Philip Verrill Mighels

“ The chuckle in the blocks, as the sailors heaved and hauled at the ropes, gave Adam Rust a pleasure he had never before experienced.
Breakfast being not yet prepared for service, Phipps conducted his foundling about the craft for a look at her beauties. When Adam had putted the muzzle of the brig’s gun and felt the weight of a naked sword in his fist, in the armory, the buoyancy of his youth put new color in his cheeks and a sparkle in his eyes. He was a bright-natural, companionable lad, who grew friendly and smiled his way into one’s affections rapidly, but naturally. ”

“ Have you great love for Massachusetts and her people, Garde?”
“Is not love a passion?” she answered, without raising her eyes from her work.
“Love of one’s country is not an unseemly passion,” said her grandfather.
“Then I have for Massachusetts a seemly regard,” said Mistress Merrill, who had given all her love elsewhere.
“And could you sacrifice somewhat of your personal thoughts, and mayhap desires, for the colony? Could you be a little patriot in the hour of your country’s need, my child?” asked the old man, his look intent upon her face. ”

“ THE GERM OF A PASSION. A bonnie little Puritan maid, Mistress Garde Merrill, stood in the open doorway at her home, fervently hugging her kitten. The sunlight seemed almost like beaten gold, so tangibly did it lay upon the house, the vines that climbed the wall, and the garden full of old-fashioned flowers.
A few leaves, which had escaped from the trees, in a longing to extend their field of romping, were being whirled about in a brisk zephyr that spun in a corner. A sense of warmth and fragrance made all the world seem wantoning in its own loveliness. ”

“ Garde emerged from the mask as rosy and cream white as an apple, for the open air and the days with Adam had wrought such evidence of health and happiness upon her that not the dread of what she might discover at home, nor any excitement of being in the land of her enemy, could make any paleness in her face of more than a moment’s duration. She was too excited to eat, although Goody tried to urge her to take even a cup of tea, and so she went on to her grandfather’s house, and let herself in, at the rear. ”

“ The beef-eaters grinned as they exchanged salutations with Phipps. Pike was a short individual, inclined to be fat, even when on the slimmest of rations. The pupils of his eyes were like two suns that had risen above the horizon of his lower lids, only to obscure themselves under the cloud-like lids above. Their expression, especially when he gazed upward into Adam’s face, was something too appealingly saint-like and beseeching for anything mortal to possess. ”

“ Yet so afraid did the young rogues appear to be that this something would yet fly upon them and do them great harm, that Adam walked at once among them, touching one upon the shoulder.
“The witch!” screamed this lad, as if the devil himself had clutched him. With yells of terror all the boys scudded swiftly away, for a matter of twenty feet, and then turned about to look at Rust. Seeing a man merely, they were reassured. It is a singular and doubtless a fortunate matter that there was never such a thing conceived as a male witch. ”

“ Man might build a palace of gold and brilliants, or Nature grow an edifice of leaves all resplendent with purples, reds, yellows and emeralds, but, when night spread her mantle, these gems of color and radiance might as well be of ebon. It is the sun that gilds, that burnishes, that lays on the tints of the mighty canvas; and when he goes, all color, all glitter and all beauty, save of form, have ceased to be.
Adam saw the trees standing dark and still, their great black limbs outstretched like arms, with upturned hands, suppliant for alms of weather. ”

“ Wherever it rested, Nature met it with a smile. Adam felt like hugging a tree, yet no single tree was that elusive spirit of Nature which he so longed to clasp and to hold in his arms. But if he was mocked by the ethereal presence of beauty too diffuse to be held, by a redolence too subtle to be defined, and by bird notes too fleeting to be retained, yet he was charmed, caressed, sublimated by the omnipresence of Nature’s loveliness. ”

“ Do you think I would trust a man to save our charter who wouldn’t save a woman’s honor—who would do what you have done? You may go—you may go away! I loathe you! I scorn you! Oh, I have found you out in time!”
“This is silly talk, Mistress Merrill,” said the man. “I know nothing of your Hester Hodder.”
Garde made a gesture expressive of disgust and impatience.
“But all this has no bearing on anything one way or the other,” Randolph continued. “You must not forget that I have as much power over the charter and the colony as ever—in fact, more. ”

“ A low moan came from between his lips—such a sound as he had made in his sleep, as he once lay curled up at the foot of the stake on which King Philip’s head was impaled.
The fragments on the floor were the scraps and litter of his violin. There was not one piece as large as three of his fingers. Isaiah Pinchbecker and Psalms Higgler had taken their revenge.
Slowly Adam knelt down and gathered the bits of wood in a little heap, lovingly. He was not enraged. A lover who finds his sweetheart murdered cannot at first be filled with anger. Adam gathered every little scrap and splinter. ”

“ In its vortex of action, movement, success and failure at last for the Indians, Adam Rust had been whirled along with Metacomet. He had never been permitted by King Philip to fight against his “white brothers,” but he had assisted to plan for the safety of the old men, women and children, in procuring game and in constructing shelters. He had learned to love these silently suffering people with all his heart. The fights, the hardships, the doom, coming inevitably upon the hopeless Wampanoags, had made the boy a man, in some of the innermost recesses of a heart’s suffering. ”

“ Adam growled at him, angrily. “Betrothed to you, she loves me more. Come, sir, stake me a thousand against my chances to win her and take her away from you, heart and soul. A thousand, sir, and if you can win it—your field shall be open, you shall hear nor fear no more from me!”
“By my faith,” said Suffle, rising, as Adam had done, “you hold this lady lightly, that you prattle of her name like this. Better I should run you through, for an arrant knave.”
“Bah!” said Rust, “you think more of your winnings than you do of your lady. You hesitate and scold over a paltry thousand. ”

“ It was not that she had the slightest hope that he could ever be the same to her again, or that she should ever wish to see him again, but at least he had a right to live, to redeem himself, partially, perhaps to suffer and to sorrow for his deeds. Indeed he must so live—he must so redeem himself for her sake—to justify the love and the trust she had given him out of her heart!
She felt that she should choke if she did not soon get out in the air. She wanted to run to the prison, hammer with her fist on the gate, demand admittance and set him free—free from Randolph’s clutches. ”

“ Her own nature so yearned over the forest and things beautiful, her own emotions were so wrought upon by the sublimity of earth’s chancels of silence, that she felt her soul longing for its kindred companion, who must be one reverent, yet joyous, where Nature ruled. She wanted Adam to pour forth the tale of his brotherhood with the trees and the loneliness of his heart, that would make him thus to play in such a place and at such a time. ”

“ Thus it doubtless appeared to her as an answer to her longing when she felt a presence and glanced up at the gate, to see him standing there, as he had so many years before, with two of the pickets clasped in his big, strong hands.
Her heart gave a leap that almost hurt, so suddenly did it send the ecstasy bounding through her veins. Yet so sublimated was the look on Adam’s face, as, with parted lips and visible color rising and falling in his face, he gazed at her, steadfastly, and as one entranced, that she went toward him as slowly as if walking might disturb the spell. ”

“ He spent the afternoon with Phipps and the beef-eaters on the ship. To his credit, he made himself an agreeable and cheerful companion. Indeed, what with the songs he had sung for Wainsworth and the others, and the spirit of his raillery, boasting and readiness to fight or to fiddle, he had succeeded in deceiving them all as to the nature under his waistcoat.
Yet when the night was come and the magnet which had been drawing and drawing him to that alley, sacred to the memory of Garde’s cat, once more exercised its influence, more powerfully than ever, he became a restless creature. ”

“ With his hand on the hilt of his sword he regarded the youngster earnestly. Nothing prettier than the little naked fellow could have been imagined, howbeit he was not so plump as a child of his age should be, for the lack of nourishment had already told upon him markedly. Adam felt convinced, from various indications, that the tree which had done its deadly work had fallen about a week before, and that Wainsworth had not been able to do anything more than to crawl to the cabin, to die, neither for himself or the child.
For a time the rover wondered what he must do. ”

“ It was not with a sense of gratifying her own longing for happiness that she finally thought a marriage with Henry possible; there was a sense of combating her own selfishness in it. It was a selfishness, it was pampering the morbid in her nature, she felt, to continue indefinitely in a “widowhood” of Adam’s love. It must also be admitted that Garde was human, wherefore the element of pique was not absolutely lacking in her being. No woman would ever wish a man she had rejected to believe that she could not, or would not, marry elsewhere. ”

“ With her grandfather dead and Goody no longer at the little cottage on the skirts of town, she had no ties remaining, save those at the houses of Soam and Phipps. And what were these, when weighed in the balance against Adam Rust—her Adam,—her mighty lord?
Trembling and clinging as she was, he had carried her off. Gladly she had gone to the parson’s. Her heart now rejoiced, as he told her that Massachusetts was behind them forever. For its people, with their harsh, mirthless lives of austerity and fanaticism, she had only love enough to give them her pity. ”

“ Swords and pistols lay about. One dying human was lying on his side, with his arm extended and his index finger slowly crooked and straightened and crooked again, as if he beckoned to death to come more quickly.
The sail began to slap at the mast again, as the brig swung bow on in the wind and stopped in stays. The croaked curses of the pirates, on their ship, which was now again drawing swiftly toward the “Spencer,” made Adam and Phipps suddenly run to the brig’s brass gun, which was looking dumbly forth toward the pirate.
Rust had filled his pocket with loose powder. ”