The House of the Seven Gables
reference to this very subject in what I am now about to say to you.
And this same inveterate grudge,—excuse me, I mean no offence,—this
irritability, which you have just shown, is not entirely aside from the
matter.”
“If you can find anything for your purpose, Mr. Pyncheon,” said the
carpenter, “in a man’s natural resentment for the wrongs done to his
blood, you are welcome to it.”
“I take you at your word, Goodman Maule,” said the owner of the Seven
Gables, with a smile, “and will proceed to suggest a mode in which your
hereditary resentments—justifiable or otherwise—may have had a bearing
on my affairs. You have heard, I suppose, that the Pyncheon family,
ever since my grandfather’s days, have been prosecuting a still
unsettled claim to a very large extent of territory at the Eastward?”
“Often,” replied Maule,—and it is said that a smile came over his
face,—“very often,—from my father!”
“This claim,” continued Mr. Pyncheon, after pausing a moment, as if to
consider what the carpenter’s smile might mean, “appeared to be on the
very verge of a settlement and full allowance, at the period of my
grandfather’s decease. It was well known, to those in his confidence,
that he anticipated neither difficulty nor delay. Now, Colonel
Pyncheon, I need hardly say, was a practical man, well acquainted with
public and private business, and not at all the person to cherish
ill-founded hopes, or to attempt the following out of an impracticable
scheme. It is obvious to conclude, therefore, that he had grounds, not
apparent to his heirs, for his confident anticipation of success in the
matter of this Eastern claim. In a word, I believe,—and my legal
advisers coincide in the belief, which, moreover, is authorized, to a
certain extent, by the family traditions,—that my grandfather was in
possession of some deed, or other document, essential to this claim,
but which has since disappeared.”
“Very likely,” said Matthew Maule,—and again, it is said, there was a
dark smile on his face,—“but what can a poor carpenter have to do with
the grand affairs of the Pyncheon family?”
“Perhaps nothing,” returned Mr. Pyncheon, “possibly much!”
Here ensued a great many words between Matthew Maule and the proprietor
of the Seven Gables, on the subject which the latter had thus broached.
It seems (although Mr. Pyncheon had some hesitation in referring to
stories so exceedingly absurd in their aspect) that the popular belief
pointed to some mysterious connection and dependence, existing between
the family of the Maules and these vast unrealized possessions of the
Pyncheons. It was an ordinary saying that the old wizard, hanged though
he was, had obtained the best end of the bargain in his contest with
Colonel Pyncheon; inasmuch as he had got possession of the great
Eastern claim, in exchange for an acre or two of garden-ground. A very
aged woman, recently dead, had often used the metaphorical expression,
in her fireside talk, that miles and miles of the Pyncheon lands had
been shovelled into Maule’s grave; which, by the bye, was but a very
shallow nook, between two rocks, near the summit of Gallows Hill.
Again, when the lawyers were making inquiry for the missing document,
it was a by-word that it would never be found, unless in the wizard’s
skeleton hand. So much weight had the shrewd lawyers assigned to these
fables, that (but Mr. Pyncheon did not see fit to inform the carpenter
of the fact) they had secretly caused the wizard’s grave to be
searched. Nothing was discovered, however, except that, unaccountably,
the right hand of the skeleton was gone.
Now, what was unquestionably important, a portion of these popular
rumors could be traced, though rather doubtfully and indistinctly, to
chance words and obscure hints of the executed wizard’s son, and the
father of this present Matthew Maule. And here Mr. Pyncheon could bring
an item of his own personal evidence into play. Though but a child at
the time, he either remembered or fancied that Matthew’s father had had
some job to perform on the day before, or possibly the very morning of
the Colonel’s decease, in the private room where he and the carpenter
were at this moment talking. Certain papers belonging to Colonel
Pyncheon, as his grandson distinctly recollected, had been spread out
on the table.
Matthew Maule understood the insinuated suspicion.
“My father,” he said,—but still there was that dark smile, making a
riddle of his countenance,—“my father was an honester man than the
bloody old Colonel! Not to get his rights back again would he have
carried off one of those papers!”
“I shall not bandy words with you,” observed the foreign-bred Mr.
Pyncheon, with haughty composure. “Nor will it become me to resent any
rudeness towards either my grandfather or myself. A gentleman, before
seeking intercourse with a person of your station and habits, will
first consider whether the urgency of the end may compensate for the
disagreeableness of the means. It does so in the present instance.”
He then renewed the conversation, and made great pecuniary offers to
the carpenter, in case the latter should give information leading to
the discovery of the lost document, and the consequent success of the
Eastern claim. For a long time Matthew Maule is said to have turned a
cold ear to these propositions. At last, however, with a strange kind
of laugh, he inquired whether Mr. Pyncheon would make over to him the
old wizard’s homestead-ground, together with the House of the Seven
Gables, now standing on it, in requital of the documentary evidence so
urgently required.
The wild, chimney-corner legend (which, without copying all its
extravagances, my narrative essentially follows) here gives an account
of some very strange behavior on the part of Colonel Pyncheon’s
portrait. This picture, it must be understood, was supposed to be so
intimately connected with the fate of the house, and so magically built
into its walls, that, if once it should be removed, that very instant
the whole edifice would come thundering down in a heap of dusty ruin.
All through the foregoing conversation between Mr. Pyncheon and the
carpenter, the portrait had been frowning, clenching its fist, and
giving many such proofs of excessive discomposure, but without
attracting the notice of either of the two colloquists. And finally, at
Matthew Maule’s audacious suggestion of a transfer of the seven-gabled
structure, the ghostly portrait is averred to have lost all patience,
and to have shown itself on the point of descending bodily from its
frame. But such incredible incidents are merely to be mentioned aside.
“Give up this house!” exclaimed Mr. Pyncheon, in amazement at the
proposal. “Were I to do so, my grandfather would not rest quiet in his
grave!”
“He never has, if all stories are true,” remarked the carpenter
composedly. “But that matter concerns his grandson more than it does
Matthew Maule. I have no other terms to propose.”
Impossible as he at first thought it to comply with Maule’s conditions,
still, on a second glance, Mr. Pyncheon was of opinion that they might
at least be made matter of discussion. He himself had no personal
attachment for the house, nor any pleasant associations connected with
his childish residence in it. On the contrary, after seven-and-thirty
years, the presence of his dead grandfather seemed still to pervade it,
as on that morning when the affrighted boy had beheld him, with so
ghastly an aspect, stiffening in his chair. His long abode in foreign
parts, moreover, and familiarity with many of the castles and ancestral
halls of England, and the marble palaces of Italy, had caused him to
look contemptuously at the House of the Seven Gables, whether in point
of splendor or convenience. It was a mansion exceedingly inadequate to
the style of living which it would be incumbent on Mr. Pyncheon to
support, after realizing his territorial rights. His steward might
deign to occupy it, but never, certainly, the great landed proprietor
himself. In the event of success, indeed, it was his purpose to return
to England; nor, to say the truth, would he recently have quitted that
more congenial home, had not his own fortune, as well as his deceased
wife’s, begun to give symptoms of exhaustion. The Eastern claim once
fairly settled, and put upon the firm basis of actual possession, Mr.
Pyncheon’s property—to be measured by miles, not acres—would be worth
an earldom, and would reasonably entitle him to solicit, or enable him
to purchase, that elevated dignity from the British monarch. Lord
Pyncheon!—or the Earl of Waldo!—how could such a magnate be expected to
contract his grandeur within the pitiful compass of seven shingled
gables?
In short, on an enlarged view of the business, the carpenter’s terms
appeared so ridiculously easy that Mr. Pyncheon could scarcely forbear
laughing in his face. He was quite ashamed, after the foregoing
reflections, to propose any diminution of so moderate a recompense for
the immense service to be rendered.
“I consent to your proposition, Maule!” cried he. “Put me in possession
of the document essential to establish my rights, and the House of the
Seven Gables is your own!”
According to some versions of the story, a regular contract to the
above effect was drawn up by a lawyer, and signed and sealed in the
presence of witnesses. Others say that Matthew Maule was contented with
a private written agreement, in which Mr. Pyncheon pledged his honor
and integrity to the fulfillment of the terms concluded upon. The
gentleman then ordered wine, which he and the carpenter drank together,
in confirmation of their bargain. During the whole preceding discussion
and subsequent formalities, the old Puritan’s portrait seems to have
persisted in its shadowy gestures of disapproval; but without effect,
except that, as Mr. Pyncheon set down the emptied glass, he thought he
beheld his grandfather frown.
“This sherry is too potent a wine for me; it has affected my brain
already,” he observed, after a somewhat startled look at the picture.
“On returning to Europe, I shall confine myself to the more delicate
vintages of Italy and France, the best of which will not bear
transportation.”
“My Lord Pyncheon may drink what wine he will, and wherever he
pleases,” replied the carpenter, as if he had been privy to Mr.
Pyncheon’s ambitious projects. “But first, sir, if you desire tidings
of this lost document, I must crave the favor of a little talk with
your fair daughter Alice.”
“You are mad, Maule!” exclaimed Mr. Pyncheon haughtily; and now, at
last, there was anger mixed up with his pride. “What can my daughter
have to do with a business like this?”
Indeed, at this new demand on the carpenter’s part, the proprietor of
the Seven Gables was even more thunder-struck than at the cool
proposition to surrender his house. There was, at least, an assignable
motive for the first stipulation; there appeared to be none whatever
for the last. Nevertheless, Matthew Maule sturdily insisted on the
young lady being summoned, and even gave her father to understand, in a
mysterious kind of explanation,—which made the matter considerably
darker than it looked before,—that the only chance of acquiring the
requisite knowledge was through the clear, crystal medium of a pure and
virgin intelligence, like that of the fair Alice. Not to encumber our
story with Mr. Pyncheon’s scruples, whether of conscience, pride, or
fatherly affection, he at length ordered his daughter to be called. He
well knew that she was in her chamber, and engaged in no occupation
that could not readily be laid aside; for, as it happened, ever since
Alice’s name had been spoken, both her father and the carpenter had
heard the sad and sweet music of her harpsichord, and the airier
melancholy of her accompanying voice.