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DELUSION;
OR THE WITCH OF NEW ENGLAND.
By Eliza Buckminster Lee
"There is in man a HIGHER than love of happiness: he can do without
happiness, and, instead thereof, find blessedness."--SARTOR.
BOSTON:
HILLIARD, GRAY, AND COMPANY.
1840.
Entered according to act of Congress, in the year 1839,
BY HILLIARD, GRAY & CO.
in the clerk's office of the district court of Massachusetts.
PREFACE.
The scenes and characters of this little tale are wholly fictitious. It
will be found that the tragic interest that belongs to the history of
the year 1692 has been very much softened in the following pages.
The object of the author has not been to write a tale of witchcraft, but
to show how circumstances may unfold the inward strength of a timid
woman, so that she may at last be willing to die rather than yield to
the delusion that would have preserved her life.
If it is objected that the young and lovely are seldom accused of any
witchcraft except that of bewitching hearts, we answer, that of those
who were _actually_ accused, many were young; and those who maintained a
firm integrity against the overwhelming power of the delusion of the
period must have possessed an intellectual beauty which it would be vain
to endeavor to portray.
This imperfect effort is submitted with much diffidence, to the
indulgence of the courteous reader.
THE WITCH OF NEW ENGLAND.
CHAPTER I.
"Ay, call it holy ground,
The soil where first they trod:
They have left unstained what there they found,--
Freedom to worship God."
New England scenery is said to be deficient in romantic and poetic
associations. It is said that we have no ruins of ancient castles,
frowning over our precipices; no time-worn abbeys and monasteries,
mouldering away in neglected repose, in our valleys.
It is true that the grand and beautiful places in our natural scenery
are not marred by the monuments of an age of violence and wrong; and our
silent valleys retain no remnant of the abodes of self-indulgent and
superstitious devotion; but the descendant of the Pilgrims finds, in
many of the fairest scenes of New England, some memento to carry back
the imagination to those heroic and self-sacrificing ancestors. His soul
is warmed and elevated when he remembers that devoted company, who were
sustained amid hardship and every privation, on the trackless ocean, and
in the mysterious and appalling solitudes of the forest, by a firm
devotion to duty, and an all-pervading sense of the immediate presence
of God.
The faults of our ancestors were the faults of their age. It is not now
understood--and how wide from it was the conviction then!--that _even_
toleration implies intoleration. Who is to judge what opinions are to be
tolerated? He whom circumstance has invested at the moment with power?
The scene I wish to describe was on the borders of one of the interior
villages of New England,--a mountain village, embosomed in high hills,
from which the winter torrents, as they met in the plain, united to form
one of those clear, sparkling rivers, in whose beautiful mirror the
surrounding hills were reflected. The stream, "winding at its own sweet
will," enclosed a smooth meadow. At the extremity of the meadow, and
shadowed by the mountain, nestled one of the poorest farm-houses, or
cottages, of the time.
It was black and old, apparently containing but two rooms and a garret.
Attached to it were the common out-houses of the poorest farms: a shed
for a cow, a covering for a cart, and a small barn were all. But the
situation of this humble and lonely dwelling was one of surpassing
beauty. The soft meadow in front was dotted with weeping elms and
birches; the opposite and neighboring hills were covered to their
summits with the richest wood, while openings here and there admitted
glimpses of the distant country.
A traveller coming upon this solitary spot, and seeing the blue smoke
curling against the mountain side, would have rejoiced. There is
something in the lonely farmhouse, surrounded with its little garden,
and its homely implements of labor, that instantly touches our sympathy.
There, we say, human hearts have experienced all the changes of life;
they have loved and rejoiced, perhaps suffered and died.
The interior consisted of only two rooms. In the ample chimney of that
which served for the common room, was burning a bright flame of pine
knots; for, although it was the middle of summer, the sun sank so early
behind the hills, and the evenings were so chilly, that the warmth was
necessary, and the light from the small window cheered the laborer
returning late from his work.
An old man sat by the chimney, evidently resting from the labors of the
day. He was bent by time, but his brilliant eye and his flowing gray
locks gave a certain refinement to his appearance, beyond that which his
homely garments would warrant.
A woman, apparently as aged as himself, sat by the little window,
catching the last rays of evening, as they were reflected from her white
cap and silvery hair. Before her was a table on which lay a large Bible.
She had just placed her spectacles between the leaves, as she closed it
and resumed her knitting.
These two formed a picture full of the quiet repose of old age. But
there was another in the room,--a youth, apparently less than twenty,
kneeling before the flaming pine, over the leaves of a worn volume that
absorbed him wholly.
The ruddy flame imparted the glow of health to a countenance habitually
pale. Over his dark, enthusiastic eye was spread a clear and noble brow,
so smooth and polished that it seemed as if at seventy it would be as
unwrinkled as at seventeen. His piercing eye had that depth of
expression that indicates dark passions or religious melancholy. He was
slender in form, and very tall; but a bend in the shoulders, produced by
agricultural labor, or by weakness in the chest, impaired somewhat the
symmetry of his form.
They had been silent some moments. The young man closed his worn volume,
an imperfect copy of Virgil, and walked several times, with hurried
steps, across the little room.
At length he stopped before the woman, and said, "Mother, let me see how
much your frugal care has hoarded. Let me know all our wealth. Unless I
can procure another book, I cannot be prepared for the approaching
examination. If I cannot enter college the next term, I never can. I
must give up all hope of ever being any thing but the drudge I am now,
and of living and dying in this narrow nook of earth."
"No, no, my son," answered the woman; "if my prayers are heard, you will
be a light and a blessing to the church, though I may not live to see
it."
The young man sighed deeply, and, taking the key she gave him, he opened
an old-fashioned chest, and, from a little cup of silver tied over with
a piece of leather, he poured the contents into his hand. There were
several crowns and shillings, and two or three pieces of gold.
Apparently the examination was unsatisfactory, for he threw himself into
a chair, and covered his face with his hands.
The old woman rose after looking at him a few moments in silence, and
laid her hand gently on his shoulder.
"My son," she said, "where is the faith that sustained your ancestors
when they left all their luxuries and splendor, their noble homes for
conscience' sake. Yes, my son, your fathers were among the distinguished
of England's sons, and they left all for God."
"Mother," said he, "would that they had been hewers of wood and drawers
of water. Then I should have been content with my lot. Mother, all your
carefully hoarded treasure will not be enough to pay my first term in
college. Without books, without friends, I must give up the hope of an
education," and the large tears trickled between his fingers.
"You forget," she said, "your good friend at C. who has lent you so many
books. Why not apply to him again?"
A deep blush flushed the young man's countenance, but he made no answer,
and seemed to wish to change the subject.
"It is almost evening," he said; "shall we not have prayers?" and,
placing himself near the window to catch the last rays of departing
daylight, he read one of the chapters from the Old Testament.
The aged man, who had not spoken during the discussion, stood up and
prayed with great fervency.
His prayer was made up, indeed, by quotations from the Old Testament,
and he used altogether the phraseology of the Scriptures. He prayed for
the church in the wilderness, "that it might be bright as the sun, fair
as the moon, beautiful as Tirzah, and terrible as an army with banners;"
"that our own exertions to serve the church and our strivings after the
Holy Spirit might not be like arrows in the air, traces in the sea, oil
upon the polished marble, and water spilt upon the ground."
He asked for no temporal blessing; all his petitions were in language
highly figurative, and he closed with a prayer for his grandson, "that
God would make him a polished shaft in the temple of the Lord, a bright
and shining light in the candlestick of the church."
When he had finished his prayer,--"My son," he said, "do not be cast
down; you forget that the great Luther begged his bread. The servants of
the church, in every age, have been poor and despised; even the Son of
God," and he looked reverently upwards, "knew not where to lay his head.
_You_ have only to labor. The peat at the bottom of the meadow is
already dry; there is more than we shall need for winter fuel; take it,
in the morning, to C----, and with the produce buy the book you need."
"No," said the young man, "there are many repairs necessary to make you
and my grandmother comfortable for the winter. I cannot rob you of more.
I can borrow the book."
He lighted his lamp, made from rushes dipped in the green wax of the bay
bush, which affords a beautiful, but not brilliant flame, and went up a
few steps to his chamber in the garret. The old woman gathered the ashes
over the kindling coal, and, with her aged partner, retired to the
bed-room opposite the narrow entrance.