The Witch. Mary Johnston

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СКАЧАТЬ 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?”

      “I like to hear you,” said old Roger; “but aren’t there godly hymns? Use your own good sense, my girl.”

      Joan at the window looked out upon the flowering trees and the springing grass and robin redbreast carolling in the pear tree. When she turned her eyes were misty. “I like to sing what I feel like singing. If it chances to be a hymn, well and good—but a forced hymn, meseems, is a fearful thing! I like to go free, and I like not a mim-mouth and a downward look. But I like not to bring trouble on you, and I do not like either to have them set upon me for ungodliness, nor to have some fool cry upon me for a witch! So I’ll be careful. I promise you.” She laid the trenchers upon the table and turned out from its pan a warm and fragrant loaf. “I’ll be careful—oh, careful!—And now when are we going to get our beehives from the forester’s wife?”

      That afternoon she took her distaff and sat in the doorway and span. The cottage stood some distance from Hawthorn Forest road, but there was a narrow greened-over path that wound between. The robin sang lustily; daffodils, edging the walk to the gate, were opening their golden cups. Old Heron had gone a mile to engage Hugh the thatcher to come to-morrow to mend the roof. Joan span and span and thought of the castle and the masque.

      An hour passed. The gate-latch clicked and she looked up. An old woman, much bent and helping herself with a knobby stick, was coming toward her between the rows of daffodils. When she reached the doorstone Joan saw how wrinkled and drear were her face and form. “Good-day,” she said in a quavering voice.

      “Good-day,” answered Joan.

      “Good-day,” said the old woman again. “You don’t remember me, but I remember you, my pretty maid! I mind you running about in the woods, playing as it were with your shadow, with your hair braided down! Now you wear it under a cap as is proper. I’m Mother Spuraway, who lives beyond the mill-race.”

      “I remember now,” said Joan. “I had forgotten. Will you sit down?”

      She brought a stool and set it for her visitor. The other lowered herself stiffly. “Oh, my old bones! I’ll sit for a minute, sweetheart, but what I wanted to ask you—” She took Joan by the apron and held her with shaking fingers. “I wanted to ask you if you wouldn’t be Christian enough to spare me a measure of meal? I’ll swear by the church door and the book of prayer that I haven’t had bite nor sup since this time yesterday!” She fell to whimpering.

      Joan stood, considering her with grey eyes. “Yes, I’ll give you some meal. But what! They used to say that you were well-to-do.”

      “Aye, aye!” said Mother Spuraway. “They said sooth. I didn’t lack baked nor brewed, no, nor silver sixpences!—for, look you, I knew all the good herbs. But alack, alack! times are changed with me.... I’m hungry, I’m hungry, and my gown’s ragged that once was good and fine, and my shoes are not fit to go to church in. Woe’s me—woe’s me—woe’s me!”

      Joan went indoors and returned with a piece of bread and a cup of milk. Mother Spuraway seized them and ate and drank with feeble avidity. “Good maid—a good maid!”

      “Why do they come to you no more?” asked Joan.

      Mother Spuraway put down the empty cup. “Partly, there’s a leech come to these parts has stolen my trade. I’ll not say he doesn’t know the herbs, too, but I knew them as well as he, and I knew them first! But mostly, oh, dear heart! because there’s been raised a hue and cry that I didn’t cure with innocence—as though I didn’t cure as innocently as him! But I’m old—I’m old!... I never had aught to do even with white magic. There was healing in the herbs and that and good sense was enough. But I’m old—old, and they bear hard upon women.... And I hear that there’s a buzz of talk and I may be taken up. I know Master Clement’s been against me since ever he came to the parish—” She began to weep, painful slow tears of age.

      Joan looked at her with a knitted brow. “There, mother, there, mother! I would not let them that hurt me make me weep. See! I’ll give you your meal, and it will all come straight.” She brought her a full measure, and a great share of her baking of bread besides.

      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. “Shall I tell father—or shall I not tell father? If I tell him, he will say she must not come again.... And how am I going to help her coming again?” In the end, she determined to tell her father, but to represent to him how hard it was going to be—and how it seemed to her poor-spirited, loveless, and mean—And as she got this far, she saw another visitor coming.

      She knew this visitor, and springing up, went to the gate to greet her. Before she left this countryside she had often, of Sundays in Hawthorn Church, sat beside Alison Inch, the sempstress’s daughter. And after she went to the castle Alison had twice been with her mother to the town, and they had climbed the hill to the castle wood and the huntsman’s house to see their old neighbours, though, indeed, they had not been such near neighbours. Alison was older than she, but at the castle hers had been the advantage, she being at home with a number of goodly things, and Alison showing herself somewhat shy and deferential. But now the castle and the park and her uncle’s house were a dream, and Joan was back in Heron’s cottage that was not on the whole so good as the Inches’ nor so near the village. Moreover, she was now almost a stranger, and knowledge and familiarity with all matters were on Alison’s side, to say nothing of her year or two longer in the world. Alison felt her advantages, and was not averse to the other’s recognition of them. Joan and she kissed, then moved somewhat saunteringly up the path to the doorstone.

      “Mother and I went to take her new smocks to Madam Carthew, and then when we came back it was so fine, and mother said that she would go to see Margery Herd, and if I chose I might walk on here.—The place looks,” said Alison, “as though you had never gone away.”

      “Nay, there are things yet to do,” said Joan, “and that though we’ve been here well-nigh a month. You would not think how hard it is to get back the gear we left with folk! They had the use until we came back, and they knew that we would come back—but now you might think that we were asking their things instead of our own! Three women have looked as black at me! We got our churn but yesterday, and the forester’s wife still has our beehives. A dozen of her own, and when we ask for our poor three back again, you might suppose we’d offered to steal the thatch from over her head!”

      They sat down, facing each other, on the sunflecked doorstone.

      Alison looked about her. “I’ve never seen daffodillies bloom like these!—Joan, I heard a story on thee the other day.”

      “What story?”

      “They said thou hadst a lover in the town—a vintner.”

      “I СКАЧАТЬ