The bay-path a tale of New England colonial life |
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| 18. | CHAPTER XVIII. |
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 | CHAPTER XVIII. The bay-path |  |
18. CHAPTER XVIII.
When Mr. Moxon left the house of Mr. Pynchon, he
proceeded homewards, carrying his child in his arms the
whole distance. Arriving at his house, he laid her upon
the bed, and, bending over her, asked her how she felt.
She made him no reply for several minutes, when she
startled him by a sudden cry of pain, and the exclamation
—“Oh! stop him! stop him! He's sticking pins into
me!”
“Where, child! where?” inquired the distressed father.
“In my foot—in my back—all over me,” replied the
child.
She was immediately undressed, and from the delicate
skin the blood was starting at several points upon her body
and limbs. After being carefully covered she lay still for
several minutes, when she began to complain of sickness at
the stomach, and soon vomited forth upon the floor an
offensive mass, in which were distinctly seen a number of
crooked pins—a fact from which the minister concluded
that the pricking had been done from within outwards.
Poor Mrs. Moxon stood at a distance in great distress,
looking pitifully fearful, wan, and woe-begone. Broken-spirited
and feeble in body, the strange calamity in whose
presence she stood had paralysed her, and she could only
impotently wring her hands, and weep, and utter feeble
ejaculations of prayer to God for help.
When the vomiting had ceased, Martha turned back
upon the bed, as if entirely exhausted, and, after lying upon
her back a few minutes, with her eyes closed, she opened
in an unwinking gaze, upon the rough ceiling. “I see
them! I see them!” she exclaimed softly, into her father's
ear, as he bent over her; “Oh! what beautiful little kittens!
and the old blue cat has got one of them in her
mouth! Oh! my neck! my neck! She's biting the kitten!
There! the kitten has got away! Good! Good!”
and the little girl clapped her hands merrily, while her face
retained its strained and rigid expression. “Oh! papa!”
continued the child, “do you see those six white, beautiful
fingers sticking down out of the boards? Arn't they
pretty! oh! they're just as pretty as they can be! and
there is the old cat sucking one of them, and there go the
kittens! Every one of them is sucking a finger, and there
they hang, swinging at the fingers all the time—oh!
wouldn't it be funny to catch hold of their tails and pull
them off? * * * * There they go!” exclaimed the
child, “the fingers have pulled them right up through the
boards.”
As she uttered the last words, her features relaxed, and
returned to their natural expression, and she turned her
face pleasantly towards her father, and exclaimed, “I'm so
glad he's gone! He was too bad to hurt me so.”
“Who do you mean, Martha?” inquired the minister
tenderly.
“John Woodcock,” replied the child, and then added,
“wasn't he cruel to squeeze my ankle?”
The father had ceased to be astonished at any of the
child's revelations, and immediately turned off the bed-clothes
to see what new wonders the invisible John Woodcock
had wrought. He was not at all surprised to find
around the child's ankle the marks of a firmly grasped hand,
even to the sharp indentations of the finger nails.
“When did he do this?” inquired the father.
“Just now, when the blue cat and her kittens were
on the foot of the bed all the time.”
“Why didn't you cry out, and tell me he was here?”
inquired the father earnestly.
“Because he told me not to say a word about him, for,
if I did, he would throw me out of the window.”
“Did he go out of the window?”
“No; he went out of the hole where the latch-string
comes through.”
There was one witness to these exhibitions and revelations
to whom little attention had ever been paid. This was the
second child of the minister, Rebekah. She had looked on,
sometimes in terrified silence, but never without an absorbing
interest. Every word uttered had been indelibly stamped
upon her memory, and the whole subject and all its associations
had become invested with the most intense fascination.
She said nothing, but she saw every motion, heard every
word, revolved them in her childish meditations, and
dreamed of them in her sleep.
During the scene which has just been described, she had
climbed upon a chair, and gazed with wondering eyes upon
her sister's contortions, and drunk in greedily her strange
utterances. Just as Martha had designated the point of
Woodcock's exit, her father accidentally turned to Rebekah,
and saw her staring with a strangely rigid expression
at the latch. He spoke to her, but she did not stir, but
gazed steadily at the object upon which she had fixed her
eye. He turned and took her hand, but it was rigid and
cold, and, grasping her in his arms in a hurried alarm, he
found her insensible, and in a trance.
This new affliction was too much for both father and
mother. The child was laid upon the bed with her sister,
while the parents, giving themselves up to wild ejaculations
and groans and cries, alternately bent over the new victim
of Satan, and walked back and forth across the room.
She lay quietly by the side of her little sister, embraced her
with childish caresses, asked her to awake, and, finally,
commenced singing to her. This brought the parents to
silence, and the mother, naturally returning to her old
habits, dropped upon her knees at the bedside, and buried
her face in the coverlet. In any other mood, and at any
other time, her husband would have reproved her for assuming
so heretical a posture, but his superstitious fears
had been so far wrought upon, that he had begun to mistrust
that, perhaps, God was visiting him with terrible
judgments for non-conformity—that he had strayed away
from the true fold.
He watched his wife for a moment, looked out of the
window to see if any one was near, stepped to the door and
made it fast, and then knelt by her side, and gave utterance
to a prayer which was momently interrupted, from its
commencement to its close, by convulsive sobs and choking
throes of mental pain.
Both remained kneeling for some minutes after the close
of the prayer, and when, at length, they lifted their eyes,
they saw their younger daughter looking silently and pleasantly
into the face of the older one, who sat regarding her
with a gratified and affectionate smile.
This sudden change in the aspect of affairs would have
brought an unmixed joy to the heart of the minister, had it
not so immediately followed a prayer uttered upon his knees.
But doubts rose out of his joy like an armed host, to beat
him back into the realm of misery he had so long inhabited.
Turning from his children, he paced forwards and backwards
across the apartment, wondering if this were not the
way God had chosen to bring him back to the true church,
and to condemn his present convictions and connexions.
Oh, that God would rend the heavens and come down! that
he would stand and converse with him, and tell him in
do to avert His judgments!
Then, as he reviewed the circumstances and events of the
occasion, another swarm of doubts came against him, from
another direction. If this were the Devil, operating directly
or indirectly upon his children; if the children had been in
his power, was not their release from his influence evidence
that he had been conciliated by the very prayer which had
just been regarded as the procurer of God's favor? Had
not the Adversary been pleased by seeing him and his wife
upon their knees once more? Was it not a promise from
the great enemy of souls to abstain from hurting the children,
on condition that the parents would return to the
bosom of the church from which they had gone out? These
two orders of questions could only result in confusion, and
it was in the utter hopelessness of their resolution that he
took his hat, and, re-assuring himself of the recovery of his
children, passed out of his house into the open air.
The atmosphere was raw and chilly, portending a storm.
Rustling leaves were driving across the street, sometimes
in parti-colored flocks and sometimes singly, clinging here
and there to a stump or a stone, and pausing tremblingly
in their leaps; sometimes rushing into heaps in the hollows
and smothering themselves, and here and there holding
themselves by a splinter, and fluttering like a smitten bird.
The clouds were dull and cold, and as the minister looked
up, the very heavens seemed barred against him, while all
the elements were in conspiracy around him to shut him up
within the circle of his miseries. The house of Mr. Pynchon
had always been his place of resort when his own
home had, for any reason, become intolerable, but he had
sufficient reasons for not bending his steps in that direction.
He felt that he had been offended—almost insulted there,
and the wound was too fresh for sudden closure.
There never had been another house in the settlement which
him, and buttoned it closely against the chilling wind, he
walked aimlessly along the street, until Holyoke's new dwelling
came in sight. He felt that he had no special errand
there, at a date so closely succeeding the wedding, but he
determined to enter, and inquire after the health of the
family, if nothing more. At his entrance he disturbed, as
has already been recorded, a conversation in progress between
Mary Holyoke and Woodcock, and it may well be
imagined, in view of his recent experiences, that the latter
individual was the one, of all in the settlement, whom he
least wished to encounter. The sight of Woodcock threw
him entirely off his balance, and made him forgetful of all
forms of politeness.
“How long has he been here?” exclaimed the minister,
in a harsh and authoritative tone, to Mary Holyoke.
“Not long—I cannot tell you how long, sir,” replied
Mary, wonderingly.
“Long enough to find out that there's a lady here, and
that she's got a husband,” said Woodcock, answering for
himself, and rising from his chair.
Mr. Moxon turned upon the old man a look of mingled
anger, scorn, and fear, but without deigning to address him,
said, “Mary, how can you harbor such a man? How can
you have him near you?”
“He has never harmed me, sir,” said Mary, “and I am
sure he never will.”
“Do you not know that he is sold, body and soul, to
Satan, and that his hands are still hot from his infernal work?”
half shouted the minister. “Do you not know that the
strange power by which he commends his boorish manners
and uncouth speech to your good will is borrowed from the
Adversary? Do you not know that one of the Devil's
foulest minions is here in your house, undermining your
peace, and planting thorns for your feet?”
Mary looked imploringly at Holyoke, and he came forward,
motioning to her to retire. Walking coolly up to the
minister, and looking him steadily in the eye, he said, “You
are either insane or impertinent; now tell me which.”
The minister stared at him fiercely for a moment, but
quailed before his unbending eyes, and apologetically said
that he had doubtless acted in a manner which was widely
open to misconstruction, but that when the facts should be
known, Holyoke would not only understand the nature of
his feelings, but would forgive any seeming extravagances
into which they might have led him.
“I accept your apology, and trust that you and our friend
Woodcock will adjust your differences, and have no further
trouble.”
“I make no compromises with Satan, or peace with the
sons of Belial,” said the minister, glowering fiercely upon
Woodcock.
That individual, who had stood with some impatience
watching the progress of affairs, could restrain his tongue
no further, and burst into the conversation with, “I ain't
Satan, nor I ain't a son of Belial; my father's name was
John and so was his afore 'im, for that matter, but if I was,
and there was any prospect of you're ever comin' to live
with me, I should send you my respects, and ask you to
stick to your mind, till after my door was shet.”
“Imp of Satan!” growled the minister, “how dare you
profane this Christian house by such godless words?”
During the conversation, Mary Woodcock, who, when it
commenced, was in another part of the house, came in, and
became immediately interested in its progress. She watched
the minister closely, and as she faintly comprehended the
terrible epithets he was heaping upon her father, her eyes
flashed, the old bright spark began to burn on either cheek,
and she only wanted action to be the highest impersonation
of a fury; and this condition did not remain long unsupplied.
uttered, than she crossed the room like a cat, grasped his
hand, and, drawing it to her mouth, fastened her teeth into
it before he could guess what she was doing. Her jaws
came spitefully together, her teeth almost meeting between
the bones.
“Hell-cat!” groaned the minister in an agony of pain,
and snatched his hand from her teeth with a suddenness
and power that almost lifted her from her feet.
“Oh! my God! Mary,” exclaimed Woodcock, in a tone
of extreme distress, “it's all over with me now!”
The child had no sooner given expression to her intense
anger than she ran to Mary Holyoke, who was sitting upon
the other side of the room, and, burying her face in her lap,
gave herself up to her old hysterical sobs and cries.
Woodcock was greatly troubled. That sudden movement
of his child was like a flash of lightning, revealing
upon the wall of the dark future the record of her fate.
His sole aim had long been to keep her dissociated from
himself, and to associate her as much as possible with those
against whom no one should dare to breathe a word; but
she had incurred the anger of the very man, who, for her
sake, he most feared. It ruined in a moment all his hopes,
destroyed his plans, and impressed him with the belief that
his daughter was designed for a fate not unlike his own.
Holyoke was deeply mortified that the event should have
occurred in his house, but, as the father of the child was
present, he simply expressed his sorrow for the occurrence,
and referred to Woodcock as the individual from whom
apology and reparation were due.
“I'm sorry the thing is done, the Lord knows,” said
Woodcock, “for the gal's sake, and the sake of the house
she belongs to, but I ain't goin to back out, and leave her
in a scrape she got into on my account. She felt jest as
her dad did, but she didn't know so much. She couldn't
she shan't be abused for it.”
“Miserable hypocrite!” exclaimed the minister, scowling
and holding his wounded hand in its fellow—“pretending
sorrow for the savage offence of your child, and yet
acting as her boastful justifier and champion!”
“Look a' here,” said Woodcock, shaking his fist in the
minister's face, “the school's out and the ma'am's drownded,
and now, you old carri'n, I aint goin to stan' any more of
your sass. You jest call me imp and hypocrite and son of
Belial and father of a hell-cat once more, and I'll pound you
till you're as full of batters as an old brass kittle. It don't
do me any good, nor my young one, nor you neither, to
treat you decent. There aint anything that'll bring you to
your milk half so quick as a good double-and-twisted
thrashin', and hang me if I don't give you one in less'n five
minutes if you don't shet your head.”
“As the head of this house,” said Mr. Moxon, turning to
Holyoke, while a sudden pallor overspread his face, “I
claim your protection from the threats and hands of this
ruffian.”
Woodcock drew back his hand to strike him as he uttered
the last epithet, but it was caught by Holyoke, who in a
firm tone said to him, “Strike no man in my house.”
“I beg your pardon,” said Woodcock, “but he tempted
me too strong.”
At this instant Mary Holyoke came up and laid her hand
upon his arm, and undertook in a soothing tone to address
him and dissuade him from violence. He understood her
motive at once, and deprecatingly held out his hand to her,
and begged her to desist. As she still persisted in her
attempt to speak, he put his hands to his ears to shut out
the sound, still begging her not to interfere, for he feared
her influence over him, and knew it would be exerted on
the side of peace.
During this brief diversion, Mr. Moxon had retreated,
stepped out of the door, and was rapidly passing away from
the house. The moment that Woodcock became aware of
his retreat, he wheeled, and, in a dozen bounds, which were
executed as strongly and as nimbly as if the very essence
of youth were dancing in his veins, he had stopped the
minister, and confronted him. The latter was alarmed, but
not entirely intimidated, and, seeing Holyoke at the door
of his house, and one or two others starting out of their
cabins and walking rapidly towards him, he endeavored to
pass on; and as Woodcock interfered, exclaimed in deep
vexation and anger, “Villain! Stand aside!”
The words had hardly passed his lips when Woodcock
struck him a staggering blow with his flat hand across his
mouth. The minister shouted “Murder!” and “Help!”
and it was strange how those words—cries of simple alarm
and distress as they were—infuriated Woodcock. He had
patiently withstood injuries and insults, but the outcry of
this large and powerful man seemed so cowardly to him—
so mean and unmanly—that, having once broken over the
restraint under which he had held himself, he became suddenly
maddened into fury, and, striking him a second blow,
the minister fell heavily upon the ground, the blood spurting
from his nose and covering his face. Woodcock was
instantly kneeling upon him, and putting his face down to
his ear, he hoarsely whispered, “Are you goin' to tech that
gal of mine?”
“Help! let me up!” gurgled forth the minister.
“Are you goin' to tech that gal of mine?” shouted
Woodcock. “Say yes or no, or I'll break your head.”
“Spare me,” feebly whispered the minister, “and I'll
promise as you wish.”
“Now you remember,” said Woodcock, shaking his fist
menacingly before his eyes, “that if you make any fuss
about her bitin' you, or let anybody else, or bring harm on
under your ear agin, and when it comes you won't think it's
a puff-ball or a piece of cold pudd'n'.”
This scene had occupied a very brief space of time, and
at first somewhat paralysed those who were its witnesses,
but as Woodcock concluded his threat, he felt himself seized
by two pairs of powerful hands. Their owners, however,
had made a very poor estimate of the kind of individual
with whom they had to deal, for in an instant he was on
his feet, and had thrown off the double grasp as if it were
the playful imposition of a child.
As he looked around him, he saw the villagers running
towards him from every quarter. As they came up and
gathered in a crowd, Henry Smith approached the minister,
and taking him by the arm, led him away towards his
house. As he was retiring Woodcock shouted, “Now remember
what you've said, for I shall be round,” and then
turned and walked, unmolested but followed by the crowd,
to Holyoke's house. He seemed to understand that there
was not a man of them who dared to lay his hand upon
him, and he walked through them as calmly as if he thought
them so many stumps of trees. Taking Holyoke and his
wife by the hand, he bade them farewell. On their inquiry
in regard to what he meant, and where he was going, he
shook his head, and simply replied that they wouldn't see
him again.
“I've got to leave the gal with you,” he continued, shifting
immediately from considerations touching himself to
the subject which burdened his mind, “and I want to have
you do as well as you can by her. I've got to go now,
any way, but I shall know how she gets along, and p'raps
shall help her some.”
Holyoke and his wife said but little to him. Both felt
unpleasantly in consequence of being associated with the
scene of violence which had just occurred, at the sudden
of the peace, and the wound to the reputation of the
settlement.
At last, Woodcock turned to the child, and taking a seat,
lifted her to his knee. He put her head back, and looking
in her face a moment, bent like a reed over her, and hiding
his rough face upon her neck, gave himself up to a passion
of grief and tenderness, which could only find expression
in long and convulsive suspirations. The villagers, one
after another, looked into the door and window, and there
was no smile upon their faces as they gave their places to
others.
“Don't forget me, Mary,” said Woodcock, as he raised
his head; “don't forget me, and don't b'lieve any on 'em
when they tell you I was a disgrace to you. Good bye!”
And straining her to his heart, he set her upon his own
chair, and looked fiercely out upon the gathering crowd.
Looking beyond the crowd, he saw the constable, John
Searles, approaching the house rapidly, and he knew that
he must act immediately. Passing by little more than a
single leap out at the back door, he ran for the river, and
as his exit was witnessed by several persons, a wild outcry
was raised, and this seemed to break the spell that rested
on the crowd.
They rushed after him with a wild halloo, and succeeded
in reaching the river's bank in time to see him push rapidly
out upon the current in his canoe. The constable and
half-a-dozen others went out in pursuit, but soon returned,
well knowing his superiority at the oar, and the danger
there would be in attempting his capture upon the water.
Woodcock's little craft, under the long sweeping strokes of
his one oar, slipped through the water with wonderful velocity,
and soon looked so small that, with its apparent life,
it seemed more like a deer swimming the stream than the
transport of a man. The speak gradually curved in to the
The crowd then turned and went chattering excitedly back
to the village.
This attack upon the minister produced an excitement
which was long in subsiding. The fact became known that
Mary Woodcock had bitten the minister's hand, and all
wondered why some corrective measures were not instituted
against her. Then, little by little, in some unaccountable
way, the story of the witchcraft practised upon Mr. Moxon's
children became known, till at last it was notorious in every
particular, and was the theme of a world of idle gossip.
But Woodcock did not return, and the affairs of the
plantation soon assumed their accustomed phase. Mr.
Moxon (after a month's confinement) preached on in his
usual way; Mr. Pynchon bought beaver and distributed
justice with his characteristic fairness and urbanity; the
planters planted and builded; the women cooked, mended,
and gossiped; the children grew, and seed-time and harvest
came and went in the revolving circle of the years, as they
have done since the birth of the rainbow.
| CHAPTER XVIII. The bay-path | |