The House of the Seven Gables
then, patronizing a ready-made clothing establishment, he had exchanged
his velvet doublet and sable cloak, with the richly worked band under
his chin, for a white collar and cravat, coat, vest, and pantaloons;
and lastly, putting aside his steel-hilted broadsword to take up a
gold-headed cane, the Colonel Pyncheon of two centuries ago steps
forward as the Judge of the passing moment!
Of course, Phœbe was far too sensible a girl to entertain this idea in
any other way than as matter for a smile. Possibly, also, could the two
personages have stood together before her eye, many points of
difference would have been perceptible, and perhaps only a general
resemblance. The long lapse of intervening years, in a climate so
unlike that which had fostered the ancestral Englishman, must
inevitably have wrought important changes in the physical system of his
descendant. The Judge’s volume of muscle could hardly be the same as
the Colonel’s; there was undoubtedly less beef in him. Though looked
upon as a weighty man among his contemporaries in respect of animal
substance, and as favored with a remarkable degree of fundamental
development, well adapting him for the judicial bench, we conceive that
the modern Judge Pyncheon, if weighed in the same balance with his
ancestor, would have required at least an old-fashioned fifty-six to
keep the scale in equilibrio. Then the Judge’s face had lost the ruddy
English hue that showed its warmth through all the duskiness of the
Colonel’s weather-beaten cheek, and had taken a sallow shade, the
established complexion of his countrymen. If we mistake not, moreover,
a certain quality of nervousness had become more or less manifest, even
in so solid a specimen of Puritan descent as the gentleman now under
discussion. As one of its effects, it bestowed on his countenance a
quicker mobility than the old Englishman’s had possessed, and keener
vivacity, but at the expense of a sturdier something, on which these
acute endowments seemed to act like dissolving acids. This process, for
aught we know, may belong to the great system of human progress, which,
with every ascending footstep, as it diminishes the necessity for
animal force, may be destined gradually to spiritualize us, by refining
away our grosser attributes of body. If so, Judge Pyncheon could endure
a century or two more of such refinement as well as most other men.
The similarity, intellectual and moral, between the Judge and his
ancestor appears to have been at least as strong as the resemblance of
mien and feature would afford reason to anticipate. In old Colonel
Pyncheon’s funeral discourse the clergyman absolutely canonized his
deceased parishioner, and opening, as it were, a vista through the roof
of the church, and thence through the firmament above, showed him
seated, harp in hand, among the crowned choristers of the spiritual
world. On his tombstone, too, the record is highly eulogistic; nor does
history, so far as he holds a place upon its page, assail the
consistency and uprightness of his character. So also, as regards the
Judge Pyncheon of to-day, neither clergyman, nor legal critic, nor
inscriber of tombstones, nor historian of general or local politics,
would venture a word against this eminent person’s sincerity as a
Christian, or respectability as a man, or integrity as a judge, or
courage and faithfulness as the often-tried representative of his
political party. But, besides these cold, formal, and empty words of
the chisel that inscribes, the voice that speaks, and the pen that
writes, for the public eye and for distant time,—and which inevitably
lose much of their truth and freedom by the fatal consciousness of so
doing,—there were traditions about the ancestor, and private diurnal
gossip about the Judge, remarkably accordant in their testimony. It is
often instructive to take the woman’s, the private and domestic, view
of a public man; nor can anything be more curious than the vast
discrepancy between portraits intended for engraving and the
pencil-sketches that pass from hand to hand behind the original’s back.
For example: tradition affirmed that the Puritan had been greedy of
wealth; the Judge, too, with all the show of liberal expenditure, was
said to be as close-fisted as if his gripe were of iron. The ancestor
had clothed himself in a grim assumption of kindliness, a rough
heartiness of word and manner, which most people took to be the genuine
warmth of nature, making its way through the thick and inflexible hide
of a manly character. His descendant, in compliance with the
requirements of a nicer age, had etherealized this rude benevolence
into that broad benignity of smile wherewith he shone like a noonday
sun along the streets, or glowed like a household fire in the
drawing-rooms of his private acquaintance. The Puritan—if not belied by
some singular stories, murmured, even at this day, under the narrator’s
breath—had fallen into certain transgressions to which men of his great
animal development, whatever their faith or principles, must continue
liable, until they put off impurity, along with the gross earthly
substance that involves it. We must not stain our page with any
contemporary scandal, to a similar purport, that may have been
whispered against the Judge. The Puritan, again, an autocrat in his own
household, had worn out three wives, and, merely by the remorseless
weight and hardness of his character in the conjugal relation, had sent
them, one after another, broken-hearted, to their graves. Here the
parallel, in some sort, fails. The Judge had wedded but a single wife,
and lost her in the third or fourth year of their marriage. There was a
fable, however,—for such we choose to consider it, though, not
impossibly, typical of Judge Pyncheon’s marital deportment,—that the
lady got her death-blow in the honeymoon, and never smiled again,
because her husband compelled her to serve him with coffee every
morning at his bedside, in token of fealty to her liege-lord and
master.
But it is too fruitful a subject, this of hereditary resemblances,—the
frequent recurrence of which, in a direct line, is truly unaccountable,
when we consider how large an accumulation of ancestry lies behind
every man at the distance of one or two centuries. We shall only add,
therefore, that the Puritan—so, at least, says chimney-corner
tradition, which often preserves traits of character with marvellous
fidelity—was bold, imperious, relentless, crafty; laying his purposes
deep, and following them out with an inveteracy of pursuit that knew
neither rest nor conscience; trampling on the weak, and, when essential
to his ends, doing his utmost to beat down the strong. Whether the
Judge in any degree resembled him, the further progress of our
narrative may show.
Scarcely any of the items in the above-drawn parallel occurred to
Phœbe, whose country birth and residence, in truth, had left her
pitifully ignorant of most of the family traditions, which lingered,
like cobwebs and incrustations of smoke, about the rooms and
chimney-corners of the House of the Seven Gables. Yet there was a
circumstance, very trifling in itself, which impressed her with an odd
degree of horror. She had heard of the anathema flung by Maule, the
executed wizard, against Colonel Pyncheon and his posterity,—that God
would give them blood to drink,—and likewise of the popular notion,
that this miraculous blood might now and then be heard gurgling in
their throats. The latter scandal—as became a person of sense, and,
more especially, a member of the Pyncheon family—Phœbe had set down for
the absurdity which it unquestionably was. But ancient superstitions,
after being steeped in human hearts and embodied in human breath, and
passing from lip to ear in manifold repetition, through a series of
generations, become imbued with an effect of homely truth. The smoke of
the domestic hearth has scented them through and through. By long
transmission among household facts, they grow to look like them, and
have such a familiar way of making themselves at home that their
influence is usually greater than we suspect. Thus it happened, that
when Phœbe heard a certain noise in Judge Pyncheon’s throat,—rather
habitual with him, not altogether voluntary, yet indicative of nothing,
unless it were a slight bronchial complaint, or, as some people hinted,
an apoplectic symptom,—when the girl heard this queer and awkward
ingurgitation (which the writer never did hear, and therefore cannot
describe), she very foolishly started, and clasped her hands.
Of course, it was exceedingly ridiculous in Phœbe to be discomposed by
such a trifle, and still more unpardonable to show her discomposure to
the individual most concerned in it. But the incident chimed in so
oddly with her previous fancies about the Colonel and the Judge, that,
for the moment, it seemed quite to mingle their identity.
“What is the matter with you, young woman?” said Judge Pyncheon, giving
her one of his harsh looks. “Are you afraid of anything?”
“Oh, nothing, sir—nothing in the world!” answered Phœbe, with a little
laugh of vexation at herself. “But perhaps you wish to speak with my
cousin Hepzibah. Shall I call her?”
“Stay a moment, if you please,” said the Judge, again beaming sunshine
out of his face. “You seem to be a little nervous this morning. The
town air, Cousin Phœbe, does not agree with your good, wholesome
country habits. Or has anything happened to disturb you?—anything
remarkable in Cousin Hepzibah’s family?— An arrival, eh? I thought so!
No wonder you are out of sorts, my little cousin. To be an inmate with
such a guest may well startle an innocent young girl!”
“You quite puzzle me, sir,” replied Phœbe, gazing inquiringly at the
Judge. “There is no frightful guest in the house, but only a poor,
gentle, childlike man, whom I believe to be Cousin Hepzibah’s brother.
I am afraid (but you, sir, will know better than I) that he is not
quite in his sound senses; but so mild and quiet he seems to be, that a
mother might trust her baby with him; and I think he would play with
the baby as if he were only a few years older than itself. He startle
me!—Oh, no indeed!”
“I rejoice to hear so favorable and so ingenuous an account of my
cousin Clifford,” said the benevolent Judge. “Many years ago, when we
were boys and young men together, I had a great affection for him, and
still feel a tender interest in all his concerns. You say, Cousin
Phœbe, he appears to be weak minded. Heaven grant him at least enough
of intellect to repent of his past sins!”
“Nobody, I fancy,” observed Phœbe, “can have fewer to repent of.”
“And is it possible, my dear,” rejoined the Judge, with a commiserating
look, “that you have never heard of Clifford Pyncheon?—that you know
nothing of his history? Well, it is all right; and your mother has
shown a very proper regard for the good name of the family with which
she connected herself. Believe the best you can of this unfortunate
person, and hope the best! It is a rule which Christians should always
follow, in their judgments of one another; and especially is it right
and wise among near relatives, whose characters have necessarily a
degree of mutual dependence. But is Clifford in the parlor? I will just
step in and see.”
“Perhaps, sir, I had better call my cousin Hepzibah,” said Phœbe;
hardly knowing, however, whether she ought to obstruct the entrance of
so affectionate a kinsman into the private regions of the house. “Her
brother seemed to be just falling asleep after breakfast; and I am sure
she would not like him to be disturbed. Pray, sir, let me give her
notice!”
But the Judge showed a singular determination to enter unannounced; and
as Phœbe, with the vivacity of a person whose movements unconsciously