Little Phoebe was one of those persons who possess, as their exclusive
patrimony, the gift of practical arrangement. It is a kind of natural
magic that enables these favored ones to bring out the hidden
capabilities of things around them; and particularly to give a look of
comfort and habitableness to any place which, for however brief a
period, may happen to be their home. A wild hut of underbrush, tossed
together by wayfarers through the primitive forest, would acquire the
home aspect by one night's lodging of such a woman, and would retain it
long after her quiet figure had disappeared into the surrounding shade.
No less a portion of such homely witchcraft was requisite to reclaim,
as it were, Phoebe's waste, cheerless, and dusky chamber, which had
been untenanted so long--except by spiders, and mice, and rats, and
ghosts--that it was all overgrown with the desolation which watches to
obliterate every trace of man's happier hours. What was precisely
Phoebe's process we find it impossible to say. She appeared to have no
preliminary design, but gave a touch here and another there; brought
some articles of furniture to light and dragged others into the shadow;
looped up or let down a window-curtain; and, in the course of half an
hour, had fully succeeded in throwing a kindly and hospitable smile
over the apartment. No longer ago than the night before, it had
resembled nothing so much as the old maid's heart; for there was
neither sunshine nor household fire in one nor the other, and, save for
ghosts and ghostly reminiscences, not a guest, for many years gone by,
had entered the heart or the chamber.
There was still another peculiarity of this inscrutable charm. The
bedchamber, no doubt, was a chamber of very great and varied
experience, as a scene of human life: the joy of bridal nights had
throbbed itself away here; new immortals had first drawn earthly breath
here; and here old people had died. But--whether it were the white
roses, or whatever the subtile influence might be--a person of delicate
instinct would have known at once that it was now a maiden's
bedchamber, and had been purified of all former evil and sorrow by her
sweet breath and happy thoughts. Her dreams of the past night, being
such cheerful ones, had exorcised the gloom, and now haunted the
chamber in its stead.
After arranging matters to her satisfaction, Phoebe emerged from her
chamber, with a purpose to descend again into the garden. Besides the
rosebush, she had observed several other species of flowers growing
there in a wilderness of neglect, and obstructing one another's
development (as is often the parallel case in human society) by their
uneducated entanglement and confusion. At the head of the stairs,
however, she met Hepzibah, who, it being still early, invited her into
a room which she would probably have called her boudoir, had her
education embraced any such French phrase. It was strewn about with a
few old books, and a work-basket, and a dusty writing-desk; and had, on
one side, a large black article of furniture, of very strange
appearance, which the old gentlewoman told Phoebe was a harpsichord.
It looked more like a coffin than anything else; and, indeed,--not
having been played upon, or opened, for years,--there must have been a
vast deal of dead music in it, stifled for want of air. Human finger
was hardly known to have touched its chords since the days of Alice
Pyncheon, who had learned the sweet accomplishment of melody in Europe.