An old man and a young girl, followed at a little distance by a staid looking man-servant, in the gubernatorial livery, all mounted on fine horses, moved briskly through the forest road that ran between Boston and Salem, on the morning when Barbara Stafford presented herself at the minister's house. They had been abroad since the dawn, had watched the sunrise shed its first gold on the pine tops and budding hemlock branches, with the exhilaration which springs from a bright day. It was with difficulty that the young girl could keep from giving her horse the bit and dashing forward, she was so buoyant with animal life, so gay with the sweet joy that filled her heart.
Elizabeth Parris could never do wrong in her father's eyes. When she now and then gave her horse the rein and dashed under the forest boughs, scattering the turf with a storm of diamonds as she passed, the old man could only follow her with an anxious smile, till she wheeled again and made her steed come dancing toward him on the sward. Then she would join him, laughing so gayly in her saddle that the very robins sang louder as they heard her, as if some mocking-bird had challenged them to a musical rivalry.
"Look, father, look how beautiful the morning is," she cried, wheeling her horse around the trunk of a great elm tree, that stood out on the highway, and caracoling up to his side again; "every footpath which leads to the forest seems paved with gold, all the branches overhead quiver again as the dew that wets them begins to burn in the sun. You are right, father—I feel it in the depths of my heart—you are right in the pulpit and out, when you tell us to bless God forever and ever, that he has made us this grand, beautiful world. Oh, I could sing like a bird, but with a new tune, father; nothing that I have ever learned is joyous enough for this heavenly morning."
"Heavenly! my child," said the minister, with a gentle effort at rebuke. "Remember that the holy place, where our Lord rests, is sacred, and must not be compared to things of earth."
"Why not, father? The same God created the heavens and the earth, and all that in them is. So when every thing here seems like heaven, why not say so in sweet thankfulness?"
The minister shook his head.
"Indeed, I can't help it!" continued the girl, dashing up to a thicket where a red-winged black-bird had settled, and frightening the pretty creature deep into the woods with her impetuous admiration. "It's a beautiful morning. I'm going home. Every minute brings me nearer—I shall see cousin Abby. Oh, how her heart will leap for joy when we come up! and old Tituba, bless the precious old soul, and Wahpee; upon my word, father, I think, I am sure that is Wahpee yonder, with that young man in the hunting-frock. Indeed, I'm quite certain it is: he's coming to meet us perhaps. Wahpee, Wahpee, you blessed old Indian, how are you? how are they all at home?"
She rode forward at a gallop, dashing through the shadow, over patches of sunshine, and calling out for her father not to be afraid, she only wanted to speak first to dear old Wahpee; but just as she came up to the spot where he had seemed to be standing, she saw only a young man in a hunter's frock of dressed deer-skin, with leggins of crimson cloth, and a cap striped with blue and red velvet, which fell in a point to the left shoulder, where it terminated in a tassel of silk and glittering beads. He held a slender gun in his hand, which he planted on the turf as Elizabeth rode up, leaning upon it with the grace of an Apollo.
The young girl drew in her horse, and looked around, amazed to find the young man alone, and expecting to see Wahpee spring out from behind some bush to frighten her with a whoop, as he had done a hundred times before.
But the morning wind, whispering through the woods, was all the sound she heard. Where was Wahpee? What could have become of him? Surely it was his form she had seen a moment before standing by that singular man!
All this passed through her mind while the strange young man was preparing to move on; but when she saw that he was absolutely alone, the color mounted hotly to her face, and with a light laugh at herself she drew her horse on one side, saying, with that exquisite grace which renders the very boldness of youth sometimes very attractive,
"I beg pardon, sir, for cantering up in this wild way; but in fact I thought some one was with you whom I love dearly and haven't seen for a long time; pray tell me, where he is hiding."
The young man had been regarding her with a half smile. His fine black eyes sparkled with a sort of mocking merriment, mingled with an expression of such admiration as kept the blushes warm on the young girl's face.
"You have seen the shadow, which a bright morning sun keeps close to my side, and mistake it for a warrior, I dare say, young lady; for certainly no one could be more alone than I am."
He said this in accents so foreign that Elizabeth looked on him with new interest, wondering greatly from what part of the earth he had come.
His face was dark, certainly, but more from exposure to the sun than any thing else, and the cluster of raven hair that fell from under his cap, waving almost into full curl around his temples, had that purplish bloom which is so beautiful, but seldom found even when black hair is most glossy. Who could this man be, with those exquisitely cut features, that form at once so proud and so wildly graceful, above all with a voice whose broken sweetness went to the soul at once, even when its words were imperfectly understood?
"Was I, indeed, so miserably cheated?" said Elizabeth, at last, striving to laugh away her confusion. "Well, well, I ain't the first girl, by many, that has been caught by shadows. Pray forgive me, sir. I have no excuse but that Wahpee is a dear, old fellow, who carried me pick-a-back before I could walk; and I haven't seen him for months; besides, I am half crazy at getting home again. Perhaps you don't know what it is to return home, after a long absence, and, and—I beg pardon, sir—what have I said to offend you?" she cried, suddenly, startled by the look that shot athwart that handsome face.
"Offend me? Nothing," he answered, with a strange smile.
"Nay, but I am sure you looked either angry or pained," cried the young girl, anxiously.
"Shadows again. It was but the waving of that tree bough across my face. Why should any one feel either anger or pain, because a young lady is rejoiced to get back to her friends, after a long absence?"
"Truly—why should they?" replied Elizabeth, drawing her horse slowly back, beginning to be conscious that this conversation with a total stranger was a little out of the ordinary course of her strict, social life. "So, now that there are no more shadows to distract me, I will ride back and keep near my father."
"One moment," said the young man, drawing close to her horse, "tell me—who is your father, and, and—"
"Oh, here he is to speak for himself," cried Elizabeth, drawing a deep breath, for the young man's approach and earnest manner had startled her.
The stranger dropped his hand from the neck of her horse, where it had slightly rested, took up his gun, and with a sharp glance at the minister, took a footpath which led into the woods.
"What is this, Elizabeth? My dear child, what does it mean?" cried the minister, riding up with an anxious face; "a stranger with his hand on your bridle."
"No, no, father: only on my horse's neck. He was asking about you—nothing else—but did you see his face?"
"Yes, child, it was a dark, beautiful face. Like those we find in that book of poems by John Milton, where Lucifer shames all the angels with the majesty of his presence. Be careful, daughter, how you look on such faces, save with averted eyes, for they are dangerous to the soul."
"Oh, but, father, his smile—I wish you could have seen that—it was like—yes, father, as I live, it was like cousin Abby's. I declare this was why it brought the heart into my mouth—oh, father! if you had only seen him smile, you would never talk of Lucifer and the angels again. Who can he be?"
"Some loitering Indian, no doubt."
"No, father, no. His hair curls; his eyes are full of fire, not grave and sullen; he smiles often, and his forehead is white as—yes, as my cousin's—he is only dressed a little Indian fashion; but I like that best of all."
"And you heard him speak—that might have guided you a little. Was his language prompt and clear?"
"Not quite: it had a strange accent."
"Indian?"
"No, no; but something that made his broken speech sweet as music."
"Strange, very strange!" muttered the minister, with a heaviness at the heart which he could not account for. "It is but a man passing like a shadow across my path, and yet I am saddened by it."
"Strange," thought Elizabeth, from whom all the surplus life had departed, leaving her subdued and thoughtful by the minister's side—"strange! it was but a hunter resting upon his gun; yet I am terrified by the very beauty of his face. What would Norman Lovel say, I wonder? What will cousin Abby say? Shall I tell this among the other wonderful things that have happened during my visit to Lady Phipps's? Ah, me! if I had never left home, how much happier I might have been! But then should I have rode so lightly, looked so pretty, or learned to dance minuets, and dress like a lady? Then would Norman ever have fancied me but for these things? I hope I shan't be sick of home, and pining to go back again, the minute I've seen the dear old room and kissed them all round; that would break poor father's heart. Well, after all, I should like to know who this stranger is—an Indian indeed—he looks more like a king."
But all these thoughts were soon driven out of the young girl's head by the sight of objects that grew more and more familiar, as they neared home. Now an orchard, heavy with green fruit, crowded up to the wayside, where she had gathered harvest apples: then a gnarled old peach tree, with the moss of age creeping over its trunk, hung over the crook of a fence, and drooped a healthy limb or two over the turf that lined the highway on either side. Here was a thicket of blackberry bushes, where she had torn her dress a hundred times; then came a huge old stump, whose decay had given birth to clusters of red raspberry vines, which she had plundered time out of mind. Then came a young elm, bending over the wayside, from which frost grape-vines fell in garlands, that fluttered out into the sunshine and challenged the wind at every breath, its leaves singing, and its clusters of unripe fruit quivering over the wild flowers that slept dreamily below.
At last the house came in sight, with its great sheltering trees, its little square windows, and its rough logs, overrun with honeysuckles and morning-glory vines, the most picturesque little bird's-nest of a place you ever set eyes upon. She began to hear the far-off sweep of the sea, and feel an invigorating saltness in the air, which brought life back to her with a glow of pleasure in it.
"Father, father, ride on, ride on—do strike into a canter. Let's have a run for it. I want wings to get over this little bit of road with. Oh, father, do strike out of that irritating trot for once!"
No. Samuel Parris loved his child to dotage, but even she could not induce him to bring scandal on the church by an undignified movement. Who ever saw a minister of the Presbyterian church cantering toward home in front of his own meeting-house door, and in sight of the burying-ground where he had laid half his parishioners down to sleep? Notwithstanding all her impatience, the minister kept on at his old measured pace. With all that he most loved at his side, he felt no haste to get home which might compare with the breathless eagerness that gave wings to the heart of his daughter.
Elizabeth broke loose at last, and darted off, leaving the man-servant far behind. Across the greenwood in front of the meeting-house, over hillocks and between frowning stumps, littered around with new-made chips, which flew beneath the spurning hoofs of her horse, she rode, her eyes kindling, and her heart on fire with the joy of a first return home.
Up she came to the door-yard fence, cast one eager glance around, expecting some one to rush forth and welcome her; then, seeing that all was still, she sprang from her saddle and ran into the house, calling out,
"Cousin Abby! Abby Williams, I say, where are you? Don't you know that I've got home? Abby! Abby!—Tituba! Tituba! Dear me! where has everybody gone?"
She stood in the little sitting-room, looking around in breathless expectation. She ran into the kitchen: old Tituba was there, kindling the fire.
"Tituba, mammy dear, dear old mammy!" cried the young girl, springing forward, dropping upon her knees, and hugging the old woman with all her might.
"Oh! did I surprise you, mammy? Caught you napping, ha? How glad I am to see you, dear, blessed old soul! Why don't you speak? Why don't you kiss me to death? There, that seems something like. Now, where is cousin Abby? And how have you all got along without me? And where is the fawn? I've got a new bell for him—and—and—"
Here the warm-hearted young creature burst into an April storm of smiles and tears, while old Tituba untied her stylish bonnet, and took off her riding-cape with a sort of shy humility, for the entire love of nurse and child had been broken up, on the old woman's part, by the confidence which she had reposed in Abby Williams, during the absence of her young mistress. Somehow the old creature felt as if she had been wronging the young girl who came back so frankly and kindly to her arms, by her conversation that night with her cousin.
"What ails you, mammy Tituba? What on earth makes you look everywhere except in my face? Indeed you don't seem half glad enough to see me!"
"Oh, yes, how can the child talk so!" cried the old woman, with a great effort at self-control. "But with all these fine clothes on, and that bonnet; dear me, one hardly knows one's own child. Then, my dear, you've grown so proud and so handsome, it's enough to make an old Indian think twice before she dares to kiss you, rough and hearty, in the old way."
"Poh—poh. I'm always the same old penny, brightened up a little, that's all," said Elizabeth, blushing crimson. "So you think I am changed—improved a little," she added, glancing down at herself with graceful vanity. "What will cousin Abby think, I wonder? Oh! there she is."
Elizabeth darted forward, and threw her arms around the neck of Abigail Williams, so blinded by the joy of meeting her old playmate again that she did not observe the restraint with which all her enthusiasm was met.
At the time of their first parting, three months before, these two girls had never possessed an unshared thought; but now the hearts that beat against each other, in that close embrace, were swelling with secrets which could never be thoroughly understood. In that little time childhood had been left behind, and each had learned to tread alone the path, which, at this point, began, with them, to diverge into the wilderness of life.
But the old love would come swelling back, spite of the thoughts that lay in its channel, like rocks cast into the bed of a stream, which sparkles all the more from the obstruction.
"Abby—Elizabeth."
How different were the voices that uttered these words! Elizabeth's was loving and brimful of affection; that of Abby Williams answered it almost with pathos; both wept, one bitterly, the other with quick gushes of joy.
"Oh, Abby, Abby, I have so much to tell you," cried Elizabeth, blushing crimson under the tears that trembled on her cheek. "Don't ask me what it is yet, only wait a little, till we get into the woods together. Come along, here is father just getting off his horse at the door, with Gov. Phipps's servant doing the pompous in his new livery. Step into the entry way, or he will feel disappointed, as I did, at not seeing your face peeping out through the morning-glory vines."
Elizabeth felt the heart, which had been beating strongly against her own, recoil with a sudden shock, as she mentioned her father; and it was almost by force that she drew her cousin into the doorway in time to meet the minister, who came through the gate with his usual hesitating slowness, and held out his hand, gravely smiling as he approached his niece.
Her hand shook like an aspen, as she held it out, and the touch was cold as ice. But the minister simply said,
"Is any thing ailing you, Abigail?" and passing on, he hung his hat on a peg in the wall, and placed his riding-whip behind the door.
With a sudden impulse, Abby drew her cousin out on the stepping-stone, leaving the passage open.
"Come, come into the woods," whispered Elizabeth, clasping her cousin round the waist, and drawing her gently along. "I want to get into the shadows, where we can talk together."
Abby drew a deep breath, and hurried on, more eager to leave the house than her companion; for she was faint from the recoil of her whole nature against the old man, who had been more than a father to her. Ready to flee anywhere to avoid the touch of that hand again, she hurried with her cousin to the woods.
So the two sped on, across the meeting-house green, by the tomb-stones rising from the tall grass behind it, and past those twin graves over which the old trees bent their whispering boughs. Elizabeth would have turned that way, for the vines were quivering with dew-drops, and the periwinkles trembled like cerulean stars among them, so deeply did the shadows lie there almost till noonday. But Abby hurried on, turning her eyes resolutely from the spot, and almost forcing her cousin into the gloom of the woods.
There was a ledge of rocks piled along the side of a ravine, choked up by dogwood trees, sassafras, and wild honeysuckles, on which the girls had loved to play from childhood up. A lofty tulip tree sheltered it, and above that towered a hill-side, clothed with great hemlocks, through which the sun never penetrated, save in golden gleams that lost themselves in the topmost boughs. The different ledges of this little precipice were not only lined, but absolutely piled, with moss, which lay beautifully thick all around. On one shelf it lay in cushions, green as emerald, and soft as Genoa velvet; then another species, bright and feathery as the plumage of a bird, crept over a huge old log that lay in a parallel line with the edge, embroidering it with green lace-work, till there was a wild wood sofa erected by this simple freak of nature, more luxurious than the couch of an empress.
"See, see, how far the moss has crept since we were here before," cried Elizabeth, throwing herself on the sofa. "When I went away, that end of the log was bare; now every inch is green. See, all along the ledge at our feet, the buckthorn moss has spread into a crisp carpet; and the wild columbines have grown in a border all around it. Why, Lady Phipps's drawing-room is not prettier."
"Yes," said Abby, looking vaguely around. "Every thing has grown and thrives since you went away, Elizabeth; but the place does not look so beautiful to me, as it did once; the loneliness seems dreary."
"Yes, yes, of course; then I was away. But now the woods will be cheerful as spring time again. Sit down, cousin. Why will you stand there, tall and still, like a ghost, when the moss fleeces are so soft and the shadows so cool? It is pleasant as sunset here. One almost gets sleepy, with the hum of the bees and blue flies. Come, sit close by me: I feel lonesome without your arm around my neck, cousin Abby."
Those tones, and that dear old name, brought quick tears into Abigail's eyes. She drew gently to the side of her cousin, and sat down. As Elizabeth clasped her waist, the bosom beneath her arm began to heave; and all at once Abby burst into a great fit of crying: the first absolute storm of passion that Elizabeth had ever seen her yield to.
"What is the matter, Abby dear? What are you crying for? How you tremble! What have they been doing to you, while I was away? Don't, pray, don't cry so!"
Abigail checked her tears as suddenly as they had commenced; and clasping her hands hard for a single instant, seemed to control her nerves by stern, mental force.
"Don't mind me," she said, hoarsely. "I have been alone so much—but you had something to tell me—about Lady Phipps, perhaps, or the governor; of course they were delighted to have you with them; come, tell me all about it; one gets so little real information from letters."
"Oh! I could not write, at least what I wished to tell you, any more than I could talk it all over in broad daylight. Besides, one must see a rainbow to judge how its colors rise out of each other; there is no describing it; and some things, that one knows and feels, are the same. The best friend you have must guess at them."
"What is it you speak of?" questioned Abby, gradually withdrawing herself from the clasp of her cousin's arm. "I do not understand. In this visit to Lady Phipps, have you been crushed down with secrets that must not be talked of? Has the memory of your mother stalked forth like a curse to haunt you?"
"The memory of my mother, the young creature who died when I was first laid in her bosom like a poor little flower broken by a sudden weight of dew, as I have often heard my father say!—What should there be in the memory of my mother which you and I cannot talk about?"
"Nothing," said Abigail, vaguely. "Were we talking of—our mothers? It is a dreary subject; let us think of something else. God help us!—something else, Elizabeth—the woods are too lonesome for talk about the dead. You were about to tell me something."
"Yes! but I cannot tell it; your voice is so strange! You look afar off, as if talking to some one in the distance. I can neither catch your eyes, nor feel the old touch of your hand. Abigail Williams, I am afraid of you!"
The low laugh, which broke from Abigail's lips, was mournful as a wail.
"There it is. I knew it, I expected it: not an hour together, and she fears me already."
She turned abruptly, drew close to her cousin's side, and stealing both arms around her, murmured in a voice of ineffable sadness,
"Don't, Bessy—dear, dear Bessy, don't be afraid of me. Is it not enough that I am afraid of myself? Now, tell me what this thing is! So that it is not about the dead, I can listen and be pleased."
"About the dead? Why, Abby, how strangely you talk! What have you and I in common with the dead? The sunshine is not pleasanter than life is to me since, since—"
"Since when, Bessie?"
"Since he loved me."
A strange sort of wonder crept over Abigail Williams. She looked upon her cousin with vague apprehension. The word love was a new thing to her; it had scarcely yet entered into her dreamy life. Elizabeth smiled at first amid her blushes, but as Abby kept gazing upon her with parted lips and that wonder in her eyes, her lips began to tremble, and the warm color ebbed away from her face.
"I forget," she said, deprecatingly, "you have not heard any thing about him. I could not write, and even my father knew nothing till he came to Boston after me. But oh! if you could see him, Abby! If you could hear him speak; or read his beautiful poetry that he writes; it would not seem strange that I love him so much."
"Then you have been treacherous also? You love some one more than me?"
"Forgive me, forgive me," pleaded Elizabeth, "I could not help it. We were in the same house—he was like a son to Lady Phipps."
"Better than your father, perhaps," continued Abby, pondering over this new subject in her mind, heedless of the tears and blushes with which she was regarded. "I have heard of such things, but never expected them to come so close. So you love some one better than us all, Elizabeth Parris?"
"Forgive me, dear cousin! Why are you so angry?"
"Angry? Oh! nothing of the kind. I only wonder how any one can look forward, when the dead will not rest—how it is the privilege of one human being to love, and the duty of another to hate!"
"The duty of another to hate!—why, cousin, there is—there can be no such duty. God is love, the Bible tells us so; and oh! when the heart is full of this blessed, blessed feeling, one sees him everywhere. Don't talk of hate, it is a new word between us two."
Abigail Williams attempted to smile, but only a quiver of the pale lips followed the effort. Still she grew more composed, and gently won her warm-hearted cousin back to bright thoughts again, by a few questions.
"His name? Oh, yes—his name is Norman—Norman Lovel—he is the private secretary of Gov. Phipps, who treats him like a son. He lives in the house, and but for his name you would never believe that he was in no way related to the governor. Still he is only a stranger, recommended by some friend in London, and singular enough don't know his own parents. Never saw them, or anybody that he knew was related to him in his whole life. But what difference does that make, when everybody else almost worships him?"
"And you among the rest?"
"I most of all," answered Elizabeth, bathed in a glow of crimson, from the white forehead to the heaving bosom.
"And this is happiness, I suppose?"
"Happiness? That is what seems strange to me, when life is full of glow, and I can hardly breathe from the rich swell of a heart that seems ready to break with joy, an exquisite pain creeps in, and I know by it that happiness can mount no farther!"
"But there must be a cause for this pain!"
"A cause? Yes! every thing must have a cause, I dare say, if one could but find it out. I only know that the joy was perfect till that storm arose, and the ship came in with a woman on board, who seemed to disturb every thing she looked upon. Even Lady Phipps never seemed to draw a deep breath while she was in the house. As for me! Abby, Abby, you don't know what torment is, till you have given your whole heart to one person, and see another stealing him away from you!"
"This," said Abby, who had listened with thoughtful interest, "this is the feeling they call jealousy, I suppose. Is it so painful?"
"For a time," answered Elizabeth, turning pale with the very recollection of her suffering, "it seemed as if I must die. Shame, anger, a keen fear of losing him, kept me silent. But when I was alone, with the door shut, and the curtains of my bed drawn close, all this pride and strength gave way; my brain grew hot; the very breath choked me as it rose; I could neither sleep nor rest, but walked the room all night, wondering if she thought of him too, if he were watching the light in her window, or if both were asleep and dreaming of each other. Sometimes I saw them in the garden, conversing together with the deepest interest; sometimes they sat in the great portico till the dark crept around them like a veil; and all this time I was overlooked and forgotten. Once in a while Norman would seem to remember me with a start, and force himself to say a few kind words; but there was neither depth nor earnestness in what he said: the woman had bewitched him, I am sure of it."
"Bewitched? That is a fearful word," said Abby, looking around with a wild stare, as if the very foundations of her life had been disturbed by the word her cousin used.
"Yes, Abby, I solemnly believe she was a witch; for the moment she was gone all the beauty of my life came back; Norman was himself again; he seemed to wake up from a dream and wonder what he had been about; at first, he would not believe how much I suffered, and wondered that I had grown thin, and that blue shadows were creeping under my eyes, as if his own neglect had not been the cause; but when Lady Phipps told him how it was—I would have died fifty times rather than let him know—nothing could be more generous than his sorrow. He begged my pardon almost on his knees. There was no kind look or sweet word that he did not coin into a more loving expression, to win me back to our old happiness."
"And you were happy then?—you are happy now?" said Abby, looking wistfully into the bright face, over which smiles and blushes came and went like gleams of sunset on a summer cloud.
"Happy? yes, he parted with me so kindly—he was so earnest to make me forget that dangerous woman, who had disappeared from among us like a ghost—he seemed to love me again so much more than ever, that I could not help being happy. Besides, he is coming down to see us. I have told him all about you, darling cousin. Father has consented that in a year or two, if we do not change our minds, that is—"
"He will take you away altogether; and this has happened while I was ignorant of it all. Oh, Elizabeth! how many things can grow up to divide two souls, while one of the little wild-flowers yonder buds, blossoms, and fades away!"
"But no souls are divided here, Abby!" cried the young girl, earnestly. "The love that I feel for you and father only grows broader and deeper since I have known him. We are not parted, cousin."
"Not by love. I know that!"
"Not at all. Look at me, cousin Abby! how strangely you are peering into the distance, as if something in the gloom drew your eyes from my face! What is it you see, cousin?"
Elizabeth bent forward, and looked keenly in the direction her cousin's eyes had taken. Far down the hollow she saw the young hunter whose presence had surprised her on the road a few hours before.
"Hush, Abby! Don't speak yet; but look and tell me who he is?"
As she spoke, Elizabeth leaned forward till her golden curls took the wind and fluttered out like sunbeams on the air. The man saw her, turned and disappeared among the undergrowth of the hollow.
"Did you ever see him before?" questioned Elizabeth of her cousin, as she shrunk back with a sort of superstitious dread, for the man had vanished like a phantom; "or have the woods become haunted since I went away?"
Abby Williams started up with nervous haste. "Come, come, you must be hungry by this time: it is almost noon; old Tituba will be waiting, and you know nothing makes her so angry as leaving her Johnny-cake to be eaten cold. She will never forgive us."
Elizabeth sighed. A pang of disappointment came across her sunny nature. Why was Abby so changed? How had it happened that a confession, which she had shrunk from and dreamed over, should have been told in that hard, common-place fashion? Why were the sweet tidings which had cost her so much agitation received so coldly by the only creature who had never till then felt a thought or feeling unshared with her?
"Well," she said, and her bright eyes filled as she spoke, while a laugh that had bitter tones in it rose to her lip, "I did not think you would have taken all this so coldly. But never mind; as you say, Tituba's Johnny-cake must not get cold."
With a slight bound she reached the shelf of rock below her, and hurried away, followed by Abigail Williams, who stopped every other moment to look anxiously around, but still kept near her cousin.
"There he is—I say, Abby—there he is again, moving through that dogwood thicket," said Elizabeth, holding her breath, and speaking in a whisper.
"Be quiet; it is only a hunter searching for deer or wild turkeys."
As she spoke, Abigail made a quick signal with her hand, which sent the young woodranger into covert again.
"Who is he? What is the reason we never saw him before?" thought Elizabeth, as she moved homeward; but the silence of her cousin encouraged no questions, and the two girls reached the house without speaking of the stranger again.
Scarcely had the two cousins left the woods, when, upon the very path they had trod, appeared Barbara Stafford, the woman who had inquired for the minister at his house that morning. Immediately after breakfast she had wandered into the open air, and, after lingering around the meeting-house a while, went into the forest. The hum of insects, and the rustle of leaves, fell soothingly upon her, and with a dreamy listlessness she moved on, sitting down at times when she came to some flower or shrub which seemed strange or curious; but frequently leaving it half examined, and moving on again restlessly searching for something else.
At last she came out on the ledge, which the cousins had just left, and sighing softly as she crossed the carpet of gray moss, sat down upon the rock sofa and fell into thought. The place seemed to have some peculiar fascination for her, for she grew paler and paler in that dim religious light, giving way to feelings that could only rise unchecked in the profoundest solitude. At last, her agitation became so great, that she fell forward upon the cushions and began to moan faintly, as those who have lost the power to weep express pain, when it becomes insupportable.
As she remained thus, the young hunter, who had twice appeared before the cousins, came out upon the lower shelf of the rock, and, without seeing her, threw himself on the edge, and lay still, as if waiting for some one.
The sound of Barbara Stafford's voice arrested his attention. He arose, clambered softly to the higher shelf of rock, and stood a moment, leaning on his gun, regarding her with vague thrills of agitation. Though he could not see her face, the mysterious atmosphere that surrounds a familiar person made its impression upon him, and he recognized her at once.
At last, oppressed by a human presence, which, even unseen and unheard, will make itself felt to a delicately organized person, Barbara lifted her head. She did not speak, but her lips parted, her eyes grew large, and a flash of wild astonishment rushed over her face.
"In the name of Heaven what is this?" she cried at last, reaching forth her hand, as if she doubted that the presence was real.
A convulsion of feeling swept over the young man's face; the gun dropped from his hold, and, forced to his knees, as it were against his will, he seized her hand, and pressed it to his lips wildly, madly, then cast it away, with a gesture of rage at himself, for a weakness of which his manhood was ashamed.
Barbara Stafford had no power to repulse this frantic homage. She had but just begun to realize that he was alive and before her—that it was his hot lips that touched her, and his flashing eyes that poured their fire into hers. The hand he had dropped fell listlessly by her side. She sat up, regarding him haughtily.
"Philip!"
The voice was stern with rebuke. The whiteness of anger settled on her features.
"Yes," said the young man. "It is Philip, the slave to whom you opened the avenues of knowledge, and whose soul you tempted from its strength by the dainty refinements of civilization. It is the Bermuda serf, whom you made free and enslaved again. But still the son of a king, and the chief of a brave people. Woman, you dashed the shackles from these limbs only to gird them around my soul; and then left me to writhe myself to death, a double serf, and a double slave!"
"Philip, you are mad—nay, worse—you are ungrateful. Am I to suffer forever for those impulses of compassion that took you from under the lash of a slave-driver, and helped you to the key of all greatness—knowledge? Am I blamable if that too fiery nature would not be content with gratitude, but, having gained liberty, and all the privileges of free manhood, asked that which his benefactress could not give—which it was presumption to seek?"
"I was the son of a king," said the hunter, proudly, "the only son of a brave man, and a woman beautiful as yourself, a woman who had blood in her veins as white and pure as that which my presence has just frightened from your own cheek. Look around: from the ocean to the mountains every thing was my father's till the people of your race came, like a pestilence, across the sea, and, more by cunning and hypocrisy than power, wrested his dominion away, and drove his people to death or slavery. Lady, there was no presumption in the thought, when the wronged heir of Philip of Mount Hope offered the love of a free, brave man, who had learned both how to think, and how to act, to the daughter of—"
"Hush! I charge you, hush!" cried Barbara, starting to her feet, "not even here must you pronounce that name—I thought myself utterly unknown. If I have ever been good to you—if it was a kindness when I won you from slavery, by tears and entreaties, that would not be refused—if the friendship of years, sacrifices, efforts, and that pure affection which a childless mother may bestow on the young man whom she would gladly have regarded as a son, gives me any claim on your forbearance, let my secrecy be respected! I am weary, wretched, broken-hearted enough already: do not add to the misery of my condition by a reckless word, or an unguarded look!"
Barbara clasped her hands, and was about to sink to her knees in pure agitation as she made this appeal.
The young hunter prevented the action by a prompt movement, and fell at her feet with an impulse of generous humility.
"Lady, command me! Do not entreat! What have I done that you should rebuke me by a request?"
Barbara smiled, and touched his forehead lightly with her hand. Instantly, a soft mist dulled the fire of those splendid eyes, and the young man bowed his head, thrilled to the heart by the proud magnetism of her look.
"Tell me, Philip," she said, very gently, "tell me how it is that I find you here, in a place so full of danger. Why come again to the lands that have passed from the possession of your people forever—lands that are swept away, and held securely in the grasp of civilization? What can you hope—what can you expect, by this mad return?"
"What can I hope, lady? That the soil upon which I stand will still be mine. What do I expect? That my father's people may be gathered together from the swamps of the lowlands, and the caves of the mountains, and, united in the midst of their old hunting-grounds, meet their enemies face to face, and fight them as my father did—conquer them, as he would have done, but for the traitors in his bosom; or failing, perish like him!"
"My poor, brave Philip!" said Barbara, regarding the youth with unutterable compassion, "what men could do your father and his chiefs essayed, and in vain. It is not fighting man to man here. There is no fair combat of human strength or manly intellect; but you combat with destiny—that grand, cruel thing, which comes in the form of civilization. Ah, Philip, there is no contending against that."
"Then let me die with the people who call me king; but die avenging the wrongs that have driven our chiefs into slavery, and left our tribes nothing but basket-makers and hunters of musk rats!" cried the youth, desperately.
"Lady, do not counsel or thwart me here; the blood of two races, fiery and hot with a sense of wrong, urges me on. My brain aches with thought, my heart beats loudly in its hope for vengeance on the men who slew my father, and sought to starve my soul down to contented servitude. Neither heart nor brain will be argued or persuaded into submission. Beyond this, and inspiring it all, I wait for the sad scornfulness of that smile to disappear. When his people are once more a nation, you cannot say that the son of Philip of Mount Hope was presumptuous in loving you."
"And is this wild feeling at the bottom of it all?" said Barbara, in a voice full of regret.
"It has brought me across the ocean, lurking like a hound in the hold of the same vessel with yourself—it has filled me with ambition to rebuild the fortunes of a down-trodden people. When these brave men they call savages are linked in one common band and common cause—like the chieftains of Scotland, each a sovereign lord in himself—we shall meet these wily white men, and conquer back the forests they have wrested from us. Hitherto their brain-craft has more than overmatched our strong arms; but I have learned something of their coward wisdom in the lands to which you have sent me. If I studied law and military science in England, it was that I might learn the art by which men rule their fellow-men. I have used the means you gave me to learn that power of mind which sways multitudes more surely than the stout arm or certain eye. Lady, I have, in my search for the great secret by which your people stole away the Indian birthright, learned to despise our conquerors. But not you! not you! My gratitude lifted you out from among them all. It was because my soul thanked you so tenderly that it lost itself in love."
"Ah, Philip," said the lady, "but for this madness how great you might become!"
"Say not so. All the thirst for greatness that I have springs out of the mighty love that you will not listen to," answered the young man.
"Because it is madness—insanity. I say nothing of the barriers which rank and civilization build up like a wall between us two; but nature herself should chill such feelings in their birth. Why, young man, I had learned to hope and suffer, as woman can alone hope and suffer, before you were born."
"Be it so—I care not. Souls made for eternity are neither brightened nor dulled by a few years of time. I see only what is grand and beautiful in the only woman of her race that this heart ever deemed worthy of a warrior's love."
The young man towered proudly upward as he spoke. The gorgeous robe which he had assumed with his savage state, shook and rattled as he gathered it over his chest. The lady gazed upon him with irresistible admiration. She might rebuke his love, and shrink with womanly delicacy from any fulfilment of his hopes, which, in truth, seemed to outrage the august dignity of her years. But there was a grandeur in the young man that forced her to respect him—a truthfulness which enlisted all her sympathies.
"Philip," she said, extending her hand, which he kissed reverently, as if she had been an empress, and that moss couch her throne, "I will not bid you God-speed in the grand, but I think hopeless, task you have undertaken, much as I deem you wronged; because my judgment, calmer than yours, tells me how surely civilization must sweep the darkness of barbarism before it. The virgin soil of this new world is required for the growth of food for the surplus population which is now sweeping across the Atlantic in a slow but steady tide from the old world. That which civilization demands it will attain. Hope not to match the bravery of your warriors against the keen energy of the Anglo-Saxon. Where he treads, opposition, nay, justice itself, sways backward. Cool, resolute, sometimes unscrupulous, he never recedes, but swiftly as time advances so does he. Look along the coast already has he hewn down the mighty forest, and let the sunshine in to ripen the grain planted within sight of your very wigwams. Already are cities and towns sending up their spires to heaven. Every courthouse, and every place of worship thus marked in the landscape, is a barrier stronger than any military fortress, against the idea of Indian sovereignty that now heaves that chest, and kindles those eyes."
The young man's lip curved, and his eyes shone as he answered:
"Lady, forgive me; but you speak like a woman, whose destiny is to think, not to act. But in my heart the barbarism out of which true heroes spring, and the Anglo-Saxon blood of which you boast, meet and swell together into one mighty resolve. We will first conquer our foes; then wrest from them the secrets that make the soil teem with food and beauty for their use. While the earth rolls, and the sun shines, brave men of all nations will seek the war-path; the church spires and halls of justice will never prevent that. But, like the white man, we will plant corn where the earth has been made richest with human blood, and let wild flowers start into bloom above the graves we have filled to loathing with dead foes."
"But if you are ready to follow the lead of our people so far," said Barbara, "why not join them in amity now?"
"Because the Indian would be master of the soil he plants, and the game he shoots. King Philip of Mount Hope acknowledged no peer. They slew him, but he filled a monarch's grave. Has the blood of a white woman, martyred for her faith, made his son so weak that he needs Anglo-Saxon adventurers and dissatisfied clergymen to share authority with him?"
Barbara arose, and reached forth her hand.
"Farewell!" she said, with sweet mournfulness. "That I meet you here and thus, is a new pang and a new sorrow. I had hoped to find you content and happy, on my return to Europe; but alas, these awful forests seem to swallow up every thing upon which my poor heart leaned. God help me, for now I feel more alone than ever. Ah, Philip, if you would only be persuaded to recross the Atlantic—there alone you are safe."
"Lady, when I am indeed a chief, and my brave warriors have turned the churches you boast of into wigwams, I will cross the sea, and ask again if great deeds and undying love may claim at least a patient hearing."
Barbara shook her head.
"Not with that hope—not with such intent," she answered, gravely; "for it can never be. Now, farewell."
"Adieu, but not forever," answered the young man, bending low over the hand she offered. "These are unsafe times, and with all your pride there will come a season when you will have need of me. The spirit which hunted Anna Hutchinson into the forest, and drove my mother out to starve, is not yet appeased. New victims will be wanted. The great Anglo-Saxon mind that you speak of is, after all, but slavish and half developed—the outgrowth of that very tyranny of opinion it fled to avoid. Those who brave martyrdom ever are foremost in persecution. Lady, beware of these new people. Nay, I had better say, take no heed; for I who, hating slavery, glory in being your slave, will guard you well."
With these words the youth snatched up his rifle, pointed out a footpath, which Barbara turned into, and both disappeared in opposite directions.
Elizabeth Parris was in her own little chamber, in the gable end of her father's log house; the window looked out toward the sea, and a beautiful glow of sunshine lay upon the pasture land which stretched between it and the shore, turning the water to sparkling sapphires, and the green of the land to a richer emerald tint, as the day drew toward its noon.
There was something very pretty and picturesque about Elizabeth's room. Though a tiny little place compared to that she had just left in the gubernatorial mansion, it possessed a score of dainty trifles, that, at first sight, awoke in her heart a sweet home-feeling, which went rippling like a trill of music through her whole being. So she went from object to object, arranging one, displacing another, and fluttering to and fro like a bird that returns to its cage, after a long, pleasant flight in the open air.
"Ah, how white and nice everything is!" she said, addressing old Tituba, who stood by the door, watching her with a glow of satisfaction in her sharp, black eyes. "This curtain is soft and pure as the clouds that hang over the sea out yonder. As for the bed, I shouldn't think it had been slept in since I went away, the pillow-cases shine like snow crust."
"The bed hasn't been slept in since we knew you were coming right away home, child," said old Tituba, casting a well-pleased look on the pillow-cases, polished by her own deftly urged smoothing-irons. "I put every thing on fresh, yesterday: all for yourself."
"Not used, Tituba, not used! Then where has cousin Abby slept? Where did she sleep last night?"
"She's gone into the back room, at t'other end of the house; the night we heard you were coming she went in there."
"What? The store-room, where you kept herbs and dried apples, and all sorts of things—where the old chest of drawers stands? What does this mean, Tituba?"
"I s'pose Abby was lonesome."
"Lonesome here, in this bright room, with a glow from the water breaking in whenever there is sunshine, and the first roses always peeping through that window, with dew on the leaves?—Tituba, you must be dreaming! How could Abby tire of our own room, even if I was away? But then, just as I was sure to come back—I can't understand it, Tituba!
"Come and see," said Tituba, crossing a little span of open garret, and unclosing a door which led to the opposite gable. "Sure as the world, this is Abby Williams's room now."
Elizabeth stepped into the little chamber. It was similar in size to the one she had just left; but not enclosed, like that, with wooden panels of a light, cheerful color, or floored with fine boards scoured white by the constant exercise of old Tituba's scrubbing-cloth. But in this still, neglected chamber, the rafters were dismally exposed, crevices of light broke through the shingles here and there, while the rough floor was full of knot-holes, and shook loosely under the tread as it was passed over.
A low trundle bed, covered with a blue-and-white yarn quilt, stood in a corner, close under the slope of the roof. A single chair was near it, and close by the door a tall chest of drawers towered into the roof. This was all the furniture visible. That the room had been used for rude household purposes formerly, was very evident; for opposite the bed, clusters of pennyroyal, sage, and coriander, were still hanging to the rafters; and on each side of the windows festoons of dried apples and rings of pumpkins fell, like a drapery, from roof to floor, but half concealing the rough logs underneath. The windows looked toward the grave-yard, and beyond that into the deep, dark forest.
Elizabeth gazed around with mingled surprise and distress. After her beautiful city life, this homely apartment seemed full of insupportable gloom.
"And does Abby mean to sleep here? She who loved our own pretty room so much? What does it all mean? Do tell me, old Tituba, what does it mean?"
Tituba shook her head.
"What does it mean?" persisted the young lady, with a burst of her natural impatience. "I want to understand all about it!"
That moment the door opened, and Abby Williams came in, looking pale and harassed.
"What is all this about?" cried Elizabeth, turning upon her cousin, with a burst of indignant affection. "I come back, Abby Williams, to find our dear old room white and cold as a snow drift—not a flower in the glasses—not even a branch of pine or hemlock in the fire-place—and worst of all, the bed so smooth that it looks as if no one ever slept in it, or ought to sleep in it, without being chilled to death. Why have you left our pretty room, Abby Williams? the chamber you and I have slept in since they took us from the same cradle; left it, too, for this dreary corner, just as I was coming home so happy, so very, very happy, at the thoughts of—of—oh! Abby, dear, dear Abby, what has come over you since I have been away?"
Abby Williams stood leaning against the chest of drawers. She looked sad and weary, rather than touched, or excited, by her cousin's almost passionate appeal.
"I came here," she said, gently, "because, since you went away, Elizabeth, I have learned to be alone. It seems unnatural to go back into the old life now: your heart is full of its own joys. But mine—you see I am fond of loneliness, and that is why we cannot sleep together any more."
Elizabeth's blue eyes filled with angry tears; her fair face flushed, and turned pale, and then broke into one of those heavenly smiles that seemed bright enough to win an angel from his place in paradise. She went up to her cousin, and flung one arm over her shoulder.
"Oh, I see how it is," she cried, turning the sad face toward her with a gentle pat of the hand: "she is jealous that I shall think of somebody else now, and not all the day and night long of her, as we used to think of each other. I know what the feeling is, Abby darling, and would rather die than give it to you. But then you are so wrong! This love—don't stare, old Tituba—indeed I love some one, very, very much—you cross-looking old thing—and that very love gives warmth and breadth to all the dear old household feelings, that nothing ever could crowd from my heart, just as a good mother loves all her children, better and better for every new baby. There now, don't be jealous, cousin!"
"I am not jealous, Elizabeth Parris," answered Abby, oppressed by the caressing tenderness of the young girl, "only sad, and in love with my own company. When two girls like us are once separated, it is not so easy to fall back into the old ways."
"Indeed, indeed, this is jealousy, nothing else. But I do love you so much, Abby Williams, cross as you are; you don't know how my heart leaped, as I came in sight of the house; I wanted to fly, to kiss you, like this, a thousand, thousand times. There—there."
Elizabeth interrupted herself, pressing kiss after kiss on the lips, forehead and hair of her cousin, who shrunk and grew pallid in her embrace, as if those warm caresses had poison in them.
"Why, Abby, you do not kiss me back—you are trying to get away—is it because you do not love me any longer—is it really that?"
Elizabeth drew back, searching her cousin's face with reproachful eyes, while Abby turned away sullenly.
"This is hard, very hard!" murmured Elizabeth, choking back the sobs that struggled in her throat. "I am home again, my—my heart brimful of joy, and no one seems to care for it; even old Tituba stands looking at me, as if she expected to be hanged, and I had the rope somewhere about me. What have I done, or left undone, that my cousin should hate me so?"
Abigail muttered something beneath her breath. It was that fragment of Scripture, which speaks of children inheriting the sins of their parents. The poor girl did not remember that endurance and atonement make up the duty of this fell inheritance, not vengeance. But her whole being was in commotion. She began to look upon herself as an avenger, and this iron repulse of her cousin was her first step in the gloomy path which seemed the only one she could ever tread.
"What were you saying, Abigail?" inquired Elizabeth, softened with what she thought a relenting murmur.
"Nothing. I did not speak," said Abby, moving toward the window, and looking out.
Elizabeth also looked out: her glance fell on the outskirts of the grave-yard, along which a female figure was moving rapidly toward the house.
Elizabeth caught her breath. Abigail turned her eyes, that instant, and saw the change that came, like a storm, over that bright face.
"She here!" said Elizabeth, casting suspicious glances at Abby and old Tituba. "She here! Then I understand it all. She is the malignant witch that prowls forever along my path, turning every one against me. Abby Williams, you saw Barbara Stafford before I came home?"
"Yes," said Abby, vaguely, "I saw her; she is a strange, sweet woman, full of soothing, rich in all that gives tranquillity."
"It is her doings!" exclaimed Elizabeth, passionately. "This woman intrigues forever against me. I say again, Abigail Williams, and you, old Tituba, this woman, Barbara Stafford, is my enemy!"
Elizabeth was white and stern, as she uttered this denunciation. Every feature bore conviction that she solemnly believed what she was saying.
Old Tituba cowered down in a corner of the room, knitting her hands together in a paroxysm of nervous dread, for the sight of her child's distress made a coward of her. Even Abby, whose soul was full of a trouble more harrassing than superstition, felt a shudder creep through her frame, and a strange, intangible dread possessed her. She almost thought her cousin mad.
"See! see!" cried Elizabeth, pointing through the window, "that is my father; she is speaking with him—she dares to touch him—she turns—he walks by her side—he stoops his head to listen. Oh! my God, save him from her subtle power; I cannot move, I cannot run, to warn him: the very sight of the evil woman takes the strength from my limbs!"
A sudden faintness seized upon the young girl, as she spoke. She began to tremble violently, and crept away to her own chamber, moaning as she went. The change in her cousin, the shock of Barbara Stafford's sudden presence, the excitement in which she had been living, recoiled upon her all at once, and she was seriously ill.
For a little time she lay writhing upon the snowy bed, which had seemed so cold to her a few moments before. Sorrow, or any kind of anxiety, was so entirely new to her, that she wrestled all her strength away with the first encounter.
Old Tituba came into the room with a bowl of herb-tea, which the young girl strove to drink; but the first drop was met with a hysterical swell of the throat, and she pushed the bowl away, exclaiming, "I cannot swallow! I cannot swallow!"
Old Tituba stood by the bed, grasping the bowl in her little, brown hands, terrified by a burst of feeling which convulsed the slight form before her with strange throes.
She possessed no skill which could reach or even understand a paroxysm like this, for in those days the hysterical affections that spring from over-excitement and ill-regulated tempers, had not reached the dignity of a fashionable disease.
Abby Williams did not enter the chamber. She heard these moans and sobs with forced indifference. With the thoughts of the constable's lash across the white shoulders of her mother, and the Indian tomahawk mercifully buried in the broad forehead of her grandame, Anna Hutchinson, she had no sympathy to cast away on the causeless moans of a young girl. To her they seemed trivial and mocking. With mighty wrongs like those in the past, what right had any one to moan over the capricious rise and flow of mere household affection?
Under the knowledge of a great wrong, Abby Williams stifled the tender impulses of a heart naturally full of human goodness. She had learned to think revenge a solemn obligation. Was not this young creature writhing under the first recoil of her affections, the child of her mother's judge? Was not she, Abigail Williams, the creature of her enemies' bounty? From the cradle up, had she not received her daily bread from the hand which placed her mother beneath the lash?
These thoughts froze all compassion in her heart; but she could not listen to the sobs that broke from that room without a sensation of terrible regret for the love that had grown so icy in her bosom. In the grasp of that iron destiny, her poor heart, with a thousand kind impulses fluttering at the core, trembled to free itself, but had no power. A wall of granite seemed built up between her and the young creature who had once been her second life. So, stupefied and locked up in the iron destiny before her, she sat down in the open garret, and waited within hearing of her cousin's sobs.
As Abigail Williams sat upon a wooden box, with both hands locked over her knees, holding herself, body and soul, as it were, in a vice, the chamber door opened, and Elizabeth came out. Her hair was disordered, and her face flushed with weeping; but she walked with a gesture of resolve, and descended to the lower part of the house in quick haste.
The sitting-room was empty, but through the window she saw her father, standing with Barbara Stafford. The woman was talking earnestly, enforcing what she said, now and then, with a gentle motion of the hand.
Samuel Parris was looking in her face with a long-fixed gaze. His heart had not been so moved by a human voice since the day when the young wife, who lay close in sight, had turned from his embrace to bless her babe and die.
There was something in Barbara's look, or voice, that troubled all the deep waters of his memory, and yet she was in no one thing like the fair young creature lost to him so long ago.
Parris was speaking as his daughter came up. Almost for the first time in his life, he did not take a step to meet the idol of his home, as she approached; but kept on with the invitation he was giving.
"Surely, we will find you food and shelter, so long as you may require either," he was saying; "we are a simple family, and live as becometh a servant of the Most High, taking God's gifts in frugal thankfulness. You have, doubtless, been used to more sumptuous fare, lady, and a statelier roof; but in my poor house you will find peace and household love, which is better than cups of gold and trenchers of silver. Sojourn with us, then, so long as it pleases you. See, here comes my daughter, who shall speak our welcome better than I can—who, to own the truth, am somewhat unused to hospitable courtesies. Elizabeth, my child, this lady will be our guest a while, welcome her as beseemeth a lady of condition, for such make sure she is."
When Elizabeth came up, her cheek was on fire, and her eyes sparkled with some passionate resolve; but as she turned from her father to Barbara Stafford, with a proud refusal on her lip, the calm, blue eyes of the woman fell upon her, like sunshine on a thunder-cloud. The repulse that had burned on her lip quivered into a murmur of welcome; her eyes drooped to the earth, and she grew ashamed of her passion. The fire upon her cheek melted into a modest blush, and her voice was sweet with new-born humility.
And all this change arose from a single, calm glance, prolonged and vital with that mesmeric power which endows some human beings with wonderful influence—an influence that might well arouse the superstition of an age like that, and prove a dangerous gift to its possessor.
As Elizabeth stood before her, mute and blushing, Barbara reached forth her hand, clasping that of the young girl with a gentle pressure.
"You will not find me troublesome," she said, with a sad smile, quietly ignoring the fact that they had ever met before; "I want a little time for rest and thought. You will not grudge me a corner in your home, or a crust and cold water twice a day. My wants will be scarcely more than that."
"You shall be welcome, lady," murmured Elizabeth, almost in a whisper. "But deal kindly with us, for you have great power."
This was not at all the reply Elizabeth had intended to make; but she had no courage either to expostulate or protest; her heart swelled, and her limbs shook, but she had lost all ability or wish to send the stranger from her father's door.
"Shall we go in-doors now?" said Samuel Parris, who saw nothing unusual in the reception his daughter had given to their guest. "I have scarcely spoken to my niece yet; but methought, Elizabeth, that she looked sad, as if the loneliness of our absence had stricken deep. Pray, call Abigail Williams, my child. I would greet her once more, and present her to our guest."
"I have already seen the young lady," said Barbara, smiling upon the old man; "she gave me some breakfast, this morning, before you came!"
"And in all that time we were together never mentioned it," murmured Elizabeth, with a swell of jealous indignation at the heart; "this is why Abby shuns me so cruelly!"
"She has a fair—nay, that is not the right word—she has a strangely interesting face," continued Barbara, softly, "a sibilline face, full of sweet gravity. I have never seen features so beautiful."
"Nay, nay," said the simple-hearted old man, looking with jealous fondness on his own child, "Abby is a comely girl enough; but great painters, I am told, give blue eyes and sunny hair to the angels."
Barbara smiled. His words bore a double compliment, for her own hair, though concealed under the folds of a lace coif, was lightly golden, and her eyes were of that deep bluish gray, which might at one time have been as rich in sparkling life as those of Elizabeth; but were now sad and hazy, with crushed tears.
Samuel Parris had not noticed this. His heart was turning back to another fair creature, who had indeed been the angel at his hearthstone years before; and her memory was the very type of human loveliness to him.
Barbara Stafford seemed to understand his thoughts.
"Yes," she said, "you are right; there is something almost divine in a pure, young face like—like—" she broke off suddenly, with a little confusion which satisfied the strong love of the old man for his child. Of course, the strange lady could not praise the beauty of Elizabeth, and she present. He looked at his daughter, wondering at the cloud on her forehead.
Barbara stepped forward, and laid her hand on that of the young girl; Elizabeth shrunk back, but as Barbara's fingers closed over hers, a thrill of almost imperceptible pleasure stole the pain from her heart, and she blushed like a naughty child beneath the grave, kind look, fastened on her face.
Abby Williams looked out from the gable window of her little chamber, and saw the action. A vague sense of loneliness drove her back into the room. She locked the door, creating for herself a moral desert, in which she sat down, a second Ishmael, ready to lift her hand against every creature of the white race.
A week went by, and all the bitter feelings, starting up in the hearts of those two girls, grew and throve like nightshade which overruns all the sweet flowers of a garden. Elizabeth was grieved and wounded into coldness. Abby grew silent, and shrunk away from her warm-hearted cousin. Her whole habits of life changed. She gave up all her dainty needle-work and passive knitting; from choice she toiled all day long in the kitchen with old Tituba, doing the hardest and coarsest work with a zeal that threatened to undermine her strength. The sweet, dreamy portion of her life gave place to hard reality. She toiled like a slave, and thought like a martyr.
Samuel Parris sometimes expostulated with his niece, in a solemn, kindly way; but she answered him vaguely, and went on her own course, denying his authority to chide only by a persistent refusal to change her new mode of life.
"I will earn my own bread," she would say to herself, "the hand that smote my mother shall not feed her child."
Then would come bitter, bitter hatred for the shelter she had received, and the food she had eaten from her cradle up. She loathed the very roundness of her limbs, and the richness of her beauty, because both had thriven on the kindness of her mother's arch enemy. Yet it seemed strange, very strange, that any one could feel a moment's bitterness toward that good old man, who had but acted up to the light of an iron age, believing himself even as Paul believed, when he persecuted the saints most cruelly.
Thus the household of Samuel Parris was divided against itself; and in the midst of this growing discord, Barbara Stafford rested, after many a heavy trouble, unconscious of the good or evil her presence created. She was a stranger in the land, the very reasons for her coming rested a secret in her bosom. Distressed, disappointed, and filled with heavy regrets, she had lost the keen perception which might have enlightened a less occupied person regarding the effect of her visit at the minister's house. Besides all this, Barbara knew nothing of the previous habits of the family, and had no way of learning that the two girls, now so far apart, had, up to the last two months, been like twin blossoms which a storm had never touched. But the days wore on, as if no discontent were known under that humble roof. When Abby Williams was not drudging in the kitchen, she spent her time in the woods; and in this lay the greatest danger of all, for during their lives, the two girls had haunted those forest nooks in company. Now Abigail went alone, in the day and in the night, without a word of explanation when she went in, or when she came out.
I do not know how Barbara Stafford spent her time, or what led her so much into the open air. She sat hours together on the sea-shore, looking wistfully over the swelling blue of the waters, waiting and musing like one who had no world out of her own thoughts. She seldom went to the forest, but sometimes walked slowly out to the outskirting trees, and came back again breathing fast as if something had frightened her away.
Sometimes Elizabeth, weary of the solitude forced upon her, would join Barbara in the sitting-room down-stairs, for the young girl seemed constantly torn by opposing influences. In the absence of her father's guest, jealousy, suspicion, and bursts of dislike, embittered every thought; but some strange force seemed constantly bringing the two in company. Then Elizabeth was like a little child, so gentle, and regretting so much the bitter feelings of her solitude, that her whole character was disturbed with contradictions.