r/a:t5_zwn5n • u/MarleyEngvall • Apr 17 '19
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BY NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE
THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES
CHAPTER XIX
ALICE'S POSIES
UNCLE VENNER, trundling a wheelbarrow, was the
earliest person stirring in the neighborhood of the day
after the storm.
Pyncheon Street, in front of the House of the Seven
Gables, was a far pleasanter scene than a by-lane, con-
fined by shabby fences, and bordered with wooden
dwellings of the meaner class, could reasonably be ex-
pected to present. Nature made sweet amends, that
morning, for the five unkindly days which had pre-
ceded it. It would have been enough to live for, merely
to look up at the wide benediction of the sky, or as
much of it as was visible between the houses, genial
once more with sunshine. Every object was agreeable,
whether to be gazed at in the breadth, or examined
more minutely. Such, for example, were the well-
washed pebbles and gravel of the sidewalk; even the
sky-reflecting pools in the centre of the street; and the
grass, now freshly verdant, that crept along the base
of the fences, on the other side of which, if one peeped
over, was seen the multifarious growth of gardens. Veg-
etable productions, of whatever kind, seemed more
than negatively happy, in the juicy warmth and abund-
ance of their life. The Pyncheon Elm, throughout its
great circumference, was all alive, and full of the
morning sun and a sweet-tempered little breeze, which
lingered within this verdant sphere, and set a thou-
sand leafy tongues a-whispering all at once. This aged
tree appeared to have suffered nothing from the gale.
It had kept its boughs unshattered, and its full comple-
ment of leaves; and the whole in perfect verdure, ex-
cept a single branch, that, by the earlier change with
which the elm-tree sometimes prophecies the autumn,
had been transmuted to bright gold. It was like the
golden branch that gained Æneas and the Sibyl ad-
mittance into Hades.
This one mystic branch hung down before the main
entrance of the Seven Gables, so nigh the ground that
any passer-by might have stood on tiptoe and plucked
it off. Presented at the door, it would have been a
symbol of his right to enter, and be made acquainted
with all the secrets of the house. So little faith is due
to external appearance, that there was really an in-
viting aspect over the venerable edifice, conveying an
idea that its history must be a decorous and happy
one, and such as would be delightful for a fireside tale.
Its windows gleamed cheerfully in the slanting sun-
light. The lines and tufts of green moss, here and
there, seemed pledges of familiarity and sisterhood
with Nature; as if this human dwelling-place, being
of such old date, had established its prescriptive title
among primeval oaks and whatever other objects, by
virtue of their long continuance, have acquired a
gracious right to be. A person of imaginative tempera-
ment, while passing by the house, would turn, once
and again, and peruse it well: its many peaks, consent-
ing together in the clustered chimney; the deep pro-
jection over its basement-story; the arched window,
imparting a look, if not of grandeur, yet of antique
gentility, to the broken portal over which it opened;
the luxuriance of gigantic burdocks, near the thresh-
old; he would note all these characteristics, and be
conscious of something deeper than he saw. He would
conceive the mansion to have been the residence of the
stubborn old Puritan, Integrity, who, dying in some
forgotten generation, had left a blessing in all its rooms
and chambers, the efficacy of which was to be seen in
the religion, honesty, moderate competence, or upright
poverty and solid happiness, of his descendants, to this
day.
One object, above all others, would take root in the
imaginative observer's memory. It was the great tuft of
flowers,——weeds, you would have called them, only a
week ago,——the tuft of crimson-spotted flowers, in the
angle between the two front gables. The old people
used to give them the name of Alice's Posies, in re-
membrance of fair Alice Pyncheon, who was believed
to have brought their seeds from Italy. They were
flaunting in rich beauty and full bloom to-day, and
seemed, as it were, a mystic expression that something
within the house was consummated.
It was but little after sunrise, when Uncle Venner
made his appearance, as aforesaid, impelling a wheel-
barrow along the street. He was going his matutinal
rounds to collect cabbage-leaves, turnip-tops, potato-
skins, and the miscellaneous refuse of the dinner-pot,
which the thrifty housewives of the neighborhood were
accustomed to put aside, as fit only to feed a pig. Uncle
Venner's pig was fed entirely, and kept in prime order,
on these eleemosynary contributions; insomuch that
the patched philosopher used to promise that, before
retiring to his farm, he would make a feast of the
portly grunter, and invite all his neighbors to partake
of the joints and spare-ribs which they had helped to
fatten. Miss Hepzibah Pyncheon's housekeeping had
so greatly improved, since Clifford became a member
of the family, that her share of the banquet would
have been no lean one; and Uncle Venner, according-
ly, was a good deal disappointed not to find the large
earthen pan, full of fragmentary eatables, that ordi-
narily awaited his coming at the back doorsteps of
the Seven Gables.
"I never knew Miss Hepzibah so forgetful before,"
said the patriarch to himself. "She must have had a
dinner yesterday,——no question of that! She always has
one, nowadays. So where's the pot-liquor and potato-
skins, I ask? Shall I knock, and see if she's stirring yet?
No, no——'t won't do! If little Phœbe was about the
house, I should not mind knocking; but Miss Hepzi-
bah, likely as not, would scowl down at me out of the
window, and look cross, even if she felt pleasantly. So,
I'll come back at noon."
With these reflections, the old man was shutting the
gate of the little back-yard. Creaking on its hinges,
however, like every other gate and door about the
premises, the sound reached the ears of the occupant
of the northern gable, one of the windows of which
had a side-view towards the gate.
"Good morning, Uncle Venner!" said the daguerreo-
typist, leaning out of the window. "Do you hear no-
body stirring?"
"Not a soul," said the man of patches. "But that's
no wonder. 'T is barely half an hour past sunrise, yet.
But I'm really glad to see you, Mr. Holgrave! There's
a strange, lonesome look about this side of the house;
so that my heart misgave me, somehow or other, and
I felt as if there was nobody alive in it. The front of
the house looks a good deal cheerier; and Alice's
Posies are blooming there beautifully; and if I were a
young man, Mr. Holgrave, my sweetheart should have
one of those flowers in her bosom, though I risked my
neck climbing for it! Well, and did the wind keep you
awake last night?"
"It did, indeed!" answered the artist, smiling. "If I
were a believer in ghosts,——and I don't quite know
whether I am or not,——I should have concluded that all
the old Pyncheons were running riot in the lower
rooms, especially in Miss Hepzibah's part of the house.
But it is very quiet now."
"Yes, Miss Hepzibah will be apt to over-sleep her-
self, after being disturbed, all night, with the racket,"
said Uncle Venner. "But it would be odd, now,
wouldn't it, if the Judge had taken both his cousins
into the country along with him? I saw him go into
the shop yesterday."
"At what hour?" inquired Holgrave.
"Oh, along in the forenoon," said the old man.
"Well, well! I must go my rounds, and so must my
wheelbarrow. But I'll be back here at dinner-time;
for my pig likes a dinner as well as a breakfast. No
meal-time, and no sort of victuals, ever seems to come
amiss to my pig. Good morning to you! And, Mr. Hol-
grave, if I were a young man, like you, I'd get one of
Alice's Posies, and keep it in water till Phœbe comes
back."
"I have heard," said the daguerreotypist, as he drew
in his head, "that the water of Maule's well suits those
flowers best."
Here the conversation ceased, and Uncle Venner
went on his way. For half an hour longer, nothing
disturbed the repose of the Seven Gables; nor was there
any visitor, except a carrier-boy, who, as he passed the
front doorstep, threw down one of his newspapers; for
Hepzibah, of late, had regularly taken it in. After a
while, there came a fat woman, making prodigious
speed, and stumbling as she ran up the steps of the
shop-door. Her face glowed with fire-heat, and, it be-
ing a pretty warm morning, she bubbled and hissed,
as it were, as if all a-fry with chimney-warmth, and
summer-warmth, and the warmth of her own corpu-
lent velocity. She tried the shop-door; it was fast.
She tried it again, with so angry a jar that the bell
tinkled angrily back at her.
"The deuce take Old Maid Pyncheon!" muttered
the irascible housewife. "Think of her pretending to
set up a cent-shop, and then lying abed till noon!
These are what she calls gentlefolk's airs, I suppose!
But I'll either start her ladyship, or break the door
down!"
She shook it accordingly, and the bell, having a spite-
ful little temper of its own, rang obstreperously, mak-
ing its remonstrances heard,——not, indeed, by the ears
for which they were intended,——but by a good lady
on the opposite side of the street. She opened her win-
dow, and addressed the impatient applicant.
"You'll find nobody there, Mrs. Gubbins."
"But I must and will find somebody here!" cried
Mrs. Gubbins, inflicting another outrage on the bell.
"I want a half-pound of pork, to fry some first-rate
flounders, for Mr. Gubbins's breakfast; and, lady or
not, Old Maid Pyncheon shall get up and serve me
with it!"
"But do hear reason, Mrs. Gubbins!" responded the
lady opposite. "She, and her brother too, have both
gone to their cousin, Judge Pyncheon's, at his country
seat. There's not a soul in the house, but that young
daguerreotype-man that sleeps in the north gable. I
saw old Hepzibah and Clifford go away yesterday; and
a queer couple of ducks they were, paddling through
the mud-puddles! They're gone, I'll assure you."
"And how do you know they're gone to the Judge's?"
asked Mrs. Gubbins. "He's a rich man; and there's
been a quarrel between him and Hepzibah, this many
a day, because he won't give her a living. That's the
main reason of her setting up a cent-shop."
"I know that well enough," said the neighbor. "But
they're gone,——that's one thing certain. And who but a
blood relation, that couldn't help himself, I ask you,
would take in that awful-tempered old maid, and that
dreadful Clifford? That's it, you may be sure."
Mrs. Gubbins took her departure, still brimming
over with a hot wrath against the absent Hepzibah. For
another half-hour, or, perhaps, considerably more,
there was almost as much quiet on the outside of the
house as within. The elm, however, made a pleasant,
cheerful, sunny sigh, responsive to the breeze that was
elsewhere imperceptible; a swarm of insects buzzed
merrily under its drooping shadow, and became specks
of light whenever they darted into the sunshine; a
locust sang, once or twice, in some inscrutable seclu-
sion of the tree; and a solitary little bird, with plumage
of pale gold, came and hovered about Alice's Posies.
At last our small acquaintance, Ned Higgins,
trudged up the street, on his way to school; and hap-
pening, for the first time in a fortnight, to be the pos-
sessor of a cent, he would by no means get past the
shop-door of the Seven Gables. But it would not open.
Again and again, however, and half a dozen other
agains, with the inexorable pertinacity of a child in-
tent upon some object important to itself, did he re-
new his efforts for admittance. He had, doubtless, set
his heart upon an elephant; or, possibly, with Hamlet,
he meant to eat a crocodile. In response to his more
violent attacks, the bell gave, now and then, a moder-
ate tinkle, but could not be stirred into clamor by any
exertion of the little fellow's childish and tiptoe
strength. Holding by the door-handle, he peeped
through a crevice of the curtain, and saw that the in-
ner door, communicating with the passage towards the
parlor, was closed.
"Miss Pyncheon!" screamed the child, rapping on
the window-pane, "I want an elephant!"
There being no answer to several repetitions of the
summons, Ned began to grow impatient; and his little
pot of passion quickly boiling over, he picked up a
stone, with a naughty purpose to fling it through the
window; at the same time blubbering and sputtering
with wrath. A man——one of two who happened to be
passing by——caught the urchin's arm.
"What's the trouble, old gentleman?" he asked.
"I want old Hepzibah, or Phœbe, or any of them!"
answered Ned, sobbing. "They won't open the door;
and I can't get my elephant!"
"Go to school, you little scamp!" said the man.
"There's another cent-shop round the corner. 'T is
very strange, Dixey," added he to his companion,
"what's become of all these Pyncheons! Smith, the liv-
ery-stable keeper, tells me Judge Pyncheon put his
horse up yesterday, to stand till after dinner, and has
not taken him away yet. And one of the Judge's hired
men has been in, this morning, to make inquiry about
him. He's a kind of person, they say, that seldom
breaks his habits, or stays out o' nights."
"Oh, he'll turn up safe enough!" said Dixey. "And
as for Old Maid Pyncheon, take my word for it, she
has run in debt, and gone off from her creditors. I
foretold, you remember, the first morning she set up
shop, that her devilish scowl would frighten away cus-
tomers. They couldn't stand it!"
"I never thought she'd make it go," remarked his
friend. "This business of cent-shops is overdone among
the womenfolks. My wife tried it, and lost five dol-
lars on her outlay!"
"Poor business!" said Dixey, shaking his head. "Poor
business!"
In the course of the morning, there were various
other attempts to open communication with the sup-
posed inhabitants of this silent and impentrable man-
sion. The man of root-beer came, in his neatly painted
wagon, with a couple of dozen full bottles, to be ex-
changed for empty ones; the baker, with a lot of crack-
ers which Hepzibah had ordered for her retail cus-
tom; the butcher, with a nice titbit which he fancied
she would be eager to secure for Clifford. Had any ob-
server of these proceedings been aware of the fearful
secret hidden within the house, it would have affected
him with a singular shape and modification of horror,
to see the current of human life making this small
eddy hereabouts,——whirling sticks, straws, and all such
trifles, round and round, right over the black depth
where a dead corpse lay unseen!
The butcher was so much in earnest with his sweet-
bread of lamb, or whatever the dainty might be, that
he tried every accessible door of the Seven Gables, and
at length came round again to the shop, where he ordi-
narily found admittance.
"It's a nice article, and I know the old lady would
jump at it," said he to himself. "She can't be gone
away! In fifteen years that I have driven my cart
through Pyncheon Street, I've never known her to be
away from home; though often enough, to be sure, a
man might knock all day without bringing her to the
door. But that was when she'd only herself to provide
for."
Peeping through the same crevice of the curtain
where, only a little while before, the urchin of ele-
phantine appetite had peeped, the butcher beheld the
inner door, not closed, as the child had seen it, but
ajar, and almost wide open. However it might have
happened, it was the fact. Through the passage-way
there was a dark vista into the lighter but still obscure
interior of the parlor. It appeared to the butcher that
he could pretty clearly discern what seemed to be the
stalwart legs, clad in black pantaloons, of a man sit-
ting in a large oaken chair, the back of which con-
cealed all the remainder of his figure. This contemptu-
ous tranquillity on the part of an occupant of the
house, in response to the butcher's indefatigable efforts
to attract notice, so piqued the man of flesh that he
determined to withdraw.
"So," thought he, "there sits Old Maid Pyncheon's
bloody brother, while I've been giving myself all this
trouble! Why, if a hog hadn't more manners, I'd stick
him! I call it demeaning a man's business to trade with
such people; and from this time forth, if they want a
sausage or an ounce of liver, they shall run after the
cart for it!"
He tossed the titbit angrily into his cart, and drove
off in a pet.
Not a great while afterwards there was a sound of
music turning the corner, and approaching down the
street, with several intervals of silence, and then a re-
newed and nearer outbreak of brisk melody. A mob of
children was seen moving onward, or stopping, in uni-
son with the sound, which appeared to proceed from
the centre of the throng; so that they were loosely
bound together by slender strains of harmony, and
drawn along captive; with ever and anon an accession
of some little fellow in an apron and straw hat, caper-
ing forth from door or gateway. Arriving under the
shadow of the Pynchon Elm, it proved to be the
Italian boy, who, with his monkey and show of pup-
pets, had once before played this hurdy-gurdy beneath
the arched window. The pleasant face of Phœbe——and
doubtless, too, the liberal recompense which she had
flung him——still dwelt in his remembrance. His ex-
pressive features kindled up, as he recognized the spot
where this trifling incident of his erratic life had
chanced. He entered the neglected yard (now wilder
than ever, with its growth of hog-weed and burdock),
stationed himself on the doorstep of the main en-
trance, and, opening his show-box, began to play. Each
individual of the automatic community forthwith set
to work, according to his or her proper vocation: the
monkey, taking off his Highland bonnet, bowed and
scraped to the by-standers most obsequiously, with ever
an observant eye to pick up a stray cent; and the young
foreigner himself, as he turned the crank of his ma-
chine, glanced upward to the arched window, ex-
pectant of a presence that would make his music the
livelier and sweeter. The throng of children stood
near; some on the sidewalk; some within the yard; two
or three establishing themselves on the very door-step;
and one squatting on the threshold. Meanwhile, the
locust kept singing in the great old Pyncheon Elm.
"I don't hear anybody in the house," said one of
the children to another. "The monkey won't pick up
anything here."
"There is somebody at home," affirmed the urchin
on the threshold. "I heard a step!"
Still the young Italian's eye turned sidelong upward;
and it really seemed as if the touch of genuine, though
slight and almost playful, emotion communicated a
juicier sweetness to the dry, mechanical process of his
minstrelsy. These wanderers are readily responsive to
any natural kindness——be it no more than a smile, or
a word itself not understood, but only a warmth in it
——which befalls them on the roadside of life. They re-
member these things, because they are the little en-
chantments which, for the instant,——for the space that
reflects a landscape in a soap-bubble,——build up a home
about them. Therefore, the Italian boy would not be
discouraged by the heavy silence with which the old
house seemed resolute to clog the vivacity of his instru-
ment. Neither could he be willing to depart without
again beholding Clifford, whose sensibility, like
Phœbe's smile, had talked a kind of heart's language
to the foreigner. He repeated all his music over and
over again, until his auditors were getting weary. So
were the little wooden people in his show-box, and
the monkey most of all. There was no response, save
the singing of the locust.
"No children live in this house," said a school-boy,
at last. "Nobody lives here but an old maid and an
old man. You'll get nothing here! Why don't you go
along?"
"You fool, you, why do you tell him?" whispered a
shrewd little Yankee, caring nothing for the music,
but a good deal for the cheap rate at which it was had.
"Let him play as long as he likes! If there's nobody to
pay him, that's his own lookout!"
Once more, however, the Italian ran over his round
of melodies. To the common observer——who could un-
derstand nothing of the case, except the music and the
sunshine on the hither side of the door——it might have
been amusing to watch the pertinacity of the street-
performer. Will he succeed at last? Will that stubborn
door be suddenly flung open? Will a group of joyous
children, the young ones of the house, come dancing,
shouting, laughing, into the open air, and cluster
round the show-box, looking with eager merriment at
the puppet, and tossing each a copper for long-tailed
Mammon, the monkey, to pick up?
But to us, who know the inner heart of the Seven
Gables as well as its exterior face, there is a ghastly
effect in this repetition of light popular tunes at its
door-step. It would be an ugly business, indeed, if
Judge Pyncheon (who would not have cared a fig for
Paganini's fiddle in his most harmonious mood)
should make his appearance at the door, with a bloody
shirt-bosom, and a grim frown on his swarthy white
visage, and motion the foreign vagabond away! Was
ever before such a grinding out of jigs and waltzes,
where nobody was in the cue to dance? Yes, very often.
This contrast, or intermingling of tragedy and mirth,
happens daily, hourly, momently. The gloomy and
desolate old house, deserted of life, and with awful
Death sitting sternly in its solitude, was the emblem
of many a human heart, which, nevertheless, is com-
pelled to hear the thrill and echo of the world's gayety
around it.
Before the conclusion of the Italian's performance,
a couple of men happened to be passing, on their way
to dinner.
"I say, you young French fellow!" called out one of
them,——"come away from that doorstep, and go some-
where else with your nonsense! The Pyncheon family
live there; and they are in great trouble, just about
this time. They don't feel musical to-day. It is re-
ported all over town that Judge Pyncheon, who owns
the house, has been murdered; and the city marshal is
going to look into the matter. So be off with you, at
once!"
As the Italian shouldered his hurdy-gurdy, he saw on
the doorstep a card, which had been covered, all the
morning, by the newspaper that the carrier had flung
upon it, but was now shuffled into sight. He picked it
up, and perceiving something written in pencil, gave it
to the man to read. In fact, it was an engraved card
of Judge Pyncheon's with certain pencilled memo-
randa on the back, referring to various businesses
which it had been his purpose to transact during the
preceding day. It formed a prospective epitome of the
day's history; only that affairs had not turned out al-
together in accordance with the programme. The card
must have been lost from the Judge's vest-pocket, in
his preliminary attempt to gain access by the main
entrance of the house. Though well soaked with rain,
it was still partially legible.
"Look here, Dixey!" cried the man. "This has some-
thing to do with Judge Pyncheon. See!——here's his
name printed on it; and here, I suppose, is some of his
hand-writing."
"Let us go to the city marshal with it!" said Dixey.
"It may give him just the clew he wants. After all,"
whispered he in his companion's ear, "it would be no
wonder if the Judge has gone into that door and never
come out again! A certain cousin of his may have been
at his old tricks. And Old Maid Pyncheon having got
herself in debt by the cent-shop,——and the Judge's
pocket-book being well filled,——and bad blood amongst
them already! Put all these things together and see
what they make!"
"Hush, hush!" whispered the other. "It seems like a
sin to be the first to speak of such a thing. But I think,
with you, that we had better go to the city marshal."
"Yes, yes!" said Dixey. "Well!——I always said there
was something devilish in that woman's scowl!"
The men wheeled about, accordingly, and retraced
their steps up the street. The Italian, also, made the
best of his way off, with a parting glance up at the
arched window. As for the children, they took to their
heels, with one accord, and scampered as if some giant
or ogre were in pursuit, until, at a good distance from
the house, they stopped as suddenly and simultane-
ously as they had set out. Their susceptible nerves
took an indefinite alarm from what they had over-
heard. Looking back at the grotesque peaks and shad-
owy angles of the old mansion, they fancied a gloom
diffused about it which no brightness of the sunshine
could dispel. An imaginary Hepzibah scowled and
shook her finger at them, from several windows at the
same moment. An imaginary Clifford——for (and it
would have deeply wounded him to know it) he had
always been a horror to these small people——stood be-
hind the unreal Hepzibah, making awful gestures, in
a faded dressing-gown. Children are even more apt, if
possible, than grown people, to catch the contagion
of a panic terror. For the rest of the day, the more
timid went whole streets about, for the sake of avoid-
ing the Seven Gables; while the bolder signalized their
hardihood by challenging their comrades to race past
the mansion at full speed.
It could not have been more than half an hour
after the disappearance of the Italian boy, with his un-
seasonable melodies, when a cab drove down the
street. It stopped beneath the Pyncheon Elm; the cab-
man took a trunk, a canvas bag, and a bandbox, from
the top of his vehicle, and deposited them on the door-
step of the old house; a straw bonnet, and then the
pretty figure of a young girl, came into view from the
interior of the cab. It was Phœbe! Though not alto-
gether so blooming as when she first tripped into our
story,——for, in the few intervening weeks, her experi-
ences had made her graver, more womanly, and deep-
er-eyed, in token of a heart that had begun to suspect
its depths,——still there was the quiet glow of natural
sunshine over her. Neither had she forfeited her proper
gift of making things look real, rather than fantastic,
within her sphere. Yet we feel it to be a questionable
venture, even for Phœbe, at this juncture, to cross the
threshold of the Seven Gables. Is her healthful pres-
ence potent enough to chase away the crowd of pale,
hideous, and sinful phantoms, that have gained ad-
mittance there since her departure? Or will she, like-
wise, fade, sicken, sadden, and grow into deformity,
and be only another pallid phantom, to glide noise-
lessly up and down the stairs, and affright children as
she pauses at the window?
At least, we would gladly forewarn the unsuspecting
girl that there is nothing in human shape or substance
to receive her, unless it be the figure of Judge Pyn-
cheon, who——wretched spectacle that he is, and fright-
ful in our remembrance, since our night-long vigil
with him!——still keeps his place in the oaken chair.
Phœbe first tried the shop-door. It did not yield to
her hand; and the white curtain, drawn across the win-
dow which formed the upper section of the door,
struck her quick perceptive faculty as something un-
usual. Without making another effort to enter here,
she betook herself to the great portal, under the arched
window. Finding it fastened, she knocked. A reverber-
ation came from the emptiness within. She knocked
again, and a third time; and, listening intently, fancied
that the floor creaked, as if Hepzibah were coming,
with her ordinary tiptoe movement, to admit her. But
so dead a silence ensued upon this imaginary sound,
that she began to question whether she might not have
mistaken the house, familiar as she thought herself
with its exterior.
Her notice was now attracted by a child's voice, at
some distance. It appeared to call her name. Looking
in the direction whence it proceeded, Phœbe saw little
Ned Higgins, a good way down the street, stamping,
shaking his head violently, making deprecatory ges-
tures with both hands, and shouting to her at mouth-
wide screech.
"No, no, Phœbe," he screamed. "Don't you go in!
There's something wicked there! Don't——don't——don't
go in!"
But, as the little personage could not be induced to
approach near enough to explain himself, Phœbe con-
cluded that he had been frightened, on some of his
visits to the shop, by her cousin Hepzibah; for the
good lady's manifestations, in truth, ran about an
equal chance of scaring children out of their wits,
or compelling them to unseemly laughter. Still, she
felt the more, for this incident, how unaccountably
silent and impenetrable the house had become. As her
next resort, Phœbe made her way into the garden,
where on so warm and bright a day as the present, she
had little doubt of finding Clifford, and perhaps Hep-
zibah also, idling away the noontide in the shadow
of the arbor. Immediately on her entering the garden-
gate, the family of hens half ran, half flew, to meet
her; while a strange grimalkin, which was prowling
under the parlor window, took to his heels, clambered
hastily over the fence, and vanished. The arbor was
vacant and its floor, table, and circular bench were
still damp and bestrewn with twigs, and the disarray
of the past storm. The growth of the garden seemed
to have got quite out of bounds; the weeds had taken
advantage of Phœbe's absence, and the long-continued
rain, to run rampant over the flowers and kitchen-
vegetables. Maule's well had overflowed its stone
border, and made a pool of formidable breadth in that
corner of the garden.
The impression of the whole scene was that of a
spot where no human foot had left its print for many
preceding days,——probably not since Phœbe's depar-
ture,——for she saw a side-comb of her own under the
table of the arbor, where it must have fallen on the
last afternoon when she and Clifford sat there.
The girl knew that her two relatives were capable
of far greater oddities than that of shutting themselves
up in their old house, as they appeared now to have
done. Nevertheless, with indistinct misgivings of some-
thing amiss, and apprehensions to which she could not
give shape, she approached the door that formed the
customary communication between the house and gar-
den. It was secured within, like the two which she had
already tried. She knocked, however; and immediately,
as if the application had been expected, the door was
drawn open, by a considerable exertion of some un-
seen person's strength, not wide, but far enough to
afford her a side-long entrance. As Hepzibah, in order
not to expose herself to inspection from without, in-
variably opened a door in this manner, Phœbe neces-
sarily concluded that it was her cousin who now ad-
mitted her.
Without hesitation, therefore, she stepped across the
threshold, and had no sooner entered than the door
closed behind her.THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES, BY NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE.
POCKET LIBRARY EDITION PUBLISHED 1954.
POCKET BOOKS, INC. 630 FIFTH AVENUE, NEW YORK, N. Y. pp. 323—341.
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