CHAPTER III
Young Thumb dwindles. The witch torments him and her foster father discerns that she is not nor ever can be a Christian woman.
From the day on which Ahab was lost and recovered, Titus began a secret courting of Doll. Witch or no witch he would have no other. On the one side of him was his father, winking at him and pointing out the richness of Mr. Bilby’s fields, the weight of his cattle, the size of his barns. On the other side of him was his fond mother, whispering and whispering, ‘The girl’s a witch, she’ll come to no good end, she’ll hang yet, the girl’s a witch ... witch ... witch.’ Of all these matrimonial plans Mrs. Hannah knew nothing. She saw that Titus was much about the house, but, being very proud of her beauty (which was remarkable in a woman of her years), she believed in her own heart that she was the reason for the young man’s constant presence. She could not believe so handsome and sought after a young man could see anything to desire in the ridiculous hobgoblin-child. Doll Bilbyflouted him at every turn, yet was he always after her, hungry as a cat for fish.
Many noticed, even by June and still more by July, that young Mr. Thumb was suffering from some malady that sapped strength from body, color from face, and dulled the eye. He was a listless worker in the fields, leaning upon his scythe, scanning the horizon, sighing, and weakly returning to his work. He ate little and slept less, so that his flesh fell away enormously, and, where four months before had stood a hale young man, now stood a haggard. He would mutter to himself, sit out in night vapours to consider the moon as it shone on the distant roof of Bilby’s house.
Thus things went from bad to worse. His mother noticed his condition and guessed its cause. She brooded over the young man, and this made him vexatious and bilious. When his little sisters had met (as they sometimes did, in spite of their mother) ‘Mistress Dolly’ by the willow brook, he would beg them to tell him everything the young woman said to them. How did they play? Did they build a little house of pebbles? Had they made dolls from stones? They would never tell him, but ran quickly away.The truth came out later. Doll amused them with stories of salamanders, elves, fairies, etc. They feared their mother would be angry if she knew—for she often had said that all thegoodstories were in the Bible, and if a story could not be found there it was proof that it was not good. So the twins ran away and told nothing of their visits with Doll. They often talked to each other, however, after they were in bed, and went on making up wicked things like those she had told them.
All her life Mrs. Thumb swore she knew her son’s distress was from no ordinary cause. If that were true, people asked her, how did she come to give consent to her son’s marriage with this same Doll? When she was an ancient lady, living in her son’s house at Cambridge, she once said: ‘I saw my son like to die, and he swore there was but one cure for him—that is, marriage with this young woman whom our magistrates later judged to be a witch. Therefore I said little to oppose the marriage. Then, too, at that time I placed much confidence in the wisdom of Mr. Zelley. He stood at my right hand, saying, “The girl is innocent. It will be a fine match.” Titus would cry out in his sleep forthis witch-girl. How could I deny him when I thought it the only way to save his life?’
Hannah raged when she learned that the marriage was arranged (although nothing yet had been said to Doll). Bilby could not fathom her anger, for he thought she would be pleased to get the girl out of the house. He did not know that his wife believed herself the reason for Titus’s mopings and pinings. Indeed she had ordered for herself a new red riding-hood from Mr. Silas Gore, of Boston, so that she might have finery with which to fascinate the young man.
At last Doll knew she was to marry the good young man, for her foster father told her so. He told her roughly, for his heart broke to think of losing her to another. Sorrow made his tongue unkind. She would not listen to him, but, laughing, clung about his waist, saying she would never leave him, that he was the only man she could ever love. He wanted to keep her with him forever, but he knew that she was a strange girl, not like others, and he believed that if she were married she would become less secret and, having a house and children of her own, she would be happier.
Then, too, he knew that his wife was cruelto her, and he thought that it would be better for her to live under a roof where there was only love. It was in vain that he told her that she was now a woman grown, and it was time that she went about the business of women—that is, the bearing and raising of children. Did she have a deep aversion for her handsome and godly young neighbour? Would she not be proud some day to be a minister’s wife? No, no, never, never—she only wanted to be his dear foster child. He hardened his heart against her, and unwound her arms from about his waist. He told her to marry young Thumb, or to think up better reasons why she should not. He would not have such an ungrateful, stubborn woman about his house. If she did not wish to do as he wished, she could find another place to live. He never meant such hard words. He acted for her own best good. He pushed her from him, and made off to the fields.
She overtook him in a field of flax where the flowers were even bluer than the rare summer sky. The air was heavy with the murmur of bees. She flung herself on her knees and caught him by the long blue smock he wore.
‘Father,’ she cried, ‘wait, wait, I beg of you.’She put her hands over her face and wept. He could have wept himself to see her thus. He hardened his heart and would have pushed by. She cried out she had something to tell him, so he waited silently, but without looking at her, for he was afraid that at the sight of her his heart would melt. She seized him by the hem of his smock and began to talk in a hoarse voice and a roaring voice like nothing he had ever heard out of her before. She had something to tell him, she said. There were reasons why she could not marry, especially not a young man who wished to be a minister. She feared she was not a Christian woman. She looked up at him from the ground, and he looked down upon her. Their eyes met, and in one horrid instant Mr. Bilby realized what it was she meant, why she feared she might not be a Christian woman. Of Evil she remembered everything, and at that moment he knew it.
He did not dare question her. He did not dare know what she knew. He essayed to comfort her and said he did not care who her parents really were. It mattered no more to him than who might be the sire of the cat that caught the mice in his barn. He also said what was not true, for he assured her that what one may have done orpromised at a very tender age had no importance in the eyes of God. So he talked vaguely, and made off to his labours.
She left him and went to a secret spot she had among the birch trees on the hillside. She was not comforted, and her heart was hard set against the thought of marriage.
Those things which Doll told Mr. Bilby frightened him. He went straight to his neighbours that same afternoon and said the time had come when Titus, with his own tongue and in his own body, should do a little courting. Titus said how could he when Doll was never a flea-hop from her foster father’s heels? Thus it was arranged. Doll, that very night, should be left alone in her father’s house—Bilby and wife should go to Thumb’s. Titus would come to her, court her, and persuade her to marriage. After a sufficient time, all would return to Bilby’s and celebrate the happy betrothal with sack-posset, hymns, psalms, prayers, etc.
To this Titus and all agreed. Even Doll had nothing to say, but at her foster father’s bidding she put on her most wanton dress—a giddy dress of scarlet tiffany such as no pious woman would wish to possess.
A woman is seized by a Frenzy. And how a man may court without profit.
Now, when she found herself alone, she ran back and forth, back and forth, through the house. She locked and barred everything. She locked the cupboards and the doors and shuttered the windows. She went to the attic and locked the trunks, the boxes, the cribs, and the cases. She went to the cellar and bolted the door. Doors she could neither bolt nor bar, she barricaded. Even when this was done, she could not stop her strange running round and round the house, sometimes turning in small circles like a dog gone mad. She said over and over to herself, ‘I must be a witch, for I can feel myself weaving a charm.’ So she ran fast through the house, but there was nothing more to lock.
It was not yet seven o’clock and the evening was still light. Yet so closely had she barred and shuttered everything, the house inside was dark as midnight. Then she got old blankets, and in the end, in her desperation, new blankets, and tried to stuff the gaping chimney hole in the fire-room so that the whole house should be utterly barred and tight. But all the time (as she afterwardstold Mr. Zelley) she would ask herself, ‘Why, why do I do these things?’ In the midst of her most desperate work with the chimney hole, she would stop and begin to run through the house—unable to stop herself. She thought to herself that she was working some charm or rather some charm worked within her. She was powerless before her great need to run back and forth, back and forth, through the locked and barred house.
Titus Thumb, dressed as though for a bridal and carrying a nosegay of lad’s-love and a turkey-leather psalm book for gifts, came proudly to the house, knocking to be let in. Doll heard him, for she was crouched upon the cold hearth of the fire-room, striving to stuff the chimney hole. She thought, ‘I will let him in, and then he can do this thing better than I.’
Titus was astonished to find the house dark and his lady’s hair a ragged black mat on her shoulders, her gay scarlet gown disordered and torn open at the throat, as though she had but recently wrestled with an enemy. And her face astonished him, for her cheeks were bright red. Fuller and more beautiful than ever before, her eyes glittered indeed like a goblin’s and her widemouth was pulled up at the corners in a wicked but most provocative smile. She, in the dark house, seemed more like imp or puck than human woman. All that was human in him—that is, intelligence, conscience, reason, and so forth—was afraid and bade him turn back; yet all that was animal in him—that is, the hunger and desire of his body—urged him to enter. So he entered.
Already that awful necessity that had made her run so madly through the house was gone. She explained the blankets by the cold hearth, saying that they were damp, and that she had planned to build a fire and dry them out. So he built a fire. She explained her dishevelled condition. She had heard a rat in the cellar and had taken a poker and hunted for him. Could he not at that moment hear the rat scampering in the cellar? So he took a light and a poker and went to the cellar, and Doll, a little ashamed and frightened, quickly ordered her clothes and hair, and unlocked everything she could before he returned. Yes, he said, he found a rat and he had killed it. This surprised her, for she had really heard no rat, and the thought came to her that perhaps the Devil had sent that rat to excuse her conduct.
The young man sat on the settle with his head in his hands and prayed God to deliver his soul from the woman’s soul, and her body unto his. At last he spoke to her, his face turned away from her. He told her that she knew why he was come. He wished to marry her, and that he would be to her a true and loving husband. No, she said, she could not marry him. He was surprised, for Mr. Bilby had told no one of the young woman’s aversion to marriage. He had understood that he had only to ask and she would assent. He told her that it was all settled—the very spot on which their house should be built. How could she now so coldly say no? She only said again that she could not marry him—nor any other. ‘If that is so,’ he said, ‘I’ll take my hat and go.’ But why, if she had no idea of marrying him, had she so kept him at her heels? She had not kept him at her heels. She was always trying to rid herself of him. She knew that was not true. The very way she drew back from him was the surest encouragement a man could have. She said she thought he was talking nonsense. Her eyes glittered at him, round and bright in the firelight, like a cat’s.
He was afraid. He got up. He said again thathe would take his hat and go. ‘I wish you would,’ said Doll. They could not find his hat. It seems that, while Doll was straightening herself and ordering the house (Titus at the moment ratting in the cellar), she had by chance picked up his hat, with many other things, such as the sooty blankets, and had stuck them under her own bed. So now they could not find his hat.
The young fellow was afraid, and now, as never before, he believed she was a witch. His blood pumped through him as though about to burst the veins; he knew that she wished this hat to work further charms upon him. But if she were so set upon charming him, making him her slave, why would she now have none of him? Why should she torture him, making him love her past all human endurance, and yet now so coldly dismiss him?
Doll said she was very sorry about the hat. ‘Oh, it is not the hat,’ he cried in despair, his head again in his two hands, ‘but, my dear Doll, why will you so torture me? Have I ever been anything but kind and respectful to you? Look what you have done. A year ago I was twice the man I now am. You have done it. You’ve sucked the strength and manhood out of myveins.’ Then he talked strangely so that she could not at first understand him. At last she understood him well. He believed that she had cast a witch spell on him, and had thus made him love her so beyond all reason. For, as he frankly told her, she really was not so wonderful nor half so beautiful, etc., as he had come to think her. He said he could remember back three years ago when he thought her a scrawny, rather ugly, little thing with too big a mouth.
All this made her very angry. She jumped up and down in her rage—more like an imp than ever—and screamed at him to be gone. She ran into her own room and came back with his hat—for she had guessed where it really was, but had not found an opportunity to get it for him. She jumped up and clapped the hat onto his head, pulling it down so sharply over his ears that she bent them, and continued to scream, ‘Go! Go! Go!’ He grabbed her roughly by the arm, called her witch, hellcat, succubus. She turned and bit his wrist, so that it was marked for days. He pulled her off him, shook her with great fury, and flung her from him so that her head struck against the settle and she moaned in pain. Her plight touched his heart infinitely,and he knew that, witch or no witch, she was his dear, his own girl.
So the parents and foster parents, returning, found them. The man, a valiant officer in the militia, a scholar, and the heir to a fine estate, was convulsed with weeping and sobbing. The girl lay terror-stricken in the corner, as harmless as a trapped rabbit. Mr. Bilby had no idea that Titus had flung her into this corner. She was a strange child, and he thought she had picked it out for herself. He pitied the terrible (if somewhat unmanly) grief of the young man, and swore that, in spite of Doll’s ridiculous and, he felt, unnatural objections, the marriage must go ahead.
Mrs. Thumb took her son home, and Mr. Bilby took Doll to bed, and he comforted her with that more than female solicitude that a man often shows towards children or women in distress.
Mrs. Hannah was in a rage when she found her fine blankets blackened with dirty soot. Nor would Doll offer an explanation to her foster mother, although afterwards she told Mr. Zelley everything.
The voice of Hell is heard in the House of the Lord.
Mrs. Thumb went everywhere whispering: ‘Look to my son. Is he not bewitched? Look at my boy—so gentle he would not kick a cat, yet you all know that once he shot at this Doll Bilby, and but a few nights ago he struck her and flung her upon the ground. Then he cried for hours. I took him home. Is it according to God and Nature for a man to love thus? Hating her, loving her, loving her, hating her. Would God the wench were dead, but she is not, and he will marry her.’
Every one thought the girl a witch. She went her own way quietly, working as she always did, a little shiftlessly, her mind on other things.
The harvest was late that year and heavy. One year Nature would starve her stepchildren (for so the colonists felt in the new land) with too little, and the next year break their backs with too much. Mr. Bilby, harassed with many things, did a wrong thing. He went to Mr. Zelley and begged him on the next Sabbath to publish the banns for his foster child and young Thumb, and he led Mr. Zelley to believe that Doll had assented to these plans.
It may well be that Doll, in some secret way common to witches (that is, through some imp or familiar used as spy), really did know that upon a certain Sunday the banns were to be read. If she did know, she said nothing of this thing to any one, keeping her own dark counsel, and working her secret spells. On a Friday Mr. Bilby sickened slightly, and upon Saturday he could not touch his proper food, only a cheat-loaf she baked with her own hands for him, and a barley gruel. Mrs. Hannah always believed—and doubtless with reason—that the young woman was at the bottom of this sickening and was endeavouring to keep him from the Meeting-House, for when she heard he was set upon going she begged him not to go, saying he was too ill, etc., and must be ruled by her, etc., and sit at home in idleness.
But he would not be persuaded, and he went to church as always. She rode with him upon the pillion. Mrs. Hannah rode the fat plough horse.
By the windows and doors of the Meeting-House were nailed the grim and grinning heads of wolves, freshly slain. In the stocks before the Meeting-House were two Quaker women, the one in an extremity of despair and cold (for therewas some ice upon the ground) and the other brazen, screaming out profanities and laughing in her disgrace. Upon the roof-walk paced back and forth Captain Buzzey, of the train-band troop, beating his drum in great long rolls, summoning all to come and worship.
Inside the Church Mrs. Hannah and Doll sat together on the women’s side, and Mr. Bilby, as befitted his station in the community, sat close to the minister. After certain psalms, prayers, etc., Mr. Zelley held forth from the Book of Judith for the space of two hours. There were announcements by the clerk, etc., and then Mr. Zelley again ascended the scaffold. Couched in proper form, he read how Titus, son of Deacon Ephraim Thumb, and Doll, foster child of Jared Bilby, engaged themselves for holy wedlock and desired the pronouncement of these banns.
His voice was drowned by a sharp and most piteous lamentation. At first none knew from where this infernal sound had come. Deacon looked to deacon, wife to wife. Mr. Cuppy, the tithing-man, ran up and down among the wretched small boys. Mr. Zelley stopped in astonishment, looking first up, as if he thoughtthe sound had come from the corn crib in the loft of the Church—or from Heaven—and then down, as though seeking its source from Hell. Doll Bilby was on her feet, her arms outstretched, addressing her foster father. Her voice rose and died out. None there could ever repeat what it was she said. That noon, in the noon-house, between the two services, men and women got together whispering, wondering, and asking each what it was that Bilby’s saucy jade had—to her own unending shame and to the great indignity of the sacred service—dared to pipe forth.
Mr. Zelley—the least disturbed of all—saw to it that Bilby and his beloved Doll be got to horse and to home, without waiting for the second service. He was perplexed and harassed by the occurrence, and refused to discuss with his deacons what would be a fitting punishment for the young woman, although most were agreed that it would be the stocks or the pillory. Instead of listening to the discussions in the noon-house, he went out of doors and stood before the evil women in the stocks, exhorting them in the name of Christ Jesus to repent and to be forgiven. Theodate Gookin, a stout child, mockedthem and pelted them with small apples. This action of the child enraged Mr. Zelley more than had the foul blasphemies of the Quakers. He roughly ordered Theodate to lay off his own warm overcoat. This he spread kindly upon the back of the most insufferable of the blasphemers. By which act of charity, he stilled her lying tongue, and reproved the levity of the child who would sport about and enjoy himself on the Lord’s Day.
Evil cursing bears bitter fruit. Mr. Bilby, though struck down, swears to the innocency of his Destroyer and makes a Pious End.
Bilby went stiffly to his horse, his mouth drawn, his face grey. His wife got on the pillion behind him and soon left Doll (on the fat work animal) far behind. When the girl got to the house, she did not seem to understand why her foster mother shook her fist, spat, and made at her with a warming-pan. She did not seem to know that she had cursed the man—that kind man, whom she loved.
Mr. Bilby suffered from a cruel congestion of the lights. Mr. Kleaver said from the first there was little chance to save him. For on one daycame the surgeon, with his saddle-bags stuffed with motherwort and goldenrod, and on the next came the minister with his big Bible, and on the third day they were like to send for Goody Goochey, the woman who had the laying-out of the dead—so sick was he.
But he delayed his passage into eternity, fighting death with hardly Christian resignation; for to your true Christian the years spent on this world must seem but as the nine months which the child spends in the womb. His death-day is in fact his birthday into the kingdom of God. Should he fight against death any more than the infant should fight against birth?
There were gathered in his sick-chamber night and day rarely less than ten or twelve people, praying for the departure of this fell disease, or, if this were impossible, they prayed in the hope of giving the shrinking soul a heavenward lift.
Mr. Bilby bade them save their breath, and, although his face was settling into lines of death and he breathed horribly and with an animal roaring, he still begged, as he had from the first, for a sight of his child Doll. The room was then cleared of the pious exhorters, who returned to the Thumb farm and there prayed and drankrumbullion. Only Mr. Kleaver, Mr. Zelley, and the wife remained. Mr. Zelley commanded Hannah to find the child, and Hannah, frowning, went away, but she came back soon and said she was not about. The truth is the woman had struck and cursed the girl so savagely that now, when she heard her name called, she did not dare to come.
The doors of the death-chamber were shut and sealed. Camphor was burned on the hearth; then the wife stood by her husband’s side, and, in the presence of Mr. Zelley and the surgeon, asked him three times and in a loud voice whether or not he believed he died of a curse pronounced upon him by his foster child. Mr. Bilby rallied his wits, and, in spite of the agony of his breathing, he stoutly denied the charge. But some (among them Hannah) believe that he was already dead when he seemed to speak, and that an evil spirit had succoured Doll by leaping into the head of the corpse and thus making answer. For he spoke up in a loud, clear voice, and yet one in no way like his own, and the next moment he was not only dead, but looked as though he had been dead for a half-hour or hour at the least.
Doll forswears the God of our Deliverance and embraces Beelzebub who prepares (for her instruction) aPROCESSION.
The four days Bilby was dying, Doll spent in the hayloft—night and day. She had over-heard the farm servants talking, and she knew of what she was accused and why it was Hannah would not let her into the house. She remembered that strange time when she had run and run through the house, working, she knew, a spell, or rather feeling a spell work through her, and she was sick to think that perhaps she had some power she did not understand, and had really put a charm upon her dear foster father when she had not intended. Perhaps it was also true that unknown to herself she had bewitched Titus Thumb. None went to her or knew where she lay but the youngest of the indentured servants, a good and gentle lad. This boy brought her food and water. When it was night he went to his poor lodgings in the cow-shed and took a blanket from his bed and gave it to her.
From the loft Doll stared down at the house and yard, and could guess, by the close attendance of the surgeon and the clergyman and by the multitudes gathered to pray, how sick hewas. Every morning she saw Hannah go early to the dunghill and catch a fowl. This bird Doll knew would be laid for warmth at the sick man’s feet, for under the dark covers the creature lay quietly and gave off a good and healing warmth, yet was no bird imprisoned longer than twenty-four hours lest its heat be translated into the chill of death.
On the fourth day—that is, the day on which Mr. Bilby died—Doll determined to leave the loft and if possible to find Goody Greene, who would at least tell her how her father did. Perhaps Greene might stay his sickness, for Doll had more confidence in her and her herbs than in Mr. Kleaver and his bleeding-cups. At this time of year the woman often went to the Bilby river meadows after an herb called ‘Love-lies-bleeding,’ so Doll, finding the opportunity to slip out unseen by any, got from the loft and decided first to hunt for her Sister-in-Evil along the riverbanks. She dared not pass through the town.
She sat by the river until sundown, crying long and bitterly. She remembered that time Titus had found her there, and cried afresh—for even those had been happier days.
Wherever she went she found the flower stemswere broke off close to the ground, and she saw the print of a small Indian moccasin in the mud. She knew that Goody Greene (being a pauper) wore these moccasins and that her feet were small, so she followed this trail, and this led her to the great forest. Here she paused, for she feared it. But she feared the cruel suspicions of her foster mother more, so she took a farewell look about her at the pastures and fields, and, finding a small path (still seeing here and there a moccasin print), she entered boldly.
It would seem, then, that another of those fits of senseless weaving back and forth overtook her. She knew the danger of being lost in this great wood, and she had not for a long time seen a footprint. Suddenly she began to run through the woods on those little paths beaten out by animals, hunters, and Indians. She could not pause either to consider her direction or to determine what it was she really sought, for she had almost forgotten the idea of finding Greene. The sun had set and the November night was coming down fast. The gloom and overwhelming silence weighed her down. She began to think that she smelt smoke or saw the glimmer of a fire. Wherever she looked she could see lightsmouldering in the underbrush. Sometimes she thought there were hundreds of tiny Indian encampments, with teepees but a few inches high, and, because she knew of Goody Greene’s fondness for Indians, she tried to come to these miniature encampments. She also knew that she was lost (although this knowledge did not horrify her as it would a reasonable person), and not only did she wish the goodwife’s company, but she needed the warmth even of the smallest fire, for the night was frosty cold.
At last, after much running, sniffing, and circling, she came to a small cleared spot, where she always maintained she found a fire burning, and over this fire was a great pall of black smoke. So she gathered more twigs and fagots, and built up the fire—not knowing that she only made a heap of rubbish upon the cold wet ground. At least her ‘fire’ seemed to warm and comfort her. She lay back upon the moss and fell quickly into deep sleep.
After some time, she waked, startled, for she heard her name called. ‘Bilby’s Doll! cried the voice, ‘Bilby’s Doll!
‘Yes,’ she answered, springing up from her unhappy bed. There was no answer to her ‘yes.’Whatever it was, she considered her ‘fire’ was almost out. ‘Who calls?’ she cried, and her voice echoed and the awful silence of night mocked at her in solitude.
Then at last, being wide awake, she realized with terror and dismay that the voice that called her was none other than that of her dear foster father. Yet would he never have called her thus, saying ‘Bilby’s Doll,’ but ‘Doll’ only.
Then she knew that he was dead, and that she would never see him again. It was his lonely spirit, fresh torn from the earthly body, that had stopped this moment on its heavenly flight to cry out to her thus sadly. She flung herself, moaning, upon the ground, unable to shed a tear. Witches, she knew, have no tears, and she realized with horror that her tears had dried up. She began to pray to ‘Dear God in Heaven....’ She heard a rustle in the forest, and then low and malicious laughter. She stopped her prayer. After a moment of writhing and moaning, she prayed again—‘Infinite Master, Lord God of Israel ... I never meant to hurt him. He was the only person I have ever loved. I never meant to kill him....’ ‘Why, then, did you curse him?’ asked a voice, and she again heard maliciouslaughter. She would have found relief for her remorse in tears, but there were no tears, nor did they ever come to her again.
Wild tiger
She felt the presence of a large and probably dangerous animal about, so she flung more wood on her ‘fire.’ She listened to its padded feet, and told herself it was lynx or wolf, yet in her heart she hoped and feared that it might be at last a messenger from that infernal King to whom she now was convinced her parents had promised her. For, between the moment that she heard a voice call ‘Bilby’s Doll’ and that moment in which she had felt a corporeal presence in the wood, she had become fully convinced that she was a witchwith all the powers that belong to such an evil estate.
Slyly she made one last appeal to Jehovah, for she thought that He might even for so evil a one as her own self make His awful majesty manifest. ‘O God, who seest all things, who rulest above, O Great God of Israel, give me a sign, give me a sign....’ Then in her impudence she lifted up her impious voice and commanded God, ‘Put back the soul of Jared Bilby, for it is not yet gone far and his body is yet warm. Do this and I will serve You. Desert me now, and I wash my hands of You and Your cruel ways!’ The rustling and the commotion crept nearer. No angel this thing which approached her on its belly. She stared, expecting to see horned head and grinning demon face. She saw nothing. She cried once more to God. The solitude echoed her voice with laughter. Then she cried to the powers of Hell below and to the Prince of Lies, ‘Great King of Hell, if I serve you, you must serve me’ (for she knew this was a stipulation in a witch’s contract). ‘I will do anything, sign any book, if you will but give me back the soul of Jared Bilby.’ But this poor soul was now in the keeping of angel hosts. Not Lucifer himselfcould snatch it from such guardians. As she thought thus, a windy voice cried, ‘Too late, too late.’ ‘Satan, you shall give me a sign,’ she cried. And there close to the ground were two great cat’s eyes, larger than saucers. They glared at her with a green hellish light that transpierced the darkness and her very soul.
She cried out desperately to those eyes, ‘Whoever you are, step forth. I will do anything, sign any book. Tell me now, in Satan’s name, is there no way back to life for Jared Bilby? For it was I, I, I, who slew him—with a witch’s look. Oh, kind spirit, if you are old, I will be your daughter; if you are young, I will be your bride—stand forth now to me.’
The yellow eyes turned from her as she struggled with her unhallowed thoughts, and the thing was gone. Far away, mile after mile, a voice no bigger than a sparrow’s cried sadly to her, and in great agony of spirit, ‘Bilby’s Doll....’ She thought to run after the voice, to catch the naked soul in her hands. Of what avail? Gone already a thousand miles. In the littlest voice, no larger than voice of flea or worm, she heard once more her foster father cry to her, ‘Bilby’s Doll....’
She knew that, as there are certain forms andincantations for the destruction of life, so must there be others for the rekindling of it. What had Our Lord said before the tomb of Lazarus? Could she but remember the words she herself had said in church—perhaps by repeating them backwards she could countermand the curse.
She fell to the ground in an ague, and lay sobbing dryly, exhorting the powers of Hell. Twigs snapped in blackness about her. Feet padded in silence.
The cold of the night, the terror of her soul, the dearth of food, the sorrow of her heart struck her into a stupor from which she could not move. Through this stupor, in steady procession, and with much pomp and circumstance, a long parade of figures, fiends, witches, warlocks, imps, beasts, familiars, satyrs, and even the beautiful chaste Diana herself, moved in fleshly form: a wicked, most fantastic procession. Goblins were there with faces of cats and owls, salamanders but lately crawled from fire. Basilisks were there, serpents, vampires with bats’ wings and horrid mouths swollen with blood. The pretty pink bodies of innocent babes were there, who had died unbaptized, and therefore must stand asservants in the halls of Hell, and with them were pucks and pugs.
After them rolled through the forest a great orange cloud—like an old and tarnished fire—no longer heat-giving. At first her eye could make nothing of it. Then she saw projecting through the dun vapours were naked legs and arms, bits of bodies, and drawn and skull-like heads with tortured eyes. These were they the French burned at Mont Hoël in Brittany. Although she might not know them, her parents were among them. A group came slowly after these, shrouded and shuffling through the woods. In the midst of these she saw Goody Greene. This woman, alone of all the passers-by, turned and looked towards Doll. But her eyes were blind.
Last of all came Ahab shaking his black head, a cowslip hanging from his blue lips. She would sleep and wake, but the procession would still be passing by, and every so often Ahab would pass by. The woods were humming-full with an infinity of unearthly things. There was continuous lovely singing—or rather a rhythmic humming that rose and fell and rose again.
With daylight the tides of Hell recede. Doll wakes but to a more determined Evil.
At last she awoke to see, not the procession of Hell, but bright day. The humming, however, still continued in her head, rising and falling, but not going away. She was frozen cold to her marrow. Now the loss of her foster father had become a tiny thing infinitely far away and long, long ago. All her previous existence seemed removed from her as if again a barrier had come down upon her, shutting one part of her life from the next. So, although she thought sadly of the kind man’s death, it already seemed one with the destruction of her parents—that is, a thing which has happened long back in childhood.
She recalled to herself the story of a girl who had slept in a fairy-wood for a hundred years, and she looked fearfully at her hands, expecting them to be gnarled with a century. But they were as they always had been. Her hair about her shoulders was black. She thought that it was possible (and at that time it even seemed most probable) that, although her body might have retained its youthful form, a great flight of time had passed. She would go back to Cowan Cornersto find the dark forest had swallowed it. There would be cellar holes lost in thickets, where Boston, Salem, Cowan Corners, Ipswich, etc., had stood. She felt herself alone upon a whole continent. Her body had grown so light and so unreal, she scarce could stand, nor was she wholly convinced of her own reality until she observed she still could cast a shadow.
Doll Bilby had always longed for the comforts of religion, so it was natural that she, having as she believed just witnessed a manifestation of her ‘god,’ should now reverently stand and give thanks. She called upon her Father in Hell, thanking him that he had made manifest to her visible proof of his greatness. She called upon her father and mother, blessed them in the great name of Hell, and promised to serve them. She called upon all that vast host of evil things, blessed them, and promised to serve them.
So she floated lightly forth, intent to see the place where Cowan Corners once had stood. Voices called her through the wood, and these she knew were true voices of men, not the eerie cries of ghosts or demons. She answered, ‘Here am I.’
Four men came to her, nor was one of them aminute older than he had seemed last Sabbath at Meeting. Mr. Zelley cried out in pity, for her five days of despair, suffering, and even the astounding pleasures of the night before, had marked the face of Doll Bilby, altering its pretty childish shape.
‘My child,’ he said, ‘you need not have run away. There is no reason to believe Mr. Bilby’s death due to anything but nature. Such a congestion of the lights is not uncommon and often results in death. Doll, as he lay dying, we questioned him if he was worked upon by any witchcraft, and he cried in a loud voice, “I die spirit free.”’
Doll wept with her hands over her face. None saw that she shed no tears. But she knew that the springs of her tears had dried in the night. Mr. Zelley kissed her gently upon the forehead, and with that kiss he entered into pact with her, for after that he cherished her and became at last her confidant in all things, even in all evil things. And he had once been a minister of God.
Mr. Zelley walked by her side. The three other men looked at her doubtfully, thinking each to himself, ‘This young woman is a murderess and a witch.’ They soon outdistanced theminister and the woman, so it was he alone who took her back to her own home.
He told her that from now on, for a little space of time, life would be hard for her. She must live peaceably in the house with Hannah (there was no other place for her to go). She must, by a godly, upright, and virtuous life, and by the goodness of her conversation and dignity of her demeanour, give the lie (he said) to all those who would with tedious rustic simplicity believe her a witch. Both he and Mr. Kleaver knew Mr. Bilby died by nature and not by art. She was, moreover, in all things to trust him. He would clear her name (he said). He had power among these people (he hoped). She was to be of good heart, and the Lord God would be with her. Also he promised to come to her often, praying with her, and strengthening her.
So he took her to her door. In the yard they saw the two indentured servants nailing together a wooden coffin. A group of serious men stood, watching them, and discussed the mutabilities of life, etc. Now and again one helped himself at the barrel of cider that had been rolled out to accommodate their thirst (for thirst is like to rise from serious discourse and ponderous thought).
Mr. Zelley took her within the house. The ovens were fired and pots boiled on the hearth. There was the leg of a great ox on a spit over the coals. The little turnspit dog, which ordinarily served at the tavern, had been brought over to serve for the sad yet pleasing occasion. He turned the spit, as he had been trained to do. His eyes were red and rheumy. The hair was burned away from his hind quarters, and they were red and scorched. Doll remembered how often her foster father at the tavern had given scraps of food to this same miserable small dog, and how he called it ‘Old Father Time’ even when it was a pup, for it had always seemed bent, wizen, and full of many cares. She turned away her head.
The house was full of neighbour women who had come to help prepare the funeral meats. Doll entered. All found reason they must go to the milk-house, the cellar, the barn, the pantry, or to the best room where the corpse lay and the widow sat in black. Doll and Mr. Zelley were left alone except for a squat and horrid form, who stood its own and feared no woman nor man nor witch. This was the form of Goochey, she who had the laying-out of the dead. She hada face and voice like a man’s. Indeed many believed that she was a man who, perhaps having committed offence in the Old World, had fled, thus disguised, to the New. She came from the Welsh borders, and would never touch a corpse unless she had first set upon her hands ten iron rings—one to each finger; for she feared that, without this protection, the spirit of the corpse might enter her veins and thus havoc her body.
When Doll saw this dwarfish man-woman standing in the fire-room, fitting iron rings to her fingers, she shrank from her in horror. Goody Goochey muttered at her, and Mr. Zelley was distressed because he believed she was calling the distrait young woman a witch. However, such was the hoarseness of Goochey’s voice and such was the coarseness of her nature, he could not be sure. She might have been calling her another, no more flattering, but surely less dangerous, epithet. Mr. Zelley sincerely hoped so, for he was far more concerned with the reputation of Doll than he was with the good or bad language of Goochey.