Part 5

Goodwife Nowell, an ancient gossip of mine aunt's, looking in this morning, and talking of the trial of the Dutchman, Van Valken, spake of the coming into these parts many years ago of one Sir Christopher Gardiner, who was thought to be a Papist. He sought lodgings at her house for one whom he called his cousin, a fair young woman, together with her serving girl, who did attend upon her. She tarried about a month, seeing no one, and going out only towards the evening, accompanied by her servant. She spake little, but did seem melancholy and exceeding mournful, often crying very bitterly. Sir Christopher came only once to see her, and Good wife Nowell saith she well remembers seeing her take leave of him on the roadside, and come back weeping and sobbing dolefully; and that a little time after, bearing that he had gotten into trouble in Boston as a Papist and man of loose behavior, she suddenly took her departure in a vessel sailing for the Massachusetts, leaving to her, in pay for house-room and diet, a few coins, a gold cross, and some silk stuffs and kerchiefs. The cross being such as the Papists do worship, and therefore unlawful, her husband did beat it into a solid wedge privately, and kept it from the knowledge of the minister and the magistrates. But as the poor man never prospered after, but lost his cattle and grain, and two of their children dying of measles the next year, and he himself being sickly, and near his end, he spake to her of he golden cross, saying that he did believe it was a great sin to keep it, as he had done, and that it had wrought evil upon him, even as the wedge of gold, and the shekels, and Babylonish garment did upon Achan, who was stoned, with all his house, in the valley of Achor; and the minister coming in, and being advised concerning it, he judged that although it might be a sin to keep it hidden from a love of riches, it might, nevertheless, be safely used to support Gospel preaching and ordinances, and so did himself take it away. The goodwife says, that notwithstanding her husband died soon after, yet herself and household did from thenceforth begin to amend their estate and condition.

Seeing me curious concerning this Sir Christopher and his cousin, Goodwife Nowell said there was a little parcel of papers which she found in her room after the young woman went away, and she thought they might yet be in some part of her house, though she had not seen them for a score of years. Thereupon, I begged of her to look for them, which she promised to do.

October 14.

A strange and wonderful providence! Last night there was a great company of the neighbors at my uncle's, to help him in the husking and stripping of the corn, as is the custom in these parts. The barn-floor was about half-filled with the corn in its dry leaves; the company sitting down on blocks and stools before it, plucking off the leaves, and throwing the yellow ears into baskets. A pleasant and merry evening we had; and when the corn was nigh stripped, I went into the house with Cousin Thankful, to look to the supper and the laying of the tables, when we heard a loud noise in the barn, and one of the girls came running in, crying out, "O Thankful! Thankful! John Gibbins has appeared to us! His spirit is in the barn!" The plates dropt from my cousin's hand, and, with a faint cry, she fell back against the wall for a little space; when, hearing a man's voice without, speaking her name, she ran to the door, with the look of one beside herself; while I, trembling to see her in such a plight, followed her. There was a clear moon, and a tall man stood in the light close to the door.

"John," said my cousin, in a quick, choking voice, "is it You?"

"Why, Thankful, don't you know me? I'm alive; but the folks in the barn will have it that I 'm a ghost," said the man, springing towards her.

With a great cry of joy and wonder, my cousin caught hold of him: "O John, you are alive!"

Then she swooned quite away, and we had a deal to do to bring her to life again. By this time, the house was full of people, and among the rest came John's old mother and his sisters, and we all did weep and laugh at the same time. As soon as we got a little quieted, John told us that he had indeed been grievously stunned by the blow of a tomahawk, and been left for dead by his comrades, but that after a time he did come to his senses, and was able to walk; but, falling into the hands of the Indians, he was carried off to the French Canadas, where, by reason of his great sufferings on the way, he fell sick, and lay for a long time at the point of death. That when he did get about again, the savage who lodged him, and who had taken him as a son, in the place of his own, slain by the Mohawks, would not let him go home, although he did confess that the war was at an end. His Indian father, he said, who was feeble and old, died not long ago, and he had made his way home by the way of Crown Point and Albany. Supper being ready, we all sat down, and the minister, who had been sent for, offered thanks for the marvellous preserving and restoring of the friend who was lost and now was found, as also for the blessings of peace, by reason of which every man could now sit under his own vine and fig-tree, with none to molest or make him afraid, and for the abundance of the harvest, and the treasures of the seas, and the spoil of the woods, so that our land might take up the song of the Psalmist: "The Lord doth build up Jerusalem; he gathereth the outcasts of Israel; he healeth the broken in heart. Praise thy God, O Zion I For he strengtheneth the bars of thy gates, he maketh peace in thy borders, and filleth thee with the finest of wheat." Oh! a sweet supper we had, albeit little was eaten, for we were filled fall of joy, and needed not other food. When the company had gone, my dear cousin and her betrothed went a little apart, and talked of all that had happened unto them during their long separation. I left them sitting lovingly together in the light of the moon, and a measure of their unspeakable happiness did go with me to my pillow.

This morning, Thankful came to my bedside to pour out her heart to me. The poor girl is like a new creature. The shade of her heavy sorrow, which did formerly rest upon her countenance, hath passed off like a morning cloud, and her eye hath the light of a deep and quiet joy.

"I now know," said she, "what David meant when he said, 'We are like them that dream; our mouth is filled with laughter, and our tongue with singing; the Lord hath done great things for us, whereof we are glad!'"

October 18.

A cloudy wet day. Goody Nowell brought me this morning a little parcel of papers, which she found in the corner of a closet. They are much stained and smoked, and the mice have eaten them sadly, so that I can make little of them. They seem to be letters, and some fragments of what did take place in the life of a young woman of quality from the North of England. I find frequent mention made of Cousin Christopher, who is also spoken of as a soldier in the wars with the Turks, and as a Knight of Jerusalem. Poorly as I can make out the meaning of these fragments, I have read enough to make my heart sad, for I gather from them that the young woman was in early life betrothed to her cousin, and that afterwards, owing, as I judge, to the authority of her parents, she did part with him, he going abroad, and entering into the wars, in the belief that she was to wed another. But it seemed that the heart of the young woman did so plead for her cousin, that she could not be brought to marry as her family willed her to do; and, after a lapse of years, she, by chance hearing that Sir Christopher had gone to the New England, where he was acting as an agent of his kinsman, Sir Ferdinando Gorges, in respect to the Maine Province, did privately leave her home, and take passage in a Boston bound ship. How she did make herself known to Sir Christopher, I find no mention made; but, he now being a Knight of the Order of St. John of Jerusalem, and vowed to forego marriage, as is the rule of that Order, and being, moreover, as was thought, a priest or Jesuit, her great love and constancy could meet with but a sorrowful return on his part. It does appear, however, that he journeyed to Montreal, to take counsel of some of the great Papist priests there, touching the obtaining of a dispensation from the Head of the Church, so that he might marry the young woman; but, getting no encouragement therein, he went to Boston to find a passage for her to England again. He was there complained of as a Papist; and the coming over of his cousin being moreover known, a great and cruel scandal did arise from it, and he was looked upon as a man of evil life, though I find nothing to warrant such a notion, but much to the contrary thereof. What became of him and the young woman, his cousin, in the end, I do not learn.

One small parcel did affect me even unto tears. It was a paper containing some dry, withered leaves of roses, with these words written on it "To Anna, from her loving cousin, Christopher Gardiner, being the first rose that hath blossomed this season in the College garden. St. Omer's, June, 1630." I could but think how many tears had been shed over this little token, and how often, through long, weary years, it did call to mind the sweet joy of early love, of that fairest blossom of the spring of life of which it was an emblem, alike in its beauty and its speedy withering.

There be moreover among the papers sundry verses, which do seem to have been made by Sir Christopher; they are in the Latin tongue, and inscribed to his cousin, bearing date many years before the twain were in this country, and when he was yet a scholar at the Jesuits' College of St. Omer's, in France. I find nothing of a later time, save the verses which I herewith copy, over which there are, in a woman's handwriting, these words:

"VERSES

"Writ by Sir Christopher when a prisoner among the Turks in Moldavia, and expecting death at their hands.

1. "Ere down the blue Carpathian hills The sun shall fall again, Farewell this life and all its ills, Farewell to cell and chain

2. "These prison shades are dark and cold, But darker far than they The shadow of a sorrow old Is on mine heart alway.

3. "For since the day when Warkworth wood Closed o'er my steed and I,-- An alien from my name and blood,-- A weed cast out to die;

4. "When, looking back, in sunset light I saw her turret gleam, And from its window, far and white, Her sign of farewell stream;

5. "Like one who from some desert shore Does home's green isles descry, And, vainly longing, gazes o'er The waste of wave and sky,

6. "So, from the desert of my fate, Gaze I across the past; And still upon life's dial-plate The shade is backward cast

7. "I've wandered wide from shore to shore, I've knelt at many a shrine, And bowed me to the rocky floor Where Bethlehem's tapers shine;

8. "And by the Holy Sepulchre I've pledged my knightly sword, To Christ his blessed Church, and her The Mother of our Lord!

9. "Oh, vain the vow, and vain the strife How vain do all things seem! My soul is in the past, and life To-day is but a dream.

10. "In vain the penance strange and long, And hard for flesh to bear; The prayer, the fasting, and the thong, And sackcloth shirt of hair:

11. "The eyes of memory will not sleep, Its ears are open still, And vigils with the past they keep Against or with my will.

12. "And still the loves and hopes of old Do evermore uprise; I see the flow of locks of gold, The shine of loving eyes.

13. "Ah me! upon another's breast Those golden locks recline; I see upon another rest The glance that once was mine!

14. "'O faithless priest! O perjured knight!' I hear the master cry,

'Shut out the vision from thy sight, Let earth and nature die.'

15. "'The Church of God is now my spouse, And thou the bridegroom art; Then let the burden of thy vows Keep down thy human heart.'

16. "In vain!--This heart its grief must know, Till life itself hath ceased, And falls beneath the self-same blow The lover and the priest!

17. "O pitying Mother! souls of light, And saints and martyrs old, Pray for a weak and sinful knight, A suffering man uphold.

18. "Then let the Paynim work his will, Let death unbind my chain, Ere down yon blue Carpathian hill The sunset falls again!"

My heart is heavy with the thought of these unfortunates. Where be they now? Did the knight forego his false worship and his vows, and so marry his beloved Anna? Or did they part forever,--she going back to her kinsfolk, and he to his companions of Malta? Did he perish at the hands of the infidels, and does the maiden sleep in the family tomb, under her father's oaks? Alas! who can tell? I must needs leave them, and their sorrows and trials, to Him who doth not willingly afflict the children of men; and whatsoever may have been their sins and their follies, my prayer is, that they may be forgiven, for they loved much.

October 20.

I do purpose to start to-morrow for the Massachusetts, going by boat to the Piscataqua River, and thence by horse to Newbury.

Young Mr. Jordan spent yesterday and last night with us. He is a goodly youth, of a very sweet and gentle disposition; nor doth he seem to me to lack spirit, although his father (who liketh not his quiet ways and easy temper, so contrary to his own, and who is sorely disappointed in that he hath chosen the life of a farmer to that of a minister, for which he did intend him) often accuseth him of that infirmity. Last night we had much pleasant discourse touching the choice he hath made; and when I told him that perhaps he might have become a great prelate in the Church, and dwelt in a palace, and made a great lady of our cousin; whereas now I did see no better prospect for him than to raise corn for his wife to make pudding of, and chop wood to boil her kettle, he laughed right merrily, and said he should never have gotten higher than a curate in a poor parish; and as for Polly, he was sure she was more at home in making puddings than in playing the fine lady.

"For my part," he continued, in a serious manner, "I have no notion that the pulpit is my place; I like the open fields and sky better than the grandest churches of man's building; and when the wind sounds in the great grove of pines on the hill near our house, I doubt if there be a choir in all England so melodious and solemn. These painted autumn woods, and this sunset light, and yonder clouds of gold and purple, do seem to me better fitted to provoke devotional thoughts, and to awaken a becoming reverence and love for the Creator, than the stained windows and lofty arched roofs of old minsters. I do know, indeed, that there be many of our poor busy planters, who, by reason of ignorance, ill- breeding, and lack of quiet for contemplation, do see nothing in these things, save as they do affect their crops of grain or grasses, or their bodily comforts in one way or another. But to them whose minds have been enlightened and made large and free by study and much reflection, and whose eyes have been taught to behold the beauty and fitness of things, and whose ears have been so opened that they can hear the ravishing harmonies of the creation, the life of a planter is very desirable even in this wilderness, and notwithstanding the toil and privation thereunto appertaining. There be fountains gushing up in the hearts of such, sweeter than the springs of water which flow from the hillsides, where they sojourn; and therein, also, flowers of the summer do blossom all the year long. The brutish man knoweth not this, neither doth the fool comprehend it."

"See, now," said Polly to me, "how hard he is upon us poor unlearned folk."

"Nay, to tell the truth," said he, turning towards me, "your cousin here is to be held not a little accountable for my present inclinations; for she it was who did confirm and strengthen them. While I had been busy over books, she had been questioning the fields and the woods; and, as if the old fables of the poets were indeed true, she did get answers from them, as the priestesses and sibyls did formerly from the rustling of leaves and trees, and the sounds of running waters; so that she could teach me much concerning the uses and virtues of plants and shrubs, and of their time of flowering and decay; of the nature and habitudes of wild animals and birds, the changes of the air, and of the clouds and winds. My science, so called, had given me little more than the names of things which to her were familiar and common. It was in her company that I learned to read nature as a book always open, and full of delectable teachings, until my poor school-lore did seem undesirable and tedious, and the very chatter of the noisy blackbirds in the spring meadows more profitable and more pleasing than the angry disputes and the cavils and subtleties of schoolmen and divines."

My cousin blushed, and, smiling through her moist eyes at this language of her beloved friend, said that I must not believe all he said; for, indeed, it was along of his studies of the heathen poets that he had first thought of becoming a farmer. And she asked him to repeat some of the verses which he had at his tongue's end. He laughed, and said he did suppose she meant some lines of Horace, which had been thus Englished:--

"I often wished I had a farm, A decent dwelling, snug and warm, A garden, and a spring as pure As crystal flowing by my door, Besides an ancient oaken grove, Where at my leisure I might rove.

"The gracious gods, to crown my bliss, Have granted this, and more than this,-- They promise me a modest spouse, To light my hearth and keep my house. I ask no more than, free from strife, To hold these blessings all my life!"

Tam exceedingly pleased, I must say, with the prospect of my cousin Polly. Her suitor is altogether a worthy young man; and, making allowances for the uncertainty of all human things, she may well look forward to a happy life with him. I shall leave behind on the morrow dear friends, who were strangers unto me a few short weeks ago, but in whose joys and sorrows I shall henceforth always partake, so far as I do come to the knowledge of them, whether or no I behold their faces any more in this life.

HAMPTON, October 24, 1678.

I took leave of my good friends at Agamenticus, or York, as it is now called, on the morning after the last date in my journal, going in a boat with my uncle to Piscataqua and Strawberry Bank. It was a cloudy day, and I was chilled through before we got to the mouth of the river; but, as the high wind was much in our favor, we were enabled to make the voyage in a shorter time than is common. We stopped a little at the house of a Mr. Cutts, a man of some note in these parts; but he being from home, and one of the children sick with a quinsy, we went up the river to Strawberry Bank, where we tarried over night. The woman who entertained us had lost her husband in the war, and having to see to the ordering of matters out of doors in this busy season of harvest, it was no marvel that she did neglect those within. I made a comfortable supper of baked pumpkin and milk, and for lodgings I had a straw bed on the floor, in the dark loft, which was piled wellnigh full with corn- ears, pumpkins, and beans, besides a great deal of old household trumpery, wool, and flax, and the skins of animals. Although tired of my journey, it was some little time before I could get asleep; and it so fell out, that after the folks of the house were all abed, and still, it being, as I judge, nigh midnight, I chanced to touch with my foot a pumpkin lying near the bed, which set it a-rolling down the stairs, bumping hard on every stair as it went. Thereupon I heard a great stir below, the woman and her three daughters crying out that the house was haunted. Presently she called to me from the foot of the stairs, and asked me if I did hear anything. I laughed so at all this, that it was some time before I could speak; when I told her I did hear a thumping on the stairs. "Did it seem to go up, or down?" inquired she, anxiously; and on my telling her that the sound went downward, she set up a sad cry, and they all came fleeing into the corn-loft, the girls bouncing upon my bed, and hiding under the blanket, and the old woman praying and groaning, and saying that she did believe it was the spirit of her poor husband. By this time my uncle, who was lying on the settle in the room below, hearing the noise, got up, and stumbling over the pumpkin, called to know what was the matter. Thereupon the woman bade him flee up stairs, for there was a ghost in the kitchen. "Pshaw!" said my uncle, "is that all? I thought to be sure the Indians had come." As soon as I could speak for laughing, I told the poor creature what it was that so frightened her; at which she was greatly vexed; and, after she went to bed again, I could hear her scolding me for playing tricks upon honest people.

We were up betimes in the morning, which was bright and pleasant. Uncle soon found a friend of his, a Mr. Weare, who, with his wife, was to go to his home, at Hampton, that day, and who did kindly engage to see me thus far on my way. At about eight of the clock we got upon our horses, the woman riding on a pillion behind her husband. Our way was for some miles through the woods,--getting at times a view of the sea, and passing some good, thriving plantations. The woods in this country are by no means like those of England, where the ancient trees are kept clear of bushes and undergrowth, and the sward beneath them is shaven clean and close; whereas here they be much tangled with vines, and the dead boughs and logs which have fallen, from their great age or which the storms do beat off, or the winter snows and ices do break down. Here, also, through the thick matting of dead leaves, all manner of shrubs and bushes, some of them very sweet and fair in their flowering, and others greatly prized for their healing virtues, do grow up plenteously. In the season of them, many wholesome fruits abound in the woods, such as blue and black berries. We passed many trees, well loaded with walnuts and oilnuts, seeming all alive, as it were, with squirrels, striped, red, and gray, the last having a large, spreading tail, which Mr. Weare told me they do use as a sail, to catch the wind, that it may blow them over rivers and creeks, on pieces of bark, in some sort like that wonderful shell-fish which transformeth itself into a boat, and saileth on the waves of the sea. We also found grapes, both white and purple, hanging down in clusters from the trees, over which the vines did run, nigh upon as large as those which the Jews of old plucked at Eschol. The air was sweet and soft, and there was a clear, but not a hot sun, and the chirping of squirrels, and the noise of birds, and the sound of the waves breaking on the beach a little distance off, and the leaves, at every breath of the wind in the tree- tops, whirling and fluttering down about me, like so many yellow and scarlet-colored birds, made the ride wonderfully pleasant and entertaining.