Twice-Told Tales (53 page)

"Come, my stout hearts!" quoth he, drawing his sword. "Let us show
these poor heathen that we can handle our weapons like men of might.
Well for them if they put us not to prove it in earnest!"

The iron-breasted company straightened their line, and each man drew
the heavy butt of his matchlock close to his left foot, thus awaiting
the orders of the captain. But as Endicott glanced right and left
along the front he discovered a personage at some little distance with
whom it behoved him to hold a parley. It was an elderly gentleman
wearing a black cloak and band and a high-crowned hat beneath which
was a velvet skull-cap, the whole being the garb of a Puritan
minister. This reverend person bore a staff which seemed to have been
recently cut in the forest, and his shoes were bemired, as if he had
been travelling on foot through the swamps of the wilderness. His
aspect was perfectly that of a pilgrim, heightened also by an
apostolic dignity. Just as Endicott perceived him he laid aside his
staff and stooped to drink at a bubbling fountain which gushed into
the sunshine about a score of yards from the corner of the
meeting-house. But ere the good man drank he turned his face
heavenward in thankfulness, and then, holding back his gray beard with
one hand, he scooped up his simple draught in the hollow of the other.

"What ho, good Mr. Williams!" shouted Endicott. "You are welcome back
again to our town of peace. How does our worthy Governor Winthrop? And
what news from Boston?"

"The governor hath his health, worshipful sir," answered Roger
Williams, now resuming his staff and drawing near. "And, for the news,
here is a letter which, knowing I was to travel hitherward to-day, His
Excellency committed to my charge. Belike it contains tidings of much
import, for a ship arrived yesterday from England."

Mr. Williams, the minister of Salem, and of course known to all the
spectators, had now reached the spot where Endicott was standing under
the banner of his company, and put the governor's epistle into his
hand. The broad seal was impressed with Winthrop's coat-of-arms.
Endicott hastily unclosed the letter and began to read, while, as his
eye passed down the page, a wrathful change came over his manly
countenance. The blood glowed through it till it seemed to be kindling
with an internal heat, nor was it unnatural to suppose that his
breastplate would likewise become red hot with the angry fire of the
bosom which it covered. Arriving at the conclusion, he shook the
letter fiercely in his hand, so that it rustled as loud as the flag
above his head.

"Black tidings these, Mr. Williams," said he; "blacker never came to
New England. Doubtless you know their purport?"

"Yea, truly," replied Roger Williams, "for the governor consulted
respecting this matter with my brethren in the ministry at Boston, and
my opinion was likewise asked. And His Excellency entreats you by me
that the news be not suddenly noised abroad, lest the people be
stirred up unto some outbreak, and thereby give the king and the
archbishop a handle against us."

"The governor is a wise man—a wise man, and a meek and moderate,"
said Endicott, setting his teeth grimly. "Nevertheless, I must do
according to my own best judgment. There is neither man, woman nor
child in New England but has a concern as dear as life in these
tidings; and if John Endicott's voice be loud enough, man, woman and
child shall hear them.—Soldiers, wheel into a hollow square.—Ho,
good people! Here are news for one and all of you."

The soldiers closed in around their captain, and he and Roger Williams
stood together under the banner of the red cross, while the women and
the aged men pressed forward and the mothers held up their children to
look Endicott in the face. A few taps of the drum gave signal for
silence and attention.

"Fellow-soldiers, fellow-exiles," began Endicott, speaking under
strong excitement, yet powerfully restraining it, "wherefore did ye
leave your native country? Wherefore, I say, have we left the green
and fertile fields, the cottages, or, perchance, the old gray halls,
where we were born and bred, the churchyards where our forefathers lie
buried? Wherefore have we come hither to set up our own tombstones in
a wilderness? A howling wilderness it is. The wolf and the bear meet
us within halloo of our dwellings. The savage lieth in wait for us in
the dismal shadow of the woods. The stubborn roots of the trees break
our ploughshares when we would till the earth. Our children cry for
bread, and we must dig in the sands of the seashore to satisfy them.
Wherefore, I say again, have we sought this country of a rugged soil
and wintry sky? Was it not for the enjoyment of our civil rights? Was
it not for liberty to worship God according to our conscience?"

"Call you this liberty of conscience?" interrupted a voice on the
steps of the meeting-house.

It was the wanton gospeller. A sad and quiet smile flitted across the
mild visage of Roger Williams, but Endicott, in the excitement of the
moment, shook his sword wrathfully at the culprit—an ominous gesture
from a man like him.

"What hast thou to do with conscience, thou knave?" cried he. "I said
liberty to worship God, not license to profane and ridicule him. Break
not in upon my speech, or I will lay thee neck and heels till this
time to-morrow.—Hearken to me, friends, nor heed that accursed
rhapsodist. As I was saying, we have sacrificed all things, and have
come to a land whereof the Old World hath scarcely heard, that we
might make a new world unto ourselves and painfully seek a path from
hence to heaven. But what think ye now? This son of a Scotch
tyrant—this grandson of a papistical and adulterous Scotch woman
whose death proved that a golden crown doth not always save an
anointed head from the block—"

"Nay, brother, nay," interposed Mr. Williams; "thy words are not meet
for a secret chamber, far less for a public street."

"Hold thy peace, Roger Williams!" answered Endicott, imperiously. "My
spirit is wiser than thine for the business now in hand.—I tell ye,
fellow-exiles, that Charles of England and Laud, our bitterest
persecutor, arch-priest of Canterbury, are resolute to pursue us even
hither. They are taking counsel, saith this letter, to send over a
governor-general in whose breast shall be deposited all the law and
equity of the land. They are minded, also, to establish the idolatrous
forms of English episcopacy; so that when Laud shall kiss the pope's
toe as cardinal of Rome he may deliver New England, bound hand and
foot, into the power of his master."

A deep groan from the auditors—a sound of wrath as well as fear and
sorrow—responded to this intelligence.

"Look ye to it, brethren," resumed Endicott, with increasing energy.
"If this king and this arch-prelate have their will, we shall briefly
behold a cross on the spire of this tabernacle which we have builded,
and a high altar within its walls, with wax tapers burning round it at
noon-day. We shall hear the sacring-bell and the voices of the Romish
priests saying the mass. But think ye, Christian men, that these
abominations may be suffered without a sword drawn, without a shot
fired, without blood spilt—yea, on the very stairs of the pulpit? No!
Be ye strong of hand and stout of heart. Here we stand on our own
soil, which we have bought with our goods, which we have won with our
swords, which we have cleared with our axes, which we have tilled with
the sweat of our brows, which we have sanctified with our prayers to
the God that brought us hither! Who shall enslave us here? What have
we to do with this mitred prelate—with this crowned king? What have
we to do with England?"

Endicott gazed round at the excited countenances of the people, now
full of his own spirit, and then turned suddenly to the
standard-bearer, who stood close behind him.

"Officer, lower your banner," said he.

The officer obeyed, and, brandishing his sword, Endicott thrust it
through the cloth and with his left hand rent the red cross completely
out of the banner. He then waved the tattered ensign above his head.

"Sacrilegious wretch!" cried the high-churchman in the pillory, unable
longer to restrain himself; "thou hast rejected the symbol of our holy
religion."

"Treason! treason!" roared the royalist in the stocks. "He hath
defaced the king's banner!"

"Before God and man I will avouch the deed," answered Endicott.—"Beat
a flourish, drummer—shout, soldiers and people—in honor of the
ensign of New England. Neither pope nor tyrant hath part in it now."

With a cry of triumph the people gave their sanction to one of the
boldest exploits which our history records. And for ever honored be
the name of Endicott! We look back through the mist of ages, and
recognize in the rending of the red cross from New England's banner
the first omen of that deliverance which our fathers consummated after
the bones of the stern Puritan had lain more than a century in the
dust.

Two lovers once upon a time had planned a little summer-house in the
form of an antique temple which it was their purpose to consecrate to
all manner of refined and innocent enjoyments. There they would hold
pleasant intercourse with one another and the circle of their familiar
friends; there they would give festivals of delicious fruit; there
they would hear lightsome music intermingled with the strains of
pathos which make joy more sweet; there they would read poetry and
fiction and permit their own minds to flit away in day-dreams and
romance; there, in short—for why should we shape out the vague
sunshine of their hopes?—there all pure delights were to cluster like
roses among the pillars of the edifice and blossom ever new and
spontaneously.

So one breezy and cloudless afternoon Adam Forrester and Lilias Fay
set out upon a ramble over the wide estate which they were to possess
together, seeking a proper site for their temple of happiness. They
were themselves a fair and happy spectacle, fit priest and priestess
for such a shrine, although, making poetry of the pretty name of
Lilias, Adam Forrester was wont to call her "Lily" because her form
was as fragile and her cheek almost as pale. As they passed hand in
hand down the avenue of drooping elms that led from the portal of
Lilias Fay's paternal mansion they seemed to glance like winged
creatures through the strips of sunshine, and to scatter brightness
where the deep shadows fell.

But, setting forth at the same time with this youthful pair, there was
a dismal figure wrapped in a black velvet cloak that might have been
made of a coffin-pall, and with a sombre hat such as mourners wear
drooping its broad brim over his heavy brows. Glancing behind them,
the lovers well knew who it was that followed, but wished from their
hearts that he had been elsewhere, as being a companion so strangely
unsuited to their joyous errand. It was a near relative of Lilias Fay,
an old man by the name of Walter Gascoigne, who had long labored under
the burden of a melancholy spirit which was sometimes maddened into
absolute insanity and always had a tinge of it. What a contrast
between the young pilgrims of bliss and their unbidden associate! They
looked as if moulded of heaven's sunshine and he of earth's gloomiest
shade; they flitted along like Hope and Joy roaming hand in hand
through life, while his darksome figure stalked behind, a type of all
the woeful influences which life could fling upon them.

But the three had not gone far when they reached a spot that pleased
the gentle Lily, and she paused.

"What sweeter place shall we find than this?" said she. "Why should we
seek farther for the site of our temple?"

It was indeed a delightful spot of earth, though undistinguished by
any very prominent beauties, being merely a nook in the shelter of a
hill, with the prospect of a distant lake in one direction and of a
church-spire in another. There were vistas and pathways leading onward
and onward into the green woodlands and vanishing away in the
glimmering shade. The temple, if erected here, would look toward the
west; so that the lovers could shape all sorts of magnificent dreams
out of the purple, violet and gold of the sunset sky, and few of their
anticipated pleasures were dearer than this sport of fantasy.

"Yes," said Adam Forrester; "we might seek all day and find no
lovelier spot. We will build our temple here."

But their sad old companion, who had taken his stand on the very site
which they proposed to cover with a marble floor, shook his head and
frowned, and the young man and the Lily deemed it almost enough to
blight the spot and desecrate it for their airy temple that his dismal
figure had thrown its shadow there. He pointed to some scattered
stones, the remnants of a former structure, and to flowers such as
young girls delight to nurse in their gardens, but which had now
relapsed into the wild simplicity of nature.

"Not here," cried old Walter Gascoigne. "Here, long ago, other mortals
built their temple of happiness; seek another site for yours."

"What!" exclaimed Lilias Fay. "Have any ever planned such a temple
save ourselves?"

"Poor child!" said her gloomy kinsman. "In one shape or other every
mortal has dreamed your dream." Then he told the lovers, how—not,
indeed, an antique temple, but a dwelling—had once stood there, and
that a dark-clad guest had dwelt among its inmates, sitting for ever
at the fireside and poisoning all their household mirth.

Under this type Adam Forrester and Lilias saw that the old man spake
of sorrow. He told of nothing that might not be recorded in the
history of almost every household, and yet his hearers felt as if no
sunshine ought to fall upon a spot where human grief had left so deep
a stain—or, at least, that no joyous temple should be built there.

"This is very sad," said the Lily, sighing.

"Well, there are lovelier spots than this," said Adam Forrester,
soothingly—"spots which sorrow has not blighted."