“It is not that way that I am lonely,” said Joan. “There are some that I care not if they never come.”
He had his round to go. The sickness in the town dwindling, he had come back, when it broke over Hawthorn, to the Oak Grange. Since then he had gone far and near, wherever it struck down the poorer sort. As he turned from the cottage door, Joan stepped, too, upon the flagged path, and they moved side by side toward the gate, between the lines of green lance-heads the daffodils were thrusting above the soil. They moved in silence, almost of a height, two simply, almost poorly dressed figures, each with its load of sorrow and care for the morrow. And yet they were not old, and about them was the low ecstatic murmur of winter swiftening into spring.
“Do you remember,” asked Aderhold, “that day when we chanced to meet in the forest and Master Harry Carthew came upon us?”
“Aye,” said Joan, “I remember.”
“Since then we have neither met nor spoken together until last week when your father was stricken and you watched for me coming from the village.—And now to-day I come only for this moment and will come no more.—Have you no close friends nor kindred?”
“They are buried with father.... I mean to stay on here and spin flax and keep myself. And if—I mean to stay.” Her hand went out to touch the eglantine growing by the beehives. “I love it and I mean to stay.”
Aderhold looked beyond at the wavy green path and the massed trees of the forest. He, too, loved this country. He had thought much here—once or twice the light had shone through. But he was ready now to go. Just as soon as there was no more sick, just as soon as the plague was gone, he meant to steal from the Oak Grange and Hawthorn countryside. He and Joan came to the little gate, and he went out of it, then turning for a moment looked back at the thatched cottage, the pleasant beehives, the fruit trees that ere long would put forth a mist of bloom. Joan stood with a sorrowful face, but grey-eyed, vital. Her hand rested upon the worn wood. He laid his own upon it, lightly, for one moment. “Good-bye,” he said, “Mistress Friendly-Soul!”
She stood in the pale sunshine until he was gone from sight, then turned and went back to her kitchen. She must bake bread; there was nothing for her to eat in the cottage. She must get water from the well. She took her well-bucket, went forth and brought it back brimming. From the faggot pile she fed the fire, then brought to the table coarse flour and other matters for the bread, mixed and worked, moulded and set to bake. And all the time she tried to feel that her father was sitting there, in the settle corner. She made the table clear again, then looked at her wheel. But she did not feel like spinning; her heart was burdened again; she sat down on the stool by the fire and bowed her head in her arms. “Day after day and day after day,” she said; “day after day and day after day.” She rocked herself. “And a powerful man that I hate to come again and yet again to trouble me, and father not here.... Day after day and day after day.... And I know not why it is, but I have no friends. They’ve turned against me, and I know not why.... Day after day—” She sat with buried head and rocked herself slowly to and fro. Save for the youth in her form and the thick, pale bronze of her braided hair, she might have seemed Mother Spuraway, or Marget Primrose, or any other old and desolate woman. She rocked herself, and the faggot burned apart, and the cat stretched itself in the warmth.
From outside the cottage came a thin calling. “Joan! Joan! Oh, Joan!”
Joan lifted her head, listened a moment, then rose and opened the door. “Joan! Joan! Oh, Joan!” She stepped without and saw who it was,—Alison Inch and Cecily Lukin calling to her from the green path well beyond the gate. They would come at first no nearer. The plague had struck in the Lukin cottage no less than in Heron’s, and for weeks it had closely neighboured Alison Inch and her mother. But Joan must be made to feel comrades’ terror of her. “Joan! Joan! Have you got it yet?—We want but to see if you’re living!”