Download the full version of the ebook now at ebookgrade.

com

Discovering Computers Microsoft Office 365

Office 2016 1337251658

https://ebookgrade.com/product/discovering-
computers-microsoft-
office-365-office-2016-1337251658/

Explore and download more ebook at https://ebookgrade.com

 Recommended digital products (PDF, EPUB, MOBI) that
you can download immediately if you are interested.

Illustrated Microsoft Office 365 & Office 2016

Introductory

https://ebookgrade.com/product/illustrated-microsoft-
office-365-office-2016-introductory/

ebookgrade.com

Illustrated Microsoft Office 365 & Office 2016

Intermediate 1305876040

https://ebookgrade.com/product/illustrated-microsoft-
office-365-office-2016-intermediate-1305876040/

ebookgrade.com

New Perspectives Microsoft Office 365 & Office 2016

Introductory

https://ebookgrade.com/product/new-perspectives-microsoft-
office-365-office-2016-introductory/

ebookgrade.com

Illustrated Microsoft Office 365 & Excel 2016

Introductory

https://ebookgrade.com/product/illustrated-microsoft-
office-365-excel-2016-introductory/

ebookgrade.com
New Perspectives Microsoft Office 365 & Excel 2016
Comprehensive

https://ebookgrade.com/product/new-perspectives-microsoft-
office-365-excel-2016-comprehensive/

ebookgrade.com

New Perspectives Microsoft Office 365 & Excel 2016

Intermediate

https://ebookgrade.com/product/new-perspectives-microsoft-
office-365-excel-2016-intermediate/

ebookgrade.com

Microsoft Office 365 and Excel 2016 Comprehensive

1305870727

https://ebookgrade.com/product/microsoft-office-365-and-
excel-2016-comprehensive-1305870727/

ebookgrade.com

Microsoft Office 365 and Word 2016 Intermediate 1305871006

https://ebookgrade.com/product/microsoft-office-365-and-
word-2016-intermediate-1305871006/

ebookgrade.com
Other documents randomly have
different content
workings of her mouth. Miss Jane listened as eagerly, and questioned the
midwife. But at the answers she turned away with coquettish shudders,
pretending to stop her ears, or threatening to slap her sister with a bone.
Laura averted her eyes. She wriggled herself a little further into the
hedge. Once again the dancers veered away to the further side of the field,
their music retreating with them. She hoped they would stay away, for their
proximity was disturbing. They aroused in her neither fear nor disgust, but
when they came close, and she felt their shadows darkening above her head,
a nameless excitement caught hold of her. As they departed, heaviness took
its place. She was not in the least sleepy and yet several times she found
herself astray from her thoughts, as though she were falling asleep in a
train. She wondered what time it was and looked up to consult the stars. But
a featureless cloud covered the sky.
Laura resigned herself. There was nothing to do but to wait, though what
she waited for she did not know: whether at length Mrs. Leak would come,
like a chaperone from the supper-room, and say: ‘Well, my dear, I really
must take you home’—or if, suddenly, at the first cock-crow, all the
company would rise up in the air, a darkening bevy, and disperse, and she
with them.
She was roused by a shrill whistle. The others heard it too. Miss Minnie
and Miss Jane scrambled up and hurried across the field, outdistancing Mrs.
Dewey, who followed them panting for breath and twitching her skirts over
the rough ground. The music had stopped. Laura saw all the witches and
warlocks jostling each other, and pressing into a circle. She wondered what
was happening now. Whatever it was, it seemed to please and excite them a
great deal, for she could hear them all laughing and talking at once. Some
newcomer, she supposed—for their behaviour was that of welcome. Now
the newcomer must be making a speech, for they all became silent: a
successful speech, for the silence was broken by acclamations, and bursts of
laughter.
‘Of course!’ said Laura. ‘It must be Satan!’
As she spoke she saw the distant group turn and with one accord begin
running towards where she sat. She got up; she felt frightened, for their
advance was like a stampede of animals, and she feared that they would
knock her down and trample her underfoot. The first runner had already
swooped upon her, she felt herself encompassed, caught hold of, and carried
forward. Voices addressed her, but she did not understand what was said.
She gathered that she was being encouraged and congratulated, as though
the neglectful assembly had suddenly decided to make much of the
unsuccessful guest. Presently she found herself between Mrs. Leak and red-
haired Emily. Each held an arm. Mrs. Leak patted her encouragingly, and
Emily whispered rapidly, incoherently, in her ear. They were quite close to
the newcomer, Satan, if it were he, who was talking to Miss Minnie and
Miss Jane. Laura looked at him. She could see him quite clearly, for those
who stood round had taken up the candles to light him. He was standing
with his back to her, speaking with great animation to the old ladies,
bowing, and fidgeting his feet. As he spoke he threw out his hands, and his
whole lean, lithe body seemed to be scarcely withheld from breaking into a
dance. Laura saw Miss Jane point at her, and the stranger turned sharply
round.
She saw his face. For a moment she thought that he was a Chinaman;
then she saw that he was wearing a mask. The candle-light shone full upon
it, but so fine and slight was the modelling that scarcely a shadow marked
the indentations of cheek and jaw. The narrow eyes, the slanting brows, the
small smiling mouth had a vivid innocent inexpressiveness. It was like the
face of a very young girl. Alert and immobile the mask regarded her. And
she, entranced, stared back at this imitation face that outwitted all
perfections of flesh and blood. It was lifeless, lifeless! But below it, in the
hollow of the girlish throat, she saw a flicker of life, a small regular pulse,
small and regular as though a pearl necklace slid by under the skin. Mincing
like a girl, the masked young man approached her, and as he approached the
others drew back and left her alone. With secretive and undulating
movements he came to her side. The lifeless face was near her own and
through the slits in the mask the unseen eyes surveyed her. Suddenly she
felt upon her cheeks a cold darting touch. With a fine tongue like a serpent’s
he had licked her right cheek, close to the ear. She started back, but found
his hands detaining her.
‘How are you enjoying your first Sabbath, Miss Willowes?’ he said.
‘Not at all,’ answered Laura, and turned her back on him.
Without glancing to left or right she walked out of the field, and the
dancers made way for her in silence. She was furious at the affront, raging
at Satan, at Mrs. Leak, at Miss Larpent, with the unreasoning anger of a
woman who has allowed herself to be put in a false position. This was what
came of attending Sabbaths, or rather, this was what came of submitting her
good sense to politeness. Hours ago her instinct had told her that she was
not going to enjoy herself. If she had asserted herself and gone home then,
this odious and petty insult would never have happened. But she had stayed
on, deferring to a public opinion that was not concerned whether she stayed
or went, stayed on just as she used to stay on at balls, stayed on to be treated
like a silly girl who at the end of a mechanical flirtation is kissed behind a
palm.
Anyway, she was out of it now. Her feet had followed the windings of a
little path, which crossed a ditch by a plank bridge: it passed through a belt
of woodland, and led her out on to a space of common that sloped away
into the darkness. Here she sat down and spread out her palms upon the
cool turf.
She had been insulted and made a mock of. But for all that she did not
feel truly humiliated. Rather, she was filled with a delighted and scornful
surprise at the ease with which she had avenged her dignity. The mask
floated before her eyes, inscrutable as ever, and she thought no more of it
than of an egg-shell that she could crush between her finger and thumb. The
Powers of Darkness, then, were no more fearful than a herd of bullocks in a
field? Once round upon them and the sniffing encumbering horde made off,
a scramble of ungainly rumps and foolish tails.
It had been a surprising night. And long, endlessly long, and not ended
yet. She yawned, and felt hungry. She fancied herself at home, cutting large
crumbling slices from the loaf in the cupboard, and spreading them with a
great deal of butter and the remains of the shrimp paste. But she did not
know where she was, and it was too dark to venture homewards with no
sense of direction. She grew impatient with the night and strained her ears
for the sound of cock-crow. As if her imperious will had wrenched aside the
covering of cloud, a faint glimmer delineated part of the horizon. Moonset
or sunrise, westerly or easterly she did not know; but as she watched it
doubtfully, thinking that it must be moonset, for it seemed to dwindle rather
than increase, a breeze winnowed the air, and looking round her she saw on
every side the first beginnings of light.
Sitting up, her hunger and sleepiness forgotten, and all the
disappointments and enigmas of the Sabbath dismissed from her mind, she
watched the spectacle of the dawn. Soon she was able to recognise her
surroundings, she knew the place well, it was here that she had met the
badger. The slope before her was dotted with close-fitting juniper bushes,
and presently she saw a rabbit steal out from one of these, twitch its ears,
and scamper off. The cloud which covered the sky was no longer a solid
thing. It was rising, and breaking up into swirls of vapour that yielded to the
wind. The growing day washed them with silver. Every moment the web of
cloud seemed to rise higher and higher, as though borne upward by a rising
tide of light. The rooks flew up cawing from the wood. Presently she heard
the snap of a dead twig. Somebody was astir. Whistling to himself, a man
came out of the wood. He walked with a peculiarly slow and easy gait, and
he had a stick in his hand, an untrimmed rod pulled from the wood. He
switched at the head of a tall thistle, and Laura saw the dew fly off the
astonished blossom. Seeing her, he stopped short, as though he did not wish
to intrude on her. He showed no surprise that she should be sitting on the
hillside, waiting for the sun to rise. She smiled at him, grateful for his good
manners, and also quite pleased to see a reasonable being again; and
emboldened by this, he smiled also, and approached.
‘You are up very early, Miss Willowes.’
She did not recognise him, but that was no reason why he should not
recognise her. She thought he must be a gamekeeper, for he wore gaiters
and a corduroy coat. His face was brown and wrinkled, and his teeth were
as white and even as a dog’s. Laura liked his appearance. He had a pleasant,
rather detached air, which suited well with the early morning. She said:
‘I have been up all night.’
There was no inquisitiveness in his look; and when he expressed the
hope that she felt none the worse for it, he spoke without servility or covert
amusement.
‘I liked it very much,’ said Laura. Her regard for truth made her add:
‘Particularly when it began to be light. I was growing rather bored before
then.’
‘Some ladies would feel afraid,’ said he.
‘I’m not afraid when I’m alone,’ she answered. ‘I lived in the country
when I was a girl.’
He bowed his head assentingly. Something in his manner implied that he
knew this already. Perhaps he had heard about her in the village.
 ‘It’s pleasant to be in the country again,’ she continued. ‘I like Great
Mop very much.’
‘I hope you will stay here, Miss Willowes.’
‘I hope so too.’
She spoke a little sadly. In this unaccustomed hour her soul was full of
doubts. She wondered if, having flouted the Sabbath, she were still a witch,
or whether, her power being taken from her, she would become the prey of
a healthy and untroubled Titus. And being faint for want of food and want
of sleep, she foreboded the worst.
‘Yes, you must stay here. It would be a pity to go now.’
Laura nearly said, ‘I have nowhere to go,’ but a dread of exile came over
her like a salt wave, and she could not trust herself to speak to this kind
man. He came nearer and said:
‘Remember, Miss Willowes, that I shall always be very glad to help you.
You have only to ask me.’
‘But where shall I find you?’ she asked, too much impressed by the
kindness of his words to think them strange.
‘You will always find me in the wood,’ he answered, and touching his
cap he walked away. She heard the noise of swishing branches and the scuff
of feet among dead leaves growing fainter as he went further into the wood.
She decided not to go back just yet. A comfortable drowsiness settled
down upon her with the first warmth of the risen sun. Her mind dwelt upon
the words just spoken. The promise had been given in such sober
earnestness that she had accepted it without question, seeing nothing
improbable in the idea that she should require the help of a strange
gamekeeper, or that he should undertake to give it. She thought that people
might be different in the early morning; less shy, like the rabbits that were
playing round her, more open-hearted, and simpler of speech. In any case,
she was grateful to the stranger for his goodwill. He had known that she
wanted to stay on at Great Mop, he had told her that she must do so. It was
the established country courtesy, the invitation to take root. But he must
have meant what he said, for seeing her troubled he had offered to help.
Perhaps he was married; and if Mrs. Leak, offended, would keep her no
longer, she might lodge with him and his wife in their cottage, a cottage in a
dell among the beechwoods. He had said that he lived in the woods. She
began to picture her life in such a cottage, thinking that it would be even
better than lodging in the village. She imagined her whitewashed bedroom
full of moving green shades; the wood-smoke curling up among the trees;
the majestic arms, swaying above her while she slept, and plumed with
snow in winter.
The trees behind her murmured consolingly; she reclined upon the
sound. ‘Remember, Miss Willowes’ ... ‘Remember,’ murmured the trees,
swaying their boughs muffled with heavy foliage. She remembered, and
understood. When he came out of the wood, dressed like a gamekeeper, and
speaking so quietly and simply, Satan had come to renew his promise and to
reassure her. He had put on this shape that she might not fear him. Or would
he have her to know that to those who serve him he appears no longer as a
hunter, but as a guardian? This was the real Satan. And as for the other,
whom her spirit had so impetuously disowned, she had done well to disown
him, for he was nothing but an impostor, a charlatan, a dummy.
Her doubts were laid to rest, and she walked back through the fields,
picking mushrooms as she went. As she approached the village she heard
Mr. Saunter’s cocks crowing, and saw the other cock, for ever watchful, for
ever silent, spangle in the sun above the church tower. The churchyard yews
cast long shadows like open graves. Behind those white curtains slumbered
Mr. Jones, and dreamed, perhaps, of the Sabbath which he was not allowed
to attend.
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 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.
Laura felt a momentary embarrassment. She had long wished for a
reasonable conversation with her Master, but now that her wish seemed
about to be granted, she felt rather at a loss for an opening. At last she
observed:
‘Titus has gone.’
‘Indeed? Isn’t that rather sudden? It was only this afternoon that I met
him.’
‘Yes, I saw you meeting him. At least, I saw him meeting you.’
‘Just so. It is remarkable,’ he added, as though he were politely parrying
her thought, ‘how invisible one is on these bare green hillsides.’
‘Or in these thick brown woods,’ said Laura, rather sternly.
This sort of Satanic playfulness was no novelty; Vinegar often behaved
in the same fashion, leaping about just out of reach when she wanted to
catch him and shut him up indoors.
 ‘Or in these thick brown woods,’ he concurred. ‘Folly Wood is
especially dense.’
‘Is?’
‘Is. Once a wood, always a wood.’
Once a wood, always a wood. The words rang true, and she sat silent,
considering them. Pious Asa might hew down the groves, but as far as the
Devil was concerned he hewed in vain. Once a wood, always a wood: trees
where he sat would crowd into a shade. And people going by in broad
sunlight would be aware of slow voices overhead, and a sudden chill would
fall upon their flesh. Then, if like her they had a natural leaning towards the
Devil, they would linger, listening about them with half-closed eyes and
averted senses; but if they were respectable people like Henry and Caroline
they would talk rather louder and hurry on. There remaineth a rest for the
people of God (somehow the thought of the Devil always propelled her
mind to the Holy Scriptures), and for the other people, the people of Satan,
there remained a rest also. Held fast in that strong memory no wild thing
could be shaken, no secret covert destroyed, no haunt of shadow and silence
laid open. The goods yard at Paddington, for instance—a savage place! as
holy and enchanted as ever it had been. Not one of the monuments and
tinkerings of man could impose on the satanic mind. The Vatican and the
Crystal Palace, and all the neat human nest-boxes in rows, Balham and
Fulham and the Cromwell Road—he saw through them, they went flop like
cardhouses, the bricks were earth again, and the steel girders burrowed
shrieking into the veins of earth, and the dead timber was restored to the
ghostly groves. Wolves howled through the streets of Paris, the foxes played
in the throneroom of Schönbrunn, and in the basement at Apsley Terrace
the mammoth slowly revolved, trampling out its lair.
‘Then I needn’t really have come here to meet you!’ she exclaimed.
‘Did you?’
‘I didn’t know I did. I thought I came here to be in the country, and to
escape being an aunt.’
‘Titus came here to write a book on Fuseli, and to enjoy himself.’
‘Titus! I can’t believe you wanted him.’
‘But you do believe I wanted you.’
Rather taken aback she yet answered the Devil honestly.
 ‘Yes! I do believe you wanted me. Though really I don’t know why you
should.’
A slightly malevolent smile crossed the Devil’s face. For some reason or
other her modesty seemed to have nettled him.
‘Some people would say that you had flung yourself at my head.’
‘Other people,’ she retorted, ‘would say that you had been going about
seeking to devour me.’
‘Exactly. I even roared that night. But you were asleep while I roared.
Only the hills heard me triumphing over my spoil.’
Laura said: ‘I wish I could really believe that.’
‘I wish you could, too,’ he answered affably; ‘you would feel so
comfortable and important. But you won’t, although it is much more
probable than you might suppose.’
Laura stretched herself out on the turf and pillowed her head on her arm.
‘Nothing could feel more comfortable than I do, now that Titus is gone,’
she said. ‘And as for importance, I never wish to feel important again. I had
enough of that when I was an aunt.’
‘Well, you’re a witch now.’
‘Yes.... I really am, aren’t I?’
‘Irrevocably.’
His voice was so perfectly grave that she began to suspect him of
concealing some amusement. When but a moment before he had jested she
had thought a deeper meaning lay beneath his words, she almost believed
that his voice had roared over her in the thunder. If he had spoken without
feigning then, she had not heard him; for he had stopped her ears with a
sleep.
‘Why do you sigh?’ he asked.
‘Did I sigh? I’m puzzled, that’s all. You see, although I’m a witch, and
although you sitting here beside me tell me so, I can’t really appreciate it,
take it in. It all seems perfectly natural.’
‘That is because you are in my power. No servant of mine can feel
remorse, or doubt, or surprise. You may be quite easy, Laura: you will never
escape me, for you can never wish to.’
 ‘Yes, I can quite well believe that, I’m sure I shall never wish to escape
you. But you are a mysterious Master.’
‘You seem to me rather an exacting servant. I have shaped myself like a
jobbing gardener, I am sitting on the grass beside you (I’ll have one of your
apples if I may. They are a fruit I am particularly fond of), I am doing
everything in my power to be agreeable and reassuring.... What more do
you want?’
‘That is exactly what I complain of. You are too lifelike to be natural;
why, it might be Goethe’s Conversations with Eckermann. No! if I am
really a witch, treat me as such. Satisfy my curiosity. Tell me about
yourself.’
‘Tell me first what you think,’ he answered.
‘I think’—she began cautiously (while he hid his cards it would not do to
show all hers)—‘I think you are a kind of black knight, wandering about
and succouring decayed gentlewomen.’
‘There are warlocks too, remember.’
‘I can’t take warlocks so seriously, not as a class. It is we witches who
count. We have more need of you. Women have such vivid imaginations,
and lead such dull lives. Their pleasure in life is so soon over; they are so
dependent upon others, and their dependence so soon becomes a nuisance.
Do you understand?’
He was silent. She continued, slowly, knitting her brows in the effort to
make clear to herself and him the thought that was in her mind:
‘It’s like this. When I think of witches, I seem to see all over England, all
over Europe, women living and growing old, as common as blackberries,
and as unregarded. I see them, wives and sisters of respectable men, chapel
members, and blacksmiths, and small farmers, and Puritans. In places like
Bedfordshire, the sort of country one sees from the train. You know. Well,
there they were, there they are, child-rearing, house-keeping, hanging
washed dishcloths on currant bushes; and for diversion each other’s silly
conversation, and listening to men talking together in the way that men talk
and women listen. Quite different to the way women talk, and men listen, if
they listen at all. And all the time being thrust further down into dullness
when the one thing all women hate is to be thought dull. And on Sundays
they put on plain stuff gowns and starched white coverings on their heads
and necks—the Puritan ones did—and walked across the fields to chapel,
and listened to the sermon. Sin and Grace, and God and the——’ (she
stopped herself just in time), ‘and St. Paul. All men’s things, like politics, or
mathematics. Nothing for them except subjection and plaiting their hair.
And on the way back they listened to more talk. Talk about the sermon, or
war, or cock-fighting; and when they got back, there were the potatoes to be
cooked for dinner. It sounds very petty to complain about, but I tell you,
that sort of thing settles down on one like a fine dust, and by and by the dust
is age, settling down. Settling down! You never die, do you? No doubt
that’s far worse, but there is a dreadful kind of dreary immortality about
being settled down on by one day after another. And they think how they
were young once, and they see new young women, just like what they were,
and yet as surprising as if it had never happened before, like trees in spring.
But they are like trees towards the end of summer, heavy and dusty, and
nobody finds their leaves surprising, or notices them till they fall off. If they
could be passive and unnoticed, it wouldn’t matter. But they must be active,
and still not noticed. Doing, doing, doing, till mere habit scolds at them like
a housewife, and rouses them up—when they might sit in their doorways
and think—to be doing still!’
She paused, out of breath. She had never made such a long speech in the
whole of her life, nor spoken with such passion. She scarcely knew what
she had said, and felt giddy and unaccustomed, as though she had been
thrown into the air and had suddenly begun to fly.
The Devil was silent, and looked thoughtfully at the ground. He seemed
to be rather touched by all this. She continued, for she feared that if she did
not go on talking she would grow ashamed at having said so much.
‘Is it true that you can poke the fire with a stick of dynamite in perfect
safety? I used to take my nieces to scientific lectures, and I believe I heard
it then. Anyhow, even if it isn’t true of dynamite, it’s true of women. But
they know they are dynamite, and long for the concussion that may justify
them. Some may get religion, then they’re all right, I expect. But for the
others, for so many, what can there be but witchcraft? That strikes them
real. Even if other people still find them quite safe and usual, and go on
poking with them, they know in their hearts how dangerous, how
incalculable, how extraordinary they are. Even if they never do anything
with their witchcraft, they know it’s there—ready! Respectable
countrywomen keep their grave-clothes in a corner of the chest of drawers,
hidden away, and when they want a little comfort they go and look at them,