Twice-Told Tales (9 page)

As the Puritan entered he thrust aside his cloak and displayed
Ilbrahim's face to the female.

"Dorothy, here is a little outcast whom Providence hath put into our
hands," observed he. "Be kind to him, even as if he were of those dear
ones who have departed from us."

"What pale and bright-eyed little boy is this, Tobias?" she inquired.
"Is he one whom the wilderness-folk have ravished from some Christian
mother?"

"No, Dorothy; this poor child is no captive from the wilderness," he
replied. "The heathen savage would have given him to eat of his scanty
morsel and to drink of his birchen cup, but Christian men, alas! had
cast him out to die." Then he told her how he had found him beneath
the gallows, upon his father's grave, and how his heart had prompted
him like the speaking of an inward voice to take the little outcast
home and be kind unto him. He acknowledged his resolution to feed and
clothe him as if he were his own child, and to afford him the
instruction which should counteract the pernicious errors hitherto
instilled into his infant mind.

Dorothy was gifted with even a quicker tenderness than her husband,
and she approved of all his doings and intentions.

"Have you a mother, dear child?" she inquired.

The tears burst forth from his full heart as he attempted to reply,
but Dorothy at length understood that he had a mother, who like the
rest of her sect was a persecuted wanderer. She had been taken from
the prison a short time before, carried into the uninhabited
wilderness and left to perish there by hunger or wild beasts. This was
no uncommon method of disposing of the Quakers, and they were
accustomed to boast that the inhabitants of the desert were more
hospitable to them than civilized man.

"Fear not, little boy; you shall not need a mother, and a kind one,"
said Dorothy, when she had gathered this information. "Dry your tears,
Ilbrahim, and be my child, as I will be your mother."

The good woman prepared the little bed from which her own children had
successively been borne to another resting-place. Before Ilbrahim
would consent to occupy it he knelt down, and as Dorothy listed to his
simple and affecting prayer she marvelled how the parents that had
taught it to him could have been judged worthy of death. When the boy
had fallen asleep, she bent over his pale and spiritual countenance,
pressed a kiss upon his white brow, drew the bedclothes up about his
neck, and went away with a pensive gladness in her heart.

Tobias Pearson was not among the earliest emigrants from the old
country. He had remained in England during the first years of the
Civil War, in which he had borne some share as a cornet of dragoons
under Cromwell. But when the ambitious designs of his leader began to
develop themselves, he quitted the army of the Parliament and sought a
refuge from the strife which was no longer holy among the people of
his persuasion in the colony of Massachusetts. A more worldly
consideration had perhaps an influence in drawing him thither, for New
England offered advantages to men of unprosperous fortunes as well as
to dissatisfied religionists, and Pearson had hitherto found it
difficult to provide for a wife and increasing family. To this
supposed impurity of motive the more bigoted Puritans were inclined to
impute the removal by death of all the children for whose earthly good
the father had been over-thoughtful. They had left their native
country blooming like roses, and like roses they had perished in a
foreign soil. Those expounders of the ways of Providence, who had thus
judged their brother and attributed his domestic sorrows to his sin,
were not more charitable when they saw him and Dorothy endeavoring to
fill up the void in their hearts by the adoption of an infant of the
accursed sect. Nor did they fail to communicate their disapprobation
to Tobias, but the latter in reply merely pointed at the little quiet,
lovely boy, whose appearance and deportment were indeed as powerful
arguments as could possibly have been adduced in his own favor. Even
his beauty, however, and his winning manners sometimes produced an
effect ultimately unfavorable; for the bigots, when the outer surfaces
of their iron hearts had been softened and again grew hard, affirmed
that no merely natural cause could have so worked upon them. Their
antipathy to the poor infant was also increased by the ill-success of
divers theological discussions in which it was attempted to convince
him of the errors of his sect. Ilbrahim, it is true, was not a skilful
controversialist, but the feeling of his religion was strong as
instinct in him, and he could neither be enticed nor driven from the
faith which his father had died for.

The odium of this stubbornness was shared in a great measure by the
child's protectors, insomuch that Tobias and Dorothy very shortly
began to experience a most bitter species of persecution in the cold
regards of many a friend whom they had valued. The common people
manifested their opinions more openly. Pearson was a man of some
consideration, being a representative to the General Court and an
approved lieutenant in the train-bands, yet within a week after his
adoption of Ilbrahim he had been both hissed and hooted. Once, also,
when walking through a solitary piece of woods, he heard a loud voice
from some invisible speaker, and it cried, "What shall be done to the
backslider? Lo! the scourge is knotted for him, even the whip of nine
cords, and every cord three knots." These insults irritated Pearson's
temper for the moment; they entered also into his heart, and became
imperceptible but powerful workers toward an end which his most secret
thought had not yet whispered.

On the second Sabbath after Ilbrahim became a member of their family,
Pearson and his wife deemed it proper that he should appear with them
at public worship. They had anticipated some opposition to this
measure from the boy, but he prepared himself in silence, and at the
appointed hour was clad in the new mourning-suit which Dorothy had
wrought for him. As the parish was then, and during many subsequent
years, unprovided with a bell, the signal for the commencement of
religious exercises was the beat of a drum. At the first sound of that
martial call to the place of holy and quiet thoughts Tobias and
Dorothy set forth, each holding a hand of little Ilbrahim, like two
parents linked together by the infant of their love. On their path
through the leafless woods they were overtaken by many persons of
their acquaintance, all of whom avoided them and passed by on the
other side; but a severer trial awaited their constancy when they had
descended the hill and drew near the pine-built and undecorated house
of prayer. Around the door, from which the drummer still sent forth
his thundering summons, was drawn up a formidable phalanx, including
several of the oldest members of the congregation, many of the
middle-aged and nearly all the younger males. Pearson found it
difficult to sustain their united and disapproving gaze, but Dorothy,
whose mind was differently circumstanced, merely drew the boy closer
to her and faltered not in her approach. As they entered the door they
overheard the muttered sentiments of the assemblage; and when the
reviling voices of the little children smote Ilbrahim's ear, he wept.

The interior aspect of the meeting-house was rude. The low ceiling,
the unplastered walls, the naked woodwork and the undraperied pulpit
offered nothing to excite the devotion which without such external
aids often remains latent in the heart. The floor of the building was
occupied by rows of long cushionless benches, supplying the place of
pews, and the broad aisle formed a sexual division impassable except
by children beneath a certain age.

Pearson and Dorothy separated at the door of the meeting-house, and
Ilbrahim, being within the years of infancy, was retained under the
care of the latter. The wrinkled beldams involved themselves in their
rusty cloaks as he passed by; even the mild-featured maidens seemed to
dread contamination; and many a stern old man arose and turned his
repulsive and unheavenly countenance upon the gentle boy, as if the
sanctuary were polluted by his presence. He was a sweet infant of the
skies that had strayed away from his home, and all the inhabitants of
this miserable world closed up their impure hearts against him, drew
back their earth-soiled garments from his touch and said, "We are
holier than thou."

Ilbrahim, seated by the side of his adopted mother and retaining fast
hold of her hand, assumed a grave and decorous demeanor such as might
befit a person of matured taste and understanding who should find
himself in a temple dedicated to some worship which he did not
recognize, but felt himself bound to respect. The exercises had not
yet commenced, however, when the boy's attention was arrested by an
event apparently of trifling interest. A woman having her face muffled
in a hood and a cloak drawn completely about her form advanced slowly
up the broad aisle and took place upon the foremost bench. Ilbrahim's
faint color varied, his nerves fluttered; he was unable to turn his
eyes from the muffled female.

When the preliminary prayer and hymn were over, the minister arose,
and, having turned the hour-glass which stood by the great Bible,
commenced his discourse. He was now well stricken in years, a man of
pale, thin countenance, and his gray hairs were closely covered by a
black velvet skull-cap. In his younger days he had practically learned
the meaning of persecution from Archbishop Laud, and he was not now
disposed to forget the lesson against which he had murmured then.
Introducing the often-discussed subject of the Quakers, he gave a
history of that sect and a description of their tenets in which error
predominated and prejudice distorted the aspect of what was true. He
adverted to the recent measures in the province, and cautioned his
hearers of weaker parts against calling in question the just severity
which God-fearing magistrates had at length been compelled to
exercise. He spoke of the danger of pity—in some cases a commendable
and Christian virtue, but inapplicable to this pernicious sect. He
observed that such was their devilish obstinacy in error that even the
little children, the sucking babes, were hardened and desperate
heretics. He affirmed that no man without Heaven's especial warrant
should attempt their conversion lest while he lent his hand to draw
them from the slough he should himself be precipitated into its lowest
depths.

The sands of the second hour were principally in the lower half of the
glass when the sermon concluded. An approving murmur followed, and the
clergyman, having given out a hymn, took his seat with much
self-congratulation, and endeavored to read the effect of his
eloquence in the visages of the people. But while voices from all
parts of the house were tuning themselves to sing a scene occurred
which, though not very unusual at that period in the province,
happened to be without precedent in this parish.

The muffled female, who had hitherto sat motionless in the front rank
of the audience, now arose and with slow, stately and unwavering step
ascended the pulpit stairs. The quaverings of incipient harmony were
hushed and the divine sat in speechless and almost terrified
astonishment while she undid the door and stood up in the sacred desk
from which his maledictions had just been thundered. She then divested
herself of the cloak and hood, and appeared in a most singular array.
A shapeless robe of sackcloth was girded about her waist with a
knotted cord; her raven hair fell down upon her shoulders, and its
blackness was defiled by pale streaks of ashes, which she had strewn
upon her head. Her eyebrows, dark and strongly defined, added to the
deathly whiteness of a countenance which, emaciated with want and wild
with enthusiasm and strange sorrows, retained no trace of earlier
beauty. This figure stood gazing earnestly on the audience, and there
was no sound nor any movement except a faint shuddering which every
man observed in his neighbor, but was scarcely conscious of in
himself. At length, when her fit of inspiration came, she spoke for
the first few moments in a low voice and not invariably distinct
utterance. Her discourse gave evidence of an imagination hopelessly
entangled with her reason; it was a vague and incomprehensible
rhapsody, which, however, seemed to spread its own atmosphere round
the hearer's soul, and to move his feelings by some influence
unconnected with the words. As she proceeded beautiful but shadowy
images would sometimes be seen like bright things moving in a turbid
river, or a strong and singularly shaped idea leapt forth and seized
at once on the understanding or the heart. But the course of her
unearthly eloquence soon led her to the persecutions of her sect, and
from thence the step was short to her own peculiar sorrows. She was
naturally a woman of mighty passions, and hatred and revenge now
wrapped themselves in the garb of piety. The character of her speech
was changed; her images became distinct though wild, and her
denunciations had an almost hellish bitterness.

"The governor and his mighty men," she said, "have gathered together,
taking counsel among themselves and saying, 'What shall we do unto
this people—even unto the people that have come into this land to put
our iniquity to the blush?' And, lo! the devil entereth into the
council-chamber like a lame man of low stature and gravely apparelled,
with a dark and twisted countenance and a bright, downcast eye. And he
standeth up among the rulers; yea, he goeth to and fro, whispering to
each; and every man lends his ear, for his word is 'Slay! Slay!' But I
say unto ye, Woe to them that slay! Woe to them that shed the blood of
saints! Woe to them that have slain the husband and cast forth the
child, the tender infant, to wander homeless and hungry and cold till
he die, and have saved the mother alive in the cruelty of their tender
mercies! Woe to them in their lifetime! Cursed are they in the delight
and pleasure of their hearts! Woe to them in their death-hour, whether
it come swiftly with blood and violence or after long and lingering
pain! Woe in the dark house, in the rottenness of the grave, when the
children's children shall revile the ashes of the fathers! Woe, woe,
woe, at the judgment, when all the persecuted and all the slain in
this bloody land, and the father, the mother and the child, shall
await them in a day that they cannot escape! Seed of the faith, seed
of the faith, ye whose hearts are moving with a power that ye know
not, arise, wash your hands of this innocent blood! Lift your voices,
chosen ones, cry aloud, and call down a woe and a judgment with me!"