X The Pyncheon Garden
CLIFFORD, except for Phoebe's More active instigation would ordinarilyhave yielded to the torpor which had crept through all his modes ofbeing, and which sluggishly counselled him to sit in his morning chairtill eventide. But the girl seldom failed to propose a removal to thegarden, where Uncle Venner and the daguerreotypist had made suchrepairs on the roof of the ruinous arbor, or summer-house, that it wasnow a sufficient shelter from sunshine and casual showers. Thehop-vine, too, had begun to grow luxuriantly over the sides of thelittle edifice, and made an interior of verdant seclusion, withinnumerable peeps and glimpses into the wider solitude of the garden.
Here, sometimes, in this green play-place of flickering light, Phoeberead to Clifford. Her acquaintance, the artist, who appeared to have aliterary turn, had supplied her with works of fiction, in pamphletform,--and a few volumes of poetry, in altogether a different style andtaste from those which Hepzibah selected for his amusement. Smallthanks were due to the books, however, if the girl's readings were inany degree more successful than her elderly cousin's. Phoebe's voicehad always a pretty music in it, and could either enliven Clifford byits sparkle and gayety of tone, or soothe him by a continued flow ofpebbly and brook-like cadences. But the fictions--in which thecountry-girl, unused to works of that nature, often became deeplyabsorbed--interested her strange auditor very little, or not at all.Pictures of life, scenes of passion or sentiment, wit, humor, andpathos, were all thrown away, or worse than thrown away, on Clifford;either because he lacked an experience by which to test their truth, orbecause his own griefs were a touch-stone of reality that few feignedemotions could withstand. When Phoebe broke into a peal of merrylaughter at what she read, he would now and then laugh for sympathy,but oftener respond with a troubled, questioning look. If a tear--amaiden's sunshiny tear over imaginary woe--dropped upon some melancholypage, Clifford either took it as a token of actual calamity, or elsegrew peevish, and angrily motioned her to close the volume. And wiselytoo! Is not the world sad enough, in genuine earnest, without making apastime of mock sorrows?
With poetry it was rather better. He delighted in the swell andsubsidence of the rhythm, and the happily recurring rhyme. Nor wasClifford incapable of feeling the sentiment of poetry,--not, perhaps,where it was highest or deepest, but where it was most flitting andethereal. It was impossible to foretell in what exquisite verse theawakening spell might lurk; but, on raising her eyes from the page toClifford's face, Phoebe would be made aware, by the light breakingthrough it, that a more delicate intelligence than her own had caught alambent flame from what she read. One glow of this kind, however, wasoften the precursor of gloom for many hours afterward; because, whenthe glow left him, he seemed conscious of a missing sense and power,and groped about for them, as if a blind man should go seeking his losteyesight.
It pleased him more, and was better for his inward welfare, that Phoebeshould talk, and make passing occurrences vivid to his mind by heraccompanying description and remarks. The life of the garden offeredtopics enough for such discourse as suited Clifford best. He neverfailed to inquire what flowers had bloomed since yesterday. Hisfeeling for flowers was very exquisite, and seemed not so much a tasteas an emotion; he was fond of sitting with one in his hand, intentlyobserving it, and looking from its petals into Phoebe's face, as if thegarden flower were the sister of the household maiden. Not merely wasthere a delight in the flower's perfume, or pleasure in its beautifulform, and the delicacy or brightness of its hue; but Clifford'senjoyment was accompanied with a perception of life, character, andindividuality, that made him love these blossoms of the garden, as ifthey were endowed with sentiment and intelligence. This affection andsympathy for flowers is almost exclusively a woman's trait. Men, ifendowed with it by nature, soon lose, forget, and learn to despise it,in their contact with coarser things than flowers. Clifford, too, hadlong forgotten it; but found it again now, as he slowly revived fromthe chill torpor of his life.
It is wonderful how many pleasant incidents continually came to pass inthat secluded garden-spot when once Phoebe had set herself to look forthem. She had seen or heard a bee there, on the first day of heracquaintance with the place. And often,--almost continually,indeed,--since then, the bees kept coming thither, Heaven knows why, orby what pertinacious desire, for far-fetched sweets, when, no doubt,there were broad clover-fields, and all kinds of garden growth, muchnearer home than this. Thither the bees came, however, and plungedinto the squash-blossoms, as if there were no other squash-vines withina long day's flight, or as if the soil of Hepzibah's garden gave itsproductions just the very quality which these laborious little wizardswanted, in order to impart the Hymettus odor to their whole hive of NewEngland honey. When Clifford heard their sunny, buzzing murmur, in theheart of the great yellow blossoms, he looked about him with a joyfulsense of warmth, and blue sky, and green grass, and of God's free airin the whole height from earth to heaven. After all, there need be noquestion why the bees came to that one green nook in the dusty town.God sent them thither to gladden our poor Clifford. They brought therich summer with them, in requital of a little honey.
When the bean-vines began to flower on the poles, there was oneparticular variety which bore a vivid scarlet blossom. Thedaguerreotypist had found these beans in a garret, over one of theseven gables, treasured up in an old chest of drawers by somehorticultural Pyncheon of days gone by, who doubtless meant to sow themthe next summer, but was himself first sown in Death's garden-ground.By way of testing whether there were still a living germ in suchancient seeds, Holgrave had planted some of them; and the result of hisexperiment was a splendid row of bean-vines, clambering, early, to thefull height of the poles, and arraying them, from top to bottom, in aspiral profusion of red blossoms. And, ever since the unfolding of thefirst bud, a multitude of humming-birds had been attracted thither. Attimes, it seemed as if for every one of the hundred blossoms there wasone of these tiniest fowls of the air,--a thumb's bigness of burnishedplumage, hovering and vibrating about the bean-poles. It was withindescribable interest, and even more than childish delight, thatClifford watched the humming-birds. He used to thrust his head softlyout of the arbor to see them the better; all the while, too, motioningPhoebe to be quiet, and snatching glimpses of the smile upon her face,so as to heap his enjoyment up the higher with her sympathy. He hadnot merely grown young;--he was a child again.
Hepzibah, whenever she happened to witness one of these fits ofminiature enthusiasm, would shake her head, with a strange mingling ofthe mother and sister, and of pleasure and sadness, in her aspect. Shesaid that it had always been thus with Clifford when the humming-birdscame,--always, from his babyhood,--and that his delight in them hadbeen one of the earliest tokens by which he showed his love forbeautiful things. And it was a wonderful coincidence, the good ladythought, that the artist should have planted these scarlet-floweringbeans--which the humming-birds sought far and wide, and which had notgrown in the Pyncheon garden before for forty years--on the very summerof Clifford's return.
Then would the tears stand in poor Hepzibah's eyes, or overflow themwith a too abundant gush, so that she was fain to betake herself intosome corner, lest Clifford should espy her agitation. Indeed, all theenjoyments of this period were provocative of tears. Coming so late asit did, it was a kind of Indian summer, with a mist in its balmiestsunshine, and decay and death in its gaudiest delight. The moreClifford seemed to taste the happiness of a child, the sadder was thedifference to be recognized. With a mysterious and terrible Past,which had annihilated his memory, and a blank Future before him, he hadonly this visionary and impalpable Now, which, if you once look closelyat it, is nothing. He himself, as was perceptible by many symptoms,lay darkly behind his pleasure, and knew it to be a baby-play, which hewas to toy and trifle with, instead of thoroughly believing. Cliffordsaw, it may be, in the mirror of his deeper consciousness, that he wasan example and representative of that great class of people whom a
ninexplicable Providence is continually putting at cross-purposes withthe world: breaking what seems its own promise in their nature;withholding their proper food, and setting poison before them for abanquet; and thus--when it might so easily, as one would think, havebeen adjusted otherwise--making their existence a strangeness, asolitude, and torment. All his life long, he had been learning how tobe wretched, as one learns a foreign tongue; and now, with the lessonthoroughly by heart, he could with difficulty comprehend his littleairy happiness. Frequently there was a dim shadow of doubt in hiseyes. "Take my hand, Phoebe," he would say, "and pinch it hard withyour little fingers! Give me a rose, that I may press its thorns, andprove myself awake by the sharp touch of pain!" Evidently, he desiredthis prick of a trifling anguish, in order to assure himself, by thatquality which he best knew to be real, that the garden, and the sevenweather-beaten gables, and Hepzibah's scowl, and Phoebe's smile, werereal likewise. Without this signet in his flesh, he could haveattributed no more substance to them than to the empty confusion ofimaginary scenes with which he had fed his spirit, until even that poorsustenance was exhausted.
The author needs great faith in his reader's sympathy; else he musthesitate to give details so minute, and incidents apparently sotrifling, as are essential to make up the idea of this garden-life. Itwas the Eden of a thunder-smitten Adam, who had fled for refuge thitherout of the same dreary and perilous wilderness into which the originalAdam was expelled.
One of the available means of amusement, of which Phoebe made the mostin Clifford's behalf, was that feathered society, the hens, a breed ofwhom, as we have already said, was an immemorial heirloom in thePyncheon family. In compliance with a whim of Clifford, as it troubledhim to see them in confinement, they had been set at liberty, and nowroamed at will about the garden; doing some little mischief, buthindered from escape by buildings on three sides, and the difficultpeaks of a wooden fence on the other. They spent much of theirabundant leisure on the margin of Maule's well, which was haunted by akind of snail, evidently a titbit to their palates; and the brackishwater itself, however nauseous to the rest of the world, was so greatlyesteemed by these fowls, that they might be seen tasting, turning uptheir heads, and smacking their bills, with precisely the air ofwine-bibbers round a probationary cask. Their generally quiet, yetoften brisk, and constantly diversified talk, one to another, orsometimes in soliloquy,--as they scratched worms out of the rich, blacksoil, or pecked at such plants as suited their taste,--had such adomestic tone, that it was almost a wonder why you could not establisha regular interchange of ideas about household matters, human andgallinaceous. All hens are well worth studying for the piquancy andrich variety of their manners; but by no possibility can there havebeen other fowls of such odd appearance and deportment as theseancestral ones. They probably embodied the traditionary peculiaritiesof their whole line of progenitors, derived through an unbrokensuccession of eggs; or else this individual Chanticleer and his twowives had grown to be humorists, and a little crack-brained withal, onaccount of their solitary way of life, and out of sympathy forHepzibah, their lady-patroness.
Queer, indeed, they looked! Chanticleer himself, though stalking on twostilt-like legs, with the dignity of interminable descent in all hisgestures, was hardly bigger than an ordinary partridge; his two wiveswere about the size of quails; and as for the one chicken, it lookedsmall enough to be still in the egg, and, at the same time,sufficiently old, withered, wizened, and experienced, to have beenfounder of the antiquated race. Instead of being the youngest of thefamily, it rather seemed to have aggregated into itself the ages, notonly of these living specimens of the breed, but of all its forefathersand foremothers, whose united excellences and oddities were squeezedinto its little body. Its mother evidently regarded it as the onechicken of the world, and as necessary, in fact, to the world'scontinuance, or, at any rate, to the equilibrium of the present systemof affairs, whether in church or state. No lesser sense of the infantfowl's importance could have justified, even in a mother's eyes, theperseverance with which she watched over its safety, ruffling her smallperson to twice its proper size, and flying in everybody's face that somuch as looked towards her hopeful progeny. No lower estimate couldhave vindicated the indefatigable zeal with which she scratched, andher unscrupulousness in digging up the choicest flower or vegetable,for the sake of the fat earthworm at its root. Her nervous cluck, whenthe chicken happened to be hidden in the long grass or under thesquash-leaves; her gentle croak of satisfaction, while sure of itbeneath her wing; her note of ill-concealed fear and obstreperousdefiance, when she saw her arch-enemy, a neighbor's cat, on the top ofthe high fence,--one or other of these sounds was to be heard at almostevery moment of the day. By degrees, the observer came to feel nearlyas much interest in this chicken of illustrious race as the mother-hendid.
Phoebe, after getting well acquainted with the old hen, was sometimespermitted to take the chicken in her hand, which was quite capable ofgrasping its cubic inch or two of body. While she curiously examinedits hereditary marks,--the peculiar speckle of its plumage, the funnytuft on its head, and a knob on each of its legs,--the little biped, asshe insisted, kept giving her a sagacious wink. The daguerreotypistonce whispered her that these marks betokened the oddities of thePyncheon family, and that the chicken itself was a symbol of the lifeof the old house, embodying its interpretation, likewise, although anunintelligible one, as such clews generally are. It was a featheredriddle; a mystery hatched out of an egg, and just as mysterious as ifthe egg had been addle!
The second of Chanticleer's two wives, ever since Phoebe's arrival, hadbeen in a state of heavy despondency, caused, as it afterwardsappeared, by her inability to lay an egg. One day, however, by herself-important gait, the sideways turn of her head, and the cock of hereye, as she pried into one and another nook of the garden,--croaking toherself, all the while, with inexpressible complacency,--it was madeevident that this identical hen, much as mankind undervalued her,carried something about her person the worth of which was not to beestimated either in gold or precious stones. Shortly after, there wasa prodigious cackling and gratulation of Chanticleer and all hisfamily, including the wizened chicken, who appeared to understand thematter quite as well as did his sire, his mother, or his aunt. Thatafternoon Phoebe found a diminutive egg,--not in the regular nest, itwas far too precious to be trusted there,--but cunningly hidden underthe currant-bushes, on some dry stalks of last year's grass. Hepzibah,on learning the fact, took possession of the egg and appropriated it toClifford's breakfast, on account of a certain delicacy of flavor, forwhich, as she affirmed, these eggs had always been famous. Thusunscrupulously did the old gentlewoman sacrifice the continuance,perhaps, of an ancient feathered race, with no better end than tosupply her brother with a dainty that hardly filled the bowl of atea-spoon! It must have been in reference to this outrage thatChanticleer, the next day, accompanied by the bereaved mother of theegg, took his post in front of Phoebe and Clifford, and deliveredhimself of a harangue that might have proved as long as his ownpedigree, but for a fit of merriment on Phoebe's part. Hereupon, theoffended fowl stalked away on his long stilts, and utterly withdrew hisnotice from Phoebe and the rest of human nature, until she made herpeace with an offering of spice-cake, which, next to snails, was thedelicacy most in favor with his aristocratic taste.
We linger too long, no doubt, beside this paltry rivulet of life thatflowed through the garden of the Pyncheon House. But we deem itpardonable to record these mean incidents and poor delights, becausethey proved so greatly to Clifford's benefit. They had the earth-smellin them, and contributed to give him health and substance. Some of hisoccupations wrought less desirably upon him. He had a singularpropensity, for example, to hang over Maule's well, and look at theconstantly shifting phantasmagoria of figures produced by the agitationof the water over the mosaic-work of colored pebbles at the bottom. Hesaid that faces looked upward to him there,--beautiful faces, arrayedin bewitching smiles,--each momentary face so fair and
rosy, and everysmile so sunny, that he felt wronged at its departure, until the sameflitting witchcraft made a new one. But sometimes he would suddenlycry out, "The dark face gazes at me!" and be miserable the whole dayafterwards. Phoebe, when she hung over the fountain by Clifford'sside, could see nothing of all this,--neither the beauty nor theugliness,--but only the colored pebbles, looking as if the gush of thewaters shook and disarranged them. And the dark face, that so troubledClifford, was no more than the shadow thrown from a branch of one ofthe damson-trees, and breaking the inner light of Maule's well. Thetruth was, however, that his fancy--reviving faster than his will andjudgment, and always stronger than they--created shapes of lovelinessthat were symbolic of his native character, and now and then a sternand dreadful shape that typified his fate.
On Sundays, after Phoebe had been at church,--for the girl had achurch-going conscience, and would hardly have been at ease had shemissed either prayer, singing, sermon, or benediction,--afterchurch-time, therefore, there was, ordinarily, a sober little festivalin the garden. In addition to Clifford, Hepzibah, and Phoebe, twoguests made up the company. One was the artist Holgrave, who, in spiteof his consociation with reformers, and his other queer andquestionable traits, continued to hold an elevated place in Hepzibah'sregard. The other, we are almost ashamed to say, was the venerableUncle Venner, in a clean shirt, and a broadcloth coat, more respectablethan his ordinary wear, inasmuch as it was neatly patched on eachelbow, and might be called an entire garment, except for a slightinequality in the length of its skirts. Clifford, on severaloccasions, had seemed to enjoy the old man's intercourse, for the sakeof his mellow, cheerful vein, which was like the sweet flavor of afrost-bitten apple, such as one picks up under the tree in December. Aman at the very lowest point of the social scale was easier and moreagreeable for the fallen gentleman to encounter than a person at any ofthe intermediate degrees; and, moreover, as Clifford's young manhoodhad been lost, he was fond of feeling himself comparatively youthful,now, in apposition with the patriarchal age of Uncle Venner. In fact,it was sometimes observable that Clifford half wilfully hid fromhimself the consciousness of being stricken in years, and cherishedvisions of an earthly future still before him; visions, however, tooindistinctly drawn to be followed by disappointment--though, doubtless,by depression--when any casual incident or recollection made himsensible of the withered leaf.
So this oddly composed little social party used to assemble under theruinous arbor. Hepzibah--stately as ever at heart, and yielding not aninch of her old gentility, but resting upon it so much the more, asjustifying a princess-like condescension--exhibited a not ungracefulhospitality. She talked kindly to the vagrant artist, and took sagecounsel--lady as she was--with the wood-sawyer, the messenger ofeverybody's petty errands, the patched philosopher. And Uncle Venner,who had studied the world at street-corners, and other posts equallywell adapted for just observation, was as ready to give out his wisdomas a town-pump to give water.
"Miss Hepzibah, ma'am," said he once, after they had all been cheerfultogether, "I really enjoy these quiet little meetings of a Sabbathafternoon. They are very much like what I expect to have after Iretire to my farm!"
"Uncle Venner" observed Clifford in a drowsy, inward tone, "is alwaystalking about his farm. But I have a better scheme for him, by and by.We shall see!"
"Ah, Mr. Clifford Pyncheon!" said the man of patches, "you may schemefor me as much as you please; but I'm not going to give up this onescheme of my own, even if I never bring it really to pass. It doesseem to me that men make a wonderful mistake in trying to heap upproperty upon property. If I had done so, I should feel as ifProvidence was not bound to take care of me; and, at all events, thecity wouldn't be! I'm one of those people who think that infinity isbig enough for us all--and eternity long enough."
"Why, so they are, Uncle Venner," remarked Phoebe after a pause; forshe had been trying to fathom the profundity and appositeness of thisconcluding apothegm. "But for this short life of ours, one would likea house and a moderate garden-spot of one's own."
"It appears to me," said the daguerreotypist, smiling, "that UncleVenner has the principles of Fourier at the bottom of his wisdom; onlythey have not quite so much distinctness in his mind as in that of thesystematizing Frenchman."
"Come, Phoebe," said Hepzibah, "it is time to bring the currants."
And then, while the yellow richness of the declining sunshine stillfell into the open space of the garden, Phoebe brought out a loaf ofbread and a china bowl of currants, freshly gathered from the bushes,and crushed with sugar. These, with water,--but not from the fountainof ill omen, close at hand,--constituted all the entertainment.Meanwhile, Holgrave took some pains to establish an intercourse withClifford, actuated, it might seem, entirely by an impulse ofkindliness, in order that the present hour might be cheerfuller thanmost which the poor recluse had spent, or was destined yet to spend.Nevertheless, in the artist's deep, thoughtful, all-observant eyes,there was, now and then, an expression, not sinister, but questionable;as if he had some other interest in the scene than a stranger, ayouthful and unconnected adventurer, might be supposed to have. Withgreat mobility of outward mood, however, he applied himself to the taskof enlivening the party; and with so much success, that even dark-huedHepzibah threw off one tint of melancholy, and made what shift shecould with the remaining portion. Phoebe said to herself,--"Howpleasant he can be!" As for Uncle Venner, as a mark of friendship andapprobation, he readily consented to afford the young man hiscountenance in the way of his profession,--not metaphorically, be itunderstood, but literally, by allowing a daguerreotype of his face, sofamiliar to the town, to be exhibited at the entrance of Holgrave'sstudio.
Clifford, as the company partook of their little banquet, grew to bethe gayest of them all. Either it was one of those up-quiveringflashes of the spirit, to which minds in an abnormal state are liable,or else the artist had subtly touched some chord that made musicalvibration. Indeed, what with the pleasant summer evening, and thesympathy of this little circle of not unkindly souls, it was perhapsnatural that a character so susceptible as Clifford's should becomeanimated, and show itself readily responsive to what was said aroundhim. But he gave out his own thoughts, likewise, with an airy andfanciful glow; so that they glistened, as it were, through the arbor,and made their escape among the interstices of the foliage. He hadbeen as cheerful, no doubt, while alone with Phoebe, but never withsuch tokens of acute, although partial intelligence.
But, as the sunlight left the peaks of the Seven Gables, so did theexcitement fade out of Clifford's eyes. He gazed vaguely andmournfully about him, as if he missed something precious, and missed itthe more drearily for not knowing precisely what it was.
"I want my happiness!" at last he murmured hoarsely and indistinctly,hardly shaping out the words. "Many, many years have I waited for it!It is late! It is late! I want my happiness!"
Alas, poor Clifford! You are old, and worn with troubles that oughtnever to have befallen you. You are partly crazy and partly imbecile;a ruin, a failure, as almost everybody is,--though some in less degree,or less perceptibly, than their fellows. Fate has no happiness instore for you; unless your quiet home in the old family residence withthe faithful Hepzibah, and your long summer afternoons with Phoebe, andthese Sabbath festivals with Uncle Venner and the daguerreotypist,deserve to be called happiness! Why not? If not the thing itself, itis marvellously like it, and the more so for that ethereal andintangible quality which causes it all to vanish at too close anintrospection. Take it, therefore, while you may. Murmurnot,--question not,--but make the most of it!
The House of the Seven Gables Page 12