This morning, Thankful came to my bedside to pour out her heart to me. The poor girl is like a new creature. The shade of her heavy sorrow, which did formerly rest upon her countenance, hath passed off like a morning cloud, and her eye hath the light of a deep and quiet joy.
"I now know," said she, "what David meant when he said, 'We are like them that dream; our mouth is filled with laughter, and our tongue with singing; the Lord hath done great things for us, whereof we are glad!'"
October 18.
A cloudy wet day. Goody Nowell brought me this morning a little parcel of papers, which she found in the corner of a closet. They are much stained and smoked, and the mice have eaten them sadly, so that I can make little of them. They seem to be letters, and some fragments of what did take place in the life of a young woman of quality from the North of England. I find frequent mention made of Cousin Christopher, who is also spoken of as a soldier in the wars with the Turks, and as a Knight of Jerusalem. Poorly as I can make out the meaning of these fragments, I have read enough to make my heart sad, for I gather from them that the young woman was in early life betrothed to her cousin, and that afterwards, owing, as I judge, to the authority of her parents, she did part with him, he going abroad, and entering into the wars, in the belief that she was to wed another. But it seemed that the heart of the young woman did so plead for her cousin, that she could not be brought to marry as her family willed her to do; and, after a lapse of years, she, by chance hearing that Sir Christopher had gone to the New England, where he was acting as an agent of his kinsman, Sir Ferdinando Gorges, in respect to the Maine Province, did privately leave her home, and take passage in a Boston bound ship. How she did make herself known to Sir Christopher, I find no mention made; but, he now being a Knight of the Order of St. John of Jerusalem, and vowed to forego marriage, as is the rule of that Order, and being, moreover, as was thought, a priest or Jesuit, her great love and constancy could meet with but a sorrowful return on his part. It does appear, however, that he journeyed to Montreal, to take counsel of some of the great Papist priests there, touching the obtaining of a dispensation from the Head of the Church, so that he might marry the young woman; but, getting no encouragement therein, he went to Boston to find a passage for her to England again. He was there complained of as a Papist; and the coming over of his cousin being moreover known, a great and cruel scandal did arise from it, and he was looked upon as a man of evil life, though I find nothing to warrant such a notion, but much to the contrary thereof. What became of him and the young woman, his cousin, in the end, I do not learn.
One small parcel did affect me even unto tears. It was a paper containing some dry, withered leaves of roses, with these words written on it "To Anna, from her loving cousin, Christopher Gardiner, being the first rose that hath blossomed this season in the College garden. St. Omer's, June, 1630." I could but think how many tears had been shed over this little token, and how often, through long, weary years, it did call to mind the sweet joy of early love, of that fairest blossom of the spring of life of which it was an emblem, alike in its beauty and its speedy withering.
There be moreover among the papers sundry verses, which do seem to have been made by Sir Christopher; they are in the Latin tongue, and inscribed to his cousin, bearing date many years before the twain were in this country, and when he was yet a scholar at the Jesuits' College of St. Omer's, in France. I find nothing of a later time, save the verses which I herewith copy, over which there are, in a woman's handwriting, these words:
"VERSES
"Writ by Sir Christopher when a prisoner among the Turks in Moldavia, and expecting death at their hands.
1.
"Ere down the blue Carpathian hills
The sun shall fall again,
Farewell this life and all its ills,
Farewell to cell and chain
2.
"These prison shades are dark and cold,
But darker far than they
The shadow of a sorrow old
Is on mine heart alway.
3.
"For since the day when Warkworth wood
Closed o'er my steed and I,—
An alien from my name and blood,—
A weed cast out to die;
4.
"When, looking back, in sunset light
I saw her turret gleam,
And from its window, far and white,
Her sign of farewell stream;
5.
"Like one who from some desert shore
Does home's green isles descry,
And, vainly longing, gazes o'er
The waste of wave and sky,
6.
"So, from the desert of my fate,
Gaze I across the past;
And still upon life's dial-plate
The shade is backward cast
7.
"I've wandered wide from shore to shore,
I've knelt at many a shrine,
And bowed me to the rocky floor
Where Bethlehem's tapers shine;
8.
"And by the Holy Sepulchre
I've pledged my knightly sword,
To Christ his blessed Church, and her
The Mother of our Lord!
9.
"Oh, vain the vow, and vain the strife
How vain do all things seem!
My soul is in the past, and life
To-day is but a dream.
10.
"In vain the penance strange and long,
And hard for flesh to bear;
The prayer, the fasting, and the thong,
And sackcloth shirt of hair:
11.
"The eyes of memory will not sleep,
Its ears are open still,
And vigils with the past they keep
Against or with my will.
12.
"And still the loves and hopes of old
Do evermore uprise;
I see the flow of locks of gold,
The shine of loving eyes.
13.
"Ah me! upon another's breast
Those golden locks recline;
I see upon another rest
The glance that once was mine!
14.
"'O faithless priest! O perjured knight!'
I hear the master cry,
'Shut out the vision from thy sight,
Let earth and nature die.'
15.
"'The Church of God is now my spouse,
And thou the bridegroom art;
Then let the burden of thy vows
Keep down thy human heart.'
16.
"In vain!—This heart its grief must know,
Till life itself hath ceased,
And falls beneath the self-same blow
The lover and the priest!
17.
"O pitying Mother! souls of light,
And saints and martyrs old,
Pray for a weak and sinful knight,
A suffering man uphold.
18.
"Then let the Paynim work his will,
Let death unbind my chain,
Ere down yon blue Carpathian hill
The sunset falls again!"
My heart is heavy with the thought of these unfortunates. Where be they now? Did the knight forego his false worship and his vows, and so marry his beloved Anna? Or did they part forever,—she going back to her kinsfolk, and he to his companions of Malta? Did he perish at the hands of the infidels, and does the maiden sleep in the family tomb, under her father's oaks? Alas! who can tell? I must needs leave them, and their sorrows and trials, to Him who doth not willingly afflict the children of men; and whatsoever may have been their sins and their follies, my prayer is, that they may be forgiven, for they loved much.