As one that on a lonesome roadDoth walk in fear and dread,And having once turned round, walks on,And turns no more his head;Because he knows a frightful fiendDoth close behind him tread:
As one that on a lonesome roadDoth walk in fear and dread,And having once turned round, walks on,And turns no more his head;Because he knows a frightful fiendDoth close behind him tread:
As one that on a lonesome roadDoth walk in fear and dread,And having once turned round, walks on,And turns no more his head;Because he knows a frightful fiendDoth close behind him tread:
when the sound of a crackling twig made everynerve in his body stiffen with terror. Some impulse not his own snatched him round in the path, only to see old Luxmoor going out with his snares. Old Luxmoor touched his cap and grinned in an embarrassed way. Every one knew that Luxmoor poached, but it was not polite to catch him at it. He did not appear to have overheard Titus or noticed his start of terror. But there had been one instant before recognition when Titus had almost known what he dreaded to see.
So it was pleasant to find that the company of his aunt could exorcise these ghostly enmities. Clearly, there was nothing in it. To-morrow he would go for a long walk by himself.
Laura also went for a walk that afternoon. It was a hot day, so hot and still that it felt like a Sunday. She could not do better than follow the example of the savages inRobinson Crusoe: go up on to a hill-top and say O! No pious savage could have ejaculated O! more devoutly than she did; for the hill-top was scattered over with patches of that small honey-scented flower called Tailors’ Needles, and in conjunction with the austere outlines of the landscape this perfume was exquisitely sweet and surprising. She found a little green pit and sat down in it, leaning herback against the short firm turf. Ensconced in her private warmth and stillness she had almost fallen asleep when a moving figure on the opposite hillside caught her attention. Laura’s grey eyes were very keen-sighted, she soon recognised that long stride and swinging gait. The solitary walker was Titus.
There is an amusing sense of superiority in seeing and remaining unseen. Laura sat up in her form and watched Titus attentively. He looked very small, human, and scrabbly, traversing that imperturbable surface. With such a large slope to wander upon, it was faintly comic to see Titus keeping so neatly to the path; the effect was rather as if he were being taken for a walk upon a string.
Further on the path was lost in a tangle of brambles and rusty foxglove stems which marked the site of Folly Wood, a larch plantation cut down during the war. In her map the wood had still been green. She had looked for it on one of her early explorations, and not finding it had felt defrauded. Her eyes now dwelt on the bramble tangle with annoyance. It was untidy, and fretted the hillside like a handful of rough-cast thrown on to a smooth wall. She turned back her gaze to see how Titus wasgetting on. It struck her that he was behaving rather oddly. Though he kept to the path he was walking almost like a drunken man or an idiot, now hurrying his pace, now reforming it into a staid deliberation that was certainly not his natural gait. Quite abruptly he began to run. He ran faster and faster, his feet striving on the slippery turf. He reached the outskirts of Folly Wood, and Laura could gauge the roughness of the going from his leaps and stumbles. Midway through the wood he staggered and fell full-length.
‘A rabbit-hole,’ she said. ‘Now I suppose he’s sprained his ankle.’
But before any thought of compunction could mitigate the rather scornful bewilderment with which she had been a spectator of these antics, Titus was up again, and behaving more oddly than ever. No amount of sprained ankle could warrant those raving gestures with which he beat himself, and beat the air. He seemed to be fending off an invisible volley of fisticuffs, for now he ducked his head, now he leaped to one side, now he threatened, now he quailed before a fresh attack. At last he made off with shambling speed, reeling and gesticulating as though his whole body bellowed with pain andfear. He reached the summit of the hill; for a moment he was silhouetted against the sky-line in a final convulsion of distress; then he was gone.
Laura felt as if she were releasing her gaze from a telescope. Her glance strayed about the landscape. She frowned and looked inquiringly from side to side, not able to credit her eyes. Blandly unconscious, the opposite hillside confronted her with its familiar face. A religious silence filled the valley. As the untroubled air had received Titus’s roarings and damnings (for it was obvious that he had both roared and damned) without concerning itself to transmit them to her hearing, so her vision had absorbed his violent pantomime without concerning itself to alarm her brain. She could not reason about what she had seen; she could scarcely stir herself to feel any curiosity, and still less any sympathy. Like a masque of bears and fantastic shapes, it had seemed framed only to surprise and delight.
But that, she knew, was not Satan’s way. He was not in the habit of bestowing these gratuitous peep-shows upon his servants, he was above the human weakness of doing things for fun; and if he exhibited Titus dancing upon the hillside like a cat on hot bricks, she might be sure that it was all according to plan. It behoved her to be serious and attend, instead of accepting it all in this spirit of blank entertainment. Even as a matter of bare civility she ought to find out what had happened. Besides, Titus might require her ministrations. She got up, and began to walk back to the village.
Titus, she reflected, would almost certainly have gone home. Even if he did not run all the way he would by now have had time to settle down and get over the worst of his disturbance. A kind of decency forbade her to view too immediately the dismay of her victim. Titus unmenaced, Titus invading her quiet and straddling over her peace of mind, was a very different thing from Titus melting and squirming before the fire of her resentment. Now that she was walking to his assistance she felt quite sorry for him. My nephew who is plagued by the Devil was as much an object for affectionate aunt-like interest as my nephew who has an attack of measles. She did not take the present affliction more seriously than she had taken those of the past. With time, and a change of air, she was confident that he would make a complete recovery.
As for her own share in the matter, she felt no shame at all. It had pleased Satan to come to her aid. Considering carefully, she did not see who else would have done so. Custom, public opinion, law, church, and state—all would have shaken their massive heads against her plea, and sent her back to bondage.
She reached Great Mop about five o’clock. As she turned up Mrs. Leak’s garden-path, Titus bounded from the porch.
‘There you are!’ he exclaimed. ‘We have just come to have tea with you.’
She perceived that Titus was not alone. In the porch playing with the kitten was Pandora Williams, Pandora Williams whom Titus had invited to play the rebeck at the Flower Show. Before Laura could welcome her Titus was exclaiming again.
‘Such an afternoon as I’ve had! Such adventures! First I fell into a wasps’-nest, and then I got engaged to Pandora.’
So that was it. It was wasps. Wasps were the invisible enemies that had beset and routed him on the hill-side. O Beelzebub, God of flies! But why was he now going to marry Pandora Williams?
‘The wops-nest was in Folly Wood. Itripped up, and fell smack on top of it. My God, I thought I should die! They got into my ears, and down my neck, and up my trousers, they were everywhere, as thick as spikes in sodawater. I ran for my life, I ran nearly all the way home, and most of them came with me, either inside or out. And when I rushed up the street calling in an exhausted voice for onions, there was Pandora!’
‘I had been invited to tea,’ said Pandora rather primly.
‘Yes, and I’d forgotten it, and gone out for a walk. Pandora, if I’d had my deserts, you would have scorned me, and left me to perish. Pandora, I shall never forget your magnanimous way of behaving. That was what did it, really. One has to offer marriage to a young woman who has picked dead wasps out of one’s armpit.’
Laura had never seen Titus so excited. His face was flushed, his voice was loud, the pupils of his eyes were extraordinarily dilated. But how much of this was due to love and how much to wasps and witchcraft it was impossible to say. And was Pandora part of the witchcraft too, a sort of queen wasp whose sting was mortal balm? Why should Titus offer her marriage? Whyshould Pandora accept it? They had always been such friends.
Laura turned to the girl to see how she was taking it. Pandora’s smooth cheeks and smooth lappets of black hair seemed to shed calm like an unwavering beam of moonlight. But at Laura’s good wishes she started, and began nervously to counter them with explanations and apologies for coming to Laura’s rooms for tea. She had dropped Titus’ teapot, and broken it. Laura was not surprised that she had dropped the teapot. It was clear to her that Pandora’s emotions that afternoon had been much more vehement than anything that Titus had experienced in his mental uproar. How well—thought Laura—she has hidden her feelings all this time! How well she is hiding them now!
These fine natures, she knew, always found comfort in cutting bread-and-butter. Pandora welcomed the suggestion. She covered three large plates, and would have covered a fourth if the butter had not given out. There were some ginger-bread nuts as well, and a few bull’s-eyes. Mrs. Leak must have surmised a romance. She marked her sense of the occasion by the tea, which was almost purple—as strong as wedding-cake, Titus said.
It was a savagely plain tea. But had it consisted of cocoa and ship’s-biscuit, Laura might have offered it without a qualm to guests so much absorbed by their proper emotions. Titus talked incessantly, and Pandora ate with the stealthy persistence of a bitch that gives suck. Meanwhile Laura looked at the new Mr. and Mrs. Willowes. They would do very well, she decided. Young as she was, Pandora had already the air of a family portrait; such looks, such characters change little, for they are independent of time. And undoubtedly she was very much in love with Titus. While he talked she watched his face with the utmost attention, though she did not seem to hear what he was saying. Titus, too, must be considerably in love. Despite the unreality of his behaviour, and a swelled nose, his happiness gave him an almost romantic appearance. Perhaps it was that too recently she had seen him dancing on the Devil’s strings to be able to take him quite seriously; perhaps she was old-maidishly scornful of the authenticity of anything that a man may say or do; but at the back of her mind Laura felt that Titus was but a proxy wooer, the ambassador of an imperious dynastic will; and that the real match was made between Pandora and Lady Place.
Anyhow, it was all very suitable, and she must be content to leave it at that. The car from the Lamb and Flag was waiting to take them to the station. Titus was going back to London with Pandora to see her people, as Pandora had refused to face their approval alone. The Williamses lived pleasantly on Campden Hill, and were typical of the best class of Londoners, being almost indistinguishable from people living pleasantly in the country. What, indeed, could be more countrified than to be in town during September? For a moment Laura feared that she too would be obliged to travel to London. The lovers had insisted upon her company as far as the station.
‘You must come,’ said Titus. ‘There will be all sorts of things I shall remember to ask you to do for me. I can’t remember them now, but I shall the moment the car starts. I always do.’
Laura knew this to be very truth. Nevertheless she stood out against going until Pandora manœuvred her into a corner and said in a desperate whisper: ‘O Miss Willowes, for God’s sake, please come. You’ve no idea how awful it is being left alone with some one you love.’
Laura replied: ‘Very well. I’ll come as a thank-offering.’
Pandora’s sense of humour could just contrive a rather castaway smile.
They got into the car. There was no time to spare, and the driver took them along the winding lanes at top speed, sounding his horn incessantly. It was a closed car, and they sat in it in perfect silence all the way to the station. Before the car had drawn up in the station yard Titus leaped out and began to pay the driver. Then he looked wildly round for the train. There was no train in sight. It had not come in yet.
When Laura had seen them off and gone back to the station yard she found that in his excitement Titus had dismissed the driver without considering how his aunt was to get back to Great Mop. However, it didn’t matter—the bus started for Barleighs at half-past eight, and from Barleighs she could walk on for the rest of the way. This gave her an hour and a half to spend in Wickendon. A sensible way of passing the time would be to eat something before her return journey; but she was not hungry, and the fly-blown cafes in the High Street were not tempting. She bought some fruit, and turned up an alley between garden walls in search of a field where she could sit and eat it in peace. The alley soon changed toan untidy lane and then to a cinder-track running steeply uphill between high hedges. A municipal kindliness had supplied at intervals iron benches, clamped and riveted into the cinders. But no one reposed on them, and the place was unpeopled save by swarms of midges. Laura was hot and breathless by the time she reached the top of the hill and came out upon a bare grassy common. Here was an obvious place to sit down and gasp, and as there were no iron benches to deter her, she did so. But she immediately forgot her exhaustion, so arresting was the sight that lay before her.
The cinder-track led to a small enclosure, full of cypresses, yews, clipped junipers and weeping-willows. Rising from this funereal plumage was an assortment of minarets, gilded cupolas and obelisks. She stared at this phenomenon, so byronic in conception, so spick and span in execution, and sprouting so surprisingly from the mild Chiltern landscape, completely at a loss to account for it. Then she remembered: it was the Maulgrave Folly. She had read of it in the guide-book, and of its author, Sir Ralph Maulgrave, the Satanic Baronet, the libertine, the atheist, who drank out of a skull, who played away his mistress and pistolled the winner, whorode about Buckinghamshire on a zebra, whose conversation had been too much for Thomas Moore. ‘This bad and eccentric character,’ the guide-book said, disinfecting his memory with rational amusement. Grown old, he had amused himself by elaborating a burial-place which was to be an epitome of his eclectic and pessimistic opinions. He must, thought Laura, have spent many hours on this hillside, watching the masons and directing the gardeners where to plant his cypresses. And afterwards he would be wheeled away in his bath-chair, for,pacethe guide-book, at a comparatively early age he lost the use of his legs.
Poor gentleman, how completely he had misunderstood the Devil! The plethoric gilt cupolas winked in the setting sun. For all their bad taste, they were perfectly respectable—cupolas and minarets and cypresses, all had a sleek and well-cared-for look. They had an assured income, nothing could disturb their calm. The silly, vain, passionate heart that lay buried there had bequeathed a sum of money for their perpetual upkeep. The Satanic Baronet who mocked at eternal life and designed this place as a lasting testimony of his disbelief had contrived to immortalise himself as a laughing-stock.
It was ungenerous. The dead man had been pilloried long enough; it was high time that Maulgrave’s Folly should be left to fall into decent ruin and decay. And instead of that, even at this moment it was being trimmed up afresh. She felt a thrill of anger as she saw a gardener come out of the enclosure, carrying a flag basket and a pair of shears. He came towards her, and something about the rather slouching and prowling gait struck her as being familiar. She looked more closely, and recognised Satan.
‘How can you?’ she said, when he was within speaking distance. He, of all people, should be more compassionate to the shade of Sir Ralph.
He feigned not to hear her.
‘Would you care to go over the Folly, ma’am?’ he inquired. ‘It’s quite a curiosity. Visitors come out from London to see it.’
Laura was not going to be fubbed off like this. He might pretend not to recognise her, but she would jog his memory.
‘So you are a grave-keeper as well as a gamekeeper?’
‘The Council employ me to cut the bushes,’ he answered.
‘O Satan!’ she exclaimed, hurt by his equivocations. ‘Do you always hide?’
With the gesture of a man who can never hold out against women, he yielded and sat down beside her on the grass.
Laura felt a momentary embarrassment. She had long wished for a reasonable conversation with her Master, but now that her wish seemed about to be granted, she felt rather at a loss for an opening. At last she observed:
‘Titus has gone.’
‘Indeed? Isn’t that rather sudden? It was only this afternoon that I met him.’
‘Yes, I saw you meeting him. At least, I saw him meeting you.’
‘Just so. It is remarkable,’ he added, as though he were politely parrying her thought, ‘how invisible one is on these bare green hillsides.’
‘Or in these thick brown woods,’ said Laura, rather sternly.
This sort of Satanic playfulness was no novelty; Vinegar often behaved in the same fashion, leaping about just out of reach when she wanted to catch him and shut him up indoors.
‘Or in these thick brown woods,’ he concurred. ‘Folly Wood is especially dense.’
‘Is?’
‘Is. Once a wood, always a wood.’
Once a wood, always a wood. The words rang true, and she sat silent, considering them. Pious Asa might hew down the groves, but as far as the Devil was concerned he hewed in vain. Once a wood, always a wood: trees where he sat would crowd into a shade. And people going by in broad sunlight would be aware of slow voices overhead, and a sudden chill would fall upon their flesh. Then, if like her they had a natural leaning towards the Devil, they would linger, listening about them with half-closed eyes and averted senses; but if they were respectable people like Henry and Caroline they would talk rather louder and hurry on. There remaineth a rest for the people of God (somehow the thought of the Devil always propelled her mind to the Holy Scriptures), and for the other people, the people of Satan, there remained a rest also. Held fast in that strong memory no wild thing could be shaken, no secret covert destroyed, no haunt of shadow and silence laid open. The goods yard at Paddington, for instance—a savage place! as holy and enchanted as ever it had been. Not one of the monuments and tinkerings of man could impose on the satanicmind. The Vatican and the Crystal Palace, and all the neat human nest-boxes in rows, Balham and Fulham and the Cromwell Road—he saw through them, they went flop like cardhouses, the bricks were earth again, and the steel girders burrowed shrieking into the veins of earth, and the dead timber was restored to the ghostly groves. Wolves howled through the streets of Paris, the foxes played in the throneroom of Schönbrunn, and in the basement at Apsley Terrace the mammoth slowly revolved, trampling out its lair.
‘Then I needn’t really have come here to meet you!’ she exclaimed.
‘Did you?’
‘I didn’t know I did. I thought I came here to be in the country, and to escape being an aunt.’
‘Titus came here to write a book on Fuseli, and to enjoy himself.’
‘Titus! I can’t believe you wantedhim.’
‘But you do believe I wanted you.’
Rather taken aback she yet answered the Devil honestly.
‘Yes! I do believe you wanted me. Though really I don’t know why you should.’
A slightly malevolent smile crossed the Devil’s face. For some reason or other her modesty seemed to have nettled him.
‘Some people would say that you had flung yourself at my head.’
‘Other people,’ she retorted, ‘would say that you had been going about seeking to devour me.’
‘Exactly. I even roared that night. But you were asleep while I roared. Only the hills heard me triumphing over my spoil.’
Laura said: ‘I wish I could really believe that.’
‘I wish you could, too,’ he answered affably; ‘you would feel so comfortable and important. But you won’t, although it is much more probable than you might suppose.’
Laura stretched herself out on the turf and pillowed her head on her arm.
‘Nothing could feel more comfortable than I do, now that Titus is gone,’ she said. ‘And as for importance, I never wish to feel important again. I had enough of that when I was an aunt.’
‘Well, you’re a witch now.’
‘Yes.... I really am, aren’t I?’
‘Irrevocably.’
His voice was so perfectly grave that she began to suspect him of concealing some amusement. When but a moment before he hadjested she had thought a deeper meaning lay beneath his words, she almost believed that his voice had roared over her in the thunder. If he had spoken without feigning then, she had not heard him; for he had stopped her ears with a sleep.
‘Why do you sigh?’ he asked.
‘Did I sigh? I’m puzzled, that’s all. You see, although I’m a witch, and although you sitting here beside me tell me so, I can’t really appreciate it, take it in. It all seems perfectly natural.’
‘That is because you are in my power. No servant of mine can feel remorse, or doubt, or surprise. You may be quite easy, Laura: you will never escape me, for you can never wish to.’
‘Yes, I can quite well believe that, I’m sure I shall never wish to escape you. But you are a mysterious Master.’
‘You seem to me rather an exacting servant. I have shaped myself like a jobbing gardener, I am sitting on the grass beside you (I’ll have one of your apples if I may. They are a fruit I am particularly fond of), I am doing everything in my power to be agreeable and reassuring.... What more do you want?’
‘That is exactly what I complain of. Youare too lifelike to be natural; why, it might be Goethe’s Conversations with Eckermann. No! if I am really a witch, treat me as such. Satisfy my curiosity. Tell me about yourself.’
‘Tell me first whatyouthink,’ he answered.
‘I think’—she began cautiously (while he hid his cards it would not do to show all hers)—‘I think you are a kind of black knight, wandering about and succouring decayed gentlewomen.’
‘There are warlocks too, remember.’
‘I can’t take warlocks so seriously, not as a class. It is we witches who count. We have more need of you. Women have such vivid imaginations, and lead such dull lives. Their pleasure in life is so soon over; they are so dependent upon others, and their dependence so soon becomes a nuisance. Do you understand?’
He was silent. She continued, slowly, knitting her brows in the effort to make clear to herself and him the thought that was in her mind:
‘It’s like this. When I think of witches, I seem to see all over England, all over Europe, women living and growing old, as common as blackberries, and as unregarded. I see them, wives and sisters of respectable men, chapel members, and blacksmiths, and small farmers, and Puritans. In places like Bedfordshire, thesort of country one sees from the train. You know. Well, there they were, there they are, child-rearing, house-keeping, hanging washed dishcloths on currant bushes; and for diversion each other’s silly conversation, and listening to men talking together in the way that men talk and women listen. Quite different to the way women talk, and men listen, if they listen at all. And all the time being thrust further down into dullness when the one thing all women hate is to be thought dull. And on Sundays they put on plain stuff gowns and starched white coverings on their heads and necks—the Puritan ones did—and walked across the fields to chapel, and listened to the sermon. Sin and Grace, and God and the——’ (she stopped herself just in time), ‘and St. Paul. All men’s things, like politics, or mathematics. Nothing for them except subjection and plaiting their hair. And on the way back they listened to more talk. Talk about the sermon, or war, or cock-fighting; and when they got back, there were the potatoes to be cooked for dinner. It sounds very petty to complain about, but I tell you, that sort of thing settles down on one like a fine dust, and by and by the dust is age, settling down. Settling down! You never die, do you? No doubtthat’s far worse, but there is a dreadful kind of dreary immortality about being settled down on by one day after another. And they think how they were young once, and they see new young women, just like what they were, and yet as surprising as if it had never happened before, like trees in spring. But they are like trees towards the end of summer, heavy and dusty, and nobody finds their leaves surprising, or notices them till they fall off. If they could be passive and unnoticed, it wouldn’t matter. But they must be active, and still not noticed. Doing, doing, doing, till mere habit scolds at them like a housewife, and rouses them up—when they might sit in their doorways and think—to be doing still!’
She paused, out of breath. She had never made such a long speech in the whole of her life, nor spoken with such passion. She scarcely knew what she had said, and felt giddy and unaccustomed, as though she had been thrown into the air and had suddenly begun to fly.
The Devil was silent, and looked thoughtfully at the ground. He seemed to be rather touched by all this. She continued, for she feared that if she did not go on talking she would grow ashamed at having said so much.
‘Is it true that you can poke the fire with a stick of dynamite in perfect safety? I used to take my nieces to scientific lectures, and I believe I heard it then. Anyhow, even if it isn’t true of dynamite, it’s true of women. But they know they are dynamite, and long for the concussion that may justify them. Some may get religion, then they’re all right, I expect. But for the others, for so many, what can there be but witchcraft? That strikes them real. Even if other people still find them quite safe and usual, and go on poking with them, they know in their hearts how dangerous, how incalculable, how extraordinary they are. Even if they never do anything with their witchcraft, they know it’s there—ready! Respectable countrywomen keep their grave-clothes in a corner of the chest of drawers, hidden away, and when they want a little comfort they go and look at them, and think that once more, at any rate, they will be worth dressing with care. But the witch keeps her cloak of darkness, her dress embroidered with signs and planets; that’s better worth looking at. And think, Satan, what a compliment you pay her, pursuing her soul, lying in wait for it, following it through all its windings, crafty and patientand secret like a gentleman out killing tigers. Her soul—when no one else would give a look at her body even! And they are all so accustomed, so sure of her! They say: “Dear Lolly! What shall we give her for her birthday this year? Perhaps a hot-water bottle. Or what about a nice black lace scarf? Or a new workbox? Her old one is nearly worn out.” But you say: “Come here, my bird! I will give you the dangerous black night to stretch your wings in, and poisonous berries to feed on, and a nest made of bones and thorns, perched high up in danger where no one can climb to it.” That’s why we become witches: to show our scorn of pretending life’s a safe business, to satisfy our passion for adventure. It’s not malice, or wickedness—well, perhaps itiswickedness, for most women love that—but certainly not malice, not wanting to plague cattle and make horrid children spout up pins and—what is it?—“blight the genial bed.” Of course, given the power, one may go in for that sort of thing, either in self-defence, or just out of playfulness. But it’s a poor twopenny housewifely kind of witchcraft, black magic is, and white magic is no better. One doesn’t become a witch to run round being harmful, or to runround being helpful either, a district visitor on a broomstick. It’s to escape all that—to have a life of one’s own, not an existence doled out to you by others, charitable refuse of their thoughts, so many ounces of stale bread of life a day, the workhouse dietary is scientifically calculated to support life. As for the witches who can only express themselves by pins and bed-blighting, they have been warped into that shape by the dismal lives they’ve led. Think of Miss Carloe! She’s a typical witch, people would say. Really she’s the typical genteel spinster who’s spent herself being useful to people who didn’t want her. If you’d got her younger she’d never be like that.’
‘You seem to know a good deal about witches,’ remarked Satan. ‘But you were going to say what you thought about me.’
She shook her head.
‘Go on,’ he said encouragingly. ‘You have compared me to a knight-errant. That’s very pretty. I believe you have also compared me to a hunter, a poaching sort of hunter, prowling through the woods after dark. Not so flattering to my vanity as the knight-errant, but more accurate, I daresay.’
‘O Satan! Why do you encourage me to talk when you know all my thoughts?’
‘I encourage you to talk, not that I may know all your thoughts, but that you may. Go on, Laura. Don’t be foolish. What do you think about me?’
‘I don’t know,’ she said honestly. ‘I don’t think I do think. I only rhapsodise and make comparisons. You’re beyond me, my thought flies off you like the centrifugal hypothesis. And after this I shall be more at a loss than ever, for I like you so much, I find you so kind and sympathetic. But it is obvious that you can’t be merely a benevolent institution. No, I must be your witch in blindness.’
‘You don’t take warlocks so seriously, I know. But you might find their point of view illuminating. As it’s a spiritual difficulty, why not consult Mr. Jones?’
‘Poor Mr. Jones!’ Laura began to laugh. ‘He can’t call his soul his own.’
‘Hush! Have you forgotten that he has sold it to me?’
‘Then why did you mortgage it to Mr. Gurdon? Mr. Jones isn’t even allowed to attend the Sabbath.’
‘You are a little dense at times. Hasn’t itoccurred to you that other people might share your sophisticated dislike for the Sabbath?’
‘You don’t attend the Sabbath either, if it comes to that.’
‘How do you know? Don’t try to put me in your pocket, Laura. You are not my only conquest, and I am not a human master to have favourites among my servants. All are souls that come to my net. I apologise for the pun, but it is apt.’
She had been rebuked, but she did not feel particularly abashed. It was true, then, what she had read of the happy relationship between the Devil and his servants. If Euphan Macalzean had rated him—why, so, at a pinch, might she. Other things that she had read might also be true, she thought, things that she had till now been inclined to reject. So easy-going a Master who had no favourites among his servants might in reality attend the Sabbath, might unbend enough to eat black-puddings at a picnic without losing his dignity.
‘That offensive young man at the Sabbath,’ she remarked, ‘I know he wasn’t you. Who was he?’
‘He’s one of these brilliant young authors,’ replied the Devil. ‘I believe Titus knows him.He sold me his soul on the condition that once a week he should be without doubt the most important person at a party.’
‘Why didn’t he sell his soul in order to become a great writer? Then he could have had the party into the bargain.’
‘He preferred to take a short-cut, you see.’
She didn’t see. But she was too proud to inquire further, especially as Satan was now smiling at her as if she were a pet lamb.
‘What did Mr. Jones——’
‘That’s enough! You can ask him that yourself, when you take your lessons in demonology.’
‘Do you suppose for one moment that Mr. Gurdon would let me sit closeted with Mr. Jones taking lessons in plain needlework even? He would put his face in at the window and say: “How much longer are them Mothers to be kept waiting?” or: “I should like to know what your reverence is doing about that there dung?” or: “I suppose you know that the cowman’s girl may go off at any minute.” And then he’d take him down to the shrubbery and scold him. My heart bleeds for the poor old gentleman!’
‘Mr. Jones’—Satan spoke demurely—‘will have his reward in another life.’
Laura was silent. She gazed at the Maulgrave Folly with what she could feel to be a pensive expression. But her mind was a blank.
‘A delicate point, you say? Perhaps it is bad taste on my part to jest about it.’
A midge settled on Laura’s wrist. She smacked at it.
‘Dead!’ said Satan.
The word dropped into her mind like a pebble thrown into a pond. She had heard it so often, and now she heard it once more. The same waves of thought circled outwards, waves of startled thought spreading out on all sides, rocking the shadows of familiar things, blurring the steadfast pictures of trees and clouds, circling outward one after the other, each wave more listless, more imperceptible than the last, until the pool was still again.
There might be some questions that even the Devil could not answer. She turned her eyes to him with their question.
Satan had risen to his feet. He picked up the flag basket and the shears, and made ready to go.
‘Is it time?’ asked Laura.
He nodded, and smiled.
She got up in her turn, and began to shakethe dust off her skirt. Then she prodded a hole for the bag which had held the apples, and buried it tidily, smoothing the earth over the hole. This took a little time to do, and when she looked round for Satan, to say good-bye, he was out of sight.
Seeing that he was gone she sat down again, for she wanted to think him over. A pleasant conversation, though she had done most of the talking. The tract of flattened grass at her side showed where he had rested, and there was the rampion flower he had held in his hand. Grass that has been lain upon has always a rather popular bank-holidayish look, and even the Devil’s lair was not exempt from this. It was as though the grass were in league with him, faithfully playing-up to his pose of being a quite everyday phenomenon. Not a blade of grass was singed, not a clover-leaf blasted, and the rampion flower was withering quite naturally; yet he who had sat there was Satan, the author of all evil, whose thoughts were a darkness, whose roots went down into the pit. There was no action too mean for him, no instrument too petty; he would go into a milk-jug to work mischief. And presently he would emerge, imperturbable, inscrutable, enormous with thedignity of natural behaviour and untrammelled self-fulfilment.
To be this—a character truly integral, a perpetual flowering of power and cunning from an undivided will—was enough to constitute the charm and majesty of the Devil. No cloak of terrors was necessary to enlarge that stature, and to suppose him capable of speculation or metaphysic would be like offering to crown him with a few casual straws. Very probably he was quite stupid. When she had asked him about death he had got up and gone away, which looked as if he did not know much more about it than she did herself: indeed, being immortal, it was unlikely that he would know as much. Instead, his mind brooded immovably over the landscape and over the natures of men, an unforgetting and unchoosing mind. That, of course—and she jumped up in her excitement and began to wave her arms—was why he was the Devil, the enemy of souls. His memory was too long, too retentive; there was no appeasing its witness, no hoodwinking it with the present; and that was why at one stage of civilisation people said he was the embodiment of all evil, and then a little later on that he didn’t exist.
For a moment Laura thought that she had him: and on the next, as though he had tricked himself out of her grasp, her thoughts were scattered by the sudden consciousness of a sort of jerk in the atmosphere. The sun had gone down, sliding abruptly behind the hills. In that case the bus would have gone too, she might as well hope to catch the one as the other. First Satan, then the sun and the bus—adieu, mes gens!With affectionate unconcern she seemed to be waving them farewell, pleased to be left to herself, left to enter into this new independence acknowledged by their departure.
The night was at her disposal. She might walk back to Great Mop and arrive very late: or she might sleep out and not trouble to arrive till to-morrow. Whichever she did Mrs. Leak would not mind. That was one of the advantages of dealing with witches; they do not mind if you are a little odd in your ways, frown if you are late for meals, fret if you are out all night, pry and commiserate when at length you return. Lovely to be with people who prefer their thoughts to yours, lovely to live at your own sweet will, lovely to sleep out all night! She had quite decided, now, to do so. It was an adventure, she had never done such a thingbefore, and yet it seemed most natural. She would not sleep here: Wickendon was too close. But presently, later on, when she felt inclined to, she would wander off in search of a suitable dry ditch or an accommodatingly loosened haystack; or wading through last year’s leaves and this year’s fern she would penetrate into a wood and burrow herself a bed, Satan going his rounds might come upon her and smile to see her lying so peaceful and secure in his dangerous keeping. But he would not disturb her. Why should he? The pursuit was over, as far as she was concerned. She could sleep where she pleased, a hind couched in the Devil’s coverts, a witch made free of her Master’s immunity; while he, wakeful and stealthy, was already out after new game. So he would not disturb her. A closer darkness upon her slumber, a deeper voice in the murmuring leaves overhead—that would be all she would know of his undesiring and unjudging gaze, his satisfied but profoundly indifferent ownership.