A MATTER OF STATE.
MISTRESS GARDE MERRILL, having several hours before delivered her
simples and aromatic leaves to old Goody Dune, just outside the limits
of the town, stood looking out of the window, at her Uncle John Soam’s
home, where she was visiting. Thus it was that she saw her grandfather,
David Donner enter the gate. Two minutes afterward she beheld the
unusual sight of three Governors come into the garden together.
The first was ex-Governor Leverett, that stern old Roundhead, the
ex-Captain of Cromwell’s horse. At his side was Governor Winslow, up
from Plymouth, on grave affairs. Behind them was an older man, and
perhaps a wiser one, Governor Simon Bradstreet, still hale and hearty
after fifty-three years of service to the colonies.
Bringing up the rear of the little procession was Henry Wainsworth,
private secretary to Leverett. He looked toward the windows in the hope
of seeing Garde, but that young lady stepped silently back into the
shadows, for she had no desire to be seen.
Neither David Donner nor the other visitors came to the house, nor even
to the front door thereof. It was a fine day, so that the garden seemed
all smiles. A cow was mooing lustily and chickens were singing in their
contentment. These sounds were interspersed with the hawing of a saw,
and then with hammer strokes, these latter disturbances issuing from a
newly constructed granary and cow-shed which John Soam, Garde’s uncle,
had recently afforded.
David Donner, who had known that he would find Goodman Soam in this
shed, had tracked across the garden without ceremony. The governors and
Wainsworth, having confidence that Donner knew what he was doing,
followed where he led, to the center whence the clatter of industry
proceeded.
The hammer-pounding had abated nothing, nor did it cease when the three
grave citizens and Wainsworth had entered the house and ranged
themselves silently beside David Donner, to whom they could not well
speak for the din. They nodded to their friend, however, and looked up,
like students of astronomy all of one mind, at Goodman Soam above them.
John Soam had never been reputed a carpenter of talent in Boston.
However, here he was, standing on the head of a barrel and obviously
completing the task of ceiling this room of the granary, for his head,
shoulders and arms were out of sight, in the darksome region above the
ceiling, while part of his body and his legs, below, moved in vigorous
jerks as he pounded into place and nailed what appeared to be the last
board but one which would be needed to complete the job on which he was
so commendably engaged.
It seemed to his visitors that they had never before seen Goodman Soam
in so tight an orifice as was the one from which he now protruded. They
waited in patience for the nailing to cease, conversation being
impossible meantime. John was, by all reckoning, a thorough workman, for
he drove home nail after nail, without ceasing for so much as a breath.
At length the board was secured to the carpenter’s satisfaction, for he
ceased to hammer and could be heard to feel his work lovingly as he
examined its beauties in the half light in which he had labored.
“Good morrow, John Soam,” now said Governor Leverett, having first
coughed behind his hand. “Here are several fellow-townsmen come to your
place.”
John was seen to give a squirm. “Oh, good morrow,” said he, his voice
muffled by the ceiling between him and his friends. “I have been doing a
little work. Wait a moment, good friend, till I may gather my nails and
tools.”
The five good men waited, hearing John scramble the nails together with
a few metallic clinks.
“We went first to your house, David,” said John Winslow to David Donner.
“We came to see you and John Soam, as promised, on a matter of some
gravity.”
John Soam now, upon making an effort to retreat out of the slender
orifice which he had left when he nailed in his board, found his chest
and shoulders thicker than his waist. He wriggled. This being of no
avail to extricate him, he struggled. A convulsion of activity then
seized upon him. He attempted to sit down, he dragged at himself, he
began to do unseemly things. But he could not get out. He had hammered
in his own head and arms, with many good nails in the board.
His friends below him now overheard a sound which, in a simian, if
simians talked at all, would have been a curse. John wrestled as if
demons, expert in catch-as-catch-can, were restraining him up there in
the attic. He kicked about, with a violence so great as to overthrow the
barrel whereon he had been standing. For a second his two blind feet
felt about for his whilom support in an agony of helplessness.
“Goodman Leverett,” he then bawled, in tones of repressed emotion, “will
you put back that barrel for a moment, till I may come down?”
“If you will constrain your legs to seemly conduct, I will,” said the
governor. He and David Donner having received a kick apiece, now
reinstated Goodman Soam’s pedestal.
John became quiescent for a moment. His friends shifted about, uneasily.
“May we help you in any respect, John?” inquired Winslow.
“Are you fastened in?” added Simon Bradstreet.
“Might we not pull him down?” suggested Wainsworth.
“My friends, how many be you?” said the hot, muffled voice of John.
“Five,” said one of the solemn governors. “Shall we give you a little
assistance?”
“It would only be a little I should want,” said the carpenter, dropping
the nails he had clung to in desperation.
The five gentlemen disposed themselves about John’s anatomy and pulled
at his legs with united strength, grasping the cloth of his trousers for
the purpose.
“Enough! enough!” roared John, after a moment of hopeless pain and
wriggling.
His warning came belated. His trousers were of good stuff enow, but
trousers have their limitations. They parted, slightly above the uneven
line of gripping hands, and came away in ragged banners.
The five citizens were horrified. So was John. Two of the gentlemen,
with the booty taken from their friend, fell heavily to the floor.
“Dear me, this was most uncalled for,” said David Donner.
John Soam tried to draw his legs up under his coat, vainly. He made
terrible sounds of anguish, in his nakedness below and his loneliness up
above the ceiling. His fellow-citizens, undecided as to whether they
should go outside, for the sake of modesty, or remain and lend further
aid to John, looked at one another inquiringly.
“John,” then said Leverett, somewhat sternly, “would you council us to
get an ax and knock out the board you have hammered into place?”
“Yes,” bawled the carpenter, “there be two axes in the corner. Let them
both be employed!”
“I have chopped down a tree in my youth,” said David Donner.
He therefore took one of the axes, while Governor Winslow took the
second.
They were then at a loss to reach the ceiling, wherefore it became
necessary for the good men to build up a platform, of boxes and boards,
while John Soam’s legs tried to hide, one behind the other.
The platform being hastily constructed, the ax-men mounted and began to
swing ill-directed blows upward at the stubborn board which the
carpenter had hammered in so thoroughly.
No more than three blows had been delivered when John made protest,
howling lustily for the purpose, as the ax-men failed at first to hear
him, while busy with their work of salvation.
“It jars me rudely,” he roared out, unable wholly to repress his
feelings. “It’s hellish.”
“Ahem,” said Governor Leverett. “What would you council us to do next,
friend Soam?”
“Saw the board,” counseled John. “It was a rare good fit, but it had
best be sawed.”
The platform was now changed and one after another the five citizens
plied the saw, for the board was wet, and to saw above one’s head is
irksome in a high degree. Yet at length the cut was made, at one end,
and those below could thrust the imprisoning plank upward. Being still
stoutly nailed at the further end, the board scraped off some buttons,
erstwhile sewn to John’s waistcoat, and it otherwise harassed him before
it was high enough to permit the carpenter to emerge from his attic. He
appeared at last, however, red of countenance and in a fine condition to
do some private blaspheming, had the opportunity been present for the
exercise of this, man’s inalienable function. His friends were
immeasurably relieved to see him, safe.
“Friend John,” said David Donner, “we have come hither on matters of
state. When you are rehabilitated we shall, I believe, be glad of your
further counsel.”
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