A Book o' Nine Tales Part 8

It is sufficient to note that certain gossips scrupled not to declare that Dame Henshaw was one of the accursed who bore the mark of the beast and kept tryst at the orgies of the witches' sabbath, and the report once started the facts in the case made little difference. Some of her neighbors went so far as to declare that if the dame's residence were forcibly changed from Sun Court street to Prison lane, the community would be the better off.

Governor Belamont, however, in this last year of the century, was far more exercised about pirates than concerning witches; and better pleased at the capture of Captain Kidd, who had just fallen into his hands, than if he had discovered all the wise women in the colonies. Public feeling, moreover, was still in a reactionary state from the horrors of the Salem delusion of 1692; and thus it came about that Mistress Henshaw was left unmolested.

The second person in the dialogue given above, John Friendleton, was an Englishman, and, if tradition be true, the son of an old lover of Mistress Henshaw. He had taken up his abode with that lady upon his arrival in the New World, whither he had been led, like many another stout young blade of his day, by the hope of finding fair fortunes in the growing colonies, and from the first he had been a favorite with the old lady. It was whispered over certain of those tea-cups which we now tenderly cherish from a respect for the memory of very great grandmothers and an aesthetic enjoyment of the beauties of old china, that it was by the aid of unhallowed power exercised in his behalf that the young man was always so fortunate in his undertakings. There were sinister tales of singular coincidences which had worked for his good, and behind which the gossips believed to lie the instigating will of his powerful landlady. Whether he himself was aware of this supernatural aid, opinion was divided, but he was so frank and handsome withal that the weight of opinion leaned toward acquitting him. The habit of New England thought, moreover, was so opposed to imagining a witch as exercising her power for anything but evil, that these rumors after all gained no great or general credence.

The friendship between the dame and her lodger was perhaps based upon mutual need. The young man gave her that full confidence which a pure-minded youth enjoys bestowing upon an elderly female friend; while in turn the childless old lady, alone and otherwise friendless, regarded him with tender affection. She cherished any chance token from him, and especially did she seem touched by this gift of a tuberose which he had given her at parting. She knew how carefully he had tended and cherished the plant, more rare then than now, and long after the sails of the ship which conveyed him to England, whither he had been summoned by the serious illness of a relative, had dipped under the horizon, the old witch--if witch she were--sat regarding the flower with eyes in which the tears glistened.

II.

It was early springtime when John Friendleton once more caught sight of the beacon upon Trimountain, and the walls of the fort standing upon a hill which has itself been removed by the enterprise of Boston. The few months of the young man's absence, and the progress of time from one century to another--for it was now 1700--had brought no great changes to the town; but to him it seemed far from being the same he had left.

The first tidings he had received from Boston, after landing in England, had been a letter telling of the death of Mistress Henshaw. She had set out from Boston, so the letter informed him, to visit a sister living somewhere in the wilds toward far Pemaquid, and had never returned. The letter was written by one Rose Dalton, who claimed to be a niece of the deceased, and who had come into possession of the small property of Mistress Henshaw by virtue of a will made before the adventurous and fatal journey. The writer added to her letter the information that she should live on with dumb Dinah, holding as nearly as possible to the fashion of her aunt's housekeeping.

When John stood once more upon the well-remembered threshold, he felt half disposed to turn away and enter no more a place in which every familiar sight could but call up sad memories. Then, endeavoring to shake off his melancholy, he knocked.

A light, brisk step approached from within, and the door opened quickly.

John stood in amazement, unable to utter a word, so bewildered was he by the beauty of the maiden who stood before him; a beauty which now, after nearly two centuries, is still a tradition of marvel. Something unreal and almost supernatural there might seem in the wonderful loveliness of this exquisite creature, were it not that she seemed so to overflow with life and vitality. Her soft and dove like eyes were full of gleams of human energy, of joy, of pa.s.sion; she had all the beauty of a perfect dream without its unreality; and then and there the young Englishman's heart fell down and worshipped her, never after to swerve from its allegiance.

"You must be Mr. Friendleton," the maiden said, courtesying bewitchingly. "I knew your ship was in."

"I--I have been minding my luggage," he stammered, rather irrelevantly, his eyes fastened upon her face.

"Be pleased to enter," said she, smiling a little at the boldness and unconsciousness of his stare. "Your room has been preserved as you left it at your departure. My aunt, good Mistress Henshaw, as I wrote you, straitly enjoined in her will that everything should be kept for you as you had left it. Her affections were marvellously set upon you."

That he should be allowed to enter under the same roof with this beautiful creature seemed to John Friendleton the height of bliss, and he had no words to express his delight when he learned that Mistress Rose expected him to take up his abode there as in former times. Her aunt had wished it; had especially spoken of it in her will, and so it was to be.

It would be impossible to pretend that Friendleton struggled much against this proposition, when inclination so strongly pleaded for the carrying out of the wishes of his dead friend; and in this way he became the lodger of young Mistress Rose.

III.

It did not long escape the eye of the young man that his new landlady wore always at her throat a cl.u.s.ter of the white, waxy blossoms of the tuberose. The circ.u.mstance was in itself sufficiently curious and unusual to excite his attention, and it recalled to his mind the plant he had given to Mistress Henshaw. He wondered what had been the fate of his gift, and one day he ventured to ask Mistress Rose about it. For reply she led him to the room formerly occupied by her aunt, and showed him the tuberose in a quaint pot. It had grown tall and thrifty, and half a dozen slim stalks upon it stood up stoutly, covered with buds, which showed here and there touches of dull red evolved in their transformation from green to white.

"I marvel how it hath increased," John said.

"It hath thriven marvellously," she replied. "Never before hath it been known that the plant would bloom throughout all the year, but this sends out buds continually. I daily wear a blossom, as you may see, and I find its odor wonderfully cheering, although for most it is too powerfully sweet."

"It is an ornament which becometh you exceedingly well," he responded, flushing.

"My neighbors," returned she smiling, "regard it as exceeding frivolous."

The fragrance of the flower which Mistress Rose wore at her throat floated about John wherever his daily occupations led him, and doubly did the delicious perfume steal through his dreams. He never thought of the maiden without feeling in the air that divinely sweet odor; and a thousand times he secretly compared her to the flower she wore. Nor was the comparison inapt; since her beauty was rendered somewhat unearthly by the strange pallor of her face, while the intense and pa.s.sionate intoxication it produced might, without great straining of the simile, be directly compared to the exaltation which the delicious and powerful fragrance produces in sensuous and sensitive natures.

The intimacy between the young people was at first hindered by the shyness of Friendleton, who was only too conscious of the fervor and depth of his pa.s.sion; but as Rose had many of the well-remembered ways of her aunt, and, stranger yet, appeared well versed in his own past history, he soon became more at his ease. In defiance of the proverb which condemns all true lovers to uneven ways and obstructed paths, the wooing of lovely Mistress Rose by John Friendleton ran smoothly and happily on, seeming to have begun with the young man's first meeting with his lovely landlady. The gossips of Boston town, strangely enough, left the relations of the lovers untouched by any but friendly comment; and in a fashion as natural as the ripening of the year, their love ripened into completeness.

It was early autumn when Rose became Mistress Friendleton. The wedding was quietly celebrated in the old North Church, and never in its century of existence before its timbers went to feed the campfires of British soldiers, did that house shelter a more lovely bride or a more manly and blissful groom. A faint flush softened the pallor of the maiden, the one charm which could add to her beauty. Her only ornament was her usual cl.u.s.ter of tuberoses, and more than one spectator noted how like the flower was the lady. The circ.u.mstance was recalled afterward when the slab was placed above her grave in Copp's Hill burial-ground. There still lingers among certain old gossips of tenacious memory the tradition of a stone which had on it "some sort of a flower." It was the slab upon which John Friendleton, imaginative at sorest need, had caused to be carved simply a bunch of tuberoses.

If John had been happy in antic.i.p.ation, he was, if such a thing be possible, no less so in reality. It is as trite to attempt as it is impossible to effect the portraying of the life of two young people who are profoundly happy in each other. Joy may be named, but not painted.

Even were it easy to picture their existence, their self-absorption would prevent their being interesting. As I have sometimes pa.s.sed the old house on Moon Street, standing worn and stained with the storms of two centuries, a picture has risen before me of the young bride and groom sitting together and inhaling the fragrance of a quaint pot of tuberoses, blooming so wonderfully that the whole house was filled with their odor; and the memory brings always the tears to my eyes.

IV.

November was at its last day. A severe storm, half rain, half snow, was sweeping over Boston. The beacon upon Trimount trembled in the blast, and on the sh.o.r.es of the peninsula the waves roared sullenly. Few people were abroad, and there was never a watchman in the city who did not for that day at least regret having chosen a calling which kept him out of doors in such weather.

The house on Sun Court Street was too stoutly built to tremble, yet those within heard the wind howling over the hill as if scourged by all the furies. It was one of those nights when a man sits before his fire and realizes the value of all his blessings.

John and Rose sat together before the blazing hearth while the husband told stories of his boyhood in England. The wife nestled close to him, absorbed in the narration, yet not forgetting to fondle his hand with her smooth, soft fingers.

Suddenly into the room burst black, dumb Dinah, wringing her hands and moving her speechless lips with frightful earnestness. In her hands she carried the fragments of the pot which had held the tuberose.

Rose sprang up with a cry of anguish.

"Dinah! Dinah! My tuberose!"

The negress gesticulated wildly, but her mistress rushed past her; and, followed by her husband, hastened to see for herself the extent of the mischief.

The pot had been overturned by the wind, which had burst in one of the tiny greenish window panes, and the plant was completely crushed in the downfall. Not a single flower had escaped, and mingled with fragments of pottery and with the black church-yard mould in which the flower had--perhaps ill-fatedly--been planted, were the leaves and petals, torn and stained and mangled.

In the first sorrow of the discovery of the accident, Rose threw herself into her husband's arms and burst into tears; but she soon controlled herself, and became perfectly calm. She directed Dinah to remove the debris, and returned to listen to her husband's stories; and, although she was more quiet than before, she seemed no less interested.

It was late when they prepared to retire.

"John," Rose said, hesitatingly, as they lingered a moment side by side before the wide hearth, "it is just a year to-night since Mistress Henshaw died. If you are willing, I wish to pa.s.s the night alone in her room."

"I am always willing you should do whatever pleaseth you best," he answered, smiling upon her; "but why do you mean to shut me out from your sorrow? I, too, loved her."

"I know," Rose returned, bending to kiss the hand he had laid upon hers, "and I fear you can never be shut out from my sorrows, however much I could wish to spare you. Still, I wish it to be so for to-night."

"Then let it be so. The storm does not fright you?"

"The storm does not fright me."

She took from her throat the tuberoses she had worn that day, and gazed at them sadly.

"I can never wear another," she said. "These are faded like our happy days."

"You speak but sadly," returned her husband, with a look of such fondness that the tears started into her eyes despite all her efforts to restrain them. "You would have spoken so had you been bidding me farewell. The destruction of the flower makes you downcast. Mayhap there is still life in the root, and it may be made once more to grow and bloom."

"John," his wife said abruptly, "John, I have loved you from the first moment I saw you; I love you now, and I shall love you to all eternity.

Whatever happens, remember that and believe it."

"I have never doubted that you love me," he answered, gathering her into his arms; "how else could it be that you could have made me so utterly happy?"

She clung to him pa.s.sionately a moment. Then with an evident effort at self-control, she kissed his lips fervently, disengaged herself from his embrace, and turned away.