The House of the Seven Gables

Hepzibah leaves Judge Pyncheon to go and get Clifford. As she walks toward his chamber, she has a grave feeling that this is a moment of importance and will go down as one of the turning points in the family’s history. She hears and sees people outside, where life goes on normally, and she longs to be a part of that world or at least to have a friend or companion. She also fears that Clifford’s encounter with Judge Pyncheon will be devastating for him, as he is so fragile.

Hepzibah’s thoughts again go back to the people outside, and she wonders what would happen if she cried for help, assuming that all would take the judge’s side. Hepzibah decides to try to get Holgrave’s help, but he is not there. Instead, she sees some papers and other ephemera on his desk, including a daguerreotype of Judge Pyncheon. Only a cat is there. Hepzibah is panicked, worrying that Clifford has left the house and might throw himself into the sea. She returns to the judge, where she finds Clifford looking pale and the judge in the same position in which she left him—but now the judge is dead.

Clifford‘s reaction is slightly erratic, as he laughs and tells her that they can now dance and sing. He tells Hepzibah that they must leave. Hepzibah, shocked and not knowing what to do, follows Clifford’s lead and leaves the house with him.

Clifford has a strange decisiveness, and Hepzibah follows his lead. She is shivering and does not know if she is even awake or not. Clifford is energized, however, and takes them to a train, which they board. Unlike Hepzibah, who thinks she might be dreaming, Clifford proclaims that he has “never been awake before!” (256).

They are pulled “into the great current of human life” (256) as the train leaves the station. On board, people read and sleep, with some settling in for a long journey, and some getting ready to leave at the next stop. As the scenery goes by, Hepzibah cannot get the house of the seven gables out of her mind, but Clifford seems to be rejuvenated, as if the train is a fountain of youth for him. He strikes up a conversation with another passenger, speaking with so much enthusiasm that Hepzibah tells him to quiet down. The man with whom he speaks tells Clifford that it is terrible weather for such a journey and the kind of day where one would rather be home next to a warm fire. Clifford vehemently disagrees, and as he talks, he, too, seems to get drawn down by the house of the seven gables, unable to shake it from his mind and the conversation.

Clifford talks in a frenzied manner about the spiral nature of progress. Rather than being linear, it progresses by way of returning to older ways of doing things, improving them. The train, for instance, makes travel much easier than it had been before and may even allow for a nomadic way of life that is more pleasurable than one that revolves around brick-and-mortar homes. Clifford keeps bringing the conversation back to the house of the seven gables, and he thinks that the farther he gets from the house, the younger he feels. He and the passenger then turn to the technology of telegraphs and also discuss mesmerism.

Clifford decides that they should get off at the next station after the conversation turns toward telegraphs and how they are able to capture murderers. They disembark at a rural stop with nothing but decrepit buildings around, and Clifford begins to collapse. Hepzibah prays for mercy.

The narrator observes the judge sitting in the parlor at the house. Adopting a strange tone, the narrator approaches the judge as if he were asleep. It is odd, the narrator observes, that the judge would stay for several hours, when he has so much to do today: The judge had planned to buy some property at an auction, to meet with his doctor, and to go to an important dinner which would have sealed his governorship. Judge Pyncheon, however, “sleeps” through all of that.

It is now getting dark, and it is clear that the judge is not just sleeping. There have long been rumors that the ghosts of Pyncheons inhabit the parlor at night, and the narrator describes these ghosts arriving and looking at the portrait of Colonel Pyncheon. In addition to the ghosts, though, are the figures of the judge himself and his son. If it is true that both are now dead, then the judge’s estate will pass down to the inhabitants of the house: Hepzibah, Clifford, and Phoebe. It is unclear whether the narrator is “reporting” on the ghosts or creating yet another Romantic fold in the larger story.