Now she is almost ready. Let us pardon her one other pause; for it is
given to the sole sentiment, or, we might better say,--heightened and
rendered intense, as it has been, by sorrow and seclusion,--to the
strong passion of her life. We heard the turning of a key in a small
lock; she has opened a secret drawer of an escritoire, and is probably
looking at a certain miniature, done in Malbone's most perfect style,
and representing a face worthy of no less delicate a pencil. It was
once our good fortune to see this picture. It is a likeness of a young
man, in a silken dressing-gown of an old fashion, the soft richness of
which is well adapted to the countenance of reverie, with its full,
tender lips, and beautiful eyes, that seem to indicate not so much
capacity of thought, as gentle and voluptuous emotion. Of the
possessor of such features we shall have a right to ask nothing, except
that he would take the rude world easily, and make himself happy in it.
Can it have been an early lover of Miss Hepzibah? No; she never had a
lover--poor thing, how could she?--nor ever knew, by her own
experience, what love technically means. And yet, her undying faith
and trust, her fresh remembrance, and continual devotedness towards the
original of that miniature, have been the only substance for her heart
to feed upon.
She seems to have put aside the miniature, and is standing again before
the toilet-glass. There are tears to be wiped off. A few more
footsteps to and fro; and here, at last,--with another pitiful sigh,
like a gust of chill, damp wind out of a long-closed vault, the door of
which has accidentally been set, ajar--here comes Miss Hepzibah
Pyncheon! Forth she steps into the dusky, time-darkened passage; a tall
figure, clad in black silk, with a long and shrunken waist, feeling her
way towards the stairs like a near-sighted person, as in truth she is.
The sun, meanwhile, if not already above the horizon, was ascending
nearer and nearer to its verge. A few clouds, floating high upward,
caught some of the earliest light, and threw down its golden gleam on
the windows of all the houses in the street, not forgetting the House
of the Seven Gables, which--many such sunrises as it had
witnessed--looked cheerfully at the present one. The reflected
radiance served to show, pretty distinctly, the aspect and arrangement
of the room which Hepzibah entered, after descending the stairs. It
was a low-studded room, with a beam across the ceiling, panelled with
dark wood, and having a large chimney-piece, set round with pictured
tiles, but now closed by an iron fire-board, through which ran the
funnel of a modern stove. There was a carpet on the floor, originally
of rich texture, but so worn and faded in these latter years that its
once brilliant figure had quite vanished into one indistinguishable
hue. In the way of furniture, there were two tables: one, constructed
with perplexing intricacy and exhibiting as many feet as a centipede;
the other, most delicately wrought, with four long and slender legs, so
apparently frail that it was almost incredible what a length of time
the ancient tea-table had stood upon them. Half a dozen chairs stood
about the room, straight and stiff, and so ingeniously contrived for
the discomfort of the human person that they were irksome even to
sight, and conveyed the ugliest possible idea of the state of society
to which they could have been adapted. One exception there was,
however, in a very antique elbow-chair, with a high back, carved
elaborately in oak, and a roomy depth within its arms, that made up, by
its spacious comprehensiveness, for the lack of any of those artistic
curves which abound in a modern chair.