The Complete Works of Nathaniel Hawthorne (Illustrated Edition). Nathaniel Hawthorne
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of coffee, without immediate notice of the guest whom he had summoned to his presence. It was not that he intended any rudeness or improper neglect, — which, indeed, he would have blushed to be guilty of, — but it never occurred to him that a person in Maule’s station had a claim on his courtesy, or would trouble himself about it one way or the other.
The carpenter, however, stepped at once to the hearth, and turned himself about, so as to look Mr. Pyncheon in the face.
“You sent for me,” said he. “Be pleased to explain your business, that I may go back to my own affairs.”
“Ah! excuse me,” said Mr. Pyncheon quietly. “I did not mean to tax your time without a recompense. Your name, I think, is Maule, — Thomas or Matthew Maule, — a son or grandson of the builder of this house?”
“Matthew Maule,” replied the carpenter, — ”son of him who built the house, — grandson of the rightful proprietor of the soil.”
“I know the dispute to which you allude,” observed Mr. Pyncheon with undisturbed equanimity. “I am well aware that my grandfather was compelled to resort to a suit at law, in order to establish his claim to the foundation-site of this edifice. We will not, if you please, renew the discussion. The matter was settled at the time, and by the competent authorities, — equitably, it is to be presumed, — and, at all events, irrevocably. Yet, singularly enough, there is an incidental reference to this very subject in what I am now about to say to you. And this same inveterate grudge, — excuse me, I mean no offence, — this irritability, which you have just shown, is not entirely aside from the matter.”
“If you can find anything for your purpose, Mr. Pyncheon,” said the carpenter, “in a man’s natural resentment for the wrongs done to his blood, you are welcome to it.”
“I take you at your word, Goodman Maule,” said the owner of the Seven Gables, with a smile, “and will proceed to suggest a mode in which your hereditary resentments — justifiable or otherwise — may have had a bearing on my affairs. You have heard, I suppose, that the Pyncheon family, ever since my grandfather’s days, have been prosecuting a still unsettled claim to a very large extent of territory at the Eastward?”
“Often,” replied Maule, — and it is said that a smile came over his face, — ”very often, — from my father!”
“This claim,” continued Mr. Pyncheon, after pausing a moment, as if to consider what the carpenter’s smile might mean, “appeared to be on the very verge of a settlement and full allowance, at the period of my grandfather’s decease. It was well known, to those in his confidence, that he anticipated neither difficulty nor delay. Now, Colonel Pyncheon, I need hardly say, was a practical man, well acquainted with public and private business, and not at all the person to cherish ill-founded hopes, or to attempt the following out of an impracticable scheme. It is obvious to conclude, therefore, that he had grounds, not apparent to his heirs, for his confident anticipation of success in the matter of this Eastern claim. In a word, I believe, — and my legal advisers coincide in the belief, which, moreover, is authorized, to a certain extent, by the family traditions, — that my grandfather was in possession of some deed, or other document, essential to this claim, but which has since disappeared.”
“Very likely,” said Matthew Maule, — and again, it is said, there was a dark smile on his face, — ”but what can a poor carpenter have to do with the grand affairs of the Pyncheon family?”
“Perhaps nothing,” returned Mr. Pyncheon, “possibly much!”
Here ensued a great many words between Matthew Maule and the proprietor of the Seven Gables, on the subject which the latter had thus broached. It seems (although Mr. Pyncheon had some hesitation in referring to stories so exceedingly absurd in their aspect) that the popular belief pointed to some mysterious connection and dependence, existing between the family of the Maules and these vast unrealized possessions of the Pyncheons. It was an ordinary saying that the old wizard, hanged though he was, had obtained the best end of the bargain in his contest with Colonel Pyncheon; inasmuch as he had got possession of the great Eastern claim, in exchange for an acre or two of garden-ground. A very aged woman, recently dead, had often used the metaphorical expression, in her fireside talk, that miles and miles of the Pyncheon lands had been shovelled into Maule’s grave; which, by the bye, was but a very shallow nook, between two rocks, near the summit of Gallows Hill. Again, when the lawyers were making inquiry for the missing document, it was a by-word that it would never be found, unless in the wizard’s skeleton hand. So much weight had the shrewd lawyers assigned to these fables, that (but Mr. Pyncheon did not see fit to inform the carpenter of the fact) they had secretly caused the wizard’s grave to be searched. Nothing was discovered, however, except that, unaccountably, the right hand of the skeleton was gone.
Now, what was unquestionably important, a portion of these popular rumors could be traced, though rather doubtfully and indistinctly, to chance words and obscure hints of the executed wizard’s son, and the father of this present Matthew Maule. And here Mr. Pyncheon could bring an item of his own personal evidence into play. Though but a child at the time, he either remembered or fancied that Matthew’s father had had some job to perform on the day before, or possibly the very morning of the Colonel’s decease, in the private room where he and the carpenter were at this moment talking. Certain papers belonging to Colonel Pyncheon, as his grandson distinctly recollected, had been spread out on the table.
Matthew Maule understood the insinuated suspicion.
“My father,” he said, — but still there was that dark smile, making a riddle of his countenance, — ”my father was an honester man than the bloody old Colonel! Not to get his rights back again would he have carried off one of those papers!”
“I shall not bandy words with you,” observed the foreign-bred Mr. Pyncheon, with haughty composure. “Nor will it become me to resent any rudeness towards either my grandfather or myself. A gentleman, before seeking intercourse with a person of your station and habits, will first consider whether the urgency of the end may compensate for the disagreeableness of the means. It does so in the present instance.”
He then renewed the conversation, and made great pecuniary offers to the carpenter, in case the latter should give information leading to the discovery of the lost document, and the consequent success of the Eastern claim. For a long time Matthew Maule is said to have turned a cold ear to these propositions. At last, however, with a strange kind of laugh, he inquired whether Mr. Pyncheon would make over to him the old wizard’s homestead-ground, together with the House of the Seven Gables, now standing on it, in requital of the documentary evidence so urgently required.
The wild, chimney-corner legend (which, without copying all its extravagances, my narrative essentially follows) here gives an account of some very strange behavior on the part of Colonel Pyncheon’s portrait. This picture, it must be understood, was supposed to be so intimately connected with the fate of the house, and so magically built into its walls, that, if once it should be removed, that very instant the whole edifice would come thundering down in a heap of dusty ruin. All through the foregoing conversation between Mr. Pyncheon and the carpenter, the portrait had been frowning, clenching its fist, and giving many such proofs of excessive discomposure, but without attracting the notice of either of the two colloquists. And finally, at Matthew Maule’s audacious suggestion of a transfer of the seven-gabled structure, the ghostly portrait is averred to have lost all patience, and to have shown itself on the point of descending bodily from its frame. But such incredible incidents are merely to be mentioned aside.
“Give up this house!” exclaimed Mr. Pyncheon, in amazement at the proposal. “Were I to do so, my grandfather would not rest quiet in his grave!”
“He never has, if all stories are true,” remarked the carpenter composedly. “But that matter concerns his grandson more than it does Matthew Maule. I have no other terms to propose.”
Impossible as he at first thought it to comply with Maule’s conditions, still, on a second glance, Mr. Pyncheon was of opinion that they might at least be made matter of discussion. He himself had no personal attachment for the house, nor any pleasant associations connected with his childish residence