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And now, being a trifle choleric in histemperament, the lieutenant-governor uplifted the heavy hilt of his sword,wherewith he so beat and banged upon the door, that, as some of the bystanderswhispered, the racket might have disturbed the dead. Be that as it might, itseemed to produce no awakening effect on Colonel Pyncheon. When the soundsubsided, the silence through the house was deep, dreary, and oppressive,notwithstanding that the tongues of many of the guests had already beenloosened by a surreptitious cup or two of wine or spirits. Meanwhile, the morning after the Judge’s death, Phoebe returns to a strangely abandoned House of the Seven Gables and is warmly welcomed by Holgrave. Holgrave explains that Hepzibah and Clifford are missing and tells her that he has discovered Judge Pyncheon’s body.
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The image of awful Death, which filled the house, held them united byhis stiffened grasp. But the stormdemon kept watch above, and, whenever a flame was kindled, drove the smoke backagain, choking the chimney’s sooty throat with its own breath.Nevertheless, during four days of this miserable storm, Clifford wrapt himselfin an old cloak, and occupied his customary chair. On the morning of the fifth,when summoned to breakfast, he responded only by a broken-hearted murmur,expressive of a determination not to leave his bed. In fact, entirely as she loved him, Hepzibah couldhardly have borne any longer the wretched duty—so impracticable by herfew and rigid faculties—of seeking pastime for a still sensitive, butruined mind, critical and fastidious, without force or volition.
Maule’s Well
This was a freedom essential to the health even of a character so littlesusceptible of morbid influences as that of Phœbe. The old house, as we havealready said, had both the dry-rot and the damp-rot in its walls; it was notgood to breathe no other atmosphere than that. Hepzibah, though she had hervaluable and redeeming traits, had grown to be a kind of lunatic by imprisoningherself so long in one place, with no other company than a single series ofideas, and but one affection, and one bitter sense of wrong. Clifford, thereader may perhaps imagine, was too inert to operate morally on hisfellow-creatures, however intimate and exclusive their relations with him. Butthe sympathy or magnetism among human beings is more subtile and universal thanwe think; it exists, indeed, among different classes of organized life, andvibrates from one to another.
Our Story
” exclaimed Holgrave, with almost a sigh, and a smilethat was burdened with thought. Even in her agitation, Phœbe could not help remarking the calmness ofHolgrave’s demeanor. He appeared, it is true, to feel the whole awfulnessof the Judge’s death, yet had received the fact into his mind without anymixture of surprise, but as an event preordained, happening inevitably, and sofitting itself into past occurrences that it could almost have been prophesied. Without hesitation, therefore, she stepped across the threshold, and had nosooner entered than the door closed behind her. The butcher was so much in earnest with his sweetbread of lamb, or whatever thedainty might be, that he tried every accessible door of the Seven Gables, andat length came round again to the shop, where he ordinarily found admittance.
One of the stanchest patrons was little Ned Higgins, thedevourer of Jim Crow and the elephant, who to-day signalized his omnivorousprowess by swallowing two dromedaries and a locomotive. Phœbe laughed, as shesummed up her aggregate of sales upon the slate; while Hepzibah, first drawingon a pair of silk gloves, reckoned over the sordid accumulation of copper coin,not without silver intermixed, that had jingled into the till. Several times, moreover, besides the above instance, her lady-likesensibilities were seriously infringed upon by the familiar, if not rude, tonewith which people addressed her. They evidently considered themselves notmerely her equals, but her patrons and superiors.
This contrast, or intermingling of tragedywith mirth, happens daily, hourly, momently. The gloomy and desolate old house,deserted of life, and with awful Death sitting sternly in its solitude, was theemblem of many a human heart, which, nevertheless, is compelled to hear thethrill and echo of the world’s gayety around it. At last our small acquaintance, Ned Higgins, trudged up the street, on his wayto school; and happening, for the first time in a fortnight, to be thepossessor of a cent, he could by no means get past the shop-door of the SevenGables.
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 tonguesa-whispering all at once. It had kept its boughs unshattered, and its full complement ofleaves; and the whole in perfect verdure, except a single branch, that, by theearlier change with which the elm-tree sometimes prophesies the autumn, hadbeen transmuted to bright gold. It was like the golden branch that gainedAeneas and the Sibyl admittance into Hades. Will the Judge still insist withHepzibah on the interview with Clifford? Will he persuade the purchaser of the old Pyncheonproperty to relinquish the bargain in his favor? Will he see his familyphysician, and obtain a medicine that shall preserve him, to be an honor andblessing to his race, until the utmost term of patriarchal longevity?
Chamber music to benefit the House of the Seven Gables - The Salem News
Chamber music to benefit the House of the Seven Gables.
Posted: Fri, 26 Apr 2024 08:30:00 GMT [source]
It was Mr. Pyncheon’speculiar apartment, and was provided with furniture, in an elegant and costlystyle, principally from Paris; the floor (which was unusual at that day) beingcovered with a carpet, so skilfully and richly wrought that it seemed to glowas with living flowers. In one corner stood a marble woman, to whom her ownbeauty was the sole and sufficient garment. Some pictures—that lookedold, and had a mellow tinge diffused through all their artfulsplendor—hung on the walls. Near the fireplace was a large and verybeautiful cabinet of ebony, inlaid with ivory; a piece of antique furniture,which Mr. Pyncheon had bought in Venice, and which he used as thetreasure-place for medals, ancient coins, and whatever small and valuablecuriosities he had picked up on his travels.
So wise, as well asantique, was their aspect, as to give color to the idea, not merely that theywere the descendants of a time-honored race, but that they had existed, intheir individual capacity, ever since the House of the Seven Gables wasfounded, and were somehow mixed up with its destiny. They were a species oftutelary sprite, or Banshee; although winged and feathered differently frommost other guardian angels. Before they left the breakfast-table, the shop-bell rang sharply, and Hepzibahset down the remnant of her final cup of tea, with a look of sallow despairthat was truly piteous to behold. In cases of distasteful occupation, thesecond day is generally worse than the first. We return to the rack with allthe soreness of the preceding torture in our limbs.
Thus, his sentiment for Phœbe, withoutbeing paternal, was not less chaste than if she had been his daughter. He took unfailing note of every charm that appertained to hersex, and saw the ripeness of her lips, and the virginal development of herbosom. All her little womanly ways, budding out of her like blossoms on a youngfruit-tree, had their effect on him, and sometimes caused his very heart totingle with the keenest thrills of pleasure. At such moments,—for theeffect was seldom more than momentary,—the half-torpid man would be fullof harmonious life, just as a long-silent harp is full of sound, when themusician’s fingers sweep across it.
Nor did she misinterpret Phœbe’s character, and the genialactivity pervading it,—one of the most valuable traits of the true NewEngland woman,—which had impelled her forth, as might be said, to seekher fortune, but with a self-respecting purpose to confer as much benefit asshe could anywise receive. As one of her nearest kindred, she had naturallybetaken herself to Hepzibah, with no idea of forcing herself on hercousin’s protection, but only for a visit of a week or two, which mightbe indefinitely extended, should it prove for the happiness of both. But here the shop-bell rang; it was like a sound from a remotedistance,—so far had Hepzibah descended into the sepulchral depths of herreminiscences. On entering the shop, she found an old man there, a humbleresident of Pyncheon Street, and whom, for a great many years past, she hadsuffered to be a kind of familiar of the house. He was an immemorial personage,who seemed always to have had a white head and wrinkles, and never to havepossessed but a single tooth, and that a half-decayed one, in the front of theupper jaw.
Thus it was for the interestof all New England that the Pyncheons should have justice done them. She told,too, how that there was undoubtedly an immense treasure of English guineashidden somewhere about the house, or in the cellar, or possibly in the garden. These words, however, had not the inhospitable bluntness with which they maystrike the reader; for the two relatives, in a talk before bedtime, had arrivedat a certain degree of mutual understanding. Hepzibah knew enough to enable herto appreciate the circumstances (resulting from the second marriage of thegirl’s mother) which made it desirable for Phœbe to establish herself inanother home.
Clifford, too, had long forgotten it; but found it again now, ashe slowly revived from the chill torpor of his life. By the involuntary effect of a genial temperament, Phœbe soon grew to beabsolutely essential to the daily comfort, if not the daily life, of her twoforlorn companions. There was no morbidness inPhœbe; if there had been, the old Pyncheon House was the very locality toripen it into incurable disease. But now her spirit resembled, in its potency,a minute quantity of ottar of rose in one of Hepzibah’s huge, iron-boundtrunks, diffusing its fragrance through the various articles of linen andwrought-lace, kerchiefs, caps, stockings, folded dresses, gloves, and whateverelse was treasured there. As every article in the great trunk was the sweeterfor the rose-scent, so did all the thoughts and emotions of Hepzibah andClifford, sombre as they might seem, acquire a subtle attribute of happinessfrom Phœbe’s intermixture with them. This facile adaptation was at oncethe symptom of perfect health and its best preservative.
TheItalian, also, made the best of his way off, with a parting glance up at thearched window. As for the children, they took to their heels, with one accord,and scampered as if some giant or ogre were in pursuit, until, at a gooddistance from the house, they stopped as suddenly and simultaneously as theyhad set out. Their susceptible nerves took an indefinite alarm from what theyhad overheard. Looking back at the grotesque peaks and shadowy angles of theold mansion, they fancied a gloom diffused about it which no brightness of thesunshine could dispel. An imaginary Hepzibah scowled and shook her finger atthem, from several windows at the same moment. An imaginary Clifford—for(and it would have deeply wounded him to know it) he had always been a horrorto these small people—stood behind the unreal Hepzibah, making awfulgestures, in a faded dressing-gown.
They were half believed to inherit mysterious attributes; the familyeye was said to possess strange power. Among other good-for-nothing propertiesand privileges, one was especially assigned them,—that of exercising aninfluence 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 thetopsy-turvy commonwealth of sleep. Modern psychology, it may be, will endeavorto reduce these alleged necromancies within a system, instead of rejecting themas altogether fabulous. This was a nephew, the cousin of the miserable young man who had been convictedof the uncle’s murder.
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