XVI Clifford's Chamber
NEVER had the old house appeared so dismal to poor Hepzibah as when shedeparted on that wretched errand. There was a strange aspect in it.As she trode along the foot-worn passages, and opened one crazy doorafter another, and ascended the creaking staircase, she gazed wistfullyand fearfully around. It would have been no marvel, to her excitedmind, if, behind or beside her, there had been the rustle of deadpeople's garments, or pale visages awaiting her on the landing-placeabove. Her nerves were set all ajar by the scene of passion and terrorthrough which she had just struggled. Her colloquy with JudgePyncheon, who so perfectly represented the person and attributes of thefounder of the family, had called back the dreary past. It weighedupon her heart. Whatever she had heard, from legendary aunts andgrandmothers, concerning the good or evil fortunes of thePyncheons,--stories which had heretofore been kept warm in herremembrance by the chimney-corner glow that was associated withthem,--now recurred to her, sombre, ghastly, cold, like most passagesof family history, when brooded over in melancholy mood. The wholeseemed little else but a series of calamity, reproducing itself insuccessive generations, with one general hue, and varying in little,save the outline. But Hepzibah now felt as if the Judge, and Clifford,and herself,--they three together,--were on the point of adding anotherincident to the annals of the house, with a bolder relief of wrong andsorrow, which would cause it to stand out from all the rest. Thus itis that the grief of the passing moment takes upon itself anindividuality, and a character of climax, which it is destined to loseafter a while, and to fade into the dark gray tissue common to thegrave or glad events of many years ago. It is but for a moment,comparatively, that anything looks strange or startling,--a truth thathas the bitter and the sweet in it.
But Hepzibah could not rid herself of the sense of somethingunprecedented at that instant passing and soon to be accomplished. Hernerves were in a shake. Instinctively she paused before the archedwindow, and looked out upon the street, in order to seize its permanentobjects with her mental grasp, and thus to steady herself from the reeland vibration which affected her more immediate sphere. It brought herup, as we may say, with a kind of shock, when she beheld everythingunder the same appearance as the day before, and numberless precedingdays, except for the difference between sunshine and sullen storm. Hereyes travelled along the street, from doorstep to doorstep, noting thewet sidewalks, with here and there a puddle in hollows that had beenimperceptible until filled with water. She screwed her dim optics totheir acutest point, in the hope of making out, with greaterdistinctness, a certain window, where she half saw, half guessed, thata tailor's seamstress was sitting at her work. Hepzibah flung herselfupon that unknown woman's companionship, even thus far off. Then shewas attracted by a chaise rapidly passing, and watched its moist andglistening top, and its splashing wheels, until it had turned thecorner, and refused to carry any further her idly trifling, becauseappalled and overburdened, mind. When the vehicle had disappeared, sheallowed herself still another loitering moment; for the patched figureof good Uncle Venner was now visible, coming slowly from the head ofthe street downward, with a rheumatic limp, because the east wind hadgot into his joints. Hepzibah wished that he would pass yet moreslowly, and befriend her shivering solitude a little longer. Anythingthat would take her out of the grievous present, and interpose humanbeings betwixt herself and what was nearest to her,--whatever woulddefer for an instant the inevitable errand on which she was bound,--allsuch impediments were welcome. Next to the lightest heart, theheaviest is apt to be most playful.
Hepzibah had little hardihood for her own proper pain, and far less forwhat she must inflict on Clifford. Of so slight a nature, and soshattered by his previous calamities, it could not well be short ofutter ruin to bring him face to face with the hard, relentless man whohad been his evil destiny through life. Even had there been no bitterrecollections, nor any hostile interest now at stake between them, themere natural repugnance of the more sensitive system to the massive,weighty, and unimpressible one, must, in itself, have been disastrousto the former. It would be like flinging a porcelain vase, withalready a crack in it, against a granite column. Never before hadHepzibah so adequately estimated the powerful character of her cousinJaffrey,--powerful by intellect, energy of will, the long habit ofacting among men, and, as she believed, by his unscrupulous pursuit ofselfish ends through evil means. It did but increase the difficultythat Judge Pyncheon was under a delusion as to the secret which hesupposed Clifford to possess. Men of his strength of purpose andcustomary sagacity, if they chance to adopt a mistaken opinion inpractical matters, so wedge it and fasten it among things known to betrue, that to wrench it out of their minds is hardly less difficultthan pulling up an oak. Thus, as the Judge required an impossibilityof Clifford, the latter, as he could not perform it, must needs perish.For what, in the grasp of a man like this, was to become of Clifford'ssoft poetic nature, that never should have had a task more stubbornthan to set a life of beautiful enjoyment to the flow and rhythm ofmusical cadences! Indeed, what had become of it already? Broken!Blighted! All but annihilated! Soon to be wholly so!
For a moment, the thought crossed Hepzibah's mind, whether Cliffordmight not really have such knowledge of their deceased uncle's vanishedestate as the Judge imputed to him. She remembered some vagueintimations, on her brother's part, which--if the supposition were notessentially preposterous--might have been so interpreted. There hadbeen schemes of travel and residence abroad, day-dreams of brilliantlife at home, and splendid castles in the air, which it would haverequired boundless wealth to build and realize. Had this wealth beenin her power, how gladly would Hepzibah have bestowed it all upon heriron-hearted kinsman, to buy for Clifford the freedom and seclusion ofthe desolate old house! But she believed that her brother's schemeswere as destitute of actual substance and purpose as a child's picturesof its future life, while sitting in a little chair by its mother'sknee. Clifford had none but shadowy gold at his command; and it wasnot the stuff to satisfy Judge Pyncheon!
Was there no help in their extremity? It seemed strange that thereshould be none, with a city round about her. It would be so easy tothrow up the window, and send forth a shriek, at the strange agony ofwhich everybody would come hastening to the rescue, well understandingit to be the cry of a human soul, at some dreadful crisis! But howwild, how almost laughable, the fatality,--and yet how continually itcomes to pass, thought Hepzibah, in this dull delirium of aworld,--that whosoever, and with however kindly a purpose, should cometo help, they would be sure to help the strongest side! Might and wrongcombined, like iron magnetized, are endowed with irresistibleattraction. There would be Judge Pyncheon,--a person eminent in thepublic view, of high station and great wealth, a philanthropist, amember of Congress and of the church, and intimately associated withwhatever else bestows good name,--so imposing, in these advantageouslights, that Hepzibah herself could hardly help shrinking from her ownconclusions as to his hollow integrity. The Judge, on one side! Andwho, on the other? The guilty Clifford! Once a byword! Now, anindistinctly remembered ignominy!
Nevertheless, in spite of this perception that the Judge would draw allhuman aid to his own behalf, Hepzibah was so unaccustomed to act forherself, that the least word of counsel would have swayed her to anymode of action. Little Phoebe Pyncheon would at once have lighted upthe whole scene, if not by any available suggestion, yet simply by thewarm vivacity of her character. The idea of the artist occurred toHepzibah. Young and unknown, mere vagrant adventurer as he was, she hadbeen conscious of a force in Holgrave which might well adapt him to bethe champion of a crisis. With this thought in her mind, she unbolted adoor, cobwebbed and long disused, but which had served as a formermedium of communication between her own part of the house and the gablewhere the wandering daguerreotypist had now established his temporaryhome. He was not there. A book, face downward, on the table, a roll ofmanuscript, a half-written sheet, a newspaper, some tools of hispresent occupatio
n, and several rejected daguerreotypes, conveyed animpression as if he were close at hand. But, at this period of the day,as Hepzibah might have anticipated, the artist was at his public rooms.With an impulse of idle curiosity, that flickered among her heavythoughts, she looked at one of the daguerreotypes, and beheld JudgePyncheon frowning at her. Fate stared her in the face. She turned backfrom her fruitless quest, with a heartsinking sense of disappointment.In all her years of seclusion, she had never felt, as now, what it wasto be alone. It seemed as if the house stood in a desert, or, by somespell, was made invisible to those who dwelt around, or passed besideit; so that any mode of misfortune, miserable accident, or crime mighthappen in it without the possibility of aid. In her grief and woundedpride, Hepzibah had spent her life in divesting herself of friends; shehad wilfully cast off the support which God has ordained his creaturesto need from one another; and it was now her punishment, that Cliffordand herself would fall the easier victims to their kindred enemy.
Returning to the arched window, she lifted her eyes,--scowling, poor,dim-sighted Hepzibah, in the face of Heaven!--and strove hard to sendup a prayer through the dense gray pavement of clouds. Those mists hadgathered, as if to symbolize a great, brooding mass of human trouble,doubt, confusion, and chill indifference, between earth and the betterregions. Her faith was too weak; the prayer too heavy to be thusuplifted. It fell back, a lump of lead, upon her heart. It smote herwith the wretched conviction that Providence intermeddled not in thesepetty wrongs of one individual to his fellow, nor had any balm forthese little agonies of a solitary soul; but shed its justice, and itsmercy, in a broad, sunlike sweep, over half the universe at once. Itsvastness made it nothing. But Hepzibah did not see that, just as therecomes a warm sunbeam into every cottage window, so comes a lovebeam ofGod's care and pity for every separate need.
At last, finding no other pretext for deferring the torture that shewas to inflict on Clifford,--her reluctance to which was the true causeof her loitering at the window, her search for the artist, and even herabortive prayer,--dreading, also, to hear the stern voice of JudgePyncheon from below stairs, chiding her delay,--she crept slowly, apale, grief-stricken figure, a dismal shape of woman, with almosttorpid limbs, slowly to her brother's door, and knocked!
There was no reply.
And how should there have been? Her hand, tremulous with the shrinkingpurpose which directed it, had smitten so feebly against the door thatthe sound could hardly have gone inward. She knocked again. Still noresponse! Nor was it to be wondered at. She had struck with the entireforce of her heart's vibration, communicating, by some subtilemagnetism, her own terror to the summons. Clifford would turn his faceto the pillow, and cover his head beneath the bedclothes, like astartled child at midnight. She knocked a third time, three regularstrokes, gentle, but perfectly distinct, and with meaning in them; for,modulate it with what cautious art we will, the hand cannot helpplaying some tune of what we feel upon the senseless wood.
Clifford returned no answer.
"Clifford! Dear brother!" said Hepzibah. "Shall I come in?"
A silence.
Two or three times, and more, Hepzibah repeated his name, withoutresult; till, thinking her brother's sleep unwontedly profound, sheundid the door, and entering, found the chamber vacant. How could hehave come forth, and when, without her knowledge? Was it possiblethat, in spite of the stormy day, and worn out with the irksomenesswithin doors he had betaken himself to his customary haunt in thegarden, and was now shivering under the cheerless shelter of thesummer-house? She hastily threw up a window, thrust forth her turbanedhead and the half of her gaunt figure, and searched the whole gardenthrough, as completely as her dim vision would allow. She could seethe interior of the summer-house, and its circular seat, kept moist bythe droppings of the roof. It had no occupant. Clifford was notthereabouts; unless, indeed, he had crept for concealment (as, for amoment, Hepzibah fancied might be the case) into a great, wet mass oftangled and broad-leaved shadow, where the squash-vines were clamberingtumultuously upon an old wooden framework, set casually aslant againstthe fence. This could not be, however; he was not there; for, whileHepzibah was looking, a strange grimalkin stole forth from the veryspot, and picked his way across the garden. Twice he paused to snuffthe air, and then anew directed his course towards the parlor window.Whether it was only on account of the stealthy, prying manner common tothe race, or that this cat seemed to have more than ordinary mischiefin his thoughts, the old gentlewoman, in spite of her much perplexity,felt an impulse to drive the animal away, and accordingly flung down awindow stick. The cat stared up at her, like a detected thief ormurderer, and, the next instant, took to flight. No other livingcreature was visible in the garden. Chanticleer and his family hadeither not left their roost, disheartened by the interminable rain, orhad done the next wisest thing, by seasonably returning to it.Hepzibah closed the window.
But where was Clifford? Could it be that, aware of the presence of hisEvil Destiny, he had crept silently down the staircase, while the Judgeand Hepzibah stood talking in the shop, and had softly undone thefastenings of the outer door, and made his escape into the street?With that thought, she seemed to behold his gray, wrinkled, yetchildlike aspect, in the old-fashioned garments which he wore about thehouse; a figure such as one sometimes imagines himself to be, with theworld's eye upon him, in a troubled dream. This figure of her wretchedbrother would go wandering through the city, attracting all eyes, andeverybody's wonder and repugnance, like a ghost, the more to beshuddered at because visible at noontide. To incur the ridicule of theyounger crowd, that knew him not,--the harsher scorn and indignation ofa few old men, who might recall his once familiar features! To be thesport of boys, who, when old enough to run about the streets, have nomore reverence for what is beautiful and holy, nor pity for what issad,--no more sense of sacred misery, sanctifying the human shape inwhich it embodies itself,--than if Satan were the father of them all!Goaded by their taunts, their loud, shrill cries, and cruellaughter,--insulted by the filth of the public ways, which they wouldfling upon him,--or, as it might well be, distracted by the merestrangeness of his situation, though nobody should afflict him with somuch as a thoughtless word,--what wonder if Clifford were to break intosome wild extravagance which was certain to be interpreted as lunacy?Thus Judge Pyncheon's fiendish scheme would be ready accomplished tohis hands!
Then Hepzibah reflected that the town was almost completelywater-girdled. The wharves stretched out towards the centre of theharbor, and, in this inclement weather, were deserted by the ordinarythrong of merchants, laborers, and sea-faring men; each wharf asolitude, with the vessels moored stem and stern, along its mistylength. Should her brother's aimless footsteps stray thitherward, andhe but bend, one moment, over the deep, black tide, would he notbethink himself that here was the sure refuge within his reach, andthat, with a single step, or the slightest overbalance of his body, hemight be forever beyond his kinsman's gripe? Oh, the temptation! Tomake of his ponderous sorrow a security! To sink, with its leadenweight upon him, and never rise again!
The horror of this last conception was too much for Hepzibah. EvenJaffrey Pyncheon must help her now She hastened down the staircase,shrieking as she went.
"Clifford is gone!" she cried. "I cannot find my brother. Help,Jaffrey Pyncheon! Some harm will happen to him!"
She threw open the parlor-door. But, what with the shade of branchesacross the windows, and the smoke-blackened ceiling, and the darkoak-panelling of the walls, there was hardly so much daylight in theroom that Hepzibah's imperfect sight could accurately distinguish theJudge's figure. She was certain, however, that she saw him sitting inthe ancestral arm-chair, near the centre of the floor, with his facesomewhat averted, and looking towards a window. So firm and quiet isthe nervous system of such men as Judge Pyncheon, that he had perhapsstirred not more than once since her departure, but, in the hardcomposure of his temperament, retained the position into which accidenthad thrown him.
"I
tell you, Jaffrey," cried Hepzibah impatiently, as she turned fromthe parlor-door to search other rooms, "my brother is not in hischamber! You must help me seek him!"
But Judge Pyncheon was not the man to let himself be startled from aneasy-chair with haste ill-befitting either the dignity of his characteror his broad personal basis, by the alarm of an hysteric woman. Yet,considering his own interest in the matter, he might have bestirredhimself with a little more alacrity.
"Do you hear me, Jaffrey Pyncheon?" screamed Hepzibah, as she againapproached the parlor-door, after an ineffectual search elsewhere."Clifford is gone."
At this instant, on the threshold of the parlor, emerging from within,appeared Clifford himself! His face was preternaturally pale; so deadlywhite, indeed, that, through all the glimmering indistinctness of thepassageway, Hepzibah could discern his features, as if a light fell onthem alone. Their vivid and wild expression seemed likewise sufficientto illuminate them; it was an expression of scorn and mockery,coinciding with the emotions indicated by his gesture. As Cliffordstood on the threshold, partly turning back, he pointed his fingerwithin the parlor, and shook it slowly as though he would havesummoned, not Hepzibah alone, but the whole world, to gaze at someobject inconceivably ridiculous. This action, so ill-timed andextravagant,--accompanied, too, with a look that showed more like joythan any other kind of excitement,--compelled Hepzibah to dread thather stern kinsman's ominous visit had driven her poor brother toabsolute insanity. Nor could she otherwise account for the Judge'squiescent mood than by supposing him craftily on the watch, whileClifford developed these symptoms of a distracted mind.
"Be quiet, Clifford!" whispered his sister, raising her hand to impresscaution. "Oh, for Heaven's sake, be quiet!"
"Let him be quiet! What can he do better?" answered Clifford, with astill wilder gesture, pointing into the room which he had just quitted."As for us, Hepzibah, we can dance now!--we can sing, laugh, play, dowhat we will! The weight is gone, Hepzibah! It is gone off this wearyold world, and we may be as light-hearted as little Phoebe herself."
And, in accordance with his words, he began to laugh, still pointinghis finger at the object, invisible to Hepzibah, within the parlor.She was seized with a sudden intuition of some horrible thing. Shethrust herself past Clifford, and disappeared into the room; but almostimmediately returned, with a cry choking in her throat. Gazing at herbrother with an affrighted glance of inquiry, she beheld him all in atremor and a quake, from head to foot, while, amid these commotedelements of passion or alarm, still flickered his gusty mirth.
"My God! what is to become of us?" gasped Hepzibah.
"Come!" said Clifford in a tone of brief decision, most unlike what wasusual with him. "We stay here too long! Let us leave the old house toour cousin Jaffrey! He will take good care of it!"
Hepzibah now noticed that Clifford had on a cloak,--a garment of longago,--in which he had constantly muffled himself during these days ofeasterly storm. He beckoned with his hand, and intimated, so far asshe could comprehend him, his purpose that they should go together fromthe house. There are chaotic, blind, or drunken moments, in the livesof persons who lack real force of character,--moments of test, in whichcourage would most assert itself,--but where these individuals, if leftto themselves, stagger aimlessly along, or follow implicitly whateverguidance may befall them, even if it be a child's. No matter howpreposterous or insane, a purpose is a Godsend to them. Hepzibah hadreached this point. Unaccustomed to action or responsibility,--full ofhorror at what she had seen, and afraid to inquire, or almost toimagine, how it had come to pass,--affrighted at the fatality whichseemed to pursue her brother,--stupefied by the dim, thick, stiflingatmosphere of dread which filled the house as with a death-smell, andobliterated all definiteness of thought,--she yielded without aquestion, and on the instant, to the will which Clifford expressed.For herself, she was like a person in a dream, when the will alwayssleeps. Clifford, ordinarily so destitute of this faculty, had foundit in the tension of the crisis.
"Why do you delay so?" cried he sharply. "Put on your cloak and hood,or whatever it pleases you to wear! No matter what; you cannot lookbeautiful nor brilliant, my poor Hepzibah! Take your purse, with moneyin it, and come along!"
Hepzibah obeyed these instructions, as if nothing else were to be doneor thought of. She began to wonder, it is true, why she did not wakeup, and at what still more intolerable pitch of dizzy trouble herspirit would struggle out of the maze, and make her conscious thatnothing of all this had actually happened. Of course it was not real;no such black, easterly day as this had yet begun to be; Judge Pyncheonhad not talked with, her. Clifford had not laughed, pointed, beckonedher away with him; but she had merely been afflicted--as lonelysleepers often are--with a great deal of unreasonable misery, in amorning dream!
"Now--now--I shall certainly awake!" thought Hepzibah, as she went toand fro, making her little preparations. "I can bear it no longer Imust wake up now!"
But it came not, that awakening moment! It came not, even when, justbefore they left the house, Clifford stole to the parlor-door, and madea parting obeisance to the sole occupant of the room.
"What an absurd figure the old fellow cuts now!" whispered he toHepzibah. "Just when he fancied he had me completely under his thumb!Come, come; make haste! or he will start up, like Giant Despair inpursuit of Christian and Hopeful, and catch us yet!"
As they passed into the street, Clifford directed Hepzibah's attentionto something on one of the posts of the front door. It was merely theinitials of his own name, which, with somewhat of his characteristicgrace about the forms of the letters, he had cut there when a boy. Thebrother and sister departed, and left Judge Pyncheon sitting in the oldhome of his forefathers, all by himself; so heavy and lumpish that wecan liken him to nothing better than a defunct nightmare, which hadperished in the midst of its wickedness, and left its flabby corpse onthe breast of the tormented one, to be gotten rid of as it might!
The House of the Seven Gables Page 18