As they went on, the feeling of indistinctness and unreality kept dimly hovering round about her, and so diffusing itself into her system that one of her hands was hardly palpable to the touch of the other. Any certainty would have been preferable to this. She whispered to herself, again and again, “Am I awake?—Am I awake?” and sometimes exposed her face to the chill spatter of the wind,for the sake of its rude assurance that she was.Whether it was Clifford’s purpose, or only chance,had led them thither,they now found themselves passing beneath the arched entrance of a large structure of gray stone. Within, there was a spacious breadth, and an airy height from floor to roof, now partially filled with smoke and steam, which eddied voluminously upward and formed a mimic cloud-region over their heads. A train of cars was just ready for a start; the locomotive was fretting and fuming, like a steed impatient for a headlong rush; and the bell rang out its hasty peal, so well expressing the brief summons which life vouchsafes to us in its hurried career. Without question or delay,—with the irresistible decision, if not rather to be called recklessness, which had so strangely taken possession of him, and through him of Hepzibah,—Clifford impelled her towards the cars, and assisted her to enter. The signal was given; the engine puffed forth its short, quick breaths; the train began its movement; and, along with a hundred other passengers, these two unwonted travellers sped onward like the wind.
At last, therefore, and after so long estrangement from everything that the world acted or enjoyed, they had been drawn into the great current of human life, and were swept away with it, as by the suction of fate itself.
Still haunted with the idea that not one of the past incidents,inclusive of Judge Pyncheon’s visit, could be real,the recluse of the Seven Gables murmured in her brother’s ear, —
“Clifford!Clifford!Is not this a dream?”
“A dream, Hepzibah!” repeated he, almost laughing in her face.“On the contrary, I have never been awake before!”
Meanwhile, looking from the window,they could see the world racing past them.At one moment, they were rattling through a solitude;the next, a village had grown up around them;a few breaths more, and it had vanished,as if swallowed by an earthquake.The spires of meeting-houses seemed set adrift from their foundations;the broad-based hills glided away.Everything was unfixed from its age-long rest,and moving at whirlwind speed in a direction opposite to their own.
Within the car there was the usual interior life of the railroad,offering little to the observation of other passengers,but full of novelty for this pair of strangely enfranchised prisoners.It was novelty enough, indeed,that there were fifty human beings in close relation with them,under one long and narrow roof,and drawn onward by the same mighty influence that had taken their two selves into its grasp. It seemed marvellous how all these people could remain so quietly in their seats, while so much noisy strength was at work in their behalf. Some, with tickets in their hats (long travellers these, before whom lay a hundred miles of railroad), had plunged into the English scenery and adventures of pamphlet novels, and were keeping company with dukes and earls. Others, whose briefer span forbade their devoting themselves to studies so abstruse, beguiled the little tedium of the way with penny-papers. A party of girls, and one young man, on opposite sides of the car, found huge amusement in a game of ball. They tossed it to and fro, with peals of laughter that might be measured by mile-lengths; for, faster than the nimble ball could fly, the merry players fled unconsciously along, leaving the trail of their mirth afar behind, and ending their game under another sky than had witnessed its commencement. Boys, with apples, cakes, candy, and rolls of variously tinctured lozenges,—merchandise that reminded Hepzibah of her deserted shop,—appeared at each momentary stopping-place, doing up their business in a hurry, or breaking it short off, lest the market should ravish them away with it. New people continually entered. Old acquaintances—for such they soon grew to be, in this rapid current of affairs—continually departed. Here and there, amid the rumble and the tumult, sat one asleep. Sleep; sport; business; graver or lighter study; and the common and inevitable movement onward!It was life itself!
Clifford’s naturally poignant sympathies were all aroused.He caught the color of what was passing about him,and threw it back more vividly than he received it,but mixed, nevertheless,with a lurid and portentous hue. Hepzibah,on the other hand, felt herself more apart from human kind than even in the seclusion which she had just quitted.
“You are not happy, Hepzibah!” said Clifford, apart, in a tone of reproach.“You are thinking of that dismal old house,and of Cousin Jaffrey”—here came the quake through him,—“and of Cousin Jaffrey sitting there, all by himself!Take my advice,—follow my example,—and let such things slip aside. Here we are,in the world, Hepzibah!—in the midst of life!—in the throng of our fellow beings!Let you and I be happy!As happy as that youth and those pretty girls,at their game of ball!”
“Happy—” thought Hepzibah, bitterly conscious,at the word, of her dull and heavy heart,with the frozen pain in it,—“happy. He is mad already;and, if I could once feel myself broad awake,I should go mad too!”
If a fixed idea be madness,she was perhaps not remote from it.Fast and far as they had rattled and clattered along the iron track,they might just as well,as regarded Hepzibah’s mental images,have been passing up and down Pyncheon Street.With miles and miles of varied scenery between,there was no scene for her save the seven old gable-peaks,with their moss, and the tuft of weeds in one of the angles,and the shop-window, and a customer shaking the door,and compelling the little bell to jingle fiercely,but without disturbing Judge Pyncheon!This one old house was everywhere!It transported its great,lumbering bulk with more than railroad speed,and set itself phlegmatically down on whatever spot she glanced at.The quality of Hepzibah’s mind was too unmalleable to take new impressions so readily as Clifford’s. He had a winged nature; she was rather of the vegetable kind, and could hardly be kept long alive, if drawn up by the roots. Thus it happened that the relation heretofore existing between her brother and herself was changed. At home, she was his guardian; here, Clifford had become hers, and seemed to comprehend whatever belonged to their new position with a singular rapidity of intelligence. He had been startled into manhood and intellectual vigor; or, at least, into a condition that resembled them, though it might be both diseased and transitory.
The conductor now applied for their tickets;and Clifford, who had made himself the purse-bearer,put a bank-note into his hand,as he had observed others do.
“For the lady and yourself?” asked the conductor. “And how far?”
“As far as that will carry us,” said Clifford.“It is no great matter.We are riding for pleasure merely.”
“You choose a strange day for it, sir!” remarked a gimlet-eyed old gentleman on the other side of the car,looking at Clifford and his companion,as if curious to make them out.“The best chance of pleasure, in an easterly rain,I take it, is in a man’s own house,with a nice little fire in the chimney.”
“I cannot precisely agree with you,” said Clifford,courteously bowing to the old gentleman,and at once taking up the clew of conversation which the latter had proffered.“It had just occurred to me, on the contrary,that this admirable invention of the railroad—with the vast and inevitable improvements to be looked for, both as to speed and convenience—is destined to do away with those stale ideas of home and fireside, and substitute something better.”
“In the name of common-sense,” asked the old gentleman rather testily,“what can be better for a man than his own parlor and chimney-corner?”