In which Demons assault the Meeting-house
The Sabbath day dawned clear with a breeze blowing soft, yet cool and
invigorating, from off the sea.
But the brightness of the day could not lighten the hearts of the
villagers, depressed by the terrible witch-trials.
Master Wentworth, however, maintained a certain peace in his home, which,
lying on the outskirts of the town, was just beyond the circle of village
gossip. Moreover, he sternly checked any tendency in Goodwife Higgins or
Deliverance to comment on the panic that was abroad. So of all the homes
in Salem his little household knew the deepest peace on the morn of that
memorable Sabbath.
“Goodwife,” he said, passing his cup for a third serving of tea, “your
Sabbath face is full as bonny a thing to look at and warms the heart, as
much as your tea and muffins console an empty stomach.”
And the goodwife replied with some asperity to conceal her pleasure at
the remark, for, being comely, she delighted to be assured of the fact,
“Ay, the cook’s face be bonny, and the tea be well brewed. Ye have a
flattering tongue, Master Wentworth.”
Then Master Wentworth, stirring his tea which had a sweetening of
molasses, related how, having once had a chest of tea sent him from old
England, he had portioned part of it among his neighbours. The goodwives,
being ignorant of its use, had boiled it well and flung the water away.
But the leaves they kept and seasoned as greens.
Now, this little story was as delicious to Master Wentworth as the
flavour of his tea, and being an absent-minded body, withal possessed of
a most gentle sense of humour, he told it every Sabbath breakfast.
He continued to converse in this gentle mood with Goodwife Higgins and
Deliverance, as the three wended their way to church.
Very cool and pleasant was the forest road. Now and then through the
green they caught glimpses of the white turret of the meeting-house, as
yet without a bell. The building was upon a hill, that travellers and
hunters might be guided by a sight of it.
Often there passed them a countryman, the goodwife mounted behind her
husband on a pillion. Later they would pass the horse tied to a tree and
see the couple afoot far down the road. This was the custom when there
was but one horse in the family. After awhile the children, carrying
their shoes and stockings, would reach the horse and, as many as could,
pile on the back of the much enduring nag and ride merrily the rest of
the way.
Master Wentworth and his family arrived early. The watchman paced the
platform above the great door, beating a drum to call the people to
service. Several horses were tied to the hitching-post. Some of the
people were wandering in the churchyard which stretched down the
hill-slope.
Others of the sad-eyed Puritans gathered in little groups, discussing a
new and terrible doctrine which had obtained currency. It was said that
the gallows had been set up, not only for the guilty but for those who
rebuked the superstition of witchery. The unbelievers would be made to
suffer to the fullest extent of the law.
And another fearful rumour was being circulated to the effect that a
renowned witch-finder of England had been sent for. He was said to
discover a witch by some mark on the body, and then cause the victim to
be bound hand and foot and cast into a pond. If the person floated he was
pronounced guilty and straightway drawn out and hanged. But he who was
innocent sank at once.
Soldiers brought from Boston Town to quell any riots that might arise,
added an unusual animation to the scene. Lieutenant-Governor Stoughton
and the six other judges conducting the trials, were the centre of a
group of the gentry.
Deliverance and Abigail Brewster strolled among the tombstones reading
their favourite epitaphs. The two little maids, having the innocent and
happy hearts of childhood, had found only pleasurable excitement in
the witch-panic until the morning Deliverance had been accused by her
pupils. But they believed this affair had blown over and remained only
a thrilling subject for conversation. Both felt the Devil had made an
unsuccessful assault upon Deliverance, and, as she wrote in her diary,
sought to destroy her good name with the “Malice of Hell.”
During meeting Deliverance sat with Goodwife Higgins on the women’s side
of the building. Her father, being of the gentry, was seated in one of
the front pews.
Through the unshuttered windows the sunlight streamed in broadly, and as
the air grew warm one could smell the pine and rosin in the boards of the
house. Pushed against the wall was the clerk’s table with its plentiful
ink-horn and quills.
The seven judges, each of whom had, according to his best light,
condemned the guilty and let the innocent go free, during the past week,
now sat in a row below the pulpit. Doubtless each felt himself in the
presence of the Great Judge of all things and, bethinking himself humbly
of his own sins, prayed for mercy.
The soldiers stacked their firearms and sat in a body on the men’s side
of the church. Their scarlet uniforms made an unusual amount of colour in
the sober meeting-house.
The long hours dragged wearily.
Little children nodded, and their heads fell against their mothers’
shoulders, or dropped into their laps. Sometimes they were given lemon
drops or sprigs of sweet herbs. One solemn little child, weary of
watching the great cobwebs swinging from the rafters, began to count
aloud his alphabet, on ten moist little fingers. He was sternly hushed.
The tithing-man ever tiptoed up and down seeking to spy some offender.
When a woman or maid grew drowsy, he brushed her chin with the end of his
wand which bore a fox’s tail. But did some goodman nod, he pricked him
smartly with the thorned end.
Deliverance loved the singing, and her young voice rang out sweetly as
she stood holding her psalm-book, her blue eyes devoutly raised. And the
armed watchman pacing the platform above the great door, his keen glance
sweeping the surrounding country for any trace of Indians or Frenchmen,
joined lustily in the singing.
Many voices faltered and broke this morning. Few families but missed some
beloved face. Over one hundred persons in the little village were in
prison accused of witchery.
The minister filled his prayers with the subject of witchcraft and made
the barn-like building ring with the text: “Have I not chosen you twelve,
and one of you is a devil?”
At this Goodwife Cloyse, who sat next to Deliverance, rose and left
the meeting-house in displeasure. She believed the text alluded to her
sister, who was then in prison charged with having a familiar spirit.
The next day she too was cried upon and cast into prison as a witch,
although a woman of purest life.
Deliverance thrilled with terror at the incident. She felt she had
been seated next to a witch, and this in God’s own house. Moreover she
imagined a sudden pain in her right arm, and dreaded lest a spell had
been cast on her.
The day which opened with so fearful an event was to end yet more
ominously.
Following the sermon came the pleasant nooning-hour. The people gathered
in family groups on the meeting-house steps, or sought the shade of the
nearby trees and ate their lunches. The goodwives provided bountifully
for the soldiers, and the judges ate with the minister and his family.
Toward the end of the nooning-hour Master Wentworth sent Deliverance to
carry to Goodwife Gibbs the tea he had brewed.
“Father sends ye this, goodwife,” said the little maid; “it be a
strengthening draught for Ebenezer. He bids me tell ye a fever sickness
has seized o’ the child.”
The goodwife snatched the bottle and flung it violently from her.
“Get ye gone with your brew, ye witch-maid! No fever sickness ails my
little son, but a spell ye have put upon him.” She began to weep sorely.
Duty compelled her to attend meeting, the while her heart sickened that
she must leave her little son in the care of a servant wench.
The gossips crowded around her in sympathy. Dark looks were cast upon
Deliverance, and muttered threats were made. Their voices rose with
their growing anger, until the minister, walking arm-in-arm with Master
Wentworth, heard them and was roused to righteous indignation.
“Hush, gossips,” he said sternly, “we will have no high words on the
Lord’s holy day, but peace and comfort and meek and contrite hearts, else
we were hypocrites. We will continue our discussion next week, Master
Wentworth,” he added, turning to his companion, “for the nooning-hour is
done.”
Master Wentworth, who was given to day-dreaming, had scarce heard the
hubbub, and had not even perceived his daughter, who was standing near
by. So, a serene smile on his countenance, he followed the minister into
the meeting-house.
His little maid, very sorrowful at this fresh trouble which had come upon
her, and not being able to attract his attention before he entered the
building, wandered away into the churchyard.
That afternoon the tithing-man missed her in the congregation. So he
tiptoed out of the meeting-house in search of her.
He called up softly to the watchman,—
“Take your spy-glass and search if ye see aught o’ Mistress Deliverance
Wentworth.”
The watchman started guiltily, and leaned over the railing with such
sudden show of interest that the tithing-man grew suspicious. His sharp
eyes spied a faint wavering line of smoke rising from the corner of the
platform. So he guessed the smoke rose from the overturned bowl of a
pipe, and that the watchman had been smoking, a comfortable practice
which had originated among the settlers of Virginia. Being in a good
humour, he was disposed to ignore this indiscretion on the part of the
watchman.
The latter had now fixed his spy-glass in the direction of the churchyard.
“I see a patch o’ orange tiger-lilies far down the hillside,” he
announced, “and near by be a little grave grown o’er with sweetbrier. And
there, with her head pillowed on the headstone, be Mistress Deliverance
Wentworth, sound in sleep.”
Thus the little maid was found by the tithing-man, and wakened and
marched back to church.
As the two neared the entrance the watchman called her softly, “Hey,
there, Mistress Deliverance Wentworth, what made ye fall asleep?”
“The Devil set a snare for my feet,” she answered mournfully, not
inclined to attach too much blame to herself.
“Satan kens his own,” said the watchman severely, quickly hiding his pipe
behind him.
Now, at the moment of the disgraced little maid’s entrance, a great rush
of wind swept in and a timber in the rafters was blown down, reaching the
floor, however, without injury to any one.
Many there were who later testified to having seen Deliverance raise her
eyes just before the timber fell. These believed that she had summoned
a demon, who, invisibly entering the meeting-house on the wings of the
wind, had sought to destroy it.
The sky, lately so blue, grew leaden gray. So dark it became, that but
few could see to read the psalms. Thunder as yet distant could be heard,
and the roaring of the wind in the tree-tops, and ever in the pauses of
the storm, the ominous booming of the ocean.
The watchman came inside. The tithing-man closed and bolted the great
door.
The minister prayed fervently for mercy. None present but believed that
an assault of the demons upon God’s house was about to be made.
The rain began to fall heavily, beating in at places through the
rafters. Flashes of lightning would illumine the church, now bringing
into vivid relief the row of judges, now the scarlet-coated soldiers, or
the golden head of a child and its terror-stricken mother, again playing
on and about the pulpit where the impassioned minister, his face ghastly
above his black vestments, called unceasingly upon the Lord for succour.
The building was shaken to its foundations. Still to an heroic degree the
people maintained their self-control.
Suddenly there was a more brilliant flash than usual, followed by a loud
crash.
When this terrific shock had passed, and each person was beginning to
realize dimly that he or she had survived it, the minister’s voice was
heard singing the fifty-second psalm.
“Mine enemies daily enterprise
to swallow me outright;
To fight against me many rise,
O, Thou most high of might.”
And this first verse he sang unwaveringly through alone.
With the commencement of the next verse, some few brave, but quavering
voices joined him.
“What things I either did or spake
they wrest them at their wil,
And al the councel that they take
is how to work me il.”
But before the third verse ended, all were singing, judges and soldiers,
and the sweet voices of the women and the shrill notes of the little
children.
“They al consent themselves to hide
close watch for me to lay:
They spie my paths and snares have layd
to take my life away.”
From this time on the storm abated its violence.
When at last the benediction was pronounced, the soldiers and men, in
constant dread of attacks by Indians, left the meeting-house before the
women and children, thus making sure the safe exit of the latter.
The people, crowding out, beheld the setting sun shining brightly. The
odour of the rain and the fresh earth greeted them. All the trees in the
leafy greenness of June quivered with fresh life.
The hail lay white upon the ground as petals new-fallen from cherry trees
in bloom.
All nature was refreshed.
Only the mighty oak that had stood near the entrance was split in twain.
And the people,—the goodmen with heads uncovered,—in the mellow light of
the departing day, rendered thanks unto God that they had been delivered.