1
_Two Women sleep in the House of Hate. Doll Bilby, having ruined the
fortunes of a Student of Divinity, now turns her powers upon a_ DIVINE.
As soon as the harvest was in and the grave of Jared Bilby was filled,
winter came raging in with unwonted ferocity. It came in foot after
foot of dazzling snow, at first snowing only in the night, the sun
sparkling out brightly in the daytime. But by the New Year (the snow
already standing up to the window-sills and over the fences) the winter
grew black. There was no sun, and such storms blew from out the north
and northeast as none had ever seen or heard of before. There was no
ceasing of wind, snow, and black days. The sea roared continuously,
like a thousand lions seeking food from a false god.
The dead could not be buried. The cattle froze. The wolves went to the
barnyards killing sheep, pigs, cattle, horses. A woman found a lynx
among her ducks. The deer came out of the forest, joining the dairy
herds, seeming to ask food of man and shelter in his barns. Such was
the cruel winter that settled down on the dead man’s house, where lived
his widow and adopted child.
These two women lived alone, shut off together from the world in
solitude. They lived almost without speaking and in hate. The two farm
servants slept in the cow-sheds, and often afterwards said they dreaded
even to enter that gloomy house, where the two women sat watching each
other, hating and being hated.
As was his duty, Mr. Zelley came often to see them. The snows were so
deep he could not travel by horse, so he came on snowshoes with his
Bible under his arm. Each woman he saw separately, praying with her
and trying to comfort her. What he said to Mrs. Hannah all heard as
soon as the roads were broken out and she was out among her gossips,
but what he said to Doll no one knew, although in after years much
that she said to him was known. Mrs. Bilby said that once he came out
of Doll’s chamber like a soul spewed out of Hell. He looked roundabout
him wildly as if he had seen a most frightful sight or heard most
frightful things. Without as much as a word for the woman (who hoped he
would pause and elucidate for her certain problems she had found in
Leviticus), he seized upon a bottle of rumbullion, swallowed half of
that, and made out of the house as though the devils were after him.
The truth is on that day Doll had confessed to him that she was a witch.
Up to this time he had always praised the Christian fortitude, the
piety, the humbleness, and sobriety of Bilby’s Doll. But after that he
came to be much agitated at the mere mention of her name, shaking his
head, exclaiming, ‘Dear me,’ or mentioning the fact that we are all
miserable sinners. He was about the Bilby house more than ever, seeing
Doll always alone and in her own chamber.
When it was said that Doll was a witch, he would reprove the speaker,
sadly bidding him keep such light thoughts on serious matters to
himself. Of course the Bible proves to us that there were witches in
the days of Leviticus and Kings—but to-day ... now, he was not sure
such things exist.
‘Then you do not believe that Jonet Greene...?’
‘There does not live a more excellent Christian. Fools call her a witch
because she begins to lean upon her staff and she has a wandering eye.
Many do so and have such.’
‘Nor yet in the justice done upon the bodies of certain witches in
Boston?’
‘I will not judge of Boston. I speak only of Cowan Corners.’
By these beliefs he gained some friends and lost others. If one does
not believe in witches, how can one believe in devils, and if not in
devils, how then in Hell?—and Hell is, as all know, the fundamental
principle on which good conduct and Christian faith are built.
The women in the Bilby house rarely spoke. Each knew her own duty and
did it. The indentured servants kept to the barn, so there was no noise
but the swish of the women’s skirts or brooms, the rattle of cooking
ware, the slam of a door. Even the house dog, grown old and deaf, never
barked. The cats, five in all, partook of the silence. They slipped
from room to room, eyeing the women suspiciously, but without half the
suspicion with which Hannah eyed them.
On a cold night, Gideon, a big malty tom, being chill, sought animal
warmth. He jumped upon Widow Bilby’s bed. She woke gagged with fear.
She seized Gideon and, in spite of the clawing that shredded her arms,
strangled him.
The next day with an axe she killed every cat in the house. This brutal
slaughter of innocent and pretty pets dismayed Doll almost beyond
endurance. She had loved and fed every one, and they often slept
upon her bed at night. Filled with abomination towards the woman,
she thought at least to give her a headache, or in some way work her
a small harm. She looked about for nail paring or wisp of hair with
which she might fortify a poppet and work magic against the woman. She
found to her astonishment that Hannah evidently suspected her, for any
combing from her hair was instantly burned, and she never pared her
nails except over a dark cloth which she shook out into the fire. While
she did these things, she would look slyly at Doll, as if to say she
understood her game, and would take every precaution against her. So
she had done ever since her husband died, but Doll did not notice this
precaution until February.
Much of the time Doll lay in her own room upon her own narrow bed, and
prayed to the Prince of Hell that he send some instructor or messenger
to her ... but thus far only Mr. Zelley came to instruct her. She
looked forward to the spring with longing, and because of a dream she
had three times concerning a young man asleep in a bed of violets (yet
the man she knew, even as she gazed at him, was infernal), she came to
believe that in spring, when the violets blossom, a messenger would
come.
By February, the roads being broken, Widow Bilby was again about, but
Doll in her discontent walked solitary. She saw no one except perhaps
once in a long time Goody Greene, and once a week Mr. Zelley (whom
she filled full of the phantasies of her childhood). She did not go
to Church, and this shocked and angered the whole community, although
Mr. Zelley himself insisted that she was too weak and sick to take the
hard trip on horseback. Of her neighbours, the Thumbs, she saw nothing.
Titus (because of the stories which Widow Bilby told his mother, and
she, in turn, told him) went in daily terror of his life. He believed
Doll had a poppet of him. If his head ached, it was because she pinched
or pricked the head of the poppet. Were it his stomach, lights, bowels,
that hurt him, he thought she was rubbing poison on the belly and
body of this same poppet. When a black sow he had raised up by hand
suddenly jumped into the air and fell dead, he thought she had in
passing glanced at it.
Of all things, however, Titus most feared Ahab, the black bull, who
had, from the day Doll found him in the forest, changed his gentle
nature to one most ferocious and perverse. He urged his father to
butcher the animal before it took human life. The deacon said it would
be gluttonous to put into the stomach such costly steaks, roasts, etc.,
and any man who did so deserved to have his bowels rot.
2
_Showing that the Sun will always shine again, no matter how black the
Winter._
The winter had come early, but (contrary to country superstition) it
remained late. For April was full of the racketing of wind, and May
was drenched and all but drowned in rain. Not until the end of that
month did the earth rally from adversity, and there come still and
sunny days. The skies were of heavenly blueness, crossed only by herds
of fleecy clouds, as sweet and innocent as wandering lambs. The grass
grew green and was prettily pied with multitudes of little flowers.
The fruit trees glanced but once at sun and sky, then burst into
rapturous blooming. The beauty of these trees is not idle and barren.
Their deeds (that is, their fructuation) is as good as their promise
(or blossoming). Man may enjoy the loveliness of these flowers, knowing
that their loveliness is one of accomplishment.
Special lectures were held at the Meeting-House, giving thanks (where
thanks were due) for the beneficent weather, the fertility of all
things, the abundance of fish, game, wild foods, and good health of the
community. In his praying Mr. Zelley (so it was observed) twice asked
with particular passion that the old hatreds, the old jealousies, and
the old cruel superstitions might be left behind, and that, in the new
land, the spirit of man might break forth as a chick breaks the egg.
The widow’s house had stood fast-shuttered for six months. Now it was
open to sun and gentle breeze. Doll had been pale, sad, all winter; now
she felt the gladness of the earth singing about her in the sweetest
voice, calling her to set aside the dark mantle of the soul to take on
joy, hope, and even pleasure. She felt frolicsome (as she had often
felt with her foster father) and played with the calves and colts,
secretly met the Thumb twins by the boundary brook, and filled them
full of devilish lies.
She went again to the Meeting-House, and even wantonly enjoyed herself
during service, for she found that (such were her latent powers for
harm), by merely twisting her fingers together and staring hard at
Deacon Pentwhistle as he led the psalm singing, she could twist his
throat so that he broke off into a coughing fit. Once, on seeing Titus
enter the pasture where Ahab grazed, she slyly and only by thought
ordered the creature to have at the young man. Behold! She had the
inimitable pleasure of seeing Ahab make at him, and Titus barely
reached a tree in time to save his limbs. If Ahab had gained too much
on this swift and willing runner, she would have crossed her legs
and this would have stopped the bull, for she wanted her old lover
frightened, but neither maimed nor slain.
Mr. Zelley continued to wrestle with her in prayer, begging her to
believe that she could not be a witch because he (being little better
than an atheist) thought such things could not exist. He always claimed
that he strove to save her soul. She rewarded him by destroying his.
She went often to his house and read in his library, especially of all
such books as the ‘Malleus Maleficarum’ and ‘Sadducismus Triumphatus,’
etc., which treat of witches and witchcraft, for she was unskilled and
wished to learn proper charms and methods for working evil. She also
questioned Goodwife Greene. Still she never could learn (except by
accident) how to do any of the things she wished. She could not even
summon the Devil, who, when he came, came as pleased him—not to her
order.
3
_An Intimation comes to Doll that some Infernal is about. She believes
that he whom she (in wicked abomination) worships will soon send sign
to her._
On a morning she awoke, knowing she must go to Greene’s house. ‘I must
see Goody Greene,’ she thought. ‘I must talk to Goody Greene.’ She left
the pots unwashed, the room unswept. She put on neither coat nor hat,
but went as she was, for the day was warm. Now the new year seemed to
promise great things, and she felt confident these things she would
find. There was every happiness close to her, hiding, waiting to be
found. Through these pleasant and cheerful thoughts came racketing the
clangour of a brass bell and the terrible blasting of a fish horn, and
the voice of man (in this case the voice of the town crier) tolled out
to her and to all the world those things that were lost.
Mr. Minchon, the crier, put the fish horn under his arm and took the
brass bell by the clapper.
‘Gone away!’ he cried. ‘Gone away! Gone away! Four pirates from the
Boston Jail, one day before their trial. Calico Jack and Black Pig
Murch, Ben Bottle and the Bloody Shad. Likewise, from the pasture of
Deacon Thumb, one priceless bull known to you all, the young bull
Ahab.’ (Ding-dong! Ding-dong!)
‘Lost or stole, lost or stole, a wallet and the money in it of Captain
Tom Buzzey, for he put it on the tavern step, turned, and it was gone.
Lost or stole, the wallet of Tom Buzzey—a wallet with the money in
it.’ (Ding-dong!) Mr. Minchon, blowing again upon his fish horn, took
himself and his sad news of things lost or things stolen to the next
street corner; there, having gathered a crowd about him, he proclaimed
again. He moved again and yet again. Knowing the matter of which he
spoke, Doll could even at a long way recognize the names of the four
pirates, for he always began with full lungs, so she heard four times
the crying out of these names, Calico Jack and Black Pig Murch, Ben
Bottle and the Bloody Shad, but of Captain Buzzey’s loss she heard but
once, for Mr. Minchon arrived at it with spent ardour and small voice.
Doll continued on her way to Greene’s hut.
Between the house of Mr. Zelley and the House of God, she met seven
Indians who walked the one after the other, with feet silent as panther
paws. They were dressed in the paint and regalia affected by their
chief men, in the hope of giving to their persons, by external and
childish methods, that true dignity which never can come from without
but arises only from the soul. The Indians passed (as they always do)
without so much as glancing at the white woman, but she gazed hard upon
them, thinking that perhaps they really were devils—as many ignorant
people then believed—and that the sign or messenger which she had come
to look for constantly would be from them. As she watched, a feather
floated or rather seemed to be lifted from the headgear of one of
these, and, after wavering a second, it came to rest at her feet. This
was a scarlet feather with a yellow tip to it. She stooped to it, and
hid it in her bosom, looking longingly after the seven chief men,
thinking that having vouchsafed her this favour they might sign her to
follow them. They did not.
She went her way, but she went exulting, with red cheeks and smiling
mouth. The young men she passed at the tavern drew back that she might
not cast a roving eye upon them and desire them, for they all knew of
the bewitchment by which she had afflicted Thumb. They guessed, by the
unaccustomed red of her cheek and the sparkle of her eye, that (spring
having come again) she was wandering about looking for a new young man
to devour. The young men stood back; Doll went her way.
She came to the waste marshes by the sea on which sat the tinker’s hut.
She rapped on the door and cried out her own name. The woman did not
call ‘Come in,’ as was usual, and Doll heard rustlings, whisperings,
tramplings, within. She thought how this woman, like herself, was a
witch. Her heart beat quicker with the (to her) delightful thought that
perhaps at that very moment she had discovered Greene in confab with
some fiend spirit or familiar, and that was why the door was not opened
to her, that was why there were rustlings from within. Then Goody
Greene opened the door and with her usual affection drew the girl into
her miserable house, kissed her, and put out the stool, a jointstool,
for her to sit on. Greene went on with her own business which was
concerned with sorting out into heaps dried toadstools and mushrooms.
Doll stared at her and saw how hard the pulse throbbed in the old
woman’s neck, how her hands shook at her work, how again and again she
swallowed as if choked by an oppressive secret. But the girl could not
tell the woman she thought her a witch and say, ‘I would like to see
the familiar I know must be close by,’ for the moment she stopped upon
the threshold she was aware that she and the goodwife were not alone.
She could feel the air tremble about her; she could almost hear it,
all but see it. It was there, close in the one room of the hut, with
them. It had not flown at her coming; it had hid itself. She saw that
the hangings upon the bed were drawn. ‘It is yonder,’ she thought;
‘the fiend hides in the bed behind drawn curtains.’ She was sick with
fear, but her hopes rode high. She took from her bosom the feather the
Indian had dropped. What did Goody Greene think of the feather? Greene
said it was a bright and pretty feather, and proved the Indians to be
more skillful than we in dyeing. But did it mean nothing more to her
than that? No, nothing more. She put it back into her bosom. What would
Goody do with so many fungi? She would mix them with snake fat and cure
rheumatics. She said she did not know snakes had any fat. Greene said
that any distillation from flesh was called ‘fat.’ Then they sat for a
long time without speaking.
Doll helped with the sorting.
Doll thought to herself, ‘Be my friend, Goody Greene; confess you are
a witch, show me your familiar, and we will work magic together, for I
cannot bear to be so lonely.’ The woman set a pot on the fire to make
a gruel for dinner. She put three handfuls of maize into the pot. Doll
asked her, ‘Does the goodman come back for dinner?’ ‘No,’ said Greene,
‘I put in the extra handful by mistake.’ This was very strange, thought
Doll, but in her mind made note of the fact that a familiar will
condescend to eat maize gruel like a poor man. It distressed Doll that
the woman would not trust her and produce her familiar.
The woman squatted before the pot, Doll knelt beside her, and, because
she was sick with bitter loneliness, she pressed her face against the
woman’s sleeve and said, ‘You are the only mother I have ever had since
I was a tiny child, and I, Goody Greene, I am the only child you ever
had.’ The woman let the wooden spoon slip from her fingers so that it
was lost in the gruel, and Doll, who jumped up to fetch her another
one, saw from the corner of her eye that she glanced at the bed. ‘Ah,’
thought Doll, ‘perhaps she has made herself a popinjay from broom or
rags or scarecrow, and calls this thing “son.” Perhaps that is what she
has about her in this room—and in the bed most likely.’
As they ate their dinner (of which there was far too much for the
two women), Doll asked Greene to tell her again some of those old
stories by which she had enchanted her as a child. Greene told her of
the unfortunate earl’s daughter, who consented to a boat ride with
a handsome stranger-man. (The masts were of gold, but did not bend
before the wind. The sails were of taffety, and did not fill with the
breeze.) They sailed three leagues and then she spied his cloven hoof
and wept most bitterly, knowing it was no man but a devil with whom she
must cope.
Greene told her other ungodly stories from an ungodly antiquity. Doll
questioned her at every turn. She must know how each magic trick was
worked; she must hear how it was Fair Jennifer of Bageley Wood called
her demon to her. Greene told her the true story of how a lycanthropic
man, believing himself to be a wolf, killed fifteen in the Midlands
before the soldiers got him. She told her of Queen Mab and her tiny
tinsel court. At last Doll got to her feet to go. She heard the bed
creak, and saw a moving lump bulge out the drawn curtains. But the
familiar did not make itself manifest. As Greene stared at the hearth,
Doll slyly drew the red and yellow feather from her bosom and, brushing
by the bed, she slipped the feather within. Calling a hasty good-bye,
she left abruptly, and began to run, for she (in spite of hopes) half
feared a great, scaly, black fiend would leap from the bed and on the
instant shoulder her, and march off down to Hell.
4
_Doll finds an Imp in a cellar. It proves unfriendly to her._
On the next day Doll returned to the marsh hut. Again she found Goody
Greene seemingly alone, yet the one room was mysteriously filled with a
Presence. That day Greene was making teas, infusions, etc. She had four
pots on the coals, and was much confined, in her thoughts and in her
words, by watching them.
Beside the hut was a cold-cellar dug into the ground, and in this
Greene stored her herbs, her drugs, fats, oils, bottles, pans—all the
matter for her trade. She wanted organy, dittany, and galingale root.
Doll ran quickly to the cellar. She knew where these things were laid.
She opened the door, which was in the shape of a bulkhead, and ran down
the short flight of stairs. Here she had played in childhood, and the
strong odours of herbs, roots, and meat oils were fragrant to her. So
she paused a moment, sniffing about. There was a rattle on a dark shelf
behind a clay crock, and a snake skin shook. She thought she had left
the familiar behind her in the good woman’s bed, yet she cried out in
her horror, calling by mistake to the _true_ God—not to the Satan she
had sworn to serve; for there, peeking about the clay crock, was a
ball of tawny fur and from out the fur glared a little man’s face. His
features were like an Ethiop’s, and his head no bigger than an orange.
She noticed, even in the brief moment she paused to look at him, that
hands and even nails were perfect. Behind dangled a long ringed tail—a
pretty tail of black and dun.
This imp was much offended by her, for it scolded her in strange
languages, and its eyes were red with hate. So in terror she, who
thought herself brave enough to stand up before Lucifer, fled from the
littlest of his servants. This servant she saw again, and the next time
without fear.
She ran to Goody Greene, crying she had seen a terrible thing.
‘Hush,’ said Greene; ‘you saw a skull or two, or a snake skin....’
‘No, no, no, it was alive. It was a little imp.’
‘You dreamed it—or it may have been a cat. Cats get into my cellar for
the sake of the fats.’
‘It was not a cat.’
But Greene knew it was not an imp.
At the end Doll was cast down because Greene trusted her so little she
would not confess the truth, even when she had seen the actual fact of
the imp’s body, had heard it chatter. She was distressed, picked up her
bonnet and put it on her head. There was much work to do, she said.
Mrs. Hannah was plucking geese, and she must be back in time to rub
ointment on them where they bled.
‘Doll,’ said Greene, ‘I heard you cry out to God for help when you saw
the cat in the cellar.’
‘I forgot myself,’ murmured Doll, and was ashamed that in her extremity
she had called upon God and not upon the Foul Fiend she had sworn to
worship. She guessed this was the reason both for the imp’s rage and
Greene’s mistrust. ‘I will not forget again,’ she said.
Goody Greene assumed an attitude which seemed indeed to the girl one
of mock piety. She rolled her eyes and said, ‘Always give thanks where
thanks are due.’
Doll thought she was reproving her. ‘I will next time,’ she promised.
Then she went away.