Among the Indian maidens was a bold, handsome girl, a little older
than Hope, who was her constant and favored companion, and having more
intelligence and tact than usually falls to the primitive maidens
of the forest, Acashee, or the Spider, (literally net-weaver, or
snare-builder,) had contrived to divest herself of the usual toils and
drudgeries of her sex in a savage condition.
Acashee was the daughter of Samoset, of the Kennebec tribe--the Indian
who went to and remained three years in England, where he shared the
royal favor of Elizabeth, whose accomplished courtiers vied with each
other in lavishing attentions upon a man who presented a new and
generous type of the race, undebauched by the vices of civilization.
Shakespeare without doubt received many a poetic hint from the
noble savage, and most certainly owed to him the story of the
Tempest, and the fable of the Pucks, or as the Indians called them
Puck-wud-jees--being literally wood-fairies.
The courage and address of Acashee had rendered her the friend and
companion of her father, and his attendant upon many a long and
perilous march. Among savage tribes intelligence of a strange or
interesting character is conveyed by fleet runners, who go from
tribe to tribe after the manner of the Highland clans so graphically
described by Walter Scott in the “speed, Malise, speed” of his spirited
poem. Accordingly, Samoset was one of the first to reach the sea-shore,
and look with wonder upon the ship which had come like a rare bird,
or superior agent, from the spirit-land. He it was who, fifteen years
afterward, hailed the Pilgrims at Plymouth with the words: “Welcome,
Englishmen.”
Samoset had been of great service to the colony upon the Saco river,
and Sir Richard Vines and family had not failed to treat his daughter
Acashee with much consideration. Little Hope more especially singled
her out as her favorite friend and companion. She liked her for her
beauty, her courage, her strength and activity, combined with an easy
gayety rare in the children of the wood, and almost unknown among the
anxious and over-taxed pilgrims to the new world.
The artful savage maiden, acute and penetrating, had not failed to
perceive the peculiar characteristics of Hope, and had not failed to
turn them to account in her own way. She played her game in a manner
worthy of her name, of Net-weaver, in the best sense, Spider in its
worst. She hinted to the melancholy and superstitious Pilgrim settlers,
doubts of her state as a true human being, for the Indians believed in
the incarnation of certain malignant beings, no less than the ascetic
whites.
To the Indians of the many tribes with whom she and her father were in
constant intercourse, she enlarged upon Hope’s gifts as a wonderful
medicine-woman, and it was she who had more than once induced them to
make attempts to abduct her for purposes of divination.
While our poor Hope was thus constantly under the eye of her wily and
malignant companion, she was a source, also, of much solicitude on the
part of the parents, who began to feel painfully that evil and cruel
thoughts were rife in the minds of their neighbors regarding her, which
might end in some tragedy even more distressing than the fate of Sir
Walter Raleigh, with whom Hope was so fond of associating herself.
Mistress Vines was a cheerful, active, dignified woman, or she would
have been sore distressed as the conviction grew upon her that all was
not quite right with little Hope. In high courtly or civilized society
her peculiarities would not have been observed--the pressure of the
same serving to keep its members in equal balance; but in an experience
admitting of greater latitude, it became evident that she, the product
of a civilized, but bred amidst a primitive, race, had inherited the
graces of the one, and absorbed the wild freedom of the other.
Having once obtained the key to the formation of her mind, all its
manifestations were complete and harmonious. The study of a book was
irksome to her, but that which she learned from the utterance of the
human tongue never escaped her memory.
There was a preternatural directness in all the elements of her mind--a
wild, vivid adherence to truth under every aspect, which rendered any
modification of it, under any circumstances, impossible to her; hence
it was followed without the power to anticipate results. It might have
been genius--for nothing was impossible to her; and yet, according to
ordinary calculations, little was attainable. She would say, “I know it
is thus and thus,” but the why it was so it was impossible for her to
define.
“Did it ever occur to you, my husband,” asked Mistress Vines, “that
there is something in the look of poor little Hope strangely like our
brother Raleigh?”
“Often, often, sweetheart; nor is it strange. Do not be distressed
about Hope; she is as God has given her to us, and in his good time
he will clear away those shadows which obscure the brightness of the
spirit he has made. Take heart, good dame.”
“She is good and beautiful in spite of all,” rejoined the wife, eying
her daughter tenderly. “Shall we ever send her to England?”
“Thy heart yearns for the mother-land, sweetheart?”
“Nay, my dear, good husband, I am more than content. I live not for
England, but for thee and our little ones.”
And she leaned both hands clasped upon his shoulder, in a most tender,
wifely way.
“If thou art truly content, sweet heart,”--and in saying this he
separated the words, as if the better to express the deep sentiment of
the love he bore her--“I rejoice, deeply rejoice, for old England is
verging upon critical times; and even here, men and women are not quite
safe from evil tongues and evil designs!”
He drew her nearer to his breast as he said this, for there were
surmises and rumors which he did not name to his lovely wife.
It was evident to both parents that Hope must be left to her own
existence, and suffered to enjoy it in her own way; nor was this by
any means a limited or degraded one. Her exquisite organization, her
perfect health and vivid vitality, were combined with a degree of hardy
activity astonishing in one so delicately made.
As a child, the Indians had treated Hope with a deference and
tenderness that implied a doubt whether a creature so fair and
diminutive could master the rude encounters of life; but as she grew
in years, and they saw her small feet so active, and her tiny wrath so
ready to wreak itself, their admiration knew no bounds. They delighted
to become her instructors in all wildwood games and primitive exploits,
and so apt a pupil did they find her that she seemed to their simple
observation a prodigy of cleverness rather than one whose mental
organization was a subject of doubt or anxiety.
She was expert at the bow and arrow, could swim like a duck, and
come out of the water and shake the drops from her long hair without
that shrunken, _soused-over_ look so common to women who breast the
waters. She was fond of the Indian mode of dress, rarely being willing
to conform to the usages prevalent at the time. She was fond of all
ornaments that left her movements unimpeded, but refused the use of
braid, bodkin, or fillet to curb the redundancy of her locks.
None of these things were lost upon the artful Acashee, who, in turn,
teased or flattered Hope, as might best subserve the great purpose of
her life, which was to separate her from John Bonyton, for whom she had
conceived a passion the more profound for the obstacles which promised
to defeat its gratification.
Hope was well aware of the arts of the girl; but she liked her bold,
fearless ways, and her untiring activity. With senses as keen as those
of the young savage, she detected her hanging like a shadow over her
own pathway, and knew that John Bonyton in the chase of the wild deer,
and spearing salmon far up the Falls of the Saco, was often confronted
by her rival, and was not unwilling to loiter in the presence of the
bright, handsome savage.
On the morning of the day when our story opens, when Hope was found
quarreling so vehemently with her lover for having saved her from a
long sleep under the sea, the two girls, as was their wont, had met
upon a point of land a few miles distant from the Pool, designing to
follow the beautiful winding of the Saco up to the Falls, and watch the
salmon, like golden ingots, “shoot” the cataract.
Standing upon this promontory, Hope’s dreamy eyes wandered over the
landscape, drinking in its beauty, as her kinsman Raleigh might have
done in one of his poetic moods. Acashee, on the contrary, practiced
all the subtle arts of her nature, and all the coquetries of a wildwood
beauty, to interest the heart of John Bonyton. Aroused at length from
her reverie, Hope saw the flashing eyes of Bonyton resting admiringly,
as she thought, upon her companion. With a wild impulse of undefined
jealousy and rage, she threw aside her bow and arrows, and cast herself
into the sea.
She was rescued, as we have seen, by the athletic youth, greatly to the
discomfiture of the impulsive child. Severe and biting reproaches were
exchanged subsequently between the two girls, in which the red maiden
betrayed a readiness and spirit as unexpected as it was fearful. Hope
was not lacking in her vocabulary of spleen, and she turned her head
scoffingly, crying:
“You are a long-legged, big, black-bodied spider, and that is what your
name means.”
Acashee darted forward, seizing her by the wrist; she bent down and
looked fiercely into her eyes; grinding her teeth, she hissed with the
rage and venom of the serpent, into the ears of Hope:
“I _am_ a spider! I weave a strong web. I will snare in it the little
fly. Go to, you had a friend; now you have a foe.”
And dashing the hand from her grasp, she plunged into the forest.
Hope laughed a bitter, contemptuous laugh, and turned slowly homeward,
followed by the repentant Bonyton, to have the indignant words of the
girl and the protestations of the other overheard by the two fathers.