Part 6 (1/2)
”Why call me demon, if I do deeds of justice, of goodness, of piety?
G.o.d cannot be everywhere--He cannot be always working. Sometimes He likes to rest, leaving us other spirits here to carry on the smaller husbandry, to remedy the ills which his providence pa.s.sed over, which his justice forgot to handle.
”Of this your husband is an example. Poor, deserving workman, he is killing himself and gaining nought in return. Heaven has had no time to look after him. But I, though rather jealous of him, still love my kind host. I pity him: his strength is going, he can bear up no longer. He will die, like your children, already dead of misery. This winter he was ill; what will become of him the next?”
Thereon, her face in her hands, she wept two, three hours, and even more. And when she had poured out all her tears--her bosom still throbbing hard--the other said, ”I ask nothing: only, I pray, save him.”
She had promised nothing, but from that hour she became his.
CHAPTER V.
POSSESSION.
A dreadful age was the age of gold; for thus do I call that hard time when gold first came into use. This was in the year 1300, during the reign of that Fair King[29] who never spake a word; the great king who seemed to have a dumb devil, but a devil with mighty arm, strong enough to burn the Temple, long enough to reach Rome, and with glove of iron to deal the first good blow at the Pope.
[29] Philip the Fair of France, who put down the Templar in Paris, and first secured the liberties of the Gallican Church.--TRANS.
Gold thereupon becomes a great pope, a mighty G.o.d, and not without cause. The movement began in Europe with the Crusades: the only wealth men cared for was that which having wings could lend itself to their enterprise; the wealth, namely, of swift exchanges. To strike blows afar off the king wants nothing but gold. An army of gold, a fiscal army, spreads over all the land. The lord, who has brought back with him his dreams of the East, is always longing for its wonders, for damascened armour, carpets, spices, valuable steeds. For all such things he needs gold. He pushes away with his foot the serf who brings him corn. ”That is not all; I want gold!”
On that day the world was changed. Theretofore in the midst of much evil there had always been a harmless certainty about the tax.
According as the year was good or bad, the rent followed the course of nature and the measure of the harvest. If the lord said, ”This is little,” he was answered, ”My lord, Heaven has granted us no more.”
But the gold, alas! where shall we find it? We have no army to seize it in the towns of Flanders. Where shall we dig the ground to win him his treasure? Oh, that the spirit of hidden treasures would be our guide![30]
[30] The devils trouble the world all through the Middle Ages; but not before the thirteenth century does Satan put on a settled shape. ”_Compacts_,” says M. Maury, ”are very rare before that epoch;” and I believe him. How could they treat with one who as yet had no real existence? Neither of the treating parties was yet ripe for the contract. Before the will could be reduced to the dreadful pa.s.s of selling itself for ever, it must be made thoroughly desperate. It is not the unhappy who falls into despair, but the truly wretched, who being quite conscious of his misery, and having yet more to suffer, can find no escape therefrom. The wretched in this way are the men of the fourteenth century, from whom they ask a thing so impossible as payments in gold. In this and the following chapter I have touched on the circ.u.mstances, the feelings, the growing despair, which brought about the enormity of _compacts_, and, worse still than these, the dreadful character of the _Witch_. If the name was freely used, the thing itself was then rare, being no less than a marriage and a kind of priesthood. For ease of ill.u.s.tration, I have joined together the details of so delicate a scrutiny by a thread of fiction. The outward body of it matters little. The essential point is to remember that such things were not caused, as they try to persuade us, by _human fickleness, by the inconstancy of our fallen nature, by the chance persuasions of desire_. There was needed the deadly pressure of an age of iron, of cruel needs: it was needful that h.e.l.l itself should seem a shelter, an asylum, by contrast with the h.e.l.l below.
While all are desperate, the woman with the goblin is already seated on her sacks of corn in the little neighbouring village. She is alone, the rest being still at their debate in the village.
She sells at her own price. But even when the rest come up, everything favours her, some strange magical allurement working on her side. No one bargains with her. Her husband, before his time, brings his rent in good sounding coin to the feudal elm. ”Amazing!” they all say, ”but the Devil is in her!”
They laugh, but she does not. She is sorrowful and afraid. In vain she tries to pray that night. Strange p.r.i.c.kings disturb her slumber.
Fantastic forms appear before her. The small gentle sprite seems to have grown imperious. He waxes bold. She is uneasy, indignant, eager to rise. In her sleep she groans, and feels herself dependent, saying, ”No more do I belong to myself!”
”Here is a sensible countryman,” says the lord; ”he pays beforehand!
You charm me: do you know accounts?”--”A little.”--”Well then, you shall reckon with these folk. Every Sat.u.r.day you shall sit under the elm and receive their money. On Sunday, before ma.s.s, you shall bring it up to the castle.”
What a change in their condition! How the wife's heart beats when of a Sat.u.r.day she sees her poor workman, serf though he be, seated like a lordling under the baronial shades. At first he feels giddy, but in time accustoms himself to put on a grave air. It is no joking matter, indeed; for the lord commands them to show him due respect. When he has gone up to the castle, and the jealous ones look like laughing and designing to pay him off, ”You see that battlement,” says the lord, ”the rope you don't see, but it is also ready. The first man who touches him shall be set up there high and quick.”
This speech is repeated from one to another; until it has spread around these two as it were an atmosphere of terror. Everybody doffs his hat to them, bowing very low indeed. But when they pa.s.s by, folk stand aloof, and get out of the way. In order to s.h.i.+rk them they turn up cross roads, with backs bended, with eyes turned carefully down.
Such a change makes them first savage, but afterwards sorrowful. They walk alone through all the district. The wife's shrewdness marks the hostile scorn of the castle, the trembling hate of those below. She feels herself fearfully isolated between two perils. No one to defend her but her lord, or rather the money they pay him: but then to find that money, to spur on the peasant's slowness, and overcome his sluggish antagonism, to s.n.a.t.c.h somewhat even from him who has nothing, what hard pressure, what threats, what cruelty, must be employed! This was never in the goodman's line of business. The wife brings him to the mark by dint of much pus.h.i.+ng: she says to him, ”Be rough; at need be cruel. Strike hard. Otherwise you will fall short of your engagements; and then we are undone.”
This suffering by day, however, is a trifle in comparison with the tortures of the night. She seems to have lost the power of sleeping.
She gets up, walks to and fro, and roams about the house. All is still; and yet how the house is altered; its old innocence, its sweet security all for ever gone! ”Of what is that cat by the hearth a-thinking, as she pretends to sleep, and 'tweenwhiles opens her green eyes upon me? The she-goat with her long beard, looking so discreet and ominous, knows more about it than she can tell. And yon cow which the moon reveals by glimpses in her stall, why does she give me such a sidelong look? All this is surely unnatural!”
s.h.i.+vering, she returns to her husband's side. ”Happy man, how deep his slumber! Mine is over; I cannot sleep, I never shall sleep again.” In time, however, she falls off. But oh, what suffering visits her then!