Twice-told tales
“Nay, brother, nay,” interposed Mr. Williams; “thy words are not meet
for a secret chamber, far less for a public street.”
“Hold thy peace, Roger Williams!” answered Endicott, imperiously. “My
spirit is wiser than thine for the business now in hand.—I tell ye,
fellow-exiles, that Charles of England and Laud, our bitterest
persecutor, arch-priest of Canterbury, are resolute to pursue us even
hither. They are taking counsel, saith this letter, to send over a
governor-general in whose breast shall be deposited all the law and
equity of the land. They are minded, also, to establish the idolatrous
forms of English episcopacy; so that when Laud shall kiss the pope’s
toe as cardinal of Rome he may deliver New England, bound hand and
foot, into the power of his master.”
A deep groan from the auditors—a sound of wrath as well as fear and
sorrow—responded to this intelligence.
“Look ye to it, brethren,” resumed Endicott, with increasing energy.
“If this king and this arch-prelate have their will, we shall briefly
behold a cross on the spire of this tabernacle which we have builded,
and a high altar within its walls, with wax tapers burning round it at
noon-day. We shall hear the sacring-bell and the voices of the Romish
priests saying the mass. But think ye, Christian men, that these
abominations may be suffered without a sword drawn, without a shot
fired, without blood spilt—yea, on the very stairs of the pulpit? No!
Be ye strong of hand and stout of heart. Here we stand on our own soil,
which we have bought with our goods, which we have won with our swords,
which we have cleared with our axes, which we have tilled with the
sweat of our brows, which we have sanctified with our prayers to the
God that brought us hither! Who shall enslave us here? What have we to
do with this mitred prelate—with this crowned king? What have we to do
with England?”
Endicott gazed round at the excited countenances of the people, now
full of his own spirit, and then turned suddenly to the
standard-bearer, who stood close behind him.
“Officer, lower your banner,” said he.
The officer obeyed, and, brandishing his sword, Endicott thrust it
through the cloth and with his left hand rent the red cross completely
out of the banner. He then waved the tattered ensign above his head.
“Sacrilegious wretch!” cried the high-churchman in the pillory, unable
longer to restrain himself; “thou hast rejected the symbol of our holy
religion.”
“Treason! treason!” roared the royalist in the stocks. “He hath defaced
the king’s banner!”
“Before God and man I will avouch the deed,” answered Endicott.—“Beat a
flourish, drummer—shout, soldiers and people—in honor of the ensign of
New England. Neither pope nor tyrant hath part in it now.”
With a cry of triumph the people gave their sanction to one of the
boldest exploits which our history records. And for ever honored be the
name of Endicott! We look back through the mist of ages, and recognize
in the rending of the red cross from New England’s banner the first
omen of that deliverance which our fathers consummated after the bones
of the stern Puritan had lain more than a century in the dust.
THE LILY’S QUEST
AN APOLOGUE
Two lovers once upon a time had planned a little summer-house in the
form of an antique temple which it was their purpose to consecrate to
all manner of refined and innocent enjoyments. There they would hold
pleasant intercourse with one another and the circle of their familiar
friends; there they would give festivals of delicious fruit; there they
would hear lightsome music intermingled with the strains of pathos
which make joy more sweet; there they would read poetry and fiction and
permit their own minds to flit away in day-dreams and romance; there,
in short—for why should we shape out the vague sunshine of their
hopes?—there all pure delights were to cluster like roses among the
pillars of the edifice and blossom ever new and spontaneously.
So one breezy and cloudless afternoon Adam Forrester and Lilias Fay set
out upon a ramble over the wide estate which they were to possess
together, seeking a proper site for their temple of happiness. They
were themselves a fair and happy spectacle, fit priest and priestess
for such a shrine, although, making poetry of the pretty name of
Lilias, Adam Forrester was wont to call her “Lily” because her form was
as fragile and her cheek almost as pale. As they passed hand in hand
down the avenue of drooping elms that led from the portal of Lilias
Fay’s paternal mansion they seemed to glance like winged creatures
through the strips of sunshine, and to scatter brightness where the
deep shadows fell.
But, setting forth at the same time with this youthful pair, there was
a dismal figure wrapped in a black velvet cloak that might have been
made of a coffin-pall, and with a sombre hat such as mourners wear
drooping its broad brim over his heavy brows. Glancing behind them, the
lovers well knew who it was that followed, but wished from their hearts
that he had been elsewhere, as being a companion so strangely unsuited
to their joyous errand. It was a near relative of Lilias Fay, an old
man by the name of Walter Gascoigne, who had long labored under the
burden of a melancholy spirit which was sometimes maddened into
absolute insanity and always had a tinge of it. What a contrast between
the young pilgrims of bliss and their unbidden associate! They looked
as if moulded of heaven’s sunshine and he of earth’s gloomiest shade;
they flitted along like Hope and Joy roaming hand in hand through life,
while his darksome figure stalked behind, a type of all the woeful
influences which life could fling upon them.
But the three had not gone far when they reached a spot that pleased
the gentle Lily, and she paused.
“What sweeter place shall we find than this?” said she. “Why should we
seek farther for the site of our temple?”
It was indeed a delightful spot of earth, though undistinguished by any
very prominent beauties, being merely a nook in the shelter of a hill,
with the prospect of a distant lake in one direction and of a
church-spire in another. There were vistas and pathways leading onward
and onward into the green woodlands and vanishing away in the
glimmering shade. The temple, if erected here, would look toward the
west; so that the lovers could shape all sorts of magnificent dreams
out of the purple, violet and gold of the sunset sky, and few of their
anticipated pleasures were dearer than this sport of fantasy.
“Yes,” said Adam Forrester; “we might seek all day and find no lovelier
spot. We will build our temple here.”
But their sad old companion, who had taken his stand on the very site
which they proposed to cover with a marble floor, shook his head and
frowned, and the young man and the Lily deemed it almost enough to
blight the spot and desecrate it for their airy temple that his dismal
figure had thrown its shadow there. He pointed to some scattered
stones, the remnants of a former structure, and to flowers such as
young girls delight to nurse in their gardens, but which had now
relapsed into the wild simplicity of nature.
“Not here,” cried old Walter Gascoigne. “Here, long ago, other mortals
built their temple of happiness; seek another site for yours.”
“What!” exclaimed Lilias Fay. “Have any ever planned such a temple save
ourselves?”
“Poor child!” said her gloomy kinsman. “In one shape or other every
mortal has dreamed your dream.” Then he told the lovers, how—not,
indeed, an antique temple, but a dwelling—had once stood there, and
that a dark-clad guest had dwelt among its inmates, sitting for ever at
the fireside and poisoning all their household mirth.
Under this type Adam Forrester and Lilias saw that the old man spake of
sorrow. He told of nothing that might not be recorded in the history of
almost every household, and yet his hearers felt as if no sunshine
ought to fall upon a spot where human grief had left so deep a
stain—or, at least, that no joyous temple should be built there.
“This is very sad,” said the Lily, sighing.
“Well, there are lovelier spots than this,” said Adam Forrester,
soothingly—“spots which sorrow has not blighted.”
So they hastened away, and the melancholy Gascoigne followed them,
looking as if he had gathered up all the gloom of the deserted spot and
was bearing it as a burden of inestimable treasure. But still they
rambled on, and soon found themselves in a rocky dell through the midst
of which ran a streamlet with ripple and foam and a continual voice of
inarticulate joy. It was a wild retreat walled on either side with gray
precipices which would have frowned somewhat too sternly had not a
profusion of green shrubbery rooted itself into their crevices and
wreathed gladsome foliage around their solemn brows. But the chief joy
of the dell was in the little stream which seemed like the presence of
a blissful child with nothing earthly to do save to babble merrily and
disport itself, and make every living soul its playfellow, and throw
the sunny gleams of its spirit upon all.
“Here, here is the spot!” cried the two lovers, with one voice, as they
reached a level space on the brink of a small cascade. “This glen was
made on purpose for our temple.”
“And the glad song of the brook will be always in our ears,” said
Lilias Fay.
“And its long melody shall sing the bliss of our lifetime,” said Adam
Forrester.
“Ye must build no temple here,” murmured their dismal companion.
And there again was the old lunatic standing just on the spot where
they meant to rear their lightsome dome, and looking like the embodied
symbol of some great woe that in forgotten days had happened there.
And, alas! there had been woe, nor that alone. A young man more than a
hundred years before had lured hither a girl that loved him, and on
this spot had murdered her and washed his bloody hands in the stream
which sang so merrily, and ever since the victim’s death-shrieks were
often heard to echo between the cliffs.
“And see!” cried old Gascoigne; “is the stream yet pure from the stain
of the murderer’s hands?”
“Methinks it has a tinge of blood,” faintly answered the Lily; and,
being as slight as the gossamer, she trembled and clung to her lover’s
arm, whispering, “Let us flee from this dreadful vale.”
“Come, then,” said Adam Forrester as cheerily as he could; “we shall
soon find a happier spot.”
They set forth again, young pilgrims on that quest which millions—which
every child of earth—has tried in turn.
And were the Lily and her lover to be more fortunate than all those
millions? For a long time it seemed not so. The dismal shape of the old
lunatic still glided behind them, and for every spot that looked lovely
in their eyes he had some legend of human wrong or suffering so
miserably sad that his auditors could never afterward connect the idea
of joy with the place where it had happened. Here a heartbroken woman
kneeling to her child had been spurned from his feet; here a desolate
old creature had prayed to the evil one, and had received a fiendish
malignity of soul in answer to her prayer; here a new-born infant,
sweet blossom of life, had been found dead with the impress of its
mother’s fingers round its throat; and here, under a shattered oak, two
lovers had been stricken by lightning and fell blackened corpses in
each other’s arms. The dreary Gascoigne had a gift to know whatever
evil and lamentable thing had stained the bosom of Mother Earth; and
when his funereal voice had told the tale, it appeared like a prophecy
of future woe as well as a tradition of the past. And now, by their sad
demeanor, you would have fancied that the pilgrim-lovers were seeking,
not a temple of earthly joy, but a tomb for themselves and their
posterity.