Mr Fletcher observed this conference, which he could not understand, with some anxiety and displeasure, and he broke it off by directing Jennet to conduct Magawisca to another apartment.
Jennet obeyed, muttering, as she went, “a notable providence this concerning the Pequod caitiff. Even like Adonibezek, as he has done to others the Lord hath requited him.”
Mr Fletcher then most reluctantly took into his possession the savage trophy, and dismissed the Indian, deeply lamenting that motives of mistaken policy should tempt his brethren to depart from the plainest principles of their religion.
CHAPTER 3
“But ah, who can deceive his destiny,
Or ween, by Warning, to avoid his Fate?”
The Faerie Queene
On the following morning Mr Fletcher set out for Boston, and escaping all perils by flood and field, he arrived there at the expiration of nine days, having accomplished the journey, now the affair of a single day, with unusual expedition.
His wards were accompanied by two individuals who were now, with them, to become permanent members of his family. Mrs Grafton, the sister of their father, and one Master Cradock, a scholar “skilled in the tongues,” who attended them as their tutor. Mrs Grafton was a widow, far on the shady side of fifty; though, as that was a subject to which she never alluded, she probably regarded age with the feelings ascribed to her sex, that being the last quality for which womankind would wish to be honoured, as is said by one whose satire is so good-humoured that even its truth may be endured. She was, unhappily for herself as her lot was cast, a zealous adherent to the church of England. Good people, who take upon themselves the supervisorship of their neighbours’ consciences, abounded in that age; and from them Mrs Grafton received frequent exhortations and remonstrances. To these she uniformly replied, ‘that a faith and mode of religion that had saved so many was good enough to save her’ – ‘that she had received her belief, just as it was, from her father, and that he, not she, was responsible for it.’ Offensive such opinions must needs be in a community of professed reformers, but the good lady did not make them more so by the obtrusiveness of overwrought zeal. To confess the truth, her mind was far more intent on the forms of head-pieces, than modes of faith; and she was far more ambitious of being the leader of fashion, than the leader of a sect. She would have contended more earnestly for a favourite recipe, than a favourite dogma; and though she undoubtedly believed “a saint in crape” to be “twice a saint in lawn,” and fearlessly maintained that “no man could suitably administer the offices of religion without ‘gown, surplice, and wig,’” yet she chiefly directed her hostilities against the puritanical attire of the ladies of the colony, who, she insisted, ‘did most unnaturally belie their nature as women, and their birth and bringing-up as gentlewomen, by their ill-fashioned, ill-sorted, and unbecoming apparel.’ To this heresy she was fast gaining proselytes; for, if we may believe the “simple cobbler of Agawam,” there were, even in those early and pure day, “nugiperous gentle dames who inquired what dress the Queen is in this week.” The contagion spread rapidly; and when some of the most vigilant and zealous sentinels proposed that the preachers should make it the subject of public and personal reproof, it was whispered that the scandal was not limited to idle maidens, but that certain of the deacons’ wives were in it, and it was deemed more prudent to adopt gentle and private measures to eradicate the evil; an evil so deeply felt as to be bewailed by the merciless ‘cobbler,’ above quoted, in the following affecting terms: “Methinks it would break the hearts of Englishmen to see so many goodly English women imprisoned in French cages, peeping out of their hood-holes for some men of mercy to help them with a little wit, and nobody relieves them. We have about five or six of them in our colony. If I see any of them accidentally, I cannot cleanse my phansie of them for a month after.”
It would seem marvellous that a woman like Mrs Grafton, apparently engrossed with the world, living on the foam and froth of life, should become a voluntary exile to the colonies; but, to do her justice, she was kind-hearted and affectionate – susceptible of strong and controlling attachment, and the infant children of a brother on whom she had doted, outweighed her love of frivolous pleasures and personal indulgence.
She certainly believed that the resolution of her sister to go to the wilderness, had no parallel in the history of human folly and madness; but the resolution once taken, and, as she perceived, unconquerable, she made her own destiny conformable, not without some restiveness, but without serious repining. It was an unexpected shock to her to be compelled to leave Boston for a condition of life not only more rude and inconvenient, but really dangerous. Necessity, however, is more potent than philosophy, and Mrs Grafton, like most people, submitted with patience to an inevitable evil.
As ‘good Master Cradock’ was a man rather acted upon than acting, we shall leave him to be discovered by our readers as the light of others falls on him.
Mr Fletcher received the children – the relicts and gifts of a woman whom he had loved as few men can love, with an intense interest. The youngest, Mary, was a pretty petted child, wayward and bashful. She repelled Mr Fletcher’s caresses, and ran away from him to shelter herself in her aunt’s arms – but Alice, the eldest, seemed instinctively to return the love that beamed in the first glance that Mr Fletcher cast on her – in that brief eager glance he saw the living and beautiful image of her mother. So much was he impressed with the resemblance, that he said, in a letter to his wife, that it reminded him of the heathen doctrine of metempsychosis – and he could almost believe the spirit of the mother was transferred to the bosom of the child. The arrangement Mr Fletcher made, for the transportation of his charge to Springfield, might probably be traced to the preference inspired by this resemblance.
He dispatched the little Mary with her aunt and the brother of Magawisca, the Indian boy Oneco, and such attendants as were necessary for their safe conduct – and he retained Alice and the tutor to be the companions of his journey. Before the children were separated, they were baptised by the Reverend Mr Cotton, and in commemoration of the Christian graces of their mother, their names were changed to the puritanical appellations of Hope and Faith.
Mr Fletcher was detained, at first by business, and afterwards by ill-health, much longer than he had expected, and the fall, winter, and earliest months of spring wore away before he was able to set his face homeward. In the mean time, his little community at Bethel proceeded more harmoniously than could have been hoped from the discordant materials of which it was composed. This was owing, in great part, to the wise and gentle Mrs Fletcher, the sun of her little system – all were obedient to the silent influence that controlled, without being perceived. But a letter which she wrote to Mr Fletcher, just before his return, containing some important domestic details, may be deemed worth the perusal of our readers.
Springfield, 1636.
To my good and honoured husband!
Thy kind letter was duly received fourteen days after date, and was most welcome to me, containing, as it does, a portion of that stream of kindness that is ever flowing out from thy bountiful nature towards me. Sweet and refreshing was it, as these gentle days of spring after our sullen winter. Winter! ever disconsolate in these parts, but made tenfold more dreary by the absence of that precious light by which I have ever been cheered and guided.
I thank thee heartily, my dear life, that thou dost so warmly commend my poor endeavours to do well in thy absence. I have truly tried to be faithful to my little nestlings, and to cheer them with notes of gladness when I have drooped inwardly for the voice of my mate. Yet my anxious thoughts have been more with thee than with myself; nor have I been unmindful of any of thy perplexities by sickness and otherwise, but in all thy troubles I have been troubled, and have ever prayed, that whatever might betide me, thou mightest return, in safety, to thy desiring family.