CHAPTER XII.
ELIZABETH AND HER COUSIN.
From the cradle up, Elizabeth Parris and Abigail Williams had been as sisters—nay, more, for while the same blood flowed in their veins and the same household words had been breathed into their ears, there existed that strong bond of contrast which is sure to give some degree of excitement to the quietest life. Abigail was the elder by about three years. She had come to a rapid growth, and her beauty possessed all the roundness and depth of tint which belongs to a full-statured woman. Her mind was like her person, and both were remarkable. Apt, bright, full of intelligence, yet gentle, and troubled with a shy bashfulness at times, which sprang from pride rather than timidity, she was a wonder to everybody that saw her. She was so unlike other children, her manner of doing things was so firm and gentle, that few even of the gravest church-members ever thought of rebuking her as they did other offenders, or of petting her in the same way.
She was greatly given to study, but sometimes would sit with her book in one hand, or her slate in her lap, gazing wistfully into the distance through the window of the log school-house, as if her life like her thoughts lay afar off, and having escaped her lesson, could not be brought back again.
The school-house commanded a broad, beautiful approach to the sea, and behind it was a dense forest of hemlocks, oaks, and beech, which kept the earth forever in shadow, and covered the old sodden logs and decayed stumps with thick fleeces of moss that gleamed out like velvet and gold when a sunbeam chanced to strike downward and touch the earth. Vast as the ocean itself stretched the shadows of that forest, and Abigail's face took a deeper and more earnest expression when she looked that way, deeper and more earnest even than when she gazed upon the far-off waters and saw the distant sky bend down and cover their retreat with silvery mists. You would have thought the child was searching for something that was very, very long in coming, as she fell into these long musing fits. Sometimes she would remain motionless, leaning both elbows on her little pine-desk, and dropping her chin between her hands, for half an hour together without turning her eyes from the shadows that darkened the forest, and seeming to hold her breath lest it should frighten some one back that she had been waiting and hoping for. She seemed to be conscious herself that there was someone weird and strange about these fits of concentrated thought, for at every sound of your voice, at every step that drew near, she would catch her breath, start and look up, as if she expected something dreadful to happen.
Speak softly to Abigail Williams at such times, or look at her with a glance of love, and her quiet eyes would fill and her childish heart would heave, it was impossible to say why. But if you spoke sharply to her when her head was at the little window and her thoughts far away, no one knew where, the poor thing would grow pale, and turn upon you with such a sorrowful look, then go away and do as she was bidden with a gravity that touched you to the heart. Sometimes it would require a whole day after a rebuke like this to restore the dye of her sweet lips or to persuade her that you were not half so angry as you might have appeared. But with all this, the quickness of her intellect, and the alacrity with which she took to study, was remarkable as her thoughtfulness.
But Elizabeth Parris was in every respect a very different child. If you chided her even to the lifting of a finger, ten to one, she laughed in your face, and made you laugh with her, in spite of yourself. Scold her, and you got an answer back that made you love the creature for her very sauciness. She would mimic your step with her little naked feet, or the motion of your head, or the curve of your mouth, while you were expecting to terrify her. Everybody was tired of her in half an hour, and yet everybody was glad to see her again, for, with all her mischief, she crossed your threshold like a sunbeam.
She was a careless little romp, too. Loved above all things to run barefoot, and was forever losing her shoes in the long grass.
She had a hundred different ways of combing her bright hair; and, in the winter time, if there was an ice-pond or a snow-drift within a mile of the village, she was sure to be sliding on the one or wading knee-deep in the other. Still Elizabeth grew very fond of her book, and had fits of hard study that kept her ahead of her class in spite of her wild ways.