This could not be, however; he was not there; for while Hepzibah was looking, a strange grimalkin stole forth from the very spot, and picked his way across the garden.
Twice he paused to snuff the air and then anew directed his course to the parlour window.
Whether it was only on account of the stealthy prying manner common to the race, or that this cat seemed to have more than ordinary mischief in his thoughts, the old gentlewoman, in spite of her much perplexity, felt an impulse to drive the animal away, and accordingly flung down a windowstick.
The cat stared up at her, like a detected thief or murderer, and the next instant took to flight.
No other living creature was visible in the garden.
Chanticleer and his family had either not left their roost, disheartened by the interminable rain, or had 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 his Evil Destiny, he had crept silently down the staircase, while the judge and Hepzibah stood talking in the shop, and had softly undone the fastenings of the outer door, and made his escape into the street?
With that thought, she seemed to behold his gray, wrinkled, yet childlike aspect, in the old-fashioned garments which he wore about the house; a figure such as one sometimes imagines himself to be, with the world's eye upon him, in a troubled dream.
This figure of her wretched brother would go wandering through the city, attracting all eyes, and everybody's wonder and repugnance, like a ghost, the more to be shuddered at because visible at noontide.
To incur the ridicule of the younger crowd, that knew him not—the harsher scorn and indignation of a few old men, who might recall his once familiar features! To be the sport of boys, who, when old enough to run about the streets, have no more reverence for what is beautiful and holy, nor pity for what is sad—no more sense of sacred misery, sanctifying the human shape in which it embodies itself—than if Satan were the father of them all!
Goaded by their taunts, their loud shrill cries, and cruel laughter—insulted by the filth of the public ways, which they would fling upon him—or, as it might well be, distracted by the mere strangeness of his situation, though nobody should afflict him with so much as a thoughtless word—what wonder if Clifford were to break into some wild extravagance which was certain to be interpreted as lunacy?
Thus Judge Pyncheon's fiendish scheme would be ready accomplished to his hands!
Then Hepzibah reflected that the town was almost completely water-girdled.
The wharves stretched out towards the center of the harbor, and, in this inclement weather, were deserted by the ordinary throng of merchants, laborers, and seafaring men; each wharf a solitude, with the vessels moored stem and stern, along its misty length.
Should her brother's aimless footsteps stray thitherward, and he but bend one moment over the deep, black tide, would he not bethink himself that here was the sure refuge within his reach, and that, with a single step, or the slightest overbalance of his body, he might be for ever beyond his kinsman's grip? O, the temptation! To make of his ponderous sorrow a security! To sink, with its leaden weight upon him, and never rise again!
The horror of this last conception was too much for Hepzibah.
Even Jaffrey 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 parlour door.
But, what with the shade of branches across the windows, and the smoke-blackened ceiling, and the dark oak-panelling of the walls, there was hardly so much daylight in the room that Hepzibah's imperfect sight could accurately distinguish the judge's figure.
She was certain, however, that she saw him sitting in the ancestral armchair, near the center of the floor, with his face somewhat averted, and looking towards a window. So firm and quiet is the nervous system of such men as Judge Pyncheon, that he had perhaps stirred not more than once since her departure, but, in the hard composure of his temperament, retained the position into which accident had thrown him.
"I tell you, Jaffrey," cried Hepzibah, impatiently, as she turned from the parlour door to search other rooms, "my brother is not in the chamber!
You must help me seek him!"
But Judge Pyncheon was not the man to let himself be startled from an easy-chair with haste illbefitting either the dignity of his character or his broad personal basis, by the alarm of an hysteric woman.
Yet considering his own interest in the matter, he might have bestirred himself with a little more alacrity.
"Do you hear me, Jaffrey Pyncheon?" screamed Hepzibah, as she again approached the parlour door, after an ineffectual search elsewhere.
"Clifford is gone!"
At this instant, on the threshold of the parlour, emerging from within, appeared Clifford himself!
His face was preternaturally pale; so deadly white, indeed, that through all the glimmering indistinctness of the passageway, Hepzibah could discern his features, as if a light fell on them alone.
Their vivid and wild expression seemed likewise sufficient to illuminate them; it was an expression of scorn and mockery, coinciding with the emotions indicated by his gesture.
As Clifford stood on the threshold, partly turning back, he pointed his finger within the parlour, and shook it slowly, as though he would have summoned, not Hepzibah alone, but the whole world, to gaze at some object inconceivably ridiculous.
This action, so ill-timed and extravagant—accompanied too, with a look that showed more like joy than any other kind of excitement—compelled Hepzibah to dread that her stern kinsman's ominous visit had driven her poor brother to absolute insanity.
Nor could she otherwise account for the judge's quiescent mood than by supposing him craftily on the watch, while Clifford developed these symptoms of a distracted mind.
"Be quiet, Clifford!" whispered his sister, raising her hand, to impress caution.
"O, for Heaven's sake, be quiet!"
"Let him be quiet!
What can he do better?" answered Clifford, with a still wider gesture, pointing into the room which he had just quitted.
"As for us, Hepzibah, we can dance now!—we can sing, laugh, play, do what we will!
The weight is gone, Hepzibah! it is gone off this weary old world; and we may be as light-hearted as little Phoebe herself!"
And, in accordance with these words, he began to laugh, still pointing his finger at the object, invisible to Hepzibah, within the parlour.
She was seized with a sudden intuition of some horrible thing.
She thrust herself past Clifford, and disappeared into the room; but almost immediately returned, with a cry choking in her throat.
Gazing at her brother, with an affrighted glance of inquiry she beheld him all in a tremor and a quake, from head to foot, while amid these commoted elements of passion or alarm, still flickered his gusty mirth.
"My God! what is to become of us?" gasped Hepzibah.