“thine eye is on thy wandering sheep;
thou knowest where they are, and thou wilt keep
and bring them home.”
hetty bowman.
“so you’ve really come back at last! well, i did wonder what you’d gone after! such lots of folks have asked me—old turguia, and franna, and aunt isel, and derette—leastwise leuesa—and ever such a lot: and i couldn’t tell ne’er a one of them a single word about it.”
anania spoke in the tone of an injured woman, defrauded of her rights by the malice prepense of stephen.
“well,” said stephen calmly, “you may tell them all that i went after my own business; and if any of them thinks that’s what a man shouldn’t do, she can come and tell me so.”
“well, to be sure! but what business could you have to carry you out of the town for such a time, and nobody to know a word about it? tell me that, if you please.”
“don’t you tell her nought!” said osbert in the chimney-corner. “if you went to buy a new coat, she’ll want to know where the money was minted, and who sheared the sheep.”
“i’ll finish my pie first, i think,” answered stephen, “for i am rather too hungry for talk; and i dare say she’ll take no harm by that.”
he added, in mental reservation,—“and meantime i can be thinking what to say.”
“oh, you never want to know nought!” exclaimed anania derisively. “turguia, she said you were gone after rabbits—as if any man in his senses would do that in the snow: and aunt isel thought you were off on a holiday; and franna was certain sure you were gone a-courting.”
stephen laughed to himself, but made no other reply.
“baint you a-going to tell me, now?” demanded anania.
“aunt isel wasn’t so far out,” said stephen, helping himself to a second wedge of pie.
“and franna?”
anania was really concerned on that point. she found stephen very useful, and his wages, most of which he gave her, more than paid for his board. if he were to marry and set up house for himself, it would deprive her of the means to obtain sundry fashionable frivolities wherein her soul delighted. stephen was quite aware of these facts, which put an amusing edge on his determination to keep the truth from the inquisitive gossip.
“franna?” he repeated. “did you say she thought i’d gone after squirrels? because i’ve brought ne’er a one.”
“no, stupid! she said you’d gone a-courting, and i want to know who.”
“you must ask franna that, not me. i did not say so.”
“you’ll say nothing, and that’s the worst of signs. when folks won’t answer a reasonable question, ten to one they’ve been in some mischief.”
“i haven’t finished the pie.”
“much you’ll tell me when you have!”
“oh, i’ll answer any reasonable question,” said stephen, with a slight emphasis on the adjective.
osbert laughed, and anania was more vexed than ever.
“you’re a pair!” said he.
“now, look you here! i’ll have an answer, if i stand here while christmas; and you sha’n’t have another bite till you’ve given it. did you go a-courting?”
as anania had laid violent hands on the pie, which she held out of his grasp, and as stephen had no desire to get into a genuine quarrel with her, he was obliged to make some reply.
“will you give me back the pie, if i tell you?”
“yes, i will.”
“then, i’d no such notion in my head. let’s have the pie.”
“when?” anania still withheld the pie.
“when what?”
“when hadn’t you such a notion? when you set forth, or when you came back?”
“eat thy supper, lad, and let them buzzing things be!” said osbert. “there’ll never be no end to it, and thou mayest as well shut the portcullis first as last.”
“them’s my thoughts too,” said stephen.
“then you sha’n’t have another mouthful.”
“nay, you’re off your bargain. i answered the question, i’m sure.”
“you’ve been after some’at ill, as i’m a living woman! you’d have told me fast enough if you hadn’t. there’s the pie,”—anania set it up on a high shelf—“take it down if you dare!”
“i’ve no wish to quarrel with you, sister. i’ll go and finish my supper at aunt isel’s—they’ll give me some’at there, i know.”
“anania, don’t be such a goose!” said osbert.
“don’t you meddle, or you’ll get what you mayn’t like!” was the conjugal answer.
osbert rose and took down a switch from its hook on the wall.
“you’ll get it first, my lady!” said he: and stephen, who never had any fancy for quarrelling, and was wont to leave the house when such not unfrequent scenes occurred, shut the door on the ill-matched pair, and went off to kepeharme lane.
“stephen, is it? good even, lad. i’m fain to see thee back. art only just come?”
“long enough to eat half a supper, and for anania to get into more than half a temper,” said stephen, laughing. “i’m come to see, aunt, if you’ll give me another half.”
“that i will, lad, and kindly welcome. what will thou have? i’ve a fat fish pie and some cold pork and beans.”
“let’s have the pork and beans, for i’ve been eating pie up yonder.”
“good, and i’ll put some apples down to roast. hast thou enjoyed thy holiday?”
“ay, middling, thank you, if it hadn’t been so cold.”
“it’s a desperate cold winter!” said isel, with a sigh, which stephen felt certain was breathed to the memory of the germans. “i never remember a worse.”
“i’m afraid you feel lonely, aunt.”
“ay, lonely enough, the saints know!”
“why doesn’t haimet wed, and bring you a daughter to help you? mabel’s a bit too grand, i reckon.”
“mabel thinks a deal of herself, that’s true. well. i don’t know. one’s not another, stephen.”
“i’ll not gainsay you, aunt isel. but mayn’t ‘another’ be better than none? leastwise, some others,”—as a recollection of his amiable sister-in-law crossed his mind.
“i don’t know, stephen. sometimes that hangs on the ‘one.’ you’ll think it unnatural in me, lad, but i don’t miss flemild nor derette as i do ermine.”
“bless you, dear old thing!” said stephen in his heart.
“o stephen, lad, i believe you’ve a kind heart; you’ve shown it in a many little ways. do let me speak to you of them now and again! your uncle won’t have me say a word, and sometimes i feel as if i should burst. i don’t believe you’d tell on me, if i did, and it would relieve me like, if i could let it out to somebody.”
“catch me at it!” said stephen significantly. “you say what you’ve a mind, aunt isel: i’m as safe as the king’s treasury.”
“well, lad, do you think they’re all gone—every one?”
“i’m afraid there’s no hope for the most of them, aunt,” said stephen in a low voice.
“then you do think there might—?”
“one, perhaps, or two—ay, there might be, that had got taken in somewhere. i can’t say it isn’t just possible. but folks would be afraid of helping them, mostly.”
“ay, i suppose they would,” said isel sorrowfully.
stephen ate in silence, sorely tempted to tell her what he knew. had the danger been for himself only, and not for ermine, he thought he should certainly have braved it.
“well!” said isel at last, as she stood by the fire, giving frequent twirls to the string which held the apples. “maybe the good lord is more merciful than men. they haven’t much mercy.”
“hold you there!” said stephen.
“now why shouldn’t we?—we that are all sinners, and all want forgiving? we might be a bit kinder to one another, if we tried.”
“some folks might. i’m not sure you could, aunt isel.”
“eh, lad, i’m as bad a sinner as other folks. i do pray to be forgiven many a time.”
“maybe that’s a good help to forgiving,” said stephen.
“so you’re back from your holiday?” said haimet, coming in, and flinging his felt hat on one of the shelves. “well, where did you go?”
“oh, round-about,” replied stephen, taking his last mouthful of beans.
“did you go banbury way?”
“no, t’other way,” answered stephen, without indicating which other way.
“weather sharp, wasn’t it?”
“ay, sharp enough. it’s like to be a hard winter.—well, aunt, i’m much obliged to you. i reckon i’d best be turning home now.”
“weather rather sharp there too, perhaps?” suggested haimet jocosely.
“ay, there’s been a bit of a storm since i got back. i came here to get out of it. i’m a fair-weather-lover, as you know.”
stephen went home by a round-about way, for he took saint john’s anchorhold in the route. he scarcely knew why he did it; he had an idea that the sight of derette would be an agreeable diversion of his thoughts. too deep down to be thoroughly realised, was a vague association of her with ermine, whose chief friend in the family she had been.
derette came to the casement as soon as she heard from leuesa who was there.
“good evening, stephen!” she said cordially. “leuesa, my maid, while i chat a minute with my cousin, prithee tie on thine hood and run for a cheese. i forgot it with the other marketing this morrow. what are cheeses now? a halfpenny each?”
“three a penny, lady, they were yesterday.”
“very good; bring a pennyworth, and here is the money.”
as soon as leuesa was out of hearing, derette turned to stephen with a changed expression on her face.
“stephen!” she said, in a low whisper, “you have been to see after them. tell me what you found.”
“i never said nought o’ the sort,” answered stephen, rather staggered by his cousin’s penetration and directness.
“maybe your heart said it to mine. you may trust me, stephen. i would rather let out my life-blood than any secret which would injure them.”
“well, you’re not far wrong, derette. gerard and agnes are gone; they lie under the snow. so does adelheid; but berthold was not buried; i reckon he was one of the last. i cannot find rudolph.”
“you have told me all but the one thing my heart yearns to know. ermine?”
stephen made no reply.
“you have found her!” said derette. “don’t tell me where. it is enough, if she lives. keep silence.”
“some folks are hard that you’d have looked to find soft,” answered stephen, with apparent irrelevance; “and by times folk turn as soft as butter that you’d expect to be as hard as stones.”
derette laid up the remark in her mind for future consideration.
“folks baint all bad that other folks call ill names,” he observed further.
derette gave a little nod. she was satisfied that ermine had found a refuge, and with some unlikely person.
“wind’s chopped round since morning, seems to me,” pursued stephen, as if he had nothing particular to say. “blew on my back as i came up to the gate.”
another nod from derette. she understood that ermine’s refuge lay south of oxford.
“have you seen flemild?” she asked. “she has sprained her wrist sadly, and cannot use her hand.”
“now just you tell her,” answered stephen, with a significant wink, “i’ve heard say the white witch of bensington makes wonderful cures with marsh-mallows poultice: maybe it would ease her.”
“i’ll let her know, be sure,” said derette: and stephen took his leave as leuesa returned with her purchase.
he had told her nothing about ermine: he had told her every thing. derette thanked god for the—apparently causeless—impulse to mention her sister’s accident, which had just given stephen the opportunity to utter the last and most important item. not the slightest doubt disturbed her mind that ermine was in the keeping of the white witch of bensington, and that stephen was satisfied of the wise woman’s kind treatment and good faith. she was sorry for gerhardt and agnes; but she had loved ermine best of all. as for rudolph, if ermine were safe, why should he not be likewise? derette’s was a hopeful nature, not given to look on the dark side of any thing which had a light one: a tone of mind which, as has been well said, is worth a thousand a year to its possessor.
leuesa returned full of excitement. a wolf had been killed only three miles from the city, and the earl had paid the sportsman fourpence for its head, which was to be sent up to the king—the highest price ever given for a wolf’s head in that county. the popular idea that edgar exterminated all the wolves in england is an error. henry second paid tenpence for three wolves’ heads (pipe roll, 13 henry second), and henry third’s state papers speak of “hares, wolves, and cats,” in the royal forests (close roll, 38 henry third).
the days went on, and stephen received no summons to the wise woman’s hut. he found it very hard to keep away. if he could only have known that all was going on right! but weeks and months passed by, and all was silence. stephen almost made up his mind to brave the witch’s anger, and go without bidding. yet there would be danger in that, for anania, who had been piqued by his parrying of her queries, watched him as a cat watches a mouse.
he was coming home, one evening in early summer, having been on guard all day at the east gate, when, as he passed the end of snydyard (now oriel) street, a small child of three or four years old toddled up to him, and said—
“there! take it.”
stephen, who had a liking for little toddlers, held out his hand with a smile; and grew suddenly grave when there was deposited in it a ball of grey wool.
“who gave thee this?”
“old man—down there—said, ‘give it that man with the brown hat,’” was the answer.
stephen thanked the child, threw it a sweetmeat, with which his pocket was generally provided, and ran after the old man, whom he overtook at the end of the street.
“what mean you by this?” he asked.
the old man looked up blankly.
“i know not,” said he. “i was to take it to stephen the watchdog,—that’s all i know.”
“tell me who gave it you, then?”
“i can’t tell you—a woman i didn’t know.”
“where?”
“a bit this side o’ dorchester.”
“that’ll do. thank you.”
the ball was safely stored in stephen’s pocket, and he hastened to the castle. at the gate he met his brother.
“here’s a pretty mess!” said osbert. “there’s orme of the fen run off, because i gave him a scolding for his impudence: and it is his turn to watch to-night. i have not a minute to go after him; i don’t know whatever to do.”
stephen grasped the opportunity.
“i’ll go after him for you, if you’ll get me leave for a couple of days or more. i have a bit of business of my own i want to see to, and i can manage both at once—only don’t tell anania of it, or she’ll worry the life out of me.”
osbert laughed.
“make your mind easy!” said he. “go in and get you ready, lad, and i’ll see to get you the leave.”
stephen turned into the castle, to fetch his cloak and make up a parcel of provisions, while osbert went to the earl, returning in a few minutes with leave of absence for stephen. to the great satisfaction of the latter, anania was not at home; so he plundered her larder, and set off, leaving osbert to make his excuses, and to tell her just as much, or as little, as he found convenient. stephen was sorely tempted to go first to bensington, but he knew that both principle and policy directed the previous search for orme. he found that exemplary gentleman, after an hour’s search, drinking and gambling in a low ale-booth outside south gate; and having first pumped on him to get him sober, he sent him off to his work with a lecture. then, going a little way down grandpont street, he turned across presthey, and coming out below saint edmund’s well, took the road to bensington.
the journey was accomplished in much shorter time than on the previous occasion. as stephen came up to the witch’s hut, he heard the sound of a low, monotonous voice; and being untroubled, at that period of the world’s history, by any idea that eavesdropping was a dishonourable employment, he immediately applied his ear to the keyhole. to his great satisfaction, he recognised ermine’s voice. the words were these:—
“‘i confess to thee, father, lord of heaven and earth, that thou hiddest these things from the wise and prudent, and revealedst them unto little children. even so, father; for this was well-pleasing before thee. all things are to me delivered from my father; and none knoweth the son save the father; neither the father doth any know, save the son, and he to whom the son is willing to reveal him. come unto me, all ye that labour and are burdened, and i will refresh you. take my yoke upon you, and learn of me, for i am meek and lowly of heart; and ye shall find rest unto your souls.’”
“did he say that, now, dearie?” asked the voice of the white witch. “eh, it sounds good—it does so! i’m burdened, saints knows; i’d like to find a bit o’ rest and refreshing. life’s a heavy burden, and sin’s a heavier; and there’s a many things i see are sins now, that i never did afore you came. but how am i to know that he’s willing?”
“won’t you come and see, mother?” said ermine softly.
“husht! bide a bit, my dear: there’s a little sound at the door as i don’t rightly understand. maybe—”
in another moment the wicket opened, and haldane’s face looked out upon stephen.
“good evening, mother!” said stephen, holding up the ball of grey wool.
“ay, you got it, did you? come in—you’re welcome.”
“i hope i am,” replied stephen, going forward. ermine was no longer hidden behind the screen, but seated on the form in the chimney-corner. on her calm fair brow there was no scar visible.
“ay, ain’t she a fine cure!” cried the old woman. “that’s white mallows, that is, and just a pinch of—well, i’d best tell no tales. but she’s a grand cure; i don’t hide her up now. nobody’d ever guess nought, from the look of her, now, would folks? what think you?”
“no, i hope they wouldn’t,” answered stephen: “leastwise they sha’n’t if i can help it.”
haldane laid her hand on his arm impressively.
“stephen, you must take her away.”
“i’ll take her fast enough, if she’ll go, mother; but why? i reckoned she was as safe here as she could be anywhere.”
“she was,” said haldane significantly. “she won’t be, presently. i don’t tell my secrets: but the wise woman knows a thing or two. you’d best take her, and waste no time: but it must not be to oxford. there’s folks there would know her face.”
“ay, to be sure there are. well, mother, i’ll do your bidding. where’ll she be safest?”
“you’d best be in london. it’s the biggest place. and when a man wants to hide, he’ll do it better in a large town than a little place, where every body knows his neighbour’s business.”
“all right!” said stephen. “ermine!”—and he went up to her—“will you go with me?”
ermine lived in an age when it was a most extraordinary occurrence for a woman to have any power to dispose of herself in marriage, and such a thing was almost regarded as unnatural and improper. she held out her hand to stephen.
“i will go where the lord sends me,” she said simply. “dear mother haldane saved my life, and she has more right to dispose of me than any one else. be it so.”
“when folks are wed, they commonly have gifts made them,” said haldane with a smile. “i haven’t much to give, and you’ll think my gift a queer one: but i wish you’d take it, ermine. it’s gib.”
“i will take gib and welcome, and be very thankful to you,” answered ermine in some surprise. “but, mother haldane, you are leaving yourself all alone. i was afraid you would miss me, after all these weeks, and if you lose gib too, won’t you be lonely?”
“miss you!” repeated the old woman in a tremulous voice. “miss you, my white bird that flew into my old arms from the cruel storm? sha’n’t i miss you? but it won’t be for long. ay! when one has kept company with the angels for a while, one’s pretty like to miss them when they fly back home. but you’d best take gib. the wise woman knows why. only i don’t tell all my secrets. and it won’t be for long.”
haldane had been laying fresh sticks on the embers while she spoke. now she turned to stephen.
“she’d best have gib,” she said. “he’s like another creature since she came. she’ll take care of him. and you’ll take care of her. i told you last time you were here as i’d do the best for her, not for you. but this is the best for both of you. and maybe the good lord’ll do the best for me. ermine says he’s not above keeping a poor old woman company. but whatever comes, and whatever you may hear, you bear in mind that i did my best for you.”
“ay, that i’m sure you’ve done, mother,” replied stephen warmly. “as for gib, i’ll make him welcome for your sake; he looks rather comfortable now, so i think he’ll get along.”
it certainly was not too much to say that gib was another creature. that once dilapidated-looking object, under ermine’s fostering care, had developed into a sleek, civilised, respectable cat; and as he sat on her lap, purring and blinking at the wood-fire, he suggested no ideas of discomfort.
“ay, i’ve done my best,” repeated the old woman with a sigh. “the lord above, he knows i’ve done it. you’d best be off with the morning light. i can’t be sure—well, i mustn’t tell my secrets.”
stephen was inclined to be amused with the wise woman’s reiteration of this assertion. what fancy she had taken into her head he could not guess. it was some old-womanly whim, he supposed. if he could have guessed her reason for thus dismissing them in haste—if he had seen in the embers what she saw coming nearer and nearer, and now close to her very door—wild horses would not have carried stephen away from the woman who had saved ermine.
haldane’s bidding was obeyed. the dawn had scarcely broken on the following morning, when stephen and ermine, with gib in the arms of the latter, set forth on their journey to london. haldane stood in her doorway to watch them go.
“thank god!” she said, when she had entirely lost sight of them. “thank god, my darling is safe! i can bear anything that comes now. it is only what such as me have to look for. and ermine said the good lord wouldn’t fail them that trusted him. i’m only a poor ignorant old woman, and he knows it; but he took the pains to make me, and he’ll not have forgot it; and ermine says he died for me, and i’m sure he could never forget that, if he did it. i’ve done a many ill things, though i’m not the black witch they reckon me: no, i’ve had more laid to my charge than ever i did; but for all that i’m a sinner, i’m afeared, and i should be sore afeared to meet what’s coming if he wouldn’t take my side. but ermine, she said he would, if i trusted myself to him.”
haldane clasped her withered hands and looked heavenwards.
“good lord!” she said, “i’d fain have thee on my side, and i do trust thee. and if i’m doing it wrong way about, bethink thee that i’m only a poor old woman, that never had no chance like, and i mean to do right, and do put things to rights for me, as thou wouldst have ’em. have a care of my darling, and see her safe: and see me through what’s coming, if thou wilt be so good. worlds o’ worlds, amen.”
that conclusion was haldane’s misty idea of the proper way to end a prayer (note 1). perhaps the poor petition found its way above the stars as readily as the choral services that were then being chanted in the perfumed cathedrals throughout england.
she went in and shut the door. she did not, as usual, shake her straw bed and fold up the rug. a spectator might have thought that she had no heart for it. she only kept up the fire; for though summer was near, it was not over-warm in the crazy hut, and a cold east wind was blowing. for the whole of the long day she sat beside it, only now and then rising to look out of the window, and generally returning to her seat with a muttered exclamation of “not yet!” the last time she did this, she pulled the faded woollen kerchief over her shoulders with a shiver.
“not yet! i reckon they’ll wait till it’s dusk. well! all the better: they’ll have more time to get safe away.”
the pronouns did not refer to the same persons, but haldane made no attempt to specify them.
she sat still after that, nodding at intervals, and she was almost asleep when the thing that she had feared came upon her. a low sound, like and yet unlike the noise of distant thunder, broke upon her ear. she sat up, wide awake in a moment.
“they’re coming! good lord, help me through! don’t let it be very bad to bear, and don’t let it be long!”
ten minutes had not passed when the hut was surrounded by a crowd. an angry crowd, armed with sticks, pitchforks, or anything that could be turned into a weapon—an abusive crowd, from whose lips words of hate and scorn were pouring, mixed with profaner language.
“pull the witch out! stone her! drown her! burn her!” echoed on all sides.
“good lord, don’t let them burn me!” said poor old haldane, inside the hut. “i’d rather be drowned, if thou dost not mind.”
did the good lord not mind what became of the helpless old creature, who, in her ignorance and misery, was putting her trust in him? it looked like it, as the mob broke open the frail door, and roughly hauled out the frailer occupant of the wretched hut.
“burn her!” the cry was renewed: and it came from one of the two persons most prominent in the mob—that handsome girl to whom haldane had refused the revenge she coveted upon brichtiva.
“nay!” said the other, who was the bishop’s sumner, “that would be irregular. burning’s for heretics. tie her hands and feet together, and cast her into the pond: that’s the proper way to serve witches.”
the rough boys among the crowd, to whom the whole scene was sport—and though we have become more civilised in some ways as time has passed, sport has retained much of its original savagery even now—gleefully tied together haldane’s hands and feet, and carried her, thus secured, to a large deep pond about a hundred yards from her abode.
this was the authorised test for a witch. if she sank and was drowned, she was innocent of the charge of witchcraft; if she swam on the surface, she was guilty, and liable to the legal penalty for her crime. either way, in nine out of ten cases, the end was death: for very few thought of troubling themselves to save one who proved her innocence after this fashion. (note 2.)
the boys, having thus bound the poor old woman into a ball, lifted her up, and with a cry of—“one—two—three!” flung her into the pond. at that moment a man broke through the ring that had formed outside the principal actors.
“what are you doing now? some sort of mischief you’re at, i’ll be bound—you lads are always up to it. who are you ducking? if it’s that cheat wrangecoke, i’ll not meddle, only don’t—what, mother haldane! shame on you! colgrim, walding, oselach, amfrid!—shame on you! what, you, erenbald, that she healed of that bad leg that laid you up for three months! and you, baderun, whose child she brought back well-nigh from the grave itself! if you are men, and not demons, come and help me to free her!”
the speaker did not content himself with words. he had waded into the pond, and was feeling his way carefully to the spot where the victim was. for mother haldane had not struggled nor even protested, but according to all the unwritten laws relating to witchcraft, had triumphantly exhibited her innocence by sinking to the bottom like a stone. the two spectators whom he had last apostrophised joined him in a shamefaced manner, one muttering something about his desire to avoid suspicion of being in league with a witch, and the other that he “didn’t mean no harm:” and among them, amid the more or less discontented murmurs of those around, they at last dragged out the old woman, untied the cords, and laid her on the grass. the life was yet in her; but it was nearly gone.
“who’s got a sup of anything to bring her to?” demanded her rescuer. “she’s not gone; she opened her eyes then.”
the time-honoured remedies for drowning were applied. the old woman was set on her head “to let the water run out;” and somebody in the crowd having produced a flask of wine, an endeavour was made to induce her to swallow. consciousness partially returned, but haldane did not seem to recognise any one.
“don’t be feared, mother,” said the man who had saved her. “i’ll look after you. don’t you know me? i am wigan, son of egglas the charcoal-burner, in the wood.”
then mother haldane spoke,—slowly, with pauses, and as if in a dream.
“ay, he looked after me. did all—i asked. he kept them—safe, and—didn’t let it—be long.”
she added two words, which some of her hearers said were—“good night.” a few thought them rather, “good lord!”
nobody understood her meaning. only he knew it, who had kept safe the two beings whom mother haldane loved, and had not let the hour of her trial and suffering be long.
and then, when the words had died away in one last sobbing sigh, wigan the son of egglas stood up from the side of the dead, and spoke to the gazing and now silent multitude.
“you can go home,” he said. “you’ve had your revenge. and what was it for? how many of you were there that she had not helped and healed? which of you did she ever turn away unhelped, save when the malady was beyond her power, or when one came to her for aid to do an evil thing? men, women, lads! you’ve repeated the deed of iscariot this day, for you’ve betrayed innocent blood—you have slain your benefactor and friend. go home and ask god and the saints to forgive you—if they ever can. how they sit calm above yonder, and stand this world, is more than i can tell.—poor, harmless, kindly soul! may god comfort thee in his blessed heaven! and for them that have harried thee, and taken thy life, and have the black brand of murder on their souls, god pardon them as he may!”
the crowd dispersed silently and slowly. some among them, who had been more thoughtless than malicious, were already beginning to realise that wigan’s words were true. the sumner, however, marched away whistling a tune. then wigan, with his shamefaced helpers, erenbald and baderun, and a fourth who had come near them as if he too were sorry for the evil which he had helped to do, inasmuch as he had not stood out to prevent its being done, lifted the frail light corpse, and bore it a little way into the wood. there, in the soft fresh green, they dug a grave, and laid in it the body of mother haldane.
“we’d best lay a cross of witch hazel over her,” suggested baderun. “if things was all right with her, it can’t do no harm; and if so be—”
“lay what you like,” answered wigan. “i don’t believe, and never did, that she was a witch. what harm did you ever know her do to any one?”
“nay, but mildred o’ th’ farm, over yonder, told me her black cow stopped giving milk the night mother haldane came up to ask for a sup o’ broth, and she denied it.”
“ay, and hesela by the brook—i heard her tell,” added erenbald, “that her hens, that hadn’t laid them six weeks or more, started laying like mad the day after she’d given the white witch a gavache. what call you that?”
“i call it stuff and nonsense,” replied wigan sturdily, “save that both of them got what they deserved: and so being, i reckon that god, who rewards both the righteous and the wicked, had more to do with it than the white witch.”
“eh, wigan, but them’s downright wicked words! you’d never go to say as god almighty takes note o’ hens, and cows, and such like?”
“who does, then? how come we to have any eggs and milk?”
“why, man, that’s natur’.”
“i heard a man on bensington green, one day last year,” answered wigan, “talking of such things; and he said that ‘nature’ was only a fool’s word for god. and said i to myself, that’s reason.”
wigan, being one of that very rare class who think for themselves, was not comprehended by his commissionary tours, had been to this man’s heart as a match to tinder.
“ay, and he said a deal more too: but it wouldn’t be much use telling you. there—that’s enough. she’ll sleep quiet there. i’ll just go round by her hut, and see if her cat’s there—no need to leave the creature to starve.”
“eh, wigan, you’d never take that thing into your house? it’s her familiar, don’t you know? they always be, them black cats—they’re worse than the witches themselves.”
“specially when they aren’t black, like this? i tell you, she wasn’t a witch; and as to the cat, thou foolish man, it’s nought more nor less than a cat. i’ll take it home to brichtiva my wife,—she’s not so white-livered as thou.”
“eh, wigan, you’ll be sorry one o’ these days!”
“i’m as sorry now as i can be, that i didn’t come up sooner: and i don’t look to be sorry for aught else.”
wigan went off to the empty hut. but all his coaxing calls of “puss, puss!” proved vain. gib was in ermine’s arms; and ermine was travelling towards london in a heavy carrier’s waggon, with stephen on horseback alongside. he gave up the search at last, and went home; charging brichtiva that if gib should make a call on her, she was to be careful to extend to him an amount of hospitality which would induce him to remain.
but gib was never seen in the neighbourhood of bensington again.
“what wonder?” said erenbald. “the thing was no cat—it was a foul fiend; and having been released from the service of its earthly mistress, had returned as a matter of course to satan its master.”
this conclusion was so patent to every one of his neighbours that nobody dreamed of questioning it. morally speaking, there is no blindness so hopelessly incurable as that of the man who is determined to keep his eyes shut. only the great physician can heal such a case as this, and he has often to do it by painful means.
“christ save you!” said isel, coming into the anchorhold one evening, a fortnight after stephen’s disappearance. “well, you do look quiet and peaceful for sure! and i’m that tired!—”
“mother, i am afraid you miss me sadly,” responded derette, almost self-reproachfully.
“i’m pleased enough to think you’re out of it, child. miss you? well, i suppose i do; but i haven’t scarce time to think what i miss. there’s one thing i’d miss with very great willingness, i can tell you, and that’s that horrid tease, anania. she’s been at me now every day this week, and she will make me tell her where stephen is, and what he’s gone after,—and that broom knows as much as i do. she grinds the life out of me, pretty nigh: and what am i to do?”
derette smiled sympathetically. leuesa said—
“it does seem strange he should stay so long away.”
“anania will have it he is never coming again.”
“i dare say she is right there,” said derette suddenly.
“saints alive! what dost thou mean, child? never coming again?”
“i shouldn’t wonder,” said derette quietly.
“well, i should. i should wonder more than a little, i can tell you. whatever gives you that fancy, child?”
“i have it, mother; why i cannot tell you.”
“i hope you are not a prophetess!”
“i don’t think i am,” said derette with a smile.
“i think ermine was a bit of one, poor soul! she seemed to have some notion what was coming to her. eh, derette! i’d give my best gown to know those poor things were out of purgatory. father dolfin says we shouldn’t pray for them: but i do—i can’t help it. if i were a priest, i’d say mass for them every day i lived—ay, i would! i never could understand why we must not pray for heretics. seems to me, the more wrong they’ve gone, the more they want praying for. not that they went far wrong—i’ll not believe it. derette, dost thou ever pray for the poor souls?”
“ay, mother: every one of them.”
“well, i’m glad to hear it. and as to them that ill-used them, let them look to themselves. maybe they’ll not find themselves at last in such a comfortable place as they look for. the good lord may think that cruelty to christian blood (note 3)—and they were christian blood, no man can deny—isn’t so very much better than heresy after all. hope he does.”
“i remember gerard’s saying,” replied derette, “that all the heresies in the world were only men’s perversions of god’s truths: and that if men would but keep close to holy scripture, there would be no heresies.”
“well, it sounds like reason, doesn’t it?” answered isel with a sigh.
“but i remember his saying also,” pursued derette, “that where one man followed reason and scripture, ten listened to other men’s voices, and ten more to their own fancies.”
dusk was approaching on the following day, when a rap came on the door of the anchorhold, and a voice said—
“leuesa, pray you, ask my cousin to come to the casement a moment.”
“stephen!” cried derette, hurrying to her little window when she heard his voice. “so you have come back!”
“shall i go now, lady, for the fresh fish?” asked leuesa, very conveniently for stephen, who wondered if she good-naturedly guessed that he had a private communication to make.
“do,” said derette, giving her three silver pennies.
as soon as leuesa was out of hearing, stephen said—“i am only here for a few hours, derette, and nobody knows it save my lord, you, and my brother. i have obtained my discharge, and return to london with the dawn.”
“are you not meaning to come back, stephen? folks are saying that.”
“folks are saying truth. i shall live in london henceforth. but remember, derette, that is a secret.”
“i shall not utter it, stephen. truly, i wish you all happiness, but i cannot help being sorry.”
there were tears in derette’s eyes. stephen had ever been more brotherly to her than her own brothers. it was stephen who had begged her off from many a punishment, had helped her over many a difficulty, had made her rush baskets and wooden boats, and had always had a sweetmeat in his pocket for her in childhood. she was grieved to think of losing him.
“you may well wish me happiness in my honeymoon,” he said, laughingly.
“are you married? why, when—o stephen, stephen! is it ermine?”
“you are a first-rate guesser, little one. yes, i have ermine safe; and i will keep her so, god helping me.”
“i am so glad, steenie!” said derette, falling into the use of the old pet name, generally laid aside now. “tell ermine i am so glad to hear that, and so sorry to lose you both: but i will pray god and the saints to bless you as long as i live, and that will be better for you than our meeting, though it will not be the same thing to me.”
“‘so glad, and so sorry!’ it seems to me, cousin, that’s no inapt picture of life. god keep thee!—to the day when—ermine says—it will be all ‘glad’ and no ‘sorry.’”
“ay, we shall meet one day. farewell!”
the days passed, and no more was seen or heard of stephen in oxford. what had become of him was not known at the walnut tree, until one evening when osbert looked in about supper-time, and was invited to stay for the meal, with the three of whom the family now consisted—manning, isel, and haimet. as isel set on the table a platter of little pies, she said—
“there, that’s what poor stephen used to like so well. maybe you’ll fancy them too, osbert.”
“why do you call him poor stephen?” questioned osbert, as he appropriated a pie. “he is not particularly poor, so far as i know.”
“well, we’ve lost him like,” said isel, with a sigh. “when folks vanish out of your sight like snow in a thaw, one cannot help feeling sorry.”
“oh, i’m sorry for myself, more ways than one: but not so much for stephen.”
“why, osbert, do you know where he is, and what he’s doing?”
“will you promise not to let on to anania, if i tell you?”
“never a word that i can help, trust me.”
“her knowing matters nought, except that she’ll never let me be if she thinks i have half a notion about it. well, he’s gone south somewhere—i don’t justly know where, but i have a guess of london way.”
“what for?”
“dare say he had more reasons than he gave me. he told me he was going to be married.”
“dear saints!—who to?”
“didn’t ask him.”
isel sat looking at osbert in astonishment, with a piece of pie transfixed on the end of her knife.
“you see, if i did not know, i shouldn’t get so much bothered with folks asking me questions: so i thought i’d let it be.”
that osbert’s “folks” might more properly be read “anania,” isel knew full well.
“saints love us!—but i would have got to know who was my sister-in-law, if i’d been in your place.”
“to tell the truth, aunt, i don’t care, so long as she is a decent woman who will make stephen comfortable; and i think he’s old enough to look out for himself.”
“but don’t you know even what he was going to do?—seek another watch, or go into service, or take to trade, or what?”
“i don’t know a word outside what i have just told you. oh, he’ll be all right! stephen has nine lives, like a cat. he always falls on his feet.”
“but it don’t seem natural like!”
osbert laughed. “i suppose it is natural to a woman to have more curiosity than a man. i never had much of that stuff. anania’s got enough for both.”
“well, i’m free to confess she has. osbert, how do you manage her? i can’t.”
“let her alone as long as i can, and take the mop to her when i can’t,” was the answer.
“i should think the mop isn’t often out of your hand,” observed haimet with painful candour.
“it wears out by times,” returned osbert drily.
note 1. “into the worlds of worlds” is the primer’s translation of “in saecula saeculorum.”
note 2. that witchcraft is no fable, but a real sin, which men have committed in past times, and may commit again, is certain from holy scripture. but undoubtedly, in the middle ages, numbers of persons suffered under accusation of this crime who were entirely innocent: and the so-called “white witches” were in reality mere herbalists and dealers in foolish but harmless charms, often consisting in a kind of nursery rhyme and a few biblical words.
note 3. the wrong of cruelty to men and women, as such, whether they were christians or not, had not dawned on men’s minds in the twelfth century, nor did it till the reformation. but much pity was often expressed for the sufferings of “christian blood,” and a very few persons had some compassion for animals.
