The Scowl and Smile

It was no fault of Hepzibah's. Everything--even the old
chairs and tables, that had known what weather was for three or four
such lifetimes as her own--looked as damp and chill as if the present
were their worst experience. The picture of the Puritan Colonel
shivered on the wall. The house itself shivered, from every attic of
its seven gables down to the great kitchen fireplace, which served all
the better as an emblem of the mansion's heart, because, though built
for warmth, it was now so comfortless and empty.

Hepzibah attempted to enliven matters by a fire in the parlor. But the
storm demon kept watch above, and, whenever a flame was kindled, drove
the smoke back again, choking the chimney's sooty throat with its own
breath. Nevertheless, during four days of this miserable storm,
Clifford wrapt himself in an old cloak, and occupied his customary
chair. On the morning of the fifth, when summoned to breakfast, he
responded only by a broken-hearted murmur, expressive of a
determination not to leave his bed. His sister made no attempt to
change his purpose. In fact, entirely as she loved him, Hepzibah could
hardly have borne any longer the wretched duty--so impracticable by her
few and rigid faculties--of seeking pastime for a still sensitive, but
ruined mind, critical and fastidious, without force or volition. It
was at least something short of positive despair, that to-day she might
sit shivering alone, and not suffer continually a new grief, and
unreasonable pang of remorse, at every fitful sigh of her fellow
sufferer.

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.