The Witch. Mary Johnston
side of Hawthorn village, in a ruined old house, and was a miser. If he had been to London it would be sure to have been about money. And finally there was Squire Carthew’s brother, also from Hawthorn way. He was a fine young man, but very strict and religious. The company wasn’t going to stay—it wished food and hot drink and to go on, wanting to reach the town before night. And here the hostess descended upon the girl and rated her fiercely for an idle, loose-tongue gabbling wench—
Aderhold, rested, rose from the settle and went into the greater room. Here were the seven or eight principal travellers—the serving-men being without, busy with the riding and sumpter horses. All in the room were cold, demanding warmth and drink,—peremptory, authoritative, well-to-do burghers of a town too large for village manners and not large enough for a wide urbanity. In a corner, on a bed made of a bench and stool, with a furred mantle for cover, lay a lean old man with a grey beard. He was breathing thick and hard, and now and again he gave a deep groan. A young serving-man stood beside him, but with a dull and helpless aspect toward sickness. Across the room, standing by a window, appeared a man of a type unlike the others in the room. Tall and well-made, he had a handsome face, but with a strange expression as of warring elements. There showed a suppressed passionateness, and there showed a growing austerity. His dress was good, but dark and plain. He was booted and cloaked, and his hat which he kept upon his head was plain and wide-brimmed. Aderhold, glancing toward him, saw, he thought, one of the lesser gentry, with strong Puritan leanings. This would be “Squire Carthew’s brother.”
As he looked, the serving-man left the greybeard stretched upon the bench, went across to the window, and, cap in hand, spoke a few words. The man addressed listened, then strode over to the chimney-corner and stood towering above the sick man. “Are you so ill, Master Hardwick? Bear up, until you can reach the town and a leech!”
Aderhold, who had not left the doorway, moved farther into the room. Full in the middle of it, a man who had had his back to him swung around. He encountered one whom he had encountered before—to wit, the red and blue bully of the Cap and Bells. Master Anthony Mull did not at first recognize him. He was blustering against the host of the Rose because there was no pasty in the house. The physician would fain have slipped past, but the other suddenly gave a start and put out a pouncing hand. “Ha, I know you! You’re the black sorcerer and devil’s friend at the Cap and Bells who turned a book into a bowl of sack!”
He had a great hectoring voice. The travellers in the room, all except the group in the corner, turned their heads and stared. Aderhold, attempting to pass, made a gesture of denial and repulsion. “Ha! Look at him!” cried Master Anthony Mull. “He makes astrologer’s signs—warlock’s signs! Look if he doesn’t bring a fiend’s own storm upon us ere we get to town!”
Very quiet, kindly, not easily angered, Aderhold could feel white wrath rise within him. He felt it now—felt a hatred of the red and blue man. The most of those in the room were listening. It came to him with bitterness that this bully and liar with his handful of idle words might be making it difficult for him to tarry, to fall into place if any place invited, in the town ahead. He had had some such idea. They said it was a fair town, with some learning....
He clenched his hands and pressed his lips together. To answer in words was alike futile and dangerous; instead, with a shake of the head, he pushed by the red and blue man. The other might have followed and continued the baiting, but some further and unexpected dilatoriness exhibited by the Rose Tavern fanned his temper into conflagration. He joined the more peppery of the merchants in a general denouncement and prophecy of midnight ere they reached the town. Aderhold, as far from him as he could get, put under the surge of anger and alarm. He stood debating within himself the propriety of leaving the inn at once, before Master Mull could make further mischief. The cold twilight and the empty road without were to be preferred to accusations, in this age, of any difference in plane.
The sick man near him gave a deep groan, struggled to a sitting posture, then fell to one side in a fit or swoon, his head striking against the wall. The young serving-man uttered an exclamation of distress and helplessness. The man with the plain hat, who had turned away, wheeled and came back with knitted brows. There was some commotion in the room among those who had noticed the matter, but yet no great amount. The old man seemed unknown to some and to others known unfavourably.
Aderhold crossed to the bench and bending over the sufferer proceeded to loosen his ruff and shirt. “Give him air,” he said, and then to the tall man, “I am a physician.”
They laid Master Hardwick upon a bed in an inner room, where, Aderhold doing for him what he might, he presently revived. He stared about him. “Where am I? Am I at the Oak Grange? I thought I was on the road from London. Where is Will, my man?”
“He is without,” said Aderhold. “Do you want him? I am a physician.”
Master Hardwick lay and stared at him. “No, no! You are a leech? Stay with me.... Am I going to die?”
“No. But you do not well to travel too far abroad nor to place yourself where you will meet great fatigues.”
The other groaned. “It was this one only time. I had monies at stake and none to straighten matters out but myself.” He lay for a time with closed eyes, then opened them again upon Aderhold. “I must get on—I must get home—I must get at least as far as the town to-night. Don’t you think that I can travel?”
“Yes, if you go carefully,” said Aderhold. “I will tell your man what to do—”
The old man groaned. “He works well at what he knows, but he knows so little.... I do not know if I will get home alive.”
“How far beyond the town have you to go?”
“Eight miles and more.... Doctor, are you not travelling, too? You’ve done me good—and if I were taken again—” He groaned. “I’m a poor man,—they make a great mistake when they say I’m rich,—but if you’ll ride with me I’ll pay somehow—”
Aderhold sat in silence, revolving the matter in his mind. “I have,” he said at last, “no horse.”
But Master Hardwick had with him a sumpter horse. “Will can now ride that and now walk. You may have Will’s horse.” He saw the long miles, cold and dark, before him and grew eager. “I’m a sick man and I must get home.” He raised himself upon the bed. “You go with me—you’ve got a kindly look—you do not seem strange to me. What is your name?”
“My name is Gilbert Aderhold.”
“Aderhold!” said Master Hardwick. “My mother’s mother was an Aderhold.”
CHAPTER V
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.