In the course of the year 1656 several of the people called
Quakers—led, as they professed, by the inward movement of the
spirit—made their appearance in New England. Their reputation as
holders of mystic and pernicious principles having spread before them,
the Puritans early endeavored to banish and to prevent the further
intrusion of the rising sect. But the measures by which it was intended
to purge the land of heresy, though more than sufficiently vigorous,
were entirely unsuccessful. The Quakers, esteeming persecution as a
divine call to the post of danger, laid claim to a holy courage unknown
to the Puritans themselves, who had shunned the cross by providing for
the peaceable exercise of their religion in a distant wilderness.
Though it was the singular fact that every nation of the earth rejected
the wandering enthusiasts who practised peace toward all men, the place
of greatest uneasiness and peril, and therefore in their eyes the most
eligible, was the province of Massachusetts Bay.
The fines, imprisonments and stripes liberally distributed by our pious
forefathers, the popular antipathy, so strong that it endured nearly a
hundred years after actual persecution had ceased, were attractions as
powerful for the Quakers as peace, honor and reward would have been for
the worldly-minded. Every European vessel brought new cargoes of the
sect, eager to testify against the oppression which they hoped to
share; and when shipmasters were restrained by heavy fines from
affording them passage, they made long and circuitous journeys through
the Indian country, and appeared in the province as if conveyed by a
supernatural power. Their enthusiasm, heightened almost to madness by
the treatment which they received, produced actions contrary to the
rules of decency as well as of rational religion, and presented a
singular contrast to the calm and staid deportment of their sectarian
successors of the present day. The command of the Spirit, inaudible
except to the soul and not to be controverted on grounds of human
wisdom, was made a plea for most indecorous exhibitions which,
abstractedly considered, well deserved the moderate chastisement of the
rod. These extravagances, and the persecution which was at once their
cause and consequence, continued to increase, till in the year 1659 the
government of Massachusetts Bay indulged two members of the Quaker sect
with the crown of martyrdom.
An indelible stain of blood is upon the hands of all who consented to
this act, but a large share of the awful responsibility must rest upon
the person then at the head of the government. He was a man of narrow
mind and imperfect education, and his uncompromising bigotry was made
hot and mischievous by violent and hasty passions; he exerted his
influence indecorously and unjustifiably to compass the death of the
enthusiasts, and his whole conduct in respect to them was marked by
brutal cruelty. The Quakers, whose revengeful feelings were not less
deep because they were inactive, remembered this man and his associates
in after-times. The historian of the sect affirms that by the wrath of
Heaven a blight fell upon the land in the vicinity of the “bloody town”
of Boston, so that no wheat would grow there; and he takes his stand,
as it were, among the graves of the ancient persecutors, and
triumphantly recounts the judgments that overtook them in old age or at
the parting-hour. He tells us that they died suddenly and violently and
in madness, but nothing can exceed the bitter mockery with which he
records the loathsome disease and “death by rottenness” of the fierce
and cruel governor.
On the evening of the autumn day that had witnessed the martyrdom of
two men of the Quaker persuasion, a Puritan settler was returning from
the metropolis to the neighboring country-town in which he resided. The
air was cool, the sky clear, and the lingering twilight was made
brighter by the rays of a young moon which had now nearly reached the
verge of the horizon. The traveller, a man of middle age, wrapped in a
gray frieze cloak, quickened his pace when he had reached the outskirts
of the town, for a gloomy extent of nearly four miles lay between him
and his home. The low straw-thatched houses were scattered at
considerable intervals along the road, and, the country having been
settled but about thirty years, the tracts of original forest still
bore no small proportion to the cultivated ground. The autumn wind
wandered among the branches, whirling away the leaves from all except
the pine trees and moaning as if it lamented the desolation of which it
was the instrument. The road had penetrated the mass of woods that lay
nearest to the town, and was just emerging into an open space, when the
traveller’s ears were saluted by a sound more mournful than even that
of the wind. It was like the wailing of some one in distress, and it
seemed to proceed from beneath a tall and lonely fir tree in the centre
of a cleared but unenclosed and uncultivated field. The Puritan could
not but remember that this was the very spot which had been made
accursed a few hours before by the execution of the Quakers, whose
bodies had been thrown together into one hasty grave beneath the tree
on which they suffered. He struggled, however, against the
superstitious fears which belonged to the age, and compelled himself to
pause and listen.
“The voice is most likely mortal, nor have I cause to tremble if it be
otherwise,” thought he, straining his eyes through the dim moonlight.
“Methinks it is like the wailing of a child—some infant, it may be,
which has strayed from its mother and chanced upon this place of death.
For the ease of mine own conscience I must search this matter out.” He
therefore left the path and walked somewhat fearfully across the field.
Though now so desolate, its soil was pressed down and trampled by the
thousand footsteps of those who had witnessed the spectacle of that
day, all of whom had now retired, leaving the dead to their loneliness.
The traveller at length reached the fir tree, which from the middle
upward was covered with living branches, although a scaffold had been
erected beneath, and other preparations made for the work of death.
Under this unhappy tree—which in after-times was believed to drop
poison with its dew—sat the one solitary mourner for innocent blood. It
was a slender and light-clad little boy who leaned his face upon a
hillock of fresh-turned and half-frozen earth and wailed bitterly, yet
in a suppressed tone, as if his grief might receive the punishment of
crime. The Puritan, whose approach had been unperceived, laid his hand
upon the child’s shoulder and addressed him compassionately.
“You have chosen a dreary lodging, my poor boy, and no wonder that you
weep,” said he. “But dry your eyes and tell me where your mother
dwells; I promise you, if the journey be not too far, I will leave you
in her arms tonight.”
The boy had hushed his wailing at once, and turned his face upward to
the stranger. It was a pale, bright-eyed countenance, certainly not
more than six years old, but sorrow, fear and want had destroyed much
of its infantile expression. The Puritan, seeing the boy’s frightened
gaze and feeling that he trembled under his hand, endeavored to
reassure him:
“Nay, if I intended to do you harm, little lad, the readiest way were
to leave you here. What! you do not fear to sit beneath the gallows on
a new-made grave, and yet you tremble at a friend’s touch? Take heart,
child, and tell me what is your name and where is your home.”
“Friend,” replied the little boy, in a sweet though faltering voice,
“they call me Ilbrahim, and my home is here.”
The pale, spiritual face, the eyes that seemed to mingle with the
moonlight, the sweet, airy voice and the outlandish name almost made
the Puritan believe that the boy was in truth a being which had sprung
up out of the grave on which he sat; but perceiving that the apparition
stood the test of a short mental prayer, and remembering that the arm
which he had touched was lifelike, he adopted a more rational
supposition. “The poor child is stricken in his intellect,” thought he,
“but verily his words are fearful in a place like this.” He then spoke
soothingly, intending to humor the boy’s fantasy:
“Your home will scarce be comfortable, Ilbrahim, this cold autumn
night, and I fear you are ill-provided with food. I am hastening to a
warm supper and bed; and if you will go with me, you shall share them.”
“I thank thee, friend, but, though I be hungry and shivering with cold,
thou wilt not give me food nor lodging,” replied the boy, in the quiet
tone which despair had taught him even so young. “My father was of the
people whom all men hate; they have laid him under this heap of earth,
and here is my home.”
The Puritan, who had laid hold of little Ilbrahim’s hand, relinquished
it as if he were touching a loathsome reptile. But he possessed a
compassionate heart which not even religious prejudice could harden
into stone. “God forbid that I should leave this child to perish,
though he comes of the accursed sect,” said he to himself. “Do we not
all spring from an evil root? Are we not all in darkness till the light
doth shine upon us? He shall not perish, neither in body nor, if prayer
and instruction may avail for him, in soul.” He then spoke aloud and
kindly to Ilbrahim, who had again hid his face in the cold earth of the
grave:
“Was every door in the land shut against you, my child, that you have
wandered to this unhallowed spot?”
“They drove me forth from the prison when they took my father thence,”
said the boy, “and I stood afar off watching the crowd of people; and
when they were gone, I came hither, and found only this grave. I knew
that my father was sleeping here, and I said, ‘This shall be my home.’”
“No, child, no, not while I have a roof over my head or a morsel to
share with you,” exclaimed the Puritan, whose sympathies were now fully
excited. “Rise up and come with me, and fear not any harm.”
The boy wept afresh, and clung to the heap of earth as if the cold
heart beneath it were warmer to him than any in a living breast. The
traveller, however, continued to entreat him tenderly, and, seeming to
acquire some degree of confidence, he at length arose; but his slender
limbs tottered with weakness, his little head grew dizzy, and he leaned
against the tree of death for support.
“My poor boy, are you so feeble?” said the Puritan. “When did you taste
food last?”
“I ate of bread and water with my father in the prison,” replied
Ilbrahim, “but they brought him none neither yesterday nor to-day,
saying that he had eaten enough to bear him to his journey’s end.
Trouble not thyself for my hunger, kind friend, for I have lacked food
many times ere now.”
The traveller took the child in his arms and wrapped his cloak about
him, while his heart stirred with shame and anger against the
gratuitous cruelty of the instruments in this persecution. In the
awakened warmth of his feelings he resolved that at whatever risk he
would not forsake the poor little defenceless being whom Heaven had
confided to his care. With this determination he left the accursed
field and resumed the homeward path from which the wailing of the boy
had called him. The light and motionless burden scarcely impeded his
progress, and he soon beheld the fire-rays from the windows of the
cottage which he, a native of a distant clime, had built in the Western
wilderness. It was surrounded by a considerable extent of cultivated
ground, and the dwelling was situated in the nook of a wood-covered
hill, whither it seemed to have crept for protection.
“Look up, child,” said the Puritan to Ilbrahim, whose faint head had
sunk upon his shoulder; “there is our home.”
At the word “home” a thrill passed through the child’s frame, but he
continued silent. A few moments brought them to the cottage door, at
which the owner knocked; for at that early period, when savages were
wandering everywhere among the settlers, bolt and bar were
indispensable to the security of a dwelling. The summons was answered
by a bond-servant, a coarse-clad and dull-featured piece of humanity,
who, after ascertaining that his master was the applicant, undid the
door and held a flaring pine-knot torch to light him in. Farther back
in the passageway the red blaze discovered a matronly woman, but no
little crowd of children came bounding forth to greet their father’s
return.
As the Puritan entered he thrust aside his cloak and displayed
Ilbrahim’s face to the female.
“Dorothy, here is a little outcast whom Providence hath put into our
hands,” observed he. “Be kind to him, even as if he were of those dear
ones who have departed from us.”
“What pale and bright-eyed little boy is this, Tobias?” she inquired.
“Is he one whom the wilderness-folk have ravished from some Christian
mother?”
“No, Dorothy; this poor child is no captive from the wilderness,” he
replied. “The heathen savage would have given him to eat of his scanty
morsel and to drink of his birchen cup, but Christian men, alas! had
cast him out to die.” Then he told her how he had found him beneath the
gallows, upon his father’s grave, and how his heart had prompted him
like the speaking of an inward voice to take the little outcast home
and be kind unto him. He acknowledged his resolution to feed and clothe
him as if he were his own child, and to afford him the instruction
which should counteract the pernicious errors hitherto instilled into
his infant mind.
Dorothy was gifted with even a quicker tenderness than her husband, and
she approved of all his doings and intentions.
“Have you a mother, dear child?” she inquired.
The tears burst forth from his full heart as he attempted to reply, but
Dorothy at length understood that he had a mother, who like the rest of
her sect was a persecuted wanderer. She had been taken from the prison
a short time before, carried into the uninhabited wilderness and left
to perish there by hunger or wild beasts. This was no uncommon method
of disposing of the Quakers, and they were accustomed to boast that the
inhabitants of the desert were more hospitable to them than civilized
man.
“Fear not, little boy; you shall not need a mother, and a kind one,”
said Dorothy, when she had gathered this information. “Dry your tears,
Ilbrahim, and be my child, as I will be your mother.”
The good woman prepared the little bed from which her own children had
successively been borne to another resting-place. Before Ilbrahim would
consent to occupy it he knelt down, and as Dorothy listed to his simple
and affecting prayer she marvelled how the parents that had taught it
to him could have been judged worthy of death. When the boy had fallen
asleep, she bent over his pale and spiritual countenance, pressed a
kiss upon his white brow, drew the bedclothes up about his neck, and
went away with a pensive gladness in her heart.
Tobias Pearson was not among the earliest emigrants from the old
country. He had remained in England during the first years of the Civil
War, in which he had borne some share as a cornet of dragoons under
Cromwell. But when the ambitious designs of his leader began to develop
themselves, he quitted the army of the Parliament and sought a refuge
from the strife which was no longer holy among the people of his
persuasion in the colony of Massachusetts. A more worldly consideration
had perhaps an influence in drawing him thither, for New England
offered advantages to men of unprosperous fortunes as well as to
dissatisfied religionists, and Pearson had hitherto found it difficult
to provide for a wife and increasing family. To this supposed impurity
of motive the more bigoted Puritans were inclined to impute the removal
by death of all the children for whose earthly good the father had been
over-thoughtful. They had left their native country blooming like
roses, and like roses they had perished in a foreign soil. Those
expounders of the ways of Providence, who had thus judged their brother
and attributed his domestic sorrows to his sin, were not more
charitable when they saw him and Dorothy endeavoring to fill up the
void in their hearts by the adoption of an infant of the accursed sect.
Nor did they fail to communicate their disapprobation to Tobias, but
the latter in reply merely pointed at the little quiet, lovely boy,
whose appearance and deportment were indeed as powerful arguments as
could possibly have been adduced in his own favor. Even his beauty,
however, and his winning manners sometimes produced an effect
ultimately unfavorable; for the bigots, when the outer surfaces of
their iron hearts had been softened and again grew hard, affirmed that
no merely natural cause could have so worked upon them. Their antipathy
to the poor infant was also increased by the ill-success of divers
theological discussions in which it was attempted to convince him of
the errors of his sect. Ilbrahim, it is true, was not a skilful
controversialist, but the feeling of his religion was strong as
instinct in him, and he could neither be enticed nor driven from the
faith which his father had died for.
The odium of this stubbornness was shared in a great measure by the
child’s protectors, insomuch that Tobias and Dorothy very shortly began
to experience a most bitter species of persecution in the cold regards
of many a friend whom they had valued. The common people manifested
their opinions more openly. Pearson was a man of some consideration,
being a representative to the General Court and an approved lieutenant
in the train-bands, yet within a week after his adoption of Ilbrahim he
had been both hissed and hooted. Once, also, when walking through a
solitary piece of woods, he heard a loud voice from some invisible
speaker, and it cried, “What shall be done to the backslider? Lo! the
scourge is knotted for him, even the whip of nine cords, and every cord
three knots.” These insults irritated Pearson’s temper for the moment;
they entered also into his heart, and became imperceptible but powerful
workers toward an end which his most secret thought had not yet
whispered.
On the second Sabbath after Ilbrahim became a member of their family,
Pearson and his wife deemed it proper that he should appear with them
at public worship. They had anticipated some opposition to this measure
from the boy, but he prepared himself in silence, and at the appointed
hour was clad in the new mourning-suit which Dorothy had wrought for
him. As the parish was then, and during many subsequent years,
unprovided with a bell, the signal for the commencement of religious
exercises was the beat of a drum. At the first sound of that martial
call to the place of holy and quiet thoughts Tobias and Dorothy set
forth, each holding a hand of little Ilbrahim, like two parents linked
together by the infant of their love. On their path through the
leafless woods they were overtaken by many persons of their
acquaintance, all of whom avoided them and passed by on the other side;
but a severer trial awaited their constancy when they had descended the
hill and drew near the pine-built and undecorated house of prayer.
Around the door, from which the drummer still sent forth his thundering
summons, was drawn up a formidable phalanx, including several of the
oldest members of the congregation, many of the middle-aged and nearly
all the younger males. Pearson found it difficult to sustain their
united and disapproving gaze, but Dorothy, whose mind was differently
circumstanced, merely drew the boy closer to her and faltered not in
her approach. As they entered the door they overheard the muttered
sentiments of the assemblage; and when the reviling voices of the
little children smote Ilbrahim’s ear, he wept.
The interior aspect of the meeting-house was rude. The low ceiling, the
unplastered walls, the naked woodwork and the undraperied pulpit
offered nothing to excite the devotion which without such external aids
often remains latent in the heart. The floor of the building was
occupied by rows of long cushionless benches, supplying the place of
pews, and the broad aisle formed a sexual division impassable except by
children beneath a certain age.
Pearson and Dorothy separated at the door of the meeting-house, and
Ilbrahim, being within the years of infancy, was retained under the
care of the latter. The wrinkled beldams involved themselves in their
rusty cloaks as he passed by; even the mild-featured maidens seemed to
dread contamination; and many a stern old man arose and turned his
repulsive and unheavenly countenance upon the gentle boy, as if the
sanctuary were polluted by his presence. He was a sweet infant of the
skies that had strayed away from his home, and all the inhabitants of
this miserable world closed up their impure hearts against him, drew
back their earth-soiled garments from his touch and said, “We are
holier than thou.”
Ilbrahim, seated by the side of his adopted mother and retaining fast
hold of her hand, assumed a grave and decorous demeanor such as might
befit a person of matured taste and understanding who should find
himself in a temple dedicated to some worship which he did not
recognize, but felt himself bound to respect. The exercises had not yet
commenced, however, when the boy’s attention was arrested by an event
apparently of trifling interest. A woman having her face muffled in a
hood and a cloak drawn completely about her form advanced slowly up the
broad aisle and took place upon the foremost bench. Ilbrahim’s faint
color varied, his nerves fluttered; he was unable to turn his eyes from
the muffled female.
When the preliminary prayer and hymn were over, the minister arose,
and, having turned the hour-glass which stood by the great Bible,
commenced his discourse. He was now well stricken in years, a man of
pale, thin countenance, and his gray hairs were closely covered by a
black velvet skull-cap. In his younger days he had practically learned
the meaning of persecution from Archbishop Laud, and he was not now
disposed to forget the lesson against which he had murmured then.
Introducing the often-discussed subject of the Quakers, he gave a
history of that sect and a description of their tenets in which error
predominated and prejudice distorted the aspect of what was true. He
adverted to the recent measures in the province, and cautioned his
hearers of weaker parts against calling in question the just severity
which God-fearing magistrates had at length been compelled to exercise.
He spoke of the danger of pity—in some cases a commendable and
Christian virtue, but inapplicable to this pernicious sect. He observed
that such was their devilish obstinacy in error that even the little
children, the sucking babes, were hardened and desperate heretics. He
affirmed that no man without Heaven’s especial warrant should attempt
their conversion lest while he lent his hand to draw them from the
slough he should himself be precipitated into its lowest depths.
The sands of the second hour were principally in the lower half of the
glass when the sermon concluded. An approving murmur followed, and the
clergyman, having given out a hymn, took his seat with much
self-congratulation, and endeavored to read the effect of his eloquence
in the visages of the people. But while voices from all parts of the
house were tuning themselves to sing a scene occurred which, though not
very unusual at that period in the province, happened to be without
precedent in this parish.
The muffled female, who had hitherto sat motionless in the front rank
of the audience, now arose and with slow, stately and unwavering step
ascended the pulpit stairs. The quaverings of incipient harmony were
hushed and the divine sat in speechless and almost terrified
astonishment while she undid the door and stood up in the sacred desk
from which his maledictions had just been thundered. She then divested
herself of the cloak and hood, and appeared in a most singular array. A
shapeless robe of sackcloth was girded about her waist with a knotted
cord; her raven hair fell down upon her shoulders, and its blackness
was defiled by pale streaks of ashes, which she had strewn upon her
head. Her eyebrows, dark and strongly defined, added to the deathly
whiteness of a countenance which, emaciated with want and wild with
enthusiasm and strange sorrows, retained no trace of earlier beauty.
This figure stood gazing earnestly on the audience, and there was no
sound nor any movement except a faint shuddering which every man
observed in his neighbor, but was scarcely conscious of in himself. At
length, when her fit of inspiration came, she spoke for the first few
moments in a low voice and not invariably distinct utterance. Her
discourse gave evidence of an imagination hopelessly entangled with her
reason; it was a vague and incomprehensible rhapsody, which, however,
seemed to spread its own atmosphere round the hearer’s soul, and to
move his feelings by some influence unconnected with the words. As she
proceeded beautiful but shadowy images would sometimes be seen like
bright things moving in a turbid river, or a strong and singularly
shaped idea leapt forth and seized at once on the understanding or the
heart. But the course of her unearthly eloquence soon led her to the
persecutions of her sect, and from thence the step was short to her own
peculiar sorrows. She was naturally a woman of mighty passions, and
hatred and revenge now wrapped themselves in the garb of piety. The
character of her speech was changed; her images became distinct though
wild, and her denunciations had an almost hellish bitterness.
“The governor and his mighty men,” she said, “have gathered together,
taking counsel among themselves and saying, ‘What shall we do unto this
people—even unto the people that have come into this land to put our
iniquity to the blush?’ And, lo! the devil entereth into the
council-chamber like a lame man of low stature and gravely apparelled,
with a dark and twisted countenance and a bright, downcast eye. And he
standeth up among the rulers; yea, he goeth to and fro, whispering to
each; and every man lends his ear, for his word is ‘Slay! Slay!rsquo;
But I say unto ye, Woe to them that slay! Woe to them that shed the
blood of saints! Woe to them that have slain the husband and cast forth
the child, the tender infant, to wander homeless and hungry and cold
till he die, and have saved the mother alive in the cruelty of their
tender mercies! Woe to them in their lifetime! Cursed are they in the
delight and pleasure of their hearts! Woe to them in their death-hour,
whether it come swiftly with blood and violence or after long and
lingering pain! Woe in the dark house, in the rottenness of the grave,
when the children’s children shall revile the ashes of the fathers!
Woe, woe, woe, at the judgment, when all the persecuted and all the
slain in this bloody land, and the father, the mother and the child,
shall await them in a day that they cannot escape! Seed of the faith,
seed of the faith, ye whose hearts are moving with a power that ye know
not, arise, wash your hands of this innocent blood! Lift your voices,
chosen ones, cry aloud, and call down a woe and a judgment with me!”
Having thus given vent to the flood of malignity which she mistook for
inspiration, the speaker was silent. Her voice was succeeded by the
hysteric shrieks of several women, but the feelings of the audience
generally had not been drawn onward in the current with her own. They
remained stupefied, stranded, as it were, in the midst of a torrent
which deafened them by its roaring, but might not move them by its
violence. The clergyman, who could not hitherto have ejected the
usurper of his pulpit otherwise than by bodily force, now addressed her
in the tone of just indignation and legitimate authority.
“Get you down, woman, from the holy place which you profane,” he said,
“Is it to the Lord’s house that you come to pour forth the foulness of
your heart and the inspiration of the devil? Get you down, and remember
that the sentence of death is on you—yea, and shall be executed, were
it but for this day’s work.”
“I go, friend, I go, for the voice hath had its utterance,” replied
she, in a depressed, and even mild, tone. “I have done my mission unto
thee and to thy people; reward me with stripes, imprisonment or death,
as ye shall be permitted.” The weakness of exhausted passion caused her
steps to totter as she descended the pulpit stairs.
The people, in the mean while, were stirring to and fro on the floor of
the house, whispering among themselves and glancing toward the
intruder. Many of them now recognized her as the woman who had
assaulted the governor with frightful language as he passed by the
window of her prison; they knew, also, that she was adjudged to suffer
death, and had been preserved only by an involuntary banishment into
the wilderness. The new outrage by which she had provoked her fate
seemed to render further lenity impossible, and a gentleman in military
dress, with a stout man of inferior rank, drew toward the door of the
meetinghouse and awaited her approach. Scarcely did her feet press the
floor, however, when an unexpected scene occurred. In that moment of
her peril, when every eye frowned with death, a little timid boy threw
his arms round his mother.
“I am here, mother; it is I, and I will go with thee to prison,” he
exclaimed.
She gazed at him with a doubtful and almost frightened expression, for
she knew that the boy had been cast out to perish, and she had not
hoped to see his face again. She feared, perhaps, that it was but one
of the happy visions with which her excited fancy had often deceived
her in the solitude of the desert or in prison; but when she felt his
hand warm within her own and heard his little eloquence of childish
love, she began to know that she was yet a mother.
“Blessed art thou, my son!” she sobbed. “My heart was withered—yea,
dead with thee and with thy father—and now it leaps as in the first
moment when I pressed thee to my bosom.”
She knelt down and embraced him again and again, while the joy that
could find no words expressed itself in broken accents, like the
bubbles gushing up to vanish at the surface of a deep fountain. The
sorrows of past years and the darker peril that was nigh cast not a
shadow on the brightness of that fleeting moment. Soon, however, the
spectators saw a change upon her face as the consciousness of her sad
estate returned, and grief supplied the fount of tears which joy had
opened. By the words she uttered it would seem that the indulgence of
natural love had given her mind a momentary sense of its errors, and
made her know how far she had strayed from duty in following the
dictates of a wild fanaticism.
“In a doleful hour art thou returned to me, poor boy,” she said, “for
thy mother’s path has gone darkening onward, till now the end is death.
Son, son, I have borne thee in my arms when my limbs were tottering,
and I have fed thee with the food that I was fainting for; yet I have
ill-performed a mother’s part by thee in life, and now I leave thee no
inheritance but woe and shame. Thou wilt go seeking through the world,
and find all hearts closed against thee and their sweet affections
turned to bitterness for my sake. My child, my child, how many a pang
awaits thy gentle spirit, and I the cause of all!”
She hid her face on Ilbrahim’s head, and her long raven hair,
discolored with the ashes of her mourning, fell down about him like a
veil. A low and interrupted moan was the voice of her heart’s anguish,
and it did not fail to move the sympathies of many who mistook their
involuntary virtue for a sin. Sobs were audible in the female section
of the house, and every man who was a father drew his hand across his
eyes.
Tobias Pearson was agitated and uneasy, but a certain feeling like the
consciousness of guilt oppressed him; so that he could not go forth and
offer himself as the protector of the child. Dorothy, however, had
watched her husband’s eye. Her mind was free from the influence that
had begun to work on his, and she drew near the Quaker woman and
addressed her in the hearing of all the congregation.
“Stranger, trust this boy to me, and I will be his mother,” she said,
taking Ilbrahim’s hand. “Providence has signally marked out my husband
to protect him, and he has fed at our table and lodged under our roof
now many days, till our hearts have grown very strongly unto him. Leave
the tender child with us, and be at ease concerning his welfare.”
The Quaker rose from the ground, but drew the boy closer to her, while
she gazed earnestly in Dorothy’s face. Her mild but saddened features
and neat matronly attire harmonized together and were like a verse of
fireside poetry. Her very aspect proved that she was blameless, so far
as mortal could be so, in respect to God and man, while the enthusiast,
in her robe of sackcloth and girdle of knotted cord, had as evidently
violated the duties of the present life and the future by fixing her
attention wholly on the latter. The two females, as they held each a
hand of Ilbrahim, formed a practical allegory: it was rational piety
and unbridled fanaticism contending for the empire of a young heart.
“Thou art not of our people,” said the Quaker, mournfully.
“No, we are not of your people,” replied Dorothy, with mildness, “but
we are Christians looking upward to the same heaven with you. Doubt not
that your boy shall meet you there, if there be a blessing on our
tender and prayerful guidance of him. Thither, I trust, my own children
have gone before me, for I also have been a mother. I am no longer so,”
she added, in a faltering tone, “and your son will have all my care.”
“But will ye lead him in the path which his parents have trodden?”
demanded the Quaker. “Can ye teach him the enlightened faith which his
father has died for, and for which I—even I—am soon to become an
unworthy martyr? The boy has been baptized in blood; will ye keep the
mark fresh and ruddy upon his forehead?”
“I will not deceive you,” answered Dorothy. “If your child become our
child, we must breed him up in the instruction which Heaven has
imparted to us; we must pray for him the prayers of our own faith; we
must do toward him according to the dictates of our own consciences,
and not of yours. Were we to act otherwise, we should abuse your trust,
even in complying with your wishes.”
The mother looked down upon her boy with a troubled countenance, and
then turned her eyes upward to heaven. She seemed to pray internally,
and the contention of her soul was evident.
“Friend,” she said, at length, to Dorothy, “I doubt not that my son
shall receive all earthly tenderness at thy hands. Nay, I will believe
that even thy imperfect lights may guide him to a better world, for
surely thou art on the path thither. But thou hast spoken of a husband.
Doth he stand here among this multitude of people? Let him come forth,
for I must know to whom I commit this most precious trust.”
She turned her face upon the male auditors, and after a momentary delay
Tobias Pearson came forth from among them. The Quaker saw the dress
which marked his military rank, and shook her head; but then she noted
the hesitating air, the eyes that struggled with her own and were
vanquished, the color that went and came and could find no
resting-place. As she gazed an unmirthful smile spread over her
features, like sunshine that grows melancholy in some desolate spot.
Her lips moved inaudibly, but at length she spake:
“I hear it, I hear it! The voice speaketh within me and saith, ‘Leave
thy child, Catharine, for his place is here, and go hence, for I have
other work for thee. Break the bonds of natural affection, martyr thy
love, and know that in all these things eternal wisdom hath its ends.’
I go, friends, I go. Take ye my boy, my precious jewel. I go hence
trusting that all shall be well, and that even for his infant hands
there is a labor in the vineyard.”
She knelt down and whispered to Ilbrahim, who at first struggled and
clung to his mother with sobs and tears, but remained passive when she
had kissed his cheek and arisen from the ground. Having held her hands
over his head in mental prayer, she was ready to depart.
“Farewell, friends in mine extremity,” she said to Pearson and his
wife; “the good deed ye have done me is a treasure laid up in heaven,
to be returned a thousandfold hereafter.—And farewell, ye mine enemies,
to whom it is not permitted to harm so much as a hair of my head, nor
to stay my footsteps even for a moment. The day is coming when ye shall
call upon me to witness for ye to this one sin uncommitted, and I will
rise up and answer.”
She turned her steps toward the door, and the men who had stationed
themselves to guard it withdrew and suffered her to pass. A general
sentiment of pity overcame the virulence of religious hatred.
Sanctified by her love and her affliction, she went forth, and all the
people gazed after her till she had journeyed up the hill and was lost
behind its brow. She went, the apostle of her own unquiet heart, to
renew the wanderings of past years. For her voice had been already
heard in many lands of Christendom, and she had pined in the cells of a
Catholic Inquisition before she felt the lash and lay in the dungeons
of the Puritans. Her mission had extended also to the followers of the
Prophet, and from them she had received the courtesy and kindness which
all the contending sects of our purer religion united to deny her. Her
husband and herself had resided many months in Turkey, where even the
sultan’s countenance was gracious to them; in that pagan land, too, was
Ilbrahim’s birthplace, and his Oriental name was a mark of gratitude
for the good deeds of an unbeliever.
When Pearson and his wife had thus acquired all the rights over
Ilbrahim that could be delegated, their affection for him became, like
the memory of their native land or their mild sorrow for the dead, a
piece of the immovable furniture of their hearts. The boy, also, after
a week or two of mental disquiet, began to gratify his protectors by
many inadvertent proofs that he considered them as parents and their
house as home. Before the winter snows were melted the persecuted
infant, the little wanderer from a remote and heathen country, seemed
native in the New England cottage and inseparable from the warmth and
security of its hearth. Under the influence of kind treatment, and in
the consciousness that he was loved, Ilbrahim’s demeanor lost a
premature manliness which had resulted from his earlier situation; he
became more childlike and his natural character displayed itself with
freedom. It was in many respects a beautiful one, yet the disordered
imaginations of both his father and mother had perhaps propagated a
certain unhealthiness in the mind of the boy. In his general state
Ilbrahim would derive enjoyment from the most trifling events and from
every object about him; he seemed to discover rich treasures of
happiness by a faculty analogous to that of the witch-hazel, which
points to hidden gold where all is barren to the eye. His airy gayety,
coming to him from a thousand sources, communicated itself to the
family, and Ilbrahim was like a domesticated sunbeam, brightening moody
countenances and chasing away the gloom from the dark corners of the
cottage.
On the other hand, as the susceptibility of pleasure is also that of
pain, the exuberant cheerfulness of the boy’s prevailing temper
sometimes yielded to moments of deep depression. His sorrows could not
always be followed up to their original source, but most frequently
they appeared to flow—though Ilbrahim was young to be sad for such a
cause—from wounded love. The flightiness of his mirth rendered him
often guilty of offences against the decorum of a Puritan household,
and on these occasions he did not invariably escape rebuke. But the
slightest word of real bitterness, which he was infallible in
distinguishing from pretended anger, seemed to sink into his heart and
poison all his enjoyments till he became sensible that he was entirely
forgiven. Of the malice which generally accompanies a superfluity of
sensitiveness Ilbrahim was altogether destitute. When trodden upon, he
would not turn; when wounded, he could but die. His mind was wanting in
the stamina of self-support. It was a plant that would twine
beautifully round something stronger than itself; but if repulsed or
torn away, it had no choice but to wither on the ground. Dorothy’s
acuteness taught her that severity would crush the spirit of the child,
and she nurtured him with the gentle care of one who handles a
butterfly. Her husband manifested an equal affection, although it grew
daily less productive of familiar caresses.
The feelings of the neighboring people in regard to the Quaker infant
and his protectors had not undergone a favorable change, in spite of
the momentary triumph which the desolate mother had obtained over their
sympathies. The scorn and bitterness of which he was the object were
very grievous to Ilbrahim, especially when any circumstance made him
sensible that the children his equals in age partook of the enmity of
their parents. His tender and social nature had already overflowed in
attachments to everything about him, and still there was a residue of
unappropriated love which he yearned to bestow upon the little ones who
were taught to hate him. As the warm days of spring came on Ilbrahim
was accustomed to remain for hours silent and inactive within hearing
of the children’s voices at their play, yet with his usual delicacy of
feeling he avoided their notice, and would flee and hide himself from
the smallest individual among them. Chance, however, at length seemed
to open a medium of communication between his heart and theirs; it was
by means of a boy about two years older than Ilbrahim, who was injured
by a fall from a tree in the vicinity of Pearson’s habitation. As the
sufferer’s own home was at some distance, Dorothy willingly received
him under her roof and became his tender and careful nurse.
Ilbrahim was the unconscious possessor of much skill in physiognomy,
and it would have deterred him in other circumstances from attempting
to make a friend of this boy. The countenance of the latter immediately
impressed a beholder disagreeably, but it required some examination to
discover that the cause was a very slight distortion of the mouth and
the irregular, broken line and near approach of the eyebrows.
Analogous, perhaps, to these trifling deformities was an almost
imperceptible twist of every joint and the uneven prominence of the
breast, forming a body regular in its general outline, but faulty in
almost all its details. The disposition of the boy was sullen and
reserved, and the village schoolmaster stigmatized him as obtuse in
intellect, although at a later period of life he evinced ambition and
very peculiar talents. But, whatever might be his personal or moral
irregularities, Ilbrahim’s heart seized upon and clung to him from the
moment that he was brought wounded into the cottage; the child of
persecution seemed to compare his own fate with that of the sufferer,
and to feel that even different modes of misfortune had created a sort
of relationship between them. Food, rest and the fresh air for which he
languished were neglected; he nestled continually by the bedside of the
little stranger and with a fond jealousy endeavored to be the medium of
all the cares that were bestowed upon him. As the boy became
convalescent Ilbrahim contrived games suitable to his situation or
amused him by a faculty which he had perhaps breathed in with the air
of his barbaric birthplace. It was that of reciting imaginary
adventures on the spur of the moment, and apparently in inexhaustible
succession. His tales were, of course, monstrous, disjointed and
without aim, but they were curious on account of a vein of human
tenderness which ran through them all and was like a sweet familiar
face encountered in the midst of wild and unearthly scenery. The
auditor paid much attention to these romances and sometimes interrupted
them by brief remarks upon the incidents, displaying shrewdness above
his years, mingled with a moral obliquity which grated very harshly
against Ilbrahim’s instinctive rectitude. Nothing, however, could
arrest the progress of the latter’s affection, and there were many
proofs that it met with a response from the dark and stubborn nature on
which it was lavished. The boy’s parents at length removed him to
complete his cure under their own roof.
Ilbrahim did not visit his new friend after his departure, but he made
anxious and continual inquiries respecting him and informed himself of
the day when he was to reappear among his playmates. On a pleasant
summer afternoon the children of the neighborhood had assembled in the
little forest-crowned amphitheatre behind the meeting-house, and the
recovering invalid was there, leaning on a staff. The glee of a score
of untainted bosoms was heard in light and airy voices, which danced
among the trees like sunshine become audible; the grown men of this
weary world as they journeyed by the spot marvelled why life, beginning
in such brightness, should proceed in gloom, and their hearts or their
imaginations answered them and said that the bliss of childhood gushes
from its innocence. But it happened that an unexpected addition was
made to the heavenly little band. It was Ilbrahim, who came toward the
children with a look of sweet confidence on his fair and spiritual
face, as if, having manifested his love to one of them, he had no
longer to fear a repulse from their society. A hush came over their
mirth the moment they beheld him, and they stood whispering to each
other while he drew nigh; but all at once the devil of their fathers
entered into the unbreeched fanatics, and, sending up a fierce, shrill
cry, they rushed upon the poor Quaker child. In an instant he was the
centre of a brood of baby-fiends, who lifted sticks against him, pelted
him with stones and displayed an instinct of destruction far more
loathsome than the bloodthirstiness of manhood.
The invalid, in the mean while, stood apart from the tumult, crying out
with a loud voice, “Fear not, Ilbrahim; come hither and take my hand,”
and his unhappy friend endeavored to obey him. After watching the
victim’s struggling approach with a calm smile and unabashed eye, the
foul-hearted little villain lifted his staff and struck Ilbrahim on the
mouth so forcibly that the blood issued in a stream. The poor child’s
arms had been raised to guard his head from the storm of blows, but now
he dropped them at once. His persecutors beat him down, trampled upon
him, dragged him by his long fair locks, and Ilbrahim was on the point
of becoming as veritable a martyr as ever entered bleeding into heaven.
The uproar, however, attracted the notice of a few neighbors, who put
themselves to the trouble of rescuing the little heretic, and of
conveying him to Pearson’s door.
Ilbrahim’s bodily harm was severe, but long and careful nursing
accomplished his recovery; the injury done to his sensitive spirit was
more serious, though not so visible. Its signs were principally of a
negative character, and to be discovered only by those who had
previously known him. His gait was thenceforth slow, even and unvaried
by the sudden bursts of sprightlier motion which had once corresponded
to his overflowing gladness; his countenance was heavier, and its
former play of expression—the dance of sunshine reflected from moving
water—was destroyed by the cloud over his existence; his notice was
attracted in a far less degree by passing events, and he appeared to
find greater difficulty in comprehending what was new to him than at a
happier period. A stranger founding his judgment upon these
circumstances would have said that the dulness of the child’s intellect
widely contradicted the promise of his features, but the secret was in
the direction of Ilbrahim’s thoughts, which were brooding within him
when they should naturally have been wandering abroad. An attempt of
Dorothy to revive his former sportiveness was the single occasion on
which his quiet demeanor yielded to a violent display of grief; he
burst into passionate weeping and ran and hid himself, for his heart
had become so miserably sore that even the hand of kindness tortured it
like fire. Sometimes at night, and probably in his dreams, he was heard
to cry, “Mother! Mother!” as if her place, which a stranger had
supplied while Ilbrahim was happy, admitted of no substitute in his
extreme affliction. Perhaps among the many life-weary wretches then
upon the earth there was not one who combined innocence and misery like
this poor broken-hearted infant so soon the victim of his own heavenly
nature.
While this melancholy change had taken place in Ilbrahim, one of an
earlier origin and of different character had come to its perfection in
his adopted father. The incident with which this tale commences found
Pearson in a state of religious dulness, yet mentally disquieted and
longing for a more fervid faith than he possessed. The first effect of
his kindness to Ilbrahim was to produce a softened feeling, an
incipient love for the child’s whole sect, but joined to this, and
resulting, perhaps, from self-suspicion, was a proud and ostentatious
contempt of their tenets and practical extravagances. In the course of
much thought, however—for the subject struggled irresistibly into his
mind—the foolishness of the doctrine began to be less evident, and the
points which had particularly offended his reason assumed another
aspect or vanished entirely away. The work within him appeared to go on
even while he slept, and that which had been a doubt when he laid down
to rest would often hold the place of a truth confirmed by some
forgotten demonstration when he recalled his thoughts in the morning.
But, while he was thus becoming assimilated to the enthusiasts, his
contempt, in nowise decreasing toward them, grew very fierce against
himself; he imagined, also, that every face of his acquaintance wore a
sneer, and that every word addressed to him was a gibe. Such was his
state of mind at the period of Ilbrahim’s misfortune, and the emotions
consequent upon that event completed the change of which the child had
been the original instrument.
In the mean time, neither the fierceness of the persecutors nor the
infatuation of their victims had decreased. The dungeons were never
empty; the streets of almost every village echoed daily with the lash;
the life of a woman whose mild and Christian spirit no cruelty could
embitter had been sacrificed, and more innocent blood was yet to
pollute the hands that were so often raised in prayer. Early after the
Restoration the English Quakers represented to Charles II. that a “vein
of blood was open in his dominions,” but, though the displeasure of the
voluptuous king was roused, his interference was not prompt. And now
the tale must stride forward over many months, leaving Pearson to
encounter ignominy and misfortune; his wife, to a firm endurance of a
thousand sorrows; poor Ilbrahim, to pine and droop like a cankered
rose-bud; his mother, to wander on a mistaken errand, neglectful of the
holiest trust which can be committed to a woman.
A winter evening, a night of storm, had darkened over Pearson’s
habitation, and there were no cheerful faces to drive the gloom from
his broad hearth. The fire, it is true, sent forth a glowing heat and a
ruddy light, and large logs dripping with half-melted snow lay ready to
cast upon the embers. But the apartment was saddened in its aspect by
the absence of much of the homely wealth which had once adorned it, for
the exaction of repeated fines and his own neglect of temporal affairs
had greatly impoverished the owner. And with the furniture of peace the
implements of war had likewise disappeared; the sword was broken, the
helm and cuirass were cast away for ever: the soldier had done with
battles, and might not lift so much as his naked hand to guard his
head. But the Holy Book remained, and the table on which it rested was
drawn before the fire, while two of the persecuted sect sought comfort
from its pages.
He who listened while the other read was the master of the house, now
emaciated in form and altered as to the expression and healthiness of
his countenance, for his mind had dwelt too long among visionary
thoughts and his body had been worn by imprisonment and stripes. The
hale and weatherbeaten old man who sat beside him had sustained less
injury from a far longer course of the same mode of life. In person he
was tall and dignified, and, which alone would have made him hateful to
the Puritans, his gray locks fell from beneath the broad-brimmed hat
and rested on his shoulders. As the old man read the sacred page the
snow drifted against the windows or eddied in at the crevices of the
door, while a blast kept laughing in the chimney and the blaze leaped
fiercely up to seek it. And sometimes, when the wind struck the hill at
a certain angle and swept down by the cottage across the wintry plain,
its voice was the most doleful that can be conceived; it came as if the
past were speaking, as if the dead had contributed each a whisper, as
if the desolation of ages were breathed in that one lamenting sound.
The Quaker at length closed the book, retaining, however, his hand
between the pages which he had been reading, while he looked
steadfastly at Pearson. The attitude and features of the latter might
have indicated the endurance of bodily pain; he leaned his forehead on
his hands, his teeth were firmly closed and his frame was tremulous at
intervals with a nervous agitation.
“Friend Tobias,” inquired the old man, compassionately, “hast thou
found no comfort in these many blessed passages of Scripture?”
“Thy voice has fallen on my ear like a sound afar off and indistinct,”
replied Pearson, without lifting his eyes. “Yea; and when I have
hearkened carefully, the words seemed cold and lifeless and intended
for another and a lesser grief than mine. Remove the book,” he added,
in a tone of sullen bitterness; “I have no part in its consolations,
and they do but fret my sorrow the more.”
“Nay, feeble brother; be not as one who hath never known the light,”
said the elder Quaker, earnestly, but with mildness. “Art thou he that
wouldst be content to give all and endure all for conscience’ sake,
desiring even peculiar trials that thy faith might be purified and thy
heart weaned from worldly desires? And wilt thou sink beneath an
affliction which happens alike to them that have their portion here
below and to them that lay up treasure in heaven? Faint not, for thy
burden is yet light.”
“It is heavy! It is heavier than I can bear!” exclaimed Pearson, with
the impatience of a variable spirit. “From my youth upward I have been
a man marked out for wrath, and year by year—yea, day after day—I have
endured sorrows such as others know not in their lifetime. And now I
speak not of the love that has been turned to hatred, the honor to
ignominy, the ease and plentifulness of all things to danger, want and
nakedness. All this I could have borne and counted myself blessed. But
when my heart was desolate with many losses, I fixed it upon the child
of a stranger, and he became dearer to me than all my buried ones; and
now he too must die as if my love were poison. Verily, I am an accursed
man, and I will lay me down in the dust and lift up my head no more.”
“Thou sinnest, brother, but it is not for me to rebuke thee, for I also
have had my hours of darkness wherein I have murmured against the
cross,” said the old Quaker. He continued, perhaps in the hope of
distracting his companion’s thoughts from his own sorrows: “Even of
late was the light obscured within me, when the men of blood had
banished me on pain of death and the constables led me onward from
village to village toward the wilderness. A strong and cruel hand was
wielding the knotted cords; they sunk deep into the flesh, and thou
mightst have tracked every reel and totter of my footsteps by the blood
that followed. As we went on—”
“Have I not borne all this, and have I murmured?” interrupted Pearson,
impatiently.
“Nay, friend, but hear me,” continued the other. “As we journeyed on
night darkened on our path, so that no man could see the rage of the
persecutors or the constancy of my endurance, though Heaven forbid that
I should glory therein. The lights began to glimmer in the cottage
windows, and I could discern the inmates as they gathered in comfort
and security, every man with his wife and children by their own evening
hearth. At length we came to a tract of fertile land. In the dim light
the forest was not visible around it, and, behold, there was a
straw-thatched dwelling which bore the very aspect of my home far over
the wild ocean—far in our own England. Then came bitter thoughts upon
me—yea, remembrances that were like death to my soul. The happiness of
my early days was painted to me, the disquiet of my manhood, the
altered faith of my declining years. I remembered how I had been moved
to go forth a wanderer when my daughter, the youngest, the dearest of
my flock, lay on her dying-bed, and—”
“Couldst thou obey the command at such a moment?” exclaimed Pearson,
shuddering.
“Yea! yea!” replied the old man, hurriedly. “I was kneeling by her
bedside when the voice spoke loud within me, but immediately I rose and
took my staff and gat me gone. Oh that it were permitted me to forget
her woeful look when I thus withdrew my arm and left her journeying
through the dark valley alone! for her soul was faint and she had
leaned upon my prayers. Now in that night of horror I was assailed by
the thought that I had been an erring Christian and a cruel parent;
yea, even my daughter with her pale dying features seemed to stand by
me and whisper, ‘Father, you are deceived; go home and shelter your
gray head.’—O Thou to whom I have looked in my furthest wanderings,”
continued the Quaker, raising his agitated eyes to heaven, “inflict not
upon the bloodiest of our persecutors the unmitigated agony of my soul
when I believed that all I had done and suffered for thee was at the
instigation of a mocking fiend!—But I yielded not; I knelt down and
wrestled with the tempter, while the scourge bit more fiercely into the
flesh. My prayer was heard, and I went on in peace and joy toward the
wilderness.”
The old man, though his fanaticism had generally all the calmness of
reason, was deeply moved while reciting this tale, and his unwonted
emotion seemed to rebuke and keep down that of his companion. They sat
in silence, with their faces to the fire, imagining, perhaps, in its
red embers new scenes of persecution yet to be encountered. The snow
still drifted hard against the windows, and sometimes, as the blaze of
the logs had gradually sunk, came down the spacious chimney and hissed
upon the hearth. A cautious footstep might now and then be heard in a
neighboring apartment, and the sound invariably drew the eyes of both
Quakers to the door which led thither. When a fierce and riotous gust
of wind had led his thoughts by a natural association to homeless
travellers on such a night, Pearson resumed the conversation.
“I have wellnigh sunk under my own share of this trial,” observed he,
sighing heavily; “yet I would that it might be doubled to me, if so the
child’s mother could be spared. Her wounds have been deep and many, but
this will be the sorest of all.”
“Fear not for Catharine,” replied the old Quaker, “for I know that
valiant woman and have seen how she can bear the cross. A mother’s
heart, indeed, is strong in her, and may seem to contend mightily with
her faith; but soon she will stand up and give thanks that her son has
been thus early an accepted sacrifice. The boy hath done his work, and
she will feel that he is taken hence in kindness both to him and her.
Blessed, blessed are they that with so little suffering can enter into
peace!”
The fitful rush of the wind was now disturbed by a portentous sound: it
was a quick and heavy knocking at the outer door. Pearson’s wan
countenance grew paler, for many a visit of persecution had taught him
what to dread; the old man, on the other hand, stood up erect, and his
glance was firm as that of the tried soldier who awaits his enemy.
“The men of blood have come to seek me,” he observed, with calmness.
“They have heard how I was moved to return from banishment, and now am
I to be led to prison, and thence to death. It is an end I have long
looked for. I will open unto them lest they say, ‘Lo, he
feareth!rsquo;”
“Nay; I will present myself before them,” said Pearson, with recovered
fortitude. “It may be that they seek me alone and know not that thou
abidest with me.”
“Let us go boldly, both one and the other,” rejoined his companion. “It
is not fitting that thou or I should shrink.”
They therefore proceeded through the entry to the door, which they
opened, bidding the applicant “Come in, in God’s name!” A furious blast
of wind drove the storm into their faces and extinguished the lamp;
they had barely time to discern a figure so white from head to foot
with the drifted snow that it seemed like Winter’s self come in human
shape to seek refuge from its own desolation.
“Enter, friend, and do thy errand, be it what it may,” said Pearson.
“It must needs be pressing, since thou comest on such a bitter night.”
“Peace be with this household!” said the stranger, when they stood on
the floor of the inner apartment.
Pearson started; the elder Quaker stirred the slumbering embers of the
fire till they sent up a clear and lofty blaze. It was a female voice
that had spoken; it was a female form that shone out, cold and wintry,
in that comfortable light.
“Catharine, blessed woman,” exclaimed the old man, “art thou come to
this darkened land again? Art thou come to bear a valiant testimony as
in former years? The scourge hath not prevailed against thee, and from
the dungeon hast thou come forth triumphant, but strengthen, strengthen
now thy heart, Catharine, for Heaven will prove thee yet this once ere
thou go to thy reward.”
“Rejoice, friends!” she replied. “Thou who hast long been of our
people, and thou whom a little child hath led to us, rejoice! Lo, I
come, the messenger of glad tidings, for the day of persecution is
over-past. The heart of the king, even Charles, hath been moved in
gentleness toward us, and he hath sent forth his letters to stay the
hands of the men of blood. A ship’s company of our friends hath arrived
at yonder town, and I also sailed joyfully among them.”
As Catharine spoke her eyes were roaming about the room in search of
him for whose sake security was dear to her. Pearson made a silent
appeal to the old man, nor did the latter shrink from the painful task
assigned him.
“Sister,” he began, in a softened yet perfectly calm tone, “thou
tellest us of his love manifested in temporal good, and now must we
speak to thee of that selfsame love displayed in chastenings. Hitherto,
Catharine, thou hast been as one journeying in a darksome and difficult
path and leading an infant by the hand; fain wouldst thou have looked
heavenward continually, but still the cares of that little child have
drawn thine eyes and thy affections to the earth. Sister, go on
rejoicing, for his tottering footsteps shall impede thine own no more.”
But the unhappy mother was not thus to be consoled. She shook like a
leaf; she turned white as the very snow that hung drifted into her
hair. The firm old man extended his hand and held her up, keeping his
eye upon hers as if to repress any outbreak of passion.
“I am a woman—I am but a woman; will He try me above my strength?” said
Catharine, very quickly and almost in a whisper. “I have been wounded
sore; I have suffered much—many things in the body, many in the mind;
crucified in myself and in them that were dearest to me. Surely,” added
she, with a long shudder, “he hath spared me in this one thing.” She
broke forth with sudden and irrepressible violence: “Tell me, man of
cold heart, what has God done to me? Hath he cast me down never to rise
again? Hath he crushed my very heart in his hand?—And thou to whom I
committed my child, how hast thou fulfilled thy trust? Give me back the
boy well, sound, alive—alive—or earth and heaven shall avenge me!”
The agonized shriek of Catharine was answered by the faint—the very
faint—voice of a child.
On this day it had become evident to Pearson, to his aged guest and to
Dorothy that Ilbrahim’s brief and troubled pilgrimage drew near its
close. The two former would willingly have remained by him to make use
of the prayers and pious discourses which they deemed appropriate to
the time, and which, if they be impotent as to the departing
traveller’s reception in the world whither he goes, may at least
sustain him in bidding adieu to earth. But, though Ilbrahim uttered no
complaint, he was disturbed by the faces that looked upon him; so that
Dorothy’s entreaties and their own conviction that the child’s feet
might tread heaven’s pavement and not soil it had induced the two
Quakers to remove. Ilbrahim then closed his eyes and grew calm, and,
except for now and then a kind and low word to his nurse, might have
been thought to slumber. As nightfall came on, however, and the storm
began to rise, something seemed to trouble the repose of the boy’s mind
and to render his sense of hearing active and acute. If a passing wind
lingered to shake the casement, he strove to turn his head toward it;
if the door jarred to and fro upon its hinges, he looked long and
anxiously thitherward; if the heavy voice of the old man as he read the
Scriptures rose but a little higher, the child almost held his
dying-breath to listen; if a snowdrift swept by the cottage with a
sound like the trailing of a garment, Ilbrahim seemed to watch that
some visitant should enter. But after a little time he relinquished
whatever secret hope had agitated him and with one low complaining
whisper turned his cheek upon the pillow. He then addressed Dorothy
with his usual sweetness and besought her to draw near him; she did so,
and Ilbrahim took her hand in both of his, grasping it with a gentle
pressure, as if to assure himself that he retained it. At intervals,
and without disturbing the repose of his countenance, a very faint
trembling passed over him from head to foot, as if a mild but somewhat
cool wind had breathed upon him and made him shiver.
As the boy thus led her by the hand in his quiet progress over the
borders of eternity, Dorothy almost imagined that she could discern the
near though dim delightfulness of the home he was about to reach; she
would not have enticed the little wanderer back, though she bemoaned
herself that she must leave him and return. But just when Ilbrahim’s
feet were pressing on the soil of Paradise he heard a voice behind him,
and it recalled him a few, few paces of the weary path which he had
travelled. As Dorothy looked upon his features she perceived that their
placid expression was again disturbed. Her own thoughts had been so
wrapped in him that all sounds of the storm and of human speech were
lost to her; but when Catharine’s shriek pierced through the room, the
boy strove to raise himself.
“Friend, she is come! Open unto her!” cried he.
In a moment his mother was kneeling by the bedside; she drew Ilbrahim
to her bosom, and he nestled there with no violence of joy, but
contentedly as if he were hushing himself to sleep. He looked into her
face, and, reading its agony, said with feeble earnestness,
“Mourn not, dearest mother. I am happy now;” and with these words the
gentle boy was dead.
The king’s mandate to stay the New England persecutors was effectual in
preventing further martyrdoms, but the colonial authorities, trusting
in the remoteness of their situation, and perhaps in the supposed
instability of the royal government, shortly renewed their severities
in all other respects. Catharine’s fanaticism had become wilder by the
sundering of all human ties; and wherever a scourge was lifted, there
was she to receive the blow; and whenever a dungeon was unbarred,
thither she came to cast herself upon the floor. But in process of time
a more Christian spirit—a spirit of forbearance, though not of
cordiality or approbation—began to pervade the land in regard to the
persecuted sect. And then, when the rigid old Pilgrims eyed her rather
in pity than in wrath, when the matrons fed her with the fragments of
their children’s food and offered her a lodging on a hard and lowly
bed, when no little crowd of schoolboys left their sports to cast
stones after the roving enthusiast,—then did Catharine return to
Pearson’s dwelling, and made that her home.
As if Ilbrahim’s sweetness yet lingered round his ashes, as if his
gentle spirit came down from heaven to teach his parent a true
religion, her fierce and vindictive nature was softened by the same
griefs which had once irritated it. When the course of years had made
the features of the unobtrusive mourner familiar in the settlement, she
became a subject of not deep but general interest—a being on whom the
otherwise superfluous sympathies of all might be bestowed. Every one
spoke of her with that degree of pity which it is pleasant to
experience; every one was ready to do her the little kindnesses which
are not costly, yet manifest good-will; and when at last she died, a
long train of her once bitter persecutors followed her with decent
sadness and tears that were not painful to her place by Ilbrahim’s
green and sunken grave.