Mistress Bonyton at length found repose where the weary are at rest,
and Nancy gave her hand, in due time, to the godly youth, Ephraim
Higgins, who, stimulated by his wife, made many ambitious attempts at
public prayer and exhortation, but, being deficient in that fervor
or ostentation of character essential to “freedom of utterance,” our
Ephraim was fain to give over these public aspirations, and content
himself with the “amen,” which marked his indorsement of the sayings of
others. If the truth must be told, Nancy not unfrequently nudged him to
hold his peace even in this, because of the said amen having fallen in
the wrong quarter, to the no little mortification of his wife.
Perseverance was a rose so guarded with thorns, that no man had the
courage to pluck it, and she may have sometimes caused Nancy some
discomfort by alluding to persons and events which might as well have
been buried in oblivion. For instance, she was fond of marking an event
thus:
“This happened when your Ephraim, the great goose, was spoonying about
Hope Vines. Never shall I forget, Nancy, how he used to stand with his
finger in his mouth--no, his thumb in his mouth--looking after that
girl.”
“What do you think became of Hope?” asked Nancy Higgins, ignoring the
spiteful remark of her sister.
“I believe Satan carried her off bodily. I no more believe that she was
stolen by the Indians, than I believe that brother Ephe will set the
world afire.”
“Never you mind my Ephe; it’s easy to cry sour grapes. When you get
_your_ man we shall see--we shall see!”
“There goes John, as true as I live, stalking along just as though the
folks warn’t ready to eat him up,” cried Perseverance, making a rush at
the door, at which she cried, loudly:
“John! John Bonyton, look here!”
The sagamore turned with a grave slowness, and confronted the speaker
in silence. His sister Nancy now joined her, and beckoned him to
approach. He lowered the musket which he carried carelessly in the
hollow of his arm, showing it to be loaded, and casting the butt upon
the ground, it gave out a sharp, significant ring.
“What is your will, wildcats?” he asked.
Unheeding this not very complimentary epithet, Mrs. Higgins entreated
him to enter her house.
“Why should I enter your house?”
“Because I am your sister, John, and it shames me to see you living
this heathenish life.”
“Then cease to regard me as a brother. Come here, Perseverance.”
In a few minutes the woman was seen moving slowly down the street in
company with the tall and taciturn man, who moved toward the rude
cemetery, in which were laid the dust to dust of the few of the colony
who had passed from the strife of the world into the eternal rest. It
was a small inclosure in which the stumps of trees were still visible,
and the graves were little more than heaps of sand.
Now and then might be seen a few flowers, and a grave rounded with
green turf; but it was a desolate-looking place, serving for nothing
but the sad necessities of humanity.
In silence the two proceeded onward, and at length stopped where the
sod was heaped with unwonted care over a newly made grave. Perseverance
burst into tears:
“She lies here, John.”
The sagamore leaned upon his gun--raising the helmet of plumes from his
head, and as he gazed downward, tears flowed from his eyes.
“Did she die in peace, at last?”
“Yea, my brother, she deplored your heathenish--”
He waved his hand.
“What said she?”
“At the last she was very gentle. She said she feared the people would
bring down the curse of God upon themselves for some of their doings.”
“Go on,” he said, observing her to hesitate.
“She said, ‘I am ill at ease about John,’ and then she burst into
tears, and cried, ‘Oh! John, John, my dearest, best! Oh, that I could
see him!--oh, that I could bless him, before I die!’”
At this outburst of genuine feeling from his sister, John Bonyton took
her hand in his, and long after did Perseverance remember the groan
that escaped his bosom.
“Said she nothing of Hope Vines?”
“Yes, John, she said she repented before God the evil she designed in
her heart against her.”
“And you?”
As he asked the question, his stern eyes were upon her face.
“I, John?”
“Yes; have you no repentance?”
“I did nothing.”
“Is it nothing to let loose the tongue against the innocent? Do not
tell me that you, Perseverance Bonyton, believed these idle stories,
which you helped to promulgate.”
“Wiser than I believed them.”
He turned moodily away to the woods, and Perseverance went her way,
momentarily softened, but only to resume her hard and vindictive
thoughts, and become one in that aggregate of falsehood and malignity
which goes to make up human society.
That night, when the village was buried in sleep, John Bonyton might
have been seen for hours, kneeling upon his mother’s grave--he, the
strong man, weeping like a child upon its mother’s breast.
Not till the morning was dawning did he turn away, murmuring, “Mother,
mother,” as if the repetition of the word brought some ease to his
heart.
As he turned away from the grave in the early light, he was surprised
to see Ephraim Higgins standing beside him.
“I just come, John, to speak to you. I al’ays liked you, John.”
“I am sure of it. You’ve a true, honest heart, Ephe.”
“I’m glad you think so, John. I al’ays liked you--you know I did.”
“Then you would not take my life, even to please the Governor?” This
with a smile.
“No, indeed, John. I wish I could do something for you. I wish you’d
come home, and live like a Christian, John--I wish you would.”
And poor, honest Ephraim grasped his hand warmly as he went on:
“I don’t understand things much, John, and sometimes I make your sister
Nancy feel ashamed of me, John; but I mean right, I do--and we’ve got a
baby--we have, and it’s e’ena’most as purty as Hope Vines.”
“You don’t forget Hope?”
“No, John, no; I didn’t think of her as the women think I did--never,
never! She was like a born angel to me--like a cherubim on a tombstone.
Somehow I felt as if I could pray to her. My mother said I was
bewitched, and you was bewitched, and I believed it. I know better now,
John. I’ve thought it out.”
“And you love your old playmate yet, Ephraim, and you know and hear
nothing of Hope?”
“No, John, not a word. But, look here--she was doomed, like, from the
fust. I used to feel as if I should cry, to look at her eyes.”
“I never saw any thing strange in her--nothing but truth and goodness.”
“All that, John, but not the kind to wring out a dishcloth or sweep a
kitchen. Women don’t like them that don’t do jest as all the rest of
them duz.”
“That is true. What then?”
“Don’t you remember that Hope would whistle up a quail, with that purty
cherry month of hern? Well, the women used to look askance at this, and
say--I’ve heard Nancy say it a hundred times--”
“Say what?” asked the sagamore, for Ephraim had a dim perception of
saying something not just what should be said and had stopped.
“Well, they used to say,
‘Whistling gals and crowing hens
Always come to bad ends.’
If women don’t keep the right side of each other, it’s a gone case with
’em, John.”
“You think they would have tortured and killed Hope out of spite, and
called it religion?”
“I don’t pretend to be as wise as your sister Nancy, John--la, bless
you! I believe the baby’s wiser’n its own father; but I do say they’d a
killed her; and it’s better as it is.”
“Who would have had the heart to do it?”
“As to that, any of them. My wife Nancy would a helped, she would.
You ought to hear her quote Scriptur’ about witches and wizards, and
necromancers, and Moloch, and familiar sperrits. I’ve sot and heard her
till every hair in my head stood on end. I think the women are kind of
disappointed not to a had a chance at her.”
John Bonyton ground his teeth with fury, and exclaimed:
“They will find a subject in due time, I’ll be bound.”
“That they will. The way they tell about running pins and needles into
the flesh of some poor old thing is awful. I think the women, not going
to war, let their minds run on these kind of torments instead. Now,
Nancy is as kind as the best, but I’ve heard her tell how they’d do.
They were in doubt whether they would burn or hang Hope.”
John Bonyton shuddered, and ejaculated between his teeth a compound
which we will not repeat; but it was “she-”-- something, and a term
which many a woman has well deserved.
Ephraim looked aghast at the fierce passion of his friend and droned on
again:
“You was al’ays violent and kind o’ unreasonable, John. But it’s
nothing here nor there to talk. Howsomever you can fix it, women ain’t
over’n above tender. They kinder enjoy sufferin’. See ’em cry. They
_enjoy_ it. I’m more tender to our baby than Nancy is.”
It is doubtful if the sagamore heard half of this philosophical tirade
of the kind-hearted Ephraim. The sun was now up, and admonished him
that if he would escape observation at such a time and place, he must
take his departure. Seeing this, Ephraim broke in again:
“Come home with me, John, and eat breakfast--bread and ham and
potatoes, John, Christian food, with a grace before meat.”
“I have renounced the colony, as you well know, Ephraim. I can not go
with you; but I thank you none the less.”
“Come, now, don’t turn your back upon me, John Bonyton. It goes to my
heart to see you go away from kith and kin, and everybody’s hand agin’
you.”
But, before he had ceased to speak, the sagamore grasped his hand, and
even, in an unwonted fit of softness, clasped his arms around his one
simple, devoted friend, and without a word, was gone.