eyes had grown accustomed to the darkness. She could see a crowd of
people walking about in a large field; lights of some sort were burning
under a hedge, and one or two paper garlands were looped over the
trees. When she first caught sight of them, the assembled witches and
warlocks seemed to be dancing, but now the music had stopped and they
were just walking about. There was something about their air of
disconnected jollity which reminded Laura of a Primrose League gala and
fête. A couple of bullocks watched the Sabbath from an adjoining field.
Laura was denied the social gift, she had never been good at enjoying
parties. But this, she hoped, would be a different and more exhilarating
affair. She entered the field in a most propitious frame of mind, which
not even Mr. Gurdon, wearing a large rosette like a steward’s and
staring rudely and searchingly at each comer before he allowed them to
pass through the gate, was able to check.
‘Old Goat!’ exclaimed Mrs. Leak in a voice of contemptuous amusement
after they had passed out of Mr. Gurdon’s hearing. ‘He thinks he can
boss us here, just as he does in the village.’
‘Is Mr. Jones here?’ inquired Laura.
Mrs. Leak shook her head and laughed.
‘Mr. Gurdon doesn’t allow him to come.’
‘I suppose he doesn’t think it suitable for a clergyman.’
Perhaps it was as well that Mr. Gurdon had such strict views. In spite
of the example of Mr. Lowis, that old reading parson, it might be a
little awkward if Mr. Jones were allowed to attend the Sabbath.
But that apparently was not the reason. Mrs. Leak was beginning to
explain when she broke off abruptly, coughed in a respectful way, and
dropped a deep curtsey. Before them stood an old lady, carrying herself
like a queen, and wearing a mackintosh that would have disgraced a
tinker’s drab. She acknowledged Mrs. Leak’s curtsey with an inclination
of the head, and turned to Laura,
‘I am Miss Larpent. And you, I think, must be Miss Willowes.’
The voice that spoke was clear as a small bell and colourless as if time
had bleached it of every human feeling save pride. The hand that rested
in Laura’s was light as a bird’s claw; a fine glove encased it like a
membrane, and through the glove Laura felt the slender bones and the
sharp-faceted rings.
‘Long ago,’ continued Miss Larpent, ‘I had the pleasure of meeting your
great-uncle, Commodore Willowes.’
Good heavens, thought Laura in a momentary confusion, was great-uncle
Demetrius a warlock? For Miss Larpent was so perfectly witchlike that it
seemed scarcely possible that she should condescend to ordinary
gentlemen.
Apparently Miss Larpent could read Laura’s thoughts.
‘At Cowes,’ she added, reassuringly.
Laura raised her eyes to answer, but Miss Larpent had disappeared. Where
she had stood, stood Miss Carloe, mincing and bridling, as though she
would usurp the other’s gentility. Over her face she wore a spotted
veil. Recognising Laura she put on an air of delighted surprise and
squeaked like a bat, and immediately she too edged away and was lost in
the darkness.
Then a young man whom she did not know came up to Laura and put his arm
respectfully round her waist. She found herself expected to dance. She
could not hear any music, but she danced as best she could, keeping time
to the rhythm of his breath upon her cheek. Their dance was short, she
supposed she had not acquitted herself to her partner’s satisfaction,
for after a few turns he released her, and left her standing by the
hedge. Not a word had passed between them. Laura felt that she ought to
say something, but she could not think of a suitable opening. It was
scarcely possible to praise the floor.
A familiar discouragement began to settle upon her spirits. In spite of
her hopes she was not going to enjoy herself. Even as a witch, it
seemed, she was doomed to social failure, and her first Sabbath was not
going to open livelier vistas than were opened by her first ball. She
remembered her dancing days in Somerset, Hunt Balls, and County Balls in
the draughty Assembly Rooms. With the best intentions she had never
managed to enjoy them. The first hour was well enough, but after that
came increasing listlessness and boredom; the effort, when one danced
again with the same partner, not to say the same things, combined with
the obligation to say something rather like them, the control of
eyelids, the conversion of yawns into smiles, the humbling consciousness
that there was nothing to look forward to except the drive home. That
was pleasant, and so was the fillip of supper at the drive’s end, and
the relief of yielding at last to an unfeigned hunger and sleepiness.
But these were by-blow joys, of the delights for which balls are
ordained she knew nothing.
She watched the dancers go by and wondered what the enchantment was
which they felt and she could not. What made them come out in the middle
of the night, loop paper garlands over the trees, light a row of candles
in the ditch, and then, friends and enemies and indifferents, go bumping
round on the rough grass? That fatal comparison with the Primrose League
recurred to her. She was not entertained, so she blamed the
entertainment. But the fault lay with her, she had never been good at
parties, she had not got the proper Sabbath-keeping spirit. Miss Larpent
was enjoying herself; Laura saw the bonnet whisk past. But doubtless
Miss Larpent had enjoyed herself at Cowes.
These depressing thoughts were interrupted by red-haired Emily, who came
spinning from her partner’s arms, seized hold of Laura and carried her
back into the dance. Laura liked dancing with Emily; the pasty-faced and
anaemic young slattern whom she had seen dawdling about the village
danced with a fervour that annihilated every misgiving. They whirled
faster and faster, fused together like two suns that whirl and blaze in
a single destruction. A strand of the red hair came undone and brushed
across Laura’s face. The contact made her tingle from head to foot. She
shut her eyes and dived into obliviousness--with Emily for a partner
she could dance until the gunpowder ran out of the heels of her boots.
Alas! this happy ending was not to be, for at the height of their
performance Emily was snatched away by Mr. Jowl, the horse-doctor. Laura
opened her eyes and saw the pale face disappearing in the throng as the
moon sinks into the clouds.
Emily was in great request, and no wonder. Like a torch she was handed
on from one to another, and every mutation shook down some more hair.
The Sabbath was warming up nicely now, every one was jigging it, even
Laura. For a while Mrs. Leak kept up a semblance of chaperonage.
Suddenly appearing at Laura’s elbow she would ask her if she were
enjoying herself, and glancing at her would slip away before she could
answer. Or with vague gestures she indicated some evasively bowing
partner, male or female; and silently Laura would give her hand and be
drawn into the dance, presently to be relinquished or carried off by
some one else.
The etiquette of a Sabbath appeared to consist of one rule only: to do
nothing for long. Partners came and went, figures and conformations were
in a continual flux. Sometimes the dancers were coupled, sometimes they
jigged in a circle round some specially agile performer, sometimes they
all took hands and galloped about the field. Half-way through a very
formal quadrille presided over by the Misses Larpent they fell abruptly
to playing Fox and Geese. In spite of Mr. Gurdon’s rosette there was no
Master of Ceremonies. A single mysterious impulse seemed to govern the
company. They wheeled and manœuvred like a flock of starlings.
After an hour or two of this Laura felt dizzy and bewildered. Taking
advantage of the general lack of formality she tore herself from Mr.
Gurdon’s arms, not to dance with another, but to slip away and sit
quietly in the hedge.
She wondered where the music came from. She had heard it quite clearly
as she came over the hill, but upon entering the field she had lost it.
Now as she watched the others she heard it once more. When they neared
it grew louder, when they retreated into the darkness it faded with
them, as though the sound issued from the dancers themselves, and hung,
a droning exhalation, above their heads. It was an odd kind of music, a
continuous high shapeless blurr of sound. It was something like
mosquitoes in a hot bedroom, and something like a distant threshing
machine. But beside this, it had a faintly human quality, a metallic
breathing as of trombones marking the measure; and when the dancers took
hands and revolved in a leaping circle the music leaped and pounded with
them, so much like the steam-organ music of a merry-go-round that for a
moment Laura thought that they were riding on horses and dragons,
bobbing up and down on crested dragons with heads like cocks, and horses
with blood-red nostrils.
The candles burnt on in the dry ditch. Though the boughs of the
thorn-trees moved above them and grated in the night-wind, the candle
flames flowed steadily upwards. Thus lit from below, the dancers seemed
of more than human stature, their bodies extending into the darkness as
if in emulation of their gigantic upcast shadows. The air was full of
the smell of bruised grass.
Mrs. Leak had forgotten Laura now. She was dancing the Highland
Schottische with a lean young man whose sleeves were rolled up over his
tattooed forearms. The nails in his boots shone in the candle-light, and
a lock of hair hung over his eye. Mrs. Leak danced very well. Her feet
flickered to and fro as nimbly as a tongue. At the turn of the figure
she tripped forward to be caught up and swung round on the young man’s
arm. Though her feet were off the ground they twitched with the
movements of the dance, and set down again they took up the
uninterrupted measure. Laura watched her with admiration. Even at a
Witches’ Sabbath Mrs. Leak lost none of her respectability. Her white
apron was scarcely crumpled, she was as self-contained as a cat watching
a mouse, and her eyes dwelt upon the young man’s face as though she were
listening to a sermon.
She preserved her dignity better than some of the others did. Mr. Gurdon
stood by himself, stamping his foot and tossing his head, more like the
farmer’s bull than ever. Miss Carloe was begging people to look at the
hole in her leg where the hedgehog sucked her; and red-haired Emily,
half-naked and holding a candle in either hand, danced round a tree,
curtseying to it, her mouth fixed in a breathless corpse-like grin.
Miss Minnie and Miss Jane had also changed their demeanour for the
worse. They sat a little retired from the dancers, tearing up a cold
grouse and gossiping with Mrs. Dewey the midwife. A horrible curiosity
stretched their skinny old necks. Miss Minnie had forgotten to gnaw her
grouse, she leant forward, her hand covered the lower half of her face
to conceal the workings of her mouth. Miss Jane listened as eagerly, and
questioned the midwife. But at the answers she turned away with
coquettish shudders, pretending to stop her ears, or threatening to slap
her sister with a bone.
Laura averted her eyes. She wriggled herself a little further into the
hedge. Once again the dancers veered away to the further side of the
field, their music retreating with them. She hoped they would stay away,
for their proximity was disturbing. They aroused in her neither fear nor
disgust, but when they came close, and she felt their shadows darkening
above her head, a nameless excitement caught hold of her. As they
departed, heaviness took its place. She was not in the least sleepy and
yet several times she found herself astray from her thoughts, as though
she were falling asleep in a train. She wondered what time it was and
looked up to consult the stars. But a featureless cloud covered the sky.
Laura resigned herself. There was nothing to do but to wait, though what
she waited for she did not know: whether at length Mrs. Leak would come,
like a chaperone from the supper-room, and say: ‘Well, my dear, I
really must take you home’--or if, suddenly, at the first cock-crow,
all the company would rise up in the air, a darkening bevy, and
disperse, and she with them.
She was roused by a shrill whistle. The others heard it too. Miss Minnie
and Miss Jane scrambled up and hurried across the field, outdistancing
Mrs. Dewey, who followed them panting for breath and twitching her
skirts over the rough ground. The music had stopped. Laura saw all the
witches and warlocks jostling each other, and pressing into a circle.
She wondered what was happening now. Whatever it was, it seemed to
please and excite them a great deal, for she could hear them all
laughing and talking at once. Some newcomer, she supposed--for their
behaviour was that of welcome. Now the newcomer must be making a speech,
for they all became silent: a successful speech, for the silence was
broken by acclamations, and bursts of laughter.
‘Of course!’ said Laura. ‘It must be Satan!’
As she spoke she saw the distant group turn and with one accord begin
running towards where she sat. She got up; she felt frightened, for
their advance was like a stampede of animals, and she feared that they
would knock her down and trample her underfoot. The first runner had
already swooped upon her, she felt herself encompassed, caught hold of,
and carried forward. Voices addressed her, but she did not understand
what was said. She gathered that she was being encouraged and
congratulated, as though the neglectful assembly had suddenly decided to
make much of the unsuccessful guest. Presently she found herself between
Mrs. Leak and red-haired Emily. Each held an arm. Mrs. Leak patted her
encouragingly, and Emily whispered rapidly, incoherently, in her ear.
They were quite close to the newcomer, Satan, if it were he, who was
talking to Miss Minnie and Miss Jane. Laura looked at him. She could see
him quite clearly, for those who stood round had taken up the candles to
light him. He was standing with his back to her, speaking with great
animation to the old ladies, bowing, and fidgeting his feet. As he spoke
he threw out his hands, and his whole lean, lithe body seemed to be
scarcely withheld from breaking into a dance. Laura saw Miss Jane point
at her, and the stranger turned sharply round.
She saw his face. For a moment she thought that he was a Chinaman; then
she saw that he was wearing a mask. The candle-light shone full upon
it, but so fine and slight was the modelling that scarcely a shadow
marked the indentations of cheek and jaw. The narrow eyes, the slanting
brows, the small smiling mouth had a vivid innocent inexpressiveness. It
was like the face of a very young girl. Alert and immobile the mask
regarded her. And she, entranced, stared back at this imitation face
that outwitted all perfections of flesh and blood. It was lifeless,
lifeless! But below it, in the hollow of the girlish throat, she saw a
flicker of life, a small regular pulse, small and regular as though a
pearl necklace slid by under the skin. Mincing like a girl, the masked
young man approached her, and as he approached the others drew back and
left her alone. With secretive and undulating movements he came to her
side. The lifeless face was near her own and through the slits in the
mask the unseen eyes surveyed her. Suddenly she felt upon her cheeks a
cold darting touch. With a fine tongue like a serpent’s he had licked
her right cheek, close to the ear. She started back, but found his hands
detaining her.
‘How are you enjoying your first Sabbath, Miss Willowes?’ he said.
‘Not at all,’ answered Laura, and turned her back on him.
Without glancing to left or right she walked out of the field, and the
dancers made way for her in silence. She was furious at the affront,
raging at Satan, at Mrs. Leak, at Miss Larpent, with the unreasoning
anger of a woman who has allowed herself to be put in a false position.
This was what came of attending Sabbaths, or rather, this was what came
of submitting her good sense to politeness. Hours ago her instinct had
told her that she was not going to enjoy herself. If she had asserted
herself and gone home then, this odious and petty insult would never
have happened. But she had stayed on, deferring to a public opinion that
was not concerned whether she stayed or went, stayed on just as she used
to stay on at balls, stayed on to be treated like a silly girl who at
the end of a mechanical flirtation is kissed behind a palm.
Anyway, she was out of it now. Her feet had followed the windings of a
little path, which crossed a ditch by a plank bridge: it passed through
a belt of woodland, and led her out on to a space of common that sloped
away into the darkness. Here she sat down and spread out her palms upon
the cool turf.
She had been insulted and made a mock of. But for all that she did not
feel truly humiliated. Rather, she was filled with a delighted and
scornful surprise at the ease with which she had avenged her dignity.
The mask floated before her eyes, inscrutable as ever, and she thought
no more of it than of an egg-shell that she could crush between her
finger and thumb. The Powers of Darkness, then, were no more fearful
than a herd of bullocks in a field? Once round upon them and the
sniffing encumbering horde made off, a scramble of ungainly rumps and
foolish tails.
It had been a surprising night. And long, endlessly long, and not ended
yet. She yawned, and felt hungry. She fancied herself at home, cutting
large crumbling slices from the loaf in the cupboard, and spreading them
with a great deal of butter and the remains of the shrimp paste. But she
did not know where she was, and it was too dark to venture homewards
with no sense of direction. She grew impatient with the night and
strained her ears for the sound of cock-crow. As if her imperious will
had wrenched aside the covering of cloud, a faint glimmer delineated
part of the horizon. Moonset or sunrise, westerly or easterly she did
not know; but as she watched it doubtfully, thinking that it must be
moonset, for it seemed to dwindle rather than increase, a breeze
winnowed the air, and looking round her she saw on every side the first
beginnings of light.
Sitting up, her hunger and sleepiness forgotten, and all the
disappointments and enigmas of the Sabbath dismissed from her mind, she
watched the spectacle of the dawn. Soon she was able to recognise her
surroundings, she knew the place well, it was here that she had met the
badger. The slope before her was dotted with close-fitting juniper
bushes, and presently she saw a rabbit steal out from one of these,
twitch its ears, and scamper off. The cloud which covered the sky was no
longer a solid thing. It was rising, and breaking up into swirls of
vapour that yielded to the wind. The growing day washed them with
silver. Every moment the web of cloud seemed to rise higher and higher,
as though borne upward by a rising tide of light. The rooks flew up
cawing from the wood. Presently she heard the snap of a dead twig.
Somebody was astir. Whistling to himself, a man came out of the wood. He
walked with a peculiarly slow and easy gait, and he had a stick in his
hand, an untrimmed rod pulled from the wood. He switched at the head of
a tall thistle, and Laura saw the dew fly off the astonished blossom.
Seeing her, he stopped short, as though he did not wish to intrude on
her. He showed no surprise that she should be sitting on the hillside,
waiting for the sun to rise. She smiled at him, grateful for his good
manners, and also quite pleased to see a reasonable being again; and
emboldened by this, he smiled also, and approached.
‘You are up very early, Miss Willowes.’
She did not recognise him, but that was no reason why he should not
recognise her. She thought he must be a gamekeeper, for he wore gaiters
and a corduroy coat. His face was brown and wrinkled, and his teeth were
as white and even as a dog’s. Laura liked his appearance. He had a
pleasant, rather detached air, which suited well with the early morning.
She said:
‘I have been up all night.’
There was no inquisitiveness in his look; and when he expressed the hope
that she felt none the worse for it, he spoke without servility or
covert amusement.
‘I liked it very much,’ said Laura. Her regard for truth made her add:
‘Particularly when it began to be light. I was growing rather bored
before then.’
‘Some ladies would feel afraid,’ said he.
‘I’m not afraid when I’m alone,’ she answered. ‘I lived in the country
when I was a girl.’
He bowed his head assentingly. Something in his manner implied that he
knew this already. Perhaps he had heard about her in the village.
‘It’s pleasant to be in the country again,’ she continued. ‘I like Great
Mop very much.’
‘I hope you will stay here, Miss Willowes.’
‘I hope so too.’
She spoke a little sadly. In this unaccustomed hour her soul was full of
doubts. She wondered if, having flouted the Sabbath, she were still a
witch, or whether, her power being taken from her, she would become the
prey of a healthy and untroubled Titus. And being faint for want of food
and want of sleep, she foreboded the worst.
‘Yes, you must stay here. It would be a pity to go now.’
Laura nearly said, ‘I have nowhere to go,’ but a dread of exile came
over her like a salt wave, and she could not trust herself to speak to
this kind man. He came nearer and said:
‘Remember, Miss Willowes, that I shall always be very glad to help you.
You have only to ask me.’
‘But where shall I find you?’ she asked, too much impressed by the
kindness of his words to think them strange.
‘You will always find me in the wood,’ he answered, and touching his cap
he walked away. She heard the noise of swishing branches and the scuff
of feet among dead leaves growing fainter as he went further into the
wood.
She decided not to go back just yet. A comfortable drowsiness settled
down upon her with the first warmth of the risen sun. Her mind dwelt
upon the words just spoken. The promise had been given in such sober
earnestness that she had accepted it without question, seeing nothing
improbable in the idea that she should require the help of a strange
gamekeeper, or that he should undertake to give it. She thought that
people might be different in the early morning; less shy, like the
rabbits that were playing round her, more open-hearted, and simpler of
speech. In any case, she was grateful to the stranger for his goodwill.
He had known that she wanted to stay on at Great Mop, he had told her
that she must do so. It was the established country courtesy, the
invitation to take root. But he must have meant what he said, for seeing
her troubled he had offered to help. Perhaps he was married; and if
Mrs. Leak, offended, would keep her no longer, she might lodge with him
and his wife in their cottage, a cottage in a dell among the beechwoods.
He had said that he lived in the woods. She began to picture her life in
such a cottage, thinking that it would be even better than lodging in
the village. She imagined her whitewashed bedroom full of moving green
shades; the wood-smoke curling up among the trees; the majestic arms,
swaying above her while she slept, and plumed with snow in winter.
The trees behind her murmured consolingly; she reclined upon the sound.
‘Remember, Miss Willowes’ ... ‘Remember,’ murmured the trees, swaying
their boughs muffled with heavy foliage. She remembered, and understood.
When he came out of the wood, dressed like a gamekeeper, and speaking so
quietly and simply, Satan had come to renew his promise and to reassure
her. He had put on this shape that she might not fear him. Or would he
have her to know that to those who serve him he appears no longer as a
hunter, but as a guardian? This was the real Satan. And as for the
other, whom her spirit had so impetuously disowned, she had done well to
disown him, for he was nothing but an impostor, a charlatan, a dummy.
Her doubts were laid to rest, and she walked back through the fields,
picking mushrooms as she went. As she approached the village she heard
Mr. Saunter’s cocks crowing, and saw the other cock, for ever watchful,
for ever silent, spangle in the sun above the church tower. The
churchyard yews cast long shadows like open graves. Behind those white
curtains slumbered Mr. Jones, and dreamed, perhaps, of the Sabbath which
he was not allowed to attend.