Phoebe Pyncheon

“ Its master is coming."
"Do you mean Judge Pyncheon?" asked Phoebe, in surprise.
"Judge Pyncheon!" answered her cousin angrily. "He will hardly cross the threshold while I live. You shall see the face of him I speak of."
She went in quest of a miniature, and returned and placed it in Phoebe's hand.
"How do you like the face?" asked Hepzibah.
"It is handsome; it is very beautiful!" said Phoebe admiringly. "It is as sweet a face as a man's can be or ought to be. Who is it, Cousin Hepzibah?"
"Did you never hear of Clifford Pyncheon?" ”

“ I thought there were no Pyncheons left, except yourself and our Cousin Jaffrey, the judge. And yet I seem to have heard the name of Clifford Pyncheon. Yes, from my father, or my mother. But hasn't he been dead a long while?"
"Well, well, child, perhaps he has," said Hepzibah, with a sad, hollow laugh; "but in old houses like this, you know, dead people are very apt to come back again. And, Cousin Phoebe, if your courage does not fail you, we will not part soon. You are welcome to such a home as I can offer you." ”

“ What is to be done now?" thought the country girl to herself. "He looks as if there were nothing softer in him than a rock, nor milder than the east wind."
Then all at once it struck Phoebe that this very Judge Pyncheon was the original of a miniature which Mr. Holgrave--who took portraits, and whose acquaintance she had made within a few hours of her arrival--had shown her yesterday. There was the same hard, stern, relentless look on the face. In reality, the miniature was copied from an old portrait of Colonel Pyncheon which hung within the house. ”

“ Clifford Pyncheon!" said the man of patches, "you may scheme for me as much as you please; but I'm not going to give up this one scheme of my own, even if I never bring it really to pass. It does seem to me that men make a wonderful mistake in trying to heap up property upon property. If I had done so, I should feel as if Providence was not bound to take care of me; and, at all events, the city wouldn't be! I'm one of those people who think that infinity is big enough for us all—and eternity long enough."
"Why, so they are, Uncle Venner," remarked Phoebe after a pause ”

“ Phoebe is no Pyncheon. She takes everything from her mother!"
As to Phoebe's not being a lady, or whether she were a lady or no, it was a point, perhaps, difficult to decide, but which could hardly have come up for judgment at all in any fair and healthy mind. Out of New England, it would be impossible to meet with a person combining so many ladylike attributes with so many others that form no necessary (if compatible) part of the character. She shocked no canon of taste; she was admirably in keeping with herself, and never jarred against surrounding circumstances. ”

“ Strength is incomprehensible by weakness, and, therefore, the more terrible. There is no greater bugbear than a strong-willed relative in the circle of his own connections.
XII The Daguerreotypist
IT must not be supposed that the life of a personage naturally so active as Phoebe could be wholly confined within the precincts of the old Pyncheon House. Clifford's demands upon her time were usually satisfied, in those long days, considerably earlier than sunset. ”

“ Poor Phoebe! Gentle child, of coarse, unfeeling parents, few shed more sincerely a tear for thy early fate than the stranger whom they hated and despised. Often have I stood beside that humble mound, when the song of the lark was above me, and the bee murmuring at my feet, and thought that it was well for thee that God opened the eyes of thy soul, and called thee out of the darkness of ignorance and sin to glory in His marvellous light. ”

“ Then he’s got no more power over ’e than a drowned worm, nor Miller, nor any.”
“To think you can forgive me enough to marry me after all my wickedness! I never dreamed theer was such a big heart in the world as yourn.”
“Why, we promised, didn’t us? We’m built for each other. I knawed I’d only got to come. An’ I have, at cost, tu, I promise ’e. Now we’ll be upsides wi’ this tramp from furrin paarts, if awnly you do ezacally what I be gwaine to tell you. I’d meant to write it, but I can speak it better as the chance has come.”
Phoebe’s heart glowed at this tremendous change in the position. ”

“ There the girls spoke in murmurs together, while various sounds, all louder than their voices, proceeded from the kitchen below. There were assembled the miller, Billy Blee, Mr. Chapple, and one Abraham Chown, the police inspector of Chagford, a thin, black-bearded man, oppressed with the cares of his office.
“They be arranging the programme of festive delights,” explained Phoebe. “My heart sinks in me every way I turn now. All the world seems thinking about what’s to come; an’ I knaw it never will.”
“’T is a wonnerful straange thing to fall out. ”

“ Phoebe squared herself to her reviewing self and admitted that she had cared for him then and ever since—cared for him, but had starved his tenderness and in the lover had left unsought the man. But she was clear-sighted enough to know that the handsome easy-going boy, who had wooed with a smile and taken rebuff with a laugh, was not the steady-eyed forceful man who now faced her. ”

“ She was very pretty; as graceful as a bird, and graceful much in the same way; as pleasant about the house as a gleam of sunshine falling on the floor through a shadow of twinkling leaves, or as a ray of firelight that dances on the wall while evening is drawing nigh. Instead of discussing her claim to rank among ladies, it would be preferable to regard Phoebe as the example of feminine grace and availability combined, in a state of society, if there were any such, where ladies did not exist. ”

“ Oh, Phoebe, I want thee much. My bosom needs thy head upon it,—thou alone art essential. Thou art the only person in the world that ever was necessary to me. Other people have occasionally been more or less agreeable; but I think I was always more at ease alone than in anybody's company, till I knew thee. And now I am only myself when thou art within my reach. Thou art an unspeakably beloved woman. How couldst thou inflict such frozen agony upon me, in that dream! Thou shouldst have caressed me and embraced me. ”

“ I’ve seed ’em by the river jump slap in the water, almost on to a trout’s back. So us hops along and caan’t say what’s comin’ next. We ’m built to see just beyond our awn nose-ends and no further. That’s philosophy.”
“Ban’t comfortin’ if ’t is,” said Phoebe.
“Whether or no, I’ll see your faither ’fore night and have a plain answer. I’m a straight, square man, so’s the miller.”
“You’ll speed poorly, I’m fearin’, but ’t is a honest thing; and I’ll tell faither you ’m all the world to me. He doan’t seem to knaw what it is for a gal to be nineteen year old somehow.” ”

“ On one of these occasions, with a ship reeling under them like a restive horse, and the waves running mountains high, poor Phoebe's terrors overmastered both her hostility and her reserve. “Doctor,” said she, “I believe 'tis God's will we shall never see England. I must try and die more like a Christian than I have lived, forgiving all who have wronged me, and you, that have been my good friend and my worst enemy, but you did not mean it. Sir, what has turned me against you so—your wife was my husband's sweetheart before he married me.” ”

“ A prig is a stuck-up silly creature, and a prude is always thinking everything wicked. And that’s what you are.”
Phoebe wisely made no reply. Tea finished, Rhoda condescended to be dressed and have her hair curled and powdered, gave Phoebe very few minutes for changing her own dress, and then, followed by her cousin and handmaid, she descended to the drawing-room. To Phoebe’s consternation, it seemed full of young ladies and gentlemen, in fashionable array ”

“ He looked up in my eyes as I brought un away, an’ after he’d got used to me he was quiet as a mouse an’ snuggled to me.”
“They’d have said ’twas a fairy changeling in my young days,” mused Mrs. Blanchard, “but us knaws better now. ’Tis a li’l gypsy, I’ll warn ’e, an’ some wicked mother’s dropped un under your nose to ease her conscience.”
“What will you do? Take un to the poorhouse?” asked Phoebe.
“‘Poorhouse’! Never! This be mine, tu. Mine! I was called to it, weern’t I? By a human voice or another, God knaws. Theer’s more to this than us can see.” ”

“ To my eye he looks younger than my memory picture of him. But that’s because I’ve grown from boy to man, as you have from child to woman.”
“So I have, and ’t is a pity my faither doan’t knaw it,” answered Phoebe, smarting under her wrongs, and willing to chronicle them in a friendly ear. “If I ban’t full woman, who is? Yet I’m treated like a baaby, as if I’d got no ’pinions an’ feelings, and wasn’t—wasn’t auld enough to knaw what love meant.” ”

“ The children ’ull be better company for ’ee nor they crazy notions o’ yours, an’ if ye do want to do a bit o’ mendin’ of a evenin’ ye can darn Caines’ socks.”
“Nay, now, nay Phoebe, nay indeed,” cried the old woman in a shaking voice, her eyes becoming round with alarm, and her lips quivering. “I couldn’t shift, my dear, I couldn’t bide nowhere but in the wold place where I was barn, an’ where I do look to die. The only shiftin’ I’ll do ’ull be then. I’ll shift to the New House, Phoebe, my dear, whenever it be the Lard’s will to take I, but not before.” ”

“ She had no hopes, such as she had cherished, against all reason, upon getting Ishmael's note that morning, of a moonlit walk home with him, but something in her shrank from the walk undertaken with Archelaus. He wrapped the shawl about her as she spoke. Phoebe could no more have resisted a man who had his mind made up than a frog can get away from a viper which has once sighted it, and she let herself be swathed without further protest. Good-byes were said, with careless affection on the part of Vassie, and kindliness from Judith and a pressure of the hand and a deep look from Blanche. ”

“ And so in the watches of the night the siege was raised and Phoebe, the dauntless, brilliant, arrogant Phoebe had capitulated. No love-lorn woman of the ages ever palpitated more thoroughly at the thought of her lover than did she as she kept vigil with David across the city. ”

“ I be gwaine to give myself up—then us’ll see who’s the fule!”
Phoebe was out of bed with her arms round her husband in a moment.
“No, no—never. You couldn’t, Will; you daren’t—’tis against nature. You ban’t free to do no such wild thing. You forget me, an’ the li’l maid, an’ t’ other comin’!”
“Doan’t ’e choke me,” he said; “an’ doan’t ’e look so terrified. Your small hands caan’t keep off what’s ahead o’ me; an’ I wouldn’t let ’em if they could. ’T is in this world that a chap’s got to pay for his sins most times, an’ damn short credit, tu, so far as I can see. ”

“ Ross."
"Miss Nina, I don't like the looks of you this morning. When your eyes are as if there was little imps a-dancing in 'em, then I looks out for squalls."
"Thank you, Phoebe," I said, laughing and making her a mocking curtsey. "My eyes feel very flattered, I can assure you."
"Oh, they're well enough, and bright enough," she replied, grudgingly, "but I should like to see a bit more soberness about them; why, when I was your age, miss, I was married. Mr. Larkins—
"Poor man," I ejaculated under my breath.
Phoebe did not hear; she was lost in reminiscences of the past. ”

“ Fresh was Phoebe, moreover, and airy and sweet in her apparel; as if nothing that she wore—neither her gown, nor her small straw bonnet, nor her little kerchief, any more than her snowy stockings—had ever been put on before; or, if worn, were all the fresher for it, and with a fragrance as if they had lain among the rosebuds.
The girl waved her hand to Hepzibah and Clifford, and went up the street; a religion in herself, warm, simple, true, with a substance that could walk on earth, and a spirit that was capable of heaven. ”

“ In full consciousness of his danger, he determines not to commit himself by any voluntary avowal of what he has seen and heard; but to bury the secret in his own breast, as also insist on its being so interred within the bosom of his better half.
This day, Phoebe is not in the field along with the working gang; which causes him some anxiety. The coon-hunter can trust his wife’s affections, but is not so confident as to her prudence. ”

“ It is perhaps remarkable, considering her temperament, that Phoebe oftener chose a strain of pathos than of gayety. But the young and happy are not ill pleased to temper their life with a transparent shadow. The deepest pathos of Phoebe's voice and song, moreover, came sifted through the golden texture of a cheery spirit, and was somehow so interfused with the quality thence acquired, that one's heart felt all the lighter for having wept at it. ”

“ We’ve been idle long enough, Cousin Judith—too long, I fear—and it’s time for us to act.”
“To whom do you refer when you say ‘us’!” asked the Little Mother, smiling at the girl’s earnestness.
“To you and to myself, of course.”
“I fear I am not a good conspirator, Phoebe; though you, I admit, seem qualified to be one. But what may two weak, inexperienced girls do, where a powerful banker and a clever lawyer fail?”
“We can do lots,” asserted Phoebe. “I can’t say just what, until I’ve thought it over; but oughtn’t the right to triumph, Cousin Judith!” ”

“ Dar’s a cat in de bag, somewha; you better let her out, and confess de whole troof.”
As Phoebe makes this appeal, her glance rests inquiringly on her husband’s countenance, and keenly scrutinises the play of his features.
There is not much play to be observed. The coon-hunter is a pure-blooded African, with features immobile as those of the Sphinx. And from his colour nought can be deduced. As already said, it is the depth of its ebon blackness, producing a purplish iridescence over the epidermis, that has gained for him the sobriquet “Blue Bill.” ”