morning as a witch when she had gone out to give the kitten a run. The
sunflowers had been cut off and given to the hens, but the
scrubbing-brush was still propped on the kitchen window-sill. That was
three weeks ago. And Titus, like the scrubbing-brush, was still there.
During those three weeks Titus had demanded a great deal of support; in
fact, being a witch-aunt was about twice as taxing as being an ordinary
aunt, and if she had not known that the days were numbered she could
scarcely have endured them.
At her nephew’s request she made veils of butter-muslin weighted with
blue beads to protect his food and drink. Titus insisted that the beads
should be blue: blue was the colour of the Immaculate Conception; and as
pious Continental mothers dedicate their children, so he would dedicate
his milk and hope for the best. But no blue beads were to be found in
the village, so Laura had to walk into Barleighs for them. Titus was
filled with gratitude, he came round on purpose to thank her and stayed
to tea.
He was no sooner gone than Mrs. Garland arrived. Mrs. Garland had seen
the veils. She hoped that Mr. Willowes didn’t think she was to blame for
the milk going sour. She could assure Miss Willowes that the jugs were
mopped out with boiling water morning _and_ evening. For _her_ part, she
couldn’t understand it at all. She was always anxious to give
satisfaction, she said; but her manner suggested less anxiety to give
than to receive. Laura soothed Mrs. Garland, and sat down to wait for
Mr. Dodbury. However, Mr. Dodbury contented himself with frowning at
that interfering young Willowes’s aunt, and turning the bull into the
footpath field. Laura thought that the bull frowned too.
Though veiled in butter-muslin, the milk continued to curdle. Titus came
in to say that he’d had an idea; in future, he would rely upon condensed
milk out of a tin. Which sort did Aunt Lolly recommend? And would she
make him a kettle-holder? Apparently tinned milk could resist the Devil,
for all was peace until Titus gashed his thumb on the raw edge of a tin.
In spite of Laura’s first aid the wound festered, and for several days
Titus wore a sling. Triumphant over pain he continued the Life of
Fuseli. But the wounded thumb being a right-hand thumb, the triumph
involved an amanuensis. Laura hated ink, she marvelled that any one
should have the constancy to write a whole book. She thought of
_Paradise Lost_ with a shudder, for it required even more constancy to
write some one else’s book. Highly as she rated the sufferings of
Milton’s daughters, she rated her own even higher, for she did not
suppose that they had to be for ever jumping up and down to light the
poet’s cigarette; and blank verse flowed, flowed majestically, she
understood, from his lips, whereas Titus dictated in prose, which was
far harder to punctuate.
Nor did it flow. Titus was not feeling at his best. He hated small
bothers, and of late he had been seethed alive in them. Every day
something went wrong, some fiddle-faddle little thing. All his ingenuity
was wasted in circumvention; he had none left for Fuseli.
Anyhow, dictation was only fit for oil-kings! He jumped up and dashed
about the room with a fly-flap. Fly-flapping was a manly indoor sport,
especially if one observed all the rules. The ceiling was marked out in
squares like a chess-board, and while they stayed in their squares the
flies could not be attacked. The triangle described by the blue vase,
the pink vase, and the hanging lamp was a Yellowstone Park, and so was
the King’s Face, a difficult ruling, but Titus had decided that of two
evils it was more tolerable that the royal countenance should be crawled
over by flies than assaulted by the subject. All this from a left-handed
adversary--the flies had nothing to complain of, in his opinion. Laura
owned his generosity, and sat, when she could, in the Yellowstone Park.
By the time Titus had recovered the use of his right hand the flies had
lost their sanctuaries one by one, and could not even call the King’s
Face their own. They swarmed in his sitting-room, attracted, Mrs.
Garland supposed, by the memory of that nasty foreign cheese Mr.
Willowes’s Mr. Humphries had brought with him when he came to stay. They
swarmed in his bedroom also, and that--Mrs. Garland said--was what
brought in the bats. Laura told Titus the belief that if a bat once
entangles itself in a woman’s flowing hair there is no remedy but to cut
away hair and bat together. Titus turned pale. That afternoon he went up
to London to visit his hairdresser, and returned with hair cropped like
a convict’s.
All this had unsettled her victim a good deal; but it had not unseated
him, and meanwhile it was sufficiently unsettling for her. So far, she
thought, the scheme and its execution had been the kitten’s--she could
recognise Vinegar’s playful methods. She gave him credit for doing his
best. But he was young and inexperienced, this was probably his first
attempt at serious persecution; it was not to be wondered at if his
methods were a little sketchy. Now that the Devil had taken matters into
his own hands--and of this she felt assured--all would soon be well.
Well for her, well for Titus. Really, it was time that poor boy was
released from his troubles. She felt complete confidence in the Devil, a
confidence that the kitten had never inspired. There was a tinge of
gratuitous malice in Vinegar’s character; he was, as one says, rather a
cat. She suspected him of meditating a scratch which would give Titus
blood-poisoning. She remembered with uneasiness what cats are said to
do to sleeping infants, and every night she was careful to imprison
Vinegar in her bedroom, a useless precaution since he had come in by the
keyhole and might as easily go out by it. The Devil would get rid of
Titus more speedily, more kindly (he had no reason to be anything but
kind: she could not imagine Titus being of the smallest interest to
Satan), more economically. There would be no catastrophe, no
pantechnicon displays of flood or fire. He would proceed discreetly and
surely, like a gamekeeper going his rounds by night, he would remove
Titus as imperturbably as Dunlop had removed the beech-leaf. She could
sit back quite comfortably now, and wait for it to happen.
When Titus next appeared and complained that he had been kept awake for
two nights running by a mouse gnawing the leg of his bedstead, Laura was
most helpful. They went to Mrs. Trumpet’s to buy a mouse-trap, but as
Mrs. Trumpet only kept cheese they walked very pleasantly by field-paths
into Barleighs, where Denby’s stores had a larger range of groceries.
During their walk Titus recalled anecdotes illustrative of mice from
Soup from a Sausage Peg, and propounded a scheme for defending his bed
by a catskin valance. The day was fine, and at intervals Titus would
stop and illustrate the landscape with possessive gestures.
He was particularly happy. He had not enjoyed himself so much for some
time. The milk and the mice and the flies had checked his spirits; he
was not doing justice to Fuseli, and when he went out for long
encouraging walks an oppressed feeling went with him. Twice or thrice he
had felt horribly frightened, though at what he could not tell. The
noise of two iron hurdles grating against each other in the wind, a dead
tree with branches that looked like antlers, the stealthy movement of
the sun towards the horizon: quite ordinary things like these were able
to disquiet him.
He fell into the habit of talking aloud to himself. He would reason with
appearances. ‘I see you, old Horny,’ he said to the dead tree. And once,
as dusk pursued him homeward, he began repeating:
As one that on a lonesome road
Doth walk in fear and dread,
And having once turned round, walks on,
And turns no more his head;
Because he knows a frightful fiend
Doth close behind him tread:
when the sound of a crackling twig made every nerve in his body stiffen
with terror. Some impulse not his own snatched him round in the path,
only to see old Luxmoor going out with his snares. Old Luxmoor touched
his cap and grinned in an embarrassed way. Every one knew that Luxmoor
poached, but it was not polite to catch him at it. He did not appear to
have overheard Titus or noticed his start of terror. But there had been
one instant before recognition when Titus had almost known what he
dreaded to see.
So it was pleasant to find that the company of his aunt could exorcise
these ghostly enmities. Clearly, there was nothing in it. To-morrow he
would go for a long walk by himself.
Laura also went for a walk that afternoon. It was a hot day, so hot and
still that it felt like a Sunday. She could not do better than follow
the example of the savages in _Robinson Crusoe_: go up on to a hill-top
and say O! No pious savage could have ejaculated O! more devoutly than
she did; for the hill-top was scattered over with patches of that small
honey-scented flower called Tailors’ Needles, and in conjunction with
the austere outlines of the landscape this perfume was exquisitely sweet
and surprising. She found a little green pit and sat down in it, leaning
her back against the short firm turf. Ensconced in her private warmth
and stillness she had almost fallen asleep when a moving figure on the
opposite hillside caught her attention. Laura’s grey eyes were very
keen-sighted, she soon recognised that long stride and swinging gait.
The solitary walker was Titus.
There is an amusing sense of superiority in seeing and remaining unseen.
Laura sat up in her form and watched Titus attentively. He looked very
small, human, and scrabbly, traversing that imperturbable surface. With
such a large slope to wander upon, it was faintly comic to see Titus
keeping so neatly to the path; the effect was rather as if he were being
taken for a walk upon a string.
Further on the path was lost in a tangle of brambles and rusty foxglove
stems which marked the site of Folly Wood, a larch plantation cut down
during the war. In her map the wood had still been green. She had looked
for it on one of her early explorations, and not finding it had felt
defrauded. Her eyes now dwelt on the bramble tangle with annoyance. It
was untidy, and fretted the hillside like a handful of rough-cast thrown
on to a smooth wall. She turned back her gaze to see how Titus was
getting on. It struck her that he was behaving rather oddly. Though he
kept to the path he was walking almost like a drunken man or an idiot,
now hurrying his pace, now reforming it into a staid deliberation that
was certainly not his natural gait. Quite abruptly he began to run. He
ran faster and faster, his feet striving on the slippery turf. He
reached the outskirts of Folly Wood, and Laura could gauge the roughness
of the going from his leaps and stumbles. Midway through the wood he
staggered and fell full-length.
‘A rabbit-hole,’ she said. ‘Now I suppose he’s sprained his ankle.’
But before any thought of compunction could mitigate the rather scornful
bewilderment with which she had been a spectator of these antics, Titus
was up again, and behaving more oddly than ever. No amount of sprained
ankle could warrant those raving gestures with which he beat himself,
and beat the air. He seemed to be fending off an invisible volley of
fisticuffs, for now he ducked his head, now he leaped to one side, now
he threatened, now he quailed before a fresh attack. At last he made off
with shambling speed, reeling and gesticulating as though his whole body
bellowed with pain and fear. He reached the summit of the hill; for a
moment he was silhouetted against the sky-line in a final convulsion of
distress; then he was gone.
Laura felt as if she were releasing her gaze from a telescope. Her
glance strayed about the landscape. She frowned and looked inquiringly
from side to side, not able to credit her eyes. Blandly unconscious, the
opposite hillside confronted her with its familiar face. A religious
silence filled the valley. As the untroubled air had received Titus’s
roarings and damnings (for it was obvious that he had both roared and
damned) without concerning itself to transmit them to her hearing, so
her vision had absorbed his violent pantomime without concerning itself
to alarm her brain. She could not reason about what she had seen; she
could scarcely stir herself to feel any curiosity, and still less any
sympathy. Like a masque of bears and fantastic shapes, it had seemed
framed only to surprise and delight.
But that, she knew, was not Satan’s way. He was not in the habit of
bestowing these gratuitous peep-shows upon his servants, he was above
the human weakness of doing things for fun; and if he exhibited Titus
dancing upon the hillside like a cat on hot bricks, she might be sure
that it was all according to plan. It behoved her to be serious and
attend, instead of accepting it all in this spirit of blank
entertainment. Even as a matter of bare civility she ought to find out
what had happened. Besides, Titus might require her ministrations. She
got up, and began to walk back to the village.
Titus, she reflected, would almost certainly have gone home. Even if he
did not run all the way he would by now have had time to settle down and
get over the worst of his disturbance. A kind of decency forbade her to
view too immediately the dismay of her victim. Titus unmenaced, Titus
invading her quiet and straddling over her peace of mind, was a very
different thing from Titus melting and squirming before the fire of her
resentment. Now that she was walking to his assistance she felt quite
sorry for him. My nephew who is plagued by the Devil was as much an
object for affectionate aunt-like interest as my nephew who has an
attack of measles. She did not take the present affliction more
seriously than she had taken those of the past. With time, and a change
of air, she was confident that he would make a complete recovery.
As for her own share in the matter, she felt no shame at all. It had
pleased Satan to come to her aid. Considering carefully, she did not see
who else would have done so. Custom, public opinion, law, church, and
state--all would have shaken their massive heads against her plea, and
sent her back to bondage.
She reached Great Mop about five o’clock. As she turned up Mrs. Leak’s
garden-path, Titus bounded from the porch.
‘There you are!’ he exclaimed. ‘We have just come to have tea with you.’
She perceived that Titus was not alone. In the porch playing with the
kitten was Pandora Williams, Pandora Williams whom Titus had invited to
play the rebeck at the Flower Show. Before Laura could welcome her Titus
was exclaiming again.
‘Such an afternoon as I’ve had! Such adventures! First I fell into a
wasps’-nest, and then I got engaged to Pandora.’
So that was it. It was wasps. Wasps were the invisible enemies that had
beset and routed him on the hill-side. O Beelzebub, God of flies! But
why was he now going to marry Pandora Williams?
‘The wops-nest was in Folly Wood. I tripped up, and fell smack on top
of it. My God, I thought I should die! They got into my ears, and down
my neck, and up my trousers, they were everywhere, as thick as spikes in
sodawater. I ran for my life, I ran nearly all the way home, and most of
them came with me, either inside or out. And when I rushed up the street
calling in an exhausted voice for onions, there was Pandora!’
‘I had been invited to tea,’ said Pandora rather primly.
‘Yes, and I’d forgotten it, and gone out for a walk. Pandora, if I’d had
my deserts, you would have scorned me, and left me to perish. Pandora, I
shall never forget your magnanimous way of behaving. That was what did
it, really. One has to offer marriage to a young woman who has picked
dead wasps out of one’s armpit.’
Laura had never seen Titus so excited. His face was flushed, his voice
was loud, the pupils of his eyes were extraordinarily dilated. But how
much of this was due to love and how much to wasps and witchcraft it was
impossible to say. And was Pandora part of the witchcraft too, a sort of
queen wasp whose sting was mortal balm? Why should Titus offer her
marriage? Why should Pandora accept it? They had always been such
friends.
Laura turned to the girl to see how she was taking it. Pandora’s smooth
cheeks and smooth lappets of black hair seemed to shed calm like an
unwavering beam of moonlight. But at Laura’s good wishes she started,
and began nervously to counter them with explanations and apologies for
coming to Laura’s rooms for tea. She had dropped Titus’ teapot, and
broken it. Laura was not surprised that she had dropped the teapot. It
was clear to her that Pandora’s emotions that afternoon had been much
more vehement than anything that Titus had experienced in his mental
uproar. How well--thought Laura--she has hidden her feelings all this
time! How well she is hiding them now!
These fine natures, she knew, always found comfort in cutting
bread-and-butter. Pandora welcomed the suggestion. She covered three
large plates, and would have covered a fourth if the butter had not
given out. There were some ginger-bread nuts as well, and a few
bull’s-eyes. Mrs. Leak must have surmised a romance. She marked her
sense of the occasion by the tea, which was almost purple--as strong as
wedding-cake, Titus said.
It was a savagely plain tea. But had it consisted of cocoa and
ship’s-biscuit, Laura might have offered it without a qualm to guests so
much absorbed by their proper emotions. Titus talked incessantly, and
Pandora ate with the stealthy persistence of a bitch that gives suck.
Meanwhile Laura looked at the new Mr. and Mrs. Willowes. They would do
very well, she decided. Young as she was, Pandora had already the air of
a family portrait; such looks, such characters change little, for they
are independent of time. And undoubtedly she was very much in love with
Titus. While he talked she watched his face with the utmost attention,
though she did not seem to hear what he was saying. Titus, too, must be
considerably in love. Despite the unreality of his behaviour, and a
swelled nose, his happiness gave him an almost romantic appearance.
Perhaps it was that too recently she had seen him dancing on the Devil’s
strings to be able to take him quite seriously; perhaps she was
old-maidishly scornful of the authenticity of anything that a man may
say or do; but at the back of her mind Laura felt that Titus was but a
proxy wooer, the ambassador of an imperious dynastic will; and that the
real match was made between Pandora and Lady Place.
Anyhow, it was all very suitable, and she must be content to leave it at
that. The car from the Lamb and Flag was waiting to take them to the
station. Titus was going back to London with Pandora to see her people,
as Pandora had refused to face their approval alone. The Williamses
lived pleasantly on Campden Hill, and were typical of the best class of
Londoners, being almost indistinguishable from people living pleasantly
in the country. What, indeed, could be more countrified than to be in
town during September? For a moment Laura feared that she too would be
obliged to travel to London. The lovers had insisted upon her company as
far as the station.
‘You must come,’ said Titus. ‘There will be all sorts of things I shall
remember to ask you to do for me. I can’t remember them now, but I shall
the moment the car starts. I always do.’
Laura knew this to be very truth. Nevertheless she stood out against
going until Pandora manœuvred her into a corner and said in a desperate
whisper: ‘O Miss Willowes, for God’s sake, please come. You’ve no idea
how awful it is being left alone with some one you love.’
Laura replied: ‘Very well. I’ll come as a thank-offering.’
Pandora’s sense of humour could just contrive a rather castaway smile.
They got into the car. There was no time to spare, and the driver took
them along the winding lanes at top speed, sounding his horn
incessantly. It was a closed car, and they sat in it in perfect silence
all the way to the station. Before the car had drawn up in the station
yard Titus leaped out and began to pay the driver. Then he looked wildly
round for the train. There was no train in sight. It had not come in
yet.
When Laura had seen them off and gone back to the station yard she found
that in his excitement Titus had dismissed the driver without
considering how his aunt was to get back to Great Mop. However, it
didn’t matter--the bus started for Barleighs at half-past eight, and
from Barleighs she could walk on for the rest of the way. This gave her
an hour and a half to spend in Wickendon. A sensible way of passing the
time would be to eat something before her return journey; but she was
not hungry, and the fly-blown cafes in the High Street were not
tempting. She bought some fruit, and turned up an alley between garden
walls in search of a field where she could sit and eat it in peace. The
alley soon changed to an untidy lane and then to a cinder-track running
steeply uphill between high hedges. A municipal kindliness had supplied
at intervals iron benches, clamped and riveted into the cinders. But no
one reposed on them, and the place was unpeopled save by swarms of
midges. Laura was hot and breathless by the time she reached the top of
the hill and came out upon a bare grassy common. Here was an obvious
place to sit down and gasp, and as there were no iron benches to deter
her, she did so. But she immediately forgot her exhaustion, so arresting
was the sight that lay before her.
The cinder-track led to a small enclosure, full of cypresses, yews,
clipped junipers and weeping-willows. Rising from this funereal plumage
was an assortment of minarets, gilded cupolas and obelisks. She stared
at this phenomenon, so byronic in conception, so spick and span in
execution, and sprouting so surprisingly from the mild Chiltern
landscape, completely at a loss to account for it. Then she remembered:
it was the Maulgrave Folly. She had read of it in the guide-book, and of
its author, Sir Ralph Maulgrave, the Satanic Baronet, the libertine, the
atheist, who drank out of a skull, who played away his mistress and
pistolled the winner, who rode about Buckinghamshire on a zebra, whose
conversation had been too much for Thomas Moore. ‘This bad and eccentric
character,’ the guide-book said, disinfecting his memory with rational
amusement. Grown old, he had amused himself by elaborating a
burial-place which was to be an epitome of his eclectic and pessimistic
opinions. He must, thought Laura, have spent many hours on this
hillside, watching the masons and directing the gardeners where to plant
his cypresses. And afterwards he would be wheeled away in his
bath-chair, for, _pace_ the guide-book, at a comparatively early age he
lost the use of his legs.
Poor gentleman, how completely he had misunderstood the Devil! The
plethoric gilt cupolas winked in the setting sun. For all their bad
taste, they were perfectly respectable--cupolas and minarets and
cypresses, all had a sleek and well-cared-for look. They had an assured
income, nothing could disturb their calm. The silly, vain, passionate
heart that lay buried there had bequeathed a sum of money for their
perpetual upkeep. The Satanic Baronet who mocked at eternal life and
designed this place as a lasting testimony of his disbelief had
contrived to immortalise himself as a laughing-stock.
It was ungenerous. The dead man had been pilloried long enough; it was
high time that Maulgrave’s Folly should be left to fall into decent ruin
and decay. And instead of that, even at this moment it was being trimmed
up afresh. She felt a thrill of anger as she saw a gardener come out of
the enclosure, carrying a flag basket and a pair of shears. He came
towards her, and something about the rather slouching and prowling gait
struck her as being familiar. She looked more closely, and recognised
Satan.
‘How can you?’ she said, when he was within speaking distance. He, of
all people, should be more compassionate to the shade of Sir Ralph.
He feigned not to hear her.
‘Would you care to go over the Folly, ma’am?’ he inquired. ‘It’s quite a
curiosity. Visitors come out from London to see it.’
Laura was not going to be fubbed off like this. He might pretend not to
recognise her, but she would jog his memory.
‘So you are a grave-keeper as well as a gamekeeper?’
‘The Council employ me to cut the bushes,’ he answered.
‘O Satan!’ she exclaimed, hurt by his equivocations. ‘Do you always
hide?’
With the gesture of a man who can never hold out against women, he
yielded and sat down beside her on the grass.