University of Virginia Library

13. XIII.
ALICE PYNCHEON.

There was a message brought, one day, from the worshipful
Gervayse Pyncheon to young Matthew Maule, the
carpenter, desiring his immediate presence at the House of
the Seven Gables.

“And what does your master want with me?” said the
carpenter to Mr. Pyncheon's black servant. “Does the house
need any repair? Well it may, by this time; and no
blame to my father who built it, neither! I was reading the
old colonel's tombstone, no longer ago than last Sabbath;
and reckoning from that date, the house has stood seven-and-thirty
years. No wonder if there should be a job to do
on the roof.”

“Don't know what massa wants,” answered Scipio.
“The house is a berry good house, and old Colonel Pyncheon
think so too, I reckon; — else why the old man haunt it
so, and frighten a poor nigga, as he does?”

“Well, well, friend Scipio; let your master know that
I'm coming,” said the carpenter, with a laugh. “For a
fair, workman-like job, he'll find me his man. And so the
house is haunted, is it? It will take a tighter workman
than I am to keep the spirits out of the seven gables.
Even if the colonel would be quit,” he added, muttering to
himself, “my old grandfather, the wizard, will be pretty sure
to stick to the Pyncheons, as long as their walls hold
together.”

“What 's that you mutter to yourself, Matthew Maule?”

asked Scipio. “And what for do you look so black at
me?”

“No matter, darkey!” said the carpenter. “Do you
think nobody is to look black but yourself? Go tell your
master I 'm coming; and if you happen to see Mistress
Alice, his daughter, give Matthew Maule's humble respects
to her. She has brought a fair face from Italy, — fair, and
gentle, and proud, — has that same Alice Pyncheon!”

“He talk of Mistress Alice!” cried Scipio, as he
returned from his errand. “The low carpenter-man! He
no business so much as to look at her a great way off!”

This young Matthew Maule, the carpenter, it must be
observed, was a person little understood, and not very generally
liked, in the town where he resided; not that anything
could be alleged against his integrity, or his skill and
diligence in the handicraft which he exercised. The aversion
(as it might justly be called) with which many persons
regarded him, was partly the result of his own character and
deportment, and partly an inheritance.

He was the grandson of a former Matthew Maule, one of
the early settlers of the town, and who had been a famous
and terrible wizard, in his day. This old reprobate was
one of the sufferers when Cotton Mather, and his brother
ministers, and the learned judges, and other wise men, and
Sir William Phipps, the sagacious governor, made such laudable
efforts to weaken the great enemy of souls, by sending a
multitude of his adherents up the rocky pathway of Gallows
Hill. Since those days, no doubt, it had grown to be suspected,
that, in consequence of an unfortunate overdoing of
a work praiseworthy in itself, the proceedings against the
witches had proved far less acceptable to the Beneficent Father
than to that very Arch Enemy whom they were intended
to distress and utterly overwhelm. It is not the less certain,
however, that awe and terror brooded over the memories of

those who died for this horrible crime of witchcraft. Their
graves, in the crevices of the rocks, were supposed to be
incapable of retaining the occupants who had been so hastily
thrust into them. Old Matthew Maule, especially, was
known to have as little hesitation or difficulty in rising out
of his grave as an ordinary man in getting out of bed, and
was as often seen at midnight as living people at noonday.
This pestilent wizard (in whom his just punishment seemed
to have wrought no manner of amends) had an inveterate
habit of haunting a certain mansion, styled the House of the
Seven Gables, against the owner of which he pretended to
hold an unsettled claim for ground-rent. The ghost, it appears,
— with the pertinacity which was one of his distinguishing
characteristics while alive, — insisted that he was
the rightful proprietor of the site upon which the house
stood. His terms were, that either the aforesaid ground-rent,
from the day when the cellar began to be dug, should
be paid down, or the mansion itself given up; else he, the
ghostly creditor, would have his finger in all the affairs of
the Pyncheons, and make everything go wrong with them,
though it should be a thousand years after his death. It
was a wild story, perhaps, but seemed not altogether so incredible,
to those who could remember what an inflexibly
obstinate old fellow this wizard Maule had been.

Now, the wizard's grandson, the young Matthew Maule
of our story, was popularly supposed to have inherited some
of his ancestor's questionable traits. It is wonderful how
many absurdities were promulgated in reference to the
young man. He was fabled, for example, to have a strange
power of getting into people's dreams, and regulating matters
there according to his own fancy, pretty much like the
stage-manager of a theatre. There was a great deal of
talk among the neighbors, particularly the petticoated ones,
about what they called the witchcraft of Maule's eye,

Some said that he could look into people's minds; others,
that, by the marvellous power of this eye, he could draw
people into his own mind, or send them, if he pleased, to do
errands to his grandfather, in the spiritual world; others,
again, that it was what is termed an Evil Eye, and possessed
the valuable faculty of blighting corn, and drying
children into mummies with the heart-burn. But, after all,
what worked most to the young carpenter's disadvantage
was, first, the reserve and sternness of his natural disposition,
and next, the fact of his not being a church-communicant,
and the suspicion of his holding heretical tenets in
matters of religion and polity.

After receiving Mr. Pyncheon's message, the carpenter
merely tarried to finish a small job, which he happened to
have in hand, and then took his way towards the House of
the Seven Gables. This noted edifice, though its style might
be getting a little out of fashion, was still as respectable a
family residence as that of any gentleman in town. The
present owner, Gervayse Pyncheon, was said to have contracted
a dislike to the house, in consequence of a shock to
his sensibility, in early childhood, from the sudden death of
his grandfather. In the very act of running to climb
Colonel Pyncheon's knee, the boy had discovered the old
Puritan to be a corpse! On arriving at manhood, Mr.
Pyncheon had visited England, where he married a lady
of fortune, and had subsequently spent many years, partly
in the mother country, and partly in various cities on the
continent of Europe. During this period, the family mansion
had been consigned to the charge of a kinsman, who
was allowed to make it his home, for the time being, in consideration
of keeping the premises in thorough repair. So
faithfully had this contract been fulfilled, that now, as the
carpenter approached the house, his practised eye could
detect nothing to criticize in its condition. The peaks of

the seven gables rose up sharply; the shingled roof looked
thoroughly water-tight; and the glittering plaster-work
entirely covered the exterior walls, and sparkled in the
October sun, as if it had been new only a week ago.

The house had that pleasant aspect of life which is like
the cheery expression of comfortable activity in the human
countenance. You could see, at once, that there was the
stir of a large family within it. A huge load of oak-wood
was passing through the gateway, towards the out-buildings
in the rear; the fat cook — or probably it might be the
housekeeper — stood at the side-door, bargaining for some
turkeys and poultry, which a countryman had brought for
sale. Now and then, a maid-servant, neatly dressed, and
now the shining sable face of a slave, might be seen
bustling across the windows, in the lower part of the house.
At an open window of a room in the second story, hanging
over some pots of beautiful and delicate flowers, — exotics,
but which had never known a more genial sunshine than
that of the New England autumn, — was the figure of a
young lady, an exotic, like the flowers, and beautiful and
delicate as they. Her presence imparted an indescribable
grace and faint witchery to the whole edifice. In other
respects, it was a substantial, jolly-looking mansion, and
seemed fit to be the residence of a patriarch, who might
establish his own head-quarters in the front gable, and
assign one of the remainder to each of his six children;
while the great chimney in the centre should symbolize the
old fellow's hospitable heart, which kept them all warm, and
made a great whole of the seven smaller ones.

There was a vertical sun-dial on the front gable; and as
the carpenter passed beneath it, he looked up and noted the
hour.

“Three o'clock!” said he to himself. “My father told
me that dial was put up only an hour before the old colonel's

death. How truly it has kept time these seven-and-thirty
years past! The shadow creeps and creeps, and is always
looking over the shoulder of the sunshine!”

It might have befitted a craftsman, like Matthew Maule,
on being sent for to a gentleman's house, to go to the back-door,
where servants and work-people were usually admitted;
or at least to the side-entrance, where the better class of
tradesmen made application. But the carpenter had a great
deal of pride and stiffness in his nature; and, at this
moment, moreover, his heart was bitter with the sense of
hereditary wrong, because he considered the great Pyncheon-house
to be standing on soil which should have been
his own. On this very site, beside a spring of delicious
water, his grandfather had felled the pine-trees and built a
cottage, in which children had been born to him; and it was
only from a dead man's stiffened fingers that Colonel Pyncheon
had wrested away the title-deeds. So young Maule
went straight to the principal entrance, beneath a portal of
carved oak, and gave such a peal of the iron knocker that
you would have imagined the stern old wizard himself to be
standing at the threshold.

Black Scipio answered the summons, in a prodigious
hurry; but showed the whites of his eyes, in amazement, on
beholding only the carpenter.

“Lord-a-mercy! what a great man he be, this carpenter
fellow!” mumbled Scipio, down in his throat. “Anybody
think he beat on the door with his biggest hammer!”

“Here I am!” said Maule, sternly. “Show me the way
to your master's parlor!”

As he stept into the house, a note of sweet and melancholy
music thrilled and vibrated along the passage-way,
proceeding from one of the rooms above stairs. It was the
harpsichord which Alice Pyncheon had brought with her from
beyond the sea. The fair Alice bestowed most of her maiden

leisure between flowers and music, although the former were
apt to droop, and the melodies were often sad. She was of
foreign education, and could not take kindly to the New
England modes of life, in which nothing beautiful had ever
been developed.

As Mr. Pyncheon had been impatiently awaiting Maule's
arrival, black Scipio, of course, lost no time in ushering
the carpenter into his master's presence. The room in
which this gentleman sat was a parlor of moderate size,
looking out upon the garden of the house, and having its
windows partly shadowed by the foliage of fruit-trees. It
was Mr. Pyncheon's peculiar apartment, and was provided
with furniture, in an elegant and costly style, principally
from Paris; the floor (which was unusual, at that day) being
covered with a carpet, so skilfully and richly wrought,
that it seemed to glow as with living flowers. In one corner
stood a marble woman, to whom her own beauty was the
sole and sufficient garment. Some pictures — that looked
old, and had a mellow tinge diffused through all their artful
splendor — hung on the walls. Near the fireplace was a
large and very beautiful cabinet of ebony, inlaid with ivory;
a piece of antique furniture, which Mr. Pyncheon had
bought in Venice, and which he used as the treasure-place
for medals, ancient coins, and whatever small and valuable
curiosities he had picked up, on his travels. Through all
this variety of decoration, however, the room showed its
original characteristics; its low stud, its cross-beam, its
chimney-piece, with the old-fashioned Dutch tiles; so that it
was the emblem of a mind industriously stored with foreign
ideas, and elaborated into artificial refinement, but neither
larger, nor, in its proper self, more elegant, than before.

There were two objects that appeared rather out of place
in this very handsomely furnished room. One was a large
map, or surveyor's plan, of a tract of land, which looked as

if it had been drawn a good many years ago, and was now
dingy with smoke, and soiled, here and there, with the touch
of fingers. The other was a portrait of a stern old man, in
a Puritan garb, painted roughly, but with a bold effect, and
a remarkably strong expression of character.

At a small table, before a fire of English sea-coal, sat
Mr. Pyncheon, sipping coffee, which had grown to be a very
favorite beverage with him in France. He was a middle-aged
and really handsome man, with a wig flowing down
upon his shoulders; his coat was of blue velvet, with lace
on the borders and at the button-holes; and the fire-light
glistened on the spacious breadth of his waistcoat, which
was flowered all over with gold. On the entrance of Scipio,
ushering in the carpenter, Mr. Pyncheon turned partly
round, but resumed his former position, and proceeded deliberately
to finish his cup of coffee, without immediate notice
of the guest whom he had summoned to his presence. It
was not that he intended any rudeness, or improper neglect,
— which, indeed, he would have blushed to be guilty of, —
but it never occurred to him that a person in Maule's station
had a claim on his courtesy, or would trouble himself about
it, one way or the other.

The carpenter, however, stepped at once to the hearth,
and turned himself about, so as to look Mr. Pyncheon in
the face.

“You sent for me,” said he. “Be pleased to explain
your business, that I may go back to my own affairs.”

“Ah! excuse me,” said Mr. Pyncheon, quietly. “I did
not mean to tax your time without a recompense. Your
name, I think, is Maule, — Thomas or Matthew Maule, — a
son or grandson of the builder of this house?”

“Matthew Maule,” replied the carpenter, — “son of him
who built the house, — grandson of the rightful proprietor
of the soil.”

“I know the dispute to which you allude,” observed Mr.
Pyncheon, with undisturbed equanimity. “I am well
aware that my grandfather was compelled to resort to a
suit at law, in order to establish his claim to the foundationsite
of this edifice. We will not, if you please, renew the
discussion. The matter was settled at the time, and by
the competent authorities, — equitably, it is to be presumed,
— and, at all events, irrevocably. Yet, singularly enough,
there is an incidental reference to this very subject in what
I am now about to say to you. And this same inveterate
grudge, — excuse me, I mean no offence, — this irritability,
which you have just shown, is not entirely aside from the
matter.”

“If you can find anything for your purpose, Mr. Pyncheon,”
said the carpenter, “in a man's natural resentment
for the wrongs done to his blood, you are welcome to it!”

“I take you at your word, Goodman Maule,” said the
owner of the seven gables, with a smile, “and will proceed
to suggest a mode in which your hereditary resentments —
justifiable, or otherwise — may have had a bearing on my
affairs. You have heard, I suppose, that the Pyncheon
family, ever since my grandfather's days, have been prosecuting
a still unsettled claim to a very large extent of
territory at the eastward?”

“Often,” replied Maule, — and it is said that a smile
came over his face, — “very often, — from my father!”

“This claim,” continued Mr. Pyncheon, after pausing a
moment, as if to consider what the carpenter's smile might
mean, “appeared to be on the very verge of a settlement
and full allowance, at the period of my grandfather's decease.
It was well known, to those in his confidence, that
he anticipated neither difficulty nor delay. Now, Colonel
Pyncheon, I need hardly say, was a practical man, well acquainted
with public and private business, and not at all the

person to cherish ill-founded hopes, or to attempt the following
out of an impracticable scheme. It is obvious to conclude,
therefore, that he had grounds, not apparent to his
heirs, for his confident anticipation of success in the matter
of this eastern claim. In a word, I believe, — and my
legal advisers coincide in the belief, which, moreover, is
authorized, to a certain extent, by the family traditions, —
that my grandfather was in possession of some deed, or
other document, essential to this claim, but which has since
disappeared.”

“Very likely,” said Matthew Maule, — and again, it is
said, there was a dark smile on his face, — “but what can
a poor carpenter have to do with the grand affairs of the
Pyncheon family?”

“Perhaps nothing,” returned Mr. Pyncheon, — “possibly,
much!”

Here ensued a great many words between Matthew Maule
and the proprietor of the seven gables, on the subject which
the latter had thus broached. It seems (although Mr. Pyncheon
had some hesitation in referring to stories so exceedingly
absurd in their aspect) that the popular belief pointed
to some mysterious connection and dependence, existing
between the family of the Maules and these vast, unrealized
possessions of the Pyncheons. It was an ordinary
saying, that the old wizard, hanged though he was, had obtained
the best end of the bargain, in his contest with Colonel
Pyncheon; inasmuch as he had got possession of the
great eastern claim, in exchange for an acre or two of garden-ground.
A very aged woman, recently dead, had often
used the metaphorical expression, in her fire-side talk, that
miles and miles of the Pyncheon lands had been shovelled
into Maule's grave; which, by-the-by, was but a very shallow
nook, between two rocks, near the summit of Gallows
Hill. Again, when the lawyers were making inquiry for

the missing document, it was a by-word, that it would never
be found, unless in the wizard's skeleton-hand. So much
weight had the shrewd lawyers assigned to these fables, that
— (but Mr. Pyncheon did not see fit to inform the carpenter
of the fact) — they had secretly caused the wizard's grave
to be searched. Nothing was discovered, however, except
that, unaccountably, the right hand of the skeleton was gone.

Now, what was unquestionably important, a portion of
these popular rumors could be traced, though rather doubtfully
and indistinctly, to chance words and obscure hints of
the executed wizard's son, and the father of this present
Matthew Maule. And here Mr. Pyncheon could bring an
item of his own personal evidence into play. Though but
a child at the time, he either remembered or fancied that
Matthew's father had had some job to perform, on the day
before, or possibly the very morning of the colonel's decease,
in the private room where he and the carpenter were at this
moment talking. Certain papers belonging to Colonel
Pyncheon, as his grandson distinctly recollected, had been
spread out on the table.

Matthew Maule understood the insinuated suspicion.

“My father,” he said, — but still there was that dark
smile, making a riddle of his countenance, — “my father
was an honester man than the bloody old colonel! Not to
get his rights back again would he have carried off one
of those papers!”

“I shall not bandy words with you,” observed the foreign-bred
Mr. Pyncheon, with haughty composure. “Nor will it
become me to resent any rudeness towards either my grandfather
or myself. A gentleman, before seeking intercourse
with a person of your station and habits, will first consider
whether the urgency of the end may compensate for the
disagreeableness of the means. It does so, in the present
instance.”

He then renewed the conversation, and made great pecuniary
offers to the carpenter, in case the latter should give
information leading to the discovery of the lost document,
and the consequent success of the eastern claim. For a
long time Matthew Maule is said to have turned a cold ear
to these propositions. At last, however, with a strange kind
of laugh, he inquired whether Mr. Pyncheon would make
over to him the old wizard's homestead-ground, together
with the House of the Seven Gables, now standing on it, in
requital of the documentary evidence so urgently required.

The wild, chimney-corner legend (which, without copying
all its extravagances, my narrative essentially follows)
here gives an account of some very strange behavior on
the part of Colonel Pyncheon's portrait. This picture, it
must be understood, was supposed to be so intimately connected
with the fate of the house, and so magically built
into its walls, that, if once it should be removed, that very
instant the whole edifice would come thundering down
in a heap of dusty ruin. All through the foregoing conversation
between Mr. Pyncheon and the carpenter, the
portrait had been frowning, clenching its fist, and giving
many such proofs of excessive discomposure, but without
attracting the notice of either of the two colloquists. And
finally, at Matthew Maule's audacious suggestion of a transfer
of the seven-gabled structure, the ghostly portrait is
averred to have lost all patience, and to have shown itself
on the point of descending bodily from its frame. But such
incredible incidents are merely to be mentioned aside.

“Give up this house!” exclaimed Mr. Pyncheon, in
amazement at the proposal. “Were I to do so, my grandfather
would not rest quiet in his grave!”

“He never has, if all stories are true,” remarked the carpenter,
composedly. “But that matter concerns his grandson

more than it does Matthew Maule. I have no other
terms to propose.”

Impossible as he at first thought it to comply with
Maule's conditions, still, on a second glance, Mr. Pyncheon
was of opinion that they might at least be made
matter of discussion. He himself had no personal attachment
for the house, nor any pleasant associations connected
with his childish residence in it. On the contrary,
after seven-and-thirty years, the presence of his dead grandfather
seemed still to pervade it, as on that morning when
the affrighted boy had beheld him, with so ghastly an
aspect, stiffening in his chair. His long abode in foreign
parts, moreover, and familiarity with many of the castles and
ancestral halls of England, and the marble palaces of Italy,
had caused him to look contemptuously at the House of
the Seven Gables, whether in point of splendor or convenience.
It was a mansion exceedingly inadequate to the
style of living which it would be incumbent on Mr. Pyncheon
to support, after realizing his territorial rights. His
steward might deign to occupy it, but never, certainly, the
great landed proprietor himself. In the event of success,
indeed, it was his purpose to return to England; nor, to
say the truth, would he recently have quitted that more
congenial home, had not his own fortune, as well as his
deceased wife's, begun to give symptoms of exhaustion.
The eastern claim once fairly settled, and put upon the firm
basis of actual possession, Mr. Pyncheon's property — to be
measured by miles, not acres — would be worth an earldom,
and would reasonably entitle him to solicit, or enable him
to purchase, that elevated dignity from the British monarch.
Lord Pyncheon! — or the Earl of Waldo! — how could such
a magnate be expected to contract his grandeur within the
pitiful compass of seven shingled gables?

In short, on an enlarged view of the business, the carpenter's

terms appeared so ridiculously easy, that Mr. Pyncheon
could scarcely forbear laughing in his face. He was
quite ashamed, after the foregoing reflections, to propose any
diminution of so moderate a recompense for the immense
service to be rendered.

“I consent to your proposition, Maule,” cried he. “Put
me in possession of the document essential to establish my
rights, and the House of the Seven Gables is your own!”

According to some versions of the story, a regular contract
to the above effect was drawn up by a lawyer, and
signed and sealed in the presence of witnesses. Others say
that Matthew Maule was contented with a private written
agreement, in which Mr. Pyncheon pledged his honor and
integrity to the fulfilment of the terms concluded upon.
The gentleman then ordered wine, which he and the carpenter
drank together, in confirmation of their bargain.
During the whole preceding discussion and subsequent formalities,
the old Puritan's portrait seems to have persisted in
its shadowy gestures of disapproval; but without effect,
except that, as Mr. Pyncheon set down the emptied glass,
he thought he beheld his grandfather frown.

“This sherry is too potent a wine for me; it has affected
my brain already,” he observed, after a somewhat startled
look at the picture. “On returning to Europe, I shall confine
myself to the more delicate vintages of Italy and
France, the best of which will not bear transportation.”

“My Lord Pyncheon may drink what wine he will, and
wherever he pleases,” replied the carpenter, as if he had
been privy to Mr. Pyncheon's ambitious projects. “But
first, sir, if you desire tidings of this lost document, I must
crave the favor of a little talk with your fair daughter
Alice.”

“You are mad, Maule!” exclaimed Mr. Pyncheon,
haughtily; and now, at last, there was anger mixed up with

his pride. “What can my daughter have to do with a
business like this?”

Indeed, at this new demand on the carpenter's part, the
proprietor of the seven gables was even more thunder-struck
than at the cool proposition to surrender his house. There
was, at least, an assignable motive for the first stipulation;
there appeared to be none whatever, for the last. Nevertheless,
Matthew Maule sturdily insisted on the young lady
being summoned, and even gave her father to understand,
in a mysterious kind of explanation, — which made the
matter considerably darker than it looked before, — that
the only chance of acquiring the requisite knowledge was
through the clear, crystal medium of a pure and virgin
intelligence, like that of the fair Alice. Not to encumber
our story with Mr. Pyncheon's scruples, whether of conscience,
pride, or fatherly affection, he at length ordered his
daughter to be called. He well knew that she was in her
chamber, and engaged in no occupation that could not
readily be laid aside; for, as it happened, ever since Alice's
name had been spoken, both her father and the carpenter
had heard the sad and sweet music of her harpsichord, and
the airier melancholy of her accompanying voice.

So Alice Pyncheon was summoned, and appeared. A
portrait of this young lady, painted by a Venetian artist, and
left by her father in England, is said to have fallen into the
hands of the present Duke of Devonshire, and to be now
preserved at Chatsworth; not on account of any associations
with the original, but for its value as a picture, and the high
character of beauty in the countenance. If ever there was
a lady born, and set apart from the world's vulgar mass by
a certain gentle and cold stateliness, it was this very Alice
Pyncheon. Yet there was the womanly mixture in her;
the tenderness, or, at least, the tender capabilities. For the
sake of that redeeming quality, a man of generous nature

would have forgiven all her pride, and have been content,
almost, to lie down in her path, and let Alice set her slender
foot upon his heart. All that he would have required, was
simply the acknowledgment that he was indeed a man, and
a fellow-being, moulded of the same elements as she.

As Alice came into the room, her eyes fell upon the carpenter,
who was standing near its centre, clad in a green
woollen jacket, a pair of loose breeches, open at the knees,
and with a long pocket for his rule, the end of which protruded;
it was as proper a mark of the artisan's calling, as
Mr. Pyncheon's full-dress sword of that gentleman's aristocratic
pretensions. A glow of artistic approval brightened
over Alice Pyncheon's face; she was struck with admiration
— which she made no attempt to conceal — of the remarkable
comeliness, strength and energy, of Maule's figure.
But that admiring glance (which most other men, perhaps,
would have cherished as a sweet recollection, all through
life) the carpenter never forgave. It must have been the
devil himself that made Maule so subtile in his perception.

“Does the girl look at me as if I were a brute beast?”
thought he, setting his teeth. “She shall know whether I
have a human spirit; and the worse for her, if it prove
stronger than her own!”

“My father, you sent for me,” said Alice, in her sweet
and harp-like voice. “But, if you have business with this
young man, pray let me go again. You know I do not love
this room, in spite of that Claude, with which you try to
bring back sunny recollections.”

“Stay a moment, young lady, if you please!” said Matthew
Maule. “My business with your father is over. With
yourself, it is now to begin!”

Alice looked towards her father, in surprise and inquiry.

“Yes, Alice,” said Mr. Pyncheon, with some disturbance
and confusion. “This young man — his name is Matthew

Maule — professes, so far as I can understand him, to be
able to discover, through your means, a certain paper or
parchment, which was missing long before your birth. The
importance of the document in question renders it advisable
to neglect no possible, even if improbable, method of regaining
it. You will therefore oblige me, my dear Alice, by
answering this person's inquiries, and complying with his
lawful and reasonable requests, so far as they may appear
to have the aforesaid object in view. As I shall remain in
the room, you need apprehend no rude nor unbecoming
deportment, on the young man's part; and, at your slightest
wish, of course, the investigation, or whatever we may call
it, shall immediately be broken off.”

“Mistress Alice Pyncheon,” remarked Matthew Maule,
with the utmost deference, but yet a half-hidden sarcasm in
his look and tone, “will no doubt feel herself quite safe in
her father's presence, and under his all-sufficient protection.”

“I certainly shall entertain no manner of apprehension,
with my father at hand,” said Alice, with maidenly dignity.
“Neither do I conceive that a lady, while true to herself,
can have aught to fear, from whomsoever, or in any circumstances!”

Poor Alice! By what unhappy impulse did she thus put
herself at once on terms of defiance against a strength which
she could not estimate?

“Then, Mistress Alice,” said Matthew Maule, handing
a chair, — gracefully enough, for a craftsman, — “will it
please you only to sit down, and do me the favor (though
altogether beyond a poor carpenter's deserts) to fix your
eyes on mine!”

Alice complied. She was very proud. Setting aside all
advantages of rank, this fair girl deemed herself conscious
of a power, — combined of beauty, high, unsullied purity,
and the preservative force of womanhood, — that could

make her sphere impenetrable, unless betrayed by treachery
within. She instinctively knew, it may be, that some sinister
or evil potency was now striving to pass her barriers;
nor would she decline the contest. So Alice put woman's
might against man's might; a match not often equal, on the
part of woman.

Her father, meanwhile, had turned away, and seemed
absorbed in the contemplation of a landscape by Claude,
where a shadowy and sun-streaked vista penetrated so remotely
into an ancient wood, that it would have been no
wonder if his fancy had lost itself in the picture's bewildering
depths. But, in truth, the picture was no more to him,
at that moment, than the blank wall against which it hung.
His mind was haunted with the many and strange tales
which he had heard, attributing mysterious if not supernatural
endowments to these Maules, as well the grandson, here
present, as his two immediate ancestors. Mr. Pyncheon's
long residence abroad, and intercourse with men of wit and
fashion,—courtiers, worldlings, and free-thinkers,—had done
much towards obliterating the grim Puritan superstitions,
which no man of New England birth, at that early period,
could entirely escape. But, on the other hand, had not a
whole community believed Maule's grandfather to be a wizard?
Had not the crime been proved? Had not the wizard
died for it? Had he not bequeathed a legacy of hatred
against the Pyncheons to this only grandson, who, as it
appeared, was now about to exercise a subtle influence over
the daughter of his enemy's house? Might not this influence
be the same that was called witchcraft?

Turning half around, he caught a glimpse of Maule's figure
in the looking-glass. At some paces from Alice, with
his arms uplifted in the air, the carpenter made a gesture,
as if directing downward a slow, ponderous, and invisible
weight upon the maiden.

“Stay, Maule!” exclaimed Mr. Pyncheon, stepping forward.
“I forbid your proceeding further!”

“Pray, my dear father, do not interrupt the young man,”
said Alice, without changing her position. “His efforts, I
assure you, will prove very harmless.”

Again Mr. Pyncheon turned his eyes towards the Claude.
It was then his daughter's will, in opposition to his own,
that the experiment should be fully tried. Henceforth,
therefore, he did but consent, not urge it. And was it not
for her sake, far more than for his own, that he desired its
success? That lost parchment once restored, the beautiful
Alice Pyncheon, with the rich dowry which he could then
bestow, might wed an English duke, or a German reigning-prince,
instead of some New England clergyman or lawyer!
At the thought, the ambitious father almost consented, in
his heart, that, if the devil's power were needed to the
accomplishment of this great object, Maule might evoke
him. Alice's own purity would be her safeguard.

With his mind full of imaginary magnificence, Mr. Pyncheon
heard a half-uttered exclamation from his daughter.
It was very faint and low; so indistinct that there seemed
but half a will to shape out the words, and too undefined a
purport to be intelligible. Yet it was a call for help! —
his conscience never doubted it; — and, little more than a
whisper to his ear, it was a dismal shriek, and long reëchoed
so, in the region round his heart! But, this time, the
father did not turn.

After a further interval, Maule spoke.

“Behold your daughter!” said he.

Mr. Pyncheon came hastily forward. The carpenter was
standing erect in front of Alice's chair, and pointing his
finger towards the maiden with an expression of triumphant
power, the limits of which could not be defined, as, indeed,
its scope stretched vaguely towards the unseen and the

infinite. Alice sat in an attitude of profound repose, with
the long brown lashes drooping over her eyes.

“There she is!” said the carpenter. “Speak to her!”

“Alice! My daughter!” exclaimed Mr. Pyncheon.
“My own Alice!”

She did not stir.

“Louder!” said Maule, smiling.

“Alice! Awake!” cried her father. “It troubles me
to see you thus! Awake!”

He spoke loudly, with terror in his voice, and close to
that delicate ear, which had always been so sensitive to
every discord. But the sound evidently reached her not.
It is indescribable what a sense of remote, dim, unattainable
distance, betwixt himself and Alice, was impressed on the
father by this impossibility of reaching her with his voice.

“Best touch her!” said Matthew Maule. “Shake the
girl, and roughly too! My hands are hardened with too
much use of axe, saw, and plane, — else I might help you!”

Mr. Pyncheon took her hand, and pressed it with the
earnestness of startled emotion. He kissed her, with so
great a heart-throb in the kiss, that he thought she must
needs feel it. Then, in a gust of anger at her insensibility,
he shook her maiden form, with a violence which, the next
moment, it affrighted him to remember. He withdrew his
encircling arms, and Alice — whose figure, though flexible,
had been wholly impassive — relapsed into the same attitude
as before these attempts to arouse her. Maule having
shifted his position, her face was turned towards him,
slightly, but with what seemed to be a reference of her very
slumber to his guidance.

Then it was a strange sight to behold how the man of
conventionalities shook the powder out of his periwig; how
the reserved and stately gentleman forgot his dignity; how
the gold-embroidered waistcoat flickered and glistened in

the fire-light, with the convulsion of rage, terror, and sorrow,
in the human heart that was beating under it.

“Villain!” cried Mr. Pyncheon, shaking his clenched
fist at Maule. “You and the fiend together have robbed
me of my daughter! Give her back, spawn of the old wizard,
or you shall climb Gallows Hill in your grandfather's
footsteps!”

“Softly, Mr. Pyncheon!” said the carpenter, with scornful
composure. “Softly, an' it please your worship, else you
will spoil those rich lace ruffles, at your wrists! Is it my
crime if you have sold your daughter for the mere hope
of getting a sheet of yellow parchment into your clutch?
There sits Mistress Alice, quietly asleep! Now let
Matthew Maule try whether she be as proud as the carpenter
found her a while since.”

He spoke, and Alice responded, with a soft, subdued,
inward acquiescence, and a bending of her form towards
him, like the flame of a torch when it indicates a gentle
draft of air. He beckoned with his hand, and, rising from
her chair, — blindly, but undoubtingly, as tending to her
sure and inevitable centre, — the proud Alice approached
him. He waved her back, and, retreating, Alice sank again
into her seat.

“She is mine!” said Matthew Maule. “Mine, by the
right of the strongest spirit!”

In the further progress of the legend, there is a long, grotesque,
and occasionally awe-striking account of the carpenter's
incantations (if so they are to be called), with a view
of discovering the lost document. It appears to have been
his object to convert the mind of Alice into a kind of telescopic
medium, through which Mr. Pyncheon and himself
might obtain a glimpse into the spiritual world. He succeeded,
accordingly, in holding an imperfect sort of intercourse,
at one remove, with the departed personages, in

whose custody the so much valued secret had been carried
beyond the precincts of earth. During her trance, Alice
described three figures as being present to her spiritualized
perception. One was an aged, dignified, stern-looking
gentleman, clad, as for a solemn festival, in grave and costly
attire, but with a great blood-stain on his richly-wrought
band; the second, an aged man, meanly dressed, with a
dark and malign countenance, and a broken halter about his
neck; the third, a person not so advanced in life as the
former two, but beyond the middle age, wearing a coarse
woollen tunic and leather breeches, and with a carpenter's
rule sticking out of his side-pocket. These three visionary
characters possessed a mutual knowledge of the missing
document. One of them, in truth, — it was he with the
blood-stain on his band, — seemed, unless his gestures were
misunderstood, to hold the parchment in his immediate
keeping, but was prevented, by his two partners in the
mystery, from disburthening himself of the trust. Finally,
when he showed a purpose of shouting forth the secret,
loudly enough to be heard from his own sphere into that of
mortals, his companions struggled with him, and pressed
their hands over his mouth; and forthwith — whether that
he were choked by it, or that the secret itself was of a crimson
hue — there was a fresh flow of blood upon his band.
Upon this, the two meanly-dressed figures mocked and
jeered at the much-abashed old dignitary, and pointed their
fingers at the stain.

At this juncture, Maule turned to Mr. Pyncheon.

“It will never be allowed,” said he. “The custody of this
secret, that would so enrich his heirs, makes part of your
grandfather's retribution. He must choke with it until it is
no longer of any value. And keep you the House of the
Seven Gables! It is too dear-bought an inheritance, and

too heavy with the curse upon it, to be shifted yet a while
from the colonel's posterity!”

Mr. Pyncheon tried to speak, but — what with fear and
passion — could make only a gurgling murmur in his throat.
The carpenter smiled.

“Aha, worshipful sir! — so, you have old Maule's blood to
drink!” said he jeeringly.

“Fiend in man's shape! why dost thou keep dominion
over my child?” cried Mr. Pyncheon, when his choked
utterance could make way. “Give me back my daughter!
Then go thy ways; and may we never meet again!”

“Your daughter!” said Matthew Maule. “Why, she is
fairly mine! Nevertheless, not to be too hard with fair
Mistress Alice, I will leave her in your keeping; but I do
not warrant you that she shall never have occasion to remember
Maule, the carpenter.”

He waved his hands with an upward motion; and, after
a few repetitions of similar gestures, the beautiful Alice
Pyncheon awoke from her strange trance. She awoke,
without the slightest recollection of her visionary experience;
but as one losing herself in a momentary reverie,
and returning to the consciousness of actual life, in almost
as brief an interval as the down-sinking flame of the hearth
should quiver again up the chimney. On recognizing Matthew
Maule, she assumed an air of somewhat cold but
gentle dignity; the rather, as there was a certain peculiar
smile on the carpenter's visage, that stirred the native
pride of the fair Alice. So ended, for that time, the quest
for the lost title-deed of the Pyncheon territory at the
eastward; nor, though often subsequently renewed, has it
ever yet befallen a Pyncheon to set his eye upon that
parchment.

But, alas for the beautiful, the gentle, yet too haughty
Alice! A power, that she little dreamed of, had laid its

grasp upon her maiden soul. A will, most unlike her own,
constrained her to do its grotesque and fantastic bidding.
Her father, as it proved, had martyred his poor child to an
inordinate desire for measuring his land by miles, instead
of acres. And, therefore, while Alice Pyncheon lived, she
was Maule's slave, in a bondage more humiliating, a thousand
fold, than that which binds its chain around the
body. Seated by his humble fireside, Maule had but to wave
his hand; and, wherever the proud lady chanced to be, —
whether in her chamber, or entertaining her father's stately
guests, or worshipping at church, — whatever her place or
occupation, her spirit passed from beneath her own control,
and bowed itself to Maule. “Alice, laugh!” — the carpenter,
beside his hearth, would say; or perhaps intensely
will it, without a spoken word. And, even were it prayer-time,
or at a funeral, Alice must break into wild laughter.
“Alice, be sad!” — and, at the instant, down would come
her tears, quenching all the mirth of those around her, like
sudden rain upon a bonfire. “Alice, dance!” — and dance
she would, not in such court-like measures as she had
learned abroad, but some high-paced jig, or hop-skip rigadoon,
befitting the brisk lasses at a rustic merry-making.
It seemed to be Maule's impulse not to ruin Alice, nor to
visit her with any black or gigantic mischief, which would
have crowned her sorrows with the grace of tragedy, but to
wreak a low, ungenerous scorn upon her. Thus all the
dignity of life was lost. She felt herself too much abased,
and longed to change natures with some worm!

One evening, at a bridal-party — (but not her own; for,
so lost from self-control, she would have deemed it sin to
marry) — poor Alice was beckoned forth by her unseen despot,
and constrained, in her gossamer white dress and satin
slippers, to hasten along the street to the mean dwelling of
a laboring-man. There was laughter and good cheer

within; for Matthew Maule, that night, was to wed the
laborer's daughter, and had summoned proud Alice Pyncheon
to wait upon his bride. And so she did; and when
the twain were one, Alice awoke out of her enchanted
sleep. Yet, no longer proud, — humbly, and with a smile
all steeped in sadness, — she kissed Maule's wife, and went
her way. It was an inclement night; the south-east wind
drove the mingled snow and rain into her thinly-sheltered
bosom; her satin slippers were wet through and through,
as she trod the muddy sidewalks. The next day, a cold;
soon, a settled cough; anon, a hectic cheek, a wasted form,
that sat beside the harpsichord, and filled the house with
music! Music, in which a strain of the heavenly choristers
was echoed! O, joy! For Alice had borne her last humiliation!
O, greater joy! For Alice was penitent of
her one earthly sin, and proud no more!

The Pyncheons made a great funeral for Alice. The kith
and kin were there, and the whole respectability of the town
besides. But, last in the procession, came Matthew Maule,
gnashing his teeth, as if he would have bitten his own heart
in twain — the darkest and wofullest man that ever walked
behind a corpse! He meant to humble Alice — not to kill
her; — but he had taken a woman's delicate soul into his
rude gripe, to play with, — and she was dead!