Hope Leslie: or, early times in the Massachusetts, volume 2 (of 2)

“Yes, it is a token from thy sister. Listen to me, Hope Leslie: my time is brief; I may not stay here another moment; but come to me this evening at nine o’clock, at the burial-place, a little beyond the clump of pines, and I will give thee tidings of thy sister: keep what I say in thine own bosom; tell no one thou hast seen me; come alone, and fear not.”

“Oh, I have no fear,” exclaimed Hope, vehemently; “but tell me--tell me!”

Magawisca put her finger on her lips in token of silence, for at this instant the door was again opened, not by the servant who had before appeared, but by Jennet. Magawisca instantly recognised her, and turned as if in the act of departing.

Time had, indeed, wrought little change on Jennet, save imparting a shriller squeak to her doleful voice, and a keener edge to her sharp features. “Madam Winthrop,” she said, “is engaged now, but says you may call some other time with your moccasins; and I would advise you to let it be any other than the fag-end of a Saturday--a wrong season for temporalities.”

While Jennet was uttering this superfluous counsel, Hope sprang off the steps after Magawisca, anxious for some farther light on her dawning expectations.

“Stay, oh stay,” she said, “one moment, and let me try your moccasins.”

At the same instant Mrs. Grafton appeared from the back parlour, evidently in a great flurry. “Here, you Indian woman,” she screamed, “let me see your moccasins.”

Thus beset, Magawisca was constrained to retrace her steps, and confront the danger of discovery. She drew her blanket closer over her head and face, and reascending the steps, threw her moccasins on the floor, and cautiously averted her face from the light. It was too evident to her that Jennet had some glimmering recollections; for, while she affected to busy herself with the moccasins, she turned her inquisitorial gray eyes towards her with a look of sharp scrutiny. Once Magawisca, with a movement of involuntary disdain, returned her glance. Jennet dropped the moccasins as suddenly as if she had received a blow, hemmed as if she were choking, and put her hand on the knob of the parlour door.

“Oh,” thought Magawisca, “I am lost!” But Jennet, confused by her misty recollections, relinquished her purpose, whatever it was, and returned to the examination of the moccasins. In the mean while, Hope stood behind her aunt and Jennet, her hands clasped, and her beautiful eyes bent on Magawisca with a supplicating inquiry.

Mrs. Grafton, as usual, was intent on her traffic. “It was odd enough of Madam Winthrop,” she said, “not to let me know these moccasins were here; she knew I wanted them--at least she must know I might want them; and if I don’t want them, that’s nothing to the purpose. I like to look at everything {7} that’s going. It is a diversion to the mind. A neat article,” she continued; “I should like you to have a pair, Hope; Sir Philip said, yesterday, they gave a trig look to a pretty foot and ankle. How much does she ask for them?”

“I do not know,” replied Hope.

“Do not know! that’s peculiar of you, Hope Leslie; you never inquire the price of anything. I dare say Tawney expects enough for them to buy all the glass beads in Boston. Hey, Tawney?”

Mrs. Grafton now, for the first time, turned from the articles to their possessor: she was struck with an air of graceful haughtiness in her demeanour, strongly contrasting with the submissive, dejected deportment of the natives whom she was in the habit of seeing; and dropping the moccasins and turning to Hope, she whispered, “Best buy a pair, dearie--by all means buy a pair--pay her anything she asks--best keep peace with them: ‘never affront dogs nor Indians.’”

Hope wanted no urging; but, anxious to get rid of the witnesses that embarrassed her, and quick of invention, she directed Jennet to go for her purse, “which she would find in a certain basket, or drawer, or somewhere else;” and reminded her aunt that she had promised to call in at Mrs. Cotton’s on her way to lecture, to look at her hyacinths, and that she had no time to lose.

Jennet obeyed, and Mrs. Grafton said, “That’s true, and it’s thoughtful of you to think of it, Hope; but,” she added, lowering her voice, “I would not {8} like to leave you alone, so I’ll just open the parlour door.”

Before Hope could intercept her, she set the door ajar, and through the aperture Magawisca had a perfect view of Everell, who was sitting musing in the window-seat. An involuntary exclamation burst from her lips; and then, shuddering at this exposure of her feelings, she hastily gathered together the moccasins that were strewn over the floor, dropped a pair at Hope’s feet, and darted away.

Hope had heard the exclamation and understood it. Mrs. Grafton heard it without understanding it, and followed Magawisca to the door, calling after her, “Do stay and take a little something; Madam Winthrop has always a bone to give away. Ah! you might as well call after the wind; she has already turned the corner. Heaven send she may not bear malice against us! What do you think, Hope?” Mrs. Grafton turned to appeal to her niece; but she, foreseeing endless interrogatories, had made good her retreat, and escaped to her own apartment.

Jennet, however, came to the good lady’s relief; listened to all her conjectures and apprehensions, and reciprocated her own.

Jennet could not say what it was in the woman, but she had the strangest feeling all the time she was there--a mysterious beating of her heart that she could not account for; as to her disappearing so suddenly, that she did not think much of; the foresters were always impatient to get to their haunts; {9} they were like the “wild ass,” that the Scripture saith “scorneth the multitude of a city.”

But we leave Mrs. Grafton and Jennet to their unedifying conference, to follow our heroine to the privacy of her own apartment. There, in the first rush of her newly-awakened feelings, till then repressed, she wept like a child, and repeated again and again, “Oh, my sister! my sister!” Her mind was in a tumult; she knew not what to believe--what to expect--what to hope.

But, accustomed to diffuse over every anticipation the sunny hue of her own happy temperament, she flattered herself that she would even that night meet her sister; that she would be forever restored to her; that the chord severed by the cruel disaster at Bethel would be rebound about their hearts. She had but a brief space to compose herself, and that was passed in fervent supplications for the blessing of God upon her hopes. She must go to the lecture, and after that trust to her ingenuity to escape to the rendezvous. The thought of danger or exposure never entered her mind, for she was not addicted to fear; and, as she reflected on the voice and deportment of the stranger, she was convinced she could be no other than Magawisca, the heroine of Everell’s imagination, whom he had taught her to believe was one of those who,

“Without arte’s bright lamp, by nature’s eye, Keep just promise, and love equitie.”

Almost as impatient to go to the lecture as she was afterward to escape from it (we trust our readers {10} have absolved her for her apparent indecorum in the sanctuary), she had tied and untied her hat twenty times before she heard the ringing of the bell for the assembling of the congregation. She refused, as has been seen, the escort of Everell, for she dared not expose to him emotions which she could not explain.

After the various detentions which have been already detailed, she arrived at the appointed rendezvous, and there saw Magawisca, and Magawisca alone, kneeling before an upright stake planted at one end of a grave. She appeared occupied in delineating a figure on the stake with a small implement she held in her hand, which she dipped in a shell placed on the ground beside her.

Hope paused with a mingled feeling of disappointment and awe; disappointment that her sister was not there, and awe inspired by the solemnity of the scene before her: the spirit-stirring figure of Magawisca, the duty she was performing, the flickering light, the monumental stones, and the dark shadows that swept over them as the breeze bowed the tall pines. She drew her mantle, that fluttered in the breeze, close around her, and almost suppressed her breath, that she might not disturb what she believed to be an act of filial devotion.

Magawisca was not unconscious of Miss Leslie’s approach, but she deemed the office in which she was engaged too sacred to be interrupted. She accompanied the movement of her hand with a low chant in her native tongue; and so sweet and varied {11} were the tones of her voice, that it seemed to Hope they might have been breathed by an invisible spirit.

When she had finished her work, she leaned her head for a moment against the stake, and then rose and turned to Miss Leslie; a moonbeam shot across her face; it was wet with tears, but she spoke in a tranquil voice. “You have come--and alone?” she said, casting a searching glance around her.

“I promised to come alone,” replied Hope.

“Yes, and I trusted you; and I will trust you farther, for the good deed you did Nelema.”

“Nelema, then, lived to reach you.”

“She did; wasted, faint, and dying, she crawled into my father’s wigwam. She had but scant time and short breath; with that she cursed your race, and blessed you, Hope Leslie; her day was ended; the hand of death pressed her throat, and even then she made me swear to perform her promise to you.”

“And you will, Magawisca,” cried Hope, impetuously, “you will give me back my sister?”

“Nay, that she never promised--that I cannot do. I cannot send back the bird that has mated, to its parent nest--the stream that has mingled with other waters, to its fountain.”