Title: Hope Leslie: or, early times in the Massachusetts, volume 1 (of 2)
Author: Catharine Maria Sedgwick
Release date: May 6, 2025 [eBook #76028]
Language: English
Original publication: New York: Harper & Brothers, 1842
Credits: an anonymous Project Gutenberg volunteer
BY
CATHARINE MARIA SEDGWICK
AUTHOR OF
“THE LINWOODS,” “POOR RICH MAN,” “LIVE AND LET
LIVE,” “REDWOOD,” &c.
IN TWO VOLUMES.
VOL. I.
NEW-YORK:
HARPER & BROTHERS, 82 CLIFF-ST.
1842.
Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1842, by
Harper & Brothers,
In the Clerk’s Office of the Southern District of New-York.
Here stood the Indian chieftain, rejoicing in his glory!
How deep the shade of sadness that rests upon his story:
For the white man came with power—like brethren they met—
But the Indian fires went out, and the Indian sun has set!
And the chieftain has departed—gone is his hunting-ground,
And the twanging of the bowstring is a forgotten sound:
Where dwelleth yesterday? and where is Echo’s cell?
Where has the rainbow vanished?—there does the Indian dwell.—E.
“Virtue may be assail’d, but never hurt,
Surprised by unjust force, but not enthrall’d;
Yea, even that which mischief meant most harm,
Shall in the happy trial prove most glory.”
Comus.
William Fletcher was the son of a respectable country gentleman of Suffolk, in England, and the destined heir of his uncle, Sir William Fletcher, an eminent lawyer, who had employed his talents with such effective zeal and pliant principle, that he had won his way to courtly favour and secured a courtly fortune.
Sir William had only one child—a daughter; and possessing the common ambition of transmitting his name with his wealth, he selected his nephew as the future husband of his daughter Alice.
“Take good heed,” Sir William thus expressed himself in a letter to his brother, “take good heed that the boy be taught unquestioning and unqualified loyalty to his sovereign—the Alpha and Omega of political duty. These are times when every true subject has his price. Divers of the leaders of the Commons are secret friends of the seditious, mischief-brewing Puritans; and Buckingham himself is suspected of favouring their cabals; but this sub rosa—I burn not my fingers with these matters. ‘He who meddleth with another man’s strifes, taketh a dog by the ear,’ said the wisest man that ever lived; and he, thank God, was a king. Caution Will against all vain speculation and idle inquiries: there are those that are forever inquiring and inquiring, and never coming to the truth. One inquiry should suffice for a loyal subject: ‘What is established?’ and that being well ascertained, the line of duty is so plain, that he who runs may read.
“I would that all our youths had inscribed on their hearts that golden rule of political religion, framed and well maintained by our good Queen Elizabeth, ‘No man should be suffered to decline, either on the left or on the right hand, from the drawn line limited by authority, and by the sovereign’s laws and injunctions.’
“Instead of such healthy maxims, our lads’ heads are crammed with the philosophy, and rhetoric, and history of those liberty-loving Greeks and Romans. This is the pernicious lore that has poisoned our academical fountains. Liberty! what is it? Daughter of Disloyalty, and mother of all misrule, who, from the hour that she tempted our first parents to forfeit Paradise, hath ever worked mischief to our race.
“But, above all, brother, as you value the temporal salvation of your boy, restrain him from all confederacy, association, or even acquaintance with the Puritans. If my master took counsel of me, he would ship these mad canting fools to our New-England colonies, where their tender consciences would be no more offended, because, forsooth, a prelate saith his prayers in white vestments, and where they might enjoy with the savages that primitive equality about which they make such a pother. God forefend that our good lad William should company with these misdoers! He must be narrowly watched; for, as I hear, there is a neighbour of yours, one Winthrop (a notable gentleman, too, as they say, but he doth grievously scandalize his birth and breeding), who hath embraced these scurvy principles, and doth magnify them with the authority of his birth and condition, and hath much weight with the country. There is in Suffolk, too, as I am told, one Eliot, a young zealot, a fanatical incendiary, who doth find ample combustibles in the gossiping matrons, idle maidens, and lawless youth who flock about him.
“These are dangerous neighbours; rouse yourself, brother; give over your idle sporting with hawk and hound, and watch over this goodly scion of ours—ours, I say; but I forewarn you, no daughter or guinea of mine shall ever go to one who is infected with this spreading plague.”
This letter was too explicit to be misunderstood; but, so far from having the intended effect of awakening the caution of the expectant of fortune, it rather stimulated the pride of the independent country gentleman. He permitted his son to follow the bent of accident, or the natural course of a serious, reflecting, and enthusiastic temper. Winthrop, the future governor of Massachusetts, was the counsellor of young Fletcher, and Eliot, the “apostle of New-England,” his most intimate friend. These were men selected of Heaven to achieve a great work. In the quaint language of the time, “the Lord sifted three nations for precious seed to sow the wilderness.”
There were interested persons who were not slow in conveying to Sir William unfavourable reports of his nephew, and the young man received a summons from his uncle, who hoped, by removing him from the infected region, to rescue him from danger.
Sir William’s pride was gratified by the elegant appearance and graceful deportment of his nephew, whom he had expected to see with the “slovenly and lawyer-like carriage” that marked the scholars of the times. The pliant courtier was struck with the lofty independence of the youth, who from the first showed that neither frowns nor favour would induce him to bow the knee to the idols Sir William had served. There was something in this independence that awed the inferior mind of the uncle. To him it was an unknown, mysterious power, which he knew not how to approach, and almost despaired of subduing. However, he was experienced in life, and had observed enough of human infirmity to convince him that there was no human virtue that had not some weak, some assailable point. Time and circumstances were not long in developing the vulnerability of the nephew. Alice Fletcher had been the companion of his childhood. They now met without any of the reserve that often prevents an intimate intercourse between young persons, and proceeds from the consciousness of a susceptibility which it would seem to deny.
The intercourse of the cousins was renewed with all the frankness and artlessness of the sunny season of childish love and confidence. Alice had been educated in retirement by her mother, whom she had recently attended through a long and fatal illness. She had been almost the exclusive object of her love, for there was little congeniality between the father and daughter. The ties of nature may command all dutiful observances, but they cannot control the affections. Alice was deeply afflicted by her bereavement. Her cousin’s serious temper harmonized with her sorrow, and nature and opportunity soon indissolubly linked their hearts together.
Sir William perceived their growing attachment, and exulted in it; for, as he fancied, it reduced his nephew to dependance on his will and whims. He had never himself experienced the full strength of any generous sentiment, but he had learned from observation that love was a controlling passion, and he now most anxiously watched and promoted the kindling of the flame, in the expectation that the fire would subdue the principles of civil and religious liberty with which he had but too well ascertained the mind of his nephew to be imbued.
He silently favoured the constant and exclusive intercourse of the young people: he secretly contrived various modes of increasing their mutual dependance; and, when he was certain their happiness was staked, he cast the die. He told his nephew that he perceived and rejoiced in the mutual affection that had so naturally sprung up between him and his daughter, and he confessed their union had been the favourite object of his life; and said that he now heartily accorded his consent to it, prescribing one condition only—but that condition was unalterable. “You must abjure, William, in the presence of witnesses,” he said, “the fanatical notions of liberty and religion with which you have been infected; you must pledge yourself, by a solemn oath, to unqualified obedience to the king, and adherence to the Established Church: you shall have time enough for the effervescence of your young blood. God send this fermentation may work off all impurities. Nay, answer me not now. Take a day—a week—a month for consideration; for on your decision depends fortune and love, or the alternative, beggary and exile.”
If a pit had yawned beneath his feet and swallowed Alice from his view, William Fletcher could not have been more shocked. He was soul-stricken, as one who listens to a sentence of death. To his eye the earth was shrouded in darkness; not an object of hope or pursuit remained.
He had believed his uncle was aware of what he must deem his political and religious delinquency; but he had never spoken to him on the subject: he had treated him with marked favour, and he had so evidently encouraged his attachment to his cousin that he had already plighted his love to her, and received her vows without fearing that he had passed even the limit of strict prudence.
There was no accommodating flexibility in his principles; his fidelity to what he deemed his duty could not have been subdued by the fires of martyrdom, and he did not hesitate to sacrifice what was dearer than life to it. He took the resolution at once to fly from the temptation that, present, he dared not trust himself to resist.
“I shall not again see my Alice,” he said. “I have not courage to meet her smiles; I have not strength to endure her tears.”
In aid of his resolution there came, most opportunely, a messenger from his father, requiring his immediate presence. This afforded him a pretext for his sudden departure from London. He left a few brief lines for Alice, that expressed without explaining the sadness of his heart.
His father died a few hours before he arrived at the paternal mansion. He was thus released from his strongest natural tie. His mother had been long dead; and he had neither brother nor sister. He inherited a decent patrimony, sufficient at least to secure the independence of a gentleman. He immediately repaired to Groton, to his friend Winthrop; not that he should dictate his duty to him, but as one leans on the arm of a friend when he finds his own strength scarcely sufficient to support him.
Mr. Winthrop is well known to have been a man of the most tender domestic affections and sympathies; but he had then been long married—and thrice married—and probably a little dimness had come over his recollection of the enthusiasm of a first passion. When Fletcher spoke of Alice’s unequalled loveliness, and of his own unconquerable love, his friend listened as one listens to a tale he has heard a hundred times, and seemed to regard the cruel circumstances in which the ardent lover was placed only in the light of a providential opportunity of making a sacrifice to the great and good cause to which this future statesman had even then begun to devote himself, as the sole object of his life. He treated his friend’s sufferings as in their nature transient, and concluded by saying, “the Lord hath prepared this fire, my friend, to temper your faith, and you will come out of it the better prepared for your spiritual warfare.”
Fletcher listened to him with stern resolution, like him who permits a surgeon to probe a wound which he is himself certain is incurable.
Mr. Winthrop knew that a ship was appointed to sail from Southampton in a few days for New-England. With that characteristic zeal which then made all the intentions of Providence so obvious to the eye of faith, and the interpretation of all the events of life so easy, Mr. Winthrop assured his friend that the designs of Heaven in relation to him were plain. He said, “There was a great call for such services as he could render in the expedition just about to sail, and which was like to fail for the want of them; and that now, like a faithful servant to the cause he had confessed, he must not look behind, but press on to the things that were before.”
Fletcher obeyed the voice of Heaven.
This is no romantic fiction. Hundreds in that day resisted all that solicits earthly passions, and sacrificed all that gratifies them to the cause of God and of man—the cause of liberty and religion. This cause was not to their eyes invested with any romantic attractions. It was not assisted by the illusions of chivalry, nor magnified by the spiritual power and renown of crusades. Our fathers neither had, nor expected their reward on earth.
One severe duty remained to be performed. Fletcher must announce their fate to Alice. He honoured her too much to believe she would have permitted the sacrifice of his integrity, if he would have made it. He, therefore, had nothing to excuse; nothing but to tell the terrible truth; to try to reconcile her to her father; to express, for the last time, his love, and to pray that he might receive, at Southampton, one farewell line from her. Accompanying his letter to Alice was one to Sir William, announcing the decision to resign his favour and exile himself forever from England.
He arranged his affairs, and in a few days received notice that the vessel was ready to sail. He repaired to Southampton; and as he was quitting the inn to embark in the small boat that was to convey him to the vessel, already in the offing, a voice from an inner apartment pronounced his name, and at the next moment Alice was in his arms. She gently reproved him for having estimated her affection at so low a rate as not to have anticipated that she should follow him and share his destiny. It was more than could have been expected from man that Fletcher should have opposed such a resolution. He had but a moment for deliberation. Most of the passengers had already embarked; some still lingered on the strand, protracting their last farewell to their country and their friends. In the language of one of the most honoured of these pilgrims, “Truly doleful was the sight of that sad and mournful parting, to hear what sighs, and sobs, and prayers did sound among them; what tears did gush from every eye, and pithy speeches pierced each other’s hearts.”
With the weeping group Fletcher left Alice and her attendants, while he went to the vessel to prepare for her suitable reception. He there found a clergyman, and bespoke his holy offices to unite him to his cousin immediately after their embarcation.
All the necessary arrangements were made, and he was returning to the shore, his eye fixed on the lovely being whom he believed Heaven had interposed to give to him, when he descried Sir William’s carriage, guarded by a cavalcade of armed men, in the uniform of the king’s guards, approaching the spot where she stood.
He comprehended at once their cruel purpose. He exhorted the boatmen to put forth all their strength; he seized the oars himself—despair gave him supernatural power—the boat shot forward with the velocity of light; but all in vain! he only approached near enough to the shore to hear Alice’s last impotent cries to him; to see her beautiful face convulsed with agony, and her arms outstretched towards him, when she was forced to the carriage by her father, and driven from his sight.
He leaped on the strand; he followed the troop with cries and entreaties; but he was only answered by the coarse jeering and profane jests of the soldiery.
Notice was soon given that the boat was ready to return to the ship for the last time, and Fletcher, in a state of agitation and despair, almost amounting to insanity, permitted it to return without him.
He went to London, and requested an interview with his uncle. The request was granted, and a long and secret conference ensued. It was known by the servants of the household that their mistress, Alice, had been summoned by her father to this meeting, but what was said or done did not transpire. Immediately after, Fletcher returned to Mr. Winthrop’s, in Suffolk. The fixedness of despair was on his countenance; but he said nothing, even to this confidential friend, of the interview with his uncle. The particulars of the affair at Southampton, which had already reached Suffolk, seemed sufficiently to explain his misery.
In less than a fortnight he there received despatches from his uncle, informing him that he had taken effectual measures to save himself from a second conspiracy against the honour of his family; that his daughter Alice had that day been led to the altar by Charles Leslie; and concluding with a polite hope that, though his voyage had been interrupted, it might not be long deferred.
Alice had, indeed, in the imbecility of utter despair, submitted to her father’s commands. It was intimated at the time, and reported for many years after, that she had suffered a total alienation of mind. To the world this was never contradicted, for she lived in absolute retirement; but those who best knew could have attested that, if her mind had departed from its beautiful temple, an angelic spirit had entered in and possessed it.
William Fletcher was in a few months persuaded to unite himself with an orphan girl, a ward of Mr. Winthrop, who had, in the eyes of the elders, all the meek graces that befitted a godly maiden and dutiful helpmate. Fletcher remained constant to his purpose of emigrating to New-England, but he did not effect it till the year 1630, when he embarked with his family and effects in the ship Arbella, with Governor Winthrop, who then, for the first time, went to that land where his name will ever be held in affectionate and honourable remembrance.
“For the temper of the brain in quick apprehensions and acute judgments, to say no more, the most High and Sovereign God hath not made the Indian inferior to the European.”—Roger Williams.
The magnitude of the enterprise in which the first settlers of New-England were engaged, the terrific obstacles they encountered, and the hardships they endured, gave to their characters a seriousness and solemnity, heightened, it may be, by the severity of their religious faith.
Where all were serious, the melancholy of an individual was not conspicuous; and Mr. Fletcher’s sadness would probably have passed unnoticed but for the reserve of his manners, which piqued the pride of his equals, and provoked the curiosity of his inferiors.
The first probably thought that the apostolic principle of community of goods at least extended to opinions and feelings; and the second always fancy, when a man shuts the door of his lips, that there must be some secret worth knowing within.
Like many other men of an ardent temperament and disinterested love of his species, Mr. Fletcher was disappointed at the slow operation of principles which, however efficient and excellent in the abstract, were to be applied to various and discordant subjects. Such men, inexperienced in the business of life, are like children, who, setting out on a journey, are impatient after the few first paces to be at the end of it. They cannot endure the rebuffs and delays that retard them in their course. These are the men of genius—the men of feeling—the men that the world calls visionaries; and it is because they are visionaries—because they have a beau-ideal in their own minds, to which they can see but a faint resemblance in the actual state of things, that they become impatient of detail, and cannot brook the slow progress to perfection. They are too rapid in their anticipations. The character of man and the institutions of society are yet very far from their possible and destined perfection. Still, how far is the present age in advance of that which drove reformers to a dreary wilderness! which hanged Quakers! which condemned to death, as witches, innocent, unoffending old women! But it is unnecessary to heighten the glory of day by comparing it with the preceding twilight.
To return to Mr. Fletcher. He was mortified at seeing power, which had been earned at so dear a rate, and which he had fondly hoped was to be applied to the advancement of man’s happiness, sometimes perverted to purposes of oppression and personal aggrandizement. He was shocked when a religious republic, which he fancied to be founded on the basis of established truth, was disturbed by the outbreak of heresies; and his heart sickened when he saw those who had sacrificed whatever man holds dearest to religious freedom, imposing those shackles on others from which they had just released themselves at such a price. Partly influenced by these disgusts, and partly by that love of contemplation and retirement that belongs to a character of his cast, especially when depressed by some early disappointment, he refused the offices of honour and trust that were from time to time offered to him; and finally, in 1636, when Pynchon, Holioke, and Chapin formed their settlement at Springfield, on Connecticut River, he determined to retire from the growing community of Boston to this frontier settlement.
Mrs. Fletcher received his decision as all wives of that age of undisputed masculine supremacy (or most of those of our less passive age) would do, with meek submission. The inconveniences and dangers of that outpost were not unknown to her, nor did she underrate them; but Abraham would as soon have remonstrated against the command that bade him go forth from his father’s house into the land of the Chaldees, as she would have failed in passive obedience to the resolve of her husband.
The removal was effected early in the summer of 1636. Springfield assumed at once, under the auspices of its wealthy and enterprising proprietors, the aspect of a village. The first settlers followed the course of the Indians, and planted themselves on the borders of rivers—the natural gardens of the earth, where the soil is mellowed and enriched by the annual overflowing of the streams, and prepared by the unassisted processes of nature to yield to the indolent Indian his scanty supply of maize and other esculents. The wigwams which constituted the village, or, to use the graphic aboriginal description, the “smoke” of the natives, gave place to the clumsy, but more convenient dwellings of the Pilgrims.
Where there are now contiguous rows of shops, filled with the merchandise of the East, the manufactures of Europe, the rival fabrics of our own country, and the fruits of the tropics; where now stand the stately hall of justice, the academy, the bank, churches orthodox and heretic, and all the symbols of a rich and populous community, were, at the early period of our history, a few log houses, planted around a fort defended by a slight embankment and palisade.
The mansions of the proprietors were rather more spacious and artificial than those of their more humble associates, and were built on the well-known model of the modest dwelling illustrated by the birth of Milton: a form still abounding in the eastern parts of Massachusetts, and presenting to the eye of a New-Englander the familiar aspect of an awkward friendly country cousin.
The first clearing was limited to the plain. The beautiful hill that is now the residence of the gentry (for there yet lives such a class in the heart of our democratic community), and is embellished with stately edifices and expensive pleasure-grounds, was then the border of a dense forest, and so richly fringed with the original growth of trees that scarce a sunbeam had penetrated to the parent earth.
Mr. Fletcher was at first welcomed as an important acquisition to the infant establishment; but he soon proved that he purposed to take no part in its concerns, and, in spite of the remonstrances of the proprietors, he fixed his residence a mile from the village, deeming exposure to the incursions of the savages very slight, and the surveillance of an inquiring neighbourhood a certain evil. His domain extended from a gentle eminence, that commanded an extensive view of the bountiful Connecticut, to the shore, where the river indented the meadow by one of those sweeping graceful curves by which it seems to delight to beautify the land it nourishes.
The border of the river was fringed with all the water-loving trees; but the broad meadows were quite cleared, excepting that a few elms and sycamores had been spared by the Indians, and consecrated by tradition as the scene of revels or councils. The house of our pilgrim was a low-roofed modest structure, containing ample accommodation for a patriarchal family; where children, dependants, and servants were all to be sheltered under one roof-tree. On one side, as we have described, lay an open and extensive plain; within view was the curling smoke from the little cluster of houses about the fort—the habitation of civilized man; but all else was a savage howling wilderness.
Never was a name more befitting the condition of a people than “Pilgrim” that of our forefathers. It should be redeemed from the puritanical and ludicrous associations which have degraded it in most men’s minds, and be hallowed by the sacrifices made by these voluntary exiles. They were pilgrims, for they had resigned forever what the good hold most dear—their homes. Home can never be transferred; never repeated in the experience of an individual. The place consecrated by parental love, by the innocence and sports of childhood, by the first acquaintance with nature, by the linking of the heart to the visible creation, is the only home. There, there is a living and breathing spirit infused into nature: every familiar object has a history; the trees have tongues, and the very air is vocal. There the vesture of decay doth not close in and control the noble functions of the soul. It sees, and hears, and enjoys without the ministry of gross material substance.
Mr. Fletcher had resided a few months in Springfield, when he one day entered, with an open letter in his hand, that apartment of his humble dwelling styled, by courtesy, the parlour. His wife was sitting there with her eldest son, a stripling of fourteen, busily assisting him in twisting a cord for his crossbow. She perceived that her husband looked disturbed; but he said nothing, and her habitual deference prevented her inquiring into the cause of his discomposure.
After taking two or three turns about the room, he said to his son, “Everell, my boy, go to the door, and await there the arrival of an Indian girl; she is, as you may see, yonder by the river side, and will be here shortly. I would not that Jennet should, at the very first, shock the child with her discourteous ways.”
“Child! coming here!” exclaimed the boy, dropping his bow and gazing through the window. “Who is she? that tall girl, father: she is no more a child than I am!”
His mother smiled at an exclamation that betrayed a common juvenile jealousy of the honour of dawning manhood, and bade the boy obey his father’s directions. When Everell had left the apartment, Mr. Fletcher said, “I have just received letters from Boston—from Governor Winthrop—” He paused.
“Our friends are all well, I hope,” said Mrs. Fletcher.
“Yes, Martha, our friends are all well; but these letters contain something of more importance than aught that concerns the health of the perishing body.”
Mr. Fletcher again hesitated, and his wife, perplexed by his embarrassment, inquired, “Has poor deluded Mrs. Hutchinson again presumed to disturb the peace of God’s people?”
“Martha, you aim wide of the mark. My present emotions are not those of a mourner for Zion. A ship has arrived from England, and in it came—”
“My brother Stretton!” exclaimed Mrs. Fletcher.
“No, no, Martha. It will be long ere Stretton quits his paradise to join a suffering people in the wilderness.”
He paused for a moment, and when he again spoke, the softened tone of his voice evinced that he was touched by the expression of disappointment, slightly tinged by displeasure, that shaded his wife’s gentle countenance. “Forgive me, my dear wife,” he said. “I should not have spoken aught that implied censure of your brother, for I know he hath ever been most precious in your eyes; albeit, not the less so that he is yet without the fold. That which I have to tell you—and it were best that it were quickly told—is, that my cousin Alice was a passenger in this newly-arrived ship. Martha, your blushes wrong you. The mean jealousies that degrade some women have, I am sure, never been harboured in your heart.”
“If I deserve your praise, it is because the Lord has been pleased to purify my heart and make it his sanctuary. But, if I have not the jealousies, I have the feelings of a woman, and I cannot forget that you was once affianced to your cousin Alice; and—”
“And that I once told you, Martha, frankly, that the affection I gave to her could not be transferred to another. That love grew with my growth, strengthened with my strength. Of its beginning I had no more consciousness than of the commencement of my existence. It was sunshine and flowers in all the paths of my childhood. It inspired every hope, modified every project; such was the love I bore to Alice—love immortal as the soul!
“You know how cruelly we were severed at Southampton; how she was torn from the strand by the king’s guards, within my view, almost within my grasp. How Sir William tempted me with the offer of pardon, my cousin’s hand, and—poor temptation indeed after that—honours, fortune. You know that even Alice, my precious, beautiful Alice, knelt to me. That, smitten of God and man, and for the moment bereft of the right use of reason, she would have persuaded me to yield my integrity. You know that her cruel father reproached me with virtually breaking my plighted troth. That many of my friends urged my present conformity; and you know, Martha, that there was a principle in my bosom that triumphed over all these temptations. And think you not that principle has preserved me faithful in my friendship to you? Think you not that your obedience, your careful conformity to my wishes, your steady love, which hath kept far more than even measure with my deserts, is undervalued—can be lightly estimated?”
“Oh, I know,” said the humble wife, “that your goodness to me does far surpass my merit; but, bethink you, it is the nature of a woman to crave the first place.”
“It is the right of a wife, Martha; and there is none now to contest it with you. This is but the second time I have spoken to you on a subject that has been much in our thoughts; that has made me wayward, and would have made my sojourning on earth miserable, but that you have been my support and comforter. These letters contain tidings that have opened a long-sealed fountain. My uncle, Sir William, died last January. Leslie perished in a foreign service. Alice, thus released from all bonds, and sole mistress of her fortunes, determined to cast her lot in the heritage of God’s people. She embarked with her two girls, her only children; a tempestuous voyage proved too much for a constitution already broken by repeated shocks. She was fully aware of her approaching death, and died as befits a child of faith, in sweet peace. Would to God I could have seen her once more; but,” he added, raising his eyes devoutly, “not my will, but thine be done! The sister of Leslie, a Mistress Grafton, attended Alice, and with her she left a will, committing her children to my guardianship. It will be necessary for me to go to Boston to assume this trust. I shall leave home to-morrow, after making suitable provision for your safety and comfort during my absence. These children will bring additional labour to your household; and in good time hath our thoughtful friend, Governor Winthrop, procured for us two Indian servants. The girl has arrived. The boy is retained about the little Leslies, the youngest of whom, it seems, is a petted child, and is particularly pleased by his activity in ministering to her amusement.”
“I am glad if any use can be made of an Indian servant,” said Mrs. Fletcher, who, oppressed with conflicting emotions, expressed the lightest of them—a concern at a sudden increase of domestic cares where there were no facilities to lighten them.
“How any use! You surely do not doubt, Martha, that these Indians possess the same faculties that we do? The girl just arrived, our friend writes me, hath rare gifts of mind, such as few of God’s creatures are endowed with. She is just fifteen; she understands and speaks English perfectly well, having been taught it by an English captive, who for a long time dwelt with her tribe. On that account she was much noticed by the English who traded with the Pequods, and, young as she was, she acted as their interpreter.
“She is the daughter of one of their chiefs; and when this wolfish tribe were killed, or dislodged from their dens, she, her brother, and their mother, were brought, with a few other captives, to Boston. They were given for a spoil to the soldiers. Some, by a Christian use of money, were redeemed; and others, I blush to say it, for ‘it is God’s gift that every man should enjoy the good of his own labour,’ were sent into slavery in the West Indies. Monoca, the mother of these children, was noted for the singular dignity and modesty of her demeanour. Many notable instances of her kindness to the white traders are recorded; and when she was taken to Boston, our worthy governor, ever mindful of his duties, assured her that her good deeds were held in remembrance, and that he would testify the gratitude of his people in any way she should direct. ‘I have nothing to ask,’ she said, ‘but that I and my children may receive no personal dishonour.’
“The governor redeemed her children, and assured her they should be cared for. For herself, misery and sorrow had so wrought on her that she was fast sinking into the grave. Many Christian men and women laboured for her conversion, but she would not even consent that the Holy Word should be interpreted to her; insisting, in the pride of her soul, that all the children of the Great Spirit were equal objects of His favour, and that He had not deemed the book he had withheld needful to them.”
“And did she,” inquired Mrs. Fletcher, “thus perish in her sins?”
“She died,” replied her husband, “immovably fixed in those sentiments. But, Martha, we should not suit God’s mercy to the narrow frame of our thoughts. This poor savage’s life, as far as it has come to our knowledge, was marked with innocence and good deeds; and I would gladly believe that we may hope for her, on that broad foundation laid by the apostle Peter: ‘In every nation, he that feareth God and worketh righteousness is accepted of Him.’ ”
“That text,” answered Mrs. Fletcher, her heart easily kindling with the flame of charity, “is a light behind many a dark scripture, like the sun shining all around the edges of a cloud that cannot hide all its beams.”
“Such thoughts, my dear wife, naturally spring from thy kind heart, and are sweet morsels for private meditation; but it were well to keep them in thine own bosom, lest, taking breath, they should lighten the fears of unstable souls. But here comes the girl Magawisca, clothed in her Indian garb, which the governor has permitted her to retain, not caring, as he wisely says, to interfere with their innocent peculiarities; and she, in particular, having shown a loathing of the English dress.”
Everell Fletcher now threw wide open the parlour door, inviting the Indian girl, by a motion of his hand and a kind smile, to follow. She did so, and remained standing beside him, with her eyes riveted to the floor, while every other eye was turned towards her. She and her conductor were no unfit representatives of the people from whom they sprung. Everell Fletcher was a fair, ruddy boy of fourteen; his smooth brow and bright curling hair bore the stamp of the morning of life; hope, and confidence, and gladness beamed in the falcon glance of his keen blue eye, and love and frolic played about his lips. The active, hardy habits of life in a new country had already knit his frame and given him the muscle of manhood, while his quick elastic step truly expressed the untamed spirit of childhood—the only spirit without fear and without reproach. His dress was of blue cloth, closely fitting his person; the sleeves reached midway between the elbow and wrist, and the naked and, as it would seem to a modern eye, awkward space, was garnished with deep-pointed lace ruffles of a coarse texture; a ruff or collar of the same material was worn about the neck.
The Indian stranger was tall for her years, which did not exceed fifteen. Her form was slender, flexible, and graceful; and there was a freedom and loftiness in her movement which, though tempered with modesty, expressed a consciousness of high birth. Her face, although marked by the peculiarities of her race, was beautiful even to a European eye. Her features were regular, and her teeth white as pearls; but there must be something beyond symmetry of feature to fix the attention, and it was an expression of dignity, thoughtfulness, and deep dejection that made the eye linger on Magawisca’s face, as if it were perusing there the legible record of her birth and wrongs. Her hair, contrary to the fashion of the Massachusetts Indians, was parted on her forehead, braided, and confined to her head by a band of small feathers, jet black, and interwoven, and attached at equal distances by rings of polished bone. She wore a waistcoat of deerskin, fastened at the throat by a richly-wrought collar. Her arms, a model for sculpture, were bare. A mantle of purple cloth hung gracefully from her shoulders, and was confined at the waist by a broad band, ornamented with rude hieroglyphics. The mantle, and her strait short petticoat, or kilt, of the same rare and costly material, had been obtained, probably, from the English traders. Stockings were an unknown luxury; but leggins, similar to those worn by the ladies of Queen Elizabeth’s court, were no bad substitute. The moccasin, neatly fitted to a delicate foot and ankle, and tastefully ornamented with bead-work, completed the apparel of this daughter of a chieftain, which altogether had an air of wild and fantastic grace, that harmonized well with the noble demeanour and peculiar beauty of the young savage.
Mr. Fletcher surveyed her for a moment with a mingled feeling of compassion and curiosity, and then turning away and leaning his head on the mantelpiece, his thoughts reverted to the subject that had affected him far more deeply than he had ventured to confess, even to the wife of his bosom.
Mrs. Fletcher’s first feeling was rather that of a housewife than a tender woman. “My husband,” she thought, “might as well have brought a wild doe from the forest to plough his fields, as to give me this Indian girl for household labour; but the wisest men have no sense in these matters.” This natural domestic reflection was soon succeeded by a sentiment of compassion, which scarcely needed to be stimulated by Everell’s whisper of “Do, mother, speak to her.”
“Magawisca,” she said, in a friendly tone, “you are welcome among us, girl.” Magawisca bowed her head. Mrs. Fletcher continued: “You should receive it as a signal mercy, child, that you have been taken from the midst of a savage people, and set in a Christian family.” Mrs. Fletcher paused for her auditor’s assent; but the proposition was either unintelligible or unacceptable to Magawisca.
“Mistress Fletcher means,” said a middle-aged serving-woman who had just entered the room, “that you should be mighty thankful, Tawney, that you are snatched as a brand from the burning.”
“Hush, Jennet!” said Everell Fletcher, touching the speaker with the point of an arrow which he held in his hand.
Magawisca’s eyes had turned on Jennet, flashing like a sunbeam through an opening cloud. Everell’s interposition touched a tender chord, and when she again cast them down, a tear trembled on their lids.
“You will have no hard service to do,” said Mrs. Fletcher, resuming her address. “I cannot explain all to you now; but you will soon perceive that our civilized life is far easier, far better and happier than your wild wandering ways, which are, indeed, as you will presently see, but little superior to those of the wolves and foxes.”
Magawisca suppressed a reply that her heart sent to her quivering lips, and Everell said, “Hunted, as the Indians are, to their own dens, I am sure, mother, they need the fierceness of the wolf and the cunning of the fox.”
“True, true, my son,” replied Mrs. Fletcher, who really meant no unkindness in expressing what she deemed a self-evident truth; and then, turning again to Magawisca, she said, in a gentle tone, “You have had a long and fatiguing journey—was it not, girl?”
“My foot,” replied Magawisca, “is used to the wild-wood path. The deer tires not of his way on the mountain, nor the bird of its flight in the air.”
She uttered her natural feeling in so plaintive a tone that it touched the heart like a strain of sad music; and when Jennet again officiously interposed in the conversation, by saying that “Truly these savages have their house in the wilderness, and their way no man knows,” her mistress cut short her outpouring by directing her to go to the outer door, and learn who it was that Digby was conducting to the house.
A moment after, Digby, Mr. Fletcher’s confidential domestic, entered with the air of one who has important intelligence to communicate. He was followed by a tall, gaunt Indian, who held in his hand a deerskin pouch. “Ha! Digby,” said Mr. Fletcher, “have you returned? What say the Commissioners? Can they furnish me a guide and attendants for my journey?”
“Yes, an please you, sir. I was in the nick of time, for they were just despatching a messenger to the governor.”
“On what account?”
“Why, it’s rather an odd errand,” replied Digby, scratching his head with an awkward hesitation. “I would not wish to shock my gentle mistress, who will never bring her feelings to the queer fashions of the New World; but Lord’s mercy, sir, you know we think no more of taking off a scalp here than we did of shaving our beards at home.”
“Scalp!” exclaimed Mr. Fletcher. “Explain yourself, Digby.”
The Indian, as if to assist Digby’s communication, untied his pouch, and drew from it a piece of dried and shrivelled skin, to which hair, matted together with blood, still adhered. There was an expression of fierce triumph on the countenance of the savage as he surveyed the trophy with a grim smile. A murmur of indignation burst from all present.
“Why did you bring that wretch here?” demanded Mr. Fletcher of his servant, in an angry tone.
“I did but obey Mr. Pynchon, sir. The thing is an abomination to the soul and eye of a Christian, but it has to be taken to Boston for the reward.”
“What reward, Digby?”
“The reward, sir, that is in reason expected for the scalp of the Pequod chief.”
As Digby uttered these last words, Magawisca shrieked as if a dagger had pierced her heart. She darted forward and grasped the arm that upheld the trophy. “My father! Mononotto!” she screamed, in a voice of agony.
“Give it to her—by Heaven, you shall give it to her,” cried Everell, springing on the Indian, and losing all other thought in his instinctive sympathy for Magawisca.
“Softly, softly, Mr. Everell,” said Digby; “that is the scalp of Sassacus, not Mononotto. The Pequods had two chiefs, you know.”
Magawisca now released her hold; and, as soon as she could again command her voice, she said, in her own native language, to the Indian, “My father—my father—does he live?”
“He does,” answered the Indian, in the same dialect; “he lives in the wigwam of the chief of the Mohawks.”
Magawisca was silent for a moment, and knit her brows as if agitated with an important deliberation. She then undid a bracelet from her arm and gave it to the Indian. “I charge ye,” she said, “as ye hope for game in your hunting-grounds, for the sun on your wigwam, and the presence of the Great Spirit in your death-hour—I charge ye to convey this token to my father. Tell him his children are servants in the house of his enemies; but,” she added, after a moment’s pause, “to whom am I trusting? to the murderer of Sassacus, my father’s friend!”
“Fear not,” replied the Indian; “your errand shall be done. Sassacus was a strange tree in our forests; but he struck his root deep, and lifted his tall head above our loftiest branches, and cast his shadow over us, and I cut him down. I may not return to my people, for they called Sassacus brother, and they would fain avenge him. But fear not, maiden, your errand shall be done.”
Mr. Fletcher observed this conference, which he could not understand, with some anxiety and displeasure, and he broke it off by directing Jennet to conduct Magawisca to another apartment.
Jennet obeyed, muttering as she went, “A notable providence, this, concerning the Pequod caitiff. Even like Adonibezek, as he has done to others the Lord hath requited him.”
Mr. Fletcher then most reluctantly took into his possession the savage trophy, and dismissed the Indian, deeply lamenting that motives of mistaken policy should tempt his brethren to depart from the plainest principles of their religion.
“But ah! who can deceive his destiny,
Or ween by warning to avoid his fate?”
Fairy Queen.
On the following morning Mr. Fletcher set out for Boston, and, escaping all perils by flood and field, arrived there at the expiration of nine days, having accomplished the journey, now the affair of a single day, with unusual expedition.
His wards were accompanied by two individuals, who were now, with them, to become permanent members of his family: Mrs. Grafton, the sister of their father, and one Master Cradock, a scholar “skilled in the tongues,” who attended them as their tutor. Mrs. Grafton was a widow, far on the shady side of fifty; though, as that was a subject to which she never alluded, she probably regarded age with the feelings ascribed to her sex, that being the last quality for which womankind would wish to be honoured, as is said by one whose satire is so good-humoured that even its truth may be endured. She was, unhappily for herself, as her lot was cast, a zealous adherent to the Church of England. Good people, who take upon themselves the supervisorship of their neighbours’ consciences, abounded in that age, and from them Mrs. Grafton received frequent exhortations and remonstrances. To these she uniformly replied, “That a faith and mode of religion that had saved so many, was good enough to save her;” “that she had received her belief, just as it was, from her father, and that he, not she, was responsible for it.” Offensive such opinions must needs be in a community of professed reformers, but the good lady did not make them more so by the obtrusiveness of over-wrought zeal. To confess the truth, her mind was far more intent on the forms of headpieces than modes of faith, and she was far more ambitious of being the leader of fashion than the leader of a sect. She would have contended more earnestly for a favourite recipe than a favourite dogma; and though she undoubtedly believed “a saint in crape” to be “twice a saint in lawn,” and fearlessly maintained that “no man could suitably administer the offices of religion without ‘gown, surplice, and wig,’ ” yet she chiefly directed her hostilities against the puritanical attire of the ladies of the colony, who, she insisted, “did most unnaturally belie their nature as women, and their birth and bringing-up as gentlewomen, by their ill-fashioned, ill-sorted, and unbecoming apparel.” To this heresy she was fast gaining proselytes; for, if we may believe the “simple cobbler of Agawam,” there were, even in those early and pure days, “nugiperous gentle dames who inquired what dress the Queen is in this week.” The contagion spread rapidly; and when some of the most vigilant and zealous sentinels proposed that the preachers should make it the subject of public and personal reproof, it was whispered that the scandal was not limited to idle maidens, but that certain of the deacons’ wives were in it, and it was deemed more prudent to adopt gentle and private measures to eradicate the evil; an evil so deeply felt as to be bewailed by the merciless “cobbler” above quoted in the following affecting terms: “Methinks it would break the hearts of Englishmen to see so many goodly English women imprisoned in French cages, peeping out of their hood-holes for some men of mercy to help them with a little wit, and nobody relieves them. We have about five or six of them in our colony. If I see any of them accidentally, I cannot cleanse my phansie of them for a month after.”
It would seem marvellous that a woman like Mrs. Grafton, apparently engrossed with the world, living on the foam and froth of life, should become a voluntary exile to the colonies; but, to do her justice, she was kind-hearted and affectionate, susceptible of strong and controlling attachment, and the infant children of a brother on whom she had doted outweighed her love of frivolous pleasures and personal indulgence.
She certainly believed that the resolution of her sister to go to the wilderness had no parallel in the history of human folly and madness; but, the resolution once taken, and, as she perceived, unconquerable, she made her own destiny conformable, not without some restiffness, but without serious repining. It was an unexpected shock to her to be compelled to leave Boston for a condition of life not only more rude and inconvenient, but really dangerous. Necessity, however, is more potent than philosophy, and Mrs. Grafton, like most people, submitted with patience to an inevitable evil.
As “good Master Cradock” was a man rather acted upon than acting, we shall leave him to be discovered by our readers as the light of others falls on him.
Mr. Fletcher received the children—the relicts and gifts of a woman whom he had loved as few men can love—with an intense interest. The youngest, Mary, was a pretty, petted child, wayward and bashful. She repelled Mr. Fletcher’s caresses, and ran away from him to shelter herself in her aunt’s arms; but Alice, the eldest, seemed instinctively to return the love that beamed in the first glance that Mr. Fletcher cast on her; in that brief, eager glance he saw the living and beautiful image of her mother. So much was he impressed with the resemblance, that he said, in a letter to his wife, that it reminded him of the heathen doctrine of metempsychosis, and he could almost believe the spirit of the mother was transferred to the bosom of the child. The arrangement Mr. Fletcher made for the transportation of his charge to Springfield might probably be traced to the preference inspired by this resemblance.
He despatched the little Mary with her aunt and the brother of Magawisca, the Indian boy Oneco, and such attendants as were necessary for their safe conduct, and he retained Alice and the tutor to be the companions of his journey. Before the children were separated they were baptized by the Reverend Mr. Cotton, and, in commemoration of the Christian graces of their mother, their names were changed to the puritanical appellations of Hope and Faith.
Mr. Fletcher was detained, at first by business and afterward by ill health, much longer than he had expected, and the fall, winter, and earliest months of spring wore away before he was able to set his face homeward. In the mean time, his little community at Bethel proceeded more harmoniously than could have been hoped from the discordant materials of which it was composed. This was owing, in great part, to the wise and gentle Mrs. Fletcher, the sun of her little system; all were obedient to the silent influence that controlled without being perceived. The following letter which she wrote to Mr. Fletcher just before his return, contains some important domestic details.
“Springfield, 1638.
“To my good and Honoured Husband:
“Thy kind letter was duly received fourteen days after date, and was most welcome to me, containing, as it does, a portion of that stream of kindness that is ever flowing out from thy bountiful nature towards me. Sweet and refreshing was it, as these gentle days of spring after our sullen winter. Winter! ever disconsolate in these parts, but made tenfold more dreary by the absence of that precious light by which I have ever been cheered and guided.
“I thank thee heartily, my dear life, that thou dost so warmly commend my poor endeavours to do well in thy absence. I have truly tried to be faithful to my little nestlings, and to cheer them with notes of gladness when I have drooped inwardly for the voice of my mate. Yet my anxious thoughts have been more with thee than with myself; nor have I been unmindful of any of thy perplexities by sickness or otherwise, but in all thy troubles I have been troubled, and have ever prayed that, whatever might betide me, thou mightst return in safety to thy desiring family.
“I have had many difficulties to contend with in thy absence, of which I have forborne to inform thee, deeming it the duty of a wife never to disquiet her husband with her household cares; but now that, with the Lord’s permission, thou art so soon to be with us, I would fain render unto thee an account of my stewardship, knowing that thou art not a hard master, and wilt consider the will, and not the weakness, of thy loving wife.
“This Dame Grafton is strangely out of place here—fitter for a parlour bird than a flight into the wilderness; and but that she cometh commended to us as a widow—a name that is a draught from the Lord upon every Christian heart—we might find it hard to brook her light and worldly ways. She raileth, and yet, I think, not with an evil mind, but rather ignorantly, at our most precious faith, and hath even ventured to read aloud from her book of Common Prayer: an offence that she hath been prevented from repeating by the somewhat profane jest of our son Everell, whose love of mischief, proceeding from the gay temper of youth, I trust you will overlook. It was a few nights ago, when a storm was raging, that the poor lady’s fears were greatly excited. My womanish apprehensions had a hard struggle with my duty, so terrific was the hideous howling of the wolves, mingling with the blasts that swept through the forest; but I stilled my beating heart with the thought that my children leaned on me, and I must not betray my weakness. But Dame Grafton was beside herself. At one moment she fancied we should be the prey of the wild beast, and at the next, that she heard the alarm yell of the savages. Everell brought her her prayer-book, and, affecting a well-beseeming gravity, begged her to look out the prayer for distressed women in imminent danger of being scalped by North American Indians. The poor lady, distracted with terror, seized the book, and turned over leaf after leaf, Everell, meanwhile, affecting to aid her search. In vain I shook my head reprovingly at the boy; in vain I assured Mistress Grafton that I trusted we were in no danger; she was beyond the influence of reason; nothing allayed her fears, till, chancing to catch a glance of Everell’s eye, she detected the lurking laughter, and rapping him soundly over the ears with her book, she left the room greatly enraged. I grieve to add, that Everell evinced small sorrow for his levity, though I admonished him thereupon. At the same time I thought it a fit occasion to commend the sagacity whereby he had detected the shortcomings of written prayers, and to express my hope that, unpromising as his beginnings are, he may prove a son of Jacob that shall wrestle and prevail.
“I have something farther to say of Everell, who is, in the main, a most devoted son, and, as I believe, an apt scholar; as his master telleth me that he readeth Latin like his mother tongue, and is well grounded in the Greek. The boy doth greatly affect the company of the Pequod girl Magawisca. If, in his studies, he meets with any trait of heroism (and with such, truly, her mind doth seem naturally to assimilate), he straightway calleth for her, and rendereth it into English, in which she hath made such marvellous progress that I am sometimes startled with the beautiful forms in which she clothes her simple thoughts. She, in her turn, doth take much delight in describing to him the customs of her people, and relating their traditionary tales, which are, like pictures, captivating to a youthful imagination. He hath taught her to read, and reads to her Spenser’s rhymes, and many other books of the like kind, of which, I am sorry to say, Dame Grafton hath brought hither stores. I have not forbidden him to read them, well knowing that the appetite of youth is often whetted by denial, and fearing that the boy might be tempted secretly to evade my authority; and I would rather expose him to all the mischief of this unprofitable lore, than to tempt him to a deceit that might corrupt the sweet fountain of truth—the well-spring of all that is good and noble.
“I have gone far from my subject. When my boy comes before my mind’s eye, I can see no other object. But to return. I have not been unmindful of my duty to the Indian girl, but have endeavoured to instil into her mind the first principles of our religion, as contained in Mr. Cotton’s Catechism and elsewhere. But, alas! to these her eye is shut and her ear is closed, not only with that blindness and deafness common to the natural man, but she entertaineth an aversion, which has the fixedness of principle, and doth continually remind me of Hannibal’s hatred to Rome, and is, like that, inwrought with her filial piety. I have in vain attempted to subdue her to the drudgery of domestic service, and make her take part with Jennet; but as hopefully might you yoke a deer with an ox. It is not that she lacks obedience to me: so far as it seems she can command her duty, she is ever complying; but it appeareth impossible to her to clip the wings of her soaring thoughts, and keep them down to household matters.
“I have sometimes marvelled at the providence of God, in bestowing on this child of the forest such rare gifts of mind, and other and outward beauties. Her voice hath a natural, deep, and most sweet melody in it, far beyond any stringed instrument. She hath, too (think not that I, like Everell, am, as Jennet saith, a charmed bird to her)—she hath, though yet a child in years, that in her mien that doth bring to mind the lofty Judith and the gracious Esther. When I once said this to Everell, he replied, ‘Oh, mother! is she not more like the gentle and tender Ruth?’ To him she may be, and therefore it is that, innocent and safe as the intercourse of these children now is, it is for thee to decide whether it be not most wise to remove the maiden from our dwelling. Two young plants that have sprung up in close neighbourhood may be separated while young, but if disjoined after their fibres are all intertwined, one, or perchance both, may perish.
“Think not that this anxiety springs from the mistaken fancy of a woman, that love is the natural channel for all the purposes, thoughts, hopes, and feelings of humanity. Neither think, I beseech thee, that, doting with a foolish fondness upon my noble boy, I magnify into importance whatsoever concerneth him. No: my heart yearneth towards this poor heathen orphan-girl; and when I see her, in his absence, starting at every sound, and her restless eye turning an asking glance at every opening of the door, every movement betokening a disquieted spirit, and then the sweet contentment that stealeth over her face when he appeareth—oh, my honoured husband! all my woman’s nature feeleth for her; not for any present evil, but for what may betide.
“Having commended this subject to thy better wisdom, I will leave caring for it to speak to thee of others of thy household. Your three little girls are thriving mightily; and as to the baby, you will not be ashamed to own him, though you will not recognise, in the bouncing boy that plays bo-peep and creeps quite over the room, the little creature who had scarcely opened his eyes on the world when you went away. He is by far the largest child I ever had, and the most knowing; he has cut his front upper teeth, and showeth signs of two more. He is surprisingly fond of Oneco, and clappeth his hands with joy whenever he sees him. Indeed, the boy is a favourite with all the young ones, and greatly aideth me by continually pleasuring them. He is far different from his sister—gay and volatile, giving scarcely one thought to the past, and not one care to the future. His sister often taketh him apart to discourse with him, and sometimes doth produce a cast of seriousness over his countenance; but at the next presented object, it vanisheth as speedily as a shadow before a sunbeam. He hath commended himself greatly to the favour of Dame Grafton by his devotion to her little favourite: a spoiled child is she, and it seemeth a pity that the name of Faith was given to her, since her shrinking, timid character doth not promise, in any manner, to resemble that most potent of the Christian graces. Oneco hath always some charm to lure her waywardness. He bringeth home the treasures of the woods to please her—berries, and wild flowers, and the beautiful plumage of birds that are brought down by his unerring aim. Everell hath much advantage from the wood-craft of Oneco: the two boys daily enrich our table, which, in truth, hath need of such helps, with the spoils of the air and water.
“I am grieved to tell thee that some misrule hath crept in among thy servants in thy absence. Alas, what are sheep without their shepherd! Digby is, as ever, faithful—not serving with eye-service; but Hutton hath consorted much with some evil-doers, who have been violating the law of God and the law of our land, by meeting together in merry companies, playing cards, dancing, and the like. For these offences they were brought before Mr. Pynchon, and sentenced to receive, each, ‘twenty stripes well laid on.’ Hutton furthermore, having been overtaken with drink, was condemned to wear, suspended around his neck, for one month, a bit of wood on which Toper is legibly written; and Darby, who is ever a dawdler, having gone, last Saturday, with the cart to the village, dilly-dallied about there, and did not set out on his return till the sun was quite down, both to the eye and by the calendar. Accordingly, early on the following Monday he was summoned before Mr. Pynchon, and ordered to receive ten stripes; but by reason of his youth and my intercession, which, being by a private letter, doubtless had some effect, the punishment was remitted; whereupon he heartily promised amendment and a better carriage.
“There hath been some alarm here within the last few days, on account of certain Indians who have been seen lurking in the woods around us. They are reported not to have a friendly appearance. We have been advised to remove, for the present, to the Fort; but, as I feel no apprehension, I shall not disarrange my family by taking a step that would savour more of fear than prudence. I say I feel no apprehension; yet I must confess it, I have a cowardly, womanish spirit, and fear is set in motion by the very mention of danger. There are vague forebodings hanging about me, and I cannot drive them away even by the thought that your presence, my honoured husband, will soon relieve me from all agitating apprehensions, and repair all the faults of my poor judgment. Fearful thoughts press on me; untoward accidents have prolonged thy absence; our reunion may yet be far distant; and if it should never chance in this world, oh remember, that if I have fallen far short in duty, the measure of my love hath been full. I have ever known that mine was Leah’s portion; that I was not the chosen and the loved one; and this has sometimes made me fearful, often joyless; but remember, it is only the perfect love of the husband that casteth out the fear of the wife.
“I have one request to prefer to thee, which I have lacked courage to make by word of mouth, and therefore now commend it by letter to thy kindness. Be gracious unto me, my dear husband, and deem not that I overstep the modest bound of a woman’s right in meddling with that which is thy prerogative—the ordering of our eldest son’s education. Everell here hath few except spiritual privileges. God, who seeth my heart, knoweth I do not undervalue these—the manna of the wilderness. Yet to them might be added worldly helps, to aid the growth of the boy’s noble gifts, a kind Providence having opened a wide door therefore in the generous offer of my brother Stretton. True, he hath not attained to our light, whereby manifold errors of Church and State are made visible, yet he hath ever borne himself uprightly, and to us most lovingly; and as I remember there was a good Samaritan and a faithful centurion, I think we are permitted to enlarge the bounds of our charity to those who work righteousness, albeit not of our communion.
“Thou hast already sown the good seed in our boy’s heart, and it hath been (I say it not presumingly) nurtured with a mother’s tears and prayers. Trust, then, to the promised blessing, and fear not to permit him to pass a few years in England, whence he will return to be a crown of glory to thee, my husband, and a blessing and honour to our chosen country. Importunity, I know, is not beseeming in a wife; it is the instrument of weakness, whereby, like the mouse in the fable, she would gnaw away what she cannot break. I will not, therefore, urge thee farther, but leave the decision to thy wisdom and thy love. And now, my dear husband, I kiss and embrace thee; and may God company with thee, and restore thee, if it be his good pleasure, to thy ever faithful, and loving, and obedient wife,
“Martha Fletcher.
“To her honoured husband these be delivered.”