Marie de Montalvo's BURNING WITCHES
was published in 1927 by J.H. Sears & Company, Inc.
It's a story about an emancipated young woman in New York City, but the
Prologue describes a much earlier American scene.
The family has given Emily permission to upload the Prologue here.
Enjoy!
Her cows are milked and her wood is cut by the devil's magic, while the godly sleep; and she hath cast a spell upon the son of Elder Bradley."
Some of the selectmen turned to look at the Elder, in whose house they sat behind locked doors. Straight and tall and thin as a poplar he stood in the low room, black cloaked under a wide black hat, blue jawed, hawk nosed and stern of mouth, his eyes glittering like ice from his narrow, shadowed visage. He towered motionless above them; but the flickering fire and the candlelight cast a silhouette upon the ceiling which crouched now, darkly brooding, now lengthened, gaunt and menacing. While upstairs in his bedroom the fair-haired, blue-eyed Phineas, son of the Elder by his third wife, who now lay in the churchyard, sat reading his Bible, ignorant that his name had been spoken--ignorant, too, that he, who was betrothed to Sabrina, had been seen in the moonlight talking with Joan. Joan's mother, too, had been carried to the churchyard during the harsh New England winter, and her father had been killed by a falling tree, and she lived with her blind old grandmother. And she was soft and small and tender, and her hands were too delicate for the heavy tasks that occupied them from dawn until long past sundown; but there was spirit in the way she carried her little head, spirit in her slight, elastic form as it swayed to the heavy burdens, spirit in her riotous dark hair that refused to be confined by the prim Puritan headdress, and in the flash of her gay brown eyes, that showed little flecks of gold in the sunlight, and under the moon were sometimes appealingly tired.... Phineas covered his face with his hands to shut out the memory of them, closed his Bible, and put a finger at random between the pages. Praying for guidance, he opened it and looked at the verse his finger marked. Her feet go down to death; her steps take hold on hell. He shuddered. It was a warning. |
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The men below dispersed silently into the darkness. He heard his father come upstairs to bed. Presently he too went to bed, but the spring moonlight poured in at the window, and he could not sleep.
An hour before dawn he rose and made his way to Joan's, his gun over his shoulder, munching a dry crust as he went. He did not approach the house, but busied himself in the outbuildings; after which he went into the forest, for he felt strangely restless, and tramped for hours in search of game--but returned empty handed because his eye lacked keenness and his aim was faulty. As he crossed the common of the little town a slender spiral of smoke curled upward through the May sunshine--where Joan, the light hearted, had met the fate of a witch that spring morning of 16--, because Phineas had milked her cows and cut her wood while the godly slept. |
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Marie de Montalvo's obituary in The New York Times, Nov. 3, 1950. Her son, Evaristo Murray, met Marion Hall at Swarthmore.
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Evaristo de Montalvo Murray and Marion Hall were married and had one child, Barbara, born April 5, 1933. Risto and Marion divorced in January 1937.
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