The House of the Seven Gables Page 6

  IV A Day Behind the Counter

  TOWARDS noon, Hepzibah saw an elderly gentleman, large and portly, andof remarkably dignified demeanor, passing slowly along on the oppositeside of the white and dusty street. On coming within the shadow of thePyncheon Elm, he stopt, and (taking off his hat, meanwhile, to wipe theperspiration from his brow) seemed to scrutinize, with especialinterest, the dilapidated and rusty-visaged House of the Seven Gables.He himself, in a very different style, was as well worth looking at asthe house. No better model need be sought, nor could have been found,of a very high order of respectability, which, by some indescribablemagic, not merely expressed itself in his looks and gestures, but evengoverned the fashion of his garments, and rendered them all proper andessential to the man. Without appearing to differ, in any tangibleway, from other people's clothes, there was yet a wide and rich gravityabout them that must have been a characteristic of the wearer, since itcould not be defined as pertaining either to the cut or material. Hisgold-headed cane, too,--a serviceable staff, of dark polishedwood,--had similar traits, and, had it chosen to take a walk by itself,would have been recognized anywhere as a tolerably adequaterepresentative of its master. This character--which showed itself sostrikingly in everything about him, and the effect of which we seek toconvey to the reader--went no deeper than his station, habits of life,and external circumstances. One perceived him to be a personage ofmarked influence and authority; and, especially, you could feel just ascertain that he was opulent as if he had exhibited his bank account, oras if you had seen him touching the twigs of the Pyncheon Elm, and,Midas-like, transmuting them to gold.

  In his youth, he had probably been considered a handsome man; at hispresent age, his brow was too heavy, his temples too bare, hisremaining hair too gray, his eye too cold, his lips too closelycompressed, to bear any relation to mere personal beauty. He wouldhave made a good and massive portrait; better now, perhaps, than at anyprevious period of his life, although his look might grow positivelyharsh in the process of being fixed upon the canvas. The artist wouldhave found it desirable to study his face, and prove its capacity forvaried expression; to darken it with a frown,--to kindle it up with asmile.

  While the elderly gentleman stood looking at the Pyncheon House, boththe frown and the smile passed successively over his countenance. Hiseye rested on the shop-window, and putting up a pair of gold-bowedspectacles, which he held in his hand, he minutely surveyed Hepzibah'slittle arrangement of toys and commodities. At first it seemed not toplease him,--nay, to cause him exceeding displeasure,--and yet, thevery next moment, he smiled. While the latter expression was yet onhis lips, he caught a glimpse of Hepzibah, who had involuntarily bentforward to the window; and then the smile changed from acrid anddisagreeable to the sunniest complacency and benevolence. He bowed,with a happy mixture of dignity and courteous kindliness, and pursuedhis way.

  "There he is!" said Hepzibah to herself, gulping down a very bitteremotion, and, since she could not rid herself of it, trying to drive itback into her heart. "What does he think of it, I wonder? Does itplease him? Ah! he is looking back!"

  The gentleman had paused in the street, and turned himself half about,still with his eyes fixed on the shop-window. In fact, he wheeledwholly round, and commenced a step or two, as if designing to enter theshop; but, as it chanced, his purpose was anticipated by Hepzibah'sfirst customer, the little cannibal of Jim Crow, who, staring up at thewindow, was irresistibly attracted by an elephant of gingerbread. Whata grand appetite had this small urchin!--Two Jim Crows immediatelyafter breakfast!--and now an elephant, as a preliminary whet beforedinner. By the time this latter purchase was completed, the elderlygentleman had resumed his way, and turned the street corner.

  "Take it as you like, Cousin Jaffrey," muttered the maiden lady, asshe drew back, after cautiously thrusting out her head, and looking upand down the street,--"Take it as you like! You have seen my littleshop-window. Well!--what have you to say?--is not the Pyncheon Housemy own, while I'm alive?"

  After this incident, Hepzibah retreated to the back parlor, where sheat first caught up a half-finished stocking, and began knitting at itwith nervous and irregular jerks; but quickly finding herself at oddswith the stitches, she threw it aside, and walked hurriedly about theroom. At length she paused before the portrait of the stern oldPuritan, her ancestor, and the founder of the house. In one sense, thispicture had almost faded into the canvas, and hidden itself behind theduskiness of age; in another, she could not but fancy that it had beengrowing more prominent and strikingly expressive, ever since herearliest familiarity with it as a child. For, while the physicaloutline and substance were darkening away from the beholder's eye, thebold, hard, and, at the same time, indirect character of the man seemedto be brought out in a kind of spiritual relief. Such an effect mayoccasionally be observed in pictures of antique date. They acquire alook which an artist (if he have anything like the complacency ofartists nowadays) would never dream of presenting to a patron as hisown characteristic expression, but which, nevertheless, we at oncerecognize as reflecting the unlovely truth of a human soul. In suchcases, the painter's deep conception of his subject's inward traits haswrought itself into the essence of the picture, and is seen after thesuperficial coloring has been rubbed off by time.

  While gazing at the portrait, Hepzibah trembled under its eye. Herhereditary reverence made her afraid to judge the character of theoriginal so harshly as a perception of the truth compelled her to do.But still she gazed, because the face of the picture enabled her--atleast, she fancied so--to read more accurately, and to a greater depth,the face which she had just seen in the street.

  "This is the very man!" murmured she to herself. "Let Jaffrey Pyncheonsmile as he will, there is that look beneath! Put on him a skull-cap,and a band, and a black cloak, and a Bible in one hand and a sword inthe other,--then let Jaffrey smile as he might,--nobody would doubtthat it was the old Pyncheon come again. He has proved himself thevery man to build up a new house! Perhaps, too, to draw down a newcurse!"

  Thus did Hepzibah bewilder herself with these fantasies of the oldtime. She had dwelt too much alone,--too long in the PyncheonHouse,--until her very brain was impregnated with the dry-rot of itstimbers. She needed a walk along the noonday street to keep her sane.

  By the spell of contrast, another portrait rose up before her, paintedwith more daring flattery than any artist would have ventured upon, butyet so delicately touched that the likeness remained perfect.Malbone's miniature, though from the same original, was far inferior toHepzibah's air-drawn picture, at which affection and sorrowfulremembrance wrought together. Soft, mildly, and cheerfullycontemplative, with full, red lips, just on the verge of a smile, whichthe eyes seemed to herald by a gentle kindling-up of their orbs!Feminine traits, moulded inseparably with those of the other sex! Theminiature, likewise, had this last peculiarity; so that you inevitablythought of the original as resembling his mother, and she a lovely andlovable woman, with perhaps some beautiful infirmity of character, thatmade it all the pleasanter to know and easier to love her.

  "Yes," thought Hepzibah, with grief of which it was only the moretolerable portion that welled up from her heart to her eyelids, "theypersecuted his mother in him! He never was a Pyncheon!"

  But here the shop-bell rang; it was like a sound from a remotedistance,--so far had Hepzibah descended into the sepulchral depths ofher reminiscences. On entering the shop, she found an old man there, ahumble resident of Pyncheon Street, and whom, for a great many yearspast, she had suffered to be a kind of familiar of the house. He wasan immemorial personage, who seemed always to have had a white head andwrinkles, and never to have possessed but a single tooth, and that ahalf-decayed one, in the front of the upper jaw. Well advanced asHepzibah was, she could not remember when Uncle Venner, as theneighborhood called him, had not gone up and down the street, stoopinga little and drawing his feet heavily over the gravel or pavement. Butstill there was something tough and vigorous ab
out him, that not onlykept him in daily breath, but enabled him to fill a place which wouldelse have been vacant in the apparently crowded world. To go oferrands with his slow and shuffling gait, which made you doubt how heever was to arrive anywhere; to saw a small household's foot or two offirewood, or knock to pieces an old barrel, or split up a pine boardfor kindling-stuff; in summer, to dig the few yards of garden groundappertaining to a low-rented tenement, and share the produce of hislabor at the halves; in winter, to shovel away the snow from thesidewalk, or open paths to the woodshed, or along the clothes-line;such were some of the essential offices which Uncle Venner performedamong at least a score of families. Within that circle, he claimed thesame sort of privilege, and probably felt as much warmth of interest,as a clergyman does in the range of his parishioners. Not that he laidclaim to the tithe pig; but, as an analogous mode of reverence, he wenthis rounds, every morning, to gather up the crumbs of the table andoverflowings of the dinner-pot, as food for a pig of his own.

  In his younger days--for, after all, there was a dim tradition that hehad been, not young, but younger--Uncle Venner was commonly regarded asrather deficient, than otherwise, in his wits. In truth he hadvirtually pleaded guilty to the charge, by scarcely aiming at suchsuccess as other men seek, and by taking only that humble and modestpart in the intercourse of life which belongs to the allegeddeficiency. But now, in his extreme old age,--whether it were that hislong and hard experience had actually brightened him, or that hisdecaying judgment rendered him less capable of fairly measuringhimself,--the venerable man made pretensions to no little wisdom, andreally enjoyed the credit of it. There was likewise, at times, a veinof something like poetry in him; it was the moss or wall-flower of hismind in its small dilapidation, and gave a charm to what might havebeen vulgar and commonplace in his earlier and middle life. Hepzibahhad a regard for him, because his name was ancient in the town and hadformerly been respectable. It was a still better reason for awardinghim a species of familiar reverence that Uncle Venner was himself themost ancient existence, whether of man or thing, in Pyncheon Street,except the House of the Seven Gables, and perhaps the elm thatovershadowed it.

  This patriarch now presented himself before Hepzibah, clad in an oldblue coat, which had a fashionable air, and must have accrued to himfrom the cast-off wardrobe of some dashing clerk. As for his trousers,they were of tow-cloth, very short in the legs, and bagging downstrangely in the rear, but yet having a suitableness to his figurewhich his other garment entirely lacked. His hat had relation to noother part of his dress, and but very little to the head that wore it.Thus Uncle Venner was a miscellaneous old gentleman, partly himself,but, in good measure, somebody else; patched together, too, ofdifferent epochs; an epitome of times and fashions.

  "So, you have really begun trade," said he,--"really begun trade!Well, I'm glad to see it. Young people should never live idle in theworld, nor old ones neither, unless when the rheumatize gets hold ofthem. It has given me warning already; and in two or three yearslonger, I shall think of putting aside business and retiring to myfarm. That's yonder,--the great brick house, you know,--the workhouse,most folks call it; but I mean to do my work first, and go there to beidle and enjoy myself. And I'm glad to see you beginning to do yourwork, Miss Hepzibah!"

  "Thank you, Uncle Venner" said Hepzibah, smiling; for she always feltkindly towards the simple and talkative old man. Had he been an oldwoman, she might probably have repelled the freedom, which she now tookin good part. "It is time for me to begin work, indeed! Or, to speakthe truth, I have just begun when I ought to be giving it up."

  "Oh, never say that, Miss Hepzibah!" answered the old man. "You are ayoung woman yet. Why, I hardly thought myself younger than I am now,it seems so little while ago since I used to see you playing about thedoor of the old house, quite a small child! Oftener, though, you usedto be sitting at the threshold, and looking gravely into the street;for you had always a grave kind of way with you,--a grown-up air, whenyou were only the height of my knee. It seems as if I saw you now; andyour grandfather with his red cloak, and his white wig, and his cockedhat, and his cane, coming out of the house, and stepping so grandly upthe street! Those old gentlemen that grew up before the Revolution usedto put on grand airs. In my young days, the great man of the town wascommonly called King; and his wife, not Queen to be sure, but Lady.Nowadays, a man would not dare to be called King; and if he feelshimself a little above common folks, he only stoops so much the lowerto them. I met your cousin, the Judge, ten minutes ago; and, in my oldtow-cloth trousers, as you see, the Judge raised his hat to me, I dobelieve! At any rate, the Judge bowed and smiled!"

  "Yes," said Hepzibah, with something bitter stealing unawares into hertone; "my cousin Jaffrey is thought to have a very pleasant smile!"

  "And so he has" replied Uncle Venner. "And that's rather remarkable ina Pyncheon; for, begging your pardon, Miss Hepzibah, they never had thename of being an easy and agreeable set of folks. There was no gettingclose to them. But Now, Miss Hepzibah, if an old man may be bold toask, why don't Judge Pyncheon, with his great means, step forward, andtell his cousin to shut up her little shop at once? It's for yourcredit to be doing something, but it's not for the Judge's credit tolet you!"

  "We won't talk of this, if you please, Uncle Venner," said Hepzibahcoldly. "I ought to say, however, that, if I choose to earn bread formyself, it is not Judge Pyncheon's fault. Neither will he deserve theblame," added she more kindly, remembering Uncle Venner's privileges ofage and humble familiarity, "if I should, by and by, find it convenientto retire with you to your farm."

  "And it's no bad place, either, that farm of mine!" cried the old mancheerily, as if there were something positively delightful in theprospect. "No bad place is the great brick farm-house, especially forthem that will find a good many old cronies there, as will be my case.I quite long to be among them, sometimes, of the winter evenings; forit is but dull business for a lonesome elderly man, like me, to benodding, by the hour together, with no company but his air-tight stove.Summer or winter, there's a great deal to be said in favor of my farm!And, take it in the autumn, what can be pleasanter than to spend awhole day on the sunny side of a barn or a wood-pile, chatting withsomebody as old as one's self; or, perhaps, idling away the time with anatural-born simpleton, who knows how to be idle, because even our busyYankees never have found out how to put him to any use? Upon my word,Miss Hepzibah, I doubt whether I've ever been so comfortable as I meanto be at my farm, which most folks call the workhouse. Butyou,--you're a young woman yet,--you never need go there! Somethingstill better will turn up for you. I'm sure of it!"

  Hepzibah fancied that there was something peculiar in her venerablefriend's look and tone; insomuch, that she gazed into his face withconsiderable earnestness, endeavoring to discover what secret meaning,if any, might be lurking there. Individuals whose affairs have reachedan utterly desperate crisis almost invariably keep themselves alivewith hopes, so much the more airily magnificent as they have the lessof solid matter within their grasp whereof to mould any judicious andmoderate expectation of good. Thus, all the while Hepzibah wasperfecting the scheme of her little shop, she had cherished anunacknowledged idea that some harlequin trick of fortune wouldintervene in her favor. For example, an uncle--who had sailed forIndia fifty years before, and never been heard of since--might yetreturn, and adopt her to be the comfort of his very extreme anddecrepit age, and adorn her with pearls, diamonds, and Oriental shawlsand turbans, and make her the ultimate heiress of his unreckonableriches. Or the member of Parliament, now at the head of the Englishbranch of the family,--with which the elder stock, on this side of theAtlantic, had held little or no intercourse for the last twocenturies,--this eminent gentleman might invite Hepzibah to quit theruinous House of the Seven Gables, and come over to dwell with herkindred at Pyncheon Hall. But, for reasons the most imperative, shecould not yield to his request. It was more probable, therefore, thatthe descendants of a Pyncheon who had emigrated to Virginia
, in somepast generation, and became a great planter there,--hearing ofHepzibah's destitution, and impelled by the splendid generosity ofcharacter with which their Virginian mixture must have enriched the NewEngland blood,--would send her a remittance of a thousand dollars, witha hint of repeating the favor annually. Or,--and, surely, anything soundeniably just could not be beyond the limits of reasonableanticipation,--the great claim to the heritage of Waldo County mightfinally be decided in favor of the Pyncheons; so that, instead ofkeeping a cent-shop, Hepzibah would build a palace, and look down fromits highest tower on hill, dale, forest, field, and town, as her ownshare of the ancestral territory.

  These were some of the fantasies which she had long dreamed about; and,aided by these, Uncle Venner's casual attempt at encouragement kindleda strange festal glory in the poor, bare, melancholy chambers of herbrain, as if that inner world were suddenly lighted up with gas. Buteither he knew nothing of her castles in the air,--as how shouldhe?--or else her earnest scowl disturbed his recollection, as it mighta more courageous man's. Instead of pursuing any weightier topic,Uncle Venner was pleased to favor Hepzibah with some sage counsel inher shop-keeping capacity.

  "Give no credit!"--these were some of his golden maxims,--"Never takepaper-money. Look well to your change! Ring the silver on thefour-pound weight! Shove back all English half-pence and base coppertokens, such as are very plenty about town! At your leisure hours, knitchildren's woollen socks and mittens! Brew your own yeast, and makeyour own ginger-beer!"

  And while Hepzibah was doing her utmost to digest the hard littlepellets of his already uttered wisdom, he gave vent to his final, andwhat he declared to be his all-important advice, as follows:--

  "Put on a bright face for your customers, and smile pleasantly as youhand them what they ask for! A stale article, if you dip it in a good,warm, sunny smile, will go off better than a fresh one that you'vescowled upon."

  To this last apothegm poor Hepzibah responded with a sigh so deep andheavy that it almost rustled Uncle Venner quite away, like a witheredleaf,--as he was,--before an autumnal gale. Recovering himself,however, he bent forward, and, with a good deal of feeling in hisancient visage, beckoned her nearer to him.

  "When do you expect him home?" whispered he.

  "Whom do you mean?" asked Hepzibah, turning pale.

  "Ah!--You don't love to talk about it," said Uncle Venner. "Well,well! we'll say no more, though there's word of it all over town. Iremember him, Miss Hepzibah, before he could run alone!"

  During the remainder of the day, poor Hepzibah acquitted herself evenless creditably, as a shop-keeper, than in her earlier efforts. Sheappeared to be walking in a dream; or, more truly, the vivid life andreality assumed by her emotions made all outward occurrencesunsubstantial, like the teasing phantasms of a half-conscious slumber.She still responded, mechanically, to the frequent summons of theshop-bell, and, at the demand of her customers, went prying with vagueeyes about the shop, proffering them one article after another, andthrusting aside--perversely, as most of them supposed--the identicalthing they asked for. There is sad confusion, indeed, when the spiritthus flits away into the past, or into the more awful future, or, inany manner, steps across the spaceless boundary betwixt its own regionand the actual world; where the body remains to guide itself as best itmay, with little more than the mechanism of animal life. It is likedeath, without death's quiet privilege,--its freedom from mortal care.Worst of all, when the actual duties are comprised in such pettydetails as now vexed the brooding soul of the old gentlewoman. As theanimosity of fate would have it, there was a great influx of custom inthe course of the afternoon. Hepzibah blundered to and fro about hersmall place of business, committing the most unheard-of errors: nowstringing up twelve, and now seven, tallow-candles, instead of ten tothe pound; selling ginger for Scotch snuff, pins for needles, andneedles for pins; misreckoning her change, sometimes to the publicdetriment, and much oftener to her own; and thus she went on, doing herutmost to bring chaos back again, until, at the close of the day'slabor, to her inexplicable astonishment, she found the money-draweralmost destitute of coin. After all her painful traffic, the wholeproceeds were perhaps half a dozen coppers, and a questionableninepence which ultimately proved to be copper likewise.

  At this price, or at whatever price, she rejoiced that the day hadreached its end. Never before had she had such a sense of theintolerable length of time that creeps between dawn and sunset, and ofthe miserable irksomeness of having aught to do, and of the betterwisdom that it would be to lie down at once, in sullen resignation, andlet life, and its toils and vexations, trample over one's prostratebody as they may! Hepzibah's final operation was with the littledevourer of Jim Crow and the elephant, who now proposed to eat a camel.In her bewilderment, she offered him first a wooden dragoon, and next ahandful of marbles; neither of which being adapted to his elseomnivorous appetite, she hastily held out her whole remaining stock ofnatural history in gingerbread, and huddled the small customer out ofthe shop. She then muffled the bell in an unfinished stocking, and putup the oaken bar across the door.

  During the latter process, an omnibus came to a stand-still under thebranches of the elm-tree. Hepzibah's heart was in her mouth. Remoteand dusky, and with no sunshine on all the intervening space, was thatregion of the Past whence her only guest might be expected to arrive!Was she to meet him now?

  Somebody, at all events, was passing from the farthest interior of theomnibus towards its entrance. A gentleman alighted; but it was onlyto offer his hand to a young girl whose slender figure, nowise needingsuch assistance, now lightly descended the steps, and made an airylittle jump from the final one to the sidewalk. She rewarded hercavalier with a smile, the cheery glow of which was seen reflected onhis own face as he reentered the vehicle. The girl then turned towardsthe House of the Seven Gables, to the door of which, meanwhile,--notthe shop-door, but the antique portal,--the omnibus-man had carried alight trunk and a bandbox. First giving a sharp rap of the old ironknocker, he left his passenger and her luggage at the door-step, anddeparted.

  "Who can it be?" thought Hepzibah, who had been screwing her visualorgans into the acutest focus of which they were capable. "The girlmust have mistaken the house." She stole softly into the hall, and,herself invisible, gazed through the dusty side-lights of the portal atthe young, blooming, and very cheerful face which presented itself foradmittance into the gloomy old mansion. It was a face to which almostany door would have opened of its own accord.

  The young girl, so fresh, so unconventional, and yet so orderly andobedient to common rules, as you at once recognized her to be, waswidely in contrast, at that moment, with everything about her. Thesordid and ugly luxuriance of gigantic weeds that grew in the angle ofthe house, and the heavy projection that overshadowed her, and thetime-worn framework of the door,--none of these things belonged to hersphere. But, even as a ray of sunshine, fall into what dismal place itmay, instantaneously creates for itself a propriety in being there, sodid it seem altogether fit that the girl should be standing at thethreshold. It was no less evidently proper that the door should swingopen to admit her. The maiden lady herself, sternly inhospitable inher first purposes, soon began to feel that the door ought to be shovedback, and the rusty key be turned in the reluctant lock.

  "Can it be Phoebe?" questioned she within herself. "It must be littlePhoebe; for it can be nobody else,--and there is a look of her fatherabout her, too! But what does she want here? And how like a countrycousin, to come down upon a poor body in this way, without so much as aday's notice, or asking whether she would be welcome! Well; she musthave a night's lodging, I suppose; and to-morrow the child shall goback to her mother."

  Phoebe, it must be understood, was that one little offshoot of thePyncheon race to whom we have already referred, as a native of a ruralpart of New England, where the old fashions and feelings ofrelationship are still partially kept up. In her own circle, it wasregarded as by no means improper for kinsfolk to visit one another
without invitation, or preliminary and ceremonious warning. Yet, inconsideration of Miss Hepzibah's recluse way of life, a letter hadactually been written and despatched, conveying information of Phoebe'sprojected visit. This epistle, for three or four days past, had beenin the pocket of the penny-postman, who, happening to have no otherbusiness in Pyncheon Street, had not yet made it convenient to call atthe House of the Seven Gables.

  "No--she can stay only one night," said Hepzibah, unbolting the door."If Clifford were to find her here, it might disturb him!"