The House of the Seven Gables Read online

  III The First Customer

  MISS HEPZIBAH PYNCHEON sat in the oaken elbow-chair, with her handsover her face, giving way to that heavy down-sinking of the heart whichmost persons have experienced, when the image of hope itself seemsponderously moulded of lead, on the eve of an enterprise at oncedoubtful and momentous. She was suddenly startled by the tinklingalarum--high, sharp, and irregular--of a little bell. The maiden ladyarose upon her feet, as pale as a ghost at cock-crow; for she was anenslaved spirit, and this the talisman to which she owed obedience.This little bell,--to speak in plainer terms,--being fastened over theshop-door, was so contrived as to vibrate by means of a steel spring,and thus convey notice to the inner regions of the house when anycustomer should cross the threshold. Its ugly and spiteful little din(heard now for the first time, perhaps, since Hepzibah's periwiggedpredecessor had retired from trade) at once set every nerve of her bodyin responsive and tumultuous vibration. The crisis was upon her! Herfirst customer was at the door!

  Without giving herself time for a second thought, she rushed into theshop, pale, wild, desperate in gesture and expression, scowlingportentously, and looking far better qualified to do fierce battle witha housebreaker than to stand smiling behind the counter, barteringsmall wares for a copper recompense. Any ordinary customer, indeed,would have turned his back and fled. And yet there was nothing fiercein Hepzibah's poor old heart; nor had she, at the moment, a singlebitter thought against the world at large, or one individual man orwoman. She wished them all well, but wished, too, that she herselfwere done with them, and in her quiet grave.

  The applicant, by this time, stood within the doorway. Coming freshly,as he did, out of the morning light, he appeared to have brought someof its cheery influences into the shop along with him. It was aslender young man, not more than one or two and twenty years old, withrather a grave and thoughtful expression for his years, but likewise aspringy alacrity and vigor. These qualities were not only perceptible,physically, in his make and motions, but made themselves felt almostimmediately in his character. A brown beard, not too silken in itstexture, fringed his chin, but as yet without completely hiding it; hewore a short mustache, too, and his dark, high-featured countenancelooked all the better for these natural ornaments. As for his dress,it was of the simplest kind; a summer sack of cheap and ordinarymaterial, thin checkered pantaloons, and a straw hat, by no means ofthe finest braid. Oak Hall might have supplied his entire equipment.He was chiefly marked as a gentleman--if such, indeed, he made anyclaim to be--by the rather remarkable whiteness and nicety of his cleanlinen.

  He met the scowl of old Hepzibah without apparent alarm, as havingheretofore encountered it and found it harmless.

  "So, my dear Miss Pyncheon," said the daguerreotypist,--for it was thatsole other occupant of the seven-gabled mansion,--"I am glad to seethat you have not shrunk from your good purpose. I merely look in tooffer my best wishes, and to ask if I can assist you any further inyour preparations."

  People in difficulty and distress, or in any manner at odds with theworld, can endure a vast amount of harsh treatment, and perhaps be onlythe stronger for it; whereas they give way at once before the simplestexpression of what they perceive to be genuine sympathy. So it provedwith poor Hepzibah; for, when she saw the young man's smile,--lookingso much the brighter on a thoughtful face,--and heard his kindly tone,she broke first into a hysteric giggle and then began to sob.

  "Ah, Mr. Holgrave," cried she, as soon as she could speak, "I never cango through with it! Never, never, never! I wish I were dead, and in theold family tomb, with all my forefathers! With my father, and mymother, and my sister! Yes, and with my brother, who had far betterfind me there than here! The world is too chill and hard,--and I am tooold, and too feeble, and too hopeless!"

  "Oh, believe me, Miss Hepzibah," said the young man quietly, "thesefeelings will not trouble you any longer, after you are once fairly inthe midst of your enterprise. They are unavoidable at this moment,standing, as you do, on the outer verge of your long seclusion, andpeopling the world with ugly shapes, which you will soon find to be asunreal as the giants and ogres of a child's story-book. I find nothingso singular in life, as that everything appears to lose its substancethe instant one actually grapples with it. So it will be with what youthink so terrible."

  "But I am a woman!" said Hepzibah piteously. "I was going to say, alady,--but I consider that as past."

  "Well; no matter if it be past!" answered the artist, a strange gleamof half-hidden sarcasm flashing through the kindliness of his manner."Let it go! You are the better without it. I speak frankly, my dearMiss Pyncheon!--for are we not friends? I look upon this as one of thefortunate days of your life. It ends an epoch and begins one.Hitherto, the life-blood has been gradually chilling in your veins asyou sat aloof, within your circle of gentility, while the rest of theworld was fighting out its battle with one kind of necessity oranother. Henceforth, you will at least have the sense of healthy andnatural effort for a purpose, and of lending your strength be it greator small--to the united struggle of mankind. This is success,--all thesuccess that anybody meets with!"

  "It is natural enough, Mr. Holgrave, that you should have ideas likethese," rejoined Hepzibah, drawing up her gaunt figure with slightlyoffended dignity. "You are a man, a young man, and brought up, Isuppose, as almost everybody is nowadays, with a view to seeking yourfortune. But I was born a lady, and have always lived one; no matterin what narrowness of means, always a lady."

  "But I was not born a gentleman; neither have I lived like one," saidHolgrave, slightly smiling; "so, my dear madam, you will hardly expectme to sympathize with sensibilities of this kind; though, unless Ideceive myself, I have some imperfect comprehension of them. Thesenames of gentleman and lady had a meaning, in the past history of theworld, and conferred privileges, desirable or otherwise, on thoseentitled to bear them. In the present--and still more in the futurecondition of society-they imply, not privilege, but restriction!"

  "These are new notions," said the old gentlewoman, shaking her head."I shall never understand them; neither do I wish it."

  "We will cease to speak of them, then," replied the artist, with afriendlier smile than his last one, "and I will leave you to feelwhether it is not better to be a true woman than a lady. Do you reallythink, Miss Hepzibah, that any lady of your family has ever done a moreheroic thing, since this house was built, than you are performing in itto-day? Never; and if the Pyncheons had always acted so nobly, I doubtwhether an old wizard Maule's anathema, of which you told me once,would have had much weight with Providence against them."

  "Ah!--no, no!" said Hepzibah, not displeased at this allusion to thesombre dignity of an inherited curse. "If old Maule's ghost, or adescendant of his, could see me behind the counter to-day, he wouldcall it the fulfillment of his worst wishes. But I thank you for yourkindness, Mr. Holgrave, and will do my utmost to be a good shop-keeper."

  "Pray do" said Holgrave, "and let me have the pleasure of being yourfirst customer. I am about taking a walk to the seashore, before goingto my rooms, where I misuse Heaven's blessed sunshine by tracing outhuman features through its agency. A few of those biscuits, dipt insea-water, will be just what I need for breakfast. What is the priceof half a dozen?"

  "Let me be a lady a moment longer," replied Hepzibah, with a manner ofantique stateliness to which a melancholy smile lent a kind of grace.She put the biscuits into his hand, but rejected the compensation. "APyncheon must not, at all events under her forefathers' roof, receivemoney for a morsel of bread from her only friend!"

  Holgrave took his departure, leaving her, for the moment, with spiritsnot quite so much depressed. Soon, however, they had subsided nearlyto their former dead level. With a beating heart, she listened to thefootsteps of early passengers, which now began to be frequent along thestreet. Once or twice they seemed to linger; these strangers, orneighbors, as the case might be, were looking at the display of toysand petty commoditie
s in Hepzibah's shop-window. She was doublytortured; in part, with a sense of overwhelming shame that strange andunloving eyes should have the privilege of gazing, and partly becausethe idea occurred to her, with ridiculous importunity, that the windowwas not arranged so skilfully, nor nearly to so much advantage, as itmight have been. It seemed as if the whole fortune or failure of hershop might depend on the display of a different set of articles, orsubstituting a fairer apple for one which appeared to be specked. Soshe made the change, and straightway fancied that everything wasspoiled by it; not recognizing that it was the nervousness of thejuncture, and her own native squeamishness as an old maid, that wroughtall the seeming mischief.

  Anon, there was an encounter, just at the door-step, betwixt twolaboring men, as their rough voices denoted them to be. After someslight talk about their own affairs, one of them chanced to notice theshop-window, and directed the other's attention to it.

  "See here!" cried he; "what do you think of this? Trade seems to belooking up in Pyncheon Street!"

  "Well, well, this is a sight, to be sure!" exclaimed the other. "Inthe old Pyncheon House, and underneath the Pyncheon Elm! Who would havethought it? Old Maid Pyncheon is setting up a cent-shop!"

  "Will she make it go, think you, Dixey?" said his friend. "I don'tcall it a very good stand. There's another shop just round the corner."

  "Make it go!" cried Dixey, with a most contemptuous expression, as ifthe very idea were impossible to be conceived. "Not a bit of it! Why,her face--I've seen it, for I dug her garden for her one year--her faceis enough to frighten the Old Nick himself, if he had ever so great amind to trade with her. People can't stand it, I tell you! She scowlsdreadfully, reason or none, out of pure ugliness of temper."

  "Well, that's not so much matter," remarked the other man. "Thesesour-tempered folks are mostly handy at business, and know pretty wellwhat they are about. But, as you say, I don't think she'll do much.This business of keeping cent-shops is overdone, like all other kindsof trade, handicraft, and bodily labor. I know it, to my cost! My wifekept a cent-shop three months, and lost five dollars on her outlay."

  "Poor business!" responded Dixey, in a tone as if he were shaking hishead,--"poor business."

  For some reason or other, not very easy to analyze, there had hardlybeen so bitter a pang in all her previous misery about the matter aswhat thrilled Hepzibah's heart on overhearing the above conversation.The testimony in regard to her scowl was frightfully important; itseemed to hold up her image wholly relieved from the false light of herself-partialities, and so hideous that she dared not look at it. Shewas absurdly hurt, moreover, by the slight and idle effect that hersetting up shop--an event of such breathless interest toherself--appeared to have upon the public, of which these two men werethe nearest representatives. A glance; a passing word or two; a coarselaugh; and she was doubtless forgotten before they turned the corner.They cared nothing for her dignity, and just as little for herdegradation. Then, also, the augury of ill-success, uttered from thesure wisdom of experience, fell upon her half-dead hope like a clodinto a grave. The man's wife had already tried the same experiment,and failed! How could the born lady--the recluse of half a lifetime,utterly unpractised in the world, at sixty years of age,--how could sheever dream of succeeding, when the hard, vulgar, keen, busy, hackneyedNew England woman had lost five dollars on her little outlay! Successpresented itself as an impossibility, and the hope of it as a wildhallucination.

  Some malevolent spirit, doing his utmost to drive Hepzibah mad,unrolled before her imagination a kind of panorama, representing thegreat thoroughfare of a city all astir with customers. So many and somagnificent shops as there were! Groceries, toy-shops, drygoods stores,with their immense panes of plate-glass, their gorgeous fixtures, theirvast and complete assortments of merchandise, in which fortunes hadbeen invested; and those noble mirrors at the farther end of eachestablishment, doubling all this wealth by a brightly burnished vistaof unrealities! On one side of the street this splendid bazaar, with amultitude of perfumed and glossy salesmen, smirking, smiling, bowing,and measuring out the goods. On the other, the dusky old House of theSeven Gables, with the antiquated shop-window under its projectingstory, and Hepzibah herself, in a gown of rusty black silk, behind thecounter, scowling at the world as it went by! This mighty contrastthrust itself forward as a fair expression of the odds against whichshe was to begin her struggle for a subsistence. Success?Preposterous! She would never think of it again! The house might justas well be buried in an eternal fog while all other houses had thesunshine on them; for not a foot would ever cross the threshold, nor ahand so much as try the door!

  But, at this instant, the shop-bell, right over her head, tinkled as ifit were bewitched. The old gentlewoman's heart seemed to be attachedto the same steel spring, for it went through a series of sharp jerks,in unison with the sound. The door was thrust open, although no humanform was perceptible on the other side of the half-window. Hepzibah,nevertheless, stood at a gaze, with her hands clasped, looking verymuch as if she had summoned up an evil spirit, and were afraid, yetresolved, to hazard the encounter.

  "Heaven help me!" she groaned mentally. "Now is my hour of need!"

  The door, which moved with difficulty on its creaking and rusty hinges,being forced quite open, a square and sturdy little urchin becameapparent, with cheeks as red as an apple. He was clad rather shabbily(but, as it seemed, more owing to his mother's carelessness than hisfather's poverty), in a blue apron, very wide and short trousers, shoessomewhat out at the toes, and a chip hat, with the frizzles of hiscurly hair sticking through its crevices. A book and a small slate,under his arm, indicated that he was on his way to school. He staredat Hepzibah a moment, as an elder customer than himself would have beenlikely enough to do, not knowing what to make of the tragic attitudeand queer scowl wherewith she regarded him.

  "Well, child," said she, taking heart at sight of a personage so littleformidable,--"well, my child, what did you wish for?"

  "That Jim Crow there in the window," answered the urchin, holding out acent, and pointing to the gingerbread figure that had attracted hisnotice, as he loitered along to school; "the one that has not a brokenfoot."

  So Hepzibah put forth her lank arm, and, taking the effigy from theshop-window, delivered it to her first customer.

  "No matter for the money," said she, giving him a little push towardsthe door; for her old gentility was contumaciously squeamish at sightof the copper coin, and, besides, it seemed such pitiful meanness totake the child's pocket-money in exchange for a bit of stalegingerbread. "No matter for the cent. You are welcome to Jim Crow."

  The child, staring with round eyes at this instance of liberality,wholly unprecedented in his large experience of cent-shops, took theman of gingerbread, and quitted the premises. No sooner had he reachedthe sidewalk (little cannibal that he was!) than Jim Crow's head was inhis mouth. As he had not been careful to shut the door, Hepzibah wasat the pains of closing it after him, with a pettish ejaculation or twoabout the troublesomeness of young people, and particularly of smallboys. She had just placed another representative of the renowned JimCrow at the window, when again the shop-bell tinkled clamorously, andagain the door being thrust open, with its characteristic jerk and jar,disclosed the same sturdy little urchin who, precisely two minutes ago,had made his exit. The crumbs and discoloration of the cannibal feast,as yet hardly consummated, were exceedingly visible about his mouth.

  "What is it now, child?" asked the maiden lady rather impatiently; "didyou come back to shut the door?"

  "No," answered the urchin, pointing to the figure that had just beenput up; "I want that other Jim Crow."

  "Well, here it is for you," said Hepzibah, reaching it down; butrecognizing that this pertinacious customer would not quit her on anyother terms, so long as she had a gingerbread figure in her shop, shepartly drew back her extended hand, "Where is the cent?"

  The little boy had the cent ready, but, like a true-born Yankee, wouldhav
e preferred the better bargain to the worse. Looking somewhatchagrined, he put the coin into Hepzibah's hand, and departed, sendingthe second Jim Crow in quest of the former one. The new shop-keeperdropped the first solid result of her commercial enterprise into thetill. It was done! The sordid stain of that copper coin could never bewashed away from her palm. The little schoolboy, aided by the impishfigure of the negro dancer, had wrought an irreparable ruin. Thestructure of ancient aristocracy had been demolished by him, even as ifhis childish gripe had torn down the seven-gabled mansion. Now letHepzibah turn the old Pyncheon portraits with their faces to the wall,and take the map of her Eastern territory to kindle the kitchen fire,and blow up the flame with the empty breath of her ancestraltraditions! What had she to do with ancestry? Nothing; no more thanwith posterity! No lady, now, but simply Hepzibah Pyncheon, a forlornold maid, and keeper of a cent-shop!

  Nevertheless, even while she paraded these ideas somewhatostentatiously through her mind, it is altogether surprising what acalmness had come over her. The anxiety and misgivings which hadtormented her, whether asleep or in melancholy day-dreams, ever sinceher project began to take an aspect of solidity, had now vanished quiteaway. She felt the novelty of her position, indeed, but no longer withdisturbance or affright. Now and then, there came a thrill of almostyouthful enjoyment. It was the invigorating breath of a fresh outwardatmosphere, after the long torpor and monotonous seclusion of her life.So wholesome is effort! So miraculous the strength that we do not knowof! The healthiest glow that Hepzibah had known for years had come nowin the dreaded crisis, when, for the first time, she had put forth herhand to help herself. The little circlet of the schoolboy's coppercoin--dim and lustreless though it was, with the small services whichit had been doing here and there about the world--had proved atalisman, fragrant with good, and deserving to be set in gold and wornnext her heart. It was as potent, and perhaps endowed with the samekind of efficacy, as a galvanic ring! Hepzibah, at all events, wasindebted to its subtile operation both in body and spirit; so much themore, as it inspired her with energy to get some breakfast, at which,still the better to keep up her courage, she allowed herself an extraspoonful in her infusion of black tea.

  Her introductory day of shop-keeping did not run on, however, withoutmany and serious interruptions of this mood of cheerful vigor. As ageneral rule, Providence seldom vouchsafes to mortals any more thanjust that degree of encouragement which suffices to keep them at areasonably full exertion of their powers. In the case of our oldgentlewoman, after the excitement of new effort had subsided, thedespondency of her whole life threatened, ever and anon, to return. Itwas like the heavy mass of clouds which we may often see obscuring thesky, and making a gray twilight everywhere, until, towards nightfall,it yields temporarily to a glimpse of sunshine. But, always, theenvious cloud strives to gather again across the streak of celestialazure.

  Customers came in, as the forenoon advanced, but rather slowly; in somecases, too, it must be owned, with little satisfaction either tothemselves or Miss Hepzibah; nor, on the whole, with an aggregate ofvery rich emolument to the till. A little girl, sent by her mother tomatch a skein of cotton thread, of a peculiar hue, took one that thenear-sighted old lady pronounced extremely like, but soon came runningback, with a blunt and cross message, that it would not do, and,besides, was very rotten! Then, there was a pale, care-wrinkled woman,not old but haggard, and already with streaks of gray among her hair,like silver ribbons; one of those women, naturally delicate, whom youat once recognize as worn to death by a brute--probably a drunkenbrute--of a husband, and at least nine children. She wanted a fewpounds of flour, and offered the money, which the decayed gentlewomansilently rejected, and gave the poor soul better measure than if shehad taken it. Shortly afterwards, a man in a blue cotton frock, muchsoiled, came in and bought a pipe, filling the whole shop, meanwhile,with the hot odor of strong drink, not only exhaled in the torridatmosphere of his breath, but oozing out of his entire system, like aninflammable gas. It was impressed on Hepzibah's mind that this was thehusband of the care-wrinkled woman. He asked for a paper of tobacco;and as she had neglected to provide herself with the article, herbrutal customer dashed down his newly-bought pipe and left the shop,muttering some unintelligible words, which had the tone and bitternessof a curse. Hereupon Hepzibah threw up her eyes, unintentionallyscowling in the face of Providence!

  No less than five persons, during the forenoon, inquired forginger-beer, or root-beer, or any drink of a similar brewage, and,obtaining nothing of the kind, went off in an exceedingly bad humor.Three of them left the door open, and the other two pulled it sospitefully in going out that the little bell played the very deuce withHepzibah's nerves. A round, bustling, fire-ruddy housewife of theneighborhood burst breathless into the shop, fiercely demanding yeast;and when the poor gentlewoman, with her cold shyness of manner, gaveher hot customer to understand that she did not keep the article, thisvery capable housewife took upon herself to administer a regular rebuke.

  "A cent-shop, and no yeast!" quoth she; "That will never do! Who everheard of such a thing? Your loaf will never rise, no more than minewill to-day. You had better shut up shop at once."

  "Well," said Hepzibah, heaving a deep sigh, "perhaps I had!"

  Several times, moreover, besides the above instance, her lady-likesensibilities were seriously infringed upon by the familiar, if notrude, tone with which people addressed her. They evidently consideredthemselves not merely her equals, but her patrons and superiors. Now,Hepzibah had unconsciously flattered herself with the idea that therewould be a gleam or halo, of some kind or other, about her person,which would insure an obeisance to her sterling gentility, or, atleast, a tacit recognition of it. On the other hand, nothing torturedher more intolerably than when this recognition was too prominentlyexpressed. To one or two rather officious offers of sympathy, herresponses were little short of acrimonious; and, we regret to say,Hepzibah was thrown into a positively unchristian state of mind by thesuspicion that one of her customers was drawn to the shop, not by anyreal need of the article which she pretended to seek, but by a wickedwish to stare at her. The vulgar creature was determined to see forherself what sort of a figure a mildewed piece of aristocracy, afterwasting all the bloom and much of the decline of her life apart fromthe world, would cut behind a counter. In this particular case,however mechanical and innocuous it might be at other times, Hepzibah'scontortion of brow served her in good stead.

  "I never was so frightened in my life!" said the curious customer, indescribing the incident to one of her acquaintances. "She's a real oldvixen, take my word of it! She says little, to be sure; but if youcould only see the mischief in her eye!"

  On the whole, therefore, her new experience led our decayed gentlewomanto very disagreeable conclusions as to the temper and manners of whatshe termed the lower classes, whom heretofore she had looked down uponwith a gentle and pitying complaisance, as herself occupying a sphereof unquestionable superiority. But, unfortunately, she had likewise tostruggle against a bitter emotion of a directly opposite kind: asentiment of virulence, we mean, towards the idle aristocracy to whichit had so recently been her pride to belong. When a lady, in adelicate and costly summer garb, with a floating veil and gracefullyswaying gown, and, altogether, an ethereal lightness that made you lookat her beautifully slippered feet, to see whether she trod on the dustor floated in the air,--when such a vision happened to pass throughthis retired street, leaving it tenderly and delusively fragrant withher passage, as if a bouquet of tea-roses had been borne along,--thenagain, it is to be feared, old Hepzibah's scowl could no longervindicate itself entirely on the plea of near-sightedness.

  "For what end," thought she, giving vent to that feeling of hostilitywhich is the only real abasement of the poor in presence of therich,--"for what good end, in the wisdom of Providence, does that womanlive? Must the whole world toil, that the palms of her hands may bekept white and delicate?"

  Then, ashamed and penitent, she
hid her face.

  "May God forgive me!" said she.

  Doubtless, God did forgive her. But, taking the inward and outwardhistory of the first half-day into consideration, Hepzibah began tofear that the shop would prove her ruin in a moral and religious pointof view, without contributing very essentially towards even hertemporal welfare.