Twice-told tales
Catholic Inquisition before she felt the lash and lay in the dungeons
of the Puritans. Her mission had extended also to the followers of the
Prophet, and from them she had received the courtesy and kindness which
all the contending sects of our purer religion united to deny her. Her
husband and herself had resided many months in Turkey, where even the
sultan’s countenance was gracious to them; in that pagan land, too, was
Ilbrahim’s birthplace, and his Oriental name was a mark of gratitude
for the good deeds of an unbeliever.
When Pearson and his wife had thus acquired all the rights over
Ilbrahim that could be delegated, their affection for him became, like
the memory of their native land or their mild sorrow for the dead, a
piece of the immovable furniture of their hearts. The boy, also, after
a week or two of mental disquiet, began to gratify his protectors by
many inadvertent proofs that he considered them as parents and their
house as home. Before the winter snows were melted the persecuted
infant, the little wanderer from a remote and heathen country, seemed
native in the New England cottage and inseparable from the warmth and
security of its hearth. Under the influence of kind treatment, and in
the consciousness that he was loved, Ilbrahim’s demeanor lost a
premature manliness which had resulted from his earlier situation; he
became more childlike and his natural character displayed itself with
freedom. It was in many respects a beautiful one, yet the disordered
imaginations of both his father and mother had perhaps propagated a
certain unhealthiness in the mind of the boy. In his general state
Ilbrahim would derive enjoyment from the most trifling events and from
every object about him; he seemed to discover rich treasures of
happiness by a faculty analogous to that of the witch-hazel, which
points to hidden gold where all is barren to the eye. His airy gayety,
coming to him from a thousand sources, communicated itself to the
family, and Ilbrahim was like a domesticated sunbeam, brightening moody
countenances and chasing away the gloom from the dark corners of the
cottage.
On the other hand, as the susceptibility of pleasure is also that of
pain, the exuberant cheerfulness of the boy’s prevailing temper
sometimes yielded to moments of deep depression. His sorrows could not
always be followed up to their original source, but most frequently
they appeared to flow—though Ilbrahim was young to be sad for such a
cause—from wounded love. The flightiness of his mirth rendered him
often guilty of offences against the decorum of a Puritan household,
and on these occasions he did not invariably escape rebuke. But the
slightest word of real bitterness, which he was infallible in
distinguishing from pretended anger, seemed to sink into his heart and
poison all his enjoyments till he became sensible that he was entirely
forgiven. Of the malice which generally accompanies a superfluity of
sensitiveness Ilbrahim was altogether destitute. When trodden upon, he
would not turn; when wounded, he could but die. His mind was wanting in
the stamina of self-support. It was a plant that would twine
beautifully round something stronger than itself; but if repulsed or
torn away, it had no choice but to wither on the ground. Dorothy’s
acuteness taught her that severity would crush the spirit of the child,
and she nurtured him with the gentle care of one who handles a
butterfly. Her husband manifested an equal affection, although it grew
daily less productive of familiar caresses.
The feelings of the neighboring people in regard to the Quaker infant
and his protectors had not undergone a favorable change, in spite of
the momentary triumph which the desolate mother had obtained over their
sympathies. The scorn and bitterness of which he was the object were
very grievous to Ilbrahim, especially when any circumstance made him
sensible that the children his equals in age partook of the enmity of
their parents. His tender and social nature had already overflowed in
attachments to everything about him, and still there was a residue of
unappropriated love which he yearned to bestow upon the little ones who
were taught to hate him. As the warm days of spring came on Ilbrahim
was accustomed to remain for hours silent and inactive within hearing
of the children’s voices at their play, yet with his usual delicacy of
feeling he avoided their notice, and would flee and hide himself from
the smallest individual among them. Chance, however, at length seemed
to open a medium of communication between his heart and theirs; it was
by means of a boy about two years older than Ilbrahim, who was injured
by a fall from a tree in the vicinity of Pearson’s habitation. As the
sufferer’s own home was at some distance, Dorothy willingly received
him under her roof and became his tender and careful nurse.
Ilbrahim was the unconscious possessor of much skill in physiognomy,
and it would have deterred him in other circumstances from attempting
to make a friend of this boy. The countenance of the latter immediately
impressed a beholder disagreeably, but it required some examination to
discover that the cause was a very slight distortion of the mouth and
the irregular, broken line and near approach of the eyebrows.
Analogous, perhaps, to these trifling deformities was an almost
imperceptible twist of every joint and the uneven prominence of the
breast, forming a body regular in its general outline, but faulty in
almost all its details. The disposition of the boy was sullen and
reserved, and the village schoolmaster stigmatized him as obtuse in
intellect, although at a later period of life he evinced ambition and
very peculiar talents. But, whatever might be his personal or moral
irregularities, Ilbrahim’s heart seized upon and clung to him from the
moment that he was brought wounded into the cottage; the child of
persecution seemed to compare his own fate with that of the sufferer,
and to feel that even different modes of misfortune had created a sort
of relationship between them. Food, rest and the fresh air for which he
languished were neglected; he nestled continually by the bedside of the
little stranger and with a fond jealousy endeavored to be the medium of
all the cares that were bestowed upon him. As the boy became
convalescent Ilbrahim contrived games suitable to his situation or
amused him by a faculty which he had perhaps breathed in with the air
of his barbaric birthplace. It was that of reciting imaginary
adventures on the spur of the moment, and apparently in inexhaustible
succession. His tales were, of course, monstrous, disjointed and
without aim, but they were curious on account of a vein of human
tenderness which ran through them all and was like a sweet familiar
face encountered in the midst of wild and unearthly scenery. The
auditor paid much attention to these romances and sometimes interrupted
them by brief remarks upon the incidents, displaying shrewdness above
his years, mingled with a moral obliquity which grated very harshly
against Ilbrahim’s instinctive rectitude. Nothing, however, could
arrest the progress of the latter’s affection, and there were many
proofs that it met with a response from the dark and stubborn nature on
which it was lavished. The boy’s parents at length removed him to
complete his cure under their own roof.
Ilbrahim did not visit his new friend after his departure, but he made
anxious and continual inquiries respecting him and informed himself of
the day when he was to reappear among his playmates. On a pleasant
summer afternoon the children of the neighborhood had assembled in the
little forest-crowned amphitheatre behind the meeting-house, and the
recovering invalid was there, leaning on a staff. The glee of a score
of untainted bosoms was heard in light and airy voices, which danced
among the trees like sunshine become audible; the grown men of this
weary world as they journeyed by the spot marvelled why life, beginning
in such brightness, should proceed in gloom, and their hearts or their
imaginations answered them and said that the bliss of childhood gushes
from its innocence. But it happened that an unexpected addition was
made to the heavenly little band. It was Ilbrahim, who came toward the
children with a look of sweet confidence on his fair and spiritual
face, as if, having manifested his love to one of them, he had no
longer to fear a repulse from their society. A hush came over their
mirth the moment they beheld him, and they stood whispering to each
other while he drew nigh; but all at once the devil of their fathers
entered into the unbreeched fanatics, and, sending up a fierce, shrill
cry, they rushed upon the poor Quaker child. In an instant he was the
centre of a brood of baby-fiends, who lifted sticks against him, pelted
him with stones and displayed an instinct of destruction far more
loathsome than the bloodthirstiness of manhood.
The invalid, in the mean while, stood apart from the tumult, crying out
with a loud voice, “Fear not, Ilbrahim; come hither and take my hand,”
and his unhappy friend endeavored to obey him. After watching the
victim’s struggling approach with a calm smile and unabashed eye, the
foul-hearted little villain lifted his staff and struck Ilbrahim on the
mouth so forcibly that the blood issued in a stream. The poor child’s
arms had been raised to guard his head from the storm of blows, but now
he dropped them at once. His persecutors beat him down, trampled upon
him, dragged him by his long fair locks, and Ilbrahim was on the point
of becoming as veritable a martyr as ever entered bleeding into heaven.
The uproar, however, attracted the notice of a few neighbors, who put
themselves to the trouble of rescuing the little heretic, and of
conveying him to Pearson’s door.
Ilbrahim’s bodily harm was severe, but long and careful nursing
accomplished his recovery; the injury done to his sensitive spirit was
more serious, though not so visible. Its signs were principally of a
negative character, and to be discovered only by those who had
previously known him. His gait was thenceforth slow, even and unvaried
by the sudden bursts of sprightlier motion which had once corresponded
to his overflowing gladness; his countenance was heavier, and its
former play of expression—the dance of sunshine reflected from moving
water—was destroyed by the cloud over his existence; his notice was
attracted in a far less degree by passing events, and he appeared to
find greater difficulty in comprehending what was new to him than at a
happier period. A stranger founding his judgment upon these
circumstances would have said that the dulness of the child’s intellect
widely contradicted the promise of his features, but the secret was in
the direction of Ilbrahim’s thoughts, which were brooding within him
when they should naturally have been wandering abroad. An attempt of
Dorothy to revive his former sportiveness was the single occasion on
which his quiet demeanor yielded to a violent display of grief; he
burst into passionate weeping and ran and hid himself, for his heart
had become so miserably sore that even the hand of kindness tortured it
like fire. Sometimes at night, and probably in his dreams, he was heard
to cry, “Mother! Mother!” as if her place, which a stranger had
supplied while Ilbrahim was happy, admitted of no substitute in his
extreme affliction. Perhaps among the many life-weary wretches then
upon the earth there was not one who combined innocence and misery like
this poor broken-hearted infant so soon the victim of his own heavenly
nature.
While this melancholy change had taken place in Ilbrahim, one of an
earlier origin and of different character had come to its perfection in
his adopted father. The incident with which this tale commences found