Mary Johnston

“ To Joan and Aderhold, accustomed to the sun, good was this warmth! There was one great stone-flagged room, large as a baron’s hall. When the dozen men of their guard disposed themselves, there was yet space where the ruddy glow might reach them, dry their clothing wet with the rain, warm their bodies. Where there was not overmuch for any, their portion of supper was small, indeed, but it sufficed. When all would sleep, lying about the fire upon the straw which the inn’s servitors brought in, the two were thrust to a corner at the far end of the place, farthest from the door. ”

“ The old Indian came this morning to visit Aderhold and Joan. Others had been before him; they had held, perforce, a kind of levee. The children were not more curious, nor simpler in their expression of curiosity, than were the men and women. They had no language in common with the castaways but that of gesture, but they made this answer. The torn, sun-faded clothing of the two, the fineness and tint of their hair, the colour of their skin, Joan’s grey eyes, the absurd sound of their speech at which the Indians laughed heartily—every physical trait was of interest. ”

“ The water, beyond the foam of the breaking rollers, seemed of an intenser hue than the sky itself—and calm, calm—with never a sail, never a sail.
“We may live here and die here—an old man and woman,” said Joan: “die together.”
“I am thirty-four years old,” said Aderhold. “I will have to die before you.”
“No. I will die a little sooner than I might.”
“No! I will grow younger—”
“We talk nonsense,” said Joan. “We sit here, as young and as old each as the other! And we shall die together.” ”

“ Gervaise was light and spare as a jester; the wry-mouthed, surly, one-time soldier strong enough, though somewhat rusty in the joints; Aderhold was a thinker who lived much out of doors, a leech who walked to his patients, and where there was need walked fast; Joan, a woman of Arcady, with a step as light as a panther’s. These two had behind them prison inaction and weakening, prison fare, anxiety, despair, strain, and torment. They were not in health and strength as they had been. But instinct furnished a mighty spur; if they must run to live, they would run! ”

“ But not the great sin, Harry Carthew—not the Unpardonable Sin.... God will have mercy. He will forgive. Have you not served Him well, and will you not do so, ever the more zealously? And will you not forever more guard your ways, that you fall not again into the pit? I trow that you will! Harry Carthew—Harry Carthew, we will pray together! You are too valuable—This very night I will come, and on our knees we will wrestle with Him as did Jacob of old—”
Joan and Aderhold stood hand in hand. ”

“ Harry Carthew!” cried Master Clement. “Every man alive has sin against his soul! The soul of every man alive is black as midnight, and no dawn cometh to it save from one that is not himself! Unless and save the dayspring chooseth to shine upon that soul, it resteth black and lost—it hath in itself no power of motion and light! But God hath elected thee, Harry Carthew! But this man and woman are of the deep gulf of hell, predestined and damned of eternity! ”

“ The physician thought that the old man had not many years to live. Aderhold set himself with a steady kindness to doing what could be done, to giving sympathy and understanding, and when the old man wished it, companionship. Sitting in the dim house with him, facing him at table over their scant and simple fare, listening to his brief talk, the physician came to find, beneath a hard and repellent exterior, something sound enough, an honesty and plain-dealing. And Master Hardwick, with a hidden need both to feel and receive affection, turned and clung to the younger man. ”

“ You listen to me, Joan, and while you listen, just bear in mind that this is a dangerous business! Figure some authority out there storming, ‘Where, in Cerberus’s name, is the new gaoler?’ Keep that in mind, I say, and that time’s gold—gold?—nay, rubies and diamonds! Now, look you! ’Tis no easy jaunt, forth from this prison and town, to some land of safety for witches and warlocks! Naught but courage and wit and strength and good luck by the armful will make it—and a crowd would never make it! ”

“ They had now great strength and health, Joan’s renewed, Aderhold’s such as it had never been. They stood erect and bright-eyed, their movements had rhythm, the hand went with precision to its task, the glance fell unerringly, the foot bore them lightly. They bent to life with a smile, frequently with laughter. If life was always a mighty riddle, if at times it seemed a vivid disaster, yet indubitably there were stretches, as now, when it became a splendid possession! ”

“ Space widened between the two cavalcades, the voices of the gallants died from the ear. The road lay bright and sunny, the morning air blew fresh and sweet. The great earth swept calm to the horizon, the sky sprang, a pure and cloudless arch. For a long way the road ran lonely of travellers other than the sheriff, his men, and the prisoners. Joan and Aderhold, riding together, talked in low tones. After a time they were passing through a forest. They loved the brown earth and the bracken, the boughs overhead, the purple distances. ”

“ Mother Spuraway blessed her for a pitiful maid, got painfully to her feet, and said she would be going. “You’ve good herbs in your garden, but I see no rue. If I be straying this way again I’ll bring you a bit for planting.”
She went away, her stick supporting her, her eyes still searching the little leaves and low plants on each side of the garden path and the faint, winding track between gate and forest road. Joan, in the doorway, let her distaff fall and sat pondering, her elbow on her knee, her chin in her hand, and her grey eyes upon the fruit trees. ”

“ At dawn one morning Aderhold and Joan leaned against the rail and looked at the purple sea. It lay like a vast gem, moveless and hard. The folk upon the ship were still sleeping. The seamen aloft in the rigging or moving upon the decks troubled them not, hardly looked their way.
“If you held a feather before you,” said Joan, “it would not move a hair’s breadth! They are to pray for a wind to-day. Master Evans will pray—all aboard will pray. Is it chained somewhere, or idle or asleep, or locked in a chest, and will we turn the key that way?”
“Did you see or speak to George Dragon yesterday?” ”

“ Joan and Aderhold knelt in a warm hollow of the bank, leaned against the good earth.
“Giles and John Allen,” he said. “Do not forget the names.”
“No.... When I speak to you, am I to say, ‘Giles’?”
“Aye,—aye, John.”
“Do you think they will not know that I am a woman?”
He looked at her critically for the first time. “You have height and a right frame. Your voice is deeper than most women’s. Now that your hair is cut, I have seen youths with locks so worn and of that colour and thickness. ”

“ Love burned clear, love of man and woman. It kept its heyday. But beside it rose, higher and more massive than in the peopled, busy island, other ranges of the mind. The child’s death—and the loss of the Indian village and of the old chief and the recurring vision of that oppression and the inhumanity of their kind—and the deep loneliness of this place—all wrought upon them. Moreover, the spring of inward growth was strong and constant. Year by year, with Joan as with Aderhold, the spirit travelled further in all its dimensions. ”

“ It flowed around and away to the burning horizon, and not a sail and not a breath, and no sound in the cordage overhead. The deepening light flowed between Joan and Aderhold, and in it, suddenly, the body of each was beautiful in the other’s eyes.... The sun came up, a red-gold ball. Neither man nor woman had spoken, and now, suddenly, too, with the full dayspring, the ship was astir, men were upon the decks. Gilbert Aderhold, Joan Heron stepped back into the violet shadow; here were Giles and John Allen. ”

“ By nature I am a ‘live and let live’ man. Peter, Luther, Calvin, Mohammed, and Abraham each may have had his own knowledge of heaven and hell! I will not quarrel with knowledge for being various. I am tolerant—I am tolerant, Master Aderhold! But I hold with emphasis that you must not inculpate others—no, you must not let the edge of your mantle of heresy touch another! ”

“ Joan and Aderhold ate and drank. The will to live was strong, for life had turned a rainbow, and a wild and beautiful forest, and a song of the high and the deep, and an intense pulsation. The two came swiftly up from Death’s threshold. Before the boat came into sight of land the light was back in their sunken eyes and some strength in their frame.... The land seemed a low, island shore. The excited Indians gesticulated, spoke in their own tongue. Aderhold, questioning them, learned that it was the outermost of their island group, but not their own island to which they were bound. ”

“ The two strove to be guarded, spoke little themselves, passed well enough for a quiet clerk or scrivener or teacher and his wife whom the whimsical fortunes of the time had made colonists, and wind and wave and ill chance castaways on that islet. Wisdom made them not too silent, not to seem morosely so—nor too guarded, not to make it evident that they were watching from behind barricades. It was chiefly to Aderhold that he talked, Joan sitting by, her hands clasped in her lap, her eyes upon the sea, narrowing between them and England. ”

“ She found an old, familiar oak with huge and knotted roots rising amid bracken, and here she sank down and lay with her head upon her arm and her eyes upon the place where in all her life she had been happiest. An old hound came and snuffed about her, a redbreast watched her from a bough. She lay for some time, resting, not thinking but dreaming back. At last she rose, settled the basket upon her arm, looked long at the huntsman’s house, then turned away, and leaving the wood began to descend the castle hill. ”

“ Now I’m not denying that there are witches; the Bible says there are, and so, of course, there must be. But it knocks at my head that many a silly old woman and many a young maid has been called a witch that was none! And it came to me that Hawthorn’s not the castle and the castle wood, and that if Mistress Borrow called you pagan and said that you stepped and spoke too freely for a woman, it’s like that some here might take it on themselves to think pure ill—”
“I see not how they could,” said Joan. “There is no ill to think.—Do you mean that I am not to sing about Robin Hood and Maid Marian?” ”

“ The projecting palm thatch, the overhanging, thick foliage, kept out the fierce sun, made a green and brown gloom.
Joan and Aderhold slept, too. For them the immediate need was health again, strength again, energy in which to base the wonderful flower of life. They lay like children near each other, and slept the livelong day. When, in the last bright light, they waked, there was cassava bread, and tropic fruit and water from a neighbouring spring. ”

“ The bad season passed, the good days came around again, and still no fleck of a sail showed on all the round of the blue ocean. The Indians ceased to glance up continually from whatever employment they were about. Now they looked not once a day, now they ceased all active expectation, now the matter grew dim, remote, now it faded almost from mind. The old chief, perhaps, still looked seaward, but the village at large had short memories when immediate anxieties were lifted. Life took up again the old, smooth measure.
But Aderhold and Joan could not forget. ”

“ Carthew’s voice quivered, and he struck one hand into the other. “Words are locked doors, but not the voice with which the words are uttered! ‘Piteous wronged souls’ that my gentleman born of no low condition feels grief for and would deliver if he might from gaol and judgement—and Joan Heron whom his voice only trembles not before, only caresses not because he would guard her from the ruin of his favour!—What good to loom there against me and thrust that, too, from you? You love her! You love her! ”

“ The news from England was Despotism that barked like Cerberus out of three mouths—King, Bishops, and Favourites! The agent’s face turned red and the veins in his forehead stood out, so in earnest and angry was he. “News of England!” he said, “is that slaves will be slaves and free men will be free men! News of England is that if things better not there will be battles!” He swung round upon Aderhold. ”

“ Aderhold and Joan recognized the head figure—across the years they saw him again at the Hawthorn trials—a tall, lean, saturnine minor piece of the law’s machinery who had herded the prisoners in and out of that hall of judgement. He was so tall and lean and lantern-jawed and grim that he might have been a prize man for the rôle of Death in a mystery play. ”

“ What they had planned was to lose themselves, immediately upon leaving the ship, in the crowd which doubtless would gather at the waterside, then to slip into some street or lane and begone. Somewhere in 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 a vision, not unhomely, comforting, hopeful—physician’s work among the poor and obscure, sempstress or spinster’s work, quiet life in the shadow but with gleams of sun.... But now the plans seemed hardly even gossamer.
The Eagle came slowly into port. ”

“ Three years come Saint John’s Eve.”
“Three years.—I have been here three years.”
“You are the physician?” asked Joan. “You live at the Oak Grange with Master Hardwick?”
“Aye. At the Oak Grange.”
“They say that fairies dance there and that a demon haunts it.”
“‘They say’ is the father and mother of delusion.”
“I would wish there were no demons,” said Joan, “but some fairies are not ill folk. But the minister saith that God hates all alike.”
They came to the edge of the forest, before them the threadlike green path to Heron’s cottage. “I must go on now by the road,” said Aderhold. ”

“ But as they came into the shadow of the great church tower they again heard voices nearing them—roistering voices of young men, petty gallants and citizens’ sons, homeward bound from some place of drinking and outcasts’ favours. “The church porch,” motioned Gervaise. Like swallows they sped across and lodged themselves in the shadow-filled, cavernous place.
The roisterers came close, elected, indeed, just here to arrest their steps and finish out a dispute. “Black eyes are best!” averred one. “Grey eyes? Faugh! That vilest Hawthorn witch hath grey eyes! Ha, ha! Eyes like Joan Heron!” ”

“ JOAN HERON—The daughter of old Heron that had died of the plague. He brought her before his mind’s eye—a tall, grey-eyed girl sitting quietly in church. Save for that image she did not come into his mind with any force; he had, after all, no great knowledge of her. They were outlying people, the Herons, and then they had been away from Hawthorn. He was a man of the study and the pulpit and of crisises in the parish, rather than of any minute, loving, daily intercourse and knowledge; theologian rather than pastor. ”

“ Joan had native wit. Her being, simple-seeming, pushed forward complexes enough when it came to the touch. Aderhold marvelled to see her so skilful and wary, and still so quiet with it all that she seemed to act without motion, or with motion too swift for perception. She went unsuspected of all—a [330] tall, fair youth with grey eyes and a manner of reserve, brooding aside over some loss of his own. ”

“ They walked on.
“It was Gervaise and Lantern,” said Aderhold, “who told her that tale of a capture at the mill. They are ahead.... I have seen brave men and women, but I have seen none braver than you, Joan.... Life is very great. There are in it threads of all colours and every tone that is, and if happiness is not stable, neither is misery. You are brave—be brave enough to be happy!”
The sun declined, the town ahead grew larger against a soft and vivid sky. Now they could see the harbour and that there were ships at anchor. ”