Twice-Told Tales (12 page)

"Have I not borne all this, and have I murmured?" interrupted Pearson,
impatiently.

"Nay, friend, but hear me," continued the other. "As we journeyed on
night darkened on our path, so that no man could see the rage of the
persecutors or the constancy of my endurance, though Heaven forbid
that I should glory therein. The lights began to glimmer in the
cottage windows, and I could discern the inmates as they gathered in
comfort and security, every man with his wife and children by their
own evening hearth. At length we came to a tract of fertile land. In
the dim light the forest was not visible around it, and, behold, there
was a straw-thatched dwelling which bore the very aspect of my home
far over the wild ocean—far in our own England. Then came bitter
thoughts upon me—yea, remembrances that were like death to my soul.
The happiness of my early days was painted to me, the disquiet of my
manhood, the altered faith of my declining years. I remembered how I
had been moved to go forth a wanderer when my daughter, the youngest,
the dearest of my flock, lay on her dying-bed, and—"

"Couldst thou obey the command at such a moment?" exclaimed Pearson,
shuddering.

"Yea! yea!" replied the old man, hurriedly. "I was kneeling by her
bedside when the voice spoke loud within me, but immediately I rose
and took my staff and gat me gone. Oh that it were permitted me to
forget her woeful look when I thus withdrew my arm and left her
journeying through the dark valley alone! for her soul was faint and
she had leaned upon my prayers. Now in that night of horror I was
assailed by the thought that I had been an erring Christian and a
cruel parent; yea, even my daughter with her pale dying features
seemed to stand by me and whisper, 'Father, you are deceived; go home
and shelter your gray head.'—O Thou to whom I have looked in my
furthest wanderings," continued the Quaker, raising his agitated eyes
to heaven, "inflict not upon the bloodiest of our persecutors the
unmitigated agony of my soul when I believed that all I had done and
suffered for thee was at the instigation of a mocking fiend!—But I
yielded not; I knelt down and wrestled with the tempter, while the
scourge bit more fiercely into the flesh. My prayer was heard, and I
went on in peace and joy toward the wilderness."

The old man, though his fanaticism had generally all the calmness of
reason, was deeply moved while reciting this tale, and his unwonted
emotion seemed to rebuke and keep down that of his companion. They sat
in silence, with their faces to the fire, imagining, perhaps, in its
red embers new scenes of persecution yet to be encountered. The snow
still drifted hard against the windows, and sometimes, as the blaze of
the logs had gradually sunk, came down the spacious chimney and hissed
upon the hearth. A cautious footstep might now and then be heard in a
neighboring apartment, and the sound invariably drew the eyes of both
Quakers to the door which led thither. When a fierce and riotous gust
of wind had led his thoughts by a natural association to homeless
travellers on such a night, Pearson resumed the conversation.

"I have wellnigh sunk under my own share of this trial," observed he,
sighing heavily; "yet I would that it might be doubled to me, if so
the child's mother could be spared. Her wounds have been deep and
many, but this will be the sorest of all."

"Fear not for Catharine," replied the old Quaker, "for I know that
valiant woman and have seen how she can bear the cross. A mother's
heart, indeed, is strong in her, and may seem to contend mightily with
her faith; but soon she will stand up and give thanks that her son has
been thus early an accepted sacrifice. The boy hath done his work, and
she will feel that he is taken hence in kindness both to him and her.
Blessed, blessed are they that with so little suffering can enter into
peace!"

The fitful rush of the wind was now disturbed by a portentous sound:
it was a quick and heavy knocking at the outer door. Pearson's wan
countenance grew paler, for many a visit of persecution had taught him
what to dread; the old man, on the other hand, stood up erect, and his
glance was firm as that of the tried soldier who awaits his enemy.

"The men of blood have come to seek me," he observed, with calmness.
"They have heard how I was moved to return from banishment, and now am
I to be led to prison, and thence to death. It is an end I have long
looked for. I will open unto them lest they say, 'Lo, he feareth!'"

"Nay; I will present myself before them," said Pearson, with recovered
fortitude. "It may be that they seek me alone and know not that thou
abidest with me."

"Let us go boldly, both one and the other," rejoined his companion.
"It is not fitting that thou or I should shrink."

They therefore proceeded through the entry to the door, which they
opened, bidding the applicant "Come in, in God's name!" A furious
blast of wind drove the storm into their faces and extinguished the
lamp; they had barely time to discern a figure so white from head to
foot with the drifted snow that it seemed like Winter's self come in
human shape to seek refuge from its own desolation.

"Enter, friend, and do thy errand, be it what it may," said Pearson.
"It must needs be pressing, since thou comest on such a bitter night."

"Peace be with this household!" said the stranger, when they stood on
the floor of the inner apartment.

Pearson started; the elder Quaker stirred the slumbering embers of the
fire till they sent up a clear and lofty blaze. It was a female voice
that had spoken; it was a female form that shone out, cold and wintry,
in that comfortable light.

"Catharine, blessed woman," exclaimed the old man, "art thou come to
this darkened land again? Art thou come to bear a valiant testimony as
in former years? The scourge hath not prevailed against thee, and
from the dungeon hast thou come forth triumphant, but strengthen,
strengthen now thy heart, Catharine, for Heaven will prove thee yet
this once ere thou go to thy reward."

"Rejoice, friends!" she replied. "Thou who hast long been of our
people, and thou whom a little child hath led to us, rejoice! Lo, I
come, the messenger of glad tidings, for the day of persecution is
over-past. The heart of the king, even Charles, hath been moved in
gentleness toward us, and he hath sent forth his letters to stay the
hands of the men of blood. A ship's company of our friends hath
arrived at yonder town, and I also sailed joyfully among them."

As Catharine spoke her eyes were roaming about the room in search of
him for whose sake security was dear to her. Pearson made a silent
appeal to the old man, nor did the latter shrink from the painful task
assigned him.

"Sister," he began, in a softened yet perfectly calm tone, "thou
tellest us of his love manifested in temporal good, and now must we
speak to thee of that selfsame love displayed in chastenings.
Hitherto, Catharine, thou hast been as one journeying in a darksome
and difficult path and leading an infant by the hand; fain wouldst
thou have looked heavenward continually, but still the cares of that
little child have drawn thine eyes and thy affections to the earth.
Sister, go on rejoicing, for his tottering footsteps shall impede
thine own no more."

But the unhappy mother was not thus to be consoled. She shook like a
leaf; she turned white as the very snow that hung drifted into her
hair. The firm old man extended his hand and held her up, keeping his
eye upon hers as if to repress any outbreak of passion.

"I am a woman—I am but a woman; will He try me above my strength?"
said Catharine, very quickly and almost in a whisper. "I have been
wounded sore; I have suffered much—many things in the body, many in
the mind; crucified in myself and in them that were dearest to me.
Surely," added she, with a long shudder, "he hath spared me in this
one thing." She broke forth with sudden and irrepressible violence:
"Tell me, man of cold heart, what has God done to me? Hath he cast
me down never to rise again? Hath he crushed my very heart in his
hand?—And thou to whom I committed my child, how hast thou fulfilled
thy trust? Give me back the boy well, sound, alive—alive—or earth
and heaven shall avenge me!"

The agonized shriek of Catharine was answered by the faint—the very
faint—voice of a child.

On this day it had become evident to Pearson, to his aged guest and to
Dorothy that Ilbrahim's brief and troubled pilgrimage drew near its
close. The two former would willingly have remained by him to make use
of the prayers and pious discourses which they deemed appropriate to
the time, and which, if they be impotent as to the departing
traveller's reception in the world whither he goes, may at least
sustain him in bidding adieu to earth. But, though Ilbrahim uttered no
complaint, he was disturbed by the faces that looked upon him; so that
Dorothy's entreaties and their own conviction that the child's feet
might tread heaven's pavement and not soil it had induced the two
Quakers to remove. Ilbrahim then closed his eyes and grew calm, and,
except for now and then a kind and low word to his nurse, might have
been thought to slumber. As nightfall came on, however, and the storm
began to rise, something seemed to trouble the repose of the boy's
mind and to render his sense of hearing active and acute. If a passing
wind lingered to shake the casement, he strove to turn his head toward
it; if the door jarred to and fro upon its hinges, he looked long and
anxiously thitherward; if the heavy voice of the old man as he read
the Scriptures rose but a little higher, the child almost held his
dying-breath to listen; if a snowdrift swept by the cottage with a
sound like the trailing of a garment, Ilbrahim seemed to watch that
some visitant should enter. But after a little time he relinquished
whatever secret hope had agitated him and with one low complaining
whisper turned his cheek upon the pillow. He then addressed Dorothy
with his usual sweetness and besought her to draw near him; she did
so, and Ilbrahim took her hand in both of his, grasping it with a
gentle pressure, as if to assure himself that he retained it. At
intervals, and without disturbing the repose of his countenance, a
very faint trembling passed over him from head to foot, as if a mild
but somewhat cool wind had breathed upon him and made him shiver.

As the boy thus led her by the hand in his quiet progress over the
borders of eternity, Dorothy almost imagined that she could discern
the near though dim delightfulness of the home he was about to reach;
she would not have enticed the little wanderer back, though she
bemoaned herself that she must leave him and return. But just when
Ilbrahim's feet were pressing on the soil of Paradise he heard a voice
behind him, and it recalled him a few, few paces of the weary path
which he had travelled. As Dorothy looked upon his features she
perceived that their placid expression was again disturbed. Her own
thoughts had been so wrapped in him that all sounds of the storm and
of human speech were lost to her; but when Catharine's shriek pierced
through the room, the boy strove to raise himself.

"Friend, she is come! Open unto her!" cried he.

In a moment his mother was kneeling by the bedside; she drew Ilbrahim
to her bosom, and he nestled there with no violence of joy, but
contentedly as if he were hushing himself to sleep. He looked into her
face, and, reading its agony, said with feeble earnestness,

"Mourn not, dearest mother. I am happy now;" and with these words the
gentle boy was dead.

The king's mandate to stay the New England persecutors was effectual
in preventing further martyrdoms, but the colonial authorities,
trusting in the remoteness of their situation, and perhaps in the
supposed instability of the royal government, shortly renewed their
severities in all other respects. Catharine's fanaticism had become
wilder by the sundering of all human ties; and wherever a scourge was
lifted, there was she to receive the blow; and whenever a dungeon was
unbarred, thither she came to cast herself upon the floor. But in
process of time a more Christian spirit—a spirit of forbearance,
though not of cordiality or approbation—began to pervade the land in
regard to the persecuted sect. And then, when the rigid old Pilgrims
eyed her rather in pity than in wrath, when the matrons fed her with
the fragments of their children's food and offered her a lodging on a
hard and lowly bed, when no little crowd of schoolboys left their
sports to cast stones after the roving enthusiast,—then did Catharine
return to Pearson's dwelling, and made that her home.

As if Ilbrahim's sweetness yet lingered round his ashes, as if his
gentle spirit came down from heaven to teach his parent a true
religion, her fierce and vindictive nature was softened by the same
griefs which had once irritated it. When the course of years had made
the features of the unobtrusive mourner familiar in the settlement,
she became a subject of not deep but general interest—a being on whom
the otherwise superfluous sympathies of all might be bestowed. Every
one spoke of her with that degree of pity which it is pleasant to
experience; every one was ready to do her the little kindnesses which
are not costly, yet manifest good-will; and when at last she died, a
long train of her once bitter persecutors followed her with decent
sadness and tears that were not painful to her place by Ilbrahim's
green and sunken grave.

A young fellow, a tobacco-pedler by trade, was on his way from
Morristown, where he had dealt largely with the deacon of the Shaker
settlement, to the village of Parker's Falls, on Salmon River. He had
a neat little cart painted green, with a box of cigars depicted on
each side-panel, and an Indian chief holding a pipe and a golden
tobacco-stalk on the rear. The pedler drove a smart little mare and
was a young man of excellent character, keen at a bargain, but none
the worse liked by the Yankees, who, as I have heard them say, would
rather be shaved with a sharp razor than a dull one. Especially was he
beloved by the pretty girls along the Connecticut, whose favor he used
to court by presents of the best smoking-tobacco in his stock, knowing
well that the country-lasses of New England are generally great
performers on pipes. Moreover, as will be seen in the course of my
story, the pedler was inquisitive and something of a tattler, always
itching to hear the news and anxious to tell it again.