 CHAPTER XXI THE SUTTON DEATH OF SO PROMINANT A MEMBER OF THE SOCIAL WORLD AS THE HONORBLE Judge Jaffrey Pinchon created a sensation, at least in the circles more immediately connected with the deceased, which had hardly quite subsided in a fortnight. It may be remarked, however, that of all the events which constitute a person's biography, there is scarcely one, none certainly, of anything like a similar importance, to which the world so easily reconciles itself as to his death. In most other cases and contingencies the individual is present among us, mixed up with a daily revolution of affairs, and affording a definite point for observation. At his decease there is only a vacancy and a momentary eddy, very small, as compared with the apparent magnitude of the engurgitated object, and a bubble or two ascending out of the black depth and bursting at the surface. As regarded Judge Pinchon, it seemed probable, at first blush, that the mode of his final departure might give him a larger and longer posthumous vogue than ordinarily attends the memory of a distinguished man, but when it came to be understood, on the highest professional authority, that the event was a natural end, except for some unimportant particulars denoting a slight idiosyncrasy, by no means an unusual form of death, the public, with its customary alacrity, proceeded to forget that he had ever lived. In short, the honourable Judge was beginning to be a stale subject before half the country newspapers had found time to put their columns in mourning and publish his exceedingly eulogistic obituary. Nevertheless, creeping darkly through the places which this excellent person had haunted in his lifetime, there was a hidden stream of private talk, such as it would have shocked all decency to speak loudly at the street corners. It is very singular how the fact of a man's death often seems to give people a truer idea of his character, whether for good or evil, than they have ever possessed while he was living and acting among them. Death is so genuine a fact that it excludes falsehood, or betrays its emptiness. It is a touchstone that proves the gold and dishonours the baser-metal. Could the departed, whoever he may be, return in a week after his decease, he would almost invariably find himself at a higher or lower point than he had formally occupied, on the scale of public appreciation. But the talk, or scandal, to which we now allude, had reference to matters of no less old a date than the supposed murder 30 or 40 years ago of the late Judge Pinchon's uncle. The medical opinion with regard to his own recent and regretted decease had almost entirely obviated the idea that a murder was committed in the former case. Yet as the record showed, there were circumstances irrefragably indicating that some person had gained access to old Jeffrey Pinchon's private apartments, at or near the moment of his death. His desk and private drawers, in a room contiguous to his bed-chamber, had been ransacked. Money and valuable articles were missing. There was a bloody handprint on the old man's linen, and, by a powerfully welded chain of deductive evidence, the guilt of the robbery and apparent murder had been fixed on Clifford, then residing with his uncle in the house of the Seven Gables. Whensoever originating, there now arose a theory that undertook so to account for these circumstances as to exclude the idea of Clifford's agency, many persons affirm that the history and elucidation of the facts, long so mysterious, had been obtained by the daguerreotypist from one of those mesmerical seers who nowadays so strangely perplexed the aspect of human affairs, and put everybody's natural vision to the bush by the marvels which they see with their eyes shut. According to this version of the story, Judge Pinchon, exemplary as we have portrayed him in our narrative, was in his youth an apparently irreclaimable scape-grace, the brutish, the animal instincts, as is often the case, had been developed earlier than the intellectual qualities, and the force of character for which he was afterwards remarkable. He had shown himself wild, dissipated, addicted to low pleasures, little short of ruffianly in his propensities, and recklessly expensive, with no other resources than the bounty of his uncle. This course of conduct had alienated the old bachelor's affection once strongly fixed upon him. Now it is avert, but whether on authority available in a court of justice we do not pretend to have investigated, that the young man was tempted by the devil one night to search his uncle's private drawers to which he had unsuspected means of access. While thus criminally occupied, he was startled by the opening of the chamber-door. There stood old Jeffrey Pinchon in his night-clothes. The surprise of such a discovery, his agitation, alarm, and horror, brought on the crisis of a disorder to which the old bachelor had an hereditary liability. He seemed to choke with blood, and fell upon the floor, striking his temple a heavy blow against the corner of a table. What was to be done? The old man was surely dead. Once would come too late. What a misfortune indeed, should it come too soon, since his reviving consciousness would bring the recollection of the ignominious offense which he had beheld his nephew in the very act of committing. But he never did revive. With the cool hardy-hood that always pertained to him, the young man continued his search of the drawers, and found a will of recent date in favor of Clifford, which he destroyed, and an older one in his own favor, which he suffered to remain. But before retiring, Jeffrey bethought himself of the evidence in these ransacked drawers that someone had visited the chamber with sinister purposes. Suspicion, unless subverted, might fix upon the real offender. In the very presence of the dead man, therefore, he laid a scheme that should free himself at the expense of Clifford, his rival, for whose character he had at once a contempt and a repugnance. It is not probable, be it said, that he acted with any set purpose of involving Clifford in a charge of murder. Knowing that his uncle did not die by violence, it may not have occurred to him, in the hurry of the crisis, that such an inference might be drawn. But when the affair took this darker aspect, Jeffrey's previous steps had already pledged him to those which remained. So craftily had he arranged the circumstances, that at Clifford's trial, his cousin hardly found it necessary to swear to anything false, but only to withhold the one decisive explanation by refraining to state what he had himself done and witnessed. Thus Jaffrey Pinchon's inward criminality, as regarded Clifford, was indeed black and damnable, while its mere outward show and positive commission was the smallest that could possibly consist with so great a sin. This is just the sort of guilt that a man of eminent respectability finds it easiest to dispose of. It was suffered to fade out of sight, or be reckoned a venial matter, and the honourable Judge Pinchon's long, subsequent survey of his own life. He shuffled it aside among the forgotten and forgiven frailties of his youth, and seldom thought of it again. We leave the judge to his repose. He could not be styled fortunate at the hour of death. Unknowingly he was a childless man, while striving to add more wealth to his only child's inheritance. Only a week after his decease one of the Cunard steamers brought intelligence of the death by cholera of Judge Pinchon's son just at the point of embarkation for his native land. By this misfortune Clifford became rich. So did Hepsiba. So did our little village maiden, and through her, that sworn foe of wealth in all manner of conservatism, the wild reformer, Holgrave. It was now far too late in Clifford's life for the good opinion of society to be worth the trouble and anguish of a formal vindication. What he needed was the love of a very few, not the admiration, or even the respect of the unknown many. The latter might probably have been one for him, had those on whom the guardianship of his welfare had fallen deemed it advisable to expose Clifford to a miserable resuscitation of past ideas. In the condition of whatever comfort he might expect lay in the calm of forgetfulness. After such wrong as he had suffered, there is no reparation. The pitiable mockery of it, which the world might have been ready enough to offer, coming so long after the agony had done its utmost work, would have been fit only to provoke bitterer laughter than poor Clifford was ever capable of. It is a truth, and it would be a very sad one, but for the higher hopes which it suggests, that no great mistake, whether acted or endured in our mortal sphere, is ever really set right. Time, the continual vicissitude of circumstances, and the invariable inopportunity of death, render it impossible. If after long laps of years the right seems to be in our power, we find no niche to set it in. The better remedy is for the sufferer to pass on, and leave what he once thought his irreparable ruin far behind him. The shock of Judge Pinchon's death had a permanently invigorating and ultimately beneficial effect on Clifford. That strong and ponderous man had been Clifford's nightmare. There was no free breath to be drawn within the sphere of so malevolent an influence. The first effect of freedom, as we have witnessed in Clifford's aimless flight, was a tremulous exhilaration. Subsiding from it, he did not sink into his former intellectual apathy. He never, it is true, attained to nearly the full measure of what might have been his faculties. But he recovered enough of them partially to light up his character, to display some outline of the marvellous grace that was abortive in it, and to make him the object of no less deep, although less melancholy, interests than here to fore. He was evidently happy. Could we pause to give another picture of his daily life, with all the appliances now at command to gratify his instinct for the beautiful, the garden scenes that seem so sweet to him would look mean and trivial in comparison. Very soon, after their change of fortune, Clifford, Hepsiba, and little Phoebe, with the approval of the artist, concluded to remove from the dismal old house of the Seven Gables and take up their abode for the present at the elegant country seat of the late Judge Pinshawn. Chanticleer and his family had already been transported thither, where the two hands had forthwith begun an indefatigable process of egg-laying, with an evident design, as a matter of duty and conscience, to continue their illustrious breed under better auspices than for a century past. On the day set for their departure the principal personages of our story, including good Uncle Venner, were assembled in the parlor. The country house is certainly a very fine one, so far as the plan goes, observed whole grave as the party were discussing their future arrangements. But I wonder that the late Judge, being so opulent, and with a reasonable prospect of transmitting his wealth to descendants of his own, should not have felt the propriety of embodying so excellent a piece of domestic architecture in stone rather than in wood. Then every generation of the family might have altered the interior to suit its own taste and convenience, while the exterior, through the lapse of years, might have been adding venerableness to its original beauty, and thus giving that impression of permanence which I consider essential to the happiness of any one moment. Why, cried Phoebe, gazing into the artist's face with infinite amazement, how wonderfully your ideas have changed! A house of stone indeed! It is but two or three weeks ago that you seemed to wish people to live in something as fragile and temporary as a bird's nest. Ha! Ha! Phoebe! I told you how it would be, said the artist with a half melancholy laugh. You find me a conservative already. Little did I think ever to become one. It is especially unpardonable in this dwelling of so much hereditary misfortune, and under the eye of yonder portrait of a model conservative who in that very character rendered himself so long the evil destiny of his race. That picture, said Clifford, seeming to shrink from its stern glance, whenever I look at it there is an old dreamy recollection haunting me, but keeping just beyond the grasp of my mind. Wealth, it seems to say, boundless wealth, unimaginable wealth. I could fancy that, when I was a child or a youth, that portrait had spoken, and told me a rich secret, or had held forth its hand with a written record of hidden opulence. But these old matters are so dim with me nowadays. What could this dream have been? Perhaps I can recall it, answered Holgrave. See, there are a hundred chances to one that no person, unacquainted with the secret, would ever touch this spring. A secret spring! cried Clifford. Ah! I remember now. I did discover it one summer afternoon, when I was idling and dreaming about the house long, long ago. But the mystery escapes me. The artist put his finger on the contrivance to which he had referred. In former days the effect would probably have been to cause the picture to start forward. But in so long a period of concealment the machinery had been eaten through with rust, so that at Holgrave's pressure the portrait, frame and all, tumbled suddenly from its position and lay face downward on the floor. A recess in the wall was thus brought to light, in which lay an object so covered with a sentry's dust that it could not immediately be recognized as a folded sheet of parchment. Holgrave opened it and displayed an ancient deed, signed with the hieroglyphics of several Indian Sagamores, and conveying to Colonel Pinshawn and his heirs, forever, a vast extent of territory at the eastward. This is the very parchment, the attempt to recover which cost the beautiful Alice Pinshawn her happiness and life, said the artist, alluding to his legend. It is what the Pinshawn sought in vain, while it was valuable, and now that they find the treasure it is long been worthless. Poor cousin Jeffrey, this is what deceived him, exclaimed Hepsiba. When they were young together Clifford probably made a kind of fairy tale of this discovery. He was always dreaming hither and thither about the house, and lighting up its dark corners with beautiful stories. And poor Jeffrey, who took hold of everything as if it were real, thought my brother had found out his uncle's wealth. He died with this delusion in his mind. But, said Phoebe, apart to Holgrave, how came you to know the secret? My dearest Phoebe, said Holgrave, how will it please you to assume the name of Maul? As for the secret, it is the only inheritance that has come down to me from my ancestors. You should have known sooner, only that I was afraid of frightening you away, that in this long drama of wrong and retribution, I represent the old wizard, and in probably as much a wizard as ever he was. The son of the executed Matthew Maul, while building this house, took the opportunity to construct that recess, and hide away the Indian deed, on which depended the immense land claim of the Pinshawns. Thus they bartered their eastern territory from Maul's garden ground. And now, said Uncle Venner, I suppose their whole claim is not worth one man's share in my farm yonder. Uncle Venner, cried Phoebe, taking the patched philosopher's hand, you must never talk any more about your farm. You shall never go there as long as you live. There is a cottage in our new garden, the prettiest little yellowish-brown cottage you ever saw, and the sweetest-looking place, for it looks just as if it were made of gingerbread. And we are going to fit it up and furnish it on purpose for you. And you shall do nothing but what you choose, and shall be as happy as the day is long, and shall keep cousin Clifford in spirits with the wisdom and pleasantness which is always dropping from your lips. Ah, my dear child, quote good Uncle Venner, quite overcome, if you were to speak to a young man as you'll do to an old one, his chance of keeping his heart another minute would not be worth one of the buttons on my waistcoat, and so alive that great sigh which you made me heave, has burst off the very last of them. But never mind, it was the happiest sigh I ever did heave, and it seems as if I must have drawn in a gulp of heavenly breath to make it with. Well, well, Miss Phoebe, they'll miss me in the gardens hereabouts, and round by the back doors, and pinch on street, I'm afraid, we'll hardly look the same without old Uncle Venner, who remembers it with a mowing-field on one side, and the garden of the seven gables on the other. But either I must go to your country-seat, or you must come to my farm. That's one of two things certain, and I leave you to choose which. Oh, come with us by all means, Uncle Venner, said Clifford, who had a remarkable enjoyment of the old man's mellow, quiet, and simple spirit. I want you always to be within five minutes' saunter of my chair. You are the only philosopher I ever knew of whose wisdom has not a drop of bitter essence at the bottom." "'Dear me!' cried Uncle Venner, beginning partly to realize what manner of man he was. And yet folks used to set me down among the simple ones in my younger days. But I suppose I am like a Roxbury Russet. A great deal the better, the longer I can be kept. Yes, and my words of wisdom that you and Phoebe tell me of are like the golden dandelions, which never grow in the hot months, but may be seen glistening among the withered grass in under the dry leaves, sometimes as late as December. And you are welcome friends to my mess of dandelions if there were twice as many.'" A plain but handsome dark-green barouche had now drawn up in front of the ruinous portal of the old mansion-house. The party came forth, and, with the exception of good Uncle Venner, who was to follow in a few days, proceeded to take their places. They were chatting and laughing very pleasantly together, and, as proves to be often the case, at moments when we ought to palpitate with sensibility, Clifford and Hepsiba bade a final farewell to the abode of their forefathers, with hardly more emotion than if they had made it their arrangement to return thither at tea-time. Several children were drawn to the spot by so unusual a spectacle as the barouche and pair of gray horses. Recognizing little Ned Higgins among them, Hepsiba put her hand into her pocket, and presented the urchin, her earliest and staunchest customer, with silver enough to people the domedennial cavern of his interior, with his various a procession of quadrupeds as passed into the ark. Two men were passing, just as the barouche drove off. "'Well, Dixie,' said one of them, "'what do you think of this? My wife kept the scent shop three months, and lost five dollars on her outlay. Old maid Pinchon has been in trade just about as long, and rides off in her carriage with a couple of hundred thousand, reckoning her share and Clifford's and Phoebe's, and some say twice as much. If you choose to call it luck, it is all very well. But if we are to take it as the will of Providence, why, I can't exactly fathom it.' "'Pretty good business,' quoth the sagacious Dixie, "'pretty good business.'" It rolls well all this time, though left in solitude was throwing up a succession of kaleidoscopic pictures in which a gifted eye might have seen foreshadowed the coming fortunes of Hepsiba and Clifford, and the descendant of the legendary wizard and the village maiden over whom he had thrown love's web of sorcery. The Pinchon Elm, moreover, with what foliage the September Gale had spared to it, spurred unintelligible prophecies, and wise Uncle Venner, passing slowly from the ruinous porch, seemed to hear a strain of music, and fancied that sweet Alice Pinchon, after witnessing these deeds this bygone woe and this present happiness of her kindred mortals, had given one farewell touch of a spirit's joy upon her harpsichord, as she floated heavenward from the house of the seven gables. End of chapter, end of book. Thank you for listening.