THE STRANGE ADVOCATE.
The evidence for the prosecution was here exhausted, and Barbara had
nothing to offer in her defence. A judge, more compassionate 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 superstition,
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 principal 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 passion 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 principally 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 attitude 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 God
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 attitude
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
passionate 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 multitude,
it fired the superstition, 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
massive 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."
A shrewd bystander caught these words as they fell from the white lips
of Jason Brown, and he cried out in a voice that rang through the court
like a trumpet,
"Behold the confederate of her sorcery! The beautiful witch has brought
Lucifer himself to plead her cause: mark the fire in his eyes, the
breath from his nostrils; see the bronze on his forehead, the proud
curve on his mouth!"
At these words there rose a tumult in the house. Women shrieked, and
pressed forward to the doors; men broke into wild murmurs, or whispered
together in low voices; while the judges stood up, pale as a group of
statues; and the jury huddled together, looking into each other's faces
aghast.
In the midst of this turmoil, Barbara Stafford felt a breath on her
cheek, and looking suddenly up, met the glance of those eyes, which, a
moment before, had frightened the people with their burning passion, now
full of determined purpose.
He whispered something, but in the tumultuous noise Barbara lost its
meaning. The next instant the rush of the crowd carried the noble youth
from her sight, and when the court, recovering from its panic, looked
around for this emissary of the dark one, who had denounced its
proceedings face to face with the august judges, the strange advocate
was gone.
Then, while the crowd was hushed with unconquerable awe, and the very
heavens bent over it black with a mustering storm, the verdict of the
jury ran in a low whisper from lip to lip, till it reached the savages
brooding in the forest, and was mingled with the deep, deep curses of
the white man--
"Guilty! guilty!"
Then the storm burst over them, shaking the window-panes, like angry
fiends, uphurling great trees in the woods, and plowing up the virgin
soil; and in the midst of its fury sentence was pronounced.
On the second day from that Barbara Stafford was doomed to suffer death
by drowning for the crime of witchcraft.