But Clifford, it seemed, though he did not make his appearance below
stairs, had, after all, bestirred himself in quest of amusement. In
the course of the forenoon, Hepzibah heard a note of music, which
(there being no other tuneful contrivance in the House of the Seven
Gables) she knew must proceed from Alice Pyncheon's harpsichord. She
was aware that Clifford, in his youth, had possessed a cultivated taste
for music, and a considerable degree of skill in its practice. It was
difficult, however, to conceive of his retaining an accomplishment to
which daily exercise is so essential, in the measure indicated by the
sweet, airy, and delicate, though most melancholy strain, that now
stole upon her ear. Nor was it less marvellous that the long-silent
instrument should be capable of so much melody. Hepzibah involuntarily
thought of the ghostly harmonies, prelusive of death in the family,
which were attributed to the legendary Alice. But it was, perhaps,
proof of the agency of other than spiritual fingers, that, after a few
touches, the chords seemed to snap asunder with their own vibrations,
and the music ceased.
But a harsher sound succeeded to the mysterious notes; nor was the
easterly day fated to pass without an event sufficient in itself to
poison, for Hepzibah and Clifford, the balmiest air that ever brought
the humming-birds along with it. The final echoes of Alice Pyncheon's
performance (or Clifford's, if his we must consider it) were driven
away by no less vulgar a dissonance than the ringing of the shop-bell.
A foot was heard scraping itself on the threshold, and thence somewhat
ponderously stepping on the floor. Hepzibah delayed a moment, while
muffling herself in a faded shawl, which had been her defensive armor
in a forty years' warfare against the east wind. A characteristic
sound, however,--neither a cough nor a hem, but a kind of rumbling and
reverberating spasm in somebody's capacious depth of chest;--impelled
her to hurry forward, with that aspect of fierce faint-heartedness so
common to women in cases of perilous emergency. Few of her sex, on
such occasions, have ever looked so terrible as our poor scowling
Hepzibah. But the visitor quietly closed the shop-door behind him,
stood up his umbrella against the counter, and turned a visage of
composed benignity, to meet the alarm and anger which his appearance
had excited.
Hepzibah's presentiment had not deceived her. It was no other than
Judge Pyncheon, who, after in vain trying the front door, had now
effected his entrance into the shop.
"How do you do, Cousin Hepzibah?--and how does this most inclement
weather affect our poor Clifford?" began the Judge; and wonderful it
seemed, indeed, that the easterly storm was not put to shame, or, at
any rate, a little mollified, by the genial benevolence of his smile.
"I could not rest without calling to ask, once more, whether I can in
any manner promote his comfort, or your own."