of the Seven Gables, black and heavy-browed as it still certainly looked, must have shown a kind of cheerfulness glimmering through its dusky windows as Phoebe passed to and fro in the interior. Otherwise, it is impossible to explain how the people of the neighborhood so soon became aware of the girl’s presence. There was a great run of custom, setting steadily in, from about ten o’ clock until towards noon, — relaxing, somewhat, at dinner-time, but recommencing in the afternoon, and, finally, dying away a half an hour or so before the long day’s sunset. One of the stanchest patrons was little Ned Higgins, the devourer of Jim Crow and the elephant, who to-day signalized his omnivorous prowess by swallowing two dromedaries and a locomotive. Phoebe laughed, as she summed up her aggregate of sales upon the slate; while Hepzibah, first drawing on a pair of silk gloves, reckoned over the sordid accumulation of copper coin, not without silver intermixed, that had jingled into the till.
“We must renew our stock, Cousin Hepzibah!” cried the little saleswoman. “The gingerbread figures are all gone, and so are those Dutch wooden milkmaids, and most of our other playthings. There has been constant inquiry for cheap raisins, and a great cry for whistles, and trumpets, and jew’s-harps; and at least a dozen little boys have asked for molasses-candy. And we must contrive to get a peck of russet apples, late in the season as it is. But, dear cousin, what an enormous heap of copper! Positively a copper mountain!”
“Well done! well done! well done!” quoth Uncle Venner, who had taken occasion to shuffle in and out of the shop several times in the course of the day. “Here’s a girl that will never end her days at my farm! Bless my eyes, what a brisk little soul!”
“Yes, Phoebe is a nice girl!” said Hepzibah, with a scowl of austere approbation. “But, Uncle Venner, you have known the family a great many years. Can you tell me whether there ever was a Pyncheon whom she takes after?”
“I don’t believe there ever was,” answered the venerable man. “At any rate, it never was my luck to see her like among them, nor, for that matter, anywhere else. I’ve seen a great deal of the world, not only in people’s kitchens and back-yards but at the street-corners, and on the wharves, and in other places where my business calls me; and I’m free to say, Miss Hepzibah, that I never knew a human creature do her work so much like one of God’s angels as this child Phoebe does!”
Uncle Venner’s eulogium, if it appear rather too high-strained for the person and occasion, had, nevertheless, a sense in which it was both subtile and true. There was a spiritual quality in Phoebe’s activity. The life of the long and busy day — spent in occupations that might so easily have taken a squalid and ugly aspect — had been made pleasant, and even lovely, by the spontaneous grace with which these homely duties seemed to bloom out of her character; so that labor, while she dealt with it, had the easy and flexible charm of play. Angels do not toil, but let their good works grow out of them; and so did Phoebe.
The two relatives — the young maid and the old one — found time before nightfall, in the intervals of trade, to make rapid advances towards affection and confidence. A recluse, like Hepzibah, usually displays remarkable frankness, and at least temporary affability, on being absolutely cornered, and brought to the point of personal intercourse; like the angel whom Jacob wrestled with, she is ready to bless you when once overcome.
The old gentlewoman took a dreary and proud satisfaction in leading Phoebe from room to room of the house, and recounting the traditions with which, as we may say, the walls were lugubriously frescoed. She showed the indentations made by the lieutenant-governor’s sword-hilt in the door-panels of the apartment where old Colonel Pyncheon, a dead host, had received his affrighted visitors with an awful frown. The dusky terror of that frown, Hepzibah observed, was thought to be lingering ever since in the passageway. She bade Phoebe step into one of the tall chairs, and inspect the ancient map of the Pyncheon territory at the eastward. In a tract of land on which she laid her finger, there existed a silver mine, the locality of which was precisely pointed out in some memoranda of Colonel Pyncheon himself, but only to be made known when the family claim should be recognized by government. Thus it was for the interest of all New England that the Pyncheons should have justice done them. She told, too, how that there was undoubtedly an immense treasure of English guineas hidden somewhere about the house, or in the cellar, or possibly in the garden.
“If you should happen to find it, Phoebe,” said Hepzibah, glancing aside at her with a grim yet kindly smile, “we will tie up the shop-bell for good and all!”
“Yes, dear cousin,” answered Phoebe; “but, in the mean time, I hear somebody ringing it!”
When the customer was gone, Hepzibah talked rather vaguely, and at great length, about a certain Alice Pyncheon, who had been exceedingly beautiful and accomplished in her lifetime, a hundred years ago. The fragrance of her rich and delightful character still lingered about the place where she had lived, as a dried rosebud scents the drawer where it has withered and perished. This lovely Alice had met with some great and mysterious calamity, and had grown thin and white, and gradually faded out of the world. But, even now, she was supposed to haunt the House of the Seven Gables, and, a great many times, — especially when one of the Pyncheons was to die, — she had been heard playing sadly and beautifully on the harpsichord. One of these tunes, just as it had sounded from her spiritual touch, had been written down by an amateur of music; it was so exquisitely mournful that nobody, to this day, could bear to hear it played, unless when a great sorrow had made them know the still profounder sweetness of it.
“Was it the same harpsichord that you showed me?” inquired Phoebe.
“The very same,” said Hepzibah. “It was Alice Pyncheon’s harpsichord. When I was learning music, my father would never let me open it. So, as I could only play on my teacher’s instrument, I have forgotten all my music long ago.”
Leaving these antique themes, the old lady began to talk about the daguerreotypist, whom, as he seemed to be a well-meaning and orderly young man, and in narrow circumstances, she had permitted to take up his residence in one of the seven gables. But, on seeing more of Mr. Holgrave, she hardly knew what to make of him. He had the strangest companions imaginable; men with long beards, and dressed in linen blouses, and other such newfangled and ill-fitting garments; reformers, temperance lecturers, and all manner of cross-looking philanthropists; community-men, and comeouters, as Hepzibah believed, who acknowledged no law, and ate no solid food, but lived on the scent of other people’s cookery, and turned up their noses at the fare. As for the daguerreotypist, she had read a paragraph in a penny paper, the other day, accusing him of making a speech full of wild and disorganizing matter, at a meeting of his banditti-like associates. For her own part, she had reason to believe that he practised animal magnetism, and, if such things were in fashion nowadays, should be apt to suspect him of studying the Black Art up there in his lonesome chamber.
“But, dear cousin,” said Phoebe, “if the young man is so dangerous, why do you let him stay? If he does nothing worse, he may set the house on fire!”
“Why, sometimes,” answered Hepzibah, “I have seriously made it a question, whether I ought not to send him away. But, with all his oddities, he is a quiet kind of a person, and has such a way of taking hold of one’s mind, that, without exactly liking him (for I don’t know enough of the young man), I should be sorry to lose sight of him entirely. A woman clings to slight acquaintances when she lives so much alone as I do.”
“But if Mr. Holgrave is a lawless person!” remonstrated Phoebe, a part of whose essence it was to keep within the limits of law.
“Oh!” said Hepzibah carelessly, — for, formal as she was, still, in her life’s experience, she had gnashed her teeth against human law, — ”I suppose he has a law of his own!”
VI. Maule’s Well
