Part 2

The evening, which followed the day whose events we have narrated, was one of those peculiar seasons of beauty when the climate of New England seems preferable to that of Italy. The sun went down in the soft haze of the horizon, while the full moon was rising at the same time in the east. Its mellow silver mingled with the deep gold of the sunset. The south-west wind, as warm as that of summer, but softer, was heard, at long intervals, faintly harping amidst the pines, and blending its low sighing with the lulling murmurs of the river. The inhabitants of Pentucket had taken the precaution, as night came on, to load their muskets carefully, and place them in readiness for instant use, in the event of an attack from the savages. Such an occurrence, was, indeed, not unlikely, after the rude treatment which the son of old Passaconaway had received at the settlement. It was well known that the old chief was able, at a word, to send every warrior from Pennacook to Naumkeag upon the war-path of Miantonimo; the vengeful character of the Indians was also understood; and, in the event of an out-breaking of their resentment, the settlement of Pentucket was, of all others, the most exposed to danger.

"Don't go to neighbor Clements's to-night, Mary," said Alice Ward to her young, unmarried sister; "I'm afraid some of the tawny Indians may be lurking hereabout. Mr. Ward says he thinks they will be dangerous neighbors for us."

Mary had thrown her shawl over her head, and was just stepping out. "It is but a step, as it were, and I promised good-wife Clements that I would certainly come. I am not afraid of the Indians. There's none of them about here except Red Sam, who wanted to buy me of Mr. Ward for his squaw; and I shall not be afraid of my old spark."

The girl tripped lightly from the, threshold towards the dwelling of her neighbor. She had passed nearly half the distance when the pathway, before open to the moonlight, began to wind along the margin of the river, overhung with young sycamores and hemlocks. With a beating heart and a quickened step she was stealing through the shadow, when the boughs on the river-side were suddenly parted, and a tall man sprang into the path before her. Shrinking back with terror, she uttered a faint scream.

"Mary Edmands!" said the stranger, "do not fear me."

A thousand thoughts wildly chased each other through the mind of the astonished girl. That familiar voice--that knowledge of her name--that tall and well-remembered form! She leaned eagerly forward, and looked into the stranger's face. A straggling gleam of moonshine fell across its dark features of manly beauty.

"Richard Martin! can it be possible!"

"Yea, Mary," answered the other, "I have followed thee to the new world, in that love which neither sea nor land can abate. For many weary months I have waited earnestly for such a meeting as this, and, in that time, I have been in many and grievous perils by the flood and the wilderness, and by the heathen Indians and more heathen persecutors among my own people. But I may not tarry, nor delay to tell my errand. Mary, thou knowest my love; wilt thou be my wife?"

Mary hesitated.

"I ask thee again, if thou wilt share the fortunes of one who hath loved thee ever since thou wast but a child, playing under the cottage trees in old Haverhill, and who hath sacrificed his worldly estate, and perilled his soul's salvation for thy sake. Mary, dear Mary, for of a truth thou art very dear to me; wilt thou go with me and be my wife?"

The tones of Richard Martin, usually harsh and forbidding, now fell soft and musical on the ear of Mary. He was her first love, her only one. What marvel that she consented?

"Let us hasten to depart," said Martin, "this is no place for me. We will go to the Providence plantations. Passaconaway will assist us in our journey."

The bright flush of hope and joy faded from the face of the young girl. She started back from the embrace of her lover.

"What mean you, Richard? What was 't you said about our going to that sink of wickedness at Providence? Why don't you go back with me to sister Ward's?"

"Mary Edmands!" said Martin, in a tone of solemn sternness, "it is fitting that I should tell thee all. I have renounced the evil doctrines of thy brother-in-law, and his brethren in false prophecy. It was a hard struggle, Mary; the spirit was indeed willing, but the flesh was weak, exceeding weak, for I thought of thee, Mary, and of thy friends. But I had a measure of strength given me, whereby I have been enabled to do the work which was appointed me."

"Oh, Richard!" said Mary, bursting into tears, "I'm afraid you have become a Williamsite, one of them, who, Mr. Ward says, have nothing to hope for in this world or in that to come."

"The Lord rebuke him!" said Martin, with a loud voice. "Woe to such as speak evil of the witnesses of the truth. I have seen the utter nakedness of the land of carnal professors, and I have obeyed the call to come out from among them and be separate. I belong to that persecuted family whom the proud priests and rulers of this colony have driven from their borders. I was brought, with many others, before the wicked magistrates of Boston, and sentenced to labor, without hire, for the ungodly. But I have escaped from my bonds; and the Lord has raised up a friend for his servant, even the Indian Passaconaway, whose son I assisted, but a little time ago, to escape from his captors."

"Can it be?" sobbed Mary, "can it be? Richard, our own Richard, following the tribe of Gorton, the Familist! Oh, Richard, if you love me, if you love God's people and his true worship, do come away from those wicked fanatics."

"Thou art in the very gall of bitterness and the bond of iniquity," answered Martin. "Listen, Mary Edmands, to the creed of those whom thou callest fanatics. We believe in Christ, but not in man-worship. The Christ we reverence is the shadow or image of God in man; he was crucified in Adam of old, and hath been crucified in all men since; his birth, his passion, and his death, were but manifestations or figures of his sufferings in Adam and his descendants. Faith and Christ are the same, the spiritual image of God in the heart. We acknowledge no rule but this Christ, this faith within us, either in temporal or spiritual things. And the Lord hath blessed us, and will bless us, and truth shall be magnified and exalted in us; and the children of the heathen shall be brought to know and partake of this great redemption whereof we testify. But woe to the false teachers, and to them who prophesy for hire and make gain of their soothsaying. Their churches are the devices of Satan, the pride and vanity of the natural Adam. Their baptism is blasphemy; and their sacrament is an abomination, yea, an incantation and a spell. Woe to them who take the shadow for the substance, that bow down to the altars of human device and cunning workmanship, that make idols of their ceremonies! Woe to the high priests and the Pharisees, and the captains and the rulers; woe to them who love the wages of unrighteousness!"

The Familist paused from utter exhaustion, so vehemently had he poured forth the abundance of his zeal. Mary Edmands, overwhelmed by his eloquence, but still unconvinced, could only urge the disgrace and danger attending his adherence to such pernicious doctrines. She concluded by telling him, in a voice choked by tears, that she could never marry him while a follower of Gorton.

"Stay then," said Martin, fiercely dashing her hand from his, "stay and partake of the curse of the ungodly, even of the curse of Meroz, who come not up to the help of the Lord, against the mighty Stay, till the Lord hath made a threshing instrument of the heathen, whereby the pride of the rulers, and the chief priests, and the captains of this land shall be humbled. Stay, till the vials of His wrath are poured out upon ye, and the blood of the strong man, and the maid, and the little child is mingled together!"

The wild language, the fierce tones and gestures of her lover, terrified the unhappy girl. She looked wildly around her, all was dark and shadowy, an undefined fear of violence came over her; and, bursting into tears, she turned to fly. "Stay yet a moment," said Martin, in a hoarse and subdued voice. He caught hold of her arm. She shrieked as if in mortal jeopardy.

"Let go the gal, let her go!" said old Job Clements, thrusting the long barrel of his gun through the bushes within a few feet of the head of the Familist. "A white man, as sure as I live! I thought, sartin, 't was a tarnal In-in." Martin relinquished his hold, and, the next instant, found himself surrounded by the settlers.

After a brief explanation had taken place between Mr. Ward and his sister-in-law, the former came forward and accosted the Familist. "Richard Martin!" he said, "I little thought to see thee so soon in the new world, still less to see thee such as thou art. I am exceeding sorry that I cannot greet thee here as a brother, either in a temporal or a spiritual nature. My sister tells me that you are a follower of that servant of Satan, Samuel Gorton, and that you have sought to entice her away with you to the colony of fanatics at Rhode Island, which may be fitly compared to that city which Philip of Macedonia peopled with rogues and vagabonds, and the offscouring of the whole earth."

"John Ward, I know thee," said the unshrinking Familist; "I know thee for a man wise above what is written, a man vain, uncharitable, and given to evil speaking. I value neither thy taunts nor thy wit; for the one hath its rise in the bitterness, and the other in the vanity, of the natural Adam. Those who walk in the true light, and who have given over crucifying Christ in their hearts, heed not a jot of the reproaches and despiteful doings of the high and mighty in iniquity. For of us it hath been written: 'I have given them thy word and the world hath hated them because they are not of the world. If the world hate you, ye know that it hated me before it hated you. If they have hated me they will hate you also; if they have persecuted me they will persecute you.' And, of the scoffers and the scorners, the wise ones of this world, whose wisdom and knowledge have perverted them, and who have said in their hearts, There is none beside them, it hath been written, yea, and will be fulfilled: The day of the Lord of Hosts shall be upon every one that is proud and lofty, and upon every one that is lifted up, and he shall be brought low; and the loftiness of man shall be bowed down, and the haughtiness of man shall be brought low; and the Lord alone shall be exalted in that day; and the idols shall he utterly abolish.' Of thee, John Ward, and of thy priestly brotherhood, I ask nothing; and for the much evil I have received, and may yet receive at your hands, may ye be rewarded like Alexander the coppersmith, every man according to his works."

"Such damnable heresy," said Mr. Ward, addressing his neighbors, "must not be permitted to spread among the people. My friends, we must send this man to the magistrates."

The Familist placed his hands to his month, and gave a whistle, similar to that which was heard in the morning, and which preceded the escape of Wonolanset. It was answered by a shout from the river; and a score of Indians came struggling up through the brush-wood.

"Vile heretic!" exclaimed Mr. Ward, snatching a musket from the hands of his neighbor, and levelling it full at the head of Martin; "you have betrayed us into this jeopardy."

"Wagh! down um gun," said a powerful Indian, as he laid his rough hand on the shoulder of the minister. "You catch Wonolanset, tie um, shoot um, scare squaw. Old sachem come now, me tie white man, shoot um, roast um;" and the old savage smiled grimly and fiercely in the indistinct moonlight, as he witnessed the alarm and terror of his prisoner.

"Hold, Passaconaway!" said Martin, in the Indian tongue. "Will the great chief forget his promise?"

The sachem dropped his hold on Mr. Ward's arm. "My brother is good," he said; "me no kill um, me make um walk woods like Wonolanset." Martin spoke a few words in the chief's ear. The countenance of the old warrior for an instant seemed to express dissatisfaction; but, yielding to the powerful influence which the Familist had acquired over him, he said, with some reluctance, "My brother is wise, me do so."

"John Ward," said the Familist, approaching the minister, "thou hast devised evil against one who hath never injured thee. But I seek not carnal revenge. I have even now restrained the anger of this heathen chief whom thou and thine have wronged deeply. Let us part in peace, for we may never more meet in this world." And he extended his hand and shook that of the minister.

"For thee, Mary," he said, "I had hoped to pluck thee from the evil which is to come, even as a brand from the burning. I had hoped to lead thee to the manna of true righteousness, but thou last chosen the flesh- pots of Egypt. I had hoped to cherish thee always, but thou hast forgotten me and my love, which brought me over the great waters for thy sake. I will go among the Gentiles, and if it be the Lord's will, peradventure I may turn away their wrath from my people. When my wearisome pilgrimage is ended, none shall know the grave of Richard Martin; and none but the heathen shall mourn for him. Mary! I forgive thee; may the God of all mercies bless thee! I shall never see thee more."

Hot and fast fell the tears of that stern man upon the hand of Mary. The eyes of the young woman glanced hurriedly over the faces of her neighbors, and fixed tearfully upon that of her lover. A thousand recollections of young affection, of vows and meetings in another land, came vividly before her. Her sister's home, her brother's instructions, her own strong faith, and her bitter hatred of her lover's heresy were all forgotten.

"Richard, dear Richard, I am your Mary as much as ever I was. I'll go with you to the ends of the earth. Your God shall be my God, and where you are buried there will I be also."

Silent in the ecstasy of joyful surprise, the Familist pressed her to his bosom. Passaconaway, who had hitherto been an unmoved spectator of the scene, relaxed the Indian gravity of his features, and murmured, in an undertone, "Good, good."

"Will my brother go?" he inquired, touching Martin's shoulder; "my squaws have fine mat, big wigwam, soft samp, for his young woman."

"Mary," said Martin, "the sachem is impatient; and we must needs go with him." Mary did not answer, but her head was reclined upon his bosom, and the Familist knew that she resigned herself wholly to his direction. He folded the shawl more carefully around her, and supported her down the precipitous and ragged bank of the river, followed closely by Passaconaway and his companions.

"Come back, Mary Edmands!" shouted Mr. Ward. "In God's name come back."

Half a dozen canoes shot out into the clear moonlight from the shadow of the shore. "It is too late!" said the minister, as he struggled down to the water's edge. "Satan hath laid his hands upon her; but I will contend for her, even as did Michael of old for the body of Moses. Mary, sister Mary, for the love of Christ, answer me."

No sound came back from the canoes, which glided like phantoms, noiselessly and swiftly, through the still waters of the river. "The enemy hath prevailed," said Mr. Ward; "two women were grinding at my mill, the one is taken and the other is left. Let us go home, my friends, and wrestle in prayer against the Tempter."

The heretic and his orthodox bride departed into the thick wilderness, under the guidance of Passaconaway, and in a few days reached the Eldorado of the heretic and the persecuted, the colony of Roger Williams. Passaconaway, ever after, remained friendly to the white men. As civilization advanced he retired before it, to Pennacook, now Concord, on the Merrimac, where the tribes of the Naumkeags, Piscataquas, Accomentas, and Agawams acknowledged his authority.

THE OPIUM EATER.

[1833.]

Heavens! what a revulsion! what an upheaving from its lowest depths of the inner spirit! what an apocalypse of the world within me! Here was a panacea, a pharmakon nepenthes for all human woes; here was the secret of happiness about which philosophers had disputed for so many ages: happiness might be bought for a penny, and carried in the waistcoat pocket.--DEQUINCEY's "Confessions of an Opium Eater."

HE was a tall, thin personage, with a marked brow and a sunken eye.

He stepped towards a closet of his apartment, and poured out a few drops of a dark liquid. His hand shook, as he raised the glass which contained them to his lips; and with a strange shuddering, a nervous tremor, as if all the delicate chords of his system were unloosed and trembling, he turned away from his fearful draught.

He saw that my eye was upon him; and I could perceive that his mind struggled desperately with the infirmity of his nature, as if ashamed of the utter weakness of its tabernacle. He passed hastily up and down the room. "You seem somewhat ill," I said, in the undecided tone of partial interrogatory.

He paused, and passed his long thin fingers over his forehead. "I am indeed ill," he said, slowly, and with that quavering, deep-drawn breathing, which is so indicative of anguish, mental and physical. "I am weak as a child, weak alike in mind and body, even when I am under the immediate influence of yonder drug." And he pointed, as he spoke, to a phial, labelled "Laudanum," upon a table in the corner of the room.

"My dear sir," said I, "for God's sake abandon your desperate practice: I know not, indeed, the nature of your afflictions, but I feel assured that you have yet the power to be happy. You have, at least, warm friends to sympathize with you. But forego, if possible, your pernicious stimulant of laudanum. It is hurrying you to your grave."

"It may be so," he replied, while another shudder ran along his nerves; "but why should I fear it? I, who have become worthless to myself and annoying to my friends; exquisitely sensible of my true condition, yet wanting the power to change it; cursed with a lively apprehension of all that I ought now to be, yet totally incapable of even making an effort to be so! My dear sir, I feel deeply the kindness of your motives, but it is too late for me to hope to profit by your advice."

I was shocked at his answer. "But can it be possible," said I, "that the influence of such an excessive use of opium can produce any alleviation of mental suffering? any real relief to the harassed mind? Is it not rather an aggravation?"

"I know not," he said, seating himself with considerable calmness,--"I know not. If it has not removed the evil, it has at least changed its character. It has diverted my mind from its original grief; and has broken up and rendered divergent the concentrated agony which oppressed me. It has, in a measure, substituted imaginary afflictions for real ones. I cannot but confess, however, that the relief which it has afforded has been produced by the counteraction of one pain by another; very much like that of the Russian criminal, who gnaws his own flesh while undergoing the punishment of the knout.'"

"For Heaven's sake," said I, "try to dispossess your mind of such horrid images. There are many, very many resources yet left you. Try the effect of society; and let it call into exercise those fine talents which all admit are so well calculated to be its ornament and pride. At least, leave this hypochondriacal atmosphere, and look out more frequently upon nature. Your opium, if it be an alleviator, is, by your own confession, a most melancholy one. It exorcises one demon to give place to a dozen others.

'With other ministrations, thou, O Nature! Healest thy wandering and distempered child.'"

He smiled bitterly; it was a heartless, melancholy relaxation of features, a mere muscular movement, with which the eye had no sympathy; for its wild and dreamy expression, the preternatural lustre, without transparency, remained unaltered, as if rebuking, with its cold, strange glare, the mockery around it. He sat before me like a statue, whose eye alone retained its stony and stolid rigidity, while the other features were moved by some secret machinery into "a ghastly smile."

"I am not desirous, even were it practicable," he said, "to defend the use of opium, or rather the abuse of it. I can only say, that the substitutes you propose are not suited to my condition. The world has now no enticements for me; society no charms. Love, fame, wealth, honor, may engross the attention of the multitude; to me they are all shadows; and why should I grasp at them? In the solitude of my own thoughts, looking on but not mingling in them, I have taken the full gauge of their hollow vanities. No, leave me to myself, or rather to that new existence which I have entered upon, to the strange world to which my daily opiate invites me. In society I am alone, fearfully solitary; for my mind broods gloomily over its besetting sorrow, and I make myself doubly miserable by contrasting my own darkness with the light and joy of all about me; nay, you cannot imagine what a very hard thing it is, at such times, to overcome some savage feelings of misanthropy which will present themselves. But when I am alone, and under the influence of opium, I lose for a season my chief source of misery, myself; my mind takes a new and unnatural channel; and I have often thought that any one, even that of insanity, would be preferable to its natural one. It is drawn, as it were, out of itself; and I realize in my own experience the fable of Pythagoras, of two distinct existences, enjoyed by the same intellectual being.

"My first use of opium was the consequence of an early and very bitter disappointment. I dislike to think of it, much more to speak of it. I recollect, on a former occasion, you expressed some curiosity concerning it. I then repelled that curiosity, for my mind was not in a situation to gratify it. But now, since I have been talking of myself, I think I can go on with my story with a very decent composure. In complying with your request, I cannot say that my own experience warrants, in any degree, the old and commonly received idea that sorrow loses half its poignancy by its revelation to others. It was a humorous opinion of Sterne, that a blessing which ties up the tongue, and a mishap which unlooses it, are to be considered equal; and, indeed, I have known some people happy under all the changes of fortune, when they could find patient auditors. Tully wept over his dead daughter, but when he chanced to think of the excellent things he could say on the subject, he considered it, on the whole, a happy circumstance. But, for my own part, I cannot say with the Mariner in Coleridge's ballad, that

"'At an uncertain hour My agony returns;

And, till my ghastly tale is told, This heart within me burns.'"

He paused a moment, and rested his head upon his hand. "You have seen Mrs. H------, of -------?" he inquired, somewhat abruptly. I replied in the affirmative.

"Do you not think her a fine woman?"

"Yes, certainly, a fine woman. She was once, I am told, very beautiful."

"Once? is she not so now?" he asked. "Well, I have heard the same before. I sometimes think I should like to see her now, now that the mildew of years and perhaps of accusing recollections are upon her; and see her toss her gray curls as she used to do her dark ones, and act over again her old stratagem of smiles upon a face of wrinkles. Just Heavens! were I revengeful to the full extent of my wrongs, I could wish her no worse punishment.