Great Britain -- History -- James I, 1603-1625 -- Fiction; Witchcraft -- Fiction
He came to a booth where there was a raree show. A shock-headed, ragged
youth was taking down the boards, which were painted with figures
of Indians, copper-hued and feathered. Half a dozen children stood
watching.
Aderhold stopped and watched also. “Have you an Indian here,” he asked
the boy. “I have never seen one.”
The youth nodded. “He sleeps in the corner back of the curtain. You pay
twopence to see him—” He grinned, and looked at the children. “But
it’s before hours, and if so be you won’t tell master on me—”
“We won’t, master, we won’t!” chorused the children.
The boy took down the last board, showing a concave much like a den
with a black curtain at the back. He whistled and the curtain stirred.
“We got him,” said the boy, “from two Spaniards who got him from a ship
from Florida. They trained him. They had a bear, too, that we bought,
but the bear died.” He whistled again. The curtain parted and the
Indian came forth and sat upon a stool planted in the middle of the den.
It was evident that he had been “trained.” Almost naked, gaunt, dull
and hopeless, he sat with a lack-lustre eye. The boy whistled again
and he spoke, a guttural and lifeless string of words. The children
gathered close, flushed and excited. But Aderhold’s brows drew upward
and together and he turned a little sick. He was a physician; he was
used to seeing wretchedness, but it had not deadened him. Every now and
then the wave of human misery came and went over him, high as space,
ineffably dreary, unutterably hopeless.... He stood and looked at the
Indian for a few moments, then, facing from the booth, walked away with
a rapid and disturbed step which gradually became slower and halted. He
turned and went back. “Has he eaten this morning? You don’t give him
much to eat?”
“Times are hard,” said the boy.
Aderhold took the smaller bundle from his stick, unwrapped it and with
his knife cut from the loaf a third of its mass. “May I give him this?”
The boy stared. “If you choose, master.”
The physician entered the booth, went up to the Indian and placed the
bread upon his knee. “Woe are we,” he said, “that can give no efficient
help!”
The savage and the European looked each other in the eyes. For a
moment something hawk-like, eagle-like, came back and glanced through
the pupils of the red man, then it sank and fled. His eyes grew dull
again, though he made a guttural sound and his hand closed upon the
bread. The physician stood a moment longer. He had strongly the sacred
wonder and curiosity, the mother of knowledge, and he had truly been
interested to behold an Indian. Now he beheld one—but the iron showed
more than the soul. “I am sorry for thee, my brother,” Aderhold said
softly.
The boy spoke from without. “Hist, hist! Master’s coming down the
street.”
Aderhold left the booth, shouldered his stick and bundle and went on
his way.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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