The Crucible Read online

  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!

  Strangely, she doesn’t resist him but hangs limply by his grip.

  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?

  As though to compensate, Mary Warren goes to Elizabeth with a small rag doll.

  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.

  Pause.

  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.

  PROCTOR: But the proof, the proof!

  MARY WARREN, with greater impatience with him: I told you the proof. It’s hard proof, hard as rock, the judges said.

  PROCTOR—he pauses an instant, then: You will not go to court again, Mary Warren.

  MARY WARREN: I must tell you, sir, I will be gone every day now. I am amazed you do not see what weighty work we do.

  PROCTOR: What work you do! It’s strange work for a Christian girl to hang old women!

  MARY WARREN: But, Mr. Proctor, they will not hang them if they confess. Sarah Good will only sit in jail some time—recalling— and here’s a wonder for you; think on this. Goody Good is pregnant!

  ELIZABETH: Pregnant! Are they mad? The woman’s near to sixty!

  MARY WARREN: They had Doctor Griggs examine her, and she’s full to the brim. And smokin’ a pipe all these years, and no husband either! But she’s safe, thank God, for they’ll not hurt the innocent child. But be that not a marvel? You must see it, sir, it’s God’s work we do. So I’ll be gone every day for some time. I’m—I am an official of the court, they say,
and I—She has been edging toward offstage.

  PROCTOR: I’ll official you! He strides to the mantel, takes down the whip hanging there.

  MARY WARREN, terrified, but coming erect, striving for her authority: I’ll not stand whipping any more!

  ELIZABETH, hurriedly, as Proctor approaches: Mary, promise now you’ll stay at home—

  MARY WARREN, backing from him, but keeping her erect posture, striving, striving for her way: The Devil’s loose in Salem, Mr. Proctor; we must discover where he’s hiding!

  PROCTOR: I’ll whip the Devil out of you! With whip raised he reaches out for her, and she streaks away and yells.

  MARY WARREN, pointing at Elizabeth: I saved her life today!

  Silence. His whip comes down.

  ELIZABETH, softly: I am accused?

  MARY WARREN, quaking: Somewhat mentioned. But I said I never see no sign you ever sent your spirit out to hurt no one, and seeing I do live so closely with you, they dismissed it.

  ELIZABETH: Who accused me?

  MARY WARREN: I am bound by law, I cannot tell it. To Proctor: I only hope you’ll not be so sarcastical no more. Four judges and the King’s deputy sat to dinner with us but an hour ago. I —I would have you speak civilly to me, from this out.

  PROCTOR, in horror, muttering in disgust at her: Go to bed.

  MARY WARREN, with a stamp of her foot: I’ll not be ordered to bed no more, Mr. Proctor! I am eighteen and a woman, however single!

  PROCTOR: Do you wish to sit up? Then sit up.

  MARY WARREN: I wish to go to bed!

  PROCTOR, in anger: Good night, then!

  MARY WARREN: Good night. Dissatisfied, uncertain of herself, she goes out. Wide-eyed, both Proctor and Elizabeth stand staring.

  ELIZABETH, quietly: Oh, the noose, the noose is up!

  PROCTOR: There’ll be no noose.

  ELIZABETH: She wants me dead. I knew all week it would come to this!

  PROCTOR, without conviction: They dismissed it. You heard her say—

  ELIZABETH : And what of tomorrow? She will cry me out until they take me!

  PROCTOR: Sit you down.

  ELIZABETH: She wants me dead, John, you know it!

  PROCTOR: I say sit down! She sits, trembling. He speaks quietly, trying to keep his wits. Now we must be wise, Elizabeth.

  ELIZABETH, with sarcasm, and a sense of being lost: Oh, indeed, indeed!

  PROCTOR: Fear nothing. I’ll find Ezekiel Cheever. I’ll tell him she said it were all sport.

  ELIZABETH: John, with so many in the jail, more than Cheever’s help is needed now, I think. Would you favor me with this? Go to Abigail.

  PROCTOR, his soul hardening as he senses... : What have I to say to Abigail?

  ELIZABETH, delicately: John—grant me this. You have a faulty understanding of young girls. There is a promise made in any bed—

  PROCTOR, striving against his anger: What promise!

  ELIZABETH: Spoke or silent, a promise is surely made. And she may dote on it now—I am sure she does—and thinks to kill me, then to take my place.

  Proctor’s anger is rising; he cannot speak.

  ELIZABETH: It is her dearest hope, John, I know it. There be a thousand names; why does she call mine? There be a certain danger in calling such a name—I am no Goody Good that sleeps in ditches, nor Osburn, drunk and half-witted. She’d dare not call out such a farmer’s wife but there be monstrous profit in it. She thinks to take my place, John.

  PROCTOR: She cannot think it! He knows it is true.

  ELIZABETH, “reasonably”: John, have you ever shown her somewhat of contempt? She cannot pass you in the church but you will blush—

  PROCTOR : I may blush for my sin.

  ELIZABETH: I think she sees another meaning in that blush.

  PROCTOR: And what see you? What see you, Elizabeth?

  ELIZABETH, “conceding”: I think you be somewhat ashamed, for I am there, and she so close.

  PROCTOR: When will you know me, woman? Were I stone I would have cracked for shame this seven month!

  ELIZABETH: Then go and tell her she’s a whore. Whatever promise she may sense—break it, John, break it.

  PROCTOR, between his teeth: Good, then. I’ll go. He starts for his rifle.

  ELIZABETH, trembling, fearfully: Oh, how unwillingly!

  PROCTOR, turning on her, rifle in hand: I will curse her hotter than the oldest cinder in hell. But pray, begrudge me not my anger!

  ELIZABETH: Your anger! I only ask you—

  PROCTOR : Woman, am I so base? Do you truly think me base?

  ELIZABETH: I never called you base.

  PROCTOR: Then how do you charge me with such a promise? The promise that a stallion gives a mare I gave that girl!

  ELIZABETH: Then why do you anger with me when I bid you break it?

  PROCTOR: Because it speaks deceit, and I am honest! But I’ll plead no more! I see now your spirit twists around the single error of my life, and I will never tear it free!

  ELIZABETH, crying out: You’ll tear it free—when you come to know that I will be your only wife, or no wife at all! She has an arrow in you yet, John Proctor, and you know it well!

  Quite suddenly, as though from the air, a figure appears in the doorway. They start slightly. It is Mr. Hale. He is different now—drawn a little, and there is a quality of deference, even of guilt, about his manner now.

  HALE: Good evening.

  PROCTOR, still in his shock: Why, Mr. Hale! Good evening to you, sir. Come in, come in.

  HALE, to Elizabeth: I hope I do not startle you.

  ELIZABETH: No, no, it’s only that I heard no horse—

  HALE: You are Goodwife Proctor.

  PROCTOR: Aye; Elizabeth.

  HALE, nods, then: I hope you’re not off to bed yet.

  PROCTOR, setting down his gun: No, no. Hale comes further into the room. And Proctor, to explain his nervousness: We are not used to visitors after dark, but you’re welcome here. Will you sit you down, sir?

  HALE: I will. He sits. Let you sit, Goodwife Proctor.

  She does, never letting him out of her sight. There is a pause as Hale looks about the room.

  PROCTOR, to break the silence: Will you drink cider, Mr. Hale?

  HALE: No, it rebels my stomach; I have some further traveling yet tonight. Sit you down, sir. Proctor sits. I will not keep you long, but I have some business with you.

  PROCTOR: Business of the court?

  HALE: No—no, I come of my own, without the court’s authority. Hear me. He wets his lips. I know not if you are aware, but your wife’s name is—mentioned in the court.

  PROCTOR: We know it, sir. Our Mary Warren told us. We are entirely amazed.

  HALE: I am a stranger here, as you know. And in my ignorance I find it hard to draw a clear opinion of them that come accused before the court. And so this afternoon, and now tonight, I go from house to house—I come now from Rebecca Nurse’s house and—

  ELIZABETH, shocked: Rebecca’s charged!

  HALE: God forbid such a one be charged. She is, however—mentioned somewhat.

  ELIZABETH, with an attempt at a laugh: You will never believe, I hope, that Rebecca trafficked with the Devil.

  HALE: Woman, it is possible.

  PROCTOR, taken aback: Surely you cannot think so.

  HALE: This is a strange time, Mister. No man may longer doubt the powers of the dark are gathered in monstrous attack upon this village. There is too much evidence now to deny it. You will agree, sir?

  PROCTOR, evading: I—have no knowledge in that line. But it’s hard to think so pious a woman be secretly a Devil’s bitch after seventy year of such good prayer.

  HALE: Aye. But the Devil is a wily one, you cannot deny it. However, she is far from accused, and I know she will not be. Pause. I thought, sir, to put some questions as to the Christian character of this house, if you’ll permit me.

  PROCTOR, coldly, resentful: Why, we—have no fear of questions, sir.

  HALE: Good, then. He makes him
self more comfortable. In the book of record that Mr. Parris keeps, I note that you are rarely in the church on Sabbath Day.

  PROCTOR: No, sir, you are mistaken.

  HALE: Twenty-six time in seventeen month, sir. I must call that rare. Will you tell me why you are so absent?

  PROCTOR: Mr. Hale, I never knew I must account to that man for I come to church or stay at home. My wife were sick this winter.

  HALE: So I am told. But you, Mister, why could you not come alone?

  PROCTOR: I surely did come when I could, and when I could not I prayed in this house.

  HALE: Mr. Proctor, your house is not a church; your theology must tell you that.

  PROCTOR: It does, sir, it does; and it tells me that a minister may pray to God without he have golden candlesticks upon the altar.

  HALE: What golden candlesticks?

  PROCTOR: Since we built the church there were pewter candlesticks upon the altar; Francis Nurse made them, y’know, and a sweeter hand never touched the metal. But Parris came, and for twenty week he preach nothin’ but golden candlesticks until he had them. I labor the earth from dawn of day to blink of night, and I tell you true, when I look to heaven and see my money glaring at his elbows—it hurt my prayer, sir, it hurt my prayer. I think, sometimes, the man dreams cathedrals, not clapboard meetin’ houses.

  HALE, thinks, then: And yet, Mister, a Christian on Sabbath Day must be in church. Pause. Tell me—you have three children?

  PROCTOR: Aye. Boys.

  HALE: How comes it that only two are baptized?

  PROCTOR, starts to speak, then stops, then, as though unable to restrain this: I like it not that Mr. Parris should lay his hand upon my baby. I see no light of God in that man. I’ll not conceal it.

  HALE: I must say it, Mr. Proctor; that is not for you to decide. The man’s ordained, therefore the light of God is in him.

  PROCTOR, flushed with resentment but trying to smile: What’s your suspicion, Mr. Hale?

  HALE: No, no, I have no—

  PROCTOR: I nailed the roof upon the church, I hung the door—

  HALE: Oh, did you! That’s a good sign, then.

  PROCTOR: It may be I have been too quick to bring the man to book, but you cannot think we ever desired the destruction of religion. I think that’s in your mind, is it not?

  HALE, not altogether giving way: I—have—there is a softness in your record, sir, a softness.