Twice-told tales
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