The House of the Seven Gables
continued to regard the memory of the reputed witches. The mantle, or
rather the ragged cloak, of old Matthew Maule had fallen upon his
children. They were half believed to inherit mysterious attributes; the
family eye was said to possess strange power. Among other
good-for-nothing properties and privileges, one was especially assigned
them,—that of exercising an influence over people’s dreams. The
Pyncheons, if all stories were true, haughtily as they bore themselves
in the noonday streets of their native town, were no better than
bond-servants to these plebeian Maules, on entering the topsy-turvy
commonwealth of sleep. Modern psychology, it may be, will endeavor to
reduce these alleged necromancies within a system, instead of rejecting
them as altogether fabulous.
A descriptive paragraph or two, treating of the seven-gabled mansion in
its more recent aspect, will bring this preliminary chapter to a close.
The street in which it upreared its venerable peaks has long ceased to
be a fashionable quarter of the town; so that, though the old edifice
was surrounded by habitations of modern date, they were mostly small,
built entirely of wood, and typical of the most plodding uniformity of
common life. Doubtless, however, the whole story of human existence may
be latent in each of them, but with no picturesqueness, externally,
that can attract the imagination or sympathy to seek it there. But as
for the old structure of our story, its white-oak frame, and its
boards, shingles, and crumbling plaster, and even the huge, clustered
chimney in the midst, seemed to constitute only the least and meanest
part of its reality. So much of mankind’s varied experience had passed
there,—so much had been suffered, and something, too, enjoyed,—that the
very timbers were oozy, as with the moisture of a heart. It was itself
like a great human heart, with a life of its own, and full of rich and
sombre reminiscences.
The deep projection of the second story gave the house such a
meditative look, that you could not pass it without the idea that it
had secrets to keep, and an eventful history to moralize upon. In
front, just on the edge of the unpaved sidewalk, grew the Pyncheon Elm,
which, in reference to such trees as one usually meets with, might well
be termed gigantic. It had been planted by a great-grandson of the
first Pyncheon, and, though now four-score years of age, or perhaps
nearer a hundred, was still in its strong and broad maturity, throwing
its shadow from side to side of the street, overtopping the seven
gables, and sweeping the whole black roof with its pendant foliage. It
gave beauty to the old edifice, and seemed to make it a part of nature.
The street having been widened about forty years ago, the front gable
was now precisely on a line with it. On either side extended a ruinous
wooden fence of open lattice-work, through which could be seen a grassy
yard, and, especially in the angles of the building, an enormous
fertility of burdocks, with leaves, it is hardly an exaggeration to
say, two or three feet long. Behind the house there appeared to be a
garden, which undoubtedly had once been extensive, but was now
infringed upon by other enclosures, or shut in by habitations and
outbuildings that stood on another street. It would be an omission,
trifling, indeed, but unpardonable, were we to forget the green moss
that had long since gathered over the projections of the windows, and
on the slopes of the roof nor must we fail to direct the reader’s eye
to a crop, not of weeds, but flower-shrubs, which were growing aloft in
the air, not a great way from the chimney, in the nook between two of
the gables. They were called Alice’s Posies. The tradition was, that a
certain Alice Pyncheon had flung up the seeds, in sport, and that the
dust of the street and the decay of the roof gradually formed a kind of
soil for them, out of which they grew, when Alice had long been in her
grave. However the flowers might have come there, it was both sad and
sweet to observe how Nature adopted to herself this desolate, decaying,
gusty, rusty old house of the Pyncheon family; and how the
ever-returning Summer did her best to gladden it with tender beauty,
and grew melancholy in the effort.
There is one other feature, very essential to be noticed, but which, we
greatly fear, may damage any picturesque and romantic impression which
we have been willing to throw over our sketch of this respectable
edifice. In the front gable, under the impending brow of the second
story, and contiguous to the street, was a shop-door, divided
horizontally in the midst, and with a window for its upper segment,
such as is often seen in dwellings of a somewhat ancient date. This
same shop-door had been a subject of no slight mortification to the
present occupant of the august Pyncheon House, as well as to some of
her predecessors. The matter is disagreeably delicate to handle; but,
since the reader must needs be let into the secret, he will please to
understand, that, about a century ago, the head of the Pyncheons found
himself involved in serious financial difficulties. The fellow
(gentleman, as he styled himself) can hardly have been other than a
spurious interloper; for, instead of seeking office from the king or
the royal governor, or urging his hereditary claim to Eastern lands, he
bethought himself of no better avenue to wealth than by cutting a
shop-door through the side of his ancestral residence. It was the
custom of the time, indeed, for merchants to store their goods and
transact business in their own dwellings. But there was something
pitifully small in this old Pyncheon’s mode of setting about his
commercial operations; it was whispered, that, with his own hands, all
beruffled as they were, he used to give change for a shilling, and
would turn a half-penny twice over, to make sure that it was a good
one. Beyond all question, he had the blood of a petty huckster in his
veins, through whatever channel it may have found its way there.
Immediately on his death, the shop-door had been locked, bolted, and
barred, and, down to the period of our story, had probably never once
been opened. The old counter, shelves, and other fixtures of the little
shop remained just as he had left them. It used to be affirmed, that
the dead shop-keeper, in a white wig, a faded velvet coat, an apron at
his waist, and his ruffles carefully turned back from his wrists, might
be seen through the chinks of the shutters, any night of the year,
ransacking his till, or poring over the dingy pages of his day-book.
From the look of unutterable woe upon his face, it appeared to be his
doom to spend eternity in a vain effort to make his accounts balance.
And now—in a very humble way, as will be seen—we proceed to open our
narrative.
II.
The Little Shop-Window
It still lacked half an hour of sunrise, when Miss Hepzibah Pyncheon—we
will not say awoke, it being doubtful whether the poor lady had so much
as closed her eyes during the brief night of midsummer—but, at all
events, arose from her solitary pillow, and began what it would be
mockery to term the adornment of her person. Far from us be the
indecorum of assisting, even in imagination, at a maiden lady’s toilet!
Our story must therefore await Miss Hepzibah at the threshold of her
chamber; only presuming, meanwhile, to note some of the heavy sighs
that labored from her bosom, with little restraint as to their
lugubrious depth and volume of sound, inasmuch as they could be audible
to nobody save a disembodied listener like ourself. The Old Maid was
alone in the old house. Alone, except for a certain respectable and
orderly young man, an artist in the daguerreotype line, who, for about
three months back, had been a lodger in a remote gable,—quite a house
by itself, indeed,—with locks, bolts, and oaken bars on all the
intervening doors. Inaudible, consequently, were poor Miss Hepzibah’s
gusty sighs. Inaudible the creaking joints of her stiffened knees, as
she knelt down by the bedside. And inaudible, too, by mortal ear, but
heard with all-comprehending love and pity in the farthest heaven, that
almost agony of prayer—now whispered, now a groan, now a struggling
silence—wherewith she besought the Divine assistance through the day!
Evidently, this is to be a day of more than ordinary trial to Miss
Hepzibah, who, for above a quarter of a century gone by, has dwelt in
strict seclusion, taking no part in the business of life, and just as
little in its intercourse and pleasures. Not with such fervor prays the
torpid recluse, looking forward to the cold, sunless, stagnant calm of
a day that is to be like innumerable yesterdays.
The maiden lady’s devotions are concluded. Will she now issue forth
over the threshold of our story? Not yet, by many moments. First, every
drawer in the tall, old-fashioned bureau is to be opened, with
difficulty, and with a succession of spasmodic jerks then, all must
close again, with the same fidgety reluctance. There is a rustling of
stiff silks; a tread of backward and forward footsteps to and fro
across the chamber. We suspect Miss Hepzibah, moreover, of taking a
step upward into a chair, in order to give heedful regard to her
appearance on all sides, and at full length, in the oval, dingy-framed
toilet-glass, that hangs above her table. Truly! well, indeed! who
would have thought it! Is all this precious time to be lavished on the
matutinal repair and beautifying of an elderly person, who never goes
abroad, whom nobody ever visits, and from whom, when she shall have
done her utmost, it were the best charity to turn one’s eyes another
way?
Now she is almost ready. Let us pardon her one other pause; for it is
given to the sole sentiment, or, we might better say,—heightened and
rendered intense, as it has been, by sorrow and seclusion,—to the
strong passion of her life. We heard the turning of a key in a small
lock; she has opened a secret drawer of an escritoire, and is probably
looking at a certain miniature, done in Malbone’s most perfect style,
and representing a face worthy of no less delicate a pencil. It was
once our good fortune to see this picture. It is a likeness of a young
man, in a silken dressing-gown of an old fashion, the soft richness of
which is well adapted to the countenance of reverie, with its full,
tender lips, and beautiful eyes, that seem to indicate not so much
capacity of thought, as gentle and voluptuous emotion. Of the possessor
of such features we shall have a right to ask nothing, except that he
would take the rude world easily, and make himself happy in it. Can it
have been an early lover of Miss Hepzibah? No; she never had a
lover—poor thing, how could she?—nor ever knew, by her own experience,
what love technically means. And yet, her undying faith and trust, her
fresh remembrance, and continual devotedness towards the original of
that miniature, have been the only substance for her heart to feed
upon.
She seems to have put aside the miniature, and is standing again before
the toilet-glass. There are tears to be wiped off. A few more footsteps
to and fro; and here, at last,—with another pitiful sigh, like a gust
of chill, damp wind out of a long-closed vault, the door of which has
accidentally been set, ajar—here comes Miss Hepzibah Pyncheon! Forth
she steps into the dusky, time-darkened passage; a tall figure, clad in
black silk, with a long and shrunken waist, feeling her way towards the
stairs like a near-sighted person, as in truth she is.
The sun, meanwhile, if not already above the horizon, was ascending
nearer and nearer to its verge. A few clouds, floating high upward,
caught some of the earliest light, and threw down its golden gleam on
the windows of all the houses in the street, not forgetting the House