HOLGRAVE, plunging into his tale with the energy and absorption
natural to a young author, had given a good deal of action to the
parts capable of being developed and exemplified in that manner.
He now observed that a certain remarkable drowsiness (wholly
unlike that with which the reader possibly feels himself affected)
had been flung over the senses of his auditress. It was the
effect, unquestionably, of the mystic gesticulations by which he
had sought to bring bodily before Phoebe's perception the figure
of the mesmerizing carpenter. With the lids drooping over her
eyes,--now lifted, for an instant, and drawn down again, as with
leaden weights,--she leaned slightly towards him, and seemed
almost to regulate her breath by his. Holgrave gazed at her, as he
rolled up his manuscript, and recognized an incipient stage of
that curious psychological condition, which, as he had himself
told Phoebe, he possessed more than an ordinary faculty of
producing. A veil was beginning to be muffled about her, in which
she could behold only him, and live only in his thoughts and
emotions. His glance, as he fastened it on the young girl, grew
involuntarily more concentrated; in his attitude there was the
consciousness of power, investing his hardly mature figure with a
dignity that did not belong to its physical manifestation. It was
evident, that, with but one wave of his hand and a corresponding
effort of his will, he could complete his mastery over Phoebe's
yet free and virgin spirit: he could establish an influence over
this good, pure, and simple child, as dangerous, and perhaps as
disastrous, as that which the carpenter of his legend had acquired
and exercised over the ill-fated Alice.
To a disposition like Holgrave's, at once speculative and active,
there is no temptation so great as the opportunity of acquiring
empire over the human spirit; nor any idea more seductive to a
young man than to become the arbiter of a young girl's destiny.
Let us, therefore,--whatever his defects of nature and education,
and in spite of his scorn for creeds and institutions,--concede to
the daguerreotypist the rare and high quality of reverence for
another's individuality. Let us allow him integrity, also, for
ever after to be confided in; since he forbade himself to twine
that one link more which might have rendered his spell over Phoebe
indissoluble.
He made a slight a gesture upward with his hand.
"You really mortify me, my dear Miss Phoebe!" he exclaimed smiling
half-sarcastically at her. "My poor story, it is but too evident,
will never do for Godey or Graham! Only think of your falling
asleep at what I hoped the newspaper critics would pronounce a
most brilliant, powerful, imaginative, pathetic, and original
winding up! Well, the manuscript must serve to light lamps
with;--if, indeed, being so imbued with my gentle dulness, it is
any longer capable of flame!"
"Me asleep! How can you say so?" answered Phoebe, as unconscious
of the crisis through which she had passed as an infant of the
precipice to the verge of which it has rolled. "No, no! I consider
myself as having been very attentive; and, though I don't remember
the incidents quite distinctly, yet I have an impression of a vast
deal of trouble and calamity,--so, no doubt, the story will prove
exceedingly attractive."
By this time, the sun had gone down, and was tinting the clouds
towards the zenith with those bright hues which are not seen there
until some time after sunset, and when the horizon has quite lost
its richer brilliancy. The moon, too, which had long been climbing
overhead, and unobtrusively melting its disk into the azure,--like
an ambitious demagogue, who hides his aspiring purpose by assuming
the prevalent hue of popular sentiment,--now began to shine out,
broad and oval, in its middle pathway. These silvery beams were
already powerful enough to change the character of the lingering
daylight. They softened and embellished the aspect of the old
house; although the shadows fell deeper into the angles of its
many gables, and lay brooding under the projecting story, and
within the half-open door. With the lapse of every moment, the
garden grew more picturesque; the fruit-trees, shrubbery, and
flower-bushes had a dark obscurity among them. The common-place
characteristics,--which, at noontide, it seemed to have taken a
century of sordid life to accumulate,--were now transfigured by a
charm of romance. A hundred mysterious years were whispering among
the leaves, whenever the slight sea-breeze found its way thither
and stirred them. Through the foliage that roofed the little
summer-house the moonlight flickered to and fro, and fell silvery
white on the dark floor, the table, and the circular bench, with a
continual shift and play, according as the chinks and wayward
crevices among the twigs admitted or shut out the glimmer.
So sweetly cool was the atmosphere, after all the feverish day,
that the summer eve might be fancied as sprinkling dews and liquid
moonlight, with a dash of icy temper in them, out of a silver
vase. Here and there a few drops of this freshness were scattered
on a human heart, and gave it youth again, and sympathy with the
eternal youth of nature. The artist chanced to be one on whom the
reviving influence fell. It made him feel--what he sometimes
almost forgot, thrust so early as he had been into the rude
struggle of man with man--how youthful he still was.
"It seems to me," he observed, "that I never watched the coming of
so beautiful an eve, and never felt anything so very much like
happiness as at this moment. After all, what a good world we live
in! How good, and beautiful! How young it is, too, with nothing
really rotten or age-worn in it! This old house, for example,
which sometimes has positively oppressed my breath with its smell
of decaying timber! And this garden, where the black mould always
clings to my spade, as if I were a sexton, delving in a
grave-yard! Could I keep the feeling that now possesses me, the
garden would every day be virgin soil, with the earth's first
freshness in the flavor of its beans and squashes; and the
house!--it would be like a bower in Eden, blossoming with the
earliest roses that God ever made. Moonlight, and the sentiment in
man's heart responsive to it, are the greatest of renovators and
reformers. And all other reform and renovation, I suppose, will
prove to be no better than moonshine!"
"I have been happier than I am now; at least, much gayer," said
Phoebe, thoughtfully. "Yet I am sensible of a great charm in this
brightening moonlight; and I love to watch how the day, tired as
it is, lags away reluctantly, and hates to be called yesterday so
soon. I never cared much about moonlight before. What is there, I
wonder, so beautiful in it, to-night?"
"And you have never felt it before?" inquired the artist, looking
earnestly at the girl, through the twilight.
"Never," answered Phoebe; "and life does not look the same, now
that I have felt it so. It seems as if I had looked at everything,
hitherto, in broad daylight, or else in the ruddy light of a
cheerful fire, glimmering and dancing through a room. Ah, poor
me!" she added, with a half-melancholy laugh. "I shall never be so
merry as before I knew Cousin Hepzibah and poor Cousin Clifford. I
have grown a great deal older, in this little time. Older, and, I
hope, wiser, and,--not exactly sadder,--but, certainly, with not
half so much lightness in my spirits! I have given them my
sunshine, and have been glad to give it; but, of course, I cannot
both give and keep it. They are welcome, notwithstanding!"
"You have lost nothing, Phoebe, worth keeping, nor which it was
possible to keep," said Holgrave, after a pause. "Our first youth
is of no value; for we are never conscious of it, until after it
is gone. But sometimes,--always, I suspect, unless one is
exceedingly unfortunate--there comes a sense of second youth,
gushing out of the heart's joy at being in love; or, possibly, it
may come to crown some other grand festival in life, if any other
such there be. This bemoaning of one's self (as you do now) over
the first, careless, shallow gayety of youth departed, and this
profound happiness at youth regained,--so much deeper and richer
than that we lost,--are essential to the soul's development. In
some cases, the two states come almost simultaneously, and mingle
the sadness and the rapture in one mysterious emotion."
"I hardly think I understand you," said Phoebe.
"No wonder," replied Holgrave, smiling; "for I have told you a
secret which I hardly began to know, before I found myself giving
it utterance. Remember it, however; and when the truth becomes
clear to you, then think of this moonlight scene!"
"It is entirely moonlight now, except only a little flush of faint
crimson, upward from the west, between those buildings," remarked
Phoebe. "I must go in. Cousin Hepzibah is not quick at figures,
and will give herself a headache over the day's accounts, unless I
help her."
But Holgrave detained her a little longer.
"Miss Hepzibah tells me," observed he, "that you return to the
country, in a few days."
"Yes, but only for a little while," answered Phoebe; "for I look
upon this as my present home. I go to make a few arrangements, and
to take a more deliberate leave of my mother and friends. It is
pleasant to live where one is much desired, and very useful; and I
think I may have the satisfaction of feeling myself so, here."
"You surely may, and more than you imagine," said the artist.
"Whatever health, comfort, and natural life exists in the house,
is embodied in your person. These blessings came along with you,
and will vanish when you leave the threshold. Miss Hepzibah, by
secluding herself from society, has lost all true relation with
it, and is, in fact, dead; although she galvanizes herself into a
semblance of life, and stands behind her counter, afflicting the
world with a greatly-to-be-deprecated scowl. Your poor cousin
Clifford is another dead and long-buried person, on whom the
governor and council have wrought a necromantic miracle. I should
not wonder if he were to crumble away, some morning, after you are
gone, and nothing be seen of him more, except a heap of dust. Miss
Hepzibah, at any rate, will lose what little flexibility she has.
They both exist by you."
"I should be very sorry to think so," answered Phoebe, gravely.
"But it is true that my small abilities were precisely what they
needed; and I have a real interest in their welfare,--an odd kind
of motherly sentiment,--which I wish you would not laugh at! And
let me tell you frankly, Mr. Holgrave, I am sometimes puzzled to
know whether you wish them well or ill."
"Undoubtedly," said the daguerreotypist, "I do feel an interest in
this antiquated, poverty-stricken old maiden lady, and this
degraded and shattered gentleman,--this abortive lover of the
beautiful. A kindly interest, too, helpless old children that they
are! But you have no conception what a different kind of heart
mine is from your own. It is not my impulse, as regards these two
individuals, either to help or hinder; but to look on, to analyze,
to explain matters to myself, and to comprehend the drama which,
for almost two hundred years, has been dragging its slow length
over the ground where you and I now tread. If permitted to witness
the close, I doubt not to derive a moral satisfaction from it, go
matters how they may. There is a conviction within me that the end
draws nigh. But, though Providence sent you hither to help, and
sent me only as a privileged and meet spectator, I pledge myself
to lend these unfortunate beings whatever aid I can!"
"I wish you would speak more plainly," cried Phoebe, perplexed and
displeased; "and, above all, that you would feel more like a
Christian and a human being! How is it possible to see people in
distress, without desiring, more than anything else, to help and
comfort them? You talk as if this old house were a theatre; and
you seem to look at Hepzibah's and Clifford's misfortunes, and
those of generations before them, as a tragedy, such as I have
seen acted in the hall of a country hotel, only the present one
appears to be played exclusively for your amusement. I do not like
this. The play costs the performers too much, and the audience is
too cold-hearted."
"You are severe," said Holgrave, compelled to recognize a degree
of truth in this piquant sketch of his own mood.
"And then," continued Phoebe, "what can you mean by your
conviction, which you tell me of, that the end is drawing near? Do
you know of any new trouble hanging over my poor relatives? If so,
tell me at once, and I will not leave them!"
"Forgive me, Phoebe!" said the daguerreotypist, holding out his
hand, to which the girl was constrained to yield her own. "I am
somewhat of a mystic, it must be confessed. The tendency is in my
blood, together with the faculty of mesmerism, which might have
brought me to Gallows Hill, in the good old times of witchcraft.
Believe me, if I were really aware of any secret, the disclosure
of which would benefit your friends,--who are my own friends,
likewise,--you should learn it before we part. But I have no such
knowledge."
"You hold something back! "said Phoebe.
"Nothing,--no secrets but my own," answered Holgrave. "I can
perceive, indeed, that Judge Pyncheon still keeps his eye on
Clifford, in whose ruin he had so large a share. His motives and
intentions, however, are a mystery to me. He is a determined and
relentless man, with the genuine character of an inquisitor; and
had he any object to gain by putting Clifford to the rack, I
verily believe that he would wrench his joints from their sockets,
in order to accomplish it. But, so wealthy and eminent as he
is,--so powerful in his own strength, and in the support of
society on all sides,--what can Judge Pyncheon have to hope or
fear from the imbecile, branded, half-torpid Clifford?"
"Yet," urged Phoebe, "you did speak as if misfortune were
impending!"
"Oh, that was because I am morbid!" replied the artist. "My mind
has a twist aside, like almost everybody's mind, except your own.
Moreover, it is so strange to find myself an inmate of this old
Pyncheon-house, and sitting in this old garden--(hark, how Maule's
well is murmuring!)--that, were it only for this one circumstance,
I cannot help fancying that Destiny is arranging its fifth act for
a catastrophe."
"There!" cried Phoebe, with renewed vexation; for she was by
nature as hostile to mystery as the sunshine to a dark corner.
"You puzzle me more than ever!"
"Then let us part friends!" said Holgrave, pressing her hand. "Or,
if not friends, let us part before you entirely hate me. You, who
love everybody else in the world!"
"Good-by, then," said Phoebe, frankly. "I do not mean to be angry
a great while, and should be sorry to have you think so. There has
Cousin Hepzibah been standing in the shadow of the door-way, this
quarter of an hour past! She thinks I stay too long in the damp
garden. So, good-night, and good-by!
