innocent, as we know him to be!”
“They were arranged,” said Holgrave, — ”at least such has long been my conviction, — they were arranged after the uncle’s death, and before it was made public, by the man who sits in yonder parlor. His own death, so like that former one, yet attended by none of those suspicious circumstances, seems the stroke of God upon him, at once a punishment for his wickedness, and making plain the innocence of Clifford. But this flight, — it distorts everything! He may be in concealment, near at hand. Could we but bring him back before the discovery of the Judge’s death, the evil might be rectified.”
“We must not hide this thing a moment longer!” said Phoebe. “It is dreadful to keep it so closely in our hearts. Clifford is innocent. God will make it manifest! Let us throw open the doors, and call all the neighborhood to see the truth!”
“You are right, Phoebe,” rejoined Holgrave. “Doubtless you are right.”
Yet the artist did not feel the horror, which was proper to Phoebe’s sweet and order-loving character, at thus finding herself at issue with society, and brought in contact with an event that transcended ordinary rules. Neither was he in haste, like her, to betake himself within the precincts of common life. On the contrary, he gathered a wild enjoyment, — as it were, a flower of strange beauty, growing in a desolate spot, and blossoming in the wind, — such a flower of momentary happiness he gathered from his present position. It separated Phoebe and himself from the world, and bound them to each other, by their exclusive knowledge of Judge Pyncheon’s mysterious death, and the counsel which they were forced to hold respecting it. The secret, so long as it should continue such, kept them within the circle of a spell, a solitude in the midst of men, a remoteness as entire as that of an island in mid-ocean; once divulged, the ocean would flow betwixt them, standing on its widely sundered shores. Meanwhile, all the circumstances of their situation seemed to draw them together; they were like two children who go hand in hand, pressing closely to one another’s side, through a shadow-haunted passage. The image of awful Death, which filled the house, held them united by his stiffened grasp.
These influences hastened the development of emotions that might not otherwise have flowered so. Possibly, indeed, it had been Holgrave’s purpose to let them die in their undeveloped germs. “Why do we delay so?” asked Phoebe. “This secret takes away my breath! Let us throw open the doors!”
“In all our lives there can never come another moment like this!” said Holgrave. “Phoebe, is it all terror? — nothing but terror? Are you conscious of no joy, as I am, that has made this the only point of life worth living for?”
“It seems a sin,” replied Phoebe, trembling, “to think of joy at such a time!”
“Could you but know, Phoebe, how it was with me the hour before you came!” exclaimed the artist. “A dark, cold, miserable hour! The presence of yonder dead man threw a great black shadow over everything; he made the universe, so far as my perception could reach, a scene of guilt and of retribution more dreadful than the guilt. The sense of it took away my youth. I never hoped to feel young again! The world looked strange, wild, evil, hostile; my past life, so lonesome and dreary; my future, a shapeless gloom, which I must mould into gloomy shapes! But, Phoebe, you crossed the threshold; and hope, warmth, and joy came in with you! The black moment became at once a blissful one. It must not pass without the spoken word. I love you!”
“How can you love a simple girl like me?” asked Phoebe, compelled by his earnestness to speak. “You have many, many thoughts, with which I should try in vain to sympathize. And I, — I, too, — I have tendencies with which you would sympathize as little. That is less matter. But I have not scope enough to make you happy.”
“You are my only possibility of happiness!” answered Holgrave. “I have no faith in it, except as you bestow it on me!”
“And then — I am afraid!” continued Phoebe, shrinking towards Holgrave, even while she told him so frankly the doubts with which he affected her. “You will lead me out of my own quiet path. You will make me strive to follow you where it is pathless. I cannot do so. It is not my nature. I shall sink down and perish!”
“Ah, Phoebe!” exclaimed Holgrave, with almost a sigh, and a smile that was burdened with thought.
“It will be far otherwise than as you forebode. The world owes all its onward impulses to men ill at ease. The happy man inevitably confines himself within ancient limits. I have a presentiment that, hereafter, it will be my lot to set out trees, to make fences, — perhaps, even, in due time, to build a house for another generation, — in a word, to conform myself to laws and the peaceful practice of society. Your poise will be more powerful than any oscillating tendency of mine.”
“I would not have it so!” said Phoebe earnestly.
“Do you love me?” asked Holgrave. “If we love one another, the moment has room for nothing more. Let us pause upon it, and be satisfied. Do you love me, Phoebe?”
“You look into my heart,” said she, letting her eyes drop. “You know I love you!”
And it was in this hour, so full of doubt and awe, that the one miracle was wrought, without which every human existence is a blank. The bliss which makes all things true, beautiful, and holy shone around this youth and maiden. They were conscious of nothing sad nor old. They transfigured the earth, and made it Eden again, and themselves the two first dwellers in it. The dead man, so close beside them, was forgotten. At such a crisis, there is no death; for immortality is revealed anew, and embraces everything in its hallowed atmosphere.
But how soon the heavy earth-dream settled down again!
“Hark!” whispered Phoebe. “Somebody is at the street door!”
“Now let us meet the world!” said Holgrave. “No doubt, the rumor of Judge Pyncheon’s visit to this house, and the flight of Hepzibah and Clifford, is about to lead to the investigation of the premises. We have no way but to meet it. Let us open the door at once.”
But, to their surprise, before they could reach the street door, — even before they quitted the room in which the foregoing interview had passed, — they heard footsteps in the farther passage. The door, therefore, which they supposed to be securely locked, — which Holgrave, indeed, had seen to be so, and at which Phoebe had vainly tried to enter, — must have been opened from without. The sound of footsteps was not harsh, bold, decided, and intrusive, as the gait of strangers would naturally be, making authoritative entrance into a dwelling where they knew themselves unwelcome. It was feeble, as of persons either weak or weary; there was the mingled murmur of two voices, familiar to both the listeners.
“Can it be?” whispered Holgrave.
“It is they!” answered Phoebe. “Thank God! — thank God!”
And then, as if in sympathy with Phoebe’s whispered ejaculation, they heard Hepzibah’s voice more distinctly.
“Thank God, my brother, we are at home!”
“Well! — Yes! — thank God!” responded Clifford. “A dreary home, Hepzibah! But you have done well to bring me hither! Stay! That parlor door is open. I cannot pass by it! Let me go and rest me in the arbor, where I used, — oh, very long ago, it seems to me, after what has befallen us, — where I used to be so happy with little Phoebe!”
But the house was not altogether so dreary as Clifford imagined it. They had not made many steps, — in truth, they were lingering in the entry, with the listlessness of an accomplished purpose, uncertain what to do next, — when Phoebe ran to meet them. On beholding her, Hepzibah burst into tears. With all her might, she had staggered onward beneath the burden of grief and responsibility, until now that it was safe to fling it down. Indeed, she had not energy to fling it down, but had ceased to uphold it, and suffered it to press her to the earth. Clifford appeared the stronger of the two.
“It is our own little Phoebe! — Ah! and Holgrave with, her” exclaimed he, with a glance of keen and delicate insight, and a smile, beautiful, kind, but melancholy. “I thought of you both, as we came down