[pg 151]
The celebrated 'Edict of Nantes' was, to speak accurately, a new confirmation of former treaties between the French government and the Protestants, orHuguenots—in fact, a royal act of indemnity for all past offences. The verdicts against the 'Reformed' were annulled and erased from the rolls of the Superior Courts, and to them unlimited liberty of conscience was recognized as a right. This important and solemn Edict marked for France the close of the Middle Ages, and the true commencement of modern times; it was sealed with the great seal of green wax, to testify its irrevocable and perpetual character. In signing this great document, Henry IV. completely triumphed over the usages of the Middle Ages, and the illustrious monarch wished nothing less than to grant to the 'Reformed' all the civil and religious rights which had been refused them by their enemies. For the first time France raised itself above religious parties. Still, a state policy so new could not fail to excite the clamors of the more violent, and the hatred of factions. The sovereign, however, remained firm. 'I have enacted the Edict,' said Henry to the Parliament of Paris,—'I wish it to be observed. My will must serve as the reason why. I am king. I speak to you as king.—I will be obeyed.' To the clergy he said, 'My predecessors have given you good words, but I, with my gray jacket,—I will give you good deeds. I am all gray on the outside, but I'm all gold within.' Praise to those noble sentiments, peace was maintained in the realm; the honor of which alone belongs to Henry IV.
In the first half of the seventeenth century, there could be counted in France more than eight hundred Reformed churches, with sixty-two Conferences. Such was the prosperity and powerful organization of the Protestant party until the fall of La Rochelle, which was emphatically called the citadel of 'the Reform.' This misfortune terminated the religious wars of France. The Huguenots, now excluded from the employment of the civil service and the court, became the industrial arms of the kingdom. They cultivated the fine lands of the Cevennes, the vineyards of Guienne, the cloths of Caen. In their hands were almost entirely the maritime trade of Normandy, with the silks and taffetas of Lyons, and, from even the testimony of their enemies, they combined with industry, frugality, integrity all those commercial virtues, which were hallowed by earnest love of religion and a constant fear of God. The vast plains which they owned in Bearn waved with bounteous harvests. Languedoc, so long devastated by civil wars, was raised from ruin by their untiring industry. In the diocese of Nimes was the valley of Vannage, renowned for its rich vegetation. Here the Huguenots had more than sixty churches or 'temples,' and they called this region 'Little Canaan.' Esperon, a lofty summit of the Cevennes, filled with sparkling springs and delicious wild flowers, was known as 'Hort-dieu' the garden of the Lord.
The Protestant party in France did not confine themselves to manufactures and commerce, but entered largely into the liberal pursuits. Many of the 'Reformed' distinguished themselves as physicians, advocates and writers, contributing largely to the literary glory of the age of Louis XIV. In all the principal cities of the kingdom, the Huguenots maintained colleges, the most flourishing of which were those at Orange, Caen, Bergeracs and Nimes, etc. etc. To the Huguenot gentlemen, in the reign of Louis XIII. and Louis XIV., France was indebted for her most brilliant victories. Marshal Rantzan, brave and devoted, received no less than sixty wounds, lost an arm, a leg, and an eye, his heart alone remaining untouched, amidst his many[pg 152]battles. Need we add the names of Turenne, one of the greatest tacticians of his day, with Schomberg, who, in the language of Madame de Sevigne, 'was a hero also,' or glorious Duquesne, the conqueror of De Ruyter? He beat the Spaniards and English by sea, bombarded Genoa and Algiers, spreading terror among the bold corsairs of the Barbary States; the Moslemin termed him 'The old French captain who had wedded the sea, and whom the angel of death had forgotten.' All these were illustrious leaders, with crowds of distinguished officers, and belonged to the Reformed religion. Wonderful and strange to relate, in the midst of all this national happiness and prosperity, the kingdom of France was again to appear before the world as the persecutor of her best citizens, the destroyer of her own vital interests. The Edict of Nantes was revoked on 22d October, 1685. It is not our purpose to name the causes of this suicidal policy, as they are indelibly written on the pages of our world's history, nor shall we point to the well-known provisions of this insane and bloody act. In a word, Protestant worship was abolished throughout France, under the penalty of arrest, with the confiscation of goods. Huguenot ministers were to quit the kingdom in a fortnight. Protestant schools were closed, and the laity were forbidden to follow their clergy, under severe and fatal penalties. All the strict laws concerning heretics were again renewed. But, in spite of all these enactments, dangers and opposition, the Huguenots began to leave France by thousands.
Many entreated the court, but in vain, for permission to withdraw themselves from France. This favor was only granted to the Marshal de Schomberg and the Marquis de Ruoigny, on condition of their retiring to Portugal and England. Admiral Duquesne, then aged eighty, was strongly urged by the king to change his religion. 'During sixty years,' said the old hero, showing his gray hairs,' I have rendered unto Cæsar the things which I owe to Cæsar; permit me now, sire, to render unto God the thing which I owe to God.' He was permitted to end his days in his native land. The provisions of the Edict were carried out with inflexible rigor. In the month of June, 1686, more than six hundred of the Reformed could be counted in the galleys at Marseilles, and nearly as many in those of Toulon, and the most of them condemned by the decision of a single marshal (de Mortieval). Fortunately for the refugees, the guards along the coast did not at all times faithfully execute the royal orders, but often aided the escape of the fugitives. Nor were the, land frontiers more faithfully guarded. In our day, it is impossible to state the correct numbers of the Protestant emigration. Assuming that one hundred thousand Protestants were distributed among twenty millions of Roman Catholics, we think it safe to calculate that from two hundred and fifty to three hundred thousand, during fifteen years, expatriated themselves from France. Sismondi estimates their number at three or four hundred thousand. Reaching London, Amsterdam or Berlin, the refugees were received with open purses and arms, and England, America, Germany, Switzerland, Denmark, Sweden, Russia, Prussia, and Holland, all profited by this wholesale proscription of Frenchmen. All agree that these Protestant emigrants were among the bravest, the most industrious, loyal and pious in the kingdom of France, and that they carried with them the arts by which they had enriched their own land, and abundantly repaid the hospitality of those countries which afforded them that asylum denied them in their own.
The influence which the Huguenot refugees especially exerted upon trade and manufactures in those countries where they settled, was very striking and lasting. England and Holland, of all other nations, owe gratitude to the Protestants of France for the various branches of industry introduced by them, and which have greatly contributed in making their 'merchants princes,' and, their 'traffickers the honorable of the earth.' We refer to these nations particularly,[pg 153]because they are so intimately connected with the colonization of our own favored land. The Huguenot refugees in England introduced the silk factories in Spitalfields, using looms like those of Lyons and of Tours. They also commenced the manufacture of fine linen, calicoes, sail-cloth, tapestries, and paper, most of which had before been imported from France. It has been estimated that these refugees thus brought into Great Britain a trade which deprived France of an annual income of nearly ten millions of dollars. Science, arms, jurisprudence and literature, were also advanced by their arrival. Thefirstnewspaper in Ireland was published by the Pastor Droz, a refugee, who also founded a library in Dublin. Thelluson (Lord Redlesham), a brave soldier in the Peninsular war, General Ligonier, General Prevost of the British army, Sir Samuel Romilly, Majendie, Bishop of Chester, Henry Layard, the excavator of Nineveh, all are the descendants of the French Huguenots. Saurin secured the reputation of his powerful eloquence at the Hague; but in the French Church, Threadneedle street, London, he reached the summit of his splendid pulpit eloquence. Most of the Huguenots who fled to England for an asylum were natives of Normandy, Brittany, Picardy, and Guienne. Their numbers at the revocation may be calculated at eighty thousand. Hume estimates them at fifty thousand, another writer at seventy thousand, but we believe these calculations are too low. In 1676, the communicants of the Protestant French Church at Canterbury reached not less than twenty-five hundred. Of all the services of the Huguenots to England, none was more important than the energetic support to the Prince of Orange against James II. The Prince employed no less than seven hundred and thirty-six French officers, brave men who had been learned to conquer under the banner of Turenne and Condi. Schomberg was the hero at the battle of Boyne. One of his standards bore a BIBLE, supported on three swords, with the motto—'Ie maintiendray.' The gallant old man, now eighty-two years of age, fell mortally wounded, but triumphing, and with his dying eyes he saw the soldiers of James vanquished, and dispersed in headlong flight. Ruoigny, in the same battle, received a mortal wound, and, covered with blood, before the advancing French refugee regiments, cheered them on, crying, 'Onward, my lads, to glory! onward to glory!'
In England, the French Protestants long remained as a distinct people, preserving in a good degree a nationality of their own, but in the lapse of years this disappeared. One hardly knows in our day where to find a genuine Saxon,—'pure English undefiled,'—for the Huguenot blood circulates beneath many a well-known patronymic. Who would imagine that anything French could be traced in the colorless names of White and Black, or the authoritative ones of King and Masters? Still it is a well-known fact that such names, at the close of the last century, delighted in the designations of Leblanck (White), Lenoir (Black), Loiseau (Bird), Lejeune (Young), Le Tonnellier (Cooper), Lemaitre (Master), Leroy (King). These names were thus translated into good strong Saxon, the owners becoming one with the English in feeling, language, and religion. Holland, too, glorious Protestant Holland! the fatherland of American myriads, welcomed the fugitive Huguenots. From the beginning of the Middle Ages that noble land had been a hospitable home for the persecuted from all parts of Europe. During the last twenty years of the seventeenth century, the French emigration into that country became a political event. Amsterdam granted to all citizenship, with freemen's privilege of trade, and exemption of taxes for three years; and all the other towns of that nation rivalled each other in the same liberal and Christian spirit. In the single year of the revocation, more than two hundred and fifty Huguenot preachers reached the free soil of the United Provinces. Pensions were allowed to them, the married receiving four hundred florins, those in celibacy two hundred.[pg 154]The Prince of Orange attached two French preachers to his person, with many French officers to his army against James II.—thanks to the generous Princess of Orange, who selected several Huguenot dames as ladies of honor. One house at Harlaem was exclusively reserved for young ladies of noble birth. At the Hague, an ancient convent of preaching monks was changed into an asylum for the persecuted ladies. Of all lands which received the refugees, none witnessed such crowds as the Republic of Holland; and hence Boyle called it 'the grand arch of the refugees.' No documents exactly compute their number; one author calculates it at fifty-five thousand, and another, in 1686, at nearly seventy-five thousand souls. In the Dutch Republic and Germany, as was the result in England, the Huguenots exercised a most powerful influence on politics, literature, war, and religion, and industry and commerce. Holland, contrary to the general expectation, outlived the invasion of 1672, the Prince of Orange fortunately checking the designs of Louis XIV. Refugee soldiers had powerfully contributed to the triumph of his cause in England, Scotland, and Ireland, and then they followed him, with valor, in the war against Louis XIV., which compelled that monarch to sue for peace.
Literary men and preachers obtained repose and liberty in that land, with consideration and honor. Amsterdam alone received sixteen banished refugee ministers; and more than two hundred spread themselves through all the towns of the United Provinces. Very eloquent French pastors filled the pulpits of the Hague, Rotterdam, Leyden, and Harlaem. Their most brilliant orator was James Saurin. Abbaddié, hearing him for the first time, exclaimed, 'Is this a man or an angel, who is speaking to us?' Let us dwell a moment upon the character of this wonderful man. By the elevation of his thoughts and brilliancy of imagination, his luminous expositions, purity of style, with vigor of expression, he produced the most profound impression on the refugees and others who crowded to hear his varied eloquence. What charmed them most was the union in his style of Genevese zeal and earnestness with southern ardor, and especially those solemn prayers, with which he loved to close his discourses. Saurin displayed in these petitions strains of supplication which up to this time among the Hollanders had never been observed in any other preacher.
All the branches of human learning were advanced in Holland by the Protestant Frenchmen. Here no fetters on genius, no secret censorship or persecution, existed. The boldest democratic theories, with the most daring philosophic systems, were freely discussed, and the refugees promoted this spirit of investigation. They also increased the commerce and manufactures and agriculture of the Netherlands, and rendered Amsterdam one of the most famous cities of the world. Like the ancient city of Tyre, which the prophet named the 'perfection of beauty,' her merchant princes traded with all islands and nations. Macpherson, in his Annals of Commerce, estimates the annual loss to France, caused by the refugees establishing themselves in England and Holland, was not less than 3,582,000 pounds sterling, or about ninety millions of francs. Until the close of the eighteenth century, the descendants of the Huguenots in Holland were united among themselves, by intermarriage and the bonds of mutual sympathies. But in time a fusion with the Dutch became inevitable. Then, in Holland, as was the case with England and Germany, many refugees, abjuring their nationality, changed their French names into Dutch. The Leblancs called themselves De Witt,—the Deschamps, Van de Velde,—the Dubois, Van den Bosch,—the Chevaliers, Ruyter,—the Legrands, De Groot, etc. etc. With the change of names, Huguenot churches began to disappear, so that out of sixty-two which could be counted among the seven provinces in 1688, eleven only now remain,—among them those at Hague, Amsterdam, Leyden, Utrecht, Rotterdam, and Groningen. These are the last monuments of[pg 155]the Huguenot emigration to Holland, and a certain number of families preserve some sentiment of nationality, who consider themselves honored by their French, noble, Protestant origin, while at the same time they are united by patriotic affection to their newly adopted country.
This rapid chapter of the expulsion of the 'Huguenots,' or 'Protestants,' or 'Refugees,' from their native land, with their settlement in England and Holland, seem necessary for a better understanding of our subject. Thence, they emigrated to America, and it is our object to collect something concerning their origin and descendants among us. The Huguenots of America is a volume which still remains fully and correctly to be written. This is a period when increased attention and study are directed to historical subjects, and we gladly will contribute what mite we may possess to the important object.
'A witch,' according to my nurse's account, 'must be a haggard old woman, living in a little rotten cottage under a hill by a wood-side, and must be frequently spinning by the door; she must have a black cat, two or three broom-sticks, and must be herself of so dry a nature, that if you fling her into a river she will not sink: so hard then is her fate, that, if she is to undergo the trial, if she does not drown she must be burnt, as many have been within the memory of man.'
In a bustling New England village there lived, not many years ago, a poor, infirm, deformed little old woman, who was known to the middle-aged people living there and thereabout as 'Aunt Hannah.' The younger members of the little community had added another and very odious title to the 'Aunt'—they called her 'Aunt Hannah, the Black Witch.' Not that she was of negro blood. Her pale, pinched and patient face was white as the face of a corpse; so, also, was her thin hair, combed smoothly down under the plain cap she always wore. Very white indeed she was, as to face, and hair, and cap, but otherwise she was all and always black, especially so as regarded an ugly pair of gloves, which were never removed from her hands, so far as the youngsters were aware, and which added to the fearfully mysterious aspect of those members. Exactly what they covered, the children never knew, but they saw that one hideous glove enclosed something like a gigantic, withered bird's claw, while within the other there musts have been a repulsive and horrid knob, without proper form, and lacking any remotest attempt at thumb and fingers.
These shapeless members, forever covered from the world, wrought fearful images in the minds of the children, and their youthful imaginations conjured up all sorts of uses to which such strange members might be applied. Upon one point they were agreed. There was no doubt in any little head among them that Aunt Hannah had at some time sold herself to Satan, and that he had placed this deformity upon her as a mark of ownership. Then she had a humped back, poor woman, the result of the cruel weight of many weary years; and she leaned upon an old-fashioned staff with a curved and crutch-like handle; and her bleared eyes were bent forever on the ground; and her thin lips twitched convulsively, and she muttered to herself as she crawled about the village[pg 156]streets; and it was said by those who knew, that she was nearly a hundred years of age. So the youngsters called her the 'Black Witch,' and sometimes hooted after her in the streets, or hobbled on before her with bowed heads and ridiculous affectation of infirmity. Thanks to her evil name, none of them ever ventured to actually assault the poor old creature, and their taunts she bore with patient meekness, going ever quietly upon her accustomed, peaceful way.
The older villagers regarded her with a pity that was half pity and half disgust. Those fearful hands they never could forget, nor the bowed figure, nor the strange working of the lips. Therefore, they held her in a sort of dreading, but still her lonely life, and her patient, uncomplaining spirit, moved their hearts. Then a vague tradition—nothing more, for neither kith nor kin had ancient Hannah—a vague tradition said that she had once been very beautiful; that when she was in her fresh and lovely youth, some strange misfortune had fallen upon her, and that she had worn since then—most innocently—the mark of a direful tragedy. One lady, old, nearly, as Aunt Hannah, but upon whom there had never fallen any blight of poverty or wrong, loved the poor creature well, and she only, of all the inhabitants of the village, frequently entered the cottage where the 'Black Witch' dwelt. This lady, it was said, had known her when both were young, and carried forever locked in her heart the story of that saddened youth. None called good Mrs. Marjoram a witch.Herface was clear, her smile bright, her eyes sparkling, and she bore her years with an upright and cheerful carriage.
The little, one-storied house where Aunt Hannah dwelt was situated in a hollow just out of the village, in the shadow of a grove of tangled hemlocks and pines. It consisted of two rooms only, with an unfinished attic overhead; and before her door the poor old soul might be seen any pleasant day, sitting meekly in the sun. She could neither knit nor sew as other old women do, but she sat there waiting patiently for the time when her kind Father should call her home, to lose forever the blackness that clung to her in this weary world.
She did not live here entirely alone, for, true to the universal reputation of witches, she kept, not one cat only, but several; all black cats, too. It was the only fancy she indulged in, the only luxury she allowed herself, and it was sad that this harmless freak should cost her so many taunts. Sometimes the boys tried to kill her cats, aided in the murderous attempt by the village dogs, but no dog ever came back scatheless from those sharp and spiteful claws. Hence the boys were certain as to the witchcraft, and 'knew' that these savage animals were true imps of Satan.
This weak and defenceless creature, living thus apart from human companionship, was supported on a small annuity, paid her quarterly by a very honest company, that would have been ruined with many such venerable clients. On pleasant days she crept about the town to do her meagre marketing, or crawled to the paupers' pew in the old brick meeting-house. During the warm summer weather her scant life was somewhat cheered, and a faint attempt at joyousness sometimes winked in her old eyes, but with the winter's cold came the cruel cramps and rheumatism, the sleepless nights and painful days. Then Mrs. Marjoram frequently drove to her door, carrying medicines and nourishing food,—over and above all, bringing cheerful words and a warm and hearty smile.
One winter Mrs. Marjoram was taken ill, and, being so very old, her life was despaired of. During this sickness there came a great fall of snow, piling up four or five feet on the level, and driving and drifting into the hollows, so that for several days the less frequented roads in that part of the country were impassible. And now, when Mrs. Marjoram, but for her own sad plight, would have thought of poor Aunt Hannah, there was no one enough interested to give her loneliness a moment's consideration, till, one morning, one street lad cried out suddenly to[pg 157]another that Aunt Hannah must be buried alive!
Buriedalive?The men, suddenly summoned from their business or their leisure, hardly thoughtthatpossible in the deep hollow, filled nearly to the level with heavily packed and frozen snow.
Men walked out on the firm crust till they were directly over the spot where, full twenty feet below, stood Aunt Hannah's little house. And they shook their heads mournfully at the sickening thought of what must lie below them.
It was a good day's work for twenty men to open a gradually descending way to the lonely house,—a good day's work; so that when they reached the door—finding it locked inside—they sent back to the village for lanterns and candles before bursting it in.
The sight that startled and horrified them after they had forced the door, they never liked to speak of. The sounds from the furious, spitting and snarling cats they never forgot.
Her disfigured and mutilated remains were decently interred, and when the spring-time carried away the snow, they leveled the house with the ground. But, though they buried her out of their sight and pulled down the rotten cottage she had inhabited for so many weary years, the fearful memory of her evil name and dreadful end remained, and nearly all the village came to regard her as, in very truth, a witch.
Only Mrs. Marjoram took from the cottage with pious love an ancient and much-thumbed book, on whose fly-leaf was written 'Jason Fletcher, His Bible.' Then, having no longer any reason to conceal the early history of the deceased, she related to the village gossips—as a warning against trusting too fully to evil appearances—the following
A long time ago—before the middle of the last century, in fact—there dwelt in one of the most flourishing towns in Western Massachusetts a family of Puritan extraction named Fletcher. Straitest among the strict, John Cotton Fletcher and his wife Mehitabel held all lightness of conduct or gamesomeness of speech as sin most devoutly to be prayed and striven against, and not only 'kept' the ten commandments with pious zeal, but, for the better serving of the Lord, invented an eleventh, which read 'Laugh not at all.'Holy daysthey knew, in number during the year fifty-four, namely, the fifty-two 'Sabbaths' and the governor's Fast and Thanksgiving days;holidaysthey held in utter abhorrence, deeming Christmas, especially, an invention of the devil. On 'work-days' they worked; on 'Sabbath-days' they attended the preaching of the word; otherwise, on the Lord's day, doing nothing save to eat and drink what was absolutely necessary to keep them from faintness. They lived to praise the Lord, and they must eat to live. But no cooking or other labor was done on that day, and if the old horse was saddled to carry them to meeting it was because that was a work of necessity. On Fast and Thanksgiving days—because they were peculiarly of Puritan origin—there was an especial effort at godliness, and woe, then, to any profaning youngster who dared to shout or play within sound or sight of Deacon Fletcher's premises. Every Saturday night, at sunset, all tools for men and playthings for children were put away, to be disturbed no more till sunset on Sunday. All papers, books, knitting-work, sewing, were disposed of 'out of the way.' It was necessary to milk the cows, feed the pigs, and saddle the horse, but that was all the work that was allowed. As to any jest on any holy day, that was, beyond all other things, most abhorrent to their ideas of Christian duty. Life with them was a continued strife against sin, cheered only by the hope of casting off all earthly trammels at last, to enter upon one long, never-ending Sabbath. And their Sabbath of idleness was more dreary than their 'week-day' of work.
Yet were they an humble, honest, and upright pair, walking purely before God according to the light they had, and as highly respected and honored in the[pg 158]community, that the fiat of the minister himself—and in those days the minister's word was 'law and gospel' in the smaller New England villages—was hardly more potent than that of Deacon Fletcher.
To this couple was born one son, and one only. Much as they mourned when they saw their neighbors adding almost yearly to their groups of olive branches, the Lord in his wisdom vouchsafed to them only this one child, and they bowed meekly to the providence and tried to be content. Why his father named the boy 'Jason,' no one could rightly tell; perhaps because the fleece of his flocks had been truly fleece of gold to him; at all events, thus was the child named, and in the strict rule of this Christian couple was Jason reared.
It would be sad as well as useless to tell of the dreary winter-Sundays in the cold meeting-house (it was thought a wicked weakness to have a fire in a church then) through which he shivered and froze; of the fearful sitting in the corner after the two-hours sermons and the thirty-minutes prayers were done; of the utter absence of all cheerful themes or thoughts on the holy days which they so straitly remembered to keep; of the visions of sudden death, and the bottomless pit thereafter, which haunted the child through long nights; of the sighing for green fields and the singing of birds, on some summer Sundays, when the sun was warm and the sky was fair; and the clapping of the old-fashioned wooden seats, as the congregation rose to pray or praise, was sweeter music than the blacksmith made who 'led the singing' through his nose. It would be a dreary task to follow the boy through all this youthful misery, and so I will let it pass. Doubtless all these things brought forth their fruits when his day of freedom came. He was a large-framed, full-blooded boy, with more than the usual allowance of animal spirits. But his father was larger framed and tougher, and in his occasional contests with his son victory naturally perched upon his banners, so that the boy's spirit (which rebelled alway against the iron rule of the household), if not broken down, was certainly so far kept under that it rarely showed itself. It was a slumbering volcano, ready, when it reached its strength, to pour out burning lava of passion and evil-doing.
Thus the boy grew up almost to manhood, with very few rays of sunshine cast over his early path to look back upon when he should Teach the middle eminence of life. And the gloom of the present cheerless and austere way caused him to look forward with the more rapture to that time, when, with his twenty-first birth-day, should come the power to do as he pleased with himself: with his hours of labor and of ease, with his Sabbath-days and his work-days.
A little before the time when big majority was to come and set him partially free—for then, according to the good old Puritan custom, he would have his 'freedom-suit,' and probably a few hundred dollars and a horse, and might remain with his father or go elsewhere—there fell across Jason's path a sweet gleam of golden sunshine, such as he had never known before, nor ever dreamed of. When he was in his twenty-first year, his father, the Deacon,—being urged thereto by the failing health of his overtasked wife,—adopted as half daughter, half serving maid, a beautiful and friendless girl, who might otherwise have gone to ruin. Her name was plain Hannah Lee. No name can be imagined too liquid, sweet and voluptuous in its sound to typify her loveliness. It was not strange, therefore, that she had not been long in the house before Jason Fletcher, hitherto deprived of much cheerful female society, felt stealing over him a new and strange excitement of mingled joy and wonder. It is trite and tame to say that for him there came new flowers in all the fields and by all the road-sides, and a hitherto unknown fragrance in the balmy air; rosier colors to the sunset, softer tints to the yellow gray east at dawn, brighter sparkle to the brooks, breezier glories to the mountain-tops; but, doubtless, this was strictly true, as[pg 159]it has been many times before and since to many other men, but scarce ever accompanied by so great and complete a change.
His father might have expected it, and his mother have reckoned upon it, but no thought of love in connection with their quiet and awkward son ever entered into their minds, and so they put this sweet creature into the youth's way, not reflecting that only one result—on his side, at least—could follow.
They kept no watch upon the pair, and knew not of the many meetings, accidental, apparently, even to themselves, that took place between the innocent youth and girl. It needs no reading of light books to make a successful lover, nor grace, nor elegant carriage; and Nature points the way to the most modest and untrained wooer. So, without a word having been spoken on the subject, nor any caress exchanged, except, perhaps, an occasional momentarily clasped hand, or the necessary and proper contact, when Hannah rode, sometimes, behind Jason on the pillion (one arm around him to keep her in her seat), they became lovers, and none the less so that they had given no verbal or labial utterance to their loves.
And the summer flew by on wings of the fleetest, and Jason's twenty-first birth-day approached.
It fell this year upon a Sunday. The family had 'been to meeting' all the day as usual, no reference being made to the fact that the youth was now 'free.' (His father had said to him, as they milked the cows on Saturday night, 'We will put by your "Freedom Day" till Monday.') But all day Jason had walked, and thought, and eaten, and drunk, not to the glory of the Lord, as his father and mother piously believedtheydid, but to the glory of himself—no longer a child, but a man!
It lacked a full half hour to sunset, and there was no cooler resting place that warm summer afternoon than beneath the shade of a thick-leaved grape-vine that overspread a stunted pear tree some little distance in the rear of the house. Hannah, with her natural love for pleasant things and places, had induced Jason, some time before, to make a seat for her in this charming spot. It was quite out of sight from the house, and the little bower the vine made could be entered only from one side. In this bower Hannah sat this sunny afternoon, wondering if it would change Jason very much to be a boy no longer, and devoutly praying in the depths of her pure little heart that it would not.
She sat, half sadly, and not very distinctly, dreaming over this problem, when the shade was deepened, and, looking up, she was aware that Jason stood at the entrance to the arbor. Her heart stopped beating for half a moment, and she felt quite faint and sick. Then she said, with a smile, half sad, half jocose, 'You are amannow, Jason, are you not?'
There was room for two on the seat, and she moved a little toward the further end as she spoke.
'I am a man to-day, Hannah,' he said. 'Father wants to keep me boy till to-morrow, because this is the Lord's day, and I suppose it is wicked to be a man on Sunday. To-morrow I shall go away from here, and not come back for a long, long time.' His voice trembled, and sounded very cold and sad.
Hannah put her two elbows on her knees, rested her face in her hands, and uttered a little, low, wailing cry, most painful to hear.
Then Jason seated himself beside her, put his arms about her, and, raising her gently up, kissed her on the cheek. He had never before kissed any woman save his mother.
'When I come back,' he said, 'I will marry you, if you love me, and then we will always live together.'
The little maid dried her eyes, and a look sweet and calm, such as, perhaps, the angels wear, stole over her innocent face.
'Oh, do you love me so? Will you?' she said.
'So help me God, I will,' he said.
Then she put her arms about his neck,[pg 160]and lifting up her innocent face to his, gave him her heart in one long kiss.
(Just then a light foot, passing toward the house from a neighbor's, paused at the arbor door, all unknown to those within, and little Martha Hopkins, the neighbor's daughter and Hannah's special pet, looked in upon them for a moment. Then she sped quickly to Deacon Fletcher's house, and burst, all excitement, into the kitchen.)
'Will you wait for me, Hannah, darling,' said Jason, 'all the time it may take me to get ready for a wife, and never love any other man, nor let any other man love you? Never forget me, for years and years, perhaps, till I come back for you? Will you always remember that we love each other, and that you are to be my wife?'
'I will wait for you, dear, if I wait till I die,' she answered.
He folded her yet more closely to his breast.
While they held each other thus, forgetting all else in the world, his father burst, furious and terrible, into the arbor!
He seized them with a strong and cruel rasp, and tore them pitilessly asunder.
'Go into the house, boy,' he cried, 'and leave this'—
'Stop!' shouted Jason, springing to his feet, his face as white as death and his eyes flashing—'Stop! Do not call her any name but a good name! I would not bear it if you were twenty times my father!'
The old man stood transfixed.
'She is as good as you or as my mother, and will go to heaven as well as you when she dies,' he continued passionately; 'as well as any of us; as well as the minister! What did you come here for? Haven't you driven my life almost to death ever since I can remember; and isn't that enough, but you must come here and kill my darling, my dear, my love?'
He knelt where she lay on the ground.
'Hear the boy,' cried the father, in a rage equally terrible and far less noble. 'Hear the boy go on about the baggage!'
The boy still knelt, unheeding anything save the senseless form beside him.
'Wasn't it enough that you should wanton with a young woman in this style, but you must do it on the holy Sabbath day?' the old man continued. 'Mother,' he cried, jerking the words over his shoulder at his wife, who stood behind him, 'do you bring such profligates as this into the world, to disgrace a pious man's fame and bring his house to sorrow? Let him go forth—my oldest and youngest born, and eat husks with the swine; he shall have no portion, and there shall be no fatted calf killed when he returns!'
Still the youth knelt, and now his head had fallen upon the prostrate body, and he was covering her cold hand with kisses.
'Look here, young man,' the father cried, 'leave go that girl's hand and come into the house; as true as there's a God in Israel I'll teach you what a stout rawhide is made of!'
Just at this juncture neighbor Hopkins and his wife, warned by quick-flying little Martha that something terrible was going on at Deacon Fletcher's, appeared, hurrying towards the spot.
Peter Hopkins was considered a somewhat ungodly but a very just man, and while the Deacon most highly disapproved of his spiritual state, and doubted that he and 'vital piety' were strangers, he still respected Peter's rugged honesty and directness of purpose, and ranked him foremost among the 'world's people.' He was a man of powerful frame and strong impulses, and when his feelings were aroused he stood in awe of no man, high or low. When he forced his way into the arbor, therefore, the Deacon paused in his invective and made no remonstrance.
Peter Hopkins at once put the worst construction on the scene before him. He saw in the son of Deacon Fletcher only a seducer, in poor Hannah Lee only a victim, and his blood rose to boiling heat. Without pausing to ask any[pg 161]question, grasping at one guess, as he supposed, the whole sad history, he seized Jason by the collar, and, lifting him up, dashed him violently down again, the boy's head striking a corner of the bench as he fell.
Then he took the girl tenderly up and faced about upon the father, actually foaming with wrath.
'This comes of psalm singing,' he cried. 'Clear the way there!' and he bore the still unconscious maiden toward his own house.
Then a sudden and strange revulsion came over Deacon Fletcher. For the first time, perhaps, in twenty-one years, the father's heart triumphed over the Deacon's prejudices. As he saw his son—his only son—lying pale and bleeding on the ground, all recollection of his offense, all thought of sinfulness or godliness in connection with his conduct, vanished, and he only considered whether this pride of his, this strong and beautiful son, were to die there, or to live and bless him. He stooped, sobbing, over the boy, reconciled, at last, to humanity, and conscious of a strong human love.
Not more tenderly was poor Hannah Lee borne to the house of Peter Hopkins than the father carried the son he had only just received into his own dwelling. There were no thoughts of husks now, but only a sorrowful joy that one so long dead to him was at length alive, that a new heart, full of human instincts, had found birth within his bosom. But mingled with this joy was the fear that he had only, at length, possessed his son to lose him.
While Jason Fletcher lay tossing, week after week, through the fever that followed the scene of violence in the arbor, poor Hannah went sadly but patiently about the light duties that farmer Hopkins and his wife allowed her to perform.
Thoroughly convinced, through his wife's communications with Hannah, of the innocence of the pair, Peter Hopkins had gone to Deacon Fletcher and remonstrated with him on his outrageous conduct.
'Your son is a fine lad,' he said, 'and Hannah is fit to be queen anywhere; and if you don't give her a fitting out when he's well enough to marry her, hang me ifIwon't! I owe the boy something for the ill trick I played him in my hot-headedness, and he shall have it, too! Say, now, that they shall be man and wife!'
Deacon Fletcher astonished the hot-hearted man beyond measure by quietly telling him that, God willing, his dear son should marry Hannah as soon as the visitation that now kept him on a bed of raving illness was taken away. He added meekly that he hoped God would forgive him if he had abused the trust placed in him, and, misled by a vanity of holiness, had done his son great wrong, these many years.
'Give us your hand, Deacon,' cried the delighted pleader; 'you are a good man, if youarea Deacon, and that's more'n I'd have said a week ago! Youhavehurt that boy, and no mistake! You've either beaten the spirit all out of him, or you have shut up a devil in him that'll break out one o' these days, worse'n them that went into the pigs that we read about! But 'tain't too late to mend, an' if a stitch in timedoessave nine, it's better to take theninestitches than to wait till they are ninety times nine. You've got to be a thousand times kinder to the boy than you would if you hadn't been so hard on him all his life.'
It was agreed that while the fever held its course nothing should be said to poor Hannah, and so the two men parted—warm friends for the first time in their lives.
And poor Hannah Lee went droopingly and patiently about her duties, asking quietly from day to day as to the health of Jason, and telling no soul how her heart seemed breaking within her, and how all the future looked to her like a dreary waste.
Mrs. Hopkins threw out gentle hints that the Deacon might relent, and that if he did the wish that was ever in Hannah's heart might be realized. But the poor child paid little heed to her suggestions,[pg 162]a foreshadowing of some direful calamity constantly enfolding and saddening her. Still she kept bravely and quietly about her duties, and it was only when she was alone in her chamber at night that she gave way to the terrible wofulness that oppressed her, and prayed, and wept, and wrestled with her sorrow.
And this sweet and lovely creature was the same pious and patient soul who was afterwards taunted by rude village boys, and pointed at as one who had sold herself to Satan.
One night she had cried herself asleep, and lay in an unquiet and fitful slumber. As she thought of him alway by day, so now in her dreams the image of Jason Fletcher was fantastically and singularly busy. It seemed to her that she stood upon an eminence overlooking a peaceful valley of that charming sort only to be seen in dreams. Afar off, and still, in some strange way, very near, she beheld the youth of her love, who reclined upon a bank beside a quiet stream. Everything was at rest. The soft moonbeams—for, in her dream, evening rested on the valley—bathed all the prospect in a cool effulgence. There was no sound, save only that sweet music of never-sleeping nature which is forever heard within all her broad domain. Still the dreamer felt that there was something direful and most to be dreaded that threatened to invade and mar the heavenly peacefulness. She felt it coming, and fearfully awaited its approach. And she had not long to wait. For presently there appeared, flying between the calm moonlight and the figure, and casting a doleful shadow over his form, a scaly and dreadful dragon, like those we read of that devastated whole countries in the old, old times. This hideous beast breathed fire and smoke from its horrid nostrils as it flew, and it flapped its fearful way downwards to scorch and destroy the figure recumbent by the stream.
Just when it was stooping upon its unconscious victim, a heavy scale, beaten from its side by the bat-like wings, fell upon the night-mare stricken sleeper's breast, and she awoke.
The moon was shining peacefully into the room, and she found upon the bed a black cat that had leaped in through the low window. It was a gentle and loving animal, that had made friends with her upon her first arrival, and it had already coiled itself up on the bed with a gentle purring.
Everything was most quiet and calm as she lay gazing out through the window; still the dreadful memory of her dream weighed upon and oppressed her. She arose and leaned out into the cool night air. So leaning, she could see Deacon Fletcher's house, standing bare and brown in the moonlight only a few rods distant. She could gaze, with what pleasure or sorrow she might, at the windows of the room where poor Jason lay tossing with the fever.
She gazes earnestly thitherward, and her breath comes thick and short, while her heart seems rising into her throat. For she sees, gathered thick and dun above the house, a dense, undulating and ever-increasing shadow, that threatens to obscure the low-floating moon! There is no wind, and it rises slowly but steadily! Deacon Fletcher's house is on fire!
Her shrill cries, uttered in wild and rapid succession, aroused the household of Peter Hopkins to the fact that there was fire somewhere—fire, that most terrible fiend to awake before in the dead of night. As for Hannah, it was but an instant's work for her to throw on a little clothing and spring from the low window into the yard. Then she ran, with what trembling speed she might, towards the burning house.
The smoke still rose sombre and heavy from the roof, and about one of the chimneys little tongues of flame leaped up as she approached. She could hear a fierce crackling, too, of that spiteful sort made by the burning of dry wood. The house was all of wood, and old, and it was evidently thoroughly afire within.
She realized this as she hurried up to it. In the brief seconds of her crossing[pg 163]the field and leaping a small stream that ran near the house, she thought of Jason, so noble, so self-denying, so persecuted, so beautiful, lying there in his little upper room, powerless from the fever, and doomed to die a dreadful death. She thought of him, weak and helpless, with no strength even to shrink from the flames that should lap over him and lick him to death with their fiery tongues. All this as she sped across the field and leaped the stream.
Reaching the house, she glanced upward, and could perceive the light of the flames already showing itself through the upper front windows, next the room where slept the Deacon and his wife. Fortunately Jason's room was in the rear. Then she remembered that an old nurse from the village watched with him, and she called fiercely on her name, but with no response.
As she had approached the house, the nearest outer door was that facing the road, immediately over which the fire was evidently about to break out, and this door she tried, finding it fast. Then she remembered a side entrance, through an old wood-shed, that was seldom locked, and she immediately made her way to it.
Meanwhile the fire was busy with the dry wood-work of the house, and though there was no wind, it spread with fearful rapidity. Already the flames had burst out through the roof in two or three places, and in the front of the house they were cruelly curling and creeping about the eaves. They seemed confined, however, to the upper portion of the building, and therein she had hope.
As she had anticipated, she found the side door unfastened, and she made her way rapidly to the foot of the back stairway. When she opened the door to ascend, a thick, black smoke rushed down, almost overpowering her. The opening of the door seemed to aid the fire, too, and there was a sort of explosive eagerness in the new start it took as it now crackled and roared above her. Then she recognized in the sickening smoke a smell of burning feathers, and she felt faint and weak as she thought that it might behisbed that was on fire.
This was only for an instant. Staggering backward before the cloud of smoke, with outstretched, groping hands, like one suddenly struck blind, an 'instinct,' or what you please to call it, struck her, and she tore off her flannel petticoat, wrapping it about her head and shoulders. Then, holding her hands over mouth and nose, she rushed desperately up the stairs.
No one, unless he has been through such a smoke, can conceive of the trials she had to undergo in mounting those stairs. No one can fancy, except from the recollection of such an experience, how the fierce heat beat her back when she reached the upper hall. The walls were not yet fully on fire, but great tongues of flame curled along the ceiling, and hot blasts swept across her path.
She knew his room. It was but a step to it, and the door opened easily. The nurse was fast asleep, so fast that poor Hannah's warning cry, as she stumbled in, hardly aroused her. On the bed lay Jason, so thin, so white, so corpse-like, she would hardly have known him. In the fierce strength of her despair it was no task to lift that emaciated body, but, ah! how to get out of the house with it? For when she turned she saw that the hall was now wholly on fire.
But she did not hesitate. Wrapping him quickly and tenderly in a blanket taken from the bed, she rushed out into the flames.
Meanwhile Peter Hopkins and his 'hired man' had been aroused by Hannah's first screams, and had hurriedly scrambled on a portion of their clothing and rushed out. They had been in time—running quickly across the field—to see Hannah disappear behind the house. Neither of them supposed for an instant that she had entered it.
Trying the front door, and finding it fast, Peter uplifted his stout foot and kicked it crashing in, but he found it impossible to enter by the breach he[pg 164]had made. The front stairway was all in flames, and the fierce heat drove him hopelessly back. Then they ran around to the rear. By this time the entire upper portion of the building seemed to be one mass of fire and smote, and now they could hear shrill and terrible shrieks, evidently proceeding from the suddenly awakened inmates. They ran to the kitchen door and burst it in.
As they did so there rushed towards them from the foot of the kitchen stairs some horrible, blazing, and unnatural shape, that came stumbling but swiftly forward. With it came smoke and flame and a horrible sound of stifled moans.
At the approach of this strange and unsightly object they sprang back amazed, and it passed them headlong into the open air; passed them anddropped apart, as it were, into the stream before the door.
For many years thereafter the slumbers of Farmer Hopkins were disturbed by visions of what he saw when the two two parts of that terrible apparition were taken from the water.
There lay Hannah Lee, no longer beautiful and fresh as the morning, but blackened, crisped, scorched and shrunken, with all her wealth of silken hair burned to ashes, with all her clear loveliness of complexion gone forever. And there lay Jason Fletcher, unburned,—so carefully had she covered him as she fled,—but senseless, and to all appearance a corpse.
Thus Hannah Lee went through fire and water, even unto worse than death, for the sake of him she loved. And verily she had her reward.
When the sun rose, there only remained a black and ugly pit to mark the place where Deacon Fletcher's house had stood.
And of all its inmates, only Jason—carefully watched and tended at the house of Peter Hopkins—was left to tell the tale of that night's tragedy. And he, poor fellow, had no tale to tell, the delirium of fever having been upon him all the night. It was very doubtful if he would recover,—more than doubtful. Not one in a thousand could do so, with such an exposure at the critical period of his sickness.
Even more tenderly, with even more anxiety, did all in the country round minister to poor Hannah Lee. The story of her love, of her bravery, of her heroic self-abnegation, spread throughout all those parts, and there was no end to what was done for her by neighbors and friends. So widely did her fame spread, that people from thirty, forty, and even fifty miles away came to see her, or sent messages, or money, or delicacies to comfort her.
Whatcouldbe done for them was done, and they both lived.
When Jason Fletcher arose from his sick bed, he arose another man than the Jason Fletcher who was thrown down in the arbor by Farmer Hopkins. He went sick, a dependent, simple, good-hearted, though impatient boy, worn out by the constraints of twenty years, but capable of future cultivation and improvement; he arose from his sickness a moody, cross-grained, dogged and impatient man, whose only memories were tinged red with wrong, and made bitter by thought of what he had endured. It was little matter to him that all his father's broad acres were now his own—the thought of the horrible death his parents had died only suggested a question in his mind, whether it were not a 'judgment' on them: they having lived to persecute him too long already. Through all the vista of his past life he saw only gloom and shadows, and no ray of brightness cheered the retrospective glance.
No ray? Yes, there was one. He saw a fair young girl, loving and innocent, whose sweet face scarce ever left his thoughts. She reigned where father and mother held no sway; and she made, with the sunshine of her love, a clear heaven for him even in the purgatory of the past. So he lay, slowly gathering strength, dreaming about her. And presently they told him—gently as might be—how she had saved him.[pg 165]And they nearly killed him in the telling.
When he was well enough to be about, it was strange that they would not allow him to see her. She was still very ill, they said, and the doctor, a reasonable man enough usually, utterly refused him admission to her chamber. He fretted at this, and as he gained strength he 'went wrong.'
Mingled with the memory of his old privations was a full assurance of his present liberty. He was of age, and he owned, by right, all the extensive property the Deacon, his father, had so laboriously amassed. During all his boyhood he had never had a shilling, at any one time, that he could call his own; now hundreds of pounds stood ready at his bidding, and he proceeded very speedily to spend them. During all his boyhood he had been cut off from the amusements common to the youth of that day; now he launched out into the most extravagant pleasures his money could procure. Money was nothing, for he had it in plenty; character was nothing, for he had none to lose; only love remained to him of all the good things he might have held, and love lay bleeding while he was denied access to Hannah. Love lay bleeding, and he turned for comfort to the wine-cup, and raised Bacchus to the place Cupid should have occupied. Alas for Jason Fletcher!
Weeks rolled on and passed into months, and still he was refused speech with, or right of, Hannah. And he chafed at the denial. Had she not risked everything to save his life? And he could not even thank her!
At length, being unable to find further excuse wherewith to put him off, they one day told him he could see his love. They endeavored to prepare him by hints and suggestions as to the probable consequences of the trial she had passed through, but all that they could say or he imagine had not prepared him for the fearful sight.
Poor Hannah Lee! This scarred, deformed and helpless body, without proper hands—oh! white hands, how well he remembered them!—without comeliness of form or feature, was all that was left of the once glorious creature, whose heaven-given beauty had ensnared his fresh and untutored heart! Poor Hannah Lee!
The rough youth, loving her yet, but repelled by the horrible aspect she presented, fell sobbing upon his knees and buried his face in the bed-clothing. He spoke no word, but the tumultuous throes of his agony shook the room as he knelt beside her. And from the bed arose a wail more terrible in its utter, eternal sorrowfulness than had ever fallen upon the ears of those present. It was the wail of a soul recognizing for the first time that the loveliness of life had passed away forever.
They mingled their cries thus for a little time, and then Jason arose and staggered from the room. He would have spoken, but the dreadful sorrow rose up and choked him. All the memories of the past were linked with youth and beauty. He could not speak to the blight before him, as to his love and his life, and so, with blind and lumbering footsteps, he toiled heavily from the house.
The fires of the Revolution had broken forth and swept over New England, burning out like stubble the little loyalty to the crown left in men's hearts.
At the battle of Bunker Hill Jason Fletcher fought like a tiger. Last among the latest, he clubbed his musket, and was driven slowly backward from the slight redoubt.
He was heard of at White Plains, at Trenton, Princeton, Brandywine, Germantown, and always with marvelous mention of courage and prowess. Then he was promoted from the ranks, and was mentioned as 'Lieutenant Fletcher.' Then there were rumors of some dishonor that had sullied the brightness of his fame; and then it came to be hinted about that in all the rank and file of the patriot army there was no one so utterly dissolute and drunken as he. And then came news of his ignominiously quitting the service, and a cloud dropped down[pg 166]about him, and no word, good or bad, came home from the castaway any more.
Meanwhile poor Hannah Lee languished upon her bed of suffering, but did not die. And finally, when spring after spring had spread new verdure over the rough hills among which she dwelt, she got, by little and little, to venturing out into the village streets. And when they saw her bowed form and her ugly, misshapen hands, the village children, knowing her history, forbore to sneer at or taunt her. All the village loved the unfortunate creature, and all the village strove together to do her kindness.
One man in the town—a cousin of Jason the wanderer—was supposed to hold communication with him. This man notified Hannah one day that a safe life annuity had been purchased for her, and thereafter she lived at the house of Farmer Hopkins, not as a loved dependent, but as a cherished and faithful friend. Thus freed from the bitter sting of helpless poverty, Hannah sank resignedly into a quiet and honorable life.
At length, one warm summer day, when Jason Fletcher should have been about forty years of age, there strayed into the village a blind mendicant, with a dog for guide, and a wooden leg rudely fastened to one stiff stump. This stranger, white-headed and with the care-lines of many years on his sadly furrowed face, sought out poor Hannah Lee, and told her that he had, by the grace of God, come back, at last, to die. Leading him with gentle counsels to that Mercy Seat where none ever seek in vain, poor Hannah saw him bend with contrite and humble spirit, and seek the forgiveness needed to atone for many years of sin. Patient and penitent he passed a few quiet years, and then she followed to the tomb the earthly remains of him for whom she had sacrificed a life.
And this being done, she removed to a distant town, where Martha Hopkins, now kind Mrs. Marjoram, dwelt.
And many years afterwards Mrs. Marjoram told her story, as a lesson that men should never judge a living soul by its outward habiliments.