University of Virginia Library

8. VIII.
THE PYNCHEON OF TO-DAY.

Phœbe, on entering the shop, beheld there the already
familiar face of the little devourer — if we can reckon his
mighty deeds aright — of Jim Crow, the elephant, the
camel, the dromedaries, and the locomotive. Having expended
his private fortune, on the two preceding days, in
the purchase of the above unheard-of luxuries, the young
gentleman's present errand was on the part of his mother,
in quest of three eggs and half a pound of raisins. These
articles Phœbe accordingly supplied, and, as a mark of
gratitude for his previous patronage, and a slight super-added
morsel after breakfast, put likewise into his hand a
whale! The great fish, reversing his experience with the
prophet of Nineveh, immediately began his progress down
the same red pathway of fate whither so varied a caravan
had preceded him. This remarkable urchin, in truth, was
the very emblem of old Father Time, both in respect of his
all-devouring appetite for men and things, and because he,
as well as Time, after engulfing thus much of creation,
looked almost as youthful as if he had been just that moment
made.

After partly closing the door, the child turned back, and
mumbled something to Phœbe, which, as the whale was but
half disposed of, she could not perfectly understand.

“What did you say, my little fellow?” asked she.

“Mother wants to know,” repeated Ned Higgins, more
distinctly, “how Old Maid Pyncheon's brother does?
Folks say he has got home.”

“My cousin Hepzibah's brother!” exclaimed Phœbe,
surprised at this sudden explanation of the relationship
between Hepzibah and her guest. “Her brother! And
where can he have been?”

The little boy only put his thumb to his broad snub-nose,
with that look of shrewdness which a child, spending much
of his time in the street, so soon learns to throw over his
features, however unintelligent in themselves. Then, as
Phœbe continued to gaze at him, without answering his
mother's message, he took his departure.

As the child went down the steps, a gentleman ascended
them, and made his entrance into the shop. It was the
portly, and, had it possessed the advantage of a little more
height, would have been the stately figure of a man considerably
in the decline of life, dressed in a black suit of
some thin stuff, resembling broadcloth as closely as possible.
A gold-headed cane, of rare oriental wood, added materially
to the high respectability of his aspect, as did also a white
neckcloth of the utmost snowy purity, and the conscientious
polish of his boots. His dark, square countenance, with its
almost shaggy depth of eyebrows, was naturally impressive,
and would, perhaps, have been rather stern, had not
the gentleman considerately taken upon himself to mitigate
the harsh effect by a look of exceeding good-humor and
benevolence. Owing, however, to a somewhat massive
accumulation of animal substance about the lower region of
his face, the look was, perhaps, unctuous, rather than
spiritual, and had, so to speak, a kind of fleshly effulgence,
not altogether so satisfactory as he doubtless intended it to
be. A susceptible observer, at any rate, might have
regarded it as affording very little evidence of the genuine
benignity of soul whereof it purported to be the outward
reflection. And if the observer chanced to be ill-natured,
as well as acute and susceptible, he would probably suspect

that the smile on the gentleman's face was a good deal akin
to the shine on his boots, and that each must have cost him
and his boot-black, respectively, a good deal of hard labor to
bring out and preserve them.

As the stranger entered the little shop, where the projection
of the second story and the thick foliage of the elm-tree,
as well as the commodities at the window, created a
sort of gray medium, his smile grew as intense as if he had
set his heart on counteracting the whole gloom of the atmosphere
(besides any moral gloom pertaining to Hepzibah and
her inmates) by the unassisted light of his countenance.
On perceiving a young rose-bud of a girl, instead of the
gaunt presence of the old maid, a look of surprise was
manifest. He at first knit his brows; then smiled with
more unctuous benignity than ever.

“Ah, I see how it is!” said he, in a deep voice, — a
voice which, had it come from the throat of an uncultivated
man, would have been gruff, but, by dint of careful training,
was now sufficiently agreeable, — “I was not aware
that Miss Hepzibah Pyncheon had commenced business
under such favorable auspices. You are her assistant, I
suppose?”

“I certainly am,” answered Phœbe, and added, with a
little air of ladylike assumption (for, civil as the gentleman
was, he evidently took her to be a young person serving for
wages), “I am a cousin of Miss Hepzibah, on a visit to
her.”

“Her cousin? — and from the country? Pray pardon
me, then,” said the gentleman, bowing and smiling, as
Phœbe never had been bowed to nor smiled on before; “in
that case, we must be better acquainted; for, unless I am
sadly mistaken, you are my own little kinswoman likewise!
Let me see, — Mary? — Dolly? — Phœbe? — yes, Phœbe
is the name! Is it possible that you are Phœbe Pyncheon,

only child of my dear cousin and classmate, Arthur? Ah,
I see your father now, about your mouth! Yes, yes! we
must be better acquainted! I am your kinsman, my dear.
Surely you must have heard of Judge Pyncheon?”

As Phœbe courtesied in reply, the judge bent forward,
with the pardonable and even praiseworthy purpose — considering
the nearness of blood, and the difference of age —
of bestowing on his young relative a kiss of acknowledged
kindred and natural affection. Unfortunately (without
design, or only with such instinctive design as gives no
account of itself to the intellect), Phœbe, just at the critical
moment, drew back; so that her highly respectable kinsman,
with his body bent over the counter, and his lips protruded,
was betrayed into the rather absurd predicament of
kissing the empty air. It was a modern parallel to the case
of Ixion embracing a cloud, and was so much the more
ridiculous, as the judge prided himself on eschewing all
airy matter, and never mistaking a shadow for a substance.
The truth was, — and it is Phœbe's only excuse, — that,
although Judge Pyncheon's glowing benignity might not be
absolutely unpleasant to the feminine beholder, with the
width of a street, or even an ordinary-sized room, interposed
between, yet it became quite too intense, when this dark,
full-fed physiognomy (so roughly bearded, too, that no razor
could ever make it smooth) sought to bring itself into actual
contact with the object of its regards. The man, the sex,
somehow or other, was entirely too prominent in the judge's
demonstrations of that sort. Phœbe's eyes sank, and, without
knowing why, she felt herself blushing deeply under
his look. Yet she had been kissed before, and without any
particular squeamishness, by perhaps half a dozen different
cousins, younger, as well as older, than this dark-browed,
grisly-bearded, white-neckclothed, and unctuously-benevolent
judge! Then, why not by him?

On raising her eyes, Phœbe was startled by the change
in Judge Pyncheon's face. It was quite as striking, allowing
for the difference of scale, as that betwixt a landscape
under a broad sunshine and just before a thunder-storm;
not that it had the passionate intensity of the latter aspect,
but was cold, hard, immitigable, like a day-long brooding
cloud.

“Dear me! what is to be done now?” thought the country-girl
to herself. “He looks as if there were nothing softer
in him than a rock, nor milder than the east wind! I
meant no harm! Since he is really my cousin, I would
have let him kiss me, if I could!”

Then, all at once, it struck Phœbe that this very Judge
Pyncheon was the original of the miniature which the
daguerreotypist had shown her in the garden, and that the
hard, stern, relentless look, now on his face, was the same
that the sun had so inflexibly persisted in bringing out.
Was it, therefore, no momentary mood, but, however skilfully
concealed, the settled temper of his life? And not
merely so, but was it hereditary in him, and transmitted
down, as a precious heirloom, from that bearded ancestor, in
whose picture both the expression, and, to a singular degree,
the features, of the modern judge were shown as by a kind
of prophecy. A deeper philosopher than Phœbe might
have found something very terrible in this idea. It implied
that the weaknesses and defects, the bad passions, the mean
tendencies, and the moral diseases, which lead to crime, are
handed down from one generation to another, by a far surer
process of transmission than human law has been able to
establish, in respect to the riches and honors which it seeks
to entail upon posterity.

But, as it happened, scarcely had Phœbe's eyes rested
again on the judge's countenance, than all its ugly sternness
vanished; and she found herself quite overpowered by

the sultry, dog-day heat, as it were, of benevolence, which
this excellent man diffused out of his great heart into the
surrounding atmosphere; — very much like a serpent,
which, as a preliminary to fascination, is said to fill the air
with his peculiar odor.

“I like that, Cousin Phœbe!” cried he, with an emphatic
nod of approbation. “I like it much, my little cousin!
You are a good child, and know how to take care of yourself.
A young girl — especially if she be a very pretty
one — can never be too chary of her lips.”

“Indeed, sir,” said Phœbe, trying to laugh the matter off,
“I did not mean to be unkind.”

Nevertheless, whether or no it were entirely owing to the
inauspicious commencement of their acquaintance, she still
acted under a certain reserve, which was by no means customary
to her frank and genial nature. The fantasy would
not quit her, that the original Puritan, of whom she had
heard so many sombre traditions, — the progenitor of the
whole race of New England Pyncheons, the founder of the
House of the Seven Gables, and who had died so strangely
in it, — had now stept into the shop. In these days of offhand
equipment, the matter was easily enough arranged.
On his arrival from the other world, he had merely found
it necessary to spend a quarter of an hour at a barber's,
who had trimmed down the Puritan's full beard into a pair
of grizzled whiskers; then, patronizing a ready-made clothing
establishment, he had exchanged his velvet doublet and
sable cloak, with the richly-worked band under his chin, for
a white collar and cravat, coat, vest, and pantaloons; and
lastly, putting aside his steel-hilted broadsword to take up a
gold-headed cane, the Colonel Pyncheon, of two centuries
ago, steps forward as the judge, of the passing moment!

Of course, Phœbe was far too sensible a girl to entertain
this idea in any other way than as matter for a smile. Possibly,

also, could the two personages have stood together
before her eye, many points of difference would have been
perceptible, and perhaps only a general resemblance. The
long lapse of intervening years, in a climate so unlike that
which had fostered the ancestral Englishman, must inevitably
have wrought important changes in the physical system
of his descendant. The judge's volume of muscle could
hardly be the same as the colonel's; there was undoubtedly
less beef in him. Though looked upon as a weighty
man, among his contemporaries, in respect of animal substance,
and as favored with a remarkable degree of fundamental
development, well adapting him for the judicial
bench, we conceive that the modern Judge Pyncheon, if
weighed in the same balance with his ancestor, would have
required at least an old-fashioned fifty-six to keep the scale
in equilibrio. Then the judge's face had lost the ruddy
English hue, that showed its warmth through all the duskiness
of the colonel's weather-beaten cheek, and had taken
a sallow shade, the established complexion of his country-men.
If we mistake not, moreover, a certain quality of
nervousness had become more or less manifest, even in so
solid a specimen of Puritan descent as the gentleman now
under discussion. As one of its effects, it bestowed on his
countenance a quicker mobility than the old Englishman's
had possessed, and keener vivacity, but at the expense of
a sturdier something, on which these acute endowments
seemed to act like dissolving acids. This process, for aught
we know, may belong to the great system of human progress,
which, with every ascending footstep, as it diminishes
the necessity for animal force, may be destined gradually to
spiritualize us, by refining away our grosser attributes of
body. If so, Judge Pyncheon could endure a century or two
more of such refinement, as well as most other men.

The similarity, intellectual and moral, between the judge

and his ancestor, appears to have been at least as strong as
the resemblance of mien and feature would afford reason to
anticipate. In old Colonel Pyncheon's funeral discourse,
the clergyman absolutely canonized his deceased parishioner,
and opening, as it were, a vista through the roof of the
church, and thence through the firmament above, showed him
seated, harp in hand, among the crowned choristers of the
spiritual world. On his tombstone, too, the record is highly
eulogistic; nor does history, so far as he holds a place upon
its page, assail the consistency and uprightness of his character.
So also, as regards the Judge Pyncheon of to-day,
neither clergyman, nor legal critic, nor inscriber of tombstones,
nor historian of general or local politics, would venture
a word against this eminent person's sincerity as a
Christian, or respectability as a man, or integrity as a judge,
or courage and faithfulness as the often-tried representative
of his political party. But, besides these cold, formal, and
empty words of the chisel that inscribes, the voice that
speaks, and the pen that writes, for the public eye and for
distant time, — and which inevitably lose much of their
truth and freedom by the fatal consciousness of so doing, —
there were traditions about the ancestor, and private diurnal
gossip about the judge, remarkably accordant in their testimony.
It is often instructive to take the woman's, the private
and domestic view of a public man; nor can anything
be more curious than the vast discrepancy between portraits
intended for engraving, and the pencil-sketches that pass
from hand to hand, behind the original's back.

For example, tradition affirmed that the Puritan had been
greedy of wealth; the judge, too, with all the show of liberal
expenditure, was said to be as close-fisted as if his
gripe were of iron. The ancestor had clothed himself in a
grim assumption of kindliness, a rough heartiness of word
and manner, which most people took to be the genuine

warmth of nature, making its way through the thick and
inflexible hide of a manly character. His descendant, in
compliance with the requirements of a nicer age, had etherealized
this rude benevolence into that broad benignity of
smile, wherewith he shone like a noon-day sun along the
streets, or glowed like a household fire in the drawing-rooms
of his private acquaintance. The Puritan — if not
belied by some singular stories, murmured, even at this day,
under the narrator's breath — had fallen into certain transgressions
to which men of his great animal development,
whatever their faith or principles, must continue liable, until
they put off impurity, along with the gross earthly substance
that involves it. We must not stain our page with any contemporary
scandal, to a similar purport, that may have been
whispered against the judge. The Puritan, again, an autocrat
in his own household, had worn out three wives, and,
merely by the remorseless weight and hardness of his
character in the conjugal relation, had sent them, one after
another, broken-hearted, to their graves. Here, the parallel,
in some sort, fails. The judge had wedded but a single
wife, and lost her in the third or fourth year of their marriage.
There was a fable, however, — for such we choose
to consider it, though, not impossibly, typical of Judge
Pyncheon's marital deportment, — that the lady got her
death-blow in the honey-moon, and never smiled again,
because her husband compelled her to serve him with coffee,
every morning, at his bedside, in token of fealty to her
liege-lord and master.

But it is too fruitful a subject, this of hereditary resemblances,
— the frequent recurrence of which, in a direct line,
is truly unaccountable, when we consider how large an
accumulation of ancestry lies behind every man, at the distance
of one or two centuries. We shall only add, therefore,
that the Puritan — so, at least, says chimney-corner

tradition, which often preserves traits of character with marvellous
fidelity — was bold, imperious, relentless, crafty;
laying his purposes deep, and following them out with an
inveteracy of pursuit that knew neither rest nor conscience;
trampling on the weak, and, when essential to his ends, doing
his utmost to beat down the strong. Whether the judge in
any degree resembled him, the further progress of our narrative
may show.

Scarcely any of the items in the above-drawn parallel
occurred to Phœbe, whose country birth and residence, in
truth, had left her pitifully ignorant of most of the family
traditions, which lingered, like cobwebs and incrustations of
smoke, about the rooms and chimney-corners of the House
of the Seven Gables. Yet there was a circumstance, very
trifling in itself, which impressed her with an odd degree of
horror. She had heard of the anathema flung by Maule,
the executed wizard, against Colonel Pyncheon and his posterity,
— that God would give them blood to drink, — and
likewise of the popular notion, that this miraculous blood
might now and then be heard gurgling in their throats.
The latter scandal — as became a person of sense, and, more
especially, a member of the Pyncheon family — Phœbe had
set down for the absurdity which it unquestionably was.
But ancient superstitions, after being steeped in human
hearts, and embodied in human breath, and passing from lip
to ear, in manifold repetition, through a series of generations,
become imbued with an effect of homely truth. The smoke
of the domestic hearth has scented them, through and
through. By long transmission among household facts,
they grow to look like them, and have such a familiar way
of making themselves at home, that their influence is usually
greater than we suspect. Thus it happened, that when
Phœbe heard a certain noise in Judge Pyncheon's throat, —
rather habitual with him, not altogether voluntary, yet indicative

of nothing, unless it were a slight bronchial complaint,
or, as some people hinted, an apoplectic symptom, —
when the girl heard this queer and awkward ingurgitation
(which the writer never did hear, and therefore cannot describe),
she, very foolishly, started, and clasped her hands.

Of course, it was exceedingly ridiculous in Phœbe to be
discomposed by such a trifle, and still more unpardonable
to show her discomposure to the individual most concerned
in it. But the incident chimed in so oddly with her previous
fancies about the colonel and the judge, that, for the
moment, it seemed quite to mingle their identity.

“What is the matter with you, young woman?” said
Judge Pyncheon, giving her one of his harsh looks. “Are
you afraid of anything?”

“O, nothing, sir, — nothing in the world!” answered
Phœbe, with a little laugh of vexation at herself. “But perhaps
you wish to speak with my cousin Hepzibah. Shall I
call her?”

“Stay a moment, if you please,” said the judge, again
beaming sunshine out of his face. “You seem to be a little
nervous, this morning. The town air, Cousin Phœbe, does
not agree with your good, wholesome country habits. Or,
has anything happened to disturb you? — anything remarkable
in Cousin Hepzibah's family? — An arrival, eh? I
thought so! No wonder you are out of sorts, my little
cousin. To be an inmate with such a guest may well startle
an innocent young girl!”

“You quite puzzle me, sir,” replied Phœbe, gazing inquiringly
at the judge. “There is no frightful guest in the
house, but only a poor, gentle, child-like man, whom I believe
to be Cousin Hepzibah's brother. I am afraid (but
you, sir, will know better than I) that he is not quite in his
sound senses; but so mild and quiet he seems to be, that a
mother might trust her baby with him; and I think he

would play with the baby, as if he were only a few years
older than itself. He startle me! — O, no indeed!”

“I rejoice to hear so favorable and so ingenuous an account
of my cousin Clifford,” said the benevolent judge.
“Many years ago, when we were boys and young men together,
I had a great affection for him, and still feel a tender
interest in all his concerns. You say, Cousin Phœbe, he
appears to be weak-minded. Heaven grant him at least
enough of intellect to repent of his past sins!”

“Nobody, I fancy,” observed Phœbe, “can have fewer to
repent of.”

“And is it possible, my dear,” rejoined the judge, with a
commiserating look, “that you have never heard of Clifford
Pyncheon? — that you know nothing of his history? Well,
it is all right; and your mother has shown a very proper
regard for the good name of the family with which she connected
herself. Believe the best you can of this unfortunate
person, and hope the best! It is a rule which Christians
should always follow, in their judgments of one another;
and especially is it right and wise among near relatives,
whose characters have necessarily a degree of mutual dependence.
But is Clifford in the parlor? I will just step
in and see.”

“Perhaps, sir, I had better call my cousin Hepzibah,” said
Phœbe; hardly knowing, however, whether she ought to
obstruct the entrance of so affectionate a kinsman into the
private regions of the house. “Her brother seemed to be
just falling asleep, after breakfast; and I am sure she would
not like him to be disturbed. Pray, sir, let me give her
notice!”

But the judge showed a singular determination to enter
unannounced; and as Phœbe, with the vivacity of a person
whose movements unconsciously answer to her thoughts,

had stepped towards the door, he used little or no ceremony
in putting her aside.

“No, no, Miss Phœbe!” said Judge Pyncheon, in a voice
as deep as a thunder-growl, and with a frown as black as
the cloud whence it issues. “Stay you here! I know the
house, and know my cousin Hepzibah, and know her brother
Clifford likewise! — nor need my little country cousin put
herself to the trouble of announcing me!” — in these latter
words, by-the-by, there were symptoms of a change from
his sudden harshness into his previous benignity of manner.
— “I am at home here, Phœbe, you must recollect, and
you are the stranger. I will just step in, therefore, and see
for myself how Clifford is, and assure him and Hepzibah of
my kindly feelings and best wishes. It is right, at this
juncture, that they should both hear from my own lips how
much I desire to serve them. Ha! here is Hepzibah herself!”

Such was the case. The vibrations of the judge's voice
had reached the old gentlewoman in the parlor, where she
sat, with face averted, waiting on her brother's slumber.
She now issued forth, as would appear, to defend the
entrance, looking, we must needs say, amazingly like the
dragon which, in fairy tales, is wont to be the guardian over
an enchanted beauty. The habitual scowl of her brow
was, undeniably, too fierce, at this moment, to pass itself
off on the innocent score of near-sightedness; and it was
bent on Judge Pyncheon in a way that seemed to confound,
if not alarm him, so inadequately had he estimated the
moral force of a deeply-grounded antipathy. She made a
repelling gesture with her hand, and stood, a perfect picture
of prohibition, at full length, in the dark frame of the door-way.
But we must betray Hepzibah's secret, and confess
that the native timorousness of her character even now
developed itself, in a quick tremor, which, to her own

perception, set each of her joints at variance with its fellows.

Possibly, the judge was aware how little true hardihood
lay behind Hepzibah's formidable front. At any rate, being
a gentleman of steady nerves, he soon recovered himself,
and failed not to approach his cousin with outstretched
hand; adopting the sensible precaution, however, to cover
his advance with a smile, so broad and sultry, that, had it
been only half as warm as it looked, a trellis of grapes
might at once have turned purple under its summer-like
exposure. It may have been his purpose, indeed, to melt
poor Hepzibah on the spot, as if she were a figure of yellow
wax.

“Hepzibah, my beloved cousin, I am rejoiced!” exclaimed
the judge, most emphatically. “Now, at length, you have
something to live for. Yes, and all of us, let me say, your
friends and kindred, have more to live for than we had
yesterday. I have lost no time in hastening to offer any
assistance in my power towards making Clifford comfortable.
He belongs to us all. I know how much he requires, — how
much he used to require, — with his delicate taste, and his
love of the beautiful. Anything in my house, — pictures,
books, wine, luxuries of the table, — he may command them
all! It would afford me most heart-felt gratification to see
him! Shall I step in, this moment?”

“No,” replied Hepzibah, her voice quivering too painfully
to allow of many words. “He cannot see visiters!”

“A visiter, my dear cousin! — do you call me so?”
cried the judge, whose sensibility, it seems, was hurt by the
coldness of the phrase. “Nay, then, let me be Clifford's
host, and your own likewise. Come at once to my house.
The country air, and all the conveniences — I may say
luxuries — that I have gathered about me, will do wonders
for him. And you and I, dear Hepzibah, will consult

together, and watch together, and labor together, to make
our dear Clifford happy. Come! why should we make
more words about what is both a duty and a pleasure, on
my part? Come to me at once!”

On hearing these so hospitable offers, and such generous
recognition of the claims of kindred, Phœbe felt very much
in the mood of running up to Judge Pyncheon, and giving
him, of her own accord, the kiss from which she had so
recently shrunk away. It was quite otherwise with Hepzibah;
the judge's smile seemed to operate on her acerbity
of heart like sunshine upon vinegar, making it ten times
sourer than ever.

“Clifford,” said she, — still too agitated to utter more
than an abrupt sentence, — “Clifford has a home here!”

“May Heaven forgive you, Hepzibah,” said Judge Pyncheon,
— reverently lifting his eyes towards that high court
of equity to which he appealed, — “if you suffer any
ancient prejudice or animosity to weigh with you in this
matter! I stand here, with an open heart, willing and
anxious to receive yourself and Clifford into it. Do not
refuse my good offices, — my earnest propositions for your
welfare! They are such, in all respects, as it behooves
your nearest kinsman to make. It will be a heavy responsibility,
cousin, if you confine your brother to this dismal
house and stifled air, when the delightful freedom of my
country-seat is at his command.”

“It would never suit Clifford,” said Hepzibah, as briefly
as before.

“Woman!” broke forth the judge, giving way to his
resentment, “what is the meaning of all this? Have you
other resources? Nay, I suspected as much! Take care,
Hepzibah, take care! Clifford is on the brink of as black a
ruin as ever befell him yet! But why do I talk with you,
woman as you are? Make way! — I must see Clifford!”

Hepzibah spread out her gaunt figure across the door,
and seemed really to increase in bulk; looking the more
terrible, also, because there was so much terror and agitation
in her heart. But Judge Pyncheon's evident purpose
of forcing a passage was interrupted by a voice from the
inner room; a weak, tremulous, wailing voice, indicating
helpless alarm, with no more energy for self-defence than
belongs to a frightened infant.

“Hepzibah, Hepzibah!” cried the voice; “go down on
you knees to him! Kiss his feet! Entreat him not to
come in! O, let him have mercy on me! Mercy! —
mercy!”

For the instant, it appeared doubtful whether it were not
the judge's resolute purpose to set Hepzibah aside, and step
across the threshold into the parlor, whence issued that
broken and miserable murmur of entreaty. It was not pity
that restrained him, for, at the first sound of the enfeebled
voice, a red fire kindled in his eyes, and he made a quick
pace forward, with something inexpressibly fierce and grim
darkening forth, as it were, out of the whole man. To know
Judge Pyncheon, was to see him at that moment. After
such a revelation, let him smile with what sultriness he would,
he could much sooner turn grapes purple, or pumpkins
yellow, than melt the iron-branded impression out of the
beholder's memory. And it rendered his aspect not the less,
but more frightful, that it seemed not to express wrath or
hatred, but a certain hot fellness of purpose, which annihilated
everything but itself.

Yet, after all, are we not slandering an excellent and
amiable man? Look at the judge now! He is apparently
conscious of having erred, in too energetically pressing his
deeds of loving-kindness on persons unable to appreciate
them. He will await their better mood, and hold himself
as ready to assist them, then, as at this moment. As he

draws back from the door, an all-comprehensive benignity
blazes from his visage, indicating that he gathers Hepzibah,
little Phœbe, and the invisible Clifford, all three, together
with the whole world besides, into his immense heart, and
gives them a warm bath in its flood of affection.

“You do me great wrong, dear Cousin Hepzibah!” said
he, first kindly offering her his hand, and then drawing on
his glove preparatory to departure. “Very great wrong!
But I forgive it, and will study to make you think better of
me. Of course, our poor Clifford being in so unhappy a
state of mind, I cannot think of urging an interview at present.
But I shall watch over his welfare, as if he were my
own beloved brother; nor do I at all despair, my dear cousin,
of constraining both him and you to acknowledge your injustice.
When that shall happen, I desire no other revenge
than your acceptance of the best offices in my power to do
you.”

With a bow to Hepzibah, and a degree of paternal benevolence
in his parting nod to Phœbe, the judge left the shop,
and went smiling along the street. As is customary with
the rich, when they aim at the honors of a republic, he
apologized, as it were, to the people, for his wealth, prosperity,
and elevated station, by a free and hearty manner
towards those who knew him; putting off the more of his
dignity, in due proportion with the humbleness of the man
whom he saluted, and thereby proving a haughty consciousness
of his advantages as irrefragably as if he had marched
forth preceded by a troop of lackeys to clear the way. On
this particular forenoon, so excessive was the warmth of
Judge Pyncheon's kindly aspect, that (such, at least, was
the rumor about town) an extra passage of the water-carts
was found essential, in order to lay the dust occasioned by
so much extra sunshine!

No sooner had he disappeared than Hepzibah grew
deadly white, and, staggering towards Phœbe, let her head
fall on the young girl's shoulder.

“O, Phœbe!” murmured she, “that man has been the
horror of my life! Shall I never, never have the courage, —
will my voice never cease from trembling long enough to
let me tell him what he is?”

“Is he so very wicked?” asked Phœbe. “Yet his offers
were surely kind!”

“Do not speak of them, — he has a heart of iron!”
rejoined Hepzibah. “Go, now, and talk to Clifford! Amuse
and keep him quiet! It would disturb him wretchedly to
see me so agitated as I am. There, go, dear child, and I
will try to look after the shop.”

Phœbe went, accordingly, but perplexed herself, meanwhile,
with queries as to the purport of the scene which she
had just witnessed, and also, whether judges, clergymen,
and other characters of that eminent stamp and respectability,
could really, in any single instance, be otherwise than
just and upright men. A doubt of this nature has a most
disturbing influence, and, if shown to be a fact, comes with
fearful and startling effect, on minds of the trim, orderly, and
limit-loving class, in which we find our little country-girl.
Dispositions more boldly speculative may derive a stern enjoyment
from the discovery, since there must be evil in the
world, that a high man is as likely to grasp his share of it
as a low one. A wider scope of view, and a deeper insight,
may see rank, dignity, and station, all proved illusory, so far
as regards their claim to human reverence, and yet not feel
as if the universe were thereby tumbled headlong into
chaos. But Phœbe, in order to keep the universe in its old
place, was fain to smother, in some degree, her own intuitions
as to Judge Pyncheon's character. And as for her

cousin's testimony in disparagement of it, she concluded
that Hepzibah's judgment was embittered by one of those
family feuds, which render hatred the more deadly, by the
dead and corrupted love that they intermingle with its
native poison.