THE ROAD TO HAWTHORN
IT was full dusk when the London travellers did at last win away from
the Rose Tavern. The evening was cold, the snow yet falling in slow,
infrequent flakes. The merchants and their men, together with Master
Anthony Mull, first took the road. Then followed Master Harry Carthew,
straight and stern, upon a great roan mare. In the rear came on
slowly old John Hardwick, his servant Will, and the physician Gilbert
Aderhold. These three soon lost sight of the others, who, pushing on,
came to the town, rest, and bed, ere they had made half the distance.
At last, very late, the place loomed before them. They passed through
dark and winding streets, and found an inn which Master Hardwick knew.
Together Will and Aderhold lifted the old man from his horse and helped
him into the house and into a great bed, where he lay groaning through
the night, the physician beside him speaking now and again a soothing
and steadying word.
He could not travel the next day or the next. Finally Aderhold and Will
wrung permission to hire a litter and two mules. On the third morning
they placed Master Hardwick in the litter and all took the street
leading to the road which should bring them in the afternoon to the
Oak Grange. Going, they passed a second inn, and here Master Harry
Carthew suddenly appeared beside them upon his great roan. It seemed
that affairs had kept him likewise in this town, but that now he was
bound in their direction.
The snow had passed into rain. The weather had moderated, the rain
ceased, and this morning there was pure blue sky and divine sunlight.
The latter bathed the unpaved streets, the timbered, projecting fronts
of houses, guildhall and shops and marketplace, and the tower and body
of a great and ancient abbey church. Beyond the church the ground
sloped steeply to the river winding by beneath an arched bridge of
stone. Above the town, commanding all, rose a castle, half-ruinous,
half in repair. The streets were filled with people, cheerful in the
morning air. Litter, mules, and horsemen moved slowly along. Honest
Will drew a long breath. “Fegs! Who would live in the country that
could live in a town?”
Aderhold was riding beside him, Carthew being ahead on his great roan
mare. “Tell me something,” said the physician, “of the country to which
we are going.”
“The country’s a good country enough,” said Will. “But the Oak
Grange—Lord! the Grange is doleful and lonely—”
“Doleful and lonely?”
“It’s all buried in black trees,” said Will, “and nobody lives there
but our old master.”
“Where does Master Carthew live?”
“He lives in the squire’s house beyond the village. He’s the squire’s
brother.”
“You’re near a village?”
“Aye, the village of Hawthorn.”
They rode on, Will gazing busily about him. They were still in the
town, indeed in an important part of it, for before them rose the
prison. Without it stood pillory and stocks, two men by the legs in
the latter, a dozen children deliberately pelting them with rotten
vegetables, shards, and mud. Aderhold stared with a frown, the
countryman with a curious mixture of interest in the event and lumpish
indifference as to the nature of it. “Aye,” he repeated, “the village
of Hawthorn.”
“Is there,” asked Aderhold, “a physician in the village?”
They had passed the prison, and were approaching the sculptured portal
of the great church. “A physician?” said Will. “No. There was one,
but he died two years ago. Now they send here, or the schoolmaster
will bleed at a pinch or give a drench. And sometimes they go—but the
parson would stop that—to old Mother Spuraway.”
They were now full before the great portal of the church. Carthew,
ahead, stopped his horse to speak to some person who seemed an
acquaintance. His halting in the narrow way halted the mules with the
litter. Master Hardwick had fallen into a doze. The physician and
serving-man, standing their horses together, looked up at the huge
pile of the church, towering like a cliff immediately above them. On
each side of the vast arched doorway had stood in niches the figures
of saints. These were broken and gone—dragged down in the day when
the neighbouring abbey was closed. But around and about, overhead and
flanking the cavernous entrance, had been left certain carvings—a
train of them—imps and devils and woe-begone folk possessed by the
foul fiend. The fiend grinned over the shoulder of one like a monkey,
he tugged like a wolf at the ear of another, he crept like a mouse
from a woman’s mouth.... Aderhold’s gaze was upon the great tower
against the sky and the rose-window out of which the stained glass was
not yet broken. But Will looked lower. Something presently causing
the physician to glance his way, he was startled at the serving-man’s
posture and expression. It was as though he had never seen these stone
figures before—and, indeed, it proved that he had never been so
closely within the porch, and that, in short, they had never so caught
his attention. He was staring at them now as though his eyeballs and
all imagination behind them were fastened by invisible wires to the
grotesque and horrible carvings. Into his countenance came a creeping
terror and a kind of fearful exaltation. Aderhold knew the look—he
had seen it before, in France and elsewhere, upon peasant faces and
upon faces that were not those of peasants. It was not an unusual look
in his century. Again, for the millionth time, imagination had been
seized and concentrated upon the Satanic and was creating a universe to
command. Will shivered, then he put his hand to his ear.
“There is nothing there,” said the physician, “but your ear itself.”
“Mice never come out of men’s mouths,” said Will. The physician knew
the voice, too, the dry-throated, rigid-tongued monotone. “The comfort
is that most of the wicked are women.”
“Then take comfort,” said Aderhold, “and come away. Those figures are
but the imagination of men like yourself.”
But Will was not ready to budge. “Twelfth night, I was going through
the fields. They were white with snow. Something black ran across and
howled and snapped at me.”
“A famished wolf,” said Aderhold.
“Aye, it looked like a wolf. But this is what proved it wasn’t,” said
Will. “That night in Hawthorn Forest Jock the forester set a trap. In
the night-time he heard it click down on the wolf and the wolf howl. He
said, says he, ‘I’ve got you now, old demon!’ and went back to sleep.
But at dawn, when he went to the trap, there was blood there and a tuft
of grizzled hair, but nothing else. And so he and his son followed red
spots on the snow—right through the forest and across Town Road. And
on the other side of the road, where the hedge comes down, they lost it
clean—not a drop of blood nor the mark of a paw on the snow. But the
dog they had he ran about, and at last he lifted his head and bayed,
and then he started—And where, sir, do you think he led them? He led
them to the hut of old Marget Primrose between Black Hill and Hawthorn
Brook. And Marget was lying huddled, crying with a bloody cut across
her ankle. And they matched the hair from the trap with the hair under
her cap.”
“They did not match with care,” said Aderhold. “And there are many ways
by which a foot may be hurt.”
“Nay,” said the serving-man, “but when they brought the trap and thrust
her leg in it the marks fitted.” He continued to stare at the stone
wolf tearing the ear. “That’s been four years, and never since have I
been able to abide the sight of a wolf!... Witches and warlocks and
wizards and what they call incubi and succubi and all the demons and
fiends of hell, and Satan above saying, ‘Hist! this one!’ and ‘Hist!
that one!’ and your soul lost and dragged to hell where you will burn
in brimstone, shrieking, and God and the angels mocking you and crying,
‘Burn! Burn forever!’—Nay, an if they do not get your soul, still they
ravage and ruin what you have on earth—blast the fields and dry the
streams, slay cow and sheep and horse, burn your cot and wither your
strength of a man.... Thicker than May flies in the air—all the time
close around you, whether you see them or you don’t see them—monkeys
and wolves and bat wings flapping.... Once something came on my breast
at night—Satan, Satan avaunt!”
Aderhold leaned across, seized the bridle of the other’s horse, and
forcibly turned Will from further contemplation of the sculptured
portal. “Come away, or you will fall down in a fit!”
Carthew ahead was in motion, the mules with the litter following. Will
rode for a few paces with a dazed look which was gradually replaced
by his usual aspect. The red came back into his cheeks, the spring
into his figure. By the time they had reached the bridge he was ready
for something palely resembling a disinterested discussion of the
supernatural.
“Isn’t it true, sir, that witch or warlock, however they’ve been
roaming, must take their own shape when they cross running water?”
“Whatever shape matter takes is its own shape,” said the physician,
“and would be though we saw it in a thousand shapes, one after the
other. I have never seen, nor expect to see, a witch or warlock.”
“Why, where have you travelled, sir?” asked the yeoman bluntly; then,
without waiting for an answer, “They’re hatching thick and thicker
in England, though not so thick as they are in Scotland. In Scotland
they’re very thick. Our new King, they say, does most fearfully hate
them! Parson preached about them not long ago. He said that we’d
presently see a besom used in this kingdom that would sweep such folk
from every corner into the fire! He read from the Bible and it said,
‘Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live!’”
He spoke with considerable cheer, the apple-red back in his cheeks.
“It’s good to feel,” he said, “that they are nearly all women.”
They were trampling across the bridge, on either hand the sparkling
water, above their heads the vivid sky. “They are neither man nor
woman,” said Aderhold. “They are naught. There are no witches.”
He had spoken abstractedly, and more unguardedly than was his wont.
The words were no sooner from his tongue than he felt alarm. They
were not safe words to have spoken, even in such simple company as
this. He looked aside and found that Will was staring, round-eyed. “No
witches?” asked Will slowly. “Parson saith that none but miscreants and
unbelievers—”
“Tell me about your church and parson,” said Aderhold calmly, and,
aided by a stumble of Will’s horse and some question from the litter
behind them, avoided for that time the danger.
They crossed the bridge and left behind the winding river and the
town that climbed to the castle, clear-cut and dark against the
brilliant sky. Before them, lapped in the golden sunshine, spread a
rich landscape. Field and meadow, hill and dale, crystal stream and
tall, hanging woods, it flickered and waved in the gilt light and the
warm, blowing wind. There were many trees by the wayside, and in their
branches a singing and fluttering of birds. The distance shimmered;
here was light and here were violet shadows and everywhere hung the
breath of spring. From a hilltop they saw, some miles away, roofs and
a church tower. “Hawthorn Village,” said Will. “The Oak Grange is two
miles the other side.”
Master Hardwick parted the curtains of the litter and called to the
physician. His heart, he said, was beating too slowly; it frightened
him, he thought it might be going to stop. Aderhold reassured him.
He had a friendly, humorous, strengthening way with his patients;
they brightened beneath his touch, and this old man was no exception.
Master Hardwick was comforted and said that he thought he could sleep
a little more. His lean hand clutched the other’s wrist as he stood
dismounted beside him, litter and mules and Will on the sumpter horse
having all stopped in the lee of a green bank disked with primroses.
Master Hardwick made signs for the physician to stoop. “Eh, kinsman,”
he whispered. “You and I are the only Aderholds in this part of the
world. And you are a good leech—a good leech! Would you stay at the
Oak Grange for your lodging, man? I’ve no money—no money at all—but
I’d _lodge_ you—”
The miles decreased between the cavalcade and the village. Aderhold
was riding now alone, Carthew still ahead, and Will fallen back with
the litter. Looking about him, the physician found something very rich
and fair in the day and the landscape. Not for a long time had he had
such a feeling of health and moving peace, a feeling that contained
neither fever nor exhaustion. There was a sense of clarity, strength,
and fineness; moreover, the scene itself seemed to exhibit something
unusual, to have a strangeness of beauty, a richness, a quality as of a
picture where everything is ordered and heightened. It had come about
before, this certain sudden interfusion, or permeation, or intensity of
realization, when all objects had taken on a depth and glow, lucidity,
beauty, and meaning. The countryside before him was for an appreciable
moment transfigured. He saw it a world very lovely, very rich. It was
noble and good in his eyes—it was the dear Earth as she might always
be.... The glow went as it had come, and there lay before him only a
fair, wooded English countryside, sun and shadow and the April day.
He saw the village clearly now, with a sailing of birds about the
church tower. Carthew, who had kept steadily ahead, occupied apparently
with his own meditations, checked his horse and waited until the other
came up with him, then touched the roan with his whip and he and the
physician went on together.
There was something about this young man that both interested and
repelled. He was good-looking and apparently intelligent. Silence
itself was no bar to liking, often it was quite the reverse. But
Carthew’s was no friendly and flowing quiet. His silence had a harsh
and pent quality. He looked often like a man in a dream, but the dream
had in it no suavity, but appeared to contemplate high and stern and
dreadful things. Aderhold looked instinctively first at a man’s eyes.
Carthew’s eyes were earnest and intolerant. In the lower part of his
face there was something that spoke of passions sunken, covered over,
and weighted down.
The two rode some little distance without speaking, then Carthew opened
his lips abruptly. “How do you like this country?”
“I like it well,” said Aderhold. “It is a fair country.”
“Fair and unfair,” answered the other. “It rests like every other
region under the primal Curse—The old man, back there, has taken a
fancy to you and calls you his kinsman. Do you expect to bide at the
Oak Grange?”
“I think it truth that I am his kinsman,” answered Aderhold. “For the
other—I do not know.”
“He is misliked hereabouts,” said Carthew. “He is old and miserly.
Those who have goods and gear like him not because he will not spend
with them, and those who have none like him not because he gives
nothing. The Oak Grange is a ruinous place.”
The village now opened before them, a considerable cluster of houses,
most of them small and poor, climbing a low hill and spreading over a
bit of meadow. The houses were huddled together, but they enclosed
a village green and here and there rose old trees, or showed a tiny
garden. At the farther end, on the higher ground, the church lifted
itself, dominating. Beyond it ran the highway still. The landscape
was fair, with hill and dale, and to the right, against the horizon,
violet-hued and misty, an old forest.
Aderhold looked somewhat wistfully at the scene before him. He had
passed through much of harm and peril. Body and mind he wanted rest,
quiet routine, for a time some ease. “It looks a place where peace
might be found,” he said.
“Five years ago,” said Carthew, “we had the sweating sickness. Many
died. Then all saw the shadow from the lifted Hand.”
“It is wholesome now?”
“Aye,” answered the other, “until sin and denial again bring bodily
grief.”
Aderhold glanced aside at his companion. The latter was riding with a
stern and elevated countenance, his lips moving slightly. The physician
knew that look no less than he had known the serving-man’s.
“Is it not,” demanded Carthew, “is it not marvellous how the whole
Creation groaneth and travaileth with the knowledge of her doom! How
contemptible and evil is this world! Yet here we are sifted out—and
not the wise man of old, nor the heathen, nor the ignorant, nor the
child in his cradle is excused! Is it not marvellous how, under our
very feet, men and women and babes are burning in hell! How, for
Adam’s sin, all perish save only the baptized believer—and he is saved
in no wise of his own effort and merit, but only of another’s! How God
electeth the very damned—and yet is their guilt no whit the less! Is
it not marvellous!”
“Aye, fabulously marvellous,” said Aderhold.
“The sense of sin!” pursued Carthew. “How it presses hard upon my
heart! The sense of sin!”
Aderhold was silent. He possessed a vivid enough realization of his
many and recurring mistakes and weaknesses, but, in the other’s
meaning, he had no sense of sin.
They came to the village and rode through it, the litter arousing
curiosity, allayed every few yards by Will’s statements. Aderhold
observed the lack of any sympathy with the sick old man, even the
growling note with which some of the people turned aside. There was
the usual village traffic in the crooked street, the small shops and
the doorways. Children were marching with the geese upon the green,
where there was a pond, and near it the village stocks. Housewives,
with tucked-up skirts and with pattens,—for an April shower had made
mire of the ways,—clattered to and fro or sat spinning by window or
door. Many of the men were in the fields, but there were left those
who traded or were mechanic, as well as the aged, sitting, half-awake,
half-asleep, in sunny spots. It was the usual village of the time, poor
enough, far from clean, ignorant and full of talk, and yet not without
its small share of what then counted for human flower and fruition,
nor without promise of the future’s flower and fruition.
They rode by the church, set in dark yews. Almost in its shadow rose
a plain stone house. “Master Thomas Clement, the minister’s,” said
Carthew. “Hawthorn hath a godly and zealous pastor! The town behind us
is all for prelates and vestments and a full half at least of the old
superstitions. But Hawthorn and the country to the north have purged
themselves as far as they safely may.”
Out upon the open road again they saw to the left, back among trees
upon a low hilltop, a large and well-built house. “Carthew House,” said
Carthew, “where I live. But I think that I will ride on with you to the
Oak Grange.”
Presently, leaving the highway, they took a rough and narrow road that
led, first through fields and then through uncultivated country, toward
the great wood that had been for some time visible. “Hawthorn Forest,”
said Carthew. They rode a mile in silence, the wood growing darker and
taller until it reared itself immediately before them. To the right,
at some little distance from the road and almost upon the edge of the
forest, stood a thatch-roofed cottage with a dooryard where, later,
flowers would bloom, and under the eaves a row of beehives. “Heron’s
cottage,” said Carthew. “Old Heron lives there, who in the old times
was clerk to the steward of the castle.”
They entered the wood. It was dark and old, parts of it not having
been cut since Saxon times. Their road, which was now hardly more than
a cart track, crossed but an angle, the Oak Grange lying beyond in open
country. But for some minutes they were sunk in a wilderness of old
trees, with a spongy, leaf-thickened earth beneath the horses’ hoofs.
The sunshine fell shattered through an interlacing of boughs just
beginning to take on a hue of spring. Every vista closed in a vaporous
blue.
A woman was gathering faggots in the wood. As they came nearer she
straightened herself and stood, watching them. She was young and tall,
grey-eyed, and with braided hair the colour of ripe wheat. “Heron’s
daughter,” said Carthew when they had passed. “She should cover her
hair like other women with a cap. It is not seemly to wear it so, in
braids that shine.”
They were presently forth from the forest; before them a stretch of
fields no longer well husbanded, a stream murmuring among stones, a bit
of orchard, and an old, dilapidated dwelling, better than a farm house,
less than a manor house, all crusted with lichen and bunched with ivy.
A little removed stood the huge old granary that had given the place
its name, but it, too, looked forlorn, ruinous, and empty. “The Oak
Grange,” said Carthew. “People say that once it was a great haunt of
elves and fairies, and that they are yet seen of moonlight nights,
dancing around yonder oak. They dance—but every seven years they pay a
tithe of their company to hell.”