I The Old Pyncheon Family
HALFWAY down a by-street of one of our New England towns stands a rustywooden house, with seven acutely peaked gables, facing towards variouspoints of the compass, and a huge, clustered chimney in the midst. Thestreet is Pyncheon Street; the house is the old Pyncheon House; and anelm-tree, of wide circumference, rooted before the door, is familiar toevery town-born child by the title of the Pyncheon Elm. On myoccasional visits to the town aforesaid, I seldom failed to turn downPyncheon Street, for the sake of passing through the shadow of thesetwo antiquities,--the great elm-tree and the weather-beaten edifice.
The aspect of the venerable mansion has always affected me like a humancountenance, bearing the traces not merely of outward storm andsunshine, but expressive also, of the long lapse of mortal life, andaccompanying vicissitudes that have passed within. Were these to beworthily recounted, they would form a narrative of no small interestand instruction, and possessing, moreover, a certain remarkable unity,which might almost seem the result of artistic arrangement. But thestory would include a chain of events extending over the better part oftwo centuries, and, written out with reasonable amplitude, would fill abigger folio volume, or a longer series of duodecimos, than couldprudently be appropriated to the annals of all New England during asimilar period. It consequently becomes imperative to make short workwith most of the traditionary lore of which the old Pyncheon House,otherwise known as the House of the Seven Gables, has been the theme.With a brief sketch, therefore, of the circumstances amid which thefoundation of the house was laid, and a rapid glimpse at its quaintexterior, as it grew black in the prevalent east wind,--pointing, too,here and there, at some spot of more verdant mossiness on its roof andwalls,--we shall commence the real action of our tale at an epoch notvery remote from the present day. Still, there will be a connectionwith the long past--a reference to forgotten events and personages, andto manners, feelings, and opinions, almost or wholly obsolete--which,if adequately translated to the reader, would serve to illustrate howmuch of old material goes to make up the freshest novelty of humanlife. Hence, too, might be drawn a weighty lesson from thelittle-regarded truth, that the act of the passing generation is thegerm which may and must produce good or evil fruit in a far-distanttime; that, together with the seed of the merely temporary crop, whichmortals term expediency, they inevitably sow the acorns of a moreenduring growth, which may darkly overshadow their posterity.
The House of the Seven Gables, antique as it now looks, was not thefirst habitation erected by civilized man on precisely the same spot ofground. Pyncheon Street formerly bore the humbler appellation ofMaule's Lane, from the name of the original occupant of the soil,before whose cottage-door it was a cow-path. A natural spring of softand pleasant water--a rare treasure on the sea-girt peninsula where thePuritan settlement was made--had early induced Matthew Maule to build ahut, shaggy with thatch, at this point, although somewhat too remotefrom what was then the centre of the village. In the growth of thetown, however, after some thirty or forty years, the site covered bythis rude hovel had become exceedingly desirable in the eyes of aprominent and powerful personage, who asserted plausible claims to theproprietorship of this and a large adjacent tract of land, on thestrength of a grant from the legislature. Colonel Pyncheon, theclaimant, as we gather from whatever traits of him are preserved, wascharacterized by an iron energy of purpose. Matthew Maule, on theother hand, though an obscure man, was stubborn in the defence of whathe considered his right; and, for several years, he succeeded inprotecting the acre or two of earth which, with his own toil, he hadhewn out of the primeval forest, to be his garden ground and homestead.No written record of this dispute is known to be in existence. Ouracquaintance with the whole subject is derived chiefly from tradition.It would be bold, therefore, and possibly unjust, to venture a decisiveopinion as to its merits; although it appears to have been at least amatter of doubt, whether Colonel Pyncheon's claim were not undulystretched, in order to make it cover the small metes and bounds ofMatthew Maule. What greatly strengthens such a suspicion is the factthat this controversy between two ill-matched antagonists--at a period,moreover, laud it as we may, when personal influence had far moreweight than now--remained for years undecided, and came to a close onlywith the death of the party occupying the disputed soil. The mode ofhis death, too, affects the mind differently, in our day, from what itdid a century and a half ago. It was a death that blasted with strangehorror the humble name of the dweller in the cottage, and made it seemalmost a religious act to drive the plough over the little area of hishabitation, and obliterate his place and memory from among men.
Old Matthew Maule, in a word, was executed for the crime of witchcraft.He was one of the martyrs to that terrible delusion, which should teachus, among its other morals, that the influential classes, and those whotake upon themselves to be leaders of the people, are fully liable toall the passionate error that has ever characterized the maddest mob.Clergymen, judges, statesmen,--the wisest, calmest, holiest persons oftheir day stood in the inner circle round about the gallows, loudest toapplaud the work of blood, latest to confess themselves miserablydeceived. If any one part of their proceedings can be said to deserveless blame than another, it was the singular indiscrimination withwhich they persecuted, not merely the poor and aged, as in formerjudicial massacres, but people of all ranks; their own equals,brethren, and wives. Amid the disorder of such various ruin, it is notstrange that a man of inconsiderable note, like Maule, should havetrodden the martyr's path to the hill of execution almost unremarked inthe throng of his fellow sufferers. But, in after days, when thefrenzy of that hideous epoch had subsided, it was remembered how loudlyColonel Pyncheon had joined in the general cry, to purge the land fromwitchcraft; nor did it fail to be whispered, that there was aninvidious acrimony in the zeal with which he had sought thecondemnation of Matthew Maule. It was well known that the victim hadrecognized the bitterness of personal enmity in his persecutor'sconduct towards him, and that he declared himself hunted to death forhis spoil. At the moment of execution--with the halter about his neck,and while Colonel Pyncheon sat on horseback, grimly gazing at the sceneMaule had addressed him from the scaffold, and uttered a prophecy, ofwhich history, as well as fireside tradition, has preserved the verywords. "God," said the dying man, pointing his finger, with a ghastlylook, at the undismayed countenance of his enemy,--"God will give himblood to drink!" After the reputed wizard's death, his humblehomestead had fallen an easy spoil into Colonel Pyncheon's grasp. Whenit was understood, however, that the Colonel intended to erect a familymansion-spacious, ponderously framed of oaken timber, and calculated toendure for many generations of his posterity over the spot firstcovered by the log-built hut of Matthew Maule, there was much shakingof the head among the village gossips. Without absolutely expressing adoubt whether the stalwart Puritan had acted as a man of conscience andintegrity throughout the proceedings which have been sketched, they,nevertheless, hinted that he was about to build his house over anunquiet grave. His home would include the home of the dead and buriedwizard, and would thus afford the ghost of the latter a kind ofprivilege to haunt its new apartments, and the chambers into whichfuture bridegrooms were to lead their brides, and where children of thePyncheon blood were to be born. The terror and ugliness of Maule'scrime, and the wretchedness of his punishment, would darken the freshlyplastered walls, and infect them early with the scent of an old andmelancholy house. Why, then,--while so much of the soil around him wasbestrewn with the virgin forest leaves,--why should Colonel Pyncheonprefer a site that had already been accurst?
But the Puritan soldier and magistrate was not a man to be turned asidefrom his well-considered scheme, either by dread of the wizard's ghost,or by flimsy sentimentalities of any kind, however specious. Had hebeen told of a bad air, it might have moved him somewhat; but he wasready to encounter an evil spirit on his own ground. Endowed withcommonsense, as massive and hard as blocks of granite, fastenedtoge
ther by stern rigidity of purpose, as with iron clamps, he followedout his original design, probably without so much as imagining anobjection to it. On the score of delicacy, or any scrupulousness whicha finer sensibility might have taught him, the Colonel, like most ofhis breed and generation, was impenetrable. He therefore dug hiscellar, and laid the deep foundations of his mansion, on the square ofearth whence Matthew Maule, forty years before, had first swept awaythe fallen leaves. It was a curious, and, as some people thought, anominous fact, that, very soon after the workmen began their operations,the spring of water, above mentioned, entirely lost the deliciousnessof its pristine quality. Whether its sources were disturbed by thedepth of the new cellar, or whatever subtler cause might lurk at thebottom, it is certain that the water of Maule's Well, as it continuedto be called, grew hard and brackish. Even such we find it now; andany old woman of the neighborhood will certify that it is productive ofintestinal mischief to those who quench their thirst there.
The reader may deem it singular that the head carpenter of the newedifice was no other than the son of the very man from whose dead gripethe property of the soil had been wrested. Not improbably he was thebest workman of his time; or, perhaps, the Colonel thought itexpedient, or was impelled by some better feeling, thus openly to castaside all animosity against the race of his fallen antagonist. Nor wasit out of keeping with the general coarseness and matter-of-factcharacter of the age, that the son should be willing to earn an honestpenny, or, rather, a weighty amount of sterling pounds, from the purseof his father's deadly enemy. At all events, Thomas Maule became thearchitect of the House of the Seven Gables, and performed his duty sofaithfully that the timber framework fastened by his hands still holdstogether.
Thus the great house was built. Familiar as it stands in the writer'srecollection,--for it has been an object of curiosity with him fromboyhood, both as a specimen of the best and stateliest architecture ofa longpast epoch, and as the scene of events more full of humaninterest, perhaps, than those of a gray feudal castle,--familiar as itstands, in its rusty old age, it is therefore only the more difficultto imagine the bright novelty with which it first caught the sunshine.The impression of its actual state, at this distance of a hundred andsixty years, darkens inevitably through the picture which we would faingive of its appearance on the morning when the Puritan magnate bade allthe town to be his guests. A ceremony of consecration, festive as wellas religious, was now to be performed. A prayer and discourse from theRev. Mr. Higginson, and the outpouring of a psalm from the generalthroat of the community, was to be made acceptable to the grosser senseby ale, cider, wine, and brandy, in copious effusion, and, as someauthorities aver, by an ox, roasted whole, or at least, by the weightand substance of an ox, in more manageable joints and sirloins. Thecarcass of a deer, shot within twenty miles, had supplied material forthe vast circumference of a pasty. A codfish of sixty pounds, caughtin the bay, had been dissolved into the rich liquid of a chowder. Thechimney of the new house, in short, belching forth its kitchen smoke,impregnated the whole air with the scent of meats, fowls, and fishes,spicily concocted with odoriferous herbs, and onions in abundance. Themere smell of such festivity, making its way to everybody's nostrils,was at once an invitation and an appetite.
Maule's Lane, or Pyncheon Street, as it were now more decorous to callit, was thronged, at the appointed hour, as with a congregation on itsway to church. All, as they approached, looked upward at the imposingedifice, which was henceforth to assume its rank among the habitationsof mankind. There it rose, a little withdrawn from the line of thestreet, but in pride, not modesty. Its whole visible exterior wasornamented with quaint figures, conceived in the grotesqueness of aGothic fancy, and drawn or stamped in the glittering plaster, composedof lime, pebbles, and bits of glass, with which the woodwork of thewalls was overspread. On every side the seven gables pointed sharplytowards the sky, and presented the aspect of a whole sisterhood ofedifices, breathing through the spiracles of one great chimney. Themany lattices, with their small, diamond-shaped panes, admitted thesunlight into hall and chamber, while, nevertheless, the second story,projecting far over the base, and itself retiring beneath the third,threw a shadowy and thoughtful gloom into the lower rooms. Carvedglobes of wood were affixed under the jutting stories. Little spiralrods of iron beautified each of the seven peaks. On the triangularportion of the gable, that fronted next the street, was a dial, put upthat very morning, and on which the sun was still marking the passageof the first bright hour in a history that was not destined to be allso bright. All around were scattered shavings, chips, shingles, andbroken halves of bricks; these, together with the lately turned earth,on which the grass had not begun to grow, contributed to the impressionof strangeness and novelty proper to a house that had yet its place tomake among men's daily interests.
The principal entrance, which had almost the breadth of a church-door,was in the angle between the two front gables, and was covered by anopen porch, with benches beneath its shelter. Under this archeddoorway, scraping their feet on the unworn threshold, now trod theclergymen, the elders, the magistrates, the deacons, and whatever ofaristocracy there was in town or county. Thither, too, thronged theplebeian classes as freely as their betters, and in larger number.Just within the entrance, however, stood two serving-men, pointing someof the guests to the neighborhood of the kitchen and ushering othersinto the statelier rooms,--hospitable alike to all, but still with ascrutinizing regard to the high or low degree of each. Velvet garmentssombre but rich, stiffly plaited ruffs and bands, embroidered gloves,venerable beards, the mien and countenance of authority, made it easyto distinguish the gentleman of worship, at that period, from thetradesman, with his plodding air, or the laborer, in his leathernjerkin, stealing awe-stricken into the house which he had perhapshelped to build.
One inauspicious circumstance there was, which awakened a hardlyconcealed displeasure in the breasts of a few of the more punctiliousvisitors. The founder of this stately mansion--a gentleman noted forthe square and ponderous courtesy of his demeanor, ought surely to havestood in his own hall, and to have offered the first welcome to so manyeminent personages as here presented themselves in honor of his solemnfestival. He was as yet invisible; the most favored of the guests hadnot beheld him. This sluggishness on Colonel Pyncheon's part becamestill more unaccountable, when the second dignitary of the provincemade his appearance, and found no more ceremonious a reception. Thelieutenant-governor, although his visit was one of the anticipatedglories of the day, had alighted from his horse, and assisted his ladyfrom her side-saddle, and crossed the Colonel's threshold, withoutother greeting than that of the principal domestic.
This person--a gray-headed man, of quiet and most respectfuldeportment--found it necessary to explain that his master stillremained in his study, or private apartment; on entering which, an hourbefore, he had expressed a wish on no account to be disturbed.
"Do not you see, fellow," said the high-sheriff of the county, takingthe servant aside, "that this is no less a man than thelieutenant-governor? Summon Colonel Pyncheon at once! I know that hereceived letters from England this morning; and, in the perusal andconsideration of them, an hour may have passed away without hisnoticing it. But he will be ill-pleased, I judge, if you suffer him toneglect the courtesy due to one of our chief rulers, and who may besaid to represent King William, in the absence of the governor himself.Call your master instantly."
"Nay, please your worship," answered the man, in much perplexity, butwith a backwardness that strikingly indicated the hard and severecharacter of Colonel Pyncheon's domestic rule; "my master's orders wereexceeding strict; and, as your worship knows, he permits of nodiscretion in the obedience of those who owe him service. Let who listopen yonder door; I dare not, though the governor's own voice shouldbid me do it!"
"Pooh, pooh, master high sheriff!" cried the lieutenant-governor, whohad overheard the foregoing discussion, and felt himself high enough instation to play a little with his dignity.
"I will take the matterinto my own hands. It is time that the good Colonel came forth togreet his friends; else we shall be apt to suspect that he has taken asip too much of his Canary wine, in his extreme deliberation which caskit were best to broach in honor of the day! But since he is so muchbehindhand, I will give him a remembrancer myself!"
Accordingly, with such a tramp of his ponderous riding-boots as mightof itself have been audible in the remotest of the seven gables, headvanced to the door, which the servant pointed out, and made its newpanels reecho with a loud, free knock. Then, looking round, with asmile, to the spectators, he awaited a response. As none came,however, he knocked again, but with the same unsatisfactory result asat first. And now, being a trifle choleric in his temperament, thelieutenant-governor uplifted the heavy hilt of his sword, wherewith heso beat and banged upon the door, that, as some of the bystanderswhispered, the racket might have disturbed the dead. Be that as itmight, it seemed to produce no awakening effect on Colonel Pyncheon.When the sound subsided, the silence through the house was deep,dreary, and oppressive, notwithstanding that the tongues of many of theguests had already been loosened by a surreptitious cup or two of wineor spirits.
"Strange, forsooth!--very strange!" cried the lieutenant-governor,whose smile was changed to a frown. "But seeing that our host sets usthe good example of forgetting ceremony, I shall likewise throw itaside, and make free to intrude on his privacy."
He tried the door, which yielded to his hand, and was flung wide openby a sudden gust of wind that passed, as with a loud sigh, from theoutermost portal through all the passages and apartments of the newhouse. It rustled the silken garments of the ladies, and waved thelong curls of the gentlemen's wigs, and shook the window-hangings andthe curtains of the bedchambers; causing everywhere a singular stir,which yet was more like a hush. A shadow of awe and half-fearfulanticipation--nobody knew wherefore, nor of what--had all at oncefallen over the company.
They thronged, however, to the now open door, pressing thelieutenant-governor, in the eagerness of their curiosity, into the roomin advance of them. At the first glimpse they beheld nothingextraordinary: a handsomely furnished room, of moderate size, somewhatdarkened by curtains; books arranged on shelves; a large map on thewall, and likewise a portrait of Colonel Pyncheon, beneath which satthe original Colonel himself, in an oaken elbow-chair, with a pen inhis hand. Letters, parchments, and blank sheets of paper were on thetable before him. He appeared to gaze at the curious crowd, in frontof which stood the lieutenant-governor; and there was a frown on hisdark and massive countenance, as if sternly resentful of the boldnessthat had impelled them into his private retirement.
A little boy--the Colonel's grandchild, and the only human being thatever dared to be familiar with him--now made his way among the guests,and ran towards the seated figure; then pausing halfway, he began toshriek with terror. The company, tremulous as the leaves of a tree,when all are shaking together, drew nearer, and perceived that therewas an unnatural distortion in the fixedness of Colonel Pyncheon'sstare; that there was blood on his ruff, and that his hoary beard wassaturated with it. It was too late to give assistance. Theiron-hearted Puritan, the relentless persecutor, the grasping andstrong-willed man was dead! Dead, in his new house! There is atradition, only worth alluding to as lending a tinge of superstitiousawe to a scene perhaps gloomy enough without it, that a voice spokeloudly among the guests, the tones of which were like those of oldMatthew Maule, the executed wizard,--"God hath given him blood todrink!"
Thus early had that one guest,--the only guest who is certain, at onetime or another, to find his way into every human dwelling,--thus earlyhad Death stepped across the threshold of the House of the Seven Gables!
Colonel Pyncheon's sudden and mysterious end made a vast deal of noisein its day. There were many rumors, some of which have vaguely drifteddown to the present time, how that appearances indicated violence; thatthere were the marks of fingers on his throat, and the print of abloody hand on his plaited ruff; and that his peaked beard wasdishevelled, as if it had been fiercely clutched and pulled. It wasaverred, likewise, that the lattice window, near the Colonel's chair,was open; and that, only a few minutes before the fatal occurrence, thefigure of a man had been seen clambering over the garden fence, in therear of the house. But it were folly to lay any stress on stories ofthis kind, which are sure to spring up around such an event as that nowrelated, and which, as in the present case, sometimes prolongthemselves for ages afterwards, like the toadstools that indicate wherethe fallen and buried trunk of a tree has long since mouldered into theearth. For our own part, we allow them just as little credence as tothat other fable of the skeleton hand which the lieutenant-governor wassaid to have seen at the Colonel's throat, but which vanished away, ashe advanced farther into the room. Certain it is, however, that therewas a great consultation and dispute of doctors over the dead body.One,--John Swinnerton by name,--who appears to have been a man ofeminence, upheld it, if we have rightly understood his terms of art, tobe a case of apoplexy. His professional brethren, each for himself,adopted various hypotheses, more or less plausible, but all dressed outin a perplexing mystery of phrase, which, if it do not show abewilderment of mind in these erudite physicians, certainly causes itin the unlearned peruser of their opinions. The coroner's jury satupon the corpse, and, like sensible men, returned an unassailableverdict of "Sudden Death!"
It is indeed difficult to imagine that there could have been a serioussuspicion of murder, or the slightest grounds for implicating anyparticular individual as the perpetrator. The rank, wealth, andeminent character of the deceased must have insured the strictestscrutiny into every ambiguous circumstance. As none such is on record,it is safe to assume that none existed. Tradition,--which sometimesbrings down truth that history has let slip, but is oftener the wildbabble of the time, such as was formerly spoken at the fireside and nowcongeals in newspapers,--tradition is responsible for all contraryaverments. In Colonel Pyncheon's funeral sermon, which was printed,and is still extant, the Rev. Mr. Higginson enumerates, among the manyfelicities of his distinguished parishioner's earthly career, the happyseasonableness of his death. His duties all performed,--the highestprosperity attained,--his race and future generations fixed on a stablebasis, and with a stately roof to shelter them for centuries tocome,--what other upward step remained for this good man to take, savethe final step from earth to the golden gate of heaven! The piousclergyman surely would not have uttered words like these had he in theleast suspected that the Colonel had been thrust into the other worldwith the clutch of violence upon his throat.
The family of Colonel Pyncheon, at the epoch of his death, seemeddestined to as fortunate a permanence as can anywise consist with theinherent instability of human affairs. It might fairly be anticipatedthat the progress of time would rather increase and ripen theirprosperity, than wear away and destroy it. For, not only had his sonand heir come into immediate enjoyment of a rich estate, but there wasa claim through an Indian deed, confirmed by a subsequent grant of theGeneral Court, to a vast and as yet unexplored and unmeasured tract ofEastern lands. These possessions--for as such they might almostcertainly be reckoned--comprised the greater part of what is now knownas Waldo County, in the state of Maine, and were more extensive thanmany a dukedom, or even a reigning prince's territory, on Europeansoil. When the pathless forest that still covered this wildprincipality should give place--as it inevitably must, though perhapsnot till ages hence--to the golden fertility of human culture, it wouldbe the source of incalculable wealth to the Pyncheon blood. Had theColonel survived only a few weeks longer, it is probable that his greatpolitical influence, and powerful connections at home and abroad, wouldhave consummated all that was necessary to render the claim available.But, in spite of good Mr. Higginson's congratulatory eloquence, thisappeared to be the one thing which Colonel Pyncheon, provident andsagacious as he was, had allowed to go at loose ends. So far as theprospective territory was concerned, he unquestionably died t
oo soon.His son lacked not merely the father's eminent position, but the talentand force of character to achieve it: he could, therefore, effectnothing by dint of political interest; and the bare justice or legalityof the claim was not so apparent, after the Colonel's decease, as ithad been pronounced in his lifetime. Some connecting link had slippedout of the evidence, and could not anywhere be found.
Efforts, it is true, were made by the Pyncheons, not only then, but atvarious periods for nearly a hundred years afterwards, to obtain whatthey stubbornly persisted in deeming their right. But, in course oftime, the territory was partly regranted to more favored individuals,and partly cleared and occupied by actual settlers. These last, ifthey ever heard of the Pyncheon title, would have laughed at the ideaof any man's asserting a right--on the strength of mouldy parchments,signed with the faded autographs of governors and legislators long deadand forgotten--to the lands which they or their fathers had wrestedfrom the wild hand of nature by their own sturdy toil. This impalpableclaim, therefore, resulted in nothing more solid than to cherish, fromgeneration to generation, an absurd delusion of family importance,which all along characterized the Pyncheons. It caused the poorestmember of the race to feel as if he inherited a kind of nobility, andmight yet come into the possession of princely wealth to support it.In the better specimens of the breed, this peculiarity threw an idealgrace over the hard material of human life, without stealing away anytruly valuable quality. In the baser sort, its effect was to increasethe liability to sluggishness and dependence, and induce the victim ofa shadowy hope to remit all self-effort, while awaiting the realizationof his dreams. Years and years after their claim had passed out of thepublic memory, the Pyncheons were accustomed to consult the Colonel'sancient map, which had been projected while Waldo County was still anunbroken wilderness. Where the old land surveyor had put down woods,lakes, and rivers, they marked out the cleared spaces, and dotted thevillages and towns, and calculated the progressively increasing valueof the territory, as if there were yet a prospect of its ultimatelyforming a princedom for themselves.
In almost every generation, nevertheless, there happened to be some onedescendant of the family gifted with a portion of the hard, keen sense,and practical energy, that had so remarkably distinguished the originalfounder. His character, indeed, might be traced all the way down, asdistinctly as if the Colonel himself, a little diluted, had been giftedwith a sort of intermittent immortality on earth. At two or threeepochs, when the fortunes of the family were low, this representativeof hereditary qualities had made his appearance, and caused thetraditionary gossips of the town to whisper among themselves, "Here isthe old Pyncheon come again! Now the Seven Gables will benew-shingled!" From father to son, they clung to the ancestral housewith singular tenacity of home attachment. For various reasons,however, and from impressions often too vaguely founded to be put onpaper, the writer cherishes the belief that many, if not most, of thesuccessive proprietors of this estate were troubled with doubts as totheir moral right to hold it. Of their legal tenure there could be noquestion; but old Matthew Maule, it is to be feared, trode downwardfrom his own age to a far later one, planting a heavy footstep, all theway, on the conscience of a Pyncheon. If so, we are left to dispose ofthe awful query, whether each inheritor of the property--conscious ofwrong, and failing to rectify it--did not commit anew the great guiltof his ancestor, and incur all its original responsibilities. Andsupposing such to be the case, would it not be a far truer mode ofexpression to say of the Pyncheon family, that they inherited a greatmisfortune, than the reverse?
We have already hinted that it is not our purpose to trace down thehistory of the Pyncheon family, in its unbroken connection with theHouse of the Seven Gables; nor to show, as in a magic picture, how therustiness and infirmity of age gathered over the venerable houseitself. As regards its interior life, a large, dim looking-glass usedto hang in one of the rooms, and was fabled to contain within itsdepths all the shapes that had ever been reflected there,--the oldColonel himself, and his many descendants, some in the garb of antiquebabyhood, and others in the bloom of feminine beauty or manly prime, orsaddened with the wrinkles of frosty age. Had we the secret of thatmirror, we would gladly sit down before it, and transfer itsrevelations to our page. But there was a story, for which it isdifficult to conceive any foundation, that the posterity of MatthewMaule had some connection with the mystery of the looking-glass, andthat, by what appears to have been a sort of mesmeric process, theycould make its inner region all alive with the departed Pyncheons; notas they had shown themselves to the world, nor in their better andhappier hours, but as doing over again some deed of sin, or in thecrisis of life's bitterest sorrow. The popular imagination, indeed,long kept itself busy with the affair of the old Puritan Pyncheon andthe wizard Maule; the curse which the latter flung from his scaffoldwas remembered, with the very important addition, that it had become apart of the Pyncheon inheritance. If one of the family did but gurglein his throat, a bystander would be likely enough to whisper, betweenjest and earnest, "He has Maule's blood to drink!" The sudden death ofa Pyncheon, about a hundred years ago, with circumstances very similarto what have been related of the Colonel's exit, was held as givingadditional probability to the received opinion on this topic. It wasconsidered, moreover, an ugly and ominous circumstance, that ColonelPyncheon's picture--in obedience, it was said, to a provision of hiswill--remained affixed to the wall of the room in which he died. Thosestern, immitigable features seemed to symbolize an evil influence, andso darkly to mingle the shadow of their presence with the sunshine ofthe passing hour, that no good thoughts or purposes could ever springup and blossom there. To the thoughtful mind there will be no tinge ofsuperstition in what we figuratively express, by affirming that theghost of a dead progenitor--perhaps as a portion of his ownpunishment--is often doomed to become the Evil Genius of his family.
The Pyncheons, in brief, lived along, for the better part of twocenturies, with perhaps less of outward vicissitude than has attendedmost other New England families during the same period of time.Possessing very distinctive traits of their own, they nevertheless tookthe general characteristics of the little community in which theydwelt; a town noted for its frugal, discreet, well-ordered, andhome-loving inhabitants, as well as for the somewhat confined scope ofits sympathies; but in which, be it said, there are odder individuals,and, now and then, stranger occurrences, than one meets with almostanywhere else. During the Revolution, the Pyncheon of that epoch,adopting the royal side, became a refugee; but repented, and made hisreappearance, just at the point of time to preserve the House of theSeven Gables from confiscation. For the last seventy years the mostnoted event in the Pyncheon annals had been likewise the heaviestcalamity that ever befell the race; no less than the violent death--forso it was adjudged--of one member of the family by the criminal act ofanother. Certain circumstances attending this fatal occurrence hadbrought the deed irresistibly home to a nephew of the deceasedPyncheon. The young man was tried and convicted of the crime; buteither the circumstantial nature of the evidence, and possibly somelurking doubts in the breast of the executive, or, lastly--an argumentof greater weight in a republic than it could have been under amonarchy,--the high respectability and political influence of thecriminal's connections, had availed to mitigate his doom from death toperpetual imprisonment. This sad affair had chanced about thirty yearsbefore the action of our story commences. Latterly, there were rumors(which few believed, and only one or two felt greatly interested in)that this long-buried man was likely, for some reason or other, to besummoned forth from his living tomb.
It is essential to say a few words respecting the victim of this nowalmost forgotten murder. He was an old bachelor, and possessed ofgreat wealth, in addition to the house and real estate whichconstituted what remained of the ancient Pyncheon property. Being ofan eccentric and melancholy turn of mind, and greatly given torummaging old records and hearkening to old traditions, he had broughthimself, it is averred, to the concl
usion that Matthew Maule, thewizard, had been foully wronged out of his homestead, if not out of hislife. Such being the case, and he, the old bachelor, in possession ofthe ill-gotten spoil,--with the black stain of blood sunken deep intoit, and still to be scented by conscientious nostrils,--the questionoccurred, whether it were not imperative upon him, even at this latehour, to make restitution to Maule's posterity. To a man living somuch in the past, and so little in the present, as the secluded andantiquarian old bachelor, a century and a half seemed not so vast aperiod as to obviate the propriety of substituting right for wrong. Itwas the belief of those who knew him best, that he would positivelyhave taken the very singular step of giving up the House of the SevenGables to the representative of Matthew Maule, but for the unspeakabletumult which a suspicion of the old gentleman's project awakened amonghis Pyncheon relatives. Their exertions had the effect of suspendinghis purpose; but it was feared that he would perform, after death, bythe operation of his last will, what he had so hardly been preventedfrom doing in his proper lifetime. But there is no one thing which menso rarely do, whatever the provocation or inducement, as to bequeathpatrimonial property away from their own blood. They may love otherindividuals far better than their relatives,--they may even cherishdislike, or positive hatred, to the latter; but yet, in view of death,the strong prejudice of propinquity revives, and impels the testator tosend down his estate in the line marked out by custom so immemorialthat it looks like nature. In all the Pyncheons, this feeling had theenergy of disease. It was too powerful for the conscientious scruplesof the old bachelor; at whose death, accordingly, the mansion-house,together with most of his other riches, passed into the possession ofhis next legal representative.
This was a nephew, the cousin of the miserable young man who had beenconvicted of the uncle's murder. The new heir, up to the period of hisaccession, was reckoned rather a dissipated youth, but had at oncereformed, and made himself an exceedingly respectable member ofsociety. In fact, he showed more of the Pyncheon quality, and had wonhigher eminence in the world, than any of his race since the time ofthe original Puritan. Applying himself in earlier manhood to the studyof the law, and having a natural tendency towards office, he hadattained, many years ago, to a judicial situation in some inferiorcourt, which gave him for life the very desirable and imposing title ofjudge. Later, he had engaged in politics, and served a part of twoterms in Congress, besides making a considerable figure in bothbranches of the State legislature. Judge Pyncheon was unquestionablyan honor to his race. He had built himself a country-seat within a fewmiles of his native town, and there spent such portions of his time ascould be spared from public service in the display of every grace andvirtue--as a newspaper phrased it, on the eve of an election--befittingthe Christian, the good citizen, the horticulturist, and the gentleman.
There were few of the Pyncheons left to sun themselves in the glow ofthe Judge's prosperity. In respect to natural increase, the breed hadnot thriven; it appeared rather to be dying out. The only members ofthe family known to be extant were, first, the Judge himself, and asingle surviving son, who was now travelling in Europe; next, thethirty years' prisoner, already alluded to, and a sister of the latter,who occupied, in an extremely retired manner, the House of the SevenGables, in which she had a life-estate by the will of the old bachelor.She was understood to be wretchedly poor, and seemed to make it herchoice to remain so; inasmuch as her affluent cousin, the Judge, hadrepeatedly offered her all the comforts of life, either in the oldmansion or his own modern residence. The last and youngest Pyncheonwas a little country-girl of seventeen, the daughter of another of theJudge's cousins, who had married a young woman of no family orproperty, and died early and in poor circumstances. His widow hadrecently taken another husband.
As for Matthew Maule's posterity, it was supposed now to be extinct.For a very long period after the witchcraft delusion, however, theMaules had continued to inhabit the town where their progenitor hadsuffered so unjust a death. To all appearance, they were a quiet,honest, well-meaning race of people, cherishing no malice againstindividuals or the public for the wrong which had been done them; orif, at their own fireside, they transmitted from father to child anyhostile recollection of the wizard's fate and their lost patrimony, itwas never acted upon, nor openly expressed. Nor would it have beensingular had they ceased to remember that the House of the Seven Gableswas resting its heavy framework on a foundation that was rightfullytheir own. There is something so massive, stable, and almostirresistibly imposing in the exterior presentment of established rankand great possessions, that their very existence seems to give them aright to exist; at least, so excellent a counterfeit of right, that fewpoor and humble men have moral force enough to question it, even intheir secret minds. Such is the case now, after so many ancientprejudices have been overthrown; and it was far more so inante-Revolutionary days, when the aristocracy could venture to beproud, and the low were content to be abased. Thus the Maules, at allevents, kept their resentments within their own breasts. They weregenerally poverty-stricken; always plebeian and obscure; working withunsuccessful diligence at handicrafts; laboring on the wharves, orfollowing the sea, as sailors before the mast; living here and thereabout the town, in hired tenements, and coming finally to the almshouseas the natural home of their old age. At last, after creeping, as itwere, for such a length of time along the utmost verge of the opaquepuddle of obscurity, they had taken that downright plunge which, sooneror later, is the destiny of all families, whether princely or plebeian.For thirty years past, neither town-record, nor gravestone, nor thedirectory, nor the knowledge or memory of man, bore any trace ofMatthew Maule's descendants. His blood might possibly exist elsewhere;here, where its lowly current could be traced so far back, it hadceased to keep an onward course.
So long as any of the race were to be found, they had been marked outfrom other men--not strikingly, nor as with a sharp line, but with aneffect that was felt rather than spoken of--by an hereditary characterof reserve. Their companions, or those who endeavored to become such,grew conscious of a circle round about the Maules, within the sanctityor the spell of which, in spite of an exterior of sufficient franknessand good-fellowship, it was impossible for any man to step. It wasthis indefinable peculiarity, perhaps, that, by insulating them fromhuman aid, kept them always so unfortunate in life. It certainlyoperated to prolong in their case, and to confirm to them as their onlyinheritance, those feelings of repugnance and superstitious terror withwhich the people of the town, even after awakening from their frenzy,continued to regard the memory of the reputed witches. The mantle, orrather the ragged cloak, of old Matthew Maule had fallen upon hischildren. They were half believed to inherit mysterious attributes;the family eye was said to possess strange power. Among othergood-for-nothing properties and privileges, one was especially assignedthem,--that of exercising an influence over people's dreams. ThePyncheons, if all stories were true, haughtily as they bore themselvesin the noonday streets of their native town, were no better thanbond-servants to these plebeian Maules, on entering the topsy-turvycommonwealth of sleep. Modern psychology, it may be, will endeavor toreduce these alleged necromancies within a system, instead of rejectingthem as altogether fabulous.
A descriptive paragraph or two, treating of the seven-gabled mansion inits more recent aspect, will bring this preliminary chapter to a close.The street in which it upreared its venerable peaks has long ceased tobe a fashionable quarter of the town; so that, though the old edificewas surrounded by habitations of modern date, they were mostly small,built entirely of wood, and typical of the most plodding uniformity ofcommon life. Doubtless, however, the whole story of human existencemay be latent in each of them, but with no picturesqueness, externally,that can attract the imagination or sympathy to seek it there. But asfor the old structure of our story, its white-oak frame, and itsboards, shingles, and crumbling plaster, and even the huge, clusteredchimney in the midst, seemed to constitute only the least and meanestpart of its re
ality. So much of mankind's varied experience had passedthere,--so much had been suffered, and something, too, enjoyed,--thatthe very timbers were oozy, as with the moisture of a heart. It wasitself like a great human heart, with a life of its own, and full ofrich and sombre reminiscences.
The deep projection of the second story gave the house such ameditative look, that you could not pass it without the idea that ithad secrets to keep, and an eventful history to moralize upon. Infront, just on the edge of the unpaved sidewalk, grew the Pyncheon Elm,which, in reference to such trees as one usually meets with, might wellbe termed gigantic. It had been planted by a great-grandson of thefirst Pyncheon, and, though now four-score years of age, or perhapsnearer a hundred, was still in its strong and broad maturity, throwingits shadow from side to side of the street, overtopping the sevengables, and sweeping the whole black roof with its pendant foliage. Itgave 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 gablewas now precisely on a line with it. On either side extended a ruinouswooden fence of open lattice-work, through which could be seen a grassyyard, and, especially in the angles of the building, an enormousfertility of burdocks, with leaves, it is hardly an exaggeration tosay, two or three feet long. Behind the house there appeared to be agarden, which undoubtedly had once been extensive, but was nowinfringed upon by other enclosures, or shut in by habitations andoutbuildings that stood on another street. It would be an omission,trifling, indeed, but unpardonable, were we to forget the green mossthat had long since gathered over the projections of the windows, andon the slopes of the roof nor must we fail to direct the reader's eyeto a crop, not of weeds, but flower-shrubs, which were growing aloft inthe air, not a great way from the chimney, in the nook between two ofthe gables. They were called Alice's Posies. The tradition was, thata certain Alice Pyncheon had flung up the seeds, in sport, and that thedust of the street and the decay of the roof gradually formed a kind ofsoil for them, out of which they grew, when Alice had long been in hergrave. However the flowers might have come there, it was both sad andsweet to observe how Nature adopted to herself this desolate, decaying,gusty, rusty old house of the Pyncheon family; and how theever-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, wegreatly fear, may damage any picturesque and romantic impression whichwe have been willing to throw over our sketch of this respectableedifice. In the front gable, under the impending brow of the secondstory, and contiguous to the street, was a shop-door, dividedhorizontally in the midst, and with a window for its upper segment,such as is often seen in dwellings of a somewhat ancient date. Thissame shop-door had been a subject of no slight mortification to thepresent occupant of the august Pyncheon House, as well as to some ofher predecessors. The matter is disagreeably delicate to handle; but,since the reader must needs be let into the secret, he will please tounderstand, that, about a century ago, the head of the Pyncheons foundhimself involved in serious financial difficulties. The fellow(gentleman, as he styled himself) can hardly have been other than aspurious interloper; for, instead of seeking office from the king orthe royal governor, or urging his hereditary claim to Eastern lands, hebethought himself of no better avenue to wealth than by cutting ashop-door through the side of his ancestral residence. It was thecustom of the time, indeed, for merchants to store their goods andtransact business in their own dwellings. But there was somethingpitifully small in this old Pyncheon's mode of setting about hiscommercial operations; it was whispered, that, with his own hands, allberuffled as they were, he used to give change for a shilling, andwould turn a half-penny twice over, to make sure that it was a goodone. Beyond all question, he had the blood of a petty huckster in hisveins, through whatever channel it may have found its way there.
Immediately on his death, the shop-door had been locked, bolted, andbarred, and, down to the period of our story, had probably never oncebeen opened. The old counter, shelves, and other fixtures of thelittle 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, anapron at his waist, and his ruffles carefully turned back from hiswrists, might be seen through the chinks of the shutters, any night ofthe year, ransacking his till, or poring over the dingy pages of hisday-book. From the look of unutterable woe upon his face, it appearedto be his doom to spend eternity in a vain effort to make his accountsbalance.
And now--in a very humble way, as will be seen--we proceed to open ournarrative.
The House of the Seven Gables Page 3