“Five years ago,” said Carthew, “we had the sweating sickness. Many died. Then all saw the shadow from the lifted Hand.”
“It is wholesome now?”
“Aye,” answered the other, “until sin and denial again bring bodily grief.”
Aderhold glanced aside at his companion. The latter was riding with a stern and elevated countenance, his lips moving slightly. The physician knew that look no less than he had known the serving-man’s.
“Is it not,” demanded Carthew, “is it not marvellous how the whole Creation groaneth and travaileth with the knowledge of her doom! How contemptible and evil is this world! Yet here we are sifted out—and not the wise man of old, nor the heathen, nor the ignorant, nor the child in his cradle is excused! Is it not marvellous how, under our very feet, men and women and babes are burning in hell! How, for Adam’s sin, all perish save only the baptized believer—and he is saved in no wise of his own effort and merit, but only of another’s! How God electeth the very damned—and yet is their guilt no whit the less! Is it not marvellous!”
“Aye, fabulously marvellous,” said Aderhold.
“The sense of sin!” pursued Carthew. “How it presses hard upon my heart! The sense of sin!”
Aderhold was silent. He possessed a vivid enough realization of his many and recurring mistakes and weaknesses, but, in the other’s meaning, he had no sense of sin.
They came to the village and rode through it, the litter arousing curiosity, allayed every few yards by Will’s statements. Aderhold observed the lack of any sympathy with the sick old man, even the growling note with which some of the people turned aside. There was the usual village traffic in the crooked street, the small shops and the doorways. Children were marching with the geese upon the green, where there was a pond, and near it the village stocks. Housewives, with tucked-up skirts and with pattens,—for an April shower had made mire of the ways,—clattered to and fro or sat spinning by window or door. Many of the men were in the fields, but there were left those who traded or were mechanic, as well as the aged, sitting, half-awake, half-asleep, in sunny spots. It was the usual village of the time, poor enough, far from clean, ignorant and full of talk, and yet not without its small share of what then counted for human flower and fruition, nor without promise of the future’s flower and fruition.
They rode by the church, set in dark yews. Almost in its shadow rose a plain stone house. “Master Thomas Clement, the minister’s,” said Carthew. “Hawthorn hath a godly and zealous pastor! The town behind us is all for prelates and vestments and a full half at least of the old superstitions. But Hawthorn and the country to the north have purged themselves as far as they safely may.”