CHAPTER IV
THE ROSE TAVERN
THREE days after this conversation Gilbert Aderhold said good-byeto the Puritan woman and her son, shouldered a stick with a bundleat the end, and set his face toward the periphery of London and thegreen country beyond. He had no money. The idea of asking his fellowphysician for a loan haunted him through one night, but when morningcame the ghost was laid. He strongly doubted if the other would makethe loan and he did not wish to ask it anyhow. Since he had been inLondon he had given a cast of his art more than once or twice in thisneighbourhood. But it was a poor neighbourhood, and those whom he hadserved had been piteous folk, and he did not think that they couldpay. 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 toleranceand humanity, the fellow physician might be expected to drop a wordof warning, here and there, among the brotherhood. His hope had beenthat his case was so obscure that no talk would come from Paris.... Itwas not only that the arm of religion had been raised; he had invokedin medicine, too, strange gods of observation and experience; he hadbeen hounded forth with a double cry. To linger in London, to try towork and earn here—with a shudder he tasted beforehand the rebuff thatmight 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 himfor years, and fancied him now somewhere upon the ocean or adventuringin the New World. He remembered his mother telling him that there wereor 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 eventuallyhe turned his face toward the north.
It was six in the morning when he stepped forth. Slung beside hisbundle of clothing and a book or two, wrapped in a clean cloth, was agreat loaf of bread which the Puritan woman had given him. There wasa divine, bright sweetness and freshness in the air and the pale-blueheaven over all. He turned into Fleet Street and walked westward. Theapprentices were opening the shops, country wares were coming intotown, the city was beginning to bustle. Aderhold walked, looking toright and left, interested in all. He was not a very young man, but hewas young. Health and strength had been rudely shaken by anxiety, fear,and misery. Anxiety still hovered, and now and then a swift, upstartingfear cut him like a whip and left him quivering. But fear and anxietywere going further, weakening, toning down. Calm was returning, calmand rainbow lights.
Hereabouts in the street were all manner of small shops, places ofentertainment, devices by which to catch money. The apprentices werebeginning 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, raggedyouth was taking down the boards, which were painted with figuresof Indians, copper-hued and feathered. Half a dozen children stoodwatching.
Aderhold stopped and watched also. “Have you an Indian here,” he askedthe boy. “I have never seen one.”
The youth nodded. “He sleeps in the corner back of the curtain. You paytwopence to see him—” He grinned, and looked at the children. “Butit’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 denwith 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 shipfrom Florida. They trained him. They had a bear, too, that we bought,but the bear died.” He whistled again. The curtain parted and theIndian 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, dulland hopeless, he sat with a lack-lustre eye. The boy whistled againand he spoke, a guttural and lifeless string of words. The childrengathered close, flushed and excited. But Aderhold’s brows drew upwardand together and he turned a little sick. He was a physician; he wasused to seeing wretchedness, but it had not deadened him. Every now andthen the wave of human misery came and went over him, high as space,ineffably dreary, unutterably hopeless.... He stood and looked at theIndian for a few moments, then, facing from the booth, walked away witha rapid and disturbed step which gradually became slower and halted. Heturned and went back. “Has he eaten this morning? You don’t give himmuch to eat?”
“Times are hard,” said the boy.
Aderhold took the smaller bundle from his stick, unwrapped it and withhis 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 thebread upon his knee. “Woe are we,” he said, “that can give no efficienthelp!”
The savage and the European looked each other in the eyes. For amoment something hawk-like, eagle-like, came back and glanced throughthe pupils of the red man, then it sank and fled. His eyes grew dullagain, though he made a guttural sound and his hand closed upon thebread. The physician stood a moment longer. He had strongly the sacredwonder and curiosity, the mother of knowledge, and he had truly beeninterested to behold an Indian. Now he beheld one—but the iron showedmore than the soul. “I am sorry for thee, my brother,” Aderhold saidsoftly.
The boy spoke from without. “Hist, hist! Master’s coming down thestreet.”
Aderhold left the booth, shouldered his stick and bundle and went onhis way.
He walked steadily, the sun at his back, lifting through the mistand at last gilding the whole city. He was now upon its northwesternfringe, in the “suburbs.” They had an evil name, and he was willing topass through them hurriedly. They had a sinister look,—net-work offoul 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 outsteppedher, “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 arewilling 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 notfor it, either, but—Lord God! one must eat!” She began to sing in acracked 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. Shebroke off her song. “Bring your stick and bundle in front of you! Thisis a marked place for snatchers.”
Her warning was not idle. As he shifted the stick a shaggy, bull-headedman made a move from shadow to sunlight, lurched against him andgrasped at the bundle. Aderhold slipping aside, the fellow lost hisbalance and came almost to the ground. The woman laughed. Enraged,the bull-headed man drew a knife and made at the physician, but thewoman, coming swiftly under his raised arm, turned, and grasping wristand hand, gave so sudden a wrench that the knife clanked down uponthe stones. She kicked it aside into the gutter, her face turned toAderhold. “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 anold 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 andwoods. Now he walked briskly, enjoying the air, hopeful with thehopeful day. Sometime in the morning an empty cart overtook him, thecarter walking by his horse. They walked together up a hill and talkedof the earth and the planting and the carting of stuffs and the ratespaid and the ways of horses. Level ground reached, the carter offered alift, and the two travelled some miles together, chiefly in a friendlysilence. At midday Aderhold unwrapped his loaf o
f bread, and the carterproduced bread, too, and a bit of cheese and a jug containing ale.They ate and drank, jogging along by April hedges and budding trees. Alittle later the carter must turn aside to some farm, and, wishing eachother well, they parted.
This day and the next Aderhold walked, by green country and Tudorvillage and town, by smithy and mill, by country houses set deepin giant trees, by hamlet and tavern, along stretches of lonelyroad and through whispering, yet unvanished forests. The sun shone,the birds sang, the air was a ripple of zephyrs. The road had itstraffic, ran an unwinding ribbon of spectacle. There were the wallsof country and the roof of sky and a staccato presence of brute andhuman life. Now horsemen went by—knightly travel or merchant travel,or a judge or lawyer, or a high ecclesiastic. Serving-men walked orrode, farming folk, a nondescript of trade or leisure. Drovers cameby with cattle, country wains, dogs. A pedlar with his pack kept himcompany for a while. Country women passed, carrying butter and eggsto market, children coming from school, three young girls, lithe,with linked arms, a parson and his clerk, an old seaman, a beggar, acharcoal-burner, a curious small troupe of mummers and mountebanks, andfor contrast three or four mounted men somewhat of the stripe of thewidow’s sons. One looked a country gentleman and another a minister ofthe stricter sort. They gazed austerely at the mummers as they passed.Now life flowed in quantity upon the road, now the stream dwindled, nowfor 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 asky all golden like the halos around saints’ heads in pictures that heremembered in Italy. No house was visible, nor, had one been so, hadhe 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 goldfrom the sky he turned aside from the road upon which, up and downas 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 madea pillow. The stars came out; in some neighbouring, marshy place thefrogs began their choiring.
Although he was tired enough, he could not sleep at once, nor evenafter a moderate time of lying there, in his ears the monotonous,not unmusical sound. He thought of what he should do to-morrow, andhe 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 cameinto his cheek. He did not wish to beg. And were there no pride inthe matter, there was the law of the land. Beggars and vagabonds andmasterless men, how hardly were they dealt with! They were dealt withsavagely, 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 allalong of stopping at last in some town or village, of some mercifulopportunity floating to him, of tarrying, staying there—finding roomsomewhere—his skill shown—some accident, perhaps, some case like thealderman’s wife ... a foothold, a place to grip with the hand, thenlittle by little to build up. Quiet work, good work, people to trusthim, assurance, a cranny of peace at last ... and all the time thelight growing. But where was the cranny, and how would he find the wayto 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 wasovercast. The air, too, was colder. He wrapped the cloak more closelyabout him and slept again. When he woke the day was here, but not sucha day as yesterday. The clouds hung grey and threatening, the wind blewchill. There set in a day of weariness and crosses. It passed somehow.Footsore, at dusk, he knocked at a cotter’s door, closed fast againstthe wind which was high. When the family questioned him, he toldthem that he was a poor physician, come from overseas, going towardkinspeople. There chanced to be a sick child in the cottage; they lethim 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 thewind still blew. It carried with it flakes of snow. The road stretchedbare, none fared abroad who could stay indoors. Aderhold now stumbledas he walked. There was a humming in his ears. In the early afternoonof his sixth day from London he came to as lonely a strip of country ashe had seen, lonely and grey and furrowed and planted with a gnarledwood. The flakes were coming down thickly.
Then, suddenly, beyond a turn of the road, he saw a small inn, set in acourtyard among trees. As he came nearer he could tell the sign—a redrose on a black ground. It was a low-built house with a thatched roof,and firelight glowed through the window. The physician had a bleedingfoot; 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 passedthrough he had bought food and the night’s lodging with a portion ofthe contents of his bundle. Now he sat down upon the root of a treeoverhanging the road, opened his shrunken store, and considered thatwith most of what was left he might perhaps purchase lodging and fareuntil the sky cleared and his strength came back. A while before he hadpassed one on the road who told him that some miles ahead was a fairlylarge town. He might press on to that ... but he was tired, horriblytired, and shivering with the cold. In the end, keeping the bundle inhis hand, he went and knocked at the door of the Rose Tavern.
The blowsed servant wench who answered finally brought her master thehost, a smooth, glib man with a watery eye. He looked at the stuffAderhold offered in payment and looked at the balance of the bundle.In the end, he gestured Aderhold into the house. It was warm withinand fairly clean with a brightness of scrubbed pannikins, and in thekitchen, opening from the chief room, a vision of flitches of bacon andstrings of onions hanging from the rafters. Besides the serving-maidand a serving-man there was the hostess, a giant of a woman with a redkerchief about her head. She gave Aderhold food. When it was eaten hestretched himself upon the settle by the kitchen hearth, arms beneathhis head. The firelight danced on the walls, there was warmth andrest....
Aderhold lay and slept. Hours passed. Then, as the day drew towardevening, he half roused, but lay still upon the settle, in the brownwarmth. There was a feeling about him of peace and deep forests, oflapping waves, of stars that rose and travelled to their meridiansand sank, of long, slow movements of the mind. The minutes passed.He started full awake with the hearing of horses trampling into thecourtyard and a babel of voices. He sat up, and the serving-wenchcoming at the moment into the kitchen he asked her a question. Sheproved a garrulous soul who told all she knew. The Rose Tavern stoodsome miles from a good-sized town. Those in the yard and enteringthe house were several well-to-do merchants and others with theirserving-men. They had been to London, travelling together for company,and were now returning to this town. There was with them Master—shecouldn’t think of his name—of Sack Hall in the next county. Andcoming in at the same time, and from London, too, there was old MasterHardwick who lived the other side of Hawthorn village, in a ruined oldhouse, and was a miser. If _he_ had been to London it would be sure tohave been about money. And finally there was Squire Carthew’s brother,also from Hawthorn way. He was a fine young man, but very strict andreligious. The company wasn’t going to stay—it wished food and hotdrink and to go on, wanting to reach the town before night. And herethe 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-menbeing without, busy with the riding and sumpter horses. All in the roomwere cold, demanding warmth and drink,—peremptory, authoritative,well-to-do burghers of a town too large for village manners and notlarge enough for a wide urbanity. In a corner, on a bed made of a benchand stool, with a furred mantle for cover, lay a lean old man with agrey beard. He was breathing thick and hard, and now and again he gavea deep groan. A young serving-man stood beside him, but with a dull andhe
lpless aspect toward sickness. Across the room, standing by a window,appeared a man of a type unlike the others in the room. Tall andwell-made, he had a handsome face, but with a strange expression as ofwarring elements. There showed a suppressed passionateness, and thereshowed a growing austerity. His dress was good, but dark and plain. Hewas booted and cloaked, and his hat which he kept upon his head wasplain 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 thebench, went across to the window, and, cap in hand, spoke a few words.The man addressed listened, then strode over to the chimney-corner andstood 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 swungaround. He encountered one whom he had encountered before—to wit,the red and blue bully of the Cap and Bells. Master Anthony Mull didnot at first recognize him. He was blustering against the host of theRose because there was no pasty in the house. The physician would fainhave slipped past, but the other suddenly gave a start and put out apouncing hand. “Ha, I know you! You’re the black sorcerer and devil’sfriend 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 exceptthe 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’ssigns—warlock’s signs! Look if he doesn’t bring a fiend’s own stormupon us ere we get to town!”
Very quiet, kindly, not easily angered, Aderhold could feel white wrathrise within him. He felt it now—felt a hatred of the red and blueman. The most of those in the room were listening. It came to him withbitterness that this bully and liar with his handful of idle wordsmight be making it difficult for him to tarry, to fall into place ifany place invited, in the town ahead. He had had some such idea. Theysaid it was a fair town, with some learning....
He clenched his hands and pressed his lips together. To answer in wordswas alike futile and dangerous; instead, with a shake of the head,he pushed by the red and blue man. The other might have followed andcontinued the baiting, but some further and unexpected dilatorinessexhibited by the Rose Tavern fanned his temper into conflagration. Hejoined the more peppery of the merchants in a general denouncementand prophecy of midnight ere they reached the town. Aderhold, as farfrom him as he could get, put under the surge of anger and alarm. Hestood debating within himself the propriety of leaving the inn at once,before Master Mull could make further mischief. The cold twilight andthe empty road without were to be preferred to accusations, in thisage, of any difference in plane.
The sick man near him gave a deep groan, struggled to a sittingposture, then fell to one side in a fit or swoon, his head strikingagainst the wall. The young serving-man uttered an exclamation ofdistress and helplessness. The man with the plain hat, who had turnedaway, wheeled and came back with knitted brows. There was somecommotion in the room among those who had noticed the matter, but yetno great amount. The old man seemed unknown to some and to others knownunfavourably.
Aderhold crossed to the bench and bending over the sufferer proceededto loosen his ruff and shirt. “Give him air,” he said, and then to thetall man, “I am a physician.”
They laid Master Hardwick upon a bed in an inner room, where, Aderholddoing 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 fromLondon. 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? Staywith me.... Am I going to die?”
“No. But you do not well to travel too far abroad nor to place yourselfwhere you will meet great fatigues.”
The other groaned. “It was this one only time. I had monies at stakeand none to straighten matters out but myself.” He lay for a time withclosed eyes, then opened them again upon Aderhold. “I must get on—Imust get home—I must get at least as far as the town to-night. Don’tyou think that I can travel?”
“Yes, if you go carefully,” said Aderhold. “I will tell your man whatto do—”
The old man groaned. “He works well at what he knows, but he knows solittle.... 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’vedone me good—and if I were taken again—” He groaned. “I’m a poorman,—they make a great mistake when they say I’m rich,—but if you’llride with me I’ll pay somehow—”
Aderhold sat in silence, revolving the matter in his mind. “I have,” hesaid at last, “no horse.”
But Master Hardwick had with him a sumpter horse. “Will can now ridethat 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 mustget home.” He raised himself upon the bed. “You go with me—you’ve gota 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.”
The Witch Page 5
