{34}
“But ah! who can deceive his destiny,
Or ween by warning to avoid his fate?”
Fairy Queen.
On the following morning Mr. Fletcher set out for Boston, and,
escaping all perils by flood and field, arrived there at the
expiration of nine days, having accomplished the journey, now the
affair of a single day, with unusual expedition.
His wards were accompanied by two individuals, who were now, with
them, to become permanent members of his family: Mrs. Grafton, the
sister of their father, and one Master Cradock, a scholar “skilled in
the tongues,” who attended them as their tutor. Mrs. Grafton was a
widow, far on the shady side of fifty; though, as that was a subject
to which she never alluded, she probably regarded age with the
feelings ascribed to her sex, that being the last quality for which
womankind would wish to be honoured, as is said by one whose satire is
so good-humoured that even its truth may be endured. She was,
unhappily for herself, as her lot was cast, a zealous adherent to the
Church of England. Good people, who take upon themselves the
supervisorship of their neighbours’ consciences, abounded in that age,
and from them Mrs. Grafton received frequent {35} exhortations and
remonstrances. To these she uniformly replied, “That a faith and mode
of religion that had saved so many, was good enough to save her;”
“that she had received her belief, just as it was, from her father,
and that he, not she, was responsible for it.” Offensive such opinions
must needs be in a community of professed reformers, but the good lady
did not make them more so by the obtrusiveness of over-wrought zeal.
To confess the truth, her mind was far more intent on the forms of
headpieces than modes of faith, and she was far more ambitious of
being the leader of fashion than the leader of a sect. She would have
contended more earnestly for a favourite recipe than a favourite
dogma; and though she undoubtedly believed “a saint in crape” to be
“twice a saint in lawn,” and fearlessly maintained that “no man could
suitably administer the offices of religion without ‘gown, surplice,
and wig,’” yet she chiefly directed her hostilities against the
puritanical attire of the ladies of the colony, who, she insisted,
“did most unnaturally belie their nature as women, and their birth and
bringing-up as gentlewomen, by their ill-fashioned, ill-sorted, and
unbecoming apparel.” To this heresy she was fast gaining proselytes;
for, if we may believe the “simple cobbler of Agawam,” there were,
even in those early and pure days, “nugiperous gentle dames who
inquired what dress the Queen is in this week.” The contagion spread
rapidly; and when some of the most vigilant and zealous sentinels
proposed that the preachers should {36} make it the subject of public
and personal reproof, it was whispered that the scandal was not
limited to idle maidens, but that certain of the deacons’ wives were
in it, and it was deemed more prudent to adopt gentle and private
measures to eradicate the evil; an evil so deeply felt as to be
bewailed by the merciless “cobbler” above quoted in the following
affecting terms: “Methinks it would break the hearts of Englishmen to
see so many goodly English women imprisoned in French cages, peeping
out of their hood-holes for some men of mercy to help them with a
little wit, and nobody relieves them. We have about five or six of
them in our colony. If I see any of them accidentally, I cannot
cleanse my phansie of them for a month after.”
It would seem marvellous that a woman like Mrs. Grafton, apparently
engrossed with the world, living on the foam and froth of life, should
become a voluntary exile to the colonies; but, to do her justice, she
was kind-hearted and affectionate, susceptible of strong and
controlling attachment, and the infant children of a brother on whom
she had doted outweighed her love of frivolous pleasures and personal
indulgence.
She certainly believed that the resolution of her sister to go to the
wilderness had no parallel in the history of human folly and madness;
but, the resolution once taken, and, as she perceived, unconquerable,
she made her own destiny conformable, not without some restiffness,
but without serious repining. It was an unexpected shock to her to be
compelled {37} to leave Boston for a condition of life not only more
rude and inconvenient, but really dangerous. Necessity, however, is
more potent than philosophy, and Mrs. Grafton, like most people,
submitted with patience to an inevitable evil.
As “good Master Cradock” was a man rather acted upon than acting, we
shall leave him to be discovered by our readers as the light of others
falls on him.
Mr. Fletcher received the children--the relicts and gifts of a woman
whom he had loved as few men can love--with an intense interest. The
youngest, Mary, was a pretty, petted child, wayward and bashful. She
repelled Mr. Fletcher’s caresses, and ran away from him to shelter
herself in her aunt’s arms; but Alice, the eldest, seemed
instinctively to return the love that beamed in the first glance that
Mr. Fletcher cast on her; in that brief, eager glance he saw the
living and beautiful image of her mother. So much was he impressed
with the resemblance, that he said, in a letter to his wife, that it
reminded him of the heathen doctrine of metempsychosis, and he could
almost believe the spirit of the mother was transferred to the bosom
of the child. The arrangement Mr. Fletcher made for the transportation
of his charge to Springfield might probably be traced to the
preference inspired by this resemblance.
He despatched the little Mary with her aunt and the brother of
Magawisca, the Indian boy Oneco, and such attendants as were necessary
for their safe conduct, and he retained Alice and the tutor to be {38}
the companions of his journey. Before the children were separated they
were baptized by the Reverend Mr. Cotton, and, in commemoration of the
Christian graces of their mother, their names were changed to the
puritanical appellations of Hope and Faith.
Mr. Fletcher was detained, at first by business and afterward by ill
health, much longer than he had expected, and the fall, winter, and
earliest months of spring wore away before he was able to set his face
homeward. In the mean time, his little community at Bethel proceeded
more harmoniously than could have been hoped from the discordant
materials of which it was composed. This was owing, in great part, to
the wise and gentle Mrs. Fletcher, the sun of her little system; all
were obedient to the silent influence that controlled without being
perceived. The following letter which she wrote to Mr. Fletcher just
before his return, contains some important domestic details.
“Springfield, 1638.
“To my good and Honoured Husband:
“Thy kind letter was duly received fourteen days after date, and was
most welcome to me, containing, as it does, a portion of that stream
of kindness that is ever flowing out from thy bountiful nature towards
me. Sweet and refreshing was it, as these gentle days of spring after
our sullen winter. Winter! ever disconsolate in these parts, but made
tenfold more dreary by the absence of that precious light by which I
have ever been cheered and guided.
{39}
“I thank thee heartily, my dear life, that thou dost so warmly commend
my poor endeavours to do well in thy absence. I have truly tried to be
faithful to my little nestlings, and to cheer them with notes of
gladness when I have drooped inwardly for the voice of my mate. Yet my
anxious thoughts have been more with thee than with myself; nor have I
been unmindful of any of thy perplexities by sickness or otherwise,
but in all thy troubles I have been troubled, and have ever prayed
that, whatever might betide me, thou mightst return in safety to thy
desiring family.
“I have had many difficulties to contend with in thy absence, of which
I have forborne to inform thee, deeming it the duty of a wife never to
disquiet her husband with her household cares; but now that, with the
Lord’s permission, thou art so soon to be with us, I would fain render
unto thee an account of my stewardship, knowing that thou art not a
hard master, and wilt consider the will, and not the weakness, of thy
loving wife.
“This Dame Grafton is strangely out of place here--fitter for a
parlour bird than a flight into the wilderness; and but that she
cometh commended to us as a widow--a name that is a draught from the
Lord upon every Christian heart--we might find it hard to brook her
light and worldly ways. She raileth, and yet, I think, not with an
evil mind, but rather ignorantly, at our most precious faith, and hath
even ventured to read aloud from her book of Common Prayer: an offence
that she hath been prevented from repeating {40} by the somewhat
profane jest of our son Everell, whose love of mischief, proceeding
from the gay temper of youth, I trust you will overlook. It was a few
nights ago, when a storm was raging, that the poor lady’s fears were
greatly excited. My womanish apprehensions had a hard struggle with my
duty, so terrific was the hideous howling of the wolves, mingling with
the blasts that swept through the forest; but I stilled my beating
heart with the thought that my children leaned on me, and I must not
betray my weakness. But Dame Grafton was beside herself. At one moment
she fancied we should be the prey of the wild beast, and at the next,
that she heard the alarm yell of the savages. Everell brought her her
prayer-book, and, affecting a well-beseeming gravity, begged her to
look out the prayer for distressed women in imminent danger of being
scalped by North American Indians. The poor lady, distracted with
terror, seized the book, and turned over leaf after leaf, Everell,
meanwhile, affecting to aid her search. In vain I shook my head
reprovingly at the boy; in vain I assured Mistress Grafton that I
trusted we were in no danger; she was beyond the influence of reason;
nothing allayed her fears, till, chancing to catch a glance of
Everell’s eye, she detected the lurking laughter, and rapping him
soundly over the ears with her book, she left the room greatly
enraged. I grieve to add, that Everell evinced small sorrow for his
levity, though I admonished him thereupon. At the same time I thought
it a fit occasion to commend the sagacity whereby {41} he had detected
the shortcomings of written prayers, and to express my hope that,
unpromising as his beginnings are, he may prove a son of Jacob that
shall wrestle and prevail.
“I have something farther to say of Everell, who is, in the main, a
most devoted son, and, as I believe, an apt scholar; as his master
telleth me that he readeth Latin like his mother tongue, and is well
grounded in the Greek. The boy doth greatly affect the company of the
Pequod girl Magawisca. If, in his studies, he meets with any trait of
heroism (and with such, truly, her mind doth seem naturally to
assimilate), he straightway calleth for her, and rendereth it into
English, in which she hath made such marvellous progress that I am
sometimes startled with the beautiful forms in which she clothes her
simple thoughts. She, in her turn, doth take much delight in
describing to him the customs of her people, and relating their
traditionary tales, which are, like pictures, captivating to a
youthful imagination. He hath taught her to read, and reads to her
Spenser’s rhymes, and many other books of the like kind, of which, I
am sorry to say, Dame Grafton hath brought hither stores. I have not
forbidden him to read them, well knowing that the appetite of youth is
often whetted by denial, and fearing that the boy might be tempted
secretly to evade my authority; and I would rather expose him to all
the mischief of this unprofitable lore, than to tempt him to a deceit
that might corrupt the sweet fountain of truth--the well-spring of all
that is good and noble.
{42}
“I have gone far from my subject. When my boy comes before my mind’s
eye, I can see no other object. But to return. I have not been
unmindful of my duty to the Indian girl, but have endeavoured to
instil into her mind the first principles of our religion, as
contained in Mr. Cotton’s Catechism and elsewhere. But, alas! to these
her eye is shut and her ear is closed, not only with that blindness
and deafness common to the natural man, but she entertaineth an
aversion, which has the fixedness of principle, and doth continually
remind me of Hannibal’s hatred to Rome, and is, like that, inwrought
with her filial piety. I have in vain attempted to subdue her to the
drudgery of domestic service, and make her take part with Jennet; but
as hopefully might you yoke a deer with an ox. It is not that she
lacks obedience to me: so far as it seems she can command her duty,
she is ever complying; but it appeareth impossible to her to clip the
wings of her soaring thoughts, and keep them down to household
matters.
“I have sometimes marvelled at the providence of God, in bestowing on
this child of the forest such rare gifts of mind, and other and
outward beauties. Her voice hath a natural, deep, and most sweet
melody in it, far beyond any stringed instrument. She hath, too (think
not that I, like Everell, am, as Jennet saith, a charmed bird to
her)--she hath, though yet a child in years, that in her mien that
doth bring to mind the lofty Judith and the gracious Esther. When I
once said this to Everell, he replied, {43} ‘Oh, mother! is she not
more like the gentle and tender Ruth?’ To him she may be, and
therefore it is that, innocent and safe as the intercourse of these
children now is, it is for thee to decide whether it be not most wise
to remove the maiden from our dwelling. Two young plants that have
sprung up in close neighbourhood may be separated while young, but if
disjoined after their fibres are all intertwined, one, or perchance
both, may perish.
“Think not that this anxiety springs from the mistaken fancy of a
woman, that love is the natural channel for all the purposes,
thoughts, hopes, and feelings of humanity. Neither think, I beseech
thee, that, doting with a foolish fondness upon my noble boy, I
magnify into importance whatsoever concerneth him. No: my heart
yearneth towards this poor heathen orphan-girl; and when I see her, in
his absence, starting at every sound, and her restless eye turning an
asking glance at every opening of the door, every movement betokening
a disquieted spirit, and then the sweet contentment that stealeth over
her face when he appeareth--oh, my honoured husband! all my woman’s
nature feeleth for her; not for any present evil, but for what may
betide.
“Having commended this subject to thy better wisdom, I will leave
caring for it to speak to thee of others of thy household. Your three
little girls are thriving mightily; and as to the baby, you will not
be ashamed to own him, though you will not recognise, in the bouncing
boy that plays bo-peep and creeps quite over the room, the little
creature who {44} had scarcely opened his eyes on the world when you
went away. He is by far the largest child I ever had, and the most
knowing; he has cut his front upper teeth, and showeth signs of two
more. He is surprisingly fond of Oneco, and clappeth his hands with
joy whenever he sees him. Indeed, the boy is a favourite with all the
young ones, and greatly aideth me by continually pleasuring them. He
is far different from his sister--gay and volatile, giving scarcely
one thought to the past, and not one care to the future. His sister
often taketh him apart to discourse with him, and sometimes doth
produce a cast of seriousness over his countenance; but at the next
presented object, it vanisheth as speedily as a shadow before a
sunbeam. He hath commended himself greatly to the favour of Dame
Grafton by his devotion to her little favourite: a spoiled child is
she, and it seemeth a pity that the name of Faith was given to her,
since her shrinking, timid character doth not promise, in any manner,
to resemble that most potent of the Christian graces. Oneco hath
always some charm to lure her waywardness. He bringeth home the
treasures of the woods to please her--berries, and wild flowers, and
the beautiful plumage of birds that are brought down by his unerring
aim. Everell hath much advantage from the wood-craft of Oneco: the two
boys daily enrich our table, which, in truth, hath need of such helps,
with the spoils of the air and water.
“I am grieved to tell thee that some misrule hath crept in among thy
servants in thy absence. Alas, {45} what are sheep without their
shepherd! Digby is, as ever, faithful--not serving with eye-service;
but Hutton hath consorted much with some evil-doers, who have been
violating the law of God and the law of our land, by meeting together
in merry companies, playing cards, dancing, and the like. For these
offences they were brought before Mr. Pynchon, and sentenced to
receive, each, ‘twenty stripes well laid on.’ Hutton furthermore,
having been overtaken with drink, was condemned to wear, suspended
around his neck, for one month, a bit of wood on which Toper is
legibly written; and Darby, who is ever a dawdler, having gone, last
Saturday, with the cart to the village, dilly-dallied about there, and
did not set out on his return till the sun was quite down, both to the
eye and by the calendar. Accordingly, early on the following Monday he
was summoned before Mr. Pynchon, and ordered to receive ten stripes;
but by reason of his youth and my intercession, which, being by a
private letter, doubtless had some effect, the punishment was
remitted; whereupon he heartily promised amendment and a better
carriage.
“There hath been some alarm here within the last few days, on account
of certain Indians who have been seen lurking in the woods around us.
They are reported not to have a friendly appearance. We have been
advised to remove, for the present, to the Fort; but, as I feel no
apprehension, I shall not disarrange my family by taking a step that
would savour more of fear than prudence. I say I feel no {46}
apprehension; yet I must confess it, I have a cowardly, womanish
spirit, and fear is set in motion by the very mention of danger. There
are vague forebodings hanging about me, and I cannot drive them away
even by the thought that your presence, my honoured husband, will soon
relieve me from all agitating apprehensions, and repair all the faults
of my poor judgment. Fearful thoughts press on me; untoward accidents
have prolonged thy absence; our reunion may yet be far distant; and if
it should never chance in this world, oh remember, that if I have
fallen far short in duty, the measure of my love hath been full. I
have ever known that mine was Leah’s portion; that I was not the
chosen and the loved one; and this has sometimes made me fearful,
often joyless; but remember, it is only the perfect love of the
husband that casteth out the fear of the wife.
“I have one request to prefer to thee, which I have lacked courage to
make by word of mouth, and therefore now commend it by letter to thy
kindness. Be gracious unto me, my dear husband, and deem not that I
overstep the modest bound of a woman’s right in meddling with that
which is thy prerogative--the ordering of our eldest son’s education.
Everell here hath few except spiritual privileges. God, who seeth my
heart, knoweth I do not undervalue these--the manna of the wilderness.
Yet to them might be added worldly helps, to aid the growth of the
boy’s noble gifts, a kind Providence having opened a wide door
therefore in the generous offer of my {47} brother Stretton. True, he
hath not attained to our light, whereby manifold errors of Church and
State are made visible, yet he hath ever borne himself uprightly, and
to us most lovingly; and as I remember there was a good Samaritan and
a faithful centurion, I think we are permitted to enlarge the bounds
of our charity to those who work righteousness, albeit not of our
communion.
“Thou hast already sown the good seed in our boy’s heart, and it hath
been (I say it not presumingly) nurtured with a mother’s tears and
prayers. Trust, then, to the promised blessing, and fear not to permit
him to pass a few years in England, whence he will return to be a
crown of glory to thee, my husband, and a blessing and honour to our
chosen country. Importunity, I know, is not beseeming in a wife; it is
the instrument of weakness, whereby, like the mouse in the fable, she
would gnaw away what she cannot break. I will not, therefore, urge
thee farther, but leave the decision to thy wisdom and thy love. And
now, my dear husband, I kiss and embrace thee; and may God company
with thee, and restore thee, if it be his good pleasure, to thy ever
faithful, and loving, and obedient wife,
“Martha Fletcher.
“To her honoured husband these be delivered.”
The above letter may indicate, but it feebly expresses, the character
and state of mind of the writer. She never magnified her love by
words, but expressed it by that self-devoting, self-sacrificing
conduct {48} to her husband and children, which characterizes, in all
ages and circumstances, faithful and devoted woman. She was too
generous to communicate all her fears (about which a woman is
generally least reserved) to her husband.
Some occurrences of the preceding day had given her just cause of
alarm. At a short distance from Bethel (the name that Mr. Fletcher had
given his residence) there lived an old Indian woman, one of the few
survivers of a tribe who had been faithful allies of the Pequods.
After the destruction of her people, she had strayed up the banks of
the Connecticut, and remained in Springfield. She was in the habit of
supplying Mrs. Fletcher with wild berries and herbs, and receiving
favours in return, and on that day went thither, as it appeared, on
her customary errand. She had made her usual barter, and had drawn her
blanket around her as if to depart, but still she lingered, standing
before Mrs. Fletcher, and looking fixedly at her. Mrs. Fletcher did
not at first observe her; her head was bent over her infant sleeping
on her lap, in the attitude of listening to its soft breathing. As she
perused its innocent face, a mother’s beautiful visions floated before
her; but as she raised her eye, and met the piercing glance of the old
woman, a dark cloud came over the clear heaven of her thoughts.
Nelema’s brow was contracted, her lips drawn in, and her little sunken
eye gleamed like a diamond from its dark recess.
“Why do you look at my baby thus?” asked Mrs. Fletcher.
{49}
The old woman replied in her own dialect, in a hurried, inarticulate
manner. “What says she, Magawisca?” asked Mrs. Fletcher of the Indian
girl, who stood beside her, and seemed to listen with unwonted
interest.
“She says, madam, the baby is like a flower just opened to the sun,
with no stain upon it; that he better pass now to the Great Spirit.
She says this world is all a rough place--all sharp stones, and deep
waters, and black clouds!”
“Oh, she is old, Magawisca, and the days have come to her that have no
pleasure in them. Look there,” she said, “Nelema, at my son
Everell!”--the boy was at the moment passing the window, flushed with
exercise, and triumphantly displaying a string of game that he had
just brought from the forest--“is there not sunshine in my boy’s face?
To him every day is bright, and every path is smooth.”
“Ah!” replied the old woman, with a heavy groan, “I had sons too, and
grandsons; but where are they? They trod the earth as lightly as that
boy; but they have fallen, like our forest trees, before the stroke of
the English axe. Of all my race, there is not one now in whose veins
my blood runs. Sometimes, when the spirits of the storm are howling
about my wigwam, I hear the voices of my children crying for
vengeance, and then I could myself deal the death-blow.” Nelema spoke
with vehemence and wild gestures; and her language, though interpreted
by Magawisca’s soft voice, had little tendency to allay the feeling
her manner inspired. Mrs. {50} Fletcher recoiled from her, and
instinctively drew her baby closer to her breast.
“Nay,” said the old woman, “fear me not; I have had kindness from
thee; thy blankets have warmed me, I have been fed from thy table, and
drank of thy cup; and what is this arm,” and she threw back her
blanket, and stretched out her naked, shrivelled, trembling arm, “what
is this to do the work of vengeance?”
She paused for an instant, glanced her eye wildly around the room, and
then again fixed it on Mrs. Fletcher and her infant. “They spared not
our homes,” she said; “there, where our old men spoke, where was heard
the song of the maiden and the laugh of our children, there now all is
silence, dust, and ashes. I can neither harm thee nor help thee. When
the stream of vengeance rolls over the land, the tender shoot must be
broken, and the goodly tree uprooted that gave its pleasant shade and
fruits to all.”
“It is a shame and a sin,” said Jennet, who entered the room just as
Magawisca was conveying Nelema’s speech to Mrs. Fletcher, “a crying
shame, for this heathen hag to be pouring forth here as if she were
gifted like the prophets of old--she that can only see into the future
by reading the devil’s book; and, if that be the case, as more than
one has mistrusted, it were best forthwith to deliver her to the
judges, and cast her into prison.”
“Peace, Jennet,” said Mrs. Fletcher, alarmed less Nelema should hear
her, and her feelings, which {51} were then at an exalted pitch,
should be wrought to phrensy; but her apprehensions were groundless;
the old woman saw nothing but the visions of her imagination; heard
nothing but the fancied voices of the spirits of her race. She
continued for a few moments to utter her thoughts in low, articulate
murmurs, and then, without again addressing Mrs. Fletcher, or raising
her eyes, she left the house.
A few moments after her departure, Mrs. Fletcher perceived that she
had dropped at her feet a little roll, which she found, on
examination, to be an arrow, and the rattle of a rattlesnake,
enveloped in a skin of the same reptile. She knew it was the custom of
the savages to express much meaning by these symbols, and she turned
to demand an explanation of Magawisca, who was deeply skilled in all
the ways of her people.
Magawisca had disappeared; and Jennet, who had ever looked on the poor
girl with a jealous and an evil eye, took this occasion to give vent
to her feelings. “It is a pity,” she said, “the child is out of the
way the first time she was like to do a service; she may be skilled in
snake’s rattles and bloody arrows, for I make no doubt she is as used
to them as I am to my broom and scrubbing-cloth.”
“Will you call Magawisca to me?” said Mrs. Fletcher, in a voice that
from her would have been a silencing reproof to a more sensitive ear
than Jennet’s; but she, no ways daunted, replied, “Ah! that will I,
madam, if I can find her; but where to look {52} for her no mere
mortal can tell; for she does not stay longer on a perch than a
butterfly, unless, indeed, it be when she is working on Mr. Everell’s
moccasins, or filling his ears with wild fables about those rampaging
Indians. Ah, there she is!” she exclaimed, looking through the window,
“talking with Nelema, just a little way into the wood; there, I see
their heads above those scrub-oaks; see their wild motions; see,
Magawisca starts homeward--now the old woman pulls her back--now she
seems entreating Nelema; the old hag shakes her head--Magawisca covers
her eyes: what can all this mean? no good, I am sure. The girl is ever
going to Nelema’s hut, and of moonlight nights too, when they say
witches work their will: birds of a feather flock together. Well, I
know one thing, that if Master Everell was mine, I would sooner, in
faith, cast him into the lion’s den or the fiery furnace, than leave
him to this crafty offspring of a race that are the children and heirs
of the Evil One.”
“Jennet,” said Mrs. Fletcher, “thy tongue far outruns thy discretion.
Restrain thy foolish thoughts, and bid Magawisca come to me.”
Jennet sullenly obeyed, and soon after Magawisca entered. Mrs.
Fletcher was struck with her changed aspect. She turned away, as one
conscious of possessing a secret, and fearful that the eye will speak
unbidden. Her air was troubled and anxious, and instead of her usual
light and lofty step, she moved timidly and dejectedly.
“Come to me, Magawisca,” said Mrs. Fletcher, {53} “and deal truly by
me, as I have ever dealt by thee.”
She obeyed, and as she stood by Mrs. Fletcher, the poor girl’s tears
dropped on her benefactor’s lap. “Thou hast been more than true,” she
said; “thou hast been kind to me as the mother-bird that shelters the
wanderer in her nest.”
“Then, Magawisca, if it concerneth me to know it, thou wilt explain
the meaning of this roll which Nelema dropped at my feet.”
The girl started and became very pale: to an observing eye, the
changes of the olive skin are as apparent as those of a fairer
complexion. She took the roll from Mrs. Fletcher, and shut her eyes
fast. Her bosom heaved convulsively; but, after a short struggle with
conflicting feelings, she said deliberately, in a low voice, “That
which I may speak without bringing down on me the curse of my father’s
race, I will speak. This,” she added, unfolding the snake’s skin,
“this betokeneth the unseen and silent approach of an enemy. This, you
know,” and she held up the rattle, “is the warning voice that speaketh
of danger near. And this,” she concluded, taking the arrow in her
trembling hand, “this is the symbol of death.”
“And why, Magawisca, are these fearful tokens given to me? Dost thou
know, girl, aught of a threatening enemy--of an ambushed foe?”
“I have said all that I may say,” she replied.
Mrs. Fletcher questioned farther, but could obtain no satisfaction.
Magawisca’s lips were sealed; and {54} it was certain that, if her
resolution did not yield to the entreaties of her own heart, it would
resist every other influence.
Mrs. Fletcher summoned Everell, and bade him urge Magawisca to
disclose whatever Nelema had communicated. He did so, but sportively,
for he said “the old woman was cracked, and Magawisca’s head was
turned. If there were indeed danger,” he continued, “and Magawisca was
apprized of it, think you, mother, she would permit us to remain in
ignorance?” He turned an appealing glance to Magawisca, but her face
was averted. Without suspecting this was intentional, he continued,
“You ought to do penance, Magawisca, for the alarm you have given
mother. You and I will act as her patrol to-night.”
Magawisca assented, and appeared relieved by the proposition, though
her gloom was not lightened by Everell’s gayety. Mrs. Fletcher did
not, of course, acquiesce in this arrangement, but she deemed it
prudent to communicate her apprehensions to her trusty Digby. After a
short consultation, it was agreed that Digby should remain on guard
during the night, and that the two other men-servants should have
their muskets in order, and be ready at a moment’s warning. Such
precautions were not unfrequent, and caused no unusual excitement in
the household. Mrs. Fletcher had it, as she expressed herself, “borne
in upon her mind, after the evening exercise, to make some remarks
upon the uncertainty of life.” She then dismissed the family to their
several {55} apartments, and herself retired to endite the epistle
given above.
Everell observed Magawisca closely through the evening, and he was
convinced, from the abstraction of her manner, and from the efforts
she made (which were now apparent to him) to maintain a calm
demeanour, that there was more ground for his mother’s apprehensions
than he at first supposed. He determined to be the companion of
Digby’s watch; and, standing high in that good fellow’s confidence, he
made a private arrangement with him, which he easily effected without
his mother’s knowledge; for his youthful zeal did not render him
regardless of the impropriety of heightening her fears.