"I was young then, scarcely more than sixteen. We were thrown together—you know who I mean—even here I would not mention his name and wound the honor for which I am ready to die. We loved each other with the first bright passion of youth, with the enduring love which fills a whole life with bliss or a perpetual weight of pain. We were young, rash, mad. I knew how hopeless it was to attempt winning my father's consent. The noble youth your solemn voice made my husband was his equal or the equal of any man who ever drew breath; but he was poor—a man of the people, a working man, though educated with the best, in intellect and energy equal to those who build up dynasties. My father was struck dumb with his audacity, when he asked my hand in marriage. So embittered was he with this outrage to his pride that he hastened to leave the country. But for a few days, contrary winds held him weather-bound. Then driven to despair, we fled to you, my husband's old friend.
"Do not shrink and moan so. It was a holy union you sanctified that night. I have suffered, oh, how terribly, since, but never regretted it, never shall regret it even in my death-throes.
"During three weeks after that ride through the forest when I returned to Boston a happy bride—for, spite of all, I was happy—we met in secret and arranged that he should follow me to England, and there, before the whole world, demand me of my father. We sailed. Hidden away in an inferior part of the vessel, he went with us, never appearing on deck till after night-fall and keeping his presence in the ship a secret from my father.
"We reached England at last and went up to London, where my father threw me into a whirl of fashionable life, hoping thus to win my thoughts from the man who was my husband. I resisted: the pleasures of society were worse than nothing to me, and I thus once more incurred my father's anger. Samuel Parris, you know the man who was my husband, his pride of character, his indomitable integrity. Holding my father's objections trivial and insulting to his manhood, he had swept them aside in scorn: it was only for my sake that he consented to concealment for a single hour. When he saw that the result of this secrecy was my humiliation—that I was forced to act a falsehood before the world—he put every other thought aside and resolved to declare our marriage and endure its consequences as he best might.
"I remember the morning well. My father was at home in our town residence, surrounded by all the pomp of state and subserviency of well-trained menials. The knowledge that my young husband had a painful duty to perform excited all that was courageous or noble in my nature, and I felt a certain sublime animation in the thought of standing by his side while he proclaimed me his lawful wife. I was young, and loved my husband so dearly that the disobedience of which we had both been guilty seemed trivial compared with the complete happiness of our union. Since then I have learned how fatally domestic rebellion may root itself into a human life. The day came. My father was in his library. Every thing had gone well with him since our return. He stood high at court, was a favorite in society, and all his projects of aggrandizement, some of them bearing upon my fate in life, seemed to promise a happy fulfilment. He did not dream of the impediment my marriage would cast in the way of his ambition. Up to that time he had no idea that William was in England, or that my liking for him had amounted to more than a passing folly.
"Half an hour before the time appointed for our mutual declaration, my father sent for me. I found him in brilliant spirits and almost caressingly kind. He met me with unusual affection, kissed me with smiling lips, and proclaimed triumphantly that a noble suitor had just left him, and that it was my own fault if I did not become a duchess within the month.
"I might have met this announcement with some courage had my husband been there with his strong will and calm self-reliance; as it was I could only tremble in my father's arms and shrink guiltily from his caresses. He looked for blushes and found me pale as snow, for I knew that this offer, so gratifying to his pride, would give tenfold bitterness to his disappointment.
"While I stood mute and cold, dreading to speak, William was announced. I dared not look at my father, but knew, from his suppressed breathing, that he was silent only from intense rage. You saw William in his youth, and know how grand was his presence, how distinguished his bearing. If nobility was ever written upon a human form, it shone out in native splendor there. Approaching me as if he had been an emperor and I his mate, this man of humble birth took my hand in his, and, with simple but most touching earnestness, confessed his fault in making me his wife.
"Dumb and white with wrath, my father attempted to annihilate him with a look, at which my heart rose in proud rebellion, and I felt the hot blood in my cheek. But William was self-poised, and bore himself with a sort of brave humility that should have disarmed even rage itself.
"'If I have done wrong in stealing this dear one from you,' he said, 'we have both suffered more than you will believe. If there is any penalty that you can impose—any probation that will atone for an act, which though wrong we cannot repent of—name it, and if human effort can win a blessing from your lips it shall yet be deserved.'