{194}
“A pensive nun, devout and pure,
Sober, steadfast, and demure.”
Il Penseroso.
When the two ladies were alone, there were a few moments of
embarrassed and uninterrupted silence, a rare occurrence between two
confidential young friends. Hope Leslie was the first to speak. “Come,
my dear Esther,” she said, “it is in vain for you to think of hiding
your heart from me; if you do not fairly conduct me through its mazes,
I shall make use of the clew you have dropped, and find my own way
through the labyrinth.”
“Hope Leslie! what clew do you mean? You should not trifle thus.”
“Well, then, I will be as serious as you please, and most solemnly
demand why thou hast never hinted to the friend of thy bosom that thou
hadst seen in thine own country this youth, Everell Fletcher, of whom
I have, at divers times and sundry places, most freely spoken to
thee?”
“I never told you I had not seen him.”
“Oh no! but methinks, for a godly, gracious maiden as thou art,
Esther--approved by our elders, the pattern of our deacons’
wives--your actions, as well as your language, should be the Gospel
‘yea, yea, and nay, nay;’ this ‘paltering with a double {195} sense,’
as the poet has it, would better become a profane damsel like myself.”
“If I have lacked sincerity, I merit your reproach; but I meant to
have told you. Mr. Fletcher’s arrival now was unexpected--”
“And you were indisposed? your nerves deranged? your circulations
disordered? I thought so when I saw that burning blush, that looked,
even through the folds of your veil, as if it would set it on fire;
but, now your surprise is over, why look so like the tragic muse?
Raise up your eyes and look at me, dear Esther, and do not let those
long eyelashes droop over your pale cheek like a weeping willow over
monumental marble.”
“Oh, Hope Leslie! if it were not sinful, I could wish that monumental
marble might press the clods on my cold bosom.”
Hope was startled at the unaffected solemnity and deep distress of her
friend: every pulsation of her heart was audible, and her lips, which
before were as pale as death, became absolutely blue. She threw her
arms around her, and kissed her tenderly. “Dear, dear Esther,” she
said, “forgive me for offending thee. I never will ask thee anything
again--never, so long as I live. You may look glad or sorry, blush or
faint--do anything you please, and I never will ask you for a reason.”
“You are very kind, very generous, Hope; but have you not already
guessed the secret I have striven to hide? You hesitate: answer me
truly.”
“Why, then, if I must answer truly, perhaps I {196} have,” replied
Hope, looking, in spite of herself, as archly as the mischievous
little god, when he sees one of his own arrows trembling in the heart;
“‘set a thief to catch a thief,’ dear Esther, is an old maxim; and,
though I have never felt this nervous malady, yet, you know, I am
skilled in the books that describe the symptoms, thanks to aunt
Grafton’s plentiful stock of romances and plays.”
“Oh, most unprofitable skill! But I have no right to reproach thee,
since what hath been but the sport of thy imagination is my
experience--degrading experience. Whatever it may cost me, you shall
know all, Hope Leslie. You have justly reproached me with insincerity:
I will at least lighten my conscience of the burden of that sin.”
Hope’s curiosity was on tiptoe; and, notwithstanding her generous
resolution not voluntarily to penetrate her friend’s mystery, she was
delighted with the dawn of a disclosure which, she believed, would
amount to a simple confession of a tender sentiment. She sincerely
pitied Miss Downing’s sufferings; but it is, perhaps, impossible for a
third person to sympathize fully with feelings of this nature. “Now,
Esther,” she said, sportively, “fancy me to be the priest, and
yourself the penitent. Confess freely, daughter; our holy Church,
through me, her most unworthy servant, doth offer thee full
absolution.”
“Stop, stop, Hope Leslie! do not trifle with holy words and most
unholy rites; but listen seriously, and compassionate a weakness that
can never be forgotten.”
{197}
Miss Downing then proceeded to relate some of the following
particulars; but, as her narrative was confused by her emotions, and
as it is necessary our readers should, for the sake of its
illustration, be possessed of some circumstances which were omitted by
her, we here give it, more distinctly, in our own language.
Esther was the daughter of Emanuel Downing, the husband of Governor
Winthrop’s sister, so often mentioned by that gentleman in his journal
as the faithful and useful friend of the Pilgrims, whom he finally
joined in New-England.
Esther Downing was of a reserved, tender, and timid cast of character,
and, being bred in the strictest school of the Puritans, their
doctrines and principles easily commingled with the natural qualities
of her mind. She could not have disputed the nice points of faith,
sanctification, and justification, with certain celebrated
contemporary female theologians, but no one excelled her in the
practical part of her religion. In the language of the times,
justification was witnessed both by word and work.
That young ladies were then indulged in a moderate degree of personal
embellishment, we learn from one of the severest Pilgrim satirists,
who avers that he was “no cynic to the due _bravery_ of the true
gentry,” and allows that “a good text always deserves a fair margent.”
Miss Downing was certainly a pure and beautiful “text,” but her attire
never varied from the severest Gospel simplicity. It is possible that
she was fortified in this self-denying virtue {198} by that lively
little spirit that ever hovers about a woman’s toilet, whispering in
her ear that all the arts of the tyring-woman could not improve the
becomingness of her Madonna style. She wore her hair, which was of a
sober brown hue, parted on her forehead, and confined behind in a
braid that was so adjusted, it may be accidentally, as to perfectly
define the graceful contour of her head. Her complexion was rather
pale, but so exquisitely fair and transparent that it showed the
faintest tinge of colour, and set off to the greatest advantage
features which, if not striking, had the admitted beauty of perfect
symmetry. She was at least half a head taller than our heroine or the
Venus de Medicis; but, as neither of these were standards with the
Pilgrims, no one who ventured to speak of the personal graces of
Esther Downing ever impeached their perfection. Spiritual graces were
then in far higher estimation than external charms; and Miss Downing,
who would have been a reigning belle in our degenerate times, was
always characterized by a religious epithet; she was the “godly” or
the “gracious maiden.” She attained the age of nineteen without one
truant wish straying beyond the narrow bound of domestic duty and
religious exercises; but the course of youth and beauty “never doth
run smooth,” and the perils that commonly beset it now assailed the
tender Esther.
Everell Fletcher came to her father’s to pass two months. He had then,
for some years, resided in the family of his uncle Stretton, a
moderate churchman, {199} who, though he had not seen fit to eradicate
the religious and political principles that had been planted in the
mind of the boy, had so tempered them that, to confess the truth, the
man fell far below the standard of Puritanism. At first Esther was
rather shocked by the unsubdued gayety, the unconstrained freedom, and
the air of a man of society that distinguished Everell from the few
demure, solemn young men of her acquaintance; but there is an
irresistible charm in ease, simplicity, and frankness, when chastened
by the refinements of education, and there is a natural affinity in
youth, even when there is no resemblance in the character; and Esther
Downing, who at first remained in Everell’s presence but just as long
as the duties of hospitality required, soon found herself lingering in
the parlour, and strolling in the walks that were his favourite
resort. It seemed as if the sun had risen on her after a polar winter,
and cheerfulness and her pleasant train sprung up in a mind that had
been chilled and paralyzed by the absence of whatever cherishes the
gay temper of youth; but it was, after all, but the stinted growth of
a polar summer.
She felt a change stealing over her; new thoughts were in her heart,
“And love and happiness their theme.”
She did not investigate the cause of this change, but suffered the
current of her feelings to flow unchecked, till she was roused to
reflection by her serving-maid, who said to her mistress one evening,
when she came in from a long moonlight walk with Everell, {200} “Our
worthy minister has been here to-day, and he asked me what kept you
from the lecture-room so oft of late. I minded him it rained last
night. He said that in months past no tempest detained you from the
place of worship. I made no answer to that; besides that, it was not
for me to gainsay the minister. He stood as if meditating a minute,
and then he took up your psalm-book, and as he did so, a paper dropped
with some verses written on it, and he said, with almost a smile, ‘Ah,
Judy, then your young lady tries her hand, sometimes, at versifying
the words of the royal psalmist?’”
“Did he look at the lines, Judy?” asked Esther, blushing deeply with
the consciousness that they were but a profane sentimental effusion.
“Yes, my lady; but he looked solemnized, and said nothing more about
them; but, turning to me, and speaking as if he would ask a question,
he said, ‘Judy, it was your mistress’ wont to keep the wheel of prayer
in perpetual motion. I doubt not her private duty is still faithfully
done?’ I answered to him that your honoured parents had been absent
the last week, and you had had company to entertain, and were not
quite as long at closet-exercise as usual.”
“Judy, you were very ready with your excuses for me,” said her
mistress, after a moment’s thoughtfulness.
“It must be a dumb dog indeed,” replied the girl, “that cannot bark
for such a kind mistress as thou art.”
{201}
How often does an accident, a casual word even, serve as a key to
unlock feelings of which the possessor has been unconscious. The
conscientious girl was suddenly awakened from what appeared to her a
sinful dream. Had she perceived, on investigation, a reciprocal
sentiment in Everell Fletcher, she would probably have permitted her
feelings to flow in their natural channel; but, not mingling with his,
they were like a stream that, being dammed up, flows back, and spreads
desolation where it should have produced life and beauty.
The severest religionists of the times did not require the extinction
of the tenderest human affections. On the contrary, there was,
perhaps, never a period when they were more frequently and perfectly
illustrated. How many delicate women, whom the winds of heaven had
never visited roughly, subscribed with their lives to that beautiful
declaration of affection from a tender and devoted wife:
“Whithersoever your fatall destinie,” she said to her husband, “shall
dryve you, eyther by the furious waves of the great ocean, or by the
manifolde and horrible dangers of the lande, I will surely beare you
company. There can be no peryll chaunce to me so terrible, nor any
kynde of deathe so cruelle, that shall not be much easier for me to
abyde than to live so farre separate from you.”
But, though human affections were permitted, they were to be in
manifest subservience to religious devotion: their encroachments were
watched with a vigilance resembling the jealousy with which the
Israelites {202} defended from every profane footstep the Holy Circle
around the ark of the living God. It was this jealousy that now
alarmed the fearful, superstitious girl; and, after some days of the
most unsparing self-condemnation, imbittered by an indefinite feeling
of disappointment, she fell into a dangerous illness, and in the
paroxysms of her fever she prayed fervently that her Creator would
resume the spirit which had been too weak to maintain its fidelity. It
seemed as if her prayer was soon to be granted; she felt herself, and
was pronounced by her physician, to be on the verge of the grave. She
then was inspired with a strong desire, proceeding, as she believed,
from a divine intimation, but which might possibly have sprung from
natural feeling, to open her heart to Everell. This disclosure,
followed by her dying admonition, would, she hoped, rescue him from
the vanities of youth. She accordingly requested her mother to conduct
him to her bedside, and to leave them alone for a few moments; and
when her request was complied with, she made to the astonished youth,
in the simplicity and sincerity of her heart, a confession that, in
other circumstances, the rack would not have extorted.
At first Fletcher fancied her reason was touched. He soothed her, and
attempted to withdraw to call her attendants. She interpreted his
thoughts, assured him he was mistaken, and begged that he would not
waste one moment of her ebbing life. He then knelt at her bedside,
took her burning hand in his, and bathed it with tears of deep
commiseration and tender {203} regret. He promised to lay up her
exhortations in his heart, and cherish them as the law of his life;
but he did not intimate that he had ever felt a sentiment responding
to hers. There was that in the solemnity of the death-bed, in her
purity and truth, that would have rebuked the slightest insincerity,
however benevolent the feeling that dictated it.
This strange interview lasted but a few moments. Miss Downing, in the
energy of her feeling, raised herself on her elbow; the effort
exhausted her, and she sunk back in a stupor which appeared to be the
immediate precursor of death. Her friends flocked round her, and
Fletcher retired to his own room, filled with sorrowful concern at the
involuntary influence he had exercised on this sensitive being, who
seemed to him far better fitted for heaven than for earth.
But Miss Downing was not destined yet to be translated to a more
congenial sphere. Her unburdened heart reposed after its long
struggles; the original cause of her disease was lightened, if not
removed; and the elasticity of a youthful constitution rose victorious
over her malady. She never mentioned Everell Fletcher; but she heard,
incidentally, that he had remained at her father’s till she was
pronounced out of danger, and had then gone to his uncle Stretton’s in
Suffolk.
The following autumn, her father, in compliance with a request of
Madam Winthrop, and in the hope that a voyage would benefit her
health, which was still delicate, sent her to Boston. There she met
{204} Hope Leslie--a bright, gay spirit--an allegro to her penseroso.
They were unlike in everything that distinguished each; and it was
therefore more probable, judging from experience, that they would
become mutually attached. Whatever the theory of the affections may
be, the fact was that they soon became inseparable and confidential
friends. Hope sometimes ventured to rally Esther on her
over-scrupulousness, and Miss Downing often rebuked the laughing
girl’s gayety; but, however variant their dispositions, they melted
into each other like light into shade, each enhancing the beauty and
effect of the other.
Hope often spoke of Everell, for he was associated with all the most
interesting recollections of her childhood, and probably with her
visions of the future; for what girl of seventeen has not a lord for
her air-built castles?
Miss Downing listened calmly to her description of the hero of her
imagination, but never, by word or sign, gave token that she knew
aught of him other than was told her; and the secret might have died
with her, had not her emotion at Everell’s unexpected appearance half
revealed the state of her heart to her quick-sighted friend. This
revelation she finished by a full confession, interrupted by tears of
bitter mortification.
“Oh!” she concluded, “had I but known how to watch and rule my own
spirit, I should have been saved these pangs of remorse and shame.”
“My dear Esther,” said Hope, brushing away the {205} tears of sympathy
that suffused her eyes, “I assure you I am not crying because I
consider it a crying case; you people that dwell in the clouds have
always a mist before you; now I can see that your path is plain, and
sure the end thereof; just give yourself up to my guidance, who,
though not half so good and wise as you are, am far more sure-footed.
I do not doubt in the least Everell feels all he ought to feel. I defy
anybody to know you and not love you, Esther. And do you not see that,
if he had made any declaration at the time, it might have seemed as if
he were moved by pity or gratitude? He knew you were coming to
New-England, and that he was to follow you; and now he has anticipated
his return by some weeks, and why nobody knows, and it must be because
you are here: don’t you think so? You will not speak, but I know by
your smile what you think as well as if you did.”
Arguments appear very sound that are fortified by our wishes, and Miss
Downing’s face was assuming a more cheerful expression, when Jennet
(our old friend Jennet) came into the room to give the young ladies
notice to prepare for dinner, and to inform them that Sir Philip
Gardiner was to dine with them; “and a godly appearing man he is,”
said Jennet, “as ever I laid my eyes on; and it is a wonder to me that
our Mr. Everell should have fallen into such profitable company; for,
I am sorry to see it and loath to say it, he looks as gay as when he
used to play his mad pranks at Bethel; when it was next to an
impossibility to keep you and him, Miss Hope, {206} from talking and
laughing even on a Sabbath day. I think,” she continued, glancing her
eye at Miss Downing, “sober companions do neither of you any good; and
it is so strange Mr. Everell should come home with his hair looking
like one of those heathen pictures of your aunt’s.”
“Oh! hush, Jennet! It would be a sin to crop those dark locks of Mr.
Everell.”
“A sin indeed, Miss Leslie! That is the way you always turn things
wrong side out; a sin to have his hair cut like his father’s--or the
honourable governor’s--or this Sir Philip Gardiner’s--or any other
Christian man’s.”
“Well, Jennet, I wish it would come into your wise head that Christian
tongues were not made for railing. As to my being serious to-day, that
is entirely out of the question; therefore you may spare yourself hint
and exhortation, and go to my aunt, and ask her for my blue bodice and
necklace. But no--” she said, stopping Jennet, for she recollected
that she had directed the blue bodice because it matched her blue
fillet, Everell’s gift, and a secret voice told her she had best,
under existing circumstances, lay that favourite badge aside. “No,
Jennet, bring me my pink bodice and my ruby locket.” Jennet obeyed,
but not without muttering, as she left the room, a remonstrance
against the vanities of dress.
Jennet was one of those persons, abounding in every class of life,
whose virtues are most conspicuous in “damning sins they are not
inclined to.” We ought, perhaps, to apologize for obtruding so {207}
humble and disagreeable a personage upon our readers. But the truth
is, she figured too much on the family record of the Fletchers to be
suppressed by their faithful historian. Those personages ycleped bores
in the copious vocabulary of modern times, seem to be a necessary
ingredient in life, and, like pinching shoes and smoky rooms,
constitute a portion of its trials. Jennet had first found favour with
Mrs. Fletcher from her religious exterior. To employ none but godly
servants was a rule of the Pilgrims; and there were certain set
phrases and modes of dress which produced no slight impression upon
the minds of the credulous. To do Jennet justice, she had many
temporal virtues; and though her religion was of the ritual order,
and, therefore, particularly disagreeable to her spiritual mistress,
yet her household faculties were invaluable, for then, as now, in the
interior of New-England, a faithful servant was like the genius of a
fairy tale--no family could hope for more than one.
Long possession legalized Jennet’s rights and increased her tyrannical
humours, which were naturally most freely exercised on those members
of the family who had grown from youth to maturity under her eye. In
nothing was the sweetness of Hope Leslie’s temper more conspicuous
than in the perfect good-nature with which she bore the teasing
impertinences of this menial, who, like a cross cur, was ready to bark
at every passer by.
Youth and beauty abridge the labours of the toilet, and our young
friends, though on this occasion unusually {208} solicitous about the
impression they were to make, were not long in attiring themselves;
and when Mrs. Grafton presented herself to attend them to dinner, they
were awaiting her. “Upon my word,” she said, “young ladies, you have
done honour to the occasion; it is not every day we have two gentlemen
fresh from Old England to dine with us; I am glad you have shown
yourselves sensible of the importance of the becomings. It is every
woman’s duty, upon all occasions, to look as well as she can.”
“And a duty so faithfully performed, my dear aunt,” said Hope, “that I
fancy, like other duties, it becomes easy from habit.”
“Easy!” replied Mrs. Grafton, with perfect _naïveté_; “second
nature, my dear, second nature. I was taught, from a child, to
determine, the first thing in the morning, what I should wear that
day; and now it is as natural to me as to open my eyes when I wake.”
“I should think, madam,” said Esther, “that other and higher thoughts
were more fitting a rational creature, preserved through the
night-watches.”
Hope was exquisitely susceptible to her aunt’s frailties, but she
would fain have sheltered them from the observation of others. “Now,
my gentle Esther,” she whispered to Miss Downing, “lecturing is not
your vocation, and this is not lecture-day. On jubilee-days slaves
were set free, you know, and why should not follies be?”
Miss Downing could not have failed to have made some sage reply to her
friend’s casuistry, but the {209} ringing of a bell announced the
dinner, and the young ladies, arm in arm, followed Mrs. Grafton to the
dining-room. Just as they entered, Hope whispered, “Remember, Esther,
the festal day is sacred, and may not be violated by a sad
countenance.” This was a well-timed caution; it called a slight tinge
to Miss Downing’s cheeks, and relieved her too expressive paleness.
Everell Fletcher met them at the door. The light of his happiness
seemed to gild every object. He complimented Mrs. Grafton on her
appearance; told her she had not in the least changed since he saw
her--an implied compliment, always, after a woman has passed a
_certain age_. He congratulated Miss Downing upon the very apparent
effect of the climate on her health; and then, breaking through the
embarrassment that slightly constrained him in addressing her, he
turned to Hope Leslie, and they talked of the past, the present, and
the future with spontaneous animation, their feelings according and
harmonizing as naturally as the music of the stars when they sang
together.