The Witch

by Mary Johnston

  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 abeech tree, in her hand a dry, fallen bough which she was brandishingand making play with as though it had been a quarter-staff. She wassinging, 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 notfrighten 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 yougave 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 suchthings, I—I—”

  “What things?”

  She was silent for a moment, then faced him with courage. “I haveheard talk that you don’t believe what other people believe, that youdeny things that are in the Bible, and that maybe you practise sorcerythere in the Oak Grange.... And—and some one once told me that—thatpeople like that had always familiars which went mostly like littleanimals such as a cat or small dog, or sometimes a bird or a frog,—andthat—and that if they offered to give you such a thing for a giftand—and you took it, you signed yourself so to the Evil One....But—but I do not believe such things. They are against all goodnessand—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 goodnessand good sense—and they do not happen.... I was going to see a sickman, and passing by the burned cottage, I heard the cat crying, andwent and took her from the boys. She’s naught but just your firesidecat. 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 anysuch talk.... It is miserable that there should be.”

  He stood leaning against a tree, with half-shut eyes. Old fears cameover 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 thephysician. But for all that—and for all her comparative happiness thisbeautiful day and for her singing—she looked older and less care-freethan she had done last year. Her face was thinner, and there appearedin her, now and again, a startled, listening air. It came now. “Do youhear a horse coming?”

  At no part in the forest were you far from some cart track along whichmight, indeed, push a horseman. One was here now, leaving the track andcoming 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, buttinctured with both anger and dread. It was Harry Carthew, Aderholdnow saw, who approached. He caught sight of them, checked the roan aperceptible moment, then came on. The great horse stopped within tenfeet of the two beneath the beech tree. Carthew sat looking at them, astrange 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 hismind was preoccupied with those pale fears which her earlier speechhad awakened. He was thinking only of these—or rather he was notconsciously thinking at all; he was only gathering his forces forwardafter the recoil. He answered Carthew’s look with a somewhat blankgaze. “Good-day,” he said.

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

  Aderhold’s thoughts were still away. He repeated the word after theother, 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 withhim, nor I with you! God’s mercy! Cannot a girl speak a civil word to achance-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 tobe neighbours.—’Neighbours’—it is easy for neighbours to meet—withthis dark wood touching each house.” He lifted his hand to his throat,then turned upon Aderhold with a brow so black, a gesture so violentthat 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 donot know what you mean, Master Carthew,—or, if I guess, seeing thatyour words will bear that interpretation,—I will tell you that yourbolt goes wide!—Mistress Joan Heron and I chanced to meet five minutesbefore you appeared before us—and I do think in my soul that it is thesecond time we have spoken together in our lives! And I know not yourright—”

  “‘Right!’” broke in Joan with passion. “He has no right! And I will nothave him couple my name here and couple it there! Oh, I would”—hereyes blazed at Carthew—“I would that so great a saint would leave thisearth and go to heaven—if that, indeed, is where you belong!”

  Carthew sat his horse, dark as a thunder-cloud, and for all his ironframe and power of control, shaking like a leaf. “I believe neither ofyou,” he said thickly. He looked at Joan. “This is why you will notturn to me.”

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

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

  Joan turned, stood still the moment asked.

  “Master Carthew, shall I tell you what I shall shortly do if you leaveme 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 HawthornParish, and I shall say to them, ‘This holy and zealous young man whomI have heard you, Master Clement, call Joseph, and young David, andwhat-not—this same Master Harry Carthew, who will speak and exhort andpray with sinners,—this same man has for months made a harmless girl’slife wretched to her, offering loathed love and insult—’”

  Her voice broke; she threw up her arms in a gesture of anger andunhappiness and fled away. Carthew sat like a graven image, watchingher 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 willnever dare—” The last flutter of her skirt vanished among the trees.Suddenly he said with violence, “She denied it not!” and turned uponAderhold as though he would ride him down.

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

  He forced the other’s gaze upon him and a somewhat cooler judgementinto his eyes. Each, with his inner vision, was viewing in waves andsequences past relations, knowledge, and impressions. For the firsttime, general observation and lukewarm interest quickened into thekeen and particular and well-warmed. Aderhold saw again Carthew at theRose Tavern, and Carthew upon the road; heard again Carthew’s cosmicspeculations and Carthew’s expressed sense of sin. Four years gone by,and yet that impression remained the most deeply graved. After thatcame the long stretch of time in this region, and, during
it, littlespeech, few meetings with Carthew. There had been knowledge that attimes he was away, often for months, from Hawthorn, and there had beenobservation at church and elsewhere of the sterner sort in him ofPuritan zeal and faith, together with hearsay that the minister andhe were like elder and younger brother in the word, and the younger agrowing power in this part of England and a chosen vessel. And therehad been a kind of half-melancholy, half-artistic and philosophicrecognition of the perfection of the specimen Carthew afforded. Inlook, frame, dress, countenance, temper, and inward being, he seemedthe exactest symbol!—Nowhere further than all this had Aderhold comeuntil to-day.

  As for Carthew, with far narrower powers of reflection, and with thoseconcentrated with hectic intensity in a small round, it might be saidthat in these years he had barely regarded or thought of the physicianat all. Such a statement would be true of all sides but one. MasterClement had, within the past year, doubted to him any true zeal inreligion on the part of the physician, and had set up a faint currentof observation and misliking. It had been nothing much; at times, whenhe thought of it, he marked Aderhold at church, how he looked anddemeaned himself; once or twice when he had overheard some peasantspeak 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 togetherhad weighed little. He had the soul of Harry Carthew to be concernedfor ... though, of course, for that very soul’s salvation, it behoovedto see that other lamps were kept burning.... Nay, it behooved forthose others’ salvation—for the warfare of the true saint was forthe salvation of every soul alive!—All this was before the past fewmonths. Through these months he had thought but of one thing—or ifat all of another thing, then of how his own soul was on the brinkof the pit, with the Devil whispering, and the heat of the flame ofhell already burning within him.... And now, suddenly, it seemed thatthe physician living at the Oak Grange was a figure in the sum. Helooked at him, and where before he had seen but a silently coming andgoing learned man, to be somewhat closely watched by God’s saints lestmysterious knowledge should lead him astray, he saw now a tall man,still young, not ill-looking, with strange knowledge that might teachhim how to ingratiate.... He spoke in a hollow voice. “I have beenblind.”

  “Whatever you may have been,” said Aderhold with impatience, “you areblind in this hour. Look at me! Not for the sake of myself, but for thesake of truth, and to guard another from misapprehension, and to takea strange poison from your mind, I swear most solemnly that that maidand I were chance-met but now beneath this tree; that we spoke mostgenerally, and far afield from what you madly imagine; and that, savefor once before as chance and momentary a meeting, never have we beenalone together! I swear that I think in that wise of no woman, and nowoman 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 bringwisdom and better love into your counsel, and leave the maid alone!”

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

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

  “Or she has said,” said Carthew. He moistened his lips. “Foolish maidswill make much of slight matters!—If I have slipped a little—if Satanhath tempted me and the foul weakness of universal nature—so that Ihave chanced, perhaps, to give her a kiss or to tell her that she wasfair—what hath it been to her hurt? Naught—no hurt at all. But tome.... Nay, I will recover myself. God help me! I will not put my soulin perdition. God help me!” He lifted his clasped hands, then let themdrop to his saddle-bow. “I will begin by believing even where I believenot! What hurt to me if now and again you and Joan Heron speak inpassing?—so be it that with your evil learning and your commerce whoknows where, you put not the maid’s soul in peril ... so be it that youtouch 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 Iwould 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 thedirection of the village.

  Back upon the forest track which he had pursued, and then upon the roadthat 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 withinher own door. But on the road, no great distance beyond the cottage,he came upon another woman, walking toward the village. This was thesempstress’s daughter, Alison Inch.... Two years gone by, Alison hadspent some weeks in Carthew House, sewing for Madam Carthew. He hadbeen reading aloud that winter to his sister-in-law, who was a learnedand pious lady, and Alison had sat in a corner, sewing and listening.The reading done, he had at times explained the discourse or addedillustration, encouraging the women to ask questions.—He felt friendlytoward Alison, and always, since that time, answered her curtsy whenthey 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 hishorse beside her.

  “You have been riding through the forest, sir?” she asked. “It is afine 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, andstrained voice. “I was walking to Heron’s cottage to see Joan. Butshe was not there.—She’s not much like others. When she gets herwork done, she’s off to herself somewhere—maybe to the wood, maybeelsewhere. It’s often so that you can’t find her.”

  Now Carthew had found, too, that you couldn’t always find her. Suddenlyhis 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: “MasterAderhold who lives at the Oak Grange—” He paused.

  “Yes, sir?” said Alison.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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