Abigail, with hushed trepidation: How is Ruth sick?
Mercy: It’s weirdish, I know not—she seems to walk like a dead one since last night.
Abigail, turns at once and goes to Betty, and now, with fear in her voice: Now stop this! Betty! Sit up now!
Betty doesn’t stir. Mercy comes over.
Mercy: Have you tried beatin’ her? I gave Ruth a good one and it waked her for a minute. Here, let me have her.
Abigail, holding Mercy back: No, he’ll be comin’ up. Listen, now; if they be questioning us, tell them we danced — I told him as much already.
Mercy: Aye. And what more?
Abigail: He knows Tituba conjured Ruth’s sisters to come out of the grave.
Mercy: And what more?
Abigail: He saw you naked.
Mercy, clapping her hands together with a frightened laugh: Oh, Jesus!
Enter Mary Warren, breathless. She is seventeen, a subservient, naive, lonely girl.
Mary Warren: What’ll we do? The village is out! I just come from the farm; the whole country’s talkin’ witchcraft! They’ll be callin’ us witches, Abby!
Mercy, pointing and looking at Mary Warren: She means to tell, I know it.
Mary Warren: Abby, we’ve got to tell! Witchery’s a hangin’ error, a hangin’ like they done in Boston two years ago! We must tell the truth, Abby! You’ll only be whipped for dancin’, and the other things!
Abigail: Oh, we’ll be whipped!
Mary Warren: I never done none of it, Abby. I only looked!
Mercy, moving menacingly toward Mary: Oh, you’re a great one for lookin’, aren’t you, Mary Warren? What a grand peeping courage you have!
Betty, on bed, whimpers. Abigail turns to her at once.
Abigail: Betty? She goes to Betty. Now, Betty, dear, wake up now. It’s Abigail. She sits Betty up and furiously shakes her. I’ll beat you, Betty! Betty whimpers. My, you seem improving. I talked to your papa and I told him everything. So there’s nothing to–
Betty, darts off bed, frightened of Abigail, and flattens herself against the wall: I want my mama!
Abigail, with alarm, as she cautiously approaches Betty: What ails you, Betty? Your mama’s dead and buried.
Betty: I’ll fly to Mama. Let me fly! She raises her arms as though to fly, and streaks towards window, gets one leg out.
Abigail, pulling her away from window: I told him everything; he knows now, he knows everything we –
Betty: You drank blood, Abby! You didn’t tell him that!
Abigail: Betty, you never say that again! You will never –
Betty: You did, you did! You drank a charm to kill John Proctor’s wife! You drank a charm to kill Goody Proctor!
Abigail, smashes her across the face: Shut it! Now shut it!
Betty, collapsing on the bed: Mama, Mama! She dissolves into sobs.
Abigail: Now look you. All of you. We danced. And Tituba conjured Ruth Putnam’s dead sisters. And that is all. And mark this. Let either of you breathe a word, or the edge of a word, about the other things, and I will come to you in the black of some terrible night and I will bring a pointy reckoning that will shudder you. And you know I can do it; I saw Indians smash my dear parents’ heads on the pillow next to mine, and I have seen some reddish work done at night, and I can make you wish you had never seen the sun go down! She goes and roughly sits Betty up. Now, you – sit up and stop this!
Betty collapses in her hands and lies inert on the bed.
Mary Warren, with hysterical fright: What’s got her? Abigail stares in fright at Betty. Abby, she’s going to die! It’s a sin to conjure, and we –
Abigail, starting for Mary: I say shut it, Mary Warren!
Enter John Proctor. Upon seeing him, Mary Warren jumps in fright.
Proctor was a farmer in his middle thirties. He need not have been a partisan of any faction in the town, but there is evidence to suggest that he had a sharp and biting way with hypocrites. He was the kind of man – powerful of body, even tempered, and not easily led – who cannot refuse support to partisans without drawing their deepest resentment. In Proctor’s presence a fool felt his foolishness instantly – and a Proctor is always marked for calumny therefore.
But as we shall see, the steady manner he displays does not spring from an untroubled soul. He is a sinner, a sinner not only against the moral fashion of the time, but against his own vision of decent conduct. These people had no ritual for the washing away of sins. It is another trait we inherited from them, and it has helped to discipline us as well as to breed hypocrisy among us. Proctor, respected and even feared in Salem, has come to regard himself as a kind of fraud. But no hint of this has yet appeared on the surface, and as he enters from the crowded parlor below it is a man in his prime we see, with a quiet confidence and an unexpressed, hidden force. Mary Warren, his servant, can barely speak for embarrassment and fear.