Silent Struggles Part 34

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 G.o.d'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 pa.s.sionate 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 pa.s.sion. 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 superst.i.tion 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 pa.s.sive knitting; from choice she toiled all day long in the kitchen with old t.i.tuba, doing the hardest and coa.r.s.est 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-sh.o.r.e, 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.

CHAPTER x.x.x.

STRANGE SHADOWS.

One evening, after Barbara Stafford had found shelter beneath the roof of Samuel Parris, Jason Brown and his wife sat upon the lonely hearth, just after the tow-wicked candle was lighted, and the evening knitting-work brought out. Jason was sitting near the round stand, scooping out a rude b.u.t.ter-ladle with his jackknife, from a thick piece of pine, which he had brought in from the wood-house. The hired man occupied a closer place by the dim light; for he was employed in the more difficult operation of mending a broken harness.

"Look a-here, Jase," said the hired man, looking up from his task, while he jerked two waxed ends through the leather, and tightened them at arm's length. "What du yer mean ter decide on about them tarnal heavy boxes in the barn? The hay is eenamost gone, and by-an-by there won't be enough left to kiver 'em with. Besides--what is in 'em? I should kinder like to know that, my bisness or not."

"What du you know or care about that?" answered Jason, lifting his b.u.t.ter-ladle to the light, and eying its growing symmetry with great satisfaction.

"Don't know nothin' and don't care a darn," was the reply, given in perfect self-complacency; "only the all-fired things will be tarnally in the way when we come to thrash."

"But they can be moved then."

"Moved! why you might as well try to lift a tombstun. I reckon I've tried it."

Goody Brown kept on with her work, without joining in this conversation, and for some minutes the click and rattle of her needles kept time with the splinters cast off by her husband's jackknife.

Then the hired man spoke again.

"How long afore you'll be going to sea agin, Jase?"

"That's rayther unsartin. There'll be a good deal of jiner work to do on the vessel afore she puts out agin. That storm tore her eenamost tu pieces."

Goody Brown looked up from her knitting with the ghost of a smile hovering over her lips.

"Then you'll have so much longer to stay tu hum," she said.

"Wal, yes; I shouldn't much wonder if Thanksgiving found me in this identical spot."

The good wife breathed deeply, and went on with her work, sending out absolute music from her needles. Then the hired man spoke again.

"Any pa.s.sengers this trip?"