CHAPTER IX.

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“Ye’re like to the timmer o’ yon rotten wood, Ye’re like to the bark o’ yon rotten tree, Ye’ll slip frae me like a knotless thread, And ye’ll crack your credit wi’ mae nor me.” Burns.

At the period of our history, twelve o’clock was the hour appointed for dinner: we believe in the mother-country--certainly in the colony then, as now, everywhere in the interior of our states, this natural division of time was maintained. Our magistrates did not then claim any exemption from the strict rules of simplicity and frugality that were imposed on the humble citizens, and Governor Winthrop’s meridian meal, though it might have been somewhat superior in other luxuries, had no more of the luxury of time bestowed on it than that of the honest artisans and tradesmen about him.

In order to explain what follows, it is necessary to state to our readers, that adjoining the parlour of Governor Winthrop’s mansion was that _sine qua non_ of all thrifty housekeepers, an ample pantry. In the door of this pantry was a glazed panel, over the parlour side of which hung a green curtain. The glass had been broken, and not yet repaired; and, let housewives take the admonition if they like, on this slight accident depended life and death.

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The pantry, besides the door already described, had another, which communicated with the kitchen; through this Jennet (who in housewife skill resembled the “neat-handed Phillis” of poetic fame, though in other respects prosaic enough) had entered to perform within the sanctum certain confidential services for Madam Winthrop.

It now drew near the hour of two, the time appointed for the interview of the governor with Sir Philip; the dinner was over, the table removed, and all orderly and quiet in the parlour, when Jennet, in her retreat, heard Miss Leslie and Mr. Everell Fletcher enter, and, though the weather was warm, close the door after them. A slight hint is sufficient for the wary and wise; and Jennet, on hearing the door shut, forbore to make any noise which should apprize the parties of her proximity.

The young people, as if fearful of being overheard without, withdrew to the farthest extremity from the entry door, and came into the corner adjoining the pantry. They spoke, though in low tones, yet in the most earnest and animated manner; and Jennet, tempted beyond what she was able to bear, drew nigh to the door with a cat’s tread, and applied her ear to the aperture, where the sounds were only slightly obstructed by the silk curtain.

While speakers and listener stood in this interesting relation to each other, Sir Philip Gardiner was approaching the mansion, his bad mind filled with projects, hopes, and fears. He had, after much painful study, framed the following story, which he hoped {179} to impose on the credulity of the governor, and, through him, of the public. His sole care was to avoid present investigation and detection; in navigating a winding channel, he regarded only the difficulties directly before him.

He meant that, in the first place, by way of a _coup de grace_, the governor should understand he had intentionally acquiesced in the discovery of Rosa’s disguise. He would then, as honest Varney did, confess there had been some love-passages between the girl and himself in the days of his folly. He would state that, subsequent to his conversion, he had placed her in a godly school in England, and that, to his utter confusion, he had discovered, after he had sailed from London, that she had, in the disguise she still wore, secreted herself on board the ship. He had, perhaps, felt too much indulgence for the girl’s youth and unconquerable affection for him; but he should hope that was not an unpardonable sin. He had been restrained from divulging her real character on shipboard, from his reluctance to expose her youth to insult or farther temptation. On his arrival, he was conscious it was a manifest duty to have delivered her over to the public authorities; but pity--pity still had ruled him. He scrupled--perhaps that was a temptation of the enemy, who knew well to assail the weakest points--he scrupled to give over to public shame one, of whose transgressions he had been the cause. Besides, she had been bred in France--a Papist; and he had hoped--trusting, perhaps, too much in his own strength--that he might {180} convert her from the error of her ways--snatch the brand from the burning; he had, indeed, felt a fatherly tenderness for her, and, weakly indulging that sentiment, he had still, when he found her obstinately persisting in her errors, devised a plan to shelter her from public punishment; and, in pursuance of it, he had taken advantage of the opportunity afforded him by his visit to Thomas Morton, to propose to Magawisca that, in case she should obtain her liberty from the clemency of her judges, she should undertake to convey Rosa to a convent in Montreal, of the order to which she had been, in her childhood, attached.

He meant to plead guilty, as he thought he could well afford to do, if he was exculpated on the other points, to all the sin of acquiescence in Rosa’s devotion to an unholy and proscribed religion; and to the crucifix Magawisca had produced, and which he feared would prove a “confirmation strong” to any jealousies the governor might still harbour against him, he meant to answer that he had taken it from Rosa to explain to Magawisca that she was of the Romish religion.

With this plausible tale--not the best that could have been devised, perhaps, by one accustomed to all the sinuosities of the human mind and human affairs, but the best that Sir Philip could frame in his present perplexity--he bent his steps towards the governor’s, a little anticipating the appointed hour in the hope of obtaining a glimpse of Miss Leslie, whom he had not seen since their last interview at the island; {181} and who was still the bright cynosure by which, through all the dangers that beset him, he trusted to guide himself to a joyous destiny.

Never was he more unwelcome to her sight than when he opened the parlour door, and interrupted the deeply-interesting conversation in which we left her engaged. She coldly bowed, without speaking, and left him, without making any apology, in the midst of his flattering compliments on the recovery of her health.

Sir Philip and Everell were much on the terms of two unfriendly dogs, who are, by some coercion, kept from doing battle, but who never meet without low growls and sullen looks, that intimate their deadly enmity. Everell paced the room twice or thrice, then snatched up his hat, left the house, and sauntered up the street.

No sooner had he disappeared than Jennet emerged from her seclusion, her hands uplifted and her eyes upturned. “Oh, Sir Philip! Sir Philip!” she said, as soon as she could get her voice, a delay never long with Jennet, “truly is the heart deceitful, and the lips too. Oh! who would have thought it? such a daring, presumptuous, and secret sin, too! Where is the governor? He must know it. But first, Sir Philip, I will tell you; that will do, as you and the governor are one in counsel.”

“Heaven grant we may be so,” thought Sir Philip, and he closed the door and turned to Jennet, eager to hear her communication; for her earnestness, {182} and, still more, the source whence the intelligence emanated, excited his curiosity.

Jennet drew very close to him, and communicated her secret in a whisper.

At first the listener’s face did not indicate any particular emotion, but merely that courteous attention which a sagacious man would naturally lend to intelligence which the relator deemed of vital importance. Suddenly a light seemed to flash across him; he started away from Jennet, stood still for a moment with a look of intense thought, then turning to his informer, he said, “Mrs. Jennet, I think we had best, for to-day, confine within our own bosoms the knowledge of this secret. As you say, Mr. Everell’s is a presumptuous sin; but it will not be punished unless it proceeds to the overt act.”

“Overt act! What kind of act is that?” inquired Jennet.

Sir Philip explained; and Jennet soon comprehended the difference, in its consequences to the offender, between a meditated and an executed crime. Jennet hesitated for a few moments; she had a sort of attachment to the family she had long served, much like that of an old cat for its accustomed haunts; but towards Everell she had a feeling of unqualified hostility. From his boyhood he had been rebellious against her petty domiciliary tyranny, and had never manifested the slightest deference for her canting pretensions. Still she was loath in any way to be accessory to an act that would involve the family with which she was herself identified in any {183} disgrace or distress. Sir Philip divined the cause of her hesitation, and, impatient for her decision, he essayed to resolve her doubts: “Of course, Mrs. Jennet,” he said, “you are aware that any penalty Mr. Everell Fletcher would incur will not be of a nature to touch life or limb.”

“Ay, that’s what I wanted to know; and that being the case, it appears to me plain duty to let him bake as he has brewed. Faithful are the wounds of a friend, Sir Philip; and this may prove a timely rebuke to his youth, and to this quicksilver, fearnaught, Hope Leslie. But you will take care to have your hand come in in time; for if there should be any miss in the matter, it would prove a heavy weight to our consciences.”

“Oh, certainly, certainly,” said Sir Philip, with undisguised exultation: “I shall, you know, command the springs, and can touch them at pleasure. Now, Mrs. Jennet, will you favour me with pen and ink? and do me still another favour”--and he took a guinea from his purse--“expend this trifle in some book for your private edification; I hear much of a famous one just brought from England, entitled ‘Food for Saints and Fire for Sinners.’”

“Many thanks, Sir Philip,” replied Jennet, graciously accepting the gift; “such savoury treatises are as much wanted among us just now, as rain upon the parched earth: it’s but a sickly and a moral time with us. You put me in mind, Sir Philip,” she continued, while she was collecting the writing materials, “you put me in mind of Mr. Everell’s oversight; or, rather, I may say, of his making me a {184} mark in that unhandsome way that I can never forget. When he came from England, there was not, save myself, one of the family--no, nor an old woman or child in Springfield, but what he had some keepsake for; not that I care for the value of the thing, as I told Digby at his wedding, when he saluted every woman in the room but me; but, then, one does not like to be slighted.”

Sir Philip, by this time, was fortunately bending over his paper, and Jennet did not perceive his smile at her jumble of selfish and feminine resentments; and, observing that he had at once become quite abstracted from her, she withdrew, half satisfied herself that she had acted conscientiously in her conspiracy against her young master, and quite sure that she should appear a pattern of wisdom and duty.

Sir Philip, mentally thanking Heaven that he had not yet encountered Governor Winthrop, addressed a hasty note to him, saying that he had come to his house, true to his appointment, and impatient for the explanation, which, he might say without presumption, he was sure would remove the displeasure under which he (Sir Philip) was at this moment suffering; but that, in consequence of a sudden and severe indisposition, the effect of the distressful agitation he had undergone, he found himself obliged to return to his lodgings, and defer their interview till the next day; till then, he humbly hoped the governor would suspend his judgment. He then directed the note and left it on the table, and passed the threshold of the Winthrop mansion, as he believed and hoped, for the last time.