CHAPTER LV.
CLOSING SCENES.
Samuel Parris kept his word faithfully; for added to his own promise was the sacramental oath taken by Barbara Stafford, which he dared not force her to break. But the secret confided to him lay heavily on his conscience, and the struggle there wore away his strength. For a whole year he avoided his old friend the governor, and refused to visit his house, even when Elizabeth became its permanent inmate as Norman Lovel's wife. But at last there came a period when the old man went mournfully to the house he had shunned. This time, he was summoned there to attend, not a wedding, but a funeral—Lady Phipps had laid down a life all sunshine, and gone suddenly into the valley and shadow of death. When Samuel Parris rode up to that stately mansion, he found its pillars draped with black, and a hatchment over the front entrance. These emblems of grief struck him with singular feelings of blended grief and thankfulness. His eyes filled with tears of regret for the gentle woman who had gone; but his heart beat free once more, and a grievous load fell from it, when his foot passed that threshold. In an hour after his arrival at the mansion, a funeral cortege went forth from its portals which surpassed any thing known to the colony in its exceeding solemnity and worldly grandeur. In the procession, Samuel Parris rode with his friend; and, for the first time since Barbara Stafford's escape, the two men sat hand in hand, yielding to the old sympathy, and united by the old love. Both mourned the dead with sincere grief; but it was observed of Samuel Parris, that a gentle hopefulness had settled on his face, and there was something in his voice, when he prayed, that thrilled the hearer with strange accents of thanksgiving.
When the coffin, palled with black velvet, and rich with silver, was placed before the altar where William Phipps had partaken of his first sacrament, Parris knelt beside it, in violation of all usage, and prayed, for some moments, silently; but as if he were in absolute communion with the dead. Then he arose, like one reassured, and with benign calmness went through the funeral ceremonies.
That night the gubernatorial mansion was indeed a house of mourning. Elizabeth, clad in black from head to foot, glided from room to room, like a troubled spirit. Every other instant tears would fill her beautiful eyes, and she would creep close to Lovel's side, under the pretence of comforting him. The governor spent those first sad hours in his own room, and Samuel Parris sat musing in the library. He thought of the poor lady who was gone—of her bright cheerfulness, her beauty, and gracious manners. All her life she had been the favorite of fortune and of circumstances. But Samuel Parris well knew that she had never wholly and entirely possessed the heart of that strong, great man, whose entire nature was, in fact, beyond her comprehension. Affection, care, indulgences, he had given her, and with these things she was content. But the great happiness of married life—that of being mated, heart and intellect, in one noble union—she could not have comprehended. She was quite ready to worship her husband's greatness, without understanding it; but blind worship satisfies no man entirely. In order to be thoroughly loved he must be understood.
Samuel Parris did not reason in this way. It would have seemed cruel, thus coldly, and under that roof, to analyze the life that had just passed away; but he had a solemn duty to perform, and welcomed such thoughts as promised to make the result a happy one. For three days the minister remained the guest of his bereaved friend. All the kind relations of pupil and tutor came back to them. In his sincere grief, the governor loved to fall back upon that highly cultivated and generous nature for sympathy and Christian comfort, and both were given him entirely.
A few hours before that appointed for his return home, the old man quietly followed Sir William into his library, and closed the door.
"William," he said, laying his hand on the governor's arm, "William, my son, sit down by the window here; I have something to say to you."
Sir William smiled kindly and sat down, a little surprised by the old man's nervous manner.
"William, thou rememberest that night when thou camest to my house with that young girl?"