“No, indeed you are not,” she replied, rising and clasping her hands in earnest supplication; “and therefore I hope—nay, I believe—you will grant my petition for our poor Indian friend.”
“Well, be calm; what of her?”
“What of her! Is she not, the generous creature, at this moment in your condemned dungeon? Is she not to be tried to-morrow, perhaps sentenced to death? and can I, the cause of bringing her into this trouble, can I look calmly on?”
“Well, what would you have, young lady?” asked the governor, in a quiet manner, that damped our heroine’s hopes, though it did not abate her ardour.
“I would have your warrant, sir,” she replied, boldly, “for her release; her free passage to her poor old father, if indeed he lives.”
“You speak unadvisedly, Miss Leslie. I am no king; and I trust the Lord will never send one in wrath on his chosen people of the New World, as he did on those of old. No, in truth, I am no king. I have but one voice in the Commonwealth, and I cannot grant pardons at pleasure; and, besides, on what do you found your plea?”
“On what!” exclaimed Hope. “On her merits and rights.”
“Methinks, my young friend, you have lost right suddenly that humble tone that but now, in the parlour, graced you so well. I trusted that your light afflictions and short sickness had tended to the edification of your spirit.”
“I spoke then of myself, and humility became me; but surely you will permit me to speak courageously of the noble Magawisca.”
“There is some touch of reason in thy speech, Hope Leslie,” replied the governor, his lips almost relaxing to a smile. “Sit down, child, and tell me of these merits and rights, for I would be possessed of everything in favour of this unhappy maiden.”
“I have not to tell you, sir,” said Hope, struggling to speak in a dispassionate tone, “but only to remind you of what you were once the first to speak of—the many obligations of the English to the family of Mononotto: a debt that has been but ill paid.”
“That debt, I think, was cancelled by the dreadful massacre at Bethel.”
“If it be so, there is another debt that never has been, that scarce can be cancelled.”
“Yes, I know to what you allude: it was a noble action for a heathen savage; and I marvel not that my friend Fletcher should think it a title to our mercy, or that young Mr. Everell, looking with a youthful eye on this business, should deem it a claim on our justice. They have both spoken much and often to me, and it were well if Everell Fletcher were content to leave this matter with those who have the right to determine it.” Hope perceived the governor looked very significantly, and she apprehended that he might think her intercession was instigated by Everell.
“I have not seen Everell Fletcher,” she said, “till this evening, since we parted at the garden; and you will do both him and me the justice to believe I have not now spoken at his bidding.”
“I did not think it. I know thou art ever somewhat forward to speak the dictates of thy heart,” he continued, with a smile; “but now let me caution you both, especially Everell, not to stir in this matter; any private interference will but prejudice the Pequod’s cause. They have ever been a hateful race to the English; and as the old chief and his daughter are accused, and I fear justly, of kindling the enmity of the tribes against us, and attempting to stir up a war that would lay our villages in ruins, it will be difficult to make a private benefit outweigh such a public crime. At any rate, the prisoner must be tried for her life; afterward we may consider if it be possible and suitable to grant her a pardon.” Hope rose to withdraw: the sanguine hopes that had sustained her were abated; her limbs trembled, and her lips quivered as she turned to say “good-night.” The governor took her hand, and said compassionately, “Be not thus disquieted, my child; cast thy care upon the Lord. He can bring light out of this darkness.”
“And He alone,” she thought, as she slowly crept to her room. A favourite from her birth, Hope had been accustomed to the gratification of her wishes; innocent and moderate they had been; but uniform indulgence is not a favourable school, and our heroine had now to learn, from that stern teacher, experience, that events and circumstances cannot be moulded to individual wishes. She must sit down and passively await the fate of Magawisca. “She had done all she could do, and without any effect: had she done all?” While she still meditated on this last clause of her thoughts, Esther entered the room. Absorbed in her own revery, Hope did not, at first, particularly notice her friend, and when she did, she saw that she appeared much disturbed. Esther, after opening and shutting drawers and cupboards, and seeking by these little devices to conceal or subdue her agitation, found all unavailing, and, throwing herself in a chair, she gave way to hysterical sobbings.
This, in almost any young lady, would have been a common expression of romantic distress; but in the disciplined, circumspect Esther, uncontrolled emotion was as alarming, to compare small things to great, as if a planet were to start from its orbit.
Hope hastened to her, and, folding her arms around her tenderly, inquired what could thus distress her. Esther disengaged herself from her friend, and turned her face from her.
“I cannot bear this,” said Hope; “I can bear anything better than this: are you displeased with me, Esther?”
“Yes, I am displeased with you—with myself—with everybody: I am miserable.”
“What do you mean, Esther? I have done nothing to offend you; for pity’s sake tell me what you mean? I have never had a feeling or thought that should offend you.”
“You have most cruelly, fatally injured me, Hope Leslie.”
“Here is some wretched mistake,” cried Hope; “for Heaven’s sake explain, Esther: if I had injured you knowingly, I should be of all creatures most guilty; but I have not. If I have innocently injured you, speak, my dear friend, I beseech you,” she added, again putting her arm around Esther; “have not you yourself, a thousand times, said there should be no disguises with friends—no untold suspicions—no unexplained mysteries?”
Again Esther repressed Hope. “I have been unfairly dealt by,” she said. “I have been treated as a child.”
“How—when—where—by whom?” demanded Hope, impetuously.
“Ask me no questions now, Hope. I will answer none. I will no longer be played upon.”
“Oh, Esther, you are cruel,” said Hope, bursting into tears. “You are the one friend that I have loved gratefully, devotedly, disinterestedly, and I cannot bear this.”
There was a pause of half an hour, during which Esther sat with her face covered with her handkerchief, and sobbing violently, while Hope walked up and down the room, her tender heart penetrated to the very core with sorrow, and her mind perplexed with endless conjectures about the cause of her friend’s emotions.
She sometimes approached near the truth, but that way she could not bear to look. At last Esther became quiet, and Hope ventured once more to approach her, and leaned over her without speaking. Esther rose from her chair, knelt down, and drew Hope down beside her, and in a low, but perfectly firm voice, supplicated for grace to resist engrossing passion and selfish affections. She prayed they might both be assisted from above, so that their mutual forgiveness and mutual love might be perfected, and issue in a friendship which should be a foretaste of Heaven. She then rose and folded her arms around her friend, saying, “I have given way to my sinful nature, but I feel already an earnest of returning peace. Do not say anything to me now, Hope; the future will explain all.”
There was an authority in her manner that Hope could not, and did not wish to resist. “If you speak to me so, Esther,” she said, “I would obey you, even though it were possible obedience should be more difficult. Now we will go to bed, and forget all this wearisome evening; but first kiss me, and tell me you love me as well as ever.”
“I do,” she replied; but her voice faltered; and, governed by the strictest law of truth, she changed her form of expression: “I mean that I shall again love you as well—I trust, better than ever; be content with this for the present, Hope, and try me no farther.”
Once, while they were undressing, Esther said, but without any emotion in her voice—her face was averted from Hope—“Everell has been proposing to me to assist him in a clandestine attempt to get Magawisca out of prison.”
“To get her out!” exclaimed Hope, with the greatest animation: “to-night?”
“To-night or to-morrow night.”
“And is there any hope of effecting it?”
“I thought it not right for me to undertake it,” Esther replied, in the same tone, quite calm, but so deliberate that Hope detected the effort with which she spoke, and dared not venture another question.
They both went to bed, but not to sleep; mutual and secret anxieties kept them for a long time restless, and a strange feeling of embarrassment, as distant as the width of their bed would allow; but, finally, Hope, as if she could no longer bear this estrangement, nestled close to Esther, folded her arms around her, and fell asleep on her bosom.
Madam Winthrop had very considerately, in the course of the evening, left Everell and her niece alone together; and he had availed himself of this first opportunity of private communication to inform her that, after being frustrated in all his efforts for Magawisca’s rescue, he had at length devised a plan which only wanted her co-operation to ensure it success. Her agency would certainly, he believed, not be detected; and, at any rate, could not involve her in any disagreeable consequences.
“Any consequences to herself,” Esther said, “she would not fear.” Everell assured her that he was certain she would not; but he was anxious she should see he would not expose her to any, even to attain an object for which he would risk or sacrifice his own life. He then went on eagerly to detail his plan of operations, till Esther summoned courage to interrupt him. Perhaps there is not on earth a more difficult duty than for a woman to place herself in a disagreeable light before the man she truly loves. Esther’s affections were deep, fixed, and unpretending, capable of any effort or any sacrifice that was not proscribed by religious loyalty; but no earthly consideration could have tempted her to waver from the strictest letter of her religious duty, as that duty was interpreted by her conscience. It cost her severe struggles; but, after several intimations which Everell did not understand, she constrained herself to say, “That she thought they had not Scripture warrant for interfering between the prisoner and the magistrates.”
“Scripture warrant!” exclaimed Everell, with surprise and vexation he could not conceal. “And are you to do no act of mercy, or compassion, or justice, for which you cannot quote a text from Scripture?”
“Scripture hath abundant texts to authorize all mercy, compassion, and justice, but we are not always the allowed judges of their application; and in the case before us we have an express rule, to which, if we submit, we cannot err; for thou well knowest, Everell, we are commanded, in the first epistle of Peter, second chapter, to ‘Submit ourselves to every ordinance of man, for the Lord’s sake: whether it be to the king, as supreme; or unto governors, as unto them that are sent by him for the punishment of evil doers, and for the praise of them that do well.’ ”
“But surely, Esther, there must be warrant, as you call it, for sometimes resisting legitimate authority, or all our friends in England would not be at open war with their king. With such a precedent, I should think the sternest conscience would permit you to obey the generous impulses of nature, rather than to render this slavish obedience to the letter of the law.”
“Oh, Everell! do not seek to blind my judgment. Our friends at home are men who do all things in the fear of the Lord, and are, therefore, doubtless guided by the light of Scripture and the inward testimony. But they cannot be a rule for us in any measure; and for me, Everell, it would be to sin presumptuously, to do aught in any way to countervail the authority of those chosen servants of the Lord whose magistracy we are privileged to live under.”
Everell tried all argument and persuasion to subdue her scruples, but in vain; she had some text or some unquestioned rule of duty to oppose to every reason and entreaty.
To an ardent young man, there is something unlovely, if not revolting, in the sterner virtues, and particularly when they oppose those objects which he may feel to be authorized by the most generous emotions of his heart. Everell did not mean to be unjust to Esther—his words were measured and loyal—but he felt a deep conviction that there was a painful discord between them; that there was, to use the modern German term, no elective affinity. In the course of their conversation, he said, “You would not, you could not, thus resist my wishes if you knew Magawisca.”
“Everell,” she replied, “those who love you need not know this maiden to feel that they would save her life at the expense of their own, if they might do it;” and then, blushing at what she feared might seem an empty boast, she added, “but I do know Magawisca; I have visited her in her prison every day since she has been there.”
“God bless you for that, Esther; but why did you not tell me?”
“Because my uncle only permitted me access to her on condition that I kept it a secret from you.”
“Methinks that prohibition was as useless as cruel.”
“No, Everell; my uncle doubtless anticipated such applications as you have made to-night, and he was right to guard me from temptation.”
“He might securely have trusted you to resist it,” thought Everell. But he tried to suppress the unkind feeling, and asked Esther “if she had any motive in visiting Magawisca thus often, beyond the gratification of her compassionate disposition.”
“Yes,” replied Esther; “I heard my uncle say, that if Magawisca could be induced to renounce her heathenish principles, and promise, instead of following her father to the forest, to remain here and join the catechized Indians, he thought the magistrates might see it to be their duty to overlook her past misdemeanours, and grant her Christian privileges.” Esther paused for a moment, but Everell made no comment, and she proceeded, in a tone of the deepest humility: “I knew I was a poor instrument, but I hoped a blessing on the prayer of faith and the labour of love. I set before her her temporal and her eternal interest—life and death. I prayed with her—I exhorted her; but oh! Everell, she is obdurate; she neither fears death, nor will believe that eternal misery awaits her after death!”
To Esther’s astonishment, Everell, though he looked troubled, neither expressed surprise nor disappointment at the result of her labours, but immediately set before her the obvious inference from it. “You see, yourself,” he said, “by your own experience, there is but one way of aiding Magawisca.”
“It is unkind of you, Everell,” she replied, with a trembling voice, “to press me farther; that way, you know, my path is hedged up;” and, without saying anything more, she abruptly left the room; but she had scarcely passed the threshold of the door, when her gentle heart reproached her with harshness, and she turned to soften her final refusal. Everell did not hear her returning footsteps; he stood with his back to the door, and Esther heard him make this involuntary apostrophe: “Oh, Hope Leslie! how thy unfettered soul would have answered such an appeal! why has fate cruelly severed us?”
Esther escaped hastily, and without his observation; and the scene already described in the apartment of the young ladies ensued.
Everell Fletcher must not be reproached with being a disloyal knight. The artifices of Sir Philip Gardiner; the false light in which our heroine had been placed by her embarrassments with Magawisca; the innocent manœuvring of Madam Winthrop; and, finally, the generous rashness of Hope Leslie, had led him, step by step, to involve himself in an engagement with Miss Downing; that engagement had just been made known to her protectors, and ratified by them, when the denouément of the mysterious rendezvous at the garden explained his fatal mistake. When he recurred to all that had passed since his first meeting with Hope Leslie, and particularly to their last interview at the garden, when he had imputed her uncontrollable emotion to her sensibility in relation to Sir Philip, he had reason to believe he was beloved by the only being he had ever loved. But in what cruel circumstance did this discovery find him! His troth plighted to one whose pure and tender heart he had long possessed. There was but one honourable course for him to pursue, and on that he firmly resolved: to avoid the presence of Hope Leslie; to break the chain of affection wrought in youth and riveted in manhood, and whose links seemed to him to encompass and sustain his very life; in fine, to forget the past: but, alas! who can convert to Lethe the sweetest draughts of memory?
Hope’s dangerous illness had suspended all his purposes; he could not disguise his interest; and, indeed, its manifestations excited neither surprise nor remark, for it seemed sufficiently accounted for by their long and intimate association. While Hope’s life was in peril, even Magawisca was forgotten; but the moment Hope’s convalescence restored the use of his faculties, they were all devoted to obtaining Magawisca’s release, and he had left no means untried, either of open intercession or clandestine effort; but all, as yet, was without effect.
“What trick, what device, what starting hole canst thou now find out, to hide thee from this open and apparent shame?”—Henry IV.
The day appointed for Magawisca’s trial arose on Boston one of the brightest and most beautiful of summer. There are moments of deep dejection and gloom in every one’s experience, when the eye closes against the beauty of light, when the silence of all those great powers that surround us presses on the soul like the indifference of a friend, and when their evolving glories overpower the wearied spirit, as the splendours of the sun offend the sick eye. In this diseased state of mind, Everell wandered about Boston till the ringing of the bell, the appointed signal, gave notice that the court was about to open for the trial of the Indian prisoner. He then turned his footsteps towards the house where the sittings of the magistrates were held; and on reaching it, he found a crowd had already assembled in the room assigned for the trial.
At one extremity of the apartment was a platform of two or three feet elevation, on which sat the deputies and magistrates who constituted the court, and those elders who had, as was customary on similar occasions, been invited to be present as advisory counsel. The New-England people have always evinced a fondness for asking advice, which may, perhaps, be explained by the freedom with which it is rejected. A few seats were provided for those who might have claims to be selected from the ordinary spectators; two of these were occupied by the elder Fletcher and Sir Philip Gardiner. Everell remained amid the multitude unnoticed and unnoticing, his eye roving about in that vague and inexpressive manner that indicates the mind holds no communion with external objects, till he was roused by a buzz of “There she comes!” and a call of “Make room for the prisoner.” A lane was opened, and Magawisca appeared, preceded and followed by a constable. A man of middle age walked beside her, whose deep-set and thoughtful eye, pale brow, ascetic complexion, and spare person, indicated a life of self-denial, and of physical and mental labour; while an expression of love, compassion, and benevolence seemed, like the seal of his Creator, affixed to declare him a minister of mercy to his creatures. Everell was struck with the aspect and position of the stranger, and inquired of the person standing next to him “who he was.”
The man turned on him a look of astonishment which expressed, “Who are you that ask so strange a question?” and replied, “That gentleman, sir, is the ‘apostle of New-England,’ though it much offendeth his modesty to be so called.”
“God be praised!” thought Everell. “Eliot” (for he was familiar with the title, though not with the person of that excellent man), “my father’s friend! This augurs well for Magawisca.”
“I marvel,” continued his informant, “that Mr. Eliot should in this manner lend his countenance to this Jezebel. See with what an air she comes among her betters, as if she were queen of us all.”
There was certainly none of the culprit or suiter in the aspect of Magawisca: neither guilt, nor fearfulness, nor submission. Her eyes were downcast, but with the modesty of her sex; her erect attitude, her free and lofty tread, and the perfect composure of her countenance, all expressed the courage and dignity of her soul. Her national pride was manifest in the care with which, after rejecting with disdain the governor’s offer of an English dress, she had attired herself in the peculiar costume of her people. Her collar, bracelet, girdle, embroidered moccasins, and purple mantle, with its rich border of beadwork, had been laid aside in prison, but were now all resumed, and displayed with a feeling resembling Nelson’s, when he emblazoned himself with stars and orders to appear before his enemies on the fatal day of his last battle.
The constable led her to the prisoner’s bar. There was a slight convulsion of her face perceptible as she entered it; and when her attendant signed to her to seat herself, she shook her head, and remained standing. Everell, moved by an irresistible impulse, forced his way through the crowd, and placed himself beside her. Neither spoke; but the sudden flush of a sunbeam on the October leaf is not more bright nor beautiful than the colour that overspread Magawisca’s olive cheek. This speaking suffusion, and the tear that trembled on her eyelids, but no other sign, expressed her consciousness of his presence. The magistrates looked at Everell, and whispered together, but they appeared to come to the conclusion that this expression of his feeling was natural and harmless, and it was suffered to pass unreproved.
The governor, as chief magistrate, now rose, and requested Mr. Eliot to supplicate Divine assistance in the matter they were about to enter on. The good man accordingly performed the duty with earnestness and particularity. He first set forth the wonder-working providence of God in making their enemies to be at peace with them. He recounted, in the narrative style, then much used in public devotions, the various occasions on which they had found their fears of the savages groundless, and their alarms unfounded. He touched on divers instances of “kindness and neighbourlike conduct that had been shown them by the poor heathen people, who, having no law, were a law unto themselves.” He intimated that the Lord’s chosen people had not now, as of old, been selected to exterminate the heathen, but to enlarge the bounds of God’s heritage, and to convert these strangers and aliens to servants and children of the Most High. He alluded to the well-known and signal mercies received from the mother of the prisoner, and to that valiant act of the prisoner herself, whereby she did redeem from death, and captivity worse than death, the child—the only child—of a sorely-bereaved man. He hinted at the authorities for the merciful requital of these deeds in the promises of the spies of Joshua to the heathen woman of Jericho, that when the Lord had given them the land, they would deal truly with her, and show kindness to her and to her father’s house; and in the case of David’s generosity to Mephibosheth, the son of Jonathan, the son of Saul, wherein he passed by the evil that Saul had done him, and only remembered the favours of Jonathan. He alluded to the ruined chief—the old father on whom “the executed wrath of God had fallen so heavily, that, as divers testified, the light of reason was quite put out, and he was left to wander up and down among the tribes, counselling revenges to which none listened.” And, finally, he dwelt on “the Gospel spirit of forgiveness as eminently becoming those who, being set on a hill in the wilderness, were to show their light to the surrounding nations,” and concluded with the prayer that, on this occasion, Justice and Mercy might be made publicly to kiss each other.
When he had done, all eyes turned again on Magawisca; and many who had regarded her with scorn, or, at best, idle curiosity, now looked at her with softened hearts and moistened eyes. Not so Sir Philip, who had his own reasons for being apprehensive of any advance Magawisca might make in the favour of her judges. He whispered to a magistrate near whom he sat, “Is it not a singular procedure thus to convert a prayer into an ex parte statement of the case?”
“Very singular,” replied the good man, with an ominous shake of the head; “but Brother Eliot hath an overweening kindness towards the barbarians. We shall set all right,” he added, with one of those sagacious mods so expressive of infallibility. The governor now proceeded to give an outline of the charges against Magawisca, and the testimony that would be adduced to support them. He suppressed nothing, but gave a colour to the whole which plainly indicated his own favourable disposition; and Everell felt lightened of half his fears. Sir Philip was then requested to relate the circumstances that had, through his instrumentality, led to the taking of the prisoner, and so much of the conversation he had heard between her and Miss Leslie as might serve to elucidate the testimony of the Indian, who had pretended, by his information, to reveal a direful conspiracy. Sir Philip rose; and Magawisca, for the first time, raised her eyes and fixed them on him; his met hers, and he quailed before her glance. As if to test the power of conscience still farther, at this critical moment his unhappy page, poor Rosa, pressed through the crowd, and, giving Sir Philip a packet of letters just arrived from England, she seated herself on the steps of the platform near where the knight stood.
Sir Philip threw the packet on the table before the governor, and stood for a few moments silent, with his eyes downcast, in profound meditation. The trial was assuming an unexpected and startling aspect. Sir Philip now feared he had counted too far on the popular prejudices, which he knew were arrayed against Magawisca, as one of the diabolical race of the Pequods. He perceived that all the weight of Eliot’s influence would be thrown into the prisoner’s scale, and that the governor was disposed, not only to an impartial, but to a merciful investigation of her case.
Reposing confidently on the extraordinary favour that had been manifested towards him by the magistrates, he had felt certain of being able to prevent Magawisca’s disclosure of their interview in the prison, or to avert any evil consequence to himself, by giving it the air of a malignant contrivance, to be expected from a vengeful savage, against one who had been the providential instrument of her detection. But he now felt that this might be a difficult task.
He had at first, as has been seen, enlisted against Magawisca, not from any malignant feeling towards her, but merely to advance his own private interests. In the progress of the affair, his fate had, by his own act, become singularly involved with hers. Should she be acquitted, he might be impeached, perhaps exposed and condemned, by her testimony. Alliances like his with Rosa were, by the laws of the colony, punished by severe penalties. These would be aggravated by the discovery of his imposture. At once perceiving all his danger, he mentally cursed the foolhardiness with which he had rushed, unnecessarily and unwittingly, to the brink of a precipice.
He had observed Magawisca’s scrutinizing eye turn quickly from him to Rosa, and he was sure, from her intelligent glances, that she had at once come to the conclusion that this seeming page was the subject of their prison interview. Rosa herself appeared, to his alarmed imagination, to be sent by Heaven as a witness against him. How was he to escape the dangers that encompassed him? He had no time to deliberate on the most prudent course to be pursued. The most obvious was to inflame the prejudices of Magawisca’s judges, and by anticipation to discredit her testimony; and quick of invention, and unembarrassed by the instincts of humanity, he proceeded, after faithfully relating the conversation in the churchyard between the prisoner and Miss Leslie, to detail the following gratuitous particulars.
He said “that, after conducting Miss Leslie to the governor’s door, he had immediately returned to his own lodgings, and that, induced by the still raging storm to make his walk as short as possible, he took a cross-cut through the burial ground; that, on coming near the upper extremity of the enclosure, he fancied he heard a human voice mingling with the din of the storm; that he paused, and directly a flash of lightning discovered Magawisca kneeling on the bare wet earth, making those monstrous and violent contortions, which all who heard him well knew characterized the devil-worship of the powwows; he would not, he ought not repeat to Christian ears her invocations to the Evil One to aid her in the execution of her revenge on the English; nor would he more particularly describe her diabolical writhings and beatings of her person. His brethren might easily imagine his emotions at witnessing them by the sulphureous gleams of lightning, on which, doubtless, her prayers were sped.”
Sir Philip had gained confidence as he proceeded in his testimony, for he perceived by the fearful and angry glances that were cast on the prisoner, that his tale was credited by many of his audience, and he hoped by all.
The notion that the Indians were the children of the devil was not confined to the vulgar; and the belief in a familiar intercourse with evil spirits, now rejected by all but the most ignorant and credulous, was then universally received.
All had, therefore, listened in respectful silence to Sir Philip’s extraordinary testimony, and it was too evident that it had the effect to set the current of feeling and opinion against the prisoner. Her few friends looked despondent; but for herself, true to the spirit of her race, she manifested no surprise nor emotion of any kind.
The audience listened eagerly to the magistrate, who read from his note-book the particulars which had been received from the Indian informer, and which served to corroborate and illustrate Sir Philip’s testimony. All the evidence being now before the court, the governor asked Magawisca “if she had aught to allege in her own defence.”
“Speak humbly, maiden,” whispered Mr. Eliot; “it will grace thy cause with thy judges.”
“Say,” said Everell, “that you are a stranger to our laws and usages, and demand some one to speak for you.”
Magawisca bowed her head to both advisers, in token of acknowledgment of their interest, and then, raising her eyes to her judges, she said, “I am your prisoner, and ye may slay me, but I deny your right to judge me. My people have never passed under your yoke; not one of my race has ever acknowledged your authority.”
“This excuse will not suffice thee,” answered one of her judges; “thy pride is like the image of Nebuchadnezzar’s dream—it standeth on feet of clay: thy race have been swift witnesses to that sure word of prophecy, ‘Fear thou not, O Jacob, my servant, for I am with thee, and I will make a full end of the people whither I have driven thee;’ thy people! truly, where are they?”
“My people! where are they?” she replied, raising her eyes to Heaven, and speaking in a voice that sounded like deep-toned music after the harsh tones addressed to her; “my people are gone to the isles of the sweet southwest—to those shores that the bark of an enemy can never touch: think ye I fear to follow them?”
There was a momentary silence throughout the assembly; all seemed, for an instant, to feel that no human power could touch the spirit of the captive. Sir Philip whispered to the magistrate who last spoke, “Is it not awful presumption for this woman thus publicly to glory in her heathen notions?”
The knight’s prompting had the intended effect. “Has this Pequod woman,” demanded the magistrate, “never been instructed in the principles of truth, that she dares thus to hold forth her heathenisms before us? Dost thou not know, woman,” he continued, holding up a Bible, “that this book contains the only revelation of a future world—the only rule for the present life?”
“I know,” she replied, “that it contains thy rule, and it may be needful for thy mixed race; but the Great Spirit hath written his laws on the hearts of his original children, and we need it not.”
“She is of Satan’s heritage, and our enemy—a proved conspirator against the peace of God’s people, and I see not why she should not be cut off,” said the same gentleman, addressing his brethren in office.
“The testimony,” said another of the magistrates, in a low voice, in which reason and mildness mingled, and truly indicated the disposition of the speaker, “the testimony appeareth to me insufficient to give peace to our consciences in bringing her to extremity. She seems, after her own manner, to be guided by the truth. Let the governor put it to her whether she will confess the charges laid against her.”
The governor accordingly appealed to the prisoner. “I neither confess nor deny aught,” she said. “I stand here like a deer caught in a thicket, awaiting the arrow of the hunter.”
Sir Philip again whispered to his next neighbour, who, unconsciously obeying the knight’s crafty suggestions, seemed to have become the conductor of the prosecution. “She hath the dogged obstinacy of all the Pequod race,” said he, “and it hath long been my opinion that we should never have peace in the land till their last root was torn from the soil.”
“You may be right, brother,” replied the governor, “but it becometh us, as Christian men, to walk circumspectly in this matter:” then, opening a note-book, elevating his voice, and turning to the knight, he added, “I observe that your present testimony, Sir Philip, hath not kept equal pace with that taken down from your lips on a former occasion. I have looked over these memoranda with a careful eye, and I do not perceive even an intimation of your having seen the prisoner after parting with Hope Leslie.”
The knight had anticipated this scrutiny, and was prepared to answer it: “I was not upon oath then,” he replied, “and, of course, was not required to disclose the whole truth; and, besides, it was then, as your excellency may remember, doubtful whether the prisoner would be taken, and I was reluctant to magnify, unnecessarily, the apprehensions of the paternal guardians of the people.”
Though this insinuated compliment was enforced by a deferential bow to the governor, he passed it over, and replied to the first clause of Sir Philip’s rejoinder: “You allege, Sir Philip Gardiner, that you were not then on oath—neither have you been now; we do not require a member of the congregation to take the oath, unless charged by the party against whom he testifies. What sayest thou, maiden: shall I administer the oath to him?”
“Certainly—require the oath of him,” whispered Everell to Magawisca.
Magawisca bowed her assent to the governor.
Sir Philip would not probably have been so prompt in his false testimony if he had anticipated being put on his oath; for he was far enough from having one of those religious consciences that regard truth as so sacred that no ceremonies can add to its authority. But now, his word being questioned, it became necessary for him to recede from it, or to maintain it in the usual legal form; and, without hesitating, he advanced to the table, raised his hand, and went through the customary form of the oath. The collectedness and perfect equanimity of Magawisca, to this moment, had seemed to approach to indifference to her fate; but the persevering falsehood of Sir Philip, and the implicit faith in which it was apparently received, now roused her spirit, and stimulated that principle of retaliation, deeply planted in the nature of every human being, and rendered a virtue by savage education. She took a crucifix from her bosom: Everell whispered, “I pray thee hide that, Magawisca; it will ruin thy cause.” Magawisca shook her head, and held up the crucifix.
“Put down that idolatrous sign,” said the governor.
“She hath doubtless fallen under popish enchantments,” whispered one of the deputies; “the French priests have spread their nets throughout the western forests.”
Magawisca, without heeding the governor’s command, or observing the stares of astonishment that her seeming hardihood drew upon her, addressed herself to Sir Philip: “This crucifix,” she said, “thou didst drop in my prison. If, as thou saidst, it is a charmed figure, that hath power to keep thee in the straight path of truth, then press it to thy lips now, as thou didst then, and take back the false words thou hast spoken against me.”
“What doth she mean?” asked the governor, turning to Sir Philip.
“I know not,” replied the knight, his reddening face and embarrassed utterance indicating he knew that which he dared not confess; “I know not; but I should marvel if this heathen savage were permitted, with impunity, to insult me in your open court. I call upon the honourable magistrates and deputies,” he continued, with a more assured air, “to impose silence on this woman, lest her uttered malignities should, in the minds of the good people here assembled, bring scandal upon one whose humble claims to fellowship with you you have yourselves sanctioned.”
The court were for a moment silent; every eye was turned towards Magawisca, in the hope that she would be suffered to make an explanation; and the emotions of curiosity coinciding with the dictates of justice in the bosoms of the sage judges themselves, were very likely to counteract the favour any of them might have felt for Sir Philip. Everell rose to appeal to the court to permit Magawisca to invalidate, as far as she was able, the testimony against her; but Mr. Eliot laid his hand on his arm, and withheld him. “Stay, my young friend,” he whispered; “I may speak more acceptably.” Then, addressing the court, he “prayed the prisoner might be allowed liberty to speak freely, alleging it was for the wisdom of her judges to determine what weight was to be attached to her testimony;” and, glancing his eye at Sir Philip, he added, “The upright need not fear the light of truth.”
Sir Philip again remonstrated; he asked “why the prisoner should be permitted farther to offend the consciences of the godly? Surely,” he said, “none of her judges would enforce her demand; surely, having just sworn before them in the prescribed form, they would not require him to repeat his oath on that symbol of Popish faith, that had been just styled an idolatrous sign.”
“This, I think, Brother Eliot, is not what thou wouldst ask?” said Governor Winthrop.
“Nay, God forbid that I should bring such scandal upon our land. It is true, I have known many misguided sons of the Romish Church who would swear freely on the Holy Word what they dared not verify on the crucifix; which abundantly showeth that superstition is, with such, stronger than faith. But we, I think, have no warrant for using such a test, neither do we need it. The prisoner hath asserted that this symbol belongeth to Sir Philip Gardiner, and that he did use it to fortify his word; if so, the credit of his present testimony would be mainly altered; and it seemeth to me but just that the prisoner should not only be allowed, but required to state in full that to which she hath but alluded.”
A whispered consultation of the magistrates followed this proposition, during which Sir Philip seemed virtually to have changed places with the prisoner, and appeared as agitated as if he were on the verge of condemnation: his brow was knit, his lips compressed, and his eye, whose movement seemed beyond his control, flashed from the bench of magistrates to Magawisca, and then fixed on Rosa, as if he would fain have put annihilation in its glance. This unhappy girl still sat where she had first seated herself; she had taken off her hat, laid it on her lap, and rested her face upon it.
There was a vehement remonstrance from some of the members of the court against permitting the prisoner to criminate one who had shown himself well and zealously affected towards them. And it was urged, with some plausibility, that the hints she had received of the advantage to be gained by disqualifying Sir Philip, would tempt her to contrive some crafty tale that might do him a wrong which they could not repair. The governor answered this argument by suggesting that they, being forewarned, were forearmed, and might certainly rely on their own sagacity to detect any imposture. Of course, no individual was forward to deny, for himself, such an allegation, and the governor proceeded to request Magawisca to state the circumstances to which she alluded as having transpired in the prison. Magawisca now, for the first time, appeared to hesitate, to deliberate, and to feel embarrassed.
“Why dost thou falter, woman?” demanded one of her judges; “no time shall be allowed now to contrive a false testimony; proceed—speak quickly!”
“Fear not to speak, Magawisca,” whispered Everell.
“I do fear to speak,” she replied aloud; “but it is such fear as he hath, who, seeing the prey in the eagle’s talons, is loath to hurl his arrow, lest, perchance, it should wound the innocent victim.”
“Speak not in parables, Magawisca,” said Governor Winthrop, “but let us have thy meaning plainly.”
“Then,” replied Magawisca, “let me first crave of thy mercy that that poor youth (pointing to Rosa) withdraw from this presence.”
All eyes were now directed to Rosa, who, herself conscious that she had become the object of attention, raised her head, threw back the rich feminine curls that drooped over her face, and looked wildly around her. On every side her eye encountered glances of curiosity and suspicion; her colour deepened, her lips quivered, and, like a bewildered, terrified child, that instinctively flies to its mother’s side, she sprang up the steps, grasped Sir Philip’s cloak as if she would have hidden herself in its folds, and sunk down at his feet. Sir Philip’s passions had risen to an uncontrollable pitch: “Off! boy,” he cried, spurning her with his foot. A murmur of “Shame! Cruelty!” ran through the house. The unhappy girl rose to her feet, pressed both her hands on her forehead, stared vacantly about, as if her reason were trembling on the verge of annihilation, then darting forward, she penetrated through the crowd and disappeared.
There were few persons present so dull as not to have solved Magawisca’s parable at the instant the clew was given by Rosa’s involuntary movements. Still, all they had discovered was that the page was a disguised girl; and a hope darted on Sir Philip, in the midst of his overwhelming confusion, that, if he could gain time, he might escape the dangers that menaced him. He rose, and with an effrontery that with some passed for the innocence he would fain have counterfeited, said “that circumstances had just transpired in that honourable presence which no doubt seemed mysterious; that he could not then explain them without uselessly exposing the unhappy; for the same reason, namely, to avoid unnecessary suffering, he begged that no interrogatories might at the present moment be put to the prisoner in relation to the hints she had thrown out; that, if the governor would vouchsafe him a private interview, he would, on the sure word of a Christian man, clear up whatever suspicions had been excited by the dark intimations of the prisoner, and the very singular conduct of his page.”
The governor replied, with a severe gravity, ominous to the knight, “That the circumstances he had alluded to certainly required explanation; if that should not prove satisfactory, they would demand a public investigation. In the mean time, he should suspend the trial of the prisoner, who, though the decision of her case might not wholly depend on the establishment of Sir Philip’s testimony, was yet, at present, materially affected by it.
“He expressed a deep regret at the interruption that had occurred, as it must lead,” he said, “to the suspension of the justice to be manifested, either in the acquittal or condemnation of the prisoner. Some of the magistrates being called away from town on the next morning, he found himself compelled to adjourn the sitting of the court till one month from the present date.”
“Then,” said Magawisca, for the first time speaking with a tone of impatience, “then, I pray you, send me to death now. Anything is better than wearing through another moon in my prison-house, thinking,” she added, and cast down her eyelids, heavy with tears, “thinking of that old man—my father. I pray thee,” she continued, bending low her head, “I pray thee now to set me free. Wait not for his testimony”—she pointed to Sir Philip: “as well may ye expect the green herb to spring up in your trodden streets, as the breath of truth to come from his false lips. Do you wait for him to prove that I am your enemy? Take my own word—I am your enemy; the sunbeam and the shadow cannot mingle. The white man cometh—the Indian vanisheth. Can we grasp in friendship the hand raised to strike us? Nay: and it matters not whether we fall by the tempest that lays the forest low, or are cut down alone by the stroke of the axe. I would have thanked you for life and liberty; for Mononotto’s sake I would have thanked you; but if ye send me back to that dungeon—the grave of the living, feeling, thinking soul, where the sun never shineth, where the stars never rise nor set, where the free breath of Heaven never enters, where all is darkness without and within”—she pressed her hand on her breast—“ye will even now condemn me to death, but death more slow and terrible than your most suffering captive ever endured from Indian fires and knives.” She paused; passed unresisted without the little railing that encompassed her, mounted the steps of the platform, and, advancing to the feet of the governor, threw back her mantle, and knelt before him. Her mutilated person, unveiled by this action, appealed to the senses of the spectators. Everell involuntarily closed his eyes, and uttered a cry of agony, lost, indeed, in the murmurs of the crowd. She spoke, and all again were as hushed as death. “Thou didst promise,” she said, addressing herself to Governor Winthrop, “to my dying mother thou didst promise kindness to her children. In her name, I demand of thee death or liberty.”
Everell sprang forward, and, clasping his hands, exclaimed, “In the name of God, liberty!”
The feeling was contagious, and every voice, save her judges, shouted “Liberty! liberty! Grant the prisoner liberty!”
The governor rose, waved his hand to command silence, and would have spoken, but his voice failed him; his heart was touched with the general emotion, and he was fain to turn away to hide tears more becoming to the man than the magistrate.
The same gentleman who, throughout the trial, had been most forward to speak, now rose—a man of metal to resist any fire. “Are ye all fools, and mad!” he cried; “ye that are gathered here together, that, like the men of old, ye shout ‘Great is Diana of the Ephesians?’ For whom would you stop the course of justice? for one who is charged before you with having visited every tribe on the shores and in the forests, to quicken the savages to diabolical revenge; for one who flouts the faith once delivered to the saints to your very faces! for one who hath entered into an open league and confederacy with Satan against you! for one who, as ye have testimony within yourselves, in that her looks and words do so prevail over your judgments, is presently aided and abetted by the arch enemy of mankind—I call upon you, my brethren,” he added, turning to his associates, “and most especially on you, Governor Winthrop, to put a sudden end to this confusion by the formal adjournment of our court.”
The governor bowed his assent. “Rise, Magawisca,” he said, in a voice of gentle authority; “I may not grant thy prayer; but what I can do in remembrance of my solemn promise to thy dying mother, without leaving undone higher duty, I will do.”
“And what mortal can do, I will do,” said Everell, whispering the words into Magawisca’s ear as she rose. The cloud of despondency that had settled over her fine face for an instant vanished, and she said aloud, “Everell Fletcher, my dungeon will not be, as I said, quite dark, for thither I bear the memory of thy kindness.”
Some of the magistrates seemed to regard this slight interchange of expressions between the captive and her champion as indecorous: the constables were ordered immediately to perform their duty, by reconducting their prisoner to jail; and Magawisca was led out, leaving in the breasts of a great majority of the audience a strange contrariety of opinion and feelings: their reason, guided by the best lights they possessed, deciding against her, the voice of nature crying out for her.
Before the parties separated, the governor arranged a private interview with Sir Philip Gardiner, to take place at his own house immediately after dinner.
“Ye’re like to the timmer o’ yon rotten wood,
Ye’re like to the bark o’ yon rotten tree,
Ye’ll slip frae me like a knotless thread,
And ye’ll crack your credit wi’ mae nor me.”
Burns.
At the period of our history, twelve o’clock was the hour appointed for dinner: we believe in the mother-country—certainly in the colony then, as now, everywhere in the interior of our states, this natural division of time was maintained. Our magistrates did not then claim any exemption from the strict rules of simplicity and frugality that were imposed on the humble citizens, and Governor Winthrop’s meridian meal, though it might have been somewhat superior in other luxuries, had no more of the luxury of time bestowed on it than that of the honest artisans and tradesmen about him.
In order to explain what follows, it is necessary to state to our readers, that adjoining the parlour of Governor Winthrop’s mansion was that sine qua non of all thrifty housekeepers, an ample pantry. In the door of this pantry was a glazed panel, over the parlour side of which hung a green curtain. The glass had been broken, and not yet repaired; and, let housewives take the admonition if they like, on this slight accident depended life and death.
The pantry, besides the door already described, had another, which communicated with the kitchen; through this Jennet (who in housewife skill resembled the “neat-handed Phillis” of poetic fame, though in other respects prosaic enough) had entered to perform within the sanctum certain confidential services for Madam Winthrop.
It now drew near the hour of two, the time appointed for the interview of the governor with Sir Philip; the dinner was over, the table removed, and all orderly and quiet in the parlour, when Jennet, in her retreat, heard Miss Leslie and Mr. Everell Fletcher enter, and, though the weather was warm, close the door after them. A slight hint is sufficient for the wary and wise; and Jennet, on hearing the door shut, forbore to make any noise which should apprize the parties of her proximity.
The young people, as if fearful of being overheard without, withdrew to the farthest extremity from the entry door, and came into the corner adjoining the pantry. They spoke, though in low tones, yet in the most earnest and animated manner; and Jennet, tempted beyond what she was able to bear, drew nigh to the door with a cat’s tread, and applied her ear to the aperture, where the sounds were only slightly obstructed by the silk curtain.
While speakers and listener stood in this interesting relation to each other, Sir Philip Gardiner was approaching the mansion, his bad mind filled with projects, hopes, and fears. He had, after much painful study, framed the following story, which he hoped to impose on the credulity of the governor, and, through him, of the public. His sole care was to avoid present investigation and detection; in navigating a winding channel, he regarded only the difficulties directly before him.
He meant that, in the first place, by way of a coup de grace, the governor should understand he had intentionally acquiesced in the discovery of Rosa’s disguise. He would then, as honest Varney did, confess there had been some love-passages between the girl and himself in the days of his folly. He would state that, subsequent to his conversion, he had placed her in a godly school in England, and that, to his utter confusion, he had discovered, after he had sailed from London, that she had, in the disguise she still wore, secreted herself on board the ship. He had, perhaps, felt too much indulgence for the girl’s youth and unconquerable affection for him; but he should hope that was not an unpardonable sin. He had been restrained from divulging her real character on shipboard, from his reluctance to expose her youth to insult or farther temptation. On his arrival, he was conscious it was a manifest duty to have delivered her over to the public authorities; but pity—pity still had ruled him. He scrupled—perhaps that was a temptation of the enemy, who knew well to assail the weakest points—he scrupled to give over to public shame one, of whose transgressions he had been the cause. Besides, she had been bred in France—a Papist; and he had hoped—trusting, perhaps, too much in his own strength—that he might convert her from the error of her ways—snatch the brand from the burning; he had, indeed, felt a fatherly tenderness for her, and, weakly indulging that sentiment, he had still, when he found her obstinately persisting in her errors, devised a plan to shelter her from public punishment; and, in pursuance of it, he had taken advantage of the opportunity afforded him by his visit to Thomas Morton, to propose to Magawisca that, in case she should obtain her liberty from the clemency of her judges, she should undertake to convey Rosa to a convent in Montreal, of the order to which she had been, in her childhood, attached.
He meant to plead guilty, as he thought he could well afford to do, if he was exculpated on the other points, to all the sin of acquiescence in Rosa’s devotion to an unholy and proscribed religion; and to the crucifix Magawisca had produced, and which he feared would prove a “confirmation strong” to any jealousies the governor might still harbour against him, he meant to answer that he had taken it from Rosa to explain to Magawisca that she was of the Romish religion.
With this plausible tale—not the best that could have been devised, perhaps, by one accustomed to all the sinuosities of the human mind and human affairs, but the best that Sir Philip could frame in his present perplexity—he bent his steps towards the governor’s, a little anticipating the appointed hour in the hope of obtaining a glimpse of Miss Leslie, whom he had not seen since their last interview at the island; and who was still the bright cynosure by which, through all the dangers that beset him, he trusted to guide himself to a joyous destiny.
Never was he more unwelcome to her sight than when he opened the parlour door, and interrupted the deeply-interesting conversation in which we left her engaged. She coldly bowed, without speaking, and left him, without making any apology, in the midst of his flattering compliments on the recovery of her health.
Sir Philip and Everell were much on the terms of two unfriendly dogs, who are, by some coercion, kept from doing battle, but who never meet without low growls and sullen looks, that intimate their deadly enmity. Everell paced the room twice or thrice, then snatched up his hat, left the house, and sauntered up the street.
No sooner had he disappeared than Jennet emerged from her seclusion, her hands uplifted and her eyes upturned. “Oh, Sir Philip! Sir Philip!” she said, as soon as she could get her voice, a delay never long with Jennet, “truly is the heart deceitful, and the lips too. Oh! who would have thought it? such a daring, presumptuous, and secret sin, too! Where is the governor? He must know it. But first, Sir Philip, I will tell you; that will do, as you and the governor are one in counsel.”
“Heaven grant we may be so,” thought Sir Philip, and he closed the door and turned to Jennet, eager to hear her communication; for her earnestness, and, still more, the source whence the intelligence emanated, excited his curiosity.
Jennet drew very close to him, and communicated her secret in a whisper.
At first the listener’s face did not indicate any particular emotion, but merely that courteous attention which a sagacious man would naturally lend to intelligence which the relator deemed of vital importance. Suddenly a light seemed to flash across him; he started away from Jennet, stood still for a moment with a look of intense thought, then turning to his informer, he said, “Mrs. Jennet, I think we had best, for to-day, confine within our own bosoms the knowledge of this secret. As you say, Mr. Everell’s is a presumptuous sin; but it will not be punished unless it proceeds to the overt act.”
“Overt act! What kind of act is that?” inquired Jennet.
Sir Philip explained; and Jennet soon comprehended the difference, in its consequences to the offender, between a meditated and an executed crime. Jennet hesitated for a few moments; she had a sort of attachment to the family she had long served, much like that of an old cat for its accustomed haunts; but towards Everell she had a feeling of unqualified hostility. From his boyhood he had been rebellious against her petty domiciliary tyranny, and had never manifested the slightest deference for her canting pretensions. Still she was loath in any way to be accessory to an act that would involve the family with which she was herself identified in any disgrace or distress. Sir Philip divined the cause of her hesitation, and, impatient for her decision, he essayed to resolve her doubts: “Of course, Mrs. Jennet,” he said, “you are aware that any penalty Mr. Everell Fletcher would incur will not be of a nature to touch life or limb.”
“Ay, that’s what I wanted to know; and that being the case, it appears to me plain duty to let him bake as he has brewed. Faithful are the wounds of a friend, Sir Philip; and this may prove a timely rebuke to his youth, and to this quicksilver, fearnaught, Hope Leslie. But you will take care to have your hand come in in time; for if there should be any miss in the matter, it would prove a heavy weight to our consciences.”
“Oh, certainly, certainly,” said Sir Philip, with undisguised exultation: “I shall, you know, command the springs, and can touch them at pleasure. Now, Mrs. Jennet, will you favour me with pen and ink? and do me still another favour”—and he took a guinea from his purse—“expend this trifle in some book for your private edification; I hear much of a famous one just brought from England, entitled ‘Food for Saints and Fire for Sinners.’ ”
“Many thanks, Sir Philip,” replied Jennet, graciously accepting the gift; “such savoury treatises are as much wanted among us just now, as rain upon the parched earth: it’s but a sickly and a moral time with us. You put me in mind, Sir Philip,” she continued, while she was collecting the writing materials, “you put me in mind of Mr. Everell’s oversight; or, rather, I may say, of his making me a mark in that unhandsome way that I can never forget. When he came from England, there was not, save myself, one of the family—no, nor an old woman or child in Springfield, but what he had some keepsake for; not that I care for the value of the thing, as I told Digby at his wedding, when he saluted every woman in the room but me; but, then, one does not like to be slighted.”
Sir Philip, by this time, was fortunately bending over his paper, and Jennet did not perceive his smile at her jumble of selfish and feminine resentments; and, observing that he had at once become quite abstracted from her, she withdrew, half satisfied herself that she had acted conscientiously in her conspiracy against her young master, and quite sure that she should appear a pattern of wisdom and duty.
Sir Philip, mentally thanking Heaven that he had not yet encountered Governor Winthrop, addressed a hasty note to him, saying that he had come to his house, true to his appointment, and impatient for the explanation, which, he might say without presumption, he was sure would remove the displeasure under which he (Sir Philip) was at this moment suffering; but that, in consequence of a sudden and severe indisposition, the effect of the distressful agitation he had undergone, he found himself obliged to return to his lodgings, and defer their interview till the next day; till then, he humbly hoped the governor would suspend his judgment. He then directed the note and left it on the table, and passed the threshold of the Winthrop mansion, as he believed and hoped, for the last time.
“This murderous shaft that’s shot
Hath not yet lighted; and our safest way
Is to avoid the aim. Therefore to horse,
And let us not be dainty of leave-taking.”
Macbeth.
The Greeks and Romans had their lucky and unlucky days; and, whatever name we give to the alternations of life, we believe that the experience of every family and individual will attest the clustering of joys or woes at marked periods. The day of Magawisca’s trial was eventful, and long remembered in the annals of the Fletcher family. Indeed, every one in any way associated with them seems to have participated in the influences of their ruling star. Each member of Governor Winthrop’s household appeared to be moving in a world of his own, and to be utterly absorbed in his own projects and hopes.
Miss Downing was for a long time closeted with her uncle and aunt; then a great bustle ensued, and emissaries went to and fro from Madam Winthrop’s apartment. Madam Winthrop herself forgot her usual stateliness and dignified composure, and hurried from one apartment to another with quick footsteps and a disturbed countenance. The governor was heard pacing up and down his study, in earnest conversation with the elder Fletcher. Everell had gone out, leaving directions with a servant to say to his father, or any one who should inquire for him, that he should not return till the next day. Hope Leslie resisted all her aunt’s efforts to interest her in a string of pearls which she intended for a wedding gift for Esther; “but,” Mrs. Grafton said, wreathing them into Hope’s hair, “her heart misgave her, they looked so much prettier peeping out from among Hope’s wavy locks than they would on Esther’s sleek hair.” The agitation of Hope’s spirits was manifest, but (we grieve to unveil her infirmities) that, in her, excited no more attention than a change of weather in an April day. She read one moment—worked the next—and the next was devoting herself with earnest affection to the amusement of her pining sister; then she would suddenly break off from her, and take a few turns in the garden: in short, confusion had suddenly intruded within the dominion of order, and usurped the government of all his subjects.
In the evening, the surface of affairs, at least, bore a more tranquil aspect. The family all assembled in the parlour as usual, excepting Miss Leslie and Cradock, who had retired to the study to look over a translation from the Italian, which Hope just recollected her tutor had never revised.
Faith Leslie sat on a cushion beside the door, in a state of vacancy and listlessness, into which she seemed to have hopelessly sunk after the first violent emotions that succeeded her return. The ladies were plying their needles at the table: Miss Downing, pale as a statue, moved her hand mechanically, and Mrs. Grafton had just remarked that she had seen her put her needle twelve times in the same place, when, fortunately for her, any farther notice of her abstraction was averted by a rap at the outer door, and a servant admitted a stranger, who, without heeding a request that he would remain in the portico till the governor should be summoned, advanced to the parlour door. He sent a keen, scrutinizing glance around the room, and on every individual in it; and then, fixing his eye on the governor, he bent his head low, with an expression of deferential supplication.
His appearance was that of extreme wretchedness, and, as all who saw him thought, indicated a shipwrecked sailor. His face and figure were youthful, and his eye bright, but his skin was of a sickly, ashen hue. He had on his head a sailor’s woollen cap, drawn down to his eyes, in part, as it seemed, to defend a wound he had received on his temple, and about which, and to the rim of the cap which covered it, there adhered clotted blood. His dress was an overcoat of coarse frieze cloth, much torn and weather-beaten, and strapped around the waist with a leathern girdle; his throat was covered with a cotton handkerchief, knotted in sailor fashion, and his legs and feet were bare.
To the governor’s inquiry of “Who are you, friend?” and “what do you want?” he replied in an unknown language, and with a low, rapid enunciation. At the first sound of his voice Faith Leslie sprang to her feet, but instantly sunk back again on the cushion, and apparently returned to her former abstraction.
Governor Winthrop eyed the stranger narrowly. “I think, Brother Fletcher,” he said, “this man has the Italian lineaments; perhaps Master Cradock may understand his language, as he is well versed in all the dialects of the kingdoms of Italy. Robin,” he added, “bid Master Cradock come hither.”
“Master Cradock has gone out, sir, an please you, some minutes since, with Miss Leslie.”
“Gone out—with Miss Leslie! Whither?”
“I do not know, sir. The young lady bid me say she had gone to a friend’s, and should not return till late. She begged Mrs. Jennet might be in waiting for her.”
“This is somewhat unseasonable,” said the governor, looking at his watch; “it is now almost nine; but I believe,” he added, in kind consideration of Mr. Fletcher’s feelings, “we may trust your wild wood-bird; her flights are somewhat devious, but her instincts are safer than I once thought them.”
“Trust her! yes, indeed,” exclaimed Mrs. Grafton, catching the word that implied distrust. “But I wonder,” she added, going to the window and looking anxiously abroad, “that she should venture out this dark night, with nobody but that blind beetle of a Cradock to attend her; however, I suppose she is safe if she but keep on the mainland, as I think you say the wolves come no more over the neck.”
“They certainly will not come anywhere within the bounds that our lamb is likely to stray,” said Mr. Fletcher.
The governor’s care again recurred to the mendicant stranger, who now signified, by intelligible gestures, that he both wanted food and sleep. Every apartment in the governor’s house was occupied; but it was a rule with him that admitted of no exception, that his shelter should never be denied to the wanderer, nor his charities to the poor; and, accordingly, after some consultation with the executive department of his domestic government, a flock-bed was ordered to be spread on the kitchen floor, and a meal provided, on which the stranger did extraordinary execution.
When the result of these charitable deliberations were signified to him, he expressed his gratitude by the most animated gestures, and seeming involuntarily to recur to the natural organ of communication, he uttered, in his low and rapid manner, several sentences, which appeared, from the direction of his eye and his repeated bows, to be addressed to his benefactor.
“Enough, enough,” said the governor, interpreting his words by a wave of his hand, which signified to the mendicant that he was to follow Robin to the kitchen. There we must leave him to achieve, in due time, an object involving most momentous consequences, while we follow on the trail of our heroine, whose excursive habits have so often compelled us to deviate from the straight line of narration.