CHAPTER XIX.
A MUCH-MARRIED MAN.
The spring had ripened into midsummer, and under the sad and foreboding eyes of Governor Bradford a most ominous hegira of some of his dearest friends and Plymouth’s most valued townsmen had taken place, nominally for the summer only, but as Bradford too plainly foresaw not to end with the summer.
Standish’s house upon the foot of his own hill was complete, and not far away Jonathan Brewster, the Elder’s oldest son, had put up a summer cottage and established his wife and children. This might have passed, but when the Elder himself, with his two sons Love and Wrestling, also built a cottage close beside Jonathan’s upon a pretty inlet called Eagle’s Creek, the governor’s heart sank within him, and, calling a Court of the People, he proposed a legal enactment to the effect that those colonists who should build houses outside the town limits for the convenience of grazing or farming should return to the town at the beginning of winter, and abide there until spring; also, that they should week by week come into town to attend divine service on the Lord’s Day.
To this all consented, even Winslow, who, in spite of his frequent and protracted absences in England, had found time to view the land beyond Duxbury, and to appropriate a lovely and fertile tract at Green Harbor in what is now Marshfield. Building a temporary cottage here, he named the estate Careswell after his ancestral home in England, and in true family spirit gathered around him his brothers: John, now husband of Mary Chilton, Josias, and Kenelm, who, married to Ellinor Newton of the Fortune, settled upon a gentle eminence by the sea in a spot so fertile and so beautiful that it was fitly named Eden.
Where Standish chose to lead, John Alden was in the habit of following, nor was this migration to Duxbury an exception, for in this very summer of 1631 Alden took up a large tract of land on the south side of Bluefish River, and built his house upon a pleasant rise of land near Eagletree Pond; and although two other houses have at different dates replaced the one he built, his children of the eighth generation live to-day upon the spot where Betty Alden grew into her fair maidenhood, and brothers and sisters made home happy, and life a quiet joy.
All these things and more had William Bradford been rehearsing to his friend Captain William Pierce of the Lyon, who had looked into Plymouth to leave some passengers and merchandise before proceeding upon his voyage to England, until the sailor, sorry for the depression and foreboding Bradford did not disguise from him, cast about for some pleasanter topic, and finally cried,—
“Oh, let me tell you, Governor, of the hornets’ nest I found myself caught in, awhile ago in Lun’on; and by the way, Master Isaac Allerton was in it as well. Didn’t he tell you here of the two wives of Sir Christopher Gardiner?”
“Nay, we have had but little pleasant converse with Master Allerton for a long time past,” replied Bradford heavily, and Pierce hastened to proceed:—
“I know, I know, it would seem as if Allerton with all his pious texts had never learned that the man who faileth to care for his own is worse than a beast; for he cozened his own old father as much as he did you. But this is another matter. It was in February that I was stopping at the Three Anchors down by Wapping Old Stairs, and Allerton came in and said he had a message from a woman calling herself Lady Gardiner, who fain would have speech with him because he came out of New England; but he, prudent man, would go to see no fair ladies unknown to himself without a reputable witness to his honest intent, and so he was come for me. Be sure, Bradford, I did not let the chance slip to pass some merry jests upon our sour-visaged friend, and brought the blood to his tallow cheeks as it has not been seen for many a day; but in the end I gave my word to go and protect him as best I might from any designing Lindabrides who might assail him. So at once we went to the address written on the billet that was sent him, smelling of musk and ambergris and civet, worse than the hold of the Lyon after a ten weeks’ voyage. Coming to the house in the Strand, we found in a very fair lodging not one but two fair dames; and the merry jest of it is that both the one and the other are honest women, and married by ring, book, and bell to this same gay knight whom Winthrop found living so meekly in the woods of Neponset River with his cousin Mary Grove.”
“Nay, Pierce, but this passes a jest!” exclaimed Bradford, much disturbed as he recalled his little sister’s pale face, and his wife’s anxieties on her account. But the jolly mariner mopped his red face and laughed amain while he replied,—
“Nay, nay, Governor, I’m no church-member, and I suppose you saints were men before you were saints, and how can you help to see the mirth of it?”
“Well, tell me how it was.”
“Why, the first fair dame,—and a pretty creature she was, with soft eyes like those of your wife’s pet doe, and yellow hair, but a mouth too sad for kisses, and a cheek too thin and white for my taste,—she showed us her marriage lines, and told how she was married some six years ago to this Sir Christopher in Paris, and there abode until a few weeks before that speaking, when, hearing strange rumors of her husband’s proceedings, she came over to seek him in Lun’on, and found the scent warm indeed, but Master Reynard fled over seas; and as she sought him up and down, her quest crossed that of this other lady, who had been indeed more deeply wronged than herself. And at that word, Number Two, a fine bouncing well-set-up figure of a woman, black eyes and hair, and a cheek like a sturdy rose, and a mouth I’d rather have seen at peace than trembling with rage, she took up the word, and told how not six months before, she too had wed Sir Christopher Gardiner, and she too showed her marriage lines, which if not so binding as the first ones had at least the merit of being writ in English; and furthermore she showed us schedules of jewels and coin, and silver- and goldsmith’s work, and much rare and costly apparel both for men and women, for she was a widow, and all of it gone over seas with Sir Christopher, who, it seems, after sending her for a day or two to visit friends in the country, had made a clean sweep of everything, and the same night set sail for Monhegan with Mary Grove, for whom, poor wench, she could find no name vile enough, laying all the blame, as is the wont of women, upon her, and making Sir Kit a victim of her wiles.”
“You saw the marriage lines of both these women?” asked Bradford, leaning his forehead upon his hand as he sat beside the table, and sighing heavily.
“Oh, yes,” returned Pierce, wondering at the effect of his story, but rather attributing it to the morbid sensitiveness of a church-member. “Yes, they were both of them as safe as a chain-cable; and though Sir Kit does seem to have slipped them, he couldn’t have parted them so long as the anchor of common law found holding-ground. Well, both women were clamoring to have us two catch the man and bring him back; but while the soft sweet first wife would have him brought back to duty and gently wooed into a better life, the full-rigged to’-gallant-s’il gallant buccaneer of a second wife only yearned to get him within reach that she might write the ten commandments on his face with her pretty little nails, and if she couldn’t recover her jewels, plate, and apparel, she would have the worth of them out of his hair and hide, and as for Mary Grove,—wow! man, you should have heard her! The ducking-stool, and the bilboes, and the white sheet, and the cart’s tail, and I know not what, were but the beginning of the blessings she longed to pour upon that poor little sinner’s head, oh me, oh me!”
And again the sailor, recalling the scene, threw back his head and laughed aloud, but meeting no response checked himself suddenly and continued:—
“Well, Allerton and I, when we might be heard, assured both the one and the other dame that we compassionated their sad estate most heartily and would willingly see them avenged, but that we had no power except to bring the matter before Governor Winthrop, within whose jurisdiction Sir Christopher had settled, and in the end both ladies resolved to write to His Excellency, and promised to send the letters betimes next day to the Three Anchors at Wapping; which, to cut the yarn short, they did, and I gave them to Winthrop, and he as you know coursed the hare, or rather, hunted the fox, and ran him down, here at Plymouth.”
“But he has not been sent home, or so I heard the other day!” exclaimed Bradford.
“No; and why, I know not,” replied Pierce. “They kept him clapt up for a while, but finding nothing worse against him than that he is a friend to Sir Ferdinando Gorges, who wants the Massachusetts lands for himself, they gave him the run of the town, and he has been vaporing up and down there for months more than one or two. But now, Bradford, now here’s a merry jest that even you cannot but smile at if there’s a drop of red blood in your veins.
“A week or two ago a stalwart fellow called Thomas Purchase, who has taken up land at the eastward at a place called Sagadahoc, on the Kennebec River,—or is it the Androscoggin?”
“Both, since they come to a confluence. We have been thither trading for beaver, and will have a port there soon, if God will.”
“Well, this Purchase is a big man down there, and meaning to be bigger; so, having a house, he came to Boston to purvey himself a wife; and who should he pick from among all the fair and godly maids and widows of that pious village but Mary Grove, who has been waiting there until the magistrates should settle within their own minds which of the Lady Gardiners might claim the plucking of her feathers. Yes, sir; Thomas Purchase, with his eyes and his ears open, chose Mary Grove to be his wife, Sir Christopher gave his consent and his blessing, and the lord’s brethren, as Blackstone calls them, hailed with joy so clear a course out of the muddle they’d fallen into with this woman. So Winthrop himself married them, and Purchase, having his boat at hand, well stocked with the barter of the beaver he had brought up, carried his bride aboard, and also,—now mark you well, for here’s the very moral of the jest,—also he took aboard Sir Christopher Gardiner himself, and away they all sailed for Sagadahoc. There, what think you of that, gossip?”
“I think Master Thomas Purchase a singularly charitable man,” replied Bradford with a dry smile. “But let us hope that Mary Grove convinced him that she was more sinned against than sinning, and had not done the wrong this villain’s second wife imputed to her.”
“Ay, ay, doubtless you as a church-member are bound to find some such way out of the thing; but to the mind of a plain old sea-dog like Bill Pierce ’tis a marvelous merry tale, with no moral tacked to the end on’t.”
And possibly this conversation had something to do with the fact that when Thanksgiving Day came round, Priscilla Carpenter became the wife of William Wright.