A Book o' Nine Tales.

Interlude First

AN EPISODE IN MASK

[Scene: – A balcony opening by a wide, curtained window from a ball-room in which a masquerade is in progress. Two maskers, the lady dressed as a peasant girl of Britany and her companion as a brigand, come out. The curtains fall behind them so that they are hidden from those within.]

He. You waltz divinely, mademoiselle.

She. Thank you. So I have been told before, but I find that it depends entirely upon my partner.

He. You flatter me. Will you sit down?

She. Thank you. How glad one is when a ball is over. It is almost worth enduring it all, just to experience the relief of getting through with it.

He. What a world-weary sentiment for one so young and doubtless so fair.

She. Oh, everybody is young in a mask, and by benefit of the same doubt, I suppose, everybody is fair as well.

He. It were easy in the present case to settle all doubts by dropping the mask.

She. No, thank you. The doubt does not trouble me, so why should I take pains to dispel it? Say I am five hundred; I feel it.

He. What indifference; and in one who waltzes so well, too. Will you not give me another turn?

She. Pardon me. I am tired.

He. And you can resist music with such a sound of the sea in it?

She. It is not melancholy enough for the sea.

He. Is the sea so solemn to you, then?

She. Inexpressibly. It is just that – solemn. It is too sad for anger, and too great and grave for repining; it is as awful as fate.

He. I confess it never struck me so.

She. It did not me always. It was while I was in Britany – where I got this peasant dress; isn’t it quaint? – that I learned to know the sea. It judged me; it reiterated one burden over and over until it seemed to me that I should go mad; yet at the same time its calmness gave me self-control. If there had been the slightest trace of anger or relenting in its accusations, I could have turned away easily enough, and shaken its influence all off. But it was like an awful tribunal before which I had to stand silent, and review my past as interpreted by inexorable justice, – with no palliations, no shams, nothing but honest truth. But why should I say all this rigmarole to you? You must be amused, – if you are not too much bored, that is.

He. On the contrary, I thank you very much.

She. For what?

He. First, for your confidence in me; and second, for telling me an experience so like my own. It was not the sea, but circumstances that delivered me over to myself, – a long, slow convalescence, in which I, too, had an interview with the Nemesis of truth, and found a carefully built structure of shams and self-deception go down as mist before the sun. The most frightful being in the world to encounter is one’s estranged better self.

She. That is true. No one but myself could have persuaded me that it was I who was to blame. The more I was argued with, the more I believed myself a martyr, and my husband —

He. Your husband?

She. I have betrayed myself. I am not mademoiselle, but madame.

He. But I see no —

She. No ring? True; I returned that to my husband before I went to Britany.

He. And in Britany?

She. In Britany I would have given the world to have it back again.

He. But your husband? Did he accept it so easily?

She. What else can a man do when his wife casts him off?

He. Do? Oh, it is considered proper in such cases, I believe, for him to make a violent pretence of not accepting his freedom.

She. You seem to be sure he considered it freedom!

He. Pardon me. I forgot for the moment that you were his wife.

She. Compliments do not please me.

He. Then you are not a woman.

She. Will you be serious?

He. Why should I be – at a ball?

She. Because I choose.

He. Oh, good and sufficient reason!

She. But tell me soberly, – you are a man, – what could my husband have done?

He. Do you mean to make my ideas standards by which to try him?

She. Perhaps yes; perhaps no. At least tell me what you think.

He. A man need not accept a dismissal too easily.

She. But what then?

He. He might have followed; he might have argued. It is scarcely possible that you alone were to blame. Was there nothing in which he might have acknowledged himself wrong, – nothing with which he should reproach himself?

She. How can I tell what took place in his heart? I only know my own. He may have repented somewhat, or he may not. As for following – You do not know my husband. He is just, just, just. It was his one fault, I thought then. It took time for me to appreciate the worth of such a virtue.

He. But what has that to do with following you?

She. ‘She has chosen,’ he would reason. ‘Let the event punish her; it is only right that she should suffer for her own act.’

He. But is his justice never tempered by mercy?

She. The highest mercy is to be just. To palliate is merely to postpone sentence.

He. You are the first woman I ever met who would acknowledge that.

She. Few women, I hope, have been taught by an experience so hard as mine. But how dolefully we are talking. Do say something amusing; we are at a ball.

He. I might give you an epigram for the one with which you served me a moment ago, and retort that to be amusing is to be insincere.

She. Then – for we came to be amused – why are we here?

He. Manifestly because we prize insincerity.

She. You are right. I came to get away from myself. One must do something, and even the dissipations of charity pall after a time.

He. We seem to be in much the same frame of mind, and perhaps cannot do better than to stay where we are, consorting darkly, while the others take pains to amuse themselves. So we get through the evening, that is the main thing.

She. You have forgotten to be as complimentary as you were half an hour since.

He. Have I? And yet the greatest compliment a man can pay a woman is sincerity.

She. If he does not love her, yes.

He. Ah, then you agree with Tom Moore:

She. Perhaps; but it is no matter, since we were not talking of love.

He. But if we were?

She. If we were we should undoubtedly say a great many foolish things and quite as many false ones.

He. You are cynical.

She. Oh, no. Cynicism is like a cravat, very becoming to a man if properly worn, but always setting ill upon a lady.

He. Did you learn that, also, in Britany? It is a country of enlightenment. Would that my wife had gone there.

She. Or her husband!

He. You are keen. Her husband learned bitter truths enough by staying at home. I am evidently your complement; for I had a wedding-ring sent back to me.

She. And why?

He. Why? Why? Who ever knows a woman’s reason! Because I refused, perhaps, to call black white, to say I was pleased by what made me angry; because – No; on the whole, since I am not making love to her, it is hardly worth while to lie to a peasant from Britany, though it is of course necessary to sustain the social fictions with people nearer home. It was because the wedding-ring was a fetter that constrained my wife, body and soul; because I was as inflexible as steel. My purposes, my views, my beliefs were the Procrustean bed upon which every act of hers was measured. Voila tout!

She. I understand, I think.

He. Oh, I have learned well enough where the blame lay in the three years since she left me.

She. Three years!

He. Why do you start?

She. It is three years, too, since I —

He. Who are you?

She. It is no matter; my husband is far from here.

He. That is more than I can say of my wife.

She. Where is she, then?

He. Heaven knows; not I. But let that go. Why may we not be useful to each other? Our cases are similar; we are both lonely.

She. And strangers.

He. Acquaintance is not a matter of time, but of temperament. Should we have found it possible to be so frank with one another had we been merely strangers?

She. You are specious.

He. No; only honest.

She. But what —

He. What? Why, friendship. We have found it possible to be frank in masks; why not out of them?

She. Then you propose a platonic friendship?

He. I want a woman who will be my friend, to whom I can talk freely. There are words a man has no power or wish to say to a man, yet which must be spoken or they fester in his mind.

She. I am, then, to be a safety-valve.

He. Every man must have a woman as a lodestar; you are to be that to me.

She. And your wife?

He. My wife? She voluntarily abandoned me. I haven’t seen her for three years; and surely she ought to cease to count by this time.

She. You are heartless.

He. Heartless?

She. You should be faithful to your lost —

He. Lost fiddlestick!

She. You are very rude!

He. I don’t see —

She. And very disagreeable.

He. But —

She. If you had really loved your wife, you’d always mourn for her, whatever she did.

He. Good Heavens! That is like a woman. A man is expected to bear anything, everything, and if at last he does not come weeping to kiss the hand that smites him, he is heartless, forsooth! Bah! I am not a whipped puppy, thank you.

She. Your love was, perhaps, never distinguished by meekness?

He. I’m afraid not.

She. It might be none the worst for that. The ideal man for whom I am looking will not be too lamblike, even in love.

He. You look for an ideal man, then?

She. As closely as did Diogenes.

He. And your husband?

She. Oh, like your wife, he should, perhaps, begin not to count.

He. Good. We are sworn friends, then, until you find your ideal man.

She. If you will.

He. Then unmask.

She. Is that in the bargain?

He. Of course. Else how should we know each other again?

She. But —

He. Unmask!

She. Very well, – when you do.

He. Now, then. [They unmask.]

She. Philip!

He. Agnes!

She. You knew all the time!

He. Who told you I was here?

She. I didn’t know it.

He. I thought you went to Russia.

She. Well, I didn’t. I hope you feel better! Good night.

He. Wait, Agnes. I —

[There is a moment’s silence, in which they look at each other intently. He takes her hand in both his.]

He. Agnes, I am not your ideal man, but —

She. Nor I your ideal woman, apparently. Your wife does not count, you say.

He. No more than your husband; so we are quits there.

She. It’s very horrid of you to remind me of that.

He. I acknowledge that I was always very horrid in everything.

She. Oh, if you acknowledge that, Phil, it is hardly worth while to spend any more time in explanations while this divine waltz is running to waste.

He. But you were tired and out of sorts.

She. You old goose, don’t you see that I’m neither!

He. And you do waltz divinely.

[They attempt to adjust their masks, but somehow get into each other’s arms. In a few moments more, however, they are seen among the dancers within.]

Tale the Second.

THE TUBEROSE

“I shall feel honored, Mistress Henshaw, if you will accept this posie as a token which may perchance serve to keep me in remembrance while I am over the sea.”

“I am extremely beholden to you,” replied the old dame addressed, her wrinkled face illuminated with a smile of pleasure. “But for keeping you in remembrance it needs not this posie or other token. I do not hold my friends so lightly.”

“I thank you for counting me one of your friends,” John Friendleton said frankly. “I have no kindlier memories of Boston than of the home under your roof.”

He had placed upon the many-legged table a flower-pot containing a thrifty tuberose, and with a kindly smile upon his handsome and winning face, he stood regarding the old dame into whose custody he had just given the plant. The dress of the period, – the days of the end of the seventeenth century, – plain though it was, accorded well with the sturdy honesty and kindness of his face and the compact and strong build of his figure. The wrinkled crone returned his smile with one of frosty but genuine warmth.

“This plant is none the less pleasing to me,” she said, “though I by no means need it as a reminder. I shall be very careful in its nourishing.”

“It is by no means an ordinary herb,” Friendleton returned lightly. “There may be magic in it for aught I can tell. My uncle, who sent me the bulbs from even so far away as Spain, hath a shrewd name as a wise man; and to say sooth he belike doth know far more than altogether becometh a good Christian. I give you fair warning that there may be mischief in the herb; though to be sure,” he added laughing, “the earth in which it grows is consecrated, for I filled the pot from Copp’s Hill graveyard hard by here.”

A momentary gleam shot with a sinister light its fiery sparkle across the black eyes of Mistress Henshaw.

“To one who feareth no harm,” she answered, “it seldom haps. I trust the wind may hold fair for your sailing,” she added, glancing from the small-paned window, “and that you may safely return to Boston as you are minded.”

“Thank you, I have hitherto been much favored by Providence in my journeyings. Farewell, Mistress Henshaw.”

The old dame received his adieu, and a moment later she watched from the window his active young figure as he walked briskly away. She regarded it intently until a corner hid him from sight. Then she turned back to her room and her occupations.

“Providence, indeed!” she muttered half aloud, with a world of contempt in her tone.

Then she turned to the thrifty, healthy tuberose and caressed its leaves with her thin old fingers as if it were alive and could understand her attentions.

The house in which this conversation took place was still standing a few years since, the oldest in Boston, at the corner of Moon and Sun Court streets. It was erected in 1669; its timber, tradition says, being cut in the neighborhood. The upper story projected over the lower like a frowning brow, from beneath which the windows shone at night like the glowing eye-balls of a wild beast. It was a stout and almost warlike-looking edifice, which preserved even up to the day when, in 1878, it was at length pulled down by the hand of progress, a certain strongly individual appearance, which if less marked at the time when John Friendleton bade Mistress Henshaw good-by, and the building was thirty years old, must always have distinguished the dwelling from those about it.

Dwellings, however, take much of their air from dwellers, and Mistress Henshaw was likely to impart to any house she inhabited a bearing unlike that of its neighbors. She was a dame to all appearances of some three score winters, each frosty season having left its snow upon her hair. Her figure was still erect, while her eyes were piercing and black and capable of a glance of such strength and directness as almost to seem supernatural.

It may have been from the power and fervor of this glance that Mistress Henshaw acquired the uncanny reputation which she enjoyed in Boston. As she moved with surprising energy about the house, overseeing and directing her dumb negro servant Dinah, the eyes of passers-by who saw her erect figure flit by the windows were half averted as if from some deadly thing which yet held them with a weird fascination; and at nightfall the children whom chance belated in the neighborhood went skurrying past Dame Henshaw’s house like frightened hares.

It is not perhaps to be told why Satan should have been able to establish his kingdom among a people so devout and pious as the godly inhabitants of the Massachusetts colony; yet we have it upon the testimony of no less a man than the sage and reverend Cotton Mather, whose sepulchre is with us unto this day, and upon the word of many another scarcely less wise and devout, that the Father of Evil did establish a peculiar and covenant people of his own in the midst of the very elect of New England. It may be that it is always as it was in the days of Job, and that the sons of God never assemble without finding in their midst the dark form of Lucifer; for certain it is that the devil, to quote the Rev. Cotton Mather’s own words, “broke in upon the country after as astonishing a manner as was ever heard of.”

“Flashy people,” quaintly and solemnly remarks the learned divine, “may burlesque these things, but when hundreds of the most sober people in a country where they have as much mother-wit certainly as the rest of mankind, know them to be true, nothing but the absurd and forward spirit of Sadducism can question them.” From all of which, and from much more which might be cited, it is evident that there was plenty of witchcraft abroad in those days, whether Mistress Henshaw was concerned therein or not.

It is sufficient to note that certain gossips scrupled not to declare that Dame Henshaw was one of the accursed who bore the mark of the beast and kept tryst at the orgies of the witches’ sabbath, and the report once started the facts in the case made little difference. Some of her neighbors went so far as to declare that if the dame’s residence were forcibly changed from Sun Court street to Prison lane, the community would be the better off.

Governor Belamont, however, in this last year of the century, was far more exercised about pirates than concerning witches; and better pleased at the capture of Captain Kidd, who had just fallen into his hands, than if he had discovered all the wise women in the colonies. Public feeling, moreover, was still in a reactionary state from the horrors of the Salem delusion of 1692; and thus it came about that Mistress Henshaw was left unmolested.

The second person in the dialogue given above, John Friendleton, was an Englishman, and, if tradition be true, the son of an old lover of Mistress Henshaw. He had taken up his abode with that lady upon his arrival in the New World, whither he had been led, like many another stout young blade of his day, by the hope of finding fair fortunes in the growing colonies, and from the first he had been a favorite with the old lady. It was whispered over certain of those tea-cups which we now tenderly cherish from a respect for the memory of very great grandmothers and an æsthetic enjoyment of the beauties of old china, that it was by the aid of unhallowed power exercised in his behalf that the young man was always so fortunate in his undertakings. There were sinister tales of singular coincidences which had worked for his good, and behind which the gossips believed to lie the instigating will of his powerful landlady. Whether he himself was aware of this supernatural aid, opinion was divided, but he was so frank and handsome withal that the weight of opinion leaned toward acquitting him. The habit of New England thought, moreover, was so opposed to imagining a witch as exercising her power for anything but evil, that these rumors after all gained no great or general credence.

The friendship between the dame and her lodger was perhaps based upon mutual need. The young man gave her that full confidence which a pure-minded youth enjoys bestowing upon an elderly female friend; while in turn the childless old lady, alone and otherwise friendless, regarded him with tender affection. She cherished any chance token from him, and especially did she seem touched by this gift of a tuberose which he had given her at parting. She knew how carefully he had tended and cherished the plant, more rare then than now, and long after the sails of the ship which conveyed him to England, whither he had been summoned by the serious illness of a relative, had dipped under the horizon, the old witch – if witch she were – sat regarding the flower with eyes in which the tears glistened.

It was early springtime when John Friendleton once more caught sight of the beacon upon Trimountain, and the walls of the fort standing upon a hill which has itself been removed by the enterprise of Boston. The few months of the young man’s absence, and the progress of time from one century to another – for it was now 1700 – had brought no great changes to the town; but to him it seemed far from being the same he had left.

The first tidings he had received from Boston, after landing in England, had been a letter telling of the death of Mistress Henshaw. She had set out from Boston, so the letter informed him, to visit a sister living somewhere in the wilds toward far Pemaquid, and had never returned. The letter was written by one Rose Dalton, who claimed to be a niece of the deceased, and who had come into possession of the small property of Mistress Henshaw by virtue of a will made before the adventurous and fatal journey. The writer added to her letter the information that she should live on with dumb Dinah, holding as nearly as possible to the fashion of her aunt’s housekeeping.

When John stood once more upon the well-remembered threshold, he felt half disposed to turn away and enter no more a place in which every familiar sight could but call up sad memories. Then, endeavoring to shake off his melancholy, he knocked.

A light, brisk step approached from within, and the door opened quickly.