Page:Weird Tales Volume 5 Number 3 (1925-03).djvu/75

74 congregation against another, taking sides first with one side, then the other, till the little band of worshipers is torn to pieces with factional strife.

From the window of his study in the manse, Mr. Parris sees the four selectmen striding down the street, and his sallow face reflects the misgivings his heart feels. These men, substantial citizens all, are not to be browbeaten or bullied by any clergyman, no matter how thunderous his words or violent his temper. They will surely suggest the emptying of his pulpit as the only means of settling the controversy.

Something must be done; a means must be found to unite the people in one common cause and divert their dislike from their pastor. Love? No, the Reverend Mr. Parris' religion knows no love. He is a Fundamentalist of the Fundamentalists, and, like his modern brethren of the same school, finds his favorite passages of Scripture among those which tell of the dreadful vengeance of the Almighty. Fear? Hatred? Perhaps. Those emotions sway men—and women—more vigorously than anything else. But how; how?

The reverend gentleman takes up his great, cedar-bound Bible and opens it at random. Advice, if not comfort, is to be found in its pages. He reads intently by the waning aftternoon sunshine, his long, crooked-nailed forefinger tracing the words as his eyes devour line after line. The twenty-seventh verse of the twentieth chapter of the Book of Leviticus: "And a man also or a woman that hath a familiar spirit, or that is a wizard, shall surely be put to death, their blood shall be upon them."

Mr. Parris closes the Holy Book and paces his study floor, his head bent, his lean, knotty fingers locked behind his back. He meditates the text he has just read—"their blood shall be upon them."

other household effects, the Reverend Mr. Parris owned two servants, John Indian, a partially civilized American aborigin, and Tituba, a halfbreed woman from the West Indies, part Indian, part negro. Like most West Indian slaves, this woman laid claim to a knowledge of voodooism, or obea, pretending to tell fortunes by palmistry and foretell the future by divination and communion with the spirits of the dead. Such things were roundly denounced and heavily penalized by the laws of the colony, which makes what followed doubly hard to explain.

During the winter of 1691-2, a circle of young girls and women began meeting at the Reverend Mr. Parris' home for the purpose of consulting Tituba and learning the secrets of palmistry and fortune telling. Those engaged in the forbidden pastime were Elizabeth Parris, age nine; Abigail Williams, seventeen; Ann Putnam, twelve; Mary Walcott, seventeen; Elizabeth Hubbard, seventeen; Susannah Sheldon, eighteen; Elizabeth Booth, eighteen; Sarah Churchill, twenty, and several others in their late teens or early twenties.

Mr. Parris could not have been unaware of these gatherings, or of their purpose, for two of the young women, Elizabeth Parris and Abigail Williams, were members of his immediate family, and all the séances were held in his kitchen. Nevertheless, it does not appear that he forbade Tituba to teach the black arts to members of his family and flock or denounced the unlawful assemblies to the authorities. On the contrary, he seems to have exhibited a mildness and tolerance entirely at variance with his usual habit and the custom of the times and community.

Winter ran its course and springtime came, and with it a remarkable sequel to the meetings at Mr. Parris' house. The girls and women who had studied with Tituba began behaving