{139}
“Powwow--a priest. These do begin and order their service and
invocation of their gods, and all the people follow, and join
interchangeably in a laborious bodily service unto sweating,
especially of the priest, who spends himself in strange antic gestures
and actions even unto fainting. Being once in their houses and
beholding what their worship was, I never durst be an eyewitness,
spectator, or looker-on, lest I should have been a partaker of Satan’s
inventions and worships.”--Roger Williams.
The following letter, written by Hope Leslie, and addressed to
Everell Fletcher, then residing in England, will show, briefly, the
state of affairs at Bethel seven years subsequent to the date of the
events already detailed. Little had occurred, save the changes of the
seasons in nature and human life, to mark the progress of time.
“Dear Everell:
“This is the fifth anniversary of the day you left us--your birthday
too, you know; so we celebrate it, but with a blended joy and grief,
which, as my dear guardian says, is suitable to the mixed condition of
human life.
“I surprised him this morning with a painting on which I had expended
much time and laid out all my poor skill. The scene is a forest glade;
a boy is sleeping under a birch tree, near a thicket of hazel {140}
bushes, and from their deepest shadow peeps a gaunt wolf, in the act
of springing on him; while, just emerging from the depths of the wood,
in the background, appears a man with a musket levelled at the animal.
I had placed the painting on the mantelpiece, and it caught your
father’s eye as he entered to attend our morning exercise. He said
nothing, for you know the order of our devotions is as strictly
observed as were the services of the ancient Temple. So we all took
our accustomed places: I mine, on the cushion beside your father;
yours still stands on the other side of him, like the vacant seat of
Banquo. Love can paint as well as fear; and though no form, palpable
to common eyes, is seated there, yet, to our second sight, imagination
produces from her shadowy regions the form of our dear Everell.
“I believe the picture had touched the hidden springs of memory, for
your father, though he was reading the chapter of Exodus that speaks
of the wise-hearted men who wrought for the sanctuary (a portion of
scripture not particularly moving), repeatedly wiped the gathering
tears from his eyes. Jennet is never lagging in the demonstration of
religious emotion, and I inferred from her responsive hems! and hahs!
that, as there was no obvious cause for tears, she fancied affecting
types were lurking in the ‘loops and selvages, and tenons and sockets,
and fine twined linen’ about which your father was reading. But when
he came, in his prayer, to his customary mention of his absent child;
when he touched {141} upon the time when his habitation was made
desolate, and then upon the deliverance of his son, his only son, from
the savage foe and the ravening beast, his voice faltered; every heart
responded; Digby sobbed aloud; and even my aunt Grafton, whose
aversion to standing at her devotions has not diminished with her
increasing years, stood a monument of patience till the clock twice
told the hour; though it was but the other day, when she thought your
father was drawing to a close, and he started a new topic, that she
broke out, after her way of thinking aloud, ‘Well, if he is going on
t’other tack, I’ll sit down.’
“When the exercise was finished, Digby gave vent to his pleasure.
‘There, Jennet,’ he said, rubbing his hands exultingly, ‘you are
always on the lookout for witchcraft. I wonder what you call that? It
is a perfect picture of the place where I found Mr. Everell, as that
fellow there, in the frieze jacket, is of me; and anybody would know
that, though they would not expect to see John Digby painted in a
picture. To be sure, Mr. Everell does not look quite so pale and
famished as he did when I first saw him sleeping under that birch
tree: as I live, she has put his name there, just as he had carved it.
Well, it will be a kind of a history for Mr. Everell’s children, when
we, and the forest too, are laid low.’
“Your father permitted the honest fellow’s volubility to flow
unrepressed; he himself only said, as he drew me to him and kissed me,
‘You have kept a faithful copy of our dear Everell in your memory.’
{142}
“My honest tutor, Cradock, and my aunt Grafton contended for the
honour of my excellence in the art--poor Cradock, my Apollo! He
maintained that he had taught me the theory, while aunt Grafton
boasted her knowledge of the practice; but, alas! the little honour my
success reflected on them was not worth their contest; and I did them
no injustice in secretly ascribing all my skill to the source whence
the Corinthian maid derived her power to trace, by the secret lamp,
the shade of her lover. Affection for my dear Everell and for his
father is my inspiration; but, I confess, it might never have appeared
in the mimicry of even this rude painting, if my aunt Grafton had not
taken lessons at the Convent of the Chartreux at Paris, and had daily
access, as you know she has a thousand times repeated to us, to the
paintings of Rossi and Albati in the palace of Fontainebleau.
“But into what egotism does this epistolary journalizing betray me?
The day is yours, Everell, and I will not speak again of myself.
“My aunt, meaning to do it what honour she could, had our dinner-table
set out with massive silver dishes, engraved with her family’s
armorial bearings. They have never before seen the light in America.
Your father smiled at their contrast with our bare walls, pine tables,
chairs, &c., and said we looked like Attila in his rude hut,
surrounded with the spoils of Rome; and aunt Grafton, who has a
decided taste for all the testimonials of her family grandeur, entered
into a warm discussion with Master Cradock as to how far the new man
might lawfully {143} indulge in a vain show. By-the-way, their
skirmishing on the debatable grounds of Church and State have of late
almost ceased. When I remarked this to your father, he said he
believed I had brought about the present amicable state of affairs, by
affording them a kind of neutral ground, where their common affections
and interests met. Whatever has produced this result, it is too happy
not to be carefully cherished; so I have taken care that my poor
tutor, who never would intentionally provoke a human being, should
avoid, as far as possible, all those peculiarities which, as some
colours offend certain animals, were sure every day, and thrice a day,
to call forth my aunt’s animadversions. I have, too, entered into a
secret confederacy with Digby, the effect of which is, that Master
Cradock’s little brown wig is brushed every morning, and is, at least
once each day, straight on his head. The brush has invaded, too, the
hitherto unexplored regions of his broadcloth, and his black stock
gives place, on every Lord’s day at least, to a white collar. Aunt
Grafton herself has more than once remarked, that, ‘for one of these
scholar-folks, he goes quite decent.’ As to aunt Grafton, I am afraid
that, if you were here, though we may both have gained with our years
a little discretion, yet I am afraid we should laugh, as we were wont
to do, at her innocent peculiarities. She spends many a weary hour in
devising new head-gear, and doth daily, as Jennet says, break the law
against costly apparel. Jennet is the same untired and tiresome
railer. If there are anodynes for the tongue in England, pray send
some for her.
{144}
“We are going to-morrow on an excursion to a new settlement on the
river, called Northampton. Your father feared the toils and perils of
the way for me, and has consented, reluctantly, to my being of the
party. Aunt Grafton remonstrated, and expressed her natural and kind
apprehensions, by alleging that it was ‘very unladylike, and a thing
quite unheard of in England,’ for a young person like me to go out
exploring a new country. I urged that our new country develops
faculties that young ladies in England were unconscious of possessing.
She maintained, as usual, that whatever was not practised and known in
England, was not worth possessing; but finally she concluded her
opposition with her old customary phrase, ‘Well, it’s peculiar of you,
Miss Hope,’ which, you know, she always uses to characterize whatever
opposes her opinions or inclinations.
“My good tutor, who would fain be my ægis-bearer, insists on
attending me. You may laugh at him, Everell, and call him my
knight-errant, or squire, or what you will; but I assure you, he is a
right godly and suitable appendage to a Pilgrim damsel. I will finish
my letter when I return; a journey of twenty miles has put my thoughts
(which, you know, are ever ready to take wing) to flight.
======
“25th October, Thursday--or, as the injunction has come from Boston
that we be more particular in avoiding these heathen designations,
8th month 25th, 5th day.
{145}
“Dear Everell: We followed the Indian footpath that winds along the
margin of the river, and reached Northampton without any accident.
There is but a narrow opening there, scooped out of the forest, and
Mr. Holioke, wishing to have an extensive view of the country, engaged
an Indian guide to conduct your father and himself to the summit of a
mountain, which rises precipitously from the meadows, and overlooks an
ocean of forest.
“I had gazed on the beautiful summits of this mountain, that, in this
transparent October atmosphere, were as blue and bright as the heavens
themselves, till I had an irrepressible desire to go to them; and,
like the child who cried for the horns of the silver moon, should I
have cried too if my wishes had been unattainable.
“Your father acquiesced (as my conscience tells me, Everell, he does
too easily) in my wishes, and nobody objected but my tutor, who
evidently thought it would be unmanly for him to shrink from the toils
that I braved, and who looked forward with dread and dismay to the
painful ascent. However, we all reached the summit without scath to
life or limb, and then we looked down upon a scene that made me clap
my hands, and my pious companions raise their eyes in silent devotion.
I hope you have not forgotten the autumnal brilliancy of our woods.
They say the foliage in England has a paler, sickly hue; but for our
Western world--Nature’s youngest child--she has reserved her
many-coloured robe, the brightest and most beautiful of her garments.
Last {146} week the woods were as green as an emerald, and now they
look as if all the summer-spirits had been wreathing them with flowers
of the richest and most brilliant dyes.
“Philosophers may inquire into the process of Nature, and find out, if
they can, how such sudden changes are produced; though, after all, I
fancy their inquiries will turn out like the experiment of the
inquisitive boy, who cut open the drum to find the sound; but I love
to lend my imagination to poets’ dreams, and to fancy Nature has her
myriads of little spirits who
“Do wander everywhere
Swifter than the moone’s sphere.”
He must have a torpid imagination and a cold heart, I think, who does
not fancy these vast forests filled with invisible intelligences. Have
these beautiful valleys of our Connecticut, which we saw from the
mountain looking like a smile on Nature’s rugged face, and stretching
as far as our vision extended, till the broad river diminished in the
shadowy distance to a silver thread--have they been seen and enjoyed
only by those savages who have their summer home in them? While I was
pondering on this thought, Mr. Holioke, who seldom indulges in a
fanciful suggestion, said to your father, ‘The Romans, you know,
Brother Fletcher, had their Cenotapha, empty sepulchres, in honour of
those who died in their country’s cause, and mouldered on a distant
soil. Why may we not have ours, and surmise that the spirits of those
who have died for liberty and {147} religion have come before us to
this wilderness, and taken possession in the name of the Lord?’
“We lingered for an hour or two on the mountain. Mr. Holioke and your
father were noting the sites for future villages, already marked out
for them by clusters of Indian huts. The instinct of the children of
the forest guides them to these rich intervals, which the sun and the
river prepare and almost till for them. While the gentlemen were thus
engaged, I observed that the highest rock of the mountain was crowned
with a pyramidal pile of stones, and about them were strewn relics of
Indian sacrifices. It has, I believe, been the custom of people, in
all ages, who were instructed only by Nature, to worship on high
places.[3] I pointed to the rude altar, and ventured to ask Mr.
Holioke if an acceptable service might not have been offered there.
“He shook his head at me as if I were but little better than a
heathen, and said, ‘It was all worship to an unknown God.’
“‘But,’ said your father, ‘the time is approaching when, through the
valleys beneath and on this mount, incense shall rise from Christian
hearts.’
“‘It were well,’ replied Mr. Holioke, ‘if we now, in the spirit,
consecrated it to the Lord.’
{148}
“‘And let me stand sponsor for it,’ said I, ‘while you christen it
Holioke.’
“I was gently rebuked for my levity, but my hint was not unkindly
taken; for the good man has never since spoken of his namesake without
calling it ‘_Mount Holioke_.’
“My senses were enchanted on that high place. I listened to the mighty
sound that rose from the forest depths of the abyss like the roar of
the distant ocean, and to the gentler voices of nature, borne on the
invisible waves of air; the farewell notes of the few birds that still
linger with us; the rustling of the leaves beneath the squirrel’s
joyous leap; the whirring of the partridge startled from his perch;
the tinkling of the cow-bell, and the barking of the Indian’s dog. I
was lying with my ear over the rock when your father reminded me that
it was time to return, and bade Digby, who had attended us, ‘look well
to Miss Leslie’s descent, and lend a helping hand to Master Cradock.’
“My poor tutor’s saffron skin changed to brick colour; and that he
might not think I heard the imputation cast upon his serviceable
power, I stepped between him and Digby, and said, ‘that with such
wings on each side of me, I might fly down the mountain.’
“‘Ah, Miss Hope Leslie,’ said Cradock, restored to his
self-complacency, ‘you are a merry thought atween us.’ He would fain
have appeared young and agile; not from vanity, Everell, but to
persuade me to accept his proffered assistance. Poor old man! {149} he
put me in mind, as he went after Digby, panting and leaping (or rather
settling) from crag to crag, of an old horse, that almost cracks his
bones to keep pace with a colt. His involuntary groans betrayed the
pain of his stiffened muscles, and I lingered on every projecting
cliff on the pretence of taking a farewell look of the valleys, but
really to allow him time to recover breath.
“In the mean time the gentlemen had got far in advance of us. We came
to the last rock of difficult passage; Digby gave me his hand to
assist me in springing from it, and asked Cradock to ascertain if the
foothold below was sure: a necessary precaution, as the matted leaves
had sometimes proved treacherous. Cradock, in performing this office,
startled a rattlesnake that lay concealed under a mass of leaves and
moss; the reptile coiled himself up and darted his fangs into his
hand. I heard the rattle, and saw the poor man’s deathly paleness as
he sunk to the ground, exclaiming ‘I am but a dead sinner!’
“Digby turned to pursue the snake, and I sprang from the rock. I
begged Cradock to show me the wound: it was on the back of his hand. I
assured him I could easily extract the venom, and would have applied
my lips to the wound, but he withdrew his hand. Digby at that moment
returned. ‘She would suck the poison from my hand, Digby,’ said
Cradock; ‘verily, she is but little lower than the angels.’
“‘What! Miss Hope!’ exclaimed Digby, ‘would you be guilty of
self-murder even if you could save {150} the old gentleman from dying,
and dying, as it were, by the will of the Lord?’ I assured Digby that
there was no danger whatever to me; that I had read of many cases of
poison being extracted in that way without the slightest injury to the
person extracting it. He asked me where I had read such stories. I was
obliged to refer to a book of my aunt Grafton’s, called ‘The Wonders
of the Crusades.’ This seemed to Digby but apocryphal authority; he
shook his head, and said ‘he would believe such fables nowhere out of
the Bible.’ I entreated vehemently, for I well knew it could not harm
me, and I believed it to be life or death to my poor tutor. He seemed
half disposed to yield to me. ‘Thou hast a marvellous persuasion,
child,’ he said; ‘and now I remember me of a proverb they have in
Italy: the lips extract venom from the heart, and poison from the
wound.’
“Digby again shook his head. ‘Nothing but one of those flourishes they
put into verses,’ he said. ‘Come, come, Master Cradock, stir up a
manly spirit, and let’s on to the fort, where we may get help it’s
lawful for you to use; and don’t ransack your memory for any more such
scholar-rubbish to uphold you in consenting to our young lady’s
exposing her life to save the fag end of yours.’
“‘Expose her life!’ retorted Cradock, rising with a feeling of honest
indignation that for a moment overcame the terror of death. ‘Digby,
you know that if I had a hundred lives, I would rather lose them all
than expose her precious life.’
{151}
“‘I believe you, Master Cradock, I believe you; and whether you live
or die, I will always uphold you for a true-hearted man; and you must
excuse me for my boldness in speaking, when I thought our young
mistress was putting herself in the jaws of death.’
“We now made all speed to reach the fort; but when we arrived there no
aid could be obtained, and poor Cradock’s death was regarded as
inevitable. I remembered to have heard Nelema say that she knew a
certain antidote to the poison of a rattlesnake; and when I told this
to your father, he ordered our horses to be saddled, and we set out
immediately for home, where we arrived in six hours. Even in that
brief space the disease had made fearful progress. The wound was
horribly inflamed, and the whole arm swollen and empurpled. I saw
despair in every face that looked on Cradock. I went myself, attended
by Jennet and Digby, to Nelema’s hut; for I knew, if the old woman was
in one of her moody fits, she would not come for any bidding but mine.
“Jennet, as you know was always her wont, took up her testimony
against ‘the old heathen witch.’ ‘It were better,’ she said, ‘to die
than to live by the devil’s help.’ I assured her that, if the case was
her own, I would not oppose her pious preference, but that now I must
have my own way, and I believed the Giver of Life would direct the
means of its preservation.
“Though it was near midnight, we found Nelema sitting at the entrance
of her hut. I told her my errand. ‘Peace be with you, child,’ she
said. ‘I {152} knew you were coming, and have been waiting for you.’
She is superstitious, or loves to affect supernatural knowledge, and I
should have thought nothing of her harmless boast had I not seen, by
the significant shake of Jennet’s head, that she set it down against
her. The old woman filled a deerskin pouch from a repository of herbs
in one corner of her hut, and then returned to Bethel with us. We
found Cradock in a state of partial delirium and nervous restlessness
which, your father said, was the immediate precursor of death. Aunt
Grafton was kneeling at his bedside, reading the prayers for the
dying.
Nelema ordered every one, with the exception of myself, to leave the
room, for she said her cures would not take effect unless there was
perfect silence. Your father retired to his own apartment, and gave
orders that he should in no case be diverted from his prayers. Aunt
Grafton withdrew with evident reluctance, and Jennet lingered till
Nelema’s patience was exhausted, when she pushed her out of the room
and barred the door against her.
“I confess, Everell, I would gladly have been excluded too, for I
recoiled from witnessing Cradock’s mortal agony; but I dared in no
wise cross Nelema; so I quietly took the lamp, as she bade me, and
stood at the head of the bed. She first threw aside her blanket, and
discovered a kind of wand, which she had concealed beneath it,
wreathed with a snake’s skin. She then pointed to the figure of a
snake delineated on her naked shoulder. ‘It is the symbol of our
tribe,’ she said. ‘Foolish child!’ she continued, {153} for she saw me
shudder, ‘it is a sign of honour, won for our race by him who first
drew from the veins the poison of the king of all creeping things. The
tale was told by our fathers, and sung at our feasts; and now am I,
the last of my race, bidden to heal a servant in the house of our
enemies.’ She remained for a moment silent, motionless, and perfectly
abstracted. A loud groan from Cradock roused her. She bent over him,
and muttered an incantation in her own tongue. She then, after many
efforts, succeeded in making him swallow a strong decoction, and
bathed the wound and arm with the same liquor. These applications were
repeated at short intervals, during which she brandished her wand,
making quick and mysterious motions, as if she were writing
hieroglyphics on the invisible air. She writhed her body into the most
horrible contortions, and tossed her withered arms wildly about her;
and, Everell, shall I confess to you, that I trembled lest she should
assume the living form of the reptile whose image she bore? So violent
was her exercise, that the sweat poured from her face like rain, and
ever and anon she sank down in momentary exhaustion and stupor, and
then would spring to her feet as a racehorse starts on the course,
fling back her long black locks that had fallen over her bony face,
and repeat the strange process.
“After a while--how long I know not, for anxiety and terror prevented
my taking any note of time--Cradock showed plain symptoms of
amendment; his respiration became free; the colour in his face {154}
subsided; his brow, which had been drawn to a knot, relaxed, and his
whole appearance became natural and tranquil. ‘Now,’ whispered Nelema
to me, ‘fear no more for him; he has turned his back on the grave. I
will stay here and watch him, but go thou to thy bed; thy cheek is
pale with weariness and fear.’
“I was too happy at that moment to feel weariness, and would have
remained, but Nelema’s gestures for me to withdraw were vehement, and
I left her, mentally blessing her for her effectual aid. As I opened
the door I stumbled against Jennet. It was evident, from her posture,
that she had been peeping through the keyhole. Do not think me a
vixen, Everell, if I confess that my first impulse was to box her
ears; however, I suppressed my rage, and for the first time in my life
was prudent and temporizing, and I stooped to beg her to go with me to
my room; I am sure it was with the timid voice of one who asks a
favour, for, the moment we were in the light, I saw by her mien that
she felt the power was all in her own hands.
“‘It is enough,’ she said, ‘to make the hair of a saint stand on end
to have such carryings-on in my master’s house; and you, Miss Hope
Leslie, that have been, as it were, exalted to heaven in point of
privileges, that you should be nothing better than an aid and abetment
of this emissary of Satan.’
“‘Hush,’ said I, ‘Jennet, and keep your breath to give thanks for good
Mr. Cradock’s recovery. Nelema has cured him: Satan does not send
forth his emissaries with healing gifts.’
{155}
“‘Now, Miss Leslie,’ retorted the provoking creature, ‘you are in the
very gall of bitterness and blindness of the flesh. Did not the
magicians with their enchantments even as did Moses and Aaron? The
sons of darkness always put on the form of the sons of light. I always
said so. I knew what it would come to. I said she was a witch in
Mistress Fletcher’s time.’
“‘And you spoke falsely then, as you do now, Jennet, for Nelema is no
witch.’
“‘No witch!’ rejoined Jennet, screaming with her screech-owl voice so
loud that I was afraid your father would hear her; ‘try her, then; see
if she can read in the Bible, or Mr. Cotton’s catechism; no, no; but
give her your aunt Grafton’s prayer-book, and she will read as glib as
a minister.’
“‘Jennet,’ said I, ‘you are mad outright; you seem to forget that
Nelema cannot read anything.’
“‘It is all the same as if she could,’ persisted Jennet; ‘her master
makes short teaching: there are none so deaf as those that won’t hear.
I tell you again, Miss Hope Leslie, remember Mrs. Fletcher; remember
what she got for shutting her ears to me.’
“You will forgive me, Everell, for losing my patience utterly at these
profane allusions to your mother, and commanding Jennet to leave my
room.
“She made me bitterly repent my want of self-command; for, self-willed
as the fools of Solomon’s time, she determined to have her own way,
and went to your father’s room, where she gained admittance, and gave
such a description of Nelema’s healing process, {156} that, late as it
was, I was summoned to his presence.
“As I followed Jennet along the passage, she whispered to me, ‘Now,
for the love of your own soul, don’t use his blind partiality to
pervert his judgment.’
“I made no reply, but mentally resolved that I would task my power and
ingenuity to the utmost to justify Nelema. When we came into the
study, Jennet, to my great joy, was dismissed. It is much easier for
me to contend with my superiors than my inferiors. Your father bade me
sit down by him. I seated myself on the footstool at his feet, so that
I could look straight into his eyes; for many a time, when my heart
has quailed at his solemn address, the tender spirit stationed in that
soft hazel eye of his--so like yours, Everell--has quieted all my
apprehensions. I spoke first, and said, ‘I was sure Jennet had spoiled
the good news of my tutor’s amendment, or he would not look so grave.’
“He replied, ‘that it was time to look grave when a powwow dared to
use her diabolical spells, mutterings, and exorcisms beneath a
Christian roof, and in the presence of a Christian maiden, and on a
Christian man; but,’ he added, ‘perhaps Jennet hath not told the
matter rightly; her zeal is not always according to knowledge. I would
gladly believe that my house has not been profaned. Tell me, Hope, all
you witnessed; tell me truly.’
“I obeyed. Your father heard me through without any comment, but now
and then a deep-drawn {157} sigh; and when I had finished, he asked,
‘what I understood by the strange proceedings I had described.’
“‘May I not answer,’ I said, ‘in the language of Scripture, “that this
only I know, that whereas thy servant was sick, he is now whole.”’
“‘Do not, my dear child,’ said your father, ‘rashly misapply
Scripture, and thus add to your sin in (as I trust ignorantly) dealing
with this witch and her familiars.’
“I replied, ‘I did not believe Nelema had used any witchcraft.’
“He asked me ‘if I had not been told that some of our catechized
Indians had confessed that when they were pagans they were powwows,
devoted in their infancy to demons; that these powwows were factors
for the devil; that they held actual conversation, and were in open
and avowed confederacy with him?’
“I said, ‘I had heard all this,’ but asked, ‘if it were right to take
the confession of these poor children of ignorance and superstition
against themselves.’ I repeated what I had often heard you, Everell,
say, that Magawisca believed the mountain and the valley, the air, the
trees, every little rivulet, had their present invisible spirit, and
that the good might hold discourse with them. ‘Why not believe the
one,’ I asked, ‘as well as the other?’
“Your father looked at me sternly. ‘Dost thou not believe in
witchcraft, child?’ he said. While I hesitated how to reply, lest I
should in some way {158} implicate Nelema, your father hastily turned
the leaves of the Bible that lay on his table, and opened to every
text where familiar spirits, necromancers, sorcerers, wizards,
witches, and witchcraft are spoken of.
“I felt as if the windows of heaven were opened on my devoted head. As
soon as I could collect my wits, I said something, confusedly, about
not having thought much on the subject, but that I had supposed, as
indeed I always did, that bad spirits were only permitted to appear on
earth when there were also good spirits and holy prophets to oppose
them.
“Your father looked steadily at me for a few moments, then closing the
Bible, he said, ‘I will not blame thee, my child, but myself, that I
have left thee to the guidance of thy natural erring reason; I should
have better instructed thee.’ He then kissed me, bade me good-night,
and opened the door for me to depart. I ventured to ask ‘if I might
not say to Jennet that it was his orders she should be silent in
regard to Nelema.’
“‘No, no,’ he said; ‘meddle no farther with that matter, but go to
your own apartment, and remain there till the bell rings for morning
prayers.’
“My heart rebelled, but I dared not disobey. I came to my room, and
have been sitting by my open window, in the hope of hearing Nelema’s
parting footsteps; but I have listened in vain, and, unable to sleep,
I have tried to tranquillize my mind by writing to you. Poor old
Nelema! if she is given up to the magistrates, it will go hard with
her, Jennet is {159} such an obstinate, self-willed fool! I believe
she will be willing to see Nelema hung for a witch, that she may have
the pleasure of saying ‘I told you so.’
“Poor Nelema! such a harmless, helpless, lonely being! my tears fall
so fast on my paper that I can scarcely write. I blame myself for
bringing her into this hapless case; but it may be better than I fear.
I will leave my letter, and try to sleep.
======
“It is as I expected: Nelema was sent, early this morning, to the
magistrates. She was tried before our triumvirate, Mr. Pynchon,
Holioke, and Chapin. It was not enough to lay on her the crime of
curing Cradock, but Jennet and some of her gossips imputed to her all
the mischances that have happened for the last seven years. My
testimony was extorted from me, for I could not disguise my reluctance
to communicate anything that could be made unfavourable to her. Our
magistrates looked sternly on me, and Mr. Holioke said, ‘Take care,
Hope Leslie, that thou art not found in the folly of Balaam, who would
have blessed when the Lord commanded him to curse.’
“I said ‘it was better to mistake in blessing than in cursing, and
that I was sure Nelema was as innocent as myself.’ I know not whence I
had my courage, but I think truth companies not with cowardice;
however, what I would fain call courage, Mr. Pynchon thought necessary
to rebuke as presumption: ‘Thou art somewhat forward, maiden,’ he
said, ‘in giving thy opinion, but thou must know that we regard {160}
it but as the whistle of a bird; withdraw, and leave judgment to thy
elders.’
“In leaving the room I passed close to Nelema. I gave her my hand in
token of kindness; and though I heard a murmur of ‘shame! shame!’ I
did not withdraw it till the poor old creature had bowed her wrinkled
brow upon it, and dropped a tear which no suffering could have
extorted.
“The trial went on, and she was pronounced worthy of death; but, as
the authority of our magistracy does not extend to life, limb, or
banishment, her fate is referred to the court at Boston. In the mean
time, she awaits her sentence in a cell in Mr. Pynchon’s cellar. We
have, as yet, no jail.
======
“Digby has been summoned before the magistrates, and publicly reproved
for expressing himself against their proceedings. Mr. Pynchon charged
him to speak no more against godly governors and righteous government,
for ‘to such scoffers Heaven had sent divers plagues: some had been
spirited away by Satan, some blown up in our harbours, and some, like
poor Austin of Quinnepaig, taken into Turkish captivity!’ Digby’s
feelings are suppressed, but not subdued.
======
“How I wish you were here, dear Everell. Sometimes I wish your
mother’s letter had not been so persuasive. Nothing but that last
request of hers would have induced your father to send you to your
uncle Stretton. If you were here, I am sure you would {161} devise
some way to save Nelema. When she is gone you will never again hear of
Magawisca. I shall never hear more of my sweet sister. They both, if
we may believe Nelema, still dwell safely in the wigwam of Mononotto,
among the Mohawks. These Mohawks are said to be a fierce race; and all
those tribes who dwell near the coast, and have, in some measure, come
under a Christian jurisdiction, and are called ‘praying and catechized
Indians,’ say that the Mohawks are to them as wolves to sheep. I
cannot bear to think of my gentle, timid sister--a very dove in her
nature--among these fierce tribes. I wonder that I am ever happy, and
yet it is so natural to me to be happy! The commander of the fort at
Albany, at Governor Winthrop’s request, has made great efforts to
obtain some information about my sister, but without any satisfactory
result. Still Nelema insists to me that her knowledge is certain; and
when I have endeavoured to ascertain the source whence she obtained
it, she pointed upward, indicating that she held mysterious
intelligence with the spirits of the air; but I believe she employed
this artifice to hide some intercourse she holds with distant and
hostile tribes.
======
“What a tragi-comedy is life, Everell! I am sure Shakspeare has copied
Nature in dividing his scenes between mirth and sadness. I have
laughed to-day heartily, and for a few moments I quite forgot poor
Nelema, and all my heart-rending anxieties about her. My tutor, for
the first time since his {162} most unlucky mishap, left his room, and
made his appearance in the parlour. I was sitting there with aunt
Grafton, and I rose to shake his hand, and express my unfeigned joy on
his recovery. His little gray eyes were for a moment blinded with
tears at what he was pleased to call the ‘condescendency of my regard
for him.’ He then stood for a moment as if he were lost, as you know
is always his wont, when a blur comes over his mind, which is none of
the clearest at best. I thought he looked pale and weak, and I offered
him a chair and begged him to sit down; but he declined it with a
wave, or, rather, a poke of his hand, for he never in his life made a
motion so graceful as a wave; and, drawing a paper from his pocket, he
said, ‘I have here an address to thee, sweet Miss Hope Leslie, wherein
I have put in a body of words the spirit of my late meditations; and I
have endeavoured to express, in the best Latinity with which many
years of daily and nightly study have possessed me, my humble sense of
that marvellous wit and kindness of thine, which made thee, as it
were, a ministering angel unto me, when I was brought nigh unto the
grave by the bite of that most cunning beast of the field, with whom I
verily believe the devil left a portion of his spirit, in payment of
the body he borrowed to beguile our first parents.’
“This long preamble finished, Master Cradock began the reading of his
address, of which, being in the language of the learned, I could not,
as you know, understand one word; however, he did not perceive that my
smiles were not those of intelligence, {163} nor hear aunt Grafton’s
remark, that ‘much learning and little wit had made him as crazy as a
loon.’ He had not proceeded far when his knees began to shake under
him, and disdaining to sit (an attitude, I suppose, proscribed in the
ceremonies of the schools, the only ceremonies he observes), he
contrived, with the aid of the chair I had placed for him, to kneel.
When he had finished his address, which, according to the rules of
art, had a beginning, a middle, and, thank Heaven! an end, he essayed
to rise; but, alas! though, like Falstaff, he had an ‘alacrity in
sinking,’ to rise was impossible; for, besides the usual impediments
of his bulk and clumsiness, he was weakened and stiffened by his late
sickness; so I was fain to call Digby to his assistance, and run away
to my own apartment to write you, dear Everell, who are ever patient
with my Bethel chronicles, an account of what aunt Grafton calls ‘this
_scholar_ foolery.’
======
“Yesterday was our lecture day, and I went to the village to attend
the meeting. A sudden storm of hail and wind came on during the
exercises, and continued after, and I was obliged to accept Mrs.
Pynchon’s invitation to go home with her. After we had taken our
supper, I observed Mr. Pynchon fill a plate bountifully with
provisions from the table, and give it, with a large key which he took
from a little cupboard over the fireplace, to a serving-woman. She
returned in a short time with the key, and, as I observed, restored it
to its place. Digby came {164} shortly after to attend me home. The
family hospitably urged me to remain, and, ascertaining from Digby
that there was no especial reason for my return, I dismissed him.
“The next morning I was awakened from a deep sleep by one of Mr.
Pynchon’s daughters, who told me, with a look of terror, that a
despatch had arrived early that morning from Boston, notifying the
acquiescence of the court there in the opinion of our magistrates, and
Nelema’s sentence of condemnation to death; that her father had
himself gone to the cell to announce her fate to her, when lo! she had
vanished: the prison door was fast, the key in its usual place, but
the witch was spirited away. I hurried on my clothes, and trembling
with surprise, pleasure, or whatever emotion you may please to ascribe
to me, I descended to the parlour, where the family and neighbours had
assembled to talk over the strange event. I only added exclamations to
the various conjectures that were made. No one had any doubt as to who
had been Nelema’s deliverer, unless a suspicion was implied in the
inquiring glances which Mr. Pynchon cast on me, but which, I believe,
no one but myself observed. Some could smell sulphur from the outer
kitchen door to the door of the cell; and there were others who
fancied that, at a few yards’ distance from the house, there were on
the ground marks of a slight scorching: a plain indication of a
visitation from the enemy of mankind. One of the most sagacious of our
neighbours remarked that he had often heard of Satan getting his
servants {165} into trouble, but he never before heard of his getting
them out. However, the singularity of the case only served to magnify
their wonder, without in the least weakening their faith in the
actual, and, as it appeared, friendly alliance between Nelema and the
Evil One. Indeed, I was the only person present whose belief in her
witchcraft was not, as it were, converted into sight.
“Everell, I had been visited by a strange dream that night, which I
will venture to relate to you, for you, at least, will not think me
confederate with Nelema’s deliverer.
“Methought I stood, with the old woman, beneath the elm-tree at the
end of Mr. Pynchon’s garden; the moon, through an opening of the
branches, shone brightly on her face: it was wet with tears.
“‘I shall not forget,’ she said, ‘who saved me from dying by the hand
of an enemy. As surely as the sun will appear there again,’ she added,
pointing to the east, ‘so surely, Hope Leslie, you shall see your
sister.’
“‘But, Nelema,’ said I, ‘my poor little sister is in the far western
forests; you can never reach there.’
“‘I will reach there,’ she replied; ‘if I crawl on my hands and knees,
I will reach there.’
“Think you, dear Everell, my sister will ever expound this dream to
me?
“I was the first to carry the news to Bethel. Your father was in one
of his meditative humours, and heeded it no more than if I had told
him a bird had {166} flown from its cage. Jennet joined in the general
opinion, that Satan, or at least one of his emissaries, had opened the
prison door; and our good Digby, with his usual fearlessness,
maintained, in the teeth of her exhortation and invective, that an
angel had wrought for the innocent old woman.
======
“A week has elapsed. It is whispered that on the night Nelema
vanished, Digby was missed by his bedfellow! strange depredations were
committed on Jennet’s larder! and muffled oars were heard on the
river!
“Our magistrates have made long and frequent visits to Bethel, and
have held secret conferences with your father. The purport of them I
leave you to conjecture from the result. Yesterday he sent for me to
the study. He appeared deeply affected. It was some time before he
could command his voice; at length he said that he had determined to
accept for me Madam Winthrop’s invitation to Boston. I told him, and
told him truly, that I did not wish to go to Boston; that I was
perfectly contented--perfectly happy. ‘And what,’ I asked, ‘will you
and poor aunt Grafton do without me?’
“‘Your aunt goes with you,’ he said; ‘and as for me, my dear child, I
have too long permitted myself the indulgence of having you with me. I
have a pilgrimage to accomplish through this wilderness, and I am
sinful if I linger to watch the unfolding of even the single flower
that has sprung up in my path.’
{167}
“‘But,’ said I, ‘does not He who appoints the path through the
wilderness, set the flowers by the wayside? I will not--I will not be
plucked up and cast away.’ He kissed me, and said, ‘I believe, my
beloved child, thou wert sent in mercy to me; but it were indeed
sinful to convert the staff vouchsafed to my pilgrimage into fetters.
I should ever bear in mind that life is a race and a warfare, and
nothing else: you have this yet to learn, Hope. I have proved myself
not fit to teach or to guide thee--nor is your aunt. Madam Winthrop
will give you pious instruction and counsel; and her godly niece,
Esther Downing, will, I trust, win you to the narrow path, which, as
the elders say, she doth so steadily pursue.’
“The idea of this Puritanical guardianship did not strike me
agreeably, and, besides, I love Bethel; I love your father--with my
whole soul I love him; and, as you already know, Everell, therefore it
is no confession, I love to have my own way, and I said I would not
go.
“‘You must go, my child,’ said your father; ‘I cannot find it in my
heart to chide you for your reluctance, but you must go. Neither you
nor I have any choice.’
“‘But why must I go?’ I asked.
“‘Ask no questions,’ he replied; ‘it is fixed that you must go. Tell
your aunt Grafton that she must be ready to leave Springfield next
week. Mr. Pynchon and his servants attend you. Now leave me, my child;
for when you are with me, you touch at will every chord in my heart,
and I would fain keep it still now.’
{168}
“I left him, Everell, while I could command my tears; and after I had
given them free course, I informed aunt Grafton of our destiny. She
was so delighted with the prospect of a visit to Boston, that I too
began to think it must be very pleasant; and my dread of this
straight-laced Mrs. Winthrop and her perpendicular niece gave place to
indefinite anticipations of pleasure. I shall, at any rate, see you
sooner than if I remained here. Thank Heaven, the time of your return
approaches; and now that it is so near, I rejoice that your father has
not been persuaded, by those who seem to me to take a very superfluous
care of his private affairs, to recall you sooner. On this subject he
has stood firm; satisfied, as he has always said, that he could not
err in complying with the last request of your sainted mother.
“Aunt Grafton charges me with divers messages to you, but I will not
add a feather to this leaden letter, which you will now have to read,
as I have written it, by instalments.
“Farewell, dear Everell: forget not thy loving friend and sister,
“Hope Leslie.”
As Hope had declined her aunt’s messages, the good lady affixed them
herself; and here they follow.
“_To Everell Fletcher._
“Valued Sir,
“Being much hurried in point of time, I would fain have been myself
excused from writing, but Miss {169} Hope declines adding to her
letter what I have indited.
“In your last, you mention being visited with the great cold, which I
take, from your account of it, to be the same as that with which we
were all shaken soon after the coronation of his present majesty (God
bless him!). I had then a recipe given me for an infallible remedy by
the Lady Penyvere, great aunt, by the mother’s side, to la belle
Rosette, maid of honour to the queen.
“I enclose it for you, believing it will greatly advantage you: though
Hope insists that, if the cold has not yet left you, it will be a
chronic disease before this reaches you; in which case I would advise
you to apply to old Lady Lincoln, who hath, in her family
receipt-book, many renowned cures for chronics. I remember one in
particular, somewhere about the middle of the book, which follows
immediately after a rare recipe for an every-day plum-pudding.
“I doubt not that years have mended thee, and that thou wouldst now
condemn the folly and ignorance of thy childhood, which made thee then
deride the most sovereign remedies. Hope, I am sorry to say, is as
obstinate as ever; and it was but yesterday, when I wished her to take
some diluents for a latent fever, that she reminded me of the time
when she and you, in one of your mischievous pranks, threw the
pennyroyal tea out of the window, and suffered me to believe that it
had cured an incipient pleurisy. Thus presumptuous is youth! Hope is,
to be sure, notwithstanding her living entirely without medicine,
{170} in indifferent good health; her form is rather more slender than
when you left us, as is becoming at seventeen; but her cheek is as
round and as ruddy as a peach. I should not care so much about her
self-will on the score of medicine, but that her stomach, being in
such perfect order now, would bear every kind of preventive, and
medicines of this class are so simple that they can do no harm. I
believe it is true, as old Doctor Panton used to say, ‘your healthy
people are always prejudiced against medicine.’ I wish you would drop
a hint on this subject in your next letter to her, for the slightest
hint from you goes farther than a lecture from me.
“It was very thoughtful in you, Mr. Everell, and what I once should
not have expected, to inquire so particularly after my health. I am
happy to say, that at this present I am better than I have been for
years, which is unaccountable to me, as, since the hurry of our
preparations for Boston, I have forgotten my pills at night and my
tonics in the morning.
“I wish you to present many thanks to Lady Amy for assisting you in my
commissions. The articles in general suited, though the pinking of the
flounces was too deep. My gown was a trifle too dark; but do not
mention that to Lady Amy, for I make no doubt she took due pains, and
only wanted a right understanding of the real hue, called _feuille
morte_, which, between you and I--_sub rosa_, mind--my gown would not
be called by any person skilled in the colours of silk. Hope thought
to convince me I was wrong by matching it with a dead leaf from the
forest. Was not that peculiar of Hope?
{171}
“Now, Mr. Everell, I would not be an old woman before my time,
therefore I will have another silk of a brighter cast. Brown it must
be, but lively--lively. I will enclose a lock of Hope’s hair, which is
precisely the hue I mean. You will observe it has a golden tinge, that
makes it appear in all lights as if there were sunshine on it, and yet
it is a decided brown; a difficult colour to hit, but by due
inquiry--and I am sure, from the pains you were at to procure the
articles I requested for Hope, you will spare no trouble--I think it
may be obtained.
“I am greatly beholden to you for the pocket-glass you sent me; it is
a mighty convenient article, and an uncommon pretty little attention,
Mr. Everell.
“Your present to Hope was a real beauty. The only blue fillet, and the
prettiest of any colour I ever saw; and such a marvellous match for
her eyes--that is, when the light is full on them; but you know they
always had a changeable trick with them. I remember Lady Amy’s once
saying to me before we left England, that my niece would yet do
mischief with those laughing _black_ eyes of hers. I liked her
sister’s (poor dear Mary--God help her the while!) better then; they
were the true Leslie blue. But one word more of the fillet. Your taste
in it cannot be too much commended; but then, as I tell Hope, one does
not want always to see the same thing; and she doth continually wear
it: granted, it keeps the curls out of her eyes, and they do look
lovely falling about it; but she wears it week-days and Sundays, {172}
feast-days and fast-days, and she never yet has put on the
Henriette--do remember a thousand thanks to Lady Amy for the
pattern--the Henriette I made her, like that worn by the queen the
first night she appeared in the royal box.
“I should like to have a little more chitchat with you, Mr. Everell,
now my pen has got, so to speak, warm in the harness; but business
before pleasure. I beg you will remember me to all inquiring friends.
Alas! few in number now, as most of my surviving contemporaries have
died since I left England.
“Farewell, Mr. Everell; these few lines are from your friend and
well-wisher,
“Bertha Grafton.
“N.B.--It is a great pleasure to me to think you are living in a
churchman’s family, where you can’t but steer clear of--you know
what--peculiarities.
“N.B.--Hope will have given you the particulars of poor Master
Cradock’s miscarriage; his mind was set a little _agee_ by it, but he
appears to be mending.
“N.B.--The enclosed recipe hath marvellous virtues in fevers as well
as in colds.”