The Crucible (10 page)

 

ELIZABETH: What keeps you so late? It’s almost dark.

PROCTOR: I were planting far out to the forest edge.

ELIZABETH: Oh, you’re done then.

PROCTOR: Aye, the farm is seeded. The boys asleep?

ELIZABETH: They will be soon.
And she goes to the fireplace, proceeds to ladle up stew in a dish
.

PROCTOR: Pray now for a fair summer.

ELIZABETH: Aye.

PROCTOR: Are you well today?

ELIZABETH: I am.
She brings the plate to the table, and, indicating the food:
It is a rabbit.

PROCTOR,
going to the table:
Oh, is it! In Jonathan’s trap?

ELIZABETH: No, she walked into the house this afternoon; I found her sittin’ in the corner like she come to visit.

PROCTOR: Oh, that’s a good sign walkin’ in.

ELIZABETH: Pray God. It hurt my heart to strip her, poor rabbit.
She sits and watches him taste it.

PROCTOR: It’s well seasoned.

ELIZABETH,
blushing with pleasure:
I took great care. She’s tender?

PROCTOR: Aye.
He eats. She watches him.
I think we’ll see green fields soon. It’s warm as blood beneath the clods.

ELIZABETH: That’s well.

PROCTOR: If the crop is good I’ll buy George Jacobs’ heifer. How would that please you?

ELIZABETH: Aye, it would.

PROCTOR,
with a grin:
I mean to please you, Elizabeth.

ELIZABETH—
it is hard to say:
I know it, John.

PROCTOR,
as gently as he can:
Cider?

ELIZABETH,
with a sense of reprimanding herself for having forgot :
Aye!
She gets up and goes and pours a glass for him. He now arches his back.

PROCTOR: This farm’s a continent when you go foot by foot droppin’ seeds in it.

ELIZABETH,
coming with the cider:
It must be.

PROCTOR,
he drinks a long draught, then, putting the glass down:
You ought to bring some flowers in the house.

ELIZABETH: Oh! I forgot! I will tomorrow.

PROCTOR: It’s winter in here yet. On Sunday let you come with me, and we’ll walk the farm together; I never see such a load of flowers on the earth.
With good feeling he goes and looks up at the sky through the open doorway.
Lilacs have a purple smell. Lilac is the smell of nightfall, I think. Massachusetts is a beauty in the spring!

ELIZABETH: Aye, it is.

PROCTOR: I think you’re sad again. Are you?

ELIZABETH—
she
doesn’t want friction, and yet she must: You come so late I thought you’d gone to Salem this afternoon.

PROCTOR: Why? I have no business in Salem.

ELIZABETH: You did speak of going, earlier this week.

PROCTOR—
he knows what she means:
I thought better of it since.

ELIZABETH: Mary Warren’s there today.

PROCTOR: Why’d you let her? You heard me forbid her to go to Salem any more!

ELIZABETH: I couldn’t stop her.

PROCTOR,
holding back a full condemnation of her:
It is a fault, it is a fault, Elizabeth—you’re the mistress here, not Mary Warren.

ELIZABETH: She frightened all my strength away.

PROCTOR: How may that mouse frighten you, Elizabeth? You—

ELIZABETH : It is a mouse no more. I forbid her go, and she raises up her chin like the daughter of a prince and says to me, “I must go to Salem, Goody Proctor; I am an official of the court!”

PROCTOR: Court! What court?

ELIZABETH: Aye, it is a proper court they have now. They’ve sent four judges out of Boston, she says, weighty magistrates of the General Court, and at the head sits the Deputy Governor of the Province.

PROCTOR,
astonished:
Why, she’s mad.

ELIZABETH: I would to God she were. There be fourteen people in the jail now, she says.
Proctor simply looks at her, unable to grasp it.
And they’ll be tried, and the court have power to hang them too, she says.

PROCTOR,
scoffing, but without conviction:
Ah, they’d never hang—

ELIZABETH : The Deputy Governor promise hangin’ if they’ll not confess, John. The town’s gone wild, I think. She speak of Abigail, and I thought she were a saint, to hear her. Abigail brings the other girls into the court, and where she walks the crowd will part like the sea for Israel. And folks are brought before them, and if they scream and howl and fall to the floor—the person’s clapped in the jail for bewitchin’ them.

PROCTOR,
wide-eyed:
Oh, it is a black mischief.

ELIZABETH: I think you must go to Salem, John.
He turns to her.
I think so. You must tell them it is a fraud.

PROCTOR,
thinking beyond this:
Aye, it is, it is surely.

ELIZABETH: Let you go to Ezekiel Cheever—he knows you well. And tell him what she said to you last week in her uncle’s house. She said it had naught to do with witchcraft, did she not?

PROCTOR,
in thought:
Aye, she did, she did.
Now a pause.

ELIZABETH,
quietly, fearing to anger him by prodding:
God forbid you keep that from the court, John. I think they must be told.

PROCTOR,
quietly, struggling with his thought:
Aye, they must, they must. It is a wonder they do believe her.

ELIZABETH: I would go to Salem now, John—let you go tonight.

PROCTOR: I’ll think on it.

ELIZABETH,
with her courage now:
You cannot keep it, John.

PROCTOR,
angering:
I know I cannot keep it. I say I will think on it!

ELIZABETH,
hurt, and very coldly:
Good, then, let you think on it.
She stands and starts to walk out of the room.

PROCTOR: I am only wondering how I may prove what she told me, Elizabeth. If the girl’s a saint now, I think it is not easy to prove she’s fraud, and the town gone so silly. She told it to me in a room alone- have no proof for it.

ELIZABETH: You were alone with her?

PROCTOR,
stubbornly:
For a moment alone, aye.

ELIZABETH: Why, then, it is not as you told me.

PROCTOR,
his anger rising:
For a moment, I say. The others come in soon after.

ELIZABETH,
quietly—she has suddenly lost all faith in him:
Do as you wish, then.
She starts to turn.

PROCTOR: Woman.
She turns to him.
I’ll not have your suspicion any more.

ELIZABETH,
a little loftily:
I have no-

PROCTOR: I’ll not have it!

ELIZABETH: Then let you not earn it.

PROCTOR,
with a violent undertone:
You doubt me yet?

ELIZABETH,
with a smile, to keep her dignity:
John, if it were not Abigail that you must go to hurt, would you falter now? I think not.

PROCTOR: Now look you—

ELIZABETH : I see what I see, John.

PROCTOR,
with solemn warning:
You will not judge me more, Elizabeth. I have good reason to think before I charge fraud on Abigail, and I will think on it. Let you look to your own improvement before you go to judge your husband any more. I have forgot Abigail, and—

ELIZABETH : And I.

PROCTOR: Spare me! You forget nothin’ and forgive nothin‘. Learn charity, woman. I have gone tiptoe in this house all seven month since she is gone. I have not moved from there to there without I think to please you, and still an everlasting funeral marches round your heart. I cannot speak but I am doubted, every moment judged for lies, as though I come into a court when I come into this house!

ELIZABETH: John, you are not open with me. You saw her with a crowd, you said. Now you—

PROCTOR : I’ll plead my honesty no more, Elizabeth.

ELIZABETH—
now she would justify herself:
John, I am only—

PROCTOR: No more! I should have roared you down when first you told me your suspicion. But I wilted, and, like a Christian, I confessed. Confessed! Some dream I had must have mistaken you for God that day. But you’re not, you’re not, and let you remember it! Let you look sometimes for the goodness in me, and judge me not.

ELIZABETH: I do not judge you. The magistrate sits in your heart that judges you. I never thought you but a good man, John—
with a smile—
only somewhat bewildered.

PROCTOR,
laughing bitterly:
Oh, Elizabeth, your justice would freeze beer!
He turns suddenly toward a sound outside. He starts for the door as Mary Warren enters. As soon as he sees her, he goes directly to her and grabs her by her cloak, furious.
How do you go to Salem when I forbid it? Do you mock me?
Shaking her:
I’ll whip you if you dare leave this house again!

MARY WARREN: I am sick, I am sick, Mr. Proctor. Pray, pray, hurt me not.
Her strangeness throws him off, and her evident pallor and weakness. He frees her.
My insides are all shuddery; I am in the proceedings all day, sir.

PROCTOR,
with draining anger—his curiosity is draining it:
And what of these proceedings here? When will you proceed to keep this house, as you are paid nine pound a year to do—and my wife not wholly well?

MARY WARREN: I made a gift for you today, Goody Proctor. I had to sit long hours in a chair, and passed the time with sewing.

ELIZABETH,
perplexed, looking at the doll:
Why, thank you, it’s a fair poppet.

MARY WARREN,
with a trembling, decayed voice:
We must all love each other now, Goody Proctor.

ELIZABETH,
amazed at her strangeness:
Aye, indeed, we must.

MARY WARREN,
glancing at the room:
I’ll get up early in the morning and clean the house. I must sleep now.
She turns and starts Off

PROCTOR: Mary.
She halts.
Is it true? There be fourteen women arrested?

MARY WARREN: No, sir. There be thirty-nine now—
She suddenly breaks off and sobs and sits down, exhausted.

ELIZABETH: Why, she’s weepin’! What ails you, child?

MARY WARREN: Goody Osburn—will hang!
There is a shocked pause, while she sobs.

PROCTOR: Hang!
He calls into her face.
Hang, y’say?

MARY WARREN,
through her weeping:
Aye.

PROCTOR: The Deputy Governor will permit it?

MARY WARREN: He sentenced her. He must.
To ameliorate it:
But not Sarah Good. For Sarah Good confessed, y’see.

PROCTOR: Confessed! To what?

MARY WARREN: That she—in
horror at the memory—she
sometimes made a compact with Lucifer, and wrote her name in his black book—with her blood—and bound herself to torment Christians till God’s thrown down—and we all must worship Hell forevermore.

PROCTOR: But—surely you know what a jabberer she is. Did you tell them that?

MARY WARREN: Mr. Proctor, in open court she near to choked us all to death.

PROCTOR: How, choked you?

MARY WARREN: She sent her spirit out.

ELIZABETH : Oh, Mary, Mary, surely you—

MARY WARREN,
with an indignant edge:
She tried to kill me many times, Goody Proctor!

ELIZABETH: Why, I never heard you mention that before.

MARY WARREN: I never knew it before. I never knew anything before. When she come into the court I say to myself, I must not accuse this woman, for she sleep in ditches, and so very old and poor. But then—then she sit there, denying and denying, and I feel a misty coldness climbin’ up my back, and the skin on my skull begin to creep, and I feel a clamp around my neck and I cannot breathe air; and
then—entranced—I
hear a voice, a screamin’ voice, and it were my voice—and all at once I remember everything she done to me!

PROCTOR: Why? What did she do to you?

MARY WARREN,
like one awakened to a marvelous secret insight:
So many time, Mr. Proctor, she come to this very door, beggin’ bread and a cup of cider—and mark this: whenever I turned her away empty, she
mumbled.

ELIZABETH: Mumbled! She may mumble if she’s hungry.

MARY WARREN: But
what
does she mumble? You must remember, Goody Proctor. Last month—a Monday, I think—she walked away, and I thought my guts would burst for two days after. Do you remember it?

ELIZABETH: Why—I do, I think, but—

MARY WARREN: And so I told that to Judge Hathorne, and he asks her so. “Goody Osburn,” says he, “what curse do you mumble that this girl must fall sick after turning you away?” And then she
replies-mimicking an old crone
—“Why, your excellence, no curse at all. I only say my commandments; I hope I may say my commandments,” says she!

ELIZABETH: And that’s an upright answer.

MARY WARREN: Aye, but then Judge Hathorne say, “Recite for us your commandments!”—
leaningavidly toward them—and
of all the ten she could not say a single one. She never knew no commandments, and they had her in a flat lie!

PROCTOR: And so condemned her?

MARY WARREN,
now a little strained, seeing his stubborn doubt:
Why, they must when she condemned herself.