University of Virginia Library

3. III.
THE FIRST CUSTOMER.

Miss Hepzibah Pyncheon sat in the oaken elbow-chair,
with her hands over her face, giving way to that heavy
down-sinking of the heart which most persons have experienced,
when the image of hope itself seems ponderously
moulded of lead, on the eve of an enterprise at once doubtful
and momentous. She was suddenly startled by the
tinkling alarum — high, sharp, and irregular — of a little
bell. The maiden lady arose upon her feet, as pale as a
ghost at cock-crow; for she was an enslaved spirit, and this
the talisman to which she owed obedience. This little bell
— to speak in plainer terms — being fastened over the
shop-door, was so contrived as to vibrate by means of a
steel spring, and thus convey notice to the inner regions of
the house, when any customer should cross the threshold.
Its ugly and spiteful little din (heard now for the first time,
perhaps, since Hepzibah's periwigged predecessor had retired
from trade) at once set every nerve of her body in responsive
and tumultuous vibration. The crisis was upon her!
Her first customer was at the door!

Without giving herself time for a second thought, she
rushed into the shop, pale, wild, desperate in gesture and
expression, scowling portentously, and looking far better
qualified to do fierce battle with a house-breaker than to
stand smiling behind the counter, bartering small wares for
a copper recompense. Any ordinary customer, indeed,
would have turned his back and fled. And yet there was
nothing fierce in Hepzibah's poor old heart; nor had she, at

the moment, a single bitter thought against the world at
large, or one individual man or woman. She wished them
all well, but wished, too, that she herself were done with
them, and in her quiet grave.

The applicant, by this time, stood within the door-way.
Coming freshly, as he did, out of the morning light, he
appeared to have brought some of its cheery influences into
the shop along with him. It was a slender young man,
not more than one or two and twenty years old, with rather
a grave and thoughtful expression, for his years, but likewise
a springy alacrity and vigor. These qualities were not
only perceptible, physically, in his make and motions, but
made themselves felt almost immediately in his character.
A brown beard, not too silken in its texture, fringed his
chin, but as yet without completely hiding it; he wore a
short moustache, too, and his dark, high-featured countenance
looked all the better for these natural ornaments.
As for his dress, it was of the simplest kind; a summer
sack of cheap and ordinary material, thin, checkered pantaloons,
and a straw hat, by no means of the finest braid. Oak
Hall might have supplied his entire equipment. He was
chiefly marked as a gentleman — if such, indeed, he made
any claim to be — by the rather remarkable whiteness and
nicety of his clean linen.

He met the scowl of old Hepzibah without apparen
alarm, as having heretofore encountered it, and found it
harmless.

“So, my dear Miss Pyncheon,” said the daguerreotypist,
— for it was that sole other occupant of the seven-gabled
mansion, — “I am glad to see that you have not shrunk
from your good purpose. I merely look in to offer my best
wishes, and to ask if I can assist you any further in your
preparations.”

People in difficulty and distress, or in any manner at

odds with the world, can endure a vast amount of harsh
treatment, and perhaps be only the stronger for it; whereas,
they give way at once before the simplest expression of
what they perceive to be genuine sympathy. So it proved
with poor Hepzibah; for, when she saw the young man's
smile, — looking so much the brighter on a thoughtful
face, — and heard his kindly tone, she broke first into a
hysteric giggle, and then began to sob.

“Ah, Mr. Holgrave,” cried she, as soon as she could
speak, “I never can go through with it! Never, never,
never! I wish I were dead, and in the old family-tomb,
with all my forefathers! With my father, and my mother,
and my sister! Yes, and with my brother, who had far
better find me there than here! The world is too chill and
hard, — and I am too old, and too feeble, and too hopeless!”

“O, believe me, Miss Hepzibah,” said the young man,
quietly, “these feelings will not trouble you any longer,
after you are once fairly in the midst of your enterprise.
They are unavoidable at this moment, standing, as you do,
on the outer verge of your long seclusion, and peopling the
world with ugly shapes, which you will soon find to be as
unreal as the giants and ogres of a child's story-book. I
find nothing so singular in life, as that everything appears
to lose its substance, the instant one actually grapples with
it. So it will be with what you think so terrible.”

“But I am a woman!” said Hepzibah, piteously. “I
was going to say, a lady, — but I consider that as past.”

“Well; no matter if it be past!” answered the artist, a
strange gleam of half-hidden sarcasm flashing through the
kindliness of his manner. “Let it go! You are the better
without it. I speak frankly, my dear Miss Pyncheon:
for are we not friends? I look upon this as one of the fortunate
days of your life. It ends an epoch, and begins one.

Hitherto, the life-blood has been gradually chilling in your
veins, as you sat aloof, within your circle of gentility, while
the rest of the world was fighting out its battle with one
kind of necessity or another. Henceforth, you will at least
have the sense of healthy and natural effort for a purpose,
and of lending your strength — be it great or small — to
the united struggle of mankind. This is success — all the
success that anybody meets with!”

“It is natural enough, Mr. Holgrave, that you should
have ideas like these,” rejoined Hepzibah, drawing up her
gaunt figure, with slightly offended dignity. “You are a
man, a young man, and brought up, I suppose, as almost
everybody is now-a-days, with a view to seeking your fortune.
But I was born a lady, and have always lived one;
no matter in what narrowness of means, always a lady!”

“But I was not born a gentleman; neither have I lived
like one,” said Holgrave, slightly smiling; “so, my dear
madam, you will hardly expect me to sympathize with sensibilities
of this kind; though, unless I deceive myself,
I have some imperfect comprehension of them. These
names of gentleman and lady had a meaning, in the past
history of the world, and conferred privileges, desirable or
otherwise, on those entitled to bear them. In the present
— and still more in the future condition of society — they
imply, not privilege, but restriction!”

“These are new notions,” said the old gentlewoman,
shaking her head. “I shall never understand them; neither
do I wish it.”

“We will cease to speak of them, then,” replied the artist,
with a friendlier smile than his last one, “and I will leave
you to feel whether it is not better to be a true woman than
a lady. Do you really think, Miss Hepzibah, that any lady
of your family has ever done a more heroic thing, since this
house was built, than you are performing in it to-day?

Never; and if the Pyncheons had always acted so nobly, I
doubt whether an old wizard Maule's anathema, of which
you told me once, would have had much weight with Providence
against them.”

“Ah! — no, no!” said Hepzibah, not displeased at this
allusion to the sombre dignity of an inherited curse. “If
old Maule's ghost, or a descendant of his, could see me
behind the counter to-day, he would call it the fulfilment
of his worst wishes. But I thank you for your kindness,
Mr. Holgrave, and will do my utmost to be a good shop-keeper.”

“Pray do,” said Holgrave, “and let me have the pleasure
of being your first customer. I am about taking a walk to
the sea-shore, before going to my rooms, where I misuse
Heaven's blessed sunshine, by tracing out human features,
through its agency. A few of those biscuits, dipt in seawater,
will be just what I need for breakfast. What is the
price of half a dozen?”

“Let me be a lady a moment longer,” replied Hepzibah,
with a manner of antique stateliness, to which a melancholy
smile lent a kind of grace. She put the biscuits into his
hand, but rejected the compensation. “A Pyncheon must
not, at all events, under her forefathers' roof, receive money
for a morsel of bread, from her only friend!”

Holgrave took his departure, leaving her, for the moment,
with spirits not quite so much depressed. Soon, however,
they had subsided nearly to their former dead level. With
a beating heart, she listened to the footsteps of early passengers,
which now began to be frequent along the street.
Once or twice, they seemed to linger; these strangers, or
neighbors, as the case might be, were looking at the display
of toys and petty commodities in Hepzibah's shop-window.
She was doubly tortured; in part, with a sense of overwhelming
shame, that strange and unloving eyes should

have the privilege of gazing, and partly because the idea
occurred to her, with ridiculous importunity, that the window
was not arranged so skilfully, nor nearly to so much
advantage, as it might have been. It seemed as if the whole
fortune or failure of her shop might depend on the display
of a different set of articles, or substituting a fairer apple for
one which appeared to be specked. So she made the change,
and straightway fancied that everything was spoiled by it;
not recognizing that it was the nervousness of the juncture,
and her own native squeamishness, as an old maid, that
wrought all the seeming mischief.

Anon, there was an encounter, just at the door-step, betwixt
two laboring men, as their rough voices denoted them
to be. After some slight talk about their own affairs, one
of them chanced to notice the shop-window, and directed the
other's attention to it.

“See here!” cried he; “what do you think of this?
Trade seems to be looking up, in Pyncheon-street!”

“Well, well, this is a sight, to be sure!” exclaimed the
other. “In the old Pyncheon-house, and underneath the
Pyncheon-elm! Who would have thought it? Old Maid
Pyncheon is setting up a cent-shop!”

“Will she make it go, think you, Dixey?” said his friend.
“I don't call it a very good stand. There 's another shop,
just round the corner.”

“Make it go!” cried Dixey, with a most contemptuous
expression, as if the very idea were impossible to be conceived.
“Not a bit of it! Why, her face — I 've seen it,
for I dug her garden for her, one year — her face is enough
to frighten the Old Nick himself, if he had ever so great a
mind to trade with her. People can't stand it, I tell you!
She scowls dreadfully, reason or none, out of pure ugliness
of temper!”

“Well, that 's not so much matter,” remarked the other

man. “These sour-tempered folks are mostly handy at
business, and know pretty well what they are about. But,
as you say, I don't think she 'll do much. This business
of keeping cent-shops is overdone, like all other kinds of
trade, handicraft, and bodily labor. I know it, to my cost!
My wife kept a cent-shop three months, and lost five dollars
on her outlay!”

“Poor business!” responded Dixey, in a tone as if he
were shaking his head, — “poor business!”

For some reason or other, not very easy to analyze, there
had hardly been so bitter a pang, in all her previous misery
about the matter, as what thrilled Hepzibah's heart, on over-hearing
the above conversation. The testimony in regard
to her scowl was frightfully important; it seemed to hold
up her image, wholly relieved from the false light of her
self-partialities, and so hideous that she dared not look at it.
She was absurdly hurt, moreover, by the slight and idle
effect that her setting up shop — an event of such breathless
interest to herself — appeared to have upon the public,
of which these two men were the nearest representatives.
A glance; a passing word or two; a coarse laugh; and she
was doubtless forgotten, before they turned the corner!
They cared nothing for her dignity, and just as little for
her degradation. Then, also, the augury of ill-success,
uttered from the sure wisdom of experience, fell upon her
half-dead hope like a clod into a grave. The man's wife
had already tried the same experiment, and failed! How
could the born lady — the recluse of half a lifetime, utterly
unpractised in the world, at sixty years of age — how could
she ever dream of succeeding, when the hard, vulgar, keen,
busy, hackneyed New England woman, had lost five dollars
on her little outlay! Success presented itself as an impossibility,
and the hope of it as a wild hallucination.

Some malevolent spirit, doing his utmost to drive Hepzibah

mad, unrolled before her imagination a kind of panorama,
representing the great thoroughfare of a city, all
astir with customers. So many and so magnificent shops
as there were! Groceries, toy-shops, dry-goods stores, with
their immense panes of plate-glass, their gorgeous fixtures,
their vast and complete assortments of merchandise, in
which fortunes had been invested; and those noble mirrors
at the further end of each establishment, doubling all this
wealth by a brightly-burnished vista of unrealities! On
one side of the street, this splendid bazaar, with a multitude
of perfumed and glossy salesmen, smirking, smiling, bowing,
and measuring out the goods. On the other, the
dusky old House of the Seven Gables, with the antiquated
shop-window under its projecting story, and Hepzibah herself,
in a gown of rusty black silk, behind the counter,
scowling at the world as it went by! This mighty contrast
thrust itself forward, as a fair expression of the odds
against which she was to begin her struggle for a subsistence.
Success? Preposterous! She would never think
of it again! The house might just as well be buried in an
eternal fog, while all other houses had the sunshine on
them; for not a foot would ever cross the threshold, nor a
hand so much as try the door!

But, at this instant, the shop-bell, right over her head,
tinkled as if it were bewitched. The old gentlewoman's
heart seemed to be attached to the same steel spring, for it
went through a series of sharp jerks, in unison with the
sound. The door was thrust open, although no human
form was perceptible on the other side of the half-window.
Hepzibah, nevertheless, stood at a gaze, with her hands
clasped, looking very much as if she had summoned up an
evil spirit, and were afraid, yet resolved, to hazard the
encounter.

“Heaven help me!” she groaned, mentally. “Now is
my hour of need!”

The door, which moved with difficulty on its creaking
and rusty hinges, being forced quite open, a square and
sturdy little urchin became apparent, with cheeks as red
as an apple. He was clad rather shabbily (but, as it
seemed, more owing to his mother's carelessness than his
father's poverty), in a blue apron, very wide and short
trousers, shoes somewhat out at the toes, and a chip-hat,
with the frizzles of his curly hair sticking through its crevices.
A book and a small slate, under his arm, indicated
that he was on his way to school. He stared at Hepzibah
a moment, as an elder customer than himself would have
been likely enough to do, not knowing what to make of the
tragic attitude and queer scowl wherewith she regarded
him.

“Well, child,” said she, taking heart at sight of a personage
so little formidable, — “well, my child, what did you
wish for?”

“That Jim Crow, there, in the window,” answered the
urchin, holding out a cent, and pointing to the gingerbread
figure that had attracted his notice, as he loitered along to
school; “the one that has not a broken foot.”

So Hepzibah put forth her lank arm, and taking the
effigy from the shop-window, delivered it to her first
customer.

“No matter for the money,” said she, giving him a little
push towards the door; for her old gentility was contumaciously
squeamish at sight of the copper coin, and, besides,
it seemed such pitiful meanness to take the child's pocket-money
in exchange for a bit of stale gingerbread. “No
matter for the cent. You are welcome to Jim Crow.”

The child, staring, with round eyes, at this instance of
liberality, wholly unprecedented in his large experience of

cent-shops, took the man of gingerbread, and quitted the
premises. No sooner had he reached the sidewalk (little
cannibal that he was!) than Jim Crow's head was in his
mouth. As he had not been careful to shut the door,
Hepzibah was at the pains of closing it after him, with a
pettish ejaculation or two about the troublesomeness of
young people, and particularly of small boys. She had just
placed another representative of the renowned Jim Crow
at the window, when again the shop-bell tinkled clamorously,
and again the door being thrust open, with its characteristic
jerk and jar, disclosed the same sturdy little
urchin who, precisely two minutes ago, had made his exit.
The crumbs and discoloration of the cannibal feast, as yet
hardly consummated, were exceedingly visible about his
mouth.

“What is it now, child?” asked the maiden lady, rather
impatiently; “did you come back to shut the door?”

“No,” answered the urchin, pointing to the figure that
had just been put up; “I want that other Jim Crow.”

“Well, here it is for you,” said Hepzibah, reaching it
down; but, recognizing that this pertinacious customer
would not quit her on any other terms, so long as she had
a gingerbread figure in her shop, she partly drew back her
extended hand, — “Where is the cent?”

The little boy had the cent ready, but, like a true-born
Yankee, would have preferred the better bargain to the
worse. Looking somewhat chagrined, he put the coin into
Hepzibah's hand, and departed, sending the second Jim
Crow in quest of the former one. The new shop-keeper
dropped the first solid result of her commercial enterprise
into the till. It was done! The sordid stain of that copper
coin could never be washed away from her palm. The
little schoolboy, aided by the impish figure of the negro
dancer, had wrought an irreparable ruin. The structure of

ancient aristocracy had been demolished by him, even as if
his childish gripe had torn down the seven-gabled mansion!
Now let Hepzibah turn the old Pyncheon portraits with
their faces to the wall, and take the map of her eastern territory
to kindle the kitchen fire, and blow up the flame with
the empty breath of her ancestral traditions! What had
she to do with ancestry? Nothing; no more than with
posterity! No lady, now, but simply Hepzibah Pyncheon,
a forlorn old maid, and keeper of a cent-shop!

Nevertheless, even while she paraded these ideas somewhat
ostentatiously through her mind, it is altogether surprising
what a calmness had come over her. The anxiety
and misgivings which had tormented her, whether asleep or
in melancholy day-dreams, ever since her project began to
take an aspect of solidity, had now vanished quite away.
She felt the novelty of her position, indeed, but no longer
with disturbance or affright. Now and then, there came a
thrill of almost youthful enjoyment. It was the invigorating
breath of a fresh outward atmosphere, after the long torpor
and monotonous seclusion of her life. So wholesome is
effort! So miraculous the strength that we do not know
of! The healthiest glow that Hepzibah had known for
years had come now, in the dreaded crisis, when, for the
first time, she had put forth her hand to help herself. The
little circlet of the schoolboy's copper coin — dim and lustreless
though it was, with the small services which it had
been doing, here and there about the world — had proved a
talisman, fragrant with good, and deserving to be set in
gold and worn next her heart. It was as potent, and perhaps
endowed with the same kind of efficacy, as a galvanic
ring! Hepzibah, at all events, was indebted to its subtile
operation, both in body and spirit; so much the more, as it
inspired her with energy to get some breakfast, at which,

still the better to keep up her courage, she allowed herself
an extra spoonful in her infusion of black tea.

Her introductory day of shop-keeping did not run on,
however, without many and serious interruptions of this
mood of cheerful vigor. As a general rule, Providence seldom
vouchasafes to mortals any more than just that degree
of encouragement which suffices to keep them at a reasonably
full exertion of their powers. In the case of our old
gentlewoman, after the excitement of new effort had subsided,
the despondency of her whole life threatened, ever
and anon, to return. It was like the heavy mass of clouds
which we may often see obscuring the sky, and making a
gray twilight everywhere, until, towards nightfall, it yields
temporarily to a glimpse of sunshine. But, always, the envious
cloud strives to gather again across the streak of celestial
azure.

Customers came in, as the forenoon advanced, but rather
slowly; in some cases, too, it must be owned, with little
satisfaction either to themselves or Miss Hepzibah; nor, on
the whole, with an aggregate of very rich emolument to the
till. A little girl, sent by her mother to match a skein of
cotton thread, of a peculiar hue, took one that the near-sighted
old lady pronounced extremely like, but soon came
running back, with a blunt and cross message, that it would
not do, and, besides, was very rotten! Then, there was a
pale, care-wrinkled woman, not old but haggard, and already
with streaks of gray among her hair, like silver ribbons;
one of those women, naturally delicate, whom you at once
recognize as worn to death by a brute — probably a drunken
brute — of a husband, and at least nine children. She
wanted a few pounds of flour, and offered the money, which
the decayed gentlewoman silently rejected, and gave the
poor soul better measure than if she had taken it. Shortly
afterwards, a man in a blue cotton frock, much soiled, came

in and bought a pipe, filling the whole shop, meanwhile, with
the hot odor of strong drink, not only exhaled in the torrid
atmosphere of his breath, but oozing out of his entire system,
like an inflammable gas. It was impressed on Hepzibah's
mind that this was the husband of the care-wrinkled
woman. He asked for a paper of tobacco; and as she had
neglected to provide herself with the article, her brutal customer
dashed down his newly-bought pipe, and left the
shop, muttering some unintelligible words, which had the
tone and bitterness of a curse. Hereupon, Hepzibah threw
up her eyes, unintentionally scowling in the face of Providence!

No less than five persons, during the forenoon, inquired
for ginger-beer, or root-beer, or any drink of a similar brew-age,
and, obtaining nothing of the kind, went off in an
exceedingly bad humor. Three of them left the door open,
and the other two pulled it so spitefully in going out that
the little bell played the very deuce with Hepzibah's nerves.
A round, bustling, fire-ruddy housewife of the neighborhood
burst breathless into the shop, fiercely demanding yeast;
and when the poor gentlewoman, with her cold shyness of
manner, gave her hot customer to understand that she did
not keep the article, this very capable housewife took upon
herself to administer a regular rebuke.

“A cent-shop, and no yeast!” quoth she; “that will
never do! Who ever heard of such a thing? Your loaf
will never rise, no more than mine will to-day. You had
better shut up shop at once.”

“Well,” said Hepzibah, heaving a deep sigh, “perhaps I
had!”

Several times, moreover, besides the above instance, her
ladylike sensibilities were seriously infringed upon by the
familiar, if not rude tone, with which people addressed her.
They evidently considered themselves not merely her equals,

but her patrons and superiors. Now, Hepzibah had unconsciously
flattered herself with the idea that there would be
a gleam or halo, of some kind or other, about her person,
which would insure an obeisance to her sterling gentility,
or, at least, a tacit recognition of it. On the other hand,
nothing tortured her more intolerably than when this recognition
was too prominently expressed. To one or two
rather officious offers of sympathy, her responses were little
short of acrimonious; and, we regret to say, Hepzibah was
thrown into a positively unchristian state of mind, by the
suspicion that one of her customers was drawn to the shop,
not by any real need of the article which she pretended to
seek, but by a wicked wish to stare at her. The vulgar
creature was determined to see for herself what sort of a
figure a mildewed piece of aristocracy, after wasting all the
bloom, and much of the decline of her life, apart from the
world, would cut behind a counter. In this particular case,
however mechanical and innocuous it might be at other
times, Hepzibah's contortion of brow served her in good
stead.

“I never was so frightened in my life!” said the curious
customer, in describing the incident to one of her acquaintances.
“She 's a real old vixen, take my word of it!
She says little, to be sure; but if you could only see the
mischief in her eye!”

On the whole, therefore, her new experience led our
decayed gentlewoman to very disagreeable conclusions as to
the temper and manners of what she termed the lower
classes, whom heretofore she had looked down upon with a
gentle and pitying complaisance, as herself occupying a
sphere of unquestionable superiority. But, unfortunately,
she had likewise to struggle against a bitter emotion of a
directly opposite kind: a sentiment of virulence, we mean,
towards the idle aristocracy to which it had so recently

been her pride to belong. When a lady, in a delicate and
costly summer garb, with a floating veil and gracefully-swaying
gown, and, altogether, an ethereal lightness that made
you look at her beautifully-slippered feet, to see whether she
trod on the dust or floated in the air, — when such a vision
happened to pass through this retired street, leaving it tenderly
and delusively fragrant with her passage, as if a bouquet
of tea-roses had been borne along, — then, again, it is
to be feared, old Hepzibah's scowl could no longer vindicate
itself entirely on the plea of near-sightedness.

“For what end,” thought she, giving vent to that feeling
of hostility which is the only real abasement of the poor, in
presence of the rich, — “for what good end, in the wisdom
of Providence, does that woman live? Must the whole
world toil, that the palms of her hands may be kept white
and delicate?”

Then, ashamed and penitent, she hid her face.

“May God forgive me!” said she.

Doubtless, God did forgive her. But, taking the inward
and outward history of the first half-day into consideration,
Hepzibah began to fear that the shop would prove her ruin
in a moral and religious point of view, without contributing
very essentially towards even her temporal welfare.