Hepzibah knew this truth, or, at least, acted on the instinct of it. So long estranged from what was lovely as Clifford had been, she rejoiced — rejoiced, though with a present sigh, and a secret purpose to shed tears in her own chamber that he had brighter objects now before his eyes than her aged and uncomely features. They never possessed a charm; and if they had, the canker of her grief for him would long since have destroyed it.
The guest leaned back in his chair. Mingled in his countenance with a dreamy delight, there was a troubled look of effort and unrest. He was seeking to make himself more fully sensible of the scene around him; or, perhaps, dreading it to be a dream, or a play of imagination, was vexing the fair moment with a struggle for some added brilliancy and more durable illusion.
“How pleasant! — How delightful!” he murmured, but not as if addressing any one. “Will it last? How balmy the atmosphere through that open window! An open window! How beautiful that play of sunshine! Those flowers, how very fragrant! That young girl’s face, how cheerful, how blooming! — a flower with the dew on it, and sunbeams in the dewdrops! Ah! this must be all a dream! A dream! A dream! But it has quite hidden the four stone walls!”
Then his face darkened, as if the shadow of a cavern or a dungeon had come over it; there was no more light in its expression than might have come through the iron grates of a prison-window — still lessening, too, as if he were sinking farther into the depths. Phoebe (being of that quickness and activity of temperament that she seldom long refrained from taking a part, and generally a good one, in what was going forward) now felt herself moved to address the stranger.
“Here is a new kind of rose, which I found this morning in the garden,” said she, choosing a small crimson one from among the flowers in the vase. “There will be but five or six on the bush this season. This is the most perfect of them all; not a speck of blight or mildew in it. And how sweet it is! — sweet like no other rose! One can never forget that scent!”
“Ah! — let me see! — let me hold it!” cried the guest, eagerly seizing the flower, which, by the spell peculiar to remembered odors, brought innumerable associations along with the fragrance that it exhaled. “Thank you! This has done me good. I remember how I used to prize this flower, — long ago, I suppose, very long ago! — or was it only yesterday? It makes me feel young again! Am I young? Either this remembrance is singularly distinct, or this consciousness strangely dim! But how kind of the fair young girl! Thank you! Thank you!”
The favorable excitement derived from this little crimson rose afforded Clifford the brightest moment which he enjoyed at the breakfast-table. It might have lasted longer, but that his eyes happened, soon afterwards, to rest on the face of the old Puritan, who, out of his dingy frame and lustreless canvas, was looking down on the scene like a ghost, and a most ill-tempered and ungenial one. The guest made an impatient gesture of the hand, and addressed Hepzibah with what might easily be recognized as the licensed irritability of a petted member of the family.
“Hepzibah! — Hepzibah!” cried he with no little force and distinctness, “why do you keep that odious picture on the wall? Yes, yes! — that is precisely your taste! I have told you, a thousand times, that it was the evil genius of the house! — my evil genius particularly! Take it down, at once!”
“Dear Clifford,” said Hepzibah sadly, “you know it cannot be!”
“Then, at all events,” continued he, still speaking with some energy, “pray cover it with a crimson curtain, broad enough to hang in folds, and with a golden border and tassels. I cannot bear it! It must not stare me in the face!”
“Yes, dear Clifford, the picture shall be covered,” said Hepzibah soothingly. “There is a crimson curtain in a trunk above stairs, — a little faded and moth-eaten, I’m afraid, — but Phoebe and I will do wonders with it.”
“This very day, remember” said he; and then added, in a low, self-communing voice, “Why should we live in this dismal house at all? Why not go to the South of France? — to Italy? — Paris, Naples, Venice, Rome? Hepzibah will say we have not the means. A droll idea that!”
He smiled to himself, and threw a glance of fine sarcastic meaning towards Hepzibah.
But the several moods of feeling, faintly as they were marked, through which he had passed, occurring in so brief an interval of time, had evidently wearied the stranger. He was probably accustomed to a sad monotony of life, not so much flowing in a stream, however sluggish, as stagnating in a pool around his feet. A slumberous veil diffused itself over his countenance, and had an effect, morally speaking, on its naturally delicate and elegant outline, like that which a brooding mist, with no sunshine in it, throws over the features of a landscape. He appeared to become grosser, — almost cloddish. If aught of interest or beauty — even ruined beauty — had heretofore been visible in this man, the beholder might now begin to doubt it, and to accuse his own imagination of deluding him with whatever grace had flickered over that visage, and whatever exquisite lustre had gleamed in those filmy eyes.
Before he had quite sunken away, however, the sharp and peevish tinkle of the shop-bell made itself audible. Striking most disagreeably on Clifford’s auditory organs and the characteristic sensibility of his nerves, it caused him to start upright out of his chair.
“Good heavens, Hepzibah! what horrible disturbance have we now in the house?” cried he, wreaking his resentful impatience — as a matter of course, and a custom of old — on the one person in the world that loved him. “I have never heard such a hateful clamor! Why do you permit it? In the name of all dissonance, what can it be?”
It was very remarkable into what prominent relief — even as if a dim picture should leap suddenly from its canvas — Clifford’s character was thrown by this apparently trifling annoyance. The secret was, that an individual of his temper can always be pricked more acutely through his sense of the beautiful and harmonious than through his heart. It is even possible — for similar cases have often happened — that if Clifford, in his foregoing life, had enjoyed the means of cultivating his taste to its utmost perfectibility, that subtile attribute might, before this period, have completely eaten out or filed away his affections. Shall we venture to pronounce, therefore, that his long and black calamity may not have had a redeeming drop of mercy at the bottom?
“Dear Clifford, I wish I could keep the sound from your ears,” said Hepzibah, patiently, but reddening with a painful suffusion of shame. “It is very disagreeable even to me. But, do you know, Clifford, I have something to tell you? This ugly noise, — pray run, Phoebe, and see who is there! — this naughty little tinkle is nothing but our shop-bell!”
“Shop-bell!” repeated Clifford, with a bewildered stare.
“Yes, our shop-bell,” said Hepzibah, a certain natural dignity, mingled with deep emotion, now asserting itself in her manner. “For you must know, dearest Clifford, that we are very poor. And there was no other resource, but either to accept assistance from a hand that I would push aside (and so would you!) were it to offer bread when we were dying for it, — no help, save from him, or else to earn our subsistence with my own hands! Alone, I might have been content to starve. But you were to be given back to me! Do you think, then, dear Clifford,” added she, with a wretched smile, “that I have brought an irretrievable disgrace on the old house, by opening a little shop in the front gable? Our great-great-grandfather did the same, when there was far less need! Are you ashamed of me?”
“Shame! Disgrace! Do you speak these words to me, Hepzibah?” said Clifford, — not angrily, however; for when a man’s spirit has been thoroughly crushed, he may be peevish at small offences, but never resentful of great ones. So he spoke with only a grieved emotion. “It was not kind to say so, Hepzibah! What shame can befall me now?”
And
