One Snowy Night Part 38

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 pa.s.sed 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 pa.s.sed, 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 fas.h.i.+on. [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 princ.i.p.al 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 Wrangec.o.ke, 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 gra.s.s. 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!"

n.o.body 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 mult.i.tude.

"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 G.o.d 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 G.o.d 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, G.o.d 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 st.u.r.dily, "save that both of them got what they deserved: and so being, I reckon that G.o.d, 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 G.o.d 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 G.o.d. And said I to myself, That's reason."

Wigan, being one of that very rare cla.s.s 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 n.o.body 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."