One of the available means of amusement, of which Phœbe made the most in Clifford’s behalf,was that feathered society, the hens, a breed of whom, as we have already said,was an immemorial heirloom in the Pyncheon family. In compliance with a whim of Clifford,as it troubled him to see them in confinement, they had been set at liberty,and now roamed at will about the garden; doing some little mischief,but hindered from escape by buildings on three sides,and the difficult peaks of a wooden fence on the other.They spent much of their abundant leisure on the margin of Maule’s well,which was haunted by a kind of snail, evidently a titbit to their palates;and the brackish water itself, however nauseous to the rest of the world,was so greatly esteemed by these fowls, that they might be seen tasting, turning up their heads,and smacking their bills, with precisely the air of wine-bibbers round a probationary cask.Their generally quiet, yet often brisk, and constantly diversified talk, one to another,or sometimes in soliloquy,—as they scratched worms out of the rich, black soil,or pecked at such plants as suited their taste,—had such a domestic tone,that it was almost a wonder why you could not establish a regular interchange of ideas about household matters,human and gallinaceous. All hens are well worth studying for the piquancy and rich variety of their manners;but by no possibility can there have been other fowls of such odd appearance and deportment as these ancestral ones.They probably embodied the traditionary peculiarities of their whole line of progenitors,derived through an unbroken succession of eggs;or else this individual Chanticleer and his two wives had grown to be humorists,and a little crack-brained withal, on account of their solitary way of life,and out of sympathy for Hepzibah, their lady-patroness.
Queer, indeed, they looked!Chanticleer himself, though stalking on two stilt-like legs,with the dignity of interminable descent in all his gestures,was hardly bigger than an ordinary partridge; his two wives were about the size of quails;and as for the one chicken, it looked small enough to be still in the egg, and, at the same time,sufficiently old, withered, wizened, and experienced, to have been founder of the antiquated race.Instead of being the youngest of the family,it rather seemed to have aggregated into itself the ages,not only of these living specimens of the breed, but of all its forefathers and foremothers,whose united excellences and oddities were squeezed into its little body.Its mother evidently regarded it as the one chicken of the world, and as necessary, in fact,to the world’s continuance, or, at any rate, to the equilibrium of the present system of affairs,whether in church or state. No lesser sense of the infant fowl’s importance could have justified,even in a mother’s eyes, the perseverance with which she watched over its safety,ruffling her small person to twice its proper size,and flying in everybody’s face that so much as looked towards her hopeful progeny.No lower estimate could have vindicated the indefatigable zeal with which she scratched,and her unscrupulousness in digging up the choicest flower or vegetable,for the sake of the fat earthworm at its root. Her nervous cluck,when the chicken happened to be hidden in the long grass or under the squash-leaves;her gentle croak of satisfaction, while sure of it beneath her wing;her note of ill-concealed fear and obstreperous defiance, when she saw her arch-enemy,a neighbor’s cat, on the top of the high fence,—one or other of these sounds was to be heard at almost every moment of the day. By degrees,the observer came to feel nearly as much interest in this chicken of illustrious race as the mother-hen did.
Phœbe, after getting well acquainted with the old hen,was sometimes permitted to take the chicken in her hand,which was quite capable of grasping its cubic inch or two of body.While she curiously examined its hereditary marks,—the peculiar speckle of its plumage,the funny tuft on its head, and a knob on each of its legs,—the little biped, as she insisted,kept giving her a sagacious wink. The daguerreotypist once whispered her that these marks betokened the oddities of the Pyncheon family,and that the chicken itself was a symbol of the life of the old house,embodying its interpretation, likewise, although an unintelligible one,as such clews generally are. It was a feathered riddle; a mystery hatched out of an egg,and just as mysterious as if the egg had been addle!
The second of Chanticleer’s two wives, ever since Phœbe’s arrival,had been in a state of heavy despondency, caused, as it afterwards appeared,by her inability to lay an egg. One day, however, by her self-important gait,the sideways turn of her head, and the cock of her eye,as she pried into one and another nook of the garden,—croaking to herself, all the while,with inexpressible complacency,—it was made evident that this identical hen,much as mankind undervalued her, carried something about her person the worth of which was not to be estimated either in gold or precious stones.Shortly after, there was a prodigious cackling and gratulation of Chanticleer and all his family,including the wizened chicken, who appeared to understand the matter quite as well as did his sire,his mother, or his aunt. That afternoon Phœbe found a diminutive egg,—not in the regular nest,it was far too precious to be trusted there,—but cunningly hidden under the currant-bushes,on some dry stalks of last year’s grass. Hepzibah, on learning the fact,took possession of the egg and appropriated it to Clifford’s breakfast,on account of a certain delicacy of flavor, for which, as she affirmed,these eggs had always been famous. Thus unscrupulously did the old gentlewoman sacrifice the continuance,perhaps, of an ancient feathered race, with no better end than to supply her brother with a dainty that hardly filled the bowl of a tea-spoon!It must have been in reference to this outrage that Chanticleer, the next day,accompanied by the bereaved mother of the egg, took his post in front of Phœbe and Clifford,and delivered himself of a harangue that might have proved as long as his own pedigree,but for a fit of merriment on Phœbe’s part. Hereupon,the offended fowl stalked away on his long stilts,and utterly withdrew his notice from Phœbe and the rest of human nature,until she made her peace with an offering of spice-cake, which, next to snails,was the delicacy most in favor with his aristocratic taste.
We linger too long, no doubt, beside this paltry rivulet of life that flowed through the garden of the Pyncheon House.But we deem it pardonable to record these mean incidents and poor delights,because they proved so greatly to Clifford’s benefit. They had the earth-smell in them,and contributed to give him health and substance.Some of his occupations wrought less desirably upon him. He had a singular propensity, for example,to hang over Maule’s well, and look at the constantly shifting phantasmagoria of figures produced by the agitation of the water over the mosaic-work of colored pebbles at the bottom. He said that faces looked upward to him there,—beautiful faces, arrayed in bewitching smiles,—each momentary face so fair and rosy, and every smile so sunny, that he felt wronged at its departure, until the same flitting witchcraft made a new one. But sometimes he would suddenly cry out, “The dark face gazes at me!” and be miserable the whole day afterwards. Phœbe,when she hung over the fountain by Clifford’s side, could see nothing of all this,—neither the beauty nor the ugliness,—but only the colored pebbles,looking as if the gush of the waters shook and disarranged them. And the dark face,that so troubled Clifford, was no more than the shadow thrown from a branch of one of the damson-trees,and breaking the inner light of Maule’s well. The truth was, however,that his fancy—reviving faster than his will and judgment,and always stronger than they—created shapes of loveliness that were symbolic of his native character,and now and then a stern and dreadful shape that typified his fate.
On Sundays, after Phœbe had been at church,—for the girl had a church-going conscience,and would hardly have been at ease had she missed either prayer, singing, sermon, or benediction,—after church-time, therefore, there was, ordinarily, a sober little festival in the garden.In addition to Clifford, Hepzibah, and Phœbe, two guests made up the company.One was the artist Holgrave, who, in spite of his consociation with reformers,and his other queer and questionable traits,continued to hold an elevated place in Hepzibah’s regard. The other, we are almost ashamed to say,was the venerable Uncle Venner, in a clean shirt, and a broadcloth coat,more respectable than his ordinary wear, inasmuch as it was neatly patched on each elbow,and might be called an entire garment, except for a slight inequality in the length of its skirts.Clifford, on several occasions, had seemed to enjoy the old man’s intercourse,for the sake of his mellow, cheerful vein, which was like the sweet flavor of a frost-bitten apple,such as one picks up under the tree in December.A man at the very lowest point of the social scale was easier and more agreeable for the fallen gentleman to encounter than a person at any of the intermediate degrees; and, moreover, as Clifford’s young manhood had been lost, he was fond of feeling himself comparatively youthful, now, in apposition with the patriarchal age of Uncle Venner. In fact, it was sometimes observable that Clifford half wilfully hid from himself the consciousness of being stricken in years, and cherished visions of an earthly future still before him; visions, however, too indistinctly drawn to be followed by disappointment—though, doubtless, by depression—when any casual incident or recollection made him sensible of the withered leaf.
So this oddly composed little social party used to assemble under the ruinous arbor.Hepzibah—stately as ever at heart, and yielding not an inch of her old gentility,but resting upon it so much the more, as justifying a princess-like condescension—exhibited a not ungraceful hospitality.She talked kindly to the vagrant artist,and took sage counsel—lady as she was—with the wood-sawyer,the messenger of everybody’s petty errands, the patched philosopher. And Uncle Venner,who had studied the world at street-corners,and other posts equally well adapted for just observation,was as ready to give out his wisdom as a town-pump to give water.
“Miss Hepzibah, ma’am,” said he once, after they had all been cheerful together,“I really enjoy these quiet little meetings of a Sabbath afternoon.They are very much like what I expect to have after I retire to my farm!”
“Uncle Venner” observed Clifford in a drowsy, inward tone, “is always talking about his farm.But I have a better scheme for him, by and by. We shall see!”
“Ah, Mr. Clifford Pyncheon!” said the man of patches, “you may scheme for me as much as you please;but I’m not going to give up this one scheme of my own, even if I never bring it really to pass.It does seem to me that men make a wonderful mistake in trying to heap up property upon property.If I had done so, I should feel as if Providence was not bound to take care of me; and, at all events, the city wouldn’t be!I’m one of those people who think that infinity is big enough for us all—and eternity long enough.”
“Why, so they are, Uncle Venner,” remarked Phœbe after a pause;for she had been trying to fathom the profundity and appositeness of this concluding apothegm.“But for this short life of ours, one would like a house and a moderate garden-spot of one’s own.”
“It appears to me,” said the daguerreotypist, smiling,“that Uncle Venner has the principles of Fourier at the bottom of his wisdom;only they have not quite so much distinctness in his mind as in that of the systematizing Frenchman. ”
“Come, Phœbe,” said Hepzibah, “it is time to bring the currants.”
And then, while the yellow richness of the declining sunshine still fell into the open space of the garden,Phœbe brought out a loaf of bread and a china bowl of currants, freshly gathered from the bushes,and crushed with sugar. These, with water,—but not from the fountain of ill omen, close at hand,—constituted all the entertainment. Meanwhile,Holgrave took some pains to establish an intercourse with Clifford, actuated, it might seem,entirely by an impulse of kindliness, in order that the present hour might be cheerfuller than most which the poor recluse had spent,or was destined yet to spend. Nevertheless, in the artist’s deep, thoughtful, all-observant eyes,there was, now and then, an expression, not sinister, but questionable;as if he had some other interest in the scene than a stranger,a youthful and unconnected adventurer, might be supposed to have.With great mobility of outward mood, however,he applied himself to the task of enlivening the party; and with so much success,that even dark-hued Hepzibah threw off one tint of melancholy,and made what shift she could with the remaining portion. Phœbe said to herself, —“How pleasant he can be!” As for Uncle Venner, as a mark of friendship and approbation,he readily consented to afford the young man his countenance in the way of his profession,—not metaphorically, be it understood, but literally, by allowing a daguerreotype of his face,so familiar to the town, to be exhibited at the entrance of Holgrave’s studio.
Clifford, as the company partook of their little banquet, grew to be the gayest of them all.Either it was one of those up-quivering flashes of the spirit,to which minds in an abnormal state are liable,or else the artist had subtly touched some chord that made musical vibration. Indeed,what with the pleasant summer evening, and the sympathy of this little circle of not unkindly souls,it was perhaps natural that a character so susceptible as Clifford’s should become animated,and show itself readily responsive to what was said around him. But he gave out his own thoughts,likewise, with an airy and fanciful glow; so that they glistened, as it were, through the arbor,and made their escape among the interstices of the foliage. He had been as cheerful, no doubt,while alone with Phœbe, but never with such tokens of acute, although partial intelligence.
But, as the sunlight left the peaks of the Seven Gables,so did the excitement fade out of Clifford’s eyes. He gazed vaguely and mournfully about him,as if he missed something precious, and missed it the more drearily for not knowing precisely what it was.
“I want my happiness!” at last he murmured hoarsely and indistinctly, hardly shaping out the words. “Many, many years have I waited for it!It is late!It is late!I want my happiness!”
Alas, poor Clifford!You are old, and worn with troubles that ought never to have befallen you.You are partly crazy and partly imbecile; a ruin, a failure, as almost everybody is,—though some in less degree, or less perceptibly, than their fellows.Fate has no happiness in store for you;unless your quiet home in the old family residence with the faithful Hepzibah,and your long summer afternoons with Phœbe,and these Sabbath festivals with Uncle Venner and the daguerreotypist, deserve to be called happiness!Why not?If not the thing itself, it is marvellously like it,and the more so for that ethereal and intangible quality which causes it all to vanish at too close an introspection.Take it, therefore, while you may. Murmur not,—question not,—but make the most of it!
XI. The Arched Window
From the inertness, or what we may term the vegetative character, of his ordinary mood,Clifford would perhaps have been content to spend one day after another, interminably,—or,at least, throughout the summer-time,—in just the kind of life described in the preceding pages.Fancying, however, that it might be for his benefit occasionally to diversify the scene,Phœbe sometimes suggested that he should look out upon the life of the street. For this purpose,they used to mount the staircase together, to the second story of the house, where,at the termination of a wide entry, there was an arched window, of uncommonly large dimensions,shaded by a pair of curtains. It opened above the porch, where there had formerly been a balcony,the balustrade of which had long since gone to decay, and been removed. At this arched window,throwing it open, but keeping himself in comparative obscurity by means of the curtain,Clifford had an opportunity of witnessing such a portion of the great world’s movement as might be supposed to roll through one of the retired streets of a not very populous city. But he and Phœbe made a sight as well worth seeing as any that the city could exhibit. The pale, gray, childish, aged, melancholy, yet often simply cheerful, and sometimes delicately intelligent aspect of Clifford, peering from behind the faded crimson of the curtain,—watching the monotony of every-day occurrences with a kind of inconsequential interest and earnestness, and, at every petty throb of his sensibility, turning for sympathy to the eyes of the bright young girl!
If once he were fairly seated at the window,even Pyncheon Street would hardly be so dull and lonely but that,somewhere or other along its extent, Clifford might discover matter to occupy his eye,and titillate, if not engross, his observation.Things familiar to the youngest child that had begun its outlook at existence seemed strange to him.A cab; an omnibus, with its populous interior, dropping here and there a passenger,and picking up another, and thus typifying that vast rolling vehicle, the world,the end of whose journey is everywhere and nowhere;these objects he followed eagerly with his eyes,but forgot them before the dust raised by the horses and wheels had settled along their track.As regarded novelties (among which cabs and omnibuses were to be reckoned),his mind appeared to have lost its proper gripe and retentiveness. Twice or thrice, for example,during the sunny hours of the day, a water-cart went along by the Pyncheon House,leaving a broad wake of moistened earth,instead of the white dust that had risen at a lady’s lightest footfall;it was like a summer shower, which the city authorities had caught and tamed,and compelled it into the commonest routine of their convenience.With the water-cart Clifford could never grow familiar;it always affected him with just the same surprise as at first.His mind took an apparently sharp impression from it,but lost the recollection of this perambulatory shower, before its next reappearance,as completely as did the street itself, along which the heat so quickly strewed white dust again.It was the same with the railroad. Clifford could hear the obstreperous howl of the steam-devil,and, by leaning a little way from the arched window, could catch a glimpse of the trains of cars,flashing a brief transit across the extremity of the street.The idea of terrible energy thus forced upon him was new at every recurrence,and seemed to affect him as disagreeably, and with almost as much surprise, the hundredth time as the first.
Nothing gives a sadder sense of decay than this loss or suspension of the power to deal with unaccustomed things,and to keep up with the swiftness of the passing moment. It can merely be a suspended animation;for, were the power actually to perish, there would be little use of immortality.We are less than ghosts, for the time being, whenever this calamity befalls us.
Clifford was indeed the most inveterate of conservatives.All the antique fashions of the street were dear to him;even such as were characterized by a rudeness that would naturally have annoyed his fastidious senses.He loved the old rumbling and jolting carts,the former track of which he still found in his long-buried remembrance,as the observer of to-day finds the wheel-tracks of ancient vehicles in Herculaneum.The butcher’s cart, with its snowy canopy, was an acceptable object; so was the fish-cart,heralded by its horn; so, likewise, was the countryman’s cart of vegetables,plodding from door to door, with long pauses of the patient horse,while his owner drove a trade in turnips, carrots, summer-squashes, string-beans, green peas,and new potatoes, with half the housewives of the neighborhood. The baker’s cart,with the harsh music of its bells, had a pleasant effect on Clifford, because,as few things else did, it jingled the very dissonance of yore.One afternoon a scissor-grinder chanced to set his wheel a-going under the Pyncheon Elm,and just in front of the arched window. Children came running with their mothers’ scissors,or the carving-knife, or the paternal razor, or anything else that lacked an edge (except, indeed,poor Clifford’s wits), that the grinder might apply the article to his magic wheel,and give it back as good as new. Round went the busily revolving machinery,kept in motion by the scissor-grinder’s foot, and wore away the hard steel against the hard stone,whence issued an intense and spiteful prolongation of a hiss as fierce as those emitted by Satan and his compeers in Pandemonium,though squeezed into smaller compass. It was an ugly, little, venomous serpent of a noise,as ever did petty violence to human ears. But Clifford listened with rapturous delight. The sound,however disagreeable, had very brisk life in it, and,together with the circle of curious children watching the revolutions of the wheel,appeared to give him a more vivid sense of active, bustling,and sunshiny existence than he had attained in almost any other way. Nevertheless,its charm lay chiefly in the past; for the scissor-grinder’s wheel had hissed in his childish ears.
He sometimes made doleful complaint that there were no stage-coaches nowadays.And he asked in an injured tone what had become of all those old square-topped chaises,with wings sticking out on either side, that used to be drawn by a plough-horse,and driven by a farmer’s wife and daughter,peddling whortle-berries and blackberries about the town. Their disappearance made him doubt,he said, whether the berries had not left off growing in the broad pastures and along the shady country lanes.
But anything that appealed to the sense of beauty, in however humble a way,did not require to be recommended by these old associations.This was observable when one of those Italian boys (who are rather a modern feature of our streets) came along with his barrel-organ,and stopped under the wide and cool shadows of the elm.With his quick professional eye he took note of the two faces watching him from the arched window,and, opening his instrument, began to scatter its melodies abroad. He had a monkey on his shoulder,dressed in a Highland plaid; and, to complete the sum of splendid attractions wherewith he presented himself to the public,there was a company of little figures, whose sphere and habitation was in the mahogany case of his organ,and whose principle of life was the music which the Italian made it his business to grind out.In all their variety of occupation,—the cobbler, the blacksmith, the soldier,the lady with her fan, the toper with his bottle,the milk-maid sitting by her cow—this fortunate little society might truly be said to enjoy a harmonious existence,and to make life literally a dance. The Italian turned a crank; and, behold!every one of these small individuals started into the most curious vivacity.The cobbler wrought upon a shoe; the blacksmith hammered his iron,the soldier waved his glittering blade; the lady raised a tiny breeze with her fan;the jolly toper swigged lustily at his bottle;a scholar opened his book with eager thirst for knowledge,and turned his head to and fro along the page; the milkmaid energetically drained her cow;and a miser counted gold into his strong-box,—all at the same turning of a crank. Yes; and,moved by the self-same impulse, a lover saluted his mistress on her lips!Possibly some cynic, at once merry and bitter, had desired to signify, in this pantomimic scene,that we mortals, whatever our business or amusement,—however serious, however trifling,—all dance to one identical tune, and, in spite of our ridiculous activity,bring nothing finally to pass. For the most remarkable aspect of the affair was, that,at the cessation of the music, everybody was petrified at once,from the most extravagant life into a dead torpor. Neither was the cobbler’s shoe finished,nor the blacksmith’s iron shaped out; nor was there a drop less of brandy in the toper’s bottle,nor a drop more of milk in the milkmaid’s pail, nor one additional coin in the miser’s strong-box,nor was the scholar a page deeper in his book.All were precisely in the same condition as before they made themselves so ridiculous by their haste to toil,to enjoy, to accumulate gold, and to become wise. Saddest of all, moreover,the lover was none the happier for the maiden’s granted kiss!But, rather than swallow this last too acrid ingredient, we reject the whole moral of the show.
The monkey, meanwhile, with a thick tail curling out into preposterous prolixity from beneath his tartans,took his station at the Italian’s feet.He turned a wrinkled and abominable little visage to every passer-by,and to the circle of children that soon gathered round, and to Hepzibah’s shop-door,and upward to the arched window, whence Phœbe and Clifford were looking down. Every moment, also,he took off his Highland bonnet, and performed a bow and scrape. Sometimes, moreover,he made personal application to individuals, holding out his small black palm,and otherwise plainly signifying his excessive desire for whatever filthy lucre might happen to be in anybody’s pocket.The mean and low, yet strangely man-like expression of his wilted countenance;the prying and crafty glance, that showed him ready to gripe at every miserable advantage;his enormous tail (too enormous to be decently concealed under his gabardine),and the deviltry of nature which it betokened,—take this monkey just as he was, in short,and you could desire no better image of the Mammon of copper coin,symbolizing the grossest form of the love of money.Neither was there any possibility of satisfying the covetous little devil.Phœbe threw down a whole handful of cents, which he picked up with joyless eagerness,handed them over to the Italian for safekeeping,and immediately recommenced a series of pantomimic petitions for more.
Doubtless, more than one New-Englander—or, let him be of what country he might,it is as likely to be the case—passed by, and threw a look at the monkey, and went on,without imagining how nearly his own moral condition was here exemplified. Clifford, however,was a being of another order. He had taken childish delight in the music, and smiled, too,at the figures which it set in motion. But, after looking awhile at the long-tailed imp,he was so shocked by his horrible ugliness, spiritual as well as physical,that he actually began to shed tears; a weakness which men of merely delicate endowments,and destitute of the fiercer, deeper, and more tragic power of laughter, can hardly avoid,when the worst and meanest aspect of life happens to be presented to them.
Pyncheon Street was sometimes enlivened by spectacles of more imposing pretensions than the above,and which brought the multitude along with them.With a shivering repugnance at the idea of personal contact with the world,a powerful impulse still seized on Clifford,whenever the rush and roar of the human tide grew strongly audible to him. This was made evident,one day, when a political procession, with hundreds of flaunting banners, and drums, fifes,clarions, and cymbals, reverberating between the rows of buildings, marched all through town,and trailed its length of trampling footsteps, and most infrequent uproar,past the ordinarily quiet House of the Seven Gables. As a mere object of sight,nothing is more deficient in picturesque features than a procession seen in its passage through narrow streets.The spectator feels it to be fool’s play,when he can distinguish the tedious commonplace of each man’s visage,with the perspiration and weary self-importance on it, and the very cut of his pantaloons,and the stiffness or laxity of his shirt-collar, and the dust on the back of his black coat.In order to become majestic, it should be viewed from some vantage point,as it rolls its slow and long array through the centre of a wide plain,or the stateliest public square of a city; for then, by its remoteness,it melts all the petty personalities, of which it is made up, into one broad mass of existence,—one great life,—one collected body of mankind, with a vast, homogeneous spirit animating it. But,on the other hand, if an impressible person,standing alone over the brink of one of these processions, should behold it, not in its atoms,but in its aggregate,—as a mighty river of life, massive in its tide, and black with mystery, and,out of its depths, calling to the kindred depth within him,—then the contiguity would add to the effect.It might so fascinate him that he would hardly be restrained from plunging into the surging stream of human sympathies.