Silent Struggles Part 40

In her eagerness, she almost lifted Abby from her seat on the bed, and kissed her averted face again and again. Abby was taken by surprise: her heart gave a wild leap, and her cheeks grew red and warm. The good, true heart for a moment flung off its bitter load.

They crossed the garret, each with an arm girding the other's waist, and stood by the window, while the young man dismounted. Abby could not feel that young heart beating and fluttering against her own without a thrill of warm sympathy, and for a little time the old love triumphed.

"Stand back a little, just a step, cousin Abby, or he will see us watching him," cried Elizabeth, blushing crimson as the fear crossed her mind.

"There now--ah!"

Elizabeth gave a start, and, forgetting her late precaution, drew close to the window. The young man had sprung from his saddle, and was moving eagerly toward the door-step, on which Barbara Stafford seemed to be waiting for him. The sound of his voice, clear and full of glad surprise, rang up to the two girls where they stood.

"You here, lady--oh, if you only knew how anxious we have been, how lonely the house was after you left so strangely. The governor has scarcely spoken since, except on state affairs--and as for Lady Phipps, she moves about like a shadow. Somehow all the sunshine went out when you disappeared."

Barbara Stafford answered, in a constrained voice, but with gentleness,

"I have a few weeks to wait, before the ship goes out. My business in this land is accomplished. I only wanted some place to rest in, till the time came, and was reluctant to burden the governor's hospitality for so long a time. Avoiding a formal farewell I found my way here, knowing that the good minister would give me shelter."

"Oh, but we have been so troubled at your sudden disappearance: it was very cruel."

"Was there any one who felt my loss?" asked Barbara, with a thrill of tenderness in her voice. "Who cared to inquire if I was dead or alive?"

"You ask that question in earnest? I will not believe it. How little you knew of the friendship, the love you abandoned!"

These words rose to the window less distinctly than the others had done; but Abby felt the form, still encircled by her arm, waver as if about to fall.

"Listen--listen," she said, "it is not of himself he speaks."

Elizabeth did not answer. Her breath was hushed. With all her soul she listened for the next words. They came like a gush of bright waters.

"But now that I find you safe, and have good tidings to carry back to Sir William and Lady Phipps, I will pa.s.s in, lady, for I must see another before my hard gallop is quite rewarded. Surely, Miss Parris is not away from home, or ill?"

"He thinks of you--he inquires for you!" whispered Abby. "It was surprise, only surprise, that kept him at the door so long."

"I will go down. Shall I go down at once? Dear cousin, tell me--don't let me go if it is unmaidenly, or if you think he has been too cold.

Shall I go, cousin Abby?"

"Yes, go," answered Abby Williams, withdrawing her arm. "He is waiting for you!"

Elizabeth smoothed her hair with both hands, looked shyly at her cousin as she turned from the little mirror, and glided away. She entered the lower hall; there between her and her lover stood Barbara Stafford, with the sunshine on her head, but casting a dark shadow across the door-sill. So the young people met with constraint, and each thought the other cold.

Barbara Stafford glided away when she saw Elizabeth, and bent her course to the sea-sh.o.r.e. Young Lovel watched her, with a long, earnest look, and when she disappeared behind a grove of orchard trees he sighed deeply, and fell into thought. Elizabeth stood on the threshold, leaning against the mouldings of the door. Her cheek grew red, and she began to tremble beneath the rush of a terrible idea, that took distinct form on that fatal moment.

"Strange, strange woman!" muttered the youth. "By what power does she drain the heart of all thoughts that do not belong to herself?"

Elizabeth drew back keenly disappointed. The young man seemed unconscious of her presence; yet they had not seen each other for weeks.

She turned proudly, and went into the house. The movement aroused Lovel.

He withdrew his eyes from the retreating form of Barbara Stafford, to which they seemed drawn by some fascination, and followed the young girl, unconscious that he had done any thing to wound or offend her.

Elizabeth sat down in the oaken chair, that had belonged to her mother.

She could not understand the iron feelings that crept over her.

"Has that woman's shadow chilled all the love from my heart as well as his?" she said to herself. "Am I too bewitched?"

CHAPTER x.x.xIV.

TOWARD THE Sh.o.r.e.

This word made the idea, that had haunted her so long, painfully tangible. The young girl began to shudder at the thoughts that crowded upon her. All the feelings, connected with her love of this young man, had been strange from the first. So much of pain was mingled with its sweetness, so much of pa.s.sion, temper, and the bitter tears which spring from both, that she could not comprehend them. The very development of her own nature, under the workings of a pa.s.sion utterly unknown to her before, had something mysterious in it, which aroused ideas of some supernatural power, checking and thwarting it into a wild pain.

Barbara Stafford had undoubtedly connected herself with the evil power, which sometimes held her heart girded like a vice, and again forced the young creature to throw herself upon the woman's bosom in a paroxysm of regretful tenderness.

Why was she to love or hate Barbara Stafford, a woman she had never seen till within the last few weeks--a stranger wrecked upon the sh.o.r.e, and cast up, as it were, from the foam of the ocean, without a history, and it might prove without a true name. If it must be that their destinies jostled each other, why could it not be all love or entire hate?

Elizabeth Parris sat still, thinking these things over, while Norman Lovel was talking to her of the friends she had so lately left. He brought a score of sweet messages from Lady Phipps, and kindly remembrances from the governor himself. He spoke of the loneliness that fell upon the family when its guests had departed; but after his words to Barbara Stafford, any thing he could say to her seemed cold and common-place. Without knowing it, Elizabeth was possessed of that proud hunger, which every true woman feels, when she really loves--that craving desire to be all or nothing, which makes so many n.o.ble hearts miserable.

Yes, Elizabeth would be all to Norman Lovel, or she would be nothing.

She did not say these words, or think these thoughts; but the resolution rose and burned in her heart like a fire. Filled with the tumult of these sensations, she did not heed what her lover was saying. His voice seemed to come from afar off; and as for the meaning of his speech, her ears refused to drink it in.

Norman saw her distraction, and was amazed by it. Had he ridden fifteen miles through the woods, almost on an unbroken gallop, to be met with half looks, and greeted only by monosyllables? The young man took fire at once. He would give Elizabeth plenty of time to collect her thoughts.

His kindest words should no longer be wasted on a sullen statue.

In this heat of temper, Norman took up his hat and went out. Elizabeth started, looked wildly over her shoulder, and tried to call him back; but her voice was husky, and refused utterance; she could neither speak nor move, till he had crossed the threshold, and was gone. For some moments she sat motionless. It seemed as if her limbs were girded to the chair. She thought with bitterness that the power of Barbara Stafford's evil will held her tight, when it was but the reaction of her own overwrought feelings. The fiend Jealousy was torturing her.

Elizabeth broke free from this painful thrall, started up, and went to the door, shading her eyes with one hand as she looked forth toward the ocean. It lay in the distance, blue and sparkling, like ridges and waves of sapphire, breaking through streams of diamond dust. The glory of the sunshine was nothing to her. She turned away, searching the sh.o.r.e; there she saw young Lovel walking rapidly in the path from which Barbara Stafford had just disappeared.

"He is going to her! he is going to her!" cried the young girl, pressing one hand upon her forehead, to still a thought that seemed gnawing at her brain like a viper. "She has charmed him away, she and the sweet-toned familiar, that whispers in her voice, and looks through those velvet eyes--"

"Elizabeth, child! Elizabeth!"

She did not hear the voice of t.i.tuba, who stood in the entry, behind her, waiting to be noticed.

"Child!" she repeated, touching the uplifted arm with her finger, "child!"

Elizabeth dropped her hand, and shrunk away, looking at t.i.tuba suspiciously, over her shoulder.

"You hurt me, old t.i.tuba. Look--my arm is black and purple where the marks of your nails have been. She has taught you this, old woman. I have seen her in the kitchen, with fresh herbs, which you made into tea; and roots, which she dug up with a dagger from among drifts of sea-weed on the sh.o.r.e. Keep away from me, old woman; my flesh creeps as you come near."

Old t.i.tuba was confounded. She had only come to consult her young mistress on the propriety of killing a chicken, and making up a batch of blackberry pies, if the young gentleman was likely to stay over night; and this charge of hurting the creature whom she loved better, almost, than any thing on earth, struck her dumb. At length she spoke.

"You are sick, Miss Lizzybeth; something dreadful is the matter, or you'd never say this to old t.i.tuba. Go up-stairs, and lie down while I make some tea."

"No; you gave me herb drink last night, and once before this week. I will not take that drink from any one."

"Why, child?"

"Hush, t.i.tuba, hush, if you love me! I don't mean to be cross; but my head is full of awful thoughts; they make me say cruel things even to poor old t.i.tuba."