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Title: The Witch

Author: Mary Johnston

Release date: September 21, 2016 [eBook #53109]

Language: English

Credits: Produced by Giovanni Fini, sp1nd and the Online Distributed
        Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was
        produced from images generously made available by The
        Internet Archive)


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE WITCH ***




Produced by Giovanni Fini, sp1nd and the Online Distributed
Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was
produced from images generously made available by The
Internet Archive)







                         TRANSCRIBER’S NOTE:

—Obvious print and punctuation errors were corrected.




By Mary Johnston


 HAGAR.

 THE LONG ROLL. The first of two books dealing with the war between the
 States. With Illustrations in color by N. C. WYETH.

 CEASE FIRING. The second of two books dealing with the war between the
 States. With Illustrations in color by N. C. WYETH.

 LEWIS RAND. With Illustrations in color by F. C. YOHN.

 AUDREY. With Illustrations in color by F. C. YOHN.

 PRISONERS OF HOPE. With Frontispiece.

 TO HAVE AND TO HOLD. With 8 Illustrations by HOWARD PYLE, E. B.
 THOMPSON, A. W. BETTS, and EMLEN MCCONNELL.

 THE GODDESS OF REASON. _A Drama._


HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY

BOSTON AND NEW YORK

[Illustration:
  (p. 154)
“GOOD-BYE, MISTRESS FRIENDLY-SOUL!”]




                               THE WITCH

                                  BY

                             MARY JOHNSTON

[Illustration: LOGO]

                          BOSTON AND NEW YORK

                       HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY

                     The Riverside Press Cambridge

                                 1914




                   COPYRIGHT, 1914, BY MARY JOHNSTON

                          ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

                       _Published October 1914_




                               CONTENTS


                I. THE QUEEN’S CHAMBER                    1

               II. THE CAP AND BELLS                     10

              III. THE TWO PHYSICIANS                    24

               IV. THE ROSE TAVERN                       37

                V. THE ROAD TO HAWTHORN                  54

               VI. THE MAN WITH THE HAWK                 69

              VII. JOAN                                  82

             VIII. THE SQUIRE’S BROTHER                  97

               IX. THE OAK GRANGE                       109

                X. IN HAWTHORN FOREST                   124

               XI. THE PLAGUE                           136

              XII. HERON’S COTTAGE                      151

             XIII. HAWTHORN CHURCH                      165

              XIV. NIGHT                                176

               XV. NEXT DAY                             188

              XVI. MASTER THOMAS CLEMENT                204

             XVII. MOTHER SPURAWAY                      218

            XVIII. THE GAOL                             235

              XIX. ADERHOLD AND CARTHEW                 246

               XX. THE WITCH JUDGE                      260

              XXI. THE WITCH                            272

             XXII. ESCAPE                               281

            XXIII. THE ROAD TO THE PORT                 298

             XXIV. THE FARTHER ROAD                     312

              XXV. THE SILVER QUEEN                     327

             XXVI. THE OPEN BOAT                        342

            XXVII. THE ISLAND                           351

           XXVIII. FOUR YEARS                           362

             XXIX. THE SPANIARDS                        376

              XXX. THE ISLET                            387

             XXXI. THE HOUR-GLASS                       404

            XXXII. A JOURNEY                            420




                               THE WITCH




                               THE WITCH




CHAPTER I

THE QUEEN’S CHAMBER


IT was said that the Queen was dying. She lay at Richmond, in the
palace looking out upon the wintry, wooded, March-shaken park, but
London, a few miles away, had daily news of how she did. There was
much talk about her--the old Queen—much telling of stories and
harking back. She had had a long reign—“Not far from fifty years, my
masters!”—and in it many important things had happened. The crowd in
the streets, the barge and wherry folk upon the wind-ruffled river,
the roisterers in the taverns drinking ale or sack, merchants and
citizens in general talking of the times in the intervals of business,
old soldiers and seamen ashore, all manner of folk, indeed, agreed
upon the one most important thing. The most important thing had been
the scattering of the Armada fifteen years before. That disposed of,
opinions differed as to the next most important. The old soldiers were
for all fighting wherever it had occurred. The seamen and returned
adventurers threw for the voyages of Drake and Frobisher and Gilbert
and Raleigh. With these were inclined to agree the great merchants
and guild-masters who were venturing in the East India and other
joint-stock companies. The little merchant and guild fellows agreed
with the great. A very large number of all classes claimed for the
overthrow of Popery the first place. On the other hand, a considerable
number either a little hurriedly slurred this, or else somewhat too
anxiously and earnestly supported the assertion. One circle, all
churchmen, lauded the Act of Uniformity, and the pains and penalties
provided alike for Popish recusant and non-conforming Protestant.
Another circle, men of a serious cast of countenance and of a growing
simplicity in dress, left the Act of Uniformity in obscurity, and
after the deliverance from the Pope, made the important happening the
support given the Protestant principle in France and the Netherlands.
A few extreme loyalists put in a claim for the number of conspiracies
unearthed and trampled into nothingness—Scottish conspiracies, Irish
conspiracies, Spanish conspiracies, Westmoreland and Northumberland
conspiracies, Throgmorton conspiracies—the death of the Queen of
Scots, the death, two years ago, of Essex.

All agreed that the Queen had had a stirring reign—all but the latter
end of it. The last few years—despite Irish affairs—had been dull and
settled, a kind of ditch-water stagnation, a kind of going downhill.
Fifty years, almost, was a long time for one person to reign....

On a time the Queen had been an idol and a cynosure—for years
the love of a people had been warm about her. It had been a people
struggling to become a nation, beset with foreign foes and inner
dissensions, battling for a part in new worlds and realms. She had led
the people well, ruled well, come out with them into the Promised Land.
And now there was a very human dissatisfaction with the Promised Land,
for the streams did not run milk and honey nor were the sands golden.
As humanly, the dissatisfaction involved the old Queen. She could not
have been, after all, the Queen that they had thought her.... After
crying for so many years “Long live Queen Elizabeth!” there would come
creeping into mind a desire for novelty. _King James,—King James!_ The
words sounded well, and promised, perhaps, the true Golden Age. But
they were said, of course, under breath. The Queen was not dead yet.

They told strange stories of her—the old Queen; usually in small,
select companies where there were none but safe men. As March roared
on, there was more and more of this story-telling, straws that showed
the way the tide was setting. They were rarely now stories of her
youth, of her courage and fire, of her learning, of the danger in which
she lived when she was only “Madam Elizabeth,” of her imprisonment
in the Tower—nor were they stories of her coronation, and of the
way, through so many long years, she had queened it, of her “mere
Englishness,” her steady courage, her power of work, her councillors,
her wars, and her statecraft. Leaving that plane, they were not so
often either stories of tragic errors, of wrath and jealousy, finesse
and deception, of arbitrary power, of the fret and weakness of the
strong.—But to-day they told stories of her amours, real or pretended.
They repeated what she had said to Leicester and Leicester had said to
her, what she had said to Alençon and Alençon had answered. They dug
up again with a greasy mind her girlhood relations with Seymour, they
created lovers for her and puffed every coquetry into a full-blown
_liaison_; here they made her this man’s mistress and that man’s
mistress, and there they said that she could be no man’s mistress. They
had stories to tell of her even now, old and sick as she was. They told
how, this winter, for all she was so ill at ease, she would be dressed
each day in stiff and gorgeous raiment, would lie upon her pillows so,
with rings upon her fingers and her face painted, and when a young man
entered the room, how she gathered strength....

The March wind roared down the streets and shook the tavern signs.

In the palace at Richmond, there was a great room, and in the room
there was a great bed. The room had rich hangings, repeated about the
bed. The windows looked upon the wintry park, and under a huge, marble
mantelpiece, carved with tritons and wreaths of flowers, a fire burned.
About the room were standing women—maids of honour, tiring-women.
Near the fire stood a group of men, silent, in attendance.

The Queen did not lie upon the bed—now she said that she could not
endure it, and now she said that it was her will to lie upon the
floor. They placed rich cushions and she lay among them at their feet,
her gaunt frame stretched upon cloth of gold and coloured silk. She
had upon her a long, rich gown, as full and rigid a thing as it was
possible to wear and yet recline. Her head was dressed with a tire of
false hair, a mass of red-gold; there was false colour upon her cheek
and lip. She kept a cup of gold beside her filled with wine and water
which at long intervals she put to her lips. Now she lay for hours very
still, with contracted brows, and now she turned from side to side,
seeking ease and finding none. Now there came a moan, and now a Tudor
oath. For the most part she lay still, only the fingers of one hand
moving upon the rim of the cup or measuring the cloth of gold beneath
her. Her sight was failing. She had not eaten, would not eat. She lay
still, supported upon fringed cushions, and the fire burned with a low
sound, and the March wind shook the windows.

From the group of men by the fire stepped softly, not her customary
physician, but another of some note, called into association during
these last days. He crossed the floor with a velvet step and stood
beside the Queen. His body bent itself into a curve of deference, but
his eyes searched without reverence. She could not see him, he knew,
with any clearness. He was followed from the group by a grave and able
councillor. The two stood without speaking, looking down. The Queen lay
with closed eyes. Her fingers continued to stroke the cloth of gold;
from her thin, drawn lips, coloured cherry-red, came a halting murmur:
“_England—Scotland—Ireland—_”

The two men glanced at each other, then the Queen’s councillor,
stepping back to the fire, spoke to a young man standing a little apart
from the main group. This man, too, crossed the floor with a noiseless
step and stood beside the physician. His eyes likewise searched with a
grave, professional interest.

“_Navarre_,” went the low murmur at their feet. “_Navarre
and Orange.... No Pope, but I will have ritual still....
England—Scotland—_”

The Queen moaned and moved her body upon the cushions. She opened her
eyes. “Who’s standing there? God’s death—!”

The physician knelt. “Madam, it is your poor physician. Will not Your
Grace take the draught now?”

“No.—There’s some one else—”

“Your Grace, it is a young physician—English—but who has studied
at Paris under the best scholar of Ambroise Paré. He is learned and
skilful. He came commended by the Duke of —-- to Sir Robert Cecil—”

“God’s wounds!” cried the Queen in a thin, imperious voice. “Have I
not told you and Cecil, too, that there was no medicine and no doctor
who could do me good! Paré died, did he not? and you and your fellow
will die! All die. I have seen a many men and matters die—and I will
die, too, if it be my will!”

She stared past him at the strange physician. “If he were Hippocrates
himself I would not have him! I do not like his looks. He is a dreamer
and born to be hanged.—Begone, both of you, and leave me at peace.”

Her eyes closed. She turned upon the cushions. Her fingers began again
to move upon the rich stuff beneath her. “_England_—”

The rejected aid or attempt to aid stepped, velvet-footed, backward
from the pallet. The physicians knew, and all in the room knew, that
the Queen could not now really envisage a new face. She might with
equal knowledge have said of the man from Paris, “He is a prince in
disguise and born to be crowned.” But though they knew this to be
true, the Queen had said the one thing and had not said the other, and
what she said had still great and authoritative weight of suggestion.
The younger physician, returning to his place a little apart alike
from the women attendants and from the group of courtiers, became the
recipient of glances of predetermined curiosity and misliking. Now, as
it happened, he really did have something the look of a dreamer—thin,
pale, and thoughtful-faced, with musing, questioning eyes. While
according to accepted canons it was not handsome, while, indeed, it
was somewhat strange, mobile, and elf-like, his countenance was in
reality not at all unpleasing. It showed kindliness no less than power
to think. But it was a face that was not usual.... He was fairly
young, tall and well-formed though exceedingly spare, well dressed
after the quiet and sober fashion of his calling. Of their own accord,
passing him hastily in corridor or street, the people in the room might
not have given him a thought. But now they saw that undoubtedly he
_was_ strange, perhaps even sinister of aspect. Each wished to be as
perspicacious as the Queen.

But they did not think much about it, and as the newcomer, after a
reverence directed toward the Queen, presently withdrew with the older
physician,—who came gliding back without him,—and as he was seen
no more in the palace, they soon ceased to think about him at all.
He had been recommended by a great French lord to the favour of Sir
Robert Cecil. The latter, sending for him within a day or two, told
him bluntly that he did not seem fitted for the Court nor for Court
promotion.

The March wind roared through London and over Merry England and around
Richmond park and hill. It shook the palace windows. Within, in the
great room with the great bed, the old Queen lay upon the floor with
pillows beneath her, with her brows drawn together above her hawk nose.
At intervals her mortal disease and lack of all comfort wrung a moan,
or she gave one of her old, impatient, round, mouth-filling oaths. For
the most part she lay quite silent, uneating, unsleeping, her fleshless
fingers keeping time against the rich cloth beneath her. Her women did
not love her as the women of Mary Stuart had loved that Queen. Year in
and year out, day in and day out, they had feared this Queen; now she
was almost past fearing. They took no care to tell her that the carmine
upon her face was not right, or that she had pushed the attire of hair
to one side, and that her own hair showed beneath and was grey. They
reasoned, perhaps with truth, that she might strike the one who told.
She lay in her rich garments upon the floor, and the fire burned with a
low sound beneath the wreathed tritons and she smoothed the gold cloth
with her fingers. “_England—Scotland—Ireland.... Mere English—...
The Pope down, but I’ll have the Bishops still—_”




CHAPTER II

THE CAP AND BELLS


THE inn was small and snug, near Cheapside Cross, and resorted to by
men of an argumentative mind. The Mermaid Tavern, no great distance
away, had its poets and players, but the Cap and Bells was for
statesmen in their own thought alone, and for disputants upon such
trifles as the condition of Europe, the Pope, and the change in the
world wrought by Doctor Martin Luther. It was ill-luck, certainly, that
brought Gilbert Aderhold to such a place.

When he lost hope of any help from Cecil, the evident first thing to
do upon returning from Richmond to London, was to change to lodgings
that were less dear,—indeed, to lodgings as little dear as possible.
His purse was running very low. He changed, with promptitude, to a
poor room in a poor house. It was cold at night and dreary, and his
eyes, tired with reading through much of the day, ached in the one
candlelight. He went out into the dark and windy street, saw the glow
from the windows and open door of the Cap and Bells, and trimmed his
course for the swinging sign, a draught of malmsey and jovial human
faces.

In the tavern’s common room he found a seat upon the long bench that
ran around the wall. It was a desirable corner seat and it became
his only by virtue of its former occupant, a portly goldsmith, being
taken with a sudden dizziness, rising and leaving the place. Aderhold,
chancing to be standing within three feet, slipped into the corner. He
was near the fire and it warmed him gratefully. A drawer passing, he
ordered the malmsey, and when it was brought he rested the cup upon
the table before him. It was a long table, and toward the farther end
sat half a dozen men, drinking and talking. What with firelight and
candles the room was bright enough. It was warm, and at the moment of
Aderhold’s entrance, peaceable. He thought of a round of wild and noisy
taverns that he had tried one after the other, and, looking around him,
experienced a glow of self-congratulation. He wanted peace, he wanted
quiet; he had no love for the sudden brawls, for the candles knocked
out, and lives of peaceable men in danger that characterized the most
of such resorts. He sipped his wine, and after a few minutes of looking
about and finding that the cluster at the far end of the table was upon
a discussion of matters which did not interest him, he drew from his
breast the book he had been reading and fell to it again. As he read
always with a concentrated attention, he was presently oblivious of all
around.

An arm in a puffed sleeve of blue cloth slashed with red, coming flat
against the book and smothering the page from sight, broke the spell
and brought him back to the Cap and Bells. He raised his chin from
his hand and his eyes from the book—or rather from the blue sleeve.
The wearer of this, a formidable, large man, an evident bully, with
a captious and rubicund face, frowned upon him from the seat he had
taken, at the foot of the table, just by his corner. The number of
drinkers and conversers had greatly increased. There was not now just
a handful at this especial table; they were a dozen or more. Moreover,
he found that for some reason their attention was upon him; they were
watching him; and he had a great and nervous dislike of being watched.
He became aware that there was a good deal of noise, coarse jests and
laughter, and some disputing. Yet they looked, for the most part,
substantial men, not the wild Trojans and slashswords that he sometimes
encountered. For all his physical trepidations he was a close and
accurate observer; roused now, he sent a couple of rapid glances the
length and breadth of the table. They reported disputatious merchants
and burgomasters, a wine-flushed three or four from the neighbouring
congeries of lawyers, a country esquire, some one who looked pompous
and authoritative like a petty magistrate, others less patent,—and the
owner of the arm still insolently stretched across his book.

The latter now removed the arm. “So ho! Master Scholar, your
Condescension returns from the moon—after we’ve halloaed ourselves
hoarse! What devil of a book carried you aloft like that?”

Aderhold decided to be as placating as possible. “It is, sir, the
‘Chirurgia Magna’ of Theophrastus Bombast von Hohenheim, called
Paracelsus.”

The red and blue man was determined to bully. “The Cap and Bells has
under consideration the state of the Realm. The Cap and Bells has
addressed itself to you three times, requesting your opinion upon grave
matters. First you deign no answer at all, and finally you insult us
with trivialities! ’S death! are you an Englishman, sir?”

“As English as you, sir,” answered Aderhold; “though, in truth, seeing
that I have lived abroad some years and am but lately returned, my
English manners may have somewhat rusted and become clownish. I crave
pardon of the worshipful company, and I shall not again read in its
presence.”

A roisterer addressed him from halfway down the table. “We’ve got a
ruling—we that frequent the Cap and Bells. You’re a stranger—and a
strange-looking stranger, too, by your leave—and you must wipe out the
offense of your outlandishness! A bowl of sack for the company—you’ll
pay for a bowl of sack for the company?”

The colour flooded Aderhold’s thin cheek. He had not enough in his
purse or anything like enough. To-morrow he expected—or hoped rather
than expected—to receive payment from the alderman whose wife, having
fallen ill before the very door of the house where he lodged, he had
attended and brought out from the presence of death. But to-morrow
was to-morrow, and to-night was to-night. He told the truth. “I am
a poor physician, my masters, who hath of late been set about with
misfortune—”

The red and blue bully smote the table with his fist.

“What a murrain is a man doing in the Cap and Bells who cannot pay for
sack? Poor physician, quotha! I’ve known a many physicians, but none so
poor as that—”

One of the lawyers, a middle-aged, wiry man in black, raised his head.
“He says true. Come, brother, out with thy gold and silver!”

“When I shall have paid,” said Aderhold, “for the malmsey I have drunk,
I shall not have fourpence in my purse.”

“Pay for the sack,” said the lawyer, “and leave the malmsey go.”

“Nay,” said Aderhold, “I owe for the malmsey.”

The red and blue man burst forth again. “Oons! Would you have it that
you do not owe the sack? Call for the drink and a great bowl of it,
aye! If the host is out at the end, he can take his pay with a cudgel
or summon the watch! Physician, quotha? Now, as my name’s Anthony Mull,
he looks more to me like a black seminary priest!”

Aderhold leaned back appalled. He wished himself in the windy street
or the gloom of his lodgings, or anywhere but here. Was it all to
begin again, the great weariness of trouble here and trouble there?
To thread and dodge and bend aside, only in the end to find himself
at bay, bright-eyed and fierce at last like any hunted animal—he
who wanted only peace and quiet, calm space to think in! He groaned
inwardly. “Ah, the most unlucky star!” There came to his help, somewhat
strangely, and, though none noticed it, upon the start as it were of
the red and blue bully’s closing words, the Inns of Court man who had
spoken before. He took his arms from the table and, turning, called
aloud, “William Host! William Host!”

The host came—a stout man with a moon face. “Aye, sir? aye, Master
Carnock?”

“William Host,” said Carnock, “it is known, even in that remnant of
Bœotia, the Mermaid Tavern, that thou ’rt the greatest lover of books
of all the Queen’s subjects—”

The host assumed the look of the foolish-wise. “Nay, nay, I would not
say the greatest, Master Carnock! But ’tis known that I value a book—”

“Then,” said the other, “here is a learned doctor with a no less
learned book.” Rising, he leaned halfway over the table and lifted
from before Aderhold the volume with which he had been engaged. “Lo! A
good-sized book and well made and clothed! Look you, now! Is’t worth
thy greatest bowl of sack, hot and sugared? It is—I see it by thine
eye of judicious appraisement! I applaud thy judgement!—I call it a
Solomon’s judgement.—Furnish the doctor with the sack and take the
book for payment!”

Aderhold thrust out a long and eager arm. “Nay, sir! I value the book
greatly—”

“If you are not a fool—” said the lawyer with asperity.

But the physician had already drawn back his arm. He could be at times
what the world might call a fool, but his intelligence agreed that this
occasion did not warrant folly. He might somehow come up with the book
again; if the alderman paid, he might, indeed, come back to-morrow to
the Cap and Bells and recover it from the host. When the first starting
and shrinking from danger was over, he was quick and subtle enough in
moves of extrication. He had learned that in his case, or soon or late,
a certain desperate coolness might be expected to appear. Sometimes he
found it at one corner, sometimes at another; sometimes it only came
after long delay, after long agony and trembling; and sometimes it
slipped its hand into his immediately after the first recoil. Whenever
it came it brought, to his great relief, an inner detachment, much as
though he were a spectator, very safe in some gallery above. Up there,
so safe and cool, he could even see the humour in all things. Now he
addressed the company. “My masters, Cleopatra, when she would have
a costly drink, melted pearls in wine! The book there may be called
a jewel, for I prized it mightily. Will you swallow it dissolved in
sack? So I shall make amends, and all will be wiser for having drunk
understanding!”

The idea appealed, the sack was ordered. But the red and blue bully was
bully still. Aderhold would have sat quiet in his corner, awaiting the
steaming stuff and planning to slip away as soon as might be after its
coming. At the other end of the table had arisen a wordy war over some
current city matter or other—so far as he was concerned the company
might seem to be placated and attention drawn. He was conscious that
the lawyer still watched him from the corner of his eye, but the rest
of the dozen indulged in their own wiseacre wrangling. All, that is,
but the red and blue bully. He still stared and swelled with animosity,
and presently broke forth again. “‘Physician’! It may be so, but I do
not believe it! As my name’s Anthony Mull, I believe you to be a Jesuit
spy—”

The sack came at the moment and with it a diversion. Cups were filled,
all drank, and the lawyer flung upon the board for discussion the
growing use of tobacco, its merits and demerits. Then, with suddenness,
the petty magistrate at the head of the table was found to be relating
the pillorying that day, side by side, of a Popish recusant and a
railing Banbury man or Puritan. All at table turned out to be strong
Church of England men, zealous maintainers of the Act of Uniformity,
jealous of even a smack of deviation toward Pope or Calvin. At the
close of a moment of suspension, while all drank again, the red and
blue bully, leaning forward, addressed the man of justice. “Good Master
Pierce, regard this leech, so named, and put the question to him, will
he curse Popery and all its works.”

It seemed, in truth, that this was Aderhold’s unlucky night. That, or
there was something in the Queen’s declaration, there was something
about him different, something that provoked in all these people
antagonism. And yet he was a quiet man, of a behaviour so careful that
it suggested a shyness or timidity beyond the ordinary. He was not
ill-looking or villainous-looking—but yet, there it was! For all that
he was indubitably of English birth, “_Foreigner_” was written upon him.

The present unluckiness was the being again involved in this
contentious and noisy hour. He had been gathering himself together,
meaning to rise with the emptying of the bowl, make his bow to the
company, and quit the Cap and Bells. And now it seemed that he must
stop to assure them that he was not of the old religion! Aderhold’s
inner man might have faintly smiled. He felt the lawyer’s gaze upon
him—a curious, even an apprehensive, gaze. The justice put the
question portentously, all the table, save only the lawyer, leaning
forward, gloating for the answer, ready to dart a claw forward at the
least flinching. But Aderhold spoke soberly, with a quiet brow. “I
do not hold with cursing, Master Justice. It is idle to curse past,
present, or to come, for in all three a man but curses himself. But I
am far removed from that faith, and that belief is become a strange and
hostile one to me. I am no Papist.”

The bully struck the table with his fist. “As my name’s Anthony Mull,
that’s not enough!”

And the justice echoed him with an owl-like look: “That’s not enough!”

A colour came into Aderhold’s cheek. “There is, my masters, no faith
that has not in some manner served the world and given voice to what
we were and are, good and bad. No faith without lives of beauty and
grace. No faith without its garland. But since I am to clear myself
of belonging to the old religion—then I will say that I abhor—as in
a portion of myself, diseased, which I would have as far otherwise
as I might—that I abhor in that faith all its cruelties past and
present, its Inquisition, its torturers and savage hate, its wars and
blood-letting and insensate strife, its falseness and cupidity and
great and unreasonable pride, its King Know-No-More and its Queen
Enquire-No-Further! I abhor its leasing bulls, its anathemas and
excommunications, its iron portcullis dropped across the outward and
onward road, its hand upon the throat of knowledge and its searing
irons against the eyes of vision! I say that it has made a dogma of
the childhood of the mind and that, or soon or late, there will stand
within its portals intellectual death—”

The table blinked. “At least,” said the justice sagely, “you are no
Papist!”

But the red and blue man would not be balked of his prey. “That’s round
enough, but little enough as a true Churchman talks! You appear to me
not one whit less one of us than you did before! Master Pierce, Master
Pierce! if he be not a masked Jesuit, then is he a Marprelate man, a
Banbury man, a snuffling, Puritan, holy brother! Examine him, Master
Pierce! My name is not Mull, if he be not somehow pillory fruit—”

It seemed that they all hated a Puritan as much as a Papist. “Declare!
Declare! Are you a Banbury Saint and a Brother? Are you Reformed, a
Precisian, and a Presbyter? Are you John Calvin and John Knox?”

But Aderhold kept a quiet forehead. “A brother to any in the sense you
mean—no. A saint—not I! A Calvinist?—No, I am no Calvinist.”

“Not enough! Not enough!”

Aderhold looked at them, bright-eyed. “Then I will say that Calvin
burned Servetus. I will say that where they have had power to persecute
they have persecuted! I will say that—”

Outside the Cap and Bells arose a great uproar. Whether it were
apprentices fighting, or an issue of gentry and sword-play with—in
either case—the watch arriving, or whether it were a fire, or news,
perhaps, of the old Queen’s death—whatever it was it behooved the Cap
and Bells to know the worst! All the revellers and disputers rose, made
for the door, became dispersed. Aderhold snatched up his cloak and hat,
laid a coin beside the empty malmsey cup, sent one regretful glance in
the direction of the volume lying beside the great bowl, and quitted
the Cap and Bells. In the street was a glare of light and the noise
of running feet. The crowd appeared to be rushing toward Thames bank,
some tall building upon it being afire. He let them go, and drawing his
cloak about him, turned in the direction of his lodging.

He had not gone far when he felt himself touched on the shoulder. “Not
so fast! A word with you, friend!—You’ve put me out of breath—”

It proved to be the lawyer who had befriended him. They were standing
before some church. Wall and porch, it rose above them, dark and
vacant. The lawyer looked about him, glanced along the steps and into
the hollow of the porch. “Bare as is this land of grace!—Look you,
friend, we know that it is allowable at times to do that in danger
which we disavow in safety. Especially if we have great things in
trust.—I marked you quickly enough for a man with a secret—and a
secret more of the soul and mind than of worldly goods. Hark you!
I’m as little as you one of the mass-denying crew we’ve left. What!
a man may go in troublous times with the current and keep a still
tongue—nay, protest with his tongue that he loves the current—else
he’ll have a still tongue, indeed, and neither lands nor business, nor
perhaps bare life! But when we recognize a friend—” He spoke rapidly,
in a voice hardly above a whisper, a sentence or two further.

“You take me,” said Aderhold, “to be Catholic. You mistake; I am not.
I spoke without mask.” Then, as the other drew back with an angry
breath. “You were quick and kindly and saved me from that which it
would have been disagreeable to experience. Will you let me say but
another word?”

“Say on,” said the other thickly, “but had I known—”

The light from Thames bank reddening the street even here, they drew a
little farther into the shadow of the porch. “I have travelled much,”
said Aderhold, “and seen many men and beliefs, and most often the
beliefs were strange to me, and I saw not how any could hold them.
Yet were the people much what they were themselves, some kindly, some
unkindly, some hateful, some filled with all helpfulness. I have seen
men of rare qualities, tender and honourable women and young children,
believe what to me were monstrous things. Everywhere I have seen that
men and women may be better than the dogma that is taught them, seeing
that what they think they believe is wrapped in all the rest of their
being which believes no such thing. Both in the old religion and in the
Reformed have I known many a heroic and love-worthy soul. Think as well
as you may of me, brother, and I will think well of thee—and thank
thee, besides,—”

“Cease your heretic talk!” said the lawyer. “I held you to be of holy
Mother Church—” With suddenness, in the darkness, he put forth his
foot and swung his arm, at once tripping and striking the physician
with such violence that he came to the ground with his forehead against
the stone step of the church. When he staggered to his feet the lawyer
was gone. Around him howled the March wind and far above the church
vane creaked. He stood for a moment until the giddiness passed, then
gathered his cloak about him and, hurrying on through the nipping air,
reached his lodging without further adventure.

That night he slept well. The next morning, as he was eating his
breakfast, that was spare enough, he heard a loud and formal crying
in the street below. He went to the window. A crier was approaching,
at his heels a mob of boys and of the idle generally. “_The Queen is
Dead!—The Queen is Dead!—The Queen is Dead!—Long Live King James!_”




CHAPTER III

THE TWO PHYSICIANS


HE went that morning to visit the alderman, inopportune as he knew the
visit would be esteemed. But many things were inopportune—hunger, for
instance. The alderman found the visit offensively, unpatriotically
inopportune. “What! The King’s Majesty’s ascension day—!” But one
thing saved Aderhold, and that was the presence in the alderman’s
parlour of some seven or eight cronies, men and women. It would not
do—it would not do for the alderman to seem haggling and unwilling.
Aderhold quitted the house the richer by twelve shillings.

The narrow streets were crowded; everybody was out, excited and
important as though he or she had died or been crowned. The physician
strolled with the others. The morning was fine, he felt wealthy and
happy. The sunshine that stroked the projecting, timbered fronts of
houses was the sunshine of home, the soft and moist light of England.
He loved England. He wandered for an hour or two here and there in
the London of less than two hundred thousand souls. He went down to
the riverside, and sat upon a stone step, and gazed into the purple,
brooding distance.... At last he turned back, and after a time found
himself in the street of his lodging, and before the house.

It was a narrow, poor, and gloomy place, owned by people whom he
guessed to have fallen on evil days. The plainly dressed elderly woman
from whom he had hired his room had told him, indeed, as much. “Aye?”
said Aderhold. “Then, mother, I’ll feel the more at home.” He had
lodged here now ten days and he had seen only the elderly woman and her
son, a boy far gone in consumption who coughed and coughed. The woman
was a silent, rigid person, withered but erect, wearing a cap and over
her gown of dark stuff a coarse white kerchief and apron. This morning,
when she brought him his half loaf and tankard of ale, he had spoken
with casualness of the Cap and Bells. She looked at him strangely. “The
Cap and Bells!... Doubtless you heard good talk there.” Then had come
the crying about the Queen’s death. When he turned from the window the
woman was gone.

Now he entered the house. As he laid his hand upon the stair-rail the
woman stood framed in a doorway. “Tarry a little,” she said. “I wish to
tell you that this house will lodge you no longer.”

Aderhold stood still, then turned. “And why, good mother? I like my
room and the house. I have striven to be in no way troublesome.” He put
his hand in his purse and drew it forth with the alderman’s shillings
upon the palm. “You see I have money. You’ll not lose by me.”

A voice came from the room behind the woman. “Let him enter, mother. We
would see this fellow who will make no trouble for us.”

Aderhold noted a pale triumph in the woman’s strong, lined face and
in her tense, updrawn figure. “Aye, it happened to give thanks for!”
she told him. “Two things happened this morning. A King came to the
throne who, for all his mother’s scarlet and raging sins, has himself
been bred by godly men to godly ways! And my two sons came home from
overseas!”

She turned and passed through the doorway into the room from which
she had come. Aderhold, after a moment of hesitation, followed. It
was a large, dark place, very cold and bare. Here, too, was a table,
drawn toward the middle of the room, with a cloth upon it and bread
and a piece of meat. Beside it, chair and stool pushed back, stood
two men—the returned sons Aderhold was at once aware. He had seen
before men like these men—English sectaries abroad, men who stood
with the Huguenots in France, and in the Low Countries fought Spain
and the Devil with the soldiers of Orange. Estranged or banished from
home, lonely and insular, fighting upon what they esteemed the Lord’s
side, in the place where they esteemed the fight to be hottest, they
exhibited small, small love and comradeship for those in whose cause
they fought. Only, truly, in conventicles, could they seem to warm to
people of another tongue and history. Ultra-zealous, more Calvin than
Calvin, trained to harshness in a frightful war, iron, fanatic, back
now they came to England, the most admirable soldiers and the most
uncharitable men!

The two stood in their plain doublets, their great boots, their small
falling collars. They were tall and hard of aspect, the one bearded,
the other with a pale, clean-shaven, narrow, enthusiast’s face. The
home-keeping son also had risen from table. He stood beside his mother,
coughing and pressing a cloth to his lips.

The bearded man spoke. “Good-morrow, friend!”

“Good-morrow, friend,” answered Aderhold.

“You spoke that,” said the bearded man, “as though you were indeed a
friend, whereas we know you to be but a Cap and Bells friend.”

“I do not take your meaning,” said Aderhold. “I would be friends—no
man knows how I would be friends with men.”

The shaven man spoke. “Thou hypocritical prelate’s man! Why did you let
slip to my mother that the Cap and Bells was your place of revelling
and roistering and blackening God to his face? As if, before we went
to the wars, the Cap and Bells was not known for what it was—yea, and
is! for my mother saith the leopard hath not changed his spots nor the
Ethiop his skin—a bishop-loving, stained-glass praising, Prayer-Book
upholding, sacrament kneeling, bowing, chanting, genuflecting, very
pillar and nest of prelacy! drinking-place of all they who, if they
had their wicked will, would give into the hand of ruin—yea, would
pillory and stock, yea, would put to the rack if they might, yea,
would give to the flame if they were strong enough!—the Lord’s chosen
people, sole fence between this land and the fate of the cities of the
plain!”

“There have been before now,” said the bearded man, “spies sent among
the Lord’s people, and always such have been received and comforted in
that same house—to wit, the Cap and Bells!”

The consumptive took the red cloth from his lips. “Mother, mother, did
I not say, when the man came, that he had a strange look?”

“Aye, Andrew,” said the mother, “he went like a man with a guilty
load and watched his shadow.—But I had you to think on, and the need
for bread, and he paid me, which, God knoweth! they do not always do.
And it came not into my head, until, before he thought, he had said
the ‘Cap and Bells,’ that he might be here to spy and wring news of
us—cozening us to tell reportable tales of the Lord’s Saints!” She
stopped, then spoke on with a high, restrained passion and triumph.
“But now—but now I think that that is what he is! But now I am not
afraid—and now he may get his deserts—seeing that the new King is
surely for us, and that my sons have come home!”

“The new King!” exclaimed the shaven man. “The new King is an old
Stuart! Lean upon that reed and it will pierce your hand! I tell that
to my brother and to you, mother, and you will not believe—”

“Time will show,” said the bearded man impatiently. “Time will show
which of us is right. But to-day my mother can turn out this bishop’s
man, neck and crop! Yea, and if he murmurs—”

He made a step forward, a big-boned, powerful man, grim of countenance.
His hand shot out toward the physician.

Aderhold gave back a step, then recovered himself. “You are mistaken,”
he said. “I am no spy and I am no bishop’s man. Like you, I have been
from England. I return poor and seeking physician’s work. Desiring
lodging, I asked at this house as I had asked at others, and as
honestly as a man may. For the Cap and Bells, I knew naught of it nor
of its frequenters. I crossed its threshold but once, and so ill did
the place suit me that I am not like to go again. I tell you the plain
truth.”

The woman and her sons regarded him fixedly. “What think you,” asked
the shaven man at last, abruptly and sternly, “of the law that maketh
it an offense for a man to worship his Creator after the dictates of
his own heart—yea, that would compel him to conform to practices which
his soul abhorreth?”

“I think,” said Aderhold, “that it is an evil law.”

“You say truth,” answered the shaven man. “Now tell me plainly. Believe
you in copes and stoles and altars and credence tables, in kneeling
at communion, in Prayer-Book and surplice and bowing when the name is
mentioned, in bishops and archbishops and pride of place before God?”

Aderhold looked at him dreamily. The fear of physical injury, which
was the weakness that most beset him, was gone by. He had at times
a strange sense of expansion, accompanied by a differentiation and
deepening of light. The experience—he knew it to be inward, and
never steadfast, very fleeting—returned to him now. The room looked
world-wide, the four interlocutors tribes and peoples. “My mind does
not dwell overmuch,” he said, “upon matters such as these. They are
little matters. The wrong is that a man should be made to say they
are necessary and great matters, and, to avoid falseness, be made to
fight dwarfs as though they were giants.—I need no priest in cope or
surplice or especial dress when all that I am lifts in contemplation
and resolve. I need not kneel when All communes with All. No slave is
my soul. Would I pray, I can pray without book, and would I not, no
book held before my face hath power to pray for me. If I bowed my head
at each thought of the mystery that surrounds us, I would not with
overmuch frequency walk erect, for I think much and constantly of that
mystery. If I bow my head without thought—an idiot may do the same. As
for prelates and they who are called ‘spiritual princes’—I have seen
not one who is not a man-chosen master of a man-built house.”

The woman spoke uncertainly. “If we have been mistaken in you, sir,—”

“What you say has truth,” said the bearded man. “But it also has a
strangeness and rings not like our truth.... If you are a Brownist,
this house will have naught to do with you!”

“I am not a Brownist,” said Aderhold wearily. The sense of space
widening off and intenser light was gone. Never yet had it stayed but
the fewest of moments, and, going, it threw life back upon itself....

But the second son, who had been standing with an abstracted and
distant look, started and spoke. “Let him alone, mother and my brother!
Whatever he be, he hath no ill-will nor guile—” He turned to the
table. “Are you hungry?” he asked. “Sit down and eat with us.”

Aderhold dwelt in this house some days longer. He did not again see
the two sons; they had taken horse and ridden to visit some returned
comrade or officer in the country. The woman he saw, and sometimes
talked with, but she had ceased to be curious about him, and they
chiefly spoke of the consumptive boy. He was near death. The physician
could only give something that should make the nights pass more
swiftly, less painfully.

He himself wished to see a physician, the physician to whom, as to
Cecil, he had been recommended by a great noble of France, but whom
he had not seen since that day in Richmond, after that hour in the
Queen’s chamber. He had gone to his house to enquire—he was yet out of
London, he would be home on such a day. Aderhold went then, but could
not see him; waited two days, and was again denied; went in another
three, and was admitted. The physician was alone, in a small room, and
his manner dry and cold.

If Aderhold still nursed a hope it was a faint and failing one. Before
that day in Richmond the hope had been strong. This physician was a
skilled man and knew skill when he saw it—the great Frenchman had
written with a guarded enthusiasm, but yet with enthusiasm of what
Gilbert Aderhold might do—the London physician had let drop a hint
that he himself had thought at times of an assistant—if not that, he
could certainly speak a word in season in another quarter. Aderhold had
hoped—after Richmond he had hoped less strongly. Now he found that
hope was failing. What had happened? What always happened?

The physician continued standing. The room opened upon a garden, and
outside the lattice window there showed a tender mist of budding tree
and shrub. “You were so good,” said Aderhold, “as to bid me come to you
upon your return.”

“I wished,” said the physician, “to give all weight and recognition
to the commendation of the Duke of —--.” A grey cat came and rubbed
against his ankle. He stooped and lifting the creature to the table
beside him stood stroking it. “The commendation of great noblemen is
at times like their largesse. It often falls—through, of course, no
fault of theirs—before the stranger and the unworthy.”

“If I be unworthy,” said Aderhold, “yet I am not strange to that
nobleman, nor, I think, unloved by him. He has been my good patron,
almost, I might dare to say, my friend.”

“Aye?” said the physician. “It has come to Court ears, with other
French news, that the Duke is out of favour.... Moreover, a friend of
my own has lately returned from Paris where he had long resided. He is
a man of the world, with a great interest in life and a knowledge of
what is talked about, small things as well as great. He told me”—the
physician paused—“of _you_!”

“Yes,” Aderhold said dully; “of me?”

“He brought you in as a slight case, but typical, of what grows up
in the narrow strip between religious wars and factions, between
Leaguer and Huguenot—to wit, something that is neither Catholic nor
Protestant, which the Leaguer would burn and the Huguenot would flay!
He told me of your case and your trial and imprisonment, and how none
would help you, neither Papist nor Reformed, but only this one nobleman
whose child, it seems, you had healed, and even he could only help by
helping you forth from France.” The physician continued to draw his
hand over the grey fur. “I quarrel with that nobleman for considering
that an atheist might prosper here in England, and for deceivingly
writing to me only of his skill in all that pertained to his art! I
might,” said the physician, “have become involved in what discovery and
disfavour you may bring upon yourself in this realm!”

“I am not,” said Aderhold, “an atheist. Sanction and authority and
restraint are within.”

The other shrugged. “Oh, your fine distinctions!” He went to the window
and set it wider so that the whole green garden and white and rosy
branches of bloom seemed to come into the room. “I am not,” he said,
with his back to the lattice, “myself a theologian. By nature I am a
‘live and let live’ man. Peter, Luther, Calvin, Mohammed, and Abraham
each may have had his own knowledge of heaven and hell! I will not
quarrel with knowledge for being various. I am tolerant—I am tolerant,
Master Aderhold! But I hold with emphasis that you must not inculpate
others—no, you must not let the edge of your mantle of heresy touch
another! It were base ingratitude, for instance, were you—”

“I have been careful,” said Aderhold, “to mention your name to no
one. I have led since seeing you a retired and soundless life. I am a
stranger in this city and none knows my life, nor feels an interest in
it.”

The physician’s countenance showed relief. “I did not know of what
folly you might not have been capable!” He stroked the cat, moved a
few paces about the room and returned. “I regret that I can give you
no aid. Indeed, I must tell you plainly that I owe it to my family
and my patients and my place—which is no slight one—in the esteem of
this city, to refuse all association with a man who at any hour may
fall under suspicion and prosecution.” He paused. “I may say to you
once, and this once only, that I find your case a hard one. I certainly
advise you not to be stiff-necked, but living in the world to conform
to the world. Philosophize, if you choose, but inwardly, inwardly, man!”

He spoke quite amiably, even genially. It was apparent that Aderhold
had taken his dismissal, that he was not going to beg or be
distressful. He considered through the open casement the height of the
sun. He could give the unfortunate man a minute or two longer. “Let us
speak a moment,” he said, “of our art. London is thronged with doctors.
I tell you truly that there is scant room for another, even were the
circumstances not as they are, and you were as like others as you are
unlike. However still a tongue you may keep,—and I think you may
betray yourself oftener than you think,—you will eventually be found
out.” He lifted his finger impressively. “Now the temper of the time
is religious and growing ever more so. The Italian and antique spirit
that I remember is going—is almost gone. We are all theologians and
damn the whole world outside of our particular ark. People of the old
faith, people of the established faith, people of the Presbytery—each
of the three detests and will persecute the remaining two. Right and
left suffer from the middle, which is in power, as the middle—and
the remaining other—would suffer were the right or left in power.
War, secret or open, war, war! and they only unite to plague a witch
or to run to earth and burn for heresy one like you who belongs not
to right nor left nor middle. The tolerant, humane, philosophic heart
dissents—but few, my friend, are tolerant and humane, too few, too
few! All this being so, I do not advise you to remain in London—no, I
should not, were you Galen himself!”

Aderhold stood gazing at the garden without. There were thorn hedges
everywhere—across all paths. “I do not know,” he said, “where I should
go—”

“My advice,” said his fellow physician, “would be to travel to some
smaller town that hath never received a whisper from France. And
now”—he rose—“and now I must bid you good-bye, for an important
personage expects me at this hour.”




CHAPTER IV

THE ROSE TAVERN


THREE days after this conversation Gilbert Aderhold said good-bye
to the Puritan woman and her son, shouldered a stick with a bundle
at the end, and set his face toward the periphery of London and the
green country beyond. He had no money. The idea of asking his fellow
physician for a loan haunted him through one night, but when morning
came the ghost was laid. He strongly doubted if the other would make
the loan and he did not wish to ask it anyhow. Since he had been in
London he had given a cast of his art more than once or twice in this
neighbourhood. But it was a poor neighbourhood, and those whom he had
served had been piteous folk, and he did not think that they could
pay. He had not asked them to pay. He had no connections in London,
no friends. His knowledge of men told him that, for all his tolerance
and humanity, the fellow physician might be expected to drop a word
of warning, here and there, among the brotherhood. His hope had been
that his case was so obscure that no talk would come from Paris.... It
was not only that the arm of religion had been raised; he had invoked
in medicine, too, strange gods of observation and experience; he had
been hounded forth with a double cry. To linger in London, to try to
work and earn here—with a shudder he tasted beforehand the rebuff that
might come. He would leave London.

He was without near kindred. His parents were dead, a sister also.
There was an elder brother, a sea-captain. Aderhold had not seen him
for years, and fancied him now somewhere upon the ocean or adventuring
in the New World. He remembered his mother telling him that there were
or had been cousins to the north. She had spoken of an elderly man,
living somewhere in a Grange. The name was Hardwick, not Aderhold....
He had no defined idea or intention of seeking kinsmen, but eventually
he turned his face toward the north.

It was six in the morning when he stepped forth. Slung beside his
bundle of clothing and a book or two, wrapped in a clean cloth, was a
great loaf of bread which the Puritan woman had given him. There was
a divine, bright sweetness and freshness in the air and the pale-blue
heaven over all. He turned into Fleet Street and walked westward. The
apprentices were opening the shops, country wares were coming into
town, the city was beginning to bustle. Aderhold walked, looking to
right and left, interested in all. He was not a very young man, but he
was young. Health and strength had been rudely shaken by anxiety, fear,
and misery. Anxiety still hovered, and now and then a swift, upstarting
fear cut him like a whip and left him quivering. But fear and anxiety
were going further, weakening, toning down. Calm was returning, calm
and rainbow lights.

Hereabouts in the street were all manner of small shops, places of
entertainment, devices by which to catch money. The apprentices were
beginning their monotonous crying, “What d’ye lack? What d’ye lack?”

He came to a booth where there was a raree show. A shock-headed, ragged
youth was taking down the boards, which were painted with figures
of Indians, copper-hued and feathered. Half a dozen children stood
watching.

Aderhold stopped and watched also. “Have you an Indian here,” he asked
the boy. “I have never seen one.”

The youth nodded. “He sleeps in the corner back of the curtain. You pay
twopence to see him—” He grinned, and looked at the children. “But
it’s before hours, and if so be you won’t tell master on me—”

“We won’t, master, we won’t!” chorused the children.

The boy took down the last board, showing a concave much like a den
with a black curtain at the back. He whistled and the curtain stirred.
“We got him,” said the boy, “from two Spaniards who got him from a ship
from Florida. They trained him. They had a bear, too, that we bought,
but the bear died.” He whistled again. The curtain parted and the
Indian came forth and sat upon a stool planted in the middle of the den.

It was evident that he had been “trained.” Almost naked, gaunt, dull
and hopeless, he sat with a lack-lustre eye. The boy whistled again
and he spoke, a guttural and lifeless string of words. The children
gathered close, flushed and excited. But Aderhold’s brows drew upward
and together and he turned a little sick. He was a physician; he was
used to seeing wretchedness, but it had not deadened him. Every now and
then the wave of human misery came and went over him, high as space,
ineffably dreary, unutterably hopeless.... He stood and looked at the
Indian for a few moments, then, facing from the booth, walked away with
a rapid and disturbed step which gradually became slower and halted. He
turned and went back. “Has he eaten this morning? You don’t give him
much to eat?”

“Times are hard,” said the boy.

Aderhold took the smaller bundle from his stick, unwrapped it and with
his knife cut from the loaf a third of its mass. “May I give him this?”

The boy stared. “If you choose, master.”

The physician entered the booth, went up to the Indian and placed the
bread upon his knee. “Woe are we,” he said, “that can give no efficient
help!”

The savage and the European looked each other in the eyes. For a
moment something hawk-like, eagle-like, came back and glanced through
the pupils of the red man, then it sank and fled. His eyes grew dull
again, though he made a guttural sound and his hand closed upon the
bread. The physician stood a moment longer. He had strongly the sacred
wonder and curiosity, the mother of knowledge, and he had truly been
interested to behold an Indian. Now he beheld one—but the iron showed
more than the soul. “I am sorry for thee, my brother,” Aderhold said
softly.

The boy spoke from without. “Hist, hist! Master’s coming down the
street.”

Aderhold left the booth, shouldered his stick and bundle and went on
his way.

He walked steadily, the sun at his back, lifting through the mist
and at last gilding the whole city. He was now upon its northwestern
fringe, in the “suburbs.” They had an evil name, and he was willing to
pass through them hurriedly. They had a sinister look,—net-work of
foul lanes, low, wooden, squinting houses, base taverns that leered.

A woman came and walked beside him, paint on her cheeks.

“Where are you going, my bonny man?” Then, as he would have outstepped
her, “What haste? Lord! what haste?”

“I have a long way to go,” said Aderhold.

“As long and as short as I have to go,” said the woman. “If you are
willing we might go together.”

Aderhold walked on, “I am not for that gear, mistress.”

“No?” said the woman. “Then for what gear are you?... Perhaps I am not
for it, either, but—Lord God! one must eat!” She began to sing in a
cracked voice but vaguely sweet.

  “A lass there dwelled in London town—
    ‘Alas!’ she said, ‘Alas!’ she said,
      ‘Of gold and land
        I’ve none in hand—’”

They were coming flush with the opening of a small, dim courtyard. She
broke off her song. “Bring your stick and bundle in front of you! This
is a marked place for snatchers.”

Her warning was not idle. As he shifted the stick a shaggy, bull-headed
man made a move from shadow to sunlight, lurched against him and
grasped at the bundle. Aderhold slipping aside, the fellow lost his
balance and came almost to the ground. The woman laughed. Enraged,
the bull-headed man drew a knife and made at the physician, but the
woman, coming swiftly under his raised arm, turned, and grasping wrist
and hand, gave so sudden a wrench that the knife clanked down upon
the stones. She kicked it aside into the gutter, her face turned to
Aderhold. “Be off, my bonny man!” she advised. “No, he’ll not hurt me!
We’re old friends.”

Aderhold left the suburbs behind, left London behind. He was on an
old road, leading north. For the most part, during the next few days,
he kept to this road, though sometimes he took roughly paralleling,
less-frequented ways, and sometimes footpaths through fields and
woods. Now he walked briskly, enjoying the air, hopeful with the
hopeful day. Sometime in the morning an empty cart overtook him, the
carter walking by his horse. They walked together up a hill and talked
of the earth and the planting and the carting of stuffs and the rates
paid and the ways of horses. Level ground reached, the carter offered a
lift, and the two travelled some miles together, chiefly in a friendly
silence. At midday Aderhold unwrapped his loaf of bread, and the carter
produced bread, too, and a bit of cheese and a jug containing ale.
They ate and drank, jogging along by April hedges and budding trees. A
little later the carter must turn aside to some farm, and, wishing each
other well, they parted.

This day and the next Aderhold walked, by green country and Tudor
village and town, by smithy and mill, by country houses set deep
in giant trees, by hamlet and tavern, along stretches of lonely
road and through whispering, yet unvanished forests. The sun shone,
the birds sang, the air was a ripple of zephyrs. The road had its
traffic, ran an unwinding ribbon of spectacle. There were the walls
of country and the roof of sky and a staccato presence of brute and
human life. Now horsemen went by—knightly travel or merchant travel,
or a judge or lawyer, or a high ecclesiastic. Serving-men walked or
rode, farming folk, a nondescript of trade or leisure. Drovers came
by with cattle, country wains, dogs. A pedlar with his pack kept him
company for a while. Country women passed, carrying butter and eggs
to market, children coming from school, three young girls, lithe,
with linked arms, a parson and his clerk, an old seaman, a beggar, a
charcoal-burner, a curious small troupe of mummers and mountebanks, and
for contrast three or four mounted men somewhat of the stripe of the
widow’s sons. One looked a country gentleman and another a minister of
the stricter sort. They gazed austerely at the mummers as they passed.
Now life flowed in quantity upon the road, now the stream dwindled, now
for long distances there was but the life of the dust, tree and plant,
and the air.

When the second sunset came he was between hedged fields in a quiet,
solitary country of tall trees, with swallows circling overhead in a
sky all golden like the halos around saints’ heads in pictures that he
remembered in Italy. No house was visible, nor, had one been so, had
he made up his mind to ask the night’s lodging. The day had been warm,
even the light airs had sunk away, the twilight was balm and stillness.
He possessed a good cloak, wide and warm. With the fading of the gold
from the sky he turned aside from the road upon which, up and down
as far as he could see, nothing now moved, broke through the hedge,
found an angle and spread his cloak within its two walls of shelter.
The cloak was wide enough to lie upon and cover with, his bundle made
a pillow. The stars came out; in some neighbouring, marshy place the
frogs began their choiring.

Although he was tired enough, he could not sleep at once, nor even
after a moderate time of lying there, in his ears the monotonous,
not unmusical sound. He thought of what he should do to-morrow, and
he could not tell. Walk on? Yes. How far, and where should he stop?
So far he had not begged, but that could not last. The colour came
into his cheek. He did not wish to beg. And were there no pride in
the matter, there was the law of the land. Beggars and vagabonds and
masterless men, how hardly were they dealt with! They were dealt with
savagely, and few asked what was the reason or where was the fault.
_Work._ Yes, he would work, but how and where? Dimly he had thought all
along of stopping at last in some town or village, of some merciful
opportunity floating to him, of tarrying, staying there—finding room
somewhere—his skill shown—some accident, perhaps, some case like the
alderman’s wife ... a foothold, a place to grip with the hand, then
little by little to build up. Quiet work, good work, people to trust
him, assurance, a cranny of peace at last ... and all the time the
light growing. But where was the cranny, and how would he find the way
to it?

Over him shone the Sickle. He lay and wondered, and at last he slept,
with the Serpent rising in the east.

Late in the night, waking for a moment, he saw that the sky was
overcast. The air, too, was colder. He wrapped the cloak more closely
about him and slept again. When he woke the day was here, but not such
a day as yesterday. The clouds hung grey and threatening, the wind blew
chill. There set in a day of weariness and crosses. It passed somehow.
Footsore, at dusk, he knocked at a cotter’s door, closed fast against
the wind which was high. When the family questioned him, he told
them that he was a poor physician, come from overseas, going toward
kinspeople. There chanced to be a sick child in the cottage; they let
him stay for reading her fever and telling them what to do.

The next day and the next and the next the sky was greyer yet, and the
wind still blew. It carried with it flakes of snow. The road stretched
bare, none fared abroad who could stay indoors. Aderhold now stumbled
as he walked. There was a humming in his ears. In the early afternoon
of his sixth day from London he came to as lonely a strip of country as
he had seen, lonely and grey and furrowed and planted with a gnarled
wood. The flakes were coming down thickly.

Then, suddenly, beyond a turn of the road, he saw a small inn, set in a
courtyard among trees. As he came nearer he could tell the sign—a red
rose on a black ground. It was a low-built house with a thatched roof,
and firelight glowed through the window. The physician had a bleeding
foot; he was cold, cold, and dizzy with fatigue. He had no money,
and the inn did not look charitable. In the last town he had passed
through he had bought food and the night’s lodging with a portion of
the contents of his bundle. Now he sat down upon the root of a tree
overhanging the road, opened his shrunken store, and considered that
with most of what was left he might perhaps purchase lodging and fare
until the sky cleared and his strength came back. A while before he had
passed one on the road who told him that some miles ahead was a fairly
large town. He might press on to that ... but he was tired, horribly
tired, and shivering with the cold. In the end, keeping the bundle in
his hand, he went and knocked at the door of the Rose Tavern.

The blowsed servant wench who answered finally brought her master the
host, a smooth, glib man with a watery eye. He looked at the stuff
Aderhold offered in payment and looked at the balance of the bundle.
In the end, he gestured Aderhold into the house. It was warm within
and fairly clean with a brightness of scrubbed pannikins, and in the
kitchen, opening from the chief room, a vision of flitches of bacon and
strings of onions hanging from the rafters. Besides the serving-maid
and a serving-man there was the hostess, a giant of a woman with a red
kerchief about her head. She gave Aderhold food. When it was eaten he
stretched himself upon the settle by the kitchen hearth, arms beneath
his head. The firelight danced on the walls, there was warmth and
rest....

Aderhold lay and slept. Hours passed. Then, as the day drew toward
evening, he half roused, but lay still upon the settle, in the brown
warmth. There was a feeling about him of peace and deep forests, of
lapping waves, of stars that rose and travelled to their meridians
and sank, of long, slow movements of the mind. The minutes passed.
He started full awake with the hearing of horses trampling into the
courtyard and a babel of voices. He sat up, and the serving-wench
coming at the moment into the kitchen he asked her a question. She
proved a garrulous soul who told all she knew. The Rose Tavern stood
some miles from a good-sized town. Those in the yard and entering
the house were several well-to-do merchants and others with their
serving-men. They had been to London, travelling together for company,
and were now returning to this town. There was with them Master—she
couldn’t think of his name—of Sack Hall in the next county. And
coming in at the same time, and from London, too, there was old Master
Hardwick who lived the other side of Hawthorn village, in a ruined old
house, and was a miser. If _he_ had been to London it would be sure to
have been about money. And finally there was Squire Carthew’s brother,
also from Hawthorn way. He was a fine young man, but very strict and
religious. The company wasn’t going to stay—it wished food and hot
drink and to go on, wanting to reach the town before night. And here
the hostess descended upon the girl and rated her fiercely for an idle,
loose-tongue gabbling wench—

Aderhold, rested, rose from the settle and went into the greater room.
Here were the seven or eight principal travellers—the serving-men
being without, busy with the riding and sumpter horses. All in the room
were cold, demanding warmth and drink,—peremptory, authoritative,
well-to-do burghers of a town too large for village manners and not
large enough for a wide urbanity. In a corner, on a bed made of a bench
and stool, with a furred mantle for cover, lay a lean old man with a
grey beard. He was breathing thick and hard, and now and again he gave
a deep groan. A young serving-man stood beside him, but with a dull and
helpless aspect toward sickness. Across the room, standing by a window,
appeared a man of a type unlike the others in the room. Tall and
well-made, he had a handsome face, but with a strange expression as of
warring elements. There showed a suppressed passionateness, and there
showed a growing austerity. His dress was good, but dark and plain. He
was booted and cloaked, and his hat which he kept upon his head was
plain and wide-brimmed. Aderhold, glancing toward him, saw, he thought,
one of the lesser gentry, with strong Puritan leanings. This would be
“Squire Carthew’s brother.”

As he looked, the serving-man left the greybeard stretched upon the
bench, went across to the window, and, cap in hand, spoke a few words.
The man addressed listened, then strode over to the chimney-corner and
stood towering above the sick man. “Are you so ill, Master Hardwick?
Bear up, until you can reach the town and a leech!”

Aderhold, who had not left the doorway, moved farther into the room.
Full in the middle of it, a man who had had his back to him swung
around. He encountered one whom he had encountered before—to wit,
the red and blue bully of the Cap and Bells. Master Anthony Mull did
not at first recognize him. He was blustering against the host of the
Rose because there was no pasty in the house. The physician would fain
have slipped past, but the other suddenly gave a start and put out a
pouncing hand. “Ha, I know you! You’re the black sorcerer and devil’s
friend at the Cap and Bells who turned a book into a bowl of sack!”

He had a great hectoring voice. The travellers in the room, all except
the group in the corner, turned their heads and stared. Aderhold,
attempting to pass, made a gesture of denial and repulsion. “Ha!
Look at him!” cried Master Anthony Mull. “He makes astrologer’s
signs—warlock’s signs! Look if he doesn’t bring a fiend’s own storm
upon us ere we get to town!”

Very quiet, kindly, not easily angered, Aderhold could feel white wrath
rise within him. He felt it now—felt a hatred of the red and blue
man. The most of those in the room were listening. It came to him with
bitterness that this bully and liar with his handful of idle words
might be making it difficult for him to tarry, to fall into place if
any place invited, in the town ahead. He had had some such idea. They
said it was a fair town, with some learning....

He clenched his hands and pressed his lips together. To answer in words
was alike futile and dangerous; instead, with a shake of the head,
he pushed by the red and blue man. The other might have followed and
continued the baiting, but some further and unexpected dilatoriness
exhibited by the Rose Tavern fanned his temper into conflagration. He
joined the more peppery of the merchants in a general denouncement
and prophecy of midnight ere they reached the town. Aderhold, as far
from him as he could get, put under the surge of anger and alarm. He
stood debating within himself the propriety of leaving the inn at once,
before Master Mull could make further mischief. The cold twilight and
the empty road without were to be preferred to accusations, in this
age, of any difference in plane.

The sick man near him gave a deep groan, struggled to a sitting
posture, then fell to one side in a fit or swoon, his head striking
against the wall. The young serving-man uttered an exclamation of
distress and helplessness. The man with the plain hat, who had turned
away, wheeled and came back with knitted brows. There was some
commotion in the room among those who had noticed the matter, but yet
no great amount. The old man seemed unknown to some and to others known
unfavourably.

Aderhold crossed to the bench and bending over the sufferer proceeded
to loosen his ruff and shirt. “Give him air,” he said, and then to the
tall man, “I am a physician.”

They laid Master Hardwick upon a bed in an inner room, where, Aderhold
doing for him what he might, he presently revived. He stared about him.
“Where am I? Am I at the Oak Grange? I thought I was on the road from
London. Where is Will, my man?”

“He is without,” said Aderhold. “Do you want him? I am a physician.”

Master Hardwick lay and stared at him. “No, no! You are a leech? Stay
with me.... Am I going to die?”

“No. But you do not well to travel too far abroad nor to place yourself
where you will meet great fatigues.”

The other groaned. “It was this one only time. I had monies at stake
and none to straighten matters out but myself.” He lay for a time with
closed eyes, then opened them again upon Aderhold. “I must get on—I
must get home—I must get at least as far as the town to-night. Don’t
you think that I can travel?”

“Yes, if you go carefully,” said Aderhold. “I will tell your man what
to do—”

The old man groaned. “He works well at what he knows, but he knows so
little.... I do not know if I will get home alive.”

“How far beyond the town have you to go?”

“Eight miles and more.... Doctor, are you not travelling, too? You’ve
done me good—and if I were taken again—” He groaned. “I’m a poor
man,—they make a great mistake when they say I’m rich,—but if you’ll
ride with me I’ll pay somehow—”

Aderhold sat in silence, revolving the matter in his mind. “I have,” he
said at last, “no horse.”

But Master Hardwick had with him a sumpter horse. “Will can now ride
that and now walk. You may have Will’s horse.” He saw the long miles,
cold and dark, before him and grew eager. “I’m a sick man and I must
get home.” He raised himself upon the bed. “You go with me—you’ve got
a kindly look—you do not seem strange to me. What is your name?”

“My name is Gilbert Aderhold.”

“Aderhold!” said Master Hardwick. “My mother’s mother was an Aderhold.”




CHAPTER V

THE ROAD TO HAWTHORN


IT was full dusk when the London travellers did at last win away from
the Rose Tavern. The evening was cold, the snow yet falling in slow,
infrequent flakes. The merchants and their men, together with Master
Anthony Mull, first took the road. Then followed Master Harry Carthew,
straight and stern, upon a great roan mare. In the rear came on
slowly old John Hardwick, his servant Will, and the physician Gilbert
Aderhold. These three soon lost sight of the others, who, pushing on,
came to the town, rest, and bed, ere they had made half the distance.

At last, very late, the place loomed before them. They passed through
dark and winding streets, and found an inn which Master Hardwick knew.
Together Will and Aderhold lifted the old man from his horse and helped
him into the house and into a great bed, where he lay groaning through
the night, the physician beside him speaking now and again a soothing
and steadying word.

He could not travel the next day or the next. Finally Aderhold and Will
wrung permission to hire a litter and two mules. On the third morning
they placed Master Hardwick in the litter and all took the street
leading to the road which should bring them in the afternoon to the
Oak Grange. Going, they passed a second inn, and here Master Harry
Carthew suddenly appeared beside them upon his great roan. It seemed
that affairs had kept him likewise in this town, but that now he was
bound in their direction.

The snow had passed into rain. The weather had moderated, the rain
ceased, and this morning there was pure blue sky and divine sunlight.
The latter bathed the unpaved streets, the timbered, projecting fronts
of houses, guildhall and shops and marketplace, and the tower and body
of a great and ancient abbey church. Beyond the church the ground
sloped steeply to the river winding by beneath an arched bridge of
stone. Above the town, commanding all, rose a castle, half-ruinous,
half in repair. The streets were filled with people, cheerful in the
morning air. Litter, mules, and horsemen moved slowly along. Honest
Will drew a long breath. “Fegs! Who would live in the country that
could live in a town?”

Aderhold was riding beside him, Carthew being ahead on his great roan
mare. “Tell me something,” said the physician, “of the country to which
we are going.”

“The country’s a good country enough,” said Will. “But the Oak
Grange—Lord! the Grange is doleful and lonely—”

“Doleful and lonely?”

“It’s all buried in black trees,” said Will, “and nobody lives there
but our old master.”

“Where does Master Carthew live?”

“He lives in the squire’s house beyond the village. He’s the squire’s
brother.”

“You’re near a village?”

“Aye, the village of Hawthorn.”

They rode on, Will gazing busily about him. They were still in the
town, indeed in an important part of it, for before them rose the
prison. Without it stood pillory and stocks, two men by the legs in
the latter, a dozen children deliberately pelting them with rotten
vegetables, shards, and mud. Aderhold stared with a frown, the
countryman with a curious mixture of interest in the event and lumpish
indifference as to the nature of it. “Aye,” he repeated, “the village
of Hawthorn.”

“Is there,” asked Aderhold, “a physician in the village?”

They had passed the prison, and were approaching the sculptured portal
of the great church. “A physician?” said Will. “No. There was one,
but he died two years ago. Now they send here, or the schoolmaster
will bleed at a pinch or give a drench. And sometimes they go—but the
parson would stop that—to old Mother Spuraway.”

They were now full before the great portal of the church. Carthew,
ahead, stopped his horse to speak to some person who seemed an
acquaintance. His halting in the narrow way halted the mules with the
litter. Master Hardwick had fallen into a doze. The physician and
serving-man, standing their horses together, looked up at the huge
pile of the church, towering like a cliff immediately above them. On
each side of the vast arched doorway had stood in niches the figures
of saints. These were broken and gone—dragged down in the day when
the neighbouring abbey was closed. But around and about, overhead and
flanking the cavernous entrance, had been left certain carvings—a
train of them—imps and devils and woe-begone folk possessed by the
foul fiend. The fiend grinned over the shoulder of one like a monkey,
he tugged like a wolf at the ear of another, he crept like a mouse
from a woman’s mouth.... Aderhold’s gaze was upon the great tower
against the sky and the rose-window out of which the stained glass was
not yet broken. But Will looked lower. Something presently causing
the physician to glance his way, he was startled at the serving-man’s
posture and expression. It was as though he had never seen these stone
figures before—and, indeed, it proved that he had never been so
closely within the porch, and that, in short, they had never so caught
his attention. He was staring at them now as though his eyeballs and
all imagination behind them were fastened by invisible wires to the
grotesque and horrible carvings. Into his countenance came a creeping
terror and a kind of fearful exaltation. Aderhold knew the look—he
had seen it before, in France and elsewhere, upon peasant faces and
upon faces that were not those of peasants. It was not an unusual look
in his century. Again, for the millionth time, imagination had been
seized and concentrated upon the Satanic and was creating a universe to
command. Will shivered, then he put his hand to his ear.

“There is nothing there,” said the physician, “but your ear itself.”

“Mice never come out of men’s mouths,” said Will. The physician knew
the voice, too, the dry-throated, rigid-tongued monotone. “The comfort
is that most of the wicked are women.”

“Then take comfort,” said Aderhold, “and come away. Those figures are
but the imagination of men like yourself.”

But Will was not ready to budge. “Twelfth night, I was going through
the fields. They were white with snow. Something black ran across and
howled and snapped at me.”

“A famished wolf,” said Aderhold.

“Aye, it looked like a wolf. But this is what proved it wasn’t,” said
Will. “That night in Hawthorn Forest Jock the forester set a trap. In
the night-time he heard it click down on the wolf and the wolf howl. He
said, says he, ‘I’ve got you now, old demon!’ and went back to sleep.
But at dawn, when he went to the trap, there was blood there and a tuft
of grizzled hair, but nothing else. And so he and his son followed red
spots on the snow—right through the forest and across Town Road. And
on the other side of the road, where the hedge comes down, they lost it
clean—not a drop of blood nor the mark of a paw on the snow. But the
dog they had he ran about, and at last he lifted his head and bayed,
and then he started—And where, sir, do you think he led them? He led
them to the hut of old Marget Primrose between Black Hill and Hawthorn
Brook. And Marget was lying huddled, crying with a bloody cut across
her ankle. And they matched the hair from the trap with the hair under
her cap.”

“They did not match with care,” said Aderhold. “And there are many ways
by which a foot may be hurt.”

“Nay,” said the serving-man, “but when they brought the trap and thrust
her leg in it the marks fitted.” He continued to stare at the stone
wolf tearing the ear. “That’s been four years, and never since have I
been able to abide the sight of a wolf!... Witches and warlocks and
wizards and what they call incubi and succubi and all the demons and
fiends of hell, and Satan above saying, ‘Hist! this one!’ and ‘Hist!
that one!’ and your soul lost and dragged to hell where you will burn
in brimstone, shrieking, and God and the angels mocking you and crying,
‘Burn! Burn forever!’—Nay, an if they do not get your soul, still they
ravage and ruin what you have on earth—blast the fields and dry the
streams, slay cow and sheep and horse, burn your cot and wither your
strength of a man.... Thicker than May flies in the air—all the time
close around you, whether you see them or you don’t see them—monkeys
and wolves and bat wings flapping.... Once something came on my breast
at night—Satan, Satan avaunt!”

Aderhold leaned across, seized the bridle of the other’s horse, and
forcibly turned Will from further contemplation of the sculptured
portal. “Come away, or you will fall down in a fit!”

Carthew ahead was in motion, the mules with the litter following. Will
rode for a few paces with a dazed look which was gradually replaced
by his usual aspect. The red came back into his cheeks, the spring
into his figure. By the time they had reached the bridge he was ready
for something palely resembling a disinterested discussion of the
supernatural.

“Isn’t it true, sir, that witch or warlock, however they’ve been
roaming, must take their own shape when they cross running water?”

“Whatever shape matter takes is its own shape,” said the physician,
“and would be though we saw it in a thousand shapes, one after the
other. I have never seen, nor expect to see, a witch or warlock.”

“Why, where have you travelled, sir?” asked the yeoman bluntly; then,
without waiting for an answer, “They’re hatching thick and thicker
in England, though not so thick as they are in Scotland. In Scotland
they’re very thick. Our new King, they say, does most fearfully hate
them! Parson preached about them not long ago. He said that we’d
presently see a besom used in this kingdom that would sweep such folk
from every corner into the fire! He read from the Bible and it said,
‘Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live!’”

He spoke with considerable cheer, the apple-red back in his cheeks.
“It’s good to feel,” he said, “that they are nearly all women.”

They were trampling across the bridge, on either hand the sparkling
water, above their heads the vivid sky. “They are neither man nor
woman,” said Aderhold. “They are naught. There are no witches.”

He had spoken abstractedly, and more unguardedly than was his wont.
The words were no sooner from his tongue than he felt alarm. They
were not safe words to have spoken, even in such simple company as
this. He looked aside and found that Will was staring, round-eyed. “No
witches?” asked Will slowly. “Parson saith that none but miscreants and
unbelievers—”

“Tell me about your church and parson,” said Aderhold calmly, and,
aided by a stumble of Will’s horse and some question from the litter
behind them, avoided for that time the danger.

They crossed the bridge and left behind the winding river and the
town that climbed to the castle, clear-cut and dark against the
brilliant sky. Before them, lapped in the golden sunshine, spread a
rich landscape. Field and meadow, hill and dale, crystal stream and
tall, hanging woods, it flickered and waved in the gilt light and the
warm, blowing wind. There were many trees by the wayside, and in their
branches a singing and fluttering of birds. The distance shimmered;
here was light and here were violet shadows and everywhere hung the
breath of spring. From a hilltop they saw, some miles away, roofs and
a church tower. “Hawthorn Village,” said Will. “The Oak Grange is two
miles the other side.”

Master Hardwick parted the curtains of the litter and called to the
physician. His heart, he said, was beating too slowly; it frightened
him, he thought it might be going to stop. Aderhold reassured him.
He had a friendly, humorous, strengthening way with his patients;
they brightened beneath his touch, and this old man was no exception.
Master Hardwick was comforted and said that he thought he could sleep
a little more. His lean hand clutched the other’s wrist as he stood
dismounted beside him, litter and mules and Will on the sumpter horse
having all stopped in the lee of a green bank disked with primroses.
Master Hardwick made signs for the physician to stoop. “Eh, kinsman,”
he whispered. “You and I are the only Aderholds in this part of the
world. And you are a good leech—a good leech! Would you stay at the
Oak Grange for your lodging, man? I’ve no money—no money at all—but
I’d _lodge_ you—”

The miles decreased between the cavalcade and the village. Aderhold
was riding now alone, Carthew still ahead, and Will fallen back with
the litter. Looking about him, the physician found something very rich
and fair in the day and the landscape. Not for a long time had he had
such a feeling of health and moving peace, a feeling that contained
neither fever nor exhaustion. There was a sense of clarity, strength,
and fineness; moreover, the scene itself seemed to exhibit something
unusual, to have a strangeness of beauty, a richness, a quality as of a
picture where everything is ordered and heightened. It had come about
before, this certain sudden interfusion, or permeation, or intensity of
realization, when all objects had taken on a depth and glow, lucidity,
beauty, and meaning. The countryside before him was for an appreciable
moment transfigured. He saw it a world very lovely, very rich. It was
noble and good in his eyes—it was the dear Earth as she might always
be.... The glow went as it had come, and there lay before him only a
fair, wooded English countryside, sun and shadow and the April day.

He saw the village clearly now, with a sailing of birds about the
church tower. Carthew, who had kept steadily ahead, occupied apparently
with his own meditations, checked his horse and waited until the other
came up with him, then touched the roan with his whip and he and the
physician went on together.

There was something about this young man that both interested and
repelled. He was good-looking and apparently intelligent. Silence
itself was no bar to liking, often it was quite the reverse. But
Carthew’s was no friendly and flowing quiet. His silence had a harsh
and pent quality. He looked often like a man in a dream, but the dream
had in it no suavity, but appeared to contemplate high and stern and
dreadful things. Aderhold looked instinctively first at a man’s eyes.
Carthew’s eyes were earnest and intolerant. In the lower part of his
face there was something that spoke of passions sunken, covered over,
and weighted down.

The two rode some little distance without speaking, then Carthew opened
his lips abruptly. “How do you like this country?”

“I like it well,” said Aderhold. “It is a fair country.”

“Fair and unfair,” answered the other. “It rests like every other
region under the primal Curse—The old man, back there, has taken a
fancy to you and calls you his kinsman. Do you expect to bide at the
Oak Grange?”

“I think it truth that I am his kinsman,” answered Aderhold. “For the
other—I do not know.”

“He is misliked hereabouts,” said Carthew. “He is old and miserly.
Those who have goods and gear like him not because he will not spend
with them, and those who have none like him not because he gives
nothing. The Oak Grange is a ruinous place.”

The village now opened before them, a considerable cluster of houses,
most of them small and poor, climbing a low hill and spreading over a
bit of meadow. The houses were huddled together, but they enclosed
a village green and here and there rose old trees, or showed a tiny
garden. At the farther end, on the higher ground, the church lifted
itself, dominating. Beyond it ran the highway still. The landscape
was fair, with hill and dale, and to the right, against the horizon,
violet-hued and misty, an old forest.

Aderhold looked somewhat wistfully at the scene before him. He had
passed through much of harm and peril. Body and mind he wanted rest,
quiet routine, for a time some ease. “It looks a place where peace
might be found,” he said.

“Five years ago,” said Carthew, “we had the sweating sickness. Many
died. Then all saw the shadow from the lifted Hand.”

“It is wholesome now?”

“Aye,” answered the other, “until sin and denial again bring bodily
grief.”

Aderhold glanced aside at his companion. The latter was riding with a
stern and elevated countenance, his lips moving slightly. The physician
knew that look no less than he had known the serving-man’s.

“Is it not,” demanded Carthew, “is it not marvellous how the whole
Creation groaneth and travaileth with the knowledge of her doom! How
contemptible and evil is this world! Yet here we are sifted out—and
not the wise man of old, nor the heathen, nor the ignorant, nor the
child in his cradle is excused! Is it not marvellous how, under our
very feet, men and women and babes are burning in hell! How, for
Adam’s sin, all perish save only the baptized believer—and he is saved
in no wise of his own effort and merit, but only of another’s! How God
electeth the very damned—and yet is their guilt no whit the less! Is
it not marvellous!”

“Aye, fabulously marvellous,” said Aderhold.

“The sense of sin!” pursued Carthew. “How it presses hard upon my
heart! The sense of sin!”

Aderhold was silent. He possessed a vivid enough realization of his
many and recurring mistakes and weaknesses, but, in the other’s
meaning, he had no sense of sin.

They came to the village and rode through it, the litter arousing
curiosity, allayed every few yards by Will’s statements. Aderhold
observed the lack of any sympathy with the sick old man, even the
growling note with which some of the people turned aside. There was
the usual village traffic in the crooked street, the small shops and
the doorways. Children were marching with the geese upon the green,
where there was a pond, and near it the village stocks. Housewives,
with tucked-up skirts and with pattens,—for an April shower had made
mire of the ways,—clattered to and fro or sat spinning by window or
door. Many of the men were in the fields, but there were left those
who traded or were mechanic, as well as the aged, sitting, half-awake,
half-asleep, in sunny spots. It was the usual village of the time, poor
enough, far from clean, ignorant and full of talk, and yet not without
its small share of what then counted for human flower and fruition,
nor without promise of the future’s flower and fruition.

They rode by the church, set in dark yews. Almost in its shadow rose
a plain stone house. “Master Thomas Clement, the minister’s,” said
Carthew. “Hawthorn hath a godly and zealous pastor! The town behind us
is all for prelates and vestments and a full half at least of the old
superstitions. But Hawthorn and the country to the north have purged
themselves as far as they safely may.”

Out upon the open road again they saw to the left, back among trees
upon a low hilltop, a large and well-built house. “Carthew House,” said
Carthew, “where I live. But I think that I will ride on with you to the
Oak Grange.”

Presently, leaving the highway, they took a rough and narrow road that
led, first through fields and then through uncultivated country, toward
the great wood that had been for some time visible. “Hawthorn Forest,”
said Carthew. They rode a mile in silence, the wood growing darker and
taller until it reared itself immediately before them. To the right,
at some little distance from the road and almost upon the edge of the
forest, stood a thatch-roofed cottage with a dooryard where, later,
flowers would bloom, and under the eaves a row of beehives. “Heron’s
cottage,” said Carthew. “Old Heron lives there, who in the old times
was clerk to the steward of the castle.”

They entered the wood. It was dark and old, parts of it not having
been cut since Saxon times. Their road, which was now hardly more than
a cart track, crossed but an angle, the Oak Grange lying beyond in open
country. But for some minutes they were sunk in a wilderness of old
trees, with a spongy, leaf-thickened earth beneath the horses’ hoofs.
The sunshine fell shattered through an interlacing of boughs just
beginning to take on a hue of spring. Every vista closed in a vaporous
blue.

A woman was gathering faggots in the wood. As they came nearer she
straightened herself and stood, watching them. She was young and tall,
grey-eyed, and with braided hair the colour of ripe wheat. “Heron’s
daughter,” said Carthew when they had passed. “She should cover her
hair like other women with a cap. It is not seemly to wear it so, in
braids that shine.”

They were presently forth from the forest; before them a stretch of
fields no longer well husbanded, a stream murmuring among stones, a bit
of orchard, and an old, dilapidated dwelling, better than a farm house,
less than a manor house, all crusted with lichen and bunched with ivy.
A little removed stood the huge old granary that had given the place
its name, but it, too, looked forlorn, ruinous, and empty. “The Oak
Grange,” said Carthew. “People say that once it was a great haunt of
elves and fairies, and that they are yet seen of moonlight nights,
dancing around yonder oak. They dance—but every seven years they pay a
tithe of their company to hell.”




CHAPTER VI

THE MAN WITH THE HAWK


ADERHOLD saw no fairies, though sometimes of moonlight nights he
pleased his fancy by bringing them in his mind’s eye in a ring around
the oak. Hours—days—weeks passed, and still he abode at the Oak
Grange.

Together he and Master Hardwick had gone over an ancient record. There
was the Aderhold line, intertwining with the Hardwick. The blood-tie
was not close, but it was there. Back in the reign of the sixth Henry
they found a common ancestor in one Gilbertus Aderhold, slain on
Bosworth Field. The blood-warmth was between them. Moreover, the old
man had turned with a strong liking to this present Aderhold, and
besides all there was his fear of illness and death. How well to have a
leech always at hand! At last it came to “Will you live here for your
roof and keep? I could not give you money—no, no! I have no money to
give.”

Refuge—security—here in this silent place, behind the great screen
of Hawthorn Wood.... Aderhold stayed and was glad to stay, and served
the old man well for his keep. The region grew to know that here was
old Master Hardwick’s kinsman, brought with him when he came back from
London, to live with him and doubtless become his heir. He was a
leech. Goodman Cole, living by the forest, fell ill of a racking cough
and a burning fever, sent for the doctor at the Grange, was swiftly
better, and sang the leech’s praises. As time wore on he began to be
sent for here and there, chiefly to poor people’s houses. Eventually he
doctored many of such people, now in the village, now in the country
roundabout. Few of the well-to-do employed him; they sent to the town
for a physician of name. He asked little money for his services; he did
not press the poor for payment, and often as not remitted the whole. He
earned enough to keep him clad, now and then to purchase him a book.

He soon came to the conclusion that whatever store of gold Master
Hardwick might once have had, it was now a dwindling store. In whatever
secret place in his gaunt, bare room the old man kept his wealth, he
was, Aderhold thought, nearing the bottom layer. There was a rueful
truth in the anxiety with which he regarded even the smallest piece
of either metal he must produce and part with. And if, at the Oak
Grange, there was little of outgo, there was still less of income. The
land which went with the Grange was poor and poorly tilled. There was
a cot or two with tenants, dulled labourers, dully labouring. Mostly
they paid their rent in kind. He heard it said that in his middle life
Master Hardwick had ventured with some voyage or other to the Indies,
and had received in increase twenty times his venture. If so, he
thought that his venture must have been but small.

Master Hardwick kept but the one man, Will the smith’s son, who did
not sleep at the Grange, but came each morning and cared for the horse
and the cow and the garden. Within doors there was old Dorothy, who
cooked and cleaned, and, now in and now out, there strayed a lank,
shy, tousle-headed boy, her nephew. The old house was dim and still,
as out of the world as a house may be. Master Hardwick rarely stirred
abroad. There was in truth a lack of health. The physician thought
that the old man had not many years to live. Aderhold set himself with
a steady kindness to doing what could be done, to giving sympathy and
understanding, and when the old man wished it, companionship. Sitting
in the dim house with him, facing him at table over their scant and
simple fare, listening to his brief talk, the physician came to find,
beneath a hard and repellent exterior, something sound enough, an
honesty and plain-dealing. And Master Hardwick, with a hidden need both
to feel and receive affection, turned and clung to the younger man.

Visitors of any nature rarely came to the Oak Grange. The place was
as retired as though fernseed had been sprinkled about and the world
really could not see it. Once, during this early summer, Harry Carthew
came, riding across the stream upon his great roan. But this day
Aderhold was away, one of the tenants breaking a leg and a small child
being sent wailing with the news to the Grange. And Master Thomas
Clement came, alike afresh to reason with the miser and to view this
new parishioner.

Aderhold saw him cross the stream by the footbridge and come on beneath
the fairy oak. He knew who it was, and he had time to map his course.
He had made up his mind—he was worn and weary and buffeted, he was
now for peace and quiet living. He tied a millstone around the neck of
the Gilbert Aderhold of Paris and sank him deep, deep! The minister
stayed no great while and directed most of his discourse toward Master
Hardwick. When he turned to Aderhold, the latter said little, listened
much, answered circumspectly, and endued himself with an agreeing
inclination of the head and an air of grave respect. When the minister
was gone, he went and lay beneath the fairy oak, in the spangly
twilight, his head buried in his arms.

The next Sunday he went to church and sat with a still face, watching
the sands run from the pulpit glass. There were facts about the region
which he had gathered. The town a few miles away with the earl’s seat
above it was prelatical and all for “superstitious usages.” The country
between town and village might be called debatable ground. But Hawthorn
Village and the region to the north of it might have been approved by
Calvin or by Knox.

Sitting far back, in the bare, whitewashed church, he remarked men and
women truly happy in their religion, men and women who showed zeal
if not happiness, men and women who wore zeal because it was the
fashionable garment, men and women, born followers, who trooped behind
zeal in others, and uttered war-cries in a language not their own. In
the pulpit there was flaming zeal. The sermon dealt with miracles and
prodigies, with the localities of heaven and hell, with Death and the
Judgement—Death that entered the world five thousand and six hundred
and odd years ago. “For before that time, my hearers, neither man nor
animal nor flower nor herb died!”

Aderhold walked that summer far and wide, learning the countryside. Now
he wandered in deep woods, now he climbed the hills and looked upon the
fair landscape shining away, now he entered leafy, hidden vales, or
traced some stream upward to its source, or downward to the murmur of
wider waters. Several times he walked to the town. Here was a bookshop,
where, if he could not buy, he could yet stand awhile and read.... He
loved the view of this town with the winding river and the bridge,
and above the climbing streets the old castle and the castle wood. He
liked to wander in its streets and to mark the mellow light upon its
houses. Now and then he went into the great church where the light
fell through stained glass and lay athwart old pillars. Once he found
himself here, sitting in the shadow of a pillar, when people began to
enter. Some especial service was to be held, he knew not wherefore. The
organ rolled and he sat where he was, for he loved music. There was a
sermon, and it was directed against Puritan and Presbyterian, and more
especially against that taint of Republicanism which clung to their
Geneva cloaks. No such imputation breathed against the surplice. _The
Divine Right of Kings._—_The duty of Passive Obedience._—_Authority!
Authority! Authority!_ It rolled through the church, boomed forth with
passion.

Aderhold, coming out into the sunshine, walked through the town and
found himself upon the London road. It was high summer, the sun yet
far aloft, and when it sank the round pearl of the moon would rise. He
had not before walked upon this road. An interest stirred within him
to view the country toward the Rose Tavern, travelled through in the
darkness that night. He left the town behind him and walked southward.
Between two and three miles out, he saw before him a little rise in the
road, and crowning it, a gibbet with some bones and shrivelled flesh
swinging in the chains. It was nothing uncommon; he had seen in France
a weary number of such signposts, and on this great road, coming north
from London, he had twice passed such a thing. It was so fair and soft
a summer’s day, the gauzy air filled with dancing sunbeams, the sky
a melting blue—the very upright and cross of the gibbet faded into
it and seemed robbed of horror. Indeed, long usage had to the eyes of
most robbed it of frightfulness at any hour, unless it was in the dead
of night when the chains creaked, creaked, and something sighed. The
traffic of the road went talking and jesting by, with hardly a glance
aside at the arm across the sky.

Aderhold sat down upon the opposite bank, amid fern and foxglove, and
with his chin in his hand regarded the gibbet. Now and again man and
beast passed, but they paid no attention to the dusty, seated figure.
For the greater while the road lay bare. He gazed, dreaming, and
through the mists of time he seemed to see Judea....

At last he spoke. “Carpenter of Nazareth! Man as we are men, but a
Prince in the house of Moral Genius! Born with thy heritage, also, of
an ancient, savage faith, in thine ears, still, old saws of doom, on
thy lips at times hard sayings of that elder world, in thy mind, yet
unresolved, more than one of the ancient riddles.... But thou thyself,
through all the realm of thy being, rising into the clearer light,
lifting where we all shall lift one day, transfiguring life!... Genius
and Golden Heart and Pure Courage and Immortal Love.... Condemned
by a Church, handed over by it to the secular arm, gone forth to
thy martyr’s death—and still, Sage and Seer! misunderstood and
persecuted,—and still thou standest with the martyrs ... slain afresh
by many, and not least by those who call themselves thine. Wisdom,
freedom, love.... Love—Love—Love!”

The fox-gloves nodded around him. He drew toward him a long stem and
softly touched, one by one, the purple bells. “Freedom—love!... Thou
flower! When shall we see how thou flowest into me and I into thee?”

He let the purple stem swing back, and with his hands about his knees
again regarded the gibbet; then, when some minutes had gone by, rose
and pursued his way. Another half-hour and he came to a place where
three roads met. A passing shepherd boy told him the name was Heron’s
Cross-Roads. It was a lonely place, wold and stunted wood, and in an
angle, amid heath and briar, was set a blackened stake. Aderhold went
across to it. In the wood was a rudely cut name, with a word or two
below; the stake was set through the heart of a suicide. Nettles were
about it, and some one passing had thrown an empty and broken jug of
earthenware. It lay in shards. Aderhold knelt, gathered them together,
and rising, laid the heap beneath the hedge.

Back upon the highway, he turned his face again to the town. It was
a long way to the Oak Grange, and Master Hardwick was concerned if
the house were not closed and fast at a most early hour. _Heron’s
Cross-Roads._ As Aderhold walked an association arose with the name.
Heron—that was the name of the old man who owned the cottage on the
edge of Hawthorn Forest. He was not there now; the cottage had been
shut up and tenantless since early summer. He and his daughter were
gone, Will had told him, on a long visit to the old man’s brother, the
earl’s huntsman who lived in the castle wood above the town. No one
knew when they would be back. Most of their furnishings and household
things had been loaned here or there. The dairy woman had taken their
cow, some one else the beehives. Heron! He had a moment’s drifting
vision of the girl gathering faggots in the forest. It passed and the
present day and landscape took its place. Soon he came again to the
rise of ground and the gibbet so stark against the blue. He hesitated,
then paused, resting as he had rested before upon a stone sunk in the
wayside growth.

A horse and rider emerged with suddenness from a sunken lane upon his
left, and stood still in the middle of the road—a fine horse, and a
fine, richly dressed rider, a man of thirty-five with a hawk upon his
gauntleted fist. Turning in the saddle he looked about him, and espying
Aderhold where he sat, called to him.

“Hey, friend! Have the earl and his train passed this way?”

“I have not seen them, sir.”

The other glanced around again, then beckoned with an easy command.
Aderhold rose and went to him, to find that he was wanted to hold the
hooded falcon while the horseman waited for the hawking party from
which some accident had separated him. Aderhold took the peregrine
from the other’s wrist and stood stroking softly with one finger the
blue-black plumage. The rider rose in his stirrups, swept the horizon
with his eye, and settled back. “Dust in the distance.” His voice went
with his looks—he seemed a rich and various person, who could show
both caprice and steadfastness. Now he glanced downward at Aderhold.
“Ha, I had not observed you before!—A travelling scholar?”

“A travelling physician, an it please you,” said Aderhold, smoothing
the bird with his finger, “biding at present at the Oak Grange, beyond
Hawthorn Village.”

“You take,” said the horseman with a glance at the gibbet, “a merry
signpost to rest beneath!”

“It is neither merry nor dismal,” said Aderhold, “but a subject for
thought. That which swung there swings there now—though shrunken and
dark and answering to no lust of the eye. But that which never swung
there swings there now neither. I trouble it not. It is away from here.”

The other swung himself from his saddle. “I had rather philosophize
than eat, drink, or go hawking—and philosophers are most rare in this
region!” He took his seat upon a heap of stones, while his horse beside
him fell to grazing. “Come, sit and talk, travelling scholar!—That
fellow on the gibbet—that small, cognized part of him that was hanged,
as you would say. Being hungry, he slew a deer for his own use, then
violently resisted and wounded those sent to his hut to take him, and
finally, in court he miserably defamed and maligned the laws of the
land and the judge in his chair. So there he swings for an example
to stealers of deer and resisters of constables, to say naught of
blasphemers of procedure and churls to magistrates!... What is your
opinion, travelling scholar, of Authority?”

“Nay,” said Aderhold, “what is yours?”

The other laughed. “Mine, Sir Prudence?—Well, at times I have thought
this and at times that. Once or twice a head like Roger Bacon’s has
spoken. ‘The swollen stream forgets its source, and the overweening son
turns and with his knotted and sinewy hands chokes his mother that bore
him.’”

“It is a good parable,” said Aderhold. “I trust that your worship,
being obviously of those in authority, will often listen to that brazen
head!”

“Ah!” answered the other. “I am of that camp and not of it. My brazen
head will yet get me into trouble!” He sat regarding the mound
opposite, the tall upright and arm, the creaking chain, and the
shapeless thing, now small, for most of the bones had fallen, which
swung and dangled. “And, friend, what do you think of this matter of
the Golden Age, man’s perfection, Paradise, the friendship of angels
and all wisdom and happiness lying, in the history of this orb,
_behind_ us?”

“If it were so,” said Aderhold, “then were it well to walk backwards.”

“So saith my brazen head!—Hark!”

It was a horn winding at no great distance. There came a sound of
approaching horsemen, of voices and laughter. The waiting cavalier
rose to his feet, caught his horse by the bridle and mounted. Aderhold
gave him back the falcon. The earl and his train, a dozen in all,
gentlemen, falconers, and grooms, coming across the fields, leaped the
hedge and crowded into the road, gathering into their number the rider
with the hawk. Aderhold heard him named as “Sir Richard.” He waved
his hand to the physician—all rode away with a flash of colour and a
blare of sound. A few moments, and there was only the bare highway, the
little rise of ground, and the gibbet with its outstretched arm against
the blue and serene sky.

Aderhold, keeping on to the town, passed along its bustling high
street, and down the steep slope, beneath the shadow of the great
church and the castle in its woods above, to the river and its
many-arched, ancient bridge. Before him lay the fair country between
the town and Hawthorn village. He travelled through it in the late,
golden light, and at sunset came into Hawthorn. Children were playing
and calling in the one street and several lanes, on the green, by the
pond, and the village stocks. The ale-house had its custom, but, as he
presently saw, most of the inhabitants of Hawthorn were gathered in a
buzzing cluster before the church. A post, riding from London north,
had passed through the village and left behind a dole of news. Among
his items, principal to Hawthorn was this: The King, they say, will
presently of his good pleasure, lighten the pains and penalties now
imposed upon Papists.

Aderhold, touching the fringe of the crowd, caught a glimpse of Master
Clement, standing upon the church steps, haranguing. He caught the
words, “The Scarlet Woman ... Babylon ... Lighten? Rather double and
treble and quadruple—” Near the minister he saw Harry Carthew. He did
not pause; he went by like a moth in the dusk. As the moon rose he came
to the stream before the Grange, crossed it by the footbridge, and went
on beneath the fairy oak to the house where one candle shone from a
single window. In the middle of the night he was wakened by some one
calling and throwing pebbles against his casement. The miller, a mile
down the stream, was ill and groaning for the leech.




CHAPTER VII

JOAN


IT was May three years since Joan had smelled the apple tree in blossom
by the well, or had marked the heartsease amid the grass. She drew
her bucket of water, flashing, dripping, and cold, rested it upon the
well-stone, and regarded with grey eyes the cottage and its handbreadth
of garden.

She sighed. There had been much of advantage in that long sojourn
with her uncle the huntsman, in his better house than this, a mile
in the castle wood, above the town so much greater than Hawthorn
Village! There had been the town to walk to, the bright things to see,
the bustle in the streets, the music in the church, the occasional
processions and pageants, the fairs and feast days. For the castle
itself, the great family was not often there, but the housekeeper had
been friendly to her, and she had been let to roam as she pleased
through the place, half-mediæval stronghold, half new walls and
chambers echoing Tudor luxury. Four times in the three years the
family had been in residence, and then there were other things to
watch, though at a most respectful distance!... Once there had been a
masque in the park, and, as many figures were needed, there had come
an order from the countess. A page had brought it, and had explained
in detail, what was wanted. There was to be a whole pageant of scenes
from the mythology. She was to enact a virgin who had been very
swift of foot—she was to run swiftly from north to south across the
great pleasaunce—a young gentleman, who would be running likewise,
would throw before her, one after the other, three yellow apples.
She would stoop and pick them up while he ran on. She nodded. “Yes,
I know. Atalanta.” The page, who was younger than herself but comely
and court-bred, evinced surprise. “Wherever, Phyllis, didst get that
learning?” She said that her father was clerkly and talked to her of
things in books.... The masque! It was a world to remember, the masque!
How beautiful all things had been, and everybody—and kind! But there
had never been but the one masque, and soon the family had gone away.

She was thinking, as she stood by the well, that now perhaps they would
come back this May and she would not be there. She drew a long sigh,
and missed the castle, the park and the wood, the town and the sight
of the river and the bridge, over which something was always passing.
She missed, too, her uncle the huntsman, who had died; missed his
larger house and the greater coming and going; missed her room, where,
standing at her window, she saw the moon rise behind the Black Tower.
And now her uncle was dead who had been a single man, and who had
kept them from month to month and year to year with his loud protest
each time they talked of lifting a burden and going back to Hawthorn
Forest.... But he was dead, and his house passed to the new huntsman.
Joan and her father loaded their clothes and such matters upon a cart,
mounted it themselves, and with some farewells to castle neighbours
took the road to their own small cottage, miles away.

She sighed, but then, with her eyes upon the heartsease, determined to
make the best of it. It was not as though she did not love the cottage
and the garden, where presently all the flowers would bloom again, and
Hawthorn Forest, where she had wandered freely from childhood. She did
love them, she had a warm love for them; and sometimes at her uncle’s
she had pleased herself with being pensive and missing them sadly. She
loved her father, too; the old clerk and she were good friends, so good
friends, in an age of parental severity and filial awe, as to have
scandalized the housekeeper at the castle. Moreover, though they were
poor and had always lived so retired, and though the country hereabouts
afforded few neighbours, and though she had never known many people in
the village, having been but a young maid when she went away, there
were those whom she remembered, and she looked forward to a renewal of
acquaintance. And the day was very rich and fair, and a robin singing,
and waves of fragrance blowing from the fruit trees, and she was young
and strong and innately joyous. She broke a branch of apple blossom
and stuck it into the well water; she stooped and plucked a knot of
heartsease and fastened it at her bodice throat. Then she lifted the
bucket to her head, and moved with it, tall and steady, over the worn
stones of the path to the cottage door.

Arrived within, she fell to her baking, in a clean kitchen with doors
and windows wide. She was a notable cook, her mother having trained
her before she died. Moreover, what she touched she touched like an
artist. She made no useless steps or movements, she neither dallied
nor hurried; all went with a fine assurance, an easy “Long ago I knew
how—but if you ask me _how_ I know—!” She sang as she worked, a brave
young carolling of Allan-à-Dale and John-à-Green and Robin Hood and
Maid Marian.

The good odour of the bread arose and floated out to mingle with the
maytime of the little garden. Old Roger Heron, short, ruddy, and hale
for all he was so clerkly, came in from his spading. “That smells
finely!” he said. He dipped a cup into the well water and drank.

“Aye, and it is going to taste finely!” answered Joan.

  “‘I have heard talk of bold Robin Hood,
    And of brave Little John,
  Of Friar Tuck and Will Scarlet,
    Locksley and Maid Marian—’”

Her father put down the cup, moved to the settle, and sitting
deliberately down, began with deliberation one of his talks of
a thinking man. “Look you, Joan! Goodman Cole and I have been
discoursing. We were talking of religion.”

“Aye?” said Joan. She spread a white cloth upon the table and set in
the midst a bow-pot of cherry bloom. “Religion. Well?”

“You should say the word with a heavier tone,” said old Roger.
“‘Religion.’—Things aren’t here as they were at your uncle’s—rest
his soul! Modesty in religion and a decent mirth seemed right enough,
seeing that the earl was minded that way and on the whole the town
as well. So the old games and songs and ways went somehow on—though
everything was stiffening, even there, and not like it was when I
was young and the learned were talking of the Greeks. But times have
changed! It seems the Lord wishes gloom, or the minister says he
does. If it was begun to be felt in the castle and the town, and it
was,—your uncle and I often talked about it,—it shows ten times more
here. Aye, it showed three years ago, but Goodman Cole says it grows
day by day, and that now if you appear not with a holy melancholy you
are little else than a lost soul!”

“‘Holy melancholy’ and ‘lost souls,’” said Joan. “I know not why it
is that those words together sound to me so foolish.—Doth it help
anything when I am sad?”

  “‘—Friar Tuck and Will Scarlet,
        Locksley and Maid Marian—’”

“Stop, child!” said old Roger. “I’m in earnest and so must you be.
Look you, Joan! you’re all I’ve got, and folk will be fanciful about
all they’ve got and try to guard it all around. And it came into my
head while Goodman Cole was talking—and it was he who put it there,
talking of your looks, and saying that you had better go mim-mouth to
church, and that you had a strange way of looking straight at a body
when you spoke, which didn’t become a woman, who ought always to go
with a downcast look—it came into my head, I say, that we’re poor and
without any protector and fairly strange here now, and how evil tongues
are as common as grass, and I said to myself that I’d give you a good
cautioning—”

“Mim-mouth and downcast look and go to heaven so!” said Joan. “I wonder
what that heaven’s like!”

“You mustn’t talk that way,” said old Heron. “No, I know, you don’t do
so when others are by, but you’ll forget sometime. Mistress Borrow at
the castle said that you were a very pagan, though an innocent one!
That came into my head, too, while he talked. And another thing came
that sounds fanciful—but a myriad of women and girls have found it no
fancy! Listen to me, Joan. Since we got our new King, and since the
land has grown so zealous and finds Satan at any neighbour’s hearth,
there’s been a growing ferreting out and hanging of witches. In
Scotland it’s a fever and a running fire and we’re not as far as the
antipodes from Scotland. Now I’m not denying that there are witches;
the Bible says there are, and so, of course, there must be. But it
knocks at my head that many a silly old woman and many a young maid has
been called a witch that was none! And it came to me that Hawthorn’s
not the castle and the castle wood, and that if Mistress Borrow called
you pagan and said that you stepped and spoke too freely for a woman,
it’s like that some here might take it on themselves to think pure
ill—”

“I see not how they could,” said Joan. “There is no ill to think.—Do
you mean that I am not to sing about Robin Hood and Maid Marian?”

“I like to hear you,” said old Roger; “but aren’t there godly hymns?
Use your own good sense, my girl.”

Joan at the window looked out upon the flowering trees and the
springing grass and robin redbreast carolling in the pear tree. When
she turned her eyes were misty. “I like to sing what I feel like
singing. If it chances to be a hymn, well and good—but a forced
hymn, meseems, is a fearful thing! I like to go free, and I like not
a mim-mouth and a downward look. But I like not to bring trouble on
you, and I do not like either to have them set upon me for ungodliness,
nor to have some fool cry upon me for a witch! So I’ll be careful. I
promise you.” She laid the trenchers upon the table and turned out from
its pan a warm and fragrant loaf. “I’ll be careful—oh, careful!—And
now when are we going to get our beehives from the forester’s wife?”

That afternoon she took her distaff and sat in the doorway and span.
The cottage stood some distance from Hawthorn Forest road, but there
was a narrow greened-over path that wound between. The robin sang
lustily; daffodils, edging the walk to the gate, were opening their
golden cups. Old Heron had gone a mile to engage Hugh the thatcher to
come to-morrow to mend the roof. Joan span and span and thought of the
castle and the masque.

An hour passed. The gate-latch clicked and she looked up. An old woman,
much bent and helping herself with a knobby stick, was coming toward
her between the rows of daffodils. When she reached the doorstone Joan
saw how wrinkled and drear were her face and form. “Good-day,” she said
in a quavering voice.

“Good-day,” answered Joan.

“Good-day,” said the old woman again. “You don’t remember me, but I
remember you, my pretty maid! I mind you running about in the woods,
playing as it were with your shadow, with your hair braided down! Now
you wear it under a cap as is proper. I’m Mother Spuraway, who lives
beyond the mill-race.”

“I remember now,” said Joan. “I had forgotten. Will you sit down?”

She brought a stool and set it for her visitor. The other lowered
herself stiffly. “Oh, my old bones! I’ll sit for a minute, sweetheart,
but what I wanted to ask you—” She took Joan by the apron and held her
with shaking fingers. “I wanted to ask you if you wouldn’t be Christian
enough to spare me a measure of meal? I’ll swear by the church door
and the book of prayer that I haven’t had bite nor sup since this time
yesterday!” She fell to whimpering.

Joan stood, considering her with grey eyes. “Yes, I’ll give you some
meal. But what! They used to say that you were well-to-do.”

“Aye, aye!” said Mother Spuraway. “They said sooth. I didn’t lack baked
nor brewed, no, nor silver sixpences!—for, look you, I knew all the
good herbs. But alack, alack! times are changed with me.... I’m hungry,
I’m hungry, and my gown’s ragged that once was good and fine, and my
shoes are not fit to go to church in. Woe’s me—woe’s me—woe’s me!”

Joan went indoors and returned with a piece of bread and a cup of milk.
Mother Spuraway seized them and ate and drank with feeble avidity.
“Good maid—a good maid!”

“Why do they come to you no more?” asked Joan.

Mother Spuraway put down the empty cup. “Partly, there’s a leech come
to these parts has stolen my trade. I’ll not say he doesn’t know the
herbs, too, but I knew them as well as he, and I knew them first! But
mostly, oh, dear heart! because there’s been raised a hue and cry that
I didn’t cure with innocence—as though I didn’t cure as innocently
as him! But I’m old—I’m old!... I never had aught to do even with
white magic. There was healing in the herbs and that and good sense
was enough. But I’m old—old, and they bear hard upon women.... And I
hear that there’s a buzz of talk and I may be taken up. I know Master
Clement’s been against me since ever he came to the parish—” She began
to weep, painful slow tears of age.

Joan looked at her with a knitted brow. “There, mother, there, mother!
I would not let them that hurt me make me weep. See! I’ll give you your
meal, and it will all come straight.” She brought her a full measure,
and a great share of her baking of bread besides.

Mother Spuraway blessed her for a pitiful maid, got painfully to her
feet, and said she would be going. “You’ve good herbs in your garden,
but I see no rue. If I be straying this way again I’ll bring you a bit
for planting.”

She went away, her stick supporting her, her eyes still searching
the little leaves and low plants on each side of the garden path and
the faint, winding track between gate and forest road. Joan, in the
doorway, let her distaff fall and sat pondering, her elbow on her knee,
her chin in her hand, and her grey eyes upon the fruit trees. “Shall I
tell father—or shall I not tell father? If I tell him, he will say she
must not come again.... And how am I going to help her coming again?”
In the end, she determined to tell her father, but to represent to him
how hard it was going to be—and how it seemed to her poor-spirited,
loveless, and mean—And as she got this far, she saw another visitor
coming.

She knew this visitor, and springing up, went to the gate to greet
her. Before she left this countryside she had often, of Sundays in
Hawthorn Church, sat beside Alison Inch, the sempstress’s daughter.
And after she went to the castle Alison had twice been with her mother
to the town, and they had climbed the hill to the castle wood and the
huntsman’s house to see their old neighbours, though, indeed, they
had not been such near neighbours. Alison was older than she, but
at the castle hers had been the advantage, she being at home with a
number of goodly things, and Alison showing herself somewhat shy and
deferential. But now the castle and the park and her uncle’s house
were a dream, and Joan was back in Heron’s cottage that was not on
the whole so good as the Inches’ nor so near the village. Moreover,
she was now almost a stranger, and knowledge and familiarity with all
matters were on Alison’s side, to say nothing of her year or two longer
in the world. Alison felt her advantages, and was not averse to the
other’s recognition of them. Joan and she kissed, then moved somewhat
saunteringly up the path to the doorstone.

“Mother and I went to take her new smocks to Madam Carthew, and then
when we came back it was so fine, and mother said that she would go
to see Margery Herd, and if I chose I might walk on here.—The place
looks,” said Alison, “as though you had never gone away.”

“Nay, there are things yet to do,” said Joan, “and that though we’ve
been here well-nigh a month. You would not think how hard it is to get
back the gear we left with folk! They had the use until we came back,
and they knew that we would come back—but now you might think that we
were asking their things instead of our own! Three women have looked
as black at me! We got our churn but yesterday, and the forester’s
wife still has our beehives. A dozen of her own, and when we ask for
our poor three back again, you might suppose we’d offered to steal the
thatch from over her head!”

They sat down, facing each other, on the sunflecked doorstone.

Alison looked about her. “I’ve never seen daffodillies bloom like
these!—Joan, I heard a story on thee the other day.”

“What story?”

“They said thou hadst a lover in the town—a vintner.”

“I never had a lover, town or country.”

Alison made round eyes. “What! no one ever asked you to wed?”

“I said not that. I said that I never had a lover.”

Alison fell to plaiting her apron, her head on one side. “Mother says
that your father’s that sunk in notions of the learned that he’d never
think of it, but she wonders that your uncle didn’t see fit to find you
a husband.”

“Does she? Well, one wonders over one thing and one over another.”

“There are very few bachelors and marriageable men hereabouts,” said
Alison, “but I suppose you’ll get that one of them you set your cap
for.”

“And why do you suppose that?”

Alison, her head still on one side, looked aslant at the returned
friend. “Oh, men are all for strange and new! Your tallness, now,
that most people count a fault, and that colour hair and that colour
eyes.... Yes, you’ll get the one you want.”

“And if I want none?”

“Oh!” said Alison, and laughed somewhat shrilly. “Have you got an elfin
man for your true-love? You’ll not cheat me else with your ‘And if I
want none?’”

Joan twirled her distaff. “I do not wish to cheat you.—And you went
with the smocks to Madam Carthew’s?”

Alison bent, slipped off her shoe, and shook out of it a minute pebble.
“And what do you mean by that?”

“Mean? I mean naught,” said Joan. “I meant that she was a great lady,
and the squire’s house must be fine to see. What didst think I meant?”

But Alison would not divulge. All that came was, “_I_ noted you last
Sunday, how you looked aside, during the singing, at the gentry in the
squire’s pew! But they are godly people, and if you think that _they_
looked aside—”

“In God’s name!” said Joan, “what is the matter with the wench?”

But before she could find that out, here came one back—Mother
Spuraway, to wit. She came hobbling up the green path to the gate, and
stood beckoning. Joan rose and went to her. Mother Spuraway held in her
hand a green herb taken up by the root with earth clinging to it.

“It is rue, dearie,” she said. “There was a clump of it left by the
burned cot a little way off. So I dug it up for you—”

Joan took it. “Thank you. I’ll plant it now.”

“You’ve got company,” said Mother Spuraway. “I’ll not come in. But I
wanted to do somewhat for you—”

She turned and hobbled off, her wavering old figure wavering away upon
the twisting path.

Joan went back to the doorstone with the rue in her hand.

“Wasn’t that Mother Spuraway?” asked Alison. “I wouldn’t be seen
talking to her. She’s a witch.”

“She’s no such thing,” said Joan. “She’s only a wretched, poor old
woman. Now, what did you mean about Sunday and church?”

But her father came round the corner of the cottage, bringing with him
Hugh the thatcher to have a look at the torn roof. Alison rose; the
sun was getting low and she must be going. She went, and Joan, at that
time, did not find out what she had meant.




CHAPTER VIII

THE SQUIRE’S BROTHER


FOUR days later she went to walk in Hawthorn Forest. It was a golden
afternoon, and she had hastened her work and got it out of hand. The
roof was mended, the beehives were back, the cottage taking on an air
of having been lived in all this while. Old Heron earned by scrivener’s
work. It was not much that he found to do, but it gave them plain fare
and plain clothes to wear. Joan, too, from time to time sold to a
merchant flax that she had spun.... She had gone no way into the forest
since their return, there had been each day so much to do! But to-day
an image had haunted her of how the forest used to look in its garb of
May.

She let the gate-latch fall behind her and went out in the grey-green
gown that she had spun and dyed herself. She wore a small cap of linen
and a linen kerchief. Sunday she would wear a bluish gown, and a cap
and kerchief of lawn. She was tall and light upon her feet, grey-eyed
and well-featured, with hair more gold than brown, with a warm,
sun-flushed, smooth, fine-textured skin, and a good mouth and chin and
throat. The sun was three hours high; she meant to have a long and
beautiful time.

So close to the forest edge was the cottage that almost immediately
great trees were about her, leaf-mould and flowerets beneath her feet.
The forest was hardly yet in full leaf. There spread about her a divine
pale emerald fretwork, and gold light in lances and arrows, and closing
the vistas purple light in gauzy sheets and curtains. The boles of
the trees were marvels, the great spreading branches kings’ wonders,
every slight fern illustrious. The stir and song of hidden birds, the
scurrying of a hare, a glimpse down a beechen aisle of a doe and fawn,
filled a cup of delight. She was Greek to it all, a country girl of
Attica. Merely to live was good, merely to vibrate and quiver to the
myriad straying fingers of life, merely to be, and ever more to be,
with a fresh intensity!

On she wandered with a light step and heart, now by some handbreadth of
sward, now in a maze of trees. Now and then she stood still, gazing and
listening and smelling the good earth. Once or twice she rested upon
some protruding root or fallen log, nursed her knees and marked the
minute life about her.

Happy, happy, happy! with the blood coursing warmly and sanely through
her veins, with her senses keen at the intake and her brain good at
combining.... Open places, small clearings, existed here and there in
the forest with, at great intervals, some hut or poor cottage. So it
was that she soon came in sight of the burned cot and trodden bit of
garden whence Mother Spuraway had plucked the rue.

The place lay curiously, half in gold light, half in deep shadow. The
stone chimney was standing, together with some portion of charred
rafter. There were currant and gooseberry bushes, and a plum tree,
but the bit of garden-hedge was broken down and all things had run to
waste. Joan, drawing near, heard children’s voices, and presently,
touching the cleared space, came into view of six or seven village
boys, who, roaming at will or sent on some errand through the wood,
had found here a resting-stage and fascination. They were after
something—she thought a bird’s nest—in a crotch of the plum tree that
brushed the blackened chimney. She stood and watched for a moment, then
called to them. “Leave that poor bird alone!” Two or three, turning,
laughed and jeered, and one small savage at the foot of the tree threw
a stone. Joan was angry, but she could not help the bird—they probably
had nest and eggs by now. She went on, past the burned cot, and was
presently in the greenwood again.

After a time she found herself upon the Oak Grange road, running across
this corner of the forest. She had not meant to go this way, but a
memory came to her of a stream flowing over pebbles, of an old house
and an oak tree around which they used to say the fairies danced at
night. She walked on upon the narrow and grass-grown road, and after a
little time it led her out of the wood and to the edge of the pebbly
stream. There was a footbridge thrown across, but she did not mean to
go over to the other bank. She had no acquaintance at the Grange. She
had heard Goodman Cole say that the old miser, Master Hardwick, was
still alive, but was rarely seen without the house. Will the smith’s
son had once worked at the Grange, but she did not know if he were
there yet.... She sat down on a stone at this end of the bridge, and
regarded now the old ruinous house sunk in ivy, with the long grass
and ragged shrubs before it, and now the giant oak where the fairies
danced, and now the bright blue sky behind with floating clouds, and
now the shallow, narrow river with its pebbly shore, and now she
regarded all in one. _Ripple, ripple!_ sang the water.

She sat there some time, but at last, with a long breath, she stood up,
looked a moment longer, then turned and, reëntering the wood, faced
homeward. She had strolled and sauntered and spent her time. Now the
sun was getting low in the west. Presently she left the road and took
the forest track that would bring her again by the burned cot.

Through the thinning wood she saw the place before her, in shadow now,
except that the top of the plum tree was gold. She thought that she
still heard the boys’ voices. Then, just at the edge of the clearing,
she came suddenly face to face with a man.

He was a tall man, plainly dressed in some dark stuff. Stopping as he
did when he saw her, stepping aside a pace to give her room, he chanced
to come into a ray of the last slant sunlight. It showed his face, a
lined, rather strange, not unpleasing face. He was carrying in the
hollow of his arm a grey and white cat. The creature lay stretched out,
half-dead, blood upon its fur.

“Ah,” said Joan, “it was that they were tormenting!” She stood still.
She was sympathetic with animals; they were like everything else,
living and loving to live. She thought they were very like human beings.

“Aye,” said the man. “But it can recover. It is starved as well.” He
looked at this chance-met young woman. “I meant to carry it back to
Dorothy at the Grange,” he said. “But I am on my way to visit a sick
man and it will be much out of my road. Do you live anywhere near?” He
knit his brows a little. He thought that by now he knew all faces for a
long way around, but he did not know her face.

“Aye,” said Joan. “I live at Heron’s cottage.—If you wish me to, I’ll
take her and give her milk to drink and let her lie by the hearth for a
while.”

They were standing beneath the very last line of trees, before there
began the bit of waste and the ruined garden. The village boys were
there yet, turned—all but two of them—to some other idle sport about
the chimney and the fallen beams. These two, loath to give up the beast
they were tormenting, and childishly wrathful against the intruder,
stood watching him from behind a thorn bush.

“Will you do so?” said Aderhold. “That is well! I am going your way
through the wood. I will carry it until we reach the path to the
cottage.”

They moved from the clearing and the sight of the thorn bush. It
was dim now in the wood, with an evening wind and darkness stealing
through. They walked rather swiftly than slowly.

“I heard that Goodman Heron had come back,” said Aderhold. “You are his
daughter?”

“Yes. I’m Joan.”

“You have been away a long time.”

“Aye. Three years come Saint John’s Eve.”

“Three years.—I have been here three years.”

“You are the physician?” asked Joan. “You live at the Oak Grange with
Master Hardwick?”

“Aye. At the Oak Grange.”

“They say that fairies dance there and that a demon haunts it.”

“‘They say’ is the father and mother of delusion.”

“I would wish there were no demons,” said Joan, “but some fairies are
not ill folk. But the minister saith that God hates all alike.”

They came to the edge of the forest, before them the threadlike green
path to Heron’s cottage. “I must go on now by the road,” said Aderhold.
Joan held out her hands and he put in them the white and grey cat. “You
are a good maid to help me,” he said. “I have little power to do aught
for any one, but if I can serve you ever I will.” He turned to the road
and the sick man, she to the cottage gate.

The next morning there came a visitor, indeed, to Heron’s cottage,
Master Harry Carthew, the squire’s brother, who fastened his horse to
the elm at the gate, and came up the path between the daffodils in his
great boots and his sad-coloured doublet and wide-brimmed hat. Joan,
watching from the window,—her father was just without and would meet
him,—thought how handsome a man he was, but also how stern was his
aspect, stern almost as if the world were all a churchyard, with graves
about.... It seemed that he had some writings that he wished copied.
As she moved about the kitchen she heard his voice in explanation. The
voice, she thought, was like the gentleman, a well-made voice, and yet
hard, and yet melancholy, too. She heard him say that he would ride by
in a day or so for the writing—and then he said that the day was warm
and asked for a cup of water.

Old Heron turned his head. “Joan!”

Joan filled a cup with fresh well water, set it on a trencher for
salver, and brought it forth to the squire’s brother. He lifted it to
his lips and drank. Goodman Cole’s advice to the contrary, Joan stood
with a level gaze, with the result that she was aware that as he drank
he looked steadily at her over the rim of the cup. It was not a free or
distasteful look, rather it had in it melancholy and wonder. He put the
cup down and presently went away.

Two days thereafter he came with other papers to be copied. A pouring
rain arrived upon his heels and he must sit with old Heron in the
kitchen until it was over. The room was bright and clean. Joan,
having put for him her father’s chair, sat to one side spinning; old
Heron took a stool. They were yeoman stock, and the squire’s brother
was gentry. Carthew spoke little and the others waited for him to
speak. The room was quiet save for the whirr of the wheel and the rain
without. The white and grey cat lay by the hearth. Old Heron had thrown
fresh faggots on the fire, and the tongues of flame threw a dancing
light.

The little speech there was, and that solely between the two men, fell
upon the affairs of the country. The discovery of the Gunpowder Plot
was seven months old, but England still echoed to the stupendous noise
it had made. Old Heron said something that bore upon the now heavily
penalized state of the Catholics.

“Aye, they pulled down their own house on their own heads!” answered
Carthew. He spoke with a stern, intense triumph. “I would have them
forth from England! There is warrant for it in all histories. As the
Spaniards pushed out the Jews, so I would push them out!”

The rain stopped; he rose to go. Old Heron opening the door, let in a
burst of fresh sweetness. Joan stood up from her wheel, and, as Carthew
passed, curtsied. He made an inclination of his head, their eyes met.
There was that in his look that both challenged and besought, that, at
all events, left her troubled enough.

Again two days and he came to recover what was copied. Again she sat
and span, and again she was conscious that he looked at her rather than
at her father, and that, though he spoke aloud only to her father,
there was some utterance trying to pierce its way to her. He went
away—but the next day he came again, when there was no looking for him.

Her father was away to the village. She was at the well, beneath the
apple tree, by the heartsease bed. She turned from lifting the cool,
brimming, dripping bucket, and saw him close beside her.

“Good-day,” he said.

“Good-day, sir.—He is not here. Father is not here!”

“I am sorry for that,” he answered; then, after a silence in which she
became aware that he was fighting, she knew not why, for breath, “But
you are here.”

“Aye,” said Joan. “I—I have so much to do.” She left the bucket on the
coping of the well and started toward the cottage. “Father went but a
little while ago. You may overtake him, sir,—”

Carthew stood before her. “I have seen you at church three times. I
have seen you here three times. For years I had not thought of earthly
toys—my mind was set on the coming of the Kingdom of God.... And now
_you_—_you_ come.... I think you have bewitched me.”

Joan’s heart beat violently. A strong presence was beside her, before
her. She wrenched herself free. “You must not speak so, sir. You must
not speak so, Master Carthew! I am naught to you—you can be naught to
me.” Brushing by him, she began to walk swiftly toward the cottage.

He kept beside her. “You are much to me—and I will be much to you....
God knoweth the struggle, and knoweth if I be damned or no!—But now I
will abide in this land that I believed not in—but I will serve Him
still; even where I am, I will serve Him more strictly than before! So
perhaps He will accept, and not too dreadfully condemn.... Do not doubt
that I mean honestly by you.”

“What you mean or mean not, I know not!” said Joan. “But I am all but a
stranger to you, sir, and I will to remain so! Will you not go?—and my
father shall bring you the writings—”

Carthew’s hand clasped and unclasped. He had gone further than he ever
meant to go to-day. Indeed, he had no plan, no gathered ideas. He might
have pleaded that he was himself a victim, struck down unawares. Forces
within had gathered, no doubt, for a violent reaction after violent,
long-continued repression, and chance had set a woman, young and fair,
in the eye of the reaction—and now in his soul there was a divided
will and war, war! His brow showed struggle and misery, even while his
eyes and parted lips desired wholly.

With effort he won a temporary control. “I did not mean to frighten
you. I mean no harm. I will say nothing more—not now, at least. Yes, I
will ride away now, and come for the writing another day.—See, I am
naught now but friend and well-wisher!”

That a squire’s brother should conceive that he might take some slight
liberty with a cotter’s daughter, that he might, on a May day and none
looking, snatch a kiss or steal an arm about her, was truly, in Joan’s
time, neither a great rarity nor a great matter. If it went no further
than that, it need not be especially remembered. Rebuff with vigour,
if you chose, but so that the thing ended there, it was no hanging
matter! At the castle, page or esquire might have been more forward
than Carthew, and Joan, though she sent them about their business,
might have done so with some inward laughter. But Master Harry Carthew!
He was a Puritan, strict and stern, he was always with the minister,
he walked with the Bible and by the Bible. He was no hypocrite either;
it was easy to see that he was earnest. Then what did he have to do
with coming here so, troubling her so? Joan felt a surge of anger and
fright. Something boding and pestilential seemed to gather like a mist
about her.

The two, both silent now, moved out of the shadow of the fruit trees
into the blossomy handbreadth before the cottage door. As they did so,
Alison Inch came by the gate, saw the horse fastened to the elm, and,
looking through the wicket, Carthew and Joan. If she had meant to come
in or no did not appear; she stood stock-still for a moment, then put
herself into motion again and passed on.

If Carthew saw her, he paid no attention. But Joan saw her, saw her
face quite plainly. When Carthew—with a sudden and harsh “Good-bye for
this time; or, good-bye forever, if so be I can yet kill this thing
within me!”—strode away and through the gate, and, mounting his horse,
rode off with a stiff bearing, not looking back, she stood for a moment
or two with a still, expressionless face, then, moving slowly to the
doorstep, sat down and took her head into her hands. She was seeing
again Alison’s face. “That’s what she meant the other day—she meant
that at church I was minding, not the psalm, but that man.... Then,
doth she mind him so herself that she looked so, there at the gate?...
Woe’s me!” mourned Joan. “Here’s a coil!”




CHAPTER IX

THE OAK GRANGE


ADERHOLD sat in the moth-eaten old chair, in the bare room, beside the
bed in which, seventy-odd years before, Master Hardwick had been born
and in which he was now to die. The old man lay high upon the pillows.
He slept a good deal, but when he waked his mind was clear, not
weakened like his body. Indeed, the physician thought that the mental
flame burned more strongly toward the end, as though Death fanned away
some heavy and dulling vapour.

Master Hardwick was sleeping now. Old Dorothy had tiptoed in to see how
matters went, and, after a whispered word, had tiptoed out again. She
was fond of Aderhold—she said that the Oak Grange had been human since
he came.

He sat musing in the great chair. Four years.... Four years in this
still house. He felt a great pity for the old man lying drawn and
crumpled there beside him, a pity and affection. The two were kindred.
He had this refuge, this nook in the world, this home to be grateful
for, and he was grateful. Moreover, the old man depended upon him,
depended and clung.... Four years—four years of security and peace.
They had been bought at a price. He saw himself, a silent figure,
watching all things but saying naught, keeping silence, conforming,
agreeing by his silence. He thought a braver man would not have been
so silent.... Four years—four years of the quietest routine, going
where there was sickness and he was called, wandering far afield in a
country not thickly peopled, lying musing by streams or in deep woods,
or moving upon long bare hilltops with the storm sky or the blue sky,
going punctually to church each Sunday, paying to the tithing-man some
part of his scant earnings ... then at the Oak Grange sitting with this
old man, drawing him, when he could, out of his self-absorption and
his fears. Aderhold was tender with his fears; that which weighed upon
his own soul was his own fear, and it made him comprehend the other’s
terrors, idle though he thought they were. He thought that from some
other dimension his own would seem as idle—and yet they bowed him
down, and kept him forever fabricating a mask.

Four years. In the small bare room which was called his and which,
through care for old Dorothy, he himself kept and cleaned, there stood
an oaken press, where under lock and key he guarded ink and pen and
paper and a book that he was writing. That guess at qualities, at
origins and destinies, that more or less mystical vision, taste and
apprehension of ground and consequence, that intuition of all things
in flood, of form out of form, of unity in motion—all that in France
he had outspoken, and in speaking had like to have lost liberty and
life—all that he had not spoken of here these four years, hard-by
Hawthorn Village and church—all this he was striving to put there
upon paper. He rose at dawn and wrote while the light strengthened; he
bought himself candles and wrote at night when all the place was so
still that silence grew sound. Four years—.

Master Hardwick stirred, opened his eyes. “Gilbert!”

“I am here, cousin.”

“How long—?”

“I do not know. You do not fail fast nor easily. Your body is
courageous.”

He gave him to drink. As he put down the cup Dorothy opened the door.
Behind her appeared a man with a black dress, close-cut hair, and a
steeple-crowned hat. Although the day was warm he had about him a wide
cloak. He was short and thin, with a pale, acrimonious, zealot’s face.
He carried in his hand a Geneva Bible.

Dorothy stammered out, “Master Clement did not wish to wait, master—”

Clement spoke for himself. “While I waited your master’s soul might
have perished, for a soul can perish in a twinkling.” He put the old
woman aside with his hand and came forward from the door to the bed.
“How do you do to-day, Master Hardwick?”

The old man made a feeble movement upon his pillows. “I do as I have
done, Master Clement,—I run rapidly toward this life’s end.”

“Yea,” said the minister, “and I fear me that you run toward worse than
this life’s end! I am come—I am come, Master Hardwick, to wrestle with
the Devil for thy soul! I tell thee, it stands in mortal danger of
dropping from life’s end into that gulf where Dives burns and is mocked
from Abraham’s bosom!”

Aderhold had risen. Dorothy, having placed a chair for Master Clement,
was on the point of vanishing, but the minister called her back. “Stay,
woman, and be edified likewise! Or wait! Call also the serving-man
and the lad that I saw without. It befits that a dying man, suing for
pardon to an offended King, should have his household about him.”

Dorothy brought them in, Will and the boy, her nephew. The three stood
in a solemn row. Long habit had made them accept old master and his
ways, but they did not doubt that he stood in peril of his soul. It was
proper that the minister should exhort him. They stood with slightly
lifted and exalted countenances. After all, so little came into their
lives to make them feel a comparative righteousness, to set them in any
wise upon a platform of honour!

Master Hardwick lay awake and conscious but passed beyond much
speaking. Aderhold withdrew into the shadow of the bed-curtains, and
out of this twilight regarded Master Clement. He knew of more than
one or two heroic things which this man had done. Moreover, he had
heard that years before, when Calvin had by no means as yet tinctured
England, Master Clement had stoutly set up his standard and kept strict
vigil before it. It was whispered that he had stood in the pillory
for “No Pope—and No Prelates!” Aderhold, gazing upon him, was aware
that Master Clement would endure persecution as unflinchingly as,
indubitably, he would inflict it. Each quality somehow cancelled the
other—Master Clement was out of it—and there was left only the gross
waste and suffering....

Aderhold had heard priest and preacher, after pulpit cries of human
worthlessness, of the insignificance of the soul, of universal and
hopeless guilt, of the inflamed mind of God, of the hell which, in the
course of nature, awaited every child of Adam, of the predestination
of some, indeed, through grace of another, to an unearned glory, of
the eternal, insufferable loss and anguish of those multitudes and
multitudes and multitudes, who either had never known or heard of that
remedy, or who, the Devil at their ear, had made bold to doubt its
utter efficacy—he had heard and seen such men, at death-beds, in the
presence of solemn and temperate Death, turn from what they preached to
Reason and Love. He had heard them try to smooth away the deep and dark
trenches in the bewildered brain which they themselves had done their
best to dig. He thought their conversion the saddest miracle—sad,
for it did not last. Death passed for that time from their view, back
they went to preach to listening throngs who must die, Inherited Guilt,
Inherited, fiendish punishment, an Inherited, fearful God, an Inherited
curse upon enquiry, and the humbling, indeed, of an Inherited vicarious
atonement.... He wondered that they never foresaw their own death-bed.
He thought that they never truly, bone and marrow, believed what
they said, but that the reverberating voices of the ages behind them
stunned, went through them, produced an automatic voice and action. To
resist that insistence, to breast the roaring stream of the past—he
acknowledged that it was difficult, difficult!

Three or four times in these years he had chanced to find himself
together with Master Clement at some death-bed. Once he had seen him
soften—a child dying and crying out in terror of the Judgement Day.
“You were baptized—you were baptized—” repeated the minister to him
over and over again. “I baptized you myself. You are safe—you are
safe, my dear child! The Lord Christ will help you—the Lord Christ
will help you—” But the child had died in terror.

To-day there was no softening in the aspect of Master Clement. This
old man before him was a wretched miser hoarding gold, a solitary who
in this dark old house as probably as not practised alchemy, lusting
to turn lead and iron into gold, and as probably as not practised
it by unlawful and demoniacal aid. Rarely was he seen in church—too
feeble to come, he said; too unwilling, thought Master Clement. He did
not give of his substance, he was bitter and misliked, he asked no
prayers—Master Clement had many counts against him, and was fain to
believe that they tallied with God’s counts. He girded himself and came
forth to wrestle with and throw this soul, and by the hair of its head
to drag it from the edge of the bottomless pit. He wrestled for the
better part of an hour.

Master Hardwick lay unwinking, high upon his pillows. Aderhold could
not tell how much really entered ear and mind; the old man seemed to be
regarding something far away, something growing in the distance. The
pity of it, he thought, was for Will and old Dorothy and the boy; they
were drinking, drinking.

At last Master Clement desisted. He stared with a fixed face at Master
Hardwick who stared beyond him. “Thou impenitent old man—!” He rose
and with a gesture dismissed the three in line. Will and Dorothy
and the boy filed out, primed to discuss among themselves master’s
impenitency. “I go now, Master Hardwick,” said the minister, “but I
shall come again to-morrow, though I fear me thou art as utterly lost
as any man in England!”

Aderhold accompanied him from the chamber into the hall. He knew that
it was in order to speak with unction of the just closed exhortation;
to wonder at the minister’s fervent power, and deprecate with sighs
and shaken head the horrible wickedness of the human heart; to marvel
that any could hold out against the truth so presented—how many
times had he heard such an utterance and seen the self-congratulation
behind—how many times! He knew that the pause which the minister
made, unconscious as it certainly was, was a pause for the accustomed
admiration. When it did not come he saw that, as unconsciously again,
Master Clement’s mistrust of him deepened. He knew that, for all his
locked lips and eyes withheld from expression, for all his stillness,
repression, and church-going, the minister liked him not. The clash of
minds came subtly through whatever walls you might build around it.

“I fear, Master Aderhold,” now said the minister, “that you have
done little during your residence with your kinsman to bring him to
repentance. Surely, in these years of such close communion, a godly man
could have done much! Such a man as Harry Carthew would have had him by
now day and night upon his knees!”

Aderhold sighed, then dropped the veil, and raising his head, spoke eye
to eye. “I would that I could make you believe, Master Clement, that
there is in this old man who is coming to die more good than ill. In
these years that you speak of, I have seen that good grow, of its own
motion, upon the ill. Why may it not continue, throughout oceans yet
of experience, to suffuse and gain upon and dissolve and reconcile
unto itself the ill?”

Master Clement drew a sharp “Ha!” of triumph. Here was heterodoxy
raising its head, and the man had always looked to him heterodox! “Ha!
‘_Of its own motion!_’ Beware—beware, Master Aderhold! I have marked
you—I am marking you still! Beware lest one day you be cited for a
creeping, insidious doubter and insinuator of false doctrine!”

He went away, striding by the fairy oak in his wide cloak and steeple
hat, with a pale, wrathful, intense face. Aderhold returned to the
room and his patient. Master Hardwick lay upon his pillows, with a
countenance much as it had been. Aderhold, saying nothing, sat beside
him, and presently he fell asleep. Outside it was high summer, but
cool, with a moving air and a rustling of every leaf. Hours passed, the
day waned, the dusk set in. Aderhold, moving softly, made a fire in
the cavernous fireplace, where, even in winter, Master Hardwick rarely
wasted firewood.

When he came back the old man was awake.

“Gilbert!”

“Yes, cousin.”

“I have a feeling that I am going to-night—”

“It is possible.”

“Gilbert ... you’ve been comfortable to me these four years. You’ve
been a kind of warmth and stay, asking nothing, not wasting or
spending, but giving.... They think I am rich, but I am not. I was
never very rich.... I ventured in the Indies’ voyage and gained, and
then I was a fool and ventured again and lost. Since then I have been a
poor man. It is the truth.... Give me something to keep me up—”

Aderhold gave him wine. After a moment he spoke again. “There are
creditors in the town that you’ll hear from. They’ll take the land—all
but the bit about the house. That and the house I’ve willed you—kin
to me, and kind as well.... The gold they say I’ve buried—I’ve buried
none. There are twenty pieces that you’ll find in an opening of the
wall behind the panel there—” He pointed with a shaking hand that
sank at once. “It’s all that’s left—and you’ll have to bury me from
it.... A miser.... Maybe, but what I saved only lasted me through with
spare living. If I had told them of that heavy loss—my gold gone down
at sea, and that, even so, it was not so much I had had to venture
... would they have believed me? No! I was a miser—I lied and hid my
gold.... Well, I did not tell them.... Do not tell all that you know
and empty yourself like a wine skin—” His voice sank, he slept again.

Aderhold thought that he might sink from sleep into stupor and so die
painlessly and without words. But in the middle of the night he waked
again.

“Gilbert!”

“Yes, I am here.”

“What did you think of all that which Master Clement had to say?...
How much was true and how much was false?”

“There was some truth. But much of it was false. It is false because
reason and feeling, the mind and the spirit recoil from it. Whatever
is, that is not.”

“I never thought it was.... I’ve been called sour and hard and
withholding, and maybe I am it all. But I would not make an imperfect
creature and then plague it through eternity for its imperfection....
Gilbert—”

“Yes?”

“What would you do?”

Aderhold came and knelt beside the bed, and laid his hands over the
cold and shrunken hand of Master Hardwick. “I would trust and hope—and
that not less in myself than in that Other that seems to spread around
us. I think that ourselves and that Other may turn out to be the same.
I would think of myself as continuing, as journeying on, as surely
carrying with me, in some fashion, memory of the past, as growing
endlessly through endless experience. I would take courage. And if, in
my heart, I knew that in this life I had at times—not all the time,
but at times—been sour and hard and withholding and fearful, and if I
felt in my heart that that made against light and love and wisdom and
strength for all—then, as I lay here dying, and as I died, I would
put that withholding and fear from me, and step forth toward better
things.... There is within you a fountain of love and strength. Trust
yourself to your higher self.... Hoist sail and away!”

The night passed, and at dawn Master Hardwick died. Aderhold closed
his eyes, straightened his limbs, and smoothed the bed upon which
he lay. Going to the window he set the casement wide. The dawn was
coming up in stairs and slopes of splendour. The divine freshness,
the purity, the high, austere instigation, the beginning again....
The dawn perpetual, never ceasing, the dawn elsewhere when here would
be noon, the dawn elsewhere when here would be night—Never, from
the first mists upon earth rising to the great sun, had dawn failed,
dawn rising from the bath of night and sleep, dawn the new birth, the
beginning again, the clean-washed.... Aderhold breathed the divine air,
the blended solemnity and sweetness. The light was growing, a thousand
beauties were unfolding, and with them laughter and song. The water
rippling over the stones came to him with a sound of merriment. The
window was clustered around with ivy and a spray nodded, nodded against
his hand with an effect of familiarity, a friend tapping to call his
attention. From some near-by bush a thrush began to sing—so golden,
so clear. “O moving great and small!” said Aderhold; “O thought of all
sense and soul, gathered, interfused, and aware of a magic Oneness! O
macrocosm that I, the microcosm, will one day lift to and be and know
that I am—O sea of all faiths, O temperer of every concept, O eternal
permission and tolerance, nurse of growth and artifex of form from
form!... These children’s masks which we lift upon a stick and call
Thee, crying, Lo, this is God with the fixed face—”

He rested a little longer in the window, listening to the thrush, then
turned, looked again at the quiet figure upon the bed, and going from
the room wakened old Dorothy and the boy. Later that day, Will, Goodman
Cole, old Heron, and a lawyer from the town being present, he searched
for and found the spring that opened the panel Master Hardwick had
indicated. Behind was a recess, and within it twenty gold-pieces. He
gave them into the lawyer’s hands for keeping.

They buried Master Hardwick in Hawthorn Churchyard. Hard upon the end
of that, there appeared a merchant and a man of means from the town
with a note-of-hand. The farm land, such as it was, would go there in
satisfaction. The lawyer produced a will made one year before. Lacking
issue and near kindred, Master Hardwick left all that he had, his
creditors being satisfied, to his loving cousin, the physician, Gilbert
Aderhold. What that was in reality was solely the decaying old house
and the few acres of worn garden and orchard immediately surrounding
it. The twenty pieces of gold, when all was paid, shrunk to three.

Aderhold dwelled solitary in the Oak Grange as he and his kinsman
had dwelled solitary before. The land around went no longer with the
Grange, but there was no change else. The old tenants hung on; it
still spread, poor in soil, poorly tilled, shut off from the richer
vale by Hawthorn Forest. Will no longer came to the Grange; Aderhold,
old Dorothy, and the boy lived in the place and kept it. There was no
other money than the scant sixpences and shillings that the physician
gained. To sell the house sounded well, but there was no purchaser. The
place was ruinous, lonely, and without advantage, said to be haunted
as well. Aderhold, only, had grown to love it, the ivied walls and
the wild garden, the oak and the stream, and the room where he took
from behind locked doors his book and sat and wrote. All was so quiet,
still, secure, there behind the shield of Hawthorn Forest....

But Hawthorn countryside and village refused to believe that the
gold was gone. It was known that the dead miser had had a chest-full
of broad pieces. Probably he had buried this great store—some said
under the house itself, some said under the fairies’ oak. Wherever it
was buried, certainly the leech must know where it was; or if he did
not know yet, he would. If one were to go that way through Hawthorn
Forest, and come into sight of the house and see a candle passing from
window to window, or hear a digging sound in the orchard or beneath
the ill-named oak, that would be he.... A whisper arose, none knew
how, that Master Hardwick had practised alchemy, and that his kinsman
practised it too; that he knew how to make gold. If he knew, then, of
course, he would be making it, in the dead of night. Could you make
gold alone, unaided by any but your own powers? Alchemists, it was
known, did not hesitate to raise a spirit or demon. Then there was
little difference between an alchemist and a sorcerer?... There came
among the whispers a counter-statement from several cotters and poor
folk. Master Aderhold was no sorcerer—he was a good leech; witness
such and such a cure! Whereupon opposition sharpened the whisperers’
ingenuity. Aye, perhaps the demon helped him cure as well as make
gold! Came another counter—he was a good church-goer. So! _but Master
Clement thinks not highly of him_.

How this vortex and whirling storm began, whose breath first stirred
it up, it were hard to say. It had moved in widening rings for months,
before Aderhold discovered how darkened was the air about him.




CHAPTER X

IN HAWTHORN FOREST


IT was winter—a mild, bright, winter’s day—when, for the second time,
he met and spoke to Joan in the forest. She was standing beneath a
beech tree, in her hand a dry, fallen bough which she was brandishing
and making play with as though it had been a quarter-staff. She was
singing, though not in the least loudly,—

  “‘I have heard talk of bold Robin Hood,
        And of brave Little John,
  Of Friar Tuck and Will Scarlet,
        Locksley and Maid Marian—’”

When she saw Aderhold close to her she started violently.

“Good-day,” he said. “I meant not to frighten you!”

She looked at him curiously and shook her head. “No.... You did not
frighten me. I am not at all frighted.”

He smiled. “You say that as though you were surprised at yourself.”

She looked at him again with grey eyes half-troubled, half-fearless.
“It isn’t so hard to surprise yourself.... You did take that cat you
gave me from the boys who were stoning her at the burned cot?”

“Yes,” said Aderhold, surprised in his turn. “Why?”

She stammered. “I heard them talking, and though I believe not such
things, I—I—”

“What things?”

She was silent for a moment, then faced him with courage. “I have
heard talk that you don’t believe what other people believe, that you
deny things that are in the Bible, and that maybe you practise sorcery
there in the Oak Grange.... And—and some one once told me that—that
people like that had always familiars which went mostly like little
animals such as a cat or small dog, or sometimes a bird or a frog,—and
that—and that if they offered to give you such a thing for a gift
and—and you took it, you signed yourself so to the Evil One....
But—but I do not believe such things. They are against all goodness
and—and good sense.”

She ended somewhat breathlessly; for all her courage, which was great,
her heart was beating hard.

“You are right,” said Aderhold. “Such things are against all goodness
and good sense—and they do not happen.... I was going to see a sick
man, and passing by the burned cottage, I heard the cat crying, and
went and took her from the boys. She’s naught but just your fireside
cat. And I am a solitary man who has no familiar and knows no magic.”

He drew a heavy, oppressed breath. “I did not know that there was any
such talk.... It is miserable that there should be.”

He stood leaning against a tree, with half-shut eyes. Old fears came
over him in a thick and sickening wave.

“Oh—talk!” said Joan. “There’s always such a weary deal of talk.”
She had regained her calm; at least she was no longer afraid of the
physician. But for all that—and for all her comparative happiness this
beautiful day and for her singing—she looked older and less care-free
than she had done last year. Her face was thinner, and there appeared
in her, now and again, a startled, listening air. It came now. “Do you
hear a horse coming?”

At no part in the forest were you far from some cart track along which
might, indeed, push a horseman. One was here now, leaving the track and
coming between the tree boles. Presumably he had heard voices.

Joan rose to her feet. Her eyes were glittering. “No peace—” she said.
“He leaves me no peace at all. I wish he were dead.”

She spoke in a very low voice, hardly above a whisper, measured, but
tinctured with both anger and dread. It was Harry Carthew, Aderhold
now saw, who approached. He caught sight of them, checked the roan a
perceptible moment, then came on. The great horse stopped within ten
feet of the two beneath the beech tree. Carthew sat looking at them, a
strange expression upon his face.

Aderhold had no knowledge of the why or wherefore of his look,
though Joan’s ejaculation might be making for illumination. But his
mind was preoccupied with those pale fears which her earlier speech
had awakened. He was thinking only of these—or rather he was not
consciously thinking at all; he was only gathering his forces forward
after the recoil. He answered Carthew’s look with a somewhat blank
gaze. “Good-day,” he said.

“Give you good-day,” answered Carthew. “How long have you and Joan
Heron been trysting?”

Aderhold’s thoughts were still away. He repeated the word after the
other, but put no meaning to it. “‘Trysting’—”

It was Joan who took it up, with a flame of anger. “Who is trysting,
Master Carthew?—Not one of these three—not he with me, nor I with
him, nor I with you! God’s mercy! Cannot a girl speak a civil word to a
chance-met neighbour—”

“‘Neighbour,’” said Carthew. “That is true. I had not thought of that.
The Grange and Heron’s cottage are not so far apart—might be said to
be neighbours.—’Neighbours’—it is easy for neighbours to meet—with
this dark wood touching each house.” He lifted his hand to his throat,
then turned upon Aderhold with a brow so black, a gesture so violent
that the other instinctively gave back a pace. “I have been blind!”
cried Carthew thickly. “I have been blind!”

Aderhold, amazed, spoke with an awakening and answering anger. “I do
not know what you mean, Master Carthew,—or, if I guess, seeing that
your words will bear that interpretation,—I will tell you that your
bolt goes wide!—Mistress Joan Heron and I chanced to meet five minutes
before you appeared before us—and I do think in my soul that it is the
second time we have spoken together in our lives! And I know not your
right—”

“‘Right!’” broke in Joan with passion. “He has no right! And I will not
have him couple my name here and couple it there! Oh, I would”—her
eyes blazed at Carthew—“I would that so great a saint would leave this
earth and go to heaven—if that, indeed, is where you belong!”

Carthew sat his horse, dark as a thunder-cloud, and for all his iron
frame and power of control, shaking like a leaf. “I believe neither of
you,” he said thickly. He looked at Joan. “This is why you will not
turn to me.”

Her eyes flamed against him. “I never thought to hate a human creature
as you have made me hate you!—And now I am going home.”

She snatched up the staff with which she had been playing and turned
with decision. He turned his horse also, but uncertainly, with his
eyes yet upon Aderhold. Black wrath and jealousy were written in
his face, and something else, a despairing struggle against total
self-abandonment. “Stay a moment!” he cried to Joan. “Will you swear
by God on high that you and this man have not been meeting, meeting in
Hawthorn Forest?”

Joan turned, stood still the moment asked.

“Master Carthew, shall I tell you what I shall shortly do if you leave
me not alone? I shall go with my father to the squire your brother,
and to the minister, and to the three most zealous men in Hawthorn
Parish, and I shall say to them, ‘This holy and zealous young man whom
I have heard you, Master Clement, call Joseph, and young David, and
what-not—this same Master Harry Carthew, who will speak and exhort and
pray with sinners,—this same man has for months made a harmless girl’s
life wretched to her, offering loathed love and insult—’”

Her voice broke; she threw up her arms in a gesture of anger and
unhappiness and fled away. Carthew sat like a graven image, watching
her go. He spoke to himself, in a curious voice from the lips only.
“If ever I should come to hate you as now I—” and again—“She will
never dare—” The last flutter of her skirt vanished among the trees.
Suddenly he said with violence, “She denied it not!” and turned upon
Aderhold as though he would ride him down.

The physician caught the bridle of the roan. “You are mad, Master
Carthew! Look at me!”

He forced the other’s gaze upon him and a somewhat cooler judgement
into his eyes. Each, with his inner vision, was viewing in waves and
sequences past relations, knowledge, and impressions. For the first
time, general observation and lukewarm interest quickened into the
keen and particular and well-warmed. Aderhold saw again Carthew at the
Rose Tavern, and Carthew upon the road; heard again Carthew’s cosmic
speculations and Carthew’s expressed sense of sin. Four years gone by,
and yet that impression remained the most deeply graved. After that
came the long stretch of time in this region, and, during it, little
speech, few meetings with Carthew. There had been knowledge that at
times he was away, often for months, from Hawthorn, and there had been
observation at church and elsewhere of the sterner sort in him of
Puritan zeal and faith, together with hearsay that the minister and
he were like elder and younger brother in the word, and the younger a
growing power in this part of England and a chosen vessel. And there
had been a kind of half-melancholy, half-artistic and philosophic
recognition of the perfection of the specimen Carthew afforded. In
look, frame, dress, countenance, temper, and inward being, he seemed
the exactest symbol!—Nowhere further than all this had Aderhold come
until to-day.

As for Carthew, with far narrower powers of reflection, and with those
concentrated with hectic intensity in a small round, it might be said
that in these years he had barely regarded or thought of the physician
at all. Such a statement would be true of all sides but one. Master
Clement had, within the past year, doubted to him any true zeal in
religion on the part of the physician, and had set up a faint current
of observation and misliking. It had been nothing much; at times, when
he thought of it, he marked Aderhold at church, how he looked and
demeaned himself; once or twice when he had overheard some peasant
speak of the leech, he had come in with his deep and stern voice. “Aye?
Can he doctor thy soul as well as thy body?” But the whole together
had weighed little. He had the soul of Harry Carthew to be concerned
for ... though, of course, for that very soul’s salvation, it behooved
to see that other lamps were kept burning.... Nay, it behooved for
those others’ salvation—for the warfare of the true saint was for
the salvation of every soul alive!—All this was before the past few
months. Through these months he had thought but of one thing—or if
at all of another thing, then of how his own soul was on the brink
of the pit, with the Devil whispering, and the heat of the flame of
hell already burning within him.... And now, suddenly, it seemed that
the physician living at the Oak Grange was a figure in the sum. He
looked at him, and where before he had seen but a silently coming and
going learned man, to be somewhat closely watched by God’s saints lest
mysterious knowledge should lead him astray, he saw now a tall man,
still young, not ill-looking, with strange knowledge that might teach
him how to ingratiate.... He spoke in a hollow voice. “I have been
blind.”

“Whatever you may have been,” said Aderhold with impatience, “you are
blind in this hour. Look at me! Not for the sake of myself, but for the
sake of truth, and to guard another from misapprehension, and to take
a strange poison from your mind, I swear most solemnly that that maid
and I were chance-met but now beneath this tree; that we spoke most
generally, and far afield from what you madly imagine; and that, save
for once before as chance and momentary a meeting, never have we been
alone together! I swear that I think in that wise of no woman, and no
woman of me!”

“I would,” said Carthew heavily, “that I knew that you speak truth.”

“I speak it,” said Aderhold. “And in turn I would that you might bring
wisdom and better love into your counsel, and leave the maid alone!”

Carthew looked at him. “Is there idle talk. Have you heard such
tongue-clatter?”

“Not I,” answered the other. “What I perceive you yourself have shown.”

“Or she has said,” said Carthew. He moistened his lips. “Foolish maids
will make much of slight matters!—If I have slipped a little—if Satan
hath tempted me and the foul weakness of universal nature—so that I
have chanced, perhaps, to give her a kiss or to tell her that she was
fair—what hath it been to her hurt? Naught—no hurt at all. But to
me.... Nay, I will recover myself. God help me! I will not put my soul
in perdition. God help me!” He lifted his clasped hands, then let them
drop to his saddle-bow. “I will begin by believing even where I believe
not! What hurt to me if now and again you and Joan Heron speak in
passing?—so be it that with your evil learning and your commerce who
knows where, you put not the maid’s soul in peril ... so be it that you
touch not her lips nor her hand—” He ceased to speak, his face working.

“You are much to be pitied,” said Aderhold. “Have you finished?—for I
would be going.”

He drew his cloak about him, and made to pass the other.

Carthew did not detain him; he only said, “But I shall watch you,”
gathered up the roan’s reins, and himself rode starkly off in the
direction of the village.

Back upon the forest track which he had pursued, and then upon the road
that ran between Hawthorn and the Oak Grange, he saw naught of Joan,
though he looked for her. She was fleet-footed; by now she was within
her own door. But on the road, no great distance beyond the cottage,
he came upon another woman, walking toward the village. This was the
sempstress’s daughter, Alison Inch.... Two years gone by, Alison had
spent some weeks in Carthew House, sewing for Madam Carthew. He had
been reading aloud that winter to his sister-in-law, who was a learned
and pious lady, and Alison had sat in a corner, sewing and listening.
The reading done, he had at times explained the discourse or added
illustration, encouraging the women to ask questions.—He felt friendly
toward Alison, and always, since that time, answered her curtsy when
they chanced to meet by a grave enquiry as to her health and welfare,
the spiritual being meant rather than the bodily. To-day he walked his
horse beside her.

“You have been riding through the forest, sir?” she asked. “It is a
fine day for riding.”

“Yes—I wished to enquire for a man at the North-End Farm.”

He rode and she walked in silence, then she spoke in a dry, thin, and
strained voice. “I was walking to Heron’s cottage to see Joan. But
she was not there.—She’s not much like others. When she gets her
work done, she’s off to herself somewhere—maybe to the wood, maybe
elsewhere. It’s often so that you can’t find her.”

Now Carthew had found, too, that you couldn’t always find her. Suddenly
his brow grew black again; he had not put that two and two together.
“Alison,” he said and paused.

Alison, with an air of not looking at him at all, was watching closely.
“Yes, Master Carthew?”

He rode a little farther in silence, then he said determinedly: “Master
Aderhold who lives at the Oak Grange—” He paused.

“Yes, sir?” said Alison.

“He is a strange man,” said Carthew. “I remember when he came to
Hawthorn, when I rode with him from the town, I thought him of a
strange and doubtful mind.—We have not caught him tripping yet, but
Master Clement holds that he thinks perversely, not according to sound
doctrine.”

“People say that he makes gold and hoards it,” said Alison, “and that
he hath a familiar.” She was not interested in Master Aderhold, but she
would keep up whatever ball Master Harry Carthew tossed.

“I know not as to that,” said Carthew. “It is enough if he setteth up
his own judgement and denieth essential doctrines.—It were surely ill
for any upon whom he might thrust his company—ill, I mean, for them to
be seen with him often and in close talk. In common charity any such
should be warned. I dare aver he is often straying through the forest
or upon this road.”

Alison looked aside. She did not know yet what he would be at, but her
every sense was sharpened.

“Have you ever seen,” asked Carthew with careful carelessness—“have
you ever chanced to see him and Goodman Heron’s daughter Joan together?”

Alison walked thrice her own length upon the shadowy road before she
answered. It took a little time to get it straight. It wasn’t Joan’s
soul that he was concerned about—thought one. He was putting her name
with that of the leech—had he seen them together, and now was eaten
with jealousy? She knew how it felt to be eaten with jealousy—thought
two. If he believed that Joan played him false—put him off for
another—it could not but help, his thinking that....

“Oh, aye!” said Alison. “I have seen them a dozen times walking and
talking together in the forest. But what a sin, sir, if he should teach
her heresy!”




CHAPTER XI

THE PLAGUE


LATE that winter, after long immunity, black sickness came to the
town with the great church and the castle, and cast a long, crooked
finger across the river and in the direction of Hawthorn Village. In
the streets of the town burned fires of juniper. Waking in the night
you might hear the wheels of the death-cart. They stopped before
this house, they stopped before that house. The thought trembled and
shrank—one night will they stop before this house? In the daytime the
bells were tolled.

Hawthorn Village tolled no bells, for to toll bells savoured of
“superstitious usages.” But it looked with a clammy terror at the black
finger which had touched a farmhouse midway between village and town.

The plague grew worse in the town. More and yet more houses were
marked and shut. The richer sort and those who could left the place,
scattered through the country, not always welcome where they appeared.
The mass who must stay saw the horror increase. A pall came over the
place; there grew an insistent and rapid murmur of prayers. Side by
side with that occurred a relaxation and neglect of usual order. The
strict rule in such cases was against people coming together in any
manner of congregation whereby the infection might spread; but the
watch grew sick and fear constantly sought companions. There was much
drinking in alehouses and taverns, no little gathering together of one
sort and another. Side by side with wild appeals and supplications to
Heaven wavered a sick and wan determination to some sort of mirth. At
times this spirit rose to dare-deviltry. Small crimes increased. The
poor were the hardest stricken, seeing that for them starvation clanked
behind disease. Theft and housebreaking grew common, while professional
thieves might and did make a harvest feast. The church bells tolled. At
night the death-carts increased in number, the closed houses increased
in number, the juniper smoke rolled thicker and thicker.

But after one death in the farmhouse, halfway to Hawthorn, the black
finger drew back. No one else at the farm was taken, the scattered
houses between it and the village went unscathed; time passed and no
harm came to Hawthorn. Some said the river barred the infection, others
that the air was different. One or two at most called attention to the
great crowding in the town, to the massed poverty and dirt,—whereas
the village was open-built and reasonably clean,—and to the traffic
between the town and a large seaport, whereas small was the business of
Hawthorn and few the strangers. But the most part of Hawthorn Village
and the country to the north of it knew otherwise and said otherwise
with unction and lifted looks. Pestilence came like comets, as a
visitation and a sign from on high. Jehovah launched the one and the
other. Fire against the cities of the plain—plague against prelatical
towns and castles, only not Popish by a narrow line, retainers of
stained glass and images, organ-players and bowers of the head,
waiting but their chance to reinstate a wearing of copes and lighting
of candles! The wonder was not that the plague came, but that Jehovah
had so long withheld his hand! In Hawthorn Church they prayed that the
plague might cease from the afflicted town, but prayed knowing that the
plague had been deserved. Now that the outstretched black finger had
been definitely withdrawn, the analyst might have found in the prayer
of some—not of all—a flavour of triumph. Was it not also Jehovah’s
doing that the pure faith was so adorned with health and vindicated?

The town grew a gloomy place indeed, filled with apprehension. People
viewing it from distant hills professed to see hanging over it a
darkened and quivering air of its own. The streets had a deserted
look, with fires burning and none around them. The death-carts went
more frequently, and the bells clanged, clanged. There was a need of
physicians, those in the place being overworked and one smitten. About
the time that the black finger drew back from the farmhouse, Gilbert
Aderhold walked to the town and offered his services. Thereafter for
weeks he was busied, day and night.

Up in the castle above the town, a kinsman of the earl’s stayed on
after the hurried departure of the great family to another seat in an
untouched countryside. Heir to a burdened estate and courtier out of
favour, not pleased for reasons of his own to remove with the earl, and
liking for another set of reasons the very solitariness of the huge
old abode, assured that the infection would not mount the cliff and
pass the castle wood, and constitutionally careless of danger, he asked
leave to stay on, keep ward with the old housekeeper, the armour in the
hall, the earl’s regiment of books, and his own correspondence with
foreign scholars. He stayed, and for exercise rode through the country
roundabout, and now and then, to satisfy a philosophic curiosity,
through the town itself. The ideas of the time as to quarantine were
lax enough. The sick were shut away in the houses, purifying fires
burned in the streets; if you were careful to avoid any who looked
in the faintest degree as though they might be sickening, life and
business might go on. The rider from the castle, when he came down into
the place, carried with him and put often to his nostrils a quantity
of medicated spices and perfumed grains from the Orient, carried in a
small perforated silver box.

Riding so through the streets one day he came upon Aderhold, his foot
upon the doorstep of a marked house. He drew rein. “Ha, the travelling
scholar!—Are you physician here?”

“Until the trouble is abated.”

“Black enough trouble!” said the rider. “Toll, toll! The place is more
ghastly than a row of gibbets.”

“Abroad,” said Aderhold, “I have seen this sickness in a far worse
form. I have hopes that it will not outlast the winter.”

The other smelled at his box of spices. “Do you feel no fear, bending
over their beds?”

Aderhold shook his head. “No. It is my calling.”

The man on horseback kept ten feet between them and smelled continually
at his silver box, but for the rest was willing to stay and talk. “That
seems to be it. The soldier will run from the pest, but face a cannon
mouth. The sailor rocks upon a masthead or boards a Spanish galleon
with a cutlass between his teeth, but a churchyard ghost turns him into
a whimpering child! Your thinker will scale Olympus and enquire of Jove
direct, but the sight of torn flesh turns him pale. To each his courage
and each his fear! Each a master and each a slave.”

“Aye,” said Aderhold briefly, “I know that well.” He put his hand upon
the door behind him. “I must not stay.”

The other gathered up the reins. “I am dwelling at the castle. When the
plague is spent, and the air again is clean and sweet, and old clothing
has been burned and new put on, then, before you travel farther, come
to see me there.—I have faced cannon and fought a galleon. I would
go far to have speech with an authentic ghost. A brazen head would
like me well, and I am constantly considering new Dædalus’ wings. But
to enter that house behind you, and stand over that swollen, ghastly,
loathsomely smelling and moaning thing—no, no! There I am your abject
Eastern slave.”

He backed his horse farther from the house.

“Ah,” said Aderhold, “I, too, have a great region where Fear is my
master and sets his foot upon my neck! I will enter this house, but I
make no talk of Dædalus’ wings—seeing that the neighbours like it not,
and that they have the whip-hand!—When all’s well I’ll come to the
castle.”

The one rode away, the other entered the plague-touched house. The
first, returning home, found company, come from the southward, and
so reaching the castle without passing through the town. An old
nobleman, father of the countess, was here, come unexpectedly from
the Court, and having no knowledge of the family flitting. Now he was
in an ill-humour, indeed, and yet not very fearful of the plague,
and set upon resting his old bones before he pursued his further
journey. Mistress Borrow, the housekeeper, promised to make him
comfortable—there were servants enough—“And your Lordship will be
glad to know that Sir Richard is here.” With his lordship was a London
physician of note, one that had sometimes been called to the old Queen.
For years he had doctored his lordship; now, at special invitation, he
was making this journey with him.

That evening at supper the talk was almost solely of the plague. The
physician had had experience in London; he had written learnedly upon
the subject, and was reckoned an authority. He talked of preventives
and plague-waters, and hoped that while, for his lordship’s sake, he
should not think of closely exposing himself, he might yet, with proper
precautions, descend into the town and observe the general appearance
of matters. He would be glad to give to the authorities or to the
physicians in the place any advice in his power,—and then he fell to
the capon, the venison pasty, and the canary. The old nobleman asked
Sir Richard how he should get word to William Carthew, living beyond
Hawthorn Village, of his presence at the castle. It seemed that there
was some tie of old service a generation agone,—Carthew’s father had
owed a captaincy and other favours to the nobleman,—and now that he
was dead the present squire and justice always came dutifully to see
the great man upon the occasions when he was at the castle. “They tell
me that he hath turned Puritan—or rather that his younger brother hath
turned Puritan and draggeth William with him. A pack of crop-eared
wretches! I should have thought better of John Carthew’s son. I wish to
see him just to tell him so.”

“One of the grooms shall be sent to Hawthorn to-morrow morning, sir. If
your man be afraid of infection he may ride around the town and come in
from this side.”

But the Carthews—for both brothers would ride from Hawthorn to the
castle—were not afraid of infection. The older was unimaginative. As
long as you did not touch nor go too near, you were safe enough. The
younger brooded on other things, and was sincerely careless of any
danger riding through the town might present. Neither was averse to
seeing how the stricken place might look. The younger, who, truly,
greatly influenced his brother, came with him primarily that he might
be at hand if the castle, which was prelatical, opened upon religion.

It opened, but only in the person of the old nobleman. Sir Richard
sat a little to one side in the great hall where the armour hung and
listened as to three actors in the same play. The physician standing
by the fire faintly shrugged his shoulders. The nobleman ridiculed and
vituperated, the younger Puritan—for the elder was no match for his
lordship—came back with verse and Scripture. Finally the first was
reduced to “Insolent!” and a fine, foaming rage. Squire Carthew plucked
his brother’s sleeve. “No, no, Harry! Don’t go so far—”

The younger Carthew made a stiff bow to his lordship and stood silent.
He had answered, he knew, boldly and well, and it was much to him now
to answer well and know it, to feel that he had been God Almighty’s
able champion. In subtle ways it tended to balance matters. It eased
the sore and fearful feeling within, the anguished sensation that he
was slipping, slipping, that the hand of Grace was trembling beneath
him....

The quarrel was too deep for any reconciliation. The old nobleman
advanced no olive branches. Instead, with a “Fare you well, gentlemen!
If this goes much further in England there’ll be hangings and
beheadings!” he rose from his cushioned chair and stalked from the
hall. Sir Richard offered food and canary, but the two Carthews
misliked his suavity, and the younger, at least, meant to keep no terms
of any kind. They refused entertainment. They must needs at once return
to Hawthorn.

“As you please, gentlemen!—I am glad to know that the sickness has not
touched your neighbourhood.”

The physician now came forward; they all stood about the great table
in the hall. “You are lucky if it reaches you not,” said the London
doctor. “I understand that you are not more than six miles away. But in
great cities I have seen it skip one parish and slay its hundreds all
around. For some reason the folk just there were more resistive.”

A servant entering with a message from the old nobleman, he turned
aside to receive it.

“Nay,” said the younger Carthew with sternness, “the plague falls where
God would have it fall, and falls not where he is willing to spare.
He saith to his Angel, ‘Smite here!’ or He saith, ‘Pass me by this
door!’—and where is the resistance of man that you prate of? As well
might the worm resist the master of the vineyard’s treading foot!”

Sir Richard looked at him curiously. “Of course! of course! Poor
worm!” There fell a silence, then the last speaker, unthinkingly,
merely to make talk to the great door before which stood the visitors’
horses, brought forward Aderhold’s presence in the town. “Hawthorn
hath played the Samaritan in one person—though, I believe, indeed,
that he lives beyond the village. You’ve given a good leech. I saw him
yesterday morning in the town, going from sick to sick.”

The squire spoke. “You mean one Gilbert Aderhold? Yes, he is a leech.
But Hawthorn sent him not—”

The London physician, returning at the moment, caught the name,
“Gilbert Aderhold!—What! I’ve wondered more than once what became of
the man—if, indeed, you speak of the same—”

“A tall, quiet man,” said Sir Richard. “A thinker who has travelled—”

“It has a sound of him,” said the physician. He somewhat despised the
two country gentlemen, so he addressed himself exclusively to Sir
Richard. As to what followed, it must be said that he spoke alike
without malice and without forethought. Indifferentist himself, dulled
by personal vanity and complacence of position, and with a knowledge
at least of the tolerant-mindedness of the person to whom he spoke,
he possibly took not into consciousness at all the very different
nature of the two who might be listening, nor realized that the man
of whom he spoke dwelled in their bailiwick and not in the town. At
any rate, he spoke on with vivacity. “A man of abilities who should
have risen—studied in Paris—was for a time in the Duke of —--’s
household. Then what must he do but grow atheist and begin to write
and teach! ‘The God of Isaac and Jacob, Isaac and Jacob’s idea of
God. God the vast abstraction, like and differing with all times and
peoples. The Bible not writ by the finger of God, but a book of Eastern
wisdom with much that is gold, and much that is not.—No Fall of Man
as therein told.—Salvation out of the depths of yourself and not by
gift of another.—No soul can be bathed clean by another’s blood.’—His
book,” said the physician, “was burned in an open place in Paris by
the common hangman, and he himself lay a long while in prison and was
hardly dealt with, nay, just escaped with life—which he might not
have done but for the Duke of —--, who got him forth from France
with a letter to Sir Robert Cecil, and—seeing that I had brought his
Grace up from an illness which he had when he was in England—one from
his secretary to me. But naturally neither Sir Robert nor I could do
aught—”

Sir Richard, his brow clouded, stopped him with a gesture. “You caught
my interest and held me fast—but I should have checked you at once!
Now—” He bit his lip, his brows drawn together with deep vexation.

The two men from Hawthorn were standing stone still. In the elder’s
face, at once stolid and peremptory, was only single-minded amazement
and wrath. What was this that Justice Carthew and all Hawthorn had been
harbouring? A Jesuit spy would have been bad enough—but atheist!—But
the younger was more complex, and in him a number of impulses were
working. He left it to the elder to speak, who did so, explosively.
“Atheist! No one hath thought well of the man of late—but atheist!—I
will promise you, doctor—I will promise you, Sir Richard—”

“Nay,” said Sir Richard, no longer with suavity, “what I would have you
promise, that I know you will not!” He shook himself like a great dog.
“Unhappy!”

The two Carthews rode down the castle hill and through the town where
people went dully to and fro with Fear in company. There rose the
pungent smell of burning wood, a church bell made a slow and measured
clangour. They passed between tall, gloomy, jutting houses, passed
the prison with the stocks and pillory, and the great church with the
sculptured portal, wound down to the river, and crossed the arched
bridge. Before them rolled the yet wintry country. Mounting a hill,
they saw on the horizon a purple-grey line that was Hawthorn Forest.

The younger Carthew spoke. “It comes back to me.... That night at the
Rose Tavern when he so suddenly appeared beside old Hardwick.... Master
Anthony Mull, of Sack Hall, who was travelling with us, appeared to
recognize him and flew out against him.... Wait a moment!—his very
words will come back. He said—’Black sorcerer and devil’s friend!’”

That afternoon a serving-man brought to a house at the foot of the
castle hill a letter to be passed on by a safe hand to the physician
from Hawthorn. It came into Aderhold’s hand as dusk was falling. He
broke the seal and read by the light of one of the street fires. The
letter—no lengthy one—came from his friend of the hawk and the silver
box. It told him what the London physician had betrayed, though without
malice, and to whom. It argued that it might be well to quit as quickly
as possible this part of the country, or even to go forth for a time
from England. It offered a purse and a horse; also, if it were wished
for, a letter of commendation to the captain of a ship then lying at
anchor at the nearest port, which captain, his own vessel being for
longer voyages, would get him passage in some other ship touching
at a Dutch port—“Amsterdam being to-day as safe as any place for a
thinker—where no place is safe.” The letter ended with “The younger
Carthew will move, no fear! Then, my friend, move first.”—An answer
was to be left at the house at the foot of the hill.

Aderhold mechanically folded the letter and placed it in the breast of
his doublet. The fire was burning in an almost deserted street. Beside
it was a bench where an old tender of fires sat at times and nodded in
the warmth. He was not here now. Aderhold moved to the bench and sat
down. He sat leaning forward, his hands clasped and hanging, his head
bowed. After a time he sighed, straightened himself, and turning upon
the bench looked about him. It was a gusty twilight with now and again
a dash of rain. He looked up and down the solemn street. Some of the
houses stood dark, those who had lived in them dead or fled. Behind
the windows of others candles burned and shadows passed. This house he
knew was stricken, and this and that. Here it was a child, here a young
man or woman, here older folk. In more than one house there were many
cases, a whole family stricken.... As he sat he heard the first cart of
the night roll into the street, and a distant, toneless cry, “Bring out
your dead!”

He rose and stood with a solemn and wide gesture of his hands. He
waited a moment longer by the fire, then turned and went from this
street into the next, where there lived behind his shop an old
stationer and seller of books with whom he had made acquaintance. Here
he begged pen and ink and paper, and when he had them, wrote, at no
great length, an answer to the letter in his doublet. The next morning
he left it at the house indicated, whence in due time it was taken by
the serving-man and carried to Sir Richard at the castle. The letter
spoke of strong gratitude, “but it befits not my calling to leave the
town now.”

The days lagged by in the stricken place. Then, suddenly, the black
finger shot out again and touched a house beyond the midway farm, so
much nearer than it to Hawthorn Village.... A week of held breath
and the finger went forward again. This time it touched a house in
Hawthorn.




CHAPTER XII

HERON’S COTTAGE


IT was early spring again, and on the fruit trees pale emerald buds
of yet unfolded leaves. The blackbirds came in flocks to the ploughed
fields. But this year there were many fields that were not ploughed;
dead men could not plough, nor those who had been to death’s door and
were coming halting, halting back.

Joan sat in her kitchen, on a low stool by the hearth. The room was
clean, with shafts of sunlight slanting in. But her wheel was pushed
back into a corner, and there lacked other signs of industry. She sat
still and listless, bent over, her cheek resting upon her knees, and
with her forefinger she made idle marks and letters in the ashes. The
fire was smouldering out, the place seemed deadly still.

There came a knock upon the door. She raised her head, and sat with a
frozen look, listening. After a minute the knock was repeated. Rising,
she moved noiselessly across the floor to the window, and, standing
so that she could not be seen, looked out. The rigour passed from her
face; she drew a breath of relief and went and opened the door.

The sunshine flooded in and in the midst of it stood Aderhold. He
looked at her quietly and kindly. “I came again but to see if you were
well and lacked naught.”

“I lack naught, thank you, sir,” said Joan. “And I am well—O me, O me,
I would that it had taken me, too! O father, father!”

She leaned against the wall, shaken with dry sobs. The fit did not
last; she was resolute enough. She straightened herself. “I’ve done
what you told me to. Yesterday I washed and cleaned and let the sun in
everywhere, and burned in the room the powder you gave me. Everything
is clean—and lonely. No, I don’t feel badly anywhere. I feel terribly
strong, as though I would live to be an old woman.... I miss father—I
miss father!”

“It looks so clean and bright,” said Aderhold, “and your cat purring
there on the hearth. Your father went very quickly, and without much
suffering. His presence will come back to you, and you will take
comfort in it. You will feel it in this room, and upon this doorstep,
and out here among the fruit trees, and under the stars at night.”

“Aye,” said Joan, “I think it too. But now—” She stood beside him on
the doorstep, looking out past the budding trees to the gate and the
misty green twisted path that led at last to the village road. Overhead
drove a fleecy drift of clouds with islands of blue. “All last night
the countryside mourned low and wailed. It was the wind, but I knew it
was the other too! It is sad for miles and miles to be so woeful.”

“The sickness is greatly lessening. By the time the spring is strongly
here it will be over and Hawthorn beginning to forget.—You have been
here now three days alone. Has no one come to enquire or help?”

“Mother Spuraway from beyond the mill-race came. No one else.”

“In a time like this all fear all. But presently friends will find out
friends again.”

“It is not that way that I am lonely,” said Joan. “There are some that
I care not if they never come.”

He had his round to go. The sickness in the town dwindling, he had
come back, when it broke over Hawthorn, to the Oak Grange. Since then
he had gone far and near, wherever it struck down the poorer sort. As
he turned from the cottage door, Joan stepped, too, upon the flagged
path, and they moved side by side toward the gate, between the lines
of green lance-heads the daffodils were thrusting above the soil. They
moved in silence, almost of a height, two simply, almost poorly dressed
figures, each with its load of sorrow and care for the morrow. And yet
they were not old, and about them was the low ecstatic murmur of winter
swiftening into spring.

“Do you remember,” asked Aderhold, “that day when we chanced to meet in
the forest and Master Harry Carthew came upon us?”

“Aye,” said Joan, “I remember.”

“Since then we have neither met nor spoken together until last week
when your father was stricken and you watched for me coming from the
village.—And now to-day I come only for this moment and will come no
more.—Have you no close friends nor kindred?”

“They are buried with father.... I mean to stay on here and spin flax
and keep myself. And if—I mean to stay.” Her hand went out to touch
the eglantine growing by the beehives. “I love it and I mean to stay.”

Aderhold looked beyond at the wavy green path and the massed trees of
the forest. He, too, loved this country. He had thought much here—once
or twice the light had shone through. But he was ready now to go. Just
as soon as there was no more sick, just as soon as the plague was gone,
he meant to steal from the Oak Grange and Hawthorn countryside. He and
Joan came to the little gate, and he went out of it, then turning for
a moment looked back at the thatched cottage, the pleasant beehives,
the fruit trees that ere long would put forth a mist of bloom. Joan
stood with a sorrowful face, but grey-eyed, vital. Her hand rested
upon the worn wood. He laid his own upon it, lightly, for one moment.
“Good-bye,” he said, “Mistress Friendly-Soul!”

She stood in the pale sunshine until he was gone from sight, then
turned and went back to her kitchen. She must bake bread; there was
nothing for her to eat in the cottage. She must get water from the
well. She took her well-bucket, went forth and brought it back
brimming. From the faggot pile she fed the fire, then brought to the
table coarse flour and other matters for the bread, mixed and worked,
moulded and set to bake. And all the time she tried to feel that her
father was sitting there, in the settle corner. She made the table
clear again, then looked at her wheel. But she did not feel like
spinning; her heart was burdened again; she sat down on the stool by
the fire and bowed her head in her arms. “Day after day and day after
day,” she said; “day after day and day after day.” She rocked herself.
“And a powerful man that I hate to come again and yet again to trouble
me, and father not here.... Day after day and day after day.... And
I know not why it is, but I have no friends. They’ve turned against
me, and I know not why.... Day after day—” She sat with buried head
and rocked herself slowly to and fro. Save for the youth in her form
and the thick, pale bronze of her braided hair, she might have seemed
Mother Spuraway, or Marget Primrose, or any other old and desolate
woman. She rocked herself, and the faggot burned apart, and the cat
stretched itself in the warmth.

From outside the cottage came a thin calling. “_Joan! Joan! Oh, Joan!_”

Joan lifted her head, listened a moment, then rose and opened the
door. “_Joan! Joan! Oh, Joan!_” She stepped without and saw who it
was,—Alison Inch and Cecily Lukin calling to her from the green path
well beyond the gate. They would come at first no nearer. The plague
had struck in the Lukin cottage no less than in Heron’s, and for weeks
it had closely neighboured Alison Inch and her mother. But Joan must
be made to feel comrades’ terror of her. “Joan! Joan! Have you got it
yet?—We want but to see if you’re living!”

With a gesture of anger Joan turned to reënter the cottage.

But Alison did not wish that. “Joan! Joan! We were laughing. We’re not
afraid if you don’t come very close.—I’ve got something to tell you.
See! I’m not afraid.”

Alison came to the gate, Cecily with her. Joan no longer liked Alison,
and with Cecily she had never had much acquaintance. But they were
women and young, and the loneliness was terrible about her. She went
halfway up the path toward them. The grey and white cat came from the
cottage and followed her.

Alison regarded her with a thin, flushed, shrewish face and an
expression lifted, enlarged, and darkened beyond what might have seemed
possible to her nature. But Alison had drunk deep from an acrid spring
that drew in turn from a deep, perpetual fount. She spoke in a thin and
cutting voice. “Watching and weeping haven’t taken the rose away.—What
are you going to do now, Joan?”

“I do not think,” said Joan, “that it is necessary to tell thee.” She
looked past her to Cecily. “They say your sister died. I am sorry.”

But Alison had put poison into Cecily’s mind. “Yes, she died. They do
say that you would not be sorry if more of us died. Why people like you
and—and Mother Spuraway should wish harm to us others—”

“What are you talking of?” said Joan. “I wish no harm to any—”

Cecily was an impish small piece with no especial evil in her save a
teasing devil. “Oh, they say that you and a black man understand each
other! Some boys told me—”

“Nay, that’s naught, Cis!” said Alison impatiently. She came closer to
the gate, and Joan, as though drawn against her will, approached from
her side. “Joan—nay, don’t come any nearer, Joan—”

“Yes?”

“There’s one ill at the squire’s house. Ah!” cried Alison. “Do you look
joyful?”

“No—no!” stammered Joan.

Taken by surprise, shaken and unstable as she was to-day, she gave
back a step, lifted her hands to her forehead. As for Alison—Alison
had not expected Joan to look joyful. She had spoken, burning her own
heart, to make Joan feel the hot iron, knowing that the pang she gave
would not be lasting, for truly it was but one of the maidservants at
the great house that was stricken and not that person of overshadowing
importance. She had believed with all her heart that it would smite
Joan to the heart until she told her true—and now there had been in
her face an awful joy, though at once it had shrunk back and something
piteous had come instead. But it was the first look with which Alison
was concerned. There went through her a keen hope like a knife-blade.
Perhaps he no longer liked Joan!—perhaps that made Joan angry, hurting
her vanity—so, perhaps she would have liked to hear that he was sick
of the plague! Alison stood astare, revolving Joan’s look.

Cecily, who had never come before so close to Heron’s cottage, gazed
about her. “And Katherine Scott says there’s something ‘no canny’ about
the bees in your beehives. She says she had them while you were away to
the castle, and they did naught for her and made, besides, her own bees
idle and sick. But she says they make honey for you, great combs of
it—”

“There is none that is sick at the squire’s house,” said Alison in a
strange voice, “but Agnes, Madam Carthew’s woman. They’ve taken her
from the house and put her in a room by the stable, and the family goes
freely forth.—Why did you look as you were glad, Joan?”

“If I did, God forgive me!” said Joan. “In the deep of me there is no
ill-wishing.—Presently, the leech says, it will be all safe here, as,
indeed, it’s clean and sun-washed and safe to-day. Then I hope you’ll
both come to see me—”

Cecily gave a gibing, elfin laugh. “Are you going to live here all
alone—like a witch?”

The grey and white cat had advanced beyond Joan and now stood upon the
sunny path between the daffodil points. What happened none of the three
saw; perhaps a dog crossed the track behind the two visitors, perhaps
the creature recognized human hostility—be that as it may, the cat
suddenly arched its back, its hair rose, its mouth opened.

“Ah-h!” cried Cecily. “Look at her cat!”

A curious inspiration, not of light, passed like a cloud-shadow
over Alison’s face. “It doesn’t like what you said, Cis! It’s her
familiar.—Come away! We’d best be going.”

They turned. Lightning came against them from Joan’s grey eyes. “Yes,
go! And come not here again! Do you hear?—Come not here again!” Her
voice followed them up the green path. “Come not here again—”

The next day she went to get wood from the edge of the forest. She
had gathered her load of faggots, and was sitting upon them, resting,
in her hand a fallen bird’s nest, when Will the smith’s son happened
that way. The two had known each other to speak to in a friendly way
for many a year; it used to be that, coming or going from the Grange,
he might at any time stop for a minute before the cottage for a crack
with old Heron and maybe with Joan herself. That time had come to an
end with Joan and her father’s going to the castle; when they came back
he had been, as it were, afraid of new graces and manners. Moreover,
old Master Hardwick had presently died, and so Will left the employment
of the Grange and had little need any more to come and go by Hawthorn
Forest. It might be that, save at church, they had not seen each other
for months. Moreover, he had been away to the nearest port.

Now he greeted her with friendliness and an honest-awkward speech
of sorrow for old Heron’s death. “He was a good man and, fegs! so
learned!—Am sorry for thee, Joan. And what will’t do now?”

Joan turned the grey and empty nest in her hands. “I do not know,” she
said drearily; then, with a backward fling of her shoulders and a lift
of courage, “The cottage’s mine. And I always sell the flax I spin.
I’ll bide and spin and keep the place.”

Will shook his head compassionately. “A lass like thou—! In no time
thou’dst be talked of and called ill names. Either thou must take
service or marry—”

Joan turned upon him heavy-lidded grey orbs. “Why should I marry or be
a serving-woman if I wish neither, and can keep myself?—Oh, I like not
the way we’ve made this world!” She turned the nest again. “This thing
of ill names—Well, ill names do not kill.”

Will stood, biting a piece of thorn. “You’d see how it would turn out.
No one would believe—”

He looked at her with rustic meditativeness. He was slow and
country-living; he had no great acquaintance with Alison or Cecily,
and it had never occurred to him to mark Master Harry Carthew, where
the squire’s brother rode or whom his looks pursued. He had heard of
the vintner in the town, and had dimly supposed that Joan would marry
him, or maybe the new huntsman or some other fine-feathered person at
the castle. But now the plague had swept the town, and the vintner
might be of those taken—and here was old Heron gone. He looked at her
again, and the hand that held the piece of thorn against his lips began
to shake a little. It occurred to him more strongly than it had done
before that she was a fair woman—and then, Heron’s cottage. There was
a tiny plot of ground, the cow, some poultry. As things went, she had
a good dowry. Will the smith’s son might go farther and fare worse.
It was not the right time, all Hawthorn being so gloomy and everybody
afraid, and his own heart knocking at times against his side with
fear. But it wouldn’t hurt just to drop a hint. He moistened his lips.
“Joan,” he said; “Joan—”

And then, by the perversity of her fortune, Joan herself shook him from
this base. She lifted sombre eyes, still turning the little grey nest
about in her hands. “Why do you think we had the plague? The minister
preached that it was sent against the town for its false doctrine, and
we gave thanks that we were not as the town.... And then in a little
while it was upon us, and my father, who was a good man, took it and
died....”

Gloom that had lifted this bright afternoon on the forest edge settled
again. Will the smith’s son had a strong taste for the supernatural,
all the emotional in him finding that vent. It could grow to light up
with strange lightnings and transform every humdrum corner of his mind.
He liked to discuss these matters and feel a wind of terror prick his
temples cold. He spoke oracularly, having, indeed, listened to talk at
the sexton’s the night before. “There’s always an Evil Agent behind any
pest, or a comet or a storm that wrecks ships or blows down chimneys.
At times God uses the Evil Agent to punish the presumptuous with—as
He might give Satan leave to spot with plague the town over yonder,
seeing that if it could it would have the old mass-priests back! And at
other times He gives the Evil Agent leave to prick and try his chosen
people that they may turn like a wauling babe and cling the closer to
Him. And again there may be one patch of weed in the good corn and
Satan couching and holding his Sabbat there. In which case God will
send plagues of Egypt, one after the other, until every soul wearing
the Devil’s livery is haled forth.—Now,” said Will, and he laid it
off with the sprig of thorn, “Hawthorn is for the pure faith of the
Holy Scriptures, so we haven’t the plague for the reason the town hath
it.—Again, put case that so we’re to love the Lord the more. Now
Hawthorn and all to the north of it is known for religion. I’ve been
a traveller,” said Will with unction, “and I know how we’re looked
on, clear from here to the sea, and held up to the ungodly! Master
Clement’s got a name that sounds to the wicked like the trump of doom
and Master Harry Carthew isn’t far behind him—What did you say?”

“I said naught,” said Joan.

Will closed his exposition. “Now it may be that God wisheth to prick
up Hawthorn to fresh zeal, and, indeed, the sexton holds that it is so
that Master Clement interprets the matter. But it seemed to me and the
tinker, who was there talking, too, that the third case is the likelier
and that there are some ill folk among us!” Will dropped the bit of
thorn. “It’s the more likely because there’s another kind of mischief
going around and growing as the plague dies off. I know myself of three
plough-horses gone lame in one night, and Hodgson’s cow dying without
rhyme or reason, and a child at North-End Farm falling into fits and
talking of a dog that runs in and out of the room, but no one else can
see it. The tinker”—Will spoke with energy—“the tinker has come not
long since over the border from Scotland. He says that if Hawthorn was
Scotland we’d have had old Mother Spuraway and maybe others in the
pennywinkis and the caschielawis before this!”

Joan rose and lifted her bundle of faggots to her shoulders. The grey
bird-nest she set between two boughs of the thorn tree. “What are the
pennywinkis and the caschielawis?”

“The one’s your thumbscrew,” said Will, “and the other’s a hollow iron
case where they set your leg and build a fire beneath.”

Joan turned her face toward the cottage. Her old acquaintance walked
beside her. It was afternoon and there was over everything a tender,
flickering, charming light. It made the new grass emerald, of the
misting trees veil on veil of soft, smiling magic. Primroses and
violets bloomed as though dropped from immortal hands. The blue vault
of air rose height on height and so serene and kind....

Joan spoke in a smothered voice. “I would believe in a good God.”

The young countryman beside her had gone on in mind with the tinker and
his talk. “What did you say, Joan?”

“I said naught,” said Joan.




CHAPTER XIII

HAWTHORN CHURCH


TOWN and village and all the country roundabout were growing clean of
the plague. Day by day the evil lessened, the sickness stole away. It
left its graves, and among those whose loss was personal its mood of
grief. At large there was still a kind of sullen fear, a tension of the
nerves, a readiness to attend to any cry of “Wolf!” The wolf might come
no more in the guise of the plague, but there were other damages and
terrors. All Hawthorn region was in a mood to discover them.

It came Sunday. The danger, at least, of congregating together seemed
to have rolled away. Comfort remained, comfort of the crowd, of feeling
people warm about you, gloomy comfort of “Eh, sirs!” and shakings of
the head. Hawthorn, village and neighbourhood, flocked to church.
Going, the people drew into clusters. The North-End Farm folk had a
large cluster, and there the shaking of the head was over the possessed
boy. But the widow whose cow was dead and the waggoner whose horses
were lamed had their groups, too, and the largest group of all came
compactly from the lower end of the village, past the green and the
pond and the stocks and the Sabbath-closed ale-house, with the tinker
from Scotland talking in the midst of it.

Dark stone, gaunt and ancient, rather small than large, Hawthorn Church
rose among yew trees. Within was barer than without. What of antique
carving could be broken away was broken away, what could be whitewashed
was whitewashed, what of austerity could be injected was injected. The
Act of Uniformity loomed over England like a writing in the sky; there
must be and was use of the book of Common Prayer. But parishes minded
like Hawthorn used it with all possible reserves. Where matters could
be pared they were pared to the quick; all exfoliation was done away
with. As far as was possible in an England where Presbyterianism yet
sat in the shadow of the Star Chamber and the Independents had not
arisen, idolatrousness was excluded. Only the sermon was not pared.
Sunday by Sunday minister and people indemnified themselves with the
sermon.—You could not speak against the King; except in metaphor you
could not speak against the Apostolic Succession; there were a number
of things you could not speak against unless you wished to face gaol
or pillory or worse. Because of this the things that you could speak
against were handled with an added violence. The common outer foe
received the cudgellings you could not bestow within the house. The
Devil was mightily dealt with in pulpits such as this of Hawthorn,
the Devil and his ministers. The Devil was invisible; even the most
materializing mind did not often get a glimpse of him, though such a
thing was possible and had of course happened: witness Martin Luther
and others. But his ministers—his ministers! They were many and
palpable....

Hawthorn Church was filled. They sat very still, men and women and
children. They were peasants and yeomen, small tradespeople, a very few
of the clerkly caste, one or two families of gentry. The only great
enclosed pew was that belonging by prescription to Carthew House. The
squire, the squire’s wife, his young son, and the squire’s brother sat
there, where the force of the sermon could reach them first. Quite
at the back of the church sat Gilbert Aderhold, a quiet, dark figure
beside an old, smocked farmer. Joan sat where she had been wont to sit
with her father, halfway down the church, just in front of Alison Inch
and her mother. It was a dark day, the air hot, heavy, and oppressive,
drawing to a storm.

Master Thomas Clement came into the pulpit wearing a black gown. He
opened his Geneva Bible and laid it straight before him. He turned
the hourglass, then lifting his hands to the lowering sky he smote
them together, and in a loud, solemn and echoing voice read from the
book before him, “_If there arise among you a prophet or a dreamer of
dreams, and giveth thee a sign or a wonder. And the sign or the wonder
come to pass whereof he spake to thee, saying, Let us go after other
gods, that thou hast not known, and let us serve them.... That prophet
or that dreamer of dreams shall be put to death; because he hath spoken
to turn you away from the Lord your God.... And all Israel shall hear
and fear and shall do no more any such wickedness as this is among
you...._”

“_... There shall not be found among you any one that ... useth
divination, or an observer of times, or an enchanter, or a witch, or a
consulter with familiar spirits, or a wizard, or a necromancer._”

He ceased to read, and with another gesture of his long, thin hands,
began to preach. He had a peculiar power and calibre had Master Thomas
Clement. He stood in his black gown, a small man with a pale face; then
his dire vision came upon him and it was as though his form gained
height and dilated. He burned like a flame, a wind-tossed flame,
burning _blue_. When he spoke his words came with a rushing weight.
His figure bent toward the people, his lean hands quivered above his
head, gesturing against the dark concave of the roof. The roof might
have been an open, stormy sky, the pulpit a rock upon some plain of
assemblage, the preacher a gaunt, half-clad Israelite shrilling out
to the Hebrew multitude the rede of their lawgivers. _Thou shalt not
suffer doubt to live! Thou shalt endure no speech of more or other
paths than this one. He that differeth, he shall die!_

But it was not Sinai and some thousands of years ago and an Asiatic
tribe struggling back from Egypt to some freehold of its own, or
Asiatic lawgivers building a careful theocracy. It was Europe,—it was
England and the seventeenth century,—and still men like this stood in
fiery sincerity and became mouthpieces for that people and its history
and its laws. The order to Judah and Simeon and Levi rolled through
the ages like never-cooling lava, withering and whelming vineyards of
thought. _Thou shalt not suffer doubt to live. He that differeth, he
shall die!_—And a thousand thousand pale shapes might rise to the
inner eye and speak to the inner ear. “_We died._”

Aderhold sat still, far back in Hawthorn Church. In his own mind he
saw that he was on the edge of the abyss. He doubted much if he would
escape.... The old farmer sitting, blue-smocked, beside him, his
watery eyes fixed upon the minister, broke now and again into a mutter
of repetition and comment. “Aye, aye! The misbeliever to perish for
idolatry.... Of course he blasphemes—the misbeliever blasphemes....
Aye, aye! ‘Why,’ and ‘Wherefore,’ the Devil’s own syllables.... Aye,
aye! Unbelief and sorcery go together.... Aye, now we’re at fire in
this world and everlasting, lasting fire to come!”

The preacher had before him a people who had come through a narrow
strait and a valley of the shadow, gathered together in a mood of
strained nerves, of twitches and starts aside, of a readiness to
take panic. The day was dark with heat and oppression, a sense of
hush before tempest. It was a day on which it was easy to awaken
emotion. The faces of the people showed pale in the dusk, breathing
became laboured. At last it grew that men and women looked aside with
something like a shudder and a sigh in the dimness. It was as though
they looked to see a serpent’s head, fanged and crowned, lifting itself
in the gloom from monstrous coils. Aderhold saw the slow turning of
eyes in his direction.

He thought swiftly. He had served many in this congregation. Since,
in the winter-time, his eyes had been opened, he knew of the drifting
talk of his hoarding gold, of his practising alchemy there in the dark
Oak Grange, alchemy, and perhaps worse. Even after his return from the
plague-stricken town, even in his going through Hawthorn countryside
from house to house where there were sick, helping, serving, even then
he had seen doubtful looks, had known his aid taken hurriedly, as it
were secretly and grudgingly. But all had not done so. There had been
those too simple and too suffering and sorrowful for that, and there
had been those whose minds seemed not to have taken the dye. There
were some in this church of whom, in the years he had dwelt in this
country, he had grown fond; folk that of their own bent felt for him
liking and kindness.... But he did not deceive himself. He knew of none
that would stand before this parching and withering wind. Heretofore
the talk might have been idle talk, but now it was evident that Master
Clement had at his shaken finger-ends the history in France of Gilbert
Aderhold. Friends! By what multitude of written words, of hearsay and
legend—by what considerable amount of personal observation did he
know how friends fell away from the denounced dreamer of dreams!...
Poor friends! He felt no rise of bitterness against them. They would
not have fallen away in physical battle; they would have stood many a
strain, perhaps all but this. This was not to cow the blood; it was to
cow mind and the immortal spirit. To face for a friend a wolf, a lion,
or an earthly angered King, that was well!—but to face for a friend an
angered God, to save him not from hell-fire and to be yourself whelmed,
remediless, for eternity! Few there were who could inwardly frame the
question, “Is He angered?” or “What is He that can be so angered?” or
“You who would silence this man with the silence of death, are you
beyond doubt the spokesmen of God and Eternity? Are you, after all,
_God’s_ Executioners?” But they said that they were, and the human mind
was clay to believe.... Aderhold looked over the church and thought he
saw none who would not be terrified aside.

Well! he asked those questions and other questions. Mind and moral
nature rose in him and stood. But he knew that his body would betray
him if it could. Highly strung, very sensitive to pain, he possessed
an imagination and memory vivid to paint or to bring back all manner
of pangs and shrinkings of the earthly frame. No detail of any Calvary
but in some wise he knew and feared it. He felt the cold sweat dew his
temples and break out upon the backs of his hands. He felt the nausea
that numbed and withered the brain and brought the longing for death....

Not in the beginning, the middle, or the ending of his white-heated
discourse did the minister call the name of Gilbert Aderhold or say
the Oak Grange. The invective, the “Lo, this is he that troubleth
Israel!” only drew in circles, closer, closer, until there was no one
there who did not know who was meant. The tremendous accusation was
of Atheism, but in and out there tolled like a lesser bell, _Sorcery!
Sorcery!_ The withdrawing light, the hot, small, vagrant breaths of
air, announcers of the onward rolling storm, the darkened hollow of
the building with the whitewashed walls glimmering pale, the faces
lifted from the benches, the square Hall pew, the high pulpit and the
black sounding-board and the black figure with the lifted arms and the
death-like shaken hands, and in the back of the church, all knew, even
if they could not see him, the man who had made pact with the Devil....
A woman fainted; a child began a frightened, whimpering crying. The
sands had quite run out from the upper half of the hourglass....

Aderhold, close to the door, was the first of the congregation to
step from the church into the open air. It would seem that those near
him held back, so as to let the fearful thing forth and out. The
churchyard path stretched bare before him, between the yews to the
mossed gate, and so forth from the immediate pale. There came as yet no
challenge or molestation. He had looked for this; when all had risen
and he with them, it had been with an inward bracing to meet at the
door a writ of arrest. He looked to see the Hawthorn constable. But he
was not at the door, or out upon the path, or at the gate.... The storm
was at hand, with clouds heavy and dark as the yew trees and with a
mutter of thunder. As he reached the village street, raindrops touched
his face. Behind him the churchyard was astir with people, murmuring
and dark. He wrapped his cloak about him, pulled his hat down against
the rain, and faced homeward. Almost immediately, the church being at
the village end, the cloud-shadowed country was about him.

He walked rapidly for half a mile, then halted and stood in the wind
and rain, trying to think it out. It occurred to him that he might turn
back through the fields and passing the village come out on the highway
and strike southward to the town and the castle. He knew not if his
friend of the hawk were yet at the castle. And if he were not?—and if
he were?...

There was that at the Oak Grange which must be considered. His
book—there in the quiet room behind the cupboard’s oaken door, all his
writing lying there—that which he was trying to put down. It turned
him decisively from the town and the bare chance of reaching help.
His book was his lover and playmate and child. He put himself into
motion again and went on toward the Grange, beneath the tempestuous
sky, through the wind and the rain.... When he came within Hawthorn
Forest there arrived a sudden lull. The oaks stood still around
him, the raindrops fringing branch and twig and unfolding tufts of
velvet leaves. Overhead the clouds drove apart, there came a gleam of
intensest blue. As he moved through the forest it took on an ineffable
beauty. When he came to the edge and to the stream murmuring over its
pebbly strand there was a great rainbow. He crossed the footbridge and
went on by the fairy oak.

Within the still old house was none but himself. Dorothy and the boy,
her nephew, had been there in Hawthorn Church. They would come on but
slowly; indeed, they might have stopped at a cousin’s on the way;
indeed, he knew not if, terrified and at a loss, they would come back
to the Grange at all. They might, perhaps, have waited to beseech the
minister’s and the squire’s protection and advice. There was a fire
in the kitchen. Aderhold, spreading his cloak to dry, knelt upon the
hearth, crouched together, bathed by the good warmth. But even while
the light and comfort played about him there came into his mind,
suddenly, with sickening strength, a thing that he had witnessed in his
childhood, here in England. Again he saw a woman burning at a stake....
He shuddered violently, rose and left the room.

Upstairs he unlocked the cupboard and took from it a heap of closely
covered manuscript. It rested upon the table before him.... He stood
for some moments with a bowed head; presently his hand stole to the
leaves and caressed them. He knew what he should do; he should take
the whole down to the kitchen and lay it in the fire. Since the
warning of the man with the hawk he had known that that was what
should be done. The knowledge had lain upon his heart at night. “I
will do it to-morrow,” and again, “I will do it to-morrow.” The only
other thing was to hide it in some deep and careful place, whence, if
ever there came escape and security, he might recover it, or where,
long years after he was dead, men might find it and read it. He had
thought of digging beneath the fairy oak—but the fire, he knew, was
the safest.... He gathered all together and with it in his hands went
downstairs. He thought that he had decided upon the fire, but going, he
had a vision of a mattock and spade resting behind an outhouse door.
Now would be the time to dig, now at once! As his foot touched the oak
flooring of the hall there sounded a heavy knock upon the door. It was
not locked or barred; even as he stood the one uncertain instant, it
swung inward to admit the men who had followed him from Hawthorn.




CHAPTER XIV

NIGHT


THE storm that had broken in the early afternoon regathered. The clouds
hung low and black, the wind whistled, the rain came in gusts, now
and again there was lightning and thunder. It was so dark in Heron’s
cottage, behind the deep, dripping eaves, that Joan moving to and fro
seemed a shadow among shadows. The hearth glowed, but she held her hand
from making a bright light with fresh faggots. Her mood was not for the
dancing flame.

What it was for she knew not. She only knew that she was suited by
the rain that dashed, by the bending fruit trees, striking the thatch
with mossed boughs, the solemn roll of the thunder, the darkness and
solitude. She paced the room, her arms lifted and crossed behind her
head. At last a bit of unburned wood caught and sent up forked flames.
Light and shadow danced about the walls. The grey and white cat came
and walked with Joan, rubbing against her skirt.

The thunder rolled. Outside, the murk of the day thickened toward
evening. A hand fell across the door, then pressed the latch. The
door swung inward; there was a vision of a muffled figure, behind it
wind-tossed trees and up-towering clouds lit by lightning.

“Who is it?” Joan cried sharply; then, as the man let drop the cloak he
had been holding across his face, “Master Carthew!...”

The firelight, sinking, left only the smouldering coals and the room
almost dark. Joan, moving swiftly across the room, seized fresh brands
and threw them upon the old. A flame leaped up; the place was fairly
light again. She turned upon him. “To come here—to come here—”

“Aye,” he answered, “to come here.” He unclasped his great cloak and
let it drop on the settle, took off his steeple-crowned hat and set
it on the cloak. He stood out, dark-clothed, plain as Master Clement
himself in what he wore, with short-cut hair, with handsome features,
haggard, flushed, and working. “Do you know whence I have come? I have
come from leading men to the Oak Grange where they took and bound that
atheist there and carried him away to gaol. You’ll walk no more with
him in Hawthorn Forest.”

Joan drew a heavy, painful breath. “I walked little with him in
Hawthorn Forest. But when my father took the plague he came to him. He
is a good man! Aye, I was in church and heard Master Clement—”

“Nay, I think that you walked much. But now you will walk no more.” He
came nearer to her. “Joan, put that Satan’s servant from out your mind!
Turn instead to one who sinneth truly and puts oftentimes in peril his
immortal soul, but is at least no misbeliever and denier of God’s
Word. Joan—Joan!”

He tried to take her in his arms. She was strong and broke from him.
Behind her was a shelf with some pewter jugs and dishes and small
articles of use. She put up her arm and snatched from it a good and
keen hunting-knife; then stood, breathing quickly, the firelight
reddening the blade in her hand.

He gave a harsh and forced laugh. “Put it down, Joan! I did not mean to
fright thee. I came to persuade—”

“Nay, I’ll keep it by me,” said Joan. “Persuade me to what? To feel
love for you? That, Master Carthew, you cannot do! But you could make
me feel gratitude—”

“If I took hat and cloak and went from out your door?”

“Aye, just.”

“I cannot.... No man ever loved as I love you.... Here, this dusk, this
Sabbath.—Think if I am in earnest.... Joan, Joan! If I lose for thee
my immortal soul—”

She made a sound of anger and contempt. “Oh, thy little immortal soul!
Be but mortal—and just!” The tears rose in her grey eyes. “See what
you will do to me! Say that you were seen coming here—say that any
of the times you have waited for me, waylaid me, met me against my
will, you were watched—we were seen together.... You are a man and
a gentleman and a great man in this country. It will not harm you.
But Joan Heron—but Joan Heron—it will harm her! It will provide her
misery for all her days!”

Carthew struck his hand against the settle. “Is not all my name and
future risked? I am not of the old England, nor of to-day’s careless
and idolatrous England. My world is the world of the new England, of
the forces of the Lord mustering upon the straight and narrow path
where there is no room for Satan’s toys! And if I turn aside to Babylon
and the flesh and its madness, and if my turning becomes known—Joan,
Joan, you know not how great is my risk—even my worldly risk! As for
the other—as for my risk of God’s hatred and damnation—but I will
not speak of that.... Enough that I am here, and that to hold you
consenting in my arms would even all out and make my lead gold and my
torment bliss! Joan—if you would but love me and feel how the risk is
outweighed! As for security, we can manage that. Many another pair has
managed that. To-day—here—with the wind and rain keeping all within
doors.... I rode with the men some way toward the town, and then I
left them, saying there were matters at home that needed. When they
were out of sight, I turned through the fields and went up the stream
that was all solitary, until I was over against the Oak Grange and the
forest all around me. Then I turned and rode here through the forest,
and fastened my horse in a hollow out there where none may see him....
Joan, it is like a desert all about us—or like Paradise garden. Joan,
Joan, I love you! Joan, have pity!”

There came an access of lightning with thunder and a prolonged
whistling of the wind. In the warring light and darkness of the room,
Carthew, as though the final spring of restraint had snapped, came
close to her, put his arms about her. The lightning blazed again, and
by it both saw with distinctness a man and woman standing without,
their faces close to the window. In the darkness after the flash,
they left it and came on to the cottage door, but as yet did not
knock. Within the room, Carthew, sobered, the colour ebbing from
his face, only one consideration pouring in upon his mind, released
Joan and caught from the settle hat and cloak. There was a second
outward-opening door, giving upon the bit of garden behind the cottage,
leading in its turn to the forest. He looked toward it. She nodded,
“Yes, yes, go!” He came close to her, moving noiselessly and speaking
low, “Do you think they saw—saw at all?”

She shook her head. “I do not know.”

“It was too dusk within. I do not think they saw. Keep counsel, Joan,
for thy own sake if not for mine.”

The two without knocked. Carthew crossed the floor without sound,
opened the forest-facing door, and with a gesture of farewell vanished.
There was a continuous noise of wind and rain; what daylight was left
and the lightning were all without; it might truly be doubted if one
glancing through the window could either see or hear, the interior was
so dusky, the voice of wind and wet so continuing. Joan, with a long,
shuddering sigh, put down the hunting-knife, and going to the door
opened it. The two who stood there were Will the smith’s son and his
mother. They had, it seemed, the weather clearing, walked to see the
forester’s people; then, the clouds returning, they had taken their
leave to hurry home. But the storm had overtaken them—and they had
thought to take refuge until the rain lessened in Heron’s cottage. But
they did not know—they thought they had better go on.

“Come in and warm and dry yourselves,” said Joan.

They came in hesitatingly. They looked around them, confused and
doubtful. They sat on the settle by the fire and stared at the grey and
white cat. Will was trembling, and it could not be from the wet and
chill, for he was used to that.

His mother was of stouter mental make. “Were you alone, Joan? It seemed
to us there was somebody else—”

“Why, who else,” asked Joan, “could there have been?” She looked around
her. “The shadows moving along the walls do look like people.”

“It looked,” said Will, in a strange voice, “as though you and a shadow
were locked and moving together. It looked like a tall black man.” He
stared at the fire and at the grey and white cat. A fine, bead-like
moisture that was not rain clung to his brow, beneath his yellow elf
locks.

“No, no black man,” said Joan. “I myself fancy all kinds of things in a
storm.”

Her woman guest was silent. She sat with bead-like blue eyes now on
Joan, now upon the kitchen from wall to wall. But Will’s perturbation
remained. The events of the day, North-End Farm talk and the tinker’s
talk, the atmosphere of heat and storm, church and the denunciation of
his old master’s kinsman, the physician with whom at the Oak Grange he
had himself been in daily contact, the talk at the forester’s which
had been of the marvellous, indeed, and the evident power of Satan;
afterwards the dark wood, the lightning, rain, and thunder, and then
the momentary spectral vision through the window, which now, it seemed,
was naught—all wrought powerfully upon his unstable imagination. There
flowed into his mind his long-ago adventure with the wolf that ran
across the snow-field, and was trapped that night but never found ...
but old Marget Primrose was found with her ankle cut. The remembrance
dragged with it another—he was again with that same physician sitting
his horse before the portal of the great church in the town—the
carvings in the stone struck with almost material force back into his
mind that was edged already with panic. _Witches and devils...._ And
the tinker’s talk of how Scotland was beset, and Satan buying women,
old and young.... He had always thought of witches being old like
Marget Primrose or like Mother Spuraway—but, of course, they could be
young.... The forester’s wife, that afternoon, had said something—it
hummed back through his head. Her beehives were bewitched by Joan
Heron’s beehives....

His mind was tinder to every superstitious spark. With a whistling
breath and a shuffling of the feet, he rose from the settle. “We’re dry
and warm now, mother.—Let’s be getting home.”

His mother, it seemed, was ready. Her parting with Joan was somewhat
tight-lipped and stony. “Seeing that you are alone now in the world
’tis a pity you ever had to leave living by the town and the castle!
There were fine strange doings there that you miss, no doubt—”

The two went out into the declining day. The rain had ceased, but the
wind blew hard, driving vast iron-grey clouds across the sky. However,
since the thunder had rolled away, one could talk. As soon as the two
were out of the cottage gate and upon the serpentine green path, wet
beneath the wet trees, they began to talk.

“It was something,” said Will; “and then when we got within, it was
nothing.... Mother!”

“Aye, aye,” said his mother. “It wasn’t to be seen plain. But she was
not by herself.”

“Mother ... the tinker saith that the Scotch witches all have
familiars. A man or a woman or sometimes children see such and such
an one walking or talking with a tall black man, but when they get
close there is only, maybe, a dog, or a cat, or sometimes a frog or a
mouse.... But the witch-prickers always find the witch’s mark where the
Devil that is her familiar sucks.... And then the witch confesses and
tells how the Devil is now tall and black like himself and now shrinks
into the small beast, and how by his power she can herself change her
shape.”—Will shivered and his eyes glanced fearfully about. “Mother,
do you think that there was something evil there?”

His mother looked steadily before her with beady blue eyes. “I don’t
know what I think. I think there was somebody or something there that
she didn’t want seen or known about—but where it went, or he went....
Don’t you think any more that you might marry her.”

Back in Heron’s cottage Joan sat crouched before the fire. She fed
it now constantly with wood so as to make the whole room light. A
determination was taking form in her mind. To-morrow she would walk to
the town, and climb the castle hill, and ask for Mistress Borrow at the
castle. The old housekeeper had called her a pagan, but natheless she
had been fond of Joan and Joan of her.... Now to go to the castle, and
find her in the cheerful housekeeper’s room and to sit on the floor
beside her with head, maybe, in her lap, and free a burdened heart and
mind and ask counsel.... She would do it. She would start early—at
sunrise. The vigour of her purpose lightened her heart; she rose to
her feet, and going to the window, looked out. It was quite dark. The
storm had died away, but the sky was filled with torn and hurrying
clouds. Now hidden, now silvering cloud and earth, a half-moon hurried
too. Joan stood gazing, her face lifted. She thought of her father. At
last she raised her arm, closed the casement, and drew across it its
linen curtain. From the cupboard she took a candlestick and candle and
lighted the latter with a splinter from the hearth. She set it upon the
table, and going to the main door turned the large key in the lock.
This done, she moved across the kitchen floor to the small door giving
upon the back. The key was lost of this, but there was a heavy bar. She
had lifted this to slip it into place when the door, pushing against
her, opened from without. Carthew reëntered the room.

Joan uttered a cry less of fright than of sudden and great anger.
“Beware,” she cried, “that I do not kill you yet! Begone from this
place!”

He shook his head. “No. I have watched all away. Who comes, after
curfew, of a wet and wild night, to your cottage? No good folk of this
region, I am sure. So we’re alone now, Joan, at last!”

He made a movement past her. She saw what he was after, and, lithe and
quick herself, she was there first. She had the knife again.... They
stood facing each other in the lit room, and Joan spoke.

“Thou hypocrite!” she said; “thou pillar of Hawthorn Church and
dependence of God on high and Master Clement! Thou hope of England!
Thou searcher-out of iniquity and punisher of wrong-doing! Thou
perceiver of high things and the meaning of the world! Thou judge and
master in thy own conceit!—Thou plain and beast-like man, who wantest
but one thing and knows not love, but lust—”

He caught her in his arms. He was strong, but so was she. They
struggled, swaying, their shadows, in firelight and candlelight,
towering above them. They breathed hard—they uttered broken words,
ejaculations. He was in the grasp of the brute past; she struggled with
the energy of despair and hatred. She felt that he gained. Need taught
her cunning. She seemed to give in his clasp, then, in the moment when
he was deceived, she gathered all her strength, tore her arm free, and
struck with the hunting-knife.

The blade entered his side. She drew it out, encrimsoned. They fell
apart, Carthew reeling against the wall. The colour ebbed from his
face. He felt the bleeding, and thrusting a scarf within his doublet,
strove to stanch it. As he leaned there, he kept his eyes upon her.
But with the suddenness of the lightning their expression had changed.
Wrath and defeat and shame were written in them; desire still, but
mixed now with something baleful, with something not unlike hate. The
bleeding continued. He felt a singing in his ears and a mist before his
eyes.

With the ice of the new mood came a sense of the peril of his position.
Did he swoon here from loss of blood—grow so weak that he could not
get away—be found here when day came—. The scandal flared out in
letters of fire before him. He saw the face of Master Clement, and
the faces of other and more powerful men of the faction, religious
and political, with which he was becoming strongly identified.... He
must get away—get home—framing some story as he went. His horse was
near—the streaming blood seemed less.

Joan stood like a dart, in her face blended relief and horror. They
stared each at the other.

“Do you remember,” said Carthew in a hollow voice, “in the forest
there, I said that love might turn to hate? Beware lest it has turned!”

“You may hate me,” said Joan. “You never loved me.”

He took his eyes from her and moving haltingly to the door opened it.
His horse was close outside, fastened within the small enclosure.
Through the dark oblong, by the light of the half-moon, she saw him
mount. He gathered up the reins, he held also by the horse’s mane. His
face looked back at her for a moment, a ghastly, an enemy’s face. Then
there was only the mournful night and Heron’s cottage, thatch-roofed,
sunk among blossoming fruit trees from which the raindrops dripped,
dripped.




CHAPTER XV

NEXT DAY


AT sunrise she shut the cottage door behind her, locked it, and put the
key in a hiding-place under the eaves, then went down the path between
the daffodils and out of the little gate. She had a basket upon her arm
and within it in a blue jar a honeycomb for a gift to Mistress Borrow.
It was a morning fresh and fragrant, the grass diamonded with last
night’s rain, the tree-tops veiled with mist, distant cocks crowing.
When she came upon the road the sun was drinking up the mist; it was
going to be a beautiful day.

She walked for some distance toward the village, but at a point where
she saw Carthew House among the trees and the church yews were growing
large before her, she turned into a path that would take her through
the fields and bring her out upon the highway with the village left
behind. She did not wish to go through the village, she did not wish to
pass Alison Inch’s door, she did not wish to come near to Carthew House.

She walked between the springing grain, and through a copse where a
thrush was singing, and by a stream that was the same that murmured
past the Oak Grange, and so at last came back to the highway. She
looked back. The village roofs, the church tower, rested dark against
the blue sky; light curls of smoke were rising and a great bird sailed
overhead.

Before her, over hill and dale, ran the road to the town. She shifted
her basket to the other arm and walked on in the golden morning. Now
she was by nature courageous, and by nature also a lover of light and
air, of form and colour, of diverse motion and the throb of life. In
her soul the whole round earth mirrored itself as alive, and, despite
black moods and fits of madness, as dominantly good and fair. What of
sorrow, gloom, and care had of late clung about her, what of terror
and horror the happening of the evening before had left with her,
slowly lessened, grew diaphanous in the sunlight and open country. The
road began to entertain her, and there came sweet wafted memories of
the castle wood, of how fondly she and her father and uncle had lived
together and understood one another and liked life, and of all the
pleasant doings when the great family were at the castle. Music hummed
in her ears again, the figures of the masque filed across the green
sward.

In the fresh morning there was more or less meeting and passing on
the road. A shepherd with a flock of sheep overtook her, and she
stood under an elm to let them by. The shepherd whistled clearly, the
sheep kept up their plaintive crying, pushing and jostling with their
woolly bodies, their feet making a small pattering sound. “To market!
To market!” said the shepherd. “Are you for the market, too, pretty
maid?” Farther on she overtook in her turn two or three children going
on some errand and walked with them awhile. They wanted to know what
was in her basket and she opened the jar and showed them the bright
honeycomb, then, breaking clean skewers from a wayside hazel, dipped
them in the liquid gold and gave each child a taste. They left her at
a lane mouth, and she walked for a little way with two women who were
carrying between them an old tavern sign painted with a sheaf of wheat
and a giant bunch of grapes. When she had left these two behind and had
gone some distance upon a bare, sunny road, she saw before her like a
picture the river and the bridge, the climbing town and the castle. She
could make out the Black Tower among the trees.

The town was quit of the plague. To the knowing there would be still
visible a gloom about the place, a trailing shadow of remembered fear
and loss. People would be missed from the streets, vacant houses and
shops remarked. Street cries and sounds would come more sombrely and
the sunshine fall less warmly. But to the stranger it would seem a
town as usual. For Joan, it was not so gay and rich as once it had
been, because she that looked on it was not so care-free as once she
had been. But still it was to her the great town, so different from
Hawthorn, so jewelled with pleasant memories.... She passed the
vintner’s house and was glad to see that it was open and cheerful, and
that therefore he had not died of the plague. At length she came to
climb the castle hill, and with her heart beating fast to cross the
pleasaunce and go around to a certain small door of the offices through
which she would soonest gain admittance to Mistress Borrow. The sky was
so blue, the grass, the flowers, the budding trees were so fair, mavis
and lark and robin sang so shrill and sweet, that earth and heaven once
more assumed for Joan a mother aspect. Warm, not unhappy, tears came
to her eyes. She shook them back and went on over daisies and violets.
She had not slept last night and the miles were long between her and
Heron’s cottage. She felt light-headed with the assurance of comfort
and counsel, the sense that the black cloud that had gathered about her
so strangely, so almost she knew not how, would now begin to melt away.

Mistress Borrow was not at the castle. Her sister, thirty miles away,
was dying of a dropsy, and the housekeeper had been given leave to
go to her. She had gone last week—she might be away a month.... The
family were not there—they had gone at the first alarm of the plague.
Sir Richard had stayed through it and my lord the countess’s father,
had stopped for a week, but they, too, were now away.... It was a
civil-spoken girl who told her all this, a new maidservant who had
no knowledge of Joan. There were men and women servitors whom she
remembered and who would remember her, but when the girl asked if,
Mistress Borrow being away, she could do her errand to any one else,
she shook her head. “You look dazed,” said the maid. “Better come in
and sit awhile.” But no, said Joan, she must be getting home. So she
thanked the girl, and they said good-morning to each other, and she
left the little door and the flagged courtyard, and coming out under
an archway found herself again upon the flower-starred grass, with
the shadows of the trees showing two hours from noon. To the right
stretched the castle wood, and she would go through it and see again
the huntsman’s house.

It rose among the trees before her, a comfortable, friendly, low,
deep-windowed place. She would not go very near; she did not know the
people who had it now, and truly she felt dazed and beaten and did not
wish questioning or talk. She found an old, familiar oak with huge and
knotted roots rising amid bracken, and here she sank down and lay with
her head upon her arm and her eyes upon the place where in all her
life she had been happiest. An old hound came and snuffed about her, a
redbreast watched her from a bough. She lay for some time, resting, not
thinking but dreaming back. At last she rose, settled the basket upon
her arm, looked long at the huntsman’s house, then turned away, and
leaving the wood began to descend the castle hill.

When she passed through the high street of the town the church bells
were ringing. She turned out of the brighter street into one that
sloped to the river, and here she came upon an open place and the
prison tall and dark. She stopped short, standing in the shadow of a
bit of wall. It was easy for one’s own cares to make one forget, and
she had forgotten Aderhold. But he would be here—there was no real
gaol in Hawthorn itself, though offenders might be locked for a time in
a dungeon-like room beneath the sexton’s house. But a learned man and
a property-owner and a man accused of the greatest crime of all, which
was to deny the real existence and power of the God of Abraham, Isaac,
and Jacob,—such an one would be brought here. They would have haled
Master Aderhold here last night.... She stood and gazed at the frowning
mass. The windows were few and far apart and small and closely barred.
To-day that was so sunshiny bright would be stifling and black enough
in there. She wished that she could send in the light and air.

A man, coming, too, from the high street with his course shaped
for Hawthorn Village, joined her where she stood. He was a wiry,
crooked-shouldered, grizzle-headed, poorly clad person with a face of
some knavery, cunning, and wildness. Over his shoulder, strung together
with leather thongs, hung some small pots and pans, and in a leather
pouch he seemed to carry tools and bits of metal. Joan recognized him
for the tinker, who, after wandering far and wide, came back, at long
intervals, to a hut just this side of Hawthorn. It appeared that on his
part he remembered her face. “From Heron’s cottage, mistress?—near
the Oak Grange.” He seemed to cast a glance upon the prison, but then
he looked at her grey eyes and her face, paler to-day than was its
wont, and asked if she had walked from home. She said yes, she had been
to see the housekeeper at the castle—but she was not there. “Was she
walking back to Hawthorn?” Yes, she said, and began to move across the
prison square. He moved with her. “I walked from Hawthorn myself this
morning. Matters to buy for my trade! Shall stop here at the Boar’s
Head before I take the road back.” To her content he left her, and she
went on by the great church and down the hill to the arched bridge. But
when she had crossed it, and when the river behind her lay thin like a
silver crescent, she found him again at her side.

It was hot midday and the road bare of folk. She did not wish a
travelling companion and would have liked to tell him so, but she was
somehow cowed this noon, weary and listless where on the sunrise road
she had been hopeful. She let him walk beside her, a freakish figure,
vowed to mischief. Immediately he began to talk about the plague.
Her father had died?—“Yes.”—He had been told so. Many people had
died—many people in the town, and not so many, but enough in Hawthorn
and roundabout. Once he saw the plague. He was lying in the heather
on a hillside near a town that had it. Dark was coming. Then a great
figure of a woman, black and purple, with a veil all over, rose
straight up above the roofs and chimneys. She lifted her arms and took
the veil from her head, and it was crowned with shiny gold and she was
the Plague—and she floated in the sky and took her veil and drew it
behind her, and every roof it touched they were going to die in that
house.—Yes, tinkers saw strange things, wandering over the country.
There were a many strange things, weren’t there? The plague left the
country very fearful—and there was another strange thing, Fear! It
took a man and knocked the heart out of him—but then to make up, it
gave him more eyes and ears than he’d ever had before!

He looked at her aslant. “Did you ever see the Devil?”

“No.”

“Then you aren’t fearful,” said the tinker. “Fearful folk can see him
plain.”

He kept silence for a little, his eyes upon a cloud of butterflies
fluttering before them over a muddy place in the road, then again
turned upon Joan his curious, half-squinting look. “Of course there’ve
been men who weren’t afraid and yet have seen him. Men who were great
enemies to him, and pushing him hard, and he so angry and despairing
that he shows himself, tail, claws, and all! Tall Bible men and great
men like Doctor Martin Luther who threw his ink-well at him. And a
lot of other men—mass-priests, and bishops, and marprelates, all
the same. It’s to their honour to have seen him, for so the people
see how the Devil must hate them to come himself to beard them, and
what a strong enemy they are to him, which means, of course, that the
King of Heaven must hold them in high regard.—Even poor wights may
sometimes give a good blow—just as a camp-follower might save an army
or a scullion a palace! I’m not saying that I didn’t get a glint of his
horns myself once on Little Heath, between two furze bushes!”

Joan was not talkative. She walked steadily on, but she was tired, and
her mind now seemed to drowse, and now, rousing itself, strayed far
from the other’s talk.

The tinker was piqued by her inattention. “And then witches and
warlocks see him.—_Women_ see him,” he said with spite. “And not
because they’re his enemies neither! Ten women know him, hair and hoof,
to one man.... For why? They knew him first, as the good Book tells us,
and became his gossips in Eden Garden. So ’tis that still when things
go wrong ’tis woman that gives them the shog. The Devil gives her the
apple still, and she takes it and shakes out harm on mankind—which
is why we’ve got a leave to keep her somewhat down! That’s woman in
ordinary—and then you come to witches—”

Joan’s eyelids twitched.

He saw that she attended. “Witches! First they begin by having commerce
with elves and fays, green men, and such. They get into fairy hills
and eat and drink there, and they dance in the moonlight around trees
in the wood. But the elves are the Devil’s cousins, and he’s always on
hand, and some night he comes smirking up, dressed now this way and
now that. So the woman drops a curtsy, and he puts out his hand and
gives her something, just as he did in Eden Garden. She takes it, and
that seals her both sides of the Judgement Day! Pay for pay! Blood
gives him strength, and so he sucks from a little place he makes upon
her body—that’s the witch mark that can’t be made to feel pain, and
that’s why we strip and prick witches to find their mark, which is
better proof even than their confessing! Now she’s the Devil’s servant
and leman forever, and begins to work evil and practise the Black Art.
He shows her how to fly through the air and change herself into all
manner of shapes. Then she goes to his Sabbat and learns to know other
witches and maybe a wizard or two, though there aren’t so many wizards.
They’re mostly witches and demons. If you look overhead at night you
can sometimes see a scud of them flying between you and the moon. Then
begin the tempests of hail and thunder and lightning, and the ships
that are sunk at sea, and the murrain in the cattle, and the corn
blighted and ricks burned and beasts lamed and children possessed and
gear taken and sickness come—”

He stopped to cough and also to observe if she were listening. She was
listening. He was saying nothing that she had not heard before. They
were commonplaces alike of pulpit and doorstep. But it had all been
like figures seen afar off and upon another road. Now she had come to
a place in life where, bewildered, she found them about her. Joan was
conscious that life was becoming like an evil dream. Just as in a dream
a hundred inconsequences might form the strongest net, entangling you,
withholding you from some longed-for escape, so now, awake, a hundred
things so little in themselves— She never said to herself that there
was a net weaving about her; the mind, struck and bewildered, could not
yet give things a name, perhaps would not if it could. She only saw the
gold and warmth going for her steadily out of the sunshine—and knew
not how it came that they were going nor how to stop that departure.
Now she said dully, “I do not believe all that,” and then saw
immediately that it was a mistake for any one to say that.

The tinker again looked aslant. “Most of your witches are old women.
At their Sabbats you’ll see a hundred withered gammers, dancing and
leaping around a fire with the Devil sitting in the midst, and all
sing-songing a charm and brewing in a kettle a drink with which to
freeze men’s blood! But each crew hath always one young witch that they
call the maiden. A young and well-looking wench with red lips and she
calls the dance. They were burning such an one where I was a while ago
in Scotland. She cried out, ‘I be no witch! I be no witch!’ to the
end. But they sang and prayed her down and she burned on.”

Joan moistened her lips. “Why did they think she was—”

“Ah,” said the tinker, “there was a young laird she had bewitched! He
peaked and pined and syne he cried out that a dirk was always turning
in his side. So they found, beneath the hearth in her cot, a figure of
wax with a rusted nail set in its side, and as the wax melted away,
so was he to pine. And there were other tokens and matters proved on
her. Beside, when they tried her in the loch she never sank at all.
_Convicta et combusta_—which is what they write in witch cases upon
the court book.”

By now they were much advanced upon the Hawthorn road. The day was
warm, the air moist and languid. Joan felt deadly tired. There swam
in her mind a desire to be away, away—to find a door from this earth
that was growing drear and ugly. She moved in silence, her grey eyes
wide and fixed. The tinker, his throat dry with talking, drew in front
of him one of the pans which he carried and in lieu of further speech
drummed upon it as he walked. Presently a cart came up behind them,
empty but for a few trusses of hay, and the carter known to them both,
being Cecily Lukin’s brother.

“Hey!” said the tinker. “Give me a lift!”

The cart stopped. “Get in!” said Lukin. He stared at Joan.

The tinker, swinging himself up, spoke with a grin. “There’s room for
you too—”

Joan shook her head. She made no halting, but went on by in her greyish
gown and wide hat with her basket on her arm.

The carter flicked his horse, the cart passed her, left her behind, in
a few minutes disappeared around a bend of the road. To the last the
two men stared back at her; she seemed to hear Lukin’s slow, clownish
voice repeating Cecily’s tattle—Cecily’s and Alison’s.

Hawthorn Village grew plain before her: thatched cottages, the trees
upon the green, the church yews and the church tower—there flashed
upon her again yesterday at church, and Master Aderhold in prison. He
was a good man; despite what the minister had said, she believed that
with passion—he was a good man. It had not kept them from haling him
to prison. What would they do to him, what?... She came to the path
that would spare her going through the village and turned into it from
the highway. It led her by the stream and through the fields and out
upon Hawthorn Forest road. Heron’s cottage was in sight when she met
Goodman Cole, walking to the village.

He looked at her oddly. “Good-day, Joan.”

“Good-day, Goodman.”

“Where have you been?”

“I walked to the castle to see Mistress Borrow. But she was not there.”

Goodman Cole propped himself upon his stick, full in her way in the
sunny road. “We are seeing strange doings in Hawthorn Parish! Aye,
strange doings we are seeing! Have you heard about Master Harry
Carthew?”

“No.—Heard what?”

“Then I’ll tell you,” said the old man. “Yesterday afternoon Master
Carthew rode a part of the way with the men who were taking the leech
to the town.—And there,” said Goodman Cole, “is another strange thing!
That we could like an atheist well enough, and think him skilled and
kindly, and all the time he was mankind’s deadliest foe! ’Twas the
Devil sure that blinded us!—Well, as I was telling you, Master Carthew
rode a part of the way. Then, having seen them well started, he turns
his horse, meaning to go first to Master Clement’s to consult about
having a commission named, before the next assize, to look into a many
things that have happened about Hawthorn, some in connection with the
leech and some by themselves—and then to ride from the minister’s home
to Carthew House. It was stormy as we know, the kind of hot and dark
storm they say witches brew. He was riding, looking straight before
him, and thinking what a darkness like the darkness of the sky was over
England, when what does his horse do but start aside and begin to rear
and plunge—and yet there was nothing there! It lightened, and the road
on all sides lay bare. And yet, in an instant, just like that! Master
Carthew was struck in the side and wounded as by a sword or dagger. It
lightened again and he had time to see a tall black man dressed, bit
for bit, like the leech,—and it lightened the third time and the road
was bare as a blade, only he saw on the top of a bank a figure like a
woman making signs to the sky. Then it fell dark, and there burst a
great roar of thunder and wind and the horse began to run. He checked
it just outside Hawthorn and rode around by Old Path and the fields,
for he felt himself bleeding and did not wish to frighten people. So,
going slowly, he got home at last, and they laid him in bed and found a
great wound in his side.... Joan!”

“Will he die?” said Joan.

“And will you be glad if he does?... Wench, wench, why do you look like
that?”

The old man and she faced each other, between them but a narrow space
of the forest road. Her face was mobile, transparent,—a clear window
through which much of her nature might be read. She had never thought
to try to veil it—never until of late. It was, on the whole, a strong
and beautiful nature, and none had quarrelled with the face that was
its window. But of late there had come into her life to work her injury
something bitter, poisonous, and dark. Fear and hatred had come, and
a burning wrath against the net that was weaving, she knew not how—a
wrath and helplessness and a wrath against her helplessness. All her
nature flamed against a lie and an injustice. And because she had
known so little fear, and when it came it found it hard to make an
entry, so it worked like poison when it was within the citadel. It
was the foe she liked least; all her being rose and wrought to cast
it out. But it was giving her a fight—it was giving her a fight....
And nowadays she had to try not to show what she thought or felt.
Sometimes, by force of wit and will, she succeeded, keeping her soul
back from the window of her face. She was not succeeding now, she felt.
She bit her lips, she struggled, she turned her face from Goodman Cole,
and stood, her hands closing and unclosing, then, the victory won, but
too late to save her with him, she turned upon him a quiet face.

It was too late. A good old man, but simple and superstitious, he was
staring at her with a misliking and terror of his own.

“I’d heard tales, but I wouldn’t believe any real harm of Heron’s
daughter,—but God knows what to think when a woman looks like that!”
He edged from her, his hand trembled upon his staff; he would evidently
put distance between them, be gone on his way. “The minister saith that
from the Witch of Endor on they have baleful eyes—”

He suddenly put himself in motion. “Good-day to you!” he said in a
quavering voice, and went on down the road with a more rapid step than
was his wont.




CHAPTER XVI

MASTER THOMAS CLEMENT


TWO magistrates and certain of the clergy of the town, Justice Carthew
and Master Thomas Clement from Hawthorn, sat in consultation in a room
opening from the hall of assizes. Court was not sitting—it lacked a
month and more of the time when judges on circuit would appear and make
a gaol delivery. In the mean time a precognition was to be prepared.
The case was diabolical and aggravated, involving as it did apostasy,
idolatry, blasphemy, and sorcery of a dye most villanous. Evidence
should not lack, witnesses must abound. On the main counts of apostasy
and blasphemy the prisoner was himself convict by himself. He had been
brought from the prison hard by to this room for examination, and the
clergy had questioned him. But no pressure or cunning questions would
make him confess idolatry or sorcery or the procuring of Master Harry
Carthew’s wound.

The clerk wrote down what they had—Master Clement’s evidence and
Squire Carthew’s, together with the evidence they had gathered from
others at Hawthorn, the clergy’s questions and the prisoner’s answers.
He copied also Master Harry Carthew’s written testimony, Master Carthew
himself being still in bed, fevered of his wound. There was enough
and many times enough for the physician’s commitment and most close
confinement until assize day—enough to warrant what Carthew and the
clergy urged, a petition to the Privy Council that there be especially
sent a certain judge known and belauded for his strict handling of
such offences, and that, pending assizes, a commission be named to
take depositions and make sweeping examination throughout the Hawthorn
end of the county—seeing that Satan had rarely just one in his court.
Indeed, there were signs in many directions of a hellish activity,
whether in pact with the leech or independent of him remained to be
discovered. Hawthorn mentioned the afflicted child at North-End Farm,
the great number of lamed animals, a barn consumed to ashes, and the
hailstorm that had cut the young wheat.

“A woman was seen by Master Harry Carthew?”

The squire nodded. “Aye. Moreover, this long time Mother Spuraway has
been suspect.”

The minister of Hawthorn sat, a small, rigid, black figure, his hands
clasped upon the board before him, his light-hued, intense eyes seeing
always one fixed vision. His voice was unexpectedly powerful, though
of a rigid quality and inclined to sing-song. “My mind is not made
up as to what brought the plague to Hawthorn and the region north.
But I hold it full likely that Satan was concerned to harass a godly
and innocent people, godly beyond many in England, if I say it that
perhaps should not! It is well known and abundantly proved that his
imps and ministers, his infidels, Sadducees, and witches go about to
construct a pestilence no less readily than they do a hailstorm or a
tempest that miserably sinks a ship at sea. I would have the commission
take evidence upon that point also—”

The clerk, a thin, stooping, humble man, slightly coughed, then spoke
deprecatingly. “If I may make so bold, your worships—the prisoner hath
a manner of good reputation among some in this town. He came during the
plague and healed many.”

“Aye, so?” answered Justice Carthew. “About Hawthorn also may be found
a few silly folk who would praise him, though none I think will praise
him who were at church last Sunday! But this cargo of damnable stuff
we’ve found will beat down their good opinion.”

“The unsafest thing,” said a fellow justice, and nodded
portentously,—“the unsafest thing a plain man can do is to think and
speak well of a heretic.”

And with that serving-men from the Boar’s Head near by entered, bearing
a collation for the magistrates and clergy assembled....

Late in the afternoon the men from Hawthorn returned home. Squire
Carthew rode with pursed lips, ponderously on to Carthew House. But the
minister refused an invitation to accompany him. He wished to consider
these matters in his closet, alone with the Scriptures and in prayer.
He put up his horse and went into his small, chill house. There lived
with him an aunt and one maidservant, and, it being late, they had his
supper spread and waiting. But he would not touch the food; he had
ordained for himself a fast.

With a candle in his hand he went into his small bare room and closed
the door. Cloak and hat laid aside, he appeared slight and spare and
sad-coloured, a man as intensely in earnest as might well be; a man,
as far as his conscious knowledge of himself could light the vaults
and caverns, sincere and of an undivided will to the service and
glory of his God. On the table lay his Bible, open; from wall to wall
stretched a space of bare floor good for slow-pacing to and fro, good
for kneeling, for wrestling in prayer. The room was haunted to him;
it had seen so many of what he and all his day, and days before and
days after, called “spiritual struggles.” But there was pleasure no
less than gloom and exaltation in the haunting; there were emanations
from the walls of triumph, for though his soul agonized he was bold to
believe that also it conquered. He believed that he was foe of Satan
and henchman of the Lord.

Terror at times overwhelmed the henchman—panic thoughts that Satan
had him; cold and awful doubts of his acceptability to his overlord.
But they were not lasting; they went away like the chill mists from
the face of the hills. It was incredible, it was impossible that the
Lord would not see his own banner, would not recognize and succour his
own liegeman! The liegeman might err and come under displeasure; good!
the punishment came in agony and remorse for lukewarm zeal, in a shown
sight of the evil lord to whose suzerainty he might be transferred and
of that lord’s dismal and horrible demesne! Nay, more solemnly and
threateningly, in an allowed vision of what a disobedient liegeman
would forfeit—the heavens opening and showing the rainbow-circled
throne, the seven lamps, the sea of glass, the winged beasts saying,
“Holy, Holy, Holy!” and giving glory and honour and thanks; the
four-and-twenty elders crowned with gold, falling down and worshipping
Him who sat on the Throne; the streets of gold, and the twelve gates,
and the temple open in heaven, and in the temple the ark of the
testament. “O God,” prayed the minister, “take not my name from the
book of life! Take not my name from the book of life, and I will serve
thee forever and ever!”

Master Clement very truly worshipped the God whom he had seated on the
throne, and was jealous for his honour and glory and solicitous for
his praise among men, and would give life itself to bring all mankind
under his Lord’s supremacy. As little as any man-at-war of an earthly
feudal suzerain would he have hesitated to compel them to come in. Was
it not to their endless, boundless good, and without was there any
other thing than hell eternal and everlasting and the evil lord? If,
contumaciously, they would not come in, or if being in they rebelled
and broke from their allegiance, what else was to be done but to
carry fire and sword—that is, to put into operation the laws of the
land—against his Lord’s enemies? Had any one called his attention to
the fact of how largely liegemen like himself had brought these laws
into being, he would have answered, Yes; under the direction of their
Suzerain’s own Word, writ down for their perpetual guidance, shortly
after the making of the world!

It was not alone eager jealousy for his Lord’s glory and honour, nor
anxious care that he himself prove in no wise an idle and unprofitable
servant, that was felt by Master Clement. To his intense zeal and his
own cries for life eternal was added a thwart love of mankind—that
portion of it enclosed in the great sheepfold, and that portion who,
wandering outside, lost upon the mountain-sides in the cold and
darkness, yet had in them no stubbornness, but would hasten to the
fold so soon as they heard the shepherd’s voice through the mist. He
was eager for them, his brothers and children in the fold; eager, too,
for the poor lost souls upon the mountains,—lost, yet not wilfully,
stubbornly, and abandonedly lost, but capable of being found and
regained, so many as were elected.

But the others, ah, the others! they who set up their own wills and
professed other knowledge, or, if not knowledge, then doubt and
scepticism of the liegeman’s knowledge, writing a question mark beside
that which was not to be questioned—they who moved away from the
fold in its completeness! Master Clement’s zeal flared downward no
less than upward, to the left no less than to the right. He hated
with intensity—with the greater intensity that he was so sure his
hatred was disinterested. “Have I not hated _Thy_ enemies?” But if
those without were manifestly rather than invisibly of the Kingdom
of Satan,—if their ill-doing was so great that it became as it were
_corporeal_,—if the people saw them open atheists, wizards, and
witches,—if their foot had slipped or their master had been negligent
to cover them with his mantle of darkness,—the soul of Master Clement
experienced a grim and deadly exaltation. He tightened his belt, he saw
that his axe was sharp, he went forth to hew the dead and poisoned wood
out of the forest of the Lord.

In his small room he sat and read by his one candle—read those
portions of the Old Testament and the New which he wished to read.
Had a spirit queried his choice he would have answered, “Is it not
all his Word? And are not these the indicated circumstances and this
very passage the Answer and Direction?” When he had finished reading
he knelt and prayed long and fervently. His prayer told his God who He
was, his attributes, and what was his usual and expected conduct; it
told Him who were his enemies and rehearsed the nature of the ill they
would do Him; then changed to a vehement petition that if it was his
will He would discover his enemies and bring them to confusion—and if
by means of the worm Thomas Clement—

He prayed in terrible earnest, his hands locking and unlocking, beads
of sweat upon his brow, prayed for the better part of an hour. Finally
he rose from his knees, and standing by the table read yet another
passage, then paced the floor, then sat down, and, drawing forth the
tablets upon which he had made his own notes of the examination that
day, fell to studying them, the open book yet beside him.

He read over a list of questions with the answers Aderhold had given.
He had not been quick to give the answers—he had fenced—he had
striven to shift the ground—but at last, with a desperate quietness,
he had given them.

_Qu._ Do you believe in God?

_Ans._ In my sense, yes. In your sense, no.

_Qu._ In God as Father, Son, and Holy Ghost?

_Ans._ No.

_Qu._ Then you do not believe in the Trinity?

_Ans._ No.

There were other questions—a number of them—and the answers. But the
very beginning was enough—enough. Master Clement, sitting rigidly,
stared at the opposite wall. A sentence formed itself clearly before
his eyes, the letters well made, of a red colour. Only the last of the
three words wavered a little. CONVICTED AND HANGED. Or it might be
CONVICTED AND BURNED. The first two words stood steady, and above them
the name, GILBERT ADERHOLD.

The concern was now to prove the sorcery—and to take all confederates
in the net—to lop Satan in all his members.

The minister stared at the wall. Another name formed itself as though
it were stained there—MOTHER SPURAWAY....

Master Clement sat rigid, trying to place other names beside this
one. It was his sincere belief that there were others. The probable
diabolical activities at the Oak Grange—the coming to Hawthorn,
after so long and godly an immunity, of the late sickness—the
varied and mysterious happenings, losses, and attacks with which
village and countryside were beginning to buzz—this final heinous
Satan-revenge and attempt upon the godliest and most greatly promising
young man of whom he had any knowledge—back again, and above all,
to the blasphemer, the atheist, the idolater, and denier now fast in
gaol!—Master Clement was firm in his belief that so frightful and
important a round of occurrences pointed to many and prime agents of
evil, though always that unbeliever yonder would prove the ring-leader,
the very lieutenant of Satan himself! Hawthorn made a narrow stage for
such a determined and concentrated presence and effort on the part of
the Prince of the Power of the Air. But Master Clement’s was a narrow
experience and a mind of one province. To him, truly, the stage seemed
of the widest, and the quarry worthy Apollyon’s presence in person.

The atheist and sorcerer himself—Mother Spuraway—who else? The
minister thought of old Dorothy at the Grange. There existed a
presupposition of contamination. On the other hand, so far as he knew,
there had never gone out a word against her; she had seemed a pious,
harmless soul, trudging to church in all weathers. That in itself,
though, the Devil was wont to use as a mask. Witness the atheist and
sorcerer at church! Nay, was it not known that sometimes Satan came
himself to listen and to confound, if he might, the preacher, making
him tame and cold in his discourse; or razing from his memory that
which he had carefully prepared; or putting into his mind, even while
he preached, worldly and wicked and satiric thoughts; or during a
sermon of so great power that all who heard should be lifted to the
courts of heaven, stuffing the mind of the congregation with a like
gallimaufrey?

The minister sat stiffly, staring at the wall. Dorothy’s name did not
form itself there before him, but neither did he wholly dismiss it
from mind. He put it, as it were, on the wall at right angles, marked,
“To be further thought on.” Then what other name or names for the main
wall?... Old Marget Primrose was dead. He thought of two or three old
and solitary women, and of the son of one of the Grange tenants—a
silent and company-shunning youth who had gotten his letters somehow,
and went dreaming through the woods with a book. Once Master Clement,
meeting him by the stream-side, had taken his book from him and looking
at it found it naught but idle verse; moreover, it seemed that it was
Master Gilbert Aderhold’s book, and that the youth went at times to
the Grange for instruction.... All these, the boy with the itch for
learning, and the two or three women he relegated to the wall with old
Dorothy.

There was one other—there was Grace Maybank. She was not old, but
Satan, though for occult reasons he oftenest signed them old, signed
them young as well, and though he gave preferment to the ugly and the
bent, would take good looks when they were at hand. Satan had already
signed Grace in another department of the Kingdom of Evil-doing. The
minister rose, and going to a press that stood in the room, took from
it a book in which was entered, among other things, cases of church
discipline. He found the page, the date several years back. _Grace
Maybank, Fornicatress. Stood before the congregation, two Sundays in
each month for three months in succession. Texts preached from on these
Sundays, for the warning of sinners...._ And again, _Grace Maybank, her
infant being born, stood with it in her arms before the congregation,
Sunday, June the —--_.

Grace came into the probable class. Moreover—“Ha!” said the minister,
recollection rising to the surface. He took from a second shelf a book
of record, made not by himself, but by his predecessor, the godly
Master Thomson. It ran back twenty years and more. He found near the
beginning of the book what he was looking for. _Ellice Maybank. Suspect
of being a witch, and dragged through Hawthorn Pond. The said Ellice
swam. Died of a fever before she could be brought to trial._

“Ha!” said Master Clement; “it descends! it descends!” But he was a
careful and scrupulous man, and so he put Grace’s name only up on the
probable wall.

It was growing late. A wind had arisen and moaned around the house. He
went to the window and looked out at the church and the church yews.
A waning moon hung in the east. The yews were black, the church was
palely silvered; Master Clement regarded the church with eyes that
softened, grew almost mild. The plain interior, the plain exterior, the
hard stones, the tower lifting squarely and uncompromisingly toward
the span of sky that was called the zenith—whatever of romance was in
Master Clement’s nature clung and centred itself here! Hawthorn Church
was his beloved, it was his bride.

He stood by the window for some minutes, then turning began again to
pace the room, and then once more to read in the Bible. It chanced
now—his main readings that night having been concluded—that he
had eyes for passages of a different timbre. He read words of old,
firm wisdom, Oriental tenderness, mystic rapture, strainings toward
unity—golden words that time would not willingly let slip. Many a
soul, many a tradition, many a mind had left their mark in that book,
and some were very beautiful, and the voices of some were music and
long-lasting truth and carried like trumpets.

Master Clement read, and his soul mounted: only it mounted not to where
it could overlook the earlier reading in the same Bible. It never came
to a point where it could hold the two side by side and say, “Judge you
which concept and which mind you will accept as brother to your own!
For many minds have made this book.” Master Clement read, and his soul
lightened and lifted, but not so far as to change settled perspectives.
Had he not read these passages a thousand times before? The names
remained upon the wall, and when after a time he undressed and laid
himself in bed, they stayed before him without a shadow of wavering
until he slept. Indeed, he drowsed away upon the word CONVICTED—

Morning came. He rose at an ascetic’s hour, dressed in a half-light,
and ate his frugal breakfast while the day was yet at the dawn. The
two women waited upon him; breakfast over, he read the Scriptures to
them, and standing, prayed above their bowed heads. Later he went out
into the hedged path between his house and the church and began his
customary slow walking to and fro for morning exercise. The sun was
coming up, a multitude of birds sang in the ancient trees. Master
Clement walked, small, arid, meagre, and upright, his hands at his
sides, and presently, in his walking, caught sight of something white
at the edge of the path. It proved to be a hand’s-breadth of paper,
kept in place by a pebble. He stooped and picked it up. On it was
marked in rude letters, JOAN HERON. He turned it over—nothing on the
other side, blank paper save for the name. He walked on with it in his
hand. Twenty paces farther there was another piece of paper, held by
another pebble, and a fair duplicate of the first—JOAN HERON. Well
within the churchyard he found the third piece—JOAN HERON. ASK JOAN
HERON WHO GAVE HER THE RUE THAT’S PLANTED IN HER GARDEN.




CHAPTER XVII

MOTHER SPURAWAY


MASTER CLEMENT, the papers in his hand, retraced his steps until he
came to a bench set in the shadow of a yew that knotted the minister’s
house and garden to the churchyard. He sat down and spread the three
out upon the wood beside him. It was the last-found scrap upon which,
naturally, he concentrated attention. ASK JOAN HERON WHO GAVE HER THE
RUE THAT’S PLANTED IN HER GARDEN. He sat with knitted brow and pursed
lips, searching for a meaning. One was not there at first sight. He
weighed the words. JOAN HERON—The daughter of old Heron that had died
of the plague. He brought her before his mind’s eye—a tall, grey-eyed
girl sitting quietly in church. Save for that image she did not come
into his mind with any force; he had, after all, no great knowledge of
her. They were outlying people, the Herons, and then they had been away
from Hawthorn. He was a man of the study and the pulpit and of crisises
in the parish, rather than of any minute, loving, daily intercourse
and knowledge; theologian rather than pastor. JOAN HERON. He would,
however, presently think together any impressions or memories. Now
little occurred further than that she had been away with her father
for years, living under the walls of the castle that was prelatical.
In addition, he remembered that neither old Roger Heron nor this girl
had ever brought to him spiritual problems to be solved. Many did bring
them—cold, creeping doubts as to whether God really meant to save them
or not. But the Herons had never done so. The fact, called to mind,
just faintly darkened for him the name beneath his hand. He would make
enquiries.—WHO GAVE HER THE RUE THAT’S PLANTED IN HER GARDEN.

Master Clement frowned. He had little taste for riddles and
uncertainties and haunting suspensions of thought. Make a line
distinct; colour matters plainly; if a thing were black, paint it in
black! The words on the paper carried no meaning, or a foolish one.
RUE.... Not long before he had been reading an account, set forth
in a book, of a number of Satan’s machinations, and of the devices,
likings, and small personal habits of his sworn servants. A bit of this
text suddenly sprang out before him, sitting there beneath the yew
tree. “_For plants—hemlock, poppy, and mandrake, and, especially, the
witches love, handle, and give to such as show inclination to become of
their company, rue_—”

Master Clement slowly folded the three pieces of paper together, took
out his pocketbook, and laid them in it. Grace Maybank was yet strongly
in his mind, but now on the wall beside her name he put another name.

A little later, hatted and cloaked, he stepped into Hawthorn street.
As he did so he looked northward and, seeing Squire Carthew riding
in from Carthew House, stood and waited. The squire approached, gave
good-morning, and dismounted. He nodded his head; ponderously energetic
he had put already his engines into motion. The constable with helpers
was gone at sunrise to take into custody Mother Spuraway, have her into
the village, and thrust her into the room beneath the sexton’s house
that did for village gaol. To-morrow, after examination, and if proof
of her evil-doing were forthcoming, she should be sent to town and
quartered in the prison with the leech. Orders likewise had been given
to the North-End Farm folk to bring into Hawthorn the afflicted boy. To
confront the injurer with the injured, that was the best and approved
way—

“How is Harry Carthew this morning?”

“Very fevered still. He talks strangely and paganly—about gods and
goddesses and Love and the Furies and I know not what trash.”

“Ah!” said Master Clement. “Were it devil or Gilbert Aderhold who
struck him that night, be sure from the dagger would have run Satan’s
own venom, empoisoning the mind, bringing growth of nettles and darnel
into the soul! The godly young man! I will pray—I will wrestle with
God in prayer for Harry Carthew—”

From beyond the church there burst a small riot of sound. “They’ve got
Mother Spuraway—”

The constable had his hand upon the old woman’s arm and dragged
her along, she being lame and stumbling. Behind them marched the
constable’s helpers, a self-constituted posse. Here was the father of
the afflicted boy, and Lukin the carter, and a ditcher whose arm was
palsied, and one or two others. A dozen boys brought up the rear. One
had run ahead to cry to the village what was happening. Everybody was
coming to door and window, out of doors, into the street. Voices buzzed
and clacked. The witch fever was mounting, mounting, hardening the
heart, confusing the head!

When Mother Spuraway saw the minister and the squire, for all she
was as old and spare and feeble as a dried reed, she broke from the
constable, and, running to them, fell upon her knees and raising her
clasped hands began at once to protest her innocence and to beg for
mercy.

The squire spoke to the North End farmer. “They’re bringing your son
in?”

“Aye, sir. His mother and sister and my son that’s married and his wife
and my niece and Humphrey Tanner. He’s twisting fearful, and he sees
the dog come day and come night!”

“Your worship, your worship!” cried the old woman on her knees. “I
never could abide dogs—Is it likely I’d trouble a child?—Oh, Master
Clement—”

The squire was speaking with the constable and the farmer, the whole
company of witch-takers hearkening to him rather than to Mother
Spuraway. Had she not kept up a like babble clean from her own hut to
Hawthorn? But the witch and straightening out the two walls were Master
Clement’s concern. Not always subtle, he was subtle when it came to
playing the inquisitor. When the rôle fell to him, it was as though he
had suddenly endued himself with a mantle that fitted. Had he lived
in a Catholic country, had he been born and baptized there into an
unquerying group, it is not unlikely that sooner or later he would have
found employment in the Holy Office, unlikelier yet that he would not
have served with zeal and a consciousness of high devoir done that King
in heaven. In a vast range of relations starkly literal, he was capable
when it came to theological detection, of keen and imaginative work.
The churchyard yews somewhat cut off the village street; the small
present crowd were attending to the squire. Master Clement put some
questions. Mother Spuraway, who was now moaning and rocking herself,
roused as best she could to answer. Associates? She had no associates.
What, in God’s name, should she have associates for? The leech? Well,
the leech had taken her trade, that was all the association there—

“Ha!” said Master Clement. “The same trade! She hath said that far!”

Mother Spuraway looked at him and shrank affrighted. “My trade was to
gather good herbs and make sick folk well. I meant that I was a leech
as well as he.”

“Leechcraft is not for women,” answered Master Clement. “But leechcraft
was not his main trade. His trade is in souls to Satan, his own soul
and others. I fear me that thou art indentured to that same master and
may well speak of this atheist and sorcerer as thy fellow trafficker!
Tell me what others thou art concerned with—”

Mother Spuraway had an inward sturdiness, though age and weakness, fear
and pain might yet betray it. “Concerned neither with him nor with
others. Oh me! oh me! I’ve always stood on my own feet and harmed no
one—”

“They that stand on their own feet and by their own strength,” said the
minister, “are naught. So they lean not upon Scripture and know that
they are naught in themselves, but only by grace of another, they are
already lost and have reached their hand to Satan.—Tell me if Grace
Maybank be of thy company?”

“Grace Maybank!” Mother Spuraway’s voice quavered and her frame seemed
to shake. Perhaps there rose a memory of a love philtre or charm, or
of Grace in trouble, coming secretly for counsel. But Mother Spuraway
never took life. The child was born, was it not?—as merry and pretty a
child as if it were not set apart and branded for life. Grace? It had
been little that she had done for Grace! The charm had not worked; the
man would not offer marriage, and so save Grace from what came upon
her. Grace herself had come to the hut and bitterly reviled her for
a useless wise woman. Grace Maybank! She began to stammer and protest
that she and Grace were strangers.—But Master Clement thought the most
and the worst and the impossible. “Ha!” he said. “That window hath a
light in it!” In his mind Grace’s name left the one wall and came over
to the other.

The squire made a movement from the constable, the constable a movement
toward his prisoner. “Tell me,” said Master Clement in a tense and low
voice,—“tell me why you gave a bush of rue to Joan Heron?”

He had not known that she had done it. It had flashed upon him to make
that move. Made, he saw that it was correct.

Mother Spuraway, dazed and shaken, put up her two hands as though to
ward off blows that she knew not why were coming. “What harm,” queried
her thin old frightened voice, “in giving a body a sprig of rue? She
had none in her garden.”

“How did the rue come to you?”

“It was growing about the burned cot.” For all her terror and misery
Mother Spuraway felt a gust of anger. “O Jesus! What questions Master
Clement asks!”

The constable came and took her by the arms. “On with you! Don’t say
that you can’t walk, when we know that you can dance and fly!”

She broke again into a pitiful clamour. “I am no witch!—Satan’s no
friend nor master nor king of mine—I know naught of the leech—I’ve
put no spell on any one—Oh, gentlemen, gentlemen, think on the mother
that bore you—” The constable and his helpers dragged her away. Her
voice came back—“Think—think! How could I—”

In a little while the North-End Farm folk came into Hawthorn—Hawthorn
quivering now with excitement. Every loss of a twelvemonth, every
undeserved grief, every untoward happening, every petty mystery was
awake and growing monstrous. The air was changing, the yew trees, the
look of the houses, the loom to the west of Hawthorn Forest.... To-day,
to an observer, the church might look not greatly different from a
palm-thatched or cedar roof over some sacred stone or carven god. Out
of the deep veins, out of the elder world, old and gross superstition
had been whistled up. It had not far to come; the elder world was close
of kin. On the climbing road of the human mind the scenery of the lower
slopes began to glow.

The sexton’s house giving upon the green, Hawthorn could find pretext
enough for gathering there in humming clusters. The sexton had a
clean, bare room where at times charges were heard and prisoners
brought up for examination from a cellar-like apartment below. On the
whole, Justice Carthew preferred it to having poachers and vagrants,
quarrelers, swearers and breakers of various commandments, petty
officers, complainants, and witnesses trampling into Carthew House. Now
as the warm midday drew on, he entered, marshalled by the constable;
with him, besides a young man half his son’s tutor, half his own clerk,
Master Clement, and a neighbour or two of fair consequence in the
village and in Hawthorn Church. In the room already were the North-End
Farm folk. The crowd pressed in behind, or, when no more were admitted,
stood as close as might be without the door, left open for the air.
Outside the one crazy window boys stood on heaped stones, their eyes
a-row above the sill. The air seemed to beat and sound and pulse. No
other kind of lawbreaking could so raise, so universalize, emotion.
Other kinds were particular, affecting a few. But where sorcery and
witchcraft, blasphemy and heresy, were arraigned, even though it were
in a poor room and village like to this, there the universal enemy,
there the personal foe of God Almighty, came into court! The personal
foe of God was naturally the would-be murderer of every baptized soul
alive—the unbaptized were his already. Nor did he stop at attempts
against their souls; he did not hesitate to direct his engines against
their bodies and their goods, to burn their ricks and barns, blast
their fields, palsy their arms, lame their beasts, make their children
peak and pine, wither the strength of men within them—If he had
not yet harmed them to-day, he but waited for the chance to do so
to-morrow! No man, woman, or child was safe, and the thing to be done
was to destroy his instruments as fast as they were found.

The North-End Farm boy—an observer from the platform of a further age
might have conjectured that it was partly a nervous disorder marked by
hysteria, partly an impish satisfaction in the commotion produced and
the attention received, partly an actual rejoicing in the workings of
his own imagination together with a far past, early-man unawareness
of any reason for forbearance—the North-End Farm boy cried out and
writhed tormentedly.

They brought Mother Spuraway up the steep stair from the cellar and
into the room, and making a clear space stood her before the boy for
what should be judgement and doom. “The dog! the dog!” he cried, and
writhed in the arms of the men behind him—“The dog!”

The room quivered and sucked in its breath. Now the magistrate, and
now, at the magistrate’s nod, the minister, questioned him. “You see
the dog?—Where do you see it?—There? But something else is standing
there! A woman is standing there.... Ha! Only the dog there, showing
his teeth at you? Do you see no woman?... He sees no woman. He sees
only the dog.”

“The dog! the dog!” cried the boy. “The constable brought the dog
in with him.... Oh, it wants to get at me! It’s trying to shake the
constable off! Oh, oh, don’t let it!” And he writhed and twisted, half
terrified and persuaded by the vividness of his own creation, deep down
enjoying himself.

Commotion and hard breathing held in the room and outside about the
door and window. “He sees her as she is when she’s running with
Satan!... Witch!... Witch!...”

Mother Spuraway fell again upon her knees, beat her hands together with
passion. “It’s not true—he’s lying!—Oh, sirs, are you going to hang
me for what a sick child says?”

North-End Farm raised an answering clamour. “Thou witch! ’Tis thou
that liest! Take thy spells off him!” The greater part of the room
became vocal, “’Tis not only that boy!—A many and a many things
happening!—My arm, thou witch! I dug all day, and passed thee in
the twilight, and next day ’twas like this!—The corn so thin and
burned!—The old witch! She made a sign above my wife’s drink and she
died and the babe died!—The witch! the witch! But she’s not alone....
She and the leech.... Yes, but others than the leech.... There are folk
here who can tell.... The plague—she brought the plague—she and the
Devil and her fellows.... The pond!—Tie her thumb and toe and try her
in the water—”

There came a surge forward. Mother Spuraway cowered and screamed. The
squire might not object to the water trial in itself, but he objected
and that strongly to any unruliness before Justice Carthew. The people
were used to being cowed; his voice, bursting out against them, drove
them back to a silence broken only by murmurs and intakes of the
breath. The North-End Farm boy continuing noisy, and crying out, his
father and mother had leave to take him from the sexton’s room and
across to the ale-house. There was curiosity to see if the dog that was
visible to him alone could follow. But no! At the door he cried out
that it tried to spring after him, but could not pass the minister’s
chair. From the ale-house itself presently came back word that he was
much comforted and quiet and said that Master Clement was keeping the
dog from him.

Mother Spuraway sat on a bench, somewhat cut off from the rest of the
room by the heavy chairs of the Law and the Church. She sat crouched
together, for the most part silent, her white hair straggling from
beneath her cap, her lip fallen, her meagre, bloodless hands with
high-raised veins plucking at the stuff of her old worn kirtle. The day
was warm. The squire, heated and thirsty, sent across for a tankard of
ale. When it was brought, he drank, set the vessel down, and wiped his
mouth. “And now,” he said, “‘tis to find if, in getting two, we get all
the vipers in the nest—”

He did not think so himself; nor did Master Clement, nor did the throng
of Hawthorn in the sexton’s room and without, pressing about door and
window. The whispers had been continuous. It was much to have put an
arresting hand upon one witch, and beyond doubt she was a witch and
a _vera causa_! But for more years than a few Hawthorn had looked
somewhat askance at Mother Spuraway. She had been among them for a
long time, and these blackest happenings had not happened. Not in all
these years the plague—never before at Hawthorn such a thing as the
bold wounding of the squire’s brother—never before so many accidents
of one kind and another! For new activities new beings.... The leech,
of course, proved beyond all seeming to be so fell and wicked a
man! But not the leech alone.... The feeling, whatever it was, was
increasing. There seemed something pent and thunderous, lying in wait
for its chance.... There were those now in the crowd who had not been
here earlier, who, having heard what was toward, had made their way in
after the first. Some came from without the village. The tinker was
plain to the front. Midway of the room might be seen Will the smith’s
son and his mother, and beside them Katherine Scott, the forester’s
wife. At the back, in company with the Lukins, stood Alison Inch.

The squire looked down at a piece of paper which he held in his hand.
“Now what is this about a grey and white cat, and the burned cot in
Hawthorn Wood?”

There rose a murmur, like wind over sedge. It grew in volume, and out
of it came clear a woman’s voice. “It’s her familiar. He gave it to
her. The boys saw him give it to her at the burned cot.”

The squire lifted himself a little—looked over the crowd. “Who spoke
there? Come forward here, you who spoke!”

A confusion; then Cecily Lukin was pushed to the front. She came
protesting, her face flushed. “Oh, Your Honour, I didn’t know I was
speaking so loud! I never meant to say anything—”

“Nay, you _must_ say,” answered the squire. “He or she who keeps
witness back will find trouble for their own part!”

“I said naught,” said Cecily, “but that she had a grey and white cat
which lay on the hearth or in the sun, and that once I did see it anger
itself and grow larger than natural, and its eyes glowed like lanthorns
and it went backward, rubbing itself against her skirt—”

“Mother Spuraway’s skirt?”

“Oh, no, sir!” said Cecily. “They say Mother Spuraway’s imp is a green
frog that lives in a stream by her door—”

A boy beside the tinker, nudged by the latter, opened his mouth. “Tom
and Dick and Jarvis and I were playing in Hawthorn Forest by the burned
cot. And a grey and white cat came out of the stones and climbed up in
the plum tree and sat and looked at us, and we tried to drive it away,
but we couldn’t. Then Master Aderhold came out of the woods and grew
as tall as the plum tree and put up his arm, and the cat came and lay
upon it. And there was Joan Heron standing in her grey dress, and she
was as tall as he was, and he gave her the cat and she laid it along
her shoulder, and they went away through the woods without their feet
touching the ground—”

The forester’s wife was an impatient dame. By this she had worked her
way into the row nearest the justice and the minister, and now she
raised her voice. “Your Honour and Maister Clement, I keep bees, and,
Your Honour, they’ve not done well for a lang, lang time! They’ve not
done well since, out of kindness, I took three hives frae folk that
were gaeing visiting and put them with my ain. Those bees I took, I
swear were not just bees! Times I thought as much while they harboured
with my bees, and would do naught nor let my ain do aught—but I
kenned it well when they were gone back to where they came frae! Your
Honour and Maister Clement, I ha’ gone by where those hives stand
now and seen those bees come flying in with wings a span long and
shining, and bodies daubed with gold and making a humming sound like a
fiddle-string! And those visiting folk were not auld Mither Spuraway,
though I doubt not she be a witch, too!—Those beehives are standing
under the thatch of Heron’s cottage!”

       *       *       *       *       *

At sunset that evening Joan sat on her doorstep, her elbows upon her
knees and her brow in her hands. The apple trees were in bloom, the
heartsease was in bloom beside the well, red and gold cowslips brushed
her shoe. The day had been warm, but the evening fell cool and rich.
All day she had not gone from the cottage. She had seen none pass
either; the road, the fields, the wood were as quiet as though human
life had fled from the earth. She sat with a heart oppressed, the world
grown vague and monstrous.... The cottage, the garden, the fruit trees
were wrapped in the afterglow. The birds were still; the last bee had
come in from the flowers; somewhere in a marshy meadow, the frogs were
beginning.

The grey and white cat came and rubbed itself against her. She lifted
her head, and saw three or four men on the winding path between the
forest road and Heron’s cottage. As they came nearer she recognized
first the tinker, but in a moment saw that the one at the head was the
Hawthorn constable. Her heart stopped, then began to beat very heavily.
As they came through the gate and up the little path she rose from the
doorstep.

“Good-day,” said one of them.

“Good-day, neighbours.”

The constable cleared his throat. He was a stolid, elderly man with
many daughters and sons, and he opposed to the world a wooden,
depthless face. “Probably you know,” he said, “what we’ve come for?”

“No,” said Joan: “what have you come for?”

The constable put out the staff that he carried and touched her on the
shoulder. “In the King’s name! You’re to come with me for being a witch
and working great harm to the King’s good subjects—for laming and
casting spells—for worshipping Satan at his sabbats at the burned cot
and the fairy oak—for plotting mischief with an infidel, blasphemer,
and sorcerer—”

Joan stood motionless, her grey eyes clear, the blood not driven from
her heart. She had seen the harm brewing, she had had her torture
in watching the deep storm gather; now that it was rolling over her
she grew suddenly steady. Though she knew it not she had always had
strength and courage, but now she touched and drew from some great
reservoir indeed. A wholesome anger helped her to it, an inner total
rebellion and scorn, an amazed recognition of universal, incredible
mistake and folly! Truly if men based life so crumblingly, on such
a lie as this!... Sabbats at the burned cot and the fairy oak....
Plotting with— Something swept over her face, her frame seemed to grow
taller in the flower-starred dusk by Heron’s cottage.

The tinker was next to the constable. Now he spoke with an elfish grin
and his foot trampling down the cowslip by the door. “Mistress Young
Witch never thought, did she, that when Tom Tinker came up behind her,
standing before the prison yonder, he saw well enough that she was
making witch signs to one within?—Now the witch to the warlock—lemans
must lodge under the same roof!”




CHAPTER XVIII

THE GAOL


ADERHOLD looked forth from a narrow grating, so high-placed
that he must stand a-tiptoe like a child to see at all. Summer
without,—summer, summer, and the winds of heaven! Within the gaol was
summer close and stagnant. It was difficult for light and air to make
their way into the space where he was kept. What could come came, but
much was prevented by the walls and the intention with which they had
been built. In that day, in a prison such as this, a noisy medley of
people without freedom might be found in the dark and damp central
passage and larger rooms or in the high-walled and dismal bit of court.
All manner of crime and no-crime, soil, mistake, and innocence huddled
there together, poisoning and being poisoned. Time and space received
of their poison, carried it without these walls with at least as much
ease as air and light came in, and distributed it with a blind face and
an impartial hand.

But certain prisoners, those that people without the prison thought too
poisonous or were willing vengefully to make suffer, were not allowed
the hallway or the court or speech with fellow misery. These were put
into small, twilight chambers or dungeons.

Aderhold paced twelve feet by six—twelve feet by six. He was shackled,
a chain from ankle to ankle, another from wrist to wrist. But they
were not heavy, and there was slack enough, so that one might walk and
to some extent use the hands. Twelve feet by six—twelve feet by six.
What light fell through the loophole window fell in one thin shaft of
gold-dust. The walls were damp to the touch, and scratched over with
names, ribaldry, and prayers. He himself, with a bit of pointed stone
that he had found, was graving in Latin upon an unmarked breadth.
Twelve by six—twelve by six—where the straw pallet was flung, not
more than three feet clear.

He knew well how to avail himself of the escape of the mind and thereby
to defeat the hours. He had no books, but memory and imagination were
to him landscape and library, while the searching thought worked here
as elsewhere. Memory and imagination could become his foes; Aderhold
had known that from of old. Oftenest friends and great genii, but
sometimes foes with mowing faces and stabbing, icy fingers. But
strangely to him, in these days, no hostile side appeared; or if it
came, it came in lessened strength; or if its strength was the same,
then the opposing forces within him had themselves gathered power to
overcome. It seemed to him that of late he had come to a turning; fear,
shrinking, and dismay, that had often met him full course in life,
often lurked for him at corners he must pass, seemed now themselves
somewhat shrunken and sinewless. He had known that there was further
growth within him—oh, further, further!—and that some day he would
turn and look them in the face and see them for the pygmies that
they were. It seemed that the dawn of that day had been nearer than
he knew.... Twelve feet by six—twelve feet by six—with as even and
steady a pace as the irons would allow, and all the time to fancy that
he walked free in Hawthorn Wood. Then, for a change, to draw himself
up and see what might be seen through the slit of window. What might
be seen was the topmost branch of a tree and a gargoyled angle of the
great church tower, and above all a scimitar breadth of blue sky.
From that to turn and grave at a letter upon the wall; then to walk
again; then to rest upon the straw while the subtile body went free,
passed like an emanation through the prison walls and wandered in
foreign lands, and where there was neither land nor water underfoot.
At times he took under consideration his own present predicament and
earthly future. But the sting and terror were gone. That they were
so he thanked his higher self, his widening, deepening, marching
consciousness.

His present case.... There had been the examination immediately after
his arrest and commitment to this gaol, the examination when he had
admitted the apostasy and denied the sorcery. But that had been weeks
ago, and since then naught. Day after day in this dusk place, and only
the turnkey had entered.

This gaoler was a battered, sometime soldier, red-faced and
wry-mouthed. What romance had been in his life appeared to have come to
him with the dykes and green levels and waters of the Low Countries.
Chance leading him one day to the discovery that his prisoner knew
Zutphen, Utrecht, and Amsterdam, he had henceforth, at each visit,
plunged back for one short moment into the good old wars and renewed a
lurid happiness. The reflex, striking upon Aderhold, lightened his lot
as prisoner. The gaoler, after the first few days, exhibited toward
him no personal brutality. Once he made, unexpectedly, the remark
that he had seen good fighting done by all manner of people, and that
the Devil must have some virtue in order to make so good a stand. But
the gaoler’s visits were of the briefest, and he was close-mouthed
as to all things save the wars. If he knew when assizes would be, he
chose not to impart it. One day only he had been communicative enough
to speak of the commission named by the Privy Council. Who were the
commissioners? He named the members from this side of the county—two
or three of the clergy, several considerable country gentlemen. From
the Hawthorn end Squire Carthew and his brother and Master Clement the
minister. It had been at work, the commission, meeting and meeting and
taking people up. The matter was become a big matter, making a noise
through the country. They said the King himself was interested. A
bishop was coming—and the Witch Judge.

“The Witch Judge?”

“Aye, the Witch Judge.”

But the gaoler would say no more—Aderhold was not sure that he knew
much more. He left the cell, and at no other visit would he speak of
anything but the Dutch and the good wars.... What he had said had left
a sharp thorn of anxiety,—not for the prisoner’s self. Aderhold knew
perfectly well how palely hope gleamed upon Gilbert Aderhold. He would
be done to death. But he knew also, from much observation, how they
dragged the net so as to take in unallied forms. He tried to think of
any at Hawthorn or thereabouts who might be endangered. He had been
intimate with no one; none there had been confidant or disciple. How
many that could save he had had occasion to note in France and Italy.
Speech with such an one, acts of mere neighbourliness, the sheerest
accidental crossing of paths—anything served for prosecution and
ruin.... In the lack of all knowledge he was chiefly anxious about old
Dorothy and the boy her nephew, and the youth to whom he had given
books. He never thought of Joan as being in peril.

Counting the days, he gathered that assizes could now be no great
way off. Then would he hear and know, be judged and suffer. After
that—continuance, persistence, being, yet and for ever, though he
knew not the mode nor the manner of experience.... The gold light lay
across the cell like a fairy road. He turned upon his side, eased wrist
and ankle as best he might, and with the chain across his breast fell
half asleep. Ocean waves seemed to bear him up, a strong warm wind
to blow upon him, birds to be flying toward him from some beautiful,
friendly strand....

The grating of the key roused him. It was not the gaoler’s time of day,
but he was here, red-faced and wry-mouthed.

Aderhold rose to his feet. “Are the Judges come?”

The gaoler shook his head. “No, no! They’re trying highway thieves next
county. You’re to be lodged t’other side of gaol.”

They went down a winding stair and through a dark and foul passageway,
then from one general room to another. The place was here dusk and
gloom, here patched with sunny light. It was well peopled with shapes
despairing and complaining, or still and listless, or careless and
noisy. The gaoler and Aderhold crossed a bit of court and came by
a small door into a long and narrow room where again there were
prisoners, men and women.

“Stand here,” said the gaoler, “while I get an order.” He moved away to
a door in the wall.

The place was warm and dusk, save where from high windows there fell
a broken and wavering light. There was a dull murmur as of droning
bees. Sound, too, from the town square without floated in,—summer
sounds. A fugitive memory came to Aderhold. It was years ago, and a
spring morning, and he was riding across the square with Will the
serving-man, Master Hardwick behind in the litter, ahead on his great
roan Harry Carthew. Upon the heels of that retracing came another. It
was last winter again, and he stood on a doorstep not far from here,
and ten feet away Sir Richard from the castle sat his horse and smelled
at his silver box of spices.... He came back to the present hour.
This place was long, like a corridor; it was curiously gold-brown and
red-brown, like a rich painting for light and shadow. He looked across
and, standing alone against the wall, he saw Joan Heron.... All noise
stilled itself, all other shapes passed. It was as though there were
spread around them the loneliest desert or sea-strand in all the world.

Joan stood straight against the wall. Her grey dress was torn, her grey
eyes had shadows beneath them, she had no colour in cheek or lip, and
she stood indomitable.

Aderhold put his hand before his eyes. “Mistress Friendly Soul,” he
said, “why are you here?”

“For somewhat the same reason,” she answered, “that you are here.
Because it is a crazed world.”

“How long—?”

“A long time.... Nearly four weeks.”

“Is it my misery to have brought you here?”

“No,” said Joan, “cruelty and wrong brought me here.”

“You are charged with—”

“Yes. With witchcraft.”

The gaoler, returning, began furiously to grumble that he would have no
speaking together, and urged Aderhold away. There was naught to do but
to obey; he went, but at the door looked back. She was standing with
her grey eyes and her sorrowful face set in scorn of this place and of
the world. The door closed between them.

“No!” said the gaoler. “No questions, for I’ll not answer them. Say
naught and pay naught!—Down this stair. You won’t be so well lodged.”

It mattered not greatly to Gilbert Aderhold how he was lodged. When the
gaoler was gone and the grating key removed, and solitude with him in
this dim place, he lay down upon the stone that made its flooring and
hid his face. After a time, rising, he walked the dungeon where he was
immured. He struck his shackled hands against the wall, pressed his
forehead against the stone....

The hours passed, the day passed, another night passed; another dawn
came, strengthening outside into burning day. The gaoler appeared for
a moment morning and evening, then darkness and silence.... He thought
that he must be yet nearer the great church than he had been in his
first cell. He could hear the bells, and they clanged more loudly here.

Aderhold, pacing the space not much longer or wider than a grave, heard
in their ringing church bells far and near and deep in time. He heard
them ringing over Europe and from century to century. He heard the
bells of a countryside that had rung when he was a child and had loved
them well. He thought of the hosts who had loved the church bells, who
loved them yet; of the sweetness and peace and musical memory they
were to many—to very many; of the thousand associations, hovering
like overtones, thoughts of old faces, old scenes, old gladnesses. He
saw old, peaceful faces of men and women who had made their religion
a religion of love and had loved the church bells. Waves of fragrant
memories came to Aderhold himself—days of a serious, quiet childhood
when he had pondered over Bible stories; when in some leafy garden
corner, or on his bed at night, he had gone in imagination step by step
through that drama of Judea, figuring himself as a boy who followed,
as, maybe, a younger brother of the beloved John. It came back to
him—as, indeed, it had never left him—the soft and bright and good,
the pristine part, the Jesus part, the natural part. _Do unto others
as thou wouldst have others do unto you_—_Love thy neighbour as
thyself_—_I say unto you until seventy times seven times_—

The church bells! The church bells! But they had swung him here into
this narrow place and dark, and they would swing him into a darker and
a narrower. They had swung Joan Heron there where she stood against the
wall.... The many and the many and the many they had rung and swung to
torture, infamy, and death! The church bells! They rang in the name of
a gentle heart, but they rang also for the savage and poor guesses,
the ferocities, the nomad imagination of an ancient, early people.
They rang for Oriental ideas of despot and slave, thrones and princes,
glittering reward of eternal, happy indolence, fearful punishment of
eternal physical torment and ignominy! They rang head beneath the foot,
and he that raiseth voice against this Order, not his body only, but
his soul and his memory shall be flayed!... Palestine or England, what
did it matter? Caiaphas or the Christian Church?... The searching,
questing spirit that, age by age, lifted from the lower past toward the
light of further knowledge, larger scope—and the past that, age by
age, hurled its bolts and let its arrows fly and rang its iron bells
against that spirit.... The bells rang and rang. He heard them sweet
and softened across the years and knew that many loved them and held
them holy; he heard them ring, jubilantly, above many a martyr’s stake,
massacre, war, and torture chamber, ring the knell of just questioning,
ring the burial, for yet longer and yet longer, of the truth of things;
and knew that many, and those not the least worthy, must abhor them. He
had loved them, too, but to-day he loved them not. They clanged with
a hoarse old sound of savage gong and drum and tube calling to the
sacrifice....

Between morning and midday the door opened and his red-faced,
wry-mouthed friend of the Dutch wars appeared. “Two of the
commissioners would talk with you.” They climbed the stairs leading
from the darkness, and passed again through that long and narrow room.
But though there were prisoners here, Joan Heron was not among them.
The gaoler turned to the left and, opening a door, signed to him to
enter a fair-sized, well-lighted room where were chairs and a table.
The light dazzled him, coming from the almost night underfoot. When his
vision cleared he saw that the two who awaited him were the minister of
Hawthorn and Master Harry Carthew.




CHAPTER XIX

ADERHOLD AND CARTHEW


MASTER CLEMENT sat, tense and straight, spiritually girded to meet
Satan and his legionaries. Harry Carthew was standing when Aderhold
entered the room, but immediately he came and sat beside the minister,
his eyes, deep-set in a pale, fever-wasted countenance, regarding, not
unsteadily, the prisoner. He had risen from his bed but a week ago;
this was the first time he had ridden to the town. There was something
strange in his countenance, a look now vacillating, now fixed and
hardened. He held his gloves in one hand and drew them through the
other with a repeated motion.

“Give you good-day, Master Aderhold,” he said in a controlled, toneless
voice.

“Give you good-day, Master Carthew.”

The minister’s strong sing-song pierced the air. “Thou guilty and
wretched man! We have left thee so long to hug thy own mind because
there was much work elsewhere to do! To-day we would have thee bethink
thyself. Thy sorcery at the Oak Grange and in Hawthorn Forest and
elsewhere is wholly discovered! Thy fellows in iniquity are all taken,
and sufficient have confessed to set thee at the stake! Why continue to
deny—adding so to the heat of that hell which awaits thee—thy doings
in this nature? What use to say that thou didst not, leaving thy double
in the constable’s hands, return in the storm upon the Hawthorn road,
and by the power of Satan affront and stay and with thy devil-furnished
dagger wound Master Harry Carthew?”

“What use, indeed!” said Aderhold. “And yet I say it.”

“Then,” said Master Clement, and the veins upon his forehead began to
swell, “thou art a foolish poor atheist! What! when thou art compact
of denial, and will be lost from earth and heaven because of that,
dost think that one denial more will serve thee? Come! Thou struckest
the blow, we know. What witch had come at thy call and was with thee,
standing on the hill brow, weaving and beckoning the storm?”

“What witch?” echoed Aderhold, startled. “Nor I was there nor any
other!”

Harry Carthew had not ceased to draw the gloves held in one hand
through the other. He sat with downcast eyes, wasted and sombre, more
wasted, more haggard, and overlaid with the dull tint of tragedy than
Aderhold himself. He spoke now with a flushed cheek. “Let that go by!
It matters not what hand struck me in the side that night—” He turned
on Aderhold. “That which I must know, and will know, I tell you—”
Shaken by passion he pushed back his chair, and rising moved with a
disordered step the length of the room.

Master Clement could not let pass the first part of his speech. “Not
so, Harry Carthew! What! Matters not that you should be brought to
death’s door by the stroke of a wizard misbeliever—”

Carthew again approached the table. “It matters not, I say. Unless—”
He stood looking fixedly at Aderhold, the breath coming quickly from
between his lips. “It has been confessed that you met these witches and
wantoned with them at the sabbats in Hawthorn Wood.... Now, I have been
sick and my senses wandering, and I have come but lately back into this
enquiry. Much has happened—much has been done—much has been laid bare
that I knew naught of. In particular—” He broke away, walked again the
length of the room; then returning, stood above Master Clement in his
great chair and urged some course in an undertone.

Master Clement first demurred, then, though without alacrity,
acquiesced. “Is it well for you to be alone with him? I tell you the
Devil hath such wiles—But since you wish it, I will go—I will go for
a short while.” He heaved his slight, black figure from the chair, and,
moving stiffly, quitted the room. The gaoler stood yet at the door,
but, at a sign from Carthew, without, not within, the room.

The squire’s brother had his own strength. It exhibited itself now. He
stilled his hurried breathing, ceased the nervous motion of his hands,
indefinably broadened and heightened his frame, and became the strong,
Puritan country gentleman, the future officer of Ironsides. Whatever
there was in him of stanch and firm and good so struggled with what was
darkly passionate that, for these minutes at least, there rose on the
horizon something that was not the tempest-tossed ship of many months.
The masts seemed to cease to bend, the anchor to hold again.

He stood within five feet of Aderhold. He had moved so that the table
was no longer between them. In doing so, the attitude of advantage
and mastership had been lost. The two stood on a level floor, with no
conventional judgement bar between them. If in Carthew, beneath murk
and tempest, there appeared for the moment something basic, justified,
and ultimate, in Aderhold no less character unveiled its mass. He
stood in chains, but they seemed ribbons of mist. It was he that was
metal and real, and with a sudden loom and resistive force sent back,
broken, doubts and fantastic violences of thought and ascription.
Though for a short time only, yet for that time, the tattered farrago
of superstitions, hanging in Carthew’s mind like mouldering banners of
wars whose very reason was forgot, shrunk and shrivelled until they
seemed but featureless dust. For a time he ceased, standing here, to
believe in Aderhold’s attendance at sabbats, brewings of poison from
baleful herbs, toads, spiders, and newts, and midnight conspirings in
the interests of the Kingdom of Satan. Even the acknowledged, monstrous
sin, the extravagant, the unpardonable, the monarch and includer
of all—even the enormity of Unbelief—wavered in his mind, grew
unsubstantial. There was a fact of great force before him, a mass, a
reality.... But if, for one larger, saner moment, he rejected belief in
a supernatural bond of evil linking together Aderhold and Joan Heron,
he by no means did this with the possibility of other bonds—evil also
if they existed between these two—evil to him as wormwood, darkness,
and madness!

“In particular,” he said, in a voice that thickened as he went on,
“I am told that they have taken Joan Heron. I had never thought of
that—of her coming under suspicion.... I had never thought of that.
I do not yet believe her to be a witch—though indeed they bring all
manner of accusation and proof against her—but I will not yet believe
it.... But I will have from thee what has been thy power over her! Tell
me that, thou atheist!”

“My power over her has been naught and is naught. I have spoken with
her seldomer than I have spoken with you. I have had no association
with her. Why she should be in this gaol I know not.”

“It is proved that the morning after you were lodged here she came into
this square, and stood before this prison, making signs.”

“I know naught of that. What does she say herself?”

“She says that she had walked to the castle to see one there, and
coming back, paused but a moment in the square. She says she made no
signs.”

“And is it so hard to believe what she says?”

Carthew drew a heavy and struggling breath. “There is a passion, I
think, that teacheth all human beings to lie.... It is said, and
loudly, that you came to Heron’s cottage by night, and that she went to
the Oak Grange by night, and that you were paramours.”

“It is false. I neither went so to Heron’s cottage nor did she come so
to the Grange, nor were we paramours.”

“That day I found you together in Hawthorn Wood—”

“Do you remember what I said to you? That was the truth.”

“Not one hour afterward I was told that often—oh, often and
often!—you walked together in the forest.”

“Then you were falsely told. It was not so.”

“Was the truth—and ‘is’ the truth.—You are earnest to clear her from
every shadow of association with you. Why?”

“Why?” Aderhold’s eyelids flickered. “Why? It seems to me easy to know
why. I was not born of so low condition that I would see the innocent
dragged to a place like this.”

A moment’s dead silence; then Carthew spoke with a regathered and
dangerous passion. “Others are here—dragged here for their own sinful
activities, and accused likewise of being your hail fellows and boon
companions. There are here a youth to whom it is said you taught
atheism, and Mother Spuraway and Grace Maybank and your housekeeper at
the Grange and others. Do you grieve for them that they are here?”

“Aye,” said Aderhold; “I grieve for them. Piteous, wronged souls! I
tell you, I have had naught to do with them, nor they with me!”

Carthew’s voice quivered, and he struck one hand into the other.
“Words are locked doors, but not the voice with which the words are
uttered! ‘Piteous wronged souls’ that my gentleman born of no low
condition feels grief for and would deliver if he might from gaol and
judgement—and Joan Heron whom his voice only trembles not before,
only caresses not because he would guard her from the ruin of his
favour!—What good to loom there against me and thrust that, too, from
you? You love her! You love her! And now I will know if she loves you!
And when I know that I will know what I shall do!”

“You are mad! Her life and mine touch not, save as this Hawthorn music
jangles our names together! I shall presently be dead. I know it, and
you know it. Leave her living, her and these others! You have the
power. Leave them living!”

“Power!” the other burst forth. “I have no power to save her. She is
bound with a hundred cords! Had I not fallen ill I might have—or I
might have not— But now it is too late. I cannot!” His helplessness
was real enough, and it made—if he would not feel it too crushingly—a
dark bubbling-up of heat, violence, murky and passionate substance a
necessity to him. He gave it way.

Aderhold saw the change, the resurgence. He made with his chained hands
a stately and mournful gesture. “As it will be!” he said.

The other burst forth. “Aye, I believe—I believe that you have
poisoned and corrupted her, and that there is truth in every word
they say! Now as I am a baptised man there is truth! For you are an
unbeliever and God’s enemy! And is not God’s enemy of necessity black
and corrupt and a liar to the last particle of his being, to the last
hair of his head, to the paring of his nails! More—you have stood
there weaving a spell to make me listen and well-nigh believe! Well,
your spell will not hold me!—As God liveth I hold it to be true that
you met by night in Hawthorn Forest—”

“Look at me!” said Aderhold. “That is as true as that it was I who
struck a dagger into you on a Sunday night! _Now_ you know how true it
is!”

Carthew gave back a step and went deadly white. There was within him
that root of grace that he had risen from his sick bed with his first
madness lessened and his mind set on managing a correction in the
minds alike of Hawthorn and the commission. In the first wild turmoil
and anger, pushing home under the half-moon from Heron’s cottage,
blood staining his doublet and his head beginning to swim, he had
seized—it coming to him upon some blast of the wind that he must find
and presently give a reason for his condition—he had seized the first
dark inspiration. It had answered—he had found on stepping from weeks
of stupor and delirium that it had answered so well and thoroughly
that now—always below the Unbelief and Blasphemy—it was one of the
main counts against the physician. He had thought to be able to cast
hesitancy and doubt on his original assertion. It was dark—the figure
was cloaked—it might not have been the leech.... He found that he
could corrupt no one’s belief that it was the leech—Hawthorn, his
brother, Master Clement, the commission, all were unshakable. He knew
not himself how to shatter their conviction. He could not so injure his
own name and fame, the strict religion, the coming England, the great
services which he meant yet to perform, as to stand and say, “I lied.”
He could see that even if he said it, he would not be believed. They
would say, “Your fever still confuses your head.” Or they might say,
“They are casting their spells still.” Or they might ask, “Who, then,
struck you?”... It was impossible.... Even did they believe it, what
would it alter? Nothing! The apostate and sorcerer was in any event
doomed. A straw more or less would make no difference. Surely one out
of the circle of God’s mercy need not be too closely considered.... But
he paled with the issue thrown so by the man himself between them.

He paled; then desperately opened the gates to anger the restorative,
and jealousy that shredded shame to the winds. Moreover, there flashed
into his soul in storm a suspicion. “Who struck me? Knowest thou
_that_? If thou knowest that, then, indeed—”

But Aderhold knew not that. He stood with folded arms and a steady
face. It was now to summon the ancient virtue, to play truly the
Republican, the free man, now to summon courage for others. Life! Life!
And what men and women had suffered would be suffered again. And still
the ether sprang clear and time stretched endlessly, and what was lost
here might be found there. He looked at Harry Carthew with a steadfast
face, and reckoned that the younger man was unhappier than he.

The door opened with a heavy sound and Master Clement reappeared.
Carthew flung himself toward him, his face distorted. “Naught—naught!
And now I think the worst—I tell you I think the worst—”

“I have always thought the worst,” said Master Clement. “Send him hence
now, and let us see these others.”

... Aderhold moved before the red-faced, wry-mouthed gaoler through
the dark passageway and down the stair, back to the chill and darkness
of his dungeon. Within it, the gaoler made a moment’s pause before
he should turn and, departing, shut the thick door with the sound
of a falling slab of a sepulchre. He stood, to the eye a rude and
portentous figure, but to the inward vision giving off at times
relieving glints.

“Everything goes,” he said in a deep and rusty voice, “by looking at
more than just itself. In another day in England or in another country
to-day, you’d have been racked or put to the scarpines till, when they
wanted you, we’d have had to carry you!”

“That’s true enough,” said Aderhold. “One should have a grateful
heart!... True enough—as I know—as I know!”

“It’s ten days to assizes,” said the gaoler. “It isn’t lawful to put
folk to the question in England—though if you stand mute, there’s
_peine forte et dure_—and of course nobody’s going to do anything that
isn’t lawful! But you know yourself there are ways—”

“Yes,” said Aderhold. “Do you mean that they will be used?”

But the gaoler grew surly again. “I don’t know anything except that
they want your confession. They’ve got a story that’s going to be sold
in chap-books all over England—and ballads made—and of course they
want all the strange things in. It’s like the pictures of George and
the Dragon—the more dreadful the dragon, the taller man is the George!
The town’s all abuzz—with the King writing a learned letter, and the
bishop coming and the Witch Judge.—They want a dreadful dragon and the
tallest kind of George!”

“I see,” said Aderhold. “Even the dragon, the spear at his throat,
expected to flatter!—O Diogenes! let us laugh, if we die for it!”

“Anan?” said the gaoler. “Well, it stands that way.”

The door shut behind him, grating and heavy. That it stood that way
Aderhold found in the days that followed....

It drew toward assizes. Five days before the time he found himself one
late afternoon, after a weary, weary hour of facing the commission,
again in the long, dusky prison room where he had seen Joan. He knew
now that it was a kind of antechamber, a place where prisoners were
drawn together to wait occasions. More than once during these last days
he had been kept here for minutes at a time, and sometimes others had
been here and sometimes not. But Joan Heron never. One day he had seen
Dorothy, and in passing had managed a moment’s word. “Dorothy, Dorothy!
I am sorry—” Dorothy had gasped and shrunk aside. “Oh, wicked man!
Oh, Master Aderhold—” He had seen also the youth with a clear passion
for knowledge to whom he had lent books and talked of Copernicus and
Galileo. This one had not been fearful of him.

To-day he saw neither this youth nor Dorothy. But suddenly, as he
stood waiting his gaoler’s leisure, he was aware of Joan Heron....
From somewhere came a red sunset light, and it followed and enwrapped
her as she moved. She was moving with her arm in the grasp of a man
of a curious and sinister look—moving by the wall at the end of the
room—moving across, then back again, across again and back, across and
back.... Aderhold drew near, and it was as though an iron hand closed
hard upon and wrung his heart.

Joan went very slowly, dragging her limbs, more haled by the man than
moving of volition. Her form swayed, seemed as if all and only its
desire was to sink together, fall upon the earth and lie there with
time and motion ended in one stroke. Her head was sunken forward, her
eyes closed.

The man shook her savagely. “No sleeping!—When you are willing to tell
your witch deeds, then you shall sleep!”

“Joan! Joan!” cried Aderhold. He moved beside the two. The man looked
at him but, stupid or curious, neither thrust him off nor dragged his
charge away. It was but for a moment.

Joan opened her eyes. “You?” she said. “All I want is to sleep, sleep—”

Her face was ghastly, exhausted. Aderhold uttered a groan. “Do they
not let you sleep either?” she said. “Five days, five nights—and I am
thirsty, too.”

He managed to touch her hand. “Joan, Joan—”

She looked at him with lustreless eyes. “The others have all made up
something to confess. But though I die, I will not. They may twist a
cord around my head and I will not.” A spasm crossed her face. “Of
their vileness they may set the witch-pricker on me and I will not.”
Her voice, monotonous and low, died away. The man haled her by the arm,
forcing her to walk. She reeled against him. “Sleep ... sleep. Oh, let
me sleep!” A door opened. The man with her looked up, nodded, put his
hands on both her shoulders and pushed her toward it. Her eyes closed
again, her head sank forward. Together the two vanished, leaving to
Aderhold a sense of midnight and the abyss.




CHAPTER XX

THE WITCH JUDGE


THE WITCH JUDGE sat high; beside him his circuit fellow who was a
nonentity; a step or two lower a row of local magistrates. The hall
was large and high,—time-darkened, powdered with amber sunshine
entering through narrow windows. The commission that had so zealously
discharged its duties had a place of honour. The bishop was seated as
high as the judge, around him those of the clergy who did not sit with
the commission. The earl was away from the castle, but at an early
moment in the proceedings there came in his kinsman, Sir Richard. One
of the justices whispered to the nonentity-judge, who whispered to the
Witch Judge. The Witch Judge stopped short in a foaming and thunderous
speech and waited until the earl’s kinsman should be seated. His air
recognized the importance of the entrance; he slightly inclined his
enormous, grizzled head, then returned to his hurtling thunders.

The jury sat in its place. Farmers and tradesmen, it sat a stolid
twelve, and believed implicitly that one who said that there was
truth in the Bible, and also that which was not truth must be hanged
or burned. What else was there to do with him? It had as firm an
assurance that your misbeliever was always your necromancer. Indeed,
you exhibited and proved the wickedness of his unbelieving by the
nauseous ill of his conduct. That was why examiners and commissions
sought always until they found the thread that led to Satan’s visible
ownership. As for the Hawthorn witches—the jury saw them hanging in a
row, and purposed buying the ballads that would certainly be made.

The hall was crowded. It was the most exciting kind of trial that could
happen—barring only, perhaps, an occasional case of _lèse majesté_.
But this was also _lèse majesté_. They all saw God as a King with a
gold crown and throne and court; and Satan as a derision-covered rebel,
and his imps and servants very ugly—when they were not at times very
beautiful—and doom like a Traitor’s Gate, and hell a Tower from which
there was never any coming forth.... And it was good to feel such
loyal subjects, and to marvel and cry out, “Eh, sirs! To think of any
thinking that!”... The hall was crowded, hot, and jostling. Young and
old were here, full means and narrow means, lettered and unlettered,
town and country,—for many walked each day from Hawthorn,—birth and
the commonalty, they who held with the Episcopacy, and they who were
turning Puritan, zealots and future sectaries, shepherds and sheep! And
the neighbours of the accused—as many as could get here—and those who
had sat with them in Hawthorn Church—and the witnesses and sufferers,
fresh numbers of these being continually discovered. Now the hall held
its breath while a witness was being questioned, or the counsel for
the Crown spoke, or the Witch Judge thundered, and now it buzzed and
hummed like the bees that they said were bewitched. Heat, many bodies
in contact and a mist of breaths, an old, old contagion of opinion old
as savagery....

The Witch Judge was to most a fearful delight. No silent, listening,
seldom-speaking judge was he! He had a voice like rolling thunder and
an animus against just those wrongs judgement upon which had swelled
his reputation. He overbore; he thundered in where Jove would have
left matters to lesser divinities; he questioned, answered, tried, and
judged. He loved to hear his own voice and took and made occasions. Nor
would he hasten to the end, but preferred to draw matters out in long
reverberations. He was prepared to give a week, if need be, to this
trial which was concluded ere he took his seat. In all, in the Hawthorn
matter, there were eight folk to be tried. Destroy one, destroy all,
principal and accessories, the whole hung together! But he was prepared
with devices and flourishes, and for each soul on trial specific
attention and cat-and-mouse play, for the Witch Judge loved to show his
variousness.... The practice of the age was everywhere elastic enough,
but in no trials so licensed as in such as this. What need for scruples
when you dealt with Satan?... No counsel was allowed the prisoners. If
ever there was floating in the air a notion that the judge should be
counsel for prisoners, guarding them from injustice and oppression, it
had made no lodgement in this judge’s ear.

The writ _de hæretico comburendo_! The Witch Judge thundered forth the
text of it, then preached his sermon. This wretched man, this wicked
leech, this miscreant, blasphemer, and infidel had made confession
of his crime of apostasy—the most enormous under heaven—confessing
it without tears, shame, or penitence! Confessing! nay, avowing,
upholding—The Witch Judge glowed fuliginous; his voice of horror
seemed to come from the caverns of the earth. “He denieth the actuality
of the Holy Trinity—he saith that the world was not made in six
days and is not composed and constructed as set forth in the Holy
Scriptures—he refuseth to believe in the remission of sins by the
shedding of blood—No language nor tongues,” cried the Witch Judge,
“can set forth the enormity of his error, sin, and crime! Let him burn,
as God saith he will burn, through eternity and back again!” The phrase
caught the fancy of the throng. It came back in a deep and satisfied
murmur. _Through eternity and back again._

On crackled and roared the Witch Judge’s thunder. Convict by manifold
testimony and impeccable witnesses, and wholly and terminably convict
by his own confession without violence, it remained—the authority of
Holy Religion and the Ecclesiastical Court being present in the person
of my Lord Bishop—it remained but to give judgement and pass sentence
upon the apostate! In regard to his apostasy. But this wicked leech
rested also under a charge of sorcery—sorcery of the blackest—sorcery
which he obdurately denied! Let him, then, before judgement given, be
tried for his sorcery—he with these wretched others, for Satan hunteth
not with one beagle, but with many!

The Witch Judge half rose, puffed himself forth, became more than ever
a bolt-darting Jupiter. Trials for heresy, apostasy, blasphemy were not
in themselves wholly his element. But let them darken and lower—as
indeed, they almost always did darken and lower—into questions of
actual physical contact and trade dealings with the Hereditary Foe,
then he was in his element!... Wizards and witches! The Witch Judge
shook his hand above the prisoners. “And let not any think Witchcraft
to be other or less than Apostasy, Idolatry, and Blasphemy! If Apostasy
is the Devil’s right hand, Witchcraft makes his left—his left? Nay,
his right and most powerful, for here is your apostate in action—here
is your unbeliever upon his Lord Satan’s business!” Witchcraft!
Witchcraft! The Witch Judge paced around, threw lurid lights upon the
crime he battened on. His tribute of huge words rolled beneath the
groined roof and shook the hearts of the fearful. There came back from
the crowd a sighing and muttering, half-ecstatic, half-terrified, low
sound. The word of God—the command of the Most High, taken from his
own lips—the plainest order of the King of Kings.—_Thou shall not
suffer a witch to live_.... Statute of the first year of our present
Gracious Sovereign, our lord, King James—_All persons invoking any
evil spirit, or consulting, covenanting with, entertaining, employing,
feeding, or rewarding any evil spirit, or taking up dead bodies
from their graves to be used in any witchcraft, sorcery, charm, or
enchantment, or killing or otherwise hurting any person by such
infernal arts, are declared guilty of felony without benefit of clergy
and shall suffer death._ He had a way of uttering “death” that made the
word a distillation of all the suffering man could make for man.

Preliminary thunders from the Witch Judge ceased. Counsel for the Crown
came afterwards like a whistling wind. The long Hawthorn Witch Trial
began, and stretched from midsummer day to day. To many it afforded an
exciting, day-by-day renewed entertainment; to some it was a fearful
dream; to a very few, perhaps, it seemed a long, dull, painful watch
by mortality’s fever bed. Once Aderhold caught the gaze of the earl’s
kinsman upon him. The eyes of the two met and agreed as to what was
passing, then Aderhold looked away.

The prisoners had their appointed space. At times they were all brought
together here; at times the greater number were withdrawn, leaving one
or two to be examined separately or together. The heat and the light
struck against them, and the waves of sound; from one side came the
booming of the judge’s voice or the dry shrilling of the king’s lawyer;
from the other the whisper of the crowd that meant to have witch blood.
There were Aderhold, the youth to whom he had given books, the boy of
sixteen, old Dorothy’s nephew, Dorothy herself, a halfwitted woman from
a hut between the Grange and the North-End Farm, Grace Maybank, Mother
Spuraway, and Joan Heron—eight in all.

Mother Spuraway—Now torture was not allowed in England, though on the
Continent and in Scotland it flared in witch trials to its fullest
height. Mother Spuraway, therefore, had not been tortured—no more than
Aderhold, no more than Joan, no more than others. But it was allowable,
where confession did not come easily, to hasten it with fasting from
bread, water, and sleep—all these being withholdings, not inflictings.
There might be, too, insistent, long-continued questionings and threats
and a multitude of small gins and snares. Mother Spuraway had been
long weeks in gaol, and she was old and her faculties, once good, were
perhaps not now hard to break down. At any rate, she had a ghastly look
and a broken. Since she trembled so that she could not stand, they put
her into a chair.

“Now answer strictly the questions asked you, if you have any hope of
mercy!”

Mother Spuraway put her two trembling hands to her head. “Mercy? Yes,
sirs, that is what I want. Mercy.”

“Very well, then! Look on this man and tell us what you know of him.”

The clerks’ pens began to scratch.

Mother Spuraway’s gaze was so wandering that while it came across
Aderhold, it went on at once to a cobweb above the judge’s chair. “He
is the Devil,” she said.

“You mean the Devil’s servant.”

“Yes—oh, yes! Devil’s servant. I mean just what Your Honours want.”

The Witch Judge thundered at her. “Woman! it is not what _we_ want. You
are to speak the truth. Truth-speaking is what we want.”

Mother Spuraway’s head nodded, her eyes fallen now from the cobweb to
the judge’s robe. “Yes, sirs—yes, sirs. You shall have what you want.
Oh, yes, sirs!”

“She asserts,” said the counsel for the Crown, “that she tells the
truth.—You were used to going to sabbats with this man?”

“Yes, sirs,—sabbats, sabbats, sabbats, sabbats—”

“Give her wine,” said the Witch Judge. “She is old. Let her rally
herself. Give her wine.”

A gaoler set a cup to her lips and she drank. “Now,” said the Crown,
“tell us of these sabbats—circumstantially.”

Mother Spuraway, revived by the wine, looked from floor to roof and
roof to floor and at the commission and the Witch Judge and the bishop,
and at the motes in a broken shaft of light. “We danced about the
burned cot—all taking hands—so! Sometimes of dark nights we went
_widdershins_ around Hawthorn Church—sometimes it was around the fairy
oak at the Oak Grange. Sometimes we danced and sometimes we flew. We
rode in the air. I had an oaken horse—and Grace had an elmen horse and
Dorothy had a willow horse, and Elspeth No-Wit had a beechen horse, and
Marget Primrose had a horse of yew—”

There was a movement among the commission. “Marget Primrose,” exclaimed
Squire Carthew, “died years ago!”

“She came back. Marget had a yew horse—and I had an oaken horse—and
there were other horses, but I never learned their names. And there
were green men—”

“Was this man in green?”

“No, no! He had on a doctor’s cloak. Sometimes he fiddled for us when
Satan grew tired.”

“Then he was a chief among you?”

“Yes, yes, a chief among us.—Sometimes we changed to bats and mice and
harmless green frogs and hares and owls and other creatures—”

“You did that when you were about to go to folk’s houses or fields to
injure them?”

“Yes, sirs, yes, yes—about to injure them. Then I was a dog, and Grace
a little brown hare, and Dorothy a great frog, and Elspeth No-Wit a
bat, and Marget Primrose—And we brewed poisons and charms in a great
cauldron inside the burned cot, but at the fairy oak we made little
figures out of river clay and stuck them full of pins. And there we had
a feast—”

“And this man?”

“He sat on the green hillock beside Satan, and Satan had a black book.
He gave it to him to read in while we were dancing and eating and
daffing with the green men—and then the cock crew and we all flew
home.”

“There were many sabbats?”

“Oh, yes, many!”

“And this man was always among you?”

“Yes, always among us.”

“You say he read in a black book. But he likewise danced and wantoned
as did the green men?”

“Yes, yes! The pretty green men.”

“Be careful now. With whom especially did he work this iniquity? Whom
did he single out at each sabbat?”

“Whom?—I do not know whom.... Sabbats? There are no such things.
Who would leave home at night to wander round oak trees and burned
cots?—Oh, home, home! Oh, my hut! I want to see my hut!” cried
Mother Spuraway. “Oh, good gentlemen! Oh, Your Worships! Oh, Squire
Carthew—Master Clement!—Won’t you let me go home? A poor old woman
that never harmed a soul—”

The Witch Judge’s voice came thundering down. “Her mind is
wandering!—Thou wretched woman! Dost wish to be taken back to thy
prison, and urged anew to confess?”

But apparently Mother Spuraway did not wish that. She put up her two
hands and said, “No, no!”—then, shrunken and shuddering, begged for
more wine. They gave it to her.... “Now, whom did this sorcerer take in
his arms? Was it the _maiden_ of your company?”

“Yes, oh, yes! The maiden.”

“The maiden of your company was Joan Heron?”

“Yes, Joan Heron.”

       *       *       *       *       *

The shafts of light were shortening, the earth wheeling toward sunset.
Without clanged the bells of the great church—it was late afternoon.
The people who had far to walk, though loath for the entertainment to
cease, yet approved when the court rose for that day. Morning would
not be long, and they purposed returning most early in order that
good places might be got. The hall and the square without seethed and
sounded with the dispersing crowd.

Near at hand was the prison, its black mass facing the great square,
the pillory in its shadow; beyond, slanting down to the river, the
field where they raised the gallows. The prisoners when they were
removed were taken, guarded, along by the wall, into the dark, gaping
prison mouth.

Joan walked beside Mother Spuraway. In the last three or four days the
hand of withholding had been lifted from the prisoners so that they
might get their strength.... Joan walked with a colourless, thin cheek
and shadowed eyes, but walked steadily. But Mother Spuraway could not
drag her limbs across the stones; a gaoler held her roughly up with a
force that drew a moan. Presently, his grasp relaxing, she stumbled
again and fell. Joan stooped and raised her, then with her arm about
her bore her on. “Thank’ee, my pretty maid,” said Mother Spuraway.
“I’ll do as much for you when you are old!”




CHAPTER XXI

THE WITCH


THE morrow came and went in heat and tenseness and excitement. The
third day arrived and passed with no lessening. The fourth day came
and the fever ran more high than before. The Crown, the jury, and the
Witch Judge, the throng nodding approval, had now checked off Mother
Spuraway, Grace Maybank, Dorothy and her nephew, Elspeth No-Wit, and
the youth. It remained on this day to concentrate upon and finally
dash to earth the main sorcerer and that one who patently had been his
paramour and adjutant—the “maiden” of the wicked crew. There were
many witnesses and much wild testimony. Small facts were puffed out to
become monstrous symbols. Where facts failed, the inflamed and morbid
imagination invented. It was strange hearing to the two who had dwelled
at the Oak Grange and Heron’s cottage....

They questioned Elspeth No-Wit. “You had a meeting the night before the
leech was taken?”

Elspeth laughed and nodded.

“What did you do there?”

“We had a big kettle and a great fire. Everybody dropped what she loved
best in the kettle. We played and clapped hands and jumped as high as
the tree-tops. When we clapped our hands, it thundered, and when we ran
around the kettle the wind blew our clothes away.”

“You were brewing the storm that broke next day?”

“Oh, aye!”

“The leech and Joan Heron were with you?”

Elspeth twisted her body and peered around. “Is that Joan Heron and is
that the leech? They ran round thrice to our once, and they kissed the
closest, and at last they wandered away.”

Will the smith’s son was called. “You stopped at Heron’s cottage that
Sunday evening?”

Will stammered, looking wild, hollow-eyed, and awed. “Aye, I did,
please Your Honour!—But I never would have stopped but that it was
storming so.—My mother was with me, please you, sir.”

“No one means you any ill.—It was dark under the clouds without, but
there was a light inside the cottage—a red light?”

“Yes, sir; bright like firelight.”

“Hardly, I think, true firelight: a red and strange light.—It was well
after the hour when the leech had been taken from this Oak Grange?”

“Aye, Your Honour. ’Twas close to dark.”

“With the constable and his men, and Master Carthew riding a part of
the way, he must then have been upon the Hawthorn road, his face set to
this gaol?”

“He must have been so, sir, but—”

“We are coming to that. It is a fact, is it not, that witches and
warlocks are able to transport themselves, with their master Satan’s
aid, through the air—and that so swiftly that you cannot see their
flight?”

“Oh, yes, Your Honour,” said Will. “They fly in sieves, and sometimes
they steal bats’ wings.”

“Very well. Now you and your mother opened this cottage gate and went
up the path to the door, and to reach that you had to pass the window.
As you did that, passing close, you naturally put forehead to the
frame, and looked within, and the place being filled with that red
light—”

“It wasn’t very bright,” said Will. “It was like a faggot had parted
on the hearth, and there was now a dancing light, and now it was dark.
There was nothing clear, and we heard naught because it was lightning
and thundering—”

“And you saw—”

Will moistened his lips. “Yes, sir.—She and a black man were
together—yes, please Your Honour, standing locked together—”

“The black man was the leech?”

“We didn’t know it, then, sir—How could we,” said Will, “when he was
three miles the other side of Hawthorn with a guard? But I know it now.
It was the leech.—And mother and I went on and knocked at the door,
and she opened it—and there was nobody there but Joan—Joan and the
grey and white cat.”

“You stayed no time in that cottage?”

“No, sir, please Your Honour. There was that that frightened us.”

Will the smith’s son was motioned down. They set Mother Spuraway again
in the eye of the court—Mother Spuraway, wrecked until she was nigh of
the fellowship of Elspeth No-Wit. “You have told us that on this Sunday
evening you were running in the shape of a hare through field and copse
by the Hawthorn road. We have obtained from you that you saw the leech
part from his natural body, having by black magic so blinded the guard
that they went on bearing with them but a shadow, a double, and yet
unsuspecting that cheat. Now tell us what the sorcerer did.”

Mother Spuraway plucked at the stuff of her kirtle. “He mounted in the
air.—Storm—storm—break storm!”

“He went toward Hawthorn Wood?”

“Yes, oh, yes! Hawthorn Wood.... Rue around the burned cot.”

“That is, toward Heron’s cottage.—A time passed, and you, crouching
then in the hazels by the road, saw him returning.—Now, mark! Was
there a horseman upon this same Hawthorn road?”

Mother Spuraway tried to mark, but her mind was wandering again.
She preferred, it seemed, to talk of when she was a young woman and
Spuraway and she had wandered, hand in hand, in Hawthorn Wood. But one
wrenched her arm, and said something in her ear and brought her back
with a shiver. “‘Horseman’? Oh, aye, Your Worships! A great, noble
horseman.”

“You saw the leech coming across the fields from the direction of
Heron’s cottage, and you saw this horseman riding through the storm
toward Hawthorn Village. What then?”

“I ran under the earth,” said Mother Spuraway. “For I was now a pretty
black mole, dressed all in velvet and blind—blind—blind—blind—”

It was with a different—oh, a different, different tone that they
questioned Master Harry Carthew and harkened solicitously to what he
had to tell. All the crowded place leaned forward and listened, in
the hot, slanted gold of the fourth afternoon.... Joan saw them all,
and saw into their minds prone before the foreknown truth of whatever
Master Carthew was about to recount. She sat like carven marble and
viewed and knew the world she viewed. She saw Alison and Cecily, Will
and his mother, Goodman Cole, the forester’s wife, Lukin the carter,
the tinker, many others. She saw Master Clement and all the clergy
and gentry of the commission, the court, the spectators. She saw the
Witch Judge who was going to hang her. And townspeople with whom she
had had acquaintance.... The vintner who had wished to marry her was
here, pale and of a tremendous inward thankfulness. And servants from
the castle, and the new huntsman.... All here to see her hunted—her
and the others. She felt their tongues go over their lips, and the
warm indrawing of their shoulders and nursing of their elbows—felt and
cared not.

Carthew was speaking in a hollow, short, determined voice. If a black
lava torrent of passion and madness was devastating his soul, few
enough knew it of all in that thronged place.... At no previous time
had there been such soundlessness in the hall, such keyed and strained
attention. Hawthorn, at least, believed that Master Harry Carthew was
to be a great man in England, was to climb high, with the Bible in
his hand. For the town, that was of another cast of opinion,—if it
conceived of him hardly so highly, if it shrugged its shoulders and
waxed bitter over these mounting Puritans, yet it felt in its heart
that they were mounting and gave to their personal qualities an uneasy
recognition. It, too, marked Harry Carthew for a coming man—though it
might not hold with Hawthorn that the fact of Satan’s striking through
the sorcerer’s hand at this life marked a recognition on Satan’s part
of qualities the most dangerous to his sovereignty. And Carthew was
young, and, though yet gaunt and pale and hardly recovered from that
felon blow, of a manly form and a well-looking face. All through the
long trial he had sat there so evidently poisoned and suffering—urged
now by his brother and now by others to leave and take his rest, yet
never going—sitting there with his eyes upon this murdering wizard....
The throng was ready to make him into the hero, the visible St.
George—standing there now with his spear lifted to give the one last,
needed blow.... There was the dragon, there! the pale leech and all the
wretches with him, and dim and horrible behind him all his train of
evil works, and Satan horned and hoofed, spreading enormous bat wings,
making the very hall brown and dusky! Full beside the leech, in all
minds now, stood that most vile witch Joan Heron.

Carthew’s words were few but explicit. “The sky was very dark—there
seemed more thunder and lightning than there had been. I was several
miles this side of Hawthorn. I was riding without regarding the road,
my mind being on other things. My horse stopped short, then reared.
I felt the blow. It was given by a cloaked figure that immediately
vanished.... Yes, it bore resemblance to the leech, Gilbert Aderhold.”

The words fell, aimed and deliberate, like the executioner’s flaming
tow upon the straw between the piled logs. A stillness followed as
though the throng were waiting with parted lips for the long upward
run of the flame. Then out of it came Joan’s voice, quiet, distinct,
clear, pitched loudly enough to reach from wall to wall. “Thou liar!
Know all here that that man whom Will the smith’s son has called the
black man and saw through my window—that man”—she stood, her arm
outstretched and her finger pointing—“that man was this man who speaks
to you! Know all here that for weary months Master Harry Carthew had
pursued and entreated me who speak to you now—that when he turned that
afternoon upon the Hawthorn road it was to ride to Heron’s cottage and
break in upon me there! Know that Will the smith’s son, looking through
the window, saw _him_. But he, hearing those two knock, and fearing
discovery that would spot his fame, snatched up his cloak and made
off through another door. But he hid not far away, and when they were
gone and darkness had fallen, back he came, stealing in at night upon
a woman alone. Know all of you here that I wanted not his love. Know
all that we struggled together, and that I struck him in the side with
a hunting-knife. Know all that he rode from Heron’s cottage to Carthew
House, and to save himself lied as you have heard!”

She stood an instant longer with her arm outstretched and her eyes upon
Carthew, then slowly turned, moved past Aderhold, and, taking her place
between Mother Spuraway and Grace Maybank, leaned her elbow on her knee
and her chin on her hand.

The Witch Judge’s instantaneous thunder, the clamour of voices, the
hubbub in the hall appeared to give her no especial concern. When
silence was obtained, and Carthew, white as death, gave a categorical
denial, she only slightly moved her shoulders, and continued her
contemplative gaze upon this scene and much besides. That if the crowd
could have gotten at her she would most likely have paid with death at
once for her brazen mendacity, her measureless vile attempt to blacken
one whom the Enemy most evidently feared and hated, appeared to trouble
her neither. She sat as still as though consciousness were elsewhere....

The next day it ended—the Hawthorn apostasy-sorcery-witchcraft trial.
Judgement was given, sentence passed. The court, the crowd, the bishop,
Hawthorn, the town, all seemed well of a mind. Death for six of the
eight. For the youth who read too much and for the boy, old Dorothy’s
nephew, pillory and imprisonment; but for the six, death. Burning for
the apostate and sorcerer, the leech Aderhold, though, so squeamish
grew the times, he might be strangled first. For the five witches the
gallows—though it was said that the old woman Dorothy had sickened
with gaol-fever and would not live to be hanged. The sheriff would see
to it that the execution took place within the month. In the mean time
close prison for the evil-doers, and some thought, maybe, on how the
Church and the Law for ever overmatched the Devil.




CHAPTER XXII

ESCAPE


JOAN sat on the edge of her straw bed, with her arms around her knees
and her eyes upon the blank wall. For something to do she had been
plaiting straws, making braids of many strands and laying them beside
her in squares and triangles and crosses. That had palled, and now
she was determinedly using the inner vision. The one thing she was
bent upon was neither to think nor to feel these past days, weeks, and
months, not to think or to feel at all closer than a year ago. She
could bring back, she could recompose, she could live again, though
with much subtle difference, where she had lived before. She could
image forth, too; she could guide a waking dream. Now, with all the
might that was in her, she made her prison cell to grow what once as
a child she had seen, the sandy shore of the boundless sea. That was
freedom, that was light and wind and space! Then she had raced along
the beach, and in mind she ran now, long-limbed, with flying hair,
only she turned not, came not back.... The Joan Heron here in gaol sat
motionless.... One by one she added the other prisoners, until they all
ran away by the sea beach, all hastening with the cool wind at their
back and the free blue sky before. She drew ahead. They were free and
running to some happy land, but their presence made it harder not to
think or feel, and so she ran ahead. Sea and sky, and harm forgot....
One was running beside her, leaving, too, the others. She would not
image this one plainly, but they ran and ran, the sand beneath their
feet.... It never occurred to her that this _was_ magic, nor, if it had
occurred, would she have cared. It was good magic.

The rainbow vanished, the storm returned. Here was the creaking,
creaking of the dungeon door; here came again the hateful gaoler, the
man who had watched her that she should not sleep! She did not turn her
head or speak; perhaps to-day he would put down the jug of water and
the crust of bread and go without attempt at parley.

But he was standing waiting, his hand upon the door which he had drawn
to behind him. “Hist!” he said; “Joan Heron!”

The voice was different. When she had turned swiftly she saw that it
was another man, a lean, nervous, quaint-faced man in a stained leather
jerkin. Across the years since the huntsman’s house and the castle wood
and the castle and its servants there shot a memory. “Gervaise!” she
said: “Gervaise, Sir Richard’s man!”

“Ah,” said Gervaise with a jerk of his head; “you’ve got a good memory!
I hope that others’ aren’t as good! I’ve been out of these parts for
the length of two Indies voyages.”

He opened the door, put out his head and glanced up and down the
passageway, then, with a satisfied nod, drew back, shut the door, and
came close to Joan. “But I’m Sir Richard’s man still, though not, I
would have you note, to the world—no, not to the world!—The man who
up till now locked and unlocked this door had a dream of a purse of
gold, and so yesterday he quit the gaol’s service with a speech to all
men that he was sick halfway to death with a shaking cold palsy! But by
good fortune he had a cousin to slip in his place. I am the cousin—for
the nonce, for the nonce! Hist, Joan; I remember thee well at thy
uncle’s there in the wood! I’ll tell thee what I once said to him. I
said, said I, ‘That niece of thine’s got courage and wit!’—Joan, see
this bundle!” He placed it beside her upon the straw.

“Aye,” said Joan. “What’s in it?”

“Good, plain apprentice doublet, hose, cap, and shoon! Scissors
likewise to cut long hair.”

Joan’s hand closed upon it, but she said nothing. She looked at him
with parted lips and a light in her eyes.

“Just so!” said Gervaise. “It’s now close to sunset. At nine of the
clock I’ll be here again. Put everything you have on—put your long
cut hair—into the smallest bundle you may. So, if I win you forth as
a youth, my helper—God blinding them to the fact that I never brought
you in!—they’ll find no stitch of you to-morrow. ‘The witch—the
witch hath vanished into thin air! No other one than Master Satan did
ever help her forth!’”

“And when I’m forth?” said Joan.

“One thing at a time!” answered the new gaoler. “A before B; bud before
flower! Roads may open. Here’s no road at all.”

“And that’s true,” said Joan. “But all the others?”

Gervaise gazed at her with his head on one side. “The others—the
others! How do you think it possible that I should make a complete gaol
delivery? It is not possible—not in the least possible.”

“Why do you choose out me? And I thank you, Gervaise, but I think that
I will not go.”

Gervaise looked at her with light blue eyes, not sharp but penetrative,
with a kind of basal, earth understanding. “You listen to me, Joan, and
while you listen, just bear in mind that this is a dangerous business!
Figure some authority out there storming, ‘Where, in Cerberus’s
name, is the new gaoler?’ Keep that in mind, I say, and that time’s
gold—gold?—nay, rubies and diamonds! Now, look you! ’Tis no easy
jaunt, forth from this prison and town, to some land of safety for
witches and warlocks! Naught but courage and wit and strength and good
luck by the armful will make it—and a crowd would never make it! There
are two who are not to suffer death—but if they tried to flee and were
taken, as, of course, they most likely would be, they would suffer it!
Common sense saith, ‘Those two are better where they are.’ The old
woman named Dorothy died to-day. She’s gone anyhow—made her escape
clean, with Death and the scythe and hourglass. Do you think that
Mother Spuraway could be dragged free—do you think that she could run
and lie hidden and disguise herself, and starve if need be? For Grace
Maybank—she hath pleaded that she is with child, and is not to be
hanged until the elfling is born. Naught can be done there. And Elspeth
No-Wit sits and laughs, and the sweetest words would not persuade her
forth.” He ceased speaking and stood with his light blue eyes upon her.

“There is,” said Joan, “one other.”

“Aye, aye,” said Gervaise. “Well, you see mine is the kindly feeling to
youward, and Sir Richard’s is the kindly feeling to himward. Not that
Sir Richard hath not a kindly feeling to youward likewise! But, I know
not why, he hath the greatest liking for the sorcerer!”

“Aye,” said Joan. “And after?”

“In fact,” said Gervaise, “and though I would not hurt your feelings,
making you seem of less importance to yourself, this is a rescue
planned in the first place for the sorcerer and not for the witch! But
when I am brought in—having, see you, watched you from a nook in the
crowd through the trial—I say to Sir Richard.... More than my saying,
the sorcerer makes some such catechism as you’ve been making, and will
only have freedom on terms. So Sir Richard nods and agrees. Double
peril! But if he will not come forth else? Then I may say that Sir
Richard, too, marked you, if for a witch, then a brave witch, and that
he hath a taste for the quality.”

“Do you mean that Master Aderhold escapes this night?”

“‘Escapes’!—’escapes’! I know not who escapes. It’s full of peril.
But Humphrey Lantern, who takes him bread and water, served under Sir
Richard in the wars. He’s weary of turning keys, and hath an itch to
see far countries. I know not; Fate’s got it all hidden.—But if the
stars are propitious, you might touch another prisoner’s hand on the
dark, windy road.”

He stopped speaking. Joan took up the braided straws and laid them
again in patterns, then brushed them aside. She sat with one hand in
the other, her eyes upon the wall. Then she stood up, tall in her
ragged gown. “Thank you, Gervaise! If it goes wrong, save yourself, for
no worse harm can come to me. I’ll make ready.”

The sunset light dyed the town, the looping river, the castle on the
hill, the great church, and the prison a pale red. The glow faded,
night came down. Within the prison every passageway was dim enough;
here a smoky light and there at a distance another, and all between
a wavering dusk. The new gaoler and a youth, whom he mentioned to
one they met as his nephew and helper, pursued these passages with a
slow step and a halt here and a halt there, as the gaoler’s duties
presented themselves.... But at last they turned a corner and saw
before them a low portal. “Win through that and we’re outside!”
muttered Gervaise. “I’ve the key—and it would make a story, my getting
it! Oiled, too.”

Right and left and behind them they saw no one. He stopped. The key
went in noiselessly, turned noiselessly, the door opened outward, they
felt, instead of the heavy breath of the gaol, the air of the wide
night. They stepped into an alley, black as pitch. Gervaise stooped,
reinserted the key, and turned it. “Lock Discovery in overnight,
anyway! Take the key and drop it in the river with your bundle.”

Joan touched his arm. “There are two men standing yonder by the wall.”

Gervaise nodded. “There’s hope they’re Lantern and the other. We
agreed—”

They crept toward the two. Hope changed to certainty. There were some
whispered words; then in the darkness the four figures stole forward,
away from the prison walls that towered like the very form of Death.
The night was black and quiet, but at the mouth of the alley as they
left it for the wide darkness of the square they heard voices, and
staves striking against the stones, and saw the lanterns of the watch.
The pillory was at hand; they drew into its shadow, pressing close
beneath the platform.

Swinging lanterns, forms ebon and tawny, footsteps, voices, approached,
seemed to envelop them, passed, lessened in bulk toward the High
Street. The orange spheres of light dwindled to points, the voices
from frightfully hoarse and loud thinned to a murmur afar. The four,
Gervaise leading, moved from the pillory, friendly for once, and
struck across the considerable open place. The hour was late and
the townspeople housed. They saw no one in all the square. But as
they came into the shadow of the great church tower they again heard
voices nearing them—roistering voices of young men, petty gallants
and citizens’ sons, homeward bound from some place of drinking and
outcasts’ favours. “The church porch,” motioned Gervaise. Like swallows
they sped across and lodged themselves in the shadow-filled, cavernous
place.

The roisterers came close, elected, indeed, just here to arrest their
steps and finish out a dispute. “Black eyes are best!” averred one.
“Grey eyes? Faugh! That vilest Hawthorn witch hath grey eyes! Ha, ha!
Eyes like Joan Heron!”

“That she hath not! They are green. A grey eye is well enough! That
vile witch’s are green.”

“Grey.”

“I tell thee I saw them, green and wicked! Green beneath red gold hair.”

“Grey! Grey as the sea, and hair like wheat when it is cut.”

“Thou fool—”

“Thou knave—”

“Thou villain to liken my mistress’s eye to that of a vile witch and
devil’s whore! My sword shall make thee eat it—”

“Will it? Will it? Out, tuck—”

But a third and fourth, wiser or less flushed with wine, struck
between. “Will you have the watch upon us and be clapped up for whether
a vile witch’s eyes are grey or green? Grey or green or blue or black
or brown, ere the month be gone the crows will pick them out! Put up
your blades!—I told you so! The watch—”

True it was that the watch was coming back. The roisterers fell
suddenly into hushed and amicable converse, began to move, too, from
before the church. But the watch were coming hastily, were already
within eyeshot of the porch. It was not so dark now, either.

“The moon is up,” muttered Gervaise. “We should have been clear of the
town—”

It was rising, indeed, above the housetops. The watch and the young
men were in parley, fifty yards away. The four from the prison pressed
more closely into the shadow of the pillars. They stood in blackness
and watched the full round moon silver the houses and the uneven floor
of the square. The moonbeams touched the portal, picked out the carven
figures that adorned it. Watch and the explanatory tavern group,
voices and glowworm lanterns moved farther, lessened into distance,
disappeared in the dark mouth of some street. Windows had been opened,
householders were looking forth. It needed to wait until all was again
peace and sleeping time.

Aderhold spoke for the first time since the four had left the prison
alley. The apprentice youth stood near him. They leaned against the
one pillar, and though they thought not of it, they had among other
seemings, in the lapping light and darkness, the seeming of two bound
to one stake. He spoke in a whisper. “You are not afraid?”

“No.”

“I knew that you would not be. Little worse can come, and something
that is better may.”

“Yes.... I had rather sink trying.”

The moon whitened the carvings of the porch. Grotesque after grotesque
came into the light: the man with the head of a wolf, the woman with a
bat spreading its wings across her eyes, the demons, the damned, the
beatified exulting over the damned, fox and goat and ape crossed with
man and woman. The silver, calm light turned all from black to grey.
The wind whispered, the nearer stars shone, the moon travelled her
ancient road and threw transformed sunlight upon the earth. The minutes
passed, the town lay fast asleep.

Gervaise moved from the porch, the others followed. They would not pass
through the town; they took a steep street which led them first down
to the river, and then, as steeply mounting, up to the castle wood.
They went in silence, with a rapid step, and came without mishap under
the shadow of the summer trees. Here was a wall which they climbed,
dropping from its top into fern and brush. Joan knew the path that they
took, a skirting path, walled with bracken, arched over by oak boughs.
They heard wild things moving, but no human tongue questioned them. It
was cool and dim, and because the moon was riding high and they must
make all haste, they ran along this path which stretched a mile and
more. Gervaise was light and spare as a jester; the wry-mouthed, surly,
one-time soldier strong enough, though somewhat rusty in the joints;
Aderhold was a thinker who lived much out of doors, a leech who walked
to his patients, and where there was need walked fast; Joan, a woman of
Arcady, with a step as light as a panther’s. These two had behind them
prison inaction and weakening, prison fare, anxiety, despair, strain,
and torment. They were not in health and strength as they had been.
But instinct furnished a mighty spur; if they must run to live, they
would run! They ran in the scented darkness, the bracken brushing their
arms, the moon sending against them, between the oak boughs, a silver
flight of hurtless arrows. The mile was overpast, the path widened into
a moonlit vale, the vale swept downward to a fringing cliff, by day
not formidable, but difficult in this gliding, watery light. The four,
with some risk of broken limbs, swung themselves down by jutting root
and stone, dropped at last a sheer twelve feet, and found themselves
clear of the wood and the castle heights, clear of the town, out upon
the grassy edge of the London road. It stretched before them, gleaming,
bare, silent as to the feet which even now might be coming after them,
silent as to whether or no they would outstrip those feet, silent as
to the ends that it would serve. They lay for a minute upon the bank,
breathing hard, regathering force. An owl hooted, _Tu-whoo! Tu-whoo!_
They rose from the wayside growth and took the road. It ran so hard and
gleaming—it might be a friend, it might be an enemy! Over them soared
the night, far off they saw sleeping houses. The air was astir, the
shadows of the trees dancing on the road.

They measured a mile, two miles. The road climbed somewhat; before
them, in the flooding moonlight, they saw a gibbet with its arm and
down-hanging chains.

“I know this place,” said Aderhold.

The wry-mouthed man wagged his head. “Creak, creak! Once I saw fifty
such in a lane, and the air was black with birds! This one’s stood
clean for a year.”

It was like a letter against the sky. Joan stared at it. Her lips
parted. “I would cut it down and set fire to it, and warm some beggar
and her child.”

Gervaise was looking about him. “The crossroads are not far from here.
He said—”

“Stand still. There’s a horseman there.”

Gervaise nodded his head and continued to move forward. The horseman
moved from the lane mouth into the road. Even before Gervaise turned
and beckoned, Aderhold saw who it was. “The man with the hawk,” he
said, and smiled.

The man of the hawk and of the silver box dismounted, threw the reins
over his horse’s neck, and stepped forward to meet them. Road and lane
and fields, the heap of rock amid fox-gloves where Aderhold had sat
one summer afternoon, the knoll crowned by the gibbet—all lay bare of
human life, whitened by the moon.

“Ha, philosopher!” said Sir Richard. “Places called of ill omen are
often just the other way round! Well met again, under a harmless tree!”
He put out his hand.

Aderhold clasped it. “Poor enough to say, ‘I thank you, friend!’ And
yet enough when it is the very truth. I thank you, friend!”

He spoke to Joan. “This is the man who opened our prison doors.”

She came and stood beside him. “I thank you, sir. May you be through
all time a friend to folk and find them friends to you!”

She stood tall and straight in man’s dress. She had cut away the
lengths of hair. A man’s cap rested upon the short, thick locks. At
first she made no motion to remove this cap; instead, as she faced
Sir Richard, she made, involuntarily, the bend of knee that formed a
curtsy; then, as instantly, she caught herself, recovered her height,
and lifting her hand doffed the cap, and stood with it held against her
breast.

The man from the castle gave a genial laugh. There was admiration in
the sound. “Quick to learn! A flexible free mind—and courage! Good
youth, I seem to remember you at the old huntsman’s house.”

“At times my father wrote for you, please you, Sir Richard. And twice
or thrice you came and sat in the porch and talked with him and my
uncle. And once it was cherry time, and I brought you a dish of
cherries.”

“I remember! And then you both went away.” His kindly look dwelled upon
her. “I watched you through that five-days’ comedy in the Judgement
Hall yonder. I found it worth my mind’s while to watch you; no less
worth it than to watch this other that they called servant of Evil! As
for thanks, it is yet to be seen if there is much reason.” He spoke
to them both. “I am putting you on the road to the nearest port, and
when you reach it I can bring you to a ship there. But before you reach
it, you may be taken, and if you reach it and enter the ship, I cannot
answer for what will come to you afterwards in life. I may be no friend
at all.”

“Friend, whatever comes,” said Aderhold. “If we die to-morrow, friend
on the other side of that.”

“We’ll touch hands on that,” answered Sir Richard. “And now, seeing
that you must go on to the crossroads, I will speak while we walk.”

They put themselves into motion, five human figures now upon the road,
and the horse following his master. The two escaped prisoners and
their helper moved ahead; behind them came Gervaise and the gaoler,
discoursing in whispers. The moon shone down, the wind took a harp-like
tone.

“At the crossroads you four—Humphrey Lantern, that was a good
man-at-arms in the Low Countries, and Gervaise, a born wanderer and a
man of mine between long flittings, and one Giles Allen, a chirurgeon,
and John his brother—will take the road that runs to the port. If you
reach it or reach it not, one wiser than I may tell! Gervaise knows a
place where you may lie hidden to-morrow, going on at nightfall. You
may or may not save yourselves. On the way thither I can give you but
my wishes. But when you come to the port,—if you come to the port,—go
at once to the harbour and find out the Silver Queen.” He gave a packet
wrapped in silk to Aderhold. “Give the letter therein to the captain.
There is also a purse.—Nay, the thing must be done rightly!”

“The Silver Queen.”

“The Silver Queen, sailing to Virginia. I have a venture in her,
and the captain owes me somewhat. She carries a Virginia lading of
adventurers and indentured men.—In Virginia are forests and savage
men and wild beasts, but less preoccupation, maybe, with Exclusive
Salvation and the Guilt of Doubt—though even in Virginia a still
tongue were certainly best!—To Virginia is the only help that I can
give.”

“I am content,” said Aderhold.

The man of the hawk looked at Joan.

“I am content,” she said.

“Good!” said Sir Richard. “Humphrey Lantern is all for adventure and
a new world. But Gervaise, when he has seen you safely shipped, will
manage to cross to Ireland and take service for a time with my brother
there. Next year I’m for France, and I look to find Gervaise dropped
like an acorn on the road to Paris. But Lantern goes with you. What,
good Humphrey, is now your name?”

The red-faced, wry-mouthed man scratched his head. “I hadn’t thought,
Your Honour.... George is a good name—George Dragon, Sir Richard.”

The little company fell silent, walking in the moonlight upon a road
bare as a sword.... Behind Joan and Aderhold receded the old life,
sunk away the town, the road to Hawthorn and Hawthorn and its church,
the Oak Grange and Hawthorn Forest, people a many, the two Carthews,
Master Thomas Clement, Alison, Cecily, other names, folk a many, things
done and suffered, old life. Before them stretched something new,
strange life, bare as yet of feature as the road before them. Their
imaginations were not busy with it; they left it veiled, but yet they
felt its presence.... Undoubtedly, even at this moment, even earlier
than this moment, their escape might be discovered. Already the hue and
cry might be raised. Even now the finders might be on their track. They
might be seized long ere they could reach the port, or, having reached
it, before they could reach the Silver Queen. The Silver Queen might
be searched before it sailed. They might be dragged back. The gallows
and the stake might be cheated no moment of their prey. They might
again see Hawthorn faces. They knew all this, but their thought did not
dwell upon it. Their minds saw dimly something new, bare yet of feature.

The man of the hawk walked musing beside Aderhold. At last he spoke.
“We are not far from the crossroads. When we are there you will go your
ways and I shall turn and go back to the castle.... If we grow by means
of all circumstance as it flows by and through us, how are you changed
by what has lately passed?”

“This summer,” said Aderhold, “I grew somewhat past bodily fear. I
should like you to know that.”

“I saw no great cowardice before.... How now do you feel toward your
fellow man?”

“My fellow man is myself.”

“And toward that which we call God?”

“As I did.... I seek that which is high within me.”

The other nodded. “I understand....” They walked on in silence until
they saw before them the crossroads. Aderhold remembered the ragged
trees, the dyke-like bank, the stake through the heart of the suicide.
The night was wearing late. The moon shone small and high. Charles’s
Wain was under the North Star. The five came to a stand, and here the
four said good-bye to the one.




CHAPTER XXIII

THE ROAD TO THE PORT


THEIR side of the earth turned, turned with ceaseless motion toward
the central orb. There grew a sense of the threshold of dawn, of the
chill and sunken furthest hour, when the need was great for the door
of light to open. The road they were upon was narrower, rougher, than
the highway, with more hills to climb. The four travelled as rapidly as
was possible, there being a goal to be reached before sunlight and the
world abroad. Gervaise and Lantern swung on without overmuch effort,
but the faces of Joan and Aderhold were drawn and the beads stood on
their foreheads. Behind them were long prison, scanty fare, bodily
hurt, broken strength. Their lips parted, their breath came gaspingly.
They went on from moment to moment, each step now a weariness, all
thought suspended, the whole being bent only on endurance, on measuring
the road that must be measured. They did not speak, though now and then
one turned eyes to the other.

Far off a cock crew and was answered by another. Vaguely the air
changed, the world paled, a steely light came into the east. Gervaise
looked at the two. “We’ll rest here until there’s colour in the sky.
We’ve come pretty fast.” There was a great stone by the road. Aderhold
and Joan sank upon it, lay outstretched, still as in the last sleep.
He had a wide cloak, she had none. He raised himself upon his hand and
spread over her the half of this. They lay with closed eyes, drinking
rest.

Far off and not so far, more cocks were crowing. In the eastern sky
the bars of grey turned purple, then into them came a faint red. The
birds were cheeping in the tree-tops. The mist veil over field and
meadow grew visible. Gervaise and Lantern, who had been seated with
their knees drawn up, arms upon knees and head upon arms, raised their
eyes, marked the red in the sky, and got to their feet. Gervaise went
and touched the two. “Time to go on! We’ve got to get hidden before
Curiosity’s had breakfast.”

They went on, the light strengthening, the air warming, a myriad small
sounds beginning. In less than a mile they came to a branching road,
rough and narrow. Gervaise leading, they entered this, followed it for
some distance, and left it for a half-obliterated cart track running
through woods. In turn they quitted the woods for a stubblefield,
plunged from this into a sunken lane, and so in the early sunlight came
before a small farmhouse, remote and lonely, couched and hidden between
wooded hills. “My granther’s brother’s house,” said Gervaise. “Stay
you all here while I go spy out the land.” They waited in the sunken
lane, the blue sky overhead. The wry-mouthed man busied himself with a
torn shoe. Joan and Aderhold knelt in a warm hollow of the bank, leaned
against the good earth.

“_Giles and John Allen_,” he said. “Do not forget the names.”

“No.... When I speak to you, am I to say, ‘Giles’?”

“Aye,—aye, John.”

“Do you think they will not know that I am a woman?”

He looked at her critically for the first time. “You have height and a
right frame. Your voice is deeper than most women’s. Now that your hair
is cut, I have seen youths with locks so worn and of that colour and
thickness. You are pale from prison and unhappiness, but the sun will
tan your cheeks. You have mind and will, and all that you do you do
with a just art. Discovery may come, but it need not come—”

Gervaise reappeared. “It’s all right! The old people will not blab, and
their two daughters and the ploughman have propitiously gone to a fair!
Now, Master Allen, and your brother, and good George Dragon—” They
moved toward the house. Gervaise jerked his thumb toward a barn that
showed beyond. “Good straw—good, warm, dusk corner to lie _perdu_ in,
back of the eaves! I’ll bring food, bread and milk. So you’ll have your
rest to-day, and to-night we’ll cover as many miles as may be.—This
way! We’ll not go through the house. Say we’re taken, I’d rather not
drag the good folk in more than ankle-deep.”

The barn was dim and wholesome-smelling. The piled straw in the loft
felt good beneath aching frames. They made with bundles of it a
chance-seeming barrier, behind which in a fragrant hollow they prepared
to rest. Close overhead was the brown roof that, beyond their niche,
sloped steeply upward a great distance. A square had been cut for light
and air; through it poured vagrant, scented breezes, and in and out
flew the swallows. The light was thick and brown; it would take keen
eyes to see aught but straw, rudely heaped. Gervaise brought a basket
filled with homely, country fare, and then a great jug of spring water.
They ate and drank, and then set watches—one to watch while the others
slept. Humphrey Lantern took the first.

Rest was sweet, sleep was sweet.... Joan woke sometime in the early
afternoon. There in a hollow of his own sat Gervaise, succeeded to
Lantern’s watch. He sat, blue-eyed and meditative, chewing a straw.
Lantern sprawled at a little distance, in sleep back, perhaps, in
the old wars. Nearer lay Aderhold, his arm thrown across his eyes,
profoundly sleeping. At first Joan was bewildered and did not know
where she was; then the whole surged back. She lay quite still, and
memory painted for her picture after picture.

Presently Gervaise, glancing her way, saw that her eyes were open.
He nodded to her and crept over the straw until they were close
neighbours, when he seated himself Turk fashion and asked if she had
slept.

She laughed. “Unless I was dead, I was asleep.”

“He has not moved. Prison life’s a hard life, and then I understand
that before that he was up day and night with the plague.... Well, and
what do you think of the wide world before you?”

“Is it so wide?”

“That’s as you take it. It’s as wide as your vision, your taste, and
your hearing.”

“I do not wish to be hanged.... It used to come and gather round me
when I slept, there in the dungeon, in the prison. First the place
grew large, and then it filled with people,—I could feel them in the
dark,—and then I knew where the gallows was, and hands that burned me
and bruised me put a rope around my neck, and in the dark the people
began to laugh and curse. And then I woke up, and my hands and arms
were cold and wet, and I said, ‘So it will be, and so the rope will
feel, and so they will laugh!’... Over and over.... But it did not come
to me here, though I was asleep. I do not believe that they will take
us now.”

“Do you believe in witches and black men and Satan and his country?”

“I used to. Isn’t every little child taught it? It’s hard to rub out
what they taught you when you were a child. But do I believe it now?”
She laughed with a bitter mirth. “My oath, on anything you please,
that I do not believe it now! I believe that some folk have more good
than bad in them, and a few have far more good than bad. And that some
folk have more bad than good in them, and a few have far more bad than
good. And that most folk are pretty evenly mixed, and that now one
having walks forth and now another. But that we are all folk.”

“That presents well enough,” said Gervaise, “my manner of thinking. But
then I have lived long with Sir Richard.”

They fell silent. A bird flew in at the window. The pleasant, drowsy
scent of the hay was about them, the sun-shot dusk, the murmur of the
wind across the opening. “Is your watch nearly over,” asked Joan, “and
were you going to wake him next? I am awake already, so give it to me.”

“Nay, nay,” said Gervaise; “neither to you nor to him! I’ll sit here
for another two hours and think of the flowers I might have grown. Then
Lantern will take it again. You two are to get your rest.—I like well
enough to converse with you, but my advice is to shut your eyes and go
back to sleep.”

Joan smiled at him and obeyed. She shut her grey eyes, and in two
minutes was back at the fountain of rest for overwrought folk. She
slept, slept, and Aderhold slept. When they waked the sun was hanging
low in the west. They waked at a touch from Gervaise. “Best all of us
open our eyes and pull our senses together! I hear the two daughters
and the ploughman, and maybe company with them, coming back from the
fair.”

There were heard, indeed, from the lane, not far away, voices talking
freely and all together. Lantern crept to the window and with care
looked forth. He came back. “Country folk—five or six, and merry from
the fair.” The voices reached the farmhouse, entered it, and became
muffled. The sun dropped behind the hills.

Twilight was not far advanced when there sounded a footstep in the barn
below the hayloft. The four, still before, now lay hardly breathing.

The footstep approached the loft, halted beside the ladder that led
up. “Gervaise” said a quavering, anxious voice. “Granther’s brother,”
murmured Gervaise, and crept cautiously to the edge of the loft.
Presently he disappeared down the ladder, and the three, crouched
where the roof was lowest, heard a muted colloquy below. The farmer’s
voice sounded alarmed and querulous, Gervaise’s soothing. At last they
ceased to talk, and the old man’s slow and discontented step was heard
to leave the barn. Gervaise came up the ladder and crawled over the
straw to the escaped prisoners and runaway gaoler. The loft was now
in darkness, only the square window glimmered yet, framing a sky from
which the gold had not quite faded.

“It’s boot and saddle, sound horn and away!” he said in a sober
whisper. “We had not been gone two hours when some officious fool
must seek the heart’s ease of Lantern’s company! No Lantern to be
found—all dark! No new turnkey to be found either. Whereupon they
waken an authority, and he’s inspired to open dungeon doors and look
within! Hue and cry! Town first, but with the morning light men
a-horseback on all roads.—They had it all at the fair—brought it
all home. County’s afire to bring the wild beasts back. Country for
as many miles as necessary will be scoured clean as a prize pannikin.
Reward for capture, living or dead;—bands out to earn it. All manner
penalties for any who harbour. The goodman here put two and two
together,—matched four with four,—and at the first chance, while
they’re all at supper, comes shivering out to warn us off. Granther’s
brother’ll not tell, but travel it is!—Humphrey Lantern, you take the
basket with what food’s left. We’ll need it. Toss the straw together so
’twill not show the lair. We’ll just wait till that last light goes.”

They waited, felt their way to the ladder and down it, then out of the
barn. Voices were noisy in the house a stone’s throw away. A woman
came to the open door and stood looking out. When she had turned away,
they entered the lane and followed it until it set them in the wood
track they had left in the morning. Here they paused to consider their
course. In that direction so many miles, as the crow flew, lay the
port. Return to the road they had left at dawn, strive to keep upon it
at least through the night, and so make certainly the greatest speed
toward their goal? Night-time, and ordinarily there would be none or
little travel through the night, and that little easily hidden from.
But to-night the road might be most perilous; harrow and rake might be
dragging along it. Nevertheless they decided for the road.

It was now utterly dark. They saw nothing, heard nothing, but the small
continuous voice of the hot, dry night. They were rested; to Joan and
Aderhold especially there seemed to have come anew youth and strength.
They walked steadily, with a swinging step, and the country fell behind
them and the sea grew nearer. They spoke only at long intervals and
then in whispers.

“Luck’s with us,” offered Gervaise. “I’d almost rather see it more
chequered! Very Smooth always has a mocking look in her eyes.”

Lantern growled in his throat. “I haven’t had much smooth in _my_ life.
It owes me a little smooth.”

The moon rose. It showed them on either hand a rolling country, and
before them a village. The road ran through this; therefore, for the
time being, they would leave the road. They crept through a hedge
and found themselves in a rough and broken field. Crossing this they
pierced a small wood and dipped down to a stream murmuring past a
mill. The great wheel rose before them, the moon making pearls of the
dripping water. The stream had a footbridge. They hesitated, but all
was dark and silent. They crossed, and as they stepped upon the beaten
earth on the farther side, two dogs sprang upon them from the shadow
of the mill. They came barking furiously—the refugees snatched what
stick or stone they could reach and beat them back. One was cowardly
and stood off and barked, but the other, a great black beast, sprang
upon the first in his path. It chanced to be Joan. She caught him by
his own throat before he could reach hers, but he was fierce and strong
and tore from her grasp. His teeth met in the cloth of her jerkin, he
dragged her to the ground. Aderhold’s hands were at his throat, choking
his jaws open, pushing him backward. Over the physician’s bent shoulder
Lantern’s arm rose and fell, the moon making the dagger gleam. The dog
loosened his grip, howled, and gave back with a slashed and bleeding
muzzle.

Out of a hut, built beside the mill, came a man’s voice, roughly
threatening. “Who’s there? Who’s there? Ill-meaning folk take warning!”

As they did not answer, the owner of the voice burst from the hut and
came toward them, shouting to the dogs to hold fast and swinging a
great thorn stick. The moon showed a half-dressed, stout rustic, bold
enough but dull of wit, and still heavy, besides, with sleep. Behind
him came a half-grown boy.

“Call off your dogs!” cried Gervaise. “We are seamen ashore, making
from the port to the town of —--. They told us there was a village
hereabouts, and we kept on walking after night, thinking to come
to it. But we think it’s bewitched and walks as we walk. Call your
dogs off! We’re harmless men, used to the sea and crossing a strange
country. Put us right, friend, and thank you kindly!”

“What have you done to Holdfast? He’s frighted and bleeding.”

“He pulled one of us down and nothing else served to make him loosen
grip. ’Twill heal and no harm done!”

But a controversy gathered in the eyes of the miller’s man. “That dog’s
worth all the ’gyptians and vagrants and seamen between here and London
town! If you think you’re going round murdering dogs—”

“I think,” said Gervaise, “that I’ve in my pouch a crown piece which
I got of a gentleman for a parrokeet and an Indian pipe. Let’s see if
’t won’t salve that muzzle.” He drew it forth and turned it to and fro
in the moonlight. “Ask the dog. Hark’ee! He says, ‘Take it, and let
harmless sailor folk pass!’” He slid it into the peasant’s hand, who
stood looking down upon it with a dawning grin. “Cross this bridge,”
asked Gervaise, “and we’ll be in the path to the village?”

“Aye, aye,” answered the fellow. “If you be harmful folk, let them find
it out there!—Be you sure this piece is good? You ben’t coiners or
passers?”

“We ben’t,” said Gervaise. “The piece is as good as the new breeches it
will buy.”

They recrossed the bridge, stepping from it into the wood already
traversed. The boy’s shrill voice came to them from across the stream.
“Father, father! They’re four, and ’twas four the man told us broke
gaol! They ben’t sailors—they be the witches!” His voice took a
bewildered tone. “Only one of them was a woman—and they’re going
toward the town—”

“What I be going to do,” answered the man, “is to go up t’ the house
and waken miller—”

The dogs were still barking. The boy’s voice rose shriller and
shriller. “I know they’re witches! They had glowing eyes and they were
taller than people—”

The four plunged more deeply into the wood. The confused sound died
behind them. They went up the stream a mile, came upon a track that ran
down to stepping-stones, crossed the water for the second time, and
once more faced seaward; then after a time turned at right angles and
so struck the road again, the village well passed. But the détour had
cost them heavily in time. Moreover, even in the night-time, there grew
a feeling of folk aware, of movement, a fear of eyes, of a sudden shout
of arrest.... They heard behind them a trampling of horses’ hoofs,
together with voices. There was just time to break into a friendly
thicket by the roadside, and crouch there among the hazel stems, out of
the moonlight. There came by a party of men, some a-horseback, some on
foot.

“Four,” said one distinctly.

“Shall we beat that thicket?”

“They couldn’t have gotten this far.”

“I’ll ride through it to make sure—”

Man and horse came into the thicket. They passed within ten feet of
the four lying flat, but touched them not and saw them not.... When
all were gone the sorcerer and the witch and their companions came
forth and again pressed seaward. The dawn appeared, the sky unearthly
cold and remote behind the clean black line of the earth. It showed
a homeless country for them. With the first grey gleam there began a
traffic upon the road. They were passed in the dimness by a pedlar with
his pack, a drover with sheep. They saw coming a string of carts, and
they left the road again, this time for good. They lay now amid heather
upon a moor, and in the pale, uncertain light considered their course.
The miles were not many now before them, but they were dangerous miles.
They decided at last to break company and, two and two, to strive for
the port. Say that, so they arrived there, then would they come as well
to an inner ring of dangers.... But they all strove for cheer, or grim
or bright, and Gervaise appointed for rendezvous an obscure small inn
called The Moon, down by the harbour’s edge. It was kept by a man known
to Sir Richard. Get to The Moon, whisper a word or two which Gervaise
now furnished, and the rest would probably go well. The problem was to
get there.

It was also to decide, if they divided, who would go with whom.
Gervaise looked at Aderhold. “Will you, sir, take Humphrey Lantern, and
Joan go with me?” There was a silence, then Aderhold spoke, “You have
proved yourself the best of guides and guards. But life has taught me,
too, to watch for dangers and in some measure has given me skill. And
she and I are the heinous ones and the desperate.” He turned his eyes
to Joan. “Shall we not keep together?”

She nodded. “Very good.... The sky is growing red.”




CHAPTER XXIV

THE FARTHER ROAD


WHAT were Gervaise’s and Lantern’s adventures they would hear when
they reached The Moon. Their own, throughout this day, led them to no
harm. They had been for long in the hand of Ill Fortune; it seemed now
that she slept and her grasp relaxed. The first outward happening came
quickly, ere the sun was an hour high. They were crossing a heath-like,
shelterless expanse, when a sudden _Hilloa!_ halted them. Two men were
rapidly approaching over the heath.

“If we can, we will evade them,” said Aderhold. “If we cannot and they
would keep us by force—?”

“They are not wrestlers nor giants,” answered Joan. “If they have no
weapon, mayhap we can give them as good as they send—”

The two ran up, looked at them suspiciously. “What do you here? Who are
you?”

“Nay, who are _you_?” said Aderhold. “We are lookers for a reward.”

The opposing pairs stood and eyed each other. The newcomers were two
lank and unhealthy-looking, plainly dressed, town-appearing young men.

“Fie!” said one. “We also search, but not for love of lucre and silver
pounds in purses! We would serve God by stamping his foes into dust!”

“Which way have you looked?”

The more garrulous of the two swept his arm around. “Unless the Prince
of the Power of the Air hath held them invisible to the eyes of the
Elect, they are not in that direction nor in that! My companion, Only
Truth Turner, and I were about to seek in the quarter to which I see
you are addressed. Let us, then, seek for a while in company. And what,
friends, may be your names?”

“I am Relative Truth Allen, otherwise known as Giles Allen, and this is
my brother, Be-ye-kind-to-one-Another.—Four together, is it not so?
Three fierce, foreign-looking men, and a short, dark woman.”

“We didn’t,” said Only Truth, “hear them described. But there will
assuredly be some devil’s mark whereby to know them.”

They were now moving together over the heath. Each of the four had a
stout stick, broken at some time in their several journeyings. With
theirs the two townsmen now and again beat some clump of furze or
thorn. Once a hare rushed forth and away, and once a lark spread its
wings and soaring vanished into the blue. “Do you think,” said the
speaker, whose name was Wrath Diverted, “do you think that that hare
and bird might have been—? I understand that in the trial the Hawthorn
witches all avowed that they became bird or beast at will.”

Aderhold followed the lark with his eyes. “I have seen human beings
who reminded me of bird or beast, and I have seen bird and beast who
reminded me of human beings. If that one up yonder is a witch, she hath
strength of wing!”

The lark disappeared; the hare came not back. “Even so,” said Only
Truth, “there would be two left. But I hold that those were natural
creatures.”

They walked through the bright morning, over the high bare world. “We
came out,” said Wrath Diverted, “to see my brother Another-Pays-my-Debt
who dwells at Win-Grace Farm. Yesterday came news of the loosing of
Beelzebub. Whereupon many made themselves into bands and went forth
even as hunters, and at dawn this morning Only Truth and I also.”

“Let us keep our faces seaward,” said Aderhold. “You have looked that
way and we have looked this.”

“Good,” answered Wrath Diverted; “but we should examine that dip in the
earth I see yonder.”

They searched the hollow and found naught to the purpose, which done,
they went briskly on, but kept a constant watch to right and left.
“This heath,” said Wrath Diverted, “will presently fall to tilled lands
with roads and dwellings, byways and hedges. Then there will be places
to search, but here there is naught—Were you at the trial of the
troublers of Israel?”

He spoke to Joan. “No,” she answered. “We heard of it. Everybody heard
of it.”

“For my part,” said Only Truth, “I cannot conceive how a man when he
hath choice of masters should choose so scurvy an one! Here is a King
whom you may serve who, if in this world He seemeth at times neglectful
of his servants and niggardly in comforts and rewards, yet, when you
have come to the next world which is his true city and court, you have
his sign manual for it that you will have honours and titles and riches
without end! Moreover, your body will be happy and comforted, and you
will not again be sorrowful or tried, nor ever have to work, but only
stand and praise.—Not so with that other man, who will not kneel here
nor wear this Master’s livery! Comes King Satan and claps him, ‘You are
mine!’ Then mayhap he is led to a dance of unlawful and honey-sweet
pleasures, or is given a heap of gold, or is dressed in a purple mantle
and given a sceptre to hold, or is made drunk with worthless knowledge!
But it is all a show and turneth to gall and wormwood. For incontinent
he dieth. Nay, oftenest there is not in his hire the honey-sweet nor
the gold and purple! For the other King’s servant even here triumpheth,
and Satan’s man dieth a lazar and poor, even if he be not hanged, torn
asunder, broken on the wheel, or burned. Then goeth the wicked wretch
to his Master’s capital and court, even as the good man goeth to his.
But the one servant lifteth his feet in haste from burning marl and
findeth no cool floor to set them on. He swalloweth smoke and flames
and findeth no water in all hell. His flesh blackeneth to a crisp, but
is never burned senseless. A million years pass, and not one second but
he hath felt first pain and terror. Eternity, eternity! and never will
his anguish lessen. He looketh about him and seeth those for whom he
had affection—for like liketh like—burning with him, and about their
feet, creeping and wailing, the unbaptized babes. He looketh up, and he
seeth across the gulf the other King’s court, and the Happy Servant.
And the Happy Servant looketh down and seeth him, and his own bliss
waxeth great. Wherefore—”

Wrath Diverted took the word. “Nay! You err, Brother Only Truth, in
using the word ‘choice.’ There is no choice, none!—that is, none on
our part. Attribute no merit to us who attain Salvation! Attain it, do
I say? Nay, we attain it not, we are _lifted_ into it. Another pays my
debt!”

“Nay, I meant it in that wise,” said Only Truth. “A babe in the faith
knoweth that all are rightly lost and damned. Lost, lost! all are lost.
Five thousand and more years ago it happened! One day, nay, one hour,
one minute—and all was done and over! Then all souls sank to hell, and
all put on Satan’s livery. In hell are folk who have burned and howled
five thousand years! Lost, lost, all are lost! But the King, because of
the Prince’s intercession, holds out his sceptre to those among us whom
he chooses out. But we have no goodness or merit of our own! Miserable
sinners are we all, and the due of perdition!”

“Precisely so,” said Wrath Diverted. “In Adam’s fall, we sinned all.
Wherefore they in hell, whether they be pagan or heathen or ignorant
or babes, have no reason to complain. But while all are guilty there
be some who have added rebellion to rebellion, and sewed the web of
disobedience with the needle of blasphemy! They be those who refuse to
worship! They be those who will not admire the Plan of Salvation!”

“Aye,” said Only Truth. “Apostates, Sadducees, atheists, miscreants,
infidels, unbelievers, witches, warlocks, wizards, magicians, and
sorcerers! Damned and lost! They howl in the hottest cauldron and burn
in a furnace seven times heated!”

So discoursing they came insensibly into a strip of country, green and
pleasant with late summer. Before them was a hillside with a parcel of
children at play, a dozen or more, and among them a big boy or two.
These now gathered into a knot and stared down at the pedestrians.
“Four—coming across Blackman’s Heath!”

There arose a buzzing sound, half from fright, half from a sense of
exciting adventure. One bolder than his fellows called down. “Be you
the witches?”

“Witches!—witches—!”

“They be all men—”

“Ho! Satan could make them all seem men! They pray to Satan and he lets
them turn what they will. Bats and red mice and ravens and horses—”

“So he could! Witches!”

“They be four, and they come running over Blackman’s Heath—”

A stone leaped down the hillside. Another followed, and struck Only
Truth, who grew red and angry and brandished his stick. The assailants
shouted, half in fear, half in glee, and gave somewhat back; then
seeing that they were safe, well above the assailed and with the open
hill behind them, stopped and threw more stones. Only Truth would have
made after them, up the hillside, but Aderhold checked him. “Do not
fight bees and children—”

They were presently out of stoneshot. But the children might carry news
and set others on their path. “Those escaped are four,” said Aderhold
to Wrath Diverted, “and we are four. It will not be convenient to be
stopped and questioned on that ground.”

“I believe that you are right,” answered Wrath Diverted. “Moreover,
you and your brother are evidently country-bred, and walk more swiftly
than is comfortable for us who dwell in towns. Let us part, therefore
in amity. I see yonder a road which should furnish easier walking than
this growth and unevenness beneath our feet.”

“Then,” said Aderhold, “we, being as you say, country-bred, will keep
on seaward over these fields and downs.”

An hour later the two lay in a pit dug long since for some purpose
and now half filled with old dead brush, while a formidable chase
went by. These were mounted men, officers of the law, armed with an
accurate description, among them, indeed, a sheriff’s man who knew the
escaped by sight. They came trampling by; they looked down into the
pit as they passed, and thought they saw true bottom and naught there
but a litter of dead leaves and twigs; they checked their horses not
many yards from the opening and stood conferring. Their voices came
down in an indistinguishable hoarse murmur like the sea against the
strand. They shook their bridles and rode away.... The two, who had
lain half-stifled, covered by the bed of brush, stirred, heaved the
stuff away, rose gasping to their knees. Silence and the blue sky. They
crouched, eye above the rim of the pit, until sight gave reassurance,
then climbed forth and brushed from each other dead leaf and ancient
dust.

“That was like a grave,” said Joan.

Aderhold stood gazing, his hand above his eyes. “Far off yonder—that
is ocean.”

“Where?”

They stood in silence. About them was sunny stillness; far off lay the
sapphire streak. Tension—action—the mind held to an arduous matter in
hand—in the moments between, exhaustion, concern only with rest—so
had passed the time since they had crept from the gaol into the black
gaol alley. Now suddenly there came a sense of relaxation, then of
poise, then of time before them. Years—there might be years.... Even
that set amount and partition dissolved like a mist. They were going to
be together, and their minds placed no term.

They were, the two of them, sincere and powerful natures. Now they
ceased to look at the ocean which their bodies would sail, and turned
and met each other’s eyes.... Another division melted from between
them. He had been to her a learned man, of a station higher than her
own. She had said “Sir,” and “Master Aderhold.” He was still, through
circumstance, more learned than she, with a wider range of knowledge
and suffering, with a subtler command of peace and mind’s joy. But she
had power to learn and to suffer and to weave joy; there was no natural
inequality. The other inequality, the unevenness in station, now melted
into air. Given substance only by long convention, it now faded like a
dream and left a man and woman moulded of one stuff, peers, unity in
twain.

“The ocean!” said Joan: “to sail upon the ocean! What things happen
that once you thought were dreams!”

“Aye,” said Aderhold. “Long to the height—imagine to the height—build
in the ether....”

They moved toward the sea. The country was not populous. Avoiding
as they did all beaten ways, taking cover where they might of wood
or hillside, they seemed to have come into a realm of security.
They were faint with hunger. Before them rose a solitary cottage
bowered in trees. After weighing it this way and that, they went
forward soft-footed, and peered from behind a stout hedge of thorn. A
blue feather curled from the chimney, the door stood open, and on a
sunny-space of grass three young women were spreading linen to bleach.
They hummed and chattered as they worked; they were rosy and comely,
and looked kind.

Aderhold spoke with his hands on the top of the gate. “Maidens, will
you give two hungry folk a bite and a sup? We can pay a penny for it.”

The three looked up and stood in doubt; then one ran to the cottage
door. An elderly woman, tall and comely, appeared, hearkened to her
daughter, then stepped across the bit of green to the gate. “Be you
vagrants and masterless men?”

“No,” answered Aderhold. “We are honest folk seeking work, which we
look to find in the port. We are not far from it, good mistress?”

“Less than three miles by the path, the lane, and the road,” said the
woman. “You can see the roofs and towers and, if you listen, hear the
church bells.”

They were, indeed, ringing, a faint, silver sound. Aderhold listened;
then, “We are very hungry. If we might buy a loaf of you we would eat
it as we walked—”

“Nay, I’ll give you bread,” said the woman. “I or mine might be hungry,
too, sometime—and what odds if we never were!” She spoke to one of
the three standing amid the bleaching linen. “Alice! get the new-baked
loaf—”

Alice turned toward the cottage. The two others came nearer to the
gate. The church bells were still ringing, fine and far and faint. They
seemed to bring something to the woman’s mind. “They say they’ve taken
the Hawthorn folk who ran from prison.”

“Where—”

“Two men came by and told us. A miller and his men and dogs took
them last night. They fought with fire and Satan was seen above the
mill-wheel. But they took them all, the two men said, and gave them
to the nearest constable, and so now the countryside can rest.” She
stood with her capable air of strength and good nature, looking over
the green earth to the distant town. “There must be witches because
God wrote the Bible and it cannot be mistaken. Otherwise, of course,
there are a lot of things.... I used to know Hawthorn when I was a
girl. And Roger Heron. More years than one I danced with him about the
maypole—for then we had maypoles.”

“Roger Heron!” It was Joan who spoke.

“Aye. I was thinking.... He’s dead of the plague. And his daughter’s
Joan Heron, the main witch. Life’s a strange thing.”

Her daughter brought the loaf of bread and also a pitcher of milk and
two earthenware cups. The other girls left the white, strewn linen and
drew near. The cottage was a lonely one, and few passed, and by nature
all were kind-hearted and social. Alice gave a cup to each of the
wanderers, and then, tilting the pitcher, filled the cups with milk.
Giles and John Allen thanked her and, hungry and thirsty to exhaustion,
drank and were refreshed.

But Joan, when she had put down the cup, moved nearer to the mother of
the three. “Did you ever see—the witch?”

The woman, who had been listening to the church bells, turned her
strong and kindly face. “Roger Heron brought her here once when she was
a child. There was no ill in her then—or I saw it not. Roger Heron
should not have had an evil child. There was little evil in him.”

The middle daughter was more prim of countenance than the others. She
now put on a shocked look. “But, mother! That is to deny Original Sin
and Universal Guilt!”

The elder woman made a gesture with her hand. It had in it a slight
impatience. “I do not mean,” she said, “that we haven’t all of
everything in us. But Roger Heron was a good man.”

“Ah!” said the youngest daughter, “how any one can be a witch and hurt
and harm, and be lost for aye, and leave a vile name—”

“Aye,” said the second; “to know that your name was Joan Heron, and
that it would be a byword for a hundred years!”

“I am glad that Roger Heron died of the plague and waited not for a
broken heart,” said the mother, and took the pitcher from the grass.
“How far have you walked to-day?”

Aderhold answered. Presently, the loaf of bread in hand, he said that
they must go on if they would reach the port before night, and that
they gave warm thanks for kindness.... They left the friendly cottage
with the sunny spread of grass and the bleaching linen and the kindly
women. A dip of the land, a turn of the path, and all vanished as if
they had sunk into earth. Before them, fraying the horizon, they saw
the distant town.

Aderhold spoke. “You were there when you were a child. Do you remember
it?”

She answered. “I remembered at last—not at first: not plainly. I
remember the sea.”

Her voice was broken. He looked and saw that she was weeping.

He had not seen her so since the last time he had come to Heron’s
cottage, and she had wept for her father’s death. There had been no
weeping in prison, nor in that Judgement Hall, nor since. He knew
without telling that though she felt grief, she controlled grief. But
now, startled by a tide she had not looked for, control was beaten
down. All about them was a solitariness, a green and silent, sunny
world. She struggled for a moment, then with a gesture of wild sorrow,
sank upon a wayside rise of earth and hid her face. “Weep it out,” said
Aderhold in a shaken voice; “it will do you good.”

He stood near her, but did not watch her or touch her. Instead he
broke the loaf of bread into portions and kept a lookout north and
south and east and west. No human being came into range of vision. The
slow minutes went by, then came Joan’s voice, broken yet, but steadying
with every word. “All that is over now—I’ll not do that again.”

She came up to him and took a piece of the bread. “Let us go on. We can
eat it as we go.”

They walked on.

“It was Gervaise and Lantern,” said Aderhold, “who told her that tale
of a capture at the mill. They are ahead.... I have seen brave men and
women, but I have seen none braver than you, Joan.... Life is very
great. There are in it threads of all colours and every tone that is,
and if happiness is not stable, neither is misery. You are brave—be
brave enough to be happy!”

The sun declined, the town ahead grew larger against a soft and vivid
sky. Now they could see the harbour and that there were ships at
anchor. They now met, overtook, or were passed by people. Some spoke,
some went on preoccupied, but none stopped and questioned them. They
entered the town by a travelled way, slipping in with a crowd of carts
and hucksters. Within, and standing for a moment looking back, they saw
coming with dust and jingling the party that had passed them lying in
the pit.

They turned, struck into a narrow way that led downward to the sea, and
came upon the waterside in the red sunset light. A fishwife crossed
their path. “The Moon Tavern? Yonder, beyond the nets.” They came to
it in the dusk, its sign a great, full moon with a man, a dog, and a
thornbush on the golden ground. As it loomed before them, Gervaise
stepped from the shadow of a heap of timber. “Greeting, Giles and John!
George Dragon and I have been here this hour.—And yonder lies the
Silver Queen.”




CHAPTER XXV

THE SILVER QUEEN


THE SILVER QUEEN, a ship neither great nor small, high-pooped,
white-sailed, her figurehead a crowned woman, her name good for
seaworthiness, ploughed the green water. Her sailors and the
adventurers for new lands whom she carried watched their own island
sink from view, watched the European coast, saw it also fade, saw only
the boundless, restless main. The ship drove south, for the Indies’
passage.

Mariners and all, she carried a hundred and sixty souls. Captain Hugh
Bard was the captain—a doughty son of the sea. Her sailors were fair
average, tough of body, in mind some brutal, some weak, some good and
true men. She was carrying colonists and adventurers to the New World,
accessions to the lately established settlement at Jamestown. Among
these men were sober-minded Englishmen, reputable and not ill-to-do,
men who had warred or traded with credit in various parts of the world,
who had perhaps joined in earlier ventures to American shores. These
carried with them labourers, indentured servants, perhaps a penniless
kinsman or two, discontented at home. The mass of those upon the Silver
Queen were followers and indentured men. But there were likewise
adventurers going singly, free lances, with enough or just enough to
pay passage, men all for change and roving, or dare-devil men, or men
with wild fancies, hopes, ambitions, intents, or men merely leaving
worst things for a conjectural better. Also there were a few who
thought to practise their professions in the new settlement, a barber
and perfumer, a musician, a teacher, a lawyer, and a divine. It was an
average swarm from old England, in the early years of colonization.

Aboard was but one woman, and she was not known as a woman. She was
called John Allen, and went as the still-mouthed and loneliness-loving
brother of the chirurgeon Giles Allen. In the first days the latter had
stated to a group, from which John Allen had risen and gone away, that
his brother was but now recovering from a melancholy brought about by
the death of one whom he had loved. Now those aboard were not beasts,
but men with, in the main, answering hearts to lovers’ joys and woes.
For the most part not over-observant or critical, and with their own
matters much in mind, they took the statement as it was given them and
allowed to John Allen silence and solitude—such silence and solitude
as were obtainable. Silence and solitude were all around upon the great
sea, but the ship was a hive adrift.

Captain Hugh Bard was under obligations to Sir Richard. Clients of Sir
Richard—nothing known but that they were folk whom that knight was
willing to help from England—were sure of his blunt good offices.
Moreover, the ship’s doctor fell ill, whereupon Giles Allen offered his
services, there being much sickness among the colonists. The captain
nodded, found that he had aboard a skilled physician, and took a liking
to the man himself. Aderhold asked no favours for himself, and none
that might arouse suspicion for her who passed as his brother. But
yet, with a refinement of skill, he managed to obtain for her what she
wanted in that throng of men—a little space, a little distance.

She never added difficulty to their situation. She was no fine lady.
She was yeoman born and bred, courageous and sane. It was yet the
evening glow of the strong Elizabethan age. Men and women were more
frank and free in one another’s company than grew to be the case in a
later period. The wife or mistress, sometimes the sister, in the dress
of page or squire, fellow traveller, attendant at court, sometimes
fellow soldier, made a commonplace of the age’s stage-play or romantic
tale. If the masquerade occurred oftener in poem or play than in fact,
yet in the last-named, too, it occurred.

Joan had native wit. Her being, simple-seeming, pushed forward
complexes enough when it came to the touch. Aderhold marvelled to
see her so skilful and wary, and still so quiet with it all that she
seemed to act without motion, or with motion too swift for perception.
She went unsuspected of all—a tall, fair youth with grey eyes and a
manner of reserve, brooding aside over some loss of his own.

Giles Allen, John Allen, George Dragon—it was George Dragon, Aderhold
came to see, who furnished the danger point.—Humphrey Lantern was
no artist to put forward a self complete, yet not your home and most
familiar self. He had no considerable rôle to play; he was merely
George Dragon, an old soldier of the Dutch Wars, who since had knocked
about as best he might, and now would try his fortune in Virginia. He
was at liberty to talk of the good wars and the Low Countries all he
wished. He sought the forecastle and the company of the ruder sort and
he talked of these. But he was forgetful, and at times the near past
would trip up the far past. Never the very near past, but Aderhold
had heard him let slip that for part time since the good wars, he had
served as a gaoler—“head man in a good prison,” he put it with a grim
touch of pride. Aderhold thought that some one had given him usquebaugh
to drink. When he cautioned him, as he earnestly did at the first
chance, Lantern could not remember that he had said any such thing,
but, being sober, he agreed that the least thing might be spark to
gunpowder, and that their lives depended upon discretion. He promised
and for some time Aderhold observed him exercising due caution. But the
fear remained, and the knowledge that Lantern would drink if tempted,
and drunken knew not what he said.

At first they had a favouring wind and seas not rough or over-smooth.
The ship bore strongly on, and the spirits of most aboard were good.
Now and then broke out revelry and boisterousness, but the men of
weight kept rule among their followers, and Captain Hugh Bard would
have order where he commanded. The wilder sort, of whom there were
enough aboard, must content themselves with suppressed quarrels, secret
gaming, a murmur of feverish and unstable talk and conjecture. There
were those who, wherever they were, must have excitement to feed upon.
Their daily life must be peppered with a liberal hand, heightened to
a fevered and whirling motion with no line of advance. These were
restless, and spread their restlessness upon the Silver Queen. But
there was much stolidity aboard, and at first and for many days it
counteracted.

The wind blew, the sails filled, they drove cheerily on. They came to
the Canaries, on the old passage, then drove westward. Days passed,
many days. They came to where they might begin to look for islands.
And here a storm took them and carried them out of their reckoning,
and here their luck fell away from them. The storm was outlasted, but
after it there befell a calm. The wind failed, sank away until there
was not a breath. Sullen and stubborn, the calm lasted, weary day after
weary day. The sails hung lank, the water made not even a small lipping
sound, the crowned woman at the prow stood full length and steady,
staring at a glassy floor. The sea was oil, the sky brazen, and the
spirits flagged like the flagging sails. Day after day, day after day...

At dawn one morning Aderhold and Joan leaned against the rail and
looked at the purple sea. It lay like a vast gem, moveless and hard.
The folk upon the ship were still sleeping. The seamen aloft in the
rigging or moving upon the decks troubled them not, hardly looked their
way.

“If you held a feather before you,” said Joan, “it would not move a
hair’s breadth! They are to pray for a wind to-day. Master Evans will
pray—all aboard will pray. Is it chained somewhere, or idle or asleep,
or locked in a chest, and will we turn the key that way?”

“Did you see or speak to George Dragon yesterday?”

“No. Why?”

“Some of these men brought _aqua vitæ_ or usquebaugh aboard with them.
He games for it and wins. And then his tongue wags more than it should.”

“I did not know.... Danger, again?”

“Yes. He thinks he has done no harm, then is alarmed, penitent,
protests that he will not—and then it’s all done again.... Poor human
weakness!”

“And if—?”

“We will not look at that now,” said Aderhold. “It would unroll itself
soon enough.—Joan, Joan! I would that you were safe!”

“I am safe. I would that you—”

“I will match your ‘I am safe.’ I, too, am safe. Nothing here can
quench the eternal, flowing life! But until we have lifted this level
and built more highly we shall feel its pains ... and feel them for one
another. And now I ache for your danger.”

The east was carmine, the sea from purple turned carmine—carmine
eastward from the Silver Queen to the horizon; elsewhere a burnished
play of greens and blues, a vast plain, still, still! It flowed around
and away to the burning horizon, and not a sail and not a breath, and
no sound in the cordage overhead. The deepening light flowed between
Joan and Aderhold, and in it, suddenly, the body of each was beautiful
in the other’s eyes.... The sun came up, a red-gold ball. Neither man
nor woman had spoken, and now, suddenly, too, with the full dayspring,
the ship was astir, men were upon the decks. Gilbert Aderhold, Joan
Heron stepped back into the violet shadow; here were Giles and John
Allen.

Up to these now came Master Evans, the minister bound for Jamestown,
a stout, gentle-faced man in a sad-coloured suit. “Fast as though
the ship were in the stocks!” he said. “But if the Lord is gracious,
we will pray her free! Breakfast done, we will gather together and
make hearty supplication.” He looked across to the sun, mailed now
in diamond, mounting blinding and fierce. The sweet coolness of the
earlier hour was gone; wave on wave came heat, heat, heat! Master
Evans clasped more closely the Bible in his hand. “Thou sun whom for
Israel’s sake the Lord halted in thy course and held thee nailed fast
above Gibeon! Dost thou think if He chooses now to veil thy face with
cloud and to blow thy rays aside, thou canst prevent? And thou hot and
moveless air, if He choose to drive thee against the stern of this
ship and into the hollow of these sails, wilt thou make objection?
Nay, verily! And why should He not choose? Here upon this ship are not
infidels and heathen, but his own servants and sheep! Wherefore we will
kneel and beseech Him, and perchance a miracle may fall like manna.”

He looked smilingly about him, then, pressing his Bible closely, went
on to other emigrants.... Later in the morning all upon the Silver
Queen were drawn together to make petition for a prospering wind. All
save the sick were there. Giles and John Allen stood with the others,
knelt with the others. “Have we not a chronicle of Thy deeds,” prayed
Master Evans. “Didst Thou not make a dry road through an ocean for a
chosen people? Didst Thou not, at the Tower of Babel, in one hour shake
one language into all the tongues that are heard upon the earth? Didst
Thou not enable Noah to bring into the Ark in pairs all the beasts of
this whole earth? Didst Thou not turn a woman into a pillar of salt,
and give powers of speech to an ass, and preserve three men unsinged
in a fiery furnace? Didst Thou not direct the dew on the one night to
moisten only the fleece of Gideon and not any of the earth besides, and
on the next night to glisten over the face of the earth, but to leave
the fleece unmoistened? And are not we thy servants even as were Gideon
and Lot and Noah?...”

The calm held. A sky of brass, an oily sea, heat and heat, and now
more sickness, and now an uneasy whisper as to the store of water! The
whisper grew, for the ship lay still, day after day, as though she had
never moved nor ever would do so. Panic terror came and hovered near
the Silver Queen. Captain Bard fell ill, lay in fever and delirium....
The mate took command—no second Captain Bard, but a frightened man
himself. There was aboard a half-crazed fellow who began to talk of
Ill-Luck. “The ship hath Ill-Luck. Who brought it aboard? Seek it out
and tie it to the mast and shoot it with your arquebuse! Then, mayhap,
the wind will blow.” He laughed and mouthed of Ill-Luck, until crew and
passengers all but saw a shadowy figure. Time crawled by, and the calm
held and the panic grew.

There came an hour when the bolt fell, foreseen by Aderhold. Before it
ran a whisper; then there fell a pause and an ominous quiet; then burst
the voices, fast and thick. It was afternoon, the sun not far from the
horizon, the sea red glass. Aderhold came up on deck from the captain’s
cabin. He looked about him and saw a crowd drawn together. Out of
it issued a loud voice. “Ill-Luck? What marvel there is ill-luck?”
Noise mounted. The half-crazed fellow suddenly began to shrill out,
“Ill-Luck! Ill-Luck! There she sits!” He burst from the throng and
pointed with his finger. Away from the stir, on a great coil of rope
near a slung boat, there sat, looking out to sea, John Allen.

The mate, with him several of the more authoritative adventurers and
also Master Evans, came out of the state cabin. “What’s all this? What
has happened?”

A man of the wilder sort aboard, a ruffler and gamester, was pushed
forward by the swarm. “My masters, there’s one aboard named George
Dragon who, being somewhat drunk, hath let drop news that we hold hath
a bearing upon this ship’s poor fortune! He saith that we carry escaped
prisoners—runaways from the King’s justice—rebels, too, to religion—”

“Ill Luck! Ill Luck! There sits Ill Luck!” cried the half-crazed one,
and pointed again.

The swarm began to speak with a general voice. “And we say that we
won’t get a wind, but will lie here until water is gone and we die of
thirst and rot and sink.... If we’ve got men aboard who are bringing
misfortune on us.... Twelve days lying here and not a breath! The
captain ill and twenty men besides, and the water low.... There’s
Scripture for it.... What’s the good of praying for a wind, if all the
time we’re harbouring his foes?... Held here, as though we were nailed
to the sea floor, and the water low! The ship’s cursed.... We want
George Dragon made to tell their names—”

Suddenly George Dragon himself was among them—red-faced and
wry-mouthed, but to-day thick-tongued also and stumbling. He
looked about him wildly. “What’s all this chattering? Talking like
monkeys!—Waked me up—but I won and he paid—good stuff—” He saw
Aderhold and lurched toward him. When he was near he spoke and imagined
that none else could hear him. “Don’t look so grimly upon me, Master
Aderhold!” he said. “I’ve dropped not a word, as I told you I wouldn’t.
’Zooks! I’m not one to peach—”

_Aderhold!_ With one sharp sound the name ran through the swarm. “Not
Allen!—_Aderhold_....” There were those here from that port town and
the surrounding country,—those who had heard that name before. A man
cried out, “Aderhold! That was the sorcerer who was to be burned!”
Another: “They escaped—The sorcerer and apostate and the witch Joan
Heron—”

“Ill Luck! Ill Luck!” cried the Bedlamite. “There she stands!”

John Allen had risen from the coil of rope and stood against the slung
boat. The throng swung its body that way, hung suspended one long
moment, open-mouthed, wide-eyed, then with a roaring cry-flung itself
across the space between. Aderhold reached her side, but the throng
came, too, hurled him down and laid hands upon her. One clutched her
shirt and jerkin and tore them across. She stood a woman revealed.

“The witch! The witch!” they roared and struck her to the deck.

The mate was not the man that was the captain, but he knew what the
captain would do, and where he was able he copied. The few superior
colonists were not superior to witch-fear, but they had a preference
for orderly judgement and execution. Master Evans was of a timid
and gentle nature and abhorred with his bodily eyes to see violence
done. He believed devoutly that in the interests of holiness witches,
infidels, and sorcerers must be put to death, but he would not
willingly himself behold the act which his religion approved. There
were others aboard amenable to discipline, and bold enough to escape
panic over mere delay. The sorcerer and the witch were drawn from the
hands of the more enraged. Their arms were bound across; they were
thrust into the ship’s dungeon. With them went Humphrey Lantern, sober
enough now—poor wry-mouthed man!... In the state cabin there was
held a council. “Keep the wretches close under hatches until Virginia
is reached,” said the cooler sense. “Then let the officers of the
settlement hang them, on dry land and after solemn judgement. Or let
them be prisoned in Jamestown until a ship is sailing home, taken
back to England, and hanged there. If, as may well be the case, the
Silver Queen hath been cursed for their sakes, surely now that they are
ironed there below, and their doom certain in the end, the Almighty
will lift the curse! At least, wait and see if the calm be not
broken.” Within the cabin and without were malcontents, but the soberer
counsel prevailed. The mate agreed to keep the crew from mutiny, the
moderate-minded adventurers to tame the wilder, more frightened and
impatient spirits.... That very night the calm vanished.

The calm vanished in a wild uprush of clouds and stir of the elements.
The heat and savour of brass, the stillness of death, the amazing blue
of the sky, the splashed red of sunrise and sunset went away. In their
place came darkness and a roaring wind. At first they went under much
canvas; it was a drunken delight to feel the spray, to see the crowned
woman drink the foam, to hear the whistling and the creaking, to know
motion again. But presently they took in canvas.... Twenty-four hours
after the first hot puff of air, they were being pushed, bare-masted,
as by a giant’s hand over a sea that ran in mountains. The sky was
black-purple, torn by lightnings, the rain fell with a hissing fury,
the wind howled now, howled too loudly!

As the calm would not break, so now the storm would not break. It
roared and howled and the water curved and broke over the decks of the
Silver Queen. A mast went, the ship listed, there arose a cry. The rain
and lightning and thunder ceased, but never the wind and the furious
sea and the darkened sky. The Silver Queen was beaten from wave to
wave, now smothered in the hollow, now rising dizzily to the moving
summit. The waves combed over her, they struck her as with hammers,
her seamen cried out that there was sprung a leak, it came to be seen
that she might not live. The panic of the calm gave way to that of the
storm.

And now they cried out wildly that the voyage was cursed, and that God
Almighty who had plagued Israel for Achan’s sin was plaguing them for
that they kept aboard most vile offenders and rebels such as these!
Those that were still for delay kept quarter yet a little longer, but
while the wind somewhat lessened, the leak gained, and panic attacked
them too. The captain lay ill and out of his head, the mate was no
stronger than they who wished clearance made. In a black and wild
morning, the livid sky dragging toward them, the sea running high, they
lowered a boat and placed in it Aderhold and Joan and Humphrey Lantern.
They might, perhaps, have held the last with them, carrying him in
irons to Virginia, but when he found what was toward he cursed them so
horribly that no wizard could have thought of worse imprecations. They
shivered and thrust him into the boat, where he knelt and continued his
raving. “Hush!” said Aderhold. “Let us die quietly.”

The sailors loosed the small boat and pushed it outward from the Silver
Queen. It fell astern, the black water widened between. The ship, mad
to get on, to put distance between her and the curse, flung out what
sail the tempest would let her carry. It made but a slight pinion, but
yet wing enough to take her from that speck upon the ocean, the boat
she had set adrift.... Not she had set adrift, but Ignorance, Fear and
Superstition, their compound, Cruelty, and their blind Prætorian, Brute
Use of Brute Force. There had been one pale ray of something else.
Master Evans had insisted that there be put in the boat a small cask of
water and a portion of ship’s bread.

The Silver Queen hurried, hurried over the wild and heaving sea,
beneath a low sky as grey as iron. The many gazing still lost at last
all sight of the open boat. It faded into the moving air, or it was
drawn into the sea, they knew not which. But it was gone, and they made
bold to hope that now God would cease to plague them.




CHAPTER XXVI

THE OPEN BOAT


THAT day and night they in the open boat merely lived to die. With each
wave of a sea yet in storm Death overhung them, the foam atop gleaming
down like a white skull. The boat rode that wave, and then Death rose
on another. There seemed naught to do in life but to meet Death—a
little candle left to go forth by. Death preoccupied them—it was so
wide and massive, it came against them in such tourney shocks. “Now ...
No!—Then now....” But still the boat lived and the candle burned. When
the dawn broke the waves were seen to be lessening in might.

That day the sea went down and the sky cleared. Sea and sky turned
a marvel of blue, Indian, wondrous. There was a wind, steadily
and quietly blowing, but it served them not who had no sail. All
around—all around the intense sea spread to the horizon, and no sail
showed and no land. The sun mounted and for all the moving air they
felt its heat which increased. Heat and light—light—light....

The cask of water.... They found beside it a small drinking-cup of
horn, and they agreed that each should drink this once filled each
day. It was little, but so they might keep Death at bay so many days.
They also portioned out the ship’s bread. Likewise they watched for a
sail. They were now in seas where ships might be looked for; west and
south must lie the islands held by Spain. Once two sea-birds flew past
them, and that would mean that land was not inconceivably far away.
But they saw no land, and no sail was etched against the sapphire sky.
Loneliness profound, and heat and light....

All was done that could be done to preserve life. It remained to live
it.... But poor Humphrey Lantern, whom the other two tried to comfort,
would not be comforted. He sat and bit his nails, full of remorse and
horror, then passed through stages of anger to a melancholy, and thence
to a dull indifference, silence, and abstraction. They could not rouse
him. Aderhold spoke in vain of the Low Countries and the wars, and of
all the good that they owed him, and of how they might yet live to
remember these days not unkindly. Lantern, huddled in the bottom of
the boat, looked at them blankly. His abused body sank more quickly
than did theirs.... He had a knife, and at last one night, when they
had been drifting long days and nights, he struck it into his heart.
The body, swaying against Aderhold, roused him from uneasy sleep.
His exclamation waked Joan; she put out her hand and raised it wet
with blood. A moon so great and shining lit the night that they could
see well enough what had been done. Lantern was dead. They laid him
straight in the bottom of the boat. Aderhold drew out and washed the
knife, and then they sat beside the dead man until the moon paled in
the vast rose-flush of dawn. Then, while sea and sky were so beauteous,
they lifted the body; then, while they looked to the brightening east,
let it leave their hands for the great deep. Wind and current bore the
boat slowly onward and away. The two were now so weak that they lay
still as after great and prolonged exertion.

The day burned to its height, flamed to its close. There came a sunset
of supernal beauty, and then the pitying, brief twilight and the glory
of the southern night. The coolness gave a little strength. Aderhold
set the cup to the mouth of the cask and poured for each a shallow
draught of water. They should not have drunk till morning, for their
store was nearly gone. But with one mind they took this, to give them
voice, to free them for a little from gross pain. When it was done they
turned each to the other, came each to the other’s arms.

Another dawn—the furnace of the day—sunset—the night. The wheel went
round and they, bound to it, came again to dawn and then to strong
light and heat. When they had drunk this morning, there remained of
the water but one cupful more. They lay, hand clasping hand, in the
bottom of the boat that now drifted on a waveless sea. Sometimes they
murmured to each other, but for the most part they lay silent. There
was now no outward beauty in the two. They lay withered, scorched,
fleshless, half-naked, human life at last gasp between the ocean and
the sky. Within, all strength and beauty could summon only negatives.
They did not complain, they did not curse, they did not despair, they
did not hate. Within was a stillness as of a desert, with a low wind
of life moving over it. The physical could not lift far into emotion,
but what there was was love and pity. Emotion could hardly attain
to thought, nor thought to intuition, but what there was knew still
the splendour and terror and all things that we are. Day—eve—the
night—the dawn—day. They measured out the last water in the cask and
shared it justly between them. They lay side by side, his hand upon her
breast, her hand upon his. The fierce heat, the fierce sunlight rose
and reigned....

A crazy, undecked sailboat came out of the haze. It was returning from
a great island south to a group of small islands lying northerly in
these seas, and it held five or six Indians—not the fiercer, southern
Caribs, but mild Lucayans. One spied a dot upon the waters and pointed
it out. They drew slowly nearer in a light wind, and when they saw
that it was a boat adrift, tacked and came up with it. A man leaned
overboard, seized and drew it in, and with a rope fastened it to the
stern of the larger craft. Uttering exclamations, they examined their
prize. In the bottom of the boat lay a man and a woman in man’s dress.
They lay unconscious, wreathed in each other’s arms, two parched and
gaunt creatures who had suffered the extremity of exposure, hunger,
and thirst. The Indians thought that they were dead, and, indeed, they
looked like death and terrible death. But when they were lifted and
dragged into the larger boat, and when water was put between their
blackened and shrivelled lips, there came a faint stir and a moaning
breath.... The Indians had good store of water in cask and calabash;
they gave it again from time to time, and they crumbled cassava bread
and fed that too.... Joan and Aderhold turned back to the land of the
living.

At first the Indians thought that they were Spanish, for they had
no association with other white men. Association with the Spaniard
had been cruel enough for them; they belonged to the disappearing
remnant of a people swept by the thousands from their islands to the
larger islands, enslaved, oppressed, extirpated. These in the boat
were runaways from a hard master, who had stolen this boat and put
out, crazy as it was, on what might seem a hopeless voyage. Did they
pass through days and nights, and leagues and leagues of sea and go
uncaptured by some Spanish craft, did they come at last to their own
island, what would they find there? A desert, with, perhaps, a tiny
cluster of palm-thatched huts, still clinging, looking for some landing
party, looking to be swept away as had been their kith and kin—a
perishing group, dejection, languor of life.... But homesickness drove
them on; better a death-bed with freedom than the peopled great island
where they were slaves! They had felt the Spanish lash and the Spanish
irons; they looked doubtfully enough upon the white man and woman, and
it was perhaps a question whether now they would not pay back.... But
when at last Aderhold spoke, it was in English. They did not know that
tongue and they answered in altered and distorted Spanish. He had a
little Spanish, and he made them understand briefly that the two had
been in an English ship and that there had been a storm and that they
were castaways. They were not Spanish, and they did not know the great
island or any of the masters. They were English, whom the Spanish
hated. That fact being weighed, the Indians turned friendly, laughed
and stroked their hands in token of amity, then set apart for the two a
great calabash of water, and gave them more cassava bread.

Joan and Aderhold ate and drank. The will to live was strong, for life
had turned a rainbow, and a wild and beautiful forest, and a song of
the high and the deep, and an intense pulsation. The two came swiftly
up from Death’s threshold. Before the boat came into sight of land
the light was back in their sunken eyes and some strength in their
frame.... The land seemed a low, island shore. The excited Indians
gesticulated, spoke in their own tongue. Aderhold, questioning them,
learned that it was the outermost of their island group, but not their
own island to which they were bound. They saw pale sand and verdure
green as emerald; then the night came and covered all from sight. No
light of torch or of cooking-fire pierced the darkness. The blank
shores slipped past, the boat left them astern, and now again all
around was the sea.... But though it was night there was no sleeping.
The returning exiles were excited, restless, garrulous. The two learned
that there were many islands and now almost no people. The people—the
Indians beat their breasts—were gone now, almost all gone. For the
masters sent men from the great islands to burn the villages and take
the men and women and children and drive them aboard ships and carry
them off to make poor slaves of them. They had done so when the oldest
men were children, and when the oldest men’s fathers were children. But
now the masters did not come, for the men and women and children were
all gone—all gone but a few, a few. The returned from long slavery did
not know if these few were yet there, yet clinging to their island.

Night passed, dawn came, the wind blew them on. Now they saw islets and
islands, but no craft upon the water, or sign of life. Then, in the
afternoon, the Indians’ lode-star lifted upon the horizon. They put
their helm for it, a freshening wind filled their sail. Presently they
saw it clear, a low island, here ivory white and here green as emerald.
The Indians shouted and wept. They caressed one another in their own
tongue, they gesticulated, they held out their arms to the nearing
shore.

The shore dilated. Reefs appeared to be warily avoided, and the water
grew unearthly blue and clear. Green plumes of palm seemed to wave
and beckon. Back from the narrow ivory beach, inland out of a break
in the belt of green, rose a feather of smoke. The Indians when they
saw it were as mad people. They leaped to their feet, they embraced
one another, they laughed, they strained their bodies toward the land,
and broke into a savage chant of home-coming.... Now they were in
a tortuous channel between _cays_ and the island. The island beach
widened, and now human forms appeared—not many, and at first with a
hesitant and fearful air; then, as they became assured that here was
only one small sailboat, with a bolder advance, until at last they came
down to the edge of the small bight to which the boat was heading. They
were Indians like those in the boat, a mild and placable strain, dulled
and weakened by the century-old huge wrong done them. They were but a
handful. In the whole island there was now but one small village.

The boat glided past a fanged reef and came into a tiny crystal
anchorage where the bright fish played below like coloured birds in the
air. They lowered sail; they came as close as might be to the shelving
land; the Indians leaped into the water and made ashore with loud cries
and incoherent words. The islanders swept about them, surrounded them;
there rose a wild, emotional questioning and greeting, laughing and
crying.

The infection spread to Joan and Aderhold. Behind them lay pain and
horror, and pain and horror might again claim them. But now Time had
spread for them a mighty reaction. It was so blessed to be alive!—they
were so prepared to embrace and love life—every material thing seemed
so transfused and brightly lit from within—they laughed themselves and
felt in their eyes the happy dew.... They, too, must take to the water
to come ashore. It was naught to them, the shallow bright flood. They
crossed it as had done the Indians, and stepped upon the land.




CHAPTER XXVII

THE ISLAND


A FEW miles in length, fewer in breadth, the island lay in a sub-tropic
clime. During its winter all the air was neither cold nor hot, but of a
happy in-between and suave perfection. Its summer brought strong heat
and at times wild tempests of rain and wind, thunder and lightning. For
the most part the land rose but a little way above the sea, a shallow
soil with a coral base. Out of this mould sprang a forest of eternal
greenness. Once there had been a number of villages, each in its small
clearing, but one by one they had been destroyed and the clearings had
gone back to the forest.

This one larger village had outlasted. Dwindling year by year, before
it, at no great term, death and absorption, when all the island would
be desert, it yet showed a number of irregularly placed, circular huts
woven of branch and reed and thatched with palm. To this village Joan
and Aderhold were swept together with the escaped slaves, the returned
exiles. Besides the tenanted huts there were others from which the
last of the occupants had died, but which were not yet fallen to the
earth and become a part of the forest floor. Joan and Aderhold were
given one of these abodes standing under tamarind and palm, and here
food was brought them. All the village was in commotion, restless and
excited, for seldom and most seldom in all the years did any one come
back.... When night fell there ensued feasting and revelry, a strange
picture-dance, performed by men and women, long recitatives wherein
some sonorous voice told of this people’s woes, of their palmy days,
and how the white men came in the time of their fathers, and they took
them for gods and they proved themselves not so—not gods but devils!
The torrent expression of wrongs flowed on. Sharp cries and wailings
came from the dusky figures seated in an ellipse about the narrator.
Eyes looked angrily across to where the white man and woman sat and
watched.

Among the Indians of the sailboat had been an old man with a finer,
more intelligent face than was to be found among his fellows. It was
he, principally, who had talked with the castaways. Now, on land, he
constituted himself their advocate and protector. He had been, it
seemed, the chief man of a vanished village, and this present village,
being without a strong man, looked to him with deference. Now he rose
and spoke and the threatening looks faded. These Indians were not of a
fierce and cruel temper—and the two strangers were not Spanish, but
came from a tribe whom the Spanish fought.... Danger to the two from
their hosts or captors passed away.

The night went by in noise and feasting. With the dawn the village sank
into sleep. The home-coming ones needed, after long adventure and
strain, rest and repose, while the friends and kindred at home were
used to swift and calm descendings to immobility and profound sleep.
Within and without the tent-like huts lay the dusky, well-shaped forms,
almost bare, still as death, lying as though they had been shot down by
invisible arrows. The projecting palm thatch, the overhanging, thick
foliage, kept out the fierce sun, made a green and brown gloom.

Joan and Aderhold slept, too. For them the immediate need was health
again, strength again, energy in which to base the wonderful flower of
life. They lay like children near each other, and slept the livelong
day. When, in the last bright light, they waked, there was cassava
bread, and tropic fruit and water from a neighbouring spring. They ate
and drank and talked a little, about indifferent things—only nothing
now was indifferent, but rich and significant. But it was as though
they would hold away from them for a little while their deeper bliss;
would not speak of that until they could speak in health, with glow
and vigour and beauty and power! About them the village half waked,
half slept. They heard women’s and children’s voices, but dreamily. The
woods, that had been very still during the heat of the day, were now
as murmurous as rapids of a stream. All manner of winged life made a
continuous sound. Joan and Aderhold rested their heads again upon the
woven palm mat and slept the deep night through.

With the second morning the Indian village resumed its normal process
of existing. The women practised a kind of embryonic agriculture. The
men hunted not at all, though they trapped birds; but they fished,
pushing out into the turquoise sea in canoes hollowed from tree-trunks.
The women plaited baskets, and cut and dried gourds large and small.
They had cotton, and they knew how to weave it into the scant clothing
needed in such a clime. They scraped the cassava root into meal and
made bread, and gathered and brought in the staple fruits. In the
village were to be found in some slight number and variety matters not
of savage make. During the more than a hundred years since the great
Genoese and his Spanish sailors had come upon this group, such things
had drifted here, as it were, upon the tide and the winds. Thus there
were to be seen several cutlasses and daggers, together with a rusted
Andrea Ferrara, a great iron pot, and smaller utensils, a sea-chest, a
broken compass, a Spanish short mantle and hat and feather, some piece
of furnishing from a church, a drinking-cup, a length of iron chain.
But nothing had been left, or had been traded for with Indians of other
villages, for a long, long time. The islands were desert and forgotten
... except that now of late sea-robbers and pirates were, for that
very reason, taking as anchorage, refuges, and bases of operation, the
intricate channels and well-concealed harbours. But no pirate ship had
found as yet this inward-lying island. It rested upon the sea as if
forgotten or lost or inaccessible, and its fading people knew at least
a still and not ungentle autumn.

The old Indian came this morning to visit Aderhold and Joan. Others had
been before him; they had held, perforce, a kind of levee. The children
were not more curious, nor simpler in their expression of curiosity,
than were the men and women. They had no language in common with the
castaways but that of gesture, but they made this answer. The torn,
sun-faded clothing of the two, the fineness and tint of their hair,
the colour of their skin, Joan’s grey eyes, the absurd sound of their
speech at which the Indians laughed heartily—every physical trait was
of interest. But as with children attention went little further than
that and was quick to flag. The levee dispersed.

But the old man’s interest went beyond eyes and hair and a fair skin.
He could speak in Spanish, too, and Aderhold could answer. He was as
curious as the others, but his curiosity had a wider mental range.
The strangers’ country and its nature—their rank there—why they
left it—had their ship utterly perished in the hurricane—these and
other questions he asked, with his fine, old, chieftain, shrewd, not
unhumorous face. Aderhold answered with as much frankness as was
possible. The old chief listened, nodded, said briefly that he had
heard men in the great island speak of those other white men, the
English, and how they fought like devils. “But devils’ devil not what
I call devil,” said the chief. “Devils’ god what I call devil.”

He wished to know if the English were not coming to fight the Spanish,
and his eyes lit up, “Then come rest here. Englishmen wouldn’t stamp
foot upon us—eh?” He observed that the hut was old and falling down.
“Not good place. Too much tree—too much other houses all around. I
like place see the water—night and morning. Sit and think, think where
it ends.” He offered to have them a house built. “Do it in one day.
When you like it you look, say where.”

Presently he gazed at them thoughtfully, and held up two fingers.
“Sister and brother?”

“No, not sister and brother. We are lovers.”

“Ah, ah!” said the old chief. “I thought that, yonder in the
boat.—What is her name—and your name?”

“Joan—and Gilbert.”

The old man said them over, twice and thrice, pleased at mastering the
strange sounds. “Joan—Gilbert. Joan—Gilbert.” At last he went away,
but that was the beginning of a long and staunch friendship.

The day passed, the night. Another day dawned and ran onward to an
afternoon marvellously fair. The season of hurricanes and great heat
was passing; the air was growing temperate, life-giving. This day had
been jewel-clear, with a tonic, blowing wind, strong and warm. The
narrow shore-line of wave-worn rock and coralline sand lay only a
little way from the village. In the latter occurred a continual, sleepy
oscillation of its particles, talk and encounter, and privacy had not
been invented. Joan and Aderhold, fairly as strong now as on that night
when with Gervaise and Lantern they broke prison, went this afternoon
down to the sea.

It stretched before them, the great matrix from which the life of the
land had broken, the ancient habitat. They left the village behind;
a point of woodland came between them and it. Now there was only the
ocean, the narrow shore, the lift of palms and many another tropic
tree, and the arch of the deep blue sky. The tide was coming in. They
sat upon a ledge of coral rock and watched it. The water, beyond the
foam of the breaking rollers, seemed of an intenser hue than the sky
itself—and calm, calm—with never a sail, never a sail.

“We may live here and die here—an old man and woman,” said Joan: “die
together.”

“I am thirty-four years old,” said Aderhold. “I will have to die before
you.”

“No. I will die a little sooner than I might.”

“No! I will grow younger—”

“We talk nonsense,” said Joan. “We sit here, as young and as old each
as the other! And we shall die together.”

A wave broke at their feet with a hollow sound. It fell on her last
word, and it seemed to repeat it with a sullen depth, _Together_. It
came to both that they were to have died together, there in England,
and that if ever they were retaken, as the great strangeness of
life might permit, then certainly in all probability they would die
together. That was one way in which the granting of their wish might be
taken as assured.... But they saw no sail, and they saw that now the
village never looked for a sail.... Safety might, indeed, have come to
dwell with them. The thought of omen faded out.

The wind blew around them warm and strong. It was full tide, and about
them foam and pearl, and the voice of mother sea. They sat with clasped
hands on their coral ledge. It was coming back to them—it had come
back to them—health and glow and colour and spring. Joan was fairer
than she had been in Heron’s cottage. First youth, youth of the senses,
youth controlled and well-guided, but youth, revived like the phœnix
in Aderhold the scholar. He had seemed graver and older than he truly
was. In him strength, activity, adventure, interest, will, and daring
had early risen into the realm of the mind. There they had bourgeoned,
pressed on, been light of step and high of heart. But the outward man
had not been able to keep pace. Now a deep passion changed that. He
looked as young as Joan; both looked immortal youth. Each put hands
upon the other’s shoulders, they drew together, they kissed. The voice
of the ocean, and of the wind and of the forest spoke for them, and
their own hearts spoke.

The next day, when the old chief visited them, they went back to his
proposal of a new house. The idea found him ready as a child. It was
among his traits to be easily fired with the joy of building. He would
speak to the chief men and the young men, and they would tell the women
to do it at once. Where would Joan and Gilbert—he produced the names
with pride—have it built?

They took him with them and showed him. Just without the village, so
near that they could hear its murmur, yet so far that there was not
oppression, in a rich grove, opening to a bit of sandy shore and a
wide view of the azure sea.... The old chief gazed with appreciation,
nodded, “Good! Go talk to chief men now.” So much a man of his word
was he that the next day saw the women bringing bundles of reeds and
palm leaves for the thatching. Also young trees were cut for the posts.
Aderhold and Joan studied the method, saw how they might extend, add
a shed-like room or two, make a gallery for working under shade. The
old chief and the others, too, from the great island, had ideas. The
village was in a gay, a stimulated mood. It was a gala month—not every
other day, nor any other day, did captive tribesmen come back, or
castaways appear that were not Spanish, human driftwood making human
interest! They built for the two from far away so large and good a
house that they themselves marvelled at it. “Houses like that”—a woman
said to Joan—“in houses like that our fathers live, eating bread with
the Great Spirit!” When the house was done, the village feasted, and
an Indian, rising, addressed the castaways and said that now they were
members and an adopted man and woman of the tribe, and that the village
expected much good from them. “We show you how we do—you show us how
your people do—show us how to kill Spaniards when they come!”

The next day Joan and Aderhold took possession of their house. When
the crowd who had accompanied them to it was gone, and when the old
chief was gone, and when there came the evening stir and murmur from
the village, the two built their fire, and Joan made cakes of cassava
bread and Aderhold brought water from a little spring that was their
own. They had gold and russet fruit, and they sat and ate before their
own door and were content. It was a bright and lovely evening, with a
light upon the sea and the palm fronds slowly swinging. The voice of
the village came not harshly, but with a certain mellow humming, and
the voice of the sea upon the reef came not harshly either. When the
meal was finished, they covered the embers of their fire so that it
should not go out, then rose from their knees and hand in hand went
the round of their domain. Here they would make a garden, here they
would bring the water to a trough nearer the hut. Back at the doorway
they looked within and saw their house fair and clean, yet fragrant of
the green wood, with store of primitive household matters, with the
sleeping-mats spread. They turned and saw the great sea and the sky
wide and deep. The evening wind, too, had arisen and caressed them,
blowing richly and strongly. A tall palm tree rose from clean white
sand. They sat beneath this while the stars came shining forth, and
that of which they spoke was Love.




CHAPTER XXVIII

FOUR YEARS


NO Spaniards came to be driven back, had Aderhold been that magician
who could do it. It was like a lost island, or the first peopled
island, or the last. Day after day they watched a tranquil sea and saw
no point of any sail. Time passed. The Indians from the great island
ceased to dream of recapture. Joan and Aderhold ceased to dream of
being taken, wrenched apart; ceased to dream of the open boat and of
the Silver Queen and of the prison and the gallows field. They did not
cease to dream of Hawthorn, of Heron’s Cottage and the Oak Grange, of
Hawthorn Forest, and all the life that lay on yonder side the prison
gates. Joan dreamed of her father and of her uncle the huntsman, of
the castle and Mistress Borrow and others there, the town as once it
had been to her, and of Hawthorn as once it had been. She dreamed of
Heron’s cottage—of every item there—the well under the fruit trees,
the bees under the thatch, the daffodils and every later flower, of
her kitchen and the hearth and the old settle, and her spinning-wheel.
She dreamed of gathering faggots in Hawthorn Forest. She dreamed of
Alison and of Will the smith’s son and of Goodman Cole and of many
another—the vintner in the town, Cecily Lukin and the forester’s
wife, old Master Hardwick—many another. But all were blended together
in a dream world, in a gay and bright picture-book, where if there were
witches they were harmless good souls who rather helped people than
otherwise, and where no one was persecuted for thinking things out
for one’s self. In the picture book it seemed almost a laudable thing
to do. Aderhold dreamed—and his dream world was wider by his greater
range of this life’s experience. He dreamed of Hawthorn and Hawthorn
Forest and all the roads thereabouts, of the Oak Grange and of Heron’s
cottage; but he dreamed likewise of a world beyond Hawthorn. He dreamed
of his own childhood and boyhood, and they, too, had a picture-book
setting, where the rough became only rich and varied, and what had
seemed sorrow and harm turned an unhurt side. He dreamed of his first
manhood, and of his search for knowledge, the sacred hunger and thirst
and the lamp of aspiration in his hand. He dreamed of old woes and
scars, happenings many an one, persons many an one.... But neither he
nor Joan dreamed any more, with a frightful sense of nearness, with a
cold start of waking, of sudden, clutching hands, of separation, of
dark and deep gaols where neither could hear the other’s voice, or
if the other’s voice was heard, indeed, then heard in a long cry of
anguish. Fear spread its dark wings and left them, and took with it
intensity of watchfulness and all the floating motes that made its
court.

They had now great strength and health, Joan’s renewed, Aderhold’s such
as it had never been. They stood erect and bright-eyed, their movements
had rhythm, the hand went with precision to its task, the glance fell
unerringly, the foot bore them lightly. They bent to life with a smile,
frequently with laughter. If life was always a mighty riddle, if at
times it seemed a vivid disaster, yet indubitably there were stretches,
as now, when it became a splendid possession!

  “‘I have heard talk of bold Robin Hood,
    And of brave Little John,
  Of Friar Tuck and Will Scarlett,
    Locksley and Maid Marian—’”

sang Joan. She wove as she sang, for there was cotton for weaving,
and she had learned of the Indian women and greatly bettered their
instruction. She saw garments for them both, hanging from the pegs,
lying upon the shelves Aderhold had made. She had traded her skill at
many things for needles of bone, for the vegetable dyes that the women
used, for various matters that she wanted. She was of all women most
fit for such a return to a younger world. Sane and strong and skilled,
with the artist arisen from the mere workwoman, she turned back some
thousand years, and handled savage life with a creative hand. On all
sides latent power came forth. A wise trader, she gathered what she
needed; a good teacher, she imparted knowledge as she went, without
ostentation, insensibly, with a fine unconsciousness; a worker of the
best, she did that which her hand found to do with _élan_ and precision
and an assured result upon which to base further results. She lacked
not for leisure either, nor for a whimsical, sceptical glance upon her
own labours, nor for an ability to let it all slip aside while she sat
and brooded upon the open sea.

As for Aderhold, he was and was not the man of the Oak Grange. He was
that man freed where he had been bound, fed where he had been starved.

Their domain grew in fitness and beauty. By the time the perfect
winter had passed into the languors of spring, and spring into the
heats and rains of summer, and summer again into cooler, fairer days,
they had achieved about them an Arcadian right simplicity, as far from
meagreness as from excess. The large hut, palm-thatched, stood in a
well-stocked garden. Great trees gave them shade; a spring of clear
water for ever a cooling, trickling sound. Around all they planted a
flowering hedge. Within this round sounded the hum of their industries
and their own clear voices. Without was the eternal voice of the sea,
and in and out and around, the voice of the moving air.

The murmur of the Indian village was likewise there, but it did not
come athwart; it travelled equably with the other sounds. They had
come to have a fondness for the dwindling village, an affection for
this remnant of a remnant of a people. They were poor savages, they
had flaws and vices, but save that they were less complex, less
intertwined with later offshoots, more plain stalk and plain word,
their flaws and vices differed in no great wise from those that might
be viewed in France or England. At times the village seemed like a
village of children, and then again it might seem very old and somewhat
wise. Once or twice they had seen it waver toward a village of beasts,
heavily swaying toward the animal only. But Aderhold had seen that
happen in France and Italy—they might both think that they had seen
it happen in England. On the very morrow it was something more than
animal. At times it was something much more—something much higher. And
they knew that flaws and vices lurked in themselves also—unplucked-out
weeds yet living a slow dark life in the backward-reaching abyss. They
understood the village, and they tried to help. They did help, and by
slow degrees the village came to change affection with them. As for the
old chief, every other day he came to see them.

He was of an enquiring and speculative turn of mind, and it was his
wont to bring unsolved questions to the vine-shaded strip of bare
earth before the hut, and there, seated on a mat with a few followers
squatted around, propound them to the two. To most of the islanders all
things, outside the narrowest range, were supernatural. The old man’s
scope was wider, and the daring of his scepticism, proportioned to his
environment, would have qualified him for a dungeon in most countries
that Aderhold knew.... Here upon this island all was as a sketch, a
faint model and portent only of what, in seventeenth-century Europe,
had become enlarged, filled in and solid. Generically it was the same;
it was but a question of degree of intensity and of accretions. These
Indians also held for an external deity, so extruded, so external that
steps—that intermediaries—must be extruded to cover the extruded
space between, to reach the extruded Ear and Mind. Moreover, they
did not maintain this a flowing process, but continually let the
extrusions of remote ancestors dam the stream. They had idols whom
certainly not even the old chief might with impunity criticize. They
had “Thou shalts” and “Thou shalt nots” which were wise and might long
remain so, and those which had been wise and were now meaningless,
colourless, making neither for much good nor much harm, and those
which might once have been wise but were now hurtful, and those which
never had been wise and grew in folly. They had notions, dim, not as
yet fearfully positive, of a future life of reward or punishment,
where they would do without limit or term—throughout eternity,
indeed—that which, Indians upon this island, they most liked to do
in this present moment, or would suffer, alike for ever, just those
pains which at present they acutely disliked. They placed great merit
in belief without question, obedience without discrimination, and a
prostrate attitude. They had extruded Authority. Nothing had a proper
motion of its own, but everything was moved by something else. The
disclaimer of responsibility, of generic lot and part, was general. The
disinclination to examine premises was supreme. They had found their
despot in Inertia.

But the old chief was exceptional. He was wary and paid respect to
taboos. That done, he loved to talk. He brought to Aderhold questions
such as, at the dawn of philosophy, an intelligent barbarian might
have put to Thales or Anaximander. Aderhold answered as simply and
well as he might; where he could not answer, said so. Now and then
the more active-minded of the old man’s escort brought queries. Joan
also listened and questioned. Aderhold, answering, taught in terms of
natural science and a general ethic—very simply, for that, here, was
the only way....

But when the old chief and his followers had gone away from the
vine-clad porch, and the murmur of the village came faintly across
the evening, when, their day’s labour done, they went down to the
sea, to the coral ledge or crescent of pale sand, and lay there by
the blue, unending water; or when, night having fallen, they rested
in the moonlight on the black-and-white chequered ground beneath the
palms, they spoke more fully, shared more completely the inner worlds.
Love could not rest with them in the physical. Freedom, dilation,
redoubling, rapid and powerful vibration, energy, colour, music, all
mounted from the denser to the rarer universe. Their minds interfused,
there came moments when their spirits might seem one iridescent orb.
They were one, ... only the next instant to be exquisitely different
... then to approach and blend again. At such times they spoke in low
tones, with slow, rounded words, of the deepest waters where their
souls drank of which they had knowledge, or they spoke not at all,
having no need to.... At other times they talked of the past and the
future and the whole round world. Steadily they learned of each other:
Joan much from Aderhold, Aderhold much from Joan.

They had lived here a year—they had lived here more than a year. When
they had lived here two years, when they, no more than the Indians
about them, watched the horizon for any ship, when they had ceased to
dream of separation, change, and disaster, when it was fully home, with
the sweetness and fragrance of home—then was born their child.

Joan lay upon the clean, woven mats in the bright moonlight. Aderhold
put the babe in her arms, then stretched himself beside them. Her grey
eyes opened upon him. “Gilbert—Gilbert—I love you so—”

“I love you so—”

She took his hand and guided it with hers until it rested upon the
child, wrapped in cloth which she had woven. “Life from life and added
unto life,” she said. “Love from love and added unto love.”

The child was a woman child, and they named her Hope. She grew and
thrived and they had great joy in her. When the old chief came to see
her, he held her in his hands and gave her a musical name of his own.
They translated it, Bird-with-Wide-Wings. Henceforward now they called
her by this Indian name and now they called her Hope. The old chief
grew fond of her, came oftener than ever, would sit in sun or shade
quite still and content beside the cotton hammock in which she swung.
The days went by, the weeks, the months, and she continued to thrive.
She had Joan’s grey eyes, but save for this she was liker Aderhold. She
lay regarding them, or laughed when they came toward her, or put out a
small hand to touch them; she was happy and well, and they were glad,
glad that she was on earth.

The hot season came and the rains, and in August heavy storms. Trees
were levelled and the frail huts of the village suffered. The sea came
high upon the land and the rain fell in sheets. In the dim hut with the
door fast closed, Aderhold and Joan and the babe rested in security.
The babe slept; the two lay and listened to the fury without.

“There comes into my mind,” said Joan, “the black sky and the dead air
and the lightning and thunder that Sunday in Hawthorn Church.”

“It came to me then, too,” answered Aderhold. “Some finger in this
storm strikes the key.”

There was a silence. Both saw Hawthorn Church again and the
congregation, and Master Clement in the pulpit. Both felt again the
darkness of that storm, the oppression and the sense of catastrophe.
In mind again each, the remembered bolt having fallen, left the church
and took the homeward road. Joan hurried once more over the sighing
grass, past the swaying trees, saw Heron’s cottage and the breaking
storm. Aderhold passed again through Hawthorn Forest and crossed the
stream before the Oak Grange, reached again the fairy oak and the
Grange. He was again in Dorothy’s kitchen, stooping over the fire—in
his old room with his unfinished book beneath his hand—upon the
stairs—the door was opening—the men to take him.... The blast without
the hut changed key. The babe woke, and Joan, lifting her, moved to and
fro. When she was hushed and sleeping, the strong echo, the returned
emotion had disappeared. They kept silence for a little, and then they
talked, not of old things but of the island, of their trees and garden
and harm from the hurricane that must be repaired, and then of the
village and the children of the village. They were beginning now to
teach these.

The storm passed and other storms. There came around again the days of
balm, the perfect weather. The child Hope was a year old. Their joy
in her was great, indeed. For themselves, they were husband and wife,
lovers, friends, fellow scholars, fellow workers, playmates. Their
friendship with the Indians was stronger by a year, their service
stronger. The old chief came often and often, and the child crowed and
laughed and clapped her hands to see him.

The balmy days, the perfect weather passed, and the spring passed.
Summer again with its heats and rains was here. With the first great
storm, in the hut with the door fast closed, shutting out the swaying
and the wind and the hot, rain-filled air, Joan, playing with the
little Hope, keeping her from being terrified by the darkness and the
rush of sound, suddenly fell quite still where she knelt. She turned
her head; her attitude became that of one who was tensely and painfully
listening.

When she spoke it was with a strange voice. “Does it come again to you
as it did last year?”

“Yes,” said Aderhold; “it comes by force of association. Dismiss it
from your mind.”

“It comes as close as though it were going to be real again.”

“It is the darkness and oppression and the feeling of being pent. It
will pass.—Look at the Bird-with-Wide-Wings! She is laughing at us.”

The hurricane raved itself to a close; the light came and the blue sky,
the sun shone out. There followed a week of this; then, one morning at
sunrise, Joan, coming out of the hut into the space beneath the trees,
looked seaward and uttered a cry. “Gilbert—Gilbert!”

Aderhold came to her side. “What is it?”

Her arm was raised and extended, the hand pointing. A ship stood off
the island.

All that day it was there; it hovered, as it were, it reconnoitred.
It sent out no boats, but there was something that said that it had
seen the village. It came near enough, and the clearing would be
visible from the rigging. The Indians’ canoes, moreover, were there
upon the beach.... It was a ship with dingy sails, with a bravo air,
yet furtive, too. Once it clapped on sail and dwindled to a flake, and
those who watched from out a screening belt of wood thought that it was
gone. But it seemed that it meant only to sail around the island, for
presently the outlook in the tallest tree saw its shape, having doubled
a long point, enlarge again across this green and silver spit. When the
second morning dawned, there it was again, dusky, ill-omened, riding
the deep water beyond the reef that somewhat guarded the shore.... Then
the air thickened, and there threatened a hurricane. The ship turned
and scudded away. While the sky darkened, she vanished, sinking beneath
the horizon to the south.

The storm broke, reigned and passed. When it was over, when, save for
the myriad small wreckage and the whitened and high-running sea, there
was calm again, then fell talk and discussion enough as to that ship,
foreboding enough, excitement enough in the village. The Indians made
new spears or tried trusted old ones, sharpening afresh every point.
They had bows and arrows, though they put more dependence in their
spears, and in short hatchets, headed with bits of sharpened rock.
Whatever weapons there were were got in order. That done, all that they
could do was done. Their not unhealthful clime, their search for food,
their fishing, swimming, their games and ceremonial dances kept their
bodies, slight and not greatly muscular though they were, yet in a
condition of some strength and readiness. Now they had only to wait....
They waited, but no ship came back, nor other ships appeared.

The bad season passed, the good days came around again, and still no
fleck of a sail showed on all the round of the blue ocean. The Indians
ceased to glance up continually from whatever employment they were
about. Now they looked not once a day, now they ceased all active
expectation, now the matter grew dim, remote, now it faded almost from
mind. The old chief, perhaps, still looked seaward, but the village at
large had short memories when immediate anxieties were lifted. Life
took up again the old, smooth measure.

But Aderhold and Joan could not forget. Subtly they felt that the
current was wearing another channel. There were cloud shapes below the
horizon. They were happy. Their joy in each other and in the child was,
if that could be, deeper—the very shape of fear gave an intensity, a
lambent rose and purple, a richer music—made it deeper. Their service
to the folk among whom they had fallen was no less.... But they felt a
threat and a haunting and a movement of life from one house to another.

At last, on a calm and glorious morning, they saw the ship again—that
ship and another. The two lowered sail, down rattled the anchors; they
swung at ease in the still water beyond the fringing reef. Their flags
were Spanish; they sent a shot from a culverin shrieking across to
the land. It sheared the top of a palm tree; the green panache came
tumbling to the ground. Birds rose with clamour and fled away; the shot
echoed from a low hill back in the island. Forth from the ships’ sides
put boats—boat after boat until there were a number—and all filled
with armed men.




CHAPTER XXIX

THE SPANIARDS


THE slave-seekers, one hundred and fifty armed men, struck a flag into
the earth before the village and demanded a parley. Their leader or
captain was a tall, black-bearded person, fierce and fell of voice and
aspect. He came to the front and shouted to the Indians in a mixture
of Spanish and Indian words. Also he made friendly-seeming gestures.
“No harm meant—no harm meant! Friends—friends! Your kindred send you
messages—from a happy country—much happier than here where you live!
Let us come into your village and talk.—We have beads and scarlet
cloth—”

But the village kept silence. At Aderhold’s instigation, immediately
after the ship’s first visit, it had digged around itself a shallow
ditch and planted in part a stockade of sharpened stakes, in part a
tall and thorny hedge. Within this manner of wall were gathered some
four hundred souls, counting men, women, and children. Besides the
infants and the small boys and girls there were the old and infirm and
the sick. All were naked of other defence than this one barrier and
the frail, booth-like walls of their huts. They were armed only with
primitive weapons. The word “Spaniard” meant to them ogre and giant.

If they were not truly ogres and giants, the slave-seekers were yet
active, hardened, picked men, trained in cruelty, practised in wiles,
fired with lust of the golden price. When the village held silent, the
leader tried again with blandishments; when there came no answer but
the hot sunshine and the murmur of wood and sea, the company lifted its
flag and advanced with deliberation. From behind the wall came a flight
of spears and arrows. A Spaniard staggered and fell. Some savage arm,
more sinewy than most, had sent a spear full through his neck. There
arose a roar of anger. The men from the ships, the black-bearded one
at their head, rushed forward, came tilt against the stockade and the
thorn hedge.... They had not believed in the stoutness of any defence,
nor of these Indians’ hearts. But driven back, they must believe.
Carrying with them their wounded, they withdrew halfway to the sea and
held council.

In the village they mended the gaps in the wall of stakes and thorny
growth, and that done, watched and waited. The sun rode high, the
children went to sleep.... The old chief—the fighting men, the women
gathered around him—talked with high, ironic passion of days gone by
in this island, in this island group. “They came, and our fathers’
fathers thought they were gods or men like gods! They had their wooden
cross, and they planted it in the sand, side by side with their flag
that says ‘Slay!’ They said that both were pleasing to the Great
Spirit, and that they were his favoured children. They went away and
our fathers’ fathers thought of them as gods and their country as the
house of the Great Spirit.... They who had been children when they came
grew to be men. There were men and men, then, in this land, men and
men! Then the Spaniards came again. They told our fathers that they
came from heavenly shores. They said that there, would our fathers
only go with them in their many ships, they would find their dead
again! Find them living and bright and always young. Find them they
loved. Find their forefathers whom the Great Spirit loved and kept
always about him. Find all they dreamed about. Find happiness.... They
were weak of mind and they believed! They went into the Spaniards’
ships—hundreds and hundreds and hundreds. Next year the Spaniards came
again and they brought what they said were messages from the red men
who had gone last year to the heavenly shores. It was truly where the
Great Spirit dwelt and where the dead lived again and all the red men
who could should come.... And they whose islands these were were weak
in judgment and listened and believed and went. The Spaniards carried
them away in their ships—men and men and men and women and children.
They loaded their ships with them as though they were nuts or fruit or
fish they had caught, or the gold that they are always seeking. They
carried them away, and next year they came for more. They took these
too. And now this country was growing as it is to-day—trees where once
there were people. But at last one escaped from the ‘heavenly shores,’
and after long toil and suffering reached these islands and told the
truth. So at last when the Spaniards came the people fought them. But
they were strong and the people were weak. And more and more trees grew
where once there had been men! Now”—said the old chief—“I will tell
you about those heavenly shores, for I, too, have been there. I will
tell you of what we from this country do there, and what is done to
us.” He told, circumstantially, a tale of fearful suffering.

Many of the Indians, men and women alike, determined to die rather
than be taken. But many, and perhaps the most, were neither strong
nor stoic, and there was a doubt, Aderhold and Joan felt, and the old
chief felt.... Neither that day nor that night did there befall another
attack. The Spaniards camped upon the shore, but the watching village
saw boats go to and fro between the land and the ships. The night was
dark and they saw moving lanterns. With the dawn one of the ships
slowly felt her way farther into the crooked channel; when she anchored
again she lay much nearer than before, and her row of culverins grinned
against the village. Moreover, three lesser pieces had been dismounted
and brought ashore. In the night-time they had made a platform and
mounted these falcons or sakers.

As the sun rushed up, they sent a broadside against the wall and the
huts beyond. The flame and thunder terrified, the iron shot wrought
havoc. They sent another round, tore a great gap in the hedge, then
with a shout charged, the whole company, across the open strip.... The
bravest of the village fought desperately, but the breach was made.
Many of the assailants were partly mailed. The Indians’ weapons turned
against steel headpieces and backs and breasts. The Spaniards’ pikes
and cutlasses had advantage; their strength and ruthless practice had
advantage; their name, their face, their voice carried terror to these
forest people. Yet they fought, the braver sort striking twice—for
themselves and for those whose joints were as water. The old chief grew
young again. His eyes breathed fire; he fought and he cried his people
on with a great, chanting voice.... A turn in the confused struggle
brought the black-bearded Spaniard facing Aderhold and Joan. “Mother of
God! What’s here? White skins leading these devils and fighting against
us? Flay you alive—”

Men drove between. There was a great noise, a panting heat, a rocking
and swimming of all things before the eyes. A crying arose. Unlooked
for, suddenly, there had been sent ashore from the ships the final
numbers of their crew and company. Thirty fresh assailants poured with
shouts and lifted weapons through the broken defences.... The fearful
among the Indians, and those who thought slavery better than death,
threw down whatever weapons they bore and made gestures of submission
and entreaty. Others were overpowered. There were many who could not
fight—the sick, the infirm, and aged, many children. The terror of
these and their wailings weakened the hearts of those who did fight.
Moreover, the Spaniards knew what to do. They took a child and threw
it from pike point to pike point, and found Indian words in which to
threaten a like fate to every babe. The Indian mothers cried out to
fight no more.

The slave-seekers came in mass against those who yet struggled. They
cut down the old chief, fighting grimly; they ran him through the body
with a pike and slew him. Aderhold and Joan with others, men and women,
fought before a hut in which had been placed a number of children. A
Spaniard came behind Aderhold and struck him down with a blow upon the
head. He lay for a minute stunned; when his senses cleared all was
over. All were beaten down, cowed, disarmed. Hands would have seized
Joan. She fought them off, sprang into the hut and caught up her child,
then, with her in her arms, came back to Aderhold’s side....

The victors were accustomed to victory. The fighting over, the business
conducted itself according to custom. This affair differed only
from many others in that there had been a resistance of unexpected
firmness. Victory had not been without hurt, without, even, the loss
of Spanish lives. Business, reacting, conducted itself therefore with
something less of contemptuous and careless disregard of pain inflicted
and something more of vindictive willingness to inflict it. The
conquered were driven together and stripped of every belonging which,
by any ingenuity, might be converted into a weapon either against their
masters or their own now wretched lives. The black-bearded captain
told off guards, and beside pike and cutlass the lash appeared....
The ships were to be furnished fruit and cassava cakes and the casks
filled with water. The already slaves were set to the task. Graves
must be dug for the Spanish dead, and these the slaves dug. Their
own dead went unburied. The black-bearded man walked in front of the
rows of captives and with a jerk of his thumb indicated the too badly
wounded, the sick who would not survive the voyage, the too old. These
they put away with sword or dagger or pike thrust. The children were
to go—healthy children had value. At last he came to Aderhold and
Joan. He stood still before them, looked them up and down, his beard
bristling. “Spanish?” he said. “No, no! I think not!—English, then?
English—English—English! How did you come here?”

“Through shipwreck.”

“You taught them to fight us. English—English—English! Well, we shall
see, English!—Are you heretics?”

“If you mean are we of the English Church, we are not of the English
Church.”

“English have no church. There is only one church and religion. Are you
of the Holy Catholic Church and Religion?”

“No.”

“Then,” said the black-bearded man and spat toward them, “I will take
you as a present to those who are.”

He stood off and regarded them. Joan with the child sat on the earth,
in the hot sunlight. The child’s terrified crying had hushed; in her
mother’s arms she had sobbed herself to sleep. She lay half covered
by Joan’s skirt, shadowed by her mother’s bending breast and face.
The Spaniard’s countenance twisted until it was like a gargoyle’s for
cruelty and ungenial mirth. Without a word he stooped and with one
great slashing stroke of his dagger slew the child....

They bound Joan, and she lay at last, prostrate upon the earth, her
forehead touching the child’s still feet. Aderhold sat beside the dead
and the living love.... Around was heat and glare, huge suffering,
brute indifference, brute triumph, life brought low, life iron-shod
trampling life, a battlefield of instincts, a welter of emotions,
tendencies in impact, old and deep ideas opposed to ideas ... and all
with which he and Joan were ranged in time and space,—their stream and
current—here and now, as often before and often to come, the loser,
the loser drowning in defeat.... He felt the wide cold, the check, the
bitter diminishing, felt it impersonally for the enormous current, the
stream where there were so many drops; then, because he was man, felt
it for this childish people, felt it, a bitter and overwhelming tide,
for himself and Joan. Woe—woe—there was so much woe in living....

All the rest of that day the enslaved brought food and rolled casks of
water for the ships. When night came they were let to sleep, lying on
the ground, in a herd. Now and again through the darkness rose a sharp
cry of grief, or ran from one to another a sobbing and groaning. But
the most slept heavily, without movement. Dawn came, and the slaves
were roused. They were permitted to eat a little food—and then they
were driven to the shore and into the boats.... Their dead, their
village, their island were severed from them. They were left naked to
the beating of new tides....

Joan and Aderhold were put upon the ship with the darker sails—the
ship that had come first to the island. The hold of this ship was
inexpressibly, fearfully crowded with the enslaved. When the hatches
were closed, it was a black pit, a place of gasping, fighting for
breath. When morning came the Spaniards, seeing that otherwise much
of their property would die and become no man’s property, drew out
several score and penned them in a narrow space upon the deck. Aderhold
and Joan were brought forth with the others, driven here with them,
pressed by the mass close against the ship’s side.

Day crept away, sunset came. The island where they had dwelled was long
fallen from sight. Out of the sea before them, though as yet at some
distance, rose the shape of an outermost islet of this group. When that
should be passed, there would lie an expanse of ocean, and, at last,
driving south, would rise the great island to which they were bound.
The sun dipped below the horizon, but over against it rose the round
and silver moon. By its light could be seen the strengthening outline
of the last island, at length the very curve of surf, the beach and
sombre palms.

Aderhold moved, touched Joan who sat as if in a trance. About them
many of the Indians had fallen asleep or lay, beaten down to a
half-consciousness. At no great distance were the guards. But these
had no fear now of that cowed shipload, and so paid little attention.
Amidships and forward were Spaniards enough, but these talked and swore
or gamed among themselves or gazed at the island without lights by
which they were slipping. Aderhold bent and whispered in Joan’s ear.
For a moment she sat motionless; then slowly the mind returned and
became active, though through dark veils of woe.

She nodded. “Yes, yes! Let us go! If we die we may find her.”

“Wait until that cloud is between us and the moon.”

It came between and the ship and the decks darkened. The two rose with
caution to their feet. About them were darkness, shadowy forms, blended
sounds, but no eye seemed to see what they were about, no voice cried
out an alarm. They were close to the ship’s side—one other moment and
they had swung themselves up, leaped overboard.... They touched the
dark water, went under, rose, struck out. In their ears rang no shout
or sound of discovery. The sucking and turmoil of the water about them
lessened. A fresh wind was blowing and the ship sailed swiftly. She was
no longer huge above them, they came out of her shadow; she was seen at
a slight distance, then at a greater and a greater.... They were free
of her, free also of her consort, the other ship. The wide ocean swept
around.

It swept around save where the island rose. It rose not at all far
away, a quiet and lonely strand. A light surf broke upon its shore.
Sometimes floating, sometimes swimming, the two who would yet have life
gained toward it. They gained toward it until at last they reached it,
came out of the beating surf, and lay with closed eyes and fluttering
breath upon the moonlight-coloured sand.




CHAPTER XXX

THE ISLET


THIS was a small island or cay. They found water and they found fruit
and cassava, and with these and a shelter of boughs and leaves of the
little palm they raised again the flag of life....

The death of the child. For a time that made of existence a cruel
buffet, a sore bruise. The parents grieved. But time dealt with that
grief—time and inner strength. At length it diffused itself, adding
its own hue to many-tinted consciousness, its own strain to life’s vast
orchestration, but no longer darkening and making to throb all moments
of the waking day. They had within them a coördinating, harmonizing
power, and sorrow brought its own wealth and added to the whole.

The outward activities of life narrowed, indeed, upon this islet. But
here also they took circumstance and enlarged its bounds and deepened
its meaning. They brought will and intellect to bear upon environment,
moulded it as far as might be and increased their havings. Here nor
nowhere in this universe could they be less than interested. Flotsam
upon this islet, yet here as elsewhere the mind found food and field of
action and through small doorways passed into wide countries.

Love burned clear, love of man and woman. It kept its heyday. But
beside it rose, higher and more massive than in the peopled, busy
island, other ranges of the mind. The child’s death—and the loss
of the Indian village and of the old chief and the recurring vision
of that oppression and the inhumanity of their kind—and the deep
loneliness of this place—all wrought upon them. Moreover, the spring
of inward growth was strong and constant. Year by year, with Joan as
with Aderhold, the spirit travelled further in all its dimensions.

The mind.... Here upon this span of earth the old ache for knowledge,
the old brooding and longing of the mind came back to Aderhold, came
more imperiously, larger, wider-robed. This ball of earth and the
criss-cross of movement upon it. This sun and the chain that held
to it the ball of earth. What was the chain? These stars and clouds
of stars—this sea of ether—light in waves.... Again, the growth
of plants—motion fluent as a stream. And the life that dwelt in
shells—that made its armour and outgrew it.... Ceaseless change,
transition,—kinds linked by likeness to other kinds, kinds growing out
of other kinds, the trunk branching. He thought that all kinds might
have branched from one or few, and the selfsame sap in all. He did
not believe in a myriad unconnected, arbitrary creations.... But if
the least leaf and tendril knew motion, alteration, growth, then the
sap, too, knew it—the sap that was supposed to be so moveless, so
perfected.... Kin and kin again—one and one again.

As for Joan—her mind trod differing roads, though with many a point of
contact, many an inn where she met him who travelled too. As of Heron’s
cottage her hands and head had wrought a bright pastoral, an unfrayed
and well-woven garment of life—as in the peopled island she had with a
larger and a freer play, with a more creative and a nobler touch, made
life not an idyll only, but an idyll and something more, so here she
lived a nobler poem. Her child’s death brought into it deeper tones, as
of an organ, as of violins. And as she had lit torches for Aderhold, so
had he lit torches for her. She thought and imaged with a wider sweep
than had once been possible. She thought and imaged now for the whole
world; she dreamed light for all.

To both the time upon this isle was a time of deepening vision,
of a crescent sense of inward freedom and power. To a stranger’s
chance-lighting eye they would have seemed but two castaways, narrowly
environed, scantly living, lonely and lost, of necessity wretched. They
were not wretched, or lonely, or lost.

Months passed—the year—a great part of another year. Then one day
again they saw a sail.... It was the beginning of the stormy season,
and there had been rough weather. To-day the sky was blue, the air
but gently moving, but there had been a gale to drive ships and make
wrecks. This ship had not been greatly hurt, but the winds had driven
her out of her course. Moreover, there had been leakage among her
water-casks. It was with joy that she saw this islet lift upon the
horizon. She made it, found a large-enough harbour, between two horns
of coral rock and sand, and presently sent her longboat, filled with
seamen, to the shore. They rowed in cautiously, keeping a good lookout,
for, while it was but an islet and looked desert, there might be
Indians or pirates or Spaniards. No harm showing, they made a landing
and came upon the shore.—It was now to search for water.

In the search they found a palm-thatched hut, and, standing expectant
before it, a white man and woman.—“Who be you?” demanded the boatswain
in good Devon.

The ship was the Eagle, sailing home from Virginia, having brought
out colonists and supplies. Now it was taking home samples of native
products, two or three Indians for show, and not a few dissatisfied
adventurers, with others of a stouter make who were bound with
representations to the Company or upon various upgathering missions....
Who were the white man and woman? They were Giles and Ellice Heme,
shipwrecked here several years ago. The captain, who presently came
ashore, was questioning them. From London? Aye, then! and their ship?
The Needs Must, sailing from port of London. The captain rubbed his
brows. He did not remember the ship or the loss of her, but then more
and more ships were going out, and he could not remember all names or
accidents. All lost? Giles and Ellice Heme could not tell. They had
escaped in a small boat. Those with them had died.—Would they be taken
back to England?—The captain was a bluff old sea-dog, literal-minded
and not inquisitive. He assumed that their tale was true in the main,
and he assumed that, of course, they wished to be taken back to
England. Otherwise, there would be something wrong with them. He hardly
waited for an answer, but turned eyes and mind toward the water-casks.
He was in haste; he wished to up sail and away while the sky was still
without clouds.

The two, left alone at last after all exclamation and question, faced
a decision—how momentous an one made itself felt between them. They
stood in the brown light of their hut, the doorway framing blue sea and
sky and the Eagle, quivering to be gone.

Aderhold spoke. “If we refused to go, it is most likely—it is certain,
I think—that they would force us with them. We should be thought
mad—or if not that, they would hold that we were not simply castaways.
They would take us still, and from the first we should rest under
suspicion.”

“At any time the Spaniards may come again,” said Joan; “then again
horror ... death. Or some other harm may come to one of us here—and
the other left alone. That is often in my mind, and I know that it is
often in yours.”

“If we reached England unsuspected—if we could lose ourselves in
London—”

“Never could we go back to Hawthorn—nor to the town!”

“No.”

“Six years.... Gilbert, would we not be safe anywhere else?”

“Ours are matters in which no one is safe who thinks not as his
neighbours. And say we slipped silent and down-bent through life,
giving no present authority offence—yet at some corner comes one who
recognizes face or voice and recalls the past—’Ha, you hide!’ And it
is all to do again.... I do not think we have any choice. I do not
think this captain will leave us here.... There have been men who,
under feigned names and away from the place of blackest threatening,
have lived long and peacefully.... At first, until we were free of
enquiries and had found work by which we might live, there would be
thick danger.... We might escape.”

“It is best to be with your kind.”

“Yes, it is best. The world grows so.”

“Oh, to see green grass and English flowers!... But the child—the
child! We would go farther and farther from where the child lies.... I
know that we must go.”

“Yes. She does not lie there. She does not stay there.”

“No—she is here—she is everywhere.... Well, let us go bravely.”

Giles and Ellice Herne went aboard the Eagle. Before sunset she had
clapped on all sail and was moving swiftly from that island. It faded,
faded. They lost the clump of palm trees marking the place of their
hut, lost the outline of the tiny harbour, lost in the dusk the gleam
of the beach and the white crests of the incoming tide. The Eagle was a
good ship and a swift sailer. Back she came into her course. The bird
that was her figurehead looked east, looked north, between it and its
homing the grey and rolling Atlantic. Now she had bad weather and now
she had good, but the good predominated.

The ship was not crowded, as had been, six years before, the Silver
Queen. Moreover, those aboard were preoccupied, the dissatisfied
with their dissatisfaction, the hardier, more patient or farseeing
sort, returning to England only to return thence to their new
world, with their papers of representation, their arguments, and
busy schemes. At first there was curiosity as to the castaways and
how they had preserved life, alone, on that morsel of land. That
satisfied, attention turned in each on board to his own matters, or to
matters that seemed cognate. The rescued were quiet folk who kept to
themselves; doubtless they were dazed by long privation and loneliness,
and by this unexpected salvation....

Aboard were several women, the captain’s wife, and one or two others
of the bolder sort who would go with their husbands to whatever new
worlds might be discovered. These helped Joan to fitter clothing than
any she possessed. She came back to Aderhold in a linsey kirtle and
bodice, a small white cap, and with a kerchief folded across her bosom.
“Hawthorn again,” she said with a sob in her throat. He, too, had been
given clothing. He was dressed plainly, like a clerk. No one was by,
the soft dusk closing in. They stood for a moment and within them rose
the vivid shape of the past. They smelled again the fern and mould of
Hawthorn Forest; they heard again the drone of the bees, the singing
of the stream past the fairy oak; they heard again the distant church
bells. Rose the great image, grave and golden, of the six years past,
rose the vision of the child, rose old memories, tendernesses, fears,
rose forebodings, prophecies, realizations. It was dusk, the wind
making a low, sustained music. They came to each other’s arms, they
embraced closely, straining each to each with passion. They kissed, the
tears stood in the eyes, fell upon the cheeks of each. It was like a
farewell, and it was like a meeting....

Upon the ship was a man neither young nor old, who had come out to
Virginia the year before, sent by the Company upon some investigation.
Now, the work done, he was returning. He had a strong, determined face,
steady eyes and a close-shutting mouth. On the day of their coming
aboard, he with others had approached Giles and Ellice Herne and asked
them questions. They had been true questions; he was interested in
knowing how they got upon that island, but preferred the detail of how
they had managed to live while there. After that, with some frequency
he sought them out and fell into talk. The rest upon the ship were
preoccupied with the struggles and miseries and triumphs of the Colony.
To them it was growing to be home. But the Company’s agent, his errand
done, was returning to England like Antæus to Mother Earth. He must
talk, and guided by some subtle principle of choice, he talked to these
people who also must be homesick for England.

The two strove to be guarded, spoke little themselves, passed well
enough for a quiet clerk or scrivener or teacher and his wife whom
the whimsical fortunes of the time had made colonists, and wind and
wave and ill chance castaways on that islet. Wisdom made them not
too silent, not to seem morosely so—nor too guarded, not to make it
evident that they were watching from behind barricades. It was chiefly
to Aderhold that he talked, Joan sitting by, her hands clasped in her
lap, her eyes upon the sea, narrowing between them and England. He
talked, it seemed to Aderhold, with boldness, but then the castaway
gathered that upon the issues that interested this man, men in England,
in six years’ time, had grown bolder.

News from England! News of England when the agent left England last
year was the already two-years-old news that the king meant to rule
without Parliaments. Perhaps when they landed in London they might find
newer news—perhaps the king, wanting money very badly, had wanted
it enough at last to summon a Parliament. If that were so, the agent
of the Company hoped that certain men had seats. He mentioned among
others John Pym. News! There was the news that the Bishops were in the
saddle. Episcopacy had been established in Scotland. Timid and recreant
ministers had gone over, the patriotic were in hiding,—proscribed. The
people were at the mercy of the wolves—the Crown’s wolves. In England
just as bad—though with a difference. The Established Church rode high
and kissed the hand of the king. “Passive obedience!” It had got its
shibboleth. “No power in the people and disordered multitude.”—God’s
own hand having touched the forehead of kings! “Did I not tell ye?”
says the king; and with one hand puts down the civil courts and with
the other lifts the ecclesiastical.

News! The news from England was Despotism that barked like Cerberus out
of three mouths—King, Bishops, and Favourites! The agent’s face turned
red and the veins in his forehead stood out, so in earnest and angry
was he. “News of England!” he said, “is that slaves will be slaves and
free men will be free men! News of England is that if things better not
there will be battles!” He swung round upon Aderhold. “I speak more
plainly than I should! But if I can read men, your passion, too, is
for freedom!”

“Aye,” said Aderhold, “I would be free.”

Another time, when for some minutes they had been watching the sea in
silence, the determined-faced man spoke with sudden energy. “Do you
not hold that the Presbyterian or Calvinist form of religion and the
rule of the people—such as are landowners and tend neither to Popery
on the one hand nor to any manner of disbelief on the other—through
Parliaments duly chosen is the way of God upon earth?”

Aderhold kept silence, his eyes upon the moving sea. When he spoke at
last it was almost dreamily. “The only way?... Do you?”

Something in the fast-flowing field, the field that was but the surface
of depth, or in the mist-veiled sky, or in the tone of the castaway,
checked the other’s reply. At last he said slowly, “It is right to
resist a king who would rule us beyond what the sense of man allows.”

“Yes,” said Aderhold, “that is right.”

“That is what I care for,” said the agent; “that is the way of God to
me. The bishops go with the king and preach tyranny, so the bishops are
to be fought too. He who wishes to be free surely will not chain his
will to the Pope’s throne. So what is there left but Calvin—if you
exclude these mad Independents who spring up like mushrooms! At any
rate, in England to-day the men who oppose the king’s tyranny are like
to smack of Edinburgh or Geneva!”

“In a manner I believe that to be true,” said Aderhold. “Not yet do
they wish freedom around and around. But never will I deny that it is
much to begin to image freedom!”

The ship sailed on through good and bad weather. To the two castaways
danger seemed to sleep. No one troubled them on this ship, preoccupied
with its own affairs. The fact that they were seen with the agent of
the Company procured for them a certain respect. The days slipped by,
the weeks slipped by—pearl-grey weeks, quiet, halcyon.

There came a summer eve when, hand in hand, Joan and Aderhold watched
England rise from out the sea. None was by. They stood long in silence;
then, “Do you remember,” said Joan in a low voice, “how we ran through
the castle wood with the great moon on high? How we lay in that pit
with the branches over us while they that hunted us went by? Do you
remember the woman with the three daughters who gave us bread and milk?”

“I remember it all,” said Aderhold. “May we come forth now as then!...
The smell of the hay there in the barn where we lay all day.... The
white road that first night from the prison and the starry sky over the
gallows tree.”

“Over the gallows tree!”

“Once I thought a thing like that the fearfullest thing! Now, though I
love life more now than I did then, I do not think so. The old terrors
grow smaller. They will come one day, I think, to cause laughter.”

“I understand that,” said Joan. “Nor do they matter to me as they did.
Neither the gallows tree, nor words like witch and sorcerer, heretic
and atheist!”

The shore before them grew in distinctness, grew and grew as they stood
there alone, withdrawn, watching. With that increasing definiteness,
that rigour of line and hue and shape, came with a growing form, a
growing sharpness of menace, came as it had not come to them before
upon this ship, a realizing knowledge that here there was no change;
that the hot ploughshares and the sharp swords were yet ready laid
for folk like them to move across! England was England still.... They
heard upon the wind, “_Witch and Sorcerer—Witch and Sorcerer—doubly
damned for that you were judged and lay not still under our judgement!
Witch and Sorcerer.... Fornicators—for in what church were read
your marriage banns, and what priest with lifted hands blessed your
union?... Blasphemers, deniers, atheists who pray not to Jehovah! Witch
and Sorcerer—Witch and Sorcerer_—”

They were not wholly free from fear and shrinking. They looked at each
other with whitened faces. But they had said true when they had said
that they were freer. They recovered, they smiled into each other’s
eyes. “I wonder how much of us they will hang or burn—”

The shores grew plainer, higher. There came, suddenly, a summons to
the captain. They found him in the great cabin, papers upon the table.
Still short of speech, incurious and literal, he now had duties which
he would perform. He had to give account to the proper officers of
the Eagle’s voyage and of those whom she brought into England, and he
proposed not to lose sight of the castaways, Giles and Ellice Herne,
until the right authorities gave him quittance. He could not remember
the Needs Must, but there were many who would. Any saved from any lost
ship had an importance, for they could give to her owners information
where had been guessing. Therefore the captain meant to send the two
ashore with a trusted man who would take them before such and such
persons in authority. There they would be questioned, and if they
answered to satisfaction would doubtless be helped. The captain, with a
wave of his hand dismissing them, turned to other business. He left a
sharp enough thorn of anxiety with the two who had fled England on the
Silver Queen.

Night passed. Morning broke—English summer, soft and sweet. Here
was the Thames mouth, here other winged ships and ships at anchor,
here the green shores, the waving trees, the clustered houses, here
England—England!

As they stood watching with full hearts the agent of the Company came
to them from the poop deck. “You have no money?”

“No.”

“Have you friends in London?”

“No.”

He held out to Aderhold a woolen purse, open, showing two gold nobles
and some silver pieces. “Yes, take it—and no need for thanks! I have
gotten good from you.—You will want work?”

“Yes.”

“I have weight enough with the Company to get you a clerkship.”

Aderhold thanked him again, and with warmth of feeling, but shook his
head. He had plans, he said.—But when the agent was gone the two
smiled at each other. Gold and plans!... They had had plans—they had
planned. What they had planned was to lose themselves, immediately upon
leaving the ship, in the crowd which doubtless would gather at the
waterside, then to slip into some street or lane and begone. Somewhere
in the tangled heart of London, in some poor street, in some garret,
they might find a lodging. Then work to live by.... There had risen a
vision, not unhomely, comforting, hopeful—physician’s work among the
poor and obscure, sempstress or spinster’s work, quiet life in the
shadow but with gleams of sun.... But now the plans seemed hardly even
gossamer.

The Eagle came slowly into port. Aboard was bustle and confusion. With
the rattling down of her anchor appeared the small boats, the wherries,
clamouring to take all ashore. A barge brought port officers. These
came up the side.... All was well, all might go ashore. The agent of
the Company would go, it seemed, in the port barge. Giles and Ellice
Herne watched him leave the ship. He had been a friend; they felt
gratitude and liking; they watched the dwindling boat and thought it
doubtful if, in this round of life, they would ever see the agent
again....

Their time came—they were to go with the second mate, a
broad-shouldered, surly, watchful man.

The catch into which they stepped was crowded with the lesser sort of
the Eagle’s passengers. Here were the dissatisfied, returning folk,
and here with their exploiter were the Indians brought for show.
Aderhold, looking at them, had a fleeting thought of a booth, paused
before on a morning when he had set out northward from London, years
ago.... Shipping loomed about them, Thames side before them. The
high, narrow houses, the roofs, the windows, the roaring streets,
the throng about the water steps, pushing and jostling for a sight
of the disembarking—talking and shouting, people greeting and being
greeted, a swarm and distraction! Joan sat elbow on knee, hand pressed
against lips, her eyes wide, and, as far as Thames side was concerned,
unseeing. What else she saw she did not say, but her face had a soft
and brooding look.... The catch made its landing. Joan and Aderhold,
placed in the stern, were the last to come out upon the water stairs.
Before them the second mate shouldered his way. About them was the
English crowd, beneath their feet soil of England. Home—home—home
where they were born!




CHAPTER XXXI

THE HOUR-GLASS


THEY were moving with the second mate through a busy street, toward
a harsh old pile of buildings. The mate was a watchful man. To start
aside from him into some court or lane or other street, to elude him
and vanish, was from the start a clearly hopeless thing. Did they
try it he would raise a hue and cry. They went with him in silence,
watching Fate to see what she would do.

The street was narrow, the houses dark, and high, with overhanging
storeys, with swinging signs. Above showed only one pale stripe of sky.
There were booths and shops, with an occasional stentor crying of “What
d’ye lack?—What d’ye lack?” Many people went up and down—type after
type that Aderhold recalled. The years since he had been in London
had made no great difference. He thought that he discerned more party
men—in many a greater stiffness of bearing, a darker hue and plainer
cut in apparel. The chance words and phrases caught in passing had an
interest....

In old, old days there had come to him at times of crisis, a
detachment, an awareness of impersonality, a perception that, actor
here, he was no less spectator of his action, safe in further space
and time. The perception returned, and came with greater strength than
ever before, and with it, too, an old sense of deepening light. He
turned his face toward Joan beside him.... She was gazing upon London
town, her grey eyes calm and bright, her lips parted, rose colour in
her cheeks. In a manner she looked as young, as free from care and
danger as when, on a holiday, Joan Heron had come with her father from
the huntsman’s house in the castle wood and had strolled here and
there and to and fro in the town six miles from Hawthorn. She looked
as young and like a girl, and yet the next moment there moved beside
him the woman, the mind and soul that had grown. But the calmness held,
the bright stillness, the manner of radiance. She put out her hand and
touched Aderhold’s. “Do you feel it?—I felt only fear this morning,
but now, somehow, I do not believe that I shall ever feel fear again.
The things that were so great have become little.”

The early morning had been clear, but the sky, overcast when they left
the Eagle, was now darkening rapidly. There came a silver dash of rain,
increasing to a downpour. With slanted bodies and bent heads men and
women hastened to shelter. Some hurried on to destinations not so far
away; others, with farther to go, took present refuge under overhanging
eaves or in doorways. The rain fell with a steady, rushing sound; the
gutters began to fill and overflow; the air grew dark and still. “Stand
by,” said the mate, “until the cloud empties!” The three stepped under
the cover of an antique porch, so jutting from the building of which it
made a part that the street had been forced to bend. Others were here
before them, perhaps a dozen in all. Some were citizens, three or four
country or small town people, viewing the sights of London. These had
with them for guide and showman some city friend.

The latter was speaking with distinctness, in a cheerful and complacent
voice. “This was one of the old religious houses. Over yonder used to
be a field where in Queen Mary’s time they burned people.”

The country folk looked with interest, not at the old religious house,
but at the row of small buildings where once had been the field.

One spoke. “Did you ever see a man or woman burned?”

“No,” said the citizen. “It’s dying out. They mostly hang people now.”

A man in a sad-coloured dress spoke with an abrupt, harsh voice. “There
are sins that you should burn for. I believe not in your weak mercy.
What is good enough for God on High is good enough for me. He burns
sinners. If you do not believe in burning sinners, you do not believe
in God as shown forth in his written Word.”

“I think witches should be burned,” said the citizen.

The first country speaker put in his word again. “I saw one burned once
when I was a young man! She was a tall, fair wench, and when the flames
went up around her she cried out only one thing to the crowd of us
watching. She cried it thrice. ‘When you feel fire, feel what you have
believed!’”

“What did she mean?” asked the citizen.

“I do not know,” answered the countryman. “There’s been an outbreak of
witches this summer! They’re getting very bold in the North. If you
hear of one, the next day you hear of another. For one thing, as soon
as there’s known to be a witch abroad, people are on the lookout—”

The downpour of rain had lessened into a shower.

“Make sail!” said the mate.

Leaving the porch, the three from the Eagle moved on up the narrow
street between the rain-washed houses. They were now at no great
distance from their destination. As they walked the two tried to hear
the questions that would be put to them and to frame answers.... But
it was difficult, difficult. In both the impulse that was gathering
strength, that was, as they both now began to perceive, the destined
conqueror, was the impulse still to serve the truth. They were not
fanatic, and they loved life. But side by side with the recognition
that hardly, hardly could they escape, that they would have to make a
tissue of statements that could and in all human likelihood would be
disproved, streamed stronger and stronger the distaste for that web of
misstatement, the liking for a plain relation of their being and its
acts. They were conscious of no ecstasy, no hot, martyr enthusiasm, but
direction was taken. With that deep inward movement came to each a
feeling of strengthened personality, of unison, harmony....

The wet and glistening street, the houses, the roofs, the sky, the
people passing up and down,—the windows, the signs—Before them they
saw a swinging tavern sign, painted and cut in the shape of a great
hourglass. The tavern had a wide window, overhanging the street, and in
the window, as the three from the Eagle came in line with it, appeared
the ruddy, determined face of the agent of the Company. He looked
out upon the street from which the rain had in great part driven the
people; saw and hailed his fellow voyagers.

“Well met, good folk! Whither away—”

The second mate told the port to which they were making. The man in the
window was a person of importance to the Eagle and its seamen. The mate
spoke with deference, and was ready to listen when the agent proposed
that he and the two shipwrecked folk enter the Hour-Glass and drink a
cup of wine. He knew that the agent had seemed to have a liking for the
castaways—and they were not precisely folk under suspicion, but only
to be, as it were, certified for. The agent spoke again with a touch of
authority, and the mate said, “Very good, sir, and thank you kindly! A
few minutes won’t matter.”

The determined-faced man had the inn’s best room and had it to himself.
He welcomed into it Giles and Ellice Herne, but left the mate in the
common room with the host and a command for what he pleased to drink.

The mate spoke again. “I’m ordered, sir, not to let the shipwrecked
people out of my sight.”

“If you stay where you are you will see them still,” said the agent.
“There is but one door to this room, and I leave it open.”

The room had a sanded floor, a table, and benches. Outside the clouds
were parting, and now a stormy sunlight broke through the window. The
street began again to fill with people and their voices came confusedly
into the room. A drawer brought wine.

“I frequent this inn,” said the agent. “Moreover, by good luck, I
find that a man whom I greatly desire to see is in London and sleeps
here at the Hour-Glass. I await him now, and in the mean time lack
entertainment.—I was glad to see you coming up the street.” He poured
wine. “Here’s to the Eagle and freedom!—Has England changed to your
eyes?”

“Yes and no,” said Aderhold.

Bow bells were ringing. The sunlight suddenly flooded the room. Without
the door the mate’s rumbling voice was heard. “Two castaways—”

“I have been gone a year,” said the agent. “The man that I am looking
for is a coming man in England, and I expect to learn from him—”

The agent and Aderhold were standing by the table, but Joan had seated
herself where through the open casement she could see the clearing
sky. The movement brought her into the shaft of light. It bathed, it
etherealized face and form. She looked an immortal.... Placed so,
she came first before the eye when the man, whose step was now heard
without, swung the door wider and entered the room.

The agent started from the table. “Ha, Harry Carthew! I looked to find
you—”

But Carthew had neither eye nor ear for the returned acquaintance and
fellow-resister of the King. Harry Carthew stood like a man turned to
stone.... Six years alone could not have made him look so much older.
He looked much older—a stern and worn man, with a grim mouth and eyes
where enthusiasm now burned bright and now sank among the embers of
itself. He was dressed much as he used to dress. It was the face and
figure of the man who had come to Heron’s cottage, but there had been a
long warfare in the nature and some degree of change. He stood starkly
silent, with a great, arrested look, as if the very elements of his
being stood still.... Joan, rising, passed from the beam of light into
the shadow by Aderhold. They stood side by side, hand touching hand.
With a final crash and clangour the bells stopped ringing.

“What is it?” demanded the agent. “You know these people—”

Carthew moistened his lips. They parted, but at first there came forth
only an uncertain and broken sound. Then,—“You were long sought. But
when the Silver Queen came back from Virginia we learned that you had
escaped upon her, but had been thrown from her for what you were, and
were dead. Years ago ... and you stand there....”

The mate of the Eagle came to the door. “Sir, may we be going now?”

The agent crossed to him. “Not yet. Wait a little, there without—”
A voice spoke from behind the mate. “I am with Master Carthew. I may
enter, sir?”

The agent turned back into the room, and with him came a slight man
with a steeple-crowned hat and a Geneva cloak. Joan and Aderhold faced
Master Thomas Clement.

At last there came from the minister’s lips, “Thou witch! Thou atheist
and sorcerer!”

The agent of the Company struck his hand against the table. “Who are
these?”

Harry Carthew turned and walked stiffly to the window-seat. When he
reached it he sank down, rested his locked arms against the sill, and
his forehead upon his arms. But Master Clement was of more iron make.
His long forefinger shot out toward the two; he raised his arms, the
black cloak falling away from them, his small figure dilated; he shook
his lean and nervous hands; his voice, beginning on a low tone, grew
shrill and rapid; his eyes burned. Zeal for the honour of his God had
him.

“Who are they? Scorners of God and deniers of Revelation! Yoke-fellows
with Satan and blaspheming workers and doers of evil! Who are they?
Breakers forth from prison and just doom—cheaters of stake and
gallows—froth of hell! Who are they? Say not that you have forgotten
the Hawthorn trials!”

“The Hawthorn trials!”

“Who in England heard not of them? Of the wicked certain ones were
hanged, but there broke gaol and escaped the unbeliever and sorcerer
Gilbert Aderhold and the witch Joan Heron!” He stretched his arms
higher, he shook his hands more vehemently. “But God for his glory,” he
said, “bringeth them back!”

Aderhold and Joan stood straight and silent. The shock of the encounter
had driven the colour from cheek and lip, but there was no other
sign of cowing. They knew now that they were in the arms of death.
The knowledge did not frighten. This very day they had taken their
direction—they were moving now as they had determined.... The agent
leaned against the table, pale and staring.

Aderhold turned and spoke to him. “Our names are Joan Heron and
Gilbert Aderhold. We are not witch and sorcerer—nor yoke-fellows with
Satan—nor blasphemers of good. But we were judged by our neighbours
and by the law to be such, and we were condemned to death and put in
prison. By the help of a gaoler who is dead we escaped. We managed to
stow ourselves upon the Silver Queen. In the seas near the island where
the Eagle found us, our names were discovered and the Silver Queen
cast us adrift. By this fortune and by that we came first to a larger
island and then to the islet from which the Eagle took us. That, so
far as is needful to tell you, is our story. You have been good to us,
knowing only what we showed. If you will believe, what we showed was
ourselves.”

Joan’s voice, a rich, clear, low voice, followed his. “I am no witch,
and he is no sorcerer. I was a country girl and he a physician who
helped many. Now we are a man and woman who fare forward, wishing no
ill to any.”

As she spoke she moved, unconsciously, a step nearer to the table. The
agent of the Company recoiled, put out his hand against her closer
approach. In his face was a white horror. He remembered the Hawthorn
witch trial. That year he had chanced to be in company with the elder
Carthew, and no detail but had been given him. The very words of a
ballad made upon the witch Joan Heron came into mind—forgotten, he
might have thought, long since, but now flashing out in letters of
fire—hell fire. It had been a ballad sold and bought throughout
England, and it spared no strange assertion, nor none that was gross.
_The Witch Joan Heron._ The ballad rang in his ears. He saw its title.
THE ABHORRED WITCH; or, THE MONSTROUS LIFE OF JOAN HERON.... A look of
sickness passed over the agent’s face, no longer ruddy. He put his arm
above his eyes. “Avaunt, witch!” he said.

Joan stepped back. Her eyes sought Aderhold’s. He bent toward her, took
her hands. She smiled and said in the Indian tongue they had learned
upon that island. “Heart of my heart! The great sea is cold at first—”

“Hark!” cried Master Clement. “She speaks the tongue she learned of
Apollyon!”

Harry Carthew rose from the window-seat. His face was yet without
colour, drawn and sunken, grim and set. For the most part, with an
iron effort, he kept his voice under control, but now it broke and
sank and now it took a cadence of pain and horror. He leaned against
the wall for support, and once or twice he lifted his eyes to where,
in his thought, there sat God whom he had angered. “Master Clement,
and my friend here,” he said, “God knows I cannot doubt that this man
is a sorcerer and this woman a witch! In his Bible God tells us that
there are such and commands that they be done to death. Moreover, from
old time, wise judges and men of law and knowledge, and devout and
holy preachers of the Word have showed us how these wicked abound! As
for these two, all manner of witness was brought against them, and
proof irrefragable. Yea, and those who were hanged confessed that
these two kept by day and by night companionship with Satan and did
monstrous wickednesses. And that the man is an apostate and blasphemer,
an atheist worthy of death, has been proved—nay, he himself denied
nothing in that sort. All that, and the doom pronounced against them,
in this world and in the next, stands for true and lasting, and I have
no part in it, and there the shadow comes not against me.... But there
is a sin upon my soul, and God gives me no rest until I tell it—”
He wheeled toward Master Clement. “I will tell it here and now, and
appoint me a day and I will tell it in open church—So may offended God
pardon me!”

“Harry Carthew! Harry Carthew!” cried Master Clement. “Every man alive
has sin against his soul! The soul of every man alive is black as
midnight, and no dawn cometh to it save from one that is not himself!
Unless and save the dayspring chooseth to shine upon that soul, it
resteth black and lost—it hath in itself no power of motion and light!
But God hath elected thee, Harry Carthew! But this man and woman are of
the deep gulf of hell, predestined and damned of eternity! What have
you to do with them, my brother, my son—for Christ knoweth I love thee
as a son—”

“What had I to do with them?” said Carthew. “I will tell you! At
the trial in the town I gave evidence that he struck me in the side
with a dagger that eve upon his road to prison. I lied. Sorcerer and
atheist though he be, he told truth when he said that he did not so.
And witch though she be, this woman told truth when there in the court
she cried out against me. She told truth when she cried that that
night I had come to her cottage to tempt her and that she struck me
with a hunting-knife.... What was I? I was a young man, mad for a
fair woman—fair as her mother Eve who sinned before her! What was
I? I was a man desirous to increase in name and fame, desirous of
leadership—who therefore must not let men view his sin! But it was
sin, and I know not if there be a greater—”

If he began as to a more general audience, he ended with a haggard-eyed
appeal to Master Clement.... The minister’s frame trembled; with a pale
and scared face he fronted Harry Carthew whom he truly loved. “Harry
Carthew! Harry Carthew! Pray to God—”

“I pray,” said Carthew. “Night and day, I wrestle in prayer. I thought
that He had answered and given me peace in service. The moment I ceased
to serve and to act for this England, that moment Gehenna opened in
my soul.... But now I see that He wanteth open confession.” He turned
upon the two where they stood beyond the shaft of light. “Joan Heron,
I wronged you,—and Gilbert Aderhold, I wronged you,—and that I must
say, though you be the Fiend’s own! I must say it, though I stood in
heaven and looked across the gulf upon you in hell—” He sank upon a
bench by the table and flung his clasped hands above his head. “God,
God! Grant me but to save my soul alive!”

Silence held in the room at the Hour-Glass. The agent of the Company
leaned against the table, white and shaken. Master Clement came to
Carthew, put his hand on his shoulder, and spoke in a trembling
voice. “A great sin verily, and greatly to be repented.... But not
the great sin, Harry Carthew—not the Unpardonable Sin.... God will
have mercy. He will forgive. Have you not served Him well, and will
you not do so, ever the more zealously? And will you not forever more
guard your ways, that you fall not again into the pit? I trow that you
will! Harry Carthew—Harry Carthew, we will pray together! You are too
valuable—This very night I will come, and on our knees we will wrestle
with Him as did Jacob of old—”

Joan and Aderhold stood hand in hand. What now they felt and thought
was simple and whole. This room with its occupants seemed not to have
over-greatly to do with them—it had widened out—they felt a larger
world.... It was as though these old quarrels were childish concerns
and fears and quarrels—small, intense, unknowing things—childish,
pitiful. They felt them so, and yet they did not feel old, they felt
young....

Aderhold spoke, again to the agent of the Company. “Knowing nothing
of our story, save that we were shipwrecked folk, you showed us much
kindness. It does not hurt to take the thanks of shipwrecked folk.
Believe that we are grateful for that kindness. This is to end, we
know, in giving us into the hands of the law. Then let them call those
who will take us.”

Carthew rose from the seat where he had thrown himself. What wild
emotion had possessed and actuated him was driven to cover and
stillness. His face was grey, but set and grim with no softening in its
lines. He would have said that softening were further sin. Out like a
burned candle had gone long since his passion for Joan Heron that had
never been high love.

His eyes met those of Master Clement, “Aye,” he said, “end it!”

Master Clement nodded, turned, and left the room.

There was, it seemed, no great distance to send, and those sent for
were not long in coming. Without the Hour-Glass it was now bright
afternoon and many people going up and down. Whenever and wherever
watch or ward was summoned the act of its summoning was apt immediately
to become known. It was so here and now, and a crowd began to gather
before the Hour-Glass. How there started a whisper of heinous crime,
of escaped and retaken caitiffs, it were hard to say. Perhaps the host
or the now staring and greatly excited mate of the Eagle had heard
somewhat and had repeated what he had heard. But there started a murmur
which grew to a buzzing sound and threatened to become clamour. “What
was done?—Who is it? Ho, there, Hour-Glass! What happened?” The law
appeared—half a dozen burly armed men with an officer at their head.
“Within the Hour-Glass! Let us pass, good people, let us pass!” They
entered the tavern. Outside the crowd and the noise grew. “Traitors?”
cried one, and another, “Poisoners?” but a third, “I can see through
the window. It’s a woman—_Witch! Witch!_”




CHAPTER XXXII

A JOURNEY


THEY lay for a month in prison in London. Then, all procedures having
been met, the law would return them to the county where they had
offended and the gaol from which they had broken and the gallows field
which had waited six years.

They rode from London in company of a sheriff and a dozen horsemen,
and they went by the road which Aderhold had travelled years before.
He recognised this place and that. Where the ways were bad—and they
were often bad—they dismounted and went afoot. So many were with
them and so no danger at all was there of escape, that they were left
unshackled, were even let to draw a little to themselves. At first the
guard was rough of tongue, ready with frequent, unneeded commands,
ready with coarse gibes. But the two answered quietly, or were silent
without sullenness, and there was something in them that gave check....
At last the men conveyed them without insult, without much further
speech to them direct. At night, when they came to town or village,
they were lodged in the gaol. When they passed where there were people,
and if it became known what manner of felons were here, they met with
savage jeers and execrations. Sometimes mud was thrown, sometimes
flints. But it was not the guard’s cue to tell names and offence—and
England was not as populous then as now—and there were long miles
of lonely peace. To Joan and Aderhold they seemed at times miles of
a beautiful, a sunny peace. They knew how to talk together with few
words, with a glance of the eye. And there were many times when, some
space allowed them and the guards talking among themselves, the road
became as it were their own. Then they spoke freely, though with low
voices.

It was late summer, with autumn well in view upon the slope of the
year. The landscape was growing russet, and none the less fair for
that. And it was England—England after the blue plains of the sea and
the low, coral isles. And it was country and pure air after the fetid
London prison. And it was the land where they were born—it was home,
seen after years away. These green fields and spreading trees—this
English sky—these birds and flowers and crystal streams—these were
no foes of theirs. These had never cast them out. Here as elsewhere,
the great round earth had its own orthodoxy, but took scant heed of
man’s.... They saw England after long absence; and for all that they
were to be slain here, they could find it beautiful, and for all that
they knew where ended this road, they played with the happenings upon
it.

Twenty miles out from London the sheriff’s horse cast a shoe, and at
the next smithy all must halt until Grey Dick was shod. The smithy
stood in the pleasant shadow of an oak so great that it must have
been growing when the Conqueror came over. The hot smithy fire glowed
within, iron struck rhythmically against iron. Beyond the tree was
a well, and all were thirsty. They had not drawn bridle for several
hours. The men dismounted—the two prisoners were given leave to do
likewise, even to rest upon the earth beneath the oak.

The four children of the smith sat upon a log and watched with an
intensity of interest horses and men and all their movements, and the
man and woman half sitting, half lying beneath the oak. The smithy dog
came up to these two, snuffed around them, and then lay down at their
feet. _Clink! Clink!_ and the trees began to wave in an afternoon
breeze, and the voices of the men about the well and the smithy door
sounded cheerful and hardy. The two had no misliking for the bright
world. They sat watching the children.... The youngest child, a
yellow-haired mite of three, would make an excursion of its own from
the log, past the oak, to the door. In the course of the journey it
came upon a protruding root, stumbled over it and fell. Joan sprang
forward and lifted it to its feet. “There, there! You’re not hurt—Look
at the pretty flower you fell against!” The child decided not to cry,
laughed instead. Joan’s arm curved about the sturdy small form and
pressed it to her. “Ah, what a good baby!”—The child was willing to
stay and play, but with suddenness found herself released, given a
gentle push back toward the three upon the log. Joan took her seat
again upon the turf. “It wasn’t wise to touch her. It’s strange that it
should be so, but if any saw they might bring it against her when she
is grown.”

She spoke without any pain for herself in her voice, but with yearning
and tenderness for the child. “Now she’s there and happy! She’s got a
stick to play with.”

“Joan, Joan!” said Aderhold. “There will come a day—”

The horse was shod, the well-water drunk, guard and prisoners took
again the road. The smith and his man had, at the last, their curiosity
satisfied. “Witches and wizards!—Nay, if I had known that—”

The road presented its stream, here full, here very thin, of autumn
travel. Little pictures and the whole picture had a clear, a vivid
interest. Market people went by, drovers with cattle, sturdy beggars,
children, country girls and swains, carters and their carts, mounted
travel of merchants or justices or churchmen or country gentlemen.
The mounted travel would always, authoritatively, have its curiosity
gratified. “A ward with prisoners!—Who are your prisoners,
sheriff?” The second morning it was a party of young gallants who
would know this. They wore feathered hats, fine riding-clothes,
boots of soft leather, their hair somewhat long and curled. They
were for King and Church—would all live, perhaps, to fight on that
side. “Prisoners! What are your prisoners, sirrah!” Then, when they
knew,—“Witch! Witch! A young witch, too! Let’s see her—Zounds!
Who’s the man?... The Hawthorn two who fled! _Gilbert Aderhold—Joan
Heron!_” Certain of these gallants had been in London and knew of
the recapture. It had been common talk. The king had learned of it.
“Joan Heron!—Joan Heron! Let’s see—let’s see! Grey eyes—gold
hair—no, hair like bronze, pale bronze.... Would you dare to kiss a
witch?”—“No!”—“Yes!”—“No!”—“Yes, I would!”—“To make the Devil
jealous—that were a parlous thing!”—“Parlous or not, if she hath grey
eyes and red lips—”—“Kiss her—clip her in thy arms and to-night she
will come as _succuba_ and kiss and clip thee! Then hark to thy roar,
‘Avaunt, thou hag! Will none save me from the foul fiend?’”—“Joan
Heron! Rememberest the ballad, THE DEVIL AND JOAN HERON?”—“But thou’rt
not called ‘Daredevil’ for naught!”—“Do you dare me?”—“Yes, yes! We
dare you!”—“Kiss her hard, clip her fast—No, no. Master Sheriff! Fair
play—make a ring!... Now! Now!”... “_Well, thou hast courage!_”...
“_She did not struggle,—as do honest women or those who would be
thought honest!_” “To-night, to-night, when thou hast put out the
light, look to find her!”—“Ha, ha! ha, ha! JOAN HERON—”

They won away from those of the feathered hats. Space widened between
the two cavalcades, the voices of the gallants died from the ear. The
road lay bright and sunny, the morning air blew fresh and sweet. The
great earth swept calm to the horizon, the sky sprang, a pure and
cloudless arch. For a long way the road ran lonely of travellers other
than the sheriff, his men, and the prisoners. Joan and Aderhold, riding
together, talked in low tones. After a time they were passing through
a forest. They loved the brown earth and the bracken, the boughs
overhead, the purple distances.

“I remember this wood,” said Aderhold. “I lay and rested under
these trees and wondered what was before me.... And I could not see
_thee_.—I did not know the lovely thing that was before me.”

“And that night, at home, I slept and dreamed—and saw not thee.”

“There are glories in our lives. With every pain and sorrow counted in,
we have not been unhappy.”

“No. Pain did not win. And the light was brighter yesterday than the
day before, and brighter to-day than yesterday.... Look at the bird
flying up!”

The third night the troop did not arrive, in time for rest, at any
town or village. A heavy rain had fallen and delayed progress. They
came at dark to three or four mean houses, clustered around one of
better proportions, an inn by the sign just made out through the dusk
and the autumn mists. There was not much to eat, but it might be made
to do—straw could be shaken down—there was a great fireplace where
blazing warmth might be had.... To Joan and Aderhold, accustomed to
the sun, good was this warmth! There was one great stone-flagged room,
large as a baron’s hall. When the dozen men of their guard disposed
themselves, there was yet space where the ruddy glow might reach them,
dry their clothing wet with the rain, warm their bodies. Where there
was not overmuch for any, their portion of supper was small, indeed,
but it sufficed. When all would sleep, lying about the fire upon the
straw which the inn’s servitors brought in, the two were thrust to a
corner at the far end of the place, farthest from the door. A watch was
set—a stanch man relieved each two hours by another. The sheriff meant
no slipping of the wizard and witch out of his fingers. But sleeping
time was not yet come. The two sat to one side, watched, but no more
closely than was thought necessary.

Beside the sheriff and his men there were the host and hostess, three
or four uncouth serving-men and maids, and one other traveller, belated
like the rest. This was a gentle-faced old man, the parson, it was
learned, of a parish a dozen miles away.... The night before, in a town
of fair size, the names of his prisoners becoming known, the sheriff
had had trouble to rescue them from the mob that gathered. This day,
therefore, he would keep secret the full heinousness of the pair—along
the way and here it was said only that they were a man and woman
accused of witchcraft and apostasy, being transferred from one gaol to
another.

Under this description the inn folk looked aside at them with great
curiosity and fear. At supper time none could be found willing to
carry to them from the kitchen their bit of coarse bread and pitcher
of water. The host was busied elsewhere; the hostess put down her foot
that she would not; the men and maids laughed vacantly and stared, but
would not budge in that direction. The old man, the parson, who chanced
to be by, uttered a word of gentle chiding, then, as all still hung
back, himself picked up the bread and water and carried them to the
two. They thanked him. He stood looking at them with a gentle, pained
face. Called to supper at the long table where the sheriff and his men
were noisily taking places, he went away. But presently, his own frugal
meal quickly made, he came back. Theirs, too, was made. They were
seated on the stone flooring, shoulder against the wall, hand touching
hand. They had no look of wicked folk.

The old man found a stool, brought it and sat down beside them. “You
look worn and tired. The roads have been bad to-day.”

He spoke to Joan. “Bad here and there,” she said. “We are a little
tired.”

The old man sat looking from one to the other. Then he spoke with
simplicity. “Is it true that you are apostates from religion?”

“What,” said Aderhold, “is religion?—Is it love of good? Then, with
our hand in death’s, I dare aver that we are not apostates!” He smiled
at the old man. “Since we entered this room you have shown us a piece
of religion.”

“I would show you truly,” said the old man earnestly. “I would show you
Jesus.”

Aderhold answered gently. “You do so, sir. Believe that all of us know
Jesus when we meet him.”

The old man looked from one to the other. “You do not seem to me wicked
people. I know not how it is, but you seem—” The sheriff and his men
rose noisily from table. There immediately ensued a bustle in the
place—boards and trestles being taken away—bundles of straw brought
in—men going forth to look after the horses—men coming in with the
breath of the wet night. One came and called the old parson, drew him
away toward the small inner room where he was to rest. Going, he said
but one word more to the two. “Good-night. I wish you good sleep.”

The host who had called him held up his hands. “Reverend sir, I marvel
how you can stand to talk with such miscreants—”

Joan and Aderhold lay upon the stone floor and slept.... Night passed,
the rain ceased, the clouds broke, dawn came with magnificence. The
old parson, approaching, too, in the course of nature, his death hour,
slept on like a child in the inner room. But Joan and Aderhold went
forward with the guard. The inn sank from sight, the road stretched
before them.

This day, riding into a village, they found there, the centre until
their arrival of excited interest, no less a matter than an officer of
the law with three or four subordinates, come from the town to which
they were bound—despatched thence by the authorities with orders to
meet upon the way the party known to be bringing from London that witch
and sorcerer, join themselves to it, and so give touch of that town and
county’s importance, assuming charge, as it were, even leagues away,
of their own sinful ones.... Aderhold and Joan recognized the head
figure—across the years they saw him again at the Hawthorn trials—a
tall, lean, saturnine minor piece of the law’s machinery who had herded
the prisoners in and out of that hall of judgement. He was so tall and
lean and lantern-jawed and grim that he might have been a prize man for
the rôle of Death in a mystery play. For his part he came and looked
at them, threw back his head and laughed. “Ha, ha!” he said. “We’ve
got you back! The wicked do not prosper!” With that he returned to the
sheriff with whom he would ride.... This village was of the places
where stones and other matters were flung, together with whatever
epithet came to the lips. Joan and Aderhold opposed a quietness. Both
were bleeding when at last the law persuaded or threatened down the
raised hands and bore them away for its own blows. Out even upon the
open road came, borne by the wind, “Witch—Witch—Witch! Vile Witch!”

There was a man with the added party who proved to be of kin to the
Hawthorn end of the county. He knew Hawthorn and Hawthorn Forest.
Riding near to the two prisoners and discoursing with his fellows, the
two heard mention of many a familiar name. He had a body of great bulk
and a round, good-humoured face, and a liking for his own speech which
he delivered—so as not to disturb his superiors—in a monotone of low
pitch. The two heard him talk of the Hawthorn crops and fields and
weather, of the times good and bad, of the stock, the sheep and cattle,
of the streams and woods, of the people.... This day was a high, cool
autumn day with a tang in the air. The sun shone, but there was a wind
and whirling leaves. Joan and Aderhold knew that now there were not
many miles.... At dusk they halted within a hamlet where the folk were
too few to do more than stare and talk. There was no gaol. The two were
thrust into a damp and dark place where firewood was piled. Bread and
water were given them, but no straw for sleeping upon. When the heavy
door was shut and barred, and those without and the hamlet’s self sunk
into sleep or silence, all was as black, as cold and still, as the
grave is supposed to be.

The two knew that next day they would reach the town and the prison
from which, six years and more ago, they had fled away. There they
would be separated.... Probably they would die together—would be
brought forth together to die—might then each reach the other’s hand,
might clasp it until nearly the last. But not again in this life
would they be together like this, alone together, free, shut from the
world.... To-night, at first, all things flowed away save the fact that
they loved, save human passion and sorrow and clinging. They lay in the
space left by the heaped firewood, in the intense dark, and they held
each other in their arms, close, close! as if to defy all parting, and
there were broken words and sighs and tears. The last night—the last
night—

The higher mood returned, though slowly, slowly. With the bending of
the night toward dawn, it was here. They lay with clasped hands, and
when they spoke they spoke of love. All things else flowed away, or
did not flow away, for it was now as though love tinted all, made the
vast whole warm and vital.... They spoke of their child, and of their
island life and home; they spoke of the old chief. They spoke of people
they had known and loved—of old Roger Heron, of Master Hardwick—of
many, of all people. The draff and dross, the crooked and bent, all
came into the glow, the solvent. Love—love—love!... Love took this
form and took that form, and now it flew with these wings, and now with
other wings—and it was love of the body and the earth and all nature,
and it was love of wisdom—love of knowledge—love of the search—love
of love—love of truth! It was love that was not afraid—that rose on
splendid wings—that outwatched the night and saw the morning coming....

Outside began, faintly, a stirring. A cock crew and was answered. A
dog barked—the cock-crow came again. A grey light stole in at the
keyhole and under the door of the windowless place they were in. It
strengthened until they could make out each other’s face and form. The
dog barked again, men’s voices were heard.

Joan and Aderhold rose to their knees, to their feet, steadying each
other, holding by the firewood. The place, through the night, had
had the chill of the sepulchre. They knew it to be their last moment
together; hereafter, to the end, there would be others by. They stood
locked in each other’s arms, their lips meeting.... Steps were heard
without and the fall of the chain from across the door. They released
each other, they stood apart. The door swung open, light rushed in.
“Come forth, you wicked ones! Time to ride on—and to-night we’ll lodge
you in the nest you flew from!”

There could not have been a fairer autumn day. And now as they rode the
country grew more and more familiar.... While the day was yet young,
all were halted for a few minutes before a tavern set among trees,
its sign a great rose painted on a black ground. While ale in jacks
and tankards was brought forth for the guardians of the law, the two
prisoners had brief speech together.

“The Rose Tavern,” said Aderhold. “It was in this place that I first
met Master Hardwick. It was here that came the turn toward Hawthorn.”

“We have not far to go now.”

“No, not far.”

In the doorway stood the tall hostess that Aderhold remembered. She
stood with arms akimbo, regarding the prisoners with a mien so hostile
as to approach the ferocious. “Aaah!” she said. “I’d like to help bring
straw and wood!” She spat toward the two. “Haven’t _I_ had things
bewitched?—a gold earring taken from under my eyes, and our ricks
burned, and ill luck for a year running—and a bat this summer came
flapping through the house every eve, and none could beat it down!” She
was speaking to the constable’s man who knew Hawthorn. “Wherever that
vile witch has been this weary time, be sure she’s sent her word out
over all these parts to do us harm—”

“And that’s very possible,” said the round-faced man.

“Aren’t you going to take them by Hawthorn?”

“Yes,” answered the other. “Turn off this side of town—go round by
Hawthorn Wood—then through Hawthorn, and so back to town and the
prison. It’s miles out, but Hawthorn wants it done. There’s a murmur of
more witches—and it’s good warning to see how such folk fare!”

Joan and Aderhold, startled, exchanged glances. They had not thought of
that—of coming to their prison from the Hawthorn end. They would be
longer together. Joan’s lips parted. “And Hawthorn Forest—Ah, maybe we
shall see Heron’s cottage—”

The sun and shadow on the road, the waving trees, the white fleets of
clouds in a blue, blue sky.... They came to the crossroads with the
suicide’s grave—they came to the rise of earth where stood the gibbet
with its swinging chains—they came to a view of the castle wood and
the castle and the town beyond. One of the men asked a question of the
round-faced man. “Who lives up there?”

“The earl,” said the round-faced man. “But he’s away now. It used to be
that if he wasn’t there his cousin, Sir Richard, was. But Sir Richard
went to France, and they say he married there and has a son.—I used to
know Gervaise his man. But Gervaise has gone too.”

The sun made of the castle woods golden woods. Joan could see the Black
Tower—see where deep among the trees would be the huntsman’s house. A
great bird rose above the gold-green and sailed away.... Here, a mile
from the first outlying house, was the narrow and little-used road
that, curving aside from the town, led through some miles of country,
tilled and untilled, to Hawthorn Forest; then, with a half turn, came
at its leisure to Hawthorn, and so touched again the highway. They took
this road.

Until they came to a stream, in size between a brook and a river,
the country was to the two as the other familiar country. But this
was the stream that murmured past the Oak Grange. They were riding by
its shore, they were going toward the Grange—now indeed it grew to
be known land. Aderhold knew every winding.... The two rode as in a
dream. Before them, in the distance, in a golden haze, rose a forest.
“Hawthorn Wood”—and Joan’s voice made the words dreamy music. The sun
was warm now, the sky was blue, the leaves were falling, but without
sadness, ready to go, to return once more to the elements, build again.
The stream bent and the road with it. There came a long reach of
murmuring water, sliding by a pebbly strand. Across it now were fields
that once had gone with the Oak Grange.... A little farther, and they
saw the old house, and before it the fairy oak.

Just at the footbridge across the stream sounded an order to halt. The
lean, grim man whom the town had sent spoke in a harsh and rattling
voice. “This is where he made gold and practised sorcery.—Thou
God-denier! behold thy old lair, how accursed it looks!”

To the two it did not seem accursed. It stood an old, deserted, ruinous
house, but the ivy was green upon it, and the sunshine bathed it, and
the swallows circled above the roof. The oak tree in front lived, and
from its acorns were growing other oaks.... Joan and Aderhold looked
long and earnestly. The air was thronged with memories and there
seemed a weaving music. They were not unhappy—the artifex within them
was not unhappy. But those that were with them thought that they must
be so.

The horses were in motion again. And now the road turned and became
Hawthorn Forest road that ran to Hawthorn. The Oak Grange passed
from sight, the murmur of the stream left the ears. They were within
Hawthorn Forest. The great trees rose around; there fell gold shafts
of light; there came the odour, damp and rich, of the forest mould
deepening, deepening since old time. Down a purple vista they saw deer
moving—a faint wind was blowing—there was a drifting, drifting down
of leaves.... To Joan and Aderhold this forest breathed music. They
were glad to be here once again. They knew the single trees and the
groups of trees, they knew each picture within a picture: loved the
detail and loved the whole. It was sweet, before death, to have been in
Hawthorn Wood again.

Heron’s cottage. When they were forth from the forest they would see
that plainly, riding by. Perhaps they would draw rein there too. The
red crept into Joan’s cheek, her grey eyes grew bright and wistful....
The forest stopped; the grassy road brought them out into full
sunshine, a high blue sky arching the open, autumn country. Heron’s
cottage.... There was yet the green path from the road, yet the fruit
trees, bronze now and trembling in the wind—but there was no thatched
cottage. “Vile witch!” said the tall man, “Hawthorn burned your house.”

Hawthorn—there was no great distance now to Hawthorn. There had never
been much passing on this road, little human life going up and down.
This day there seemed none; moreover, a cot or two by the wayside
showed no folk about the doors, appeared shut and left to care for
themselves. At dawn a man had been sent forward on a fresh horse—the
loneliness of the road now connected itself with that. “Everybody’s
gone to Hawthorn,” said the round-faced man.

Hawthorn Church, stone amid stone-like yew trees, Hawthorn roofs showed
over the rim of the fields. Out of a coppice rose a lark and soaring
high sang up there in the blue. The Hawthorn Forest road joined the
highroad; guard and prisoners coming upon this turned now to Hawthorn
village. Carthew House—they passed Carthew House—they passed the
outlying cottages, among them that of Alison Inch—they came into
Hawthorn and to Hawthorn Church and Master Clement’s house. Here were
the people....

A bench had been placed by the churchyard gate, and upon this stood
Master Clement, raised as by a pulpit over Hawthorn. Near him stood
Squire Carthew and his brother, and the latter stood grim and grey as
granite. It was his intention to rise in church the coming Sunday and
before all Hawthorn acknowledge that six-years-past sin. He owed that
to God. The confession might or might not put in jeopardy his future
in England, but, however that might be, he would make it—make it
publicly! So he might have peace and could go on with the great work,
assured that God had forgiven.... For to-day he had made himself come
hither, taking it as part of his duty. Master Clement had urged that it
was his duty. With a stern face he gazed upon the two, but they, after
one glance, looked at him no more.

All around, packed in the churchyard and the street, were the people of
Hawthorn and its neighbourhood. How many familiar faces they saw—but
how few out of which superstition had not razed kindliness! Heretofore
on this journey, where they had been set in the eye of a gathered
crowd, the two had met with physical blows no less than with hard
words. But the Hawthorn throng was held in hand. No stone or clod or
refuse was thrown. The hard words arose, broke over them heavily, a
sordid and bitter wave. But this, too, the minister checked. He raised
his arms and flung them wide, he shook his lean and nervous hands.
Thrust to the front of the throng stood the tinker with whom Joan had
once walked on the road from the town. “Hist, hist!” said the tinker.
“Now will they hear their last sermon!”

“‘_And the sea gave up the dead which were in it; and death and
hell delivered up the dead which were in them, and they were judged
according to their works.... And whosoever was not found written in
the book of life was cast into the lake of fire!_’

“‘_And the devil that deceived them was cast into the lake of fire
and brimstone where the beast and the false prophet are, and shall be
tormented day and night forever and ever._’”

Hawthorn drew in its breath and shivered with that sermon. They said
that it was the greatest that Master Clement had ever preached, and
he had preached a-many great ones! Some of the simpler folk almost
looked for fire to come down from heaven and consume the wicked leech
and that vilest witch where they stood. It would have been a wonderful
sight and lesson! But doubtless God wanted the forms of the law carried
out—though they could not but still think how wonderful would have
been a visible sign....

Joan and Aderhold were an hour in Hawthorn.... It passed; all hours
passed, though some, and this among them, went on wounded feet.

It passed. They were in motion again. The Hawthorn folk that cried
bitter words behind them, the narrow street, the small, familiar houses
with dooryards where the flowers were fading, the ale-house, the green,
the sexton’s house, other houses, the elms and willows that marked the
village end—all were overpassed, left behind. Here at last was the
open road, and they had six miles to ride together.... Hawthorn faded
from the mind.

It was afternoon. The gold light lay softly over the country that
had always seemed to them a very fair country—that seemed so still.
The wind had fallen. They rode side by side. Those that guarded them
were tired with the long day and its various excitements. These rode
in silence or talked among themselves in voices somewhat subdued,
and for a time let the prisoners go unmarked. When they came within
sight of the town it would be different. Then all would straighten in
their saddles and closely surround the two, assuming the proper air of
vigilance. But now they allowed them to ride side by side and gave no
heed to what words they might speak to each other.

They were simple words that Joan and Aderhold spoke—old, old words of
love and tenderness. They spoke of courage. And they spoke of Truth,
the Origin and Goal. And they loved each other, and the light of all
suns, and they found song and sweetness, promise and fulfilment even in
this autumnal day....

The miles fell away like the leaves from the trees. The ground rose;
they had a great view bathed in the amber light. There flowed a
gleaming crescent. “The river!” said Joan.

The town that they had seen from the south, now they saw from the
north. They saw the river and the arched bridge, the climbing streets
and many roofs; they saw the great church and near it the dark prison,
and above the town the castle and the castle wood. The sun was sinking,
the light was reddening; above, the sky sprang pure, without a stain,
for the fleets of clouds had sailed away.

The tall, lean man spoke. “Witch and blasphemer! do you see yon ragged
field sloping down? That is where we will hang you.”

Joan and Aderhold, going toward the river, looked upon the ragged field
with steadfastness, but gave but few moments to that sight. Before
them was the arched bridge, and they saw, even on this side of it,
people gathering. Presently the sheriff’s men would come between them,
surrounding each, making one go before the other. Now they had these
last few moments side by side. Their hands might touch, their eyes
be eloquent. Farewell—and farewell—and oh, fare you well, love—my
love!...

The road descended to the river and the bridge. There arose the sound
they knew from the crowd they knew. The sheriff’s men pushed between
them; they must go one before the other. So each might be better seen
as well as better guarded. They crossed the river; they mounted the
steep street; they came to the town square, past the great church’s
sculptured portal.... The two had been ordered to dismount, were now
afoot.... Here was the pillory—here was the black prison’s frowning
front, the prison steps, the open door.... The setting sun flooded
the place with red light. A flint, flung by some strong arm, had
cut Aderhold’s forehead. With his hand he wiped the blood away and
looked to see Joan. She was upon the prison steps, lifted so that
the roaring crowd might see her. That great light from the sun beat
strongly upon face and form. The form was drawn to its height, the face
was high, resolved, and beautiful. But the crowd shouted, “The witch!
The witch! Look at the light as of fire! The fire has her already!
Witch—Witch—Witch!”

Joan mounted the last step, the black prison gaped for her, she
entered. Aderhold, mounting, met also that great shaft of light. The
voice of the crowd swelled, grew phrensied, but he heeded it not, and
with a face lit from within followed Joan into the prison.


THE END




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