WORKING OF THE EVIL SPELL.
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.