THE CRUEL ENLIGHTENMENT
Grandmother Derwent had contrived to purchase implements for spinning
and weaving the coarse cloth, which constituted the principal clothing
of the settlers. The inhabitants gave her plenty of work, and produce
from her farm supplied her household with grain and vegetables.
Even the little girls, who under many circumstances would have been a
burden, were in reality an assistance to her.
Jane was a bright and beautiful child, with dark silky hair, pleasant
eyes, and lips like the damp petals of a red rose. She was, withal, a
tidy, active little maiden, and, as Mrs. Derwent was wont to say, “saved
grandma a great many steps” by running to the spring for water, winding
_quills_, and doing what Miss Sedgwick calls the “odds and ends of
housework.”
Jane led a pleasant life on the island. She was a frank, mirthful
creature, and it suited her to paddle her canoe on the bosom of the
river, or even to urge it down the current, when “grandma” wanted a
piece of cloth carried to the village, or was anxious to procure tea and
other delicacies for her household.
When Mrs. Derwent’s quill-box was full, and “the work all done up,” Jane
might be found clambering among the wild rocks, which frowned along the
eastern shore, looking over the face of some bold precipice at her image
reflected in the stream below; or, perchance, perched in the foliage of
a grape-vine, with her rosy face peering out from the leaves, and her
laugh ringing merrily from cliff to cliff, while her little hands
showered down the purple clusters to her sister below.
Such was Jane Derwent, at the age of fourteen; but poor little Mary
Derwent! nature grew more and more cruel to her. While each year endowed
her sister with new beauty and unclouded cheerfulness, she, poor
delicate thing, was kept instinctively from the notice of her
fellow-creatures. The inmates of that little cabin could not bear that
strange eyes should gaze on her deformity—for it was this deformity
which had ever made the child an object of such tender interest.
From her infancy the little girl had presented a strange mixture of the
hideous and the beautiful. Her oval face, with its marvellous symmetry
of features, might have been the original from which Dubufe drew the
chaste and heavenly features of Eve, in his picture of the “Temptation.”
The same sweetness and purity was there, but the expression was
chastened and melancholy. Her soft blue eyes were always sad, and almost
always moist; the lashes drooped over them, an expression of languid
misery. A smile seldom brightened her mouth—the same mournful expression
of hopelessness sat forever on that calm, white forehead; the faint
color would often die away from her cheek, but it seldom deepened there.
Mary was fifteen before any person supposed her conscious of her
horrible malformation, or was aware of the deep sensitiveness of her
nature. The event which brought both to life occurred a few years after
the death of her father. Both the children had been sent to school, and
her first trial came on the clearing, before the little log schoolhouse
of the village. Mary was chosen into the centre of the merry ring by
Edward Clark, a bright-eyed, handsome boy, with manners bold and frank
almost to carelessness.
The kind-hearted boy drew her gently into the ring, and joined the
circle, without the laugh and joyous bound which usually accompanied his
movements. There was an instinctive feeling of delicacy and tenderness
towards the little girl which forbade all boisterous merriment when she
was by his side. It was her turn to select a partner; she extended her
hand timidly towards a boy somewhat older than herself—the son of a rich
landholder in the valley; but young Wintermoot drew back with an
insulting laugh, and refused to stand up with the _hunchback_.
Instantly the ring was broken up. Edward Clark leaped forward, and with
a blow, rendered powerful by honest indignation, smote the insulter to
the ground. For one moment Mary looked around bewildered, as if she did
not comprehend the nature of the taunt; then the blood rushed up to her
face, her soft blue eyes blazed with a sudden flash of fire, the little
hand was clenched, and her distorted form dilated with passion.
Instantly the blood flowed back upon her heart, her white lips closed
over her clenched teeth, and she fell forward with her face upon the
ground, as one stricken by unseen lightning.
The group gathered around her, awe-stricken and afraid. They could not
comprehend this fearful burst of passion in a creature habitually so
gentle and sweet-tempered. It seemed as if the insolent boy had crushed
her to death with a sneer.
Her brave defender knelt and raised her head to his bosom, tears of
generous indignation still lingered on his burning cheek, and his form
shook with scarcely abated excitement.
At length Mary Derwent arose with the calmness of a hushed storm upon
her face, and turning to her inevitable solitude walked silently away.
There was something terrible in the look of anguish with which she left
her companions, taking, as it were, a silent and eternal farewell of all
the joys that belong to childhood. The coarse taunt of the boy had been
a cruel revelation, tearing away all the tender shields and loving
delusions with which home-affection had so long sheltered her. She did
not know what meaning lay in the word hunchback, but felt, with a sting
of unutterable shame, that it was applied to her because she was unlike
other girls. That she must never be loved as they were—never hope to be
one of them again.
The school-children looked on this intense passion with silent awe. Even
Jane dared not utter the sympathy that filled her eyes with tears, or
follow after her sister.
So with terror and shame at the cruel discovery at her heart, Mary went
away. The blood throbbed in her temples and rushed hotly through all her
veins. An acute sense of wrong seized upon her, and thirsting to be
alone she fled to the woods like a hunted animal, recoiling alike from
her playfellows and her home.
Through the thick undergrowth and over wild rocks the poor creature tore
her way, struggling and panting amid the thorny brushwood, as if life
and death depended upon her progress.
A striped squirrel ran along the boughs of a chestnut-tree and peered
down upon her from among the long green leaves and tassel-like blossoms.
A flush came to her beautiful forehead, and with a cry that seemed in
itself a pang, she tore up a stone to fling at it. The squirrel started
away, uttering a broken noise that fell upon her sore heart like a
taunt. Why did the little creature follow her? Why did it bend those
sharp, black eyes upon her, with its head turned so mockingly upon one
side? Was she never to be alone? Was the cruel animal still gibing at
her through the chestnut-leaves?
The squirrel darted from bough to bough, and at last ran down the trunk
of the chestnut. Mary followed it with eager glances till her eyes fell
upon the root of the tree. The stone dropped from her hand, the angry
color fled from her face, and stretching out her arms with a cry that
perished on her lips she waited for the missionary to descend.
He came rather quickly, and the gentle serenity of his countenance was
disturbed, but still a look of unutterable goodness rested upon it. When
he reached Mary her eyes were flooded with tears, and she trembled from
head to foot. _His_ sympathy she could endure. His very look had opened
the purest fountains of her heart again. She was not altogether alone.
“Crying, Mary, crying?” he said, in a tone of inquiry, rather than of
reproach. “Who has taught you to weep?”
“Oh! father, father, what can I do? Where can I hide myself?” cried the
poor girl, lifting her clasped hands piteously upward.
The missionary saw it all. For a moment the color left his lips, and his
eyes were full of trouble to their azure depths. He sat down by her
side, and drew her gently towards him.
“And this has driven you so far from home?” he said, smoothing her hair
with one hand, which trembled among the golden tresses, for never had
his sympathies been drawn more powerfully forth. “Who has done this
cruel thing, Mary?”
She did not answer, but he felt a shudder pass over her frame as she
made a vain effort to speak.
“Was it your playfellows at school?”
“I shall never have playfellows again,” broke from the trembling lips
which seemed torn apart by the desolating words; “never again, for where
does another girl like me live in the world? God has made no playfellow
for me!”
The missionary allowed her to weep. He knew that a world of bitterness
would be carried from her bosom with those tears.
“But God has made us for something better than playfellows to each
other,” he said at last, taking her little hand in his.
She looked at him wistfully, and answered with unutterable sadness, “But
I cannot be even that; I am alone!”
“No,” answered the missionary, “not alone—not alone, though you never
heard another human voice—even here in the deep woods you would find
something to love and help, too—never think yourself alone, Mary, while
any creature that God has made is near.”
“But who will love _me_? Who will help _me_?” cried the girl, with a
burst of anguish.
“Who will love you, Mary! Do not I love you? Does not your grandmother
and sister love you?”
“But now—now that they know about this—that I am a hunchback, it will be
all over.”
“But they have known it, Mary, ever since you were a little child. Well,
well! we must not talk about it, but think how much every one at home
has loved you.”
“And they knew it all—they saw it while I was blind, and loved me
still,” murmured the girl, while great tears of gratitude rolled down
her cheeks, “and they will love me always just the same—you promise me
this?”
“Always the same, Mary!”
“Yes, yes—I see they have loved me always, more than if I were ever so
beautiful—they were sorry for me; I understand!” There was a sting of
bitterness in her voice. The love which came from compassion wounded
her.
“But our Saviour loves his creatures most for this very reason. Their
imperfections and feebleness appeal like an unuttered prayer to him. It
is a beautiful love, Mary, that which strength gives to dependence, for
it approaches nearest to that heavenly benevolence which the true soul
always thirsts for.”
Mary lifted her eyes to his face as he spoke. The unshed tears trembled
like diamonds within them. She became very thoughtful, and drooped
slowly downward, coloring faintly beneath his eyes, as maidens sometimes
blush at their own innocent thoughts when nothing but the eye of God is
upon them.
“But there is another love, my father; I have seen it at the school and
in the cabins, I have watched it as I have the mountain flowers, and
thought that God meant this love for me, like the rest; but when I go
among other girls, no one will ever think that I am one of them—no one
but Edward Clark, and he only feels pity-love for me; to all the rest I
am a hunchback.”
A look of great trouble came upon the face of the missionary. For some
moments he did not answer, and the poor girl drooped by his side. The
blush faded from the snow of her forehead, and she trembled all over
with vague shame of the words she had spoken. His silence seemed like a
reproach to her.
“My child!”—oh! with what holy sweetness the words fell from his
lips—“my child, it is true; this love must never be yours.”
“Never!” echoed the pale lips of the child. “Never!”
“This dream of love, give it up, Mary, while it is but a dream,” added
the missionary, in a firmer voice. “To many more than yourself it is a
hope never, never realized. Do not struggle for it—do not pine for
it—God help you! child—God help us all!”
The anguish in his voice thrilled her to the soul. She bent her forehead
meekly to his knee, murmuring:
“I will try to be patient—but, oh! do not look at me so mournfully.”
He laid his hands softly under her forehead, and, lifting her face to
his gazed mournfully upon it, as if his soul were looking far away
through her eyes into the dim past.
“Father, believe me, I will try.”
His hands dropped downward at the sound of her voice, and his lips began
to move, as if unuttered words were passing through them. Mary knew that
he was praying, and her face drooped reverently downward. When or how
this silence broke into words she never knew, but over her soul went the
burning eloquence of his voice, carried heavenward by prayer—by the
wind, and the rush of the mountain stream. The very breath lay still
upon her lips as she listened, and she felt more like a winged angel
close to the gate of heaven than the poor deformed girl, whose soul had,
a few hours before, been so full of bitterness.