Chapter Fifteen.
The Scowl and Smile
Several days passed over the Seven Gables, heavily and drearily enough.
In fact (not to attribute the whole gloom of sky and earth to the one inauspicious circumstance of Phoebe's departure) an easterly storm had set in, and indefatigably applied itself to the task of making the black roof and walls of the old house look more cheerless than ever before.
Yet was the outside not half so cheerless as the interior.
Poor Clifford was cut off, at once, from all his scanty resources of enjoyment.
Phoebe was not there; nor did the sunshine fall upon the floor.
The garden, with its muddy walls, and the chill, dripping foliage of its summerhouse, was an image to be shuddered at.
Nothing flourished in the cold, moist, pitiless atmosphere, drifting with the brackish scud of sea breezes, except the moss along the joints of the shingle-roof, and the great bunch of weeds, that had lately been suffering from drought, in the angle between the two front gables.
As for Hepzibah, she seemed not merely possessed with the east wind, but to be, in her very person, only another phase of this gray and sullen spell of weather; the east wind itself, grim and disconsolate, in a rusty black silk gown, with a turban of cloud-wreaths on its head.
The custom of the shop fell off, because a story had got abroad that she soured her small beer and other damageable commodities, by scowling on them.
It is, perhaps, true that the public had something reasonably to complain of in her deportment; but towards Clifford she was neither ill-tempered nor unkind, nor felt less warmth of heart than always, had it been possible to make it reach him.
The inutility of her best efforts, however, palsied the poor old gentlewoman.
She could do little else than sit silently in a corner of the room, when the wet pear tree branches, sweeping across the small windows, created a noonday dusk, which Hepzibah unconsciously darkened with her woebegone aspect.
It was no fault of Hepzibah's.
Everything—even the old chairs and tables, that had known what weather was for three or four such lifetimes as her own—looked as damp and chill as if the present were their worst experience.
The picture of the Puritan colonel shivered on the wall.
The house itself shivered, from every attic of its seven gables, down to the great kitchen fireplace, which served all the better as an emblem of the mansion's heart, because, though built for warmth, it was now so comfortless and empty.
Hepzibah attempted to enliven matters by a fire in the parlour.
But the storm-demon kept watch above, and, whenever a flame was kindled, drove the smoke back again, choking the chimney's sooty throat with its own breath.
Nevertheless, during four days of this miserable storm, Clifford wrapped himself in an old cloak, and occupied his customary chair.
On the morning of the fifth, when summoned to breakfast, he responded only by a broken-hearted murmur, expressive of a determination not to leave his bed.
His sister made no attempt to change his purpose.
In fact, entirely as she loved him, Hepzibah could hardly have borne any longer the wretched duty—so impracticable by her few and rigid faculties—of seeking pastime for a still sensitive, but ruined mind, critical and fastidious, without force or volition.
It was, at least, something short of positive despair, that, today, she might sit shivering alone, and not suffer continually a new grief, and unreasonable pang of remorse, at every fitful sigh of her fellow sufferer.
But Clifford, it seemed, though he did not make his appearance below stairs, had, after all, bestirred himself in quest of amusement.
In the course of the forenoon, Hepzibah heard a note of music, which (there being no other tuneful contrivance in the House of Seven Gables) she knew must proceed from Alice Pyncheon's harpsichord.
She was aware that Clifford, in his youth, had possessed a cultivated taste for music, and a considerable degree of skill in its practice. It was difficult, however, to conceive of his retaining an accomplishment to which daily exercise is so essential, in the measure indicated by the sweet, airy, and delicate, though most melancholy strain, that now stole upon her ear. Nor was it less marvelous that the long-silent instrument should be capable of so much melody.
Hepzibah involuntarily thought of the ghostly harmonies, prelusive of death in the family, which were attributed to the legendary Alice. But it was perhaps, proof of the agency of other than spiritual fingers, that, after a few touches, the chords seemed to snap asunder with their own vibrations, and the music ceased.
But a harsher sound succeeded to the mysterious notes; nor was the easterly day fated to pass without an event sufficient in itself to poison, for Hepzibah and Clifford, the balmiest air that ever brought the humming-birds along with it.
The final echoes of Alice Pyncheon's performance (or Clifford's if his we must consider it) were driven away by no less vulgar a dissonance than the ringing of the shop bell.
A foot was heard scraping itself on the threshold, and thence somewhat ponderously stepping on the floor.
Hepzibah delayed a moment, while muffling herself in a faded shawl, which had been her defensive armor in a forty years' warfare against the east wind.
A characteristic sound, however—neither a cough nor a hem, but a kind of rumbling and reverberating spasm in somebody's capacious depth of chest—impelled her to hurry forward, with that aspect of fierce faint-heartedness so common to women in cases of perilous emergency. Few of her sex, on such occasions, have ever looked so terrible as our poor scowling Hepzibah.
But the visitor quietly closed the shop door behind him, stood up his umbrella against the counter, and turned a visage of composed benignity, to meet the alarm and anger which his appearance had excited.
Hepzibah's presentiment had not deceived her.
It was no other than Judge Pyncheon, who, after in vain trying the front door, had now effected his entrance into the shop.
"How do you do, Cousin Hepzibah?—and how does this most inclement weather affect our poor Clifford?" began the judge; and wonderful it seemed, indeed, that the easterly storm was not put to shame, or, at any rate, a little mollified, by the genial benevolence of his smile.
"I could not rest without calling to ask, once more whether I can in any manner promote his comfort, or your own."
"You can do nothing," said Hepzibah, controlling her agitation as well as she could.
"I devote myself to Clifford.
He has every comfort which his situation admits of."
"But, allow me to suggest, dear cousin," rejoined the judge, "you err—in all affection and kindness, no doubt, and with the very best intentions—but you do err, nevertheless, in keeping your brother so secluded. Why insulate him thus from all sympathy and kindness?
Clifford, alas! has had too much of solitude.
Now let him try society—the society, that is to say, of kindred and old friends.
Let me, for instance, but see Clifford; and I will answer for the good effect of the interview."
"You cannot see him," answered Hepzibah.
"Clifford has kept his bed since yesterday."
"What! How!
Is he ill?" exclaimed Judge Pyncheon, starting with what seemed to be angry alarm, for the very frown of the old Puritan darkened through the room as he spoke.