The Witch

by Mary Johnston

  CHAPTER XVI

  MASTER THOMAS CLEMENT

  TWO magistrates and certain of the clergy of the town, Justice Carthewand Master Thomas Clement from Hawthorn, sat in consultation in a roomopening from the hall of assizes. Court was not sitting—it lacked amonth and more of the time when judges on circuit would appear and makea gaol delivery. In the mean time a precognition was to be prepared.The case was diabolical and aggravated, involving as it did apostasy,idolatry, blasphemy, and sorcery of a dye most villanous. Evidenceshould not lack, witnesses must abound. On the main counts of apostasyand blasphemy the prisoner was himself convict by himself. He had beenbrought from the prison hard by to this room for examination, and theclergy had questioned him. But no pressure or cunning questions wouldmake him confess idolatry or sorcery or the procuring of Master HarryCarthew’s wound.

  The clerk wrote down what they had—Master Clement’s evidence andSquire Carthew’s, together with the evidence they had gathered fromothers at Hawthorn, the clergy’s questions and the prisoner’s answers.He copied also Master Harry Carthew’s written testimony, Master Carthewhimself being still in bed, fevered of his wound. There was enoughand many times enough for the physician’s commitment and most closeconfinement until assize day—enough to warrant what Carthew and theclergy urged, a petition to the Privy Council that there be especiallysent a certain judge known and belauded for his strict handling ofsuch offences, and that, pending assizes, a commission be named totake depositions and make sweeping examination throughout the Hawthornend of the county—seeing that Satan had rarely just one in his court.Indeed, there were signs in many directions of a hellish activity,whether in pact with the leech or independent of him remained to bediscovered. Hawthorn mentioned the afflicted child at North-End Farm,the great number of lamed animals, a barn consumed to ashes, and thehailstorm that had cut the young wheat.

  “A woman was seen by Master Harry Carthew?”

  The squire nodded. “Aye. Moreover, this long time Mother Spuraway hasbeen suspect.”

  The minister of Hawthorn sat, a small, rigid, black figure, his handsclasped upon the board before him, his light-hued, intense eyes seeingalways one fixed vision. His voice was unexpectedly powerful, thoughof a rigid quality and inclined to sing-song. “My mind is not madeup as to what brought the plague to Hawthorn and the region north.But I hold it full likely that Satan was concerned to harass a godlyand innocent people, godly beyond many in England, if I say it thatperhaps should not! It is well known and abundantly proved that hisimps and ministers, his infidels, Sadducees, and witches go about toconstruct a pestilence no less readily than they do a hailstorm or atempest that miserably sinks a ship at sea. I would have the commissiontake evidence upon that point also—”

  The clerk, a thin, stooping, humble man, slightly coughed, then spokedeprecatingly. “If I may make so bold, your worships—the prisoner hatha manner of good reputation among some in this town. He came during theplague and healed many.”

  “Aye, so?” answered Justice Carthew. “About Hawthorn also may be founda few silly folk who would praise him, though none I think will praisehim who were at church last Sunday! But this cargo of damnable stuffwe’ve found will beat down their good opinion.”

  “The unsafest thing,” said a fellow justice, and noddedportentously,—“the unsafest thing a plain man can do is to think andspeak well of a heretic.”

  And with that serving-men from the Boar’s Head near by entered, bearinga collation for the magistrates and clergy assembled....

  Late in the afternoon the men from Hawthorn returned home. SquireCarthew rode with pursed lips, ponderously on to Carthew House. But theminister refused an invitation to accompany him. He wished to considerthese matters in his closet, alone with the Scriptures and in prayer.He put up his horse and went into his small, chill house. There livedwith him an aunt and one maidservant, and, it being late, they had hissupper spread and waiting. But he would not touch the food; he hadordained for himself a fast.

  With a candle in his hand he went into his small bare room and closedthe door. Cloak and hat laid aside, he appeared slight and spare andsad-coloured, a man as intensely in earnest as might well be; a man,as far as his conscious knowledge of himself could light the vaultsand caverns, sincere and of an undivided will to the service andglory of his God. On the table lay his Bible, open; from wall to wallstretched a space of bare floor good for slow-pacing to and fro, goodfor kneeling, for wrestling in prayer. The room was haunted to him;it had seen so many of what he and all his day, and days before anddays after, called “spiritual struggles.” But there was pleasure noless than gloom and exaltation in the haunting; there were emanationsfrom the walls of triumph, for though his soul agonized he was bold tobelieve that also it conquered. He believed that he was foe of Satanand henchman of the Lord.

  Terror at times overwhelmed the henchman—panic thoughts that Satanhad him; cold and awful doubts of his acceptability to his overlord.But they were not lasting; they went away like the chill mists fromthe face of the hills. It was incredible, it was impossible that theLord would not see his own banner, would not recognize and succour hisown liegeman! The liegeman might err and come under displeasure; good!the punishment came in agony and remorse for lukewarm zeal, in a shownsight of the evil lord to whose suzerainty he might be transferred andof that lord’s dismal and horrible demesne! Nay, more solemnly andthreateningly, in an allowed vision of what a disobedient liegemanwould forfeit—the heavens opening and showing the rainbow-circledthrone, the seven lamps, the sea of glass, the winged beasts saying,“Holy, Holy, Holy!” and giving glory and honour and thanks; thefour-and-twenty elders crowned with gold, falling down and worshippingHim who sat on the Throne; the streets of gold, and the twelve gates,and the temple open in heaven, and in the temple the ark of thetestament. “O God,” prayed the minister, “take not my name from thebook of life! Take not my name from the book of life, and I will servethee forever and ever!”

  Master Clement very truly worshipped the God whom he had seated on thethrone, and was jealous for his honour and glory and solicitous forhis praise among men, and would give life itself to bring all mankindunder his Lord’s supremacy. As little as any man-at-war of an earthlyfeudal suzerain would he have hesitated to compel them to come in. Wasit not to their endless, boundless good, and without was there anyother thing than hell eternal and everlasting and the evil lord? If,contumaciously, they would not come in, or if being in they rebelledand broke from their allegiance, what else was to be done but tocarry fire and sword—that is, to put into operation the laws of theland—against his Lord’s enemies? Had any one called his attention tothe fact of how largely liegemen like himself had brought these lawsinto being, he would have answered, Yes; under the direction of theirSuzerain’s own Word, writ down for their perpetual guidance, shortlyafter the making of the world!

  It was not alone eager jealousy for his Lord’s glory and honour, noranxious care that he himself prove in no wise an idle and unprofitableservant, that was felt by Master Clement. To his intense zeal and hisown cries for life eternal was added a thwart love of mankind—thatportion of it enclosed in the great sheepfold, and that portion who,wandering outside, lost upon the mountain-sides in the cold anddarkness, yet had in them no stubbornness, but would hasten to thefold so soon as they heard the shepherd’s voice through the mist. Hewas eager for them, his brothers and children in the fold; eager, too,for the poor lost souls upon the mountains,—lost, yet not wilfully,stubbornly, and abandonedly lost, but capable of being found andregained, so many as were elected.

  But the others, ah, the others! they who set up their own wills andprofessed other knowledge, or, if not knowledge, then doubt andscepticism of the liegeman’s knowledge, writing a question mark besidethat which was not to be questioned—they who moved away from thefold in its completeness! Master Clement’s zeal flared downward noless than upward, to the left no less than to the right. He hatedwith intensity—with the greater intensity that he was so sure hishatred w
as disinterested. “Have I not hated _Thy_ enemies?” But ifthose without were manifestly rather than invisibly of the Kingdomof Satan,—if their ill-doing was so great that it became as it were_corporeal_,—if the people saw them open atheists, wizards, andwitches,—if their foot had slipped or their master had been negligentto cover them with his mantle of darkness,—the soul of Master Clementexperienced a grim and deadly exaltation. He tightened his belt, he sawthat his axe was sharp, he went forth to hew the dead and poisoned woodout of the forest of the Lord.

  In his small room he sat and read by his one candle—read thoseportions of the Old Testament and the New which he wished to read.Had a spirit queried his choice he would have answered, “Is it notall his Word? And are not these the indicated circumstances and thisvery passage the Answer and Direction?” When he had finished readinghe knelt and prayed long and fervently. His prayer told his God who Hewas, his attributes, and what was his usual and expected conduct; ittold Him who were his enemies and rehearsed the nature of the ill theywould do Him; then changed to a vehement petition that if it was hiswill He would discover his enemies and bring them to confusion—and ifby means of the worm Thomas Clement—

  He prayed in terrible earnest, his hands locking and unlocking, beadsof sweat upon his brow, prayed for the better part of an hour. Finallyhe rose from his knees, and standing by the table read yet anotherpassage, then paced the floor, then sat down, and, drawing forth thetablets upon which he had made his own notes of the examination thatday, fell to studying them, the open book yet beside him.

  He read over a list of questions with the answers Aderhold had given.He had not been quick to give the answers—he had fenced—he hadstriven to shift the ground—but at last, with a desperate quietness,he had given them.

  _Qu._ Do you believe in God?

  _Ans._ In my sense, yes. In your sense, no.

  _Qu._ In God as Father, Son, and Holy Ghost?

  _Ans._ No.

  _Qu._ Then you do not believe in the Trinity?

  _Ans._ No.

  There were other questions—a number of them—and the answers. But thevery beginning was enough—enough. Master Clement, sitting rigidly,stared at the opposite wall. A sentence formed itself clearly beforehis eyes, the letters well made, of a red colour. Only the last of thethree words wavered a little. CONVICTED AND HANGED. Or it might beCONVICTED AND BURNED. The first two words stood steady, and above themthe name, GILBERT ADERHOLD.

  The concern was now to prove the sorcery—and to take all confederatesin the net—to lop Satan in all his members.

  The minister stared at the wall. Another name formed itself as thoughit were stained there—MOTHER SPURAWAY....

  Master Clement sat rigid, trying to place other names beside thisone. It was his sincere belief that there were others. The probablediabolical activities at the Oak Grange—the coming to Hawthorn,after so long and godly an immunity, of the late sickness—thevaried and mysterious happenings, losses, and attacks with whichvillage and countryside were beginning to buzz—this final heinousSatan-revenge and attempt upon the godliest and most greatly promisingyoung man of whom he had any knowledge—back again, and above all,to the blasphemer, the atheist, the idolater, and denier now fast ingaol!—Master Clement was firm in his belief that so frightful andimportant a round of occurrences pointed to many and prime agents ofevil, though always that unbeliever yonder would prove the ring-leader,the very lieutenant of Satan himself! Hawthorn made a narrow stage forsuch a determined and concentrated presence and effort on the part ofthe Prince of the Power of the Air. But Master Clement’s was a narrowexperience and a mind of one province. To him, truly, the stage seemedof the widest, and the quarry worthy Apollyon’s presence in person.

  The atheist and sorcerer himself—Mother Spuraway—who else? Theminister thought of old Dorothy at the Grange. There existed apresupposition of contamination. On the other hand, so far as he knew,there had never gone out a word against her; she had seemed a pious,harmless soul, trudging to church in all weathers. That in itself,though, the Devil was wont to use as a mask. Witness the atheist andsorcerer at church! Nay, was it not known that sometimes Satan camehimself to listen and to confound, if he might, the preacher, makinghim tame and cold in his discourse; or razing from his memory thatwhich he had carefully prepared; or putting into his mind, even whilehe preached, worldly and wicked and satiric thoughts; or during asermon of so great power that all who heard should be lifted to thecourts of heaven, stuffing the mind of the congregation with a likegallimaufrey?

  The minister sat stiffly, staring at the wall. Dorothy’s name did notform itself there before him, but neither did he wholly dismiss itfrom mind. He put it, as it were, on the wall at right angles, marked,“To be further thought on.” Then what other name or names for the mainwall?... Old Marget Primrose was dead. He thought of two or three oldand solitary women, and of the son of one of the Grange tenants—asilent and company-shunning youth who had gotten his letters somehow,and went dreaming through the woods with a book. Once Master Clement,meeting him by the stream-side, had taken his book from him and lookingat it found it naught but idle verse; moreover, it seemed that it wasMaster Gilbert Aderhold’s book, and that the youth went at times tothe Grange for instruction.... All these, the boy with the itch forlearning, and the two or three women he relegated to the wall with oldDorothy.

  There was one other—there was Grace Maybank. She was not old, butSatan, though for occult reasons he oftenest signed them old, signedthem young as well, and though he gave preferment to the ugly and thebent, would take good looks when they were at hand. Satan had alreadysigned Grace in another department of the Kingdom of Evil-doing. Theminister rose, and going to a press that stood in the room, took fromit a book in which was entered, among other things, cases of churchdiscipline. He found the page, the date several years back. _GraceMaybank, Fornicatress. Stood before the congregation, two Sundays ineach month for three months in succession. Texts preached from on theseSundays, for the warning of sinners...._ And again, _Grace Maybank, herinfant being born, stood with it in her arms before the congregation,Sunday, June the —--_.

  Grace came into the probable class. Moreover—“Ha!” said the minister,recollection rising to the surface. He took from a second shelf a bookof record, made not by himself, but by his predecessor, the godlyMaster Thomson. It ran back twenty years and more. He found near thebeginning of the book what he was looking for. _Ellice Maybank. Suspectof being a witch, and dragged through Hawthorn Pond. The said Elliceswam. Died of a fever before she could be brought to trial._

  “Ha!” said Master Clement; “it descends! it descends!” But he was acareful and scrupulous man, and so he put Grace’s name only up on theprobable wall.

  It was growing late. A wind had arisen and moaned around the house. Hewent to the window and looked out at the church and the church yews.A waning moon hung in the east. The yews were black, the church waspalely silvered; Master Clement regarded the church with eyes thatsoftened, grew almost mild. The plain interior, the plain exterior, thehard stones, the tower lifting squarely and uncompromisingly towardthe span of sky that was called the zenith—whatever of romance was inMaster Clement’s nature clung and centred itself here! Hawthorn Churchwas his beloved, it was his bride.

  He stood by the window for some minutes, then turning began again topace the room, and then once more to read in the Bible. It chancednow—his main readings that night having been concluded—that hehad eyes for passages of a different timbre. He read words of old,firm wisdom, Oriental tenderness, mystic rapture, strainings towardunity—golden words that time would not willingly let slip. Many asoul, many a tradition, many a mind had left their mark in that book,and some were very beautiful, and the voices of some were music andlong-lasting truth and carried like trumpets.

  Master Clement read, and his soul mounted: only it mounted not to whereit could overlook the earlier reading in the same Bible. It never cameto a point where it could hold the two side by side and say, “Judge youwhich c
oncept and which mind you will accept as brother to your own!For many minds have made this book.” Master Clement read, and his soullightened and lifted, but not so far as to change settled perspectives.Had he not read these passages a thousand times before? The namesremained upon the wall, and when after a time he undressed and laidhimself in bed, they stayed before him without a shadow of waveringuntil he slept. Indeed, he drowsed away upon the word CONVICTED—

  Morning came. He rose at an ascetic’s hour, dressed in a half-light,and ate his frugal breakfast while the day was yet at the dawn. Thetwo women waited upon him; breakfast over, he read the Scriptures tothem, and standing, prayed above their bowed heads. Later he went outinto the hedged path between his house and the church and began hiscustomary slow walking to and fro for morning exercise. The sun wascoming up, a multitude of birds sang in the ancient trees. MasterClement walked, small, arid, meagre, and upright, his hands at hissides, and presently, in his walking, caught sight of something whiteat the edge of the path. It proved to be a hand’s-breadth of paper,kept in place by a pebble. He stooped and picked it up. On it wasmarked in rude letters, JOAN HERON. He turned it over—nothing on theother side, blank paper save for the name. He walked on with it in hishand. Twenty paces farther there was another piece of paper, held byanother pebble, and a fair duplicate of the first—JOAN HERON. Wellwithin the churchyard he found the third piece—JOAN HERON. ASK JOANHERON WHO GAVE HER THE RUE THAT’S PLANTED IN HER GARDEN.