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DELUSION;
OR THE WITCH OF NEW ENGLAND.
By Eliza Buckminster Lee
"There is in man a HIGHER than love of happiness: he can do without happiness, and, instead thereof, find blessedness."--SARTOR.
BOSTON: HILLIARD, GRAY, AND COMPANY. 1840.
Entered according to act of Congress, in the year 1839, BY HILLIARD, GRAY & CO. in the clerk's office of the district court of Massachusetts.
PREFACE.
The scenes and characters of this little tale are wholly fictitious. Itwill be found that the tragic interest that belongs to the history ofthe year 1692 has been very much softened in the following pages.
The object of the author has not been to write a tale of witchcraft, butto show how circumstances may unfold the inward strength of a timidwoman, so that she may at last be willing to die rather than yield tothe delusion that would have preserved her life.
If it is objected that the young and lovely are seldom accused of anywitchcraft except that of bewitching hearts, we answer, that of thosewho were _actually_ accused, many were young; and those who maintained afirm integrity against the overwhelming power of the delusion of theperiod must have possessed an intellectual beauty which it would be vainto endeavor to portray.
This imperfect effort is submitted with much diffidence, to theindulgence of the courteous reader.
THE WITCH OF NEW ENGLAND.
CHAPTER I.
"Ay, call it holy ground, The soil where first they trod: They have left unstained what there they found,-- Freedom to worship God."
New England scenery is said to be deficient in romantic and poeticassociations. It is said that we have no ruins of ancient castles,frowning over our precipices; no time-worn abbeys and monasteries,mouldering away in neglected repose, in our valleys.
It is true that the grand and beautiful places in our natural sceneryare not marred by the monuments of an age of violence and wrong; and oursilent valleys retain no remnant of the abodes of self-indulgent andsuperstitious devotion; but the descendant of the Pilgrims finds, inmany of the fairest scenes of New England, some memento to carry backthe imagination to those heroic and self-sacrificing ancestors. His soulis warmed and elevated when he remembers that devoted company, who weresustained amid hardship and every privation, on the trackless ocean, andin the mysterious and appalling solitudes of the forest, by a firmdevotion to duty, and an all-pervading sense of the immediate presenceof God.
The faults of our ancestors were the faults of their age. It is not nowunderstood--and how wide from it was the conviction then!--that _even_toleration implies intoleration. Who is to judge what opinions are to betolerated? He whom circumstance has invested at the moment with power?
The scene I wish to describe was on the borders of one of the interiorvillages of New England,--a mountain village, embosomed in high hills,from which the winter torrents, as they met in the plain, united to formone of those clear, sparkling rivers, in whose beautiful mirror thesurrounding hills were reflected. The stream, "winding at its own sweetwill," enclosed a smooth meadow. At the extremity of the meadow, andshadowed by the mountain, nestled one of the poorest farm-houses, orcottages, of the time.
It was black and old, apparently containing but two rooms and a garret.Attached to it were the common out-houses of the poorest farms: a shedfor a cow, a covering for a cart, and a small barn were all. But thesituation of this humble and lonely dwelling was one of surpassingbeauty. The soft meadow in front was dotted with weeping elms andbirches; the opposite and neighboring hills were covered to theirsummits with the richest wood, while openings here and there admittedglimpses of the distant country.
A traveller coming upon this solitary spot, and seeing the blue smokecurling against the mountain side, would have rejoiced. There issomething in the lonely farmhouse, surrounded with its little garden,and its homely implements of labor, that instantly touches our sympathy.There, we say, human hearts have experienced all the changes of life;they have loved and rejoiced, perhaps suffered and died.
The interior consisted of only two rooms. In the ample chimney of thatwhich served for the common room, was burning a bright flame of pineknots; for, although it was the middle of summer, the sun sank so earlybehind the hills, and the evenings were so chilly, that the warmth wasnecessary, and the light from the small window cheered the laborerreturning late from his work.
An old man sat by the chimney, evidently resting from the labors of theday. He was bent by time, but his brilliant eye and his flowing graylocks gave a certain refinement to his appearance, beyond that which hishomely garments would warrant.
A woman, apparently as aged as himself, sat by the little window,catching the last rays of evening, as they were reflected from her whitecap and silvery hair. Before her was a table on which lay a large Bible.She had just placed her spectacles between the leaves, as she closed itand resumed her knitting.
These two formed a picture full of the quiet repose of old age. Butthere was another in the room,--a youth, apparently less than twenty,kneeling before the flaming pine, over the leaves of a worn volume thatabsorbed him wholly.
The ruddy flame imparted the glow of health to a countenance habituallypale. Over his dark, enthusiastic eye was spread a clear and noble brow,so smooth and polished that it seemed as if at seventy it would be asunwrinkled as at seventeen. His piercing eye had that depth ofexpression that indicates dark passions or religious melancholy. He wasslender in form, and very tall; but a bend in the shoulders, produced byagricultural labor, or by weakness in the chest, impaired somewhat thesymmetry of his form.
They had been silent some moments. The young man closed his worn volume,an imperfect copy of Virgil, and walked several times, with hurriedsteps, across the little room.
At length he stopped before the woman, and said, "Mother, let me see howmuch your frugal care has hoarded. Let me know all our wealth. Unless Ican procure another book, I cannot be prepared for the approachingexamination. If I cannot enter college the next term, I never can. Imust give up all hope of ever being any thing but the drudge I am now,and of living and dying in this narrow nook of earth."
"No, no, my son," answered the woman; "if my prayers are heard, you willbe a light and a blessing to the church, though I may not live to seeit."
The young man sighed deeply, and, taking the key she gave him, he openedan old-fashioned chest, and, from a little cup of silver tied over witha piece of leather, he poured the contents into his hand. There wereseveral crowns and shillings, and two or three pieces of gold.
Apparently the examination was unsatisfactory, for he threw himself intoa chair, and covered his face with his hands.
The old woman rose after looking at him a few moments in silence, andlaid her hand gently on his shoulder.
"My son," she said, "where is the faith that sustained your ancestorswhen they left all their luxuries and splendor, their noble homes forconscience' sake. Yes, my son, your fathers were among the distinguishedof England's sons, and they left all for God."
"Mother," said he, "would that they had been hewers of wood and drawersof water. Then I should have been content with my lot. Mother, all yourcarefully hoarded treasure will not be enough to pay my first term incollege. Without books, without friends, I must give up the hope of aneducation," and the large tears trickled between his fingers.
"You forget," she said, "your good friend at C. w
ho has lent you so manybooks. Why not apply to him again?"
A deep blush flushed the young man's countenance, but he made no answer,and seemed to wish to change the subject.
"It is almost evening," he said; "shall we not have prayers?" and,placing himself near the window to catch the last rays of departingdaylight, he read one of the chapters from the Old Testament.
The aged man, who had not spoken during the discussion, stood up andprayed with great fervency.
His prayer was made up, indeed, by quotations from the Old Testament,and he used altogether the phraseology of the Scriptures. He prayed forthe church in the wilderness, "that it might be bright as the sun, fairas the moon, beautiful as Tirzah, and terrible as an army with banners;""that our own exertions to serve the church and our strivings after theHoly Spirit might not be like arrows in the air, traces in the sea, oilupon the polished marble, and water spilt upon the ground."
He asked for no temporal blessing; all his petitions were in languagehighly figurative, and he closed with a prayer for his grandson, "thatGod would make him a polished shaft in the temple of the Lord, a brightand shining light in the candlestick of the church."
When he had finished his prayer,--"My son," he said, "do not be castdown; you forget that the great Luther begged his bread. The servants ofthe church, in every age, have been poor and despised; even the Son ofGod," and he looked reverently upwards, "knew not where to lay his head._You_ have only to labor. The peat at the bottom of the meadow isalready dry; there is more than we shall need for winter fuel; take it,in the morning, to C----, and with the produce buy the book you need."
"No," said the young man, "there are many repairs necessary to make youand my grandmother comfortable for the winter. I cannot rob you of more.I can borrow the book."
He lighted his lamp, made from rushes dipped in the green wax of the baybush, which affords a beautiful, but not brilliant flame, and went up afew steps to his chamber in the garret. The old woman gathered the ashesover the kindling coal, and, with her aged partner, retired to thebed-room opposite the narrow entrance.