“Dear Everell:
“This is the fifth anniversary of the day you left us—your birthday too, you know; so we celebrate it, but with a blended joy and grief, which, as my dear guardian says, is suitable to the mixed condition of human life.
“I surprised him this morning with a painting on which I had expended much time and laid out all my poor skill. The scene is a forest glade; a boy is sleeping under a birch tree, near a thicket of hazel bushes, and from their deepest shadow peeps a gaunt wolf, in the act of springing on him; while, just emerging from the depths of the wood, in the background, appears a man with a musket levelled at the animal. I had placed the painting on the mantelpiece, and it caught your father’s eye as he entered to attend our morning exercise. He said nothing, for you know the order of our devotions is as strictly observed as were the services of the ancient Temple. So we all took our accustomed places: I mine, on the cushion beside your father; yours still stands on the other side of him, like the vacant seat of Banquo. Love can paint as well as fear; and though no form, palpable to common eyes, is seated there, yet, to our second sight, imagination produces from her shadowy regions the form of our dear Everell.
“I believe the picture had touched the hidden springs of memory, for your father, though he was reading the chapter of Exodus that speaks of the wise-hearted men who wrought for the sanctuary (a portion of scripture not particularly moving), repeatedly wiped the gathering tears from his eyes. Jennet is never lagging in the demonstration of religious emotion, and I inferred from her responsive hems! and hahs! that, as there was no obvious cause for tears, she fancied affecting types were lurking in the ‘loops and selvages, and tenons and sockets, and fine twined linen’ about which your father was reading. But when he came, in his prayer, to his customary mention of his absent child; when he touched upon the time when his habitation was made desolate, and then upon the deliverance of his son, his only son, from the savage foe and the ravening beast, his voice faltered; every heart responded; Digby sobbed aloud; and even my aunt Grafton, whose aversion to standing at her devotions has not diminished with her increasing years, stood a monument of patience till the clock twice told the hour; though it was but the other day, when she thought your father was drawing to a close, and he started a new topic, that she broke out, after her way of thinking aloud, ‘Well, if he is going on t’other tack, I’ll sit down.’
“When the exercise was finished, Digby gave vent to his pleasure. ‘There, Jennet,’ he said, rubbing his hands exultingly, ‘you are always on the lookout for witchcraft. I wonder what you call that? It is a perfect picture of the place where I found Mr. Everell, as that fellow there, in the frieze jacket, is of me; and anybody would know that, though they would not expect to see John Digby painted in a picture. To be sure, Mr. Everell does not look quite so pale and famished as he did when I first saw him sleeping under that birch tree: as I live, she has put his name there, just as he had carved it. Well, it will be a kind of a history for Mr. Everell’s children, when we, and the forest too, are laid low.’
“Your father permitted the honest fellow’s volubility to flow unrepressed; he himself only said, as he drew me to him and kissed me, ‘You have kept a faithful copy of our dear Everell in your memory.’
“My honest tutor, Cradock, and my aunt Grafton contended for the honour of my excellence in the art—poor Cradock, my Apollo! He maintained that he had taught me the theory, while aunt Grafton boasted her knowledge of the practice; but, alas! the little honour my success reflected on them was not worth their contest; and I did them no injustice in secretly ascribing all my skill to the source whence the Corinthian maid derived her power to trace, by the secret lamp, the shade of her lover. Affection for my dear Everell and for his father is my inspiration; but, I confess, it might never have appeared in the mimicry of even this rude painting, if my aunt Grafton had not taken lessons at the Convent of the Chartreux at Paris, and had daily access, as you know she has a thousand times repeated to us, to the paintings of Rossi and Albati in the palace of Fontainebleau.
“But into what egotism does this epistolary journalizing betray me? The day is yours, Everell, and I will not speak again of myself.
“My aunt, meaning to do it what honour she could, had our dinner-table set out with massive silver dishes, engraved with her family’s armorial bearings. They have never before seen the light in America. Your father smiled at their contrast with our bare walls, pine tables, chairs, &c., and said we looked like Attila in his rude hut, surrounded with the spoils of Rome; and aunt Grafton, who has a decided taste for all the testimonials of her family grandeur, entered into a warm discussion with Master Cradock as to how far the new man might lawfully indulge in a vain show. By-the-way, their skirmishing on the debatable grounds of Church and State have of late almost ceased. When I remarked this to your father, he said he believed I had brought about the present amicable state of affairs, by affording them a kind of neutral ground, where their common affections and interests met. Whatever has produced this result, it is too happy not to be carefully cherished; so I have taken care that my poor tutor, who never would intentionally provoke a human being, should avoid, as far as possible, all those peculiarities which, as some colours offend certain animals, were sure every day, and thrice a day, to call forth my aunt’s animadversions. I have, too, entered into a secret confederacy with Digby, the effect of which is, that Master Cradock’s little brown wig is brushed every morning, and is, at least once each day, straight on his head. The brush has invaded, too, the hitherto unexplored regions of his broadcloth, and his black stock gives place, on every Lord’s day at least, to a white collar. Aunt Grafton herself has more than once remarked, that, ‘for one of these scholar-folks, he goes quite decent.’ As to aunt Grafton, I am afraid that, if you were here, though we may both have gained with our years a little discretion, yet I am afraid we should laugh, as we were wont to do, at her innocent peculiarities. She spends many a weary hour in devising new head-gear, and doth daily, as Jennet says, break the law against costly apparel. Jennet is the same untired and tiresome railer. If there are anodynes for the tongue in England, pray send some for her.
“We are going to-morrow on an excursion to a new settlement on the river, called Northampton. Your father feared the toils and perils of the way for me, and has consented, reluctantly, to my being of the party. Aunt Grafton remonstrated, and expressed her natural and kind apprehensions, by alleging that it was ‘very unladylike, and a thing quite unheard of in England,’ for a young person like me to go out exploring a new country. I urged that our new country develops faculties that young ladies in England were unconscious of possessing. She maintained, as usual, that whatever was not practised and known in England, was not worth possessing; but finally she concluded her opposition with her old customary phrase, ‘Well, it’s peculiar of you, Miss Hope,’ which, you know, she always uses to characterize whatever opposes her opinions or inclinations.
“My good tutor, who would fain be my ægis-bearer, insists on attending me. You may laugh at him, Everell, and call him my knight-errant, or squire, or what you will; but I assure you, he is a right godly and suitable appendage to a Pilgrim damsel. I will finish my letter when I return; a journey of twenty miles has put my thoughts (which, you know, are ever ready to take wing) to flight.
“25th October, Thursday—or, as the injunction has come from Boston that we be more particular in avoiding these heathen designations, 8th month 25th, 5th day.
“Dear Everell: We followed the Indian footpath that winds along the margin of the river, and reached Northampton without any accident. There is but a narrow opening there, scooped out of the forest, and Mr. Holioke, wishing to have an extensive view of the country, engaged an Indian guide to conduct your father and himself to the summit of a mountain, which rises precipitously from the meadows, and overlooks an ocean of forest.
“I had gazed on the beautiful summits of this mountain, that, in this transparent October atmosphere, were as blue and bright as the heavens themselves, till I had an irrepressible desire to go to them; and, like the child who cried for the horns of the silver moon, should I have cried too if my wishes had been unattainable.
“Your father acquiesced (as my conscience tells me, Everell, he does too easily) in my wishes, and nobody objected but my tutor, who evidently thought it would be unmanly for him to shrink from the toils that I braved, and who looked forward with dread and dismay to the painful ascent. However, we all reached the summit without scath to life or limb, and then we looked down upon a scene that made me clap my hands, and my pious companions raise their eyes in silent devotion. I hope you have not forgotten the autumnal brilliancy of our woods. They say the foliage in England has a paler, sickly hue; but for our Western world—Nature’s youngest child—she has reserved her many-coloured robe, the brightest and most beautiful of her garments. Last week the woods were as green as an emerald, and now they look as if all the summer-spirits had been wreathing them with flowers of the richest and most brilliant dyes.
“Philosophers may inquire into the process of Nature, and find out, if they can, how such sudden changes are produced; though, after all, I fancy their inquiries will turn out like the experiment of the inquisitive boy, who cut open the drum to find the sound; but I love to lend my imagination to poets’ dreams, and to fancy Nature has her myriads of little spirits who
“Do wander everywhere
Swifter than the moone’s sphere.”
He must have a torpid imagination and a cold heart, I think, who does not fancy these vast forests filled with invisible intelligences. Have these beautiful valleys of our Connecticut, which we saw from the mountain looking like a smile on Nature’s rugged face, and stretching as far as our vision extended, till the broad river diminished in the shadowy distance to a silver thread—have they been seen and enjoyed only by those savages who have their summer home in them? While I was pondering on this thought, Mr. Holioke, who seldom indulges in a fanciful suggestion, said to your father, ‘The Romans, you know, Brother Fletcher, had their Cenotapha, empty sepulchres, in honour of those who died in their country’s cause, and mouldered on a distant soil. Why may we not have ours, and surmise that the spirits of those who have died for liberty and religion have come before us to this wilderness, and taken possession in the name of the Lord?’
“We lingered for an hour or two on the mountain. Mr. Holioke and your father were noting the sites for future villages, already marked out for them by clusters of Indian huts. The instinct of the children of the forest guides them to these rich intervals, which the sun and the river prepare and almost till for them. While the gentlemen were thus engaged, I observed that the highest rock of the mountain was crowned with a pyramidal pile of stones, and about them were strewn relics of Indian sacrifices. It has, I believe, been the custom of people, in all ages, who were instructed only by Nature, to worship on high places.[3] I pointed to the rude altar, and ventured to ask Mr. Holioke if an acceptable service might not have been offered there.
“He shook his head at me as if I were but little better than a heathen, and said, ‘It was all worship to an unknown God.’
“ ‘But,’ said your father, ‘the time is approaching when, through the valleys beneath and on this mount, incense shall rise from Christian hearts.’
“ ‘It were well,’ replied Mr. Holioke, ‘if we now, in the spirit, consecrated it to the Lord.’
“ ‘And let me stand sponsor for it,’ said I, ‘while you christen it Holioke.’
“I was gently rebuked for my levity, but my hint was not unkindly taken; for the good man has never since spoken of his namesake without calling it ‘Mount Holioke.’
“My senses were enchanted on that high place. I listened to the mighty sound that rose from the forest depths of the abyss like the roar of the distant ocean, and to the gentler voices of nature, borne on the invisible waves of air; the farewell notes of the few birds that still linger with us; the rustling of the leaves beneath the squirrel’s joyous leap; the whirring of the partridge startled from his perch; the tinkling of the cow-bell, and the barking of the Indian’s dog. I was lying with my ear over the rock when your father reminded me that it was time to return, and bade Digby, who had attended us, ‘look well to Miss Leslie’s descent, and lend a helping hand to Master Cradock.’
“My poor tutor’s saffron skin changed to brick colour; and that he might not think I heard the imputation cast upon his serviceable power, I stepped between him and Digby, and said, ‘that with such wings on each side of me, I might fly down the mountain.’
“ ‘Ah, Miss Hope Leslie,’ said Cradock, restored to his self-complacency, ‘you are a merry thought atween us.’ He would fain have appeared young and agile; not from vanity, Everell, but to persuade me to accept his proffered assistance. Poor old man! he put me in mind, as he went after Digby, panting and leaping (or rather settling) from crag to crag, of an old horse, that almost cracks his bones to keep pace with a colt. His involuntary groans betrayed the pain of his stiffened muscles, and I lingered on every projecting cliff on the pretence of taking a farewell look of the valleys, but really to allow him time to recover breath.
“In the mean time the gentlemen had got far in advance of us. We came to the last rock of difficult passage; Digby gave me his hand to assist me in springing from it, and asked Cradock to ascertain if the foothold below was sure: a necessary precaution, as the matted leaves had sometimes proved treacherous. Cradock, in performing this office, startled a rattlesnake that lay concealed under a mass of leaves and moss; the reptile coiled himself up and darted his fangs into his hand. I heard the rattle, and saw the poor man’s deathly paleness as he sunk to the ground, exclaiming ‘I am but a dead sinner!’
“Digby turned to pursue the snake, and I sprang from the rock. I begged Cradock to show me the wound: it was on the back of his hand. I assured him I could easily extract the venom, and would have applied my lips to the wound, but he withdrew his hand. Digby at that moment returned. ‘She would suck the poison from my hand, Digby,’ said Cradock; ‘verily, she is but little lower than the angels.’
“ ‘What! Miss Hope!’ exclaimed Digby, ‘would you be guilty of self-murder even if you could save the old gentleman from dying, and dying, as it were, by the will of the Lord?’ I assured Digby that there was no danger whatever to me; that I had read of many cases of poison being extracted in that way without the slightest injury to the person extracting it. He asked me where I had read such stories. I was obliged to refer to a book of my aunt Grafton’s, called ‘The Wonders of the Crusades.’ This seemed to Digby but apocryphal authority; he shook his head, and said ‘he would believe such fables nowhere out of the Bible.’ I entreated vehemently, for I well knew it could not harm me, and I believed it to be life or death to my poor tutor. He seemed half disposed to yield to me. ‘Thou hast a marvellous persuasion, child,’ he said; ‘and now I remember me of a proverb they have in Italy: the lips extract venom from the heart, and poison from the wound.’
“Digby again shook his head. ‘Nothing but one of those flourishes they put into verses,’ he said. ‘Come, come, Master Cradock, stir up a manly spirit, and let’s on to the fort, where we may get help it’s lawful for you to use; and don’t ransack your memory for any more such scholar-rubbish to uphold you in consenting to our young lady’s exposing her life to save the fag end of yours.’
“ ‘Expose her life!’ retorted Cradock, rising with a feeling of honest indignation that for a moment overcame the terror of death. ‘Digby, you know that if I had a hundred lives, I would rather lose them all than expose her precious life.’
“ ‘I believe you, Master Cradock, I believe you; and whether you live or die, I will always uphold you for a true-hearted man; and you must excuse me for my boldness in speaking, when I thought our young mistress was putting herself in the jaws of death.’
“We now made all speed to reach the fort; but when we arrived there no aid could be obtained, and poor Cradock’s death was regarded as inevitable. I remembered to have heard Nelema say that she knew a certain antidote to the poison of a rattlesnake; and when I told this to your father, he ordered our horses to be saddled, and we set out immediately for home, where we arrived in six hours. Even in that brief space the disease had made fearful progress. The wound was horribly inflamed, and the whole arm swollen and empurpled. I saw despair in every face that looked on Cradock. I went myself, attended by Jennet and Digby, to Nelema’s hut; for I knew, if the old woman was in one of her moody fits, she would not come for any bidding but mine.
“Jennet, as you know was always her wont, took up her testimony against ‘the old heathen witch.’ ‘It were better,’ she said, ‘to die than to live by the devil’s help.’ I assured her that, if the case was her own, I would not oppose her pious preference, but that now I must have my own way, and I believed the Giver of Life would direct the means of its preservation.
“Though it was near midnight, we found Nelema sitting at the entrance of her hut. I told her my errand. ‘Peace be with you, child,’ she said. ‘I knew you were coming, and have been waiting for you.’ She is superstitious, or loves to affect supernatural knowledge, and I should have thought nothing of her harmless boast had I not seen, by the significant shake of Jennet’s head, that she set it down against her. The old woman filled a deerskin pouch from a repository of herbs in one corner of her hut, and then returned to Bethel with us. We found Cradock in a state of partial delirium and nervous restlessness which, your father said, was the immediate precursor of death. Aunt Grafton was kneeling at his bedside, reading the prayers for the dying.
Nelema ordered every one, with the exception of myself, to leave the room, for she said her cures would not take effect unless there was perfect silence. Your father retired to his own apartment, and gave orders that he should in no case be diverted from his prayers. Aunt Grafton withdrew with evident reluctance, and Jennet lingered till Nelema’s patience was exhausted, when she pushed her out of the room and barred the door against her.
“I confess, Everell, I would gladly have been excluded too, for I recoiled from witnessing Cradock’s mortal agony; but I dared in no wise cross Nelema; so I quietly took the lamp, as she bade me, and stood at the head of the bed. She first threw aside her blanket, and discovered a kind of wand, which she had concealed beneath it, wreathed with a snake’s skin. She then pointed to the figure of a snake delineated on her naked shoulder. ‘It is the symbol of our tribe,’ she said. ‘Foolish child!’ she continued, for she saw me shudder, ‘it is a sign of honour, won for our race by him who first drew from the veins the poison of the king of all creeping things. The tale was told by our fathers, and sung at our feasts; and now am I, the last of my race, bidden to heal a servant in the house of our enemies.’ She remained for a moment silent, motionless, and perfectly abstracted. A loud groan from Cradock roused her. She bent over him, and muttered an incantation in her own tongue. She then, after many efforts, succeeded in making him swallow a strong decoction, and bathed the wound and arm with the same liquor. These applications were repeated at short intervals, during which she brandished her wand, making quick and mysterious motions, as if she were writing hieroglyphics on the invisible air. She writhed her body into the most horrible contortions, and tossed her withered arms wildly about her; and, Everell, shall I confess to you, that I trembled lest she should assume the living form of the reptile whose image she bore? So violent was her exercise, that the sweat poured from her face like rain, and ever and anon she sank down in momentary exhaustion and stupor, and then would spring to her feet as a racehorse starts on the course, fling back her long black locks that had fallen over her bony face, and repeat the strange process.
“After a while—how long I know not, for anxiety and terror prevented my taking any note of time—Cradock showed plain symptoms of amendment; his respiration became free; the colour in his face subsided; his brow, which had been drawn to a knot, relaxed, and his whole appearance became natural and tranquil. ‘Now,’ whispered Nelema to me, ‘fear no more for him; he has turned his back on the grave. I will stay here and watch him, but go thou to thy bed; thy cheek is pale with weariness and fear.’
“I was too happy at that moment to feel weariness, and would have remained, but Nelema’s gestures for me to withdraw were vehement, and I left her, mentally blessing her for her effectual aid. As I opened the door I stumbled against Jennet. It was evident, from her posture, that she had been peeping through the keyhole. Do not think me a vixen, Everell, if I confess that my first impulse was to box her ears; however, I suppressed my rage, and for the first time in my life was prudent and temporizing, and I stooped to beg her to go with me to my room; I am sure it was with the timid voice of one who asks a favour, for, the moment we were in the light, I saw by her mien that she felt the power was all in her own hands.
“ ‘It is enough,’ she said, ‘to make the hair of a saint stand on end to have such carryings-on in my master’s house; and you, Miss Hope Leslie, that have been, as it were, exalted to heaven in point of privileges, that you should be nothing better than an aid and abetment of this emissary of Satan.’
“ ‘Hush,’ said I, ‘Jennet, and keep your breath to give thanks for good Mr. Cradock’s recovery. Nelema has cured him: Satan does not send forth his emissaries with healing gifts.’
“ ‘Now, Miss Leslie,’ retorted the provoking creature, ‘you are in the very gall of bitterness and blindness of the flesh. Did not the magicians with their enchantments even as did Moses and Aaron? The sons of darkness always put on the form of the sons of light. I always said so. I knew what it would come to. I said she was a witch in Mistress Fletcher’s time.’
“ ‘And you spoke falsely then, as you do now, Jennet, for Nelema is no witch.’
“ ‘No witch!’ rejoined Jennet, screaming with her screech-owl voice so loud that I was afraid your father would hear her; ‘try her, then; see if she can read in the Bible, or Mr. Cotton’s catechism; no, no; but give her your aunt Grafton’s prayer-book, and she will read as glib as a minister.’
“ ‘Jennet,’ said I, ‘you are mad outright; you seem to forget that Nelema cannot read anything.’
“ ‘It is all the same as if she could,’ persisted Jennet; ‘her master makes short teaching: there are none so deaf as those that won’t hear. I tell you again, Miss Hope Leslie, remember Mrs. Fletcher; remember what she got for shutting her ears to me.’
“You will forgive me, Everell, for losing my patience utterly at these profane allusions to your mother, and commanding Jennet to leave my room.
“She made me bitterly repent my want of self-command; for, self-willed as the fools of Solomon’s time, she determined to have her own way, and went to your father’s room, where she gained admittance, and gave such a description of Nelema’s healing process, that, late as it was, I was summoned to his presence.
“As I followed Jennet along the passage, she whispered to me, ‘Now, for the love of your own soul, don’t use his blind partiality to pervert his judgment.’
“I made no reply, but mentally resolved that I would task my power and ingenuity to the utmost to justify Nelema. When we came into the study, Jennet, to my great joy, was dismissed. It is much easier for me to contend with my superiors than my inferiors. Your father bade me sit down by him. I seated myself on the footstool at his feet, so that I could look straight into his eyes; for many a time, when my heart has quailed at his solemn address, the tender spirit stationed in that soft hazel eye of his—so like yours, Everell—has quieted all my apprehensions. I spoke first, and said, ‘I was sure Jennet had spoiled the good news of my tutor’s amendment, or he would not look so grave.’
“He replied, ‘that it was time to look grave when a powwow dared to use her diabolical spells, mutterings, and exorcisms beneath a Christian roof, and in the presence of a Christian maiden, and on a Christian man; but,’ he added, ‘perhaps Jennet hath not told the matter rightly; her zeal is not always according to knowledge. I would gladly believe that my house has not been profaned. Tell me, Hope, all you witnessed; tell me truly.’
“I obeyed. Your father heard me through without any comment, but now and then a deep-drawn sigh; and when I had finished, he asked, ‘what I understood by the strange proceedings I had described.’
“ ‘May I not answer,’ I said, ‘in the language of Scripture, “that this only I know, that whereas thy servant was sick, he is now whole.” ’
“ ‘Do not, my dear child,’ said your father, ‘rashly misapply Scripture, and thus add to your sin in (as I trust ignorantly) dealing with this witch and her familiars.’
“I replied, ‘I did not believe Nelema had used any witchcraft.’
“He asked me ‘if I had not been told that some of our catechized Indians had confessed that when they were pagans they were powwows, devoted in their infancy to demons; that these powwows were factors for the devil; that they held actual conversation, and were in open and avowed confederacy with him?’
“I said, ‘I had heard all this,’ but asked, ‘if it were right to take the confession of these poor children of ignorance and superstition against themselves.’ I repeated what I had often heard you, Everell, say, that Magawisca believed the mountain and the valley, the air, the trees, every little rivulet, had their present invisible spirit, and that the good might hold discourse with them. ‘Why not believe the one,’ I asked, ‘as well as the other?’
“Your father looked at me sternly. ‘Dost thou not believe in witchcraft, child?’ he said. While I hesitated how to reply, lest I should in some way implicate Nelema, your father hastily turned the leaves of the Bible that lay on his table, and opened to every text where familiar spirits, necromancers, sorcerers, wizards, witches, and witchcraft are spoken of.
“I felt as if the windows of heaven were opened on my devoted head. As soon as I could collect my wits, I said something, confusedly, about not having thought much on the subject, but that I had supposed, as indeed I always did, that bad spirits were only permitted to appear on earth when there were also good spirits and holy prophets to oppose them.
“Your father looked steadily at me for a few moments, then closing the Bible, he said, ‘I will not blame thee, my child, but myself, that I have left thee to the guidance of thy natural erring reason; I should have better instructed thee.’ He then kissed me, bade me good-night, and opened the door for me to depart. I ventured to ask ‘if I might not say to Jennet that it was his orders she should be silent in regard to Nelema.’
“ ‘No, no,’ he said; ‘meddle no farther with that matter, but go to your own apartment, and remain there till the bell rings for morning prayers.’
“My heart rebelled, but I dared not disobey. I came to my room, and have been sitting by my open window, in the hope of hearing Nelema’s parting footsteps; but I have listened in vain, and, unable to sleep, I have tried to tranquillize my mind by writing to you. Poor old Nelema! if she is given up to the magistrates, it will go hard with her, Jennet is such an obstinate, self-willed fool! I believe she will be willing to see Nelema hung for a witch, that she may have the pleasure of saying ‘I told you so.’
“Poor Nelema! such a harmless, helpless, lonely being! my tears fall so fast on my paper that I can scarcely write. I blame myself for bringing her into this hapless case; but it may be better than I fear. I will leave my letter, and try to sleep.
“It is as I expected: Nelema was sent, early this morning, to the magistrates. She was tried before our triumvirate, Mr. Pynchon, Holioke, and Chapin. It was not enough to lay on her the crime of curing Cradock, but Jennet and some of her gossips imputed to her all the mischances that have happened for the last seven years. My testimony was extorted from me, for I could not disguise my reluctance to communicate anything that could be made unfavourable to her. Our magistrates looked sternly on me, and Mr. Holioke said, ‘Take care, Hope Leslie, that thou art not found in the folly of Balaam, who would have blessed when the Lord commanded him to curse.’
“I said ‘it was better to mistake in blessing than in cursing, and that I was sure Nelema was as innocent as myself.’ I know not whence I had my courage, but I think truth companies not with cowardice; however, what I would fain call courage, Mr. Pynchon thought necessary to rebuke as presumption: ‘Thou art somewhat forward, maiden,’ he said, ‘in giving thy opinion, but thou must know that we regard it but as the whistle of a bird; withdraw, and leave judgment to thy elders.’
“In leaving the room I passed close to Nelema. I gave her my hand in token of kindness; and though I heard a murmur of ‘shame! shame!’ I did not withdraw it till the poor old creature had bowed her wrinkled brow upon it, and dropped a tear which no suffering could have extorted.
“The trial went on, and she was pronounced worthy of death; but, as the authority of our magistracy does not extend to life, limb, or banishment, her fate is referred to the court at Boston. In the mean time, she awaits her sentence in a cell in Mr. Pynchon’s cellar. We have, as yet, no jail.
“Digby has been summoned before the magistrates, and publicly reproved for expressing himself against their proceedings. Mr. Pynchon charged him to speak no more against godly governors and righteous government, for ‘to such scoffers Heaven had sent divers plagues: some had been spirited away by Satan, some blown up in our harbours, and some, like poor Austin of Quinnepaig, taken into Turkish captivity!’ Digby’s feelings are suppressed, but not subdued.
“How I wish you were here, dear Everell. Sometimes I wish your mother’s letter had not been so persuasive. Nothing but that last request of hers would have induced your father to send you to your uncle Stretton. If you were here, I am sure you would devise some way to save Nelema. When she is gone you will never again hear of Magawisca. I shall never hear more of my sweet sister. They both, if we may believe Nelema, still dwell safely in the wigwam of Mononotto, among the Mohawks. These Mohawks are said to be a fierce race; and all those tribes who dwell near the coast, and have, in some measure, come under a Christian jurisdiction, and are called ‘praying and catechized Indians,’ say that the Mohawks are to them as wolves to sheep. I cannot bear to think of my gentle, timid sister—a very dove in her nature—among these fierce tribes. I wonder that I am ever happy, and yet it is so natural to me to be happy! The commander of the fort at Albany, at Governor Winthrop’s request, has made great efforts to obtain some information about my sister, but without any satisfactory result. Still Nelema insists to me that her knowledge is certain; and when I have endeavoured to ascertain the source whence she obtained it, she pointed upward, indicating that she held mysterious intelligence with the spirits of the air; but I believe she employed this artifice to hide some intercourse she holds with distant and hostile tribes.
“What a tragi-comedy is life, Everell! I am sure Shakspeare has copied Nature in dividing his scenes between mirth and sadness. I have laughed to-day heartily, and for a few moments I quite forgot poor Nelema, and all my heart-rending anxieties about her. My tutor, for the first time since his most unlucky mishap, left his room, and made his appearance in the parlour. I was sitting there with aunt Grafton, and I rose to shake his hand, and express my unfeigned joy on his recovery. His little gray eyes were for a moment blinded with tears at what he was pleased to call the ‘condescendency of my regard for him.’ He then stood for a moment as if he were lost, as you know is always his wont, when a blur comes over his mind, which is none of the clearest at best. I thought he looked pale and weak, and I offered him a chair and begged him to sit down; but he declined it with a wave, or, rather, a poke of his hand, for he never in his life made a motion so graceful as a wave; and, drawing a paper from his pocket, he said, ‘I have here an address to thee, sweet Miss Hope Leslie, wherein I have put in a body of words the spirit of my late meditations; and I have endeavoured to express, in the best Latinity with which many years of daily and nightly study have possessed me, my humble sense of that marvellous wit and kindness of thine, which made thee, as it were, a ministering angel unto me, when I was brought nigh unto the grave by the bite of that most cunning beast of the field, with whom I verily believe the devil left a portion of his spirit, in payment of the body he borrowed to beguile our first parents.’
“This long preamble finished, Master Cradock began the reading of his address, of which, being in the language of the learned, I could not, as you know, understand one word; however, he did not perceive that my smiles were not those of intelligence, nor hear aunt Grafton’s remark, that ‘much learning and little wit had made him as crazy as a loon.’ He had not proceeded far when his knees began to shake under him, and disdaining to sit (an attitude, I suppose, proscribed in the ceremonies of the schools, the only ceremonies he observes), he contrived, with the aid of the chair I had placed for him, to kneel. When he had finished his address, which, according to the rules of art, had a beginning, a middle, and, thank Heaven! an end, he essayed to rise; but, alas! though, like Falstaff, he had an ‘alacrity in sinking,’ to rise was impossible; for, besides the usual impediments of his bulk and clumsiness, he was weakened and stiffened by his late sickness; so I was fain to call Digby to his assistance, and run away to my own apartment to write you, dear Everell, who are ever patient with my Bethel chronicles, an account of what aunt Grafton calls ‘this scholar foolery.’
“Yesterday was our lecture day, and I went to the village to attend the meeting. A sudden storm of hail and wind came on during the exercises, and continued after, and I was obliged to accept Mrs. Pynchon’s invitation to go home with her. After we had taken our supper, I observed Mr. Pynchon fill a plate bountifully with provisions from the table, and give it, with a large key which he took from a little cupboard over the fireplace, to a serving-woman. She returned in a short time with the key, and, as I observed, restored it to its place. Digby came shortly after to attend me home. The family hospitably urged me to remain, and, ascertaining from Digby that there was no especial reason for my return, I dismissed him.
“The next morning I was awakened from a deep sleep by one of Mr. Pynchon’s daughters, who told me, with a look of terror, that a despatch had arrived early that morning from Boston, notifying the acquiescence of the court there in the opinion of our magistrates, and Nelema’s sentence of condemnation to death; that her father had himself gone to the cell to announce her fate to her, when lo! she had vanished: the prison door was fast, the key in its usual place, but the witch was spirited away. I hurried on my clothes, and trembling with surprise, pleasure, or whatever emotion you may please to ascribe to me, I descended to the parlour, where the family and neighbours had assembled to talk over the strange event. I only added exclamations to the various conjectures that were made. No one had any doubt as to who had been Nelema’s deliverer, unless a suspicion was implied in the inquiring glances which Mr. Pynchon cast on me, but which, I believe, no one but myself observed. Some could smell sulphur from the outer kitchen door to the door of the cell; and there were others who fancied that, at a few yards’ distance from the house, there were on the ground marks of a slight scorching: a plain indication of a visitation from the enemy of mankind. One of the most sagacious of our neighbours remarked that he had often heard of Satan getting his servants into trouble, but he never before heard of his getting them out. However, the singularity of the case only served to magnify their wonder, without in the least weakening their faith in the actual, and, as it appeared, friendly alliance between Nelema and the Evil One. Indeed, I was the only person present whose belief in her witchcraft was not, as it were, converted into sight.
“Everell, I had been visited by a strange dream that night, which I will venture to relate to you, for you, at least, will not think me confederate with Nelema’s deliverer.
“Methought I stood, with the old woman, beneath the elm-tree at the end of Mr. Pynchon’s garden; the moon, through an opening of the branches, shone brightly on her face: it was wet with tears.
“ ‘I shall not forget,’ she said, ‘who saved me from dying by the hand of an enemy. As surely as the sun will appear there again,’ she added, pointing to the east, ‘so surely, Hope Leslie, you shall see your sister.’
“ ‘But, Nelema,’ said I, ‘my poor little sister is in the far western forests; you can never reach there.’
“ ‘I will reach there,’ she replied; ‘if I crawl on my hands and knees, I will reach there.’
“Think you, dear Everell, my sister will ever expound this dream to me?
“I was the first to carry the news to Bethel. Your father was in one of his meditative humours, and heeded it no more than if I had told him a bird had flown from its cage. Jennet joined in the general opinion, that Satan, or at least one of his emissaries, had opened the prison door; and our good Digby, with his usual fearlessness, maintained, in the teeth of her exhortation and invective, that an angel had wrought for the innocent old woman.
“A week has elapsed. It is whispered that on the night Nelema vanished, Digby was missed by his bedfellow! strange depredations were committed on Jennet’s larder! and muffled oars were heard on the river!
“Our magistrates have made long and frequent visits to Bethel, and have held secret conferences with your father. The purport of them I leave you to conjecture from the result. Yesterday he sent for me to the study. He appeared deeply affected. It was some time before he could command his voice; at length he said that he had determined to accept for me Madam Winthrop’s invitation to Boston. I told him, and told him truly, that I did not wish to go to Boston; that I was perfectly contented—perfectly happy. ‘And what,’ I asked, ‘will you and poor aunt Grafton do without me?’
“ ‘Your aunt goes with you,’ he said; ‘and as for me, my dear child, I have too long permitted myself the indulgence of having you with me. I have a pilgrimage to accomplish through this wilderness, and I am sinful if I linger to watch the unfolding of even the single flower that has sprung up in my path.’
“ ‘But,’ said I, ‘does not He who appoints the path through the wilderness, set the flowers by the wayside? I will not—I will not be plucked up and cast away.’ He kissed me, and said, ‘I believe, my beloved child, thou wert sent in mercy to me; but it were indeed sinful to convert the staff vouchsafed to my pilgrimage into fetters. I should ever bear in mind that life is a race and a warfare, and nothing else: you have this yet to learn, Hope. I have proved myself not fit to teach or to guide thee—nor is your aunt. Madam Winthrop will give you pious instruction and counsel; and her godly niece, Esther Downing, will, I trust, win you to the narrow path, which, as the elders say, she doth so steadily pursue.’
“The idea of this Puritanical guardianship did not strike me agreeably, and, besides, I love Bethel; I love your father—with my whole soul I love him; and, as you already know, Everell, therefore it is no confession, I love to have my own way, and I said I would not go.
“ ‘You must go, my child,’ said your father; ‘I cannot find it in my heart to chide you for your reluctance, but you must go. Neither you nor I have any choice.’
“ ‘But why must I go?’ I asked.
“ ‘Ask no questions,’ he replied; ‘it is fixed that you must go. Tell your aunt Grafton that she must be ready to leave Springfield next week. Mr. Pynchon and his servants attend you. Now leave me, my child; for when you are with me, you touch at will every chord in my heart, and I would fain keep it still now.’
“I left him, Everell, while I could command my tears; and after I had given them free course, I informed aunt Grafton of our destiny. She was so delighted with the prospect of a visit to Boston, that I too began to think it must be very pleasant; and my dread of this straight-laced Mrs. Winthrop and her perpendicular niece gave place to indefinite anticipations of pleasure. I shall, at any rate, see you sooner than if I remained here. Thank Heaven, the time of your return approaches; and now that it is so near, I rejoice that your father has not been persuaded, by those who seem to me to take a very superfluous care of his private affairs, to recall you sooner. On this subject he has stood firm; satisfied, as he has always said, that he could not err in complying with the last request of your sainted mother.
“Aunt Grafton charges me with divers messages to you, but I will not add a feather to this leaden letter, which you will now have to read, as I have written it, by instalments.
“Farewell, dear Everell: forget not thy loving friend and sister,
“Hope Leslie.”
As Hope had declined her aunt’s messages, the good lady affixed them herself; and here they follow.
“To Everell Fletcher.
“Valued Sir,
“Being much hurried in point of time, I would fain have been myself excused from writing, but Miss Hope declines adding to her letter what I have indited.
“In your last, you mention being visited with the great cold, which I take, from your account of it, to be the same as that with which we were all shaken soon after the coronation of his present majesty (God bless him!). I had then a recipe given me for an infallible remedy by the Lady Penyvere, great aunt, by the mother’s side, to la belle Rosette, maid of honour to the queen.
“I enclose it for you, believing it will greatly advantage you: though Hope insists that, if the cold has not yet left you, it will be a chronic disease before this reaches you; in which case I would advise you to apply to old Lady Lincoln, who hath, in her family receipt-book, many renowned cures for chronics. I remember one in particular, somewhere about the middle of the book, which follows immediately after a rare recipe for an every-day plum-pudding.
“I doubt not that years have mended thee, and that thou wouldst now condemn the folly and ignorance of thy childhood, which made thee then deride the most sovereign remedies. Hope, I am sorry to say, is as obstinate as ever; and it was but yesterday, when I wished her to take some diluents for a latent fever, that she reminded me of the time when she and you, in one of your mischievous pranks, threw the pennyroyal tea out of the window, and suffered me to believe that it had cured an incipient pleurisy. Thus presumptuous is youth! Hope is, to be sure, notwithstanding her living entirely without medicine, in indifferent good health; her form is rather more slender than when you left us, as is becoming at seventeen; but her cheek is as round and as ruddy as a peach. I should not care so much about her self-will on the score of medicine, but that her stomach, being in such perfect order now, would bear every kind of preventive, and medicines of this class are so simple that they can do no harm. I believe it is true, as old Doctor Panton used to say, ‘your healthy people are always prejudiced against medicine.’ I wish you would drop a hint on this subject in your next letter to her, for the slightest hint from you goes farther than a lecture from me.
“It was very thoughtful in you, Mr. Everell, and what I once should not have expected, to inquire so particularly after my health. I am happy to say, that at this present I am better than I have been for years, which is unaccountable to me, as, since the hurry of our preparations for Boston, I have forgotten my pills at night and my tonics in the morning.
“I wish you to present many thanks to Lady Amy for assisting you in my commissions. The articles in general suited, though the pinking of the flounces was too deep. My gown was a trifle too dark; but do not mention that to Lady Amy, for I make no doubt she took due pains, and only wanted a right understanding of the real hue, called feuille morte, which, between you and I—sub rosa, mind—my gown would not be called by any person skilled in the colours of silk. Hope thought to convince me I was wrong by matching it with a dead leaf from the forest. Was not that peculiar of Hope?
“Now, Mr. Everell, I would not be an old woman before my time, therefore I will have another silk of a brighter cast. Brown it must be, but lively—lively. I will enclose a lock of Hope’s hair, which is precisely the hue I mean. You will observe it has a golden tinge, that makes it appear in all lights as if there were sunshine on it, and yet it is a decided brown; a difficult colour to hit, but by due inquiry—and I am sure, from the pains you were at to procure the articles I requested for Hope, you will spare no trouble—I think it may be obtained.
“I am greatly beholden to you for the pocket-glass you sent me; it is a mighty convenient article, and an uncommon pretty little attention, Mr. Everell.
“Your present to Hope was a real beauty. The only blue fillet, and the prettiest of any colour I ever saw; and such a marvellous match for her eyes—that is, when the light is full on them; but you know they always had a changeable trick with them. I remember Lady Amy’s once saying to me before we left England, that my niece would yet do mischief with those laughing black eyes of hers. I liked her sister’s (poor dear Mary—God help her the while!) better then; they were the true Leslie blue. But one word more of the fillet. Your taste in it cannot be too much commended; but then, as I tell Hope, one does not want always to see the same thing; and she doth continually wear it: granted, it keeps the curls out of her eyes, and they do look lovely falling about it; but she wears it week-days and Sundays, feast-days and fast-days, and she never yet has put on the Henriette—do remember a thousand thanks to Lady Amy for the pattern—the Henriette I made her, like that worn by the queen the first night she appeared in the royal box.
“I should like to have a little more chitchat with you, Mr. Everell, now my pen has got, so to speak, warm in the harness; but business before pleasure. I beg you will remember me to all inquiring friends. Alas! few in number now, as most of my surviving contemporaries have died since I left England.
“Farewell, Mr. Everell; these few lines are from your friend and well-wisher,
“Bertha Grafton.
“N.B.—It is a great pleasure to me to think you are living in a churchman’s family, where you can’t but steer clear of—you know what—peculiarities.
“N.B.—Hope will have given you the particulars of poor Master Cradock’s miscarriage; his mind was set a little agee by it, but he appears to be mending.
“N.B.—The enclosed recipe hath marvellous virtues in fevers as well as in colds.”
“A country lad is my degree,
An’ few there be that ken me, O;
But what care I how few they be,
I’m welcome aye to Nannie, O.”
Burns.
There are hints in Miss Leslie’s letter to Everell Fletcher that require some amplification to be quite intelligible. She looked upon herself as the unhappy, though innocent cause, of the old Indian woman’s misfortune; and, rash as generous, she had resolved, if possible, to extricate her. With the inconsiderate warmth of youthful feeling, she had, before the grave and reverend magistrates, declared her belief in Nelema’s innocence, and thereby implied a censure of their wisdom. This was certainly an almost unparalleled presumption in those times, when youth was accounted inferiority; but the very circumstance that in one light aggravated her fault, in another mitigated it; and her youth being admitted in extenuation of her offence, she was allowed to escape with a reproof and admonition of moderate length, while her poor guardian was condemned to a long and private conference on the urgency of reclaiming the spoiled child. Various modes of effecting so desirable an object were suggested; for, as the Scotchman said in an analogous case, “Ilka man can manage a wife but him that has her.”
This matter had passed over, and justice was proceeding in her stern course, when fortune, accident, or, more truly, Providence, favoured the benevolent wishes of our heroine. She had, as has been seen, been carried by an unforeseen circumstance to the house of one of the magistrates. There, mindful of the poor old prisoner, whose sentence she knew was daily expected from Boston, she had been watchful of every circumstance relating to her, and when she observed the key of her prison deposited in an accessible place (no one dreaming of any interference in behalf of the condemned), she was inspired with a sudden resolution to set her free. This was a bold, dangerous, and unlawful interposition; but Hope Leslie took counsel only from her own heart, and that told her that the rights of innocence were paramount to all other rights: and as to danger to herself, she did not weigh it—she did not think of it.
Digby came to the village to attend her home, and this afforded her an opportunity of concert with him; in the depths of the night, when all the household were in profound sleep, she stole from her bed, found her way to the door of the dungeon, and leading out the prisoner, gave her into Digby’s charge, who had a canoe in waiting, in which he ferried her to the opposite shore, where he left her, after having supplied her with provisions to sustain her to the valleys of the Housatonic, if, indeed, her wasted strength should enable her to reach there. The gratitude of the poor old creature for her unexpected deliverance from shameful death is faintly touched on in Hope’s letter. She could scarcely, without magnifying her own merit, have described the vehement emotion with which Nelema promised that she would devote the remnant of her miserable days to seeking and restoring her lost sister. Again and again, while Hope urged her departure, she reiterated this promise; and finally, when she parted from Digby, she repeated, as if it were a prophecy, “She shall see her sister.”
Young persons are not apt to make a very exact adjustment of means and ends, and our heroine certainly placed an undue confidence in the power of the helpless old woman to accomplish her promise; but she needed not this to increase her present joy at her success. She crept to her bed, and was awakened in the morning, as she has herself related, with the information of Nelema’s escape. She had now a part to play to which she was unused: to mask her feelings, affect ignorance, and take part in the consternation of the assembled village. As may be imagined, her assumed character was awkwardly enough performed; but all were occupied with their own surmises, and no one thought of her—no one excepting Mr. Pynchon, who had scarcely fixed his eye on her when a suspicion that had before flashed on his mind was confirmed. He knew, from the simplicity of her nature, and from her habitual frankness, that she would not have hesitated to avow her pleasure in Nelema’s escape if she had not herself been accessory to it. He watched her averted eye, he observed her unbroken silence, and her lips, that, in spite of all her efforts, played into an inevitable smile at the superstitious surmises of some of the wise people, whose philosophy had never dreamed of that every-day axiom of modern times, that supernatural aid should not be called in to interpret events which may be explained by natural causes.
However satisfactory Mr. Pynchon’s conclusions were to himself, he confined them, for the present, to his own bosom. He was a merciful man, and probably felt an emotion of joy at the old woman’s escape, that could not be suppressed by the stern justice that had pronounced her worthy of death. But while he easily reconciled himself to the loss of the prisoner, he felt the necessity of taking instant and efficient measures to subdue to becoming deference and obedience the rash and lawless girl who had dared to interpose between justice and its victim. His heart recoiled from punishing her openly, and he contented himself with insisting, in a private interview with Mr. Fletcher, on the necessity of her removal to a stricter control than his; and recommended, for a time, a temporary transfer of his neglected authority to less indulgent hands.
Mr. Fletcher complied so far as to consent that his favourite should be sent for a few months to Boston, to the care of Madam Winthrop, whose character being brought out by the light of her husband’s official station, was held up as a sort of pattern throughout New-England. But we must, for the present, pass by state characters—gallery portraits—for the miniature picture that lies next our heart, and which it is full time should be formally presented to our readers, whose curiosity, we trust, has not been sated by occasional glimpses.
Nothing could be more unlike the authentic, “thoroughly educated,” and thoroughly disciplined young ladies of the present day than Hope Leslie—as unlike as a mountain rill to a canal—the one leaping over rocks and precipices, sportive, free, and beautiful, or stealing softly on, in unseen, unpraised loveliness; the other, formed by art, restrained within prescribed and formal limits, and devoted to utility. Neither could anything in outward show be more unlike a modern belle arrayed in the last Paris fashion, than Hope Leslie in her dress of silk or muslin, shaped with some deference to the fashion of the day, but more according to the dictates of her own skill and classic taste, which she followed somewhat pertinaciously, in spite of the suggestions of her experienced aunt.
Fashion had no shrines among the Pilgrims: but where she is most abjectly worshipped, it would be treason against the paramount rights of Nature to subject such a figure as Hope Leslie’s to her tyranny. As well might the exquisite classic statue be arrayed in corsets, manches en gigot, garnitures en tulle, &c. Her height was not above the medium standard of her sex; she was delicately formed; the high health and the uniform habits of a country life had endowed her with the beauty with which Poetry has invested Hebe; while her love for exploring hill and dale, ravine and precipice, had given her that elastic step and ductile grace which belong to all agile animals, and which made every accidental attitude such as a painter would have selected to express the nymph-like beauty of Camilla.
It is in vain to attempt to describe a face whose material beauty, though that beauty may be faultless, is but a medium for the irradiations of the soul. For the curious, we would, if we could, set down the colour of our heroine’s eyes; but, alas! it was undefinable; and appeared gray, blue, hazel, or black, as the outward light touched them, or as they kindled by the light of her feelings.
Her rich brown hair turned in light waves from her sunny brow, as if it would not hide the beauty it sheltered. Her mouth, at this early period of life, had nothing of the seriousness and contemplation that events might afterward have traced there. It rather seemed the station of all-sportive, joyous, and kindly feeling; and, at the slightest motion of her thoughts, curled into smiles, as if all the breathings of her young heart were happiness and innocence.
It may appear improbable that a girl of seventeen, educated among the strictest sect of the Puritans, should have had the open, fearless, and gay character of Hope Leslie; but it must be remembered that she lived in an atmosphere of favour and indulgence, which permits the natural qualities to shoot forth in unrepressed luxuriance: an atmosphere of love, that, like a tropical climate, brings forth the richest flowers and most flavorous fruits. She was transferred from the care of the gentlest and tenderest of mothers to Mr. Fletcher, who, though stern in his principles, was indulgent in his practice; whose denying virtues were all self-denying; and who infused into the parental affection he felt for the daughter, something of the romantic tenderness of the lover of her mother. Her aunt Grafton doted on her; she was the depository of her vanity as well as of her affection. To her simple tutor she seemed to imbody all that philosophers and poets had set down in their books of virtue and beauty; and those of the old and rigid, who were above or below the influence of less substantial charms, regarded the young heiress with deference. In short, she was the petted lamb of the fold.
It has been seen that Hope Leslie was superior to some of the prejudices of the age. This may be explained without attributing too much to her natural sagacity. Those persons she most loved, and with whom she had lived from her infancy, were of variant religious sentiments. Her father had belonged to the Established Church, and, though he had much of the gay spirit that characterized the cavaliers of the day, he was serious and exact in his observance of the rites of the Church. She had often been her mother’s companion at the proscribed “meeting,” and witnessed the fervour with which she joined in the worship of a persecuted and suffering people. Early impressions sometimes form moulds for subsequent opinions; and when, at a more reflecting age, Hope heard her aunt Grafton rail with natural good sense, and with the freedom, if not the point, of mother-wit, at some of the peculiarities of the Puritans, she was led to doubt their infallibility; and, like the bird that spreads his wings, and soars above the limits by which each man fences in his own narrow domain, she enjoyed the capacities of her nature, and permitted her mind to expand beyond the contracted boundaries of sectarian faith. Her religion was pure and disinterested; no one, therefore, should doubt its intrinsic value, though it had not been coined into a particular form, or received the current impress.
Though the history of our heroine, like a treasured flower, has only left its sweetness on the manuscript page, from which we have amplified it, yet we have been compelled to infer, from some transactions which we shall faithfully record, that she had faults; but we leave our readers to discover them. Who has the resolution to point out a favourite’s defects?
As our fair readers are not apt to be observant of dates, it may be useful to remind them that Miss Leslie’s letter was written in October. In the following May, two ships from the mother country anchored at the same time in Boston Bay. Some passengers from each ship availed themselves of the facility of the pilot-boat to go up to the town. Among others were two gentlemen, who met now for the first time: the one a youth, in manhood’s earliest prime, with a frank, intelligent, and benevolent countenance, over which, as he strained his eyes to the shore, joy and anxiety flitted with rapid vicissitude; the other had advanced farther into life: he might not be more than five-and-thirty, possibly not so much; but his face was deeply marked by the ravages of the passions, or, perhaps, the stirring scenes of life. His eyes were black and piercing, set near together, and overhung by thick black brows, whose incessant motion indicated a restless mind. The concentration of thought, or the designing purpose expressed by the upper part of his face, was contradicted by his loose, open, flexible lips. His complexion had the same puzzling contrariety; it was dark and saturnine, but enlivened with the ruddy hue of a bon vivant. His nose neither turned up nor down, was neither Grecian nor Roman. In short, the countenance of the stranger was a worthless dial-plate—a practical refutation of the science of Physiognomy; and, as the infallible art of Phrenology was unknown to our fathers, they were compelled to ascertain the character (as their unlearned descendants still are) by the slow development of the conduct. The person of the stranger had a certain erect and gallant bearing that marks a man of the world, but his dress was strictly Puritanical; and his hair, so far from being permitted the “freedom of growing long,” then deemed “a luxurious feminine prolixity,” or being covered with a wig (one of the abominations that, according to Eliot; had brought on the country the infliction of the Pequod war), was cropped with exemplary precision. But, though the stranger’s apparel was elaborately Puritanical, still there was a certain elegance about it which indicated that his taste had reluctantly yielded to his principles. His garments were of the finest materials, and exactly fitted to a form of striking manly symmetry. His hair, it is true, was scrupulously clipped, but, being thick and jet black, it becomingly defined a forehead of uncommon whiteness and beauty. In one particular he had departed from the letter of the law, and, instead of exposing his throat by the plain, open linen collar usually worn, he sheltered its ugly protuberance with a fine cambric ruff, arranged in box plaits. In short, though, with the last exception, a nice critic could not detect the most venial error in his apparel, yet among the Puritans he looked much like a “dandy Quaker” of the present day amid his sober-suited brethren.
While the boat, impelled by a favouring tide and fair breeze, glided rapidly towards the metropolis of the now thriving colony, the gentlemen fell into conversation with the pilot. The elder stranger inquired if Governor Winthrop had been re-elected.
“Yes, God bless him,” replied the sailor, “the worthy gentleman has taken the helm once more.”
“Has he,” asked the stranger, eagerly, “declared for King or Parliament?”
“Ho! I don’t know much about their land-tackle,” replied the seaman; “but, to my mind, the fastings we have had all along when the king won the day, and the rejoicings when the Parliament gained it, was what you might call a declaration. Since you speak of it, I do remember I heard the boys up in town saying that our magistrates, at election, did scruple about the oath, and concluded to leave out that part which promises to bear true faith and allegiance to our sovereign lord, King Charles.”
“So, we have thrown his majesty overboard, and are to sail under Parliament colours?” said the young gentleman. “Well,” he continued, “this might have been predicted some five or six years since, for, I remember, there were then disputes whether the king’s ensign should be spread there,” and he pointed to the fortifications on Castle Island, past which the boat was at that moment gliding. “They scruple now about the oath. Then their consciences rebelled against the red cross in the ensign, which, I remember, was called ‘the Pope’s gift,’ ‘a relic of papacy,’ ‘an idolatrous sign,’ &c.”
“Scruples of conscience are ever honourable,” said the elder stranger; “and, doubtless, your governor has good reason for not complying with the Scripture rule: ‘render unto Cæsar the things that are Cæsar’s.’ ”
“There is no doubt of it,” replied the seaman. “The governor—God bless him!—knows the rules of the Good Book as well as I know the ropes of a ship; and there is no better pilot than he for all weathers, as he shows by not joining in the hue and cry against the good creature tobacco. Fair winds through life, and a pleasant harbour at last, do I wish him for this piece of Christian love!” at the same time he illustrated his benediction by putting a portion of the favourite luxury in his mouth.
“I am sorry,” said the young gentleman, “that our magistrates have volunteered a public expression of their feelings; their sympathies, of course, are with the Parliament party; they virtually broke the yoke of royal authority when they left their native land, and showed what value they set on liberty by sacrificing for it every temporal good. Now they have a right to enjoy their liberty in peace.”
“Peace!” said the elder gentleman, emphatically; “thus it ever is with the natural man, crying peace, peace, where there is no peace. Think you, young man, that if the king were to recover his power, he would not resume all the privileges he has formerly granted to these people, who, thanks to Him whose ark abideth with them! show themselves so ready to cast off their allegiance?”
“The king, no doubt,” replied the young gentleman, “would like to resume both power and possession; but still I think we might retain our own, on the principle that he had no right to give, and, in truth, could not give what was not his, and what we have acquired either by purchase of the natives or by lawful conquest, which gives us the right to the vacuum domicilium.”
“I am happy to see, sir,” said the elder gentleman, slightly bowing and smiling, “that your principles, at least, are on the side of the Puritans.”
“My feelings and principles both, sir; but that does not render me insensible to the happiness of the adverse party, or the wisdom of all parties, which is peace; the peace which the generous Falkland so earnestly invokes, every patriot may ardently desire. Peace, if I may borrow a figure from our friend the pilot here, is a fair wind and a flood-tide, and war a storm that must wreck some, and may wreck both friend and foe.”
The young gentleman seemed tired of the conversation, and turned away, fixing his eager gaze on the shore, towards which his heart bounded. His companion, however, was not disposed to indulge him in silence. “This town, sir,” he said, “appears to be familiar to you. I, alas! am a stranger and a wanderer.” This was spoken in a tone of unaffected seriousness.
“Of such this country is the natural home,” replied the young man, regarding his companion for the first time with some interest, for he had been repelled by what seemed to him to savour of cant, of which he had heard too much in the mother country. “I should be happy, sir,” he said, courteously, “to render my acquaintance with the town of any service to you.”
The stranger bowed in acknowledgment of the civility. “I would gladly,” he said, “find entertainment with some godly family here. Is Mr. Wilson still teacher of the congregation?”
“No, sir: if he were, you might securely count on his hospitality, as it was so notorious that ‘come in, you are heartily welcome,’ was said to be the anagram of his name. But, if he is gone, the doors in Boston are always open to the stranger. Mr. Cotton, I believe, is the present minister—is he not, pilot?”
“Yes, an please you, sir; but I’m thinking,” he added, with a leer, “that that butterfly will be an odd fish to harbour with any of our right godly ones.” The young gentleman followed the direction of the pilot’s eye, and for the first time observed a lad, who sat on one side of the boat, leaning over, and amusing himself with lashing the waves with a fanciful walking-stick. He overheard the pilot’s remark, and raised his head, as it appeared, involuntarily, for he immediately averted it again, but not till he had exposed a face of uncommon beauty. He looked about fifteen. He had the full, melting dark eye and rich complexion of southern climes; masses of jetty curls parted on his forehead, shaded his temples and neck, and “smooth as Hebe’s was his unrazored lip.” It was obvious that it was his dress which had called forth the sailor’s sarcasm. The breast and sleeves of his jerkin were embroidered; a deep-pointed rich lace ruff embellished his neck, if a neck round and smooth as alabaster could be embellished; and his head was covered with a little fantastic Spanish hat, decorated with feathers.
“Does that youth appertain to you, sir?” asked the young gentleman of the elder stranger.
“Yes, he is a sort of dependant—a page of mine,” he replied, with an embarrassed manner; but in a moment recovering his self-possession, he added, “I infer, from the gratuitous remarks of our very frank pilot, and from the survey you have taken of the lad, that you think his apparel extraordinary.”
“It might possibly,” replied the young man, with a smile, “offend against certain sumptuary laws of our colony, and thus prove inconvenient to you.”
“Roslin, do you hear?” said the master to the page, who nodded his head without raising it; “thy finery, boy, as I have told thee, must be retrenched;” then turning to his companion, and lowering his voice to a confidential tone, he added, “the lad hath lived on the Continent, and hath there imbibed these vanities, of which I hope in good time to reform him; perhaps his youth hath overwrought with my indulgence in suffering them thus long.”
The young gentleman courteously prevented any farther, and, as he thought, unnecessary exculpation, by saying “that the offence was certainly a very trifling one, and if observed at all, would be, by the most scrupulous, considered as venial in so young a lad.” He now again turned his ardent gaze to the shore. “Ah! there is the spire of the new meeting-house,” he said; “and when I went away, the good people assembled under a thatched roof, and within mud walls.”
“And I can remember,” said the pilot, “for I was among the first comers to the wilderness, when for weeks the congregation met under an oak tree: and there was heart-worship there, gentlemen, if there ever was on the ball.”
A church standing where Joy’s buildings are now located was the only one then in Boston. The greater part of the houses were built in its vicinity, just about the heart of the peninsula, on whose striking and singular form its first possessors aver they saw written prophecies of its future greatness. Some of its most prominent features have been softened by time, and others changed by the busy art of man. Wharves, whole streets, and the noble granite market-house (a prouder memorial to its founder than a triumphal arch) now stand where the deep “cove” stretched its peaceful harbour, between the two hills that stood like towers of defence at its extremities. That at the north rose to the height of fifty feet above the sea, and on its level summit stood a windmill; towards the sea it presented an abrupt declivity, and was fortified at its base by a strong battery. The eastern hill was higher than its sister by some thirty feet; it descended kindly towards the town, and was on that side planted with corn. Towards the sea its steep and ragged cliffs announced that Nature had formed it for defence; and, accordingly, our fathers soon fortified it with “store of great artillery,” and changed the first pastoral name of Corn-hill, which they had given it, to the more appropriate designation of Fort-hill. A third hill flanked the town, rising to the height of one hundred and thirty-eight feet. “All three,” says Johnson, “like overtopping towers, keepe a constant watch to foresee the approach of forrein dangers, being furnished with a beacon, and loud babbling guns, to give notice, by their redoubled eccho, to all their sister townes.”
Shawmut, a word expressing living fountains, was the Indian name of Boston. Tri-mountain, its first English name, and descriptive of Beacon Hill, which, as we are told, rose in three majestic and lofty eminences, the most eastern of these summits having on its brow three little hillocks. Its present, and, as we fondly believe, immortal name, was given with characteristic reverence, in honour of one of its first pastors, Mr. Cotton, who came from Boston, in England.