The Witch

by Mary Johnston

  CHAPTER XI

  THE PLAGUE

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

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

  The plague grew worse in the town. More and yet more houses weremarked 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 theplace; there grew an insistent and rapid murmur of prayers. Side byside with that occurred a relaxation and neglect of usual order. Thestrict rule in such cases was against people coming together in anymanner of congregation whereby the infection might spread; but thewatch grew sick and fear constantly sought companions. There was muchdrinking in alehouses and taverns, no little gathering together of onesort and another. Side by side with wild appeals and supplications toHeaven wavered a sick and wan determination to some sort of mirth. Attimes this spirit rose to dare-deviltry. Small crimes increased. Thepoor were the hardest stricken, seeing that for them starvation clankedbehind disease. Theft and housebreaking grew common, while professionalthieves might and did make a harvest feast. The church bells tolled. Atnight the death-carts increased in number, the closed houses increasedin number, the juniper smoke rolled thicker and thicker.

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

  The town grew a gloomy place indeed, filled with apprehension. Peopleviewing it from distant hills professed to see hanging over it adarkened and quivering air of its own. The streets had a desertedlook, with fires burning and none around them. The death-carts wentmore frequently, and the bells clanged, clanged. There was a need ofphysicians, those in the place being overworked and one smitten. Aboutthe time that the black finger drew back from the farmhouse, GilbertAderhold walked to the town and offered his services. Thereafter forweeks he was busied, day and night.

  Up in the castle above the town, a kinsman of the earl’s stayed onafter the hurried departure of the great family to another seat in anuntouched countryside. Heir to a burdened estate and courtier out offavour, not pleased for reasons of his own to remove with the earl, andliking for another set of reasons the very solitariness of the hugeold abode, assured that the infection would not mount the cliff andpass the castle wood, and constitutionally careless of danger, he askedleave to stay on, keep ward with the old housekeeper, the armour in thehall, the earl’s regiment of books, and his own correspondence withforeign scholars. He stayed, and for exercise rode through the countryroundabout, and now and then, to satisfy a philosophic curiosity,through the town itself. The ideas of the time as to quarantine werelax enough. The sick were shut away in the houses, purifying firesburned in the streets; if you were careful to avoid any who lookedin the faintest degree as though they might be sickening, life andbusiness might go on. The rider from the castle, when he came down intothe place, carried with him and put often to his nostrils a quantityof medicated spices and perfumed grains from the Orient, carried in asmall perforated silver box.

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

  “Until the trouble is abated.”

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

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

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

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

  The man on horseback kept ten feet between them and smelled continuallyat his silver box, but for the rest was willing to stay and talk. “Thatseems to be it. The soldier will run from the pest, but face a cannonmouth. The sailor rocks upon a masthead or boards a Spanish galleonwith a cutlass between his teeth, but a churchyard ghost turns him intoa whimpering child! Your thinker will scale Olympus and enquire of Jovedirect, but the sight of torn flesh turns him pale. To each his courageand each his fear! Each a master and each a slave.”

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

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

  He backed his horse farther from the house.

  “Ah,” said Aderhold, “I, too, have a great region where Fear is mymaster and sets his foot upon my neck! I will enter this house, but Imake 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 thecastle.”

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

  That evening at supper the talk was almost solely of the plague. Thephysician had had experience in London; he had written learnedly uponthe subject, and was reckoned an authority. He talked of preventivesand plague-wa
ters, and hoped that while, for his lordship’s sake, heshould not think of closely exposing himself, he might yet, with properprecautions, descend into the town and observe the general appearanceof matters. He would be glad to give to the authorities or to thephysicians in the place any advice in his power,—and then he fell tothe capon, the venison pasty, and the canary. The old nobleman askedSir Richard how he should get word to William Carthew, living beyondHawthorn Village, of his presence at the castle. It seemed that therewas some tie of old service a generation agone,—Carthew’s father hadowed a captaincy and other favours to the nobleman,—and now that hewas dead the present squire and justice always came dutifully to seethe great man upon the occasions when he was at the castle. “They tellme that he hath turned Puritan—or rather that his younger brother hathturned Puritan and draggeth William with him. A pack of crop-earedwretches! I should have thought better of John Carthew’s son. I wish tosee him just to tell him so.”

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

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

  It opened, but only in the person of the old nobleman. Sir Richardsat a little to one side in the great hall where the armour hung andlistened as to three actors in the same play. The physician standingby the fire faintly shrugged his shoulders. The nobleman ridiculed andvituperated, the younger Puritan—for the elder was no match for hislordship—came back with verse and Scripture. Finally the first wasreduced to “Insolent!” and a fine, foaming rage. Squire Carthew pluckedhis 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 nowto answer well and know it, to feel that he had been God Almighty’sable champion. In subtle ways it tended to balance matters. It easedthe sore and fearful feeling within, the anguished sensation that hewas slipping, slipping, that the hand of Grace was trembling beneathhim....

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

  “As you please, gentlemen!—I am glad to know that the sickness has nottouched your neighbourhood.”

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

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

  “Nay,” said the younger Carthew with sternness, “the plague falls whereGod 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 thisdoor!’—and where is the resistance of man that you prate of? As wellmight the worm resist the master of the vineyard’s treading foot!”

  Sir Richard looked at him curiously. “Of course! of course! Poorworm!” 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. “Hawthornhath played the Samaritan in one person—though, I believe, indeed,that he lives beyond the village. You’ve given a good leech. I saw himyesterday 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 ofthe 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 thetwo country gentlemen, so he addressed himself exclusively to SirRichard. As to what followed, it must be said that he spoke alikewithout malice and without forethought. Indifferentist himself, dulledby personal vanity and complacence of position, and with a knowledgeat least of the tolerant-mindedness of the person to whom he spoke,he possibly took not into consciousness at all the very differentnature of the two who might be listening, nor realized that the manof whom he spoke dwelled in their bailiwick and not in the town. Atany rate, he spoke on with vivacity. “A man of abilities who shouldhave risen—studied in Paris—was for a time in the Duke of —--’shousehold. Then what must he do but grow atheist and begin to writeand teach! ‘The God of Isaac and Jacob, Isaac and Jacob’s idea ofGod. God the vast abstraction, like and differing with all times andpeoples. The Bible not writ by the finger of God, but a book of Easternwisdom with much that is gold, and much that is not.—No Fall of Manas therein told.—Salvation out of the depths of yourself and not bygift of another.—No soul can be bathed clean by another’s blood.’—Hisbook,” said the physician, “was burned in an open place in Paris bythe common hangman, and he himself lay a long while in prison and washardly dealt with, nay, just escaped with life—which he might nothave done but for the Duke of —--, who got him forth from Francewith a letter to Sir Robert Cecil, and—seeing that I had brought hisGrace up from an illness which he had when he was in England—one fromhis secretary to me. But naturally neither Sir Robert nor I could doaught—”

  Sir Richard, his brow clouded, stopped him with a gesture. “You caughtmy 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’sface, at once stolid and peremptory, was only single-minded amazementand wrath. What was this that Justice Carthew and all Hawthorn had beenharbouring? A Jesuit spy would have been bad enough—but atheist!—Butthe younger was more complex, and in him a number of impulses wereworking. 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!—Iwill promise you, doctor—I will promise you, Sir Richard—”

  “Nay,” said Sir Richard, no longer with suavity, “what I would have youpromise, 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 wherepeople went dully to and fro with Fear in company. There rose thepungent smell of burning wood, a church bell made a slow and measuredclangour. They passed between tall, gloomy, jutting houses, passedthe prison with the stocks and pillory, and the great church with thesculptured portal, wound down to the river, and crossed the archedbridge. 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 theRose Tavern when he so suddenly appeared beside old Hardwick.... MasterAnthony Mull, of Sack Hall, who was travelling with us, appeared torecognize him and flew out against him.... Wait a moment!—his verywords will come back. He said—’Black sorcerer and devil’s friend!’”

  That afternoon a serving-man brought to a house at the foot of thecastle hill a letter to be pass
ed on by a safe hand to the physicianfrom Hawthorn. It came into Aderhold’s hand as dusk was falling. Hebroke the seal and read by the light of one of the street fires. Theletter—no lengthy one—came from his friend of the hawk and the silverbox. It told him what the London physician had betrayed, though withoutmalice, and to whom. It argued that it might be well to quit as quicklyas possible this part of the country, or even to go forth for a timefrom England. It offered a purse and a horse; also, if it were wishedfor, a letter of commendation to the captain of a ship then lying atanchor at the nearest port, which captain, his own vessel being forlonger voyages, would get him passage in some other ship touchingat a Dutch port—“Amsterdam being to-day as safe as any place for athinker—where no place is safe.” The letter ended with “The youngerCarthew will move, no fear! Then, my friend, move first.”—An answerwas to be left at the house at the foot of the hill.

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

  He rose and stood with a solemn and wide gesture of his hands. Hewaited a moment longer by the fire, then turned and went from thisstreet into the next, where there lived behind his shop an oldstationer and seller of books with whom he had made acquaintance. Herehe begged pen and ink and paper, and when he had them, wrote, at nogreat length, an answer to the letter in his doublet. The next morninghe left it at the house indicated, whence in due time it was taken bythe serving-man and carried to Sir Richard at the castle. The letterspoke of strong gratitude, “but it befits not my calling to leave thetown now.”

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