Читать книгу A Candle in the Wilderness - Irving Bacheller - Страница 6

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William had his talk with Mr. Brade. The man was kind and favorably disposed but firm as a rock. Personal and family pride were strong in him.

“I set you a hard task, but it is one to test your worthiness.” said he. “You shall be welcome to our home as often as you may wish to enter it. This I say because we like you and, further, because Doctor Cotton has some knowledge of you and your people. But you must promise on your word of honor as a gentleman that you will seek no further progress in this affair until I am better informed.”

William gave his word and kept it. Still it was impossible that no progress should be made in that affair. William came to the house and returned to his home and no word of love was spoken, but youth has its way of speaking without words.

The young men bought a pair of Flemish mares and, on the approval of the court, some two thousand acres of land an hour or so from the neck, a part of which had been burned over. It was watered by streams and a small lake. Settled in a good and hopeful manner with such help as they could get, they cut a path over hard ground to a point on their land where they began clearing and burning. Amos Todkill lived in a shanty on the tract and was their overseer. Their help lived in tents. It was when William had taken water for Plymouth to hire men and buy horses that Robert went to call on the Brades. Mr. Brade was not at home. Robert sat down to talk with the Lady Bess and her mother.

“I came in the hope of finding Mr. Brade here,” he began. “William and I grew up together. I am quite a rogue. He is the most innocent creature I have ever known and the most generous. It is so unnecessary to keep these young people waiting for the slow ships. I could not wait. Madam, one look in a pair of eyes like those of your daughter and my promise would be forgotten. William is different. You could search the world and find no higher type of gentleman. I came to say this, and having said it, and more even than I intended to say, I shall go.”

“Stay a while,” the girl urged. “You are like William and yet you are not like him. Stay and talk with us.”

“No, I might fall in love with you myself,” he laughed. “Besides, I would miss an appointment.”

When he was gone Bess turned to her mother saying: “A gallant, fascinating, beautiful man!”

“I fear that he is a subtle rogue of a man!” her mother answered. “You have not learned wisdom. You have a glowing eye for every handsome young buck that comes along.”

While Robert was, like most young gentlemen of the time, a bit of a rogue and deeply impressed by the girl’s beauty, this verdict was too severe. It would seem that many women of the colony entertained suspicions of young men who were handsome and unattached, especially if they were of the gentry and lately arrived. Wild rumors often followed them on the wings of the wind. There was little reading, but that which the Bible afforded. News went by word of mouth. Therefore, the tongues of the ladies were well-developed. However, it must be said that Robert had been moved by the best of motives in his errand.

Their house was finished and furnished—a neat but simple wooden structure of five rooms with a “lento” for a kitchen. William and Robert were living in it. A well-born, elderly lady of the parish, one Margaret Hooper, recommended by Doctor Cotton, was their housekeeper. A comely young Englishwoman of about thirty, whose husband worked in Newtown, came every day to do their cooking and milking, going home at night. Her name was Mabel Hartley.

They had fish in plenty coming every week from the northern coast, and Todkill kept them supplied with venison and dried berries. They had a cow that was pastured in the common fields and a small stable. Moreover, the ships were bringing oatmeal and pitch-suet and tallow and conserves of red roses and mithridate. They could also buy corn-meal for hasty pudding.

Through the autumn and early winter William and Robert were at work with Todkill and his men. When the snow came deep enough to clog their affairs, they broke camp in the forest and waited for better weather.

Every Sabbath they went to the crowded meeting-house and sat on the stairs with a parcel of young boys. Constables, each with a black staff tipped with brass, were at its three doors to prevent people from coming out and dogs from going in. The dogs of Boston, abandoned by their masters and playmates, were depressed in spirit and wont to howl with loneliness. The long prayer, the chapter and its exposition by Doctor Cotton, the sermon by the pastor, the psalm singing, the solemnity on many faces wearied the young and put them in dread of the Sabbath day, especially in severe weather with no heat in the meeting-house. Our young men found the prisoners, who came under compulsion with armed guards, a diverting part of the congregation. Robert speaks in a letter of the stir when some “blubbering person” made a public confession.

Todkill and Blaxton came often to while away a winter afternoon with them. The hermit with his dog and cat and pipe and his castipitigan—a sack of muskrat skin filled with the “sovereign precious weed”—was glad to accept the greater comfort of their home in bitter weather.

Bess came of a winter afternoon with her maid to bring them a wild goose—one of the two which her father had shot when the snow-laden drag was flying low. As she went away, Blaxton exclaimed: “What heavenly pulchritude is this!”

“I hope that she will be my wife,” said William.

“A lamp of virginity! And what a pretty redness of cheek and lip!” the old gentleman exclaimed. “Looking at her I regret my age. Counsel to the young is like giving mutton to a horse. You will both do well to marry with the red blood of youth in you and a lusty young wife in the kitchen.”

He told how a baronet had come over with a comely punk and been compelled to run for his life and find refuge among the savages.

“Neither heraldry nor wealth can prevail with the court if one is up for clicketing. Will Shakespeare once said to me, speaking of the Puritans: ‘There are those who think that because they are virtuous there should be no more cakes and ale.’ ”

It reminded Todkill of the killing and boiling of a Puritan by “man eaters” of the wilderness.

Blaxton interrupted him, saying: “I make one remark. A Spaniard is that tough they hang him three days before he is boiled. If you have a Spaniard to be cooked I will listen, but if he be an Englishman I beg you to desist. It provokes me like a wringing of the nose. Turn somersaults or sing a bawdy song if you will, but no more torturing of the King’s men.”

So the brain of Blaxton moved about in these sessions as unexpectedly as a cork in water.

It was after this talk with him that the young men decided to displace that “lusty young wife” in the kitchen, Mabel Hartley.

“Her face and form are too winning,” said William. “We do not need a Venus in the kitchen. To be sure, she is a wench, but we are human and we want to live a few years yet.”

In this they were of the same mind. They drew lots to decide which should dismiss her and the heavy task fell to William.

Mabel Hartley had served in the kitchen of the Earl of Warwick. She had married one of his stablemen and come to America in the westward rush of 1632. Her husband had turned out to be a heavy-drinking roysterer incapable of supporting a wife. He had found work in Newtown where he progressed in the downward way. She had left him there and come back to Boston. The young woman had agreeable manners and a face and form which many of higher birth had regarded with envy. She had flaxen hair, eyes of the shade of a bluet in the meadow grass and a fair skin. Her cheeks glowed with color. Robert Heathers said in his diary that she was about five feet and six inches tall, straight as an arrow, and that “her plump breast and slender waist and ankles would have filled the eye of old Phidias. It is a pity that she was so thrown away. Henry VIII would have educated her and brought her to court.”

William found her at work in the kitchen.

“Mrs. Hartley, I am sorry to have to tell you that you must find other employment,” said he.

The young woman asked: “Have I not pleased you, sir?”

“Too well,” he answered. “We are young and you are that pleasing to the eye it will make gossip if we keep you here. They tell us in Boston that we are all filled with corruption. There are moments when I can believe it. It is said, I hear, that you and Robert already know each other too well.”

He smiled but she flushed with anger.

“I would not have you think that I believe it,” he went on. “You are no brabbling, limber-tongued sossle like most of the women who do kitchen work. You have a brain in your head. You have a comely face and figure. You know the town you live in as well as I do.”

“Yes, I know you rich people. A woman who works is like your cattle. You do not care what happens to her.”

“You are in error,” he answered. “I do care. I shall try to find a place for you and until that is done we shall give you an allowance for food and lodging.”

She left that day not in a good temper. The young men engaged a new maid who went home at night, and Mabel lived with a poor family on the shore and came once a week in the evening for her allowance until she was suitably placed in the house of a reputable freeman.

William was often at the Brades’ or with Lady Bess at the Winthrops’. He was fond of the Winthrops, who gave their heartiest welcome to these young ones. The brown-bearded John Winthrop was a man of wealth, learning and dignity; his wife a lady with unusual graces. The atmosphere of affectionate devotion was in their home. Here was an example of married life not without its effect on the young of the parish.

“Youth is of perishable stuff,” he said to the boy and girl. “We should ever be looking toward the future. Therefore, the mainstays of our commonwealth will be the school and the church. I look forward to a time in this land when education will not be regarded as the privilege of the few but as a duty which the state owes to every citizen.”

William was often thinking of this vision of his wise friend. In May Winthrop was elected Governor.

The summer returned. The young men had resumed their task in the wilderness. Day and night they were going back and forth on the well-worn path to their clearings. Ships laden with men and women, with sheep, goats, horses and cattle had arrived. On every side one could hear the sound of saws and hammers. The colony was growing. It was at peace.

Friendly savages came in their feathered caps and blankets, and fantastic necklaces and bracelets, and traded and begged at the stores and stood about, silently gazing at the strange, hurried, restless doings of the white folk, and went away. They feared the strong hands of these pale-faced people, swift to punish or to help. No one feared them. The Indian menace had passed. Only the Pequots were in a bad temper, but they were far out and beyond the valley of the great Fresh Water River in the west.

A ship brought the long-desired letters. Roswell Brade, not easy to satisfy, was satisfied. William and Bess were preparing for their examination as candidates for baptism in the church. Meanwhile Robert had had a deep experience. The good fortune of his friend in finding the stay and solace of an affection well placed had not been his.

At last he had hope of it. One day at Mrs. Winthrop’s he had met Peggy Weld—a tall, light-hearted, red-cheeked blonde—lately arrived from England with her brother Henry. Her hair was beautiful. There was much talk of that wavy silken crown of red gold among the men and women of Boston. She had dark blue merry eyes. Her face was not so finely molded as that of the Lady Bess, but she was good to look upon. It was her love of fun—her gay manner and her talk—that chiefly pleased the boy Robert, although it shocked the good people of the parish. Soon the ladies began to chatter of her light carriage and to shake their heads.

“I’m pinked at last,” the young man said to his friend William. “I’m not going to gaze at the moon and twitter. I could sing pretty but I have no perch to stand on. I have a rival in Jim Rosewell, who has been bossing the fortifications. He’s a living Apollo. I may have to poison him.”

“Bob, good luck to you,” said William. “It’s the thing I’ve been hoping for. She’s got a brain in her head. Good family and all that! The type that stirs the blood in a man! She’s a pearl.”

“For the present she’s just a sweet-voiced bird in the bush,” Robert went on. “She’s as wise as she is beautiful. She loves joy. She’s a ray of sunlight in this gloomy parish. Lord! It’s a land of long faces. I wonder why it makes a man solemn to get his soul saved. Peggy could be a help in the great problem of New Boston.”

“What problem?” William asked.

“The dissipation of solemnity and keeping the grave out of conversation and in the cemetery where it belongs and hell in the hereafter. For my own part I simply refuse to be worried about my soul. For that reason I will not join the church.”

Robert was still a rebel. Next day he rode with Peggy to the clearings. On the way he said to her:

“Peggy, I couldn’t make love in a saddle. One needs free hands and feet and proximity. He might want to run. I warn you that I have serious intentions. I’m a little worried about Rosewell. If I’m to have a race with him, I ask for fair conditions.”

The girl blushed as she answered: “This is a subject on which I can not talk with you. I am engaged to Mr. Rosewell.”

“He’s a quick starter. I have had no chance to show you my pace.”

“I can imagine what it would be,” she said with a laugh. “You see, Jim Rosewell and I were friends in England.”

“Well, permit me to say that I love you and that I do not surrender. I shall keep on loving you because I can not help it. Not until I must will I bow my head to the deepest regret of my life and say that I wish you happiness and good luck with Rosewell.”

They rode on in silence. She broke it, saying: “Don’t take it seriously. You are one of the dearest of men and there are better fish in the sea than were ever caught. I’m a common alewife that they use in growing corn. I feel sorry for Rosewell when I think of myself. I’m unregenerate. A lady asked me the other day if I was bound for Heaven. I told her that I just kept going and really didn’t know where I’d fetch up. She grew stern and said, ‘It’s a pity. Have you no sense of sanctification?’ I had to say that no one had ever suspected me of having any kind of sense, that one might as well try to pick strawberries on the sea-beach. I’m all right in England, but here I’m a lost soul.”

“Well, I ask one favor,” he said. “It may be the last one I shall ever request.”

“What is it?” she asked.

“I want a memory that will last as long as I live.”

“A memory!” she exclaimed.

“A blessed memory! I want to kiss those lips of yours—just once.”

She looked down and did not answer. The horses stopped. He dismounted. They were in the deep greenwood. She leaned toward him and their lips met.

Looking into her eyes he asked: “Do you think that I could ever forget that?”

“Lord o’ mercy! It’s a mean thing to do to one,” she answered with a sigh.

“Why mean?”

“Because you put me in mind of the Devil. I shall have nothing more to do with you. Your lips have filled me with a strange trembling. Get on your horse and look to your behavior. Let us go home and pull this burr out of our minds. I am engaged to marry one of the best men in the world. Keep that among your memories.”

She spurred her horse and rode on. He mounted and caught up with her.

“If I have too much ardor, forgive me,” he said. “I have got my memory and if I have to be content with that I shall find comfort in recalling it. I shall think of it only as an act of charity and generosity.”

“My grandmother used to tell me that there are lovers with whom a girl should always keep in sight of her mama,” she answered with a smile. “We shall ride no more together, but I shall be glad to have you visit us at the Governor’s house.”

Robert returned to his home in a rather unhappy mood. He said to William: “I am now a lack-brained, sorry varlet. My virgin heart is broken. I called her a ray of sunlight piercing the gloom, but she has only pierced me. She’s been a kind of lightning flash, and now it’s darker than ever and I’m like a splintered tree with its top on the ground.”

“Cheer up, old man,” William answered. “Girls are coming on every ship. There’s time enough. Meanwhile my home shall be yours.”

Early October of the memorable year of 1635 brought a welcome arrival to the colony. He was young Sir Harry Vane, of the best blood in England, a descendant of the Sir Harry who fought heroically with the Black Prince at Poitiers. The newcomer had been a friend of Heydon in the school at Westminster. There William’s gift for mathematics and good fellowship had made him popular. The young baronet had been a commoner in spirit and a noted rebel at Magdalen College. He was still a rebel—young, handsome and picturesque. A courtly figure, he had the Puritan leaning and a genius for statecraft. His fine manners and brilliant talk captured the leading men of the colony. He had long wavy hair, an offense to some in that land of cropped heads. Soon all were reconciled. He, they agreed, should be the next Governor. Heraldry had its power even in New England when backed by a clean personality and Calvinistic hatred of oppression. He took William to his heart with all friendly good feeling for the sake of well-remembered days.

Vane’s friendship had strengthened William with the Brades. One evening the boy sat with Bess. His way was now open.

“After all these ages of waiting when are we to be married?” he asked.

“Suppose I say to-morrow,” Bess answered. “There’s a test for your courage.”

“Next to to-night I favor to-morrow,” he answered.

“There is a matter of family courtesy to be considered,” Mr. Brade remarked. “My father will arrive early in November. It is only a little time to wait for his blessing, a deference which would, I am sure, please him deeply. The marriage may take place immediately after his arrival.”

“Oh, the cold unfeeling tyranny of age!” Bess exclaimed. “Have we not suffered enough delay?”

“Oh, the hot blood, the unthinking selfishness of youth! That is my answer,” said Mr. Brade. “At your age a few days will not gray your heads.”

“I am growing old. I feel it,” said the Lady Bess. “If the king and queen will retire we will have a session of parliament to consider the address from the throne.”

Of course the throne prevailed. There was no danger of rebellion. The Lady Bess might speak lightly of her father’s authority, but she ever gave it implicit obedience.

It was indeed a memorable session of the young lovers that evening, filled with vows, confessions and embraces. William left so late that he had to make peace with the constable.

In the days that followed they sailed the smooth, translucent, pearl-bottomed sea “whose water is nectar and whose rocks pure gold.”

It was a day in the time of the Indian summer, soon after this talk, when of a sudden every face in the quiet town was changed. The colony was rent with tumult and groping in a black cloud of mystery. In the evening of that day, Robert announced his intention of going to see Peggy Weld. The housekeeper testified that he went out at seven-thirty. William was not at home when Robert left. As to William’s movements that night, the historian must be content with the court record.

It had been a warm quiet evening under a clear sky with a great golden moon rising. As to Robert, his doing, up to the hour of nine, there was much unquestionable evidence. Leaving home he wore his belt and pistol, as both young men were wont to do when they went out after dark. He was talking with the Welds and James Rosewell and the latter’s bosom friend, Roderick Leighton, from Wiltshire, and Sir Harry Vane at the house of the Governor. He left there at nine, saying: “This is the land of early hours. One wandering in the night at ten has to give a good account of himself.”

The young lady went out of the door with him.

This entry in Robert’s diary made some days later relates an incident of this last meeting as follows:

“She went out with me into the moonlit space in front of the door. She put in my hands a little golden case shaped like a locket.

“ ‘This is a curious plaything,’ said she. ‘It was called Le Médaillon avec la serrure à secret. It came to me from my grandmother. It was made by an ingenious French jeweler for one of the naughty ladies of the court of King Henry VIII. The little thing is made to hold and carry secrets. You see, it has a gold beading around its rim. It is a trick to open it—a test of one’s patience and curiosity. I lend it to you. When you have opened it bring or send it back to me. But be warned—years may pass before you find the combination that opens it or you may be lucky.’

“With that I came away. I have spent many hours pushing at members in the circlet around its rim that look like small golden beads. I suppose that certain of them communicate with springs and that these must be pushed in the right order.”

Of the events of that evening, he has nothing further to say. He went away in the darkness and whither?

A goodman of the parish—one Hachaliah Grout, a constable—lay concealed that night beside a mossy glade in a pine thicket, remote from the house of the Governor, his lantern hidden under his cloak. He had learned that the glade was a trysting-place. The thicket was not in the path which Robert would naturally have taken.

About nine-fifteen of the clock a woman came down the path to the glade dimly lighted from above. As she came the officer detected the odor of musk. The woman concealed herself in the bushes. Soon after that a young man entered the glade walking hurriedly, his sword tapping his leg. The woman stopped him and kissed his hand.

“Don’t you know me?” she whispered. “I am your slave Mab.”

“You wanton! Again you put my neck in danger,” he had answered.

The pair retired in the shadows not two fathoms from the edge of the glade. A little later the constable sprang upon them, his lantern in his hand. They arose, terror-stricken. The officer seized the woman. He saw the young man not too clearly in the lantern-light. The latter drew his sword. The woman had the better head. She cried out: “Don’t strike. Run before he sees you.”

There was no time for thinking. It was a moment when action yields to impulse. The young man leaped away and ran. He tore through the thicket and was soon in the open. As he ran a dog pursued him, it was thought, for a dog was found lying dead from a sword thrust.

The court convened at eight-thirty next morning. The young woman, Mabel Hartley, sometime the kitchen maid of William and Robert, was brought from the prison. The watchman related the circumstances under which she had been arrested. The grave, stern-faced Dudley examined the prisoner. Having heard the constable’s account of her taking, substantially as given above, he asked:

“Have you a husband who is living?”

“Yes, sir.”

“It is the foul sin of adultery. Do you know that the punishment is death?”

All eyes were on the unfortunate woman who was weeping. She gave her head a pathetic, affirmative nod.

“As you value the mercy of God and this court, I enjoin you to tell the whole truth. With whom were you lying when the constable discovered you?”

She wiped her eyes, lifted her head and in a trembling tone spoke a name heard in every part of the court-room:

“William Heydon.”

Winthrop dropped the quill with which he had been writing and sank back in his chair. A pallor fell upon his face almost as much in contrast with his black robe as the ample breadth of white linen in his collar. Endicott and Dudley with wrinkled brows turned to each other and whispered. Winthrop broke the silence. He asked the constable:

“Did you see the man?”

“Yes, sir. He was William Heydon, sir. I have seen him often. This is the coat he wore. It was torn from his back in the thicket. We found it lyin’ among thorny briars. In one o’ the pockets is a letter to William Heydon.”

“Is he under arrest?”

“No, sir. He threatened me with his sword and took to his legs. He is not to be found either at his home or the plantation he is clearin’. Both he and his friend made off for parts unknown whilst I was busy with the prisoner.”

Winthrop conferred a moment with Endicott and Dudley. Then with sorrow in his face he said in a low tone: “If William Heydon has not returned by high noon you may proclaim the hue and cry.”

In due time the constables went through the town with raised staffs crying out: “William Heydon, wanted for the foul sin of adultery, has fled. Let all who hear me assemble at the court-house for a hue and cry.”

There were many who enjoyed the excitement of a man chase. It was one of the frightful customs of medieval men, giving free rein to primitive passion, still used in England but not before in the colony. The vulgar crowd gave themselves to its plan with the eager avidity of hounds in the chase—and especially if a man of rank were the fugitive. In the rage of it the captive was likely to lose his life. Soon men and boys and fish-wives and dogs were in full cry, seeking William Heydon. The running, shouting, screaming, barking and blowing of horns filled the pursuers with excitement.

Many joined them, streaming westward in the main path, spreading into the bush on either side and beating the thickets with clubs in hand. Some had guns or pistols. They were more like furies than like those who have the brain and heart of man in them.

The tumult awoke strange echoes in the silent wilderness. It reached the ears of young Heydon who lay asleep in a mossy glade a mile or so west of the path from which he had wandered in the darkness trying to walk to his plantation. It pained the ears of the Brades, of Margaret Hooper, of John Cotton and of all the good people of the parish. What a striving of thoughts, what a beating of hearts, what a shuddering of souls was under all this hellish uproar!