Delusion, or The Witch of New England Part 9

"Apart she lived, and still she rests alone: Yon earthly heap awaits no flattering stone."

As it was mentioned in Edith's letter, the old woman who lived at the cottage by the cliff had become very ill, and it was apparent that she would never leave her bed again. Edith had been a.s.siduous in her kindness. Dinah had been with her a part of every day, and had watched with her many nights. Edith insisted, at last, that her poor slave should sleep, and resolved herself to take her place by the bedside.

The old woman had made herself feared and hated by the scattered inhabitants. She was called a witch, and they deserted her sick bed,--a thing most rare among the kind-hearted dwellers in a thinly-peopled neighborhood.

It was a threatening evening when Edith took her station by the low pallet of the sick woman. The solitary hut, as I have mentioned, stood on the edge of the little bay; and, at high water, it was almost washed by the waves.

How different the whole scene from that brilliant morning when Edith visited the tenant of the cottage! A leaden cloud seemed now to rest on the water, shutting out the fair sky; and, as the sullen waves rolled on the beach, a close and stifling air oppressed Edith's spirits.

The old woman was alone: her poor grandchild, wearied with the services of the day, had fallen asleep with her hand in her grandmother's, and her head falling over the pillow: her long hair rested on the old woman's face, which she seemed not to have strength to remove.

Edith's first care was to take the little girl from her grandmother's pillow; and, laying her gently on the foot of the bed, she took off her own shawl, and made a pillow for her head. The old woman looked at her without speaking, and a tear coursed slowly down her cheek.

Edith hoped the hardness was melting from her heart. She took her hand tenderly in hers, and whispered, "Cannot you put your trust in G.o.d?"

"I cannot pray--to G.o.d; no, it is too late. But"--and her voice was interrupted with short, impeded breath. She pointed to the child, and looked at Edith with an expression so imploring, so full of tenderness for the child, of agony that she must leave her, of appeal to Edith's compa.s.sion, that the tears started to her eyes, and she answered, "Fear nothing: I will take care of her; I will be a mother to her."

The old woman pressed her hand: the look of agony pa.s.sed away from her features, and she closed her eyes to sleep.

Edith sat silently by the bedside. The tempest that had been gathering over the water now shook the little dwelling: torrents of rain fell, and frequent flashes lighted the little room. At last, a gust of wind from the broken window extinguished the taper, and Edith was in total darkness. It was a warm night for the season, and no fire on the hearth to afford a spark by which she could relight it.

Edith trembled; but she tried to be calm. She only feared the old woman would die while she held her hand, which she imagined was already growing cold in hers.

The storm gradually pa.s.sed away into silence. There was no sound but the short, interrupted breath of her patient, and the soft, healthful, regular breathing of infancy. Edith longed for the dawn, and looked anxiously through the little cas.e.m.e.nt for the first gray streak. As far as the eye could reach, the bay was white with foam; but no light yet dawned upon it from the morning.

The old woman awoke. "I cannot see you," she said; "a film is over my eyes."

Edith told her the lamp had been extinguished with the wind.

"Alas!" she said; "and I must die as I have lived,--in darkness."

Edith a.s.sured her she was not then dying, and begged her to try to pray, or to listen while she endeavored, as far as she was able, to offer a prayer to G.o.d.

"No," she said; "I have lived without prayer, and I will not mock G.o.d on my death-bed; but, if there is mercy for me, G.o.d may listen to you, pure and good as you have ever been."

Edith knelt; and, with lips trembling with timidity and responsibility, she uttered a low, humble, and earnest prayer.

The old woman seemed at first to listen; but her mind soon wandered: broken and, as it afterwards would almost appear, prophetic sentences escaped from her lips: "Judgments are coming on this unhappy land,--delusions and oppression. Men and devils shall oppress the innocent. The good like you, the innocent and good, shall not escape!"

Then she looked at the sleeping child: "Can the lamb dwell with the tiger, or the dove nestle with the hawk? But you have promised: you will keep your word; and when G.o.d counts his jewels"--

Edith arose from her knees, and trembled like a leaf. With inexpressible joy, her eyes fell on her own Dinah, standing looking on, with the deepest awe in her countenance. She had risen before the dawn, and come to relieve her young mistress, and had entered while Edith was kneeling.

She now insisted on taking her place. Edith committed to her care the sleeping child, and then sought the repose the agitation of the night had rendered so necessary.

Before evening, the old woman died; and the next day she was to be committed to the earth. Little preparation was necessary for her funeral. No mourners were to be summoned from afar: there was no mockery of grief. She had lived disliked by her neighbors. A few old women came from curiosity to see old Nanny, who had never been very courteous in inviting her neighbors to visit her; and they came now to see how she had contrived to live upon nothing.

The poor child, since the death of her only friend, had refused to leave the body, but sat subdued and tearless, like a faithful dog, watching by the side of her grandmother, apparently expecting her to return again to life.

Towards evening, a few persons were a.s.sembled in the hut to pay the last Christian services to the dead. The old woman had always said she would be buried, not in the common grave-yard, but near a particular rock where her last son who was drowned had been washed on sh.o.r.e and buried.

The neighbors were whispering among themselves, as to what was to be the fate of the poor child; every one avoiding to look at her, lest it should imply some design to take charge of her. The child looked on with wonder, as though she hardly knew why they were there. She had clung to Dinah as the best known among them; but, when the prayer was finished, and they began to remove the coffin, she uttered a loud cry, flew from Dinah's arms, and clung to the bier with all her strength.

The men instinctively paused and laid down their burden. The voice of nature in that little child was irresistible. They looked at Edith, who had now made known her promise to the grandmother to take care of the child, to ask what they should do. She took the child in her arms and quieted her till all was over, and then, consigning her to the care of Dinah, she was taken to their own home.

Edith felt deeply the responsibility she had a.s.sumed in the care and instruction of this child. She knew the tenderness of her own heart, her yielding nature, and feared she should err on the side of too much indulgence. She said to herself, "She shall never need a mother's care.

I know the heart of the orphan, and no unkindness shall ever make her feel that she is motherless."

The poor little Phoebe had cried herself to sleep in Dinah's arms, and had been put to bed in her soiled and dirty state. The next morning a clean new dress banished the memory of her grandmother, and her childish tears were dried, and grief forgotten.

Dinah had brought to aid her the power of soap and water, and had disentangled her really soft and beautiful hair; and when Edith came down, she would scarcely have known her again. The soil of many weeks had been taken from the child's skin, and, under it, her complexion was delicately fair: her cheeks were like pale blush roses, and her lips were two crimson rosebuds. But with this youthful freshness, which was indeed only the brilliancy of color, there was an expression in her face that marred its beauty. It was coa.r.s.e and earthly, and the absence of that confiding openness we love to see in children. It reminded one of her old grandmother; although the one was fair, and smooth, and blooming, the other dark and wrinkled, a stranger would have said they were related.

Edith called the child to her, and kissed her fair cheek; but when she observed the likeness to the old woman, she turned away with a slight shudder, and something like a sigh.

Dinah, an interested observer of every pa.s.sing emotion, said, softly, "The cloud is not gone over yet; a few more tears, and it will pa.s.s away from her young brow, and then it will be fair as your own."

"It is too fair already," answered Edith; "so much beauty will be hard to guide; and then look at that dark, wayward expression."

"Say not so, my dear mistress;" and Dinah drew back the hair from her fair forehead. "Look at her beautiful face: in a few days your heart will yearn to her as mine does to you."

"G.o.d grant I may be as faithful to my duty," said Edith; but this is not the way to begin it; and she drew the child to her knee, and a few moments of playful caressing brought smiles to the young countenance that nearly chased away the dark expression.

Edith, although superior to the age in which she lived, could not but be influenced by its peculiarities. The belief that an all-pervading and ever-present Providence directed the most minute, as well as the more important events of life, was common to the Puritans. She could not free herself from a superst.i.tious feeling that this child was to have, in some way or other, she knew not how, an unfavorable influence upon her happiness. She was free, indeed, from that puerile superst.i.tion

"That G.o.d's fixed will from nature's wanderings learns."

But the tempest that shook the little building, the incoherent ravings of the old woman's mind, and the solemn darkness of the hour when she promised to take charge of the child, had made a deep impression on her mind.

It is true "that coming events cast their shadows before." Who has not felt presentiments that certain persons and certain places are, in some mysterious way, we know not how, connected by invisible links with our own destiny? The ancients gave to this hidden and mysterious power the name of Fate. The tragedy of life arises from the powerless efforts of mortals to contend with its decrees. All that the ancient tragedy taught was, to bear evils with fort.i.tude, because they were inevitable; but the "hope that is full of immortality" has taught us that they are the discipline appointed by Heaven to perfect and prepare our souls for their immortal destiny.

CHAPTER XIV.

"There has been too much cause to observe that the Christians that were driven into the American desert which is now called New England, have, to their sorrow, seen Azahel dwelling and raging there in very tragical instances."

COTTON MATHER.

The delusion that pa.s.sed through our country in 1692 has left a dark chapter in the history of New England. But it was not alone in New England that this fearful delusion influenced the minds and actions of men. It was believed all over Europe, in the seventeenth century, that evil spirits mingled in the concerns of mortals, and that compacts were made with them, and sealed with the blood of many of the most eminent persons of the age.

The desire to penetrate the mysteries of the spiritual natures that we believe every where to surround us, has taken different forms in different states of society. In New England, it seems to have begun in the wicked fancies of some nervous or really diseased children, who were permitted, at last, to accuse and persecute persons who were remarkable for goodness or intellect, and especially females who were distinguished for any excellence of mind or person.

An historian of the time says, "In the present world, it is no wonder that the operations of evil angels are more sensible than that of the good; nevertheless 'tis very certain that the good angels fly about in our infected atmosphere to minister to the good of those who are to be the heirs of salvation. Children and ignorant persons first complained of being tormented and affected in divers manners. They then accused some persons eminent for their virtues and standing in society."

We have seen that Edith was disposed to think lightly of the subject at first, although she rejoiced that the old woman of the cliff had escaped suspicion by a timely death. But when she found that some of her own neighbors had been suspected, and that one old woman, in another village, for denying all knowledge of evil spirits, had been executed, she was filled with consternation; and when others, to save themselves from the same dreadful fate, increased the delusion of the times by confessing a compact with the evil one, her pity was mingled with indignation. With so much clearness of intellect, and simplicity of heart, she could not persuade herself that it was any thing but wilful blindness, and a wicked lie.

But Edith began soon to feel much anxiety for her faithful Dinah.