Читать книгу Looking Back: An Autobiography - Merrick Abner Richardson - Страница 16

Table of Contents

The reader will remember that Susan Beaver was talking when the deacon came in, and now stood listening to his subterfuge, and Dimock's stinging insinuations. As I remember Susan, she was short, stout, with black eyes, glistening teeth, and quick movements. She tried to keep silent, but now her cup of wrath was full, and reached the high-water mark, where danger could not restrain the break, and she broke:

"Deacon Hobbs, you miserable old liar, I saw the detectives in your house myself. Maybe they're waiting to take my husband to Salem. If so, you can inform them that they can never cross our threshold unless it is over my dead body. You say you do not know much about it. Was not Abigail at Salem, swearing against the minister? Did not you both swear he was in league with the Devil? Now you say he may have been convicted of some other crime. George Burroughs, that worthy Christian minister, defile his name, now he is dead, will you? Oh, you ought not to live another minute," and suiting the action to the word, she sprang across the store to the old cheese box. Now, I knew the cheese knife was long and heavy, and in the hands of a desperate woman. Bang-slam-bang, they went around and around the store, he holding a chair before him and crying, "Help! Murder!" while she struck out wildly without speaking a word. Dimock and Stubbs sprang in to save the deacon's life, but when I peeped through the crack and saw the broad grin on Dimock's face, I concluded their interference was not genuine. The deacon worked around the counter, when she sprang on top and had him in a trap, at which he dropped his chair and ran and plunged through the window headlong. After he had escaped, and Susan had time to think, she sat down and began to cry, but on being assured by Dimock that no one would think the less of her, she left the store.

While Paul was helping board up the broken window, I overheard Stubbs ask him: "Do you consider Cotton Mather and his associates murderers?"

"Oh, no," was the reply, "not exactly that. It is a phenomenal wave of insanity. Similar waves have spread their gloomy pall over the innocent, long before Joshua put the women and children to death at Jericho. These Salemites are at war with the Devil on the same principle that one nation wars with another; they justify themselves through a spasmodic lunacy, that duty calls them to kill their fellow beings.

"God works in a mysterious way. Cotton Mather may be blind. He may be a tool in the hand of a higher power. Finite beings do not comprehend the infinite. If God permits, does He not sanction? These cruelties will have a tendency to humanize Christianity. When years have passed and Brother Burroughs thinks over earthly life he will not regret that his Maker called him home at noon. Friendship and love will increase towards the Burroughs family. They are just leaving their lights along the shore. The love of Jesus will spread when the church shall have hatched out of its shell of ignorance; then it will stand on a higher and more liberal plane; midnight to us may be morning to the angels. Do you know, Stubbs, what is the main trouble with the human family?"

"I do not, Paul. What is it?"

"It is that they know less than they are aware of."

After the store had been closed and Stubbs was working on his books, I heard the door open and some one come in.

"Good evening, doctor. How is Fanny Burroughs?"

The doctor came near and replied in an almost inaudible voice, "She is dead." The little bullet-headed doctor was affected, for I could hear his voice tremble. "Oh, well," he replied to Stubbs' inquiry, "She had no disease, the poor girl actually died of a broken heart. Such suffering I never saw before, but when she did go if you had seen her, Stubbs, you would never question the theory of life beyond dissolution of the body. She raised her eyes upwards, smiled so sweetly and said: 'Oh, father, father, where is Jim?' I am sorry, Stubbs, I have not led a better life, for I have known Fanny Shepherd since she was born and if God will forgive the past, I will turn over a new leaf and try to meet her when I die. I know now that our minister, whom I always ridiculed, was right there in the room with us when she was dying. Besides, Mr. Stubbs, I believe Jim is alive, for if he had been dead he would have been the first one for her to recognize. You see, she was expecting to see him and he was not there."

Here Jim's heart and voice seemed to fail and Winnie put her arm around his neck and they sobbed convulsively for a moment and then continued.

When all was still I crept from my hiding place, washed my face, but could not eat. As usual, the shutters were closed, so I lit a candle and began to rummage around the store. I found Stubbs had a new musket with a horn of powder and a bag of shot, and as I knew he would gladly give them to me, I took them. Then I waited until near dawn, when I went out to the hill in the woods and stayed all day, on the very spot where I had spent many happy hours with Fanny. I could look down into the room where I had courted and wedded my dear Fanny, and could see part on one of her arms, as her body lay near the window, in Father Shepherd's house. Also I saw the village carpenter making my Fanny's coffin and a stranger digging her grave. That night I slept in the store again and the next day, from the same hill, I saw them lower her body into the grave, but my heart was locked in despair; I could not weep.