“My dear cousin,” said Judge Pyncheon,with a quietude which he had the power of making more formidable than any violence, “since your brother’s return, I have taken the precaution (a highly proper one in the near kinsman and natural guardian of an individual so situated) to have his deportment and habits constantly and carefully overlooked. Your neighbors have been eye-witnesses to whatever has passed in the garden. The butcher, the baker, the fish-monger, some of the customers of your shop, and many a prying old woman, have told me several of the secrets of your interior. A still larger circle—I myself, among the rest—can testify to his extravagances at the arched window. Thousands beheld him, a week or two ago, on the point of flinging himself thence into the street. From all this testimony, I am led to apprehend—reluctantly, and with deep grief—that Clifford’s misfortunes have so affected his intellect, never very strong, that he cannot safely remain at large. The alternative, you must be aware,—and its adoption will depend entirely on the decision which I am now about to make,—the alternative is his confinement, probably for the remainder of his life, in a public asylum for persons in his unfortunate state of mind.”
“You cannot mean it!” shrieked Hepzibah.
“Should my cousin Clifford,” continued Judge Pyncheon,wholly undisturbed, “from mere malice,and hatred of one whose interests ought naturally to be dear to him,—a mode of passion that, as often as any other,indicates mental disease,—should he refuse me the information so important to myself,and which he assuredly possesses,I shall consider it the one needed jot of evidence to satisfy my mind of his insanity. And, once sure of the course pointed out by conscience, you know me too well, Cousin Hepzibah, to entertain a doubt that I shall pursue it.”
“O Jaffrey,—Cousin Jaffrey,” cried Hepzibah mournfully,not passionately, “it is you that are diseased in mind, not Clifford!You have forgotten that a woman was your mother!—that you have had sisters, brothers,children of your own!—or that there ever was affection between man and man,or pity from one man to another,in this miserable world!Else, how could you have dreamed of this?You are not young, Cousin Jaffrey!—no, nor middle-aged,—but already an old man!The hair is white upon your head!How many years have you to live?Are you not rich enough for that little time?Shall you be hungry,—shall you lack clothes,or a roof to shelter you,—between this point and the grave?No!but, with the half of what you now possess,you could revel in costly food and wines,and build a house twice as splendid as you now inhabit,and make a far greater show to the world,—and yet leave riches to your only son,to make him bless the hour of your death!Then, why should you do this cruel, cruel thing?—so mad a thing, that I know not whether to call it wicked!Alas, Cousin Jaffrey,this hard and grasping spirit has run in our blood these two hundred years.You are but doing over again, in another shape,what your ancestor before you did,and sending down to your posterity the curse inherited from him!”
“Talk sense, Hepzibah, for Heaven’s sake!” exclaimed the Judge,with the impatience natural to a reasonable man,on hearing anything so utterly absurd as the above,in a discussion about matters of business.“I have told you my determination.I am not apt to change.Clifford must give up his secret,or take the consequences. And let him decide quickly;for I have several affairs to attend to this morning,and an important dinner engagement with some political friends. ”
“Clifford has no secret!” answered Hepzibah.“And God will not let you do the thing you meditate!”
“We shall see,” said the unmoved Judge. “Meanwhile,choose whether you will summon Clifford,and allow this business to be amicably settled by an interview between two kinsmen, or drive me to harsher measures, which I should be most happy to feel myself justified in avoiding. The responsibility is altogether on your part.”
“You are stronger than I,” said Hepzibah,after a brief consideration;“and you have no pity in your strength!Clifford is not now insane;but the interview which you insist upon may go far to make him so.Nevertheless, knowing you as I do,I believe it to be my best course to allow you to judge for yourself as to the improbability of his possessing any valuable secret. I will call Clifford. Be merciful in your dealings with him!—be far more merciful than your heart bids you be!—for God is looking at you, Jaffrey Pyncheon!”
The Judge followed his cousin from the shop,where the foregoing conversation had passed,into the parlor, and flung himself heavily into the great ancestral chair.Many a former Pyncheon had found repose in its capacious arms:rosy children, after their sports; young men,dreamy with love; grown men, weary with cares; old men,burdened with winters,—they had mused, and slumbered,and departed to a yet profounder sleep.It had been a long tradition, though a doubtful one,that this was the very chair,seated in which the earliest of the Judge’s New England forefathers—he whose picture still hung upon the wall—had given a dead man’s silent and stern reception to the throng of distinguished guests. From that hour of evil omen until the present, it may be,—though we know not the secret of his heart,—but it may be that no wearier and sadder man had ever sunk into the chair than this same Judge Pyncheon, whom we have just beheld so immitigably hard and resolute. Surely, it must have been at no slight cost that he had thus fortified his soul with iron. Such calmness is a mightier effort than the violence of weaker men. And there was yet a heavy task for him to do. Was it a little matter—a trifle to be prepared for in a single moment, and to be rested from in another moment,—that he must now, after thirty years, encounter a kinsman risen from a living tomb, and wrench a secret from him, or else consign him to a living tomb again?
“Did you speak?” asked Hepzibah, looking in from the threshold of the parlor;for she imagined that the Judge had uttered some sound which she was anxious to interpret as a relenting impulse. “I thought you called me back.”
“No, no” gruffly answered Judge Pyncheon with a harsh frown,while his brow grew almost a black purple,in the shadow of the room. “Why should I call you back?Time flies!Bid Clifford come to me!”
The Judge had taken his watch from his vest pocket and now held it in his hand,measuring the interval which was to ensue before the appearance of Clifford.
XVI. Clifford’s Chamber