HOPE LESLIE:
OR,
EARLY TIMES
IN
THE MASSACHUSETTS.
BY
CATHARINE MARIA SEDGWICK
AUTHOR OF
“THE LINWOODS,” “POOR RICH MAN,” “LIVE AND LET
LIVE,” “REDWOOD,” &c.
IN TWO VOLUMES.
VOL. II.
NEW-YORK:
HARPER & BROTHERS, 82 CLIFF-ST.
1842.
[COPYRIGHT.]
Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1842, by
Harper & Brothers,
In the Clerk’s Office of the Southern District of New-York.
[EPIGRAPH.]
Here stood the Indian chieftain, rejoicing in his glory!
How deep the shade of sadness that rests upon his story:
For the white man came with power--like brethren they met--
But the Indian fires went out, and the Indian sun has set!
And the chieftain has departed--gone is his hunting-ground,
And the twanging of the bowstring is a forgotten sound:
Where dwelleth yesterday? and where is Echo’s cell?
Where has the rainbow vanished?--there does the Indian dwell.--E.
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER I
CHAPTER II
CHAPTER III
CHAPTER IV
CHAPTER V
CHAPTER VI
CHAPTER VII
CHAPTER VIII
CHAPTER IX
CHAPTER X
CHAPTER XI
CHAPTER XII
CHAPTER XIII
CHAPTER XIV
NOTES
ENDNOTES
HOPE LESLIE,
VOLUME II.
{3}
CHAPTER I.
“Those well scene natives in grave Nature’s hests,
All close designs conceal in their deep brests.”
Morrell.
It would be highly improper any longer to keep our readers in
ignorance of the cause of our heroine’s apparent aberration from the
line of strict propriety. After her conversation with Everell, in
which we must infer, from its effect on his mind, that she manifested
less art than zeal in her friend’s cause, she was retiring to her own
apartment, when, on passing through the hall, she saw an Indian woman
standing there, requesting the servant who had admitted her “to ask
the young ladies of the house if they would look at some rare
moccasins.”
Miss Leslie was arrested by the uncommon sweetness of the stranger’s
voice; and fixing her eye on her, she was struck with the singular
dignity and grace of her demeanour--a certain air indicating an
“inborn royalty of soul,” that even the ugly envelope of a blanket did
not conceal.
The stranger seemed equally interested in Miss Leslie’s appearance;
and, fixing her eye intently on her, “Pray try my moccasins, lady,”
she said, earnestly.
{4}
“Oh, certainly; I should of all things like to buy a pair of you,”
said Hope; and, advancing, she was taking them from her shoulder, over
which they were slung, when she, ascertaining by a quick glance that
the servant had disappeared, gently repressed Miss Leslie’s hand,
saying at the same time, “Tell me thy name, lady.”
“My name! Hope Leslie. But who art thou?” Hope asked in return, in a
voice rendered almost inarticulate by the thought that flashed into
her mind.
The stranger cast down her eyes, and for half an instant hesitated;
then looking apprehensively around, she said, in low, distinct
accents, “Hope Leslie, I am Magawisca.”
“Magawisca!” echoed Hope. “Oh, Everell!” and she sprang towards the
parlour door to summon Everell.
“Silence! stay,” cried Magawisca, with a vehement gesture, and at the
same time turning to escape should Hope prosecute her intention.
Hope perceived this, and again approached her. “It cannot, then, be
Magawisca,” she said; and she trembled as she spoke with doubts,
hopes, and fears.
Magawisca might have at once identified herself by opening her blanket
and disclosing her person; but that she did not, no one will wonder
who knows that a savage feels more even than ordinary sensibility at
personal deformity. She took from her bosom a necklace of hair and
gold entwined together. “Dost thou know this?” she asked. “Is it not
like that thou wearest?”
{5}
Hope grasped it, pressed it to her lips, and answered by exclaiming
passionately, “My sister! my sister!”
“Yes, it is a token from thy sister. Listen to me, Hope Leslie: my
time is brief; I may not stay here another moment; but come to me this
evening at nine o’clock, at the burial-place, a little beyond the
clump of pines, and I will give thee tidings of thy sister: keep what
I say in thine own bosom; tell no one thou hast seen me; come _alone_,
and fear not.”
“Oh, I have no fear,” exclaimed Hope, vehemently; “but tell me--tell
me!”
Magawisca put her finger on her lips in token of silence, for at this
instant the door was again opened, not by the servant who had before
appeared, but by Jennet. Magawisca instantly recognised her, and
turned as if in the act of departing.
Time had, indeed, wrought little change on Jennet, save imparting a
shriller squeak to her doleful voice, and a keener edge to her sharp
features. “Madam Winthrop,” she said, “is engaged now, but says you
may call some other time with your moccasins; and I would advise you
to let it be any other than the fag-end of a Saturday--a wrong season
for temporalities.”
While Jennet was uttering this superfluous counsel, Hope sprang off
the steps after Magawisca, anxious for some farther light on her
dawning expectations.
“Stay, oh stay,” she said, “one moment, and let me try your
moccasins.”
{6}
At the same instant Mrs. Grafton appeared from the back parlour,
evidently in a great flurry. “Here, you Indian woman,” she screamed,
“let me see your moccasins.”
Thus beset, Magawisca was constrained to retrace her steps, and
confront the danger of discovery. She drew her blanket closer over her
head and face, and reascending the steps, threw her moccasins on the
floor, and cautiously averted her face from the light. It was too
evident to her that Jennet had some glimmering recollections; for,
while she affected to busy herself with the moccasins, she turned her
inquisitorial gray eyes towards her with a look of sharp scrutiny.
Once Magawisca, with a movement of involuntary disdain, returned her
glance. Jennet dropped the moccasins as suddenly as if she had
received a blow, hemmed as if she were choking, and put her hand on
the knob of the parlour door.
“Oh,” thought Magawisca, “I am lost!” But Jennet, confused by her
misty recollections, relinquished her purpose, whatever it was, and
returned to the examination of the moccasins. In the mean while, Hope
stood behind her aunt and Jennet, her hands clasped, and her beautiful
eyes bent on Magawisca with a supplicating inquiry.
Mrs. Grafton, as usual, was intent on her traffic. “It was odd enough
of Madam Winthrop,” she said, “not to let me know these moccasins were
here; she knew I wanted them--at least she must know I might want
them; and if I don’t want them, that’s nothing to the purpose. I like
to look at everything {7} that’s going. It is a diversion to the mind.
A neat article,” she continued; “I should like you to have a pair,
Hope; Sir Philip said, yesterday, they gave a trig look to a pretty
foot and ankle. How much does she ask for them?”
“I do not know,” replied Hope.
“Do not know! that’s peculiar of you, Hope Leslie; you never inquire
the price of anything. I dare say Tawney expects enough for them to
buy all the glass beads in Boston. Hey, Tawney?”
Mrs. Grafton now, for the first time, turned from the articles to
their possessor: she was struck with an air of graceful haughtiness in
her demeanour, strongly contrasting with the submissive, dejected
deportment of the natives whom she was in the habit of seeing; and
dropping the moccasins and turning to Hope, she whispered, “Best buy a
pair, dearie--by all means buy a pair--pay her anything she asks--best
keep peace with them: ‘never affront dogs nor Indians.’”
Hope wanted no urging; but, anxious to get rid of the witnesses that
embarrassed her, and quick of invention, she directed Jennet to go for
her purse, “which she would find in a certain basket, or drawer, or
somewhere else;” and reminded her aunt that she had promised to call
in at Mrs. Cotton’s on her way to lecture, to look at her hyacinths,
and that she had no time to lose.
Jennet obeyed, and Mrs. Grafton said, “That’s true, and it’s
thoughtful of you to think of it, Hope; but,” she added, lowering her
voice, “I would not {8} like to leave you alone, so I’ll just open the
parlour door.”
Before Hope could intercept her, she set the door ajar, and through
the aperture Magawisca had a perfect view of Everell, who was sitting
musing in the window-seat. An involuntary exclamation burst from her
lips; and then, shuddering at this exposure of her feelings, she
hastily gathered together the moccasins that were strewn over the
floor, dropped a pair at Hope’s feet, and darted away.
Hope had heard the exclamation and understood it. Mrs. Grafton heard
it without understanding it, and followed Magawisca to the door,
calling after her, “Do stay and take a little something; Madam
Winthrop has always a bone to give away. Ah! you might as well call
after the wind; she has already turned the corner. Heaven send she may
not bear malice against us! What do you think, Hope?” Mrs. Grafton
turned to appeal to her niece; but she, foreseeing endless
interrogatories, had made good her retreat, and escaped to her own
apartment.
Jennet, however, came to the good lady’s relief; listened to all her
conjectures and apprehensions, and reciprocated her own.
Jennet could not say what it was in the woman, but she had the
strangest feeling all the time she was there--a mysterious beating of
her heart that she could not account for; as to her disappearing so
suddenly, that she did not think much of; the foresters were always
impatient to get to their haunts; {9} they were like the “wild ass,”
that the Scripture saith “scorneth the multitude of a city.”
But we leave Mrs. Grafton and Jennet to their unedifying conference,
to follow our heroine to the privacy of her own apartment. There, in
the first rush of her newly-awakened feelings, till then repressed,
she wept like a child, and repeated again and again, “Oh, my sister!
my sister!” Her mind was in a tumult; she knew not what to
believe--what to expect--what to hope.
But, accustomed to diffuse over every anticipation the sunny hue of
her own happy temperament, she flattered herself that she would even
that night meet her sister; that she would be forever restored to her;
that the chord severed by the cruel disaster at Bethel would be
rebound about their hearts. She had but a brief space to compose
herself, and that was passed in fervent supplications for the blessing
of God upon her hopes. She must go to the lecture, and after that
trust to her ingenuity to escape to the rendezvous. The thought of
danger or exposure never entered her mind, for she was not addicted to
fear; and, as she reflected on the voice and deportment of the
stranger, she was convinced she could be no other than Magawisca, the
heroine of Everell’s imagination, whom he had taught her to believe
was one of those who,
“Without arte’s bright lamp, by nature’s eye,
Keep just promise, and love equitie.”
Almost as impatient to go to the lecture as she was afterward to
escape from it (we trust our readers {10} have absolved her for her
apparent indecorum in the sanctuary), she had tied and untied her hat
twenty times before she heard the ringing of the bell for the
assembling of the congregation. She refused, as has been seen, the
escort of Everell, for she dared not expose to him emotions which she
could not explain.
After the various detentions which have been already detailed, she
arrived at the appointed rendezvous, and there saw Magawisca, and
Magawisca alone, kneeling before an upright stake planted at one end
of a grave. She appeared occupied in delineating a figure on the stake
with a small implement she held in her hand, which she dipped in a
shell placed on the ground beside her.
Hope paused with a mingled feeling of disappointment and awe;
disappointment that her sister was not there, and awe inspired by the
solemnity of the scene before her: the spirit-stirring figure of
Magawisca, the duty she was performing, the flickering light, the
monumental stones, and the dark shadows that swept over them as the
breeze bowed the tall pines. She drew her mantle, that fluttered in
the breeze, close around her, and almost suppressed her breath, that
she might not disturb what she believed to be an act of filial
devotion.
Magawisca was not unconscious of Miss Leslie’s approach, but she
deemed the office in which she was engaged too sacred to be
interrupted. She accompanied the movement of her hand with a low chant
in her native tongue; and so sweet and varied {11} were the tones of
her voice, that it seemed to Hope they might have been breathed by an
invisible spirit.
When she had finished her work, she leaned her head for a moment
against the stake, and then rose and turned to Miss Leslie; a moonbeam
shot across her face; it was wet with tears, but she spoke in a
tranquil voice. “You have come--and alone?” she said, casting a
searching glance around her.
“I promised to come alone,” replied Hope.
“Yes, and I trusted you; and I will trust you farther, for the good
deed you did Nelema.”
“Nelema, then, lived to reach you.”
“She did; wasted, faint, and dying, she crawled into my father’s
wigwam. She had but scant time and short breath; with that she cursed
your race, and blessed you, Hope Leslie; her day was ended; the hand
of death pressed her throat, and even then she made me swear to
perform her promise to you.”
“And you will, Magawisca,” cried Hope, impetuously, “you will give me
back my sister?”
“Nay, that she never promised--that I cannot do. I cannot send back
the bird that has mated, to its parent nest--the stream that has
mingled with other waters, to its fountain.”
“Oh, do not speak to me in these dark sayings,” replied Hope, her
smooth brow contracting with impatience and apprehension, and her
hurried manner and convulsed countenance contrasting strongly with the
calmness of Magawisca; “what is it you mean? Where is my sister?”
{12}
“She is safe--she is near to you--and you shall see her, Hope Leslie.”
“But when--and where, Magawisca? Oh, if I could once clasp her in my
arms, she never should leave me--she never should be torn from me
again.”
“Those arms,” said Magawisca, with a faint smile, “could no more
retain thy sister than a spider’s web. The lily of the Maqua’s valley
will never again make the English garden sweet.”
“Speak plainer to me,” cried Hope, in a voice of entreaty that could
not be resisted. “Is my sister--” she paused, for her quivering lips
could not pronounce the words that rose to them.
Magawisca understood her, and replied. “Yes, Hope Leslie, thy sister
is married to Oneco.”
“God forbid!” exclaimed Hope, shuddering as if a knife had been
plunged in her bosom. “My sister married to an Indian!”
“An Indian!” exclaimed Magawisca, recoiling with a look of proud
contempt, that showed she reciprocated with full measure the scorn
expressed for her race. “Yes, an Indian, in whose veins runs the blood
of the strongest, the fleetest of the children of the forest, who
never turned their backs on friends or enemies, and whose souls have
returned to the Great Spirit stainless as they came from him. Think ye
that your blood will be corrupted by mingling with this stream?”
Long before Magawisca ceased to pour out her indignation, Hope’s first
emotion had given place to a burst of tears; she wept aloud, and her
broken utterance {13} of “O, my sister! my sister! My dear mother!”
emitted but imperfect glimpses of the ruined hopes, the bitter
feelings that oppressed her.
There was a chord in Magawisca’s heart that needed but the touch of
tenderness to respond in harmony; her pride vanished, and her
indignation gave place to sympathy. She said in a low, soothing voice,
“Now do not weep thus; your sister is well with us. She is cherished
as the bird cherishes her young. The cold winds may not blow on her,
nor the fierce sun scorch her, nor a harsh sound ever be spoken to
her; she is dear to Mononotto as if his own blood ran in her veins;
and Oneco--Oneco worships and serves her as if all good spirits dwelt
in her. Oh, she is indeed well with us.”
“There lies my mother,” cried Hope, without seeming to have heard
Magawisca’s consolations; “she lost her life in bringing her children
to this wild world, to secure them in the fold of Christ. O, God!
restore my sister to the Christian family.”
“And here,” said Magawisca, in a voice of deep pathos, “here is my
mother’s grave; think ye not that the Great Spirit looks down on these
sacred spots, where the good and the peaceful rest, with an equal eye?
think ye not their children are His children, whether they are
gathered in yonder temple where your people worship, or bow to him
beneath the green boughs of the forest?”
There was certainly something thrilling in Magawisca’s faith, and she
now succeeded in riveting Hope’s attention. “Listen to me,” she said;
“your {14} sister is of what you call the Christian family. I believe
ye have many names in that family. She hath been signed with the cross
by a holy father from France; she bows to the crucifix.”
“Thank God!” exclaimed Hope, fervently, for she thought that any
Christian faith was better than none.
“Perhaps ye are right,” said Magawisca, as if she read Hope’s heart;
“there may be those that need other lights; but to me, the Great
Spirit is visible in the life-creating sun. I perceive him in the
gentle light of the moon that steals in through the forest boughs. I
feel him here,” she continued, pressing her hand on her breast, while
her face glowed with the enthusiasm of devotion. “I feel him in these
ever-living, ever-wakeful thoughts--but we waste time. You must see
your sister.”
“When--and where?” again demanded Hope.
“Before I answer you, you must promise me by this sign,” and she
pointed to the emblem of her tribe, an eagle, which she had rudely
delineated on the post that served as a headstone to her mother’s
grave; “you must promise me by the bright host of Heaven, that the
door of your lips shall be fast; that none shall know that you have
seen me, or are to see me again.”
“I promise,” said Hope, with her characteristic precipitancy.
“Then, when five suns have risen and set, I will return with your
sister. But hush!” she said, suddenly stopping, and turning a
suspicious eye towards the thicket of evergreens.
{15}
“It was but the wind,” said Hope, rightly interpreting Magawisca’s
quick glance, and the slight inclination of her head.
“You would not betray me!” said Magawisca, in a voice of mingled
assurance and inquiry. “Oh, more than ever entered into thy young
thoughts hangs upon my safety.”
“But why any fear for your safety? why not come openly among us? I
will get the word of our good governor that you shall come and go in
peace. No one ever feared to trust his word.”
“You know not what you ask.”
“Indeed I do; but you, Magawisca, know not what you refuse; and why
refuse? are you afraid of being treated like a recovered prisoner? Oh,
no! every one will delight to honour you, for your very name is dear
to all Mr. Fletcher’s friends--most dear to Everell.”
“Dear to Everell Fletcher! Does he remember me? Is there a place in
his heart for an Indian?” she demanded, with a blended expression of
pride and melancholy.
“Yes, yes, Magawisca, indeed is there,” replied Hope, for now she
thought she had touched the right key. “It was but this morning that
he said he had a mind to take an Indian guide, and seek you out among
the Maquas.” Magawisca hid her face in the folds of her mantle, and
Hope proceeded with increasing earnestness. “There is nothing in the
wide world--there is nothing that Everell thinks so good and so noble
as you. Oh, if you could but {16} have seen his joy, when, after your
parting on that horrid rock, he first heard you were living! He has
described you so often and so truly, that the moment I saw you and
heard your voice, I said to myself, ‘this is surely Everell’s
Magawisca.’”
“Say no more, Hope Leslie, say no more,” exclaimed Magawisca, throwing
back the envelope from her face, as if she were ashamed to shelter
emotions she ought not to indulge. “I have promised my father, I have
repeated the vow here on my mother’s grave, and if I were to go back
from it, those bright witnesses,” she pointed to the heavens, “would
break their silence. Do not speak to me again of Everell Fletcher.”
“Oh yes, once again, Magawisca: if you will not listen to me; if you
will but give me this brief, mysterious meeting with my poor sister,
at least let Everell be with me; for his sake, for my sake, for your
own sake, do not refuse me.”
Magawisca looked on Hope’s glowing face for a moment, and then shook
her head with a melancholy smile. “They tell me,” she said, “that no
one can look on you and deny you aught; that you can make old men’s
hearts soft, and mould them at your will; but I have learned to deny
even the cravings of my own heart; to pursue my purpose like the bird
that keeps her wing stretched to the toilsome flight, though the
sweetest note of her mate recalls her to the nest. But ah! I do but
boast,” she continued, casting her eyes to the ground. “I may not
trust myself; that was a childish scream that escaped {17} me when I
saw Everell; had my father heard it, his cheek would have been pale
with shame. No, Hope Leslie, I may not listen to thee. You must come
alone to the meeting, or never meet your sister: will you come?”
Hope saw in the determined manner of Magawisca that there was no
alternative but to accept the boon on her own terms, and she no longer
withheld her compliance. The basis of their treaty being settled, the
next point to be arranged was the place of meeting. Magawisca had no
objections to venture again within the town, but then it would be
necessary completely to disguise Faith Leslie; and she hinted that she
understood enough of Hope’s English feelings to know that she would
wish to see her sister with the pure tint of her natural complexion.
Hope had too much delicacy and too much feeling even inadvertently to
appear to lay much stress on this point; but the experience of the
evening made her feel the difficulty of arranging a meeting,
surrounded as she was by vigilant friends, and within the sphere of
their observation. Suddenly it occurred to her that Digby, her fast
friend, and on more than one occasion her trusty ally, had the
superintendence of the governor’s garden on an island in the harbour,
and within three miles of the town. The governor’s family were in the
habit of resorting thither frequently. Digby had a small habitation
there, of which he and his family were the only tenants, and, indeed,
were the only persons who dwelt {18} on the island. Hope was certain
of permission to pass a night there, where she might indulge in an
interview with her sister of any length, without hazard of
interruption; and, having explained her plan to Magawisca, it received
her ready and full acquiescence.
Before they separated, Hope said, “You will allow me, Magawisca, to
persuade my sister, if I can, to remain with me?”
“Oh yes, if you can; but do not hope to persuade her. She and my
brother are as if one life-chord bound them together; and, besides,
your sister cannot speak to you and understand you as I do. She was
very young when she was taken where she has only heard the Indian
tongue: some, you know, are like water, that retains no mark; and
others like the flinty rock, that never loses a mark.” Magawisca
observed Hope’s look of disappointment, and, in a voice of pity,
added, “Your sister hath a face that speaketh plainly what the tongue
should never speak--her own goodness.”
When these two romantic females had concerted every measure they
deemed essential to the certainty and privacy of their meeting,
Magawisca bowed her head and kissed the border of Hope’s shawl with
the reverent delicacy of an Oriental salutation; she then took from
beneath her mantle some fragrant herbs, and strewed them over her
mother’s grave, then prostrated herself in deep and silent devotion,
feeling (as others have felt on earth thus consecrated) as if the
clods she pressed were instinct with {19} life. When this last act of
filial love was done, she rose, muffled herself closely in her dark
mantle, and departed.
Hope lingered for a moment. “Mysteriously,” she said, as her eye
followed the noble figure of Magawisca till it was lost in the
surrounding darkness, “mysteriously have our destinies been
interwoven. Our mothers brought from a far distance to rest together
here--their children connected in indissoluble bonds!”
But Hope was soon aware that this was no time for solitary meditation.
In the interest of her interview with Magawisca she had been heedless
of the gathering storm. The clouds rolled over the moon suddenly, like
the unfurling of a banner, and the rain poured down in torrents. Hope
had no light to guide her but occasional flashes of lightning, and the
candle whose little beam, proceeding from Mr. Cotton’s study window,
pierced the dense sheet of rain.
Hope hurried her steps homeward, and, as she passed the knot of
evergreens, she fancied she heard a rattling of the boughs, as if
there were some struggling within, and a suppressed voice saying,
“Hist! whish!” She paused, and with a resolute step turned towards the
thicket. “We have been overheard,” she thought; “this generous
creature shall not be betrayed.” At this instant a thunderbolt burst
over her head, and the whole earth seemed kindled in one bright
illumination. She was terrified; and, perhaps, as much convinced by
her fears {20} as her reason that it was both imprudent and useless to
make any farther investigation, she again bent her quick steps towards
home. She had scarcely surmounted the fence, which she passed more
like a winged spirit than a fine lady, when Sir Philip Gardiner joined
her.
“Miss Leslie!” he exclaimed, as a flash of lightning revealed her
person. “Now, thanks to my good stars that I am so fortunate as to
meet you; suffer me to wrap my cloak about you; you will be drenched
with this pitiless rain.”
“Oh no, no,” she said; “the cloak will but encumber me. I am already
drenched, and I shall be at home directly;” and she would have left
him, but he caught her arm, and gently detained her while he enveloped
her in his cloak.
“It should not be a trifle, Miss Leslie, that has kept you out,
regardless of this gathering storm,” Sir Philip said, inquiringly.
Miss Leslie made no reply, and he proceeded. “You may have forgotten
it is Saturday night--or perhaps you have a dispensation?”
“Neither,” replied Hope.
“Neither! Then I am sure you are abroad in some godly cause; for you
need to be one of the righteous--who, we are told, are as bold as a
lion--to confront the governor’s family after trespassing on holy
time.”
“I have no fears,” said Hope.
“No fears! That is a rare exemption for a young lady; but I would that
you possessed one still more {21} rare: she who is incapable of fear
should never be exposed to danger; and if I had a charmed shield, I
would devote my life to sheltering you from all harm: may not--may not
love be such a one?”
“It’s useless talking, Sir Philip,” replied Hope, if that could be
deemed a reply which seemed to have rather an indirect relation to the
previous address, “it’s useless talking in this rattling storm, your
words drop to the ground with the hailstones.”
“And every word you utter,” said the knight, biting his lips with
vexation, “not only penetrates my ear, but sinks into my heart;
therefore I pray you to be merciful, and do not make my heart heavy.”
“The hailstones melt as they touch the ground, and my words pass away
as soon, I fancy,” said Hope, with the most provoking nonchalance.
Sir Philip had no time to reply; they were just turning into the court
in front of Governor Winthrop’s house, when a flash of lightning, so
vivid that its glare almost blinded them, disclosed the figure of the
mysterious page leaning against the gatepost, his head inclined
forward as if in the act of listening, his cap in his hand, his dark
curls in wild disorder over his face and neck, and he apparently
unconscious of the storm. They both recoiled: Hope uttered an
exclamation of pity. “Ha, Roslin!” burst in a tone of severe reproach
from Sir Philip; but, instantly changing it for one of kindness, he
added, “you should not have waited for me, boy, in the storm.”
“I cared not for the storm--I did not feel it,” replied {22} the lad,
in a penetrating voice, which recalled to Miss Leslie all he had said
to her, and induced her to check her first impulse to bid him in; she
therefore passed him without any farther notice, ascended the steps,
and, as has been related in the preceding chapter, met Everell in the
hall.
======
It is necessary to state briefly to our readers some particulars in
relation to the reappearance of Magawisca, which events have not as
yet explained.
Her father, from the hour of his expulsion from his own dominion, had
constantly meditated revenge. His appetite was not sated at Bethel:
that massacre seemed to him but a retaliation for his private wrongs.
The catastrophe on the sacrifice-rock disordered his reason for a
time; and the Indians, who perceived something extraordinary in the
energy of his unwavering and undivided purpose, never believed it to
be perfectly restored. But this, so far from impairing their
confidence, converted it to implicit deference; for they, in common
with certain Oriental nations, believe that an insane person is
inspired; that the Divinity takes possession of the temple which the
spirit of the man has abandoned. Whatever Mononotto predicted was
believed; whatever he ordered was done.
He felt that Oneco’s volatile, unimpressive character was unfit for
his purpose, and he permitted him to pursue, without intermission, his
own pleasure--to hunt and fish for his “white bird,” as he called the
little Leslie. But Magawisca was the constant {23} companion of her
father; susceptible and contemplative, she soon imbibed his
melancholy, and became as obedient to the impulse of his spirit as the
most faithful are to the fancied intimations of the Divinity. She was
the priestess of the oracle. Her tenderness for Everell and her
grateful recollections of his lovely mother she determined to
sacrifice on the altar of national duty.
In the years 1642 and 1643 there was a general movement among the
Indians. Terrible massacres were perpetrated in the English
settlements in Virginia; the Dutch establishments in New-York were
invaded, and rumours of secret and brooding hostility kept the
colonies of New-England in a state of perpetual alarm. Mononotto
determined to avail himself of this crisis, that appeared so
favourable to his design, of uniting all the tribes of New-England in
one powerful combination. He first applied to Miantunnomoh, hoping by
his personal influence to persuade that powerful and crafty chief to
sacrifice to the general good his private feud with Uncas, the chief
of the Mohegans.
Mononotto eloquently pressed those arguments, which, as is allowed by
the historian of the Indian wars, “seemed to right reason not only
pregnant to the purpose, but also most cogent and invincible,” and for
a time they prevailed over the mind of Miantunnomoh.
Vague rumours of conspiracy reached Boston, and the governor summoned
Miantunnomoh to appear before his court, and abide an examination
there. {24} The chief accordingly (as has been seen) came to Boston;
but so artfully did he manage his cause as to screen from the English
every just ground of offence. Their suspicions, however, were not
removed; for Hubbard says, “though his words were smoother than oil,
yet many conceived in his heart were drawn swords.”
It may appear strange, that while prosecuting so hazardous and
delicate an enterprise, Mononotto should have encumbered himself with
his family. Magawisca was necessary to him; and he submitted to be
accompanied by Oneco and his bride, from respect to the dying
declaration of Nelema, that his plans could never be accomplished till
her promise to Hope Leslie had been redeemed; till, as she had sworn
to her preserver, the sisters had met.
Had the Indians been capable of a firm combination, the purpose of
Mononotto might have been achieved, and the English have been then
driven from the American soil. But the natives were thinly scattered
over an immense tract of country; the different tribes divided by
petty rivalships, and impassable gulfs of long-transmitted hatred.
They were brave and strong, but it was brute force without art or
arms: they had ingenuity to form, and they did form, artful
conspiracies, but their best-concerted plans were betrayed by the
timid or the treacherous.
Mononotto trusted to his daughter the arrangement of the meeting of
the sisters, which, from his having a superstitious notion that it was
in some way to influence his political purposes, he was anxious to
{25} promote. Magawisca left her companions at an Indian station on
the Neponset River, and proceeded herself to Boston to seek a private
interview with Hope Leslie. The appearance of an Indian woman in
Boston excited no observation, the natives being in the habit of
resorting there daily with game, fish, and their rude manufactures.
Aware of the necessity of disguising every peculiarity, she unbound
her hair from the braids in which it was usually confined, and combed
it thick over her forehead, after the fashion of the aborigines in the
vicinity of Boston, whom Eliot describes as wearing this “maiden
veil.” She enveloped herself in a blanket, that concealed the rich
dress which it was her father’s pride (and perhaps her pleasure) that
she should wear. Thus disguised, and favoured by the kind shadows of
twilight, she presented herself at Governor Winthrop’s, and was, as
has already appeared, successful in her mission.