Silent Struggles Part 33

"Ah, how white and nice everything is!" she said, addressing old t.i.tuba, 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 t.i.tuba, 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, t.i.tuba, 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, t.i.tuba?"

"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?--t.i.tuba, 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, t.i.tuba!

"Come and see," said t.i.tuba, 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 t.i.tuba'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 pa.s.sed 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, cl.u.s.ters 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 t.i.tuba, what does it mean?"

t.i.tuba 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 hara.s.sed.

"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 gla.s.ses--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 pa.s.sionate 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 t.i.tuba--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 t.i.tuba 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 t.i.tuba. "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, pa.s.sionately. "This woman intrigues forever against me. I say again, Abigail Williams, and you, old t.i.tuba, 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 t.i.tuba 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 harra.s.sing than superst.i.tion, 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 G.o.d, 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 t.i.tuba 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 t.i.tuba 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 compa.s.sion 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.

CHAPTER XXIX.

ASKING FOR SHELTER.