Lois the Witch

by Elizabeth Gaskell

  Three or four days before assize-time, two summonses to attend the trial at York were sent to the old people. Neither Bessy, nor John, nor Jane, could understand this; for their own notices had come long before, and they had been told that their evidence would be enough to convict.

  But alas! the fact was, that the lawyer employed to defend the prisoners had heard from them that there was a third person engaged, and had heard who that third person was; and it was this advocate’s business to diminish, if possible, the guilt of his clients, by proving that they were but tools in the hands of one who had, from his superior knowledge of the premises and the daily customs of the inhabitants, been the originator and planner of the whole affair. To do this it was necessary to have the evidence of the parents, who, as the prisoners had said, must have recognized the voice of the young man, their son. For no one knew that Bessy, too, could have borne witness to his having been present; and, as it was supposed that Benjamin had escaped out of England, there was no exact betrayal of him on the part of his accomplices.

  Wondering, bewildered, and weary, the old couple reached York, in company with John and Bessy, on the eve of the day of trial. Nathan was still so self-contained, that Bessy could never guess what had been passing in his mind. He was almost passive under his old wife’s trembling caresses; he seemed hardly conscious of them, so rigid was his demeanour.

  She, Bessy feared at times, was becoming childish; for she had evidently so great and anxious a love for her husband, that her memory seemed going in her endeavours to melt the stonyness of his aspect and manners; she appeared occasionally to have forgotten why he was so changed, in her piteous little attempts to bring him back to his former self.

  ‘They’ll, for sure, never torture them when they see what old folks they are!’ cried Bessy, on the morning of the trial, a dim fear looming over her mind. ‘They’ll never be so cruel, for sure!’

  But ‘for sure’ it was so. The barrister looked up at the judge, almost apologetically, as he saw how hoary-headed and woeful an old man was put into the witness-box, when the defence came on, and Nathan Huntroyd was called on for his evidence.

  ‘It is necessary, on behalf of my clients, my lord, that I should pursue a course which, for all other reasons, I deplore.’

  ‘Go on!’ said the judge. ‘What is right and legal must be done.’ But, an old man himself, he covered his quivering mouth with his hand as Nathan, with grey, unmoved face, and solemn, hollow eyes, placing his two hands on each side of the witness-box, prepared to give his answers to questions, the nature of which he was beginning to foresee, but would not shrink from replying to truthfully; ‘the very stones’ (as he said to himself, with a kind of dulled sense of the Eternal Justice) ‘rise up against such a sinner’.

  ‘Your name is Nathan Huntroyd, I believe?’

  ‘It is.’

  ‘You live at Nab-end Farm?’

  ‘I do.’

  ‘Do you remember the night of November the twelfth?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You were awakened that night by some noise, I believe. What was it?’

  The old man’s eyes fixed themselves upon his questioner, with the look of a creature brought to bay. That look the barrister never forgets. It will haunt him till his dying day.

  ‘It was a throwing up of stones against our window.’

  ‘Did you hear it at first?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘What awakened you then?’

  ‘She did.’

  ‘And then you both heard the stones. Did you hear nothing else?’

  A long pause. Then a low, clear ‘Yes.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Our Benjamin asking us for to let him in. She said as it were him, leastways.’

  ‘And you thought it was him, did you not?’

  ‘I told her’ (this time in a louder voice) ‘for to get to sleep, and not to be thinking that every drunken chap as passed by were our Benjamin, for that he were dead and gone.’

  ‘And she?’

  ‘She said, as though she’d heerd our Benjamin, afore she were welly awake, axing for to be let in. But I bade her ne’er heed her dreams, but turn on her other side, and get to sleep again.’

  ‘And did she?’

  A long pause, —judge, jury, bar, audience, all held their breath. At length Nathan said,

  ‘No!’

  ‘What did you do then? (My lord, I am compelled to ask these painful questions.)’

  ‘I saw she wadna be quiet: she had allays thought he would come back to us, like the Prodigal i’ th’ Gospels.’ (His voice choked a little, but he tried to make it steady, succeeded and went on.) ‘She said, if I wadna get up she would; and just then I heerd a voice. I’m not quite mysel, gentlemen – I’ve been ill and i’ bed, an’ it makes me trembling-like. Some one said, “Father, mother, I’m here, starving i’ the cold – wunnot yo’ get up and let me in?”’

  ‘And that voice was?—’

  ‘It were like our Benjamin’s. I see whatten yo’re driving at, sir, and I’ll tell yo’ truth, though it kills me to speak it. I dunnot say it were our Benjamin as spoke, mind yo’ —I only say it were like—’

  ‘That’s all I want, my good fellow. And on the strength of that entreaty, spoken in your son’s voice, you went down and opened the door to these two prisoners at the bar, and to a third man?’

  Nathan nodded assent, and even that counsel was too merciful to force him to put more into words.

  ‘Call Hester Huntroyd.’

  An old woman, with a face of which the eyes were evidently blind, with a sweet, gentle, careworn face, came into the witness-box, and meekly curtseyed to the presence of those whom she had been taught to respect – a presence she could not see.

  There was something in her humble, blind aspect, as she stood waiting to have something done to her – what, her poor troubled mind hardly knew – that touched all who saw her, inexpressibly. Again the counsel apologized, but the judge could not reply in words; his face was quivering all over, and the jury looked uneasily at the prisoners’ counsel. That gentleman saw that he might go too far, and send their sympathies off on the other side; but one or two questions he must ask. So, hastily recapitulating much that he had learned from Nathan, he said, ‘You believed it was your son’s voice asking to be let in?’

  ‘Ay! Our Benjamin came home, I’m sure; choose where he is gone.’

  She turned her head about, as if listening for the voice of her child, in the hushed silence of the court.

  ‘Yes; he came home that night – and your husband went down to let him in?’

  ‘Well! I believe he did. There was a great noise of folk down stair.’

  ‘And you heard your son Benjamin’s voice among the others?’

  ‘Is it to do him harm, sir?’ asked she, her face growing more intelligent and intent on the business in hand.

  ‘That is not my object in questioning you. I believe he has left England, so nothing you can say will do him any harm. You heard your son’s voice, I say?’

  ‘Yes, sir. For sure, I did.’

  ‘And some men came up stairs into your room? What did they say?’

  ‘They axed where Nathan kept his stocking.’

  ‘And you – did you tell them?’

  ‘No, sir, for I knew Nathan would not like me to.’

  ‘What did you do then?’

  A shade of reluctance came over her face, as if she began to perceive causes and consequences.

  ‘I just screamed on Bessy – that’s my niece, sir.’

  ‘And you heard some one shout out from the bottom of the stairs?’

  She looked piteously at him, but did not answer.

  ‘Gentlemen of the jury, I wish to call your particular attention to this fact: she acknowledges she heard some one shout – some third person, you observe – shout out to the two above. What did he say? That is the last question I shall trouble you with. What did the third person, left behind down stairs, say?’

  Her
face worked – her mouth opened two or three times as if to speak – she stretched out her arms imploringly; but no word came, and she fell back into the arms of those nearest to her. Nathan forced himself forward into the witness-box:

  ‘My Lord Judge, a woman bore ye, as I reckon; it’s a cruel shame to serve a mother so. It wur my son, my only child, as called out for us t’ open door, and who shouted out for to hold th’ oud woman’s throat if she did na stop her noise, when hoo’d fain ha’ cried for her niece to help. And now yo’ve truth, and a’ th’ truth, and I’ll leave yo’ to th’ Judgment o’ God for th’ way yo’ve getten at it.’

  Before night the mother was stricken with paralysis, and lay on her death-bed. But the broken-hearted go Home, to be comforted of God.