The House of the Seven Gables
nature. The artist chanced to be one on whom the reviving influence
fell. It made him feel—what he sometimes almost forgot, thrust so early
as he had been into the rude struggle of man with man—how youthful he
still was.
“It seems to me,” he observed, “that I never watched the coming of so
beautiful an eve, and never felt anything so very much like happiness
as at this moment. After all, what a good world we live in! How good,
and beautiful! How young it is, too, with nothing really rotten or
age-worn in it! This old house, for example, which sometimes has
positively oppressed my breath with its smell of decaying timber! And
this garden, where the black mould always clings to my spade, as if I
were a sexton delving in a graveyard! Could I keep the feeling that now
possesses me, the garden would every day be virgin soil, with the
earth’s first freshness in the flavor of its beans and squashes; and
the house!—it would be like a bower in Eden, blossoming with the
earliest roses that God ever made. Moonlight, and the sentiment in
man’s heart responsive to it, are the greatest of renovators and
reformers. And all other reform and renovation, I suppose, will prove
to be no better than moonshine!”
“I have been happier than I am now; at least, much gayer,” said Phœbe
thoughtfully. “Yet I am sensible of a great charm in this brightening
moonlight; and I love to watch how the day, tired as it is, lags away
reluctantly, and hates to be called yesterday so soon. I never cared
much about moonlight before. What is there, I wonder, so beautiful in
it, to-night?”
“And you have never felt it before?” inquired the artist, looking
earnestly at the girl through the twilight.
“Never,” answered Phœbe; “and life does not look the same, now that I
have felt it so. It seems as if I had looked at everything, hitherto,
in broad daylight, or else in the ruddy light of a cheerful fire,
glimmering and dancing through a room. Ah, poor me!” she added, with a
half-melancholy laugh. “I shall never be so merry as before I knew
Cousin Hepzibah and poor Cousin Clifford. I have grown a great deal
older, in this little time. Older, and, I hope, wiser, and,—not exactly
sadder,—but, certainly, with not half so much lightness in my spirits!
I have given them my sunshine, and have been glad to give it; but, of
course, I cannot both give and keep it. They are welcome,
notwithstanding!”
“You have lost nothing, Phœbe, worth keeping, nor which it was possible
to keep,” said Holgrave after a pause. “Our first youth is of no value;
for we are never conscious of it until after it is gone. But
sometimes—always, I suspect, unless one is exceedingly
unfortunate—there comes a sense of second youth, gushing out of the
heart’s joy at being in love; or, possibly, it may come to crown some
other grand festival in life, if any other such there be. This
bemoaning of one’s self (as you do now) over the first, careless,
shallow gayety of youth departed, and this profound happiness at youth
regained,—so much deeper and richer than that we lost,—are essential to
the soul’s development. In some cases, the two states come almost
simultaneously, and mingle the sadness and the rapture in one
mysterious emotion.”
“I hardly think I understand you,” said Phœbe.
“No wonder,” replied Holgrave, smiling; “for I have told you a secret
which I hardly began to know before I found myself giving it utterance.
Remember it, however; and when the truth becomes clear to you, then
think of this moonlight scene!”
“It is entirely moonlight now, except only a little flush of faint
crimson, upward from the west, between those buildings,” remarked
Phœbe. “I must go in. Cousin Hepzibah is not quick at figures, and will
give herself a headache over the day’s accounts, unless I help her.”
But Holgrave detained her a little longer.
“Miss Hepzibah tells me,” observed he, “that you return to the country
in a few days.”
“Yes, but only for a little while,” answered Phœbe; “for I look upon
this as my present home. I go to make a few arrangements, and to take a
more deliberate leave of my mother and friends. It is pleasant to live
where one is much desired and very useful; and I think I may have the
satisfaction of feeling myself so here.”
“You surely may, and more than you imagine,” said the artist. “Whatever
health, comfort, and natural life exists in the house is embodied in
your person. These blessings came along with you, and will vanish when
you leave the threshold. Miss Hepzibah, by secluding herself from
society, has lost all true relation with it, and is, in fact, dead;
although she galvanizes herself into a semblance of life, and stands
behind her counter, afflicting the world with a
greatly-to-be-deprecated scowl. Your poor cousin Clifford is another
dead and long-buried person, on whom the governor and council have
wrought a necromantic miracle. I should not wonder if he were to
crumble away, some morning, after you are gone, and nothing be seen of
him more, except a heap of dust. Miss Hepzibah, at any rate, will lose
what little flexibility she has. They both exist by you.”
“I should be very sorry to think so,” answered Phœbe gravely. “But it
is true that my small abilities were precisely what they needed; and I
have a real interest in their welfare,—an odd kind of motherly
sentiment,—which I wish you would not laugh at! And let me tell you
frankly, Mr. Holgrave, I am sometimes puzzled to know whether you wish
them well or ill.”
“Undoubtedly,” said the daguerreotypist, “I do feel an interest in this
antiquated, poverty-stricken old maiden lady, and this degraded and
shattered gentleman,—this abortive lover of the beautiful. A kindly
interest, too, helpless old children that they are! But you have no
conception what a different kind of heart mine is from your own. It is
not my impulse, as regards these two individuals, either to help or
hinder; but to look on, to analyze, to explain matters to myself, and
to comprehend the drama which, for almost two hundred years, has been
dragging its slow length over the ground where you and I now tread. If
permitted to witness the close, I doubt not to derive a moral
satisfaction from it, go matters how they may. There is a conviction
within me that the end draws nigh. But, though Providence sent you
hither to help, and sends me only as a privileged and meet spectator, I
pledge myself to lend these unfortunate beings whatever aid I can!”
“I wish you would speak more plainly,” cried Phœbe, perplexed and
displeased; “and, above all, that you would feel more like a Christian
and a human being! How is it possible to see people in distress without
desiring, more than anything else, to help and comfort them? You talk
as if this old house were a theatre; and you seem to look at Hepzibah’s
and Clifford’s misfortunes, and those of generations before them, as a
tragedy, such as I have seen acted in the hall of a country hotel, only
the present one appears to be played exclusively for your amusement. I
do not like this. The play costs the performers too much, and the
audience is too cold-hearted.”
“You are severe,” said Holgrave, compelled to recognize a degree of
truth in the piquant sketch of his own mood.
“And then,” continued Phœbe, “what can you mean by your conviction,
which you tell me of, that the end is drawing near? Do you know of any
new trouble hanging over my poor relatives? If so, tell me at once, and
I will not leave them!”
“Forgive me, Phœbe!” said the daguerreotypist, holding out his hand, to
which the girl was constrained to yield her own. “I am somewhat of a
mystic, it must be confessed. The tendency is in my blood, together
with the faculty of mesmerism, which might have brought me to Gallows
Hill, in the good old times of witchcraft. Believe me, if I were really
aware of any secret, the disclosure of which would benefit your
friends,—who are my own friends, likewise,—you should learn it before
we part. But I have no such knowledge.”
“You hold something back!” said Phœbe.
“Nothing,—no secrets but my own,” answered Holgrave. “I can perceive,
indeed, that Judge Pyncheon still keeps his eye on Clifford, in whose
ruin he had so large a share. His motives and intentions, however are a
mystery to me. He is a determined and relentless man, with the genuine
character of an inquisitor; and had he any object to gain by putting
Clifford to the rack, I verily believe that he would wrench his joints
from their sockets, in order to accomplish it. But, so wealthy and
eminent as he is,—so powerful in his own strength, and in the support
of society on all sides,—what can Judge Pyncheon have to hope or fear
from the imbecile, branded, half-torpid Clifford?”
“Yet,” urged Phœbe, “you did speak as if misfortune were impending!”
“Oh, that was because I am morbid!” replied the artist. “My mind has a
twist aside, like almost everybody’s mind, except your own. Moreover,
it is so strange to find myself an inmate of this old Pyncheon House,
and sitting in this old garden—(hark, how Maule’s well is
murmuring!)—that, were it only for this one circumstance, I cannot help
fancying that Destiny is arranging its fifth act for a catastrophe.”
“There!” cried Phœbe with renewed vexation; for she was by nature as
hostile to mystery as the sunshine to a dark corner. “You puzzle me
more than ever!”
“Then let us part friends!” said Holgrave, pressing her hand. “Or, if
not friends, let us part before you entirely hate me. You, who love
everybody else in the world!”
“Good-by, then,” said Phœbe frankly. “I do not mean to be angry a great
while, and should be sorry to have you think so. There has Cousin
Hepzibah been standing in the shadow of the doorway, this quarter of an
hour past! She thinks I stay too long in the damp garden. So,
good-night, and good-by.”
On the second morning thereafter, Phœbe might have been seen, in her
straw bonnet, with a shawl on one arm and a little carpet-bag on the
other, bidding adieu to Hepzibah and Cousin Clifford. She was to take a
seat in the next train of cars, which would transport her to within
half a dozen miles of her country village.
The tears were in Phœbe’s eyes; a smile, dewy with affectionate regret,
was glimmering around her pleasant mouth. She wondered how it came to
pass, that her life of a few weeks, here in this heavy-hearted old
mansion, had taken such hold of her, and so melted into her
associations, as now to seem a more important centre-point of
remembrance than all which had gone before. How had Hepzibah—grim,
silent, and irresponsive to her overflow of cordial sentiment—contrived
to win so much love? And Clifford,—in his abortive decay, with the
mystery of fearful crime upon him, and the close prison-atmosphere yet
lurking in his breath,—how had he transformed himself into the simplest
child, whom Phœbe felt bound to watch over, and be, as it were, the
providence of his unconsidered hours! Everything, at that instant of
farewell, stood out prominently to her view. Look where she would, lay
her hand on what she might, the object responded to her consciousness,
as if a moist human heart were in it.
She peeped from the window into the garden, and felt herself more
regretful at leaving this spot of black earth, vitiated with such an
age-long growth of weeds, than joyful at the idea of again scenting her
pine forests and fresh clover-fields. She called Chanticleer, his two
wives, and the venerable chicken, and threw them some crumbs of bread
from the breakfast-table. These being hastily gobbled up, the chicken
spread its wings, and alighted close by Phœbe on the window-sill, where
it looked gravely into her face and vented its emotions in a croak.
Phœbe bade it be a good old chicken during her absence, and promised to
bring it a little bag of buckwheat.