“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 beech-woods. 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 white-washed 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.
As Laura passed through Mrs. Leak’s garden she remembered her first 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 weighed with blue beads to protect his food and drink. Titus insisted that the beads should be blue: blue was the color 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 recognize Vinegar’s playful methods. She gave him credit for do
ing 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. Tomorrow 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 recognized 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 resentm
ent. 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 wasps’-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 soda-water. 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.”
Lolly Willowes Page 14
