ASKING FOR SHELTER.
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 God'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 passionate 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 passion. 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
superstition 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 passive knitting; from choice she toiled all day long in
the kitchen with old Tituba, doing the hardest and coarsest 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-shore, 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.