University of Virginia Library

31. CHAPTER XXXI.

No member of the party returning from the Bay could
have been more rejoiced upon arriving within sight of the
Connecticut than Goody Tomson. Her three youngest
children had been left in the care of Peter Trimble, as, in
fact, the only willing nurse to be found; and, when it is
remembered that the youngest of the three had but recently
missed some of the tenderest ministries of maternity, it
may well be imagined that Peter and the mother would be
oppressed, the one with onerous cares and the other with
feverish anxieties.

It may also be imagined that, under all the circumstances,
they would be extremely happy to see each other; and in
truth they were. The woman found Peter within her cabin,
engaged in the endeavor to ascertain the effect of turkey's
oil in softening his heavy shoes, and, as he used his hand in
the application of that article, the first necessity arising from
the impulsive greeting that passed between the two friends
was a basin of water and some soap, in order that Goody
Tomson might so far clean her hands as to be able to “take
off her things.” Before any progress was made, however,
she inquired for her children. Peter told her that they
were well, and quieted her curiosity in regard to the place
where they were all hidden by mysterious nods and winks,
which were intended to convey the command to wash her
hands and take care of herself, and the intimation that he
would then be ready for particulars.

After the preliminaries were finished, and Peter had
brought out and placed before the mistress of the house a

plate of severely broken victuals, he sat down opposite to
her, and, assuming an air of great complacency, began.

“You see, pretty quick after you went away, the baby
began to cry like smoke. I'll bet she cried one night as
much as five hours. Land ahead! I never see a little critter
tune up so in my life. Well, that set the other two agoing,
and I found I couldn't stand it. So, after they'd all
cried till they got tuckered out, and went to sleep, I went
to thinking of it, and I made up my mind I could do better
than tend babies while you was gone, and I reckoned I might
do something towards working them off. Anyhow, I locked
them into the cabin the next morning, and put for the neighbors.
I told them I believed the children would die if they
couldn't go where there was women; and I hung on till I
got rid of one here, and another there, and another there,
in the course of the day; and, come night, I went to bed
laughing over it, and slept as sound as a nut. By George!
Esther” (exclaimed Peter, smitten with a sudden spasm of
affection, and rising to his feet and walking around the table
to her side, to give her hand a renewed shake), “I'm glad
to see you! Why don't you say something to a feller?”

Poor Esther, grievously disappointed at not meeting with
her children, and her motherly sensibilities shocked at
Peter's apparent heartlessness, was obliged to give over her
efforts to repress her feelings, and, filling her mouth, as if
to dam up the accumulating flood as long as possible,
burst, at last, into a complex paroxysm of mastication and
tears.

“Land ahead!” exclaimed Peter, rising and shaking his
fists with excess of sympathetic irritation, “why don't you
have that old tooth out? You never'll take any comfort
till you do.”

Esther, quite willing to see Peter misled in regard to the
real cause of her grief, continued to fill her mouth and
weep, but did not dare to trust herself with speech. Her

unrestrained mastication, however, led Peter to mistrust
that he had not judged correctly of the cause of her unhappiness,
and he inquired if her back did not ache terribly
after riding so far, stating that it not unfrequently affected
him in that manner, and that he didn't wonder she was perfectly
used up.

Goody Tomson must have been uncommonly perverse
not to be soothed by this deep and appreciative ministry,
and Peter was rejoiced, at last, to see her jaws work less
actively and powerfully, and her tears fall less copiously, as
she subsided into her usual genial placidity.

“Where did you say the baby was?” inquired Esther,
looking fixedly upon her trencher.

Peter had not said, but he informed her.

“Don't you think she is too young to be put out?” continued
the mother, still busy with her victuals.

“Well, I tell you what I think,” replied Peter, putting
his feet upon the table and leaning back in his chair. “If
the people that take her don't find any fault, it stands us in
hand to keep mum. Young ones are in the way unless you
happen to take to them pretty strong; and they eat like
mischief anyhow, and if anybody's willing to keep them,
why, there's so much saved in elbow grease. That's the
way I look at it.”

“Yes, of course,” responded the bereaved mother, with
renewed sobbing.

“I kind o' reckoned,” pursued Peter, “that when you
got back, you'd be sick for a few days, and wouldn't want
to have the children round; and that would give the people
that have got them a chance to get tied to them more;
and perhaps they'd want to keep them for good and all.
Now, if you'll go to bed I'll go round and tell them you've
got home, and are crying for your children, but that you're
all tired to death, and ain't fit to take care of them, and
that they'll have to keep them a little longer.”

At this moment the plans of Peter were dashed to the
ground by the sudden opening of the door, and the entrance
of a dirty girl, who carried in her arms a dirty bundle,
which she deposited in Goody Tomson's arms, with the
words, “There's your worryin' little young one that I've
been takin' care of till I've about broke my back. Next
time you go away I hope you'll leave somebody else to home
besides this lazy lummox of a Peter Trimble.”

This saucy speech was greatly broken in its effect upon
both Peter and Esther by the emotions which had taken
pre-possession of them. Peter was distressed to witness
the return of the child. He had been extremely anxious
to see a very decided reduction of the stock before coming
permanently into the establishment. In the widow's first
distress, he saw her willing to get rid of the older children,
and he could conceive no reason why she would not willingly
part with all of them, provided they could be got into good
places. He perceived, at last, that the baby was a fixture.
He saw it, as well in the caresses which its mother was lavishing
upon the child, as in the insolent language which its
involuntary nurse had used.

The mother, in her joy at once more clasping the babe in
a pair of arms that, by eight or nine years' practice, did
not know what to do with themselves without one, hardly
heard the insult offered to the man she had chosen to supply
the place of the lamented Tomson. In fact, she seemed to
forget his presence in the superabundance of her joy upon
again gaining the possession of her treasure.

“By the way,” said Peter, after the unpleasant girl
had departed, and Goody Tomson had become in some
measure conscious that there was a whole world outside
of her baby, “how about Mary Parsons, and the rest of
them?”

“Mary Parsons!” exclaimed Goody Tomson, surprised
that the subject had not been thought of before, “why, she

came within an inch of being hung, and she would 'a been
if she hadn't 'a died.”

“Mary Parsons isn't dead, is she?” exclaimed Peter, in a
tone of genuine concern.

“Well, you may ask the rest of them, if you don't believe
me. They'll tell you she's dead, and that she died in
jail.”

“Died in jail? Mary Parsons died in jail?” and Peter
slapped his thigh, and walked across the room under strong
emotion.

“What makes you act so?” inquired his companion.

“Won't you never tell anybody if I'll tell you something?”
inquired Peter, sitting down, and drawing his chair
up to the widow.

“No—never, as long as I live.”

“Well,” pursued Peter, “I come very near marrying that
girl once—very near;” and he nodded emphatically, and
looked out of the window as if some object at an immense
distance were absorbing his attention.

Goody Tomson blushed scarlet, and while attempting to
feed her child with the scant remains of her meal, said, “I
never thought so bad of Mary as other folks did, but I do wonder
what such a man as you could see in such a woman as her.”

Peter detected the motive that lay coiled beneath the
widow's somewhat emphatic language, and followed up the
attack. “I believe,” he pursued, “that she didn't make any
fuss when her baby was took away from her, and brought
here. Some people are willing to do what is best for them,
and some ain't. I don't find any fault. Perhaps it isn't any
of my business, but there's such a thing as having more in a
family than is comfortable all round, especially” (and Peter
rose and swaggered towards the window) “if a man is pretty
independent, and don't care much what becomes of him.”

As Peter finished this cruel speech, he saw the widow putting
a huge bone into her mouth, and her eyes all afloat

again. What concession she would have made at this juncture,
it is impossible to state; but, at the moment, the door
was again opened, and another child, who had had a kind
keeper, came in, and bounded to a seat in his mother's lap,
by the side of the baby.

This one had hardly been thoroughly kissed (the bone
having suddenly been withdrawn from the mother's mouth
for that purpose), when the third, quite old enough to pull
the latch herself, being the identical child that Peter had
recommended to Hugh and Mary on a previous occasion,
rushed into the widow's arms, and quite overwhelmed her
with caresses.

Peter looked at the group with an expression of mingled
vexation and resignation, took his hat from a nail, put it on,
walked out of the door, and turned his steps down the street,
giving utterance to a kind of music that he had the happy
faculty of producing by the change of a hiss into a whistle,
without the necessity of puckering his lips. He went out
to think, and to make up his mind, if possible, upon what it
was best for him to do.

Those three children, it had become evident, must remain,
at present, with their mother. Nobody wanted them
—nobody would keep them; and if he and Goody Tomson
should consummate the little arrangement that had been initiated
between them, he would be obliged to work for and
support the children. From this subject his mind ran off
upon Mary Parsons, whose name very naturally suggested
that of Hugh; and Peter quickened his pace, under a determination
to seek his old crony, and ask for his advice.

Quite unexpectedly he met him on his way to the old
cabin. The tears sprang into the poor fellow's eyes as he
grasped Peter's hand; and the latter, with all his shallowness,
could not but be touched by his grief, and the wonderfully
sad change it had wrought upon him. Peter was
even sufficiently considerate to allow Hugh to tell his story

—his long story of Mary's terrible sufferings, of her calm
death, her early morning burial, and of all his sorrows—his
sorrowful memories, and his sorrowful prospects.

When he had relieved his burdened heart, and Peter had,
so far as it was possible for him to do it, given him his sympathy,
the latter assumed the lead of the conversation, and
revealed to Hugh the peculiar trials that were associated
with his matrimonial prospects.

“If I could get rid of them children,” said Peter, “the
widow would stand me in at a snug little profit, but if I've
got to feed them, they'll swallow the whole place, and all I
can do on it. I've got to look out for number one. By the
way, Hugh, I wonder if the magistrate will make me promise
to support the children as well as the widow, when he
comes to marry me?”

Hugh said he presumed not, and then commenced very
warmly in behalf of his child's old nurse. He extolled her
generosity, her genial temper, her excellent good-nature
and her industry, and even went so far as to compliment
her for her youthful appearance—urging Peter not to disappoint
her, vindicating her parental sympathies, and pronouncing
her an excellent match for any man whom she
might honor with her choice. Hugh did not close his eulogium
of the widow until he had discharged, so far as possible,
the large debt of gratitude he owed her, and had thrown
out the intimation to Peter's selfishness that the children
would soon be able to help him, and would require but little
of his care.

During all this address, Peter stood and stroked his face
in thoughtful complacency, and looked down upon his legs
with a pleasant smirk that showed his intense gratification.
At the close he looked up at Hugh, and said, “Well, what
did I tell you? You begin to find out that I know something
about women, don't you? As you say, the children
may help a little one of these days, and, on the whole, I

suppose I may as well marry her, and have it over with.
Between you and I, Hugh, I believe she'd die if I should
quit her.”

“Oh, you will marry her, I know you will,” said Hugh.
“You'll marry her to please me, won't you, Peter?”

“By George!” responded Peter, with a chivalric touch
of self-devotion, “I'll do it if you say so, any way. I never
refused you anything yet, and I ain't going to begin now.
If you say marry, marry it is; and if you name the time
when you'd like to eat a few of Goody Trimble's nutcakes,
I'll see that the chair is set and the platter on the table.”

Thus devoting himself to matrimony and his friend, Peter
took leave of Hugh, and hurried back to Goody Tomson,
under a vague impression that so precious a creature as the
former had described her to be, must necessarily be overwhelmed
with suitors as soon as it should become known
that she had returned from the Bay.

It is needless to say that, notwithstanding Goody Tomson's
fatigues and maternal incumbrances, she was most
happy, before closing her eyes in sleep, to receive Peter's
plighted troth without reservation, and to promise in return
to make him a happy man after the crops should be gathered
in, in the fall. In the meantime, it was arranged that he
should expend his labors upon the estate of Tomson deceased,
and act as the noctural protector of the family, as
he had done for several months.

Two or three days after his return from the Bay, Mr.
Pynchon invited his children to his house—at the same
time giving them an intimation that important business was
to be advised upon, at the interview. The party was—
strange as it may appear—the most joyous one that had gathered
in the old family house for many years. The children
of Holyoke and Henry Smith, loosened from the strait rules
of decorum which at that time curbed the natural overflow
of childish hilarity, filled the house with their mirthful music,

while parent and grand-parent listened, not only without
remonstrance but with positive delight.

It seemed refreshing, after the wrangles, and discomforts,
and trials, and distresses, to taste once more of life at its
fountain—to take it to the lips as it leaped up into the sunshine
from youthful spirits, and once more to forget, in
innocent pleasure, the various ills that had beset the path
of each. Of all this joy Mr. Pynchon was, in truth, the radiating
centre. It was his buoyant spirit that released the
burden from the spirits of his children, and their happiness
that gave license to the limbs and the laugh of the grandchildren;
and the mutual reaction from spirit to spirit that
made the meeting happier than the family had known, even
in the times of its power and prosperity.

When at last the older members of the party had
become tired of the frolics of the younger, the latter were
sent into another room; and Mr. Pynchon, with a warm
smile upon the affectionate group left around him, said,
“Well, children, I have something to say to you which, as
it concerns my happiness, certainly should concern yours.
You have been pained to see me lose my influence in this
colony, for which I have suffered so much—and I will not
deny that it has been to me a cause of very deep unhappiness,
but the pang is past. I have never felt more buoyant-hearted
than now, and life never seemed sweeter or more desirable.
But I cannot, and I must not, live in bonds. After having
been, during my whole lifetime, subject to bondage, and
among its last years having tasted of freedom, I shall not
again come under the yoke. In this plantation, my usefulness
is at an end. I am not allowed to forward its affairs
by my counsels, and I am too old to aid it with my hands.
Therefore” (and the old man's eye moistened as he looked
around upon the expectant group), “I am going back to
die in England.”

This was the first intimation they had had of this determination,

and they looked at one another in blank astonishment.
Mary Holyoke was the first to break the silence.
Rising, and pushing aside the reserve that advancing years
had placed between her father and herself, she was the girl.
Mary Pynchon once more; and, throwing herself into his
arms, she kissed the old man fervently, and exclaimed, “If you
go to England, I shall go with you—we will all go with you.”

“No, no, my child,” replied the old man, putting his arm
affectionately around his old-time idol. “No, no, you must
stay here. If you are going to leave for me, I shall remain.
This is the place for you, and the rest of my children. You
do not write books, and I am not yet done with Mr. John
Norton. You do not wish me to remain, and be subject to
the annoyances which the General Court are determined to
visit upon me; and if I do remain, I shall certainly give
them greater cause for persecution than has actuated them
thus far. I have but a few more years to live, and, while
it would be very pleasant to me to have my children around
me in my last hours, I will never consent to receive the
blessing at the expense of their usefulness and prosperity.
You have all a future before you, and your children will
come into a noble inheritance when you are gone.”

Mrs. Pynchon, while these remarks were in progress, was
evidently in distress, and they were no sooner concluded
than she took the opportunity to say that she knew Mr.
Pynchon had been treated shamefully, and no doubt that it
would be uncomfortable for him to live here. She did not
know but, if a person was prepared, it was just as well to
die away from one's children as any way. It was very unpleasant
to live where one wasn't respected, especially if
one had not been used to such a state of things; but she
did think that before a decision had been irrevocably made
to return to England, Mr. Pynchon ought to have thought
of the salt water, and to have found out what sort of a
vessel he was going in. Her remarks, for some reason she

did not fully appreciate, did not materially deepen the
solemnity that attended their opening, and so, having been
heard, she subsided to her knitting, and sailed out into her
placid sea of thought, on a woollen vessel with steel spars
and blue-mixed cordage.

Mary Holyoke still sat on her father's knee, but she was
engaged in deep thought, and when her mother concluded,
she said, very emphatically, “Some of us must go to England.
Father and mother must not go alone.”

The matter had appeared in this light to all, yet all were
equally undecided in regard to what was individual propriety
and duty in the premises. Henry Smith, who had said
nothing thus far, decided the question at last. He had no
doubt that it was the duty of one or more of the children
to return with their parents, and, as he was bound to them
by a double tie, Mrs. Pynchon being his own mother, he
believed that the duty was pointed out to him. At any
rate, he should so consider it with his present light.

“I had not reckoned upon the companionship of any of
my children,” said Mr. Pynchon, with a grateful suffusion
of the eye, “but it will be very pleasant; and, while it will
cost me a great struggle to leave the remainder here, and
bid them good-bye, never more probably to meet them in
this world, I cannot but confess that the thought of being
able while I live to act freely in matters that have come to
make up so much of my life, and the prospect of dying
among the scenes of my youth, and of being buried among
those with whom are connected some of my happiest memories,
bring to me many pleasant anticipations. I could
almost wish that the farewells had been said, that the winds
were bearing me away from you, and that those I must
leave behind had prosperously recommenced pursuits with
which my presence can only interfere.”

A long conversation ensued, suggested by this development
in the history of the plantation—a development which

all could not fail to see was to inaugurate a new era in their
lives and affairs. By some association the past was called up,
and the family sat for a long hour talking of the people and
times gone by. Among the topics of the hour was the sad
case of Mary Parsons, of which there were so many things
in the house, in the history of the family, and in the plantation,
to remind them.

To relieve the distressing details of her last days, Mr.
Pynchon, under pledge of secresy, told his family of his discovery
of John Woodcock, of his long residence near them
among the Indians, of his charities to Mary and Hugh during
the sickness of the former, of the authorship of Mr.
Moxon's bark manuscripts, and so described him that all
declared that they had seen him repeatedly, and called up a
multitude of occurrences to which his presence among the
Indians furnished the key.

All were very deeply interested in the narrative, and
were astonished when informed by Mr. Pynchon that he
had, during the comparatively brief interview that he held
with Woodcock on the morning of his departure from the
Bay, not only learned the particulars he had communicated
to them, but had informed Woodcock of his determination
to return to England, and received from Woodcock the assurance
that he would gladly return with him. The family
had always known the sympathy that existed between Mr.
Pynchon and Woodcock—two individuals as widely diverse
in their character, apparently, as could be imagined—but
now that they more fully comprehended the character of
both, they were less at a loss in accounting for the pleasant
anticipation that lighted up the old man's eye, as he spoke of
having Woodcock near him in his last years; of recalling with
him, in their distant retirement, the details of the wonderful
episode in their lives furnished by their residence in America;
of listening to his fresh and quaint humors, and of coming
into invigorating contact with his free and original spirit.

“There is one man,” said Holyoke, in a very decided
voice, “who I wish could be induced to leave the plantation
when you do, if he will not go before, and the wider
the sea which separates him from us the better. If you are
going to leave, I beg you not to leave behind you Mr.
Moxon. He has been the author of great calamities
amongst us, and, whatever may have been his position once,
he can now do us no good.”

The others spoke less boldly, but with no less strength of
conviction, in the same behalf. All felt, not only that the
day but the capacity for usefulness with him had passed, and
that, thereafter, his presence in the plantation must be an
offence, if nothing worse.

Mr. Pynchon coincided with the general opinion, and,
moreover, intimated the probability that Mr. Moxon would
make the proposition to return with him, without a request
or invitation from any quarter.

The company little imagined that, at the very moment
when they were talking of him, Mr. Moxon was passing
through another of those trials to which he had been so
frequently subjected, and were startled by a loud rap at
the door, and a general summons to come with haste to the
minister's house. The messenger only knew that Martha
Moxon was bewitched by somebody, and that her father
was anxious that every one should see her.

Mr. Moxon was not unaware that there were open and
secret murmurings in regard to his treatment of Mary Parsons,
and doubts touching the soundness of his reason. He
had, therefore, upon the renewal of the attack upon his
children, determined that every one should have an opportunity
to witness the scenes which had made such an impression
upon him, and by that means to vindicate as well
his opinions as his proceedings.

It was remarkable to see the air of deep sadness which
pervaded the Pynchon family as this announcement was

made to them. “Who, in Heaven's name, is to be the victim
now?' exclaimed Holyoke impatiently.

It was an unpleasant conclusion to a most interesting
family re-union, and as the gentlemen of the party left the
house to obey the summons it was with many expressions
of perplexity and discouragement. As they emerged upon
the street they perceived that quite an excitement was
on foot, and that the call to the entertainment to which
they were invited had been very general. When they arrived
at the minister's house they found it already full, but
room was made for them; and, advancing to the bed where
Martha lay, they found the minister exhibiting to the gaping
crowd one of her limbs, which was covered with black and
blue spots, inflicted, as he assured them, by her invisible
tormentor. As he raised his head and recognised the new
comers, he informed them that his daughter had just recovered
from a terrible paroxysm, and had made an accusation
which gave him as much pain as it could any one
present.

As he was speaking, there was a slight stir among the
crowd, and a small form pressed forward to get a view of
the bewitched girl. He had no sooner worked his way
to her bedside, his face flushed with painful excitement,
than she sprang up with frantic energy, and pointing to
Hugh Parsons exclaimed, “There is the man who struck
me—there he is! there he is! there he is!” Saying this,
she was thrown into renewed convulsions, in which she gave
wild screams of torment, and declared alternately that he
was pounding her and sticking pins into her.

All eyes were turned upon Hugh, who, frightened not
only by the wild words and wilder screams of the girl, but
by a vision of the dangers to which he had become exposed
by her accusation, began to grow dizzy as he gazed;—the
room swam around him, and he sank to the floor in a swoon
as deep, almost, as death.

“My God!” exclaimed Holyoke, quite overcome by the
spectacle; “where is all this to end?”

“It will never end until justice shall be done,” replied
Mr. Moxon, in an excited voice. “So long as the devil's
agents go unpunished—so long as they evade or triumph
over law, so long will he continue his torments. He will
never cease until those who call themselves the children
of God cease to assist him in his work, by accusing his
innocent victims of deception, and their distressed friends
of insanity.”

As Hugh was removed from the room into the open air,
Holyoke followed without uttering a word. He was sick
at heart. He saw before him another dark tragedy—in
fact a brood of them, for, upon the faces of the simple
planters who were assembled, he could not but detect the
credulity—the conviction—necessary to sustain, by testimony,
the charge against Hugh, and the groundwork of
a mental epidemic as hostile to all worldly prosperity, as to
intellectual growth and spiritual religion. Directing that
Hugh should be carried to his own house, he returned with
Mr. Pynchon for his wife and family.

Thus again, and for the most deplorable of causes, was
the plantation in commotion, but the end was approaching,
and was nearer than any imagined.