"Nay, nay, Harry," she cried out, with a pitiful strength of anger.
"I doubt if it be the will of the Lord. I doubt if it be not the
devil--Catherine, Catherine--Harry, my brain reels when I
think that she should have done it--a paltry ring, and to let
you--"
"It may be that she had not her wits," I said. "Such things have
been, I have heard, and especially in the case of a woman with
jewels. It may be that she knew not what she did, and in any case I
pray you to think no more of it, dear madam." And all the time I
spoke I was smoothing her old forehead under the flapping frills of
her cap.
One black woman was there in the room, sitting in the shadow of the
bed-curtains, fast asleep and making a strange purring noise like a
cat as she slept.
Suddenly Madam Cavendish clutched hard at my hand. "Harry," she
said, "I sent for you because I have lain here fretting lest Mary
and Catherine get not home in safety with only the black people to
guard them. I fear lest the Indians may be lurking about."
"Dear Madam Cavendish," I said, "you know that we stand in no more
danger from the Indians."
"Nay," she persisted, "we can never tell what plans may be brewing
in such savage brains. I pray thee, Harry, ride to meet them and see
if they be safe."
I laughed, for the danger from Indians was long since past, but said
readily enough that I would do as she wished, being, in fact, glad
enough of a gallop in the moonlight, with the prospect of meeting
Mary. So in a few minutes I was in the saddle and riding toward
Jamestown. The night was very bright with the moon, and there was a
great mist rising from the marshy lands, and such strangely pale and
luminous developments in the distances of the meadows, marshalling
and advancing and retreating, like companies of spectres, and
lingering as if for consultation on the borders of the woods, with
floating draperies caught in the boughs thereof, that one might have
considered danger from others than Indians. And, indeed, I often
caught the note of an owl, and once one flitted past my face and my
horse shied at the evil bird, which is thought by the ignorant to be
but a feathered cat and of ill omen, and indeed is considered by
many who are wise to have presaged ill oftentimes, as in the cases
of the deaths of the emperors Valentinian and Commodus. Be that as
it may, I, having a pistol with me, shot at the bird, and, though I
was as good a shot as any thereabouts, missed, and away it flew,
with a great hoot as of laughter, which I am ready to swear I heard
multiplied in a trice, as if the bird were joined by a whole
company, and my horse shied again and would have bolted had I not
held him tightly. Now, this which I am about to relate I am ready to
swear did truly happen, though it may well be doubted. I had come
within a short distance of Jamestown when I reached two houses of a
small size, not far apart, not much removed from the fashion of the
negro cabins, but inhabited by English folk. In the one dwelt a man
who had been transported for a grievous crime, whether justly or not
I cannot say, but his visage was such as to condemn him, and he was
often in his cups and had spent many days in the stocks, and had
made frequent acquaintance with the whipping-post, and with him
dwelt his wife, an old dame with a tongue which had once earned her
the ducking-stool in England. As I passed this house I saw over the
door a great bunch of dill and vervain and white thorn, which is
held to keep away witches from the threshold if gathered upon a May
day. And I knew well the reason, for not many rods distant was the
hut where dwelt one Margery Key, an ancient woman, who had been
verily tied crosswise and thrown in a pond for witchcraft and been
weighed against the church Bible, and had her body searched for
witch-marks and the thatch of her house burned. I know not why she
had not come to the stake withal, but instead she had fled to
Virginia, where, witches being not so common, were treated with more
leniency. It may have been that she had escaped the usual fate of
those of her kind by being considered by some a white witch, and one
who worked good instead of ill if approached rightly, though many
considered that they who approached a white witch for the purpose of
profiting by her advice or warning, were of equal guilt, and that it
all led in the end to mischief. Be that as it may, this old dame
Margery Key dwelt there alone in her little hut so over-thatched and
grown by vines, and scarce showing the shaggy slant of its roof
above the bushes, that it resembled more the hole of some timid and
wary animal than a human habitation. And if any visited her for
consultation it was by night and secretly, and no one ever caught
sight of her except now and then the nodding white frill of her cap
in the green gloom of a window or the painful bend of her old back
as she gathered sticks for her fire in the woods about. How she
lived none knew. A little garden-patch she had, and a hive or two of
bees, and a red cow, which many affirmed to have the eye of a demon,
and there were those who said that her familiars stole bread for her
from the plantation larders, and that often a prime ham was missed
and a cut of venison, with no explanation, but who can say? Without
doubt there are strange things in the earth, but we are all so in
the midst of them, and even a part of their workings, that we can
have no outside foothold to take fair sight thereof. Verily a man
might as well strive to lift himself by his boot-straps over a
stile.