OLD FRIENDS IN COUNCIL.
When Sir William returned home, he found Samuel Parris, his old patron
and early preceptor, waiting for him. The good man had taken his staff
and walked all the way from Salem, to seek counsel and consolation of
his powerful friend.
Between these two men was a tie which no one could fathom--a tie
stronger than that which might have bound master and pupil, or
benefactor and protege. Phipps had sprung from a poor apprentice boy, to
be the richest and most powerful man in New England. He had won title
and wealth from the mother government, by his indomitable energies,
while Samuel Parris had dreamed his life away, under the roof where the
embryo great man had taken his first charity lesson. But though one was
a man of thought, and the other of progress, no distance of time nor
station could separate them.
Governor Phipps was in the prime of life, a man of noble presence,
strong in intellect and in power. Parris was old and bowed to the earth
with trouble; the white locks floated thinly over his temples, his black
eyes were sharp and wild with protracted anguish. But the two met
kindly, as they had done years before. The strong man forgot his
successful ambition, and the state to which it had led. With the feeble
old minister he was an apprentice boy again.
Sir William found the minister sitting in his library, exhausted with
fatigue and completely broken down by the awful affliction that had
fallen upon him. Dust from the road lay thick upon his heavy shoes and
along the seams of his black garments, while it turned his snow white
hair to a dull gray. His stout cane was planted hard on the carpet, and
his weary head fell on the withered hands clenched tremulously over it.
Thus tired, desolate, and broken-hearted, the old man waited for his
former pupil.
"My dear, old master--my best friend!" cried Phipps, smitten with a
thousand memories, both of pain and pleasure at the sight of his
preceptor. "I can guess what has brought you hither. The same subject is
weighing on my own heart. I have just returned from a conference with
that unhappy lady."
Samuel Parris looked up eagerly.
"You saw her? She spoke with you? Tell me, tell me, did the woman
confess?"
"Nay, she did not speak."
"What, obstinately silent? does the evil spirit take that course?" said
Parris.
"Not obstinately silent: I did not say that; on the contrary, she seemed
deeply moved, and her sobs filled the room as I left it."
"But she confessed nothing?"
"Nothing!"
"Nor has she told any one a word of her own history?"
"Not a word."
The old man lifted his wild eyes to those of his friend, and searched
the expression there as if his life depended on it.
"William Phipps, you think this woman innocent?"
"I feel that she is innocent, but magistrates do not judge by feeling.
Justice appeals only to the brain, while mercy is a child of the heart.
Samuel Parris, as I came from Barbara Stafford's prison, it was with a
thankful spirit that God had not made me one of her judges."
"But I--I am her accuser!" cried out the old man, in passionate sorrow.
"But you had good grounds. This charge came not from you or yours,
lightly or with malice: of that I am certain," said the governor,
soothingly.
"But it came from me in terror and sore perplexity. The sight of my
child possessed with the evil one urged me on. William, William, I
thought of her, rather than of God's service! It is this that troubles
me."
"But how of the maiden? Is she better or does this fiend rend her yet?"
"She is better. Since the sound sleep into which the woman cast her,
Elizabeth has been quiet; but thoughtful as I never saw her before. The
flush has left her face and half the time her eyes are full of tears,
but she says little."
"These are favorable symptoms," answered Sir William. "Does the maiden
still persist in thinking this woman the cause of her malady?"
"Both its cause and its cure. To her she has been an angel of wrath and
of mercy both. But another cause of sorrow has sprung up in my
household--Abigail Williams!"
"What, the dark-eyed girl that Lady Phipps thought so beautiful? Has
this wicked contagion seized on her also?"
"Worse than my child. She seems smitten to the soul with sullen sorrow
and deadly hate. Above all she dreaded old Tituba, who followed her from
room to room like a dog at first, but when the girl drove her away, she
sat down on the kitchen hearth with her feet in the ashes, refusing to
eat or sleep, but kept up a weird chant that filled the house night and
day with deathly music."
"Does this old woman accuse any one?"
"Nay, she simply accused herself. Once or twice she has gone out to the
forest and stayed all day. At last she persuaded Abigail to go into the
woods with her. After that, the strange animosity which had seized upon
the maiden died out, and she was much with old Tituba who went quietly
about her household work again."
Sir William listened to all this with grave attention. He was striving
to judge how far the disturbed state of the minister's household had
arisen from natural causes, but in his profound ignorance of all those
sources of irritation which had preceded Barbara Stafford's arrest, he
was unable to give them any solution save that of witchcraft, strongly
as his sound judgment rebelled against it.
"Tell me, and speak I adjure you in the fear of God--tell me, William
Phipps, if after hearing the evidence on which I have accused this
woman, you can find one reason for thinking the charge of witchcraft
without just foundation."
The governor, who sat with his elbow resting on the library table, bent
his forehead thoughtfully on one hand.
"Friend, you ask a solemn question, and I will solemnly answer it.
Before the Most High I cannot yet give a full and free belief to this
enormity, which men call witchcraft. Yet when such judges as Hale, and
many of like sort, give it credence, and hold solemn tribunals over it,
I dare not oppose my judgment against theirs."
Samuel Parris arose to his feet and leaned heavily on his cane for
support.
"What if these doubts be true?" he said, moving his head and looking
away into vacancy. "Then what am I but a bearer of false witness, a
persecutor, and if this lady is driven to her death, a murderer!"
"We can but walk according to the light which God has given us,"
answered Sir William.
"Tell me," continued Parris, "did this woman impress you with a sense of
her diabolical power? Did your heart beat evenly as she spoke? Could you
breath without an effort?"
"Nay, I cannot tell if the sensation I felt was evil or good," Phipps
answered. "Compassion never yet swelled my heart so near to bursting. I
tell you of a truth, Samuel Parris, when I was talking to that unhappy
woman, I felt my knees shake, my breath stand still, and my very being
go out to her in a flood of sorrowful tenderness, such as I never felt
for mortal woman--but one."
"Then--then--you did think of _her_!" cried Parris, suddenly standing
upright. "That was the question I dared not ask. Has her memory haunted
you as it besets me, night and day, not only now but ever since that
ship came drifting toward me through the storm?"
"Hush!" said the governor, and his voice scarcely rose above a whisper,
while his face turned coldly white. "If this thing is witchcraft may it
not drag the memories we love out of the very grave to haunt us?"
"Even so I have reasoned," answered Parris.
"God help us!" exclaimed Phipps, rising and beginning to pace the room
with long, powerful strides, "for we have fallen on evil times."
Samuel Parris followed his friend's tall figure as it strode to and fro
in the room with wistful interest.
"I came hither for counsel of thy younger and more vigorous mind," he
said, with touching melancholy, "but everywhere that my footsteps turn,
doubt and terror spring up. It grieves me sorely, son William, that my
words have driven the color from that face, and the calm from thy bosom.
Forgive me before I go!"
Phipps broke off abruptly in his walk. His grand face had regained its
composure: it was pale still, but resolutely calm.
"Father," he said, gently, using an old term of endearment, "I am unfit
to give counsel in this matter. See you not how weak I am?"
Parris took the hand held out to him and pressed it with solemn fervor.
"William, I too will see this woman in prison: peradventure some light
may be vouchsafed to me."
"After that, come to me again," said the governor.
Thus the two friends parted.
The minister did indeed go to the prison, where his victim was confined,
but she resolutely refused to see him. "No good could come of the
interview," she said. "She was resigned to her fate, and only asked to
be left in quiet till her day of humiliation came on." The only person
that she would permit to enter her presence was Norman Lovel, whose
faith in her goodness had never been shaken for an instant. Twice a
dark-browed and singularly handsome young man made urgent solicitation
to be admitted to her prison, but she never heard of it. Being a
stranger of singular appearance, the guard had refused him without
communicating his wish to her, but the fact was stated to Samuel Parris
with such interpretation as an ignorant and superstitious man might be
expected to give. To him the singular beauty of the visitor's face, the
magnificent eyes and raven hair, could alone belong to the evil one
himself. Certain it was, no human being like that had ever been
recognized by any one in or out of the city till he began to haunt the
witch-prison.
Here was new cause for suspicion, and once more the minister's heart
hardened itself. Disappointed in his hopes of counsel from the governor,
the restless man betook himself to his brother divines, and told them
his doubts and sorrows with the simple truth so natural to his
character. When he described the condition of his child and told how
Barbara Stafford, who seemed at first an angel of light, had wrought a
fiend's work in his household, the ministers rebuked his unbelief and
reasoned with him diligently, till he began to look upon his gentler
feelings as a snare of Satan, ever on the alert to save his own. To this
belief, at last, Sir William Phipps brought himself, but slowly and with
reluctance. His heart smote him as he gave the lady up, but how would he
oppose such evidence? After admitting so much it was impossible for a
just man to feel any thing but holy indignation against the person who
had, by satanic power, disturbed the beautiful character of his favorite
Elizabeth Parris.
From that time he began to look upon the interest which young Lovel
manifested in the prisoner as a proof of her pernicious influence, and
rebuked the young man sternly when he sought to arouse kindly feelings
in her behalf once more.
Thus weeks and months went by, leaving Barbara Stafford in miserable
solitude, till the frost crept over the forest, and the white snow fell
upon the earth like a winding sheet; then they brought her forth for
trial.