{173}
“A country lad is my degree,
An’ few there be that ken me, O;
But what care I how few they be,
I’m welcome aye to Nannie, O.”
Burns.
There are hints in Miss Leslie’s letter to Everell Fletcher that
require some amplification to be quite intelligible. She looked upon
herself as the unhappy, though innocent cause, of the old Indian
woman’s misfortune; and, rash as generous, she had resolved, if
possible, to extricate her. With the inconsiderate warmth of youthful
feeling, she had, before the grave and reverend magistrates, declared
her belief in Nelema’s innocence, and thereby implied a censure of
their wisdom. This was certainly an almost unparalleled presumption in
those times, when youth was accounted inferiority; but the very
circumstance that in one light aggravated her fault, in another
mitigated it; and her youth being admitted in extenuation of her
offence, she was allowed to escape with a reproof and admonition of
moderate length, while her poor guardian was condemned to a long and
private conference on the urgency of reclaiming the spoiled child.
Various modes of effecting so desirable an object were suggested; for,
as the Scotchman said in an analogous case, “Ilka man can manage a
wife but him that has her.”
{174}
This matter had passed over, and justice was proceeding in her stern
course, when fortune, accident, or, more truly, Providence, favoured
the benevolent wishes of our heroine. She had, as has been seen, been
carried by an unforeseen circumstance to the house of one of the
magistrates. There, mindful of the poor old prisoner, whose sentence
she knew was daily expected from Boston, she had been watchful of
every circumstance relating to her, and when she observed the key of
her prison deposited in an accessible place (no one dreaming of any
interference in behalf of the condemned), she was inspired with a
sudden resolution to set her free. This was a bold, dangerous, and
unlawful interposition; but Hope Leslie took counsel only from her own
heart, and that told her that the rights of innocence were paramount
to all other rights: and as to danger to herself, she did not weigh
it--she did not think of it.
Digby came to the village to attend her home, and this afforded her an
opportunity of concert with him; in the depths of the night, when all
the household were in profound sleep, she stole from her bed, found
her way to the door of the dungeon, and leading out the prisoner, gave
her into Digby’s charge, who had a canoe in waiting, in which he
ferried her to the opposite shore, where he left her, after having
supplied her with provisions to sustain her to the valleys of the
Housatonic, if, indeed, her wasted strength should enable her to reach
there. The gratitude of the poor old creature for her unexpected
deliverance from shameful death is faintly touched on in Hope’s {175}
letter. She could scarcely, without magnifying her own merit, have
described the vehement emotion with which Nelema promised that she
would devote the remnant of her miserable days to seeking and
restoring her lost sister. Again and again, while Hope urged her
departure, she reiterated this promise; and finally, when she parted
from Digby, she repeated, as if it were a prophecy, “She shall see her
sister.”
Young persons are not apt to make a very exact adjustment of means and
ends, and our heroine certainly placed an undue confidence in the
power of the helpless old woman to accomplish her promise; but she
needed not this to increase her present joy at her success. She crept
to her bed, and was awakened in the morning, as she has herself
related, with the information of Nelema’s escape. She had now a part
to play to which she was unused: to mask her feelings, affect
ignorance, and take part in the consternation of the assembled
village. As may be imagined, her assumed character was awkwardly
enough performed; but all were occupied with their own surmises, and
no one thought of her--no one excepting Mr. Pynchon, who had scarcely
fixed his eye on her when a suspicion that had before flashed on his
mind was confirmed. He knew, from the simplicity of her nature, and
from her habitual frankness, that she would not have hesitated to avow
her pleasure in Nelema’s escape if she had not herself been accessory
to it. He watched her averted eye, he observed her unbroken silence,
and her lips, that, in {176} spite of all her efforts, played into an
inevitable smile at the superstitious surmises of some of the wise
people, whose philosophy had never dreamed of that every-day axiom of
modern times, that supernatural aid should not be called in to
interpret events which may be explained by natural causes.
However satisfactory Mr. Pynchon’s conclusions were to himself, he
confined them, for the present, to his own bosom. He was a merciful
man, and probably felt an emotion of joy at the old woman’s escape,
that could not be suppressed by the stern justice that had pronounced
her worthy of death. But while he easily reconciled himself to the
loss of the prisoner, he felt the necessity of taking instant and
efficient measures to subdue to becoming deference and obedience the
rash and lawless girl who had dared to interpose between justice and
its victim. His heart recoiled from punishing her openly, and he
contented himself with insisting, in a private interview with Mr.
Fletcher, on the necessity of her removal to a stricter control than
his; and recommended, for a time, a temporary transfer of his
neglected authority to less indulgent hands.
Mr. Fletcher complied so far as to consent that his favourite should
be sent for a few months to Boston, to the care of Madam Winthrop,
whose character being brought out by the light of her husband’s
official station, was held up as a sort of pattern throughout
New-England. But we must, for the present, pass by state
characters--gallery portraits--for the miniature picture that lies
next our heart, and {177} which it is full time should be formally
presented to our readers, whose curiosity, we trust, has not been
sated by occasional glimpses.
Nothing could be more unlike the authentic, “thoroughly educated,” and
thoroughly disciplined young ladies of the present day than Hope
Leslie--as unlike as a mountain rill to a canal--the one leaping over
rocks and precipices, sportive, free, and beautiful, or stealing
softly on, in unseen, unpraised loveliness; the other, formed by art,
restrained within prescribed and formal limits, and devoted to
utility. Neither could anything in outward show be more unlike a
modern belle arrayed in the last Paris fashion, than Hope Leslie in
her dress of silk or muslin, shaped with some deference to the fashion
of the day, but more according to the dictates of her own skill and
classic taste, which she followed somewhat pertinaciously, in spite of
the suggestions of her experienced aunt.
Fashion had no shrines among the Pilgrims: but where she is most
abjectly worshipped, it would be treason against the paramount rights
of Nature to subject such a figure as Hope Leslie’s to her tyranny. As
well might the exquisite classic statue be arrayed in corsets,
_manches en gigot, garnitures en tulle, &c._ Her height was not above
the medium standard of her sex; she was delicately formed; the high
health and the uniform habits of a country life had endowed her with
the beauty with which Poetry has invested Hebe; while her love for
exploring hill and dale, ravine and precipice, had given her that
elastic step {178} and ductile grace which belong to all agile
animals, and which made every accidental attitude such as a painter
would have selected to express the nymph-like beauty of Camilla.
It is in vain to attempt to describe a face whose material beauty,
though that beauty may be faultless, is but a medium for the
irradiations of the soul. For the curious, we would, if we could, set
down the colour of our heroine’s eyes; but, alas! it was undefinable;
and appeared gray, blue, hazel, or black, as the outward light touched
them, or as they kindled by the light of her feelings.
Her rich brown hair turned in light waves from her sunny brow, as if
it would not hide the beauty it sheltered. Her mouth, at this early
period of life, had nothing of the seriousness and contemplation that
events might afterward have traced there. It rather seemed the station
of all-sportive, joyous, and kindly feeling; and, at the slightest
motion of her thoughts, curled into smiles, as if all the breathings
of her young heart were happiness and innocence.
It may appear improbable that a girl of seventeen, educated among the
strictest sect of the Puritans, should have had the open, fearless,
and gay character of Hope Leslie; but it must be remembered that she
lived in an atmosphere of favour and indulgence, which permits the
natural qualities to shoot forth in unrepressed luxuriance: an
atmosphere of love, that, like a tropical climate, brings forth the
richest flowers and most flavorous fruits. She was transferred from
the care of the gentlest and tenderest of mothers {179} to Mr.
Fletcher, who, though stern in his principles, was indulgent in his
practice; whose denying virtues were all self-denying; and who infused
into the parental affection he felt for the daughter, something of the
romantic tenderness of the lover of her mother. Her aunt Grafton doted
on her; she was the depository of her vanity as well as of her
affection. To her simple tutor she seemed to imbody all that
philosophers and poets had set down in their books of virtue and
beauty; and those of the old and rigid, who were above or below the
influence of less substantial charms, regarded the young heiress with
deference. In short, she was the petted lamb of the fold.
It has been seen that Hope Leslie was superior to some of the
prejudices of the age. This may be explained without attributing too
much to her natural sagacity. Those persons she most loved, and with
whom she had lived from her infancy, were of variant religious
sentiments. Her father had belonged to the Established Church, and,
though he had much of the gay spirit that characterized the cavaliers
of the day, he was serious and exact in his observance of the rites of
the Church. She had often been her mother’s companion at the
proscribed “meeting,” and witnessed the fervour with which she joined
in the worship of a persecuted and suffering people. Early impressions
sometimes form moulds for subsequent opinions; and when, at a more
reflecting age, Hope heard her aunt Grafton rail with natural good
sense, and with the freedom, if not the {180} point, of mother-wit, at
some of the peculiarities of the Puritans, she was led to doubt their
infallibility; and, like the bird that spreads his wings, and soars
above the limits by which each man fences in his own narrow domain,
she enjoyed the capacities of her nature, and permitted her mind to
expand beyond the contracted boundaries of sectarian faith. Her
religion was pure and disinterested; no one, therefore, should doubt
its intrinsic value, though it had not been coined into a particular
form, or received the current impress.
Though the history of our heroine, like a treasured flower, has only
left its sweetness on the manuscript page, from which we have
amplified it, yet we have been compelled to infer, from some
transactions which we shall faithfully record, that she had faults;
but we leave our readers to discover them. Who has the resolution to
point out a favourite’s defects?
As our fair readers are not apt to be observant of dates, it may be
useful to remind them that Miss Leslie’s letter was written in
October. In the following May, two ships from the mother country
anchored at the same time in Boston Bay. Some passengers from each
ship availed themselves of the facility of the pilot-boat to go up to
the town. Among others were two gentlemen, who met now for the first
time: the one a youth, in manhood’s earliest prime, with a frank,
intelligent, and benevolent countenance, over which, as he strained
his eyes to the shore, joy and anxiety flitted with rapid vicissitude;
the other had advanced farther into life: he might not be more than
five-and-thirty, {181} possibly not so much; but his face was deeply
marked by the ravages of the passions, or, perhaps, the stirring
scenes of life. His eyes were black and piercing, set near together,
and overhung by thick black brows, whose incessant motion indicated a
restless mind. The concentration of thought, or the designing purpose
expressed by the upper part of his face, was contradicted by his
loose, open, flexible lips. His complexion had the same puzzling
contrariety; it was dark and saturnine, but enlivened with the ruddy
hue of a _bon vivant_. His nose neither turned up nor down, was
neither Grecian nor Roman. In short, the countenance of the stranger
was a worthless dial-plate--a practical refutation of the _science_ of
Physiognomy; and, as the infallible art of Phrenology was unknown to
our fathers, they were compelled to ascertain the character (as their
unlearned descendants still are) by the slow development of the
conduct. The person of the stranger had a certain erect and gallant
bearing that marks a man of the world, but his dress was strictly
Puritanical; and his hair, so far from being permitted the “freedom of
growing long,” then deemed “a luxurious feminine prolixity,” or being
covered with a wig (one of the abominations that, according to Eliot;
had brought on the country the infliction of the Pequod war), was
cropped with exemplary precision. But, though the stranger’s apparel
was elaborately Puritanical, still there was a certain elegance about
it which indicated that his taste had reluctantly yielded to his
principles. His garments were of {182} the finest materials, and
exactly fitted to a form of striking manly symmetry. His hair, it is
true, was scrupulously clipped, but, being thick and jet black, it
becomingly defined a forehead of uncommon whiteness and beauty. In one
particular he had departed from the letter of the law, and, instead of
exposing his throat by the plain, open linen collar usually worn, he
sheltered its ugly protuberance with a fine cambric ruff, arranged in
box plaits. In short, though, with the last exception, a nice critic
could not detect the most venial error in his apparel, yet among the
Puritans he looked much like a “dandy Quaker” of the present day amid
his sober-suited brethren.
While the boat, impelled by a favouring tide and fair breeze, glided
rapidly towards the metropolis of the now thriving colony, the
gentlemen fell into conversation with the pilot. The elder stranger
inquired if Governor Winthrop had been re-elected.
“Yes, God bless him,” replied the sailor, “the worthy gentleman has
taken the helm once more.”
“Has he,” asked the stranger, eagerly, “declared for King or
Parliament?”
“Ho! I don’t know much about their land-tackle,” replied the seaman;
“but, to my mind, the fastings we have had all along when the king won
the day, and the rejoicings when the Parliament gained it, was what
you might call a declaration. Since you speak of it, I do remember I
heard the boys up in town saying that our magistrates, at election,
did scruple about the oath, and concluded to leave out {183} that part
which promises to bear true faith and allegiance to our sovereign
lord, King Charles.”
“So, we have thrown his majesty overboard, and are to sail under
Parliament colours?” said the young gentleman. “Well,” he continued,
“this might have been predicted some five or six years since, for, I
remember, there were then disputes whether the king’s ensign should be
spread there,” and he pointed to the fortifications on Castle Island,
past which the boat was at that moment gliding. “They scruple now
about the oath. Then their consciences rebelled against the red cross
in the ensign, which, I remember, was called ‘the Pope’s gift,’ ‘a
relic of papacy,’ ‘an idolatrous sign,’ &c.”
“Scruples of conscience are ever honourable,” said the elder stranger;
“and, doubtless, your governor has good reason for not complying with
the Scripture rule: ‘render unto Cæsar the things that are
Cæsar’s.’”
“There is no doubt of it,” replied the seaman. “The governor--God
bless him!--knows the rules of the Good Book as well as I know the
ropes of a ship; and there is no better pilot than he for all
weathers, as he shows by not joining in the hue and cry against the
good creature tobacco. Fair winds through life, and a pleasant harbour
at last, do I wish him for this piece of Christian love!” at the same
time he illustrated his benediction by putting a portion of the
favourite luxury in his mouth.
“I am sorry,” said the young gentleman, “that our magistrates have
volunteered a public expression {184} of their feelings; their
sympathies, of course, are with the Parliament party; they virtually
broke the yoke of royal authority when they left their native land,
and showed what value they set on liberty by sacrificing for it every
temporal good. Now they have a right to enjoy their liberty in peace.”
“Peace!” said the elder gentleman, emphatically; “thus it ever is with
the natural man, crying peace, peace, where there is no peace. Think
you, young man, that if the king were to recover his power, he would
not resume all the privileges he has formerly granted to these people,
who, thanks to Him whose ark abideth with them! show themselves so
ready to cast off their allegiance?”
“The king, no doubt,” replied the young gentleman, “would like to
resume both power and possession; but still I think we might retain
our own, on the principle that he had no right to give, and, in truth,
could not give what was not his, and what we have acquired either by
purchase of the natives or by lawful conquest, which gives us the
right to the _vacuum domicilium_.”
“I am happy to see, sir,” said the elder gentleman, slightly bowing
and smiling, “that your principles, at least, are on the side of the
Puritans.”
“My feelings and principles both, sir; but that does not render me
insensible to the happiness of the adverse party, or the wisdom of all
parties, which is peace; the peace which the generous Falkland so
earnestly invokes, every patriot may ardently desire. Peace, if I may
borrow a figure from our friend the {185} pilot here, is a fair wind
and a flood-tide, and war a storm that must wreck some, and may wreck
both friend and foe.”
The young gentleman seemed tired of the conversation, and turned away,
fixing his eager gaze on the shore, towards which his heart bounded.
His companion, however, was not disposed to indulge him in silence.
“This town, sir,” he said, “appears to be familiar to you. I, alas! am
a stranger and a wanderer.” This was spoken in a tone of unaffected
seriousness.
“Of such this country is the natural home,” replied the young man,
regarding his companion for the first time with some interest, for he
had been repelled by what seemed to him to savour of cant, of which he
had heard too much in the mother country. “I should be happy, sir,” he
said, courteously, “to render my acquaintance with the town of any
service to you.”
The stranger bowed in acknowledgment of the civility. “I would
gladly,” he said, “find entertainment with some godly family here. Is
Mr. Wilson still teacher of the congregation?”
“No, sir: if he were, you might securely count on his hospitality, as
it was so notorious that ‘come in, you are heartily welcome,’ was said
to be the anagram of his name. But, if he is gone, the doors in Boston
are always open to the stranger. Mr. Cotton, I believe, is the present
minister--is he not, pilot?”
“Yes, an please you, sir; but I’m thinking,” he {186} added, with a
leer, “that that butterfly will be an odd fish to harbour with any of
our right godly ones.” The young gentleman followed the direction of
the pilot’s eye, and for the first time observed a lad, who sat on one
side of the boat, leaning over, and amusing himself with lashing the
waves with a fanciful walking-stick. He overheard the pilot’s remark,
and raised his head, as it appeared, involuntarily, for he immediately
averted it again, but not till he had exposed a face of uncommon
beauty. He looked about fifteen. He had the full, melting dark eye and
rich complexion of southern climes; masses of jetty curls parted on
his forehead, shaded his temples and neck, and “smooth as Hebe’s was
his unrazored lip.” It was obvious that it was his dress which had
called forth the sailor’s sarcasm. The breast and sleeves of his
jerkin were embroidered; a deep-pointed rich lace ruff embellished his
neck, if a neck round and smooth as alabaster could be embellished;
and his head was covered with a little fantastic Spanish hat,
decorated with feathers.
“Does that youth appertain to you, sir?” asked the young gentleman of
the elder stranger.
“Yes, he is a sort of dependant--a page of mine,” he replied, with an
embarrassed manner; but in a moment recovering his self-possession, he
added, “I infer, from the gratuitous remarks of our very frank pilot,
and from the survey you have taken of the lad, that you think his
apparel extraordinary.”
“It might possibly,” replied the young man, with a smile, “offend
against certain sumptuary laws of our colony, and thus prove
inconvenient to you.”
{187}
“Roslin, do you hear?” said the master to the page, who nodded his
head without raising it; “thy finery, boy, as I have told thee, must
be retrenched;” then turning to his companion, and lowering his voice
to a confidential tone, he added, “the lad hath lived on the
Continent, and hath there imbibed these vanities, of which I hope in
good time to reform him; perhaps his youth hath overwrought with my
indulgence in suffering them thus long.”
The young gentleman courteously prevented any farther, and, as he
thought, unnecessary exculpation, by saying “that the offence was
certainly a very trifling one, and if observed at all, would be, by
the most scrupulous, considered as venial in so young a lad.” He now
again turned his ardent gaze to the shore. “Ah! there is the spire of
the new meeting-house,” he said; “and when I went away, the good
people assembled under a thatched roof, and within mud walls.”
“And I can remember,” said the pilot, “for I was among the first
comers to the wilderness, when for weeks the congregation met under an
oak tree: and there was heart-worship there, gentlemen, if there ever
was on the ball.”
A church standing where _Joy’s buildings_ are now located was the only
one then in Boston. The greater part of the houses were built in its
vicinity, just about the heart of the peninsula, on whose striking and
singular form its first possessors aver they saw written prophecies of
its future greatness. Some of its most prominent features have been
softened by {188} time, and others changed by the busy art of man.
Wharves, whole streets, and the noble granite market-house (a prouder
memorial to its founder than a triumphal arch) now stand where the
deep “cove” stretched its peaceful harbour, between the two hills that
stood like towers of defence at its extremities. That at the north
rose to the height of fifty feet above the sea, and on its level
summit stood a windmill; towards the sea it presented an abrupt
declivity, and was fortified at its base by a strong battery. The
eastern hill was higher than its sister by some thirty feet; it
descended kindly towards the town, and was on that side planted with
corn. Towards the sea its steep and ragged cliffs announced that
Nature had formed it for defence; and, accordingly, our fathers soon
fortified it with “store of great artillery,” and changed the first
pastoral name of Corn-hill, which they had given it, to the more
appropriate designation of Fort-hill. A third hill flanked the town,
rising to the height of one hundred and thirty-eight feet. “All
three,” says Johnson, “like overtopping towers, keepe a constant watch
to foresee the approach of forrein dangers, being furnished with a
beacon, and loud babbling guns, to give notice, by their redoubled
eccho, to all their sister townes.”
Shawmut, a word expressing living fountains, was the Indian name of
Boston. Tri-mountain, its first English name, and descriptive of
Beacon Hill, which, as we are told, rose in three majestic and lofty
eminences, the most eastern of these summits having on its brow three
little hillocks. Its present, and, as {189} we fondly believe,
immortal name, was given with characteristic reverence, in honour of
one of its first pastors, Mr. Cotton, who came from Boston, in
England.
But we return from this digression to our pilot-boat, which now had
nearly reached its landing-place. A throng had gathered on the
“town-dock” in expectation of friends, or news from friends. In vain
did the young stranger’s eye explore the crowd for some familiar face;
he was obliged to check the greetings that rose to his lips, and
repress the throbbings of his heart. “Time,” he said, “has wrought
strange changes. I fancied that even the stones in Boston would know
me; but now I see not one welcoming look, unless it be in those
barbary and rose bushes, that appear just as they did the last time I
scrambled over Windmill Hill.” They now landed at the foot of this
hill, and the young gentleman told his companion that he should go to
his old home at Governor Winthrop’s, where he was sure of finding
friends to welcome him. “And if you will accompany me thither,” he
said, “I am certain our kind governor will render you all the
courtesies which, as a stranger, you may require.”
This opportune offer was of course accepted; and the gentlemen
proceeded like old acquaintances, arm in arm together, after a short
consultation between the master and page, the amount of which seemed
to be that the boy should attend him, and await without Governor
Winthrop’s door farther orders.
{190}
They had not gone far, when, as they turned a corner, two young ladies
issued from the door of a house a little in advance, and walked on
without observing them. The young gentleman quickened his steps. “It
must be she!” he exclaimed, in a most animated tone. “There is but one
person in the world that has such tresses!” and his eye rested on the
bright golden ringlets that peeped from beneath a chip gipsy hat worn
by one of the ladies.
“That is not a rational conclusion of yours,” said his companion.
“Women have cunning devices by which to change the order of Nature in
the colouring of the hair. I have seen many a court dame arrayed in
the purchased locks of her serving-maid; besides, you know it is the
vain fashion of the day to make much use of coloured powders, fluids,
and unguents.”
“That may all be; but do you not see this nymph’s locks are, as
Rosalind says, of the colour God chooses?”
“It were better, my friend, if you explained your meaning without a
profane quotation from a play, a practice to which our godless
cavaliers are much addicted; but pardon my reproof: age has
privileges.”
“I do not know,” replied the young gentleman, “what degree of
seniority may confer this privilege; if some half dozen years, I
submit to your right; and the more readily, as I am just now too happy
to quarrel about anything; but excuse me, I must quicken my pace to
overtake this girl, who trips it along as if she had Mercury’s wings
on those pretty feet.”
{191}
“Ah, that’s a foot to leave its print in the memory,” said the elder
gentleman, in an animated and natural tone, that, eagerly as his
companion was pressing on, did not escape his observation.
They had now approached the parties they were pursuing near enough to
hear their voices and catch a few words of their conversation. “You
say it’s edifying, and all that,” said the shortest of the two young
ladies, in reply to what seemed, from the tone in which it was
concluded, to have been an expostulation; “and I dare say, dear
Esther, you are quite right, for you are as wise as Solomon, and
always in the right; but for my part, I confess, I had infinitely
rather be at home drying marigolds, and matching embroidery silks for
aunt Grafton.”
“Hope Leslie! by Heaven!” exclaimed the young man, springing forward.
The young lady turned at the sound of her name, uttered a scream of
joy, and, under the impulse of strong affection and sudden delight,
threw her arms around the stranger’s neck, and was folded in the
embrace of Everell Fletcher.
The next instant, the consciousness that the street was an awkward
place for such a demonstration of happiness, or, perhaps, the thought
that the elegant young man before her was no longer the playfellow of
her childhood, suffused her neck and face with the deepest crimson;
and a sort of exculpatory exclamation of “I was so surprised!” burst
from her lips, and extorted a smile even from Everell’s new
acquaintance, whose gravity had all the fixedness of premeditation.
{192}
For a moment Everell’s eyes were riveted to Hope Leslie’s face, which
he seemed to compare with the image in his memory. “Yes,” he said, as
if thinking aloud, “the same face that I saw, for the first time,
peeping through my curtains, the day Digby brought me home to Bethel:
how is Digby? my dear father? Mrs. Grafton? the Winthrops? everybody?”
“All, all well; but I must defer particulars till I have introduced
you to my friend, Miss Downing.”
“Miss Downing! is it possible!” exclaimed Everell; and a recognition
followed which showed that, though he had not before observed the
lady, who had turned aside, and was sheltered under the thick folds of
a veil, the parties were not unknown to each other. Miss Leslie now
drew her friend’s arm within hers, and, as she did so, she perceived
she trembled excessively; but, too considerate to remark an agitation
which it was obvious the lady did not mean to betray, she did not
appear to notice it, and proceeded to give Everell such particulars of
his friends as he must be most impatient to hear. She told him that
his father was in Boston, and that, in compliance with his son’s
wishes, he had determined to fix his residence there. Everell was
rejoiced at this decision, for gloomy recollections were, in his mind,
always associated with Bethel, and he was never happy when he thought
of the dangers to which Miss Leslie was exposed there.
“My last letters from America,” he said, “informed me that you had, as
yet, no tidings from your sister or my friend Magawisca.”
{193}
“Nor have we now; still I cling to my belief that my poor sister will
some day be restored to me: Nelema’s promise is prophecy to me.”
They had by this time reached Governor Winthrop’s. Miss Downing
withdrew her arm from her friend, with the intention of retiring to
her own apartment; but her steps faltered, and she sunk down in the
first chair she could reach, hoping to escape all observation in the
bustle of joy occasioned by the unexpected arrival of Everell; and she
did so, excepting that her aunt called the colour to her cheek by
saying, “My dear Esther, you have sadly fatigued yourself; you are as
pale as death!” and Hope Leslie, noticing that Everell cast stolen
glances of anxious inquiry at her friend, made, with the usual
activity of a romantic imagination, a thousand conjectures as to the
nature of their acquaintance. But there was nothing said or done to
assist her speculations; and while the governor was looking over a
letter of introduction, presented to him by Everell’s chance
acquaintance, who had announced himself by the name of Sir Philip
Gardiner, the young ladies withdrew to their own apartment.