James Fenimore Cooper's Five Novels

by James Fenimore Cooper

  “Have you nothing better than this to show a townsman, who has been absent seventeen years, on his return! Pray let us go through some better streets than this, if any there are in Boston which can be called better.”

  The lad stopped short, and looked up in the face of the speaker, with an air of undisguised amazement, and then, without replying, he changed the direction of his route, and after one or two more deviations in his path, suddenly turning again, he glided up an alley, so narrow that the passenger might touch the buildings on either side of him. The officer hesitated an instant to enter this dark and crooked passage, but perceiving that his guide was already hid by a bend in the houses, he quickened his steps, and immediately regained the ground he had lost. They soon emerged from the obscurity of the place, and issued on a street of greater width.

  “There!” said Job, triumphantly, when they had effected this gloomy passage, “does the king live in so crooked and narrow a street as that!”

  “His majesty must yield the point in your favour,” returned the officer.

  “Ma’am Lechmere is a grand lady!” continued the lad, seemingly following the current of his own fanciful conceits, “and she wouldn’t live in that alley for the world, though it is narrow, like the road to heaven, as old Nab says; I suppose they call it after the Methodies for that reason.”

  “I have heard the road you mention termed narrow, certainly, but it is also called strait,” returned the officer, a little amused with the humour of the lad; “but forward, the time is slipping away, and we loiter.”

  Job turned, and moving onward, he led the way, with swift steps, along another narrow and crooked path, which, however, better deserved the name of a street, under the projecting stories of the wooden buildings, which lined its sides. After following the irregular windings of their route for some distance, they entered a triangular area, of a few rods in extent, where Job, disregarding the use of the narrow walk, advanced directly into the centre of the open space. Here he stopped once more, and turning his vacant face with an air of much seriousness, towards a building which composed one side of the triangle, he said, with a voice that expressed his own deep admiration—

  “There—that’s the ‘old North!’ did you ever see such a meet­in’us’ afore! does the king worship God in such a temple!”

  The officer did not chide the idle liberties of the fool, for in the antiquated and quaint architecture of the wooden edifice, he recognized one of those early efforts of the simple, puritan builders, whose rude tastes have been transmitted to their posterity with so many deviations in the style of the same school, but so little of improvement. Blended with these considerations, were the dawnings of revived recollections; and he smiled, as he recalled the time when he also used to look up at the building with feelings somewhat allied to the profound admiration of the idiot. Job watched his countenance narrowly, and mistaking its expression, he extended his arm toward one of the narrowest of the avenues that entered the area, where stood a few houses of more than common pretension.

  “And there ag’in!” he continued, “there’s palaces for you! stingy Tommy lived in the one with the pile-axters, and the flowers hanging to their tops; and see the crowns on them too! stingy Tommy loved crowns, they say; but Province’us’ wasn’t good enough for him, and he lived here—now they say he lives in one of the king’s cupboards!”

  “And who was stingy Tommy, and what right had he to dwell in Province-House, if he would?”

  “What right has any governor to live in Province’us’! because its the king’s! though the people paid for it.”

  “Pray, sir, excuse me,” said Meriton, from behind, “but do the Americans usually call all their governors stingy Tommies?”

  The officer turned his head, at this vapid question, and perceived that he had been accompanied thus far by the aged stranger, who stood at his elbow, leaning on his staff, studying with close attention the late dwelling of Hutchinson, while the light of the moon fell, unobstructed, on the lines of his haggard face. During the first surprise of this discovery, he forgot to reply, and Job took the vindication of his language into his own hands.

  “To be sure they do—they call people by their right names,” he said. “Insygn Peck is called Insygn Peck; and you call Deacon Winslow any thing but Deacon Winslow, and see what a look he’ll give you! and I am Job Pray, so called; and why shouldn’t a governor be called stingy Tommy, if he is a stingy Tommy?”

  “Be careful how you speak lightly of the king’s representative,” said the young officer, raising his light cane with the affectation of correcting the lad.—“Forget you that I am a soldier?”

  The idiot shrunk back a little, timidly, and then leering from under his sunken brow, he answered—

  “I heard you say you were a Boston boy!”

  The gentleman was about to make a playful reply, when the aged stranger passed swiftly before him, and took his stand at the side of the lad, with a manner so remarkable for its earnestness, that it entirely changed the current of his thoughts.

  “The young man knows the ties of blood and country,” the stranger muttered, “and I honour him!”

  It might have been the sudden recollection of the danger of those allusions, which the officer so well understood, and to which his accidental association with the singular being who uttered them, had begun to familiarize his ear, that induced the youth to resume his walk, silently, and in deep thought, along the street. By this movement, he escaped observing the cordial grasp of the hand which the old stranger bestowed on the idiot, while he muttered a few more terms of commendation. Job soon took his station in front, and the whole party moved on, again, though with less rapid strides. As the lad advanced deeper into the town, he evidently wavered once or twice in his choice of streets, and the officer began to suspect that he contemplated one of his wild circuits, to avoid the direct route to a house that he manifestly approached with great reluctance. Once or twice the young soldier looked about him, intending to inquire the direction, of the first passenger he might see; but the quiet of deep night already pervaded the place, and not an individual but those who accompanied him, appeared in the long ranges of streets they had passed. The air of the guide was becoming so dogged, and hesitating, that his follower had just determined to make an application at one of the doors, when they emerged from a dark, dirty, and gloomy street, on an open space, of much greater extent than the one they had so recently left. Passing under the walls of a blackened dwelling, Job led the way to the centre of a swinging bridge, which was thrown across an inlet from the harbour, that extended a short distance into the area, forming a shallow dock. Here he took his stand, and allowed the view of the surrounding objects to work its own effect on those he had conducted thither. The square was composed of low, gloomy, and irregular houses, most of which had the appearance of being but little used. Stretching from the end of the basin, and a little on one side, stood a long, narrow, brick edifice, ornamented with pilasters, perforated with arched windows, and surmounted by a humble cupola. The story which held the rows of silent, glistening windows, was supported on abutments and arches, through the narrow vistas of which were to be seen the shambles of the common market-place. Heavy cornices of stone were laid above and beneath the pilasters, and something more than the unskilful architecture of the dwelling houses they had passed, was affected throughout the whole structure. While the officer gazed at this building, the idiot watched his countenance, until impatient at hearing no words of pleasure or of recognition, he exclaimed—

  “If you don’t know Funnel-Hall, you are no Boston boy!”

  “But I do know Faneuil-Hall, and I am a Boston boy,” returned the other, amused with his guide’s shrewdness; “the place begins to freshen on my memory, and I now recall the scenes of my childhood.”

  “This, then,” said the aged stranger, “is the spot where liberty has found so many bold advocates!”

  �
�It would do the king’s heart good to hear the people talk in old Funnel, sometimes,” said Job; “I was on the cornishes, and looked into the winders, the last town-meetin’-da’, and if there was soldiers on the common, there was them in the hall that did’nt care for them!”

  “All this is very amusing, no doubt,” said the officer, gravely, “but it does not advance me a foot on my way to Mrs. Lechmere’s.”

  “It is also instructing,” exclaimed the stranger; “go on, child; I love to hear his simple feelings thus expressed; they indicate the state of the public mind.”

  “Why,” said Job, “they were plain spoken that’s all, and it would be better for the king to come over, and hear them—it would pull down his pride, and make him pity the people, and then he wouldn’t think of shutting up Boston harbour. Suppose he should stop the water from coming in by the narrows, why we should get it by Broad Sound! and if it didn’t come by Broad Sound, it would by Nantasket! He needn’t think that the Boston folks are so dumb as to be cheated out of God’s water by acts of Parliament, while old Funnel stands in the dock square!”

  “Sirrah!” exclaimed the officer, a little angrily, “we have already loitered until the clocks are striking eight.”

  The idiot lost his animation, and lowered in his looks again.

  “Well, I told neighbour Hopper,” he said, “there was more ways to ma’am Lechmere’s than straight forward! but every body knows Job’s business better than Job himself! now you make me forget the road; let us go in and ask old Nab, she knows the way too well!”

  “Old Nab! wilful dolt! who is Nab, and what have I to do with any but yourself?”

  “Every body in Boston knows Abigail Pray.”

  “What of her?” asked the startling voice of the stranger; “what of Abigail Pray, boy; is she not honest?”

  “Yes, as poverty can make her,” returned the natural, gloomily; “now the king has said there shall be no goods but tea sent to Boston, and the people won’t have the bohea, its easy living rent-free.—Nab keeps her huckster-stuff in the old ware’us’, and a good place it is too—Job and his mother have each a room to sleep in, and they say the king and queen haven’t more!”

  While he was speaking, the eyes of his listeners were drawn by his gestures toward the singular edifice to which he alluded. Like most of the others adjacent to the square, it was low, old, dirty, and dark. Its shape was triangular, a street bounding it on each side, and its extremities were flanked by as many low hexagonal towers, which terminated, like the main building itself, in high pointed roofs, tiled, and capped with rude ornaments. Long ranges of small windows were to be seen in the dusky walls, through one of which the light of a solitary candle was glimmering, the only indication of the presence of life about the building.

  “Nab knows ma’am Lechmere better than Job,” continued the idiot, after a moment’s pause, “and she will know whether ma’am Lechmere will have Job whipped for bringing company on Saturday-night;¶ though they say she’s so full of scoffery as to talk, drink tea, and laugh on that night, just the same as any other time.”

  “I will pledge myself to her courteous treatment,” the officer replied, beginning to be weary of the fool’s delay.

  “Let us see this Abigail Pray,” cried the aged stranger, suddenly seizing Job by the arm, and leading him, with a sort of irresistible power, toward the walls of the building, through one of the low doors of which they immediately disappeared.

  Thus left on the bridge, with his valet, the young officer hesitated a single instant how to act; but yielding to the secret and powerful interest which the stranger had succeeded in throwing around all his movements and opinions, he bid Meriton await his return, and followed his guide and the old man into the cheerless habitation of the former. On passing the outer door he found himself in a spacious, but rude apartment, which, from its appearance, as well as from the few articles of heavy but valueless merchandise it now contained, would seem to have been once used as a store-house. The light drew his steps toward a room in one of the towers, where, as he approached its open door, he heard the loud, sharp tones of a woman’s voice, exclaiming—

  “Where have you been, graceless, this Saturday-night! tagging at the heels of the soldiers, or gazing at the men-of-war, with their ungodly music and revelry, I dare to say! and you knew that a ship was in the bay, and that madam Lechmere had desired me to send her the first notice of its arrival. Here have I been waiting for you to go up to Tremont-street since sun-down, with the news, and you are out of call—you, that know so well who it is she expects!”

  “Don’t be cross to Job, mother, for the grannies have been cutting his back with cords, till the blood runs! ma’am Lechmere! I do believe, mother, that ma’am Lechmere has moved; for I’ve been trying to find her house this hour, because there’s a gentleman who landed from the ship wanted Job to show him the way.”

  “What means the ignorant boy!” exclaimed his mother.

  “He alludes to me,” said the officer, entering the apartment; “I am the person, if any, expected by Mrs. Lechmere, and have just landed from the Avon, of Bristol; but your son has led me a circuitous path, indeed; at one time he spoke of visiting the graves on Copps-Hill.”

  “Excuse the ignorant and witless child, sir,” said the matron, eyeing the young man keenly through her spectacles; “he knows the way as well as to his own bed, but he is wilful at times. This will be a joyful night in Tremont-street! So handsome, and so stately too! excuse me, young gentleman,” she added, raising the candle to his features with an evident unconsciousness of the act—“he has the sweet smile of the mother, and the terrible eye of his father! God forgive us all our sins, and make us happier in another world than in this place of evil and wickedness!” As she muttered the latter words, the woman set aside her candle with an air of singular agitation. Each syllable, notwithstanding her secret intention, was heard by the officer, across whose countenance there passed a sudden gloom that doubled its sad expression. He, however, said—

  “You know me, and my family, then.”

  “I was at your birth, young gentleman, and a joyful birth it was! but madam Lechmere waits for the news, and my unfortunate child shall speedily conduct you to her door; she will tell you all that it is proper to know. Job, you Job, where are you getting to, in that corner! take your hat, and show the gentleman to Tremont-street directly; you know, my son, you love to go to madam Lechmere’s!”

  “Job would never go, if Job could help it,” muttered the boy; “and if Nab had never gone, ’twould have been better for her soul.”

  “Do you dare, disrespectful viper!” exclaimed the angry quean, seizing the tongs, and threatening the head of her stubborn child.

  “Woman, peace!” said a voice behind.

  The weapon fell from the nerveless hand of the vixen, and the hues of her yellow and withered countenance changed to the whiteness of death. She stood motionless, for near a minute, as if riveted to the spot by a superhuman power, before she succeeded in muttering, “who speaks to me?”

  “It is I,” returned the stranger, advancing from the shadow of the door into the dim light of the candle; “a man who has numbered ages, and who knows, that as God loves him, so is he bound to love the children of his loins.”

  The rigid limbs of the woman lost their stability, in a tremour that shook every fibre in her body; she sunk in her chair, her eyes rolled from the face of one visiter to that of the other, while unsuccessful efforts to utter, denoted that she had temporarily lost the command of speech. Job stole to the side of the stranger, in this short interval, and looking up in his face piteously, he said—

  “Don’t hurt old Nab—read that good saying to her out of the Bible, and she’ll never strike Job with the tongs ag’in; will you, mother? See her cup, where she hid it under the towel, when you came in! ma’am Lechmere gives her the p’ison tea to drink, and then Nab is never so good to Job, as Job
would be to mother, if mother was half-witted, and Job was old Nab. Tea intoxicates, they say, as well as rum.”

  The stranger considered the countenance of the boy, while he pleaded thus earnestly in behalf of his mother, with marked attention, and when he had done, he stroked the head of the natural compassionately.

  “Poor, imbecile child!” he said, “God has denied the most precious of his gifts, and yet his spirit hovers around thee; for thou canst distinguish between austerity and kindness, and thou hast learnt to know good from evil. Young man, see you no moral in this dispensation! Nothing, which says that Providence bestows no gift in vain; while it points to the difference between the duty that is fostered by indulgence, and that which is extorted by power!”

  The officer avoided the ardent looks of the stranger, and after an embarrassing pause, he expressed his readiness to depart on his way. The matron, whose eye had never ceased to dwell on the features of the old man, since her faculties were restored, arose slowly, and in a feeble voice, directed her son to show the road to Tremont-street. She had acquired, by long practice, a manner that never failed to control, when necessary, the wayward humours of her child, and on the present occasion, the solemnity imparted to her voice, by deep agitation, aided in effecting her object. Job quietly arose, and prepared himself to comply. The manners of the whole party wore a restraint which implied they had touched on feelings that it would be wiser to smother, and the separation would have been silent, though courteous, on the part of the youth, had he not perceived the passage still filled by the motionless form of the stranger.

  “You will precede me, sir,” he said; “the hour grows late, and you, too, may need a guide to find your dwelling.”

  “To me, the streets of Boston have long been familiar,” returned the old man. “I have noted the increase of the town as a parent notes the growing stature of his child; nor is my love for it less than paternal. It is enough that I am within its limits, where liberty is prized as the greatest good; and it matters not under what roof I lay my head—this will do as well as another.”