University of Virginia Library

30. CHAPTER XXX.

The arrangements were all made, at last, for the return
of the Springfield party, and, on the evening previous to
the day appointed for setting forth, the majority of them
were assembled at Mr. Pynchon's room, when an officer
from the jail arrived with a message from Mary Parsons,
requesting the attendance of Mr. Pynchon and Mr. Holyoke
at her bedside. Upon inquiry, the officer stated that
Mary was very low, and would not probably survive the
night; and her old friends lost no time in complying with
her request, and following him to her cell. They found her
lying upon a low cot, and very evidently breathing out her
last hour. She turned towards them her black and fearfully
hollow eye, and a faint smile of recognition and gratitude
illuminated her features, as she opened her hand to Holyoke
to receive his silent pressure. The two gentlemen hardly
noticed Hugh, as he sobbed at the opposite side of the cot,
and were entirely unmindful of the old Indian who sat with
compressed lips leaning against the wall of the cell.

Mary looked into Holyoke's eyes, and moved her lips,
as if she would speak to him. He put down his ear, and
caught in whispers, “Tell Mistress Holyoke that I thought of
her while I was dying, and hoped that she would never forget
me. Tell her to be a friend to poor Hugh, and to believe
that wilfully I never did anybody wrong; and oh! ask
her to thank God for me—for I am weak and troubled—
that He has taken me from the terrible death I was sentenced
to.”

Holyoke could not restrain his tears, and, as there was

something in her closing words, as well as in the occasion,
which very naturally suggested prayer, he asked her if she
would like to have Mr. Pynchon pray with her. She signified
her assent, and the old man, forgetting custom, prejudices,
and self, knelt down upon the cold stone, and taking
the dying woman's hand in his own, gave utterance to a
prayer so tender, so fervent, so full of the genuine spirit of
charity, that, borne on the wings of its language, her own
spirit went calmly upwards in resignation, trust, and hope.
He committed her soul to God. He prayed for her husband,
and then, as if he could forget nothing that might
come into the dying woman's mind, he prayed that wherever
in the broad earth the feet of her father should wander,
they might, at last, be found walking heavenward in
the straight and narrow path, and that both father and
child might be re-united in a land where sorrow and sighing
should never come.

There was not a dry eye in the room, and when he concluded,
or, rather, while his closing words were sounding,
the old Indian left his seat, and falling upon his knees by
Mr. Pynchon's side, buried his dusky face in the bed, and
gave himself up to most distressing groans.

Mr. Pynchon and Mr. Holyoke were both astonished,
and were still more surprised when the old man took the
hand which Mr. Pynchon had relinquished, and pressed it
to his lips and covered it with tears. Such emotion commanded
respect, and the two visitors stood back, and regarded
with deep feeling the afflicted group before them.
Hugh was receiving the last whispered words of tenderness
from his wife. She told him with her dying expirations
how much she loved him—how much more than everything
else she was leaving in the world, and how gladly, to save
him from sorrow and trouble, she should die.

The minutes passed away until an hour had expired, and
it became evident that her time was short. Mr. Pynchon

and Mr. Holyoke pressed her hand, and bade her an affectionate
farewell. A long passage of laborious breathing
terminated all intelligible conversation with her, and her
thin, white hands became chill with the retiring tide of life;
yet, while all were looking to see her breathe her last a
beautiful smile spread over her countenance, her eyes turned
upwards, and, raising both hands, she brought them together
and crossed them over her breast, at the same time
uttering the whispered exclamation, “My mother and my
child!”

There, above her, looking down through the prison roofs
and celled floors, smiled, at last, with an undimmed and unobstructed
radiance, her mother's heavenly eyes; and folded
to the shadowy bosom beneath them, wrapped in ineffable
repose, lay her child. Death and the presence in which she
lay—all earthly loves and regrets—were forgotten in the
blissful vision, and her spirit left the body at last without one
struggle, as if it had been lifted out of its tenement by the
serene attraction to which she had surrendered her being.

“She is gone,” said Mr. Pynchon, solemnly, as he advanced
and tenderly closed her transparent eyelids.

Hugh abandoned himself to grief's wildest convulsions,
but the old Indian rose calmly to his feet, and, turning to
Mr. Pynchon, said in a deep voice, “Gone where?”

“I cannot tell,” replied Mr. Pynchon, startled equally by
the question and the manner in which it was propounded.
“I hope she has gone to heaven.”

“Well, Square,” pursued the old man, “here we be, and
the wheel has come round. There lies my gal, and I
wouldn't wake her up if I could do it with a feather; for
I've been thinkin' on't all over, and I've made up my mind
that God will deal square with her, and I'd rather have her
in his hands than anybody else's. If I didn't think the Lord
would see jest how she's been abused and knocked round,
and would allow for the way she was brung up, and would

strike out all he's got ag'in her exceptin' that that didn't
come from bein' meddled with, and insulted, and plagued, I
should want to have her and me and everybody else I care
anything about blown into a thousand flinders, body and
soul, and all the pieces lost.”

“Woodcock!” exclaimed Mr. Pynchon, as soon as he became
convinced of the identity of the speaker, and overcame
his astonishment so as to be able to speak.

“Square Pynchon, God bless you!” exclaimed Woodcock,
and the two old friends grasped one another's hands
with a mutual cordiality that betrayed the honesty of their
long friendship.

“Square,” resumed Woodcock, “when I heard that you
had sentenced my gal to be whipped—which was worse
than the whippin' a great sight—for jest givin' widow
Marshfield as good as she sent, I felt wicked towards you,
and I never should 'a felt right ag'in if I hadn't heard you
prayin' with her. I stood it as long as I could, but when
you begun to pray for me, that fetched me.” And the
tears ran down upon the old man's painted face as freely
as if he were but a child.

“I am glad,” said Mr. Pynchon, “that you are able to
sustain your afflictions with calmness and resignation; and
it seems to me that if your state of mind is based simply on
a belief in God's justice, you might have positive joy in
thinking of and trusting in His mercy.”

“I've been thinkin' of these things pretty busy for a few
years,” responded Woodcock, “and I don't look at 'em jest
as you do. I believe there's a God, and that he's jest as good
as he can be. If he wasn't, he'd be a devil. Now, if God
made us he knows all about us, and he knows how hard it
is for us to toe the mark, and how little we know, and how
one thing and another is always cuttin' into us, and how
we get knocked round, and I've no notion that he's goin'
to come down on all alike. Now, I don't say that Mary was

very good, but I say she was pretty good considerin', and
any sensible man would say so, and I b'lieve God is a good
deal more sensible than any of us.”

“He knoweth our frame; He remembereth that we are
dust,” half unconsciously repeated Holyoke, who was listening
to the conversation.

“That's it exactly,” pursued Woodcock, “but that's nothin'
to do with mercy! If I had a small boy, and should
tell him to make a first-rate ash hoe-handle out of a pine
stick, and to do it with his jack-knife, I should expect he'd
fall consid'able short of it any way, and not have very good
courage to do the best he could; and it would only be doin'
the fair thing by him to give him his board and clo'es, and
tell him he'd done pretty well considerin'. There wouldn't
be any mercy in it.”

“Comparisons of that character can very rarely be just,”
said Mr. Pynchon, biting his lip to repress a smile. “The
relations between man and man are very different from
those existing between man and God.”

“Well, I can see that—that's plain enough—but it
always seemed to me as if we was apt to set ourselves too
high. We ain't anything but a lot of little fellers trottin'
round among the bushes, and it's sometimes mighty queer
to me that the Lord takes any notice on us at all. Any way,
He can't think so much of us as we do of ourselves. It
always makes me laugh to hear a man tellin' how the world
was made for us, and how the sun, moon, and stars was
made to give us light, and all creation was got up to our
order, jest as if we wan't born 'fore we knew it, and didn't
die 'fore we got ready. I've got a consait that the Lord
made us 'cause he wanted to, and he didn't do it for the
sake of abusin' on us, and givin' on us trouble any mor'n you
and I, Square, would abuse anything we had got up, when
it wan't strong enough to do us any damage.”

“There is a good deal of truth in your notions,” replied

Mr. Pynchon, “but you have not got hold of the whole of
it. I know that we are too apt to feel that everything was
made for us, partly because we are proud, and partly
because we enter so harmoniously into the structure of a
universe, each part of which ministers to our wants, that it
is a very natural mistake to suppose that it was made only
for that ministry. Yet there is such a thing as thinking so
meanly of ourselves as to dishonor our Maker. Nothing is
insignificant that God thought worthy to make and takes
care to preserve. If an insect is not to be despised, then
surely man is of importance, and if he is of sufficient
importance to receive the constant care and protection of
God—to be the subject of His kind and never failing
providence—then he is worthy, in some high sense, to be
honored by himself, and accountable in some high and positive
respect for his behavior.”

“I presume you're right, Square, and p'raps I said more'n
I meant to. All I wanted to say was that I didn't b'lieve
that the Lord would expect so much of us as if it was all a
straight road and no stumps.”

When Woodcock closed his characteristic explanation, a
sigh that was half a groan found impulsive utterance at his
lips. Returning suddenly fom his momentary diversion,
he saw, lying cold and lifeless before him, the object of long
years of care and self-denial; and, for the first time, the
question arose within him. “What am I to live for now?”
He could not mourn for his daughter. He was glad that
she had escaped from a long and most unjust persecution.
He was glad that she had died acquitted of the crime of
witchcraft, of which she had long been suspected, and glad
that she had evaded the execution of an ignominious
sentence; yet the thought that he had no one left to labor
and be anxious for was one of unmingled pain.

There came to him, also, the thought of the companionship
to which he had so long submitted, and to

which, if he should continue in the country, he must still
submit, and life seemed sad and even disgusting to him.
Outlawed, at first, by comparatively trivial offences, new
enactments severely punishing those who might lead a
vagabond life among the Indians had forbidden his return
to civilized life, and he saw nothing before him but an
insipid and valueless existence. With a sad voice and
dejected air, he gave expression to his feelings to Mr.
Pynchon.

“I can sympathize with you,” replied that gentleman,
“for all the great aims of my life, with one exception, are
either frustrated or accomplished. You have heard, doubtless,
how they have been dealing with me, and know that I
have no longer any power in the colony, and have become
the object of persecution.”

“I know all about it, Square, but I never should 'a said
a word, if you hadn't. It's come out jest where I s'posed
'twould fetch up, more'n ten years ago. I knew there was
some of the same stuff in you that there was in me, and
I knew it was a kind of stuff that always leaked out of
a man 'fore he died. If you are any like me, you feel
a mighty sight better with it out than in.—Now if it's
a fair question, what is the thing that you hav'n't done that
you're goin' to do?”

“To endeavor, by God's grace, to become fully prepared
to meet death, and the scenes to which it leads,” replied
Mr. Pynchon, with a solemn voice; adding, as he saw a
thoughtful shadow passing over Woodcock's face; “it is a
great aim—worthy of the last years of your life as well as
mine—more worthy probably than any object for which
you have thus far lived.”

“I've been thinkin' of this, too, in my way,” responded
Woodcock. “I was thinkin' on it when I was settin' on the
floor, jest as you come in. I've made up my mind that the
Lord keeps a pretty close look-out for us, if we be small.

There was my wife—she lived out all her happy days, and
when the Lord saw what she was comin' to, she died.
I thought it was mighty hard, but bein' left with my little
gal kind o' altered me, and her livin' with your Mary was
good for her, and she was happier'n I ever could make her.
Well, Mary lived out all of her happy days, and now, jest
afore the law is goin' to murder her, she goes to sleep like a
baby, and can't be hurt by anybody. Now He's choked
me off from pretty much everything I wanted, and I can't
think of anything that he wants me for now but to get
religion and 'tend up to it.” The old man's voice was
honest and earnest, and his lip quivered with genuine
emotion, as, in his homely way, he thus recognised the
operations of Providence, and adopted the lesson they were
designed to inculcate.

As the two old friends closed their conversation, the
officers of the jail appeared, and announced that preparations
were to be made for the disposal of the body of the deceased.
This recalled Woodcock to the painful features of the
occasion, overwhelmed Hugh with a fresh influx of grief,
and informed the visitors that it was time for them to retire.
A conference was first held, and, it being determined by
the officers that Mary's burial should occur early on the
following morning, Mr. Pynchon promised for himself, and
in behalf of his party, to be in attendance, and so, passing
out with Holyoke, bade Woodcock and Hugh a good
night.

The events that followed were all like the experiences of
a troubled dream to the grief-stricken Hugh—the sleepless
night passed with Woodcock within the jail, the homely
but hearty words of comfort uttered by the latter, the
gathering of friends in the early grey of the morning, the
words of a prayer pronounced in deep solemnity by a
minister, the nailing of the rough coffin, its transportation
in a yard back of the jail to a spot where a grave had but

just been completed, the hollow resonance of the coffin
as the first earth fell upon it, the final closure of the opening,
and the trampling down of the sward above a bosom
which had loved him as none other could—all these events
were dimly realized, and, before he began calmly to apprehend
the scenes through which he had passed, he, with
the whole Spring field party, had left the sea-coast, and
once more within the Bay Path—with the fresh leaves of
June above his head, and the sweet air of June around
him—was plunging into the broad forest that intervened
between the Bay settlements and the Connecticut. Woodcock,
after a private conference with Mr. Pynchon, was left
behind, to find his way westward at his own convenience.

As the party arrived at Springfield, after a tedious ride,
various emotions exercised its different members. Mr.
Pynchon was happy at heart—and most happy to grasp the
hands of his closely clinging friends. Henry Smith was
mortified with his commission, and was pained by any
allusion to it. It somehow seemed to him that he had
received and appropriated the price of his father's dishonor.
Mr. Moxon was discontented, and excessively mortified at
his failure to sustain his charge against Mary; and Hugh
felt that life, which had once been so sweet and joyous to
him, was a ruined and pleasureless possession.

The impression produced upon the residents of the
plantation by the recital of the events that had transpired
at the Bay, was painfully profound. There were open
threats of leaving the jurisdiction, but Mr. Pynchon begged
all to wait for the development of events, and, by his own
cheerfulness and equanimity, succeeded in controlling the
rising discord, and restoring patience and peace to the
people.