A mirror for witches

by Esther Forbes

2

A woman is seized by a Frenzy. And how a man may court without profit.

Now, when she found herself alone, she ran back and forth, back and forth, through the house. She locked and barred everything. She locked the cupboards and the doors and shuttered the windows. She went to the attic and locked the trunks, the boxes, the cribs, and the cases. She went to the cellar and bolted the door. Doors she could neither bolt nor bar, she barricaded. Even when this was done, she could not stop her strange running round and round the house, sometimes turning in small circles like a dog gone mad. She said over and over to herself, ‘I must be a witch, for I can feel myself weaving a charm.’ So she ran fast through the house, but there was nothing more to lock.

It was not yet seven o’clock and the evening was still light. Yet so closely had she barred and shuttered everything, the house inside was dark as midnight. Then she got old blankets, and in the end, in her desperation, new blankets, and tried to stuff the gaping chimney hole in the fire-room so that the whole house should be utterly barred and tight. But all the time (as she afterwards told Mr. Zelley) she would ask herself, ‘Why, why do I do these things?’ In the midst of her most desperate work with the chimney hole, she would stop and begin to run through the house—unable to stop herself. She thought to herself that she was working some charm or rather some charm worked within her. She was powerless before her great need to run back and forth, back and forth, through the locked and barred house.

Titus Thumb, dressed as though for a bridal and carrying a nosegay of lad’s-love and a turkey-leather psalm book for gifts, came proudly to the house, knocking to be let in. Doll heard him, for she was crouched upon the cold hearth of the fire-room, striving to stuff the chimney hole. She thought, ‘I will let him in, and then he can do this thing better than I.’

Titus was astonished to find the house dark and his lady’s hair a ragged black mat on her shoulders, her gay scarlet gown disordered and torn open at the throat, as though she had but recently wrestled with an enemy. And her face astonished him, for her cheeks were bright red. Fuller and more beautiful than ever before, her eyes glittered indeed like a goblin’s and her wide mouth was pulled up at the corners in a wicked but most provocative smile. She, in the dark house, seemed more like imp or puck than human woman. All that was human in him—that is, intelligence, conscience, reason, and so forth—was afraid and bade him turn back; yet all that was animal in him—that is, the hunger and desire of his body—urged him to enter. So he entered.

Already that awful necessity that had made her run so madly through the house was gone. She explained the blankets by the cold hearth, saying that they were damp, and that she had planned to build a fire and dry them out. So he built a fire. She explained her dishevelled condition. She had heard a rat in the cellar and had taken a poker and hunted for him. Could he not at that moment hear the rat scampering in the cellar? So he took a light and a poker and went to the cellar, and Doll, a little ashamed and frightened, quickly ordered her clothes and hair, and unlocked everything she could before he returned. Yes, he said, he found a rat and he had killed it. This surprised her, for she had really heard no rat, and the thought came to her that perhaps the Devil had sent that rat to excuse her conduct.

The young man sat on the settle with his head in his hands and prayed God to deliver his soul from the woman’s soul, and her body unto his. At last he spoke to her, his face turned away from her. He told her that she knew why he was come. He wished to marry her, and that he would be to her a true and loving husband. No, she said, she could not marry him. He was surprised, for Mr. Bilby had told no one of the young woman’s aversion to marriage. He had understood that he had only to ask and she would assent. He told her that it was all settled—the very spot on which their house should be built. How could she now so coldly say no? She only said again that she could not marry him—nor any other. ‘If that is so,’ he said, ‘I’ll take my hat and go.’ But why, if she had no idea of marrying him, had she so kept him at her heels? She had not kept him at her heels. She was always trying to rid herself of him. She knew that was not true. The very way she drew back from him was the surest encouragement a man could have. She said she thought he was talking nonsense. Her eyes glittered at him, round and bright in the firelight, like a cat’s.

He was afraid. He got up. He said again that he would take his hat and go. ‘I wish you would,’ said Doll. They could not find his hat. It seems that, while Doll was straightening herself and ordering the house (Titus at the moment ratting in the cellar), she had by chance picked up his hat, with many other things, such as the sooty blankets, and had stuck them under her own bed. So now they could not find his hat.

The young fellow was afraid, and now, as never before, he believed she was a witch. His blood pumped through him as though about to burst the veins; he knew that she wished this hat to work further charms upon him. But if she were so set upon charming him, making him her slave, why would she now have none of him? Why should she torture him, making him love her past all human endurance, and yet now so coldly dismiss him?

Doll said she was very sorry about the hat. ‘Oh, it is not the hat,’ he cried in despair, his head again in his two hands, ‘but, my dear Doll, why will you so torture me? Have I ever been anything but kind and respectful to you? Look what you have done. A year ago I was twice the man I now am. You have done it. You’ve sucked the strength and manhood out of my veins.’ Then he talked strangely so that she could not at first understand him. At last she understood him well. He believed that she had cast a witch spell on him, and had thus made him love her so beyond all reason. For, as he frankly told her, she really was not so wonderful nor half so beautiful, etc., as he had come to think her. He said he could remember back three years ago when he thought her a scrawny, rather ugly, little thing with too big a mouth.

All this made her very angry. She jumped up and down in her rage—more like an imp than ever—and screamed at him to be gone. She ran into her own room and came back with his hat—for she had guessed where it really was, but had not found an opportunity to get it for him. She jumped up and clapped the hat onto his head, pulling it down so sharply over his ears that she bent them, and continued to scream, ‘Go! Go! Go!’ He grabbed her roughly by the arm, called her witch, hellcat, succubus. She turned and bit his wrist, so that it was marked for days. He pulled her off him, shook her with great fury, and flung her from him so that her head struck against the settle and she moaned in pain. Her plight touched his heart infinitely, and he knew that, witch or no witch, she was his dear, his own girl.

So the parents and foster parents, returning, found them. The man, a valiant officer in the militia, a scholar, and the heir to a fine estate, was convulsed with weeping and sobbing. The girl lay terror-stricken in the corner, as harmless as a trapped rabbit. Mr. Bilby had no idea that Titus had flung her into this corner. She was a strange child, and he thought she had picked it out for herself. He pitied the terrible (if somewhat unmanly) grief of the young man, and swore that, in spite of Doll’s ridiculous and, he felt, unnatural objections, the marriage must go ahead.

Mrs. Thumb took her son home, and Mr. Bilby took Doll to bed, and he comforted her with that more than female solicitude that a man often shows towards children or women in distress.

Mrs. Hannah was in a rage when she found her fine blankets blackened with dirty soot. Nor would Doll offer an explanation to her foster mother, although afterwards she told Mr. Zelley everything.