The House of the Seven Gables

by Nathaniel Hawthorne

  XVII The Flight of Two Owls

  SUMMER as it was, the east wind set poor Hepzibah's few remaining teethchattering in her head, as she and Clifford faced it, on their way upPyncheon Street, and towards the centre of the town. Not merely was itthe shiver which this pitiless blast brought to her frame (although herfeet and hands, especially, had never seemed so death-a-cold as now),but there was a moral sensation, mingling itself with the physicalchill, and causing her to shake more in spirit than in body. Theworld's broad, bleak atmosphere was all so comfortless! Such, indeed,is the impression which it makes on every new adventurer, even if heplunge into it while the warmest tide of life is bubbling through hisveins. What, then, must it have been to Hepzibah and Clifford,--sotime-stricken as they were, yet so like children in theirinexperience,--as they left the doorstep, and passed from beneath thewide shelter of the Pyncheon Elm! They were wandering all abroad, onprecisely such a pilgrimage as a child often meditates, to the world'send, with perhaps a sixpence and a biscuit in his pocket. InHepzibah's mind, there was the wretched consciousness of being adrift.She had lost the faculty of self-guidance; but, in view of thedifficulties around her, felt it hardly worth an effort to regain it,and was, moreover, incapable of making one.

  As they proceeded on their strange expedition, she now and then cast alook sidelong at Clifford, and could not but observe that he waspossessed and swayed by a powerful excitement. It was this, indeed,that gave him the control which he had at once, and so irresistibly,established over his movements. It not a little resembled theexhilaration of wine. Or, it might more fancifully be compared to ajoyous piece of music, played with wild vivacity, but upon a disorderedinstrument. As the cracked jarring note might always be heard, and asit jarred loudest amidst the loftiest exultation of the melody, so wasthere a continual quake through Clifford, causing him most to quiverwhile he wore a triumphant smile, and seemed almost under a necessityto skip in his gait.

  They met few people abroad, even on passing from the retiredneighborhood of the House of the Seven Gables into what was ordinarilythe more thronged and busier portion of the town. Glisteningsidewalks, with little pools of rain, here and there, along theirunequal surface; umbrellas displayed ostentatiously in theshop-windows, as if the life of trade had concentrated itself in thatone article; wet leaves of the horse-chestnut or elm-trees, torn offuntimely by the blast and scattered along the public way; an unsightly,accumulation of mud in the middle of the street, which perversely grewthe more unclean for its long and laborious washing,--these were themore definable points of a very sombre picture. In the way of movementand human life, there was the hasty rattle of a cab or coach, itsdriver protected by a waterproof cap over his head and shoulders; theforlorn figure of an old man, who seemed to have crept out of somesubterranean sewer, and was stooping along the kennel, and poking thewet rubbish with a stick, in quest of rusty nails; a merchant or two,at the door of the post-office, together with an editor and amiscellaneous politician, awaiting a dilatory mail; a few visages ofretired sea-captains at the window of an insurance office, looking outvacantly at the vacant street, blaspheming at the weather, and frettingat the dearth as well of public news as local gossip. What atreasure-trove to these venerable quidnuncs, could they have guessedthe secret which Hepzibah and Clifford were carrying along with them!But their two figures attracted hardly so much notice as that of ayoung girl, who passed at the same instant, and happened to raise herskirt a trifle too high above her ankles. Had it been a sunny andcheerful day, they could hardly have gone through the streets withoutmaking themselves obnoxious to remark. Now, probably, they were feltto be in keeping with the dismal and bitter weather, and therefore didnot stand out in strong relief, as if the sun were shining on them, butmelted into the gray gloom and were forgotten as soon as gone.

  Poor Hepzibah! Could she have understood this fact, it would havebrought her some little comfort; for, to all her othertroubles,--strange to say!--there was added the womanish andold-maiden-like misery arising from a sense of unseemliness in herattire. Thus, she was fain to shrink deeper into herself, as it were,as if in the hope of making people suppose that here was only a cloakand hood, threadbare and woefully faded, taking an airing in the midstof the storm, without any wearer!

  As they went on, the feeling of indistinctness and unreality kept dimlyhovering round about her, and so diffusing itself into her system thatone of her hands was hardly palpable to the touch of the other. Anycertainty would have been preferable to this. She whispered toherself, again and again, "Am I awake?--Am I awake?" and sometimesexposed her face to the chill spatter of the wind, for the sake of itsrude assurance that she was. Whether it was Clifford's purpose, oronly chance, had led them thither, they now found themselves passingbeneath the arched entrance of a large structure of gray stone.Within, there was a spacious breadth, and an airy height from floor toroof, now partially filled with smoke and steam, which eddiedvoluminously upward and formed a mimic cloud-region over their heads.A train of cars was just ready for a start; the locomotive was frettingand fuming, like a steed impatient for a headlong rush; and the bellrang out its hasty peal, so well expressing the brief summons whichlife vouchsafes to us in its hurried career. Without question ordelay,--with the irresistible decision, if not rather to be calledrecklessness, which had so strangely taken possession of him, andthrough him of Hepzibah,--Clifford impelled her towards the cars, andassisted her to enter. The signal was given; the engine puffed forthits short, quick breaths; the train began its movement; and, along witha hundred other passengers, these two unwonted travellers sped onwardlike the wind.

  At last, therefore, and after so long estrangement from everything thatthe world acted or enjoyed, they had been drawn into the great currentof human life, and were swept away with it, as by the suction of fateitself.

  Still haunted with the idea that not one of the past incidents,inclusive of Judge Pyncheon's visit, could be real, the recluse of theSeven Gables murmured in her brother's ear,--

  "Clifford! Clifford! Is not this a dream?"

  "A dream, Hepzibah!" repeated he, almost laughing in her face. "On thecontrary, I have never been awake before!"

  Meanwhile, looking from the window, they could see the world racingpast them. At one moment, they were rattling through a solitude; thenext, a village had grown up around them; a few breaths more, and ithad vanished, as if swallowed by an earthquake. The spires ofmeeting-houses seemed set adrift from their foundations; thebroad-based hills glided away. Everything was unfixed from itsage-long rest, and moving at whirlwind speed in a direction opposite totheir own.

  Within the car there was the usual interior life of the railroad,offering little to the observation of other passengers, but full ofnovelty for this pair of strangely enfranchised prisoners. It wasnovelty enough, indeed, that there were fifty human beings in closerelation with them, under one long and narrow roof, and drawn onward bythe same mighty influence that had taken their two selves into itsgrasp. It seemed marvellous how all these people could remain soquietly in their seats, while so much noisy strength was at work intheir behalf. Some, with tickets in their hats (long travellers these,before whom lay a hundred miles of railroad), had plunged into theEnglish scenery and adventures of pamphlet novels, and were keepingcompany with dukes and earls. Others, whose briefer span forbade theirdevoting themselves to studies so abstruse, beguiled the little tediumof the way with penny-papers. A party of girls, and one young man, onopposite sides of the car, found huge amusement in a game of ball.They tossed it to and fro, with peals of laughter that might bemeasured by mile-lengths; for, faster than the nimble ball could fly,the merry players fled unconsciously along, leaving the trail of theirmirth afar behind, and ending their game under another sky than hadwitnessed its commencement. Boys, with apples, cakes, candy, and rollsof variously tinctured lozenges,--merchandise that reminded Hepzibah ofher deserted shop,--appeared at each momentary stopping-place, doing uptheir business in a hurry, or breakin
g it short off, lest the marketshould ravish them away with it. New people continually entered. Oldacquaintances--for such they soon grew to be, in this rapid current ofaffairs--continually departed. Here and there, amid the rumble and thetumult, sat one asleep. Sleep; sport; business; graver or lighterstudy; and the common and inevitable movement onward! It was lifeitself!

  Clifford's naturally poignant sympathies were all aroused. He caughtthe color of what was passing about him, and threw it back more vividlythan he received it, but mixed, nevertheless, with a lurid andportentous hue. Hepzibah, on the other hand, felt herself more apartfrom human kind than even in the seclusion which she had just quitted.

  "You are not happy, Hepzibah!" said Clifford apart, in a tone ofapproach. "You are thinking of that dismal old house, and of CousinJaffrey"--here came the quake through him,--"and of Cousin Jaffreysitting there, all by himself! Take my advice,--follow my example,--andlet such things slip aside. Here we are, in the world, Hepzibah!--inthe midst of life!--in the throng of our fellow beings! Let you and Ibe happy! As happy as that youth and those pretty girls, at their gameof ball!"

  "Happy--" thought Hepzibah, bitterly conscious, at the word, of herdull and heavy heart, with the frozen pain in it,--"happy. He is madalready; and, if I could once feel myself broad awake, I should go madtoo!"

  If a fixed idea be madness, she was perhaps not remote from it. Fastand far as they had rattled and clattered along the iron track, theymight just as well, as regarded Hepzibah's mental images, have beenpassing up and down Pyncheon Street. With miles and miles of variedscenery between, there was no scene for her save the seven oldgable-peaks, with their moss, and the tuft of weeds in one of theangles, and the shop-window, and a customer shaking the door, andcompelling the little bell to jingle fiercely, but without disturbingJudge Pyncheon! This one old house was everywhere! It transported itsgreat, lumbering bulk with more than railroad speed, and set itselfphlegmatically down on whatever spot she glanced at. The quality ofHepzibah's mind was too unmalleable to take new impressions so readilyas Clifford's. He had a winged nature; she was rather of the vegetablekind, and could hardly be kept long alive, if drawn up by the roots.Thus it happened that the relation heretofore existing between herbrother and herself was changed. At home, she was his guardian; here,Clifford had become hers, and seemed to comprehend whatever belonged totheir new position with a singular rapidity of intelligence. He hadbeen startled into manhood and intellectual vigor; or, at least, into acondition that resembled them, though it might be both diseased andtransitory.

  The conductor now applied for their tickets; and Clifford, who had madehimself the purse-bearer, put a bank-note into his hand, as he hadobserved others do.

  "For the lady and yourself?" asked the conductor. "And how far?"

  "As far as that will carry us," said Clifford. "It is no great matter.We are riding for pleasure merely."

  "You choose a strange day for it, sir!" remarked a gimlet-eyed oldgentleman on the other side of the car, looking at Clifford and hiscompanion, as if curious to make them out. "The best chance ofpleasure, in an easterly rain, I take it, is in a man's own house, witha nice little fire in the chimney."

  "I cannot precisely agree with you," said Clifford, courteously bowingto the old gentleman, and at once taking up the clew of conversationwhich the latter had proffered. "It had just occurred to me, on thecontrary, that this admirable invention of the railroad--with the vastand inevitable improvements to be looked for, both as to speed andconvenience--is destined to do away with those stale ideas of home andfireside, and substitute something better."

  "In the name of common-sense," asked the old gentleman rather testily,"what can be better for a man than his own parlor and chimney-corner?"

  "These things have not the merit which many good people attribute tothem," replied Clifford. "They may be said, in few and pithy words, tohave ill served a poor purpose. My impression is, that our wonderfullyincreased and still increasing facilities of locomotion are destined tobring us around again to the nomadic state. You are aware, my dearsir,--you must have observed it in your own experience,--that all humanprogress is in a circle; or, to use a more accurate and beautifulfigure, in an ascending spiral curve. While we fancy ourselves goingstraight forward, and attaining, at every step, an entirely newposition of affairs, we do actually return to something long ago triedand abandoned, but which we now find etherealized, refined, andperfected to its ideal. The past is but a coarse and sensual prophecyof the present and the future. To apply this truth to the topic nowunder discussion. In the early epochs of our race, men dwelt intemporary huts, of bowers of branches, as easily constructed as abird's-nest, and which they built,--if it should be called building,when such sweet homes of a summer solstice rather grew than were madewith hands,--which Nature, we will say, assisted them to rear wherefruit abounded, where fish and game were plentiful, or, mostespecially, where the sense of beauty was to be gratified by a loveliershade than elsewhere, and a more exquisite arrangement of lake, wood,and hill. This life possessed a charm which, ever since man quittedit, has vanished from existence. And it typified something better thanitself. It had its drawbacks; such as hunger and thirst, inclementweather, hot sunshine, and weary and foot-blistering marches overbarren and ugly tracts, that lay between the sites desirable for theirfertility and beauty. But in our ascending spiral, we escape all this.These railroads--could but the whistle be made musical, and the rumbleand the jar got rid of--are positively the greatest blessing that theages have wrought out for us. They give us wings; they annihilate thetoil and dust of pilgrimage; they spiritualize travel! Transition beingso facile, what can be any man's inducement to tarry in one spot? Why,therefore, should he build a more cumbrous habitation than can readilybe carried off with him? Why should he make himself a prisoner for lifein brick, and stone, and old worm-eaten timber, when he may just aseasily dwell, in one sense, nowhere,--in a better sense, wherever thefit and beautiful shall offer him a home?"

  Clifford's countenance glowed, as he divulged this theory; a youthfulcharacter shone out from within, converting the wrinkles and pallidduskiness of age into an almost transparent mask. The merry girls lettheir ball drop upon the floor, and gazed at him. They said tothemselves, perhaps, that, before his hair was gray and the crow's-feettracked his temples, this now decaying man must have stamped theimpress of his features on many a woman's heart. But, alas! no woman'seye had seen his face while it was beautiful.

  "I should scarcely call it an improved state of things," observedClifford's new acquaintance, "to live everywhere and nowhere!"

  "Would you not?" exclaimed Clifford, with singular energy. "It is asclear to me as sunshine,--were there any in the sky,--that the greatestpossible stumbling-blocks in the path of human happiness andimprovement are these heaps of bricks and stones, consolidated withmortar, or hewn timber, fastened together with spike-nails, which menpainfully contrive for their own torment, and call them house and home!The soul needs air; a wide sweep and frequent change of it. Morbidinfluences, in a thousand-fold variety, gather about hearths, andpollute the life of households. There is no such unwholesomeatmosphere as that of an old home, rendered poisonous by one's defunctforefathers and relatives. I speak of what I know. There is a certainhouse within my familiar recollection,--one of those peaked-gable(there are seven of them), projecting-storied edifices, such as youoccasionally see in our older towns,--a rusty, crazy, creaky,dry-rotted, dingy, dark, and miserable old dungeon, with an archedwindow over the porch, and a little shop-door on one side, and a great,melancholy elm before it! Now, sir, whenever my thoughts recur to thisseven-gabled mansion (the fact is so very curious that I must needsmention it), immediately I have a vision or image of an elderly man, ofremarkably stern countenance, sitting in an oaken elbow-chair, dead,stone-dead, with an ugly flow of blood upon his shirt-bosom! Dead, butwith open eyes! He taints the whole house, as I remember it. I couldnever flourish there, nor be happy, nor do nor enjoy what God meant meto
do and enjoy."

  His face darkened, and seemed to contract, and shrivel itself up, andwither into age.

  "Never, sir!" he repeated. "I could never draw cheerful breath there!"

  "I should think not," said the old gentleman, eyeing Cliffordearnestly, and rather apprehensively. "I should conceive not, sir,with that notion in your head!"

  "Surely not," continued Clifford; "and it were a relief to me if thathouse could be torn down, or burnt up, and so the earth be rid of it,and grass be sown abundantly over its foundation. Not that I shouldever visit its site again! for, sir, the farther I get away from it,the more does the joy, the lightsome freshness, the heart-leap, theintellectual dance, the youth, in short,--yes, my youth, my youth!--themore does it come back to me. No longer ago than this morning, I wasold. I remember looking in the glass, and wondering at my own grayhair, and the wrinkles, many and deep, right across my brow, and thefurrows down my cheeks, and the prodigious trampling of crow's-feetabout my temples! It was too soon! I could not bear it! Age had noright to come! I had not lived! But now do I look old? If so, myaspect belies me strangely; for--a great weight being off my mind--Ifeel in the very heyday of my youth, with the world and my best daysbefore me!"

  "I trust you may find it so," said the old gentleman, who seemed ratherembarrassed, and desirous of avoiding the observation which Clifford'swild talk drew on them both. "You have my best wishes for it."

  "For Heaven's sake, dear Clifford, be quiet!" whispered his sister."They think you mad."

  "Be quiet yourself, Hepzibah!" returned her brother. "No matter whatthey think! I am not mad. For the first time in thirty years mythoughts gush up and find words ready for them. I must talk, and Iwill!"

  He turned again towards the old gentleman, and renewed the conversation.

  "Yes, my dear sir," said he, "it is my firm belief and hope that theseterms of roof and hearth-stone, which have so long been held to embodysomething sacred, are soon to pass out of men's daily use, and beforgotten. Just imagine, for a moment, how much of human evil willcrumble away, with this one change! What we call real estate--the solidground to build a house on--is the broad foundation on which nearly allthe guilt of this world rests. A man will commit almost any wrong,--hewill heap up an immense pile of wickedness, as hard as granite, andwhich will weigh as heavily upon his soul, to eternal ages,--only tobuild a great, gloomy, dark-chambered mansion, for himself to die in,and for his posterity to be miserable in. He lays his own dead corpsebeneath the underpinning, as one may say, and hangs his frowningpicture on the wall, and, after thus converting himself into an evildestiny, expects his remotest great-grandchildren to be happy there. Ido not speak wildly. I have just such a house in my mind's eye!"

  "Then, sir," said the old gentleman, getting anxious to drop thesubject, "you are not to blame for leaving it."

  "Within the lifetime of the child already born," Clifford went on, "allthis will be done away. The world is growing too ethereal andspiritual to bear these enormities a great while longer. To me,though, for a considerable period of time, I have lived chiefly inretirement, and know less of such things than most men,--even to me,the harbingers of a better era are unmistakable. Mesmerism, now! Willthat effect nothing, think you, towards purging away the grossness outof human life?"

  "All a humbug!" growled the old gentleman.

  "These rapping spirits, that little Phoebe told us of, the other day,"said Clifford,--"what are these but the messengers of the spiritualworld, knocking at the door of substance? And it shall be flung wideopen!"

  "A humbug, again!" cried the old gentleman, growing more and more testyat these glimpses of Clifford's metaphysics. "I should like to rapwith a good stick on the empty pates of the dolts who circulate suchnonsense!"

  "Then there is electricity,--the demon, the angel, the mighty physicalpower, the all-pervading intelligence!" exclaimed Clifford. "Is that ahumbug, too? Is it a fact--or have I dreamt it--that, by means ofelectricity, the world of matter has become a great nerve, vibratingthousands of miles in a breathless point of time? Rather, the roundglobe is a vast head, a brain, instinct with intelligence! Or, shallwe say, it is itself a thought, nothing but thought, and no longer thesubstance which we deemed it!"

  "If you mean the telegraph," said the old gentleman, glancing his eyetoward its wire, alongside the rail-track, "it is an excellentthing,--that is, of course, if the speculators in cotton and politicsdon't get possession of it. A great thing, indeed, sir, particularlyas regards the detection of bank-robbers and murderers."

  "I don't quite like it, in that point of view," replied Clifford. "Abank-robber, and what you call a murderer, likewise, has his rights,which men of enlightened humanity and conscience should regard in somuch the more liberal spirit, because the bulk of society is prone tocontrovert their existence. An almost spiritual medium, like theelectric telegraph, should be consecrated to high, deep, joyful, andholy missions. Lovers, day by, day--hour by hour, if so often moved todo it,--might send their heart-throbs from Maine to Florida, with somesuch words as these 'I love you forever!'--'My heart runs over withlove!'--'I love you more than I can!' and, again, at the next message'I have lived an hour longer, and love you twice as much!' Or, when agood man has departed, his distant friend should be conscious of anelectric thrill, as from the world of happy spirits, telling him 'Yourdear friend is in bliss!' Or, to an absent husband, should come tidingsthus 'An immortal being, of whom you are the father, has this momentcome from God!' and immediately its little voice would seem to havereached so far, and to be echoing in his heart. But for these poorrogues, the bank-robbers,--who, after all, are about as honest as ninepeople in ten, except that they disregard certain formalities, andprefer to transact business at midnight rather than 'Change-hours,--andfor these murderers, as you phrase it, who are often excusable in themotives of their deed, and deserve to be ranked among publicbenefactors, if we consider only its result,--for unfortunateindividuals like these, I really cannot applaud the enlistment of animmaterial and miraculous power in the universal world-hunt at theirheels!"

  "You can't, hey?" cried the old gentleman, with a hard look.

  "Positively, no!" answered Clifford. "It puts them too miserably atdisadvantage. For example, sir, in a dark, low, cross-beamed, panelledroom of an old house, let us suppose a dead man, sitting in anarm-chair, with a blood-stain on his shirt-bosom,--and let us add toour hypothesis another man, issuing from the house, which he feels tobe over-filled with the dead man's presence,--and let us lastly imaginehim fleeing, Heaven knows whither, at the speed of a hurricane, byrailroad! Now, sir, if the fugitive alight in some distant town, andfind all the people babbling about that self-same dead man, whom he hasfled so far to avoid the sight and thought of, will you not allow thathis natural rights have been infringed? He has been deprived of hiscity of refuge, and, in my humble opinion, has suffered infinite wrong!"

  "You are a strange man; Sir!" said the old gentleman, bringing hisgimlet-eye to a point on Clifford, as if determined to bore right intohim. "I can't see through you!"

  "No, I'll be bound you can't!" cried Clifford, laughing. "And yet, mydear sir, I am as transparent as the water of Maule's well! But come,Hepzibah! We have flown far enough for once. Let us alight, as thebirds do, and perch ourselves on the nearest twig, and consult witherwe shall fly next!"

  Just then, as it happened, the train reached a solitary way-station.Taking advantage of the brief pause, Clifford left the car, and drewHepzibah along with him. A moment afterwards, the train--with all thelife of its interior, amid which Clifford had made himself soconspicuous an object--was gliding away in the distance, and rapidlylessening to a point which, in another moment, vanished. The world hadfled away from these two wanderers. They gazed drearily about them.At a little distance stood a wooden church, black with age, and in adismal state of ruin and decay, with broken windows, a great riftthrough the main body of the edifice, and a rafter dangling from thetop of the square tower. Farther off was a far
m-house, in the oldstyle, as venerably black as the church, with a roof sloping downwardfrom the three-story peak, to within a man's height of the ground. Itseemed uninhabited. There were the relics of a wood-pile, indeed, nearthe door, but with grass sprouting up among the chips and scatteredlogs. The small rain-drops came down aslant; the wind was notturbulent, but sullen, and full of chilly moisture.

  Clifford shivered from head to foot. The wild effervescence of hismood--which had so readily supplied thoughts, fantasies, and a strangeaptitude of words, and impelled him to talk from the mere necessity ofgiving vent to this bubbling-up gush of ideas had entirely subsided. Apowerful excitement had given him energy and vivacity. Its operationover, he forthwith began to sink.

  "You must take the lead now, Hepzibah!" murmured he, with a torpid andreluctant utterance. "Do with me as you will!" She knelt down upon theplatform where they were standing and lifted her clasped hands to thesky. The dull, gray weight of clouds made it invisible; but it was nohour for disbelief,--no juncture this to question that there was a skyabove, and an Almighty Father looking from it!

  "O God!"--ejaculated poor, gaunt Hepzibah,--then paused a moment, toconsider what her prayer should be,--"O God,--our Father,--are we notthy children? Have mercy on us!"