The Witch

by Mary Johnston

  CHAPTER III

  THE TWO PHYSICIANS

  HE went that morning to visit the alderman, inopportune as he knew thevisit would be esteemed. But many things were inopportune—hunger, forinstance. The alderman found the visit offensively, unpatrioticallyinopportune. “What! The King’s Majesty’s ascension day—!” But onething saved Aderhold, and that was the presence in the alderman’sparlour of some seven or eight cronies, men and women. It would notdo—it would not do for the alderman to seem haggling and unwilling.Aderhold quitted the house the richer by twelve shillings.

  The narrow streets were crowded; everybody was out, excited andimportant as though he or she had died or been crowned. The physicianstrolled with the others. The morning was fine, he felt wealthy andhappy. The sunshine that stroked the projecting, timbered fronts ofhouses was the sunshine of home, the soft and moist light of England.He loved England. He wandered for an hour or two here and there inthe London of less than two hundred thousand souls. He went down tothe riverside, and sat upon a stone step, and gazed into the purple,brooding distance.... At last he turned back, and after a time foundhimself in the street of his lodging, and before the house.

  It was a narrow, poor, and gloomy place, owned by people whom heguessed to have fallen on evil days. The plainly dressed elderly womanfrom whom he had hired his room had told him, indeed, as much. “Aye?”said Aderhold. “Then, mother, I’ll feel the more at home.” He hadlodged here now ten days and he had seen only the elderly woman and herson, a boy far gone in consumption who coughed and coughed. The womanwas a silent, rigid person, withered but erect, wearing a cap and overher gown of dark stuff a coarse white kerchief and apron. This morning,when she brought him his half loaf and tankard of ale, he had spokenwith casualness of the Cap and Bells. She looked at him strangely. “TheCap and Bells!... Doubtless you heard good talk there.” Then had comethe crying about the Queen’s death. When he turned from the window thewoman was gone.

  Now he entered the house. As he laid his hand upon the stair-rail thewoman stood framed in a doorway. “Tarry a little,” she said. “I wish totell you that this house will lodge you no longer.”

  Aderhold stood still, then turned. “And why, good mother? I like myroom and the house. I have striven to be in no way troublesome.” He puthis hand in his purse and drew it forth with the alderman’s shillingsupon the palm. “You see I have money. You’ll not lose by me.”

  A voice came from the room behind the woman. “Let him enter, mother. Wewould see this fellow who will make no trouble for us.”

  Aderhold noted a pale triumph in the woman’s strong, lined face andin her tense, updrawn figure. “Aye, it happened to give thanks for!”she told him. “Two things happened this morning. A King came to thethrone who, for all his mother’s scarlet and raging sins, has himselfbeen bred by godly men to godly ways! And my two sons came home fromoverseas!”

  She turned and passed through the doorway into the room from whichshe had come. Aderhold, after a moment of hesitation, followed. Itwas a large, dark place, very cold and bare. Here, too, was a table,drawn toward the middle of the room, with a cloth upon it and breadand a piece of meat. Beside it, chair and stool pushed back, stoodtwo men—the returned sons Aderhold was at once aware. He had seenbefore men like these men—English sectaries abroad, men who stoodwith the Huguenots in France, and in the Low Countries fought Spainand the Devil with the soldiers of Orange. Estranged or banished fromhome, lonely and insular, fighting upon what they esteemed the Lord’sside, in the place where they esteemed the fight to be hottest, theyexhibited small, small love and comradeship for those in whose causethey fought. Only, truly, in conventicles, could they seem to warm topeople of another tongue and history. Ultra-zealous, more Calvin thanCalvin, trained to harshness in a frightful war, iron, fanatic, backnow they came to England, the most admirable soldiers and the mostuncharitable men!

  The two stood in their plain doublets, their great boots, their smallfalling collars. They were tall and hard of aspect, the one bearded,the other with a pale, clean-shaven, narrow, enthusiast’s face. Thehome-keeping son also had risen from table. He stood beside his mother,coughing and pressing a cloth to his lips.

  The bearded man spoke. “Good-morrow, friend!”

  “Good-morrow, friend,” answered Aderhold.

  “You spoke that,” said the bearded man, “as though you were indeed afriend, whereas we know you to be but a Cap and Bells friend.”

  “I do not take your meaning,” said Aderhold. “I would be friends—noman knows how I would be friends with men.”

  The shaven man spoke. “Thou hypocritical prelate’s man! Why did you letslip to my mother that the Cap and Bells was your place of revellingand roistering and blackening God to his face? As if, before we wentto the wars, the Cap and Bells was not known for what it was—yea, andis! for my mother saith the leopard hath not changed his spots nor theEthiop his skin—a bishop-loving, stained-glass praising, Prayer-Bookupholding, sacrament kneeling, bowing, chanting, genuflecting, verypillar and nest of prelacy! drinking-place of all they who, if theyhad their wicked will, would give into the hand of ruin—yea, wouldpillory and stock, yea, would put to the rack if they might, yea,would give to the flame if they were strong enough!—the Lord’s chosenpeople, sole fence between this land and the fate of the cities of theplain!”

  “There have been before now,” said the bearded man, “spies sent amongthe Lord’s people, and always such have been received and comforted inthat same house—to wit, the Cap and Bells!”

  The consumptive took the red cloth from his lips. “Mother, mother, didI not say, when the man came, that he had a strange look?”

  “Aye, Andrew,” said the mother, “he went like a man with a guiltyload and watched his shadow.—But I had you to think on, and the needfor bread, and he paid me, which, God knoweth! they do not always do.And it came not into my head, until, before he thought, he had saidthe ‘Cap and Bells,’ that he might be here to spy and wring news ofus—cozening us to tell reportable tales of the Lord’s Saints!” Shestopped, then spoke on with a high, restrained passion and triumph.“But now—but now I think that that is what he is! But now I am notafraid—and now he may get his deserts—seeing that the new King issurely for us, and that my sons have come home!”

  “The new King!” exclaimed the shaven man. “The new King is an oldStuart! Lean upon that reed and it will pierce your hand! I tell thatto my brother and to you, mother, and you will not believe—”

  “Time will show,” said the bearded man impatiently. “Time will showwhich of us is right. But to-day my mother can turn out this bishop’sman, neck and crop! Yea, and if he murmurs—”

  He made a step forward, a big-boned, powerful man, grim of countenance.His hand shot out toward the physician.

  Aderhold gave back a step, then recovered himself. “You are mistaken,”he said. “I am no spy and I am no bishop’s man. Like you, I have beenfrom England. I return poor and seeking physician’s work. Desiringlodging, I asked at this house as I had asked at others, and ashonestly as a man may. For the Cap and Bells, I knew naught of it norof its frequenters. I crossed its threshold but once, and so ill didthe place suit me that I am not like to go again. I tell you the plaintruth.”

  The woman and her sons regarded him fixedly. “What think you,” askedthe shaven man at last, abruptly and sternly, “of the law that makethit an offense for a man to worship his Creator after the dictates ofhis own heart—yea, that would compel him to conform to practices whichhis soul abhorreth?”

  “I think,” said Aderhold, “that it is an evil law.”

  “You say truth,” answered the shaven man. “Now tell me plainly. Believeyou in copes and stoles and altars and credence tables, in kneelingat communion, in Prayer-Book and surplice and bowing when the name ismentioned, in bishops and archbishops and pride of place before God?”

  Aderhold looked at him dreamily. The fear of physical injury, whichwas the weakness that most beset him, was gone by. He had at timesa
strange sense of expansion, accompanied by a differentiation anddeepening of light. The experience—he knew it to be inward, andnever steadfast, very fleeting—returned to him now. The room lookedworld-wide, the four interlocutors tribes and peoples. “My mind doesnot dwell overmuch,” he said, “upon matters such as these. They arelittle matters. The wrong is that a man should be made to say theyare necessary and great matters, and, to avoid falseness, be made tofight dwarfs as though they were giants.—I need no priest in cope orsurplice or especial dress when all that I am lifts in contemplationand resolve. I need not kneel when All communes with All. No slave ismy soul. Would I pray, I can pray without book, and would I not, nobook held before my face hath power to pray for me. If I bowed my headat each thought of the mystery that surrounds us, I would not withovermuch frequency walk erect, for I think much and constantly of thatmystery. If I bow my head without thought—an idiot may do the same. Asfor prelates and they who are called ‘spiritual princes’—I have seennot one who is not a man-chosen master of a man-built house.”

  The woman spoke uncertainly. “If we have been mistaken in you, sir,—”

  “What you say has truth,” said the bearded man. “But it also has astrangeness and rings not like our truth.... If you are a Brownist,this house will have naught to do with you!”

  “I am not a Brownist,” said Aderhold wearily. The sense of spacewidening off and intenser light was gone. Never yet had it stayed butthe fewest of moments, and, going, it threw life back upon itself....

  But the second son, who had been standing with an abstracted anddistant look, started and spoke. “Let him alone, mother and my brother!Whatever he be, he hath no ill-will nor guile—” He turned to thetable. “Are you hungry?” he asked. “Sit down and eat with us.”

  Aderhold dwelt in this house some days longer. He did not again seethe two sons; they had taken horse and ridden to visit some returnedcomrade or officer in the country. The woman he saw, and sometimestalked with, but she had ceased to be curious about him, and theychiefly spoke of the consumptive boy. He was near death. The physiciancould only give something that should make the nights pass moreswiftly, less painfully.

  He himself wished to see a physician, the physician to whom, as toCecil, he had been recommended by a great noble of France, but whomhe had not seen since that day in Richmond, after that hour in theQueen’s chamber. He had gone to his house to enquire—he was yet out ofLondon, he would be home on such a day. Aderhold went then, but couldnot see him; waited two days, and was again denied; went in anotherthree, and was admitted. The physician was alone, in a small room, andhis manner dry and cold.

  If Aderhold still nursed a hope it was a faint and failing one. Beforethat day in Richmond the hope had been strong. This physician was askilled man and knew skill when he saw it—the great Frenchman hadwritten with a guarded enthusiasm, but yet with enthusiasm of whatGilbert Aderhold might do—the London physician had let drop a hintthat he himself had thought at times of an assistant—if not that, hecould certainly speak a word in season in another quarter. Aderhold hadhoped—after Richmond he had hoped less strongly. Now he found thathope was failing. What had happened? What always happened?

  The physician continued standing. The room opened upon a garden, andoutside the lattice window there showed a tender mist of budding treeand shrub. “You were so good,” said Aderhold, “as to bid me come to youupon your return.”

  “I wished,” said the physician, “to give all weight and recognitionto the commendation of the Duke of —--.” A grey cat came and rubbedagainst his ankle. He stooped and lifting the creature to the tablebeside him stood stroking it. “The commendation of great noblemen isat times like their largesse. It often falls—through, of course, nofault of theirs—before the stranger and the unworthy.”

  “If I be unworthy,” said Aderhold, “yet I am not strange to thatnobleman, nor, I think, unloved by him. He has been my good patron,almost, I might dare to say, my friend.”

  “Aye?” said the physician. “It has come to Court ears, with otherFrench news, that the Duke is out of favour.... Moreover, a friend ofmy own has lately returned from Paris where he had long resided. He isa man of the world, with a great interest in life and a knowledge ofwhat is talked about, small things as well as great. He told me”—thephysician paused—“of _you_!”

  “Yes,” Aderhold said dully; “of me?”

  “He brought you in as a slight case, but typical, of what grows upin the narrow strip between religious wars and factions, betweenLeaguer and Huguenot—to wit, something that is neither Catholic norProtestant, which the Leaguer would burn and the Huguenot would flay!He told me of your case and your trial and imprisonment, and how nonewould help you, neither Papist nor Reformed, but only this one noblemanwhose child, it seems, you had healed, and even he could only help byhelping you forth from France.” The physician continued to draw hishand over the grey fur. “I quarrel with that nobleman for consideringthat an atheist might prosper here in England, and for deceivinglywriting to me only of his skill in all that pertained to his art! Imight,” said the physician, “have become involved in what discovery anddisfavour you may bring upon yourself in this realm!”

  “I am not,” said Aderhold, “an atheist. Sanction and authority andrestraint are within.”

  The other shrugged. “Oh, your fine distinctions!” He went to the windowand set it wider so that the whole green garden and white and rosybranches of bloom seemed to come into the room. “I am not,” he said,with his back to the lattice, “myself a theologian. By nature I am a‘live and let live’ man. Peter, Luther, Calvin, Mohammed, and Abrahameach may have had his own knowledge of heaven and hell! I will notquarrel with knowledge for being various. I am tolerant—I am tolerant,Master Aderhold! But I hold with emphasis that you must not inculpateothers—no, you must not let the edge of your mantle of heresy touchanother! It were base ingratitude, for instance, were you—”

  “I have been careful,” said Aderhold, “to mention your name to noone. I have led since seeing you a retired and soundless life. I am astranger in this city and none knows my life, nor feels an interest init.”

  The physician’s countenance showed relief. “I did not know of whatfolly you might not have been capable!” He stroked the cat, moved afew paces about the room and returned. “I regret that I can give youno aid. Indeed, I must tell you plainly that I owe it to my familyand my patients and my place—which is no slight one—in the esteem ofthis city, to refuse all association with a man who at any hour mayfall under suspicion and prosecution.” He paused. “I may say to youonce, and this once only, that I find your case a hard one. I certainlyadvise you not to be stiff-necked, but living in the world to conformto the world. Philosophize, if you choose, but inwardly, inwardly, man!”

  He spoke quite amiably, even genially. It was apparent that Aderholdhad taken his dismissal, that he was not going to beg or bedistressful. He considered through the open casement the height of thesun. He could give the unfortunate man a minute or two longer. “Let usspeak a moment,” he said, “of our art. London is thronged with doctors.I tell you truly that there is scant room for another, even were thecircumstances not as they are, and you were as like others as you areunlike. However still a tongue you may keep,—and I think you maybetray yourself oftener than you think,—you will eventually be foundout.” He lifted his finger impressively. “Now the temper of the timeis religious and growing ever more so. The Italian and antique spiritthat I remember is going—is almost gone. We are all theologians anddamn the whole world outside of our particular ark. People of the oldfaith, people of the established faith, people of the Presbytery—eachof the three detests and will persecute the remaining two. Right andleft suffer from the middle, which is in power, as the middle—andthe remaining other—would suffer were the right or left in power.War, secret or open, war, war! and they only unite to plague a witchor to run to earth and burn for heresy one like you who belongs notto right nor left nor middle. The tolerant, humane, philosophic h
eartdissents—but few, my friend, are tolerant and humane, too few, toofew! All this being so, I do not advise you to remain in London—no, Ishould not, were you Galen himself!”

  Aderhold stood gazing at the garden without. There were thorn hedgeseverywhere—across all paths. “I do not know,” he said, “where I shouldgo—”

  “My advice,” said his fellow physician, “would be to travel to somesmaller town that hath never received a whisper from France. Andnow”—he rose—“and now I must bid you good-bye, for an importantpersonage expects me at this hour.”