following night? Was it part of God’s beautiful design to leave him there in the winter darkness, waiting for the devil to snatch away his soul? Or did God make no designs for the heathen? If so, what was father about, in his ministry to them? Perhaps it was pride, merely, to seek these souls that God had chosen to abandon. Perhaps it was in itself a sin. . . . But no. Surely my wise father could not err so. And why had God brought Caleb into my path if I was not meant to save him? Why had he set us down here at all? I could no longer even guess at the whole, no longer even glimpse an outline amid so many dangling threads.
I was sorely troubled by these things, and did not eat or sleep well, and could give no convincing account of what distressed me. I told myself that I wanted father to go and find Caleb, wherever he was in the wild woods, and deliver him from evil. Yet where he slept that night, in all those heaths and thickets, that only God— or Satan— knew.
Chapter IX
As it happened, father did propose a journey, around that time, although not the one I longed for him to make. Grandfather was interested in acquiring a share in the Merrys’ grist mill and, as ever, he looked to father to be his negotiator.
“I thought to take Bethia with me, if she cares to go,” father said to mother, quite suddenly, at our breakfast board. “She is looking rather wan of late and I think a long ride in the fresh air might be good for her.” He spoke lightly, but I saw the meaning glance exchanged as mother handed him a hot corn cake. “You will like to see the Merrys’ farm, Bethia; I hear it has a pleasant prospect with the brook running through, which he has dammed up for a millpond, and he has built his house well, I’m told. They say, who have seen it, that he has a number of glass windows, and has installed a wainscot.” Makepeace looked up at that, and made a disapproving snort. “Sumptuary affectations and an affront to plainness,” he said. Me, I thought it none of my brother’s affair. If a man wished to glaze his windows or line his walls, then he might face fewer drafts when the icy air of winter probed through every chink and crevice. And what harm if he have the skill to make it look well?
The appointed morning was cold, but fine and crisp. Mother touched my face before I set out, and looked at me kindly, but with searching eyes. “I rejoice that you will get out of this house for a time, into the healthful air,” she said. “You have not been abroad lately, as has long been your wont. I have wondered at it.” I looked down, and said nothing, but I felt the heat in my face. Mother’s toil-roughened fingers caressed my cheek. “I do not ask you to account for the change in your ways. You have reached a time in your life when many things must change. You will find, perhaps, that what seemed good occupation to you one day may loose its luster the next, and seem but a child’s errand. I have been glad of your help about the house; you must not think I do not rejoice to have you more often by me. But neither do I think these last weeks have agreed with you. Try to enjoy your visit to the Merrys. And whatever it is that weighs so heavy with you, try to set it by.” She kissed me then, and I returned her embrace with a full heart.
I do not know if she had said aught to father about raising my spirits, but he seemed uncommonly lighthearted as we set out. In the summer, I had suggested that our tegs might do better on some higher pastures that I had found in my explorations. The sedges were lush and various there, and father, having inspected the place, had decided to try it. The ewes had thrived and put on condition and were well set now for the coming winter, when we would bring them down into the folds. Father took the opportunity of our ride to inspect them, and later to give me credit. “You will make some farmer a fine wife someday, Bethia.” He meant it kindly.
As we made our way through the woods, he began to talk about Jacob Merry in a way unlike him, who did not stoop to gossip. But now, unprompted, he offered up opinions about his character, and described how he was perceived by others in the settlement. “Just as your grandfather’s views were moderate by the lights of the Massachusetts Bay colonists, enough to push him to this island, so Merry’s are looser still. I will be frank with you, Bethia; he struggled against adverse opinions in Great Harbor. His first wife died of consumption when his youngest children were but two and three years old and the older boys just nine and twelve, I think it was. He married again within a six month— a young girl, Sofia, who had been an indentured servant in their household. There were some who judged him for that, but I was not one of them, for those children needed mothering more than they needed mourning rites. Merry grew up a miller’s son in England, so, on finding a stream fast-running enough to fill a millpond, he considered it an opportunity, and did not scruple to bring his family to a place so many miles distant from the rest of us. I do not say that he is a radical or a non-conformist as we commonly understand such things. He is a sound and godly man. But perhaps more his own man than most people find acceptable.”
We saw the farm from better than a mile off: a large tract of low-slung land protected from the winds in the lee of gentle hillocks, hugging a shallow, shimmering pond. The Wampanoag, who had a settlement not far distant— from where we were we could see the curls of smoke from their fires— had gardened some of the land before Merry offered for it, so there were clearings. In between, stands of dead trees stood, girdled by the Merrys a year or more since, so as to let the light pass through to the crops. They were a forlorn sight, the tree skeletons, but as we lacked oxen or draft beasts then, to pull out stumps, there was no better way to make cropland. Merry had harvested early and the shocks were many, large and well made. As we approached, we could see three men— Jacob, Noah and his elder brother, Josiah— toiling to raise a wall from the granite stones they had wrestled out of the path of the plough. They left off readily, as soon as they saw us, and came forward with cheerful greetings.
I had not seen Noah for more than two years, since the family left Great Harbor. Because of what I had overheard regarding him, I felt conscious as he greeted me. But I also felt inclined to take more notice of him than I might have done. I observed him as we walked toward the house (which was indeed a fine one— easily the finest yet built on the island— of two full floors and an attic). He and his father and brother put off their soiled smocks and hung them on a peg rail. We sat at board in a large and sunny room with not less than four diamond-paned glass windows, and, yes, a handsome wainscot.
I decided that Noah Merry suited his name. He had a ready laugh and a mop of yellow curls that he wore rather too long, so that he tossed them back out of his eyes when he spoke. This mannerism was part of a general restless animation of his person, and as he helped himself to his young stepmother’s excellent seed cake, his stream of good humored banter was as uninterrupted as the flow of the brook that plashed and glinted outside the windows.
We were still at board when two young Wampanoag presented themselves at the door. Jacob Merry rose and welcomed them and, somewhat to my surprise, as I thought we were the only English household that did such a thing, offered them a place at board while Sofia Merry heaped their plates with seedcake and poured each a tankard of small beer.
As part of the bargain that had been struck for the farmland, the Indians were to have their corn ground at no cost and to have certain youth instructed in the ways of milling. Merry explained that these two youths had been chosen by their sonquem to learn the trade, “and likely millers they are, the pair of them.” Father nodded approvingly at this. “Wisely done. This is exactly as we should be going on, as the settlement grows beyond Great Harbor. If they see a benefit in our presence, then we will have a true commonwealth of interests.” He turned then to engage the youths, who seemed a little shy of him, in pleasant conversation in their own tongue. I listened to their account of themselves and their village with half an ear while pretending to be fully absorbed in talk with Sofia Merry and her stepsons.
I had a tankard, which was sweating from the coldness of the beer, raised to my lips when one of the young men, whose name was Momonequem, asked father if he happened to have any English remedies with him, for there was a sickened man in their settlement.
“He is not one of us. He is Nah noso, sonquem of Nobnocket, come to parlay with our sonquem, and we fear if it goes ill
