Twice-Told Tales (52 page)

Pshaw! I will linger not another instant at arm's-length from these
dim terrors, which grow more obscurely formidable the longer I delay
to grapple with them. Now for the onset, and, lo! with little damage
save a dash of rain in the face and breast, a splash of mud high up
the pantaloons and the left boot full of ice-cold water, behold me at
the corner of the street. The lamp throws down a circle of red light
around me, and twinkling onward from corner to corner I discern other
beacons, marshalling my way to a brighter scene. But this is a
lonesome and dreary spot. The tall edifices bid gloomy defiance to the
storm with their blinds all closed, even as a man winks when he faces
a spattering gust. How loudly tinkles the collected rain down the tin
spouts! The puffs of wind are boisterous, and seem to assail me from
various quarters at once. I have often observed that this corner is a
haunt and loitering-place for those winds which have no work to do
upon the deep dashing ships against our iron-bound shores, nor in the
forest tearing up the sylvan giants with half a rood of soil at their
vast roots. Here they amuse themselves with lesser freaks of mischief.
See, at this moment, how they assail yonder poor woman who is passing
just within the verge of the lamplight! One blast struggles for her
umbrella and turns it wrong side outward, another whisks the cape of
her cloak across her eyes, while a third takes most unwarrantable
liberties with the lower part of her attire. Happily, the good dame is
no gossamer, but a figure of rotundity and fleshly substance; else
would these aerial tormentors whirl her aloft like a witch upon a
broomstick, and set her down, doubtless, in the filthiest kennel
hereabout.

From hence I tread upon firm pavements into the centre of the town.
Here there is almost as brilliant an illumination as when some great
victory has been won either on the battlefield or at the polls. Two
rows of shops with windows down nearly to the ground cast a glow from
side to side, while the black night hangs overhead like a canopy, and
thus keeps the splendor from diffusing itself away. The wet sidewalks
gleam with a broad sheet of red light. The raindrops glitter as if the
sky were pouring down rubies. The spouts gush with fire. Methinks the
scene is an emblem of the deceptive glare which mortals throw around
their footsteps in the moral world, thus bedazzling themselves till
they forget the impenetrable obscurity that hems them in, and that can
be dispelled only by radiance from above.

And, after all, it is a cheerless scene, and cheerless are the
wanderers in it. Here comes one who has so long been familiar with
tempestuous weather that he takes the bluster of the storm for a
friendly greeting, as if it should say, "How fare ye, brother?" He is
a retired sea-captain wrapped in some nameless garment of the
pea-jacket order, and is now laying his course toward the
marine-insurance office, there to spin yarns of gale and shipwreck
with a crew of old seadogs like himself. The blast will put in its
word among their hoarse voices, and be understood by all of them. Next
I meet an unhappy slipshod gentleman with a cloak flung hastily over
his shoulders, running a race with boisterous winds and striving to
glide between the drops of rain. Some domestic emergency or other has
blown this miserable man from his warm fireside in quest of a doctor.
See that little vagabond! How carelessly he has taken his stand right
underneath a spout while staring at some object of curiosity in a
shop-window! Surely the rain is his native element; he must have
fallen with it from the clouds, as frogs are supposed to do.

Here is a picture, and a pretty one—a young man and a girl, both
enveloped in cloaks and huddled beneath the scanty protection of a
cotton umbrella. She wears rubber overshoes, but he is in his
dancing-pumps, and they are on their way no doubt, to some
cotillon-party or subscription-ball at a dollar a head, refreshments
included. Thus they struggle against the gloomy tempest, lured onward
by a vision of festal splendor. But ah! a most lamentable disaster!
Bewildered by the red, blue and yellow meteors in an apothecary's
window, they have stepped upon a slippery remnant of ice, and are
precipitated into a confluence of swollen floods at the corner of two
streets. Luckless lovers! Were it my nature to be other than a
looker-on in life, I would attempt your rescue. Since that may not be,
I vow, should you be drowned, to weave such a pathetic story of your
fate as shall call forth tears enough to drown you both anew. Do ye
touch bottom, my young friends? Yes; they emerge like a water-nymph
and a river-deity, and paddle hand in hand out of the depths of the
dark pool. They hurry homeward, dripping, disconsolate, abashed, but
with love too warm to be chilled by the cold water. They have stood a
test which proves too strong for many. Faithful though over head and
ears in trouble!

Onward I go, deriving a sympathetic joy or sorrow from the varied
aspect of mortal affairs even as my figure catches a gleam from the
lighted windows or is blackened by an interval of darkness. Not that
mine is altogether a chameleon spirit with no hue of its own. Now I
pass into a more retired street where the dwellings of wealth and
poverty are intermingled, presenting a range of strongly-contrasted
pictures. Here, too, may be found the golden mean. Through yonder
casement I discern a family circle—the grandmother, the parents and
the children—all flickering, shadow-like, in the glow of a
wood-fire.—Bluster, fierce blast, and beat, thou wintry rain, against
the window-panes! Ye cannot damp the enjoyment of that fireside.—Surely
my fate is hard that I should be wandering homeless here, taking to my
bosom night and storm and solitude instead of wife and children.
Peace, murmurer! Doubt not that darker guests are sitting round the
hearth, though the warm blaze hides all but blissful images.

Well, here is still a brighter scene—a stately mansion illuminated
for a ball, with cut-glass chandeliers and alabaster lamps in every
room, and sunny landscapes hanging round the walls. See! a coach has
stopped, whence emerges a slender beauty who, canopied by two
umbrellas, glides within the portal and vanishes amid lightsome
thrills of music. Will she ever feel the night-wind and the rain?
Perhaps—perhaps! And will Death and Sorrow ever enter that proud
mansion? As surely as the dancers will be gay within its halls
to-night. Such thoughts sadden yet satisfy my heart, for they teach me
that the poor man in this mean, weatherbeaten hovel, without a fire to
cheer him, may call the rich his brother—brethren by Sorrow, who must
be an inmate of both their households; brethren by Death, who will
lead them both to other homes.

Onward, still onward, I plunge into the night. Now have I reached the
utmost limits of the town, where the last lamp struggles feebly with
the darkness like the farthest star that stands sentinel on the
borders of uncreated space. It is strange what sensations of sublimity
may spring from a very humble source. Such are suggested by this
hollow roar of a subterranean cataract where the mighty stream of a
kennel precipitates itself beneath an iron grate and is seen no more
on earth. Listen a while to its voice of mystery, and Fancy will
magnify it till you start and smile at the illusion. And now another
sound—the rumbling of wheels as the mail-coach, outward bound, rolls
heavily off the pavements and splashes through the mud and water of
the road. All night long the poor passengers will be tossed to and fro
between drowsy watch and troubled sleep, and will dream of their own
quiet beds and awake to find themselves still jolting onward. Happier
my lot, who will straightway hie me to my familiar room and toast
myself comfortably before the fire, musing and fitfully dozing and
fancying a strangeness in such sights as all may see. But first let me
gaze at this solitary figure who comes hitherward with a tin lantern
which throws the circular pattern of its punched holes on the ground
about him. He passes fearlessly into the unknown gloom, whither I will
not follow him.

This figure shall supply me with a moral wherewith, for lack of a more
appropriate one, I may wind up my sketch. He fears not to tread the
dreary path before him, because his lantern, which was kindled at the
fireside of his home, will light him back to that same fireside again.
And thus we, night-wanderers through a stormy and dismal world, if we
bear the lamp of Faith enkindled at a celestial fire, it will surely
lead us home to that heaven whence its radiance was borrowed.

At noon of an autumnal day more than two centuries ago the English
colors were displayed by the standard bearer of the Salem train-band,
which had mustered for martial exercise under the orders of John
Endicott. It was a period when the religious exiles were accustomed
often to buckle on their armor and practise the handling of their
weapons of war. Since the first settlement of New England its
prospects had never been so dismal. The dissensions between Charles I.
and his subjects were then, and for several years afterward, confined
to the floor of Parliament. The measures of the king and ministry were
rendered more tyrannically violent by an opposition which had not yet
acquired sufficient confidence in its own strength to resist royal
injustice with the sword. The bigoted and haughty primate Laud,
archbishop of Canterbury, controlled the religious affairs of the
realm, and was consequently invested with powers which might have
wrought the utter ruin of the two Puritan colonies, Plymouth and
Massachusetts. There is evidence on record that our forefathers
perceived their danger, but were resolved that their infant country
should not fall without a struggle, even beneath the giant strength of
the king's right arm.

Such was the aspect of the times when the folds of the English banner
with the red cross in its field were flung out over a company of
Puritans. Their leader, the famous Endicott, was a man of stern and
resolute countenance, the effect of which was heightened by a grizzled
beard that swept the upper portion of his breastplate. This piece of
armor was so highly polished that the whole surrounding scene had its
image in the glittering steel. The central object in the mirrored
picture was an edifice of humble architecture with neither steeple nor
bell to proclaim it—what, nevertheless, it was—the house of prayer.
A token of the perils of the wilderness was seen in the grim head of a
wolf which had just been slain within the precincts of the town, and,
according to the regular mode of claiming the bounty, was nailed on
the porch of the meeting-house. The blood was still plashing on the
doorstep. There happened to be visible at the same noontide hour so
many other characteristics of the times and manners of the Puritans
that we must endeavor to represent them in a sketch, though far less
vividly than they were reflected in the polished breastplate of John
Endicott.

In close vicinity to the sacred edifice appeared that important engine
of Puritanic authority the whipping-post, with the soil around it well
trodden by the feet of evil-doers who had there been disciplined. At
one corner of the meeting-house was the pillory and at the other the
stocks, and, by a singular good fortune for our sketch, the head of an
Episcopalian and suspected Catholic was grotesquely encased in the
former machine, while a fellow-criminal who had boisterously quaffed a
health to the king was confined by the legs in the latter. Side by
side on the meeting-house steps stood a male and a female figure. The
man was a tall, lean, haggard personification of fanaticism, bearing
on his breast this label, "A WANTON GOSPELLER," which betokened that
he had dared to give interpretations of Holy Writ unsanctioned by the
infallible judgment of the civil and religious rulers. His aspect
showed no lack of zeal to maintain his heterodoxies even at the stake.
The woman wore a cleft stick on her tongue, in appropriate retribution
for having wagged that unruly member against the elders of the church,
and her countenance and gestures gave much cause to apprehend that the
moment the stick should be removed a repetition of the offence would
demand new ingenuity in chastising it.

The above-mentioned individuals had been sentenced to undergo their
various modes of ignominy for the space of one hour at noonday. But
among the crowd were several whose punishment would be lifelong—some
whose ears had been cropped like those of puppy-dogs, others whose
cheeks had been branded with the initials of their misdemeanors; one
with his nostrils slit and seared, and another with a halter about his
neck, which he was forbidden ever to take off or to conceal beneath
his garments. Methinks he must have been grievously tempted to affix
the other end of the rope to some convenient beam or bough. There was
likewise a young woman with no mean share of beauty whose doom it was
to wear the letter A on the breast of her gown in the eyes of all the
world and her own children. And even her own children knew what that
initial signified. Sporting with her infamy, the lost and desperate
creature had embroidered the fatal token in scarlet cloth with golden
thread and the nicest art of needlework; so that the capital A might
have been thought to mean "Admirable," or anything rather than
"Adulteress."

Let not the reader argue from any of these evidences of iniquity that
the times of the Puritans were more vicious than our own, when as we
pass along the very street of this sketch we discern no badge of
infamy on man or woman. It was the policy of our ancestors to search
out even the most secret sins and expose them to shame, without fear
or favor, in the broadest light of the noonday sun. Were such the
custom now, perchance we might find materials for a no less piquant
sketch than the above.

Except the malefactors whom we have described and the diseased or
infirm persons, the whole male population of the town, between sixteen
years and sixty were seen in the ranks of the train-band. A few
stately savages in all the pomp and dignity of the primeval Indian
stood gazing at the spectacle. Their flint-headed arrows were but
childish weapons, compared with the matchlocks of the Puritans, and
would have rattled harmlessly against the steel caps and hammered iron
breastplates which enclosed each soldier in an individual fortress.
The valiant John Endicott glanced with an eye of pride at his sturdy
followers, and prepared to renew the martial toils of the day.