University of Virginia Library

SCENE IV.

—A Highway.
Enter Topsfield and Braybrook.
Braybrook.
Shall we see many, Thomas? I begin
To be afeard.

Topsfield.
Stick you to my skirts, and keep a good heart;
There'll be but one: The sister witches keep
Invisible, and she alone, does the high work.

Braybrook.
You are sure of that, Thomas?

Topsfield.
We know it: there 's Mercy Short has been,
Now for a fortnight, with eight cruel spectres
Troubled! Seven with their faces covered—
The eighth she knew, old Ambla Bodish.

Braybrook.
Ho! who 's he that comes this way?

Topsfield.
Gideon Bodish, if we live:—we'll ask him with us.

Braybrook.
Gideon will not be afeard!

Topsfield.
We'll try him; if this be Goodwife Bodish,
Gideon will not along. Ho—Gideon, Gideon!
He hears, but walks as one that would not hear.

Braybrook.
Gideon, hither! He 's not a wall of stone.

Topsfield.
He moves along, but circles yet about the hill,
On which he keeps his aspect fixed from far—
What draws him? Some fatal thing, I fear.

Enter Gideon Bodish, S E. R.
Gideon.
You called me?

Topsfield.
We did. There 's work a foot, and you
Must stead us in it.

Gideon.
Must is a lion that turns back
To tear its driver, you know, no less than hunt
What goes before.

Topsfield.
You will, 't is service honorable;
A witch-session sits to-night, at Maple Hill,
And who can mainly help, as you, to watch
And to confound it?

Gideon.
Alas, I have no faculty of eye
Or ear, to apprehend what lies beyond
Our common walk: do you go on or stay,
Simon and you, as your bold natures prompt.

Braybrook.
We two, you understand, are quite a match
For any devil's dam that broods on hills
Or plains, or rocks, but three is better, Gideon,
For that 's a number holy.

Topsfield.
There will be honor in this work; we 're sure
To fix one witch at least, and she, the chief.

Gideon.
[Aside.]
To go or stay, in both lies coiled a fear;
I know my mother at this calm hour walks
The hill, and meditates, in silent thought,
In hope to soothe her melancholy age:
Go I with them, or haste to warn my mother
Of their coming—I am her familiar,
They will say, and she is bound with that which
Would have freed her; and if I linger, they
Will hold me guilty, in secret purpose, deep
And undisclosed, and so suspect her more.

Braybrook.
[Aside to Topsfield.]
He is greatly troubled! There 's much in this,
I dare be sworn.

Gideon.
[Aside.]
Shall I
Be made a binder of my mother's limbs,
A prover of the darkness of her life,
If it be dark, and one of three fierce hounds
To hunt her? I will not go.

Topsfield.
Consider,
Gideon, your duty as a townsman.

Gideon.
I have considered, I will not go.

Topsfield.
You are too greatly moved—The son of her,
The oldest habitant, should stand by Salem
In her hour of need.

Gideon.
[Cross to L.]
Let Salem be
Her own deliverer! I will not go,
No step, nor inch, nor hair's breadth of the way.

Topsfield.
Would you not see one taken in the very act,
The chief of the hill council?

Gideon.
Why do you vex me further?
Though I could see an hundred witches
'Gainst the white moon flying, I would not move,
You see I would not! You see me, marble, and stone,
And mountainous, in the repose of staying.
Go on or stay, or walk or fly, I'm rooted here,
And when I bend, 't will be toward an opposite!
Why do you dally with the devil's horns,
When you may seize them, as you proudly say,
By stretching forth your own brave arms?

Topsfield.
Alas, this hour is fatal, Gideon,
And drags a black hereafter.

[Cross to R.
[Exeunt Topsfield and Braybrook, R. H.
Gideon.
Is this a mist of tears that fills mine eyes,
Or is it the night-fog of the swamp rising
Beneath the hill? Darkly, from where I stand,
I see my mother moving! oh, could I shout
Or run towards her, and not make more the snare,
Heaven! to thee I 'd give perpetual thanks—
But see, they steal upon her, and 'mid the shadowy woods,
And the dark cloud, and the down-flooding light
Of the pale sky, she changes before me.
God—oh, God! This torture is in the brain,
And shakes its powers to a dark wilderness,
Full of the night, and agony, and storm!
Oh! I am rocked as is the cedar-tree
Haled to and fro, by mad and merciless winds!
It may not be at rest—it may not move—
But lives a lonely and a troubled thing
With sadness in its top. Oh, let me fall
In death rather than live uncertain!
Can this be true, these men would have to be?
Am I within the shadow of a power,
Which shoots up its blinding mists from hell—
What fires burn underneath my trembling feet,
What furnaces are in this desert, all
A-glow, to forge engines to fight down souls
And batter dear life's best peace to ruins?
On every side beset by doubts and fears—
If these men wrong her, and they are hunters
For the sport's sake, if they pursue her,
Panther-like, for the wild-roaming beauty
Of her ways, I'll turn and rend them—that they
Shall know the game they keenely hunt, retorts
As eagles do, invaded in their high homes.
With every gift of man a holy God
Has given to me, I'll rise upon them,
And defend a righteous woman's ways!
[Exit Gideon, R. H.