The Witch

by Mary Johnston

  CHAPTER XIII

  HAWTHORN CHURCH

  TOWN and village and all the country roundabout were growing clean ofthe plague. Day by day the evil lessened, the sickness stole away. Itleft its graves, and among those whose loss was personal its mood ofgrief. At large there was still a kind of sullen fear, a tension of thenerves, a readiness to attend to any cry of “Wolf!” The wolf might comeno more in the guise of the plague, but there were other damages andterrors. All Hawthorn region was in a mood to discover them.

  It came Sunday. The danger, at least, of congregating together seemedto have rolled away. Comfort remained, comfort of the crowd, of feelingpeople warm about you, gloomy comfort of “Eh, sirs!” and shakings ofthe head. Hawthorn, village and neighbourhood, flocked to church.Going, the people drew into clusters. The North-End Farm folk had alarge cluster, and there the shaking of the head was over the possessedboy. But the widow whose cow was dead and the waggoner whose horseswere lamed had their groups, too, and the largest group of all camecompactly from the lower end of the village, past the green and thepond and the stocks and the Sabbath-closed ale-house, with the tinkerfrom Scotland talking in the midst of it.

  Dark stone, gaunt and ancient, rather small than large, Hawthorn Churchrose among yew trees. Within was barer than without. What of antiquecarving could be broken away was broken away, what could be whitewashedwas whitewashed, what of austerity could be injected was injected. TheAct of Uniformity loomed over England like a writing in the sky; theremust be and was use of the book of Common Prayer. But parishes mindedlike Hawthorn used it with all possible reserves. Where matters couldbe pared they were pared to the quick; all exfoliation was done awaywith. As far as was possible in an England where Presbyterianism yetsat in the shadow of the Star Chamber and the Independents had notarisen, idolatrousness was excluded. Only the sermon was not pared.Sunday by Sunday minister and people indemnified themselves with thesermon.—You could not speak against the King; except in metaphor youcould not speak against the Apostolic Succession; there were a numberof things you could not speak against unless you wished to face gaolor pillory or worse. Because of this the things that you could speakagainst were handled with an added violence. The common outer foereceived the cudgellings you could not bestow within the house. TheDevil was mightily dealt with in pulpits such as this of Hawthorn,the Devil and his ministers. The Devil was invisible; even the mostmaterializing mind did not often get a glimpse of him, though such athing was possible and had of course happened: witness Martin Lutherand others. But his ministers—his ministers! They were many andpalpable....

  Hawthorn Church was filled. They sat very still, men and women andchildren. They were peasants and yeomen, small tradespeople, a very fewof the clerkly caste, one or two families of gentry. The only greatenclosed pew was that belonging by prescription to Carthew House. Thesquire, the squire’s wife, his young son, and the squire’s brother satthere, where the force of the sermon could reach them first. Quiteat the back of the church sat Gilbert Aderhold, a quiet, dark figurebeside an old, smocked farmer. Joan sat where she had been wont to sitwith her father, halfway down the church, just in front of Alison Inchand her mother. It was a dark day, the air hot, heavy, and oppressive,drawing to a storm.

  Master Thomas Clement came into the pulpit wearing a black gown. Heopened his Geneva Bible and laid it straight before him. He turnedthe hourglass, then lifting his hands to the lowering sky he smotethem together, and in a loud, solemn and echoing voice read from thebook before him, “_If there arise among you a prophet or a dreamer ofdreams, and giveth thee a sign or a wonder. And the sign or the wondercome to pass whereof he spake to thee, saying, Let us go after othergods, that thou hast not known, and let us serve them.... That prophetor that dreamer of dreams shall be put to death; because he hath spokento turn you away from the Lord your God.... And all Israel shall hearand fear and shall do no more any such wickedness as this is amongyou...._”

  “_... There shall not be found among you any one that ... usethdivination, or an observer of times, or an enchanter, or a witch, or aconsulter with familiar spirits, or a wizard, or a necromancer._”

  He ceased to read, and with another gesture of his long, thin hands,began to preach. He had a peculiar power and calibre had Master ThomasClement. He stood in his black gown, a small man with a pale face; thenhis dire vision came upon him and it was as though his form gainedheight and dilated. He burned like a flame, a wind-tossed flame,burning _blue_. When he spoke his words came with a rushing weight.His figure bent toward the people, his lean hands quivered above hishead, gesturing against the dark concave of the roof. The roof mighthave been an open, stormy sky, the pulpit a rock upon some plain ofassemblage, the preacher a gaunt, half-clad Israelite shrilling outto the Hebrew multitude the rede of their lawgivers. _Thou shalt notsuffer doubt to live! Thou shalt endure no speech of more or otherpaths than this one. He that differeth, he shall die!_

  But it was not Sinai and some thousands of years ago and an Asiatictribe struggling back from Egypt to some freehold of its own, orAsiatic lawgivers building a careful theocracy. It was Europe,—it wasEngland and the seventeenth century,—and still men like this stood infiery sincerity and became mouthpieces for that people and its historyand its laws. The order to Judah and Simeon and Levi rolled throughthe ages like never-cooling lava, withering and whelming vineyards ofthought. _Thou shalt not suffer doubt to live. He that differeth, heshall die!_—And a thousand thousand pale shapes might rise to theinner eye and speak to the inner ear. “_We died._”

  Aderhold sat still, far back in Hawthorn Church. In his own mind hesaw that he was on the edge of the abyss. He doubted much if he wouldescape.... The old farmer sitting, blue-smocked, beside him, hiswatery eyes fixed upon the minister, broke now and again into a mutterof repetition and comment. “Aye, aye! The misbeliever to perish foridolatry.... Of course he blasphemes—the misbeliever blasphemes....Aye, aye! ‘Why,’ and ‘Wherefore,’ the Devil’s own syllables.... Aye,aye! Unbelief and sorcery go together.... Aye, now we’re at fire inthis world and everlasting, lasting fire to come!”

  The preacher had before him a people who had come through a narrowstrait and a valley of the shadow, gathered together in a mood ofstrained nerves, of twitches and starts aside, of a readiness totake panic. The day was dark with heat and oppression, a sense ofhush before tempest. It was a day on which it was easy to awakenemotion. The faces of the people showed pale in the dusk, breathingbecame laboured. At last it grew that men and women looked aside withsomething like a shudder and a sigh in the dimness. It was as thoughthey looked to see a serpent’s head, fanged and crowned, lifting itselfin the gloom from monstrous coils. Aderhold saw the slow turning ofeyes in his direction.

  He thought swiftly. He had served many in this congregation. Since,in the winter-time, his eyes had been opened, he knew of the driftingtalk of his hoarding gold, of his practising alchemy there in the darkOak Grange, alchemy, and perhaps worse. Even after his return from theplague-stricken town, even in his going through Hawthorn countrysidefrom house to house where there were sick, helping, serving, even thenhe had seen doubtful looks, had known his aid taken hurriedly, as itwere secretly and grudgingly. But all had not done so. There had beenthose too simple and too suffering and sorrowful for that, and therehad been those whose minds seemed not to have taken the dye. Therewere some in this church of whom, in the years he had dwelt in thiscountry, he had grown fond; folk that of their own bent felt for himliking and kindness.... But he did not deceive himself. He knew of nonethat would stand before this parching and withering wind. Heretoforethe talk might have been idle talk, but now it was evident that MasterClement had at his shaken finger-ends the history in France of GilbertAderhold. Friends! By what multitude of written words, of hearsay andlegend—by what considerable amount of personal observation did heknow how friends fell away from the denounced dreamer of dreams!...Poor friends! He felt no rise of bitterness against them. They wouldnot have fallen away in physical battle; they would hav
e stood many astrain, perhaps all but this. This was not to cow the blood; it was tocow mind and the immortal spirit. To face for a friend a wolf, a lion,or an earthly angered King, that was well!—but to face for a friend anangered God, to save him not from hell-fire and to be yourself whelmed,remediless, for eternity! Few there were who could inwardly frame thequestion, “Is He angered?” or “What is He that can be so angered?” or“You who would silence this man with the silence of death, are youbeyond doubt the spokesmen of God and Eternity? Are you, after all,_God’s_ Executioners?” But they said that they were, and the human mindwas clay to believe.... Aderhold looked over the church and thought hesaw none who would not be terrified aside.

  Well! he asked those questions and other questions. Mind and moralnature rose in him and stood. But he knew that his body would betrayhim if it could. Highly strung, very sensitive to pain, he possessedan imagination and memory vivid to paint or to bring back all mannerof pangs and shrinkings of the earthly frame. No detail of any Calvarybut in some wise he knew and feared it. He felt the cold sweat dew histemples and break out upon the backs of his hands. He felt the nauseathat numbed and withered the brain and brought the longing for death....

  Not in the beginning, the middle, or the ending of his white-heateddiscourse did the minister call the name of Gilbert Aderhold or saythe Oak Grange. The invective, the “Lo, this is he that troublethIsrael!” only drew in circles, closer, closer, until there was no onethere who did not know who was meant. The tremendous accusation wasof Atheism, but in and out there tolled like a lesser bell, _Sorcery!Sorcery!_ The withdrawing light, the hot, small, vagrant breaths ofair, announcers of the onward rolling storm, the darkened hollow ofthe building with the whitewashed walls glimmering pale, the faceslifted from the benches, the square Hall pew, the high pulpit and theblack sounding-board and the black figure with the lifted arms and thedeath-like shaken hands, and in the back of the church, all knew, evenif they could not see him, the man who had made pact with the Devil....A woman fainted; a child began a frightened, whimpering crying. Thesands had quite run out from the upper half of the hourglass....

  Aderhold, close to the door, was the first of the congregation tostep from the church into the open air. It would seem that those nearhim held back, so as to let the fearful thing forth and out. Thechurchyard path stretched bare before him, between the yews to themossed gate, and so forth from the immediate pale. There came as yet nochallenge or molestation. He had looked for this; when all had risenand he with them, it had been with an inward bracing to meet at thedoor a writ of arrest. He looked to see the Hawthorn constable. But hewas not at the door, or out upon the path, or at the gate.... The stormwas at hand, with clouds heavy and dark as the yew trees and with amutter of thunder. As he reached the village street, raindrops touchedhis face. Behind him the churchyard was astir with people, murmuringand dark. He wrapped his cloak about him, pulled his hat down againstthe rain, and faced homeward. Almost immediately, the church being atthe village end, the cloud-shadowed country was about him.

  He walked rapidly for half a mile, then halted and stood in the windand rain, trying to think it out. It occurred to him that he might turnback through the fields and passing the village come out on the highwayand strike southward to the town and the castle. He knew not if hisfriend of the hawk were yet at the castle. And if he were not?—and ifhe were?...

  There was that at the Oak Grange which must be considered. Hisbook—there in the quiet room behind the cupboard’s oaken door, all hiswriting lying there—that which he was trying to put down. It turnedhim decisively from the town and the bare chance of reaching help.His book was his lover and playmate and child. He put himself intomotion again and went on toward the Grange, beneath the tempestuoussky, through the wind and the rain.... When he came within HawthornForest there arrived a sudden lull. The oaks stood still aroundhim, the raindrops fringing branch and twig and unfolding tufts ofvelvet leaves. Overhead the clouds drove apart, there came a gleam ofintensest blue. As he moved through the forest it took on an ineffablebeauty. When he came to the edge and to the stream murmuring over itspebbly strand there was a great rainbow. He crossed the footbridge andwent on by the fairy oak.

  Within the still old house was none but himself. Dorothy and the boy,her nephew, had been there in Hawthorn Church. They would come on butslowly; indeed, they might have stopped at a cousin’s on the way;indeed, he knew not if, terrified and at a loss, they would come backto the Grange at all. They might, perhaps, have waited to beseech theminister’s and the squire’s protection and advice. There was a firein the kitchen. Aderhold, spreading his cloak to dry, knelt upon thehearth, crouched together, bathed by the good warmth. But even whilethe light and comfort played about him there came into his mind,suddenly, with sickening strength, a thing that he had witnessed in hischildhood, here in England. Again he saw a woman burning at a stake....He shuddered violently, rose and left the room.

  Upstairs he unlocked the cupboard and took from it a heap of closelycovered manuscript. It rested upon the table before him.... He stoodfor some moments with a bowed head; presently his hand stole to theleaves and caressed them. He knew what he should do; he should takethe whole down to the kitchen and lay it in the fire. Since thewarning of the man with the hawk he had known that that was whatshould be done. The knowledge had lain upon his heart at night. “Iwill do it to-morrow,” and again, “I will do it to-morrow.” The onlyother thing was to hide it in some deep and careful place, whence, ifever there came escape and security, he might recover it, or where,long years after he was dead, men might find it and read it. He hadthought of digging beneath the fairy oak—but the fire, he knew, wasthe safest.... He gathered all together and with it in his hands wentdownstairs. He thought that he had decided upon the fire, but going, hehad a vision of a mattock and spade resting behind an outhouse door.Now would be the time to dig, now at once! As his foot touched the oakflooring of the hall there sounded a heavy knock upon the door. It wasnot locked or barred; even as he stood the one uncertain instant, itswung inward to admit the men who had followed him from Hawthorn.