Silent Struggles. Ann S. Stephens

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      Barbara drew the cold hand from Lady Phipps's clasp, and, standing up, looked at her with a strained gaze as she left the room. The moment she was quite alone, wrapped up in the stillness of an empty house, the pale woman walked forward to the bed, fell upon it without a breath or a sob, and lay motionless with her face to the pillow.

      That night, after all the family were asleep, except Goody Brown, she was surprised by the rustle of a silk dress at her elbow, just as she was raking up the kitchen fire for the night. She turned quickly, and saw her guest, who stood shivering on the hearth as if it had been the depth of winter.

      "Goodness me!" exclaimed the housewife, planting her iron shovel with a plunge into the ashes; "I thought you'd gone to bed long ago. Any thing the matter?"

      "Nothing—nothing!" answered the lady, sinking into one of the straight-backed chairs that stood near the hearth; "I heard you stirring, and so came out. Sit down a little while; I would like to ask a few questions about this new country—about Boston and its people."

      Goody Brown seated herself on the dye-tub, which occupied a corner of the chimney, and smoothing down her checked apron prepared to listen. She was no great talker at any time, and though the questions asked by her guest were low-toned, and uttered at long intervals, she heard them patiently and answered each in its place, without betraying any of that curiosity said to be characteristic of the New England matron of later days.

      During the whole conversation, Barbara sat back in her chair, quite still, gazing upon the half-smothered embers with a dull, heavy look. The tallow candle, with its long tow wick, that occupied a little round stand in a corner, left her face in the shadow, and the good woman remained quite unconscious how pale it was till her guest arose to say good-night; then she remembered how husky her voice had been, and how she seemed to shiver with cold.

      "Do let me rake open the embers and give you a bowl of yarb tea, and put another coverlet on the bed," she urged, in her stiff, motherly way; "the teeth e'en a'most chatter in your head; you'll sartinly be took down agin."

      "No, no! I shall be quieter now that I know—that I know all about the country, thank you."

      And with a soft, gliding step, noiseless as when she entered, Barbara went into her room again.

      "That's strange," muttered Goody Brown, as she sat before the buried fire with a foot planted on each andiron, meditating on the conversation she had just held. "Now can she be any relative to the governor or his wife, or the Salem minister, I wonder? She's mighty curious about them. Well, thank goodness, I'd as lief tell her all I know about 'em as not. There ain't no witchcraft in the truth."

CHAPTER VIII.

       Table of Contents

THE MINISTER AND HIS PUPIL.

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      Governor Phipps and Samuel Parris had been neighbors for many years. They had known each other when Parris was first settled over the church in Salem—a man in his prime—and the governor was the apprentice of a ship-builder near by. More than this; when Phipps was an apprentice and a dreamer, as all men of great capacities are at some period of their lives, thirsting for knowledge and restive as a wild animal, because all its sources were closed to him, Samuel Parris received the lad every night beneath his roof, and spent hours and hours in teaching him those rudiments of learning which are the key to all knowledge.

      Parris had been an enthusiast, and a visionary man from his youth up. He was simple, pious, with a vein of rich poetry in his nature which could never be worked out fully in the pulpit, but was concentrated in his affections, and sometimes threatened the very foundations of his understanding.

      The predominance of a vivid imagination over faculties of no ordinary stamp kept the minister's mind out of balance, and made his life an unfinished poem. Had all the other faculties of his mind been equal, Samuel Parris must have been a great poet or powerful statesman. Lacking so much and possessing so much, he was always good, affectionate, and most kind. A love of the pure and beautiful possessed him so entirely that it broke forth in veins of exquisite poetry in his sermons, and at times gave to his conversation an eloquence which seemed like absolute inspiration.

      Like the minister, Phipps had much rough poetic ore in his composition; but underneath it all was a foundation of hard, practical good sense: he reasoned, while the minister dreamed. The poetry in his nature was enough to give fire and energy to his actions: it broke out through all his great after-schemes like veins of gold in a rock.

      But in this man all the faculties came up and mated themselves with this high mental element, forming a most vigorous mind, and a will which nothing could conquer when set upon a right object.

      Let no one smile when I speak of imagination as essential to real greatness. It were better to question fairly if absolute greatness ever existed without it. This high element of the mind is as necessary to a superior character as observation. It gives force and coloring to the other faculties. But with Phipps all the soul traits that make up a great character rose to a commanding level, urging the imagination to useful purposes, as machinery turns the beautiful waterfall into a mighty power.

      Parris was a hoarder of books, rare manuscripts, and even old newspapers, which, coming from over sea, were not very plentiful in the colonies in those days, and thus were rendered worthy of preservation. It was in this store of ancient literature that the lad Phipps took his first course of reading. In these researches—for the acute lad, in his thirst for information, devoured every scrap of print that came in his way—it chanced that the two fell upon an old paper, which gave an account of some Spanish galley, wrecked years before on the coast of La Plata. Laden with fabulous wealth, in silver, and jewels, and gold, this galley still lay in the depths of the ocean. They had talked the matter over, Parris as he would have dwelt upon a fairy tale, had such things been permitted to his creed; Phipps with reflection and purposes, for the first burning thoughts of great enterprise rose in his mind that night.

      After studying the old newspaper diligently in every word and syllable, Phipps left Salem and took up his abode in Boston, then went a voyage to sea, studying navigation with a zeal that equalled his first efforts at reading.

      He returned to the colonies in the first strength of his youth, taller in person, and with a dignity of carriage that distinguished him all his days. But his best friends knew little of his purposes now. The knowledge which he had acquired with the habit of concentrated thought had lifted him out of his old life. The very acquirements obtained at so much cost, while they exalted him in the estimation of his old friends, only isolated him from their sympathies. Other feelings besides ambition may have stirred in the young man's heart at this time; if so, but one human being ever became his confidant.

      Shortly after his return from sea, William Phipps came one night fifteen miles through the wilderness, which separated Boston from Salem, and asked an interview with his old friend.

      They went into a little room, the scene of their first studies, and conversed long and earnestly together. The subject of this conversation no one knew. The Indian woman in the kitchen heard her master's voice more than once, rising from entreaty to expostulation, but she took little heed of the matter, as arguments between the youth and his teacher often arose over some old book or worn-out manuscript, which they chanced to be studying together.

      But one thing is certain; the great СКАЧАТЬ