Somebody, at all events, was passing from the farthest interior of the

omnibus towards its entrance. A gentleman alighted; but it was only to

offer his hand to a young girl whose slender figure, nowise needing

such assistance, now lightly descended the steps, and made an airy

little jump from the final one to the sidewalk. She rewarded her

cavalier with a smile, the cheery glow of which was seen reflected on

his own face as he reentered the vehicle. The girl then turned towards

the House of the Seven Gables, to the door of which, meanwhile,—not the

shop-door, but the antique portal,—the omnibus-man had carried a light

trunk and a bandbox. First giving a sharp rap of the old iron knocker,

he left his passenger and her luggage at the door-step, and departed.

“Who can it be?” thought Hepzibah, who had been screwing her visual

organs into the acutest focus of which they were capable. “The girl

must have mistaken the house.” She stole softly into the hall, and,

herself invisible, gazed through the dusty side-lights of the portal at

the young, blooming, and very cheerful face which presented itself for

admittance into the gloomy old mansion. It was a face to which almost

any door would have opened of its own accord.

The young girl, so fresh, so unconventional, and yet so orderly and

obedient to common rules, as you at once recognized her to be, was

widely in contrast, at that moment, with everything about her. The

sordid and ugly luxuriance of gigantic weeds that grew in the angle of

the house, and the heavy projection that overshadowed her, and the

time-worn framework of the door,—none of these things belonged to her

sphere. But, even as a ray of sunshine, fall into what dismal place it

may, instantaneously creates for itself a propriety in being there, so

did it seem altogether fit that the girl should be standing at the

threshold. It was no less evidently proper that the door should swing

open to admit her. The maiden lady herself, sternly inhospitable in her

first purposes, soon began to feel that the door ought to be shoved

back, and the rusty key be turned in the reluctant lock.

“Can it be Phœbe?” questioned she within herself. “It must be little

Phœbe; for it can be nobody else,—and there is a look of her father

about her, too! But what does she want here? And how like a country

cousin, to come down upon a poor body in this way, without so much as a

day’s notice, or asking whether she would be welcome! Well; she must

have a night’s lodging, I suppose; and to-morrow the child shall go

back to her mother.”

Phœbe, it must be understood, was that one little offshoot of the

Pyncheon race to whom we have already referred, as a native of a rural

part of New England, where the old fashions and feelings of

relationship are still partially kept up. In her own circle, it was

regarded as by no means improper for kinsfolk to visit one another

without invitation, or preliminary and ceremonious warning. Yet, in

consideration of Miss Hepzibah’s recluse way of life, a letter had

actually been written and despatched, conveying information of Phœbe’s

projected visit. This epistle, for three or four days past, had been in

the pocket of the penny-postman, who, happening to have no other

business in Pyncheon Street, had not yet made it convenient to call at

the House of the Seven Gables.

“No—she can stay only one night,” said Hepzibah, unbolting the door.

“If Clifford were to find her here, it might disturb him!”

V.

May and November

Phœbe Pyncheon slept, on the night of her arrival, in a chamber that

looked down on the garden of the old house. It fronted towards the

east, so that at a very seasonable hour a glow of crimson light came

flooding through the window, and bathed the dingy ceiling and

paper-hangings in its own hue. There were curtains to Phœbe’s bed; a

dark, antique canopy, and ponderous festoons of a stuff which had been

rich, and even magnificent, in its time; but which now brooded over the

girl like a cloud, making a night in that one corner, while elsewhere

it was beginning to be day. The morning light, however, soon stole into

the aperture at the foot of the bed, betwixt those faded curtains.

Finding the new guest there,—with a bloom on her cheeks like the

morning’s own, and a gentle stir of departing slumber in her limbs, as

when an early breeze moves the foliage,—the dawn kissed her brow. It

was the caress which a dewy maiden—such as the Dawn is,

immortally—gives to her sleeping sister, partly from the impulse of

irresistible fondness, and partly as a pretty hint that it is time now

to unclose her eyes.

At the touch of those lips of light, Phœbe quietly awoke, and, for a

moment, did not recognize where she was, nor how those heavy curtains

chanced to be festooned around her. Nothing, indeed, was absolutely

plain to her, except that it was now early morning, and that, whatever

might happen next, it was proper, first of all, to get up and say her

prayers. She was the more inclined to devotion from the grim aspect of

the chamber and its furniture, especially the tall, stiff chairs; one

of which stood close by her bedside, and looked as if some

old-fashioned personage had been sitting there all night, and had

vanished only just in season to escape discovery.

When Phœbe was quite dressed, she peeped out of the window, and saw a

rosebush in the garden. Being a very tall one, and of luxuriant growth,

it had been propped up against the side of the house, and was literally

covered with a rare and very beautiful species of white rose. A large

portion of them, as the girl afterwards discovered, had blight or

mildew at their hearts; but, viewed at a fair distance, the whole

rosebush looked as if it had been brought from Eden that very summer,

together with the mould in which it grew. The truth was, nevertheless,

that it had been planted by Alice Pyncheon,—she was Phœbe’s

great-great-grand-aunt,—in soil which, reckoning only its cultivation

as a garden-plat, was now unctuous with nearly two hundred years of

vegetable decay. Growing as they did, however, out of the old earth,

the flowers still sent a fresh and sweet incense up to their Creator;

nor could it have been the less pure and acceptable because Phœbe’s

young breath mingled with it, as the fragrance floated past the window.

Hastening down the creaking and carpetless staircase, she found her way

into the garden, gathered some of the most perfect of the roses, and

brought them to her chamber.

Little Phœbe was one of those persons who possess, as their exclusive

patrimony, the gift of practical arrangement. It is a kind of natural

magic that enables these favored ones to bring out the hidden

capabilities of things around them; and particularly to give a look of

comfort and habitableness to any place which, for however brief a

period, may happen to be their home. A wild hut of underbrush, tossed

together by wayfarers through the primitive forest, would acquire the

home aspect by one night’s lodging of such a woman, and would retain it

long after her quiet figure had disappeared into the surrounding shade.

No less a portion of such homely witchcraft was requisite to reclaim,

as it were, Phœbe’s waste, cheerless, and dusky chamber, which had been

untenanted so long—except by spiders, and mice, and rats, and

ghosts—that it was all overgrown with the desolation which watches to

obliterate every trace of man’s happier hours. What was precisely

Phœbe’s process we find it impossible to say. She appeared to have no

preliminary design, but gave a touch here and another there; brought

some articles of furniture to light and dragged others into the shadow;

looped up or let down a window-curtain; and, in the course of half an

hour, had fully succeeded in throwing a kindly and hospitable smile

over the apartment. No longer ago than the night before, it had

resembled nothing so much as the old maid’s heart; for there was

neither sunshine nor household fire in one nor the other, and, save for

ghosts and ghostly reminiscences, not a guest, for many years gone by,

had entered the heart or the chamber.

There was still another peculiarity of this inscrutable charm. The

bedchamber, no doubt, was a chamber of very great and varied

experience, as a scene of human life: the joy of bridal nights had

throbbed itself away here; new immortals had first drawn earthly breath

here; and here old people had died. But—whether it were the white

roses, or whatever the subtile influence might be—a person of delicate

instinct would have known at once that it was now a maiden’s

bedchamber, and had been purified of all former evil and sorrow by her

sweet breath and happy thoughts. Her dreams of the past night, being

such cheerful ones, had exorcised the gloom, and now haunted the

chamber in its stead.

After arranging matters to her satisfaction, Phœbe emerged from her

chamber, with a purpose to descend again into the garden. Besides the

rosebush, she had observed several other species of flowers growing

there in a wilderness of neglect, and obstructing one another’s

development (as is often the parallel case in human society) by their

uneducated entanglement and confusion. At the head of the stairs,

however, she met Hepzibah, who, it being still early, invited her into

a room which she would probably have called her boudoir, had her

education embraced any such French phrase. It was strewn about with a

few old books, and a work-basket, and a dusty writing-desk; and had, on

one side, a large black article of furniture, of very strange

appearance, which the old gentlewoman told Phœbe was a harpsichord. It

looked more like a coffin than anything else; and, indeed,—not having

been played upon, or opened, for years,—there must have been a vast

deal of dead music in it, stifled for want of air. Human finger was

hardly known to have touched its chords since the days of Alice

Pyncheon, who had learned the sweet accomplishment of melody in Europe.

Hepzibah bade her young guest sit down, and, herself taking a chair

near by, looked as earnestly at Phœbe’s trim little figure as if she

expected to see right into its springs and motive secrets.

“Cousin Phœbe,” said she, at last, “I really can’t see my way clear to

keep you with me.”

These words, however, had not the inhospitable bluntness with which

they may strike the reader; for the two relatives, in a talk before

bedtime, had arrived at a certain degree of mutual understanding.

Hepzibah knew enough to enable her to appreciate the circumstances

(resulting from the second marriage of the girl’s mother) which made it

desirable for Phœbe to establish herself in another home. Nor did she

misinterpret Phœbe’s character, and the genial activity pervading

it,—one of the most valuable traits of the true New England

woman,—which had impelled her forth, as might be said, to seek her

fortune, but with a self-respecting purpose to confer as much benefit

as she could anywise receive. As one of her nearest kindred, she had

naturally betaken herself to Hepzibah, with no idea of forcing herself

on her cousin’s protection, but only for a visit of a week or two,

which might be indefinitely extended, should it prove for the happiness

of both.

To Hepzibah’s blunt observation, therefore, Phœbe replied as frankly,

and more cheerfully.

“Dear cousin, I cannot tell how it will be,” said she. “But I really

think we may suit one another much better than you suppose.”

“You are a nice girl,—I see it plainly,” continued Hepzibah; “and it is

not any question as to that point which makes me hesitate. But, Phœbe,

this house of mine is but a melancholy place for a young person to be

in. It lets in the wind and rain, and the snow, too, in the garret and

upper chambers, in winter-time, but it never lets in the sunshine. And

as for myself, you see what I am,—a dismal and lonesome old woman (for

I begin to call myself old, Phœbe), whose temper, I am afraid, is none

of the best, and whose spirits are as bad as can be! I cannot make your

life pleasant, Cousin Phœbe, neither can I so much as give you bread to

eat.”

“You will find me a cheerful little body” answered Phœbe, smiling, and

yet with a kind of gentle dignity, “and I mean to earn my bread. You

know I have not been brought up a Pyncheon. A girl learns many things

in a New England village.”

“Ah! Phœbe,” said Hepzibah, sighing, “your knowledge would do but

little for you here! And then it is a wretched thought that you should

fling away your young days in a place like this. Those cheeks would not

be so rosy after a month or two. Look at my face!” and, indeed, the

contrast was very striking,—“you see how pale I am! It is my idea that

the dust and continual decay of these old houses are unwholesome for

the lungs.”

“There is the garden,—the flowers to be taken care of,” observed Phœbe.

“I should keep myself healthy with exercise in the open air.”

“And, after all, child,” exclaimed Hepzibah, suddenly rising, as if to

dismiss the subject, “it is not for me to say who shall be a guest or

inhabitant of the old Pyncheon House. Its master is coming.”

“Do you mean Judge Pyncheon?” asked Phœbe in surprise.

“Judge Pyncheon!” answered her cousin angrily. “He will hardly cross

the threshold while I live! No, no! But, Phœbe, you shall see the face

of him I speak of.”

She went in quest of the miniature already described, and returned with

it in her hand. Giving it to Phœbe, she watched her features narrowly,

and with a certain jealousy as to the mode in which the girl would show

herself affected by the picture.

“How do you like the face?” asked Hepzibah.

“It is handsome!—it is very beautiful!” said Phœbe admiringly. “It is

as sweet a face as a man’s can be, or ought to be. It has something of

a child’s expression,—and yet not childish,—only one feels so very

kindly towards him! He ought never to suffer anything. One would bear

much for the sake of sparing him toil or sorrow. Who is it, Cousin

Hepzibah?”

“Did you never hear,” whispered her cousin, bending towards her, “of

Clifford Pyncheon?”

“Never. I thought there were no Pyncheons left, except yourself and our

cousin Jaffrey,” answered Phœbe. “And yet I seem to have heard the name

of Clifford Pyncheon. Yes!—from my father or my mother; but has he not

been a long while dead?”

“Well, well, child, perhaps he has!” said Hepzibah with a sad, hollow

laugh; “but, in old houses like this, you know, dead people are very

apt to come back again! We shall see. And, Cousin Phœbe, since, after

all that I have said, your courage does not fail you, we will not part

so soon. You are welcome, my child, for the present, to such a home as

your kinswoman can offer you.”

With this measured, but not exactly cold assurance of a hospitable

purpose, Hepzibah kissed her cheek.

They now went below stairs, where Phœbe—not so much assuming the office

as attracting it to herself, by the magnetism of innate fitness—took

the most active part in preparing breakfast. The mistress of the house,

meanwhile, as is usual with persons of her stiff and unmalleable cast,

stood mostly aside; willing to lend her aid, yet conscious that her

natural inaptitude would be likely to impede the business in hand.

Phœbe and the fire that boiled the teakettle were equally bright,

cheerful, and efficient, in their respective offices. Hepzibah gazed

forth from her habitual sluggishness, the necessary result of long

solitude, as from another sphere. She could not help being interested,

however, and even amused, at the readiness with which her new inmate

adapted herself to the circumstances, and brought the house, moreover,

and all its rusty old appliances, into a suitableness for her purposes.

Whatever she did, too, was done without conscious effort, and with

frequent outbreaks of song, which were exceedingly pleasant to the ear.

This natural tunefulness made Phœbe seem like a bird in a shadowy tree;

or conveyed the idea that the stream of life warbled through her heart

as a brook sometimes warbles through a pleasant little dell. It

betokened the cheeriness of an active temperament, finding joy in its

activity, and, therefore, rendering it beautiful; it was a New England

trait,—the stern old stuff of Puritanism with a gold thread in the web.

Hepzibah brought out some old silver spoons with the family crest upon

them, and a china tea-set painted over with grotesque figures of man,

bird, and beast, in as grotesque a landscape. These pictured people

were odd humorists, in a world of their own,—a world of vivid

brilliancy, so far as color went, and still unfaded, although the

teapot and small cups were as ancient as the custom itself of

tea-drinking.

“Your great-great-great-great-grandmother had these cups, when she was

married,” said Hepzibah to Phœbe. “She was a Davenport, of a good

family. They were almost the first teacups ever seen in the colony; and

if one of them were to be broken, my heart would break with it. But it

is nonsense to speak so about a brittle teacup, when I remember what my

heart has gone through without breaking.”

The cups—not having been used, perhaps, since Hepzibah’s youth—had

contracted no small burden of dust, which Phœbe washed away with so

much care and delicacy as to satisfy even the proprietor of this

invaluable china.

“What a nice little housewife you are!” exclaimed the latter, smiling,

and at the same time frowning so prodigiously that the smile was

sunshine under a thunder-cloud. “Do you do other things as well? Are

you as good at your book as you are at washing teacups?”

“Not quite, I am afraid,” said Phœbe, laughing at the form of

Hepzibah’s question. “But I was schoolmistress for the little children

in our district last summer, and might have been so still.”

“Ah! ’tis all very well!” observed the maiden lady, drawing herself up.

“But these things must have come to you with your mother’s blood. I

never knew a Pyncheon that had any turn for them.”

It is very queer, but not the less true, that people are generally

quite as vain, or even more so, of their deficiencies than of their

available gifts; as was Hepzibah of this native inapplicability, so to

speak, of the Pyncheons to any useful purpose. She regarded it as an

hereditary trait; and so, perhaps, it was, but unfortunately a morbid

one, such as is often generated in families that remain long above the

surface of society.

Before they left the breakfast-table, the shop-bell rang sharply, and

Hepzibah set down the remnant of her final cup of tea, with a look of

sallow despair that was truly piteous to behold. In cases of

distasteful occupation, the second day is generally worse than the

first. We return to the rack with all the soreness of the preceding

torture in our limbs. At all events, Hepzibah had fully satisfied

herself of the impossibility of ever becoming wonted to this peevishly

obstreperous little bell. Ring as often as it might, the sound always

smote upon her nervous system rudely and suddenly. And especially now,

while, with her crested teaspoons and antique china, she was flattering

herself with ideas of gentility, she felt an unspeakable disinclination

to confront a customer.

“Do not trouble yourself, dear cousin!” cried Phœbe, starting lightly

up. “I am shop-keeper to-day.”

“You, child!” exclaimed Hepzibah. “What can a little country girl know

of such matters?”

“Oh, I have done all the shopping for the family at our village store,”

said Phœbe. “And I have had a table at a fancy fair, and made better

sales than anybody. These things are not to be learnt; they depend upon

a knack that comes, I suppose,” added she, smiling, “with one’s

mother’s blood. You shall see that I am as nice a little saleswoman as

I am a housewife!”

The old gentlewoman stole behind Phœbe, and peeped from the passageway

into the shop, to note how she would manage her undertaking. It was a

case of some intricacy. A very ancient woman, in a white short gown and

a green petticoat, with a string of gold beads about her neck, and what

looked like a nightcap on her head, had brought a quantity of yarn to

barter for the commodities of the shop. She was probably the very last

person in town who still kept the time-honored spinning-wheel in

constant revolution. It was worth while to hear the croaking and hollow

tones of the old lady, and the pleasant voice of Phœbe, mingling in one

twisted thread of talk; and still better to contrast their figures,—so

light and bloomy,—so decrepit and dusky,—with only the counter betwixt

them, in one sense, but more than threescore years, in another. As for

the bargain, it was wrinkled slyness and craft pitted against native

truth and sagacity.

“Was not that well done?” asked Phœbe, laughing, when the customer was

gone.

“Nicely done, indeed, child!” answered Hepzibah. “I could not have gone

through with it nearly so well. As you say, it must be a knack that

belongs to you on the mother’s side.”

It is a very genuine admiration, that with which persons too shy or too

awkward to take a due part in the bustling world regard the real actors

in life’s stirring scenes; so genuine, in fact, that the former are

usually fain to make it palatable to their self-love, by assuming that

these active and forcible qualities are incompatible with others, which

they choose to deem higher and more important. Thus, Hepzibah was well

content to acknowledge Phœbe’s vastly superior gifts as a shop-keeper;

she listened, with compliant ear, to her suggestion of various methods

whereby the influx of trade might be increased, and rendered

profitable, without a hazardous outlay of capital. She consented that

the village maiden should manufacture yeast, both liquid and in cakes;

and should brew a certain kind of beer, nectareous to the palate, and

of rare stomachic virtues; and, moreover, should bake and exhibit for

sale some little spice-cakes, which whosoever tasted would longingly

desire to taste again. All such proofs of a ready mind and skilful

handiwork were highly acceptable to the aristocratic hucksteress, so

long as she could murmur to herself with a grim smile, and a

half-natural sigh, and a sentiment of mixed wonder, pity, and growing

affection:—

“What a nice little body she is! If she only could be a lady; too—but

that’s impossible! Phœbe is no Pyncheon. She takes everything from her

mother!”

As to Phœbe’s not being a lady, or whether she were a lady or no, it

was a point, perhaps, difficult to decide, but which could hardly have

come up for judgment at all in any fair and healthy mind. Out of New

England, it would be impossible to meet with a person combining so many

ladylike attributes with so many others that form no necessary (if

compatible) part of the character. She shocked no canon of taste; she

was admirably in keeping with herself, and never jarred against

surrounding circumstances. Her figure, to be sure,—so small as to be

almost childlike, and so elastic that motion seemed as easy or easier

to it than rest, would hardly have suited one’s idea of a countess.

Neither did her face—with the brown ringlets on either side, and the

slightly piquant nose, and the wholesome bloom, and the clear shade of

tan, and the half dozen freckles, friendly remembrances of the April

sun and breeze—precisely give us a right to call her beautiful. But

there was both lustre and depth in her eyes. She was very pretty; as

graceful as a bird, and graceful much in the same way; as pleasant

about the house as a gleam of sunshine falling on the floor through a

shadow of twinkling leaves, or as a ray of firelight that dances on the

wall while evening is drawing nigh. Instead of discussing her claim to

rank among ladies, it would be preferable to regard Phœbe as the

example of feminine grace and availability combined, in a state of

society, if there were any such, where ladies did not exist. There it

should be woman’s office to move in the midst of practical affairs, and

to gild them all, the very homeliest,—were it even the scouring of pots

and kettles,—with an atmosphere of loveliness and joy.

Such was the sphere of Phœbe. To find the born and educated lady, on

the other hand, we need look no farther than Hepzibah, our forlorn old

maid, in her rustling and rusty silks, with her deeply cherished and

ridiculous consciousness of long descent, her shadowy claims to

princely territory, and, in the way of accomplishment, her

recollections, it may be, of having formerly thrummed on a harpsichord,

and walked a minuet, and worked an antique tapestry-stitch on her

sampler. It was a fair parallel between new Plebeianism and old

Gentility.

It really seemed as if the battered visage of the House of the Seven

Gables, black and heavy-browed as it still certainly looked, must have

shown a kind of cheerfulness glimmering through its dusky windows as

Phœbe passed to and fro in the interior. Otherwise, it is impossible to

explain how the people of the neighborhood so soon became aware of the

girl’s presence. There was a great run of custom, setting steadily in,

from about ten o’clock until towards noon,—relaxing, somewhat, at

dinner-time, but recommencing in the afternoon, and, finally, dying

away a half an hour or so before the long day’s sunset. One of the

stanchest patrons was little Ned Higgins, the devourer of Jim Crow and

the elephant, who to-day signalized his omnivorous prowess by

swallowing two dromedaries and a locomotive. Phœbe laughed, as she

summed up her aggregate of sales upon the slate; while Hepzibah, first

drawing on a pair of silk gloves, reckoned over the sordid accumulation

of copper coin, not without silver intermixed, that had jingled into

the till.

“We must renew our stock, Cousin Hepzibah!” cried the little

saleswoman. “The gingerbread figures are all gone, and so are those

Dutch wooden milkmaids, and most of our other playthings. There has

been constant inquiry for cheap raisins, and a great cry for whistles,

and trumpets, and jew’s-harps; and at least a dozen little boys have

asked for molasses-candy. And we must contrive to get a peck of russet

apples, late in the season as it is. But, dear cousin, what an enormous

heap of copper! Positively a copper mountain!”

“Well done! well done! well done!” quoth Uncle Venner, who had taken

occasion to shuffle in and out of the shop several times in the course

of the day. “Here’s a girl that will never end her days at my farm!

Bless my eyes, what a brisk little soul!”

“Yes, Phœbe is a nice girl!” said Hepzibah, with a scowl of austere

approbation. “But, Uncle Venner, you have known the family a great many

years. Can you tell me whether there ever was a Pyncheon whom she takes

after?”

“I don’t believe there ever was,” answered the venerable man. “At any

rate, it never was my luck to see her like among them, nor, for that

matter, anywhere else. I’ve seen a great deal of the world, not only in

people’s kitchens and back-yards but at the street-corners, and on the

wharves, and in other places where my business calls me; and I’m free

to say, Miss Hepzibah, that I never knew a human creature do her work

so much like one of God’s angels as this child Phœbe does!”

Uncle Venner’s eulogium, if it appear rather too high-strained for the

person and occasion, had, nevertheless, a sense in which it was both

subtile and true. There was a spiritual quality in Phœbe’s activity.

The life of the long and busy day—spent in occupations that might so

easily have taken a squalid and ugly aspect—had been made pleasant, and

even lovely, by the spontaneous grace with which these homely duties

seemed to bloom out of her character; so that labor, while she dealt

with it, had the easy and flexible charm of play. Angels do not toil,

but let their good works grow out of them; and so did Phœbe.

The two relatives—the young maid and the old one—found time before

nightfall, in the intervals of trade, to make rapid advances towards

affection and confidence. A recluse, like Hepzibah, usually displays

remarkable frankness, and at least temporary affability, on being

absolutely cornered, and brought to the point of personal intercourse;

like the angel whom Jacob wrestled with, she is ready to bless you when

once overcome.

The old gentlewoman took a dreary and proud satisfaction in leading

Phœbe from room to room of the house, and recounting the traditions

with which, as we may say, the walls were lugubriously frescoed. She

showed the indentations made by the lieutenant-governor’s sword-hilt in

the door-panels of the apartment where old Colonel Pyncheon, a dead

host, had received his affrighted visitors with an awful frown. The

dusky terror of that frown, Hepzibah observed, was thought to be

lingering ever since in the passageway. She bade Phœbe step into one of

the tall chairs, and inspect the ancient map of the Pyncheon territory

at the eastward. In a tract of land on which she laid her finger, there

existed a silver mine, the locality of which was precisely pointed out

in some memoranda of Colonel Pyncheon himself, but only to be made

known when the family claim should be recognized by government. Thus it

was for the interest of all New England that the Pyncheons should have

justice done them. She told, too, how that there was undoubtedly an

immense treasure of English guineas hidden somewhere about the house,

or in the cellar, or possibly in the garden.

“If you should happen to find it, Phœbe,” said Hepzibah, glancing aside

at her with a grim yet kindly smile, “we will tie up the shop-bell for

good and all!”

“Yes, dear cousin,” answered Phœbe; “but, in the mean time, I hear

somebody ringing it!”

When the customer was gone, Hepzibah talked rather vaguely, and at

great length, about a certain Alice Pyncheon, who had been exceedingly

beautiful and accomplished in her lifetime, a hundred years ago. The

fragrance of her rich and delightful character still lingered about the

place where she had lived, as a dried rose-bud scents the drawer where

it has withered and perished. This lovely Alice had met with some great

and mysterious calamity, and had grown thin and white, and gradually

faded out of the world. But, even now, she was supposed to haunt the

House of the Seven Gables, and, a great many times,—especially when one

of the Pyncheons was to die,—she had been heard playing sadly and

beautifully on the harpsichord. One of these tunes, just as it had

sounded from her spiritual touch, had been written down by an amateur

of music; it was so exquisitely mournful that nobody, to this day,

could bear to hear it played, unless when a great sorrow had made them

know the still profounder sweetness of it.

“Was it the same harpsichord that you showed me?” inquired Phœbe.

“The very same,” said Hepzibah. “It was Alice Pyncheon’s harpsichord.

When I was learning music, my father would never let me open it. So, as

I could only play on my teacher’s instrument, I have forgotten all my

music long ago.”

Leaving these antique themes, the old lady began to talk about the

daguerreotypist, whom, as he seemed to be a well-meaning and orderly

young man, and in narrow circumstances, she had permitted to take up

his residence in one of the seven gables. But, on seeing more of Mr.

Holgrave, she hardly knew what to make of him. He had the strangest

companions imaginable; men with long beards, and dressed in linen

blouses, and other such new-fangled and ill-fitting garments;

reformers, temperance lecturers, and all manner of cross-looking

philanthropists; community-men, and come-outers, as Hepzibah believed,

who acknowledged no law, and ate no solid food, but lived on the scent

of other people’s cookery, and turned up their noses at the fare. As

for the daguerreotypist, she had read a paragraph in a penny paper, the

other day, accusing him of making a speech full of wild and

disorganizing matter, at a meeting of his banditti-like associates. For

her own part, she had reason to believe that he practised animal

magnetism, and, if such things were in fashion nowadays, should be apt

to suspect him of studying the Black Art up there in his lonesome

chamber.

“But, dear cousin,” said Phœbe, “if the young man is so dangerous, why

do you let him stay? If he does nothing worse, he may set the house on

fire!”

“Why, sometimes,” answered Hepzibah, “I have seriously made it a

question, whether I ought not to send him away. But, with all his

oddities, he is a quiet kind of a person, and has such a way of taking

hold of one’s mind, that, without exactly liking him (for I don’t know

enough of the young man), I should be sorry to lose sight of him

entirely. A woman clings to slight acquaintances when she lives so much

alone as I do.”

“But if Mr. Holgrave is a lawless person!” remonstrated Phœbe, a part

of whose essence it was to keep within the limits of law.

“Oh!” said Hepzibah carelessly,—for, formal as she was, still, in her

life’s experience, she had gnashed her teeth against human law,—“I

suppose he has a law of his own!”

VI.

Maule’s Well

After an early tea, the little country-girl strayed into the garden.

The enclosure had formerly been very extensive, but was now contracted

within small compass, and hemmed about, partly by high wooden fences,

and partly by the outbuildings of houses that stood on another street.

In its centre was a grass-plat, surrounding a ruinous little structure,

which showed just enough of its original design to indicate that it had

once been a summer-house. A hop-vine, springing from last year’s root,

was beginning to clamber over it, but would be long in covering the

roof with its green mantle. Three of the seven gables either fronted or

looked sideways, with a dark solemnity of aspect, down into the garden.

The black, rich soil had fed itself with the decay of a long period of

time; such as fallen leaves, the petals of flowers, and the stalks and

seed-vessels of vagrant and lawless plants, more useful after their

death than ever while flaunting in the sun. The evil of these departed

years would naturally have sprung up again, in such rank weeds

(symbolic of the transmitted vices of society) as are always prone to

root themselves about human dwellings. Phœbe saw, however, that their

growth must have been checked by a degree of careful labor, bestowed

daily and systematically on the garden. The white double rosebush had

evidently been propped up anew against the house since the commencement

of the season; and a pear-tree and three damson-trees, which, except a

row of currant-bushes, constituted the only varieties of fruit, bore

marks of the recent amputation of several superfluous or defective

limbs. There were also a few species of antique and hereditary flowers,

in no very flourishing condition, but scrupulously weeded; as if some

person, either out of love or curiosity, had been anxious to bring them

to such perfection as they were capable of attaining. The remainder of

the garden presented a well-selected assortment of esculent vegetables,

in a praiseworthy state of advancement. Summer squashes almost in their

golden blossom; cucumbers, now evincing a tendency to spread away from

the main stock, and ramble far and wide; two or three rows of

string-beans and as many more that were about to festoon themselves on

poles; tomatoes, occupying a site so sheltered and sunny that the

plants were already gigantic, and promised an early and abundant

harvest.

Phœbe wondered whose care and toil it could have been that had planted

these vegetables, and kept the soil so clean and orderly. Not surely

her cousin Hepzibah’s, who had no taste nor spirits for the lady-like

employment of cultivating flowers, and—with her recluse habits, and

tendency to shelter herself within the dismal shadow of the house—would

hardly have come forth under the speck of open sky to weed and hoe

among the fraternity of beans and squashes.

It being her first day of complete estrangement from rural objects,

Phœbe found an unexpected charm in this little nook of grass, and

foliage, and aristocratic flowers, and plebeian vegetables. The eye of

Heaven seemed to look down into it pleasantly, and with a peculiar

smile, as if glad to perceive that nature, elsewhere overwhelmed, and

driven out of the dusty town, had here been able to retain a

breathing-place. The spot acquired a somewhat wilder grace, and yet a

very gentle one, from the fact that a pair of robins had built their

nest in the pear-tree, and were making themselves exceedingly busy and

happy in the dark intricacy of its boughs. Bees, too,—strange to

say,—had thought it worth their while to come hither, possibly from the

range of hives beside some farm-house miles away. How many aerial

voyages might they have made, in quest of honey, or honey-laden,

betwixt dawn and sunset! Yet, late as it now was, there still arose a

pleasant hum out of one or two of the squash-blossoms, in the depths of

which these bees were plying their golden labor. There was one other

object in the garden which Nature might fairly claim as her inalienable

property, in spite of whatever man could do to render it his own. This

was a fountain, set round with a rim of old mossy stones, and paved, in

its bed, with what appeared to be a sort of mosaic-work of variously

colored pebbles. The play and slight agitation of the water, in its

upward gush, wrought magically with these variegated pebbles, and made

a continually shifting apparition of quaint figures, vanishing too

suddenly to be definable. Thence, swelling over the rim of moss-grown

stones, the water stole away under the fence, through what we regret to

call a gutter, rather than a channel. Nor must we forget to mention a

hen-coop of very reverend antiquity that stood in the farther corner of

the garden, not a great way from the fountain. It now contained only

Chanticleer, his two wives, and a solitary chicken. All of them were

pure specimens of a breed which had been transmitted down as an

heirloom in the Pyncheon family, and were said, while in their prime,

to have attained almost the size of turkeys, and, on the score of

delicate flesh, to be fit for a prince’s table. In proof of the

authenticity of this legendary renown, Hepzibah could have exhibited

the shell of a great egg, which an ostrich need hardly have been

ashamed of. Be that as it might, the hens were now scarcely larger than

pigeons, and had a queer, rusty, withered aspect, and a gouty kind of

movement, and a sleepy and melancholy tone throughout all the

variations of their clucking and cackling. It was evident that the race

had degenerated, like many a noble race besides, in consequence of too

strict a watchfulness to keep it pure. These feathered people had

existed too long in their distinct variety; a fact of which the present

representatives, judging by their lugubrious deportment, seemed to be

aware. They kept themselves alive, unquestionably, and laid now and

then an egg, and hatched a chicken; not for any pleasure of their own,

but that the world might not absolutely lose what had once been so

admirable a breed of fowls. The distinguishing mark of the hens was a

crest of lamentably scanty growth, in these latter days, but so oddly

and wickedly analogous to Hepzibah’s turban, that Phœbe—to the poignant

distress of her conscience, but inevitably—was led to fancy a general

resemblance betwixt these forlorn bipeds and her respectable relative.

The girl ran into the house to get some crumbs of bread, cold potatoes,

and other such scraps as were suitable to the accommodating appetite of

fowls. Returning, she gave a peculiar call, which they seemed to

recognize. The chicken crept through the pales of the coop and ran,

with some show of liveliness, to her feet; while Chanticleer and the

ladies of his household regarded her with queer, sidelong glances, and

then croaked one to another, as if communicating their sage opinions of

her character. So wise, as well as antique, was their aspect, as to

give color to the idea, not merely that they were the descendants of a

time-honored race, but that they had existed, in their individual

capacity, ever since the House of the Seven Gables was founded, and

were somehow mixed up with its destiny. They were a species of tutelary

sprite, or Banshee; although winged and feathered differently from most

other guardian angels.

“Here, you odd little chicken!” said Phœbe; “here are some nice crumbs

for you!”

The chicken, hereupon, though almost as venerable in appearance as its

mother—possessing, indeed, the whole antiquity of its progenitors in

miniature,—mustered vivacity enough to flutter upward and alight on

Phœbe’s shoulder.

“That little fowl pays you a high compliment!” said a voice behind

Phœbe.

Turning quickly, she was surprised at sight of a young man, who had

found access into the garden by a door opening out of another gable

than that whence she had emerged. He held a hoe in his hand, and, while

Phœbe was gone in quest of the crumbs, had begun to busy himself with

drawing up fresh earth about the roots of the tomatoes.

“The chicken really treats you like an old acquaintance,” continued he

in a quiet way, while a smile made his face pleasanter than Phœbe at

first fancied it. “Those venerable personages in the coop, too, seem

very affably disposed. You are lucky to be in their good graces so

soon! They have known me much longer, but never honor me with any

familiarity, though hardly a day passes without my bringing them food.

Miss Hepzibah, I suppose, will interweave the fact with her other

traditions, and set it down that the fowls know you to be a Pyncheon!”

“The secret is,” said Phœbe, smiling, “that I have learned how to talk

with hens and chickens.”

“Ah, but these hens,” answered the young man,—“these hens of

aristocratic lineage would scorn to understand the vulgar language of a

barn-yard fowl. I prefer to think—and so would Miss Hepzibah—that they

recognize the family tone. For you are a Pyncheon?”

“My name is Phœbe Pyncheon,” said the girl, with a manner of some

reserve; for she was aware that her new acquaintance could be no other

than the daguerreotypist, of whose lawless propensities the old maid

had given her a disagreeable idea. “I did not know that my cousin

Hepzibah’s garden was under another person’s care.”

“Yes,” said Holgrave, “I dig, and hoe, and weed, in this black old

earth, for the sake of refreshing myself with what little nature and

simplicity may be left in it, after men have so long sown and reaped

here. I turn up the earth by way of pastime. My sober occupation, so

far as I have any, is with a lighter material. In short, I make

pictures out of sunshine; and, not to be too much dazzled with my own

trade, I have prevailed with Miss Hepzibah to let me lodge in one of

these dusky gables. It is like a bandage over one’s eyes, to come into

it. But would you like to see a specimen of my productions?”

“A daguerreotype likeness, do you mean?” asked Phœbe with less reserve;

for, in spite of prejudice, her own youthfulness sprang forward to meet

his. “I don’t much like pictures of that sort,—they are so hard and

stern; besides dodging away from the eye, and trying to escape

altogether. They are conscious of looking very unamiable, I suppose,

and therefore hate to be seen.”

“If you would permit me,” said the artist, looking at Phœbe, “I should

like to try whether the daguerreotype can bring out disagreeable traits

on a perfectly amiable face. But there certainly is truth in what you

have said. Most of my likenesses do look unamiable; but the very

sufficient reason, I fancy, is, because the originals are so. There is

a wonderful insight in Heaven’s broad and simple sunshine. While we

give it credit only for depicting the merest surface, it actually

brings out the secret character with a truth that no painter would ever

venture upon, even could he detect it. There is, at least, no flattery

in my humble line of art. Now, here is a likeness which I have taken

over and over again, and still with no better result. Yet the original

wears, to common eyes, a very different expression. It would gratify me

to have your judgment on this character.”

He exhibited a daguerreotype miniature in a morocco case. Phœbe merely

glanced at it, and gave it back.

“I know the face,” she replied; “for its stern eye has been following

me about all day. It is my Puritan ancestor, who hangs yonder in the

parlor. To be sure, you have found some way of copying the portrait

without its black velvet cap and gray beard, and have given him a

modern coat and satin cravat, instead of his cloak and band. I don’t

think him improved by your alterations.”

“You would have seen other differences had you looked a little longer,”

said Holgrave, laughing, yet apparently much struck. “I can assure you

that this is a modern face, and one which you will very probably meet.

Now, the remarkable point is, that the original wears, to the world’s

eye,—and, for aught I know, to his most intimate friends,—an

exceedingly pleasant countenance, indicative of benevolence, openness

of heart, sunny good-humor, and other praiseworthy qualities of that

cast. The sun, as you see, tells quite another story, and will not be

coaxed out of it, after half a dozen patient attempts on my part. Here

we have the man, sly, subtle, hard, imperious, and, withal, cold as

ice. Look at that eye! Would you like to be at its mercy? At that

mouth! Could it ever smile? And yet, if you could only see the benign

smile of the original! It is so much the more unfortunate, as he is a

public character of some eminence, and the likeness was intended to be

engraved.”

“Well, I don’t wish to see it any more,” observed Phœbe, turning away

her eyes. “It is certainly very like the old portrait. But my cousin

Hepzibah has another picture,—a miniature. If the original is still in

the world, I think he might defy the sun to make him look stern and

hard.”

“You have seen that picture, then!” exclaimed the artist, with an

expression of much interest. “I never did, but have a great curiosity

to do so. And you judge favorably of the face?”

“There never was a sweeter one,” said Phœbe. “It is almost too soft and

gentle for a man’s.”

“Is there nothing wild in the eye?” continued Holgrave, so earnestly

that it embarrassed Phœbe, as did also the quiet freedom with which he

presumed on their so recent acquaintance. “Is there nothing dark or

sinister anywhere? Could you not conceive the original to have been

guilty of a great crime?”

“It is nonsense,” said Phœbe a little impatiently, “for us to talk

about a picture which you have never seen. You mistake it for some

other. A crime, indeed! Since you are a friend of my cousin Hepzibah’s,

you should ask her to show you the picture.”

“It will suit my purpose still better to see the original,” replied the

daguerreotypist coolly. “As to his character, we need not discuss its

points; they have already been settled by a competent tribunal, or one

which called itself competent. But, stay! Do not go yet, if you please!

I have a proposition to make you.”

Phœbe was on the point of retreating, but turned back, with some

hesitation; for she did not exactly comprehend his manner, although, on

better observation, its feature seemed rather to be lack of ceremony

than any approach to offensive rudeness. There was an odd kind of

authority, too, in what he now proceeded to say, rather as if the

garden were his own than a place to which he was admitted merely by

Hepzibah’s courtesy.

“If agreeable to you,” he observed, “it would give me pleasure to turn

over these flowers, and those ancient and respectable fowls, to your

care. Coming fresh from country air and occupations, you will soon feel

the need of some such out-of-door employment. My own sphere does not so

much lie among flowers. You can trim and tend them, therefore, as you

please; and I will ask only the least trifle of a blossom, now and

then, in exchange for all the good, honest kitchen vegetables with

which I propose to enrich Miss Hepzibah’s table. So we will be

fellow-laborers, somewhat on the community system.”

Silently, and rather surprised at her own compliance, Phœbe accordingly

betook herself to weeding a flower-bed, but busied herself still more

with cogitations respecting this young man, with whom she so

unexpectedly found herself on terms approaching to familiarity. She did

not altogether like him. His character perplexed the little

country-girl, as it might a more practised observer; for, while the

tone of his conversation had generally been playful, the impression

left on her mind was that of gravity, and, except as his youth modified

it, almost sternness. She rebelled, as it were, against a certain

magnetic element in the artist’s nature, which he exercised towards

her, possibly without being conscious of it.

After a little while, the twilight, deepened by the shadows of the

fruit-trees and the surrounding buildings, threw an obscurity over the

garden.

“There,” said Holgrave, “it is time to give over work! That last stroke

of the hoe has cut off a beanstalk. Good-night, Miss Phœbe Pyncheon!

Any bright day, if you will put one of those rosebuds in your hair, and

come to my rooms in Central Street, I will seize the purest ray of

sunshine, and make a picture of the flower and its wearer.” He retired

towards his own solitary gable, but turned his head, on reaching the

door, and called to Phœbe, with a tone which certainly had laughter in

it, yet which seemed to be more than half in earnest.

“Be careful not to drink at Maule’s well!” said he. “Neither drink nor

bathe your face in it!”

“Maule’s well!” answered Phœbe. “Is that it with the rim of mossy

stones? I have no thought of drinking there,—but why not?”

“Oh,” rejoined the daguerreotypist, “because, like an old lady’s cup of

tea, it is water bewitched!”

He vanished; and Phœbe, lingering a moment, saw a glimmering light, and

then the steady beam of a lamp, in a chamber of the gable. On returning

into Hepzibah’s apartment of the house, she found the low-studded

parlor so dim and dusky that her eyes could not penetrate the interior.

She was indistinctly aware, however, that the gaunt figure of the old

gentlewoman was sitting in one of the straight-backed chairs, a little

withdrawn from the window, the faint gleam of which showed the blanched

paleness of her cheek, turned sideways towards a corner.

“Shall I light a lamp, Cousin Hepzibah?” she asked.

“Do, if you please, my dear child,” answered Hepzibah. “But put it on

the table in the corner of the passage. My eyes are weak; and I can

seldom bear the lamplight on them.”

What an instrument is the human voice! How wonderfully responsive to

every emotion of the human soul! In Hepzibah’s tone, at that moment,

there was a certain rich depth and moisture, as if the words,

commonplace as they were, had been steeped in the warmth of her heart.

Again, while lighting the lamp in the kitchen, Phœbe fancied that her

cousin spoke to her.

“In a moment, cousin!” answered the girl. “These matches just glimmer,

and go out.”

But, instead of a response from Hepzibah, she seemed to hear the murmur

of an unknown voice. It was strangely indistinct, however, and less

like articulate words than an unshaped sound, such as would be the

utterance of feeling and sympathy, rather than of the intellect. So

vague was it, that its impression or echo in Phœbe’s mind was that of

unreality. She concluded that she must have mistaken some other sound

for that of the human voice; or else that it was altogether in her

fancy.

She set the lighted lamp in the passage, and again entered the parlor.

Hepzibah’s form, though its sable outline mingled with the dusk, was

now less imperfectly visible. In the remoter parts of the room,

however, its walls being so ill adapted to reflect light, there was

nearly the same obscurity as before.

“Cousin,” said Phœbe, “did you speak to me just now?”

“No, child!” replied Hepzibah.

Fewer words than before, but with the same mysterious music in them!

Mellow, melancholy, yet not mournful, the tone seemed to gush up out of

the deep well of Hepzibah’s heart, all steeped in its profoundest

emotion. There was a tremor in it, too, that—as all strong feeling is

electric—partly communicated itself to Phœbe. The girl sat silently for

a moment. But soon, her senses being very acute, she became conscious

of an irregular respiration in an obscure corner of the room. Her

physical organization, moreover, being at once delicate and healthy,

gave her a perception, operating with almost the effect of a spiritual

medium, that somebody was near at hand.

“My dear cousin,” asked she, overcoming an indefinable reluctance, “is

there not some one in the room with us?”

“Phœbe, my dear little girl,” said Hepzibah, after a moment’s pause,

“you were up betimes, and have been busy all day. Pray go to bed; for I

am sure you must need rest. I will sit in the parlor awhile, and

collect my thoughts. It has been my custom for more years, child, than

you have lived!” While thus dismissing her, the maiden lady stept

forward, kissed Phœbe, and pressed her to her heart, which beat against

the girl’s bosom with a strong, high, and tumultuous swell. How came

there to be so much love in this desolate old heart, that it could

afford to well over thus abundantly?

“Goodnight, cousin,” said Phœbe, strangely affected by Hepzibah’s

manner. “If you begin to love me, I am glad!”

She retired to her chamber, but did not soon fall asleep, nor then very

profoundly. At some uncertain period in the depths of night, and, as it

were, through the thin veil of a dream, she was conscious of a footstep

mounting the stairs heavily, but not with force and decision. The voice

of Hepzibah, with a hush through it, was going up along with the

footsteps; and, again, responsive to her cousin’s voice, Phœbe heard

that strange, vague murmur, which might be likened to an indistinct

shadow of human utterance.

VII.

The Guest

When Phœbe awoke,—which she did with the early twittering of the

conjugal couple of robins in the pear-tree,—she heard movements below

stairs, and, hastening down, found Hepzibah already in the kitchen. She

stood by a window, holding a book in close contiguity to her nose, as

if with the hope of gaining an olfactory acquaintance with its

contents, since her imperfect vision made it not very easy to read

them. If any volume could have manifested its essential wisdom in the

mode suggested, it would certainly have been the one now in Hepzibah’s

hand; and the kitchen, in such an event, would forthwith have streamed

with the fragrance of venison, turkeys, capons, larded partridges,

puddings, cakes, and Christmas pies, in all manner of elaborate mixture

and concoction. It was a cookery book, full of innumerable old fashions

of English dishes, and illustrated with engravings, which represented

the arrangements of the table at such banquets as it might have

befitted a nobleman to give in the great hall of his castle. And, amid

these rich and potent devices of the culinary art (not one of which,

probably, had been tested, within the memory of any man’s grandfather),

poor Hepzibah was seeking for some nimble little titbit, which, with

what skill she had, and such materials as were at hand, she might toss

up for breakfast.

Soon, with a deep sigh, she put aside the savory volume, and inquired

of Phœbe whether old Speckle, as she called one of the hens, had laid

an egg the preceding day. Phœbe ran to see, but returned without the

expected treasure in her hand. At that instant, however, the blast of a

fish-dealer’s conch was heard, announcing his approach along the

street. With energetic raps at the shop-window, Hepzibah summoned the

man in, and made purchase of what he warranted as the finest mackerel

in his cart, and as fat a one as ever he felt with his finger so early

in the season. Requesting Phœbe to roast some coffee,—which she

casually observed was the real Mocha, and so long kept that each of the

small berries ought to be worth its weight in gold,—the maiden lady

heaped fuel into the vast receptacle of the ancient fireplace in such

quantity as soon to drive the lingering dusk out of the kitchen. The

country-girl, willing to give her utmost assistance, proposed to make

an Indian cake, after her mother’s peculiar method, of easy

manufacture, and which she could vouch for as possessing a richness,

and, if rightly prepared, a delicacy, unequalled by any other mode of

breakfast-cake. Hepzibah gladly assenting, the kitchen was soon the

scene of savory preparation. Perchance, amid their proper element of

smoke, which eddied forth from the ill-constructed chimney, the ghosts

of departed cook-maids looked wonderingly on, or peeped down the great

breadth of the flue, despising the simplicity of the projected meal,

yet ineffectually pining to thrust their shadowy hands into each

inchoate dish. The half-starved rats, at any rate, stole visibly out of

their hiding-places, and sat on their hind-legs, snuffing the fumy

atmosphere, and wistfully awaiting an opportunity to nibble.

Hepzibah had no natural turn for cookery, and, to say the truth, had

fairly incurred her present meagreness by often choosing to go without

her dinner rather than be attendant on the rotation of the spit, or

ebullition of the pot. Her zeal over the fire, therefore, was quite an

heroic test of sentiment. It was touching, and positively worthy of

tears (if Phœbe, the only spectator, except the rats and ghosts

aforesaid, had not been better employed than in shedding them), to see

her rake out a bed of fresh and glowing coals, and proceed to broil the

mackerel. Her usually pale cheeks were all ablaze with heat and hurry.

She watched the fish with as much tender care and minuteness of

attention as if,—we know not how to express it otherwise,—as if her own

heart were on the gridiron, and her immortal happiness were involved in

its being done precisely to a turn!

Life, within doors, has few pleasanter prospects than a neatly arranged

and well-provisioned breakfast-table. We come to it freshly, in the

dewy youth of the day, and when our spiritual and sensual elements are

in better accord than at a later period; so that the material delights

of the morning meal are capable of being fully enjoyed, without any

very grievous reproaches, whether gastric or conscientious, for

yielding even a trifle overmuch to the animal department of our nature.

The thoughts, too, that run around the ring of familiar guests have a

piquancy and mirthfulness, and oftentimes a vivid truth, which more

rarely find their way into the elaborate intercourse of dinner.

Hepzibah’s small and ancient table, supported on its slender and

graceful legs, and covered with a cloth of the richest damask, looked

worthy to be the scene and centre of one of the cheerfullest of

parties. The vapor of the broiled fish arose like incense from the

shrine of a barbarian idol, while the fragrance of the Mocha might have

gratified the nostrils of a tutelary Lar, or whatever power has scope

over a modern breakfast-table. Phœbe’s Indian cakes were the sweetest

offering of all,—in their hue befitting the rustic altars of the

innocent and golden age,—or, so brightly yellow were they, resembling

some of the bread which was changed to glistening gold when Midas tried

to eat it. The butter must not be forgotten,—butter which Phœbe herself

had churned, in her own rural home, and brought it to her cousin as a

propitiatory gift,—smelling of clover-blossoms, and diffusing the charm

of pastoral scenery through the dark-panelled parlor. All this, with

the quaint gorgeousness of the old china cups and saucers, and the

crested spoons, and a silver cream-jug (Hepzibah’s only other article

of plate, and shaped like the rudest porringer), set out a board at

which the stateliest of old Colonel Pyncheon’s guests need not have

scorned to take his place. But the Puritan’s face scowled down out of

the picture, as if nothing on the table pleased his appetite.

By way of contributing what grace she could, Phœbe gathered some roses

and a few other flowers, possessing either scent or beauty, and

arranged them in a glass pitcher, which, having long ago lost its

handle, was so much the fitter for a flower-vase. The early sunshine—as

fresh as that which peeped into Eve’s bower while she and Adam sat at

breakfast there—came twinkling through the branches of the pear-tree,

and fell quite across the table. All was now ready. There were chairs

and plates for three. A chair and plate for Hepzibah,—the same for

Phœbe,—but what other guest did her cousin look for?

Throughout this preparation there had been a constant tremor in

Hepzibah’s frame; an agitation so powerful that Phœbe could see the

quivering of her gaunt shadow, as thrown by the firelight on the

kitchen wall, or by the sunshine on the parlor floor. Its

manifestations were so various, and agreed so little with one another,

that the girl knew not what to make of it. Sometimes it seemed an

ecstasy of delight and happiness. At such moments, Hepzibah would fling

out her arms, and infold Phœbe in them, and kiss her cheek as tenderly

as ever her mother had; she appeared to do so by an inevitable impulse,

and as if her bosom were oppressed with tenderness, of which she must

needs pour out a little, in order to gain breathing-room. The next

moment, without any visible cause for the change, her unwonted joy

shrank back, appalled, as it were, and clothed itself in mourning; or

it ran and hid itself, so to speak, in the dungeon of her heart, where

it had long lain chained, while a cold, spectral sorrow took the place

of the imprisoned joy, that was afraid to be enfranchised,—a sorrow as

black as that was bright. She often broke into a little, nervous,

hysteric laugh, more touching than any tears could be; and forthwith,

as if to try which was the most touching, a gush of tears would follow;

or perhaps the laughter and tears came both at once, and surrounded our

poor Hepzibah, in a moral sense, with a kind of pale, dim rainbow.

Towards Phœbe, as we have said, she was affectionate,—far tenderer than

ever before, in their brief acquaintance, except for that one kiss on

the preceding night,—yet with a continually recurring pettishness and

irritability. She would speak sharply to her; then, throwing aside all

the starched reserve of her ordinary manner, ask pardon, and the next

instant renew the just-forgiven injury.

At last, when their mutual labor was all finished, she took Phœbe’s

hand in her own trembling one.

“Bear with me, my dear child,” she cried; “for truly my heart is full

to the brim! Bear with me; for I love you, Phœbe, though I speak so

roughly. Think nothing of it, dearest child! By and by, I shall be

kind, and only kind!”

“My dearest cousin, cannot you tell me what has happened?” asked Phœbe,

with a sunny and tearful sympathy. “What is it that moves you so?”

“Hush! hush! He is coming!” whispered Hepzibah, hastily wiping her

eyes. “Let him see you first, Phœbe; for you are young and rosy, and

cannot help letting a smile break out whether or no. He always liked

bright faces! And mine is old now, and the tears are hardly dry on it.

He never could abide tears. There; draw the curtain a little, so that

the shadow may fall across his side of the table! But let there be a

good deal of sunshine, too; for he never was fond of gloom, as some

people are. He has had but little sunshine in his life,—poor

Clifford,—and, oh, what a black shadow. Poor, poor Clifford!”

Thus murmuring in an undertone, as if speaking rather to her own heart

than to Phœbe, the old gentlewoman stepped on tiptoe about the room,

making such arrangements as suggested themselves at the crisis.

Meanwhile there was a step in the passage-way, above stairs. Phœbe

recognized it as the same which had passed upward, as through her

dream, in the night-time. The approaching guest, whoever it might be,

appeared to pause at the head of the staircase; he paused twice or

thrice in the descent; he paused again at the foot. Each time, the

delay seemed to be without purpose, but rather from a forgetfulness of

the purpose which had set him in motion, or as if the person’s feet

came involuntarily to a stand-still because the motive-power was too

feeble to sustain his progress. Finally, he made a long pause at the

threshold of the parlor. He took hold of the knob of the door; then

loosened his grasp without opening it. Hepzibah, her hands convulsively

clasped, stood gazing at the entrance.

“Dear Cousin Hepzibah, pray don’t look so!” said Phœbe, trembling; for

her cousin’s emotion, and this mysteriously reluctant step, made her

feel as if a ghost were coming into the room. “You really frighten me!

Is something awful going to happen?”

“Hush!” whispered Hepzibah. “Be cheerful! whatever may happen, be

nothing but cheerful!”

The final pause at the threshold proved so long, that Hepzibah, unable

to endure the suspense, rushed forward, threw open the door, and led in

the stranger by the hand. At the first glance, Phœbe saw an elderly

personage, in an old-fashioned dressing-gown of faded damask, and

wearing his gray or almost white hair of an unusual length. It quite

overshadowed his forehead, except when he thrust it back, and stared

vaguely about the room. After a very brief inspection of his face, it

was easy to conceive that his footstep must necessarily be such an one

as that which, slowly and with as indefinite an aim as a child’s first

journey across a floor, had just brought him hitherward. Yet there were

no tokens that his physical strength might not have sufficed for a free

and determined gait. It was the spirit of the man that could not walk.

The expression of his countenance—while, notwithstanding it had the

light of reason in it—seemed to waver, and glimmer, and nearly to die

away, and feebly to recover itself again. It was like a flame which we

see twinkling among half-extinguished embers; we gaze at it more

intently than if it were a positive blaze, gushing vividly upward,—more

intently, but with a certain impatience, as if it ought either to

kindle itself into satisfactory splendor, or be at once extinguished.

For an instant after entering the room, the guest stood still,

retaining Hepzibah’s hand instinctively, as a child does that of the

grown person who guides it. He saw Phœbe, however, and caught an

illumination from her youthful and pleasant aspect, which, indeed,

threw a cheerfulness about the parlor, like the circle of reflected

brilliancy around the glass vase of flowers that was standing in the

sunshine. He made a salutation, or, to speak nearer the truth, an

ill-defined, abortive attempt at curtsy. Imperfect as it was, however,

it conveyed an idea, or, at least, gave a hint, of indescribable grace,

such as no practised art of external manners could have attained. It

was too slight to seize upon at the instant; yet, as recollected

afterwards, seemed to transfigure the whole man.

“Dear Clifford,” said Hepzibah, in the tone with which one soothes a

wayward infant, “this is our cousin Phœbe,—little Phœbe

Pyncheon,—Arthur’s only child, you know. She has come from the country

to stay with us awhile; for our old house has grown to be very lonely

now.”

“Phœbe—Phœbe Pyncheon?—Phœbe?” repeated the guest, with a strange,

sluggish, ill-defined utterance. “Arthur’s child! Ah, I forget! No

matter. She is very welcome!”

“Come, dear Clifford, take this chair,” said Hepzibah, leading him to

his place. “Pray, Phœbe, lower the curtain a very little more. Now let

us begin breakfast.”

The guest seated himself in the place assigned him, and looked

strangely around. He was evidently trying to grapple with the present

scene, and bring it home to his mind with a more satisfactory

distinctness. He desired to be certain, at least, that he was here, in

the low-studded, cross-beamed, oaken-panelled parlor, and not in some

other spot, which had stereotyped itself into his senses. But the

effort was too great to be sustained with more than a fragmentary

success. Continually, as we may express it, he faded away out of his

place; or, in other words, his mind and consciousness took their

departure, leaving his wasted, gray, and melancholy figure—a

substantial emptiness, a material ghost—to occupy his seat at table.

Again, after a blank moment, there would be a flickering taper-gleam in

his eyeballs. It betokened that his spiritual part had returned, and

was doing its best to kindle the heart’s household fire, and light up

intellectual lamps in the dark and ruinous mansion, where it was doomed

to be a forlorn inhabitant.

At one of these moments of less torpid, yet still imperfect animation,

Phœbe became convinced of what she had at first rejected as too

extravagant and startling an idea. She saw that the person before her

must have been the original of the beautiful miniature in her cousin

Hepzibah’s possession. Indeed, with a feminine eye for costume, she had

at once identified the damask dressing-gown, which enveloped him, as

the same in figure, material, and fashion, with that so elaborately

represented in the picture. This old, faded garment, with all its

pristine brilliancy extinct, seemed, in some indescribable way, to

translate the wearer’s untold misfortune, and make it perceptible to

the beholder’s eye. It was the better to be discerned, by this exterior

type, how worn and old were the soul’s more immediate garments; that

form and countenance, the beauty and grace of which had almost

transcended the skill of the most exquisite of artists. It could the

more adequately be known that the soul of the man must have suffered

some miserable wrong, from its earthly experience. There he seemed to

sit, with a dim veil of decay and ruin betwixt him and the world, but

through which, at flitting intervals, might be caught the same

expression, so refined, so softly imaginative, which Malbone—venturing

a happy touch, with suspended breath—had imparted to the miniature!

There had been something so innately characteristic in this look, that

all the dusky years, and the burden of unfit calamity which had fallen

upon him, did not suffice utterly to destroy it.

Hepzibah had now poured out a cup of deliciously fragrant coffee, and

presented it to her guest. As his eyes met hers, he seemed bewildered

and disquieted.

“Is this you, Hepzibah?” he murmured sadly; then, more apart, and

perhaps unconscious that he was overheard, “How changed! how changed!

And is she angry with me? Why does she bend her brow so?”

Poor Hepzibah! It was that wretched scowl which time and her

near-sightedness, and the fret of inward discomfort, had rendered so

habitual that any vehemence of mood invariably evoked it. But at the

indistinct murmur of his words her whole face grew tender, and even

lovely, with sorrowful affection; the harshness of her features

disappeared, as it were, behind the warm and misty glow.

“Angry!” she repeated; “angry with you, Clifford!”

Her tone, as she uttered the exclamation, had a plaintive and really

exquisite melody thrilling through it, yet without subduing a certain

something which an obtuse auditor might still have mistaken for

asperity. It was as if some transcendent musician should draw a

soul-thrilling sweetness out of a cracked instrument, which makes its

physical imperfection heard in the midst of ethereal harmony,—so deep

was the sensibility that found an organ in Hepzibah’s voice!

“There is nothing but love here, Clifford,” she added,—“nothing but

love! You are at home!”

The guest responded to her tone by a smile, which did not half light up

his face. Feeble as it was, however, and gone in a moment, it had a

charm of wonderful beauty. It was followed by a coarser expression; or

one that had the effect of coarseness on the fine mould and outline of

his countenance, because there was nothing intellectual to temper it.

It was a look of appetite. He ate food with what might almost be termed

voracity; and seemed to forget himself, Hepzibah, the young girl, and

everything else around him, in the sensual enjoyment which the

bountifully spread table afforded. In his natural system, though

high-wrought and delicately refined, a sensibility to the delights of

the palate was probably inherent. It would have been kept in check,

however, and even converted into an accomplishment, and one of the

thousand modes of intellectual culture, had his more ethereal

characteristics retained their vigor. But as it existed now, the effect

was painful and made Phœbe droop her eyes.

In a little while the guest became sensible of the fragrance of the yet

untasted coffee. He quaffed it eagerly. The subtle essence acted on him

like a charmed draught, and caused the opaque substance of his animal

being to grow transparent, or, at least, translucent; so that a

spiritual gleam was transmitted through it, with a clearer lustre than

hitherto.

“More, more!” he cried, with nervous haste in his utterance, as if

anxious to retain his grasp of what sought to escape him. “This is what

I need! Give me more!”

Under this delicate and powerful influence he sat more erect, and

looked out from his eyes with a glance that took note of what it rested

on. It was not so much that his expression grew more intellectual;

this, though it had its share, was not the most peculiar effect.

Neither was what we call the moral nature so forcibly awakened as to

present itself in remarkable prominence. But a certain fine temper of

being was now not brought out in full relief, but changeably and

imperfectly betrayed, of which it was the function to deal with all

beautiful and enjoyable things. In a character where it should exist as

the chief attribute, it would bestow on its possessor an exquisite

taste, and an enviable susceptibility of happiness. Beauty would be his

life; his aspirations would all tend toward it; and, allowing his frame

and physical organs to be in consonance, his own developments would

likewise be beautiful. Such a man should have nothing to do with

sorrow; nothing with strife; nothing with the martyrdom which, in an

infinite variety of shapes, awaits those who have the heart, and will,

and conscience, to fight a battle with the world. To these heroic

tempers, such martyrdom is the richest meed in the world’s gift. To the

individual before us, it could only be a grief, intense in due

proportion with the severity of the infliction. He had no right to be a

martyr; and, beholding him so fit to be happy and so feeble for all

other purposes, a generous, strong, and noble spirit would, methinks,

have been ready to sacrifice what little enjoyment it might have

planned for itself,—it would have flung down the hopes, so paltry in

its regard,—if thereby the wintry blasts of our rude sphere might come

tempered to such a man.

Not to speak it harshly or scornfully, it seemed Clifford’s nature to

be a Sybarite. It was perceptible, even there, in the dark old parlor,

in the inevitable polarity with which his eyes were attracted towards

the quivering play of sunbeams through the shadowy foliage. It was seen

in his appreciating notice of the vase of flowers, the scent of which

he inhaled with a zest almost peculiar to a physical organization so

refined that spiritual ingredients are moulded in with it. It was

betrayed in the unconscious smile with which he regarded Phœbe, whose

fresh and maidenly figure was both sunshine and flowers,—their essence,

in a prettier and more agreeable mode of manifestation. Not less

evident was this love and necessity for the Beautiful, in the

instinctive caution with which, even so soon, his eyes turned away from

his hostess, and wandered to any quarter rather than come back. It was

Hepzibah’s misfortune,—not Clifford’s fault. How could he,—so yellow as

she was, so wrinkled, so sad of mien, with that odd uncouthness of a

turban on her head, and that most perverse of scowls contorting her

brow,—how could he love to gaze at her? But, did he owe her no

affection for so much as she had silently given? He owed her nothing. A

nature like Clifford’s can contract no debts of that kind. It is—we say

it without censure, nor in diminution of the claim which it

indefeasibly possesses on beings of another mould—it is always selfish

in its essence; and we must give it leave to be so, and heap up our

heroic and disinterested love upon it so much the more, without a

recompense. Poor Hepzibah knew this truth, or, at least, acted on the

instinct of it. So long estranged from what was lovely as Clifford had

been, she rejoiced—rejoiced, though with a present sigh, and a secret

purpose to shed tears in her own chamber that he had brighter objects

now before his eyes than her aged and uncomely features. They never

possessed a charm; and if they had, the canker of her grief for him

would long since have destroyed it.

The guest leaned back in his chair. Mingled in his countenance with a

dreamy delight, there was a troubled look of effort and unrest. He was

seeking to make himself more fully sensible of the scene around him;

or, perhaps, dreading it to be a dream, or a play of imagination, was

vexing the fair moment with a struggle for some added brilliancy and

more durable illusion.

“How pleasant!—How delightful!” he murmured, but not as if addressing

any one. “Will it last? How balmy the atmosphere through that open

window! An open window! How beautiful that play of sunshine! Those

flowers, how very fragrant! That young girl’s face, how cheerful, how

blooming!—a flower with the dew on it, and sunbeams in the dew-drops!

Ah! this must be all a dream! A dream! A dream! But it has quite hidden

the four stone walls!”

Then his face darkened, as if the shadow of a cavern or a dungeon had

come over it; there was no more light in its expression than might have

come through the iron grates of a prison-window—still lessening, too,

as if he were sinking farther into the depths. Phœbe (being of that

quickness and activity of temperament that she seldom long refrained

from taking a part, and generally a good one, in what was going

forward) now felt herself moved to address the stranger.

“Here is a new kind of rose, which I found this morning in the garden,”

said she, choosing a small crimson one from among the flowers in the

vase. “There will be but five or six on the bush this season. This is

the most perfect of them all; not a speck of blight or mildew in it.

And how sweet it is!—sweet like no other rose! One can never forget

that scent!”

“Ah!—let me see!—let me hold it!” cried the guest, eagerly seizing the

flower, which, by the spell peculiar to remembered odors, brought

innumerable associations along with the fragrance that it exhaled.

“Thank you! This has done me good. I remember how I used to prize this

flower,—long ago, I suppose, very long ago!—or was it only yesterday?

It makes me feel young again! Am I young? Either this remembrance is

singularly distinct, or this consciousness strangely dim! But how kind

of the fair young girl! Thank you! Thank you!”

The favorable excitement derived from this little crimson rose afforded

Clifford the brightest moment which he enjoyed at the breakfast-table.

It might have lasted longer, but that his eyes happened, soon

afterwards, to rest on the face of the old Puritan, who, out of his

dingy frame and lustreless canvas, was looking down on the scene like a

ghost, and a most ill-tempered and ungenial one. The guest made an

impatient gesture of the hand, and addressed Hepzibah with what might

easily be recognized as the licensed irritability of a petted member of

the family.

“Hepzibah!—Hepzibah!” cried he with no little force and distinctness,

“why do you keep that odious picture on the wall? Yes, yes!—that is

precisely your taste! I have told you, a thousand times, that it was

the evil genius of the house!—my evil genius particularly! Take it

down, at once!”

“Dear Clifford,” said Hepzibah sadly, “you know it cannot be!”

“Then, at all events,” continued he, still speaking with some energy,

“pray cover it with a crimson curtain, broad enough to hang in folds,

and with a golden border and tassels. I cannot bear it! It must not

stare me in the face!”

“Yes, dear Clifford, the picture shall be covered,” said Hepzibah

soothingly. “There is a crimson curtain in a trunk above stairs,—a

little faded and moth-eaten, I’m afraid,—but Phœbe and I will do

wonders with it.”

“This very day, remember” said he; and then added, in a low,

self-communing voice, “Why should we live in this dismal house at all?

Why not go to the South of France?—to Italy?—Paris, Naples, Venice,

Rome? Hepzibah will say we have not the means. A droll idea that!”

He smiled to himself, and threw a glance of fine sarcastic meaning

towards Hepzibah.

But the several moods of feeling, faintly as they were marked, through

which he had passed, occurring in so brief an interval of time, had

evidently wearied the stranger. He was probably accustomed to a sad

monotony of life, not so much flowing in a stream, however sluggish, as

stagnating in a pool around his feet. A slumberous veil diffused itself

over his countenance, and had an effect, morally speaking, on its

naturally delicate and elegant outline, like that which a brooding

mist, with no sunshine in it, throws over the features of a landscape.

He appeared to become grosser,—almost cloddish. If aught of interest or

beauty—even ruined beauty—had heretofore been visible in this man, the

beholder might now begin to doubt it, and to accuse his own imagination

of deluding him with whatever grace had flickered over that visage, and

whatever exquisite lustre had gleamed in those filmy eyes.

Before he had quite sunken away, however, the sharp and peevish tinkle

of the shop-bell made itself audible. Striking most disagreeably on

Clifford’s auditory organs and the characteristic sensibility of his

nerves, it caused him to start upright out of his chair.

“Good heavens, Hepzibah! what horrible disturbance have we now in the

house?” cried he, wreaking his resentful impatience—as a matter of

course, and a custom of old—on the one person in the world that loved

him. “I have never heard such a hateful clamor! Why do you permit it?

In the name of all dissonance, what can it be?”

It was very remarkable into what prominent relief—even as if a dim

picture should leap suddenly from its canvas—Clifford’s character was

thrown by this apparently trifling annoyance. The secret was, that an

individual of his temper can always be pricked more acutely through his

sense of the beautiful and harmonious than through his heart. It is

even possible—for similar cases have often happened—that if Clifford,

in his foregoing life, had enjoyed the means of cultivating his taste

to its utmost perfectibility, that subtile attribute might, before this

period, have completely eaten out or filed away his affections. Shall

we venture to pronounce, therefore, that his long and black calamity

may not have had a redeeming drop of mercy at the bottom?

“Dear Clifford, I wish I could keep the sound from your ears,” said

Hepzibah, patiently, but reddening with a painful suffusion of shame.

“It is very disagreeable even to me. But, do you know, Clifford, I have

something to tell you? This ugly noise,—pray run, Phœbe, and see who is

there!—this naughty little tinkle is nothing but our shop-bell!”

“Shop-bell!” repeated Clifford, with a bewildered stare.

“Yes, our shop-bell,” said Hepzibah, a certain natural dignity, mingled

with deep emotion, now asserting itself in her manner. “For you must

know, dearest Clifford, that we are very poor. And there was no other

resource, but either to accept assistance from a hand that I would push

aside (and so would you!) were it to offer bread when we were dying for

it,—no help, save from him, or else to earn our subsistence with my own

hands! Alone, I might have been content to starve. But you were to be

given back to me! Do you think, then, dear Clifford,” added she, with a

wretched smile, “that I have brought an irretrievable disgrace on the

old house, by opening a little shop in the front gable? Our

great-great-grandfather did the same, when there was far less need! Are

you ashamed of me?”

“Shame! Disgrace! Do you speak these words to me, Hepzibah?” said

Clifford,—not angrily, however; for when a man’s spirit has been

thoroughly crushed, he may be peevish at small offences, but never

resentful of great ones. So he spoke with only a grieved emotion. “It

was not kind to say so, Hepzibah! What shame can befall me now?”

And then the unnerved man—he that had been born for enjoyment, but had

met a doom so very wretched—burst into a woman’s passion of tears. It

was but of brief continuance, however; soon leaving him in a quiescent,

and, to judge by his countenance, not an uncomfortable state. From this

mood, too, he partially rallied for an instant, and looked at Hepzibah

with a smile, the keen, half-derisory purport of which was a puzzle to

her.

“Are we so very poor, Hepzibah?” said he.

Finally, his chair being deep and softly cushioned, Clifford fell

asleep. Hearing the more regular rise and fall of his breath (which,

however, even then, instead of being strong and full, had a feeble kind

of tremor, corresponding with the lack of vigor in his

character),—hearing these tokens of settled slumber, Hepzibah seized

the opportunity to peruse his face more attentively than she had yet

dared to do. Her heart melted away in tears; her profoundest spirit

sent forth a moaning voice, low, gentle, but inexpressibly sad. In this

depth of grief and pity she felt that there was no irreverence in

gazing at his altered, aged, faded, ruined face. But no sooner was she

a little relieved than her conscience smote her for gazing curiously at

him, now that he was so changed; and, turning hastily away, Hepzibah

let down the curtain over the sunny window, and left Clifford to

slumber there.

VIII.

The Pyncheon of To-day

Phœbe, on entering the shop, beheld there the already familiar face of

the little devourer—if we can reckon his mighty deeds aright—of Jim

Crow, the elephant, the camel, the dromedaries, and the locomotive.

Having expended his private fortune, on the two preceding days, in the

purchase of the above unheard-of luxuries, the young gentleman’s

present errand was on the part of his mother, in quest of three eggs

and half a pound of raisins. These articles Phœbe accordingly supplied,

and, as a mark of gratitude for his previous patronage, and a slight

super-added morsel after breakfast, put likewise into his hand a whale!

The great fish, reversing his experience with the prophet of Nineveh,

immediately began his progress down the same red pathway of fate

whither so varied a caravan had preceded him. This remarkable urchin,

in truth, was the very emblem of old Father Time, both in respect of

his all-devouring appetite for men and things, and because he, as well

as Time, after ingulfing thus much of creation, looked almost as

youthful as if he had been just that moment made.

After partly closing the door, the child turned back, and mumbled

something to Phœbe, which, as the whale was but half disposed of, she

could not perfectly understand.

“What did you say, my little fellow?” asked she.

“Mother wants to know” repeated Ned Higgins more distinctly, “how Old

Maid Pyncheon’s brother does? Folks say he has got home.”

“My cousin Hepzibah’s brother?” exclaimed Phœbe, surprised at this

sudden explanation of the relationship between Hepzibah and her guest.

“Her brother! And where can he have been?”

The little boy only put his thumb to his broad snub-nose, with that

look of shrewdness which a child, spending much of his time in the

street, so soon learns to throw over his features, however

unintelligent in themselves. Then as Phœbe continued to gaze at him,

without answering his mother’s message, he took his departure.

As the child went down the steps, a gentleman ascended them, and made

his entrance into the shop. It was the portly, and, had it possessed

the advantage of a little more height, would have been the stately

figure of a man considerably in the decline of life, dressed in a black

suit of some thin stuff, resembling broadcloth as closely as possible.

A gold-headed cane, of rare Oriental wood, added materially to the high

respectability of his aspect, as did also a neckcloth of the utmost

snowy purity, and the conscientious polish of his boots. His dark,

square countenance, with its almost shaggy depth of eyebrows, was

naturally impressive, and would, perhaps, have been rather stern, had

not the gentleman considerately taken upon himself to mitigate the

harsh effect by a look of exceeding good-humor and benevolence. Owing,

however, to a somewhat massive accumulation of animal substance about

the lower region of his face, the look was, perhaps, unctuous rather

than spiritual, and had, so to speak, a kind of fleshly effulgence, not

altogether so satisfactory as he doubtless intended it to be. A

susceptible observer, at any rate, might have regarded it as affording

very little evidence of the general benignity of soul whereof it

purported to be the outward reflection. And if the observer chanced to

be ill-natured, as well as acute and susceptible, he would probably

suspect that the smile on the gentleman’s face was a good deal akin to

the shine on his boots, and that each must have cost him and his

boot-black, respectively, a good deal of hard labor to bring out and

preserve them.

As the stranger entered the little shop, where the projection of the

second story and the thick foliage of the elm-tree, as well as the

commodities at the window, created a sort of gray medium, his smile

grew as intense as if he had set his heart on counteracting the whole

gloom of the atmosphere (besides any moral gloom pertaining to Hepzibah

and her inmates) by the unassisted light of his countenance. On

perceiving a young rose-bud of a girl, instead of the gaunt presence of

the old maid, a look of surprise was manifest. He at first knit his

brows; then smiled with more unctuous benignity than ever.

“Ah, I see how it is!” said he in a deep voice,—a voice which, had it

come from the throat of an uncultivated man, would have been gruff,

but, by dint of careful training, was now sufficiently agreeable,—“I

was not aware that Miss Hepzibah Pyncheon had commenced business under

such favorable auspices. You are her assistant, I suppose?”

“I certainly am,” answered Phœbe, and added, with a little air of

lady-like assumption (for, civil as the gentleman was, he evidently

took her to be a young person serving for wages), “I am a cousin of

Miss Hepzibah, on a visit to her.”

“Her cousin?—and from the country? Pray pardon me, then,” said the

gentleman, bowing and smiling, as Phœbe never had been bowed to nor

smiled on before; “in that case, we must be better acquainted; for,

unless I am sadly mistaken, you are my own little kinswoman likewise!

Let me see,—Mary?—Dolly?—Phœbe?—yes, Phœbe is the name! Is it possible

that you are Phœbe Pyncheon, only child of my dear cousin and

classmate, Arthur? Ah, I see your father now, about your mouth! Yes,

yes! we must be better acquainted! I am your kinsman, my dear. Surely

you must have heard of Judge Pyncheon?”

As Phœbe curtsied in reply, the Judge bent forward, with the pardonable

and even praiseworthy purpose—considering the nearness of blood and the

difference of age—of bestowing on his young relative a kiss of

acknowledged kindred and natural affection. Unfortunately (without

design, or only with such instinctive design as gives no account of

itself to the intellect) Phœbe, just at the critical moment, drew back;

so that her highly respectable kinsman, with his body bent over the

counter and his lips protruded, was betrayed into the rather absurd

predicament of kissing the empty air. It was a modern parallel to the

case of Ixion embracing a cloud, and was so much the more ridiculous as

the Judge prided himself on eschewing all airy matter, and never

mistaking a shadow for a substance. The truth was,—and it is Phœbe’s

only excuse,—that, although Judge Pyncheon’s glowing benignity might

not be absolutely unpleasant to the feminine beholder, with the width

of a street, or even an ordinary-sized room, interposed between, yet it

became quite too intense, when this dark, full-fed physiognomy (so

roughly bearded, too, that no razor could ever make it smooth) sought

to bring itself into actual contact with the object of its regards. The

man, the sex, somehow or other, was entirely too prominent in the

Judge’s demonstrations of that sort. Phœbe’s eyes sank, and, without

knowing why, she felt herself blushing deeply under his look. Yet she

had been kissed before, and without any particular squeamishness, by

perhaps half a dozen different cousins, younger as well as older than

this dark-browned, grisly-bearded, white-neck-clothed, and

unctuously-benevolent Judge! Then, why not by him?

On raising her eyes, Phœbe was startled by the change in Judge

Pyncheon’s face. It was quite as striking, allowing for the difference

of scale, as that betwixt a landscape under a broad sunshine and just

before a thunder-storm; not that it had the passionate intensity of the

latter aspect, but was cold, hard, immitigable, like a day-long

brooding cloud.

“Dear me! what is to be done now?” thought the country-girl to herself.

“He looks as if there were nothing softer in him than a rock, nor

milder than the east wind! I meant no harm! Since he is really my

cousin, I would have let him kiss me, if I could!”

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.