The Witch

by Mary Johnston

  CHAPTER IX

  THE OAK GRANGE

  ADERHOLD sat in the moth-eaten old chair, in the bare room, beside thebed in which, seventy-odd years before, Master Hardwick had been bornand 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, notweakened like his body. Indeed, the physician thought that the mentalflame burned more strongly toward the end, as though Death fanned awaysome heavy and dulling vapour.

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

  He sat musing in the great chair. Four years.... Four years in thisstill house. He felt a great pity for the old man lying drawn andcrumpled there beside him, a pity and affection. The two were kindred.He had this refuge, this nook in the world, this home to be gratefulfor, 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 beenso silent.... Four years—four years of the quietest routine, goingwhere there was sickness and he was called, wandering far afield in acountry 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 somepart of his scant earnings ... then at the Oak Grange sitting with thisold man, drawing him, when he could, out of his self-absorption andhis fears. Aderhold was tender with his fears; that which weighed uponhis own soul was his own fear, and it made him comprehend the other’sterrors, idle though he thought they were. He thought that from someother dimension his own would seem as idle—and yet they bowed himdown, 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 stoodan oaken press, where under lock and key he guarded ink and pen andpaper and a book that he was writing. That guess at qualities, atorigins and destinies, that more or less mystical vision, taste andapprehension of ground and consequence, that intuition of all thingsin flood, of form out of form, of unity in motion—all that in Francehe had outspoken, and in speaking had like to have lost liberty andlife—all that he had not spoken of here these four years, hard-byHawthorn Village and church—all this he was striving to put thereupon paper. He rose at dawn and wrote while the light strengthened; hebought himself candles and wrote at night when all the place was sostill 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 iscourageous.”

  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 asteeple-crowned hat. Although the day was warm he had about him a widecloak. 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 mighthave perished, for a soul can perish in a twinkling.” He put the oldwoman 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 havedone, Master Clement,—I run rapidly toward this life’s end.”

  “Yea,” said the minister, “and I fear me that you run toward worse thanthis life’s end! I am come—I am come, Master Hardwick, to wrestle withthe Devil for thy soul! I tell thee, it stands in mortal danger ofdropping from life’s end into that gulf where Dives burns and is mockedfrom 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-manand the lad that I saw without. It befits that a dying man, suing forpardon to an offended King, should have his household about him.”

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

  Master Hardwick lay awake and conscious but passed beyond muchspeaking. Aderhold withdrew into the shadow of the bed-curtains, andout of this twilight regarded Master Clement. He knew of more thanone or two heroic things which this man had done. Moreover, he hadheard that years before, when Calvin had by no means as yet tincturedEngland, Master Clement had stoutly set up his standard and kept strictvigil before it. It was whispered that he had stood in the pilloryfor “No Pope—and No Prelates!” Aderhold, gazing upon him, was awarethat Master Clement would endure persecution as unflinchingly as,indubitably, he would inflict it. Each quality somehow cancelled theother—Master Clement was out of it—and there was left only the grosswaste and suffering....

  Aderhold had heard priest and preacher, after pulpit cries of humanworthlessness, of the insignificance of the soul, of universal andhopeless guilt, of the inflamed mind of God, of the hell which, in thecourse of nature, awaited every child of Adam, of the predestinationof some, indeed, through grace of another, to an unearned glory, ofthe eternal, insufferable loss and anguish of those multitudes andmultitudes and multitudes, who either had never known or heard of thatremedy, or who, the Devil at their ear, had made bold to doubt itsutter efficacy—he had heard and seen such men, at death-beds, in thepresence of solemn and temperate Death, turn from what they preached toReason and Love. He had heard them try to smooth away the deep and darktrenches in the bewildered brain which they themselves had done theirbest to dig. He thought their conversion the saddest miracle—sad,for it did not last. Death passed for that time from their view, backthey went to preach to listening throngs who must die, Inherited Guilt,Inherited, fiendish punishment, an Inherited, fearful God, an Inheritedcurse upon enquiry, and the humbling, indeed, of an Inherited vicariousatonement.... He wondered that they never foresaw their own death-bed.He thought that they never truly, bone and marrow, believed whatthey said, but that the reverberating voices of the ages behind themstunned, went through them, produced an automatic voice and action. Toresist that insistence, to breast the roaring stream of the past—heacknowledged that it was difficult, difficult!

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

  To-day there was no softening in the aspect of Master Clement. Thisold man before him was a wretched miser hoarding gold, a solitary whoin this dark old house as probably as not practised alchemy, lustingto turn lead and iron into gold, and as probably as not practisedit by unlawful and demoniacal aid. Rarely was he seen in church—toofeeble to come, he said; too unwilling, thought Master Clement. He didnot give of his substance, he was bitter and misliked, he asked noprayers—Master Clement had many counts against him, and was fain tobelieve that they tallied with God’s counts. He girded himself and cameforth to wrestle with and throw this soul, and by the hair of its headto drag it from the edge of the bottomless pit. He wrestled for thebetter part of an h
our.

  Master Hardwick lay unwinking, high upon his pillows. Aderhold couldnot tell how much really entered ear and mind; the old man seemed to beregarding something far away, something growing in the distance. Thepity of it, he thought, was for Will and old Dorothy and the boy; theywere drinking, drinking.

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

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

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

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

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

  He went away, striding by the fairy oak in his wide cloak and steeplehat, with a pale, wrathful, intense face. Aderhold returned to theroom and his patient. Master Hardwick lay upon his pillows, with acountenance much as it had been. Aderhold, saying nothing, sat besidehim, and presently he fell asleep. Outside it was high summer, butcool, with a moving air and a rustling of every leaf. Hours passed, theday waned, the dusk set in. Aderhold, moving softly, made a fire inthe cavernous fireplace, where, even in winter, Master Hardwick rarelywasted 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’vebeen a kind of warmth and stay, asking nothing, not wasting orspending, but giving.... They think I am rich, but I am not. I wasnever very rich.... I ventured in the Indies’ voyage and gained, andthen I was a fool and ventured again and lost. Since then I have been apoor man. It is the truth.... Give me something to keep me up—”

  Aderhold gave him wine. After a moment he spoke again. “There arecreditors in the town that you’ll hear from. They’ll take the land—allbut the bit about the house. That and the house I’ve willed you—kinto me, and kind as well.... The gold they say I’ve buried—I’ve buriednone. There are twenty pieces that you’ll find in an opening of thewall behind the panel there—” He pointed with a shaking hand thatsank at once. “It’s all that’s left—and you’ll have to bury me fromit.... A miser.... Maybe, but what I saved only lasted me through withspare living. If I had told them of that heavy loss—my gold gone downat 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 mygold.... Well, I did not tell them.... Do not tell all that you knowand empty yourself like a wine skin—” His voice sank, he slept again.

  Aderhold thought that he might sink from sleep into stupor and so diepainlessly and without words. But in the middle of the night he wakedagain.

  “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 becausereason and feeling, the mind and the spirit recoil from it. Whateveris, that is not.”

  “I never thought it was.... I’ve been called sour and hard andwithholding, and maybe I am it all. But I would not make an imperfectcreature 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 thecold and shrunken hand of Master Hardwick. “I would trust and hope—andthat not less in myself than in that Other that seems to spread aroundus. 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 surelycarrying with me, in some fashion, memory of the past, as growingendlessly through endless experience. I would take courage. And if, inmy 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 Ifelt in my heart that that made against light and love and wisdom andstrength for all—then, as I lay here dying, and as I died, I wouldput that withholding and fear from me, and step forth toward betterthings.... There is within you a fountain of love and strength. Trustyourself to your higher self.... Hoist sail and away!”

  The night passed, and at dawn Master Hardwick died. Aderhold closedhis eyes, straightened his limbs, and smoothed the bed upon whichhe lay. Going to the window he set the casement wide. The dawn wascoming 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 wouldbe noon, the dawn elsewhere when here would be night—Never, fromthe 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, thebeginning again, the clean-washed.... Aderhold breathed the divine air,the blended solemnity and sweetness. The light was growing, a thousandbeauties were unfolding, and with them laughter and song. The waterrippling over the stones came to him with a sound of merriment. Thewindow was clustered around with ivy and a spray nodded, nodded againsthis hand with an effect of familiarity, a friend tapping to call hisattention. From some near-by bush a thrush began to sing—so golden,so clear. “O moving great and small!” said Aderhold; “O thought of allsense and soul, gathered, interfused, and aware of a magic Oneness! Omacrocosm that I, the microcosm, will one day lift to and be and knowthat I am—O sea of all faiths, O temperer of every concept, O eternalpermission and tolerance, nurse of growth and artifex of form fromform!... These children’s masks which we lift upon a stick and callThee, crying, Lo, this is God with the fixed face—”

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

  They buried Master Hardwick in Hawthorn
Churchyard. Hard upon the endof that, there appeared a merchant and a man of means from the townwith a note-of-hand. The farm land, such as it was, would go there insatisfaction. The lawyer produced a will made one year before. Lackingissue and near kindred, Master Hardwick left all that he had, hiscreditors being satisfied, to his loving cousin, the physician, GilbertAderhold. What that was in reality was solely the decaying old houseand the few acres of worn garden and orchard immediately surroundingit. The twenty pieces of gold, when all was paid, shrunk to three.

  Aderhold dwelled solitary in the Oak Grange as he and his kinsmanhad dwelled solitary before. The land around went no longer with theGrange, but there was no change else. The old tenants hung on; itstill spread, poor in soil, poorly tilled, shut off from the richervale 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 noother money than the scant sixpences and shillings that the physiciangained. To sell the house sounded well, but there was no purchaser. Theplace was ruinous, lonely, and without advantage, said to be hauntedas well. Aderhold, only, had grown to love it, the ivied walls andthe wild garden, the oak and the stream, and the room where he tookfrom 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 thegold was gone. It was known that the dead miser had had a chest-fullof broad pieces. Probably he had buried this great store—some saidunder the house itself, some said under the fairies’ oak. Wherever itwas buried, certainly the leech must know where it was; or if he didnot know yet, he would. If one were to go that way through HawthornForest, and come into sight of the house and see a candle passing fromwindow to window, or hear a digging sound in the orchard or beneaththe ill-named oak, that would be he.... A whisper arose, none knewhow, that Master Hardwick had practised alchemy, and that his kinsmanpractised it too; that he knew how to make gold. If he knew, then, ofcourse, he would be making it, in the dead of night. Could you makegold alone, unaided by any but your own powers? Alchemists, it wasknown, did not hesitate to raise a spirit or demon. Then there waslittle difference between an alchemist and a sorcerer?... There cameamong the whispers a counter-statement from several cotters and poorfolk. Master Aderhold was no sorcerer—he was a good leech; witnesssuch and such a cure! Whereupon opposition sharpened the whisperers’ingenuity. Aye, perhaps the demon helped him cure as well as makegold! Came another counter—he was a good church-goer. So! _but MasterClement thinks not highly of him_.

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