_THE VILLAGE WITCH._
People who have lived all their lives in London, when they come to live
in a country place generally find the inhabitants what is called “behind
the world,” and the village that our hotel is in is no exception to the
rule. Even the railway, which has done a lot to take stupid ideas out of
country people, hasn’t made our village folks quite as sharp as they
should be. The old people--those who were born before School Boards and
all the new-fangled ideas--have some awfully funny notions, and nothing
you can say will shake their belief in them.
In our village there are still no end of old people who believe in
charms, especially for warts; and one day that I had one come on my
hand, Graves, the farrier, said quite seriously, “I’ll tell you how you
can cure that, Mrs. Beckett. You get old Dame Trueman to charm it away
for you.”
I said, “What nonsense, Mr. Graves! You don’t suppose I believe in such
stuff as that?”
“Oh, but it isn’t stuff!” said Graves. “Dame Trueman has got charms for
no end of things, and there’s plenty of people that she’s done good to,
and cured, when the doctors had given them up.”
This Dame Trueman was quite a character, and lived up at the end of a
village all alone with a black cat in an old broken-down cottage. Many
years ago she had lost her husband under rather mysterious
circumstances, and, it was said, she had bewitched him and caused his
death, because he treated her badly.
He was a farm labourer, and worked on the farm that I told you about in
“Old Gaffer Gabbitas,” called Curnock’s Farm; but he used to take more
than was good for him at the village alehouse. People used to say, “How
can he afford to spend such a lot of money out of his wages?” but the
mystery was cleared up when one day it got all over the village that he
had found out where his wife had hidden her savings, and that he had
been helping himself for a long time without her knowing it.
It seems she had made a bit of money selling charms and telling fortunes
to servant-girls and other foolish people, and had changed her savings
into bank-notes, and sewn them up in the mattress, not telling her
husband anything about it. But he had found it out, and had unsewn the
mattress one day while she was out marketing, taken a couple of notes,
and then sewn the place up again very neatly, and she had never noticed
it.
How she found it out was through a neighbour who had seen Trueman change
a five-pound note at the inn. Directly his wife heard of that, she went
and unsewed the mattress, and the cat was out of the bag.
She was heard to say that he would never help himself to any more. And
soon after that, one night he was at the alehouse, smoking his pipe,
when a black cat, that nobody in the place ever remembered to have seen
before, came into the tap-room and jumped up on his knee.
It was a very curious-looking cat, with very fierce eyes, and it had
three white hairs on its breast. Trueman said, “Hullo, whose cat is
this?” and he put his hand on its back and stroked it. Everybody in the
room declared that as he did so they saw sparks fly out of its back, but
the awful thing about it was that the man gave a sudden cry, as if some
terrible pain had just come to him. The cat jumped off his knee, and ran
out of the door and disappeared. Trueman tried to get on his legs; but
he only staggered half-way across the room and fell down in a heap on
the floor. They ran and fetched the doctor to him; but before the doctor
could get there he was quite dead.
At the inquest the jury brought it in that he had died of heart disease;
but everybody in the village declared that he had been bewitched by his
wife for stealing her money, and that the black cat was the “familiar,”
or whatever it is called.
Of course, when I first heard the story, I said, “What nonsense!” and I
couldn’t understand how people living in a Christian country could
believe in such rubbish; but there is no mistake about it that this very
black cat, after the funeral, was seen in Dame Trueman’s house, and it
followed her about like a dog, and nobody had ever seen it in the
village before the night that it jumped on the poor man’s lap at the
alehouse.
After that the old lady got quite the reputation of being a witch, and
very curious stories were told about her, and the things that went on in
her cottage. She was always very clever with herbs and old women’s
remedies, as they are called, and she had, according to the ignorant
people, wonderful charms for curing sore eyes, and wounds, and other
things; and once when a man working on a farm had put his wrist out, he
went to her, and she caught hold of his hand and muttered a charm, and
pulled it and put it in its place again.
All these things made the old woman looked up to with a good deal of
fear by the ignorant people. Nobody liked her; but they were all a bit
afraid of her. And it was said that if anybody offended her she could
put them under a spell, and bring misfortune upon them.
There was a boy in the village, a mischievous young imp, named Joe
Daniels. His mother did washing, and he used to go round with an old
perambulator and fetch it and also take it home. One day that he was
wheeling his perambulator along with a bundle of linen on it, he met Old
Dame Trueman coming down the lane, and after she had passed him he said
to another boy that was with him, “Do you know she’s an old witch, and
rides through the air on a broomstick? My mother says she ought to be
burned alive, if she had her deserts.”
Dame Trueman, who was hobbling along, being a little lame with one leg,
heard the boy, and she turned round and said, “Your mother says that,
does she?--let her beware!” Then she made an awful grimace at the boy,
and shook her stick at him. He declared that fire came out of her eyes,
and that he felt an awful sensation go all over his body. When he got
home he told his mother what had happened, and she was in a terrible
state, and said she would be ruined, as the old witch would be sure to
put a spell on her now. She was in such a state that she went off to the
clergyman and asked him what she could do to guard against the spells.
He lectured her, which was quite right, and told her it was very wicked
to believe in such things as witches, as there weren’t any. But it
certainly was a fact that, from that day, nothing went right with Mrs.
Daniels. She had the best linen, belonging to the richest family she
washed for, stolen out of her drying-ground two days after; and her boy
Joe, that the witch had shaken her stick at, was run over by a horse and
cart the next time he took the washing home, and had his leg broken;
and, to crown everything, it got about that she had taken washing of a
family that had come down from London with the scarlet fever, and after
that nobody would send her any washing at all; and, having been security
for her married daughter’s husband, and signed a bill of sale on her
things, everything was seized one day, and the poor woman took on so
about it that she died not long afterwards; and little Joe was sent away
to a training-ship to be made a sailor, and the first time he went to
sea he fell down off the top of the mast into the water and was drowned.
This is one of the stories that I was told in our bar-parlour one night
that we were talking about charms and things, and it brought up about
old Dame Trueman. I said that all these things might have happened. I
found out afterwards that they did--but that didn’t prove that the old
woman was a witch, or that her “charms” were anything more than ordinary
remedies.
Our new clergyman, poor Mr. Wilkins’s “young whipper-snapper,” was
awfully wild when he found that a lot of his parishioners believed in
witches and spells, and he made it his business to investigate a lot of
things that were being said about the old woman. He found out that she
was telling fortunes by cards on the quiet, and selling a lot of foolish
young women charms to make them get fallen in love with, and all that
sort of nonsense; so he went straight up to the dilapidated old cottage
where the old Dame lived, and he told her that if he heard any more of
it he would have her up before the magistrate, and she would be sent to
prison.
Of course she pitched him a nice tale, and tried to make out that it
wasn’t true; but that she was a poor, lone widow woman, and that these
stories were circulated by her enemies to do her harm.
Graves, the farrier, said, when he heard that the young clergyman had
been threatening the Dame, that something was sure to happen to
him--that nobody ever crossed “the old witch’s” path without coming to
grief.
I laughed at the time, and told Graves that a great strong fellow, like
he was, ought to be ashamed of himself for having such silly, childish
ideas; but it was a very remarkable thing that, the week after, the
young clergyman was riding past the Dame’s door, when her black cat
dashed suddenly across the road, and so terrified the clergyman’s horse
that it bolted and ran into a tree, and fell, and flung the young
clergyman off on to his head, and he was confined to his bed for six
weeks in consequence.
Of course it was only a coincidence; but Graves was quite triumphant
about it, and he said to me the evening of the accident, “Well, Mrs.
Beckett, what about old Dame Trueman being a witch now?”
Of course, things happening like this, and the things that had happened
before, made a great impression on the ignorant people; and even people
who weren’t ignorant said it was very odd that everybody who crossed or
offended that dreadful old woman came to grief. It was no good arguing
against it, because these things were known all over the village, and
there is no doubt that the old hag made a lot of money out of her dupes,
in consequence of her being held in such dread and looked up to as
having supernatural powers.
As I said when I began to write about her, folks who live in London can
hardly credit the number of people in villages who still believe in
magic and spells and charms and witches. But even in some parts of
London there are people who believe the same thing, because every now
and then you read about “a wise woman” being brought up at the
police-court for swindling young women by telling their fortunes, and
selling them charms; and not long ago Harry read a bit out of the paper
to me about “a wise woman,” who had got five pounds out of a working
man’s wife for a bottle of something which she was to put in his tea to
make him die, so that she could marry another man. A nice wife and a
nice woman she must have been!
What has made me write so much about old Dame Trueman is this. There was
an old gentleman who used to come to our smoke-room pretty regularly of
an evening; but not till after Mr. Wilkins had left, and so he might be
called a new customer. He was an old gentleman who took a small house in
the neighbourhood, and it was said he was a retired builder. He was very
nice and quiet, and I should say comfortably off, for his house was
nicely furnished, and although there was only himself and his wife, they
had two servants, and kept a pony and trap.
Mr. Gwillam--that was the old gentleman’s name--began to use our house
of an evening soon after he came, I suppose finding it dull at home, and
he always smoked a long clay pipe, and drank hot grog in the good
old-fashioned way. He didn’t talk very much, only joining in the
conversation now and then; but he was a wonderful listener, and the
other customers soon found out that he was very simple-minded, because
he took everything he heard for gospel. Some of them, when they found
that out, used to start telling the most dreadful stories about what had
happened in the place, and it was a sight to see the dear old gentleman
open his innocent blue eyes, and to hear him say, “Good gracious!”
Somebody who knew him told us that what made him seem so simple and
eccentric at times was that years ago, while superintending some
building operations, he had fallen off a ladder on to his head, and it
had affected him a little.
We liked him very much, because he was so nice and quiet, and, being an
independent and retired person, he was just the sort of customer we
liked to get into the smoke-room, as it brings others of the same class,
and keeps the wrong sort out, as the wrong sort never feel comfortable
where the right sort are.
The first thing that made me think Mr. Gwillam really was a little
eccentric was his saying very quietly one evening that according to
Revelations the end of the world would be at five-and-twenty minutes
past six in the evening the last Friday in August, 1890. I thought it
was a very odd thing to say, as nobody was talking about the end of the
world, and, in fact, just at the time there was a dead silence.
I didn’t know what to say, so I said, “Indeed!” Then he said, “Oh yes;
but it’s nothing to be frightened at, as we shall all be caught up by a
whirlwind.”
Graves, the farrier, looked at Mr. Gwillam for a minute, and then he
said, “How do you know that, sir?”
“Oh,” he said, “I read it in the _Evening Standard_, and that is a most
respectable paper. It has been in several evenings.”
“Oh,” said Graves, “has it? It’s very good of the editor to let us know.
I hope we shall go up steady and not knock against each other. It will
be very awkward if some of us turn over and go up head downwards.”
I frowned at Graves, as it seemed to me wrong to jest about such
matters; but I knew where Mr. Gwillam had seen it. It was an
advertisement which some madman had put in for years, having nothing
better to do with his money. But I thought it very queer that anybody in
their senses could believe such mischievous nonsense.
After that I began to notice one or two queer things that Mr. Gwillam
said, and I made up my mind that he must have what Harry calls “a tile
loose;” but how loose it was I didn’t know till he did something which
made quite a sensation in the village. One night in our smoke-room he
happened to mention that, coming out of his gate, he had come upon one
of his maid-servants talking to a queer-looking old woman, and when he
described the woman everybody said, “Why, that is old Dame Trueman, the
witch!”
He looked very horrified, and said, “Do you mean to say that a witch is
allowed to live in the place?”
That turned the conversation on to the subject, and everybody began to
tell stories about Dame Trueman; of course, making them out as awful as
possible to astonish the old gentleman.
He didn’t say much that night; but the next evening when he came he
didn’t look very well, and he said that he had been awake all night
thinking about the witch.
He smoked his pipe and had his glass of grog; but he went away early.
After he was gone I said it was a pity for them to have told him such a
lot of stuff about old Dame Trueman--he was just the man to take it all
for gospel.
The next evening he didn’t come as usual, and I was afraid he was ill,
and our doctor happening to look in, I asked him if he had heard if Mr.
Gwillam was ill.
“Yes,” he said, “he is a bit poorly; but it’s nothing. The old boy
hasn’t been able to sleep the last night or two, and it has upset his
nerves. He’s got some absurd idea into his head that he is under a
spell. He can’t be quite right in his head.”
The next day after dinner Graves came in in quite a bustle, and said, “I
say, Mrs. Beckett, whatever do you think has happened?”
“How should I know?” I said. And if you come to think of it, it’s absurd
for people to ask you what you think has happened. As if, out of the
thousands of things that might happen, anybody could think straight off
at once of the one that has happened.
“Oh,” said Graves, “there’s been an awful scene in the village! Old
Gwillam was out for a walk this morning, and he saw old Dame Trueman
coming along, and he ran after her and seized her by the neck and tried
to push her into the horse-pond, shouting out that she was a witch, and
a crowd came round, and some of them said, “Serve her right!” But the
others interfered and dragged the old woman away, half-choked and black
in the face, and then he ran after her, and laid into her with his
walking-stick, shouting and cursing, and saying that she had bewitched
him, and prevented him from sleeping; and the end of it was that Jones,
the policeman, had to come to the rescue, and rush in and stop Mr.
Gwillam. But he was so excited that he whacked into the policeman, and
for that he was marched off to the police-station, all the village
tagrag and bobtail following.”
When Graves told me that, I thought it was a very dreadful thing. I laid
the blame on the people who had told the poor old gentleman all that
nonsense about Dame Trueman being a witch.
Harry went up to the police-station to make inquiries, and he told me
that Mr. Gwillam had been allowed to go home; but he was to be summoned
for assaulting the policeman, and also that Dame Trueman had been and
applied for a summons against him for assaulting her.
There was a lot of talk about it in our bar and in the parlour that
evening, and it was the biggest sensation we had had in the village
since the inquest on the London gentleman, who was found dead in the
wood near the Silent Pool, with a pistol in his hand, and a letter in
his pocket saying he had committed suicide because he heard voices. It
was a dreadful letter, and showed the poor fellow was quite mad. I cut
the letter out from our county paper, and kept it, because I thought it
so curious, as showing what extraordinary delusions some people go
through life with, appearing sane in every other way. This was some of
the letter--
“I have committed suicide to escape from the pursuit of a devilish
agency. This is the story of my life. When I was a boy of tender age,
some organization of individuals erected--where, of course, I cannot
tell--an elaborate scientific contrivance for conveying all kinds of
sounds and disagreeable sensations to the human frame. At the time this
was first erected it was not brought into full play; but at a very early
stage these persons worked upon my feelings by simulating the voices of
persons with whom I was brought into contact. But, since then, wherever
I go I have been annoyed by this scientific agency. Wherever I go the
sound of human voices is conveyed to me. When I sit down an intense
heavy pressure is brought to bear upon my body, destroying the effect of
the food I eat, and producing great discomfort. This and the voices have
at last driven me mad, and as no human agency will protect me I am
determined to end my life, believing that beyond the grave those voices
will not be allowed to pursue me, and I shall be at rest.”
Poor fellow!--but I suppose it is a common delusion, that about voices.
Of course Mr. Gwillam wasn’t as mad as that; but it was certain that he
must have delusions because of his believing about the end of the world
coming at twenty-five past six on a Friday, and about our going up into
the skies on a whirlwind. And it was a delusion for him to believe that
Dame Trueman had bewitched him.
When the summonses came on for hearing before our magistrate, the little
justice-room was crowded almost to suffocation. Mr. Gwillam, poor
gentleman, had gone about the village, and got all the people who had
anything to say against Dame Trueman to promise to come forward and
prove that she had practised witchcraft, and what he called the black
art.
He was very troublesome directly the case began, interrupting every
minute, and saying that by the law of the land all witches had a right
to be burned at the stake, and a lot of nonsense, and the magistrate had
to speak quite cross to make him be quiet.
Old Dame Trueman was in court, and they say she looked most
malignant--in fact, as much like a witch as it was possible to look
without being one--and she told the magistrate how she had been
assaulted. The magistrate asked Mr. Gwillam what he had to say, and he
told the most extraordinary story you ever heard in your life.
He declared that “the old witch” had put a spell upon him so that he
could not sleep. He had seen her plotting with his servant at his gate,
and that night he couldn’t sleep, nor the next night either, and that he
never should have slept again, only he was determined to find out what
the spell was; and so he got up in the middle of the night and went out
into his garden, and there, under a clod of earth, he discovered a toad,
that was walking round and round. He said the toad had been charmed and
put there by the witch, and as long as it kept walking round and round
he could not go to sleep, so he had killed the toad, and the proof that
it was a spell, was this--that directly he had killed it he went back
to bed again and fell asleep, and he had not had another bad night
since.
The magistrate looked over his gold spectacles very hard at Mr. Gwillam,
and he said, “My dear sir, I’m very sorry for you; but we can’t accept
your explanation. No toad could have anything to do with your sleeping,
and there is no such thing as a witch.”
“What!” exclaimed Mr. Gwillam, “no such thing as a witch! Why, this
woman is one! I have dozens of witnesses here to prove that she has put
them under her spells. I demand that she shall be punished as the law
directs, and burnt alive, or drowned in the horse-pond!”
The magistrate, of course, had heard the rumours about Dame Trueman,
because they had been the common talk in the village for years, so he
thought it was a good opportunity to give the people a lecture, and he
made a long speech, saying how wicked it was to suppose that anybody had
supernatural powers; that witches were only believed in when people were
ignorant and degraded and knew no better, and he was ashamed to think
that in such a thriving place as our village there were still people so
foolish as to entertain such beliefs. As to the story about the toad, it
was too absurd. It was trifling with the Court to make such an excuse
for a wanton attack upon a feeble old woman.
“It is no excuse!” exclaimed Mr. Gwillam indignantly. “She is a bad old
woman, and she put that toad in my garden to charm me. She charmed me,
and I got no rest day nor night for her till I found this walking toad
under the mould. She dug a hole, and she put it there to have a spell on
me. She went round and round this walking toad after she had buried it,
and I shouldn’t have slept till now if I hadn’t found it and killed it.”
The magistrate called the doctor up and whispered with him for a little,
and then he said that no doubt Mr. Gwillam, who was a very respectable
person, was the victim of a delusion, and had allowed himself to be
carried away by his feelings. He must mark his sense of the impropriety
of the proceedings by fining him ten pounds--five pounds for each
assault--or a month’s imprisonment.
“I won’t pay!” shouted Mr. Gwillam, brandishing his umbrella. “I’ll go
to prison!”
He was quieted down a little and taken into another room, and the crowd
was got away while a consultation was held. The old gentleman’s wife saw
the magistrate, and asked to be allowed to pay the ten pounds without
her husband knowing it, and this was done, and presently he was released
believing that the magistrate had altered his mind.
That evening he came into our bar-parlour as calm as though nothing had
happened. I had begged the customers not to say anything about the
affair to him, and they didn’t. But just as I thought everything was all
right he startled everybody by saying that he was going to wait for the
witch at midnight, and rid the place of her.
“Harry,” I said to my husband in a whisper, “you must see Mr. Gwillam
home, and don’t leave him till he’s safe in his own house. He isn’t fit
to be trusted alone. He’ll murder that old woman, or some awful thing.”
So Harry went home with him that evening, and saw him safe indoors, and
told his wife to look after him; but we all agreed that he ought to be
watched, or something dreadful would happen, as he’d evidently got the
witch on his mind.
But before anything was done, a most extraordinary thing happened. One
morning soon after the trial, the neighbours noticed that there was no
smoke coming out of Dame Trueman’s chimney. They thought it odd, as she
was generally up and her fire alight very early. About twelve o’clock a
young woman, who, it seems, had an appointment with her to get a charm
for her lover, who was going to sea, called at the house, and knocked at
the door, but couldn’t make anybody hear. Some people saw her knocking,
and getting no answer, and made up their minds something was wrong, so
they went and forced the door open.
“When they got inside all was quite still. They called out, but got no
answer. One of them then went into the kitchen and gave a cry of horror.
There, on the hearth, by a fire that had gone out, lay something that
looked like a heap of cinders. And walking round and round the heap was
a black cat with three white hairs on its breast.
The heap of cinders was old Dame Trueman. The witch was dead. It was
supposed that she fell forward in a fit of some sort into the fire, and
her clothes caught, and that she was burned to death on the hearth.
Nothing else had caught light from the flames, as the kitchen was all
paved with bricks.
That was the end of “our witch,” and a very awful end it was, and a nice
sensation it made in the village. Of course she wasn’t a witch; but I’m
afraid she was a very wicked old woman, and was quite willing to be
thought to be able to cast spells, because she made money by it.
When her house was searched, over a hundred pounds was found concealed
in different places. The black cat disappeared the day she was found
dead, and nobody ever saw it again.
I know there are lots of London people who will think that I am like the
customers in our smoke-room, and that I have exaggerated; but I have
not. I have just told you the true story of our village witch--and I can
show you the county paper with the account in it of Mr. Gwillam’s trial
for beating her; and the very words he said about the walking toad are
in it.
After the witch was dead, Mr. Gwillam seemed to get better; but to the
last he persisted that it was his killing the toad that had brought
about the old woman’s death. It was one of her “familiars,” and he had
slain her in slaying that. Nobody attempted to argue with him on the
question. He didn’t come to our place very long afterwards, because he
got an idea that whenever he went out he was followed by a shadow, and
if ever the shadow overtook him it would kill him; so his wife had a man
to look after him and go about with him, who was really his keeper, and
he was never brought out after dark. Poor gentleman, I have no doubt it
was all the result of his tumbling off the ladder on to his head before
he retired from business.
The cottage that “the witch” had lived in so many years was done up and
thoroughly repaired; but nobody would live in it, as it was said to be
haunted. Some boys declared that late at night they had seen a black cat
with three white hairs on its breast prowling about on the roof and
making a most unearthly noise, and that----
* * * * *
The post! Thank you. Oh, Harry! who _do_ you think this letter’s from?
It’s from Jenny. She and her husband are coming to stay with us at last,
and they’re going to bring the baby. Oh! I am so glad.