Silent Struggles Part 50

This was all Jason Brown had to say, except that he had felt the strange influence, described by so many, when the woman addressed him. In spite of himself he was always constrained to lift his hat when she went by.

Indeed, so far had this feeling prevailed, that he had more than once put the quid of tobacco back into his pocket when it was almost to his mouth, because she happened to be looking that way; and would hide his cup of grog behind him if she chanced to be present when the rations of gin or rum were dealt out to the men. Jason Brown could not account for these things. He had never felt afraid or awkward in the presence of womankind before. If it was witchcraft--well, he couldn't say that the sin was altogether an unpleasant one. He knew nothing more; but his old woman had been with the prisoner a good deal, and might have something to tell.

As Jason Brown stepped heavily down into the crowd, his wife appeared on the stand, prim, cold, and self-possessed, like a statue of wood. She looked toward the prisoner with a cold, quiet glance, and then gave herself up to be questioned. Her story did not vary from that of the other witnesses, save that she threw no feeling into it, but spoke the simple truth without even an implied comment. Yes, she had loved the lady, loved her so well from the very first, that it seemed almost like a sin. But it appeared to her that this affection sprang out of the dreariness left at her hearth after the two children died. It was very pleasant to sit at her spinning-wheel and see the sweet, mournful look on that face. Goody Brown could not help but think that the poor lady had lost something that she loved, and felt lonesome over it, for sometimes she would sit minutes together looking out on the sea till tears filled her eyes and blinded them. It was these tears that went to her heart. Others might have been bewitched by her smiles and her sweet voice, but she always thought of her children when the lady fell to crying, and longed to kneel down at her feet, sorrowful like herself, and pray G.o.d to help them both.

Had the witness seen nothing else that was strange in the prisoner?

Yes; one thing did happen which she had never mentioned to any human being except her husband. One day when Barbara Stafford was taking some things out of a trunk, Goody Brown went into her room suddenly, when the sunshine was streaming in at the window, and saw what seemed to her a wreath of living fire on the bed; a pair of handcuffs blazed in the same light, and a chain, half gold, half flame, rippled across the pillow.

The prisoner started when she opened the door, and made an attempt to fling a purple silk mantle, that she had just taken from the trunk, over these things, but seeing that it was too late she dropped the garment and, pale with fright, asked what brought the housewife there, in a voice that was almost cross.

The witness looked in wonder at these strange objects, and asked if they would not set the bed on fire; at which the lady smiled, answering: "No, they were only bright stones playing with the sunshine, but cold and hard as rocks."

Then the witness touched the chain and saw that the prisoner spoke truth. It seemed like handling drops of frozen water. She asked what they were good for, and what use they could be put to. At which the lady sat the wreath upon her head, hung the chain around her neck, and fastened the handcuffs to her wrist with a snap that sounded like the click of a lock. She stood close by the window, and it appeared as if a rainbow had been broken over her.

Then the witness asked what the stones were called. The prisoner did not answer, but took them from her head and arms with a deep sigh, saying that they were of little use to her, and only made her heart ache. Then she put them up in a leather box lined with red velvet, and pressed them down into her trunk.

The witness had heard that witches sometimes crowned themselves with fire; and this thing troubled her even then, for the lady had not acted like herself, but turned red and white in the same breath, and spoke sharply, as she had never done before. The witness had not wished to stay in the room after that. When Barbara Stafford came out she looked very anxious, and asked Goody Brown not to mention any thing about the stones she had seen, or the rich garments packed in her trunk, as the farm-house stood in a lonely place, and the knowledge that such things could be found there might tempt robbers, she said.

This request, and the evident anxiety of the prisoner, had given the witness some troubled thoughts, but she had not really considered the fiery stones as witch ornaments till after Barbara Stafford's visit that night, when the shadows swarmed so thickly along her path.

Here the judge asked if the prisoner's trunk had been searched, and was answered that a thorough examination had been made, but no jewels found.

Then Goody Brown remembered another event. One day she had gone down to the wharf to carry her husband's dinner to him on shipboard, and was returning home, when a young man, who looked like a foreigner, came from the direction of her dwelling, carrying a small travelling-bag in his hand. He pa.s.sed her, walking fast, and lifting his hat as if she had been a lady.

But what was there in this to implicate the prisoner?

Nothing, only that same man had come to the house to ask for a drink of milk on the very day that Barbara was rescued from the waves, and the housewife had caught a glimpse of him coming out of her room as she lay sleeping there. Besides, the boxes which had disappeared so strangely were his property. More than this. When Goody went back to her house she found the door open, and the trunk in which Barbara Stafford had packed the witch crown had been moved from its place. The lock was secure. But she knew that it had been opened, by a girdle of blue ribbon which hung over the edge, and was half shut in.

Was this all the witness had to say?

Yes; she knew nothing more, except that in every thing the lady had been kind and gentle in her house--more like an angel of light than a witch.

She had again and again heard her praying in the night. Besides, she had given her money to buy a marble grave-stone for the two children who had left her house so lonesome.

At last old t.i.tuba took the stand. Her withered face seemed small, and more shrivelled up than ever; but her eyes, usually sharp and piercing as those of a rattlesnake, were now hard as steel. Instead of glancing round the court with her usual vigilance, she kept her gaze fixed on the judge, as if all her duty lay with him. The prosecutor expected much from this witness. She had been with Abigail Williams and Elizabeth Parris from their infancy, and must know better than any other person the effect which Barbara Stafford had produced upon them. She had helped to decoct the herbs and roots which Barbara loved to gather, and had herself drank of this devil's broth, as those pleasant, wholesome drinks were now denominated. It was these drinks, no doubt, that had shrunk up her own features, and made her eyes so bloodshot.

t.i.tuba's first words flung the court into consternation. When called upon to look at the prisoner, she turned her head resolutely another way, calling out,

"No, no! What has old t.i.tuba to do with the stranger? It was I, old t.i.tuba, who made the drinks, and it was I who went out in the night for herbs. Poor old t.i.tuba meant right; but if witches walked by her side, unseen, and put strange plants into her ap.r.o.n, how was she to know? She had heard the mandrakes cry out when she tore up their roots; and once had plucked a plant from the earth out of which the blood dropped red when her knife cut it, and whispers ran through the forest as she carried it away. These roots she had been tempted to put into the household beer just before Elizabeth was taken ill."

"Had Barbara Stafford tempted her?" This was a question put by the judge. "Had she been near when the mandrake shrieked?"

"No; old t.i.tuba was alone, it was her work altogether. She was the witch--she had yielded herself to the evil one in her old age--it was her lips which had given forth the poison that ran through the whole household. Beguiled by unseen devils, she had talked strange and wicked things to Abigail Williams, and turned her to stone. The witch poison had spread from cousin to cousin--from father to child--from parlor to kitchen, till the minister's household was utterly accursed, and she, old t.i.tuba, the Indian woman--she, the witch of witches, had done it all."

When t.i.tuba was dismissed from the stand, she cast one imploring glance toward the dusky young stranger, who still kept his place near the judges. When she saw by his look that he seemed satisfied with what she had done, the fire came back to her eyes, and pa.s.sing quickly down the aisle where he stood, she whispered:

"Has t.i.tuba done well?"

The young man did not answer her, but turned another way, apparently unconscious of her whisper.

While the judges were consulting together, t.i.tuba glided through the crowd; an Indian who stood near the door, withdrew the blanket from his shoulders and cast it over her head. Thus disguised after the fashion of her tribe, she found her way into the forest, thinking, poor old soul, that in confessing herself a witch, and taking the household curse on her own head, she had saved the beautiful, strange lady from death.

Alas, it was all in vain! The judges looked upon old t.i.tuba as an accomplice, not as a princ.i.p.al. Thus, in their minds, Barbara's guilt was confirmed.

CHAPTER XLVI.

THE STRANGE ADVOCATE.

The evidence for the prosecution was here exhausted, and Barbara had nothing to offer in her defence. A judge, more compa.s.sionate than his brethren, asked the prisoner if she had no counsel.

Barbara looked up at this question, smiled faintly, and shook her head.

"Wherefore should I seek counsel?" she said. "I have no friends, and those who bear witness of my innocence injure me most. What could eloquence or wisdom do in behalf of a creature so forsaken?"

"No, not forsaken--do not say that. One friend is ready to stand by you," whispered a voice in her ear, and looking suddenly around she saw Norman Lovel, with all the fire of a generous nature in his face, ready to die at her feet, or in her defence, despite his patron--despite all the judges on earth.

A beautiful joy broke over Barbara Stafford's face; the loneliness of desolation was no longer around her. But other eyes were bent on Norman Lovel, and when Barbara smiled, the frown upon that dark forehead gloomed like midnight.

"The prisoner refuses counsel," said the judge. "Let the trial proceed."

"Not so," cried a clear voice, that rang over the crowd with singular distinctness. "The lady has counsel. I, an admitted advocate in the English courts, as these credentials testify, stand here in her defence."

Barbara Stafford started at the sound of that voice. It was the son of King Philip, who had flung himself in the midst of his most deadly enemies to rescue her from death. Norman Lovel started forward and took his place by the young man, whom he saw for the first time, and toward whom his heart leaped in quick sympathy.

The judges consulted together. The case was a singular one, and they were not altogether certain about admitting a stranger into the provincial courts without due question. But the credentials which the young man submitted were genuine, and after a little he was escorted with considerable show of dignity to a place before the judges. Though armed with the impulses of a giant, and a kind of eloquence that might have kindled enthusiasm in any heart not locked close by superst.i.tion, which is the romance of bigotry, he might as well have argued with the rocks on the hills, as attempted that woman's defence before a bigoted jury, and those iron-hearted judges. What argument could he use which would not wound the self-love of those solemn men? how could he arouse sympathies which they repudiated as a sin, or appeal to the judgment which was bound down by prejudices, reverenced as solemn allegations?

At first his voice was husky and faint; the very might of his sympathy for the woman who sat gazing on him so piteously paralyzed his powers; but indignation at last broke the trammels from his speech, and with a loud, clear utterance, he entered upon her defence.

Had not both judges and jury been blind with bigotry and solemn self-conceit, his first argument must have enforced the prisoner's acquittal. With the might of a powerful intellect he unravelled the tissue of evidence, and exhibited the case as it would appear this day.

"The evil," he said, "lay not in the gentle lady arraigned before them, but in the disturbed minds of the witnesses: Samuel Parris was a man of books, of meditation, and thought--a poet, diseased by the unwritten music in his soul, which had no power to express itself in long sermons, and to which all other avenues to sympathy were closed up. It was this that had drawn him into the storm, and had sent him to battling the waves face to face with death on the coast. It was this that made love for his child idolatry, from which he was compelled by a sensitive conscience to fast and pray, as from a grievous sin.

"Samuel Parris, the princ.i.p.al witness, was neither insincere nor insane, but a man born in advance of the age, to whom endowments, that would have been greatness if understood even by himself, were turned into a torment and a curse. This quick imagination, this sensitive love, had seized upon the old man's reason, and thus rendered him a most dread witness--a thousand times more dangerous than falsehood or malice could have been, because of his honesty." The other witnesses he touched on lightly and with gentleness, but when he left them and threw his fiery soul into a protest and appeal for the prisoner, the pa.s.sion of his eloquence was enough to stir even that crowd of prejudging accusers.

Why had Barbara Stafford done these strange things? How, except from the Prince of Darkness, had she attained the power of winning every soul that came in contact with hers into subjection? Why was she possessed of a beauty which died with the first youth of most women--a fresh, proud beauty, to which years only gave grandeur, except that she had made a compact with the evil one, and given her soul in exchange for the marvellous beauty in which her diabolical power princ.i.p.ally lay? How could he, or any man, answer charges like these--charges based on imagination only, yet for which a fellow-creature was in jeopardy of her life?

How should he answer? Let the judge and the jury look upon the woman where she sat, with halberts bristling around her, and a tribunal of death that moment waiting to hurl her into eternity; for, guard the dignity of that court as they might, such was its object. See how gently she watches these proceedings--see how brave she is. Though a woman upon the brink of eternity, rich in beauty, and strong with life, she is not afraid to die. Was that the att.i.tude of a fiend? Was that troubled smile, so full of forgiveness and pity, the smile of a devil or an angel? Let the jury look upon that face, and answer to the most high G.o.d if they refused to profit by the evidence beaming therein!

Here the men of the jury looked at Barbara Stafford with a single accord, as if they had no power to resist the direction of the young advocate's eye, and it seemed impossible to turn from her gaze, so mournful was the gloom of those large eyes, so calm was the att.i.tude with which she met their scrutiny.

But here one of the judges arose, and warned the jury, that a glance like that was the most dangerous fascination that Satan gave to his witch children, and besought them to look straight toward the bench, thus saving their souls from jeopardy.

Then the wonderful eloquence of the young man was aroused, his magnificent eyes shot fire, his lip curved, and his thin nostrils dilated; all the strength and fervor of his being was flung into the scathing denunciation which he hurled against the court, and against the people whom this tribunal represented. It was the wild eloquence of despair, for he knew when the jury turned to look upon Winthrop, the chief judge, whose rebuke had crushed the rising pity which might have saved Barbara Stafford, that her doom was sealed. Thus, with the terrible conviction that he was avenging the fate of a doomed woman rather than pleading with a hope, he poured out a wild outburst of pa.s.sionate eloquence--now appeal--now denunciation--now a wailing lament, that made the jury tremble, and the judges turn white in the face, as if an avenging angel had descended to protect the woman they were about to adjudge to death.

This eloquence, native to the Indian, overbore the restraint of education, and as the wild torrent of feeling rushed over the mult.i.tude, it fired the superst.i.tion, brooding there, into a terrible conviction. A word only was wanting, like a lighted match, to ignite these lurid apprehensions. It came from a far-off corner of the meeting-house, where one of the witnesses stood aghast with wonder, and trembling in all his ma.s.sive limbs.

"It is the man who came with us in the hold of the vessel. He followed her after the storm. He it was who left the heavy boxes in my keeping."