The Witch

by Mary Johnston

  CHAPTER XXX

  THE ISLET

  THIS was a small island or cay. They found water and they found fruitand cassava, and with these and a shelter of boughs and leaves of thelittle palm they raised again the flag of life....

  The death of the child. For a time that made of existence a cruelbuffet, a sore bruise. The parents grieved. But time dealt with thatgrief—time and inner strength. At length it diffused itself, addingits own hue to many-tinted consciousness, its own strain to life’s vastorchestration, but no longer darkening and making to throb all momentsof the waking day. They had within them a coördinating, harmonizingpower, and sorrow brought its own wealth and added to the whole.

  The outward activities of life narrowed, indeed, upon this islet. Buthere also they took circumstance and enlarged its bounds and deepenedits meaning. They brought will and intellect to bear upon environment,moulded it as far as might be and increased their havings. Here nornowhere in this universe could they be less than interested. Flotsamupon this islet, yet here as elsewhere the mind found food and field ofaction and through small doorways passed into wide countries.

  Love burned clear, love of man and woman. It kept its heyday. Butbeside it rose, higher and more massive than in the peopled, busyisland, other ranges of the mind. The child’s death—and the lossof the Indian village and of the old chief and the recurring visionof that oppression and the inhumanity of their kind—and the deeploneliness of this place—all wrought upon them. Moreover, the springof inward growth was strong and constant. Year by year, with Joan aswith Aderhold, the spirit travelled further in all its dimensions.

  The mind.... Here upon this span of earth the old ache for knowledge,the old brooding and longing of the mind came back to Aderhold, camemore imperiously, larger, wider-robed. This ball of earth and thecriss-cross of movement upon it. This sun and the chain that heldto it the ball of earth. What was the chain? These stars and cloudsof stars—this sea of ether—light in waves.... Again, the growthof plants—motion fluent as a stream. And the life that dwelt inshells—that made its armour and outgrew it.... Ceaseless change,transition,—kinds linked by likeness to other kinds, kinds growing outof other kinds, the trunk branching. He thought that all kinds mighthave branched from one or few, and the selfsame sap in all. He didnot believe in a myriad unconnected, arbitrary creations.... But ifthe least leaf and tendril knew motion, alteration, growth, then thesap, too, knew it—the sap that was supposed to be so moveless, soperfected.... Kin and kin again—one and one again.

  As for Joan—her mind trod differing roads, though with many a point ofcontact, many an inn where she met him who travelled too. As of Heron’scottage her hands and head had wrought a bright pastoral, an unfrayedand well-woven garment of life—as in the peopled island she had with alarger and a freer play, with a more creative and a nobler touch, madelife not an idyll only, but an idyll and something more, so here shelived a nobler poem. Her child’s death brought into it deeper tones, asof an organ, as of violins. And as she had lit torches for Aderhold, sohad he lit torches for her. She thought and imaged with a wider sweepthan had once been possible. She thought and imaged now for the wholeworld; she dreamed light for all.

  To both the time upon this isle was a time of deepening vision,of a crescent sense of inward freedom and power. To a stranger’schance-lighting eye they would have seemed but two castaways, narrowlyenvironed, scantly living, lonely and lost, of necessity wretched. Theywere not wretched, or lonely, or lost.

  Months passed—the year—a great part of another year. Then one dayagain they saw a sail.... It was the beginning of the stormy season,and there had been rough weather. To-day the sky was blue, the airbut gently moving, but there had been a gale to drive ships and makewrecks. This ship had not been greatly hurt, but the winds had drivenher out of her course. Moreover, there had been leakage among herwater-casks. It was with joy that she saw this islet lift upon thehorizon. She made it, found a large-enough harbour, between two hornsof coral rock and sand, and presently sent her longboat, filled withseamen, to the shore. They rowed in cautiously, keeping a good lookout,for, while it was but an islet and looked desert, there might beIndians or pirates or Spaniards. No harm showing, they made a landingand came upon the shore.—It was now to search for water.

  In the search they found a palm-thatched hut, and, standing expectantbefore it, a white man and woman.—“Who be you?” demanded the boatswainin good Devon.

  The ship was the Eagle, sailing home from Virginia, having broughtout colonists and supplies. Now it was taking home samples of nativeproducts, two or three Indians for show, and not a few dissatisfiedadventurers, with others of a stouter make who were bound withrepresentations to the Company or upon various upgathering missions....Who were the white man and woman? They were Giles and Ellice Heme,shipwrecked here several years ago. The captain, who presently cameashore, was questioning them. From London? Aye, then! and their ship?The Needs Must, sailing from port of London. The captain rubbed hisbrows. He did not remember the ship or the loss of her, but then moreand more ships were going out, and he could not remember all names oraccidents. All lost? Giles and Ellice Heme could not tell. They hadescaped in a small boat. Those with them had died.—Would they be takenback to England?—The captain was a bluff old sea-dog, literal-mindedand not inquisitive. He assumed that their tale was true in the main,and he assumed that, of course, they wished to be taken back toEngland. Otherwise, there would be something wrong with them. He hardlywaited for an answer, but turned eyes and mind toward the water-casks.He was in haste; he wished to up sail and away while the sky was stillwithout clouds.

  The two, left alone at last after all exclamation and question, faceda decision—how momentous an one made itself felt between them. Theystood in the brown light of their hut, the doorway framing blue sea andsky and the Eagle, quivering to be gone.

  Aderhold spoke. “If we refused to go, it is most likely—it is certain,I think—that they would force us with them. We should be thoughtmad—or if not that, they would hold that we were not simply castaways.They would take us still, and from the first we should rest undersuspicion.”

  “At any time the Spaniards may come again,” said Joan; “then againhorror ... death. Or some other harm may come to one of us here—andthe other left alone. That is often in my mind, and I know that it isoften in yours.”

  “If we reached England unsuspected—if we could lose ourselves inLondon—”

  “Never could we go back to Hawthorn—nor to the town!”

  “No.”

  “Six years.... Gilbert, would we not be safe anywhere else?”

  “Ours are matters in which no one is safe who thinks not as hisneighbours. And say we slipped silent and down-bent through life,giving no present authority offence—yet at some corner comes one whorecognizes face or voice and recalls the past—’Ha, you hide!’ And itis all to do again.... I do not think we have any choice. I do notthink this captain will leave us here.... There have been men who,under feigned names and away from the place of blackest threatening,have lived long and peacefully.... At first, until we were free ofenquiries and had found work by which we might live, there would bethick danger.... We might escape.”

  “It is best to be with your kind.”

  “Yes, it is best. The world grows so.”

  “Oh, to see green grass and English flowers!... But the child—thechild! We would go farther and farther from where the child lies.... Iknow that we must go.”

  “Yes. She does not lie there. She does not stay there.”

  “No—she is here—she is everywhere.... Well, let us go bravely.”

  Giles and Ellice Herne went aboard the Eagle. Before sunset she hadclapped on all sail and was moving swiftly from that island. It faded,faded. They lost the clump of palm trees marking the place of theirhut, lost the outline of the tiny harbour, lost in the dusk the gleamof the beach and the white crests of the incoming tide. The Eagle was agood ship and a swift sailer. Back she came into her course. The birdt
hat was her figurehead looked east, looked north, between it and itshoming the grey and rolling Atlantic. Now she had bad weather and nowshe had good, but the good predominated.

  The ship was not crowded, as had been, six years before, the SilverQueen. Moreover, those aboard were preoccupied, the dissatisfiedwith their dissatisfaction, the hardier, more patient or farseeingsort, returning to England only to return thence to their newworld, with their papers of representation, their arguments, andbusy schemes. At first there was curiosity as to the castaways andhow they had preserved life, alone, on that morsel of land. Thatsatisfied, attention turned in each on board to his own matters, or tomatters that seemed cognate. The rescued were quiet folk who kept tothemselves; doubtless they were dazed by long privation and loneliness,and by this unexpected salvation....

  Aboard were several women, the captain’s wife, and one or two othersof the bolder sort who would go with their husbands to whatever newworlds might be discovered. These helped Joan to fitter clothing thanany she possessed. She came back to Aderhold in a linsey kirtle andbodice, a small white cap, and with a kerchief folded across her bosom.“Hawthorn again,” she said with a sob in her throat. He, too, had beengiven clothing. He was dressed plainly, like a clerk. No one was by,the soft dusk closing in. They stood for a moment and within them rosethe vivid shape of the past. They smelled again the fern and mould ofHawthorn Forest; they heard again the drone of the bees, the singingof the stream past the fairy oak; they heard again the distant churchbells. Rose the great image, grave and golden, of the six years past,rose the vision of the child, rose old memories, tendernesses, fears,rose forebodings, prophecies, realizations. It was dusk, the windmaking a low, sustained music. They came to each other’s arms, theyembraced closely, straining each to each with passion. They kissed, thetears stood in the eyes, fell upon the cheeks of each. It was like afarewell, and it was like a meeting....

  Upon the ship was a man neither young nor old, who had come out toVirginia the year before, sent by the Company upon some investigation.Now, the work done, he was returning. He had a strong, determined face,steady eyes and a close-shutting mouth. On the day of their comingaboard, he with others had approached Giles and Ellice Herne and askedthem questions. They had been true questions; he was interested inknowing how they got upon that island, but preferred the detail of howthey had managed to live while there. After that, with some frequencyhe sought them out and fell into talk. The rest upon the ship werepreoccupied with the struggles and miseries and triumphs of the Colony.To them it was growing to be home. But the Company’s agent, his erranddone, was returning to England like Antæus to Mother Earth. He musttalk, and guided by some subtle principle of choice, he talked to thesepeople who also must be homesick for England.

  The two strove to be guarded, spoke little themselves, passed wellenough for a quiet clerk or scrivener or teacher and his wife whomthe whimsical fortunes of the time had made colonists, and wind andwave and ill chance castaways on that islet. Wisdom made them nottoo silent, not to seem morosely so—nor too guarded, not to make itevident that they were watching from behind barricades. It was chieflyto Aderhold that he talked, Joan sitting by, her hands clasped in herlap, her eyes upon the sea, narrowing between them and England. Hetalked, it seemed to Aderhold, with boldness, but then the castawaygathered that upon the issues that interested this man, men in England,in six years’ time, had grown bolder.

  News from England! News of England when the agent left England lastyear was the already two-years-old news that the king meant to rulewithout Parliaments. Perhaps when they landed in London they might findnewer news—perhaps the king, wanting money very badly, had wantedit enough at last to summon a Parliament. If that were so, the agentof the Company hoped that certain men had seats. He mentioned amongothers John Pym. News! There was the news that the Bishops were in thesaddle. Episcopacy had been established in Scotland. Timid and recreantministers had gone over, the patriotic were in hiding,—proscribed. Thepeople were at the mercy of the wolves—the Crown’s wolves. In Englandjust as bad—though with a difference. The Established Church rode highand kissed the hand of the king. “Passive obedience!” It had got itsshibboleth. “No power in the people and disordered multitude.”—God’sown hand having touched the forehead of kings! “Did I not tell ye?”says the king; and with one hand puts down the civil courts and withthe other lifts the ecclesiastical.

  News! The news from England was Despotism that barked like Cerberus outof three mouths—King, Bishops, and Favourites! The agent’s face turnedred and the veins in his forehead stood out, so in earnest and angrywas he. “News of England!” he said, “is that slaves will be slaves andfree men will be free men! News of England is that if things better notthere will be battles!” He swung round upon Aderhold. “I speak moreplainly than I should! But if I can read men, your passion, too, isfor freedom!”

  “Aye,” said Aderhold, “I would be free.”

  Another time, when for some minutes they had been watching the sea insilence, the determined-faced man spoke with sudden energy. “Do younot hold that the Presbyterian or Calvinist form of religion and therule of the people—such as are landowners and tend neither to Poperyon the one hand nor to any manner of disbelief on the other—throughParliaments duly chosen is the way of God upon earth?”

  Aderhold kept silence, his eyes upon the moving sea. When he spoke atlast it was almost dreamily. “The only way?... Do you?”

  Something in the fast-flowing field, the field that was but the surfaceof depth, or in the mist-veiled sky, or in the tone of the castaway,checked the other’s reply. At last he said slowly, “It is right toresist a king who would rule us beyond what the sense of man allows.”

  “Yes,” said Aderhold, “that is right.”

  “That is what I care for,” said the agent; “that is the way of God tome. The bishops go with the king and preach tyranny, so the bishops areto be fought too. He who wishes to be free surely will not chain hiswill to the Pope’s throne. So what is there left but Calvin—if youexclude these mad Independents who spring up like mushrooms! At anyrate, in England to-day the men who oppose the king’s tyranny are liketo smack of Edinburgh or Geneva!”

  “In a manner I believe that to be true,” said Aderhold. “Not yet dothey wish freedom around and around. But never will I deny that it ismuch to begin to image freedom!”

  The ship sailed on through good and bad weather. To the two castawaysdanger seemed to sleep. No one troubled them on this ship, preoccupiedwith its own affairs. The fact that they were seen with the agent ofthe Company procured for them a certain respect. The days slipped by,the weeks slipped by—pearl-grey weeks, quiet, halcyon.

  There came a summer eve when, hand in hand, Joan and Aderhold watchedEngland rise from out the sea. None was by. They stood long in silence;then, “Do you remember,” said Joan in a low voice, “how we ran throughthe castle wood with the great moon on high? How we lay in that pitwith the branches over us while they that hunted us went by? Do youremember the woman with the three daughters who gave us bread and milk?”

  “I remember it all,” said Aderhold. “May we come forth now as then!...The smell of the hay there in the barn where we lay all day.... Thewhite road that first night from the prison and the starry sky over thegallows tree.”

  “Over the gallows tree!”

  “Once I thought a thing like that the fearfullest thing! Now, though Ilove life more now than I did then, I do not think so. The old terrorsgrow smaller. They will come one day, I think, to cause laughter.”

  “I understand that,” said Joan. “Nor do they matter to me as they did.Neither the gallows tree, nor words like witch and sorcerer, hereticand atheist!”

  The shore before them grew in distinctness, grew and grew as they stoodthere alone, withdrawn, watching. With that increasing definiteness,that rigour of line and hue and shape, came with a growing form, agrowing sharpness of menace, came as it had not come to them beforeupon this ship, a realizing knowledge that here there was no chang
e;that the hot ploughshares and the sharp swords were yet ready laidfor folk like them to move across! England was England still.... Theyheard upon the wind, “_Witch and Sorcerer—Witch and Sorcerer—doublydamned for that you were judged and lay not still under our judgement!Witch and Sorcerer.... Fornicators—for in what church were readyour marriage banns, and what priest with lifted hands blessed yourunion?... Blasphemers, deniers, atheists who pray not to Jehovah! Witchand Sorcerer—Witch and Sorcerer_—”

  They were not wholly free from fear and shrinking. They looked at eachother with whitened faces. But they had said true when they had saidthat they were freer. They recovered, they smiled into each other’seyes. “I wonder how much of us they will hang or burn—”

  The shores grew plainer, higher. There came, suddenly, a summons tothe captain. They found him in the great cabin, papers upon the table.Still short of speech, incurious and literal, he now had duties whichhe would perform. He had to give account to the proper officers ofthe Eagle’s voyage and of those whom she brought into England, and heproposed not to lose sight of the castaways, Giles and Ellice Herne,until the right authorities gave him quittance. He could not rememberthe Needs Must, but there were many who would. Any saved from any lostship had an importance, for they could give to her owners informationwhere had been guessing. Therefore the captain meant to send the twoashore with a trusted man who would take them before such and suchpersons in authority. There they would be questioned, and if theyanswered to satisfaction would doubtless be helped. The captain, with awave of his hand dismissing them, turned to other business. He left asharp enough thorn of anxiety with the two who had fled England on theSilver Queen.

  Night passed. Morning broke—English summer, soft and sweet. Herewas the Thames mouth, here other winged ships and ships at anchor,here the green shores, the waving trees, the clustered houses, hereEngland—England!

  As they stood watching with full hearts the agent of the Company cameto them from the poop deck. “You have no money?”

  “No.”

  “Have you friends in London?”

  “No.”

  He held out to Aderhold a woolen purse, open, showing two gold noblesand some silver pieces. “Yes, take it—and no need for thanks! I havegotten good from you.—You will want work?”

  “Yes.”

  “I have weight enough with the Company to get you a clerkship.”

  Aderhold thanked him again, and with warmth of feeling, but shook hishead. He had plans, he said.—But when the agent was gone the twosmiled at each other. Gold and plans!... They had had plans—they hadplanned. What they had planned was to lose themselves, immediately uponleaving the ship, in the crowd which doubtless would gather at thewaterside, then to slip into some street or lane and begone. Somewherein the tangled heart of London, in some poor street, in some garret,they might find a lodging. Then work to live by.... There had risen avision, not unhomely, comforting, hopeful—physician’s work among thepoor and obscure, sempstress or spinster’s work, quiet life in theshadow but with gleams of sun.... But now the plans seemed hardly evengossamer.

  The Eagle came slowly into port. Aboard was bustle and confusion. Withthe rattling down of her anchor appeared the small boats, the wherries,clamouring to take all ashore. A barge brought port officers. Thesecame up the side.... All was well, all might go ashore. The agent ofthe Company would go, it seemed, in the port barge. Giles and ElliceHerne watched him leave the ship. He had been a friend; they feltgratitude and liking; they watched the dwindling boat and thought itdoubtful if, in this round of life, they would ever see the agentagain....

  Their time came—they were to go with the second mate, abroad-shouldered, surly, watchful man.

  The catch into which they stepped was crowded with the lesser sort ofthe Eagle’s passengers. Here were the dissatisfied, returning folk,and here with their exploiter were the Indians brought for show.Aderhold, looking at them, had a fleeting thought of a booth, pausedbefore on a morning when he had set out northward from London, yearsago.... Shipping loomed about them, Thames side before them. Thehigh, narrow houses, the roofs, the windows, the roaring streets,the throng about the water steps, pushing and jostling for a sightof the disembarking—talking and shouting, people greeting and beinggreeted, a swarm and distraction! Joan sat elbow on knee, hand pressedagainst lips, her eyes wide, and, as far as Thames side was concerned,unseeing. What else she saw she did not say, but her face had a softand brooding look.... The catch made its landing. Joan and Aderhold,placed in the stern, were the last to come out upon the water stairs.Before them the second mate shouldered his way. About them was theEnglish crowd, beneath their feet soil of England. Home—home—homewhere they were born!