Hope Leslie. Catharine Maria Sedgwick
been seen lurking in the woods around us. They are reported not to have a friendly appearance. We have been advised to remove, for the present, to the Fort; but as I feel no apprehension, I shall not disarrange my family by taking a step that would savour more of fear than prudence. I say I feel no apprehension – yet I must confess it – I have a cowardly womanish spirit, and fear is set in motion by the very mention of danger. There are vague forebodings hanging about me, and I cannot drive them away even by the thought that your presence, my honoured husband, will soon relieve me from all agitating apprehensions, and repair all the faults of my poor judgment. Fearful thoughts press on me – untoward accidents have prolonged thy absence – our re-union may yet be far distant, and if it should never chance in this world, oh remember that if I have fallen far short in duty, the measure of my love hath been full. I have ever known that mine was Leah’s portion – that I was not the chosen and the loved one; and this has sometimes made me fearful – often joyless – but remember, it is only the perfect love of the husband that casteth out the fear of the wife.
I have one request to prefer to thee which I have lacked courage to make by word of mouth, and therefore now commend it by letter to thy kindness. Be gracious unto me, my dear husband, and deem not that I overstep the modest bound of a woman’s right in meddling with that which is thy prerogative – the ordering of our eldest son’s education. Everell here hath few except spiritual privileges. God, who seeth my heart, knoweth I do not undervalue these – the manna of the wilderness. Yet to them might be added worldly helps, to aid the growth of the boy’s noble gifts, a kind Providence having opened a wide door therefor in the generous offer of my brother Stretton. True, he hath not attained to our light whereby manifold errors of church and state are made visible; yet he hath ever borne himself uprightly, and to us, most lovingly, and as I remember there was a good Samaritan, and a faithful centurion, I think we are permitted to enlarge the bounds of our charity to those who work righteousness, albeit not of our communion.
Thou hast already sown the good seed in our boy’s heart, and it hath been (I say it not presumingly) nurtured with a mother’s tears and prayers. Trust then to the promised blessing, and fear not to permit him to pass a few years in England, whence he will return to be a crown of glory to thee, my husband, and a blessing and honour to our chosen country. Importunity, I know, is not beseeming in a wife – it is the instrument of weakness, whereby, like the mouse in the fable, she would gnaw away what she cannot break. I will not, therefore, urge thee farther, but leave the decision to thy wisdom and thy love. And now, my dear husband, I kiss and embrace thee, and may God company with thee, and restore thee, if it be his good pleasure, to thy ever faithful and loving and obedient wife,
Martha Fletcher.
To her honoured husband these be delivered.
The above letter may indicate, but it feebly expresses, the character and state of mind of the writer. She never magnified her love by words, but expressed it by that self-devoting, self-sacrificing conduct to her husband and children, which characterizes, in all ages and circumstances, faithful and devoted woman. She was too generous to communicate all her fears, (about which a woman is usually least reserved) to her husband.
Some occurrences of the preceding day had given her just cause of alarm. At a short distance from Bethel, (the name that Mr Fletcher had given his residence) there lived an old Indian woman, one of the few survivors of a tribe who had been faithful allies of the Pequods. After the destruction of her people, she had strayed up the banks of the Connecticut, and remained in Springfield. She was in the habit of supplying Mrs Fletcher with wild berries and herbs, and receiving favours in return, and on that day went thither, as it appeared, on her customary errand. She had made her usual barter, and had drawn her blanket around her as if to depart, but still she lingered standing before Mrs Fletcher and looking fixedly at her. Mrs Fletcher did not at first observe her; her head was bent over her infant sleeping on her lap, in the attitude of listening to its soft breathing. As she perused its innocent face a mother’s beautiful visions floated before her; but, as she raised her eye and met the piercing glance of the old woman, a dark cloud came over the clear heaven of her thoughts. Nelema’s brow was contracted, her lips drawn in, and her little sunken eye gleamed like a diamond from its dark recess.
“Why do you look at my baby thus?” asked Mrs Fletcher.
The old woman replied in her own dialect, in a hurried inarticulate manner. “What says she, Magawisca?” asked Mrs Fletcher of the Indian girl who stood beside her, and seemed to listen with unwonted interest.
“She says, madam, the baby is like a flower just opened to the sun, with no stain upon it – that he better pass now to the Great Spirit. She says this world is all a rough place – all sharp stones, and deep waters, and black clouds.”
“Oh, she is old, Magawisca, and the days have come to her that have no pleasure in them. Look there,” she said, “Nelema, at my son Everell;’ the boy was at the moment passing the window, flushed with exercise and triumphantly displaying a string of game that he had just brought from the forest – “Is there not sunshine in my boy’s face! To him every day is bright, and every path is smooth.”
“Ah!” replied the old woman with a heavy groan, “I had sons too – and grandsons; but where are they? They trod the earth as lightly as that boy; but they have fallen like our forest trees, before the stroke of the English axe. Of all my race, there is not one, now, in whose veins my blood runs. Sometimes, when the spirits of the storm are howling about my wigwam, I hear the voices of my children crying for vengeance, and then I could myself deal the death blow.” Nelema spoke with vehemence and wild gesture; and her language, though interpreted by Magawisca’s soft voice, had little tendency to allay the feeling her manner inspired. Mrs Fletcher recoiled from her, and instinctively drew her baby closer to her breast.
“Nay,” said the old woman, “fear me not, I have had kindness from thee, thy blankets have warmed me, I have been fed from thy table, and drank of thy cup, and what is this arm,” and she threw back her blanket and stretched out her naked, shrivelled, trembling arm, “what is this to do the work of vengeance?”
She paused for an instant, glanced her eye wildly around the room, and then again fixed it on Mrs Fletcher and her infant. “They spared not our homes,” she said; “there where our old men spoke, where was heard the song of the maiden, and the laugh of our children; there now all is silence, dust, and ashes. I can neither harm thee, nor help thee. When the stream of vengeance rolls over the land, the tender shoot must be broken, and the goodly tree uprooted, that gave its pleasant shade and fruits to all.”
“It is a shame and a sin,” said Jennet who entered the room just as Magawisca was conveyveying Nelema’s speech to Mrs Fletcher; “a crying shame, for this heathen hag to be pouring forth here as if she were gifted like the prophets of old; she that can only see into the future by reading the devil’s book, and if that be the case, as more than one has mistrusted, it were best, forthwith, to deliver her to the judges and cast her into prison.”
“Peace, Jennet,” said Mrs Fletcher, alarmed lest Nelema should hear her, and her feelings, which were then at an exalted pitch, should be wrought to frenzy; but her apprehensions were groundless; the old woman saw nothing but the visions of her imagination; heard nothing but the fancied voices of the spirits of her race. She continued for a few moments to utter her thoughts in low inarticulate murmurs, and then, without again addressing Mrs Fletcher, or raising her eyes, she left the house.
A few moments after her departure, Mrs Fletcher perceived that she had dropped at her feet a little roll, which she found on examination, to be an arrow, and the rattle of a rattlesnake enveloped in a skin of the same reptile. She knew it was the custom of the savages to express much meaning by these symbols, and she turned to demand an explanation of Magawisca, who was deeply skilled in all the ways of her people.
Magawisca had disappeared, and Jennet, who had ever looked on the poor girl with a jealous and an evil eye, took this occasion to give vent to her feelings. “It is a pity,” she said, “the child is out of the way the first time she was like to do a service; she may be skilled in snake’s rattles, and bloody arrows, for I make no doubt she is as used to them, as I am to my broom and scrubbing-cloth.”
“Will