"In the name of Heaven," cried Hepzibah, provoked only to intenser
indignation by this outgush of the inestimable tenderness of a stern
nature,--"in God's name, whom you insult, and whose power I could
almost question, since he hears you utter so many false words without
palsying your tongue,--give over, I beseech you, this loathsome
pretence of affection for your victim! You hate him! Say so, like a
man! You cherish, at this moment, some black purpose against him in
your heart! Speak it out, at once!--or, if you hope so to promote it
better, hide it till you can triumph in its success! But never speak
again of your love for my poor brother. I cannot bear it! It will
drive me beyond a woman's decency! It will drive me mad! Forbear! Not
another word! It will make me spurn you!"
For once, Hepzibah's wrath had given her courage. She had spoken.
But, after all, was this unconquerable distrust of Judge Pyncheon's
integrity, and this utter denial, apparently, of his claim to stand in
the ring of human sympathies,--were they founded in any just perception
of his character, or merely the offspring of a woman's unreasonable
prejudice, deduced from nothing?
The Judge, beyond all question, was a man of eminent respectability.
The church acknowledged it; the state acknowledged it. It was denied
by nobody. In all the very extensive sphere of those who knew him,
whether in his public or private capacities, there was not an
individual--except Hepzibah, and some lawless mystic, like the
daguerreotypist, and, possibly, a few political opponents--who would
have dreamed of seriously disputing his claim to a high and honorable
place in the world's regard. Nor (we must do him the further justice
to say) did Judge Pyncheon himself, probably, entertain many or very
frequent doubts, that his enviable reputation accorded with his
deserts. His conscience, therefore, usually considered the surest
witness to a man's integrity,--his conscience, unless it might be for
the little space of five minutes in the twenty-four hours, or, now and
then, some black day in the whole year's circle,--his conscience bore
an accordant testimony with the world's laudatory voice. And yet,
strong as this evidence may seem to be, we should hesitate to peril our
own conscience on the assertion, that the Judge and the consenting
world were right, and that poor Hepzibah with her solitary prejudice
was wrong. Hidden from mankind,--forgotten by himself, or buried so
deeply under a sculptured and ornamented pile of ostentatious deeds
that his daily life could take no note of it,--there may have lurked
some evil and unsightly thing. Nay, we could almost venture to say,
further, that a daily guilt might have been acted by him, continually
renewed, and reddening forth afresh, like the miraculous blood-stain of
a murder, without his necessarily and at every moment being aware of it.