His career it would be difficult to prefigure.There appeared to be qualities in Holgrave, such as,in a country where everything is free to the hand that can grasp it,could hardly fail to put some of the world’s prizes within his reach.But these matters are delightfully uncertain.At almost every step in life,we meet with young men of just about Holgrave’s age,for whom we anticipate wonderful things, but of whom,even after much and careful inquiry,we never happen to hear another word.The effervescence of youth and passion,and the fresh gloss of the intellect and imagination,endow them with a false brilliancy,which makes fools of themselves and other people.Like certain chintzes, calicoes, and ginghams,they show finely in their first newness,but cannot stand the sun and rain,and assume a very sober aspect after washing-day.
But our business is with Holgrave as we find him on this particular afternoon,and in the arbor of the Pyncheon garden.In that point of view,it was a pleasant sight to behold this young man,with so much faith in himself,and so fair an appearance of admirable powers,—so little harmed, too,by the many tests that had tried his metal,—it was pleasant to see him in his kindly intercourse with Phœbe.Her thought had scarcely done him justice when it pronounced him cold;or, if so, he had grown warmer now.Without such purpose on her part,and unconsciously on his,she made the House of the Seven Gables like a home to him,and the garden a familiar precinct.With the insight on which he prided himself,he fancied that he could look through Phœbe,and all around her,and could read her off like a page of a child’s story-book.But these transparent natures are often deceptive in their depth;those pebbles at the bottom of the fountain are farther from us than we think.Thus the artist, whatever he might judge of Phœbe’s capacity,was beguiled, by some silent charm of hers,to talk freely of what he dreamed of doing in the world.He poured himself out as to another self.Very possibly, he forgot Phœbe while he talked to her,and was moved only by the inevitable tendency of thought,when rendered sympathetic by enthusiasm and emotion,to flow into the first safe reservoir which it finds.But, had you peeped at them through the chinks of the garden-fence,the young man’s earnestness and heightened color might have led you to suppose that he was making love to the young girl!
At length, something was said by Holgrave that made it apposite for Phœbe to inquire what had first brought him acquainted with her cousin Hepzibah, and why he now chose to lodge in the desolate old Pyncheon House. Without directly answering her, he turned from the Future, which had heretofore been the theme of his discourse, and began to speak of the influences of the Past. One subject, indeed, is but the reverberation of the other.
“Shall we never, never get rid of this Past?” cried he, keeping up the earnest tone of his preceding conversation.“It lies upon the Present like a giant’s dead body!In fact, the case is just as if a young giant were compelled to waste all his strength in carrying about the corpse of the old giant, his grandfather, who died a long while ago, and only needs to be decently buried. Just think a moment, and it will startle you to see what slaves we are to bygone times,—to Death, if we give the matter the right word!”
“But I do not see it,” observed Phœbe.
“For example, then,” continued Holgrave: “a dead man,if he happens to have made a will,disposes of wealth no longer his own; or,if he die intestate,it is distributed in accordance with the notions of men much longer dead than he. A dead man sits on all our judgment-seats; and living judges do but search out and repeat his decisions. We read in dead men’s books!We laugh at dead men’s jokes,and cry at dead men’s pathos!We are sick of dead men’s diseases, physical and moral,and die of the same remedies with which dead doctors killed their patients!We worship the living Deity according to dead men’s forms and creeds.Whatever we seek to do, of our own free motion,a dead man’s icy hand obstructs us!Turn our eyes to what point we may, a dead man’s white,immitigable face encounters them,and freezes our very heart!And we must be dead ourselves before we can begin to have our proper influence on our own world, which will then be no longer our world, but the world of another generation, with which we shall have no shadow of a right to interfere. I ought to have said, too, that we live in dead men’s houses; as, for instance, in this of the Seven Gables!”
“And why not,” said Phœbe,“so long as we can be comfortable in them?”
“But we shall live to see the day, I trust,” went on the artist,“when no man shall build his house for posterity. Why should he?He might just as reasonably order a durable suit of clothes,—leather, or guttapercha,or whatever else lasts longest,—so that his great-grandchildren should have the benefit of them,and cut precisely the same figure in the world that he himself does.If each generation were allowed and expected to build its own houses,that single change,comparatively unimportant in itself,would imply almost every reform which society is now suffering for.I doubt whether even our public edifices—our capitols,state-houses, court-houses, city-hall, and churches,—ought to be built of such permanent materials as stone or brick.It were better that they should crumble to ruin once in twenty years,or thereabouts, as a hint to the people to examine into and reform the institutions which they symbolize.”
“How you hate everything old!” said Phœbe in dismay.“It makes me dizzy to think of such a shifting world!”
“I certainly love nothing mouldy,” answered Holgrave.“Now, this old Pyncheon House!Is it a wholesome place to live in,with its black shingles,and the green moss that shows how damp they are?—its dark, low-studded rooms—its grime and sordidness,which are the crystallization on its walls of the human breath,that has been drawn and exhaled here in discontent and anguish?The house ought to be purified with fire,—purified till only its ashes remain!”
“Then why do you live in it?” asked Phœbe, a little piqued.
“Oh, I am pursuing my studies here; not in books,however,” replied Holgrave. “The house, in my view,is expressive of that odious and abominable Past,with all its bad influences,against which I have just been declaiming.I dwell in it for a while,that I may know the better how to hate it. By the bye,did you ever hear the story of Maule, the wizard,and what happened between him and your immeasurably great-grandfather?”
“Yes, indeed!” said Phœbe; “I heard it long ago, from my father,and two or three times from my cousin Hepzibah,in the month that I have been here.She seems to think that all the calamities of the Pyncheons began from that quarrel with the wizard, as you call him. And you, Mr. Holgrave look as if you thought so too!How singular that you should believe what is so very absurd,when you reject many things that are a great deal worthier of credit!”