_ THE sudden death of so prominent a member of the social world
as the Honorable Judge Jaffrey Pyncheon created a sensation
(at least, in the circles more immediately connected with the
deceased) which had hardly quite subsided in a fortnight.
It may be remarked, however, that, of all the events which
constitute a person's biography, there is scarcely one--none,
certainly, of anything like a similar importance--to which the
world so easily reconciles itself as to his death. In most other
cases and contingencies, the individual is present among us,
mixed up with the daily revolution of affairs, and affording a
definite point for observation. At his decease, there is only
a vacancy, and a momentary eddy,--very small, as compared with
the apparent magnitude of the ingurgitated object,--and a bubble
or two, ascending out of the black depth and bursting at the
surface. As regarded Judge Pyncheon, it seemed probable, at first
blush, that the mode of his final departure might give him a
larger and longer posthumous vogue than ordinarily attends the
memory of a distinguished man. But when it came to be understood,
on the highest professional authority, that the event was a natural,
and--except for some unimportant particulars, denoting a slight
idiosyncrasy--by no means an unusual form of death, the public,
with its customary alacrity, proceeded to forget that he had ever
lived. In short, the honorable Judge was beginning to be a stale
subject before half the country newspapers had found time to put
their columns in mourning, and publish his exceedingly eulogistic
obituary.
Nevertheless, creeping darkly through the places which this
excellent person had haunted in his lifetime, there was a hidden
stream of private talk, such as it would have shocked all decency
to speak loudly at the street-corners. It is very singular,
how the fact of a man's death often seems to give people a truer
idea of his character, whether for good or evil, than they have
ever possessed while he was living and acting among them. Death
is so genuine a fact that it excludes falsehood, or betrays its
emptiness; it is a touchstone that proves the gold, and dishonors
the baser metal. Could the departed, whoever he may be, return
in a week after his decease, he would almost invariably find
himself at a higher or lower point than he had formerly occupied,
on the scale of public appreciation. But the talk, or scandal, to
which we now allude, had reference to matters of no less old a date
than the supposed murder, thirty or forty years ago, of the late
Judge Pyncheon's uncle. The medical opinion with regard to his own
recent and regretted decease had almost entirely obviated the idea
that a murder was committed in the former case. Yet, as the record
showed, there were circumstances irrefragably indicating that some
person had gained access to old Jaffrey Pyncheon's private apartments,
at or near the moment of his death. His desk and private drawers,
in a room contiguous to his bedchamber, had been ransacked; money and
valuable articles were missing; there was a bloody hand-print on the
old man's linen; and, by a powerfully welded chain of deductive evidence,
the guilt of the robbery and apparent murder had been fixed on Clifford,
then residing with his uncle in the House of the Seven Gables.
Whencesoever originating, there now arose a theory that undertook
so to account for these circumstances as to exclude the idea of
Clifford's agency. Many persons affirmed that the history and
elucidation of the facts, long so mysterious, had been obtained
by the daguerreotypist from one of those mesmerical seers who,
nowadays, so strangely perplex the aspect of human affairs, and
put everybody's natural vision to the blush, by the marvels which
they see with their eyes shut.
According to this version of the story, Judge Pyncheon, exemplary
as we have portrayed him in our narrative, was, in his youth,
an apparently irreclaimable scapegrace. The brutish, the animal
instincts, as is often the case, had been developed earlier
than the intellectual qualities, and the force of character, for
which he was afterwards remarkable. He had shown himself wild,
dissipated, addicted to low pleasures, little short of ruffianly
in his propensities, and recklessly expensive, with no other
resources than the bounty of his uncle. This course of conduct had
alienated the old bachelor's affection, once strongly fixed upon
him. Now it is averred,--but whether on authority available in
a court of justice, we do not pretend to have investigated,--that
the young man was tempted by the devil, one night, to search his
uncle's private drawers, to which he had unsuspected means of
access. While thus criminally occupied, he was startled by the
opening of the chamber-door. There stood old Jaffrey Pyncheon,
in his nightclothes! The surprise of such a discovery, his agitation,
alarm, and horror, brought on the crisis of a disorder to which
the old bachelor had an hereditary liability; he seemed to choke
with blood, and fell upon the floor, striking his temple a heavy
blow against the corner of a table. What was to be done? The
old man was surely dead! Assistance would come too late! What a
misfortune, indeed, should it come too soon, since his reviving
consciousness would bring the recollection of the ignominious
offence which he had beheld his nephew in the very act of committing!
But he never did revive. With the cool hardihood that always
pertained to him, the young man continued his search of the
drawers, and found a will, of recent date, in favor of Clifford,
--which he destroyed,--and an older one, in his own favor, which
he suffered to remain. But before retiring, Jaffrey bethought
himself of the evidence, in these ransacked drawers, that some
one had visited the chamber with sinister purposes. Suspicion,
unless averted, might fix upon the real offender. In the very
presence of the dead man, therefore, he laid a scheme that should
free himself at the expense of Clifford, his rival, for whose
character he had at once a contempt and a repugnance. It is not
probable, be it said, that he acted with any set purpose of
involving Clifford in a charge of murder. Knowing that his uncle
did not die by violence, it may not have occurred to him, in the
hurry of the crisis, that such an inference might be drawn. But,
when the affair took this darker aspect, Jaffrey's previous steps
had already pledged him to those which remained. So craftily had
he arranged the circumstances, that, at Clifford's trial, his cousin
hardly found it necessary to swear to anything false, but only to
withhold the one decisive explanation, by refraining to state what
he had himself done and witnessed.
Thus Jaffrey Pyncheon's inward criminality, as regarded Clifford,
was, indeed, black and damnable; while its mere outward show
and positive commission was the smallest that could possibly
consist with so great a sin. This is just the sort of guilt that
a man of eminent respectability finds it easiest to dispose of.
It was suffered to fade out of sight or be reckoned a venial matter,
in the Honorable Judge Pyncheon's long subsequent survey of his
own life. He shuffled it aside, among the forgotten and forgiven
frailties of his youth, and seldom thought of it again.
We leave the Judge to his repose. He could not be styled
fortunate at the hour of death. Unknowingly, he was a childless man,
while striving to add more wealth to his only child's inheritance.
Hardly a week after his decease, one of the Cunard steamers brought
intelligence of the death, by cholera, of Judge Pyncheon's son,
just at the point of embarkation for his native land. By this
misfortune Clifford became rich; so did Hepzibah; so did our little
village maiden, and, through her, that sworn foe of wealth and all
manner of conservatism, --the wild reformer,--Holgrave!
It was now far too late in Clifford's life for the good opinion
of society to be worth the trouble and anguish of a formal
vindication. What he needed was the love of a very few; not the
admiration, or even the respect, of the unknown many. The latter
might probably have been won for him, had those on whom the
guardianship of his welfare had fallen deemed it advisable to
expose Clifford to a miserable resuscitation of past ideas,
when the condition of whatever comfort he might expect lay in
the calm of forgetfulness. After such wrong as he had suffered,
there is no reparation. The pitiable mockery of it, which the
world might have been ready enough to offer, coming so long after
the agony had done its utmost work, would have been fit only to
provoke bitterer laughter than poor Clifford was ever capable of.
It is a truth (and it would be a very sad one but for the higher
hopes which it suggests) that no great mistake, whether acted or
endured, in our mortal sphere, is ever really set right. Time,
the continual vicissitude of circumstances, and the invariable
inopportunity of death, render it impossible. If, after long
lapse of years, the right seems to be in our power, we find no niche
to set it in. The better remedy is for the sufferer to pass on,
and leave what he once thought his irreparable ruin far behind him.
The shock of Judge Pyncheon's death had a permanently invigorating
and ultimately beneficial effect on Clifford. That strong and
ponderous man had been Clifford's nightmare. There was no free
breath to be drawn, within the sphere of so malevolent an influence.
The first effect of freedom, as we have witnessed in Clifford's aimless
flight, was a tremulous exhilaration. Subsiding from it, he did not
sink into his former intellectual apathy. He never, it is true,
attained to nearly the full measure of what might have been his
faculties. But he recovered enough of them partially to light up
his character, to display some outline of the marvellous grace that
was abortive in it, and to make him the object of No less deep,
although less melancholy interest than heretofore. He was evidently
happy. Could we pause to give another picture of his daily life,
with all the appliances now at command to gratify his instinct for
the Beautiful, the garden scenes, that seemed so sweet to him,
would look mean and trivial in comparison.
Very soon after their change of fortune, Clifford, Hepzibah, and
little Phoebe, with the approval of the artist, concluded to remove
from the dismal old House of the Seven Gables, and take up their
abode, for the present, at the elegant country-seat of the late
Judge Pyncheon. Chanticleer and his family had already been
transported thither, where the two hens had forthwith begun an
indefatigable process of egg-laying, with an evident design, as a
matter of duty and conscience, to continue their illustrious breed
under better auspices than for a century past. On the day set for
their departure, the principal personages of our story, including
good Uncle Venner, were assembled in the parlor.
"The country-house is certainly a very fine one, so far as the
plan goes," observed Holgrave, as the party were discussing their
future arrangements. "But I wonder that the late Judge--being so
opulent, and with a reasonable prospect of transmitting his wealth
to descendants of his own--should not have felt the propriety of
embodying so excellent a piece of domestic architecture in stone,
rather than in wood. Then, every generation of the family might
have altered the interior, to suit its own taste and convenience;
while the exterior, through the lapse of years, might have been
adding venerableness to its original beauty, and thus giving that
impression of permanence which I consider essential to the
happiness of any one moment."
"Why," cried Phoebe, gazing into the artist's face with infinite
amazement, "how wonderfully your ideas are changed! A house of
stone, indeed! It is but two or three weeks ago that you seemed
to wish people to live in something as fragile and temporary as
a bird's-nest!"
"Ah, Phoebe, I told you how it would be!" said the artist, with
a half-melancholy laugh."You find me a conservative already!
Little did I think ever to become one. It is especially
unpardonable in this dwelling of so much hereditary misfortune,
and under the eye of yonder portrait of a model conservative,
who, in that very character, rendered himself so long the evil
destiny of his race."
"That picture!" said Clifford, seeming to shrink from its stern
glance. "Whenever I look at it, there is an old dreamy recollection
haunting me, but keeping just beyond the grasp of my mind. Wealth,
it seems to say! --boundless wealth!--unimaginable wealth! I could
fancy that, when I was a child, or a youth, that portrait had spoken,
and told me a rich secret, or had held forth its hand, with the
written record of hidden opulence. But those old matters are so dim
with me, nowadays! What could this dream have been?"
"Perhaps I can recall it," answered Holgrave. "See! There are a
hundred chances to one that no person, unacquainted with the
secret, would ever touch this spring."
"A secret spring!" cried Clifford. "Ah, I remember Now! I did
discover it, one summer afternoon, when I was idling and
dreaming about the house, long, long ago. But the mystery
escapes me."
The artist put his finger on the contrivance to which he had
referred. In former days, the effect would probably have been to
cause the picture to start forward. But, in so long a period of
concealment, the machinery had been eaten through with rust; so that
at Holgrave's pressure, the portrait, frame and all, tumbled suddenly
from its position, and lay face downward on the floor. A recess in
the wall was thus brought to light, in which lay an object so covered
with a century's dust that it could not immediately be recognized as
a folded sheet of parchment. Holgrave opened it, and displayed an
ancient deed, signed with the hieroglyphics of several Indian
sagamores, and conveying to Colonel Pyncheon and his heirs, forever,
a vast extent of territory at the Eastward.
"This is the very parchment, the attempt to recover which cost
the beautiful Alice Pyncheon her happiness and life," said the
artist, alluding to his legend. "It is what the Pyncheons sought
in vain, while it was valuable; and now that they find the
treasure, it has long been worthless."
"Poor Cousin Jaffrey! This is what deceived him," exclaimed
Hepzibah. "When they were young together, Clifford probably
made a kind of fairy-tale of this discovery. He was always
dreaming hither and thither about the house, and lighting up its
dark corners with beautiful stories. And poor Jaffrey, who took
hold of everything as if it were real, thought my brother had
found out his uncle's wealth. He died with this delusion in his
mind!"
"But," said Phoebe, apart to Holgrave, "how came you to know
the secret?"
"My dearest Phoebe," said Holgrave, "how will it please you to
assume the name of Maule? As for the secret, it is the only
inheritance that has come down to me from my ancestors. You
should have known sooner (only that I was afraid of frightening
you away) that, in this long drama of wrong and retribution,
I represent the old wizard, and am probably as much a wizard
as ever he was. The son of the executed Matthew Maule, while
building this house, took the opportunity to construct that recess,
and hide away the Indian deed, on which depended the immense
land-claim of the Pyncheons. Thus they bartered their eastern
territory for Maule's garden-ground."
"And now" said Uncle Venner "I suppose their whole claim is not
worth one man's share in my farm yonder!"
"Uncle Venner," cried Phoebe, taking the patched philosopher's
hand, "you must never talk any more about your farm! You shall
never go there, as long as you live! There is a cottage in our
new garden,--the prettiest little yellowish-brown cottage you
ever saw; and the sweetest-looking place, for it looks just as
if it were made of gingerbread,--and we are going to fit it up
and furnish it, on purpose for you. And you shall do nothing
but what you choose, and shall be as happy as the day is long,
and shall keep Cousin Clifford in spirits with the wisdom and
pleasantness which is always dropping from your lips!"
"Ah! my dear child," quoth good Uncle Venner, quite overcome,
"if you were to speak to a young man as you do to an old one,
his chance of keeping his heart another minute would not be
worth one of the buttons on my waistcoat! And--soul alive!--that
great sigh, which you made me heave, has burst off the very last
of them! But, never mind! It was the happiest sigh I ever did
heave; and it seems as if I must have drawn in a gulp of heavenly
breath, to make it with. Well, well, Miss Phoebe! They'll miss
me in the gardens hereabouts, and round by the back doors;
and Pyncheon Street, I'm afraid, will hardly look the same
without old Uncle Venner, who remembers it with a mowing
field on one side, and the garden of the Seven Gables on the
other. But either I must go to your country-seat, or you must
come to my farm,--that's one of two things certain; and I leave
you to choose which!"
"Oh, come with us, by all means, Uncle Venner!" said Clifford,
who had a remarkable enjoyment of the old man's mellow, quiet,
and simple spirit. "I want you always to be within five minutes,
saunter of my chair. You are the only philosopher I ever knew
of whose wisdom has not a drop of bitter essence at the bottom!"
"Dear me!" cried Uncle Venner, beginning partly to realize what
manner of man he was. "And yet folks used to set me down
among the simple ones, in my younger days! But I suppose I am
like a Roxbury russet,--a great deal the better, the longer I can
be kept. Yes; and my words of wisdom, that you and Phoebe tell
me of, are like the golden dandelions, which never grow in the
hot months, but may be seen glistening among the withered
grass, and under the dry leaves, sometimes as late as December.
And you are welcome, friends, to my mess of dandelions, if there
were twice as many!"
A plain, but handsome, dark-green barouche had now drawn up in
front of the ruinous portal of the old mansion-house. The party
came forth, and (with the exception of good Uncle Venner, who was
to follow in a few days) proceeded to take their places. They
were chatting and laughing very pleasantly together; and--as proves
to be often the case, at moments when we ought to palpitate with
sensibility--Clifford and Hepzibah bade a final farewell to the
abode of their forefathers, with hardly more emotion than if they
had made it their arrangement to return thither at tea-time.
Several children were drawn to the spot by so unusual a spectacle
as the barouche and pair of gray horses. Recognizing little
Ned Higgins among them, Hepzibah put her hand into her pocket,
and presented the urchin, her earliest and staunchest customer,
with silver enough to people the Domdaniel cavern of his interior
with as various a procession of quadrupeds as passed into the ark.
Two men were passing, just as the barouche drove off.
"Well, Dixey," said one of them, "what do you think of this? My
wife kept a cent-shop three months, and lost five dollars on her
outlay. Old Maid Pyncheon has been in trade just about as long,
and rides off in her carriage with a couple of hundred thousand,
--reckoning her share, and Clifford's, and Phoebe's,--and some
say twice as much! If you choose to call it luck, it is all very
well; but if we are to take it as the will of Providence, why,
I can't exactly fathom it!"
"Pretty good business!" quoth the sagacious Dixey,--"pretty good business!"
Maule's well, all this time, though left in solitude, was throwing
up a succession of kaleidoscopic pictures, in which a gifted eye
might have seen foreshadowed the coming fortunes of Hepzibah and
Clifford, and the descendant of the legendary wizard, and the
village maiden, over whom he had thrown Love's web of sorcery.
The Pyncheon Elm, moreover, with what foliage the September gale
had spared to it, whispered unintelligible prophecies. And wise
Uncle Venner, passing slowly from the ruinous porch, seemed to
hear a strain of music, and fancied that sweet Alice Pyncheon--after
witnessing these deeds, this bygone woe and this present happiness,
of her kindred mortals--had given one farewell touch of a spirit's
joy upon her harpsichord, as she floated heavenward from the HOUSE
OF THE SEVEN GABLES!
THE END.
House of Seven Gables, by Nathaniel Hawthorne _