Tales Of Puritan Land - Charles M. Skinner
The figure on the bed tried to hide its hideous face. "Do not look on
me," it cried. "I am cursed for my pride that I wrapped about me as a
mantle. You are avenged. I am Eleanore Rochcliffe."
The lunatic stared for a moment, then the house echoed with his laughter.
The deadly mantle lay on a chair. He snatched it up, and waving also the
red flag of the pestilence ran into the street. In a short time an effigy
wrapped in the mantle was borne to Province House and set on fire by a
mob. From that hour the pest abated and soon disappeared, though graves
and scars made a bitter memory of it for many a year. Unhappiest of all
was the disfigured creature who wandered amid the shadows of Province
House, never showing her face, unloved, avoided, lonely.
HOWE'S MASQUERADE
During the siege of Boston Sir William Howe undertook to show his
contempt for the raw fellows who were disrespectfully tossing
cannon-balls at him from the batteries in Cambridge and South Boston, by
giving a masquerade. It was a brilliant affair, the belles and blades of
the loyalist set being present, some in the garb of their ancestors, for
the past is ever more picturesque than the present, and a few roisterers
caricaturing the American generals in ragged clothes, false noses, and
absurd wigs. At the height of the merriment a sound of a dirge echoing
through the streets caused the dance to stop. The funeral music paused
before the doors of Province House, where the dance was going on, and
they were flung open. Muffled drums marked time for a company that began
to file down the great stair from the floor above the ball-room: dark men
in steeple-hats and pointed beards, with Bibles, swords, and scrolls, who
looked sternly at the guests and descended to the street.
Colonel Joliffe, a Whig, whose age and infirmity had prevented him from
joining Washington, and whose courtesy and intelligence had made him
respected by his foes, acted as chorus: "These I take to be the Puritan
governors of Massachusetts: Endicott, Winthrop, Vane, Dudley, Haynes,
Bellingham, Leverett, Bradstreet." Then came a rude soldier, mailed,
begirt with arms: the tyrant Andros; a brown-faced man with a sailor's
gait: Sir William Phipps; a courtier wigged and jewelled: Earl Bellomont;
the crafty, well-mannered Dudley; the twinkling, red-nosed Shute; the
ponderous Burnet; the gouty Belcher; Shirley, Pownall, Bernard,
Hutchinson; then a soldier, whose cocked hat he held before his face.
"'Tis the shape of Gage!" cried an officer, turning pale. The lights were
dull and an uncomfortable silence had fallen on the company. Last, came a
tall man muffled in a military cloak, and as he paused on the landing the
guests looked from him to their host in amazement, for it was the figure
of Howe himself. The governor's patience was at an end, for this was a
part of the masquerade that had not been looked for. He fiercely cried to
Joliffe, "There is a plot in this. Your head has stood too long on a
traitor's shoulders."
"Make haste to cut it off, then," was the reply, "for the power of Sir
William Howe and of the king, his master, is at an end. These shadows are
mourners at his funeral. Look! The last of the governors."
Howe rushed with drawn sword on the figure of himself, when it turned and
looked at him. The blade clanged to the floor and Howe fell back with a
gasp of horror, for the face was his own. Hand nor voice was raised to
stay the double-goer as it mournfully passed on. At the threshold it
stamped its foot and shook its fists in air; then the door closed.
Mingled with the strains of the funeral march, as it died along the empty
streets, came the tolling of the bell on South Church steeple, striking
the hour of midnight. The festivities were at an end and, oppressed by a
nameless fear, the spectators of this strange pageant made ready for
departure; but before they left the booming of cannon at the southward
announced that Washington had advanced. The glories of Province House
were over. When the last of the royal governors left it he paused on the
threshold, beat his foot on the stone, and flung up his hands in an
attitude of grief and rage.
OLD ESTHER DUDLEY
Boston had surrendered. Washington was advancing from the heights where
he had trained his guns on the British works, and Sir William Howe
lingered at the door of Province House,--last of the royal governors who
would stand there,--and cursed and waved his hands and beat his heel on
the step, as if he were crushing rebellion by that act. The sound brought
an old woman to his side. "Esther Dudley!" he exclaimed. "Why are you not
gone?"
"I shall never leave. As housekeeper for the governors and pensioner of
the king, this has been my home; the only home I know. Go back, but send
more troops. I will keep the house till you return."
"Grant that I may return," he cried. "Since you will stay, take this bag
of guineas and keep this key until a governor shall demand it."
Then, with fierce and moody brow, the governor went forth, and the faded
eyes of Esther Dudley saw him nevermore. When the soldiers of the
republic cast about for quarters in Boston town, they spared the official
mansion to this old woman. Her bridling toryism and assumption of old
state amused them and did no harm; indeed, her loyalty was half admired;
beside, nobody took the pride in the place that she did, or would keep it
in better order. That she sometimes had a half-dozen of unrepentant
codgers in to dinner, and that they were suspected of drinking healths to
George III. in crusted port, was a fact to blink. Rumor had it that not
all her guests were flesh and blood, but that she had an antique mirror
across which ancient occupants of the house would pass in shadowy
procession at her command, and that she was wont to have the Shirleys,
Olivers, Hutchinsons, and Dudleys out of their graves to hold receptions
there; so a touch of dread may have mingled in the feeling that kept the
populace aloof.
Living thus by herself, refusing to hear of rebel victories, construing
the bonfires, drumming, hurrahs, and bell-ringing to signify fresh
triumphs for England, she drifted farther and farther out of her time and
existed in the shadows of the past. She lighted the windows for the
king's birthday, and often from the cupola watched for a British fleet,
heeding not the people below, who, as they saw her withered face,
repeated the prophecy, with a laugh "When the golden Indian on Province
House shall shoot his arrow and the cock on South Church spire shall
crow, look for a royal governor again." So, when it was bandied about the
streets that the governor was coming, she took it in no wise strange, but
dressed herself in silk and hoops, with store of ancient jewels, and made
ready to receive him. In truth, there was a function, for already a man
of stately mien, and richly dressed, was advancing through the court,
with a staff of men in wigs and laced coats behind him, and a company of
troops at a little distance. Esther Dudley flung the door wide and
dropping on her knees held forth the key with the cry, "Thank heaven for
this hour! God save the king!"
The governor put off his hat and helped the woman to her feet. "A strange
prayer," said he; "yet we will echo it to this effect: For the good of
the realm that still owns him to be its ruler, God save King George."
Esther Dudley stared wildly. That face she remembered now,--the
proscribed rebel, John Hancock; governor, not by royal grant, but by the
people's will.
"Have I welcomed a traitor? Then let me die."
"Alas! Mistress Dudley, the world has changed for you in these later
years. America has no king." He offered her his arm, and she clung to it
for a moment, then, sinking down, the great key, that she so long had
treasured, clanked to the floor.
"I have been faithful unto death," she gasped. "God save the king!"
The people uncovered, for she was dead.
"At her tomb," said Hancock, "we will bid farewell forever to the past. A
new day has come for us. In its broad light we will press onward."
THE LOSS OF JACOB HURD
Jacob Hurd, stern witch-harrier of Ipswich, can abide nothing out of the
ordinary course of things, whether it be flight on a broomstick or the
wrong adding of figures; so his son gives him trouble, for he is an
imaginative boy, who walks alone, talking to the birds, making rhymes,
picking flowers, and dreaming. That he will never be a farmer, mechanic,
or tradesman is as good as certain, and one day when the child runs in
with a story of a golden horse, with tail and mane of silver, on which he
has ridden over land and sea, climbing mountains and swimming rivers, he
turns pale with fright lest the boy be bewitched; then, as the awfulness
of the invention becomes manifest, he cries, "Thou knowest thou art
lying," and strikes the little fellow.
The boy staggers into his mother's arms, and that night falls into a
fever, in which he raves of his horse and the places he will see, while
Jacob sits by his side, too sore in heart for words, and he never leaves
the cot for food or sleep till the fever is burned out. Just before he
closes his eyes the child looks about him and says that he hears the
horse pawing in the road, and, either for dust or cloud or sun gleam, it
seems for an instant as if the horse were there. The boy gives a cry of
joy, then sinks upon his pillow, lifeless.
Some time after this Jacob sets off one morning, while the stars are out,
to see three witches hanged, but at evening his horse comes flying up the
road, splashed with blood and foam, and the neighbors know from that of
Jacob's death, for he is lying by the wayside with an Indian arrow in his
heart and an axemark on his head. The wife runs to the door, and, though
she shakes with fear at its approach, she sees that in the sunset glow
the horse's sides have a shine like gold, and its mane and tail are
silver white. Now the animal is before the house, but the woman does not
faint or cry at the blood splash on the saddle, for--is it the dust-cloud
that takes that shape?--she sees on its back a boy with a shining face,
who throws a kiss at her,--her Paul. He, little poet, lives in spirit,
and has found happiness.
THE HOBOMAK
Such was the Indian name of the site of Westboro, Massachusetts, and the
neighboring pond was Hochomocko. The camp of the red men near the shore
was full of bustle one day, for their belle, Iano, was to marry the young
chief, Sassacus. The feast was spread and all were ready to partake of
it, when it was found that the bride was missing. One girl had seen her
steal into the wood with a roguish smile on her lip, and knew that she
intended to play hide-and-seek with Sassacus before she should be
proclaimed a wife, but the day wore on and she did not come. Among those
who were late in reaching camp was Wequoash, who brought a panther in
that he had slain on Boston Hill, and he bragged about his skill, as
usual. There had been a time when he was a rival of the chief for the
hand of Iano, and he showed surprise and concern at her continued
absence. The search went on for two days, and, at the end of that time,
the girl's body was taken from the lake.
At the funeral none groaned so piteously as Wequoash. Yet Sassacus felt
his loss so keenly that he fell into a sickness next day, and none was
found so constant in his ministrations as Wequoash; but all to no avail,
for within a week Sassacus, too, was dead. As the strongest and bravest
remaining in the tribe, Wequoash became heir to his honors by election.
A year later he sat moodily by the lakeside, when a flame burst up from
the water, and a canoe floated toward him that a mysterious agency
impelled him to enter. The boat sped toward the flame, that, at his
approach, assumed Iano's form. He heard the water gurgle as he passed
over the spot where the shape had glimmered, but there was no other sound
or check. Next year this thing occurred again, and then the spirit spoke:
"Only once more."
Yet a third time his fate took him to the spot, and as the hour came on
he called his people to him: "This," said he, "is my death-day. I have
done evil, and the time comes none too soon. Sassacus was your chief. I
envied him his happiness, and gave him poison when I nursed him. Worse
than that, I saw Iano in her canoe on her wedding-day. She had refused my
hand. I entered my canoe and chased her over the water, in pretended
sport, but in the middle of the lake I upset her birch and she was
drowned. See! she comes!"
For, as he spoke, the light danced up again, and the boat came,
self-impelled, to the strand. Wequoash entered it, and with head bent
down was hurried away. Those on the shore saw the flame condense to a
woman's shape, and a voice issued from it: "It is my hour!" A blinding
bolt of lightning fell, and at the appalling roar of thunder all hid
their faces. When they looked up, boat and flame had vanished. Whenever,
afterward, an Indian rowed across the place where the murderer had sunk,
he dropped a stone, and the monument that grew in that way can be seen on
the pond floor to this day.
BERKSHIRE TORIES
The tories of Berkshire, Massachusetts, were men who had been endeared to
the king by holding office under warrant from that sacred personage. They
have been gently dealt with by historians, but that is "overstrained
magnanimity which concentrates its charities and praises for defeated
champions of the wrong, and reserves its censures for triumphant
defenders of the right." While the following incidents have been so well
avouched that they deserve to stand as history, their picturesqueness
justifies renewed acquaintance.
Among the loyalists was Gideon Smith, of Stockbridge, who had helped
British prisoners to escape, and had otherwise made himself so obnoxious
that he was forced for a time to withdraw and pass a season of penitence
and meditation in a cavern near Lenox, that is called the Tories' Glen.
Here he lay for weeks, none but his wife knowing where he was, but at his
request she walked out every day with her children, leading them past his
cave, where he fed on their faces with hungry eyes. They prattled on,
never dreaming that their father was but a few feet from them. Smith
survived the war and lived to be on good terms with his old foes.
In Lenox lived a Tory, one of those respectable buffers to whom wealth
and family had given immunity in the early years of the war, but who
sorely tried the temper of his neighbors by damning everything American
from Washington downward. At last they could endure his abuse no longer;
his example had affected other Anglomaniacs, and a committee waited on
him to tell him that he could either swear allegiance to the colonies or
be hanged. He said he would be hanged if he would swear, or words to that
effect, and hanged he was, on a ready-made gallows in the street. He was
let down shortly, "brought around" with rum, and the oath was offered
again. He refused it. This had not been looked for. It had been taken for
granted that he would abjure his fealty to the king at the first
tightening of the cord. A conference was held, and it was declared that
retreat would be undignified and unsafe, so the Tory was swung up again,
this time with a yank that seemed to "mean business." He hung for some
time, and when lowered gave no sign of life. There was some show of alarm
at this, for nobody wanted to kill the old fellow, and every effort was
made to restore consciousness. At last the lungs heaved, the purple faded
from his cheek, his eyes opened, and he gasped, "I'll swear." With a
shout of joy the company hurried him to the tavern, seated him before the
fire, and put a glass of punch in his hand. He drank the punch to
Washington's health, and after a time was heard to remark to himself,
"It's a hard way to make Whigs, but it'll do it."
Nathan Jackson, of Tyringham, was another Yankee who had seen fit to take
arms against his countrymen, and when captured he was charged with
treason and remanded for trial. The jail, in Great Barrington, was so
little used in those days of sturdy virtue that it had become a mere
shed, fit to hold nobody, and Jackson, after being locked into it, might
have walked out whenever he felt disposed; but escape, he thought, would
have been a confession of the wrongness of Tory principles, or of a fear
to stand trial. He found life so monotonous, however, that he asked the
sheriff to let him go out to work during the day, promising to sleep in
his cell, and such was his reputation for honesty that his request was
granted without a demur, the prisoner returning every night to be locked
up. When the time approached for the court to meet in Springfield heavy
harvesting had begun, and, as there was no other case from Berkshire
County to present, the sheriff grumbled at the bother of taking his
prisoner across fifty miles of rough country, but Jackson said that he
would make it all right by going alone. The sheriff was glad to be
released from this duty, so off went the Tory to give himself up and be
tried for his life. On the way he was overtaken by Mr. Edwards, of the
Executive Council, then about to meet in Boston, and without telling his
own name or office, he learned the extraordinary errand of this lonely
pedestrian. Jackson was tried, admitted the charges against him, and was
sentenced to death. While he awaited execution of the law upon him, the
council in Boston received petitions for clemency, and Mr. Edwards asked
if there was none in favor of Nathan Jackson. There was none. Mr. Edwards
related the circumstance of his meeting with the condemned man, and a
murmur of surprise and admiration went around the room. A despatch was
sent to Springfield. When it reached there the prison door was flung open
and Jackson walked forth free.
THE REVENGE OF JOSIAH BREEZE
Two thousand Cape Cod fishermen had gone to join the colonial army, and
in their absence the British ships had run in shore to land crews on
mischievous errands. No man, woman, or child on the Cape but hated the
troops and sailors of King George, and would do anything to work them
harm. When the Somerset was wrecked off Truro, in 1778, the crew were
helped ashore, 'tis true, but they were straightway marched to prison,
and it was thought that no other frigate would venture near the shifting
dunes where she had laid her skeleton, as many a good ship had done
before and has done since. It was November, and ugly weather was shutting
in, when a three-decker, that had been tacking off shore and that flew
the red flag, was seen to yaw wildly while reefing sail and drift toward
land with a broken tiller. No warning signal was raised on the bluffs;
not a hand was stirred to rescue. Those who saw the accident watched with
sullen satisfaction the on-coming of the vessel, nor did they cease to
look for disaster when the ship anchored and stowed sail.
Ezekiel and Josiah Breeze, father and son, stood at the door of their
cottage and watched her peril until three lights twinkling faintly
through the gray of driving snow were all that showed where the enemy
lay, straining at her cables and tossing on a wrathful sea. They stood
long in silence, but at last the boy exclaimed, "I'm going to the ship."
"If you stir from here, you're no son of mine," said Ezekiel.
"But she's in danger, dad."
"As she oughter be. By mornin' she'll be strewed along the shore and not
a spar to mark where she's a-swingin' now."
"And the men?"
"It's a jedgment, boy."
The lad remembered how the sailors of the Ajax had come ashore to burn
the homes of peaceful fishermen and farmers; how women had been insulted;
how his friends and mates had been cut down at Long Island with British
lead and steel; how, when he ran to warn away a red-faced fellow that was
robbing his garden, the man had struck him on the shoulder with a
cutlass. He had sworn then to be revenged. But to let a host go down to
death and never lift a helping hand--was that a fair revenge? "I've got
to go, dad," he burst forth. "Tomorrow morning there'll be five hundred
faces turned up on the beach, covered with ice and staring at the sky,
and five hundred mothers in England will wonder when they're goin' to see
those faces again. If ever they looked at me the sight of 'em would never
go out of my eyes. I'd be harnted by 'em, awake and asleep. And to-morrow
is Thanksgiving. I've got to go, dad, and I will." So speaking, he rushed
away and was swallowed in the gloom.
The man stared after him; then, with a revulsion of feeling, he cried,
"You're right, 'Siah. I'll go with you." But had he called in tones of
thunder he would not have been heard in the roar of the wind and crash of
the surf. As he reached the shore he saw faintly on the phosphorescent
foam a something that climbed a hill of water; it was lost over its crest
and reappeared on the wave beyond; it showed for a moment on the third
wave, then it vanished in the night. "Josiah!" It was a long, querulous
cry. No answer. In half an hour a thing rode by the watcher on the sands
and fell with a crash beside him--a boat bottom up: his son's.
Next day broke clear, with new snow on the ground. In his house at
Provincetown, Captain Breeze was astir betimes, for his son Ezekiel, his
grandson Josiah, and all other relatives who were not at the front with
Washington were coming for the family reunion. Plump turkeys were ready
for the roasting, great loaves of bread and cake stood beside the oven,
redoubtable pies of pumpkin and apple filled the air with maddening
odors. The people gathered and chattered around his cheery fire of the
damage that the storm had done, when Ezekiel stumbled in, his brown face
haggard, his lips working, and a tremor in his hands. He said, "Josiah!"
in a thick voice, then leaned his arms against the chimney and pressed
his face upon them. Among fishermen whose lives are in daily peril the
understanding of misfortune is quick, and the old man put his hand on the
shoulder of his son and bent his head. The day of joy was become a day of
gloom. As the news went out, the house began to fill with sympathizing
friends, and there was talking in low voices through the rooms, when a
cry of surprise was heard outside. A ship, cased in tons of ice, was
forging up the harbor, her decks swarming with blue jackets, some of whom
were beating off the frozen masses from lower spars and rigging. She
followed the channel so steadily, it was plain to be seen that a wise
hand was at her helm; her anchor ran out and she swung on the tide. "The
Ajax, as I'm a sinner!" exclaimed a sailor on shore. A boat put off from
her, and people angrily collected at the wharf, with talk of getting out
their guns, when a boyish figure arose in the stern, and was greeted with
a shout of surprise and welcome.
The boat touched the beach, Josiah Breeze leaped out of it, and in
another minute his father had him in a bear's embrace, making no attempt
to stop the tears that welled out of his eyes. An officer had followed
Josiah on shore, and going to the group he said, "That boy is one to be
proud of. He put out in a sea that few men could face, to save an enemy's
ship and pilot it into the harbor. I could do no less than bring him
back." There was praise and laughter and clasping of hands, and when the
Thanksgiving dinner was placed, smoking, on the board, the commander of
H. M. S. Ajax was among the jolliest of the guests at Captain Breeze's
table.
THE MAY-POLE OF MERRYMOUNT
The people of Merrymount--unsanctified in the eyes of their Puritan
neighbors, for were they not Episcopals, who had pancakes at Shrovetide
and wassail at Christmas?--were dancing about their May-pole one summer
evening, for they tried to make it May throughout the year. Some were
masked like animals, and all were tricked with flowers and ribbons.
Within their circle, sharing in song and jest, were the lord and lady of
the revels, and an English clergyman waiting to join the pair in wedlock.
Life, they sang, should be all jollity: away with care and duty; leave
wisdom to the weak and old, and sanctity for fools. Watching the sport
from a neighboring wood stood a band of frowning Puritans, and as the sun
set they stalked forth and broke through the circle. All was dismay. The
bells, the laughter, the song were silent, and some who had tasted
Puritan wrath before shrewdly smelled the stocks. A Puritan of iron
face--it was Endicott, who had cut the cross from the flag of
England--warning aside the "priest of Baal," proceeded to hack the pole
down with his sword. A few swinging blows, and down it sank, with its
ribbons and flowers.
"So shall fall the pride of vain people; so shall come to grief the
preachers of false religion," quoth he. "Truss those fellows to the trees
and give them half a dozen of blows apiece as token that we brook no
ungodly conduct and hostility to our liberties. And you, king and queen
of the May, have you no better things to think about than fiddling and
dancing? How if I punish you both?"