Chapter: PHOEBE PYNCHEON slept, on the night of her arrival, in a chamber that
looked down on the garden of the old house.  It fronted towards the
east, so that at a very seasonable hour a glow of crimson light came
flooding through the window, and bathed the dingy ceiling and
paper-hangings in its own hue.  There were curtains to Phoebe's bed; a
dark, antique canopy, and ponderous festoons of a stuff which had been
rich, and even magnificent, in its time; but which now brooded over the
girl like a cloud, making a night in that one corner, while elsewhere
it was beginning to be day.  The morning light, however, soon stole
into the aperture at the foot of the bed, betwixt those faded curtains.
Finding the new guest there,--with a bloom on her cheeks like the
morning's own, and a gentle stir of departing slumber in her limbs, as
when an early breeze moves the foliage,--the dawn kissed her brow.  It
was the caress which a dewy maiden--such as the Dawn is,
    immortally--gives to her sleeping sister, partly from the impulse of
    irresistible fondness, and partly as a pretty hint that it is time now
    to unclose her eyes.

    At the touch of those lips of light, Phoebe quietly awoke, and, for a
    moment, did not recognize where she was, nor how those heavy curtains
    chanced to be festooned around her.  Nothing, indeed, was absolutely
    plain to her, except that it was now early morning, and that, whatever
    might happen next, it was proper, first of all, to get up and say her
    prayers.  She was the more inclined to devotion from the grim aspect of
    the chamber and its furniture, especially the tall, stiff chairs; one
    of which stood close by her bedside, and looked as if some
    old-fashioned personage had been sitting there all night, and had
    vanished only just in season to escape discovery.

    When Phoebe was quite dressed, she peeped out of the window, and saw a
    rosebush in the garden.  Being a very tall one, and of luxuriant
    growth, it had been propped up against the side of the house, and was
    literally covered with a rare and very beautiful species of white rose.
    A large portion of them, as the girl afterwards discovered, had blight
    or mildew at their hearts; but, viewed at a fair distance, the whole
    rosebush looked as if it had been brought from Eden that very summer,
    together with the mould in which it grew.  The truth was, nevertheless,
    that it had been planted by Alice Pyncheon,--she was Phoebe's
    great-great-grand-aunt,--in soil which, reckoning only its cultivation
    as a garden-plat, was now unctuous with nearly two hundred years of
    vegetable decay.  Growing as they did, however, out of the old earth,
    the flowers still sent a fresh and sweet incense up to their Creator;
nor could it have been the less pure and acceptable because Phoebe's
young breath mingled with it, as the fragrance floated past the window.
Hastening down the creaking and carpetless staircase, she found her way
into the garden, gathered some of the most perfect of the roses, and
brought them to her chamber.

Little Phoebe was one of those persons who possess, as their exclusive
patrimony, the gift of practical arrangement.  It is a kind of natural
magic that enables these favored ones to bring out the hidden
capabilities of things around them; and particularly to give a look of
comfort and habitableness to any place which, for however brief a
period, may happen to be their home.  A wild hut of underbrush, tossed
together by wayfarers through the primitive forest, would acquire the
home aspect by one night's lodging of such a woman, and would retain it
long after her quiet figure had disappeared into the surrounding shade.
No less a portion of such homely witchcraft was requisite to reclaim,
   as it were, Phoebe's waste, cheerless, and dusky chamber, which had
   been untenanted so long--except by spiders, and mice, and rats, and
   ghosts--that it was all overgrown with the desolation which watches to
   obliterate every trace of man's happier hours.  What was precisely
   Phoebe's process we find it impossible to say.  She appeared to have no
   preliminary design, but gave a touch here and another there; brought
   some articles of furniture to light and dragged others into the shadow;
   looped up or let down a window-curtain; and, in the course of half an
   hour, had fully succeeded in throwing a kindly and hospitable smile
   over the apartment.  No longer ago than the night before, it had
   resembled nothing so much as the old maid's heart; for there was
   neither sunshine nor household fire in one nor the other, and, save for
   ghosts and ghostly reminiscences, not a guest, for many years gone by,
   had entered the heart or the chamber.

   There was still another peculiarity of this inscrutable charm.  The
   bedchamber, no doubt, was a chamber of very great and varied
   experience, as a scene of human life:  the joy of bridal nights had
   throbbed itself away here; new immortals had first drawn earthly breath
   here; and here old people had died.  But--whether it were the white
   roses, or whatever the subtile influence might be--a person of delicate
   instinct would have known at once that it was now a maiden's
   bedchamber, and had been purified of all former evil and sorrow by her
   sweet breath and happy thoughts.  Her dreams of the past night, being
   such cheerful ones, had exorcised the gloom, and now haunted the
   chamber in its stead.

   After arranging matters to her satisfaction, Phoebe emerged from her
   chamber, with a purpose to descend again into the garden.  Besides the
   rosebush, she had observed several other species of flowers growing
   there in a wilderness of neglect, and obstructing one another's
   development (as is often the parallel case in human society) by their
   uneducated entanglement and confusion.  At the head of the stairs,
   however, she met Hepzibah, who, it being still early, invited her into
   a room which she would probably have called her boudoir, had her
   education embraced any such French phrase.  It was strewn about with a
   few old books, and a work-basket, and a dusty writing-desk; and had, on
   one side, a large black article of furniture, of very strange
   appearance, which the old gentlewoman told Phoebe was a harpsichord.
   It looked more like a coffin than anything else; and, indeed,--not
   having been played upon, or opened, for years,--there must have been a
   vast deal of dead music in it, stifled for want of air.  Human finger
   was hardly known to have touched its chords since the days of Alice
   Pyncheon, who had learned the sweet accomplishment of melody in Europe.

   Hepzibah bade her young guest sit down, and, herself taking a chair
   near by, looked as earnestly at Phoebe's trim little figure as if she
   expected to see right into its springs and motive secrets.

   "Cousin Phoebe," said she, at last, "I really can't see my way clear to
   keep you with me."

   These words, however, had not the inhospitable bluntness with which
   they may strike the reader; for the two relatives, in a talk before
   bedtime, had arrived at a certain degree of mutual understanding.
   Hepzibah knew enough to enable her to appreciate the circumstances
   (resulting from the second marriage of the girl's mother) which made it
   desirable for Phoebe to establish herself in another home.  Nor did she
   misinterpret Phoebe's character, and the genial activity pervading
   it,--one of the most valuable traits of the true New England
   woman,--which had impelled her forth, as might be said, to seek her
   fortune, but with a self-respecting purpose to confer as much benefit
   as she could anywise receive.  As one of her nearest kindred, she had
   naturally betaken herself to Hepzibah, with no idea of forcing herself
   on her cousin's protection, but only for a visit of a week or two,
   which might be indefinitely extended, should it prove for the happiness
   of both.

   To Hepzibah's blunt observation, therefore, Phoebe replied as frankly,
   and more cheerfully.

   "Dear cousin, I cannot tell how it will be," said she.  "But I really
   think we may suit one another much better than you suppose."

   "You are a nice girl,--I see it plainly," continued Hepzibah; "and it
   is not any question as to that point which makes me hesitate.  But,
   Phoebe, this house of mine is but a melancholy place for a young person
   to be in.  It lets in the wind and rain, and the snow, too, in the
   garret and upper chambers, in winter-time, but it never lets in the
   sunshine.  And as for myself, you see what I am,--a dismal and lonesome
   old woman (for I begin to call myself old, Phoebe), whose temper, I am
   afraid, is none of the best, and whose spirits are as bad as can be! I
   cannot make your life pleasant, Cousin Phoebe, neither can I so much as
   give you bread to eat."

   "You will find me a cheerful little body" answered Phoebe, smiling, and
   yet with a kind of gentle dignity, "and I mean to earn my bread.  You
   know I have not been brought up a Pyncheon.  A girl learns many things
   in a New England village."

   "Ah! Phoebe," said Hepzibah, sighing, "your knowledge would do but
   little for you here! And then it is a wretched thought that you should
   fling away your young days in a place like this.  Those cheeks would
   not be so rosy after a month or two.  Look at my face!" and, indeed,
   the contrast was very striking,--"you see how pale I am! It is my idea
   that the dust and continual decay of these old houses are unwholesome
   for the lungs."

   "There is the garden,--the flowers to be taken care of," observed
   Phoebe.  "I should keep myself healthy with exercise in the open air."

   "And, after all, child," exclaimed Hepzibah, suddenly rising, as if to
   dismiss the subject, "it is not for me to say who shall be a guest or
   inhabitant of the old Pyncheon House.  Its master is coming."

   "Do you mean Judge Pyncheon?" asked Phoebe in surprise.

   "Judge Pyncheon!" answered her cousin angrily.  "He will hardly cross
   the threshold while I live! No, no! But, Phoebe, you shall see the face
   of him I speak of."

   She went in quest of the miniature already described, and returned with
   it in her hand.  Giving it to Phoebe, she watched her features
   narrowly, and with a certain jealousy as to the mode in which the girl
   would show herself affected by the picture.

   "How do you like the face?" asked Hepzibah.

   "It is handsome!--it is very beautiful!" said Phoebe admiringly.  "It
   is as sweet a face as a man's can be, or ought to be.  It has something
   of a child's expression,--and yet not childish,--only one feels so very
   kindly towards him! He ought never to suffer anything.  One would bear
   much for the sake of sparing him toil or sorrow.  Who is it, Cousin
   Hepzibah?"

   "Did you never hear," whispered her cousin, bending towards her, "of
   Clifford Pyncheon?"

   "Never.  I thought there were no Pyncheons left, except yourself and
   our cousin Jaffrey," answered Phoebe.  "And yet I seem to have heard
   the name of Clifford Pyncheon.  Yes!--from my father or my mother; but
   has he not been a long while dead?"

   "Well, well, child, perhaps he has!" said Hepzibah with a sad, hollow
   laugh; "but, in old houses like this, you know, dead people are very
   apt to come back again! We shall see.  And, Cousin Phoebe, since, after
   all that I have said, your courage does not fail you, we will not part
   so soon.  You are welcome, my child, for the present, to such a home as
   your kinswoman can offer you."

   With this measured, but not exactly cold assurance of a hospitable
   purpose, Hepzibah kissed her cheek.

   They now went below stairs, where Phoebe--not so much assuming the
   office as attracting it to herself, by the magnetism of innate
   fitness--took the most active part in preparing breakfast.  The
   mistress of the house, meanwhile, as is usual with persons of her stiff
   and unmalleable cast, stood mostly aside; willing to lend her aid, yet
   conscious that her natural inaptitude would be likely to impede the
   business in hand.   Phoebe and the fire that boiled the teakettle were
   equally bright, cheerful, and efficient, in their respective offices.
   Hepzibah gazed forth from her habitual sluggishness, the necessary
   result of long solitude, as from another sphere.  She could not help
   being interested, however, and even amused, at the readiness with which
   her new inmate adapted herself to the circumstances, and brought the
   house, moreover, and all its rusty old appliances, into a suitableness
   for her purposes.  Whatever she did, too, was done without conscious
   effort, and with frequent outbreaks of song, which were exceedingly
   pleasant to the ear.  This natural tunefulness made Phoebe seem like a
   bird in a shadowy tree; or conveyed the idea that the stream of life
   warbled through her heart as a brook sometimes warbles through a
   pleasant little dell.  It betokened the cheeriness of an active
   temperament, finding joy in its activity, and, therefore, rendering it
   beautiful; it was a New England trait,--the stern old stuff of
   Puritanism with a gold thread in the web.

   Hepzibah brought out some old silver spoons with the family crest upon
   them, and a china tea-set painted over with grotesque figures of man,
   bird, and beast, in as grotesque a landscape.  These pictured people
   were odd humorists, in a world of their own,--a world of vivid
   brilliancy, so far as color went, and still unfaded, although the
   teapot and small cups were as ancient as the custom itself of
   tea-drinking.

   "Your great-great-great-great-grandmother had these cups, when she was
   married," said Hepzibah to Phoebe.  "She was a Davenport, of a good
   family.  They were almost the first teacups ever seen in the colony;
   and if one of them were to be broken, my heart would break with it.
   But it is nonsense to speak so about a brittle teacup, when I remember
   what my heart has gone through without breaking."

   The cups--not having been used, perhaps, since Hepzibah's youth--had
   contracted no small burden of dust, which Phoebe washed away with so
   much care and delicacy as to satisfy even the proprietor of this
   invaluable china.

   "What a nice little housewife you are!" exclaimed the latter, smiling,
   and at the same time frowning so prodigiously that the smile was
   sunshine under a thunder-cloud.  "Do you do other things as well?   Are
   you as good at your book as you are at washing teacups?"

   "Not quite, I am afraid," said Phoebe, laughing at the form of
   Hepzibah's question.  "But I was schoolmistress for the little children
   in our district last summer, and might have been so still."

   "Ah! 'tis all very well!" observed the maiden lady, drawing herself up.
   "But these things must have come to you with your mother's blood.  I
   never knew a Pyncheon that had any turn for them."

   It is very queer, but not the less true, that people are generally
   quite as vain, or even more so, of their deficiencies than of their
   available gifts; as was Hepzibah of this native inapplicability, so to
   speak, of the Pyncheons to any useful purpose.  She regarded it as an
   hereditary trait; and so, perhaps, it was, but unfortunately a morbid
   one, such as is often generated in families that remain long above the
   surface of society.

   Before they left the breakfast-table, the shop-bell rang sharply, and
   Hepzibah set down the remnant of her final cup of tea, with a look of
   sallow despair that was truly piteous to behold.  In cases of
   distasteful occupation, the second day is generally worse than the
   first.  We return to the rack with all the soreness of the preceding
   torture in our limbs.  At all events, Hepzibah had fully satisfied
   herself of the impossibility of ever becoming wonted to this peevishly
   obstreperous little bell.  Ring as often as it might, the sound always
   smote upon her nervous system rudely and suddenly.  And especially now,
   while, with her crested teaspoons and antique china, she was flattering
   herself with ideas of gentility, she felt an unspeakable disinclination
   to confront a customer.

   "Do not trouble yourself, dear cousin!" cried Phoebe, starting lightly
   up.  "I am shop-keeper to-day."

   "You, child!" exclaimed Hepzibah.  "What can a little country girl know
   of such matters?"

   "Oh, I have done all the shopping for the family at our village store,"
   said Phoebe.  "And I have had a table at a fancy fair, and made better
   sales than anybody.  These things are not to be learnt; they depend
   upon a knack that comes, I suppose," added she, smiling, "with one's
   mother's blood.  You shall see that I am as nice a little saleswoman as
   I am a housewife!"

   The old gentlewoman stole behind Phoebe, and peeped from the passageway
   into the shop, to note how she would manage her undertaking.  It was a
   case of some intricacy.  A very ancient woman, in a white short gown
   and a green petticoat, with a string of gold beads about her neck, and
   what looked like a nightcap on her head, had brought a quantity of yarn
   to barter for the commodities of the shop.  She was probably the very
   last person in town who still kept the time-honored spinning-wheel in
   constant revolution.  It was worth while to hear the croaking and
   hollow tones of the old lady, and the pleasant voice of Phoebe,
   mingling in one twisted thread of talk; and still better to contrast
   their figures,--so light and bloomy,--so decrepit and dusky,--with only
   the counter betwixt them, in one sense, but more than threescore years,
   in another.  As for the bargain, it was wrinkled slyness and craft
   pitted against native truth and sagacity.

   "Was not that well done?" asked Phoebe, laughing, when the customer was
   gone.

   "Nicely done, indeed, child!" answered Hepzibah.  "I could not have
   gone through with it nearly so well.  As you say, it must be a knack
   that belongs to you on the mother's side."

   It is a very genuine admiration, that with which persons too shy or too
   awkward to take a due part in the bustling world regard the real actors
   in life's stirring scenes; so genuine, in fact, that the former are
   usually fain to make it palatable to their self-love, by assuming that
   these active and forcible qualities are incompatible with others, which
   they choose to deem higher and more important.  Thus, Hepzibah was well
   content to acknowledge Phoebe's vastly superior gifts as a
   shop-keeper'--she listened, with compliant ear, to her suggestion of
   various methods whereby the influx of trade might be increased, and
   rendered profitable, without a hazardous outlay of capital.  She
   consented that the village maiden should manufacture yeast, both liquid
   and in cakes; and should brew a certain kind of beer, nectareous to the
   palate, and of rare stomachic virtues; and, moreover, should bake and
   exhibit for sale some little spice-cakes, which whosoever tasted would
   longingly desire to taste again.  All such proofs of a ready mind and
   skilful handiwork were highly acceptable to the aristocratic
   hucksteress, so long as she could murmur to herself with a grim smile,
   and a half-natural sigh, and a sentiment of mixed wonder, pity, and
   growing affection:--

   "What a nice little body she is! If she only could be a lady; too--but
   that's impossible! Phoebe is no Pyncheon.  She takes everything from
   her mother!"

   As to Phoebe's not being a lady, or whether she were a lady or no, it
   was a point, perhaps, difficult to decide, but which could hardly have
   come up for judgment at all in any fair and healthy mind.  Out of New
   England, it would be impossible to meet with a person combining so many
   ladylike attributes with so many others that form no necessary (if
           compatible) part of the character.  She shocked no canon of taste; she
   was admirably in keeping with herself, and never jarred against
   surrounding circumstances.  Her figure, to be sure,--so small as to be
   almost childlike, and so elastic that motion seemed as easy or easier
   to it than rest, would hardly have suited one's idea of a countess.
   Neither did her face--with the brown ringlets on either side, and the
   slightly piquant nose, and the wholesome bloom, and the clear shade of
   tan, and the half dozen freckles, friendly remembrances of the April
   sun and breeze--precisely give us a right to call her beautiful.  But
   there was both lustre and depth in her eyes.  She was very pretty; as
   graceful as a bird, and graceful much in the same way; as pleasant
   about the house as a gleam of sunshine falling on the floor through a
   shadow of twinkling leaves, or as a ray of firelight that dances on the
   wall while evening is drawing nigh.   Instead of discussing her claim
   to rank among ladies, it would be preferable to regard Phoebe as the
   example of feminine grace and availability combined, in a state of
   society, if there were any such, where ladies did not exist.  There it
   should be woman's office to move in the midst of practical affairs, and
   to gild them all, the very homeliest,--were it even the scouring of
   pots and kettles,--with an atmosphere of loveliness and joy.

   Such was the sphere of Phoebe.  To find the born and educated lady, on
   the other hand, we need look no farther than Hepzibah, our forlorn old
   maid, in her rustling and rusty silks, with her deeply cherished and
   ridiculous consciousness of long descent, her shadowy claims to
   princely territory, and, in the way of accomplishment, her
   recollections, it may be, of having formerly thrummed on a harpsichord,
   and walked a minuet, and worked an antique tapestry-stitch on her
   sampler.  It was a fair parallel between new Plebeianism and old
   Gentility.

   It really seemed as if the battered visage of the House of the Seven
   Gables, black and heavy-browed as it still certainly looked, must have
   shown a kind of cheerfulness glimmering through its dusky windows as
   Phoebe passed to and fro in the interior.  Otherwise, it is impossible
   to explain how the people of the neighborhood so soon became aware of
   the girl's presence.  There was a great run of custom, setting steadily
   in, from about ten o' clock until towards noon,--relaxing, somewhat, at
   dinner-time, but recommencing in the afternoon, and, finally, dying
   away a half an hour or so before the long day's sunset.  One of the
   stanchest patrons was little Ned Higgins, the devourer of Jim Crow and
   the elephant, who to-day signalized his omnivorous prowess by
   swallowing two dromedaries and a locomotive.  Phoebe laughed, as she
   summed up her aggregate of sales upon the slate; while Hepzibah, first
   drawing on a pair of silk gloves, reckoned over the sordid accumulation
   of copper coin, not without silver intermixed, that had jingled into
   the till.

   "We must renew our stock, Cousin Hepzibah!" cried the little
   saleswoman.  "The gingerbread figures are all gone, and so are those
   Dutch wooden milkmaids, and most of our other playthings.  There has
   been constant inquiry for cheap raisins, and a great cry for whistles,
   and trumpets, and jew's-harps; and at least a dozen little boys have
   asked for molasses-candy.  And we must contrive to get a peck of russet
   apples, late in the season as it is.  But, dear cousin, what an
   enormous heap of copper!  Positively a copper mountain!"

   "Well done! well done! well done!" quoth Uncle Venner, who had taken
   occasion to shuffle in and out of the shop several times in the course
   of the day.  "Here's a girl that will never end her days at my farm!
   Bless my eyes, what a brisk little soul!"

   "Yes, Phoebe is a nice girl!" said Hepzibah, with a scowl of austere
   approbation.  "But, Uncle Venner, you have known the family a great
   many years.  Can you tell me whether there ever was a Pyncheon whom she
   takes after?"

   "I don't believe there ever was," answered the venerable man.  "At any
   rate, it never was my luck to see her like among them, nor, for that
   matter, anywhere else.  I've seen a great deal of the world, not only
   in people's kitchens and back-yards but at the street-corners, and on
   the wharves, and in other places where my business calls me; and I'm
   free to say, Miss Hepzibah, that I never knew a human creature do her
   work so much like one of God's angels as this child Phoebe does!"

   Uncle Venner's eulogium, if it appear rather too high-strained for the
   person and occasion, had, nevertheless, a sense in which it was both
   subtile and true.  There was a spiritual quality in Phoebe's activity.
   The life of the long and busy day--spent in occupations that might so
   easily have taken a squalid and ugly aspect--had been made pleasant,
   and even lovely, by the spontaneous grace with which these homely
   duties seemed to bloom out of her character; so that labor, while she
   dealt with it, had the easy and flexible charm of play.  Angels do not
   toil, but let their good works grow out of them; and so did Phoebe.

   The two relatives--the young maid and the old one--found time before
   nightfall, in the intervals of trade, to make rapid advances towards
   affection and confidence.  A recluse, like Hepzibah, usually displays
   remarkable frankness, and at least temporary affability, on being
   absolutely cornered, and brought to the point of personal intercourse;
   like the angel whom Jacob wrestled with, she is ready to bless you when
   once overcome.

   The old gentlewoman took a dreary and proud satisfaction in leading
   Phoebe from room to room of the house, and recounting the traditions
   with which, as we may say, the walls were lugubriously frescoed.  She
   showed the indentations made by the lieutenant-governor's sword-hilt in
   the door-panels of the apartment where old Colonel Pyncheon, a dead
   host, had received his affrighted visitors with an awful frown.  The
   dusky terror of that frown, Hepzibah observed, was thought to be
   lingering ever since in the passageway.  She bade Phoebe step into one
   of the tall chairs, and inspect the ancient map of the Pyncheon
   territory at the eastward.  In a tract of land on which she laid her
   finger, there existed a silver mine, the locality of which was
   precisely pointed out in some memoranda of Colonel Pyncheon himself,
   but only to be made known when the family claim should be recognized by
   government.  Thus it was for the interest of all New England that the
   Pyncheons should have justice done them.  She told, too, how that there
   was undoubtedly an immense treasure of English guineas hidden somewhere
   about the house, or in the cellar, or possibly in the garden.

   "If you should happen to find it, Phoebe," said Hepzibah, glancing
   aside at her with a grim yet kindly smile, "we will tie up the
   shop-bell for good and all!"

   "Yes, dear cousin," answered Phoebe; "but, in the mean time, I hear
   somebody ringing it!"

   When the customer was gone, Hepzibah talked rather vaguely, and at
   great length, about a certain Alice Pyncheon, who had been exceedingly
   beautiful and accomplished in her lifetime, a hundred years ago.  The
   fragrance of her rich and delightful character still lingered about the
   place where she had lived, as a dried rose-bud scents the drawer where
   it has withered and perished.  This lovely Alice had met with some
   great and mysterious calamity, and had grown thin and white, and
   gradually faded out of the world.  But, even now, she was supposed to
   haunt the House of the Seven Gables, and, a great many times,--especially
   when one of the Pyncheons was to die,--she had been heard playing sadly
   and beautifully on the harpsichord.  One of these tunes, just as it had
   sounded from her spiritual touch, had been written down by an amateur of
   music; it was so exquisitely mournful that nobody, to this day, could
   bear to hear it played, unless when a great sorrow had made them know
   the still profounder sweetness of it.

   "Was it the same harpsichord that you showed me?" inquired Phoebe.

   "The very same," said Hepzibah.  "It was Alice Pyncheon's harpsichord.
   When I was learning music, my father would never let me open it.  So,
   as I could only play on my teacher's instrument, I have forgotten all
   my music long ago."

   Leaving these antique themes, the old lady began to talk about the
   daguerreotypist, whom, as he seemed to be a well-meaning and orderly
   young man, and in narrow circumstances, she had permitted to take up
   his residence in one of the seven gables.  But, on seeing more of Mr.
   Holgrave, she hardly knew what to make of him.  He had the strangest
   companions imaginable; men with long beards, and dressed in linen
   blouses, and other such new-fangled and ill-fitting garments;
   reformers, temperance lecturers, and all manner of cross-looking
   philanthropists; community-men, and come-outers, as Hepzibah believed,
   who acknowledged no law, and ate no solid food, but lived on the scent
   of other people's cookery, and turned up their noses at the fare.  As
   for the daguerreotypist, she had read a paragraph in a penny paper, the
   other day, accusing him of making a speech full of wild and
   disorganizing matter, at a meeting of his banditti-like associates.
   For her own part, she had reason to believe that he practised animal
   magnetism, and, if such things were in fashion nowadays, should be apt
   to suspect him of studying the Black Art up there in his lonesome
   chamber.

   "But, dear cousin," said Phoebe, "if the young man is so dangerous, why
   do you let him stay? If he does nothing worse, he may set the house on
   fire!"

   "Why, sometimes," answered Hepzibah, "I have seriously made it a
   question, whether I ought not to send him away.  But, with all his
   oddities, he is a quiet kind of a person, and has such a way of taking
   hold of one's mind, that, without exactly liking him (for I don't know
           enough of the young man), I should be sorry to lose sight of him
   entirely.  A woman clings to slight acquaintances when she lives so
   much alone as I do."

   "But if Mr. Holgrave is a lawless person!" remonstrated Phoebe, a part
   of whose essence it was to keep within the limits of law.

   "Oh!" said Hepzibah carelessly,--for, formal as she was, still, in her
   life's experience, she had gnashed her teeth against human law,--"I
   suppose he has a law of his own!"




AFTER an early tea, the little country-girl strayed into the garden.
The enclosure had formerly been very extensive, but was now contracted
within small compass, and hemmed about, partly by high wooden fences,
       and partly by the outbuildings of houses that stood on another street.
       In its centre was a grass-plat, surrounding a ruinous little structure,
       which showed just enough of its original design to indicate that it had
       once been a summer-house.  A hop-vine, springing from last year's root,
       was beginning to clamber over it, but would be long in covering the
       roof with its green mantle.  Three of the seven gables either fronted
       or looked sideways, with a dark solemnity of aspect, down into the
       garden.

       The black, rich soil had fed itself with the decay of a long period of
       time; such as fallen leaves, the petals of flowers, and the stalks and
       seed--vessels of vagrant and lawless plants, more useful after their
       death than ever while flaunting in the sun.  The evil of these departed
       years would naturally have sprung up again, in such rank weeds
       (symbolic of the transmitted vices of society) as are always prone to
       root themselves about human dwellings.  Phoebe saw, however, that their
       growth must have been checked by a degree of careful labor, bestowed
       daily and systematically on the garden.  The white double rosebush had
       evidently been propped up anew against the house since the commencement
       of the season; and a pear-tree and three damson-trees, which, except a
       row of currant-bushes, constituted the only varieties of fruit, bore
       marks of the recent amputation of several superfluous or defective
       limbs.  There were also a few species of antique and hereditary
       flowers, in no very flourishing condition, but scrupulously weeded; as
       if some person, either out of love or curiosity, had been anxious to
       bring them to such perfection as they were capable of attaining.  The
       remainder of the garden presented a well-selected assortment of
       esculent vegetables, in a praiseworthy state of advancement.  Summer
       squashes almost in their golden blossom; cucumbers, now evincing a
       tendency to spread away from the main stock, and ramble far and wide;
       two or three rows of string-beans and as many more that were about to
       festoon themselves on poles; tomatoes, occupying a site so sheltered
       and sunny that the plants were already gigantic, and promised an early
       and abundant harvest.

       Phoebe wondered whose care and toil it could have been that had planted
       these vegetables, and kept the soil so clean and orderly.  Not surely
       her cousin Hepzibah's, who had no taste nor spirits for the lady-like
       employment of cultivating flowers, and--with her recluse habits, and
       tendency to shelter herself within the dismal shadow of the
       house--would hardly have come forth under the speck of open sky to weed
       and hoe among the fraternity of beans and squashes.

       It being her first day of complete estrangement from rural objects,
       Phoebe found an unexpected charm in this little nook of grass, and
       foliage, and aristocratic flowers, and plebeian vegetables.  The eye of
       Heaven seemed to look down into it pleasantly, and with a peculiar
       smile, as if glad to perceive that nature, elsewhere overwhelmed, and
       driven out of the dusty town, had here been able to retain a
       breathing-place.  The spot acquired a somewhat wilder grace, and yet a
       very gentle one, from the fact that a pair of robins had built their
       nest in the pear-tree, and were making themselves exceedingly busy and
       happy in the dark intricacy of its boughs.  Bees, too,--strange to
       say,--had thought it worth their while to come hither, possibly from
       the range of hives beside some farm-house miles away.  How many aerial
       voyages might they have made, in quest of honey, or honey-laden,
       betwixt dawn and sunset! Yet, late as it now was, there still arose a
       pleasant hum out of one or two of the squash-blossoms, in the depths of
       which these bees were plying their golden labor.  There was one other
       object in the garden which Nature might fairly claim as her inalienable
       property, in spite of whatever man could do to render it his own.  This
       was a fountain, set round with a rim of old mossy stones, and paved, in
       its bed, with what appeared to be a sort of mosaic-work of variously
       colored pebbles.  The play and slight agitation of the water, in its
       upward gush, wrought magically with these variegated pebbles, and made
       a continually shifting apparition of quaint figures, vanishing too
       suddenly to be definable.  Thence, swelling over the rim of moss-grown
       stones, the water stole away under the fence, through what we regret to
       call a gutter, rather than a channel.  Nor must we forget to mention a
       hen-coop of very reverend antiquity that stood in the farther corner of
       the garden, not a great way from the fountain.   It now contained only
       Chanticleer, his two wives, and a solitary chicken.  All of them were
       pure specimens of a breed which had been transmitted down as an
       heirloom in the Pyncheon family, and were said, while in their prime,
       to have attained almost the size of turkeys, and, on the score of
       delicate flesh, to be fit for a prince's table.  In proof of the
       authenticity of this legendary renown, Hepzibah could have exhibited
       the shell of a great egg, which an ostrich need hardly have been
       ashamed of.  Be that as it might, the hens were now scarcely larger
       than pigeons, and had a queer, rusty, withered aspect, and a gouty kind
       of movement, and a sleepy and melancholy tone throughout all the
       variations of their clucking and cackling.  It was evident that the
       race had degenerated, like many a noble race besides, in consequence of
       too strict a watchfulness to keep it pure.  These feathered people had
       existed too long in their distinct variety; a fact of which the present
       representatives, judging by their lugubrious deportment, seemed to be
       aware.  They kept themselves alive, unquestionably, and laid now and
       then an egg, and hatched a chicken; not for any pleasure of their own,
       but that the world might not absolutely lose what had once been so
       admirable a breed of fowls.  The distinguishing mark of the hens was a
       crest of lamentably scanty growth, in these latter days, but so oddly
       and wickedly analogous to Hepzibah's turban, that Phoebe--to the
       poignant distress of her conscience, but inevitably--was led to fancy a
       general resemblance betwixt these forlorn bipeds and her respectable
       relative.

       The girl ran into the house to get some crumbs of bread, cold potatoes,
       and other such scraps as were suitable to the accommodating appetite of
       fowls.  Returning, she gave a peculiar call, which they seemed to
       recognize.  The chicken crept through the pales of the coop and ran,
       with some show of liveliness, to her feet; while Chanticleer and the
       ladies of his household regarded her with queer, sidelong glances, and
       then croaked one to another, as if communicating their sage opinions of
       her character.  So wise, as well as antique, was their aspect, as to
       give color to the idea, not merely that they were the descendants of a
       time-honored race, but that they had existed, in their individual
       capacity, ever since the House of the Seven Gables was founded, and
       were somehow mixed up with its destiny.  They were a species of
       tutelary sprite, or Banshee; although winged and feathered differently
       from most other guardian angels.

       "Here, you odd little chicken!" said Phoebe; "here are some nice crumbs
       for you!"

       The chicken, hereupon, though almost as venerable in appearance as its
       mother--possessing, indeed, the whole antiquity of its progenitors in
       miniature,--mustered vivacity enough to flutter upward and alight on
       Phoebe's shoulder.

       "That little fowl pays you a high compliment!" said a voice behind
       Phoebe.

       Turning quickly, she was surprised at sight of a young man, who had
       found access into the garden by a door opening out of another gable
       than that whence she had emerged.  He held a hoe in his hand, and,
       while Phoebe was gone in quest of the crumbs, had begun to busy himself
       with drawing up fresh earth about the roots of the tomatoes.

       "The chicken really treats you like an old acquaintance," continued he
       in a quiet way, while a smile made his face pleasanter than Phoebe at
       first fancied it.  "Those venerable personages in the coop, too, seem
       very affably disposed.  You are lucky to be in their good graces so
       soon! They have known me much longer, but never honor me with any
       familiarity, though hardly a day passes without my bringing them food.
       Miss Hepzibah, I suppose, will interweave the fact with her other
       traditions, and set it down that the fowls know you to be a Pyncheon!"

       "The secret is," said Phoebe, smiling, "that I have learned how to talk
       with hens and chickens."

       "Ah, but these hens," answered the young man,--"these hens of
       aristocratic lineage would scorn to understand the vulgar language of a
       barn-yard fowl.  I prefer to think--and so would Miss Hepzibah--that
       they recognize the family tone.  For you are a Pyncheon?"

       "My name is Phoebe Pyncheon," said the girl, with  a manner of some
       reserve; for she was aware that her new acquaintance could be no other
       than the daguerreotypist, of whose lawless propensities the old maid
       had given her a disagreeable idea.  "I did not know that my cousin
       Hepzibah's garden was under another person's care."

       "Yes," said Holgrave, "I dig, and hoe, and weed, in this black old
       earth, for the sake of refreshing myself with what little nature and
       simplicity may be left in it, after men have so long sown and reaped
       here.  I turn up the earth by way of pastime.  My sober occupation, so
       far as I have any, is with a lighter material.  In short, I make
       pictures out of sunshine; and, not to be too much dazzled with my own
       trade, I have prevailed with Miss Hepzibah to let me lodge in one of
       these dusky gables.  It is like a bandage over one's eyes, to come into
       it.  But would you like to see a specimen of my productions?"

       "A daguerreotype likeness, do you mean?" asked Phoebe with less
       reserve; for, in spite of prejudice, her own youthfulness sprang
       forward to meet his.  "I don't much like pictures of that sort,--they
       are so hard and stern; besides dodging away from the eye, and trying to
       escape altogether.  They are conscious of looking very unamiable, I
       suppose, and therefore hate to be seen."

       "If you would permit me," said the artist, looking at Phoebe, "I should
       like to try whether the daguerreotype can bring out disagreeable traits
       on a perfectly amiable face.  But there certainly is truth in what you
       have said.  Most of my likenesses do look unamiable; but the very
       sufficient reason, I fancy, is, because the originals are so.  There is
       a wonderful insight in Heaven's broad and simple sunshine.  While we
       give it credit only for depicting the merest surface, it actually
       brings out the secret character with a truth that no painter would ever
       venture upon, even could he detect it.  There is, at least, no flattery
       in my humble line of art.  Now, here is a likeness which I have taken
       over and over again, and still with no better result.  Yet the original
       wears, to common eyes, a very different expression.  It would gratify
       me to have your judgment on this character."

       He exhibited a daguerreotype miniature in a morocco case.  Phoebe
       merely glanced at it, and gave it back.

       "I know the face," she replied; "for its stern eye has been following
       me about all day.  It is my Puritan ancestor, who hangs yonder in the
       parlor.  To be sure, you have found some way of copying the portrait
       without its black velvet cap and gray beard, and have given him a
       modern coat and satin cravat, instead of his cloak and band.  I don't
       think him improved by your alterations."

       "You would have seen other differences had you looked a little longer,"
       said Holgrave, laughing, yet apparently much struck.  "I can assure you
       that this is a modern face, and one which you will very probably meet.
       Now, the remarkable point is, that the original wears, to the world's
       eye,--and, for aught I know, to his most intimate friends,--an
       exceedingly pleasant countenance, indicative of benevolence, openness
       of heart, sunny good-humor, and other praiseworthy qualities of that
       cast.  The sun, as you see, tells quite another story, and will not be
       coaxed out of it, after half a dozen patient attempts on my part.  Here
       we have the man, sly, subtle, hard, imperious, and, withal, cold as
       ice.  Look at that eye! Would you like to be at its mercy? At that
       mouth! Could it ever smile? And yet, if you could only see the benign
       smile of the original! It is so much the more unfortunate, as he is a
       public character of some eminence, and the likeness was intended to be
       engraved."

       "Well, I don't wish to see it any more," observed Phoebe, turning away
       her eyes.  "It is certainly very like the old portrait.  But my cousin
       Hepzibah has another picture,--a miniature.  If the original is still
       in the world, I think he might defy the sun to make him look stern and
       hard."

       "You have seen that picture, then!" exclaimed the artist, with an
       expression of much interest.  "I never did, but have a great curiosity
       to do so.  And you judge favorably of the face?"

       "There never was a sweeter one," said Phoebe.  "It is almost too soft
       and gentle for a man's."

       "Is there nothing wild in the eye?" continued Holgrave, so earnestly
       that it embarrassed Phoebe, as did also the quiet freedom with which he
       presumed on their so recent acquaintance.  "Is there nothing dark or
       sinister anywhere? Could you not conceive the original to have been
       guilty of a great crime?"

       "It is nonsense," said Phoebe a little impatiently, "for us to talk
       about a picture which you have never seen.  You mistake it for some
       other.  A crime, indeed! Since you are a friend of my cousin
       Hepzibah's, you should ask her to show you the picture."

       "It will suit my purpose still better to see the original," replied the
       daguerreotypist coolly.  "As to his character, we need not discuss its
       points; they have already been settled by a competent tribunal, or one
       which called itself competent.  But, stay! Do not go yet, if you
       please! I have a proposition to make you."

       Phoebe was on the point of retreating, but turned back, with some
       hesitation; for she did not exactly comprehend his manner, although, on
       better observation, its feature seemed rather to be lack of ceremony
       than any approach to offensive rudeness.  There was an odd kind of
       authority, too, in what he now proceeded to say, rather as if the
       garden were his own than a place to which he was admitted merely by
       Hepzibah's courtesy.

       "If agreeable to you," he observed, "it would give me pleasure to turn
       over these flowers, and those ancient and respectable fowls, to your
       care.  Coming fresh from country air and occupations, you will soon
       feel the need of some such out-of-door employment.  My own sphere does
       not so much lie among flowers.  You can trim and tend them, therefore,
       as you please; and I will ask only the least trifle of a blossom, now
       and then, in exchange for all the good, honest kitchen vegetables with
       which I propose to enrich Miss Hepzibah's table.  So we will be
       fellow-laborers, somewhat on the community system."

       Silently, and rather surprised at her own compliance, Phoebe
       accordingly betook herself to weeding a flower-bed, but busied herself
       still more with cogitations respecting this young man, with whom she so
       unexpectedly found herself on terms approaching to familiarity.  She
       did not altogether like him.  His character perplexed the little
       country-girl, as it might a more practised observer; for, while the
       tone of his conversation had generally been playful, the impression
       left on her mind was that of gravity, and, except as his youth modified
       it, almost sternness.  She rebelled, as it were, against a certain
       magnetic element in the artist's nature, which he exercised towards
       her, possibly without being conscious of it.

       After a little while, the twilight, deepened by the shadows of the
       fruit-trees and the surrounding buildings, threw an obscurity over the
       garden.

       "There," said Holgrave, "it is time to give over work! That last stroke
       of the hoe has cut off a beanstalk.  Good-night, Miss Phoebe Pyncheon!
       Any bright day, if you will put one of those rosebuds in your hair, and
       come to my rooms in Central Street, I will seize the purest ray of
       sunshine, and make a picture of the flower and its wearer."  He retired
       towards his own solitary gable, but turned his head, on reaching the
       door, and called to Phoebe, with a tone which certainly had laughter in
       it, yet which seemed to be more than half in earnest.

       "Be careful not to drink at Maule's well!" said he.  "Neither drink nor
       bathe your face in it!"

       "Maule's well!" answered Phoebe.  "Is that it with the rim of mossy
       stones? I have no thought of drinking there,--but why not?"

       "Oh," rejoined the daguerreotypist, "because, like an old lady's cup of
       tea, it is water bewitched!"

       He vanished; and Phoebe, lingering a moment, saw a glimmering light,
       and then the steady beam of a lamp, in a chamber of the gable.  On
       returning into Hepzibah's apartment of the house, she found the
       low-studded parlor so dim and dusky that her eyes could not penetrate
       the interior.  She was indistinctly aware, however, that the gaunt
       figure of the old gentlewoman was sitting in one of the straight-backed
       chairs, a little withdrawn from the window, the faint gleam of which
       showed the blanched paleness of her cheek, turned sideways towards a
       corner.

       "Shall I light a lamp, Cousin Hepzibah?" she asked.

       "Do, if you please, my dear child," answered Hepzibah.  "But put it on
       the table in the corner of the passage.  My eyes are weak; and I can
       seldom bear the lamplight on them."

       What an instrument is the human voice! How wonderfully responsive to
       every emotion of the human soul! In Hepzibah's tone, at that moment,
       there was a certain rich depth and moisture, as if the words,
       commonplace as they were, had been steeped in the warmth of her heart.
       Again, while lighting the lamp in the kitchen, Phoebe fancied that her
       cousin spoke to her.

       "In a moment, cousin!" answered the girl.  "These matches just glimmer,
       and go out."

       But, instead of a response from Hepzibah, she seemed to hear the murmur
       of an unknown voice.  It was strangely indistinct, however, and less
       like articulate words than an unshaped sound, such as would be the
       utterance of feeling and sympathy, rather than of the intellect.  So
       vague was it, that its impression or echo in Phoebe's mind was that of
       unreality.  She concluded that she must have mistaken some other sound
       for that of the human voice; or else that it was altogether in her
       fancy.

       She set the lighted lamp in the passage, and again entered the parlor.
       Hepzibah's form, though its sable outline mingled with the dusk, was
       now less imperfectly visible.  In the remoter parts of the room,
       however, its walls being so ill adapted to reflect light, there was
       nearly the same obscurity as before.

       "Cousin," said Phoebe, "did you speak to me just now?"

       "No, child!" replied Hepzibah.

       Fewer words than before, but with the same mysterious music in them!
       Mellow, melancholy, yet not mournful, the tone seemed to gush up out of
       the deep well of Hepzibah's heart, all steeped in its profoundest
       emotion.  There was a tremor in it, too, that--as all strong feeling is
       electric--partly communicated itself to Phoebe.  The girl sat silently
       for a moment.  But soon, her senses being very acute, she became
       conscious of an irregular respiration in an obscure corner of the room.
       Her physical organization, moreover, being at once delicate and
       healthy, gave her a perception, operating with almost the effect of a
       spiritual medium, that somebody was near at hand.

       "My dear cousin," asked she, overcoming an indefinable reluctance, "is
       there not some one in the room with us?"

       "Phoebe, my dear little girl," said Hepzibah, after a moment's pause,
       "you were up betimes, and have been busy all day.  Pray go to bed; for
       I am sure you must need rest.  I will sit in the parlor awhile, and
       collect my thoughts.  It has been my custom for more years, child, than
       you have lived!"  While thus dismissing her, the maiden lady stept
       forward, kissed Phoebe, and pressed her to her heart, which beat
       against the girl's bosom with a strong, high, and tumultuous swell.
       How came there to be so much love in this desolate old heart, that it
       could afford to well over thus abundantly?

       "Goodnight, cousin," said Phoebe, strangely affected by Hepzibah's
       manner.  "If you begin to love me, I am glad!"

       She retired to her chamber, but did not soon fall asleep, nor then very
       profoundly.  At some uncertain period in the depths of night, and, as
       it were, through the thin veil of a dream, she was conscious of a
       footstep mounting the stairs heavily, but not with force and decision.
       The voice of Hepzibah, with a hush through it, was going up along with
       the footsteps; and, again, responsive to her cousin's voice, Phoebe
       heard that strange, vague murmur, which might be likened to an
       indistinct shadow of human utterance.

 The next morning Phoebe awakens, says her prayers, and visits the rose garden where she picks some of the prettiest blossoms. Returning to the house, she meets Hepzibah, who tells her that she has no financial means to keep her and that Phoebe must return home. As they talk, Phoebe enthusiastically maintains that she can earn her own way, and her youthful honesty impresses Hepzibah who then agrees to keep her on. After breakfast, which Phoebe prepares, the shop bell rings, and Phoebe volunteers to tend the shop for the day. Phoebe proves to have an excellent relationship with the customers, and Hepzibah is greatly impressed with the girl's honest and pleasing manner. Hepzibah thinks that Phoebe's practicality must come from her mother's side of the family because it is certainly not a Pyncheon trait. Hepzibah then shows the girl Alice Pyncheon's harpsichord, and she describes their roomer, Mr. Holgrave, the artist and a practitioner of mesmerism. She expresses her concern over some of his bearded companions but she still likes him well enough to keep him as a renter. Phoebe enters the Pyncheon garden, with its rich old soil and its many plants, all apparently well-tended, its bees and birds, and its diminutive rooster with his two hens and a lone chick. Suddenly Holgrave, who has tended the garden, enters and compliments Phoebe's ability to feed the chickens. He introduces himself as a photographer and shows her a picture of Judge Pyncheon which Phoebe, with a shudder, mistakes for a photograph of Colonel Pyncheon's portrait. Holgrave bitterly criticizes the Judge and comments that a photograph does not lie. He offers to make a portrait of her, then he "yields control of the garden" to her; he will manage the vegetables. Before he leaves, he warns her against the "bewitched water" of Maule's well. When Phoebe goes into Hepzibah's parlor, she senses the presence of another person in a shadowy, withdrawn chair. She goes to the kitchen for matches, and when she returns, Hepzibah kisses her gently and suggests that she retire early. The girl's sleep is troubled.

