The House of the Seven Gables
Half an hour later, in the street next to this, there was to be an
auction of real estate, including a portion of the old Pyncheon
property, originally belonging to Maule’s garden ground. It has been
alienated from the Pyncheons these four-score years; but the Judge had
kept it in his eye, and had set his heart on reannexing it to the small
demesne still left around the Seven Gables; and now, during this odd
fit of oblivion, the fatal hammer must have fallen, and transferred our
ancient patrimony to some alien possessor. Possibly, indeed, the sale
may have been postponed till fairer weather. If so, will the Judge make
it convenient to be present, and favor the auctioneer with his bid, on
the proximate occasion?
The next affair was to buy a horse for his own driving. The one
heretofore his favorite stumbled, this very morning, on the road to
town, and must be at once discarded. Judge Pyncheon’s neck is too
precious to be risked on such a contingency as a stumbling steed.
Should all the above business be seasonably got through with, he might
attend the meeting of a charitable society; the very name of which,
however, in the multiplicity of his benevolence, is quite forgotten; so
that this engagement may pass unfulfilled, and no great harm done. And
if he have time, amid the press of more urgent matters, he must take
measures for the renewal of Mrs. Pyncheon’s tombstone, which, the
sexton tells him, has fallen on its marble face, and is cracked quite
in twain. She was a praiseworthy woman enough, thinks the Judge, in
spite of her nervousness, and the tears that she was so oozy with, and
her foolish behavior about the coffee; and as she took her departure so
seasonably, he will not grudge the second tombstone. It is better, at
least, than if she had never needed any! The next item on his list was
to give orders for some fruit-trees, of a rare variety, to be
deliverable at his country-seat in the ensuing autumn. Yes, buy them,
by all means; and may the peaches be luscious in your mouth, Judge
Pyncheon! After this comes something more important. A committee of his
political party has besought him for a hundred or two of dollars, in
addition to his previous disbursements, towards carrying on the fall
campaign. The Judge is a patriot; the fate of the country is staked on
the November election; and besides, as will be shadowed forth in
another paragraph, he has no trifling stake of his own in the same
great game. He will do what the committee asks; nay, he will be liberal
beyond their expectations; they shall have a check for five hundred
dollars, and more anon, if it be needed. What next? A decayed widow,
whose husband was Judge Pyncheon’s early friend, has laid her case of
destitution before him, in a very moving letter. She and her fair
daughter have scarcely bread to eat. He partly intends to call on her
to-day,—perhaps so—perhaps not,—accordingly as he may happen to have
leisure, and a small bank-note.
Another business, which, however, he puts no great weight on (it is
well, you know, to be heedful, but not over-anxious, as respects one’s
personal health),—another business, then, was to consult his family
physician. About what, for Heaven’s sake? Why, it is rather difficult
to describe the symptoms. A mere dimness of sight and dizziness of
brain, was it?—or disagreeable choking, or stifling, or gurgling, or
bubbling, in the region of the thorax, as the anatomists say?—or was it
a pretty severe throbbing and kicking of the heart, rather creditable
to him than otherwise, as showing that the organ had not been left out
of the Judge’s physical contrivance? No matter what it was. The doctor
probably would smile at the statement of such trifles to his
professional ear; the Judge would smile in his turn; and meeting one
another’s eyes, they would enjoy a hearty laugh together! But a fig for
medical advice. The Judge will never need it.
Pray, pray, Judge Pyncheon, look at your watch, Now! What—not a glance!
It is within ten minutes of the dinner hour! It surely cannot have
slipped your memory that the dinner of to-day is to be the most
important, in its consequences, of all the dinners you ever ate. Yes,
precisely the most important; although, in the course of your somewhat
eminent career, you have been placed high towards the head of the
table, at splendid banquets, and have poured out your festive eloquence
to ears yet echoing with Webster’s mighty organ-tones. No public dinner
this, however. It is merely a gathering of some dozen or so of friends
from several districts of the State; men of distinguished character and
influence, assembling, almost casually, at the house of a common
friend, likewise distinguished, who will make them welcome to a little
better than his ordinary fare. Nothing in the way of French cookery,
but an excellent dinner, nevertheless. Real turtle, we understand, and
salmon, tautog, canvas-backs, pig, English mutton, good roast beef, or
dainties of that serious kind, fit for substantial country gentlemen,
as these honorable persons mostly are. The delicacies of the season, in
short, and flavored by a brand of old Madeira which has been the pride
of many seasons. It is the Juno brand; a glorious wine, fragrant, and
full of gentle might; a bottled-up happiness, put by for use; a golden
liquid, worth more than liquid gold; so rare and admirable, that
veteran wine-bibbers count it among their epochs to have tasted it! It
drives away the heart-ache, and substitutes no head-ache! Could the
Judge but quaff a glass, it might enable him to shake off the
unaccountable lethargy which (for the ten intervening minutes, and five
to boot, are already past) has made him such a laggard at this
momentous dinner. It would all but revive a dead man! Would you like to
sip it now, Judge Pyncheon?
Alas, this dinner. Have you really forgotten its true object? Then let
us whisper it, that you may start at once out of the oaken chair, which
really seems to be enchanted, like the one in Comus, or that in which
Moll Pitcher imprisoned your own grandfather. But ambition is a
talisman more powerful than witchcraft. Start up, then, and, hurrying
through the streets, burst in upon the company, that they may begin
before the fish is spoiled! They wait for you; and it is little for
your interest that they should wait. These gentlemen—need you be told
it?—have assembled, not without purpose, from every quarter of the
State. They are practised politicians, every man of them, and skilled
to adjust those preliminary measures which steal from the people,
without its knowledge, the power of choosing its own rulers. The
popular voice, at the next gubernatorial election, though loud as
thunder, will be really but an echo of what these gentlemen shall
speak, under their breath, at your friend’s festive board. They meet to
decide upon their candidate. This little knot of subtle schemers will
control the convention, and, through it, dictate to the party. And what
worthier candidate,—more wise and learned, more noted for philanthropic
liberality, truer to safe principles, tried oftener by public trusts,
more spotless in private character, with a larger stake in the common
welfare, and deeper grounded, by hereditary descent, in the faith and
practice of the Puritans,—what man can be presented for the suffrage of
the people, so eminently combining all these claims to the
chief-rulership as Judge Pyncheon here before us?
Make haste, then! Do your part! The meed for which you have toiled, and
fought, and climbed, and crept, is ready for your grasp! Be present at
this dinner!—drink a glass or two of that noble wine!—make your pledges
in as low a whisper as you will!—and you rise up from table virtually
governor of the glorious old State! Governor Pyncheon of Massachusetts!
And is there no potent and exhilarating cordial in a certainty like
this? It has been the grand purpose of half your lifetime to obtain it.
Now, when there needs little more than to signify your acceptance, why
do you sit so lumpishly in your great-great-grandfather’s oaken chair,
as if preferring it to the gubernatorial one? We have all heard of King
Log; but, in these jostling times, one of that royal kindred will
hardly win the race for an elective chief-magistracy.
Well; it is absolutely too late for dinner! Turtle, salmon, tautog,
woodcock, boiled turkey, South-Down mutton, pig, roast-beef, have
vanished, or exist only in fragments, with lukewarm potatoes, and
gravies crusted over with cold fat. The Judge, had he done nothing
else, would have achieved wonders with his knife and fork. It was he,
you know, of whom it used to be said, in reference to his ogre-like
appetite, that his Creator made him a great animal, but that the
dinner-hour made him a great beast. Persons of his large sensual
endowments must claim indulgence, at their feeding-time. But, for once,
the Judge is entirely too late for dinner! Too late, we fear, even to
join the party at their wine! The guests are warm and merry; they have
given up the Judge; and, concluding that the Free-Soilers have him,
they will fix upon another candidate. Were our friend now to stalk in
among them, with that wide-open stare, at once wild and stolid, his
ungenial presence would be apt to change their cheer. Neither would it
be seemly in Judge Pyncheon, generally so scrupulous in his attire, to
show himself at a dinner-table with that crimson stain upon his
shirt-bosom. By the bye, how came it there? It is an ugly sight, at any
rate; and the wisest way for the Judge is to button his coat closely
over his breast, and, taking his horse and chaise from the livery
stable, to make all speed to his own house. There, after a glass of
brandy and water, and a mutton-chop, a beefsteak, a broiled fowl, or
some such hasty little dinner and supper all in one, he had better
spend the evening by the fireside. He must toast his slippers a long
while, in order to get rid of the chilliness which the air of this vile
old house has sent curdling through his veins.
Up, therefore, Judge Pyncheon, up! You have lost a day. But to-morrow
will be here anon. Will you rise, betimes, and make the most of it?
To-morrow. To-morrow! To-morrow. We, that are alive, may rise betimes
to-morrow. As for him that has died to-day, his morrow will be the
resurrection morn.
Meanwhile the twilight is glooming upward out of the corners of the
room. The shadows of the tall furniture grow deeper, and at first
become more definite; then, spreading wider, they lose their
distinctness of outline in the dark gray tide of oblivion, as it were,
that creeps slowly over the various objects, and the one human figure
sitting in the midst of them. The gloom has not entered from without;
it has brooded here all day, and now, taking its own inevitable time,
will possess itself of everything. The Judge’s face, indeed, rigid and
singularly white, refuses to melt into this universal solvent. Fainter
and fainter grows the light. It is as if another double-handful of
darkness had been scattered through the air. Now it is no longer gray,
but sable. There is still a faint appearance at the window; neither a
glow, nor a gleam, nor a glimmer,—any phrase of light would express
something far brighter than this doubtful perception, or sense, rather,
that there is a window there. Has it yet vanished? No!—yes!—not quite!
And there is still the swarthy whiteness,—we shall venture to marry
these ill-agreeing words,—the swarthy whiteness of Judge Pyncheon’s
face. The features are all gone: there is only the paleness of them
left. And how looks it now? There is no window! There is no face! An
infinite, inscrutable blackness has annihilated sight! Where is our
universe? All crumbled away from us; and we, adrift in chaos, may