 Chapter 18 of the House of the Seven Gables Governor Pynchon Judge Pynchon, while his two relatives have fled away with such ill-considered haste, still sits in the old parlor keeping house as the familiar phrase is, in the absence of its ordinary occupants. To him and to the venerable house of the Seven Gables does our story now but take itself, like an owl bewildered in the daylight and hastening back to his hollow tree. The judge has not shifted his position for a long while now. He has not stirred hand or foot, nor withdrawn his eyes so much as a haired's breath from their fixed gaze toward the corner of the room. Since the footsteps of Hepsibon Clifford creaked along the passage, and the outer door was closed cautiously behind their exit, he holds his watch in his left hand, but clutched in such a manner that you cannot see the dial plate. How profound a fit of meditation, or supposing him asleep, how infantile a quietude of conscience, and what wholesome order the gastric region are betokened by slumber so entirely undisturbed with starts, cramped witches, muttered dream talk, trumpet blasts through the nasal organ, or any slightest irregularity of breath. You must hold your own breath to satisfy yourself whether he breathes at all. It is quite inaudible. You hear the ticking of his watch, his breath you do not hear, a most refreshing slumber doubtless, and yet the judge cannot be asleep. His eyes are open. A veteran politician such as he would never fall asleep with wide open eyes, lest some enemy or mischief maker, taking him thus at unawares, should peep through these windows into his consciousness and make strange discoveries among the reminiscences, projects, hopes, apprehensions, weaknesses, and strong points, which he has here to foreshared with nobody. A cautious man is proverbially said to sleep with one eye open. That may be wisdom, but not with both. For this were heedlessness. No, no. Judge Pinchin cannot be asleep. It is odd, however, that a gentleman so burdened with engagements, and noted due propunctuality, should linger thus in an old, lonely mansion which he has never seemed fond of visiting. The oaken chair, to be sure, may tempt him with its roominess. It is indeed a spacious and allowing for the rude age that fashioned it, a moderately easy seat with capacity enough at all events, and offering no restraint to the judge's breath of being. A bigger man might find ample accommodation in it. His ancestor, now pictured upon the wall with all his English beef about him, used hardly to present a front extending from elbow to elbow at this chair, or a base that would cover its old cushion, but there are better chairs than this. Mahogany, black walnut, rosewood, spring seated, and a mask cushioned, with various slopes and innumerable artifices to make them easy, and obviate the irksomeness of two tame and ease. A score of such might be a Judge Pinchin service. Yes, in a score of drawing rooms he would be more than welcome. Mama would advance to meet him without stretched hand. The virgin daughter, elderly as he has now got to be, an old widower as he smilingly describes himself, would shake up the cushion for the judge, and do her pretty utmost to make him comfortable. For the judge is a prosperous man. He cherishes his schemes, moreover, like other people, and reasonably brighter than most others, or did so at least as he lay a bed this morning in an agreeable half-drowse, planning the business of the day and speculating on the probabilities of the next fifteen years. With his firm health, and the little in-road that age has made upon him, fifteen years or twenty years, or perhaps five and twenty, are no more than he may fairly call his own. Five and twenty years for the enjoyment of his real estate in town and country, his railroad bank and insurance shares, his United States stock, his wealth in short, however invested, now in possession, or soon to be acquired, together with the public honors, that have fallen upon him, and the weightier ones that are yet to fall. It is good. It is excellent. It is enough. Still lingering in the old chair. If the judge has a little time to throw away, why does he not visit the insurance office, as is his frequent custom, and sit a while in one of their leather and cushioned arm chairs, listening to the gossip of the day, and dropping some deeply designed chance word, which will be certain to become the gossip of tomorrow? And have not the bank directors a meeting at which it was the judge's purpose to be present, and his office to preside? Indeed they have, and the hour is noted on a card, which is, or ought to be, in Judge Pinchin's right vest pocket. Let him go thither, and lull at ease upon his money bags. He has lounged long enough in the old chair. This was to have been such a busy day. In the first place, the interview with Clifford, half an hour by the judge's reckoning was to suffice for that, it would probably be less, but taking into consideration that Hepsaba was first to be dealt with, and that these women are apt to make many words, where a few would do much better, it might be safer to allow half an hour. Half an hour? Why, Judge, it is already two hours by your own, undeviatingly accurate chronometer. Glance your eye down at it and see. Ah, he will not give himself the trouble either to bend his head or elevate his hand so as to bring the faithful timekeeper within his range of vision. Time all at once appears to have become a matter of no moment with the judge. And has he forgotten all the other items of his memoranda? Clifford's affair arranged. He was to meet a state street broker who has undertaken to procure a heavy percentage, and the best of paper, for a few loose thousands, which the judge happens to have by him, uninvested. The wrinkled noteshaver will have taken his railroad trip in Bane. Half an hour later, in the street next to this, there was to be an auction of real estate, including a portion of the old pension property, originally belonging to Mall's garden ground. It has been alienated from the pensions these four score gears, but the judge had kept it in his eye, and had set his heart on re-annexing it to the small Domesna still left around the seven gables. And now, during this odd fit of oblivion, the fatal hammer must have fallen and transferred our ancient patrimony to some alien possessor. Possibly, indeed, the sale may have been postponed till fairer weather. If so, will the judge make it convenient to be present and favour the auctioneer with his bid on the proximate occasion? The next affair was to buy a horse for his own driving. The one here to four, his favourite, stumbled this very morning on the road to town. It must be at once discarded. Judge Pynchon's neck is too precious to be risked on such a contingency as a stumbling steed. Should all the above business be seasonably got through with, he might attend the meeting of a charitable society. The very name of which, however, in the multiplicity of his benevolence is quite forgotten, so that this engagement may pass unfulfilled and no great harm done. And if he have time, amid the press of more urgent matters, he must take measures for the renewal of Mrs. Pynchon's tombstone, which the sexton tells him, has fallen on its marble face and cracked quite entwain. She was appraised worthy woman enough, thinks the judge, in spite of her nervousness, and the tears that she was so oozy with, and her foolish behaviour about the coffee. And as she took her departure so seasonably, he will not grudge the second tombstone. It is better, at least, than if she had never needed any. The next item on his list was to give orders for some fruit trees of a rare variety to be delivered at his country's seat in the ensuing autumn. Yes, buy them by all means, and may the peaches be luscious in your mouth, Judge Pynchon. After this comes something more important. A committee of his political party has besought him for a hundred or two of dollars, in addition to his previous disbursements, towards carrying on the fall campaign. The judge is a patriot. The fate of the country is staked on the November election. And besides, as will be shadowed forth in another paragraph, he has no trifling stake of his own in the same great game. He will do what the committee asks, and hey, he will be liberal beyond their expectations. They shall have a check for five hundred dollars, and more anon if it be needed. What next? A decayed widow, whose husband was Judge Pynchon's early friend, has laid her case of destitution before him in a very moving letter. She and her fair daughter have scarcely bred to eat. He partly intends to call on her to-day. Perhaps so. Perhaps not. Accordingly, as he may happen to have leisure, and a small bake-note. Another business which, however, he puts no great weight on, it is, well, you know, to be heedful but not over-anxious as respects one's personal health. Another business, then, was to consult his family physician. About what, for heaven's sake, why it is rather difficult to describe the symptoms? A mere dimness of sight and dizziness of brain, was it? Or disagreeable choking, or stifling, or gurgling, or bubbling in the region of the thorax, as the anatomists say? Or was it a pretty severe throbbing and kicking of the heart, rather creditable to him than otherwise, as showing that the organ had not been left out of the judge's physical contrivance? No matter what it was, the doctor probably would smile at the statement of such trifles to his professional ear. The judge would smile in his turn, and, meeting one another's eyes, they would enjoy a hearty laugh together. But a fig for medical advice, the judge will never need it. Pray, pray, Judge Pinchin, look at your watch now. What? Not a glance? It is within ten minutes of the dinner hour. It surely cannot have slipped your memory that the dinner of today is to be the most important in its consequences of all the dinners you ever ate. Yes, precisely the most important, although in the course of your somewhat eminent career you have been placed high towards the head of the table at splendid banquets, and have poured out your festive eloquence to ears yet echoing with Webster's mighty organ tones. No public dinner this, however. It is merely a gathering of some dozen or so of friends from several districts of the state. Men are distinguished character and influence, assembling, almost casually, at the house of a common friend, likewise distinguished, who will make them welcome to a little better than his ordinary fare. Nothing in the way of French cookery, but an excellent dinner, nevertheless. Real turtle, we understand, and salmon, tartar, canvas bags, pig, English mutton, good roast beef, or dainties of that serious kind. Fit for substantial country gentlemen, as these honorable persons mostly are, the delicacies of the season, in short, and flavored by a brand of old madera which has been the pride of many seasons. It is the Juno brand, a glorious wine, fragrant and full of gentle might, a bottled up happiness put by for use. A golden liquid worth more than liquid gold so rare and admirable that veteran wine-bibbers count it among their epochs to have tasted it. It drives away the heartache and substitutes no headache. Could the judge but quaff a glass it might enable him to shake off the unaccountable lethargy which, for the ten intervening minutes and five to boot are already passed, has made him such a laggard at this momentous dinner. It would all but revive a dead man. Would you like to sip it now, Judge Pinchon? Alas, this dinner. Have you really forgotten its true object? Then let us whisper it that you might start at once out of the oaken chair which really seems to be enchanted like the one in commas, or that in which Maldpitcher imprisoned your own grandfather. But ambition is a talisman more powerful than witchcraft. Start up then, and hurrying through the streets burst in upon the company that they may begin before the fish is spoiled. They wait for you, and it is little for your interest that they should wait. These gentlemen, need you be told it, have assembled not without purpose from every quarter of the state. They are practiced politicians, every man of them, and skilled to adjust those preliminary measures which steal from the people without its knowledge the power of choosing its own rulers. The popular voice at the next gubernatorial election, though loud as thunder, will be really but an echo of what these gentlemen shall speak unto their breath at your friend's festive board. They need to decide upon their candidate. This little knot of subtle schemers will control the convention and through it dictate to the party. And what worthier candidate? More wise and learned, more noted for felinthropic liberality. Pureer to safe principles, tried often by public trusts, more spotless in private character with a larger stake in the common welfare, and deeper grounded by hereditary descent in the faith and practice of the Puritans. What man can be presented for the suffrage of the people, so eminently combining all these claims to the chief rulership as Judge Pynchon here before us? Make haste then, do your part. The mead for which you have toiled and fought and climbed and crept is ready for your grasp. Be present at this dinner. Drink a glass or two of that noble wine. Make your pledges in as low a whisper as you will, and you rise up from table virtually governor of the glorious old state. Governor Pynchon of Massachusetts. And is there no potent and exhilarating cordial in a certainty like this? It has been the grand purpose of half your lifetime to obtain it. Now, when there needs little more than to signify your acceptance, why do you sit so lumpishly in your great-great grandfather's oaken chair as if preferring it to the gubernatorial one? We have all heard of King Log, but in these chostling times one of that royal kindred will hardly win the race for an elective chief magistracy. Well, it is absolutely too late for dinner. Turtle, salmon, tau-tog, woodcock, boiled turkey, south-down, mutton-pig roast-beef have vanished or exist only in fragments with lukewarm potatoes and gravies crested over with cold fat. The judge, had he done nothing else, would have achieved wonders with his knife and fork. It was he, you know, of whom it used to be said in reference to his ogre-like appetite, that his creator made him a great animal, but that the dinner-hour made him a great beast. Persons of his large, sensual endowments must claim indulgence at their feeding time. But for once the judge is entirely too late for dinner. Too late we fear even to join the party at their wine. The guests are warm and merry. They have given up the judge, and concluding that the free soillers have him they will fix upon another candidate. Were our friend now to stalk in among them with that wide open stair, at once wild and stolid, his ungenial presence would be apt to change their cheer. Neither would it be seemly in Judge Pinchon generally so scrupulous in his attire to show himself at a dinner-table with that crimson stain upon his shirt-bosom. By the by, how came it there? It is an ugly sight at any rate, and the wisest way for the judge is to button his coat closely over his breast and taking his horse and chase from the livery-stable to make all speed to his own house. There, after a glass of brandy and water, and a mutton chop, a beef steak, a broiled fowl, or some such hasty little dinner and supper all in one, he had better spend the evening by the fireside. He must toast his slippers long while in order to get rid of the chillness which the air of this vile old house has sent curdling through his veins. Up, therefore, Judge Pinchon, up! You have lost a day. But tomorrow will be here and on. Will you rise, be times, and make the most of it? Tomorrow, tomorrow, tomorrow. We that are alive may rise, be times, tomorrow. As for him that has died today, his tomorrow will be the resurrection born. Meanwhile the twilight is glooming upward out of the corners of the room. The shadows of the tall furniture grow deeper, and at first become more definite. Then, spreading wider, they lose their distinctness of outline in the dark grey tide of oblivion, as it were, that creeps slowly over the various objects, and the one human figure sitting in the midst of them. The gloom has not entered from without. It has brooded here all day, and now, taking its own inevitable time, will possess itself of everything. The judge's face, indeed rigid and singularly white, refuses to melt into this universal solvent. Fainter and fainter grows the light. It is as if another double handful of darkness had been scattered through the air. Now it is no longer grey but sable. There is still a faint appearance at the window, neither a glow nor gleam nor glimmer. Any phrase of light would express something far brighter than this doubtful perception, or sense, rather, that there is a window there. Has it yet vanished? No, yes, not quite, and there is still the swarthy whiteness. We shall venture to marry these ill-agreeing words, the swarthy whiteness of Judge Pynchon's face. The features are all gone, there is only the paleness of them left. And how looks it now? There is no window, there is no face. An infinite, inscrutable blackness has annihilated sight, whereas our universe, all crumbled away from us, and we, adrift in chaos, may hearken to the gusts of homeless wind that go sighing and murmuring about in quest of what was once a world. Is there no other sound? One other, and a fearful one. It is the ticking of the Judge's watch, which ever since Hebsaba left the room in search of Clifford, he has been holding in his hand. Be the cause what it may. This little quiet, never-ceasing throb of time's pulse, repeating its small strokes with such busy regularity in Judge Pynchon's motionless hand, has an effect of terror which we do not find in any other accompaniment of the scene. But listen, that puff of the breeze was louder. It had a tone unlike the dreary and sullen one which has bemoaned itself, and afflicted all mankind with miserable sympathy for five days past. The wind has veered about. It now comes boisterously from the northwest, and taking hold of the aged framework of the Seven Gables gives it a shake, like a wrestler that would try strength with his antagonist. Another and another sturdy tussle with the blast. The old house creaks again, and makes a vociferous but somewhat unintelligible bellowing in its sooty throat. The big flu we mean of its wide chimney. Partly in complaint at the rude wind, but rather as befits their sentry in a half of hostile intimacy, in tough defiance, a rumbling kind of a bluster roars behind the fireboard. The door has slammed above stairs. A window, perhaps, has been left open, or else is driven in by an unruly gust. It is not to be conceived beforehand what wonderful wind instruments are these old timber mansions, and now haunted with the strangest noises, which immediately began to sing and sigh and sob and shriek, and to smite with sledge-hammer's airy but ponderous in some distant chamber, and to tread along the entries as with stately footsteps and rustle up and down the staircase as with silks miraculously stiff, whenever the gale catches the house with a window open and gets fairly into it. Would that we were not an attendant spirit here? It is too awful. The clamour of the wind through the lonely house, the judge's quietude as he sits invisible, and that pertinacious ticking of his watch. As regards Judge Pynchon's invisibility, however, that matter will soon be remedied. The northwest wind has swept the sky clear. The window is distinctly seen. Through its pains, moreover, we dimly catch the sweep of the dark, clustering foliage outside, fluttering with a constant irregularity of movement, and letting in a peep of starlight, now here, now there. Offener than any other object, these glimpses illuminate the judge's face. But here comes the more effectual light. Observe that silvery dance upon the upper branches of the pear tree, and now a little lower, and now on the whole mass of boughs, while through their shifting intricacies, the moonbeams fall a slant into the room. They play over the judge's figure, and show that he has not stirred throughout the hours of darkness. They follow the shadows in changeful sport across his unchanging features. They gleam upon his watch. His grasp conceals the dial plate, but we know that the faithful hands have met, for one of the city clocks tells midnight. A man of sturdy understanding like Judge Pynchon cares no more for twelve o'clock at night than for the corresponding hour of noon. However, just the parallel drawn in some of the preceding pages between his Puritan ancestor and himself, it fails in this point. The Pynchon of two centuries ago, in common with most of his contemporaries, professed his full belief in spiritual ministrations, although reckoning them chiefly of a malignant character. The Pynchon of tonight, who sits in yonder armchair, believes in no such nonsense. Such, at least, was his creed some few hours since. His hair will not bristle, therefore, the stories, which, in times when chimney corners had benches in them, where old people sat poking into the ashes of the past, and raking out traditions like live coals, used to be told about this very room of his ancestral house. In fact, these tales are too absurd to bristle even childhood's hair. What sense, meaning or moral, for example, such as even ghost stories should be susceptible of, can be traced in the ridiculous legend that at midnight all the dead Pynchons are bound to assemble in this parlour? And pray for what? Why, to see whether the portrait of their ancestor still keeps its place upon the wall in compliance with his testamentary directions? Is it worth while to come out of their graves for that? We are tempted to make a little sport with the idea. Ghost stories are hardly to be treated seriously any longer. The family party at the defunct Pynchons, we presume, goes off in this wise. First comes the ancestor himself in his black cloak, steeple hat, and trunk-breaches, girt about the waist with a leathern belt in which hangs his steel-hilted sword. He has a long staff in his hand, such as gentlemen in advanced life used to carry, as much for the dignity of the thing as for the support to be derived from it. He looks up at the portrait, a thing of no substance, gazing at its own painted image. All is safe. The picture is still there. The purpose of his brain has been kept sacred thus long after the man himself has sprouted up in graveyard grass. See, he lifts his ineffectual hand and tries the frame. All safe. But is that a smile? Is it not rather a frown of deadly import that darkens over the shadow of his features? The stout colonel is dissatisfied. So decided is his look of discontent as to impart additional distinctness to his features, through which nevertheless the moonlight passes and flickers on the wall beyond. Something has strangely vexed the ancestor. With a grim shake of the head he turns away. Here come other pensions, the whole tribe and their half a dozen generations jostling and elbowing one another to reach the picture. We behold aged men and grandams, a clergyman with a puritanic stiffness still in his garb and mane, and a red-coated officer of the old French war. And there comes the shopkeeping pinching of a century ago with the ruffles turned back from his wrists. And there the peri-wiged and brocaded gentleman of the artist's legend with the beautiful and pensive Alice who brings no pride out of her virgin grave. All try the picture frame. What do these ghostly people seek? A mother lifts her child that his little hand may touch it. There is evidently a mystery about the picture that perplexes these poor pensions when they ought to be at rest. In a corner, meanwhile, stands the figure of an elderly man in a leathered jerkin and breeches with a carpenter's rule sticking out of his side pocket. He points his finger at the bearded colonel and his descendants, nodding, jeering, mocking, and finally bursting into obstreporous though inaudible laughter. Indulging our fancy in this freak, we have partly lost the power of restraint and guidance. We distinguish an unlooked-for figure in our visionary scene. Among those ancestral people there was a young man, dressed in the very fashion of today. He wears a dark frock coat, almost destitute of skirts, grey pantaloons, gator boots of patent leather, and has a finely wrought gold chain across his breast, and a little silver-headed whale bone stick in his hand. Were we to meet this figure at noon-day, we should greet him as young Jeffrey Pynchon, the judge's only surviving child, who has been spending the last two years in foreign travel. If still in life, how comes his shadow hither? If dead, what a misfortune! The old Pynchon property, together with the great estate acquired by the young man's father, would devolve on whom? Unpoor, foolish Clifford, gaunt Hepsiba, and rustic little Phoebe. But another and a greater marvel greets us. Can we believe our eyes? A stout, elderly gentleman has made his appearance. He has an aspect of eminent respectability, wears a black coat and pantaloons of roomy width, and might be pronounced scrupulously neat in his attire, but for a broad crimson stain across his snowy neck-cloth and down his shirt-buzzle. Is it the judge or no? How can it be, Judge Pynchon? We discern his figure as plainly as the flickering moonbeams can show us anything still seated in the oaken chair. Be the apparition whose it may, it advances to the picture, seems to seize the frame, tries to peep behind it, and turns away with a frown as black as the ancestral one. The fantastic scene just hinted at must by no means be considered as forming an actual portion of our story. We were betrayed into this brief extravagance by the quiver of the moonbeams. They danced hand in hand with shadows, and are reflected in the looking-glass which, you are aware, is always a kind of window or doorway into the spiritual world. We needed relief, moreover, from our too-long and exclusive contemplation of that figure in the chair. This wild wind, too, has tossed our thoughts into strange confusion, but without tearing them away from their one determined centre, yonder-ledden judge sits immovably upon our soul. Will he never stir again? We shall go mad unless he stirs. You may the better estimate his quietude by the fearlessness of a little mouse, which sits on its hind legs in a streak of moonlight, close by Judge Pynchon's foot, and seems to meditate a journey of exploration over this great black bulk. Ha! What has startled the nimble little mouse? Is it the visage of Grimalcon outside of the window where he appears to have posted himself for a deliberate watch? This Grimalcon has a very ugly look. It is a cat watching for a mouse, or the devil for a human soul. What we could scare him from the window? Thank heaven the night is well nigh past. The moonbeams have no longer so silvery a gleam nor contrast so strongly with the blackness of the shadows among which they fall. They are paler now. The shadows look grey, not black. The boisterous wind is hushed. What is the hour? The watch has at last ceased to tick, for the judges forgetful fingers neglected to wind it up as usual at ten o'clock, being half an hour or so before his ordinary bedtime, and it has run down for the first time in five years. But the great world clock of time still keeps its beat. The dreary night, for oh how dreary seems its haunted waist behind us, gives place to a fresh, transparent, cloudless morn. Blessed, blessed radiance. The day-beam, even what little of it finds its way into this always dusky parlor, seems part of the universal benediction and ulling evil and rendering all goodness possible and happiness attainable. Will Judge Pinchin now rise up from his chair? Will he go forth and receive the early sunbeams on his brow? Will he begin this new day which God has smiled upon and blessed and given to mankind? Will he begin it with better purposes than the many that have been spent amiss? Or are all the deep-laid schemes of yesterday as stubborn in his heart and as busy in his brain as ever? In this latter case there is much to do. Will the Judge still insist with Hepsaba on the interview with Clifford? Will he buy a safe, elderly gentleman's horse? Will he persuade the purchaser of the old Pinchin property to relinquish the bargain in his favour? Will he see his family physician and obtain a medicine that shall preserve him to be an honour and blessing to his race until the utmost term of patriarchal longevity? Will Judge Pinchin above all make due apologies to that company of honourable friends and satisfy them that his absence from the festive board was unavoidable and so fully retrieve himself and their good opinion that he shall yet be Governor of Massachusetts? And all these great purposes accomplished? Will he walk the streets again with that dog-day smile of elaborate benevolence sultry enough to tempt flies to come and buzz in it? Or will he, after the tomb-like seclusion of the past day and night, go forth a humbled and repentant man, sorrowful, gentle, seeking no profit, shrinking from worldly honour, hardly daring to love God, but bold to love his fellow man, and to do him what good he may? Will he bear about with him no odious grin of feigned benignity, insolent in its pretense, and loathsome in its falsehood? But the tender sadness of a contrite heart broken at last beneath its own weight of sin? For it is our belief, whatever show of honour he may have piled upon it, that there was heavy sin at the base of this man's being. Rise up, Judge Pinchin! The morning sunshine glimmers through the foliage and beautiful and holy as it is shuns not to kindle up your face. Rise up, thou subtle, worldly, selfish, iron-hearted hypocrite, and make thy choice whether still to be subtle, worldly, selfish, iron-hearted, and hypocritical, or to tear these sins out of thy nature, though they bring the lifeblood with them. The avenger is upon thee. Rise up before it is too late. What? Thou art not stirred by this last appeal? No, not a jot. And there we see a fly, one of your common-house flies, such as are always buzzing on the window-pane, which has smelt out Governor Pinchin, and alights now on his forehead. Now on his chin, and now heaven help us as creeping over the bridge of his nose towards the would-be chief magistrate's wide-open eyes. Can't thou not brush the fly away? Aren't thou too sluggish? Thou man that has so many busy projects yesterday? Aren't thou too weak, that was so powerful? Not brush away a fly? Nay, then we give thee up, and hark the shop-bell rings. After hours like these latter ones through which we have borne our heavy tale, it is good to be made sensible that there is a living world, and that even this old, lonely mansion retains some manner of connection with it. We breathe more freely, emerging from Judge Pinchin's presence, into the street before the Seven Gables. For more information or to volunteer, please go to LibriVox.org Recording by Madeira The House of the Seven Gables by Nathaniel Hawthorne Chapter 19 Alice's Poses Uncle Venner, trundling a wheel-barrow, was the earliest person stirring in the neighborhood the day after the storm. Pinchin Street, in front of the House of the Seven Gables, was a far pleasenter scene than a by-lane, confined by shabby fences and bordered with wooden dwellings of the meaner class, could reasonably be expected to present. Nature made sweet amends that morning for the five unkindly days which had preceded it. It would have been enough to live for merely to look up at the wide benediction of the sky, or as much of it as was visible between the houses. Genial once more was sunshine. Every object was agreeable, whether to be gazed at in the bread or examined more malutely. Such, for example, were the well-washed pebbles and gravel of the sidewalk, even the sky reflecting pools in the center of the street, and the grass now freshly verdant that crept along the base of the fences, on the other side of which, if one peeped over, was the multifarious growth of gardens. Vegetable productions of whatever kind seemed more than negatively happy in the juicy warmth and abundance of their life. The pension-elm throughout its great circumference was all alive and full of the morning sun and a sweet-tempered little breeze which lingered within this verdant sphere and set a thousand leafy tongues a-whispering all at once. This agentry appeared to have suffered nothing from the gale. It had kept its boughs unshattered and its full complement of leaves, all in perfect verdure, except a single branch that by the earlier change with which the elm tree sometimes prophesies the autumn had been transmuted to bright gold. It was like the golden branch that gained an earse and the cybil admittance into eighties. This one mystic branch hung down before the main entrance of the seven gables, so nigh the ground that any passerby might have stood on tiptoe and plucked it off. Presented at the door, it would have been a symbol of his right to enter and been made acquainted with all the secrets at the house. So little faith is due to external appearance that there was really an inviting aspect over the venerable edifice, conveying an idea that its history must be a decorous and happy one and such as would be delightful for a fireside tale. Its windows gleamed cheerfully in the slanting sunlight. The gardens and tufts of green moss here and there seemed pledges of familiarity and sisterhood with nature, as if this human dwelling place, being of such old date, had established its prescriptive title among primeval oaks and whatever other objects, by virtue of their long continuance, have acquired a gracious right to be. A person of imaginative temperament while passing by the house would turn once and again and peruse it well, with many peaks consenting together in the clustered chimney, the deep projection over its basement story, the arched window imparting a look, if not of grandeur, yet of antique gentility to the broken portal over which it opened, the luxurience of gigantic bird oaks near the threshold. He would note all these characteristics and be conscious of something deeper than he saw. He could see the mansion to have been the residence of the stubborn old Puritan, integrity who, dying in some forgotten generation, had left a blessing in all its rooms and chambers, the efficacy of which was to be seen in the religion, honesty, moderate competence, or upright poverty and solid happiness of his descendants to this day. One object above all others would take root in the imaginative observer's memory. It was the great tuft of flowers, weeds you would have called them only a week ago, the tuft of crimson-spotted flowers in the angle between the two front gables. The old people used to give them the name of Alice's posies in remembrance of fair Alice Pinchin, who was believed to have brought their seed from Italy. They were flaunting in rich beauty and full bloom today, and seemed, as it were, a mystic expression that something within the house was consummated. It was but little after sunrise when Uncle Venner made his appearance, as aforesaid, impelling a wheelbarrow along the street. He was going his matitudinal rounds to collect cabbage leaves, turnip tops, potato skins, and the miscellaneous refuse of the dinner pot, which the thrifty housewives of the neighborhood were accustomed to put aside, as fit only to feed a pig. Uncle Venner's pig was fed entirely and kept in prime order on these elimocinary contributions. In so much that the patched philosopher used to promise that, before retiring to his farm, he would make a feast of the portly grunter and invite all his neighbors to partake of the joints and spare rooms, which they had helped to fatten. Miss Hepsaba Pinchin's housekeeping had so greatly improved, since Clifford became a member of the family that her share of the banquet would have been no lean one, and Uncle Venner, accordingly, was a good deal disappointed not to find the large earthen pan full of fragmentary eatables that ordinarily awaited his coming at the back doorstep of the seven gables. I never knew Miss Hepsaba so forgetful before, said the patriarch to himself. She must have had a dinner to-day. No question of that. She always has one nowadays. So where's the potlicker and potato skins, I ask? Shall I knock and see if she's stirring yet? No, no, won't do. If little Phoebe was about the house, I should not mind knocking, but Miss Hepsaba, likely as not, was scowled down at me out to the window and look cross even if she felt pleasantly. So I'll come back at noon. With these reflections the old man was shutting the gate of the little backyard. Creaking on its hinges, however, like every other gate and door about the premises, the sound reached the ears of the occupant of the northern gable, one of the windows of which had a side view towards the gate. Good morning, Uncle Venner, said the Degario typist, leaning out of the window. Do you hear nobody stirring? Not a soul, said the man of patches. But that's no wonder. It's barely half an hour past sunrise yet. But I'm really glad to see you, Mr. Haldgrave. There's a strange, lonesome look about this side of the house, so that my heart misgave me somehow or other and I felt as if there was nobody alive in it. The front of the house looks a good deal cheerier and Alice's posies are blooming there beautifully and if I were a young man, Mr. Haldgrave, a sweet arch should have one of those flowers in her bosom, though I risked my neck climbing for it. Well, and did the wind keep you awake last night? It did indeed, answered the artist smiling. If I were a believer in ghosts and I don't quite know whether I am or not, I should have concluded that all the old pinchings were running riot in the lower rooms, especially Miss Hepsiba's part of the house, but it is very quiet now. Yes, Miss Hepsiba will be up to oversleep herself after being disturbed all night with the racket," said Uncle Venner. But it would be odd now, wouldn't it, if the judge had taken both his cousins into the country along with him? I saw him go into the shop yesterday. At what hour? inquired Haldgrave. All along in the forenoon, said the old man, Well, well, I must go my rounds and so must my wheelbarrow. But I'll be back here at dinnertime for my pig likes a dinner as well as a breakfast, no mealtime, and no sort of victual has ever seemed to come amiss to my pig. Good morning to you, and Mr. Haldgrave, if I were a young man like you, I'd get one Alice's posies and keep it in water till fee becomes back. I have heard," said the daguerreotypist as he drew in his head, that the water of Maul's well suits those flowers best. Here the conversation ceased and Uncle Venner went on his way. For half an hour longer nothing disturbed the repose of the seven gables, nor was there any visitor except a carrier boy who as he passed the front door stepped through down one of his newspapers. Perhaps above late had regularly taken it in. After a while there came a fat woman making prodigious speed and stumbling as she ran at the steps at the shop door. Her face glowed with fire-heat and it being a pretty warm morning, she bubbled and hissed as it were as if all a fry with chimney warmth and summer warmth and the warmth of her own corpulent velocity. She tried the shop door. It was fast. She tried it again with so angry a jar that the bell tinkled angrily back at her. The deuce take hold me, Pingeon, muttered the irascible housewife, think of her pretending to set up a cent shop and then lying a bed till noon. These are what she calls gentle folks' heirs, I suppose, but I'll either start her ladyship or break the door down." She shook it accordingly and the bell, having a spiteful little temper of its own, rang obstreperously, making its remonstrances heard, not indeed by the ears for which they were intended, but by a good lady on the opposite side of the street. She opened the window and pressed the impatient applicant. "'You'll find nobody there, Mrs. Goebbins.' "'But I must, and I will find somebody here,' cried Mrs. Goebbins, inflicting another outrage on the bell. "'I want a half pound of pork to fry some first-rate flounders for Mr. Goebbins' breakfast, and lady or not, old maid Pingeon shall get up and serve me with it.' "'But do hear reason, Mrs. Goebbins,' replied the lady opposite. She and her brother, too, cousins, judge Pingeon's at his country's seat. "'There's not a soul in the house, but that young DeGarro-type man that sleeps in the North Gable, I saw old Hebsavon Clifford Goebbins yesterday, and a queer couple of ducks they were paddling through the mud puddles. "'They're gone, I'll assure you.' "'On how do you know they're gone to the judges?' asked Mrs. Goebbins. "'He's a rich man, and there's been a quarrel between him and Hebsavon this many a day because he won't give her a living. That's the main reason of her setting up a cent shop.' "'I know that well enough,' said the neighbour. "'But they're gone. That's one thing certain, and who but a blood relation that couldn't help themselves? I ask you had taken that awful temperate old maid and then dreadful Clifford. That's it, you may be sure.' Mrs. Goebbins took her departure still brimming over with hot wrath against the absent Hebsavon, for another half-hour, or perhaps considerably more. There was almost as much quiet on the outside of the house as within. The elm, however, made a pleasant, cheerful, sunny sigh, responsive to the breeze that was elsewhere imperceptible. A swarm of insects buzzed merrily under its drooping shadow and became specks of light whenever they darted into the sunshine. A locust sang once or twice, in some inscrutable seclusion of the tree, and a solitary little bird with plumage of pale gold came and hovered about Alice's posies. At last our small acquaintance, Ned Higgins, trudged up the street on his way to school and happening for the first time in a fortnight to be the possessor of a scent. He could by no means get past the shop door of the Seven Gables. But it would not open. Again and again, however, and a half a dozen other agends with the inexorable pertinacity of a child intent upon some object important to itself, did he renew his efforts for admittance? He set his heart upon an elephant or possibly, with Hamlet, he meant to eat a crocodile. In response to his more violent attacks the bell gave, now and then, a moderate tinkle, but could not be stirred into clamour by any exertion of the little fellow's childish and tiptoe strength. Holding by the door handle, he peeped through a crevice of the curtain and saw that the inner door communicating with the passage towards the parlor was closed. Scream the child rapping on the window pane. There being no answer to several repetitions of the summons, Ned began to grow impatient and his little pot of passion quickly boiling over, he picked up a stone with a naughty purpose to fling it through the window, at the same time blubbering and sputtering with wrath. A man, one of two who happened to be passing by, caught the utterance arm. What's the trouble, old gentleman? He asked. I want old Hepsaba or Phoebe or any of them. Answered, Ned, sobbing. They won't jump in. Go to school, you little scamp. Said the man. There's another cent shop around the corner. Tastes very strange, Dixie. Added he to his companion. What's become of all these pinchins? Smith, the livery stablekeeper, tells me Judge Pinchin put his horse up yesterday to stand till after dinner and has not taken him away yet. And one of the judge's hired men this morning to make inquiry about him. He's a kind of person, they say, that Zelda breaks his habits or stays out tonight. Oh, he'll turn up safe enough. Said Dixie. And as for old maid Pinchin, take my word for it, she's running dead and gone off from her creditors. I foretold you remember the first morning she set up shop that her devilish scowl would frighten away customers. They couldn't stand it. I never thought she'd make it go. Remarked his friend. This business of cent shops is overdone among the women folks. My wife tried it and lost $5 on her outlay. Poor business. Said Dixie, shaking his head. Poor business. In the course of the morning there were various other attempts to open a communication with the supposed inhabitants of this silent and impenetrable mansion. The man of root beer came in his neatly painted wagon with a couple of dozen full bottles to be exchanged for empty ones. The baker with a lot of crackers which Hepsiba had ordered for her retail custom. The butcher with a nice tidbit which he fancied she would be eager to secure for Clifford. Had any observer of these proceedings been aware of the fearful secret hidden within the house it would have affected him with a singular shape in modification of horror to see the current of human life making this small eddy hear abouts. Whirling, sticks, draws and all such trifles. Round and round. Right over the black depth where dead corpse lay unseen. The butcher was so much an earnest with his sweet bread of lamb or whatever the dainty might be that he tried every accessible door of the seven gables and at length came round again to the shop where he ordinarily found admittance. It's a nice article and I know the old lady would jump at it said he to himself. She can't be gone away. In fifteen years that I have driven through Pynchon Street I have never known her to be away from home though often enough to be sure a man might knock all day without bringing her to the door but that was when she'd only herself to provide for. Peeping through the same crevice of the curtain where only a little while before the urgent of elenfine appetite had beaped the butcher beheld the inner door not closed as the child had seen it but a jar and almost wide open. However it might have happened it was the fact. Through the passageway there was a dark vista into the lighter but still obscure interior of the parlour. It appeared to the butcher that he could pretty clearly discern what seemed to be the stalwart legs clad in black pantaloons of a man sitting in a large oaken chair the back of which concealed all the remainder of his figure. This contemptuous tranquility on the part of an occupant of the house in response to the butcher's despicable efforts to attract notice so peaked the man a flesh that he determined to withdraw. So thought he there sits old maid Pynchon's bloody brother while I've been given myself all this trouble. Why, if a hog hadn't more manners I'd stick him. I call it demeaning a man's business to trade with such people and from this time forth if they want a sausage or an ounce of liver they shall run after the cart for it. He tossed the tidbit angrily into his cart and drove off in a pet. Not a great while afterwards there was a sound of music turning the corner and approaching down the street with several intervals of silence and then a renewed and nearer outbreak of brisk melody. A mob of children was seen moving onward or stopping in unison with the sound which appeared to proceed from the centre of the throng so that they were loosely bound together by slender strains of harmony and drawn along captive with ever and anon and a session of some little fellow in an apron and straw hat capering forth from door or gateway. Arriving under the shadow of the Pynchon Elm it proved to be the Italian boy who, with his monkey and show of puppets had once before played his hurdy-gurdy beneath the arched window. The pleasant face of Phoebe and doubtless to the liberal recompense which she had flung him still dwelt in his remembrance. His expressive features kindled up as he recognised the spotwork this trifling incident of his erratic life had chanced. He entered the neglected yard now wilder than ever with its growth of hogweed and burdock stationed himself on the doorstep of the main entrance and opening his show box began to play. Each individual of the automatic community forthwith set to work according to his or her proper vocation the monkey taking off his highland bonnet bowed and scraped to the bystanders mostly obsequiously with ever an observant eye to pick up a stray scent and the young foreigner himself as he turned the crank of his machine glanced upward to the arched window expectant of a presence that would make his music the livelier and sweeter. The throng of children stood near some on the sidewalk some within the yard two or three establishing themselves on the very doorstep and one squatting on the threshold meanwhile the locust kept singing a pinch and elm and down here anybody in the house said one of the children to another the monkey won't pick up anything here there is somebody at home affirmed the urchin on the threshold I heard a step still the young Italian's eye turned side long upward and it really seems that the touch of genuine though slight and almost playful emotion communicated a juicier sweetness to the dry mechanical process of his minstrelsy these wanderers are readily responsive to any natural kind be it no more than a smile or a word itself not understood but only a warmth in it which befalls them on the roadside of life they remember these things because they are the little enchantments which for the instant for the space that reflects a landscape in a soap bubble build up a home about them therefore the Italian boy would not be discouraged by the heavy silence the house seemed resolute to clog the vivacity of his instrument he persisted in his melodious appeals he still looked upward trusting that his dark early encounterance would soon be brightened by Phoebe's sunny aspect neither could he be willing to depart without again beholding Clifford whose sensibility like Phoebe's smile had talked a kind of hearts language to the foreigner he repeated all his music over and over again until his auditors were getting weary so were the little wooden people in his show box and the monkey most of all there was no response save the singing of the locust no children live in this house said a school boy at last nobody lives here but an old main and an old man you get nothing here why don't you go along you fool why do you tell him whispered a shrewd little Yankee carrying nothing for the music still for the cheap rate at which it was had let him play if he likes if there's nobody to pay him that's his own look out once more however the Italian ran over his round of melodies to the common observer who could understand nothing of the case except the music and the sunshine on the hither side of the door it might have been amusing to watch the pertinacity of the street performer will he succeed at last will that stubborn door be suddenly flung open will a group of joyous children the young ones of the house come dancing shouting laughing into the open air and clustered around the show box looking with eager merriment at the puppets and tossing each a copper for long-tailed mammon the monkey to pick up but to us who know the inner heart of the seven gables as well as its exterior phase there was a ghastly effect in this repetition of light popular tunes at its doorstep it would be an ugly business indeed if judge pinchin who would not have cared a fig for Paganini's fiddle in his most harmonious mood should make his appearance at the door with a bloody shirt bosom and a grim frown on his swathily white visage and motion the foreign vagabond away was ever before such a grinding out of jigs and waltzes where nobody was in the queue to dance yes, very often this contrast or intermingling of tragedy with mirth happens daily hourly, momently the gloomy and desolate old house deserted of life and with awful death sitting sternly in its solitude was the emblem of many a human heart which nevertheless is compelled to hear the thrill and echo of the words gaiety around it before the conclusion of the Italian's performance a couple of men happen to be passing on their way to dinner I say, you young French fellow come away from that doorstep and go somewhere else with your nonsense the pension family live there and they are in great trouble just about this time they don't feel musical today it is reported all over town the judge pension who owns the house has been murdered and the city marshal is going to look into the matter so be off with you at once as the Italian shouldered his hurdy-gurdy he saw in the doorstep a card which had been covered all the morning by the newspaper that the carrier had flung upon it and now shuffled into sight he picked it up and perceiving something written in pencil gave it to the man to read in fact it was an engraved card of judge pensions with certain penciled memoranda on the back referring to various businesses which it had been his purpose to transact during the preceding day it formed a prospective epitome of the day's history only that affairs had not turned out altogether in accordance with the program the card must have been lost from the judge's vest pocket in his preliminary attempt to gain access by the main entrance of the house though well soaked with rain it was still partially legible look here Dixie cried the man this has something to do with judge pensions he is his name printed on it and here I suppose is some of his handwriting let's go to the city marshal with it said Dixie it may give him just the clue he wants after all there will be no great wonder if the judge has gone into that door and never come out again a certain cousin of his may have been at his own tricks an old maid pension haven't got herself in debt by the cent shop and the judge's pocket book being well filled and bad blood amongst them already put all these things together and see what they make hush hush whispered the other it seems like a sin to be the first to speak of such a thing but I think with you that we had better go to the city marshal yes yes said Dixie well I always said there was something devilish in that woman's scowl the men wheeled about accordingly and retraced their steps up the street the Italian also made the best of his way off with a parting glance up at the arched window as for the children they took to their heels with one accord and scampered as if some giant or ogre were in pursuit until at a good distance from the house they stopped as suddenly and simultaneously as they'd set out their susceptible nerves took an indefinite alarm from what they had overheard looking back at the grotesque peaks and shadowy angles of the old mansion they fancied a gloom diffused about it which no brightness of the sunshine could dispel an imaginary hepsabaugh scowled and shook her finger at them from several windows at the same moment an imaginary cliff heard for and deeply wounded him to know it he had always been a horror to these small people stood behind the unreal hepsabaugh making awful gestures in a faded dressing-count children are even more apt if possible than grown people to catch the contagion of a panic terror for the rest of the day the more timid went whole streets about for the sake of avoiding the seven gables while the bolder signalized their hardyhood by challenging their comrades to race in at full speed it could not have been more than half an hour after the disappearance of the Italian boy with his unseasonable melodies when a cab drove down the street it stopped beneath the pension elm the cab man took a trunk a canvas bag and a band box from the top of his vehicle and deposited them on the doorstep of the old house a straw bonnet and then the pretty figure of a young girl came into view from the interior of the cab it was Phoebe though not altogether so blooming as when she first tripped into our story for in the few intervening weeks her experiences had made her graver, more womanly and deeper eyed in token of a heart that had begun to suspect its depths still there was the quiet glow of natural sunshine over her neither had she forfeited her proper gift of making things look real rather than fantastic within her sphere yet we feel it to be a questionable venture even for Phoebe at this juncture to cross the threshold of the seven gables is her healthful presence potent enough to chase away the crowd of pale, hideous and sinful phantoms that have gained admittance there since her departure or will she likewise fade sicken, sadden and grow into deformity and be only another pallid phantom to glide noiselessly up and down the stairs and affright children as she pauses at the window at least we would gladly forewarn the unsuspecting girl that there is nothing in human shape or substance to receive her unless it be the figure of Judge Bynchon who wretched spectacle that he is and frightful in our remembrance since our night long vigil with him still keeps his place in the oaken chair Phoebe first tried the shop door it did not yield to her hand and the white curtain drawn across the window which formed the upper section of the door struck her quite perceptive faculty as something unusual without making another effort to enter here she but took herself to the great portal under the arched window finding it fastened she knocked a reverberation came from the emptiness within she knocked again and a third time and listening intently fancied that the door creaked as if hepps above were coming with her ordinary tiptoe movement to admit her but so dead a silence ensued upon this imaginary sound that she began to question whether she might not have mistaken the house familiar as she thought herself with its exterior her notice was now attracted by a child's voice at some distance it appeared to call her name looking in the direction once it proceeded Phoebe saw little Ned Higgins a good way down the street stamping shaking his head violently making deprecatory gestures with both hands and shouting to her at mouth wide screech no no Phoebe he screamed don't you go in there's something wicked there don't don't go in but as the little personage could not be induced to approach near enough to explain himself Phoebe concluded that he had been frightened to the shop by her cousin Hepsaba for the good ladies manifestations in truth ran about an equal chance of scaring children out of their wits or compelling them to unseemly laughter still she felt the more for this incident how unaccountably silent and impenetrable the house had become as her next resort Phoebe made her way into the garden where on so warm and bright a day as the present she had little doubt of finding Clifford and perhaps Hepsaba also idling away in the noontide in the shadow of the arbor immediately on her entering the garden gate the family of hens half ran half flew to meet her while a strange gremolkin which was prowling under the parlor window took to his heels clambered hastily over the fence and vanished the arbor was vacant and its floor, table and circular bench were still damp and the strewn were twigs in the disarray of the past storm the growth of the garden seemed to have got quite out of bounds the weeds had taken advantage of Phoebe's absence and the long continued rain to run rampant over the flowers and kitchen vegetables Maul's well had overflowed its stone border and made a pool of formidable breath in that corner of the garden the impression of the whole scene was that of a spot where no human foot had left its print for many preceding days probably not since Phoebe's departure for she saw a side comb of her own under the table of the arbor and must have fallen on the last afternoon when she and Clifford sat there the girl knew that her two relatives were capable of far greater oddities than that of shutting themselves up in their old house as they appeared now to have done nevertheless with indistinct misgivings of something amiss and apprehensions to which she could not give shape she approached the door that formed the customary communication between the house and garden it was secured within like the two which she had already tried she knocked, however, and immediately as if the application had been expected the door was thrown open by a considerable exertion of some unseen person's strength not wide but far enough to afford her a side long entrance as Hepsiba in order not to expose herself to inspection from without invariably opened a door in this manner Phoebe necessarily concluded that it was her cousin who now admitted her without hesitation therefore she stepped across the threshold and had no sooner entered than the door closed behind her End of Chapter 19 Chapter 20 of the House of the Seven Gables This is a LibriVox recording All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain For more information or to volunteer please go to LibriVox.org Recording by Madeira The House of the Seven Gables by Nathaniel Hawthorne Chapter 20 The Flower of Eden Phoebe coming so suddenly from the sunny daylight was altogether bedimmed in such density of shadow as lurked in most of the passages of the old house She was not at first aware by whom she had been admitted Before her eyes had adapted themselves to the obscurity a hand grasped her own with a firm but gentle and warm pressure thus imparting a welcome which caused her heart to leap and thrill with an indefinable shiver of enjoyment She felt herself drawn along not towards the parlor but into a large and unoccupied apartment which had formerly been the grand reception room of the Seven Gables The sunshine came freely into all the uncurtained windows of this room and fell upon the dusty floor so that Phoebe now clearly saw what indeed had been no secret after the encounter of a warm hand with hers that it was not Hepsaba nor Clifford, but Holgrave to whom she owed her reception The subtle intuitive communication or rather the vague and formless impression of something to be told had made her yield unresistingly to his impulse Without taking away her hand she looked eagerly in his face not quick to forebode evil but unavoidably conscious that the state of the family had changed since her departure and therefore anxious for an explanation The artist looked paler than ordinary There was a thoughtful and severe contraction of his forehead tracing a deep vertical line between the eyebrows His smile however was full of genuine warmth and had in it a joy by far the most vivid expression that Phoebe had ever witnessed out of the New England reserve with which Holgrave habitually masked whatever lay near his heart It was the look wherewith a man brooding alone over some fearful object in a dreary forest or a limitable desert would recognize the familiar aspect of his dearest friend bringing up all the peaceful ideas that belong to home and the gentle current of everyday affairs And yet as he felt the necessity of a stroke of inquiry the smile disappeared I ought not to rejoice that you've come, Phoebe said he We meet at a strange moment What has happened? she exclaimed Why is the house so deserted? Where are Hephseba and Clifford? Gone. I cannot imagine where they are answered Holgrave We are alone in the house Hephseba and Clifford gone, cried Phoebe It is not possible to enter this room instead of the parlor Something terrible has happened I must run and see No, no, Phoebe said Holgrave holding her back It is as I have told you They are gone and I know not wither A terrible event has indeed happened but not to them nor as I undoubtedly believe through any agency of theirs If I read your character rightly, Phoebe he continued fixing his eyes on hers with stern anxiety intermixed with tenderness gentle as you are and seeming to have your sphere among common things you yet possess remarkable strength You have wonderful poise and a faculty which, when tested will prove itself capable of dealing with matters that fall far out of the ordinary rule Oh no, I am very weak replied Phoebe, trembling But tell me What has happened? You are strong, persisted Holgrave You must be both strong and wise for I am all astray and need your counsel But maybe you can suggest the one right thing to do Tell me Tell me said Phoebe all in the tremble It oppresses It terrifies me This mystery Anything else I can bear The artist hesitated notwithstanding what he had just said and most sincerely in regard to the dancing power with which Phoebe impressed him it still seemed almost wicked to bring the awful secret of yesterday to her knowledge It was like dragging a hideous shape of death into the cleanly and cheerful space before a household fire where it would present all the uglier aspect amid the decorousness of everything about it yet it could not be concealed from her She must needs know it Phoebe said he Do you remember this He put into her hand a daguerreotype the same that he had shown her at their first interview in the garden and which so strikingly brought out the hard and relentless traits of the original What has this to do with Hepsibon Clifford? Asked Phoebe with impatience surprise that Holgrave should so trifle with her at such a moment It is Judge Pinchin, you've shown it to me before But here is the same face taken within this half hour said the artist presenting her with another miniature I had just finished it when I heard you at the door This is death shuttered Phoebe turning very pale Judge Pinchin dead such as they are represented said Holgrave he sits in the next room the judge is dead and Clifford and Hepsibon vanished I know no more all beyond his conjecture on returning to my solitary chamber last evening I noticed no light either in the parlor or Hepsibon's room or Clifford's no stir nor footstep about the house this morning there was the same death like quiet for my window I overheard the testimony of a neighbor that your relatives were seen leaving the house in the midst of yesterday's storm a rumor reached me too of Judge Pinchin being missed a feeling which I cannot describe an indefinite sense of some catastrophe or consummation impelled me to make my way into this part of the house where I discovered what you see as a point of evidence that may be useful to Clifford and also as a memorial valuable to myself for Phoebe there are hereditary reasons that connect me strangely with that man's fate I used the means at my disposal to preserve this pictorial record of Judge Pinchin's death even in her agitation Phoebe could not help remarking the calmness of Holgrave's demeanor he appeared it is true to feel the whole awfulness of the judge's death yet had received the fact into his mind without any mixture of surprise but as an event preordained happening inevitably and so fitting itself into past occurrences that it could almost have been prophesied why have you not thrown open the doors and called in witnesses with a painful shutter it is terrible to be here alone but Clifford suggested the artist Clifford and Hepspa we must consider what is best to be done on their behalf it is a wretched fatality that they should have disappeared their flight will throw the worst colouring over this event of which it is susceptible yet how easy is the explanation to those who know them bewildered and terror stricken by the similarity of this death to a former one ended with such disastrous consequences to Clifford they have had no idea but of removing themselves from the scene how miserably unfortunate had Hepspa but shrieked aloud had Clifford flung wide the door and proclaimed Judge Pynchon's death it would have been however awful in itself an event fruitful of good consequences to them as I view it it would have gone far towards obliterating the black stain on Clifford's character and how asked Phoebe could any good come from what is so very dreadful because said the artist if the matter can be fairly considered and candidly interpreted it must be evident that Judge Pynchon could not have come unfairly to his end this mode of death had been an idiosyncrasy with his family for generations past not often occurring indeed but when it does occur usually attacking individuals about the judge's time of life and generally in the tension of some mental crisis or perhaps in an access of wrath Old Mall's prophecy was probably founded on a knowledge of this physical predisposition in the Pynchon race now there is a minute and almost exact similarity in the appearances connected with the death that occurred yesterday and those recorded of the death of Clifford's uncle 30 years ago it is true there was a certain arrangement of circumstances unnecessary to be recounted which made it possible nay as we look at these things probable or even certain that old Jaffrey Pynchon came to a violent death and by Clifford's hands whence came those circumstances exclaimed Phoebe he being innocent as we know him to be they were arranged at least such has long been my conviction they were arranged after the uncle's death and before it was made public by the man who sits in yonder parlor his own death so like that former one yet attended by none of those suspicious circumstances seems the stroke of God upon him at once a punishment for his wickedness and making plain the innocence of Clifford but this flight it distorts everything he may be in concealment near at hand could we but bring him back before the discovery of the judge's death the evil might be rectified we must not hide this thing a moment longer said Phoebe it is dreadful to keep it so closely in our hearts Clifford is innocent God will make it manifest let us throw open the doors and call all the neighborhood to see the truth you all right Phoebe rejoined whole grave doubtless you all right yet the artist did not feel the horror which was proper to Phoebe's sweet and order loving character at thus finding herself at issue with society and brought in contact with an event that transcended ordinary rules neither was he in haste like her to partake himself within the precincts of common life on the contrary he gathered a wild enjoyment as it were a flower of strange beauty growing in a desolate spot and blossoming in the wind such a flower of momentary happiness he gathered from his present position it separated Phoebe and himself from the world and bound them to each other by their exclusive knowledge Pynchon's mysterious death and the council which they were forced to hold respecting it the secret so long as it should continue such kept them within the circle of a spell a solitude in the midst of men a remoteness as entire as that of an island in mid ocean once divulged the ocean would flow betwixt them standing on its widely sundered shores meanwhile all the circumstances of their situation seemed to draw them together they were like two children who go hand in hand pressing closely to one another side through a shadow haunted passage the image of awful death which filled the house held them united by his stiffened grasp these influences hastened the development of emotions that might not otherwise have flowered so possibly indeed it had been Holgrave's purpose to let them die in their undeveloped germs why do we delay so asked Phoebe the secret takes away my breath let us throw open the doors in all our lives there can never come another moment like this said Holgrave Phoebe is it all terror nothing but terror are you conscious of no joy as I am that has made this the only point of life worth living for it seems a sin replied Phoebe trembling to think of joy at such a time could you but know Phoebe how it was with me the hour before you came exclaimed the artist a dark cold miserable hour the presence of yonder dead man through a great black shadow over everything he made the universe so far as my perception could reach a scene of guilt and of retribution more dreadful than the guilt the sense of it took away my youth I never hoped to feel young again the world looked strange wild evil, hostile my past life so lonesome and dreary my future a shapeless gloom which I must mold into gloomy shapes but Phoebe you crossed the threshold and hope warmth and joy came in with you the black moment yet once a blissful one it must not pass without the spoken word I love you how can you love a simple girl like me asked Phoebe compelled by his earnestness to speak you have many many thoughts with which I should try in vain to sympathize and I I too I have tendencies with which you would sympathize as little that is less matter but I have not scope enough to make you happy you are my only possibility of happiness answered Holgrave I have no faith in it except as you bestow it on me and then I am afraid continued Phoebe shrinking towards Holgrave even while she told him so frankly the doubts with which he affected her you will lead me out of my own quiet path you will make me strive to follow you where it is pathless I cannot do so it is not my nature ah Phoebe exclaimed Holgrave with almost a sigh and a smile that was burdened with thought it will be far otherwise than as you forebode the world owes all its onward impulses to men ill at ease the happy man inevitably confines himself with an ancient limits I have a presentiment that hereafter it will be my lot to set out trees to make fences perhaps even in due time to build a house for another generation in a word to conform myself to laws and the peaceful practice of society your poise will be more powerful than any oscillating tendency of mine I would not have it so said Phoebe earnestly do you love me asked Holgrave if we love one another the moment has room for nothing more let us pause upon it and be satisfied Phoebe you look into my heart she said letting her eyes drop you know I love you and it was in this hour so full of doubt and awe that the one miracle was wrought without which every human existence is a blank the bliss which makes all things true beautiful and holy shown around this youth and maiden they were conscious of nothing sad nor old they transfigured the earth and made it even again and themselves the two first dwellers in it the dead man so close beside them was forgotten at such a crisis there is no death for immortality is revealed anew and embraces everything in its hallowed atmosphere but how soon the heavy earth dreams settle down again Hark! whispered Phoebe somebody is at the street door now let us meet the world said Holgrave no doubt the rumour of Judge Pynchon's visit to this house and the flight of Hepsibon Clifford is about to lead to the investigation of the premises we have no way but to meet it let us open the door at once but to their surprise before they could reach the street door before they quitted the room in which the foregoing interview had passed they heard footsteps in the farther passage the door therefore which they supposed to be securely locked which Holgrave indeed had seen to be so and at which Phoebe had vainly tried to enter must have been opened from without the sound of footsteps was not harsh bold, decided and intrusive as the gate of strangers would naturally be an authoritative entrance into a dwelling where they knew themselves unwelcome it was Phoebe as of persons either weak or weary there was the mingled murmur of two voices familiar to both the listeners can it be whispered Holgrave it is they answered Phoebe, thank god thank god and then as if in sympathy with Phoebe's whispered ejaculation Phoebe's voice more distinctly thank god my brother we are at home well, yes thank god responded Clifford a dreary home, Hepsiba but you have done well to bring me there stay that parlor door is open I cannot pass by it let me go and rest me in the arbor where I used to go it seems to me after what has befallen us where I used to be so happy with little Phoebe but the house was not altogether so dreary as Clifford imagined it they had not made many steps in truth they were lingering in the entry with the listlessness of an accomplished purpose uncertain what to do next when Phoebe ran to meet them unbeholding her Hepsiba burst into tears with all her might she had staggered onward beneath the burden of grief and responsibility until now that it was safe to fling it down indeed she had not energy to fling it down but had ceased to uphold it and suffered it to press her to the earth Clifford appeared the stronger of the two it is our own little Phoebe ah and whole grave with her exclaimed he with a glance of keen naked insight and a smile beautiful kind but melancholy I thought of you both as we came down the street and beheld Alice's posies in full bloom and so the flower of Eden has bloomed likewise in this old darksome house today End of Chapter 20 Chapter 21 of the House of the Seven Gables This is a LibriVox recording all LibriVox recordings are in the public domain For more information or to volunteer please go to LibriVox.org Recording by Madeira The House of the Seven Gables by Nathaniel Hawthorne Chapter 21 The Departure The sudden death of so prominent a member of the social world as the honorable 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 profiles itself as to his death In most other cases and contingencies the individual is present among us mixed up with the 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 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 bog 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 and 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 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 referenced to matters of no less older date than the supposed murder 30 or 40 years ago of the late Judge Pynchon'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 Jaffrey Pynchon's private apartments at or near the moment of his death his desk in 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 whence so ever 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 affirmed 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 blush by the marvels they see with their eyes shut according to this version of the story Judge Pynchon exemplary as we have portrayed him in our narrative was in his youth an apparently irreclaimable scapegrace 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 a vered but whether unauthority available in a court of justice we do not pretend to have investigated that the young man was tempted by the devil 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 Jeffery Pynchon in his nightclothes 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 assistance would come too late what a misfortune indeed should it come too soon since his reviving consciousness would bring the recollection of the ignonymous offence 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 continued his search of the drawers and found a will of recent date in favour of Clifford which he destroyed and an older one in his own favour which he suffered to remain but before retiring Jeffery bethought himself of the evidence in these ransacked drawers that someone had visited the chamber with sinister purposes suspicion, unless averted might fix upon the real offender in the very presence of the dead man therefore he laid a scheme to see 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 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 Jeffery Pinschens 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 in the honorable Judge Pinschens long subsequent survey of his own life baffled 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 whilst driving to add more wealth to his only child's inheritance hardly a week after his decease one of the canard steamers brought intelligence of the death by cholera of Judge Pinschens' son just at the point of embarkation for his native land by this misfortune Clifford became rich so did Eppsaba so did our little village maiden and through her that sworn foe of wealth and all manner of conservatism the wild reformer whole grave it was now far too late in Clifford's life for the good opinion of society 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 when 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 that no great mistake whether acted or endured in our mortal sphere is ever really set right time the continual vicitude 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 need to set it in the better remedy it's for the sufferer to pass on and leave what he once thought his irreparable ruin far behind him the shock of Judge Pynchon'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 aborted in it and to make him the object of no less deep although less melancholy interest 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, Hapsibon, 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 pension Chanticlear and his family had already been transported thither where the two hens 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 and 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 the 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 how wonderfully your ideas are changed a house of stone indeed it is but two or three weeks ago that you seem to wish people to live in something as fragile and temporary as a bird's nest ah 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 youth that portrait had spoken and told me a rich secret or had held forth its hand with the written record of hidden opulence but those old matters are so dim with me nowadays what could this dream have been perhaps I can recall it answered whole great 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 it whole graves 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 in centuries dust that it could not immediately be recognized as a folded sheet of parchment whole grave opened it and displayed an ancient deed signed with the hieroglyphics of several Indian Sagamores and conveying to Colonel Pynchon 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 Pynchon the greatness and life said the artist alluding to his legend it is what the Pynchon sought in vain while it was valuable and now that they find the treasure it has long been worthless poor cousin Jeffrey this is what deceived him exclaimed Hepsaba when they were young together Clifford probably made a kind of fairy tale of this discovery he was always dreaming hither 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 wells he died with this delusion in his mind but said Phoebe apart to whole grave how came you to know the secret my dearest Phoebe said whole grave how will it please you to assume the name of Maul secret it is the only inheritance that has come down to me for 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 am 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 Pynchons thus they bartered their eastern territory for 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 your 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 finish 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 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 and street I'm afraid will 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 and either I must go to your country seat or you must come to my farm that's one of two things certain and I'll 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 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 my words of wisdom that you and Phoebe tell me are like the golden dandelions which never grow in the hot months but may be seen glistening among the withered grass and under the dry leaves sometimes as late as December and you are welcome friends to buy mess of dandelions if there were twice as many a plain but handsome dark green barouche has 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 Hepsaba bait 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 a time several children were drawn to the spot by so unusual a spectacle as the barouche in a pair of grey horses recognizing little Ned Higgins among them Hepsaba put her hand into her pocket and presented the urchin her earliest and staunchest customer with silver enough to peeple the domed Daniel cavern of his interior with as 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 a cent 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 why I can't exactly fathom it pretty good business quote the sagacious Dixie pretty good business malls 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 Hepsaba 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 whispered 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 21 End of The House of the Seven Gables by Nathaniel Hawthorne