The House of the Seven Gables
Massachusetts? And all these great purposes accomplished, will he walk
the streets again, with that dog-day smile of elaborate benevolence,
sultry enough to tempt flies to come and buzz in it? Or will he, after
the tomb-like seclusion of the past day and night, go forth a humbled
and repentant man, sorrowful, gentle, seeking no profit, shrinking from
worldly honor, hardly daring to love God, but bold to love his fellow
man, and to do him what good he may? Will he bear about with him,—no
odious grin of feigned benignity, insolent in its pretence, and
loathsome in its falsehood,—but the tender sadness of a contrite heart,
broken, at last, beneath its own weight of sin? For it is our belief,
whatever show of honor he may have piled upon it, that there was heavy
sin at the base of this man’s being.
Rise up, Judge Pyncheon! The morning sunshine glimmers through the
foliage, and, beautiful and holy as it is, shuns not to kindle up your
face. Rise up, thou subtle, worldly, selfish, iron-hearted hypocrite,
and make thy choice whether still to be subtle, worldly, selfish,
iron-hearted, and hypocritical, or to tear these sins out of thy
nature, though they bring the lifeblood with them! The Avenger is upon
thee! Rise up, before it be too late!
What! Thou art not stirred by this last appeal? No, not a jot! And
there we see a fly,—one of your common house-flies, such as are always
buzzing on the window-pane,—which has smelt out Governor Pyncheon, and
alights, now on his forehead, now on his chin, and now, Heaven help us!
is creeping over the bridge of his nose, towards the would-be
chief-magistrate’s wide-open eyes! Canst thou not brush the fly away?
Art thou too sluggish? Thou man, that hadst so many busy projects
yesterday! Art thou too weak, that wast so powerful? Not brush away a
fly? Nay, then, we give thee up!
And hark! the shop-bell rings. After hours like these latter ones,
through which we have borne our heavy tale, it is good to be made
sensible that there is a living world, and that even this old, lonely
mansion retains some manner of connection with it. We breathe more
freely, emerging from Judge Pyncheon’s presence into the street before
the Seven Gables.
XIX.
Alice’s Posies
Uncle Venner, trundling a wheelbarrow, was the earliest person stirring
in the neighborhood the day after the storm.
Pyncheon Street, in front of the House of the Seven Gables, was a far
pleasanter scene than a by-lane, confined by shabby fences, and
bordered with wooden dwellings of the meaner class, could reasonably be
expected to present. Nature made sweet amends, that morning, for the
five unkindly days which had preceded it. It would have been enough to
live for, merely to look up at the wide benediction of the sky, or as
much of it as was visible between the houses, genial once more with
sunshine. Every object was agreeable, whether to be gazed at in the
breadth, or examined more minutely. Such, for example, were the
well-washed pebbles and gravel of the sidewalk; even the sky-reflecting
pools in the centre of the street; and the grass, now freshly verdant,
that crept along the base of the fences, on the other side of which, if
one peeped over, was seen the multifarious growth of gardens. Vegetable
productions, of whatever kind, seemed more than negatively happy, in
the juicy warmth and abundance of their life. The Pyncheon Elm,
throughout its great circumference, was all alive, and full of the
morning sun and a sweet-tempered little breeze, which lingered within
this verdant sphere, and set a thousand leafy tongues a-whispering all
at once. This aged tree appeared to have suffered nothing from the
gale. It had kept its boughs unshattered, and its full complement of
leaves; and the whole in perfect verdure, except a single branch, that,
by the earlier change with which the elm-tree sometimes prophesies the
autumn, had been transmuted to bright gold. It was like the golden
branch that gained Aeneas and the Sibyl admittance into Hades.
This one mystic branch hung down before the main entrance of the Seven
Gables, so nigh the ground that any passer-by might have stood on
tiptoe and plucked it off. Presented at the door, it would have been a
symbol of his right to enter, and be made acquainted with all the
secrets of the house. So little faith is due to external appearance,
that there was really an inviting aspect over the venerable edifice,
conveying an idea that its history must be a decorous and happy one,
and such as would be delightful for a fireside tale. Its windows
gleamed cheerfully in the slanting sunlight. The lines and tufts of
green moss, here and there, seemed pledges of familiarity and
sisterhood with Nature; as if this human dwelling-place, being of such
old date, had established its prescriptive title among primeval oaks
and whatever other objects, by virtue of their long continuance, have
acquired a gracious right to be. A person of imaginative temperament,
while passing by the house, would turn, once and again, and peruse it
well: its many peaks, consenting together in the clustered chimney; the
deep projection over its basement-story; the arched window, imparting a
look, if not of grandeur, yet of antique gentility, to the broken
portal over which it opened; the luxuriance of gigantic burdocks, near
the threshold; he would note all these characteristics, and be
conscious of something deeper than he saw. He would conceive the
mansion to have been the residence of the stubborn old Puritan,
Integrity, who, dying in some forgotten generation, had left a blessing
in all its rooms and chambers, the efficacy of which was to be seen in
the religion, honesty, moderate competence, or upright poverty and
solid happiness, of his descendants, to this day.
One object, above all others, would take root in the imaginative
observer’s memory. It was the great tuft of flowers,—weeds, you would
have called them, only a week ago,—the tuft of crimson-spotted flowers,
in the angle between the two front gables. The old people used to give
them the name of Alice’s Posies, in remembrance of fair Alice Pyncheon,
who was believed to have brought their seeds from Italy. They were
flaunting in rich beauty and full bloom to-day, and seemed, as it were,
a mystic expression that something within the house was consummated.
It was but little after sunrise, when Uncle Venner made his appearance,
as aforesaid, impelling a wheelbarrow along the street. He was going
his matutinal rounds to collect cabbage-leaves, turnip-tops,
potato-skins, and the miscellaneous refuse of the dinner-pot, which the
thrifty housewives of the neighborhood were accustomed to put aside, as
fit only to feed a pig. Uncle Venner’s pig was fed entirely, and kept
in prime order, on these eleemosynary contributions; insomuch that the
patched philosopher used to promise that, before retiring to his farm,
he would make a feast of the portly grunter, and invite all his
neighbors to partake of the joints and spare-ribs which they had helped
to fatten. Miss Hepzibah Pyncheon’s housekeeping had so greatly
improved, since Clifford became a member of the family, that her share
of the banquet would have been no lean one; and Uncle Venner,
accordingly, was a good deal disappointed not to find the large earthen
pan, full of fragmentary eatables, that ordinarily awaited his coming
at the back doorstep of the Seven Gables.
“I never knew Miss Hepzibah so forgetful before,” said the patriarch to
himself. “She must have had a dinner yesterday,—no question of that!
She always has one, nowadays. So where’s the pot-liquor and
potato-skins, I ask? Shall I knock, and see if she’s stirring yet? No,
no,—’twon’t do! If little Phœbe was about the house, I should not mind
knocking; but Miss Hepzibah, likely as not, would scowl down at me out
of the window, and look cross, even if she felt pleasantly. So, I’ll
come back at noon.”
With these reflections, the old man was shutting the gate of the little
back-yard. Creaking on its hinges, however, like every other gate and
door about the premises, the sound reached the ears of the occupant of
the northern gable, one of the windows of which had a side-view towards
the gate.
“Good-morning, Uncle Venner!” said the daguerreotypist, leaning out of
the window. “Do you hear nobody stirring?”
“Not a soul,” said the man of patches. “But that’s no wonder. ’Tis
barely half an hour past sunrise, yet. But I’m really glad to see you,
Mr. Holgrave! There’s a strange, lonesome look about this side of the
house; so that my heart misgave me, somehow or other, and I felt as if
there was nobody alive in it. The front of the house looks a good deal
cheerier; and Alice’s Posies are blooming there beautifully; and if I
were a young man, Mr. Holgrave, my sweetheart should have one of those
flowers in her bosom, though I risked my neck climbing for it! Well,
and did the wind keep you awake last night?”
“It did, indeed!” answered the artist, smiling. “If I were a believer
in ghosts,—and I don’t quite know whether I am or not,—I should have
concluded that all the old Pyncheons were running riot in the lower
rooms, especially in Miss Hepzibah’s part of the house. But it is very
quiet now.”
“Yes, Miss Hepzibah will be apt to over-sleep herself, after being
disturbed, all night, with the racket,” said Uncle Venner. “But it
would be odd, now, wouldn’t it, if the Judge had taken both his cousins
into the country along with him? I saw him go into the shop yesterday.”
“At what hour?” inquired Holgrave.
“Oh, along in the forenoon,” said the old man. “Well, well! I must go
my rounds, and so must my wheelbarrow. But I’ll be back here at
dinner-time; for my pig likes a dinner as well as a breakfast. No
meal-time, and no sort of victuals, ever seems to come amiss to my pig.
Good morning to you! And, Mr. Holgrave, if I were a young man, like
you, I’d get one of Alice’s Posies, and keep it in water till Phœbe
comes back.”
“I have heard,” said the daguerreotypist, as he drew in his head, “that
the water of Maule’s well suits those flowers best.”
Here the conversation ceased, and Uncle Venner went on his way. For
half an hour longer, nothing disturbed the repose of the Seven Gables;
nor was there any visitor, except a carrier-boy, who, as he passed the
front doorstep, threw down one of his newspapers; for Hepzibah, of
late, had regularly taken it in. After a while, there came a fat woman,
making prodigious speed, and stumbling as she ran up the steps of the
shop-door. Her face glowed with fire-heat, and, it being a pretty warm
morning, she bubbled and hissed, as it were, as if all a-fry with
chimney-warmth, and summer-warmth, and the warmth of her own corpulent
velocity. She tried the shop-door; it was fast. She tried it again,
with so angry a jar that the bell tinkled angrily back at her.
“The deuce take Old Maid Pyncheon!” muttered the irascible housewife.
“Think of her pretending to set up a cent-shop, and then lying abed
till noon! These are what she calls gentlefolk’s airs, I suppose! But
I’ll either start her ladyship, or break the door down!”
She shook it accordingly, and the bell, having a spiteful little temper
of its own, rang obstreperously, making its remonstrances heard,—not,
indeed, by the ears for which they were intended,—but by a good lady on
the opposite side of the street. She opened the window, and addressed
the impatient applicant.
“You’ll find nobody there, Mrs. Gubbins.”
“But I must and will find somebody here!” cried Mrs. Gubbins,
inflicting another outrage on the bell. “I want a half-pound of pork,
to fry some first-rate flounders for Mr. Gubbins’s breakfast; and, lady
or not, Old Maid Pyncheon shall get up and serve me with it!”
“But do hear reason, Mrs. Gubbins!” responded the lady opposite. “She,