University of Virginia Library

27. CHAPTER XXVII.

During the tedious period of Mary's sickness—its long
days of watching and longer nights—Hugh heard of many
strange things; and, although he knew that Mary was deranged,
her words seemed informed with a peculiar significance,
as if they were warnings or prophecies of some awful
event in the future. There was one object—invisible to
Hugh—of which she was always endeavoring to obtain a
view, and her trials all grew out of the presence of other
objects which obstructed her vision. Sometimes Hugh
stood between her and the object she sought, and when, at
her command, he stepped aside, Mr. Moxon appeared; and
if Mr. Moxon at last retired, some one, or some thing,
almost always took his place, and still left her wandering
imagination unsatisfied and distressed.

It was strange to see how a peculiar mood of mental
being and action had leaped over a barrier of sane and
hearty life, to join itself to a similar mood far back in the
past. As Mary lay upon her bed, tossing in feverish restlessness,
the familiar vision of her mother's eyes came back
to her. She recalled a long conversation with her father
when he asked her if she could not see them; and their
sweet and loving expression arose upon her memory, and
soon dawned upon her distempered fancy, with the old
semblance of reality. She sought for them through clouds
and darkness, and when, at times, she felt their influence
upon her aching head, and no intervention prevented their
soft and soothing light from falling deep down into her
heart, a smile so beautiful and heavenly irradiated her pallid

face that Hugh's fainting heart throbbed with a new hope,
and gushed with a long unwonted delight. But each smile
was brief. Some phantom face or form—some grim enemy
—some distant cloud or clinging mist—came between her
and those blessed eyes, and often she struggled with these
obstructions through whole nights, and waked in the morning
only for a brief hour, to enter again into the unsatisfying
and tormenting quest.

Nor did these fancies leave her as she slowly recovered a
portion of her strength. Those eyes were always above
her, in her dreams, and, as life freshened its pulses, she
sometimes slept in their light through whole nights—as
still, and white, and placidly beautiful as the earth beneath
the moon in early spring-time.

At other times, great ghostly clouds swept over her, and
tangling shapes of darkness twined their dim forms above
her, through the rifts of which those eyes, at long intervals,
looked in upon her spirit with a spell of peace, as the moon
sometimes looks from the clouds through openings towards
which it has waded in their deceitful depths for hours.

Through all these long weeks of weakness and confinement,
Hugh and Mary could hardly have been better
cared for had a special miracle been wrought for their
benefit every day. Morning after morning Hugh found at
the door some choice bird, or fish, or piece of venison,
which left him at perfect liberty to devote all his time
to the care and comfort of his wife. Further than that
these timely gifts came from the same generous hand that
supplied their earlier stores, Hugh knew nothing; but he
became so much accustomed to find at the door just what
he wanted, that he was disappointed whenever the resource
failed him.

Occasionally, neighbors called to see how Mary was getting
along, or from some motive of curiosity, and, as they
frequently came in at meal times, and saw what excellent

fare Hugh enjoyed, and was able to spread before Mary,
they asked many awkward questions in regard to the mode
of its procurement. It became known and notorious, at
last, that though Hugh did not step his foot out of doors to
obtain any kind of food, he was always supplied with the
best game in the forest, the best fish in the river, and the
best meal from the mill. Every effort made by the gossips
of the place to ascertain who supplied him, was without
avail. The matter was discussed at quilting parties, in
family circles, and even among the grave and important
men of the plantation.

As a natural consequence, the general belief ran in the
old channel, and infernal agency received the credit of
more Christian charity than existed in the whole settlement;
or perhaps, more properly, of fulfilling the terms of a bargain
to which Mary, or Hugh, or both, were parties. Mr.
Moxon always formed one link in the chain of gossip that
reached around the neighborhood, and was the receiver and
careful treasurer of every idle story concerning the ill-fated
pair; for his children were still afflicted, and with all his
circumspection he was unable to discover any one, except
Mary, who could safely be charged with being their tormentor.

Every circumstance in the unfortunate woman's life
seemed fated to feed his suspicions concerning her. If she
exhibited anger, she was under the influence of the devil.
If she won a friend, it was through Satanic wiles. If she
was fed in her helplessness, it was by the power of sorcery.
Even the insanity of her sickness was regarded as demoniacal
possession; and her sickness itself as nothing less than
the prostration of her bodily powers before a supernatural
occupation.

At long intervals, Mary's old mistress, who also suffered
from ill health, went to visit her. The meeting was always
a sad one, for each saw in the other the cruel havoc made

by disease and care. There was not one in all Mr. Pynchon's
family who felt the wounds inflicted on that gentleman's
reputation so keenly as Mary Holyoke, and, as his trials
came upon him when she was weak with indisposition, the
intelligence wrought upon her with a terrible power. Her
mental organization was so fine, and her physical powers so
exquisitely adjusted, that, irritated by the harsh influences
of a new settlement, oppressed with maternal cares and
hardships, destitute of medical advice or aid, and shocked
by the treatment dealt out to her father, whom she still
loved and honored with more than the devotion of childhood,
she could not retrieve her failing strength, or shake
off the sorrow that lay heavily upon her heart. Yet her lips
dropped only kindness, and, however irritable and petulant
Mary Parsons might be, as she entered the cabin, the serene
carriage of her friend, the sweet words of comfort which
she spoke, the manifestation of true friendship which she
never failed to make, soothed the poor girl's wounded spirit,
and filled her with gladness and gratitude that gave life
almost its only sweetness through many after days.

It was a joyous day for Hugh when his wife sat in her
chair once more, with a favorite dress upon her, and her
hair neatly parted and tied up in the way she used to wear it
when he learned to love her. He was as playful as a child,
and quite as happy; and as he drew the table to her side,
and pressed her with the viands he had prepared, and heated
the rough plank for her feet, and kissed her pale cheek, and
lavished upon her the thousand little attentions and caresses
that naturally sprang from his gratitude for her recovery,
and his wish to make her as happy as himself, it seemed a
pity that Mr. Moxon could not be a spectator of the scene
—that so he might receive an impression of the artlessness
and innocence of the unfortunate pair.

As Mary slowly recovered her strength, a new care,
which during her insanity had been forgotten, asserted the

leading place in her mind. She was, within a few months,
to become a mother. The thought thrilled her with a
strange, sweet pride, that quite subdued her natural fears
and apprehensions; and the first work to which she turned
her long unused hands was bestowed upon the preparations
for the advent of the promised comer.

One evening, three or four weeks after she had commenced
this work, and sat pleasantly talking with Hugh in
regard to it, she brought out for exhibition the store of
clothing she had rapidly prepared—the little shirts, the
little dresses, the little caps and socks, and the hundred-and-one
little things that make up humanity's first wardrobe.
One after another these were held up, and then laid down
upon the table, until that article of furniture supported such
a spread as it never had before, and presented quite the
appearance of a museum of curiosities. In the very midst
of this display, the cabin door opened without the slightest
warning, and gave ingress to Peter Trimble.

“I knew you must be alone here to-night, and I heard
Mary had got well, and so I thought I'd come down, and
walk straight in, jest to see if it wouldn't scare you a little,”
said Peter, carefully closing the door, and advancing to the
fire. “I didn't 'spose it would scare you much,” continued he,
“because I didn't know as that would do; but I thought it
would make you open your eyes sudden, and wake you up.
How do you do here—eh?” and Peter gave one hand to
Mary, and the other to Hugh, in a manner so different from
that which he usually bore that they opened their eyes with
a very genuine surprise.

“Take away these things,” said Mary to Hugh, very
hurriedly, and in an under tone. Then turning to Peter
she endeavored to engage him in conversation, and commenced
by asking how he had been for so many weeks.

“Oh! I've been fust rate,” said Peter, sitting down in
the best chair, and stretching his feet towards the fire; “but

I'd no idea you'd got so well. By George! Mary, you
look as red as fire! It's true, now, isn't it, Hugh? I never
see your cheeks so full of blood; did you, Hugh?”

All this, of course, did not tend in the slightest degree to
restore Mary's equanimity, especially as Hugh stopped exactly
in the midst of his work, in order to verify Peter's
statement.

“If you're taking them traps away because I've come,
you may as well let them be, for, between you and I, I am
getting used to them.” And then Peter put his head down
between his knees, at the infinite peril of roasting his brains,
and abandoned himself to such a powerful snicker that
Hugh and Mary were obliged to laugh outright, from very
sympathy. While he was thus engaged, however, Mary
managed to get the remainder of the “traps” out of sight,
and, with a feeling of relief, sat down and asked him what
he meant.

“Oh! I see these things pretty much every night, and
they don't scare me; and if they don't scare me, they hadn't
ought to scare anybody, and you'd say so, if you knew
what I do.” The knowledge to which he alluded quite
overcame him, and he could only check the snicker into which
it threw him, by turning around, slapping Hugh on the
back, and exclaiming—“It's the old hen, now, Hugh!”

“The old hen?” inquired Hugh, with an expression of
wonder on his face.

“Don't you remember about the pullet?” inquired Peter,
with the slightest possible sidewise nod towards Mary.

Hugh believed that he did, and smiled at the recurrence
of the term, and the scene with which it was associated.

“The pullet was took by a fox, I expect,” said Peter,
giving Hugh a sly nudge. “By George!” continued he, his
old admiration of the feat recurring, “you did that well,
Hugh! You did jest as I'd 'a done, exactly. Yes, sir!
that was a clean thing.”

“So you're after another, now,” suggested Hugh.

“Yes, I'm after another, but it ain't a pullet,” responded
Peter, and then he continued: “I might as well tell you,
for between you and I, that's jest what I come here for to-night.
You know where Deacon Chapin sets, pretty regular,
in the meeting-house, don't you?”

“Yes,” replied Mary and Hugh together.

“Can't you think of a hen and six chickens that always
set three seats back of him?”

“A hen setting in the meeting-house?” inquired Hugh,
with well feigned astonishment.

Peter rose, and, seizing Hugh by the shoulders, shook
him till he could hardly breathe,—meantime saying: “Hugh
Parsons, you're the greatest feller to be tripping up a chap's
heels I ever see. That's jest the way you served me before.
You're always putting me out and breaking me down in the
wrong place! Land ahead! there wouldn't anybody think,
to look at you, that you was up to that sort of thing.”

“Do you mean the widow Tomson?” inquired Mary,
with marked curiosity.

“No,” replied Peter, very positively.

“Well, who do you mean?”

“I mean,” replied Peter, charmed with his own ingenuity,
“a woman that looks so much like her you can't tell them
apart.”

“Do you mean to say that you are going to marry widow
Tomson?” said Mary.

“I can if I'm a-mind to,—I know that,” responded
Peter, rising to his feet proudly, and looking down upon his
legs.

Mary saw that there was really something serious in the
matter, and that Peter thought he was about to secure a
prize. She therefore refrained from any remark that would
injure his feelings, and asked him to tell her how the affair
was brought about.

“Well, you know Tomson left her in rather a tight place,
don't you?—six children and a cabin to keep them in, but
nobody to do the work for them, and stay in the house
nights. One morning, as I was going by, she called to me,
and said she, “Peter, I was almost scat to death last night.
I know, jest as well as I want to know, that an Indian tried
to get into the house, and I haven't got a bit good flint in
my gun.' Well, I knew what that meant. She knew I
always carried flints—everybody is always losing a flint,
you know, and nobody has one, and so I went to the house,
and put the best flint into the lock I had in my pocket, and
jest drew the old charge, and snapped it two or three times,
to let the children see the fire roll. Byme-by I looked up,
and there stood the widow, crying. Says I, `What's the
matter?' Says she, `I was thinking how Tomson used to
snap that same gun, with the children all standing around
him.' Says, I, `Goody Tomson, there is no use in crying for
spilt milk.' Says she, `I know it, but what'll become of
the children?' Says I, `Can't you put them out to live?'
Says she, `I don't know how I should get places for them, for
I can't leave them a minute.' Says I, `Perhaps you'd like
to have me try for you.' Says she, `Peter, that is jest what
I've been wanting to ask you to do for me a long time.'
Says I, `I'll do it.' Well, I made a good beginning, and
got rid of one child the first evening; you'd better believe
I told a pretty good story. The next morning I got rid of
another, and then the widow said I could jest as well have
their bed as not, and she should feel so much better with a
man in the house.

“So I've been there to sleep ever since; but it took me
nigh about a week to get off the third child. You see they
grow smaller as you get along down, and people are scary
about taking them because they can't pay their way. Now
there's one more that'll do to be sent off—don't you want a
little tot, Hugh, to be skiving round the cabin here, and

making a fuss, and learning to do things, and full of fun?
By George! Hugh, she's as lively as a little squirrel, and I
think she's the prettiest one of the lot. Land ahead! I
hadn't thought of you before.”

Hugh and Mary were both disposed to decline any portion
of the widow Tomson's dividends, and Peter, having
satisfied himself on that point, proceeded.

“One night, after I'd come in, and we was both feeling
pretty well, to think how nicely we'd got along with the
children, says Goody Tomson to me, `What do you s'pose
folks think, because you're here so much, and have done so
much in getting my children put out?' Says I, `I don't
know, nor I don't care. Whose business is't?' says I;
says she, `You men don't feel such things as we women do.
We don't have anybody to take care on us, and stand up
for us—we that have been left alone—' and then she put
her handkerchief up to her eyes, and I should think she
cried for half an hour.”

As the memory of this afflictive scene came back to Peter,
he rose from his chair and walked across the room, and
then returned and dropped himself into his seat.

“I ain't a'going to tell you the rest of it. You both of
you look just as full of Cain as you can hold,” said Peter, as
he caught the expression upon their faces, on resuming his
chair.

“Oh! go on! go on!” exclaimed both, Mary adding
with peculiar significance, “we were not laughing at you.”

“I shan't do it,” replied Peter, with a dim suspicion that
he had been humbugged, and a slight feeling of shame at
revealing the tender passages in his acquaintance with the
widow. “I shan't do it. You know how them things are
got along with. Anyhow, we came to an understanding,
and I tell you she's a good deal more of a woman than she
has the credit of being, and she ain't but thirty years old
either. Now you wouldn't have thought that, would you?”

“So you are really going to marry the widow Tomson,
are you, Peter?” said Mary, affirmatively and interrogatively
together.

“I shan't say that I am, and I shan't say that I ain't,”
replied Peter, “but I do say,” continued he, with an extremely
intelligent look, “that such traps as you had on the
table when I came in don't scare me. Land ahead! I'll
bet I've dressed and ondressed that baby of Goody Tomson's—Esther
she wants me to call her—more than twenty
times.”

This statement was too much for the gravity of his
auditors, and Hugh, exclaiming, “Ah, Peter, you are in for
it,” burst into a hearty laugh, in which Mary joined him.
Peter began, at last, to think there was something extremely
funny in the matter, and laughed louder than either of them,
until he wished to stop, and managed to effect his object by
seizing Hugh by the shoulders, and exclaiming, “Say!
what are you laughing at? I only did it for fun.”

Peter's friends finally found breath to congratulate him
on his success, as well in getting rid of the children of the
bereaved Esther, as in securing her and the balance of her
family; and Peter closed the interview by informing them
of the exact value of the widow's cabin, the number of acres
in her possession that had been planted with corn, and the
general desirableness of the match, in a worldly point of
view. Assuring them, with a feeling of complacent exultation
that almost choked his utterance, that he began to feel
as if he was “one of them,” he retired to the widow Tomson's
cabin, to lend the protection of his presence to its
inmates, and to dream of the time when, with all its contents
and environments, it should become his own.

Long conversations, between Mary and Hugh, upon the
all-absorbing subject, were of frequent occurrence during
the months which followed, but, meanwhile, new anxieties
descended upon both.

Mary, instead of recovering her accustomed health, as
time passed, relapsed into a strange and very miserable
state, and, during much of the time, betrayed the most
positive and painful symptoms of mental alienation. These
were frequently accompanied by a very decided aversion to
the presence of her husband, and the acceptance of any
offices of kindness and affection at his hands—a condition
which filled him with the deepest perplexity and distress.

As the spring advanced, there arose another disturbing
cause, which, though harmless in itself, became, in her imagination,
charged with terrible evils. Mr. Moxon had received
advice concerning his children from an eminent medical
gentleman at the Bay, which required him to see that they
were thoroughly exercised for an hour every morning in
the open air; and as the best walk passed by Mary's cabin,
the passage of the minister, with a daughter at each hand,
became a matter of daily recurrence. They never passed
by the cabin, however, without instituting the closest scrutiny
of everything around it, and if the door or window
happened to be open, of everything within it.

This daily inquisition became, at last, so intolerable, that
every symptom of Mary's disease was aggravated by it, and
it frequently gave rise to whole days of excessive nervous
irritation and mental distress.

Thus passed away the spring and the summer; and a
sad, weary time was it for poor Hugh. Through many a
warm summer night he sat sleepless at Mary's bedside,
endeavoring to soothe her heated fancies. Hour after hour
she lay upon her bed, gazing upwards with her large, lustrous
eyes, and brushing away with her white and spectral
hands the long succession of filmy shapes and shadows that
interposed between her own and those eyes whose loving
and gentle gaze was all for which her soul seemed to long
and labor. Sometimes she asked him for assistance, and
was vexed at his awkwardness. Sometimes he was the

obstruction, and fled before a wild burst of her impatient
temper. Then, after laboring ineffectually for hours,
she would renounce the essay, and sink into a long fit of
hysterical weeping and sobbing.

One morning in the early part of autumn, only a day or
two after Mr. Pynchon's departure for the Bay as recorded
in the preceding chapter, Mr. Moxon and his children were
taking their accustomed walk by the cabin, gazing intently
at it during their slow progress, when a feeble wail fell upon
their ears, but of a character so peculiar—coming as it did
very faintly through the closed door and windows—that
they paused in blank stillness and astonishment. The wail
was again and again repeated; and Mr. Moxon, on looking
down upon his children, saw that it was producing upon
them a very marked effect. Martha listened with a pleased
and most interested smile upon her face, and, at last, reaching
out her hand, exclaimed “Poor pussy! poor pussy!”
Then she stooped to the ground, as if she saw the object she
had named approaching her, and was ready to fold it in her
arms.

Mr. Moxon saw that a fit was actually upon her, and that
Rebekah was rapidly approaching her usual sympathetic
condition, and, fairly tearing Martha away from the spot, in
spite of tears and entreaties, he hurried with both of his
children homewards. Arriving there, the minister, who
had begun to feel hopeful in regard to his children, was
again plunged into despair by their continuance in the
paroxysm which had come upon them. All day long Martha
had the blue cat, of the years long gone, with and about
her. She folded her in her arms with childish fondness, and
was offended that neither her father nor mother could hear
her purr, or feel her as she rubbed against their garments.

During the day, Mr. Moxon was informed by a neighbor
of the birth of Mary Parsons's child; and heard the announcement
with a sigh so deep as to startle his informant.

He regarded the event as the accession of another baleful
influence to the number of those which had for years been
operative against him and his family, and as he turned to
the contemplation of his children he exclaimed, from the
depths of a heart bursting with distress, “How long, O Lord,
how long!”

Little did Mary and Hugh imagine, while they were
laughing over Peter Trimble's story of his somewhat remarkable
courtship, that they should be indebted to the
good-natured widow Tompson for some of the kindest and
most important offices of friendship.

Mary, for weeks and months after the birth of her child,
saw not one sane day or hour. Hugh, in the midst of his
perplexity, called upon his friend Peter to help him; and
Peter, with his uniform policy, was ready to lend the services
of anything he had in the world—even to those of the
self-devoted Esther. And Esther came with her hearty
baby at her breast—the youngest of the Tompsons—and
after doing what she could in the cabin, and ascertaining
that Mary's child would have to be kept away from her, took
the puny little creature to her own home, and cared for it,
and nursed it as tenderly as if it had been her own.

Many a long fight of words did she have over the strange
baby; for two days had not passed, after its birth, before
the story of the peculiarity of its tone in crying and its effect
upon the Moxon girls, had become notorious throughout
the plantation. All the gossips of the town visited the widow's
cabin for the purpose of seeing the baby that cried
like a cat. Little girls came to the window, and looked in,
and then ran away to tell the story to their mates.

It would be difficult to account fully for the peculiar
gloom that settled upon the town during the winter that
followed Mr. Pynchon's misfortunes at the Bay, and the
birth of Hugh's unwelcome child. Mr. Pynchon shut himself
closely in his room and hardly appeared at all, except

at the public religious exercises in the meeting-house. There
was a general air of thoughtfulness throughout his household,
and among his connexions. There were no merry-makings
in the neighborhood during the winter—no huskings
—no weddings. It seemed as if a great crisis in the affairs
of the plantation were approaching, and as if every one's
heart were blindly prophesying.

No man appreciated the general state of feeling and the
change that had occurred in the tone and temper of the
people more thoroughly than Mr. Pynchon, and it all tended
not only to increase his unhappiness, but to fill him with the
most distressing anxieties and the deepest self-questionings.
In his lonely contemplations, the thought had occurred to
him that perhaps all these calamities had come upon his
people in consequence of his own unfaithfulness to duty
and to truth.

To a sensitively conscientious mind, a thought like this
would be the most painful it could possibly entertain.
Was he, after all his efforts to build up the plantation, and
to order its affairs in a Christian manner, only a curse to it?
Had he been presumptuous in setting aside the learning
of his teachers, and in assuming their robes and responsibilities?
Was he but a Jonah upon the vessel, who must
be thrown overboard before the waves could be quieted?
These questions fell, one after another, upon his mind, and
fairly crushed it to the earth, and prepared the way for one
of the most painful and humiliating passages in his whole
life.

As soon as the Bay Path became passable, and the
streams that crossed it fordable, in the following spring,
Mr. Pynchon set out, with a heavy heart, for the Bay.
Henry Smith accompanied him as a deputy from the town
to the General Court, and as they turned the steps of their
horses eastward, followed by prayerful adieus, they left
a very sad community behind them. All believed and felt

that a great and good man was about to be sacrificed.
Even Deacon Chapin, who, with a number of the best and
most reliable men in the plantation, did not sympathize
with Mr. Pynchon's views of doctrine, and disapproved his
general policy, was touched by his personal distresses, and
gave him, at parting, the hand of genuine commiseration.

At the end of his journey, he found his old friends, the
ministers, ready to receive him, and ready again to labor,
in any way that offered, for his restoration to orthodoxy.
During his absence, they had gone over the whole ground
together, and had arranged their forces for a battle in
which they felt certain of becoming the victors. Mr. Norton's
reply, written in accordance with the request of the
General Court, had been completed and fully discussed
among the self-constituted board of reverend censors; and
it was, as a matter of course, the strongest document in
that behalf possible to be produced in the colony. The
divines found Mr. Pynchon debilitated by a winter's confinement,
and greatly fatigued by his journey. His mind
suffered as well as his body, and it became a task of comparative
ease to worry him down, and secure the preliminary
steps to a recantation of his alleged errors.

At this juncture, an event occurred which brought a
sudden alarm upon Mr. Pynchon, and a burden of terrible
pain—an event which thrilled with horror the members of
the General Court, and spread a sudden excitement throughout
the Bay settlements. This event will take the reader
back to Springfield, and to that town—for the time—the
scene is transferred.