{66}
“The sisters’ vows, the hours that we have spent,
When we have chid the hasty-footed time
For parting us--oh, and is all forgot?”
_Midsummer Night’s Dream_.
On quitting Everell, our heroine, quite unconscious that she was the
subject of painful suspicion or affectionate anxiety, sought a
sequestered spot, where she might indulge and tranquillize her
feelings.
It has been said that the love of a brother and sister is the only
platonic affection. This truth (if it be a truth) is the conviction of
an experience far beyond our heroine’s. She had seen in Esther the
pangs of repressed and unrequited love, and, mistaking them for the
characteristic emotions of that sentiment, it was no wonder that she
perceived no affinity to it in the joyous affection that had animated
her own soul. “After a little while,” she said, “I shall feel as I did
when we lived together in Bethel; if all that I love are happy, I must
be happy too.” If the cold and selfish laugh to scorn what they think
the reasoning of ignorance and inexperience, it is because they have
never felt that to meditate the happiness of others is to enter upon
the ministry and the joy of celestial spirits. Not one envious or
repining thought intruded into the heaven of Hope Leslie’s mind. Not
one malignant spirit passed the bounds of that paradise, that was
filled with pure {67} and tender affections, with projects of
goodness, and all their cheerful train.
Hope was longer absorbed in her revery than perhaps was quite
consistent with her philosophy; and when she was roused from it by
Digby’s voice, she blushed from the consciousness that her thoughts
had been too long withdrawn from the purpose of her visit to the
island. Digby came to say that his wife’s supper-table was awaiting
Miss Leslie. Hope embraced the opportunity, as they walked together
towards his dwelling, to make her arrangements for the evening.
“Digby,” she said, “I have something to confide to you, but you must
ask me no questions.”
“That’s crossing human nature,” replied the good fellow; “but I think
I can swim against the current for you, Miss Hope.”
“Thank you, Digby. Then, in the first place, you must know, I expect
some friends to meet me here this evening; all that I ask of you is to
permit me to remain out unmolested as long as I may choose. You may
tell your wife that I like to stroll in the garden by moonlight, or to
sit and listen to the waves breaking on the shore--as you know I do,
Digby.”
“Yes, Miss Hope, I know your heart always linked into such things; but
it will be heathen Greek to my wife--so you must make out a better
reason for her.”
“Then tell her that I like to have my own way.”
“Ah, that will I,” replied Digby, chuckling; {68} “that is what every
woman can understand. I always said, Miss Hope, it was a pure mercy
you chose the right way, for you always had yours.”
“Perhaps you think, Digby, I have been too headstrong in my own way.”
“Oh, no! my sweet mistress, no; why, this having our own way is what
everybody likes; it’s the privilege we came to this wilderness world
for; and though the gentles up in town there, with the governor at
their head, hold a pretty tight rein, yet I can tell them that there
are many who think what blunt Master Blackstone said, ‘That he came
not away from the Lord’s-bishops to put himself under the
Lord’s-brethren.’ No, no, Miss Hope, I watch the motions of the
straws--I know which way the wind blows. Thought and will are set
free. It was but the other day, so to speak--in the days of good Queen
Bess, as they called her--when, if her majesty did but raise her hand,
the Parliament folk were all down on their knees to her; and now,
thank God, the poorest and the lowest of us only kneel to Him who made
us. Times are changed--there is a new spirit in the world--chains are
broken--fetters are knocked off--and the liberty set forth in the
blessed Word is now felt to be every man’s birthright. But shame on my
prating, that wags so fast when I might hear your nightingale voice.”
Hope’s mind was preoccupied, and she found it difficult to listen to
Digby’s speculations with interest, or to respond with animation; but
she was too benignant to lose herself in sullen abstraction; and, {69}
when they arrived at the cottage, she roused her faculties to amuse
the children, and to listen to the mother’s stories of their promising
smartness. She commended the good wife’s milk and cakes, and sat for
half an hour after the table was removed, talking of the past, and
brightening the future prospects of her good friends with predictions
of their children’s prosperity and respectability: predictions which,
Digby afterward said, the dear young lady’s bounty brought to pass.
Suddenly she sprang from her chair: “Digby,” she exclaimed, “I think
the east is lighting up with the rising moon--is it not?”
“If it is not, it soon will,” replied Digby, understanding and
favouring her purpose.
“Then,” said Hope, “I will take a walk round the island; and do not
you, Betsy, sit up for me.” Betsy, of course, remonstrated. The night
air was unwholesome; and, though the sky overhead was clear, yet she
had heard distant thunder; the beach-birds had been in flocks on shore
all the day; and the breakers on the east side of the island made a
boding sound. These and other signs were urged as arguments against
the unseasonable walk. Of course they were unheeded by our heroine,
who, declaring that, with shelter so near, she was in no danger,
muffled herself in her cloak and sallied forth. She bent her steps
around the cliff which rises at the western extremity of the island,
leaving at its base a few yards of flat, rocky shore, around which the
waters of the bay sweep, deeply indenting it, and {70} forming a
natural cove or harbour for small boats. As Hope passed around a ledge
of rocks, she fancied she saw a shadow cast by a figure that seemed
flying before her. “They are here already,” she thought, and hastened
forward, expecting to catch a glimpse of them as soon as she should
turn the angle of the rock; but no figure appeared; and though Hope
imagined she heard stones rattling, as if displaced by hurried steps,
she was soon convinced the sound was accidental. Alive only to one
expectation, she seated herself, without any apprehension, to await in
this solitude the coming of her sister.
The moon rose unclouded, and sent her broad stream of light across the
beautiful bay, kindling in her beams the islands that gemmed it, and
disclosing, with a dim, indefinite light, the distant town, rising
over this fair domain of sea and land: hills, heights, jutting points,
and islands then unknown to fame, but now consecrated in domestic
annals, and illustrious in the patriot’s story.
Whatever charms the scene might have presented to our heroine’s eye at
another moment, she was now only conscious of one emotion of feverish
impatience. She gazed and listened till her senses ached; and at last,
when anticipation had nearly yielded to despair, her ear caught the
dash of oars, and at the next moment a canoe glanced around the
headland into the cove: she darted to the brink of the water--she
gazed intently on the little bark; her whole soul was in that look.
Her sister was there. At this first assurance that she really beheld
this loved, {71} lost sister, Hope uttered a scream of joy; but when,
at a second glance, she saw her in her savage attire, fondly leaning
on Oneco’s shoulder, her heart died within her; a sickening feeling
came over her--an unthought of revolting of nature; and, instead of
obeying the first impulse, and springing forward to clasp her in her
arms, she retreated to the cliff, leaned her head against it, averted
her eyes, and pressed her hands on her heart, as if she would have
bound down her rebel feelings.
Magawisca’s voice aroused her. “Hope Leslie,” she said, “take thy
sister’s hand.”
Hope stretched out her hand without lifting her eyes; but when she
felt her sister’s touch, the energies of nature awoke; she threw her
arms around her, folded her to her bosom, laid her cheek on hers, and
wept as if her heart would burst in every sob.
Mary (we use the appellative by which Hope had known her sister)
remained passive in her arms. Her eye was moistened, but she seemed
rather abashed and confounded than excited; and when Hope released
her, she turned towards Oneco with a look of simple wonder. Hope again
threw her arm around her sister, and intently explored her face for
some trace of those infantine features that were impressed on her
memory. “It is--it is my sister!” she exclaimed, and kissed her cheek
again and again. “Oh, Mary! do you not remember when we sat together
on mother’s knee? Do you not remember when, with her own burning hand,
the very day she died, she put those chains on our necks? Do you {72}
not remember when they held us up to kiss her cold lips?” Mary looked
towards Magawisca for an explanation of her sister’s words. “Look at
_me_, Mary; speak to _me_,” continued Hope.
“No speak Yengees,” replied Mary, exhausting in this brief sentence
all the English she could command.
Hope, in the impetuosity of her feelings, had forgotten that Magawisca
had forewarned her not to indulge the expectation that her sister
could speak to her; and the melancholy truth, announced by her own
lips, seemed to Hope to open a new and impassable gulf between them.
She wrung her hands: “Oh, what shall I do? what shall I say?” she
exclaimed.
Magawisca now advanced to her, and said, in a compassionate tone, “Let
me be thy interpreter, Hope Leslie, and be thou more calm. Dost thou
not see thy sister is to thee as the feather borne on the torrent?”
“I will be more calm, Magawisca; but promise me you will interpret
truly for me.”
A blush of offended pride overspread Magawisca’s cheek. “We hold truth
to be the health of the soul,” she said: “thou mayst speak, maiden,
without fear that I will abate one of thy words.”
“Oh, I fear nothing wrong from you, Magawisca; forgive me--forgive
me--I know not what I say or do.” She drew her sister to a rock, and
they sat down together. Hope knew not how to address one so near to
her by nature, so far removed by habit {73} and education. She thought
that if Mary’s dress, which was singularly and gaudily decorated, had
a less savage aspect, she might look more natural to her; and she
signed to her to remove the mantle she wore, made of birds’ feathers,
woven together with threads of the wild nettle. Mary threw it aside,
and disclosed her person, light and agile as a fawn’s, clothed with
skins, neatly fitted to her waist and arms, and ambitiously
embellished with embroidery in porcupine’s quills and beads. The
removal of the mantle, instead of the effect designed, only served to
make more striking the aboriginal peculiarities; and Hope, shuddering
and heart-sick, made one more effort to disguise them by taking off
her silk cloak and wrapping it close around her sister. Mary seemed
instantly to comprehend the language of the action; she shook her
head, gently disengaged herself from the cloak, and resumed her
mantle. An involuntary exclamation of triumph burst from Oneco’s lips.
“Oh, tell her,” said Hope to Magawisca, “that I want once more to see
her in the dress of her own people--of her own family--from whose arms
she was torn to be dragged into captivity.”
A faint smile curled Magawisca’s lip, but she interpreted faithfully
Hope’s communication and Mary’s reply: “‘She does not like the English
dress,’ she says.”
“Ask her,” said Hope, “if she remembers the day when the wild Indians
sprung upon the family at Bethel like wolves upon a fold of lambs? If
she {74} remembers when Mrs. Fletcher and her innocent little ones
were murdered, and she stolen away?”
“She says ‘she remembers it well, for then it was Oneco saved her
life.’”
Hope groaned aloud. “Ask her,” she continued, with unabated eagerness,
“if she remembers when we played together, and read together, and
knelt together at our mother’s feet; when she told us of the God that
made us, and the Saviour that redeemed us?”
“She remembers something of all this, but she says ‘it is faint and
distant, like the vanishing vapour on the far-off mountain.’”
“Oh, tell her, Magawisca, if she will come home and live with me, I
will devote my life to her. I will watch over her in sickness and
health. I will be mother--sister--friend to her: tell her that our
mother, now a saint in heaven, stoops from her happy place to entreat
her to return to our God and our father’s God.”
Mary shook her head in a manner indicative of a more determined
feeling than she had before manifested, and took from her bosom a
crucifix, which she fervently pressed to her lips.
Every motive Hope offered was powerless, every mode of entreaty
useless, and she leaned her head despondently on Mary’s shoulder. The
contrast between the two faces thus brought together was most
striking. Hope’s hat had slipped back, and her rich brown tresses fell
about her neck and face; her full eye was intently fixed on Mary, and
her cheek {75} glowing with impassioned feeling, she looked like an
angel touched with some mortal misery; while Mary’s face, pale and
spiritless, was only redeemed from absolute vacancy by an expression
of gentleness and modesty. Hope’s hand was lying on her sister’s lap,
and a brilliant diamond ring caught Mary’s attention. Hope perceived
this, and instantly drew it from her own finger and placed it on
Mary’s; “and here is another--and another--and another,” she cried,
making the same transfer of all her rings. “Tell her, Magawisca, if
she will come home with me, she shall be decked with jewels from head
to foot; she shall have feathers from the most beautiful birds that
wing the air, and flowers that never fade: tell her that all I possess
shall be hers.”
“Shall I tell her so?” asked Magawisca, with a mingled expression of
contempt and concern, as if she herself despised the lure, but feared
that Mary might be caught by it; for the pleased girl was holding her
hand before her, turning it, and gazing with childlike delight on the
gems, as they caught and reflected the moonbeams. “Shall I ask your
sister to barter truth and love--the jewels of the soul, that grow
brighter and brighter in the land of spirits--for these poor perishing
trifles? Oh, Hope Leslie, I had better thoughts of thee.”
“I cannot help it, Magawisca; I am driven to try every way to win back
my sister: tell her, I entreat you, tell her what I have said.”
Magawisca faithfully repeated all the motives Hope had urged, while
Hope herself clasped her sister’s {76} hand, and looked in her face
with a mute supplication more earnest than words could express. Mary
hesitated, and her eye turned quickly to Oneco, to Magawisca, and then
again rested on her sister. Hope felt her hand tremble in hers; Mary,
for the first time, bent towards her, and laid her cheek to Hope’s.
Hope uttered a scream of delight: “Oh, she does not refuse; she will
stay with me,” she exclaimed. Mary understood the exclamation, and
suddenly recoiled, and hastily drew the rings from her fingers. “Keep
them--keep them,” said Hope, bursting into tears; “if we must be
cruelly parted again, they will sometimes speak to you of me.”
At this moment a bright light, as of burning flax, flamed up from the
cliff before them, threw a momentary flash over the water, and then
disappeared. Oneco rose: “I like not this light,” he said; “we must be
gone; we have redeemed our promise;” and he took Hope’s cloak from the
ground, and gave it to her as a signal that the moment of separation
had arrived.
“Oh, stay one moment longer,” cried Hope. Oneco pointed to the
heavens, over which black and threatening clouds were rapidly
gathering, and Magawisca said, “Do not ask us to delay; my father has
waited long enough.” Hope now, for the first time, observed there was
an Indian in the canoe, wrapped in skins, and listlessly awaiting, in
a recumbent position, the termination of the scene.
“Is that Mononotto?” she said, shuddering at the thought of the bloody
scenes with which he was associated {77} in her mind; but, before her
inquiry was answered, the subject of it sprang to his feet, and
uttering an exclamation of surprise, stretched his hand towards the
town. All at once perceived the object towards which he pointed. A
bright strong light streamed upward from the highest point of land,
and sent a ruddy glow over the bay. Every eye turned inquiringly to
Hope. “It is nothing,” she said to Magawisca, “but the light that is
often kindled on Beacon Hill to guide the ships into the harbour. The
night is becoming dark, and some vessel is expected in; that is all,
believe me.”
Whatever trust her visiters might have reposed in Hope’s good faith,
they were evidently alarmed by an appearance which they did not think
sufficiently accounted for; and Oneco hearing, or imagining he heard,
approaching oars, said, in his own language, to Magawisca, “We have no
time to lose; I will not permit my white bird to remain any longer
within reach of the net.”
Magawisca assented: “We must go,” she said; “we must no longer hazard
our father’s life.” Oneco sprang into the canoe, and called to Mary to
follow him.
“Oh, spare her one single moment!” said Hope, imploringly, to
Magawisca; and she drew her a few paces from the shore, and knelt down
with her, and, in a half articulate prayer, expressed the tenderness
and sorrow of her soul, and committed her sister to God. Mary
understood her action, and feeling that their separation was forever,
nature for a moment asserted {78} her rights; she returned Hope’s
embrace, and wept on her bosom.
While the sisters were thus folded in one another’s arms, a loud yell
burst from the savages; Magawisca caught Mary by the arms, and Hope,
turning, perceived that a boat filled with armed men had passed the
projecting point of land, and, borne in by the tide, it instantly
touched the beach, and in another instant Magawisca and Mary were
prisoners. Hope saw the men were in the uniform of the governor’s
guard. One moment before she would have given worlds to have had her
sister in her power; but now, the first impulse of her generous spirit
was an abhorrence of her seeming treachery to her friends. “Oh!
Oneco,” she cried, springing towards the canoe, “I did not--indeed I
did not know of it.” She had scarcely uttered the words, which fell
from her neither understood nor heeded, when Oneco caught her in his
arms, and shouting to Magawisca to tell the English that, as they
dealt by Mary, so would he deal by her sister, he gave the canoe the
first impulse, and it shot out like an arrow, distancing and defying
pursuit.
Oneco’s coup-de-main seemed to petrify all present. They were roused
by Sir Philip Gardiner, who, coming round the base of the cliff,
appeared among them; and, learning the cause of their amazement, he
ordered them, with a burst of passionate exclamation, instantly to man
the boat, and proceed with him in pursuit. This one and all refused.
“Daylight and calm water,” they said, “would be necessary {79} to give
any hope to such a pursuit, and the storm was now gathering so fast as
to render it dangerous to venture out at all.”
Sir Philip endeavoured to alarm them with threats of the governor’s
displeasure, and to persuade them with offers of high reward; but they
understood too well the danger and hopelessness of the attempt to risk
it, and they remained inexorable. Sir Philip then went in quest of
Digby, and at the distance of a few paces met him. Alarmed by the
rapid approach of the storm, he was seeking Miss Leslie; when he
learned her fate from Sir Philip’s hurried communication, he uttered a
cry of despair. “Oh! I would go after her,” he said, “if I had but a
cockle-shell; but it seems as if the foul fiends were at work: my boat
was this morning sent to town to be repaired. And yet, what could we
do?” He added, shuddering, “The wind is rising to that degree, that I
think no boat could live in the bay; and it is getting as dark as
Egypt. O God, save my precious young lady! God have mercy on her!” he
continued. A sudden burst of thunder heightened his alarm: “Man can do
nothing for her. Why, in the name of Heaven,” he added, with a natural
desire to appropriate the blame of misfortune, “why must they be
forever meddling; why not let the sisters meet and part in peace?”
“Oh, why not?” thought Sir Philip, who would have given his right hand
to have retraced the steps that had led to this most unlooked-for and
unhappy issue of the affair. They were now joined by the {80} guard
with their prisoners. Digby was requested to lead them instantly to a
shelter. He did so; and, agitated as he was with fear and despair for
Miss Leslie, he did not fail to greet Magawisca as one to whom all
honour was due. She heeded him not; she seemed scarcely conscious of
the cries of Faith Leslie, who was weeping like a child, and clinging
to her. The treachery that had betrayed her rapt her soul in
indignation, and nothing roused her but the blasts of wind and flashes
of lightning, that seemed to her the death-knell of her father.
The storm continued for the space of an hour, and then died away as
suddenly as it had gathered. In another hour the guard had safely
landed at the wharf, and were conveying their prisoners to the
governor. He and his confidential counsellors, who had been awaiting
at his house the return of their emissaries, solaced themselves with
the belief that all parties were safely sheltered on the island, and
probably would remain there during the night. While they were
whispering this conclusion to one another at one extremity of the
parlour, Everell sat beside Miss Downing in the recess of a window
that overlooked the garden. The huge projecting chimney formed a
convenient screen for the lovers. The evening was warm, the
window-sash thrown up. The moon had come forth, and shed a mild lustre
through the dewy atmosphere; the very light that the young and
sentimental, and, above all, young and sentimental lovers, most
delight in. But in vain did Everell look abroad for inspiration; in
vain did {81} he turn his eyes to Esther’s face, now more beautiful
than ever, flushed as it was with the first dawn of happiness; in vain
did he try to recall his truant thoughts, to answer words to her timid
but bright glances; he would not, he could not say what he did not
feel, and the few sentences he uttered fell on his own ear like cold
abstractions. While he was in this durance, his father was
listening--if a man stretched on a rack can be said to listen--to
Madam Winthrop’s whispered and reiterated assurances of her entire
approbation of her niece’s choice.
This was the position of all parties, when a bustle was heard in the
court, and the guard entered. The foremost advanced to the governor,
and communicated a few sentences in a low tone. The governor
manifested unusual emotion, turned round suddenly, and exclaimed,
“Here, Mr. Fletcher--Everell;” and then motioning to them to keep
their places, he said, in an under voice, to those near to him, “We
must first dispose of our prisoner: come forward, Magawisca.”
“Magawisca!” echoed Everell, springing at one bound into the hall. But
Magawisca shrunk back and averted her face. “Now God be praised!” he
exclaimed, as he caught the first glance of a form never to be
forgotten; “it is--it is Magawisca!” She did not speak, but drew away,
and leaned her head against the wall. “What means this?” he said, now
for the first time espying Faith Leslie, and then looking round on the
guard; “what means it, sir?” he demanded, turning somewhat imperiously
to the governor.
{82}
“It means, sir,” replied the governor, coldly, “that this Indian woman
is the prisoner of the Commonwealth.”
“It means that I am a prisoner, lured to the net, and betrayed.”
“You a prisoner--here, Magawisca!” Everell exclaimed. “Impossible!
Justice, gratitude, humanity forbid it. My father--Governor Winthrop,
you will not surely suffer this outrage?”
The elder Fletcher had advanced, and, scarcely less perplexed and
agitated than his son, was endeavouring to draw forth Faith Leslie,
who had shrunk behind Magawisca. Governor Winthrop seemed not at all
pleased with Everell’s interference. “You will do well, young Mr.
Fletcher, to bridle your zeal; private feelings must yield to the
public good: this young woman is suspected of being an active agent in
brewing the conspiracy forming against us among the Indian tribes; and
it is somewhat bold in you to oppose the course of justice--to
intermeddle with the public welfare--to lift your feeble judgment
against the wisdom of Providence, which has led, by peculiar means, to
the apprehension of the enemy. Conduct your prisoner to the jail,” he
added, turning to the guard, “and bid Barnaby have her in close and
safe keeping till farther orders.”
“For the love of God, sir,” cried Everell, “do not this injustice. At
least suffer her to remain in your own house, on her promise--more
secure than the walls of a prison.” Governor Winthrop only replied by
signing to the guards to proceed to their duty.
{83}
“Stay one moment,” exclaimed Everell; “permit her, I beseech you, to
remain here; place her in any one of your apartments, and I will
remain before it, a faithful warder, night and day. But do not--do
not, I beseech you--sully your honour by committing this noble
creature to your jail.”
“Listen to my son, I entreat you,” said the elder Fletcher, unable any
longer to restrain his own feelings; “certainly we owe much to this
woman.”
“You owe much, undoubtedly,” replied the governor; “but it yet remains
to be proved, my friend, that your son’s redeemed life is to be put in
the balance against the public weal.”
Esther, who had observed the scene with an intense interest, now
overcame her timidity so far as to penetrate the circle that
surrounded the governor, and to attempt to enforce Everell’s prayer.
“May not Magawisca,” she said, “share our apartment--Hope’s and mine?
She will then, in safe custody, await your farther pleasure.”
“Thanks, Esther--thanks,” cried Everell, with an animation that would
have rewarded a far more difficult effort: but all efforts were
unavailing, but not useless; for Magawisca said to Everell, “You have
sent light into my darkened soul--you have truth and gratitude; and
for the rest, they are but what I deemed them. Send me,” she
continued, proudly turning to the governor, “to your dungeon; all
places are alike to me while I am your prisoner; but, for the sake of
Everell Fletcher, let me tell you, that she who is dearer to him than
his own soul, if, indeed, {84} she has lived out the perils of this
night, must answer for my safe keeping.”
“Hope Leslie!” exclaimed Everell; “what has happened? What do you
mean, Magawisca?”
“She was the decoy bird,” replied Magawisca, calmly; “and she, too, is
caught in the net.”
“Explain, I beseech you!” The governor answered Everell’s appeal by a
brief explanation. A bustle ensued: every other feeling was now lost
in concern for Hope Leslie; and Magawisca was separated from her
weeping and frightened companion, and conducted away without farther
opposition; while the two Fletchers, as if life and death hung on
every instant, were calling on the governor to aid them in the way and
means of pursuit.