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.
Great Mop 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 to steady 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 dark and 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 beside her, 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 from an 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 fold her hands upon it, as the hands of the dead are
folded upon their surprised hearts. But _her_ heart 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?
She felt neither fear nor disgust. A witch of but a few hours’ standing
she rejected with the scorn of the initiate all the bugaboo surmises of
the public. She looked with serene curiosity at the future, and saw it
but little altered from what she had hoped and planned. If she had been
called upon to decide in cold blood between being an aunt and being a
witch, she might have been overawed by habit and the cowardice of
compunction. But in the moment of election, under the stress and turmoil
of the hunted Lolly as under a covering of darkness, the true Laura had
settled it all unerringly. She had known where to turn. She had been
like the girl in the fairy tale whose godmother gave her a little
nutshell box and told her to open it in the hour of utter distress.
Unsurmised by others, and half forgotten by the girl, the little
nutshell box abided its time; and in the hour of utter distress it
opened of itself. So, unrealised, had Laura been carrying her talisman
in her pocket. She was a witch by vocation. Even in the old days of Lady
Place the impulse had stirred in her. What else had set her upon her
long solitary walks, her quests for powerful and forgotten herbs, her
brews and distillations? In London she had never had the heart to take
out her still. More urgent for being denied this innocent service, the
ruling power of her life had assaulted her with dreams and intimations,
calling her imagination out from the warm safe room to wander in
darkened fields and by desolate sea-bords, through marshes and fens, and
along the outskirts of brooding woods. It had haled her to Wapping and
to the Jews’ Burying Ground, and then, ironically releasing her, had
left her to mourn and find her way back to Apsley Terrace. How she had
come to Great Mop she could not say; whether it was of her own will, or
whether, exchanging threatenings and mockeries for sweet persuasions,
Satan had at last taken pity upon her bewilderment, leading her by the
hand into the flower-shop in the Moscow Road; but from the moment of her
arrival there he had never been far off. Sure of her--she supposed--he
had done little for nine months but watch her. Near at hand but out of
sight the loving huntsman couched in the woods, following her with his
eyes. But all the time, whether couched in the woods or hunting among
the hills, he drew closer. He was hidden in the well when she threw in
the map and the guide-book. He sat in the oven, teaching her what power
she might have over the shapes of men. He followed her and Mr. Saunter
up and down between the henhouses. He was nearest of all upon the night
when she climbed Cubbey Ridge, so near then that she acknowledged his
presence and was afraid. That night, indeed, he must have been within a
hand’s-breadth of her. But her fear had kept him at bay, or else he had
not chosen to take her just then, preferring to watch until he could
overcome her mistrust and lure her into his hand. For Satan is not only
a huntsman. His interest in mankind is that of a skilful and experienced
naturalist. Even human sportsmen at the end of their span sometimes
declare that to potter about in the woods is more amusing than to sit
behind a butt and shoot driven grouse. And Satan, who has hunted from
eternity, a little jaded moreover by the success of his latest organised
Flanders battue, might well feel that his interest in a Solitary Snipe
like Laura was but sooner or later to measure the length of her nose.
Yet hunt he must; it is his destiny, and whether he hunts with a gun or
a butterfly net, sooner or later the chase must end. All finalities,
whether good or evil, bestow a feeling of relief; and now, understanding
how long the chase had lasted, Laura felt a kind of satisfaction at
having been popped into the bag.
She was distracted from these interesting thoughts by the sounds of
footsteps. The kitten heard them too, and sat up, yawning. The Leaks
coming back from their lecture, thought Laura. But it was Titus.
Inserting his head and shoulders through the window he asked if he could
come in and borrow some milk.
‘I haven’t any milk,’ said Laura, ‘but come in all the same.’
She began to tickle the kitten behind the ears in order to reassure it.
By lamplight Titus’s head seemed even nearer to the ceiling, it was a
relief to her sense of proportion when he sat down. His milk, he
explained, the jugful which Mrs. Garland left on the sitting-room table
for his nightly Ovaltine, had curdled into a sort of unholy junket. This
he attributed to popular education, and the spread of science among
dairy farmers; in other words, Mr. Dodbury had overdone the
preservative.
‘I don’t think it’s science,’ said Laura. ‘More likely to be the
weather. It was very sultry this afternoon.’
‘I saw you starting out. I had half a mind to come with you, but it was
too hot to be a loving nephew. Where did you go?’
‘Up to the windmill.’
‘Did you find the wind?’
‘No.’
‘You weren’t going in the direction of the windmill when I saw you.’
‘No. I changed my mind. About the milk,’ she continued (Titus had come
for milk. Perhaps, being reminded that he had come in vain, he would go.
She was growing sleepy): ‘I’m sorry, but I have none left. I gave it all
to the kitten.’
‘I’ve been remarking the kitten. He’s new, isn’t he? You ugly little
devil!’
The kitten lay on her knees quite quietly. It regarded Titus with its
pale eyes, and blinked indifferently. It was only waiting for him to go,
Laura thought, to fall asleep again.
‘Where has it come from? A present from the water-butt?’
‘I don’t know. I found it here when I came back for supper.’
‘It’s a plain-headed young Grimalkin. Still, I should keep it if I were
you. It will bring you luck.’
‘I don’t think one has much option about keeping a cat,’ said Laura. ‘If
it wants to stay with me it shall.’
‘It looks settled enough. Do keep it, Aunt Lolly. A woman looks her best
with a cat on her knees.’
Laura bowed.
‘What will you call it?’
Into Laura’s memory came a picture she had seen long ago in one of the
books at Lady Place. The book was about the persecution of the witches,
and the picture was a woodcut of Matthew Hopkins the witch-finder.
Wearing a large hat he stood among a coven of witches, bound
cross-legged upon their stools. Their confessions came out of their
mouths upon scrolls. ‘My imp’s name is Ilemauzar,’ said one; and another
imp at the bottom of the page, an alert, ill-favoured cat, so lean and
muscular that it looked like a skinned hare, was called Vinegar Tom.
‘I shall call it Vinegar,’ she answered.
‘Vinegar!’ said Titus. ‘How do you like your name?’
The kitten pricked up its ears. It sprang from Laura’s knee and began to
fence with Titus’s shadow, feinting and leaping back. Laura watched it a
little apprehensively, but it did him no harm. It had awakened in a
playful frame of mind after its long sleep, that was all. When Titus had
departed it followed Laura to her bedroom, and as she undressed it
danced round her, patting at her clothes as they fell.
In the morning the kitten roused her by mewing to be let out. She awoke
from a profound and dreamless sleep. It took her a little time to
realise that she had a kitten in her bedroom, a kitten of no ordinary
kind. However it was behaving quite like an ordinary kitten now, so she
got out of bed and let it out by the back door. It was early; no one was
stirring. The kitten disappeared with dignity among the cabbages, and
Laura turned her thoughts backward to the emotions of overnight. She
tried to recall them, but could not; she could only recall the fact that
overnight she had felt them. The panic that then had shaken her flesh
was no more actual than a last winter’s gale. It had been violent enough
while it lasted, an invisible buffeting, a rending of life from its
context. But now her memory presented it to her as a cold slab of
experience, like a slab of pudding that had lain all night solidifying
in the larder. This was no matter. Her terror had been an incident; it
had no bearing upon her future, could she now recall it to life it would
have no message for her. But she regretted her inability to recapture
the mood that had followed upon it, when she sat still and thought so
wisely about Satan. Those meditations had seemed to her of profound
import. She had sat at her Master’s feet, as it were, admitted to
intimacy, and gaining the most valuable insight into his character. But
that was gone too. Her thoughts, recalled, seemed to be of the most
commonplace nature, and she felt that she knew very little about the
Devil.
Meanwhile there was the kitten, an earnest that she should know more.
‘Vinegar!’ she called, and heard its answer, a drumming scramble among
the cabbage leaves. She wished that Vinegar would impart some of his
mind to her instead of being so persistently and genially kittenish. But
he was a familiar, no doubt of it. And she was a witch, the inheritrix
of aged magic, spells rubbed smooth with long handling, and the
mistress of strange powers that got into Titus’s milk-jug. For no doubt
that was the beginning, and a very good beginning, too. Well begun is
half-done; she could see Titus bending over his suit-case. The Willowes
tradition was very intolerant of pease under its mattress.
Though she tried to think clearly about the situation--grapple, she
remembered, had been Caroline’s unpleasantly strenuous word--her
attention kept sidling off to other things: the sudden oblique movements
of the water-drops that glistened on the cabbage leaves, or the affinity
between the dishevelled brown hearts of the sunflowers and Mrs. Leak’s
scrubbing-brush, propped up on the kitchen window-sill. It must have
rained heavily during the night. The earth was moist and swelled, and
the air so fresh that it made her yawn. Her limbs were heavy, and the
contentment of the newly-awakened was upon her. All night she had bathed
in nothingness, and now she was too recently emerged from that absolving
tide to take much interest in what lay upon its banks. Her eyelids began
to droop, and calling the kitten she went back to bed again and soon
fell asleep.
She was asleep when Mrs. Leak brought her morning tea.
Mrs. Leak said: ‘Did the thunder keep you awake, miss?’
Laura shook her head. ‘I never even heard it.’
Mrs. Leak looked much astonished. ‘It’s well to have a good conscience,’
she remarked.
Laura stretched herself, sat up in bed, and began to tell Mrs. Leak
about the kitten. This seemed to be her real awakening. The other was a
dream.
Mrs. Leak was quite prepared to welcome the kitten; that was, provided
her old Jim made no unpleasantness. Jim was not Mr. Leak, but a mottled
marmalade cat, very old and rather shabby. Laura could not imagine him
making any unpleasantness, but Mrs. Leak estimated his character rather
differently. Jim thought himself quite a Great I Am, she said.
After breakfast Laura and Vinegar were called into the kitchen for the
ceremony of introduction. Jim was doing a little washing. His hind leg
was stuck straight up, out of the way, while he attended to the pit of
his stomach. Nothing could have been more suitable than Vinegar’s modest
and deferential approach. Jim gave him one look and went on licking.
Mrs. Leak said that all would be well between them; Jim always kept
himself to himself, but she could see that the old cat had taken quite a
fancy to Miss Willowes’s kitten. She promised Vinegar some of Jim’s
rabbit for dinner. Mrs. Leak did not hold the ordinary view of country
people that cats must fend for themselves. ‘They’re as thoughtful as
we,’ she said. ‘Why should they eat mouse unless they want to?’ She was
continually knocking at the parlour door with tit-bits for Vinegar, but
she was scrupulous that Laura should bestow them with her own hand.
Since Titus had come to Great Mop Laura had seen little of Mrs. Leak.
Mrs. Leak knew what good manners were; she had not been a housemaid at
Lazzard Court for nothing. Taken separately, either Titus or his aunt
might be human beings, but in conjunction they became gentry. Mrs. Leak
remembered her position and withdrew to it, firmly. Laura saw this and
was sorry. She made several attempts to persuade Mrs. Leak out from
behind her white apron, but nothing came of them, and she knew that
while Titus was in the village nothing would. Not that Mrs. Leak did not
like Titus; she approved of him highly; and it was exactly her approval
that made her barricade of respect so insuperable. But where Laura had
failed, the kitten succeeded. From the moment that Jim sanctioned her
kindly opinion of him, Mrs. Leak began to thaw. Laura knew better than
to make a fuss over this turn in the situation; she took a leaf out of
the Devil’s book and lay low, waiting for a decisive advance; and
presently it came. Mrs. Leak asked if Miss Willowes would care to come
out for a stroll one evening; it was pleasant to get a breath of air
before bedtime. Miss Willowes would like nothing better; that very
evening would suit her if Mrs. Leak had nothing else to do. Mrs. Leak
said that she would get the washing-up done as soon as possible, and
after that she would be at Miss Willowes’s disposal. However, it was
nearly half-past ten before Mrs. Leak knocked on the parlour door. Laura
had ceased to expect her, supposing that Mr. Leak or some household
accident had claimed her, but she was quite as ready to go out for a
walk as to go to bed, and Mrs. Leak made no reference to the lateness of
the hour. Indeed, according to the Great Mop standard, the hour was not
particularly late. Although the night was dark, Laura noticed that quite
a number of the inhabitants were standing about in the street.
They walked down the road in silence as far as the milestone, and turned
into the track that went up the hillside and past the wood. Others had
turned that way also. The gate stood open, and voices sounded ahead. It
was then that Laura guessed the truth, and turned to her companion.
‘Where are you taking me?’ she said. Mrs. Leak made no answer, but in
the darkness she took hold of Laura’s hand. There was no need for
further explanation. They were going to the Witches’ Sabbath. Mrs. Leak
was a witch too; a matronly witch like Agnes Sampson, she would be
Laura’s chaperone. The night was full of voices. Padding rustic
footsteps went by them in the dark. When they had reached the brow of
the hill a faint continuous sound, resembling music, was borne towards
them by the light wind. Laura remembered how young Billy Thomas,
suffering from toothache, had played all night upon his mouth-organ. She
laughed. Mrs. Leak squeezed her hand.