Then, all at once, it struck Phœbe that this very Judge Pyncheon was the original of the miniature which the daguerreotypist had shown her in the garden,and that the hard, stern, relentless look, now on his face,was the same that the sun had so inflexibly persisted in bringing out. Was it, therefore,no momentary mood, but, however skilfully concealed, the settled temper of his life?And not merely so, but was it hereditary in him, and transmitted down, as a precious heirloom,from that bearded ancestor, in whose picture both the expression and, to a singular degree,the features of the modern Judge were shown as by a kind of prophecy?A deeper philosopher than Phœbe might have found something very terrible in this idea.It implied that the weaknesses and defects, the bad passions, the mean tendencies,and the moral diseases which lead to crime are handed down from one generation to another,by a far surer process of transmission than human law has been able to establish in respect to the riches and honors which it seeks to entail upon posterity.
But, as it happened, scarcely had Phœbe’s eyes rested again on the Judge’s countenance than all its ugly sternness vanished;and she found herself quite overpowered by the sultry, dog-day heat, as it were, of benevolence,which this excellent man diffused out of his great heart into the surrounding atmosphere,—very much like a serpent, which, as a preliminary to fascination,is said to fill the air with his peculiar odor.
“I like that, Cousin Phœbe!” cried he, with an emphatic nod of approbation. “I like it much, my little cousin!You are a good child, and know how to take care of yourself.A young girl—especially if she be a very pretty one—can never be too chary of her lips.”
“Indeed, sir,” said Phœbe, trying to laugh the matter off, “I did not mean to be unkind.”
Nevertheless, whether or no it were entirely owing to the inauspicious commencement of their acquaintance,she still acted under a certain reserve,which was by no means customary to her frank and genial nature. The fantasy would not quit her,that the original Puritan, of whom she had heard so many sombre traditions,—the progenitor of the whole race of New England Pyncheons,the founder of the House of the Seven Gables, and who had died so strangely in it,—had now stept into the shop. In these days of off-hand equipment,the matter was easily enough arranged. On his arrival from the other world,he had merely found it necessary to spend a quarter of an hour at a barber’s,who had trimmed down the Puritan’s full beard into a pair of grizzled whiskers, then,patronizing a ready-made clothing establishment,he had exchanged his velvet doublet and sable cloak, with the richly worked band under his chin,for a white collar and cravat, coat, vest, and pantaloons; and lastly,putting aside his steel-hilted broadsword to take up a gold-headed cane,the Colonel Pyncheon of two centuries ago steps forward as the Judge of the passing moment!
Of course, Phœbe was far too sensible a girl to entertain this idea in any other way than as matter for a smile.Possibly, also, could the two personages have stood together before her eye,many points of difference would have been perceptible, and perhaps only a general resemblance.The long lapse of intervening years, in a climate so unlike that which had fostered the ancestral Englishman,must inevitably have wrought important changes in the physical system of his descendant.The Judge’s volume of muscle could hardly be the same as the Colonel’s;there was undoubtedly less beef in him.Though looked upon as a weighty man among his contemporaries in respect of animal substance,and as favored with a remarkable degree of fundamental development,well adapting him for the judicial bench, we conceive that the modern Judge Pyncheon,if weighed in the same balance with his ancestor,would have required at least an old-fashioned fifty-six to keep the scale in equilibrio.Then the Judge’s face had lost the ruddy English hue that showed its warmth through all the duskiness of the Colonel’s weather-beaten cheek,and had taken a sallow shade, the established complexion of his countrymen. If we mistake not,moreover, a certain quality of nervousness had become more or less manifest,even in so solid a specimen of Puritan descent as the gentleman now under discussion.As one of its effects, it bestowed on his countenance a quicker mobility than the old Englishman’s had possessed,and keener vivacity, but at the expense of a sturdier something,on which these acute endowments seemed to act like dissolving acids. This process,for aught we know, may belong to the great system of human progress, which,with every ascending footstep, as it diminishes the necessity for animal force,may be destined gradually to spiritualize us, by refining away our grosser attributes of body.If so, Judge Pyncheon could endure a century or two more of such refinement as well as most other men.
The similarity, intellectual and moral, between the Judge and his ancestor appears to have been at least as strong as the resemblance of mien and feature would afford reason to anticipate. In old Colonel Pyncheon’s funeral discourse the clergyman absolutely canonized his deceased parishioner, and opening, as it were, a vista through the roof of the church, and thence through the firmament above, showed him seated, harp in hand, among the crowned choristers of the spiritual world. On his tombstone, too, the record is highly eulogistic; nor does history, so far as he holds a place upon its page, assail the consistency and uprightness of his character. So also, as regards the Judge Pyncheon of to-day, neither clergyman, nor legal critic, nor inscriber of tombstones, nor historian of general or local politics, would venture a word against this eminent person’s sincerity as a Christian, or respectability as a man, or integrity as a judge, or courage and faithfulness as the often-tried representative of his political party. But, besides these cold, formal, and empty words of the chisel that inscribes, the voice that speaks, and the pen that writes, for the public eye and for distant time,—and which inevitably lose much of their truth and freedom by the fatal consciousness of so doing,—there were traditions about the ancestor, and private diurnal gossip about the Judge, remarkably accordant in their testimony. It is often instructive to take the woman’s, the private and domestic, view of a public man; nor can anything be more curious than the vast discrepancy between portraits intended for engraving and the pencil-sketches that pass from hand to hand behind the original’s back.
For example: tradition affirmed that the Puritan had been greedy of wealth; the Judge, too,with all the show of liberal expenditure,was said to be as close-fisted as if his gripe were of iron.The ancestor had clothed himself in a grim assumption of kindliness,a rough heartiness of word and manner, which most people took to be the genuine warmth of nature,making its way through the thick and inflexible hide of a manly character. His descendant,in compliance with the requirements of a nicer age,had etherealized this rude benevolence into that broad benignity of smile wherewith he shone like a noonday sun along the streets,or glowed like a household fire in the drawing-rooms of his private acquaintance.The Puritan—if not belied by some singular stories, murmured, even at this day,under the narrator’s breath—had fallen into certain transgressions to which men of his great animal development,whatever their faith or principles, must continue liable, until they put off impurity,along with the gross earthly substance that involves it.We must not stain our page with any contemporary scandal, to a similar purport,that may have been whispered against the Judge. The Puritan, again,an autocrat in his own household, had worn out three wives, and,merely by the remorseless weight and hardness of his character in the conjugal relation,had sent them, one after another, broken-hearted, to their graves. Here the parallel, in some sort,fails. The Judge had wedded but a single wife,and lost her in the third or fourth year of their marriage. There was a fable, however,—for such we choose to consider it, though, not impossibly,typical of Judge Pyncheon’s marital deportment,—that the lady got her death-blow in the honeymoon,and never smiled again, because her husband compelled her to serve him with coffee every morning at his bedside,in token of fealty to her liege-lord and master.
But it is too fruitful a subject, this of hereditary resemblances,—the frequent recurrence of which,in a direct line, is truly unaccountable,when we consider how large an accumulation of ancestry lies behind every man at the distance of one or two centuries.We shall only add, therefore, that the Puritan—so, at least, says chimney-corner tradition,which often preserves traits of character with marvellous fidelity—was bold, imperious, relentless,crafty; laying his purposes deep, and following them out with an inveteracy of pursuit that knew neither rest nor conscience;trampling on the weak, and, when essential to his ends, doing his utmost to beat down the strong.Whether the Judge in any degree resembled him, the further progress of our narrative may show.
Scarcely any of the items in the above-drawn parallel occurred to Phœbe,whose country birth and residence, in truth,had left her pitifully ignorant of most of the family traditions, which lingered,like cobwebs and incrustations of smoke,about the rooms and chimney-corners of the House of the Seven Gables. Yet there was a circumstance,very trifling in itself, which impressed her with an odd degree of horror.She had heard of the anathema flung by Maule, the executed wizard,against Colonel Pyncheon and his posterity,—that God would give them blood to drink,—and likewise of the popular notion, that this miraculous blood might now and then be heard gurgling in their throats.The latter scandal—as became a person of sense, and, more especially,a member of the Pyncheon family—Phœbe had set down for the absurdity which it unquestionably was.But ancient superstitions, after being steeped in human hearts and embodied in human breath,and passing from lip to ear in manifold repetition, through a series of generations,become imbued with an effect of homely truth.The smoke of the domestic hearth has scented them through and through.By long transmission among household facts, they grow to look like them,and have such a familiar way of making themselves at home that their influence is usually greater than we suspect.Thus it happened, that when Phœbe heard a certain noise in Judge Pyncheon’s throat,—rather habitual with him, not altogether voluntary, yet indicative of nothing,unless it were a slight bronchial complaint, or, as some people hinted, an apoplectic symptom,—when the girl heard this queer and awkward ingurgitation (which the writer never did hear,and therefore cannot describe), she very foolishly started, and clasped her hands.
Of course, it was exceedingly ridiculous in Phœbe to be discomposed by such a trifle,and still more unpardonable to show her discomposure to the individual most concerned in it.But the incident chimed in so oddly with her previous fancies about the Colonel and the Judge,that, for the moment, it seemed quite to mingle their identity.
“What is the matter with you, young woman?” said Judge Pyncheon, giving her one of his harsh looks. “Are you afraid of anything?”
“Oh, nothing, sir—nothing in the world!” answered Phœbe, with a little laugh of vexation at herself.“But perhaps you wish to speak with my cousin Hepzibah. Shall I call her?”
“Stay a moment, if you please,” said the Judge, again beaming sunshine out of his face.“You seem to be a little nervous this morning. The town air, Cousin Phœbe,does not agree with your good, wholesome country habits. Or has anything happened to disturb you?—anything remarkable in Cousin Hepzibah’s family?— An arrival, eh?I thought so!No wonder you are out of sorts, my little cousin.To be an inmate with such a guest may well startle an innocent young girl!”
“You quite puzzle me, sir,” replied Phœbe, gazing inquiringly at the Judge.“There is no frightful guest in the house, but only a poor, gentle, childlike man,whom I believe to be Cousin Hepzibah’s brother. I am afraid (but you, sir,will know better than I) that he is not quite in his sound senses;but so mild and quiet he seems to be, that a mother might trust her baby with him;and I think he would play with the baby as if he were only a few years older than itself. He startle me!—Oh, no indeed!”
“I rejoice to hear so favorable and so ingenuous an account of my cousin Clifford,” said the benevolent Judge. “Many years ago, when we were boys and young men together,I had a great affection for him, and still feel a tender interest in all his concerns. You say,Cousin Phœbe, he appears to be weak minded.Heaven grant him at least enough of intellect to repent of his past sins!”
“Nobody, I fancy,” observed Phœbe, “can have fewer to repent of.”
“And is it possible, my dear,” rejoined the Judge, with a commiserating look,“that you have never heard of Clifford Pyncheon?—that you know nothing of his history?Well, it is all right; and your mother has shown a very proper regard for the good name of the family with which she connected herself.Believe the best you can of this unfortunate person, and hope the best!It is a rule which Christians should always follow, in their judgments of one another;and especially is it right and wise among near relatives,whose characters have necessarily a degree of mutual dependence. But is Clifford in the parlor?I will just step in and see.”
“Perhaps, sir, I had better call my cousin Hepzibah,” said Phœbe; hardly knowing, however,whether she ought to obstruct the entrance of so affectionate a kinsman into the private regions of the house.“Her brother seemed to be just falling asleep after breakfast;and I am sure she would not like him to be disturbed. Pray, sir, let me give her notice!”
But the Judge showed a singular determination to enter unannounced; and as Phœbe,with the vivacity of a person whose movements unconsciously answer to her thoughts,had stepped towards the door, he used little or no ceremony in putting her aside.
“No, no, Miss Phœbe!” said Judge Pyncheon in a voice as deep as a thunder-growl,and with a frown as black as the cloud whence it issues. “Stay you here!I know the house, and know my cousin Hepzibah,and know her brother Clifford likewise.—nor need my little country cousin put herself to the trouble of announcing me!”—in these latter words, by the bye, there were symptoms of a change from his sudden harshness into his previous benignity of manner.“I am at home here, Phœbe, you must recollect, and you are the stranger. I will just step in,therefore, and see for myself how Clifford is,and assure him and Hepzibah of my kindly feelings and best wishes. It is right, at this juncture,that they should both hear from my own lips how much I desire to serve them. Ha!here is Hepzibah herself!”
Such was the case. The vibrations of the Judge’s voice had reached the old gentlewoman in the parlor,where she sat, with face averted, waiting on her brother’s slumber. She now issued forth,as would appear, to defend the entrance, looking, we must needs say,amazingly like the dragon which, in fairy tales,is wont to be the guardian over an enchanted beauty.The habitual scowl of her brow was undeniably too fierce, at this moment,to pass itself off on the innocent score of near-sightedness;and it was bent on Judge Pyncheon in a way that seemed to confound, if not alarm him,so inadequately had he estimated the moral force of a deeply grounded antipathy.She made a repelling gesture with her hand, and stood a perfect picture of prohibition,at full length, in the dark frame of the doorway. But we must betray Hepzibah’s secret,and confess that the native timorousness of her character even now developed itself in a quick tremor,which, to her own perception, set each of her joints at variance with its fellows.
Possibly, the Judge was aware how little true hardihood lay behind Hepzibah’s formidable front.At any rate, being a gentleman of steady nerves, he soon recovered himself,and failed not to approach his cousin with outstretched hand; adopting the sensible precaution,however, to cover his advance with a smile, so broad and sultry, that,had it been only half as warm as it looked,a trellis of grapes might at once have turned purple under its summer-like exposure.It may have been his purpose, indeed, to melt poor Hepzibah on the spot, as if she were a figure of yellow wax.
“Hepzibah, my beloved cousin, I am rejoiced!” exclaimed the Judge most emphatically. “Now, at length, you have something to live for. Yes,and all of us, let me say, your friends and kindred, have more to live for than we had yesterday.I have lost no time in hastening to offer any assistance in my power towards making Clifford comfortable.He belongs to us all. I know how much he requires,—how much he used to require,—with his delicate taste, and his love of the beautiful. Anything in my house,—pictures, books,wine, luxuries of the table,—he may command them all!It would afford me most heartfelt gratification to see him!Shall I step in, this moment?”
“No,” replied Hepzibah, her voice quivering too painfully to allow of many words. “He cannot see visitors!”
“A visitor, my dear cousin!—do you call me so?” cried the Judge, whose sensibility, it seems, was hurt by the coldness of the phrase. “Nay, then,let me be Clifford’s host, and your own likewise. Come at once to my house. The country air,and all the conveniences,—I may say luxuries,—that I have gathered about me,will do wonders for him. And you and I, dear Hepzibah, will consult together, and watch together,and labor together, to make our dear Clifford happy. Come!why should we make more words about what is both a duty and a pleasure on my part?Come to me at once!”
On hearing these so hospitable offers, and such generous recognition of the claims of kindred,Phœbe felt very much in the mood of running up to Judge Pyncheon, and giving him,of her own accord, the kiss from which she had so recently shrunk away.It was quite otherwise with Hepzibah; the Judge’s smile seemed to operate on her acerbity of heart like sunshine upon vinegar, making it ten times sourer than ever.
“Clifford,” said she,—still too agitated to utter more than an abrupt sentence, —“Clifford has a home here!”
“May Heaven forgive you, Hepzibah,” said Judge Pyncheon,—reverently lifting his eyes towards that high court of equity to which he appealed,—“if you suffer any ancient prejudice or animosity to weigh with you in this matter.I stand here with an open heart, willing and anxious to receive yourself and Clifford into it.Do not refuse my good offices,—my earnest propositions for your welfare!They are such, in all respects, as it behooves your nearest kinsman to make.It will be a heavy responsibility, cousin,if you confine your brother to this dismal house and stifled air,when the delightful freedom of my country-seat is at his command.”
“It would never suit Clifford,” said Hepzibah, as briefly as before.
“Woman!” broke forth the Judge, giving way to his resentment, “what is the meaning of all this?Have you other resources?Nay, I suspected as much!Take care, Hepzibah, take care!Clifford is on the brink of as black a ruin as ever befell him yet!But why do I talk with you, woman as you are?Make way!—I must see Clifford!”
Hepzibah spread out her gaunt figure across the door, and seemed really to increase in bulk;looking the more terrible, also, because there was so much terror and agitation in her heart.But Judge Pyncheon’s evident purpose of forcing a passage was interrupted by a voice from the inner room;a weak, tremulous, wailing voice, indicating helpless alarm,with no more energy for self-defence than belongs to a frightened infant.
“Hepzibah, Hepzibah!” cried the voice; “go down on your knees to him!Kiss his feet!Entreat him not to come in!Oh, let him have mercy on me!Mercy!mercy!”
For the instant, it appeared doubtful whether it were not the Judge’s resolute purpose to set Hepzibah aside,and step across the threshold into the parlor,whence issued that broken and miserable murmur of entreaty. It was not pity that restrained him,for, at the first sound of the enfeebled voice, a red fire kindled in his eyes,and he made a quick pace forward, with something inexpressibly fierce and grim darkening forth,as it were, out of the whole man. To know Judge Pyncheon was to see him at that moment.After such a revelation, let him smile with what sultriness he would,he could much sooner turn grapes purple, or pumpkins yellow,than melt the iron-branded impression out of the beholder’s memory.And it rendered his aspect not the less, but more frightful,that it seemed not to express wrath or hatred, but a certain hot fellness of purpose,which annihilated everything but itself.
Yet, after all, are we not slandering an excellent and amiable man?Look at the Judge now!He is apparently conscious of having erred,in too energetically pressing his deeds of loving-kindness on persons unable to appreciate them.He will await their better mood, and hold himself as ready to assist them then as at this moment.As he draws back from the door, an all-comprehensive benignity blazes from his visage,indicating that he gathers Hepzibah, little Phœbe, and the invisible Clifford, all three,together with the whole world besides, into his immense heart,and gives them a warm bath in its flood of affection.
“You do me great wrong, dear Cousin Hepzibah!” said he, first kindly offering her his hand,and then drawing on his glove preparatory to departure. “Very great wrong!But I forgive it, and will study to make you think better of me. Of course,our poor Clifford being in so unhappy a state of mind,I cannot think of urging an interview at present.But I shall watch over his welfare as if he were my own beloved brother; nor do I at all despair,my dear cousin, of constraining both him and you to acknowledge your injustice.When that shall happen, I desire no other revenge than your acceptance of the best offices in my power to do you. ”
With a bow to Hepzibah, and a degree of paternal benevolence in his parting nod to Phœbe,the Judge left the shop, and went smiling along the street. As is customary with the rich,when they aim at the honors of a republic, he apologized, as it were, to the people,for his wealth, prosperity, and elevated station,by a free and hearty manner towards those who knew him;putting off the more of his dignity in due proportion with the humbleness of the man whom he saluted,and thereby proving a haughty consciousness of his advantages as irrefragably as if he had marched forth preceded by a troop of lackeys to clear the way.On this particular forenoon, so excessive was the warmth of Judge Pyncheon’s kindly aspect,that (such, at least, was the rumor about town) an extra passage of the water-carts was found essential,in order to lay the dust occasioned by so much extra sunshine!
No sooner had he disappeared than Hepzibah grew deadly white, and, staggering towards Phœbe,let her head fall on the young girl’s shoulder.
“O Phœbe!” murmured she, “that man has been the horror of my life!Shall I never, never have the courage,—will my voice never cease from trembling long enough to let me tell him what he is?”
“Is he so very wicked?” asked Phœbe. “Yet his offers were surely kind!”
“Do not speak of them,—he has a heart of iron!” rejoined Hepzibah. “Go, now, and talk to Clifford!Amuse and keep him quiet!It would disturb him wretchedly to see me so agitated as I am. There, go, dear child, and I will try to look after the shop.”
Phœbe went accordingly, but perplexed herself, meanwhile,with queries as to the purport of the scene which she had just witnessed, and also whether judges,clergymen, and other characters of that eminent stamp and respectability, could really,in any single instance, be otherwise than just and upright men.A doubt of this nature has a most disturbing influence, and, if shown to be a fact,comes with fearful and startling effect on minds of the trim, orderly, and limit-loving class,in which we find our little country-girl.Dispositions more boldly speculative may derive a stern enjoyment from the discovery,since there must be evil in the world, that a high man is as likely to grasp his share of it as a low one.A wider scope of view, and a deeper insight, may see rank, dignity, and station,all proved illusory, so far as regards their claim to human reverence,and yet not feel as if the universe were thereby tumbled headlong into chaos. But Phœbe,in order to keep the universe in its old place, was fain to smother, in some degree,her own intuitions as to Judge Pyncheon’s character.And as for her cousin’s testimony in disparagement of it,she concluded that Hepzibah’s judgment was embittered by one of those family feuds which render hatred the more deadly by the dead and corrupted love that they intermingle with its native poison.
IX. Clifford and Phœbe
Truly was there something high, generous,and noble in the native composition of our poor old Hepzibah!Or else,—and it was quite as probably the case,—she had been enriched by poverty,developed by sorrow, elevated by the strong and solitary affection of her life,and thus endowed with heroism, which never could have characterized her in what are called happier circumstances.Through dreary years Hepzibah had looked forward—for the most part despairingly,never with any confidence of hope, but always with the feeling that it was her brightest possibility—to the very position in which she now found herself.In her own behalf, she had asked nothing of Providence but the opportunity of devoting herself to this brother,whom she had so loved,—so admired for what he was, or might have been,—and to whom she had kept her faith, alone of all the world, wholly, unfalteringly,at every instant, and throughout life. And here, in his late decline,the lost one had come back out of his long and strange misfortune, and was thrown on her sympathy,as it seemed, not merely for the bread of his physical existence,but for everything that should keep him morally alive. She had responded to the call.She had come forward,—our poor, gaunt Hepzibah, in her rusty silks, with her rigid joints,and the sad perversity of her scowl,—ready to do her utmost; and with affection enough,if that were all, to do a hundred times as much!There could be few more tearful sights,—and Heaven forgive us if a smile insist on mingling with our conception of it!—few sights with truer pathos in them, than Hepzibah presented on that first afternoon.
How patiently did she endeavor to wrap Clifford up in her great, warm love,and make it all the world to him, so that he should retain no torturing sense of the coldness and dreariness without!Her little efforts to amuse him!How pitiful, yet magnanimous, they were!
Remembering his early love of poetry and fiction, she unlocked a bookcase,and took down several books that had been excellent reading in their day.There was a volume of Pope, with the Rape of the Lock in it, and another of the Tatler,and an odd one of Dryden’s Miscellanies, all with tarnished gilding on their covers,and thoughts of tarnished brilliancy inside. They had no success with Clifford. These,and all such writers of society, whose new works glow like the rich texture of a just-woven carpet,must be content to relinquish their charm, for every reader, after an age or two,and could hardly be supposed to retain any portion of it for a mind that had utterly lost its estimate of modes and manners.Hepzibah then took up Rasselas, and began to read of the Happy Valley,with a vague idea that some secret of a contented life had there been elaborated,which might at least serve Clifford and herself for this one day.But the Happy Valley had a cloud over it. Hepzibah troubled her auditor, moreover,by innumerable sins of emphasis, which he seemed to detect, without any reference to the meaning;nor, in fact, did he appear to take much note of the sense of what she read,but evidently felt the tedium of the lecture, without harvesting its profit. His sister’s voice,too, naturally harsh, had, in the course of her sorrowful lifetime, contracted a kind of croak,which, when it once gets into the human throat, is as ineradicable as sin. In both sexes,occasionally, this lifelong croak, accompanying each word of joy or sorrow,is one of the symptoms of a settled melancholy; and wherever it occurs,the whole history of misfortune is conveyed in its slightest accent.The effect is as if the voice had been dyed black; or,—if we must use a more moderate simile,—this miserable croak, running through all the variations of the voice,is like a black silken thread, on which the crystal beads of speech are strung,and whence they take their hue. Such voices have put on mourning for dead hopes;and they ought to die and be buried along with them!