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.