The House of the Seven Gables

It is so dark that Phoebe cannot see her surroundings. A hand reaches out: It is Holgrave’s, and he brings her into a room full of sunshine.

Though Holgrave is very warm and seems particularly happy, he tells Phoebe that Hepzibah and Clifford have disappeared and that Judge Pyncheon is dead. He has just taken a daguerreotype of Judge Pyncheon’s dead body. He thinks that this might be helpful, as he is worried that Hepzibah and Clifford fled after seeing the judge’s body. Holgrave thinks they have been particularly terrified because the death looks very similar to the death of Uncle Jaffrey, for which Clifford was convicted 30 years ago.

Phoebe insists that they must reveal all to the authorities, and Holgrave concedes that she is right, although he secretly wants to hold onto this moment of secret knowledge, which “separated himself and Phoebe from the world, and bound them to each other” (305). Holgrave tells Phoebe that he loves her. Phoebe says she is skeptical of how the two of them could ever be together. She is worried that he will lead her “out of [her] own quiet path” (306) with his reforms. Holgrave assures her, though, that he will no longer “oscillate” in the midst of her “poise” and will “conform” to societal norms. He may, despite his previous protests, even build a house for their children. Phoebe insists that she does not want him to change and confesses that she loves Holgrave.

Hepzibah and Clifford walk through the door. Hepzibah bursts into tears upon seeing Phoebe, and Clifford proclaims that the “flower of Eden has bloomed!” (308).

News of the judge’s death circulates, and the community quickly changes the narrative surrounding Uncle Jaffrey’s death. People now approach the death of Jaffrey as one for which Clifford took the fall. The new story is that the future judge was going through his uncle’s papers one night when his uncle unexpectedly walked in the room. The Pyncheon men have a hereditary condition, which Maule wove into his threat, and Jaffrey had a stroke (gurgling) and fell upon seeing his nephew rifling through his possessions.

After Uncle Jaffrey falls, the future judge finds a new will that favors Clifford and destroys it so that the old one, in which he is favored, remains. While Cousin Jaffrey did not intend to frame Clifford, when suspicion falls on him and he is convicted of murder and sent to prison, the judge does not say anything.

Soon after the judge dies, news arrives that his son has died of cholera on his return home. This means that the three remaining Pyncheons—Hepzibah, Clifford, and Phoebe—will inherit the judge’s estate. They all decide to move to the judge’s home in the country, and they have a farewell party in the parlor with Holgrave and Uncle Venner.

Clifford remembers that there is a lever in the old portrait of Colonel Pyncheon. The portrait falls to the floor after the lever is pressed, and the old deed to the land is revealed in a niche behind the painting. It is, however, no longer valid. Holgrave then reveals his own identity as a Maule and also confesses that he already knew about the lever and the deed.

Uncle Venner is invited to live in a cottage on the estate where the Pyncheons and Holgrave are headed, and as they leave, Hepzibah gives a heap of silver to her first customer, the gingerbread-eating schoolboy.