The Judge, beyond all question,was a man of eminent respectability.The church acknowledged it; the state acknowledged it.It was denied by nobody.In all the very extensive sphere of those who knew him,whether in his public or private capacities,there was not an individual—except Hepzibah,and some lawless mystic, like the daguerreotypist, and,possibly, a few political opponents—who would have dreamed of seriously disputing his claim to a high and honorable place in the world’s regard. Nor (we must do him the further justice to say) did Judge Pyncheon himself, probably, entertain many or very frequent doubts, that his enviable reputation accorded with his deserts. His conscience, therefore, usually considered the surest witness to a man’s integrity,—his conscience, unless it might be for the little space of five minutes in the twenty-four hours, or, now and then, some black day in the whole year’s circle,—his conscience bore an accordant testimony with the world’s laudatory voice. And yet, strong as this evidence may seem to be, we should hesitate to peril our own conscience on the assertion, that the Judge and the consenting world were right, and that poor Hepzibah with her solitary prejudice was wrong. Hidden from mankind,—forgotten by himself, or buried so deeply under a sculptured and ornamented pile of ostentatious deeds that his daily life could take no note of it,—there may have lurked some evil and unsightly thing. Nay, we could almost venture to say, further, that a daily guilt might have been acted by him, continually renewed, and reddening forth afresh, like the miraculous blood-stain of a murder, without his necessarily and at every moment being aware of it.
Men of strong minds, great force of character,and a hard texture of the sensibilities,are very capable of falling into mistakes of this kind.They are ordinarily men to whom forms are of paramount importance.Their field of action lies among the external phenomena of life.They possess vast ability in grasping, and arranging,and appropriating to themselves, the big, heavy,solid unrealities, such as gold, landed estate,offices of trust and emolument, and public honors.With these materials, and with deeds of goodly aspect,done in the public eye,an individual of this class builds up, as it were,a tall and stately edifice, which,in the view of other people,and ultimately in his own view,is no other than the man’s character,or the man himself. Behold, therefore, a palace!Its splendid halls and suites of spacious apartments are floored with a mosaic-work of costly marbles; its windows, the whole height of each room, admit the sunshine through the most transparent of plate-glass; its high cornices are gilded, and its ceilings gorgeously painted; and a lofty dome—through which, from the central pavement, you may gaze up to the sky, as with no obstructing medium between—surmounts the whole. With what fairer and nobler emblem could any man desire to shadow forth his character?Ah!but in some low and obscure nook,—some narrow closet on the ground-floor, shut,locked and bolted, and the key flung away,—or beneath the marble pavement,in a stagnant water-puddle,with the richest pattern of mosaic-work above,—may lie a corpse, half decayed, and still decaying,and diffusing its death-scent all through the palace!The inhabitant will not be conscious of it,for it has long been his daily breath!Neither will the visitors,for they smell only the rich odors which the master sedulously scatters through the palace, and the incense which they bring, and delight to burn before him!Now and then, perchance, comes in a seer,before whose sadly gifted eye the whole structure melts into thin air,leaving only the hidden nook, the bolted closet,with the cobwebs festooned over its forgotten door,or the deadly hole under the pavement,and the decaying corpse within. Here, then,we are to seek the true emblem of the man’s character,and of the deed that gives whatever reality it possesses to his life.And, beneath the show of a marble palace,that pool of stagnant water, foul with many impurities,and, perhaps, tinged with blood,—that secret abomination, above which, possibly,he may say his prayers, without remembering it,—is this man’s miserable soul!
To apply this train of remark somewhat more closely to Judge Pyncheon.We might say (without in the least imputing crime to a personage of his eminent respectability) that there was enough of splendid rubbish in his life to cover up and paralyze a more active and subtile conscience than the Judge was ever troubled with. The purity of his judicial character, while on the bench; the faithfulness of his public service in subsequent capacities; his devotedness to his party, and the rigid consistency with which he had adhered to its principles, or, at all events, kept pace with its organized movements; his remarkable zeal as president of a Bible society; his unimpeachable integrity as treasurer of a widow’s and orphan’s fund; his benefits to horticulture, by producing two much esteemed varieties of the pear and to agriculture, through the agency of the famous Pyncheon bull; the cleanliness of his moral deportment, for a great many years past; the severity with which he had frowned upon, and finally cast off, an expensive and dissipated son, delaying forgiveness until within the final quarter of an hour of the young man’s life; his prayers at morning and eventide, and graces at meal-time; his efforts in furtherance of the temperance cause; his confining himself, since the last attack of the gout, to five diurnal glasses of old sherry wine; the snowy whiteness of his linen, the polish of his boots, the handsomeness of his gold-headed cane, the square and roomy fashion of his coat, and the fineness of its material, and, in general, the studied propriety of his dress and equipment; the scrupulousness with which he paid public notice, in the street, by a bow, a lifting of the hat, a nod, or a motion of the hand, to all and sundry of his acquaintances, rich or poor; the smile of broad benevolence wherewith he made it a point to gladden the whole world,—what room could possibly be found for darker traits in a portrait made up of lineaments like these?This proper face was what he beheld in the looking-glass.This admirably arranged life was what he was conscious of in the progress of every day. Then might not he claim to be its result and sum, and say to himself and the community, “Behold Judge Pyncheon there”?
And allowing that, many, many years ago,in his early and reckless youth,he had committed some one wrong act,—or that, even now,the inevitable force of circumstances should occasionally make him do one questionable deed among a thousand praiseworthy, or, at least, blameless ones,—would you characterize the Judge by that one necessary deed, and that half-forgotten act, and let it overshadow the fair aspect of a lifetime?What is there so ponderous in evil,that a thumb’s bigness of it should outweigh the mass of things not evil which were heaped into the other scale!This scale and balance system is a favorite one with people of Judge Pyncheon’s brotherhood. A hard, cold man, thus unfortunately situated, seldom or never looking inward, and resolutely taking his idea of himself from what purports to be his image as reflected in the mirror of public opinion, can scarcely arrive at true self-knowledge, except through loss of property and reputation. Sickness will not always help him do it; not always the death-hour!
But our affair now is with Judge Pyncheon as he stood confronting the fierce outbreak of Hepzibah’s wrath. Without premeditation, to her own surprise, and indeed terror, she had given vent, for once, to the inveteracy of her resentment, cherished against this kinsman for thirty years.