Meanwhile the twilight is glooming upward out of the corners of the
room. The shadows of the tall furniture grow deeper, and at first
become more definite; then, spreading wider, they lose their
distinctness of outline in the dark gray tide of oblivion, as it were,
that creeps slowly over the various objects, and the one human figure
sitting in the midst of them. The gloom has not entered from without;
it has brooded here all day, and now, taking its own inevitable time,
will possess itself of everything. The Judge's face, indeed, rigid,
and singularly white, refuses to melt into this universal solvent.
Fainter and fainter grows the light. It is as if another
double-handful of darkness had been scattered through the air. Now it
is no longer gray, but sable. There is still a faint appearance at
the window; neither a glow, nor a gleam, nor a glimmer--any phrase of
light would express something far brighter than this doubtful
perception, or sense, rather, that there is a window there. Has it yet
vanished? No!--yes!--not quite! And there is still the swarthy
whiteness--we shall venture to marry these ill-agreeing words--the
swarthy whiteness of Judge Pyncheon's face. The features are all gone:
there is only the paleness of them left. And how looks it now? There
is no window! There is no face! An infinite, inscrutable blackness has
annihilated sight! Where is our universe? All crumbled away from us;
and we, adrift in chaos, may harken to the gusts of homeless wind,
that go sighing and murmuring about, in quest of what was once a
world!
[Footnote 79: From Chapter XVIII of "The House of the Seven Gables."
Published by Houghton, Mifflin & Company.]
Is there no other sound? One other, and a fearful one. It is the
ticking of the Judge's watch, which, ever since Hepzibah left the room
in search of Clifford, he has been holding in his hand. Be the cause
what it may, this little, quiet, never-ceasing throb of Time's pulse,
repeating its small strokes with such busy regularity, in Judge
Pyncheon's motionless hand, has an effect of terror, which we do not
find in any other accompaniment of the scene.
But, listen! That puff of the breeze was louder; it had a tone unlike
the dreary and sullen one which has bemoaned itself, and afflicted all
mankind with miserable sympathy, for five days past. The wind has
veered about! It now comes boisterously from the northwest, and,
taking hold of the aged framework of the Seven Gables, gives it a
shake, like a wrestler that would try strength with his antagonist.
Another and another sturdy tussle with the blast! The old house creaks
again, and makes a vociferous but somewhat unintelligible bellowing in
its sooty throat (the big flue, we mean, of its wide chimney), partly
in complaint at the rude wind, but rather, as befits their century and
a half of hostile intimacy, in tough defiance. A rumbling kind of a
bluster roars behind the fireboard. A door has slammed above stairs. A
window, perhaps, has been left open, or else is driven in by an unruly
gust. It is not to be conceived, beforehand, what wonderful
wind-instruments are these old timber mansions, and how haunted with
the strangest noises, which immediately begin to sing, and sigh, and
sob, and shriek--and to smite with sledge-hammers, airy but ponderous,
in some distant chamber--and to tread along the entries as with
stately footsteps, and rustle up and down the staircase, as with silks
miraculously stiff--whenever the gale catches the house with a window
open, and gets fairly into it. Would that we were not an attendant
spirit here! It is too awful! This clamor of the wind through the
lonely house; the Judge's quietude, as he sits invisible; and that
pertinacious ticking of his watch!...
Yonder leaden Judge sits immovably upon our soul. Will he never stir
again? We shall go mad unless he stirs! You may the better estimate
his quietude by the fearlessness of a little mouse, which sits on its
hind legs, in a streak of moonlight, close by Judge Pyncheon's foot,
and seems to meditate a journey of exploration over this great black
bulk. Ha! what has startled the nimble little mouse? It is the visage
of grimalkin, outside of the window, where he appears to have posted
himself for a deliberate watch. This grimalkin has a very ugly look.
Is it a cat watching for a mouse, or the devil for a human soul? Would
we could scare him from the window!
Thank heaven, the night is well-nigh past! The moonbeams have no
longer so silvery a gleam, nor contrast so strongly with the blackness
of the shadows among which they fall. They are paler, now; the shadows
look gray, not black. The boisterous wind is hushed. What is the hour?
Ah! the watch has at last ceased to tick; for the Judge's forgetful
fingers neglected to wind it up, as usual, at ten o'clock, being half
an hour or so before his ordinary bedtime--and it has run down, for
the first time in five years. But the great world-clock of Time still
keeps its beat. The dreary night--for, oh, how dreary seems its
haunted waste, behind us--gives place to a fresh, transparent
cloudless morn. Blest, blest radiance! The day-beam--even what little
of it finds its way into this always dusky parlor--seems part of the
universal benediction, annulling evil, and rendering all goodness
possible and happiness attainable. Will Judge Pyncheon now rise up
from his chair? Will he go forth, and receive the early sunbeams on
his brow? Will he begin this new day--which God has smiled upon, and
blest, and given to mankind--will he begin it with better purposes
than the many that have been spent amiss? Or are all the deep-laid
schemes of yesterday as stubborn in his heart, and as busy in his
brain, as ever?...
The morning sunshine glimmers through the foliage, and, beautiful and
holy as it is, shuns not to kindle up your face. Rise up, thou subtle,
worldly, selfish, iron-hearted hypocrite, and make thy choice whether
still to be subtle, worldly, selfish, iron-hearted, and hypocritical,
or to tear these sins out of thy nature, tho they bring the life-blood
with them! The Avenger is upon thee! Rise up, before it be too late!
What! Thou art not stirred by this last appeal? No, not a jot! And
there we see a fly--one of your common house-flies, such as are always
buzzing on the window-pane--which has smelt out Governor Pyncheon, and
alights, now on his forehead, now on his chin, and now, heaven help
us! is creeping over the bridge of his nose, toward the would-be chief
magistrate's wide-open eyes! Canst thou not brush the fly away? Art
thou too sluggish? Thou man, that hadst so many busy projects
yesterday! Art thou too weak, that wast so powerful? Not brush away a
fly? Nay, then, we give thee up!
And hark! the shop-bell rings. After hours like these latter ones,
through which we have borne our heavy tale, it is good to be made
sensible that there is a living world, and that even this old, lonely
mansion retains some manner of connection with it. We breathe more
freely, emerging from Judge Pyncheon's presence into the street before
the Seven Gables.