Silent Struggles Part 55

"You know me then, Samuel Parris? You know me then?"

"Alas! alas!" The old man wrung his hands in wild excitement.

"And now you understand my presence here, my anguish and my silence?"

"Oh! G.o.d forgive us!--G.o.d forgive us!" moaned the old man.

"You thought me dead, Samuel Parris: would that it had been so, but the unhappy cannot die when they wish."

"And thou art condemned to death! we, the wrongers and the sinful, have done this. But it is not too late, it shall not be too late."

The old man started toward the door, but Barbara laid her hand on his arm. "I have your promise, Samuel Parris."

The old man fell back against the wall as if he had been shot.

"Henceforth my fate rests in my own hands," said the lady, with gentle firmness. "If I revealed myself to you it was not to save this poor life, but because in no other way can justice be done to the living."

"But it must not be," cried the minister, wringing his hands. "Woman, woman, why did you not confide in me from the first?"

"And thus ruin him?"

"Oh, mercy! mercy! how hard it is to act rightly!" cried the old man.

"Sit down by me here on this bench," said Barbara, kindly. "I have no better seat to offer you. Sit down, old friend, and be calm as I am."

The old man obeyed her, and, lifting his haggard eyes to her face, gazed upon her with the helplessness of a child.

She had become almost calm: a gracious dew overspread her forehead and the light of a holy resolve shone in her eyes.

"I must tell you every thing," she said, "for after I am gone you will take my duties up and bear them forward for my sake."

"Speak on: I listen," answered the old man in a broken-hearted voice.

CHAPTER L.

BARBARA STAFFORD'S STORY.

Barbara Stafford covered her face with both hands, for a moment pressing her temples hard, as if she hoped thus to still the crowd of thoughts under which her brain struggled.

"Let me begin years back when you performed the marriage rite which has been the glory and bitterness of my life," she commenced at last, in a low, forced voice that betrayed the painful effort she was making. "My father was a proud man, as you know, but how much reason he had for this lofty ancestral pride no one on this side of the Atlantic ever guessed.

He was, in fact, when we came to this country, the next heir to one of the richest earldoms in England--one of those few t.i.tles that fall alike to male and female heirs. My paternal grandmother was then living, and his near connection with her honors was but little known. After my mother's death--her maiden name was Barbara Stafford, that which I now bear as a disguise--we came to America, urged by curiosity to see a country so grand and wild, so full of wonderful promise.

"I was young then, scarcely more than sixteen. We were thrown together--you know who I mean--even here I would not mention his name and wound the honor for which I am ready to die. We loved each other with the first bright pa.s.sion of youth, with the enduring love which fills a whole life with bliss or a perpetual weight of pain. We were young, rash, mad. I knew how hopeless it was to attempt winning my father's consent. The n.o.ble youth your solemn voice made my husband was his equal or the equal of any man who ever drew breath; but he was poor--a man of the people, a working man, though educated with the best, in intellect and energy equal to those who build up dynasties. My father was struck dumb with his audacity, when he asked my hand in marriage. So embittered was he with this outrage to his pride that he hastened to leave the country. But for a few days, contrary winds held him weather-bound. Then driven to despair, we fled to you, my husband's old friend.

"Do not shrink and moan so. It was a holy union you sanctified that night. I have suffered, oh, how terribly, since, but never regretted it, never shall regret it even in my death-throes.

"During three weeks after that ride through the forest when I returned to Boston a happy bride--for, spite of all, I was happy--we met in secret and arranged that he should follow me to England, and there, before the whole world, demand me of my father. We sailed. Hidden away in an inferior part of the vessel, he went with us, never appearing on deck till after night-fall and keeping his presence in the ship a secret from my father.

"We reached England at last and went up to London, where my father threw me into a whirl of fashionable life, hoping thus to win my thoughts from the man who was my husband. I resisted: the pleasures of society were worse than nothing to me, and I thus once more incurred my father's anger. Samuel Parris, you know the man who was my husband, his pride of character, his indomitable integrity. Holding my father's objections trivial and insulting to his manhood, he had swept them aside in scorn: it was only for my sake that he consented to concealment for a single hour. When he saw that the result of this secrecy was my humiliation--that I was forced to act a falsehood before the world--he put every other thought aside and resolved to declare our marriage and endure its consequences as he best might.

"I remember the morning well. My father was at home in our town residence, surrounded by all the pomp of state and subserviency of well-trained menials. The knowledge that my young husband had a painful duty to perform excited all that was courageous or n.o.ble in my nature, and I felt a certain sublime animation in the thought of standing by his side while he proclaimed me his lawful wife. I was young, and loved my husband so dearly that the disobedience of which we had both been guilty seemed trivial compared with the complete happiness of our union. Since then I have learned how fatally domestic rebellion may root itself into a human life. The day came. My father was in his library. Every thing had gone well with him since our return. He stood high at court, was a favorite in society, and all his projects of aggrandizement, some of them bearing upon my fate in life, seemed to promise a happy fulfilment.

He did not dream of the impediment my marriage would cast in the way of his ambition. Up to that time he had no idea that William was in England, or that my liking for him had amounted to more than a pa.s.sing folly.

"Half an hour before the time appointed for our mutual declaration, my father sent for me. I found him in brilliant spirits and almost caressingly kind. He met me with unusual affection, kissed me with smiling lips, and proclaimed triumphantly that a n.o.ble suitor had just left him, and that it was my own fault if I did not become a d.u.c.h.ess within the month.

"I might have met this announcement with some courage had my husband been there with his strong will and calm self-reliance; as it was I could only tremble in my father's arms and shrink guiltily from his caresses. He looked for blushes and found me pale as snow, for I knew that this offer, so gratifying to his pride, would give tenfold bitterness to his disappointment.

"While I stood mute and cold, dreading to speak, William was announced.

I dared not look at my father, but knew, from his suppressed breathing, that he was silent only from intense rage. You saw William in his youth, and know how grand was his presence, how distinguished his bearing. If n.o.bility was ever written upon a human form, it shone out in native splendor there. Approaching me as if he had been an emperor and I his mate, this man of humble birth took my hand in his, and, with simple but most touching earnestness, confessed his fault in making me his wife.

"Dumb and white with wrath, my father attempted to annihilate him with a look, at which my heart rose in proud rebellion, and I felt the hot blood in my cheek. But William was self-poised, and bore himself with a sort of brave humility that should have disarmed even rage itself.

"'If I have done wrong in stealing this dear one from you,' he said, 'we have both suffered more than you will believe. If there is any penalty that you can impose--any probation that will atone for an act, which though wrong we cannot repent of--name it, and if human effort can win a blessing from your lips it shall yet be deserved.'

"My father stood before us, towering haughtily upward in his outraged pride; his face was ashen with the white heat of smothered wrath. He was always a man of few words, but those which fell from his lips then burned into my memory like living coals.

"'Go, earn a station high as that of my daughter; back it with wealth such as makes her one of the richest women in England. Then, and not till then, ask her at my hands.'

"'If I do earn a t.i.tle, and honorably gain such wealth, will you give her to me with a free will and generous blessing?' asked the young man in a voice that vibrated with intense feeling. 'In the brave acts or persistent efforts of some strong man, once unknown, the n.o.bility of every ill.u.s.trious house in England is rooted. To win her, and know that she is mine without dishonor, I will undertake impossibilities; if I succeed, or fail, you shall yet acknowledge, proud sir, that I deserved your daughter.'

"'When that time comes, claim her at my hands,' answered my father, with cutting unbelief in his look and voice. 'But till then she remains under my authority, and bearing the name she has secretly dishonored. Barbara, if this young man is your husband, take leave of him now, for never, till his boasted promise is fulfilled, shall you meet again.'

"I fell at that haughty man's feet, shivering with dread, cold with terror.

"'Not that--oh, father! father! not that!' I cried out in the depths of my anguish. 'Have mercy upon us. If we part I shall perish. Give me any punishment you will, but let us suffer together.'

"But for a haughty sense of high breeding my father would have spurned me from his feet. Still I clung around his knees, and without violence he could not fling me off. My arms were softly unclasped from those iron limbs. For one blissful moment I was strained to my husband's bosom. His tears fell upon my face.

"'Barbara, take hope. I will claim you, even as this proud n.o.ble mockingly suggests. Be patient! Have faith in me! One kiss; one more, and now farewell!'

"My heart gave a frightened leap in my bosom. A cry froze on my lips, and all was dark.

"This was in broad daylight; the sun streamed in upon us through the gold and crimson tints of stained gla.s.s. When I became conscious, stars were shining dimly through the curtains of my chamber window. I was alone; faint, weary, and almost dead. Samuel Parris, I never saw my husband again till he stood before the altar of that church taking the sacrament from your hands."

The minister groaned heavily, but did not speak.

"He had left me insensible--left England, and gone no one would tell me where. My father was dumb regarding him. If he wrote letters, they never reached me."

"But he wrote them. As G.o.d liveth, William Phipps wrote to his young wife again and again, but received no answer. He told me so with his own lips," cried the minister. "It was for her he toiled and thought ever on the broad ocean, and while wresting treasures from the deep where they had been engulfed for centuries. He went back to England, possessed of enormous wealth, and received a t.i.tle at the king's hand for the wonderful energy with which he had dragged silver and gold from the bosom of the ocean, discovering their hiding-place almost by a miracle.

But all that he had done turned to dust in his hands, for when he went to that proud old man and demanded his wife, the stern father answered that she was dead."

"Did he mourn her, Samuel Parris? tell me, truly, did William Phipps mourn the death of his wife, or had he learned to live without her?"

Parris looked up, with rebuking fire in his eyes.