James Fenimore Cooper's Five Novels

by James Fenimore Cooper

  Lionel made a lively reply, when a dialogue of some spirit ensued between him and Agnes, to which even Cecil listened with a beguiled ear. When the evening had advanced, Polwarth made his appearance, suitably attired, and with a face that was sufficiently knowing and important for the occasion. The presence of the captain reminded Lionel of the lateness of the hour, and, without delay, he hastened to communicate his plans to his friend.

  At a few minutes before ten, Polwarth was to accompany the ladies in a covered sleigh to the chapel, which was not a stone’s throw from their residence, where the bridegroom was to be in readiness to receive them, with the divine. Referring the captain to Meriton for further instructions, and without waiting to hear the other express his amazement at the singularity of the plan, Major Lincoln said a few words of tender encouragement to Cecil, looked at his watch, and throwing his cloak around him, took his hat, and departed.

  We shall leave Polwarth endeavouring to extract the meaning of all these mysterious movements, from the wilful and amused Agnes, (Cecil having retired also,) and accompany the bridegroom in his progress towards the residence of the divine.

  Major Lincoln found the streets entirely deserted. The night was not dark, for a full moon was wading among the volumes of clouds, which drove before the tempest in dark and threatening masses in beautiful contrast to the light covering of the hills and buildings of the town. Occasionally gusts of the wind would lift eddying wreaths of snow from some roof, and whole squares were wrapped in mist as the frozen vapour whistled by. At times, the gale howled among the chimneys and turrets, in a steady, sullen roaring, and there were again moments when the element appeared hushed, as if its fury were expended, and winter, having worked its might, was yielding to the steady, but insensible advances of spring. There was something in the season and the hour peculiarly in consonance with the excited temperament of the young bridegroom. Even the solitude of the streets, and the hollow rushing of the winds, the fleeting and dim light of the moon, which afforded passing glimpses of surrounding objects and then was hid behind a dark veil of shifting vapour, contributed to his pleasure. He made his way through the snow, with that species of joy, to which all are indebted, at times, for moments of wild and pleasing self-abandonment. His thoughts vacillated between the purpose of the hour, and the unlooked for coincidence of circumstances that had clothed it in a dress of so romantic mystery. Once or twice a painful and dark thought, connected with the secret of Mrs. Lechmere’s life, found its way among his more pleasing visions, but it was quickly chased from his mind by the image of her who awaited his movements in so confiding faith, and with so dependent affection.

  As the residence of Dr. Liturgy was on the North-end, which was then one of the fashionable quarters of the town, the distance required that Lionel should be diligent, in order to be punctual to his appointment. Young, active, and full of hope, he passed along the unequal pavements with great rapidity, and had the satisfaction of perceiving by his watch, when admitted to the presence of the clergyman, that his speed had even outstripped the proverbial fleetness of time itself.

  The reverend gentleman was in his study, consoling himself for the arduous duties of the day, with the comforts of a large easy-chair, a warm fire, and a pitcher filled with a mixture of cider and ginger, together with other articles that would have done credit to the knowledge of Polwarth in spices. His full and decorous wig was replaced by a velvet cap, his shoes were unbuckled, and his heels released from confinement. In short, all his arrangements were those of a man who, having endured a day of labour, was resolved to prove the enjoyments of an evening of rest. His pipe, though filled, and on the little table by his side, was not lighted, in compliment to the guest he expected at that hour. As he was slightly acquainted with Major Lincoln, no introduction was necessary, and the two gentlemen were soon seated; the one endeavouring to overcome the embarrassment he felt on revealing his singular errand, and the other waiting, in no little curiosity, to learn the reason why a member of parliament, and the heir of ten thousand a year, should come abroad on so unpropitious a night.

  At length Lionel succeeded in making the astonished priest understand his wishes, and paused to hear the expected approbation of his proposal.

  Dr. Liturgy listened with the most profound attention, as if to catch some clue to explain the mystery of the extraordinary proceeding, and when the young man concluded, he unconsciously lighted his pipe, and began to throw out large clouds of smoke, like a man who felt there was a design to abridge his pleasures, and who was consequently determined to make the most of his time.

  “Married! To be married in church! and after the night lecture!” he muttered between his long-drawn puffs—“’tis my duty—certainly—Major Lincoln—to marry my parishioners”—

  “In the present instance, as I know my request to be irregular, sir,” interrupted the impatient Lionel, “I will make it your interest also.” While speaking he took a well-filled purse from his pocket, and with an air of much delicacy laid a small pile of gold by the side of the silver spectacle-case of the divine, as if to show him the difference in the value of the two metals.

  Dr. Liturgy bowed his acknowledgments, and insensibly changed the stream of smoke to the opposite corner of his mouth, so as to leave the view of the glittering boon unobstructed. At the same time he raised the heel of one shoe, and threw a glance at the curtained window, to inquire into the state of the weather.

  “Could not the ceremony be performed at the house of Mrs. Lechmere?” he asked; “Miss Dynevor is a tender child, and I fear the cold air of the chapel might do her no service!”

  “It is her wish to go to the altar, and you are sensible it is not for me to question her decision in such a matter.”

  “’Tis a pious inclination; though I trust she knows the distinction between the spiritual and the temporal church. The laws of the colonies are too loose on the subject of marriages, Major Lincoln; culpably and dangerously loose!”

  “But, as it is not in our power to alter, my good sir, will you permit me to profit by them; imperfect as they are?”

  “Undeniably—it is part of my office to christen, to marry, and to bury; a duty which I often say, covers the beginning, the middle, and the end of existence—but permit me to help you to a little of my beverage, Major Lincoln—we call it ‘Samson,’ in Boston; you will find the ‘Danite’ a warm companion for a February night in this climate.”

  “The mixture is not inaptly named, sir,” said Lionel, after wetting his lips, “if strength be the quality most considered!”

  “Ah! you have him from the lap of a Delilah; but it is unbecoming in one of my cloth to meddle with aught of the harlot.”

  He laughed at his own wit, and made a more spirituous than spiritual addition to his own glass, while he continued—

  “We divide it into ‘Samson with his hair off,’ and ‘Samson with his hair on;’ and I believe myself the most orthodox in preferring the man of strength, in his native comeliness. I pledge you, Major Lincoln; may the middle of your days be as happy as the charming young lady you are about to espouse may well render them; and your end, sir, that of a good churchman, and a faithful subject.”

  Lionel, who considered this compliment as an indication of his success, now rose, and said a few words on the subject of their meeting in the chapel. The divine, who manifestly possessed no great relish for the duty, made sundry slight objections to the whole proceeding, which were, however, soon overcome by the arguments of the bridegroom. At length every difficulty was happily adjusted, save one, and that the epicurean doctor stoutly declared to be a serious objection to acting in the matter. The church fires were suffered to go down, and his sexton had been taken from the chapel that very evening, with every symptom on him of the terrible pestilence which then raged in the place, adding, by its danger, to the horrors and the privations of the siege.

  “A clear case of the small pox, I do assure you, Maj
or Lincoln,” he continued, “contracted, without doubt, from some emissaries sent into the town for that purpose, by the wicked devices of the rebels.”

  “I have heard that each party accuses the other of resorting to these unjustifiable means of annoyance,” returned Lionel; “but as I know our own leader to be above such baseness, I will not suspect any other man of it without proof.”

  “Too charitable by half, sir—much too charitable! But let the disease come whence it will, I fear my sexton will prove its victim.”

  “I will take the charge on myself of having the fires renewed,” said Lionel; “the embers must yet be in the stoves, and we have still an hour before us.”

  As the clergyman was much too conscientious to retain possession of the gold without fully entitling himself to the ownership, he had long before determined to comply, notwithstanding the secret yearnings of his flesh. Their plans were now soon arranged, and Lionel, after receiving the key of the chapel, took his leave.

  When Major Lincoln found himself in the street, he walked for some distance in the direction of the chapel, anxiously looking along the deserted way, in order to discover an unemployed soldier, who might perform the menial offices of the absent sexton. He proceeded for some distance without success, for every thing human seemed housed, even the number of lights in the windows beginning to decrease in a manner which denoted that the hour of rest had arrived. He paused in the entrance of the dock-square, uncertain where to apply for an assistant, when he caught a glimpse of the figure of a man, crouching under the walls of the old turreted ware-house, so often mentioned. Without hesitating an instant, he approached the spot, from which the figure neither moved, nor did it indeed betray any other evidence of a consciousness of his proximity. Notwithstanding the dimness of the moon, there was light enough to detect the extreme misery of the object before him. His tattered and thin attire sufficiently bespoke the motive of the stranger for seeking a shelter from the cutting winds behind an angle of the wall, while his physical wants were betrayed by the eager manner in which he gnawed at a bone that might well have been rejected from the mess of the meanest private, notwithstanding the extreme scarcity that prevailed in the garrison. Lionel forgot his present object, at this exhibition of human suffering, and with a kind voice he addressed the wretched being.

  “You have a cold spot to eat your supper in,” he said; “and it would seem, too, but a scanty meal?”

  Without ceasing to masticate his miserable nutriment, or even raising his eyes, the other said—

  “The king could shut up the harbor, and keep out the ships; but he hasn’t the might to drive cold weather from Boston, in the month of March!”

  “As I live, Job Pray! Come with me, boy; I will give you a better meal, and a warmer place to enjoy it in—but first tell me; can you procure a lantern and a light from your mother?”

  “You can’t go in the ware’us’ to-night,” returned the lad, positively.

  “Is there no place at hand, then, where such things might be purchased?”

  “They keep them there,” said Job, pointing to a low building on the opposite side of the square, through one of the windows of which a faint light was glimmering.

  “Then take this money and go buy them for me, without delay.”

  Job hesitated with ill-concealed reluctance.

  “Go, fellow, I have instant need of them, and you can keep the change for your reward.”

  The young man no longer betrayed any indisposition to go, but answered, with great promptitude for one of his imbecile mind—

  “Job will go, if you will let him buy Nab some meat with the change?”

  “Certainly, buy what you will with it; and furthermore, I promise you that neither your mother nor yourself shall want again for food or clothing.”

  “Job’s a-hungry,” said the simpleton; “but they say hunger don’t come as craving upon a young stomach as upon an old one. Do you think the king knows what it is to be a-cold and hungry?”

  “I know not, boy—but I know full well that if one suffering like you were before him, his heart would yearn to relieve him. Go, go; buy yourself food too, if they have it?”

  In a very few minutes Lionel saw the simpleton issuing from the house to which he had run at his bidding, with the desired lantern.

  “Did you get any food,” said Lionel, motioning to Job to precede him with the light—“I trust you did not entirely forget yourself in your haste to serve me?”

  “Job hopes he didn’t catch the pestilence,” returned the lad, eating at the same time voraciously of a small roll of bread.

  “Catch what? what is it you hope you did not catch?”

  “The pestilence—they are full of the foul disorder in that house.”

  “Do you mean the small-pox?”

  “Yes; some call it small-pox, and some call it the foul disorder, and other some the pestilence. The king can keep out the trade, but he can’t keep out the cold and the pestilence from Boston—but when the people get the town back, they’ll know what to do with it—they’ll send it all to the pest-housen!”

  “I hope I have not exposed you unwittingly to danger, Job—it would have been better had I gone myself, for I was innoculated for the terrible disease in infancy.”

  Job, who, in expressing his sense of the danger, had exhausted the stores of his feeble mind on the subject, made no reply, but continued walking through the square, until they reached its termination, when he turned, and inquired which way he was to go.

  “To the church,” said Lionel, “and swiftly, lad.”

  As they entered Corn-hill, they encountered the fury of the wind, when Major Lincoln bowing his head, and gathering his cloak about him, followed the light which flitted along the pavement in front. Shut out in a manner from the world by this covering, his thoughts returned to their former channel, and in a few moments he forgot where he was, or whom he was following. He was soon awakened from his abstraction by perceiving that it was necessary for him to ascend a few steps, when supposing he had reached the place of destination, he raised his head, and unthinkingly followed his conductor into the tower of a large edifice. Immediately perceiving his mistake, by the difference of the architecture from that of the King’s chapel, he reproved the lad for his folly, and demanded why he had brought him thither.

  “This is what you call a church,” said Job, “though I call it a meetin’us’—It’s no wonder you don’t know it—for what the people built for a temple, the king has turned into a stable!”

  “A stable!” exclaimed Lionel. Perceiving a strong smell of horses in the place, he advanced and threw open the inner door, when, to his amazement, he perceived that he stood in an area fitted for the exercises of the cavalry. There was no mistaking the place, nor its uses. The naked galleries, and many of the original ornaments were standing, but the accommodations below were destroyed, and in their places the floor had been covered with earth, for horses and their riders to practise in the cavesson. The abominations of the place even now offended his senses as he stood on that spot where he remembered so often to have seen the grave and pious colonists assemble, in crowds, to worship. Seizing the lantern from Job, he hurried out of the building with a disgust that even the unobservant simpleton had no difficulty in discovering. On reaching the street his eyes fell upon the lights, and on the silent dignity of Province-house, and he was compelled to recollect, that this wanton violation of the feelings of the colonists, had been practised directly under the windows of the governor.

  “Fools, fools!” he muttered bitterly; “when ye should have struck like men, ye have trifled as children; and ye have forgotten your manhood, and even your God, to indulge a besotted spleen!”

  “And now these very horses are starving for want of hay, as a judgment upon them!” said Job, who shuffled his way at the other’s side.—“They had better have gone to meetin’ themselves, and heard the
expounding, than to set dumb beasts a rioting in a place that the Lord used to visit so often!”

  “Tell me, boy, of what other act of folly and madness has the army been guilty?”

  “What! hav’n’t you heard of the old North! They’ve made oven-wood of the grandest temple in the Bay! If they dared, they’d lay their ungodly hands on Funnel itself!”

  Lionel made no reply. He had heard that the distresses of the garrison, heightened as they were by the ceaseless activity of the Americans, had compelled them to convert many houses, as well as the church in question, into fuel. But he saw in the act nothing more than the usual recourse of a common military exigency. It was free from that reckless contempt of a people’s feelings, which was exhibited in the prostitution of the ancient walls of the sister edifice, which was known throughout New-England, with a species of veneration, as the “old South.” He continued his way gloomily along the silent streets, until he reached the more favoured temple, in which the ritual of the English church was observed, and whose roof was rendered doubly sacred, in the eyes of the garrison, by the accidental circumstance of bearing the title of their earthly monarch.

  * “Coasting” is a word of local use. [1832]

  Chapter XXII

  “Thou art too like the spirit of Banquo; down!”

  Macbeth.

  * * *

  MAJOR LINCOLN found the King’s Chapel differing in every particular from the venerable, but prostituted building he had just quitted. As he entered, the light of his lantern played over the scarlet covering of many a pew, and glanced upon the glittering ornaments of the polished organ. The laboured columns, with their slender shafts and fretted capitals, threw shapeless shadows across the dim background, peopling the galleries and ceiling with imaginary phantoms. As this slight delusion passed away, he became sensible of the change in the temperature. The warmth which had been maintained during the different services of the day was not yet dissipated; for notwithstanding the wants of the town and garrison, the favoured temple, where the representative of the sovereign was wont to worship, knew not the ordinary privations of the place. Job was directed to supply the dying embers of the stoves with fresh fuel, and as the simpleton well knew where to find the stores of the church, his office was performed with an alacrity that was not a little increased by his own sufferings.