By this time the sun had gone down, and was tinting the clouds towards the zenith with those bright hues which are not seen there until some time after sunset,and when the horizon has quite lost its richer brilliancy. The moon, too,which had long been climbing overhead, and unobtrusively melting its disk into the azure,—like an ambitious demagogue, who hides his aspiring purpose by assuming the prevalent hue of popular sentiment,—now began to shine out, broad and oval, in its middle pathway.These silvery beams were already powerful enough to change the character of the lingering daylight.They softened and embellished the aspect of the old house;although the shadows fell deeper into the angles of its many gables,and lay brooding under the projecting story, and within the half-open door.With the lapse of every moment, the garden grew more picturesque; the fruit-trees, shrubbery,and flower-bushes had a dark obscurity among them. The commonplace characteristics—which,at noontide, it seemed to have taken a century of sordid life to accumulate—were now transfigured by a charm of romance.A hundred mysterious years were whispering among the leaves,whenever the slight sea-breeze found its way thither and stirred them.Through the foliage that roofed the little summer-house the moonlight flickered to and fro,and fell silvery white on the dark floor, the table, and the circular bench,with a continual shift and play, according as the chinks and wayward crevices among the twigs admitted or shut out the glimmer.
So sweetly cool was the atmosphere, after all the feverish day,that the summer eve might be fancied as sprinkling dews and liquid moonlight,with a dash of icy temper in them, out of a silver vase. Here and there,a few drops of this freshness were scattered on a human heart, and gave it youth again,and sympathy with the eternal youth of nature.The artist chanced to be one on whom the reviving influence fell.It made him feel—what he sometimes almost forgot,thrust so early as he had been into the rude struggle of man with man—how youthful he still was.
“It seems to me,” he observed, “that I never watched the coming of so beautiful an eve,and never felt anything so very much like happiness as at this moment. After all, what a good world we live in!How good, and beautiful!How young it is, too, with nothing really rotten or age-worn in it!This old house, for example, which sometimes has positively oppressed my breath with its smell of decaying timber!And this garden, where the black mould always clings to my spade,as if I were a sexton delving in a graveyard!Could I keep the feeling that now possesses me, the garden would every day be virgin soil,with the earth’s first freshness in the flavor of its beans and squashes; and the house!—it would be like a bower in Eden, blossoming with the earliest roses that God ever made. Moonlight,and the sentiment in man’s heart responsive to it, are the greatest of renovators and reformers.And all other reform and renovation, I suppose, will prove to be no better than moonshine!”
“I have been happier than I am now; at least, much gayer,” said Phœbe thoughtfully.“Yet I am sensible of a great charm in this brightening moonlight; and I love to watch how the day,tired as it is, lags away reluctantly, and hates to be called yesterday so soon.I never cared much about moonlight before. What is there, I wonder, so beautiful in it, to-night?”
“And you have never felt it before?” inquired the artist, looking earnestly at the girl through the twilight.
“Never,” answered Phœbe; “and life does not look the same, now that I have felt it so.It seems as if I had looked at everything, hitherto, in broad daylight,or else in the ruddy light of a cheerful fire, glimmering and dancing through a room. Ah, poor me!” she added, with a half-melancholy laugh.“I shall never be so merry as before I knew Cousin Hepzibah and poor Cousin Clifford.I have grown a great deal older, in this little time. Older, and, I hope, wiser, and,—not exactly sadder,—but, certainly, with not half so much lightness in my spirits!I have given them my sunshine, and have been glad to give it; but, of course,I cannot both give and keep it. They are welcome, notwithstanding!”
“You have lost nothing, Phœbe, worth keeping, nor which it was possible to keep,” said Holgrave after a pause. “Our first youth is of no value;for we are never conscious of it until after it is gone. But sometimes—always, I suspect,unless one is exceedingly unfortunate—there comes a sense of second youth,gushing out of the heart’s joy at being in love; or, possibly,it may come to crown some other grand festival in life, if any other such there be.This bemoaning of one’s self (as you do now) over the first, careless,shallow gayety of youth departed, and this profound happiness at youth regained,—so much deeper and richer than that we lost,—are essential to the soul’s development.In some cases, the two states come almost simultaneously,and mingle the sadness and the rapture in one mysterious emotion.”
“I hardly think I understand you,” said Phœbe.
“No wonder,” replied Holgrave, smiling; “for I have told you a secret which I hardly began to know before I found myself giving it utterance.Remember it, however; and when the truth becomes clear to you, then think of this moonlight scene!”
“It is entirely moonlight now, except only a little flush of faint crimson, upward from the west,between those buildings,” remarked Phœbe. “I must go in. Cousin Hepzibah is not quick at figures,and will give herself a headache over the day’s accounts, unless I help her.”
But Holgrave detained her a little longer.
“Miss Hepzibah tells me,” observed he, “that you return to the country in a few days.”
“Yes, but only for a little while,” answered Phœbe; “for I look upon this as my present home.I go to make a few arrangements, and to take a more deliberate leave of my mother and friends.It is pleasant to live where one is much desired and very useful;and I think I may have the satisfaction of feeling myself so here.”
“You surely may, and more than you imagine,” said the artist. “Whatever health, comfort,and natural life exists in the house is embodied in your person.These blessings came along with you, and will vanish when you leave the threshold. Miss Hepzibah,by secluding herself from society, has lost all true relation with it, and is, in fact, dead;although she galvanizes herself into a semblance of life, and stands behind her counter,afflicting the world with a greatly-to-be-deprecated scowl.Your poor cousin Clifford is another dead and long-buried person,on whom the governor and council have wrought a necromantic miracle.I should not wonder if he were to crumble away, some morning, after you are gone,and nothing be seen of him more, except a heap of dust. Miss Hepzibah, at any rate,will lose what little flexibility she has. They both exist by you.”
“I should be very sorry to think so,” answered Phœbe gravely.“But it is true that my small abilities were precisely what they needed;and I have a real interest in their welfare,—an odd kind of motherly sentiment, —which I wish you would not laugh at!And let me tell you frankly, Mr. Holgrave,I am sometimes puzzled to know whether you wish them well or ill.”
“Undoubtedly,” said the daguerreotypist, “I do feel an interest in this antiquated,poverty-stricken old maiden lady, and this degraded and shattered gentleman,—this abortive lover of the beautiful. A kindly interest, too, helpless old children that they are!But you have no conception what a different kind of heart mine is from your own.It is not my impulse, as regards these two individuals, either to help or hinder; but to look on,to analyze, to explain matters to myself, and to comprehend the drama which,for almost two hundred years, has been dragging its slow length over the ground where you and I now tread.If permitted to witness the close, I doubt not to derive a moral satisfaction from it,go matters how they may. There is a conviction within me that the end draws nigh. But,though Providence sent you hither to help, and sends me only as a privileged and meet spectator,I pledge myself to lend these unfortunate beings whatever aid I can!”
“I wish you would speak more plainly,” cried Phœbe, perplexed and displeased; “and, above all,that you would feel more like a Christian and a human being!How is it possible to see people in distress without desiring, more than anything else, to help and comfort them?You talk as if this old house were a theatre;and you seem to look at Hepzibah’s and Clifford’s misfortunes,and those of generations before them, as a tragedy,such as I have seen acted in the hall of a country hotel,only the present one appears to be played exclusively for your amusement. I do not like this.The play costs the performers too much, and the audience is too cold-hearted.”
“You are severe,” said Holgrave, compelled to recognize a degree of truth in the piquant sketch of his own mood.
“And then,” continued Phœbe, “what can you mean by your conviction, which you tell me of, that the end is drawing near?Do you know of any new trouble hanging over my poor relatives?If so, tell me at once, and I will not leave them!”
“Forgive me, Phœbe!” said the daguerreotypist, holding out his hand,to which the girl was constrained to yield her own. “I am somewhat of a mystic,it must be confessed. The tendency is in my blood, together with the faculty of mesmerism,which might have brought me to Gallows Hill, in the good old times of witchcraft. Believe me,if I were really aware of any secret, the disclosure of which would benefit your friends,—who are my own friends, likewise,—you should learn it before we part. But I have no such knowledge. ”
“You hold something back!” said Phœbe.
“Nothing,—no secrets but my own,” answered Holgrave. “I can perceive, indeed,that Judge Pyncheon still keeps his eye on Clifford, in whose ruin he had so large a share.His motives and intentions, however are a mystery to me. He is a determined and relentless man,with the genuine character of an inquisitor;and had he any object to gain by putting Clifford to the rack,I verily believe that he would wrench his joints from their sockets, in order to accomplish it.But, so wealthy and eminent as he is,—so powerful in his own strength,and in the support of society on all sides,—what can Judge Pyncheon have to hope or fear from the imbecile, branded, half-torpid Clifford?”
“Yet,” urged Phœbe, “you did speak as if misfortune were impending!”
“Oh, that was because I am morbid!” replied the artist. “My mind has a twist aside, like almost everybody’s mind, except your own.Moreover, it is so strange to find myself an inmate of this old Pyncheon House,and sitting in this old garden—(hark, how Maule’s well is murmuring!)—that, were it only for this one circumstance,I cannot help fancying that Destiny is arranging its fifth act for a catastrophe.”
“There!” cried Phœbe with renewed vexation; for she was by nature as hostile to mystery as the sunshine to a dark corner. “You puzzle me more than ever!”
“Then let us part friends!” said Holgrave, pressing her hand. “Or, if not friends, let us part before you entirely hate me.You, who love everybody else in the world!”
“Good-by, then,” said Phœbe frankly. “I do not mean to be angry a great while,and should be sorry to have you think so.There has Cousin Hepzibah been standing in the shadow of the doorway, this quarter of an hour past!She thinks I stay too long in the damp garden. So, good-night, and good-by.”
On the second morning thereafter, Phœbe might have been seen, in her straw bonnet,with a shawl on one arm and a little carpet-bag on the other,bidding adieu to Hepzibah and Cousin Clifford. She was to take a seat in the next train of cars,which would transport her to within half a dozen miles of her country village.
The tears were in Phœbe’s eyes; a smile, dewy with affectionate regret,was glimmering around her pleasant mouth. She wondered how it came to pass,that her life of a few weeks, here in this heavy-hearted old mansion, had taken such hold of her,and so melted into her associations, as now to seem a more important centre-point of remembrance than all which had gone before.How had Hepzibah—grim, silent, and irresponsive to her overflow of cordial sentiment—contrived to win so much love?And Clifford,—in his abortive decay, with the mystery of fearful crime upon him,and the close prison-atmosphere yet lurking in his breath,—how had he transformed himself into the simplest child, whom Phœbe felt bound to watch over,and be, as it were, the providence of his unconsidered hours!Everything, at that instant of farewell, stood out prominently to her view. Look where she would,lay her hand on what she might, the object responded to her consciousness, as if a moist human heart were in it.
She peeped from the window into the garden,and felt herself more regretful at leaving this spot of black earth,vitiated with such an age-long growth of weeds,than joyful at the idea of again scenting her pine forests and fresh clover-fields.She called Chanticleer, his two wives, and the venerable chicken,and threw them some crumbs of bread from the breakfast-table. These being hastily gobbled up,the chicken spread its wings, and alighted close by Phœbe on the window-sill,where it looked gravely into her face and vented its emotions in a croak.Phœbe bade it be a good old chicken during her absence,and promised to bring it a little bag of buckwheat.
“Ah, Phœbe!” remarked Hepzibah, “you do not smile so naturally as when you came to us!Then, the smile chose to shine out; now, you choose it should. It is well that you are going back,for a little while, into your native air. There has been too much weight on your spirits.The house is too gloomy and lonesome; the shop is full of vexations; and as for me,I have no faculty of making things look brighter than they are.Dear Clifford has been your only comfort!”
“Come hither, Phœbe,” suddenly cried her cousin Clifford, who had said very little all the morning. “Close!—closer!—and look me in the face!”
Phœbe put one of her small hands on each elbow of his chair, and leaned her face towards him,so that he might 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’s perception,she was fain to let her eyelids droop beneath Clifford’s gaze. A blush, too,—the redder,because she strove hard to keep it down,—ascended bigger and higher, in a tide of fitful progress,until even her brow was all suffused with it.
“It is enough, Phœbe,” said Clifford, with a melancholy smile. “When I first saw you,you were the prettiest little maiden in the world; and now you have deepened into beauty.Girlhood has passed into womanhood; the bud is a bloom!Go, now—I feel lonelier than I did.”
Phœbe took leave of the desolate couple, and passed through the shop,twinkling her eyelids to shake off a dew-drop; for—considering how brief her absence was to be,and therefore the folly of being cast down about it—she would not so far acknowledge her tears as to dry them with her handkerchief.On the doorstep, she met the little urchin whose marvellous feats of gastronomy have been recorded in the earlier pages of our narrative.She took from the window some specimen or other of natural history,—her eyes being too dim with moisture to inform her accurately whether it was a rabbit or a hippopotamus,—put it into the child’s hand as a parting gift, and went her way.Old Uncle Venner was just coming out of his door, with a wood-horse and saw on his shoulder; and,trudging along the street, he scrupled not to keep company with Phœbe,so far as their paths lay together; nor, in spite of his patched coat and rusty beaver,and the curious fashion of his tow-cloth trousers, could she find it in her heart to outwalk him.
“We shall miss you, next Sabbath afternoon,” observed the street philosopher.“It is unaccountable how little while it takes some folks to grow just as natural to a man as his own breath;and, begging your pardon, Miss Phœbe (though there can be no offence in an old man’s saying it), that’s just what you’ve grown to me!My years have been a great many, and your life is but just beginning; and yet,you are somehow as familiar to me as if I had found you at my mother’s door, and you had blossomed,like a running vine, all along my pathway since. Come back soon, or I shall be gone to my farm;for I begin to find these wood-sawing jobs a little too tough for my back-ache.”
“Very soon, Uncle Venner,” replied Phœbe.
“And let it be all the sooner, Phœbe, for the sake of those poor souls yonder,” continued her companion. “They can never do without you, now,—never, Phœbe;never—no more than if one of God’s angels had been living with them,and making their dismal house pleasant and comfortable!Don’t it seem to you they’d be in a sad case, if, some pleasant summer morning like this,the angel should spread his wings, and fly to the place he came from?Well, just so they feel, now that you’re going home by the railroad!They can’t bear it, Miss Phœbe; so be sure to come back!”
“I am no angel, Uncle Venner,” said Phœbe, smiling,as she offered him her hand at the street-corner. “But, I suppose,people never feel so much like angels as when they are doing what little good they may. So I shall certainly come back!”
Thus parted the old man and the rosy girl; and Phœbe took the wings of the morning,and was soon flitting almost as rapidly away as if endowed with the aerial locomotion of the angels to whom Uncle Venner had so graciously compared her.
XV. The Scowl and Smile
Several days passed over the Seven Gables, heavily and drearily enough.In fact (not to attribute the whole gloom of sky and earth to the one inauspicious circumstance of Phœbe’s departure),an easterly storm had set in, and indefatigably applied itself to the task of making the black roof and walls of the old house look more cheerless than ever before. Yet was the outside not half so cheerless as the interior. Poor Clifford was cut off, at once, from all his scanty resources of enjoyment. Phœbe was not there; nor did the sunshine fall upon the floor. The garden, with its muddy walks, and the chill, dripping foliage of its summer-house, was an image to be shuddered at. Nothing flourished in the cold, moist, pitiless atmosphere, drifting with the brackish scud of sea-breezes, except the moss along the joints of the shingle-roof, and the great bunch of weeds, that had lately been suffering from drought, in the angle between the two front gables.
As for Hepzibah, she seemed not merely possessed with the east wind, but to be, in her very person,only another phase of this gray and sullen spell of weather; the East-Wind itself,grim and disconsolate, in a rusty black silk gown, and with a turban of cloud-wreaths on its head.The custom of the shop fell off, because a story got abroad that she soured her small beer and other damageable commodities,by scowling on them. It is, perhaps, true that the public had something reasonably to complain of in her 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’s.Everything—even the old chairs and tables,that had known what weather was for three or four such lifetimes as her own—looked as damp and chill as if the present were their worst experience.The picture of the Puritan Colonel shivered on the wall. The house itself shivered,from every attic of its seven gables down to the great kitchen fireplace,which served all the better as an emblem of the mansion’s heart, because, though built for warmth, it was now so comfortless and empty.
Hepzibah attempted to enliven matters by a fire in the parlor. But the storm demon kept watch above,and, whenever a flame was kindled, drove the smoke back again,choking the chimney’s sooty throat with its own breath. Nevertheless,during four days of this miserable storm, Clifford wrapt himself in an old cloak,and occupied his customary chair. On the morning of the fifth, when summoned to breakfast,he responded only by a broken-hearted murmur, expressive of a determination not to leave his bed.His sister made no attempt to change his purpose. In fact, entirely as she loved him,Hepzibah could hardly have borne any longer the wretched duty—so impracticable by her few and rigid faculties—of seeking pastime for a still sensitive,but ruined mind, critical and fastidious, without force or volition.It was at least something short of positive despair, that to-day she might sit shivering alone,and not suffer continually a new grief, and unreasonable pang of remorse,at every fitful sigh of her fellow sufferer.
But Clifford, it seemed, though he did not make his appearance below stairs, had, after all,bestirred himself in quest of amusement. In the course of the forenoon,Hepzibah heard a note of music, which (there being no other tuneful contrivance in the House of the Seven Gables) she knew must proceed from Alice Pyncheon’s harpsichord. She was aware that Clifford, in his youth, had possessed a cultivated taste for music, and a considerable degree of skill in its practice. It was difficult, however, to conceive of his retaining an accomplishment to which daily exercise is so essential, in the measure indicated by the sweet, airy, and delicate, though most melancholy strain, that now stole upon her ear. Nor was it less marvellous that the long-silent instrument should be capable of so much melody. Hepzibah involuntarily thought of the ghostly harmonies, prelusive of death in the family, which were attributed to the legendary Alice. But it was, perhaps, proof of the agency of other than spiritual fingers, that, after a few touches, the chords seemed to snap asunder with their own vibrations, and the music ceased.
But a harsher sound succeeded to the mysterious notes;nor was the easterly day fated to pass without an event sufficient in itself to poison,for Hepzibah and Clifford, the balmiest air that ever brought the humming-birds along with it.The final echoes of Alice Pyncheon’s performance (or Clifford’s,if his we must consider it) were driven away by no less vulgar a dissonance than the ringing of the shop-bell.A foot was heard scraping itself on the threshold,and thence somewhat ponderously stepping on the floor. Hepzibah delayed a moment,while muffling herself in a faded shawl,which had been her defensive armor in a forty years’ warfare against the east wind.A characteristic sound, however,—neither a cough nor a hem,but a kind of rumbling and reverberating spasm in somebody’s capacious depth of chest;—impelled her to hurry forward, with that aspect of fierce faint-heartedness so common to women in cases of perilous emergency.Few of her sex, on such occasions, have ever looked so terrible as our poor scowling Hepzibah.But the visitor quietly closed the shop-door behind him, stood up his umbrella against the counter,and turned a visage of composed benignity,to meet the alarm and anger which his appearance had excited.
Hepzibah’s presentiment had not deceived her. It was no other than Judge Pyncheon, who,after in vain trying the front door, had now effected his entrance into the shop.
“How do you do, Cousin Hepzibah?—and how does this most inclement weather affect our poor Clifford?” began the Judge; and wonderful it seemed, indeed, that the easterly storm was not put to shame,or, at any rate, a little mollified, by the genial benevolence of his smile.“I could not rest without calling to ask, once more,whether I can in any manner promote his comfort, or your own.”
“You can do nothing,” said Hepzibah, controlling her agitation as well as she could.“I devote myself to Clifford. He has every comfort which his situation admits of.”
“But allow me to suggest, dear cousin,” rejoined the Judge, “you err,—in all affection and kindness,no doubt, and with the very best intentions,—but you do err, nevertheless,in keeping your brother so secluded. Why insulate him thus from all sympathy and kindness?Clifford, alas!has had too much of solitude. Now let him try society,—the society, that is to say,of kindred and old friends. Let me, for instance, but see Clifford,and I will answer for the good effect of the interview.”
“You cannot see him,” answered Hepzibah. “Clifford has kept his bed since yesterday.”
“What!How!Is he ill?” exclaimed Judge Pyncheon, starting with what seemed to be angry alarm;for the very frown of the old Puritan darkened through the room as he spoke. “Nay, then, I must and will see him!What if he should die?”
“He is in no danger of death,” said Hepzibah,—and added,with bitterness that she could repress no longer, “none; unless he shall be persecuted to death,now, by the same man who long ago attempted it!”
“Cousin Hepzibah,” said the Judge, with an impressive earnestness of manner,which grew even to tearful pathos as he proceeded,“is it possible that you do not perceive how unjust, how unkind, how unchristian, is this constant,this long-continued bitterness against me,for a part which I was constrained by duty and conscience, by the force of law, and at my own peril, to act?What did I do, in detriment to Clifford, which it was possible to leave undone?How could you, his sister,—if, for your never-ending sorrow, as it has been for mine,you had known what I did,—have shown greater tenderness?And do you think, cousin, that it has cost me no pang?—that it has left no anguish in my bosom, from that day to this,amidst all the prosperity with which Heaven has blessed me?—or that I do not now rejoice, when it is deemed consistent with the dues of public justice and the welfare of society that this dear kinsman,this early friend, this nature so delicately and beautifully constituted,—so unfortunate,let us pronounce him, and forbear to say, so guilty,—that our own Clifford, in fine,should be given back to life, and its possibilities of enjoyment?Ah, you little know me, Cousin Hepzibah!You little know this heart!It now throbs at the thought of meeting him!There lives not the human being (except yourself,—and you not more than I) who has shed so many tears for Clifford’s calamity.You behold some of them now. There is none who would so delight to promote his happiness!Try me, Hepzibah!—try me, Cousin!—try the man whom you have treated as your enemy and Clifford’s!—try Jaffrey Pyncheon, and you shall find him true, to the heart’s core!”
“In the name of Heaven,” cried Hepzibah,provoked only to intenser indignation by this outgush of the inestimable tenderness of a stern nature,—“in God’s name, whom you insult, and whose power I could almost question,since he hears you utter so many false words without palsying your tongue,—give over,I beseech you, this loathsome pretence of affection for your victim!You hate him!Say so, like a man!You cherish, at this moment, some black purpose against him in your heart!Speak it out, at once!—or, if you hope so to promote it better, hide it till you can triumph in its success!But never speak again of your love for my poor brother. I cannot bear it!It will drive me beyond a woman’s decency!It will drive me mad!Forbear!Not another word!It will make me spurn you!”
For once, Hepzibah’s wrath had given her courage. She had spoken. But, after all,was this unconquerable distrust of Judge Pyncheon’s integrity, and this utter denial, apparently,of his claim to stand in the ring of human sympathies,—were they founded in any just perception of his character,or merely the offspring of a woman’s unreasonable prejudice, deduced from nothing?