Clifford's Chamber

Never had the old house appeared so dismal to poor Hepzibah as when she
departed on that wretched errand. There was a strange aspect in it.
As she trode along the foot-worn passages, and opened one crazy door
after another, and ascended the creaking staircase, she gazed wistfully
and fearfully around. It would have been no marvel, to her excited
mind, if, behind or beside her, there had been the rustle of dead
people's garments, or pale visages awaiting her on the landing-place
above. Her nerves were set all ajar by the scene of passion and terror
through which she had just struggled. Her colloquy with Judge
Pyncheon, who so perfectly represented the person and attributes of the
founder of the family, had called back the dreary past. It weighed
upon her heart. Whatever she had heard, from legendary aunts and
grandmothers, concerning the good or evil fortunes of the
Pyncheons,--stories which had heretofore been kept warm in her
remembrance by the chimney-corner glow that was associated with
them,--now recurred to her, sombre, ghastly, cold, like most passages
of family history, when brooded over in melancholy mood. The whole
seemed little else but a series of calamity, reproducing itself in
successive generations, with one general hue, and varying in little,
save the outline.

But Hepzibah now felt as if the Judge, and Clifford,
and herself,--they three together,--were on the point of adding another
incident to the annals of the house, with a bolder relief of wrong and
sorrow, which would cause it to stand out from all the rest. Thus it
is that the grief of the passing moment takes upon itself an
individuality, and a character of climax, which it is destined to lose
after a while, and to fade into the dark gray tissue common to the
grave or glad events of many years ago. It is but for a moment,
comparatively, that anything looks strange or startling,--a truth that
has the bitter and the sweet in it.