“I want old Hepzibah, or Phœbe, or any of them!” answered Ned, sobbing. “They won’t open the door; and I can’t get my elephant!”
“Go to school, you little scamp!” said the man. “There’s another cent-shop round the corner. ’Tis very strange, Dixey,” added he to his companion, “what’s become of all these Pyncheon’s!Smith, the livery-stable keeper, tells me Judge Pyncheon put his horse up yesterday,to stand till after dinner, and has not taken him away yet.And one of the Judge’s hired men has been in, this morning, to make inquiry about him.He’s a kind of person, they say, that seldom breaks his habits, or stays out o’ nights.”
“Oh, he’ll turn up safe enough!” said Dixey. “And as for Old Maid Pyncheon, take my word for it, she has run in debt,and gone off from her creditors. I foretold, you remember, the first morning she set up shop,that her devilish scowl would frighten away customers. They couldn’t stand it!”
“I never thought she’d make it go,” remarked his friend.“This business of cent-shops is overdone among the women-folks. My wife tried it, and lost five dollars on her outlay!”
“Poor business!” said Dixey, shaking his head. “Poor business!”
In the course of the morning, there were various other attempts to open a communication with the supposed inhabitants of this silent and impenetrable mansion.The man of root-beer came, in his neatly painted wagon, with a couple of dozen full bottles,to be exchanged for empty ones; the baker,with a lot of crackers which Hepzibah had ordered for her retail custom; the butcher,with a nice titbit which he fancied she would be eager to secure for Clifford.Had any observer of these proceedings been aware of the fearful secret hidden within the house,it would have affected him with a singular shape and modification of horror,to see the current of human life making this small eddy hereabouts,—whirling sticks,straws and all such trifles, round and round,right over the black depth where a dead corpse lay unseen!
The butcher was so much in earnest with his sweetbread of lamb, or whatever the dainty might be,that he tried every accessible door of the Seven Gables,and at length came round again to the shop, where he ordinarily found admittance.
“It’s a nice article, and I know the old lady would jump at it,” said he to himself. “She can’t be gone away!In fifteen years that I have driven my cart through Pyncheon Street,I’ve never known her to be away from home; though often enough, to be sure,a man might knock all day without bringing her to the door.But that was when she’d only herself to provide for.”
Peeping through the same crevice of the curtain where, only a little while before,the urchin of elephantine appetite had peeped, the butcher beheld the inner door, not closed,as the child had seen it, but ajar, and almost wide open. However it might have happened,it was the fact. Through the passage-way there was a dark vista into the lighter but still obscure interior of the parlor.It appeared to the butcher that he could pretty clearly discern what seemed to be the stalwart legs,clad in black pantaloons, of a man sitting in a large oaken chair,the back of which concealed all the remainder of his figure.This contemptuous tranquillity on the part of an occupant of the house,in response to the butcher’s indefatigable efforts to attract notice,so piqued the man of flesh that he determined to withdraw.
“So,” thought he, “there sits Old Maid Pyncheon’s bloody brother,while I’ve been giving myself all this trouble!Why, if a hog hadn’t more manners, I’d stick him!I call it demeaning a man’s business to trade with such people; and from this time forth,if they want a sausage or an ounce of liver, they shall run after the cart for it!”
He tossed the titbit angrily into his cart, and drove off in a pet.
Not a great while afterwards there was a sound of music turning the corner and approaching down the street,with several intervals of silence, and then a renewed and nearer outbreak of brisk melody.A mob of children was seen moving onward, or stopping, in unison with the sound,which appeared to proceed from the centre of the throng;so that they were loosely bound together by slender strains of harmony, and drawn along captive;with ever and anon an accession of some little fellow in an apron and straw-hat,capering forth from door or gateway. Arriving under the shadow of the Pyncheon Elm,it proved to be the Italian boy, who, with his monkey and show of puppets,had once before played his hurdy-gurdy beneath the arched window.The pleasant face of Phœbe—and doubtless, too,the liberal recompense which she had flung him—still dwelt in his remembrance.His expressive features kindled up, as he recognized the spot where this trifling incident of his erratic life had chanced.He entered the neglected yard (now wilder than ever, with its growth of hog-weed and burdock),stationed himself on the doorstep of the main entrance, and, opening his show-box, began to play.Each individual of the automatic community forthwith set to work,according to his or her proper vocation: the monkey, taking off his Highland bonnet,bowed and scraped to the by-standers most obsequiously,with ever an observant eye to pick up a stray cent; and the young foreigner himself,as he turned the crank of his machine, glanced upward to the arched window,expectant of a presence that would make his music the livelier and sweeter.The throng of children stood near; some on the sidewalk; some within the yard;two or three establishing themselves on the very door-step; and one squatting on the threshold.Meanwhile, the locust kept singing in the great old Pyncheon Elm.
“I don’t hear anybody in the house,” said one of the children to another.“The monkey won’t pick up anything here.”
“There is somebody at home,” affirmed the urchin on the threshold. “I heard a step!”
Still the young Italian’s eye turned sidelong upward;and it really seemed as if the touch of genuine, though slight and almost playful,emotion communicated a juicier sweetness to the dry, mechanical process of his minstrelsy.These wanderers are readily responsive to any natural kindness—be it no more than a smile,or a word itself not understood, but only a warmth in it—which befalls them on the roadside of life.They remember these things, because they are the little enchantments which, for the instant,—for the space that reflects a landscape in a soap-bubble,—build up a home about them. Therefore,the Italian boy would not be discouraged by the heavy silence with which the old house seemed resolute to clog the vivacity of his instrument.He persisted in his melodious appeals; he still looked upward, trusting that his dark,alien countenance would soon be brightened by Phœbe’s sunny aspect.Neither could he be willing to depart without again beholding Clifford, whose sensibility,like Phœbe’s smile, had talked a kind of heart’s language to the foreigner.He repeated all his music over and over again, until his auditors were getting weary.So were the little wooden people in his show-box, and the monkey most of all.There was no response, save the singing of the locust.
“No children live in this house,” said a schoolboy, at last.“Nobody lives here but an old maid and an old man. You’ll get nothing here!Why don’t you go along?”
“You fool, you, why do you tell him?” whispered a shrewd little Yankee, caring nothing for the music,but a good deal for the cheap rate at which it was had. “Let him play as he likes!If there’s nobody to pay him, that’s his own lookout!”
Once more, however, the Italian ran over his round of melodies.To the common observer—who could understand nothing of the case,except the music and the sunshine on the hither side of the door—it might have been amusing to watch the pertinacity of the street-performer. Will he succeed at last?Will that stubborn door be suddenly flung open?Will a group of joyous children, the young ones of the house, come dancing, shouting, laughing,into the open air, and cluster round the show-box, looking with eager merriment at the puppets,and tossing each a copper for long-tailed Mammon, the monkey, to pick up?
But to us, who know the inner heart of the Seven Gables as well as its exterior face,there is a ghastly effect in this repetition of light popular tunes at its door-step.It would be an ugly business, indeed, if Judge Pyncheon (who would not have cared a fig for Paganini’s fiddle in his most harmonious mood) should make his appearance at the door, with a bloody shirt-bosom, and a grim frown on his swarthily white visage, and motion the foreign vagabond away!Was ever before such a grinding out of jigs and waltzes, where nobody was in the cue to dance?Yes, very often. This contrast, or intermingling of tragedy with mirth, happens daily, hourly,momently. The gloomy and desolate old house, deserted of life,and with awful Death sitting sternly in its solitude, was the emblem of many a human heart, which,nevertheless, is compelled to hear the thrill and echo of the world’s gayety around it.
Before the conclusion of the Italian’s performance, a couple of men happened to be passing,On their way to dinner. “I say, you young French fellow!” called out one of them,—“come away from that doorstep, and go somewhere else with your nonsense!The Pyncheon family live there; and they are in great trouble, just about this time.They don’t feel musical to-day. It is reported all over town that Judge Pyncheon,who owns the house, has been murdered; and the city marshal is going to look into the matter. So be off with you, at once!”
As the Italian shouldered his hurdy-gurdy, he saw on the doorstep a card, which had been covered,all the morning, by the newspaper that the carrier had flung upon it,but was now shuffled into sight. He picked it up, and perceiving something written in pencil,gave it to the man to read. In fact, it was an engraved card of Judge Pyncheon’s with certain pencilled memoranda on the back,referring to various businesses which it had been his purpose to transact during the preceding day.It formed a prospective epitome of the day’s history;only that affairs had not turned out altogether in accordance with the programme.The card must have been lost from the Judge’s vest-pocket in his preliminary attempt to gain access by the main entrance of the house.Though well soaked with rain, it was still partially legible.
“Look here; Dixey!” cried the man. “This has something to do with Judge Pyncheon. See!—here’s his name printed on it; and here, I suppose, is some of his handwriting.”
“Let’s go to the city marshal with it!” said Dixey. “It may give him just the clew he wants. After all,” whispered he in his companion’s ear, “it would be no wonder if the Judge has gone into that door and never come out again!A certain cousin of his may have been at his old tricks.And Old Maid Pyncheon having got herself in debt by the cent-shop,—and the Judge’s pocket-book being well filled,—and bad blood amongst them already!Put all these things together and see what they make!”
“Hush, hush!” whispered the other. “It seems like a sin to be the first to speak of such a thing. But I think,with you, that we had better go to the city marshal.”
“Yes, yes!” said Dixey. “Well!—I always said there was something devilish in that woman’s scowl!”
The men wheeled about, accordingly, and retraced their steps up the street. The Italian, also,made the best of his way off, with a parting glance up at the arched window. As for the children,they took to their heels, with one accord, and scampered as if some giant or ogre were in pursuit,until, at a good distance from the house,they stopped as suddenly and simultaneously as they had set out.Their susceptible nerves took an indefinite alarm from what they had overheard.Looking back at the grotesque peaks and shadowy angles of the old mansion,they fancied a gloom diffused about it which no brightness of the sunshine could dispel.An imaginary Hepzibah scowled and shook her finger at them,from several windows at the same moment.An imaginary Clifford—for (and it would have deeply wounded him to know it) he had always been a horror to these small people—stood behind the unreal Hepzibah,making awful gestures, in a faded dressing-gown. Children are even more apt, if possible,than grown people, to catch the contagion of a panic terror. For the rest of the day,the more timid went whole streets about, for the sake of avoiding the Seven Gables;while the bolder signalized their hardihood by challenging their comrades to race past the mansion at full speed.
It could not have been more than half an hour after the disappearance of the Italian boy,with his unseasonable melodies, when a cab drove down the street.It stopped beneath the Pyncheon Elm; the cabman took a trunk, a canvas bag, and a bandbox,from the top of his vehicle, and deposited them on the doorstep of the old house; a straw bonnet,and then the pretty figure of a young girl, came into view from the interior of the cab. It was Phœbe!Though not altogether so blooming as when she first tripped into our story,—for,in the few intervening weeks, her experiences had made her graver, more womanly, and deeper-eyed,in token of a heart that had begun to suspect its depths,—still there was the quiet glow of natural sunshine over her.Neither had she forfeited her proper gift of making things look real, rather than fantastic,within her sphere. Yet we feel it to be a questionable venture, even for Phœbe, at this juncture,to cross the threshold of the Seven Gables.Is her healthful presence potent enough to chase away the crowd of pale, hideous,and sinful phantoms, that have gained admittance there since her departure?Or will she, likewise, fade, sicken, sadden, and grow into deformity,and be only another pallid phantom, to glide noiselessly up and down the stairs,and affright children as she pauses at the window?
At least, we would gladly forewarn the unsuspecting girl that there is nothing in human shape or substance to receive her,unless it be the figure of Judge Pyncheon, who—wretched spectacle that he is,and frightful in our remembrance, since our night-long vigil with him!—still keeps his place in the oaken chair.
Phœbe first tried the shop-door. It did not yield to her hand; and the white curtain,drawn across the window which formed the upper section of the door,struck her quick perceptive faculty as something unusual.Without making another effort to enter here, she betook herself to the great portal,under the arched window. Finding it fastened, she knocked.A reverberation came from the emptiness within. She knocked again, and a third time; and,listening intently, fancied that the floor creaked, as if Hepzibah were coming,with her ordinary tiptoe movement, to admit her.But so dead a silence ensued upon this imaginary sound,that she began to question whether she might not have mistaken the house,familiar as she thought herself with its exterior.
Her notice was now attracted by a child’s voice, at some distance. It appeared to call her name.Looking in the direction whence it proceeded, Phœbe saw little Ned Higgins,a good way down the street, stamping, shaking his head violently,making deprecatory gestures with both hands, and shouting to her at mouth-wide screech.
“No, no, Phœbe!” he screamed. “Don’t you go in!There’s something wicked there!Don’t—don’t—don’t go in!”
But, as the little personage could not be induced to approach near enough to explain himself,Phœbe concluded that he had been frightened, on some of his visits to the shop,by her cousin Hepzibah; for the good lady’s manifestations, in truth,ran about an equal chance of scaring children out of their wits,or compelling them to unseemly laughter. Still, she felt the more, for this incident,how unaccountably silent and impenetrable the house had become. As her next resort,Phœbe made her way into the garden, where on so warm and bright a day as the present,she had little doubt of finding Clifford, and perhaps Hepzibah also,idling away the noontide in the shadow of the arbor. Immediately on her entering the garden gate,the family of hens half ran, half flew to meet her; while a strange grimalkin,which was prowling under the parlor window, took to his heels, clambered hastily over the fence,and vanished. The arbor was vacant, and its floor, table, and circular bench were still damp,and bestrewn with twigs and the disarray of the past storm.The growth of the garden seemed to have got quite out of bounds;the weeds had taken advantage of Phœbe’s absence, and the long-continued rain,to run rampant over the flowers and kitchen-vegetables.Maule’s well had overflowed its stone border,and made a pool of formidable breadth in that corner of the garden.
The impression of the whole scene was that of a spot where no human foot had left its print for many preceding days,—probably not since Phœbe’s departure,—for she saw a side-comb of her own under the table of the arbor,where it must have fallen on the last afternoon when she and Clifford sat there.
The girl knew that her two relatives were capable of far greater oddities than that of shutting themselves up in their old house,as they appeared now to have done. Nevertheless, with indistinct misgivings of something amiss,and apprehensions to which she could not give shape,she approached the door that formed the customary communication between the house and garden.It was secured within, like the two which she had already tried. She knocked, however;and immediately, as if the application had been expected, the door was drawn open,by a considerable exertion of some unseen person’s strength, not wide,but far enough to afford her a sidelong entrance. As Hepzibah,in order not to expose herself to inspection from without, invariably opened a door in this manner,Phœbe necessarily concluded that it was her cousin who now admitted her.
Without hesitation, therefore, she stepped across the threshold,and had no sooner entered than the door closed behind her.
XX. The Flower of Eden
Phœbe, coming so suddenly from the sunny daylight,was altogether bedimmed in such density of shadow as lurked in most of the passages of the old house.She was not at first aware by whom she had been admitted.Before her eyes had adapted themselves to the obscurity,a hand grasped her own with a firm but gentle and warm pressure,thus imparting a welcome which caused her heart to leap and thrill with an indefinable shiver of enjoyment.She felt herself drawn along, not towards the parlor, but into a large and unoccupied apartment,which had formerly been the grand reception-room of the Seven Gables.The sunshine came freely into all the uncurtained windows of this room,and fell upon the dusty floor; so that Phœbe now clearly saw—what, indeed, had been no secret,after the encounter of a warm hand with hers—that it was not Hepzibah nor Clifford, but Holgrave,to whom she owed her reception. The subtile, intuitive communication, or, rather,the vague and formless impression of something to be told,had made her yield unresistingly to his impulse. Without taking away her hand,she looked eagerly in his face, not quick to forebode evil,but unavoidably conscious that the state of the family had changed since her departure,and therefore anxious for an explanation.
The artist looked paler than ordinary; there was a thoughtful and severe contraction of his forehead,tracing a deep, vertical line between the eyebrows. His smile, however, was full of genuine warmth,and had in it a joy, by far the most vivid expression that Phœbe had ever witnessed,shining out of the New England reserve with which Holgrave habitually masked whatever lay near his heart.It was the look wherewith a man, brooding alone over some fearful object,in a dreary forest or illimitable desert,would recognize the familiar aspect of his dearest friend,bringing up all the peaceful ideas that belong to home,and the gentle current of every-day affairs. And yet,as he felt the necessity of responding to her look of inquiry, the smile disappeared.
“I ought not to rejoice that you have come, Phœbe,” said he. “We meet at a strange moment!”
“What has happened!” she exclaimed. “Why is the house so deserted?Where are Hepzibah and Clifford?”
“Gone!I cannot imagine where they are!” answered Holgrave. “We are alone in the house!”
“Hepzibah and Clifford gone?” cried Phœbe. “It is not possible!And why have you brought me into this room, instead of the parlor?Ah, something terrible has happened!I must run and see!”
“No, no, Phœbe!” said Holgrave holding her back. “It is as I have told you. They are gone, and I know not whither.A terrible event has, indeed happened, but not to them, nor, as I undoubtingly believe,through any agency of theirs. If I read your character rightly, Phœbe,” he continued,fixing his eyes on hers with stern anxiety, intermixed with tenderness, “gentle as you are,and seeming to have your sphere among common things, you yet possess remarkable strength.You have wonderful poise, and a faculty which, when tested,will prove itself capable of dealing with matters that fall far out of the ordinary rule.”
“Oh, no, I am very weak!” replied Phœbe, trembling. “But tell me what has happened!”
“You are strong!” persisted Holgrave. “You must be both strong and wise; for I am all astray, and need your counsel.It may be you can suggest the one right thing to do!”
“Tell me!—tell me!” said Phœbe, all in a tremble. “It oppresses,—it terrifies me,—this mystery!Anything else I can bear!”
The artist hesitated. Notwithstanding what he had just said, and most sincerely,in regard to the self-balancing power with which Phœbe impressed him,it still seemed almost wicked to bring the awful secret of yesterday to her knowledge.It was like dragging a hideous shape of death into the cleanly and cheerful space before a household fire,where it would present all the uglier aspect, amid the decorousness of everything about it.Yet it could not be concealed from her; she must needs know it.
“Phœbe,” said he, “do you remember this?” He put into her hand a daguerreotype; the same that he had shown her at their first interview in the garden,and which so strikingly brought out the hard and relentless traits of the original.
“What has this to do with Hepzibah and Clifford?” asked Phœbe, with impatient surprise that Holgrave should so trifle with her at such a moment. “It is Judge Pyncheon!You have shown it to me before!”
“But here is the same face, taken within this half-hour” said the artist,presenting her with another miniature. “I had just finished it when I heard you at the door.”
“This is death!” shuddered Phœbe, turning very pale. “Judge Pyncheon dead!”
“Such as there represented,” said Holgrave, “he sits in the next room. The Judge is dead,and Clifford and Hepzibah have vanished!I know no more. All beyond is conjecture. On returning to my solitary chamber, last evening,I noticed no light, either in the parlor, or Hepzibah’s room, or Clifford’s;no stir nor footstep about the house. This morning, there was the same death-like quiet.From my window, I overheard the testimony of a neighbor,that your relatives were seen leaving the house in the midst of yesterday’s storm.A rumor reached me, too, of Judge Pyncheon being missed.A feeling which I cannot describe—an indefinite sense of some catastrophe,or consummation—impelled me to make my way into this part of the house,where I discovered what you see. As a point of evidence that may be useful to Clifford,and also as a memorial valuable to myself,—for, Phœbe,there are hereditary reasons that connect me strangely with that man’s fate,—I used the means at my disposal to preserve this pictorial record of Judge Pyncheon’s death.”
Even in her agitation, Phœbe could not help remarking the calmness of Holgrave’s demeanor.He appeared, it is true, to feel the whole awfulness of the Judge’s death,yet had received the fact into his mind without any mixture of surprise,but as an event preordained, happening inevitably,and so fitting itself into past occurrences that it could almost have been prophesied.
“Why have you not thrown open the doors, and called in witnesses?” inquired she with a painful shudder. “It is terrible to be here alone!”
“But Clifford!” suggested the artist. “Clifford and Hepzibah!We must consider what is best to be done in their behalf.It is a wretched fatality that they should have disappeared!Their flight will throw the worst coloring over this event of which it is susceptible.Yet how easy is the explanation, to those who know them!Bewildered and terror-stricken by the similarity of this death to a former one,which was attended with such disastrous consequences to Clifford,they have had no idea but of removing themselves from the scene. How miserably unfortunate!Had Hepzibah but shrieked aloud,—had Clifford flung wide the door,and proclaimed Judge Pyncheon’s death,—it would have been, however awful in itself,an event fruitful of good consequences to them. As I view it,it would have gone far towards obliterating the black stain on Clifford’s character.”
“And how,” asked Phœbe, “could any good come from what is so very dreadful?”
“Because,” said the artist, “if the matter can be fairly considered and candidly interpreted,it must be evident that Judge Pyncheon could not have come unfairly to his end.This mode of death had been an idiosyncrasy with his family, for generations past;not often occurring, indeed, but, when it does occur,usually attacking individuals about the Judge’s time of life,and generally in the tension of some mental crisis, or, perhaps, in an access of wrath.Old Maule’s prophecy was probably founded on a knowledge of this physical predisposition in the Pyncheon race.Now, there is a minute and almost exact similarity in the appearances connected with the death that occurred yesterday and those recorded of the death of Clifford’s uncle thirty years ago. It is true, there was a certain arrangement of circumstances, unnecessary to be recounted, which made it possible—nay, as men look at these things, probable, or even certain—that old Jaffrey Pyncheon came to a violent death, and by Clifford’s hands.”
“Whence came those circumstances?” exclaimed Phœbe. “He being innocent, as we know him to be!”
“They were arranged,” said Holgrave,—“at least such has long been my conviction,—they were arranged after the uncle’s death, and before it was made public,by the man who sits in yonder parlor. His own death, so like that former one,yet attended by none of those suspicious circumstances, seems the stroke of God upon him,at once a punishment for his wickedness, and making plain the innocence of Clifford.But this flight,—it distorts everything!He may be in concealment, near at hand. Could we but bring him back before the discovery of the Judge’s death, the evil might be rectified.”
“We must not hide this thing a moment longer!” said Phœbe. “It is dreadful to keep it so closely in our hearts. Clifford is innocent. God will make it manifest!Let us throw open the doors, and call all the neighborhood to see the truth!”
“You are right, Phœbe,” rejoined Holgrave. “Doubtless you are right.”
Yet the artist did not feel the horror, which was proper to Phœbe’s sweet and order-loving character,at thus finding herself at issue with society,and brought in contact with an event that transcended ordinary rules. Neither was he in haste,like her, to betake himself within the precincts of common life. On the contrary,he gathered a wild enjoyment,—as it were, a flower of strange beauty, growing in a desolate spot,and blossoming in the wind,—such a flower of momentary happiness he gathered from his present position.It separated Phœbe and himself from the world, and bound them to each other,by their exclusive knowledge of Judge Pyncheon’s mysterious death,and the counsel which they were forced to hold respecting it. The secret,so long as it should continue such, kept them within the circle of a spell,a solitude in the midst of men, a remoteness as entire as that of an island in mid-ocean;once divulged, the ocean would flow betwixt them, standing on its widely sundered shores.Meanwhile, all the circumstances of their situation seemed to draw them together;they were like two children who go hand in hand, pressing closely to one another’s side,through a shadow-haunted passage. The image of awful Death, which filled the house,held them united by his stiffened grasp.
These influences hastened the development of emotions that might not otherwise have flowered so.Possibly, indeed, it had been Holgrave’s purpose to let them die in their undeveloped germs. “Why do we delay so?” asked Phœbe. “This secret takes away my breath!Let us throw open the doors!”
“In all our lives there can never come another moment like this!” said Holgrave. “Phœbe, is it all terror?—nothing but terror?Are you conscious of no joy, as I am, that has made this the only point of life worth living for?”
“It seems a sin,” replied Phœbe, trembling, “to think of joy at such a time!”