{228}
“Basta cosi t’intendo
Già ti spiegasti a pieno:
E mi diresti meno
Se mi dicessi più.”
Metastasio.
We trust we have not exhausted the patience of our readers, and that
they will vouchsafe to go forth with us once more, on the eventful
evening on which we have fallen, to watch the safe conduct of the
released prisoner.
The fugitives had not proceeded many yards from the jail when Everell
joined them. This was the first occasion on which Magawisca and
Everell had had an opportunity freely to interchange their feelings.
Everell’s tongue faltered when he would have expressed what he had
felt for her: his manly, generous nature disdained vulgar professions,
and he feared that his ineffectual efforts in her behalf had left him
without any other testimony of the constancy of his friendship and the
warmth of his gratitude.
Magawisca comprehended his feelings, and anticipated their expression.
She related the scene with Sir Philip in the prison, and dwelt long on
her knowledge of the attempt Everell then made to rescue her. “That
bad man,” she said, “made me, for the first time, lament for my lost
limb. He darkened {229} the clouds that were gathering over my soul;
and for a little while, Everell, I did deem thee like most of thy
race, on whom kindness falls like drops of rain on the lake, dimpling
its surface for a moment, but leaving no mark there; but when I found
thou wert true,” she continued, in a swelling, exulting voice, “when I
heard thee in my prison, and saw thee on my trial, I again rejoiced
that I had sacrificed my precious limb for thee; that I had worn away
the days and nights in the solitudes of the forest, musing on the
memory of thee, and counting the moons till the Great Spirit shall bid
us to those regions where there will be no more gulfs between us, and
I may hail thee as my brother.”
“And why not now, Magawisca, regard me as your brother? True, neither
time nor distance can sever the bonds by which our souls are united;
but why not enjoy this friendship while youth, and as long as life
lasts? Nay, hear me, Magawisca; the present difference of the English
with the Indians is but a vapour, that has, even now, nearly passed
away. Go, for a short time, where you may be concealed from those who
are not yet prepared to do you justice, and then--I will answer for
it--every heart and every voice will unite to recall you; you shall be
welcomed with the honour due to you from all, and always cherished
with the devotion due from us.”
“Oh! do not hesitate, Magawisca,” cried Hope, who had, till now, been
only a listener to the conversation, in which she took a deep
interest. “Promise us that you will return and dwell with us: as {230}
you would say, Magawisca, we will walk in the same path; the same joys
will shine on us; and, if need be that sorrows come over us, why, we
will all sit under their shadow together.”
“It cannot be--it cannot be,” replied Magawisca, the persuasions of
those she loved not for a moment overcoming her deep, invincible sense
of the wrongs her injured race had sustained. “My people have been
spoiled; we cannot take as a gift that which is our own; the law of
vengeance is written on our hearts: you say you have a written rule of
forgiveness--it may be better if ye would be guided by it; it is not
for us: the Indian and the white man can no more mingle and become one
than day and night.”
Everell and Hope would have interrupted her with farther entreaties
and arguments: “Touch no more on that,” she said; “we must part, and
forever.” Her voice faltered for the first time, and turning from her
own fate to what appeared to her the bright destiny of her companions,
“My spirit will joy in the thought,” she said, “that you are dwelling
in love and happiness together. Nelema told me your souls were mated;
she said your affections mingled like streams from the same fountain.
Oh! may the chains by which He who sent you from the Spirit-land bound
you together, grow brighter and stronger till you return thither
again.”
She paused: neither of her companions spoke--neither could speak; and,
naturally misinterpreting their silence, “Have I passed your bound of
modesty,” {231} she said, “in speaking to the maiden as if she were a
wife?”
“Oh, no, Magawisca,” said Everell, feeling a strange and undefinable
pleasure in an illusion which, though he could not for an instant
participate, he would not for the world have dissipated; “oh, no; do
not check one expression--one word; they are your last to us.” “And
may not the last words of a friend be, like the sayings of a
death-bed, prophetic?” he would have added, but his lips refused to
utter what he felt was the treachery of his heart.
To Hope it seemed that too much had already been spoken. She could be
prudent when anything but her own safety depended on her discretion.
Before Magawisca could reply to Everell, she gave a turn to the
conversation: “Ere we part, Magawisca,” she said, “cannot you give me
some charm by which I may win my sister’s affections? She is wasting
away with grief and pining.”
“Ask your own heart, Hope Leslie, if any charm could win your
affections from Everell Fletcher?”
She paused for a reply. The gulf from which Hope had retreated seemed
to be widening before her; but, summoning all her courage, she
answered with a tolerably firm voice, “Yes--yes, Magawisca; if
virtue--if duty to others required it, I trust in Heaven I could
command and direct my affections.”
We hope Everell may be forgiven for the joy that gushed through his
heart when Hope expressed a confidence in her own strength, which at
least implied {232} a consciousness that she needed it. Nature will
rejoice in reciprocated love, under whatever adversities it comes.
Magawisca replied to Hope’s apparent meaning: “Both virtue and duty,”
she said, “bind your sister to Oneco. She hath been married according
to our simple modes, and persuaded by a Romish father, as she came
from Christian blood, to observe the rites of their law. When she
flies from you, as she will, mourn not over her, Hope Leslie; the wild
flower would perish in your gardens; the forest is like a native home
to her, and she will sing as gayly again as the bird that hath found
its mate.”
They now approached the place where Digby, with a trusty friend, was
awaiting them. A light canoe had been provided, and Digby had his
instructions from Everell to convey Magawisca to any place she might
herself select. The good fellow had entered into the confederacy with
hearty good-will, giving, as a reason for his obedience to the impulse
of his heart, “that the poor Indian girl could not commit sins enough
against the English to weigh down her good deed to Mr. Everell.”
Everell now inquired of Magawisca whither he should direct the boat:
“To Moscutusett,” she said; “I shall there get tidings, at least, of
my father.”
“And must we now part, Magawisca? Must we live without you?”
“Oh! no, no,” cried Hope, joining her entreaties, “your noble mind
must not be wasted in those hideous solitudes.”
{233}
“Solitudes?” echoed Magawisca, in a voice in which some pride mingled
with her parting sadness; “Hope Leslie, there is no solitude to me;
the Great Spirit and his ministers are everywhere present and visible
to the eye of the soul that loves him; Nature is but his interpreter;
her forms are but bodies for his spirit. I hear him in the rushing
winds--in the summer breeze--in the gushing fountains--in the softly
running streams. I see him in the bursting life of spring--in the
ripening maize--in the falling leaf. Those beautiful lights,” and she
pointed upward, “that shine alike on your stately domes and our forest
homes, speak to me of his love to all: think you I go to a solitude,
Hope Leslie?”
“No, Magawisca; there is no solitude, nor privation, nor sorrow to a
soul that thus feels the presence of God,” replied Hope. She paused:
it was not a time for calm reflection or protracted solicitation; but
the thought that a mind so disposed to religious impressions and
affections might enjoy the brighter light of Christian revelation--a
revelation so much higher, nobler, and fuller than that which proceeds
from the voice of Nature--made Hope feel a more intense desire than
ever to retain Magawisca; but this was a motive Magawisca could not
now appreciate, and she could not, therefore, urge: “I cannot ask
you,” she said, “I do not ask you, for your sake, but for ours, to
return to us.”
“Oh! yes, Magawisca,” urged Everell, “come back to us, and teach us to
be happy, as you are, without human help or agency.”
{234}
“Ah!” she replied, with a faint smile, “ye need not the lesson; ye
will each be to the other a full stream of happiness. May it be fed
from the fountain of love, and grow broader and deeper through all the
passage of life.”
The picture Magawisca presented was, in the minds of the lovers, too
painfully contrasted with the real state of their affairs. Both felt
their emotions were beyond their control; both silently appealed to
Heaven to aid them in repressing feelings that might not be expressed.
Hope naturally sought relief in action. She took a morocco case from
her pocket, and drew from it a rich gold chain, with a clasp
containing hair, and set round with precious stones: “Magawisca,” she
said, with as much steadiness of voice as she could assume, “take this
token with you; it will serve as a memorial of us both; for I have put
in the clasp a lock of Everell’s hair, taken from his head when he was
a boy, at Bethel: it will remind you of your happiest days there.”
Magawisca took the chain, and held it in her hand a moment, as if
deliberating. “This is beautiful,” she said, “and would, when I am far
away from thee, speak sweetly to me of thy kindness, Hope Leslie. But
I would rather, if I could demean myself to be a beggar--” she
hesitated, and then added, “I wrong thy generous nature in fearing
thus to speak; I know thou wilt freely give me the image, when thou
hast the living form.”
Before she had finished, Hope’s quick apprehension {235} had
comprehended her meaning. Immediately after Everell’s arrival in
England, he had, at his father’s desire, had a small miniature of
himself painted, and sent to Hope. She attached it to a riband, and
had always worn it. Soon after Everell’s engagement to Miss Downing,
she took it off to put it aside; but feeling, at the moment, that this
action implied a consciousness of weakness, she, with a mixed feeling
of pride and reluctance to part with it, restored it to her bosom.
While she was adjusting Magawisca’s disguise in the prison, the
miniature slid from beneath her dress, and she, at the time, observed
that Magawisca’s eye rested intently on it. She must not now hesitate;
Everell must not see her reluctance; and yet, such are the strange
contrarieties of human feeling, the severest pang she felt in parting
with it was the fear that Everell would think it was a willing gift.
Hoping to shelter all her feelings in the haste of the action, she
took the miniature from her own neck and tied it around Magawisca’s.
“You have but reminded me of my duty,” she said; “nay, keep them both,
Magawisca; do not stint the little kindness I can show you.”
Digby had at this moment come up to urge no more delay; and we leave
to others to adjust the proportions of emotion that were indicated by
Hope’s faltering voice and an irrepressible burst of tears, between
her grief at parting and other and secret feelings.
All stood as if they were riveted to the ground till Digby again
spoke, and suggested the danger to {236} which Magawisca was exposed
by this delay. All felt the necessity of immediate separation, and all
shrank from it as from witnessing the last gasp of life. They moved to
the water’s edge, and once more prompted by Digby, Everell and Hope,
in broken voices, expressed their last wishes and prayers. Magawisca
joined their hands, and bowing her head on them, “The Great Spirit
guide ye,” she said, and then, turning away, leaped into the boat,
muffled her face in her mantle, and in a few brief moments disappeared
forever from their sight.
Everell and Hope remained immovable, gazing on the little boat till it
faded in the dim distance: for a few moments, every feeling for
themselves was lost in the grief of parting forever from this
admirable being, who seemed, to her enthusiastic young friends, one of
the noblest of the works of God--a bright witness to the beauty, the
independence, and the immortality of virtue. They breathed their
silent prayers for her; and when their thoughts returned to
themselves, there was a consciousness of perfect unity of feeling--a
joy in the sympathy that was consecrated by its object and might be
innocently indulged, that was a delicious spell to their troubled
hearts.
Strong as the temptation was, they both felt the impropriety of
lingering where they were, and they bent their slow, unwilling
footsteps homeward. Not one word, during the long-protracted walk, was
spoken by either; but no language could have been so expressive of
their mutual love and mutual resolution {237} as this silence. They
both afterward confessed that, though they had never felt so deeply as
at that moment the bitterness of their divided destiny, yet neither
had they before known the worth of those principles of virtue that can
subdue the strongest passions to their obedience: an experience worth
a tenfold suffering.
As they approached Governor Winthrop’s they observed that, instead of
the profound darkness and silence that usually reigned in that
exemplary mansion at eleven o’clock, the house seemed to be in great
bustle. The doors were open, and they heard loud voices, and lights
were swiftly passing from room to room. Hope inferred that,
notwithstanding her precautions, the apprehensions of the family had
probably been excited in regard to her untimely absence, and she
passed the little distance that remained with dutiful haste. Everell
attended her to the gate of the court, and, pressing her hand to his
lips with an emotion that he felt he might indulge for the last time,
he left her, and went, according to a previous determination, to
Barnaby Tuttle’s, where, by a surrender of himself to the jailer’s
custody, he expected to relieve poor Cradock from his involuntary
confinement.