Were our friend now to stalk in among them, with that wide-open stare, at once wild and stolid, his ungenial presence would be apt to change their cheer.
Neither would it be seemly in Judge Pyncheon, generally so scrupulous in his attire, to show himself at a dinner-table with that crimson stain upon his shirt-bosom.
By the by, how came it there? It is an ugly sight at any rate, and the wisest way for the judge is to button his coat closely over his breast, and, taking his horse and chaise from the livery stable, to make all speed to his own house. There, after a glass of brandy and water, and a mutton chop, a beef steak, a broiled fowl, or some such hasty little dinner and supper all in one, he had better spend the evening by the fireside. He must toast his slippers a long while, in order to get rid of the chilliness which the air of this vile old house has sent curdling through his veins.
Up, therefore, Judge Pyncheon, up! You have lost a day.
But tomorrow will be here anon. Will you rise, betimes, and make the most of it? Tomorrow! Tomorrow! Tomorrow! We that are alive may rise betimes tomorrow. As for him that has died today, his morrow will be the resurrection morn.
Meanwhile, the twilight is glooming upward out of the corners of the room.
The shadows of the tall furniture grow deeper, and at first become more definite; then, spreading wider, they lose their distinctness of outline in the dark gray tide of oblivion, as it were, that creeps slowly over the various objects, and the one human figure sitting in the midst of them.
The gloom has not entered from without; it has brooded here all day, and now, taking its own inevitable time, will possess itself of everything.
The judge's face, indeed, rigid and singularly white, refuses to melt into this universal solvent. Fainter and fainter grows the light. It is as if another double-handful of darkness had been scattered through the air. Now it is no longer gray but sable. There is still a faint appearance at the window; neither a glow, nor a gleam, nor a glimmer—any phrase of light would express something far brighter than this doubtful perception, or sense, rather, that there is a window there. Has it yet vanished? No!—yes!—not quite!—And there is still the swarthy whiteness—we shall venture to marry these ill-agreeing words—the swarthy whiteness of Judge Pyncheon's face. The features are all gone; there is only the paleness of them left. And how looks it now? There is no window! There is no face! An infinite inscrutable blackness has annihilated sight! Where is our universe? All crumbled away from us, and we, adrift in chaos, may hearken to the gusts of homeless wind, that go sighing and murmuring about in quest of what was once a world!
Is there no other sound? One other, and a fearful one.
It is the ticking of the judge's watch, which ever since Hepzibah left the room in search of Clifford, he has been holding in his hand.
Be the cause what it may, this little, quiet, never-ceasing throb of Time's pulse repeating its small strokes with such busy regularity, in Judge Pyncheon's motionless hand, has an effect of terror, which we do not find in any other accompaniment of the scene.
But listen! That puff of the breeze was louder; it had a tone unlike the dreary and sullen one which has bemoaned itself, and afflicted all mankind with miserable sympathy, for five days past. The wind has veered about! It now comes boisterously from the north-west and, taking hold of the aged framework of the seven gables, gives it a shake, like a wrestler that would try strength with his antagonist. Another and another sturdy tussle with the blast! The old house creaks again, and makes a vociferous but somewhat unintelligible bellowing in its sooty throat (the big flue, we mean, of its wide chimney) partly in complaint at the rude wind, but rather, as befits their century and a half of hostile intimacy, in tough defiance. A rumbling kind of a bluster roars behind the fire-board. A door has slammed above-stairs. A window, perhaps, has been left open, or else is driven in by an unruly gust. It is not to be conceived beforehand, what wonderful wind-instruments are these old timber mansions, and how haunted with the strangest noises, which immediately begin to sing, and sigh, and sob, and shriek—and to smite with sledge-hammers, airy, but ponderous, in some distant chamber—and to tread along the entries as with stately footsteps, and rustle up and down the staircase, as with silks miraculously stiff—whenever the gale catches the house with a window open, and gets fairly into it. Would that we were not an attendant spirit here! It is too awful! This clamour of the wind through the lonely house; the judge's quietude, as he sits invisible; and that pertinacious ticking of his watch! As regards Judge Pyncheon's invisibility, however, that matter will soon be remedied. The north-west wind has swept the sky clear. The window is distinctly seen. Through its panes, moreover, we dimly catch the sweep of the dark, clustering foliage, outside, fluttering with a constant irregularity of movement, and letting in a peep of starlight, now here, now there. Oftener than any other object, these glimpses illuminate the judge's face. But here comes more effectual light. Observe that silvery dance upon the upper branches of the pear tree, and now a little lower, and now on the whole mass of boughs, while, through their shifting intricacies, the moonbeams fall aslant into the room. They play over the judge's figure, and show that he has not stirred throughout the hours of darkness.
They follow the shadows, in changeful sport, across his unchanging features. They gleam upon his watch.
His grasp conceals the dial-plate; but we know that the faithful hands have met; for one of the city clocks tells midnight. A man of sturdy understanding, like Judge Pyncheon, cares no more for twelve o'clock at night than for the corresponding hour of noon. However just the parallel drawn, in some of the preceding pages, between his Puritan ancestor and himself, it fails in this point. The Pyncheon of two centuries ago, in common with most of his contemporaries, professed his full belief in spiritual ministrations, although reckoning them chiefly of a malignant character. The Pyncheon of tonight, who sits in yonder armchair, believes in no such nonsense. Such at least was his creed some few hours since. His hair will not bristle, therefore, at the stories which—in times when chimney-corners had benches in them, where old people sat poking into the ashes of the past, and raking out traditions like live coals—used to be told about this very room of his ancestral house.
In fact these tales are too absurd to bristle even childhood's hair.
What sense, meaning, or moral, for example, such as even ghost stories should be susceptible of, can be traced in the ridiculous legend, that, at midnight, all the dead Pyncheons are bound to assemble in this parlour?
And pray for what?
Why, to see whether the portrait of their ancestor still keeps its place upon the wall, in compliance with his testamentary directions!
Is it worth while to come out of their graves for that?
We are tempted to make a little sport with the idea. Ghost stories are hardly to be treated seriously any longer.
The family party of the defunct Pyncheons, we presume, goes off in this wise.
First comes the ancestor himself, in his black cloak, steeple-hat, and trunk-breeches, girt about the waist with a leathern belt, in which hangs his steel-hilted sword; he has a long staff in his hand such as gentlemen in advanced life used to carry, as much for the dignity of the thing as for the support to be derived from it.
He looks up at the portrait—a thing of no substance, gazing at its own painted image!
All is safe.
The picture is still there. The purpose of his brain has been kept sacred thus long after the man himself sprouted up in graveyard grass.
See! he lifts his ineffectual hand, and tries the frame.
All safe!
But is that a smile?—is it not rather, a frown of deadly import, that darkens over the shadow of his features?
The stout colonel is dissatisfied!
So decided is his look of discontent as to impart additional distinctness to his features; through which, nevertheless, the moonlight passes, and flickers on the wall beyond.
Something has strangely vexed the ancestor! With a grim shake of the head he turns away.
Here come other Pyncheons, the whole tribe, in their half-a-dozen generations, jostling and elbowing one another to reach the picture.
We behold aged men and grandames, a clergyman with the Puritanic stiffness still in his garb and mien, and a red-coated officer of the old French war; and there comes the shopkeeping Pyncheon of a century ago, with the ruffles turned back from his wrists, and there the periwigged and brocaded gentleman of the artist's legend, with the beautiful and pensive Alice, who brings no pride out of her virgin grave.
All try the picture-frame.
What do these ghostly people seek?
A mother lifts her child that his little hands may touch it!
There is evidently a mystery about the picture, that perplexes these poor Pyncheons, when they ought to be at rest.
In a corner, meanwhile, stands the figure of an elderly man, in a leather jerkin and breeches, with a carpenter's rule sticking out of his side-pocket; he points his finger at the bearded colonel and his descendants, nodding, jeering, mocking, and finally bursting into obstreperous, though inaudible laughter.
Indulging our fancy in this freak, we have partly lost the power of restraint and guidance.
We distinguish an unlooked-for figure in our visionary scene.
Among those ancestral people there is a young man, dressed in the very fashion of today; he wears a dark frockcoat, almost destitute of skirts, gray pantaloons, gaiter boots of patent leather, and has a finely wrought gold chain across his breast, and a little silver-headed whalebone stick in his hand.
Were we to meet this figure at noonday, we should greet him as young Jaffrey Pyncheon, the judge's only surviving child, who has been spending the last two years in foreign travel.
If still in life, how comes his shadow hither?
If dead, what a misfortune!
The old Pyncheon property, together with the great estate acquired by the young man's father, would devolve on whom?
On poor, foolish Clifford, gaunt Hepzibah, and rustic Phoebe!
But another and a greater marvel greets us!
Can we believe our eyes?
A stout, elderly gentleman has made his appearance; he has an aspect of eminent respectability, wears a black coat and pantaloons, of roomy width, and might be pronounced scrupulously neat in his attire, but for a broad crimson stain across his snowy neckcloth and down his shirt-bosom.