THE BROTHER AND SISTER.
In the night-time Abigail had never before visited her mother's grave.
Indeed, she had seldom been there alone, in her whole life. Now the
grave-yard was very dim and shadowy, for it lay on the verge of the
forest, and a few stray moonbeams only pierced through the pine boughs
that drooped over it. She was almost afraid to advance close, for the
periwinkles that crept over the two graves had grown luxuriantly thick,
spreading over them like a torn pall. Even their flowers, so exquisitely
blue in the day-time, seemed black among the darkness of their leaves.
Beyond the two graves--now linked into one by those dusky creepers--the
forest was black as midnight. Here and there a fire-fly shone out in the
depths of the wood; here and there a branch caught the moonlight, that
fringed the edges of its dewy leaves with silver; but this only made the
darkness beyond more complete. She crept towards the graves, holding her
breath, afraid of the solitude and darkness, afraid and yet fascinated.
All at once she stretched forth her hand, and seized hold of a pine
branch which shivered in all its slender leaves, and gave forth those
low, melancholy sighs, which sound so like human grief.
The young girl held on to the branch and, stooping forward with gleaming
eyes and parted lips, peered into the gloom of the forest, looking
straight over her mother's grave.
All at once she drew a sharp breath and let go of the pine bough, that
fell back to its place with a rustle that shook all the neighboring
branches, and covered the grave below with a storm of dew. Then, with
her head turned back and her eyes bright with new terror, she attempted
to flee. A crash--a rush amid the forest boughs, and a voice coming out
of the darkness!
Her lifted foot fell like lead upon the grass, a cry broke from her
lips, and, still maintaining the first attitude of flight, she seemed
frozen into stone.
"Mahaska!"
Out from the dim forest stole that name. When she had heard it the young
girl could not think, nor why it fell with such sweet mournfulness on
her ear. But she knew that the name had been hers; in some previous
existence perhaps, for she never remembered hearing it before with
mortal ears. It thrilled through and through her.
"Mahaska!"
"Who speaks?"
"Mahaska!"
As the name was uttered a third time, a figure came out from the
blackness, rustling through the foliage as it passed, and stood in the
moonlight.
Abigail was no longer afraid, but, dropping into her old position, stood
with one hand leaning on the gray stone at the head of her mother's
grave.
It was a savage, and yet a white man, who stood before her--a savage, in
all the pomp of his war garments, with hostile weapons at his girdle,
and a rifle in his right hand. The crest of feathers, with which his
hair was knotted, fluttered in the night wind proudly as if it had
surmounted a helmet. The warm crimson, that lined his robe of dressed
deer-skin, and the many colored wampum that bordered and fringed it,
glowed richly in the moonlight. It was a noble figure, and the young
girl's face kindled as she measured him with her eyes.
"Whom do you seek, with a tomahawk at your girdle, and a scalping-knife
within reach of your hand? I am alone, and there is only an old woman at
the house--no help within reach of my voice--but you see I stand
still--I am not afraid."
"No--not afraid," answered the savage, with a proud motion of the hand.
"Even the women of your race should be brave. Mahaska, step forth, that
the moon may look upon your face."
Fearlessly, as if she had obeyed that voice all her life, Abigail
stepped out of the pine shadow, and stood face to face with the savage.
"Your hand does not shake--you look into my face--your lip keeps its
red--the blood starts to your cheek like sunset upon the snow
mountains--you are not afraid of the Indian?"
"No, not afraid."
"The grasp of my hand does not make you tremble?"
"No, it sends the fire back to my heart."
"What brought you to the forest--to this grave?"
"I do not know--stay, the old woman Tituba was muttering a death-chant.
It must have been that."
"A death-chant in the Indian tongue--a chant of the Wampanoags?"
"A chant in the Indian tongue--but I cannot tell of what tribe."
"And you understand it?"
"Yes!"
"How--who taught you the meaning of our death-chants?"
Abigail was astonished. She had never thought of this before. How,
indeed, had she learned the meaning of these words? Not from the
minister, nor at school; nor, so far as she could remember, from the old
Indian woman. How then had that strange language become so familiar to
her ear and her tongue? This thought, so suddenly aroused, bewildered
her. She had no answer to give.
The young savage grasped her hand in his, and she felt that his limbs
quivered; slowly, very slowly, he drew her to the grave, and, pointing
downward, said--
"It was of her you learned the tongue of the Wampanoags!"
"My mother," said Abigail, mournfully, "my poor mother, who lies here so
still--how could she teach me a savage language? She, the sister of my
uncle's wife?"
"How did she know--how could she teach you the language of our tribe?
Ask how deep the wrongs must be which made her forswear her own tongue
as if it had been a curse?"
"Hold, hold!" cried Abigail, shaking off his clasp and gazing wildly
into his face. "Your speech is like my own--English is native to you,
rather than the savage tongue--your cheek is without paint--your
forehead too white--your air proud like an Indian, but gentle withal.
Who are you? Why is it that you lay wait for me in this holy place,
talking of my mother as if you knew her?"
"Knew her, Mahaska? The Great Spirit knows how well! Knew her?"
"My mother--you--"
The young man fell on his knees, and, leaning his head upon the grave
stone, remained silent a while, subduing the emotion that seemed to
sweep away his strength. At last he looked up; the fire had left his
eyes; deep, solemn resolution filled its place.
Abigail could not speak. Bewilderment and awe kept her dumb. For a
moment the young Indian gazed upon her, then his voice broke forth in a
gush of tenderness.
"Mahaska!"
"Why do you call me by that name?" cried the young girl.
"Because your mother--your beautiful, unhappy mother--whispered it
faintly as a dying wind in the pine branches, when her lord and your
father bent thankfully over her couch of fern leaves, in the deep
forest, to look upon his last-born child. Because his brave kiss pressed
your forehead in baptism, as that name left her pale lips. Because the
word has a terrible significance."
"What significance?" asked Abigail, beginning to tremble beneath those
burning glances.
"Mahaska, the Avenger."
"The avenger! Alas! alas! it is a fearful name; but what signifies that?
The consecrated waters of baptism have washed it away."
The young Indian sprang to his feet.
"Washed it away? Washed the name of our fathers from your forehead? I
tell you, girl, it is burning there in the red blood of a kingly
sire--in the flames which devoured the old men and little children of
our tribe--rusted in by the iron that held a king's son in bondage under
the hot sky of the tropics. Look, maiden, look where the ocean heaves
and rolls beneath the moon: there is not enough water in all that to
wash the name from your brow. Look upward, where the Great Spirit hath
kindled his camp-fires in the sky: you will not find flame enough to
burn it out. Look yonder, where the thick forest covers the earth--roll
all its shadows together, and through their blackness all the world
would read that name!"
Abigail covered her affrighted face with both hands. Her brain was
confused--the heart quaked in her bosom--all the traditions of her life
were uprooted in a moment. Who was she? Who was the man, garbed like a
savage, but who spoke the English tongue as if it were his own? Was the
grave at her feet really that of her mother? What did the young savage
mean by that haughty air--those proud words?
The Indian came closer to her, withdrew the hands from her face very
gently, and held them with a tender clasp.
"Mahaska!"
Abigail looked at him steadily, till the tears rose to her wild eyes;
then, as his hand grasped hers faster and tighter, she made an effort to
wrench herself away.
His hands dropped, his face bent downward.
"Mahaska!"
"I listen."
"Surely as the Great Spirit looks down upon us through his stars, the
woman who sleeps beneath these dark leaves commands you to listen when I
speak, and believe what I shall say!"
"But you are an enemy--a savage from the woods; what could you know of
my mother?"
"Every thing; it is she who charges you to believe this."
"But if she had a knowledge of you or your people, why did my uncle
never mention it?"
"Why did he never mention it?" rejoined the Indian--and now the
tenderness left his eyes, and the words came hissing through his shut
teeth--"because he was the enemy of your race. Father and mother alike,
suffered at his hands."
"What, my uncle, my good, pious uncle, the father of Elizabeth! I do not
believe it!" cried Abigail indignantly, "he was never the enemy of any
human being."
"Silence!" whispered the savage, "your words trouble the ashes in that
grave!"
That instant a gust of wind came sobbing through the pine leaves, and
the dusky creepers on the two graves shivered audibly.
Abigail drew close to the savage, and laid her hand on his arm. They
bent their heads, and listened till the wind swept by.
"Is it my mother's voice?" whispered the young girl.
"Have you never heard it before, sobbing and wailing among the trees, or
whispering softly when the leaves talk to the night?"
"Yes! oh, yes!"
"Have you never felt it in the night, or here at mid-day in the
forest--felt it all around you, till the heart quaked in your bosom, and
your limbs refused to move?"
"Ah, me! this also--this also!"
"And yet you ask, is it the voice of my mother?"
"Alas, how should I know? I who never, till this moment, dreamed that
she who rests there had wrongs to complain of."
"_Rests_ there--_rests_! why, girl, it is because she cannot rest that
the wind brings her sobs to your ear--cannot rest while her
youngest-born finds shelter with the most cruel of her enemies."
"The most cruel of her enemies!"
"He who sat in judgment upon a weak, helpless woman, when she came out
from the wilderness with her baby sister strapped to her back,
beseeching shelter among the people of her mother's race--the very
people who had driven that mother forth to die among her enemies,
because she was of a different faith, and believed in a God more
merciful than the one they worshipped--this man was Samuel Parris."
"And the woman, who was she?" cried Abigail, wringing her hands; for so
many painful thoughts rushing together almost drove her mad.
"That woman was Anna Hutchinson, the martyr, who was driven from
settlement to settlement, with her children--like a mad dog fleeing with
her young. Here chained to a cart, and lashed till her white shoulders
ran blood, while the strange man's God was piously called on to sanctify
the deed--there driven onward with taunts and jeers, starved, beaten,
trampled upon everywhere. At last she fled with her husband and her
young children into the wilderness, trusting rather to enemies
embittered against her race by wrongs deeper than hers, than to the men
who hunted her down like a beast of prey."
"But they killed her--they killed her--the Indians whom she would have
trusted--her and her little ones," cried Abigail, interrupting him. "I
have heard the story again and again. Her children were all
murdered--she left nothing but a dread curse, a curse that makes the old
men whom it was levelled against tremble even yet."
"A curse, yes, the terrible curse of a human being tortured to death--a
curse that wails through the woods and stalks around your houses forever
unappeased, unfulfilled, but which grows deeper and louder every year."
Abigail shuddered.
"But the judges, who sentenced this unhappy woman, were wise and
God-fearing men. Among them was old Mr. Parris, the father of Samuel
Parris, my uncle; the old man died blessing God, and at peace with all
his creatures."
"He persecuted Anna Hutchinson unto death. She was a beautiful, brave
woman, whose courage and truth won the hearts of liberal men to her
cause. This was her fault; her smiles, her prayers, her powerful
reasoning, overwhelmed their sermons, and shook the foundation of their
strength. She had disciples--followers--believers--was a woman of great
mind; her thoughts were like maple blossoms in spring, bright and
pleasant, giving out sunshine; but those of her persecutors always crept
along in shadows. This woman was driven upon the knife that stabbed her,
by her own brethren. The curse which she uttered in her desperation
calls louder and louder upon her children."
"But her children were all slain; she left no human soul to mourn or
avenge her--I have heard the story too often; it is written on my memory
as with fire; why bring it up here--what has that to do with me, or
her?"
Abigail pointed to the grave with her trembling finger--for now she was
shivering from head to foot. The story of Anna Hutchinson always
affected her thus; from her infancy she had never heard the name without
a cold chill.