Silent Struggles Part 48

"Friend, you ask a solemn question, and I will solemnly answer it.

Before the Most High I cannot yet give a full and free belief to this enormity, which men call witchcraft. Yet when such judges as Hale, and many of like sort, give it credence, and hold solemn tribunals over it, I dare not oppose my judgment against theirs."

Samuel Parris arose to his feet and leaned heavily on his cane for support.

"What if these doubts be true?" he said, moving his head and looking away into vacancy. "Then what am I but a bearer of false witness, a persecutor, and if this lady is driven to her death, a murderer!"

"We can but walk according to the light which G.o.d has given us,"

answered Sir William.

"Tell me," continued Parris, "did this woman impress you with a sense of her diabolical power? Did your heart beat evenly as she spoke? Could you breath without an effort?"

"Nay, I cannot tell if the sensation I felt was evil or good," Phipps answered. "Compa.s.sion never yet swelled my heart so near to bursting. I tell you of a truth, Samuel Parris, when I was talking to that unhappy woman, I felt my knees shake, my breath stand still, and my very being go out to her in a flood of sorrowful tenderness, such as I never felt for mortal woman--but one."

"Then--then--you did think of _her_!" cried Parris, suddenly standing upright. "That was the question I dared not ask. Has her memory haunted you as it besets me, night and day, not only now but ever since that ship came drifting toward me through the storm?"

"Hush!" said the governor, and his voice scarcely rose above a whisper, while his face turned coldly white. "If this thing is witchcraft may it not drag the memories we love out of the very grave to haunt us?"

"Even so I have reasoned," answered Parris.

"G.o.d help us!" exclaimed Phipps, rising and beginning to pace the room with long, powerful strides, "for we have fallen on evil times."

Samuel Parris followed his friend's tall figure as it strode to and fro in the room with wistful interest.

"I came hither for counsel of thy younger and more vigorous mind," he said, with touching melancholy, "but everywhere that my footsteps turn, doubt and terror spring up. It grieves me sorely, son William, that my words have driven the color from that face, and the calm from thy bosom.

Forgive me before I go!"

Phipps broke off abruptly in his walk. His grand face had regained its composure: it was pale still, but resolutely calm.

"Father," he said, gently, using an old term of endearment, "I am unfit to give counsel in this matter. See you not how weak I am?"

Parris took the hand held out to him and pressed it with solemn fervor.

"William, I too will see this woman in prison: peradventure some light may be vouchsafed to me."

"After that, come to me again," said the governor.

Thus the two friends parted.

The minister did indeed go to the prison, where his victim was confined, but she resolutely refused to see him. "No good could come of the interview," she said. "She was resigned to her fate, and only asked to be left in quiet till her day of humiliation came on." The only person that she would permit to enter her presence was Norman Lovel, whose faith in her goodness had never been shaken for an instant. Twice a dark-browed and singularly handsome young man made urgent solicitation to be admitted to her prison, but she never heard of it. Being a stranger of singular appearance, the guard had refused him without communicating his wish to her, but the fact was stated to Samuel Parris with such interpretation as an ignorant and superst.i.tious man might be expected to give. To him the singular beauty of the visitor's face, the magnificent eyes and raven hair, could alone belong to the evil one himself. Certain it was, no human being like that had ever been recognized by any one in or out of the city till he began to haunt the witch-prison.

Here was new cause for suspicion, and once more the minister's heart hardened itself. Disappointed in his hopes of counsel from the governor, the restless man betook himself to his brother divines, and told them his doubts and sorrows with the simple truth so natural to his character. When he described the condition of his child and told how Barbara Stafford, who seemed at first an angel of light, had wrought a fiend's work in his household, the ministers rebuked his unbelief and reasoned with him diligently, till he began to look upon his gentler feelings as a snare of Satan, ever on the alert to save his own. To this belief, at last, Sir William Phipps brought himself, but slowly and with reluctance. His heart smote him as he gave the lady up, but how would he oppose such evidence? After admitting so much it was impossible for a just man to feel any thing but holy indignation against the person who had, by satanic power, disturbed the beautiful character of his favorite Elizabeth Parris.

From that time he began to look upon the interest which young Lovel manifested in the prisoner as a proof of her pernicious influence, and rebuked the young man sternly when he sought to arouse kindly feelings in her behalf once more.

Thus weeks and months went by, leaving Barbara Stafford in miserable solitude, till the frost crept over the forest, and the white snow fell upon the earth like a winding sheet; then they brought her forth for trial.

CHAPTER XLIII.

THE MINISTER'S EVIDENCE.

The trial was one which filled the community with a certain sense of awe. It was no old woman, brought up in their midst, whose very ignorance could be urged in judgment against her; but a brave, beautiful lady, full of life, and bright with intellect, whose very presence as she walked up those aisles, with a forest of halberts bristling around her, made the proudest of her judges hold his breath. The prisoner sat down upon a bench placed near the pulpit, within sight of the communion-table which was surrounded by her judges, for whom a platform had been built, lifting them in sight of the people. She was very pale, and her eyes had a mournful look inexpressibly touching, but there was neither timidity nor unconcern in her appearance; she seemed quiet as a lamb, but weary unto death, like one who had been driven a long way, and through rough places, to be slaughtered at last.

The meeting-house was crowded. The square pews, the galleries and staircases, groaned under a weight of human life. Men crowded upon each other, like hounds on the scent, only to obtain a glimpse of the beautiful witch, or to catch a tone of her voice. Like sportsmen who had brought down a splendid bird in their search after common game, the rabble gloried in the queenliness and grace of its victim. The public had become tired of hanging withered old crones on the witch-gallows, and wanted exactly a creature like that, to give piquancy and zest to their terrible hunt after human life.

Inside and out, the meeting-house was beset with a breathless throng.

The windows were open, though the air was sharp and full of frost, that the curious crowd, which trampled down the snow without, might get a glimpse of that pale face. The forest, out of whose bosom the city of Boston had been cut, swept down close to the building, and the crowd extended into its margin. It was observed that a few Indians mingled with the people in this direction, and that others were occasionally seen moving among the naked trees farther up the woods, where a hemlock hollow broke off the view.

When the trial commenced, and the prosecuting attorney was about to open his case, drawing all eyes to the meeting-house and the proceedings within, a train of savages came gliding out of these hemlock shadows, and mingling imperceptibly with the crowd, through which they moved like a brook stirring the long gra.s.s of a meadow.

It was a common thing for friendly Indians to mix in such crowds, and no one observed that a sort of military precision marked the movement of these seemingly friendly savages, even while penetrating the mult.i.tude, and that they dropped into line, after entering the meeting-house, forming a cordon from the platform, on which the judges sat, to the front entrance doors.

Had these savages been in full costume, their number might have seemed formidable enough to excite some anxiety; but they wore no war-paint, and came after the fashion of a friendly nation, with blankets to keep them from the cold, and a movement so quiet that their very presence gave little apprehension.

At their head, and walking so far in advance that no one but a keen observer would have guessed him of the party, came a young man, handsomely garbed after the fashion of the times, as a person of condition might be, and with a certain air of self-centred ease that would have distinguished him in any place where the general attention was not fixed on one point.

He was a young man of wonderful presence, dark like a Spaniard, with quick, brilliant eyes, and features finely chiselled, bold in the outline, and yet delicate. His mouth had a beautiful power of expression, and his forehead was like dusky marble, cut when the artist was thinking of war and tempest. This man had made his way close up to the platform, where the judges were seated, and listened with keen attention to the proceedings.

The prosecuting counsel opened his case with great vigor and eloquence.

Then witnesses for the crown were called, and Samuel Parris stood forth.

The old man was agitated, but firm in his sense of right. It was seldom that a witness of so much dignity appeared upon a trial like that, for usually the accusers, like their victims, were persons of low position and small attainments. Here the wisdom and piety of the crowd rose up in array against one helpless woman.

Samuel Parris required no questioning. He told his story with brief earnestness, unconsciously drawing conclusions from the facts he related, fatal to the prisoner, but with a solemn conviction of their truth.

"Did he recognize the prisoner at the bar?" he was asked. "Yes, he had known her some months; it had seemed to him from the first that she must have been familiar to him years ago. That was doubtless one of her delusions; but the feeling had led him to think of her with friendly interest, and extend hospitalities which had conducted him and his family into a deadly snare."

"Where had he seen her first?"

"In the midst of a terrible storm, which the inhabitants of Boston might well remember; when the sh.o.r.es were lashed and trampled down by the tempest, where the waves rioted and tore against each other like mad animals, and out to sea all was one turmoil of wind, waters, and black, angry clouds.

"That woman's influence must have been infernal in its power, for in the midst of this storm he had been impelled forth to the heights--he, a feeble old man, urged forward by a premonition, that, in the black turmoil of the tempest, he would find something waited for all his life.

He went, with his garments in the wind, and the cold rain beating against his temples--went, and saw, in the midst of the storm, a great ship heaving sh.o.r.eward, with vast clouds falling around her, lurid and luminous with a red sunset, in the midst of which stood that woman--the prisoner. As he watched, a young man had come up to him on the heights, even Norman Lovel, the youth who was but now whispering to the woman.

This young man confessed there, in the whirl of the wind, that he, too, had been impelled to seek the sh.o.r.e, and look for some great good, which was to come to him up from the stormy sea.

"They saw the ship in company. That woman was upon its deck, around her surged angry billows and looming clouds, fringed for a moment by the sunset.

"They saw the woman come down the side of the vessel, where it rocked and plunged like a desert horse in the la.s.so; saw her put off in a small boat, amid the boiling waves; saw the boat leap and reel toward the land. He and young Lovel rushed down together to the base of the hills, far into the waves. They saw the boat strike, saw it crushed into atoms among the rocks, and saw the woman weltering in a whirlpool of waters.

The two, he and the young man, rushed into the waves, breasted them, battled with them like lions. A wild strength came to his arms, a supernatural power, that neither belonged to his feeble organization nor his age. From that time, no doubt, the evil one possessed him. How he tore the woman from the waves that had engulfed her he never knew; for the youth was hurled upon the sh.o.r.e, cold and dead, grasping her garments with both hands.

"The youth was dead, he could solemnly testify to that, for he felt his pulse, and kept one hand long over his heart feeling for the hushed life, but there was neither breath nor pulse--Lazarus, in his tomb, was not more lifeless when the Saviour looked upon him. Yes, the youth was surely dead. But when the woman arose from the sand, with her hair dropping salt rain, and her lips purple with cold, she saw him lying there, p.r.o.ne and white at her side. Then her pale face lighted up with supernatural gleams. She lifted his head and breathed upon it. She gathered him to her bosom, and pressed her cold lips down upon his forehead and his marble mouth--those kisses, the unearthly warmth of her eyes, brought him to life. She had purchased immortality of the evil one, and gave part of it to him.

"This was the one great act of sorcery that he had witnessed, and to which he now bore testimony before the most high G.o.d. After that, the woman obtained an unbounded power over the youth, who manifested an uncontrollable desire for her company; he had neglected his old friends and the most binding attachments; body and soul he had become the serf of her diabolical power."

Here Samuel Parris paused. The perspiration rose in great drops to his forehead, his hands shook as he wiped the moisture away.

"And is this all?" demanded the judge, while the audience broke the silence by hoa.r.s.e murmurs, that stole through the windows, and grew louder as the people outside took them up. "Is this all?"