Chapter: PHOEBE, coming so suddenly from the sunny daylight, was altogether
bedimmed in such density of shadow as lurked in most of the passages of
the old house.  She was not at first aware by whom she had been
admitted.  Before her eyes had adapted themselves to the obscurity, a
hand grasped her own with a firm but gentle and warm pressure, thus
imparting a welcome which caused her heart to leap and thrill with an
indefinable shiver of enjoyment.  She felt herself drawn along, not
towards the parlor, but into a large and unoccupied apartment, which
had formerly been the grand reception-room of the Seven Gables.  The
sunshine came freely into all the uncurtained windows of this room, and
fell upon the dusty floor; so that Phoebe now clearly saw--what,
     indeed, had been no secret, after the encounter of a warm hand with
     hers--that it was not Hepzibah nor Clifford, but Holgrave, to whom she
     owed her reception.  The subtile, intuitive communication, or, rather,
     the vague and formless impression of something to be told, had made her
     yield unresistingly to his impulse.  Without taking away her hand, she
     looked eagerly in his face, not quick to forebode evil, but unavoidably
     conscious that the state of the family had changed since her departure,
     and therefore anxious for an explanation.

     The artist looked paler than ordinary; there was a thoughtful and
     severe contraction of his forehead, tracing a deep, vertical line
     between the eyebrows.  His smile, however, was full of genuine warmth,
     and had in it a joy, by far the most vivid expression that Phoebe had
     ever witnessed, shining out of the New England reserve with which
     Holgrave habitually masked whatever lay near his heart.  It was the
     look wherewith a man, brooding alone over some fearful object, in a
     dreary forest or illimitable desert, would recognize the familiar
     aspect of his dearest friend, bringing up all the peaceful ideas that
     belong to home, and the gentle current of every-day affairs.  And yet,
     as he felt the necessity of responding to her look of inquiry, the
     smile disappeared.

     "I ought not to rejoice that you have come, Phoebe," said he.  "We meet
     at a strange moment!"

     "What has happened!" she exclaimed.  "Why is the house so deserted?
     Where are Hepzibah and Clifford?"

     "Gone! I cannot imagine where they are!" answered Holgrave.  "We are
     alone in the house!"

     "Hepzibah and Clifford gone?" cried Phoebe.  "It is not possible!  And
     why have you brought me into this room, instead of the parlor?  Ah,
     something terrible has happened! I must run and see!"

     "No, no, Phoebe!" said Holgrave holding her back.  "It is as I have
     told you.  They are gone, and I know not whither.  A terrible event
     has, indeed happened, but not to them, nor, as I undoubtingly believe,
     through any agency of theirs.  If I read your character rightly,
     Phoebe," he continued, fixing his eyes on hers with stern anxiety,
     intermixed with tenderness, "gentle as you are, and seeming to have
     your sphere among common things, you yet possess remarkable strength.
     You have wonderful poise, and a faculty which, when tested, will prove
     itself capable of dealing with matters that fall far out of the
     ordinary rule."

     "Oh, no, I am very weak!" replied Phoebe, trembling.  "But tell me what
     has happened!"

     "You are strong!" persisted Holgrave.  "You must be both strong and
     wise; for I am all astray, and need your counsel.  It may be you can
     suggest the one right thing to do!"

     "Tell me!--tell me!" said Phoebe, all in a tremble.  "It oppresses,--it
     terrifies me,--this mystery! Anything else I can bear!"

     The artist hesitated.  Notwithstanding what he had just said, and most
     sincerely, in regard to the self-balancing power with which Phoebe
     impressed him, it still seemed almost wicked to bring the awful secret
     of yesterday to her knowledge.  It was like dragging a hideous shape of
     death into the cleanly and cheerful space before a household fire,
     where it would present all the uglier aspect, amid the decorousness of
     everything about it.  Yet it could not be concealed from her; she must
     needs know it.

     "Phoebe," said he, "do you remember this?" He put into her hand a
     daguerreotype; the same that he had shown her at their first interview
     in the garden, and which so strikingly brought out the hard and
     relentless traits of the original.

     "What has this to do with Hepzibah and Clifford?" asked Phoebe, with
     impatient surprise that Holgrave should so trifle with her at such a
     moment.  "It is Judge Pyncheon! You have shown it to me before!"

     "But here is the same face, taken within this half-hour" said the
     artist, presenting her with another miniature.  "I had just finished it
     when I heard you at the door."

     "This is death!" shuddered Phoebe, turning very pale.  "Judge Pyncheon
     dead!"

     "Such as there represented," said Holgrave, "he sits in the next room.
     The Judge is dead, and Clifford and Hepzibah have vanished!  I know no
     more.  All beyond is conjecture.  On returning to my solitary chamber,
     last evening, I noticed no light, either in the parlor, or Hepzibah's
     room, or Clifford's; no stir nor footstep about the house.  This
     morning, there was the same death-like quiet.  From my window, I
     overheard the testimony of a neighbor, that your relatives were seen
     leaving the house in the midst of yesterday's storm.  A rumor reached
     me, too, of Judge Pyncheon being missed.  A feeling which I cannot
     describe--an indefinite sense of some catastrophe, or
     consummation--impelled me to make my way into this part of the house,
     where I discovered what you see.  As a point of evidence that may be
     useful to Clifford, and also as a memorial valuable to myself,--for,
     Phoebe, there are hereditary reasons that connect me strangely with
     that man's fate,--I used the means at my disposal to preserve this
     pictorial record of Judge Pyncheon's death."

     Even in her agitation, Phoebe could not help remarking the calmness of
     Holgrave's demeanor.  He appeared, it is true, to feel the whole
     awfulness of the Judge's death, yet had received the fact into his mind
     without any mixture of surprise, but as an event preordained, happening
     inevitably, and so fitting itself into past occurrences that it could
     almost have been prophesied.

     "Why have you not thrown open the doors, and called in witnesses?"
     inquired she with a painful shudder.  "It is terrible to be here alone!"

     "But Clifford!" suggested the artist.  "Clifford and Hepzibah! We must
     consider what is best to be done in their behalf.  It is a wretched
     fatality that they should have disappeared! Their flight will throw the
     worst coloring over this event of which it is susceptible.  Yet how
     easy is the explanation, to those who know them! Bewildered and
     terror-stricken by the similarity of this death to a former one, which
     was attended with such disastrous consequences to Clifford, they have
     had no idea but of removing themselves from the scene.  How miserably
     unfortunate! Had Hepzibah but shrieked aloud,--had Clifford flung wide
     the door, and proclaimed Judge Pyncheon's death,--it would have been,
     however awful in itself, an event fruitful of good consequences to
     them.  As I view it, it would have gone far towards obliterating the
     black stain on Clifford's character."

     "And how," asked Phoebe, "could any good come from what is so very
     dreadful?"

     "Because," said the artist, "if the matter can be fairly considered and
     candidly interpreted, it must be evident that Judge Pyncheon could not
     have come unfairly to his end.  This mode of death had been an
     idiosyncrasy with his family, for generations past; not often
     occurring, indeed, but, when it does occur, usually attacking
     individuals about the Judge's time of life, and generally in the
     tension of some mental crisis, or, perhaps, in an access of wrath.  Old
     Maule's prophecy was probably founded on a knowledge of this physical
     predisposition in the Pyncheon race.  Now, there is a minute and almost
     exact similarity in the appearances connected with the death that
     occurred yesterday and those recorded of the death of Clifford's uncle
     thirty years ago.   It is true, there was a certain arrangement of
     circumstances, unnecessary to be recounted, which made it possible nay,
     as men look at these things, probable, or even certain--that old
     Jaffrey Pyncheon came to a violent death, and by Clifford's hands."

     "Whence came those circumstances?" exclaimed Phoebe.  "He being
     innocent, as we know him to be!"

     "They were arranged," said Holgrave,--"at least such has long been my
     conviction,--they were arranged after the uncle's death, and before it
     was made public, by the man who sits in yonder parlor.  His own death,
     so like that former one, yet attended by none of those suspicious
     circumstances, seems the stroke of God upon him, at once a punishment
     for his wickedness, and making plain the innocence of Clifford. But
     this flight,--it distorts everything! He may be in concealment, near at
     hand.  Could we but bring him back before the discovery of the Judge's
     death, the evil might be rectified."

     "We must not hide this thing a moment longer!" said Phoebe.  "It is
     dreadful to keep it so closely in our hearts.  Clifford is innocent.
     God will make it manifest! Let us throw open the doors, and call all
     the neighborhood to see the truth!"

     "You are right, Phoebe," rejoined Holgrave.  "Doubtless you are right."

     Yet the artist did not feel the horror, which was proper to Phoebe's
     sweet and order-loving character, at thus finding herself at issue with
     society, and brought in contact with an event that transcended ordinary
     rules.  Neither was he in haste, like her, to betake himself within the
     precincts of common life.  On the contrary, he gathered a wild
     enjoyment,--as it were, a flower of strange beauty, growing in a
     desolate spot, and blossoming in the wind,--such a flower of momentary
     happiness he gathered from his present position.  It separated Phoebe
     and himself from the world, and bound them to each other, by their
     exclusive knowledge of Judge Pyncheon's mysterious death, and the
     counsel which they were forced to hold respecting it.  The secret, so
     long as it should continue such, kept them within the circle of a
     spell, a solitude in the midst of men, a remoteness as entire as that
     of an island in mid-ocean; once divulged, the ocean would flow betwixt
     them, standing on its widely sundered shores.   Meanwhile, all the
     circumstances of their situation seemed to draw them together; they
     were like two children who go hand in hand, pressing closely to one
     another's side, through a shadow-haunted passage.  The image of awful
     Death, which filled the house, held them united by his stiffened grasp.

     These influences hastened the development of emotions that might not
     otherwise have flowered so.  Possibly, indeed, it had been Holgrave's
     purpose to let them die in their undeveloped germs.  "Why do we delay
     so?" asked Phoebe.  "This secret takes away my breath! Let us throw
     open the doors!"

     "In all our lives there can never come another moment like this!" said
     Holgrave.  "Phoebe, is it all terror?--nothing but terror?  Are you
     conscious of no joy, as I am, that has made this the only point of life
     worth living for?"

     "It seems a sin," replied Phoebe, trembling, "to think of joy at such a
     time!"

     "Could you but know, Phoebe, how it was with me the hour before you
     came!" exclaimed the artist.  "A dark, cold, miserable hour!  The
     presence of yonder dead man threw a great black shadow over everything;
     he made the universe, so far as my perception could reach, a scene of
     guilt and of retribution more dreadful than the guilt.  The sense of it
     took away my youth.  I never hoped to feel young again! The world
     looked strange, wild, evil, hostile; my past life, so lonesome and
     dreary; my future, a shapeless gloom, which I must mould into gloomy
     shapes!  But, Phoebe, you crossed the threshold; and hope, warmth, and
     joy came in with you! The black moment became at once a blissful one.
     It must not pass without the spoken word.  I love you!"

     "How can you love a simple girl like me?" asked Phoebe, compelled by
     his earnestness to speak.  "You have many, many thoughts, with which I
     should try in vain to sympathize.  And I,--I, too,--I have tendencies
     with which you would sympathize as little.  That is less matter.  But I
     have not scope enough to make you happy."

     "You are my only possibility of happiness!" answered Holgrave.  "I have
     no faith in it, except as you bestow it on me!"

     "And then--I am afraid!" continued Phoebe, shrinking towards Holgrave,
     even while she told him so frankly the doubts with which he affected
     her.  "You will lead me out of my own quiet path.  You will make me
     strive to follow you where it is pathless.  I cannot do so.  It is not
     my nature.  I shall sink down and perish!"

     "Ah, Phoebe!" exclaimed Holgrave, with almost a sigh, and a smile that
     was burdened with thought.

     "It will be far otherwise than as you forebode.  The world owes all its
     onward impulses to men ill at ease.  The happy man inevitably confines
     himself within ancient limits.  I have a presentiment that, hereafter,
     it will be my lot to set out trees, to make fences,--perhaps, even, in
     due time, to build a house for another generation,--in a word, to
     conform myself to laws and the peaceful practice of society.  Your
     poise will be more powerful than any oscillating tendency of mine."

     "I would not have it so!" said Phoebe earnestly.

     "Do you love me?" asked Holgrave.  "If we love one another, the moment
     has room for nothing more.  Let us pause upon it, and be satisfied.  Do
     you love me, Phoebe?"

     "You look into my heart," said she, letting her eyes drop.  "You know I
     love you!"

     And it was in this hour, so full of doubt and awe, that the one miracle
     was wrought, without which every human existence is a blank.  The bliss
     which makes all things true, beautiful, and holy shone around this
     youth and maiden.  They were conscious of nothing sad nor old.  They
     transfigured the earth, and made it Eden again, and themselves the two
     first dwellers in it.  The dead man, so close beside them, was
     forgotten.  At such a crisis, there is no death; for immortality is
     revealed anew, and embraces everything in its hallowed atmosphere.

     But how soon the heavy earth-dream settled down again!

     "Hark!" whispered Phoebe.  "Somebody is at the street door!"

     "Now let us meet the world!" said Holgrave.  "No doubt, the rumor of
     Judge Pyncheon's visit to this house, and the flight of Hepzibah and
     Clifford, is about to lead to the investigation of the premises.  We
     have no way but to meet it.  Let us open the door at once."

     But, to their surprise, before they could reach the street door,--even
     before they quitted the room in which the foregoing interview had
     passed,--they heard footsteps in the farther passage.  The door,
     therefore, which they supposed to be securely locked,--which Holgrave,
     indeed, had seen to be so, and at which Phoebe had vainly tried to
     enter,--must have been opened from without.  The sound of footsteps was
     not harsh, bold, decided, and intrusive, as the gait of strangers would
     naturally be, making authoritative entrance into a dwelling where they
     knew themselves unwelcome.  It was feeble, as of persons either weak or
     weary; there was the mingled murmur of two voices, familiar to both the
     listeners.

     "Can it be?" whispered Holgrave.

     "It is they!" answered Phoebe.  "Thank God!--thank God!"

     And then, as if in sympathy with Phoebe's whispered ejaculation, they
     heard Hepzibah's voice more distinctly.

     "Thank God, my brother, we are at home!"

     "Well!--Yes!--thank God!" responded Clifford.  "A dreary home,
     Hepzibah! But you have done well to bring me hither! Stay! That parlor
     door is open.  I cannot pass by it! Let me go and rest me in the arbor,
     where I used,--oh, very long ago, it seems to me, after what has
     befallen us,--where I used to be so happy with little Phoebe!"

     But the house was not altogether so dreary as Clifford imagined it.
     They had not made many steps,--in truth, they were lingering in the
     entry, with the listlessness of an accomplished purpose, uncertain what
     to do next,--when Phoebe ran to meet them.  On beholding her, Hepzibah
     burst into tears.  With all her might, she had staggered onward beneath
     the burden of grief and responsibility, until now that it was safe to
     fling it down.  Indeed, she had not energy to fling it down, but had
     ceased to uphold it, and suffered it to press her to the earth.
     Clifford appeared the stronger of the two.

     "It is our own little Phoebe!--Ah! and Holgrave with, her" exclaimed
     he, with a glance of keen and delicate insight, and a smile, beautiful,
     kind, but melancholy.  "I thought of you both, as we came down the
     street, and beheld Alice's Posies in full bloom.  And so the flower of
     Eden has bloomed, likewise, in this old, darksome house to-day."

 At first Phoebe can't see in the sudden dark of the house. She feels a hand drawing her into the grand reception room. She sees that it's Mr. Holgrave who has brought her inside. He looks paler than usual, but his smile is full of a rare warmth. Phoebe asks what has happened to Hepzibah and Clifford. Mr. Holgrave the two of them are all alone in the house. He hesitates to tell Phoebe what has happened. First he shows her the old photograph of Judge Pyncheon. Then he shows her another photograph he took half an hour before of Judge Pyncheon's dead face. Mr. Holgrave explains that throughout the day he has been overhearing rumors from passersby about Judge Pyncheon and Clifford. So he went down into the main part of the house to investigate. That's when he found Judge Pyncheon's body. And that's when he decided to photograph it as a form of evidence in case it could help Clifford. Phoebe wonders why he hasn't brought in help from outside. Mr. Holgrave thinks that would look very bad for Clifford and Hepzibah, who seem to have fled the scene. Indeed, Mr. Holgrave thinks it would have been better for Clifford's reputation if they had just brought in help. After all, it's clear that Judge Pyncheon has not died from violence. It's just a hereditary ailment that seems to affect the Pyncheon family - "usually attacking individuals about the Judge's time of life, and generally in the tension of some mental crisis" . Mr. Holgrave suspects that Matthew Maule knew about this genetic problem, which is why he framed his curse the way he did. Mr. Holgrave believes that Clifford's uncle's death happened in exactly the same way 30 years earlier. But after Clifford's Uncle Jaffrey's death, someone appears to have arranged the scene to make it look like Clifford killed the man. The person who framed Clifford was, of course, Judge Pyncheon. If Clifford comes back to the House of the Seven Gables before Judge Pyncheon's body is found, then they could prove that Judge Pyncheon died of natural causes, and Uncle Jaffrey Pyncheon's death many years earlier was by the same means and thus also natural. Otherwise, it'll look like Clifford killed both Judge Pyncheon and his Uncle Jaffrey Pyncheon. Phoebe says, "Clifford is innocent. God will make it manifest!" . She insists that they have to tell the neighborhood what has happened right now. Mr. Holgrave agrees, but he stalls for a few moments. Mr. Holgrave is enjoying the fact that he and Phoebe are the only two people in the world who know this secret. He feels joy that the two of them are together in this dark business. Mr. Holgrave seizes the moment to tell Phoebe that he loves her! Phoebe is afraid that Mr. Holgrave will expect her to live too far outside of society for her comfort. Mr. Holgrave promises that in the future he is going to start settling down. Phoebe admits, "You look into my heart You know I love you!" . At this happy moment, Mr. Holgrave and Phoebe forget everything sad - even the dead guy in the next room. That is, until they both hear footsteps at the front door. It's Clifford and Hepzibah - they're back! As soon as Hepzibah sees Phoebe she bursts into tears. Clifford is delighted to see Phoebe and Mr. Holgrave, even back in this dark, dreary house.

