The Captive Bride (27 page)

“They have been most unjust! Why, would you believe that they have forced me to cut my own wood, sir, when our agreement was that the church would provide wood for me!”

Howland soon learned that there was a running warfare between Parris and his membership. Most of them, including the Winslows, were sick to death of his constant harping on the wrongs done him.

“I heard that your Betty is sick,” Rachel said, changing the subject.

“Sick? Who told you that?” Parris snapped, as if accused of a crime. Then he sniffed and calmed himself. “Why, she has a cold, nothing more.”

“Would you like us to pray with her?” Rachel asked gently.

“Not at all necessary!” Parris answered quickly. “Perhaps I could make you some tea?”

“Oh no, I have several calls to make,” Rachel informed him. “I wanted you to meet Reverend Howland since you will be brothers in the ministry.”

“We must have a visit when you're more settled,” Parris stated. As he talked the tic in his eye grew more pronounced, so he placed his hand over it in a habitual gesture.

“Your servant, sir,” Howland said, and shook the frail hand of the minister. After they were out of the house, Robert said diffidently, “Reverend Parris seems upset.”

“He is, isn't he? He's a very nervous man, Robert. He's never been happy here. He thinks he's being wasted in a small village like this.”

“ A minister's life is usually hard, don't you think, Rachel?”

“Why, I don't agree,” she returned in surprise. She walked
along for a few steps, then added, “What's hard is not knowing the grace of God. If Jesus Christ is with me, how can anything be hard?”

Robert suddenly felt a great admiration for this woman, and he took her by the arm without realizing it, saying, “You have a wonderful spirit, Rachel!”

She flushed, then laughed, “Oh, let's hurry, Robert. I wouldn't put it past Gilbert Winslow to cook those fish and eat them—every one!”

It was a delightful evening for all three of them. After they ate the delicious supper, it was too late, both Gilbert and Rachel decided, for Robert to walk back home. “We have a spare room, a Prophet's Room, we call it,” Rachel smiled. “You'll be good company for Grandfather.”

They sat around the table until eight o'clock, and Robert kept the old man telling tales of the first days. Finally, Winslow yawned. “I must be getting old! Getting so I can't stay up till midnight.” Then he smiled and for the first time there was a little weariness in his voice and a slight tremble in his hand, as he said, “You've given me a fine evening, my boy! I hope you'll come again—very often. You're
very
like your grandfather, John!”

He went to his room and Howland said, “It's so hard for me to remember he's ninety-one years old, Rachel!”

“I know,” she said quietly. “He's the strongest man I've ever known, Robert. I shall—miss him.”

Howland started, then said, “He's not ill, I trust?”

“No, thank God—but it's time soon for him to go to his Lord. That's what he lives for. And I will rejoice when that time comes, but I'll be ...”

She got up abruptly and walked out into the warm summer night, and he followed her. She leaned against the side of the house, and he came to stand close beside her.

She said nothing and neither did he.
It is strange,
he thought,
that we don't have to talk.

“You know, Rachel,” he said finally, “you're the only woman I know who can stand a thirty-second silence.”

She turned and looked at him, and he saw with a shock that there were tears in her eyes. He had never seen one trace of weakness in her, and he was moved. Suddenly he took her hand and held it tightly, saying, “You were going to say, before we came outside, that you'll be lonely when he's gone?”

“I suppose so.”

He looked down at her, and she seemed very small, very vulnerable in the soft moonlight. At last he asked her directly what he had often wondered. “Why have you never married, Rachel? Have you never been in love?”

“Once—I was,” she whispered. “At least, I thought I was. But then he died, and I promised God I'd serve Him always.”

Howland prided himself on his control. He lived by a code of iron discipline, never yielding to the weakness of the flesh. Years before, he had put all idea of marriage out of his mind, at least until God gave him freedom to seek a wife.

But as he stood there holding Rachel's hand, he was suddenly conscious of her upturned face and was filled with a strange feeling of weakness, causing his hand to tremble.

Feeling the tremor in his hand, she looked up in surprise, her large eyes luminous in the moonlight. “Why, you're trembling, Robert!” she exclaimed. Without intending to do it, she reached up and touched his cheek, and a tear rolled down her cheek, making a silver track on her face. “You mustn't be sorry for me,” she said.

But it was deep compassion and the suddenness of the emotion that shook him. He was a man who kept his emotion, as well as anything else, under strict control, but her hand on his cheek released something that had been bound up in him for years.

He took her shoulders, then lowered his head and kissed her soft lips, tasting the salt of her tears.

Rachel had not been unaware of Howland as a man, and his kiss swept through her with a power she found difficult
to repress. He put his arms around her and held her gently. Though there was pity and compassion in his caress, there was more. She had stirred something deep within him, and he found his heart reaching out to her.

Like Howland, Rachel had kept this part of life tightly locked, but suddenly the door was flung open, and she was conscious only of his strong arms around her, holding her closer, his lips on hers.

Then she gasped and drew back. Immediately, he dropped his arms, embarrassed. They stared at each other, neither able to speak. Finally Howland said, “I—I must be—”

He could not finish, and Rachel moved to wipe the tears from her face. “Don't be upset, Robert—it's not your fault.”

He was shocked beyond reason, and stammered as he said, “I—can't believe that I've acted in such a fashion!”

She gave him a strange smile. “You have a large heart, Robert. And you keep it well caged! But I think I have just seen what a compassionate man you are underneath all that bluster!”

He shook his head. “I'm glad you can think of it like that, Rachel.”

“You were just sorry for me—that's all.” Then she moved away from him, and as she came to the door, she turned and said, “It was a brotherly kiss, Robert. Good night.”

He watched her go inside, and then he walked for a long time beneath the stars, and finally returned to the house. The last thing he thought of before he finally went to sleep was her words:
It was a brotherly kiss—
nothing more!

CHAPTER NINETEEN

THE HUNT IS ON

“Robert—come in, come in! Where in the world have you been hiding?”

Grabbing Howland's arm, Miles literally pulled him into the house and began to berate him for his neglect. Howland's face broke into a smile; his affection for the young man dissolved the sober look in his student's face. Robert rode out the storm of words, thinking not so much of what Miles was saying, but of the strange state of mind which had dominated him since his last visit to Salem.

He was not a man given to excessive introspection, but that short interlude with Rachel had impressed him so much that no matter how he tried to put it out of his mind, the scene kept returning. For years he had been on his guard against anything that would be a hindrance to his ministry—and the most obvious handicap, in his judgment, was marriage. Fending off potential brides had become almost second nature to him, but something was different in this case. He could not put his finger on it, nor could he forget. Their last meeting nagged at him, pulling his mind in two ways at once, and for a month his work, his study in the Word, and his sleep had suffered. Finally that very morning, he had set his jaw after another fitful night, and started for Salem. He had no plan of action, but he knew he had to face Rachel, if only to see if his vivid memory of her was a figment of his imagination.

“Are your parents at home?” he finally asked, breaking into Miles' running monologue.

“Why, no, they're not, Robert—and you barely caught me.” His face revealed a sudden concern and he said earnestly, “I'm glad you've come—things are in a ferment here. I swear the whole town's gone insane!”

“What's happening?”

“Why, it's this fool witchcraft business!” Miles said in disgust. “Some silly women accused a poor old woman—Bridget Bishop—of being a witch, and the trial is on right now. Come on, it's already started, and you may be of some help.”

“I hardly see how,” Howland protested, but he allowed himself to be drawn along. There had been much talk of witchcraft in his own village, and he was curious to see how the business was handled in Salem.

They made their way to the largest building in Salem, a two-story structure of red brick, and found a crowd pressing around the outside, excitedly talking and staring through the open windows.

“We'll never get in there!” Howland said, but Miles pulled his arm, and they were admitted by an elderly man who nodded at the youth and opened the door just wide enough for them to slip through.

The door they passed through was in the back of the large room, so few people saw them enter. As they took places along the wall, standing with the others who had missed out on the bench seats, Robert saw the Winslow family sitting together close to the front on one of the benches that was at right angles to the room, facing the raised platform where several elderly men sat at a long table—magistrates, he suspected, and judges for the hearing.

Rachel looked his way, and as their eyes met, he had the strange feeling that she had been as restless as he, for she bit her lower lip in agitation, then nodded and turned back to the scene before her.

An old woman, plainly dressed and so upset that she could not speak without a break in her voice, stood on a smaller platform with a small rail built around it, waist high. She
must have been at least sixty-five or seventy years old, and from her speech and actions, Howland judged her to be of humble origins and not especially intelligent.

“And you have heard witness after witness testify that you appeared to them in a horrid shape,” one of the judges said sternly. He was a tall, thin man with a long face and staring eyes. “John Cook swears that you appeared to him five years ago, that you struck him on the head, and that on that same day you walked into the room where he was and an apple strangely flew out of his hand into the lap of his mother, six or eight feet from him. What say you to that, Bridget Bishop?”

“Oh, I ain't never hit his mother with no apple—please God, I never once hit 'im.”

“He has sworn that you did! Are you calling Master Cook a liar?”

“Oh no, sir!” The old woman trembled so violently with fear that she swayed back and forth. “Please God, sir, Mr. Cook—he was angry with me over the business with the suckling pigs, but I never done 'im no hurt!”

“What is this about pigs?” Every head turned to see Matthew Winslow stand up and face the court.

“Mr. Winslow! We will take care that all the evidence is heard! You are not a judge in this hearing!”

Winslow suddenly raised an arm, pointing it like a rapier at the long-faced man who had gone livid with rage. “Thomas Carlew, you have permitted a dozen witnesses to testify of some ridiculous incident going back ten years, while at the same time you are
deaf
to any suggestion that these people may be as silly as they sound!”

An angry hum went over the room, and Miles whispered to Howland, “Father's all stirred up, isn't he? Look at how mad the witnesses are.”

Howland saw that many were boiling with anger at Winslow, and he thought,
Winslow is making trouble for himself!

There was a heated argument about whether or not the defendant should be allowed to amplify her statement on
the pigs, but the direct attacks of Winslow prevailed, and the old woman said, “Please, sir, it was only that Master Cook bought six suckling pigs from me, and four of 'em died—so he come and wanted his money back—and said they was cursed. Only I didn't have none of it—so he said I was a thief and a witch.” She began crying, and Matthew turned to a sallow-faced man in the front row.

“Mr. Cook, you are a prejudiced witness—your testimony is worthless.”

Cook jumped up and began to scream at Winslow, but the judge said loudly, “Sit down, Mr. Cook! And you, too, Matthew Winslow! Or I will have you put out of this room!”

Winslow stared at him, then said loudly, “You are a disgrace to your office, Jacob Sneed!” He swept his arm over the entire courtroom and cried out, “In God's name, can't you see what a farce this hearing is? Not one trace of
evidence!
Nothing but a bunch of sniveling, silly, witless
gossips
determined to have a Roman holiday with one poor, unfortunate woman! God help you all!”

The room broke into a roar, some being in sympathy with Winslow, but most of the crowd angry at the interruption. Justice Sneed finally quieted the crowd enough to say, “You will leave this room, Matthew Winslow—before I fine you for contempt of court!”

Winslow rose to his feet with fire in his eyes as he called out in ringing tones, “There are not words enough in the world, not brains enough in your heads, to describe the contempt I feel for this—I will not say
court,
for it is none! For this pack of dogs without a single trace of Christian love! I wash my hands of you!”

He stepped to the aisle, and Lydia, Rachel, and Gilbert followed him as he stalked toward the door, his face a mask of outrage. As the party left the room, Miles and Howland joined them. Outside the crowd milled around them, some angry, some saying, “Well done, sir!”