LoistheWitchbyElizabethGaskell

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the patriarchs of the primitive little community had rapidly followed each other to
the grave. They had been loved as fathers, and looked up to as judges in the
land. The first bad effect of their loss was seen in the heated dissention which
sprang up between Pastor Tappau and the candidate Nolan. It had been
apparently healed over; but Mr Nolan had not been many weeks in Salem, after
his second coming, before the strife broke out afresh, and alienated many for life
who had till then been bound together by the ties of friendship or relationship.
Even in the Hickson family something of this feeling soon sprang up; Grace being
a vehement partisan of the elder pastor's more gloomy doctrines, while Faith was
a passionate, if a powerless, advocate of Mr Nolan. Manasseh's growing
absorption in his own fancies, and imagined gift of prophecy, making him
comparatively indifferent to all outward events, did not tend to either the fulfilment
of his visions, or the elucidation of the dark mysterious doctrines over which he
had pondered too long for the health either of his mind or body; while Prudence
delighted in irritating every one by her advocacy of the views of thinking to which
they were most opposed, and relating every gossiping story to the person most
likely to disbelieve, and to be indignant at, what she told with an assumed
unconsciousness of any such effect to be produced. There was much talk of the
congregational difficulties and dissensions being carried up to the general court;
and each party naturally hoped that, if such were the course of events, the
opposing pastor and that portion of the congregation which adhered to him might
be worsted in the struggle.
Such was the state of things in the township, when, one day towards the end of
the month of February, Grace Hickson returned from the weekly prayer-meeting,
which it was her custom to attend at Pastor Tappau's house, in a state of
extreme excitement. On her entrance into her own house she sat down, rocking
her body backwards and forwards, and praying to herself. Both Faith and Lois
stopped their spinning, in wonder at her agitation, before either of them ventured
to address her. At length Faith rose, and spoke -
'Mother, what is it? Hath anything happened of any evil nature?'
The brave, stern old woman's face was blenched, and her eyes were almost set
in horror, as she prayed; the great drops running down her cheeks.
It seemed almost as if she had to make a struggle to recover her sense of the
present homely accustomed fife, before she could find words to answer -
'Evil nature! Daughters, Satan is abroad - is close to us; I have this very hour
seen him afflict two innocent children, as of old he troubled those who were
possessed by him in Judea. Hester and Abigail Tappau have been contorted and
convulsed by him and his servants into such shapes as I am afeared to think on;
and when their father, godly Mr Tappau, began to exhort and to pray, their
howlings were like the wild beasts of the field. Satan is of a truth let loose among
us. The girls kept calling upon him, as if he were even then present among us.
Abigail screeched out that he stood at my very back in the guise of a black man;
and truly, as I turned round at her words, I saw a creature like a shadow
vanishing, and turned all of a cold sweat. Who knows where he is now? Faith, lay
straws across the door-sill!'
'But, if he be already entered in,' asked Prudence, ' may not that make it difficult
for him to depart?'
Her mother, taking no notice of her question, went on rocking herself, and
praying, till again she broke out into narration -
'Reverend Mr Tappau says, that only last night he heard a sound as of a heavy
body dragged all through his house by some strong power; once it was thrown
against his bedroom door, and would, doubtless, have broken it in, if he had not
prayed fervently and aloud at that very time; and a shriek went up at his prayer
that made his hair stand on end; and this morning all the crockery in the house
was found broken and piled up in the middle of the kitchen floor, and Pastor
Tappau says that, as soon as he began to ask a blessing on the morning's meal,
Abigail and Hester cried out, as if some one was pinching them. Lord, have
mercy upon us all! Satan is of a truth let loose.'
'They sound like the old stories I used to hear in Barford,' said Lois, breathless
with affright.
Faith seemed less alarmed; but then her dislike to Pastor Tappau was so great,
that she could hardly sympathise with any misfortunes that befell him or his
family.
Towards evening Mr Nolan came in. In general, so high did party spirit run,
Grace Hickson only tolerated his visits, finding herself often engaged at such
hours, and being too much abstracted in thought to show him the ready
hospitality which was one of her most prominent virtues. But today, both as
bringing the latest intelligence of the new horrors sprung up in Salem, and as
being one of the Church militant (or what the Puritans considered as equivalent
to the Church militant) against Satan, he was welcomed by her in an unusual
manner.
He seemed oppressed with the occurrences of the day; at first it appeared to he
almost a relief to him to sit still, and cogitate upon them, and his hosts were
becoming almost impatient for him to say something more than mere
monosyllables, when he began -
'Such a day as this I pray that I may never see again. It is as if the devils, whom
our Lord banished into the herd of swine, had been permitted to come again
upon the earth. And I would it were only the lost spirits who were tormenting us;
but I much fear that certain of those whom we have esteemed as God's people
have sold their souls to Satan, for the sake of a little of his evil power, whereby [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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