University of Virginia Library

16. XVI.
CLIFFORD'S CHAMBER.

Never had the old house appeared so dismal to poor
Hepzibah as when she departed on that wretched errand.
There was a strange aspect in it. As she trode along the
foot-worn passages, and opened one crazy door after another,
and ascended the creaking stair-case, she gazed wistfully
and fearfully around. It would have been no marvel, to her
excited mind, if, behind or beside her, there had been the
rustle of dead people's garments, or pale visages awaiting
her on the landing-place above. Her nerves were set all
ajar by the scene of passion and terror through which she
had just struggled. Her colloquy with Judge Pyncheon,
who so perfectly represented the person and attributes of
the founder of the family, had called back the dreary past.
It weighed upon her heart. Whatever she had heard, from
legendary aunts and grandmothers, concerning the good or
evil fortunes of the Pyncheons, — stories which had heretofore
been kept warm in her remembrance by the chimney-corner
glow that was associated with them, — now recurred
to her, sombre, ghastly, cold, like most passages of family
history, when brooded over in melancholy mood. The
whole seemed little else but a series of calamity, reproducing
itself in successive generations, with one general hue, and
varying in little, save the outline. But Hepzibah now felt as
if the judge, and Clifford, and herself, — they three together,
— were on the point of adding another incident to the
annals of the house, with a bolder relief of wrong and sorrow,

which would cause it to stand out from all the rest.
Thus it is that the grief of the passing moment takes upon
itself an individuality, and a character of climax, which it
is destined to lose, after a while, and to fade into the dark
gray tissue common to the grave or glad events of many
years ago. It is but for a moment, comparatively, that anything
looks strange or startling; — a truth that has the
bitter and the sweet in it.

But Hepzibah could not rid herself of the sense of
something unprecedented at that instant passing, and soon
to be accomplished. Her nerves were in a shake. Instinctively
she paused before the arched window, and looked out
upon the street, in order to seize its permanent objects with
her mental grasp, and thus to steady herself from the reel
and vibration which affected her more immediate sphere.
It brought her up, as we may say, with a kind of shock,
when she beheld everything under the same appearance as
the day before, and numberless preceding days, except for
the difference between sunshine and sullen storm. Her eyes
travelled along the street, from door-step to door-step, noting
the wet sidewalks, with here and there a puddle in hollows
that had been imperceptible until filled with water.
She screwed her dim optics to their acutest point, in the hope
of making out, with greater distinctness, a certain window,
where she half saw, half guessed, that a tailor's seamstress
was sitting at her work. Hepzibah flung herself upon that
unknown woman's companionship, even thus far off. Then
she was attracted by a chaise rapidly passing, and watched
its moist and glistening top, and its splashing wheels, until
it had turned the corner, and refused to carry any further
her idly trifling, because appalled and overburthened, mind.
When the vehicle had disappeared, she allowed herself still
another loitering moment; for the patched figure of good

Uncle Venner was now visible, coming slowly from the head
of the street downward, with a rheumatic limp, because the
east wind had got into his joints. Hepzibah wished that he
would pass yet more slowly, and befriend her shivering solitude
a little longer. Anything that would take her out of
the grievous present, and interpose human beings betwixt
herself and what was nearest to her, — whatever would
defer, for an instant, the inevitable errand on which she was
bound, — all such impediments were welcome. Next to the
lightest heart, the heaviest is apt to be most playful.

Hepzibah had little hardihood for her own proper pain,
and far less for what she must inflict on Clifford. Of so
slight a nature, and so shattered by his previous calamities,
it could not well be short of utter ruin to bring him face to
face with the hard, relentless man, who had been his evil
destiny through life. Even had there been no bitter recollections,
nor any hostile interest now at stake between
them, the mere natural repugnance of the more sensitive
system to the massive, weighty, and unimpressible one,
must, in itself, have been disastrous to the former. It would
be like flinging a porcelain vase, with already a crack in it,
against a granite column. Never before had Hepzibah so
adequately estimated the powerful character of her cousin
Jaffrey, — powerful by intellect, energy of will, the long
habit of acting among men, and, as she believed, by his
unscrupulous pursuit of selfish ends through evil means.
It did but increase the difficulty, that Judge Pyncheon was
under a delusion as to the secret which he supposed Clifford
to possess. Men of his strength of purpose, and customary
sagacity, if they chance to adopt a mistaken opinion in practical
matters, so wedge it and fasten it among things known
to be true, that to wrench it out of their minds is hardly less
difficult than pulling up an oak. Thus, as the judge

required an impossibility of Clifford, the latter, as he could
not perform it, must needs perish. For what, in the grasp
of a man like this, was to become of Clifford's soft, poetic
nature, that never should have had a task more stubborn
than to set a life of beautiful enjoyment to the flow and
rhythm of musical cadences! Indeed, what had become of
it already? Broken! Blighted! All but annihilated!
Soon to be wholly so!

For a moment, the thought crossed Hepzibah's mind,
whether Clifford might not really have such knowledge of
their deceased uncle's vanished estate as the judge imputed
to him. She remembered some vague intimations, on her
brother's part, which — if the supposition were not essentially
preposterous — might have been so interpreted. There
had been schemes of travel and residence abroad, day-dreams
of brilliant life at home, and splendid castles in the
air, which it would have required boundless wealth to build
and realize. Had this wealth been in her power, how
gladly would Hepzibah have bestowed it all upon her iron-hearted
kinsman, to buy for Clifford the freedom and seclusion
of the desolate old house! But she believed that her
brother's schemes were as destitute of actual substance and
purpose as a child's pictures of its future life, while sitting
in a little chair by its mother's knee. Clifford had none
but shadowy gold at his command; and it was not the stuff
to satisfy Judge Pyncheon!

Was there no help, in their extremity? It seemed strange
that there should be none, with a city round about her. It
would be so easy to throw up the window, and send forth a
shriek, at the strange agony of which everybody would
come hastening to the rescue, well understanding it to be
the cry of a human soul, at some dreadful crisis! But how
wild, how almost laughable, the fatality, — and yet how

continually it comes to pass, thought Hepzibah, in this dull
delirium of a world, — that whosoever, and with however
kindly a purpose, should come to help, they would be sure
to help the strongest side! Might and wrong combined,
like iron magnetized, are endowed with irresistible attraction.
There would be Judge Pyncheon, — a person eminent
in the public view, of high station and great wealth, a
philanthropist, a member of congress and of the church,
and intimately associated with whatever else bestows good
name, — so imposing, in these advantageous lights, that
Hepzibah herself could hardly help shrinking from her own
conclusions as to his hollow integrity. The judge, on one
side! And who, on the other? The guilty Clifford! Once
a by-word! Now, an indistinctly-remembered ignominy!

Nevertheless, in spite of this perception that the judge
would draw all human aid to his own behalf, Hepzibah was
so unaccustomed to act for herself, that the least word of
counsel would have swayed her to any mode of action.
Little Phœbe Pyncheon would at once have lighted up the
whole scene, if not by any available suggestion, yet simply
by the warm vivacity of her character. The idea of the
artist occurred to Hepzibah. Young and unknown, mere
vagrant adventurer as he was, she had been conscious of a
force in Holgrave which might well adapt him to be the
champion of a crisis. With this thought in her mind, she
unbolted a door, cobwebbed and long disused, but which
had served as a former medium of communication between
her own part of the house and the gable where the wandering
daguerreotypist had now established his temporary
home. He was not there. A book, face downward, on
the table, a roll of manuscript, a half-written sheet, a newspaper,
some tools of his present occupation, and several
rejected daguerreotypes, conveyed an impression as if he

were close at hand. But, at this period of the day, as
Hepzibah might have anticipated, the artist was at his public
rooms. With an impulse of idle curiosity, that flickered
among her heavy thoughts, she looked at one of the daguerreotypes,
and beheld Judge Pyncheon frowning at her!
Fate stared her in the face. She turned back from her
fruitless quest, with a heart-sinking sense of disappointment.
In all her years of seclusion, she had never felt, as
now, what it was to be alone. It seemed as if the house
stood in a desert, or, by some spell, was made invisible to
those who dwelt around, or passed beside it; so that any
mode of misfortune, miserable accident, or crime, might
happen in it, without the possibility of aid. In her grief
and wounded pride, Hepzibah had spent her life in divesting
herself of friends; — she had wilfully cast off the support
which God has ordained his creatures to need from one
another; — and it was now her punishment, that Clifford
and herself would fall the easier victims to their kindred
enemy.

Returning to the arched window, she lifted her eyes, —
scowling, poor, dim-sighted Hepzibah, in the face of Heaven!
— and strove hard to send up a prayer through the dense
gray pavement of clouds. Those mists had gathered, as if
to symbolize a great, brooding mass of human trouble, doubt,
confusion, and chill indifference, between earth and the better
regions. Her faith was too weak; the prayer too heavy
to be thus uplifted. It fell back, a lump of lead, upon her
heart. It smote her with the wretched conviction that
Providence intermeddled not in these petty wrongs of one
individual to his fellow, nor had any balm for these little
agonies of a solitary soul; but shed its justice, and its mercy,
in a broad, sunlike sweep, over half the universe at once.
Its vastness made it nothing. But Hepzibah did not see

that, just as there comes a warm sunbeam into every cottage
window, so comes a love-beam of God's care and pity,
for every separate need.

At last, finding no other pretext for deferring the torture
that she was to inflict on Clifford, — her reluctance to which
was the true cause of her loitering at the window, her
search for the artist, and even her abortive prayer, — dreading,
also, to hear the stern voice of Judge Pyncheon from
below stairs, chiding her delay, — she crept slowly, a pale,
grief-stricken figure, a dismal shape of woman, with almost
torpid limbs, slowly to her brother's door, and knocked!

There was no reply!

And how should there have been? Her hand, tremulous
with the shrinking purpose which directed it, had smitten
so feebly against the door that the sound could hardly have
gone inward. She knocked again. Still, no response!
Nor was it to be wondered at. She had struck with the
entire force of her heart's vibration, communicating, by some
subtle magnetism, her own terror to the summons. Clifford
would turn his face to the pillow, and cover his head
beneath the bed-clothes, like a startled child at midnight.
She knocked a third time, three regular strokes, gentle, but
perfectly distinct, and with meaning in them; for, modulate
it with what cautious art we will, the hand cannot help
playing some tune of what we feel, upon the senseless
wood.

Clifford returned no answer.

“Clifford! dear brother!” said Hepzibah. “Shall I come
in?”

A silence.

Two or three times, and more, Hepzibah repeated his
name, without result; till, thinking her brother's sleep
unwontedly profound, she undid the door, and entering,

found the chamber vacant. How could he have come forth,
and when, without her knowledge? Was it possible that,
in spite of the stormy day, and worn out with the irksomeness
within doors, he had betaken himself to his customary
haunt in the garden, and was now shivering under the
cheerless shelter of the summer-house? She hastily threw
up a window, thrust forth her turbaned head and the half
of her gaunt figure, and searched the whole garden through,
as completely as her dim vision would allow. She could
see the interior of the summer-house, and its circular seat,
kept moist by the droppings of the roof. It had no occupant.
Clifford was not thereabouts; unless, indeed, he had
crept for concealment — (as, for a moment, Hepzibah fancied
might be the case) — into a great wet mass of tangled and
broad-leaved shadow, where the squash-vines were clambering
tumultuously upon an old wooden frame-work, set casually
aslant against the fence. This could not be, however;
he was not there; for, while Hepzibah was looking, a
strange grimalkin stole forth from the very spot, and picked
his way across the garden. Twice he paused to snuff the
air, and then anew directed his course towards the parlor-window.
Whether it was only on account of the stealthy,
prying manner common to the race, or that this cat seemed
to have more than ordinary mischief in his thoughts, the
old gentlewoman, in spite of her much perplexity, felt an
impulse to drive the animal away, and accordingly flung
down a window-stick. The cat stared up at her, like a
detected thief or murderer, and, the next instant, took to
flight. No other living creature was visible in the garden.
Chanticleer and his family had either not left their roost,
disheartened by the interminable rain, or had done the
next wisest thing, by seasonably returning to it. Hepzibah
closed the window.

But where was Clifford? Could it be, that, aware of the
presence of his Evil Destiny, he had crept silently down the
staircase, while the judge and Hepzibah stood talking in the
shop, and had softly undone the fastenings of the outer door,
and made his escape into the street? With that thought,
she seemed to behold his gray, wrinkled, yet childlike aspect,
in the old-fashioned garments which he wore about the
house; a figure such as one sometimes imagines himself to
be, with the world's eye upon him, in a troubled dream.
This figure of her wretched brother would go wandering
through the city, attracting all eyes, and everybody's wonder
and repugnance, like a ghost, the more to be shuddered
at because visible at noontide. To incur the ridicule of the
younger crowd, that knew him not, — the harsher scorn and
indignation of a few old men, who might recall his once
familiar features! To be the sport of boys, who, when old
enough to run about the streets, have no more reverence for
what is beautiful and holy, nor pity for what is sad, — no
more sense of sacred misery, sanctifying the human shape
in which it embodies itself, — than if Satan were the father
of them all! Goaded by their taunts, their loud, shrill
cries, and cruel laughter, — insulted by the filth of the public
ways, which they would fling upon him, — or, as it
might well be, distracted by the mere strangeness of his
situation, though nobody should afflict him with so much as
a thoughtless word, — what wonder if Clifford were to
break into some wild extravagance, which was certain to be
interpreted as lunacy? Thus Judge Pyncheon's fiendish
scheme would be ready accomplished to his hands!

Then Hepzibah reflected that the town was almost completely
water-girdled. The wharves stretched out towards
the centre of the harbor, and, in this inclement weather,
were deserted by the ordinary throng of merchants, laborers,

and sea-faring men; each wharf a solitude, with the vessels
moored stem and stern, along its misty length. Should her
brother's aimless footsteps stray thitherward, and he but
bend, one moment, over the deep, black tide, would he not
bethink himself that here was the sure refuge within his
reach, and that, with a single step, or the slightest overbalance
of his body, he might be forever beyond his kinsman's
gripe? O, the temptation! To make of his ponderous
sorrow a security! To sink, with its leaden weight upon
him, and never rise again!

The horror of this last conception was too much for Hepzibah.
Even Jaffrey Pyncheon must help her now! She
hastened down the staircase, shrieking as she went.

“Clifford is gone!” she cried. “I cannot find my
brother! Help, Jaffrey Pyncheon! Some harm will happen
to him!”

She threw open the parlor-door. But, what with the
shade of branches across the windows, and the smoke-blackened
ceiling, and the dark oak-panelling of the walls,
there was hardly so much daylight in the room that Hepzibah's
imperfect sight could accurately distinguish the
judge's figure. She was certain, however, that she saw
him sitting in the ancestral arm-chair, near the centre of
the floor, with his face somewhat averted, and looking towards
a window. So firm and quiet is the nervous system
of such men as Judge Pyncheon, that he had perhaps
stirred not more than once since her departure, but, in the
hard composure of his temperament, retained the position
into which accident had thrown him.

“I tell you, Jaffrey,” cried Hepzibah, impatiently, as she
turned from the parlor-door to search other rooms, “my
brother is not in his chamber! You must help me seek
him!”

But Judge Pyncheon was not the man to let himself be
startled from an easy-chair with haste ill-befitting either
the dignity of his character or his broad personal basis, by
the alarm of an hysteric woman. Yet, considering his own
interest in the matter, he might have bestirred himself with
a little more alacrity.

“Do you hear me, Jaffrey Pyncheon?” screamed Hepzibah,
as she again approached the parlor-door, after an ineffectual
search elsewhere. “Clifford is gone!”

At this instant, on the threshold of the parlor, emerging
from within, appeared Clifford himself! His face was preternaturally
pale; so deadly white, indeed, that, through all
the glimmering indistinctness of the passage-way, Hepzibah
could discern his features, as if a light fell on them alone.
Their vivid and wild expression seemed likewise sufficient
to illuminate them; it was an expression of scorn and mockery,
coinciding with the emotions indicated by his gesture.
As Clifford stood on the threshold, partly turning back, he
pointed his finger within the parlor, and shook it slowly,
as though he would have summoned, not Hepzibah alone,
but the whole world, to gaze at some object inconceivably
ridiculous. This action, so ill-timed and extravagant, —
accompanied, too, with a look that showed more like joy
than any other kind of excitement, — compelled Hepzibah
to dread that her stern kinsman's ominous visit had driven
her poor brother to absolute insanity. Nor could she otherwise
account for the judge's quiescent mood than by supposing
him craftily on the watch, while Clifford developed
these symptoms of a distracted mind.

“Be quiet, Clifford!” whispered his sister, raising her
hand, to impress caution. “O, for Heaven's sake, be
quiet!”

“Let him be quiet! What can he do better?” answered

Clifford, with a still wilder gesture, pointing into the room
which he had just quitted. “As for us, Hepzibah, we can
dance now! — we can sing, laugh, play, do what we will!
The weight is gone, Hepzibah! it is gone off this weary old
world; and we may be as light-hearted as little Phœbe herself!”

And, in accordance with his words, he began to laugh,
still pointing his finger at the object, invisible to Hepzibah,
within the parlor. She was seized with a sudden intuition
of some horrible thing. She thrust herself past Clifford,
and disappeared into the room; but almost immediately
returned, with a cry choking in her throat. Gazing at her
brother, with an affrighted glance of inquiry, she beheld
him all in a tremor and a quake, from head to foot, while,
amid these commoted elements of passion or alarm, still
flickered his gusty mirth.

“My God! what is to become of us?” gasped Hepzibah.

“Come!” said Clifford, in a tone of brief decision, most
unlike what was usual with him. “We stay here too
long! Let us leave the old house to our cousin Jaffrey!
He will take good care of it!”

Hepzibah now noticed that Clifford had on a cloak, — a
garment of long ago, — in which he had constantly muffled
himself during these days of easterly storm. He beckoned
with his hand, and intimated, so far as she could comprehend
him, his purpose that they should go together from
the house. There are chaotic, blind, or drunken moments,
in the lives of persons who lack real force of character, —
moments of test, in which courage would most assert itself,
— but where these individuals, if left to themselves, stagger
aimlessly along, or follow implicitly whatever guidance may
befall them, even if it be a child's. No matter how preposterous
or insane, a purpose is a God-send to them. Hepzibah

had reached this point. Unaccustomed to action or
responsibility, — full of horror at what she had seen, and
afraid to inquire, or almost to imagine, how it had come to
pass, — affirghted at the fatality which seemed to pursue
her brother, — stupefied by the dim, thick, stifling atmosphere
of dread, which filled the house as with a death-smell,
and obliterated all definiteness of thought, — she yielded
without a question, and on the instant, to the will which
Clifford expressed. For herself, she was like a person in a
dream, when the will always sleeps. Clifford, ordinarily so
destitute of this faculty, had found it in the tension of the
crisis.

“Why do you delay so?” cried he, sharply. “Put on
your cloak and hood, or whatever it pleases you to wear!
No matter what; — you cannot look beautiful nor brilliant,
my poor Hepzibah! Take your purse, with money in it,
and come along!”

Hepzibah obeyed these instructions, as if nothing else
were to be done or thought of. She began to wonder, it is
true, why she did not wake up, and at what still more
intolerable pitch of dizzy trouble her spirit would struggle
out of the maze, and make her conscious that nothing of all
this had actually happened. Of course, it was not real; no
such black, easterly day as this had yet begun to be; Judge
Pyncheon had not talked with her; Clifford had not laughed,
pointed, beckoned her away with him; but she had merely
been afflicted — as lonely sleepers often are — with a great
deal of unreasonable misery, in a morning dream!

“Now — now — I shall certainly awake!” thought Hepzibah,
as she went to and fro, making her little preparations.
“I can bear it no longer! I must wake up now!”

But it came not, that awakening moment! It came not,
even when, just before they left the house, Clifford stole to

the parlor-door, and made a parting obeisance to the sole
occupant of the room.

“What an absurd figure the old fellow cuts now!” whispered
he to Hepzibah. “Just when he fancied he had me
completely under his thumb! Come, come; make haste!
or he will start up, like Giant Despair in pursuit of Christian
and Hopeful, and catch us yet!”

As they passed into the street, Clifford directed Hepzibah's
attention to something on one of the posts of the front
door. It was merely the initials of his own name, which,
with somewhat of his characteristic grace about the forms
of the letters, he had cut there, when a boy. The brother
and sister departed, and left Judge Pyncheon sitting in the
old home of his forefathers, all by himself; so heavy and
lumpish that we can liken him to nothing better than a
defunct nightmare, which had perished in the midst of its
wickedness, and left its flabby corpse on the breast of the
tormented one, to be gotten rid of as it might!