The House of the Seven Gables
open to admit her. The maiden lady herself, sternly inhospitable in her
first purposes, soon began to feel that the door ought to be shoved
back, and the rusty key be turned in the reluctant lock.
“Can it be Phœbe?” questioned she within herself. “It must be little
Phœbe; for it can be nobody else,—and there is a look of her father
about her, too! But what does she want here? And how like a country
cousin, to come down upon a poor body in this way, without so much as a
day’s notice, or asking whether she would be welcome! Well; she must
have a night’s lodging, I suppose; and to-morrow the child shall go
back to her mother.”
Phœbe, it must be understood, was that one little offshoot of the
Pyncheon race to whom we have already referred, as a native of a rural
part of New England, where the old fashions and feelings of
relationship are still partially kept up. In her own circle, it was
regarded as by no means improper for kinsfolk to visit one another
without invitation, or preliminary and ceremonious warning. Yet, in
consideration of Miss Hepzibah’s recluse way of life, a letter had
actually been written and despatched, conveying information of Phœbe’s
projected visit. This epistle, for three or four days past, had been in
the pocket of the penny-postman, who, happening to have no other
business in Pyncheon Street, had not yet made it convenient to call at
the House of the Seven Gables.
“No—she can stay only one night,” said Hepzibah, unbolting the door.
“If Clifford were to find her here, it might disturb him!”
V.
May and November
Phœbe Pyncheon slept, on the night of her arrival, in a chamber that
looked down on the garden of the old house. It fronted towards the
east, so that at a very seasonable hour a glow of crimson light came
flooding through the window, and bathed the dingy ceiling and
paper-hangings in its own hue. There were curtains to Phœbe’s bed; a
dark, antique canopy, and ponderous festoons of a stuff which had been
rich, and even magnificent, in its time; but which now brooded over the
girl like a cloud, making a night in that one corner, while elsewhere
it was beginning to be day. The morning light, however, soon stole into
the aperture at the foot of the bed, betwixt those faded curtains.
Finding the new guest there,—with a bloom on her cheeks like the
morning’s own, and a gentle stir of departing slumber in her limbs, as
when an early breeze moves the foliage,—the dawn kissed her brow. It
was the caress which a dewy maiden—such as the Dawn is,
immortally—gives to her sleeping sister, partly from the impulse of
irresistible fondness, and partly as a pretty hint that it is time now
to unclose her eyes.
At the touch of those lips of light, Phœbe quietly awoke, and, for a
moment, did not recognize where she was, nor how those heavy curtains
chanced to be festooned around her. Nothing, indeed, was absolutely
plain to her, except that it was now early morning, and that, whatever
might happen next, it was proper, first of all, to get up and say her
prayers. She was the more inclined to devotion from the grim aspect of
the chamber and its furniture, especially the tall, stiff chairs; one
of which stood close by her bedside, and looked as if some
old-fashioned personage had been sitting there all night, and had
vanished only just in season to escape discovery.
When Phœbe was quite dressed, she peeped out of the window, and saw a
rosebush in the garden. Being a very tall one, and of luxuriant growth,
it had been propped up against the side of the house, and was literally
covered with a rare and very beautiful species of white rose. A large
portion of them, as the girl afterwards discovered, had blight or
mildew at their hearts; but, viewed at a fair distance, the whole
rosebush looked as if it had been brought from Eden that very summer,
together with the mould in which it grew. The truth was, nevertheless,
that it had been planted by Alice Pyncheon,—she was Phœbe’s
great-great-grand-aunt,—in soil which, reckoning only its cultivation
as a garden-plat, was now unctuous with nearly two hundred years of
vegetable decay. Growing as they did, however, out of the old earth,
the flowers still sent a fresh and sweet incense up to their Creator;
nor could it have been the less pure and acceptable because Phœbe’s
young breath mingled with it, as the fragrance floated past the window.
Hastening down the creaking and carpetless staircase, she found her way
into the garden, gathered some of the most perfect of the roses, and
brought them to her chamber.
Little Phœbe was one of those persons who possess, as their exclusive
patrimony, the gift of practical arrangement. It is a kind of natural
magic that enables these favored ones to bring out the hidden
capabilities of things around them; and particularly to give a look of
comfort and habitableness to any place which, for however brief a
period, may happen to be their home. A wild hut of underbrush, tossed
together by wayfarers through the primitive forest, would acquire the
home aspect by one night’s lodging of such a woman, and would retain it
long after her quiet figure had disappeared into the surrounding shade.
No less a portion of such homely witchcraft was requisite to reclaim,
as it were, Phœbe’s waste, cheerless, and dusky chamber, which had been
untenanted so long—except by spiders, and mice, and rats, and
ghosts—that it was all overgrown with the desolation which watches to
obliterate every trace of man’s happier hours. What was precisely
Phœbe’s process we find it impossible to say. She appeared to have no
preliminary design, but gave a touch here and another there; brought
some articles of furniture to light and dragged others into the shadow;
looped up or let down a window-curtain; and, in the course of half an
hour, had fully succeeded in throwing a kindly and hospitable smile
over the apartment. No longer ago than the night before, it had
resembled nothing so much as the old maid’s heart; for there was
neither sunshine nor household fire in one nor the other, and, save for
ghosts and ghostly reminiscences, not a guest, for many years gone by,
had entered the heart or the chamber.
There was still another peculiarity of this inscrutable charm. The
bedchamber, no doubt, was a chamber of very great and varied
experience, as a scene of human life: the joy of bridal nights had
throbbed itself away here; new immortals had first drawn earthly breath
here; and here old people had died. But—whether it were the white
roses, or whatever the subtile influence might be—a person of delicate
instinct would have known at once that it was now a maiden’s
bedchamber, and had been purified of all former evil and sorrow by her
sweet breath and happy thoughts. Her dreams of the past night, being
such cheerful ones, had exorcised the gloom, and now haunted the
chamber in its stead.
After arranging matters to her satisfaction, Phœbe emerged from her
chamber, with a purpose to descend again into the garden. Besides the
rosebush, she had observed several other species of flowers growing
there in a wilderness of neglect, and obstructing one another’s
development (as is often the parallel case in human society) by their
uneducated entanglement and confusion. At the head of the stairs,
however, she met Hepzibah, who, it being still early, invited her into
a room which she would probably have called her boudoir, had her
education embraced any such French phrase. It was strewn about with a
few old books, and a work-basket, and a dusty writing-desk; and had, on
one side, a large black article of furniture, of very strange
appearance, which the old gentlewoman told Phœbe was a harpsichord. It
looked more like a coffin than anything else; and, indeed,—not having
been played upon, or opened, for years,—there must have been a vast
deal of dead music in it, stifled for want of air. Human finger was
hardly known to have touched its chords since the days of Alice
Pyncheon, who had learned the sweet accomplishment of melody in Europe.
Hepzibah bade her young guest sit down, and, herself taking a chair
near by, looked as earnestly at Phœbe’s trim little figure as if she
expected to see right into its springs and motive secrets.
“Cousin Phœbe,” said she, at last, “I really can’t see my way clear to
keep you with me.”
These words, however, had not the inhospitable bluntness with which
they may strike the reader; for the two relatives, in a talk before
bedtime, had arrived at a certain degree of mutual understanding.
Hepzibah knew enough to enable her to appreciate the circumstances
(resulting from the second marriage of the girl’s mother) which made it
desirable for Phœbe to establish herself in another home. Nor did she
misinterpret Phœbe’s character, and the genial activity pervading
it,—one of the most valuable traits of the true New England
woman,—which had impelled her forth, as might be said, to seek her
fortune, but with a self-respecting purpose to confer as much benefit
as she could anywise receive. As one of her nearest kindred, she had
naturally betaken herself to Hepzibah, with no idea of forcing herself
on her cousin’s protection, but only for a visit of a week or two,
which might be indefinitely extended, should it prove for the happiness
of both.
To Hepzibah’s blunt observation, therefore, Phœbe replied as frankly,
and more cheerfully.
“Dear cousin, I cannot tell how it will be,” said she. “But I really
think we may suit one another much better than you suppose.”
“You are a nice girl,—I see it plainly,” continued Hepzibah; “and it is
not any question as to that point which makes me hesitate. But, Phœbe,
this house of mine is but a melancholy place for a young person to be
in. It lets in the wind and rain, and the snow, too, in the garret and
upper chambers, in winter-time, but it never lets in the sunshine. And
as for myself, you see what I am,—a dismal and lonesome old woman (for
I begin to call myself old, Phœbe), whose temper, I am afraid, is none
of the best, and whose spirits are as bad as can be! I cannot make your
life pleasant, Cousin Phœbe, neither can I so much as give you bread to
eat.”
“You will find me a cheerful little body” answered Phœbe, smiling, and
yet with a kind of gentle dignity, “and I mean to earn my bread. You
know I have not been brought up a Pyncheon. A girl learns many things
in a New England village.”
“Ah! Phœbe,” said Hepzibah, sighing, “your knowledge would do but
little for you here! And then it is a wretched thought that you should
fling away your young days in a place like this. Those cheeks would not
be so rosy after a month or two. Look at my face!” and, indeed, the
contrast was very striking,—“you see how pale I am! It is my idea that
the dust and continual decay of these old houses are unwholesome for
the lungs.”
“There is the garden,—the flowers to be taken care of,” observed Phœbe.
“I should keep myself healthy with exercise in the open air.”
“And, after all, child,” exclaimed Hepzibah, suddenly rising, as if to
dismiss the subject, “it is not for me to say who shall be a guest or
inhabitant of the old Pyncheon House. Its master is coming.”
“Do you mean Judge Pyncheon?” asked Phœbe in surprise.
“Judge Pyncheon!” answered her cousin angrily. “He will hardly cross
the threshold while I live! No, no! But, Phœbe, you shall see the face
of him I speak of.”
She went in quest of the miniature already described, and returned with
it in her hand. Giving it to Phœbe, she watched her features narrowly,
and with a certain jealousy as to the mode in which the girl would show
herself affected by the picture.
“How do you like the face?” asked Hepzibah.
“It is handsome!—it is very beautiful!” said Phœbe admiringly. “It is