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Updated: May 21, 2025
When Hepzibah Pyncheon opens her shop in the House of the Seven Gables, her state of feeling is indicated indirectly, by what she does and how she does it. Perhaps the most delicate means of indirect delineation is to suggest the personality of one character by exhibiting his effect upon certain other people in the story.
"But here is the same face, taken within this half-hour" said the artist, presenting her with another miniature. "I had just finished it when I heard you at the door." "This is death!" shuddered Phoebe, turning very pale. "Judge Pyncheon dead!" "Such as there represented," said Holgrave, "he sits in the next room. The Judge is dead, and Clifford and Hepzibah have vanished! I know no more.
And there we see a fly, one of your common house-flies, such as are always buzzing on the window-pane, which has smelt out Governor Pyncheon, and alights, now on his forehead, now on his chin, and now, Heaven help us! is creeping over the bridge of his nose, towards the would-be chief-magistrate's wide-open eyes! Canst thou not brush the fly away? Art thou too sluggish?
"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.
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.
"Ah, but these hens," answered the young man, "these hens of aristocratic lineage would scorn to understand the vulgar language of a barn-yard fowl. I prefer to think and so would Miss Hepzibah that they recognize the family tone. For you are a Pyncheon?"
The brother and sister departed, and left Judge Pyncheon sitting in the old home of his forefathers, all by himself; so heavy and lumpish that we can liken him to nothing better than a defunct nightmare, which had perished in the midst of its wickedness, and left its flabby corpse on the breast of the tormented one, to be gotten rid of as it might! XVII The Flight of Two Owls
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.
"Because," said the artist, "if the matter can be fairly considered and candidly interpreted, it must be evident that Judge Pyncheon could not have come unfairly to his end.
The most noted event in the Pyncheon annals in the last fifty years had been the violent death of the chief member of the family an old and wealthy bachelor. One of his nephews, Clifford, was found guilty of the murder, and was sentenced to perpetual imprisonment. This had happened thirty years ago, and there were now rumours that the long-buried criminal was about to be released.
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