She felt neither fear nor disgust. A witch of but a few hours’ standing she rejected with the scorn of the initiate all the bugaboo surmises of the public. She looked with serene curiosity at the future, and saw it but little altered from what she had hoped and planned. If she had been called upon to decide in cold blood between being an aunt and being a witch, she might have been overawed by habit and the cowardice of compunction. But in the moment of election, under the stress and turmoil of the hunted Lolly as under a covering of darkness, the true Laura had settled it all unerringly. She had known where to turn. She had been like the girl in the fairy tale whose godmother gave her a little nutshell box and told her to open it in the hour of utter distress. Unsurmised by others, and half forgotten by the girl, the little nutshell box abided its time; and in the hour of utter distressit opened of itself. So, unrealised, had Laura been carrying her talisman in her pocket. She was a witch by vocation. Even in the old days of Lady Place the impulse had stirred in her. What else had set her upon her long solitary walks, her quests for powerful and forgotten herbs, her brews and distillations? In London she had never had the heart to take out her still. More urgent for being denied this innocent service, the ruling power of her life had assaulted her with dreams and intimations, calling her imagination out from the warm safe room to wander in darkened fields and by desolate sea-bords, through marshes and fens, and along the outskirts of brooding woods. It had haled her to Wapping and to the Jews’ Burying Ground, and then, ironically releasing her, had left her to mourn and find her way back to Apsley Terrace. How she had come to Great Mop she could not say; whether it was of her own will, or whether, exchanging threatenings and mockeries for sweet persuasions, Satan had at last taken pity upon her bewilderment, leading her by the hand into the flower-shop in the Moscow Road; but from the moment of her arrival there he had never been far off. Sure of her—she supposed—he had done little fornine months but watch her. Near at hand but out of sight the loving huntsman couched in the woods, following her with his eyes. But all the time, whether couched in the woods or hunting among the hills, he drew closer. He was hidden in the well when she threw in the map and the guide-book. He sat in the oven, teaching her what power she might have over the shapes of men. He followed her and Mr. Saunter up and down between the henhouses. He was nearest of all upon the night when she climbed Cubbey Ridge, so near then that she acknowledged his presence and was afraid. That night, indeed, he must have been within a hand’s-breadth of her. But her fear had kept him at bay, or else he had not chosen to take her just then, preferring to watch until he could overcome her mistrust and lure her into his hand. For Satan is not only a huntsman. His interest in mankind is that of a skilful and experienced naturalist. Even human sportsmen at the end of their span sometimes declare that to potter about in the woods is more amusing than to sit behind a butt and shoot driven grouse. And Satan, who has hunted from eternity, a little jaded moreover by the success of his latest organised Flanders battue, might well feel thathis interest in a Solitary Snipe like Laura was but sooner or later to measure the length of her nose. Yet hunt he must; it is his destiny, and whether he hunts with a gun or a butterfly net, sooner or later the chase must end. All finalities, whether good or evil, bestow a feeling of relief; and now, understanding how long the chase had lasted, Laura felt a kind of satisfaction at having been popped into the bag.
She was distracted from these interesting thoughts by the sounds of footsteps. The kitten heard them too, and sat up, yawning. The Leaks coming back from their lecture, thought Laura. But it was Titus. Inserting his head and shoulders through the window he asked if he could come in and borrow some milk.
‘I haven’t any milk,’ said Laura, ‘but come in all the same.’
She began to tickle the kitten behind the ears in order to reassure it. By lamplight Titus’s head seemed even nearer to the ceiling, it was a relief to her sense of proportion when he sat down. His milk, he explained, the jugful which Mrs. Garland left on the sitting-room table for his nightly Ovaltine, had curdled into a sort of unholy junket. This he attributed to popular education, and the spread of science amongdairy farmers; in other words, Mr. Dodbury had overdone the preservative.
‘I don’t think it’s science,’ said Laura. ‘More likely to be the weather. It was very sultry this afternoon.’
‘I saw you starting out. I had half a mind to come with you, but it was too hot to be a loving nephew. Where did you go?’
‘Up to the windmill.’
‘Did you find the wind?’
‘No.’
‘You weren’t going in the direction of the windmill when I saw you.’
‘No. I changed my mind. About the milk,’ she continued (Titus had come for milk. Perhaps, being reminded that he had come in vain, he would go. She was growing sleepy): ‘I’m sorry, but I have none left. I gave it all to the kitten.’
‘I’ve been remarking the kitten. He’s new, isn’t he? You ugly little devil!’
The kitten lay on her knees quite quietly. It regarded Titus with its pale eyes, and blinked indifferently. It was only waiting for him to go, Laura thought, to fall asleep again.
‘Where has it come from? A present from the water-butt?’
‘I don’t know. I found it here when I came back for supper.’
‘It’s a plain-headed young Grimalkin. Still, I should keep it if I were you. It will bring you luck.’
‘I don’t think one has much option about keeping a cat,’ said Laura. ‘If it wants to stay with me it shall.’
‘It looks settled enough. Do keep it, Aunt Lolly. A woman looks her best with a cat on her knees.’
Laura bowed.
‘What will you call it?’
Into Laura’s memory came a picture she had seen long ago in one of the books at Lady Place. The book was about the persecution of the witches, and the picture was a woodcut of Matthew Hopkins the witch-finder. Wearing a large hat he stood among a coven of witches, bound cross-legged upon their stools. Their confessions came out of their mouths upon scrolls. ‘My imp’s name is Ilemauzar,’ said one; and another imp at the bottom of the page, an alert, ill-favoured cat, so lean and muscular that it looked like a skinned hare, was called Vinegar Tom.
‘I shall call it Vinegar,’ she answered.
‘Vinegar!’ said Titus. ‘How do you like your name?’
The kitten pricked up its ears. It sprang from Laura’s knee and began to fence with Titus’s shadow, feinting and leaping back. Laura watched it a little apprehensively, but it did him no harm. It had awakened in a playful frame of mind after its long sleep, that was all. When Titus had departed it followed Laura to her bedroom, and as she undressed it danced round her, patting at her clothes as they fell.
In the morning the kitten roused her by mewing to be let out. She awoke from a profound and dreamless sleep. It took her a little time to realise that she had a kitten in her bedroom, a kitten of no ordinary kind. However it was behaving quite like an ordinary kitten now, so she got out of bed and let it out by the back door. It was early; no one was stirring. The kitten disappeared with dignity among the cabbages, and Laura turned her thoughts backward to the emotions of overnight. She tried to recall them, but could not; she could only recall the fact that overnight she had felt them. The panic that then had shaken her flesh was no more actual than a last winter’s gale. It had been violent enough while it lasted, aninvisible buffeting, a rending of life from its context. But now her memory presented it to her as a cold slab of experience, like a slab of pudding that had lain all night solidifying in the larder. This was no matter. Her terror had been an incident; it had no bearing upon her future, could she now recall it to life it would have no message for her. But she regretted her inability to recapture the mood that had followed upon it, when she sat still and thought so wisely about Satan. Those meditations had seemed to her of profound import. She had sat at her Master’s feet, as it were, admitted to intimacy, and gaining the most valuable insight into his character. But that was gone too. Her thoughts, recalled, seemed to be of the most commonplace nature, and she felt that she knew very little about the Devil.
Meanwhile there was the kitten, an earnest that she should know more.
‘Vinegar!’ she called, and heard its answer, a drumming scramble among the cabbage leaves. She wished that Vinegar would impart some of his mind to her instead of being so persistently and genially kittenish. But he was a familiar, no doubt of it. And she was a witch, the inheritrix of aged magic, spells rubbed smoothwith long handling, and the mistress of strange powers that got into Titus’s milk-jug. For no doubt that was the beginning, and a very good beginning, too. Well begun is half-done; she could see Titus bending over his suit-case. The Willowes tradition was very intolerant of pease under its mattress.
Though she tried to think clearly about the situation—grapple, she remembered, had been Caroline’s unpleasantly strenuous word—her attention kept sidling off to other things: the sudden oblique movements of the water-drops that glistened on the cabbage leaves, or the affinity between the dishevelled brown hearts of the sunflowers and Mrs. Leak’s scrubbing-brush, propped up on the kitchen window-sill. It must have rained heavily during the night. The earth was moist and swelled, and the air so fresh that it made her yawn. Her limbs were heavy, and the contentment of the newly-awakened was upon her. All night she had bathed in nothingness, and now she was too recently emerged from that absolving tide to take much interest in what lay upon its banks. Her eyelids began to droop, and calling the kitten she went back to bed again and soon fell asleep.
She was asleep when Mrs. Leak brought her morning tea.
Mrs. Leak said: ‘Did the thunder keep you awake, miss?’
Laura shook her head. ‘I never even heard it.’
Mrs. Leak looked much astonished. ‘It’s well to have a good conscience,’ she remarked.
Laura stretched herself, sat up in bed, and began to tell Mrs. Leak about the kitten. This seemed to be her real awakening. The other was a dream.
Mrs. Leak was quite prepared to welcome the kitten; that was, provided her old Jim made no unpleasantness. Jim was not Mr. Leak, but a mottled marmalade cat, very old and rather shabby. Laura could not imagine him making any unpleasantness, but Mrs. Leak estimated his character rather differently. Jim thought himself quite a Great I Am, she said.
After breakfast Laura and Vinegar were called into the kitchen for the ceremony of introduction. Jim was doing a little washing. His hind leg was stuck straight up, out of the way, while he attended to the pit of his stomach. Nothing could have been more suitable than Vinegar’s modest and deferential approach. Jim gave him one look and went on licking. Mrs.Leak said that all would be well between them; Jim always kept himself to himself, but she could see that the old cat had taken quite a fancy to Miss Willowes’s kitten. She promised Vinegar some of Jim’s rabbit for dinner. Mrs. Leak did not hold the ordinary view of country people that cats must fend for themselves. ‘They’re as thoughtful as we,’ she said. ‘Why should they eat mouse unless they want to?’ She was continually knocking at the parlour door with tit-bits for Vinegar, but she was scrupulous that Laura should bestow them with her own hand.
Since Titus had come to Great Mop Laura had seen little of Mrs. Leak. Mrs. Leak knew what good manners were; she had not been a housemaid at Lazzard Court for nothing. Taken separately, either Titus or his aunt might be human beings, but in conjunction they became gentry. Mrs. Leak remembered her position and withdrew to it, firmly. Laura saw this and was sorry. She made several attempts to persuade Mrs. Leak out from behind her white apron, but nothing came of them, and she knew that while Titus was in the village nothing would. Not that Mrs. Leak did not like Titus; she approved of him highly; and it was exactly her approval that made her barricade of respectso insuperable. But where Laura had failed, the kitten succeeded. From the moment that Jim sanctioned her kindly opinion of him, Mrs. Leak began to thaw. Laura knew better than to make a fuss over this turn in the situation; she took a leaf out of the Devil’s book and lay low, waiting for a decisive advance; and presently it came. Mrs. Leak asked if Miss Willowes would care to come out for a stroll one evening; it was pleasant to get a breath of air before bedtime. Miss Willowes would like nothing better; that very evening would suit her if Mrs. Leak had nothing else to do. Mrs. Leak said that she would get the washing-up done as soon as possible, and after that she would be at Miss Willowes’s disposal. However, it was nearly half-past ten before Mrs. Leak knocked on the parlour door. Laura had ceased to expect her, supposing that Mr. Leak or some household accident had claimed her, but she was quite as ready to go out for a walk as to go to bed, and Mrs. Leak made no reference to the lateness of the hour. Indeed, according to the Great Mop standard, the hour was not particularly late. Although the night was dark, Laura noticed that quite a number of the inhabitants were standing about in the street.
They walked down the road in silence as far as the milestone, and turned into the track that went up the hillside and past the wood. Others had turned that way also. The gate stood open, and voices sounded ahead. It was then that Laura guessed the truth, and turned to her companion.
‘Where are you taking me?’ she said. Mrs. Leak made no answer, but in the darkness she took hold of Laura’s hand. There was no need for further explanation. They were going to the Witches’ Sabbath. Mrs. Leak was a witch too; a matronly witch like Agnes Sampson, she would be Laura’s chaperone. The night was full of voices. Padding rustic footsteps went by them in the dark. When they had reached the brow of the hill a faint continuous sound, resembling music, was borne towards them by the light wind. Laura remembered how young Billy Thomas, suffering from toothache, had played all night upon his mouth-organ. She laughed. Mrs. Leak squeezed her hand.
The meeting-place was some way off, by the time they reached it Laura’s eyes had grown accustomed to the darkness. She could see a crowd of people walking about in a large field; lights of some sort were burning under a hedge,and one or two paper garlands were looped over the trees. When she first caught sight of them, the assembled witches and warlocks seemed to be dancing, but now the music had stopped and they were just walking about. There was something about their air of disconnected jollity which reminded Laura of a Primrose League gala and fête. A couple of bullocks watched the Sabbath from an adjoining field.
Laura was denied the social gift, she had never been good at enjoying parties. But this, she hoped, would be a different and more exhilarating affair. She entered the field in a most propitious frame of mind, which not even Mr. Gurdon, wearing a large rosette like a steward’s and staring rudely and searchingly at each comer before he allowed them to pass through the gate, was able to check.
‘Old Goat!’ exclaimed Mrs. Leak in a voice of contemptuous amusement after they had passed out of Mr. Gurdon’s hearing. ‘He thinks he can boss us here, just as he does in the village.’
‘Is Mr. Jones here?’ inquired Laura.
Mrs. Leak shook her head and laughed.
‘Mr. Gurdon doesn’t allow him to come.’
‘I suppose he doesn’t think it suitable for a clergyman.’
Perhaps it was as well that Mr. Gurdon had such strict views. In spite of the example of Mr. Lowis, that old reading parson, it might be a little awkward if Mr. Jones were allowed to attend the Sabbath.
But that apparently was not the reason. Mrs. Leak was beginning to explain when she broke off abruptly, coughed in a respectful way, and dropped a deep curtsey. Before them stood an old lady, carrying herself like a queen, and wearing a mackintosh that would have disgraced a tinker’s drab. She acknowledged Mrs. Leak’s curtsey with an inclination of the head, and turned to Laura,
‘I am Miss Larpent. And you, I think, must be Miss Willowes.’
The voice that spoke was clear as a small bell and colourless as if time had bleached it of every human feeling save pride. The hand that rested in Laura’s was light as a bird’s claw; a fine glove encased it like a membrane, and through the glove Laura felt the slender bones and the sharp-faceted rings.
‘Long ago,’ continued Miss Larpent, ‘I had the pleasure of meeting your great-uncle, Commodore Willowes.’
Good heavens, thought Laura in a momentaryconfusion, was great-uncle Demetrius a warlock? For Miss Larpent was so perfectly witchlike that it seemed scarcely possible that she should condescend to ordinary gentlemen.
Apparently Miss Larpent could read Laura’s thoughts.
‘At Cowes,’ she added, reassuringly.
Laura raised her eyes to answer, but Miss Larpent had disappeared. Where she had stood, stood Miss Carloe, mincing and bridling, as though she would usurp the other’s gentility. Over her face she wore a spotted veil. Recognising Laura she put on an air of delighted surprise and squeaked like a bat, and immediately she too edged away and was lost in the darkness.
Then a young man whom she did not know came up to Laura and put his arm respectfully round her waist. She found herself expected to dance. She could not hear any music, but she danced as best she could, keeping time to the rhythm of his breath upon her cheek. Their dance was short, she supposed she had not acquitted herself to her partner’s satisfaction, for after a few turns he released her, and left her standing by the hedge. Not a word had passed between them. Laura felt that she ought to say something, but she could not think ofa suitable opening. It was scarcely possible to praise the floor.
A familiar discouragement began to settle upon her spirits. In spite of her hopes she was not going to enjoy herself. Even as a witch, it seemed, she was doomed to social failure, and her first Sabbath was not going to open livelier vistas than were opened by her first ball. She remembered her dancing days in Somerset, Hunt Balls, and County Balls in the draughty Assembly Rooms. With the best intentions she had never managed to enjoy them. The first hour was well enough, but after that came increasing listlessness and boredom; the effort, when one danced again with the same partner, not to say the same things, combined with the obligation to say something rather like them, the control of eyelids, the conversion of yawns into smiles, the humbling consciousness that there was nothing to look forward to except the drive home. That was pleasant, and so was the fillip of supper at the drive’s end, and the relief of yielding at last to an unfeigned hunger and sleepiness. But these were by-blow joys, of the delights for which balls are ordained she knew nothing.
She watched the dancers go by and wonderedwhat the enchantment was which they felt and she could not. What made them come out in the middle of the night, loop paper garlands over the trees, light a row of candles in the ditch, and then, friends and enemies and indifferents, go bumping round on the rough grass? That fatal comparison with the Primrose League recurred to her. She was not entertained, so she blamed the entertainment. But the fault lay with her, she had never been good at parties, she had not got the proper Sabbath-keeping spirit. Miss Larpent was enjoying herself; Laura saw the bonnet whisk past. But doubtless Miss Larpent had enjoyed herself at Cowes.
These depressing thoughts were interrupted by red-haired Emily, who came spinning from her partner’s arms, seized hold of Laura and carried her back into the dance. Laura liked dancing with Emily; the pasty-faced and anaemic young slattern whom she had seen dawdling about the village danced with a fervour that annihilated every misgiving. They whirled faster and faster, fused together like two suns that whirl and blaze in a single destruction. A strand of the red hair came undone and brushed across Laura’s face. The contact made her tingle from head to foot. She shut her eyesand dived into obliviousness—with Emily for a partner she could dance until the gunpowder ran out of the heels of her boots. Alas! this happy ending was not to be, for at the height of their performance Emily was snatched away by Mr. Jowl, the horse-doctor. Laura opened her eyes and saw the pale face disappearing in the throng as the moon sinks into the clouds.
Emily was in great request, and no wonder. Like a torch she was handed on from one to another, and every mutation shook down some more hair. The Sabbath was warming up nicely now, every one was jigging it, even Laura. For a while Mrs. Leak kept up a semblance of chaperonage. Suddenly appearing at Laura’s elbow she would ask her if she were enjoying herself, and glancing at her would slip away before she could answer. Or with vague gestures she indicated some evasively bowing partner, male or female; and silently Laura would give her hand and be drawn into the dance, presently to be relinquished or carried off by some one else.
The etiquette of a Sabbath appeared to consist of one rule only: to do nothing for long. Partners came and went, figures and conformations were in a continual flux. Sometimes thedancers were coupled, sometimes they jigged in a circle round some specially agile performer, sometimes they all took hands and galloped about the field. Half-way through a very formal quadrille presided over by the Misses Larpent they fell abruptly to playing Fox and Geese. In spite of Mr. Gurdon’s rosette there was no Master of Ceremonies. A single mysterious impulse seemed to govern the company. They wheeled and manœuvred like a flock of starlings.
After an hour or two of this Laura felt dizzy and bewildered. Taking advantage of the general lack of formality she tore herself from Mr. Gurdon’s arms, not to dance with another, but to slip away and sit quietly in the hedge.
She wondered where the music came from. She had heard it quite clearly as she came over the hill, but upon entering the field she had lost it. Now as she watched the others she heard it once more. When they neared it grew louder, when they retreated into the darkness it faded with them, as though the sound issued from the dancers themselves, and hung, a droning exhalation, above their heads. It was an odd kind of music, a continuous high shapeless blurr of sound. It was something like mosquitoes in a hot bedroom, and something like a distantthreshing machine. But beside this, it had a faintly human quality, a metallic breathing as of trombones marking the measure; and when the dancers took hands and revolved in a leaping circle the music leaped and pounded with them, so much like the steam-organ music of a merry-go-round that for a moment Laura thought that they were riding on horses and dragons, bobbing up and down on crested dragons with heads like cocks, and horses with blood-red nostrils.
The candles burnt on in the dry ditch. Though the boughs of the thorn-trees moved above them and grated in the night-wind, the candle flames flowed steadily upwards. Thus lit from below, the dancers seemed of more than human stature, their bodies extending into the darkness as if in emulation of their gigantic upcast shadows. The air was full of the smell of bruised grass.
Mrs. Leak had forgotten Laura now. She was dancing the Highland Schottische with a lean young man whose sleeves were rolled up over his tattooed forearms. The nails in his boots shone in the candle-light, and a lock of hair hung over his eye. Mrs. Leak danced very well. Her feet flickered to and fro as nimbly as a tongue. At the turn of the figure shetripped forward to be caught up and swung round on the young man’s arm. Though her feet were off the ground they twitched with the movements of the dance, and set down again they took up the uninterrupted measure. Laura watched her with admiration. Even at a Witches’ Sabbath Mrs. Leak lost none of her respectability. Her white apron was scarcely crumpled, she was as self-contained as a cat watching a mouse, and her eyes dwelt upon the young man’s face as though she were listening to a sermon.
She preserved her dignity better than some of the others did. Mr. Gurdon stood by himself, stamping his foot and tossing his head, more like the farmer’s bull than ever. Miss Carloe was begging people to look at the hole in her leg where the hedgehog sucked her; and red-haired Emily, half-naked and holding a candle in either hand, danced round a tree, curtseying to it, her mouth fixed in a breathless corpse-like grin.
Miss Minnie and Miss Jane had also changed their demeanour for the worse. They sat a little retired from the dancers, tearing up a cold grouse and gossiping with Mrs. Dewey the midwife. A horrible curiosity stretched their skinny old necks. Miss Minnie had forgotten to gnawher grouse, she leant forward, her hand covered the lower half of her face to conceal the workings of her mouth. Miss Jane listened as eagerly, and questioned the midwife. But at the answers she turned away with coquettish shudders, pretending to stop her ears, or threatening to slap her sister with a bone.
Laura averted her eyes. She wriggled herself a little further into the hedge. Once again the dancers veered away to the further side of the field, their music retreating with them. She hoped they would stay away, for their proximity was disturbing. They aroused in her neither fear nor disgust, but when they came close, and she felt their shadows darkening above her head, a nameless excitement caught hold of her. As they departed, heaviness took its place. She was not in the least sleepy and yet several times she found herself astray from her thoughts, as though she were falling asleep in a train. She wondered what time it was and looked up to consult the stars. But a featureless cloud covered the sky.
Laura resigned herself. There was nothing to do but to wait, though what she waited for she did not know: whether at length Mrs. Leak would come, like a chaperone from the supper-room, and say: ‘Well, my dear, I reallymust take you home’—or if, suddenly, at the first cock-crow, all the company would rise up in the air, a darkening bevy, and disperse, and she with them.
She was roused by a shrill whistle. The others heard it too. Miss Minnie and Miss Jane scrambled up and hurried across the field, outdistancing Mrs. Dewey, who followed them panting for breath and twitching her skirts over the rough ground. The music had stopped. Laura saw all the witches and warlocks jostling each other, and pressing into a circle. She wondered what was happening now. Whatever it was, it seemed to please and excite them a great deal, for she could hear them all laughing and talking at once. Some newcomer, she supposed—for their behaviour was that of welcome. Now the newcomer must be making a speech, for they all became silent: a successful speech, for the silence was broken by acclamations, and bursts of laughter.
‘Of course!’ said Laura. ‘It must be Satan!’
As she spoke she saw the distant group turn and with one accord begin running towards where she sat. She got up; she felt frightened, for their advance was like a stampede of animals, and she feared that they would knock her downand trample her underfoot. The first runner had already swooped upon her, she felt herself encompassed, caught hold of, and carried forward. Voices addressed her, but she did not understand what was said. She gathered that she was being encouraged and congratulated, as though the neglectful assembly had suddenly decided to make much of the unsuccessful guest. Presently she found herself between Mrs. Leak and red-haired Emily. Each held an arm. Mrs. Leak patted her encouragingly, and Emily whispered rapidly, incoherently, in her ear. They were quite close to the newcomer, Satan, if it were he, who was talking to Miss Minnie and Miss Jane. Laura looked at him. She could see him quite clearly, for those who stood round had taken up the candles to light him. He was standing with his back to her, speaking with great animation to the old ladies, bowing, and fidgeting his feet. As he spoke he threw out his hands, and his whole lean, lithe body seemed to be scarcely withheld from breaking into a dance. Laura saw Miss Jane point at her, and the stranger turned sharply round.
She saw his face. For a moment she thought that he was a Chinaman; then she saw that he was wearing a mask. The candle-light shonefull upon it, but so fine and slight was the modelling that scarcely a shadow marked the indentations of cheek and jaw. The narrow eyes, the slanting brows, the small smiling mouth had a vivid innocent inexpressiveness. It was like the face of a very young girl. Alert and immobile the mask regarded her. And she, entranced, stared back at this imitation face that outwitted all perfections of flesh and blood. It was lifeless, lifeless! But below it, in the hollow of the girlish throat, she saw a flicker of life, a small regular pulse, small and regular as though a pearl necklace slid by under the skin. Mincing like a girl, the masked young man approached her, and as he approached the others drew back and left her alone. With secretive and undulating movements he came to her side. The lifeless face was near her own and through the slits in the mask the unseen eyes surveyed her. Suddenly she felt upon her cheeks a cold darting touch. With a fine tongue like a serpent’s he had licked her right cheek, close to the ear. She started back, but found his hands detaining her.
‘How are you enjoying your first Sabbath, Miss Willowes?’ he said.
‘Not at all,’ answered Laura, and turned her back on him.
Without glancing to left or right she walked out of the field, and the dancers made way for her in silence. She was furious at the affront, raging at Satan, at Mrs. Leak, at Miss Larpent, with the unreasoning anger of a woman who has allowed herself to be put in a false position. This was what came of attending Sabbaths, or rather, this was what came of submitting her good sense to politeness. Hours ago her instinct had told her that she was not going to enjoy herself. If she had asserted herself and gone home then, this odious and petty insult would never have happened. But she had stayed on, deferring to a public opinion that was not concerned whether she stayed or went, stayed on just as she used to stay on at balls, stayed on to be treated like a silly girl who at the end of a mechanical flirtation is kissed behind a palm.
Anyway, she was out of it now. Her feet had followed the windings of a little path, which crossed a ditch by a plank bridge: it passed through a belt of woodland, and led her out on to a space of common that sloped away into the darkness. Here she sat down and spread out her palms upon the cool turf.
She had been insulted and made a mock of. But for all that she did not feel truly humiliated.Rather, she was filled with a delighted and scornful surprise at the ease with which she had avenged her dignity. The mask floated before her eyes, inscrutable as ever, and she thought no more of it than of an egg-shell that she could crush between her finger and thumb. The Powers of Darkness, then, were no more fearful than a herd of bullocks in a field? Once round upon them and the sniffing encumbering horde made off, a scramble of ungainly rumps and foolish tails.
It had been a surprising night. And long, endlessly long, and not ended yet. She yawned, and felt hungry. She fancied herself at home, cutting large crumbling slices from the loaf in the cupboard, and spreading them with a great deal of butter and the remains of the shrimp paste. But she did not know where she was, and it was too dark to venture homewards with no sense of direction. She grew impatient with the night and strained her ears for the sound of cock-crow. As if her imperious will had wrenched aside the covering of cloud, a faint glimmer delineated part of the horizon. Moonset or sunrise, westerly or easterly she did not know; but as she watched it doubtfully, thinking that it must be moonset, for it seemed to dwindlerather than increase, a breeze winnowed the air, and looking round her she saw on every side the first beginnings of light.
Sitting up, her hunger and sleepiness forgotten, and all the disappointments and enigmas of the Sabbath dismissed from her mind, she watched the spectacle of the dawn. Soon she was able to recognise her surroundings, she knew the place well, it was here that she had met the badger. The slope before her was dotted with close-fitting juniper bushes, and presently she saw a rabbit steal out from one of these, twitch its ears, and scamper off. The cloud which covered the sky was no longer a solid thing. It was rising, and breaking up into swirls of vapour that yielded to the wind. The growing day washed them with silver. Every moment the web of cloud seemed to rise higher and higher, as though borne upward by a rising tide of light. The rooks flew up cawing from the wood. Presently she heard the snap of a dead twig. Somebody was astir. Whistling to himself, a man came out of the wood. He walked with a peculiarly slow and easy gait, and he had a stick in his hand, an untrimmed rod pulled from the wood. He switched at the head of a tall thistle, and Laura saw the dew fly off the astonishedblossom. Seeing her, he stopped short, as though he did not wish to intrude on her. He showed no surprise that she should be sitting on the hillside, waiting for the sun to rise. She smiled at him, grateful for his good manners, and also quite pleased to see a reasonable being again; and emboldened by this, he smiled also, and approached.
‘You are up very early, Miss Willowes.’
She did not recognise him, but that was no reason why he should not recognise her. She thought he must be a gamekeeper, for he wore gaiters and a corduroy coat. His face was brown and wrinkled, and his teeth were as white and even as a dog’s. Laura liked his appearance. He had a pleasant, rather detached air, which suited well with the early morning. She said:
‘I have been up all night.’
There was no inquisitiveness in his look; and when he expressed the hope that she felt none the worse for it, he spoke without servility or covert amusement.
‘I liked it very much,’ said Laura. Her regard for truth made her add: ‘Particularly when it began to be light. I was growing rather bored before then.’
‘Some ladies would feel afraid,’ said he.
‘I’m not afraid when I’m alone,’ she answered. ‘I lived in the country when I was a girl.’
He bowed his head assentingly. Something in his manner implied that he knew this already. Perhaps he had heard about her in the village.
‘It’s pleasant to be in the country again,’ she continued. ‘I like Great Mop very much.’
‘I hope you will stay here, Miss Willowes.’
‘I hope so too.’
She spoke a little sadly. In this unaccustomed hour her soul was full of doubts. She wondered if, having flouted the Sabbath, she were still a witch, or whether, her power being taken from her, she would become the prey of a healthy and untroubled Titus. And being faint for want of food and want of sleep, she foreboded the worst.
‘Yes, you must stay here. It would be a pity to go now.’
Laura nearly said, ‘I have nowhere to go,’ but a dread of exile came over her like a salt wave, and she could not trust herself to speak to this kind man. He came nearer and said:
‘Remember, Miss Willowes, that I shall always be very glad to help you. You have only to ask me.’
‘But where shall I find you?’ she asked, toomuch impressed by the kindness of his words to think them strange.
‘You will always find me in the wood,’ he answered, and touching his cap he walked away. She heard the noise of swishing branches and the scuff of feet among dead leaves growing fainter as he went further into the wood.
She decided not to go back just yet. A comfortable drowsiness settled down upon her with the first warmth of the risen sun. Her mind dwelt upon the words just spoken. The promise had been given in such sober earnestness that she had accepted it without question, seeing nothing improbable in the idea that she should require the help of a strange gamekeeper, or that he should undertake to give it. She thought that people might be different in the early morning; less shy, like the rabbits that were playing round her, more open-hearted, and simpler of speech. In any case, she was grateful to the stranger for his goodwill. He had known that she wanted to stay on at Great Mop, he had told her that she must do so. It was the established country courtesy, the invitation to take root. But he must have meant what he said, for seeing her troubled he had offered to help. Perhaps he was married; and if Mrs.Leak, offended, would keep her no longer, she might lodge with him and his wife in their cottage, a cottage in a dell among the beechwoods. He had said that he lived in the woods. She began to picture her life in such a cottage, thinking that it would be even better than lodging in the village. She imagined her whitewashed bedroom full of moving green shades; the wood-smoke curling up among the trees; the majestic arms, swaying above her while she slept, and plumed with snow in winter.
The trees behind her murmured consolingly; she reclined upon the sound. ‘Remember, Miss Willowes’ ... ‘Remember,’ murmured the trees, swaying their boughs muffled with heavy foliage. She remembered, and understood. When he came out of the wood, dressed like a gamekeeper, and speaking so quietly and simply, Satan had come to renew his promise and to reassure her. He had put on this shape that she might not fear him. Or would he have her to know that to those who serve him he appears no longer as a hunter, but as a guardian? This was the real Satan. And as for the other, whom her spirit had so impetuously disowned, she had done well to disown him, for he was nothing but an impostor, a charlatan, a dummy.
Her doubts were laid to rest, and she walked back through the fields, picking mushrooms as she went. As she approached the village she heard Mr. Saunter’s cocks crowing, and saw the other cock, for ever watchful, for ever silent, spangle in the sun above the church tower. The churchyard yews cast long shadows like open graves. Behind those white curtains slumbered Mr. Jones, and dreamed, perhaps, of the Sabbath which he was not allowed to attend.
As Laura passed through Mrs. Leak’s garden she remembered her first morning as a witch when she had gone out to give the kitten a run. The sunflowers had been cut off and given to the hens, but the scrubbing-brush was still propped on the kitchen window-sill. That was three weeks ago. And Titus, like the scrubbing-brush, was still there.
During those three weeks Titus had demanded a great deal of support; in fact, being a witch-aunt was about twice as taxing as being an ordinary aunt, and if she had not known that the days were numbered she could scarcely have endured them.
At her nephew’s request she made veils of butter-muslin weighted with blue beads to protect his food and drink. Titus insisted that thebeads should be blue: blue was the colour of the Immaculate Conception; and as pious Continental mothers dedicate their children, so he would dedicate his milk and hope for the best. But no blue beads were to be found in the village, so Laura had to walk into Barleighs for them. Titus was filled with gratitude, he came round on purpose to thank her and stayed to tea.
He was no sooner gone than Mrs. Garland arrived. Mrs. Garland had seen the veils. She hoped that Mr. Willowes didn’t think she was to blame for the milk going sour. She could assure Miss Willowes that the jugs were mopped out with boiling water morningandevening. Forherpart, she couldn’t understand it at all. She was always anxious to give satisfaction, she said; but her manner suggested less anxiety to give than to receive. Laura soothed Mrs. Garland, and sat down to wait for Mr. Dodbury. However, Mr. Dodbury contented himself with frowning at that interfering young Willowes’s aunt, and turning the bull into the footpath field. Laura thought that the bull frowned too.
Though veiled in butter-muslin, the milk continued to curdle. Titus came in to say that he’d had an idea; in future, he would rely upon condensed milk out of a tin. Which sortdid Aunt Lolly recommend? And would she make him a kettle-holder? Apparently tinned milk could resist the Devil, for all was peace until Titus gashed his thumb on the raw edge of a tin. In spite of Laura’s first aid the wound festered, and for several days Titus wore a sling. Triumphant over pain he continued the Life of Fuseli. But the wounded thumb being a right-hand thumb, the triumph involved an amanuensis. Laura hated ink, she marvelled that any one should have the constancy to write a whole book. She thought ofParadise Lostwith a shudder, for it required even more constancy to write some one else’s book. Highly as she rated the sufferings of Milton’s daughters, she rated her own even higher, for she did not suppose that they had to be for ever jumping up and down to light the poet’s cigarette; and blank verse flowed, flowed majestically, she understood, from his lips, whereas Titus dictated in prose, which was far harder to punctuate.
Nor did it flow. Titus was not feeling at his best. He hated small bothers, and of late he had been seethed alive in them. Every day something went wrong, some fiddle-faddle little thing. All his ingenuity was wasted in circumvention; he had none left for Fuseli.
Anyhow, dictation was only fit for oil-kings! He jumped up and dashed about the room with a fly-flap. Fly-flapping was a manly indoor sport, especially if one observed all the rules. The ceiling was marked out in squares like a chess-board, and while they stayed in their squares the flies could not be attacked. The triangle described by the blue vase, the pink vase, and the hanging lamp was a Yellowstone Park, and so was the King’s Face, a difficult ruling, but Titus had decided that of two evils it was more tolerable that the royal countenance should be crawled over by flies than assaulted by the subject. All this from a left-handed adversary—the flies had nothing to complain of, in his opinion. Laura owned his generosity, and sat, when she could, in the Yellowstone Park.
By the time Titus had recovered the use of his right hand the flies had lost their sanctuaries one by one, and could not even call the King’s Face their own. They swarmed in his sitting-room, attracted, Mrs. Garland supposed, by the memory of that nasty foreign cheese Mr. Willowes’s Mr. Humphries had brought with him when he came to stay. They swarmed in his bedroom also, and that—Mrs. Garland said—was what brought in the bats. Laura told Titusthe belief that if a bat once entangles itself in a woman’s flowing hair there is no remedy but to cut away hair and bat together. Titus turned pale. That afternoon he went up to London to visit his hairdresser, and returned with hair cropped like a convict’s.
All this had unsettled her victim a good deal; but it had not unseated him, and meanwhile it was sufficiently unsettling for her. So far, she thought, the scheme and its execution had been the kitten’s—she could recognise Vinegar’s playful methods. She gave him credit for doing his best. But he was young and inexperienced, this was probably his first attempt at serious persecution; it was not to be wondered at if his methods were a little sketchy. Now that the Devil had taken matters into his own hands—and of this she felt assured—all would soon be well. Well for her, well for Titus. Really, it was time that poor boy was released from his troubles. She felt complete confidence in the Devil, a confidence that the kitten had never inspired. There was a tinge of gratuitous malice in Vinegar’s character; he was, as one says, rather a cat. She suspected him of meditating a scratch which would give Titus blood-poisoning. She remembered with uneasiness whatcats are said to do to sleeping infants, and every night she was careful to imprison Vinegar in her bedroom, a useless precaution since he had come in by the keyhole and might as easily go out by it. The Devil would get rid of Titus more speedily, more kindly (he had no reason to be anything but kind: she could not imagine Titus being of the smallest interest to Satan), more economically. There would be no catastrophe, no pantechnicon displays of flood or fire. He would proceed discreetly and surely, like a gamekeeper going his rounds by night, he would remove Titus as imperturbably as Dunlop had removed the beech-leaf. She could sit back quite comfortably now, and wait for it to happen.
When Titus next appeared and complained that he had been kept awake for two nights running by a mouse gnawing the leg of his bedstead, Laura was most helpful. They went to Mrs. Trumpet’s to buy a mouse-trap, but as Mrs. Trumpet only kept cheese they walked very pleasantly by field-paths into Barleighs, where Denby’s stores had a larger range of groceries. During their walk Titus recalled anecdotes illustrative of mice from Soup from a Sausage Peg, and propounded a scheme for defending his bed by a catskin valance. The daywas fine, and at intervals Titus would stop and illustrate the landscape with possessive gestures.
He was particularly happy. He had not enjoyed himself so much for some time. The milk and the mice and the flies had checked his spirits; he was not doing justice to Fuseli, and when he went out for long encouraging walks an oppressed feeling went with him. Twice or thrice he had felt horribly frightened, though at what he could not tell. The noise of two iron hurdles grating against each other in the wind, a dead tree with branches that looked like antlers, the stealthy movement of the sun towards the horizon: quite ordinary things like these were able to disquiet him.
He fell into the habit of talking aloud to himself. He would reason with appearances. ‘I see you, old Horny,’ he said to the dead tree. And once, as dusk pursued him homeward, he began repeating: