The Witch. Mary Johnston

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СКАЧАТЬ from Florida. They trained him. They had a bear, too, that we bought, but the bear died.” He whistled again. The curtain parted and the Indian came forth and sat upon a stool planted in the middle of the den.

      It was evident that he had been “trained.” Almost naked, gaunt, dull and hopeless, he sat with a lack-lustre eye. The boy whistled again and he spoke, a guttural and lifeless string of words. The children gathered close, flushed and excited. But Aderhold’s brows drew upward and together and he turned a little sick. He was a physician; he was used to seeing wretchedness, but it had not deadened him. Every now and then the wave of human misery came and went over him, high as space, ineffably dreary, unutterably hopeless.... He stood and looked at the Indian for a few moments, then, facing from the booth, walked away with a rapid and disturbed step which gradually became slower and halted. He turned and went back. “Has he eaten this morning? You don’t give him much to eat?”

      “Times are hard,” said the boy.

      Aderhold took the smaller bundle from his stick, unwrapped it and with his knife cut from the loaf a third of its mass. “May I give him this?”

      The boy stared. “If you choose, master.”

      The physician entered the booth, went up to the Indian and placed the bread upon his knee. “Woe are we,” he said, “that can give no efficient help!”

      The savage and the European looked each other in the eyes. For a moment something hawk-like, eagle-like, came back and glanced through the pupils of the red man, then it sank and fled. His eyes grew dull again, though he made a guttural sound and his hand closed upon the bread. The physician stood a moment longer. He had strongly the sacred wonder and curiosity, the mother of knowledge, and he had truly been interested to behold an Indian. Now he beheld one—but the iron showed more than the soul. “I am sorry for thee, my brother,” Aderhold said softly.

      The boy spoke from without. “Hist, hist! Master’s coming down the street.”

      Aderhold left the booth, shouldered his stick and bundle and went on his way.

      He walked steadily, the sun at his back, lifting through the mist and at last gilding the whole city. He was now upon its northwestern fringe, in the “suburbs.” They had an evil name, and he was willing to pass through them hurriedly. They had a sinister look,—net-work of foul lanes, low, wooden, squinting houses, base taverns that leered.

      A woman came and walked beside him, paint on her cheeks.

      “Where are you going, my bonny man?” Then, as he would have outstepped her, “What haste? Lord! what haste?”

      “I have a long way to go,” said Aderhold.

      “As long and as short as I have to go,” said the woman. “If you are willing we might go together.”

      Aderhold walked on, “I am not for that gear, mistress.”

      “No?” said the woman. “Then for what gear are you?... Perhaps I am not for it, either, but—Lord God! one must eat!” She began to sing in a cracked voice but vaguely sweet.

      “A lass there dwelled in London town—

      ‘Alas!’ she said, ‘Alas!’ she said,

      ‘Of gold and land

      I’ve none in hand—’”

      They were coming flush with the opening of a small, dim courtyard. She broke off her song. “Bring your stick and bundle in front of you! This is a marked place for snatchers.”

      Her warning was not idle. As he shifted the stick a shaggy, bull-headed man made a move from shadow to sunlight, lurched against him and grasped at the bundle. Aderhold slipping aside, the fellow lost his balance and came almost to the ground. The woman laughed. Enraged, the bull-headed man drew a knife and made at the physician, but the woman, coming swiftly under his raised arm, turned, and grasping wrist and hand, gave so sudden a wrench that the knife clanked down upon the stones. She kicked it aside into the gutter, her face turned to Aderhold. “Be off, my bonny man!” she advised. “No, he’ll not hurt me! We’re old friends.”

      Aderhold left the suburbs behind, left London behind. He was on an old road, leading north. For the most part, during the next few days, he kept to this road, though sometimes he took roughly paralleling, less-frequented ways, and sometimes footpaths through fields and woods. Now he walked briskly, enjoying the air, hopeful with the hopeful day. Sometime in the morning an empty cart overtook him, the carter walking by his horse. They walked together up a hill and talked of the earth and the planting and the carting of stuffs and the rates paid and the ways of horses. Level ground reached, the carter offered a lift, and the two travelled some miles together, chiefly in a friendly silence. At midday Aderhold unwrapped his loaf of bread, and the carter produced bread, too, and a bit of cheese and a jug containing ale. They ate and drank, jogging along by April hedges and budding trees. A little later the carter must turn aside to some farm, and, wishing each other well, they parted.

      This day and the next Aderhold walked, by green country and Tudor village and town, by smithy and mill, by country houses set deep in giant trees, by hamlet and tavern, along stretches of lonely road and through whispering, yet unvanished forests. The sun shone, the birds sang, the air was a ripple of zephyrs. The road had its traffic, ran an unwinding ribbon of spectacle. There were the walls of country and the roof of sky and a staccato presence of brute and human life. Now horsemen went by—knightly travel or merchant travel, or a judge or lawyer, or a high ecclesiastic. Serving-men walked or rode, farming folk, a nondescript of trade or leisure. Drovers came by with cattle, country wains, dogs. A pedlar with his pack kept him company for a while. Country women passed, carrying butter and eggs to market, children coming from school, three young girls, lithe, with linked arms, a parson and his clerk, an old seaman, a beggar, a charcoal-burner, a curious small troupe of mummers and mountebanks, and for contrast three or four mounted men somewhat of the stripe of the widow’s sons. One looked a country gentleman and another a minister of the stricter sort. They gazed austerely at the mummers as they passed. Now life flowed in quantity upon the road, now the stream dwindled, now for long distances there was but the life of the dust, tree and plant, and the air.

      When the second sunset came he was between hedged fields in a quiet, solitary country of tall trees, with swallows circling overhead in a sky all golden like the halos around saints’ heads in pictures that he remembered in Italy. No house was visible, nor, had one been so, had he made up his mind to ask the night’s lodging. The day had been warm, even the light airs had sunk away, the twilight was balm and stillness. He possessed a good cloak, wide and warm. With the fading of the gold from the sky he turned aside from the road upon which, up and down as far as he could see, nothing now moved, broke through the hedge, found an angle and spread his cloak within its two walls of shelter. The cloak was wide enough to lie upon and cover with, his bundle made a pillow. The stars came out; in some neighbouring, marshy place the frogs began their choiring.

      Although he was tired enough, he could not sleep at once, nor even after a moderate time of lying there, in his ears the monotonous, not unmusical sound. He thought of what he should do to-morrow, and he could not tell. Walk on? Yes. How far, and where should he stop? So far he had not begged, but that could not last. The colour came into his cheek. He did not wish to beg. And were there no pride in the matter, there was the law of the land. Beggars and vagabonds and masterless men, how hardly were they dealt with! They were dealt with savagely, and few asked what was the reason or where was the fault. Work. Yes, he would work, but how and where? Dimly he had thought all along of stopping at last in some town or village, of some merciful opportunity floating to him, of tarrying, staying there—finding room somewhere—his СКАЧАТЬ