She turned abruptly, drew close to her cousin"s side, and stealing both arms around her, murmured in a voice of ineffable sadness,
"Don"t, Bessy--dear, dear Bessy, don"t be afraid of me. Is it not enough that I am afraid of myself? Now, tell me what this thing is! So that it is not about the dead, I can listen and be pleased."
"About the dead? Why, Abby, how strangely you talk! What have you and I in common with the dead? The sunshine is not pleasanter than life is to me since, since--"
"Since when, Bessie?"
"Since he loved me."
A strange sort of wonder crept over Abigail Williams. She looked upon her cousin with vague apprehension. The word love was a new thing to her; it had scarcely yet entered into her dreamy life. Elizabeth smiled at first amid her blushes, but as Abby kept gazing upon her with parted lips and that wonder in her eyes, her lips began to tremble, and the warm color ebbed away from her face.
"I forget," she said, deprecatingly, "you have not heard any thing about him. I could not write, and even my father knew nothing till he came to Boston after me. But oh! if you could see him, Abby! If you could hear him speak; or read his beautiful poetry that he writes; it would not seem strange that I love him so much."
"Then you have been treacherous also? You love some one more than me?"
"Forgive me, forgive me," pleaded Elizabeth, "I could not help it. We were in the same house--he was like a son to Lady Phipps."
"Better than your father, perhaps," continued Abby, pondering over this new subject in her mind, heedless of the tears and blushes with which she was regarded. "I have heard of such things, but never expected them to come so close. So you love some one better than us all, Elizabeth Parris?"
"Forgive me, dear cousin! Why are you so angry?"
"Angry? Oh! nothing of the kind. I only wonder how any one can look forward, when the dead will not rest--how it is the privilege of one human being to love, and the duty of another to hate!"
"The duty of another to hate!--why, cousin, there is--there can be no such duty. G.o.d is love, the Bible tells us so; and oh! when the heart is full of this blessed, blessed feeling, one sees him everywhere. Don"t talk of hate, it is a new word between us two."
Abigail Williams attempted to smile, but only a quiver of the pale lips followed the effort. Still she grew more composed, and gently won her warm-hearted cousin back to bright thoughts again, by a few questions.
"His name? Oh, yes--his name is Norman--Norman Lovel--he is the private secretary of Gov. Phipps, who treats him like a son. He lives in the house, and but for his name you would never believe that he was in no way related to the governor. Still he is only a stranger, recommended by some friend in London, and singular enough don"t know his own parents.
Never saw them, or anybody that he knew was related to him in his whole life. But what difference does that make, when everybody else almost worships him?"
"And you among the rest?"
"I most of all," answered Elizabeth, bathed in a glow of crimson, from the white forehead to the heaving bosom.
"And this is happiness, I suppose?"
"Happiness? That is what seems strange to me, when life is full of glow, and I can hardly breathe from the rich swell of a heart that seems ready to break with joy, an exquisite pain creeps in, and I know by it that happiness can mount no farther!"
"But there must be a cause for this pain!"
"A cause? Yes! every thing must have a cause, I dare say, if one could but find it out. I only know that the joy was perfect till that storm arose, and the ship came in with a woman on board, who seemed to disturb every thing she looked upon. Even Lady Phipps never seemed to draw a deep breath while she was in the house. As for me! Abby, Abby, you don"t know what torment is, till you have given your whole heart to one person, and see another stealing him away from you!"
"This," said Abby, who had listened with thoughtful interest, "this is the feeling they call jealousy, I suppose. Is it so painful?"
"For a time," answered Elizabeth, turning pale with the very recollection of her suffering, "it seemed as if I must die. Shame, anger, a keen fear of losing him, kept me silent. But when I was alone, with the door shut, and the curtains of my bed drawn close, all this pride and strength gave way; my brain grew hot; the very breath choked me as it rose; I could neither sleep nor rest, but walked the room all night, wondering if she thought of him too, if he were watching the light in her window, or if both were asleep and dreaming of each other.
Sometimes I saw them in the garden, conversing together with the deepest interest; sometimes they sat in the great portico till the dark crept around them like a veil; and all this time I was overlooked and forgotten. Once in a while Norman would seem to remember me with a start, and force himself to say a few kind words; but there was neither depth nor earnestness in what he said: the woman had bewitched him, I am sure of it."
"Bewitched? That is a fearful word," said Abby, looking around with a wild stare, as if the very foundations of her life had been disturbed by the word her cousin used.
"Yes, Abby, I solemnly believe she was a witch; for the moment she was gone all the beauty of my life came back; Norman was himself again; he seemed to wake up from a dream and wonder what he had been about; at first, he would not believe how much I suffered, and wondered that I had grown thin, and that blue shadows were creeping under my eyes, as if his own neglect had not been the cause; but when Lady Phipps told him how it was--I would have died fifty times rather than let him know--nothing could be more generous than his sorrow. He begged my pardon almost on his knees. There was no kind look or sweet word that he did not coin into a more loving expression, to win me back to our old happiness."
"And you were happy then?--you are happy now?" said Abby, looking wistfully into the bright face, over which smiles and blushes came and went like gleams of sunset on a summer cloud.
"Happy? yes, he parted with me so kindly--he was so earnest to make me forget that dangerous woman, who had disappeared from among us like a ghost--he seemed to love me again so much more than ever, that I could not help being happy. Besides, he is coming down to see us. I have told him all about you, darling cousin. Father has consented that in a year or two, if we do not change our minds, that is--"
"He will take you away altogether; and this has happened while I was ignorant of it all. Oh, Elizabeth! how many things can grow up to divide two souls, while one of the little wild-flowers yonder buds, blossoms, and fades away!"
"But no souls are divided here, Abby!" cried the young girl, earnestly.
"The love that I feel for you and father only grows broader and deeper since I have known him. We are not parted, cousin."
"Not by love. I know that!"
"Not at all. Look at me, cousin Abby! how strangely you are peering into the distance, as if something in the gloom drew your eyes from my face!
What is it you see, cousin?"
Elizabeth bent forward, and looked keenly in the direction her cousin"s eyes had taken. Far down the hollow she saw the young hunter whose presence had surprised her on the road a few hours before.
"Hush, Abby! Don"t speak yet; but look and tell me who he is?"
As she spoke, Elizabeth leaned forward till her golden curls took the wind and fluttered out like sunbeams on the air. The man saw her, turned and disappeared among the undergrowth of the hollow.
"Did you ever see him before?" questioned Elizabeth of her cousin, as she shrunk back with a sort of superst.i.tious dread, for the man had vanished like a phantom; "or have the woods become haunted since I went away?"
Abby Williams started up with nervous haste. "Come, come, you must be hungry by this time: it is almost noon; old t.i.tuba will be waiting, and you know nothing makes her so angry as leaving her Johnny-cake to be eaten cold. She will never forgive us."
Elizabeth sighed. A pang of disappointment came across her sunny nature.
Why was Abby so changed? How had it happened that a confession, which she had shrunk from and dreamed over, should have been told in that hard, common-place fashion? Why were the sweet tidings which had cost her so much agitation received so coldly by the only creature who had never till then felt a thought or feeling unshared with her?
"Well," she said, and her bright eyes filled as she spoke, while a laugh that had bitter tones in it rose to her lip, "I did not think you would have taken all this so coldly. But never mind; as you say, t.i.tuba"s Johnny-cake must not get cold."
With a slight bound she reached the shelf of rock below her, and hurried away, followed by Abigail Williams, who stopped every other moment to look anxiously around, but still kept near her cousin.
"There he is--I say, Abby--there he is again, moving through that dogwood thicket," said Elizabeth, holding her breath, and speaking in a whisper.
"Be quiet; it is only a hunter searching for deer or wild turkeys."
As she spoke, Abigail made a quick signal with her hand, which sent the young woodranger into covert again.
"Who is he? What is the reason we never saw him before?" thought Elizabeth, as she moved homeward; but the silence of her cousin encouraged no questions, and the two girls reached the house without speaking of the stranger again.
CHAPTER XXVII.
THE CHIEF AND THE LADY.