CHAPTER XV.
THE MIDNIGHT TRIAL.
GOODY DUNE was a frightened and pitiable spectacle, with her age and the terrors of the dungeon and coming execution upon her. She struggled in an effort to maintain a show of composure, at sight of Garde and the jailer. Nevertheless she would not, at first, listen to a word of the plan of substitution, to get her away from the prison.
When at last she had fairly overridden Goody’s objections, and had made her complete the exchange of garments, Garde kissed her with all the affection of a daughter, and sent her forth to Adam’s protection. She then heard the lock in the dungeon-door shoot squeakingly into place with a little thrill of fear, which nothing human and womanly could have escaped.
She listened to the footfalls receding down the corridor, and then the utter silence of the place began to make itself ring in her ears. She looked about her, by the aid of the flickering light which the tallow dip was furnishing, at the barren walls, the shadows, and the heap of straw in the corner. At all this she gave a little shiver of dread.
All the excitement which had buoyed her up to make this moment possible escaped from her rapidly. She began to think how Goody must have felt, till her moment of deliverance came. Then she thought of what Adam had endured when, lame, hungry, exhausted and defamed, he had been thrown with violence into this horrible hole, from which he could have had no thought of being rescued.
She took the candle in hand and went in search of the tiny window, down through which she had dropped him the keys. When she saw it, she gave a little shudder, to note how small it was, and how it permitted no light to enter the place.
Returning then to a paper, filled with bread and butter, pie, cake and cold meat, which Weaver had fetched her, while she and Goody had been exchanging garments, she tried to eat a little, to occupy her time and her thoughts. But she could only take a sip of the milk, which stood beside the paper, and a nibble at the bread. To eat, while in her present state of mind, was out of the question.
The stillness seemed to increase. She felt little creeps of chill running down her shoulders. What a terrible thing it would be to have no hope of leaving this fearful cellar! Suppose anything should happen to Adam, to prevent him from returning! How long would it be till morning? Surely she must have been there nearly an hour already. She clasped her hands, that were cold as ice. She almost wished she had not tried this solution of the difficulty. Then she remembered the wise old woman, who had made her neighbors’ children her own care—as she had no sons nor daughters of her own—and who had been sister, mother and friend to Hester Hodder, and guardian angel, teacher and kindly spirit over herself. This made her calmer, for a time, and again courageous.
When once more the dread of the place and the ringing silence and the doubts that seemed to lurk in the shadows, came stealing back, she thought of Adam, rehearsing every incident in every time they had ever met. And thus she lingered long over that walk from Plymouth to Boston.
In the midst of sweet reveries which really did much to dissipate her qualms and chills, she heard someone walking heavily along in the corridor above her. Swiftly calling to mind what the jailer had said about the light, she blew it out and stood trembling with nervousness, waiting for the door to open before her.
But the sounds of heavy boots on the upper floor presently halted. Then they retreated. She breathed more freely. And then—she suddenly felt the darkness all about her.
Fear that some one had been about to enter had, for the moment, made her oblivious of the curtain of gloom which closed in so thickly when she blew out the candle. Now, when she realized that she could not again ignite that wick, a horror spread through her, till she closed her eyes and sank on the floor in despair.
The time that passed was interminable. She had not thought of how terrible the dungeon would be without the candle. She could almost have screamed, thus to be so deprived of the kindly light which had made the place comparatively cheerful. But she pulled up her resolution once again, thinking how Goody and Adam had endured nothing but darkness, and with no hope of succor such as she could see illuminating her hours of dread.
Midnight came at last and found Garde unstrung. When the tramp of many feet rang above her, at last, she welcomed the thought that some one was near. She hoped it was morning and that Adam had returned. But then she heard a jangle of keys, and footfalls on the steps leading down to where she was, and her heart stood still.
In the natural consternation which the hour, the darkness and the suspense had brought upon her, she hastily hid her head and face in Goody’s shawl, and bending over, to represent the older woman, she tremblingly saw the door swing open and heard the jailer command her to come forth.
With her heart beating violently and her knees quaking beneath her, Garde came out, relieved in some ways to flee from that awful hole of darkness, but frightened, when she saw the array of stern-faced men, who had come, as she instantly comprehended, to take her away to a trial.
There was not one among the five or six men that she knew. She remembered the faces of Pinchbecker and Higgler, having seen them in the morning, when Goody was taken, but the others were witnesses that Randolph had sent from Salem, experts in swearing away the lives of witches. They too had been present at the capture of Goody.
Undetected as she was, Garde was surrounded by this sinister group of men, and was marched away, out of the jail, into the sweet summer’s night air, and so down a deserted street, to a building she had never entered before in her life.
Hardly had the prison been left behind when Adam Rust, swiftly returning, after having readily provided for the safe escape of Goody Dune, came galloping into Boston, his brain on fire with a scheme of boldness.
He had made up his mind to ride straight to the prison, demand admittance, compel the jailer to deliver Garde up at once, carry her straight to a parson’s, marry his sweetheart forthwith, and then take her off to New Amsterdam. Weaver could blame the rescue of the witch to him and be welcome. He could even permit Adam to tie him and gag him, to make the story more complete, but submit he should, or Rust would know the reason. His wild ride had begotten the scheme in his adventure-hungry mind.
He knew the residence of the parson who had married Henry Wainsworth and Prudence Soam, the week before he and Phipps had returned to Massachusetts, for Garde had told him all the particulars, time after time—having marriage in her own sweet thought, as indeed she should. He therefore went first to this parson’s, knocked hotly on the door, to get him out of bed, and bade him be prepared to perform the ceremony within the hour.
The parson had readily agreed, being a man amenable to sense and to the luster of gold in the palm, wherefore Adam had gone swiftly off to work the tour de force on which all else depended. He arrived at the jail when Garde had been gone for fifteen minutes. Here he learned with amazement of the midnight trial to which she had been so summarily led.
Trembling like a leaf, Garde was conducted into a chamber adjoining the room wherein the dread magistrates were sitting, with their minds already convinced that this was a case so flagrant that to permit the witch to live through the night would be to impair the heavenly heritage of every soul in Boston.
Here the girl was left, in charge of Gallows and two other ruffianly brutes, whose immunity from the evil powers of witches had been thoroughly established in former cases. In the meantime her accusers had gone before the magistrates, ahead of herself, to relate the unspeakable things of which Goody Dune had been guilty.
Shaking, not daring to look up, nor to utter a sound, Garde had tried to summon the courage to throw off the whole disguise, laugh at her captors and declare who she was, but before she should arrive in the presence of Grandther Donner, who would protect her and verify her story, at least as to who she was, she could not possibly make the attempt.
Terribly wrought upon by the suspense of waiting to be summoned before that stern tribunal of injustice, Garde began to think of the anger which these unmirthful men might show, when she revealed the joke before their astounded eyes. She swayed, weakly, almost ready to swoon, so great became her alarm.
She could hear the high voices of Psalms Higgler and Isaiah Pinchbecker, penetrating through the door. They were giving their testimony, in which they had been so well coached by Edward Randolph, who was even now in there among the witnesses, disguised, and keeping as much as possible in the background.
The door presently opened and Garde was bidden to enter. Her heart pounded with tumultuous strokes in her breast. She could barely put one foot before the other. She caught at the door-frame to prop herself up as she entered the dimly-lighted, shadow-haunted room.
Then her gaze leaped swiftly up where the magistrates were sitting. She saw strangers only—men she knew in the town, but not David Donner. She felt she should faint, when one of the men turned about, and she recognized her grandfather, looking feverish, wild-eyed and hardly sane. This was why she had not known him sooner.
“Oh, Grandther!” she suddenly cried. “It’s I! It’s Garde! Oh, save me! Oh, take me home!”
She flung off Goody’s shawl, and darting forward ran to her grandfather’s side and threw her arms like a child about his neck, where she sobbed hysterically and laughed and begged him to take her away.
The court was smitten with astonishment from which no one could, for the moment, recover.
Randolph had pressed quickly forward. But he now retired again into the shadow.
“What’s this? What’s this?” demanded the chief of the magistrates, sternly. “What business is this? What does this mean? Where is——”
“Witchcraft! A young witch! Cheated! We are cheated! The young witch has cheated us of the old witch!” cried Pinchbecker, shrilly.
“My child! My child!” said David Donner. “This is no witch, fellow-magistrates and friends.”
“She has cheated us of the old witch!” repeated Pinchbecker wildly. “She has daily consorted with a notorious witch. She has aided a witch to escape. She is a witch herself! We know them thus! She is a dangerous witch! She is a terrible young witch!”
“How comes this?” said the chief again, excitedly. His associates also demanded to know how this business came to be possible, and what was its meaning. The room was filled with the shrill cries of the men denouncing Garde more stridently than before, and with the exclamations of astonishment and shouts to know what had become of the witch they had come there to try.
During all this confusion, Garde was clinging to her grandfather and begging him to take her home.
“Have the girl stand forth,” commanded the chief magistrate. “We must know how this business has happened.”
Three of the men laid hold of Garde and took her from her wondering grandfather’s side. She regained her composure by making a mighty effort.
“Goody Dune was no witch!” she cried. “You all know what a good, kind woman she has been among you for years—till this madness came upon us! She is a good woman—and I love her, for all she has done. She is not a witch—you know she is not a witch!”
The witnesses, who knew all the ways in which witches were to be detected, raised their voices at once, in protest.
“Order in the Court!” commanded the magistrate. “Young woman, have you connived to let this Goody Dune escape?”
“She was no witch!” repeated Garde, courageously now. “I knew you would try to send her to the gallows. I knew she was fore-condemned! I could do no less—and you men could have done no less, had you been less mad!”
“Blasphemy!” cried Higgler. “She is convicted out of her own mouth!”
“When a witch is young,” cried Pinchbecker, “she can work ten times more awful evils and arts!”
One of the magistrates spoke: “No woman ever yet was beautiful and clever both at one time. If she be the one, she cannot be the other. This young woman, being both, is clearly a witch!”
“She’s a witch—worse than the other!” screamed another of the witnesses. “Condemn her! Condemn her!”
“Oh, Grandther,” cried Garde, “take me away from these terrible men!”
Randolph now came sneaking forth, out of the shadow.
“This is that same young woman,” he cried, “who lost the colony its charter!”
“The charter!” screamed David Donner, instantly a maniac. “The charter! She lost us the charter! Witch! The charter! Condemn her! Kill her! The charter! She! She! She! Kill her!—Where is she? The charter! The charter! The charter!”
With his two bony, palsied hands raised high above his head, like fearful talons, with his white hair awry over his brow, with his eyes blazing with maniacal fire, the old man had suddenly stood up and now he came staggering forward, screaming in a blood-chilling voice and making such an apparition of horror that the men fell backward from his path.
“Oh Grandther! Grandther!” cried Garde, holding forth her arms and going toward him, to catch him as she saw him come stumbling toward her.
“Witch!” screamed the old man shrilly. “Kill her! Kill her! I never coerced her! The charter! Witch! Witch! The charter!”
He suddenly choked. He clutched at his heart in a wild, spasmodic manner, and with froth bursting from his lips, he fell headlong to the floor and was dead.
“She has killed him!” cried Higgler. “She has killed him with her hellish power!”
“Witch! A murderous young witch!”
“Condemn her! Condemn her!” came in a terrible chorus.
“To the gallows! Hale her to the gallows!” Randolph added from the rear.
The man called Gallows thought this referred to him. He grinned. He and the two brutes who had handled many defenseless witches before, came toward the girl, who stood as if petrified, her hand pressed against her heart in dumb anguish.
Suddenly the door was thrown open and in there came Governor Phipps, cane in hand, periwig adjusted, cloak of office on his shoulders. He was blowing his nose as he entered, so that no one saw his face plainly, yet all knew the tall, commanding figure and the dress.
“What, a trial, at night, and without me?” he roared, in a towering rage, which many present had already learned to fear. “Is this your province, you magistrates, assembled to deal out justice? Do you heckle a defenseless woman like this? Disperse!—the whole of you, instantly. I command it! If you have condemned, I pardon. The prisoner will leave the court with me!”
The men, craven that they were, he could deceive, but Garde knew the voice, the gait, the bearing of her lover. She sprang to his side with a little cry of gladness and clung to him wildly, as his strong arm swung boldly about her waist. She could hardly more than stand, so tremendous had been the stress of her fearful emotions.
Scorning to expend further scolding or shaming upon them, and comprehending that delay had no part in his game, Adam turned his back on the slinking company and strode away, half supporting Garde, who hung so limply in his hold.
Randolph, baffled, afraid to reveal himself by denouncing the imposture which he had been only a second behind Garde in detecting, stole close to his henchmen and whispered the truth in their ears.
Higgler and Pinchbecker, conscious of the blood of Adam on their hands, felt their knees knock suddenly together. The man must be the very devil himself.