Silent Struggles Part 60

"Look! look how the witch floats!" shouted the crowd. "Devils are holding her up; you can see them buffet the water."

Sure enough, two dark objects rose on each side of the woman, and seemed to be guiding her frail support through the turbulent waves.

"Shoot! shoot! Has any one a silver ball? else the witch will escape!"

cried a voice from the crowd. But the soldiers, appalled by what they believed to be the close presence of the evil one, stood dumb and motionless.

While the general attention was fixed upon this one object, a boat shot out from the right hand promontory, rowed by six men, and, struggling fiercely against the waves, moved toward the fragment of ice to which the woman was clinging.

"Look! look! A boat rowed by Indians! The red devils will save her! Fire upon them--fire on her!"

A dozen guns were uplifted. The click of their ponderous locks sounded fearfully distinct, for a deadly stillness had fallen on the mult.i.tude.

But on the moment a tumult arose in the crowd, from which the Indians had cautiously separated themselves. With the leap of panthers they sprung upon the soldiers, and failing to wrench the muskets from their hands, flung them headlong to the ice. Then making a sudden dash through the crowd the savages plunged into the forest, leaving wild commotion behind. While the tumult raged fiercest, half a dozen guns went off at random, and others were fired blindly as the soldiers scrambled up from the ice. But they failed to reach the boat, which moved steadily toward the ma.s.s of black drapery, now visible, now submerged in the water. An almost superhuman sweep of the oars brought that toiling craft close to the wretched woman, who clung, cold and senseless, to that crumbling fragment of ice. While the boat rocked like an egg-sh.e.l.l on the waves, the tall figure of a man rose upright among the oarsmen, made a desperate leap into the water, and tore that deathly form from its hold on the ice. Aided by the two Indians who had swam from their covert under the sheeted ice, and bravely kept the fragment which bore Barbara Stafford from submerging, he lifted her to the strong arms stretched down to help him, and clambered into the boat. There, upon a pile of blankets, she lay, white as snow, and cold as the ice that clung to her wet garments. The young man stooped to make sure that she was not quite dead, when a bullet hurtled out from the sh.o.r.e and struck him in the side. A wild leap in the air--a cry, sharp and clear as the yell of a wounded eagle, and Metacomet fell, bathed in blood, by the woman he had served so faithfully.

Now the tumult on the sh.o.r.e raged with fearful vehemence. Shouts and shrieks of cruel triumph swept over the waters. A boat was pushed across the ice, and shot out into the harbor, giving chase to the fugitives.

The dying chief lifted himself up and saw this new danger. He struggled for speech, but fell back gasping for breath.

Wahpee dropped his oar and attempted to staunch the blood which flowed in a crimson stream down his side.

"Let me die--but save her!" shouted the young man, in his last agony.

"Pull for the s.h.i.+p--or never dare to look for your chief up yonder!"

The savage sprang to his oar--and now the strength of fifty men seemed urging the boat forward. It fairly leaped through the water. Panting for breath, straining those sinewy arms till the muscles stood out like whip-cords, the savages bent to their desperate work, and by main strength distanced their pursuers. The s.h.i.+p's crew gathered on the deck watched this pursuit, and stood ready to aid the fugitives. A rope ladder was flung over the side of the vessel. Up its knotted cordage the savages toiled, carrying the rescued woman with them. They laid her on the deck, leaped like wild deer into the boat again, and pulled for the promontory they had left. The good s.h.i.+p, hired to do this merciful work by the last gold Metacomet possessed, was ready, with her anchor up, and with her sails all set. As the savages leaped down her side, she bore on her way, almost sinking the boatful of armed men that had daringly crossed her bows. In a desperate effort to save themselves these men allowed the craft, in which the dying chief lay, to gain a safe distance, and approach the promontory. But now a storm of bullets swept over it from the sh.o.r.e. Two of the oarsmen fell headlong to the water; another lay upon his face in the bottom of the boat. Still the little craft cut its way through all danger.

Abigail Williams stood on a strip of white sand at the extreme point of the promontory. Curving around the inner crescent of the bay, the soldiers were crowding back from the ice which was breaking up under their feet, but with their guns still levelled, and their bayonets flas.h.i.+ng like tongues of flame in the sunbeams that slanted across them.

When the fugitives drew near the promontory, Abigail stood directly within range of the guns. Metacomet had lifted himself to a sitting posture, and saw her, through the blinding agonies of death. Then, with his last strength, he pointed her out, and, speaking to a chief who still kept to his oar unharmed, cried with his last breath--

"She is my sister--the daughter of your king; take her to the forest.

Obey her--pro--"

He broke off. A shot struck the chief to whom he appealed. Concentrating all the life that was in him in one hoa.r.s.e shout of defiance, which filled his mouth with blood, the son of King Philip fulfilled the destiny of his race, and fell dead upon the bodies of his slain friends.

Cold as stone, and white as a corpse, Abigail Williams stood upon the beach while this awful scene was enacted, and saw her brother fall.

Again the soldiers levelled their guns for another volley, heedless of her danger--heedless of every thing. Right in the pathway of the bullets levelled at the boat, she stood. They flew over her head--they fell like rain in the water; and at last, one more merciful than the rest, pierced her through the heart. She fell without a moan, just as the savages, landing under a shower of hurtling lead, carried the body of their chief from the boat in open defiance, and bore him into the forest.

While the shot that killed that unhappy girl was still ringing in the air, two hors.e.m.e.n rode fiercely into the crowd, scattering it right and left, till their horses dashed out in bold relief on the ice in front of the soldiers. One was a gray-headed old man, who reeled in his saddle, and looked wildly from the soldiers to the water without the power to utter a word. The other, young and strong of purpose but wild with apprehension, called out in a voice so full of horror that it could scarcely be heard:

"Magistrates and soldiers! where is the woman you came here to murder? I bring her full pardon, signed by our governor, Sir William Phipps."

The sheriff came close to Norman Lovel's horse. "It is too late; she has gone."

With a groan that left his white lips in a single heave of agony, Samuel Parris dropped from his horse. He had fainted quite away.

"Not dead, peradventure, but yonder!" cried the sheriff, pointing to the vessel which was still clearly visible. "A party of Indians, led by the young man who defended her at the trial, rescued the sorceress--stark or living; I cannot affirm which."

"And she is gone safe--she is in that s.h.i.+p?" cried the young man, starting up exultingly in his stirrups, and gazing after the vessel with a great outburst of thankfulness. "G.o.d forever bless the man that saved her!"

"The pestilent heathen is dead, and half his boat's crew with him,"

answered the sheriff, with a grim smile. "We gave them three volleys.

See--their boat is drifting this way, bottom upwards, riddled through and through. They got off to the forest with the body of their leader; but I have sent a company after them."

"Recall that company, I command you, on the authority of Sir William Phipps! I would myself stand by the body of this young man, were it permitted, and do him the reverence his bravery has earned. March your soldiers back to the city, good master sheriff; they are no longer wanted here."

The sheriff received this order with a stiff bow, and turned away to muster his men.

Then for the first time Lovel discovered that Samuel Parris was lying p.r.o.ne upon the ice insensible, with scattered locks of gray hair blown across his face. The young man got down from his saddle at once, and dropping on one knee lifted the old man in his arms.

"Has no one a drop of brandy?" he inquired in great alarm. "See how cold and pale he is!"

A flask of spirits was handed over his shoulder by one of the by-standers. Lovel poured some of its contents by force into those cold lips, and after a little the minister revived.

"Oh, my son, G.o.d is against us! She is dead! dead!" murmured the old man. Great tears rose and swelled in his eyes, choking his voice; but the anguish he could not speak swept over his face.

"She is safe, father; she has escaped! Lift your eyes, and they can yet discern the s.h.i.+p which carries her out of danger."

"Art thou sure--quite sure, Norman?" cried the old man, clasping his hands in an ecstasy of grat.i.tude.

"Here are those who saw her borne up the sides of the vessel."

"Let us go home, my son. Elizabeth will be sorely anxious," said the old man, struggling to his feet. "But you avouch for this? a mistake would be terrible."

"Yes, yes. Dear lady! She is out of their reach at last, and I much fear neither you nor I will ever see her face again."

"Nay, nay; but I have great need of rest and thought. Let us go home."

Norman helped the old man to his saddle, and the two rode slowly away, following the soldiers. When the sun went down that night, not a human form could be seen along all that trampled sh.o.r.e save one, so cold and beautiful, that but for the garments and those ma.s.ses of rich, black hair, it might have been chiselled from parian marble. Thus, partly on the sand, partly on the crusted snow, all that was left of that unhappy girl, called Abigail Williams, lay, till the sun set behind those naked trees and the moon arose. Then out of the black depths of the wilderness, came the figure of an old woman, toiling through the snow, and almost bent double. She sat down by the lifeless girl, and attempted to lift her head; but it resisted her hands, and fell back on the snow like marble. Then poor old t.i.tuba stretched out her withered limbs by the side of her dead charge, and winding her arms around that cold form broke into a funereal chant, so sad, so thrillingly mournful, that it wailed through the whispers of those naked tree-boughs with the anguish of a soul in pain. Then along the track she had made in the snow came a file of Indians, whose death-chant swelled with hers into a wild, fierce music. They lifted the young girl from the ground, and bore her away, filling the winter's night with that weird chant as they went. Behind them, following meekly along the beaten path, the lone Indian woman crept, her slow footsteps faltering with age. Still her feeble voice sent forth its death-wail, and thus like a shadow she disappeared.

In a hollow lined with crusted snow and overhung with naked forest-trees, they had laid the young chief Metacomet upon a rude bier formed of evergreen branches, with the foliage fresh upon them. By his side they placed the sister whose life had been broken up so fatally by his kingly ambition. Then these savages, chiefless and wanderers forever more, lifted the bier, and turned their footsteps toward Mount Hope, where the brother and sister were laid in one grave, the last of a kingly and most persecuted race.

CHAPTER LV.

CLOSING SCENES.

Samuel Parris kept his word faithfully; for added to his own promise was the sacramental oath taken by Barbara Stafford, which he dared not force her to break. But the secret confided to him lay heavily on his conscience, and the struggle there wore away his strength. For a whole year he avoided his old friend the governor, and refused to visit his house, even when Elizabeth became its permanent inmate as Norman Lovel's wife. But at last there came a period when the old man went mournfully to the house he had shunned. This time, he was summoned there to attend, not a wedding, but a funeral--Lady Phipps had laid down a life all suns.h.i.+ne, and gone suddenly into the valley and shadow of death. When Samuel Parris rode up to that stately mansion, he found its pillars draped with black, and a hatchment over the front entrance. These emblems of grief struck him with singular feelings of blended grief and thankfulness. His eyes filled with tears of regret for the gentle woman who had gone; but his heart beat free once more, and a grievous load fell from it, when his foot pa.s.sed that threshold. In an hour after his arrival at the mansion, a funeral cortege went forth from its portals which surpa.s.sed any thing known to the colony in its exceeding solemnity and worldly grandeur. In the procession, Samuel Parris rode with his friend; and, for the first time since Barbara Stafford's escape, the two men sat hand in hand, yielding to the old sympathy, and united by the old love. Both mourned the dead with sincere grief; but it was observed of Samuel Parris, that a gentle hopefulness had settled on his face, and there was something in his voice, when he prayed, that thrilled the hearer with strange accents of thanksgiving.

When the coffin, palled with black velvet, and rich with silver, was placed before the altar where William Phipps had partaken of his first sacrament, Parris knelt beside it, in violation of all usage, and prayed, for some moments, silently; but as if he were in absolute communion with the dead. Then he arose, like one rea.s.sured, and with benign calmness went through the funeral ceremonies.

That night the gubernatorial mansion was indeed a house of mourning.

Elizabeth, clad in black from head to foot, glided from room to room, like a troubled spirit. Every other instant tears would fill her beautiful eyes, and she would creep close to Lovel's side, under the pretence of comforting him. The governor spent those first sad hours in his own room, and Samuel Parris sat musing in the library. He thought of the poor lady who was gone--of her bright cheerfulness, her beauty, and gracious manners. All her life she had been the favorite of fortune and of circ.u.mstances. But Samuel Parris well knew that she had never wholly and entirely possessed the heart of that strong, great man, whose entire nature was, in fact, beyond her comprehension. Affection, care, indulgences, he had given her, and with these things she was content.

But the great happiness of married life--that of being mated, heart and intellect, in one n.o.ble union--she could not have comprehended. She was quite ready to wors.h.i.+p her husband's greatness, without understanding it; but blind wors.h.i.+p satisfies no man entirely. In order to be thoroughly loved he must be understood.

Samuel Parris did not reason in this way. It would have seemed cruel, thus coldly, and under that roof, to a.n.a.lyze the life that had just pa.s.sed away; but he had a solemn duty to perform, and welcomed such thoughts as promised to make the result a happy one. For three days the minister remained the guest of his bereaved friend. All the kind relations of pupil and tutor came back to them. In his sincere grief, the governor loved to fall back upon that highly cultivated and generous nature for sympathy and Christian comfort, and both were given him entirely.

A few hours before that appointed for his return home, the old man quietly followed Sir William into his library, and closed the door.