Читать книгу Hope Leslie (Historical Novel) - Catharine Maria Sedgwick - Страница 6

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“For the temper of the brain in quick apprehensions and acute judgments, to say no more, the most High and Sovereign God hath not made the Indian inferior to the European.”

Roger Williams

The magnitude of the enterprise in which the first settlers of New England were engaged, the terrific obstacles they encountered, and the hardships they endured, gave to their characters a seriousness and solemnity, heightened, it may be, by the severity of their religious faith.

Where all were serious the melancholy of an individual was not conspicuous; and Mr Fletcher’s sadness would probably have passed unnoticed, but for the reserve of his manners, which piqued the pride of his equals, and provoked the curiosity of his inferiors.

The first probably thought that the apostolic principle of community of goods at least extended to opinions and feelings; and the second always fancy when a man shuts the door of his lips that there must be some secret worth knowing within.

Like many other men of an ardent temperament and disinterested love of his species, Mr Fletcher was disappointed at the slow operation of principles, which, however efficient and excellent in the abstract, were to be applied to various and discordant subjects. Such men, inexperienced in the business of life, are like children, who, setting out on a journey, are impatient after the few first paces to be at the end of it. They cannot endure the rebuffs and delays that retard them in their course. These are the men of genius – the men of feeling – the men that the world calls visionaries; and it is because they are visionaries – because they have a beau-ideal in their own minds, to which they can see but a faint resemblance in the actual state of things, that they become impatient of detail, and cannot brook the slow progress to perfection. They are too rapid in their anticipations. The character of man, and the institutions of society, are yet very far from their possible and destined perfection. Still, how far is the present age in advance of that which drove reformers to a dreary wilderness! – of that which hanged Quakers! – of that which condemned to death, as witches, innocent, unoffending old women! But it is unnecessary to heighten the glory or our risen day by comparing it with the preceding twilight.

To return to Mr Fletcher. He was mortified at seeing power, which had been earned at so dear a rate, and which he had fondly hoped was to be applied to the advancement of man’s happiness, sometimes perverted to purposes of oppression and personal aggrandizement. He was shocked when a religious republic, which he fancied to be founded on the basis of established truth, was disturbed by the outbreak of heresies; and his heart sickened when he saw those, who had sacrificed whatever man holds dearest to religious freedom, imposing those shackles on others from which they had just released themselves at such a price. Partly influenced by these disgusts, and partly by that love of contemplation and retirement that belongs to a character of his cast, especially when depressed by some early disappointment, he refused the offices of honour and trust that were, from time to time, offered to him; and finally, in 1636, when Pynchon, Holioke, and Chapin formed their settlement at Springfield, on Connecticut river, he determined to retire from the growing community of Boston to this frontier settlement.

Mrs Fletcher received his decision as all wives of that age of undisputed masculine supremacy (or most of those of our less passive age) would do, with meek submission. The inconveniencies and dangers of that outpost were not unknown to her, nor did she underrate them; but Abraham would as soon have remonstrated against the command that bade him go forth from his father’s house into the land of the Chaldees, as she would have failed in passive obedience to the resolve of her husband.

The removal was effected early in the summer of 1636. Springfield assumed, at once, under the auspices of its wealthy and enterprising proprietors, the aspect of a village. The first settlers followed the course of the Indians, and planted themselves on the borders of rivers – the natural gardens of the earth, where the soil is mellowed and enriched by the annual overflowing of the streams, and prepared by the unassisted processes of nature to yield to the indolent Indian his scanty supply of maize and other esculents. The wigwams which constituted the village, or, to use the graphic aboriginal designation, the ‘smoke’ of the natives gave place to the clumsy, but more convenient dwellings of the pilgrims.

Where there are now contiguous rows of shops, filled with the merchandise of the east, the manufactures of Europe, the rival fabrics of our own country, and the fruits of the tropics; where now stands the stately hall of justice – the academy – the bank – churches, orthodox and heretic, and all the symbols of a rich and populous community – were, at the early period of our history, a few log houses, planted around a fort, defended by a slight embankment and palisade.

The mansions of the proprietors were rather more spacious and artificial than those of their more humble associates, and were built on the well known model of the modest dwelling illustrated by the birth of Milton – a form still abounding in the eastern parts of Massachusetts, and presenting to the eye of a New Englander the familiar aspect of an awkward friendly country cousin.

The first clearing was limited to the plain. The beautiful hill that is now the residence of the gentry (for there yet lives such a class in the heart of our democratic community) and is embellished with stately edifices and expensive pleasure grounds, was then the border of a dense forest, and so richly fringed with the original growth of trees, that scarce a sunbeam had penetrated to the parent earth.

Mr Fletcher was at first welcomed as an important acquisition to the infant establishment; but he soon proved that he purposed to take no part in its concerns, and, in spite of the remonstrances of the proprietors, he fixed his residence a mile from the village, deeming exposure to the incursions of the savages very slight, and the surveillance of an inquiring neighbourhood a certain evil. His domain extended from a gentle eminence, that commanded an extensive view of the bountiful Connecticut to the shore, where the river indented the meadow by one of those sweeping graceful curves by which it seems to delight to beautify the land it nourishes.

The border of the river was fringed with all the water loving trees; but the broad meadows were quite cleared, excepting that a few elms and sycamores had been spared by the Indians, and consecrated, by tradition, as the scene of revels or councils. The house of our pilgrim was a low-roofed modest structure, containing ample accommodation for a patriarchal family; where children, dependants, and servants were all to be sheltered under one roof-tree. On one side, as we have described, lay an open and extensive plain; within view was the curling smoke from the little cluster of houses about the fort – the habitation of civilized man; but all else was a savage howling wilderness.

Never was a name more befitting the condition of a people, than ‘Pilgrim’ that of our forefathers. It should be redeemed from the puritanical and ludicrous associations which have degraded it, in most men’s minds, and be hallowed by the sacrifices made by these voluntary exiles. They were pilgrims, for they had resigned, for ever, what the good hold most dear – their homes. Home can never be transferred; never repeated in the experience of an individual. The place consecrated by parental love, by the innocence and sports of childhood, by the first acquaintance with nature; by the linking of the heart to the visible creation, is the only home. There there is a living and breathing spirit infused into nature: every familiar object has a history – the trees have tongues, and the very air is vocal. There the vesture of decay doth not close in and control the noble functions of the soul. It sees and hears and enjoys without the ministry of gross material substance.

Mr Fletcher had resided a few months in Springfield when he one day entered with an open letter in his hand, that apartment of his humble dwelling styled, by courtesy, the parlour. His wife was sitting there with her eldest son, a stripling of fourteen, busily assisting him in twisting a cord for his crossbow. She perceived that her husband looked disturbed; but he said nothing, and her habitual deference prevented her inquiring into the cause of his discomposure.

After taking two or three turns about the room, he said to his son, “Everell, my boy – go to the door, and await there the arrival of an Indian girl; she is, as you may see, yonder by the riverside, and will be here shortly. I would not that Jennet should, at the very first, shock the child with her discourteous ways.”

“Child! coming here!” exclaimed the boy, dropping his bow and gazing through the window – “Who is she? – that tall girl, father – she is no more a child than I am!”

His mother smiled at an exclamation that betrayed a common juvenile jealousy of the honour of dawning manhood, and bade the boy obey his father’s directions. When Everell had left the apartment, Mr Fletcher said, “I have just received letters from Boston – from Governor Winthrop” – he paused.

“Our friends are all well, I hope,” said Mrs Fletcher.

“Yes, Martha, our friends are all well – but these letters contain something of more importance than aught that concerns the health of the perishing body.”

Mr Fletcher again hesitated, and his wife, perplexed by his embarrassment, inquired, “Has poor deluded Mrs Hutchinson again presumed to disturb the peace of God’s people?”

“Martha, you aim wide of the mark. My present emotions are not those of a mourner for Zion. A ship has arrived from England, and in it came” –

“My brother Stretton!” exclaimed Mrs Fletcher.

“No – no, Martha. It will be long ere Stretton quits his paradise to join a suffering people in the wilderness.”

He paused for a moment, and when he again spoke, the softened tone of his voice evinced that he was touched by the expression of disappointment, slightly tinged by displeasure that shaded his wife’s gentle countenance. “Forgive me, my dear wife,” he said. “I should not have spoken aught that implied censure of your brother; for I know he hath ever been most precious in your eyes – albeit, not the less so, that he is yet without the fold – That which I have to tell you – and it were best that it were quickly told – is, that my cousin Alice was a passenger in this newly arrived ship. Martha, your blushes wrong you. The mean jealousies that degrade some women have, I am sure, never been harboured in your heart.”

“If I deserve your praise, it is because the Lord has been pleased to purify my heart and make it his sanctuary. But, if I have not the jealousies, I have the feelings of a woman, and I cannot forget that you were once affianced to your cousin Alice – and” –

“And that I once told you, Martha, frankly, that the affection I gave to her, could not be transferred to another. That love grew with my growth – strengthened with my strength. Of its beginning, I had no more consciousness than of the commencement of my existence. It was sunshine and flowers in all the paths of my childhood. It inspired every hope – modified every project – such was the love I bore to Alice – love immortal as the soul! –

“You know how cruelly we were severed at Southampton – how she was torn from the strand by the king’s guards – within my view, almost within my grasp. How Sir William tempted me with the offer of pardon – my cousin’s hand – and, – poor temptation indeed after that! – honours, fortune. You know that even Alice, my precious beautiful Alice, knelt to me. That smitten of God and man, and for the moment, bereft of the right use of reason, she would have persuaded me to yield my integrity. You know that her cruel father reproached me with virtually breaking my plighted troth, that many of my friends urged my present conformity; and you know, Martha, that there was a principle in my bosom that triumphed over all these temptations. And think you not that principle has preserved me faithful in my friendship to you? Think you not that your obedience – your careful conformity to my wishes; your steady love, which hath kept far more than even measure with my deserts, is undervalued – can be lightly estimated?”

“Oh, I know,” said the humble wife, “that your goodness to me does far surpass my merit; but bethink you, it is the nature of a woman to crave the first place.”

“It is the right of a wife, Martha; and there is none now to contest it with you. This is but the second time I have spoken to you on a subject that has been much in our thoughts: that has made me wayward, and would have made my sojourning on earth miserable, but that you have been my support and comforter. These letters contain tidings that have opened a long sealed fountain. My uncle, Sir William, died last January. Leslie perished in a foreign service. Alice, thus released from all bonds, and sole mistress of her fortunes, determined to cast her lot in the heritage of God’s people. She embarked with her two girls – her only children – a tempestuous voyage proved too much for a constitution already broken by repeated shocks. She was fully aware of her approaching death, and died as befits a child of faith, in sweet peace. Would to God I could have seen her once more – but,” he added, raising his eyes devoutly, “not my will but thine be done! The sister of Leslie, a Mistress Grafton, attended Alice, and with her she left a will committing her children to my guardianship. It will be necessary for me to go to Boston to assume this trust. I shall leave home tomorrow, after making suitable provision for your safety and comfort in my absence. These children will bring additional labour to your household; and in good time hath our thoughtful friend Governor Winthrop procured for us two Indian servants. The girl has arrived. The boy is retained about the little Leslies; the youngest of whom, it seems, is a petted child; and is particularly pleased by his activity in ministering to her amusement.”

“I am glad if any use can be made of an Indian servant,” said Mrs Fletcher, who, oppressed with conflicting emotions, expressed the lightest of them – a concern at a sudden increase of domestic cares where there were no facilities to lighten them.

“How any use! You surely do not doubt, Martha, that these Indians possess the same faculties that we do. The girl, just arrived, our friend writes me, hath rare gifts of mind – such as few of God’s creatures are endowed with. She is just fifteen; she understands and speaks English perfectly well, having been taught it by an English captive, who for a long time dwelt with her tribe. On that account she was much noticed by the English who traded with the Pequods; and young as she was, she acted as their interpreter.

“She is the daughter of one of their chiefs, and when this wolfish tribe were killed, or dislodged from their dens, she, her brother, and their mother, were brought with a few other captives to Boston. They were given for a spoil to the soldiers. Some, by a Christian use of money, were redeemed; and others, I blush to say it, for ‘it is God’s gift that every man should enjoy the good of his own labour,’ were sent into slavery in the West Indies. Monoca, the mother of these children, was noted for the singular dignity and modesty of her demeanor. Many notable instances of her kindness to the white traders are recorded; and when she was taken to Boston, our worthy governor, ever mindful of his duties, assured her that her good deeds were held in remembrance, and that he would testify the gratitude of his people in any way she should direct. ‘I have nothing to ask,’ she said, ‘but that I and my children may receive no personal dishonour.’

“The governor redeemed her children, and assured her they should be cared for. For herself, misery and sorrow had so wrought on her, that she was fast sinking into the grave. Many Christian men and women laboured for her conversion but she would not even consent that the holy word should be interpreted to her; insisting, in the pride of her soul, that all the children of the Great Spirit were equal objects of His favour; and that He had not deemed the book he had withheld, needful to them.”

“And did she,” inquired Mrs Fletcher, “thus perish in her sins?”

“She died,” replied her husband, “immoveably fixed in those sentiments. But, Martha, we should not suit God’s mercy to the narrow frame of our thoughts. This poor savage’s life, as far as it has come to our knowledge, was marked with innocence and good deeds; and I would gladly believe that we may hope for her, on that broad foundation laid by the Apostle Peter – ‘In every nation, he that feareth God and worketh righteousness, is accepted of Him.’”

“That text,” answered Mrs Fletcher, her heart easily kindling with the flame of charity, “is a light behind many a dark scripture, like the sun shining all around the edges of a cloud that would fain hide its beams.”

“Such thoughts, my dear wife, naturally spring from thy kind heart, and are sweet morsels for private meditation; but it were well to keep them in thine own bosom lest, taking breath, they should lighten the fears of unstable souls. But here comes the girl, Magawisca, clothed in her Indian garb, which the governor has permitted her to retain, not caring, as he wisely says, to interfere with their innocent peculiarities; and she, in particular, having shewn a loathing of the English dress.”

Everell Fletcher now threw wide open the parlour door, inviting the Indian girl, by a motion of his hand and a kind smile, to follow. She did so, and remained standing beside him, with her eyes rivetted to the floor, while every other eye was turned towards her. She and her conductor were no unfit representatives of the people from whom they sprung. Everell Fletcher was a fair ruddy boy of fourteen; his smooth brow and bright curling hair, bore the stamp of the morning of life; hope and confidence and gladness beamed in the falcon glance of his keen blue eye; and love and frolic played about his lips. The active hardy habits of life, in a new country, had already knit his frame, and given him the muscle of manhood; while his quick elastic step truly expressed the untamed spirit of childhood – the only spirit without fear and without reproach. His dress was of blue cloth, closely fitting his person; the sleeves reached midway between the elbow and wrist, and the naked, and as it would seem to a modern eye, awkward space, was garnished with deep-pointed lace ruffles of a coarse texture; a ruff, or collar of the same material, was worn about the neck.

The Indian stranger was tall for her years, which did not exceed fifteen. Her form was slender, flexible, and graceful; and there was a freedom and loftiness in her movement which, though tempered with modesty, expressed a consciousness of high birth. Her face, although marked by the peculiarities of her race, was beautiful even to an European eye. Her features were regular, and her teeth white as pearls; but there must be something beyond symmetry of feature to fix the attention, and it was an expression of dignity, thoughtfulness, and deep dejection that made the eye linger on Magawisca’s face, as if it were perusing there the legible record of her birth and wrongs. Her hair, contrary to the fashion of the Massachusetts Indians, was parted on her forehead, braided, and confined to her head by a band of small feathers, jet black, and interwoven, and attached at equal distances by rings of polished bone. She wore a waistcoat of deerskin, fastened at the throat by a richly wrought collar. Her arms, a model for sculpture, were bare. A mantle of purple cloth hung gracefully from her shoulders, and was confined at the waist by a broad band, ornamented with rude hieroglyphics. The mantle and her strait short petticoat or kilt of the same rare and costly material, had been obtained, probably, from the English traders. Stockings were an unknown luxury; but leggings, similar to those worn by the ladies of Queen Elizabeth’s court, were no bad substitute. The moccasin, neatly fitted to a delicate foot and ankle, and tastefully ornamented with beadwork, completed the apparel of this daughter of a chieftain, which altogether, had an air of wild and fantastic grace, that harmonized well with the noble demeanor and peculiar beauty of the young savage.

Mr Fletcher surveyed her for a moment with a mingled feeling of compassion and curiosity, and then turning away and leaning his head on the mantelpiece, his thoughts reverted to the subject that had affected him far more deeply than he had ventured to confess, even to the wife of his bosom.

Mrs Fletcher’s first feeling was rather that of a housewife than a tender woman. ‘My husband,’ she thought, ‘might as well have brought a wild doe from the forest to plough his fields, as to give me this Indian girl for household labour; but the wisest men have no sense in these matters.’ This natural domestic reflection was soon succeeded by a sentiment of compassion, which scarcely needed to be stimulated by Everell’s whisper of “do, mother, speak to her.”

“Magawisca,” she said in a friendly tone, “you are welcome among us, girl.” Magawisca bowed her head. Mrs Fletcher continued: “you should receive it as a signal mercy, child, that you have been taken from the midst of a savage people, and set in a Christian family.” Mrs Fletcher paused for her auditor’s assent, but the proposition was either unintelligible or unacceptable to Magawisca.

“Mistress Fletcher means,” said a middle-aged serving woman who had just entered the room, “that you should be mightily thankful, Tawney, that you are snatched as a brand from the burning.”

“Hush, Jennet!” said Everell Fletcher, touching the speaker with the point of an arrow which he held in his hand.

Magawisca’s eyes had turned on Jennet, flashing like a sunbeam through an opening cloud. Everell’s interposition touched a tender chord, and when she again cast them down, a tear trembled on their lids.

“You will have no hard service to do,” said Mrs Fletcher, resuming her address. “I cannot explain all to you now; but you will soon perceive that our civilized life is far easier – far better and happier than your wild wandering ways, which are indeed, as you will presently see, but little superior to those of the wolves and foxes.”

Magawisca suppressed a reply that her heart sent to her quivering lips; and Everell said, “hunted, as the Indians are, to their own dens, I am sure, mother, they need the fierceness of the wolf, and the cunning of the fox.”

“True – true, my son,” replied Mrs Fletcher, who really meant no unkindness in expressing what she deemed a self-evident truth; and then turning again to Magawisca, she said, in a gentle tone, “you have had a long and fatiguing journey – was it not, girl?”

“My foot,” replied Magawisca, “is used to the wildwood path. The deer tires not of his way on the mountain, nor the bird of its flight in the air.”

She uttered her natural feeling in so plaintive a tone that it touched the heart like a strain of sad music; and when Jennet again officiously interposed in the conversation, by saying, that “truly these savages have their house in the wilderness, and their way no man knows,” her mistress cut short her outpouring by directing her to go to the outer door and learn who it was that Digby was conducting to the house.

A moment after Digby, Mr Fletcher’s confidential domestic, entered with the air of one who has important intelligence to communicate. He was followed by a tall gaunt Indian, who held in his hand a deerskin pouch. “Ha! Digby,” said Mr Fletcher, “have you returned? What say the Commissioners? Can they furnish me a guide and attendants for my journey?”

“Yes, an’ please you, sir, I was in the nick of time, for they were just despatching a messenger to the Governor.”

“On what account?”

“Why, it’s rather an odd errand,” replied Digby, scratching his head with an awkward hesitation. “I would not wish to shock my gentle mistress, who will never bring her feelings to the queer fashions of the new world; but Lord’s mercy, sir, you know we think no more of taking off a scalp here, than we did of shaving our beards at home.”

“Scalp!” exclaimed Mr Fletcher. “Explain yourself, Digby.”

The Indian, as if to assist Digby’s communication, untied his pouch and drew from it a piece of dried and shrivelled skin, to which hair, matted together with blood, still adhered. There was an expression of fierce triumph on the countenance of the savage as he surveyed the trophy with a grim smile. A murmur of indignation burst from all present.

“Why did you bring that wretch here?” demanded Mr Fletcher of his servant, in an angry tone.

“I did but obey Mr Pynchon, sir. The thing is an abomination to the soul and eye of a Christian, but it has to be taken to Boston for the reward.”

“What reward, Digby?”

“The reward, sir, that is in reason expected for the scalp of the Pequod chief.”

As Digby uttered these last words Magawisca shrieked as if a dagger had pierced her heart. She darted forward and grasped the arm that upheld the trophy. “My father! – Mononotto!” she screamed in a voice of agony.

“Give it to her – by Heaven, you shall give it to her,” cried Everell, springing on the Indian and losing all other thought in his instinctive sympathy for Magawisca.

“Softly, softly, Mr Everell,” said Digby, “that is the scalp of Sassacus, not Mononotto. The Pequods had two chiefs you know.”

Magawisca now released her hold; and as soon as she could again command her voice, she said, in her own language to the Indian, “My father – my father – does he live?”

“He does,” answered the Indian in the same dialect; “he lives in the wigwam of the chief of the Mohawks.”

Magawisca was silent for a moment, and knit her brows as if agitated with an important deliberation. She then undid a bracelet from her arm and gave it to the Indian: “I charge ye,” she said, “as ye hope for game in your hunting grounds, for the sun on your wigwam, and the presence of the Great Spirit in your death-hour – I charge ye to convey this token to my father. Tell him his children are servants in the house of his enemies; but,” she added, after a moment’s pause, “to whom am I trusting? – to the murderer of Sassacus! – my father’s friend!”

“Fear not,” replied the Indian; “your errand shall be done. Sassacus was a strange tree in our forests; but he struck his root deep, and lifted his tall head above our loftiest branches, and cast his shadow over us; and I cut him down. I may not return to my people, for they called Sassacus brother, and they would fain avenge him. But fear not, maiden, your errand shall be done.”

Mr Fletcher observed this conference, which he could not understand, with some anxiety and displeasure, and he broke it off by directing Jennet to conduct Magawisca to another apartment.

Jennet obeyed, muttering, as she went, “a notable providence this concerning the Pequod caitiff. Even like Adonibezek, as he has done to others the Lord hath requited him.”

Mr Fletcher then most reluctantly took into his possession the savage trophy, and dismissed the Indian, deeply lamenting that motives of mistaken policy should tempt his brethren to depart from the plainest principles of their religion.