CHAPTER LIV.

Some Concluding Remarks.

Perhaps before I conclude I should state that the keeper of the Boston

Bridewell, Master Arnold, was summarily dismissed for accepting the

validity of the Governor's signature. But he did not take it very

grievously to heart for Master Raymond, Captain Alden and others whom he

had obliged saw him largely recompensed. Captain Alden, by the way, had

fled for concealment to his relatives in Duxbury. Being asked when he

appeared there, "Where he came from?" the old captain said "he was

fleeing from the devil--who was still after him." However his relatives

managed to keep him safely, until all danger was passed, both from the

devil and from his imps.

As for Lady Mary, the indignation of "the faithful" was hot against

her--and finally against Sir William, who could not be made to see in it

anything but a very good joke. "You know that Lady Mary will have her

own way," he said to Master Mather.

"Wives should be kept in due gospel subjection!" returned the minister.

"Oh, yes, rejoined the Governor smiling; but I wish you had a wife like

Lady Mary, and would try it on her! I think we should hear something

breaking."

But when Mistress Ann Putnam and others began "to cry out" against Lady

Mary as a witch, the Governor waxed angry in his turn.

"It is time to put a stop to all this," he said indignantly. "They will

denounce me as a witch next." So he issued a general pardon and jail

delivery--alike to the ten persons who were then under sentence of

death, to those who had escaped from prison, and to the one hundred and

fifty lying in different jails, and the two hundred others who had been

denounced for prosecution.

It was a fair blow, delivered at the very front and forehead of the

cruel persecution and it did its good work, though it lost Sir William

his position--sending him back to England to answer the charges of his

enemies, and to die there soon afterwards in his forty-fifth year.

When Chief-Justice Stoughton, engaged in fresh trials against the

reputed witches, read the Governor's proclamation of Pardon, he was so

indignant that he left his seat on the bench, and could not be prevailed

upon to return to it.

Neither could he, to the day of his death, be brought to see that he had

done anything else than what was right in the whole matter.

Not so the jury--which, several years after, confessed its great

mistake, and publicly asked forgiveness. Nor Judge Sewall, who rose

openly in church, and confessed his fault, and afterward kept one of the

days of execution, with every returning year, sacred to repentance and

prayer--seeing no person from sunrise to nightfall, mourning in the

privacy of his own room the sin he had committed.

Mistress Ann Putnam and her husband both died within the seven years, as

Dulcibel in her moment of spiritual exaltation had predicted. Her

daughter Ann lived to make a public confession, asking pardon of those

whom she had (she said unintentionally) injured, and died at the age of

thirty-five--her grave being one that nobody wanted their loved ones to

lie next to.

As for the majority of the "afflicted circle," they fell as the years

went on into various evil ways--one authority describing them as

"abandoned to open and shameless vice."

Master Philip English, after the issue of the Governor's pardon,

returned to Salem. Seventeen years afterwards, he was still trying to

recover his property from the officials of the Province. Of £1500

seized, he never recovered more than £300; while his wife died in two

years, at the age of forty-two, in consequence of the treatment to which

she had been subjected.

Master Joseph Putnam and his fair Elizabeth lived on in peace at the old

place; taking into his service the Quaker Antipas upon his release from

prison. The latter was always quiet and peaceful, save when any allusion

was made to the witches. But he had easy service and good treatment; and

was a great favorite with the children, especially with that image of

his father, who afterwards became distinguished as the Major General

Putnam of Revolutionary fame.

As for the presents that had been promised to the "afflicted circle,"

they came to them duly, and from London too. And they were rich gifts

also; but such a collection of odd and grotesque articles, certainly are

not often got together. Master Raymond had commissioned an eccentric

friend of his in London to purchase them, and send them on; acquainting

him with the peculiar circumstances. There were yellow birds, and red

dragons, and other fantastic animals, birds and beasts. But they came

from London and the "circle" found them just suited to their peculiar

tastes; and they always maintained, even in defiance of Mistress Ann,

that Master Raymond was a lovely gentleman and an "afflicted" person

himself. It will thus be seen that these Salem maidens were in their day

truly esthetic--having that sympathetic fondness for unlovely and

repulsive things, which is the unerring indication of a daughter of

Lilith.

* * * * *

And now, in conclusion, some one may ask, "Did the Province of

Massachusetts ever make any suitable atonement for the great wrongs her

Courts of Injustice had committed?" I answer Never! Massachusetts has

never made any, adequate atonement--no, not to this day!

The General Assembly, eighteen years afterwards, did indeed pass an act

reversing the convictions and attainders in all but six of the cases;

and ordering the distribution of the paltry sum of £578 among the heirs

of twenty-four persons, as a kind of compensation to the families of

those who had suffered; but this was all--nothing, or next to nothing!

Perhaps the day will some time come, when the cry of innocent blood from

the rocky platform of Witch Hill, shall swell into sufficient volume to

be heard across the chasm of two centuries. Then, on some high pedestal,

where the world can see it, Massachusetts shall proclaim in enduring

marble her penitence and ask a late forgiveness of the twenty innocent

men and women whom she so terribly wronged. And as all around, and even

the mariner far out at sea, shall behold the gleaming shaft, standing

where stood the rude gallows of two centuries ago, they shall say with

softening eyes and glowing cheeks: "It is never too late to right a

great wrong; and Massachusetts now makes all the expiation that is

possible to those whom her deluded forefathers dishonored and persecuted

and slew!"

_By the Author of Dulcibel_

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Dulcibel: A Tale of Old Salem · 第 54 / 54 章