nor Clifford, but Holgrave, to whom she owed
her reception.
The subtile, intuitive communication, or, rather, the vague and formless impression
of something to be told, had made her yield unresistingly to his impulse.
Without taking away her hand, she looked eagerly in his face, not quick to forebode
evil, but unavoidably conscious that the state of the family had changed since her
departure, and therefore anxious for an explanation.
The artist looked paler than ordinary; there was a thoughtful and severe
contraction of his forehead, tracing a deep, vertical line between the eyebrows.
His smile, however, was full of genuine warmth, and had in it a joy, by far the
most vivid expression that Phoebe had ever witnessed, shining out of the New England
reserve with which Holgrave habitually masked whatever lay near his heart.
It was the look wherewith a man, brooding alone over some fearful object, in a dreary
forest or illimitable desert, would recognize the familiar aspect of his
dearest friend, bringing up all the
peaceful ideas that belong to home, and the gentle current of every-day affairs.
And yet, as he felt the necessity of responding to her look of inquiry, the
smile disappeared.
"I ought not to rejoice that you have come, Phoebe," said he.
"We meet at a strange moment!" "What has happened!" she exclaimed.
"Why is the house so deserted?
Where are Hepzibah and Clifford?" "Gone!
I cannot imagine where they are!" answered Holgrave.
"We are alone in the house!"
"Hepzibah and Clifford gone?" cried Phoebe. "It is not possible!
And why have you brought me into this room, instead of the parlor?
Ah, something terrible has happened!
I must run and see!" "No, no, Phoebe!" said Holgrave holding her
back. "It is as I have told you.
They are gone, and I know not whither.
A terrible event has, indeed happened, but not to them, nor, as I undoubtingly
believe, through any agency of theirs.
If I read your character rightly, Phoebe," he continued, fixing his eyes on hers with
stern anxiety, intermixed with tenderness, "gentle as you are, and seeming to have
your sphere among common things, you yet possess remarkable strength.
You have wonderful poise, and a faculty which, when tested, will prove itself
capable of dealing with matters that fall far out of the ordinary rule."
"Oh, no, I am very weak!" replied Phoebe, trembling.
"But tell me what has happened!" "You are strong!" persisted Holgrave.
"You must be both strong and wise; for I am all astray, and need your counsel.
It may be you can suggest the one right thing to do!"
"Tell me!--tell me!" said Phoebe, all in a tremble.
"It oppresses,--it terrifies me,--this mystery!
Anything else I can bear!"
The artist hesitated.
Notwithstanding what he had just said, and most sincerely, in regard to the self-
balancing power with which Phoebe impressed him, it still seemed almost wicked to bring
the awful secret of yesterday to her knowledge.
It was like dragging a hideous shape of death into the cleanly and cheerful space
before a household fire, where it would present all the uglier aspect, amid the
decorousness of everything about it.
Yet it could not be concealed from her; she must needs know it.
"Phoebe," said he, "do you remember this?"
He put into her hand a daguerreotype; the same that he had shown her at their first
interview in the garden, and which so strikingly brought out the hard and
relentless traits of the original.
"What has this to do with Hepzibah and Clifford?" asked Phoebe, with impatient
surprise that Holgrave should so trifle with her at such a moment.
"It is Judge Pyncheon!
You have shown it to me before!" "But here is the same face, taken within
this half-hour" said the artist, presenting her with another miniature.
"I had just finished it when I heard you at the door."
"This is death!" shuddered Phoebe, turning very pale.
"Judge Pyncheon dead!"
"Such as there represented," said Holgrave, "he sits in the next room.
The Judge is dead, and Clifford and Hepzibah have vanished!
I know no more.
All beyond is conjecture. On returning to my solitary chamber, last
evening, I noticed no light, either in the parlor, or Hepzibah's room, or Clifford's;
no stir nor footstep about the house.
This morning, there was the same death-like quiet.
From my window, I overheard the testimony of a neighbor, that your relatives were
seen leaving the house in the midst of yesterday's storm.
A rumor reached me, too, of Judge Pyncheon being missed.
A feeling which I cannot describe--an indefinite sense of some catastrophe, or
consummation--impelled me to make my way into this part of the house, where I
discovered what you see.
As a point of evidence that may be useful to Clifford, and also as a memorial
valuable to myself,--for, Phoebe, there are hereditary reasons that connect me
strangely with that man's fate,--I used the
means at my disposal to preserve this pictorial record of Judge Pyncheon's
death."
Even in her agitation, Phoebe could not help remarking the calmness of Holgrave's
demeanor.
He appeared, it is true, to feel the whole awfulness of the Judge's death, yet had
received the fact into his mind without any mixture of surprise, but as an event
preordained, happening inevitably, and so
fitting itself into past occurrences that it could almost have been prophesied.
"Why have you not thrown open the doors, and called in witnesses?" inquired she with
a painful shudder.
"It is terrible to be here alone!" "But Clifford!" suggested the artist.
"Clifford and Hepzibah! We must consider what is best to be done in
their behalf.
It is a wretched fatality that they should have disappeared!
Their flight will throw the worst coloring over this event of which it is susceptible.
Yet how easy is the explanation, to those who know them!
Bewildered and terror-stricken by the similarity of this death to a former one,
which was attended with such disastrous consequences to Clifford, they have had no
idea but of removing themselves from the scene.
How miserably unfortunate!
Had Hepzibah but shrieked aloud,--had Clifford flung wide the door, and
proclaimed Judge Pyncheon's death,--it would have been, however awful in itself,
an event fruitful of good consequences to them.
As I view it, it would have gone far towards obliterating the black stain on
Clifford's character."
"And how," asked Phoebe, "could any good come from what is so very dreadful?"
"Because," said the artist, "if the matter can be fairly considered and candidly
interpreted, it must be evident that Judge Pyncheon could not have come unfairly to
his end.
This mode of death had been an idiosyncrasy with his family, for generations past; not
often occurring, indeed, but, when it does occur, usually attacking individuals about
the Judge's time of life, and generally in
the tension of some mental crisis, or, perhaps, in an access of wrath.
Old Maule's prophecy was probably founded on a knowledge of this physical
predisposition in the Pyncheon race.
Now, there is a minute and almost exact similarity in the appearances connected
with the death that occurred yesterday and those recorded of the death of Clifford's
uncle thirty years ago.
It is true, there was a certain arrangement of circumstances, unnecessary to be
recounted, which made it possible nay, as men look at these things, probable, or even
certain--that old Jaffrey Pyncheon came to a violent death, and by Clifford's hands."
"Whence came those circumstances?" exclaimed Phoebe.
"He being innocent, as we know him to be!"
"They were arranged," said Holgrave,--"at least such has long been my conviction,--
they were arranged after the uncle's death, and before it was made public, by the man
who sits in yonder parlor.
His own death, so like that former one, yet attended by none of those suspicious
circumstances, seems the stroke of God upon him, at once a punishment for his
wickedness, and making plain the innocence of Clifford.
But this flight,--it distorts everything! He may be in concealment, near at hand.
Could we but bring him back before the discovery of the Judge's death, the evil
might be rectified." "We must not hide this thing a moment
longer!" said Phoebe.
"It is dreadful to keep it so closely in our hearts.
Clifford is innocent. God will make it manifest!
Let us throw open the doors, and call all the neighborhood to see the truth!"
"You are right, Phoebe," rejoined Holgrave. "Doubtless you are right."
Yet the artist did not feel the horror, which was proper to Phoebe's sweet and
order-loving character, at thus finding herself at issue with society, and brought
in contact with an event that transcended ordinary rules.
Neither was he in haste, like her, to betake himself within the precincts of
common life.
On the contrary, he gathered a wild enjoyment,--as it were, a flower of strange
beauty, growing in a desolate spot, and blossoming in the wind,--such a flower of
momentary happiness he gathered from his present position.
It separated Phoebe and himself from the world, and bound them to each other, by
their exclusive knowledge of Judge Pyncheon's mysterious death, and the
counsel which they were forced to hold respecting it.
The secret, so long as it should continue such, kept them within the circle of a
spell, a solitude in the midst of men, a remoteness as entire as that of an island
in mid-ocean; once divulged, the ocean
would flow betwixt them, standing on its widely sundered shores.
Meanwhile, all the circumstances of their situation seemed to draw them together;
they were like two children who go hand in hand, pressing closely to one another's
side, through a shadow-haunted passage.
The image of awful Death, which filled the house, held them united by his stiffened
grasp.
These influences hastened the development of emotions that might not otherwise have
flowered so.
Possibly, indeed, it had been Holgrave's purpose to let them die in their
undeveloped germs. "Why do we delay so?" asked Phoebe.
"This secret takes away my breath!
Let us throw open the doors!" "In all our lives there can never come
another moment like this!" said Holgrave. "Phoebe, is it all terror?--nothing but
terror?
Are you conscious of no joy, as I am, that has made this the only point of life worth
living for?"
"It seems a sin," replied Phoebe, trembling, "to think of joy at such a
time!"
"Could you but know, Phoebe, how it was with me the hour before you came!"
exclaimed the artist. "A dark, cold, miserable hour!
The presence of yonder dead man threw a great black shadow over everything; he made
the universe, so far as my perception could reach, a scene of guilt and of retribution
more dreadful than the guilt.
The sense of it took away my youth. I never hoped to feel young again!
The world looked strange, wild, evil, hostile; my past life, so lonesome and
dreary; my future, a shapeless gloom, which I must mould into gloomy shapes!
But, Phoebe, you crossed the threshold; and hope, warmth, and joy came in with you!
The black moment became at once a blissful one.
It must not pass without the spoken word.
I love you!" "How can you love a simple girl like me?"
asked Phoebe, compelled by his earnestness to speak.
"You have many, many thoughts, with which I should try in vain to sympathize.
And I,--I, too,--I have tendencies with which you would sympathize as little.
That is less matter.
But I have not scope enough to make you happy."
"You are my only possibility of happiness!" answered Holgrave.
"I have no faith in it, except as you bestow it on me!"
"And then--I am afraid!" continued Phoebe, shrinking towards Holgrave, even while she
told him so frankly the doubts with which he affected her.
"You will lead me out of my own quiet path.
You will make me strive to follow you where it is pathless.
I cannot do so. It is not my nature.
I shall sink down and perish!"
"Ah, Phoebe!" exclaimed Holgrave, with almost a sigh, and a smile that was
burdened with thought. "It will be far otherwise than as you
forebode.
The world owes all its onward impulses to men ill at ease.
The happy man inevitably confines himself within ancient limits.
I have a presentiment that, hereafter, it will be my lot to set out trees, to make
fences,--perhaps, even, in due time, to build a house for another generation,--in a
word, to conform myself to laws and the peaceful practice of society.
Your poise will be more powerful than any oscillating tendency of mine."
"I would not have it so!" said Phoebe earnestly.
"Do you love me?" asked Holgrave. "If we love one another, the moment has
room for nothing more.
Let us pause upon it, and be satisfied. Do you love me, Phoebe?"
"You look into my heart," said she, letting her eyes drop.
"You know I love you!"
And it was in this hour, so full of doubt and awe, that the one miracle was wrought,
without which every human existence is a blank.
The bliss which makes all things true, beautiful, and holy shone around this youth
and maiden. They were conscious of nothing sad nor old.
They transfigured the earth, and made it Eden again, and themselves the two first
dwellers in it. The dead man, so close beside them, was
forgotten.
At such a crisis, there is no death; for immortality is revealed anew, and embraces
everything in its hallowed atmosphere. But how soon the heavy earth-dream settled
down again!
"Hark!" whispered Phoebe. "Somebody is at the street door!"
"Now let us meet the world!" said Holgrave.
"No doubt, the rumor of Judge Pyncheon's visit to this house, and the flight of
Hepzibah and Clifford, is about to lead to the investigation of the premises.
We have no way but to meet it.
Let us open the door at once."
But, to their surprise, before they could reach the street door,--even before they
quitted the room in which the foregoing interview had passed,--they heard footsteps
in the farther passage.
The door, therefore, which they supposed to be securely locked,--which Holgrave,
indeed, had seen to be so, and at which Phoebe had vainly tried to enter,--must
have been opened from without.
The sound of footsteps was not harsh, bold, decided, and intrusive, as the gait of
strangers would naturally be, making authoritative entrance into a dwelling
where they knew themselves unwelcome.
It was feeble, as of persons either weak or weary; there was the mingled murmur of two
voices, familiar to both the listeners. "Can it be?" whispered Holgrave.
"It is they!" answered Phoebe.
"Thank God!--thank God!" And then, as if in sympathy with Phoebe's
whispered ejaculation, they heard Hepzibah's voice more distinctly.
"Thank God, my brother, we are at home!"
"Well!--Yes!--thank God!" responded Clifford.
"A dreary home, Hepzibah! But you have done well to bring me hither!
Stay!
That parlor door is open. I cannot pass by it!
Let me go and rest me in the arbor, where I used,--oh, very long ago, it seems to me,
after what has befallen us,--where I used to be so happy with little Phoebe!"
But the house was not altogether so dreary as Clifford imagined it.
They had not made many steps,--in truth, they were lingering in the entry, with the
listlessness of an accomplished purpose, uncertain what to do next,--when Phoebe ran
to meet them.
On beholding her, Hepzibah burst into tears.
With all her might, she had staggered onward beneath the burden of grief and
responsibility, until now that it was safe to fling it down.
Indeed, she had not energy to fling it down, but had ceased to uphold it, and
suffered it to press her to the earth. Clifford appeared the stronger of the two.
"It is our own little Phoebe!--Ah! and Holgrave with, her" exclaimed he, with a
glance of keen and delicate insight, and a smile, beautiful, kind, but melancholy.
"I thought of you both, as we came down the street, and beheld Alice's Posies in full
bloom.
And so the flower of Eden has bloomed, likewise, in this old, darksome house to-
day."
>
CHAPTER XXI The Departure
THE sudden death of so prominent a member of the social world as the Honorable Judge
Jaffrey Pyncheon created a sensation (at least, in the circles more immediately
connected with the deceased) which had hardly quite subsided in a fortnight.
It may be remarked, however, that, of all the events which constitute a person's
biography, there is scarcely one--none, certainly, of anything like a similar
importance--to which the world so easily reconciles itself as to his death.
In most other cases and contingencies, the individual is present among us, mixed up
with the daily revolution of affairs, and affording a definite point for observation.
At his decease, there is only a vacancy, and a momentary eddy,--very small, as
compared with the apparent magnitude of the ingurgitated object,--and a bubble or two,
ascending out of the black depth and bursting at the surface.
As regarded Judge Pyncheon, it seemed probable, at first blush, that the mode of
his final departure might give him a larger and longer posthumous vogue than ordinarily
attends the memory of a distinguished man.
But when it came to be understood, on the highest professional authority, that the
event was a natural, and--except for some unimportant particulars, denoting a slight
idiosyncrasy--by no means an unusual form
of death, the public, with its customary alacrity, proceeded to forget that he had
ever lived.
In short, the honorable Judge was beginning to be a stale subject before half the
country newspapers had found time to put their columns in mourning, and publish his
exceedingly eulogistic obituary.
Nevertheless, creeping darkly through the places which this excellent person had
haunted in his lifetime, there was a hidden stream of private talk, such as it would
have shocked all decency to speak loudly at the street-corners.
It is very singular, how the fact of a man's death often seems to give people a
truer idea of his character, whether for good or evil, than they have ever possessed
while he was living and acting among them.
Death is so genuine a fact that it excludes falsehood, or betrays its emptiness; it is
a touchstone that proves the gold, and dishonors the baser metal.
Could the departed, whoever he may be, return in a week after his decease, he
would almost invariably find himself at a higher or lower point than he had formerly
occupied, on the scale of public appreciation.
But the talk, or scandal, to which we now allude, had reference to matters of no less
old a date than the supposed murder, thirty or forty years ago, of the late Judge
Pyncheon's uncle.
The medical opinion with regard to his own recent and regretted decease had almost
entirely obviated the idea that a murder was committed in the former case.
Yet, as the record showed, there were circumstances irrefragably indicating that
some person had gained access to old Jaffrey Pyncheon's private apartments, at
or near the moment of his death.
His desk and private drawers, in a room contiguous to his bedchamber, had been
ransacked; money and valuable articles were missing; there was a bloody hand-print on
the old man's linen; and, by a powerfully
welded chain of deductive evidence, the guilt of the robbery and apparent murder
had been fixed on Clifford, then residing with his uncle in the House of the Seven
Gables.
Whencesoever originating, there now arose a theory that undertook so to account for
these circumstances as to exclude the idea of Clifford's agency.
Many persons affirmed that the history and elucidation of the facts, long so
mysterious, had been obtained by the daguerreotypist from one of those
mesmerical seers who, nowadays, so
strangely perplex the aspect of human affairs, and put everybody's natural vision
to the blush, by the marvels which they see with their eyes shut.
According to this version of the story, Judge Pyncheon, exemplary as we have
portrayed him in our narrative, was, in his youth, an apparently irreclaimable
scapegrace.
The brutish, the animal instincts, as is often the case, had been developed earlier
than the intellectual qualities, and the force of character, for which he was
afterwards remarkable.
He had shown himself wild, dissipated, addicted to low pleasures, little short of
ruffianly in his propensities, and recklessly expensive, with no other
resources than the bounty of his uncle.
This course of conduct had alienated the old bachelor's affection, once strongly
fixed upon him.
Now it is averred,--but whether on authority available in a court of justice,
we do not pretend to have investigated,-- that the young man was tempted by the
devil, one night, to search his uncle's
private drawers, to which he had unsuspected means of access.
While thus criminally occupied, he was startled by the opening of the chamber-
door.
There stood old Jaffrey Pyncheon, in his nightclothes!
The surprise of such a discovery, his agitation, alarm, and horror, brought on
the crisis of a disorder to which the old bachelor had an hereditary liability; he
seemed to choke with blood, and fell upon
the floor, striking his temple a heavy blow against the corner of a table.
What was to be done? The old man was surely dead!
Assistance would come too late!
What a misfortune, indeed, should it come too soon, since his reviving consciousness
would bring the recollection of the ignominious offence which he had beheld his
nephew in the very act of committing!
But he never did revive.
With the cool hardihood that always pertained to him, the young man continued
his search of the drawers, and found a will, of recent date, in favor of
Clifford,--which he destroyed,--and an
older one, in his own favor, which he suffered to remain.
But before retiring, Jaffrey bethought himself of the evidence, in these ransacked
drawers, that some one had visited the chamber with sinister purposes.
Suspicion, unless averted, might fix upon the real offender.
In the very presence of the dead man, therefore, he laid a scheme that should
free himself at the expense of Clifford, his rival, for whose character he had at
once a contempt and a repugnance.
It is not probable, be it said, that he acted with any set purpose of involving
Clifford in a charge of murder.
Knowing that his uncle did not die by violence, it may not have occurred to him,
in the hurry of the crisis, that such an inference might be drawn.
But, when the affair took this darker aspect, Jaffrey's previous steps had
already pledged him to those which remained.
So craftily had he arranged the circumstances, that, at Clifford's trial,
his cousin hardly found it necessary to swear to anything false, but only to
withhold the one decisive explanation, by
refraining to state what he had himself done and witnessed.
Thus Jaffrey Pyncheon's inward criminality, as regarded Clifford, was, indeed, black
and damnable; while its mere outward show and positive commission was the smallest
that could possibly consist with so great a sin.
This is just the sort of guilt that a man of eminent respectability finds it easiest
to dispose of.
It was suffered to fade out of sight or be reckoned a venial matter, in the Honorable
Judge Pyncheon's long subsequent survey of his own life.
He shuffled it aside, among the forgotten and forgiven frailties of his youth, and
seldom thought of it again. We leave the Judge to his repose.
He could not be styled fortunate at the hour of death.
Unknowingly, he was a childless man, while striving to add more wealth to his only
child's inheritance.
Hardly a week after his decease, one of the Cunard steamers brought intelligence of the
death, by cholera, of Judge Pyncheon's son, just at the point of embarkation for his
native land.
By this misfortune Clifford became rich; so did Hepzibah; so did our little village
maiden, and, through her, that sworn foe of wealth and all manner of conservatism,--the
wild reformer,--Holgrave!
It was now far too late in Clifford's life for the good opinion of society to be worth
the trouble and anguish of a formal vindication.
What he needed was the love of a very few; not the admiration, or even the respect, of
the unknown many.
The latter might probably have been won for him, had those on whom the guardianship of
his welfare had fallen deemed it advisable to expose Clifford to a miserable
resuscitation of past ideas, when the
condition of whatever comfort he might expect lay in the calm of forgetfulness.
After such wrong as he had suffered, there is no reparation.
The pitiable mockery of it, which the world might have been ready enough to offer,
coming so long after the agony had done its utmost work, would have been fit only to
provoke bitterer laughter than poor Clifford was ever capable of.
It is a truth (and it would be a very sad one but for the higher hopes which it
suggests) that no great mistake, whether acted or endured, in our mortal sphere, is
ever really set right.
Time, the continual vicissitude of circumstances, and the invariable
inopportunity of death, render it impossible.
If, after long lapse of years, the right seems to be in our power, we find no niche
to set it in.
The better remedy is for the sufferer to pass on, and leave what he once thought his
irreparable ruin far behind him.
The shock of Judge Pyncheon's death had a permanently invigorating and ultimately
beneficial effect on Clifford. That strong and ponderous man had been
Clifford's nightmare.
There was no free breath to be drawn, within the sphere of so malevolent an
influence.
The first effect of freedom, as we have witnessed in Clifford's aimless flight, was
a tremulous exhilaration. Subsiding from it, he did not sink into his
former intellectual apathy.
He never, it is true, attained to nearly the full measure of what might have been
his faculties.
But he recovered enough of them partially to light up his character, to display some
outline of the marvellous grace that was abortive in it, and to make him the object
of no less deep, although less melancholy interest than heretofore.
He was evidently happy.
Could we pause to give another picture of his daily life, with all the appliances now
at command to gratify his instinct for the Beautiful, the garden scenes, that seemed
so sweet to him, would look mean and trivial in comparison.
Very soon after their change of fortune, Clifford, Hepzibah, and little Phoebe, with
the approval of the artist, concluded to remove from the dismal old House of the
Seven Gables, and take up their abode, for
the present, at the elegant country-seat of the late Judge Pyncheon.
Chanticleer and his family had already been transported thither, where the two hens had
forthwith begun an indefatigable process of egg-laying, with an evident design, as a
matter of duty and conscience, to continue
their illustrious breed under better auspices than for a century past.
On the day set for their departure, the principal personages of our story,
including good Uncle Venner, were assembled in the parlor.
"The country-house is certainly a very fine one, so far as the plan goes," observed
Holgrave, as the party were discussing their future arrangements.
"But I wonder that the late Judge--being so opulent, and with a reasonable prospect of
transmitting his wealth to descendants of his own--should not have felt the propriety
of embodying so excellent a piece of
domestic architecture in stone, rather than in wood.
Then, every generation of the family might have altered the interior, to suit its own
taste and convenience; while the exterior, through the lapse of years, might have been
adding venerableness to its original
beauty, and thus giving that impression of permanence which I consider essential to
the happiness of any one moment."
"Why," cried Phoebe, gazing into the artist's face with infinite amazement, "how
wonderfully your ideas are changed! A house of stone, indeed!
It is but two or three weeks ago that you seemed to wish people to live in something
as fragile and temporary as a bird's-nest!"
"Ah, Phoebe, I told you how it would be!" said the artist, with a half-melancholy
laugh. "You find me a conservative already!
Little did I think ever to become one.
It is especially unpardonable in this dwelling of so much hereditary misfortune,
and under the eye of yonder portrait of a model conservative, who, in that very
character, rendered himself so long the evil destiny of his race."
"That picture!" said Clifford, seeming to shrink from its stern glance.
"Whenever I look at it, there is an old dreamy recollection haunting me, but
keeping just beyond the grasp of my mind. Wealth, it seems to say!--boundless
wealth!--unimaginable wealth!
I could fancy that, when I was a child, or a youth, that portrait had spoken, and told
me a rich secret, or had held forth its hand, with the written record of hidden
opulence.
But those old matters are so dim with me, nowadays!
What could this dream have been?" "Perhaps I can recall it," answered
Holgrave.
"See! There are a hundred chances to one that no person, unacquainted with the
secret, would ever touch this spring." "A secret spring!" cried Clifford.
"Ah, I remember now!
I did discover it, one summer afternoon, when I was idling and dreaming about the
house, long, long ago. But the mystery escapes me."
The artist put his finger on the contrivance to which he had referred.
In former days, the effect would probably have been to cause the picture to start
forward.
But, in so long a period of concealment, the machinery had been eaten through with
rust; so that at Holgrave's pressure, the portrait, frame and all, tumbled suddenly
from its position, and lay face downward on the floor.
A recess in the wall was thus brought to light, in which lay an object so covered
with a century's dust that it could not immediately be recognized as a folded sheet
of parchment.
Holgrave opened it, and displayed an ancient deed, signed with the hieroglyphics
of several Indian sagamores, and conveying to Colonel Pyncheon and his heirs, forever,
a vast extent of territory at the Eastward.
"This is the very parchment, the attempt to recover which cost the beautiful Alice
Pyncheon her happiness and life," said the artist, alluding to his legend.
"It is what the Pyncheons sought in vain, while it was valuable; and now that they
find the treasure, it has long been worthless."
"Poor Cousin Jaffrey!
This is what deceived him," exclaimed Hepzibah.
"When they were young together, Clifford probably made a kind of fairy-tale of this
discovery.
He was always dreaming hither and thither about the house, and lighting up its dark
corners with beautiful stories.
And poor Jaffrey, who took hold of everything as if it were real, thought my
brother had found out his uncle's wealth. He died with this delusion in his mind!"
"But," said Phoebe, apart to Holgrave, "how came you to know the secret?"
"My dearest Phoebe," said Holgrave, "how will it please you to assume the name of
Maule?
As for the secret, it is the only inheritance that has come down to me from
my ancestors.
You should have known sooner (only that I was afraid of frightening you away) that,
in this long drama of wrong and retribution, I represent the old wizard,
and am probably as much a wizard as ever he was.
The son of the executed Matthew Maule, while building this house, took the
opportunity to construct that recess, and hide away the Indian deed, on which
depended the immense land-claim of the Pyncheons.
Thus they bartered their eastern territory for Maule's garden-ground."
"And now" said Uncle Venner "I suppose their whole claim is not worth one man's
share in my farm yonder!"
"Uncle Venner," cried Phoebe, taking the patched philosopher's hand, "you must never
talk any more about your farm! You shall never go there, as long as you
live!
There is a cottage in our new garden,--the prettiest little yellowish-brown cottage
you ever saw; and the sweetest-looking place, for it looks just as if it were made
of gingerbread,--and we are going to fit it up and furnish it, on purpose for you.
And you shall do nothing but what you choose, and shall be as happy as the day is
long, and shall keep Cousin Clifford in spirits with the wisdom and pleasantness
which is always dropping from your lips!"
"Ah! my dear child," quoth good Uncle Venner, quite overcome, "if you were to
speak to a young man as you do to an old one, his chance of keeping his heart
another minute would not be worth one of the buttons on my waistcoat!
And--soul alive!--that great sigh, which you made me heave, has burst off the very
last of them!
But, never mind! It was the happiest sigh I ever did heave;
and it seems as if I must have drawn in a gulp of heavenly breath, to make it with.
Well, well, Miss Phoebe!
They'll miss me in the gardens hereabouts, and round by the back doors; and Pyncheon
Street, I'm afraid, will hardly look the same without old Uncle Venner, who
remembers it with a mowing field on one
side, and the garden of the Seven Gables on the other.
But either I must go to your country-seat, or you must come to my farm,--that's one of
two things certain; and I leave you to choose which!"
"Oh, come with us, by all means, Uncle Venner!" said Clifford, who had a
remarkable enjoyment of the old man's mellow, quiet, and simple spirit.
"I want you always to be within five minutes, saunter of my chair.
You are the only philosopher I ever knew of whose wisdom has not a drop of bitter
essence at the bottom!"
"Dear me!" cried Uncle Venner, beginning partly to realize what manner of man he
was. "And yet folks used to set me down among
the simple ones, in my younger days!
But I suppose I am like a Roxbury russet,-- a great deal the better, the longer I can
be kept.
Yes; and my words of wisdom, that you and Phoebe tell me of, are like the golden
dandelions, which never grow in the hot months, but may be seen glistening among
the withered grass, and under the dry leaves, sometimes as late as December.
And you are welcome, friends, to my mess of dandelions, if there were twice as many!"
A plain, but handsome, dark-green barouche had now drawn up in front of the ruinous
portal of the old mansion-house.
The party came forth, and (with the exception of good Uncle Venner, who was to
follow in a few days) proceeded to take their places.
They were chatting and laughing very pleasantly together; and--as proves to be
often the case, at moments when we ought to palpitate with sensibility--Clifford and
Hepzibah bade a final farewell to the abode
of their forefathers, with hardly more emotion than if they had made it their
arrangement to return thither at tea-time.
Several children were drawn to the spot by so unusual a spectacle as the barouche and
pair of gray horses.
Recognizing little Ned Higgins among them, Hepzibah put her hand into her pocket, and
presented the urchin, her earliest and staunchest customer, with silver enough to
people the Domdaniel cavern of his interior
with as various a procession of quadrupeds as passed into the ark.
Two men were passing, just as the barouche drove off.
"Well, Dixey," said one of them, "what do you think of this?
My wife kept a cent-shop three months, and lost five dollars on her outlay.
Old Maid Pyncheon has been in trade just about as long, and rides off in her
carriage with a couple of hundred thousand,--reckoning her share, and
Clifford's, and Phoebe's,--and some say twice as much!
If you choose to call it luck, it is all very well; but if we are to take it as the
will of Providence, why, I can't exactly fathom it!"
"Pretty good business!" quoth the sagacious Dixey,--"pretty good business!"
Maule's well, all this time, though left in solitude, was throwing up a succession of
kaleidoscopic pictures, in which a gifted eye might have seen foreshadowed the coming
fortunes of Hepzibah and Clifford, and the
descendant of the legendary wizard, and the village maiden, over whom he had thrown
love's web of sorcery.
The Pyncheon Elm, moreover, with what foliage the September gale had spared to
it, whispered unintelligible prophecies.
And wise Uncle Venner, passing slowly from the ruinous porch, seemed to hear a strain
of music, and fancied that sweet Alice Pyncheon--after witnessing these deeds,
this bygone woe and this present happiness,
of her kindred mortals--had given one farewell touch of a spirit's joy upon her
harpsichord, as she floated heavenward from the HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES!
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