"I will tell him the truth!"
"Against that solemn promise?"
"It was ignorantly given."
"Nay," she said, "I forbid you to interfere in this. I am content to suffer the penalty awarded by the court. Others, innocent as I, have suffered death, and to me sleep will be sweet, even in the grave."
But Samuel Parris would not be persuaded: he put her hands away. Now Barbara Stafford stood up with a gesture of command.
"Old man, you are a minister of the Most High: tell me if a vow, taken with the sacred wine and strengthened by the breaking of holy bread, can be put aside because death stands in the way? This vow I have taken—never to reveal myself to William Phipps, never to claim him or recognize him, and to its sanctity you, with your own hands, administered. In the name of the Most High God, who heard us both, I charge silence upon you now and forever!"
The old man groaned aloud.
"Be comforted! be comforted, my friend! to-morrow terminates the poor tragedy of a life which has had but little of happiness in it. When I am gone my husband will feel the shadow, which he could not comprehend, lifted from his path. It must no longer darken the noble aims of his existence. What is the life of one person compared with the happiness of so many? Until you are assured that I am no more, William Phipps must never guess that his wife lived to perish for his well-being."
Parris lifted his head, and gazed upon her in silent wonder. To his imaginative nature there was a grandeur in this resolve which bordered on the marvellous.
"Woman," he said, at last, "art thou tempting me to falsehood? If thou diest on the morrow, while there is a possibility of salvation, I—even Samuel Parris—am thy murderer."