The House of the Seven Gables
mercy, in a broad, sunlike sweep, over half the universe at once. Its
vastness made it nothing. But Hepzibah did not see that, just as there
comes a warm sunbeam into every cottage window, so comes a lovebeam of
God’s care and pity for every separate need.
At last, finding no other pretext for deferring the torture that she
was to inflict on Clifford,—her reluctance to which was the true cause
of her loitering at the window, her search for the artist, and even her
abortive prayer,—dreading, also, to hear the stern voice of Judge
Pyncheon from below stairs, chiding her delay,—she crept slowly, a
pale, grief-stricken figure, a dismal shape of woman, with almost
torpid limbs, slowly to her brother’s door, and knocked!
There was no reply.
And how should there have been? Her hand, tremulous with the shrinking
purpose which directed it, had smitten so feebly against the door that
the sound could hardly have gone inward. She knocked again. Still no
response! Nor was it to be wondered at. She had struck with the entire
force of her heart’s vibration, communicating, by some subtile
magnetism, her own terror to the summons. Clifford would turn his face
to the pillow, and cover his head beneath the bedclothes, like a
startled child at midnight. She knocked a third time, three regular
strokes, gentle, but perfectly distinct, and with meaning in them; for,
modulate it with what cautious art we will, the hand cannot help
playing some tune of what we feel upon the senseless wood.
Clifford returned no answer.
“Clifford! Dear brother!” said Hepzibah. “Shall I come in?”
A silence.
Two or three times, and more, Hepzibah repeated his name, without
result; till, thinking her brother’s sleep unwontedly profound, she
undid the door, and entering, found the chamber vacant. How could he
have come forth, and when, without her knowledge? Was it possible that,
in spite of the stormy day, and worn out with the irksomeness within
doors he had betaken himself to his customary haunt in the garden, and
was now shivering under the cheerless shelter of the summer-house? She
hastily threw up a window, thrust forth her turbaned head and the half
of her gaunt figure, and searched the whole garden through, as
completely as her dim vision would allow. She could see the interior of
the summer-house, and its circular seat, kept moist by the droppings of
the roof. It had no occupant. Clifford was not thereabouts; unless,
indeed, he had crept for concealment (as, for a moment, Hepzibah
fancied might be the case) into a great, wet mass of tangled and
broad-leaved shadow, where the squash-vines were clambering
tumultuously upon an old wooden framework, set casually aslant against
the fence. This could not be, however; he was not there; for, while
Hepzibah was looking, a strange grimalkin stole forth from the very
spot, and picked his way across the garden. Twice he paused to snuff
the air, and then anew directed his course towards the parlor window.
Whether it was only on account of the stealthy, prying manner common to
the race, or that this cat seemed to have more than ordinary mischief
in his thoughts, the old gentlewoman, in spite of her much perplexity,
felt an impulse to drive the animal away, and accordingly flung down a
window stick. The cat stared up at her, like a detected thief or
murderer, and, the next instant, took to flight. No other living
creature was visible in the garden. Chanticleer and his family had
either not left their roost, disheartened by the interminable rain, or
had done the next wisest thing, by seasonably returning to it. Hepzibah
closed the window.
But where was Clifford? Could it be that, aware of the presence of his
Evil Destiny, he had crept silently down the staircase, while the Judge
and Hepzibah stood talking in the shop, and had softly undone the
fastenings of the outer door, and made his escape into the street? With
that thought, she seemed to behold his gray, wrinkled, yet childlike
aspect, in the old-fashioned garments which he wore about the house; a
figure such as one sometimes imagines himself to be, with the world’s
eye upon him, in a troubled dream. This figure of her wretched brother
would go wandering through the city, attracting all eyes, and
everybody’s wonder and repugnance, like a ghost, the more to be
shuddered at because visible at noontide. To incur the ridicule of the
younger crowd, that knew him not,—the harsher scorn and indignation of
a few old men, who might recall his once familiar features! To be the
sport of boys, who, when old enough to run about the streets, have no
more reverence for what is beautiful and holy, nor pity for what is
sad,—no more sense of sacred misery, sanctifying the human shape in
which it embodies itself,—than if Satan were the father of them all!
Goaded by their taunts, their loud, shrill cries, and cruel
laughter,—insulted by the filth of the public ways, which they would
fling upon him,—or, as it might well be, distracted by the mere
strangeness of his situation, though nobody should afflict him with so
much as a thoughtless word,—what wonder if Clifford were to break into
some wild extravagance which was certain to be interpreted as lunacy?
Thus Judge Pyncheon’s fiendish scheme would be ready accomplished to
his hands!
Then Hepzibah reflected that the town was almost completely
water-girdled. The wharves stretched out towards the centre of the
harbor, and, in this inclement weather, were deserted by the ordinary
throng of merchants, laborers, and sea-faring men; each wharf a
solitude, with the vessels moored stem and stern, along its misty
length. Should her brother’s aimless footsteps stray thitherward, and
he but bend, one moment, over the deep, black tide, would he not
bethink himself that here was the sure refuge within his reach, and
that, with a single step, or the slightest overbalance of his body, he
might be forever beyond his kinsman’s gripe? Oh, the temptation! To
make of his ponderous sorrow a security! To sink, with its leaden
weight upon him, and never rise again!
The horror of this last conception was too much for Hepzibah. Even
Jaffrey Pyncheon must help her now! She hastened down the staircase,
shrieking as she went.
“Clifford is gone!” she cried. “I cannot find my brother. Help, Jaffrey
Pyncheon! Some harm will happen to him!”
She threw open the parlor-door. But, what with the shade of branches
across the windows, and the smoke-blackened ceiling, and the dark
oak-panelling of the walls, there was hardly so much daylight in the
room that Hepzibah’s imperfect sight could accurately distinguish the
Judge’s figure. She was certain, however, that she saw him sitting in
the ancestral arm-chair, near the centre of the floor, with his face
somewhat averted, and looking towards a window. So firm and quiet is
the nervous system of such men as Judge Pyncheon, that he had perhaps
stirred not more than once since her departure, but, in the hard
composure of his temperament, retained the position into which accident
had thrown him.
“I tell you, Jaffrey,” cried Hepzibah impatiently, as she turned from
the parlor-door to search other rooms, “my brother is not in his
chamber! You must help me seek him!”
But Judge Pyncheon was not the man to let himself be startled from an
easy-chair with haste ill-befitting either the dignity of his character
or his broad personal basis, by the alarm of an hysteric woman. Yet,
considering his own interest in the matter, he might have bestirred
himself with a little more alacrity.
“Do you hear me, Jaffrey Pyncheon?” screamed Hepzibah, as she again
approached the parlor-door, after an ineffectual search elsewhere.
“Clifford is gone.”
At this instant, on the threshold of the parlor, emerging from within,
appeared Clifford himself! His face was preternaturally pale; so deadly
white, indeed, that, through all the glimmering indistinctness of the
passageway, Hepzibah could discern his features, as if a light fell on
them alone. Their vivid and wild expression seemed likewise sufficient
to illuminate them; it was an expression of scorn and mockery,
coinciding with the emotions indicated by his gesture. As Clifford
stood on the threshold, partly turning back, he pointed his finger
within the parlor, and shook it slowly as though he would have
summoned, not Hepzibah alone, but the whole world, to gaze at some
object inconceivably ridiculous. This action, so ill-timed and
extravagant,—accompanied, too, with a look that showed more like joy
than any other kind of excitement,—compelled Hepzibah to dread that her
stern kinsman’s ominous visit had driven her poor brother to absolute
insanity. Nor could she otherwise account for the Judge’s quiescent
mood than by supposing him craftily on the watch, while Clifford
developed these symptoms of a distracted mind.
“Be quiet, Clifford!” whispered his sister, raising her hand to impress
caution. “Oh, for Heaven’s sake, be quiet!”
“Let him be quiet! What can he do better?” answered Clifford, with a
still wilder gesture, pointing into the room which he had just quitted.
“As for us, Hepzibah, we can dance now!—we can sing, laugh, play, do
what we will! The weight is gone, Hepzibah! It is gone off this weary
old world, and we may be as light-hearted as little Phœbe herself.”
And, in accordance with his words, he began to laugh, still pointing
his finger at the object, invisible to Hepzibah, within the parlor. She
was seized with a sudden intuition of some horrible thing. She thrust
herself past Clifford, and disappeared into the room; but almost
immediately returned, with a cry choking in her throat. Gazing at her
brother with an affrighted glance of inquiry, she beheld him all in a
tremor and a quake, from head to foot, while, amid these commoted
elements of passion or alarm, still flickered his gusty mirth.
“My God! what is to become of us?” gasped Hepzibah.
“Come!” said Clifford in a tone of brief decision, most unlike what was
usual with him. “We stay here too long! Let us leave the old house to
our cousin Jaffrey! He will take good care of it!”
Hepzibah now noticed that Clifford had on a cloak,—a garment of long
ago,—in which he had constantly muffled himself during these days of
easterly storm. He beckoned with his hand, and intimated, so far as she
could comprehend him, his purpose that they should go together from the
house. There are chaotic, blind, or drunken moments, in the lives of
persons who lack real force of character,—moments of test, in which
courage would most assert itself,—but where these individuals, if left
to themselves, stagger aimlessly along, or follow implicitly whatever
guidance may befall them, even if it be a child’s. No matter how
preposterous or insane, a purpose is a Godsend to them. Hepzibah had
reached this point. Unaccustomed to action or responsibility,—full of
horror at what she had seen, and afraid to inquire, or almost to
imagine, how it had come to pass,—affrighted at the fatality which
seemed to pursue her brother,—stupefied by the dim, thick, stifling
atmosphere of dread which filled the house as with a death-smell, and
obliterated all definiteness of thought,—she yielded without a
question, and on the instant, to the will which Clifford expressed. For
herself, she was like a person in a dream, when the will always sleeps.
Clifford, ordinarily so destitute of this faculty, had found it in the
tension of the crisis.
“Why do you delay so?” cried he sharply. “Put on your cloak and hood,
or whatever it pleases you to wear! No matter what; you cannot look
beautiful nor brilliant, my poor Hepzibah! Take your purse, with money
in it, and come along!”
Hepzibah obeyed these instructions, as if nothing else were to be done
or thought of. She began to wonder, it is true, why she did not wake