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.