1
_There is a small smell of_ WITCHCRAFT _in and about Boston. A straw
doll taken to Meeting throws many into confusion._
In the fall of 1665 two were hanged in Boston for the bedevilment of an
elderly woman, her cousin Germain, and her swine.
In that same year Mr. Saul Peterham, a godly, decent man, refused some
small rotten apples to an ancient and malicious hag. For this the old
crone muttered at him, making an evil sign by her thumb and her nose,
and took herself off in great bad humour. Mr. Peterham, on returning
to his house, found that his wife—an estimable church woman—had fallen
from a ladder she had put to the loft for the purpose of observing the
conduct of her servant wench and the indentured male servant, the exact
moment the crone had made her evil sign. The elders of the Church had
at the old woman and forced her, weeping and on her knees, to forswear
the Devil, his imps, and his ways, and to continue more strictly in the
ways of God. It being observed that she could both weep and say the
Lord’s Prayer, many believed the accusation of witchcraft to be a false
one, such as is often launched against disagreeable and impotent old
women.
By spring there was yet another suspicion of witchcraft in the Bay
Colony, and this at Cowan Corners. In a hut close by the seashore, and
in great misery, lived an old pauper called Greene and his wife. He
was a tinker, but there were better tinkers than he, and he got little
work to do. His wife was a proud woman, born in Kent of high rank,
yet, by turn of fortune, she was so reduced as to have become the wife
of a tinker. Her craft in herbs got her some money and more ill fame,
nor was she content to raise and sell the honest herbs of England, but
she must continually associate herself with the heathen tawny savages
and thus learn arts—doubtless often evil arts—from them. The Indians
venerated her, calling her ‘White Mother’ and Moon Woman.’ She went
even into the great forest with more safety than any man. She was
loving towards these peoples and had much traffic with them, in spite
of the fact the Church elders had warned her twice, saying it is better
for a woman to keep her own house than to go abroad through the woods
alone and no one knew on what errand.
One Sabbath in the midst of the House of the Lord a poppet contrived
of straw and maize, with a leather head and a grinning face on it,
fell from below her skirts. None at the moment questioned her boldly
as to what purpose she contrived this poppet, yet all thought of those
dollies witches make but to destroy again, that their enemies may
dwindle with the dwindling dolly.
Later in the week three deacons called upon her and demanded
explanation. She was distrait, cried out upon them in anger because
of their suspicions, and said she had but made a toy for Bilby’s poor
little Doll, who, she said, was beaten and cruelly used by that shrew
Hannah. The incident was then dismissed except for a public reprimand
for a woman so depraved as to put into the hand of a child a toy upon
the Lord’s Day and in the Lord’s House. After this the Greenes lost
what friends they had, and no one came commonly to their hut upon the
salt marsh but Bilby’s wicked Doll.
On a February night Hannah Bilby woke overcome with retching and
vomiting. In the morning Mr. Kleaver, the surgeon, being called,
took away two ounces of blood from the forearm; still she continued
in wretched state three days. By the oppression on her chest and
especially because of certain night sweatings and terrors, she became
convinced she was bewitched and frankly accused Goodwife Greene. Mr.
Zelley roughly bade her hold her tongue (this being but one of many
times when he befriended a witch) and declared there was no reason why
Greene should wish her harm. At which statement many were amazed, for
they thought every one knew that Greene loved little Doll and hated
the foster mother because of her cruelty. Through all the clustering
villages—Salem, Ipswich, Cowan Corners, etc.—it was whispered how Doll
had surrendered to Greene either parings from Mrs. Hannah’s nails or
hair from her body, and had thus given Greene the wherewithal to work
magic.
Within a year all suspicion seemed to have passed away from Goody
Greene, but in a hundred ways more doubts gathered about the child and
she was whispered of. Mrs. Bilby told many, here one and there two,
usually with entreaties for prayers and commands for secrecy, that
the girl was born and bred a witch. She told how her own unborn son
(that thumping boy) had been blasted. She told them to watch—was not
Mr. Bilby himself bewitched by her? So it seemed to many. There were
no clothes fine enough in Boston for his dear Doll—he needs must send
to England for them. Sometimes he held her on his knee—and she a girl
of thirteen or fourteen. Even when the elders and the minister came
to call on him, and Hannah, as befitted her gender, withdrew from the
room, Bilby would keep his ridiculous hobgoblin squatting at his feet.
As he talked, he patted her shaggy, spikey, hair.
The child had nothing to do with children of her own age, nor did godly
parents wish their children to play with her. For the most part she was
a silent thing, stealing about on feet as quiet as cats’ paws. To her
foster father she was pretty and frolicsome. To Goodwife Greene she was
loving, and stole from the Bilby larder food for the wretched paupers.
With her mouth she said little to any one, but her eyes spoke—those
round button eyes, and they spoke secret and evil things.
2
_Monstrous facts regarding Doll’s earliest youth which Mr. Zelley
repeated almost twenty years after her death. How she attended Black
Sabbath, etc. How she saw the Devil in Brittany and probably swore to
serve him, etc._
When the time came late in his life that Mr. Zelley, being old and
broken, was accused of witchcraft, he told, after long questionings,
much that he knew about Bilby’s Doll. For instance, he said she never
forgot one of those wicked things which she had learned of her parents
in Brittany.
It is true, the shock and horror of their death caused such mental
anguish it seemed to her a black curtain (much like the smoke of the
holocaust) dropped down upon her life. All that was actual in her life
was before the curtain—that is, after her parents’ death; yet all that
lay behind this curtain did exist for her—only infinitely small and
infinitely far away. To see (for she did not call it _remembering_)
what lay behind this barrier, she had to think and think only of
blackness. Soon was her industry rewarded. Behold, the blackness
disintegrated and little by little she saw strange scenes in piercing
clarity, yet all in miniature. She saw these visions as though she
were above them—say from the height of a church steeple, and she saw
her own self, a little shaggy girl, walking below.
If no one disturbed her, if Mrs. Hannah did not cuff her for idleness,
she could watch the movements of these people for hours. There were her
father and mother, other witches and warlocks, phantom beasts, fiends,
imps, goblins, fairies, and always her own self. Sometimes these people
and creatures grew so small they were scarcely more than shifting
sands. Yet the smaller they grew, the more intense was their actuality.
Mr. Zelley said that she observed that when these images, visions, or
what you will, were presented to her almost as large as life, they were
vapoury and hard to see, but when they were no larger than a grain
of sand she could see everything—the little frown on her father’s
forehead, the scales on the imps’ shoulders, her mother’s teeth as she
smiled, even the nails on the hands of her own self; yet how small must
have been those hands when the whole body of an adult was no more than
a grain of sand!
Mr. Zelley, an old and broken man, was commanded to tell further. What
would she see—on what business would these folk be about? She would
see naked men and women with goats’ horns on their heads. They danced
back to back. As they danced, they cried ‘hu hu hura hu,’ in the manner
of witch-people. She would see the sacrifice of a black kid, and the
crucifixion of the sacred wafer. Did she ever see the Devil himself?
Witch-people often select one of themselves to be, as it were, high
priest in their infernal synagogue. Him they call devil. Such a one
she often saw. He was young and lusty and dressed in green leaves.
When they danced their sarabands, no one jumped as high as he. He was
a pretty man and women loved him. It was only on Black Sabbath he had
such power over men and women. At other times he was a cordwainer.
This devil that she saw was but a mock devil. Did she never see that
Scriptural Devil—that Foul Fiend Lucifer? Ah, that she could never
quite recall—not even with the powerful help of her strange minute
images. It is true that after hours of application she would sometimes
see a woman whom she knew to be her mother walking through great oak
woods (mistletoe-infested) and with her, clinging to her skirts,
was a child. The child was her own self. A great light pierced the
green gloom of the forest and where it fell stood a man. He was an
aristocrat, carried a small rapier with the hilt of which he toyed; he
was dressed in green velvet, had a handsome, ruddy face, and loving
blue eyes. Nor had he horns, she said, and if a tail, he kept it to
himself; but his shoes she noticed were unsightly, as though contrived
to accommodate clubbed foot or cloven hoof.
To him her mother knelt, and the child knelt also. The mother said
she had a little servant for him, who she promised would obey him in
all things. ‘What shall I do with so little a one?’ But he caressed
her with his hands. His touch was cold as ice. Even to remember that
touch raised the gooseflesh upon her. It was searing as the hands of
Death. She never saw this particular scene enacted before her without
experiencing a physical shock—pleasant and yet repellent. Then she
could see the child accept the Book the man offered her, and she always
made a mark in the Book with blood drawn from her own arm. But the
end of this particular and much-loved vision was always the same and
always disappointing, for she saw herself and her mother sitting by the
hearth. Her mother was stirring the pot and as she stirred she talked,
telling the story of a little girl who had walked with her mother in a
great wood, had met the Devil, and had sworn to serve him. So it was
Doll Bilby never could be sure whether or not she had actually promised
to serve the Foul Fiend and had made her blood-mark in his Book, or
whether it was but a tale told by her mother.
At first she felt no terror of the strange phantasies which, waking
and sleeping, were always before her eyes, but as she grew to young
womanhood, this uncertainty as to her true status came greatly to worry
her. If she had indeed signed the Book of Hell, then was she utterly
damned, and there was no hope for her. If she had not, then might
she, by prayer, watchfulness, etc., escape into Paradise. Thus she
endured great anguish of spirit. At last the Soul, which ever turns
and struggles in the heart of man, turned uneasily within her and she
tried to forget all the evil which she remembered—even the voice of her
mother, crying out piteously to her from the midst of flame.
Then Conscience—that gift from God to man—raised _its_ head, and she
lay and moaned upon her bed, listening to the holy voice of Conscience,
asking her over and over, to her utter weariness, what have you
done—what have you done? So she applied herself with burning intensity
to the ways of religion, and it was then, said Mr. Zelley, he first
came to ponder upon her, although she told him nothing of herself or
of her past until some years later. But all her pious exercises were
performed without that pleasure which the good Christian habitually
manifests, but rather with the terror of a lost soul. Mr. Zelley
kept a diary, and in that diary he wrote (Doll being at that time
in her sixteenth or even possibly in her seventeenth year) a wanton
suggestion, ‘I mark with interest the religious fructuations of Miss D.
B. but fear she fruits without roots, and but let a man, perhaps, Titus
Thumb, come into her life by the door, and then shall God but pass out
by the window ...’ and more light and blasphemous talk, suggesting
slyly that there may be some resemblance between the carnal love of
body and the spirit love of soul.
3
_A good young man is taken in a witch’s net._
This Titus Thumb, to whom Mr. Zelley referred, was the oldest child
and only son of Deacon Ephraim Thumb, whose lands lay south of and
adjoining to the lands of Mr. Bilby. There had always been intimacy
between the two farms, for the men of one helped the men of the other
at harvesting, planting, and building. The two women were gossips.
The two men were cronies. Titus had been much away because he was a
scholar at the new college in Cambridge. For one year he was home again
to help in the opening-up of certain new lands. He was a studious
youth who hoped in time to prepare himself for the ministry of God.
This, however, never came to pass, for God willed otherwise, and,
on completing his studies at Cambridge, he remains there, known to
hundreds of young Latinists as ‘Tutor Thumb.’
He was a young man of special parts and handsome person. He would be a
minister and his father was rich. The wenches of the village flocked
to him like moths to flame, ignoring often in the exuberance of the
chase (for they were unmannerly and bold to him) proper female conduct.
They mocked him among themselves, saying he was his mother’s darling or
cosset; that he would never seek out a woman for himself. They would
torment him, pulling him behind doors and kissing him, pushing their
bodies against him when he could not escape them, etc., etc. For which
wanton conduct they were well served, for he would have none of them,
and, keeping the fifth commandment well in mind, stayed close to his
parents’ house.
He had two younger sisters, born at one time, for they were twins. They
were sad and puny children, and many who saw them wondered that God had
seen fit to cut His cloth so close—that is, it seemed to many that He
had but enough material (brains, bones, spirits, hair, vitals, etc.)
to make one proper child, yet out of this little He had made two. In
answer to this questioning of Divine Wisdom, Mr. Zelley said no one
body could have endured as many diseases and ills as the Thumb twins
were heir to. Perhaps it was as well to divide up the maladies as well
as the strength. Labour had a falling sickness. She would stiffen with
a horrid din, foam, and go into convulsions. Nor was Sorrow of much
hardier stock. She was subject to nightmares and other delusions (which
Mr. Kleaver insisted arose from a cold stomach). Their mother vexed
herself greatly over them, and where another woman might think it well
if the miserable things but made a good end and returned early to that
God Who had sent them thus poorly fortified into the world, she was
always calling upon Mr. Kleaver or Goody Greene to dose them, or Mr.
Zelley to pray over them. They were pretty children with soft brown
eyes and yellow hair, fine and finicky, but their limbs were miserably
thin and their bellies somewhat swollen.
Mrs. Thumb told them not to play with Bilby’s Doll. She feared the
girl because her foster mother said she was a witch. Like most sickly
children, they were poorly trained in obedience. They met Bilby’s Doll,
whenever they could, by the willow brook which separated the two farms.
Of these meetings, however, they said little or nothing. The mother
often heard them whispering and laughing to each other, and, because
she would hear them talk of Mistress Dolly, she knew they saw her.
As they were too feeble to be whipped or even shaken, she had little
control over them.
She would have been vexed to know that often her husband, sitting at
the Black Moon Tavern with Mr. Bilby, planned that in due time this
same girl, whom Mrs. Thumb considered too dangerous even to cast an
eye upon the twins, should marry the handsome Titus. On such occasions
Mr. Bilby (although he would clap him on the back, and protest his
friendship) always put him off—Doll was but a child, not old enough to
marry. She had the immature body of a girl of twelve. Give her time and
she would grow. Deacon Thumb would not be put off. Was she not sixteen
at the youngest? Had not his own mother married before that?
He was most cupidous. He wanted his son to become heir to the fine
estate of Bilby. He did not heed what his wife said of danger. He cared
more that his son should have a great property in this world than that
his soul should be saved for the next. He was not an evil man, for
he was a deacon in the Church. He was a heedless man, and too easily
dismissed as gossip the true stories his wife forever whispered in his
ear, in regard to this same Doll.
Mrs. Bilby was anxious that the girl should marry and so be out of the
house. One day she said, ‘What shall we ever do with your Doll? There’s
not a man in the town that would marry her.’ Mr. Bilby said that every
unmarried man in the town would be glad to get her. Mrs. Bilby said,
‘You mean they would be glad to get a slice off your meadows.’ He said
he would box her ears for her. She said Doll would be lucky if she got
herself a vagabond, or a widowed man, or an old man of eighty. Mr.
Bilby boxed her ears and went down to the tavern. Then he told Deacon
Thumb that, although it broke his heart even to think of parting with
his treasure, yet was marriage the one and only proper state for woman,
and he would put her happiness even before his own. Moreover, his
wife still hated the girl, even more than she had the night she first
saw her, and although a good woman (and very handsome), yet she was
hard. He said he had just boxed her ears and suggested that he was now
willing to talk of the marriage settlement. He would do something very
handsome by Doll. ‘For God knows,’ he said, ‘she is dear to me.’
4
_In spite of the Warnings of his Better Nature a young man looks
covetously to Bilby’s Doll._
On certain days the men of the two farms combined their labours, then
Doll brought to her foster father his midday dinner. To suit his fancy
she would bring food for herself also. This food she would eat quickly
and without speaking to any one, keeping close to Mr. Bilby. On those
harvest days, when the sun was bright on the stubble and heat shimmered
in the air, the shade beneath the oaks was grateful. Doll Bilby, in the
bright dresses her foster father bought for her, looked as fresh within
this shade as one of those little summer flowers that go down before
the scythes of harvesters. This Titus noticed, and he knew, although
never a word had been spoken to him, that his father wished the match
and his mother opposed it.
Also he noticed that the young woman, although so small, was made in
a neat and most pleasing manner. She was more dainty, more finicky in
her cut than the big English girls. He often thought, as he stretched
himself to rest upon the earth, that to the eye of a man of rare
discernment such delicacy and small perfection might give more pleasure
than more opulent charms, yet he never went so far as to say that he
himself was that discerning man. Likewise it pleased him that she was
shy before him, for he had been over-courted. When he would stretch
his body along the ground close to where she sat, she would gaze
unsmilingly at him out of her wild, troubled eyes, and something in
that gaze—some necromancy—stirred his blood, so that at nights he felt
desire for her, and often dreamed impossible things of her.
During all that year of harvest he had no thought for another one but
only of Bilby’s wicked Doll. He knew the stories of her—for his mother
was forever at his elbow whispering things. He knew of her foreign
birth, how she had once blasted an unborn child, how she and Goody
Greene had afflicted Mrs. Bilby some years ago, making her vomit pins
and fur (for to such proportions had the story of the woman’s illness
already grown), and he could see for himself how she bewitched her
foster father out of his seven senses.
As he gazed upon her sometimes the marrow grew cold in his bones. He
thought if he were a wise and Christian man, he would have none of
her in spite of his own father’s cupidity. In his heart he, like his
mother, feared her. He could not understand the power she, without
effort, had over him, for the very sight of her coming across the hot
fields of noon threw him into a cold, dismal, unnatural sweat. Now
was his heart set towards this marriage, but he looked with dread as
well as joy to that day which should unite her to him. He believed
that whatever her secret might be she should deliver it up to him on
her bridal. Half he was persuaded that he would find that she, like
Sara in the Book of Tobit, had a demon lover, who would strangle any
bridegroom, nor had he an angel or a fish’s liver, with which to
protect himself.
5
_A malignant black Bull leads all astray. Young Thumb fears Doll and
suspects the creature is her Familiar._
The Thumbs had a young black bull, which, with other neat cattle and
quick stock, they had out from England on the ship Fawnley. This bull
was a wanderer, breaking stout fences, and seeking out his own pleasure
among his neighbours’ corn fields, cabbage plots, and herds.
On the last day of April, Ahab, the bull, loosed himself, and climbing
a high hedge of stumps, which looked strong enough to hold any creature
but an angel from Heaven, he set forth. Having crossed many pastures
and trampled down valuable rye, he came to the banks of the River Inch,
where it formed the northern boundary of the Bilby farm. The men were
far away burning brush. Mrs. Bilby was at her churn in the milk-house.
Doll, a shiftless wench, was loitering by the river’s edge, and there
she came across the bull. He was knee-deep among the cowslips. Seeing
her, he threatened playfully with his short horns, and set off as fast
as he could trot with a bunch of yellow flowers dangling from his blue
lips.
[Illustration: Bull eating]
She knew the animal to be of great value, and that she must quickly
give warning of his liberty lest he escape into the forest, and, being
set upon by savages or the _feræ naturæ_ of the place, become but meat
in the stomachs of those little schooled to appreciate his worth. She
ran quickly back to the house, calling that Black Ahab was loose and
she had seen him head for the forest. Mrs. Hannah, rushing from the
milk-house, caught the girl by the arm, shook her angrily because the
cows were up and ready for milking, and she was late to her work. She
would not let her run to the upland fields where the men burned brush,
nor to the Thumbs’ farm so that the creature might be caught. She flung
her milking-stool and her pail at her feet, and told her to be about
her own business, for if she had done as she should have done—that
is, if she had made cheese all the afternoon, instead of loitering
about the pastures—she never would have seen Ahab or known that he had
escaped. Doll sat upon her stool and bent herself silently to her work.
On his return in the evening, Mr. Bilby was angry to find that no word
had been sent to his neighbour in regard to the loss of his creature.
Nor did Doll tell him that it was his wife’s and not her fault. Partly
because she was ashamed that he thought her responsible for the loss,
and partly because she was a wild girl who loved to run about, she
joined the searching party, made up of the men of the two households.
They searched the pastures and the ploughed lands, the fields, the
meadows. There was no place else to search but the forest, for Ahab
was utterly gone. They searched the forest until it was black night,
following the snappings of twigs, blowings, stampings. Not once did
they see the body of the black bull. Doll kept to her foster father’s
heels. Her dress and hands were torn. Her feet soaked with wet. She
often called, and in a lovely voice, ‘Ahab ... Ahab.’ As often as she
cried, Titus knew her whereabouts, and took himself to her side. For
on that black night it was she and not the mischievous bull that he
was pursuing. He thought how heavy was the night, how awful in their
majesty the woods, and how wild and small the dark goblin-child. So
he prayed at the same moment that God might deliver his soul from her
soul, and her body unto his.
Weary and disheartened at last, all turned towards home. But Doll had
lost Mr. Bilby, who had started back with Deacon Thumb. Titus, amazed
and delighted to find her alone, walked by her side. Doll bitterly
reproached herself that she had not given warning in time. To comfort
her Titus said it was only his and his father’s fault because they
could not keep the beast in bonds. To his amazement he found that it
was not with their loss she was concerned, but only with the fortunes
or misfortunes of the wretched bull. He thought, has this woman a
familiar, and is it that accursed Ahab? So his marrow froze in his
bones.
Thinking that she was indeed no bigger than one of those little goblins
that live by the hob and bring good fortune to those who are kind to
them, and also how there was much about her shape to please a man of
rare discernment, he would have touched her with his hands (witch or
no witch) and supported her weariness through the rough dark pasture
lands. If she would accept this much from him, it was possible (for the
night was May night when all young men for hundreds of years have been
allowed special license from their sweethearts) she would permit more
and more, so that the day’s vexations might end joyously. Many times
had he felt a vital spark pass from her to him, and he could not but
believe that she was conscious of it as well as he. Doll seemed not to
realize his intent. As in the dark he approached his hands to her, she
floated from him. Before her home was reached he came to fancy she had
no body, or that by some charm (strong as that charm she had worked to
bind him to her) she now had made a barrier about herself which he had
not the physical strength to break.
He thought of Sara and her loving demon, Asmodeus, and wondered if
such a fiend might not now be protecting her. And he wished he had
never heard that holy story, for Sara, according to Sacred Writ, had
seven husbands and each young man in turn had been strangled upon his
marriage bed by the fiend Asmodeus, who loved her.
6
_A young Christian witnesses an Awful Metamorphosis and shoots a
bullet, but not a silver bullet._
The young man’s bodily fatigue was great, and his soul tormented. It
grieved him to think that when at last he had gotten Doll Bilby by
herself (and that upon a May night) it had profited him nothing. That
night he could not sleep, but lay hot and lustful upon his bed. When he
believed day about to dawn, he got himself into breeches, jerkin, hose,
and shoes, and, having drunk a jorgen of ale, he went again to the
search of Ahab.
Because there might be danger in the forest, he took with him his
bastard musket. He came out of the house. It was not yet day. There was
some light from the east, but it was a specious and unreal light, and
the mists and fog from up over the sea were heavy and blue. He misliked
the day.
First he looked about his own cow-pens and then about the cow-pens of
his neighbour, for he knew the creature loved the company of his own
kind and if alive would be like to return to them. There was neither
bull, nor sign of bull. With his musket upon his shoulder, he took a
path through Mr. Bilby’s meadows and came down to the smooth waters of
the River Inch. He thought, ‘This Ahab is a greedy drinker. As soon as
the sun is up he will get to the river and gorge himself with water.’
The fogs lay heaviest over the river, and they lay flat and white like
piled counterpanes. Steadily the watery light grew from the east. He
thought he would sit upon a boulder under a willow tree. The sun would
soon shine out and drink up the fogs and dews of night. He kept his
bastard musket on his knees, partly because the strangeness of the
twilight vexed him, and partly because he knew that not far from him—no
farther than he could shoot with his gun—was a path from out of the
woods down which wild animals often came early to drink from the river.
It was down this path he hoped to see Ahab, and in the meantime he
might get venison for his mother’s larder. He sat quietly, and a doe
stepped out, followed by twin fawns. But these he would not shoot, for
their grace and smallness reminded him of Doll. Everything reminded
him of Doll—the birds that sang, the flowers in the grasses, even the
mystery and silence of the dawn. Yet these things should not have
reminded him of a woman, but of her Maker.
In time he heard a crashing and breaking of twigs, and laughed to
himself that he had read the bull’s thoughts so well, for nothing
that lived in the forest would make such a commotion; only a
domestic barnyard animal would carry himself so noisily. Nor was he
disappointed, for out of the fogs and through the brush came the young
bull, looking vast and large in the unreal light of dawn. He thought to
let the creature settle himself to his drinking and then to steal up
from behind him and catch his halter. So he sat quietly until he saw
with astonishment that what he believed to be an Indian was astride
him, and, having rigged reins to the halter, was endeavouring to turn
him from the water.
To see a rider on Ahab did not surprise him, for he knew the bull had
often carried even his little sisters, the puny Labour and Sorrow.
It did astonish and anger him to see a savage in possession of his
father’s property. So he called out roughly and forbade the man to turn
the creature away from him. What next happened he never truly knew,
for he was sure that the tawny (which at the instant seemed a large
and ferocious brave) jumped from the bull’s back and made at him with
his tomahawk. Titus knelt upon one knee and fired. In spite of the
fogs and bushes that partly confused his sight, he took his aim most
accurately against a bit of beadwork above the heart of his enemy. Now
he saw this boy or man most clearly, the deerskin fringe to his jerkin,
the feathers, the dark, angry face, the tomahawk, the patterns made by
beads, and he knew that his aim was accurate and good; yet, even as
the bullet sped to its mark, the Indian was there no more, and instead
stood Doll Bilby with her hands clasped to her heart.
He knew the bullet went through her. When he first saw her, she was
still staggering from the impact, but, when he reached her side and
pulled away her hands (crying out and lamenting that he had killed
her), there was no mark of blood upon her grey gown, and she assured
him in a weak and frightened voice that she was unhurt. This gown Doll
had on that day was made of strong fustian, and, as Mrs. Hannah always
said, it had not a hole nor tear in it. Yet the next time Doll wore it
there was discovered above the heart a minute and perfect patch, put
on, evidently, to cover a hole no larger than a sixpence.
So great and so unreasonable was Titus’s love for Doll, he at first
hardly considered the awful metamorphosis he had witnessed. Instead he
was sick to think how close she had been to death.
As this story (which has just been set down in its true form) spread
through the village, it grew incredibly larger in the mouths of certain
people, and yet in the mouths of others it dwindled down into nothing.
For the former of these insisted that Doll did not come alone, but
was escorted by a vast troop of infernals, witches, etc., and that
Ahab spoke to his master, making sundry infantile observations, such
as might occur to the intelligence of a beast. Those who would make
nothing of the story (and among these was Mr. Zelley) said Titus was
no solid rock upon which to build the truth, and that his fancy had
ridden him. There never had been an Indian upon the bull’s back, only
Doll. He never had seen the beads, fringes, tomahawk. When he shot, his
aim was confused and he had gone wide the mark.
Mr. Zelley, in his diary, quotes Scripture in regard to this curious
incident, saying in part that Our Lord warns us against the putting of
new wine into old bottles, lest the new wine prove too strong and burst
the bottles. ‘So a torrent of feeling—especially when arising from the
passions—is of the greatest danger to a weak container, and young Mr.
Thumb is that weak container.’
At that moment, however, Titus had but one thought, and that was that
at last the wench was in his arms, for she was so weakened by fear (or
perhaps from the actual shock of the bullet) she could hardly stand. He
comforted her, stroking her hair, kissing her, and saying over and over
that he would have died rather than hurt a hair of her head. Concerning
the fact that, but a second before, she had been in other shape and
enjoying a different gender, he said nothing, for he thought that she
might wish to remain mute concerning the matter, and then he thought:
‘It was because of kindness, at least if not towards me, towards the
bull, that made this modest young female assume another shape. How
could she, as a white girl, have ventured to the forest and found
Ahab?’ So he said nothing. Now that at last his arms were about her,
he felt none of the fire and anguish he had endured the night before;
rather, it seemed to him, that he was caressing and comforting one of
his own sisters. So he set her sideways on the bull, and took her to
her own house.
By the time he had reached his father’s farm, he was once more swept by
such inordinate and passionate desire he could not believe that earlier
in the same morning he had kissed and comforted her, thinking her only
a child—not even a witch and much less a woman.