The quiet of the lazy years flowed over Danby like a placid river. In the harbor the tall ships shook out their wings and sped to the far corners of the earth and presently came back again with holds filled with strange merchandise. Or perhaps they did not come back, and the women put on mourning clothes and there were new stones in the churchyard, with empty graves beneath them. King Philip’s War was fought and won and the settlers needed to fear Indian raids no longer. But in the main life just went on and on. Its groove was deepened, but the course and pattern never changed.
Hosea Newton went away to Harvard College where he was to be trained for the ministry, Micah worked at the rope-walk, harboring black resentment in his heart, but not daring to give tongue to it; Kundre toiled in Goody Stiles’ workroom from sunrise to sunset. She proved a clever needle-woman and her work was eagerly bought up, but she had no credit for it. Goodwife Stiles displayed the dresses proudly, and accepted compliments with modest grace, but she never told whose agile fingers fashioned them. In this she showed sound business sense, for many of her customers would have hesitated to wear garments made by a witch-child. And then——
One evening in late summer Kundre lay in Goodman Stiles’ oat field. She had worked hard all day, her eyes and muscles ached, and she was so tired that she could have cried with it, but now she had a little respite. The earth felt warm and comforting to her cramped muscles, she seemed to draw vitality from it while a little breeze played through the bearded grain, making it rustle softly, like a bride’s dress.
A bride’s dress! Kundre thought. Other maids went to the meeting house or stood up in their own homes in stiff, rustling taffety while the parson joined them to the men of their choice. Was she forever doomed to tread the earth in loneliness, to find no lover, no friend, even, in the whole world? It seemed a hard fate for a maid as well-favored as she.
Kundre knew that she had beauty. Unlike her mother, she was little; little and slender with gray eyes and a soft-lipped, rather sad smile. Her hair, despite the severe braids in which she wore it, was positively thrilling in its beauty. Paler than her mother’s, it had the sweet amber-gold of melted honey in dark lights and the vivid sheen of burnished silver when the sunshine fell on it. There was a sort of aristocratic fragility hinted at by her arched, slender neck and delicately-cut profile, her hands were so slight that she wore child’s mittens in cold weather, and the cast-off shoon of neighbors’ half-grown daughters were too large for her, even when she wore the thickest woolen stockings.
But now she had kicked off the rough brogans and stripped the heavy cotton stockings off and drew her naked, gleaming feet up under her as she half sat, half lay upon the warm and friendly earth. She rested her elbow upon a bent knee, outlining her chin with her fingers as she looked toward the blue, distant hills. How would it seem, she wondered, to have someone look at her in friendship, speak a kindly word to her, perhaps—her pulses quickened at the daring thought—tell her she was beautiful?
A footstep sounded at the margin of the field and she crouched like a little partridge when it hears the hunter coming. If she were very still perhaps whoever came would pass her by unseeing. She had no wish to be seen. Since early childhood she had never known a friendly look or word, except——
The footsteps came still nearer, swishing through the nodding grain, and now she heard a man’s voice humming softly:
Wish and fulfilment can severed be ne’er,
Nor the thing prayed for come short of the prayer——
‘I crave thy pardon, mistress!’ Unaware of Kundre crouching in her covert he had almost trodden on her. A flush suffused his face as he stepped backward hurriedly and almost lost his balance in the process.
‘I had no business trespassing on Neighbor Stiles’ land—why, Kundre, lass, is’t truly thou? How lovely thou art grown!’ he broke off in surprised delight and to her utter, blank amazement, dropped down to the ground beside her. ‘It must be full three years since I have seen thee,’ he added.
Kundre looked at him in wonder. At first it had been but a man she saw, and men, almost as much as women, were her natural enemies, for she had led an odd and hunted life, and like an animal knew the world of men and women only through the blows it dealt her. But as she looked into the smiling friendly face she felt the blood flow into her cheeks and bring sudden warmth to her brow, for it was Hosea Newton sitting by her in the oat field, Hosea Newton’s voice, all rich with friendly laughter, asked how she did, and—her heart beat so that she could hardly breathe—Hosea Newton had just said that she was lovely.
The years had been kind to him. Strongly made, wide-shouldered, he was still not burly, only big; and his face was undeniably handsome. He had a short upper lip and a square jaw with a dimple in it, blue eyes set wide apart beneath dark, curving brows, and lightly curling hair that fitted his well-formed head like a cap.
‘Art glad to see me?’ he asked frankly, and Kundre sat in thoughtful silence for a while before she answered softly:
‘I am not sure, Hosea. In all the world thou art the only person who has spoken kindly to me since my mother—died—but once, I recollect, thou suffered for thy kindness to me. Now——’
‘Now,’ he mimicked laughing, ‘I’ll dare the parson or the elders to admonish me. I am my own man, Kundre, and think what thoughts I choose, say what I will, and go with whom I please.
‘Aye,’ he added as she answered nothing, ‘I’ve thought a deal about things, Kundre, and what I think might not make pleasant hearing for the parson and the elders, or my mother, either. I’ve seen the Quakers whipped and hanged and branded for their faith’s sake, seen helpless, innocent old women go tottering to the gallows tree for witchcraft they never worked, and could not work, and seen the men who call themselves God’s ministers work lustily in Satan’s vineyard.’
‘Thou thinkest, then—’ she asked him with a quaver in her voice ‘—it may be possible my mother was no witch——’
‘No more a witch than any other,’ he replied. ‘Though I speak of the flesh that bore me, I say that those who swore her life away are tainted with the blood of innocence—why, Kundre, lass, what aileth thee?’
The girl had flung her arms about him and was sobbing out her heart against his shoulder. For almost twenty years she’d led a pariah’s life, hounded, scorned, and persecuted, and the memory of her mother had been rubbed into her breaking heart like salt in a raw wound. Now here at last was one who had a kind word for her mother, who dared suggest she had not merited a felon’s shameful death.
What happened then was like a chemical reaction in its spontaneity. It may have been that pity which is said to be akin to love inspired him to put his arms about her as she sobbed against his shoulder, but in the fraction of a heart-beat there was no questioning the emotion that possessed him. From him to her, and from her to him, there seemed to flow a mystic fluid—a sort of intangible soul-substance—that met and mingled like the waters of two rivers at their confluence and merged them into each other until they were not twain, but one.
It was an odd idyl, this romance of a man whose childhood had been spent in the house with a bawling woman and this woman whose whole life had been warped by hatred and suspicion. To say that they loved at first sight would not be accurate. Each had carried the image of the other in his heart since childhood, in each the thought of the other had been present constantly, not consciously, any more than they were conscious of the hearts that beat beneath their breasts, but always there, the greatest, most important, most vital thing in either of their lives. Now they were aware of it with blinding, dazzling suddenness. The glory of it almost stunned them.
Every evening when her work for Goody Stiles was done Kundre hurried to the oat field, and always he was there to greet her and come hurrying with uplifted hands to take her in his arms.
Judged by modern free-and-easy standards they were inhibited in their love-making. They hardly kissed at all, and when they did it was a chaste embrace which brother and sister
might have exchanged. But she would put her hand in his and turn it till her soft palm rested on his and her little fingers made a soft and gentle pattern of his own, then rest her head against his shoulder, till her gleaming hair was on his cheek, its perfume fresh and sweet as that of the green growing things about them.
I said theirs was an odd love. So it was. A love compounded partly of loneliness, partly of heart-hunger, partly of true, honest friendship; not without its moments of passion, but entirely without the savage, selfish hunger of passion; not lacking ecstasy, but with the ecstasy of love fulfilled, not satiated.
They did not talk much. There was small need of words, for that mysterious warm current, strong as a rising ocean tide, flowed constantly between them, fusing their two selves in one. And when they came to say good night the sweet pain of their parting was itself a compensation for the day-long separation facing them.
Then came catastrophe, as dreadful and as unexpected as a thunder-bolt hurled from a cloudless sky. Her brother Micah ran away from his master. It was either flight or murder, for despite the expert way in which he did his work old Goodman Belkton found fault with him constantly, and his fellow ’prentices, not slow to take their cue from the master, taunted him with his mother’s conviction and intimated that he used her devilish arts to make his handiwork the best the ’walk turned out.
Runaway apprentices were fair game for anyone, and Goodman Belkton offered a reward of two pounds for the stray’s return, so when four sturdy louts saw Micah on the dock at Salem Town, about to sign before the mast for a voyage to the Indies, they set on him and bound him with a length of rope and dragged him back to Danby.
But while they were still in the Danby suburbs they had been set upon by a ferocious heifer that gored one of them sorely, knocked down another, and put them all so utterly to flight that their prisoner escaped and joined his ship at Salem before she sailed with the tide. They brought their wounded comrade into Danby, where, over sundry mugs of potent rum-and-water, they had a wondrous story to relate.
The cow that set on them had been no ordinary cow, it seemed, but a demon beast whose nostrils breathed forth fiery flames, and which announced in human words, ‘I’ll soon set thee free from this scum, my brother!’
This all happened in the early evening, but not before it was too dark for them to see the demon beast go tearing off across a meadow when its fell work had been done and suddenly sit down upon the sod like a woman, straddle a long fence-rail like a witch that mounts a broom, and fly shrieking off across the sky toward Goodman Stiles’ oat field.
And where had Kundre been while this was happening? Her mistress asked her point-blank, and point-blank she refused to answer. And there the matter might have rested, perhaps, if Jonathan Sawyer, a laborer on Goodman Williams’ plantation, had not volunteered the information that at nine o’clock the night before he’d seen her hurrying from Stiles’ oat field and heard her singing something not to be found in the hymn book.
It seemed hardly necessary for the constable to call a posse comitatus of trained bandsmen to arrest her, or to summon Parson Middleton to lend them spiritual assistance. But so he did, and with martial clank of sword and pike and musket, and the Parson with his Book beneath his arm, they went to Goodwife Stiles’ house and formally took Kundre into custody, bound her wrists together with the constable’s spare bridle, put a horse’s leading-strap about her neck, and marched her through the streets to Danby jail, where they lodged her with a double guard before the door.
Hosea Newton roused from a deep, dream-tormented sleep, completely conscious, every faculty alert. His room was buried in a darkness blinding as a black cloak, for the moon had set long since, and a cloud-veil obscured the stars. Some instinct, some sentinel of the spirit that stands watch while we are sleeping, told him he was not alone, but he could see or hear nothing.
All day he’d raged through Danby Town like a madman, calling on the parson and the constable and even the high magistrate to intercede for Kundre. She was no witch, he vowed, but a sweet, pure maid who held his heart in the cupped palms of her two little hands. The ruffians who had told the story of the demon heifer were a lot of drunken, craven liars, seeking to excuse their prisoner’s escape with this wild tale. He’d prove it; he would range the countryside until he’d found the cow that bested them and lead her singlehanded to the pound for all to see she was a natural beast.
The parson and the constable and magistrate were sympathetic listeners, but one and all refused to help him in his trouble. The woman was a witch, the vowed and dedicated votary of Satan—like mother, like daughter. Could any natural cow put four strong men to flight, and they all armed with stout cudgels? And, most especially, could a natural beast bestride a fence-rail and sail through the sky on it? ‘Poor boy, thou are bewitched by this vile whelp from Satan’s kennels,’ they told him.
‘But fear not, poor, befuddled lad, tomorrow we shall prove that thy infatuation is the devil’s work, for on the town common at sunrise we shall prick the witchling with long pins until we find the devil’s mark, and thou shalt see she is in very truth a servant of the Prince of Darkness.’
He’d tried to see her in the jail, but the trained bandsmen turned him back. No one must see the witch until she had passed through the ordeal, even the turnkey was forbidden to go near her or to look into her cell. How should she eat and wherewith should she quench her thirst? Let Beelzebub her master see to that. They were Christian men and had no traffic with the servants of Satan.
Finally, worn out in body and in spirit, he had come home, refused his supper—could he take food while Kundre starved?—and thrown himself upon his bed, full-dressed, to fall into a sleep of utter exhaustion.
Desperate men make desperate plans, and Hosea was desperate. It did not matter to him whether she were good or bad or innocent or guilty. He loved her and would not desert her. If the court found her guilty—and accusation was equivalent to conviction—he would denounce himself as a wizard, and hang with her upon the gallows tree. She would not go to that dark land beyond the grave alone.
What was it? Something stirred in the soft darkness of the room; a shadow moving in the shadows, a rat that came to forage in the dark?
He knew that it was none of these, for in the gloom that blotted out the outlines of the furniture he saw a gleam of light, or rather lightness, like a cloud of faintly luminous vapor swirling from an unseen boiling kettle.
Slowly it spread, wafting upward, and now he saw the outlines of a figure in it, and the blood churned in his ears, his throat grew tight, and at the pit of his stomach he seemed to feel a burning and a freezing, all at once.
‘Who—what art thou?’ he croaked, hoarsely, and the sound of his own frightened voice was terrifying in the haunted darkness.
No answer came to his challenge, but the figure looming faintly in the mist-cloud seemed taking on a kind of substance. Now he could see it quite clearly, and the terror which engulfed him seemed to be any icy flood that paralyzed his heart and brain and muscles.
Yet notwithstanding his terror he felt a kind of admiration for the phantom. It was a woman, tall as a tall man, yet with a calm and regal beauty wholly feminine. Across the low white brow a spate of gold-hued hair fell flowing to her knees, and from the perfect contour of her face great eyes of zenith-blue looked at him under brows of startling blackness. She was dressed in widow’s weeds; a chain and pendant of some dull, lack-luster metal hung about her throat.
He knew her! He had been a little lad scarce eight years old when Goodman Stiles had raised him to his shoulder that he might see the hangman Peter Grimes work the court’s sentence on Kundre Maltby, the witch-woman. With a sudden pang of recollection he recalled how he had thought it a great pity that so much beauty should be vowed to Satan and hanged upon the gallows tree and entombed in the earth.
‘What—’ by supreme effort he forced speech between palsied lips ‘—what wouldst thou with me, Kundre Maltby?’
‘Wilt take m
y help, Hosea Newton?’ asked the specter, and her voice was cold and desolate as December storm-wind blowing over pine-capped hills.
Hosea hesitated in his answer, and well he might. The wraith, if wraith it were, was that of a condemned witch-woman, hanged for sorcery, and, presumably, made fast in hell. He might have been in advance of his time, but he was part and parcel of his generation, and since Deuteronomy was penned men had regarded witches as disciples of the Evil One. To traffic with them was forbidden under pain of death and loss of soul. This was a witch’s ghost, as dreadful as the witch herself, perhaps more dreadful, since she had burned in hell for twenty years, and he must make the choice of taking aid from her or bidding her begone. There was no middle course; he must hold true to all the teachings that had been instilled in him since infancy and bid her avaunt, or make compromise with Evil incarnate and put his soul in dreadful jeopardy—to what end? Did not the writings of the Fathers teach that Satan is the arch-deceiver? Would he keep the compact offered by this messenger from hell?
Then came the thought of Kundre, little Kundre, starved and thirsting, languishing in prison till the morrow, when they’d strip her to her shift in sight of all the town and pierce her tender flesh with long, cruel pins—a thousand thousand years of burning hell would be a bargain-price to pay for her deliverance.
‘Say on, O spirit of my Kundre’s mother,’ he commanded. ‘I’ll take the help thou offerest me, and pay the price thou asketh.’
The phantom raised one white, almost transparent hand and loosed the medal from its neck. ‘Take this,’ it bade, and it seemed that its ghostly voice was stronger, warmer. ‘Hie with it to the jail house and cut away the bars that pen her in. Then fly across the border southward—my time is sped, I must e’en go!’
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