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Title: The Garotters
Author: William D. Howells
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The Gray Champion
The Wedding Knell
The Minister's Black Veil
The May-Pole of Merry Mount
The Gentle Boy
Mr. Higginbotham's Catastrophe
Wakefield
The Great Carbuncle
David Swan
The Hollow of the Three Hills
Dr. Heidegger's Experiment
Legends of the Province House
I. Howe's Masquerade
II. Edward Randolph's Portrait
III. Lady Eleanore's Mantle
IV. Old Esther Dudley
The Ambitious Guest
Peter Goldthwaite's Treasure
The Shaker Bridal
Endicott and the Red Cross
FROM TWICE-TOLD TALES
THE GRAY CHAMPION
There was once a time when New England groaned under the actual pressure of heavier wrongs than those threatened ones which brought on the Revolution.
James II,
the bigoted successor of Charles the Voluptuous,
had annulled the charters of all the colonies,
and sent a harsh and unprincipled soldier
to take away our liberties and endanger our religion.
The administration of Sir Edmund Andros lacked scarcely a single characteristic of tyranny:
a Governor and Council,
holding office from the King,
and wholly independent of the country;
laws made and taxes levied without concurrence of the people immediate or by their representatives;
the rights of private citizens violated,
and the titles of all landed property declared void;
the voice of complaint stifled by restrictions on the press;
and,
finally,
disaffection overawed by the first band of mercenary troops that ever marched on our free soil.
For two years our ancestors were kept in sullen submission by that filial love which had invariably secured their allegiance
to the mother country,
whether its head chanced
to be a Parliament,
Protector,
or Popish Monarch.
Till these evil times,
however,
such allegiance had been merely nominal,
and the colonists had ruled themselves,
enjoying far more freedom than is even yet the privilege of the native subjects of Great Britain.
At length a rumor reached our shores that the Prince of Orange had ventured on an enterprise,
the success of which would be the triumph of civil and religious rights and the salvation of New England.
It was but a doubtful whisper:
it might be false,
or the attempt might fail;
and,
in either case,
the man that stirred against King James would lose his head.
Still the intelligence produced a marked effect.
The people smiled mysteriously in the streets,
and threw bold glances at their oppressors;
while far and wide there was a subdued and silent agitation,
as if the slightest signal would rouse the whole land from its sluggish despondency.
Aware of their danger,
the rulers resolved
to avert it by an imposing display of strength,
and perhaps
to confirm their despotism by yet harsher measures.
One afternoon in April,
1689,
Sir Edmund Andros and his favorite councillors,
being warm
with wine,
assembled the red-coats of the Governor's Guard,
and made their appearance in the streets of Boston.
The sun was near setting when the march commenced.
The roll of the drum at that unquiet crisis seemed
to go through the streets,
less as the martial music of the soldiers,
than as a muster-call
to the inhabitants themselves.
A multitude,
by various avenues,
assembled in King Street,
which was destined
to be the scene,
nearly a century afterwards,
of another encounter between the troops of Britain,
and a people struggling against her tyranny.
Though more than sixty years had elapsed since the pilgrims came,
this crowd of their descendants still showed the strong and sombre features of their character perhaps more strikingly in such a stern emergency than on happier occasions.
There were the sober garb,
the general severity of mien,
the gloomy but undismayed expression,
the scriptural forms of speech,
and the confidence in Heaven's blessing on a righteous cause,
which would have marked a band of the original Puritans,
when threatened by some peril of the wilderness.
Indeed,
it was not yet time
for the old spirit
to be extinct;
since there were men in the street that day who had worshipped there beneath the trees,
before a house was reared
to the God
for whom they had become exiles.
Old soldiers of the Parliament were here,
too,
smiling grimly at the thought that their aged arms might strike another blow against the house of Stuart.
Here,
also,
were the veterans of King Philip's war,
who had burned villages and slaughtered young and old,
with pious fierceness,
while the godly souls throughout the land were helping them
with prayer.
Several ministers were scattered among the crowd,
which,
unlike all other mobs,
regarded them
with such reverence,
as if there were sanctity in their very garments.
These holy men exerted their influence
to quiet the people,
but not
to disperse them.
Meantime,
the purpose of the Governor,
in disturbing the peace of the town at a period when the slightest commotion might throw the country into a ferment,
was almost the universal subject of inquiry,
and variously explained.
"Satan will strike his master-stroke presently,"
cried some,
"because he knoweth that his time is short.
All our godly pastors are
to be dragged
to prison! We shall see them at a Smithfield fire in King Street!"
Hereupon the people of each parish gathered closer round their minister,
who looked calmly upwards and assumed a more apostolic dignity,
as well befitted a candidate
for the highest honor of his profession,
the crown of martyrdom.
It was actually fancied,
at that period,
that New England might have a John Rogers of her own
to take the place of that worthy in the Primer.
"The Pope of Rome has given orders
for a new St. Bartholomew!"
cried others.
"We are
to be massacred,
man and male child!"
Neither was this rumor wholly discredited,
although the wiser class believed the Governor's object somewhat less atrocious.
His predecessor under the old charter,
Bradstreet,
a venerable companion of the first settlers,
was known
to be in town.
There were grounds
for conjecturing,
that Sir Edmund Andros intended at once
to strike terror by a parade of military force,
and
to confound the opposite faction by possessing himself of their chief.
"Stand firm
for the old charter Governor!"
shouted the crowd,
seizing upon the idea.
"The good old Governor Bradstreet!"
While this cry was at the loudest,
the people were surprised by the well-known figure of Governor Bradstreet himself,
a patriarch of nearly ninety,
who appeared on the elevated steps of a door,
and,
with characteristic mildness,
besought them
to submit
to the constituted authorities.
"My children,"
concluded this venerable person,
"do nothing rashly.
Cry not aloud,
but pray
for the welfare of New England,
and expect patiently what the Lord will do in this matter!"
The event was soon
to be decided.
All this time,
the roll of the drum had been approaching through Cornhill,
louder and deeper,
till
with reverberations from house
to house,
and the regular tramp of martial footsteps,
it burst into the street.
A double rank of soldiers made their appearance,
occupying the whole breadth of the passage,
with shouldered matchlocks,
and matches burning,
so as
to present a row of fires in the dusk.
Their steady march was like the progress of a machine,
that would roll irresistibly over everything in its way.
Next,
moving slowly,
with a confused clatter of hoofs on the pavement,
rode a party of mounted gentlemen,
the central figure being Sir Edmund Andros,
elderly,
but erect and soldier-like.
Those around him were his favorite councillors,
and the bitterest foes of New England.
At his right hand rode Edward Randolph,
our arch-enemy,
that
"blasted wretch,"
as Cotton Mather calls him,
who achieved the downfall of our ancient government,
and was followed
with a sensible curse,
through life and
to his grave.
On the other side was Bullivant,
scattering jests and mockery as he rode along.
Dudley came behind,
with a downcast look,
dreading,
as well he might,
to meet the indignant gaze of the people,
who beheld him,
their only countryman by birth,
among the oppressors of his native land.
The captain of a frigate in the harbor,
and two or three civil officers under the Crown,
were also there.
But the figure which most attracted the public eye,
and stirred up the deepest feeling,
was the Episcopal clergyman of King's Chapel,
riding haughtily among the magistrates in his priestly vestments,
the fitting representatives of prelacy and persecution,
the union of church and state,
and all those abominations which had driven the Puritans
to the wilderness.
Another guard of soldiers,
in double rank,
brought up the rear.
The whole scene was a picture of the condition of New England,
and its moral,
the deformity of any government that does not grow out of the nature of things and the character of the people.
On one side the religious multitude,
with their sad visages and dark attire,
and on the other,
the group of despotic rulers,
with the high churchman in the midst,
and here and there a crucifix at their bosoms,
all magnificently clad,
flushed
with wine,
proud of unjust authority,
and scoffing at the universal groan.
And the mercenary soldiers,
waiting but the word
to deluge the street
with blood,
showed the only means by which obedience could be secured.
"O Lord of Hosts,"
cried a voice among the crowd,
"provide a Champion
for thy people!"
This ejaculation was loudly uttered,
and served as a herald's cry,
to introduce a remarkable personage.
The crowd had rolled back,
and were now huddled together nearly at the extremity of the street,
while the soldiers had advanced no more than a third of its length.
The intervening space was empty--a paved solitude,
between lofty edifices,
which threw almost a twilight shadow over it.
Suddenly,
there was seen the figure of an ancient man,
who seemed
to have emerged from among the people,
and was walking by himself along the centre of the street,
to confront the armed band.
He wore the old Puritan dress,
a dark cloak and a steeplecrowned hat,
in the fashion of at least fifty years before,
with a heavy sword upon his thigh,
but a staff in his hand
to assist the tremulous gait of age.
When at some distance from the multitude,
the old man turned slowly round,
displaying a face of antique majesty,
rendered doubly venerable by the hoary beard that descended on his breast.
He made a gesture at once of encouragement and warning,
then turned again,
and resumed his way.
"Who is this gray patriarch?"
asked the young men of their sires.
"Who is this venerable brother?"
asked the old men among themselves.
But none could make reply.
The fathers of the people,
those of fourscore years and upwards,
were disturbed,
deeming it strange that they should forget one of such evident authority,
whom they must have known in their early days,
the associate of Winthrop,
and all the old councillors,
giving laws,
and making prayers,
and leading them against the savage.
The elderly men ought
to have remembered him,
too,
with locks as gray in their youth,
as their own were now.
And the young! How could he have passed so utterly from their memories--that hoary sire,
the relic of longdeparted times,
whose awful benediction had surely been bestowed on their uncovered heads,
in childhood?
"Whence did he come?
What is his purpose?
Who can this old man be?"
whispered the wondering crowd.
Meanwhile,
the venerable stranger,
staff in hand,
was pursuing his solitary walk along the centre of the street.
As he drew near the advancing soldiers,
and as the roll of their drum came full upon his ears,
the old man raised himself
to a loftier mien,
while the decrepitude of age seemed
to fall from his shoulders,
leaving him in gray but unbroken dignity.
Now,
he marched onward
with a warrior's step,
keeping time
to the military music.
Thus the aged form advanced on one side,
and the whole parade of soldiers and magistrates on the other,
till,
when scarcely twenty yards remained between,
the old man grasped his staff by the middle,
and held it before him like a leader's truncheon.
"Stand!"
cried he.
The eye,
the face,
and attitude of command;
the solemn,
yet warlike peal of that voice,
fit either
to rule a host in the battle-field or be raised
to God in prayer,
were irresistible.
At the old man's word and outstretched arm,
the roll of the drum was hushed at once,
and the advancing line stood still.
A tremulous enthusiasm seized upon the multitude.
That stately form,
combining the leader and the saint,
so gray,
so dimly seen,
in such an ancient garb,
could only belong
to some old champion of the righteous cause,
whom the oppressor's drum had summoned from his grave.
They raised a shout of awe and exultation,
and looked
for the deliverance of New England.
The Governor,
and the gentlemen of his party,
perceiving themselves brought
to an unexpected stand,
rode hastily forward,
as if they would have pressed their snorting and affrighted horses right against the hoary apparition.
He,
however,
blenched not a step,
but glancing his severe eye round the group,
which half encompassed him,
at last bent it sternly on Sir Edmund Andros.
One would have thought that the dark old man was chief ruler there,
and that the Governor and Council,
with soldiers at their back,
representing the whole power and authority of the Crown,
had no alternative but obedience.
"What does this old fellow here?"
cried Edward Randolph,
fiercely.
"On,
Sir Edmund! Bid the soldiers forward,
and give the dotard the same choice that you give all his countrymen--to stand aside or be trampled on!"
"Nay,
nay,
let us show respect
to the good grandsire,"
said Bullivant,
laughing.
"See you not,
he is some old round-headed dignitary,
who hath lain asleep these thirty years,
and knows nothing o'
the change of times?
Doubtless,
he thinks
to put us down
with a proclamation in Old Noll's name!"
"Are you mad,
old man?"
demanded Sir Edmund Andros,
in loud and harsh tones.
"How dare you stay the march of King James's Governor?"
"I have stayed the march of a King himself,
ere now,"
replied the gray figure,
with stern composure.
"I am here,
Sir Governor,
because the cry of an oppressed people hath disturbed me in my secret place;
and beseeching this favor earnestly of the Lord,
it was vouchsafed me
to appear once again on earth,
in the good old cause of his saints.
And what speak ye of James?
There is no longer a Popish tyrant on the throne of England,
and by to-morrow noon,
his name shall be a byword in this very street,
where ye would make it a word of terror.
Back,
thou wast a Governor,
back!
with this night thy power is ended--to-morrow,
the prison!--back,
lest I foretell the scaffold!"
The people had been drawing nearer and nearer,
and drinking in the words of their champion,
who spoke in accents long disused,
like one unaccustomed
to converse,
except
with the dead of many years ago.
But his voice stirred their souls.
They confronted the soldiers,
not wholly without arms,
and ready
to convert the very stones of the street into deadly weapons.
Sir Edmund Andros looked at the old man;
then he cast his hard and cruel eye over the multitude,
and beheld them burning
with that lurid wrath,
so difficult
to kindle or
to quench;
and again he fixed his gaze on the aged form,
which stood obscurely in an open space,
where neither friend nor foe had thrust himself.
What were his thoughts,
he uttered no word which might discover.
But whether the oppressor were overawed by the Gray Champion's look,
or perceived his peril in the threatening attitude of the people,
it is certain that he gave back,
and ordered his soldiers
to commence a slow and guarded retreat.
Before another sunset,
the Governor,
and all that rode so proudly
with him,
were prisoners,
and long ere it was known that James had abdicated,
King William was proclaimed throughout New England.
But where was the Gray Champion?
Some reported that,
when the troops had gone from King Street,
and the people were thronging tumultuously in their rear,
Bradstreet,
the aged Governor,
was seen
to embrace a form more aged than his own.
Others soberly affirmed,
that while they marvelled at the venerable grandeur of his aspect,
the old man had faded from their eyes,
melting slowly into the hues of twilight,
till,
where he stood,
there was an empty space.
But all agreed that the hoary shape was gone.
The men of that generation watched
for his reappearance,
in sunshine and in twilight,
but never saw him more,
nor knew when his funeral passed,
nor where his gravestone was.
And who was the Gray Champion?
Perhaps his name might be found in the records of that stern Court of Justice,
which passed a sentence,
too mighty
for the age,
but glorious in all after-times,
for its humbling lesson
to the monarch and its high example
to the subject.
I have heard,
that whenever the descendants of the Puritans are
to show the spirit of their sires,
the old man appears again.
When eighty years had passed,
he walked once more in King Street.
Five years later,
in the twilight of an April morning,
he stood on the green,
beside the meeting-house,
at Lexington,
where now the obelisk of granite,
with a slab of slate inlaid,
commemorates the first fallen of the Revolutions.
And when our fathers were toiling at the breastwork on Bunker's Hill,
all through that night the old warrior walked his rounds.
Long,
long may it be,
ere he comes again! His hour is one of darkness,
and adversity,
and peril.
But should domestic tyranny oppress us,
or the invader's step pollute our soil,
still may the Gray Champion come,
for he is the type of New England's hereditary spirit;
and his shadowy march,
on the eve of danger,
must ever be the pledge,
that New England's sons will vindicate their ancestry.
THE WEDDING KNELL There is a certain church in the city of New York which I have always regarded
with peculiar interest,
on account of a marriage there solemnized,
under very singular circumstances,
in my grandmother's girlhood.
That venerable lady chanced
to be a spectator of the scene,
and ever after made it her favorite narrative.
Whether the edifice now standing on the same site be the identical one
to which she referred,
I am not antiquarian enough
to know;
nor would it be worth while
to correct myself,
perhaps,
of an agreeable error,
by reading the date of its erection on the tablet over the door.
It is a stately church,
surrounded by an inclosure of the loveliest green,
within which appear urns,
pillars,
obelisks,
and other forms of monumental marble,
the tributes of private affection,
or more splendid memorials of historic dust.
With such a place,
though the tumult of the city rolls beneath its tower,
one would be willing
to connect some legendary interest.
The marriage might be considered as the result of an early engagement,
though there had been two intermediate weddings on the lady's part,
and forty years of celibacy on that of the gentleman.
At sixty-five,
Mr.Ellenwood was a shy,
but not quite a secluded man;
selfish,
like all men who brood over their own hearts,
yet manifesting on rare occasions a vein of generous sentiment;
a scholar throughout life,
though always an indolent one,
because his studies had no definite object,
either of public advantage or personal ambition;
a gentleman,
high bred and fastidiously delicate,
yet sometimes requiring a considerable relaxation,
in his behalf,
of the common rules of society.
In truth,
there were so many anomalies in his character,
and though shrinking
with diseased sensibility from public notice,
it had been his fatality so often
to become the topic of the day,
by some wild eccentricity of conduct,
that people searched his lineage
for an hereditary taint of insanity.
But there was no need of this.
His caprices had their origin in a mind that lacked the support of an engrossing purpose,
and in feelings that preyed upon themselves
for want of other food.
If he were mad,
it was the consequence,
and not the cause,
of an aimless and abortive life.
The widow was as complete a contrast
to her third bridegroom,
in everything but age,
as can well be conceived.
Compelled
to relinquish her first engagement,
she had been united
to a man of twice her own years,
to whom she became an exemplary wife,
and by whose death she was left in possession of a splendid fortune.
A southern gentleman,
considerably younger than herself,
succeeded
to her hand,
and carried her
to Charleston,
where,
after many uncomfortable years,
she found herself again a widow.
It would have been singular,
if any uncommon delicacy of feeling had survived through such a life as Mrs. Dabney's;
it could not but be crushed and killed by her early disappointment,
the cold duty of her first marriage,
the dislocation of the heart's principles,
consequent on a second union,
and the unkindness of her southern husband,
which had inevitably driven her
to connect the idea of his death
with that of her comfort.
To be brief,
she was that wisest,
but unloveliest,
variety of woman,
a philosopher,
bearing troubles of the heart
with equanimity,
dispensing
with all that should have been her happiness,
and making the best of what remained.
Sage in most matters,
the widow was perhaps the more amiable
for the one frailty that made her ridiculous.
Being childless,
she could not remain beautiful by proxy,
in the person of a daughter;
she therefore refused
to grow old and ugly,
on any consideration;
she struggled
with Time,
and held fast her roses in spite of him,
till the venerable thief appeared
to have relinquished the spoil,
as not worth the trouble of acquiring it.
The approaching marriage of this woman of the world
with such an unworldly man as Mr. Ellenwood was announced soon after Mrs. Dabney's return
to her native city.
Superficial observers,
and deeper ones,
seemed
to concur in supposing that the lady must have borne no inactive part in arranging the affair;
there were considerations of expediency which she would be far more likely
to appreciate than Mr. Ellenwood;
and there was just the specious phantom of sentiment and romance in this late union of two early lovers which sometimes makes a fool of a woman who has lost her true feelings among the accidents of life.
All the wonder was,
how the gentleman,
with his lack of worldly wisdom and agonizing consciousness of ridicule,
could have been induced
to take a measure at once so prudent and so laughable.
But while people talked the wedding-day arrived.
The ceremony was
to be solemnized according
to the Episcopalian forms,
and in open church,
with a degree of publicity that attracted many spectators,
who occupied the front seats of the galleries,
and the pews near the altar and along the broad aisle.
It had been arranged,
or possibly it was the custom of the day,
that the parties should proceed separately
to church.
By some accident the bridegroom was a little less punctual than the widow and her bridal attendants;
with whose arrival,
after this tedious,
but necessary preface,
the action of our tale may be said
to commence.
The clumsy wheels of several old-fashioned coaches were heard,
and the gentlemen and ladies composing the bridal party came through the church door
with the sudden and gladsome effect of a burst of sunshine.
The whole group,
except the principal figure,
was made up of youth and gayety.
As they streamed up the broad aisle,
while the pews and pillars seemed
to brighten on either side,
their steps were as buoyant as if they mistook the church
for a ball-room,
and were ready
to dance hand in hand
to the altar.
So brilliant was the spectacle that few took notice of a singular phenomenon that had marked its entrance.
At the moment when the bride's foot touched the threshold the bell swung heavily in the tower above her,
and sent forth its deepest knell.
The vibrations died away and returned
with prolonged solemnity,
as she entered the body of the church.
"Good heavens! what an omen,"
whispered a young lady
to her lover.
"On my honor,"
replied the gentleman,
"I believe the bell has the good taste
to toll of its own accord.
What has she
to do
with weddings?
If you,
dearest Julia,
were approaching the altar the bell would ring out its merriest peal.
It has only a funeral knell
for her."
The bride and most of her company had been too much occupied
with the bustle of entrance
to hear the first boding stroke of the bell,
or at least
to reflect on the singularity of such a welcome
to the altar.
They therefore continued
to advance
with undiminished gayety.
The gorgeous dresses of the time,
the crimson velvet coats,
the gold-laced hats,
the hoop petticoats,
the silk,
satin,
brocade,
and embroidery,
the buckles,
canes,
and swords,
all displayed
to the best advantage on persons suited
to such finery,
made the group appear more like a bright-colored picture than anything real.
But by what perversity of taste had the artist represented his principal figure as so wrinkled and decayed,
while yet he had decked her out in the brightest splendor of attire,
as if the loveliest maiden had suddenly withered into age,
and become a moral
to the beautiful around her! On they went,
however,
and had glittered along about a third of the aisle,
when another stroke of the bell seemed
to fill the church
with a visible gloom,
dimming and obscuring the bright pageant,
till it shone forth again as from a mist.
This time the party wavered,
stopped,
and huddled closer together,
while a slight scream was heard from some of the ladies,
and a confused whispering among the gentlemen.
Thus tossing
to and fro,
they might have been fancifully compared
to a splendid bunch of flowers,
suddenly shaken by a puff of wind,
which threatened
to scatter the leaves of an old,
brown,
withered rose,
on the same stalk
with two dewy buds,--such being the emblem of the widow between her fair young bridemaids.
But her heroism was admirable.
She had started
with an irrepressible shudder,
as if the stroke of the bell had fallen directly on her heart;
then,
recovering herself,
while her attendants were yet in dismay,
she took the lead,
and paced calmly up the aisle.
The bell continued
to swing,
strike,
and vibrate,
with the same doleful regularity as when a corpse is on its way
to the tomb.
"My young friends here have their nerves a little shaken,"
said the widow,
with a smile,
to the clergyman at the altar.
"But so many weddings have been ushered in
with the merriest peal of the bells,
and yet turned out unhappily,
that I shall hope
for better fortune under such different auspices."
"Madam,"
answered the rector,
in great perplexity,
"this strange occurrence brings
to my mind a marriage sermon of the famous Bishop Taylor,
wherein he mingles so many thoughts of mortality and future woe,
that,
to speak somewhat after his own rich style,
he seems
to hang the bridal chamber in black,
and cut the wedding garment out of a coffin pall.
And it has been the custom of divers nations
to infuse something of sadness into their marriage ceremonies,
so
to keep death in mind while contracting that engagement which is life's chiefest business.
Thus we may draw a sad but profitable moral from this funeral knell."
But,
though the clergyman might have given his moral even a keener point,
he did not fail
to dispatch an attendant
to inquire into the mystery,
and stop those sounds,
so dismally appropriate
to such a marriage.
A brief space elapsed,
during which the silence was broken only by whispers,
and a few suppressed titterings,
among the wedding party and the spectators,
who,
after the first shock,
were disposed
to draw an ill-natured merriment from the affair.
The young have less charity
for aged follies than the old
for those of youth.
The widow's glance was observed
to wander,
for an instant,
towards a window of the church,
as if searching
for the time-worn marble that she had dedicated
to her first husband;
then her eyelids dropped over their faded orbs,
and her thoughts were drawn irresistibly
to another grave.
Two buried men,
with a voice at her ear,
and a cry afar off,
were calling her
to lie down beside them.
Perhaps,
with momentary truth of feeling,
she thought how much happier had been her fate,
if,
after years of bliss,
the bell were now tolling
for her funeral,
and she were followed
to the grave by the old affection of her earliest lover,
long her husband.
But why had she returned
to him,
when their cold hearts shrank from each other's embrace?
Still the death-bell tolled so mournfully,
that the sunshine seemed
to fade in the air.
A whisper,
communicated from those who stood nearest the windows,
now spread through the church;
a hearse,
with a train of several coaches,
was creeping along the street,
conveying some dead man
to the churchyard,
while the bride awaited a living one at the altar.
Immediately after,
the footsteps of the bridegroom and his friends were heard at the door.
The widow looked down the aisle,
and clinched the arm of one of her bridemaids in her bony hand
with such unconscious violence,
that the fair girl trembled.
"You frighten me,
my dear madam!"
cried she.
"For Heaven's sake,
what is the matter?"
"Nothing,
my dear,
nothing,"
said the widow;
then,
whispering close
to her ear,
"There is a foolish fancy that I cannot get rid of.
I am expecting my bridegroom
to come into the church,
with my first two husbands
for groomsmen!"
"Look,
look!"
screamed the bridemaid.
"What is here?
The funeral!"
As she spoke,
a dark procession paced into the church.
First came an old man and women,
like chief mourners at a funeral,
attired from head
to foot in the deepest black,
all but their pale features and hoary hair;
he leaning on a staff,
and supporting her decrepit form
with his nerveless arm.
Behind appeared another,
and another pair,
as aged,
as black,
and mournful as the first.
As they drew near,
the widow recognized in every face some trait of former friends,
long forgotten,
but now returning,
as if from their old graves,
to warn her
to prepare a shroud;
or,
with purpose almost as unwelcome,
to exhibit their wrinkles and infirmity,
and claim her as their companion by the tokens of her own decay.
Many a merry night had she danced
with them,
in youth.
And now,
in joyless age,
she felt that some withered partner should request her hand,
and all unite,
in a dance of death,
to the music of the funeral bell.
While these aged mourners were passing up the aisle,
it was observed that,
from pew
to pew,
the spectators shuddered
with irrepressible awe,
as some object,
hitherto concealed by the intervening figures,
came full in sight.
Many turned away their faces;
others kept a fixed and rigid stare;
and a young girl giggled hysterically,
and fainted
with the laughter on her lips.
When the spectral procession approached the altar,
each couple separated,
and slowly diverged,
till,
in the centre,
appeared a form,
that had been worthily ushered in
with all this gloomy pomp,
the death knell,
and the funeral.
It was the bridegroom in his shroud! No garb but that of the grave could have befitted such a deathlike aspect;
the eyes,
indeed,
had the wild gleam of a sepulchral lamp;
all else was fixed in the stern calmness which old men wear in the coffin.
The corpse stood motionless,
but addressed the widow in accents that seemed
to melt into the clang of the bell,
which fell heavily on the air while he spoke.
"Come,
my bride!"
said those pale lips,
"the hearse is ready.
The sexton stands waiting
for us at the door of the tomb.
Let us be married;
and then
to our coffins!"
How shall the widow's horror be represented?
It gave her the ghastliness of a dead man's bride.
Her youthful friends stood apart,
shuddering at the mourners,
the shrouded bridegroom,
and herself;
the whole scene expressed,
by the strongest imagery,
the vain struggle of the gilded vanities of this world,
when opposed
to age,
infirmity,
sorrow,
and death.
The awe-struck silence was first broken by the clergyman.
"Mr.
Ellenwood,"
said he,
soothingly,
yet
with somewhat of authority,
"you are not well.
Your mind has been agitated by the unusual circumstances in which you are placed.
The ceremony must be deferred.
As an old friend,
let me entreat you
to return home."
"Home! yes,
but not without my bride,"
answered he,
in the same hollow accents.
"You deem this mockery;
perhaps madness.
Had I bedizened my aged and broken frame
with scarlet and embroidery--had I forced my withered lips
to smile at my dead heart--that might have been mockery,
or madness.
But now,
let young and old declare,
which of us has come hither without a wedding garment,
the bridegroom or the bride!"
He stepped forward at a ghostly pace,
and stood beside the widow,
contrasting the awful simplicity of his shroud
with the glare and glitter in which she had arrayed herself
for this unhappy scene.
None,
that beheld them,
could deny the terrible strength of the moral which his disordered intellect had contrived
to draw.
"Cruel! cruel!"
groaned the heart-stricken bride.
"Cruel!"
repeated he;
then,
losing his deathlike composure in a wild bitterness:
"Heaven judge which of us has been cruel
to the other! In youth you deprived me of my happiness,
my hopes,
my aims;
you took away all the substance of my life,
and made it a dream without reality enough even
to grieve at--with only a pervading gloom,
through which I walked wearily,
and cared not whither.
But after forty years,
when I have built my tomb,
and would not give up the thought of resting there--nor not
for such a life as we once pictured--you call me
to the altar.
At your summons I am here.
But other husbands have enjoyed your youth,
your beauty,
your warmth of heart,
and all that could be termed your life.
What is there
for me but your decay and death?
And therefore I have bidden these funeral friends,
and bespoken the sexton's deepest knell,
and am come,
in my shroud,
to wed you,
as
with a burial service,
that we may join our hands at the door of the sepulchre,
and enter it together."
It was not frenzy;
it was not merely the drunkenness of strong emotion,
in a heart unused
to it,
that now wrought upon the bride.
The stern lesson of the day had done its work;
her worldliness was gone.
She seized the bridegroom's hand.
"Yes!"
cried she.
"Let us wed,
even at the door of the sepulchre! My life is gone in vanity and emptiness.
But at its close there is one true feeling.
It has made me what I was in youth;
it makes me worthy of you.
Time is no more
for both of us.
Let us wed
for Eternity!"
With a long and deep regard,
the bridegroom looked into her eyes,
while a tear was gathering in his own.
How strange that gush of human feeling from the frozen bosom of a corpse! He wiped away the tears even
with his shroud.
"Beloved of my youth,"
said he,
"I have been wild.
The despair of my whole lifetime had returned at once,
and maddened me.
Forgive;
and be forgiven.
Yes;
it is evening
with us now;
and we have realized none of our morning dreams of happiness.
But let us join our hands before the altar as lovers whom adverse circumstances have separated through life,
yet who meet again as they are leaving it,
and find their earthly affection changed into something holy as religion.
And what is Time,
to the married of Eternity?"
Amid the tears of many,
and a swell of exalted sentiment,
in those who felt aright,
was solemnized the union of two immortal souls.
The train of withered mourners,
the hoary bridegroom in his shroud,
the pale features of the aged bride,
and the death-bell tolling through the whole,
till its deep voice overpowered the marriage words,
all marked the funeral of earthly hopes.
But as the ceremony proceeded,
the organ,
as if stirred by the sympathies of this impressive scene,
poured forth an anthem,
first mingling
with the dismal knell,
then rising
to a loftier strain,
till the soul looked down upon its woe.
And when the awful rite was finished,
and
with cold hand in cold hand,
the Married of Eternity withdrew,
the organ's peal of solemn triumph drowned the Wedding Knell.
THE MINISTER'S BLACK VEIL A PARABLE[1] [1] Another clergyman in New England,
Mr.Joseph Moody,
of York,
Maine,
who died about eighty years since,
made himself remarkable by the same eccentricity that is here related of the Reverend Mr. Hooper.
In his case,
however,
the symbol had a different import.
In early life he had accidentally killed a beloved friend,
and from that day till the hour of his own death,
he hid his face from men.
The sexton stood in the porch of Milford meeting-house,
pulling busily at the bell-rope.
The old people of the village came stooping along the street.
Children,
with bright faces,
tripped merrily beside their parents,
or mimicked a graver gait,
in the conscious dignity of their Sunday clothes.
Spruce bachelors looked sidelong at the pretty maidens,
and fancied that the Sabbath sunshine made them prettier than on week days.
When the throng had mostly streamed into the porch,
the sexton began
to toll the bell,
keeping his eye on the Reverend Mr. Hooper's door.
The first glimpse of the clergyman's figure was the signal
for the bell
to cease its summons.
"But what has good Parson Hooper got upon his face?"
cried the sexton in astonishment.
All within hearing immediately turned about,
and beheld the semblance of Mr. Hooper,
pacing slowly his meditative way towards the meetinghouse.
With one accord they started,
expressing more wonder than if some strange minister were coming
to dust the cushions of Mr. Hooper's pulpit.
"Are you sure it is our parson?"
inquired Goodman Gray of the sexton.
"Of a certainty it is good Mr. Hooper,"
replied the sexton.
"He was
to have exchanged pulpits
with Parson Shute,
of Westbury;
but Parson Shute sent
to excuse himself yesterday,
being
to preach a funeral sermon."
The cause of so much amazement may appear sufficiently slight.
Mr.Hooper,
a gentlemanly person,
of about thirty,
though still a bachelor,
was dressed
with due clerical neatness,
as if a careful wife had starched his band,
and brushed the weekly dust from his Sunday's garb.
There was but one thing remarkable in his appearance.
Swathed about his forehead,
and hanging down over his face,
so low as
to be shaken by his breath,
Mr.Hooper had on a black veil.
On a nearer view it seemed
to consist of two folds of crape,
which entirely concealed his features,
except the mouth and chin,
but probably did not intercept his sight,
further than
to give a darkened aspect
to all living and inanimate things.
With this gloomy shade before him,
good Mr. Hooper walked onward,
at a slow and quiet pace,
stooping somewhat,
and looking on the ground,
as is customary
with abstracted men,
yet nodding kindly
to those of his parishioners who still waited on the meeting-house steps.
But so wonder-struck were they that his greeting hardly met
with a return.
"I can't really feel as if good Mr. Hooper's face was behind that piece of crape,"
said the sexton.
"I don't like it,"
muttered an old woman,
as she hobbled into the meeting-house.
"He has changed himself into something awful,
only by hiding his face."
"Our parson has gone mad!"
cried Goodman Gray,
following him across the threshold.
A rumor of some unaccountable phenomenon had preceded Mr. Hooper into the meeting-house,
and set all the congregation astir.
Few could refrain from twisting their heads towards the door;
many stood upright,
and turned directly about;
while several little boys clambered upon the seats,
and came down again
with a terrible racket.
There was a general bustle,
a rustling of the women's gowns and shuffling of the men's feet,
greatly at variance
with that hushed repose which should attend the entrance of the minister.
But Mr. Hooper appeared not
to notice the perturbation of his people.
He entered
with an almost noiseless step,
bent his head mildly
to the pews on each side,
and bowed as he passed his oldest parishioner,
a white-haired great grandsire,
who occupied an arm-chair in the centre of the aisle.
It was strange
to observe how slowly this venerable man became conscious of something singular in the appearance of his pastor.
He seemed not fully
to partake of the prevailing wonder,
till Mr. Hooper had ascended the stairs,
and showed himself in the pulpit,
face
to face
with his congregation,
except
for the black veil.
That mysterious emblem was never once withdrawn.
It shook
with his measured breath,
as he gave out the psalm;
it threw its obscurity between him and the holy page,
as he read the Scriptures;
and while he prayed,
the veil lay heavily on his uplifted countenance.
Did he seek
to hide it from the dread Being whom he was addressing?
Such was the effect of this simple piece of crape,
that more than one woman of delicate nerves was forced
to leave the meeting-house.
Yet perhaps the pale-faced congregation was almost as fearful a sight
to the minister,
as his black veil
to them.
Mr.Hooper had the reputation of a good preacher,
but not an energetic one:
he strove
to win his people heavenward by mild,
persuasive influences,
rather than
to drive them thither by the thunders of the Word.
The sermon which he now delivered was marked by the same characteristics of style and manner as the general series of his pulpit oratory.
But there was something,
either in the sentiment of the discourse itself,
or in the imagination of the auditors,
which made it greatly the most powerful effort that they had ever heard from their pastor's lips.
It was tinged,
rather more darkly than usual,
with the gentle gloom of Mr. Hooper's temperament.
The subject had reference
to secret sin,
and those sad mysteries which we hide from our nearest and dearest,
and would fain conceal from our own consciousness,
even forgetting that the Omniscient can detect them.
A subtle power was breathed into his words.
Each member of the congregation,
the most innocent girl,
and the man of hardened breast,
felt as if the preacher had crept upon them,
behind his awful veil,
and discovered their hoarded iniquity of deed or thought.
Many spread their clasped hands on their bosoms.
There was nothing terrible in what Mr. Hooper said,
at least,
no violence;
and yet,
with every tremor of his melancholy voice,
the hearers quaked.
An unsought pathos came hand in hand
with awe.
So sensible were the audience of some unwonted attribute in their minister,
that they longed
for a breath of wind
to blow aside the veil,
almost believing that a stranger's visage would be discovered,
though the form,
gesture,
and voice were those of Mr. Hooper.
At the close of the services,
the people hurried out
with indecorous confusion,
eager
to communicate their pent-up amazement,
and conscious of lighter spirits the moment they lost sight of the black veil.
Some gathered in little circles,
huddled closely together,
with their mouths all whispering in the centre;
some went homeward alone,
wrapt in silent meditation;
some talked loudly,
and profaned the Sabbath day
with ostentatious laughter.
A few shook their sagacious heads,
intimating that they could penetrate the mystery;
while one or two affirmed that there was no mystery at all,
but only that Mr. Hooper's eyes were so weakened by the midnight lamp,
as
to require a shade.
After a brief interval,
forth came good Mr. Hooper also,
in the rear of his flock.
Turning his veiled face from one group
to another,
he paid due reverence
to the hoary heads,
saluted the middle aged
with kind dignity as their friend and spiritual guide,
greeted the young
with mingled authority and love,
and laid his hands on the little children's heads
to bless them.
Such was always his custom on the Sabbath day.
Strange and bewildered looks repaid him
for his courtesy.
None,
as on former occasions,
aspired
to the honor of walking by their pastor's side.
Old Squire Saunders,
doubtless by an accidental lapse of memory,
neglected
to invite Mr. Hooper
to his table,
where the good clergyman had been wont
to bless the food,
almost every Sunday since his settlement.
He returned,
therefore,
to the parsonage,
and,
at the moment of closing the door,
was observed
to look back upon the people,
all of whom had their eyes fixed upon the minister.
A sad smile gleamed faintly from beneath the black veil,
and flickered about his mouth,
glimmering as he disappeared.
"How strange,"
said a lady,
"that a simple black veil,
such as any woman might wear on her bonnet,
should become such a terrible thing on Mr. Hooper's face!"
"Something must surely be amiss
with Mr. Hooper's intellects,"
observed her husband,
the physician of the village.
"But the strangest part of the affair is the effect of this vagary,
even on a sober-minded man like myself.
The black veil,
though it covers only our pastor's face,
throws its influence over his whole person,
and makes him ghostlike from head
to foot.
Do you not feel it so?"
"Truly do I,"
replied the lady;
"and I would not be alone
with him
for the world.
I wonder he is not afraid
to be alone
with himself!"
"Men sometimes are so,"
said her husband.
The afternoon service was attended
with similar circumstances.
At its conclusion,
the bell tolled
for the funeral of a young lady.
The relatives and friends were assembled in the house,
and the more distant acquaintances stood about the door,
speaking of the good qualities of the deceased,
when their talk was interrupted by the appearance of Mr. Hooper,
still covered
with his black veil.
It was now an appropriate emblem.
The clergyman stepped into the room where the corpse was laid,
and bent over the coffin,
to take a last farewell of his deceased parishioner.
As he stooped,
the veil hung straight down from his forehead,
so that,
if her eyelids had not been closed forever,
the dead maiden might have seen his face.
Could Mr. Hooper be fearful of her glance,
that he so hastily caught back the black veil?
A person who watched the interview between the dead and living,
scrupled not
to affirm,
that,
at the instant when the clergyman's features were disclosed,
the corpse had slightly shuddered,
rustling the shroud and muslin cap,
though the countenance retained the composure of death.
A superstitious old woman was the only witness of this prodigy.
From the coffin Mr. Hooper passed into the chamber of the mourners,
and thence
to the head of the staircase,
to make the funeral prayer.
It was a tender and heart-dissolving prayer,
full of sorrow,
yet so imbued
with celestial hopes,
that the music of a heavenly harp,
swept by the fingers of the dead,
seemed faintly
to be heard among the saddest accents of the minister.
The people trembled,
though they but darkly understood him when he prayed that they,
and himself,
and all of mortal race,
might be ready,
as he trusted this young maiden had been,
for the dreadful hour that should snatch the veil from their faces.
The bearers went heavily forth,
and the mourners followed,
saddening all the street,
with the dead before them,
and Mr. Hooper in his black veil behind.
"Why do you look back?"
said one in the procession
to his partner.
"I had a fancy,"
replied she,
"that the minister and the maiden's spirit were walking hand in hand."
"And so had I,
at the same moment,"
said the other.
That night,
the handsomest couple in Milford village were
to be joined in wedlock.
Though reckoned a melancholy man,
Mr.Hooper had a placid cheerfulness
for such occasions,
which often excited a sympathetic smile where livelier merriment would have been thrown away.
There was no quality of his disposition which made him more beloved than this.
The company at the wedding awaited his arrival
with impatience,
trusting that the strange awe,
which had gathered over him throughout the day,
would now be dispelled.
But such was not the result.
When Mr. Hooper came,
the first thing that their eyes rested on was the same horrible black veil,
which had added deeper gloom
to the funeral,
and could portend nothing but evil
to the wedding.
Such was its immediate effect on the guests that a cloud seemed
to have rolled duskily from beneath the black crape,
and dimmed the light of the candles.
The bridal pair stood up before the minister.
But the bride's cold fingers quivered in the tremulous hand of the bridegroom,
and her deathlike paleness caused a whisper that the maiden who had been buried a few hours before was come from her grave
to be married.
If ever another wedding were so dismal,
it was that famous one where they tolled the wedding knell.
After performing the ceremony,
Mr.Hooper raised a glass of wine
to his lips,
wishing happiness
to the newmarried couple in a strain of mild pleasantry that ought
to have brightened the features of the guests,
like a cheerful gleam from the hearth.
At that instant,
catching a glimpse of his figure in the looking-glass,
the black veil involved his own spirit in the horror
with which it overwhelmed all others.
His frame shuddered,
his lips grew white,
he spilt the untasted wine upon the carpet,
and rushed forth into the darkness.
For the Earth,
too,
had on her Black Veil.
The next day,
the whole village of Milford talked of little else than Parson Hooper's black veil.
That,
and the mystery concealed behind it,
supplied a topic
for discussion between acquaintances meeting in the street,
and good women gossiping at their open windows.
It was the first item of news that the tavern-keeper told
to his guests.
The children babbled of it on their way
to school.
One imitative little imp covered his face
with an old black handkerchief,
thereby so affrighting his playmates that the panic seized himself,
and he well-nigh lost his wits by his own waggery.
It was remarkable that all of the busybodies and impertinent people in the parish,
not one ventured
to put the plain question
to Mr. Hooper,
wherefore he did this thing.
Hitherto,
whenever there appeared the slightest call
for such interference,
he had never lacked advisers,
nor shown himself averse
to be guided by their judgment.
If he erred at all,
it was by so painful a degree of self-distrust,
that even the mildest censure would lead him
to consider an indifferent action as a crime.
Yet,
though so well acquainted
with this amiable weakness,
no individual among his parishioners chose
to make the black veil a subject of friendly remonstrance.
There was a feeling of dread,
neither plainly confessed nor carefully concealed,
which caused each
to shift the responsibility upon another,
till at length it was found expedient
to send a deputation of the church,
in order
to deal
with Mr. Hooper about the mystery,
before it should grow into a scandal.
Never did an embassy so ill discharge its duties.
The minister received then
with friendly courtesy,
but became silent,
after they were seated,
leaving
to his visitors the whole burden of introducing their important business.
The topic,
it might be supposed,
was obvious enough.
There was the black veil swathed round Mr. Hooper's forehead,
and concealing every feature above his placid mouth,
on which,
at times,
they could perceive the glimmering of a melancholy smile.
But that piece of crape,
to their imagination,
seemed
to hang down before his heart,
the symbol of a fearful secret between him and them.
Were the veil but cast aside,
they might speak freely of it,
but not till then.
Thus they sat a considerable time,
speechless,
confused,
and shrinking uneasily from Mr. Hooper's eye,
which they felt
to be fixed upon them
with an invisible glance.
Finally,
the deputies returned abashed
to their constituents,
pronouncing the matter too weighty
to be handled,
except by a council of the churches,
if,
indeed,
it might not require a general synod.
But there was one person in the village unappalled by the awe
with which the black veil had impressed all beside herself.
When the deputies returned without an explanation,
or even venturing
to demand one,
she,
with the calm energy of her character,
determined
to chase away the strange cloud that appeared
to be settling round Mr. Hooper,
every moment more darkly than before.
As his plighted wife,
it should be her privilege
to know what the black veil concealed.
At the minister's first visit,
therefore,
she entered upon the subject
with a direct simplicity,
which made the task easier both
for him and her.
After he had seated himself,
she fixed her eyes steadfastly upon the veil,
but could discern nothing of the dreadful gloom that had so overawed the multitude:
it was but a double fold of crape,
hanging down from his forehead
to his mouth,
and slightly stirring
with his breath.
"No,"
said she aloud,
and smiling,
"there is nothing terrible in this piece of crape,
except that it hides a face which I am always glad
to look upon.
Come,
good sir,
let the sun shine from behind the cloud.
First lay aside your black veil:
then tell me why you put it on."
Mr.Hooper's smile glimmered faintly.
"There is an hour
to come,"
said he,
"when all of us shall cast aside our veils.
Take it not amiss,
beloved friend,
if I wear this piece of crape till then."
"Your words are a mystery,
too,"
returned the young lady.
"Take away the veil from them,
at least."
"Elizabeth,
I will,"
said he,
"so far as my vow may suffer me.
Know,
then,
this veil is a type and a symbol,
and I am bound
to wear it ever,
both in light and darkness,
in solitude and before the gaze of multitudes,
and as
with strangers,
so
with my familiar friends.
No mortal eye will see it withdrawn.
This dismal shade must separate me from the world:
even you,
Elizabeth,
can never come behind it!"
"What grievous affliction hath befallen you,"
she earnestly inquired,
"that you should thus darken your eyes forever?"
"If it be a sign of mourning,"
replied Mr. Hooper,
"I,
perhaps,
like most other mortals,
have sorrows dark enough
to be typified by a black veil."
"But what if the world will not believe that it is the type of an innocent sorrow?"
urged Elizabeth.
"Beloved and respected as you are,
there may be whispers that you hide your face under the consciousness of secret sin.
For the sake of your holy office,
do away this scandal!"
The color rose into her cheeks as she intimated the nature of the rumors that were already abroad in the village.
But Mr. Hooper's mildness did not forsake him.
He even smiled again--that same sad smile,
which always appeared like a faint glimmering of light,
proceeding from the obscurity beneath the veil.
"If I hide my face
for sorrow,
there is cause enough,"
he merely replied;
"and if I cover it
for secret sin,
what mortal might not do the same?"
And
with this gentle,
but unconquerable obstinacy did he resist all her entreaties.
At length Elizabeth sat silent.
For a few moments she appeared lost in thought,
considering,
probably,
what new methods might be tried
to withdraw her lover from so dark a fantasy,
which,
if it had no other meaning,
was perhaps a symptom of mental disease.
Though of a firmer character than his own,
the tears rolled down her cheeks.
But,
in an instant,
as it were,
a new feeling took the place of sorrow:
her eyes were fixed insensibly on the black veil,
when,
like a sudden twilight in the air,
its terrors fell around her.
She arose,
and stood trembling before him.
"And do you feel it then,
at last?"
said he mournfully.
She made no reply,
but covered her eyes
with her hand,
and turned
to leave the room.
He rushed forward and caught her arm.
"Have patience
with me,
Elizabeth!"
cried he,
passionately.
"Do not desert me,
though this veil must be between us here on earth.
Be mine,
and hereafter there shall be no veil over my face,
no darkness between our souls! It is but a mortal veil--it is not
for eternity! O! you know not how lonely I am,
and how frightened,
to be alone behind my black veil.
Do not leave me in this miserable obscurity forever!"
"Lift the veil but once,
and look me in the face,"
said she.
"Never! It cannot be!"
replied Mr. Hooper.
"Then farewell!"
said Elizabeth.
She withdrew her arm from his grasp,
and slowly departed,
pausing at the door,
to give one long shuddering gaze,
that seemed almost
to penetrate the mystery of the black veil.
But,
even amid his grief,
Mr.Hooper smiled
to think that only a material emblem had separated him from happiness,
though the horrors,
which it shadowed forth,
must be drawn darkly between the fondest of lovers.
From that time no attempts were made
to remove Mr. Hooper's black veil,
or,
by a direct appeal,
to discover the secret which it was supposed
to hide.
By persons who claimed a superiority
to popular prejudice,
it was reckoned merely an eccentric whim,
such as often mingles
with the sober actions of men otherwise rational,
and tinges them all
with its own semblance of insanity.
But
with the multitude,
good Mr. Hooper was irreparbly a bugbear.
He could not walk the street
with any peace of mind,
so conscious was he that the gentle and timid would turn aside
to avoid him,
and that others would make it a point of hardihood
to throw themselves in his way.
The impertinence of the latter class compelled him
to give up his customary walk at sunset
to the burial ground;
for when he leaned pensively over the gate,
there would always be faces behind the gravestones,
peeping at his black veil.
A fable went the rounds that the stare of the dead people drove him thence.
It grieved him,
to the very depth of his kind heart,
to observe how the children fled from his approach,
breaking up their merriest sports,
while his melancholy figure was yet afar off.
Their instinctive dread caused him
to feel more strongly than aught else,
that a preternatural horror was interwoven
with the threads of the black crape.
In truth,
his own antipathy
to the veil was known
to be so great,
that he never willingly passed before a mirror,
nor stooped
to drink at a still fountain,
lest,
in its peaceful bosom,
he should be affrighted by himself.
This was what gave plausibility
to the whispers,
that Mr. Hooper's conscience tortured him
for some great crime too horrible
to be entirely concealed,
or otherwise than so obscurely intimated.
Thus,
from beneath the black veil,
there rolled a cloud into the sunshine,
an ambiguity of sin or sorrow,
which enveloped the poor minister,
so that love or sympathy could never reach him.
It was said that ghost and fiend consorted
with him there.
With self-shudderings and outward terrors,
he walked continually in its shadow,
groping darkly within his own soul,
or gazing through a medium that saddened the whole world.
Even the lawless wind,
it was believed,
respected his dreadful secret,
and never blew aside the veil.
But still good Mr. Hooper sadly smiled at the pale visages of the worldly throng as he passed by.
Among all its bad influences,
the black veil had the one desirable effect,
of making its wearer a very efficient clergyman.
By the aid of his mysterious emblem--for there was no other apparent cause--he became a man of awful power over souls that were in agony
for sin.
His converts always regarded him
with a dread peculiar
to themselves,
affirming,
though but figuratively,
that,
before he brought them
to celestial light,
they had been
with him behind the black veil.
Its gloom,
indeed,
enabled him
to sympathize
with all dark affections.
Dying sinners cried aloud
for Mr. Hooper,
and would not yield their breath till he appeared;
though ever,
as he stooped
to whisper consolation,
they shuddered at the veiled face so near their own.
Such were the terrors of the black veil,
even when Death had bared his visage! Strangers came long distances
to attend service at his church,
with the mere idle purpose of gazing at his figure,
because it was forbidden them
to behold his face.
But many were made
to quake ere they departed! Once,
during Governor Belcher's administration,
Mr.Hooper was appointed
to preach the election sermon.
Covered
with his black veil,
he stood before the chief magistrate,
the council,
and the representatives,
and wrought so deep an impression,
that the legislative measures of that year were characterized by all the gloom and piety of our earliest ancestral sway.
In this manner Mr. Hooper spent a long life,
irreproachable in outward act,
yet shrouded in dismal suspicions;
kind and loving,
though unloved,
and dimly feared;
a man apart from men,
shunned in their health and joy,
but ever summoned
to their aid in mortal anguish.
As years wore on,
shedding their snows above his sable veil,
he acquired a name throughout the New England churches,
and they called him Father Hooper.
Nearly all his parishioners,
who were of mature age when he was settled,
had been borne away by many a funeral:
he had one congregation in the church,
and a more crowded one in the churchyard;
and having wrought so late into the evening,
and done his work so well,
it was now good Father Hooper's turn
to rest.
Several persons were visible by the shaded candlelight,
in the death chamber of the old clergyman.
Natural connections he had none.
But there was the decorously grave,
though unmoved physician,
seeking only
to mitigate the last pangs of the patient whom he could not save.
There were the deacons,
and other eminently pious members of his church.
There,
also,
was the Reverend Mr. Clark,
of Westbury,
a young and zealous divine,
who had ridden in haste
to pray by the bedside of the expiring minister.
There was the nurse,
no hired handmaiden of death,
but one whose calm affection had endured thus long in secrecy,
in solitude,
amid the chill of age,
and would not perish,
even at the dying hour.
Who,
but Elizabeth! And there lay the hoary head of good Father Hooper upon the death pillow,
with the black veil still swathed about his brow,
and reaching down over his face,
so that each more difficult gasp of his faint breath caused it
to stir.
All through life that piece of crape had hung between him and the world:
it had separated him from cheerful brotherhood and woman's love,
and kept him in that saddest of all prisons,
his own heart;
and still it lay upon his face,
as if
to deepen the gloom of his darksome chamber,
and shade him from the sunshine of eternity.
For some time previous,
his mind had been confused,
wavering doubtfully between the past and the present,
and hovering forward,
as it were,
at intervals,
into the indistinctness of the world
to come.
There had been feverish turns,
which tossed him from side
to side,
and wore away what little strength he had.
But in his most convulsive struggles,
and in the wildest vagaries of his intellect,
when no other thought retained its sober influence,
he still showed an awful solicitude lest the black veil should slip aside.
Even if his bewildered soul could have forgotten,
there was a faithful woman at this pillow,
who,
with averted eyes,
would have covered that aged face,
which she had last beheld in the comeliness of manhood.
At length the death-stricken old man lay quietly in the torpor of mental and bodily exhaustion,
with an imperceptible pulse,
and breath that grew fainter and fainter,
except when a long,
deep,
and irregular inspiration seemed
to prelude the flight of his spirit.
The minister of Westbury approached the bedside.
"Venerable Father Hooper,"
said he,
"the moment of your release is at hand.
Are you ready
for the lifting of the veil that shuts in time from eternity?"
Father Hooper at first replied merely by a feeble motion of his head;
then,
apprehensive,
perhaps,
that his meaning might be doubted,
he exerted himself
to speak.
"Yea,"
said he,
in faint accents,
"my soul hath a patient weariness until that veil be lifted."
"And is it fitting,"
resumed the Reverend Mr. Clark,
"that a man so given
to prayer,
of such a blameless example,
holy in deed and thought,
so far as mortal judgment may pronounce;
is it fitting that a father in the church should leave a shadow on his memory,
that may seem
to blacken a life so pure?
I pray you,
my venerable brother,
let not this thing be! Suffer us
to be gladdened by your triumphant aspect as you go
to your reward.
Before the veil of eternity be lifted,
let me cast aside this black veil from your face!"
And thus speaking,
the Reverend Mr. Clark bent forward
to reveal the mystery of so many years.
But,
exerting a sudden energy,
that made all the beholders stand aghast,
Father Hooper snatched both his hands from beneath the bedclothes,
and pressed them strongly on the black veil,
resolute
to struggle,
if the minister of Westbury would contend
with a dying man.
"Never!"
cried the veiled clergyman.
"On earth,
never!"
"Dark old man!"
exclaimed the affrighted minister,
"with what horrible crime upon your soul are you now passing
to the judgment?"
Father Hooper's breath heaved;
it rattled in his throat;
but,
with a mighty effort,
grasping forward
with his hands,
he caught hold of life,
and held it back till he should speak.
He even raised himself in bed;
and there he sat,
shivering
with the arms of death around him,
while the black veil hung down,
awful,
at that last moment,
in the gathered terrors of a lifetime.
And yet the faint,
sad smile,
so often there,
now seemed
to glimmer from its obscurity,
and linger on Father Hooper's lips.
"Why do you tremble at me alone?"
cried he,
turning his veiled face round the circle of pale spectators.
"Tremble also at each other! Have men avoided me,
and women shown no pity,
and children screamed and fled,
only
for my black veil?
What,
but the mystery which it obscurely typifies,
has made this piece of crape so awful?
When the friend shows his inmost heart
to his friend;
the lover
to his best beloved;
when man does not vainly shrink from the eye of his Creator,
loathsomely treasuring up the secret of his sin;
then deem me a monster,
for the symbol beneath which I have lived,
and die! I look around me,
and,
lo! on every visage a Black Veil!"
While his auditors shrank from one another,
in mutual affright,
Father Hooper fell back upon his pillow,
a veiled corpse,
with a faint smile lingering on the lips.
Still veiled,
they laid him in his coffin,
and a veiled corpse they bore him
to the grave.
The grass of many years has sprung up and withered on that grave,
the burial stone is moss-grown,
and good Mr. Hooper's face is dust;
but awful is still the thought that it mouldered beneath the Black Veil! THE MAYPOLE OF MERRY MOUNT There is an admirable foundation
for a philosophic romance in the curious history of the early settlement of Mount Wollaston,
or Merry Mount.
In the slight sketch here attempted,
the facts,
recorded on the grave pages of our New England annalists,
have wrought themselves,
almost spontaneously,
into a sort of allegory.
The masques,
mummeries,
and festive customs,
described in the text,
are in accordance
with the manners of the age.
Authority on these points may be found in Strutt's Book of English Sports and Pastimes.
Bright were the days at Merry Mount,
when the Maypole was the banner staff of that gay colony! They who reared it,
should their banner be triumphant,
were
to pour sunshine over New England's rugged hills,
and scatter flower seeds throughout the soil.
Jollity and gloom were contending
for an empire.
Midsummer eve had come,
bringing deep verdure
to the forest,
and roses in her lap,
of a more vivid hue than the tender buds of Spring.
But May,
or her mirthful spirit,
dwelt all the year round at Merry Mount,
sporting
with the Summer months,
and revelling
with Autumn,
and basking in the glow of Winter's fireside.
Through a world of toil and care she flitted
with a dreamlike smile,
and came hither
to find a home among the lightsome hearts of Merry Mount.
Never had the Maypole been so gayly decked as at sunset on midsummer eve.
This venerated emblem was a pine-tree,
which had preserved the slender grace of youth,
while it equalled the loftiest height of the old wood monarchs.
From its top streamed a silken banner,
colored like the rainbow.
Down nearly
to the ground the pole was dressed
with birchen boughs,
and others of the liveliest green,
and some
with silvery leaves,
fastened by ribbons that fluttered in fantastic knots of twenty different colors,
but no sad ones.
Garden flowers,
and blossoms of the wilderness,
laughed gladly forth amid the verdure,
so fresh and dewy that they must have grown by magic on that happy pine-tree.
Where this green and flowery splendor terminated,
the shaft of the Maypole was stained
with the seven brilliant hues of the banner at its top.
On the lowest green bough hung an abundant wreath of roses,
some that had been gathered in the sunniest spots of the forest,
and others,
of still richer blush,
which the colonists had reared from English seed.
O,
people of the Golden Age,
the chief of your husbandry was
to raise flowers! But what was the wild throng that stood hand in hand about the Maypole?
It could not be that the fauns and nymphs,
when driven from their classic groves and homes of ancient fable,
had sought refuge,
as all the persecuted did,
in the fresh woods of the West.
These were Gothic monsters,
though perhaps of Grecian ancestry.
On the shoulders of a comely youth uprose the head and branching antlers of a stag;
a second,
human in all other points,
had the grim visage of a wolf;
a third,
still
with the trunk and limbs of a mortal man,
showed the beard and horns of a venerable he-goat.
There was the likeness of a bear erect,
brute in all but his hind legs,
which were adorned
with pink silk stockings.
And here again,
almost as wondrous,
stood a real bear of the dark forest,
lending each of his fore paws
to the grasp of a human hand,
and as ready
for the dance as any in that circle.
His inferior nature rose half way,
to meet his companions as they stooped.
Other faces wore the similitude of man or woman,
but distorted or extravagant,
with red noses pendulous before their mouths,
which seemed of awful depth,
and stretched from ear
to ear in an eternal fit of laughter.
Here might be seen the Savage Man,
well known in heraldry,
hairy as a baboon,
and girdled
with green leaves.
By his side a noble figure,
but still a counterfeit,
appeared an Indian hunter,
with feathery crest and wampum belt.
Many of this strange company wore foolscaps,
and had little bells appended
to their garments,
tinkling
with a silvery sound,
responsive
to the inaudible music of their gleesome spirits.
Some youths and maidens were of soberer garb,
yet well maintained their places in the irregular throng by the expression of wild revelry upon their features.
Such were the colonists of Merry Mount,
as they stood in the broad smile of sunset round their venerated Maypole.
Had a wanderer,
bewildered in the melancholy forest,
heard their mirth,
and stolen a half-affrighted glance,
he might have fancied them the crew of Comus,
some already transformed
to brutes,
some midway between man and beast,
and the others rioting in the flow of tipsy jollity that foreran the change.
But a band of Puritans,
who watched the scene,
invisible themselves,
compared the masques
to those devils and ruined souls
with whom their superstition peopled the black wilderness.
Within the ring of monsters appeared the two airiest forms that had ever trodden on any more solid footing than a purple and golden cloud.
One was a youth in glistening apparel,
with a scarf of the rainbow pattern crosswise on his breast.
His right hand held a gilded staff,
the ensign of high dignity among the revellers,
and his left grasped the slender fingers of a fair maiden,
not less gayly decorated than himself.
Bright roses glowed in contrast
with the dark and glossy curls of each,
and were scattered round their feet,
or had sprung up spontaneously there.
Behind this lightsome couple,
so close
to the Maypole that its boughs shaded his jovial face,
stood the figure of an English priest,
canonically dressed,
yet decked
with flowers,
in heathen fashion,
and wearing a chaplet of the native vine leaves.
By the riot of his rolling eye,
and the pagan decorations of his holy garb,
he seemed the wildest monster there,
and the very Comus of the crew.
"Votaries of the Maypole,"
cried the flower-decked priest,
"merrily,
all day long,
have the woods echoed
to your mirth.
But be this your merriest hour,
my hearts! Lo,
here stand the Lord and Lady of the May,
whom I,
a clerk of Oxford,
and high priest of Merry Mount,
am presently
to join in holy matrimony.
Up
with your nimble spirits,
ye morris-dancers,
green men,
and glee maidens,
bears and wolves,
and horned gentlemen! Come;
a chorus now,
rich
with the old mirth of Merry England,
and the wilder glee of this fresh forest;
and then a dance,
to show the youthful pair what life is made of,
and how airily they should go through it! All ye that love the Maypole,
lend your voices
to the nuptial song of the Lord and Lady of the May!"
This wedlock was more serious than most affairs of Merry Mount,
where jest and delusion,
trick and fantasy,
kept up a continual carnival.
The Lord and Lady of the May,
though their titles must be laid down at sunset,
were really and truly
to be partners
for the dance of life,
beginning the measure that same bright eve.
The wreath of roses,
that hung from the lowest green bough of the Maypole,
had been twined
for them,
and would be thrown over both their heads,
in symbol of their flowery union.
When the priest had spoken,
therefore,
a riotous uproar burst from the rout of monstrous figures.
"Begin you the stave,
reverend Sir,"
cried they all;
"and never did the woods ring
to such a merry peal as we of the Maypole shall send up!"
Immediately a prelude of pipe,
cithern,
and viol,
touched
with practised minstrelsy,
began
to play from a neighboring thicket,
in such a mirthful cadence that the boughs of the Maypole quivered
to the sound.
But the May Lord,
he of the gilded staff,
chancing
to look into his Lady's eyes,
was wonder struck at the almost pensive glance that met his own.
"Edith,
sweet Lady of the May,"
whispered he reproachfully,
"is yon wreath of roses a garland
to hang above our graves,
that you look so sad?
O,
Edith,
this is our golden time! Tarnish it not by any pensive shadow of the mind;
for it may be that nothing of futurity will be brighter than the mere remembrance of what is now passing."
"That was the very thought that saddened me! How came it in your mind too?"
said Edith,
in a still lower tone than he,
for it was high treason
to be sad at Merry Mount.
"Therefore do I sigh amid this festive music.
And besides,
dear Edgar,
I struggle as
with a dream,
and fancy that these shapes of our jovial friends are visionary,
and their mirth unreal,
and that we are no true Lord and Lady of the May.
What is the mystery in my heart?"
Just then,
as if a spell had loosened them,
down came a little shower of withering rose leaves from the Maypole.
Alas,
for the young lovers! No sooner had their hearts glowed
with real passion than they were sensible of something vague and unsubstantial in their former pleasures,
and felt a dreary presentiment of inevitable change.
From the moment that they truly loved,
they had subjected themselves
to earth's doom of care and sorrow,
and troubled joy,
and had no more a home at Merry Mount.
That was Edith's mystery.
Now leave we the priest
to marry them,
and the masquers
to sport round the Maypole,
till the last sunbeam be withdrawn from its summit,
and the shadows of the forest mingle gloomily in the dance.
Meanwhile,
we may discover who these gay people were.
Two hundred years ago,
and more,
the old world and its inhabitants became mutually weary of each other.
Men voyaged by thousands
to the West:
some
to barter glass beads,
and such like jewels,
for the furs of the Indian hunter;
some
to conquer virgin empires;
and one stern band
to pray.
But none of these motives had much weight
with the colonists of Merry Mount.
Their leaders were men who had sported so long
with life,
that when Thought and Wisdom came,
even these unwelcome guests were led astray by the crowd of vanities which they should have put
to flight.
Erring Thought and perverted Wisdom were made
to put on masques,
and play the fool.
The men of whom we speak,
after losing the heart's fresh gayety,
imagined a wild philosophy of pleasure,
and came hither
to act out their latest day-dream.
They gathered followers from all that giddy tribe whose whole life is like the festal days of soberer men.
In their train were minstrels,
not unknown in London streets;
wandering players,
whose theatres had been the halls of noblemen;
mummers,
rope-dancers,
and mountebanks,
who would long be missed at wakes,
church ales,
and fairs;
in a word,
mirth makers of every sort,
such as abounded in that age,
but now began
to be discountenanced by the rapid growth of Puritanism.
Light had their footsteps been on land,
and as lightly they came across the sea.
Many had been maddened by their previous troubles into a gay despair;
others were as madly gay in the flush of youth,
like the May Lord and his Lady;
but whatever might be the quality of their mirth,
old and young were gay at Merry Mount.
The young deemed themselves happy.
The elder spirits,
if they knew that mirth was but the counterfeit of happiness,
yet followed the false shadow wilfully,
because at least her garments glittered brightest.
Sworn triflers of a lifetime,
they would not venture among the sober truths of life not even
to be truly blest.
All the hereditary pastimes of Old England were transplanted hither.
The King of Christmas was duly crowned,
and the Lord of Misrule bore potent sway.
On the Eve of St. John,
they felled whole acres of the forest
to make bonfires,
and danced by the blaze all night,
crowned
with garlands,
and throwing flowers into the flame.
At harvest time,
though their crop was of the smallest,
they made an image
with the sheaves of Indian corn,
and wreathed it
with autumnal garlands,
and bore it home triumphantly.
But what chiefly characterized the colonists of Merry Mount was their veneration
for the Maypole.
It has made their true history a poet's tale.
Spring decked the hallowed emblem
with young blossoms and fresh green boughs;
Summer brought roses of the deepest blush,
and the perfected foliage of the forest;
Autumn enriched it
with that red and yellow gorgeousness which converts each wildwood leaf into a painted flower;
and Winter silvered it
with sleet,
and hung it round
with icicles,
till it flashed in the cold sunshine,
itself a frozen sunbeam.
Thus each alternate season did homage
to the Maypole,
and paid it a tribute of its own richest splendor.
Its votaries danced round it,
once,
at least,
in every month;
sometimes they called it their religion,
or their altar;
but always,
it was the banner staff of Merry Mount.
Unfortunately,
there were men in the new world of a sterner faith than those Maypole worshippers.
Not far from Merry Mount was a settlement of Puritans,
most dismal wretches,
who said their prayers before daylight,
and then wrought in the forest or the cornfield till evening made it prayer time again.
Their weapons were always at hand
to shoot down the straggling savage.
When they met in conclave,
it was never
to keep up the old English mirth,
but
to hear sermons three hours long,
or
to proclaim bounties on the heads of wolves and the scalps of Indians.
Their festivals were fast days,
and their chief pastime the singing of psalms.
Woe
to the youth or maiden who did but dream of a dance! The selectman nodded
to the constable;
and there sat the light-heeled reprobate in the stocks;
or if he danced,
it was round the whipping-post,
which might be termed the Puritan Maypole.
A party of these grim Puritans,
toiling through the difficult woods,
each
with a horseload of iron armor
to burden his footsteps,
would sometimes draw near the sunny precincts of Merry Mount.
There were the silken colonists,
sporting round their Maypole;
perhaps teaching a bear
to dance,
or striving
to communicate their mirth
to the grave Indian;
or masquerading in the skins of deer and wolves,
which they had hunted
for that especial purpose.
Often,
the whole colony were playing at blindman's buff,
magistrates and all,
with their eyes bandaged,
except a single scapegoat,
whom the blinded sinners pursued by the tinkling of the bells at his garments.
Once,
it is said,
they were seen following a flower-decked corpse,
with merriment and festive music,
to his grave.
But did the dead man laugh?
In their quietest times,
they sang ballads and told tales,
for the edification of their pious visitors;
or perplexed them
with juggling tricks;
or grinned at them through horse collars;
and when sport itself grew wearisome,
they made game of their own stupidity,
and began a yawning match.
At the very least of these enormities,
the men of iron shook their heads and frowned so darkly that the revellers looked up imagining that a momentary cloud had overcast the sunshine,
which was
to be perpetual there.
On the other hand,
the Puritans affirmed that,
when a psalm was pealing from their place of worship,
the echo which the forest sent them back seemed often like the chorus of a jolly catch,
closing
with a roar of laughter.
Who but the fiend,
and his bond slaves,
the crew of Merry Mount,
had thus disturbed them?
In due time,
a feud arose,
stern and bitter on one side,
and as serious on the other as anything could be among such light spirits as had sworn allegiance
to the Maypole.
The future complexion of New England was involved in this important quarrel.
Should the grizzly saints establish their jurisdiction over the gay sinners,
then would their spirits darken all the clime,
and make it a land of clouded visages,
of hard toil,
of sermon and psalm forever.
But should the banner staff of Merry Mount be fortunate,
sunshine would break upon the hills,
and flowers would beautify the forest,
and late posterity do homage
to the Maypole.
After these authentic passages from history,
we return
to the nuptials of the Lord and Lady of the May.
Alas! we have delayed too long,
and must darken our tale too suddenly.
As we glance again at the Maypole,
a solitary sunbeam is fading from the summit,
and leaves only a faint,
golden tinge blended
with the hues of the rainbow banner.
Even that dim light is now withdrawn,
relinquishing the whole domain of Merry Mount
to the evening gloom,
which has rushed so instantaneously from the black surrounding woods.
But some of these black shadows have rushed forth in human shape.
Yes,
with the setting sun,
the last day of mirth had passed from Merry Mount.
The ring of gay masquers was disordered and broken;
the stag lowered his antlers in dismay;
the wolf grew weaker than a lamb;
the bells of the morris-dancers tinkled
with tremulous affright.
The Puritans had played a characteristic part in the Maypole mummeries.
Their darksome figures were intermixed
with the wild shapes of their foes,
and made the scene a picture of the moment,
when waking thoughts start up amid the scattered fantasies of a dream.
The leader of the hostile party stood in the centre of the circle,
while the route of monsters cowered around him,
like evil spirits in the presence of a dread magician.
No fantastic foolery could look him in the face.
So stern was the energy of his aspect,
that the whole man,
visage,
frame,
and soul,
seemed wrought of iron,
gifted
with life and thought,
yet all of one substance
with his headpiece and breastplate.
It was the Puritan of Puritans;
it was Endicott himself!
"Stand off,
priest of Baal!"
said he,
with a grim frown,
and laying no reverent hand upon the surplice.
"I know thee,
Blackstone![1] Thou art the man who couldst not abide the rule even of thine own corrupted church,
and hast come hither
to preach iniquity,
and
to give example of it in thy life.
But now shall it be seen that the Lord hath sanctified this wilderness
for his peculiar people.
Woe unto them that would defile it! And first,
for this flower-decked abomination,
the altar of thy worship!"
[1] Did Governor Endicott speak less positively,
we should suspect a mistake here.
The Rev.
Mr.Blackstone,
though an eccentric,
is not known
to have been an immoral man.
We rather doubt his identity
with the priest of Merry Mount.
And
with his keen sword Endicott assaulted the hallowed Maypole.
Nor long did it resist his arm.
It groaned
with a dismal sound;
it showered leaves and rosebuds upon the remorseless enthusiast;
and finally,
with all its green boughs and ribbons and flowers,
symbolic of departed pleasures,
down fell the banner staff of Merry Mount.
As it sank,
tradition says,
the evening sky grew darker,
and the woods threw forth a more sombre shadow
"There,"
cried Endicott,
looking triumphantly on his work,
"there lies the only Maypole in New England! The thought is strong within me that,
by its fall,
is shadowed forth the fate of light and idle mirth makers,
amongst us and our posterity.
Amen,
saith John Endicott."
"Amen!"
echoed his followers.
But the votaries of the Maypole gave one groan
for their idol.
At the sound,
the Puritan leader glanced at the crew of Comus,
each a figure of broad mirth,
yet,
at this moment,
strangely expressive of sorrow and dismay.
"Valiant captain,"
quoth Peter Palfrey,
the Ancient of the band,
"what order shall be taken
with the prisoners?"
"I thought not
to repent me of cutting down a Maypole,"
replied Endicott,
"yet now I could find in my heart
to plant it again,
and give each of these bestial pagans one other dance round their idol.
It would have served rarely
for a whipping-post!"
"But there are pine-trees enow,"
suggested the lieutenant.
"True,
good Ancient,"
said the leader.
"Wherefore,
bind the heathen crew,
and bestow on them a small matter of stripes apiece,
as earnest of our future justice.
Set some of the rogues in the stocks
to rest themselves,
so soon as Providence shall bring us
to one of our own well-ordered settlements where such accommodations may be found.
Further penalties,
such as branding and cropping of ears,
shall be thought of hereafter."
"How many stripes
for the priest?"
inquired Ancient Palfrey.
"None as yet,"
answered Endicott,
bending his iron frown upon the culprit.
"It must be
for the Great and General Court
to determine,
whether stripes and long imprisonment,
and other grievous penalty,
may atone
for his transgressions.
Let him look
to himself!
for such as violate our civil order,
it may be permitted us
to show mercy.
But woe
to the wretch that troubleth our religion."
"And this dancing bear,"
resumed the officer.
"Must he share the stripes of his fellows?"
"Shoot him through the head!"
said the energetic Puritan.
"I suspect witchcraft in the beast."
"Here be a couple of shining ones,"
continued Peter Palfrey,
pointing his weapon at the Lord and Lady of the May.
"They seem
to be of high station among these misdoers.
Methinks their dignity will not be fitted
with less than a double share of stripes."
Endicott rested on his sword,
and closely surveyed the dress and aspect of the hapless pair.
There they stood,
pale,
downcast,
and apprehensive.
Yet there was an air of mutual support and of pure affection,
seeking aid and giving it,
that showed them
to be man and wife,
with the sanction of a priest upon their love.
The youth,
in the peril of the moment,
had dropped his gilded staff,
and thrown his arm about the Lady of the May,
who leaned against his breast,
too lightly
to burden him,
but
with weight enough
to express that their destinies were linked together,
for good or evil.
They looked first at each other,
and then into the grim captain's face.
There they stood,
in the first hour of wedlock,
while the idle pleasures,
of which their companions were the emblems,
had given place
to the sternest cares of life,
personified by the dark Puritans.
But never had their youthful beauty seemed so pure and high as when its glow was chastened by adversity.
"Youth,"
said Endicott,
"ye stand in an evil case thou and thy maiden wife.
Make ready presently,
for I am minded that ye shall both have a token
to remember your wedding day!"
"Stern man,"
cried the May Lord,
"how can I move thee?
Were the means at hand,
I would resist
to the death.
Being powerless,
I entreat! Do
with me as thou wilt,
but let Edith go untouched!"
"Not so,"
replied the immitigable zealot.
"We are not wont
to show an idle courtesy
to that sex,
which requireth the stricter discipline.
What sayest thou,
maid?
Shall thy silken bridegroom suffer thy share of the penalty,
besides his own?"
"Be it death,"
said Edith,
"and lay it all on me!"
Truly,
as Endicott had said,
the poor lovers stood in a woful case.
Their foes were triumphant,
their friends captive and abased,
their home desolate,
the benighted wilderness around them,
and a rigorous destiny,
in the shape of the Puritan leader,
their only guide.
Yet the deepening twilight could not altogether conceal that the iron man was softened;
he smiled at the fair spectacle of early love;
he almost sighed
for the inevitable blight of early hopes.
"The troubles of life have come hastily on this young couple,"
observed Endicott.
"We will see how they comport themselves under their present trials ere we burden them
with greater.
If,
among the spoil,
there be any garments of a more decent fashion,
let them be put upon this May Lord and his Lady,
instead of their glistening vanities.
Look
to it,
some of you.
"And shall not the youth's hair be cut?"
asked Peter Palfrey,
looking
with abhorrence at the lovelock and long glossy curls of the young man.
"Crop it forthwith,
and that in the true pumpkin-shell fashion,"
answered the captain.
"Then bring them along
with us,
but more gently than their fellows.
There be qualities in the youth,
which may make him valiant
to fight,
and sober
to toil,
and pious
to pray;
and in the maiden,
that may fit her
to become a mother in our Israel,
bringing up babes in better nurture than her own hath been.
Nor think ye,
young ones,
that they are the happiest,
even in our lifetime of a moment,
who misspend it in dancing round a Maypole!"
And Endicott,
the severest Puritan of all who laid the rock foundation of New England,
lifted the wreath of roses from the ruin of the Maypole,
and threw it,
with his own gauntleted hand,
over the heads of the Lord and Lady of the May.
It was a deed of prophecy.
As the moral gloom of the world overpowers all systematic gayety,
even so was their home of wild mirth made desolate amid the sad forest.
They returned
to it no more.
But as their flowery garland was wreathed of the brightest roses that had grown there,
so,
in the tie that united them,
were intertwined all the purest and best of their early joys.
They went heavenward,
supporting each other along the difficult path which it was their lot
to tread,
and never wasted one regretful thought on the vanities of Merry Mount.
THE GENTLE BOY In the course of the year 1656,
several of the people called Quakers,
led,
as they professed,
by the inward movement of the spirit,
made their appearance in New England.
Their reputation,
as holders of mystic and pernicious principles,
having spread before them,
the Puritans early endeavored
to banish,
and
to prevent the further intrusion of the rising sect.
But the measures by which it was intended
to purge the land of heresy,
though more than sufficiently vigorous,
were entirely unsuccessful.
The Quakers,
esteeming persecution as a divine call
to the post of danger,
laid claim
to a holy courage,
unknown
to the Puritans themselves,
who had shunned the cross,
by providing
for the peaceable exercise of their religion in a distant wilderness.
Though it was the singular fact,
that every nation of the earth rejected the wandering enthusiasts who practised peace towards all men,
the place of greatest uneasiness and peril,
and therefore,
in their eyes the most eligible,
was the province of Massachusetts Bay.
The fines,
imprisonments,
and stripes,
liberally distributed by our pious forefathers;
the popular antipathy,
so strong that it endured nearly a hundred years after actual persecution had ceased,
were attractions as powerful
for the Quakers,
as peace,
honor,
and reward,
would have been
for the worldly minded.
Every European vessel brought new cargoes of the sect,
eager
to testify against the oppression which they hoped
to share;
and when shipmasters were restrained by heavy fines from affording them passage,
they made long and circuitous journeys through the Indian country,
and appeared in the province as if conveyed by a supernatural power.
Their enthusiasm,
heightened almost
to madness by the treatment which they received,
produced actions contrary
to the rules of decency,
as well as of rational religion,
and presented a singular contrast
to the calm and staid deportment of their sectarian successors of the present day.
The command of the spirit,
inaudible except
to the soul,
and not
to be controverted on grounds of human wisdom,
was made a plea
for most indecorous exhibitions,
which,
abstractedly considered,
well deserved the moderate chastisement of the rod.
These extravagances,
and the persecution which was at once their cause and consequence,
continued
to increase,
till,
in the year 1659,
the government of Massachusetts Bay indulged two members of the Quaker sect
with a crown of martyrdom.
An indelible stain of blood is upon the hands of all who consented
to this act,
but a large share of the awful responsibility must rest upon the person then at the head of the government.
He was a man of narrow mind and imperfect education,
and his uncompromising bigotry was made hot and mischievous by violent and hasty passions;
he exerted his influence indecorously and unjustifiably
to compass the death of the enthusiasts;
and his whole conduct,
in respect
to them,
was marked by brutal cruelty.
The Quakers,
whose revengeful feelings were not less deep because they were inactive,
remembered this man and his associates in after times.
The historian of the sect affirms that,
by the wrath of Heaven,
a blight fell upon the land in the vicinity of the
"bloody town"
of Boston,
so that no wheat would grow there;
and he takes his stand,
as it were,
among the graves of the ancient persecutors,
and triumphantly recounts the judgments that overtook them,
in old age or at the parting hour.
He tells us that they died suddenly and violently and in madness;
but nothing can exceed the bitter mockery
with which he records the loathsome disease,
and
"death by rottenness,"
of the fierce and cruel governor.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
On the evening of the autumn day that had witnessed the martyrdom of two men of the Quaker persuasion,
a Puritan settler was returning from the metropolis
to the neighboring country town in which he resided.
The air was cool,
the sky clear,
and the lingering twilight was made brighter by the rays of a young moon,
which had now nearly reached the verge of the horizon.
The traveller,
a man of middle age,
wrapped in a gray frieze cloak,
quickened his pace when he had reached the outskirts of the town,
for a gloomy extent of nearly four miles lay between him and his home.
The low,
straw-thatched houses were scattered at considerable intervals along the road,
and the country having been settled but about thirty years,
the tracts of original forest still bore no small proportion
to the cultivated ground.
The autumn wind wandered among the branches,
whirling away the leaves from all except the pine-trees,
and moaning as if it lamented the desolation of which it was the instrument.
The road had penetrated the mass of woods that lay nearest
to the town,
and was just emerging into an open space,
when the traveller's ears were saluted by a sound more mournful than even that of the wind.
It was like the wailing of someone in distress,
and it seemed
to proceed from beneath a tall and lonely fir-tree,
in the centre of a cleared but uninclosed and uncultivated field.
The Puritan could not but remember that this was the very spot which had been made accursed a few hours before by the execution of the Quakers whose bodies had been thrown together into one hasty grave,
beneath the tree on which they suffered.
He struggled however,
against the superstitious fears which belonged
to the age,
and compelled himself
to pause and listen.
"The voice is most likely mortal,
nor have I cause
to tremble if it be otherwise,"
thought he,
straining his eyes through the dim moonlight.
"Methinks it is like the wailing of a child;
some infant,
it may be,
which has strayed from its mother,
and chanced upon this place of death.
For the ease of mine own conscience I must search this matter out."
He therefore left the path,
and walked somewhat fearfully across the field.
Though now so desolate,
its soil was pressed down and trampled by the thousand footsteps of those who had witnessed the spectacle of that day,
all of whom had now retired,
leaving the dead
to their loneliness.
The traveller,
at length reached the fir-tree,
which from the middle upward was covered
with living branches,
although a scaffold had been erected beneath,
and other preparations made
for the work of death.
Under this unhappy tree,
which in after times was believed
to drop poison
with its dew,
sat the one solitary mourner
for innocent blood.
It was a slender and light clad little boy,
who leaned his face upon a hillock of fresh-turned and half-frozen earth,
and wailed bitterly,
yet in a suppressed tone,
as if his grief might receive the punishment of crime.
The Puritan,
whose approach had been unperceived,
laid his hand upon the child's shoulder,
and addressed him compassionately.
"You have chosen a dreary lodging,
my poor boy,
and no wonder that you weep,"
said he.
"But dry your eyes,
and tell me where your mother dwells.
I promise you,
if the journey be not too far,
I will leave you in her arms to-night."
The boy had hushed his wailing at once,
and turned his face upward
to the stranger.
It was a pale,
bright-eyed countenance,
certainly not more than six years old,
but sorrow,
fear,
and want had destroyed much of its infantile expression.
The Puritan seeing the boy's frightened gaze,
and feeling that he trembled under his hand,
endeavored
to reassure him.
"Nay,
if I intended
to do you harm,
little lad,
the readiest way were
to leave you here.
What! you do not fear
to sit beneath the gallows on a new-made grave,
and yet you tremble at a friend's touch.
Take heart,
child,
and tell me what is your name and where is your home?"
"Friend,"
replied the little boy,
in a sweet though faltering voice,
"they call me Ilbrahim,
and my home is here."
The pale,
spiritual face,
the eyes that seemed
to mingle
with the moonlight,
the sweet,
airy voice,
and the outlandish name,
almost made the Puritan believe that the boy was in truth a being which had sprung up out of the grave on which he sat.
But perceiving that the apparition stood the test of a short mental prayer,
and remembering that the arm which he had touched was lifelike,
he adopted a more rational supposition.
"The poor child is stricken in his intellect,"
thought he,
"but verily his words are fearful in a place like this."
He then spoke soothingly,
intending
to humor the bo