Silent Struggles Part 52

"Help me to save her, darling. Plead with Lady Phipps, and with Sir William. He has the power to pardon her. As I came from the court an English s.h.i.+p hove in sight, struggling against the storm. Let us save this unhappy woman from death, Elizabeth, and that s.h.i.+p shall carry her away from these sh.o.r.es forever."

"Would she go--would she?" questioned the girl, looking up eagerly.

"It was her earnest wish to leave the country before this awful charge was made."

"Lady Phipps--Lady Phipps! May I go to Sir William? May I kneel to him and beg for her life?"

"I will go with you, child," answered the lady. "Alas, it was an evil day for this poor woman when she came among us!"

"Let us go--let us go at once!" cried Elizabeth, rising, and pus.h.i.+ng back the hair from her forehead. "I shall not sleep till it is done. He cannot resist you. May Abigail Williams come with us?"

Abigail sat by herself, looking wistfully out into the storm. She turned her head as Elizabeth called to her, but did not attempt to rise.

"No," she said. "I have done nothing toward hunting this unhappy lady to her death."

"Always cruel, always cold," said Elizabeth, reproachfully. "Well, as I have borne witness against her, so will I go alone and beg for her life on my knees."

"It is better so," whispered Lovel, as Lady Phipps hesitated. "When it comes to the worst, dear friend, we must claim your help. That will be our last hope."

Elizabeth left the room as they were conversing, and went into the library. Few words were spoken after she left. Abby Williams gazed out into the storm as if she had no part in the general trouble. Lady Phipps sat with downcast eyes, looking thoughtfully on the floor. Norman paced up and down the room, turning anxiously at every sound, expecting to see Elizabeth.

She came at last, pale and heavy-eyed, moving wearily across the hall.

"She has failed!" cried Norman. "Oh, misery, she has failed!"

A smile, that seemed malicious, quivered across Abigail's lips, but she did not turn her head.

Elizabeth tottered across the room, and fell into an easy chair, exhausted.

Norman Lovel bent over her, hoping against hope.

"It is of no use," she murmured; "he would not let me plead. Oh, Norman!

must she die?"

"Shall I go now?" whispered Lady Phipps. "He never refused me any thing in his life."

"Not yet, dear lady," answered Lovel. "At present leave him alone."

"To-night, when he comes to my room," answered the lady; "that perhaps is best."

Lady Phipps seemed glad of a reprieve. She went back to her sofa, sighing heavily.

"Feel how I tremble!" she said, giving her hands to Norman. "It is strange, but nothing ever shook my nerves so till this lady came across the seas. Oh, Norman! that was a weary day for us."

"But most of all for her."

"True, true. Poor soul, I shall not sleep till she is pardoned. If she is proven guilty of witchcraft, it was not of a harmful sort, though we have been made very unhappy by it. Elizabeth, child, you are worn out; take my arm and we will go to our chambers, for I, too, am weary. Be hopeful, Norman; I will surely speak to the governor before he goes to rest."

But the lady was doomed to disappointment. All that night Sir William remained in his library, with the door locked. In the morning the gentle wife claimed admittance, and he let her in, smiling sadly upon her as she entered.

"My husband, this has been a weary night. How mournful and pale you look! Surely, it is not because you have doomed that poor woman?"

"She was doomed before her case came before me. G.o.d knows, dear wife, I would gladly save her if my conscience permitted."

Lady Phipps sat down on a cus.h.i.+oned stool at her husband's feet, resting her hand lightly on his knee. Her sweet, gracious face, formed a striking contrast with the haggard whiteness of his.

"Nay, sweetheart; you will be more merciful than the judges," she pleaded. "They are naturally stern and hard--but you--"

"Must be stern also, or betray my trust," he answered. "If I pardon this woman, who enlists your sympathy so much more than others, because of her beauty and gentle breeding, what will be said of me--that I withhold mercy from the ignorant crones and common-place witches who have perished, and give it to a gentlewoman because of her fair face? If they were held worthy of punishment for setting a few cows wild, and scattering mischief among their neighbors mostly pertaining to the body alone, how much more severely should this woman be dealt with who fastens her witchcraft on the soul! Have you marked the progress of her sorcery on the young man under our roof, who still clings to her as if she were part of his own being--on the maiden you love so, Elizabeth Parris, whose very life seems to have been half shrunk up under the evil influence which she struggles against in vain?"

"Nay," answered the lady, with an arch smile, "so far as Elizabeth is concerned, I think the witch that most troubles her is Jealousy. Indeed, indeed I do! It is the dark-browed beauty, who says so little, that seems most deeply affected. Yet she exonerates this woman entirely. As for Lovel, he is generous and good to every one: impetuous in his likings, he is always indignant if he suspects oppression or injustice.

Had this Barbara Stafford come among us without mystery, and been left unnoticed, he would have cared little about her."

Sir William looked at his wife thoughtfully while she was speaking, and a deeper shade came over his face. She was so frank, so sweetly generous, that he felt conscience-stricken at having given these trivial reasons for withholding mercy from Barbara Stafford while those, so much deeper and more potent, lay buried in his own bosom.

He took her two hands between his, and pressed them with nervous energy.

"My wife, bear with me--neither give way to anger nor fear--and I will tell you why it is impossible that this woman can receive a pardon at my hands. Even as it has enthralled the souls of these young persons, her wonderful power has bewitched your husband. Since that hour when she stood near me at the altar, and the night when she lay for one moment against my heart, I have had no rest. Nay, sweet wife, do not turn pale, or draw these hands from mine. What power there is in mortal man to resist the evil one I have striven for, but in vain. Absent or present this woman is forever in my mind, standing, as it were, like the ghost of some buried love between us two."

Lady Phipps gave a sharp cry, and wresting her hands from his grasp buried her face in them.

"Between us two? Alas! alas! I felt this but would not believe it."

"Nay, sweetheart, be calm. Is your husband a man to yield up his love, or his integrity, to the evil one, come in what form he may? Of my own free will I have never looked upon this woman, or spoken to her but once in my life."

"I know it, I know it," moaned the unhappy lady.

"But she is always here," continued Sir William, laying a hand on his heart. "She haunts me. I cannot drive her image away. Sleeping and waking I am shadow-haunted."

Lady Phipps gazed on her husband in pale dismay. At last she cried out--"Oh, my G.o.d! my G.o.d! help him--help me, for he loves this woman."

"Be calm, and let me tell every thing. In this matter I would not have a single reservation. What I say will give you pain, but my conscience must clear itself. Since I first saw this woman, something that I cannot describe--a feeling so intangible that it is in vain I strive to grasp it--divides me from--it is hard to speak, and I would rather perish than wound you, my wife--but it seems to point out my union with you as a--a--I cannot utter it. G.o.d help us both! This witch in her prison poisons my heart with feelings that I can neither repel nor describe.

Either she or I must perish before my soul is free again."

Lady Phipps sat gazing on him in affright; her eyes widened, her face contracted. "Oh, my husband! has it come to this?" she cried out in bitter anguish; "and I was pleading for her life. Poor, poor Elizabeth!

it was thus her young heart suffered. What can I do? How ought I to act?"

"Let us be still, and crave help of G.o.d," said the governor, solemnly.

"I have been asking such questions of the Lord all night, and my resolve was firm."

Awed by the thrilling earnestness of his voice Lady Phipps bowed her head and fell into a painful reverie, half thought, half prayer. When she looked up a sweet calmness shone in her eyes.

"Still, my husband, I say pardon this woman, and let her go beyond the seas."

"That she may render other men wretched as I am?" exclaimed Sir William.

"Nay, do not plead for her. The evidence of her sorcery is here, in my bosom. This clamorous pity, which will not let me rest, is a part of it.

Knowing what I know, feeling the entire justice of her condemnation, I have but one course before me."

"And the woman must die?" exclaimed Lady Phipps, piteously, forgetting her own wrongs in the flood of compa.s.sion that filled her heart.