{177}
“Ye’re like to the timmer o’ yon rotten wood,
Ye’re like to the bark o’ yon rotten tree,
Ye’ll slip frae me like a knotless thread,
And ye’ll crack your credit wi’ mae nor me.”
Burns.
At the period of our history, twelve o’clock was the hour appointed
for dinner: we believe in the mother-country--certainly in the colony
then, as now, everywhere in the interior of our states, this natural
division of time was maintained. Our magistrates did not then claim
any exemption from the strict rules of simplicity and frugality that
were imposed on the humble citizens, and Governor Winthrop’s meridian
meal, though it might have been somewhat superior in other luxuries,
had no more of the luxury of time bestowed on it than that of the
honest artisans and tradesmen about him.
In order to explain what follows, it is necessary to state to our
readers, that adjoining the parlour of Governor Winthrop’s mansion was
that _sine qua non_ of all thrifty housekeepers, an ample pantry. In
the door of this pantry was a glazed panel, over the parlour side of
which hung a green curtain. The glass had been broken, and not yet
repaired; and, let housewives take the admonition if they like, on
this slight accident depended life and death.
{178}
The pantry, besides the door already described, had another, which
communicated with the kitchen; through this Jennet (who in housewife
skill resembled the “neat-handed Phillis” of poetic fame, though in
other respects prosaic enough) had entered to perform within the
sanctum certain confidential services for Madam Winthrop.
It now drew near the hour of two, the time appointed for the interview
of the governor with Sir Philip; the dinner was over, the table
removed, and all orderly and quiet in the parlour, when Jennet, in her
retreat, heard Miss Leslie and Mr. Everell Fletcher enter, and, though
the weather was warm, close the door after them. A slight hint is
sufficient for the wary and wise; and Jennet, on hearing the door
shut, forbore to make any noise which should apprize the parties of
her proximity.
The young people, as if fearful of being overheard without, withdrew
to the farthest extremity from the entry door, and came into the
corner adjoining the pantry. They spoke, though in low tones, yet in
the most earnest and animated manner; and Jennet, tempted beyond what
she was able to bear, drew nigh to the door with a cat’s tread, and
applied her ear to the aperture, where the sounds were only slightly
obstructed by the silk curtain.
While speakers and listener stood in this interesting relation to each
other, Sir Philip Gardiner was approaching the mansion, his bad mind
filled with projects, hopes, and fears. He had, after much painful
study, framed the following story, which he hoped {179} to impose on
the credulity of the governor, and, through him, of the public. His
sole care was to avoid present investigation and detection; in
navigating a winding channel, he regarded only the difficulties
directly before him.
He meant that, in the first place, by way of a _coup de grace_, the
governor should understand he had intentionally acquiesced in the
discovery of Rosa’s disguise. He would then, as honest Varney did,
confess there had been some love-passages between the girl and himself
in the days of his folly. He would state that, subsequent to his
conversion, he had placed her in a godly school in England, and that,
to his utter confusion, he had discovered, after he had sailed from
London, that she had, in the disguise she still wore, secreted herself
on board the ship. He had, perhaps, felt too much indulgence for the
girl’s youth and unconquerable affection for him; but he should hope
that was not an unpardonable sin. He had been restrained from
divulging her real character on shipboard, from his reluctance to
expose her youth to insult or farther temptation. On his arrival, he
was conscious it was a manifest duty to have delivered her over to the
public authorities; but pity--pity still had ruled him. He
scrupled--perhaps that was a temptation of the enemy, who knew well to
assail the weakest points--he scrupled to give over to public shame
one, of whose transgressions he had been the cause. Besides, she had
been bred in France--a Papist; and he had hoped--trusting, perhaps,
too much in his own strength--that he might {180} convert her from the
error of her ways--snatch the brand from the burning; he had, indeed,
felt a fatherly tenderness for her, and, weakly indulging that
sentiment, he had still, when he found her obstinately persisting in
her errors, devised a plan to shelter her from public punishment; and,
in pursuance of it, he had taken advantage of the opportunity afforded
him by his visit to Thomas Morton, to propose to Magawisca that, in
case she should obtain her liberty from the clemency of her judges,
she should undertake to convey Rosa to a convent in Montreal, of the
order to which she had been, in her childhood, attached.
He meant to plead guilty, as he thought he could well afford to do, if
he was exculpated on the other points, to all the sin of acquiescence
in Rosa’s devotion to an unholy and proscribed religion; and to the
crucifix Magawisca had produced, and which he feared would prove a
“confirmation strong” to any jealousies the governor might still
harbour against him, he meant to answer that he had taken it from Rosa
to explain to Magawisca that she was of the Romish religion.
With this plausible tale--not the best that could have been devised,
perhaps, by one accustomed to all the sinuosities of the human mind
and human affairs, but the best that Sir Philip could frame in his
present perplexity--he bent his steps towards the governor’s, a little
anticipating the appointed hour in the hope of obtaining a glimpse of
Miss Leslie, whom he had not seen since their last interview at the
island; {181} and who was still the bright cynosure by which, through
all the dangers that beset him, he trusted to guide himself to a
joyous destiny.
Never was he more unwelcome to her sight than when he opened the
parlour door, and interrupted the deeply-interesting conversation in
which we left her engaged. She coldly bowed, without speaking, and
left him, without making any apology, in the midst of his flattering
compliments on the recovery of her health.
Sir Philip and Everell were much on the terms of two unfriendly dogs,
who are, by some coercion, kept from doing battle, but who never meet
without low growls and sullen looks, that intimate their deadly
enmity. Everell paced the room twice or thrice, then snatched up his
hat, left the house, and sauntered up the street.
No sooner had he disappeared than Jennet emerged from her seclusion,
her hands uplifted and her eyes upturned. “Oh, Sir Philip! Sir
Philip!” she said, as soon as she could get her voice, a delay never
long with Jennet, “truly is the heart deceitful, and the lips too. Oh!
who would have thought it? such a daring, presumptuous, and secret
sin, too! Where is the governor? He must know it. But first, Sir
Philip, I will tell you; that will do, as you and the governor are one
in counsel.”
“Heaven grant we may be so,” thought Sir Philip, and he closed the
door and turned to Jennet, eager to hear her communication; for her
earnestness, {182} and, still more, the source whence the intelligence
emanated, excited his curiosity.
Jennet drew very close to him, and communicated her secret in a
whisper.
At first the listener’s face did not indicate any particular emotion,
but merely that courteous attention which a sagacious man would
naturally lend to intelligence which the relator deemed of vital
importance. Suddenly a light seemed to flash across him; he started
away from Jennet, stood still for a moment with a look of intense
thought, then turning to his informer, he said, “Mrs. Jennet, I think
we had best, for to-day, confine within our own bosoms the knowledge
of this secret. As you say, Mr. Everell’s is a presumptuous sin; but
it will not be punished unless it proceeds to the overt act.”
“Overt act! What kind of act is that?” inquired Jennet.
Sir Philip explained; and Jennet soon comprehended the difference, in
its consequences to the offender, between a meditated and an executed
crime. Jennet hesitated for a few moments; she had a sort of
attachment to the family she had long served, much like that of an old
cat for its accustomed haunts; but towards Everell she had a feeling
of unqualified hostility. From his boyhood he had been rebellious
against her petty domiciliary tyranny, and had never manifested the
slightest deference for her canting pretensions. Still she was loath
in any way to be accessory to an act that would involve the family
with which she was herself identified in any {183} disgrace or
distress. Sir Philip divined the cause of her hesitation, and,
impatient for her decision, he essayed to resolve her doubts: “Of
course, Mrs. Jennet,” he said, “you are aware that any penalty Mr.
Everell Fletcher would incur will not be of a nature to touch life or
limb.”
“Ay, that’s what I wanted to know; and that being the case, it appears
to me plain duty to let him bake as he has brewed. Faithful are the
wounds of a friend, Sir Philip; and this may prove a timely rebuke to
his youth, and to this quicksilver, fearnaught, Hope Leslie. But you
will take care to have your hand come in in time; for if there should
be any miss in the matter, it would prove a heavy weight to our
consciences.”
“Oh, certainly, certainly,” said Sir Philip, with undisguised
exultation: “I shall, you know, command the springs, and can touch
them at pleasure. Now, Mrs. Jennet, will you favour me with pen and
ink? and do me still another favour”--and he took a guinea from his
purse--“expend this trifle in some book for your private edification;
I hear much of a famous one just brought from England, entitled ‘Food
for Saints and Fire for Sinners.’”
“Many thanks, Sir Philip,” replied Jennet, graciously accepting the
gift; “such savoury treatises are as much wanted among us just now, as
rain upon the parched earth: it’s but a sickly and a moral time with
us. You put me in mind, Sir Philip,” she continued, while she was
collecting the writing materials, “you put me in mind of Mr. Everell’s
oversight; or, rather, I may say, of his making me a {184} mark in
that unhandsome way that I can never forget. When he came from
England, there was not, save myself, one of the family--no, nor an old
woman or child in Springfield, but what he had some keepsake for; not
that I care for the value of the thing, as I told Digby at his
wedding, when he saluted every woman in the room but me; but, then,
one does not like to be slighted.”
Sir Philip, by this time, was fortunately bending over his paper, and
Jennet did not perceive his smile at her jumble of selfish and
feminine resentments; and, observing that he had at once become quite
abstracted from her, she withdrew, half satisfied herself that she had
acted conscientiously in her conspiracy against her young master, and
quite sure that she should appear a pattern of wisdom and duty.
Sir Philip, mentally thanking Heaven that he had not yet encountered
Governor Winthrop, addressed a hasty note to him, saying that he had
come to his house, true to his appointment, and impatient for the
explanation, which, he might say without presumption, he was sure
would remove the displeasure under which he (Sir Philip) was at this
moment suffering; but that, in consequence of a sudden and severe
indisposition, the effect of the distressful agitation he had
undergone, he found himself obliged to return to his lodgings, and
defer their interview till the next day; till then, he humbly hoped
the governor would suspend his judgment. He then directed the note and
left it on the table, and passed the threshold of the Winthrop
mansion, as he believed and hoped, for the last time.