As for ornamental articles of furniture, we recollect but two, if such
they may be called. One was a map of the Pyncheon territory at the
eastward, not engraved, but the handiwork of some skilful old
draughtsman, and grotesquely illuminated with pictures of Indians and
wild beasts, among which was seen a lion; the natural history of the
region being as little known as its geography, which was put down most
fantastically awry. The other adornment was the portrait of old
Colonel Pyncheon, at two thirds length, representing the stern features
of a Puritanic-looking personage, in a skull-cap, with a laced band and
a grizzly beard; holding a Bible with one hand, and in the other
uplifting an iron sword-hilt. The latter object, being more
successfully depicted by the artist, stood out in far greater
prominence than the sacred volume. Face to face with this picture, on
entering the apartment, Miss Hepzibah Pyncheon came to a pause;
regarding it with a singular scowl, a strange contortion of the brow,
which, by people who did not know her, would probably have been
interpreted as an expression of bitter anger and ill-will. But it was
no such thing. She, in fact, felt a reverence for the pictured visage,
of which only a far-descended and time-stricken virgin could be
susceptible; and this forbidding scowl was the innocent result of her
near-sightedness, and an effort so to concentrate her powers of vision
as to substitute a firm outline of the object instead of a vague one.
We must linger a moment on this unfortunate expression of poor
Hepzibah's brow. Her scowl,--as the world, or such part of it as
sometimes caught a transitory glimpse of her at the window, wickedly
persisted in calling it,--her scowl had done Miss Hepzibah a very ill
office, in establishing her character as an ill-tempered old maid; nor
does it appear improbable that, by often gazing at herself in a dim
looking-glass, and perpetually encountering her own frown with its
ghostly sphere, she had been led to interpret the expression almost as
unjustly as the world did. "How miserably cross I look!" she must
often have whispered to herself; and ultimately have fancied herself
so, by a sense of inevitable doom. But her heart never frowned. It
was naturally tender, sensitive, and full of little tremors and
palpitations; all of which weaknesses it retained, while her visage was
growing so perversely stern, and even fierce. Nor had Hepzibah ever
any hardihood, except what came from the very warmest nook in her
affections.
All this time, however, we are loitering faintheartedly on the
threshold of our story. In very truth, we have an invincible
reluctance to disclose what Miss Hepzibah Pyncheon was about to do.