‘Yes, miss. Shall I put in some linen thread too?’
Mrs. Trumpet was a stout, obliging woman. She promised to do up all the parcels in thick brown paper and send them off three days before Christmas. As Laura stepped out of the shop in triumph, she exclaimed: ‘Well, that’s done it!’
For the life of her she could not have said in what sense the words were intended. She was divided between admiration for her useful and well-chosen gifts and delight in affronting a kind of good taste which she believed to be merely self-esteem.
Although she had chosen presents with such care for her relations, Laura was surprised whencounter presents arrived from them. She had not thought of them as remembering her. Their presents were all of a warm nature; they insisted upon that bleakness and draughtiness which their senders had foretold. When Caroline wrote to thank Laura, she said:
‘I have started to make you a nice warm coverlet out of those pretty wools you sent. I think it will look very cheerful and variegated. I often feel quite worried to think of you upon those wind-swept hills. And from all I hear you have a great many woods round you, and I’m afraid all the decaying leaves must make the place damp.’
Heaping coals of fire was a religious occupation. Laura rather admired Caroline for the neat turn of the wrist with which she heaped these.
In spite of the general determination of her family that she should feel the cold Laura lived at Great Mop very comfortably. Mrs. Leak was an excellent cook; she attended to her lodger civilly and kindly enough, made no comments, and showed no curiosity. At times Laura felt as though she had exchanged one Caroline for another. Mrs. Leak was not, apparently, a religious woman. There were notexts on her walls, and when Laura asked for the loan of a Bible Mrs. Leak took a little time to produce it, and blew on the cover before she handed it over. But like Caroline, she gave the impression that her kingdom was not of this world. Laura liked her, and would have been glad to be upon less distant terms with her, but she did not find it easy to break through Mrs. Leak’s reserve. She tried this subject and that, but Mrs. Leak did not begin to thaw until Laura said something about black-currant tea. It seemed that Mrs. Leak shared Laura’s liking for distillations. That evening she remarked that the table-beer was of her own brewing, and lingered a while with the folded cloth in her hand to explain the recipe. After that Laura was given every evening a glass of home-made wine: dandelion, cowslip, elderberry, ashkey, or mangold. By her appreciation and her inquiries she entrapped Mrs. Leak into pausing longer and longer before she carried away the supper-tray. Before January was out it had become an established thing that after placing the bedroom candlestick on the cleared table Mrs. Leak would sit down and talk for half an hour or so.
There was an indoor pleasantness about thesetimes. Through the wall came the sound of Mr. Leak snoring in the kitchen. The two women sat by the fire, tilting their glasses and drinking in small peaceful sips. The lamplight shone upon the tidy room and the polished table, lighting topaz in the dandelion wine, spilling pools of crimson through the flanks of the bottle of plum gin. It shone on the contented drinkers, and threw their large, close-at-hand shadows upon the wall. When Mrs. Leak smoothed her apron the shadow solemnified the gesture as though she were moulding an universe. Laura’s nose and chin were defined as sharply as the peaks on a holly leaf.
Mrs. Leak did most of the talking. She talked well. She knew a great deal about everybody, and she was not content to quit a character until she had brought it to life for her listener.
Mrs. Leak’s favourite subject was the Misses Larpent, Miss Minnie and Miss Jane. Miss Minnie was seventy-three, Miss Jane four years younger. Neither of them had known a day’s illness, nor any bodily infirmity, nor any relenting of their faculties. They would live for many years yet, if only to thwart their debauched middle-aged nephew, the heir to the estate.Perhaps Miss Willowes had seen Lazzard Court on one of her walks? Yes, Laura had seen it, looking down from a hill-top—the park where sheep were penned among the grouped chestnut trees, the long white house with its expressionless façade—and had heard the stable-clock striking a deserted noon.
The drive of Lazzard Court was five miles long from end to end. The house had fourteen principal bedrooms and a suite for Royalty. Mrs. Leak had been in service at Lazzard Court before her marriage; she knew the house inside and out, and described it to Laura till Laura felt that there was not one of the fourteen principal bedrooms which she did not know. The blue room, the yellow room, the Chinese room, the buff room, the balcony room, the needle-work room—she had slept in them all. Nay, she had awakened in the Royal bed, and pulling aside the red damask curtains had looked to the window to see the sun shining upon the tulip tree.
No visitors slept in the stately bedrooms now, Lazzard Court was very quiet. People in the villages, said Mrs. Leak coldly, called Miss Minnie and Miss Jane two old screws. Mrs. Leak knew better. The old ladies spent lordilyupon their pleasures, and economised elsewhere that they might be able to do so. When they invited the Bishop to lunch and gave him stewed rabbit, blackberry pudding, and the best peaches and Madeira that his Lordship was likely to taste in his life, he fared no worse and no better than they fared themselves. Lazzard Court was famous for its racing-stable. To the upkeep of this all meaner luxuries were sacrificed—suitable bonnets, suitable subscriptions, bedroom fires, salmon and cucumber. But the stable-yard was like the forecourt of a temple. Every morning after breakfast Miss Jane would go round the stables and feel the horses’ legs, her gnarled old hand with its diamond rings slipping over the satin coat.
Nothing escaped the sisters. The dairy, the laundry, the glass-houses, the poultry-yard, all were scrutinised. If any servant were found lacking he or she was called before Miss Minnie in the Justice Room. Mrs. Leak had never suffered such an interview, but she had seen others come away, white-faced, or weeping with apron thrown over head. Even the coffins were made on the estate. Each sister had chosen her elm and had watched it felled, with sharp words for the woodman when he aimed amiss.
When Mrs. Leak had given the last touches to Miss Minnie and Miss Jane, she made Laura’s flesh creep with the story of the doctor who took the new house up on the hill. He had been a famous doctor in London, but when he came to Great Mop no one would have anything to do with him. It was said he came as an interloper, watching for old Dr. Halley to die that he might step into his shoes. He grew more and more morose in his lonely house, soon the villagers said he drank; at last came the morning when he and his wife were found dead. He had shot her and then himself, so it appeared, and the verdict at the inquest was of Insanity. The chief witnesses were another London doctor, a great man for the brain, who had advised his friend to lead a peaceful country life; and the maidservant, who had heard ranting talk and cries late one evening, and ran out of the house in terror, banging the door behind her, to spend the night with her mother in the village.
After the doctor, Mrs. Leak called up Mr. Jones the clergyman. Laura had seen his white beard browsing among the tombs. He looked like a blessed goat tethered on hallowed grass. He lived alone with his books of Latin and Hebrew and his tame owl which he tried topersuade to sleep in his bedroom. He had dismissed red-haired Emily, the sexton’s niece, for pouring hot water on a mouse. Emily had heated the water with the kindest intentions, but she was dismissed nevertheless. Mrs. Leak made much of this incident, for it was Mr. Jones’s only act of authority. In all other administrations he was guided by Mr. Gurdon, the clerk.
Mr. Gurdon’s beard was red and curly (Laura knew him by sight also). Fiery down covered his cheeks, his eyes were small and truculent, and he lived in a small surprised cottage near the church. Every morning he walked forth to the Rectory to issue his orders for the day—this old woman was to be visited with soup, that young one with wrath; and more manure should be ordered for the Rectory cabbages. For Mr. Gurdon was Mr. Jones’s gardener, as well as his clerk.
Mr. Gurdon had even usurped the clergyman’s perquisite of quarrelling with the organist. Henry Perry was the organist. He had lost one leg and three fingers in a bus accident, so there was scarcely any other profession he could have taken up. And he had always been fond of playing tunes, for his mother, who was a superior widow, had a piano at Rose Cottage.
Mr. Gurdon said that Henry Perry encouraged the choir boys to laugh at him. After church he used to hide behind a yew tree to pounce out upon any choir boys who desecrated the graves by leaping over them. When he caught them he pinched them. Pinches are silent: they can be made use of in sacred places where smacking would be irreverent. One summer Mr. Gurdon told Mr. Jones to forbid the choir treat. Three days later some of the boys were playing with a tricycle. They allowed it to get out of control, and it began to run downhill. At the bottom of the hill was a sharp turn in the road, and Mr. Gurdon’s cottage. The tricycle came faster and faster and crashed through the fence into Mr. Gurdon, who was attending to his lettuces and had his back turned. The boys giggled and ran away. Their mothers did not take the affair so lightly. That evening Mr. Gurdon received a large seed-cake, two dozen fresh eggs, a packet of cigarettes, and other appeasing gifts. Next Sunday Mr. Jones in his kind tenor voice announced that a member of the congregation wished to return thanks for mercies lately received. Mr. Gurdon turned round in his place and glared at the choir boys.
Much as he disliked Henry Perry, Mr.Gurdon had disliked the doctor from London even more. The doctor had come upon him frightening an old woman in a field, and had called him a damned bully and a hypocrite. Mr. Gurdon had cursed him back, and swore to be even with him. The old woman bore her defender no better will. She talked in a surly way about her aunt, who was a gipsy and able to afflict people with lice by just looking at them.
Laura did not hear this story from Mrs. Leak. It was told her some time after by Mrs. Trumpet. Mrs. Trumpet hated Mr. Gurdon, though she was very civil to him when he came into the shop. Few people in the village liked Mr. Gurdon, but he commanded a great deal of politeness. Red and burly and to be feared, the clerk reminded Laura of a red bull belonging to the farmer. In one respect he was unlike the bull: Mr. Gurdon was a very respectable man.
Mrs. Leak also told Laura about Mr. and Mrs. Ward, who kept the Lamb and Flag; about Miss Carloe the dressmaker, who fed a pet hedgehog on bread-and-milk; and about fat Mrs. Garland, who let lodgings in the summer and was always so down at heel and jolly.
Although she knew so much about her neighbours, Mrs. Leak was not a sociable woman. The Misses Larpent, the dead doctor, Mr. Jones, Mr. Gurdon, and Miss Carloe—she called them up and caused them to pass before Laura, but in a dispassionate way, rather like the Witch of Endor calling up old Samuel. Nor was Great Mop a sociable village, at any rate compared with the villages which Laura had known as a girl. Never had she seen so little dropping in, leaning over fences, dawdling at the shop or in the churchyard. Little laughter came from the taproom of the Lamb and Flag. Once or twice she glanced in at the window as she passed by and saw the men within sitting silent and abstracted with their mugs before them. Even the bell-ringers when they had finished their practice broke up with scant adieus, and went silently on their way. She had never met country people like these before. Nor had she ever known a village that kept such late hours. Lights were burning in the cottages till one and two in the morning, and she had been awakened at later hours than those by the sound of passing voices. She could hear quite distinctly, for her window was open and faced upon the village street. She heard Miss Carloesay complainingly: ‘It’s all very well for you young ones. But my old bones ache so, it’s a wonder how I get home!’ Then she heard the voice of red-haired Emily say: ‘No bones so nimble as old bones, Miss Carloe, when it comes to—’ and then a voice unknown to Laura said ‘Hush’; and she heard no more, for a cock crew. Another night, some time after this, she heard some one playing a mouth-organ. The music came from far off, it sounded almost as if it were being played out of doors. She lit a candle and looked at her watch—it was half-past three. She got out of bed and listened at the window; it was a dark night, and the hills rose up like a screen. The noise of the mouth-organ came wavering and veering on the wind. A drunk man, perhaps? Yet what drunk man would play on so steadily? She lay awake for an hour or more, half puzzled, half lulled by the strange music, that never stopped, that never varied, that seemed to have become part of the air.
Next day she asked Mrs. Leak what this strange music could be. Mrs. Leak said that young Billy Thomas was distracted with toothache. He could not sleep, and played for hours nightly upon his mouth-organ to divert himselffrom the pain. On Wednesday the tooth-drawer would come to Barleighs, and young Billy Thomas would be put out of his agony. Laura was sorry for the sufferer, but she admired the circumstances. The highest flights of her imagination had not risen to more than a benighted drunk. Young Billy Thomas had a finer invention than she.
After a few months she left off speculating about the villagers. She admitted that there was something about them which she could not fathom, but she was content to remain outside the secret, whatever it was. She had not come to Great Mop to concern herself with the hearts of men. Let her stray up the valleys, and rest in the leafless woods that looked so warm with their core of fallen red leaves, and find out her own secret, if she had one; with autumn it might come back to question her. She wondered. She thought not. She felt that nothing could ever again disturb her peace. Wherever she strayed the hills folded themselves round her like the fingers of a hand.
About this time she did an odd thing. In her wanderings she had found a disused well. It was sunk at the side of a green lane, and grass and bushes had grown up around its low rim,almost to conceal it; the wooden frame was broken and mouldered, ropes and pulleys had long ago been taken away, and the water was sunk far down, only distinguishable as an uncertain reflection of the sky. Here, one evening, she brought her guide-book and her map. Pushing aside the bushes she sat down upon the low rim of the well. It was a still, mild evening towards the end of February, the birds were singing, there was a smell of growth in the air, the light lingered in the fields as though it were glad to linger. Looking into the well she watched the reflected sky grow dimmer; and when she raised her eyes the gathering darkness of the landscape surprised her. The time had come. She took the guide-book and the map and threw them in.
She heard the disturbed water sidling against the walls of the well. She scarcely knew what she had done, but she knew that she had done rightly, whether it was that she had sacrificed to the place, or had cast herself upon its mercies—content henceforth to know no more of it than did its own children.
As she reached the village she saw a group of women standing by the milestone. They were silent and abstracted as usual. When shegreeted them they returned her greeting, but they said nothing among themselves. After she had gone by they turned as of one accord and began to walk up the field path towards the wood. They were going to gather fuel, she supposed. To-night their demeanour did not strike her as odd. She felt at one with them, an inhabitant like themselves, and she would gladly have gone with them up towards the wood. If they were different from other people, why shouldn’t they be? They saw little of the world. Great Mop stood by itself at the head of the valley, five miles from the main road, and cut off by the hills from the other villages. It had a name for being different from other places. The man who had driven Laura home from The Reason Why had said: ‘It’s not often that a wagonette is seen at Great Mop. It’s an out-of-the-way place, if ever there was one. There’s not such another village in Buckinghamshire for out-of-the-way-ness. Well may it be called Great Mop, for there’s never a Little Mop that I’ve heard of.’
People so secluded as the inhabitants of Great Mop would naturally be rather silent, and keep themselves close. So Laura thought, and Mr. Saunter was of the same opinion.
Mr. Saunter’s words had weight, for he spoke seldom. He was a serious, brown young man, who after the war had refused to go back to his bank in Birmingham. He lived in a wooden hut which he had put up with his own hands, and kept a poultry-farm.
Laura first met Mr. Saunter when she was out walking, early one darkish, wet, January morning. The lane was muddy; she picked her way, her eyes to the ground. She did not notice Mr. Saunter until she was quite close to him. He was standing bareheaded in the rain. His look was sad and gentle, it reflected the mood of the weather, and several dead white hens dangled from his hands. Laura exclaimed, softly, apologetically. This young man was so perfectly of a piece with his surroundings that she felt herself to be an intruder. She was about to turn back when his glance moved slowly towards her. ‘Badger,’ he said; and smiled in an explanatory fashion. Laura knew at once that he had been careless and had left the henhouse door unfastened. She took pains that no shade of blame should mix itself with her condolences. She did not even blame the badger. She knew that this was a moment for nothing but kind words, and not too many of them.
Mr. Saunter was grateful. He invited her to come and see his birds. Side by side they turned in silence through a field gate and walked into Mr. Saunter’s field. Bright birds were on the sodden grass. As he went by they hurried into their pens, expecting to be fed. ‘If you would care to come in,’ said Mr. Saunter, ‘I should like to make you a cup of tea.’
Mr. Saunter’s living-room was very untidy and homelike. A basket of stockings lay on the table. Laura wondered if she might offer to help Mr. Saunter with his mending. But after he had made the tea, he took up a stocking and began to darn it. He darned much better than she did.
As she went home again she fell to wondering what animal Mr. Saunter resembled. But in the end she decided that he resembled no animal except man. Till now, Laura had rejected the saying that man is the noblest work of nature. Half an hour with Mr. Saunter showed her that the saying was true. So had Adam been the noblest work of nature, when he walked out among the beasts, sole overseer of the garden, intact, with all his ribs about him, his equilibrium as yet untroubled by Eve. She had misunderstood the saying merely because she had nothappened to meet a man before. Perhaps, like other noble works, man is rare. Perhaps there is only one of him at a time: first Adam; now Mr. Saunter. If that were the case, she was lucky to have met him. This also was the result of coming to Great Mop.
So much did Mr. Saunter remind Laura of Adam that he made her feel like Eve—for she was petitioned by an unladylike curiosity. She asked Mrs. Leak about him. Mrs. Leak could tell her nothing that was not already known to her, except that young Billy Thomas went up there every day on his bicycle to lend Mr. Saunter a hand. Laura would not stoop to question young Billy Thomas. She fought against her curiosity, and the spring came to her aid.
This new year was changing her whole conception of spring. She had thought of it as a denial of winter, a green spear that thrust through a tyrant’s rusty armour. Now she saw it as something filial, gently unlacing the helm of the old warrior and comforting his rough cheek. In February came a spell of fine weather. She spent whole days sitting in the woods, where the wood-pigeons moaned for pleasure on the boughs. Sometimes two cock birds would tumble together in mid air, shrieking, and buffetingwith their wings, and then would fly back to the quivering boughs and nurse the air into peace again. All round her the sap was rising up. She laid her cheek against a tree and shut her eyes to listen. She expected to hear the tree drumming like a telegraph pole.
It was so warm in the woods that she forgot that she sat there for shelter. But though the wind blew lightly, it blew from the east. In March the wind went round to the south-west. It brought rain. The bright, cold fields were dimmed and warm to walk in now. Like embers the wet beech-leaves smouldered in the woods.
All one day the wind had risen, and late in the evening it called her out. She went up to the top of Cubbey Ridge, past the ruined windmill that clattered with its torn sails. When she had come to the top of the Ridge she stopped, with difficulty holding herself upright. She felt the wind swoop down close to the earth. The moon was out hunting overhead, her pack of black and white hounds ranged over the sky. Moon and wind and clouds hunted an invisible quarry. The wind routed through the woods. Laura from the hill-top heard the various surrounding woods cry out with different voices. The spent gusts left the beech-hangers throbbinglike sea caverns through which the wave had passed, the fir plantation seemed to chant some never-ending rune.
Listening to these voices, another voice came to her ear—the far-off pulsation of a goods train labouring up a steep cutting. It was scarcely audible, more perceptible as feeling than as sound, but by its regularity it dominated all the other voices. It seemed to come nearer and nearer, to inform her like the drumming of blood in her ears. She began to feel defenceless, exposed to the possibility of an overwhelming terror. She listened intently, trying not to think. Though the noise came from an ordinary goods train, no amount of reasoning could stave off this terror. She must yield herself, yield up all her attention, if she would escape. It was a wicked sound. It expressed something eternally outcast and reprobated by man, stealthily trafficking by night, unseen in the dark clefts of the hills. Loud, separate, and abrupt, each pant of the engine trampled down her wits. The wind and the moon and the ranging cloud pack were not the only hunters abroad that night: something else was hunting among the hills, hunting slowly, deliberately, sure of its quarry.
Suddenly she remembered the goods yard atPaddington, and all her thoughts slid together again like a pack of hounds that have picked up the scent. They streamed faster and faster; she clenched her hands and prayed as when a child she had prayed in the hunting-field.
In the goods yard at Paddington she had almost pounced on the clue, the clue to the secret country of her mind. The country was desolate and half-lit, and she walked there alone, mistress of it, and mistress, too, of the terror that roamed over the blank fields and haunted round her. Here was country just so desolate and half-lit. She was alone, just as in her dreams, and the terror had come to keep her company, and crouched by her side, half in fawning, half in readiness to pounce. All this because of a goods train that laboured up a cutting. What was this cabal of darkness, suborning her own imagination to plot against her? What were these iron hunters doing near mournful, ever-weeping Paddington?
‘Now! Now!’ said the moon, and plunged towards her through the clouds.
Baffled, she stared back at the moon and shook her head. For a moment it had seemed as though the clue were found, but it had slid through her hands again. The train had reachedthe top of the cutting, with a shriek of delight it began to pour itself downhill. She smiled. It amused her to suppose it loaded with cabbages. Arrived at Paddington, the cabbages would be diverted to Covent Garden. But inevitably, and with all the augustness of due course, they would reach their bourne at Apsley Terrace. They would shed all their midnight devilry in the pot, and be served up to Henry and Caroline very pure and vegetable.
‘Lovely! lovely!’ she said, and began to descend the hill, for the night was cold. Though her secret had eluded her again, she did not mind. She knew that this time she had come nearer to catching it than ever before. If it were attainable she would run it to earth here, sooner or later. Great Mop was the likeliest place to find it.
The village was in darkness; it had gone to bed early, as good villages should. Only Miss Carloe’s window was alight. Kind Miss Carloe, she would sit up till all hours tempting her hedgehog with bread-and-milk. Hedgehogs are nocturnal animals; they go out for walks at night, grunting, and shoving out their black snouts. ‘Thrice the brindled cat hath mewed; Thrice, and once the hedgepig whined. Harpercries, “’Tis time, ’tis time.”’She found the key under the half-brick, and let herself in very quietly. Only sleep sat up for her, waiting in the hushed house. Sleep took her by the hand, and convoyed her up the narrow stairs. She fell asleep almost as her head touched the pillow.
By the next day all this seemed very ordinary. She had gone out on a windy night and heard a goods train. There was nothing remarkable in that. It would have been a considerable adventure in London, but it was nothing in the Chilterns. Yet she retained an odd feeling of respect for what had happened, as though it had laid some command upon her that waited to be interpreted and obeyed. She thought it over, and tried to make sense of it. If it pointed to anything, it pointed to Paddington. She did what she could; she wrote and invited Caroline to spend a day at Great Mop. She did not suppose that this was the right interpretation, but she could think of no other.
All the birds were singing as Laura went down the lane to meet Caroline’s car. It was almost like summer, nothing could be more fortunate. Caroline was dressed in sensible tweeds. ‘It was raining when I left London,’ she said, and glanced severely at Laura’s cotton gown.
‘Was it?’ said Laura. ‘It hasn’t rained here.’ She stopped. She looked carefully at the blue sky. There was not a cloud to be seen. ‘Perhaps it will rain later on,’ she added. Caroline also looked at the sky, and said: ‘Probably.’
Conversation was a little difficult, for Laura did not know how much she was still in disgrace. She asked after everybody in a rather guilty voice, and heard how emphatically they all throve, and what a pleasant, cheerful winter they had all spent. After that came the distance from Wickendon and the hour of departure. In planning the conduct of the day, Laura had decided to keep the church for after lunch. Before lunch she would show Caroline the view. She had vaguely allotted an hour and a half to the view, but it took scarcely twenty minutes. At least, that was the time it took walking up to the windmill and down again. The view had taken no time at all. It was a very clear day, and everything that could be seen was perceptible at the first glance.
Caroline was so stoutly equipped for country walking that Laura had not the heart to dragher up another hill. They visited the church instead. The church was more successful. Caroline sank on her knees and prayed. This gave Laura an opportunity to look round, for she had not been inside the church before. It was extremely narrow, and had windows upon the south side only, so that it looked like a holy corridor. Caroline prayed for some time, and Laura made the most of it. Presently she was able to lead Caroline down the corridor, murmuring: ‘That window was presented in 1901. There is rather a nice brass in this corner. That bit of carving is old, it is the Wise and the Foolish Virgins. Take care of the step.’
One foolish Virgin pleased Laura as being particularly lifelike. She stood a little apart from the group, holding a flask close to her ear, and shaking it. During lunch Laura felt that her stock of oil, too, was running very low. But it was providentially renewed, for soon after lunch a perfect stranger fell off a bicycle just outside Mrs. Leak’s door and sprained her ankle. Laura and Caroline leapt up to succour her, and then there was a great deal of cold compress and hot tea and animation. The perfect stranger was a Secretary to a Guild. She asked Caroline if she did not think GreatMop a delightful nook, and Caroline cordially agreed. They went on discovering Committees in common till tea-time, and soon after went off together in Caroline’s car. Just as Caroline stepped into the car she asked Laura if she had met any nice people in the neighbourhood.
‘No. There aren’t any nice people,’ said Laura. Wondering if the bicycle would stay like that, twined so casually round the driver’s neck, she had released her attention one minute too soon.
As far as she knew this was her only slip throughout the day. It was a pity. But Caroline would soon forget it; she might not even have heard it, for the Secretary was talking loudly about Homes of Rest at the same moment. Still, it was a pity. She might have remembered Mr. Saunter, though perhaps she could not have explained him satisfactorily in the time.
She turned and walked slowly through the fields towards the poultry-farm. She could not settle down to complete solitude so soon after Caroline’s departure. She would decline gradually, using Mr. Saunter as an intermediate step. He was feeding his poultry, going from pen to pen with a zinc wheelbarrow and a large woodenspoon. The birds flew round him; he had continually to stop and fend them off like a swarm of large midges. Sometimes he would grasp a specially bothering bird and throw it back into the pen as though it were a ball. She leant on the gate and watched him. This young man who had been a bank-clerk and a soldier walked with the easy, slow strides of a born countryman; he seemed to possess the earth with each step. No doubt but he was like Adam. And she, watching him from above—for the field sloped down from the gate to the pens—was like God. Did God, after casting out the rebel angels and before settling down to the peace of a heaven unpeopled of contradiction, use Adam as an intermediate step?
On his way back to the hut Mr. Saunter noticed Laura. He came up and leant on his side of the gate. Though the sun had gone down, the air was still warm, and a disembodied daylight seemed to weigh upon the landscape like a weight of sleep. The birds which had sung all day now sang louder then ever.
‘Hasn’t it been a glorious day?’ said Mr. Saunter.
‘I have had my sister-in-law down,’ Laura answered. ‘She lives in London.’
‘My people,’ said Mr. Saunter, ‘all live in the Midlands.’
‘Or in Australia,’ he added after a pause.
Mr. Saunter, seen from above, walking among his flocks and herds—for even hens seemed ennobled into something Biblical by their relation to him—was an impressive figure. Mr. Saunter leaning on the gate was a pleasant, unaffected young man enough, but no more. Quitting him, Laura soon forgot him as completely as she had forgotten Caroline. Caroline was a tedious bluebottle; Mr. Saunter a gentle, furry brown moth; but she could brush off one as easily as the other.
Laura even forgot that she had invited the moth to settle again; to come to tea. It was only by chance that she had stayed indoors that afternoon, making currant scones. To amuse herself she had cut the dough into likenesses of the village people. Curious developments took place in the baking. Miss Carloe’s hedgehog had swelled until it was almost as large as its mistress. The dough had run into it, leaving a great hole in Miss Carloe’s side. Mr. Jones had a lump on his back, as though he were carrying the Black Dog in a bag; and a fancy portrait of Miss Larpent in her elegant youthand a tight-fitting sweeping amazon had warped and twisted until it was more like a gnarled thorn tree than a woman.
Laura felt slightly ashamed of her freak. It was unkind to play these tricks with her neighbours’ bodies. But Mr. Saunter ate the strange shapes without comment, quietly splitting open the villagers and buttering them. He told her that he would soon lose the services of young Billy Thomas, who was going to Lazzard Court as a footman.
‘I shouldn’t think young Billy Thomas would make much of a footman,’ said Laura.
‘I don’t know,’ he answered consideringly. ‘He’s very good at standing still.’
Laura had brought her sensitive conscience into the country with her, just as she had brought her umbrella, though so far she had not remembered to use either. Now the conscience gave signs of life. Mr. Saunter was so nice, and had eaten up those derisive scones, innocently under the impression that they had been prepared for him; he had come with his gift of eggs, all kindness and forethought while she had forgotten his existence; and now he was getting up to go, thanking her and afraid that he had stayed too long. She had acted unworthily bythis young man, so dignified and unassuming; she must do something to repair the slight she had put upon him in her own mind. She offered herself as a substitute for young Billy Thomas until Mr. Saunter could find some one else.
‘I don’t know anything about hens,’ she admitted. ‘But I am fond of animals, and I am very obedient.’
It was agreed that she might go on the following day to help him with the trap-nesting, and see how she liked it.
At first Mr. Saunter would not allow her to do more than walk round with him upon planks specially put down to save her from the muddy places, pencil the eggs, and drink tea afterwards. But she came so punctually and showed such eagerness that as time went on she persuaded him into allowing her a considerable share in the work.
There was much to do, for it was a busy time of year. The incubators had fulfilled their time; Laura learnt how to lift out the newly-hatched chicks, damp, almost lifeless from their birth-throes, and pack them into baskets. A few hours after the chicks were plump and fluffy. They looked like bunches of primroses in the moss-lined baskets.
Besides mothering his chicks Mr. Saunter was busy with a great re-housing of the older birds. This was carried out after sundown, for the birds were sleepy then, and easier to deal with. If moved by day they soon revolted, and went back to their old pens. Even as it was there were always a few sticklers, roosting uncomfortably among the newcomers, or standing disconsolately before their old homes, closed against them.
Laura liked this evening round best of all. The April twilights were marvellously young and still. A slender moon soared in the green sky; the thick spring grass was heavy with dew, and the earth darkened about her feet while overhead it still seemed quite light. Mr. Saunter would disappear into the henhouse, a protesting squawking and scuffling would be heard; then he would emerge with hens under either arm. He showed Laura how to carry them, two at a time, their breasts in her hands, their wings held fast between her arm and her side. She would tickle the warm breasts, warm and surprisingly bony with quills under the soft plumage, and make soothing noises.
At first she felt nervous with the strange burden, so meek and inanimate one moment, soshrewish the next, struggling and beating with strong freed wings. However many birds Mr. Saunter might be carrying, he was always able to relieve her of hers. Immediately the termagant would subside, tamed by the large sure grasp, meek as a dove, with rigid dangling legs, and head turning sadly from side to side.
Laura never became as clever with the birds as Mr. Saunter. But when she had overcome her nervousness she managed them well enough to give herself a great deal of pleasure. They nestled against her, held fast in the crook of her arm, while her fingers probed among the soft feathers and rigid quills of their breasts. She liked to feel their acquiescence, their dependence upon her. She felt wise and potent. She remembered the henwife in the fairy-tales, she understood now why kings and queens resorted to the henwife in their difficulties. The henwife held their destinies in the crook of her arm, and hatched the future in her apron. She was sister to the spaewife, and close cousin to the witch, but she practised her art under cover of henwifery; she was not, like her sister and her cousin, a professional. She lived unassumingly at the bottom of the king’s garden, wearing a large white apron and very possibly her husband’s cloth cap; and when she saw the king and queen coming down the gravel path she curtseyed reverentially, and pretended it was the eggs they had come about. She was easier of approach than the spaewife, who sat on a creepie and stared at the smouldering peats till her eyes were red and unseeing; or the witch, who lived alone in the wood, her cottage window all grown over with brambles. But though she kept up this pretence of homeliness she was not inferior in skill to the professionals. Even the pretence of homeliness was not quite so homely as it might seem. Laura knew that the Russian witches live in small huts mounted upon three giant hen’s legs, all yellow and scaly. The legs can go; when the witch desires to move her dwelling the legs stalk through the forest, clattering against the trees, and printing long scars upon the snow.
Following Mr. Saunter up and down between the pens, Laura almost forgot where and who she was, so completely had she merged her personality into the henwife’s. She walked back along the rutted track and down the steep lane as obliviously as though she were flitting home on a broomstick. All through April she helped Mr. Saunter. They were both sorry when anew boy applied for the job and her duties came to an end. She knew no more of Mr. Saunter at the close of this association than she had known at its beginning. It could scarcely be said even that she liked him any better, for from their first meeting she had liked him extremely. Time had assured the liking, and that was all. So well assured was it, that she felt perfectly free to wander away and forget him once more, certain of finding him as likeable and well liked as before whenever she might choose to return.
During her first months at Great Mop the moods of the winter landscape and the renewing of spring had taken such hold of her imagination that she thought no season could be more various and lovely. She had even written a slightly precious letter to Titus—for somehow correspondence with Titus was always rather attentive—declaring her belief that the cult of the summer months was a piece of cockney obtuseness, a taste for sweet things, and a preference for dry grass to strew their egg-shells upon. But with the first summer days and the first cowslips she learnt better. She had known that there would be cowslips in May; from the day she first thought of Great Mop she had promised them to herself. She had meant to find themearly and watch the yellow blossoms unfolding upon the milky green stems. But they were beforehand with her, or she had watched the wrong fields. When she walked into the meadow it was bloomed over with cowslips, powdering the grass in variable plenty, here scattered, there clustered, innumerable as the stars in the Milky Way.
She knelt down among them and laid her face close to their fragrance. The weight of all her unhappy years seemed for a moment to weigh her bosom down to the earth; she trembled, understanding for the first time how miserable she had been; and in another moment she was released. It was all gone, it could never be again, and never had been. Tears of thankfulness ran down her face. With every breath she drew, the scent of the cowslips flowed in and absolved her.
She was changed, and knew it. She was humbler, and more simple. She ceased to triumph mentally over her tyrants, and rallied herself no longer with the consciousness that she had outraged them by coming to live at Great Mop. The amusement she had drawn from their disapproval was a slavish remnant, a derisive dance on the north bank of the Ohio. There was no question of forgiving them. She had not, in any case, a forgiving nature; and the injury they had done her was not done by them. If she were to start forgiving she must needs forgive Society, the Law, the Church, the History of Europe, the Old Testament, great-great-aunt Salome and her prayer-book, the Bank of England, Prostitution, the Architect of Apsley Terrace, and half a dozen other useful props of civilisation. All she could do was to go on forgetting them. But now she was able to forget them without flouting them by her forgetfulness.
Throughout May and June and the first fortnight of July she lived in perfect idleness and contentment, growing every day more freckled and more rooted in peace. On July 17th she was disturbed by a breath from the world. Titus came down to see her. It was odd to be called Aunt Lolly again. Titus did not use the term often; he addressed his friends of both sexes and his relations of all ages as My Dear; but Aunt Lolly slipped out now and again.
There was no need to show Titus the inside of the church. There was no need even to take him up to the windmill and show him the view. He did all that for himself, and got itover before breakfast—for Titus breakfasted for three mornings at Great Mop. He had come for the day only, but he was too pleased to go back. He was his own master now, he had rooms in Bloomsbury and did not need even to send off a telegram. Mrs. Garland who let lodgings in the summer was able to oblige him with a bedroom, full of pincushions and earwigs and marine photographs; and Mrs. Trumpet gave him all the benefit of all the experience he invoked in the choice of a tooth-brush. For three days he sat about with Laura, and talked of his intention to begin brewing immediately. He had refused to visit Italy with his mother—he had rejected several flattering invitations from editors—because brewing appealed to him more than anything else in the world. This, he said, was the last night out before the wedding. On his return to Bloomsbury he intended to let his rooms to an amiable Mahometan, and to apprentice himself to his family brewery until he had learnt the family trade.
Laura gave him many messages to Lady Place. It was clear before her in an early morning light. She could exactly recall the smell of the shrubbery, her mother flowing across the croquet lawn, her father’s voice as he called up the dogs.She could see herself, too: her old self, for her present self had no part in the place. She did not suppose she would ever return there, although she was glad that Titus was faithful.
Titus departed. He wrote her a letter from Bloomsbury, saying that he had struck a good bargain with the Mahometan, and was off to Somerset. Ten days later she heard from Sibyl that he was coming to live at Great Mop. She had scarcely time to assemble her feelings about this before he was arrived.
IT was the third week in August. The weather was sultry; day after day Laura heard the village people telling each other that there was thunder in the air. Every evening they stood in the village street, looking upwards, and the cattle stood waiting in the fields. But the storm delayed. It hid behind the hills, biding its time.
Laura had spent the afternoon in a field, a field of unusual form, for it was triangular. On two sides it was enclosed by woodland, and because of this it was already darkening into a premature twilight, as though it were a room. She had been there for hours. Though it was sultry, she could not sit still. She walked up and down, turning savagely when she came to the edge of the field. Her limbs were tired, and she stumbled over the flints and matted couch grass. Throughout the long afternoon a stock dove had cooed in the wood. ‘Cool, cool, cool,’ it said, delighting in its green bower. Now it had ceased, and there was no life in the woods. The sky was covered with a thick uniform haze. No ray of the declining sunbroke through it, but the whole heavens were beginning to take on a dull, brassy pallor. The long afternoon was ebbing away, stealthily, impassively, as though it were dying under an anaesthetic.
Laura had not listened to the stock dove; she had not seen the haze thickening overhead. She walked up and down in despair and rebellion. She walked slowly, for she felt the weight of her chains. Once more they had been fastened upon her. She had worn them for many years, acquiescently, scarcely feeling their weight. Now she felt it. And, with their weight, she felt their familiarity, and the familiarity was worst of all. Titus had seen her starting out. He had cried; ‘Where are you off to, Aunt Lolly? Wait a minute, and I’ll come too.’ She had feigned not to hear him and had walked on. She had not turned her head until she was out of the village, she expected at every moment to hear him come bounding up behind her. Had he done so, she thought she would have turned round and snarled at him. For she wanted, oh! how much she wanted, to be left alone for once. Even when she felt pretty sure that she had escaped she could not profit by her solitude, for Titus’s voice still jangled on her nerves. ‘Whereare you off to, Aunt Lolly? Wait a minute, and I’ll come too.’ She heard his very tones, and heard intensely her own silence that had answered him. Too flustered to notice where she was going, she had followed a chance track until she found herself in this field where she had never been before. Here the track ended, and here she stayed.
The woods rose up before her like barriers. On the third side of the field was a straggling hedge; along it sprawled a thick bank of burdocks, growing with malignant profusion. It was an unpleasant spot. Bitterly she said to herself: ‘Well, perhaps he’ll leave me alone here,’ and was glad of its unpleasantness. Titus could have all the rest: the green meadows, the hill-tops, the beech-woods dark and resonant as the inside of a sea-shell. He could walk in the greenest meadow and have dominion over it like a bull. He could loll his great body over the hill-tops, or rout silence out of the woods. They were hers, they were all hers, but she would give them all up to him and keep only this dismal field, and these coarse weeds growing out of an uncleansed soil. Any terms to be rid of him. But even on these terms she could not be rid of him, for all the afternoon he had beenpresent in her thoughts, and his voice rang in her ears as distinctly as ever: ‘Wait a minute, and I’ll come with you.’ She had not waited; but, nevertheless, he had come.
Actually, she knew—and the knowledge smote her—Titus, seeing her walk by unheeding, had picked up his book again and read on, reading slowly, and slowly drawing at his pipe, careless, intent, and satisfied. Perhaps he still sat by the open window. Perhaps he had wandered out, taking his book with him, and now was lying in the shade, still reading, or sleeping with his nose pressed into the grass, or with idle patience inveigling an ant to climb up a dry stalk. For this was Titus, Titus who had always been her friend. She had believed that she loved him; even when she heard that he was coming to live at Great Mop she had half thought that it might be rather nice to have him there. ‘Dearest Lolly,’ Sibyl had written from Italy, ‘I feel quite reconciled to this wild scheme of Tito’s, since you will be there to keep an eye on him. Men are so helpless. Tito is so impracticable. A regular artist,’ etc.
The helpless artist had arrived, and immediately upon his arrival walked out to buy beer and raspberries. Sibyl might feel perfectlyreconciled. No cat could jump into the most comfortable armchair more unerringly than Titus. ‘Such a nice young gentleman,’ said Mrs. Garland, smoothing his pyjamas with a voluptuous hand. ‘Such a nice young gentleman,’ said Miss Carloe, rubbing her finger over the milling of the new florin she received for the raspberries. ‘Such a nice young gentleman,’ said Mrs. Trumpet at the shop, and Mrs. Ward at the Lamb and Flag. All the white-aproned laps opened to dandle him. The infant Bacchus walked down the village street with his beer and his raspberries, bowing graciously to all Laura’s acquaintances. That evening he supped with her and talked about Fuseli. Fuseli—pronounced Foozley—was a neglected figure of the utmost importance. The pictures, of course, didn’t matter: Titus supposed there were some at the Tate. It was Fuseli the man, Fuseli the sign of his times, etc., that Titus was going to write about. It had been the ambition of his life to write a book about Fuseli, and his first visit to Great Mop convinced him that this was the perfect place to write it in. The secret, Titus said, of writing a good book was to be cut off from access to the reading room of the British Museum. Laura said a littlepettishly that if that were all Titus might have stayed in Bloomsbury, and written his book on Good Fridays. Titus demurred. Suppose he ran out of ink? No! Great Mop was the place. ‘To-morrow,’ he added, ‘you must take me round and show me all your footpaths.’
He left his pipe and tobacco pouch on the mantelpiece. They lay there like the orb and sceptre of an usurping monarch. Laura dreamed that night that Fuseli had arrived at Mr. Saunter’s poultry-farm, killed the hens, and laid out the field as a golf course.
She heard a great deal about Fuseli during the next few days, while she was obediently showing Titus all her footpaths. It was hot, so they walked in the woods. The paths were narrow, there was seldom room for two to walk abreast, so Titus generally went in front, projecting his voice into the silence. She disliked these walks; she felt ashamed of his company; she thought the woods saw her with him and drew back scornfully to let them pass by together.
Titus was more tolerable in the village street. Indeed, at first she was rather proud of her nephew’s success. After a week he knew everybody, and knew them far better than she did. He passed from the bar-parlour of the Lamband Flag to the rustic woodwork of the rector’s lawn. He subscribed to the bowling-green fund, he joined the cricket club, he engaged himself to give readings at the Institute during the winter evenings. He was invited to become a bell-ringer, and to read the lessons. He burgeoned with projects for Co-operative Blue Beverens, morris-dancing, performing Coriolanus with the Ancient Foresters, getting Henry Wappenshaw to come down and paint a village sign, inviting Pandora Williams and her rebeck for the Barleighs Flower Show. He congratulated Laura upon having discovered so unspoilt an example of the village community.
After the first fortnight he was less exuberant in the growth of his vast fronds. He was growing downwards instead, rooting into the soil. He began his book, and promised to stand godfather to the roadman’s next child. When they went for walks together he would sometimes fall silent, turning his head from side to side to browse the warm scent of a clover field. Once, as they stood on the ridge that guarded the valley from the south-east, he said: ‘I should like to stroke it’—and he waved his hand towards the pattern of rounded hills embossed with rounded beech-woods. She felt a coldshiver at his words, and turned away her eyes from the landscape that she loved so jealously. Titus could never have spoken so if he had not loved it too. Love it as he might, with all the deep Willowes love for country sights and smells, love he never so intimately and soberly, his love must be a horror to her. It was different in kind from hers. It was comfortable, it was portable, it was a reasonable appreciative appetite, a possessive and masculine love. It almost estranged her from Great Mop that he should be able to love it so well, and express his love so easily. He loved the countryside as though it were a body.
She had not loved it so. For days at a time she had been unconscious of its outward aspect, for long before she saw it she had loved it and blessed it. With no earnest but a name, a few lines and letters on a map, and a spray of beech-leaves, she had trusted the place and staked everything on her trust. She had struggled to come, but there had been no such struggle for Titus. It was as easy for him to quit Bloomsbury for the Chilterns as for a cat to jump from a hard chair to a soft. Now after a little scrabbling and exploration he was curled up in the green lap and purring over the landscape.The green lap was comfortable. He meant to stay in it, for he knew where he was well off. It was so comfortable that he could afford to wax loving, praise its kindly slopes, stretch out a discriminating paw and pat it. But Great Mop was no more to him than any other likeable country lap. He liked it because he was in possession. His comfort apart, it was a place like any other place.
Laura hated him for daring to love it so. She hated him for daring to love it at all. Most of all she hated him for imposing his kind of love on her. Since he had come to Great Mop she had not been allowed to love in her own way. Commenting, pointing out, appreciating, Titus tweaked her senses one after another as if they were so many bell-ropes. He was a good judge of country things; little escaped him, he understood the points of a landscape as James his father had understood the points of a horse. This was not her way. She was ashamed at paying the countryside these horse-coping compliments. Day by day the spirit of the place withdrew itself further from her. The woods judged her by her company, and hushed their talk as she passed by with Titus. Silence heard them coming, and fled out of the fields, the hills locked up their thoughts, and became so manygrassy mounds to be walked up and walked down. She was being boycotted, and she knew it. Presently she would not know it any more. For her too Great Mop would be a place like any other place, a pastoral landscape where an aunt walked out with her nephew.
Nothing was left her but this sour field. Even this was not truly hers, for here also Titus walked beside her and called her Aunt Lolly. She was powerless against him. He had no idea how he had havocked her peace of mind, he was making her miserable in the best of faith. If he could guess, or if she could tell him, what ruin he carried with him, he would have gone away. She admitted that, even in her frenzy of annoyance. Titus had a kind heart, he meant her nothing but good. Besides, he could easily find another village, other laps were as smooth and as green. But that would never happen. He would never guess. It would never occur to him to look for resentment in her face, or to speculate upon the mood of any one he knew so well. And she would never be able to tell him. When she was with him she came to heel and resumed her old employment of being Aunt Lolly. There was no way out.
In vain she had tried to escape, transient anddelusive had been her ecstasies of relief. She had thrown away twenty years of her life like a handful of old rags, but the wind had blown them back again, and dressed her in the old uniform. The wind blew steadily from the old quarter, it was the same east wind that chivied bits of waste paper down Apsley Terrace. And she was the same old Aunt Lolly, so useful and obliging and negligible.
The field was full of complacent witnesses. Titus had let them in. Henry and Caroline and Sibyl, Fancy and Marion and Mr. Wolf-Saunders stood round about her; they recognised her and cried out: ‘Why, Aunt Lolly, what are you doing here?’ And Dunlop came stealthily up behind her and said: ‘Excuse me, Miss Lolly, I thought you might like to know that the warning gong has gone!’ She stood at bay, trembling before them, shaken and sick with the grinding anger of the slave. They were come out to recapture her, they had tracked her down and closed her in. They had let her run a little way—that was all—for they knew they could get her back when they chose. Her delusion of freedom had amused them. They had stood grinning behind the bushes when she wept in the cowslip field.
It had been quite entertaining to watch her, for she had taken herself and her freedom so seriously, happy and intent as a child keeping house under the table. They had watched awhile in their condescending grown-up way, and now they approached her to end the game. Henry was ready to overlook her rebellion, his lips glistened with magnanimity; Caroline and Sibyl came smiling up to twine their arms round her waist; the innocent children of Fancy and Marion stretched out their hands to her and called her Aunt Lolly. And Titus, who had let them in, stood a little apart like a showman, and said, ‘You see, it’s all right. She’s just the same.’
They were all leagued against her. They were come out to seize on her soul. They were invulnerably sure of their prey.
‘No!’ she cried out, wildly clapping her hands together. ‘No! You shan’t get me. I won’t go back. I won’t.... Oh! Is therenohelp?’
The sound of her voice frightened her. She heard its desperate echo rouse the impassive wood. She raised her eyes and looked round her. The field was empty. She trembled, and felt cold. The sultry afternoon was over. Duskand a clammy chill seemed to creep out from among the darkening trees that waited there so stilly. It was as though autumn had come in the place of twilight, and the colourless dark hue of the field dazzled before her eyes. She stood in the middle of the field, waiting for an answer to her cry. There was no answer. And yet the silence that had followed it had been so intent, so deliberate, that it was like a pledge. If any listening power inhabited this place; if any grimly favourable power had been evoked by her cry; then surely a compact had been made, and the pledge irrevocably given.
She walked slowly towards the wood. She was incredibly fatigued; she could scarcely drag one foot after the other. Her mind was almost a blank. She had forgotten Titus; she had forgotten the long afternoon of frenzy and bewilderment. Everything was unreal except the silence that followed after her outcry. As she came to the edge of the wood she heard the mutter of heavy foliage. ‘No!’ the woods seemed to say, ‘No! We will not let you go.’
She walked home unheedingly, almost as though she were walking in her sleep. The chance contact with a briar or a tall weed sent drowsy tinglings through her flesh. It was withsurprise that she looked down from a hillside and saw the crouched roofs of the village before her.
The cottage was dark, Laura remembered that Mrs. Leak had said that she was going out to a lecture at the Congregational Hall that evening. As she unlocked the door she smiled at the thought of having the house all to herself. The passage was cool and smelt of linoleum. She heard the kitchen clock ticking pompously as if it, too, were pleased to have the house to itself. When Mrs. Leak went out and left the house empty, she was careful to lock the door of Laura’s parlour and to put the key under the case with the stuffed owl. Laura slid her fingers into the dark slit between the bottom of the case and the bracket. The key was cold and sleek; she liked the feel of it, and the obliging way it turned in the lock.
As she entered the room, she sniffed. It smelt a little fusty from being shut up on a warm evening. Her nose distinguished Titus’s tobacco and the hemp agrimony that she had picked the day before. But there was something else—a faintly animal smell which she could not account for. She threw up the rattling window and turned to light the lamp. Under the green shade the glow whitened and steadied itself. It illuminated the supper-table prepared for her, the shining plates, the cucumber and the radishes, the neat slices of cold veal and the glistening surface of the junket. Nameless and patient, these things had been waiting in the dark, waiting for her to come back and enjoy them. They met her eye with self-possession. They had been sure that she would be pleased to see them. Her spirits shot up, as the flame of the lamp had cleared and steadied itself a moment before. She forgot all possibility of distress. She thought only of the moment, and of the certainty with which she possessed it. In this mood of sleepy exaltation she stood and looked at the supper-table. Long before she had come to Great Mop, the shining plates had come. Four of them, she knew from Mrs. Leak, had been broken; one was too much scorched in the oven to be presentable before her. But these had survived that she might come and eat off them. The quiet cow that had yielded so quietly the milk for her junket had wandered in the fields of Great Mop long before she saw them, or saw them in fancy. The radishes and cucumbers sprang from old and well-established Great Mop families. Her coming had been foreseen, her way had been prepared. GreatMop was infallibly part of her life, and she part of the life of Great Mop. She took up a plate and looked at the maker’s mark. It had come from Stoke-on-Trent, where she had never been. Now it was here, waiting for her to eat off it. ‘The Kings of Tarshish shall bring gifts,’ she murmured.
As she spoke, she felt something move by her foot. She glanced down and saw a small kitten. It crouched by her foot, biting her shoelace, and lashing its tail from side to side. Laura did not like cats; but this creature, so small, so intent, and so ferocious, amused her into kindly feelings. ‘How did you come here? Did you come in through the keyhole?’ she asked, and bent down to stroke it. Scarcely had she touched its hard little head when it writhed itself round her hand, noiselessly clawing and biting, and kicking with its hind legs. She felt frightened by an attack so fierce and irrational, and her fears increased as she tried to shake off the tiny weight. At last she freed her hand, and looked at it. It was covered with fast-reddening scratches, and as she looked she saw a bright round drop of blood ooze out from one of them. Her heart gave a violent leap, and seemed to drop dead in her bosom. She gripped the back of a chair tosteady herself and stared at the kitten. Abruptly pacified, it had curled itself into a ball and fallen asleep. Its lean ribs heaved with a rhythmic tide of sleep. As she stared she saw its pink tongue flicker for one moment over its lips. It slept like a suckling.
Not for a moment did she doubt. But so deadly, so complete was the certainty that it seemed to paralyse her powers of understanding, like a snake-bite in the brain. She continued to stare at the kitten, scarcely knowing what it was that she knew. Her heart had begun to beat once more, slowly, slowly; her ears were dizzied with a shrill wall of sound, and her flesh hung on her clammy and unreal. The animal smell that she had noticed when first she entered the room now seemed overwhelmingly rank. It smelt as if walls and floor and ceiling had been smeared with the juice of bruised fennel.
She, Laura Willowes, in England, in the year 1922, had entered into a compact with the Devil. The compact was made, and affirmed, and sealed with the round red seal of her blood. She remembered the woods, she remembered her wild cry for help, and the silence that had followed it, as though in ratification. She heard again the mutter of heavy foliage, foliage darkand heavy as the wings of night birds. ‘No! No!’—she heard the brooding voice—‘We will not let you go.’ At ease, released from her cares, she had walked homeward. Hedge and coppice and solitary tree, and the broad dust-coloured faces of meadow-sweet and hemlock had watched her go by, knowing. The dusk had closed her in, brooding over her. Every shadow, every deepened grove had observed her from under their brows of obscurity. All knew, all could bear witness. Couched within the wood, sleeping through the long sultry afternoon, had lain the Prince of Darkness; sleeping, or meditating some brooding thunderstorm of his own. Her voice of desperate need had aroused him, his silence had answered her with a pledge. And now, as a sign of the bond between them, he had sent his emissary. It had arrived before her, a rank breath, a harsh black body in her locked room. The kitten was her familiar spirit, that already had greeted its mistress, and sucked her blood.
She shut her eyes and stood very still, hollowing her mind to admit this inconceivable thought. Suddenly she started. There was a voice in the room.
It was the kitten’s voice. It stood besideher, mewing plaintively. She turned, and considered it—her familiar. It was the smallest and thinnest kitten that she had ever seen. It was so young that it could barely stand steadily upon its legs. She caught herself thinking that it was too young to be taken from its mother. But the thought was ridiculous. Probably it had no mother, for it was the Devil’s kitten, and sucked, not milk, but blood. But for all that, it looked very like any other young starveling of its breed. Its face was peaked and its ribs stood out under the dishevelled fluff of its sides. Its mew was disproportionately piercing and expressive. Strange that anything so small and weak should be the Devil’s Officer, plenipotentiary of such a power. Strange that she should stand trembling and amazed before a little rag-and-bone kitten with absurdly large ears.
Its anxious voice besought her, its pale eyes were fixed upon her face. She could not but feel sorry for anything that seemed so defenceless and castaway. Poor little creature, no doubt it missed the Devil, its warm nest in his shaggy flanks, its play with imp companions. Now it had been sent out on its master’s business, sent out too young into the world, like a slavey froman Institution. It had no one to look to now but her, and it implored her help, as she but a little while ago had implored its Master’s. Her pity overcame her terror. It was no longer her familiar, but a foundling. And it was hungry. Must it have more blood, or would milk do? Milk was more suitable for its tender age. She walked to the table, poured out a saucerful of milk and set it down on the floor. The kitten drank as though it were starving. Crouched by the saucer with dabbled nose, it shut its pale eyes and laid back its ears to lap, while shoots of ecstasy ran down its protuberant spine and stirred the tip of its tail. As Laura watched it the last of her repugnance was overcome. Though she did not like cats she thought that she would like this one. After all, it was pleasant to have some small thing to look after. Many lonely women found great companionship with even quite ordinary cats. This creature could never grow up a beauty, but no doubt it would be intelligent. When it had cleaned the saucer with large final sweeps of its tongue, the kitten looked up at her. ‘Poor lamb!’ she said, and poured out the rest of the milk. It drank less famishingly now. Its tail lay still, its body relaxed, settling down on to the floor,overcome by the peaceful weight within. At last, having finished its meal, it got up and walked round the room, stretching either hind leg in turn as it walked. Then, without a glance at Laura, it lay down, coiled and uncoiled, scratched itself nonchalantly and fell asleep. She watched it awhile and then picked it up, all limp and unresisting, and settled it in her lap. It scarcely opened its eyes, but burrowing once or twice with its head against her knees resumed its slumber.
Nursing the kitten in her lap Laura sat thinking. Her thoughts were of a different colour now. This trustful contentment, this warmth between her knees, lulled her by example. She had never wavered for an instant from her conviction that she had made a compact with the Devil; now she was growing accustomed to the thought. She perceived that throughout the greater part of her life she had been growing accustomed to it; but insensibly, as people throughout the greater part of their lives grow accustomed to the thought of their death. When it comes, it is a surprise to them. But the surprise does not last long, perhaps but for a minute or two. Her surprise also was wearing off. Quite soon, and she would be able to foldher hands upon it, as the hands of the dead are folded upon their surprised hearts. Butherheart still beat, beat at its everyday rate, a small regular pulse impelling her momently forward into the new witch life that lay before her. Since her flesh had already accepted the new order of things, and was proceeding so methodically towards the future, it behoved her, so she thought, to try to readjust her spirit.
She raised her eyes, and looked at her room, the green-painted walls with the chairs sitting silently round. She felt herself inhabiting the empty house. Through the unrevealing square of the window her mind looked at the view. About the empty house was the village, and about the village the hills, neighbourly under their covering of night. Room, house, village, hills encircled her like the rings of a fortification. This was her domain, and it was to keep this inviolate that she had made her compact with the Devil. She did not know what the price might be, but she was sure of the purchase. She need not fear Titus now, nor any of the Willoweses. They could not drive her out, or enslave her spirit any more, nor shake her possession of the place she had chosen. While she lived her solitudes were hers inalienably;she and the kitten, the witch and the familiar, would live on at Great Mop, growing old together, and hearing the owls hoot from the winter trees. And after? Mirk! But what else had there ever been? Those green grassy hills in the churchyard were too high to be seen over. What man can stand on their summit and look beyond?