 | CHAPTER X. The wept of Wish-ton-Wish |  |
10. CHAPTER X.
“Sleep, thou hast been a grandsire, and begot
A father to me: and thou hast created
A mother and two brothers.”
Cymbeline.
The short twilight was already passed, when old
Mark Heathcote ended the evening prayer. The
mixed character of the remarkable events of that
day had given birth to a feeling, which could find
no other relief than that which flowed from the
usual zealous, confiding, and exalted outpouring of
the spirit. On the present occasion, he had even
resorted to an extraordinary, and, what one less
devout might be tempted to think, a supererogatory
offering of thanksgiving and praise. After dismissing
the dependants of the establishment, supported
by the arm of his son, he had withdrawn into an
inner apartment, and there, surrounded only by
those who had the nearest claims on his affections,
the old man again raised his voice to laud the Being,
who, in the midst of so much general grief, had
deigned to look upon his particular race with the
eyes of remembrance and of favor. He spoke of
his recovered grand-child by name, and he dealt
with the whole subject of her captivity among the
heathen, and her restoration to the foot of the altar,
with the fervor of one who saw the wise decrees
of Providence in the event, and with a tenderness
of sentiment that age was far from having extinguished.
It was at the close of this private and
peculiar worship, that we return into the presence
of the family.
The spirit of reform had driven those, who so
to say the least, were quite as ungracious to the
imagination, as the customs they termed idolatrous
were obnoxious to the attacks of their own unaccommodating
theories. The first Protestants had
expelled so much from the service of the altar, that
little was left for the Puritan to destroy, without
incurring the risk of leaving it naked of its loveliness.
By a strange substitution of subtlety for humility,
it was thought pharisaical to bend the knee
in public, lest the great essential of spiritual worship
might be supplanted by the more attainable merit
of formula; and while rigid aspects, and prescribed
deportments of a new character, were observed
with all the zeal of converts, ancient and even
natural practices were condemned, chiefly, we believe,
from that necessity of innovation which appears
to be an unavoidable attendant of all plans of
improvement, whether they are successful or the
reverse. But though the Puritans refused to bow
their stubborn limbs when the eye of man was on
them, even while asking boons suited to their own
sublimated opinions, it was permitted to assume in
private an attitude which was thought to admit of
so gross an abuse, inasmuch as it infers a claim to
a religious vitality, while in truth the soul might
only be slumbering in the security of mere moral
pretension.
On the present occasion, they who worshipped
in secret had bent their bodies to the humblest
posture of devotion. When Ruth Heathcote arose
from her knees, it was with a hand clasped in that
of the child whom her recent devotion was well
suited to make her think had been rescued from a
condition far more gloomy than that of the grave.
She had used a gentle violence to force the wondering
being at her side to join, so far as externals
could go, in the prayer; and, now it was ended, she
to read the impression the scene had produced, with
all the solicitude of a Christian, heightened by the
tenderest maternal love.
Narra-mattah, as we shall continue to call her,
in air, expression, and attitude, resembled one who
had a fancied existence in the delusion of some exciting
dream. Her ear remembered sounds which
had so often been repeated in her infancy, and her
memory recalled indistinct recollections of most of
the objects and usages that were so suddenly replaced
before her eyes; but the former now conveyed
their meaning to a mind that had gained its
strength under a very different system of theology,
and the latter came too late to supplant usages that
were rooted in her affections by the aid of all those
wild and seductive habits, that are known to become
nearly unconquerable in those who have long been
subject to their influence. She stood, therefore, in
the centre of the grave, self-restrained group of
her nearest kin, like an alien to their blood, resembling
some timid and but half-tamed tenant of
the air, that human art had endeavored to domesticate,
by placing it in the society of the more tranquil
and confiding inhabitants of the aviary.
Notwithstanding the strength of her affections,
and her devotion to all the natural duties of her
station, Ruth Heathcote was not now to learn the
manner in which she was to subdue any violence
in their exhibition. The first indulgence of joy and
gratitude was over, and in its place appeared the
never-tiring, vigilant, engrossing, but regulated
watchfulness, which the events would naturally
create. The doubts, misgivings, and even fearful
apprehensions, that beset her, were smothered in
an appearance of satisfaction; and something like
gleamings of happiness were again seen playing
an unobtrusive but corroding care.
“And thou recallest thine infancy, my Ruth?”
asked the mother, when the respectful period of
silence, which ever succeeded prayer in that family,
was passed; “thy thoughts have not been altogether
strangers to us, but nature hath had its place in thy
heart. Tell us, child, of thy wanderings in the forest,
and of the sufferings that one so tender must have
undergone among a barbarous people. There is
pleasure in listening to all thou hast seen and felt,
now that we know there is an end to unhappiness.”
She spoke to an ear that was deaf to language like
this. Narra-mattah evidently understood her words,
while their meaning was wrapped in an obscurity
that she neither wished to nor was capable of comprehending.
Keeping a gaze, in which pleasure and
wonder were powerfully blended, on that soft look
of affection which beamed from her mother's eye,
she felt hurriedly among the folds of her dress, and
drawing a belt that was gaily ornamented after the
most ingenious fashion of her adopted people, she
approached her half-pleased, half-distressed parent,
and, with hands that trembled equally with timidity
and pleasure, she arranged it around her person in
a manner to show its richness to the best advantage.
Pleased with her performance, the artless being
eagerly sought approbation in eyes that bespoke
little else than regret. Alarmed at an expression she
could not translate, the gaze of Narra-mattah wandered,
as if it sought support against some sensation
to which she was a stranger. Whittal Ring had
stolen into the room, and missing the customary
features of her own cherished home, the looks of
the startled creature rested on the countenance of
the witless wanderer. She pointed eagerly at the
work of her hands, appealing by an eloquent and
whether she had done well.
“Bravely!” returned Whittal, approaching nearer
to the subject of his admiration—“'tis a brave
belt, and none but the wife of a Sachem could make
so rare a gift!”
The girl folded her arms meekly on her bosom,
and again appeared satisfied with herself and with
the world.
“Here is the hand of him visible who dealeth in
all wickedness,” said the Puritan. “To corrupt the
heart with vanities, and to mislead the affections by
luring them to the things of life, is the guile in
which he delighteth. A fallen nature lendeth but
too ready aid. We must deal with the child in fervor
and watchfulness, or better that her bones were lying
by the side of those little ones of thy flock, who are
already inheritors of the promise.”
Respect kept Ruth silent; but, while she sorrowed
over the ignorance of her child, natural affection
was strong at her heart. With the tact of a woman,
and the tenderness of a mother, she both saw and
felt that severity was not the means to effect the
improvement they desired. Taking a seat herself,
she drew her child to her person, and, first imploring
silence by a glance at those around her, she proceeded,
in a manner that was dictated by the mysterious
influence of nature, to fathom the depth of
her daughter's mind.
“Come nearer, Narra-mattah;” she said, using
the name to which the other would alone answer.
“Thou art still in thy youth, my child; but it hath
pleased him whose will is law, to have made thee
the witness of many changes in this varying life.
Tell me if thou recallest the days of infancy, and
if thy thoughts ever returned to thy father's house,
during those weary years thou wast kept from our
view?”
Ruth used gentle force to draw her daughter
nearer while speaking, and the latter sunk into that
posture from which she had just arisen, kneeling, as
she had often done in infancy, at her mother's side.
The attitude was too full of tender recollections
not to be grateful, and the half-alarmed being of
the forest was suffered to retain it during most of
the dialogue that followed. But while she was thus
obedient in person, by the vacancy or rather wonder
of an eye that was so eloquent to express all the
emotions and knowledge of which she was the mistress,
Narra-mattah plainly manifested that little
more than the endearment of her mother's words
and manner was intelligible. Ruth saw the meaning
of her hesitation; and, smothering the pang it
caused, she endeavored to adapt her language to the
habits of one so artless.
“Even the gray heads of thy people were once
young,” she resumed; “and they remember the
lodges of their fathers. Does my daughter ever think
of the time when she played among the children of
the Pale-faces?”
The attentive being at the knee of Ruth listened
greedily. Her knowledge of the language of her
childhood had been sufficiently implanted before
her captivity, and it had been too often exercised
by intercourse with the whites, and more particularly
with Whittal Ring, to leave her in any doubt
of the meaning of what she now heard. Stealing
a timid look over a shoulder, she sought the countenance
of Martha, and, studying her lineaments
for near a minute with intense regard, she laughed
aloud in the contagious merriment of an Indian girl.
“Thou hast not forgotten us! That glance at her
who was the companion of thy infancy assures me,
and we shall soon again possess our Ruth in affection,
as we now possess her in the body. I will not
speak to thee of that fearful night when the violence
of the bitter sorrow which beset us at thy loss; but
there is one who must still be known to thee, my
child; He who sitteth above the clouds, who holdeth
the earth in the hollow of his hand, and who
looketh in mercy on all that journey on the path to
which his own finger pointeth. Hath he yet a place
in thy thoughts? Thou rememberest His Holy Name,
and still thinkest of his power?”
The listener bent her head aside, as if to catch
the full meaning of what she heard, the shadows of
deep reverence passing over a face that had so lately
been smiling. After a pause, she audibly murmured
the word—
“Manitou.”
“Manitou, or Jehovah; God, or King of Kings,
and Lord of Lords! it mattereth little which term is
used to express his power. Thou knowest him then,
and hast never ceased to call upon his name?”
“Narra-mattah is a woman. She is afraid to speak
to the Manitou aloud. He knows the voices of the
chiefs, and opens his ears when they ask help.”
The Puritan groaned, but Ruth succeeded in
quelling her own anguish, lest she should disturb the
reviving confidence of her daughter.
“This may be the Manitou of an Indian,” she
said, “but it is not the Christian's God. Thou art
of a race which worships differently, and it is proper
that thou shouldst call on the name of the Deity of
thy fathers. Even the Narragansett teacheth this
truth! Thy skin is white, and thy ears should hearken
to the traditions of the men of thy blood.”
The head of the daughter drooped at this allusion
to her color, as if she would fain conceal the mortifying
truth from every eye; but she had not time
for answer, ere Whittal Ring drew near, and pointing
to the burning color of her cheeks, that were
an American sun, he said—
“The wife of the Sachem hath begun to change.
She will soon be like Nipset, all red—See,” he added,
laying a finger on a part of his own arm where the
sun and the winds had not yet destroyed the original
color; “the Evil Spirit poured water into his blood
too, but it will come out again. As soon as he is so
dark that the Evil Spirit will not know him, he will
go on the war-path; and then the lying Pale-faces
may dig up the bones of their fathers, and move
towards the sun-rise, or his lodge will be lined with
hair of the color of a deer!”
“And thou, my daughter! canst thou hear this
threat against the people of thy nation—of thy
blood—of thy God—without a shudder?”
The eye of Narra-mattah seemed in doubt; still
it regarded Whittal with its accustomed look of
kindness. The innocent, full of his imaginary glory,
raised his hand in exultation, and by gestures that
could not easily be misunderstood, he indicated the
manner in which he intended to rob his victims of
the usual trophy. While the youth was enacting
the disgusting but expressive pantomime, Ruth
watched the countenance of her child in nearly
breathless agony. She would have been relieved
by a single glance of disapprobation, by a solitary
movement of a rebellious muscle, or by the smallest
sign that the tender nature of one so lovely, and
otherwise so gentle, revolted at so unequivocal evidence
of the barbarous practices of her adopted
people. But no Empress of Rome could have witnessed
the dying agonies of the hapless gladiator,
no consort of a more modern prince could read the
bloody list of the victims of her husband's triumph,
nor any betrothed fair listen to the murderous deeds
of him her imagination had painted as a hero, with
less indifference to human suffering, than that with
looked on the mimic representation of those exploits
which had purchased for her husband a renown so
highly prized. It was but too apparent that the
representation, rude and savage as it was, conveyed
to her mind nothing but pictures in which the
chosen companion of a warrior should rejoice. The
varying features and answering eye too plainly
proclaimed the sympathy of one taught to exult in
the success of the combatant; and when Whittal,
excited by his own exertions, broke out into an exhibition
of a violence more ruthless even than common,
he was openly rewarded by another laugh.
The soft, exquisitely feminine tones of this involuntary
burst of pleasure, sounded in the ears of Ruth
like a knell over the moral beauty of her child.
Still subduing her feelings, she passed a hand
thoughtfully over her own pallid brow, and appeared
to muse long on the desolation of a mind that
had once promised to be so pure.
The colonists had not yet severed all those natural
ties which bound them to the eastern hemisphere.
Their legends, their pride, and in many instances
their memories, aided in keeping alive a feeling of
amity, and it might be added of faith, in favor of
the land of their ancestors. With some of their
descendants, even to the present hour, the beau
ideal of excellence, in all that pertains to human
qualities and human happiness, is connected with
the images of the country from which they sprung.
Distance is known to cast a softening mist, equally
over the moral and physical vision. The blue outline
of mountain which melts into its glowing back-ground
of sky, is not more pleasing than the pictures
which fancy sometimes draws of less material things;
but, as he draws near, the disappointed traveller
too often finds nakedness and deformity, where he
so fondly imagined beauty only was to be seen. No
of New-England blended recollections of the
country they still called home, with most of their
poetical pictures of life. They retained the language,
the books, and most of the habits, of the
English. But different circumstances, divided interests,
and peculiar opinions, were gradually beginning
to open those breaches which time has since
widened, and which promises soon to leave little in
common between the two people, except the same
forms of speech and a common origin: it is to be
hoped that some charity may be blended with these
ties.
The singularly restrained habits of the religionists,
throughout the whole of the British provinces,
were in marked opposition to the mere embellishments
of life. The arts were permitted only as they
served its most useful and obvious purposes. With
them, music was confined to the worship of God,
and, for a long time after the original settlement,
the song was never known to lead the mind astray
from what was conceived to be the one great object
of existence. No verse was sung, but such as blended
holy ideas with the pleasures of harmony; nor
were the sounds of revelry ever heard within their
borders. Still, words adapted to their particular
condition had come into use, and though poetry was
neither a common nor a brilliant property of the
mind, among a people thus disciplined in ascetic
practices, it early exhibited its power in quaint
versification, that was always intended, though with
a success it is almost pardonable to doubt, to redound
to the glory of the Deity. It was but a natural
enlargement of this pious practice, to adapt
some of these spiritual songs to the purposes of the
nursery.
When Ruth Heathcote passed her hand thoughtfully
across her brow, it was with a painful conviction
was sadly weakened, if not lost for ever. But the
efforts of maternal love are not easily repulsed.
An idea flashed upon her brain, and she proceeded
to try the efficacy of the experiment it suggested.
Nature had endowed her with a melodious voice,
and an ear that taught her to regulate sounds in a
manner that seldom failed to touch the heart. She
possessed the genius of music, which is melody,
unweakened by those exaggerated affectations with
which it is often encumbered by what is pretendingly
called science. Drawing her daughter nearer to her
knee, she commenced one of the songs then much
used by the mothers of the Colony, her voice scarcely
rising above the whispering of the evening air, in
its first notes, but gradually gaining, as she proceeded,
the richness and compass that a strain so
simple required.
At the first low breathing notes of this nursery
song, Narra-mattah became as motionless as if her
rounded and unfettered form had been wrought in
marble. Pleasure lighted her eyes, as strain succeeded
strain; and ere the second verse was ended,
her look, her attitude, and every muscle of her
ingenuous features, were eloquent in the expression
of delight. Ruth did not hazard the experiment
without trembling for its result. Emotion imparted
feeling to the music, and when, for the third time
in the course of her song, she addressed her child,
she saw the soft blue eyes that gazed wistfully on
her face swimming in tears. Encouraged by this
unequivocal evidence of success, nature grew still
more powerful in its efforts, and the closing verse
was sung to an ear that nestled near her heart, as
it had often done during the early years of Narra-mattah
while listening to its melancholy melody.
Content was a quiet but an anxious witness of
this touching evidence of a reviving intelligence
the look that beamed in the eyes of the former,
while her arms were, with extreme caution, folded
around her who still leaned upon her bosom, as if
fearful one so timid might be frightened from her
security by any sudden or unaccustomed interruption.
A minute passed in the deepest silence. Even
Whittal Ring was lulled into quiet, and long and
sorrowing years had passed since Ruth enjoyed
moments of happiness so pure and unalloyed. The
stillness was broken by a heavy step in the outer
room; a door was thrown open by a hand more
violent than common, and then young Mark appeared,
his face flushed with exertion, his brow
seemingly retaining the frown of battle, and with
a tread that betrayed a spirit goaded by some fierce
and unwelcome passion. The burthen of Conanchet
was on his arm. He laid it upon a table; then
pointing, in a manner that appeared to challenge
attention, he turned, and left the room as abruptly
as he had entered.
A cry of joy burst from the lips of Narra-mattah,
the instant the beaded belts caught her eye. The
arms of Ruth relaxed their hold in surprise, and
before amazement had time to give place to more
connected ideas, the wild being at her knee had
flown to the table, returned, resumed her former
posture, opened the folds of the cloth, and was
holding before the bewildered gaze of her mother
the patient features of an Indian babe.
It would exceed the powers of the unambitious
pen we wield, to convey to the reader a just idea
of the mixed emotions that struggled for mastery
in the countenance of Ruth. The innate and never-dying
sentiment of maternal joy was opposed by all
those feelings of pride, that prejudice could not fail
to implant even in the bosom of one so meek. There
was no need to tell the history of the parentage of
her face, with that peculiar calm which renders
his race so remarkable. Though its glance was
weakened by infancy, the dark glittering eye of
Conanchet was there; there were also to be seen
the receding forehead and the compressed lip of
the father; but all these marks of his origin were
softened by touches of that beauty which had
rendered the infancy of her own child so remarkable.
“See!” said Narra-mattah, raising the infant still
nearer to the riveted gaze of Ruth; “ 'tis a Sachem
of the red men! The little eagle hath left his nest
too soon.”
Ruth could not resist the appeal of her beloved.
Bending her head low, so as entirely to conceal her
own flushed face, she imprinted a kiss on the forehead
of the Indian boy. But the jealous eye of the
young mother was not to be deceived. Narra-mattah
detected the difference between the cold salute and
those fervent embraces she had herself received,
and disappointment produced a chill about her own
heart. Replacing the folds of the cloth with quiet
dignity, she arose from her knees, and withdrew in
sadness to a distant corner of the room. There she
took a seat, and with a glance that might almost be
termed reproachful, she commenced a low Indian
song to her infant.
“The wisdom of Providence is in this, as in all
its dispensations;” whispered Content over the shoulder
of his nearly insensible partner. “Had we received
her as she was lost, the favor might have
exceeded our deservings. Our daughter is grieved
that thou turnest a cold eye on her babe.”
The appeal was sufficient for one whose affections
had been wounded rather than chilled. It recalled
Ruth to recollection, and it served at once to dissipate
the shades of regret that had been unconsciously
displeasure, or it would be more true to term it
sorrow, of the young mother was easily appeased.
A smile on her infant brought the blood back to
her heart in a swift and tumultuous current; and
Ruth, herself, soon forgot that she had any reason
for regret, in the innocent delight with which her
own daughter now hastened to display the physical
excellence of the boy. From this scene of natural
feeling, Content was too quickly summoned by the
intelligence that some one without awaited his
presence, on business of the last importance to the
welfare of the settlement.
| CHAPTER X. The wept of Wish-ton-Wish | |