“I cannot imagine,” replied Everell; “she left me, not half an hour since, all smiles and gayety.”
“It is but the April-temper of youth,” said the father. “Hope is of a feeling make: she often reminds me of the Delta lands, where the fruits spring forth before the waters have retired. Smiles are playing on her lips before the tear is dry on her cheek. But this sensitiveness should be checked: the dear child’s feelings have too long been indulged.”
“And as long as they are all innocent, sir, why should they not be indulged?”
“Because, my son, she must be hardened for the cross-accidents and unkind events, or, rather, I should say, the wholesome chastisements of life. She cannot—we can none of us—expect indulgence from the events of life.” Mr. Fletcher paused for a moment, looked around, then shut the door and returned to his son. “Everell,” he said, “you have ever been dutiful to me.”
“And ever shall be, my dear father,” replied Everell, with frank confidence, little thinking how soon the virtue might become difficult.
“Trust not, my son, to thine own strength; it may soon be put to a test that will make thee feel it to be but weakness. Everell, thou seest that Hope loves thee even as she loved thee in thy childhood. Let her affection remain of this temper, I charge thee, as thou respectest thy father’s and thine own honour. And, Everell, it were well if you fixed your eye on—”
“Stop, sir! stop, I beseech you, and tell me—not because I have any thoughts—any intentions, I mean—any formed purpose, I would say—but tell me, I entreat you, why this prohibition?”
Everell spoke with such earnestness and ingenuousness that his father could not refuse to answer him; but his reasons seemed, even to himself, to lose half their force as they emerged from their shroud of mystery. He acknowledged, in the first place, what his most cherished wishes had been in relation to Hope and Everell. He then communicated the intimations that had been thrown out, that his views for his son were mercenary.
Everell laughed at the idea. “No one,” he said, “can so well afford such an imputation as you, sir, whose whole life has been a practical refutation of it; and, for my own part, I am satisfied with the consciousness that I would not marry any woman with a fortune whom I would not marry if the case were reversed, or even if we were both penniless.”
“I believe this is not an empty boast, my son; but we have set ourselves up as a mark to the world, and, as Brother Winthrop has said, and repeated to me, we cannot be too solicitous to avoid all appearance of evil. There are covetous souls, who, on the slightest ground, would suspect us of pursuing our own worldly by-ends.”
“And so, sir, to win the approbation, or, rather, the good word of these covetous souls, we are to degrade ourselves to their level, and act as if we were capable of their mean passions.”
“Everell, my son, you speak presumptuously; we are capable of all evil; but we will waive that question at present. Our individual wishes must be surrendered to the public good. We have laid the foundation of an edifice, and our children must be so coupled together as to secure its progress and stability when the present builders are laid low.”
“And so, my dear father, a precious gem is to be mortared in like a common brick, wherever may best suit the purposes and views of the builders. You are displeased, sir. Perhaps I spoke somewhat hastily. But, once for all, I entreat you not to dispose of us as if we were mere machines: we owe you our love and reverence.”
“And obedience, Everell.”
“Yes, sir, as far as can be manifested by not doing what you command us not to do.”
“Have I, then, strained parental authority so far, that you think it necessary thus to qualify your duty?”
“No, indeed, my dear father; and it is because your authority has ever been too gentle to be felt, that I wince at the galling of a new yoke. You will admit that my submission has not been less perfect for being voluntary. Trust me, then, for the future; and I promise—”
Everell was, perhaps, saved from rashly committing himself by the entrance of Madam Winthrop, who inquired if the gentlemen were ready to attend her to the lecture.
“Come, Mr. Everell,” she said, “here is Esther to show you the way, than whom there can be no safer guide.”
Miss Downing stood beside her aunt, but she shrunk back at Everell’s approach, hurt at what seemed to her a solicitation for his attention. He perceived her instinctive movement, but, without appearing to notice it, he offered his arm to Madam Winthrop, saying, “As there is no skill in guiding one quite capable of self-guidance, I will not inflict myself on Miss Downing, if you will allow me the honour of attending you.”
Madam Winthrop submitted with the best grace to this cross purpose. The elder Fletcher offered his arm to Miss Downing, and endeavoured to draw her into conversation; but she was timid, downcast, and reserved; and mentally comparing her with Hope Leslie, he felt how improbable it was that Everell would ever prefer her. The old, even when grave and rigid, are said to affect the young and gay; on the same principle, perhaps, that a dim eye delights in bright colours.
“Is that Gorton’s company?” asked Everell, pointing towards several prisoners, who, in the custody of a file of soldiers, appeared to be going towards the sanctuary.
“Yes,” replied Madam Winthrop; “the governor and our ruling elders have determined that, as they are to be tried next week, they shall have the benefit of all our public teaching in the mean time.”
“I should fear they would deem this punishment before trial,” said Everell.
“They did reluct mightily at first; but on being promised that, if they had occasion to speak, after sermon they should be permitted, provided they only spoke the words of sobriety and truth, they consented to come forth.”
This Gorton, whom Hubbard calls “a prodigious minister of exorbitant novelties,” had been brought, with his adherents, from Rhode Island, by force of arms, to be tried for certain civil and ecclesiastical offences, for which, according to the most learned antiquary of our New World (Mr. Savage), they were not amenable to the magistracy of Massachusetts.
The prisoners were ushered into the church, and placed before the ruling elders. The governor then entered, unattended by his halberd-bearers (a ceremony dispensed with except on Sunday), and, followed by his family, walked slowly to his pew, where Miss Leslie was already seated between Mrs. Grafton and Sir Philip Gardiner. She rose, and contrived to exchange her location for one next Miss Downing. “Look, Esther,” she said, in a whisper, to her friend, “at that lad who stands in the corner of the gallery, just beside the lamp.”
“I see him; but what of him?”
“Why, just observe how he gazes at me: his eye is like a burning-glass—it really scorches me. I wish the service were over. Do you think it will be long?”
“It may be long, but I trust not tedious,” replied Esther, with a gravity which was the harshest rebuke she could ever command.
“Oh, it will be both!” said Hope, in a despairing tone; “for there is Mr. Wheeler in the pulpit, and he always talks of eternity till he forgets time.”
“My dear Hope!” said Esther, in a voice of mingled surprise and reproof.
The service presently began, and Hope endeavoured dutifully to assume a decorous demeanour, and join Esther in singing the psalm; but her mind was soon abstracted, and her voice died away.
The preacher had not proceeded far in his discourse before all her patience was exhausted. Even those who are the most strenuous advocates for the passive duties of the sanctuary might have bestowed their pity on our heroine, who had really serious cause for her feverish impatience; obliged to sit, while a young man, accounted a “universal scholar,” seemed determined, like many unfledged preachers, to tell all he knew in that one discourse, which was then called a prophesying—an extempore effusion. He was bent, not only on making “root and branch work” of poor Gorton’s heresies, but on eradicating every tare from the spiritual field. To Hope he appeared to maintain one even pace straight forward, like the mortal in the fairy tale, sentenced to an eternal walk over a boundless plain.
“Do, Esther, look at the candles,” she whispered; “don’t you think it must be nine o’clock?”
“Oh, hush! no, not yet eight.”
Hope sighed audibly, and once more resumed a listening attitude. All human labours have their end, and therefore had the preacher’s. But, alas for our heroine! when he had finished, Gorton—whose face for the last hour had expressed that he felt much like a criminal condemned to be scourged before he is hung—Gorton rose, and, smarting under a sense of wrongs, repeated all the points of the discourse, and made points where there were none; refuted and attacked, and proved (to his own satisfaction) “that all ordinances, ministers, sacraments, &c., were but men’s invention—silver shrines of Diana.”
While this self-styled “professor of mysteries” spoke, Hope was so much interested in his genuine enthusiasm and mysticism (for he was the Swedenborg of his day) that she forgot her own secret subject of anxiety; but when he had finished, and half a dozen of the ruling elders rose at the same moment to prove the weapons of orthodoxy upon the arch heretic, she whispered to Esther, “I can never bear this; I must make an apology to Madam Winthrop, and go home!”
“Stay,” said Esther; “do you not see Mr. Cotton is getting up?”
Mr. Cotton, the regular pastor, rose to remind his brethren of the decree, “that private members should be very sparing in their questions and observations after public sermons,” and to say that he should postpone any farther discussion of the precious points before them, as it was near nine o’clock, after which it was not suitable for any Christian family to be unnecessarily abroad.
Hope now, and many others, instinctively rose, in anticipation of the dismissing benediction; but Mr. Cotton waved his hand for them to sit down, till he could communicate to the congregation the decision to which the ruling elders and himself had come on the subject of the last Sabbath sermon. “He would not repeat what he had before said upon that lust of costly apparel, which was fast gaining ground, and had already, as was well known, crept into godly families. He was pleased that there were among them gracious women, ready to turn at a rebuke, as was manifested in many veils being left at home, that were floating over the congregation like so many butterflies’ wings in the morning. Economy, he justly observed, was, as well as simplicity, a Christian grace; and, therefore, the rulers had determined, that those persons who had run into the excess of immoderate veils and sleeves, embroidered caps, and gold and silver lace, should be permitted to wear them out, but new ones should be forfeited.”
This sumptuary regulation announced, the meeting was dismissed.
Madam Winthrop whispered to Everell that she was going, with his father, to look in upon a sick neighbour, and would thank him to see her niece home. Everell stole a glance at Hope, and dutifully offered his arm to Miss Downing.
Hope, intent only on one object, was hurrying out of the pew, intending, in the jostling of the crowd, to escape alone; but she was arrested by Madam Winthrop’s saying, “Miss Leslie, Sir Philip offers you his arm;” and, at the same moment, her aunt stooped forward to beg her to wait a moment, till she could send a message to Deacon Knowles’s wife, that she might wear her new gown with the Turkish sleeves the next day.
“Oh, martyrdom!” thought Hope, with, indeed, little of the spirit of a martyr. She dared not speak aloud, but she continued to whisper to Mrs. Grafton, “For pity’s sake, do leave Mrs. Knowles to take care of herself; I am tired to death with staying here.”
“No wonder,” replied her aunt, in the same low tone; “it is enough to tire Job himself; but just have a minute’s patience, deary; it is but doing as a body would be done by, to let Mistress Knowles know she may come out in her new gown to-morrow.”
“Well, just as you please, ma’am; but I will go along with Sir Philip, and you can follow with Mr. Cradock. Mr. Cradock, you will wait for Mrs. Grafton?”
“Surely, surely,” replied the good man, eagerly; “there is nothing you could ask me, Miss Hope, as you well know—be it ever so disagreeable—that I would not do.”
“Thank you for nothing, Mr. Cradock,” said the dame, with a toss of her head; “you are over civil, I think, to-night. It is very well, Miss Hope, it is very well; you may go: you know Cradock, at best, is purblind at night; but it is very well; you can go; I can get home alone. It is very peculiar of you, Mr. Cradock.”
Poor Cradock saw he had offended, but how he knew not; and he looked imploringly to Hope to extricate him; but she was too anxious about her own affairs to lend her usual benevolent care to his embarrassment.
“My dear aunt,” said she, “I will not go without you, if you prefer to go with me; only do let us go.”
Mrs. Grafton now acquiesced, for in her flurry she had lost sight of the messenger whom she intended to intrust with the important errand. Sir Philip arranged her hood and cloak with a grace that she afterward said “was so like her dear deceased,” and in a few moments the party was in the street, and really moving homeward.
Mrs. Grafton prided herself on a slow, measured step, which she fancied was the true gait of dignity. Hope, on the contrary, always moved as the spirit moved her; and now she felt an irresistible impulse to hurry forward.
“My dear,” said her aunt, “how can you fly so? I am sure, if they in England were to see you walk, they would think you had been brought up here to chase the deer in the woods.”
Hope dared not confess her anxiety to get forward, and she could no longer check it.
“It is very undignified, and very unladylike, and very unbecoming, Hope; and I must say it is untoward and unfroward of you to hurry me along so. Don’t you think it is very peculiar of Hope, Sir Philip?”
The knight suspected that Miss Leslie’s haste was merely impatience of his society, and he could scarcely curb his chagrin while he said that “the young lady undoubtedly moved with uncommon celerity; indeed, he had before suspected she had invisible wings.”
“Thank you for your hint, Sir Philip,” exclaimed Hope. “It is a night,” she continued, looking up at the bright moon, “to make one long to soar; so I will just spread my wings, and leave you to crawl on the earth.” She withdrew her arm from Sir Philip’s, and, tripping on before them, she soon turned a corner and was out of sight.
We must leave the knight biting his lips with vexation, and feeling much like a merchant obliged to pay a heavy duty on a lost article. However, to do him justice, he did not make an entire loss of it, but so adroitly improved the opportunity to win the aunt’s favour, that she afterward said to Hope, that, if she must see her wedded to a Puritan, she trusted it would be Sir Philip, for he had nothing of the Puritan but the outside.
Hope had not proceeded far when she heard a quick step behind her, and, looking back, she saw the young man whose gaze had disturbed her at the lecture. She had an indefinite womanly feeling of fear; but a second thought told her she had best conceal it, and she slackened her pace. Her pursuer approached till he was parallel to her, and slackened his also. He looked at her without speaking; and, as Hope glanced her eye at him, she was struck with an expression of wretchedness and passion that seemed unnatural on a countenance so young and beautiful. “Anything is better than this strange silence,” thought Hope; so she stopped, looked the stranger full in the face, and said, inquiringly, “You have, perhaps, lost your way?”
“Lost my way?” replied the youth, in a half articulate voice: “yes, lady, I have lost my way.”
The melancholy tone and mysterious look of the stranger led Hope to suspect that he meant to convey more than the natural import of his words; but, without seeming to understand more, she said, “I perceive, by your foreign accent, that you are a stranger here. If you will tell me where you wish to go, I will direct you.”
“And who will guide you, lady?” responded the stranger, in a thrilling tone. “The lost may warn, but cannot guide.”
“I need no guidance,” said Hope, hastily, still persisting in understanding him literally: “I am familiar with the way; and, if I cannot be of service to you, must bid you good-night.”
“Stop one moment!” exclaimed the stranger, laying his hand on Hope’s arm with an imploring look: “you look so good—so kind—you may be of service to me;” and then bursting into a passionate flood of tears, he added, “Oh! no, no, there is no help for me!”
Hope now lost all thought for herself in concern for the unhappy being before her. “Who or what are you?” she asked.
“I! what am I?” he replied, in a bitter tone; “Sir Philip Gardiner’s slave, or servant, or page, or—whatever he is pleased to call me. Nay, lady, look not so piteously on me! I love my master—at least I did love him; but I think innocence is the breath of love! Heaven’s mercy, lady! you will make me weep again if you look at me thus.”
“Nay, do not weep, but tell me,” said Hope, “what I can do for you; I cannot remain here longer.”
“Oh! you can do nothing for me—no one can do anything for me. But, lady—take care for thyself.”
“What do you mean?” demanded Hope, in a tone of mingled alarm and impatience; “do you mean anything?”
The boy looked apprehensively about him, and, approaching his lips close to Hope’s ear, he said in a whisper, “Promise me you will not love my master. Do not believe him, though he pledge the word of a true knight always to love you; though he swear it on the holy crucifix, do not believe it!”
Hope now began to think that the youth’s senses were impaired; and, more impatient than ever to escape from him, she said, “Oh, I can promise all that, and as much more in the same way as you will ask of me. But leave me now, and come to me again when you want a much more difficult service.”
“I never shall want anything else, lady,” he replied, shaking his head mournfully; “I want nothing else but that you would pity me! You may—for angels pity, and I am sure you look like one. Pity me! never speak of me, and forget me.” He dropped on his knee, pressed her hand to his lips, rose to his feet, and left her so hastily that she was scarcely conscious of his departure till he was beyond her sight.
Whatever matter for future reflection this interview might have afforded her, Hope had now no time to dwell on it; and she hastened forward, and surmounting a fence at the southeastern extremity of the burial-ground, entered the enclosure now the churchyard of the stone chapel. The moon was high in the heavens; masses of black clouds were driven by a spring gale over her bright disk, producing startling changes, from light to darkness, and from darkness to that gleamy, indefinite, illusive brightness, which gives to moonlight its dominion over the imagination.
At another time Hope Leslie would have shrunk from going alone, so late at night, to this region of silence and sad thoughts, and her fancy might have imbodied the shadows that flitted over the little mounds of earth; but she was now so engrossed by one absorbing, anxious expectation, that she scarcely thought of the place where it was to be attained, and she pressed on as if she were passing over common clods. Once, indeed, she paused, as the moon shot forth a bright ray, stooped down before a little hillock, pressed her brow to the green turf, and then raising her eyes to Heaven, and clasping her hands, she exclaimed, “O, my mother! if ever thy presence is permitted to me, be with me now!” After this solemn adjuration she again rose to her feet, and looked anxiously before her for some expected object. “But I cannot know,” she said, “till I have passed the thicket of evergreens; that was the appointed spot.”
She passed the thicket, and at that moment the intensity of her feelings spread a mist before her eyes. She faltered, and leaned on one of the gravestones for support: and there we must leave her for the present, to the secrecy she sought.
CHAPTER XIII.
“There’s nothing I have done yet o’ my conscience,
Deserves a corner: would all other women
Could speak this with as free a soul as I do.”
Henry VIII.
While Hope Leslie was deeply engaged in the object of her secret expedition, Governor Winthrop’s household was thrown into alarm at her absence.
Jennet was the only member of the family who did not admit that there was real cause of uneasiness. “Miss Hope,” she said, “was always like a crazed body of moonlight nights; there was never any keeping her within the four walls of a house.”
But a moonlight night it soon ceased to be. The clouds that had been scudding over the heavens gathered in dark and terrific masses. A spring storm ensued: a storm to which winter and summer contribute all their elemental power—rain, lightning, wind, and hail.
Governor Winthrop naturally concluded (for all persons not deeply interested are apt to be rational) that Miss Leslie had taken refuge under some safe covert, and he summoned his family to their evening devotions. Both the Fletchers excused themselves, and braved the storm in quest of their lost treasure; and even old Cradock, in spite of Mrs. Grafton’s repeated suggestions that he was a very useless person for such an enterprise, sallied forth; but all returned in the space of an hour to bring their various reports of fruitless inquiry and search. Everell remained but long enough to learn that there were no tidings of Hope, and was again rushing out of the house, when he met the object of his apprehensions at the hall door. “Thank Heaven!” he exclaimed, on seeing her, “you are safe. Where have you been? we were all in the most distressful alarm about you.”
Hope had, by this time, advanced far enough into the entry for Everell to perceive, by the light of the lantern, that she was muffled in Sir Philip Gardiner’s cloak. His face had kindled with joy at her appearance; all light now vanished from it, and he stood eyeing Hope with glances that spoke, though his lips refused again to move; while she, without observing or suspecting his emotion, did not reply to him, and was only intent on disengaging herself from the cloak. “Do help me, Everell,” she said, impatiently; and he endeavoured to untie the string that fastened it; but, in his agitation, instead of untying, he doubled the knot.
“Oh, worse and worse!” she exclaimed; and, without any farther ceremony, she broke the string, and running back to the door, gave the cloak to Sir Philip, who stood awaiting it, till then unperceived by Everell, in the shadows of the portico.
Everell again looked at Miss Leslie, in the natural expectation of some explanation; but she appeared only concerned to escape to her apartment without any inquiries from the family. Her face was extremely pale; and her voice, still affected by recent agitation, trembled as she said to Everell, “Be kind enough to tell your father and all of them that I have come in drenched with the rain, and have gone to my own room; that I am wearied, and shall throw off my wet garments, and get to bed as quick as possible;” and then adding a “good-night, Everell,” and without awaiting any answer, she was springing up the stairs, when the parlour door was thrown open, and half a dozen voices exclaimed, in the same breath, “Oh, Hope!” “Hope Leslie!” “Miss Hope Leslie! is it you?”
“Come back, my child, and tell me where you have been,” said Mr. Fletcher.
“Yes, Miss Leslie,” said Governor Winthrop, but in a tone of kindness rather than authority, “render an account of thyself to thy rulers.”
“Yes, come along, Hope,” said Mrs. Grafton, “and make due apologies to Madam Winthrop. A pretty hubbub you have put her house in, to be sure; though I make no doubt you can show good reason for it, and also for leaving Sir Philip and me in that rantipole way, which I must say was peculiar.”
“For Heaven’s sake,” said Hope to Esther, who had joined her, “do go in and make an apology for me. Say I am wet and tired—say anything you please, I care not what—will you? that’s a good girl.”
“No, Hope, come in yourself; aunt Winthrop looked a little displeased; you had best come; I know she will expect it.”
Thus beset, Hope dared not any longer hesitate, and with that feeling, half resolution and half impatience to have a disagreeable thing over, which often impelled her, she descended the stairs as hastily as she had ascended them, and was in the parlour confronting all the inquirers before she had devised any mode of relieving herself from the disagreeable predicament of not being able to satisfy their curiosity.
“Verily, verily,” exclaimed Cradock, who was the only one of the group, not even excepting Everell, whose sympathy mastered his curiosity, “verily, the maiden hath been in peril; she is as white as a snow-wreath, and as wet as a drowned kitten.”
“Yes, Master Cradock, quite as wet,” replied Hope, rallying her spirits, “and with almost as little discretion left, or I should not have entered the parlour in this dripping condition. Madam Winthrop, I beg you will have the goodness to pardon me for the trouble I have occasioned.”
“Certainly, my dear, as I doubt not you will make it plain to us that you had sufficient reason for what appears so extraordinary as a young woman wandering off by herself after nine o’clock on Saturday night.”
Our heroine had never had the slightest experience in the nice art that contrives to give such a convenient indistinctness to the boundary line between truth and falsehood. After a moment’s reflection, her course seemed plain to her. To divulge the real motive of her untimely walk was impossible; to invent a false excuse, to her, equally impossible. She turned to Governor Winthrop, and said with a smile that Everell, at least, thought might have softened the elder Brutus, “I surrender myself to the laws of the land, having no hope but from the mercy of my kind ruler. I have offended, I know; but I should commit a worse offence—an offence against my own conscience and heart, if I explained the cause of my absence.”
Governor Winthrop was not accustomed to have his inquisitorial rights resisted by those of his own household, and he was certainly more struck than pleased by Hope’s moral courage.
Mrs. Grafton half muttered, half spoke, what she meant to be an apology for her favourite. “It was not everybody,” she said, “that thought as the governor did about Saturday night.”
“True, true,” said Cradock, eagerly, “it is a doubtful point with divines and gifted men.”
“Master Cradock,” said the governor, “thou art too apt to measure thy orthodoxy by thy charity. Saturday night is allowed to be, and manifestly is, holy time; and therefore to be applied, exclusively, to acts of mercy and devotion.” Then, turning to the impatient culprit, he added, “I am bound to say to thee, Hope Leslie, that thou dost take liberties unsuitable to thy youth, and in violation of that deference due to the rule and observances of my household, and discreditable to him who hath been intrusted with thy nurture and admonition.”
Hope received the first part of this reproof with her eyes riveted to the floor, and with a passiveness that had the semblance of penitence; but at the implied reproach of her guardian, for whom she had an affection that had the purity of filial and the enthusiasm of voluntary love, she raised her eyes; their mild lustre, for an instant, gave place to a flash of indignation direct from her heart. Her glance met Everell’s; he stood in a recess of the window, leaning his head against the casement, looking intently on her. “He too suspects me of evil,” she thought; and she could scarcely command her voice to say, as she turned and put her hand in the elder Fletcher’s, “I have done nothing to dishonour you. You believe me—do you not?”
“Yes, yes, my dear child, I must believe you, for you never deceived me: but be not so impatient of reproof.”
“I am not impatient for myself,” she said; “I care not how sternly, how harshly I am judged; but I see not why my fault, even if I had committed one, should cast a shadow upon you.”
Madam Winthrop now interposed her good offices to calm the troubled waters. “There is no shadow anywhere, Miss Leslie, if there is sunshine in the conscience; and I can answer for the governor, that he will overlook the disturbance of this evening, provided you are discreet in future. But we are wrong to keep you so long in your wet garments. Robin,” she said, turning to a servant, “light a little fire in the young ladies’ room, and tell Jennet to warm Miss Leslie’s bed—let her strew a little sugar in the pan—an excellent thing, Mrs. Grafton, to take soreness out of the bones.”
Madam Winthrop was solicitous to remove the impression from her guests that Miss Leslie was treated with undue strictness. Hope thanked her for her kindness; and protesting that she had no need of fire or warming-pan, she hastily bade good-night, and retired to her own apartment.
Miss Downing lingered a moment after her, and ventured to say, in a low, timid tone, “that she trusted her uncle Winthrop would harbour no displeasure against her friend; she was sure that she had been on some errand of kindness; for, though she might sometimes indulge in a blamable freedom of speech, she had ever observed her to be strict in all duties and offices of mercy.”
“You are right—right—marvellously right, Miss Downing,” cried Cradock, exultingly rubbing his hands; and then added, in a lower tone, “a discerning young woman, Miss Esther.”
“Humph!” said Mrs. Grafton, “I don’t see anything so marvellously right in what Miss Esther says; it’s what everybody knows who knows Hope, that she never did a wrong thing.”
Governor Winthrop suppressed a smile, and said to the good lady, “We should take heed, my worthy friend, not to lay too much stress on doing or not doing; not to rest unduly on duties and performances, for they be unsound ground.”
Mrs. Grafton might have thought, if she had enough such ground to stand on, it were terra firma to her; but, for once, she had the discretion of silence.
Neither Everell nor his father spoke, probably because they felt more than all the rest; and Madam Winthrop, feeling the awkwardness of the scene, mentioned the hour, and proposed a general dispersion.
Everell followed Miss Downing to the staircase. “One word, Miss Downing,” he said. Esther turned her face towards him—her pale face, for that instant illuminated. “Did you,” he asked, “in your apology for your friend, speak from knowledge or from generous faith?”
“From faith,” she replied, “but not generous faith, for it was founded on experience.”
Everell turned, disappointed, away. “Faith,” he thought, “there might be without sight, but faith against sight, never.” “Trifles light as air” are proverbially momentous matters to lovers. Everell had too noble a mind to indulge in that fretful jealousy which is far more the result of an egregious self-love than love of another. But he had cherished for Hope a consecrating sentiment; he had invested her with a sacredness which the most refined, the purest, and most elevated love throws around the object of its devotion.
“On magic ground that castle stoode,
And fenced with many a spelle.”
Were these “spelles” to be dissolved by the light of truth? “Why should one,” thought Everell, “who seemed so pure that she might dwell in light—so artless, confiding, and fearless—why should she permit herself to be obscured by mystery? If her meeting with Sir Philip Gardiner was accidental, why not say so? But what right have I to scan her conduct—what right to expect an explanation? It is evident she feels nothing more for me than the familiar affection of her childhood. How she talked to me this evening of Esther Downing! ‘If she had a brother, she would select her friend from all the world for his wife’—‘Esther was not precise, she was only discreet’—‘she was not formal, but timid.’ Perhaps she sees I love her, and thus delicately tries to give a different bent to my affections; but that is impossible; every hope, every purpose, has been concentrated in her. My affections may be blighted, but they cannot be transferred. Perhaps it is true, as some satirists say, that a woman’s heart is wayward, fantastic, and capricious. This vagrant knight has scarcely turned his eyes from Hope since he first saw her, and I know he has addressed the most presumptuous flattery to her. Perhaps she favours his pretensions. I shrink even from his gazing upon her, as if there were something sullying in the glance of his eye; and yet she violates the customs of the country, she braves severe displeasure, to walk alone with him; with him she is insensible to a gathering storm. He is incapable of loving her; he is intoxicated with her beauty; he seeks her fortune. Her fortune! I had forgotten that my father made that a bar between us. Fortune! I never thought of anything so mean as wealth in connexion with her. I would as soon barter my soul as seek any woman for fortune; and Hope Leslie! oh, I should as soon think of the dowry of a celestial spirit, as of your being enriched by the trappings of fortune.”
These disjointed thoughts, and many others that would naturally spring up in the mind of a young lover, indicated the ardour, the enthusiasm, the disinterestedness of Everell’s passion, and the restless and fearful state into which he had been plunged by the events of the evening.
While he was pursuing this train of fancies, in which some sweetness mingled with the bitter, Esther had followed Hope to her apartment, and, having shut the door, turned on her friend a look of speaking inquiry and expectation, to which Hope did not respond, but continued, in a hurried manner, to disrobe herself, throwing her drenched shawl on one side, and her wet dress on the other.
Esther took a silver whistle from the toilet, and was opening the door to summon Jennet with its shrill call, when Hope, observing her intention, cried out, “If you love me, Esther, don’t call Jennet to-night; I wish, at least, to be spared her croaking.”
“As you please,” replied Esther, quietly reclosing the door; “I thought Jennet had best come and take care of your apparel, as, if your mind was not otherwise occupied, you would not choose to leave it in such disorder.” While Esther spoke she stood by the toilet, smoothing her kerchief and restoring it to the laundress’ folds.
“Yes,” said Hope, “I prefer any disorder to the din of Jennet’s tongue. I cannot, Esther—I cannot always be precise.”
“Precision, I know, is not interesting,” said Esther, with a slight tremulousness of voice; “but if you had a little more of it, Hope, it would save yourself and your friends a vast deal of trouble.”
“Now do not you reproach me, Esther! that is the drop too much!” said Hope, turning her face to the pillow to hide the tears that gushed from her eyes: “I know I am vexed and cross; but I did not mean that you were too precise—I do not know what I meant. I feel oppressed; and I want sympathy, and not reproof.”
“Unburden your heart, then, to me,” said Esther, kneeling by the bedside, and throwing her arm over Hope: “most gladly would I pay back the debt of sympathy I owe you.”
“And never, dear Esther, did a poor creditor receive a debt more joyfully than I should this. But others are concerned in my secret: a sacred promise requires me to preserve it inviolate. The governor, and your aunt, and all of them might have known—and most of all, Everell—” she continued, raising herself on her elbow—“they might have known that I should not have been roaming about such a pitiless night as this without good reason; and Everell, I am sure, knows that I despise the silliness of making a secret out of nothing. I don’t care so much for the rest; but it was very, very unkind of Everell! I am sure my heart has been always open as the day to him.”
Perhaps Miss Downing was not quite pleased with Hope’s discriminating between the censure of Everell and the rest of the family; for she said, with more even than her ordinary gravity, “There is but one thing, Hope, that ought to make you independent of the opinion of any of your friends.”
“And what is that?”
“The acquittal of your conscience.”
“My conscience! Oh, my dear Esther, no mother Lois nor grandmother Eunice ever had a more quiet conscience than I have at this moment; and I really wish that my tutors, governors—good friends all—would not think it necessary to keep quite so strict a guard over me.”
“Hope Leslie,” said Esther, “you do allow yourself too much liberty of thought and word: you certainly know that we owe implicit deference to our elders and superiors; we ought to be guided by their advice, and governed by their authority.”
“Esther, you are a born preacher,” exclaimed Hope, with a sort of half sigh, half groan of impatience. “Nay, my dear friend, don’t look so horridly solemn: I am sure, if I have wounded your feelings, I deserve to be preached to all the rest of my life. But, really, I do not entirely agree with you about advice and authority. As to advice, it needs to be very carefully administered to do any good, else it’s like an injudicious patch, which, you know, only makes the rent worse; and as to authority, I would not be a machine to be moved at the pleasure of anybody that happened to be a little older than myself. I am perfectly willing to submit to Mr. Fletcher, for he never—” and she smiled at her own sophistry—“he never requires submission. Now, Esther, don’t look at me so, as if I was little better than one of the wicked. Come, kiss me—good-night; and when you say your prayers, Esther, remember me, for I need them more than you think.”
This last request was made in a plaintive tone, and with unaffected seriousness, and Esther turned away to perform the duty, with a deep feeling of its necessity; for Hope, conscious of her integrity, had perhaps been too impatient of rebuke; and if, to a less strict judge than Esther, she seems to have betrayed a little of the spoiled child, to her she appeared to be very far from that gracious state wherein every word is weighed before it is uttered, and every action measured before it is performed.
END OF VOL. I.
NOTES.
(1.) “She understands and speaks English perfectly well.”—Page 24, 25.
We would take the liberty to refer those who may think we have here violated probability, to Winthrop, who speaks of a Pequod maiden who attended Miantunnomoh as interpreter, and “spoke English perfectly.”
(2.) “Monoca, the mother of these children, was noted for the singular dignity and modesty of her demeanour.”—Page 25.
For those who disbelieve the existence in savage life of the virtues which we have ascribed to this Indian woman, we quote our authority:
“Among the Pequod captives were the wife and children of Mononotto. She was particularly noticed by the English for her great modesty, humanity, and good sense. She made it as her only request that she might not be injured either as to her offspring or personal honour. As a requital for her kindness to the captivated maids, her life and the lives of her children were not only spared, but they were particularly recommended to the care of Governor Winthrop. He gave charge for their protection and kind treatment.”—Trumbull’s Hist. of Connecticut. See also Hubbard’s Indian Wars, p. 47.
(3.) “They told him they would spare his life if he would guide them to our strongholds; he refused.”—Page 71.
“But, finding that the sachems, whom they had spared, would give them no information, they beheaded them on their march, at a place called Mekunkatuck, since Guilford.”—Ibid.
(4.) “You English tell us, Everell, that the book of your law is better than that written on our hearts,” &c.—Pages 71, 72.
The language of the Indians, as reported by Heckewelder, verifies so strongly the sentiment in our text, and is so powerful an admonition to Christians, that we here quote it for those who may not have met with the interesting work of this excellent Moravian missionary. “And yet,” say those injured people, “these white men would always be telling us of their great Book which God had given to them. They would persuade us that every man was good who believed in what the book said, and every man was bad who did not believe in it. They told us a great many things which they said were written in the good Book, and wanted us to believe it all. We would probably have done so if we had seen them practise what they pretended to believe, and act according to the good words which they told us. But no! while they held their big book in one hand, in the other they had murderous weapons, guns and swords, wherewith to kill us poor Indians. Ah! and they did so too!”
(5.) “The Indians remained standing,” &c.—Page 214.
The characteristic conduct of the Narragansett chief is transferred to our pages from Winthrop, who thus describes it: “When we should go to dinner, there was a table provided for the Indians to dine by themselves, and Miantunnomoh was left to sit with them. This he was discontented at, and would eat nothing till the governor sent him meat from his table. So at night, and all the time he stayed, he sat at the lower end of the magistrate’s table.”
(6.) “She entered the enclosure, now the churchyard of the stone chapel.”—Page 249.
This was the first burial-place in Boston; and as early as the year 1630, consecrated by the interment of Mr. Johnson, who died of grief for the loss of his wife, the Lady Arbella, “the pride of the colony.” “He was,” says Winthrop, “a holy man and wise, and died in sweet peace.” And another contemporary historian says, that he was so beloved that many persons requested their bodies might be interred near his.
ENDNOTES.
[1] See note at the end of this volume.
[2] wekolis] Whippoorwill.
[3] has been the custom… to worship on high places]
“About the cliffs
Lay garlands, ears of maize, and skins of wolf,
And shaggy bear, the offerings of the tribe
Here made to the Great Spirit; for they deemed,
Like worshippers of the olden time, that God
Doth walk on the high places, and affect
The earth—o’erlooking mountains.”—Bryant.
[4] help] Mr. Mathews (nice observer as he is), as well as many other foreigners, mistakes in adding an s to this word for the plural.
TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES.
The George Routledge & Co. (London, 1850) and White, Gallaher, and White (New York, 1827) editions were consulted for some of the changes listed below.
Archaic/obsolete spellings (survivers, visiters, suiter, restiffness, etc.) have been preserved.
Page numbers are given in {curly brackets}.
Alterations to the text:
Add ToC.
Convert footnotes to endnotes.
Originally located at the end of the second volume, the notes to this volume have been moved here and placed under NOTES.
Punctuation: fix some missing periods and commas, and quotation mark pairings/nestings.
[Title Page]
Add author’s name and move epigraph to a following page.
[Chapter III]
Change “plants that have sprung up in close neigbourhood” to neighbourhood.
“Providence having opened a wide door therefor in the generous” to therefore.
[Chapter IX]
“a deep ponited rich lace ruff embellished his neck” to deep-pointed.
[End of text]