HERON’S COTTAGE
IT was early spring again, and on the fruit trees pale emerald buds
of yet unfolded leaves. The blackbirds came in flocks to the ploughed
fields. But this year there were many fields that were not ploughed;
dead men could not plough, nor those who had been to death’s door and
were coming halting, halting back.
Joan sat in her kitchen, on a low stool by the hearth. The room was
clean, with shafts of sunlight slanting in. But her wheel was pushed
back into a corner, and there lacked other signs of industry. She sat
still and listless, bent over, her cheek resting upon her knees, and
with her forefinger she made idle marks and letters in the ashes. The
fire was smouldering out, the place seemed deadly still.
There came a knock upon the door. She raised her head, and sat with a
frozen look, listening. After a minute the knock was repeated. Rising,
she moved noiselessly across the floor to the window, and, standing
so that she could not be seen, looked out. The rigour passed from her
face; she drew a breath of relief and went and opened the door.
The sunshine flooded in and in the midst of it stood Aderhold. He
looked at her quietly and kindly. “I came again but to see if you were
well and lacked naught.”
“I lack naught, thank you, sir,” said Joan. “And I am well—O me, O me,
I would that it had taken me, too! O father, father!”
She leaned against the wall, shaken with dry sobs. The fit did not
last; she was resolute enough. She straightened herself. “I’ve done
what you told me to. Yesterday I washed and cleaned and let the sun in
everywhere, and burned in the room the powder you gave me. Everything
is clean—and lonely. No, I don’t feel badly anywhere. I feel terribly
strong, as though I would live to be an old woman.... I miss father—I
miss father!”
“It looks so clean and bright,” said Aderhold, “and your cat purring
there on the hearth. Your father went very quickly, and without much
suffering. His presence will come back to you, and you will take
comfort in it. You will feel it in this room, and upon this doorstep,
and out here among the fruit trees, and under the stars at night.”
“Aye,” said Joan, “I think it too. But now—” She stood beside him on
the doorstep, looking out past the budding trees to the gate and the
misty green twisted path that led at last to the village road. Overhead
drove a fleecy drift of clouds with islands of blue. “All last night
the countryside mourned low and wailed. It was the wind, but I knew it
was the other too! It is sad for miles and miles to be so woeful.”
“The sickness is greatly lessening. By the time the spring is strongly
here it will be over and Hawthorn beginning to forget.—You have been
here now three days alone. Has no one come to enquire or help?”
“Mother Spuraway from beyond the mill-race came. No one else.”
“In a time like this all fear all. But presently friends will find out
friends again.”
“It is not that way that I am lonely,” said Joan. “There are some that
I care not if they never come.”
He had his round to go. The sickness in the town dwindling, he had
come back, when it broke over Hawthorn, to the Oak Grange. Since then
he had gone far and near, wherever it struck down the poorer sort. As
he turned from the cottage door, Joan stepped, too, upon the flagged
path, and they moved side by side toward the gate, between the lines
of green lance-heads the daffodils were thrusting above the soil. They
moved in silence, almost of a height, two simply, almost poorly dressed
figures, each with its load of sorrow and care for the morrow. And yet
they were not old, and about them was the low ecstatic murmur of winter
swiftening into spring.
“Do you remember,” asked Aderhold, “that day when we chanced to meet in
the forest and Master Harry Carthew came upon us?”
“Aye,” said Joan, “I remember.”
“Since then we have neither met nor spoken together until last week
when your father was stricken and you watched for me coming from the
village.—And now to-day I come only for this moment and will come no
more.—Have you no close friends nor kindred?”
“They are buried with father.... I mean to stay on here and spin flax
and keep myself. And if—I mean to stay.” Her hand went out to touch
the eglantine growing by the beehives. “I love it and I mean to stay.”
Aderhold looked beyond at the wavy green path and the massed trees of
the forest. He, too, loved this country. He had thought much here—once
or twice the light had shone through. But he was ready now to go. Just
as soon as there was no more sick, just as soon as the plague was gone,
he meant to steal from the Oak Grange and Hawthorn countryside. He and
Joan came to the little gate, and he went out of it, then turning for
a moment looked back at the thatched cottage, the pleasant beehives,
the fruit trees that ere long would put forth a mist of bloom. Joan
stood with a sorrowful face, but grey-eyed, vital. Her hand rested
upon the worn wood. He laid his own upon it, lightly, for one moment.
“Good-bye,” he said, “Mistress Friendly-Soul!”
She stood in the pale sunshine until he was gone from sight, then
turned and went back to her kitchen. She must bake bread; there was
nothing for her to eat in the cottage. She must get water from the
well. She took her well-bucket, went forth and brought it back
brimming. From the faggot pile she fed the fire, then brought to the
table coarse flour and other matters for the bread, mixed and worked,
moulded and set to bake. And all the time she tried to feel that her
father was sitting there, in the settle corner. She made the table
clear again, then looked at her wheel. But she did not feel like
spinning; her heart was burdened again; she sat down on the stool by
the fire and bowed her head in her arms. “Day after day and day after
day,” she said; “day after day and day after day.” She rocked herself.
“And a powerful man that I hate to come again and yet again to trouble
me, and father not here.... Day after day and day after day.... And
I know not why it is, but I have no friends. They’ve turned against
me, and I know not why.... Day after day—” She sat with buried head
and rocked herself slowly to and fro. Save for the youth in her form
and the thick, pale bronze of her braided hair, she might have seemed
Mother Spuraway, or Marget Primrose, or any other old and desolate
woman. She rocked herself, and the faggot burned apart, and the cat
stretched itself in the warmth.
From outside the cottage came a thin calling. “_Joan! Joan! Oh, Joan!_”
Joan lifted her head, listened a moment, then rose and opened the
door. “_Joan! Joan! Oh, Joan!_” She stepped without and saw who it
was,—Alison Inch and Cecily Lukin calling to her from the green path
well beyond the gate. They would come at first no nearer. The plague
had struck in the Lukin cottage no less than in Heron’s, and for weeks
it had closely neighboured Alison Inch and her mother. But Joan must
be made to feel comrades’ terror of her. “Joan! Joan! Have you got it
yet?—We want but to see if you’re living!”
With a gesture of anger Joan turned to reënter the cottage.
But Alison did not wish that. “Joan! Joan! We were laughing. We’re not
afraid if you don’t come very close.—I’ve got something to tell you.
See! I’m not afraid.”
Alison came to the gate, Cecily with her. Joan no longer liked Alison,
and with Cecily she had never had much acquaintance. But they were
women and young, and the loneliness was terrible about her. She went
halfway up the path toward them. The grey and white cat came from the
cottage and followed her.
Alison regarded her with a thin, flushed, shrewish face and an
expression lifted, enlarged, and darkened beyond what might have seemed
possible to her nature. But Alison had drunk deep from an acrid spring
that drew in turn from a deep, perpetual fount. She spoke in a thin and
cutting voice. “Watching and weeping haven’t taken the rose away.—What
are you going to do now, Joan?”
“I do not think,” said Joan, “that it is necessary to tell thee.” She
looked past her to Cecily. “They say your sister died. I am sorry.”
But Alison had put poison into Cecily’s mind. “Yes, she died. They do
say that you would not be sorry if more of us died. Why people like you
and—and Mother Spuraway should wish harm to us others—”
“What are you talking of?” said Joan. “I wish no harm to any—”
Cecily was an impish small piece with no especial evil in her save a
teasing devil. “Oh, they say that you and a black man understand each
other! Some boys told me—”
“Nay, that’s naught, Cis!” said Alison impatiently. She came closer to
the gate, and Joan, as though drawn against her will, approached from
her side. “Joan—nay, don’t come any nearer, Joan—”
“Yes?”
“There’s one ill at the squire’s house. Ah!” cried Alison. “Do you look
joyful?”
“No—no!” stammered Joan.
Taken by surprise, shaken and unstable as she was to-day, she gave
back a step, lifted her hands to her forehead. As for Alison—Alison
had not expected Joan to look joyful. She had spoken, burning her own
heart, to make Joan feel the hot iron, knowing that the pang she gave
would not be lasting, for truly it was but one of the maidservants at
the great house that was stricken and not that person of overshadowing
importance. She had believed with all her heart that it would smite
Joan to the heart until she told her true—and now there had been in
her face an awful joy, though at once it had shrunk back and something
piteous had come instead. But it was the first look with which Alison
was concerned. There went through her a keen hope like a knife-blade.
Perhaps he no longer liked Joan!—perhaps that made Joan angry, hurting
her vanity—so, perhaps she would have liked to hear that he was sick
of the plague! Alison stood astare, revolving Joan’s look.
Cecily, who had never come before so close to Heron’s cottage, gazed
about her. “And Katherine Scott says there’s something ‘no canny’ about
the bees in your beehives. She says she had them while you were away to
the castle, and they did naught for her and made, besides, her own bees
idle and sick. But she says they make honey for you, great combs of
it—”
“There is none that is sick at the squire’s house,” said Alison in a
strange voice, “but Agnes, Madam Carthew’s woman. They’ve taken her
from the house and put her in a room by the stable, and the family goes
freely forth.—Why did you look as you were glad, Joan?”
“If I did, God forgive me!” said Joan. “In the deep of me there is no
ill-wishing.—Presently, the leech says, it will be all safe here, as,
indeed, it’s clean and sun-washed and safe to-day. Then I hope you’ll
both come to see me—”
Cecily gave a gibing, elfin laugh. “Are you going to live here all
alone—like a witch?”
The grey and white cat had advanced beyond Joan and now stood upon the
sunny path between the daffodil points. What happened none of the three
saw; perhaps a dog crossed the track behind the two visitors, perhaps
the creature recognized human hostility—be that as it may, the cat
suddenly arched its back, its hair rose, its mouth opened.
“Ah-h!” cried Cecily. “Look at her cat!”
A curious inspiration, not of light, passed like a cloud-shadow
over Alison’s face. “It doesn’t like what you said, Cis! It’s her
familiar.—Come away! We’d best be going.”
They turned. Lightning came against them from Joan’s grey eyes. “Yes,
go! And come not here again! Do you hear?—Come not here again!” Her
voice followed them up the green path. “Come not here again—”
The next day she went to get wood from the edge of the forest. She
had gathered her load of faggots, and was sitting upon them, resting,
in her hand a fallen bird’s nest, when Will the smith’s son happened
that way. The two had known each other to speak to in a friendly way
for many a year; it used to be that, coming or going from the Grange,
he might at any time stop for a minute before the cottage for a crack
with old Heron and maybe with Joan herself. That time had come to an
end with Joan and her father’s going to the castle; when they came back
he had been, as it were, afraid of new graces and manners. Moreover,
old Master Hardwick had presently died, and so Will left the employment
of the Grange and had little need any more to come and go by Hawthorn
Forest. It might be that, save at church, they had not seen each other
for months. Moreover, he had been away to the nearest port.
Now he greeted her with friendliness and an honest-awkward speech
of sorrow for old Heron’s death. “He was a good man and, fegs! so
learned!—Am sorry for thee, Joan. And what will’t do now?”
Joan turned the grey and empty nest in her hands. “I do not know,” she
said drearily; then, with a backward fling of her shoulders and a lift
of courage, “The cottage’s mine. And I always sell the flax I spin.
I’ll bide and spin and keep the place.”
Will shook his head compassionately. “A lass like thou—! In no time
thou’dst be talked of and called ill names. Either thou must take
service or marry—”
Joan turned upon him heavy-lidded grey orbs. “Why should I marry or be
a serving-woman if I wish neither, and can keep myself?—Oh, I like not
the way we’ve made this world!” She turned the nest again. “This thing
of ill names—Well, ill names do not kill.”
Will stood, biting a piece of thorn. “You’d see how it would turn out.
No one would believe—”
He looked at her with rustic meditativeness. He was slow and
country-living; he had no great acquaintance with Alison or Cecily,
and it had never occurred to him to mark Master Harry Carthew, where
the squire’s brother rode or whom his looks pursued. He had heard of
the vintner in the town, and had dimly supposed that Joan would marry
him, or maybe the new huntsman or some other fine-feathered person at
the castle. But now the plague had swept the town, and the vintner
might be of those taken—and here was old Heron gone. He looked at her
again, and the hand that held the piece of thorn against his lips began
to shake a little. It occurred to him more strongly than it had done
before that she was a fair woman—and then, Heron’s cottage. There was
a tiny plot of ground, the cow, some poultry. As things went, she had
a good dowry. Will the smith’s son might go farther and fare worse.
It was not the right time, all Hawthorn being so gloomy and everybody
afraid, and his own heart knocking at times against his side with
fear. But it wouldn’t hurt just to drop a hint. He moistened his lips.
“Joan,” he said; “Joan—”
And then, by the perversity of her fortune, Joan herself shook him from
this base. She lifted sombre eyes, still turning the little grey nest
about in her hands. “Why do you think we had the plague? The minister
preached that it was sent against the town for its false doctrine, and
we gave thanks that we were not as the town.... And then in a little
while it was upon us, and my father, who was a good man, took it and
died....”
Gloom that had lifted this bright afternoon on the forest edge settled
again. Will the smith’s son had a strong taste for the supernatural,
all the emotional in him finding that vent. It could grow to light up
with strange lightnings and transform every humdrum corner of his mind.
He liked to discuss these matters and feel a wind of terror prick his
temples cold. He spoke oracularly, having, indeed, listened to talk at
the sexton’s the night before. “There’s always an Evil Agent behind any
pest, or a comet or a storm that wrecks ships or blows down chimneys.
At times God uses the Evil Agent to punish the presumptuous with—as
He might give Satan leave to spot with plague the town over yonder,
seeing that if it could it would have the old mass-priests back! And at
other times He gives the Evil Agent leave to prick and try his chosen
people that they may turn like a wauling babe and cling the closer to
Him. And again there may be one patch of weed in the good corn and
Satan couching and holding his Sabbat there. In which case God will
send plagues of Egypt, one after the other, until every soul wearing
the Devil’s livery is haled forth.—Now,” said Will, and he laid it
off with the sprig of thorn, “Hawthorn is for the pure faith of the
Holy Scriptures, so we haven’t the plague for the reason the town hath
it.—Again, put case that so we’re to love the Lord the more. Now
Hawthorn and all to the north of it is known for religion. I’ve been
a traveller,” said Will with unction, “and I know how we’re looked
on, clear from here to the sea, and held up to the ungodly! Master
Clement’s got a name that sounds to the wicked like the trump of doom
and Master Harry Carthew isn’t far behind him—What did you say?”
“I said naught,” said Joan.
Will closed his exposition. “Now it may be that God wisheth to prick
up Hawthorn to fresh zeal, and, indeed, the sexton holds that it is so
that Master Clement interprets the matter. But it seemed to me and the
tinker, who was there talking, too, that the third case is the likelier
and that there are some ill folk among us!” Will dropped the bit of
thorn. “It’s the more likely because there’s another kind of mischief
going around and growing as the plague dies off. I know myself of three
plough-horses gone lame in one night, and Hodgson’s cow dying without
rhyme or reason, and a child at North-End Farm falling into fits and
talking of a dog that runs in and out of the room, but no one else can
see it. The tinker”—Will spoke with energy—“the tinker has come not
long since over the border from Scotland. He says that if Hawthorn was
Scotland we’d have had old Mother Spuraway and maybe others in the
pennywinkis and the caschielawis before this!”
Joan rose and lifted her bundle of faggots to her shoulders. The grey
bird-nest she set between two boughs of the thorn tree. “What are the
pennywinkis and the caschielawis?”
“The one’s your thumbscrew,” said Will, “and the other’s a hollow iron
case where they set your leg and build a fire beneath.”
Joan turned her face toward the cottage. Her old acquaintance walked
beside her. It was afternoon and there was over everything a tender,
flickering, charming light. It made the new grass emerald, of the
misting trees veil on veil of soft, smiling magic. Primroses and
violets bloomed as though dropped from immortal hands. The blue vault
of air rose height on height and so serene and kind....
Joan spoke in a smothered voice. “I would believe in a good God.”
The young countryman beside her had gone on in mind with the tinker and
his talk. “What did you say, Joan?”
“I said naught,” said Joan.