Rachel Dyer

by John Neal

He had acquired a large property and the title of Sir; a title which would go a great way at any time among the people of New-England, who whatever else they may be, and whatever they may pretend, are not now, and were not during the governship of Sir William Phips, at the period we refer to, and we dare say, never will be, without a regard for titles and birth, and ribbons, and stars, and garters, and much more too, than would ever be credited by those who only judge of them by what they are pleased to say of themselves in their fourth-of-July orations. His rank and wealth were acquired in rather a strange way—not by a course of rude mercantile adventure, such as the native Yankee is familiar with from his birth, through every unheard-of sea, and along every unheard-of shore; but by fishing up ingots of gold, and bars of silver, from the wreck of a Spanish hulk, which had been cast away on the coast of La Plata, years and years before, and which he had been told of by Mr. Paris, the minister of Salem,—a worthy, studious, wayward man, who had met with some account of the affair, while rummaging into a heap of old newspapers and ragged books that fell in his way.

Another would have paid no attention, it is probable, to the advice of the preacher—a man who had grown old in poring over books that nobody else in that country had ever met with or heard of; but the hardy New-Englander was too poor and too anxious for wealth to throw a chance away; and having satisfied himself in some degree about the truth of a newspaper-narrative which related to the ship, he set sail for the mother country, received the patronage of those, who if they were not noblemen, would be called partners in every such enterprise, with more than the privilege of partners—for they generally contrive to take the praise and the profit, while their plebeian associates have to put up with the loss and the reproach; found the wreck, and after a while succeeded in weighing a prodigious quantity of gold and silver. He was knighted in “consequence,” we are told; but in consequence of what, it would be no easy matter to say: and after so short an absence that he was hardly missed, returned to his native country with a new charter, great wealth, a great name, the title of Sir, and the authority of a chief magistrate.

Such are a few of the many facts which every body that knew him was acquainted with by report, and which nobody thought of disbelieving in British-America, till the fury about witches and witchcraft took possession of the people; after which they began to shake their heads at the story, and getting more and more courage as they grew more and more clear-sighted, they went on doubting first one part of the tale, and then another, till at last they did not scruple to say of their worthy Governor himself, and of the aged Mr. Paris, that one of the two—they did not like to say which—had got above their neighbors’ heads, after all, in a very strange way—a very strange way indeed—they did not like to say how; and that the sooner the other was done with old books, the better it would be for him. He had a Bible of his own to study, and what more would a preacher of the Gospel have?

Governor Phips and Matthew Paris were what are called neighbors in America. Their habitations were not more than five leagues apart. The Governor lived at Boston, the chief town of Massachusetts-Bay, and the preacher at Naumkeag, in a solitary log-house, completely surrounded by a thick wood, in which were many graves; and a rock held in great awe by the red men of the north, and avoided with special care by the whites, who had much reason to believe that in other days, it had been a rock of sacrifice, and that human creatures had been offered up there by the savages of old, either to Hobbamocko, their evil deity, or to Rawtantoweet, otherwise Ritchtau, their great Invisible Father. Matthew Paris and Sir William Phips had each a faith of his own therefore, in all that concerned witches and witchcraft. Both were believers—but their belief was modified, intimate as they were, by the circumstances and the society in which they lived. With the aged, poor and solitary man—a widower in his old age, it was a dreadful superstition, a faith mixed up with a mortal fear. With the younger and richer man, whose hope was not in the grave, and whose thoughts were away from the death-bed; who was never alone perhaps for an hour of the day; who lived in the very whirl of society, surrounded by the cheerful faces of them that he most loved on earth, it wore a less harrowing shape—it was merely a faith to talk of, and to teach on the Sabbath day, a curious faith suited to the bold inquisitive temper of the age. Both were believers, and fixed believers; and yet of the two, perhaps, the speculative man would have argued more powerfully—with fire and sword—as a teacher of what he believed.

About a twelvemonth before the enterprise to La Plata, whereby the “uneducated man of low birth” came to be a ruler and a chief in the land of his nativity, Matthew Paris the preacher, to whom he was indebted for a knowledge of the circumstances which led to the discovery, had lost a young wife—a poor girl who had been brought up in his family, and whom he married not because of her youth, but in spite of her youth; and every body knew as he stood by her grave, and saw the fresh earth heaped upon her, that he would never hold up his head again, his white venerable head, which met with a blessing wherever it appeared. From that day forth, he was a broken-hearted selfish man, weary of life, and sick with insupportable sorrow. He began to be afraid with a strange fear, to persuade himself that his Father above had cast him off, and that for the rest of his life he was to be a mark of the divine displeasure. He avoided all that knew him, and chiefly those he had been most intimate with while he was happy; for their looks and their speech, and every change of their breath reminded him of his poor Margaret, his meek beautiful wife. He could not bear the very song of the birds—nor the sight of the green trees; for she was buried in the summer-time, while the trees were in flower, and the birds singing in the branches that overshadowed her grave; and so he withdrew from the world and shut himself up in a dreary solitude, where neglecting his duty as a preacher of the gospel, he gave up his whole time to the education of his little daughter—the child of his old age, and the live miniature of its mother—who was like a child, from the day of her birth to the day of her death. His grief would have been despair, but for this one hope. It was the sorrow of old age—that insupportable sorrow—the sorrow of one who is ready to cry out with every sob, and at every breath, in the desolation of a widowed heart, whenever he goes to the fireside or the table, or sees the sun set, or the sky change with the lustre of a new day, or wakes in the dead of the night from a cheerful dream of his wife—his dear, dear wife, to the frightful truth; finding the heavy solitude of the grave about him, his bridal chamber dark with the atmosphere of death, his marriage bed—his home—his very heart, which had been occupied with a blessed and pure love a moment before, uninhabited forever.

His family consisted now of this one child, who was in her tenth year, a niece in her twelfth year, and two Indians who did the drudgery of the house, and were treated as members of the family, eating at the same table and of the same food as the preacher. One was a female who bore the name of Tituba; the other a praying warrior, who had become a by-word among the tribes of the north, and a show in the houses of the white men.

The preacher had always a belief in witchcraft, and so had every body else that he knew; but he had never been afraid of witches till after the death of his wife. He had been a little too ready perhaps to put faith in every tale that he heard about apparition or shadow, star-shooting or prophecy, unearthly musick, or spirits going abroad through the very streets of Salem village, and over the green fields, and along by the sea shore, the wilderness, the rock and the hill-top, and always at noon-day, and always without a shadow—shapes of death, who never spoke but with a voice like that of the wind afar off, nor moved without making the air cold about them; creatures from the deep sea, who are known to the pious and the gifted by their slow smooth motion over the turf, and by their quiet, grave, unchangeable eyes. But though he had been too ready to believe in such things, from his youth up, he had never been much afraid of them, till after he found himself widowed forever, as he drew near, arm in arm with an angel, to the very threshold of eternity; separated by death, in his old age, from a good and beautiful, and young wife, just when he had no other hope—no other joy—nothing but her and her sweet image, the babe, to care for underneath the sky. Are we to have no charity for such a man—weak though he appear—a man whose days were passed by the grave where his wife lay, and whose nights were passed literally in her death-bed; a man living away and apart from all that he knew, on the very outskirts of the solitude, among those who had no fear but of shadows and spirits, and witchcraft and witches? We should remember that his faith after all, was the faith, not so much of the man, as of the age he lived in, the race he came of, and the life that he led. Hereafter, when posterity shall be occupied with our doings, they may wonder at our faith—perhaps at our credulity, as we now wonder at his.

But the babe grew, and a new hope flowered in his heart, for she was the very image of her mother; and there was her little cousin too, Bridget Pope, a child of singular beauty and very tall of her age—how could he be unhappy, when he heard their sweet voices ringing together?

CHAPTER IV.

Bridget Pope was of a thoughtful serious turn—the little Abby the veriest romp that ever breathed. Bridget was the elder, by about a year and a half, but she looked five years older than Abby, and was in every way a remarkable child. Her beauty was like her stature, and both were above her age; and her aptitude for learning was the talk of all that knew her. She was a favorite every where and with every body—she had such a sweet way with her, and was so unlike the other children of her age—so that when she appeared to merit reproof, as who will not in the heyday of innocent youth, it was quite impossible to reprove her, except with a mild voice, or a kind look, or a very affectionate word or two. She would keep away from her slate and book for whole days together, and sit for half an hour at a time without moving her eyes off the page, or turning away her head from the little window of their school-house, (a log-hut plastered with blue clay in stripes and patches, and lighted with horn, oiled-paper and isinglass) which commanded a view of Naumkeag, or Salem village, with a part of the original woods of North America—huge trees that were found there on the first arrival of the white man, crowded together and covered with moss and dropping to pieces of old age; a meeting-house with a short wooden spire, and the figure of death on the top for a weather-cock, a multitude of cottages that appeared to be lost in the landscape, and a broad beautiful approach from the sea.